THEOLOGICAL TEA.
AT the call of her mother, Mary hurried into the ‘best room, with
a strange discomposure of spirit she had never felt before. From
childhood, her love for James had been so deep, equable, and intense,
that it had never disturbed her with thrills and yearnings; it had
grown up in sisterly calmness, and, quietly expanding, had taken
possession of her whole nature without her once dreaming of its power.
But this last interview seemed to have struck some great nerve of
her being,—and calm as she usually was, from habit, principle, and
good health, she shivered and trembled as she heard his retreating
footsteps, and saw the orchard-grass fly back from under his feet.
It was as if each step trod on a nerve,—as if the very sound of the
rustling grass was stirring something living and sensitive in her soul.
And, strangest of all, a vague impression of guilt hovered over her.
_Had_ she done anything wrong? She did not ask him there; she had not
spoken love to him; no, she had only talked to him of his soul, and how
she would give hers for his,—oh, so willingly!—and that was not love;
it was only what Dr. H. said Christians must always feel.
‘Child, what _have_ you been doing?’ said Aunt Katy, who sat in full
flowing chintz petticoat and spotless dimity short-gown, with her
company knitting-work in her hands; ‘your cheeks are as red as peonies.
Have you been crying? What’s the matter?’
‘There is the Deacon’s wife, mother,’ said Mary, turning confusedly,
and darting to the entry-door.
Enter Mrs. Twitchel,—a soft, pillowy, little elderly lady, whose
whole air and dress reminded one of a sack of feathers tied in the
middle with a string. A large, comfortable pocket, hung upon the side,
disclosed her knitting-work ready for operation; and she zealously
cleansed herself with a checked handkerchief from the dust which had
accumulated during her ride in the old ‘one-hoss shay,’ answering the
hospitable salutation of Katy Scudder in that plaintive, motherly voice
which belongs to certain nice old ladies, who appear to live in a state
of mild chronic compassion for the sins and sorrows of this mortal life
generally.
‘Why, yes, Miss Scudder, I’m pretty tol’able. I keep goin’, and goin’.
That’s my way. I’s a-tellin’ the Deacon, this mornin’, I didn’t see how
I _was_ to come here this afternoon; but then I _did_ want to see Miss
Scudder, and talk a little about that precious sermon, Sunday. How is
the Doctor? blessed man! Well, his reward must be great in heaven, if
not on earth, as I was a-tellin’ the Deacon; and he says to me, says
he, “Polly, we mustn’t be man-worshippers.” There, dear,’ (_to Mary_,)
‘don’t trouble yourself about my bonnet; it a’n’t my Sunday one, but I
thought ’twould do. Says I to Cerinthy Ann, “Miss Scudder won’t mind,
’cause her heart’s set on better things.” I always like to drop a word
in season to Cerinthy Ann, ’cause she’s clean took up with vanity and
dress. Oh, dear! oh, dear me! so different from your blessed daughter,
Miss Scudder! Well, it’s a great blessin’ to be called in one’s youth,
like Samuel and Timothy; but then we doesn’t know the Lord’s ways.
Sometimes I gets clean discouraged with my children,—but then ag’in I
don’t know; none on us does. Cerinthy Ann is one of the most master
hands to turn off work; she takes hold and goes along like a woman, and
nobody never knows when that gal finds the time to do all she does do;
and I don’t know nothin’ what I _should_ do without her. Deacon was
saying, if ever she was called, she’d be a Martha, and not a Mary: but
then she’s dreadful opposed to the doctrines. Oh, dear me! oh, dear
me! Somehow they seem to rile her all up; and she was a-tellin’ me
yesterday, when she was a-hangin’ out clothes, that she never should
get reconciled to Decrees and ’Lection, ’cause she can’t see, if things
is certain, how folks is to help ’emselves. Says I, “Cerinthy Ann,
folks a’n’t to help themselves; they’s to submit unconditional.” And
she jest slammed down the clothes-basket and went into the house.’
When Mrs. Twitchel began to talk, it flowed a steady stream, as when
one turns a faucet, that never ceases running till some hand turns it
back again; and the occasion that cut the flood short at present was
the entrance of Mrs. Brown.
Mr. Simeon Brown was a thriving ship-owner of Newport, who lived in a
large house, owned several negro-servants and a span of horses, and
affected some state and style in his worldly appearance. A passion for
metaphysical Orthodoxy had drawn Simeon to the congregation of Dr. H.,
and his wife of course stood by right in a high place there. She was a
tall, angular, somewhat hard-favoured body, dressed in a style rather
above the simple habits of her neighbours, and her whole air spoke the
great woman, who in right of her thousands expected to have her say in
all that was going on in the world, whether she understood it or not.
On her entrance, mild little Mrs. Twitchel fled from the cushioned
rocking-chair, and stood with the quivering air of one who feels she
has no business to be anywhere in the world, until Mrs. Brown’s bonnet
was taken and she was seated, when Mrs. Twitchel subsided into a corner
and rattled her knitting-needles to conceal her emotion.
New England has been called the land of equality; but what land upon
earth is wholly so? Even the mites in a bit of cheese, naturalists say,
have great tumblings and strivings about position and rank: he who has
ten pounds will always be a nobleman to him who has but one, let him
strive as manfully as he may; and therefore let us forgive meek little
Mrs. Twitchel from melting into nothing in her own eyes when Mrs.
Brown came in, and let us forgive Mrs. Brown that she sat down in the
rocking-chair with an easy grandeur, as one who thought it her duty
to be affable and meant to be. It was, however, rather difficult for
Mrs. Brown, with her money, house, negroes, and all, to patronise Mrs.
Katy Scudder, who was one of those women whose natures seems to sit
on thrones, and who dispense patronage and favour by an inborn right
and aptitude, whatever be their social advantages. It was one of Mrs.
Brown’s trials of life, this secret, strange quality in her neighbour,
who stood apparently so far below her in worldly goods. Even the quiet
positive style of Mrs. Katy’s knitting made her nervous; it was an
implication of independence of her sway; and though on the present
occasion every customary courtesy was bestowed, she still felt, as she
always did when Mrs. Katy’s guest, a secret uneasiness. She mentally
contrasted the neat little parlour, with its white sanded floor and
muslin curtains, with her own grand front-room, which boasted the then
uncommon luxuries of Turkey carpet and Persian rug, and wondered if
Mrs. Katy did really feel as cool and easy in receiving her as she
appeared.
You must not understand that this was what Mrs. Brown _supposed_
herself to be thinking about; oh, no! by no means! All the little,
mean work of our nature is generally done in a small dark closet just
a little back of the subject we are talking about, on which subject we
suppose ourselves of course to be thinking;—of course we _are_ thinking
of it; how else could we talk about it?
The subject in discussion, and what Mrs. Brown supposed to be in her
own thoughts, was the last Sunday’s sermon, on the doctrine of entire
Disinterested Benevolence, in which good Doctor H. had proclaimed to
the citizens of Newport their duty of being so wholly absorbed in the
general good of the universe as even to acquiesce in their own final
and eternal destruction, if the greater good of the whole might thereby
be accomplished.
‘Well, now, dear me!’ said Mrs. Twitchel, while her knitting-needles
trotted contentedly to the mournful tone of her voice,—‘I was tellin’
the Deacon, if we only could get there! Sometimes I think I get a
little way,—but then ag’in I don’t know; but the Deacon he’s quite
down,—he don’t see no evidences in himself. Sometimes he says he don’t
feel as if he ought to keep his place in the church,—but then ag’in
he don’t know. He keeps a-turnin’ and turnin’ on’t over in his mind,
and a-tryin’ himself this way and that way; and he says he don’t see
nothin’ but what’s selfish, no way.
’’Member one night last winter, after the Deacon got warm in bed,
there come a rap at the door; and who should it be but old Beulah
Ward wantin’ to see the Deacon—’twas her boy she sent, and he said
Beulah was sick and hadn’t no more wood nor candles. Now I know’d the
Deacon had carried that critter half a cord of wood, if he had one
stick, since Thanksgivin’, and I’d sent her two o’ my best moulds of
candles,—nice ones that Cerinthy Ann run when we killed a crittur;
but nothin’ would do but the Deacon must get right out his warm bed
and dress himself, and hitch up his team to carry over some wood to
Beulah. Says I, “Father, you know you’ll be down with the rheumatis
for this; besides, Beulah is real aggravatin’. I know she trades off
what we send her to the store for rum, and you never get no thanks. She
’xpects, ’cause we has done for her, we always must; and more we do,
more we may do.” And says he to me, says he, “That’s jest the way we
sarves the Lord, Polly; and what if He shouldn’t hear us when we call
on Him in our troubles?” So I shet up; and the next day he was down
with the rheumatis. And Cerinthy Ann, says she, “Well, father, _now_ I
hope you’ll own you have got _some_ disinterested benevolence,” says
she; and the Deacon he thought it over a spell, and then he says, “I’m
’fraid it’s all selfish. I’m jest a-makin’ a righteousness of it.” And
Cerinthy Ann she come out, declarin’ that the best folks never had no
comfort in religion; and for her part she didn’t mean to trouble her
head about it, but have jest as good a time as she could while she’s
young, ’cause if she was ’lected to be saved she should be, and if she
wa’n’t she couldn’t help it, any how.’
‘Mr. Brown says he came on to Dr. H.’s ground years ago’ said Mrs.
Brown, giving a nervous twitch to her yarn, and speaking in a sharp,
hard, didactic voice, which made little Mrs. Twitchel give a gentle
quiver, and look humble and apologetic. ‘Mr. Brown’s a master thinker;
there’s nothing pleases that man better than a hard doctrine; he says
you can’t get ’em too hard for him. He don’t find any difficulty in
bringing his mind up; he just reasons it out all plain; and he says,
people have no need to be in the dark; and that’s _my_ opinion. “If
folks know they ought to come up to anything, why _don’t_ they?” he
says; and I say so too.’
‘Mr. Scudder used to say that it took great afflictions to bring his
mind to that place,’ said Mrs. Katy. ‘He used to say that an old
paper-maker told him once, that paper that was shaken only one way in
the making would tear across the other, and the best paper had to be
shaken every way; and so he said we couldn’t tell, till we had been
turned and shaken and tried every way, where we should tear.’
Mrs. Twitchel responded to this sentiment with a gentle series of
groans, such as were her general expression of approbation, swaying
herself backward and forward; while Mrs. Brown gave a sort of toss and
snort, and said that for her part she always thought people knew what
they did know,—but she guessed she was mistaken.
The conversation was here interrupted by the civilities attendant on
the reception of Mrs. Jones,—a broad, buxom, hearty soul, who had come
on horseback from a farm about three miles distant.
Smiling with rosy content, she presented Mrs. Katy a small pot of
golden butter,—the result of her forenoon’s churning.
There are some people so evidently broadly and heartily of this world,
that their coming into a room always materializes the conversation. We
wish to be understood that we mean no disparaging reflection on such
persons;—they are as necessary to make up a world as cabbages to make
up a garden; the great healthy principles of cheerfulness and animal
life seem to exist in them in the gross; they are wedges and ingots
of solid, contented vitality. Certain kinds of virtues and Christian
graces thrive in such people as the first crop of corn does in the
bottom-lands of the Ohio. Mrs. Jones was a church-member, a regular
church-goer, and planted her comely person plump in front of Dr. H.
every Sunday, and listened to his searching and discriminating sermons
with broad, honest smiles of satisfaction. Those keen distinctions
as to motives, those awful warnings and urgent expostulations, which
made poor Deacon Twitchel weep, she listened to with great, round,
satisfied eyes, making to all, and after all, the same remark,—that it
was good, and she liked it, and the Doctor was a good man; and on the
present occasion, she announced her pot of butter as one fruit of her
reflections after the last discourse.
‘You see,’ she said, ‘as I was a-settin’ in the spring-house, this
mornin’, a-workin’ my butter, I says to Dinah,—“I’m goin’ to carry a
pot of this down to Miss Scudder for the Doctor,—I got so much good
out of his Sunday’s sermon.” And Dinah she says to me, says she,—“Laws,
Miss Jones, I thought you was asleep, for sartin!” But I wasn’t; only I
forgot to take any carraway-seed in the mornin’, and so I kinder missed
it; you know it ’livens one up. But I never lost myself so but what I
kinder heerd him goin’ on, on, sort o’ like,—and it sounded _all_ sort
o’ _good_; and so I thought of the Doctor to-day.’
‘Well, I’m sure,’ said Aunt Katy, ‘this will be a treat; we all know
about your butter, Mrs. Jones. I sha’n’t think of putting any of mine
on table to-night, I’m sure.’
‘Law, now don’t!’ said Mrs. Jones. ‘Why you re’lly make me ashamed,
Miss Scudder. To be sure, folks does like our butter, and it always
fetches a pretty good price,—_he’s_ very proud on’t. I tell him he
oughtn’t to be,—we oughtn’t to be proud of anything.’
And now Mrs. Katy, giving a look at the old clock, told Mary it was
time to set the tea-table; and forthwith there was a gentle movement of
expectancy. The little mahogany tea-table opened its brown wings, and
from a drawer came forth the snowy damask covering. It was etiquette,
on such occasions, to compliment every article of the establishment
successively as it appeared; so the Deacon’s wife began at the
table-cloth.
‘Well, I do declare, Miss Scudder beats us all in her table-cloths,’
she said, taking up a corner of the damask, admiringly; and Mrs. Jones
forthwith jumped up and seized the other corner.
‘Why, this ’ere must have come from the Old Country. It’s most the
beautiflest thing I ever did see.’
‘It’s my own spinning,’ replied Mrs. Katy, with conscious dignity.
‘There was an Irish weaver came to Newport the year before I was
married, who wove beautifully,—just the Old-Country patterns,—and I’d
been spinning some uncommonly fine flax then. I remember Mr. Scudder
used to read to me while I was spinning,’—and Aunt Katy looked afar, as
one whose thoughts are in the past, and dropped out the last words with
a little sigh, unconsciously, as to herself.
‘Wall, now, I must say,’ said Mrs. Jones, ‘this goes quite beyond me. I
thought I could spin some; but I shan’t never dare to show mine.’
‘I’m sure, Mrs. Jones, your towels that you had out bleaching, this
spring, were wonderful,’ said Aunt Katy. ‘But I don’t pretend to do
much now,’ she continued, straightening her trim figure. ‘I’m getting
old, you know; we must let the young folks take up these things. Mary
spins better now than I ever did; Mary, hand out those napkins.’
And so Mary’s napkins passed from hand to hand.
‘Well, well,’ said Mrs. Twitchel to Mary, ‘it’s easy to see that _your_
linen-chest will be pretty full by the time _he_ comes along; won’t it,
Miss Jones?’—and Mrs Twitchel looked pleasantly facetious, as elderly
ladies generally do, when suggesting such possibilities to younger ones.
Mary was vexed to feel the blood boil up in her cheeks in a most
unexpected and provoking way at the suggestion; whereat Mrs. Twitchel
nodded knowingly at Mrs. Jones, and whispered something in a mysterious
aside, to which plump Mrs. Jones answered,—‘Why, do tell! now I never!’
‘It’s strange,’ said Mrs. Twitchel, taking up her parable again, in
such a plaintive tone that all knew something pathetic was coming,
‘what mistakes some folks will make, a-fetchin’ up girls. Now there’s
your Mary, Miss Scudder,—why, there a’n’t nothin’ she can’t do: but
law, I was down to Miss Skinner’s, last week, a-watchin’ with her,
and re’lly it ’most broke my heart to see her. Her mother was a most
amazin’ smart woman; but she brought Suky up, for all the world, as if
she’d been a wax doll, to be kept in the drawer,—and sure enough, she
was a pretty cretur,—and now she’s married, what is she? She ha’n’t
no more idee how to take hold than nothin’. The poor child means well
enough, and she works so hard she ’most kills herself; but then she is
in the suds from mornin’ till night,—she’s one the sort whose work’s
never done,—and poor George Skinner’s clean discouraged.’
‘There’s everything in _knowing how_,’ said Mrs. Katy. ‘Nobody ought
to be always working; it’s a bad sign. I tell Mary,—“Always do up your
work in the forenoon.” Girls must learn that. I never work afternoons,
after my dinner dishes are got away; I never did and never would.’
‘Nor I, neither,’ chimed in Mrs. Jones and Mrs. Twitchel,—both
anxious to show themselves clear on this leading point of New-England
housekeeping.
‘There’s another thing I always tell Mary,’ said Mrs. Katy,
impressively. ‘“Never say there isn’t time for a thing that ought to
be done. If a thing is _necessary_, why, life is long enough to find
a place for it. That’s my doctrine. When anybody tells me they can’t
_find time_ for this or that, I don’t think much of ’em. I think they
don’t know how to work,—that’s all.”’
Here Mrs. Twitchel looked up from her knitting, with apologetic giggle
at Mrs. Brown.
‘Law, now, there’s Miss Brown, she don’t know nothin’ about it, ’cause
she’s got her servants to every turn. I s’pose she thinks it queer
to hear us talkin’ about our work. Miss Brown must have her time all
to herself. I was tellin’ the Deacon the other day that she was a
privileged woman.’
‘I’m sure, those that have servants find work enough following ’em
’round,’ said Mrs. Brown,—who, like all other human beings, resented
the implication of not having as many trials in life as her neighbours.
‘As to getting the work done up in the forenoon, that’s a thing I never
can teach ’em; they’d rather not. Chloe likes to keep her work ’round,
and do it by snacks, any time, day or night, when the notion takes her.’
‘And it was just for that reason I never would have one of those
creatures ’round,’ said Mrs. Katy. ‘Mr. Scudder was principled against
buying negroes,—but if he had _not_ been, I should not have wanted any
of _their_ work. I know what’s to be done, and most help is no help
to me. I want people to stand out of my way and let me get done. I’ve
tried keeping a girl once or twice, and I never worked so hard in my
life. When Mary and I do all ourselves, we can calculate everything to
a minute; and we get our time to sew and read and spin and visit, and
live just as we want to.’
Here, again, Mrs. Brown looked uneasy. To what use was it that she
was rich and owned servants, when this Mordecai in her gate utterly
despised her prosperity? In her secret heart she thought Mrs. Katy
must be envious, and rather comforted herself on this view of the
subject,—sweetly unconscious of any inconsistency in the feeling with
her views of utter self-abnegation just announced.
Meanwhile the tea-table had been silently gathering on its snowy
plateau the delicate china, the golden butter, the loaf of faultless
cake, a plate of crullers or wonders, as a sort of sweet fried cake
was commonly called,—tea-rusks, light as a puff, and shining on top
with a varnish of eggs,—jellies of apple and quince quivering in amber
clearness,—whitest and purest honey in the comb,—in short, everything
that could go to the getting-up of a most faultless tea.
‘I don’t see,’ said Mrs. Jones, resuming the gentle pæans of the
occasion, ‘how Miss Scudder’s loaf-cake always comes out just so. It
don’t rise neither to one side nor t’other, but just even all ’round;
and it a’n’t white one side and burnt the other, but just a good brown
all over; and it don’t have any heavy streak in it.’
‘Jest what Cerinthy Ann was sayin’, the other day,’ said Mrs. Twichel.
‘She says she can’t never be sure how hers is a-comin’ out. Do what she
can, it will be either too much or too little; but Miss Scudder’s is
always jest so. “Law,” says I, “Cerinthy Ann, it’s _faculty_,—that’s
it;—them that has it has it, and them that hasn’t—why, they’ve got to
work hard, and not do half so well, neither.”’
Mrs. Katy took all these praises as matter of course. Since she was
thirteen years old, she had never put her hand to anything that she had
not been held to do better than other folks, and therefore she accepted
her praises with the quiet repose and serenity of assured reputation:
though, of course, she used the usual polite disclaimers of ‘Oh, it’s
nothing, nothing at all; I’m sure I don’t know how I do it, and was
not aware it was so good,’ and so on. All which things are proper for
gentlewomen to observe, in like cases, in every walk of life.
‘Do you think the Deacon will be along soon?’ said Mrs. Katy, when
Mary, returning from the kitchen, announced the important fact, that
the tea-kettle was boiling.
‘Why, yes,’ said Mrs. Twitchel. ‘I’m a-lookin’ for him every minute. He
told me, that he and the men should be plantin’ up to the eight-acre
lot, but he’d keep the colt up there to come down on; and so I laid
him out a clean shirt, and says, “Now, father, you be sure and be
there by five, so that Miss Scudder may know when to put her tea
a-drawin’.”—There he is, I believe,’ she added, as a horse’s tramp was
heard without, and, after a few moments, the desired Deacon entered.
He was a gentle, soft-spoken man, low, sinewy, thin, with black hair
showing lines and patches of silver. His keen, thoughtful dark eye
marked the nervous and melancholic temperament. A mild and pensive
humility of manner seemed to brood over him, like the shadow of a
cloud. Everything in his dress, air, and motions indicated punctilious
exactness and accuracy, at times rising to the point of nervous anxiety.
Immediately after the bustle of his entrance had subsided, Mr. Simeon
Brown followed. He was a tall, lank individual, with high-cheek bones,
thin, sharp features, small, keen, hard eyes, and large hands and feet.
Simeon was, as we have before remarked, a keen theologian, and had the
scent of a hound for a metaphysical distinction. True, he was a man
of business, being a thriving trader to the coast of Africa, whence
he imported negroes for the American market; and no man was held to
understand that branch of traffic better,—he having, in his earlier
days, commanded ships in the business, and thus learned it from the
root. In his private life, Simeon was severe and dictatorial. He
was one of that class of people who, of a freezing day, will plant
themselves directly between you and the fire, and there stand and
argue to prove that selfishness is the root of moral evil. Simeon said
he always had thought so; and his neighbours sometimes supposed that
nobody could enjoy better experimental advantages for understanding
the subject. He was one of those men who suppose themselves submissive
to the Divine will, to the uttermost extent demanded by the extreme
theology of that day, simply because they have no nerves to feel,
no imagination to conceive, what endless happiness or suffering is,
and who deal therefore with the great question of the salvation or
damnation of myriads as a problem of theological algebra, to be worked
out by their inevitable _x_, _y_, _z_.
But we must not spend too much time with our analysis of character,
for matters at the tea-table are drawing to a crisis. Mrs. Jones has
announced that she does not think ‘_he_’ can come this afternoon; by
which significant mode of expression she conveyed the dutiful idea
that there was for her but one male person in the world. And now Mrs.
Katy says, ‘Mary, dear, knock at the Doctor’s door and tell him that
tea is ready.’
[Illustration: _Theological Tea_
Sampson Low, Son & Co. Jany 24, 1859 Page 37.]
The Doctor was sitting in his shady study, in the room on the other
side of the little entry. The windows were dark and fragrant with the
shade and perfume of blossoming lilacs, whose tremulous shadow, mingled
with spots of afternoon sunlight, danced on the scattered papers of a
great writing-table covered with pamphlets and heavily-bound volumes of
theology, where the Doctor was sitting.
A man of gigantic proportions, over six feet in height, and built
every way with an amplitude corresponding to his height, sitting bent
over his writing, so absorbed that he did not hear the gentle sound of
Mary’s entrance.
‘Doctor,’ said the maiden, gently, ‘tea is ready.’
No motion, no sound, except the quick tracing of the pen over the paper.
‘Doctor! Doctor!’ a little louder, and with another step into the
apartment,—‘tea is ready.’
The Doctor stretched his head forward to a paper which lay before him,
and responded in a low, murmuring voice, as reading something.
‘Firstly,—if underived virtue be peculiar to the Deity, can it be the
duty of a creature to have it?’
Here a little waxen hand came with a very gentle tap on his huge
shoulder, and ‘Doctor, tea is ready,’ penetrated drowsily to the nerve
of his ear, as a sound heard in sleep. He rose suddenly with a start,
opened a pair of great blue eyes, which shone abstractedly under the
dome of a capacious and lofty forehead, and fixed them on the maiden,
who by this time was looking up rather archly, and yet with an attitude
of the most profound respect, while her venerated friend was assembling
together his earthly faculties.
‘Tea is ready, if you please. Mother wished me to call you.’
‘Oh!—ah!—yes!—indeed!’ he said, looking confusedly about, and starting
for the door in his study gown.
‘If you please, sir,’ said Mary, standing in his way, ‘would you not
like to put on your coat and wig?’
The Doctor gave a hurried glance at his study gown, put his hand to
his head, which, in place of the ample curls of his full-bottomed wig,
was decked only with a very ordinary cap, and seemed to come at once
to full comprehension. He smiled a kind of conscious, benignant smile,
which adorned his high cheek-bones and hard features as sunshine adorns
the side of a rock, and said, kindly, ‘Ah, well, child, I understand
now; I’ll be out in a moment.’
And Mary, sure that he was now on the right track, went back to the
tea-room with the announcement that the Doctor was coming.
In a few moments he entered, majestic and proper, in all the dignity
of full-buttomed, powdered wig, full, flowing coat, with ample cuffs,
silver knee and shoe buckles, as became the gravity and majesty of the
minister of those days.
He saluted all the company with a benignity which had a touch of the
majestic, and also of the rustic in it; for at heart the Doctor was
a bashful man, that is, he had somewhere in his mental camp that
treacherous fellow whom John Bunyan anathematizes under the name of
Shame. The company rose on his entrance; the men bowed and the women
curtsied, and all remained standing while he addressed to each, with
punctilious decorum, those inquiries in regard to health and well-being
which preface a social interview. Then, at a dignified sigh from Mrs.
Katy, he advanced to the table, and all following his example, stood,
while, with one hand uplifted, he went through a devotional exercise
which, for length, more resembled a prayer than a grace,—after which
the company were seated.
‘Well, Doctor,’ said Mr. Brown, who, as a householder of substance,
felt a conscious right to be first in open conversation with the
minister, ‘people are beginning to make a noise about your views. I was
talking with Deacon Timmins the other day down on the wharf, and he
said Dr. Stiles said that it was entirely new doctrine—entirely so,—and
for his part he wanted the good old ways.’
‘They say so, do they?’ said the Doctor, kindling up from an
abstraction into which he seemed to be gradually subsiding. ‘Well, let
them. I had rather publish _new_ divinity than any other, and the more
of it the better,—_if it be but true_. I should think it hardly worth
while to write, if I had nothing _new_ to say.’
‘Well,’ said Deacon Twitchel,—his meek face flushing with awe of his
minister—‘Doctor, there’s all sorts of things said about you. Now
the other day I was at the mill with a load of corn, and while I was
a-waitin’, Amariah Wadsworth come along with his’n; and so while we
were waitin’, he says to me, “Why, they say your minister is gettin’
to be an Arminian;” and he went on a-tellin’ how old Ma’am Badger told
him that you interpreted some parts of Paul’s Epistles clear on the
Arminian side. You know Ma’am Badger’s a master-hand at doctrines, and
she’s ’most an uncommon Calvinist.’
‘That does not frighten me at all,’ said the sturdy Doctor. ‘Supposing
I do interpret some texts like the Arminians. Can’t Arminians have
anything right about them? Who wouldn’t rather go with the Arminians
when they are _right_, than with the Calvinists when they are wrong?’
‘That’s it,—you’ve hit it, Doctor,’ said Simeon Brown. ‘That’s what
I always say. I say, ‘Don’t he _prove_ it? and how are you going to
answer him?’ That gravels ’em.’
‘Well,’ said Deacon Twitchel, ‘Brother Seth—you know Brother Seth,—he
says you deny depravity. He’s all for imputation of Adam’s sin, you
know; and I have long talks with Seth about it, every time he comes to
see me; and he says, that if we did not sin in Adam, it’s givin’ up the
whole ground altogether; and then he insists you’re clean wrong about
the unregenerate doings.’
‘Not at all,—not in the least,’ said the Doctor, promptly.
‘I wish Seth could talk with you some time, Doctor. Along in the
spring, he was down helpin’ me to lay stone fence,—it was when we was
fencin’ off the south-pastur’ lot,—and we talked pretty nigh all day;
and it really did seem to me that the longer we talked, the sotter
Seth grew. He’s a master-hand at readin’; and when he heard that your
remarks on Dr. Mayhew had come out, Seth tackled up o’ purpose and
come up to Newport to get them, and spent all his time, last winter,
studyin’ on it and makin’ his remarks: and I tell you, sir, he’s a
tight fellow to argue with. Why, that day, what with layin’ stone
wall and what with arguin’ with Seth, I come home quite beat out,—Miss
Twitchel will remember.’
‘That he was!’ said his helpmeet. ‘I ’member, when he came home, says
I, “Father, you seem clean used up;” and I stirred ’round lively like,
to get him his tea. But he jest went into the bedroom and laid down
afore supper; and I says to Cerinthy Ann, “That’s a thing I ha’n’t
seen your father do since he was took with the typhus.” And Cerinthy
Ann, she said she knew ’twa’n’t anything but them old doctrines,—that
it was always so when Uncle Seth come down. And after tea father was
kinder chirked up a little, and he and Seth set by the fire, and was
a-beginnin’ it ag’in, and I jest spoke out and said,—“Now, Seth, these
’ere things doesn’t hurt you; but the Deacon is weakly, and if he gets
his mind riled after supper, he don’t sleep none all night. So,” says
I, “you’d better jest let matters stop where they be; ’cause,” says I,
“’twon’t make no difference, for to-night, which on ye’s got the right
on’t;—reckon the Lord’ll go on his own way without you; and we shall
find out, by’m-by, what that is.”’
‘Mr. Scudder used to think a great deal on these points,’ said Mrs.
Katy, ‘and the last time he was home he wrote out his views. I haven’t
ever shown them to you, Doctor; but I should be pleased to know what
you think of them.’
‘Mr. Scudder was a good man, with a clear head,’ said the Doctor; ‘and
I should be much pleased to see anything that he wrote.’
A flush of gratified feeling passed over Mrs. Katy’s face;—for one
flower laid on the shrine which we keep in our hearts for the dead is
worth more than any gift to our living selves.
We will not now pursue our party further, lest you, Reader, get more
theological tea than you can drink. We will not recount the numerous
nice points raised by Mr. Simeon Brown and adjusted by the Doctor,—and
how Simeon invariably declared, that that was the way in which he
disposed of them himself, and how he had thought it out ten years ago.
We will not relate, either, too minutely, how Mary changed colour
and grew pale and red in quick succession, when Mr. Simeon Brown
incidentally remarked that the ‘Monsoon’ was going to set sail that
very afternoon for her three-years’ voyage. Nobody noticed—in the
busy amenities—the sudden welling and ebbing of that one poor little
heart-fountain.
So we go,—so little knowing what we touch and what touches us as we
talk! We drop out a common piece of news,—‘Mr. So-and-so is dead,—Miss
Such-a-one is married,—such a ship has sailed,’—and lo, on our right
hand or our left, some heart has sunk under the news silently,—gone
down in the great ocean of Fate, without even a bubble rising to tell
its drowning pang. And this—God help us!—is what we call living!