MISS PRISSY.
WILL our little Mary really fall in love with the Doctor?—The question
reaches us in anxious tones from all the circle of our readers; and
what especially shocks us is, that grave doctors of divinity, and
serious, stocking-knitting matrons, seem to be the class who are
particularly set against the success of our excellent orthodox hero,
and bent on reminding us of the claims of that unregenerate James, whom
we have sent to sea on purpose that our heroine may recover herself of
that foolish partiality for him which all the Christian world seems
bent on perpetuating.
‘Now, really,’ says the Rev. Mrs. Q., looking up from her bundle of
Sewing-Society work, ‘you are _not_ going to let Mary marry the Doctor?’
My dear Madam, is not that just what you did, yourself, after having
turned off three or four fascinating young sinners as good as James any
day? Don’t make us believe that you are sorry for it now!
‘Is it possible,’ says Dr. Theophrastus, who is himself a stanch
Hopkinsian divine, and who is at present recovering from his last grand
effort on Natural and Moral Ability,—‘is it possible that you are going
to let Mary forget that poor young man and marry Dr. H.? That will
never do in the world!’
Dear Doctor, consider what would have become of you, if some lady at a
certain time had not had the sense and discernment to fall in love with
the _man_ who came to her disguised as a theologian.
‘But he’s so old!’ says Aunt Maria.
Not at all. Old? What do you mean? Forty is the very season of
ripeness,—the very meridian of manly lustre and splendour.
‘But he wears a wig.’
My dear Madam, so did Sir Charles Grandison, and Lovelace, and all the
other fine fellows of those days: the wig was the distinguishing mark
of a gentleman.
No,—spite of all you may say and declare, we do insist that our Doctor
is a very proper and probable subject for a young lady to fall in love
with.
If women have one weakness more marked than another, it is towards
veneration. They are born worshippers,—makers of silver shrines for
some divinity or other, which, of course, they always think fell
straight down from heaven.
The first step towards their falling in love with an ordinary mortal
is generally to dress him out with all manner of real or fancied
superiority; and having made him up, they worship him.
Now a truly great man, a man really grand and noble in heart and
intellect, has this advantage with women, that he is an idol ready-made
to hand; and so that very painstaking and ingenious sex have less
labour in getting him up, and can be ready to worship him on shorter
notice.
In particular is this the case where a sacred profession and a moral
supremacy are added to the intellectual. Just think of the career of
celebrated preachers and divines in all ages. Have they not stood like
the image that ‘Nebuchadnezzar the king set up,’ and all womankind,
coquettes and flirts not excepted, been ready to fall down and worship,
even before the sound of cornet, flute, harp, sackbut, and so forth? Is
not the faithful Paula, with her beautiful face, prostrate in reverence
before poor, old, lean, haggard, dying St. Jerome, in the most splendid
painting of the world, an emblem and sign of woman’s eternal power of
self-sacrifice to what she deems noblest in man? Does not old Richard
Baxter tell us, with delightful single-heartedness, how his wife fell
in love with him first, spite of his long, pale face,—and how she
confessed, dear soul, after many years of married life, that she had
found him _less_ sour and bitter than she had expected?
The fact is, women are burdened with fealty, faith, reverence, more
than they know what to do with; they stand like a hedge of sweet-peas,
throwing out fluttering tendrils everywhere for something high and
strong to climb by,—and when they find it, be it ever so rough in the
bark, they catch upon it. And instances are not wanting of those who
have turned away from the flattery of admirers to prostrate themselves
at the feet of a genuine hero who never wooed them except by heroic
deeds and the rhetoric of a noble life.
Never was there a distinguished man whose greatness could sustain the
test of minute domestic inspection better than our Doctor. Strong
in a single-hearted humility, a perfect unconsciousness of self, an
honest and sincere absorption in high and holy themes and objects,
there was in him what we so seldom see,—a perfect logic of life; his
minutest deeds were the true results of his sublimest principles.
His whole nature, moral, physical, and intellectual, was simple,
pure, and cleanly. He was temperate as an anchorite in all matters
of living,—avoiding, from a healthy instinct, all those intoxicating
stimuli then common among the clergy. In his early youth, indeed, he
had formed an attachment to the almost universal clerical pipe,—but,
observing a delicate woman once nauseated by coming into the atmosphere
which he and his brethren had polluted, he set himself gravely to
reflect that that which could so offend a woman must needs be uncomely
and unworthy a Christian man; wherefore he laid his pipe on the
mantelpiece, and never afterwards resumed the indulgence.
In all his relations with womanhood he was delicate and reverential,
forming his manners by that old precept, ‘The elder women entreat
as mothers, the younger as sisters,’—which rule, short and simple
as it is, is nevertheless the most perfect _résumé_ of all true
gentlemanliness. Then, as for person, the Doctor was not handsome, to
be sure; but he was what sometimes serves with woman better,—majestic
and manly, and, when animated by thought and feeling, having even a
commanding grandeur of mien. Add to all this, that our valiant hero is
now on the straight road to bring him into that situation most likely
to engage the warm partisanship of a true woman,—namely, that of a man
unjustly abused for right-doing,—and one may see that it is ten to one
our Mary may fall in love with him yet, before she knows it.
If it were not for this mysterious selfness-and-sameness which makes
this wild, wandering, uncanonical sailor, James Marvyn, so intimate
and internal,—if his thread were not knit up with the thread of her
life,—were it not for the old habit of feeling for him, thinking for
him, praying for him, hoping for him, fearing for him, which—woe is
us!—is the unfortunate habit of womankind,—if it were not for that
fatal something which neither judgment, nor wishes, nor reason, nor
common sense shows any great skill in unravelling,—we are quite
sure that Mary would be in love with the Doctor within the next six
months; as it is, we leave you all to infer from your own heart and
consciousness what his chances are.
A new sort of scene is about to open on our heroine, and we shall show
her to you, for an evening at least, in new associations, and with a
different background from that homely and rural one in which she has
fluttered as a white dove amid leafy and congenial surroundings.
As we have before intimated, Newport presented a _résumé_ of many
different phases of society, all brought upon a social level by the
then universally admitted principle of equality.
There were scattered about in the settlement lordly mansions, whose
owners rolled in emblazoned carriages, and whose wide halls were the
scenes of a showy and almost princely hospitality. By her husband’s
side, Mrs. Katy Scudder was allied to one of these families of wealthy
planters, and often recognized the connection with a quiet undertone
of satisfaction, as a dignified and self-respecting woman should. She
liked, once in a while, quietly to let people know, that, although they
lived in the plain little cottage and made no pretensions, yet they had
good blood in their veins,—that Mr. Scudder’s mother was a Wilcox, and
that the Wilcoxes were, she supposed, as high as anybody,—generally
ending the remark with the observation, that ‘all these things, to be
sure, were matters of small consequence, since at last it would be of
far more importance to have been a true Christian than to have been
connected with the highest families of the land.’
Nevertheless, Mrs. Scudder was not a little pleased to have in her
possession a card of invitation to a splendid wedding-party that was
going to be given on Friday at the Wilcox Manor. She thought it a very
becoming mark of respect to the deceased Mr. Scudder that his widow
and daughter should be brought to mind,—so becoming and praiseworthy,
in fact, that, ‘though an old woman,’ as she said, with a complacent
straightening of her tall, lithe figure, she really thought she must
make an effort to go.
Accordingly, early one morning, after all domestic duties had been
fulfilled, and the clock, loudly ticking through the empty rooms, told
that all needful bustle had died down to silence, Mrs. Katy, Mary, and
Miss Prissy Diamond, the dressmaker, might have been observed sitting
in solemn senate around the camphor-wood trunk, before spoken of, and
which exhaled vague foreign and Indian perfumes of silk and sandalwood.
You may have heard of dignitaries, my good reader,—but, I assure you,
you know very little of a situation of trust or importance compared to
that of _the_ dressmaker in a small New England town.
What important interests does she hold in her hands! How is she
besieged, courted, deferred to! Three months beforehand, all her days
and nights are spoken for; and the simple statement, that _only_ on
that day you can have Miss Clippers, is of itself an apology for any
omission of attention elsewhere,—it strikes home at once to the deepest
consciousness of every woman, married or single. How thoughtfully is
everything arranged, weeks beforehand, for the golden, important season
when Miss Clippers can come! On that day, there is to be no extra
sweeping, dusting, cleaning, cooking, no visiting, no receiving, no
reading or writing, but all with one heart and soul are to wait upon
her, intent to forward the great work which she graciously affords
a day’s leisure to direct. Seated in her chair of state, with her
well-worn cushion bristling with pins and needles at her side, her
ready roll of patterns and her scissors, she hears, judges, and decides
_ex cathedrâ_ on the possible or not possible, in that important
art on which depends the right presentation of the floral part of
Nature’s great horticultural show. She alone is competent to say
whether there is any available remedy for the stained breadth in Jane’s
dress—whether the fatal spot by any magical hocus-pocus can be cut out
from the fulness, or turned up and smothered from view in the gathers,
or concealed by some new fashion of trimming falling with generous
appropriateness exactly across the fatal weak point. She can tell you
whether that remnant of velvet will make you a basque,—whether mamma’s
old silk can reappear in juvenile grace for Miss Lucy. What marvels
follow her, wherever she goes! What wonderful results does she contrive
from the most unlikely materials, as everybody after her departure
wonders to see old things become so much better than new!
Among the most influential and happy of her class was Miss Prissy
Diamond,—a little, dapper, doll-like body, quick in her motions and
nimble in her tongue, whose delicate complexion, flaxen curls, merry
flow of spirits, and ready abundance of gaiety, song, and story, apart
from her professional accomplishments, made her a welcome guest in
every family in the neighbourhood. Miss Prissy laughingly boasted being
past forty, sure that the avowal would always draw down on her quite
a storm of compliments, on the freshness of her sweet-pea complexion
and the brightness of her merry blue eyes. She was well pleased to
hear dawning girls wondering why with so many advantages she had never
married. At such remarks, Miss Prissy always laughed loudly, and
declared that she had always had such a string of engagements with
the women that she never found half an hour to listen to what any
_man_ living would say to her, supposing she could stop to hear him.
‘Besides, if I were to get married, nobody else could,’ she would say.
‘What would become of all the wedding-clothes for everybody else?’ But
sometimes, when Miss Prissy felt extremely gracious, she would draw
out of her little chest, just the faintest tip-end of a sigh, and
tell some young lady, in a confidential undertone, that one of these
days she would tell her something,—and then there would come a wink of
her blue eyes, and a fluttering of the pink ribbons in her cap, quite
stimulating to youthful inquisitiveness, though we have never been able
to learn by any of our antiquarian researches that the expectations
thus excited were ever gratified.
In her professional prowess she felt a pardonable pride. What feats
could she relate of wonderful dresses got out of impossibly small
patterns of silk! what marvels of silks turned that could not be
told from new! what reclaimings of waists that other dressmakers had
hopelessly spoiled! Had not Mrs. General Wilcox once been obliged to
call in her aid on a dress sent to her from Paris? and did not Miss
Prissy work three days and nights on that dress, and make every stitch
of that trimming over with her own hands, before it was fit to be seen?
And when Mrs. Governor Dexter’s best silver-gray brocade was spoiled by
Miss Pimlico, and there wasn’t another scrap to pattern it with, didn’t
she make a new waist out of the cape, and piece one of the sleeves
twenty-nine times, and yet nobody would ever have known that there was
a joining in it?
In fact, though Miss Prissy enjoyed the fair average plain-sailing of
her work, she might be said to _revel_ in difficulties. A full pattern
with trimming, all ample and ready, awoke a moderate enjoyment; but the
resurrection of anything half-worn or imperfectly made, the brilliant
success, when, after turning, twisting, piecing, contriving, and,
by unheard-of inventions of trimming, a dress faded and defaced was
restored to more than pristine splendour,—_that_ was a triumph worth
enjoying.
It was true, Miss Prissy, like most of her nomadic compeers,
was a little given to gossip; but, after all, it was innocent
gossip,—not a bit of malice in it; it was only all the particulars
about Mrs. Thus-and-So’s wardrobe,—all the statistics of Mrs.
That-and-T’other’s china-closet,—all the minute items of Miss
Simpkins’s wedding-clothes,—and how her mother cried the morning of the
wedding, and said that she didn’t know anything how she could spare
Louisa Jane, only that Edward was such a good boy that she felt she
could love him like an own son,—and what a providence it seemed that
the very ring that was put into the bride-loaf was one that he gave her
when he first went to sea, when she wouldn’t be engaged to him because
she thought she loved Thomas Strickland better, but that was only
because she hadn’t found him out, you know,—and so forth, and so forth.
Sometimes, too, her narrations assumed a solemn cast, and brought to
mind the hush of funerals, and told of words spoken in faint whispers,
when hands were clasped for the last time,—and of utterances crushed
out from hearts, when the hammer of a great sorrow strikes out sparks
of the Divine, even from common stone; and there would be real tears in
the little blue eyes, and the pink bows would flutter tremulously, like
the last three leaves on a bare scarlet maple in autumn. In fact, dear
reader, _gossip_, like romance, has its noble side to it. How can you
love your neighbour as yourself, and not feel a little curiosity as to
how he fares, what he wears, where he goes, and how he takes the great
life tragi-comedy, at which you and he are both more than spectators?
Show me a person who lives in a country-village absolutely without
curiosity or interest on these subjects, and I will show you a cold,
fat oyster, to whom the tide-mud of propriety is the whole of existence.
As one of our esteemed collaborators remarks,—‘A dull town, where there
is neither theatre nor circus nor opera, must have some excitement,
and the real tragedy and comedy of life _must_ come in place of the
second-hand. Hence the noted gossiping propensities of country-places,
which, so long as they are not poisoned by envy or ill-will, have a
respectable and picturesque side to them,—an undoubted leave to be, as
probably has almost everything, which obstinately and always insists on
being, except sin!’
As it is, it must be confessed that the arrival of Miss Prissy in a
family was much like the setting up of a domestic showcase, through
which you could look into all the families in the neighbourhood, and
see the never-ending drama of life,—births, marriages, deaths,—joy
of new-made mothers, whose babes weighed just eight pounds and three
quarters, and had hair that would part with a comb,—and tears of
Rachels who wept for their children, and would not be comforted because
they were not. Was there a tragedy, a mystery, in all Newport, whose
secret closet had not been unlocked by Miss Prissy? She thought not;
and you always wondered, with an uncertain curiosity, what those things
might be over which she gravely shook her head, declaring, with such a
look,—‘Oh, if you only _could_ know!’—and ending with a general sigh
and lamentation, like the confidential chorus of a Greek tragedy.
We have been thus minute in sketching Miss Prissy’s portrait, because
we rather like her. She has great power, we admit; and were she a
sour-faced, angular, energetic body, with a heart whose secretions
had all become acrid by disappointment and dyspepsia, she might be a
fearful gnome, against whose family visitations one ought to watch
and pray. As it was, she came into the house rather like one of those
breezy days of spring, which burst all the blossoms, set all the doors
and windows open, make the hens cackle and the turtles peep,—filling a
solemn Puritan dwelling with as much bustle and chatter as if a box of
martins were setting up housekeeping in it.
Let us now introduce you to the sanctuary of Mrs. Scudder’s own private
bedroom, where the committee of exigencies, with Miss Prissy at their
head, are seated in solemn session around the camphor-wood trunk.
‘Dress, you know, is of _some_ importance after all,’ said Mrs.
Scudder, in that apologetic way in which sensible people generally
acknowledge a secret leaning towards anything so very mundane. While
the good lady spoke, she was reverentially unpinning and shaking
out of their fragrant folds creamy crape shawls of rich Chinese
embroidery,—India muslin, scarfs, and aprons; and already her hands
were undoing the pins of a silvery damask linen in which was wrapped
her own wedding-dress. ‘I have always told Mary,’ she continued, ‘that,
though our hearts ought not to be set on these things, yet they had
their importance.’
‘Certainly, certainly, ma’am,’ chimed in Miss Prissy. ‘I was saying
to Miss General Wilcox, the other day, _I_ didn’t see how we could
“consider the lilies of the field,” without seeing the importance of
looking pretty. I’ve got a flower-de-luce in my garden now, from one of
the new roots that old Major Seaforth brought over from France, which
is just the most beautiful thing you ever did see; and I was thinking,
as I looked at it to-day, that if women’s dresses only grew on ’em as
handsome and well-fitting as that, why, there wouldn’t be any need of
me; but as it is, why, we _must think_, if we want to look well. Now
peach-trees, I s’pose, might bear just as good peaches without the pink
blows; but then who would want ’em to? Miss Deacon Twitchel, when I was
up there the other day, kept kind o’ sighin’, ’cause Cerintha Ann is
getting a new pink silk made up, ’cause she said it was such a dying
world it didn’t seem right to call off our attention: but I told her
it wasn’t any pinker than the apple-blossoms; and what with robins and
blue-birds, and one thing or another, the Lord is always calling off
our attention; and I think we ought to observe the Lord’s works and
take a lesson from ’em.’
‘Yes, you are quite right,’ said Mrs. Scudder, rising and shaking out a
splendid white brocade, on which bunches of moss-roses were looped to
bunches of violets by graceful fillets of blue ribbons. ‘This was my
wedding-dress,’ she said.
Little Miss Prissy sprang up and clapped her hands in an ecstasy.
‘Well, now, Miss Scudder, really!—did I ever see anything more
beautiful? It really goes beyond anything _I_ ever saw. I don’t think,
in all the brocades I ever made up, I ever saw so pretty a pattern as
this.’
‘Mr. Scudder chose it for me himself, at the silk-factory in Lyons,’
said Mrs. Scudder, with pardonable pride, ‘and I want it tried on to
Mary.’
‘Really, Miss Scudder, this ought to be kept for _her_ wedding-dress,’
said Miss Prissy, as she delightedly bustled about the congenial task.
‘I was up to Miss Marvyn’s, a-working, last week,’ she said, as she
threw the dress over Mary’s head, ‘and she said that James expected to
make his fortune in that voyage, and come home and settle down.’
Mary’s fair head emerged from the rustling folds of the brocade, her
cheeks crimson as one of the moss-roses,—while her mother’s face
assumed a severe gravity, as she remarked that she believed James
had been much pleased with Jane Spencer, and that, for her part, she
should be very glad when he came home, if he could marry such a steady,
sensible girl, and settle down to a useful, Christian life.
‘Ah, yes,—just so,—a very excellent idea, certainly,’ said Miss Prissy.
‘It wants a little taken in here on the shoulders, and a little under
the arms. The biases are all right; the sleeves will want altering,
Miss Scudder. I hope you will have a hot iron ready for pressing.’
Mrs. Scudder rose immediately, to see the command obeyed; and as her
back was turned, Miss Prissy went on in a low tone,—
‘Now _I_, for my part, don’t think there’s a word of truth in that
story about James Marvyn and Jane Spencer, for I was down there at work
one day when he called, and I _know_ there couldn’t have been anything
between them,—besides, Miss Spencer, her mother, told me there wasn’t.
There, Miss Scudder, you see that is a good fit. It’s astonishing how
near it comes to fitting, just as it was. I didn’t think Mary was so
near what you were, when you were a girl, Miss Scudder. The other day,
when I was up to General Wilcox’s, the General he was in the room when
I was a-trying on Miss Wilcox’s cherry velvet, and she was asking
couldn’t I come this week for her, and I mentioned I was coming to Miss
Scudder; and the General, says he,—“I used to know her when she was a
girl. I tell you, she was one of the handsomest girls in Newport, by
George!” says he. And says I,—“General, you ought to see her daughter.”
And the General,—you know his jolly way,—he laughed, and says he,—“If
she is as handsome as her mother was, I don’t want to see her,” says
he. “I tell you, wife,” says he, “I but just missed falling in love
with Katy Stephens.”’
‘I could have told her more than that,’ said Mrs. Scudder, with a
flash of her old coquette girlhood for a moment lighting her eyes and
straightening her lithe form. ‘I guess, if I should show a letter
he wrote me once——. But what am I talking about?’ she said, suddenly
stiffening back into a sensible woman. ‘Miss Prissy, do you think it
will be necessary to cut it off at the bottom? It seems a pity to cut
such rich silk.’
‘So it does, I declare. Well, I believe it will do to turn it up.’
‘I depend on you to put it a little into modern fashion, you know,’
said Mrs. Scudder. ‘It is many a year, you know, since it was made.’
‘Oh, never you fear! You leave all that to me,’ said Miss Prissy.
‘Now, there never was anything so lucky as that, just before all
these wedding-dresses had to be fixed, I got a letter from my sister
Martha, that works for all the first families of Boston. And Martha,
she is really unusually privileged, because she works for Miss Cranch,
and Miss Cranch gets letters from Miss Adams,—you know Mr. Adams is
Ambassador now at the Court of St. James, and Miss Adams writes home
all the particulars about the court-dresses; and Martha, she heard one
of the letters read, and she told Miss Cranch that she would give the
best five-pound note she had, if she could just copy that description
to send to Prissy. Well, Miss Cranch let her do it, and I’ve got a copy
of the letter here in my work-pocket. I read it up to Miss General
Wilcox’s, and to Major Seaforth’s, and I’ll read it to you.’
Mrs. Katy Scudder was a born subject of a crown, and, though now a
republican matron, had not outlived the reverence, from childhood
implanted, for the high and stately doings of courts, lords, ladies,
queens, and princesses, and therefore it was not without some awe
that she saw Miss Prissy produce from her little black work-bag, the
well-worn epistle.
‘Here it is,’ said Miss Prissy, at last. ‘I only copied out the parts
about being presented at Court. She says:—
‘“One is obliged here to attend the circles of the Queen, which are
held once a fortnight; and what renders it very expensive is, that
you cannot go twice in the same dress, and a court-dress you cannot
make use of elsewhere. I directed my mantua-maker to let my dress
be elegant, but plain as I could possibly appear with decency.
Accordingly, it is white lutestring, covered and full-trimmed with
white crape, festooned with lilac ribbon and mock point-lace, over a
hoop of enormous size. There is only a narrow train, about three yards
in length to the gown-waist, which is put into a ribbon on the left
side,—the Queen only having her train borne. Ruffled cuffs for married
ladies,—treble lace ruffles, a very dress cap with long lace lappets,
two white plumes, and a blonde lace handkerchief. This is my rigging.”’
Miss Prissy here stopped to adjust her spectacles. Her audience
expressed a breathless interest.
‘You see,’ she said, ‘I used to know her when she was Nabby Smith. She
was Parson Smith’s daughter, at Weymouth, and as handsome a girl as
ever I wanted to see,—just as graceful as a sweet-brier bush. I don’t
believe any of those English ladies looked one bit better than she did.
She was always a master-hand at writing. Everything she writes about,
she puts it right before you. You feel as if you’d been there. Now,
here she goes on to tell about her daughter’s dress. She says:—
‘“My head is dressed for St. James’s, and in my opinion looks very
tasty. Whilst my daughter is undergoing the same operation, I set
myself down composedly to write you a few lines. Well, methinks I
hear Betsy and Lucy say, ‘What is cousin’s dress?’ _White_, my dear
girls, like your aunt’s, only differently trimmed and ornamented,—her
train being wholly of white crape, and trimmed with white ribbon; the
petticoat, which is the most showy part of the dress, covered and
drawn up in what are called festoons, with light wreaths of beautiful
flowers; the sleeves, white crape drawn over the silk, with a row of
lace round the sleeve near the shoulder, another half-way down the arm,
and a third upon the top of the ruffle,—a little stuck between,—a kind
of hat-cap with three large feathers and a bunch of flowers,—a wreath
of flowers on the hair.”’
Miss Prissy concluded this relishing description with a little smack of
the lips, such as people sometimes give when reading things that are
particularly to their taste.
‘Now, I was a-thinking,’ she added, ‘that it would be an excellent way
to trim Mary’s sleeves,—three rows of lace, with a sprig to each row.’
All this while, our Mary, with her white short-gown and blue
stuff-petticoat, her shining pale brown hair and serious large blue
eyes, sat innocently looking first at her mother, then at Miss Prissy,
and then at the finery.
We do not claim for her any superhuman exemption from girlish feelings.
She was innocently dazzled with the vision of courtly halls and
princely splendours, and thought Mrs. Adams’s descriptions almost a
perfect realization of things she had read in ‘Sir Charles Grandison.’
If her mother thought it right and proper she should be dressed and
made fine, she was glad of it; only there came a heavy, leaden feeling
in her little heart, which she did not understand, but we who know
womankind will translate for you: it was, that a certain pair of dark
eyes would not see her after she was dressed; and so, after all, what
was the use of looking pretty?
‘I wonder what James _would_ think,’ passed through her head; for Mary
had never changed a ribbon, or altered the braid of her hair, or pinned
a flower in her bosom, that she had not quickly seen the effect of
the change mirrored in those dark eyes. It was a pity, of course, now
she had found out that she ought not to think about him, that so many
thought-strings were twisted round him.
So while Miss Prissy turned over her papers, and read out of others
extracts about Lord Caermarthen and Sir Clement Cotterel Dormer,
and the Princess Royal, and Princess Augusta, in black and silver,
with a silver netting upon the coat, and a head stuck full of
diamond pins,—and Lady Salisbury and Lady Talbot, and the Duchess of
Devonshire, and scarlet satin sacks and diamonds and ostrich-plumes,
and the King’s kissing Mrs. Adams,—little Mary’s blue eyes grew larger
and larger, seeing far off on the salt green sea, and her ears heard
only the ripple and murmur of those waters that carried her heart
away,—till, by-and-by, Miss Prissy gave her a smart little tap, which
awakened her to the fact that she was wanted again to try on the dress
which Miss Prissy’s nimble fingers had basted.
So passed the day,—Miss Prissy busily chattering, clipping,
basting,—Mary patiently trying on to an unheard-of extent,—and Mrs.
Scudder’s neat room whipped into a perfect froth and foam of gauze,
lace, artificial flowers, linings, and other aids, accessories, and
abetments.
At dinner, the Doctor, who had been all the morning studying out his
Treatise on the Millennium, discoursed tranquilly as usual, innocently
ignorant of the unusual cares which were distracting the minds of his
listeners. What should he know of dressmakers, good soul? Encouraged
by the respectful silence of his auditors, he calmly expanded and
soliloquized on his favourite topic, the last golden age of Time, the
Marriage Supper of the Lamb, when the purified Earth, like a repentant
Psyche, shall be restored to the long-lost favour of a celestial
Bridegroom, and glorified saints and angels shall walk familiarly as
wedding-guests among men.
‘Sakes alive!’ said little Miss Prissy, after dinner, ‘did I ever hear
any one go on like that blessed man?—such a spiritual mind! Oh, Miss
Scudder, how you are privileged in having him here! I do really think
it is a shame such a blessed man a’n’t thought more of. Why, I could
just sit and hear him talk all day. Miss Scudder, I wish sometimes
you’d just let me make a ruffled shirt for him, and do it all up
myself, and put a stitch in the hem that I learned from my sister
Martha, who learned it from a French young lady who was educated in a
convent;—nuns, you know, poor things, can do _some_ things right; and
I think _I_ never saw such hemstitching as they do there;—and I should
like to hemstitch the Doctor’s ruffles; he is _so_ spiritually-minded,
it really makes me love him. Why, hearing him talk put me in mind of a
real beautiful song of Mr. Watts,—I don’t know as I could remember the
tune.’
And Miss Prissy, whose musical talent was one of her special _fortes_,
tuned her voice, a little cracked and quavering, and sang, with a
vigorous accent on each accented syllable,—
‘From _the_ third heaven, where God resides,
That holy, happy place,
The New Jerusalem comes down,
Adorned with shining grace.
‘Attending angels shout for joy,
And the bright armies sing,—
“Mortals! behold the sacred seat
Of your descending King!”’
‘Take care, Miss Scudder!—that silk must be cut exactly on the bias;’
and Miss Prissy, hastily finishing her last quaver, caught the silk and
the scissors out of Mrs. Scudder’s hand, and fell down at once from
the Millennium into a discourse on her own particular way of covering
piping-cord.
[Illustration: _The Doctor’s opinion consulted._
_Page 127._
Sampson Low, Son & Co. May 24th, 1859.]
So we go, dear reader,—so long as we have a body and a soul. Two
worlds must mingle,—the great and the little, the solemn and the
trivial, wreathing in and out, like the grotesque carvings on a Gothic
shrine;—only, did we know it rightly, nothing is trivial; since the
human soul, with its awful shadow, makes all things sacred. Have not
ribbons, cast-off flowers, soiled bits of gauze, trivial, trashy
fragments of millinery, sometimes had an awful meaning, a deadly power,
when they belonged to one who should wear them no more, and whose
beautiful form, frail and crushed as they, is a hidden and a vanished
thing for all time? For so sacred and individual is a human being,
that, of all the million-peopled earth, no one form ever restores
another. The mould of each mortal type is broken at the grave; and
never, never, though you look through all the faces on earth, shall
the exact form you mourn ever meet your eyes again! You are living
your daily life among trifles that one death-stroke may make relics.
One false step, one luckless accident, an obstacle on the track of a
train, the tangling of the cord in shifting a sail, and the penknife,
the pen, the papers, the trivial articles of dress and clothing, which
to-day you toss idly and jestingly from hand to hand, may become dread
memorials of that awful tragedy whose deep abyss ever underlies our
common life.