‘AND now, Mary,’ said Mrs. Scudder, at five o’clock the next morning,
‘to-day, you know, is the doctor’s fast, and so we won’t get any
dinner, and it will be a good time to do up all our little odd jobs.
Miss Prissy promised to come in for two or three hours this morning, to
alter the waist of that black silk, and I shouldn’t be surprised if we
could get it all done and ready to wear by Sunday.’
We will remark, by way of explanation to a part of this conversation,
that our doctor, who was a specimen of life in earnest, made a practice
through the greater part of his pulpit course of spending every
Saturday as a day of fasting and retirement in preparation for the
duties of the Sabbath.
Accordingly, the early breakfast things were no sooner disposed of than
Miss Prissy’s quick footsteps might have been heard pattering in the
kitchen.
‘Well, Miss Scudder, how _do_ you do this morning? and how _do_ you
do, Mary? Well, if you aint the beaters! up just as early as ever, and
everything cleared away! I was telling Miss Wilcox that there didn’t
ever seem to be anything done in Miss Scudder’s kitchen, and I did
verily believe you made your beds before you got up in the morning.
Well, well; wasn’t that a party last night!’ she said, as she sat down
with the black silk and prepared her ripping-knife. ‘I must rip this
myself, Miss Scudder; for there’s a great deal in ripping silk, so as
not to let anybody know where it has been sewed.
‘You didn’t know that I was at the party, did you? Well, I was. You
see, I thought I’d just step round there to see about that money to get
the doctor’s shirt with, and there I found Miss Wilcox with so many
things on her mind, and says she, “Miss Prissy, you don’t know how much
it would help me if I had somebody like you just to look after things
a little here;” and says I, “Miss Wilcox, you just go right to your
room and dress, and don’t you give yourself one minute’s thought about
anything, and you see if I don’t have everything just right.” And so
there I was in for it, and I just stayed through; and it was well I
did, for Dinah, she wouldn’t have put ne’er enough egg in the coffee if
it hadn’t been for me. Why, I just went and beat up four eggs with my
own hand, and stirred ’em into the grounds.
‘Well, but really; wasn’t I behind the door, and didn’t I peep into
the supper-room! I saw who was a-waitin’ on Miss Mary. Well, they do
say he’s the handsomest, most fascinating man; why, all the ladies in
Philadelphia are in a perfect quarrel about him; and I heard he said
that he hadn’t seen such a beauty, he didn’t remember when.’
‘We all know that beauty is of small consequence,’ said Mrs. Scudder.
‘I hope Mary has been brought up to feel that.’
‘Oh, of course,’ said Miss Prissy; ‘it’s just like a fading flower; all
is to be good and useful, and that’s what she is; and I told ’em that
her beauty was the least part of her, though I must say that dress did
fit like a biscuit, if it was my own fitting. But, Miss Scudder, what
do you think I heard ’em saying about the good old doctor?’
‘I am sure I don’t know,’ said Mrs. Scudder; ‘I only know they couldn’t
say anything bad.’
‘Well, no, not bad exactly,’ said Miss Prissy; ‘but they say he’s
getting such strange notions in his head; why, I heard some of ’em say
he was going to come out and preach against the slave trade; and I’m
sure I don’t know what Newport folks will do if that’s wicked; there
aint hardly any money here that’s made any other way: it’ll certainly
make a great noise and talk, and make everybody angry; and I hope the
Doctor aint a-going to do anything of that sort.’
‘I believe he is, Miss Prissy,’ said Mrs. Scudder; ‘he thinks it’s a
great sin that ought to be rebuked, and I think so too,’ she said,
bracing herself resolutely; ‘that was Mr. Scudder’s opinion when I
first married him, and it’s mine.’
‘Oh, ah, yes. Well, if it’s a sin, of course,’ said Miss Prissy; ‘but
then, dear me! Why, just think how many great houses are living on
it. Why, there’s General Wilcox himself, and he’s a very nice man;
and then there’s Major Seaforth; and why, I could count you off now
a dozen—all our very first people. Why, Doctor Styles doesn’t think
so, and I’m sure he’s a good Christian. Doctor Styles thinks it’s a
dispensation for giving the light of the gospel to the Africans; why,
now I’m sure, when I was a-working at Deacon Stebbins’, I stopped over
Sunday once, ’cause Miss Stebbins she was weakly; ’twas when she was
getting up after Samuel was born. No, on the whole, I believe ’twas
Nehemiah, ’cause I remember he had curly hair; but any way, I remember
I stayed there, and I remember as plain as if ’twas yesterday, just
after breakfast, how a man went driving by in a chaise, and the Deacon,
he went out and stopped him for travelling on the Lord’s day (’cause,
you know, he was a justice of the peace), and who should it be but
Tom Seaforth, and he told the Deacon his father had got a shipload
of negroes just come in, and the Deacon he just let him go, ’cause I
remember he said _that_ was a plain work of necessity and mercy.[A]
Well now, who would have thought it? I believe the Doctor is better
than most folks; but then the best people may be mistaken, you know.’
‘The Doctor has made up his mind that it’s his duty,’ said Mrs.
Scudder. ‘I’m afraid it’ll make him very unpopular; but I, for one,
shall stand by him.’
‘Oh, certainly, Miss Scudder, you’re doing just right, exactly. Well,
there’s one comfort, he’ll have a great crowd to hear him preach,
’cause as I was going round through the entries last night, I heard ’em
talking about it; and Colonel Burr said he should be there, and so did
the General, and so did Mr. What’s-his-name there, that senator from
Philadelphia. I tell you you’ll have a full house.’
It was to be confessed that Mrs. Scudder’s heart rather sank than
otherwise at this announcement, and those who have felt what it
is to be almost alone in the right, in the face of all the ‘first
families’ of their acquaintance, may perhaps find some compassion for
her; since after all, truth is invisible, but ‘first families’ are
very evident. First families are often very agreeable, undeniably
respectable—fearfully virtuous; and it takes great faith to resist
an evil principle which incarnates itself in the suavities of their
breeding and amiability; and therefore it was that Mrs. Scudder felt
her heart heavy within her, and could with a very good grace have
joined the Doctor’s Saturday fast.
As for the Doctor, he sat the while tranquil in his study, with his
great Bible and his Concordance open before him, culling, with that
patient assiduity for which he was remarkable, all the terrible texts
which that very unceremonious and old-fashioned book rains down so
unsparingly on the sin of oppressing the weak. First families, whether
in Newport or elsewhere, were as invisible to him as they were to
Moses during the forty days that he spent with God on the Mount. He
was merely thinking of his message, thinking only how he should shape
it so as not to leave one word of it unsaid, not even imagining in
the least what the result of it was to be: he was but a voice, but an
instrument,—a passive instrument through which an Almighty will was
to reveal itself: and the sublime fatalism of his faith made him as
dead to all human considerations as if he had been a portion of the
immutable laws of nature herself.
So the next morning, although all his friends trembled for him when he
rose in the pulpit, he never thought of trembling for himself: he had
come in the covered way of silence from the secret place of the Most
High, and felt himself still abiding under the shadow of the Almighty.
It was alike to him whether the house was full or empty. Whoever were
decreed to hear the message would be there; whether they would hear or
forbear was already settled in the counsels of a mightier will than
his: he had the simple duty of utterance.
The ruinous old meeting-house was never so radiant with station and
gentility as on that morning: a June sun shone brightly, the sea
sparkled with a thousand little eyes, the birds sang all along the
way, and all the notables turned out to hear the Doctor.
Mrs. Scudder received into her pew, with dignified politeness, Colonel
Burr, and Colonel and Madame de Frontignac.
General Wilcox and his portly dame, Major Seaforth, and we know not,
what not of Vernons and De Wolfs, and other grand old names were
present there. Stiff silks rustled, Chinese fans fluttered, and the
last court fashion stood revealed in bonnets; everybody was looking
fresh and amiable: a charming and respectable set of sinners come to
hear what the Doctor would find to tell them about their transgressions.
Mrs. Scudder was calculating consequences, and, shutting her eyes on
the too evident world about her, prayed that the Lord would overrule
all for good: the Doctor prayed that he might have grace to speak the
truth, and the whole truth.
We have yet on record, in his published works, the great argument of
that day, through which he moved with that calm appeal to the reason,
which made his results always so weighty.
‘If these things be true,’ he said, after a condensed statement of
the facts of the case, ‘then the following terrible consequences,
which may well make all shudder and tremble who realize them, force
themselves upon us, that all who have had any hand in this iniquitous
business, whether directly or indirectly, or have used their influence
to promote it, or have consented to it, or even connived at it, or have
not opposed it by all proper exertions of which they are capable—all
these are in a greater or less degree chargeable with the injuries and
miseries which millions have suffered and are suffering, and are guilty
of the blood of millions who lost their lives by this traffic in the
human species. Not only the merchants who have been engaged in this
trade, and the captains who have been tempted by the love of money to
engage in this cruel work, and the slaveholders of every description,
are guilty of shedding rivers of blood, but all the legislatures who
have authorized, encouraged, or even neglected to suppress it to the
utmost of their power, and all the individuals in private stations who
have in any way aided in this business, consented to it, or have not
opposed it to the utmost of their ability, have a share in this guilt.
This trade in the human species has been the first wheel of commerce
in Newport, on which every other movement in business has chiefly
depended. This town has been built up and flourished in times past at
the expense of the blood, the liberty, and the happiness of the poor
Africans; and the inhabitants have lived on this, and by it have gotten
most of their wealth and riches. If a bitter woe is pronounced on him
who buildeth his house by unrighteousness and his chambers by wrong
(Jer. xxii. 13), to him who buildeth a town by blood, and establisheth
a city by iniquity (Hab. ii. 12), to the bloody city (Ezek. xxiv.
6), what a heavy, dreadful woe hangs over the heads of all those
whose hands are defiled by the blood of the Africans—especially the
inhabitants of this state and this town, who have had a distinguished
share in this unrighteous and bloody commerce!’ He went over the recent
history of the country; expatiated on the national declaration so
lately made, that all men are born equally free and independent, and
have a natural and inalienable right to liberty, and asked with what
face a nation declaring such things could continue to hold thousands of
their fellow-men in abject slavery.
He pointed out signs of national disaster which foreboded the wrath
of heaven: the increase of public and private debts; the spirit of
murmuring and jealousy of rulers among the people; divisions and
contentions and bitter party alienations; the jealous irritation of
England constantly endeavouring to hamper our trade; the Indians making
war on the frontiers; the Algerines taking captive our ships, and
making slaves of our citizens; all evident tokens of the displeasure
and impending judgment of an offended justice.
The sermon rolled over the heads of the gay audience deep and dark as a
thunder-cloud which in a few moments changes a summer sky into heaviest
gloom. Gradually an expression of intense interest and deep concern
spread over the listeners; it was the magnetism of a strong mind, which
held them for a time under the shadow of his own awful sense of God’s
almighty justice.
It is said that a little child once described his appearance in the
pulpit by saying, ‘I saw God there, and I was afraid.’
Something of the same effect was produced on the audience now, and it
was not till after sermon, prayer, and benediction were all over, that
the respectables of Newport began gradually to unstiffen themselves
from the spell, and to look into each other’s eyes for comfort, and
to reassure themselves that after all they were the first families,
eminently respectable, and going on in the good old way the world
had always gone, and that the Doctor, of course, was a Radical and a
fanatic.
When the audience streamed out, crowding the broad aisle, Mary
descended from the singers’ seat, and stood with her psalm book in
hand, waiting at the door to be joined by her mother and the Doctor.
She overheard many hard words from people who an evening or two before
had smiled so graciously upon them. It was, therefore, with no little
determination of manner that she advanced and took the Doctor’s arm, as
if anxious to associate herself with his well-earned unpopularity; and
just at this moment she caught the eye and smile of Colonel Burr, as he
bowed gracefully, yet not without a suggestion of something sarcastic
in his eye.
FOOTNOTE:
[A] A fact.