"I give thee to thy God,--the God that gave thee
A well-spring of deep gladness to my heart!
And, precious as thou art,
And pure as dew of Hermon, He shall have thee!
My own, my beautiful, my undefiled!
And thou shalt be his child."
While the student sleeps, we will make the reader acquainted with his
short and simple annals.
His maternal grandfather had been among the Puritan emigrants who sought
the rock-bound coast of New England. He was a man of worth and property,
had been educated at Oxford, and distinguished for classical learning
and elegant pursuits. But at the call of conscience he left the
luxurious halls of his fathers, the rank, and ancestral honors that
would have descended to him, to share the hardships, privations, and
sufferings of the meanest of his companions. He brought with him his
wife and an only child, a daughter of twenty years.
Like her mother, she had been carefully nurtured, and had lived in much
luxury, although in the strict seclusion of the daughters of the
Puritans.
The wives and daughters of the Pilgrims have never been honored as they
deserved to be. Except the Lady Arbella Johnson, is there a single name
that has descended with pride and honor to their daughters, and been
cherished as a Puritan saint?
It is true they lived in an age when the maxim that a woman should
consider it her highest praise to have nothing said about her was in
full force; and when the remark of Coleridge would have been applauded,
"That the perfection of a woman's character is to be _characterless_."
But among the wives of the Pilgrims there were heroic women that endured
silently every calamity. Mrs. Hemans says, with poetry and truth,--
"_There_ was woman's _fearless_ eye,
Lit by her deep love's truth."
But how many _fearful_ days and nights they must have passed, trembling
with all a mother's timidity for their children, when they heard the
savage cry, that spared neither the touching smile of infancy, nor the
agonized prayer of woman!
They had left the comforts, and even the luxuries, of their English
homes,--the hourly attendance of servants, to meet the chilling skies
of a shelterless wilderness. She whose foot had trodden the softest
carpets, whose bed had been of down, who had been accustomed to those
minute attentions that prevent the rose-leaf from being crumpled, must
now labor with her own hands, endure the cold of the severest winter,
and leave herself unsheltered; all she asked was to guard her infant
children from suffering, and aid by her sympathy, her husband.
It is indeed true, that the sentiment of love or religion has power to
elevate above all physical suffering, and to ennoble all those homely
cares and humble offices that are performed for the beloved object with
a smile of patient endurance; and it asks, in return, but confidence and
tenderness.
The wife of Mr. Seymore soon sank under the hardships of the times, and
the severity of the climate of New England. Her grave was made in the
solitude of the overshadowing forest, and her daughter, who had brought
with her a fine, hardy, English constitution, lived to console her
widowed father.
He died about five years after his wife, and then his daughter married
an Englishman of small fortune, who had come over with his family: his
father and mother, both advanced in life, had settled on the small farm
we have attempted to describe. He built the cottage for his parents, and
then, with his wife, the mother of our young friend Seymore, returned to
England.
She lived not long after her return. The religious enthusiasm of the
time had taken possession of her mind, and, before her death, she
dedicated this, her only child, to the service of the church, and
requested her husband to send him to America, where poverty presented no
insurmountable barrier to his success.
His father, in sending him to America in his twelfth year, promised to
advance something for his education; but unfortunate circumstances
prevented, and the boy was left to make his own fortune under the roof
of his grandparents.
His disappointment was great to find his grandparents in so narrow
circumstances, and himself condemned to so obscure a station. He had
aspirations, as we have seen, beyond his humble circumstances. The few
books he brought with him were his consolation. They were read, reread,
and committed to memory; and then he longed for more. An accident, or
what we term an accident--the instrument that Providence provides to
shape our destiny--threw some light upon the gloom that seemed to have
settled on his prospects.
He met at C----, where he had gone on some business connected with his
agricultural labors, the clergyman of the place.
Mr. Grafton was interested by his fine intellectual expression, and
pleased with the refined and intelligent remarks that seemed unsuited to
his coarse laborer's frock and peasant's dress.
He took him to his house, lent him the books that were necessary to
prepare him for our young college, and promised his aid to have him
placed on the list of those indigent scholars who were devoted to the
church.
From this time his industry and ambition were redoubled, and we have
seen the poor aspirant for literary distinction striving to unite two
things which must at last break down the body or the mind,--heavy daily
labor, with severe mental toil at night.
He was young and strong; his health did not immediately fail, and we
must now leave him where thousands of our young men have been left, with
aspirations and hopes beyond their humble fortunes.