I
With our modern habit of huddling together in cities, fair urban
gardens, together with many other pleasant things of an age which loved
elbow room, are now rare: yet in some of our New England seaboard
towns, which commerce has deserted and the hands of modern improvers
left unmarred, such gardens still exist, to rest the spirits of men,
tired of living at lightning express rate.
In one of these unprosperous Massachusetts towns, Oldbury, on the
broad High Street, there stands a great square brick house, with a
broad comfortable lawn stretching down to a high fence. A pathway
leads from the street, between two rows of giant elm-trees, to the
front door of the house; an entrance dignified by a portico of wooden
Corinthian columns painted white. The house itself is severely simple,
as befits a mansion, built by a Yankee ship-owner, but there is about
it a comfortable air of solidity, which makes it more attractive than
the gimcrack villas, which our successful men build nowadays. It was
evidently built to last, and to be lived in by the builder and the
children who should come after him.
On a day in June, more than eighty years ago, this house was new,
and its owner, Captain John Woodbury, was standing, his hand on the
shoulder of his son, in the garden at the back surveying with pride his
mansion. He was a short, square-built man, his legs were encased in
knee-breeches and stockings, although long trousers had already begun
to shroud the symmetry or cover the defects of most male legs. But the
Captain’s legs were stout and well developed, and were stretched apart,
as their owner stood gazing at his new house, as if he had been used
to standing on the quarter-deck and to giving orders to his crew. His
red, weather-beaten face, with its strong aquiline nose, firm mouth,
and keen black eyes, indicated that he was a seafaring man; though
his service in the land forces of the Provincial Congress in the war
against the British entitled him to the title of Captain, as well as
did his command of a ship.
There was no rollicking air of the sea-dog about the Captain; life had
been a serious business to him, although he had been used to value
it little in times of danger. New England, at the first part of this
century, was a peculiar community; the old Puritan stock, unmixed with
foreign blood, yet strengthened by founding a nation, was beginning to
break through its narrow shell, but the old faith was strong in the
land. The Captain, as he stood on his demesne, believed that he owned
it deep down to an actual Hell where the wicked and unbelieving were in
eternal torture, and that he read his title clear to his estate far up
to Heaven, where a talent for leading hymns could not be hidden during
the eternity of paradise.
A shrewd and skilful trader, as well as a navigator, was the Captain,
and during the great wars with which Napoleon fretted the world, he
had seized the opportunities offered to Americans to make money in the
carrying trade, and the new house, at which he was gazing with pride,
was the monument of his success in life; a success which had come too
late to be shared in by his wife, who had died some dozen years before.
The light-hearted boy standing by his side did not notice the tears
which filled his father’s eyes at the thought of the dear face whose
image time had not dimmed in the sturdy Captain’s remembrance. Indeed,
the boy’s laughing blue eyes, joyful mouth, and fair curly hair
recalled the mother to the old man; and the love which he bore him was
made the deeper and tenderer by the resemblance.
It had been her darling wish that her son should be educated for the
ministry; for her father had been a distinguished divine in the last
century. His name was handed down to posterity in a volume of sermons
wherein unbaptized infants and unpredestined fared but badly. Young
James had been intended from infancy for the church, by his father,
and since his mother’s death the boy had been left by the Captain,
during his voyages, in the charge of his unmarried sister, Elizabeth,
who lived in a small house on a street in Oldbury leading from the
aristocratic High Street.
The life of Aunt Elizabeth had not been made happy by her charge,
nor had he been happy with her. The good lady was an uncompromising
Puritan, rigid in bearing and severe in visage, whose life was spent
in a constant struggle with the powers of dirt and ungodliness. She
was such a noteworthy housewife that it was a saying in Oldbury that
the ministers whom she entertained at tea might have eaten off the
dining-room floor as well as off her polished mahogany. Of course
James’ muddy boots sadly disturbed his aunt’s peace of mind. Indeed,
the boy, after that brief period of infancy when he was declared by
his female relatives to look like an angel from heaven, had little
excepting his good looks to recommend him to his aunt. He did not,
like a good boy, love his books, and he was continually in mischief,
so that he gained with surprising facility the distinction of being
the bad boy of the neighborhood. The ill-natured remarks which reached
Miss Woodbury’s ears as to “old-maid’s children” made the affliction
hard for the old lady to bear. The boy was continually wandering off to
the wharves, where the ships were laying, so that he might chat with
the old salts over the wonders of the world. There he climbed up the
shrouds of the vessels and skylarked over the decks and into the holds,
returning home late to tea, covered with an unpleasant mixture of tar
and molasses, which never could be removed from his clothes, and which
would only wear off from his hands by slow attrition. Or, he would be
missing till late at night, and return declaring that his boat had run
aground on some one of the shifting sandbars of the harbor and that he
had been compelled to wait for the tide to float it off; but I doubt
whether he was really the unskilful navigator that he claimed to be.
The mantle of the Rev. James Cheever did not seem to have fallen upon
his grandson. The world seemed to the boy to be a beautiful place, full
of color and adventure, as indeed it was, at the time when the great
Napoleon was pulling down the old kings and setting up his unroyal
brothers upon ancient pedestals.
At church, the boy used to sit through the long dreary sermons,
wriggling in his seat, greatly to the annoyance of his aunt, and
a quiet smile would play over his mouth as he thought that he was
destined by his family to occupy such a pulpit and to be as dreary and
as long-winded as good old Dr. Canterbury. His mind was always full of
schemes to avoid this painful predestined fate; of plans for stowing
his little body away in the hold of a ship, to appear upon deck in
a few days after the vessel had left port and take up the important
duties of a cabin-boy. In that happy estate of life, there would be
no more Latin lessons for him, and, best of all, no Aunt Elizabeth to
scour his face, and no long sermons on the Sabbath, to say nothing of
the escape from the lesser evils of prayer-meetings and Sabbath-school
catechism.
More than once he had stolen towards the wharves with a bag of biscuits
and a brown jug of water to sustain life while a stowaway, only to go
back home when he remembered what his father’s sorrow would be upon
returning from a long voyage to find his son gone. His father’s short
stays at home in the intervals of his voyages were the pleasantest
days of the boy’s life, for there were friendly though somewhat formal
relations between the two Woodburys; and now the old gentleman had
retired from seafaring and for the last year had been rearing the fine
mansion at which he was gazing with such sorrowful pride. His son had
been growing during this last year almost as rapidly as the new house,
and now at fifteen was as tall and as good-looking a youngster as
Oldbury could boast.
He stood by his father’s side that morning, a little ill at ease. He
was nearly ready for college and would be sent up to Cambridge for
examination in a few weeks, unless he could obtain his father’s consent
that he should go to sea. All day long he had had the words upon his
tongue’s end, which should frame the arguments by which his father
would be persuaded to relieve him from the dreadful life of a scholar
and let him take to his natural element,--the water.
But as he looked at the Captain’s stern face, it became every moment
more difficult to broach the subject, and his arguments became more and
more unconvincing to himself. Finally he mustered up courage to speak:
“Father,” he said in a faltering voice, “I wish to have a talk with
you. You know that I am almost prepared for college?”
“Mr. Dillaway tells me that he _hopes_ you can pass your examinations,
but that you have been very idle. It was not by idleness and skylarking
that your good grandfather became such an ornament to his profession,
James,” said his father, patting the boy’s shoulder as he reproved him,
to show him that the words were meant in kindness.
“I know that, sir,” said James; “I am anything but a good scholar, and
indeed, sir, I do not think that it is worth while for you to waste so
much money upon my education.”
The Captain looked for a moment into his son’s face, and then said with
a gesture of command: “Come into my room, my son, we must talk this
matter over.”
The interior of the house was like that of other good houses of the
period; a long broad hall stretched through it from the front door
to the back; from this hall rose a staircase with carved and twisted
balustrade; on either side of this hall were two large square rooms,
the two sunny back rooms being for a dining-room and living room, while
the two front parlors were kept sacred to dark respectability, samplers
and furniture covered with hair-cloth, and were rarely used except for
weddings, funerals, or other entertainments. They went through the
back door into the sitting-room, in the corner of the house overlooking
the garden. Over the high, white mantelpiece hung the picture of the
Captain’s last ship, the _Arethusa_, a gem of nautical art, depicting
the staunch craft, ploughing her way under full sail, through waves of
gray-green paint as regular as the teeth of a saw. The carved teak-wood
furniture gave the room a romantic charm, and the great lips of two
blue china vases told to the receptive ears of the boy, sweet tales of
the remote earth, just as the large pink shells sang of the Spanish
Main. In a sandal-wood chest in one corner were rich stuffs and laces
which the Captain had brought with him from the voyage to France for
the wife whom he found dead on his return. The boy’s wife should wear
them some day, the good old man thought as he packed them away. They
were too sacred for any one else, though Aunt Elizabeth knew of their
existence and coveted them; for even a Yankee old maid is a daughter of
Eve.
In another corner of the room was a great iron box studded with
heavy nails and fastened by a padlock, in which the Captain kept his
valuables. James always looked at this with awe. He supposed it to be
full of gold and silver and precious stones, and that his father was
rich beyond the dreams of avarice. I could not in many pages describe
all the contents of this wonderful room; it would be as hard as to
enumerate the contents of a boy’s pocket; but I must not pass by the
musket which the Captain carried through the war of the Revolution,
nor the cutlasses which were in a rack in the corner, with the pistols
and a great brass blunderbuss used for repelling pirates from the
_Arethusa_, nor the curious old decanters filled with New England rum
or port wine, which were in a little locker in a corner of the room.
On stormy nights, James, as he sat with his father in this room poring
over his Latin grammar, would fancy that they were sailing through
the Caribbean Sea, and that a pirate would soon heave in sight and a
desperate conflict ensue. Pretty thoughts these, for a budding parson;
and dreadful to relate, the boy quite as often dreamed that they were
pirates under the “Jolly Roger,” and he would look earnestly at his
father’s wrinkled, stern face and close-shut mouth, and wonder how he
had acquired the gold supposed to be in the strong box. It would be but
a passing thought, however, of which he was ashamed the next minute as
he saw his father turning over the leaves of the little Bible which he
knew to have been his mother’s.
“The truth is, father, I do not want to go to college, I want to go to
sea; I am not fit to be a minister, and oh,--I cannot be one,” blurted
out James as soon as they were seated in the Captain’s room.
There was silence for a moment, then the Captain, clearing his
throat and wiping his gold-bowed spectacles with a great red bandana
handkerchief, spoke: “James, you know my wishes and those of your dear
mother, whom you do not remember.”
Here the old man removed his spectacles and rubbed them again quite
violently with the bandana, while James considerately turned his face
away that he might not observe the emotion which he had learned to
expect whenever his father mentioned his mother’s name. “She dedicated
you, James, as an infant to the service of the Lord, and it is with
this end in view that I have had you educated. And now, just as I am on
the point of sending you to the college at Cambridge, you tell me that
you wish to go to sea.”
The boy looked down at the ground under his father’s stern, sad gaze
and tried to speak. “I do not believe that I can ever stand up in a
pulpit and preach long sermons, and I am very sure that I should not
enjoy it,” he finally stammered.
“Enjoy it!” interrupted his father, sternly. “Do you think that you
were put into this world for the purpose of enjoying yourself? To
think of your speaking of a holy calling as if it were a game with the
devil’s books. Why, boy,” he continued, “I have labored all these years
that you might have a higher place in the world than mine has been.
I had no advantages of education, my parents were poor and could not
give them to me, I have led a hard rough life from boyhood up, and have
lived often with wicked men. I might have been wicked myself had it
not been for your mother, who led me to the faith and for her unseen
presence which has blessed me since her death. Through my long voyages
in the solitude in which a master of a vessel lives, I have always
thought that I would save you from the wretchedness of a sailor’s life.
It is a dog’s life, lad.”
“Sailors are not hypocrites,” said the boy, petulantly. “They like
their work better than they would any other, and they do it well
because they like it. If I am made a minister, I shall be a hypocrite.”
“My son,” interrupted the Captain, bringing his hand down sharply upon
the table, “you are talking very foolishly and wrongly. In a few weeks,
your teacher informs me, you will be ready for college, and so far
I may compel you to go in the career I have marked out for you. I do
not choose that you shall go before the mast. Of course, it is in your
power to disregard my opinion and disobey me. I trust, however, that
your love for me and for the memory of your mother will prevent your
taking a wilful course. I wish that I knew enough to help you in your
work, my boy.”
“You don’t know how stupid the Latin grammar is, father. I believe
that I can learn a great deal more by seeing the world than by
committing such stuff as this to memory.” As he spoke, James opened
his dog’s-eared Latin grammar which lay upon the table and showed his
father a formidable table of irregular verbs. The Captain started to
put on his spectacles to look at the book, but stopping as if an idea
occurred to him, he laid them upon the table. He saw that he was being
craftily led from the region of the known to the unknown. As an honest,
truth-telling man, he would have had to confess that the process of
acquiring a knowledge of the Latin tongue did not seem to him an
inspiring pursuit.
“James,” he said, after shutting the Latin grammar, “I shall not
discuss with you about the details of a matter of which I know nothing.
The education which produced your good grandfather, James Cheever,
after whom you were named, is not to be criticised by an ignorant old
sea-captain like me.”
“What is one man’s meat, is another man’s poison, father,” replied the
boy, whose delicate features took something of the old man’s severe
expression, as the two contended in argument. “I’m afraid that I have
only my grandfather’s name, not his disposition. It makes me sick
to stay in doors moping over books: I take no pleasure in them. I do
not think that I could skate very well if every motion I took was
disagreeable to me. Now, Tom Gaston, who went to Cambridge last year,
is a good boy and loves his books, but he always ties granny knots when
he reefs a sail; and his chest is as flat as a flounder’s. He would
make a good parson. Do you wish me to try to be like him?”
“Go to your room, James,” interrupted his father, sternly; for Tom
Gaston was his pet abomination and his parental authority had been too
long questioned. “You have had my decision, and I will have no more
talk about it.”
James bowed respectfully to his father (if he had been born sixty years
later, I fear that he would have slammed the door), and went slowly to
his room.
The June day had lost its beauty for him. What was the loveliness of
nature to a poor chap whose future life must be passed in libraries, at
the odious task of writing sermons in sixteen parts, or, worst of all,
in delivering these sermons after he had written them, to a nodding
congregation twice a Sunday for fifty-two weeks every year, to say
nothing of the Friday prayer-meetings? Could a man, who in spirit was
navigating the Spanish Main, in the body discourse for an hour upon a
Scriptural text? He had gone into the conflict with his father with
little hope and much fear. He had long pondered over what he should
say to him and rehearsed the arguments to be used on that momentous
occasion; but when he came to face the dreaded authority, the arguments
disintegrated, and he felt that his father had got the better of him.
Even the irregular verbs had failed--well, to college he must go--worse
luck!