THE FUNNIEST THING AT THE FAIR.
The next day the sun rose glorious on the blue Lake and White City.
Our trio went in the morning to visit Lincoln Park, but returned at
noon, and took the Cottage Grove car for the Fair. They entered the
grounds again by the way of the long avenue of the Plaisance, and
there they found all the world at home again.
They went to the Street in Cairo.
As they passed in they noticed a young colored man and woman, who were
talking so loudly as to attract attention. The young woman was gayly
dressed indeed. Her hat was conspicuous even in the Street of Cairo.
It was a kind of pyramid of feathers, flowers, and streamers. Her
dress was as Oriental, and she evidently carried a very happy heart.
The young man looked as happy; his face shone.
An Oriental wedding procession was moving through the street, and in
it an Asiatic lady was riding on a camel.
How proud she looked, swaying to and fro, her body in graceful motion
with that of the camel!
“Wot is that?” asked the young colored woman of one of the guards.
[Illustration: WATER TOWER.]
“That is the ship of the desert.”
“Does it make one sick to sail in dat dare ship?”
“No, no; don’t you see how _she_ rides? That is a bridal party.”
“I am a bride; _we_ is. That is wot we are,” said the young woman,
happy hearted. The groom looked radiant.
The flags were flying; the music was playing; the bazaars were all
life and gayety.
[Illustration: LINCOLN PARK.]
The young colored woman looked enviously on the golden trappings of
the procession, and said, with a shadow of despondency, “She outdoes
me, she does. I’d like to ride on dat dare camel mysel’.”
“You can do so,” said a listener. “Many people make their wedding tour
through the Street of Cairo on the camel.”
The young woman looked happy indeed.
[Illustration: PARADE OF ACTORS AND ORIENTAL BAND ON STREET OF CAIRO.]
[Illustration: DAMASCAN SWORDSMEN.]
The procession with its gay music and trappings broke up at last, and
the tall camel came to a place near the gate and knelt down on a mat
in obedience to his keeper.
“Who wants to make a wedding tour through the Street of Cairo?”
shouted a manager.
“I—I—I!” answered the young colored woman, her hat bobbing. A crowd
gathered around the scene, a comical grin on every face.
The camel lay meek, like a great bundle of bones on the mat. He
stretched out his long neck and displayed a vicious-looking mouth.
The young woman mounted the saddle, which was easy.
“You follow me, Ben,” she said to her young husband, “I might need
your obsistence.”
There could not have been a happier couple on earth.
The camel driver made a queer sound.
Some one shouted, “Now hold on, Miss Dinah, the camel is going to
rise.”
The camel did rise indeed,—not on his fore legs, but he rose up
behind, as if his back had been shot up out of the earth.
“Dinah” grasped the saddle, and fell forward, exclaiming, “Holy
Moses!” A wild look came into her face. Then the front part of the
camel rose up, and the sable bride found herself in the air.
“Here yo’ dar, yo’, let me get off! Stop! dis yere beast am all broke
up. No lady can ride in dis yere way. Stop! Whoa!”
But the camel driver did not heed. The camel began his swaying motion,
tossing Dinah, if we may so call her, up into the air in this way, and
then in another. It was such a comical sight that the good-natured
crowd stood laughing, each one looking at the other, to share the
humor.
As the camel passed down the street, its upheaving motions increased.
“Whoa, dar!” shouted Dinah. “Stop yer wobblin’ dar! Driver, stop, dar,
I’ll fall off! Dar, I’m goin’ right ober now! Whoa! If you don’t stop
him I’ll hollar!”
The camel gave a sidling lurch, sending Dinah high up into the air
with her ribbons and feathers flying. The crowd followed her, laughing.
Down the street she went, shouting, “Stop, dar! Stop, dar!” tossed
this way and that, and once threatening the philosophical driver
with—“If you don’t stop dat dare critter, I’ll cry ‘Perlice, murder!’”
But the camel driver did not heed.
The camel stopped at length and turned back again, sawing the air. He
stopped at length at the mat. Dinah’s face grew happy again, and she
laughed with the crowd.
[Illustration: THE EGYPTIAN DONKEY BOYS, MOUNTED.]
“Ben,” she said, “didn’t I ride like a queen?”
She added, “How am I ever to get down way up here in de air?”
Dinah surveyed the great crowd. There was an acre more or less of
people, with mouths stretched from ear to ear. It was not a provoking
merriment, not sarcastic, nor that mean mirth that ridicules weakness.
It was all sympathetic, good hearted, and good natured.
The camel driver gave another queer sound, somewhat like that at the
beginning of the ride.
Dinah’s question as to how she was to get down was suddenly answered,
and without any ceremony.
The camel seemed in an instant to collapse, and fall down all in a
heap.
When Dinah found the high-backed animal falling as it were all to
pieces into a heap of bones, her eyes turned white. But she was landed
safely. The camel lay under her as if dead. She stepped from the
saddle. The crowd began to cheer. Poor Dinah at first did not know
whether to be offended or delighted. She seized the arm of Ben, and
looked around her. The crowd was laughing in such a generous-hearted
way that she wisely thought it best to join in.
So she shook her head, bridal hat and all, and clapped her hands, and
shouted “Giggers!”
Up and down the Street of Cairo ran the merriment and laughter, and
the happiest-hearted of all were Dinah and Ben. Peal on peal of
laughter rang out on the sunny air, Dinah leading the chorus.
Manton Marlowe looked down the avenue of laughing, friendly, kindly
faces, and then turned to the beaming faces of Dinah and Ben.
“I never saw anything on earth so funny as that,” he said.
“No!” said Grandfather Marlowe, “and that is the funniest thing that
you will see at the Fair.”
“I think that you are right,” said Mr. Marlowe; “and there is a
lesson too in all this light-hearted scene: people may so laugh as not
to give offence. Look! Dinah is the happiest of all, and there is not
a person here that would not be glad to do her a favor! How happy is
everything here! The hearts of all people here beat as one.”
“This is a good world,” said the old Quaker.
A few days afterwards the trio saw a calf run away from a mock
sacrifice. The priest ran after him, and a comical scene followed; but
Mr. Marlowe did not change his mind in regard to the laughing crowd of
the Street of Cairo. That was the funniest scene that he saw at the
Fair.
FOLK-LORE STORY.
MIRACULOUS SUSAN OF QUAKER HILL.
_Imprimis_, the reader will ask why the woman in our title with
the simple name of Susan was called “miraculous,” and, _secundus_,
where is Quaker Hill. I will answer the last question first, and
try to give the reader a view of the picturesque elevation where
George Fox preached in the glorious old Rhode Island of Governor
Coddington and of Roger Williams; and as for that said useful woman,
who was indispensable to the old families of the once Indian country
of Pokonoket in the trying days of dipping candles, picking live
geese, and at “killing-time,” our story will seek to portray the one
marvellous and mysterious event of her otherwise uneventful life.
I should say that the quaint, plain Quaker meeting-house on the
historic elevation near Portsmouth, R. I., is the most interesting
church in all America. It stands for the old Rhode Island principle
of soul-liberty, as set forth in Roger Williams’s day—and what could
stand for more? It is now very much what it was two hundred years
ago, when a rich Rhode Islander proposed to offer George Fox a salary
to remain on the Island as preacher,—which caused the good man to
flee.
_They_ do not do so now, to be sure, but times have a little changed,
even among the hillside farmers on the Garden Island of the New World.
I recently attended a Friends’ meeting at the quaint, roomy church
on Quaker Hill. The Narragansett Bay rolled in the distance as clear
and blue as when George Fox himself must have beheld it in 1671, or
more than two hundred years ago. The Hill is still the Mecca of the
Societies of Friends, and may be found on the Old Colony Railroad
near Portsmouth, R. I., some eight miles from Newport, and a few
miles from the Barton-Prescott house, of historic fame.
[Illustration: CORNER OF MOSQUE, IN CAIRO STREET.]
The island was Aquidneck when George Fox came there, “a voice crying
in the wilderness of the world,” and when Bishop Berkeley became
prophetic at Newport, and voiced his inspiration in the immortal
line, “Westward the course of empire takes its way.”
There are few spots on the earth more serene and lovely than Quaker
Hill. There is an ethereal beauty over the blue waterways and
bountiful farms, a “Gulf Stream influence” it is called, that seems
almost spiritual, and we do not wonder that the good old Quaker
spirit should have found its sympathetic atmosphere here. After the
long past, the Gospel of the Inner Light and universal Love is still
preached on the self-same serene hill of Portsmouth looking over
to Mount Hope,—the ancient burying-ground of the Indian race,—the
Narragansett Bay, and the sinking sails of the far sea. It is worth a
pilgrimage to spend a Sabbath on Quaker Hill.
The old-time Newport Quakers did not keep holidays, but Thanksgiving
was always a benevolent day on the thrifty Quaker farms around
the transfigured hill. The mention of the day recalls tables of
luxuries that, unhappily, are no more seen. Those were the days of
apple dumplings made of Rhode Island greenings, which Rhode Island
mythology claims to have come from the original Garden of Eden;
of pandowdy in comparison with which the modern apple pie merits
little commendation; of No Cake, rightly named, for it consisted of
parched corn so deftly cooked that it floated white on milk; of plum
porridge, hot and cold; of hasty puddings with toothsome sauces;
of bannocks; of whit-pot; of all kinds of game,—wild geese, teal,
partridges, and quail; of pound-cake that induced pipes and fireside
slumbers and dreams such as never haunted the self-denying soul of
George Fox. The old Quakers of Portsmouth were good livers, but they
shared all they had with every one.
Blessed are the graves with their mossy stones around the queer
church on old Quaker Hill! The precisianers here lived quiet lives,
but their principles of soul-liberty emancipated the world. The
little square panes in the gray meeting-house windows, to a student
of life, are more than all the rose hues of the lights of Cologne
Cathedral. It is the soul of things that is great,—and great souls
held their visions here.
I vividly recall the whortleberry and blackberry pastures of
Portsmouth, where “Miraculous Susan” used to spend the greater part
of her time in July and August, gathering berries for the Newport
market. I can see the old woman now as she used to pass with her
baskets and tin pails, and her bottle of cold coffee for lunch.
I used sometimes to go with her, and when she had filled her baskets
with berries she would help me fill mine. “It is what we do for
_other_ folks that makes life pleasant,” she often said.
The children used to start back with awe into the roadside alders and
witch-hazels as they saw her, and one of the school-group would be
likely to say:
“That’s her,—the ’ooman over whose head the miracle-ring appeared,
right in the church, hanging in the air on nothing. And some said it
was made of silver, and some said it was made of gold, and some of
pearls. But they found her out. She didn’t mean it. I’ll tell you
what it was—won’t you never, never tell?”
The mystery of the simple history of Susan had been so often told in
confidence that when one put one’s finger on one’s lip in speaking of
it, it was a sign; there are some things that it is reverent not to
tell publicly,—this was one of them.
There was a poem of some unknown author that she used to repeat to
me when whortleberrying, which to my simple mind surpassed in lyric
beauty anything that Wordsworth ever wrote. It began:
“Why, Phœbe, have you come so soon?
Where are your berries, child?”
The unfortunate Phœbe was to my eyes a never-failing source of tears.
The earthquake of Lisbon never affected me like _that_.
I shall never forget the tempests that sometimes followed the long
August days when we went whortleberrying. If we had an uneventful
tour, we yet had eventful skies. The hot forenoon; the ospreys
wheeling in the fiery meridian heaven; the fevered air; the
pearl-white clouds that rose in the north like mountains, peak
rising above peak as in the Alps or Andes; the universal singing of
birds in joyous expectation of showers; the hurrying hay-wagons; the
rapid motions of the rakes and forks; the scent of new-mown hay;
the carrying of water to the haymakers by the farmers’ wives and
daughters; the shadow of the cloud; the half-sun and half-shadow on
the fields; the muttering of the thunder; the few terrific peals; the
thunderbolt that smote some tall tree in the near woodland pasture;
the deluge of rain; the dripping leaves; the breaking cloud; the
rainbow; the broken sunset; the singing of birds again; the flying of
night-hawks, and the cool, starry night that followed,—I can still
see that country dog-day, as such a day was called. I still can
feel in my imagination as I felt in the changing air from a fevered
heat to refreshing cool, as we sheltered ourselves under the thick
savin-trees, waiting for the shower to pass.
[Illustration: DETAIL OF THE GOLDEN DOOR.]
Miraculous Susan, over whose head the silver ring appeared in the old
Orthodox church on the Heights, lived in a small cottage near Quaker
Hill. Across a narrow waterway was Tiverton Heights. The water is
spanned by a stone bridge now; it was a ferry in Susan’s day.
A strange event had happened to Susan. We never knew of her telling
the story but once, and that was at a husking at Tiverton, after her
feelings had been a little touched by certain jokes about her that
had fallen upon her ears at a husking-party.
“No,” she said, shaking her calash, “I fear sometimes that there’s
no miracle ever happened in my poor life—I can’t say; but I’ve had a
hard time. I never encouraged any man to marry me—how could I? only
Malachi, he just took hold of one end of my apron-string one evening,
and opened his mouth, and I said ‘Stop!’ and looked at him just like
_that_. Malachi was a likely man, but I wouldn’t be a burden to him.
The doctor said that Mother would be a cripple for life, and he had
no sooner said that than my mind was made right up. I knew my duty.
If a thing is right, it is right, and there need be nothing more said
about it; and if a thing is wrong, it is wrong, and there need be
nothing more said about that. I’ve had some blessin’s and a pretty
even life, take it all in all,—only that miracle that happened to me
in church, and nobody was to blame for that! I did think that the
‘angel of the Lord had come down,’ as the choir used to sing, but I
fear I was mistaken.”
Miraculous Susan arose and bent over the corn-heap and pulled down a
large husking of corn. It was a bright, clear, still November day,
with a woody odor in the air that came from the falling leaves of the
flaming maples and walnut-trees where the river made an ox-bow. There
had been a gusty storm the night before, leaving leaf-wet woods.
The crows were cawing in the far tree-tops, and the pilfering jays
were swinging in the wild grape-vines. Hither and thither a nimble
squirrel, called the “chipmunk,” might have been seen running along
the gray stone walls.
The Parson sat next to Miraculous Susan by the husk-heap.
“You never gave Malachi any yarn to wind?” said he, good-naturedly,
to lead up to the neighborhood story.
“No, I never encouraged him as much as _that_. I only treated him so
well that he came a second time. La, Parson, if I’d only said the
word I needn’t ha’ been huskin’ here for one bushel in ten. But my
folks, they were all ought-to-be people, and I had to be just what I
ought to be. It was born in me. I know that I got spiritually proud,
and actually thought that the Lord had appeared to me and set a halo
of glory around my head. Think of it, a poor lone woman like me! But
the world has been good to me, and it will be a great deal better on
the day that I go out of it than it was on the day when I came into
it, and none the worse for my being in it—don’t you think so, Parson?”
“Yes, Sister Susan, that is just my own opinion.”
“I can make mince pies equal to Dorothy Hancock’s, though I can’t
pull a string as that woman did on the French fleet one day, and have
a whole frigate go bang, banging around me. There’s a difference
between some folks and others.”
“You are right, Susan,—you _can_ make mince pies.”
“And pandowdy!”
“Yes, I never ate any Thanksgiving pandowdy equal to yours.”
“That’s because I let the crust candy, and then breaks it all up, and
kneads it into the apple.—This is a beautiful world!”
It surely was on that day and in that thrifty meadow. The sky was as
blue as in April. The hills in their late autumn hues shimmered afar
like dreamlands. The long meadows were restful and bright with cool
green aftermath. Between the hills ran the way down to the cranberry
meadows, the salt marshes, and the purple sea.
The farm lay upon a stretch of land now known as Tiverton Heights,
which was already famous in Indian history, but is now also
associated with stirring events of the Revolutionary War. There is no
place in America that commands more romantic scenes and waterways. At
a distance lay the town of Little Compton, the residence of Captain
Benjamin Church the Indian-fighter, and the rich hunting-grounds of
the Awasonks. In the lowlands at the sea-levels was the island of
Rhode Island, where had lived Bishop Berkeley, of prophetic memory.
In the town now called Middleton, near Newport, the Aquidians had met
their fate; and the same town now is famous as the place where Barton
captured General Prescott:—
“’Twas on that dark and stormy night,
The winds and waves did roar,
Bold Barton then with twenty men
Went down upon the shore.”
The old inhabitants still love to tell how Tuck Sisson on that
memorable July night broke open the British General’s door by butting
against it with his head.
To the west, where now the great stone bridge, costing a quarter of
a million, connects the island of Newport the Beautiful with the
mainland, was the pleasant ferry. And beyond lay the Narragansett,
one of the beautiful inland seas of the world. Here also were
the Highlands of the Pocassetts, and thence Queen Wetamoe and her
warriors used to cross Mount Hope Bay to unite in the war-dances
of King Philip at night. To-day every town on the Heights has its
wonderful tales and romantic legends.
[Illustration: THE BOAT LANDING AND THE LAKE, FROM THE LIBERAL ARTS
BUILDING.]
The “husk-heap,” as the unharvested corn was called, was many hundred
feet long, and covered on the top with thatch and swale meadow-hay.
Behind it rose a number of “husk-stacks,” as the heaped husked
cornstalks were termed, while in front were two huge ox-carts, with
high sides, which were brimming with yellow Indian corn. Over the
corn-heaps where the husking had already been done was a long row of
pumpkins, “pig corn” and “smutty corn,” on the ground. The crickets
were singing cheerily everywhere, as they always did on bright days
about the corn-heaps.
The huskers were a merry company. In the middle of the long row of
these busy people sat Deacon White, the owner of the seashore farm,
and next to him Sally Bannocks, his widowed sister. At his other
side sat Parson Brown, who had come over from the parsonage under
the great elbowing elm-trees to “lend a hand;” and beside the good
Parson sat Miraculous Susan, the woman-of-all-work of the town. An
old Indian woman, named Maria, took a place apart from the others at
the end of the heap. Miraculous Susan and Indian Maria husked for the
Deacon on shares, receiving one bushel in ten of the corn that they
basketed for their labor. A dozen or more boys and girls made up a
happy party, such as could have been seen in November a hundred years
ago on almost any large New England farm.
In these merry days of plenty the young people had a droll song
that they used to sing. It was evidently written in derision of the
unthrifty farmer, who had no such bounteous corn-heaps as these. It
was sung in doleful minor, and the refrain words “Over there” had
the most melancholy cadence of anything that I ever heard except the
hymn-tune “Windham.” It ran as follows:—
O potatoes they grow small,
Over there.
O potatoes they grow small,
For they plants ’em in the fall,
And they eats ’em skins and all,
Over there!
O they had a clam pie,
Over there.
O they had a clam pie,
Over there.
O they had a clam pie,
And its crust was made of rye,
You must eat it or must die,
Over there!
The fiddling tune of “Old Rosin the Beau,” and the lively strains
of “Money Musk,” the “Virginia Reel,” and “Fisher’s Hornpipe,” were
often heard at the husking-parties, played by the village fiddlers,
of whom every town had one. For more serious music, the huskers sang
the old plaintive Scotch airs.
Miraculous Susan? She was the servant of everybody in distress; the
good woman of the town. She heard the first wail of the infant, and
stood last by the trembling widow when the sod fell hollow upon the
coffin. Did a child have a bad case of measles or throat-ail, she was
there; was there a case of typhus fever, her faithful hand fanned
that brow. _She_ did not shrink even from a case of smallpox. Did a
farm-wife fall sick in haying-time, thither went Miraculous Susan.
Did a woman with a great family of children need special help on
washing-day, baking-day, or at “killing-time,” there she was found.
She used to say that the Lord created her “fists full of days’ work
for everybody,” and that that was her mission in life; and always
added the reflection of doubtful comfort, “And I shall get through by
and by.”
Her name—“Miraculous Susan”—how did she come by that?
Therein is our story, as we have intimated. Other people told it many
times; it was a wonder-tale of the old farms. I never knew her to
tell the story but once, and that was on this particular day, at the
corn-heap.
“Parson Brown,” said she, pulling down a large armful of cornstalks
and corn, “do you really think that there are such persons as
_ghost-seers_, or that all such things are only just like the ‘House
that Jack built,’ just one thing leadin’ into another?”
“Susan,” said the good Parson, “I haven’t believed much in those
things since what happened to you, according to Elder Almy’s view of
the matter. Don’t be offended, Susan. There are mostly mysterious
causes for mysterious things. You are an honest woman, Susan, and it
is much good that you have done in the world. As for that miracle,
Susan, that was a very peculiar case. It’s husking-time, and we are
all your friends; just tell us _your_ side of that story which makes
the people—the Lord forgive ’em!—all call you Miraculous Susan.”
Susan drew her Rob-Roy shawl around her, and gave the Parson the same
kind of a look that she had given Malachi when he just took hold of
her apron-string to get courage to ask _the_ question. Then her
face relaxed, and there came into it a kindly look, and she said,
“Parson Brown, I will. You have all been proper good to me, and have
always meant well, if you do say ‘Ichabod’ to me now; you mean well.”
[Illustration: ADMINISTRATION BUILDING.]
Susan pulled down a large heap of corn to husk while telling her
story, and shook out of it the dry corn-cockles, saying, “First the
blade, and then the ear, and then the full corn in the ear,” and
adding, “Every cornstalk is a Thanksgiving sermon.” The children drew
near to hear, and with them one girl, Susanna, whose eyes grew with
the story.
“Tell all you know,” said Deacon White; “and it is mighty interesting
to hear a person tell a little _more_ than he knows. I always like
people that can see just a little beyond the horizon—what is the
imagination for?”
“I shall tell you only the plain truth,” said Susan. “So let me begin
with the planting-time, when the bluebirds came with the sky on their
wings, and the children dropped the first corn into the ground. I
was dreadful poor that year. Mother had just died and left me alone
and lonesome, and I began then to be hands and feet for everybody,
so as to heal up the great lump in my heart. I had a Rob-Roy shawl
that I had worn for years to church, summer and winter, and one June
day, as I was coming down the steps of the church, Deacon White here,
says he, says he to me, ‘Susan, you ought to have some better things
to wear; and if we have a prosperous year, and my ship comes in
prosperous-like, I mean to get the folks together in the fall, and to
have them make you a present of a real camlet cloak.’
“Could I believe my ears? It was only grand folks that wore camlet
cloaks! The wives of people who traded at sea!
“I attended church at Quaker Hill for the most part, because, to tell
the truth, I had to dress plain, and my simple clothes did not make
me look so poor among the gray Quaker folk as they did among the silk
gowns and camlet cloaks at Tiverton. And then, at the hands-shaking
after the Quaker meetings, I used often to find something in my hands
besides emptiness, and I always felt friendly to the Quaker folk who
were led by the Spirit, and who believed their words were Spirit when
they preached and exhorted. They are good people, and I wish that the
world were full of such, which I say though I am Orthodox.
“Well, I looked at the Deacon. His first wife had a camlet cloak,
brought over from the East Indies or some foreign parts where the
camels grow.
“But what the Deacon said did touch my heart in a tender place. He
was the first person in all the community that had ever seemed to
think that I would like to be thought of. My lip trembled, and I
pulled down my calash to hide my weakness, because my eyelids began
to twitch, and I couldn’t help it. I walked down the steps firmly,
and then I took the wood-path home, and sat down on the pine-needles
all alone on the way and had a good cry. I didn’t know that I had any
such feelings before. It wasn’t the thought of a camlet cloak that
made me break up so,—it was that the Deacon had seen that I had had a
hard time, and felt for me.
“Well, the corn came up, and the blades waved in the long fields in
the June air, and the robins sang everywhere. I was spry that summer,
and everywhere I went there arose before me a vision of that camlet
cloak. Not that I wanted such a cloak, but I wanted the people to
have some regard for me, and what the Deacon said stood for that.
Everybody likes to be thought something of sometime.
“The blades of corn turned at last into silk and tassels, and then
it was September, and every kernel that had been planted under the
April skies had produced an ear, and some two. The green fields
turned yellow and rustled, and the crickets piped and the birds sang
their last song and flew away. Then came Indian summer, and the
Thanksgiving days were near at hand. It had been a prosperous year,
and the Deacon’s ship had come in with its gun booming.
“One day the stage came lumbering up the Heights, and the driver drew
up the reins before my door, and looked under the great leather boot
where the mail-bags were, and brought out a large box, and called,—
“‘Susan, here—I’ve got something for ye, from Newport.’
“‘That’s passing strange,’ said I, throwing my apron over my head. ‘I
haven’t any near of kin in Newport.’
“‘Friends,’ said he.
“‘Friends?’ said I. ‘I haven’t many of them anywhere, as for that
matter; they’re as scarce as hen’s teeth in this world where there’s
so much selfishness. But I hadn’t ought to complain; we all of us get
treated better than we deserve. The Lord forgive me for saying such
things as those! This is a good world.’
“He handed down a package.
“‘Guess it came from foreign parts,’ said he. ‘Do the best you can,
Susan, so that when this bothersome life is all over you will—you
will—Go lang;’ and he was out of sight in quick time, the wheels
rattling over the stony hill.
“I took the package into the house, and opened it, all alone. Could I
believe my eyes? It was a camlet cloak, all made of silk and camel’s
hair, and grand enough to have bedecked a queen, and large enough to
cover my whole body.
“I first thought that I would just sink right down on my knees and
pray. Then my vanity got the better of me, and I held up the cloak
before the looking-glass; my cap-border rose when I thought how fine
I would look going up the steps of the old church with that garment
covering me, like a picture of Queen Vashti in the Bible.
“While I was standing there, grand as a drum-major at a general
training, who should come in but old Elder Almy, of Portsmouth Farms.
“‘What has thee got there, Susan?’ said he, looking up queerly from
under the broad brim of his hat.
“‘A royal garment fit for a queen,’ said I. ‘Look there, Elder Almy—a
camlet cloak!’
“‘I see, I see,’ said he. ‘I heard that the Tiverton folks were about
to make thee a present,’ said he, ‘and I hoped it would be such an
one as would make thy heart better. It is only the present that makes
the heart better that the Lord desires thee to have, Sister Susan.’
“‘Elder Almy,’ said I, ‘I am a plain-spoken woman, and I am going
to ask you one question, if you are a Quaker. Why should not a poor
woman like me have a camlet cloak?’
“‘Thee shouldst, if it would make thee better, Susan. What hast thou
to go with thy camlet cloak? Look at thy shoes, Susan. How is thy
meal-chest, Susan? How wouldst thee look in thy green calash and thy
camlet cloak, Susan?’
“‘But I’m goin’ to get a whole lot of new things to wear with my
camlet cloak,’ said I.
“‘How about thy purse, Susan? Hast thou means to live after the
pattern of thy royal garment? And would it be good for thy heart if
thou hadst? Simple living is a duty, Susan. I dress as simply as my
work-folks, Susan. If I did otherwise, I would encourage extravagance
in them. Thy camlet cloak begetteth pride, Susan, and pride resisteth
the Spirit, Susan. It is better for thee, Susan, far better, to be
poor in spirit.’
“Then I up and fell from grace, the Lord forgive me!
“‘Elder Almy,’ said I, ‘I am just as good as any of the people that
wear camlet cloaks. There was no different blood in the veins of
Queen Anne than that in my own. Small people make small presents. The
Governor has sent forth his proclamation for all people to assemble
in the churches on the 20th day of the 11th month, and I am going to
assemble.’
“‘_All_ of you, Susan?’
“‘Yes, _all_ of me, and the camlet cloak. It doesn’t make one feel
happy to be given pewter spoons. There!’
“‘Nor a gold crown, Susan?’
“I was sorry afterwards that I said these things, for Elder Almy and
all the Quakers were the most feeling and generous people, and as for
Mrs. Almy, why, she would have given away her bonnet off her own head.
“I had some money that I had hidden away in an old Spanish money-jar,
against sickness. I resolved to take that and go to Newport and buy
me some silk for a hood, an alpaca dress, and a string of beads,
which Elder Almy would have classed among the vanities. I went to
Newport, and I found there that I needed so many things to go with
the camlet cloak that I spent all the money that I had. ‘The Lord who
sent the camlet cloak will provide,’ said I.
“I shall never forget that bright Thanksgiving morning that I was
to set out from Quaker Hill, and for Tiverton, in my silk hood and
camlet cloak. It was a cold morning, but clear. I could hear the surf
roaring at Newport, and the bells ringing.
“As I was getting ready to go, I chanced to open the old saddle-room
door, and what should I see there but the very foot-stove that my
mother used to carry to church, before they had one stove for all the
people. A thought struck me. My pew was in a cold part of the church;
I would fill the iron cup inside of the foot-stove with coals, and
take the stove along with me under my camlet cloak. No one would ever
see it, and it would keep me comfortable all the day.
“My mother was better off than I, and her foot-stove was not one of
the ordinary kind. It was made of block tin, was perforated in stars,
had a mahogany frame, and a brass pan for the coals. It was always a
mystery to me how coals in that little hand-stove would hold fire for
so long a time. _She_ used to use hard-wood coal, and mostly walnut.
I had some good coals of apple-tree wood in the stove that morning,
and I put them into the pan, and closed the stove door, and took the
stove in my left hand under my cloak like a basket of eggs. Nobody
ever carries a foot-stove now, though there can be found one still in
the saddle-rooms and eaves-holes of nearly all the old houses, along
with the brass warming-pans, candle-moulds, and shovels and tongs and
fenders.
“How bright the water looked at the ferry! How the old ferryman
stared when he saw me! How an old crow on a dead tree peered down at
me and cried out in the keen air, ‘Haw, haw, haw!’
“I met Elder Almy on the way.
“‘Goin’ to Thanksgiving?’ said he.
“‘How do I look now, Elder?’ said I.
“‘Just like a rag-bag,—a travelling vanity on the road to Vanity
Fair. You’ll get there, Susan. Did you hear that crow? What was he
talking about, Susan?’
[Illustration: EGYPTIAN JUGGLER.]
“‘Pewter spoons, I guess,’ said I. And I just gave him _that_ look
that I had given Malachi.
“The churchyard was full of people, the dead and alive; for that
matter, the dead are always there. The bell was ringing, and
carriages were coming from all the neighboring farms. All eyes were
bent upon me as I passed through the crowd and went up the church
steps. I took my seat in the back pew where I usually sat, and put
my feet on the warm foot-stove and spread over it the camlet cloak
like a tent, and looked up to the tall pulpit, the red curtains, and
sounding-board, and hour-glass.
“Elder Holmes alluded to me in the opening prayer, as one whom
‘celestial charity delighted to honor.’ After the prayer I looked
up again and around, and I saw that all the eyes in the church were
turned towards me.
“‘The Lord keep me humble!’ prayed I.
“That prayer was answered. Surely it was.
“The text was a curious one—‘Where there is no vision, the people
perish.’ Elder Holmes, he gave a Bible history of visions, and of
the times when the Lord spake to Israel in visions, and the times
when there were no visions, and then he went over history to show
that when people lost their prophetic sense the nation declined. It
was a wonderful discourse. But while he was giving a picture of the
woful Middle Ages, when the people lost their visions in bloody wars,
the church suddenly grew still; you could have heard a pin drop. The
foot-stove had made such a warmth under my cloak that I had almost
gone to sleep. I was glad that the Middle Ages were gone, and was
thinking that things in this world must be above all right now, when
the stillness of the church awoke me. I started up and looked around
wild like, and my heart gave a thump as I saw Elder Holmes standing
in the pulpit, silent, with uplifted hands,—and the great silk
sleeves of his robe did make his arms appear awful. The Elder was
looking straight at me.
“I turned my head. Every eye in the gallery was fixed upon me. I
looked towards the deacons’ pew. The four deacons all set, bent
forward like, staring straight at me. What had happened?
“I might well ask that. Every one seemed looking at something over my
head. I looked up, and there, right over my head, hung a vision. The
heavens had come down, or so thought all the people, and so thought
I. How shall I describe it as it appeared to me? I seem to see it now.
“Over my head hung a ring, bright as silver and pearls, and full of
golden light. A miraculous ring! From the ring there were floating
away little silver rings, which I took to be wings of angels, and
which melted away as they went up. The sunlight shone through the
silver ring as I sat between the windows, and the vision seemed at
times like a circle of glass filled with glimmering gold. I never
can describe how I felt at that hour. I thought of the hymn—Heaven
forgive my vanity!—
“‘The Lord descended from above,
And bowed the heavens most high,
And underneath his feet he cast
The garments of the sky.’
“I lifted up my eyes to the choir. The singers were all looking down
upon me as though they were just rising to sing. Even the bass-viol
_seemed_ to be looking. Then I dropped my eyes to the pew where the
deacons’ wives sat, and Deacon Coon’s wife, she looked just as though
her eyes would shoot out of her head, and Deacon Bradford’s wife, she
sat looking just like _this_, with a snuff-box in her hands—_so_—and
her neck as long as a sea loon’s flying—_so_.
“It was a curious sight. I shall never forget it to the longest day
of my life: the choir, all eyes looking down; the deacons on one side
of the high pulpit, looking out of their pew; the deacons’ wives
on the other side of the pulpit, looking out of their pew, and the
parson in his high curtained pulpit under the sounding-board, with
his arms in his robe, uplifted—this way.
“‘Signs and wonders!’ said Parson Holmes. ‘Let us gaze on in
silence!’ They did. The silence was _awful_.
“My heart beat so violently that I felt that I must get up and go out
into the yard. I rose slowly, and went down the aisle, where all the
people were sitting like statues. As soon as I got up, there was a
great uplifting of what seemed to be pearly angels’ wings around my
head—little silvery wings—and then the vision vanished.
“I never felt so proud in all my life as when I went back to Quaker
Hill that day, a camlet cloak on my back, and a vision of angels, for
aught I could say, hovering over my new silk hood. I imagined I was
one of the old patriarchs. What would Quaker Almy say now? Wa’n’t I
as good as anybody?
“The news of what had happened spread everywhere. In a day or two
Deacon Almy came to see me.
“‘Signs and wonders!’ said I.
“‘Pins and needles!’ said he: ‘The Lord don’t appear in visions to
people in camlet cloaks, that talk sassy when reproved. I have a
theory about that vision. We are commanded to try the spirit, Susan,’
said he, looking at me with a searching eye. ‘What didst thee carry
that day with thee under thy camlet cloak?’
“‘Nothing but my mother’s foot-stove,’ said I.
“‘Did it _smoke_?’ said he.
“‘A little bit,’ said I.
“‘And where did the smoke go to?’ asked he.
“‘I smothered it under my camlet cloak,’ said I. ‘A little of it
might have gone out between my shoulders,’ said I, after stopping to
think. ‘I sat bent over, and I couldn’t see my back. How could I?’
The word ‘smoke’ made me feel very uncertain.
“‘And a light smoke always forms a circle before it ascends, and in a
ray of sunlight the circle would look like gold,’ said he, ‘and then
it would all break apart feathery like,’ said he, ‘and’—I couldn’t
endure any more.
“I arose and seized the broom.
“‘You unbelieving Philistine!’ said I.
“‘You may spare that carnal weapon,’ said he. ‘Susan, you are a good
woman in the main, but you haven’t the kind of spirit that sees
visions. I’m sorry for ye.’
“Well, would you believe it? I began to doubt the vision myself, and
Elder Almy, he gave out his suspicions among the people, and some
thought one thing and some another.
“But right after Thanksgiving there came an awful snowstorm, and
though I had a silk hood and a camlet cloak, I hadn’t no meal, nor
hardly anything to eat or burn. Then Elder Almy and some of the
brethren came over from the Quaker Hill farms, and brought me two
cords of wood, and some bags of meal, and a quarter of beef, and
a whole sage cheese, and some stout flannel, and Sister Almy, she
put five pistareens in my hand, and gave me a braided husk mat and
a quilted bed-coverlet, and they all talked to me about the Inner
Light, and humility, and loving others better than self, and then
they held a meeting in my kitchen as still as the wings of death; and
when they were gone I hung up my camlet cloak in the cupboard for
good and all, and resolved to love henceforth and forever just such
poor creatures as myself, and to serve ’em as best I could; and I
never felt so thankful in all my life. Deacon White here, he and the
church all meant well, but, as Elder Almy says, ‘Always make presents
that will do people good.’ Good presents, of course, make people feel
better than poor ones,—but beautiful things may be serviceable, too.
“This is a good world, Deacon, and I will always love you for the
camlet cloak; but then, you know, Deacon, and you know, Elder,
that—There, the horn is blowing for dinner, and I’ve husked this
morning five baskets of corn.”
“_Was_ it a miracle, Susan?” asked one of the huskers,—the girl with
large eyes.
“Well, some say it was, like Elder Holmes, and some, like Elder Almy,
say it was only smoke; I can’t be sure. It seems to me like the
battle of Sheriff Muir, that my old grandfather, who was a Scotchman,
used to tell about:
“‘Some say that they ran,
Some say that we ran,
And some say that nane ran
At a’, man.’
“‘But of one thing I’m sure,
A battle there was at Sheriff Muir,
Which I saw, man,
And we ran, and they ran,
And they ran, and we ran,
Awa’, man.’”
Susan, like ordinary mortals, obeyed the lively dinner-horn, followed
by the merry Rhode Islanders.
The Miracle? It is a mystery still. Susan is dead, and the flat gray
wall-stone that marked her grave is sinking, moss-covered, into the
grass where the sparrows nest, among the many graves that lie on the
sunset slope of Quaker Hill.
[Illustration: FISHERIES BUILDING.]