Southern Branch 
 of the 
 
 University of California 
 
 Los Angeles 
 
 Form L I 
 
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 1295 
 C22s
 
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 9.4 
 
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 7*76 
 
 STATF NORMAL SCHOOL, 
 
 Us Arrgefes. Cal.
 
 -A ;-.
 
 SOUTH-COUNTY NEIGHBORS 
 
 BY 
 
 ESTHER BERNON CARPENTER 
 
 7** 
 
 BOSTON 
 ROBERTS BROTHERS 
 
 1887
 
 Copyright, 1887, 
 
 BY ROBERTS BROTHERS. 
 
 dnibfrsito 
 JOHN WILSON AND SON, CAMBRIDGE.
 
 F s 
 ^ 5 
 
 TO 
 
 OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES, 
 
 MY EARLIEST AND LATEST MASTER, 
 
 I Drttcate 
 
 T.H IS BOOK.
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 THE busy life of the South County of to-day 
 still keeps certain wholesomely rustic 
 phases of its leisurely yesterday. But in choos 
 ing the subjects of my character-studies I 
 have generally preferred to set back the hands 
 of the town-clocks until they pointed to the 
 time of forty or fifty years ago, when every 
 body's hobby was ridden bare-backed, and when 
 freaks and oddities of individuality flourished 
 unchecked by an upstart civilization. 
 
 In those generous days the bucolic and sea 
 faring types ran to a luxuriant growth. The in 
 formal club of rural fellowship met at the country 
 store, where the talk flowed in a vein of wise 
 acre moralizing, or of delicious inconsequence, 
 and the season of expansion was equally im 
 proved by the talkers, the listeners, and by 
 those no less sincere seekers after social in 
 fluences who yet remained among the inarticu 
 late intelligences, and dwelt in a contemplation
 
 VI PREFACE. 
 
 which seemed to yield the fruits of a Yankee 
 Nirvana. 
 
 Loitering on the highway, or sharing the 
 charitable hospitality of the farmhouse, came 
 and went " all the vagrant train " that were 
 known to the hamlet of Lissoy. The classi 
 cally familiar figures of "the aged beggar," 
 " the broken soldier," or " the ruined spend 
 thrift," appeared by their New England repre 
 sentatives, such as infirm-witted "old travel 
 lers," waifs from the War of 1812, and blighted 
 scions of good families. 
 
 All roads ranged by these picturesque origi 
 nals led to the " town-farm," where they were as 
 rudely assorted and classified as any set of 
 grotesquely-carved and half-broken toys that 
 are hastily crowded into a box. Here were 
 types of no distant kindred to those of the rural 
 almshouse of Crabbe, or the gathering of " ran- 
 die, gangrel bodies " at Poosie Nancy's ; and all 
 were thoughtfully grouped by the village fathers 
 into a kind of Conservatory of Outlawry. 
 
 Such were some of the primitive elements 
 entering into the life of those country " Neigh 
 bors " whose traits I have slightly indicated. 
 
 I have so entitled my book not only from the 
 universal neighborliness of country people, but 
 because this title of " neighbor " has been com 
 monly used among us with a scope of expres 
 sion which makes it the equivalent of the
 
 PREFACE. vii 
 
 Western " stranger," as a genial and conciliatory 
 form of address, suiting either the oldest ac 
 quaintance or the latest comer. 
 
 Those who best know our Narragansett 
 country, and have already become familiar with 
 these " South-County Folks " as they made their 
 occasional appearances in the " Providence Jour 
 nal "will least need the assurance that the figures 
 of my studies are simply types, rather than 
 likenesses. To others to those present stran 
 gers in whom every writer anxiously hopes to 
 find future friends, I can only commend my 
 people for the sake of that reality in the power 
 of which they lived and moved in my conscious 
 ness, so that I looked into their faces, heard 
 their voices, and knew no rest from these per 
 sistent guests until I had suffered them to tell 
 their stories. 
 
 WAKEFIELD, WASHINGTON COUNTY, 
 RHODE ISLAND, May 10, 1887.

 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 SALLY OF THE SOUTH COUNTY u 
 
 " WHEN MY SHIP COMES IN " 24 
 
 AT A SHEEP-WASHING 41 
 
 AlLSE CONGDON 59 
 
 AN AFTERNOON AT NEIGHBOR NORTHUP'S . . 73 
 
 FROM HOUR TO HOUR IN THE COUNTRY STORE 87 
 
 EVENING MEETING AT UNCLE 'SiAs's .... 115 
 
 WATCHING WITH THE SICK 139 
 
 JACKSON DAWLE/VT'S WIFE . 182 
 
 PRISCILLA GALLAGHAN 223 
 
 * 
 
 L. C .251
 
 SOUTH -COUNTY NEIGHBOR. 
 
 * 
 
 SALLY OF THE SOUTH COUNTY. 
 
 NO maiden of ballad romance was she, but 
 simply our ancient Yankee maid-of-all- 
 work, a " help " of the old-fashioned, pains 
 taking sort, who gave herself to the household 
 routine with an unflagging zeal and energy. 
 She was a natural ascetic (if that is not a con 
 tradiction in terms), a rigid economist, and 
 though the kitchen over which she presided as 
 tutelary deity was always filled with the smoke 
 and steam of sacrifice, she conscientiously con 
 sumed her failures in cookery, invariably 
 making choice, for her own meals, of the burnt 
 johnny-cake and the " slack-baked " bread. 
 When remonstrated with, she generally indulged 
 in the terse reply that "wicked waste makes 
 woeful want." 
 
 One of my most characteristic recollections of 
 Sally dimly shows her wrapped in the incense 
 arising from a frying-pan of doughnuts, while 
 she served as a grim target for the pleasantries
 
 12 SOUTH -COUNTY NEIGHBORS. 
 
 of the village doctor, who never omitted her in 
 his visits to the house, always having the same 
 time-worn jest to proffer anent some very recent 
 widower, or some particularly aged and forlorn 
 bachelor swain, to whom he was about to re 
 commend her as a housekeeper. To what phase 
 of even a middle-aged vanity these railleries 
 could possibly minister is now, as then, a mys 
 tery ; but if the doctor's jokes could hardly be 
 counted as instances of delicate homage, grace 
 ful attention, or well-turned compliment, I 
 suppose that at least they stood as the equiv 
 alents of those unknown quantities in the life 
 of Sally. 
 
 As to my knowledge of Sally, however, I can 
 not boast of any nearer acquaintance with her 
 than that of being received on what I may call 
 the frigid and precarious terms of a tolerated in 
 timacy. I was naturally much attached to her 
 society and her doughnuts, and though, in her 
 own vigorous language, she "would n't have chil 
 dren always 'round underfoot," she consoled me 
 with dazzling promises which soothed my simple 
 credulity with anticipations of a visit we should 
 make to a metropolis known to me, by ear, un 
 der the phonetic formula of " Branzinewuks," but 
 which I have since found to be absurdly written 
 Brand's Iron Works. This youthful vision was 
 never realized, and I fear that I must some day 
 make my own the lament of the aged peasant
 
 SALLY OF THE SOUTH COUNTY. 13 
 
 who was never able to accomplish the cherished 
 wish of his life, in visiting the capital of his native 
 province. 
 
 " Oh ! fate is spun and life is run, 
 And I have not seen Carcassonne ; " 
 
 for, as the poet of this lyric muses, 
 
 " Each mortal has his Carcassonne." 
 
 But I sometimes went with Sally to attend the 
 funerals of the neighbors. Seen from our post 
 of observation, as humble and unrelated sym 
 pathizers, they were occasions of solemn agita 
 tion and subdued bustle. The collection of 
 " teams " in the door-yard, the horses being 
 taken out of the shafts and tied, suggested the 
 same signs of a gathering crowd at an auction. 
 Women and children filled the rooms ; the men 
 were chiefly grouped in the entries, looking in 
 at the windows, or standing by the door. The 
 outward tokens of woe in dress or otherwise 
 were few or none. There was no music, and 
 there were no flowers, except in the small nose 
 gays carried by some of the nervous women, as 
 rustic substitutes for the vinaigrette of fashion, 
 and made up of" lemon balm," with " boys' love" 
 and lavender, or perhaps a sprig of sweet basil, 
 according to choice. The smell of varnish from 
 the newly-made, freshly-stained pine coffin was 
 penetrating. So was the voice of the exhorter, 
 as from his station behind the light-stand, on
 
 14 SOUTH-COUNTY NEIGHBORS. 
 
 which was placed a large Bible, he, for an hour 
 or more, continued to " improve the occasion," 
 and if successful, was approved as having said 
 everything he could to " harrow up the feel 
 ings " of any persons who might be supposed 
 insensible to the teachings of death; the whole 
 closing with a prayer, in which every relative of 
 the deceased, present or absent, must be remem 
 bered, or lasting offence would be given. Then 
 the undertaker rose to say that an opportunity 
 would now be offered for the relations and 
 friends of the corpse to take a last parting look. 
 This was a long ceremony, beginning with the 
 leave-taking of the family; but at last all the 
 distant acquaintances, the slow-moving old folk, 
 and the young mothers, with little children in 
 their arms, had made theic. deliberate way 
 through the room, and the neighbors who acted 
 as bearers removed the coffin, first with a matter- 
 of-fact coolness placing their hats upon it, after 
 the lid had been audibly screwed down by the 
 undertaker in the stern and uncompromising 
 old way. These good, severe people tasted 
 griefs more thoroughly than joys, and would 
 have held it unrighteous to abate one jot or one 
 tittle of the salutary dread to be inspired by the 
 scene. One of the early departures from this 
 general law, the innovation of replacing the 
 shroud by the ordinary dress, was at first re 
 garded as an impiety. It obviously impaired
 
 SALLY OF THE SOUTH COUNTY. 15 ?4[ StfflMf 
 
 Los Angd^ Q , 
 the force of allusion in such a remonstrance as' 
 
 that addressed by the aged Quaker preacher to 
 the young girl who was learning a worldly art 
 of needlework : " Dorothy, thee won't need any 
 lace to be laid out in; " to which she fear 
 lessly replied, with a touch of that spiritual 
 wisdom which belongs to babes: "No, Aunt 
 Huldy; but I sha'n't need any Quaker bonnet, 
 either." And now the neighbor who, with much 
 busy self-importance, " managed the funeral," 
 under a request from the family which carried 
 all the honor of a high compliment, standing in 
 the doorway, read the names of the related 
 families, according to a jealously-arranged order 
 of precedence. The remains were conveyed in 
 a farm-wagon ; the procession walked the short 
 distance to the spot of interment on the land of 
 the deceased, uninclosed it might be, and 
 almost certainly containing graves as yet un 
 marked by stones. Very young children often 
 failed to receive such memorials. No services 
 were held at the grave, as such an observance 
 would have savored too strongly of the super 
 stition of priestly rites ; and few heads were 
 uncovered ; but the elder discharged the duty 
 of publicly inviting the bearers to dinner; and 
 other friends were less formally bidden to the 
 funeral feast. So, with a strange mingling of 
 the gloomy and the abhorrent, of the tasteless 
 and the grotesque, of the sympathetic and the
 
 1 6 SOUTH-COUNTY NEIGHBORS. 
 
 matter-of-fact in the customs of the scene, we 
 buried our old neighbor. 
 
 Sally was not a regular attendant at any meet 
 ing, and if she had ever paid homage to any 
 personal ideals, they were not found among the 
 ciders, whom she was accustomed to satirize, 
 especially one of these sons of thunder, as his 
 flock had once delighted to call him, but of 
 whom she gave a very trenchant account on 
 her return from his preaching. He brought the 
 habits of his week-day labors into the sanctuary, 
 and the better to excel in his fervid style of 
 oratory, took off his coat and mounted the pul 
 pit in the costume of the hayfield. A division 
 had appeared in his church, and his popularity 
 was waning. Breathing out thrcatenings and 
 slaughter, like Saul, against the disturbers of 
 his peace, he finally abandoned the ground of 
 Scriptural warning, falling into the anti-climax 
 of quoting the language of revolutionary min 
 strelsy. The well-to-do farmers of his church 
 who were in opposition to him were indicated 
 under these poetic figures : 
 
 " There is a wealthy people, 
 
 Who sojourn in that land; 
 Their churches, all with steeples, 
 
 Most delicately stand. 
 Their houses, like the gilly, 
 
 Are painted red and gay; 
 They flourish like the lily, 
 
 In North America."
 
 SALLY OF THE SOUTH COUNTY. I/ 
 
 And in pointed attack upon the church coun 
 cil which was soon to sit, and from which he 
 expected hostilities, he closed with a vigorous 
 application of the colonial menace : 
 
 " Ye Parliament of England, 
 
 And Lords and Commons too, 
 Consider well what you 're about, 
 And what you mean to do ! " 
 
 These apt quotations are partly drawn from 
 the popular verses on " American Taxation," 
 written by a Connecticut schoolmaster, and long 
 since enrolled among the curiosities of our 
 literature. 
 
 As I said, Sally was not very desirous of my 
 company, unless, indeed, I could be more like a 
 certain little sister of hers, whom I deemed 
 fabulous, but who in Sally's recital loved to wipe 
 dishes, and to sew her " stent," and who had 
 pieced out a counterpane of five hundred blocks 
 when she died, aged seven. But on Seventh 
 Day (for Sally's early habits had been formed 
 by the Sabbatic sect), or in seasons of afternoon 
 leisure, I was allowed in her room, and could 
 attend what might be called her levte en prin- 
 cesse. At any rate, .it was her time for changing 
 her calico gown for a delaine one. Her sharp, 
 decisive, angular movements were never more 
 appalling than in that part of her toilette which 
 consisted in laying violent hands- on her hair. 
 We know from poetry, rather better than from
 
 1 8 SOUTH-COUNTY NEIGHBORS. 
 
 observation, how charming a sight it is when 
 Inez unbinds her dark tresses, and they fall 
 about her in a shadowy eclipse, until the arrowy 
 comb divides the flow of the sable river, and the 
 straight white parting gleams upon it, " one 
 moonbeam from the forehead to the crown." 
 But such was not precisely the picture suggested 
 by the excellent Sally as she stood ruthlessly 
 grasping her rather harsh hair, while seizing 
 upon some hairpins of giant stature, and of firm 
 and resolute aspect, which she adjusted with the 
 air of a carpenter at his nail-driving, crowning 
 the whole with the huge square-topped horn 
 comb which was coeval with her youth. The 
 finished result gave the damsel a somewhat for 
 bidding appearance, and was painfully sugges 
 tive of an inability to close her eyes. I do not 
 remember that Sally ever went through this 
 beautifying process without inveighing against 
 the modern extravagance of using hairpins. In 
 her early days she had been well suited with the 
 thorns of the locust tree, or those of the haw 
 thorn ; and she was also a stickler for the merits 
 of the garb of her girlhood, the long-unused 
 "petticoat and cooler," or. short sack, which 
 made up the nearest approach to a peasant cos 
 tume that was ever worn by Yankee girls. Yet 
 some slight tokens of vanity Sally still retained. 
 She wore in her ears the thin gold hoops that 
 had been the work, of her brother, a jeweller's
 
 SALLY OF THE SOUTH COUNTY. 1 9 
 
 apprentice; and in her less disapproving moods 
 she would display to me the unsunned glories of 
 that impressive structure of black silk, decked 
 with a bunch of fiercely blushing cherries, which 
 for the last ten years had held the prestige of 
 being her best bonnet. 
 
 The library which sufficed for her mental 
 needs consisted of a certain fetich, carefully pre 
 served under the title of the Good Book, with 
 the town tax-book, and by way of light litera 
 ture, a pious tract describing the sufferings and 
 deaths of the successive Mrs. Adoniram Judsons. 
 Sally had a numerous acquaintance among the 
 Second Adventists and the Millerites, but they 
 had never been able to impart any touch of their 
 dangerous enthusiasm to her dry and self-con 
 tained nature. With matter-of-fact composure, 
 or with grim humor, she detailed the particulars 
 of their several disappointments in the time of 
 the dissolution of our planet, and in the fit of 
 their ascension-robes. Indeed, I never heard 
 her commit herself to any profession of religious 
 faith, unless the occasional expression of a con 
 servative confidence in the efficiency of " them 
 that rules all things " may be regarded as such. 
 Like George Eliot's Dolly Winthrop, she invari 
 ably referred to the heavenly powers by darkly 
 remote plural pronouns. She sometimes had 
 me read the Bible to her, while she pursued her 
 stated Sunday occupation of", putting to rights"
 
 I 
 
 20 SOUTH-COUNTY NEIGHBORS. 
 
 her chest of drawers. She rarely indicated any 
 choice of chapters. It was all good, she would 
 say in a tone of didactic reproof at any proposal 
 of selection ; but I think she inclined to the in 
 tricate style of Saint Paul, and our readings were 
 frequently from Romans. With greater zest, 
 however, she scanned the tax-book, of which 
 she was an annual recipient, as she proudly paid 
 a tax of one dollar and a quarter on her maternal 
 homestead, a fragment of a house, as dilapidated 
 as any old hat thrown away by the roadside, and 
 out of the broken windows of which popped the 
 heads of negro children as you went by. Sally's 
 ancient father, who lived with a married daugh 
 ter, had been a soldier in the War of 1812, and by 
 all his acquaintances was scrupulously addressed 
 by the brevet title of General. His military 
 training had certainly taught him to obey, for 
 he was domineered over by every inmate of the 
 house, down to his youngest granddaughter, 
 who was Sally's especial aversion. " That thcre^ 
 gal's as spry as a kildee," was his delighted 
 boast, provoking thereby a scornful sniff from 
 Sally, who hated all praises, and the withering 
 remark that she was a sight smarter to play than 
 what she was to work. " Come, come, Sarai," 
 the indulgent old grandsire pleaded, "she ain't 
 but a little mite of a gal." I have heard many 
 more impressive remarks since, but few, I think, 
 that have left a pleasanter memory of the sim-
 
 SALLY OF THE SOUTH COUNTY. 21 
 
 plicity of human kindness than these words of 
 the old man, who was in what Dr. Holmes calls 
 the saccharine stage of life, when the temper 
 overflows in sweetness at a touch, as the maple 
 tree yields its sugar on being tapped. I am 
 afraid it is not an experience of every life. 
 
 Sally was wont to refresh herself, while knit 
 ting in her own room, by singing, in a voice which 
 I hope had known better days, such edifying 
 snatches of hymnody as 
 
 " Oh ! won't we have a happy time, 
 
 When we arrive at home ; 
 A-eating honey and a-drinking wine, 
 When we arrive at home ! " 
 
 Somehow I could not fancy Sally as anything 
 but an incongruous figure at a banquet; and I 
 knew she had a mortal antipathy to honey; but 
 that seemed not in the least to detract from the 
 zest with which she continued to make merry in 
 her spiritual song. 
 
 "Sally, when will they arrive at home? "I 
 finally propounded. 
 
 "What say, darter?" 
 
 This was an unusually affectionate form of ad 
 dress from Sally, but I suppose she was mol 
 lified by the enlivening imagery of her sacred 
 ditty. 
 
 " I want to know when they will get home." 
 
 " Why they 'm all coming back, to reign a 
 thousand years."
 
 22 SOUTH-COUNTY NEIGHBORS. 
 
 " Shall we be here then, Sally? " 
 
 " Land o' cakes ! yes, child. \Vc 'm the wicked, 
 'n' the wicked has all got to be burnt up, you 
 know ; 'n' we shall be ashes under the soles of the 
 feet of the righteous in them days by their tell. 
 I d'n know 's I know, " pursued Sally. " Some 
 folks talks one way, 'n' some another," she 
 concluded dispassionately, settling her knitting- 
 sheath for another bout, and drawing on the ball 
 of yarn which she kept in the large old-fashioned 
 pocket of woollen stuff which always hung at her 
 waist, as a survival of the half-colonial dress of 
 her early days. 
 
 I have since renewed my acquaintance with 
 Sally's camp-meeting chorus, or with strains not 
 unlike it, in the stories of Miss Prescott, who as 
 sociated them with a Christian society of high 
 repute for devotional fervor and missionary zeal. 
 Similar instances of a graceful unbending on the 
 part of the saints may be studied in that curi 
 ous collection of the favorite New-Light tunes, 
 with other psalmody of the South County, pub 
 lished under the title of the " Bible Harp." 
 
 I regret to say that an estrangement finally 
 occurred between Sally and myself. The friend 
 ship which had borne the strain of pronounced 
 theological differences could not outlast the or 
 deal of political bitterness. We were divided in 
 opinion upon the merits of the Presidential 
 candidates. Sally was naturally a supporter of
 
 SALLY OF THE SOUTH COUNTY. 23 
 
 a certain " old Bluecannon," as he was seriously 
 known, not only in our nursery politics, but 
 among his partisans of the circle at the village 
 store. I suppose I thought him little better 
 than Bluebeard. I could not attend the flag- 
 raising, as it was no more suitable an occasion 
 for the appearance of pretty-behaved little girls 
 than the circus itself; but my cousins had faith 
 fully drilled me in their frantic war-whoop of 
 " Fremont and Freedom ! Jessie and the Union !" 
 and we dinned it in the ears of our elders until, 
 as I almost think, their cherished Republican 
 principles trembled to the foundations. 
 
 Poor dear Sally, how good you were, in your 
 way, and what an unlovely way it was ! but the 
 last word now spoken of you shall be the frank 
 confession that your young companion of those 
 days would have done well if she had studied 
 the example afforded by the rude strength of a 
 nature that was generous in deeds of diligent 
 service, if it neither asked nor bestowed the im 
 palpable gifts of the less practical forms of daily 
 benevolence.
 
 "WHEN MY SHIP COMES IN." 
 
 BUT before my ship comes in, she must 
 first go out. My ship was the stanch 
 schooner " Ida Izette" (or, as we said, hit, accent 
 ing the first syllabic), and she was built in 
 Waterside and launched beside the little wharf 
 of that hamlet. 
 
 Waterside was a delicious little nook of virgin 
 rusticity, sweet with the breath of clover mead 
 ows, and salt with the wholesome savor of the 
 bay. Nestled on a gently sloping shore, it was 
 sheltered by its curving, sickle-shaped beach, 
 and it looked meekly up to the faint outline of 
 Mount Faith, blue as a cloud in the distance. 
 Its narrow, turfy " laneways," its moist fields, 
 where fringed gentian may be abundantly gath 
 ered, or its sandy " driftways " made for the 
 uses of the " seaweed privilege," are still quieter 
 now than they were twenty-five years ago, when 
 a boat-building industry peopled the village 
 with captains and carpenters. These classes 
 were the owners of the thrifty little shops, savory 
 with fresh odors of newly planed pine, and 
 luxurious with piles of long, rustling shavings, 
 covering the floor ankle-deep ; and of the trim
 
 " WHEN MY SHIP COMES IN." 2$ 
 
 cottages embellished with rustic work, and 
 graced with tokens of pains-taking taste and 
 sea-faring bounty, in the sweet-brier by the 
 window, or the pink-lined shells in the porch. 
 To-day one of these dwellings, made fine with 
 bay-windows and piazzas that are dotted with 
 hammocks and camp-chairs, and provided 
 with a carefully mounted telescope, is but the 
 summer tenant's ornate reproduction of the 
 native's snug habitation ; which showed only 
 such unstudied signs of local color as the spy 
 glass kept on the hooks of the cleat in the 
 kitchen, or a half-hemmed sail thrown on the 
 rag carpet of the " front-room," and awaiting 
 the afternoon leisure of the daughter of the 
 house, " Cap'n Bill's 'Liza," or " Cap'n 'Lijah's 
 Emmeline; " for in this compact, homogeneous, 
 and kindred community, to designate house 
 holders and their families by their surnames 
 would have been to use a superfluity of sound. 
 
 The launching of the " Ida Izette " was a long- 
 anticipated event that brought together with 
 one accord the dwellers in Waterside and its 
 neighborhood, as well as certain representatives 
 of that gypsy class not then known to us under 
 the curt term of " tramps," but more feelingly 
 described by the half-patriarchal appellation of 
 " old travellers." 
 
 Among those witnesses of the ceremony who 
 might be called its patrons was . an amiable old
 
 26 SOUTH-COUNTY NEIGHBORS. 
 
 gentleman, the latest descendant of a family 
 once numbered in the Xarragansett squirarchy, 
 but which had wasted its possessions with the 
 facility of the improvident Irish gentry. This 
 bachelor squireen, then, who bore the hereditary 
 name of Silvanus, was a gentleman of small 
 estate, but large leisure. Reputed " not so wise 
 as some folks be," his education, both early and 
 late, had been of a desultory character. But he 
 was an untiring reader, fond of historical dis 
 quisitions, especially attracted by the fortunes 
 of the Ptolemies, and imperilling the gravity of 
 his listeners by invariably styling them the 
 "Pottleomies." An instance of the inevitable 
 devotion of the gentle Squire Silvanus to any 
 utterly unpractical interest, and the fine indiffer 
 ence with which he met any worldly crisis, was 
 related by neighbors who dwelt upon the palmy 
 days of the Squire's middle life, and the afflu 
 ence with which he was no longer burdened. 
 Narragansett was still famous for its dairy 
 products in those days, and a packet-sloop 
 lying at the Northeast Ferry was to be loaded 
 with cheeses from the Cape Farm, with other 
 shipments of the country trade. The wind was 
 fair for departure, but this particular share of 
 the freight was delayed, until the Captain him 
 self, impatient to weigh anchor, went to inquire 
 of the tardy Squire. Nobody at the farm could 
 tell where the master of the house was to be
 
 " WHEN MY SHIP COMES IN." 27 
 
 found, but the Captain, muttering wrath, strode 
 heavily on through the wide, bare rooms of the 
 old house until at last the rickety garret-stairs 
 groaned beneath his masterful tread; and there, 
 in a dusty, cobwebby corner, was the spare, bent 
 figure of the Squire, crouched in the character 
 istic attitude which had gained him the sobri 
 quet of " Scrunch-up," and eagerly peering 
 through the pebble glasses of his heavy silver- 
 bowed spectacles at the yellow pages spread 
 before him. Happily oblivious of all homely 
 cares, Silvanus was busy with the congenial 
 labor of polishing his pedigree. Strewn around 
 him were letters and family papers, and piled 
 beside him were the old volumes of divinity 
 reserved for his recreation in reading when his 
 antiquarian toils should be suspended. " Bless 
 my soul, Zach ! I forgot all about it ! " was the 
 only explanation that could be drawn from the 
 innocent student by the irate man of affairs ; and 
 after indulging in some of the polite language 
 cultivated by men of his -calling perhaps no 
 strange sound to those walls " if ancient tales 
 speak true," nor wrong the reputation of their 
 founder, known as " Wicked Will " the Cap 
 tain turned his back upon the meek descendant 
 of that fiery ancestor, and left the Squire to 
 solace himself with further researches in the 
 buried treasures of the garret. 
 
 The greatest contrast to the kindly -Squire in
 
 28 SOUTH-COUNTY NEIGHBORS. 
 
 all the company was old Grinman, the capitalist 
 of the place, as much envied as the ricJiard of a 
 French village, and known as the hardest man 
 and the worst neighbor in the district. Misan 
 thrope and miser, his presence at the little 
 gathering was but a matter of accident, and was 
 no sign of sympathy with the interests of his 
 neighbors. He was almost a sorcerer in the 
 village opinion, in virtue of his reputed wealth 
 in bank stock, and his recondite attainments in 
 ciphering, anecdotes of his profound skill 
 in figures being in part the foundation for the 
 awe in which he was held. He had a long 
 head, as was commonly said of him, and, yes, 
 he had good headpiece, the villagers assented, 
 but he was a nigh-dweller, and no neighbor, as 
 poor Widow Broomer declared, when he lamed 
 her cow by stoning the creature out of his 
 pasture. Age had not humanized him, or made 
 him tolerant of his kind, and as he stood apart 
 from the crowd surveying its bustle with a sneer, 
 his cold and cruel eyes dealt stabs of quite 
 another character than those described by 
 Mercutio. 
 
 The well-to-do farmer of the community, and 
 one of the principal shareholders in the " Ida 
 Izette " was Sam D., who was always thus de 
 signated to distinguish him from the three or 
 four relatives who bore the same name and 
 patronymic. The initial stood for nothing, hav-
 
 " WHEN MY SHIP COMES IN." 29 
 
 ing been adopted when his business life began 
 simply as a trade-mark by which the owner 
 might be known. Sam D. was a shrewd, 
 thrifty, bustling son of gain. He might be 
 described as the realization of Yankee sharp 
 ness, mitigated by vanity. This always ami 
 able trait modified the rigorous outlines of a 
 nature hardened by early contact with toil and 
 privation. He was the great man at all the 
 funerals of the district, and would cheerfully 
 lose half a day's work for the pleasure of bury 
 ing an old neighbor. He pinched and saved, 
 scraped and delved, lived on pork and porridge, 
 with his hired men, and was, as they said, " clost 
 as the bark to a tree ; " then, with a delightfully 
 childish prodigality, he adorned his wife with a 
 gold watch, apparently for the sake of the satis 
 faction it afforded him, at the next funeral, to 
 walk complacently through a room conspicu 
 ously furnished with a loud-ticking eight-day 
 clock, in order to inquire in the general hear 
 ing, "Ma, what -time is it by your watch?" 
 With such occasional lapses into inconsequent 
 expenditure and funereal geniality, he was but 
 a neophyte in that stern worship of gain and 
 scorn of humanity of which Old Grinman was 
 so eminent an example ; and the Yankee Timon 
 regarded the busy, self-important, garrulous 
 farmer with a sovereign contempt. 
 
 Among the pleasing instances of harmless
 
 3O SOUTH-COUNTY NEIGHBORS. 
 
 vanity in the rustic assembly was a queer, thin, 
 piping, little old man, still wuaring " the old- 
 world corduroys," and dwelling long upon the 
 advantageous advice, matured by long experi 
 ence, he had given to the builders of the " Ida 
 Izctte." But he was never doubtful of his pow 
 ers in any cause. It was a favorite hypothesis 
 of his that if he could only have talked with 
 " old King Gearge," the Revolution need never 
 have occurred. His townsmen were disposed 
 to find his local flights of fancy still more am 
 bitious, as when he would wistfully ask, in his 
 slow utterance : " Now, neighbor, what d' ye 
 think makes Squire Potter and Squire Hazard 
 always talk to me wheresumever they see me? " 
 " Why, I don't know, Uncle Simon." " Well, 
 neighbor, I '11 tell ye. 'T is to draar knalidge 
 yes, to draar knalidge." Simon was the hap 
 piest of men, and even dwelt mildly on his one 
 grievance, the acquisition of an undesirable son- 
 in-law, who was " a furriner from York," and 
 was otherwise objectionable in South-County 
 eyes. 
 
 Of course the chief mechanics of Waterside, 
 and the builders of the schooner, Old Job and 
 Young Job, were both present. Old Job was 
 an immature patriarch of two score and ten, who 
 held his brevet title of antiquity in right of a 
 dazed, meek, Rip Van Winkle air, and because 
 of the rapid and weedy growth of Young Job,
 
 "WHEN MY SHIP COMES IN." 31 
 
 who had never overcome the shyness to which 
 he fell an early prey in the uneasy conscious 
 ness that his wits had hardly kept pace with his 
 stature. He was a most dutiful repetition of 
 his parent. Old Job was moderate, and Young 
 Job was irresolute; Old Job was plaintive, and 
 Young Job was querulous. Of griefs he had 
 an unfailing store, and he was darkly pessi 
 mistic in his anticipations, especially as to the 
 mercantile fortunes of the " Ida Izette." He 
 weakly deplored the unwelcome presence of 
 old Grinman. Poor Young Job had never re 
 covered from the shock which he received in 
 the sneer with which old Grinman once marked 
 his appearance on a Sunday in his best suit, 
 and accompanied by his wife and baby. Old 
 Grinman was no patron of the domestic virtues, 
 having long since driven his wretched family 
 into deserting the crazy shelter of his roof for 
 the charities of the world. The excessively 
 frail and feeble character of Young Job's con 
 stitution may be inferred from the fact that this 
 casting the evil eye upon him by Grinman so 
 overcame him that for the remainder of the 
 day he was obliged to rest on a rather unluxuri- 
 ous lounge of his own making. Young Job's 
 spouse .was unfortunately another drooping 
 spirit, who did not seem to enjoy poor health, 
 though she said she did. She did not stand 
 high among her neighbors as an energetic
 
 32 SOUTH-COUNTY NEIGHBORS. - 
 
 housewife. Indeed, Sally, our ancient help, used 
 to say that " nothing ailded Young Job but liv 
 ing on them dreadful stodges that Ann Frances 
 made." (A stodge in cookery is equivalent to 
 a bodge in handicraft.) It was, then, a feeble 
 hand that the youthful but infirm Job lent to the 
 work of launching. 
 
 Of course, the sad-faced womankind of the 
 village, dwelling in that shadow which seems 
 to brood perpetually over rustic matronhood, 
 lent their melancholy presence to the occa 
 sion. There were the Alzadys and the Celindys, 
 with plain Sarahs and Susans, and an irrepres 
 sible mob of children, concerning whom their 
 plaintive mothers dejectedly exchanged con 
 fidences; or held a conclave of agitated sun- 
 bonnets over the gossip suggested by the ap 
 pearance of the usual pair of rustic lovers, never 
 absent from public gatherings, who walked hand 
 in hand with an Arcadian simplicity that was 
 quite undisturbed by the vociferous shouting 
 of their customary heralds, the group of de 
 risive younger brothers and sisters who thus 
 proclaimed them : 
 
 " Ethan Streeter, see him ride, 
 Sword and pistol by his side, 
 And Hepsey Harvey to be his bride." 
 
 But nobody was annoyed by noise and con 
 fusion on this day of festivity, not even the
 
 " WHEN MY SHIP COMES IN." 33 
 
 rather finical Clacksum girls, as the spinster sis 
 ters of that name had been known to Waterside 
 for the last half-century. They had attained 
 their three score and ten, and it seemed as if 
 their late-lingering girlhood might in time give 
 place to the estate of womanhood, with its titles 
 and dignities. 
 
 No Waterside assembly was ever complete 
 without the presence of the Elder, who was just 
 at this time making one of his semi-annual visits 
 to the hamlet. He was, as he often solemnly 
 declared, " a wanderer upon the face of the 
 airth," but he was not averse to a prolonged 
 stay in comfortable quarters. He had scarcely 
 reached middle life when, with a fine confidence 
 in his species, he frankly threw himself upon the 
 hospitalities of the countryside. His welcome, 
 if not exactly enthusiastic, had been lasting, 
 since he had journeyed from house to house in 
 Narragansett for a generation. He came and 
 went with the seasons; and his visits were as 
 regular and inevitable as the intrusions of the 
 professional tax-gatherer. The Elder's ministra 
 tions had been ungraciously declined by his sect, 
 but he had now been for years, in virtue of his 
 course of life, no inconsiderable preacher. His 
 presence was in itself a sermon that enforced the 
 duties of hospitality, and the graces of patience 
 and toleration. It was worth while to help 
 toward sustaining such a touching example of 
 3
 
 34 SOUTH-COUNTY NEIGHBORS. 
 
 trust in human indulgence, and such a convincing 
 instance of the occasional appearance in our hard 
 New England character of the simple traits of 
 the idle children of the South. Thus the Elder 
 might be said to be cultivated like some noble 
 exotic; and there was a genuinely tropical lux 
 uriance and amplitude in his figure and bearing, 
 and in his florid vocabulary. On this occasion 
 he had exchanged a modest greeting with the 
 Squire, and sat not far from him, lost in drowsy 
 meditations. 
 
 The boys of Waterside found the impressive 
 presence of Gamby a stimulus to their faculties 
 of observation, arid he was the animated centre 
 of a gaping crowd. Gamby was a stalwart negro, 
 a ward of the town-farm, and the massive iron 
 ball and chain which he dragged after him, and- 
 which was fastened to an iron band around his 
 ankle, was proof of the futility of the efforts of 
 his guardians to control his taste for roving. 
 With the brute strength of an idiot Samson, 
 and the instinctive cunning which lurked in his 
 admixture of Indian blood, he repeatedly made 
 his escape and roamed the country until he was 
 ready to return; for, though the common opin 
 ion was that Gamby did not know his strength, it 
 was noticeable that no one cared to test the truth 
 of this convenient theory. What with his shreds 
 and tatters, his half-running gait, and the sight of 
 his head rolling heavily from side to side, his
 
 S WE mpiui sow 
 
 WHEN MY SHIP COMES IN. 
 
 great animal tongue lolling out, and his glistening 
 wolfish teeth all agrin, Gamby, in his useless fet 
 ters, was a spectacle that might have appalled a 
 less easy-going community than Waterside. But 
 the villagers regarded him stolidly enough, and 
 to the children he was a highly acceptable real 
 ization of their ideal of a giant. 
 
 Another estray from the town-farm was Liz, a 
 wretched old woman of shattered wits, who 
 quartered herself upon her relatives in Water 
 side as often as she could evade the not very 
 vigilant watch of her official protectors. After 
 her tramp she would reach the village wrought 
 up to the frenzy of a Bacchante by her desperate 
 encounters with imaginary pursuers, and espe 
 cially by the long abstinence from the healing 
 leaves of that herb which she now begged of the 
 crowd under the cry of " Backer ! Backer ! " It 
 was told of this dehumanized object that she had 
 been the handsomest girl of her time, and that a 
 time incredibly recent, in view of the wild and 
 haggard features that seemed never to have 
 known youth. 
 
 Lettice Jetsam, a more commonplace vagrant, 
 with no background of early romance to re 
 lieve her present uncomeliness, was searching 
 the swamp on the Waterside shore always known 
 as the " Indian Garden," whither, as traditionary 
 story relates, Miantonomi resorted for the potent 
 herbs used in his wigwam, pitched a few miles
 
 36 SOUTH-COUNTY NEIGHBORS. 
 
 inland, at " Miantonomi's Rock." With the aid 
 of her boon companion, a Charlestown squaw, 
 laden with baskets, her handiwork and stock in 
 trade, Lettice pursued her hunt after simples, 
 now and then addressing some shrill but un 
 heeded admonition to her nameless imbecile 
 daughter, a gaunt and staring child of want, 
 whom Lettice had as yet failed to dispose of at 
 any of the houses where, after receiving charity, 
 she usually attempted to bestow her in adoption, 
 as a parting gift. This poor dwarfish creature, 
 huddled in her amorphous rags on a mossy 
 tussock, looked like some glowering gnome just 
 risen out of the earth. With her back to the 
 scene of the launching, which had no interest for 
 her, she stealthily repeated, with a gloating sat 
 isfaction, a series of signs and motions indicat 
 ing the slaughter in a farm-yard to which she 
 had once been admitted when the sanguinary 
 artist in such work arrived, in order, as he ambi 
 tiously said, to butcher the turkeys. This had 
 been the only scene of object-teaching that had 
 ever touched a responsive chord in her gentle 
 breast. 
 
 The decisive moment of the launching came 
 as a surprise at last; and the universal thrill that 
 responded to the lovely sight of the gliding, 
 white-winged thing of life, cleaving the sunny 
 waters that met her with a manifold welcome, 
 found expression in
 
 " WHEN MY SHIP COMES IN." 37 
 
 "The shout, prolonged and loud, 
 That rose from the assembled crowd." 
 
 The Squireen, standing on a little knoll, 
 waved his hand in benevolent patronage. Old 
 Grinman, the only unmoved witness of the emo 
 tion that pulsed around him, contorted his sar 
 donic features in " a contemchous sneer," of 
 which Young Job feebly complained. Ann 
 Frances, Job's wife, who enjoyed a social dis 
 tinction that was chiefly based upon the recon 
 dite character of the ailments that she cultivated, 
 was heard plaintively announcing that she must 
 go home right away, for she " had hild in her 
 breath so long, waiting 'round there, that she 
 was all nerved up, and she believed one of them 
 distressed spells was coming on." The cheering 
 was prolonged by Calvin Luther, the heir of the 
 house of Old and Young Job, who, whirling the 
 shattered straw hat that imperfectly thatched his 
 wildly straying locks, uttered a shout in which 
 he was ably seconded by his shrill-lunged sister, 
 Hannah Ann, who had deserted her patchwork 
 task and the company of her rag-doll, having, 
 in the words of her melancholy mother, " set up 
 a tease to come." The barking of the village 
 mongrels echoed this final hurrah and announced 
 the arrival of Joe Timmel, the singing stroller 
 "of the Narragansett shore, and the itinerant 
 missionary of Calvinism. As the familiar figure 
 of the South-County Joe o' Bedlam advanced,
 
 38 SOUTH-COUNTY NEIGHBORS. 
 
 with his rolling gait, and his customary innocent 
 leer, the refrain of his favorite medley was 
 heard, " When the wicked am all burnt up 
 ah ! " and to the music of this benediction the 
 " Ida Izette " sailed down the bay. Its parting 
 echoes were still sounding as the little company 
 rapidly dispersed. The short period of cohesion 
 in the village community was over, and its atoms 
 were instantly scattered, each to its own place ; 
 sympathy and interest had had their hour, and 
 idiosyncrasies resumed their rule. Only a small 
 group of shareholders and seafarers remained to 
 discuss the prospects of the schooner. Her 
 voyage was thus auspiciously begun in the pre 
 lude of her successful launching. 
 
 " Yon bright bark goes 
 Where traffic blows, 
 From lands of sun to lands of snows. 
 This happier one, 
 Its course is run, 
 From lands of snows to lands of sun." 
 
 Such was the fortune of the " Ida I^zette ; " and 
 after a successful voyage, she made a pros 
 perous run homeward, laden with a rich and 
 picturesque cargo. Her arrival was the signal 
 for a flocking of Waterside characters to the 
 wharf to share in the spoil. For days together 
 the hamlet wore an air of abandon and revelry, 
 while the welcome task of unlading went cheer 
 fully on. Many a burst of rustic wit was hailed
 
 "WHEN MY SHIP COMES IN." 39 
 
 with the ready laughter of open-air workers ; 
 and the riotous influences of the scene pene 
 trated even to the domestic interiors where the 
 children, feasting on the moist brown Mexican 
 sugar, had arrived at a state of ecstatic bliss, 
 and a quality of personal appearance to which 
 no expressions could do justice save the rugged 
 vernacular of their grandames, who announced 
 that it was " mux and gawm, gawm and mux, 
 with them childern, and wuss than a Sabbath 
 school picnic all -the time." Waterside exulted 
 in the luxuriance of its tropical wealth. The 
 fragrance of the orange and the banana floated 
 on every breeze, while coffee and spices soothed 
 the soul of the housewife, and age was pla 
 cated by the gift of a Tonka bean to enrich the 
 last supply of rappee. The village had indeed 
 
 " Suffered a sea-change, 
 Into something rich and strange." 
 
 Bright stuffs fluttered from the shoulders of its 
 damsels, gay bunting draped its porches, and a 
 new and splendid fauna had suddenly appeared, 
 as though the schooner had been a complete 
 Noah's ark. Paroquets fed tamely with pigeons, 
 and great macaws sunned their gaudy barbaric 
 plumage, looking like Indians .in war paint. 
 Dearest to the heart of boyhood was the caged 
 " wildcat " still held in quarantine. He was a 
 small, fierce, black, restless creature, not easily
 
 40 SOUTH-COUNTY NEIGHBORS. 
 
 classified by means of the most diligent study of 
 the press and plates of " Goldsmith's Animated 
 Nature," but ravenous to a charm, and devour 
 ing red, raw morsels with the insatiate appetite 
 of a Ugolino. 
 
 Time would fail me to tell of all the wonders 
 of sea and shore which gladdened the eyes of 
 Waterside dwellers, at the advent of the good 
 schooner " Ida Izette." But memory has laid up 
 in store the fragrant associations of a time when 
 our little strip of New England coast basked in 
 the borrowed atmosphere of the tropics. We 
 children all went to the most delightful of 
 schools in making acquaintance with the deck 
 and the hold of the "Ida Izette;" and such 
 were the treasures we found in those charmed 
 regions, so rich are the recollections of this 
 choice episode in our child-life, that not one 
 of us all can be so ungrateful to our kindly fates 
 as to deny that once, at least, to each of us, our 
 ship came in from sea.
 
 AT A SHEEP-WASHING. 
 
 THE wayfarer in the South County of nearly 
 forty years ago might find himself, like 
 Dante at the beginning of his pilgrimage, be 
 fore the entrance to a dense wood. With its 
 goodly oaks of a century's growth it looked a 
 forest primeval. But it was, according to the 
 tradition of the countryside, the plantation of a 
 choleric old squire, who, in his resentment at 
 finding himself cheated in a bargain for cord- 
 wood made with a shrewd neighbor, swore 
 roundly that no heir of his estate should ever 
 suffer a like annoyance ; and immediately 
 planted the sandy plain sloping to the river 
 that bounded his patrimonial acres with oaks 
 and maples, and had them cultivated by his 
 negro servants, until they had well begun that 
 growth which now in its maturity overhung 
 with shade the smoothly sloping banks of the 
 stream of the full-syllabled Indian name, the 
 accepted meaning of which was in keeping with 
 the practical tendencies of the aboriginal mind, 
 for it signified " plenty of fish." Thus by the 
 kindly offices of Nature the wrath of man was
 
 42 SOUTH-COUNTY NEIGHBORS. 
 
 turned to praise; and the plantation which 
 perhaps originated in caprice or anger, but 
 was doubtless continued from worthier mo 
 tives, kept green the memory of the bluff old 
 squire. 
 
 Following the cart-path which led through 
 the wood to the water, the pilgrim was from 
 time to time met by creatures as strange and 
 nondescript as any that were encountered by 
 the observant Gulliver in his adventurous trav 
 els. Long-legged and awkward, with sodden 
 elf-locks, shrunken features, abject and cowering 
 air, and frightened cry, the silly sheep as the 
 poetry of old English rustic life, with Homeric 
 persistency of epithet, constantly styles them 
 rushed by, shivering from their involuntary 
 plunge in the cool waters of Rocky River. 
 
 The principal sheep-washer, who was sud 
 denly discovered as a turn in the path brought 
 the scene of the day's labors into view, proved 
 to be a shepherd of souls as well as of sheep. 
 He was no other than the powerful exhorter, 
 Elder Bissell, or " Bizzle," as his name was cur 
 rently known. Tall and muscular, though bony, 
 stooping, and ungainly, his lank black hair, high 
 cheek bones, inky eyes, and swart complexion, 
 presented a suggestion of that reversion to the 
 aboriginal type which is so anxiously sought 
 by fanciful ethnologists. The Elder was a daily 
 laborer on the farm, as well as in the spiritual
 
 AT A SHEEP-WASHING. 43 
 
 vineyard, and might well sing with particular 
 fervor of 
 
 " Flocks that whiten all the fields 
 All the stores the garding yields." 
 
 Just now, as he took the mute but struggling 
 sheep brought from the pen by the waterside 
 in the firm grasp of Benjy, the sinewy youth 
 who waded out to him as he stood in the 
 stream ready to plunge his panting prey un 
 der the current, his action inevitably suggested 
 those kindred offices which he often rendered in 
 the same surroundings to his human flock who 
 sought in Rocky River the blessings of Jordan. 
 The Elder's ministrations were naturally charged 
 with the ghostly influences of his native region. 
 The Dark Plains, as they were strangely called, 
 perhaps from their lack of spiritual enlighten 
 ment, had from ancient times been the walking- 
 ground of " harnts," the centre of witchcraft 
 wonders, and even the scene of meetings with 
 mysterious beasts and talking birds, whose in 
 telligence, as described by the belated traveller 
 who had heard and seen them on his tardy 
 return from the husking frolic, suggested the 
 keenness of their prototypes of an " Arabian 
 Nights' " story. One of these raconteurs used 
 to relate the story of his tarry at an apple-bee, 
 at which y the vintage of the last year's cider- 
 press had flowed a little too freely, and of his
 
 44 SOUTH-COUNTY NEIGHBORS. 
 
 homeward return by a path which crooked and 
 turned unaccountably, but in which he con 
 stantly met, when crossing the Plains, a very 
 knowing little bird, who hopped by his side 
 with the persistent reproach, " Oh, Tom, Tom, 
 how could you, Tom ! " 
 
 These tales of the Plains often found a nar 
 rator in the sheep-washer who was the Elder's 
 co-laborer, and who on more favorable occa 
 sions than the present would impart this ghostly 
 lore to the circle that met at the same spot 
 on Rocky River for the winter pursuits of the 
 eel or smelt-fishing. The struggle with the 
 affrighted subjects of his treatment now re 
 quired all his attention, and drew rather 
 heavily upon his patience ; for his proper call 
 ing was that of a shearer, and he was serving 
 in a humbler capacity merely to oblige his 
 friend the Elder. His great display of skill 
 would be made on his return, a week later, to 
 shear the sheep that were now turned loose 
 as fast as they were washed. Each helpless 
 creature, seized in a tenacious grasp, would 
 be speedily routed, as it were, from its fleecy 
 shelter. The unrelenting shears would run with 
 practised skill under the woolly locks, severing 
 the clinging mass, which the deft touch of the 
 worker rapidly rolled up into the fleece of 
 commerce, as easefully as the mower sweeps 
 down the swaths when the grass is wet with
 
 AT A SHEEP-WASHING. 45 
 
 falling rain. Thus denuded of its coat, the 
 animal stands forth in all the rugged harsh 
 ness of its bare framework, and is discovered 
 to be but a scaffolding for sustaining a load 
 of wool. These living results of the shearer's 
 handiwork vie in precision of ugliness with the 
 grotesque achievements of the artisan in wood- 
 carving. 
 
 Nor were admiring witnesses wanting to the 
 skill of those masters of muscle, Elder Bizzle 
 and Uncle Shearman. Besides Benjy, the abler 
 of the two attendant youths whose presence was 
 indispensable to the success of the work, there 
 was the usual knot of idlers without whose 
 countenance no special episode of rustic labor 
 is ever completed. They are always ready to 
 assist by their attendance, and will kindly give 
 character to any of the undertakings of their 
 neighbors, however remotely they might be 
 supposed to be interested in them. So, like a 
 Greek chorus, which laments, but never rescues, 
 the spectators loudly ejaculated " Whew ! " or 
 " Jericho ! " at sundry crises in the washing, 
 as when Benjy, the chief acolyte of the cere 
 mony, missed his footing on the pebbly bank, 
 and nearly lost his fleecy burden ; but gave no 
 sign of leaving their more or less easy perches 
 on the stone-wall bounding the wood-lot, to 
 come to his help. 
 
 But now the noon-spell arrived, with its tacit
 
 46 SOUTH-COUNTY NEIGHBORS. 
 
 summons to the mid-day meal, and the attend 
 ant chorus gave tokens of a lively sympathy 
 with that phase of the day's proceedings. The 
 laborers sought each for his own ample portion, 
 brought that morning from home, and fell to 
 with a will upon such cold viands as boiled 
 pork and greens, johnny-cake and pickles, 
 " white bread," pie, and gingerbread. These 
 combinations were discussed with a vigor too 
 often wanting in these degenerate days, in 
 which even the Old Farmer's Almanac of this 
 current year recognizes the existence of nervous 
 prostration. 
 
 Among the "raft" of loungers, as the Elder, 
 with pardonable surliness, styled them, and who 
 now joined the group at dinner, was that always 
 entertaining itinerant, " Doctor " Billy Hood, 
 who was not slow to claim the brotherhood of 
 man, and especially of doctors, but recognized 
 no other remedy than his own specific, the 
 " Compound Tar- Water," the virtues of which 
 he extolled in the pauses of the meal. Another 
 aged stroller and vender of simples, was the 
 supposed possessor of certain occult powers of 
 healing, drawn from an hereditary source. The 
 local records were reticent as to the origin of 
 Camper Boose ; but local gossip derived it from 
 a not very remote Indian descent, a belief which 
 naturally gave great currency to his herbal re 
 cipes. This "relic of barbarism" was seated
 
 AT A SHEEP-WASHING. 47 
 
 by another survivor of his generation, " Major " 
 by name. If he had ever borne any other, he 
 had lost it somewhere in the course of his 
 Wandering Jew existence ; but he was said to 
 have earned his present sobriquet by having 
 "old-sogered it" that is, shirked and scamped 
 his work on the few occasions when he had 
 been numbered among the "work-folks" of a 
 farm. Spoken of as being " a little off, you 
 know," he excited no surprise by his minute 
 and fluent accounts of the injuries he suffered 
 from the witches who made him their nag, 
 riding him to and from their nightly meetings, 
 meanwhile leaving him tied to a tree, which he 
 could readily identify the next morning. Thus 
 grievously tormented by night, he groaned by 
 day under the dire results of this weird ma 
 lignity, with as many stitches and rheumatic 
 cramps as Caliban foretold to the clowns who 
 provoked the revenge of his master. Now this 
 venerable man, having " come down to us from 
 a former generation," was sometimes unex 
 pectedly exacting in clamoring for a return to 
 the wholesome and laudable usages that ob 
 tained in his youth, as when he puzzled the 
 farmer's daughter, who had served his dinner 
 in a tin plate, by demanding (in the spirit of 
 the Roman lyrist forbidding a Persian luxury 
 of attendance), "Gal, hain't you no trencher?" 
 and after meeting the handmaid's vacant look
 
 48 SOUTH-COUNTY NEIGHBORS. 
 
 by a snort of disgust which fairly made her 
 jump, he sternly pronounced, with manly in 
 dependence, "Then gimme a chip!" which 
 service was meekly rendered. 
 
 The talk which seasoned the meal ran upon 
 topics no less vivid than religion and politics, 
 the conversational staples of less effete circles 
 than such as weakly exclude these firebrands 
 of debate. The prospects of the national par 
 ties were freely handled ; but with the usual ten 
 dency of the contemplative rural mind to revert 
 to pensive meditation upon the past, the glo 
 rious memory of the immortal log-cabin cam 
 paign, with its abundant flow of hard cider, was 
 invoked by that element of the company which 
 had long been known to the manipulators of 
 local elections as a doubtful quantity, and liable 
 to be diverted to this side or the other by cer 
 tain quite irrelevant causes. The transition from 
 teetotal principles to religious speculations was 
 readily made, and the group was soon engaging 
 the question tentatively propounded by the phil 
 osophical Doctor Billy, " How do you take the 
 Bible?" Various replies were promptly cho 
 rused, as " I take it promiscuously," or " I take 
 the Good Book by and large ; " but the Elder, 
 waiving his prestige as spokesman, suavely 
 sought to entrap his neighbor in the toils of 
 doubtful disputations, by repeating in slow and 
 ponderous tones, " Brother Shearman, how do
 
 AT A SHEEP-WASHING. 49 
 
 you take it? The good word is with you, 
 sir." 
 
 " Well, sir," replied Brother Shearman with 
 masterly strategy, " I take the Bible literally, as 
 you may say, from Amen to Genesis/' 
 
 The momentary pause which succeeded to 
 the assumption of this impregnably orthodox 
 position was suddenly filled by the sound of 
 voices from the river, singing in high feminine 
 tones, and with fervent emphasis, 
 
 " Oh, brother, ain't you g-1-a-a-d you 've got your soul 
 
 converted? 
 Oh, sister, ain't you g-1-a-a-d you 've got your soul 
 
 converted ? " 
 
 " That 's Grandmammy Harley to a T," re 
 marked Doctor Billy Hood with an evident air 
 of patronage ; while Elder Bizzle's brow clouded 
 with a sternness which could imply nothing less 
 serious than doctrinal disapproval. 
 
 The rather battered craft that presently 
 rounded the wooded point of land which had 
 covered its approach was seen to contain the 
 chief singer, a woman of imposing amplitude of 
 figure and a tempest-tossed countenance, tur- 
 baned and barefooted, but vigorously keeping 
 time with feet and hands to " her voice's music," 
 as Sidney says of his young Arcadian shep 
 herdess ; while another elderly woman, gaunt 
 and cynical of aspect, yet with same suggestion 
 of a Yankee Ophelia in a certain disorder of 
 .4
 
 50 SOUTH-COUNTY NEIGHBORS. 
 
 dress, joined in occasionally, as she rowed with 
 a stern and aggressive action ; and with them 
 was a delicate girl of sixteen, who panted at 
 the effort of bailing out the leaky boat, as she 
 mingled her sweeter notes with the devotional 
 outcries of her grandam. 
 
 Grandmammy Harley was in the full fervor 
 of the very last of her campmccting conversions. 
 She had experienced several of them, but was 
 a quiet and harmless soul in the intervals. 
 When not playing the Pythoness under the 
 stimulus of some itinerant Millcrite's exhorta 
 tions, or when, as she more picturesquely de 
 scribed herself, she had again become " a cold 
 and backslidin' perfessor," she made a steady 
 and efficient farm helper on such occasions as 
 soap-boiling, or "killing," or as cook in the stress 
 of haying-time ; for she was skilled in the whole 
 duty of woman respecting pies, pickles, and pre 
 serves, having been brought up at a country 
 tavern that was managed in the old-fashioned, 
 easy-going, free-handed way; and she was not 
 backward in tendering advice when present at 
 the celebration of kitchen mysteries. " An nef 
 I was you, Mis' Hahzard," she would be moved 
 to say, in the deliberative speech of her merely 
 work-a-day phase of being, " I 'd chuck in the 
 t' other handful o' salt. Salt ain't dreadful salt 
 this year," she would add, with a reflective air. 
 
 Her daughter, the tall spinster, who looked as
 
 AT A SHEEP-WASHING. 5 I 
 
 old as herself, and who was invariably addressed 
 in her native community, with a particularity 
 that savored of Russian ceremony, by her full 
 title of Olive Ida Ann, had at some remote 
 time passed through an experience indefinitely 
 described by the tongue of neighborhood gossip 
 as being " crossed in love," a saving clause 
 which was always charitably recalled in excuse for 
 habits and notions that were, as the same privi 
 leged tongue proclaimed, "queer as crazy Jane." 
 A fanciful observer might have found in her 
 name no fortuitous concourse of syllabic atoms, 
 but a prophecy of the different phases of her 
 nature and experience. " Olive " stood for the 
 exotic tastes and traits that appeared in her 
 flagrant eccentricities, " Ida " was a reminder of 
 such girlish graces as her youth had been dow 
 ered withal, and " Ann" represented the long 
 work-a-day stretch of her years, the dull drudg 
 eries of her life, and its deadly monotony of 
 routine. Perhaps it is partly in an unconscious 
 need of change, if only from the kitchen to the 
 sick-room, and in the supreme feminine desire 
 of managing and ordering, that so many women 
 of her type and condition are so zealous in the 
 neighborly offices of nursing, house-keeping, and 
 general usefulness. Olive Ida Ann's energies 
 were appreciated among her afflicted acquaint 
 ances, and despite her well-known oddities and 
 rather unconscionable requirements, she was at
 
 52 SOUTH-COUNTY NEIGHBORS. 
 
 home wherever there was suffering; or, as she 
 more vigorously expressed it, she " could n't set 
 still waiting for the skies to rain porridge, when 
 there was folks to be done for." Not content 
 with serving her convalescent patients, she knew 
 no shrinking from those last offices which re 
 mained to be rendered to such as had passed 
 beyond hope of recall to human activities. Her 
 muscular arms and toil-marked hands were so 
 closely associated with the grim services which 
 she tendered almost too readily, and to which 
 she referred with the rugged freedom of her 
 class, as to make her presence such an oppres 
 sive memento inori as sufficed to dash the spirits 
 of weakly sensitive people. Why is it that the 
 same conditions that form the background of 
 the refined and picturesque figure of the Sister 
 of Charity are so obtrusive when viewed as the 
 surroundings of the untrained, unrecognized 
 Yankee nurse and village Samaritan? Perhaps 
 the clothes-philosophy may afford a hint towards 
 the solution of this minor problem; and possi 
 bly the daughter of Rome owes to her veil and 
 scapulary that halo of sentiment which fails to 
 grace our worthy neighbor's sunbonnet and 
 apron. Olive Ida Ann's surplus activities 
 were expended upon flowers, for which she had 
 a positive devotion, and she toiled at unseason 
 able hours of dawn and twilight among the beds 
 of scarlet lychnis, sweet-william, and mullein
 
 AT A SHEEP-WASHIXG. 53 
 
 pink, that brightened her beloved garden. The 
 figure of the maiden gardener, herself the fair 
 est flower, is one that cannot be spared from 
 poetry ; but mistaken would be that observer of 
 actual rustic life who should credit the daugh 
 ters of a village with any large share in the de 
 velopment of its floral attractions. These lovely 
 young persons are far too much occupied with 
 adornments of a strictly personal character to 
 consider the lilies of the field or the garden. 
 No, it is almost invariably the old and trem 
 bling grandam, the middle-aged widow, or the 
 ancient spinster, who dedicates herself to the 
 service of nature and the worship of beauty, 
 though these fine phrases do a manifest injustice 
 to the loving simplicity of their maternal nur 
 ture of those childlike creatures, the flowers. 
 Olive Ida Ann was an adept in wood-lore, and 
 she had in charge the baskets which were to be 
 filled with sassafras, and other woodland growths, 
 for the brewing of the root-and-herb beer, and 
 the concoction of the bitter tonic drink in 
 tended for the use of the orphaned sick girl, 
 K&line, as she was known to her grandmother 
 and aunt. 
 
 Ad'line had possessed her full share of that 
 delicate prettiness which in many village girls 
 reaches its brightest bloom at fifteen or sixteen ; 
 and even now, in the gentle decline which, su 
 perinduced by a fever, advanced so impercep-
 
 54 SOUTH-COUNTY NEIGHBORS. 
 
 tibly as to be mistaken by herself and her 
 friends for a tedious convalescence, or, as they 
 said, " a real poor getting up," the pure tones 
 of the touching paleness of her face its slightly 
 accentuated outlines softened by the mass of 
 rich, dark-red curls, of a solid roundness, like 
 the heavy ringlets treated with such realistic 
 care in Assyrian reliefs were not without the 
 lingering charm of a vitality which still reigned 
 in the lustre and coloring of the hair and the 
 wine-dark eyes. Among her associates and 
 occasional schoolmates, like Benjy, the well- 
 made and frank-faced youth who acted as the 
 Elder's helper, no disappointment was felt at 
 Ad'line's immobility of feature, for they all 
 shared the same rustic fixity of expression. 
 Said an observer, who was piqued as a man 
 and baffled as an artist by the " freezing grav 
 ity" of a Greek princess whose portrait he 
 painted at Constantinople, " Her small mouth 
 and deep-colored lips might be embellished with 
 smiles, but I never had the pleasure to see 
 them." Now Ad'line, without being a subject 
 for the restrictions of court etiquette, was yet 
 not unlike this haughty beauty, for smiles she 
 had none. Her laughter was ready enough when 
 anything seemed funny, but the angel of smiles 
 and dimples had never troubled the waters of 
 her serene young soul. She had played for a 
 brief childish hour in the shallows of existence,
 
 AT A SHEEP-WASHING. 55 
 
 and she was soon to go down in the deep 
 waters of death without ever having known the 
 meaning of life. But no shadow of this darken 
 ing fate touched her with any sense of the ad 
 verse that appeared in voice or manner. She 
 showed only that slight languor of illness that 
 lends something of the repose of breeding to 
 the most untaught, as she met her late school 
 fellow "with a frank " How d' do, Benjy." Her 
 sweet gravity almost gave her the air of having 
 said, " How does thee do?" like a maiden not 
 of the world's people; and Benjy, who had 
 been furtively brushing aside the crumbs of 
 his repast, and spurring up his rather unprac 
 tised social powers, essayed to reply in tones 
 that should be manly, but kindly, cheerful, and 
 cordial, " How d 'do, Ad'line? How be you?" 
 But the result fell so far below his anticipations 
 that without a word more he disappeared in the 
 wood, whence he presently emerged bringing 
 a vast armful of sassafras-saplings with the ease 
 of one of Milton's warlike young angels bearing 
 his uprooted pine, and was quite satisfied that 
 the object of this devotion accepted the offering 
 with a mildly pleased expression that was equiv 
 alent to a smile. 
 
 "Ad'line," urged the now emboldened Benjy, 
 "don't you want to ride a piece? I ben work 
 ing on the jump all the forenoon, and I '11 get 
 Jakey to spell me while I go over and tackle up,
 
 $6 SOUTH-COUNTY NEIGHBORS. 
 
 and I '11 take you and your folks right up to 
 Broad Hill. There's roots enough up there." 
 
 " No, I cahn't, Benjy," returned Ad'line, un 
 compromisingly. " Olive Ida Ann would n't 
 stir a step. She says she won't be beholden 
 to men folks for nothing." 
 
 " Good land ! " ejaculated Bcnjy, with such 
 a foolish face of wonder at this declaration of 
 independence that Ad'line laughed aloud. 
 
 While this idyllic scene was in progress, Grand- 
 mammy had been challenging the Elder, her 
 long-time theological foe, to a passage-at-arms. 
 She had no sooner caught sight of that Attila of 
 the " no-souled Advents," as he sternly desig 
 nated them, than her visage brightened for battle. 
 Planting her footsteps firmly on the bank, and 
 leaving to Olive Ida Ann the sole care of their 
 craft, she, not unlike a threatening ship-of-war 
 with fighting signals all set, bore down heavily 
 upon the group of feasters. 
 
 " So it was," she accosted them, a tremor of 
 emotion agitating her ample draperies, and with 
 a menacing wave of her substantial arm, " So it 
 was, even in the Gentile days, when the children 
 of wrath sat down to riot and carouse, and rose 
 up to play. And my arrant to you is, look out 
 for jedgment, for the day is to come." 
 
 " Well, if ever I heerd sich a lurry," announced 
 Brother Shearman, in an evident transport of dis 
 gust, but uttering his indignation in the sluggish
 
 AT A SHEEP-WASHING. 
 
 accents of the slow-moving, deliberative tillers 
 of the soil; and "What mought be your mind, 
 Elder, on them p'ints?" querulously begged 
 Gamper Boose, thrown into a senile tremor by 
 this portentous apparition, and involuntarily dip 
 ping his gingerbread into a quite unnecessary 
 bath of molasses. 
 
 Neither of the opponents thus pitted at each 
 other took any direct notice of these appeals ; 
 but Grandmammy continued, " I tell 'um," her 
 rotund notes rising higher, " the Lord He 's 
 coming in power and glory, in heighth and 
 mighth, to rend and to slay; and He'll shake 
 the dry bones of you," she suddenly ended, with 
 scorn expressed in every line of her ample pro 
 portions, and wheeling sharply upon the withered 
 and sapless Elder, who tried to look as callous 
 as possible under the consciousness of the stifled 
 mirth among the younger of the company that 
 bore involuntary testimony to the point of the 
 personal application. 
 
 " No, Brother Shearman," observed the Elder 
 bitterly, in a tone of unnecessary loudness, 
 and with a labored air of ignoring his antagonist, 
 at the same time rising, as a signal to resume 
 work, " I don't feel no call to dispoot these here 
 things with backsliders and women-folks." 
 
 An approving murmur rose among the Elder's 
 followers, swelling to a confused noise of angry 
 agitation, much like the threatening buzz of a 
 
 psem^
 
 58 SOUTH-COUNTY NEIGHBORS. 
 
 swarm, and strongly indicating the instant pro 
 mulgation of an edict of banishment against 
 Grandmammy and her unpalatable doctrines. 
 The pseudo Hutchinson turned with dignity 
 to her silent supporter, Olive Ida Ann, who, 
 with consummate indifference to the maternal 
 outpourings, had been all the time champing dry 
 twigs like a ruminating griffin, and abruptly 
 issued her marching orders. " Ad'linc ! " called 
 her aunt in thin staccato tones, and the girl 
 obeyed, only once frankly turning to look back. 
 Benjy, if the glance were meant for him, knew 
 nothing of it, for he was just then facing the 
 river, as he went toward the Elder, every muscle 
 set to his task of carrying a particularly weighty 
 and cumbersome old sheep. But it may be that 
 he heard with some undefined pleasure the ring 
 of a girlish treble in the notes of pious song that 
 floated down to the workers from the retreating 
 trio, as they paused in their search for simples 
 on the breezy heights of the hill pasture, and 
 united in a burst of fervent hymnody : 
 
 " Oh ! we '11 have a shout in glory, 
 And the saints '11 mount the air."
 
 AILSE CONGDON. 
 
 AILSE CONGDON, whose inappropriately 
 musical name of Alice her neighbors, 
 with intuitive recognition of her salient charac 
 teristics, invariably reduced to a curt monosylla 
 ble, was a quick-stepping woman, with snapping 
 black eyes, and a tightly-set mouth. Nature's 
 danger-signals, reading, " Ware the Shrew," 
 might plainly be discerned in her face and mien. 
 She was a scold and a housewife, as some of 
 her fellow-creatures have been artists, by the 
 force of an irresistible, innate impulse. 
 
 There must be a place in the economy of 
 nature for the vixen, no less than for the gad 
 fly. Such a restless, wiry, shrill, unflagging 
 impersonation of steely energy as the indefati 
 gable Ailse Congdon was needed in an untidy 
 rustic community, careless about its gate-fasten 
 ings, and indifferent to the condition of its door- 
 yards. She did a good work when she stung 
 her neighbors into the better civilization of a 
 more thorough neatness and order. She might 
 indeed think that she did well to be angered at 
 the habits of unthrift in the revolt from which
 
 60 SOUTH-COUNTY NEIGHBORS. 
 
 her temper had been cankered. Born of a 
 drunkard father and a weak-natured, inefficient 
 mother, the sentiment of reverence was easily 
 uprooted from the thin soil which her harsh 
 nature supplied for its growth. Struggling all 
 her life with the adverse conditions of an imper 
 fect world of original sin and dust, of moths and 
 rheumatics, of spring cleanings and fall fevers, 
 what wonder if, having been, as she said, always 
 in- a pickle, she should partake of the tartness of 
 her surroundings? "Father, he was a poor 
 shoat," she would say with stern truthfulness, to 
 Huldy Pawn, her bound girl from the town 
 farm, " and mother had n't sca'ce ever any 
 ambition. I never got no chance to what you '11 
 get here, and you oughter sing praise be to 
 Canaan all your days to think you 've got a 
 home with me, f r if I live I '11 larn you some 
 thing afore I git through with you." 
 
 Huldy Pawn received these and sundry more 
 searching admonitions with a staring-eyed and 
 wooden-jointed obedience which gave her the 
 air of a Dutch doll. A foundling of no romantic 
 antecedents, a waif cast upon the reluctant chari 
 ties of the town, a helpless pawn on life's 
 checker-board, it was her destiny to become the 
 satellite of that .ruling planet, Ailse Congdon. 
 Poor Huldy was of feeble intellect, or, in the 
 vernacular, she was "not all there,"- a phrase 
 which concisely indicated the poverty of the
 
 AILSE CONGDON. 6 1 
 
 under-vitalized organization which confessed its 
 needs in the weak eyes, cold hands, and thin, 
 ash-colored hair of the weazen-faced handmaid, 
 whose sixteen years had dowered her but scan 
 tily with the graces of youth. 
 
 Ailse Congdon followed the trade of a tailor- 
 ess, that calling to which the capable and 
 strong-minded woman who scorns the flimsy 
 avocations of dress-making and millinery natur 
 ally turns. Huldy kept the house, or, as Ailse 
 contemptuously said, " puttered 'round " in her 
 absences among her employers, but never de 
 veloped a spark of independent spirit in conse 
 quence of these interruptions of surveillance. 
 The charitably-disposed often said that it was 
 clear goodness in Ailse Congdon, giving Huldy 
 her keep when she did n't need her no more 
 than a coach needs a fifth wheel; but others 
 were shrewdly inclined to believe that the rea 
 son why Ailse would n't let her go was because 
 of her love of domineering, or, as they said, she 
 wanted to have somebody under her thumb. 
 The condition of a ruler without a subject was a 
 point of bathos to which the mind of our ener 
 getic housewife had never descended. 
 
 The house in which these two women grew, 
 one into years, and the other into a sickly 
 maturity which more than kept pace with the 
 hale age of the elder, was the same humble 
 homestead that had been left in a rickety condi-
 
 62 SOUTH-COUNTY NEIGHBORS. 
 
 tion by that luckless wight, the drunken father 
 of Ailse, who finally had the grace to get him 
 self drowned from his fishing-boat. The patient 
 thrift and care of long years had so reclaimed it 
 that it remained in a state of partially arrested 
 decay. The lean-to was a little too suggestive 
 of a fall-down as it rested helplessly against the 
 rough-hewn stone chimney, and the roof sank 
 away between the gables as the heart of a 
 man knocks at his ribs when speedy collapse 
 threatens. But it was a very neat and habitable 
 ruin, after all, as no one could doubt who knew 
 the potent housewifery of its mistress. It stood 
 half-cornerwise, with no particular reference to 
 the road or anything else, in that quarter of the 
 little home-lot which had been chosen as most 
 convenient for digging a cellar. The hand- 
 breadth of dooryard, though never adorned by 
 shrub or flower, was always guiltless of litter, its 
 short grass being fiercely swept, as it were in a 
 rage of industry, by Ailse and Huldy, with the 
 birch brooms brought to the door by the sullen 
 lords of the Charlestown squaws, who, at other 
 seasons, tramped with baskets which they were 
 too prone to barter for New-England rum, return 
 ing safe to their reservation only by the favor of 
 those merciful chances that wait on the gypsy 
 train. No tree stood as comrade to the old 
 square-hewn chimney, for the ancient willow 
 had been condemned by Ailse, owing to an
 
 AILSE CONGDON. 63 
 
 inveterate habit of shedding its leaves ; and the 
 sentence pronounced upon it, in which the fine 
 old clump of incense-breathing box was in 
 cluded, because anathematized by its owner as 
 saluting her nostrils with " a pizen smell," was 
 gloatingly executed by the occasional factotum 
 of the household, Izrul Barnes by name, farm- 
 laborer by calling, and tree-butcher by taste 
 and inclination. 
 
 Izrul really stood in a wholesome awe of his 
 energetic employer, though he affected a manly 
 independence when off the premises, asserting 
 with a large plurality of expression, that Ailse 
 Congdon mought skeer her Huldy Pawnses, but 
 she couldn't drive no Barneses. His relations 
 with the hand-maid were naturally more familiar, 
 and Huldy served as the irresponsive object of 
 those colloquial attentions which provoked 
 Ailse Congdon to many a sharp comment on 
 Izrul Barnes's long tongue. 
 
 " Say, Huldy, I Ve brung in y'r wood," he 
 announced from the shed, as a signal for that 
 damsel to appear, armed with turkey-wing and 
 dust-pan, to remove any traces of his footsteps ; 
 and while she was thus employed, and he busied 
 himself outside with the repair of a disabled 
 saw-horse, he attempted a little gossip about 
 Huldy's quondam pastor, the Elder of a meeting 
 to which she had been admitted in a heated re 
 vival season, her grim guardian merely observing
 
 64 SOUTH-COUNTY NEIGHBORS. 
 
 that " Huldy 'd be a worse fool than she took her 
 for if she stayed with such a do-little set as them 
 was. If they ever brought anything to pass, she 
 never knowed it." In fact, Huldy, after once 
 meeting with them " to break bread," retired 
 from membership, alleging to Ailse Congdon 
 that the loaf used in the sacred service was of so 
 poor a quality as to cast discredit upon the 
 occasion and the church. 
 
 " Say, Huldy," resumed the cheerful Izrul, in 
 his invariable preliminary manner, " I carr'd a 
 load o' wood down to Ponder Zeke's Corners 
 las' week, V I see Elder Springer a kitin' along 
 the road." 
 
 He paused as Huldy made a vigorous dash at 
 an intruding hen, which, from furtively tiptoeing 
 about, broke into an affrighted flutter and cac 
 kle, as she fled before swift-handed justice. 
 
 " Berried his wife, y' know, three months ago 
 come nex' Sa'a'd'y," continued Izrul, in a sly 
 drawl. " The Elder, he looks ez chipper ez a 
 crow-blackbird in plantin' time. Seems to be 
 all took up 'ith visitin' his people. Tell ye what, 
 Huldy, you better sprunt up, 'n' fly roun', 'n' 
 wear y'r bettermost gownd all day. Look out 
 f r what chance the' is, ye know, ez ole Marm 
 Chaffell said to her blind gal." 
 
 " I don' want no Elder Springer," fretted the 
 feeble-minded one, under a dim sense of some 
 thing sinister in Izrul's cajoleries. " Folks say
 
 AILSE CONGDON. ' 65 
 
 you 'd better think o 1 gettin' married yourself, 
 Izrul." 
 
 " So I do, darter, so I do," returned old Izrul, 
 soothingly; "and every time I think on't, I 
 think I won't," he pursued, ruminatively. 
 
 " 'T ain't no such smart doings to get mar 
 ried," asserted Huldy, with confidence. " Ailse 
 Congdon, she ain't married." 
 
 " Wai, I sort o' thought she was onct," hinted 
 Izrul. 
 
 " 'T wan't none to speak on, anyway," tartly 
 returned the satellite, leaving the woodshed 
 with a fling. 
 
 But it was true that Ailse Congdon, though 
 always known by her maiden name, had a legal 
 right to bear that of Jim Castle, the young 
 woodsman to whom she had been united in her 
 girlhood by the local Justice of the Peace. Six 
 months of wedded warfare sufficed to convince 
 .the rather hasty and self-willed Jim, as his 
 bride explained, with what was pronounced a 
 callous indifference to " the speech of people," 
 that " he guessed he 'd ruther stay with his own 
 folks, and she would n't lift a finger agin it." 
 Jim had failed to live up to the one great article 
 of religion which possessed the soul of Ailse 
 Congdon, and with which she had informed that 
 of her handmaid, that houses are the great, sol 
 emn, cardinal facts of life, the shrines on which 
 the oblation of human wills and energies must 
 5
 
 66 SOUTH-COUNTY NEIGHBORS. 
 
 be laid. Dress fills the aspirations of some 
 women, but it was the sterner ideal of house 
 wifery that was all in all with Ailse Congdon. 
 As the fine lady in the " Bread Winners " is con 
 soled in her widowhood by gaining the use of a 
 double amount of wardrobe-room for her sum 
 mer and winter gowns, so Ailse Congdon looked 
 at her tidy, unlittered rooms, and thought that 
 Jim was a good riddance; "she didn't better 
 herself, noways, when she took him." Perhaps 
 she was not intentionally hard and severe, but 
 she was of so intensely practical and matter-of- 
 fact a nature, so incapable of the rudest form of 
 imaginative sympathy, that if not actually in 
 human, she was certainly a little less than 
 human. 
 
 Jim's absence had not been prolonged many 
 months when he was killed by the fall of a tree 
 which he was cutting down. The newly-made 
 widow received the news with composure, sim 
 ply saying to the messenger that " she always 
 told Jim he did n't have headpiece for that sorter 
 work, and that a tree would fall on him some 
 day, and ruin him." She duly attended the fu 
 neral, and observed to Huldy on her return, in a 
 spirit of relenting toward the departed, that "she 
 did n't wonder, come to see more of his folks, 
 that poor Jim was so head fo'most about every 
 thing. She should think, by the looks of things, 
 they'd had a hull beef critter cut up, and sich
 
 AILSE CONGDON. 67 
 
 porridge as them was, she would n't set afore a 
 Turk." 
 
 Ailse Congdon reached an iron old age with 
 out ever having known serious illness ; and when 
 death came, it was after a short and sharp course 
 of pneumonia, brought on by the rigid observance 
 of her usual rule of having no fire in the house 
 after the spring cleaning was done. As she 
 knitted and shivered in her icily clean keeping- 
 room one May evening, Death struck her in the 
 side with his dart, as in the engraving in the old 
 copy of the " Night Thoughts " which slept un 
 disturbed, except to be dusted, with the half-dozen 
 other volumes which had descended to her, and 
 which she had been too thrifty to destroy. When 
 she rolled up her blue yarn stocking that night, 
 her life's work was done, and the useful hands 
 were to lie idle until they should be folded away 
 out of sight forever. 
 
 But their owner was not one to give up the 
 warfare of life in a tame and spiritless fashion. 
 From her sick-bed she could see into the kitchen, 
 and was still capable of scolding an hour by the 
 eight-day clock, if Huldy, in the flurry of her 
 spirits, hung the skimmer on the wrong nail. 
 The Elder, who came to ask her if she was pre 
 pared for a change, met with a vigorous retort 
 from the sick woman, who, raising herself on her 
 elbow the better to transfix the intruder with 
 her steely glance, informed him, " I 'd have you
 
 68 SOUTH-COUNTY NEIGHBORS. 
 
 to know that we 're a very long-lived family, and 
 if you hain't nothing but that to say, you 'd bet 
 ter go back where you come from." 
 
 Her next visitor was Aunt Hepsey Dempsey, 
 a well-meaning old Quakeress, who always had 
 a mission to the dying. It was equivalent to a 
 death-warrant to see her grotesque little lame 
 figure, making its halting approach to your 
 bed-side. Sometimes the sick proved docile 
 enough under her ministrations, as when she 
 piously inquired of an aged hewer of wood and 
 drawer of water, " Zeb, is thee ready to die and 
 go to heaven ? " and the old negro with the 
 humility of his servile race faltered, " Ye-es, 
 Miss Hepsey, if so be as I can't do no better; " 
 thus voicing the unexpressed sentiment of many 
 excellent people who seem in marvellous little 
 haste to go to a place that is always- well 
 spoken of. But when, in her usual formula, 
 she desired to know of Ailse Congdon, " Is thee 
 resigned to die?" her words were flung back 
 at her. 
 
 " Resigned to die ! " cried the poor soul, 
 with such panting breath "as remained to her; 
 " d 'you think, Friend Dempsey, that anybody 
 oughter be resigned to die with the sullar only 
 half cleaned and the back yard not cleared 
 up?" 
 
 The prudent benevolence of the neighbor 
 hood was much concerned in behalf of the
 
 AILSE CONGDON. 69 
 
 prospectively destitute Huldy, and, in view of 
 the fact that Ailse Congdon had neither chick 
 nor child of her own, she was urged to leave 
 the little homestead to her faithful help, rather 
 than to the relatives, among whom she had none 
 nearer than some half-cousins of the third de 
 gree, upon whom she had always looked with 
 an eye of disfavor. But now she turned to her 
 own, as so often happens at the last, was cyni 
 cally disgusted with Huldy's tears and alarms, 
 and grumbled at leaving her all to town's poor 
 of uncertain parentage. The pressure upon her 
 was continued, however, until she finally gave 
 way, rather to the benumbing influence of 
 death's narcotics than to neighborly persua 
 sion, and consented to sign the will 'prepared 
 for her by the ever-busy Squire Codgers, a 
 fussy, self-important little man, who by brevet 
 title and volunteer service was the neighbor 
 hood notary, and was in great request for mak 
 ing out your deed or drawing your will at much 
 cheaper rates than you could get it done by 
 the legal profession. Ailse Congdon had been 
 scornfully wont to describe this learned neigh 
 bor as "the lightest kind o' timber," but she 
 accepted his proffered offices with an unnatural 
 taciturnity, and never spoke again after his visit. 
 So, as has been said of another, the poor creat 
 ure was mercifully chloroformed by the hand 
 of Nature into a better world, where she could
 
 70 SOUTH-COUNTY NEIGHBORS. 
 
 drink from healing fountains and feed on strange 
 fruits, with virtue to make her over, even to her 
 bones and marrow. No less radical a change 
 could work the miracle of creating a soul of 
 womanliness in the rugged nature of an Ailse 
 Congdon. 
 
 The funeral followed in due course, with the 
 arrival of the chief of the clan of cousins, deco 
 rously summoned by the neighbors, who had 
 now no fear of his claims, though he was well- 
 known to have come sharp-set for the property. 
 In the language of his recital to an admiring 
 auditory in the grocery store of his native village, 
 on his return, he "went right slap to work, sir, 
 to overhaul things ; " and he overhauled them to 
 such purpose that he found a flaw in the work 
 of the amateur lawyer, got the will set aside, ! 
 and took possession of " the estate and effects 
 of the deceased," as he complacently described 
 the lean-to homestead and its contents, includ 
 ing the scanty wardrobe, which he reserved for 
 the harpies of his family, excepting one of his 
 kinswoman's oldest gowns which " he did n't care 
 if Huldy Pawn had, being as he did n't hold her 
 responsible." 
 
 " It 's allers bottom up'ards 'ith my dish 
 when 't rains porridge," wailed the poor creat 
 ure, with a felicity of diction borrowed from 
 the vivid vocabulary of her life-companion ; 
 and, " Huldy, I vow for't! You have carr'd y'r
 
 AILSE CONGDON. /I 
 
 pigs to a poor market ! " was Izrul Barnes's 
 sympathetic commentary upon the hard usage 
 of a fate which threw her upon the world just 
 when her infirm, or, as her late employer had 
 been wont to say, her " slack-twisted " constitu 
 tion was failing under the stress of time. She 
 drifted about from house to house for a while, 
 finding no home where her subserviency would 
 be taken as an equivalent for board; for with 
 the displacement from her accustomed sur 
 roundings, her hand had quite lost its cunning 
 in the routine-work which she had accomplished 
 under the searching eye of her mistress. Los 
 ing her head entirely for the time, she tramped 
 about the country until neighborhood charity 
 would tolerate her no longer, and she had 
 become " chargeable to the town." To the 
 town-farm then, whence she came, she was 
 returned ; and, upon being accepted as a town 
 charge, began to develop the mysterious vitality 
 of a pensioner, actually living to a great age, 
 in which she often made the immaculate house 
 wifery of her early patroness the theme of her 
 praises. 
 
 " Ailse Congdon was a faculized woman," 
 she would say, in regretful memory of her 
 kitchen. " She could n't have things flush, but 
 she was one o' them that gits a livin' off'n a 
 rock. And when you come to neat! why, 
 you mighter gone all over her house, and you
 
 72 SOUTH-COUNTY NEIGHBORS. 
 
 could n't took up a tcaspoonful o' dirt. She 
 never let a drop o" the cleanest water stan' a 
 minute on her kitchen-floor ; 'n' lawsey ! how 
 she uster keep scoldin' me, in my young days, 
 and a tellin' me how that any woman that 
 did n't keep a shine onto her teakittle had 
 oughter be buried alive ! " 
 
 With this fitting obituary we will suffer the 
 shade of Ailse Congdon to pass.
 
 AN AFTERNOON AT NEIGHBOR 
 NORTHUP 'S. 
 
 TVTEIGHBOR NORTHUP'S gambrel-roofed, 
 1 ^1 weather-beaten, wood-colored homestead 
 of one story and a loft might almost have been 
 mistaken for a deserted dwelling, so riotous was 
 the profusion of catnip and other fat weeds that 
 flourished in the waste places of the house-lot, 
 and so tall were the door-yard grasses that 
 nodded familiarly at the window of " the gret 
 room," as the diminutive parlor was desig 
 nated, " great " being an adjective not of size, 
 but of state. But a faintly-marked, grassy foot 
 path led from the rickety front gate to the rough- 
 hewn stone that lay at the "green 'fore-door," 
 that being the conventional color of a princi 
 pal house door, and a more frequented way 
 ended at the kitchen entrance, where Neighbor 
 Northup sat smoking a peaceable pipe, and 
 lending a condescending ear to the gossip of her 
 meek henchwoman, the Widow Bill B., as she was 
 lucidly styled, to distinguish her from the equally 
 bereaved Widow Bill D., of the same ultimate 
 family name. The Widow Bill, who had arrived
 
 74 SOUTH-COUNTY NEIGHBORS. 
 
 at half-past two o'clock to spend the afternoon 
 and stay to tea, with many apologies for not be 
 ing able to come early, was solacing herself, in 
 her feebler fashion, by an occasional resort to 
 her snuff-box; and both women knitted vigor 
 ously at stockings of homespun blue-dyed yarn. 
 That excellent person, the Widow, 'resembled 
 nothing so much as an ancient and battered doll. 
 The hand of time had dealt with her meaningless 
 features as cruelly as the equally ruthless hand 
 of childhood deals with its nursery puppets; 
 and the discolorations and indentations which 
 age had imprinted on her countenance, with the 
 sparse and lifeless locks that here and there 
 clung in patches to a head of unfeminine bald 
 ness, gave her exactly the air of one of these 
 hapless victims. 
 
 Neighbor Northup was cast in a sterner mould, 
 and her ugliness was of a more picturesque 
 character. The strength of her gray eye, hawk 
 nose, firm-set mouth and square jaw remained 
 unimpaired by the ravages of years. Her face 
 was of one uniform tint of gypsy brown, and her 
 iron-gray hair, combed straight back, was tightly 
 fastened in a frankly minute knot. Her gown 
 of dark-blue calico suited well with the Zincali 
 associations of her lean, erect figure, and self- 
 reliant air. 
 
 Harty, Neighbor Northup's granddaughter, 
 stood at the ironing-table, her fresh young
 
 AN AFTERNOON AT NEIGHBOR NORTHUP S. 75 
 
 features delicately flushed, as the light dews of 
 labor just moistened her healthy white forehead, 
 disturbing with tiny tangles the neatly-smoothed 
 waves of rich brown hair. Harty sang at her 
 work with all the clan of the song-sparrow, re 
 peating again and again the same ballad strain of 
 " Mary of the Wild Moor." Sweet-brier petals, 
 borne on the light breeze, fluttered through the 
 little window and drifted among the coarse white 
 folds of the thin-worn old linen sheets spun by 
 her great-grandmother, as Harty, in her clear, 
 fresh tones, sang the dreary refrain, 
 
 " Oh ! 't was there Mary perished and died, 
 From the winds that blew 'cross the wild moor ! " 
 
 No feeling for the contrast between wintry 
 moor and sunny meadow, between the child of 
 home and the daughter of shame, no sense of 
 the rude passion and pathos of the song stirred 
 in the sheltered nature of the girl and moved 
 her to dwell thus upon its recital of the never- 
 ending story of desertion, want, suffering, and 
 death. Happily too young in thought and ex 
 perience to be reached by any echoes from the 
 depths of life, the words were of no particular 
 moment to her, but the tune was a pretty tune, 
 like any other. In the unconscious charm of 
 her untouched simplicity, she was the Yankee 
 counterpart of that English peasant maid of 
 whom the peasant lover exclaims :
 
 76 SOUTH-COUNTY NEIGHBORS. 
 
 " How gently rock yon poplars high 
 Against the reach of primrose sky, 
 
 With heaven's pale candles stored ! 
 She sees them all, sweet Lettice White ! 
 I '11 ev'n go sit again to-night 
 
 Beside her ironing-board ! " 
 
 But, though Harty may be a living poem, she 
 is destined never to know it; and the story of 
 her life and its surroundings is to be written by 
 fate in such plain prose as belongs to this nar 
 rative of one afternoon of home-life at Neighbor 
 Northup's. 
 
 " Harty 's ez chipper ez a conqueedle," com 
 mented Widow Bill B., " and thet's a real harn- 
 sum toon she 's a-singin'." 
 
 " Hum-ha," debated Neighbor Northup, who 
 was of a firmer mind than ever to give assent 
 to anything; "Harty favors me in her v'ice; 
 old Prisbyter'an Priest Brown uster say my 
 v'ice was powerful strong. Reck'lect, Betsey, 
 up to Elder Burdickses woods' meetin', to the 
 Dark Corners, the' was a hime chune 't we sung 
 b 1 spells. I don' know 's I could justly turn it 
 now," mused the dame, with an unwonted access 
 of modesty, which was presently quite justified 
 by her execution of 
 
 " O sisters, I want you, 
 I want you, and I want you, 
 To wear the glit'rin' crown." 
 
 "I always liked the 'Good Old Way' my 
 self; it lined off real handy," suggested her
 
 AN AFTERNOON AT NEIGHBOR NORTHUP'S. 77 
 
 crony, sending off the dame upon the strains 
 
 of,- 
 
 " Ez I went down 'n the valley to pray, 
 A-studyin' about this good old way, 
 Ez I went down in the valley to pray " 
 
 " Merciful George ! " suddenly ejaculated the 
 self-interrupted singer, regarding with lowering 
 looks an advancing group of figures ; and " Mer- 
 ci-ful George ! " she repeated with deepening dis 
 gust, " ef thiar ain't my darter Skinner an' her 
 ran-dan o' young 'uns, come ter spend the arter- 
 noon, sure ez pizen." 
 
 " Deary me, neighbor," echoed the pliant 
 Widow, " deary me, comfort is all to an eend ! " 
 
 Neighbor Northup was by no means the 
 doting grandam of conventional narrative. 
 She cherished no weak fondness for her de 
 scendants, and as often as she heard of any 
 death among children was wont to express no 
 slight disgust in that it had not been that of 
 one of her grandchildren. This arraignment 
 of fate was not prompted by any personal anti 
 pathy to her young relatives, but by the hard 
 common-sense of the matter, as she viewed it, 
 "Skinner being sich a poor coot, and him and 
 her with more children than they justly knowed 
 what to do with." 
 
 " Lovisy Ann Skinner ! " was the stern saluta 
 tion addressed by Neighbor Northup to her un 
 looked-for guests ; " of all possessed ! What
 
 78 SOUTH-COUNTY NEIGHBORS. 
 
 brung ye here, with all them tribes o' Beelze 
 bub? Did ye ride or travel?" 
 
 " Me an' the childun, we travelled a con- 
 sider'ble spell," drawled the impassive and 
 apathetic Lovisy, dropping into a splint-bot 
 tomed chair and fanning her stout person with 
 the almanac ; " but to the last on it, Cap'n Sail- 
 forth, he come along in his lumber-wagon, 'n' 
 we rid with him 'beout tew mild." 
 
 " Abner Sailforth, hey?" wrathfully returned 
 her mother. " I wish 't he was in Flanders. 
 Hain't he got nothin' to do but go cartin' of you 
 round ? Must 'ha ben wuss off 'n common." 
 
 " Well, he was kind of oh-be-joyful," admitted 
 Lovisy. 
 
 " Cap'n Sailforth, he 's got a jug in his wagon," 
 innocently piped up the youthful Jonas Skinner, 
 and immediately fled, howling under the sting 
 of a smart slap inflicted by the red right arm of 
 his grandmother, with a long brown towel which 
 hung at hand, while the grandmaternal accents 
 bade him " quit scandalizing [that is, slandering] 
 of his neighbors and betters." 
 
 " Don't ye tech them curr'ns dcown to the 
 garding ! " shouted the dame after the boys, as 
 they disappeared with suspicious alacrity in that 
 direction ; " ef ye do, I tell ye now, I '11 make ye 
 feel cur'ous ! " 
 
 Quiet being now restored, the Widow made 
 some deprecatory inquiries after the health of
 
 AN AFTERNOON AT NEIGHBOR NORTHUP'S. 79 
 
 Lovisy and the absent Skinner, while her in 
 dulgent parent smoked in contemptuous silence, 
 as the long-drawn recital of the physical woes 
 of the pair welled forth from Mrs. Skinner's 
 voluble lips. Mr. Skinner, it seemed, was suf 
 fering from a cold, and " though he clapped to 
 and took everything he could think on (he was 
 always a Bettyin' 'round in the cluset) he wa'n't 
 no better, an' she misdoubted he would n't be 
 'round very spry by hayin' time. He mought, 
 an* then agin he mought n't, but things looked 
 dubersome." She herself languished under an 
 ailment the symptoms of which were not of a 
 character to inspire much sympathy when made 
 the subject of complaint in July weather, and 
 were described as the state of being " all of a 
 trimble, with cold chills running up and down 
 the spine of her back." As for the maladies and 
 misfortunes of the children, they were related 
 with a wealth of detail that seemed as endless 
 as the blocks of the Job's Trouble patchwork- 
 quilt with which her fat fingers (armed with a 
 brass, open-topped thimble) were appropriately 
 busied. 
 
 The talk next turned upon the neighbor 
 hood news, being the unprecedented luck of 
 one Tad Hooper, who was currently reported 
 to have discovered a gold mine on his farm. 
 " Skinner, he said," related Lovisy, not unwil 
 ling to find herself the enthralling narrator of
 
 80 SOUTH-COUNTY NEIGHBORS. 
 
 the hour, " he said how Hiram Collins should 
 say thet Tad Hooper told him hisself thet he 
 see it croppin' outer them rocks, chunk artcr 
 'chunk ! " 
 
 " Why, Aunt Lovisy," interrupted Harty, who 
 was listening with an interest that worked no 
 little detriment to her ironing, " I thought Tad 
 Hooper did n't know nothin' ! " 
 
 " Toby sure, thet's the way on 't, child," 
 eagerly assented the Widow, in full enjoyment 
 of the marvel, " ' the wheel o' fortin dooz for to 
 go round,' ez the childern's father uster say, an' 
 ' ef ye have luck, little wit '11 do,' says the chil 
 dern's father, says he. 'T is so, ain't it, neigh 
 bor?" she pursued, deferentially appealing to 
 her stern hostess for corroboration of the phil 
 osophical moralizings of the late Mr. Bill B. 
 
 " Humph," shortly returned that lady, with a 
 vigorous puff at her pipe, while her subservient 
 auditory waited humbly upon her words, " I dis- 
 remember what Northup moughter hed ter say 
 'beout it," she began, with the ironic chuckle of 
 one who was above the weakness of quoting any 
 marital dictum, " but I c'n tell ye what's ez sure 
 ez jedgment, an' thet is thet the" ain't no gold 
 on Tad Hooper's farm, nor never will be, 'ccpt 
 fool's gold ; an' thet 's the long an' short on 't." 
 
 This debatable utterance of the oracle was 
 received in a respectful silence only broken by 
 the return of the brothers, who had fallen out
 
 AN AFTERNOON AT NEIGHBOR NORTHUP'S. 8 1 
 
 by the way, and who hastened to pour into the 
 maternal ear an exhaustive narrative of the 
 manner in which Henry Clay and Thomas Dorr 
 had come to blows, the results of which politi 
 cal conflict were apparent in torn jackets and 
 tear-smeared faces. 
 
 " Lovisy, be ye goin' ter let them childern ride 
 over y'r head?" vociferated the dame, rising to 
 her feet. " You Tom Dorr, hush now, or I '11 
 shet ye up f'r the rest o' y'r nat'ral life. Y'r 
 ma 'n' Widder Bill B., they can't hear theirselves 
 think." 
 
 " Never mind, gran'mother," coaxed Harty> 
 who had finished her ironing, " I '11 git Pesky 
 Phillups's old boat, 'n' go up the pond, 'n' the 
 boys c'n go, too." 
 
 " Goody ! Goody ! " roared her interesting 
 companions, and " Joy go with ye ! " sarcasti 
 cally shouted the grandam, as they disappeared 
 with their cousin, the girls of the party being 
 detained by her orders. 
 
 " Hain't ye got no stent for them great gals, 
 Lovisy?" she queried severely. "But mebbe 
 they was all on 'em borned with silver spoons 
 inter their mouths." 
 
 " Le 's try 'em in their book-larnin,' neigh 
 bor," pleaded the peace-loving Widow; and the 
 Old Farmers' Almanac being laid before Miry, 
 aged eleven, with an encouraging injunction to 
 do her possibles, she managed, after sundry 
 6
 
 82 SOUTH-COUNTY NEIGHBORS. 
 
 admonitions from her grandmother not to read 
 so like a mouse in the cheese, to convey to the 
 company the following piece of wisdom : 
 
 " Farm-ers att-end This-is-the-time-of-good 
 h-u-s hush, no, suthin' else, hus-hus-ban-dry 
 f'r plantin' y'r mangle-mangles [" mangle wuz- 
 zles, I expect, dear," whispered the kindly old 
 woman, but the wretched Miry justified her 
 name by plunging deeper in] mangles worsteds 
 no, 't ain't that f r plantin' y'r mangled 
 weasels." 
 
 " Shet up thet there book ! " came in hollow 
 tones of disgust from the grandmother; and the 
 Widow hastily complied, but beckoned to her 
 side the little Medora, to hear her con her 
 alphabet, and attempted to start her aright by 
 repeating with nodding suggestiveness, " A bus 
 tle A, B bustle B, C bustle C " " What 's 
 them 'ere?" lisped the bewildered babe; and 
 Lovisy, with explosions of laughter, informed 
 the Widow that the teacher " did n't learn them 
 that way any more." 
 
 " Dearest heart ! " ejaculated the flustered 
 Widow, " no, I b'lieve they don't, come to think ; 
 but seems so it don't come nat'ral to say 'em no 
 other way. Myrandy's childern, they hollered, 
 when I told 'em ter say ' Quf bustle quf.' ' No, 
 gran'ma, 't ain't Quf, it 's Q! ' but law ! I did n't 
 charge my mind 'ith it." 
 
 The Widow's early instructions had evidently
 
 AN AFTERNOON AT NEIGHBOR NORTHUP'S. 83 
 
 been imparted at one of those dame schools 
 where, for lack of books, the alphabet was re 
 cited to the children, and hummed over by 
 them, in the form of " A by itself, A," etc., with 
 the inevitable phonetic rendering. 
 
 But what succeeded in the Iliad of Neighbor 
 Northup's woes? Came the return of Harty 
 and the boys, flushed and jubilant; followed 
 the four o'clock supper, laid a trifle earlier than 
 usual, with prudent forethought for the timely 
 exodus of Lovisy and her tribe, in order to 
 reach their own domicile by " airly candlelight." 
 Sing, O Muse, of" them porridge " (always known, 
 in Narragansett, by this honorable plural), of 
 johnny-cake and cold boiled pork, of rye an' 
 Injun bread, of flour cake, of cold vegetables 
 left from dinner, and, for the children, thought 
 fully interspersed with tender shredded bits of 
 pork-rind. Sing, O heavenly goddess, the 
 wrath of Neighbor Northup when this delicacy 
 was declined by the youthful Valerius (named 
 from an imperfect recollection of Bunyan's im 
 mortal tale), as he forcibly rejected the offending 
 morsel with an explosive commentary of, " I 
 don't like it, ma; I don't, I don't! " 
 
 " Uhdone ! " shouted the grandam, in the 
 colonial corruption of the imperative " Ha' 
 done, sir," of English comedy. " Uhdone, I 
 say, 'n' don't you darst open y'r head agin, 'cept 
 ter put y'r vittles into 't, or I '11 rise upon ye ! "
 
 84 SOUTH-COUNTY NEIGHBORS. 
 
 the last clause enunciated in fearful accents. 
 Meanwhile Charlotte Ludovica, a scrawny, sal 
 low damsel of ten, was furtively partaking of 
 her fourth cup of scalding hot tea, precociously 
 taken without " trimmings ; " for her mother 
 approvingly said of Luddy Lotty, as she was 
 commonly called, that she had n't a sweet tooth 
 in her head. 
 
 Calmer moments followed, while Lovisy strove 
 for a diversion by plaintively inquiring of Harty 
 " ef she wa'n't most beat out with rowin'." " She 
 ain't rowed none ! " chorused the young bar 
 barians. " Joe Phillups come right out arter 
 her, 'n' went with us, 'n' he would n't let us row 
 none, nuther." 
 
 " Jest wanted ter show off," grumbled Henry 
 Clay, with precocious discernment. 
 
 " Yes," agreed the equally aggrieved Thomas 
 Dorr, " an' him an' Harty kep' up sich an ever- 
 lastin" jabberin' 't they skeered the turkles off 
 when we was clus' up to the rock, 'n' we did n't 
 ketch none." 
 
 " Oho," exclaimed Grandmother Northup, 
 but this time with simulated wrath, while Harty 
 flushed a painful red, " hes thet fool feller ben 
 pokin' 'round agin? Harty, I sh'd thought 
 you 'd a killed him or cured him, this time." 
 
 Lovisy here observed, with that superior and 
 patronizing air of calm judgment which one 
 woman never fails to show respecting the tender
 
 AN AFTERNOON AT NEIGHBOR NORTHUP'S. 85 
 
 history of another, that she "s'posed Harty 
 knowed her own business, but f'r her part she 
 should n't wanter live with his folks, for old 
 Marm Phillups was deef 's a beetle, 'n' Pesky was 
 cracked by spells." 
 
 " Don't you fret y'r skull, Lovisy," elegantly 
 admonished the triumphant grandmother. 
 " Guess Harty '11 do ez well, when her time 
 comes, ez any of her folks hes done afore 
 her ! " 
 
 The dame's high good humor mounted to the 
 point of presenting to Lovisy, as she bestirred 
 herself after supper with preparations for de 
 parture, a relic from her wardrobe, to be made 
 over-for use in her young family. 
 
 " It 's a clever gownd yit, Lovisy," said the 
 grandmother, smoothing it approvingly, " but, 
 good land o' patience ! your Sarah 'Liza 'd 
 thrash it out 'tween Cubit's Hill an' Potter's 
 Pond. Ef thet there was my gal, I 'd keep her 
 sewed up 'n tow-cloth." 
 
 Provided with this benefaction and with sun 
 dry other spoils, Lovisy and her train departed 
 to rejoin the twins, who had been left at home 
 in charge of the six-months-old baby, his mother 
 placidly remarking that " she guessed Moses 'n' 
 Aaron 'd pretty much giv' him up by now." 
 Harty took some hasty but indispensable stitches 
 in the garments of the over-energetic Jonas, while 
 the Widow Bill B. snatched a furtive kiss from
 
 86 SOUTH-COUNTY NEIGHBORS. 
 
 the chubby Medora. The boys dashed off as 
 though set free from school, " Poley," who, 
 deriving his name from the tyrant Corsican, was 
 naturally the moving spirit in savagery among 
 them, secretly gloating over the consciousness 
 that his grandmother's useful tabby at that mo 
 ment lay nursing a lame paw in the potato patch, 
 whither she had been driven by the mischievous 
 stone that dealt the wound, and, with some 
 uneasy apprehensions of judgment yet to light 
 upon her persecutor, bursting defiantly into a 
 catch of folk-song that had been handed down 
 in the race of Skinners, 
 
 " Oh dear ! oh dear ! what shell I do 
 
 I 've killed my daddy's keow; 
 I won't tell him on it ter-day, 
 But I '11 tell him ter-morr^a/, " 
 
 while Neighbor Northup, not as yet fully aware 
 of the various ravages committed on her ter 
 ritory by these invaders, and placated by the 
 removal of a serious cause of irritation, uncon 
 sciously returned an antistrophe to their parting 
 song, as she gave a long puff of relief at her 
 after-supper pipe, and thoughtfully struck up 
 the refrain, 
 
 "Believin', we rej'ice 
 Ter see the curse removed."
 
 FROM HOUR TO HOUR IN THE COUNTRY 
 STORE. 
 
 THE country store might not be a gem, but 
 it was richly set, in a background of dark 
 ly-wooded hills steeply descending to the stream 
 beside which it stood. Thus secluded in its 
 surroundings of woodland loveliness, its visible 
 relations to the world of trade were so few that 
 at the vacant hours when the mail-carrier was 
 not due, and no boat lay at the rude landing, it 
 might almost have posed to the wandering artist 
 as the storm-beaten, moss-grown cabin of an 
 aged settler in the primitive Narragansett wil 
 derness. But it dated from the Revolutionary 
 period, and, as was then customary in the South 
 County, it formed an integral part of a large, 
 gambrel-roofed, shingle-sided, wood-colored 
 farmhouse, being attached at one end of that 
 structure, with its independent entrance from the 
 road sometimes closed by a half-door, and its 
 door of communication with the domestic apart 
 ments always conveniently ajar. This rather 
 torpid nerve-centre of the sluggish life of the 
 outlying farms possessed vital attractions for the
 
 88 SOUTH-COUNTY NEIGHBORS. 
 
 customers of the past generation, who arrived at 
 their goal by ox-teams, or, in eccentric instances, 
 by driving that cautious and conservative steed 
 in harness, or else riding him after the fashion 
 of " old Shawmut's pioneer," the hermit Black- 
 stone. But such as did not drive the patient 
 oxen under their names of old-country descent, 
 as " Duke and Darby," " Buck and Bright," or, 
 in the later nomenclature of patriotic indepen 
 dence, " Star and Stripe," and such as did not 
 urge the reluctant Dobbin in the creaking cart 
 or the slow-jogging wagon, came by the water 
 ways which lent a grace to rustic travel ; or else, 
 in their own phrase, " footed it" on the drift 
 ways, or over the hard-beaten little paths that 
 led across-lots. So, by the winding ways of old 
 lanes that nourished tall blossoming weeds in 
 summer, and when " the frost was coming out of 
 the ground," were ironically described by indig 
 nant women-folk as being " in full bloom " with 
 a luxuriant depth of mud ; by the old roads of 
 scarce higher degree, guarded in sub-baronial 
 fashion by a gate at every farm, and keeping 
 the same leisurely twists and turns that were 
 imposed to suit the convenience of the colonial 
 proprietors; by the dark waters of the haunted 
 Hawkho Pond; by the loops and curves of Pond 
 Lily Brook or Indian Run, they all met at the 
 same point, in search of their household supplies, 
 and to call for the weekly newspaper, the " New-
 
 IN THE COUNTRY STORE. 89 
 
 port Marcury " or the denominational journal, 
 with the infrequent letter from the daughter who 
 was learning a trade, or the son who was " stor 
 ing it " in some New England town. It was the 
 neighborly duty of the storekeeping postmaster, 
 or of the droppers-in at the store, to make known 
 the arrival of letters ; and the " pleas forrard " 
 generally scrawled in the corner of one of these 
 missives was literally obeyed. The addresses 
 were almost uniformly in masculine hands, it 
 being the received tradition among the women 
 folk that a presumably gossiping feminine epis 
 tle would be officially slighted, if not utterly cast 
 aside, to make way for the business communica 
 tions of the serious sex. Occasionally a rustic 
 postmaster failed to comply with all the unwrit 
 ten regulations of neighborhood law, but right 
 eous wrath overtook him. 
 
 " I never see no sech do-little coot ez thet 
 Jim Fones," was the angry comment of Uncle 
 B'riah Sanford, as on his way home from the 
 store he accosted a neighbor, who heard his 
 story with equal indignation. " He ain't what 
 I call very work-brittle. Look-a-here, now, I 
 jest got this here letter my darter Marcy 's writ 
 me, an' it's ben a-layin' over thiar nigh upon 
 three weeks. I dono where his wits was," pur 
 sued Uncle B'riah, with a bitter smile of scorn 
 for the sterility of the official mind, "never to 
 tho't on Dely Helums, thet mustee gal. She
 
 9O SOUTH-COUNTY NEIGHBORS. 
 
 goes by the store mos' gin'ally when she goes 
 up 't the big house chorin* of a Sa'a'd'y. He 
 mighter ben on the lookout for her, an' 'a' sent it 
 to me, well 's not. Wai, I guess ef Gov'ment 
 was knowin' to 't we sh'd see a change, right 
 short off." 
 
 The interior of the store, as seen on a mild 
 and hazy afternoon of mid-autumn, presented 
 its usual display of " infinite riches in, a little 
 room," so far as a teeming variety answers to 
 the idea of riches. The needs of man and 
 beast, as felt at the So and So Corners, could 
 be amply satisfied here, so that it was com 
 monly remarked that Elder Nahum Holley, the 
 begging friar of the Baptist persuasion, whose 
 itineracy the good people of the countryside 
 had tolerated for a generation, used to sing 
 with peculiar fervor when lodged at the store, 
 and after partaking of a refreshment flatteringly 
 described by him as " a very promiscuous |>ud- 
 din'," an original hymn, of which the rather 
 singular refrain was : 
 
 "All my critter wants employed, 
 All my hours of rest alloyed, 
 All my needs air well supployed." 
 
 The gifts of the season, in fruits and vege 
 tables of the homelier sorts, occasionally found/ 
 a place here, not for sale, of course, for who 
 would be so absurd as to buy " green sass," of 
 which everybody could raise enough and to
 
 IN THE COUNTRY STORE. 9! 
 
 spare? but as signs of the skill of their pro 
 ducers. It was a spontaneous exhibition of the 
 works of nature, an inchoate rural fair. Behind 
 the bar, as it had been in the old times when 
 strong waters were dispensed to all comers, 
 from the Tory Squire to Injun Moll, that ineffi 
 cient factotum, the blameworthy Jim, was shell 
 ing some beans, rather disparagingly described 
 by him a$ comprising " all nations," but chiefly 
 of the " hundud to one " variety. A woman and 
 a little girl just entering the store became the 
 objects of a leisurely observation on the part of 
 the usual knot of loungers, which, in its undis 
 guised air of languid routine scrutiny, could 
 hardly be surpassed by the spent nonchalance 
 of the watering-place stare. 
 
 " Mis' Tift," as she was presently addressed, 
 was a stout, hearty woman, of whose age the 
 less said the better, but who might have been 
 any^iere from the middle regions of the forties 
 to that abrupt descent of life which is oddly 
 described as " risin' fifty." This exemplary 
 matron was evidently of my Lord Bacon's opin 
 ion that " Virtue is like a rich stone, best plain 
 set ; " for her dress was marked by severity of 
 choice, and comprised a massive pair of rough 
 Itather shoes, fashioned by a veteran cobbler 
 who still plied his trade from house to house, a 
 calico short-gown and petticoat, with a long 
 apron, and a log-cabin sttnbonnet. She had
 
 92 SOUTH-COUNTY NEIGHBORS. 
 
 coarse, harsh hair, styled " molasses color " by 
 herself, and springing from the top of the fore 
 head in that point which is esteemed a mark of 
 beauty, and of which one of the ladies of the 
 Stuart period makes a charmingly complacent 
 mention in her memoirs, when enumerating her 
 attractions. But, treated as it is on rustic faces, 
 the effect is as decidedly ugly as is the meeting 
 of a pair of black eyebrows (which the Romans, 
 with characteristically bad taste, nevertheless 
 admired) ; and hence, perhaps, the invective 
 with which it is loaded in the vigorous bucolic 
 speech, being known as "scold's peak," and 
 yet more derisively, as " a cowlick." 
 
 The child of ten who accompanied her was a 
 victim to the high-low cut of the dress of chil 
 dren at that day, by which the shoulders of 
 little girls were neither set free nor quite re 
 strained, so that restless childhood was continually 
 thrusting up one shoulder or the other in the 
 revolt from the uneasy bounds which fretted 
 but did not confine. Her tow-colored locks, 
 kept neither long nor short, were all gathered 
 in one "wisp," and tied with a bit of faded 
 ribbon, supplemented with a colored shoestring. 
 She was of an ill-nourished aspect, and bore the 
 large-eyed look of illness ; or, as her mother 
 more graphically said, " she was as poor as a 
 crow, and her eyes were as big as saucers." 
 
 A faded, fussy, nervous little woman, who
 
 IN THE COUNTRY STORE. 93 
 
 had come in with a deprecating air, after fidget 
 ing about for a few minutes, approached Mis' 
 Tift, who was volubly beating down the store 
 keeper in his tariff of West India goods, and 
 addressed her with an apologetic 'hem, yet with 
 something of the modest assurance of one who 
 knew the proper forms of polite inquiry. 
 
 " I wanter know, ef 't ain't imperdent in me 
 ter ahsk, ef this here ain't Salome Stillman thet 
 was?" 
 
 " Well, I calc'late 't ain't nobody but the old 
 woman herself," graciously replied the owner of 
 this complex individuality, " but, my stars V 
 garters, woman, who in time be you?" 
 
 "Why, Mis' Tift, don't you reck'lect Mis' 
 Crandall, Samwell Crandall's wife, she thet was 
 a Rose?" queried Jim Fones, perceiving that 
 the office of master of ceremonies devolved 
 upon him. 
 
 " F'r the land's sake alive ! " exclaimed Mis' 
 Tift, as she rigidly scrutinized the faded and 
 withered features of her that was once a Rose. 
 " Why, Nabby, heow you 'm broke ! You 'm 
 growed gray, an' you 'm wrinkled some, an' 
 you 'm bent over, an' y'r teeth 's most all gone, 
 ain't they. Lor', I should n't ha' knowed ye 
 from Adam." 
 
 "Well, I expect I be changed some," re 
 turned the meek Mis' Crandall, evidently with 
 some slight twinge of the pain known to even
 
 94 SOUTH-COUNTY NEIGHBORS. 
 
 the most homespun woman on becoming a prey 
 to the attacks of ruthless time, " but I sh'd 'a' 
 knowed you agin, S'lome, ef I 'd 'a' met ye in a 
 porridge-dish. And heow 's y'r heaalth, nowa 
 days?" 
 
 " Tol-lol, on'y jest tol-lol ; jest so 's ter be 
 abeout," continued Mis' lift, with increasing lu- 
 gubriousness. 
 
 "And heow's little sissy?" pursued the sed 
 ulous inquirer. 
 
 " Well, 'Mandy, she ain't a bit well. I ben 
 mithered more 'n little ter know what ter do with 
 her. Looks dretful poor in the face, don't she? 
 ['Mandy falls into a state of wriggling self-con 
 sciousness.] 'Pears ter me she's kinder consump 
 tive. (Take y'r shoulder in, 'Mandy, that ain't 
 pretty.) I ben doct'rin her, back along, with 
 some o ' these boughten pills, but they come 
 oration high, thutty-fife Cents f'r the big box, 
 so 't I gin 'em up, an' I Ve kep' her on yarb 
 tea now, stiddy. (Don't witch with thet draft 
 terthet stove, 'Mandy; you'll git it out o' kilter, 
 fuzzino.) Black daisy tea 's real good f'r them 
 distressed spells like she hes ; it 's both liv'nin' 
 and stringth'nin', ez ole Aunt Rooty uster say. 
 Well, an' howsumever come you deown here 
 ter-day, Mis' Crandall, clear way deown from 
 the Ville?" 
 
 " Well, the way on 't was, their father, he took 
 a notion to a pair o' steers somewher's down on
 
 IN THE COUNTRY STORE. 95 
 
 Pine Judy Pint, an' he 's gonter study on 'em 
 awhile, an' lef me here ter do some tradin'. 
 Well, I expect I hed oughter be tendin' toe it." 
 
 " Well, good-day, Mis' Crandall. I dono 's I 
 shall ever git up thet far to where you live. I 
 don't git no time f'r visitin' 'n' sech." 
 
 "I'm afeerd, Mis' Tift, you 'm too smart ter 
 gin yerself no chance, but you oughter take a 
 time 'n' come'n' see us." 
 
 " Well, ef I be any smarter than the next one 
 its force put, thet 's all. My will 's good ter be 
 lazy, jest the same 's ary one on 'em. Lor', I 
 sh'd like ter lay abed ev'ry mawnin o' my life 
 tell five o'clock, ef so be 't I could. But I sh'll 
 come up, ef I ken 's well 's not." 
 
 " So do. An' ef ever I go pahst y'r house I 
 sh'll 'light 'n' see your folks." 
 
 "We shell be very pleased ter see ye, any 
 time," rather curtly replied the business-like Mis' 
 Tift, closing the interchange of compliments, 
 and resuming her bargaining, which she soon 
 completed with signal success. 
 
 " Ma, ma," bleated the eager 'Mandy, holding 
 her mother by her gown, " don't go yit. Say, 
 git me a new frock off'n this here piece o' pink 
 muslin-de-laine. Oh, I do want a boughten frock 
 so dretful bad ! " 
 
 " Yes, you 'd like ter be reeled in silk, would n 't 
 ye? " returned the severe parent. " Now, don't 
 you w'ine, 'Mandy. I wish 't my head would n't
 
 96 SOUTH-COUNTY NEIGHBORS. 
 
 ache tell I git ye sech a frock ; so you study on 
 thet a while." 
 
 Headaches were all but unknown to the ma 
 tron, save in the uses of rhetoric, but 'Mandy 
 was sufficiently experienced in the significance 
 of the phrase just launched at her to resign her 
 self to the inevitable, as she and her mother de 
 parted, soon followed by Mis' Crandall. 
 
 The sole comment made in the conclave of 
 loungers upon this meeting was the indiscreet 
 utterance of the adolescent Sol Simms to Hi 
 Collins, an equally simple youth. 
 
 " Ain't it queer, though," remarked the ob 
 servant Sol, " heow Mis' Teft never will let on ez 
 she 's well 's common, when all the time she dooz 
 look stout 'n' rugged 'nough, 'cordin' ter my no 
 tion, t' eat puddin' 'ith a barnshovel !" 
 
 This attempt at wit was coldly received, Mis' 
 Tift being the wife of a man of considerable rus 
 tic importance ; and Sol made no further effort 
 to shine in the conversation until his return after 
 doing the afternoon chores, to join the group 
 that gathered around the cylinder stove, in which 
 crackled a hospitable fire of " lightwood," and 
 which was raised above a shallow box filled with 
 sawdust, and much in need of a fresh supply of the 
 same. Jim Fones had made the usual sly prepar 
 ation for his evening guests by setting the clock 
 ahead, and, as custom required, they would govern 
 themselves in accordance with the simple device.
 
 IN THE COUNTRY STORE. 97 
 
 The bucolic types of which this informal club 
 was composed were, with few exceptions, such 
 as to develop in the observer a vigorous revolt 
 from the binding force of the Miltonic example 
 of homage to the human face divine. Looking 
 upon some of these heavy countenances, with 
 nothing of adolescence but its crudeness of con 
 tour, or nothing of age but its lined and seamed 
 ugliness, one was fain to read backward the 
 meaning of that inexpressibly moving cry of 
 longing after visible human companionship ut 
 tered from the solitudes of rayless darkness, and 
 to declare that the poet was blind indeed to the 
 physical faults of Adam's lineage, known to him 
 in all its imperfections until exalted by the 
 idealizing touch born of a hopeless desire. 
 
 For instance, there was Sol Simms. This 
 adolescent was the exact similitude of a gander. 
 Every ludicrous point of resemblance was there, 
 the long craning neck, the insignificant, close- 
 cropped, whitish head, the round, reddened eyes, 
 the protruding beak, the abruptly retreating 
 chin, all these marking him, no less than his 
 long flapping arms, strident voice, and uncouth 
 gait, as being at no distant remove from those 
 clothed figures of animals which usually pass 
 for caricatures, but which might occasionally 
 be esteemed genuine likenesses. 
 
 In effective antithesis to this specimen of un 
 gainly youth was the spectacle of fine old age 
 7
 
 98 SOUTH-COUNTY NEIGHBORS. 
 
 afforded by Uncle Josey Austin, a handsome 
 old man, with- clear-cut features and flowing 
 white hair and beard. As sometimes happens 
 in such cases, Nature had forgotten to put as 
 large a supply of brains behind that picturesque 
 mask as the fitness of things might seem to re 
 quire, and hence, perhaps, the familiarity with 
 which he was still addressed by his nickname, 
 and the freedom with which children claimed 
 his society. 
 
 "Why, whiar 's my stick gone to?" mildly 
 inquired Uncle Josey, soon after taking his seat. 
 " I brung't in, sure-ly." 
 
 " Thiar 't is, Uncle, over thiar, right behind 
 ye," chorused the company. 
 
 " Ef 't hed ben a b'ar, 't would a bitten ye," 
 observed Jim Fones, and the ready rustic 
 laugh went round at the time-honored bit of 
 pleasantry. 
 
 " Say, Uncle Josey, Uncle Josey, tell us the 
 b'ar story," clamored the children of the house, 
 who were still hovering about the store, in im 
 minent peril of being sent to bed. 
 
 " Oh, neow, childring," returned the old man, 
 in his plaintive drawling intonation, " ye don't 
 wanter hear Jimmy's story fust -off, do ye? 
 Don't Sukey, a little dear, wanter hear her story, 
 all abeout the harp that seounded seven miles 
 above greound, 'n' seven miles under greound, 
 'n' seven miles beyond sea?"
 
 IN THE COUNTRY STORE. 99 
 
 " No," stoutly insisted the dominant Jimmy, 
 " me 'n' Sukey wants ter hear 'bout the b'ars." 
 
 " Wai, then," replied their aged friend, 
 "Jimmy mus' come 'n' set right here, next ter 
 me, 'n' Sukey '11 come up on the old man's knee 
 oops-a-daisy ! here she be ! Wai, onct upon 
 a time, the' was a little boy 't lived all alone with 
 his mother, 'n' one day he took his bahsket 'n 
 went out inter the woods ter pick huckleberries. 
 Wai, he went, 'n' he went, 'n' he went along a 
 leetle furder, 'n' he come toe a grahssy place, 'n' 
 then he come toe a middlin' rocky place, 'n' 
 bimeby he diskivered a b'ar's den, with three 
 little b'ars, all cuggled down in it. Wai, he 
 tucked up them little b'ars in his bahsket, all 
 nice, V he buckled f'r home. So he went 
 along, an' along, an' along, an' he was jest a say- 
 in' to hisself how dretful pleased his mother 'd be 
 ter see them little b'ars, when all toe onct he 
 heered suthin' behind him, going brookety, 
 brookety, brook, an' he turned an' he looked, 
 an' he see the old she b'ar comin' right arter 
 him." 
 
 Here Uncle Josey paused to give place to 
 the ows and owtcJies of his hearers, who were 
 quivering in the fearful joy awakened by the 
 narrative. 
 
 "Wai," pursued the story-teller, "the little 
 boy he run, but 'twa'n't no kinder use; the ole 
 b'ar was gittin' clus' up with him, when he jes'
 
 IOO SOUTH-COUNTY NEIGHBORS. 
 
 throwcd out one o' the little b'ars, 'thout stoppin' 
 tcr look behind him. Wai, the ole b'ar she nosed 
 him, 'n' licked him, V picked him up, 'n' carr'd 
 him off, 'n' laid him down in the den." 
 
 The same history was related concerning the 
 second cub, after which recital, 
 
 " So now the little boy was mos' outer the 
 woods, when jes' ez he come in sight o' home 
 an' he could see the clo'es hangin' out on the 
 line, all of a suddint he heerd suthin' behind him 
 goin' brookety, brookety, brookety, brook, an' 
 there she was codgwallopin' along arter him ; an' 
 he pitched out the larst little b'ar 'n' run lickety 
 cut, lickety cut, 'n' he got saft home. And his 
 mother was overjoyed ter see him." 
 
 The children disappeared soon after the close 
 of their favorite tale, but the youths of the 
 neighborhood, seated beside the counter, which 
 was lighted 'by the whale-oil lamp and the 
 tallow candle, were pursuing the evening amuse 
 ment of playing fox and geese with grains of 
 corn, and of puzzling out, with the help of slate 
 and pencil, the traditionary rebus, " I under 
 stand that you under-take toe over-throw my 
 under-takings." 
 
 In the circle around the stove the enlivening 
 influences of snuff and tobacco kept the sources 
 of conversational flow fully supplied. The usual 
 comments upon the weather and the crops were 
 duly exchanged. Uncle Josey predicted a "con-
 
 IN THE COUNTRY STORE. IOI 
 
 sid'ble warm spell, on the stringth o' the al 
 manac," though, as he added with mild scepti 
 cism, it did n't always tell right. Uncle Cy 
 Card, the carpenter, related some instructive 
 reminiscences of a December famous in local 
 annals, when he and the rest o' the gang worked 
 at a raisin' in their shirt-sleeves ; but it was the 
 general sense of the company that winter never 
 rots in the skies. Old Polypus Pollock, a prey 
 to the eccentricity of the paternal taste in no 
 menclature, and an inheritor of an inordinate 
 love of mysterious phrases, related with exhaus 
 tive minuteness the history of his successful 
 potato crop. 
 
 " Yes," he complacently observed, " I do 
 b'leeve I raised them 'ere p'taters ez a crop hed 
 oiigJiter be raised. I 'clar' for 't, I did n't gin 
 'em no peace. I jest hoed an' weeded, an' 
 weeded an' hoed, all summer; the' wa'n't no let 
 up to't; an' them p'taters did grow sponta- 
 nously, toe be sure," he concluded, with a 
 thoughtful air. 
 
 "What be ye goin' ter git f'r 'em, Pol?" was 
 the sharp inquiry of the astute Pindar Pryor. 
 
 " Wai, I ain't figgered it eout so fearful clus', 
 yit. 'Ezyou say, neighbor" (with urbanity) " they 
 be terr'ble big. But I don't hold to none of 
 these here 'nonymous high prices ; a good, fa'r, 
 promis'cous price is all't /calc'late on." 
 
 " Taters ain't what they uster be," mildly
 
 102 SOUTH-COUNTY NEIGHBORS. 
 
 complained Uncle Josey; "they don't taste 
 'tatery this fall." 
 
 " Of all the poor livin' 't ever I don't wanter 
 see," dryly observed a dyspeptic-looking man, 
 who had not passed unscathed through the 
 ordeal of " boarding around " when in his early 
 years he had done the State some service as a 
 schoolmaster, but without sacrificing native dia 
 lect to artificial book-learning, " 'twas jest about 
 the most mis'able down to Number Twenty-five, 
 when I taught school there. Cipherin' all day 
 with the boys, an livin' on them mean johnny- 
 cakes made 'thout a drop o* milk, was ruther too 
 tough fr me." He paid the tribute of a long- 
 drawn yawn to the melancholy recollection. 
 
 The staple topics being well-nigh disposed of, 
 a silence fell, dedicated to the influences of the 
 soothing weed, until all were suddenly aroused 
 into welcome activity by the arrival of a neigh 
 bor who, coming post-haste from a house of 
 sickness, briefly announced the animating intel 
 ligence 
 
 "Wai, Pardon Sherman's dead, died this 
 arternoon, at twelve minutes past six o'clock." 
 
 " I wanter know, now," was the refreshing 
 expletive in which Uncle Cy indulged ; " Left 
 no much prop'ty, I guess," was the character 
 istic note sharply sounded by the keen-visaged 
 Pindar Pryor; and " VVal, wal, he were a very 
 likely man," was Uncle Josey's ready word of
 
 IN THE COUNTRY STORE. 103 
 
 obituary eulogy, uttered with sundry edifying 
 head-shakings, and lugubrious " sithes," as he 
 would have named them. 
 
 " Ez toe thet ar," portentously announced 
 Steve Reynolds, or " Runnuls," a rough, middle- 
 aged man, not devoid of a certain air of homely 
 wash-and-wear wisdom, " I ain't so sure who is 
 likely, and who ain't. I don't mean no affront 
 to nobody nor no disrespec' ter the dead, but 
 sech news as this here dooz allers call ter mind 
 thet ar' 't we uster read ter school in the ' C'lum- 
 bian Orator,' when one o' them old wiseacres 
 says, says he, ' Call no man happy till the eend 
 on his days,' or some sech a saw ez thet. 
 Now, I ain't no flosopher," modestly continued 
 Steve, " but I sh'd go a leetle furder 'n thet, 'n' 
 I sh'd say, Don't go ter callin' no man good tell 
 he 's ben buried a year an' a half, an' the grahss 
 hes growed up over him. F'r I Ve noticed in 
 my time," pursued Steve, fixedly regarding his 
 audience while slowly shifting his quid, " thet 
 with thet there graveyard grahss the 's apt to 
 spring up another crop thet ain't so handy. I 
 tell 'em, the Scriptur says, ' Death 's the Prince o' 
 Darkness,' but the' is times when he brings a lot 
 of ugly things ter light What 's thet you 'm a 
 blurtin' out there, Sol Simms? " 
 
 " Why, sa-ay," stammered Sol, with phenom 
 enal smartness on being thus encouraged, 
 " there 's old Aunt Patty, up 't ourus " (he
 
 IO4 SOUTH-COUNTY NEIGHBORS. 
 
 referred to his great-aunt, a member of the 
 household), " she 's so good 't she's bad. It's 
 dretful mithersome ter hev her 'round some 
 times, "fr when anybody else 'd be mad ez a hoe, 
 she won't lay no blame ter nobody. But I ground 
 her grist f'r her yist'd'y. Says I, speakin' up 
 loud's I could, pretty nigh, f'r the old lady's 
 deef 's an adder, ' Aunt Patty, you 'm so mortle 
 charit'ble 't you allers says about folks under 
 sixty, ef they 'm cross or wrong-behaved, thet 
 they'm sick an' can't help theirselves, an' ef 
 they'm over sixty, why then they'm childish 
 an' dono no better;' an' she laffed an" said, 
 ' Git along, y'r father uster tell me so long afore 
 you was born.' " 
 
 The more practical members of the confer 
 ence had ill-brooked the delay imposed by these 
 unprofitable moralizings, and now obtained from 
 the willing narrator full particulars of the la 
 mented event. Curiosity being allayed, specu 
 lation next ran rife. 
 
 " S'pose the widder 'n the gals c'n jest about 
 make out ter ruggle along, cain't they?" queried 
 Uncle Cy, with a furrowed brow, while his neg 
 lected pipe nearly went out, in his spasm of 
 'neighborly anxiety. 
 
 " Mebbc some on 'em '11 git marr'd," was the 
 brilliant suggestion of Jim Fones. 
 
 " I dono, I dono" pondered Uncle Josey, 
 with profound sympathy; "they ain't none on
 
 IN THE COUNTRY STORE. 105 
 
 'em very fanciful, an' Almiry's got a reg'lar 
 drive-on-carter look to her." 
 
 "What sorter look?" questioned Sol Simms, 
 with interest. 
 
 " Don't you know thet story, sonny? Wai, 
 away back in some o' them old times, the' was 
 a man gonter be hung, 'n' they said how they 'd 
 gin him a pardon ef so be 't he could git any 
 body ter hev him, 'n' a woman 't come along said 
 she would. So he riz up in the cart ter see her, 
 an' when he see her he lay down agin. ' Long 
 nose, an' crooked chin,' says he ; ' drive on, 
 carter.' " 
 
 " Looker here, Mr. Runnuls," broke in Hi 
 Collins, addressing Steve, " the 's a gal livin' out, 
 down to the bridge, thet come from up north, 
 som'ers to the northern fac'tries, an' she 's the 
 most ig'nant kind. She never see chicken an' 
 quohaug pie, an' she did n't know what con- 
 queedles was ! " 
 
 " Quonqueedles, gran'futher calls 'em," re 
 marked Steve. " Quonqueedles was the name 
 the old Injuns giv' 'em, 'cordin' ter his tell. I 
 sh'd reckon it come from their n'ise, when 
 they'm a sorter tunin' up. The' was a man 
 come here from some o' them northern parts, 
 called 'em bob-o-links. I expect thet ar' out- 
 landlish name come right down from some o' 
 them dangerous old Massachusetts Prisbyter'ans. 
 Uster go spyin' 'round arter upland liverwort,
 
 io6 SOUTH-COUNTY NEIGHBORS. 
 
 an' called 'em Mayflowers, I b'licve. He was a 
 gret han' f'r'sech truck. 
 
 " I dono 's you reck'lect," joined in Uncle 
 Josey, " thet furrin' sort o' creeter, from York 
 or Pensylvany, I b'lieve." 
 
 "What, old Christian Tim's raskill son-in- 
 law? " asked Steve. " How the ole man uster 
 go on 'bout him ! Says he, ' His name was 
 Awle, an' he tho't he was all, an' he took all, 
 an' he hed all.' " 
 
 " Jes' so. Wai, he uster tell it f 'r true thct 
 whar he come from the women-folks allers 
 milked the ceows." 
 
 "Sho!" exclaimed 'Lias Simins, an hitherto 
 silent little man, now wearing the air of having 
 been forcibly struck in the face by a missile 
 from that boomerang which Dr. Holmes says 
 is the weapon carried by the man of facts in a 
 social company ; then, with a rapid adjustment 
 of his quickened intellects to the new situation, 
 " Wai, I vow, they hed oughter ! " he announced, 
 with an explosive energy that provoked a loud 
 laugh, it being the general understanding that 
 Dame Simins was one who knew her rights, 
 and, knowing, dared maintain. 
 
 " I ain't much knowin' ter furriners," cau 
 tiously preluded the cross-roads blacksmith, Jenk- 
 son Castle, " don't know, cain't tell hain't 
 seen, but I Ve hearn tell 't they 'm hed three 
 on 'em up 't the big house this summer stid o'
 
 IN THE COUNTRY STORE. IO/ 
 
 squaws." (African squaws were in his mind.) 
 " Three. I-rish maids," they said, he repeated, 
 carefully, as one speaking under possible cor 
 rection. " I never see 'em myself, I say, but 
 my woman, she 's ben up there with huckle 
 berries, an' she spoke well on 'em too. Said 
 they treated on her harnsome, very harnsome. 
 an' gin' her a dish o' tea. But it stan's to rea 
 son they cain't airn the salt ter their porridge 
 up there. Nothin' ter do, ez ye may say, but 
 set 'n' suck their paws, like a woodchuck in 
 Jenooary." 
 
 " 'T was an I-rish fellar laid thet new piece o' 
 stun wall out ter the Dilly Carly place, ter the 
 old mill," observed Steve. " Ky-arn Driscoll, 
 his name was." 
 
 "What, toe the old Twin Chimbley house?" 
 queried the blacksmith, with a quickened accent, 
 " I wanter know ! Wai, I would n't tho't one on 
 'em could airn fo'pence-ha'penny a day. I 
 calc'lated they was jest fit ter cooter 'round. 
 But Nailer Tom told me thet was a harnsome 
 piece o' work. He never said who done it, 
 though." 
 
 From these practical topics a transition was 
 gradually made, as the evening wore on, to 
 those of a less definite character; and with 
 the return to weather-speculations came a dis 
 cussion as to that weather-breeder, the Pala 
 tine Light. Steve's great yellow cur yawned
 
 108 SOUTH-COUNTY NEIGHBORS. 
 
 cavernously, as if he thought it a stale and 
 unprofitable subject, but his master paid due 
 attention to the spokesman of the moment. 
 
 " I hayve saw," said Uncle Josey, speaking 
 with the modest confidence of one who knew 
 how, on occasion, to keep his footing among, 
 the treacherous parts of speech. " I hayve saw 
 them ez seed the ole Pal'tine with their own 
 livin', breathin' eyes." 
 
 " Why, the Jedge see it, time an' agin, on 
 the ole Queen's Anne road, didn't he?" trucu 
 lently demanded, with an air as of personal 
 resentment, Zach Humford, a kind of human 
 grasshopper in voice and " build." 
 
 " No," demurred Steve, guardedly, " I dono's 
 he ever said 's he see it over 'n above onct or 
 twicet." 
 
 "Wai," fiercely returned the grasshopper, who 
 gave every indication of becoming a burden, 
 " this I will say, an' stan' to it, the Jedge were 
 a very likely man." 
 
 " Nothin' agin' thet, neighbor," spoke Steve, 
 concisely, but heartily. 
 
 " He were a likely man, I say," retorted the 
 grasshopper, with the air of having been flatly 
 contradicted, "a ve-ry likely man" swinging 
 a heavily booted leg, and viciously kicking the 
 wood-box "and I don't kcer a fiddle-string 
 who hears me say it." 
 
 " S'pos'in we sh'd ax Gran'futhcr Runnuls
 
 IN THE COUNTRY STORE. 109 
 
 about it," suggested the pacific Uncle Josey. 
 " I sh'd railly like ter hear the ole gentleman 
 talk," he added, with the patronizing tolerance 
 of age for senility. 
 
 " Gran'futher Runnuls," who held that rela 
 tion to the middle-aged Steve, had thus far 
 remained a dormant intelligence, isolated by 
 his deafness, but tranquilly absorbing the warmth 
 of the fire into his lean, old-world figure. His 
 long white hair was tied in a black ribbon 
 queue, but a gay bandanna handkerchief pro 
 tected his crown. His eyes still twinkled keenly 
 beneath his frosty brows. 
 
 " Better not git gran'futher started," warned 
 Steve. " He ain't so easy to wind up, when ye 
 git through with him, now I tell ye. He 's an 
 old, aged man, gran'futher is." 
 
 " I '11 resk him," snapped the grasshopper, 
 spurred on by this opposition to put himself in 
 communication with the patriarch by shouting 
 in his ear. 
 
 " Say, Gran'futher, tell us all about the 
 Pal' tine, 'n' who see it, won't ye ? " 
 
 "Yes, yes," responded the ancient one, appar 
 ently in cheerful assent, " Yes, I 'm a gret age, 
 I am. Nigh upon ninety year old, most ninety 
 odd. I 'm the oldes' freeman in this here town, 
 sir ! " 
 
 " Stop, he hearn ye well "nough," spoke Steve, 
 arresting the grasshopper in another attempt at
 
 1 10 SOUTH-COUNTY NEIGHBORS. 
 
 dictation. " He hears ye, but he won't hear toe 
 ye. He allers goes on thct way awhile." (Steve 
 had a manner as of calling attention to some 
 curious, but slightly damaged piece of mech 
 anism.) " Lor', he don't sc'ace ever notice what 
 you say, but goes 'n' tells over a lurry all 'bout 
 his age, jest like some youngster 't says, ' I 'm 
 half-past ten, goin' on 'leven.' He 's proud ez 
 a peacock on his age, an' now you 'm spoke to 
 him, bimeby he'll tell ye somethin', but he don't 
 take no orders from folks. Seems so he 's way 
 off, kinder, 'n* you could n't git at him, noway." 
 Steve sawed the air vaguely but vigorously with 
 both arms, in the endeavor to express these met 
 aphysical niceties. " There, he 's most ready," 
 he continued, and gestured, as if he had said of 
 a venerable time-piece, " Hark, she 's a-goin' ter 
 strike ! " 
 
 "Neighbors an' frien's," began the patriarch, 
 lifting his head, and speaking in a quaint tone of 
 old-time mannerliness. " I ben a thinkin', while 
 settin' here, ez the Quakers says [this seemed 
 to be some antiquated relic of pleasantry] 
 abeout them times inter the old Rev'lution." 
 
 " My glory ! " loudly exclaimed Sol Simms 
 to his crony, Hi Collins, " be thet old critter a 
 steerin' full tilt f'r them red-coats agin?" 
 
 " I ain't heerd him meander on about 'em mor' 
 'n forty-'leven times, hev you, Sol?" returned 
 the brilliant Collins, with fine sarcastic power.
 
 IN THE COUNTRY STORE. Ill 
 
 " Le 's go 'long ! " suggested Sol ; which they 
 did, with much clumping of awkward feet in 
 clumsy boots. 
 
 Of those who remained it might be said that 
 
 " They all sat round in attitudes 
 Of various dejection," 
 
 as, with a bright and happy look, the aged nar 
 rator began, after a rather rambling fashion, 
 
 " Many 's the time our folks hes talked it over, 
 how the red-coats come here. I wa'n't to home 
 then, ye know. I was up to Exeter, livin' eout 
 with some o' the quality. Most all on the Tory 
 folks went V staid up there them times. Wai, 
 'twas to No'thup's the red-coats brung up fust. 
 The folks heerd a n'ise in the dead o' night, V 
 when they looked out, the yard was full o' red 
 coats. Them was cur'ous times. They fired a 
 bullet through the front door, jes' ter let 'em 
 know they was comin' in, I s'pose. The bullet 
 hole 's there ter this day, ye know. No'thup's 
 folks never would hev' it teched. 
 
 " VVal, No'thup's three ahnts was a livin' with 
 him, toe the old place. Them No'thup gals was 
 kinder gittin' along. They was mighty nigh of 
 an age, but Tabithy, she was the youngest on 
 'em, why, she must ha' ben nigh upon eighty 
 year old. She slep' alone in the sto' bedroom, 
 V when she heerd the n'ise 'n' commotion in the 
 house, 'n' the trampin' o' the Ted-coats, she riz 
 up in bed, jest ez the hull posse on 'em got ter
 
 I 1 2 SOUTH-COUNTY NEIGHBORS. 
 
 her door, 'n' was filin' in. She sot up 'mazin 
 stiff, f'r she 'd allers slep' in her stays, an' her 
 nightkip nodded kind of awful, an' says she, 
 pretty middlin' starn, but her v'ice sort o' dyin' 
 away into an eecho, toe the larst on it, ' What 
 be you folks a-doin' on?' The head man on 
 'em, says he, quick enough, ' Quiet y'rself, 
 marm, we 'm on'y a sarchin' f'r men.' But with 
 thet she giv' a screech a tol'able loud one 
 ' Wha-a-t ! Sarchin' f'r men, in my room ! ' an' 
 flinged herself back on the piller, in conniption 
 fits, an' swoonded dead away. Wai, I s'pose 
 she felt obleeged to," pondered the narrator, 
 considerately. " But she hed ter come to her 
 self by herself, f'r the' wa'n't nobody ter pay no 
 'tention to her; the red-coats was in airnest, an' 
 they kep' a sarchin' an' a sarchin' in ev'ry hole 
 an' corner, tell they lighted on Mr. No'thup, ez 
 he was purtectin' his prop'ty from a p'sition 
 he 'd took up under the gret heap o' wool under 
 the eaves in the garr't. Wai, they took him an' 
 yoked him up, and carr'd him off ter Newport f'r 
 a dan-ger-ous rebel. But the best on't was 
 when they was on the way, a-marchin' past the 
 old Squire's, where toe thet self-same time the' 
 was a comp'ny of Cont'nentals a quartered in 
 the gret room, eighty on 'em slep' all over the 
 floor. One on 'em had seen some sarvice, 
 I 've hearn tell he 'd shot a dead Hessian ; but 
 howsumever, thet's neither here nor there.
 
 IN THE COUNTRY STORE. 113 
 
 Wai, the head man o' them red-coats, the cen- 
 tur/on, I sh'd call him, he come all to a halt, 
 an' says he ter No'thup, ' What 's the politics 
 with these here?' Mr. No'thup, says he, 'Oh, 
 they 'm all peaceable folks, very peaceable.' 
 ' Humph,' says he agin, wheelin' round on him 
 kinder short, ' What 's the meanin' o' all them 
 there lights ? ' An' them was the watch-lights 
 the sogers burnt, but never knowed a breath 
 about who an' what was near 'em. ' Wai,' says 
 No'thup, ' they 'm got a child thet 's terr'ble apt 
 ter hev the croup, an' 't ain't no oncommon sight 
 ter see lights 'roun' there any time o' night.' 
 So fin'lly he was pacified, an' they moved on ; 
 but the old Squire never hed chick nor child 
 in his life, an' how he happened to think on't, 
 No'thup uster say, he never did rightly know. 
 It was clear luck an' chance f 'r 'em. He knowed 
 that ar' custguard, ez they called 'em, wa'n't 
 very fit ter wrastle with reg'lars. Most they was 
 good for, the Squire's wife tho't, was ter keep 
 bread from mouldin'. She wa'n't very frien'ly 
 to 'em, an' they writ up all 'roun' the walls o' 
 the gret room, ' Hang the old she-Tory! ' The 
 Squire was ev'ry bit an' grain 's much a Tory ez 
 she was, but he did n't say nothin', ye see. She 
 would sputter right out, 'n' thet's how she got 
 the Squire inter trouble, so 't the Committee o' 
 Safety kep' an eye on him, an' quartered them 
 troops on him. Wai, she was high-sperited, an'
 
 114 SOUTH-COUNTY NEIGHBORS. 
 
 things was gettin' middlin' bitter, but it run 
 along, an' so, fin'lly " 
 
 " Look here, gran'futher ! " interrupted Steve, 
 manfully stemming the swelling tide of remi 
 niscence, " time to be goin', now ! " 
 
 "Don't you go to discumboberate me, Steve," 
 complained the aged one, after a pause, and a 
 slight start. " I b'lieve I was jest goin' ter say 
 suthin'." 
 
 " Wai, say it ter home, then," roughly but 
 not unkindly returned tho grandson, tendering 
 his sire his walking-stick. " They 'm most all 
 gone home now. Nine o'clock ! Jim 's a shut- 
 tin' up ! Say, Jim, fasten up tight ter keep out 
 them red-coats ter night, ye know," he jocosely 
 admonished, as, closing the door behind him, 
 he adjusted his sturdy tread to the shuffling 
 steps of age, and the two groped homeward in 
 the darkness, while the whip-poor-will's wild 
 note sounded again and yet again from the 
 wooded hill that overhung their pathway.
 
 EVENING MEETING AT UNCLE 'SIAS'S. 
 
 planting time had begun with the 
 softly-overcast April days, and Uncle 'Sias 
 Grumly's fields were rich with the moist warm 
 browns of the freshly turned furrows, traced by 
 the toil of Stout and Starling, the ungainly oxen 
 that now stood with bowed heads, rigid as mon 
 oliths, while waiting to be unyoked by their 
 master and his hired man, Brandywine Spears. 
 
 The west was bright with that peculiarly vivid 
 yellow light that is usually a precursor of rain. 
 Touched by this transitory radiance, which 
 streamed richly from beneath an overhanging 
 mass of densely purpling vapors, the stretches 
 of bushy pasture, and the wooded uplands, glit 
 tering with moisture and aglow with the almost 
 autumnal brilliancy of early leafage, were quick 
 ened into a burst of magical bloom and bright 
 ness. The unearthly splendor was repeated in 
 the shining links and windings of the sinuous 
 Quacataug Pond, which, by Nature's massive 
 mimicry, simulated a river of many turns, with 
 sudden surprises of narrowing channels and de 
 vices of semi-islands that became peninsulas at
 
 Il6 SOUTH-COUNTY NEIGHBORS. 
 
 low water. The same law of caprice and change 
 reappeared in the diversity of its banks, which 
 afforded the alternate varieties of grassy slopes 
 and wooded, rocky steeps. Young white birches 
 of an airy, feminine grace, stood bathing their 
 feet in the ripples, like veritable dryads, or 
 danced to the light breeze that sprang up at 
 sunset, quickening the mobile play of the sensi 
 tive waters ; and aged, dying white birches, 
 caught fast in the myriad tangles of the droop 
 ing gray moss, piteously lifted their fettered and 
 withered limbs, like victims wreathed for druid- 
 ical sacrifice. A group of blighted sycamores 
 on a hill overlooking the lake, the leopardine 
 markings of their trunks relieved against the 
 blackening sky, began to wave their tortured 
 branches with a warning murmur, breathing of 
 night and storm. The soldier blackbirds, though 
 displaying their gay red wings with all their 
 customary twilight flutter and bustle, yet seemed 
 to tune their closing bugle-song with an occa 
 sional note of serious preparation for hostile 
 weather. 
 
 But the warm yellow light in the west still lin 
 gered, bathing the whole stretch of country in a 
 transfiguring glow which held the eye with al 
 most the same effect of a sudden revelation of 
 new beauty in familiar scenes as is afforded by 
 the magical touches of a light snowfall; though 
 the darkening clouds constantly lowered upon
 
 EVENING MEETING AT UNCLE 'SIAS'S. 1 1/ 
 
 the horizon, fast obscuring the parting smile of 
 the many-minded April day. 
 
 " Open an' shet, sign o' wet," sapiently com 
 mented Brandywine Spears, who, while awaiting 
 the call to supper, was whittling at a small block 
 intended as a wheel for the toy go-cart which he 
 was rudely fashioning for his youthful son. 
 
 " 'T won't hender 'em none," replied Uncle 
 'Sias, from his momentary resting-place on the 
 horse-block, and speaking with a certain asper 
 ity of tone, evidently addressed to some latent 
 quality of his companion's manner and intent. 
 " These here young converts ain't none of y'r 
 fair-weather Christians." 
 
 "No, thet they ain't," emphatically admitted 
 the other, with the suspicious facility of an opin 
 ionated opponent who has a telling point to 
 make ; " it 's the fair weather, yer know, thet 's 
 goin' ter be too much f r 'em, putty soon, Uncle 
 'Sias. An airly spring, ez it mought be this 
 here, an' sultry days comin' on so fast is turrible 
 tryin' ter young converts. Th' ole Elder I 
 heerd him exhortin' of 'em las' Thu'sd'y evenin', 
 down ter the schoolus meetin' 
 
 " Beware, Brandywine," interrupted honest 
 Uncle 'Sias, with genuine concern, " lest, havin' 
 enj'yed the means o' grace, yer should y'rself be 
 a castaway." 
 
 " Wai, ez I was a-sayin'," pursued the undis 
 mayed serving-man, acknowledging this warning
 
 Il8 SOUTH-COUNTY NEIGHBORS. 
 
 only by a dry nod, " he gin 'cm consid'ble of a 
 talkin' to. Told 'em how they was the bloomin' 
 harvest of a precious revival season. Plants o' 
 grace, he called 'em. Wai, mebbe they be ; but 
 they 'm mighty short-lived ones. Yer know 
 well 'nough how 't is with the heft on 'em, Uncle 
 'Sias. Takes all winter long, in the fust place, 
 ter git 'em started. Paul plantin' an' 'Polios 
 waterin', an' all the women-folks, in a go-round 
 continooally on account of 'em. 'Long about 
 March, they do 'pear ter take holt some, an' all 
 toe onct, clear away they go, heightin' up in a 
 gret growth, ekil ter Jonah's gourd. 'Bout the 
 latter eend o' Aprile, some on 'em gits kinder 
 spindlin'. They can't stand warm weather, noway 
 in the world ; the May sun wilts 'em clean down 
 ter the ground; an' time June comes in, what 
 with fishin', an' layin' round in the shade, an' 
 goin' down the pond, an" an' sich they 'm 
 all broke up f r meetin' folks. All flesh is grahss, 
 I expect, Uncle 'Sias, saints 'n' sinners 'n' all." 
 
 " Ef yer would n't go down the pond so much 
 yerself, Brandywine Spears, 'long of a jug with 
 a corn-cob stopple, an' I won't say jest what in 
 side on it," admonished Uncle 'Sias, with whole 
 some severity, " mebbe yer would n't fault the 
 Lord's work an' the Lord's sarvants so much." 
 
 " Wai, Uncle, mebbe you 'm got the right 
 on 't there," confessed the unabashed culprit, 
 with calmly philosophic equipoise, " an' mebbe
 
 EVENING MEETING AT UNCLE 'SIAS'S. 119 
 
 I'm in the right on't in my notions consarnin' 
 these here young folks," he continued, with per 
 sistent scepticism. " Ef our foresight was as 
 good as our hindsight, we sh'd all on us done 
 diff'rent by times, / expect; but them new 
 converts shucks ! Uncle 'Sias, you an' me 's 
 seen a long lot on 'em, an' 7 never see the time 
 yit when the month o' May wa'n't a mighty 
 criticle junctur f r 'em." 
 
 The call to supper filled the pause that Uncle 
 'Sias apparently deemed it fruitless to occupy 
 with further admonitions; and pious yeoman 
 and sceptical swain were presently sharing the 
 bounties of the board, around which the house 
 hold had first stood, while the former with closed 
 eyes repeated, in slightly Puritanic accents, a 
 long-drawn grace. 
 
 Aunt Freelove Grumly, Uncle 'Sias's wife, pre 
 sided at the supper, having previously completed 
 her toilet for the evening exercises by donning 
 even such superfluities of dress as shoes and 
 stockings. Great-aunt Grumly, a frugal eater, 
 who never took supper, sat rigidly upright on 
 the dye-tub in the chimney corner, vigorously 
 knitting, her long apron-strings tied round her 
 waist to keep steady a corn cob that formed her 
 knitting-sheath. A box of the ever useful cobs, 
 spared from those that were stored for the pro 
 cess of curing the hams and the " buckies " of 
 last season, stood ready to be carried to the
 
 120 SOUTH-COUNTY NEIGHBORS. 
 
 Franklin stove in the damp and musty " great 
 room," where the meeting would be held. The 
 grandchildren of the house were building log- 
 cabins from the abundant store, the girl intent 
 on her toppling cobhouse, and the boy just 
 deserting his structure to deck himself with a 
 pasteboard helmet, edged with a circlet of turkey 
 feathers, the better to " play Injun " by rushing 
 with ruthless uproar upon a rather phlegmatic 
 baby, creeping in tortoise-like attitudes on the 
 fireplace-hearth, and bearing marks of having 
 painfully traversed the sandy desert that occu 
 pied the centre of the room, and which with 
 careful strokes of the broom, had been adorned 
 with the approved " herring-bone " pattern. 
 
 " Deary me, Nate," mildly expostulated his 
 grandmother, " you '11 skeer the baby out of a 
 year's growth. There, you 'm fairly skeered 
 the wits out of him," she continued, as the 
 infant, transfixed between wonder and terror, 
 decided for the latter emotion, and gave it voice, 
 with gratifying evidence of lung-power. 
 
 " Guess not," tartly remarked Great-aunt 
 Grumly, who favored the sprightly Nate, and 
 failed to see in the babe a child of promise. 
 " I '11 resk him. Nought's never in danger, ez 
 ever I heerd tell on ! " 
 
 The rain, which had fallen in occasional warm 
 " fog-showers " through the day, but had held 
 up, as Uncle 'Sias said, for a milkin' slatch, had
 
 EVENING MEETING AT UNCLE 'SIAS'S. 121 
 
 not yet begun again, and the attendants upon 
 the series of house-to-house meetings that were 
 holden as the sequelae of the recent revival, 
 began to arrive in numbers that implied as full 
 possession of the premises as if the summons 
 had been a funereal one. Not only the great 
 room, where the Elder sat, behind the light- 
 stand and Bible, with the high mantelpiece, 
 ranged with home-made candles, for a back 
 ground, was occupied ; but the borrowed chairs 
 of the occasion scraped and creaked on the 
 floors, painted and unpainted, floors sanded or 
 scantily rug-covered, of the lower story. Parlor, 
 kitchen, and bedroom adjoining the two were 
 fast filling with a company presumably including 
 that personage so often affectionately inquired 
 for by Elder Bayles, in his favorite form of 
 appeal opening with the rhetorical supposition, 
 " If there 's a sinner here to-night, within the 
 sound of my voice," a use of the subjunctive 
 mood which did but scant justice to the search 
 ing qualities of that powerful and piercing 
 organ. The "Elder's" official claims to bear 
 that Scriptural designation were not, perhaps, 
 very clearly made out; but he was rated as a 
 highly acceptable leader of the domestic meet 
 ings; and none of his hearers were prone to 
 give themselves any anxiety about the exact 
 spiritual value of his brevet title, so long as they 
 found his manner a satisfactory compromise
 
 122 SOUTH-COUNTY NEIGHBORS. 
 
 between that of the minister and the layman, 
 and continued to esteem him a much "smarter " 
 speaker than others of more assured ecclesias 
 tical position, as, for instance, the wandering 
 Elder Nahum Holley, who, on this occasion, 
 was simply tolerated as a second in the leader 
 ship of the evening's devotion. 
 
 These devotions were, like those of more 
 sophisticated people, things of mixed motive 
 and various results. The unknown writer of 
 some popular rhymes, which succinctly relate 
 the different causes promoting the assembling at. 
 church of a congregation in town, and ending 
 with this characterization of a faithful few, 
 " And some go there to worship God," would 
 have found equal scope for his satire in the 
 rustic prayer-meeting. So long as the mingling 
 qualities of human nature remain an indivisible 
 compound of fine gold and coarse clay, so long 
 will the satirist and the humorist find a legiti 
 mate field of observation in every popular gath- 
 ing, whether met for mirth or mourning, for 
 local government or social worship. Neither 
 we nor our neighbors can divest ourselves of 
 our human attributes, even in our prayers and 
 hymns ; and the smile with which we note the 
 incidental humors of the hour does no wrong to 
 the respect ^with which we regard its serious 
 motives. Nay, it may be as harmless as even 
 the earnestness of the simple souls to whom
 
 EVENING MEETING AT UNCLE 'BIAS'S. 12$ 
 
 certain observances that are perhaps things 
 remote from our needs bring a genuine spiritual 
 refreshment To the worthy Uncle 'Sias and 
 his peers, welcoming as they did the influences 
 of the special form of religious sentiment in 
 which they had been reared, there was no dero 
 gation from the honor due to sacred offices in 
 thus administering them without obvious cause 
 beneath a roof associated only with the common 
 uses of life. " The beauty of holiness," as man 
 ifested in the outward decencies of worship, was 
 a meaningless phrase to him and his spiritual 
 kin. Let it be granted that they might be none 
 the worse, in the tougher texture of their moral 
 fabric, for this deprivation ; yet it is certain that 
 they were none the more fortunate, in the last 
 development of their higher qualities, for the 
 conditions to which they were born. Says an 
 able student of the history of our progressive 
 civilization : " It has come to pass, from a 
 variety of causes, that religion is offered to the 
 eyes of this nation, for the most part, under a 
 contemptible aspect, and without those accesso 
 ries which strike the senses and move the heart 
 with a due apprehension of her heavenly origin, 
 and of a dignity and greatness above the com 
 mon way of the world." The same observer 
 would further have said of such surroundings of 
 this scene as the high-piled feather bed of state 
 in the corner of the great room, the litter of cobs
 
 124 SOUTH-COUNTY NEIGHBORS. 
 
 around the stove, and Aunt Freclovc's best 
 bonnet and shawl grotesquely occupying the 
 settee, " These are accompaniments of a secular 
 izing of religion, whereby she is stripped of the 
 reverence which is her own, and exposed to an 
 unjust humiliation." 
 
 These untoward influences, inseparable from 
 the presence of the familiar surroundings, might 
 possibly be traced in the riotous demeanor of 
 Uncle "Sias's twin grandsons, Nate and Date, 
 over whom he daily lamented as " the most mis- 
 chievousest wild colts 't ever he see" and who 
 could only be withheld by the sternest watching, 
 and by whispered threats (made with a curiously 
 unconscious disparagement of the nature of re 
 ligious privileges ) of holding a season of prayer 
 'over them when the folks w r ere gone, from indulg 
 ing in unseemly demonstrations of humorous de 
 light in Elder Holley's well-known peculiarities 
 of twitching his shaggy eyebrows, rolling his gro 
 tesquely heavy head, and displaying other John 
 sonian contortions of countenance, thus mani 
 festing his sympathy with the devotion of the 
 presiding elder in his opening prayer. Great- 
 aunt Grumly, always a rather " fractious " old 
 lady, and no easy subject of admonition, set an 
 indecorous example by persisting in her knitting ; 
 and when Uncle 'Sias, regardless of his painfully 
 audible "squeak-leather" boots, made his slow 
 way up to her with a whispered remonstrance,
 
 EVENING MEETING AT UNCLE 'SIAS'S. 12$ 
 
 she testily responded, with a peevish clicking 
 of her needles, and by no means in smothered 
 tones : 
 
 " Lemme 'lone, 'Sias, lemme 'lone; 't won't 
 hender Sim Bayles's prayin' none ef I do reel off 
 a bout or two on y 'r socks. Lord knows ye 
 hain 't got a hull pair ter yer feet, now." 
 
 Some of the young people who were grouped 
 in conveniently retired corners were severely 
 overtaken with giggles at this frank announce 
 ment, and suffered comical agonies ; or, as they 
 expressed it afterwards, they thought die they 
 should. Uncle 'Sias looked worried and anx 
 ious. It really seemed as if the Puritan tithing- 
 man, with his rod of office for the discipline of 
 such offenders, were an indispensable functionary 
 of the farmhouse prayer-meeting. Few other 
 interruptions followed just then, however, except 
 that a young woman who had insisted on coming 
 to the meeting while undergoing an attack of 
 toothache, whose swollen features were ban 
 daged with a folded handkerchief pinned be 
 neath the chin, and who from time to time leaned 
 her head wearily in her mother's lap, naturally 
 felt privileged to utter an occasional groan ; 
 which might be interpreted to edification, as sig 
 nifying concern of mind no less than distress of 
 body. Also, an aged sister, commonly called, 
 without regard to her proper name, Aunt Rooty, 
 from her vocation as a purveyor of simples, being
 
 126 SOUTH-COUNTY NEIGHBORS. 
 
 afflicted with stoutness and deafness, and occu 
 pying one of the chief seats, was armed with a 
 huge, rustling palm-leaf fan, and flagellated 
 herself therewith, in an aggressively noisy 
 fashion, inaudible to herself, but which might 
 have grated harshly upon the nerves of sen 
 sitive listeners. 
 
 The prayer went on, nevertheless, to the satis 
 faction of the hearers, to whom it was frankly 
 addressed, under the very thin veil of an oc 
 casional form of supplication. Nobody's gravity 
 was moved when, by a slight confusion of ideas, 
 the speaker, in remembering a bereaved family 
 of the neighborhood, prayed fervently for the 
 parents of the poor little orphan that lay in the 
 coffin; nobody found it noticeable when he 
 corrected a trifling misstatement which he had 
 inadvertently made, and amended his petition 
 in behalf of " an afflicted brother of this town," 
 by catching himself up with the words, " or, I 
 would say, jest over the line, inter Exeter, but " 
 (on further reflection, and in an off-hand tone) 
 " O Lord, it ain't partickerler which ; " nobody 
 in the assemblage was startled when in closing 
 he prayed with superfluous fervor that iniquity 
 might be showered down plenteously upon all 
 of them; for such as these were his staple 
 phrases, of which any one of his audience 
 might have said, in Dr. Holland's words : 
 
 " And I suppose, that in his prayers and
 
 EVENING MEETING AT UNCLE 'SIAS'S. I2/ 
 
 graces, I Ve heard them all at least a thousand 
 times." 
 
 An unacceptable brother, Hohenlinden Spears, 
 the twin of Brandywine, the paternal Spears hav 
 ing been a great student of battles, followed in 
 exhortation, with the repeated wish that his 
 tongue was longer, an aspiration so imperfectly 
 shared in his behalf by his hearers that they 
 began to sing him down, after the approved 
 method of quelling such intruders ; one hymn- 
 tune after another being quickly raised by the 
 chief brethren, the deaf sister on the front line 
 of seats persistently singing them all in her own 
 time, and generally to her favorite tune of 
 " Bonnie Doon," which she enriched with sun 
 dry luxurious quavers. At the height of the 
 melody a newly arrived group of women at 
 tracted the hospitable attention of Uncle 'Sias. 
 
 " This way," he hoarsely whispered, beckon 
 ing from the door of the parlor-bedroom to the 
 sisters, who evidently could see but little beyond 
 the range of their imprisoning sunbonnets ; and 
 as they hesitated at noticing the seated occu 
 pants of the room, he added, explanatorily, 
 " seats on the edge o' the bed." This somno 
 lent invitation was gratefully accepted, and the 
 log-cabin sunbonnets filed in, and took up their 
 places among the stuffy pillows, just as the 
 singers in the outer room were raising the 
 tune,
 
 128 SOUTH-COUNTY NEIGHBORS. 
 
 "Shell /be kerned toe the skies 
 On flowery beds of ease ? " 
 
 The bed had not been unoccupied through 
 the evening. For twenty years, or for half her 
 life, it had been the habitat of Uncle 'Sias's un 
 happy daughter, Luce. Jilted, or, as her people 
 said, " shabbed," by the young man whom she 
 was to have married, she never held up her 
 head again after the shock of this misfortune, 
 and took her bed, which she had never since 
 left, living there " as if it belonged to her or 
 ganism," and finally sinking into such a hapless 
 state that for years past her mental obituary 
 might have been read in that line of the 
 thoughtful poet of rustic life, 
 
 " She slowly withered, an imbecile mind." 
 
 By one of those coincidences that cease to 
 surprise us by the time that middle age has 
 shown us how often they recur in obedience 
 to some mysterious law, the company of that 
 night happened to include another of the weak- 
 hearted cravens in life's warfare* a man of ma 
 ture years, who had never been heard to speak 
 since the blow fell that crushed the pride, the 
 hopes, and the affections of his early manhood. 
 No force of entreaties, taunts, or provocations 
 could drag him from the refuge of silence, which 
 he had sought with a sternness of purpose that, 
 like the woman's pitiful cowering away from
 
 EVENING MEETING AT UNCLE 'SIAS'S. 129 
 
 human eyes, testified to the narrow conditions 
 and imperfect development of lives that went 
 to wreck in the first storm of disaster by which 
 they were overtaken. 
 
 The meeting was conducted in the usual way. 
 The customary appeals were made from the lead 
 ers to the more timid sisters, and to the young 
 converts, to rise and speak; and the responses 
 from each class were, in most instances, of an 
 inaudible brevity. The maturer standard-bear 
 ers rose and delivered the set speeches with 
 which they always graced these occasions ; their 
 several styles being marked by the repetition of 
 certain texts to which they had acquired a well- 
 defined right, sacred quotations that, as was 
 said of Emerson's prose " 't is," became almost 
 a personal possession. For instance, the trade 
 mark distinguishing Aunt Rooty, the gatherer 
 and compounder of simples, the Medea of 
 savory and medicinal drinks, was the text, " Oh, 
 taste and see how good the Lord is ! " which she 
 dwelt upon with a sort of professional unction, 
 as though she were offering some ptisan of 
 sovereign virtue. And Miss Experience, or 
 'Speedy Goodspeed, known for her painful and 
 halting utterance, never failed to wind up her 
 remarks with the query, " What shall be done 
 unto thee, O thou false tongue?" Then there 
 was the usual burst of gratitude from the " skinch- 
 ing," or miserly Deacon Handy, who piously 
 9
 
 130 SOUTH-COUNTY NEIGHBORS. 
 
 thanked the Lord that he had been saved from 
 dead works, and whose hopes of justification 
 must indeed, according to the testimony of his 
 neighbors, have rested upon faith alone. The 
 usual element of comedy was furnished by the 
 flighty speaker, a sister of infirm wits, but 
 pious intentions, much given to raising her voice 
 in a high, cracked tone, and detailing her do 
 mestic trials with injudicious frankness, closing 
 with the application of her favorite " varse " to her 
 house-mates, " And five of them were foolish." 
 Her example encouraged "Eelly Dick," the feeble 
 minded pauper, whose board the town had let 
 out to Uncle 'Sias as the lowest bidder, to make 
 his first appearance on any religious platform, 
 getting slightly astray in his attempted citation, 
 " A woman took a maysure of oil, and hid it in 
 in a maysure of wheat, until the whole was 
 leavened," but meeting the Elder's frown with 
 a manly independence, by the declaration, " I 
 may not repeat it as verbatim as some, but it is 
 not for this one, nor that one, nor the other one 
 to say what I shall say in the great congrega 
 tion ! " The Elder urged, warned, and ex 
 horted, addressing the doubters and inquirers, 
 reminding them that Satan desired to have 
 them, and was there among them; that the 
 spiritual eye might plainly discern him right 
 down there by the stove ; and that all concerned 
 should make haste to leave so dangerous a
 
 EVENING MEETING AT UNCLE 'SIAS'S. 131 
 
 vicinity for the haven of the anxious seats. 
 A pause ensued, of appalling length, after which 
 a sister rose, and with the pious intention of rub 
 bing in the Elder's persuasions, quoted her own 
 experience at a similar crisis, when she " felt as 
 if glue could n't begin to hold her down half so 
 fast as Satan did ; but she broke away from all 
 her bad feelings, and got up and spoke, and felt 
 quite a good deal better for spiting old Satan." 
 
 Perhaps these appeals might have met with 
 the desired response if the attention of the 
 young people had not been divided between 
 ghostly warnings and skyey threatenings. The 
 rain, which had been so long gathering in force, 
 was now preluded by keen flashes of lightning, 
 and ominous mutterings of thunder. Seeing 
 that no movement was made by the objects of 
 the recent exhortations, Uncle 'Sias rose, just to 
 occupy the time, as he explained. " Alas, alas," 
 he began, with his highest aim at a conventional 
 style, " there was a time of blessed news, when 
 the Lord did marvels amongst us, and we 
 should rej'ice, yea, and did rej'ice. But, alas, 
 the gold is become dim, and the most fine gold 
 is changed. Although I hope the' is some 
 movings on the minds of some few, yit the 
 saints air not so zeelous f'r the Lord's cause an' 
 the good o' souls ez they was in times past. 
 Sin doth greedily abound amongst us, and the 
 love of many waxes cold, for which the Lord is
 
 132 SOUTH-COUNTY NEIGHBORS. 
 
 angered ' with a great anger. Now is plantin' 
 time, in a worldly way o' speakin', but ef we 
 fare ez we desarve, what sorter harvest shell we 
 hev? Brethring, it'll be ez it was in times I 
 knowed when I lived up to Wcstfield, on Widdcr 
 Bacon's farm, when the Lord sent His armies o' 
 worms to cut off the fruits o' the airth. Thet 
 season it come 'round so thet they ez expected 
 fifty bushels did n't git sca'cely one. Seth Beebe 
 was one of our gret farmers up thet way. He 
 sowed fo'teen acres o' new ground, an' antici 
 pated on a gret crop. Wai, he plowed it up, 
 an' planted it with corn. Oh, thet we, ez a 
 people, rememberin' these jedgments o' times 
 past, should beware lest they be let loose in the 
 land agin. Oh, my young frien's we 'm all a 
 lookin' ter you. Oh, think o' the famine in 
 Egypt; think o' the plagues o' the land; think 
 o' the good-will o' the burnin' bush; think " 
 
 But here the worthy man's words were lost 
 in the fierce rush of the gust, the roll of the 
 thunder, and the maddened lashing of the rain. 
 Hysterical women, whose twitching shoulders 
 and quivering chins had for the last quarter of 
 an hour betrayed their nervous agitation, cov 
 ered their faces before the blue, blinding lights 
 that glared pitilessly in at the great uncur 
 tained windows of the old farmhouse, and sobbed 
 in the abject misery of terror. Stout-hearted 
 Aunt Freelove was heard declaring, " Kind of an
 
 EVENING MEETING AT UNCLE 'SIAS'S. 133 
 
 onseasonable sorter thunder-tempest, but I guess 
 I c'n weather it tell the sullar walls ketches fire." 
 But Brandywine Spears, who had hitherto sat in 
 the seat of the scorners, beside the open house 
 door, now hastily joined the inner circle, a pallid 
 and crestfallen Mephistopheles, as the racking 
 peals shook the giant timbers of the room, and 
 the furious beating of the rain on the roof was 
 like the tramp of a charging host, while a long, 
 lurid dazzle, a roar that seemed to fill the sky, 
 and the sickening sound of a rending, tearing 
 concussion proclaimed that one of the trees of 
 the surrounding forest had fallen. Suddenly, 
 at this crisis of awe, the mood of the people 
 passed at once from the ecstacy of fear to the 
 ecstacy of devotion ; a change effected by the 
 sign and voice of one among them who now 
 assumed the place of a leader. At the signal 
 of this strange, tall hermit figure, known as the 
 solitary dweller in the centre of the haunted 
 Carr's Plain, they rose by one impulse to their 
 feet, and poured out their swelling hearts in a 
 wild burst of sacred song, their voices mounting 
 high in the passionate cry of the triumphant 
 refrain, 
 
 " Oh, Moses smote the waters, 
 And the seas gave way ! " 
 
 With the singing of the hymn the tempest 
 somewhat abated, as if to the clang of mediaeval 
 bells. Angry black clouds still rose fast from
 
 134 SOUTH-COUNTY NEIGHBORS. 
 
 the ocean, but the lightning glanced harmlessly 
 through the protecting veil of falling waters, and 
 the house seemed an ark of safety in the midst 
 of the raging floods. All looks now turned 
 upon the new guide of the. evening's devotions, 
 as he remained standing in his place, with the 
 abstracted look of a solitary, and yet as if 
 charged with the burden of a word that must 
 make its way to utterance. Unknown and al 
 most nameless as he was to the listening crowd, 
 there was a power in his presence, in the sug 
 gestions of his emaciated countenance and the 
 spectral glitter of his eye, which pointed to a 
 reality in the vague background of rumor which 
 had given him, at his coming to live in their 
 community, the repute of a seer of strange vis 
 ions, and of a fearless host to such ghostly visi 
 tants as the inhabitants of the haunted territory 
 which he had chosen to make his dwelling- 
 place. But if a suspicion of something un 
 hallowed had at first clung to his mysterious 
 personality, it disappeared with that fuller 
 knowledge of his brooding enthusiasm, his 
 meditative insight, and his recondite learning 
 Which had gained him his common title of 
 "The Preacher," though his voice had never 
 yet been heard in these seasons of worship. A 
 lonely settler in strange places, like the spiritual 
 fathers of Rhode Island, Williams, Blackstone, 
 and Gorton, it was rumored that he, too,
 
 EVENING MEETING AT UNCLE 'SIAS'S. 135 
 
 claimed to be a witness to a special interpre 
 tation of sacred truths, and, like those historic 
 pioneers, had been separated by the stress of 
 conflicting opinions from his earlier associates, 
 or, as it was more darkly hinted, had, at the 
 Divine pleasure, as made known to him in a 
 dream, left home and family and friends to 
 dedicate himself to the contemplative life. 
 
 Such were the confused ideas prevailing 
 among the congregation concerning the strange 
 recluse who now spoke to them, wearing a far 
 away, introverted look, which presently quick 
 ened and glowed, as his low and quiet tones 
 grew in intensity with the development of his 
 theme. 
 
 " It is written," he said, without preamble or 
 address, " in the Word of God that in the last 
 days He will pour out His spirit upon His ser 
 vants and hand-maidens, and old men shall 
 dream dreams, and young men shall see visions. 
 I had been writing a letter to a friend at a dis 
 tance, and being weak and feeble, I lay down on 
 my bed, with my face toward the wall, to take 
 repose, and soon fell into a sound sleep. Me- 
 thought I cast my eyes toward heaven, and saw 
 the blue vault of heaven split asunder, through 
 which, I thought, I saw a stream of light and 
 love proceeding from the throne of God, clear 
 as crystal. As the rays of the sun in the firma 
 ment, at its first rising, shine into a door or
 
 136 SOUTH-COUNTY NEIGHBORS. 
 
 window, so that the stream through the whole 
 house will be lighter than anywhere else, so the 
 whole stream of light from heaven to where I 
 stood shined with light and love." 
 
 The storm was subsiding, and the flashes of 
 lightning were few and distant, faintly illumi 
 nating the horizon. The dreaming glances of 
 the speaker wandered out upon the night, and 
 returned kindled with a deeper light, as he 
 offered a newly-suggested image to his rapt 
 listeners. 
 
 " Never did I see anything so straight, and on 
 either side the stream was decked with thou 
 sands of little rays of light, all pointing one way, 
 even toward heaven. I thought that every drop 
 of light and love that God bestows is to be re 
 turned to Him again ; and while I stood won 
 dering at the sight, I thought I saw the fiery 
 chariot of God's love come through the gap 
 that was in the vault, coming through the midst 
 of the stream, a hundred times swifter than I 
 ever saw an eagle fly. I thought it was all over 
 glorious, and in color like to a rainbow, and was 
 carried on wings of love. In a few moments it 
 was just by where I stood, and turned short 
 about, with the fire part toward heaven, and 
 rested on its wings, keeping its wings in a slow 
 motion to bear it up, and waiting for me to 
 come in. I thought my soul was transported ; 
 I thought I stood with my heart and hands
 
 EVENING MEETING AT UNCLE 'SIAS'S. 1 
 
 3 7 
 
 extended to heaven, crying, Glory, glory in the 
 highest ! and just as I was about to mount into 
 the chariot I turned to a great multitude, cry 
 ing, Glory, glory, I am going to glory in the 
 fiery chariot of His love ! and with these words 
 on my lips I awoke out of sleep. Oh, cried I, 
 in tears, that I had been suffered to take my 
 flight ! Oh, thought I, in the bitter disappoint 
 ment of those waking moments, if one view of 
 glory and love will fill a soul with such joy, even 
 in a dream, what will the open vision and full 
 fruition be in glory?" 
 
 The preacher's voice broke and failed, the 
 light died out of his wan face, his Dantean 
 vision was told, his mission was ended. The 
 message that he had delivered was in a tone 
 of fervor and power so far above the usual spir 
 itual ministrations received by the flock that a 
 confused sense of wonder sat upon all the faces. 
 But the Elder, or exhorter of the evening, catch 
 ing something of the enthusiast's emotion, dis 
 missed them with the genuine dignity of a 
 pastoral guide. 
 
 " Brethren," said he, " our brother has spoke 
 to us in the word of power. As we go to our 
 homes, and lay us down to rest, let us meditate 
 well thereupon; and let each one commune 
 with his own heart, and be still." And he gave, 
 and the congregation received, a blessing, with 
 a new sense of reverence.
 
 138 SOUTH-COUNTY NEIGHBORS. 
 
 As the people disappeared on their homeward 
 ways the sky was still obscured by drifting fog, 
 through which glimpses of the clear heavens, 
 set with' star-points, promised a further April 
 change to fair weather. But the atmosphere of 
 storm and cloud and mist has ever since hung 
 so heavily over the story of that night that it 
 has finally come to wear the shadowy shape of 
 a legend of the South County.
 
 WATCHING WITH THE SICK. 
 
 LOUISA, Mrs. Gould's young daughter, was 
 ailing with an indisposition that had not as 
 yet assumed any definite form, though some of 
 her symptoms were thought to point to lung 
 fever, or " side-anguish." 
 
 The invalid was not left to pine in solitude. 
 In the kitchen-bedroom, which she temporarily 
 occupied, were her aunt, old Miss Esther, or 
 Eesther Gould, Friend Mahala Clark, otherwise 
 "Cousin M'hal'," who was neighboring with them 
 for the day, and whose distant relationship was 
 made the means of a compromise between a 
 " Friendly" and a worldly form of addressing a 
 person of years and dignity, with the juvenile 
 Gid Gould, whom a sprained ankle detained at 
 home, and who resorted to his sister's room in 
 restless search after some acceptable indoor en 
 tertainment. Added to these sources of com 
 panionship was the near presence of several 
 children of the village, who had gathered in the 
 door-yard, and, surrounding one of their number 
 placed in the centre of the circle, were shouting 
 at her the rhymed salutation of their game,
 
 140 SOUTH-COUNTY NEIGHBORS. 
 
 "Queen Anne, Queen Anne, she sits in the sun, 
 As fair as a lady, as bright as a nun." 
 
 In the intervals of their song some anony 
 mous crying, which might safely be credited 
 to one at least of the five babies in the imme 
 diate neighborhood, was pleasantly borne on 
 the breeze, or the frail and precarious pipe of 
 a solitary fowl, just under the sick-room win 
 dow, made itself hoarsely heard, in the gloomy 
 monosyllable " kurk," or the prolonged groan 
 " Viur-ruck," uttered with a moving melancholy 
 that might well make converts to the Pytha 
 gorean doctrine expounded by the clown in 
 " Twelfth Night," that the soul of our grandam 
 might haply inhabit a bird, and convince them 
 that this pathetic Dame Partlet was the identical 
 fowl. 
 
 " I do b'lieve that faowl's hungry," was Aunt 
 Eesther's more practical interpretation of a few 
 notes of this mournful music; "she never come 
 round when the rest on 'em was fed, f'r I see 
 her a-sottin' thiar all the time. Gid, jest you 
 shell out a han'ful o' them ears a-hangin' up 
 thiar. Here, coop, coop, coop ! Good land ! 
 how the cretur dooz gaffle it down I " cackled 
 the good old dame, whose voice and laugh were 
 as quaintly thin and sharp as the vibrant shrilling 
 of insects. 
 
 Aunt Eesther repaired the ravages of age by 
 the friendly aid of a cap and a black " foretop," 
 
 V
 
 WATCHING WITH THE SICK. 141 
 
 over which she oddly wore the brown satin 
 s^nood of her youth, on the principle that it 
 was as good as ever it was, and had ought to 
 be wore out. Her scant gown and the little 
 shawl she had crossed over her chest assimi 
 lated her general appearance to that of Friend 
 Clark ; but the latter was neater, nicer, and wore 
 her plain gown with a sort of refined rusticity. 
 The lappets of her clear-starched cap, of "sheer" 
 muslin, fell to her shoulders, and her spectacles 
 shed benevolent lights as they mildly beamed 
 on the invalid. 
 
 The latter was a delicate girl of twenty, of 
 the usual transitory type of pale prettiness so 
 often seen in the homes and schools of New 
 England. She had the softness and freshness 
 of contour and complexion that make the in 
 evitable beauty of youth, always so lightly 
 regarded by its possessor, and never appre 
 ciated until regretted. But she had not the 
 grace of youth, for her thin, tall figure, and 
 high shoulders, gave her an invalid look, even 
 in her firmest health. Now, however, as she 
 rested against the folds of the coarse, brown 
 cottons, which many washings had partially 
 bleached and softened from their first crude 
 estate, her dark hair and eyes, and her clear- 
 toned coloring assumed their full value; and 
 her looks, if they had been cheerful, would 
 have been of supreme charm ; for her fever
 
 
 
 142 SOUTH-COUNTY NEIGHBORS. 
 
 was as yet only of that incipient type which 
 brightens the eye and flushes the cheek with a 
 hectic counterfeit of the triumph of high health. 
 
 " Don't ye feel now ez ef ye could n't eat no 
 dinner, Loweyezy?" questioned her aunt with 
 unintentional ambiguity. 
 
 " The' was fowl-pie, with quohogs in it f'r 
 dinner," volunteered Gid, with appropriate 
 enthusiasm. 
 
 " Could n't thee eat some of the bread-kind, 
 Leeweeza?" benevolently queried Friend Clark. 
 
 The invalid declined this cereal feast, and 
 with the restlessness of increasing fever, turned 
 impatiently in bed. 
 
 " Here comes the Clacksum girls," pro 
 claimed Aunt Eesther with animation. " Now 
 thet's fort'nit ; like ez not they 'm brung ye 
 some relish f'r y'r supper. They ain't never 
 killed yit, it's too airly yit awhile ter be tryin" 
 out leaf lard, but some hog's pluck is jest 
 what folks kinder wants now, ain't it? Some 
 liver, now, " 
 
 " Eat the liver, live forever ; 
 Eat the lights, die to rights," 
 
 vociferated Gid, flinging himself on his sister's 
 bed, as the guests entered. 
 
 The three Clacksum girls, Phyluty, Pashe 
 (from Patience), and Osey (or Osianna), be 
 longed to that numerous class whose girlhood 
 is prolonged by a fashion of speech to the
 
 WATCHING WITH THE SICK. 143 
 
 furthest possible point. But they must be ac 
 quitted of any intention to profit by this benefit 
 of courtesy, for Phyluty, always the spokes 
 woman of the group, addressing the sick girl 
 in a loud voice, and with a lively sniff, both well 
 adapted to cheer her depressed spirits, informed 
 her " that she 'd haf to get well right away now, 
 sence the old maids had got round to see her at 
 last." This humorous description of herself 
 was Phyluty's perennial joke, and her acquaint 
 ances were expected to find perpetual mirth in 
 it. Having been in the habit of steadily regard 
 ing it, for the last twenty years and more, as an 
 excellent merry jest, she seemed now either to 
 ignore or to forget the more serious aspects of 
 the case, as it presented itself to an observer; 
 so that she afforded an instructive instance of 
 that curious tendency of the individual to make 
 light of the supposed privations of humanity; 
 for nothing is more common than to hear the 
 solitary, the childless, the sickly, and the aged 
 jesting at their condition in life, not, with simple 
 folk, from any definite motive of pride or self- 
 assertion, but from a confused, instinctive 
 prompting toward adjustment to one's environ 
 ment. And even among people of a more 
 complex self- consciousness, you shall hear 
 women making sprightly allusions to their old- 
 maidhood, and men dwelling with humorous 
 touches upon their advancing years, seemingly
 
 144 SOUTH-COUNTY NEIGHBORS. 
 
 unaware that, to the mere matter-of-fact ob 
 server, both subjects have long passed "the 
 limits of becoming mirth." 
 
 Osey, the third sister, who had inherited sun 
 dry peculiar traits that differentiated her from 
 the commonplace order of mind, had perfected 
 an ingenious scheme for fastening a desperate 
 clutch upon receding Time; and by always 
 stating her age at an advance of seven years 
 beyond what it really was, enjoyed the question 
 able refreshment of being called quite a young- 
 looking woman of her age. 
 
 " I thought I 'd fetch Leeweezy some dangle- 
 berries," observed Phyluty, in modest reference 
 to the contents of her mysterious little basket. 
 !> Ye see they 'm gittin' ter be a kind of a sc'ace 
 yarb now, an 1 I did n't know but what they 'd 
 taste good to her." 
 
 " Loweyezy don't never eat 'em," frankly re 
 sponded Aunt Eesther, with the uncompromis 
 ing truthfulness of country breeding, " but we 'm 
 obleeged ter ye, jest the same." 
 
 " Well now, I allers was a gret hand f r sass 
 out o' season," remarked Pashe, reflectively. 
 
 " Yes," agreed Phyluty, that leading lady of 
 the social comedy, " I dono 's you reck'lect the 
 time Pashe had a poor spell, kind of a fall 
 fever, an' the' wa'n't nothin' 't she took a no 
 tion t' eat, 'nless 't was some red rozbries. Well, 
 we didn't say nothin', but Osey, she scurried
 
 WATCHING WITH THE SICK. 145 
 
 round, an' 't las' she come in one day 'n' said ter 
 Pashe, ' Which hand 'II you take, the right or the 
 left ? ' ' Sho ! ' says Pashe, 't ain't red rozbries, 
 I know; red rozbries hes abeout subsided.' 
 ' Well, they 'm very good eatin' rozbries anyway,' 
 says I, ef they ain't so harnsum ez the airly 
 ones ; ' f r ye see, they was the fall kind. An' 
 Pashe begun ter pick up right away after that, so 
 't she never missed a meal." 
 
 Phyluty concluded her narrative with an ef 
 fective sniff. This mode of expression was one 
 that she had nearly brought to perfection, and 
 there were few notes in the gamut of her emo 
 tions that could not be rendered by some modi 
 fication of this energetic facial action. 
 
 The invalid again moved wearily on her pil 
 low, and Aunt Eesther hastened to smooth its 
 folds, with the mild reminder, 
 
 " Folks could n't never say of you, Loweyezy 
 ez they uster say of Cousin M'hal', thet she 
 would be the sickest woman, an' yit keep the 
 smoothest bed-clothes, 't ever they see." 
 
 ' Thee feels distressed, Leeweeza," said Cousin 
 M hal , with a subdued expression of kindliness 
 answering to the frank smile of affection which 
 lights up the unchastened lineaments of the 
 world's people, and speaking in tones steeped 
 m some source of inexhaustible calm, " but thee 
 will learn, as thee lives along, to bear pain an' 
 
 4-/-\ **4-i 1 * a 
 
 tortur." 
 
 10
 
 146 SOUTH-COUNTY NEIGHBORS. 
 
 " Leeweezy's Cousin Rit went off suddin, to 
 the last, didn't she?" plaintively inquired Osey, 
 who naturally felt the propriety of confining the 
 conversation strictly to edifying sick-room topics. 
 " You an' she was jest of an age, an' you was 
 allers very great, wa'n't you, Leeweezy?" she 
 pursued, with a glance at the bed ; to which 
 statement its occupant mutely assented. " I 
 uster think she was tougher 'n' any pitch-knot ; 
 she wa'n't one o' the kind that never makes old 
 bones " with another glance at the invalid, 
 " not ter look at her, she wa'n't ; an' she wa'n't 
 one o* them that hes sick spells; but she giv' 
 way all ter onct." 
 
 Pashe now took up the thread of conversation 
 so deftly spun by the sisters three, affirming 
 that she " never see no poor cretur that seemed 
 to take things so patient and resigned as Ritty 
 did. She told Elder Fowler what text she 'd 
 have preached from when he buried her, and 
 she picked out all of her bearers, and they said 
 she seemed real distressed for fear 't would n't be 
 a good day for her funeral, after she 'd planned 
 it all out so. They said she was a beautiful 
 planner of a funeral." 
 
 " Yes ; she was composed in her mind," em 
 phatically pronounced Phyluty, with a meaning 
 sniff; " she was a beautiful girl." This latter trib 
 ute to the departed, who had had the misfortune 
 to be of singular personal plainness, was of course
 
 WATCHING WITH THE SICK. 147 
 
 understood to refer to that moral loveliness 
 which affords the only ideal of beauty recog 
 nized in the rustic colloquialisms of feminine 
 New England. 
 
 "He ain't here, is he?" inquired Osey, with 
 apparent irrelevance, and nodding in the direc 
 tion of Louisa. 
 
 "No," hesitated Aunt Eesther, with the awk 
 wardness of a person totally unused to practise 
 reserve on any topic ; " ye see " hurriedly 
 " he 's got work now, way off to Biscuit City, 
 an' he 's up there a lathin', an' Loweyezy, she 's 
 come home to her own folks, ter stay a spell. 
 I expect, though, she misses her ma, now she 's 
 took sick." 
 
 " Mis' Gould hes gone to her sister's, ain't 
 she? " continued the anxious inquirer. 
 
 "Yes, ye know she's got a young baby, an' 
 her hands is tied, so 't she 's all behind with 
 her work, an' she begun ter shake in her shoes 
 fer fear she would n't be through house-cleanin' 
 afore the thrashers come. An' then they 'd haf 
 ter kill next, an' nobody but her ter do a hand's 
 turn, an' she 's all overdone with ev'rything 
 hangin' by the eyelids so." 
 
 Osey opined that she must have just about as 
 much as she could fly under; and, after a few 
 further expressions ,of neighborly interest, and 
 not a few tokens of neighborly inquisitiveness, 
 the sisters rose, apparently to go, but really, as
 
 148 SOUTH-COUNTY NEIGHBORS. 
 
 it proved, to stand for the space of some long 
 minutes, while Pashe, who had just bethought 
 herself of a sovereign charm against illness, re 
 lated, with some assistance from Osey, chiefly 
 bestowed in the form of vigorous corrections of 
 her narrative, the process of cutting off a lock 
 of a sick person's hair in the increase of the 
 moon, and pinning it to the wall, so that the 
 moonlight should rest on it every night for a 
 week, after which time the invalid would begin 
 to improve; though, to be sure, as she con 
 cluded, there was n't no moon just now. Phyluty 
 was reminded of a case in which this spell had 
 worked marvels, and proceeded to relate it ; but 
 in so doing, plunged into the intricacies of a col 
 loquial labyrinth, wherein panting print would 
 toil after her in vain. Speech alone could repro 
 duce the repeated " s'e " for " said he," or " said 
 she," and " s'l " for " said I," with the other frac 
 tional currency of social exchange which she 
 tendered in such profusion that her sisters were 
 fain to admonish her that her tongue " run like a 
 ginger-mill." But at last they buzzed themselves 
 away, as flies will finally go out of an open 
 door. 
 
 " 'Bijah ! " called Aunt Eesther to a slouching, 
 shabby man, furtively lounging by, " now while 
 I think on 't, jest you fetch a pail o' water." 
 
 " Ef the Mississippi River run through this 
 house 't would n't bring water enough ter satisfy
 
 WATCHING WITH THE SICK. 149 
 
 the durned women-folks," growled the man ; but 
 he finally retraced his steps, with ostentatious 
 dilatoriness, to do the hated service. 
 
 'Bijah Fry, Mrs. Gould's disreputable brother, 
 who " made his home " with her, or was toler 
 ated as an unwelcome housemate during the 
 tedious intervals between his precarious "jobs," 
 had long cherished a jealous grudge against 
 harmless Aunt Eesther, both as the helpful and 
 valued dependent of the two inmates of the fam 
 ily, and as the energetic contriver of " chores " 
 and " arrants," the execution of which fell to 
 him. He was not the less irritable for having 
 but lately returned from a prolonged " clam 
 ming " with sundry associates whose habits were 
 well known to be more convivial than industrial. 
 As he again passed the window Aunt Eesther 
 put out her head and quavered, 
 
 11 Where be ye a-goin' now, 'Bijah? " bringing 
 him face to face with her as he snapped, 
 
 " Right straight to [they did n't say sheol 
 
 then], Eest' ; don't yer wanter send an arrant? " 
 
 " Ef the' was any shame in ye, 'Bijah Fry, 
 yer'd be ashamed ter gin sech an' arnswerwhen 
 I wanted ye ter fetch the doctor," returned the 
 indignant old lady, femininely oblivious of the 
 fact that her purpose had remained undeveloped. 
 
 "Why did n't ye say so, then?" angrily 
 sneered her quasi brother-in-law, with a disgust 
 that equalled her own. " I 'd a done it for her,"
 
 150 SOUTH-COUNTY NEIGHBORS. 
 
 he added, with a touch of genuine concern in 
 his manner, as he looked in at the sick girl. 
 "I'll do it willin'ly," he loudly resumed, with 
 swelling dignity, and indulging in a gloating 
 animosity, " f r any poor gal, let alone my own 
 niece, es hes got the misfortin' ter have a stiff- 
 necked lunkhead f'r a husband, a reg'lar she-boss 
 f r a mother-in-law, an" ole Eesther Gould f r a 
 miss." 
 
 Louisa looked pained by this rude champion 
 ship, and the feverish flush mounted to her fore 
 head, but she said nothing. 
 
 " 'Bijah must ha' swallered old razors, he 's 
 so mighty sharp," scornfully commented Aunt 
 Eesther. 
 
 " 'Bijah, thee is a trial," sighed the Friend, 
 looking after the retreating swagger of his dis 
 reputable figure. " He makes me think," she 
 continued, " of the old man that went every 
 where asking for work, and praying that he 
 might not find it. Did thee hear, Eesther, how 
 he come over the other day when I was busy 
 with my molasses-quince, doing up the skins 
 and cores. Thee knows the deeper in his cups 
 'Bijah gets the more solemn-wayed he is, and he 
 said he come to me with a message from the 
 Lord to convert me and my house to the Metho 
 dist way. His coat-pockets was all weighted 
 down with Methodist books where dooz thee 
 suppose he got them? and don't thee think,"
 
 WATCHING WITH THE SICK. 151 
 
 pursued the Friend, with mild protest, " he 
 wanted me to bring him all of Friends' publica 
 tions that brother Amram keeps in his book- 
 closet, and sit down and listen to him while he 
 read out loud, and compared them with his 
 books. I never was so put by, and I told him, 
 ' Thy zeal is not according to knowledge, 'Bijah ; 
 thee pesters me ; ' but just then husband come 
 in and got him to go up to the lot and see what 
 he thought of the sick colt; for thee knows, 
 Eesther, 'Bijah used to be a man of good judg 
 ment, and a forcible man, when he was himself." 
 " No, I dono 's I ever knowed no good on 
 him," replied Aunt Eesther, with pardonable 
 resentment. 
 
 " Miss Esther Protester was sent to the Queen, 
 The most modish young lady that ever was seen," 
 
 repeated Gid, who was occasionally seized with 
 
 a desire to take part in the social exercise of the 
 
 afternoon. 
 
 " Was that air writ about you, Aunt Eesther? " 
 " Lor', no, child," affably returned his relative, 
 
 " but I Ve heerd it amongst the old folks here, 
 
 time out o' mind." 
 
 " The 's some more on it," persisted Gid, 
 
 " where it says, 
 
 " ' Is Miss Esther within, or is she without ? 
 No, she 's up chamber, a-walkin' about.' " 
 
 " Yes, yes," nodded Aunt Eesther, " I Ve
 
 152 SOUTH-COUNTY NEIGHBORS. 
 
 knowed it ever sence I was a tecnty tawnty 
 gal." 
 
 "Then what's that other one?" continued 
 Master Gid, charmed to find his overtures re 
 ceived with more than wonted consideration, 
 "you know thet one about the old keow 
 
 " ' What kin ye do with the old keow's hoof? 
 'T will make ez good a shingle ez ever teched roof. 
 What kin ye do with the old keow's head ? 
 'Twill make ez good an oven ez ever baked bread ; 
 White bread, or brown bread, or any sich a thing ' " 
 
 " Does thee like thy schooling, Gid? " pleas 
 antly asked Friend Clark, by way of timely 
 diversion. 
 
 " Like 't well 'nough, most times," graciously 
 replied the youth. " Frid'y fortnits is the wust 
 on it. Makes me sick ter hear the girls get off" 
 their compositions. Our school 's chock full o' 
 nat'ral fools mostly girls " generalized the 
 young philosopher. " Ev'ry one on 'em writes 
 a letter, an' ev'ry one on 'em gets up jest as 
 mincin' so fashion," as he attempted an 
 illustration, "an* sweetens up her voice, an' 
 reads out, 'I go to school to Miss Ann Scranton, 
 which I like ve-ry much.' " Gid mimicked the 
 small girlish pipe with impatient disgust. " They 
 don't no such a thing ! They don't like old Ann 
 Scran any better 'n I do." 
 
 "Why doozn't thee like thy kind teacher?" 
 gently inquired the good Friend.
 
 WATCHING WITH THE SICK. 153 
 
 " 'Cause she wears them brass thimbles on 
 her ten fingers, an' cracks you over the head 
 when you ain't lookin'," promptly explained the 
 youth. 
 
 " And what dooz the boys say in their let 
 ters?" further queried Friend Clark, abandoning 
 the defence of the amiable teacher. 
 
 " The boys don't write," returned Gid, with 
 contempt. " Them 's f r girls. The boys speaks 
 pieces. Si Bently hed 'The Seasons,' an' s'e, 
 'Some like spring, some like winter best; but 
 ez f r me, give me libbaty or give me death ! ' 
 
 "Was thy teacher pleased then? " 
 
 " No ; he got kep' arter school. She said 
 'twas too short," Gid added, with a musing 
 air. 
 
 " 'Nother time," he resumed, brightening up, 
 " Si got up ter speak, an' s'e, ' Friends, Romans, 
 Countrymen, and Lovers, lend me yer ears. 
 Mother 's gonter bile souse ter-morrer, an' wants 
 ter git all she kin.' " 
 
 "Did thy teacher punish him for such wrong 
 conduct? " 
 
 " Guess she did," grinned Gid, with retrospective 
 delight. Then, interrupting his recital of the trials 
 of this unappreciated humorist, he announced : 
 " Say, I b'lieve I c'n make out ter hobble roun' 
 some now," and disappeared in the direction of 
 the garret stairs, whence he presently returned 
 with a struggling cat, a penknife, and a large
 
 154 SOUTH-COUNTY NEIGHBORS. 
 
 spool. The relations between these three ob 
 jects became more apparent as he began the 
 process of shaving the tip of the cat's tail in 
 order to string the spool firmly upon it. 
 
 "Say, Gid, what be you a-doin'?" asked 
 Louisa, with annoyance. 
 
 " Hey, whossay? " automatically replied the 
 youth, whose attention was anxipusly centred 
 upon the threatening mews not loud, but 
 deep of the afflicted animal. 
 
 " I say, what does make you cruelize that 
 poor dumb cretur so?" repeated his sister with 
 invalid fretfulness. 
 
 "Wai, 't ain't ourn," answered Gid, convinc 
 ingly. "She's a wile-cat. She ain't dumb, 
 neither. Wisht she was. (Buhstill thiar ! can't 
 ye buhstill?) Ketched her down't the brook 
 when I was lookin' up turkles. Come on to her 
 all cajunk. She scratched 'n* sung some, same 's 
 she does now Scat ! ye most went through 
 my thumb ! " and as Gid applied that in 
 jured member to his mouth puss with one fran 
 tic effort writhed herself from his grasp, and in 
 a single leap cleared the window ; while her tor 
 mentor gazed after her in keen disappointment. 
 
 " Uhdone, Gideon Gould ! " sternly menaced 
 Aunt Eesther, adding the mysterious nautical 
 threat, " Uhdone, or I '11 cleave ye from clue ter 
 earring ! Mr. Pillsbury 's comin' in." 
 
 After this manner Aunt Eesther, like others of
 
 WATCHING WITH THE SICK. 155 
 
 her class, commonly described and addressed a 
 doctor. 
 
 The village doctor of that day was a taciturn, 
 routine-plodding " drugger," as he was some 
 times not inappropriately called. The old sad 
 dle-bags which now accompanied him in his 
 wagon, since he no longer went his rounds on 
 horseback were loaded to bursting with the 
 heaviest ammunition used in the warfare of the 
 medical profession with the insurgent forces of 
 disease. He wore a wig that might have seen 
 better days among the many it had evidently 
 known ; and his coat was as splashed and stained 
 with traces of rough riding as if he had been a 
 king's messenger. The old white steed that had 
 made many roundabout journeys in the town 
 ship, and which had partly earned for his rider 
 the title of " Death on the Pale Horse," stood 
 contentedly cropping the roadside grass. 
 
 Louisa shrank with the morbid sensitiveness 
 of her acutely nervous temperament from his 
 business-like look and touch ; but he coolly ig 
 nored his patient, addressing most of his inquiries 
 to her aunt, and muttered at intervals to himself 
 as if he were composing an incantation where 
 with to exorcise the evil spirit of illness. 
 
 " Her skin feels dreadful fevery, Doctor," ven 
 tured the old woman, who stood anxiously await 
 ing his commands. " I expect she 's overdone, 
 an' she 's kep' up too long. Ye see, she 's got
 
 156 SOUTH-COUNTY NEIGHBORS. 
 
 too much resolution, an' so she 's run down all 
 to onct, an' " 
 
 " Sho, nonsense ! " vouchsafed the great man. 
 " She needs to get blooded, that 's all. Bring 
 me the bowl ! " 
 
 Obedient to the expected mandate, Aunt Ees- 
 ther presently returned, bearing the bowl, and 
 looking like a rustic Muse of Tragedy ; while the 
 Doctor, quick with his lancet, opened a vein in 
 the slender arm of the trembling girl. 
 
 "That'll do," he magisterially announced, 
 after a shorter interval of silent attention than was 
 usually allotted to this familiar form of surgery, 
 speaking in a tone in which contempt and toler 
 ation, with a certain relenting toward the youth, 
 sex, and nervous distress of his patient were 
 curiously blended, " that 's all, Louisa. Sha'n't 
 bleed her much. A flea-bite knocks her over. 
 S' got no staminy." 
 
 With this frank statement the Doctor pro 
 ceeded to portion out the drugs to be adminis 
 tered in the night, and was leaving with the 
 assurance that he would be 'round in the morn 
 ing, when Aunt Eesther, curiously smelling and 
 tasting one of the doses, must needs delay him 
 to ask, 
 
 "What's this here you'm gi'n her, Mr. Pills- 
 bury? I don't seem ter make 't out egzac'ly." 
 
 " That is medicine, marm ! " shouted the en 
 raged physician in no sick-room voice.
 
 WATCHING WITH THE SICK. 157 
 
 " The land, Mr. Pillsbury ! I never laid out 
 ter affront ye," began Aunt Eesther ; but he was 
 already out of hearing. 
 
 " Deary me ! " panted the worthy old lady, 
 "he's dreadful crickery, ain't he? Loweyezy, 
 how d' ye feel now? Powerful weak, ain't ye, 
 arter that bleedin'? Wai, I wisht Cousin M'hal' 
 could a sot with ye a spell longer; but she tho't 
 she mus' go when 't come sunset. 
 
 " ' When Darby see the settin' sun 
 He slung his sy', an' home he run,' " 
 
 repeated Aunt Eesther, who" sometimes adorned 
 her discourse with poetical fragments. 
 
 " Lor', you uster be jest crazy to hev me tell 
 ye them varses in blindman's holiday same 's 't is 
 now. My poor old mem'ry 's mos' wore out," 
 she continued with a meek show of depreciation 
 that decently veiled her harmless vanity; " but 
 I guess I could worry through with ' The Three 
 Warnin's.' " 
 
 No response from the patient. 
 
 " Or else," this all-accomplished nurse vol 
 unteered, " thiar 's ' William an' Marg'ret,' yer 
 
 know. 
 
 " ' When all was wrapt in dark midnight, 
 
 And all were fast asleep, 
 In glided Margaret's grimly ghost, 
 And stood at William's feet.' " 
 
 A slight movement and a faint sigh of weari 
 ness reached Aunt Eesther's sympathetic ear.
 
 158 SOUTH-COUNTY NEIGHBORS. 
 
 "Wai, 'tis kinder pokerish," she admitted; 
 " an' so 's ' Alonzo the Brave and the Fair Imo- 
 gene ; ' but you allers was dreadful fond o' 
 ' Barbry Allen.' " 
 
 And Aunt Eesther, with infinite relish, and 
 rocking back and forth in time to the arbitrary 
 emphasis which she gave to sundry words, re 
 peated, 
 
 "In Scarlet town where I was born, 
 There was a fair maid dwelling, 
 Made every youth cry, Wel-awaye ! 
 Her name was Barbara Allen." 
 
 The invalid grew restless long before Her 
 quaint companion had reached the climax of 
 the narrative, 
 
 " He turned his face unto the wall 
 
 As deadly pangs he fell in ; 
 Adieu, adieu, adieu to all ! 
 Adieu to Barbara Allen ! 
 
 As she was walking o'er the fields 
 She heard the bells a-knelling, 
 
 And every stroke did seem to say, 
 Unworthy Barbara Allen ! 
 
 With scornful eye she looked down, 
 
 Her cheek with laughter swelling; 
 Whilst all her friends cried out amain, 
 Unworthy Barbara Allen ! 
 
 When he was dead and laid in grave, 
 Her heart was struck with sorrow ; 
 
 O mother, mother, make my bed, 
 For I shall die to-morrow !
 
 WATCHING WITH THE SICK. 159 
 
 Hard-hearted creature him to slight 
 
 Who love*d me so dearly ! 
 O that I had been more kind 'to him 
 
 When he was alive and near me ! 
 
 She, on her death-bed as she lay, 
 Begged to be buried by him " 
 
 " Don't, Aunt Eesther, don't ! " sobbed the girl 
 with a sudden violence that seemed to emanate 
 from some deeper source of emotion than physi 
 cal exhaustion or sympathy with the grotesque 
 sentiment of the old ballad ; then struggling hard 
 for self-control, she begged, " Please, don't! It 
 makes me so nervious ! " 
 
 " There, there, child ! " patiently responded 
 the kindly old dame. " Why did n't ye say so 
 afore? My pity! yer all wore out, ain't ye? 
 There now, jest yer wait tell I put some mus 
 tard drafts ter yer feet an' gin ye some o' yer 
 soothin' mixtur', an' mebbe ye '11 feel better." 
 
 These offices concluded, and the patient lying 
 still in a sort of tense quietude, the silence of 
 the dimly-lighted room was again broken by a 
 soft though measured foot-fall, and the subdued 
 sound of a kind voice asking pleasantly, " How 
 does Leeweeze seem ter be now? " 
 
 " Char/<?/te Temple ! " exclaimed the old lady, 
 starting up from her doze, and, according to her 
 custom, addressing the welcome guest, Widow 
 Wilson, by her " given name " in full, " I 'm a 
 thousan' times obleeged ter ye fer comin' ! I
 
 160 SOUTH -COUNTY NEIGHBORS. 
 
 tole her par when he come back V said yer 'd 
 be here ter-night thet I was bounden tcr ye 'nough 
 sight. I expect Loweyezy 's be'n frcttin' her head 
 off fer ye all day. I dono 's she railly needs a 
 watcher ; but yer '11 be comp'ny f r her, an' 
 there's lots o' med'cine ter give. I'm an old 
 woman, Char/0/te," impressively proclaimed 
 Aunt Eesther, who apparently still harbored 
 that subtle conviction which dies so hard in 
 the feminine consciousness, that the fact of age 
 never becomes patent to observers unless duly 
 announced, " an' it Stan's to reason 't I can't 
 be on my feet night 'n' day. I be'n on the go 
 sence four o'clock, an' I 'm putty well wagged ; 
 'Bijah he 's be'n a-tewin' roun', an' Gid he 's 
 be'n inter mischief, an' I arter 'em, an' when 
 I wrung out my dish-clout ter-night I was 
 eenemost ready ter drop." 
 
 The widow, with the quiet efficiency of experi 
 ence, began looking over the medicines. 
 
 " That 's the doze-powder," explained Aunt 
 Eesther. 
 
 " Dover's powder," interjected the patient. 
 
 "Wai, Vs all one, ain't it?" returned the aunt 
 in atone of quasi injury. " Lor', when Loweyezy 's 
 a leetle grain crickery, she '11 grammarize ev'ry 
 word 't I speak ! An' this here 's the sweet 
 nitre, an' this stuff in the cup," shaking it sus 
 piciously "no, I dono what't is. Mr. Pills- 
 bury mos' took my head off f r axin' him a civil
 
 WATCHING WITH THE SICK. l6l 
 
 question. I dono what ailded him; but they 
 say he was a dretful crosspatch when he was a 
 baby, an' I guess he hain't never outgrowed it. 
 Wai, good-night ter both on ye. Guess I sh'll 
 sleep 'thout rockin' ter-night. Charfotte [to the 
 widow, who had followed her into the kitchen], 
 I 'm real glad yer come ; she thinks the world on 
 ye ; an' I 'm afeered she 's dretful slim ; she wa'n't 
 never real rugged. Wai, I Ve eenemost watched 
 myself! It 's nigh on ter ten o'clock now! " 
 
 " Yer don't look so dreadful sick, Leeweeze," 
 said Charlotte, reassuringly, on her return. "I Ve 
 heard tell of folks thet was so homely they hed 
 ter hev watchers : but yer don't look that way." 
 
 " Oh, Charlotte ! " panted the suffering girl, 
 whose fever had now returned with violence ; " I 
 do feel so fevery ! Raise me up ; give me a 
 drink o' water." 
 
 " I dursn't, child," sorrowfully replied her 
 friend. " The doctor said yer could hev some 
 water, a teaspoonful to a time. Well, there," 
 as her patient's distress increased, "I'll resk it 
 f r yer ter drink thet much in the cup ; but yer 
 be a good girl, an' don't ask f'r no more now. 
 Poor child ! " as the girl fell back with a shud 
 dering sigh; "yer miss y'r mother, an' yer miss 
 Jim, don't yer? " 
 
 " Oh, Charlotte ! " cried the sufferer as this 
 firm touch probed her morbid consciousness, 
 "Yer know all about it, then?" 
 ii
 
 1 62 SOUTH-COUNTY NEIGHBORS. 
 
 " I know nothin' more 'n I see when I come 
 inter this room," returned the other. " I see y'r 
 heart was full quick 's as I set eyes on yer. But 
 don't yer talk now; yer c'n tell me some other 
 time, an' nef yer want to." 
 
 " No ; I must, I must tell yer now," cried the 
 young creature, wildly, her pent-up passion find 
 ing voice at last. 
 
 " Well, I don't never let none o' my sick folks 
 go ter talkin'," hesitated the new nurse, divided 
 in judgment as to her patient's most pressing 
 needs ; then yielding to the appeal that looked 
 so cravingly from the dark eyes, she said, " Well, 
 talk a little while ef yer want, an* then mebbe 
 yer '11 sleep better when yer git it off y'r mind. 
 Jest yer let me fix the clo'es 'round ye an' 
 straighten ye out a little. There, there, now," 
 murmured the elder woman as if to a child, tak 
 ing one of the throbbing wrists between her cool, 
 soothing palms. 
 
 " Oh, I know I Ve done bad," began the girl, 
 in tearless wretchedness, " but it all begun little 
 by little, an' who would thought 't would come 
 ter this in sca'cely mor 'n a year's time ! " 
 
 " Yer mean yer an' Jim has hed fallin's 
 out?" quietly asked her companion, with a 
 penetration that astonished the inexperience 
 of the younger woman. 
 
 " Yes, oh yes ; I would n't care about no 
 sickness ef only I felt right in my mind ; but
 
 WATCHING WITH THE SICK. 163 
 
 I expect the way I took sick in the first place 
 was becos I worried an' cried so." 
 
 " But how come ye ter leave yer husband, 
 Leeweeze? Couldn't ye fix things right, no 
 way? I never sh'd tho't yer'd been so uppish 
 that yer could n't get along with folks." 
 
 " Oh, I could n't stan' it no longer with 
 Mother Flint," cried the girl, with an air of 
 challenge. " Yer don't begin ter know what 
 she's like. She 's a reg'lar born scold. Mebbe 
 she can't help it, Jim says she can't, an' 
 I don't wish her a speck o' harm, an' ef she 
 was sick I'd wait on her, an' tend on her; but, 
 Charlotte, I ain't got the grace ter live with 
 her day in an' day out. She 's dreadful hard 
 ter live with; her own folks says so. Her 
 daughter uster get so worked up when she 
 was ter home that she 'd fling right out before 
 the neighbors, an' say, 'I think my mother's 
 the worst woman in the world ! ' Ev'rybody 
 says she fretted Mr. Flint inter his grave, an' 
 how could I expect to hold up my sides with 
 her? She faulted me for ev'rything I did, an' 
 ev'rything I did n't do, tell I got so nervious 
 I was fairly 'fraid o' the shadder o' her sun- 
 bunnit hangin' up against the wall." 
 
 " Sho, Leeweeze, that was real silly." 
 
 " Well, I do suppose I was jest the worst one 
 to hev went there; I wa'n't one thet could 
 give her back ez good ez I got, an' yet I wa'n't
 
 1 64 SOUTH-COUNTY NEIGHBORS. 
 
 one o' the kind ter be put upon an' never say 
 Ah! Yes? nor No! I wa'n't real patient an' 
 pleased with her, I dono who could be, 
 'nless 't was the deef 'n' dumb. So she giv' 
 me no peace, tell at larst I got ter bein' pretty 
 nigh ez highstrung ez she was, an' then she 
 was sooted, becos she could leave off talkin 1 
 about my sulks, an' talk about niy tempers. 
 That galled Jim, I knew; fer he could n't 
 never enjure women thet was coarse-wayed 
 and tonguey. I s'pose he 'd hed enough of 
 it ter home, an' he liked me becos he thought 
 I was quiet an' pretty-wayed. Well, thet 's all 
 over, now. And then they'd always made a 
 poppet of me, here ter home, an' Ma kep' put- 
 tin' me up ter things ; an' when I 'd tell her 
 how I fared with Mother Flint, she 'd say she 'd 
 take my part, ef Jim would n't. An' thet was 
 ez true a word ez ever was spoke ; he would n't 
 take no sides; seemed ter think my troubles 
 was too small business fer him, altogether. He 
 said he knew enough ter keep outer all women 
 fights, an' it made me feel ill towards him ter 
 see how he looked down on me, fer complainin' 
 the least mite. .Ef I named his mother's name 
 ter him, it madded him, an' he 'd say he mus' 
 go right off an' weed the garding, though I 
 knew well 'nough 't wa'n't sufferin'. Charlotte," 
 she turned toward her companion, seeking her 
 face with appealing eyes, " do you b'lieve any-
 
 WATCHING WITH THE SICK. 165 
 
 body ever is ez good ter yer ez yer own folks 
 be? When I was ter home my folks hed feelin's 
 fer me, an' set store by me, right along, whether 
 I done good or done bad; but when yer go 
 off among other folks, they '11 only treat yer 
 ez well ez yer've aimed a right ter be treated, 
 ef they do thet. But I feel real condemned 
 ter say so, too; fer Jim was kind ez could be, 
 most o' the time, and he uster get all worked 
 up when I hed my bad spells. ' Now, sis,' he 
 uster tell me, ' you must hev the doctor, right 
 off/ an' ther' was times when he 'd lose the 
 heft of a day's work goin' fer him an' gettin' 
 back, 'sides his charges, an' never say a word 
 about his wife's bein' nothin' but a bill of ex 
 pense, the way Squire Stonan does about his'n ; 
 and he 's a real rich man, an' rides in a wagin, 
 an' hes his house painted. But Jim would n't 
 never own thet 't was his mother's hateful ways 
 thet giv' me my bad headaches ; he always 
 would hev it thet I'd got cold^or else I'd et 
 somethin' thet wa'n't hulsome. He never minds 
 his mother's talk, no more 'n the wind thet 
 blows, an' he could n't make out why I did. 
 So, whatever I 'd tell him, he was dreadful 
 clus-mouthed, an' would n't take no notice, no 
 more 'n ef I was jest a mad child. Then I 'd 
 shet myself up an' cry hours to a time, ter think 
 how changed he was to-wards me ; for when he 
 was goin' with me, he was quick enough ter
 
 1 66 SOUTH-COUNTY NEIGHBORS. 
 
 flare up if anybody laid a straw in my path ; 
 an' when he took a notion how thct or'nary 
 Joe Harkins only looked kinder onhandsome 
 at me, he follercd him afterwards, so the 
 folks told me, an' took him ter do fer it, an' 
 when Joe giv' him some impidence, Jim told 
 him, ' You mean dog, you, I '11 thrash the 
 ground with you ! ' An' he did, too." 
 
 " Don't yer realize 't yer '11 tire yerself all v 
 out, talkin' this rate?" interposed her anxious 
 listener. 
 
 " I can't stop now, Charlotte," pleaded the 
 sufferer, with a restless impatience to recite the 
 whole unhappy story of her brief wedded life. 
 " I was all overbecome ter fare so with Jim, 
 an' did n't know what ter make of it, fer I 'd 
 never thought things would go so hard. You 
 know well 'nough how 't is with Pa. Pa thinks 
 Ma made the world, an' everythin' here goes jes' 
 ez she says. And there 's Uncle Samson, ef he 
 thinks any thoughts, they'm his wife's thoughts; 
 an' what words he speaks is his wife's words; 
 so 't it's real ridic'lous ter hear him lay down 
 the law, when you know all the time it's Aunt 
 Sarah Ann jes' makin' a mouthpiece on him ; 
 fer he shets his eyes an' takes her jedgment 
 right along in everythin', from ridge-poles ter 
 cap-borders. I see all thet, an' course I thought, 
 well, I s'pose I thought I sh'd hev' some 
 infl'ence. But the most o' women finds it the
 
 WATCHING WITH THE SICK. l6/ 
 
 same, I guess; love don't count ter men folks 
 ez it does ter us ; it ain't anythin' thet comes 
 inter their lives an' drives ev'rythin' else out, 
 ez it does with us women. Becos a man loved 
 me, or said he did, I tho't 'twas kingdom 
 come on airth, an' 't I oughter do jest ez he 
 said, an' so I went ter live with his mother, though 
 I knew better all the time. But it's diff'rent 
 with a man somehow. Ef a woman loves him, 
 why in course she ought ter, does it becos she 
 wants ter, anyway. He don't see no partic'lar 
 meerit ter it, an' no reason 't all why he sh'd ever- 
 lastin'ly hear ter her on account on' t. Ef she 
 loves him, why thet's her privilege; he ain't 
 noways obligated by it 
 
 " But Jim an' me got along well enough, in a 
 manner o' speakin' ; fer the' is times when pride 
 Stan's yer best friend, an' so I wa'n't all the time 
 hectorin' of him, ez I hev heard women doin', 
 always askin', ' Say, do yer love me ez much this 
 Mond'y mornin' ez yer did las' Wednesd'y after 
 noon ? ' or full ez foolish ez thet. I always was 
 disgusted with it, an' I could be contented enough 
 though Jim did n't make no gret fuss with me, so 
 long 's I knew 't was jest his queer way. Mostly 
 'twas kinder in joke ef he noticed me an' made 
 much o' me ; fer course he was jest like all the 
 men folks, forever a-jokin', talkin' every which- 
 way, an' never gettin' anywhiar. I never see 
 sech shaller nonsense ez they take fer wit. I
 
 1 68 SOUTH-COUNTY NEIGHBORS. 
 
 uster say t' him: 'Jim Flint, ef I was you, cf I 
 hed any wit I 'd show it ; ' an' thet would set 
 him off again worse 'n ever. He 'd say I was 
 very severe on him. I b'lieve jes' what kep' 
 him a funnin' so was becos I never once knowed 
 what under the canopy he meant by any of his 
 comical talk, He uster call me his standin' joke, 
 an' the best joke of all ; but I knowed he liked 
 me a sight better for not takin' it all in than ef 
 I 'd be'n one o' them women thet's so everlastin' 
 smart 't they know the whole story 'fore a man 's 
 got two words on it outer his mouth." 
 
 " Then yer an' Jim wa'n't allers at swords' 
 pints, ye see," mildly suggested her friend. 
 " Had n't yer better quiet down a spell now? 
 Jest see how yer fevier rages ! " 
 
 " Oh, no ! " she scornfully rejected the well- 
 meant warning. " Course we had some frien'ly 
 times. I was always quiet-wayed, an' no gret 
 han' ter make acquaintance or go runnin' in ter 
 the neighbors', so 't I kinder depended on Jim 
 fer most o' the comp'ny I had. But Mother 
 Flint always come between us ; ef she wa'n't 
 there in the flesh, she was there in the sperit ; 
 an' I had n't no comfort in livin' when I see Jim 
 so sot about her." 
 
 " Now ye kinder try me, Leeweeze, when ye 
 go on so. I 've got a boy o* my own, an' I want 
 him ter vally his mother. I sh'd tho't yer might- 
 er respected Jim's feelin's."
 
 WATCHING WITH THE SICK. 169 
 
 " But I tell yer, Charlotte, it was like this with 
 him, not his mother, but his mother. I 'd got 
 ter give in ter thet old woman, not becos 't was 
 my dooty, but becos 'twas his will 't I should. 
 Jim 's ez domineerin' ez the next one ; an' his 
 pride teached him thet his mother was part 'n' 
 passel of him, an' I 'd oughter take her with 
 him. Them was his feelin's, an' I did n't respect 
 'em, no, not a mite. I uster get real bitter 
 dwellin' on it, an' I 'd say ter myself, ef it 's sech 
 a towerin' thing ter be this man's mother, why 
 ain't it somethin' ter be his wife? Why don't I 
 count for nothin' 'tall with him? And I'd fret 
 tell I was most wild ; for nothin' took my mind 
 off'n it. I could fret jest ez well when I was 
 doin' up my work, sweepin' from the north pole 
 ter the south pole in thet shackly old house ez 
 any other time. But the more I thought on it 
 the more I was fo'ced ter own thet Jim was 
 wayed like his mother. I could see her ways, 
 some on 'em, right over again in him. I did n't 
 wanter own it; but there 't was. An' then I'd 
 think ter myself, ' Come, Louisa, why can 't you 
 get along with one o' those Flints ez well ez the 
 
 o o 
 
 other? ' but I could n't make it the same noway ; 
 an' I kep' goin' over thet tex' where it says thet 
 no one shell sarve two masters, fer he shell hate 
 the one an' love the other; an' so 'twas with 
 me about them two. Likely 't was becos I was 
 so wicked, wa'n't it?"
 
 I/O SOUTH-COUNTY NEIGHBORS. 
 
 " No, child, I don't think 't was clear wicked 
 ness; 'twas on'y natur'. Yer'm got to enjure 
 yer husband's faults, an' thet's the burden thct 
 fits ter yer shoulders ; but I don't rightly see 
 what clear call ye hev ter bear an' forbear with 
 yer mother-in-law to the eend o' time. Yer did n't 
 promise nor vow her nothin', djd ye? No, she 
 ain't no mastery over ye by rights; an' I say 
 let her go ter her own folks ter find enjurin' 
 patience.' T ain't in reason thet son's wife kin 
 be own daughter ter nobody, let alone them 
 thet's sech ez she is. We can't live our lives 
 but onct, an' she can't be the fust tho't in no 
 house no more. Thet 's hard lines, I know ; 
 but it 's what I Ve got ter realize when my time 
 comes." 
 
 " Oh, Charlotte, yer 're enough sight dif'rent 
 from Mother Flint; nobody 'd ever wish yer 
 further; but I railly think Jim wanted her ter go 
 ter keep house fer her brother, fer all he was so 
 stiff with me about it Yes, he 's pretty much 
 lost all the good opinion he ever hed o' me. 
 He took ter sayin' things thet was real cruel ; he 
 could be the most sarcastic thet ever was. I 
 come out in religion about the time I was goin' 
 with Jim, an' I wanted he should too ; but he 
 wa'n't ready then, an' he don't belong now, an' I 
 don't know 's he ever will. He 's took up a real 
 tauntin' way now about religion, always won- 
 derin' why sech religious creturs ez women is
 
 WATCHING WITH THE SICK. I /I 
 
 can't live together ez peaceable ez ev'ry-day sin 
 ners does. Yes, he 's ready 'nough to fling that 
 at me, sence he 's so disappointed in me. Well, 
 it 's all over with us. He knows my faults, an' 
 I know his'n, an' ev'rythin 's ended an' done 
 with." 
 
 " No, yer redic'lous child. What air ye both 
 on ye but a couple o' childun, settin' an' playin' 
 scorn each ter t' other? Yer lives is jest a be- 
 ginnin' in airnest. Fer pity's sake ! ye did n't 
 expect ter walk through life a-steppin' on ter 
 roses like two riggers on a valintine, did ye? 
 Yer ain't lived very long inter this here world, 
 but I sh'd tho't yer 'd knowed better 'n thet. 
 No : now 's the time, when ye know each other's 
 faults ter show thet ye ain't all faults. The 's 
 somethin' left yit ter count on. Jim ain't quite 
 a monster, by all 't I c'n make out ('twould n't 
 be safe fer me ter say so anyhow), an' I know 
 yer ain't nothin' but a poor little goose. The 's 
 a futur, an' one wuth havin', fer ye yit, or I ain't 
 no prophet." 
 
 " Charlotte, I 'm 'fraid you don't know Jim 
 ez well 's I do," replied the girl, sadly. " He 
 don't think o' me ez he did onct. He thinks 
 his mother 's old, an' hes seen trials, but thet I 
 ain't no excuse for my bad tempers, an' he 
 says, but there, I won't tell what he says, 
 I 've told too much, a' ready." 
 
 " It's my idee thet Master Jim's a good deal
 
 SOUTH-COUNTY NEIGHBORS. 
 
 more ter blame in all this fuss than what yer 
 be, yer poor child," began Charlotte, with heat ; 
 then, touched by the mute appeal of the worn 
 face, she concluded gently, " but it don't help 
 yer none ter dwell on thet, dooz it? " 
 
 " Oh, no, no, it ain't what he said ter me, it's 
 what I said an' done ter him that comes back 
 now ter trouble me most, an' keeps me so anx 
 ious in my mind. I b'lieve when we try to 
 please ourselves the most, givin' way t' our 
 feelin's, and talkin' back, we've got ter pay fer 
 it all afterwards." 
 
 " Yes, ef yer live long, yer '11 feel thet more 
 an' more. Self-pleasin 's a snare, whatever way 
 we sarch it out. It ain't no comfort ter look 
 back upon self-will, an' seekin' yer own pleas 
 ure. I Ve hed my solemn times in my life, 
 when I was brung low with sickness an' trouble, 
 when my baby was born, they all tho't I 
 could n't never git up ag'in, an' it all come 
 ter me then, clear ez day. Self-pleasin' was 
 dust an' ashes in my teeth, but ef I 'd ever giv' 
 a cup o' cold water ter my inemy, why, 'twas 
 coolness ter my sperit." 
 
 The words of the faithful woman, who owed 
 nothing to the wisdom of books, but who had 
 patiently submitted to the discipline of life, 
 breathed such an influence as if her searching 
 questionings had been voiced in the poet's 
 language :
 
 WATCHING WITH THE SICK. 1/3 
 
 " The pleasures thou hast planned, 
 
 Where shall their memory be, 
 When the white angel with the freezing hand 
 Shall sit and watch by thee ? " 
 
 " Charlotte," whispered Louisa, after a si 
 lence, " I keep goin' an' goin' it over in my 
 mind how I come off an' left him. I told him, 
 after we 'd hed one o' them talks, thet I could n't 
 stay there no longer, an' I 'd leave him ter his 
 mother, sence she was the one he thought the 
 most on, an' I 'd go home ter my own folks. 
 And he said, never onct lookin' to-wards me, 'All 
 right, please yerself; ther 's nobody else kin 
 please ye, thet 's certin.' An' so I come off; 
 but I should n't thought he 'd took me ter 
 my word so onfeelin' ; an' only ter think, he 
 would n't even look at me," repeated Louisa, 
 dwelling piteously upon this crowning misery. 
 
 " Mebbe he dursn't look at ye, fer fear he 'd 
 break down," judiciously suggested Charlotte. 
 " Yer take my word fer it, 't was thet. I guess 
 I know a leetle more about the ways o' men- 
 folks, an' about human natur' than what yer 
 do, child." Charlotte caressed the slight hand 
 that she had taken in her own with motherly 
 tenderness. 
 
 "Yer hed a hard life on it, didn't ye?" 
 questioned her young friend, momentarily di 
 verted from her own interests. 
 
 " I made it hard fer myself." The words fell
 
 1/4 SOUTH-COUNTY NEIGHBORS. 
 
 slowly from her lips, and her strong, clear-cut 
 profile was turned away from the listener. "Ev- 
 'rybody in this town knows the story about 
 me," she went on, in cold, measured tones; 
 "how my husband was a drinking man, at 
 times, though there wa'n't nothin' else ter bring 
 ag'in him, an' a good-natur'd man when he was 
 himself; but I was proud-sperited, and one 
 time I couldn't be'n in my right mind, no 
 mor'n he was I vexed him so with my tongue 
 't I driv' him away from home, an' he shipped fer 
 a vy'ge, an' was lost with the schooner. Twenty 
 year ago ! twenty year ago ! " she slowly re 
 peated, looking fixedly into the dim vacancy of 
 the room, as if she gazed far into the past. 
 
 "Don't, don't look like thet, Charlotte; don't 
 take on ! " called Louisa, " I 'm sorry I spoke 
 so. I never thought; why, I never see yer 
 look like this " - catching hold of her gown 
 with a childlike action, to which her friend pres 
 ently responded, turning toward her again with 
 her wonted aspect, " Don't go back to it all ! 
 I think yer 're the best woman I ever see, an' 
 always jest ez good an' sweet ez Cousin M'hal' ! 
 And ev'rybody says yer Ve brought up yer boy 
 wonderful." 
 
 " Yes, I hed my boy," breathed the mother, 
 with returning tranquillity. 
 
 " It fairly frightens me," cried Louisa, ner 
 vously renewing her troubled confessions, "ter
 
 WATCHING WITH THE SICK. 1/5 
 
 find out how homesick I be here ter home. 
 E v'ry thing 's so changed ter me, I feel ez ef I 
 hed n't never lived here. I 'm safter here from 
 trouble, mebbe; but it's all so strange sence I 
 come back seems so I can't stay;" and she 
 moved restlessly from side to side. 
 
 " So yer find, after all, thet ez miz'able an' 
 wretched ez you 'n' Jim was together, you 'm 
 yit more miz'able an' wretched apart," Char 
 lotte questioned, with a faint smile. 
 
 " Oh, I dono 's he wants ter lay eyes on me 
 ag'in." (A pause.) " But, oh dear ! I can't 
 no more stay here than I could git inter the 
 old chee-ry cradle in the garr't thet I was 
 rocked in. I hed some bitter times, an' some 
 hard cryin' spells over there ; but well, I did 
 take more int'rest in things than I can now. 
 Seems ez ef I was done with home fer good, 
 an' I dono where I '11 turn to now." 
 
 "I '11 tell ye, Leeweeze. Yer go home ter 
 yer husban', yer know yer want ter; yer know 
 well 'nough Jim '11 jump over the house ter 
 hev ye back ag'in, though yer pertend not; 
 an' jest you try, now, an' see ef ye can't make 
 of him. I ain't the one ter give ye no advice, 
 but my life 's giv' ye warnin', an' yer go ter 
 yer own heart fer caounsel. Can't yer try ter 
 rate yer husban' an' other folks, too 't won't 
 do no hurt 'cordin' to the best the' is in 'em, 
 or even 'cordin' ter what they 'm a-tryin' ter be,
 
 1 76 SOUTH-COUNTY NEIGHBORS. 
 
 more 'n what they actilly be, some on the time? 
 Thet 's the kind o' marcy we all on us hes ter 
 cry fer. Why, yer was speakin' jest now about 
 comin' out in religion ; how do yer think the 
 good Lord kin count ye 'mong the number o' 
 his handmaids? More by yer good desires in 
 yer prayers an' hymns than by yer righteous 
 sarvice, ain't it? Oh! how kin we shet up our 
 hearts from folks lest the Lord should harden 
 his heart ag'inst us?" 
 
 "But Mother Flint?" demurred Louisa, re 
 peating the dreaded name as if it had been that 
 of Mother Jezebel. 
 
 " Never yer mind about yer Mother Flint," 
 responded her adviser, with decision. " I 'd do 
 the best I could, an' not trouble about old Mis' 
 Flint ; an' yer see, now, ef it don't all come out 
 right at last." 
 
 Louisa scanned the speaker's kindly face, in 
 the endeavor to penetrate to the depths of this 
 oracular response. The dimple in Charlotte's 
 cheek, that one indestructible souvenir of 
 youth that continues to grace the human coun 
 tenance through all the phases of maturity and 
 age faintly played, combining with the hu 
 morous light that showed in her eyes to per 
 plex the observer ; and, after a prolonged 
 scrutiny, her young friend seemed to abandon 
 further research into the unfathomed wisdom 
 of the other's experience ; but, sinking back
 
 WATCHING WITH THE SICK. 177 
 
 among her pillows, she announced, wearily, as 
 if the confession were torn from her, 
 
 " I suppose I shell hev ter go back," and, spent 
 with the fatigues and emotions of the day, im 
 mediately burst into a passion of sobbing. 
 
 " Of course yer will, dear," briskly returned 
 her companion with cheerful sympathy. " What 
 else hev yer ben meanin' ter do, this whole en- 
 jurin' time?" 
 
 Louisa neither denied nor affirmed this astute 
 statement, but when Charlotte had finally soothed 
 and quieted her, sent her to see if Aunt Eesther 
 were not calling. 
 
 " No, child," announced Charlotte, on her return 
 a few minutes later. " You 'm kinder weak and 
 nervious, thet's all; the' ain't nobody stirrin'." 
 
 " Well, I hear somebody now fast enough," 
 insisted the invalid. " Hark ! " 
 
 " Well, true ez yer live the' is somebody now 
 knockin' ter the front door. I '11 go right away." 
 And Charlotte hastened to answer the summons, 
 which rapidly grew urgent. 
 
 Returning after a long absence, she found 
 Louisa panting, flushed, and wide-eyed. No 
 need to tell her who the late visitor was. 
 
 " Leeweeze, I 'm afeerd ye don't know Jim Flint 
 ez well ez I do," began Charlotte, in stern mim 
 icry of her patient's recent words ; and then 
 both women laughed and kissed and cried with 
 a kind of soft violence quite unbefitting the dis- 
 12
 
 1 78 SOUTH-COUNTY NEIGHBORS. 
 
 cipline of the sickroom and the habits of rustic 
 impassibility. 
 
 " Yer see, Leeweeze,. yer ain't hed the hard 
 times all t' yerself. Yer husban's hed time ter 
 think over these things, too, an" he 's tho't ter some 
 puppus. I guess 't '11 be a long lesson ter both 
 on ye. But he never knowed a breath about yer 
 bein' sick these two three days tell one o' the 
 gang told him ter-night arter hours ; an' then he 
 could n't git no team away up there ter the Dug- 
 way, so he travelled afoot ev'ry step, an' when I 
 let him in he was white 's a sheet, an' looked fit 
 ter drop. 'How's my wife?' said he. 'Yer 
 wife 's a sufferin' woman,' said I ; ' but her main 
 distress is in her mind.' And then, Leeweeze, 
 thet gret, terrible, sarcastic man you was a-tellin' 
 me on jest broke down an' cried like a baby, 
 or a man ; for they kin both on 'em cry with all 
 their might when they onct git fa'rly under way. 
 Matchment take ye both fer two o' the foolishest 
 young folks 't ever I see. I sha'n't do nothin' 
 more fer ye ! " 
 
 After this style of rustic raillery tempered 
 with affection, the elder woman went on until 
 she had completed that minute account of the 
 interview which was eagerly exacted of her by 
 the patient. 
 
 " But then he started up, an' I tho't he would 
 ha' breshed me away from the door like a fly ; 
 but I hild to, an' told him, ' No ; you can't see
 
 WATCHING WITH THE SICK. 179 
 
 her ter-night. She 's dreadful weak, an' nervious, 
 an' I can't hev her gettin' all worked up ; an', 
 besides, yer don't want ter come in so, all unbe 
 knownst ter her folks. Her ma 's comin' home 
 ter-morrer ; she 's ben sent fer, an' you come 
 then.' I teched his pride pooty clus' with thet, 
 so 't he giv' in ; but he '11 be here ter-morrer, 
 an' then he wants ter be frien's with yer ma, 
 an' all yer folks. And don't yer fret no more 
 about poor old Mis' Flint; she's goin' ter keep 
 house fer her brother. Did n't I tell ye 
 'twould all come out right? I expect 'twas 
 more 'n hinted to her afore ; but anyway Jim 
 stopped a few minutes ter home on his way 
 here, an' settled it. But yer oughter rej'ice with 
 tremblin' over sech ez thet; an' I 'm sorry fer 
 Mis' Flint; fer she 's a mother, with a mother's 
 feelin's, I know, even ef she don't make no very 
 agreeable showin' on 'em. Mebbe yer'll come 
 ter some better onderstandin' with her some 
 day, spacially ef she lives to a good distance 
 off." 
 
 "Oh, Charlotte, you do make me feel ashamed ; 
 but I can't seem to realize my wrong* doin's the 
 way I hed oughter. Seems though anybody 
 would be solemnized ter fare so much better 
 than they desarved ; but I can't feel nothin' truly 
 but glad, glad, glad ! 
 
 " But I' ve got ter own up somethin' ; " re 
 sumed the patient after a pause, and with rather
 
 ISO SOUTH-COUNTY NEIGHBORS. 
 
 an abashed look. "What do yer think ! when 
 I sent yer out ter listen ef Aunt Eesther wa'n't 
 callin' I got thet pitcher o' water she brought up 
 ter keep fer her straw-braidin', an' I drinked all 
 the' was left in it ! " 
 
 " The Lord preserve us ! " ejaculated the 
 watcher in consternation. "Well, well, an' I 
 never see what you was at ! What a han' yer 
 be ter git roun' folks ! I don't wonder Jim #n' 
 me don' stand no chance with ye. I hope an' 
 pray ye won't hev ter suffer fer bein* so heedless 
 an' keerless. Here now, time 's come round agin 
 ter give ye some more o' them powders." 
 
 But when the draft was prepared, and Char 
 lotte had approached the bed, the deep breath 
 ing of its occupant told the nurse that the 
 sudden slumber of physical exhaustion and 
 mental relief had at last overpowered the irri 
 tated nerves of her restless charge. 
 
 " I declare, I won't wake her, not ter give her 
 no doctor's stuff thet ever was pestled in a mor 
 tar ! " rebelliously uttered Charlotte in subdued 
 tones, but animated by a sense of reckless de 
 fiance tha't kept her intensely wakeful for the 
 next hour, during which she anxiously watched 
 over the sleeper. 
 
 " She seems ter rest jest ez peaceful ez though 
 thet drink o' water hed n't harmed her one mite," 
 finally murmured the watcher, relaxing her vigi 
 lance, and beginning to notice the chill of the
 
 WATCHING WITH THE SICK. l8l 
 
 night air as she shivered and drew up her 
 shawl. 
 
 The night wore on, and still there was no 
 change in the hushed repose that wrapped the 
 house in silence. Charlotte at last rested her 
 head for a moment, as she intended, on the light- 
 stand beside the bed, and was presently fast 
 asleep. The wan hours of morning stole through 
 the room, the solemn glories of dawn marshalled 
 in the heavens, and the cheerful light of a new 
 day dwelt tenderly upon the soft innocence that 
 informed the childlike face of one sleeper and 
 threw a ray of consecration upon the worn feat 
 ures of the other, that now showed some traces of 
 youthful grace, as touched by the soothing spell 
 of slumber. And the place was sacred to the 
 visible presence of that influence which we name 
 the ever-womanly, that influence which, albeit 
 with many errors, and amid occasional reproach, 
 still safely guards and cherishes the one great 
 trust of humanity, still is true to the duties, the 
 hopes, and the affections that centre in the 
 home.
 
 JACKSON DAWLEY'S WIFE. 
 
 GOOD-BY, good-by, Mrs. Dawlcy. I ought 
 to have been off with the others, instead 
 of outstaying the season, like a belated blue 
 bottle. You must be glad to see the last of 
 us, for we have been the hungriest hunters that 
 ever tramped the Flats, and we Ve made you no 
 end of cooking. You and Dawley can settle 
 down to a quiet life now. You '11 be snug and 
 comfortable enough here next week, at Thanks 
 giving, won't you ? " 
 
 The young woman to whom this effusively 
 cheerful leave-taking was addressed, while her 
 hand was held a second longer than the speaker 
 had intended before meeting the dumb appeal 
 of her questioning eyes, made no very relevant 
 or expansive answer, being, indeed, little used 
 to deal in other than the most practical expres 
 sions of personal interest. 
 
 "It's comin' on ter rain," she announced, in 
 her usual languid and plaintive monotone. 
 " Block Island looms up, and the clouds looks 
 oily. Yer better take the umbrel', Mr. Crown- 
 inshield, or yer'll ketch yer death. Hitty, run
 
 JACKSON DAWLEY'S WIFE. 183 
 
 an' fetch it, Quick! yer father's waitin' out. 
 there." 
 
 Mr. Crowninshield considerately restrained the 
 movement of impatience with which he would have 
 declined the anxiously proffered attention, but 
 took refuge from the unconscious revelation of 
 nameless distress written on Susan Dawley's 
 unschooled features in a final romp with the 
 children; and, with an exchange of shouted 
 good-byes between him and them, and the last 
 courtesies of taking leave of their mother, he 
 was driven away to the station by Dawley, in 
 whose house a few autumn visitors had been 
 boarding while their host accompanied them in 
 their daily hunting-tramps. 
 
 Susan stood on the rough door-stone of the 
 old Dawley homestead, transfixed, as it seemed, 
 in the stillness of patient pain, and looking 
 after the two figures as they disappeared around 
 the turn in the road, one so firm, easy, and 
 self-reliant in its air, the other obscurely hint 
 ing a sullen defiance in the ignoble lines of its 
 brute strength, and suggesting the saying in 
 which Le Roux has acutely expressed the bu 
 colic quality, " The peasant is a man only as a 
 'block of marble is a statue." 
 
 She was still mechanically looking into the 
 distance with eyes that saw nothing, when her 
 eldest girl pulled her gown to make her hear her 
 reiteration of "Manner, baby's all waked up,
 
 1 84 SOUTH-COUNTY NEIGHBORS. 
 
 .and she 's fixin' ter cry ! " The mother took the 
 fretful, ailing child, and tried to hush its weakly, 
 wretched wailings. But while she monotonously 
 soothed and crooned, her consciousness was 
 filled with other thoughts than such as were con 
 cerned with the helpless creature so seldom out 
 of her arms. 
 
 This woman of twenty-six had borne seven 
 children, and had cried herself heartsick and 
 despairing over the graves of three of them, as 
 they were made in the bleak spot on the wind 
 swept hill where the dead and gone Dawleys of 
 a hundred years lay in their unmarked, un 
 guarded mounds, and slept that satisfactory 
 slumber which wraps the virtuous yeomanry 
 who are buried in their own acres ; albeit their 
 repose was but little respected by the heavy- 
 treading cattle, or the curiously browsing sheep. 
 
 Not that Susan dwelt bitterly upon these mor 
 tuary humiliations. She had known no other 
 conditions on the adjoining farm, her meagre 
 patrimony, where she had lived until her mar 
 riage at sixteen ; and the usages of these two 
 places comprised nearly all that she knew of the 
 world. She had never penetrated the limits of 
 her township, and of its villages she had never 
 seen the chief. Never had she shared in the 
 bustle and the gayeties of the Carcassonne of her 
 province, never yet had realized her childish 
 hopes of joining in its Fourth-of-July pageants,
 
 JACKSON DAWLEY'S WIFE. 185 
 
 or of beholding that palpable dream of all in 
 fantile delights, the toy-shop window, crowded 
 with dolls that were seated in a row, each bear 
 ing her price-ticket in her lap, as if the display 
 were a crude tableau of a sale of Circassian 
 beauties. When she was first married her hus 
 band used to talk of taking her there when he 
 marketed his farm products, and even now he 
 would sometimes say, " I tell you, Suse, some 
 day, when it 's good goin', an' you ain't no butter 
 to make, an' the childun ain't sick, an' I have n't 
 no newspaper ter read, nor nothin* ter hender, 
 I 'd jest ez lives ez not take ye over ter the Ville 
 ter do yer tradin'." But such complacent offers 
 came less and less frequently, and Susan's timid 
 ity, indifference, tact, or possibly some more 
 complex feeling than these, saved her from the 
 error of taking this marital magnanimity too 
 literally. 
 
 She had never conquered that oppressive 
 timidity with which she had always regarded 
 Jackson Dawley, though they had spent the 
 greater part of their lives together. She used to 
 suffer with a mute dread of the rough boy, just 
 as she shrank from his great dogs ; and once she 
 saw him beating his horse in a rage that sent 
 her cowering away, with the feeling (for she was 
 then dimly aware of the shape her future was 
 to take), that it would be a pitiable thing to be 
 wife to a man capable of such savagery.
 
 1 86 SOUTH-COUNTY NEIGHBORS. 
 
 They had not been schoolmates, for Susan's 
 delicate constitution, the distance from the 
 schoolhouse, and her grandmother's indulgence 
 to an orphan, had nearly deprived her of the 
 educational opportunities afforded by her native 
 district. "What kinder diff'unce did it make?" 
 demanded her grandfather, with virile disgust; 
 for, though he was a yeoman of few acres, he 
 was none the less imbued with the fine old feudal 
 spirit of the Rhode Island landholder, and sorely 
 deplored the lack of heirs male " to bear up the 
 Mowry name." He deprecated the folly of keep 
 ing his granddaughter at school after her four 
 teenth year. " She 's nothin' but a no-account 
 little dish-washer, anyway, and she c'n larn her 
 business best 'round house, 'cordin' ter my 
 notion." In the routine of farmhouse work Su 
 san grew to be an awkward, old-fashioned girl, 
 speaking the quaint dialect of her grandparents 
 in archaic purity, free from the coarse alloy of 
 modern slang. Dame Diffidence, of Doubting 
 Castle, herself, was not more shy than Susan ; 
 and the solitary life of the farm had made her 
 odd and indescribably rustic, but she was un 
 touched by the rough influences of the sordid 
 village life as it is cheapened by the rude publi 
 city of the street and the shop. When she went 
 out " to walk abroad," as she phrased it, she 
 buried her features in a sunbonnet as deep as 
 the Quaker head-covering, and thus equipped
 
 JACKSON DAWLEY'S WIFE. 187 
 
 with modesty's shield and defence, remotely 
 wondered at the hardihood of the girls whom 
 she saw growing bold in unyouthful defiance as 
 they flaunted their imitation fineries in the garish 
 gaze of that school of cynicism, the sidewalk. 
 All her associations were clean and pure free 
 from the taint of a selfish and dangerous vanity. 
 The year in its round kept her among healthful 
 rustic sights and sounds, and brought her the 
 wholesome companionship of dumb life, in the 
 cade lambs and belated chickens, for whom she 
 knit stockings, as her grandmother had it, and 
 whom she at least established in the warmest 
 corner of the kitchen, whence mysterious cluck- 
 ings and peepings issued from a dilapidated bas 
 ket. Through all the season's changes of that 
 country life, which has its idyllic aspects to an 
 observer, but is full of the prose of the severest 
 toil, she was zealous and diligent, from the first 
 pulling of spring greens in the brook-meadow 
 to the soap-making in the fall, when a bent, old, 
 black witch stirred the gypsy caldron hung un 
 der the great apple-tree, and Susan helped her 
 grandmother to accomplish those labors and 
 observe those traditionary customs prescribed 
 by rustic superstition, lest, if they were neg 
 lected, the much-placated soap should refuse 
 "to come." 
 
 Her fifteenth summer brought her that pre 
 mature inheritance of beauty and bloom that
 
 1 88 SOUTH-COUNTY NEIGHBORS. 
 
 is early won and early lost ; and its exquisite dazzle 
 brought an answering gleam to the dullest eyes. 
 The gruff old Irishman who had for years helped 
 on the farm in haying-time, but with whom Susan 
 had never felt well acquainted, owing to his 
 sedulously cultivated deafness, and his confusing 
 habit of invariably shouting "Mim ! " in perfunc 
 tory reply to all feminine interrogations, even 
 he now doubled her embarrassment by deliber 
 ately surveying her, and emerging from his inar 
 ticulate state with the emphatic declaration that 
 she was the makings of a fine girl ; further in 
 dulging in a warm comparison between her and 
 one " Miss Honora McGlathery, who was the 
 beautifullest lady, and lived in a grand house, 
 just forninst the Phaynix Park," with some further 
 particulars respecting that semi-mythical person 
 age, of whose name, indeed, old Phclim's cronies 
 often had occasion to be weary. And the cheery 
 little English woman, a red-cloaked, courtesying 
 old-world figure, that sometimes, in a press of 
 work, brought an oddly foreign presence into 
 the Mowry surroundings, smilingly announced, 
 " She Ve grown to be the handsome gell, ma'am ; 
 she 's as slim as slim ; her eyes are as black as 
 black; her skin is white as milk; her hair is 
 that fair and curly; and she has the feeturs of 
 a lady born, has Susan Mowry;" and as the 
 language of this eulogy very nearly resembles 
 that of the descriptions of young country maids
 
 JACKSON DAWLEY'S WIFE. 189 
 
 in fairy tales, it may well serve to render the 
 values of an unspoiled, primitive beauty. 
 
 It was not at all in consequence of Susan's 
 bloom, which inspired these international com 
 pliments, but because of her grandmother's death 
 and her grandfather's decline, that her fate was 
 now to be decided, and her inheritance to pass 
 into the keeping of Jackson Dawley. Surely 
 this was an idyllic marriage ! What more charm 
 ing pastoral could there be than the tender union 
 of two simple young lives? But Susan shrank 
 with unfeigned distaste from the arrangement, 
 actually throwing her apron over her head and 
 running away when she saw her destined swain 
 doubtfully approaching, by which blindly im 
 pulsive retreat she not only got an ignominious 
 fall, but incurred the weight of her grandfather's 
 sarcasms. Jackson's only responses to the pa 
 ternal urgings were reluctantly given, but were 
 of a character that slightly discouraged the elder 
 Dawley in his first keen insistance upon the 
 scheme. " Tell you how 'tis, neighbor," frankly 
 announced Old Man Dawley (to give him the 
 derisive title that his hypochondriac notions had 
 gained for him in his middle-age), " tell you jest 
 what," he pursued, in the vigorous but enigmatic 
 idiom which conveys the mortification of dis 
 appointed match-makers, " them sticks won't 
 fight." 
 
 " And I tell you they shell ! " explosively re-
 
 190 SOUTH-COUNTY NEIGHBORS. 
 
 torted Granther Mowry, with a fine contempt for 
 the cobweb scruples of his crony, and bringing 
 down his ponderous fist with an emphasis that 
 shook a stone or two from the tottering boundary- 
 wall between the farms. " Say " (with an irri 
 tated disgust at the other's faint-hcartcdness), 
 "what ails ye, anyhow? D'ye think I don't 
 know my own mind ? " 
 
 Susan's mind in the matter, had it been sought, 
 could not have been very definitely stated. She 
 was but dimly conscious of the wrong done to 
 her youth by the fate which she was forced to 
 accept at the sordid hands of her arbitrary elders. 
 That Jackson Dawley was a less ideal figure than 
 even the conventional youths of those stories of 
 not too refined a tone that she was at much pains 
 to spell out of the village paper, might perhaps 
 be accounted but a flimsy objection. 
 
 Who was there to teach her that a loveless 
 marriage was an unholy one? From whom 
 could she have learned that the vows of mar 
 riage were in no degree less solemn and sacred 
 than the ceremonies of the Christian sacraments? 
 Her own heart might intuitively prompt her to 
 these beliefs ; but who was to credit them with 
 the stamp of experience and authority? Would 
 it be her grandmother, tottering into her second 
 childhood just as Susan's young feet began to 
 tread the perplexed path of life? Or would it 
 be the spinster schoolmistress who sometimes
 
 JACKSON DAWLEY'S WIFE. 191 
 
 boarded at the Mowry house on her rounds? 
 a desiccated personality; a being of superlative 
 refinement, who never spoke of a baby but 
 under the withering title of " a babe," who 
 would not refer to a housebreaker in less polite 
 language than to inquire "what sort of a looking 
 gentleman did he appear to be?" and who, in 
 preparing fruit for the table, never " snuffed " 
 the strawberries as her honest grandmother 
 did, nor " hulled them," as her mother had 
 it, but with accurate elegance, " removed the 
 calyxes." From a schooling in this learned 
 lady's somewhat academic conceptions of life 
 how much of saving wisdom would our poor 
 Susan learn? 
 
 Or was it from the literature or other influ 
 ences of the intermittent Sunday-school at which 
 she was an infrequent attendant that she could 
 get any guidance in these questions? The books 
 were dumb, and gave no sign; anything having 
 the most remote bearing on the one vital ques 
 tion which the young and ignorant readers would 
 be called on to decide being excluded with fever 
 ish care from their negative pages. And the 
 teachers, in all their associations with the young 
 girls of their classes, never strengthened their 
 work by that community of interests which 
 might have been formed between the elders and 
 the juniors if motherfy wisdom or sisterly sym 
 pathy had not stopped just short of the one
 
 IQ2 SOUTH-COUNTY NEIGHBORS. 
 
 point of central importance in the future of 
 these immature lives. 
 
 Nor had Jackson, when bidden by his father, 
 in Susan's behalf, to look on her, and love, as in 
 duty bound, any other excuse for his unwilling 
 ness to obey than his questionable interest in 
 " that Lewis girl," as she was conspicuously 
 known in the mill where she worked, and in the 
 sidewalk parlance of the 'ville. That Jackson 
 had long been the admirer-in-chief of this not 
 inexorable young person, his father well knew, 
 and was exceedingly anxious to sever the con 
 nection, not only from the fine-spun motives of 
 moral prudence, but for the good and sufficient 
 reason that the Lewis girl had nothing but the 
 clothes she stood in, and Susan was a " gal o' 
 prop'ty," with fifty acres of land coming to her, 
 and hundreds of dollars in the savings bank be 
 sides. The mundane old rustic put aside all 
 scruples concerning the undesirable Miss Lewis 
 with a readiness that was nothing less than 
 Chesterfieldian. " Jinny Lewis never wa'n't 
 none too good," was his cynical conclusion ; 
 and " That 's her lookout," was the dry rejoinder 
 to the query as to what would become of her, 
 which Jackson, with no unmanly spirit, addressed 
 to his honored parent. 
 
 So the marriage of reason, which occurs not 
 only in the great world, but is also evolved under 
 those sordid conditions of bucolic life which
 
 JACKSON DAWLEY'S WIFE. 193 
 
 foster the mercenary spirit, was accomplished ; 
 and it had brought its penalty in the weight of 
 the ten years that had rested heavily on the 
 slight shoulders of the weaker party to the con 
 tract. These weary years had visited Susan 
 with ill health that had sadly obscured her 
 beauty. The pure and delicate contours of 
 feature still asserted their lasting perfection; 
 but all the freshness and light had faded out of 
 the face ; its bloom had gone ; the lids showed 
 a spiritless droop ; and some deeper dejection 
 than such as is bred of the dulness of a drudg 
 ing routine gave a rude pathos to the Yankee 
 accent that lent its prolonged melancholy to her 
 tones. Indeed, Mr. Crowninshield's only depar 
 ture from that grave and punctilious respect 
 which his hostess, present or absent, received 
 from him, was made in that allusion to this 
 characteristic utterance which was conveyed in 
 his remark to a fellow-sportsman that Dawley's 
 wife ought to be called Mrs. Drawley. 
 
 Susan Dawley could have but little pride or 
 pleasure in her children. They were all, like 
 the fretful, restless infant whom she now hushed 
 and rocked, predestined to be blights, not blos 
 soms, on the hardy old stock which had sud 
 denly withered, after a century's seasoning, 
 under the adverse conditions to which these 
 pale and spiritless little folks succumbed. The 
 cruel, penetrating dampness of the mists from 
 13
 
 194 SOUTH-COUNTY NEIGHBORS. 
 
 Cedar Pond, which the old house greedily drank 
 in at its gaping crannies, and the deathly chill 
 from the side-hill against which it was built, so 
 that light and air were shut out from one of its 
 four walls, drained away the feeble vitality with 
 which they began that struggle for breath which 
 we hail as life. It was but a sorry Eden that 
 home in which Susan, on her first coming to it, 
 had been met on the threshold of her room by 
 the portent of a cold, coiling black snake no 
 such infrequent guest, as she had learned by a 
 longer experience of the persistent dampness 
 and darkness of a house partly entombed in the 
 hillside. 
 
 Of course she had heard something and had 
 divined more of that wretched story of Jinny 
 Lewis ; and though the girl, after her dismissal 
 from the factory, had left the Ville to look for 
 work in Providence, as she said, Susan still per- 
 turbedly associated her bold, hardened, unyouth- 
 ful beauty with her late dwelling-place, and 
 never ceased to feel an unreasoning jealousy at 
 her husband's errands there, and an instinctive 
 shrinking from the sight of a town that, to the 
 severity of her conception, lay under the shadow 
 of a great guilt. She thought of this village, to 
 her so inextricably connected with the wrongs 
 of a shameful history, with some touch of that 
 ascetic spirit which she drew from the Quaker 
 grcat-grandsire of whom she had often heard it
 
 JACKSON DAWLEY'S WIFE. 195 
 
 told how when he was aboard ship, a-sailing on 
 the high seas, and the captain put into London 
 town, he would not so much as look upon Baby 
 lon, but bore his testimony against her iniquities 
 by staying below reading the Word until the 
 day came to weigh anchor ; and, when urged to 
 go ashore, saying only, " Friend, thou art an 
 unstable counsellor;" or ejaculating, "Lord, 
 turn Thou away mine eyes from beholding 
 vanity." 
 
 Jackson neither comprehended nor was inter 
 ested in his wife's individuality. Her moods, as 
 far as he noted them, were such as to provoke 
 his impatience or kindle his resentment. Nor 
 could he ever quite forgive her former owner 
 ship of the acres she had meekly brought 
 him. His most tolerant estimate of her was 
 that of a mild contempt; his utmost good-nature 
 toward her but faintly suggested the strength 
 of the ties that bound him to his children ; for 
 he was an indulgent father. He suffered in the 
 deaths of the children with a fierce and angry 
 passion of loss, not unmingled with the spirit of 
 reproach. If Susan had known scarlet fever 
 when she saw it, their eldest girl might have 
 lived, and her death was as a rankling wrong in 
 the breast of her father. " I 'd ruther ha' lost 
 the best cow in my yard," he told Mr. Crownin- 
 shield, with the unconscious sincerity of a hard 
 man measuring his sorest regrets by the only
 
 196 SOUTH-COUNTY NEIGHBORS. 
 
 standard of values within the grasp of his nature. 
 But the children, timid and shrinking, like their 
 mother, and in some occult way dimly aware of 
 the invisible barrier that separated the nearer 
 parent from the solicitous one, often met his affec 
 tion with a peevish coldness for which he secretly 
 blamed Susan, and perhaps with reason ; for, .if 
 the average wife and mother is sometimes capa 
 ble of an unworthy jealousy over the affections 
 of her children, and yields their father a share 
 in them only as a dole, can an unloved and un 
 loving woman be expected to show any finer 
 sense of the mutual magnanimity of the domes 
 tic relations? Nature reserves this certain re 
 source, albeit an ungenerous one, to the most 
 unhappy woman, that her children's hearts are 
 in her hand, and she may turn them whitherso 
 ever she will. Her little child is her inalienable 
 possession, and whoever shares its love with her 
 must often accept as a grace that which might 
 be claimed as a right. 
 
 Susan, either intent on her ailing child or 
 wrapped in her unwelcome thoughts, did not 
 notice that the other children had slipped away 
 into the bedroom ; did not heed the shaggy Irish 
 setter who, after a gloomy meditation upon his 
 master's mortifying desertion of him, finally ap 
 proached his mistress, of whom he commonly 
 made but small account, to lay his head in her 
 lap, for the sake of society, and with a view to
 
 JACKSON DAWLEY'S WIFE. 197 
 
 breakfast, vigorously expressed in the thumpings 
 of an energetic tail ; nor did she see the coarse 
 black net cap of her mother-in-law, as its active 
 wearer whisked by the kitchen window a second 
 before her appearance in the room. 
 
 " My pity ! Suse Dawley ! 't fa'ly makes me 
 ache ter see yer a-settin' there wastin' daylight 
 hummin' ter that ar child like a bee in a bottle, 
 an' all o' them young uns o' yourn highted inter 
 the best bedroom, gone there ter riot and 
 carouse, I '11 lay a penny." 
 
 But this scathing description was much more 
 forcible than the reality of their feeble play at 
 the illness which was so often a serious experi 
 ence with them ; for they had all crept into bed, 
 the better to play at being sick and sending for 
 the doctor. Dame Dawley dashed in upon them, 
 and Susan passively listened to the confused 
 sounds of admonition, discipline, and chastise 
 ment, mingled with an ebullition of childish tears 
 and wrath. The grandmother presently stood 
 in the doorway, reddened and rumpled, but vic 
 torious. The spark of righteous anger kindled 
 in her eye, but further facial expression was in 
 evitably limited by the curiously intricate fret 
 work of wrinkles which masked the good lady's 
 features. If soul had ever sat enthroned in her 
 countenance, it had now for many years been 
 meanly imprisoned within this enclosure, and 
 could seldom be seen to peep through the bars.
 
 198 SOUTH-COUNTY NEIGHBORS. 
 
 " Here they was," she shouted, more in anger 
 than in sorrow, " sure 'nough, a twistin' an' a 
 turnin', an' a wearin' out o' good sheets, wuth 
 'nough sight more 'n their necks be. Yer Ben 
 Franklin, look here now ! What ye done tor old 
 Dobbin? Whiar's he gone ter? Yer gran'- 
 father says ye must ha' lef the bars down so 't 
 he got outer the lot." 
 
 " I never done no sech a thing. I tell ye I 
 ain't seen hide nor hair on him ! " clamorously 
 asserted the puny philosopher of the house of 
 Dawley, with exhaustive literalness of diction. 
 
 His assailant turned upon the next victim, 
 
 " Wai, Susan, thiar yer be yit ! An' tendin' 
 baby 's full ez lazy work fer a woman ez fishin' 
 is fer the men-folks." 
 
 Susan indulged in the retort feminine, 
 
 " Mebbe it' s so long sence yer done that 
 kinder work yer 'm furgot how it draws onto 
 the shoulders, an' makes yer side ache an' smart 
 every time ye draw breath." 
 
 " Not thet sorter heft would n't," returned 
 the grandam, nowise disconcerted, and with a 
 meaning sneer at the puny proportions of her 
 infantile descendant. " When / hed babies I 
 //^y/ babies; they wa'n't rag dawls, they wa'n't." 
 W T ith this historical statement, Mrs. Dawley 
 emitted a short laugh, of the most trenchant 
 quality. 
 
 Susan, who was no match for her venerable
 
 JACKSON DAWLEY S WIFE. 199 
 
 relative in these personal sallies, instinctively 
 clasped her maligned infant closer to her breast, 
 as she drew her breath hard and flushed deep 
 with maternal rage, but sat speechless and star 
 ing while the shaft quivered in her wound. 
 
 " Wai," resumed the old dame, in a more 
 pacific tone, as though magnanimously satisfied 
 with her two righteous victories over her guilty 
 juniors, " s'pose I must skite hum now an' hist 
 on the dinner-pot. I 'm agreeable for havin' 
 dinner an' supper together these here short days, 
 but Dawley he can't never git enough. When 
 the Lord created man he gin him a ter'ble appe 
 tite fer vittles," she mused, with the grimness of 
 a life-long observer of that phenomenon. 
 
 " How is Father Dawley?" asked Susan, for 
 cing herself to meet these friendly overtures. 
 
 " The Lord knows, I don't," piously responded 
 his spouse. " His complaints comes an' goes, 
 like the old woman's soap. He 's had the hypo' 
 now forty year runnin', an' I believe it 's healthy. 
 Sometimes I think he 's wus sence he gin up 
 the farm ter Jackson, an' then agin I dono. 
 Ef he scratches his finger he 's same 's down 
 with the lockjaw; an' ef he gits a twinge o' 
 toothache he 's goin' ter hev the tickdullroo, 
 sure. The schoolmaster down to Number Six, 
 he 's another one ; 's got ez many aches an' 
 pains ez there be pins an' needles in a cushin. 
 I would n't give much fer his schoolin', but ter
 
 200 SOUTH-COUNTY NEIGHBORS. 
 
 be sure, he keeps hours enough. Wai, he comes 
 over nights ter see the old man V cuddunk with 
 him, 'n' they set 'n' drink hot peppermint V 
 sage tea, 'n' tell over their poor spells. Daw- 
 ley's main fret jest now is 'bout his fun'l. He 's 
 dreadful feared I won't do well by him. ' Old 
 man,' says I, ' don't yer worry. I '11 see yer 
 through when 't comes ter that. D' yer s'pose 
 I sh'd take any satisfaction 't all in it, ef things 
 was skinched up,' says I. ' Deary me,' says he, 
 an' he fetched a groan with ev'ry breath he 
 drawed, ' I sha'n't live this night out. I sha'n't 
 never see ter-morrer mornin'.' 'Wai,' says I, 'ef 
 yer don't, I c'n fly roun' an' git things enough 
 fer the fun'l, ef forty folks stays ter dinner. 
 We 'm jest killed,' says I, 'an' spare-ribs an' pork- 
 turkeys relishes fust rate to a fun'l dinner,' says 
 I. He kinder sperrited up at that, an' told that 
 old story about his Cousin Congdon, how she 
 alwas kep' a ham in the house in case Congdon 
 should die, an' how Congdon et it to her fun'l 
 arter all. But land ! I must go right off now, 
 it begins ter sprenkle. I knowed 't would rain, 
 fer Block Island light streamed acrost las' night. 
 Say, Susan, gimme some o' them little aprons 
 ter make, I c'n do 'em well 's not ; " and the ac 
 tive old. woman dived into a heap of coarse sew 
 ing that piled the work-basket " My glory, I 
 guess I c'n do that one with my old eyes cz 
 well ez you'm begun it; looker them great big
 
 JACKSON DAWLEY'S WIFE. 201 
 
 stitches grinnin' at yer all acrost it ! Sartinly, 
 Susan " (with a sudden diversion to the baby), 
 " that child is gonter look dreadfully like Old 
 Man, sartin she is," indicating by an expressive 
 grimace, the grotesque likeness between the 
 drawn and puckered features, just quivering in 
 a cry, and the aged and tremulous countenance 
 of the venerable invalid. " VVal, what can't be 
 cured must be endoored. Metty take alivins, 
 'ittle sissy! Shake a day-day ter gra'ma, hey? 
 Wai, good-by, Susan; take good keer on yer- 
 self now ez ye seem likely ter ! " With this 
 parting shot the old lady took her departure, 
 leaving Susan somewhat less perturbed in spirit 
 than her visitor could have desired. 
 
 Susan's thoughts had not yet returned from 
 their melancholy wanderings to the worn chan 
 nels of domestic routine, and she still kept her 
 place, while her morning's work awaited her 
 at the uncleared table. The American break 
 fast flourished in all its pristine luxuriance 
 in the house of Jackson Dawley, and Susan, 
 who was a good cook, though her neighbors 
 declared her to be a slack housekeeper, had 
 never yet found that the most fastidious of any 
 hunting party failed to wel'come her savory 
 dishes, let them appear when they might. She 
 had never cared to adapt her service to the 
 tastes of any of her guests, until, with a dim con 
 sciousness that all was not just as Mr. Crovvnin-
 
 2O2 SOUTH-COUNTY NEIGHBORS. 
 
 shield would wish, she began to set her dinner- 
 table in the centre of the room, instead of leav 
 ing it against the wall, and to disturb the ancient 
 solitary reign of the dust and cobwebs that had 
 gathered in the old house as its mistress lost 
 more and more of her girlish zeal for house 
 wifery. But lately she had attacked these dom 
 inant foes with a vigor that had left more signs 
 of rugged toil on the shapely hand and arm 
 than had marred them since, as was said of her, 
 she began to lose all her ambition. 
 
 It was a strange fate that she, who had never 
 before taken note of her autumn guests, to 
 whom she might frankly have said, " Come as 
 shadows, so depart," should have conceived this 
 forlornly stifled regard, this piteously grotesque 
 hero-worship for one who had always treated 
 her with a scrupulously distant respect, in which 
 there was no hint of any constraint that might 
 suggest a veiled interest in a woman whose 
 hopeless secret could not be guarded from him. 
 Not unwilling to peruse the lovely lines of her 
 pure and pensive profile, whenever he happened 
 to note that it was near, which was not so often 
 as might possibly have been the case if he had 
 not had an absorbing subject of reverie where 
 with to fill the few intervals of leisure from the 
 excitement of sport, he was always quick to 
 avert his glance when he saw the shy distress, 
 and, of late, the deeper pain of consciousness,
 
 JACKSON DAWLEY S WIFE. 203 
 
 caused by his notice. It was one of the few 
 intense feelings she had ever known, though of 
 so different an order from that with which she 
 had repelled the too free admiration of a former 
 guest, protecting herself by the presence of her 
 children. Now she secretly worshipped a man 
 of no very remarkable mould, idealizing him for 
 the generous heights to which his nature rose, 
 in her simple apprehension, because, because 
 oh, how poor a tale has love to tell of the why 
 and wherefore of its unquestioning devotion ! 
 If this stranger spoke in a different tone, treated 
 her with another manner, and looked at her 
 with kinder eyes than she had ever known, 
 what spell could thus be wrought to move any 
 but the weakest heart from the fast moorings of 
 duty? And kindness was not wholly a new 
 thing to Susan. She had had much kindness 
 from her grandmother ! If in those girlish 
 days she had dreamed of a future that life had 
 never brought her, did she not assure herself, 
 in her matronhood, that she could never think 
 of any less unselfish love than the love of her 
 poor, suffering children, who needed her so 
 much ? What right had she to indulge in grati 
 tude to a stranger for the consideration which 
 he habitually showed to women, and which was 
 now deepened by an influence of which, it is 
 true, she knew nothing? Because a man who 
 flings his torn coat at his wife as she is walk-
 
 204 SOUTH-COUNTY NEIGHBORS. 
 
 ing the room holding her restless child, with .1 
 muttered order to mend it straightway, which 
 sounds more like an enemy's curse than a house 
 hold blessing, contrasts unfavorably with another 
 who asks a similar service with gentleness, ac 
 cepts it with friendliness, and acknowledges it 
 by some kindly attention to the children, it was 
 none the less a sign of innate morbidness in 
 Susan that she dwelt upon these differences 
 with a bitterness that threatened the obliga 
 tions of honor, truth, and loyalty. Poor soul ! 
 she was born with that unhappy tendency 
 which, though she could not have named it, 
 was none the less real in its cravings, the 
 spirit of romance. If a woman's innocent turn 
 for the romantic is quite denied its natural means 
 of expression, if there is no conveniently 
 neutral lay-figure at hand which she may law 
 fully embellish with the drapery of her idealisms, 
 as she lately dressed her passive doll, then 
 expect a grotesque or a tragical perversion of 
 these thwarted instincts. Said they not well, 
 our pastors and masters, when they told us in 
 our simple youth that romance was a danger 
 ous thing? Susan had escaped some obvious 
 dangers to the purity and delicacy of her wo 
 manhood in dwelling apart from the coarse vil 
 lage life ; but solitude also has its peculiar 
 snares, its tendencies to egotism and morbid 
 introspection ; and perhaps the bustle of a
 
 JACKSON DAWLEY'S WIFE. 205 
 
 street, or the gossip of elbowing neighbors, 
 though not the finest of influences, might have 
 been wholesome for this brooding spirit, and 
 might have dulled its pain. Susan was not al 
 together in fault that there was so great a lack 
 of harmony between her nature and its environ 
 ments that her affections inevitably clung to 
 the best representative of that worthier phase 
 of life to which, among all her untoward sur 
 roundings, she unconsciously aspired. Bred in 
 so dense an atmosphere of rusticity that social 
 ambitions, in the ordinary sense, were utterly 
 wanting to her experience, her spontaneous rec 
 ognition of any substantial superiority of nur 
 ture was singularly quick and genuine. Many 
 of us are born out of the nests where we belong, 
 young eagles are brooded by doves, and birds 
 of paradise come into plumage beneath the 
 wings of crows and vultures. Only, if the nest 
 ling never sings such notes as might have been 
 its own in its proper home, and so never finds 
 its true mate, why, that is but another of the 
 many cruel tales of step-dame Nature's ungentle 
 rule. 
 
 " Look at the wasted seeds that autumn scatters, 
 The myriad germs that Nature shapes and shatters." 
 
 Susan had not glided into the habit of letting 
 her thoughts dwell upon one of whom she had 
 no right to think, and who, as the sure instinct
 
 206 SOUTH-COUNTY NEIGHBORS. 
 
 of hopeless love instructed her, thought not of 
 her at all, without some natural pangs of humilia 
 tion, some scourgings of self-reproach. Between 
 fancy and fact, between principle and folly, she 
 traversed many tortuous paths of reverie. " He 
 never even wanted ter say anything he should n't 
 ha' said," she used to tell her conscience defiantly, 
 so that that grim monitor might be hushed ; 
 while in deeper murmurings than those of vanity 
 she told herself, as a smile of childish pleasure 
 lighted her faded beauty, ." Seems as if he alwas 
 liked ter see me wear my blue gownd. I hcerd 
 him tell Hitty, ' Yer mother looks like Mony 
 Lizy ter-day.' I dono who she was ; but I don't 
 believe she was the one that giv' him the book." 
 Poor Susan had not been long in perceiving the 
 care with which, for some inscrutable reason, 
 Mr. Crowninshield kept a certain book among 
 the few that he brought with him, and that lay 
 about his room. She studied it with jealous 
 passion, divining, heaven knows by what occult 
 sense, that it was from a woman, though the 
 mysterious initials M. D. L., over which she 
 pored until she gave them positive individuality, 
 were in the large, free, Minerva hand to which 
 at that day feminine chirographers seldom as 
 pired. The contents told her nothing, sedulously 
 as she scanned them ; for it was a volume men 
 tally described by her as one of " poems and 
 poetry, and such," and of course not to be
 
 JACKSON DAWLEY'S WIFE. 207 
 
 understood by anybody. But her resentment 
 toward it was as vivid as if it had been a sentient 
 thing. In one of her curiously childish passions 
 of wrathful jealousy she flung the offending book 
 as far as her utmost strength could send it, then 
 caught it up in a pallid fright, trembling lest 
 it should have been so marked as to arouse 
 the displeasure of its owner. If the poor girl's 
 mad demeanor was such as would better suit 
 with the favorite of a harem than with the mis 
 tress of a civilized home, it must be owned that 
 there had been no such efficient leaven of Chris 
 tianity in Susan's nurture as to differentiate her 
 very widely from that unknown Indian woman 
 who might have had her wigwam dwelling on the 
 same sheltered spot beside the lake where 
 Susan's hearth-fire now burned. Weak, and 
 childish still, though the mother of children ; 
 never having been led by a strong and tender 
 hand ; knowing religion only as a fluctuating 
 emotion, and not as a moving principle of life ; 
 isolated from that social influence and opinion 
 which to her was but a distant shadow, she 
 had very nearly lost sight of those traditions the 
 influence of which should have checked the 
 tumult of her impulses. 
 
 But now, as her thoughts dwelt painfully upon 
 these things, while her hands were busied with 
 her household duties, her pale cheeks suddenly 
 glowed with an honest blush as the keen dart
 
 208 SOUTH-COUNTY NEIGHBORS. 
 
 of shame pierced the idlesse of her unworthy 
 dreamings. In the searching light of her con 
 trite questionings what was she ? what had she 
 half descended to be in thought? " Oh, my 
 soul! " she groaned, "what be I better 'n Jinny 
 Lewis ? " She shuddered in the strong revulsion 
 of feeling that laid bare the ignoble reality of 
 her long self-deception, and her trembling hands 
 almost refused to do their offices. The children 
 saw her agitation, and gathered about her, think 
 ing that she shared their fear of the great dark 
 ness with which the sou'wester, now bursting in 
 gusty fury upon them, filled the house, as if with 
 a sinister presence. The sky lowered angrily 
 dark, as in a summer tempest, then faintly light 
 ened, as the rushing whiteness of the rain slanted 
 solidly down, enclosing the lonely homestead in 
 a watery sphere, which receded as the darkness 
 shut down again, and the clouds girded up their 
 strength for another savage onset. 
 
 In the momentary lull of roaring waters and 
 tossing branches, an importunate knocking at 
 the outer door at length made itself heard, and 
 Susan, without a thought of hesitation, opened 
 it to admit the very spirit of "the storm, if so 
 potent an essence had indeed condescended to 
 appear in the person of a bent and withered 
 little old man, opaquely black of visage, very 
 much rent and torn as to his wind-tossed gar 
 ments, that streamed with rain in every rag and
 
 JACKSON DAWLEY'S WIFE. 209 
 
 tatter, and very abject in his forlorn and shiver 
 ing aspect. His reception from the house-mis 
 tress was as cordial as it would naturally be made 
 by one who saw in the half-barbaric figure of 
 old Quacca Noca no hideous portent, but merely 
 a familiar personality, to be greeted with the 
 urgency of rustic hospitality. 
 
 " Why, Quacca ! why did n't ye come right in 
 outer the wet? Come ter the fire, do. Set right 
 down in the big cheer, and I '11 fetch ye a dish 
 o' tea." 
 
 " 'Fore the Lord, mistis," piously ejaculated 
 the chattering old negro, with a simian gesturing 
 and show of teeth, " I see lightnin' jes' then, 
 reg'lar jig-jag lightnin'! But I 'specs 't won't 
 harm folks none ; it 's got all the heat warped 
 out on it this time o' the year. Yes, mistis; 
 thenk you, mistis," with a low, deprecatory 
 chuckle, as the dish of tea, with sundry more 
 substantial dishes, was set before him ; " much 
 obleeged to you. Yes, mistis, yer Aunt Dim- 
 mis she 's 'bout the same. The nat'ral bone- 
 setter says 't her back 's got sprung over ter one 
 side, an' he dono 's he kin pry it round agin ; 
 he 'specs now she '11 be a poor old hypocrite ter 
 the end of her days. Yes, mistis, yes, I 'specs 
 she will," he nodded, in cheerful conclusion, with 
 the same supple and insinuating air that graced 
 the utterance of his frequent " thenk you." 
 Quacca's manners had been formed in the school 
 14
 
 210 SOUTH-COUNTY NEIGHBORS. 
 
 of slavery; for his grandfather had been shipped 
 from Guinea, and his father, born a slave, had 
 received as a part of his " freedom suit " his 
 " freedom stockings," knitted at generous length 
 by the industrious hands of his young mistress, 
 then of so tender an age that her work dragged 
 on the floor from her lap as she sat at her task. 
 Why Quacca had given the title of his father's 
 " young mistis " to Jackson Dawley's wife he 
 could hardly have told ; but it was doubtless in 
 unconscious recognition of those traits which 
 gained for her some part of that consideration 
 which her humble neighbors commonly yielded 
 only to the quality. Indeed, Quacca loved to 
 seize any occasion for prostrating himself, and 
 genuflected with all the zest of the genuine Afri 
 can strain. His quaint contortions and grimaces 
 and the sounding gibberish of his cognomen 
 perpetually suggested his savage progenitors of 
 the Gold Coast. But he had developed a vivid 
 type of Christianity; and his lips distilled a 
 fluent piety as profusely as his drenched clothing 
 now shed water. 
 
 " Yes, mistis, Dimmis she needs ter get 'ligion. 
 I tells her, ' Dimmis, you 's a po' ole mustee 
 woman, but you kin seek for grace jus' the 
 same's the quality; and once in grace allers 
 in grace, Dimmis. Thenk o' that now ! ' But 
 she 's a dreffle sassy ole brack woman ; she 
 ain't no 'spect 't all for 'fessors. I enters
 
 JACKSON DAWLEY'S WIFE. 211 
 
 inter my cluset, mistis, jus' 'cordin' ter what 
 the Good Book says, an' shets the do', same 's 
 the tex' tells on, to wrastle in pra'r befo' the 
 Lord, and she comes a bangin' agin the do', 
 an' a-screechin', ' Come 'long outer that kitchen 
 cluset, you no-'count ole nigger you ! I knows 
 ye ! You 'm gwine arter them pots o' 'sarves ! ' 
 Dimmis she hankers arter the flesh-pots allers," 
 Quacca explained with figurative loftiness, add 
 ing in more matter-of-fact tones, " and them 
 was real ginger, what Miss Mary brung down 
 herse'f from the big house when the ole woman 
 was sick. But laws ! Dimmis ain't never suited. 
 She 's one 'o the discontented kine. I tells her, 
 ' Ole woman, quiet down ! Ye can't have squash 
 an' squealer together, no, no, ye can't.' " (A 
 series of softly obsequious chuckles). " ' Git 
 'long,' says she ; ' don' talk no sich fool talk ter 
 me ! ' She ain't got no 'ligion, not the fustest 
 notion on it. But 'pears like I could n't live ef 
 I had n't got 'ligion, bress the Lord ! I ain't 
 got sich vittles ter home as you'm got here, mis 
 tis ; but I 'se got 'ligion, hosanna ! 
 
 " * Oh, glory, glory, shout hosanna, 
 While my soul 's a-eatin' manna ! ' 
 
 'Ligion 's a gre-at thing, mistis ; yes, yes, so 
 'tis ; yes, yes." Quacca's burst of song was suc 
 ceeded by the subdued chuckles with which he 
 emphasized his profession of faith, accompany-
 
 212 SOUTH-COUNTY NEIGHBORS. 
 
 ing himself, as it were, by sundry ecstatic bob- 
 bings of his apple-shaped head, while frequent 
 gurgles of satisfaction punctuated his soft, thick, 
 African utterance, his glistening canines express 
 ing an animal glee, and his roving little eyes 
 betraying a furtive glitter, as though he scented 
 prey. 
 
 No sooner had his modest hints met with a 
 liberal response in the form of a basket filled 
 with such selections from the larder as the 
 returning Dawley might not miss than he dis 
 covered that it was no use waiting for the storm 
 to be over, for it was certainly the very one that 
 lightened up, thickened up, held up, cleared up, 
 and began again ; and with a wealth of grinning 
 bows and thanks he took his punctilious leave. 
 
 The gloom of the autumnal storm shut Susan 
 in with her wretched thoughts; for the knitting 
 with which she tried to busy herself fell from 
 her helpless hands. Quacca's grotesque exhor 
 tations, instead of moving her somewhat torpid 
 sense of humor, had helped to stir into pulsing 
 life her dormant feelings of repentance. Per 
 haps he would not have been the most fitting 
 missionary to a saner spirit. How heartily either 
 Will Crowninshield or Jackson Dawley, each 
 after his own manner, would have derided the 
 idea of being moved to any less mundane emo 
 tion than a gale of laughter or a spasm of 
 disgust by the pious maundcrings of an old
 
 JACKSON DAWLEY'S WIFE. 213 
 
 chicken-thieving hypocrite ! But the gentle 
 soul of woman is not so constituted that she can 
 ever judge coldly of any appeal to her two ulti 
 mate sentiments, love and religion ; and with 
 her unquestioning reverence for all that stands 
 for these ideals, he must be indeed a brutal 
 suitor or a brazen Tartuffe who cannot entice 
 her by the trumpery magic of his hollowest pro 
 testations, or convince her by the tinsel bravery 
 of his cheapest lie. 
 
 " Poor old man ! " mused Susan, with charitable 
 thoughts of her late guest, and, as is the manner 
 of people who have lived much alone, talking 
 aloud to herself. " What a shame folks do 
 scandalize him so ! I believe he 's a real good 
 old man. How good he does talk ! How he 
 does love to talk religion ! I wisht I could 
 hev them good feelin's that he does ! " sighed 
 the poor, childish, ignorant woman, not blame 
 less before the Judge of all hearts, but not of 
 ignoble nature if scanned by the standard of 
 human charity. " Oh ! I don't believe I ever 
 got religion," she cried, shaking convulsively in 
 a passion of tearless sobbing. " .1 did go down 
 them Jurden banks, ez the old elder said when 
 we was all waitin' on the edge o' Cedar Pond ; 
 and Elder Stanton telled me, ' Sister, onct you 
 come up'ards o' them banks you '11 see Jerusa 
 lem, an' you '11 shout glory,' but I misdoubt 
 there ain't no glory for me. I must be one o'
 
 214 SOUTH-COUNTY NEIGHBORS. 
 
 them backsliders that is giv* over ter their own 
 destruction," she whispered, shuddering at the 
 possibility in which her religious teaching had 
 instructed her of the desertion of the creature by 
 an angry Creator. " Oh, I never meant to be 
 so wicked in my mind, and hev sech feelin's, 
 ez ef I hated Jackson out an" out ; an' then to 
 feel that way ez I had n't no right ter 
 about somebody else. Oh! I never half be 
 gun ter see how wrong 't was. Lord help me, 
 why be I so set agin' Jackson? He's rough- 
 natered, but he ain't got sech a bad heart ; he' s 
 all wrapped up in the childun. Seems ez ef 
 he 'd ruther hev them all ter himself. He 
 don't want me 'round while he hes them; an' I 
 can't feel 't he 's anythin" ter me now no more 'n 
 I ever could. I don't hev no feelin's but wrong 
 ones. Oh, I wish I was a stone! I-wish I was 
 a corpse ! Oh, my soul ! Oh, my soul ! Lord, 
 save me ! " she implored, wildly pacing the 
 room as if to fly from some unseen foe, and, fall 
 ing into the language long since grown familiar 
 to her in prayer-meetings, she repeated, " Save 
 me, O Lord, for the Enemy, the Enemy harries 
 me ! " . 
 
 The rain dashed violently at the windows, and 
 the gusts shook the infirm old homestead vin 
 dictively, as Susan mingled her weak cry of 
 human distress with the Titanic voices of the 
 storm; but it was none of these that arrested
 
 JACKSON DAWLEY'S WIFE. 215 
 
 her wild words. Slight as was the sound that 
 reached her ear, she started and trembled afresh 
 at the 'pattering step of her own child ; then, 
 with a sudden rush of despairing tenderness, 
 snatched the little girl to her breast. 
 
 " Marnier, take Sukey ; Sukey tired," fretted 
 the minute despot, whose pale little face and 
 lagging step effectively pleaded her cause ; and 
 the small voice went on repeating her formula 
 in the same key of childish mournfulness, until 
 sobs gave place to comfortable yawns, and these 
 yielded to great sighs of content, as the throb 
 bing little head, hot with play, and heavy with 
 sleep, rolled languidly upon the mother's arm. 
 
 The face that bent over the sleeper softened 
 to tears, and great drops moistened the parched 
 lids. A sigh that rose bearing the burden of a 
 penitent soul preceded the homely words of re 
 solve in which the awakened woman pledged 
 herself to duty. 
 
 " Yes, mother will be good to you, mother's 
 poor little lamb. I won't be fretty with the 
 childun any more. I won't give way, ef I 'm 
 ever so wore out ; and I '11 try to keep the house 
 fixed up ; and I won't mope round so when 
 Jackson is ugly, half the time he dono no 
 better ; and I '11 speak respec'ful ter Mother 
 Dawley, she 's a well-meanin' woman ; and 
 and I won't think them wrong, shameful 
 things no more ! "
 
 2l6 SOUTH-COUNTY NEIGHBORS. 
 
 Susan did not know that her tearful whisper 
 was the truest prayer she had ever breathed. 
 It did not begin with " Oh ! " nor end with 
 " Amen ! " as when you made a prayer in con 
 ference meeting; which, indeed, was only ac 
 complished by the shy Susan because she was 
 too shy to neglect the elder's repeated intima 
 tions that we would all be glad now to hear from 
 Sister Dawley. 
 
 With her little daughter's sleeping breath 
 coming and going so close to her heart, Susan 
 grew calm and soothed, and, in childish elas 
 ticity of mood, began to plan quite cheerfully 
 for Jackson's supper. She would have hot 
 flour-cake, with plenty of shortening, and she 
 would get out the sugar quince ; and there was 
 nice cold ham, or perhaps she had better fry 
 some liver. Jackson liked flour-cake, though 
 he would grumble when he saw it, and would 
 remind her that farmers' folks could n't live so 
 high as them that had a trade. But she would 
 take care to let him know, indirectly, that she 
 and the children had dined contentedly on bread 
 and milk. Not that he would deny them their 
 choice of anything there was in the house ; but 
 he would be better satisfied so, knowing that the 
 balance of household savings and losses had 
 been properly adjusted. And she would try 
 not to notice if he was a little rough in his way, 
 and she must no\ be so silly and get nervous
 
 JACKSON DAWLEY'S WIFE. 217 
 
 when he beat the dog ; it was all right, Sport 
 needed training. 
 
 It all fell out much as she had expected ; and 
 she was sitting wearily by the evening fire with 
 her work, she and her husband sharing that 
 domestic solitude which Crowninshield had so 
 effusively anticipated for them. 
 
 Dawley, who had been working at a dismem 
 bered gun, finally pushed it away with the air 
 of closing his labors for the night, and fell into 
 a study from which he emerged with a regret 
 that Mr. Crowninshield would n't be going gun 
 ning over the Flats another fall. " I 'd ruther 
 ha' seen the last o' some o' the rest on 'em," he 
 announced. " He 's a free-handed sort, and he 
 minds his own business, and he ain't no fool 
 with a gun. I 'd ruther go gunnin' with him, 
 let alone the money, than with the hull lot. He 
 ain't no pride to him, nuther, Crowninshield 
 ain't," pursued this infallible observer, warming 
 to eulogy. " I tell 'urn, he's jest like common, 
 he is." 
 
 He paused in his praises, but no confirmation 
 of them came from his unfortunate wife. The 
 intelligence he gave was nothing to her; it 
 seemed already ages since that very morning, 
 but it was terrible to hear her husband speak 
 in this tone of unusual friendliness of the man 
 to whom she had given so many thoughts for 
 which she now suffered the pangs of repentance.
 
 2l8 SOUTH-COUNTY NEIGHBORS. 
 
 "We shaVt see him this way again, I expect," 
 continued Dawley, rather irritated by Susan's 
 depressing silence; "he's gonter git marr'd, 
 he says, this winter; and then they "11 be travel- 
 lin' quite a spell in the Old Country. Wai," 
 with the short laugh, so like his mother's, which 
 Susan so dreaded to hear, but was always help 
 less to avert, " I wisht he may light on some 
 livelier company ter set up afore him than what 
 a mummychog be's." Mr. Dawley puffed an 
 grily at his pipe as though its contents had lost 
 their soothing virtue. 
 
 Susan could not trust her voice, and the few 
 words she tried to utter died hoarsely away. 
 Her whole energy was concentrated upon the 
 negative effort of restraining herself from a 
 spasm of hysterical sobs. She need not have 
 anticipated with such alarm her husband's curi 
 ous observation. He had nearly dismissed the 
 whole insignificant subject of his domestic life 
 from his manly reflections. For a minute he 
 had been annoyed at his wife's queer, nervous 
 ways, and had said resentfully to himself that 
 this was a nice way to behave to a man that 
 always provided well, and never interfered 'round 
 house. Well, as for Susan, she never was what 
 you might call lively company, and something 
 or other had come over her lately. Jinny Lewis, 
 now. She was a live girL She had her own 
 way right along to home. How she made the
 
 JACKSON DAWLEY*S WIFE. 219 
 
 old folks stand 'round, though ! he mused, ad 
 miringly. Folks found they'd got a cap'n when 
 she was 'round, dwelling with fresh interest 
 upon the high mettle, florid color, and redund 
 ant figure of that ornament to her sex, Miss 
 Angenette Lewis. Dawley had none of his 
 wife's conscientious dread of forbidden specula 
 tions. He thought of Jinny Lewis as freely as 
 he chose; often with a distinct regret that he 
 had not married her, and made an honest woman 
 of her; but as time went on, "le sensations 
 associated with her grew less potent, and the 
 ache of that old longing was well-nigh stilled. 
 Such profitless querying with the neglected past 
 soon gave way to plans for the next day's work 
 of hauling a jag of wood, and carting seaweed 
 for the Bull Meadow and sundry of the other 
 acres which, as it always irked him to remember, 
 had once been Susan's. 
 
 The silence of the house remained so long un 
 broken that the sounds of the night stole in 
 upon the two listeners. The short sou'wester, 
 which had suggested a belated thunder-storm, 
 rather than an autumnal gale, had spent itself in 
 sudden plashes of rain, and gusty pantings that 
 fitfully tossed the creaking boughs of the .old 
 buttonwood-tree, that labored in the wind like 
 a ship at sea. The last of the fog was just dis 
 appearing before the cold night-breeze, and it 
 was curling fleecily up from the woods and
 
 220 SOUTH-COUNTY NEIGHBORS. 
 
 waters that environed the Dawley homestead, 
 rolling away in great masses before the moon- 
 rise, and revealing the keen star-sparks that 
 glinted with a wintry steeliness. The haunting 
 cry of a loon came from the central solitudes 
 of the lake, and Dawley, with a sportsman's in 
 stinctive action, rose to the tantalizing game. 
 
 " Change o' weather," he announced, as he 
 opened the door and went outside to listen. 
 " It "s cleared away arter dark ; it '11 storm agin 
 soon," he added, quoting one of those veracious 
 weather signs that are not likely to lose their 
 stormy-petrel reputation in our zone of intem 
 perate climates. 
 
 " I hope not," Susan answered automatically, 
 but with a great heart-throb that almost over 
 came the quiet of her manner. " All Thy waves 
 and storms have gone over me," would have been 
 the language of her spirit. She went to the door 
 and still stood there looking dreamily out, after 
 her husband had come in. How fair the beckon 
 ing distance seemed ! How tenderly the moon- 
 wake rested on the waters that gladly met the 
 lustre that sought them out in the shelter of their 
 evergreen shores. The trees passed to each other 
 the whispered word of their nightly salutation. 
 It meant refreshment, and peace, and joy, and 
 aspiration. The aromatic freshness and softness 
 of the vapors still lingering beside the cedar- 
 framed lake, penetrated by the keen breath of
 
 JACKSON DAWLEY'S WIFE. 221 
 
 the living air that brought the wholesome in 
 fluence of wintry purity, tempered the blood, 
 and soothed the sense. Susan's untaught per 
 ceptions drank in the spirit of the scene, as surely 
 as clairvoyant eyes see the things that are hidden 
 from their ordinary vision. 
 
 " Wife," called Jackson Dawley, with a gruff- 
 ness that assuredly lent no very endearing inton 
 ation to the title, " did you furgit the doors hed 
 hinges onto 'em? You 'm cooled off this room 
 a good one." 
 
 Susan turned with a guilty start, but her hus 
 band had already left the room, in which the lan 
 guishing tallow dip just served to show the sordid 
 and grimy signs of a narrow, drudging existence, 
 and seemed, in that quick glance of hers, to cast 
 a sinister light upon the fortunes of its life-long 
 tenant With a sudden impulse, as if the act 
 were a return to the freedom of her too short 
 girlhood, Susan looked again into the wonderful 
 world that lay beyond those closely crowding 
 hills. Somewhere there must be happiness in 
 life ; life must hold some of those things she had 
 dreamed of, but had never known, such things 
 as easily belonged to him whom she did not 
 name in her thoughts, but who had uncon 
 sciously taught her what the world might be, 
 and what her world was. Somewhere, in the 
 distance, there was happiness for him and his. 
 But here might be peace. Here, below these
 
 222 SOUTH-COUNTY NEIGHBORS. 
 
 gentle, soothing waters. How grateful the sleep 
 to be sought there when the weight of the day's 
 burden grew too heavy to be any longer borne ! 
 She stood now between the living and the dead, 
 between the children who lay upon the hill 
 and those who would soon follow them, from the 
 beds where they lay sleeping. Oh, if she could 
 but go now to join those, knowing that these 
 must follow after her! 
 
 It was not an acknowledged thought; it was 
 but an undercurrent of longing, stealing through 
 the obscurer depths of the consciousness, while 
 Susan still stood irresolute at the door, as if in 
 the attitude of leaving the threshold to fare 'away, 
 fast, and faster, out into the freedom and solitude 
 of the great, wide, beckoning spaces of the whisper 
 ing night. Her hand trembled anxiously on the 
 latch as a childish voice of crying came to her 
 ear, but she kept her place, as if by a spell. The 
 sound was half-hushed, now, by indulgent tones, 
 full of the pity and the anxiousness of fatherhood, 
 and touched by the one influence that always 
 tamed that rude nature. The woman's face sud 
 denly softened from its drawn look of pain, as, 
 with a quick, decisive action, Jackson Dawlcy's 
 wife closed the door and fastened herself in.
 
 PRISCILLA GALLAGHAN. 
 
 " I had a little dahg, an' his name was Boof ; 
 I sint him oot for a pinch o' snoof ; 
 An' I think me story is long enoof." 
 
 some more, Pat ! " 
 JL " Oh, Pat, do say it over real slow ! " 
 
 " Tell it onct more, oh, do ! " 
 
 "What's a-doin' here?" sternly queried the 
 mother of the clamorously delighted audience 
 as she briskly entered Farmer Hambly's kitchen. 
 "Childun, guess you furgot yer comp'ny man 
 ners. I sh'd think sech gret gals ez you be 
 mought ben ashamed ter raised day so. Run 
 right away, now. Why, Pat Gallaghan, that you ? 
 Tis Pat, ain't it?" pursued Mrs. Carr, putting 
 the superfluous inquiry with a certain air of rus 
 tic condescension toward foreigners. 
 
 " Yis, mim," replied the young Irishman, ris 
 ing with a crude attempt at deference, and seek 
 ing a moral support by fumbling with his hat. 
 
 " Why, dear suz, man ! I sca'cely knowed ye !" 
 affably remarked Mrs. Carr, whose visits at her 
 brother's house were not of frequent recurrence. 
 " Time I see ye afore 't wa'n't long sence ye
 
 224 SOUTH-COUNTY NEIGHBORS. 
 
 come over, an' ye don't look so dretful green ez 
 ye did " (with a broad smile of reminiscence). 
 " Don't wear them clo'es now 't ycr brung over 
 from the old country, do ye?" she demanded, 
 frankly scanning Patrick's recent outfit, in which 
 the ruling tastes of his adopted country had been 
 duly consulted. The wearer received her allu 
 sion with beaming pride, while the lady, without 
 pausing for reply, went on, " Yer waitin' t' see 
 Danil? He 's gawn up t' the Snuff Mill." 
 
 " Yis, mim, I har-rd, since I was in it, he was 
 afther goin' up there; but I tought he wud be 
 in prisintly, an' it was Misther Slocum bid me 
 give a missage till him." 
 
 " You ben up t' the Corners, an' going back 
 now ter Dutch Island, I s'pose? You 'm far- 
 min' for Slocum right along now, ain't ye, sence 
 he come off the Island, an' went ter live with her 
 folks. Well, that 's a pretty good lay fer yer, 
 Pat. I sh'd think yer 'd feel real set up." 
 
 "An' ye've a right to say that same, mim," 
 soberly agreed Patrick, with modest assurance. 
 
 "An' how's your wife, Patrick?" continued 
 Mrs. Carr, quite uninformed of any recently im 
 pending domestic crisis, but merely on conde 
 scension bent, "say, how's Priscilly ? " 
 
 " Thankin' ye, mim," returned Patrick the 
 straightforward, with a deference that was height 
 ened by a certain air of proud solemnity, " me 
 wife was delivered of a young son at twinty min-
 
 PRISCILLA GALLAGHAN. 225 
 
 utes afther wan o' the clock last Choosday mar- 
 nin' glory be to God ! " and he crossed himself 
 fervently, all unaware, in his peasant simplicity, 
 that he had outraged the American proprieties, 
 and offended the matronly delicacy of his in 
 dignant hearer. That lady did not stay to offer 
 congratulations, or to make further inquiries, 
 but left the room with an abruptness that can 
 only be described as flouncing out of it; and 
 hurriedly returning to her place in the feminine 
 conclave of the sitting-room, gave loud expres 
 sion to her disgust at the plain-speaking of " them 
 dretful coarse Irish." 
 
 Her comment failed, however, to make an 
 impression commensurate to that imparted by 
 her news. " Teh, tch, tch" sounded from her 
 sister-in-law's sympathetically clicking tongue, 
 burdened with a rush of feelings that pressed 
 too strongly and suddenly to find their way 
 through the channels of articulate speech; and 
 each woman of the neighborly circle added 
 some exclamatory fragment of utterance to 
 the medley response that greeted Mrs. Carr's 
 announcement. 
 
 There was danger that Patrick's error would 
 be overlooked, if not condoned, in the zest with 
 which they fell to on receiving this fresh morsel 
 of intelligence. The flutter and cackling, the 
 shrill confusion, and the pleasing dismay rife 
 among the party, suggested the reception by a 
 15
 
 226 SOUTH-COUNTY NEIGHBORS. 
 
 staid flock of hens of an ear of corn flung sud 
 denly among them. No less interest could be 
 aroused by such an opportune event in a rustic 
 community, where the only really engrossing 
 romance-reading is that of the book of human 
 life, which, when daily conned, is a continued 
 story that has many a dull and tedious page, 
 many lapses and omissions, and many grievous 
 repetitions. 
 
 "Well, well, of all I ever did" breathlessly 
 exclaimed Aunt Hambly; "risin" a week old, I 
 do declare ! and I never heerd a lisp on it," she 
 added, in the aggrieved tone of one \vho had 
 been defrauded of a culminating sensation. 
 "Well, times is changed. I tell 'urn things 
 goes so queer now, in these new-fashioned 
 times, 't I don't know no more about my neigh 
 bors than -than the child unborn," she con 
 cluded, rhetorically suiting her style to her 
 subject. 
 
 " What Priscilly was a-thinkin' on," bitterly 
 proclaimed Mrs. Carr, " to go an' be married 
 by a priest to a Paddy, and she Elder Hall's 
 own gran'da'ater, tries my possibles ter find 
 out." 
 
 " Well, you see," uttered Mrs. .Hambly, in 
 deprecating excuse, taking up with increased 
 interest the familiar narrative, freshly illustrated 
 by the last piece of news, and going again, with 
 renewed satisfaction, over the beaten ground
 
 PRISCILLA GALLAGHAN. 22/ 
 
 of neighborhood .gossip, " she was all alone, 
 kinder. She hed n't no own folks, ah' her step 
 mother said ev'rythin' she could lay her tongue 
 to about her, so 't Priscilly got all discouraged, 
 an' notioned that folks was ag'inst her. The' 
 wa'n't no real fault ter find with her, but she 
 vva'n't gifted t' airn her salt. She took arter 
 her mother's folks ; they was all so did n't 
 know their heads from their elbers, any on 'em ; 
 but they was all clever folks, an' Priscilly was 
 real pleasant spoken. All the neighbors said 
 't was a livin' disgrace when she marr'd ez she 
 did ; but I hed cha'ity fer her. Pat 's good- 
 lookin', fer Irish, an' stiddy, or stiddier 'n most 
 on 'em, an' gits toler'ble wages; I expect it 
 makes a good home fer that gal. She could n't 
 turn her hand to an earthful thing that would 
 make her any livin'. Time an' time agin s's I 
 ter my husband, s's I, ' Father, what 's goin' ter 
 become o' Priscilly? She ain't no more sense 
 'n that kitten; ' and he 'd shuffle out on it, man- 
 fashin, an' when I hild him to, ' Well,' s's he, 
 ' she mus' git marr'd.' An' lo an' behold she 
 did, sech ez 'twas. An' I've heerd say she 
 makes out pretty well, consid'rin'. The' was ole 
 Mis' Bowsuns went over an' stayed with her, 
 Priscilly alwas humored them old Charles- 
 town squaws, an' she told me she never see 
 sech a house fer wings an' holders, an' the 
 hearth svvep' up neat 's a pin."
 
 228 SOUTH-COUNTY NEIGHBORS. 
 
 " She '11 want somethin' 'sides turkey wings t' 
 live on," tartly commented Mrs. Carr, who was 
 still smarting under a sense of personal indig 
 nity. " Must be gret sight o' vittles, Cynthy, 
 in a Paddy house, t' be sure ! Soup o' geese- 
 heads, an' pin-feather thickenin', I rayther think ! 
 Them 's the kind of outlandish dishes the Gal- 
 laghans '11 learn her. The mice stands round 
 with tears in their eyes in her cluset, I guess ! ' 
 
 N 0> I I guess not, Maria Jane," meekly 
 ventured her sister-in-law, slowly running a knit 
 ting-needle through her hair, " I dono but what 
 Priscilly 's comf 'table, 's fur ez that goes." 
 
 " I hope ter my soul she '11 hev a good gettin' 
 up," sighed the last speaker's daughter, a pale 
 and delicate young woman, with restless eyes, 
 and a nervous, anxious expression, who, as she 
 spoke, had just laid her sleeping baby in the 
 settee on rockers which served as a combination 
 of cradle and chair for mother and child. 
 
 " Who 's takin' keer on the woman?" weight 
 ily demanded Nurse Crombins, whose profes 
 sional engagement in the house was just clos 
 ing, but whose imposing presence intensified 
 the interest of the conversation, and finely sus 
 tained the dignity of the occasion. 
 
 " Well, his mother 's over there, I sh'd guess," 
 hazarded Mrs. Hambly, with a manner that im 
 plied no attempt to extend the charity devoted 
 to Priscilla so far as to include the Irish mother-
 
 PRISCILLA GALLAGHAN. 22Q 
 
 in-law. Nurse Crombins sewed on, in a grimly 
 neutral silence, but of Mrs. Carr it might be 
 said that she gave tongue with the energy of a 
 whole pack in full cry. 
 
 " His mother ! Old Nora Gallaghan ! Horns 
 an' hufs ! I 'd ez lieves hev our old Speckle ter 
 nuss me ! " 
 
 " I was on'y wonderin'," hinted the nurse, 
 at whose measured accents the conclave was 
 hushed in respectful attention, " I was jest cal- 
 culatin' what kerrickter o' rags they'm put on 
 that child ! " 
 
 An echoing murmur of mildly sarcastic intent 
 ran around the deferential group. 
 
 " Poor cretur ! " solemnly pursued the nurse, 
 whose words came slowly, hindered by a port 
 liness that lent itself to gravity and dignity of 
 demeanor rather than to the proverbial jollity of 
 the stout, " to think of her lyin' there, tied hand 
 an' foot, an' with nobody thet 's hed experience 
 ter dress that child so 's ter make human shape 
 on it, an' ter work over its head ter shape it ez a 
 head lies got ter be shaped, ter look decent." 
 This was the special fad of Nurse Crombins. 
 " 'Course it's a nice job, I don't deny it 's a nice 
 job," continued the artist in plastic humanity, 
 kindling with her theme, "an" them thet 's goin' 
 ter spile it should n't lay a finger t' it; but this I 
 will say, thet there never was one o' my babies 
 but what I fixed up a real nice round head,
 
 23O SOUTH-COUNTY NEIGHBORS. 
 
 round ez a harnsum apple, artcr I'd worked on 
 it a spell. You take their heads," she said, ad 
 dressing the company in a raised voice, and with 
 an animated manner that was fearfully suggestive 
 of a Feejee cook detailing her choicest recipe, 
 " you take an' feel o' their heads, an' they '11 give 
 middlin' easy, like putty, ye know, and you c'n 
 fix 'em up any shape that suits best; but I like 
 'em good an' round. The' was folks that I 
 nussed with onct down ter the Dugway. I won't 
 name no names," - magnanimously declared the 
 narrator, who, indeed, knew there w r as no need 
 of further particularity with so well-informed an 
 audience, "but she was the notionalist woman 
 't ever I nussed dretful awd an' she told her 
 mother she would n't hev me workin' so on that 
 child's head. Well, s's I, 'course, ef the woman 
 is notional, notions must rule, s's I, but of all 
 possessed ! " pursued the priestess of the cult of 
 the physique, breaking into a high-pitched laugh, 
 eloquent of injury, "ter go t' the Dugway ter hear 
 on new idees an' fashins ain't what I sh'd proph 
 esied. 'Cordin' ter my mind, you mought 's 
 well live out o' the world, an' done with it, ez 
 live up there in them woods," she concluded, 
 with another wrathful laugh, echoing of a rank 
 ling resentment 
 
 " Well, you might 's well be in Gret Swamp 
 ez on Dutch Island," remarked Mrs. Carr, with 
 the exasperating calmness of an absentee in
 
 PRISCILLA GALLAGHAN. 231 
 
 whom long residence in an adjoining township 
 had cooled the fervor of native jealousies and 
 partisanships. 
 
 " Pat don't like bein' so fur from a priest, he 
 says, poor misbrung-up cretur," commented 
 worthy Mrs. Hambly, with a sigh of benevolent 
 melancholy. " How solemnizin' 't is ter see them 
 thet hes immortle souls grovellin' like the beasts 
 thet perish ! " she continued in a thoughtful 
 strain. 
 
 " Yes," agreed Mrs. Carr, " Priscilly Hall was 
 courtin' jedgment an' no less, when she unekilly 
 yoked herself to an onbeliever." 
 
 " Let's hope 't won't light on her now," spoke 
 Mrs. Hambly, with matronly sympathy. 
 
 " We don't know what a day may bring forth, 
 Mis' Hambly," admonished the nurse, with that 
 air of lugubrious prophecy which was as much 
 a part of her due professional bearing as gravity 
 is the badge of an undertaker. " Ther' is years 
 when the women most all goes that way. Five 
 year ago I reck'lect it ez ef 'twas yist'd'y ez 
 it mought be fall o' the year, like this, I was nus- 
 sin' ter old Reedy Ely Joe's, an' the woman was 
 smart 's I ever see one, to all appayrence, when 
 the fevier come on like thet, an' " 
 
 " 'T would n't be no merrycle," broke in the 
 severe and godly Mrs. Carr, leaving the nurse 
 aghast at the audacity of her interruption, " ef 
 jedgment should overtake them thet will live
 
 232 SOUTH-COUNTY NEIGHBORS. 
 
 with publicans and Romers. To think a gal o* 
 her bringin' up should furgit where she sprung 
 from! I believe it's our dooty ter come out 
 from among them, and be ye separate, ez Elder 
 Hines said in his exhortin' last Sabbath, now when 
 popyism an' skepyism is a-walkin' about hand in 
 hand, seekin' whom they may devour." 
 
 "Well, there 's Danil, come seekin' what he kin 
 devour fer supper, I expect," interpolated Mrs. 
 Hambly, with surprising levity, " an' I ben so 
 betwottled a-sottin' here talkin', 't I ain't sot 
 table," and she bustled away. 
 
 The evening was well-nigh over, according to 
 the neighborhood customs, when, as the house 
 hold had again met in the keeping-room, Mrs. 
 Carr's " watch-eye," as her sharp vision was 
 known in the family, espied a light and a figure 
 pausing with it, outside the door-yard. 
 
 " Do see, Danil," exclaimed Mrs. Hambly, 
 whose glance had followed her sister's, " who 
 that is comin' here at half arter eight o'clock!" 
 
 The excellent couple went out upon their old- 
 fashioned porch to meet their visitor, who with 
 equal promptness accosted them, while she *\vas 
 yet struggling with the picket gate which con 
 spired with the rude gusts of the October night 
 to hinder her progress. 
 
 11 Come over afoot an' alone ! " she shouted, 
 with energetic pants, as she hurried toward them ; 
 " but I ain't come in the dark, anyway," she
 
 PRISCILLA GALLAGHAN. 233 
 
 triumphed, as she displayed the barn lantern, 
 and like Mr. Pope's shepherds rejoicing in the 
 full moon, " blessed the useful light." 
 
 " Kine of a revolvin' light, ain't it, neighbor !" 
 humorously inquired Farmer Hambly. "Sh'd 
 think 't was the lantern to Pine Judy Pint yer 
 hed ref'rence to." 
 
 "Now, father! " admonished Mrs. Hambly, in 
 reproachful distress; and, "Hey?" vaguely 
 gasped the guest, that honest matron being 
 quite unaware of her picturesque appearance as 
 the wind momentarily eclipsed her luminary in 
 the flappings of her substantial petticoats. 
 
 " There, now, don't you mind him one bit, Mis' 
 Baton," coaxed her hostess, tendering a super 
 fluous encouragement ; for, " I don't ! " laconically 
 responded the dame, further remarking " and I 
 never knowed them that did ! " dismissing the 
 unprofitable subject to inquire, with a breathless 
 eagerness that evidently feared to have been an 
 ticipated in its proposed recital, " Heerd an'thin' 
 from Priscilly Hall, that was, ter-day?" 
 
 "Why, yes," began Mrs. Hambly, intending 
 to luxuriate in narrative ; but Mrs. Baton hushed 
 her with an imperative signal. 
 
 " Pat Gallaghan little knowed what news was a 
 travellin' to-wards him," she announced. "He'd 
 ben three days up 't the Corners. Slocum sent 
 fer him to come up, and Slocum's folks kep' 
 him there doin' odd jobs till this art-noon. I
 
 234 SOUTH-COUNTY NEIGHBORS. 
 
 see ole Mis' Bovvsuns when she jest come off the 
 Island, 'long in the forenoon, an' s's she, ' By 
 Jo-by ! ' you know how them old Charlesto\vn 
 squaws will swear ' / call her a very sick wo 
 man ; ' an' towards night, when I see the hearse 
 goin' by, an' I run out t' ask D'rius who was 
 dead, fer I thought mebbe he was gettin' things 
 ready, 'The' ain't nobody dead jest now,' s's he; 
 ' I 'tn on'y gittin' of it home from the carr'age 
 shop ; but from all I hear, I shall have to bury 
 Pat Gallaghan's wife pretty soon,' s's he, and he 
 driv along. Thinks I, I '11 let Mis' Hambly's 
 folks know te onct, fer I thought we'd oughter 
 go right over there, an' it might be so as Mis' 
 Crombins could make out ter go." She ap 
 pealed deferentially to that potentate. " Say, 
 Mr. Hambly," she adjured, with recovered as 
 surance, "don't ye think we better go? Can't 
 ye boat us over there? " 
 
 Farmer Hambly at once fell into the mental 
 attitude with which he met any proposition. 
 By his meditative air he would seem to have 
 dived deep into the crystal well of Truth, the 
 better to consult her as to his measured reply. 
 Finally rising to the surface, he conveyed the 
 judgment of the goddess in the leisurely an 
 nouncement, 
 
 " Wai, I would n't wonder much but what I 
 could." 
 
 Satisfied with the unobtrusive gallantry of this
 
 PRISCILLA GALLAGHAN. 235 
 
 response, the zealous Mrs. Baton turned to Nurse 
 Crombins. 
 
 " Kin you make out without me ter-night, 
 Lucindy," solemnly inquired that authority, re 
 ferring the matter to the young mother. 
 
 " Oh, Aunty Crombins, I should think!" re 
 monstrated Lucindy, with a nervously reproach 
 ful sob. "What do ye take me fer? " She ran 
 out of the room and presently returned with a 
 hastily made-up bundle, which she put in the 
 nurse's lap. 
 
 " Give my love to Priscilly, an' tell her I sent 
 thet little dress to the baby." 
 
 " Why, you 'm robbed yerself, Lucindy, hain't 
 ye?" protested her almoner. 
 
 " Oh, no, I want the baby ter have it an' wear 
 it. It 's a real pretty one. Tell her I made 
 every stitch of mine myself," she began with a 
 glow of girlish animation that chilled again 
 under the returning consciousness of calamity. 
 
 " Mother," calmly observed Mr. Hambly, who 
 had apparently again taken counsel of the in 
 visible nymph, and was prepared to repeat the 
 oracle, " seems ter me you 'm a gettin' that bun- 
 nit on kinder hine side afore, ain't ye?" He 
 surveyed his spouse with an abstracted air, as 1 of 
 one who diligently essays a judicial decision. 
 
 " Oh, land o' saints, so I be ! " she cried, ridding 
 herself with a jerk of the cumbrous head-gear. 
 " I 'm addled so I dono' what I 'm about."
 
 236 SOUTH-COUNTY NEIGHBORS. 
 
 " Bet' stay right where ye be, mother," ad 
 vised her husband. " Yer git sick jest ez easy 
 ez Tallin' downstairs, an' they 'm got all the 
 hospital they want over there." 
 
 " Mis' Hambly ! I am fa'rly amazed at ye ! " an 
 nounced one who spoke with more than marital 
 authority. " Who 's ter see ter my baby, ef you 
 go off ter stay all night, fuzzino ? " 
 
 "Well, well, I'll give 't up," yielded the 
 kindly soul, " but I did feel a drawin' to-wards 
 that poor, dyin' child," and she broke down in 
 undisguised tears. 
 
 " Cryin', be you, mother, becos I 'm goin' off 
 with these here women folks?" queried Mr. 
 Hambly, with a lightness benevolently intended 
 to relieve the oppressive quality of the scene. 
 " Why, don't take 't so hard 's all that. I sh'll be 
 'round agin, ef so be 't they don't run away with 
 me." But this graceful homage fell unheeded 
 at the matronly feet of the oblivious Mrs. Baton, 
 and the preoccupied Nurse Crombins. 
 
 The ladies followed him to the shore, and the 
 boat received the substantial forms of its master, 
 his neighbor, and the nurse, stoutly riding the 
 water even after that fat aunt of Brentford had 
 clambered in. 
 
 " She ain't no tub," muttered Mr. Hambly, as 
 he took up the oars and affectionately addressed 
 himself to the only feminine object within ken 
 of a figure to appropriate the encomium.
 
 PRISCILLA GALLAGHAN. 237 
 
 " They say," observed Mrs. Baton, after a 
 brief space of silence, during which the en 
 shrouding and engulfing glooms above and 
 below seemed to have stretched out some invis 
 ible hand that steadily dragged them to a name 
 less goal, " that Priscilly hed railly sprighted up, 
 an' took holt ter work ez ef she 'd got some em- 
 bition, 't last. And they tell how she was jest 
 ez pleased an' proud 's ef she 'd marr'd one o' 
 the town council theirselves; and ez fer Pat, he 
 sets his eyes by the baby." 
 
 " Mfh ! " retorted the nurse, with the scorn of 
 a superior mind, "Priscilly ain't deeper 'n the 
 well, an' them shiftless Irish thinks all the world 
 of a young son, ez they says, no matter 'f they 
 ain't got the fust rag ter put on its back." 
 
 The words of the wise woman could not be 
 gainsaid, and Mrs. Baton at once abandoned her 
 feeble line of defence. 
 
 The influences of the night and the mystery 
 of the waters were again unbroken for a little 
 space by the doubtful harmony of human speech 
 when 
 
 " S'pose you knowed Pat's had that child 
 sprinkled?" resumed Mrs. Baton, with signs of 
 controversial disgust. 
 
 " Don't say ! And Priscilly was knowin' to 
 it?" 
 
 " What ! Ain't yer heerd SHE was sprinkled 
 quite a while back? "
 
 238 SOUTH-COUNTY NEIGHBORS. 
 
 "That so?" struck in Mr. Hambly, resting on 
 his oars in a mild shock of surprise, and indulging 
 in the worldly recreation of a prolonged whistle. 
 "Wonder what old Elder Hall'd sayter that?" 
 
 "I sh'd think he'd rise!" wrathfully ejacu 
 lated the bearer of the intelligence. 
 
 " A pretty thing tcr whistle at, Mr. Hambly ! " 
 rebuked the nurse. "An" you holdin' office 
 under the church this minute ! " 
 
 " Where was her religion ? " demanded the 
 other exponent of virtue. 
 
 " Wai," thoughtfully observed their escort, 
 making the long slow sweeps that were favorable 
 to meditation, " I see somethin' in print onct 
 that kinder jingles with the subjeck, ez you may 
 say." Mr. Hambly further prefaced his valued 
 quotation by a diligent clearing of his throat. 
 "Twas in a sort o' play-actin' book was the 
 saw, an' it run like this, ' What but love is a 
 woman's religion?' I've tho't on them words 
 consid'ble many times sence," pursued the 
 speaker, who had delivered the phrase with a 
 curious care, " ez I 've lived along, an' I won't 
 say but what the' 's somethin' in "em." 
 
 " More shame fer you, then, Danil Hambly," 
 retorted Mrs. Baton. " The church oughter 
 deal with ye, an' make a public example on ye 
 fer winkin' at sech onrighteousness. Ef folks 
 could n't rise above Priscilly Hall's notions yer 
 might talk ! "
 
 PRISCILLA GALLAGHAN. 239 
 
 " Sho, sister Baton," said her plain-speaking 
 neighbor, with a peculiar twitch of the mirthful 
 muscles, and recklessly charging on a highly 
 dangerous ckeval de bataille, " yer ain't so hard 
 hearted by half ez yer purtend. Yer ain't no 
 Baptis' born yerself, ye know. I c'n remember 
 the time when yer was raised a Methodis" afore 
 ever yer see the Deacon," broadly hinted this 
 indiscreet theorist concerning the occult religious 
 influences. 
 
 " That 's neither here nor there," tartly began 
 the lady, with a snap of the eyes which the faint 
 glimmer of her lantern failed to transmit with all 
 the force that might have been desired. 
 
 " Wai, here we be ter the Island, anyway," an 
 nounced her antagonist, with a craven haste that 
 betrayed an anxiety to capitulate on any terms. 
 " I '11 be over ter the lighthouse an' nef ye want 
 me." 
 
 The women climbed the crumbling slopes, 
 struggling against the gusts that blew the dust- 
 clouds of the Island in their faces, and crossed 
 the turfy meadow that bordered on the peat 
 bog. 
 
 "Pat said how her name 'in religion' was 
 Julye," observed Mrs. Baton, continuing the in 
 terrupted discussion. 
 
 " Oh, yes," assented her listener; " I knowed 
 she was named Jul-ye Priscilly arter both on her 
 gran'mothers and a silver tea-spoon apiece.
 
 240 SOUTH-COUNTY NEIGHBORS. 
 
 I Ve heerd say the' 's ben the time when the' was 
 a silver teapot in the Hall family." 
 
 " Gallaghan's folks calls her Julye, an' nothin' 
 else," said Mrs. Baton, snapping the thread of 
 reminiscence which her friend was just unwind 
 ing. "The Priscilly part on it never come handy 
 to 'em ; but they said Julye was a real Catholic 
 name." 
 
 " Ain't it takin' up yer cross, Mis' Baton," 
 sighed the other, " ter think how they '11 bury 
 that poor gal arter their fashion, with no fun'l ser 
 mon, nor nothin' ter show respec' ter the dead?" 
 
 " Yes, it's awful," lamented her companion. 
 " Priscilly was simple, but she was ez good a gal 
 ez ever walked the airth ; an' now ter think that 
 she can't hev Christian burial ! " 
 
 Their sympathetic exchange of opinions was 
 interrupted as they neared the little low-roofed 
 farmhouse by the clamor of sentinel geese ; and 
 their knock was promptly answered by Honora 
 Gallaghan, which sounding appellation was borne 
 by a diminutive old woman, weazen and wiry as 
 only old Irish women can be. 
 
 "Whereabouts be the woman, Nora? " asked 
 the nurse, assuming her professional manner, 
 and naming the sufferer by the official title 
 which was always used in designating one of her 
 patients. 
 
 Nora expressed a thankful sense of the kind 
 ness of their visit, and led them through the
 
 PRISCILLA GALLAGHAN. 24! 
 
 kitchen to the keeping-room, which according 
 to rustic custom had been appropriated as the 
 sick-room. 
 
 " Burnin' tug, be you, Nora?" queried the ob 
 servant Mrs. Baton, as she noticed the smoulder 
 ing peat-sods in the kitchen fire-place. " Well, 
 I never ! " 
 
 The art displayed upon the pictured walls of 
 the keeping-room spoke a various language, and 
 presented a curious mingling of the distinctive 
 marks of race and creed. An engraved likeness 
 of General Washington faced a violently colored 
 lithograph of Pius IX. A looking-glass sur 
 mounted with the American eagle emphasized 
 the national idea, and the usual funereal scene 
 of tomb, weeping-willow, and mourner might be 
 supposed to stand for that indefinite thing some- 
 times vaguely known as "the Protestant religion." 
 At least the northern side of the room committed 
 itself to nothing more distinctive than this. But 
 the southern wall was much more pronounced in 
 its indications ; for it bore a shelf on which stood 
 a plaster image of the Madonna, and near it 
 hung a rosary. More neutral decorations were 
 supplied by the cuts from the New York illus 
 trated papers and the gorgeous fashion-plates 
 that had been tacked up here and there ; while 
 the odd contrasts and analogies obtaining among 
 the miscellaneously inherited belongings of 
 Patrick and Priscilla might be still further noted 
 16
 
 242 SOUTH-COUNTY NEIGHBORS. 
 
 in the taste of the feverishly tinted lithographs, 
 of which one represented Byron writing out a 
 poem (in a neat, clerkly hand), and invoking 
 the Muse, who looked over his shoulder in the 
 person of some darkly jealous Marianna or 
 Margharita ; or the Yankee clock, in the lower 
 half of which art had painfully transfixed a man, 
 whose conspicuous and conventionally treated 
 heart lucidly revealed the pendulum at every 
 swing; or the devoutly mystical study of the 
 Sacred Heart of Mary, very faithfully and ana 
 tomically rendered, with a lavish use of pigments. 
 The room was made comfortable by sheep-skins 
 laid down for rugs, some of them colored with 
 domestic bark-and-herb dyes. Braided rag mats 
 lay on the floor, and testified to the industry 
 of the maker. There were also clean, rustling, 
 corn-husk mats, such as were originally the* 
 handiwork of the Charlestown squaws ; and one 
 of them was lying just as it had fallen half- 
 finished from the busily weaving fingers of the 
 young housewife. 
 
 Nurse Crombins stood looking down at the 
 patient, whose widely open eyes were vacant of 
 recognition. " She ain't got her senses," mut 
 tered the nurse. Yet the two women uttered 
 their comments with bated breath. 
 
 " Oh, nuss, ain't she changed beyond any- 
 thin'? I sh'd never dreamp' 'twas her." 
 
 " She 'm changed ez fast ez ever I see 'em
 
 PRISCILLA GALLAGHAN. 243 
 
 changed. You'd say she couldn't be less 'n 
 fifty year old." 
 
 " She looks older 'n my mother did the day 
 she died. Hark ter that, now ! of all the suf- 
 ferin' sounds ! " 
 
 The sick woman's features trembled piteously, 
 and an inarticulate moaning, in which was no 
 note of returning consciousness, finally shaped 
 itself into the low cry of " Oh, my soul ! oh, 
 me ! oh, my soul ! " 
 
 " Do you b'lieve the 's somethin' or 'nother 't 
 grieves her poor dyin' soul?" begged Mrs. Ba 
 ton, in an awe-struck whisper, and gazing dimly 
 through the sudden tears that had surprised her 
 well-seasoned self-control. 
 
 The nurse shook her head, with the decision 
 of long experience. 
 
 " Mostly things gits fixed in folkses heads 
 when they git so fur gone ez this," she ex 
 plained ; " an' they '11 say 'em over an' over, 
 till friends goes distracted ter hear 'em. An' 
 Priscilly, she was a gret han' ter say 'My soul !' 
 Don't yer know how she 'd look up jest ez 
 quick, 'f ye told her an'thin' p'tic'lar, lookin' so 
 laughy, an' her eyes a-shinin', an' so pleasant- 
 spoken, an' ' Oh, my soul ! ' alwas on to the tip 
 o' her tongue ! " 
 
 As the image recalled by the nurse's words 
 rose to their minds, the two looked again by 
 a common impulse toward the bed, and the
 
 244 SOUTH-COUNTY NEIGHBORS. 
 
 helpless, death-stricken fgure lying there; then 
 turned away, and asked after the child. 
 
 " It 's the foine choild he is." affirmed Nora, 
 with pride, " and cries as sthrong as hear-rt 
 could desire ; but at all evmts he slapes ristliss 
 the night, an' his brathin' is quare." 
 
 " Queer ! I sh'd think 't was ! " pronounced 
 the nurse, on examination. " Ain't you no 
 sense 't all, woman ! This child 's comin' down 
 with lung fever. An' no wonder ! Here 's 
 where you 'm kep' him right along, I s'pose, 
 right inter the draft o' this here old door." 
 
 "Ah, now! An' I niver moinded it! I 
 niver tought it cud hur-rt him ! " and Nora laid 
 the finger of perplexity against her withered 
 cheek. 
 
 " Well, you see, Nora," Mrs. Crombins in 
 structed her, " this ain't one o' your sort o' ba 
 bies, altogether. He ain't gonto be tough ez a 
 pitch knot, fer he 's part Yankee, and Priscilly 
 never was rugged." 
 
 " Oh, whativer will I do at ahl?" helplessly 
 lamented the guilty grandmother. 
 
 " Ef thet air child was one o' my babies," pro 
 claimed the nurse, suddenly stiffening out of 
 neighborly kindness into a dignified, profes 
 sional neutrality, and regarding the Gallaghan 
 infant with an abstracted air, as being one of 
 those unfortunate innocents consigned by fate 
 to the uncovenanted mercies beyond her dis-
 
 PRISCILLA GALLAGHAN. 245 
 
 pensation, " Ef 't was mine, I say, I 'd break up 
 that strictur' with mullen. I 'd wet some mullen 
 leaves in milk an' water, an' bind 'em on the 
 chist, an' put drafts 't his feet. That 's what / 
 sh'd do." 
 
 " But," vaguely implored Nora, " where is it 
 I 'd be afther foindin' this mullen the night, 
 mim? " 
 
 "'Course ef you hain't got it gethered, you 
 can't git it now, Nora," admonished the Yankee 
 neighbor, with a strong touch of contempt. 
 " But," generously resigning the claims of pro 
 fessional dignity, " well, see, you got some rye 
 meal? " 
 
 " Rye male, is it? An' Julia allays did be 
 kaapin' that same in it." 
 
 "Well, you jest fetch me some meal, an' some 
 mustard an' vinegar, an' I '11 see what I c'n fix 
 up ter help the baby. We 'm come ter stay with 
 with yer ter night, ye know. There '11 be things 
 ter do here, an' yer '11 want somebody ter 
 watch, yer know yes," she said, with a glance 
 of experience toward the bedside, to which she 
 presently returned. 
 
 "How long's she ben like this, Nora?" she 
 asked of the old woman, whose quaint features 
 were touched with the signs of that nobler lan 
 guage which grief writes even on the least spirit 
 ual type of countenance. 
 
 " Shure, she had a right to be will, intoirely,
 
 246 SOUTH-COUNTY NEIGHBORS. 
 
 ixcipt she caught cowld, jist. An' it 's mesilf 
 cud n't till how it happened her, for the plaace 
 do be jist beautiful for hate, barrin' the cracks 
 in the flure. But it was the day before yisther- 
 day she comminced to bur-rn wid the faver fit 
 to brek your hear-rt." 
 
 " What could ye think on ter do fer her, 
 Nora?" queried the nurse with pitying curiosity. 
 
 " Shure, I sprinkled her wid the wather from 
 the blissid will that the Riv'rind Mither bid me 
 take, when I saarved the Sisthers of Sint Clare," 
 was the innocent reply. 
 
 " H'm ! " ejaculated the other, refraining, with 
 remarkable self-control, from further comment. 
 " An'thin' else come inter yer head ter do, 
 Nora? " she demanded with chilling sarcasm. 
 
 " I gev' her the tay be times, when she cud 
 sup it, an' I sint post haste for the docthor," 
 answered the unsuspicious narrator. " The 
 ould Docthor Shute it was kem till her before, 
 from Wickford, but whin the kaaper's bye wint 
 afther him, they towld him, at the South Firry, 
 the docthor had gahn in the vissel for Newport ; 
 but owld Timmy Rooney, that lives jist forninst, 
 rin afther the mail wagon, an' sint wur-rd to the 
 Wakefield docthor, I niver can moind his 
 name jist, bit at ahl evints he be that one they 
 does be afther cahlin' Docthor John Hinry, an' 
 the coach jist cript an' cript along, siz thim that 
 was in it, an' the docthor docs be gahn aff, whin
 
 PRISCILLA GALLAGHAN. 247 
 
 they reached the plaace. An, whin it's tin, 
 elivin miles ye do be livin' away from the doc- 
 thor, ye '11 brek yer hear-rt wid the lookin' an* 
 the waitin'. An' I did be ixpictin' Patrick widout 
 fail ; I niver dhramed they had rason to kape 
 him, an' he niver stipped fut widin the dure 
 while she was sinsible, an' the docthor kem 
 afther he did. An' whin he kem till her bed 
 side, he jist luked har-rd at her, an' filt her 
 pouls, an' tahked wid me aboot her, an' at last 
 he siz, an' tur-rned away, ' It 's no use, she 's 
 goin' through.' 'Ye lie, docthor,' siz Patrick 
 (but it 's me belafe he niver sinsed what wur-rds 
 he was spaakin'), ' me wife will be well again, 
 plaze God.' 'No, me lad,' siz the docthor, 
 spaakin' till him qui-ite like, ' she 's goin' 
 through the eternal gates.' Thin, ' Nora,' siz 
 he, taakin' me to the wan side, ' Nora, for God's 
 sake get me aff o' this island. Have yees niver 
 a sail-boat here ? ' siz he, for 't was in a row-boat 
 he was fitched over ; ' for I want to stip me fut 
 ahn shure an' get baack to me sick paaple,' siz 
 he ; ' an' that 's all I '11 ahsk of yees,' siz he," 
 concluded Nora, who, with curious effect, per 
 sisted in gilding the doctor's Saxon speech with 
 the sunny riches of her own redundant brogue. 
 " So the kaaper's bye wint off wid him to shure, 
 an' I wint baack to Patrick." 
 
 "Where is Patrick, now?" asked Mrs. Baton, 
 in wonder at his absence.
 
 248 SOUTH-COUNTY NEIGHBORS. 
 
 " Ah, mim," sighed the old woman, " 't is yer- 
 silf knows the min does not be like us; they 
 niver sit an" sup sorra; but they wud be afther 
 sthrivin' wid dith itself. T was long e'er he gev 
 over ahl hopes ; an' thin he ran wild to hear her 
 cryin' out ahn her sowl. ' Mither,' siz he, ' I 
 must go off. to shure an' fitch the praste till 
 her; ' for the praste was ixpicted at the Firry 
 the night to marry Timmy Rooney's gur-rl to 
 wan o' thim little Frinch byes that wur-rks in 
 the facthory to a plaace they cahls Shady Lea. 
 ' Ah/ siz I, ' niver sthir to go ; shure the kaapcr's 
 bye will go there beyant for yees.' ' No,' siz 
 he, sthernly, ' me wife is no hiritic anny moore,' 
 siz he ; ' an' there 's no hiritic of thim ahl shall 
 stip a stip to do her a saarvice,' siz he ; savin' yer 
 prisince, mim, for repatin' that saame. Har-rk 
 to the poor gur-rl ! how she does be cryin' out ! " 
 
 Priscilla's faint moanings had risen again to a 
 sharper note. The nurse, exercising that last 
 duty of her calling in dealing with the sentient 
 body, lightly moistened her lips with a cloth 
 dipped in water; but the sufferer shrank away 
 from the careful touch, and her voice, already 
 hoarse with the death-change, sounded that 
 dirge with which she was entering eternity. 
 " Oh, my soul, my soul ! " 
 
 " Don't, Julia, don't be cahlin' out so, dar- 
 lint ! " implored the old woman, hanging over 
 her in tremulous distress. " Shure yer sowl is
 
 PRISCILLA GALLAGHAN. 249 
 
 safe; shure ye mind how the praste baptized 
 ye, an' aised yer sowl of morr-tal sin. Don't, 
 for the love o' God, don't cahl ahn yer sowl 
 anny moore. Cahl ahn the Blissid Mither and 
 her Son ; cahl ahn thim to resave yer sowl 
 in marcy ! Ah ! she '11 niver spake wur-rd 
 moore ! " and Honora's wailing, broke into a 
 shrill cry as, at sight of the sudden wave of 
 change that ran over the whitening, sharpening 
 features, she dropped heavily into her chair, 
 and rocked herself to and fro, with the hard- 
 wrung, dry-eyed sobbing of the aged. 
 
 " There, there, Nora," spoke Mrs. Baton, lay 
 ing a kindly hand on the old woman's convulsed 
 figure, " don't you take on ; it 's most over now. 
 Poor gal ! she's most through with her troubles ; " 
 she soothed, as the first faint sound of the death- 
 rattle was rather divined than heard. The nurse 
 threw back still further the loosened coverings 
 of the dying woman's laboring chest. " She 's 
 breathin' from higher an' higher up," she said, 
 and made a slight sign to her companion. 
 
 Nora sprang to her feet with the action of 
 youth, and sped to a cupboard. 
 
 "What you want, Nora?" questioned Mrs. 
 Baton, following her. " Ken I help you any? " 
 
 " Ah, will do I know," rejoined Nora, with a 
 kind of solemn defiance, turning upon her, and 
 showing the candle she had just taken in her 
 hand, "will do I know that the likes of yees niver
 
 250 SOUTH-COUNTY NEIGHBORS. 
 
 belaves anny thin' o' this, but this is our belafe, 
 an' what we belave, that same we sthrive to do." 
 She closed the lighted candle in Priscilla's hand 
 and held it there, first lighting candles at the 
 head of the bed ; and thus awaiting the last 
 moment, began to repeat the litany for the 
 dying. 
 
 " Here they come," whispered the nurse to 
 her companion, as the door opened, and Father 
 Mulchahey, closely followed by Patrick, entered. 
 Patrick fell on his knees beside the bed, and the 
 agonized gaspings of grief rose mingled with the 
 last ebbing sighs of mortality. The priest began 
 the rites of his office, and the two neighbor 
 women by one consent stole away, and left the 
 still breathing clay of their countrywoman to 
 the ministrations of the alien race and the for 
 eign creed. They had not very long to wait 
 before the shrill sound of the Irish death-wail 
 gave them to know that the innocent soul of 
 Priscilla had gone to seek a better country, even 
 a heavenly.
 
 L. C. 
 
 IN the great sunny garret of an old gambrel- 
 roofed homestead, a child of not more than 
 eight years, but quaint enough to be in keeping 
 with the colonial atmosphere of her surround 
 ings, sat frowning with self-importance over the 
 study of an heirloom diary, which, though written 
 in the neat and elegant hand of the seventeenth 
 century, presented frequent difficulties, both of 
 style and calligraphy, to the ambitious infant 
 who had just conned these lines, inspired by the 
 mortuary muse : 
 
 " Simon, my son ! son of my nuptial knot ! 
 Ah ! Simon 's gone ! Simon my son is not ! " 
 
 "Where had Simon gone, and what was ne 
 not? " demanded the literal-minded reader. 
 "Oh dear! I don't think I like this poetry as 
 well as Sir Walter Scott's. You can always tell 
 what he means." 
 
 Deserting the Puritanic effusion, and donning 
 a sunbonnet that had seen much fatigue-duty, 
 she made her meditative way out into the June- 
 brightened meadows that stretched almost from 
 the door. A gaunt English mastiff, whose de 
 monstratively good-natured air detracted from
 
 2$2 SOUTH-COUNTY NEIGHBORS. 
 
 the savage dignity of the mould in which Nature 
 has cast his race, came leaping toward her with 
 awkward delight. The master., whose avant- 
 courier he was, received from the child the for 
 mal greeting due to a guest. 
 
 "How do you do, Mr. Felix? Will you be 
 pleased to walk in? " 
 
 " No, L. C. ; I have come to take you out for 
 a walk." 
 
 Mr. Felix being averse to the conversational 
 burden that was assumed by those who habitu 
 ally addressed the child by her double name of 
 Lucretia* Catherine, given her for a great-aunt 
 who insisted upon having it used in full, had 
 seen fit to denominate her L. C., which pseudo 
 nym softened itself into Elsie when he was par 
 ticularly complaisant. 
 
 " And now what have you been reading to 
 day? " he asked, with the idle air of one who 
 had dedicated the lingering hours of the June 
 afternoon, 
 
 " Wherein no man shall work, but play," 
 
 to such amusement as might be derived from 
 the society of a quaintly old-fashioned child. 
 
 " Writing, Mr. Felix," returned L. C., laconi 
 cally. " I can read writing pretty well now," 
 she added with pride. " I read in the old diary 
 some poetry about Simon. ' Simon, my son. 
 He is gone. He is not.' What docs it mean,
 
 L. C. 253 
 
 Mr. Felix?" queried the student, with a corru 
 gated brow. 
 
 " You must never ask the poets what they 
 mean. That is very bad literary manners." 
 
 " But where had he gone?" persisted L. C., 
 who was contentedly skipping along the drift 
 way, or darting after crane's bill and blue-eyed 
 grass. The breeze from the bay came freshly 
 inland, brightening the faces and quickening the 
 steps of the companions. 
 
 " There be strange lapses and omissions in 
 your attainments, most erudite lady. Simon 
 had gone to heaven," instructed Mr. Felix, mind 
 ful to assume a virtue if he had it not; " and if 
 you are good, you '11 go, too, some day." 
 
 " I don't want to go to heaven," responded 
 L. C., unconcernedly, and intent upon her nod 
 ding nosegay. 
 
 " Those are pagan words for little girls," said 
 her friend, severely. 
 
 " Well, it is just like church, you know." 
 
 "And why are you not happy in church?" 
 inquired Mr. Felix, developing his Socratic 
 method. 
 
 " Because I can't read there," returned L. C., 
 calmly. " And it is dreadful when such funny 
 things happen. The old gentleman in front of 
 us when he ought to say throughly, in the 
 Psalms, you know, always reads out ' Wash 
 me, though roughly,' and I want to laugh so it
 
 254 SOUTH-COUNTY NEIGHBORS. 
 
 is quite painful," complained the child, shaking 
 her head, querulously. 
 
 " Indeed, an exquisite pleasantry." Mr. Fe 
 lix was guilty of a yawn. 
 
 " Was n't it ? " eagerly. " I laughed so," 
 related L. C., " that I had to put my head down 
 as if I was saying my prayers." 
 
 " Fetch me my tablets ! " spoke Mr. Felix, to 
 an imaginary servitor. " My tablets ! Meet it 
 is I set it down that feminine dissimulation 
 doth flourish and abound at the tender age of 
 eight years." 
 
 " Now you are talking like the wits," ob 
 served L. C., thoughtfully. " Yes," she nodded 
 emphatically, " a little like Mr. Pope, I think, 
 or perhaps a little, a ve-ry little, like Mr. 
 Addison." 
 
 " I will endeavor to hold my reprehensible 
 brilliancy more in check. But tell me some 
 thing you like about church." 
 
 " Oh, I like it when they sing, ' Ory, ory, ory 
 fresh us,' because that is the last hymn, you 
 know. Mr. Felix," queried L. C., with sudden 
 earnestness, " does the Episcopal Church go as 
 far back as Washington? Old Mrs. Piper says- 
 so ; and she and Mrs. Barker, that they call 
 the Baptist Barker, had high words about it 
 the other day, Sally says. I knew he was the 
 father of his country," pursued L. C., " and I 
 thought perhaps he might be one of the fathers
 
 L. C. 255 
 
 of the church, too. I Ve heard about them. 
 Do you think so? " 
 
 " You ask me too much, as your townsfolk 
 say. I could n't settle so nice a question. I 
 would rather ask you what you have been doing 
 to-day besides reading." 
 
 " Oh, I Ve been sitting in our graveyard," 
 answered L. C., with animation. 
 
 " Young Mortality. What takes you there so 
 often?" 
 
 " Because I like to make friends with the 
 gravestones," replied L. C., on reflection. 
 
 " Do you never play with any children, my 
 child?" 
 
 " Why, there are n't any for me to play with, 
 Mr. Felix, except seven miles away. Some 
 times when we go to church I run away to play 
 with Mary Scarlet, but they all say, ' Do you 
 know what day it is ? ' or else Maleen Castle 
 out in the kitchen you know says, 'What 
 a cantico them children do make ! ' ' 
 
 " Who is your friend, did you say?" 
 
 " Mary Char-lotte," repeated L. C., with visi 
 ble effort. 
 
 " Oh ! How odd it seems that you should 
 still have babyish struggles with your articula 
 tion. So you don't care much for play? Where 
 is your doll, now? I 'm afraid you have no 
 feminine traits." 
 
 " Why, you said I was too feminine, just now,
 
 256 SOUTH-COUNTY NEIGHBORS. 
 
 when you talked like the 'Spectator,'" remon 
 strated L. C. 
 
 " Your memory is as inconveniently good as 
 Sintram's. (Ah, heard your name, and pricked 
 up your ears, did n't you, old fellow?) But cer 
 tainly, every good little girl should be learning 
 something useful every day." 
 
 " Well, I am sure I sewed my stint." (She pro 
 nounced it stent.} " But Sally said such stitches 
 were a sight to behold, and a living disgrace to 
 my name. I did hurry, for I wanted to go out 
 and pick kingcups. Sally says if I don't learn 
 to sew better my name will ring when I grow up. 
 She says it will be heard of clear from one end of 
 the town to the other." 
 
 "From Little Rest Hill to Little Comfort 
 Cove," idly muttered Mr. Felix, hazarding a 
 local allusion, and blundering in it, as stran 
 gers usually do in such rash attempts. 
 
 " And I made a pat of butter," gravely an 
 nounced L. C. 
 
 " Really ! Come, that is doing very well," 
 commended her monitor, benevolently. 
 
 "Yes, I ran away up to old Dora Driscoll's, 
 and she let me do it. Sally is so cross ; she won't 
 let anybody into the milk room. ' Go and scald 
 your hands first,' Dora said." 
 
 " Not a bad idea that, L. C., for I have seen 
 them when they were not above suspicion, and 
 quite grubby at times."
 
 L. C. 257 
 
 " They were pretty grubby, as you say, Mr. 
 Felix," calmly assented the young lady, "that 
 day we dug the ' saxifrax.' But you know it was 
 early in the morning, and the dew was on, and 
 so, when we got through, 
 
 " ' I washed my hands in water that never rained nor ran ; 
 I dried them on a towel that was never wove nor span.' " 
 
 " That reminds me that I brought you some 
 deleterious candy from the store, at your own 
 native cross-roads." 
 
 " Oh, how nice, Mr. Felix ! Now we can sit 
 down here by Alph, the sacred river (you know 
 that's what I've named Injun Run), and eat it 
 together." 
 
 " Very well, L. C., am I not your devoted 
 slave? Certainly, we will partake, and we will 
 be poisoned together ; just like two young Pari 
 sian lovers, with a sociable pot of charcoal be 
 tween them." 
 
 " How funny you are, Mr. Felix," she chuckled, 
 animated by the equally stimulating qualities of 
 the candy and the wit. " I like you to be funny. 
 
 " Don't you think, Mr. Felix," she queried after 
 a pause, " that your noble hound looks you in 
 the face as though he would have you say, like 
 Sir Philip Sidney, you know, ' Thy necessity is 
 yet greater than mine ' ? " 
 
 " L. C., your inveterate pedantry embitters a 
 man's most careless moments. Here, Sintram ! 
 17
 
 258 SOUTH-COUNTY NEIGHBORS. 
 
 This is commended to your more robust di 
 gestion. Tell me, Elsie," continued her instruc 
 tor, " have you none but a bookworm-ideal? " 
 
 " Oh, yes; I wish I were like Miss Phoebe. I 
 think she is just perfect." 
 
 "Because?" 
 
 " Because she wears a belt," answered L. C., 
 promptly. 
 
 " At Kilve there was no weathercock. 
 And that's- the reason why," 
 
 quoted Mr. Felix. 
 
 " That 's in Wordsworth," nodded L. C., with 
 a satisfied air ; " I 've read it." 
 
 "You dreadful child, you have read everything 
 and learned nothing." 
 
 " I like Wordsworth," pronounced L. C., de 
 cisively. " And Byron," she subjoined. " And 
 Anon., the old English poet in the ' Farmers' Al 
 manac.' And I like Shakspeare, too. But you 
 know, Mr. Felix, that Mr. Rowe thought he was 
 only a kind of a wild, irregular genius." 
 
 " Keep strictly to the classic Miss Phoebe, just 
 now, L. C., and read me the charms of her 
 cestus." 
 
 " Of her chain, you mean? (I suppose that 's 1 
 a word for chain.) She has lots of little charms 
 on her watch-chain, and she wears her watch 
 in a beautiful silk belt, all colors, and her hair 
 comes way down each side of her forehead,
 
 L. C. 259 
 
 and just clears her eyes, and covers her ears 
 all up. And she never pushes it back behind 
 her ears, if she 's ever so busy. She says ' Yes? ' 
 and ' Yes, indeed,' When you tell her anything 
 and ' He 's 'nicely,' when you ask how her father 
 is just as sweet as as cream candy. And 
 she keeps it so nice and smooth a fly would slip 
 up on it, Sally says. Sally says there 's nothing 
 proud nor haughty about her, and you never 
 would know, to see her so free and pleasant in 
 her ways, that her father keeps the store, and 
 she wears a real Dunstable. When she is going 
 away from our house Sally always comes in to 
 'take leaf of her, she says, to show how much she 
 thinks of her, and how ' she '11 uphold her any 
 where, for a girl of gold.' She tells Miss Phoebe 
 she 's going to speak a good word for her some 
 day, and Miss Phcebe always laughs, but they 
 won't either of them tell me what it means, ex 
 cept that it 's lahro for meddlers." 
 
 " Well, never mind that grievance, L. C. Let 
 us go back to the interrupted story of your an 
 cestors, as you gathered it from your old book 
 in the garret." 
 
 " Oh, yes. I told you Simon's mother died. 
 She was very beautiful, and had the small-pox, 
 and all the children died, and had it, too; and 
 Simon's father says : 
 
 " ' In splendid beauty she did much excel, 
 But the small-pox did it and her expel.'
 
 260 SOUTH-COUNTY NEIGHBORS. 
 
 " Did you know, Mr. Felix," breathlessly con 
 tinued L. C., "that Cap'n Seecoke had come 
 home from New York with the small-pox? " 
 
 " I am just now made aware of it by your 
 artless narrative." 
 
 "Isn't it dreadful?" 
 
 "Yes, .it is sad to think that he lacks an ac 
 complished poet, like your ancestor, to cele 
 brate his malady in soothing verse. Now I 
 understand the full pathos of the saying, ' They 
 had no poet, and are dead.' ' 
 
 " Old Dora has been in it often, for she says 
 it ' did be very breef [prevalent] in ould Ireland.' ' 
 
 " Your conversation has taken on an agree 
 ably foreign flavor of late. It used to be largely 
 seasoned with the provincial Sally. What was 
 the last thing she said to you? " 
 
 " Why, she only called to me out of the 
 cheese- room window just now when I ran by 
 that my head looked ' like a hooraw's nest.' She 
 thinks I ought to keep it as smooth as Miss 
 Phoebe's, and I can't! But she did n't drag me 
 in, because she was keeping Seven Day." 
 
 "What is that?" 
 
 " Why, Sally was brought up with Sevendy 
 folks. Haven't you heard her say so? And 
 Saturdays she sits in the cheese-room and sings 
 her hymns. When I would n't come in she just 
 shook her head at me, and went on singing the 
 baptizing hymn,
 
 L. C. 26l 
 
 " 'Go down to the water if you 'm dry, 
 And there you '11 get your full supply.' 
 
 She always says I shall come home drownded. 
 She said something about you the other day, 
 Mr. Felix. I don't know whether I 'd better tell 
 it." 
 
 " By the way, L. C.," asked Mr. Felix with a 
 carelessness so profoundly studied that he failed 
 to hear the last remark, " about how old do you 
 take me to be ? " 
 
 Nothing surprised by the change of subject, 
 the child regarded him intensely with a busi 
 ness-like air, frankly making a telescope of her 
 hands the better to scrutinize his features, and 
 cheerfully announced at last, 
 
 " I guess you 're about as old as grandfather." 
 
 " L. C. ! " harshly exclaimed Mr. Felix, flushing 
 angrily, and half-rising, only to resume his place, 
 as if reminded of his dignity, " if you ever joked, 
 I should think you were joking now. I believe 
 I had forgotten," he added, forcing a painful 
 smile, " that you had not come to your common- 
 sense yet." He got up and walked moodily 
 about. 
 
 " Why, Mr. Felix," loudly reasoned his un 
 flattering companion, " to be sure, you 're not as 
 gray as grandfather, but you 've got those funny 
 little markings all round your eyes just the same 
 as he has, only," she confessed with another pro 
 longed gaze, " not quite so many of 'em. And
 
 262 SOUTH-COUNTY NEIGHBORS. 
 
 grandfather is n't as old as I used to think ; for 
 he can't remember the Trojan war ; he told me 
 so when I asked him once. But that was a great 
 while ago," she explained, " when I was twite a 
 little girl. I did n't know any better then." 
 
 " Know henceforth, L. C.," proclaimed her 
 friend, again summoning that constrained smile, 
 " that I am still young and blooming. I had 
 a birthday yesterday, and I was only thirty- 
 nine." Mr. Felix, after due search, drew forth 
 a folded paper, and complacently smoothed it 
 on his knee. 
 
 " Oh, did somebody write you poetry on your 
 birthday?" demanded his young friend, with 
 enthusiasm. 
 
 " Well, yes," admitted Mr. Felix, with becom 
 ing modesty, and proceeded to read : 
 
 A BIRTHDAY SALUTATION ADDRESSED TO 
 MYSELF. 
 
 The melancholy day has come, the saddest of the year : 
 With spirits low, in accents grim, my title all too clear 
 I read upon Time's balance-sheet, where sundry dates 
 
 combine 
 To write me down seized and possessed of years just 
 
 thirty-nine. 
 
 Embarrassed by my riches, I fain would shift this 
 
 treasure 
 
 On shoulders yet unsifted in such abounding measure. 
 Ah, could I but dispense it, I 'd ask no dole oflabor, 
 But all my fortune freely I 'd settle on my neighbor.
 
 L. C. 263 
 
 My deed from Time I cancel, and fund my years in com 
 mon ! 
 
 Right nobly I resign them, and spurn the wiles of Mammon. 
 I' hail this just conclusion with socialistic glee, 
 And I shout in dates and seasons for wildest anarchy. 
 
 Oh, much it irks me to recall that ofttimes I forbore 
 
 To sound the scornful interdict, " Pshaw ! forty odd or 
 more ! " 
 
 High words of dauntless youthfulness ! but still they 
 may be mine : 
 
 Be swift, my tongue, to launch them while yet I 'm thirty- 
 nine! 
 
 " What do you think of it? " inquired author 
 of critic. 
 
 "Well, I don't know," hesitated the child. 
 "Was it written to be funny?" she ventured 
 dubiously. 
 
 " No, L. C. ; it is steeped in depths of Dan- 
 tean gloom." 
 
 " Oh, I thought you read it like that," she re 
 turned, brightening up at this confirmation of 
 her judgment. " Thirty-nine," she nodded, 
 with an air of recognition ; " yes, I know it in 
 the tables." 
 
 " Ah, you '11 know it better by-and-by, when 
 you 've been longer in the great school that has 
 no vacations." 
 
 " But I don't go to any school at all," said L. 
 C. with dignity. 
 
 " True. You have not begun to learn. You 
 do not know where you are living, my child."
 
 264 SOUTH-COUNTY NEIGHBORS. 
 
 "Why, Mr. Felix, I heard grandfather say 
 only last evening we lived in School District 
 Number Thirteen. Uncle says that in Provi 
 dence, where he has stayed so long, they call it 
 the South County down here. But he says they 
 don't know much up there in Providence." 
 
 " Ah, I thought you did not know. This is 
 Arcady." 
 
 " Why, no ; it is n't." (" The dwellers in Ar 
 cady never know their fortune," mused Mr. Felix.) 
 " But I know how to get there," insisted the 
 other; and as her listener turned idly toward 
 her she was encouraged to inform him at puerile 
 length that the stage had Arcadia painted on it, 
 and must run there, though it appeared that 
 Sally insisted that " wheresumever that might be, 
 it never run no nigher to it than Branzinewuks." 
 
 " Mr. Felix," she inquired, without sign or 
 warning, "is thirty-nine too old to be in love? " 
 Her companion turned a self-revealing look upon 
 her as she coolly proceeded, " Because Sally says 
 you must be crossed in love ; for nothing else 
 would keep you moping 'round here so long. 
 She says it 's ' mor'n 'markable he should make 
 such a harmit of hisself.' But excuse me if you 
 don't want to tell ! " 
 
 " Why, I believe I was just going to confess to 
 you, Elsie," smiled her friend, if rather ruefully, 
 yet with a genuine air of relief. " Yes, I am 
 much obliged to Sally, and I put full faith in
 
 L. C. 265 
 
 your discretion, for you are a loyal little soul. 
 Not a word, you know, to anybody about it. It 
 shall be our secret, just between ourselves," 
 he admonished, and was answered by glowing 
 looks of a speechless devotion that almost over 
 powered the gravity with which he had begun 
 his narrative. 
 
 " Yes, I will submit my fate to you," repeated 
 the speaker, in a mood between jest and earnest. 
 " You shall be my Queen of Love and Beauty 
 (let me brush off that envious rose bug) ; and I 
 will inquire of you, for you are already more 
 deeply read in romance than I ever had time to 
 be. You shall tell me why my wooing does not 
 prosper. This is the case, briefly stated: Is 
 thirty-nine too old to be loved by three and 
 twenty?" 
 
 " I guess not," was the prompt opinion of the 
 court. "You see, Mr. Felix, twenty-three is 
 pretty old, too, and I don't think she could 
 mind ; especially as you can't live so very long 
 now," L. C. added, soothingly. 
 
 " Exactly. So you approve? " 
 
 " I don't quite know, after all," she objected, 
 with a knitted forehead. " There was a story 
 last week in the ' Pendulum ' about like that." 
 
 "Did it turn out well?" 
 
 " Oh, beautifully ! " cried L. C., eagerly. " At 
 least it ended good. He was very old, most as 
 old as you, I guess, but he was so good ; and he
 
 266 SOUTH-COUNTY NEIGHBORS. 
 
 died at the foot of the first column, and then she 
 married the one she knew before the young 
 one at the foot of the next column, and they 
 were very happy for almost a quarter of a 
 column." 
 
 " I am afraid I could never be as high-minded 
 as that, L. C. In fact, if that were the only way 
 to be good, I should never go in for being good 
 at all." 
 
 " But you must, you know, if you really love 
 her," L. C. gravely declared. " You ought to be 
 going into a decline, yes, hurrying into one, 
 or, if you cared for her very truly, you would 
 somehow get yourself thrown from your horse, 
 after you had made your will very handsomely. 
 And if you wanted to do it all in just the best 
 way, you would never once let her know that 
 you loved her at all, you would be so careful 
 to save her feelings." 
 
 " My little queen, this knowledge is too won 
 derful and excellent for me; I cannot attain 
 unto it." 
 
 " But, perhaps she will like you best, in the 
 end," consoled L. C. " Sometimes it turns out 
 that way, too. And you are so much like Fitz- 
 James : 
 
 " ' On his bold forehead middle age 
 Had lightly pressed its signet sage,' 
 
 Only," she soliloquized, " to be sure, Ellen
 
 L. C. 267 
 
 did n't fall in love with him ; it was young 
 Malcolm she loved." 
 
 " You are rather unfortunate in your instances. 
 But still, my child," continued Mr. Felix, in 
 the tone of soft playfulness that lightly veiled 
 the truth of his intent, " all discouragements 
 aside, would you advise me to write to her and 
 tell her that I love her ? " 
 
 " I would, yes, I would, dear Mr. Felix ! " 
 cried L. C., with unusual warmth of sympathy. 
 " Do write her one of your nice funny letters, 
 just as you wrote me when I had the scarlatina." 
 
 " My dear little girl," he replied gravely, " I 
 can't take your kind and flattering advice, much 
 as I wish I could, because well, for one thing, 
 because I Ve done it already," he was fain to 
 conclude. 
 
 "You mean you have written to her?" de 
 manded L. C., with childish persistence. 
 
 He nodded moodily. 
 
 " And she does n't answer? " asked the child, 
 reading his face. 
 
 "And she does n't answer." Mr. Felix twirled 
 the willow switch he had idly stripped of its 
 leaves, and cruelly beat down a dying swath of 
 innocent buttercups. 
 
 " Well," said L. C., cheerfully, after a moment 
 of cogitation, "perhaps she hasn't got any ruled 
 paper. I wanted to write a letter myself last 
 week," she pursued, with an important air, and
 
 268 SOUTH-COUNTY NEIGHBORS. 
 
 a glance aside, to see if her dignified labors were 
 duly recognized, " and I could n't because there 
 was n't any ruled paper, and black lines under 
 neath were no good. 
 
 " Or perhaps," she resumed, on rinding that 
 her friend's gloomy silence remained unbroken, 
 "your letter has gone wrong. Did n't you mail 
 it in the wrong time of the moon? Sally said 
 last month 't was a ' Saturday's moon, and come 
 it once in seven years, it comes too soon.' She 
 said her granny told her so. Or don't you think 
 perhaps her letter to you has gone wrong? " 
 
 " No, L. C.," said Mr. Felix, wearily rising, 
 and slowly pacing by " the sacred river " of her 
 naming, which babbled a merry undertone to 
 their serious debate, as it ran bearing their trib 
 ute of leaf-pluckings and flower-strewings "down 
 to a shoreless sea," " that only happens in your 
 stories. Besides, I have heard from a friend, 
 who mentioned that she was going abroad at 
 once. That does not look as if she cared much 
 for us, my poor Elsie." He smiled rather 
 grievously. 
 
 " Oh, the letter is lost ; I am sure the letter is 
 lost ! " wailed L. C., beating her palms together. 
 " Why, it always is down a crack, or under a 
 step, or something. It has dropped somewhere ; 
 they always do. Only yesterday I read a story 
 about a letter that stayed a month in a corner, 
 behind some cobwebs.
 
 L. C. 269 
 
 " At any rate," she prattled, finding her con 
 clusions indifferently received, " if you mean to 
 be married before the twelvemonth's end, you 
 must swallow a chicken's heart whole. That 's 
 what Maggie Driscoll did. She says it 's a 
 charm ; but she would n't give me one ; she said 
 I must wait till they had chicken again. ' Whisht, 
 niver moind ! ' she said (what makes Maggie 
 talk so funny, Mr. Felix?), she 'd do another 
 charm, she said ; and she boiled an egg, and cut 
 it in two to take out the yolk, and filled up 
 the shells with salt ; and I could n't eat mine ; 
 but Maggie ate hers, ' for to dhrame of her shu- 
 tors,' she said. But she was cross all the next 
 day because she only dreamed of big Mick in 
 the ould country, and she don't care a ha'p'orth 
 for him, and she says ' must she be spending her 
 wages to fetch that gossoon over here? ' " 
 
 " That will do, L. C. ; your conversation de 
 teriorates ; I shall take you home." 
 
 " If you talk before you go, 
 Your tongue will be your overthrow," 
 
 quoted L. C., from Sally, who, as it appeared, 
 often reminded her that her babyhood had been 
 marked by this stigma. 
 
 L. C. was in skipping spirits all the way home ; 
 and her friend put aside his graver mood to take 
 elaborate leave of her at her door. 
 
 "Adieu, Lucretia Catherine; fair creature.
 
 2/0 SOUTH-COUNTY NEIGHBORS. 
 
 adieu." And he bent in burlesque devotion over 
 the morsel of a hand. 
 
 " Good-by, Mr. Felix ; and now remember 
 I 'm sure the letter was lost," she declared in her 
 shrill pipe, and with a commanding frown. 
 
 " 'Sh, Elsie," warned her departing guest, and 
 laid a finger on his lip ; but he did not look al 
 together disheartened as he turned away. 
 
 " Oh dear, I am sorry he has gone ! " sighed 
 L. C. ; " and I wish," she murmured sadly, as 
 she felt in her empty pocket, " that I had n't 
 eaten up all the candy." 
 
 She was intensely surprised to learn the next 
 day that her mature playmate had left the place 
 early that morning. 
 
 Several weeks later she was flattered with a 
 sense of importance by getting a letter duly ad 
 dressed to Miss Lucretia Catherine, but reading 
 somewhat less formally within : 
 
 EXCELLENT L. C., Thanks, praises, rewards, de 
 votions, homages ! Excuse my Gallicisms ; but this 
 is no time for dealing in the cold Saxon idiom. Faintly 
 at best can I express, my adorable infant, what I owe 
 to your inimitable insight clairvoyance, I may call 
 it which led me to the treasure that lay perdu in the 
 keeping of that gruff custodian, our mutual " Uncle 
 Holder," who controls our epistolary fortunes at the 
 cross-roads. Often had I besieged him before with 
 inquiries after this particular letter ; and it was against 
 my (fancied) good sense, and in spite of my pride,
 
 L. C. 271 
 
 that I went to him from you on that happy day when 
 your persistent assurances that it was lost helped to 
 restore my faith in its existence. Our Uncle was sur 
 prised, surly, reluctant, but fortunately there are means 
 of soothing without compromising official dignity ; and 
 after the needful amount of grumbling he made the 
 exhaustive search that I relentlessly superintended. 
 
 Do you remember Captain Seecoke, and his small 
 pox, of which you told me ? By his perversity in falling 
 ill of this malady just as my letter came to the office, I 
 had nearly lost all the dearest hopes of my life ; for the 
 dove-like little missive was swept away by the great, 
 cumbrous, gallinaceous wings of the " Bird of Columbia," 
 the political weekly that the Captain most affects ; and 
 it was thus unconsciously deposited in his letter-box ; 
 and there it remained from week to week awaiting his 
 convalescence. The accumulating papers would not 
 be delivered sooner, as no one could call for them ; 
 and as long as no letter arrived for the Captain our 
 learned Uncle judged it not worth while to send up his 
 mail by the doctor, since the patient might be supposed 
 to be suffering a temporary suspension of interest in 
 the exchange of political hostilities. 
 
 After this, I shall acknowledge a sympathy with your 
 ancestor, and, if I had his pen, I would, like him, pre 
 sent the claims of small-pox to be married to immortal 
 verse. 
 
 If you expect my narrative to flow as frankly as one 
 of your favorite stories, Elsie, and if you ardently desire 
 to hear about my letter, I can only meet your wishes so 
 far as to say that you must gather enough from what I 
 tell you in relating that it was an inspiriting one if
 
 2/2 SOUTH-COUNTY NEIGHBORS. 
 
 read between the lines. This sort of invisible writing 
 is such as you will probably understand better by-and- 
 by ; but it seems that the writer of the letter, when she 
 did not hear from me, concluded that I did not know 
 how to read this fairy cipher. I am afraid I stood very 
 Jow indeed in her estimation just then, Elsie ! At any 
 rate, she tells me now that it was because she had not 
 been understood that she was going away from us all. 
 She had convinced herself that she ought not to have 
 left anything for the interlinear interpretation, and had 
 I been a day later, it would have been too late to find 
 her on this side of the Atlantic. So near should I 
 have come to losing all but for you, and your pretty 
 faith in the ever romantic. 
 
 Now, my dear little girl, mind this : When I shall 
 come to see you next fall, with my bride (that now is 
 to be), on our way to Newport, be ready to accept and 
 return the love of a lady who holds you very dear ; 
 and believe now and always in the devoted affection 
 and gratitude of your faithful servant, 
 
 FELIX. 
 
 University Press: Johu \Vilsou and h-on, Cambridge.
 
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