of Christ's character. The wisdom he taught filled me with the deepest
shame for my folly of fretting at the trivial perplexities of life. I
cried out, in agony, 'Oh, God give me strength!' Strength came. It will
come to those who ask for it with earnest, unselfish hearts."
Observing that Mr. Royden was thoughtful, and plunged in doubt, the old
man changed the conversation. He spoke of Mrs. Royden. He expressed his
sympathy for her, and indirectly showed his companion how tender he
should be of her, how charitable towards her temper, how careful not to
make her feel the hedge of thorns which their ill-matched dispositions
had placed between them. He went so far as to teach how, by mutual
forbearance, forgetfulness of the past and hope for the future, pleasant
discourse and serene contentment with the ways of Providence, these
briers might be made to blossom thick with roses.
"Talk with her--talk with her!" said Mr. Royden, with gushing emotions.
"Oh, if you could create such harmony between us, I would bless you, not
for our sakes alone, but for our children's. We are spoiling them; I see
it every day. I am not severe with them; but one hour I am fretful, and
the next too indulgent. My wife thinks it necessary to counteract my too
easy discipline by one too strict. She punishes them sometimes when she
is angry, and that is sure to make them worse."
If Mr. Royden had said she never punished the children except when she
was angry, he would not have gone far from the truth.
XIV.
DEACON DUSTAN'S POLICY.
Our friends met a ruddy farmer on horseback. He reined up on the
road-side, and stopped. Mr. Royden also stopped, and said,
"Good-morning, Deacon Dustan."
"Good-morning, good-morning, neighbor," cried Deacon Dustan, heartily,
his sharp gray eyes twinkling as he fixed them on the old clergyman's
face. "Good-morning to you, Father. Mr. Rensford, I believe? I heard of
your arrival, sir, and intended to call and make your acquaintance."
The old man acknowledged the compliment in his usual simple and
beautiful manner.
"We thought of getting around to your place yesterday, deacon," said Mr.
Royden. "But we found we had not time."
"Try again, and better luck!" replied Deacon Dustan. "By the way," he
added, in an off-hand, careless manner, "I suppose you will put your
name on our paper for the new meeting-house?"
"Is the thing decided upon?"
"Oh, yes. The old shell has held together long enough. The other society
has got the start of us, at the village; and we must try to be a little
in the fashion, or many of our people will go there to meeting."
"I don't know; but I suppose I must do something, if a new house is
built," said Mr. Royden. "The old one seems to me, though, to be a very
respectable place of worship, if we are only a mind to think so."
"It would do very well five years ago," said Deacon Dustan. "But our
society has come up wonderfully. We have got just the right kind of
minister now. Mr. Corlis is doing a great thing for us. I don't think we
could have got a more popular preacher. He is very desirous to see the
movement go on."
Mr. Royden said he would consider the matter; a few more remarks were
passed, touching the business of farmers, the favorable state of the
weather to commence haying, and so forth; and the deacon, switching his
little black pony, pursued his way.
"I am not much in favor of building a new meeting-house," said Mr.
Royden, with a dissatisfied air, driving on. "Although I am not a
church-member, I shall feel obliged to give in proportion with my
neighbors towards the enterprise."
"Is not the old house a good one?" asked Father Brighthopes.
"As good as any, only it is old-fashioned. Our people are getting
ashamed of the high pulpit and high-backed pews, since Mr. Corlis has
been with us. Deacon Dustan, who has some fashionable daughters, and a
farm near the proposed site of the new house, appears to be the prime
mover in the affair."
"He probably views it in a purely business light, then?"
"Yes," said Mr. Royden. "The vanity of his daughters will be gratified,
and the price of his land enhanced. I ought not to speak
so,"--laughing,--"but the truth is, the deacon is the shrewdest man to
deal with in the neighborhood."
"A jolly, good-natured man, I should judge?"
"One of the best! A capital story-teller, and eater of good dinners. But
he has an eye to speculation. He is keen. Mark Wheeler, who is a close
jockey, declares he was never cheated till the deacon got hold of him."
Father Brighthopes shook his head sadly. He was not pleased to pursue
the subject. Presently he began to talk, in his peculiarly interesting
and delightful way, about the great philosophy of life, and Mr. Royden
was glad to listen.
In this manner they passed by the minister's cottage, the old-fashioned
meeting-house and the pleasant dwellings scattered around it; and
finally came to a large, showy white house, shaded by trees, and
surrounded by handsome grounds, which Mr. Royden pointed out as Deacon
Dustan's residence.
A little further on, they came to a little brown, weather-beaten,
dilapidated house, built upon a barren hill. Here Mr. Royden stopped.
"This is one of Deacon Dustan's houses," said he. "Job Bowen, an old
soldier, who lost a leg in the war of 1812, lives here. He is now a
shoemaker. I hope I shall be able to engage his daughter Margaret to
come and live with us. Will you go in, or sit in the wagon?"
"I shall feel better to get out and stir a little," replied the
clergyman.
Mr. Royden tied Old Bill to a post, and, letting down a pair of bars
for his aged friend, accompanied him along a path of saw-dust and rotten
chips to the door.
They were admitted by a bent and haggard woman, who said "good-morning"
to Mr. Royden and his companion, in a tone so hoarse and melancholy as
to be exceedingly painful to their ears.
"Will you walk in?" she asked, holding the door open.
"Thank you. Is your daughter Margaret at home now?"
"Yes, she is."
Mrs. Bowen talked like a person who had lost all her back teeth, and her
accents seemed more and more unhappy and forbidding.
"I called to see if you could let her come and help us next week," said
Mr. Royden.
"I don't know. Sit down. I'll see what she says."
Having placed a couple of worn, patched and mended wooden chairs, for
the callers, in the business room of the house, Mrs. Bowen disappeared.
Father Brighthopes looked about him with a softened, sympathizing
glance; but, before sitting down, went and shook hands with a sallow
individual, who was making shoes in one corner. He was a short, stumpy,
queer-looking man, past the middle age, with a head as bald as an egg,
and ears that stood out in bold relief behind his temples. Sitting upon
a low bench, his wooden leg--for this was Job, the soldier--stuck out
straight from his body, diverging slightly from the left knee, on which
he hammered the soles of his customers.
"Ah! how do you do?" said he, in a soft, deliberate half-whisper, as
Father Brighthopes addressed him.
With his right hand,--having carefully wiped it upon his pantaloons, or
rather pantaloon, for his luck in war enabled him to do with half a
pair,--he greeted the old clergyman modestly and respectfully, while
with his left he raised his steel-bowed glasses from his nose.
"My friend," said Father Brighthopes, "you seem industriously at work,
this morning."
"Pegging away,--pegging away!" replied Job, with a childlike smile.
"Always pegging, you know."
There was an evident attempt at so much more cheerfulness in his voice
than he really felt, that the effect was quite touching.
"That's my mother," he added, as the clergyman turned to shake hands
with a wrinkled, unconscious-looking object, who sat wrapped in an old
blanket, in a rocking-chair. "A kind old woman, but very deaf. You'll
have to speak loud."
"Good-morning, mother," cried Father Brighthopes, raising his voice, and
taking her withered hand.
The old woman seemed to start up from a sort of dream, and a feeble
gleam of intelligence crossed her seamed and bloodless features, as she
fixed her watery eye upon the clergyman.
"Oh, yes!" she cried, mumbling the shrill words between her toothless
gums, "I remember all about it. Sally's darter was born on the tenth of
June, in eighteen-four. Her husband's mother was a Higgins."
The clergyman smiled upon her sadly, nodded assent, and, laying her hand
gently upon her lap, turned away.
"Her mind's a runnin' on old times, and she don't hear a word you say,
sir," observed Job, in his peculiar half-whisper, slow, subdued, but
very distinct. "She don't take much notice o' what's goin' on now-days,
and we have to screech to her to make her understand anything. A kind
old lady, sir, but past her time, and very deaf."
Mr. Royden squeezed a drop of moisture out of his eye, and coughed.
Meanwhile the aged woman relapsed into the dreamy state from which she
had been momentarily aroused, drawing the dingy blanket around her cold
limbs, and whispering over some dim memory of the century gone by.
XV.
THE PHILOSOPHY OF A WOODEN LEG.
"You have a good trade, friend Bowen," said Father Brighthopes, drawing
his chair near the shoemaker's bench.
"It does capital for me!" replied Job, cheerfully. "Since I got a
bayonet through my knee at Lundy's Lane, I find I get on best in the
world sittin' still."
He smiled pleasantly over this feeble attempt at humor, and arranged
some waxed ends, which, for convenience, he had hung upon his wooden
leg.
"Did you learn shoe-making before you went soldiering?" asked the
clergyman.
"I'd been a 'prentice. But I tired of the monotony. So I quarreled with
my trade, and fought my _last_ at Lundy's Lane, as I tell people," said
Job, with twinkling eyes.
"You got the worst of it?"
"All things considered I did. This fighting is bad business; and, you
see, I decidedly put my foot in it."
Job touched his wooden leg significantly, to illustrate the joke.
"You seem merry over your misfortune," observed Father Brighthopes.
"Better be merry than sad, you know. There's no use o' complainin' of
Providence, when my own folly tripped me up. My understanding is not so
lame as that."
It was amusing to see with what a relish the poor fellow cracked these
little jokes of his over his infirmity. To get hold of someone who had
never heard them before, and could laugh at them as well as if they were
quite fresh and new, seemed a great happiness to him; and the clergyman
did not fail to appreciate and encourage his humor.
"On the whole," said the latter, "you made a bad bargain when you traded
your hammer and awl for a musket and cartridge-box?"
Job's eyes glistened. He rubbed his hands together with delight. The old
man had given him a capital opportunity to get in another of his jokes,
just like an impromptu.
"I might have made a worse bargain," he said. "As long as I had one leg
left,"--he touched his solitary knee,-"I ought to call it a good
bargain. You see, I did not come off altogether without something to
boot."
"I hope you were contented to return to shoe-making?" remarked the
clergyman, laughing.
"Well--yes," replied Job, in his cheerful half whisper. "I did not find
the change so difficult as many would. I can say, truthfully, that, with
me, there was but one step between the battle-field and the shop."
Father Brighthopes took time to consider the enormity of this
far-reaching jest, and replied,
"Well, brother; I trust you get along pretty well now."
"Passable, passable. Better than I should, if I was a lamp-lighter or a
penny-postman. I wouldn't make a very good ballet-dancer, either. Do you
think I would?"
Father Brighthopes replied that, in his experience, he had learned to
regard a contented shoemaker as more blessed--even if he had lost a
leg--than a miserly millionaire, or an ambitious monarch.
"I've had considerable to try me, though," said Job. "Two fine boys, 'at
would now be able to take care of me and the family, got the small-pox
both 't a time; one was nineteen, t'other fifteen; I'd rather lost a
dozen legs, if I'd had 'em," he murmured, thoughtfully. "Then I've one
darter that's foolish and sickly. She an't able to do nothin', and it's
took more 'n my pension was wo'th to doctor her."
"You have seen affliction: thank God, my friend, that you have come
through it so nobly!" exclaimed Father Brighthopes, smiling, with tears
of sympathy running down his cheeks.
He patted Job's shoulder kindly; and the poor fellow could not speak,
for a moment, his heart was touched so deeply.
"It's all for the best, I s'pose," said he, coughing, and drawing his
shirt-sleeve across his eyes.
"Yes; and you will get your reward," answered the old man.
"So I believe! I find so much comfort in these good old leaves."
Job pointed to a worn Bible, that lay on the mantel-piece.
"Right! right!" cried the clergyman, joyously. "Job Bowen, there is a
crown for thee! Job Bowen, in my life I have not met with twenty men so
blessed as thou. But thousands and thousands of the rich and prosperous
well might envy thee, thou poor Christian shoemaker, with one leg!"
"Thank you! thank you, for saying so much!" bubbled from Job's lips,
like a gushing stream of glad water.
He laughed; he shed tears; he seemed warmed through and through with the
sunshine of peace. The clergyman clasped his hand, weeping silently,
with joy in his glorious old face.
"Yes," said Job, rallying, "I knowed it 'u'd be all right in the end. I
tell folks, though I an't good at dancing and capering, and turning
short corners in life, and dodging this way and that, with my wooden
stump, I shall do well enough in the long run."
"And, considering how well afflictions prepare us for heaven, we may
say," added Father Brighthopes, "you have already put your best foot
forward."
"That I have! that I have!" cried Job, delighted.
"How does your wife bear up, under all her trials?" asked the old man.
At this juncture the old woman in the corner started once more from her
dreams, and cried out.
"On the left-hand side, as you go down. There was thirteen children of
'em--all boys but two. The youngest was a gal, born the same day we sold
our old brindle cow."
Mr. Royden and the clergyman both started, and looked at the speaker.
"Don't mind her,--don't mind the poor creatur'!" said Job, softly. "Her
talk is all out of date; it's all about bygones. A kind old lady, but
childish again, and very deaf."
Father Brighthopes returned to the subject they were conversing upon.
"My wife has seen a mighty deal of bad weather," said Job, very softly.
"Oh, she has got through it amazin' well, for a feeble woman. She
astonishes me every day o' my life. But, then, you see, she's a good
deal broken, late years."
"I am sorry for her,--sorry for her!" exclaimed the clergyman, warmly.
"But there's a good time coming for all of us old people,"--looking up,
with a peaceful smile.
"So I tell her," replied Job. "But she han't got the animal sperrits she
once had. And that an't to be wondered at. Oh, she's a good soul! and if
she'd pluck up heart a little,--gracious!" exclaimed the shoemaker,
doubling his fists, and compressing his lips with hopeful firmness, "I
think I wouldn't like any better fun than to fight the world ten or a
dozen years longer!"
"My bold Christian hero!"
"Thank you, sir! To be that is glory enough for me; though I didn't
think exactly so when I stood strong and proud on two legs. I believed
then I was destined to do wonders with bayonets and gun-powder."
The clergyman patted his shoulder kindly, and said, "Do you not feel it
is better as it is?"
"Well, yes. I think of that a good deal. 'Supposing I had got to be a
real, genuine bloody hero?' I say to myself. 'What would it all have
come to, in the end?' I expect it was the best thing the devil could
have done for me, when he knocked me off my pins. Ah! here comes mother,
with Maggie."
Mrs. Bowen entered, accompanied by a plain, good-natured,
wholesome-looking girl, modest, but not awkward, coarsely but quite
neatly attired. She advanced to shake hands with Mr. Royden, and
inquired about Mrs. Royden and the children.
"They will all be glad to see you," he replied. "What do you say to
coming and helping us, next week?"
"I don't know how I can come, any way in the world," said Maggie. "Ma's
health is so poor now, I ought to be at home."
"I s'pose I shall have to spare you, if you think you would like to go,"
added Mrs. Bowen, in her sepulchral tone of voice.
Maggie colored very red. She seemed to know hardly what to say.
Fortunately, the grandmother in the corner attracted observation from
her, by crying out, with a shrill, childish laugh,
"So she did! he, he, he! Eggs ten cents a dozen, and all the hens a
settin'! That beat all the jokes I ever heard on! Eggs ten cents a
dozen, and five hens a--'s--'s--'s--"
The words died away in the old woman's toothless jaws; but her lips
continued to move, and her mind seemed to float lightly upon the waves
of an inaudible laugh. Mrs. Bowen broke the silence which followed.
"The truth is,"--what a ghostly tone!--"Maggie didn't like to work for
Mrs. Royden any too well, when she was there before."
"Oh, ma!" spoke up the girl, entreatingly.
"It's the truth. She liked your folks well enough, but there's
pleasanter families to work for."
"Fie, mother!" said Job, softly. "Let bygones be bygones."
"I am glad you spoke of it," added Mr. Royden, frankly. "My wife means
to be kind, but she has a good deal to try her, and she gets fretful,
now and then. I am troubled the same way, too."
"Oh, Maggie never said a word ag'in' you," rejoined Mrs. Bowen; "nor any
real harm of Mrs. Royden, for that matter. But, as I said, there's
pleasanter families to work for."
"Well, well!" cried Mr. Royden, desirous of getting away from the
disagreeable topic, "I think, if Maggie will try it again, she will find
things a little different. At any rate, she mustn't mind too much what
my wife says, when she is irritated."
"I suppose you will give a dollar and a half a week, in the busy
season?"
If Mr. Royden hesitated at this reasonable suggestion of the girl's
mother, it was only because he knew his wife would hardly be satisfied
to pay so much. But a glance around the room, in which a struggle with
poverty was so easily to be seen, decided him. What was a quarter, a
half, or even a dollar a week, to come out of his pocket? How much the
miserable trifle might be, falling into the feeble palm of the ghastly
woman, whom trouble had crushed, and who found it such a hard and
wretched task to toil and keep her family together!
"I can't come until the last of the week, any way," said Maggie.
"I am sorry for that," replied Mr. Royden.
"I might get along as early as Wednesday; Monday I am engaged to Deacon
Dustan's----"
"I shouldn't care if you broke that engagement," said Mrs. Bowen. "Rich
people as the Dustans are, they an't willing to pay a poor girl
thirty-seven and a half cents for a hard day's work a washing!"
"I must go, since I have promised," quietly observed Margaret. "Tuesday
I shall have a good many things to do for myself. So I guess you may
expect me Wednesday morning."
"Well, Wednesday be it; I will send over for you before breakfast," said
Mr. Royden. "Now, I want you to make up your mind to get along with us
as well as you can, and you shall have a dollar and a half, and a
handsome present besides."
Having concluded the bargain, Mr. Royden took leave of the family, with
his companion.
"Lord bless you, sir!" said Job, when he shook hands with the clergyman.
"You have done me a vast sight of good! I feel almost another man. Do
come again, sir; we need a little comfort, now and then."
"I hope your minister calls occasionally?" suggested Father Brighthopes.
"Not often, sir, I am sorry to say. He's over to Deacon Dustan's every
day; but he never got as far as here but once. And I'd just as lives he
wouldn't come. He didn't seem comfortable here, and I thought he was
glad to get out of sight of poverty. He's a nice man,--Mr. Corlis is,
sir,--but he hasn't a great liking to poor people, which I s'pose is
nat'ral."
"Well, you shall see me again, Providence permitting," cried Father
Brighthopes, cheerfully. "Keep up a good heart," he added, shaking hands
with Mrs. Bowen. "Christ is a friend to you; and there's a glorious
future for all of us. Good-by! good-by! God bless you all!"
He took the grandmother's hand again, and pressed it in silence. His
face was full of kindly emotion, and his eyes beamed with sympathy.
"Yes, I guess so!" cried the old woman. "About fifteen or twenty. The
string of that old looking-glass broke just five years from the day it
was hung up. It was the most wonderfulest thing I ever knowed on! I
telled our folks something dre'ful was going to happen."
She still continued to mumble over some inaudible words between her
gums, but the light of her eyes grew dim, and she settled once more in
her dreams.
Mr. Royden went out; the clergyman followed, leaving the door open, and
a stream of sunshine pouring its flood of liquid gold upon the olden
floor.
XVI.
GOING TO MEETING.
On the following morning the Roydens made early preparations for
attending church. The cows were milked and turned away into the pasture;
the horses were caught, curried and harnessed; and the great open family
carriage was backed out of the barn.
Meanwhile, Hepsy and Sarah washed the boys, combed their hair, and put
on their clean clothes. Willie's bright locks curled naturally, and in
his white collar and cunning little brown linen jacket he looked quite
charming. It was delightful to see him strut and swagger and purse up
his red lips with a consciousness of manly trousers, and tell Hepsy to
do this and do that, with an air of authority, scowling, now and then,
just like his father. Georgie was more careless of his dignity; he
declared that his collar choked him, and "darned it all" spitefully,
calling upon Sarah to take it off, that he might go without it until
meeting-time, at any rate.
Mrs. Royden busied herself about the house, cleaning up, here and there,
with her usual energy of action.
"Come, wife!" exclaimed her husband, who was shaving at the
looking-glass in the kitchen, "you had better leave off now, and get
ready. We shall be late."
"I can't bear to leave things all at loose ends," replied Mrs. Royden.
"I shall have time enough to change my dress. Hepsy! If you let the boys
get into the dirt with their clean clothes, you will deserve a good
scolding."
"Isn't Hepsy going to church?" asked Mr. Royden.
"No; she says she had just as lief stay at home; and somebody must take
care of the baby, you know."
"If Sam wasn't such a mischief-maker, we might leave the baby with him."
"Dear me! I'd as soon think of leaving it with the cows! And, Hepsy, do
you keep an eye on Samuel. Don't let him be cracking but'nuts all day.
Where's Lizzie? Is she getting ready?"
"I think she is," replied Hepsy. "She was tending the baby; but that is
still now."
"I can't conceive how we are all going to ride," added Mrs. Royden. "I
don't know but I had better stay at home. The carriage will be crowded,
and it seems as though I had everything to do."
"There will be plenty of room in the carriage," said her husband, taking
the razor from his chin, and wiping it on a strip of newspaper. "Father
Brighthopes and I can take Lizzie on the front seat with us, and you and
Sarah can hold the boys between you. Chester and James are going to
walk."
Mrs. Royden continued to work, until she had but a few minutes left in
which to get ready. The second bell was ringing, and carriages were
beginning to go by.
"Come, wife!" again her husband exclaimed; "we shall be late. There go
Mr. Eldridge's folks."
"They are always early," said she, impatiently. "Do let me take my
time!"
But Mr. Royden called her attention to the clock.
"Dear me! who would have thought it could be so late?" she cried. "Where
the morning has gone to I can't conceive. Hepsy, come and help me slip
on my silk dress."
"Willie wants to ride his stick," said Hepsy; "and it is all dirt."
"Willie cannot ride his stick to-day!" exclaimed Mrs. Royden, sharply.
"Do you hear?"
Willie began to pout and mutter, "I will, too! so there!" and kick the
mop-board.
His mother's morning experience had not prepared her for the exercise of
much patience. She rushed upon the little shaver, and boxed his ears
violently.
"Do you tell me you will?" she cried. "Take that!"
Willie blubbered with indignation, being too proud to cry outright, with
his new clothes on.
"Stop that noise!"
Willie could not stop; and his mother shook him. This was too much for
his dignity, and he bawled with open mouth.