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Transcriber’s Note:
This version of the text cannot represent certain typographical effects.
Italics are delimited with the ‘_’ character as _italic_. On each title
page, the phrase “A Tale” was printed in a blackletter font, which is
rendered here delimited by ‘=’.
The volume is a collection of three already published texts, each with
its own title page and pagination.
Minor errors, attributable to the printer, have been corrected. Please
see the transcriber’s note at the end of this text for details regarding
the handling of any textual issues encountered during its preparation.
ILLUSTRATIONS
OF
POLITICAL ECONOMY.
BY
HARRIET MARTINEAU.
——o——
BRIERY CREEK.
THE THREE AGES.
——o——
_IN NINE VOLUMES._
VOL. VIII.
LONDON:
CHARLES FOX, PATERNOSTER-ROW.
MDCCCXXXIV.
LONDON:
Printed by WILLIAM CLOWES,
Duke-street, Lambeth.
CONTENTS.
---
BRIERY CREEK.
CHAP. PAGE│CHAP. PAGE
1. The Philosopher at Home 1│5. Introductions 94
2. The Gentleman at Home 22│6. A Father’s Hope 122
3. Saturday Morning 46│7. The End of the Matter 142
4. Sunday Evening 65│
│
THE THREE AGES..
│
1. First Age 1│3. Third Age 93
2. Second Age 35│
BRIERY CREEK.
---------------------
CHAPTER I.
THE PHILOSOPHER AT HOME.
The sun,—the bright sun of May in the western world,—was going down on
the village of Briery Creek, and there was scarcely a soul left within
its bounds to observe how the shadows lengthened on the prairie, except
Dr. Sneyd; and Dr. Sneyd was too busy to do justice to the spectacle. It
was very long since letters and newspapers had been received from
England; the rains had interfered with the post; and nothing had been
heard at the settlement for a month of what the minister was planning in
London, and what the populace was doing in Paris. Dr. Sneyd had learned,
in this time, much that was taking place among the worlds overhead; and
he now began to be very impatient for tidings respecting the Old World,
on which he had been compelled to turn his back, at the moment when its
political circumstances began to be the most interesting to him. There
had been glimpses of starlight in the intervals of the shifting spring
storms, and he had betaken himself, not in vain, to his observatory; but
no messenger, with precious leathern bag, had appeared on the partial
cessation of the rains to open, beyond the clouds of the political
hemisphere, views of the silent rise or sure progress of bright moral
truths behind the veil of prejudice and passion which was for a season
obscuring their lustre. Day after day had anxious eyes been fixed on the
ford of the creek; night after night had the doctor risen, and looked
abroad in starlight and in gloom, when the dogs were restless in the
court, or a fancied horse-tread was heard in the grassy road before the
house.
This evening Dr. Sneyd was taking resolution to file the last newspapers
he had received, and to endorse and put away the letters which, having
been read till not an atom more of meaning could be extracted from them,
might now be kept in some place where they would be safer from friction
than in a philosopher’s pocket. The filing the newspapers was done with
his usual method and alacrity, but his hand shook while endorsing the
last of his letters; and he slowly opened the sheet, to look once more
at the signature,—not from sentiment, and because it was the signature
(for Dr. Sneyd was not a man of sentiment),—but in order to observe once
again whether there had been any such tremulousness in the hand that
wrote it as might affect the chance of the two old friends meeting again
in this world: the chance which he was unwilling to believe so slight as
it appeared to Mrs. Sneyd, and his son Arthur, and every body else.
Nothing more was discoverable from the writing, and the key was
resolutely turned upon the letter. The next glance fell upon the
materials of a valuable telescope, which lay along one side of the room,
useless till some glasses should arrive to replace those which had been
broken during the rough journey to this remote settlement. Piece by
piece was handled, fitted, and laid down again. Then a smile passed over
the philosopher’s countenance as his eye settled on the filmy orb of the
moon, already showing itself, though the sun had not yet touched the
western verge of the prairie. It was something to have the same moon to
look at through the same telescopes as when he was not alone in science,
in the depths of a strange continent. The face of the land had changed;
he had become but too well acquainted with the sea; a part of the
heavens themselves had passed away, and new worlds of light come before
him in their stead; but the same sun shone in at the south window of his
study; the same moon waxed and waned above his observatory; and he was
eager to be once more recognising her volcanoes and plains through the
instrument which he had succeeded in perfecting for use. This reminded
him to note down in their proper places the results of his last
observations; and in a single minute, no symptom remained of Dr. Sneyd
having old friends whom he longed to see on the other side of the world;
or of his having suffered from the deferred hope of tidings; or of his
feeling impatient about his large telescope; or of any thing but his
being engrossed in his occupation.
Yet he heard the first gentle tap at the south window, and, looking over
his spectacles at the little boy who stood outside, found time to bid
him come in and wait for liberty to talk. The doctor went on writing,
the smile still on his face, and Temmy,—in other words, Temple Temple,
heir of Temple Lodge,—crept in at the window, and stole quietly about
the room to amuse himself, till his grandfather should be at liberty to
attend to him. While the pen scratched the paper, and ceased, and
scratched again, Temmy walked along the bookshelves, and peeped into the
cylinder of the great telescope, and cast a frightened look behind him
on having the misfortune to jingle some glasses, and then slid into the
low arm-chair to study for the hundredth time the prints that hung
opposite,—the venerable portraits of his grandfather’s two most intimate
friends. Temmy had learned to look on these wise men of another
hemisphere with much of the same respect as on the philosophers of a
former age. His grandfather appeared to him incalculably old, and
unfathomably wise; and it was his grandfather’s own assurance that these
two philosophers were older and wiser still. When to this was added the
breadth of land and sea across which they dwelt, it was no wonder that,
in the eyes of the boy, they had the sanctity of the long-buried dead.
“Where is your grandmamma, Temmy?” asked Dr. Sneyd, at length, putting
away his papers. “Do you know whether she is coming to take a walk with
me?”
“I cannot find her,” said the boy. “I went all round the garden, and
through the orchard——”
“And into the poultry yard?”
“Yes; and every where else. All the doors are open, and the place quite
empty. There is nobody at home here, nor in all the village, except at
our house.”
“All gone to the squirrel-hunt; or rather to meet the hunters, for the
sport must be over by this time; but your grandmamma does not hunt
squirrels. We must turn out and find her. I dare say she is gone to the
Creek to look for the postman.”
Temmy hoped that all the squirrels were not to be shot. Though there had
been far too many lately, he should be sorry if they were all to
disappear.
“You will have your own two, in their pretty cage, at any rate, Temmy.”
Temmy’s tearful eyes, twisted fingers, and scarlet colour, said the “no”
he could not speak at the moment. Grandpapa liked to get at the bottom
of every thing; and he soon discovered that the boy’s father had, for
some reason unknown, ordered that no more squirrels should be seen in
his house, and that the necks of Temmy’s favourites should be wrung.
Temmy had no other favourites instead. He did not like to begin with any
new ones without knowing whether he might keep them; and he had not yet
asked his papa what he might be permitted to have.
“We must all have patience, Temmy, about our favourites. I have had a
great disappointment about one of mine.”
Temmy brushed away his tears to hear what favourites grandpapa could
have. Neither cat, nor squirrel, nor bird had ever met his eye in this
house; and the dogs in the court were for use, not play.
Dr. Sneyd pointed to his large telescope, and said that the cylinder,
without the lenses, was to him no more than a cage without squirrels
would be to Temmy.
“But you will have the glasses by and by, grandpapa, and I——”
“Yes; I hope to have them many months hence, when the snow is thick on
the ground, and the sleigh can bring me my packages of glass without
breaking them, as the last were broken that came over the log road. But
all this time the stars are moving over our heads; and in these fine
spring evenings I should like very much to be finding out many things
that I must remain ignorant of till next year; and I cannot spare a
whole year now so well as when I was younger.”
“Cannot you do something while you are waiting?” was Temmy’s question.
His uncle Arthur would have been as much diverted at it as Dr. Sneyd
himself was; for the fact was, Dr. Sneyd had always twice as much
planned to be done as any body thought he could get through. Temmy did
not know what a large book he was writing; nor how much might be learned
by means of the inferior instruments; nor what a number of books the
philosopher was to read through, nor how large a correspondence was to
be carried on, before the snow could be on the ground again.
“Now let us walk to the creek” was a joyful sound to the boy, who made
haste to find the doctor’s large straw hat. When the philosopher had put
it on, over his thin grey hair, he turned towards one of his many
curious mirrors, and laughed at his own image.
“Temmy,” said he, “do you remember me before I wore this large hat? Do
you remember my great wig?”
“O yes, and the black, three-cornered hat. I could not think who you
were the first day I met you without that wig. But I think I never saw
any body else with such a wig.”
“And in England they would not know what to make of me without it. I was
just thinking how Dr. Rogers would look at me, if he could see me now;
he would call me quite an American,—very like a republican.”
“Are you an American? Are you a republican?”
“I was a republican in England, and in France, and wherever I have been,
as much as I am now. As to being an American, I suppose I must call
myself one; but I love England very dearly, Temmy. I had rather live
there than any where, if it were but safe for me; but we can make
ourselves happy here. Whatever happens, we always find afterwards, or
shall find when we are wiser, is for our good. Some people at home have
made a great mistake about me; but all mistakes will be cleared up some
time or other, my dear; and in the mean while, we must not be angry with
one another, though we cannot help being sorry for what has happened.”
“I think uncle Arthur is very angry indeed. He said one day that he
would never live among those people in England again.”
“I dare say there will be no reason for his living there; but he has
promised me to forgive them for misunderstanding and disliking me. And
you must promise me the same thing when you grow old enough to see what
such a promise means.—Come here, my dear. Stand just where I do, and
look up under the eaves. Do you see anything?”
“O, I see a little bird moving!”
Temmy could not tell what bird it was. He was a rather dull
child—usually called uncommonly stupid—as indeed he too often appeared.
Whither his wits strayed from the midst of the active little world in
which he lived, where the wits of everybody else were lively enough, no
one could tell—if, indeed, he had any wits. His father thought it
impossible that Temple Temple, heir of Temple Lodge and its fifty
thousand acres, should not grow up a very important personage. Mrs.
Temple had an inward persuasion, that no one understood the boy but
herself. Dr. Sneyd did not profess so to understand children as to be
able to compare Temmy with others, but thought him a good little fellow,
and had no doubt he would do very well. Mrs. Sneyd’s hopes and fears on
the boy’s account varied, while her tender pity was unremitting: and
uncle Arthur was full of indignation at Temple for cowing the child’s
spirit, and thus blunting his intellect. To all other observers it was
but too evident that Temmy did not know a martin from a crow, or a
sycamore from a thorn.
“That bird is a martin, come to build under our eaves, my dear. If we
were to put up a box, I dare say the bird would begin to build in it
directly.”
Temmy was for putting up a box, and his grandpapa for furnishing him
with favourites which should be out of sight and reach of Mr. Temple. In
two minutes, therefore, the philosopher was mounted on a high stool,
whence he could reach the low eaves; and Temmy was vibrating on tiptoe,
holding up at arms’ length that which, being emptied of certain
mysterious curiosities, (which might belong either to grandpapa’s
apparatus of science, or grandmamma’s of housewifery,) was now destined
to hold the winged curiosities which were flitting round during the
operation undertaken on their behalf.
Before descending, the doctor looked about him, on the strange sight of
a thriving uninhabited village. Everybody seemed to be out after the
squirrel hunters. When, indeed, the higher ground near the Creek was
attained, Dr. Sneyd perceived that Mr. Temple’s family was at home. On
the terrace was the gentleman himself, walking backwards and forwards in
his usual after-dinner state. His lady (Dr. Sneyd’s only daughter) was
stooping among her flowers, while Ephraim, the black boy, was attending
at her heels, and the figures of other servants popped into sight and
away again, as they were summoned and dismissed by their master. The
tavern, kept by the surgeon of the place, stood empty, if it might be
judged by its open doors, where no one went in and out. Dods was not to
be seen in the brick-ground; which was a wonder, as Dods was a hard-
working man, and his task of making bricks for Mr. Temple’s grand
alterations had been so much retarded by the late rains that it was
expected of Dods that he would lose not a day nor an hour while the
weather continued fair. Mrs. Dods was not at work under her porch, as
usual, at this hour; nor was the young lawyer, Mr. Johnson, flitting
from fence to fence of the cottages on the prairie, to gather up and
convey the news of what had befallen since morning. About the rude
dwelling within the verge of the forest, there was the usual fluttering
of fowls and yelping of dogs; but neither was the half-savage woodsman
(only known by the name of Brawn) to be seen loitering about with his
axe, nor were his equally uncivilized daughters (the Brawnees) at their
sugar troughs under the long row of maples. The Indian corn seemed to
have chosen its own place for springing, and to be growing untended; so
rude were the fences which surrounded it, and so rank was the prairie
grass which struggled with it for possession of the furrows. The expanse
of the prairie was undiversified with a single living thing. A solitary
tree, or a cluster of bushes here and there, was all that broke the
uniformity of the grassy surface, as far as the horizon, where the black
forest rose in an even line, and seemed to seclude the region within its
embrace. There was not such an absence of sound as of motion. The waters
of the Creek, to which Dr. Sneyd and Temmy were proceeding, dashed
along, swollen by the late rains, and the flutter and splash of wild
fowl were heard from their place of assemblage,—the riffle of the Creek,
or the shallows formed by the unevenness of its rocky bottom. There were
few bird-notes heard in the forest; but the horses of the settlement
were wandering there, with bells about their necks. The breezes could
find no entrance into the deep recesses of the woods; but they whispered
in their play among the wild vines that hung from a height of fifty
feet. There was a stir also among the rhododendrons, thickets of which
were left to flourish on the borders of the wood; and with their rustle
in the evening wind were mingled the chirping, humming, and buzzing of
an indistinguishable variety of insects on the wing and among the grass.
“I see grandmamma coming out of Dods’s porch,” cried Temmy. “What has
she been there for, all alone?”
“I believe she has been the round of the cottages, feeding the pigs and
fowls, because the neighbours are away. This is like your grandmamma,
and it explains her being absent so long. You see what haste she is
making towards us. Now tell me whether you hear anything on the other
side of the Creek.”
Temmy heard something, but he could not say what,—whether winds, or
waters, or horses, or insects, or all these. Dr. Sneyd thought he heard
cart wheels approaching along the smooth natural road which led out of
the forest upon the prairie. The light, firm soil of this kind of road
was so favourable for carriages, that they did not give the rumbling and
creaking notice of their approach which is common on the log road which
intersects a marsh. The post messenger was the uppermost person in Dr.
Sneyd’s thoughts just now, whether waggon wheels or horse tread greeted
his ear. He was partly right and partly wrong in his present
conjectures. A waggon appeared from among the trees, but it contained
nobody whom he could expect to be the bearer of letters;—nobody but
Arthur’s assistant Isaac, accompanied by Mr. Temple’s black man Julian,
bringing home a stock of groceries and other comforts from a distant
store, to which they had been sent to make purchases.
The vehicle came to a halt on the opposite ridge; and no wonder, for it
was not easy to see how it was to make further progress. The Creek was
very fine to look at in its present state; but it was anything but
tempting to travellers. The water, which usually ran clear and shallow,
when there was more than enough to fill the deep holes in its bed, now
brought mud from its source, and bore on its troubled surface large
branches, and even trunks of trees. It was so much swollen from the late
rains that its depth was not easily ascertainable; but many a brier
which had lately overhung its course from the bank was now swaying in
its current, and looking lost in a new element. Isaac and Julian by
turns descended the bank to the edge of the water, but could not learn
thereby whether or not it was fordable. Their next proceeding was to
empty the cart, and drive into the flood by way of experiment.—The water
only half filled the vehicle, and the horse kept his footing admirably,
so that it was only to drive back again, and to bring the goods,—some on
the dry seat of the waggon, and some on the backs of Isaac and Julian,
as the one drove, and the other took care of the packages within. Two
trips, it was thought, would suffice to bring over the whole, high and
dry.
“What are you all about here?” asked Mrs. Sneyd, who had come up
unobserved while her husband and grandchild were absorbed in watching
the passage of the Creek. “The goods arriving! Bless me! I hope they
will get over safely. It would be too provoking if poor Arthur should
lose his first batch of luxuries. He has lived so long on Indian corn
bread, and hominy, and wild turkeys, and milk, that it is time he should
be enjoying his meal of wheaten bread and tea.”
“And the cloth for his new coat is there, grandmamma.”
“Yes; and plenty of spice and other good things for your papa. I do not
know what he will say if they are washed away; but I care much more for
your coffee, my dear,” continued she, turning to the doctor. “I am
afraid your observations and authorship will suffer for want of your
coffee. Do try and make Isaac hear that he is to take particular care of
the coffee.”
“Not I, my dear,” replied Dr. Sneyd, laughing. “I would advocate
Arthur’s affairs, if any. But the men seem to be taking all possible
care. I should advise their leaving the goods and cart together on the
other side, but that I rather think, there will be more rain before
morning, so as to make matters worse to-morrow, besides the risk of a
soaking during the night. Here they come! Now for it! How they dash down
the bank! There! They will upset the cart if they do not take care.”
“That great floating tree will upset them. What a pity they did not see
it in time! There! I thought so.”
The mischief was done. The trunk, with a new rush of water, was too much
for the light waggon. It turned over on its side, precipitating driver,
Julian, and all the packages into the muddy stream. The horse scrambled
and struggled till Isaac could regain his footing, and set the animal
free, while Julian was dashing the water from his face, and snatching at
one package after another as they eddied round him, preparatory to being
carried down the Creek.
Dr. Sneyd caught the frightened horse, as he scampered up the briery
bank. Mrs. Sneyd shouted a variety of directions which would have been
excellent, if they could have been heard; while Temmy stood looking
stupid.
“Call help, my dear boy,” said Dr. Sneyd.
“Where? I do not know where to go.”
“Do you hear the popping of guns in the wood? Some of the hunters are
coming back. Go and call them.”
“Where? I do not know which way.”
“In the direction of the guns, my dear. In that quarter, near the large
hickory. I think you will find them there.”
Temmy did not know a hickory by sight; but he could see which way Dr.
Sneyd’s finger pointed; and he soon succeeded in finding the party, and
bringing them to the spot.
“Arthur, I am very sorry,” said the doctor, on seeing his son come
running to view the disaster. “Mortal accidents, my dear son! We must
make up our minds to them.”
“Yes, father, when they are purely accidents: but this is
carelessness,—most provoking carelessness.”
“Indeed, the men did make trial of what they were about,” said the
doctor.
“The great tree came down so very fast!” added Temmy.
“Yes, yes. I am not blaming Isaac. It was my carelessness in not
throwing a bridge over the Creek long ago. Never mind that now! Let us
save what we can.”
It was a sorry rescue. The cart was broken, but it could be easily
mended. The much-longed-for wheaten flour appeared in the shape of a
sack of soiled pulp, which no one would think of swallowing. The coffee
might be dried. The tea was not altogether past hope. Sugar, salt, and
starch, were melted into one mass. Mr. Temple’s spices were supposed to
be by this time perfuming the stream two miles below; his wax candles
were battered, so that they could, at best, be used only as short ends;
and the oil for his hall lamps was diffusing a calm over the surface of
the stream. Mrs. Sneyd asked her husband whether some analogous
appliance could not be found for the proprietor’s ruffled temper, when
he should hear of the disaster.
The news could not be long in reaching him, for the other party of
squirrel-hunters, bringing with them all the remaining women and
children of the village, appeared from the forest, and the tidings
spread from mouth to mouth. As soon as Temmy saw that Uncle Arthur was
standing still, and looking round him for a moment, he put one of his
mistimed questions, at the end of divers remarks.
“How many squirrels have you killed, uncle? I do not think you can have
killed any at all; we saw so many as we came up here! Some were running
along your snake fence, uncle; and grandpapa says they were not of the
same kind as those that run up the trees. But we saw a great many run up
the trees, too. I dare say, half a dozen or a dozen. How many have you
killed, uncle?”
“Forty-one. The children there will tell you all about it.”
“Forty-one! And how many did David kill? And your whole party, uncle?”
Arthur gave the boy a gentle push towards the sacks of dead squirrels,
and Temmy, having no notion why or how he had been troublesome, amused
himself with pitying the slaughtered animals, and stroking his cheeks
with the brushes of more than a hundred of them. He might have gone on
to the whole number bagged,—two hundred and ninety-three,—if his
attention had not been called off by the sudden silence which preceded a
speech from uncle Arthur.
“Neighbours,” said Arthur, “I take the blame of this mischance upon
myself. I will not say that some of you might not have reminded me to
bridge the Creek, before I spent my time and money on luxuries that we
could have waited for a while longer; but the chief carelessness was
mine, I freely own. It seems a strange time to choose for asking a
favour of you——”
He was interrupted by many a protestation that his neighbours were ready
to help to bridge the Creek; that it was the interest of all that the
work should be done, and not a favour to himself alone. He went on:—
“I was going to say that when it happens to you, as now to me, that you
wish to exchange the corn that you grow for something that our prairies
do not produce, you will feel the want of such a bridge as much as I do
now; though I hope through a less disagreeable experience. In self-
defence, I must tell you, however, how little able I have been till
lately to provide any but the barest necessaries for myself and my men.
This will show you that I cannot now pay you for the work you propose to
do.”
He was interrupted by assurances that nobody wanted to be paid; that
they would have a bridging frolic, as they had before had a raising
frolic to build the surgeon’s tavern, and a rolling frolic to clear
Brawn’s patch of ground, and as they meant to have a reaping frolic when
the corn should be ripe. It should be a pic-nic. Nobody supposed that
Arthur had yet meat, bread, and whisky to spare.
“I own that I have not,” said he. “You know that when I began to till my
ground, I had no more capital than was barely sufficient to fence and
break up my fields, and feed me and my two labourers while my first crop
was growing. Just before it ripened, I had nothing left; but what I had
spent was well spent. It proved a productive consumption indeed; for my
harvest brought back all I had spent, with increase. This increase was
not idly consumed by me. I began to pay attention to my cattle, improved
my farm buildings, set up a kiln, and employed a labourer in making
bricks. The fruits of my harvest were thus all consumed; but they were
again restored with increase. Then I thought I might begin to indulge
myself with the enjoyment for which I had toiled so long and so hard. I
did not labour merely to have so much corn in my barns, but to enjoy the
corn, and whatever else it would bring me,—as we all do,—producing,
distributing, and exchanging, that we may afterwards enjoy.”
“Not quite all, Mr. Arthur,” said Johnson, the lawyer. “There is your
brother-in-law, Mr. Temple, who seems disposed to enjoy everything,
without so much as soiling his fingers with gathering a peach. And there
is a certain friend of ours, settled farther east, who toils like a
horse, and lives like a beggar, that he may hoard a roomful of dollars.”
“Temple produces by means of the hoarded industry of his fathers,—by
means of his capital,” replied Arthur. “And the miser you speak of
enjoys his dollars, I suppose, or he would change them away for
something else. Well, friends, there is little temptation for us to
hoard up our wealth. We have corn instead of dollars, and corn will not
keep like dollars.”
“Why should it?” asked Dods the brickmaker. “Who would take the trouble
to raise more corn than he wants to eat, if he did not hope to exchange
it for something desirable?”
“Very true. Then comes the question, what a man shall choose in
exchange. I began pretty well. I laid out some of my surplus in
providing for a still greater next year; which, in my circumstances, was
my first duty. Then I began to look to the end for which I was working;
and I reached forward to it a little too soon. I should have roasted my
corn ears and drank milk a little longer, and expended my surplus on a
bridge, before I thought of wheaten flour and tea and coffee.”
“Three months hence,” said somebody, “you will be no worse off (except
for the corn ears and milk you must consume instead of flour and tea)
than if you had had your wish. Your flour and tea would have been clean
gone by that time, without any return.”
“You grant that I must go without the pleasure,” said Arthur, smiling.
“Never mind that. But you will not persuade me that it is not a clear
loss to have flour spoiled, and sugar and salt melted together in the
creek; unless, indeed, they go to fatten the fish in the holes. Besides,
there is the mortification of feeling that your toil in making this
bridge might have been paid with that which is lost in the purchase of
luxuries which none will enjoy.”
Being vehemently exhorted to let this consideration give him no concern,
he concluded,
“I will take your advice, thank you. I will not trouble myself or you
more about this loss; and I enlarge upon it now only because it may be
useful to us as a lesson how to use the fruits of our labour. I have
been one of the foremost to laugh at our neighbours in the next
settlement for having,—not their useful frolics, like ours of to-
morrow,—but their shooting-matches and games in the wood, when the water
was so bad that it was a grievance to have to drink it. I was as ready
as any one to see that the labour spent on these pastimes could not be
properly afforded, if there were really no hands to spare to dig wells.
And now, instead of asking them when they mean to have their welling
frolic, our wisest way will be to get our bridge up before there is time
for our neighbours to make a laughing-stock of us. When that is done, I
shall be far from satisfied. I shall still feel that it is owing to me
that my father goes without his coffee, while he is watching through the
night when we common men are asleep.
”That is as much Temple’s concern as the young man’s," observed the
neighbours one to another. “Freely as he flings his money about, one
would think Temple might see that the doctor was at least as well
supplied with luxuries as himself.” “Why the young man should be left to
toil and make capital so painfully and slowly, when Temple squanders so
much, is a mystery to every body.” "A quarter of what Temple has spent
in making and unmaking his garden would have enabled Arthur Sneyd’s new
field to produce double, or have improved his team; and Temple himself
would have been all the better for the interest it would have yielded,
instead of his money bringing no return. But Temple is not the man to
lend a helping hand to a young farmer,—be he his brother-in-law or a
mere stranger."
Such were the remarks which Arthur was not supposed to hear, and to
which he did not therefore consider himself called upon to reply.
Seeing his father and mother in eager consultation with the still
dripping Isaac, he speedily completed the arrangements for the next
day’s meeting, toils, and pleasures, and joined the group. Isaac had
but just recollected that in his pocket he brought a packet of
letters and several newspapers, which had found their way, in some
circuitous manner, to the store where he had been trafficking. The
whole were deplorably soaked with mud. It seemed doubtful whether a
line of the writing could ever be made out. But Mrs. Sneyd’s
cleverness had been proved equal to emergencies nearly as great as
this. She had once got rid of the stains of a stand full of ink
which had been overset on a parchment which bore a ten-guinea stamp.
She had recovered the whole to perfect smoothness, and fitness to be
written upon. Many a time had she contrived to restore the writing
which had been discharged from her father’s manuscript chemical
lectures, when spillings from his experiments had occurred scarcely
half an hour before the lecture-room began to fill. No wonder her
husband was now willing to confide in her skill—no wonder he was
anxious to see Temmy home as speedily as possible, that he might
watch the processes of dipping and drying and unfolding, on which
depended almost the dearest of his enjoyments,—intercourse with
faithful friends far away.
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