This was the second week in May, in the year 1830. We were a promising
country, but had not yet performed. Neither railroads, telegraphs, nor
cheap postage had been established. Enthusiastic inventors yet sucked
their fingers in garrets, waiting for the good time coming; and
philanthropic statesmen aired their vocabularies in vain, in
Congressional halls, built in defiance of acoustics. Their words rose,
their fine sentiments curled up and down the pillars of the temple of
eloquence, and fell flat to the floor. Meanwhile human nature travelled
by stage-coaches; and postage for over a hundred miles rose to eighteen
cents. Not a lover's sigh for a cent less; and it took a fortune for
persons of sensibility to exchange sentiments.
The consequence to country-people of this last-mentioned fact was, that
everybody who went anywhere took everybody's letters, and, as there were
no expresses, added, of course, everybody's packages and messages. And
the consequence of this was, that everybody made everybody's purchases,
whether gowns, books, bonnets, or what not. It mattered little who did
errands, so only they were done. Generally, the one store-keeper bought
our bonnets when he went to Boston for his yearly stock of goods, and
our one bonnet lasted in those days a year, being retrimmed for winter
weather. I remember, too, when our one store-keeper, mingling in the
æsthetic conversation at one of our parties, where Art was on the
_tapis_, made a comical mistake, but one natural enough, too,--stating
that he could buy, and had bought, Vandykes for ten dollars. We were not
thinking of exactly the same kind of Vandyke that he was.
Many a time have I carried in my trunk more letters than the mail-bag
did to Boston, and conscientiously finished all the parish's business
before touching my own.
A certain amount of self-complacency and satisfaction is felt, and
laudably earned, by being intrusted with commissions; and I flatter
myself few persons ever set off for New York with such an array of them
as I did on this occasion.
Looking over my list, I must confess to a flush of real enjoyment at
finding _carte blanche_ for a scarf. "Now, that is something like!" said
I. "I can see now how pleasantly an artist feels, or would feel, at an
order for a picture,--'your own subject,--your own terms.' Miss Patty
Jones knows what is what, and shall be my patroness."
And did I not vindicate triumphantly Miss Patty's confidence? I knew
better than to buy her a gray and brown thing, merely because she, too,
was gray and brown. I wreathed her with lilies and hyacinths and French
green leaves, and she blossomed under it like a rose. If she were not
the garland, she wore it, and so borrowed bloom and gay freshness. She
extolled my taste to all Weston.
Then Mrs. Eben Loring had concluded on the whole that I should buy her a
hat, in Maiden Lane, at the very tip-top milliner's. The thought of my
return was somewhat embittered by the prospective necessity of carrying
two very large bandboxes in my lap, in case of rain. Rain might not
unreasonably be expected in the course of a three days' journey. Think
of all the bandboxes that in such a case would be put in at the
coach-window by the driver, to be held in the hapless laps of the nine
passengers! Almost I was persuaded to leave my own black satin bonnet,
and perambulate the streets of New York in my travelling-calash, which
looked exactly like, and was nearly of the size of, a "bellows-top
shay."
I was thinking of this last sacrifice, when my husband said, in a
dreamy, bewildered way,--
"Here are five boxes, mother, two bundles, and the rest of these books.
I give up!"
"Give up? Not I! Now, where a man's energies are exhausted, a woman's
just begin to show themselves. First and foremost, lock this trunk, and
let me put the key in my pocket. That's one thing done, and can't be
undone."
He stepped back from the trunk.
"What's this? all your clothes on the floor!"
"Well, yes, my dear, most of 'em. You see, I couldn't leave Zipporah
Haven's shawl out, which she sends to her grandmother; and I must put in
these bundles of the Burts's, and Mary Skinner's box of linen thread. If
my own things are lost, why, they must be replaced, you know, my dear;
that is all."
"And we must keep a good lookout, ourselves, that our bandboxes and
bundles don't fall off behind," replied the Dominie, faintly.
"Yes; and you can put the small trunk under my feet, and the big basket
under your own, and you will keep an eye on my red shawl,--and pray
don't lose the umbrella, nor your great-coat, nor your cane. I will, on
my part, see to these three small bundles, and my parasol. Doubtless we
shall go on smoothly as need be, only I am afraid you won't be able to
think up many sermons on the highway. There! I forgot the jar of
currant-jelly to go to Ruth Hoyt's aunt! However, we must manage
somehow. You are sure our names are down at the stage-office?"
But, like Charles XII., "after Pultowa's dreadful day," when the
tale-teller listened for his sympathy,
"The king had been an hour asleep."
I am ashamed to say that I must have lost myself after that, though I
thought I was only thinking of the Day of Judgment. But I must have
dreamed it, or how should I have thought it the last trumpet, when it
was only the stage-driver's warning knock?
It was delightful to hear the knock, and the simultaneous clang of pots
and pans which assured us, that, though night had been no night to us,
the dark morning would usher in our breakfast with coffee by the
faithful Polly. The driver coming in again before we had finished, we
seduced him without scruple into taking a cup of boiling comfort, while
we guiltily collected the waifs and strays of our multifarious luggage.
Many a time I have waited, myself, in the coach, while similar orgies
were going on among the unready, so I know just how vexed and impatient
the passengers were. But what use to go on without the driver? At last
we squeezed into the full stage.