DOLLY GOES INTO COMPANY.
When Dolly found herself arrayed in her red dress and red shoes, her
hair nicely curled, she was so happy that, to speak scripturally,
she leaped for joy--flew round and round with her curls flying, like
a little mad-cap--till her mother was obliged to apply a sedative
exhortation.
"Take care, Dolly; take care. I can't take you, now, unless you are
good. If you get so wild as that I shall have to leave you at home.
Come here, and let me talk to you."
And Dolly came and stood, grave and serious, at her mother's knee,
who, while she made over and arranged some of the tumbled curls,
proceeded to fortify her mind for the coming emergency with suitable
precepts.
"It's a great thing for a little girl like you, Dolly, to be allowed
to sit up with grown people till nine o'clock, and to go out with
your mamma, and I want you to be very careful and behave as a good
little girl should. I take you, so that you may learn good manners.
Now, remember, Dolly, you mustn't speak to any of them unless you
are spoken to."
Dolly reflected on this precept gravely, and then said:
"Don't they speak to any one except when they are spoken to?"
"Yes, my dear, because they are grown-up people, and know when to
speak and what is proper to be said. Little girls do not; so they
must be silent. Little girls should be seen and not heard."
Dolly knew this maxim by heart already, and she no more questioned
the propriety of it than of any of the great laws of nature.
After an interval of serious reflection, she asked:
"But, if any of them should talk to me, then I may talk to them; may
I?"
"Yes, my dear; if any body talks to you, you must answer, but be
careful not to talk too long."
"Do you think, Mamma, that Judge Gridley will be there?"
"Yes, my dear, I presume so."
"Because I am acquainted with him," remarked Dolly gravely; "he
always talks to me. He meets me sometimes coming home from school and
talks to me. I am glad he will be there."
Mrs. Cushing smiled aside to her husband as she was tying on Dolly's
little hood, and then her father took her up in his arms and they
started.
Tea parties in the highest circles of Poganuc began at six and ended
at nine, and so when Dolly and her father and mother arrived they
found a room full of people. Col. Davenport was a tall, elegant man,
with an upright, soldierly carriage, his hair powdered white, and
tied in a queue down his back; his eyes of a clear, piercing blue,
looking out each side of a well-defined aquiline nose; his voice
deep and musical, with a sort of resonance which spoke of one used
to command. The Colonel was one of the most active members of the
church;--the one who in the absence of the pastor officiated as
lay-reader, and rendered the sermon and made the prayers, in the same
sonorous, military voice that suggested the field and the commander.
Mrs. Davenport, a lady of delicate and refined appearance, with a
certain high-bred manner toned down to a kind of motherly sweetness,
received the Doctor and Mrs. Cushing with effusion, kissed and patted
Dolly on the cheek, and remarked what a nice little girl she was
getting to be; and the Colonel stooped down and took her hand, like
an affable eagle making court to a little humming-bird, and hoped she
was quite well, to which Dolly, quite overcome with awe, answered
huskily: "Very well, I thank you, sir."
Then kind Mrs. Davenport busied herself in ordering to the front
a certain little chair that had a family history. This was duly
brought and placed for Dolly by old Cato, an ancient negro servitor
of the Colonel's, who had once served as his waiter in the army,
and had never recovered from the sense of exaltation and dignity
conferred by this experience. Dolly sat down, and began employing her
eyes about the high and dainty graces of the apartment. The walls
were hung with paper imported from France and ornamented with family
portraits by Copley. In the fire place, the high brass andirons
sustained a magnificent fire, snapping and sparkling and blazing in
a manner gorgeous to behold. Soon Cato came in with the tea on a
waiter, followed by Venus, his wife, who, with a high white turban
on her head and a clear-starched white apron in front, bore after
him a tray laden with delicate rolls, sandwiches, and multiplied and
tempting varieties of cake. Dolly spread her handkerchief in her
little lap, and comported herself as nearly as possible as she saw
the grand ladies doing, who, in satin and velvet and point lace, were
making themselves agreeable, and taking their tea with elegant ease.
The tea parties of Poganuc were not wanting in subjects for
conversation. It was in rule to discuss the current literature of the
day, which at that time came from across the water--the last articles
in the _Edinburgh Review_, the latest Waverley novel, the poetry of
Moore, Byron, Southey, and Wordsworth--all came under review and had
place of consideration.
In those days, when newspapers were few and scanty, when places were
isolated and travel was tedious and uncertain, the intellectual life
of cultivated people was intense. A book was an event in Poganuc. It
was heard of first across the ocean, and watched for, as one watches
for the rising of a new planet. While the English packet was slowly
laboring over, bearing it to our shores, expectation was rising, and
when the book was to be found in the city book stores an early copy
generally found its way to the élite circle of Poganuc.
Never in this day--generation of jaded and sated literary
appetite--will any one know the fresh and eager joy, the vivid
sensation of delight with which a poem like "The Lady of the Lake,"
a novel like "Ivanhoe," was received in lonely mountain towns by a
people eager for a new mental excitement. The young folks called the
rocks and glens and rivers of their romantic region by names borrowed
from Scott; they clambered among the crags of Benvenue and sailed on
the bosom of Loch Katrine.
The students in the law offices and the young ladies of the
first families had their reading circles and their literary
partialities--some being partisans of Byron, some of Scott,
etc.--and there was much innocent spouting of poetry. There were
promising youths who tied their open shirt collars with a black
ribbon, and professed disgust at the hollow state of human happiness
in general, and there were compassionate young ladies who considered
the said young men all the more interesting for this state of
mysterious desolation, and often succeeded in the work of consoling
them. It must be remarked, however, that the present gathering was a
married people's party, and the number of young men and maidens was
limited to the immediate family connections. The young people had
their parties, with the same general decorum, where the conversation
was led by them. In the elderly circles all these literary and
social topics came under discussion. Occasionally Judge Belcher, who
was an authority in literary criticism, would hold the ear of the
drawing-room while he ran a parallel between the dramatic handling
of Scott's characters as compared with those of Shakespeare, or gave
an analysis of the principles of the Lake School of Poetry. The
Judge was an admirable talker, and people in general liked to hear
him quite as well as he liked to hear himself, and so his monologues
proceeded _nem. con._
On this particular evening, however, literature was forgotten in
the eagerness of politics. The news from the state elections was not
in those days spread by telegraph, it lumbered up in stages, and was
recorded at most in weekly papers; but enough had come to light to
make the Poganuc citizens aware that the State of Connecticut had
at last been revolutionized, and gone from the Federalists to the
Democrats.
Judge Belcher declaimed upon the subject in language which made the
very hair rise upon Dolly's head.
"Yes, sir," he said, addressing Dr. Cushing; "I consider this as
the ruin of the State of Connecticut! It's the triumph of the lower
orders; the reign of 'sans culotte-ism' begun. In my opinion, sir, we
are over a volcano; I should not be surprised, sir, at an explosion
that will blow up all our institutions!"
Dolly's eyes grew larger and larger, although she was a little
comforted to observe the Judge carefully selecting a particular
variety of cake that he was fond of, and helping himself to a third
cup of tea in the very midst of these shocking prognostications.
Dolly had not then learned the ease and suavity of mind with which
both then and ever since people at tea drinkings and other social
recreations declare their conviction that the country is going
to ruin. It never appears to have any immediate effect upon the
appetite. Dolly looked at her father, and thought he assented with
somewhat of a saddened air; and Mrs. Davenport looked concerned; and
Mrs. Judge Gridley said it was a very dark providence why such things
were permitted, but a little while after was commending the delicacy
of the cake, and saying she must inquire of Venus about her peculiar
mode of confection.
Judge Gridley--a white-haired, lively old gentleman with bright
eyes, who wore the old-fashioned small-clothes, knee-buckles, silk
stockings and low shoes--had fixed his eyes upon Dolly for some time,
and now crossing the room drew her with him into a corner, saying:
"Come, now, Miss Dolly, you and I are old friends, you know. What do
you think of all these things?"
"Oh, I'm so glad you came," said Dolly, with a long sigh of relief.
"I hoped you would, because mamma said I mustn't talk unless somebody
spoke to me, and I do so want to know all about those dreadful
things. What is a volcano? Please tell me!"
"Why, my little Puss," he said, lifting her in his lap and twining
her curls round his finger, "what do you want to know that for?"
"Because I heard Judge Belcher say that we were all over a volcano
and it would blow us all up some day. Is it like powder?"
"You dear little soul! don't you trouble your head about what Judge
Belcher says. He uses strong language. He only means that the
Democrats will govern the state."
"And are they so dreadfully wicked?" asked Dolly. "I want to tell
you something"--and Dolly whispered, "Bessie Lewis's father is a
Democrat, and yet they don't seem like wicked people."
"No, my dear; when you grow up you will learn that there are good
people in every party."
"Then you don't think Bessie's father is a bad man?" said Dolly. "I'm
so glad!"
"No; he's a good man in a bad party; that is what I think."
"I wish you'd talk to him and tell him not to do all these dreadful
things, and upset the state," said Dolly. "I thought the other night
_I_ would; but I'm only a little girl, you know; he wouldn't mind
me. If I was a grown-up woman I would," she said, with her cheeks
flushing and her eyes kindling.
Judge Gridley laughed softly to himself and stroked her head.
"When you are a grown-up woman I don't doubt you can make men do
almost anything you please, but I don't think it would do any good
for _me_ to talk to General Lewis; and now, little Curly-wurly, don't
bother your pretty head about politics. Neither party will turn the
world upside down. There's a good God above us all, my little girl,
that takes care of our country, and he will bring good out of evil.
So now don't you worry."
"I'm afraid, Judge Gridley, that Dolly is troubling you," said Mrs.
Cushing, coming up.
"Oh, dear me! madame, no; Miss Dolly and I are old acquaintances. We
have the best possible understanding."
But just then, resounding clear and loud through the windy March air,
came the pealing notes of the nine o'clock bell, and an immediate
rustle of dresses, and rising, and shaking of hands, and cutting
short of stories, and uttering last words followed.
For though not exactly backed by the arbitrary power which enforced
the celebrated curfew, yet the nine o'clock bell was one of the
authoritative institutions of New England; and at its sound all
obediently set their faces homeward, to rake up house-fires, put out
candles, and say their prayers before going to rest.
Old Captain Skeggs, a worn-out revolutionary soldier, no longer good
for hard service, had this commanding post in Poganuc, and no matter
how high blew the wind, how fiercely raged the storm, the captain in
his white woolen great coat, with three little capes to it, stamped
his way through the snow, pulled valiantly on the rope, and let
all the hills and valleys of Poganuc know that the hour of rest had
come. Then, if it were a young people's party, each young man chose
out his maiden and asked the pleasure of seeing her home; and in the
clear frosty night and under the silent stars many a word was said
that could not be said by candle-light indoors:--whereof in time came
life-long results.