his notions. He never allowed his children spending money, except such
as they fairly earned by some exertions of their own. "Let them do
something," he would say, "to make it fairly theirs, and their
generosity will then have some significance--it is very easy for
children to be generous on their parents' money." Great were the
comparing of resources and estimates of property at this time. Tom and
Ned, who were big enough to saw wood, and hoe in the garden, had
accumulated the vast sum of three dollars each, and walked about with
their hands in their pockets, and talked largely of purchases, like
gentlemen of substance. They thought of getting mamma a new muff, and
papa a writing desk, besides trinkets innumerable for sisters, and a big
doll for Ally; but after they had made one expedition to a neighboring
town to inquire prices, I observed that their expectations were greatly
moderated. As to little Willie, him of the checked apron, his whole
earthly substance amounted to thirty-seven cents; yet there was not a
member of the whole family circle, including the servants, that he could
find it in his heart to leave out of his remembrance. I ingratiated
myself with him immediately; and twenty times a day did I count over his
money to him, and did sums innumerable to show how much would be left if
he got this, that, or the other article, which he was longing to buy for
father or mother. I proved to him most invaluable, by helping him to
think of certain small sixpenny and fourpenny articles that would be
pretty to give to sisters, making out with marbles for Tom and Ned, and
a very valiant-looking sugar horse for Ally. Miss Emma had the usual
resource of young ladies, flosses, worsted, and knitting, and crochet
needles, and busy fingers, and she was giving private lessons daily to
Eliza, to enable her to get up some napkin rings, and book marks for the
all-important occasion. A gentle air of bustle and mystery pervaded the
whole circle. I was intrusted with so many secrets that I could scarcely
make an observation, or take a turn about the room, without being
implored to "remember"--"not to tell"--not to let papa know this, or
mamma that. I was not to let papa know how the boys were going to buy
him a new inkstand, with a pen rack upon it, which was entirely to
outshine all previous inkstands; nor tell mamma about the crochet bag
that Emma was knitting for her. On all sides were mysterious
whisperings, and showing of things wrapped in brown paper, glimpses of
which, through some inadvertence, were always appearing to the public
eye. There were close counsels held behind doors and in corners, and
suddenly broken off when some particular member of the family appeared.
There were flutters of vanishing book marks, which were always whisked
away when a door opened; and incessant ejaculations of admiration and
astonishment from one privileged looker or another on things which might
not be mentioned to or beheld by others.
Papa and mamma behaved with the utmost circumspection and discretion,
and though surrounded on all sides by such pitfalls and labyrinths of
mystery, moved about with an air of the most unconscious simplicity
possible.
But little Ally, from her privileged character, became a very
spoil-sport in the proceedings. Her small fingers were always pulling
open parcels prematurely, or lifting pocket handkerchiefs ingeniously
thrown down over mysterious articles, and thus disconcerting the very
profoundest surprises that ever were planned; and were it not that she
was still within the bounds of the kingly state of babyhood, and
therefore could be held to do no wrong, she would certainly have fallen
into general disgrace; but then it was "Ally," and that was apology for
all things, and the exploit was related in half whispers as so funny, so
cunning, that Miss Curlypate was in nowise disconcerted at the head
shakes and "naughty Allys" that visited her offences.
"What dis?" said she, one morning, as she was rummaging over some
packages indiscreetly left on the sofa.
"O Emma! see Ally!" exclaimed Eliza, darting forward; but too late, for
the flaxen curls and blue eyes of a wax doll had already appeared.
"Now she'll know all about it," said Eliza, despairingly.
Ally looked in astonishment, as dolly's visage promptly disappeared from
her view, and then turned to pursue her business in another quarter of
the room, where, spying something glittering under the sofa, she
forthwith pulled out and held up to public view a crochet bag sparkling
with innumerable steel fringes.
"O, what be dis!" she exclaimed again.
Miss Emma sprang to the rescue, while all the other children, with a
burst of exclamations, turned their eyes on mamma. Mamma very prudently
did not turn her head, and appeared to be lost in reflection, though she
must have been quite deaf not to have heard the loud whispers--"It's
mamma's bag! only think! Don't you think, Tom, Ally pulled out mamma's
bag, and held it right up before her! Don't you think she'll find out?"
Master Tom valued himself greatly on the original and profound ways he
had of adapting his presents to the tastes of the receiver without
exciting suspicion: for example, he would come up into his mother's
room, all booted and coated for a ride to town, jingling his purse
gleefully, and begin,--
"Mother, mother, which do you like best, pink or blue?"
"That might depend on circumstances, my son."
"Well, but, mother, for a neck ribbon, for example; suppose somebody was
going to buy you a neck ribbon."
"Why, blue would be the most suitable for me, I think."
"Well, but mother, which should you think was the best, a neck ribbon or
a book?"
"What book? It would depend something on that."
"Why, as good a book as a fellow could get for thirty-seven cents," says
Tom.
"Well, on the whole, I think I should prefer the ribbon."
"There, Ned," says Tom, coming down the stairs, "I've found out just
what mother wants, without telling her a word about it."
But the crowning mystery of all the great family arcana, the thing that
was going to astonish papa and mamma past all recovery, was certain
projected book marks, that little Ally was going to be made to work for
them. This bold scheme was projected by Miss Emma, and she had armed
herself with a whole paper of sugar plums, to be used as adjuvants to
moral influence, in case the discouragements of the undertaking should
prove too much for Ally's patience.
As to Ally, she felt all the dignity of the enterprise--her whole little
soul was absorbed in it. Seated on Emma's knee, with the needle between
her little fat fingers, and holding the board very tight, as if she was
afraid it would run away from her, she very gravely and carefully stuck
the needle in every place but the right--pricked her pretty fingers--ate
sugar plums--stopping now to pat Rover, and now to stroke pussy--letting
fall her thimble, and bustling down to pick it up--occasionally taking
an episodical race round the room with Rover, during which time Sister
Emma added a stitch or two to the work.
I would not wish to have been required, on oath, to give in my
undisguised opinion as to the number of stitches the little one really
put into her present, but she had a most genuine and firm conviction
that she worked every stitch of it herself; and when, on returning from
a scamper with pussy, she found one or two letters finished, she never
doubted that the whole was of her own execution, and, of course, thought
that working book marks was one of the most delightful occupations in
the world. It was all that her little heart could do to keep from papa
and mamma the wonderful secret. Every evening she would bustle about her
father with an air of such great mystery, and seek to pique his
curiosity by most skilful hints, such as,--
"I know somefing! but I s'ant tell you."
"Not tell me! O Ally! Why not?"
"O, it's about--a New 'Ear's pes----"
"Ally, Ally," resounds from several voices, "don't you tell."
"No, I s'ant--but you are going to have a New 'Ear's pesant, and so is
mamma, and you can't dess what it is."
"Can't I?"
"No, and I s'ant tell you."
"Now, Ally," said papa, pretending to look aggrieved.
"Well, it's going to be--somefin worked."
"Ally, be careful," said Emma.
"Yes, I'll be very tareful; it's somefin--_weall_ pretty--somefin to put
in a book. You'll find out about it by and by."
"I think I'm in a fair way to," said the father.
The conversation now digressed to other subjects, and the nurse came in
to take Ally to bed; who, as she kissed her father, in the fulness of
her heart, added a fresh burst of information. "Papa," said she, in an
earnest whisper, "that _fin_ is about so long"--measuring on her fat
little arm.
"A _fin_, Ally? Why, you are not going to give me a fish, are you?"
"I mean that _thing_," said Ally, speaking the word with great effort,
and getting quite red in the face.
"O, that _thing_; I beg pardon, my lady; that puts another face on the
communication," said the father, stroking her head fondly, as he bade
her good night.
"The child can talk plainer than she does," said the father, "but we are
all so delighted with her little Hottentot dialect, that I don't know
but she will keep it up till she is twenty."
* * * * *
It now wanted only three days of the New Year, when a sudden and deadly
shadow fell on the dwelling, late so busy and joyous--a shadow from the
grave; and it fell on the flower of the garden--the star--the singing
bird--the loved and loving Ally.
She was stricken down at once, in the flush of her innocent enjoyment,
by a fever, which from the first was ushered in with symptoms the most
fearful.
All the bustle of preparation ceased--the presents were forgotten or lay
about unfinished, as if no one now had a heart to put their hand to any
thing; while up in her little crib lay the beloved one, tossing and
burning with restless fever, and without power to recognize any of the
loved faces that bent over her.
The doctor came twice a day, with a heavy step, and a face in which
anxious care was too plainly written; and while he was there each member
of the circle hung with anxious, imploring faces about him, as if to
entreat him to save their darling; but still the deadly disease held on
its relentless course, in spite of all that could be done.
"I thought myself prepared to meet God's will in any form it might
come," said Winthrop to me; "but this one thing I had forgotten. It
never entered into my head that my little Ally could die."
The evening before New Year's, the deadly disease seemed to be
progressing more rapidly than ever; and when the doctor came for his
evening call, he found all the family gathered in mournful stillness
around the little crib.
"I suppose," said the father, with an effort to speak calmly, "that this
may be her last night with us."
The doctor made no answer, and the whole circle of brothers and sisters
broke out into bitter weeping.
"It is just possible that she may live till to-morrow," said the doctor.
"To-morrow--her birthday!" said the mother. "O Ally, Ally!"
Wearily passed the watches of that night. Each brother and sister had
kissed the pale little cheek, to bid farewell, and gone to their rooms,
to sob themselves to sleep; and the father and mother and doctor alone
watched around the bed. O, what a watch is that which despairing love
keeps, waiting for death! Poor Rover, the companion of Ally's gayer
hours, resolutely refused to be excluded from the sick chamber.
Stretched under the little crib, he watched with unsleeping eyes every
motion of the attendants, and as often as they rose to administer
medicine, or change the pillow, or bathe the head, he would rise also,
and look anxiously over the side of the crib, as if he understood all
that was passing.
About an hour past midnight, the child began to change; her moans became
fainter and fainter, her restless movements ceased, and a deep and heavy
sleep settled upon her.
The parents looked wistfully on the doctor. "It is the last change," he
said; "she will probably pass away before the daybreak."
Heavier and deeper grew that sleep, and to the eye of the anxious
watchers the little face grew paler and paler; yet by degrees the
breathing became regular and easy, and a gentle moisture began to
diffuse itself over the whole surface. A new hope began to dawn on the
minds of the parents, as they pointed out these symptoms to the doctor.
"All things are possible with God," said he, in answer to the inquiring
looks he met, "and it may be that she will yet live."
An hour more passed, and the rosy glow of the New Year's morning began
to blush over the snowy whiteness of the landscape. Far off from the
window could be seen the kindling glow of a glorious sunrise, looking
all the brighter for the dark pines that half veiled it from view; and
now a straight and glittering beam shot from the east into the still
chamber. It fell on the golden hair and pale brow of the child, lighting
it up as if an angel had smiled on it; and slowly the large blue eyes
unclosed, and gazed dreamily around.
"Ally, Ally," said the father, bending over her, trembling with
excitement.
"You are going to have a New 'Ear's pesent," whispered the little one,
faintly smiling.
"I believe from my heart that you are, sir!" said the doctor, who stood
with his fingers on her pulse; "she has passed through the crisis of the
disease, and we may hope."
A few hours turned this hope to glad certainty; for with the elastic
rapidity of infant life, the signs of returning vigor began to multiply,
and ere evening the little one was lying in her father's arms, answering
with languid smiles to the overflowing proofs of tenderness which every
member of the family was showering upon her.
"See, my children," said the father gently, "_this dear one_ is _our_
New Year's present. What can we render to God in return?"
THE OLD OAK OF ANDOVER.
A REVERY.
Silently, with dreamy languor, the fleecy snow is falling. Through the
windows, flowery with blossoming geranium and heliotrope, through the
downward sweep of crimson and muslin curtain, one watches it as the wind
whirls and sways it in swift eddies.
Right opposite our house, on our Mount Clear, is an old oak, the apostle
of the primeval forest. Once, when this place was all wildwood, the man
who was seeking a spot for the location of the buildings of Phillips
Academy climbed this oak, using it as a sort of green watchtower, from
whence he might gain a view of the surrounding country. Age and time,
since then, have dealt hardly with the stanch old fellow. His limbs have
been here and there shattered; his back begins to look mossy and
dilapidated; but after all, there is a piquant, decided air about him,
that speaks the old age of a tree of distinction, a kingly oak. To-day I
see him standing, dimly revealed through the mist of falling snows;
to-morrow's sun will show the outline of his gnarled limbs--all rose
color with their soft snow burden; and again a few months, and spring
will breathe on him, and he will draw a long breath, and break out once
more, for the three hundredth time, perhaps, into a vernal crown of
leaves. I sometimes think that leaves are the thoughts of trees, and
that if we only knew it, we should find their life's experience recorded
in them. Our oak! what a crop of meditations and remembrances must he
have thrown forth, leafing out century after century. Awhile he spake
and thought only of red deer and Indians; of the trillium that opened
its white triangle in his shade; of the scented arbutus, fair as the
pink ocean shell, weaving her fragrant mats in the moss at his feet; of
feathery ferns, casting their silent shadows on the checkerberry leaves,
and all those sweet, wild, nameless, half-mossy things, that live in the
gloom of forests, and are only desecrated when brought to scientific
light, laid out and stretched on a botanic bier. Sweet old forest
days!--when blue jay, and yellow hammer, and bobalink made his leaves
merry, and summer was a long opera of such music as Mozart dimly
dreamed. But then came human kind bustling beneath; wondering, fussing,
exploring, measuring, treading down flowers, cutting down trees, scaring
bobalinks--and Andover, as men say, began to be settled.
Staunch men were they--these Puritan fathers of Andover. The old oak
must have felt them something akin to himself. Such strong, wrestling
limbs had they, so gnarled and knotted were they, yet so outbursting
with a green and vernal crown, yearly springing, of noble and generous
thoughts, rustling with leaves which shall be for the healing of
nations.
These men were content with the hard, dry crust for themselves, that
they might sow seeds of abundant food for us, their children; men out of
whose hardness in enduring we gain leisure to be soft and graceful,
through whose poverty we have become rich. Like Moses, they had for
their portion only the pain and weariness of the wilderness, leaving to
us the fruition of the promised land. Let us cherish for their sake the
old oak, beautiful in its age as the broken statue of some antique
wrestler, brown with time, yet glorious in its suggestion of past
achievement.
I think all this the more that I have recently come across the following
passage in one of our religious papers. The writer expresses a kind of
sentiment which one meets very often upon this subject, and leads one to
wonder what glamour could have fallen on the minds of any of the
descendants of the Puritans, that they should cast nettles on those
honored graves where they should be proud to cast their laurels.
"It is hard," he says, "for a lover of the beautiful--not a mere lover,
but a believer in its divinity also--to forgive the Puritans, or to
think charitably of them. It is hard for him to keep Forefathers' Day,
or to subscribe to the Plymouth Monument; hard to look fairly at what
they did, with the memory of what they destroyed rising up to choke
thankfulness; for they were as one-sided and narrow-minded a set of men
as ever lived, and saw one of Truth's faces only--the hard, stern,
practical face, without loveliness, without beauty, and only half dear
to God. The Puritan flew in the face of facts, not because he saw them
and disliked them, but because he did not see them. He saw foolishness,
lying, stealing, worldliness--the very mammon of unrighteousness rioting
in the world and bearing sway--and he ran full tilt against the monster,
hating it with a very mortal and mundane hatred, and anxious to see it
bite the dust that his own horn might be exalted. It was in truth only
another horn of the old dilemma, tossing and goring grace and beauty,
and all the loveliness of life, as if they were the enemies instead of
the sure friends of God and man."
Now, to those who say this we must ask the question with which Socrates
of old pursued the sophist: What _is_ beauty? If beauty be only
physical, if it appeal only to the senses, if it be only an enchantment
of graceful forms, sweet sounds, then indeed there might be something of
truth in this sweeping declaration that the Puritan spirit is the enemy
of beauty.
The very root and foundation of all artistic inquiry lies here. _What is
beauty?_ And to this question God forbid that we _Christians_ should
give a narrower answer than Plato gave in the old times before Christ
arose, for he directs the aspirant who would discover the beautiful to
"consider of greater value the beauty existing _in the soul_, than that
existing in the body." More gracefully he teaches the same doctrine when
he tells us that "there are two kinds of Venus, (beauty;) the one, the
elder, who had no mother, and was the daughter of Uranus, (heaven,) whom
we name the celestial; the other, younger, daughter of Jupiter and
Dione, whom we call the vulgar."
Now, if disinterestedness, faith, patience, piety, have a beauty
celestial and divine, then were our fathers worshippers of the
beautiful. If high-mindedness and spotless honor are beautiful things,
they had those. What work of art can compare with a lofty and heroic
life? Is it not better to _be_ a Moses than to be a Michael Angelo
making statues of Moses? Is not the _life_ of Paul a sublimer work of
art than Raphael's cartoons? Are not the patience, the faith, the
undying love of Mary by the cross, more beautiful than all the Madonna
paintings in the world. If, then, we would speak truly of our fathers,
we should say that, having their minds fixed on that celestial beauty of
which Plato speaks, they held in slight esteem that more common and
earthly.
Should we continue the parable in Plato's manner, we might say that the
earthly and visible Venus, the outward grace of art and nature, was
ordained of God as a priestess, through whom men were to gain access to
the divine, invisible One; but that men, in their blindness, ever
worship the priestess instead of the divinity.
Therefore it is that great reformers so often must break the shrines and
temples of the physical and earthly beauty, when they seek to draw men
upward to that which is high and divine.
Christ says of John the Baptist, "What went ye out for to see? A man
clothed in soft raiment? Behold they which are clothed in soft raiment
are in kings' palaces." So was it when our fathers came here. There were
enough wearing soft raiment and dwelling in kings' palaces. Life in
papal Rome and prelatic England was weighed down with blossoming luxury.
There were abundance of people to think of pictures, and statues, and
gems, and cameos, vases and marbles, and all manner of deliciousness.
The world was all drunk with the enchantments of the lower Venus, and it
was needful that these men should come, Baptist-like in the wilderness,
in raiment of camel's hair. We need such men now. Art, they tell us, is
waking in America; a love of the beautiful is beginning to unfold its
wings; but what kind of art, and what kind of beauty? Are we to fill our
houses with pictures and gems, and to see that even our drinking cup and
vase is wrought in graceful pattern, and to lose our reverence for
self-denial, honor, and faith?
Is our Venus to be the frail, insnaring Aphrodite, or the starry, divine
Urania?
OUR WOOD LOT IN WINTER.
Our wood lot! Yes, we have arrived at the dignity of owning a wood lot,
and for us simple folk there is something invigorating in the thought.
To OWN even a small spot of our dear old mother earth hath in it a
relish of something stimulating to human nature. To own a meadow, with
all its thousand-fold fringes of grasses, its broidery of monthly
flowers, and its outriders of birds, and bees, and gold-winged
insects--this is something that establishes one's heart. To own a clover
patch or a buckwheat field is like possessing a self-moving manufactory
for perfumes and sweetness; but a wood lot, rustling with dignified old
trees--it makes a man rise in his own esteem; he might take off his hat
to himself at the moment of acquisition.
We do not marvel that the land-acquiring passion becomes a mania among
our farmers, and particularly we do not wonder at a passion for wood
land. That wide, deep chasm of conscious self-poverty and emptiness
which lies at the bottom of every human heart, making men crave property
as something to add to one's own bareness, and to ballast one's own
specific levity, is sooner filled by land than any thing else.
Your hoary New England farmer walks over his acres with a grim
satisfaction. He sets his foot down with a hard stamp; _here_ is
reality. No moonshine bank stock! no swindling railroads! _Here_ is
_his_ bank, and there is no defaulter here. All is true, solid, and
satisfactory; he seems anchored to this life by it. So Pope, with fine
tact, makes the old miser, making his will on his death bed, after
parting with every thing, die, clinging to the possession of his _land_.
He disposes with many a groan of this and that house, and this and that
stock and security; but at last the _manor_ is proposed to him.
"The manor! hold!" he cried,
"Not that; _I cannot part with that!_"--and died!
In such terms we discoursed yesterday, Herr Professor and myself, while
jogging along in an old-fashioned chaise to inspect a few acres of wood
lot, the acquisition of which had let us, with great freshness, into
these reflections.
Does any fair lady shiver at the idea of a drive to the woods on the
first of February? Let me assure her that in the coldest season Nature
never wants her ornaments full worth looking at.