Time waits for no man, and least of all for story writers. Our readers must move six years forward at a step, and rest for one Sunday in Norwood, where travelling on Sunday is yet against the law.
It is worth all the inconveniences arising from the occasional over-action of New-England Sabbath observance, to obtain the full flavor of a New-England Sunday. But for this, one should have been born there; should have found Sunday already waiting for him, and accepted it with implicit and absolute conviction, as if it were a law of nature, in the same way that night and day, summer and winter, are parts of nature. He should have been brought up by parents who had done the same thing; as they were by parents even more strict, if that were possible; until, not religious persons peculiarly, but every body,—not churches alone, but society itself, and all its population, those who broke it as much as those who kept it—were stained through with the color of Sunday. Nay, until Nature had adopted it, and laid its commands on all birds and beasts, on the sun and winds, and upon the whole atmosphere, so that, without much imagination, one might imagine, in a genuine New-England Sunday of the Connecticut river valley stamp, that God was still on that day resting from all the work which he had created and made, and that all his work rested with him!
Over all the town rested the Lord’s peace! The saw was ripping away yesterday in the carpenter’s shop, and the hammer was noisy enough. To-day there is not a sign of life there. The anvil makes no music to-day. Tommy Taft’s buckets and barrels give forth no hollow, thumping sound. The mill is silent—only the brook continues noisy. Listen! In yonder pine woods what a cawing of crows! Like an echo, in a wood still more remote, other crows are answering. But even a crow’s throad to-day is musical. Do they think, because they have black coats on, that they are parsons, and have a right to play pulpit with all the pine trees? Nay. The birds will not have any such monopoly,—they are all singing, and singing all together, and no one cares whether his song rushes across another’s or not. Larks and robins, blackbirds and orioles, sparrows and bluebirds, mocking cat-birds and wrens, were furrowing the air with such mixtures as no other day but Sunday, when all artificial and human sounds cease, could ever hear. Every now and then a bobolink seemed impressed with the duty of bringing these jangling birds into more regularity; and, like a country singing-master, he flew down the ranks, singing all the parts himself in snatches, as if to stimulate and help the laggards. In vain! Sunday is the birds’ day, and they will have their own democratic worship!
There was no sound in the village street. Look either way—not a vehicle, not a human being! The smoke rose up soberly and quietly, as if it said—It is Sunday! The leaves on the great elms hung motionless, glittering in dew, as if they too, like the people who dwelt under their shadow, were waiting for the bell to ring for meeting. Bees sung and flew as usual, but honey-bees have a Sunday way with them all the week, and could scarcely change for the better on the seventh day!
But oh, the Sun! It had sent before and cleared every stain out of the sky. The blue heaven was not dim and low, as on secular days, but curved and deep, as if on Sunday it shook off all incumbrance which during the week had lowered and flattened it, and sprang back to the arch and symmetry of a dome. All ordinary sounds caught the spirit of the day. The shutting of a door sounded twice as far as usual. The rattle of a bucket in a neighbor’s yard, no longer mixed with heterogeneous noises, seemed a new sound. The hens went silently about, and roosters crowed in psalm-tunes. And when the first bell rung, Nature seemed overjoyed to find something that it might do without breaking Sunday, and rolled the sound over and over, and pushed it through the air, and raced with it over field and hill, twice as far as on week days. There were no less than seven steeples in sight from the belfry, and the sexton said: “on still Sundays I’ve heard the bell, at one time and another, when the day was fair, and the air moving in the right way, from every one of them steeples, and I guess likely they’ve all heard our’n.”
“Come, Rose!” said Agate Bissell, at an even earlier hour than when Rose usually awakened—“Come, Rose, it is the Sabbath. We must not be late Sunday morning of all days in the week. It is the Lord’s day.”
There was little preparation required for the day. Saturday night, in some parts of New-England, was considered almost as sacred as Sunday itself. After sundown on Saturday night no play, and no work, except such as is immediately preparatory to the Sabbath, were deemed becoming in good Christians. The clothes had been laid out the night before. Nothing was forgotten. The best frock was ready; the hose and shoes were waiting. Every article of linen, every ruffle and ribbon, were selected on Saturday night. Every one in the house walked mildly. Every one spoke in a low tone. Yet all were cheerful. The mother had on her kindest face, and nobody laughed, but every body made it up in smiling. The nurse smiled, and the children held on to keep down a giggle within the lawful bounds of a smile; and the doctor looked rounder and calmer than ever; and the dog flapped his tail on the floor with a softened sound, as if he had fresh wrapped it in hair for that very day. Aunt Toodie, the cook, (so the children had changed Mrs. Sarah Good’s name,) was blacker than ever and shinier than ever, and the coffee better, and the cream richer, and the broiled chickens juicier and more tender, and the biscuit whiter and the corn-bread more brittle and sweet.
When the good doctor read the Scriptures at family prayer, the infection of silence had subdued every thing except the clock. Out of the wide hall could be heard in the stillness the old clock, that now lifted up its voice with unwonted emphasis, as if, unnoticed through the bustling week, Sunday was its vantage ground, to proclaim to mortals the swift flight of time! And if the old pedant performed the task with something of an ostentatious precision, it was because in that house nothing else put on official airs, and the clock felt the responsibility of doing it for the whole mansion!
And now came mother and catechism; for Mrs. Wentworth followed the old custom, and declared that no child of hers should grow up without catechism. Secretly, the doctor was quite willing, though openly he played off upon the practice a world of good-natured discouragement, and declared that there should be an opposition set up—a catechism of Nature, with natural laws for decrees, and seasons for Providence, and flowers for graces! The younger children were taught in simple catechism. But Rose, having reached the mature age of twelve, was now manifesting her power over the Westminster shorter Catechism, and as it was simply an achievement of memory and not of the understanding, she had the book at great advantage, and soon subdued every question and answer in it. As much as possible, the doctor was kept aloof on such occasions. His grave questions were not to edification, and often they caused Rose to stumble, and brought down sorely the exultation with which she rolled forth “they that are effectually called to do in this life partake of justification, adoption, sanctification and the several benefits which in this life do either accompany or flow from them.”
“What do those words mean, Rose?”
“Which words, pa?”
“Adoption, sanctification and justification?”
Rose hesitated, and looked at her mother, for rescue.
“Doctor, why do you trouble the child? Of course, she don’t know yet all the meaning. But that will come to her when she grows older.”
“You make a nest of her memory, then, and put words there, like eggs, for future hatching?”
“Yes, that is it exactly; birds do not hatch their eggs the minute they lay them. They wait.”
“Laying eggs at twelve to be hatched at twenty is subjecting them to some risk, is it not?”
“It might be so with eggs, but not with catechism. That will keep without spoiling a hundred years!”
“Because it is so dry?”
“Because it is so good. But do, dear husband, go away, and not put notions in the children’s heads. It’s hard enough already to get them through their tasks. Here’s poor Arthur, who has been two Sundays on one question, and has not got it yet.”
Arthur, aforesaid, was sharp and bright in any thing addressed to his reason, but he had no verbal memory, and he was therefore wading painfully through the catechism like a man in a deep, muddy road, with this difference, that the man carries too much clay with him, while nothing stuck to poor Arthur. Great was the lad’s pride and exultation on a former occasion when his mother advanced him from the smaller Catechism to the dignity of the Westminster Catechism. He could hardly wait for Sunday to begin his conquests. He was never known after the first Sunday to show any further impatience. He had been four weeks in reaching the fourth question, and two weeks already had he lain before that luminous answer, beating on it, like a ship too deeply laden, and unable to cross the bar.
“What is god, Arthur?” said his mother.
“God is—is a—God is—and God—God is a—”
Having got safely so far, the mother suggests “spirit,” at which he gasps eagerly, “God is a Spirit.”
“Infinite,” says the mother.
“Infinite,” says Arthur.
And then blushing and twisting in his chair, he seemed unable to extract any thing more.
“Eternal,” says the mother.
“Eternal,” says the boy.
“Well, go on; God is a spirit, infinite, eternal;—what else?”
“God is a spirit, eternal, infinite,—what else?”
“Nonsense,” says the startled mother.
“Nonsense,” goes on the boy, supposing it to be a part of the regular answer.
“Arthur, stop! what work you are making!”
To stop was the very exercise in Catechism at which he was most proficient; and he stopped so fully and firmly that nothing more could be got out of him or into him during the exercise. But his sorrow soon fled, for the second bell had rung, and it was just time to walk, and “every body was going,” the servant reported. the doctor had been called away, and his wife and the children moved down the yard,—Rose with demure propriety, and Arthur and his eight-year-old brother, Charles, with less piety manifest in deportment, but, on the whole, with decent demeanor. The beauty of the day, the genial season of the year, brought forth every one—old men and their feebler old wives, young and hearty men and their plump and ruddy companions,—young men and girls and children, thick as punctuation points in Hebrew text, filled the street. In a low voice, they spoke to each other in single sentences.
“A fine day! There’ll be a good congregation out to-day.”
“Yes; we may expect a house full. How is Widow Cheney—have you heard?”
“Well, not much better; can’t hold out many days. It will be a great loss to the children.”
“Yes; but we must all die—nobody can skip his turn. Does she still talk about them that’s gone?”
“They say not. I believe she’s sunk into a quiet way; and it looks as if she would go off easy.”
“Sunday is a good day for dying—it’s about the only journey that speeds well on this day!”
There was something striking in the outflow of people into the street that, till now, had seemed utterly deserted. There was no fevered hurry; no negligent or poorly dressed people. Every family came in groups—old folks and young children; and every member blossomed forth in his best apparel, like a rose-bush in June. Do you know that man in a silk hat and new black coat? Probably it is some stranger. No; it is the carpenter, Mr. Baggs, who was racing about yesterday with his sleeves rolled up, and a dust-and-business look in his face! I knew you would not know him. Adams Gardner, the blacksmith,—does he not look every inch a judge, now that he is clean-washed, shaved, and dressed? His eyes are as bright as the sparks that fly from his anvil!
Are not the folks proud of their children? See what groups of them! How ruddy and plump are most! Some are roguish, and cut clandestine capers at every chance. Others seem like wax figures, so perfectly proper are they. Little hands go slyly through the pickets to pluck a tempting flower. Other hands carry hymn-books or Bibles. But, carry what they may, dressed as each parent can afford, is there any thing the sun shines upon more beautiful than these troops of Sunday children?
The old bell had it all its own way up in the steeple. It was the licensed noise of the day. In a long shed behind the church stood a score and half-score of wagons and chaises and carryalls,—the horses already beginning the forenoon’s work of stamping and whisking the flies. More were coming. Hiram Beers had “hitched up,” and brought two loads with his new hack, and now, having secured the team, he stood with a few admiring young fellows about him, remarking on the people as they came up[]
“There’s Trowbridge—he’ll git asleep afore the first prayer’s over. I don’t b’lieve he’s heerd a sermon in ten years. I’ve seen him sleep standin’ up in singin’.
“Here comes Deacon Marble,—smart old feller, ain’t h3?—wouldn’t think it, jest to look at him! Face looks like an ear of last summer’s sweet corn, all dried up; but I tell ye he’s got the juice in him yit. Aunt Polly’s gittin’ old, ain’t she? They say she can’t walk half the time—lost the use of her limbs; but it’s all gone to her tongue. That’s as good as a razor, and a sight better ’n mine, for it never needs sharpenin’.
“Stand away, boys, there’s ’Biah Cathcart. Good horses—not fast, but mighty strong, just like the owner.”
And with that Hiram touched his new Sunday hat to Mrs. Cathcart, and Alice; and as he took the horses by the bits, he dropped his head and gave the Cathcart boys a look of such awful solemnity, all except one eye, that they lost their sobriety. Barton alone remained sober as a judge.
“Here comes ‘Dot-and-Go[-]One’ and his wife. They’re my kind o’ Christians. She is a saint, at any rate.”
“How is it with you, Tommy Taft?”
“Fair to middlin’, thank’e. Such weather would make a handspike blossom, Hiram?”
“Don’t you think that’s a leetle strong, Tommy, for Sunday? P’raps you mean afore it’s cut?”
“Sartin; that’s what I mean. But you mustn’t stop me Hiram. Parson Buel ’ll be lookin’ for me. He never begins till I git there.”
“You mean you always git there ’fore he begins?”
Next, Hiram’s prying eyes saw Mr. Turfmould, the sexton and undertaker, who seemed to be in a pensive meditation upon all the dead that he had ever buried. He looked upon men in a mild and pitying manner, as if he forgave them for being in good health. You could not help feeling that he gazed upon you with a professional eye, and saw just how you would look in the condition which was to him the most interesting period of a man’s earthly state. He walked with a soft tread, as if he was always at a funeral; and, when he shook your hand, his left hand half-followed his right, as if he were about beginning to lay you out. He was one of the few men absorbed by his business, and who unconsciously measured all things from its stand-point.
“Good-morning, Mr. Turfmould! How’s your health? How’s business with you?”
“Good—the Lord be praised! I’ve no reason to complain.”
And he glided silently and smoothly into the church.
“There comes Judge Bacon, white and ugly,” said the critical Hiram. “I wonder what he comes to meetin’ for. Lord knows he needs it, slippery old sinner! Face ’s as white as a lily; his heart’s as black as a chimney flue afore it’s cleaned. He’ll get his flue burned out if he don’t repent, that’s certain. He don’t believe the Bible. They say he don’t believe in God. Wal, I guess it’s pretty even between ’em. Shouldn’t wonder if God didn’t believe in him neither.”
Hiram’s prejudices were perhaps a little too severe. The judge was very selfish, but not otherwise bad. He would not do a positively bad deed if he could help it; but he neglected to do a great many good ones which other men with warm hearts would have done. But he made up in manner whatever he lacked in feeling. Dressed with unexceptionable propriety, his whole bearing was dignified and kind. No man in the village spoke more musically and gently; no one met you with a greater cordiality. His expressions of kind wishes, and his anxiety to serve you, needed only a single instance of hearty fulfilment to make Judge Bacon seem sincerely and unusually kind. But those who had most to do with him found that he was cold and selfish at heart, inflexible and unfeeling when seeking his rights or interests; and his selfishness was the more ghastly as it clothed itself in the language and manners of gentle goodwill.
“He talks to you,” said Hiram, “just as Black Sam lathers you; a kind of smooth rubbing goes on, and you feel soft and satisfied with yourself, and sort o’ lean to him, when he takes you by the nose and shaves, and shaves, and shaves, and it’s so smooth that you don’t feel the razor. But I tell you, when you git away your skin smarts. You’ve been shaved.
“Here come the Bages, and the Weekses, and a whole raft from Hardscrabble,” said Hiram, as five or six one-horse wagons drove up. At a glance one could see that these were farmers who lived to work. They were spare in figure, brown in complexion—every thing worn off but bone and muscle—like ships like iron masts and wire rigging. They drove little nubbins of horses, tough and rough, that had never felt a blanket in winter or known a leisure day in summer.
“Them fellers,” said Hiram, “is just like stones. I don’t believe there’s any blood or innards in ’em more’n in a crowbar. They work early, and work all day, and in the night, and keep workin’, and never seem to get tired except Sunday, when they’ve nothin’ to do. You know when Fat Porter was buried, they couldn’t git him into the hearse, and had to carry him with poles, and Weeks was one of the bearers, and they had a pretty heavy time of it, nigh about three hours, what with liftin’ and fixin’ him at the house, and fetchin’ him to the church door, and then carryin’ him to the graveyard, and Weeks said he hadn’t enjoyed a Sunday so much he couldn’t tell when.
“ ‘Hiram,’ sez he, ‘I should like Sunday as well as week days if I could work on it; but I git awful tired doin’ nothin’.’
“They say,” said Hiram, “that they never do exactly die up in Hardscrabble. They work up and up, and grow thinner and thinner like a knife-blade, till they git so small that some day they accidentally git misplaced or dropped, and nobody misses ’em. So that they die off in a general way, like pins, without any one of ’em making a particular fuss about it. But I guess that ain’t so,” added Hiram, with a grave air, as if fearing that he might mislead the young folks about him. Then, with demure authority, he said: “Boys, go in; the bell’s done tollin’, and meetin’s goin’ to begin. Go in, and don’t make a noise, and see you tell me where the text is. I’ve got to look after these horses, or they’ll get mixed up.”
This remark was called forth by a squeal and a rattle and backing of wagons, which showed that mischief was already brewing.
Having got the people all safely into church, Hiram bestowed his attention on the horses. The whole green was lined with horses. Every hitching-post, and the railing along the widewalk and at the fronts of the stores, were closely occupied.
Seeing Pete leaning on Dr. Wentworth’s gate, Hiram beckoned him over, and employed him in his general tour of inspection as a bishop might employ his chaplain. Here the reins had been pulled under a horse’s feet, next a horse had got his bridle off; another had backed and filled till the wagon wheels were cramped; and at each position, Hiram issued orders to Pete, who good-naturedly, and as a matter indisputable, did as he was ordered. If Hiram had told Pete to shoulder one of the horses, he would have made the attempt.
“Look here, Pete, if that ain’t a shame, then there ain’t no truth in the ten commandments! A man that’ll drive a horse with a sore shoulder like that is a brute. Just feel how hot it is,—Pete, you get a bucket of water, and put a little warm in it to take off the chill, and wash that off, and take him out of harness,—I swow!—and I don’t know but I ought to say I swear! for it’s Sunday work. Anyhow, if Blakesley don’t know any better than that, he ought not to own a horse. There he is in church a hearin’ the Gospel, and feelin’ all over as comfortable as a cruller, and he’s left his horse out here to the flies and the sun, with a shoulder that’s a disgrace to Christianity. But that’s the way with us pretty much all ’round. If we are good here, we are bad there. Folks’s good and bad is like a board-teeter,—if one end goes up, t’other is sure to go down.”
It was curious to see Pete’s superiority to Hiram in the matter of dogs. In several wagons lay the master’s dog, and Hiram was not permitted to approach without dispute; but there was not a dog, big or little, cross or affectionate, that did not own the mysterious power that Pete had over animals. Even dogs in whom a sound conscience was bottomed on an ugly temper, practised a surly submission to Pete’s familiarity.
It was nearly twelve o’clock, when Dr. Wentworth, returning from his round of visits, found Hiram sitting on the fence, his labors over, and waiting for Dr. Buell to finish.
“Not in church, Hiram? I’m afraid you’ve not been a good boy.”
“Don’t know. Somebody must take care of the outside as well as inside of church. Dr. Buell rubs down the folks, and I rub the horses; he sees that their tacklin’ is all right in there, and I do the same out here. Folks and animals are pretty much of a muchness, and they’ll bear a sight of takin’ care of.”
“Whose nag is that one, Hiram,—the roan?”
“That’s Deacon Marble’s.”
“Why he seems to sweat, standing still.”
Hiram’s eye twinkled.
“You needn’t say nothin’, Doctor,—but I thought it a pity so many horses shouldn’t be doin’ any thing! Of course, they don’t know any thing about Sunday,—it aint like workin’ a creatur’ that reads the Bible,—so I just slipped over to Skiddy’s widder—she ain’t [sic] been out doors this two months, and I knew she ought to have the air—and I gave her about a mile! She was afraid ’twould be breakin’ Sunday.—‘Not a bit,’ says I; ‘didn’t the Lord go out Sundays, and set folks off with their beds on their banks; and didn’t He pull oxen and sheep out of the ditches, and do all that sort of thing?’ If she’d know that I took the Deacon’s team, she’d been worse afraid. But I knew the Deacon would like it; and if Polly didn’t, so much the better. I like to spite those folks that’s too particular!—There, Doctor, there’s the last hymn.”
It rose upon the air, softened by distance and the enclosure of the building,—rose and fell in regular movement. Even Hiram’s tongue ceased. The vireo in the tops of the elm, hushed its shrill snatches. Again the hymn rose, and this time fuller and louder, as if the whole congregation had caught the spirit. Men’s and women’s voices, and little children’s were in it. Hiram said, without any of his usual pertness:
“Doctor, there’s somethin’ in folks singin’ when you are outside the church that makes you feel as though you ought to be inside. ‘Mebbe a fellow will be left outside, up there, when they’re singin’—if he don’t look out.”
When the last verse hd ended, a pause and silence ensued. Then came a gentle bustle, a sound of pattering feet. Out shot a boy, and then two or three, and close upon them a bunch of men. The doors were wide open and thronged. The whole green was covered with people, and the sidewalks were crowded.
Tommy Taft met the minister at the door, and put out his great rough hand to shake.
“Thankee, Doctor—thankee; very well done. Couldn’t do it better myself. It’ll do good—know it! Fell better myself; I need just such preachin’—mouldy old sinner—need a scourin’ about once a week. Drefful wicked to hev such doctrine, and not be no better—ain’t it, Doctor?”
