Produced by Curtis Weyant and the Online Distributed
Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was
produced from images produced by the Wright American Fiction
Project.)
EVENTIDE
A SERIES OF
TALES AND POEMS.
BY
EFFIE AFTON.
"I never gaze
Upon the evening, but a tide of awe,
And love, and wonder, from the Infinite,
Swells up within me, as the running brine
From the smooth-glistening, wide-heaving sea,
Grows in the creeks and channels of a stream,
Until it threats its, banks. It is not joy,--
'Tis sadness more divine."
ALEXANDER SMITH.
BOSTON:
FETRIDGE AND COMPANY.
1854.
Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1854, by
J. M. HARPER,
In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the
District of Massachusetts.
Stereotyped by
HOBART & ROBBINS,
New England Type and Stereotype Foundery,
BOSTON.
_To the_
FIRESIDES OF THE WESTERN WORLD,
_With the fond Hope_
THAT ITS PAGES MAY SERVE TO ENLIVEN OR ENTERTAIN SOME FEW OF THOSE EVENING
HOURS WHEN PLEASANT FACES GATHER ROUND WARM, GLOWING HEARTH-STONES,
_This simple Volume_
IS UNOBTRUSIVELY PRESENTED,
BY THE
UNKNOWN AND NAMELESS AUTHOR,
WHO WOULD
RATHER FIND WARM HEARTS AMONG HER READERS THAN WIN THE LAURELS OF
A TRANSITORY FAME.
Transcriber's Note:
There are two instances of illegible words in this text, both as
a result of ink blots. They have been indicated as [illegible].
PREFACE.
When the sun has disappeared behind the western mountains, and the stars
sparkled o'er the blue concave, we have been accustomed to sit down to
the compilation of this unpretending volume, and therefore it is called
"Eventide." O, that its pages might be read at that calm, silent
hour,--their follies mercifully overlooked, their faults as kindly
forgiven.
Fain would we dedicate this "waif of weary moments" to some warm-hearted,
watchful spirit, who might shelter it from the pitiless assaults of the
wide, wide world. But will not our simple booklet prove too insignificant
a mark for the critic's arrows?
In the language of another, we confidently say, melancholy is indifferent
to criticism.
Thus,
"In our own weakness shielded,"
O, Reading Public, we steal upon you 'mid the falling shadows, and lay
"Eventide" at your feet.
CONTENTS.
PAGE
WIMBLEDON; OR, THE HERMIT OF THE CEDARS, 7
SCRAGGIEWOOD, A TALE OF AMERICAN LIFE, 245
ALICE ORVILLE; OR, LIFE IN THE SOUTH AND WEST, 329
COME TO ME WHEN I'M DYING, 401
ELLEN, 404
I'M TIRED OF LIFE, 405
LINES TO A FRIEND, ON REMOVING FROM HER NATIVE VILLAGE, 407
HO FOR CALIFORNIA! 409
N. P. ROGERS, 411
LINES, 413
HENRY CLAY, 415
THE SOUL'S DESTINY, 417
LINES TO A MARRIED FRIEND, 419
NEW ENGLAND SABBATH BELLS, 421
MY HEART, 423
OUR HELEN, 425
MY BONNET OF BLUE, 427
DARK-BROWED MARTHA, 429
WIMBLEDON;
OR
THE HERMIT OF THE CEDARS.
CHAPTER I.
"The stars are out, and by their glistening light,
I fain would whisper in thine ear a tale;
Wilt hear it kindly? and if long and dull
Believe me far more deeply grieved than thou."
Clear and loud on the hushed silence of the midnight hour rang the chimes
of the village clock, from the tall steeple-tower of the quaint old
church of Wimbledon, while several ambitious chickens rose from their
neighboring perches, piped a shrill answering salute, and sank to their
nocturnal slumbers again. But nor clock nor chanticleer disturbed
Wimbledon. Still she slept on beneath the blossoming stars; and by their
soft, inspiring light, with your permission, gentle reader, we'll enter
the sleeping village.
Dim gleams of snowy cottages, peeping through a wealth of embowering
vines, steal on our star-lighted vision as we roam along the grassy
streets, and we scent the breath of gardens odorous with the sweets of
dew-watered flowers. Above and around we hear the musical stir of the
night wind among boughs and branches of luxuriant foliage, while ever and
anon it comes from afar with a deep-toned, solemn murmur, as though it
swept o'er forests of cedar and mournfully-echoing pine. Still roaming
on, the low rippling of flowing waters comes soothingly to our ears, and
we pause on the bank of a flower-bordered river that goes sweetly singing
on its way to the distant ocean. A tiny sailboat lies in a sheltering
cove, rocked gently to and fro by the swaying current. On a hill beyond
the stream we mark a large white-belfried building, relieved against a
dark background of wide-stretching timber-land. And turning our delighted
footsteps down an avenue of lofty cedar and linden trees, there rises at
length before our vision a splendid mansion, built after a most beautiful
style of architecture, with deep, bay windows, long corridors and
vine-covered terraces. Magnificent gardens, displaying the perfection of
taste, lay sloping to the southward. On the east the silvery river was
seen glancing through the shrubbery that adorned its banks. To the west
lay a beautiful park and pleasure ground, while far away to the northward
stretched the deep, dense forest, tall, dark and sombre.
And over all this lovely scene the stars shed their mild, ethereal light.
O, Wimbledon! art thou not beautiful 'neath their soft, silver gleams?
And doth not shadowy-vested romance roam thy grassy paths and
flower-strewn ways to-night, and with her wild, mysterious eyes gloating
on thy entrancing scenery, doth she not resolve to dwell awhile, 'mid thy
embowering vines, thy dewy-petalled flowers, mournfully-musical
cedar-groves, and web a fiction from the thousand tangled threads which
complicate and ramify thy social life?
We shall see what we shall see in Wimbledon; for gray dawn is already
breaking in the dappled east, and a man, closely buttoned to the chin in
a gray overcoat, emerges from a large brick mansion on the outskirts of
the village, and directs his steps toward an old, black, rickety-looking
house, which stands just on the bank of the river, surrounded by a
tangled growth of brush-wood.
Here the gairish day at length disclosed what the modest night had
obscured with her diamond veil of stars. Squalid poverty glared through
the broken window-panes, and want seemed clattering her doleful song on
the flying clapboards and crazy casements. A feeble, struggling light
from within showed the inmates were stirring as the man in the overcoat
gave a loud, careless thump on the trembling door, which was opened by a
pale, gaunt-looking urchin, clad in garments bearing patches of divers
hues.
"Is your mother at home, Bill?" inquired the man, gruffly.
"Yes, sir," answered the boy in a meek tone; "will you please to walk in,
Mr. Pimble?"
"No; tell her I want her to come and wash for me to-day," said the man,
in a harsh, rough voice, as he turned away.
The boy bowed and reëntered the miserable apartment, where a few soggy
chips smoked on a bed of embers that were gathered in the corner of a
huge fire-place. A woman, with a begrimed cotton handkerchief tied over
her head, sat on the hearth endeavoring to blow them into a blaze, while
the smoke, that poured down the foul and blackened chimney, caused the
tears to roll from her eyes, and baffled her efforts.
"Never mind the fire, mother," said the lad, approaching; "I'll try and
pick up some dry sticks in course of the day to have the room warm when
you come home to-night. Mr. Pimble has just called, and wants you to go
and wash for him to-day."
"He won't pay me a cent if I go," answered the woman moodily; "all my
drudgery for that family goes to pay the rent of this miserable old
shell."
"I think he will give you something to-day, mother, if you tell him how
needy we are," suggested the boy.
"Never a cent," said the woman, with a gloomy shake of her head;
"however, I may as well go. I shall get a cup of tea and bit of dinner,
and I'll look out to bring you a cake, Willie."
"O, will you, mother?" exclaimed the boy, his wan features brightening
momentarily at the prospect of a single cake to appease the gnawings of
hunger.
The woman threw a coarse, threadbare blanket over her shoulders and went
forth, while the boy bent his way along the riverbank in search of dry
twigs and branches with which to replenish their wasted stock of fuel.
And he thought, as he picked up here and there the scanty sticks and laid
them in small bundles, of some lines of poetry he read on a bit of
newspaper that blew across his path one day:
"If joy and pain in this nether world,
Must fairly balanced be,
O, why not some of the _pain_ to them.
And some of the _joy_ to me?"
And he could not settle the point in his youthful mind. He could not
tell why David Pimble should go to school the year round at the great,
white seminary on the hill, while he could only go about two months in
the cold, biting winter to a town-school a mile distant. He could not
tell why said David should have warm woollen jackets, while his were
threadbare and patched with rags; nor why David should fare sumptuously
on buttered toast and smoking muffins, while he starved on the crusts
that were cast from his well-spread table.
All these were knotty points which poor little Willie Danforth was too
young and untaught to solve. When he should be older and wiser, would he
be able to solve them? He didn't know;--he hoped so; though he feared he
never would be much wiser than now, if he was always to remain so poor,
and be debarred from the privilege of attending school.
There's one school whose doors are and have ever been open wide for
Willie--the school of poverty and experience. Lessons swift and bitter
are indelibly impressed on the minds of the pupils there.
Thoughtful and abstracted, Willie wandered along, gathering his little
bundles of firewood, till he found himself at the foot of the hill on
which stood the great, white seminary where David Pimble, his brother and
sister, went to school month after month and year after year. He heard
voices, and, looking up, beheld the little group that were occupying his
thoughts, on the hill-top, laughing and mocking at him as he toiled along
with his bundles of sticks. His cheeks glowed with anger for a moment,
and then grew ashy pale, as he plodded on toward his miserable home.
Dilly Danforth, the poor washerwoman, had seen better days; but the
drunken dissipation of a husband, who was now in his grave, had reduced
her to abject, despairing poverty. Her unfortunate marriage and
persistence in clinging to the man of her choice, and enduring all his
abuses, excited the displeasure of her family, and they cast her from
them to suffer and struggle on as best she might. She knew not as she had
a relative in the world. She surely had no friend, save Willie, her
little boy, with whom she dwelt in the comfortless abode we have briefly
visited.
Alas for the suffering poor! How prone are the wealthy, by warm, glowing
grates, to forget their cheerless habitations, and turn inhumanly from
their pitiful tales of want and destitution!