watch-meetin'," Aunt Jane continued, "and I set here and laugh to
myself over the times we used to have in the old Goshen church. Jest
hand me my knittin', child, and I'll tell you about that meetin'. It's
jest as easy to talk as it is to think."
The room was lighted only by the faint glow from the fireplace, but
Aunt Jane needed no lamp or candle to guide her through the maze of
stitches in the heel of the gray stocking. I sat with folded hands and
wondered at the deft fingers that wove the yarn into the web of the
stocking, and at the deft brain that, from the thread of old memories,
could weave the web of a story in which was caught and held the
spirit of an older day.
"The night o' that watch-meetin'," began Aunt Jane, "was jest such a
night as this, cold and clear and still; and if you're wrapped up well
and have a good warm quilt over your knees, why, it's nothin' but a
pleasure to ride a mile or so to the church. A watch-meetin' is
different from any other church-meetin'. It generally comes on a
week-day, it ain't preachin' and it ain't prayer-meetin', and you
don't have to remember to keep the day holy; so you can laugh and talk
goin' and comin' and before the meetin' begins. Next to a May-meetin'
a watch-meetin's about the pleasantest sort of a church-meetin' there
is.
"Now, as you didn't know what a watch-meetin' is, it ain't likely you
know what a May-meetin' is, either. There, now! I knew you wouldn't.
Well, child, that all comes o' livin' in town. Town's a fine place to
go to once in a while, but there's a heap o' disadvantages about
livin' there all the time. A May-meetin' is the first Sunday in May,
when we all take big baskets o' dinner to the church and eat outdoors
under the trees after preachin's over. And now let me git back to my
story or, the first thing you know, I'll be tellin' about a
May-meetin' instead of a watch-meetin'. But I thought I'd better
explain it to you right now, honey, so's you won't be mortified this
way again. There's some things everybody's expected to know, and this
is one of 'em.
"I ricollect jest how the old church looked the night o' that
watch-meetin'. It was soon after we'd got the new organ, and the shine
hadn't wore off the new cyarpet yet, and the lamps was burning bright
on the stands each side o' the pulpit and on the organ. Some o' the
young folks had hung branches o' pine and cedar around the walls and
over the winders, and you could hear the hickory wood cracklin' and
poppin' in the stove at the back o' the church, and there was all the
Goshen folks sittin' in their pews: Sam and Milly, and Hannah and
Miles, and Maria and Silas, and Uncle Jim and Sally Ann, and Parson
Page down in front o' the pulpit leanin' back in his chair with his
chin restin' on his hand and his other hand proppin' up his elbow. The
young folks of course was in the back part o' the church, where they
could talk and laugh without bein' seen by their parents; and little
Sam Amos and two or three more o' the Goshen boys, along with Martin
Luther Wilson, was sittin' down on the pulpit steps, where they could
see everything that was to be seen and hear everything that was to be
heard."
Aunt Jane began to laugh gently, and the knitting dropped from her
hands. Another moment and she would have slipped away to the
watch-meeting of forty years ago, leaving me alone in the quiet
shadow-haunted room; but I called her back.
"How did Martin Luther happen to be at Goshen?" I asked. It was an
idle question, but it served my purpose.
"Why, don't you ricollect?" said Aunt Jane brightly. "Brother Wilson
preached in town, but after Squire Schuyler give him that house for a
weddin' fee he lived there. That was betwixt and between the town and
the country. Martin Luther loved the country jest like his father did,
and there never was a watch-meetin' or a May-meetin' that Martin
Luther wasn't on hand; but I'm bound to say that most o' the time it
wasn't for any good.
"Well, by nine o'clock everything was ready for the watch-meetin' to
begin, and Parson Page set the clock on the floor back o' the
pulpit--it sounds a heap solemner at a watch-meetin', child, to hear
the clock strike when you can't see it--and then he give out the first
hymn:
"'A few more years shall roll,
A few more seasons come,
And we shall be with those that rest,
Asleep within the tomb.
"'A few more suns shall set
O'er these dark hills of time,
And we shall be where suns are not,
A far serener clime.'"
To me there seemed nothing joy-inspiring in the old hymn, but Aunt
Jane smiled radiantly as she chanted the melancholy words that held in
their cadences the voices of the choir and the music of the organ in
the old country church.
"That's one o' the hymns we always sung at a watch-meetin'," she
observed, "that and
"'Lo, on a narrow neck of land
'Twixt two unbounded seas I stand.'
"I love every one o' the old hymns, child, jest as much as I love my
Bible, and I can take that hymn-book yonder and read over the hymns we
used to sing at prayer-meetin' and communion and funerals and
baptizin's, and I declare it's jest like livin' over again all the
Sundays of my life. When we got through singin' the hymn Parson Page
read a chapter out o' the Bible. It was the ninetieth psalm, the one
that begins, 'Lord, thou hast been our dwelling place in all
generations'; and then he give us a little talk, not a sermon exactly,
but jest a little talk about the new year and the old year. I
ricollect pretty much all he said as well as if it was yesterday. He
said that there was nothin' sad about the passin' of the years, and
every New-year's eve ought to be a time for rejoicin'; that life was
jest a gainin' and a losin' and the two balanced pretty even. Every
year we lost a little of our youth and a little of our strength, but
we gained in wisdom and understandin'. He said if we'd improved our
time and come up to our opportunities durin' the past year, we could
go forward joyfully to meet the new year, and if we hadn't, why, still
there wasn't any reason for givin' up and feelin' downhearted, for the
mercy of the Lord was infinite, and there was always another chance
waitin' for us, and if a man turned over a new leaf and made up his
mind to do better, every day was a New-year's day.
"And then he called on the men folks to tell what their experience had
been durin' the past year, and jest as Uncle Jim Mathews got up to
tell his experience the clock struck ten, and Uncle Jim says:
'Brethren, you hear that? Jest two more hours of this year is left to
us.' Says he, 'I don't know how it is with the rest of you, but for my
part I feel that this has been a profitable year for my soul. I feel,'
says he, 'that I have grown in grace and in the knowledge of the Lord,
that my faith has been strengthened, that patience has had her perfect
work in me, and that I'm nearer to the kingdom than I ever was'; and
he went on this way for about ten minutes, and Sally Ann whispered to
me and says she, 'If one-half o' that's true, the Lord ought to send
down a chariot of fire and take Uncle Jim up to heaven this very
night.'
"Then Uncle Jerry Amos got up and says he, 'Brethren, I thank the Lord
that during the past year I have grown more charitable toward my
fellow men.' And to save our lives we couldn't help laughin' at that,
for if there was anything Uncle Jerry didn't need it was more charity.
I ricollect when old man Abner Simpson died--he was a mighty mean man,
so mean that Parson Page had a heap o' trouble to preach the right
kind of a funeral sermon about him--and right after the funeral Uncle
Jerry heard some o' the neighbors talkin' about him and says he:
'Boys, ain't you ashamed to be talkin' this way about the dead? Don't
you know you mustn't say anything but good about the dead, or the
livin' either, for that matter?' And Bush Elrod says, 'Now, Uncle
Jerry, you know nobody could say anything good about old man Abner;
you couldn't yourself.' And Uncle Jerry says: 'Yes, I can. Jest give
me time, and I can think o' plenty o' good things to say about him.'
And he stood and thought and thought, and the rest o' the men laughin'
at him, and Bush Elrod says, 'You'll have to give it up, Uncle Jerry.'
But Uncle Jerry says, 'No, there never was a human bein' that
somethin' good couldn't be said about him.' And pretty soon he slapped
his side and says he: 'I've got it! He had a good appetite.' That's
why we all had to laugh when Uncle Jerry said he'd grown more
charitable toward his fellow men.
"Well, all the men folks got up and told what progress in grace they'd
made durin' the year, and I ricollect Sam Amos sayin' it was
astonishin' how many saints there was in Goshen church, but nobody
knew anything about 'em till we had an experience-meetin'. After the
experiences had all been give in we sung another hymn and had another
prayer. Then the clock struck eleven, and Parson Page said, 'We will
spend a little time in forming good resolutions for the coming year.'
And after we'd set there a while makin' our resolutions and had some
more singin' and prayin', he said, 'Brethren and sisters, let us give
the remaining minutes of the old year to silent prayer for grace that
will help us to keep the good resolutions we've made for the new year
that is so close at hand.' And we all bowed our heads feelin' mighty
solemn, everything so still you could hear the folks around you
breathin' and the old clock back o' the pulpit tickin', tickin' away
the minutes o' the old year. And we set there expectin' every minute
to hear the first stroke o' twelve.
"I ricollect Abram had rheumatism in the muscles of his neck that
winter, and leanin' over was mighty painful to him; so pretty soon he
straightened up, but all the rest of us kept our heads bowed on the
back o' the pew in front of us, and waited for the clock to strike.
Somehow or other the time seemed mighty long, and everybody begun to
feel restless. Sam Amos was in the pew jest across the aisle from me
and Abram and I saw him take out his watch and look at it, and Uncle
Jim Mathews dropped off to sleep and got to snorin', and that set the
young folks to laughin', and everybody got tired leanin' their heads
over so long, and every now and then somebody would straighten up,
till at last everybody was settin' up straight except two or three
that was fast asleep. And still the clock didn't strike, and I reckon
we'd 'a' stayed there till daylight if it hadn't been for Sam Amos.
Everybody knew there was something wrong, but nobody had the courage
to git up and say so except Sam. He rose up in his pew and says he,
'Neighbors, I don't want to disturb this watch-meetin', but it looks
to me like one of two things has happened: either the new year's got
lost on the way or the old year's took a notion to stay with us a
little longer, and,' says he, 'I move that somebody goes behind the
pulpit and sees if there ain't somethin' wrong with the clock.'
"Well, Parson Page he got up and went up the pulpit steps--I ricollect
he had to step over Martin Luther's legs; Martin Luther was lyin' over
on his face sound asleep--and he stooped down and looked at the clock,
and then he threw up his hands and says he: 'Why, bless my soul! It's
nearly one o'clock.'
"Well, with that the young folks begun to laugh scandalous, and
everybody jumped up and begun talkin' at once. Abram says, 'The
strikin' part o' that clock must be out o' fix.' And Parson Page says,
'That can't be, for I carried it to town last week and had it put in
order especially for this occasion.' And Milly Amos says, 'Why didn't
some o' you men folks look at your watches instead o' lettin' us sit
here wastin' all this good time?' And Sam Amos says, 'I did look at
mine, but it didn't do much good, for I forgot to wind it last night,
and it had stopped at half-past five in the mornin' or the evenin', I
couldn't tell which.' And Silas Petty said his watch hadn't been
keepin' good time lately, and he didn't think it was worth while to
look at it. And Parson Page said he laid his watch on the bureau and
forgot to put it back in his vest pocket when he put on his Sunday
clothes. And somebody says, 'Maybe the clock struck and we didn't hear
it.' And Abram says: 'I'm pretty certain the strikin' part o' that
clock is out o' fix. Probably it got jarred bringin' it over here.'
"Jest then the old clock struck one, as loud and clear as you please.
And Parson Page says: 'Do you hear that? There's nothing wrong with
the clock; it must be our ears that are out of fix.' And Silas Petty
says: 'There's nothin' the matter with my ears. It's my opinion some
o' those rascally boys have been foolin' with the clock jest to play a
trick on us. They've had a mighty good chance at it, sprawlin' around
here on the floor and the clock out o' sight behind the pulpit.'
Little Sam Amos and the Crawford boys they spoke up and says they, 'We
never touched the clock,' and Milly says: 'You can't lay it on little
Sam. He's been fast asleep for the last two hours.' And somebody says,
'Where's Martin Luther?' and we all looked around, and Parson Page
says, 'Why, he must be here; he was sound asleep on the floor when I
stepped up here to examine the clock.' And Sam Amos says, 'Look
a-yonder, will you?' and he p'inted toward the winder, and there was
Martin Luther up on the winder-sill outside, with his face right up
against the glass and his nose all flattened out, and grinnin' like a
Cheshire cat. And as soon as he saw us lookin' at him, he dropped down
to the ground and give a whoop like a wild Indian and went tearin'
down the road as hard as he could foot it in the direction of Schuyler
Hall.
"Well, honey, it was right aggravatin'. You know country folks have to
work hard and git up early, and there we'd lost a good hour o' sleep
all for nothin', and a madder set o' folks you never saw, all but the
young folks. They laughed and laughed, and of course that made us all
still madder. Silas Petty and Dave Crawford begun blessin' Martin
Luther and sayin' what ought to be done to him and how they was goin'
to let Brother Wilson know about this as soon as day broke, and Sam
Amos he listened to 'em a while and then says he: 'Now here it is, the
new year jest an hour old, and you church-members are breakin' every
one o' your good resolutions about keepin' your temper and bein'
charitable to your neighbors. Can't you make allowances for a boy?'
And Uncle Jerry says: 'That's right, Sam. What's the use in takin'
notice of a boy's pranks? We've all been boys once--all except the
women folks--and there ain't one of us that hasn't rocked houses and
stole watermelons and robbed orchards and disturbed meetin' and done
all the rest o' the devilment that boys delight in. But jest let a boy
play a joke on us and we forgit all about the sins of our youth. To
hear us talk, a person would think that we was born sixty years old.'
Says he: 'All we've lost is an hour's sleep, and we can make that up
by goin' to bed earlier to-morrow night. Now, why not overlook this
little caper of Martin Luther's and begin the new year in a good humor
with everything and everybody?'
"And Sam Amos he begun to laugh, and he laughed till he had to set
down, and he kept on till Milly got skeered and beat him in the back
to make him stop, and finally he got his breath and says he, 'I'm
laughin' to think how we all looked settin' here at one o'clock in the
mornin' waitin' to hear the clock strike twelve.' And then he started
out again, and we laughed with him, and everybody went home in a good
humor. I ricollect me and Abram had an argument on the way home about
whether it was worth while to go to bed or not. Abram said it was
worth while to go to bed if you couldn't sleep but a half-hour, but
betwixt laughin' and ridin' in the cold air I was so wide awake I felt
like I never wanted to sleep again; and I went to work and cleaned up
the house and cut out some sewin' and had breakfast ready by half-past
four. I never made that sleep up, child, and I never felt any worse
for it. You know what the Bible says, 'As thy days so shall thy
strength be,' and when a person's young, there's strength for the day
and more besides."
Aunt Jane dropped her knitting and rested her head against the
patchwork cover of the high-backed chair. Like a great wall of shelter
and defense, we felt around us the deep stillness of a midwinter night
in the country. The last traveler had gone his homeward way over the
pike hours ago, and in the quiet room we could hear now and then those
faint noises made by shrinking timbers, as if the old house groaned in
the icy clutch of the December cold, and, louder and clearer than by
day, the voice of the clock ticking away the last hours of the old
year.
What is there in the flight of years to sadden the heart? Our little
times and seasons are but fragments of eternity, and eternity is ours.
The sunset on which we gaze with melancholy eyes is a sunrise on the
other side of the world, and the vanishing days can take from us
nothing that may not be restored by some day yet unborn. Eternity!
Immortality! If mortal mind could but fathom the depth of these ideas,
they would be as wells of peace in which all trouble, all regret,
would be forever drowned. But as Aunt Jane and I sat alone by her
deserted hearth we saw the shadows of the night deepening while the
fire burned low, and in our hearts we felt another and a darker
shadow cast by the wing of the passing year. And, breaking our dreams,
the clock struck ten. Aunt Jane gave a start, and the ball of yarn
fell from her lap. She picked it up before I could reach it, and
winding the yarn and rolling the stocking around the ball she called
in her wandering thoughts and entered instantly into the life of the
present hour.
"Light the lamp, child," she said, "and hand me my Bible. The
Scripture's got a word suitable for every season, and I'll read you
the psalm that Parson Page read the night the clock didn't strike."
[Illustration: "REVERENTLY SHE LAID THE HEAVY CALF-BOUND VOLUME
ACROSS HER KNEES."
_Page 290._]
Reverently she laid the heavy calf-bound volume across her knees, and
turning the leaves with swift and certain fingers she found the
ninetieth psalm as readily as the twentieth-century woman finds
Sordello in her complete Browning. Centuries ago, a Hebrew, standing
on one of the mountain peaks of old age, saw in a vision the little
lives and the little deeds of men outlined against a background of the
"eternal years of God." He put the vision into words, and because they
held a universal thought, a burden of the soul in every age and clime,
those words have outlasted kingdoms and dynasties. I had often heard
the rhythmic lines rolling from priestly lips and echoing under
cathedral arches, but never had they moved me as now, when by the
dying fire in the last hours of a dying year, I heard them, half
chanted, half read, in the tremulous voice of an old woman whose feet
were on the same height and whose eyes beheld the same vision:
"Lord, thou hast been our dwelling place in all generations.
"Before the mountains were brought forth, or ever thou hadst
formed the earth and the world, even from everlasting to
everlasting, thou art God.
"Thou turnest man to destruction; and sayest, Return, ye children
of men.
"For a thousand years in thy sight are but as yesterday when it
is past, and as a watch in the night.
"Thou carriest them away as with a flood; they are as a sleep: in
the morning they are like grass which groweth up.
"In the morning it flourisheth, and groweth up; in the evening it
is cut down, and withereth....
"For all our days are passed away in thy wrath; we spend our
years as a tale that is told.
"The days of our years are threescore years and ten; and if by
reason of strength they be fourscore years, yet is their strength
labor and sorrow; for it is soon cut off, and we fly away....
"So teach us to number our days, that we may apply our hearts
unto wisdom....
"O satisfy us early with thy mercy; that we may rejoice and be
glad all our days.
"Make us glad according to the days wherein thou hast afflicted
us, and the years wherein we have seen evil.
"Let thy work appear unto thy servants, and thy glory unto their
children.
"And let the beauty of the Lord our God be upon us; and establish
thou the work of our hands upon us; yea, the work of our hands
establish thou it."
Aunt Jane removed her glasses and folded her withered hands over the
sacred pages. "You know, child," she said, "the Bible's the word of
God. I ain't questionin' that. But it looks like to me there's some o'
the words of man in it, too. Now this psalm I've jest read is the very
one to read at a watch-meetin' on New-year's eve because it's all
about time and life and the passin' o' the years, but there's some o'
the verses I'd like to leave out. There's that tenth one about 'the
days of our years' and the strength of our years. I reckon we all feel
like sayin' such things when we git tired and it looks like we haven't
done the work we set out to do, but that's the sort o' feelin' to keep
to ourselves. It don't do any good to tell such feelin's. And when a
man can say that the Lord has been his dwellin' place in all
generations, he oughtn't to turn right around and say that the
strength of his years is jest labor and sorrow. The trouble with some
folks is that they're always lookin' back and countin' the years
wherein they have seen evil, but they don't ricollect that the Lord's
promise is to make us glad accordin' to the evil years. Trouble has
got to come to us, child, but whenever it comes we ought to know
there's happiness comin' to make up for it jest like this psalm says,
'Make us glad according to the days wherein thou hast afflicted us,
and the years wherein we have seen evil.' I've lived pretty near
eighty years, and I've had my share o' trouble, but I'm far from
sayin' that the strength of my years is nothin' but labor and sorrow.
I never had a sorrow that I didn't know there was a happiness comin'
to make up for it. I've spent my life 'as a tale that is told,' and
I'm nearly to the end of it, but I'd be right glad, child, if I could
go back to the beginnin' and have it told all over again."
It is easy to pronounce a benediction on life when life is in its
morning; but with the darkness of the long night closing around us the
words that rise most often to human lips are the words of the cynic
king who, from "the dazzling height of a throne," surveyed the
magnificent ruin of his years and said,
"Vanity of vanities; all is vanity."
God once looked at a seething chaos which he called his world and
pronounced it good. Only a divinity could do this. And only the
divinity in man enables one to look back on the chaos of sorrow,
ecstasy, hope, despair, labor, failure, sin, and suffering which we
call life and say, "It is all good; I would live it again if I might."
Aunt Jane closed her Bible and laid it on the mahogany centre-table.
"Half-past ten o'clock," she said, glancing at the clock in the
corner. "I sometimes think, honey, that I'd like to watch the old year
out once more, for there's somethin' about the night that the day
hasn't got. But I'm too old to lose sleep unless there's a good reason
for it, so cover up the fire and we'll sleep the old year out instead
o' watchin' it out. This night's no more'n any other night, and it's
jest as Parson Page said, every day's a New-year's day."
_By the author of "The Land of Long Ago."_
AUNT JANE OF KENTUCKY
_By_ ELIZA CALVERT HALL
Illustrated by Beulah Strong. 12mo. Cloth. $1.50
Aunt Jane is perfectly delightful.--_The Outlook_, New York.
A book that plays on the heart strings.--_St. Louis
Post-Despatch._
What Mrs. Gaskill did in "Cranford" this author does for
Kentucky.--_Syracuse Herald._
A prose idyl. Nothing more charming has appeared in recent
fiction.--MARGARET E. SANGSTER.
These pages have in them much of the stuff that makes genuine
literature.--_Louisville Courier Journal._
Where so many have made caricatures of old-time country folk,
Eliza Calvert Hall has caught at once the real charm, the real
spirit, the real people, and the real joy of living which was
theirs.--_New York Times._
Have you read that charming little book written by one of your
clever Kentucky women--"Aunt Jane of Kentucky"--by Eliza Calvert
Hall? It is very wholesome and attractive. Be sure that you read
it.--THEODORE ROOSEVELT.
LITTLE, BROWN, & CO., PUBLISHERS
254 WASHINGTON STREET, BOSTON
* * * * *
End of Project Gutenberg's The Land of Long Ago, by Eliza Calvert Hall