Zigzag Journeys in the White City

Chapter X The Folk-Song Festival.

A MONG the most delightful of all the entertainments given under the auspices of the World’s Congress Auxiliary in the Art Palace, Chicago, was the festival of the home songs of all nations. It was held in the halls of Washington and Columbus, the same singers passing from the one hall to the other, so that two audiences might enjoy the review of the world’s popular songs on the same evening.

The singers, many of whom came from the nations represented on the Midway Plaisance, were dressed in the costumes of their own country, and were accompanied by their national instruments. The most beautiful of all folk-songs were those of Wales; among the most unique, those of India.

The representation of old New England tunes was interesting. The concert closed late at night, the last number being “The Battle Cry of Freedom,” sung by Dr. Root, the composer of the song.

Our trio listened to this wonderful festival with delight.

“Every town ought to have a choral society to sing these songs,” said Mr. Marlowe; “they are, for the most part, songs of the heart. Even the songs of the nations that we call heathen have human sympathy in them. The human heart is one.”

Mr. Marlowe saved his programme for use in making up some limited entertainment of the kind for home use.

“I will tell the story of ‘Hannah, Who Sang Countre,’” he said, “when the Club meets again, and I will sing some of the old New England tunes while telling the story.”

Mr. Marlowe carried into effect the thought. The story was as follows:—

Hannah, Who Sang Countre. a Thanksgiving Story.

I can see her now in my mind’s eye, as she used to sit alone on the church steps, her white face beaming with benevolence beneath her gray poke bonnet. The great bell hung over the steps, high in air. It was silent then, or rung only by the sharp gusts of winds. Before her was the old Puritan graveyard, in which slept all to whom she could claim kin. Hannah Semple was a poor, lone woman. Her home was among the lilac-bushes and apple-trees, but all that was mortal of those dear to her was here under the gray stones. She loved to visit them at early evenings. Her Sundays were always spent with them. Hannah Semple’s heart had been true to her own family while they were living; it was true still, and would always be the same.

I can, in memory, hear her sing, and her cracked voice was tender and pitiful. Her favorite hymn began with a curious simile that excited my curiosity before I knew its history, and my imagination, afterwards:

“As on some lonely building’s top

The sparrow tells her moan,

Far from the tents of joy and hope,

I sit and grieve alone.”

The tune was “Hallowell,” a great favorite in the olden time. It was one of those tunes in which, to my boyish ears, the singers of the different parts chased each other about in a most harmonious and wonderful way, and finally came out together at the end. The country choirs who could perform such tunes to the accompaniment of bass viols, were thought by the country people to have made great progress in musical art. It was in the days of these majestic performances in the choir-loft of the progressive Puritan church, that Hannah Semple used to sing countre.

The church was closed now, and had been closed for two years: as silent as the graveyard in which the hardy Puritans slept under the mosses and zigzag stones. There was a progressive spirit in the old Swansea neighborhood, which was one of the successive communities that ran from Plymouth to the old towns founded by Roger Williams and the Quaker-Baptists on the Narragansett Bay. This was shown by the introduction of the bass viol into the choir, which soon found an evolution in two bass viols; then in fugued tunes by Billings and Holden and Maxim; then more bass viols, which were played on Thanksgiving Day.

The greatest choral performance in those days, when Hannah sang countre, was a tune called “Majesty,” by Billings. William Billings was the musical wonder of these eventful times,—a rural Handel of the many neighborhoods of Puritan churches. He did not know much about counterpoint,—he followed only natural inspiration; but his music is still to be found in collections. This tune, “Majesty,” was thought to be his masterpiece, and was sung on all great occasions. The words were as stirring as the music:—

“The Lord descended from above,

And bowed the heavens most high,

And underneath his feet he cast

The darkness of the sky.

“On cherub and on cherubim

Full royally he rode,

And on the wings of mighty winds

Came flying all abroad.”

Vigorous indeed was the rendering of this tune on Independence days, after the reading of the immortal Declaration, and before the Oration; and as inspiring also on Thanksgiving mornings, before the long sermon. It required much practice on the part of the orchestra, and hard were the bitings of the tuning fork, and severe were the rehearsals, before it could be acceptably performed. The soprano was a rural Patti, and as for the basso profundo, there is no present comparison.

To sing countre was held to be a great accomplishment in the days of the music of Billings, Maxim, and Holden. By countre we do not mean the counter alto of the present time, but a kind of alto or contralto. It was often called the “natural alto,” for in these days of rural Handels, each church developed one or more female singers that were thought to have the gift of singing alto by direct inspiration.

In the prosperous days of the old Swansea church, when the descendants of heroic Samson Mason, of Cromwell’s army, and of like heroes, sent out missionary colonies to Nova Scotia and elsewhere, Hannah Semple sang countre in the ancient meeting-house, and her voice was the pride of the many neighborhoods. People used to visit the church from the distant villages in ark-like carryalls, and it was often said that many of them came less to hear the long sermon, in regard to the domestic affairs of the Jews in Jerusalem, than to hear musical Hannah, who sang countre.

In the days of her musical triumphs Hannah never changed her humble name into Hannahetti. Her guileless soul never entertained any vanity like that, and yet local appreciation had given her a name as long as that of any modern singer. She was never spoken of as simply Hannah, but always as “Hannah, who sang countre,” a name that would be sufficiently picturesque for a modern concert bill.

I first saw the old woman on a Sunday morning, as I was riding with my father to another church. It was in early May.

As we came to a low, red cottage, a gate in front slowly opened, and the tall, thin form of a woman appeared, in a gray dress, Rob-Roy shawl, and high poke bonnet, followed by a Maltese cat. There was something so pleasant in the expression of her face, so patient and kindly, that I followed her movements with sympathetic curiosity.

“Who is that, Father?” I asked, in an undertone.

“That is ‘Hannah, who sang countre.’ She holds a meeting alone every Sunday morning, on the old church steps, and declares that the church-members will come together again, and there will be a great thanksgiving, if she remains faithful. Her mind is slightly unbalanced, and she thinks she is a prophetess.”

My father bowed to her, and her face lightened up as she said,—

“A beautiful morning. ’Tis a morning of the trees of the Lord, and I am one of the branches. Do you believe in the Great Thanksgiving?” Her face seemed full of hope.

“No, Hannah, no,” said my father, truthfully.

“No? Well, I am sorry you don’t believe it. But I must be faithful. It is sure to come, for it has been revealed to me. I have been faithful to the dead,—and now I must be faithful to the living. This is all I have to live for. It will come! The people of the Lord in these plantations will gather again. The doors will open, and there will be great thanksgiving. I shall be there,—right before the pulpit, right by the deacon’s seat. It has been revealed to me. I don’t know how I shall be there. That is a veiled mystery; there is a shadow over it; I cannot see how it will be, but I shall be there.”

“Where are you going this morning? Will you ride?” asked my father.

“I’m going to meetin’.”

“Who is to preach?”

“I.”

“Who attends the meeting?”

“I.”

“Who sings?”

“I.”

“Do you sing countre?”

She dropped her eyes, and looked down on the violets, and when at last she lifted her face, it was wet with tears.

“Bless you, no! There is no one now to sing countre. It takes two voices to sing countre. They will sing again after the Great Thanksgiving, but now I am left to sing alone. I have to sing the upper part now. My voice is not so good as it used to be.”

She broke some purple lilacs from the sunny bushes by the roadside, and gave them to me. I thanked her, and, with a heart full of boyish sympathy, said,—

“I wish I had something to give you.”

“You are a good boy to say so, but I don’t expect anything from any one now. My folks are all housed in the graveyard, and the sun is shinin’ upon them, and the violets bloom in there. I shall be with them soon. I wish you would come to meetin’ with me some Sunday morning. I’ll sing to ye, and tell of my vision, and the Great Thanksgiving. It is lonesome to preach all to one’s self, and the dead.”

“Don’t any one ever come to hear you?” asked I.

“Yes, the Lord comes regularly. They are there. Those I love are always there, down under the moss. Do they listen? I think they do. The sun comes down on the steps, and the winds come from the meadows, and the birds come. The world is full of beautiful things that come to hear me preach to myself. Child, if you will come to hear me next Sunday mornin’, I will sing you one of the most beautiful songs that you ever heard, and will tell you about the Great Thanksgiving, just as I said. Now you will come—do.”

The next Sabbath was not a meeting day with the family. The horses had been worked so hard in ploughing that Father decided that they must be allowed to rest. At the breakfast-table an allusion was made to old Hannah, and I startled the family with the question,—

“May I go over there to-day, and see Hannah, and get some lilacs?”

“Yes,” said my mother, whose heart was all sympathy. “You would be company for her. I never knew a woman who was so self-forgetful, or did so much for poor people and sick people, as she has done. She is not a prophetess, but I do think if the angels of heaven have a message for any one, it must be for her. Poor old Hannah!”

“Perhaps she will tell you about her beau, Peter Rugg, who thought that a sheep was a catamount,” said one of the work-people, dryly.

As I approached the silent meeting-house, I saw, through the opening in the locust-trees, Hannah, sitting on its sunny steps. She met me with a smile, exclaiming, “Come in; meetin’ hasn’t begun. I’m glad you’ve come. We will have the service, then I will prophesy as the Lord commands, and after that you shall go home with me for some cake to eat. You will live to see the Great Thanksgiving. It has been revealed to me.”

She held a hymn book in her hand, and an old-time parallelogram of tunes, with slant sides, lay beside her. She took up the music book, opened it, and held it in one hand, and the hymn book in the other.

“This tune that I am goin’ to sing has a mighty curious history,” said she. “It was written by Abraham Maxim, or Granville Maxim. He lived in Maine, and he named his tunes for the towns in Maine: ‘Portland,’ ‘Hallowell,’ ‘Bath,’ and the like.

“He was disappointed in love, Maxim was. So was I. I’ll tell you about it when I get home, after meetin’. One day he went out into the woods to hang himself, carryin’ with him a rope. He sat down in a lonely place, near a shed, to meditate before he tied the rope to a tree. Well, as Providence would have it, a sparrer, whose nest had been disturbed, uttered its little plaintive cry of fear, because of its young. It touched his heart, and he wrote down on a piece of birch-bark the hymn I’m goin’ to sing. Then he wrote to the hymn a tune in deep minor, endin’ with a very solemn chord. It’s very comfortin’ to me.”

She lifted up the music book, and sang the most melancholy piece of music to which I ever listened, ending with the very solemn chord:—

“As on some lonely building’s top

The sparrow makes her moan,

Far from the tents of joy and hope

I sit and grieve alone.”

Hannah then made a prayer in glowing Hebrew figures, a kind of rhapsody of Hebrew poetry. She sang another hymn tune of Maxim’s, then laid down her books and stood up.

“My child,” she said, “this is my text; it was written for you thousands of years ago,—‘And Reuben returned unto the pit; and behold Joseph was not in the pit.’” Her thought was that a lost opportunity for doing good, of being loving, kind, and merciful, could seldom be recalled. Her words were homely and quaint, but her figures and ideas were poetic. She preached charity to all men. I recall only one whole sentence. It was: “Never lose an opportunity of doing good; if you do, it will injure you. We are all passin’ away; he that hath ears to hear, let him hear.”

When she had finished her discourse, she said, “Now, I am goin’ to prophesy.”

She stood in silence at first, looking up to the sky; then lifting her hand, she repeated the first six verses of the Fifty-first chapter of the poetry of Isaiah, in a tone quite unlike her usual voice.

“It will come,” she said,—“that Great Thanksgiving will come in these towns that were founded by the old prophets. You will be there; that is revealed to me. I shall be there. But how? That is not clear. When I try to see myself there, there comes a cloud; the vision shuts down. Men have shut the doors of the old church, but the doors of the heavens are not closed. The Great Thanksgiving that I see will come, if I only prove faithful. It will come! It will come! The people will gather, as in days of old. There will be preachin’ in the old pulpit, and singing though I may not be here to sing countre. I can see the people comin’ through the graveyard, under the trees, but I am not there. Oh, where am I? Where am I? I don’t see myself anywhere; yet the Voice tells me I shall be there.”

She sank down, a shadow on her serene face.

She arose again, and sang a strange hymn. Each stanza ended with the words: “With glory in our souls.” It was a long hymn, with a plaintive air.

“Come, child,” said she, when the song ended, “meetin’ is over now. Let us go.”

She led me to the red cottage among the lilac-trees. How clean and neat it was! Then, in her kindly way, she brought me cake and milk, and drove out of the house a solitary fly, an early intruder.

“You live alone?” I said.

“Oh, no, no, child; they all live with me; they come to visit me. The Lord lives with me, when I don’t murmur nor complain, and He never turns against me.

“Shall I tell you about myself? Well, I was very happy as a child, roamin’ among the berry pastures, goin’ to the deestrict school, and helpin’ Mother about the house. Mother was a great-hearted, good woman, and Father was an honest, hard-working man. I never thought that I should be a public singer, and sit in the gallery, and sing countre in the ‘Easter Anthem.’ I never thought I should sing before the great Daniel Webster, on Independence Day.

“It all came about in this way. Old Schoolmaster Mason opened a singin’ school in the vestry of the church, and asked me to attend. I always loved music, and I did not go to the school but a little while, before I found that I could sing countre. Even in a new piece that I had never seen, if I only had the words before me, I could make up a countre to the singing of the air.

“I learned to sing low tones that the people thought were wonderful. It used sometimes to trouble me because they seemed to think more about how I sang, than what I sang.

“There was a young man in the neighborhood, at the time, named Peter Rugg. He is dead now. He used to listen to the countre at the singin’ school as though he was spellbound. One night, after I had been singin’, he came to me, and asked leave to see me home. He was fine-looking, with curly hair and a high forehead, and he tried to sing tenor. I liked him, and, after a time, he used to visit me often, and one night he said,—

“‘Hannah, if I ever should save money enough to marry anybody, it would be you; you do sing countre so solemn.’

“I felt that he paid to me the greatest compliment that could be paid to a woman, and says I, says I,—

“‘Peter, if I were ever to leave my home, I should want to jine my lot with yourn, you do sing so high.’

“I was kind of modest, and I didn’t wish to say any more than he did, but I really did love him, and I would have been glad to have married him.

“Well, one winter, all the country round was thrown into a state of great fright, by a report that some woodchoppers had seen a catamount in the woods. Soon after this, sheep and pigs began to disappear, and the loss was laid to the catamount. There used to be catamounts in New England, and in the great woods, along the Pocassett coast, one would be seen occasionally.

“The excitement grew. A great many people began to think that they had seen the catamount, though whether there was one, at that time, in Massachusetts, no one can say.

“One day, when the people were all excited about the catamount, Peter Rugg took tea at our house, and went with me in the evenin’ to the singin’ school. I sang my best that night, and Peter was so pleased that he said to me: ‘Hannah, whatever may happen, I will always be true to you.’ I was very happy, and we left the vestry to walk home.

“We took a roundabout way, but had not gone far, when we heard a patterin’ of feet on the other side of the wall.

“‘Hark, it’s the catamount!’ Peter cried.

“‘I’ll cling to you forever,’ said I. ‘We will die true. If he devours you, he shall devour me.’

“We hurried on, trembling in every limb. The patter of the feet continued on the other side of the wall.

“‘Let go my arm,’ he said, ‘and I’ll see what it is.’

“I released his arm, when, could you believe it? he ran off, sayin’,—‘I’ll get a gun,’ and he flew over the hill. I never saw him again for a year. I stood dumb in the road. In my indignation all fear left me. A moment later I heard a sheep ‘ba-a’ on the other side of the wall.

“Nobody can tell what a heavy heart I carried home that night. All respect for the man I thought I loved was gone. I cried myself to sleep. For months I suffered more than I can ever tell, but I never told the story while Peter lived. I forgave him when death touched him. We are all poor and weak. We must be merciful in our thoughts.

“Well, Father was stricken with the palsy, and Mother, she began to lose her mind, and thought she had committed the unpardonable sin, or that she should do some violence to herself, and she wanted to be watched all the time. She didn’t sleep much for years, and, amid all these troubles, my only sister died. I tried to take care of them all. I did my best. How I used to work in those days! There were weeks at a time when I could not take off my dress at night.

“Well, the old folks died; then my poor sister passed away: so life goes. One goes, then more, and the number grows. I have no blood kin now. The lot in the graveyard is full, but sometimes they visit me in spirit. It makes me happy to think that I did all I could for them, when they were living. I know where they are; they know where I am. There is no real partin’ among hearts that are true to each other.

“I had one great comfort in all my hard lot. It was music. I did love to sing. My voice made me a little vain at first, but I meant to use it only for good, and never for myself. I came to hold it as a trust. I could see how it helped and comforted others, and that made me happy. I used to sing, ‘Peace, troubled soul,’ at funerals, and, ‘Come, ye disconsolate,’ and, ‘Come unto me when shadows darkly gather.’ I had no father, mother, sister, brother, husband, or child; but I was happy in the choir. That fellowship was everything to me.

“Then came the great church quarrel. How can such things be! A part of the members became Six-Principle Baptists, and a part Christian Baptists, and each claimed the church. Neither party would yield. So the old church was closed. The doors were nailed up, and the rope taken off the bell.

“I felt that I was utterly alone when the bell ceased to ring,” she said. “People sent for me to take care of their sick, to comfort the dying, and to lay out the dead, and sing at funerals. That was all the life I had. Then my voice began to break, and my hair to turn gray. It is white, now,—see.

“One morning I came home early, after watching all night with poor Widow Green, who was sick so long. I laid down on the lounge, with my dress on, and fell asleep. It was the day after it was resolved to close the church. Well, there came to me a vision. I seemed to be sittin’ alone on the church steps, when there stood before me a noble-lookin’ man, in a silvery haze, and said: ‘I am Elder John Myles. I was the founder of these plantations. I love this people, and the old church, which I founded. You are God’s child. Be true to His cause. Go to the old church every Sunday, and hold a meetin’ on the steps. If you remain true, the people will be gathered here again, and there will be a Great Thanksgiving, and you will be there in body or in soul.’ I woke. It was gone,—the beautiful face in the silver cloud. But the words were printed on my mind. They are there,—always there.

“People call me crazy Hannah, but they all send for me when they are in trouble. Their harvests come and go, but the bell does not ring, nor the doors open. But I am true to the vision. The Great Thanksgiving will come, and I shall be there.”

She then sang the song that she had promised. The words and music were really beautiful. I recall the first lines:—

“How sweet to reflect on the joys that await me

In yon blissful region, the haven of rest.”

One of the stanzas began:—

“Then hail, blessed state! hail, ye songsters of glory!

Ye harpers of bliss, soon I’ll meet you above.”

The beatific look that I had seen in her face, on the church steps, came back to her. It was the most lovely expression I ever saw.

The music of the school of Billings, Holden, and Maxim, and the hymns and ballads to which it was written, were no weak compositions. There were people in those days who delighted to sing—

“If you want to see the devil run,

Shoot him with the Gospel gun,”

to a dance rhythm, but the primitive, original psalmody of the old Orthodox churches was, as a rule, as solid as it was solemn. “While shepherds watched their flocks by night” had something of modern lightness and sprightliness, which may account for its popularity to-day, as a number in the programme of old folks’ concerts; but Maxim’s “Turner” and “Bath,” and Holden’s “Coronation” and “No war nor battle sound,” and Billings’ “Boston,” and many tunes, all of which formed a part of the musical experience of the best New England homes, some fifty years ago, were serious work, of the school of Tausur and of Handel.

The great patriotic song of those times was entitled “Ode on Science.” This was the chef-d’œuvre of Independence days and Thanksgivings, and Hannah had once sung countre in the performance of it before Daniel Webster.

Two years after my interview with Hannah she responded to the Governor’s Proclamation, and, faithful to the old traditions, resolved to celebrate the approaching Thanksgiving on the church steps. On the morning of that day she took her music book, which contained the famous “Ode on Science,” put her spectacles into her ample pocket, and, followed by her cat, went to the steps of the old meeting-house. It was a mild Indian summer day, of melting frosts, dropping nuts, and lingering splendors. The woods were crimson, with an odor of decay in the leaves, and the orchards red, with a cidery scent. The call of the lively bluejay was heard here and there, and the whir of the partridge wings on the margin of the woods. The farmers were busy husking their stacks of corn, and the cellar doors were heaped with squashes and pumpkins of enormous size, taking a last mellowing in the sun.

Just as Hannah arose on the church steps to give thanks for all these blessings of plenty, Deacon Goodwin approached in his cart, that was loaded with corn and pumpkins. He took the Christian view, as the word was pronounced, in the great theological discussion. His heart was touched at the sight of the white hair of old Hannah, and he stopped to hear her sing.

It was a striking picture that she presented, on that bright morning, in her straight gown, poke bonnet, Rob-Roy shawl, and white hair, which filled the dark cavern over her forehead. She stood with her hymn book in one hand, and beating time with her other hand, she began:—

“The morning sun shines from the east,

And spreads his glories in the west.

All nations with his beams are blest.”

Her voice was high. Her free hand waved vigorously to tell how—

“Freedom her attendant waits

To bless the portals of her gates,

To crown the young and rising States

With laurels of immortal day.

“The British yoke, the Gallic chain,

Was urged upon our necks in vain.

All haughty tyrants we disdain,

And shout, Long live America.”

The last word rang out with a long sound of ca at the end.

She stopped, removed her spectacles, and looked down upon Deacon Goodwin, inquiringly.

“I declare it’s too bad,” said the Deacon, “that you have to be the Thanksgiving for the hull town. Two or three people have had their own heads here about long enough, it’s my opinion. If I could have my way, Hannah, we’d not be ruled as we are. I’ll see what can be done. Somethin’ ’ll have to be done, and I’ll do it.

“Go lang!” and he laid a long birch stick on the back of the patient beast before him, and left Hannah to conclude her devotions among the dead.

An epidemic of smallpox spread over the towns between the coast and Narragansett Bay, and in a neighboring town there was no one to go into the pest-house and nurse the sick. Hannah was told of the situation, and it touched her heart.

“I will go,” she said.

“But you have never had the smallpox,” said the visitor.

“It makes no difference. I have a promise in my heart. Pain is nothing when it is over, and it is a glorious thing to bear for the sake of others. I shall surely live until the Great Thanksgiving. I will go. They need me.”

She gave herself, night and day, to the sufferers, and did not take the disease. But she was very old, and when she returned to her cottage, it was with exhausted strength.

To the church steps she went feebly, with each returning Sabbath. Autumn came with bountiful harvests. The blue gentians bloomed in the cranberry meadows and by the roadside; the apples, red and russet, bent down the trees; the cornfields rustled, and the hunter’s moon rose in the nightfall.

The farmers were very busy filling their bursting barns and cribs; but Hannah’s home was silent. No one remembered to have seen her enter it. The curtains were drawn, the door closed. The next Sunday morning she did not appear upon the church steps as usual, and some neighbors went to the door of the little red house to inquire if she were ill. They rapped, and waited for the sound of feet under the withered morning-glory vines, but none came. The house seemed tenantless. One of the farmers at length pushed open a shutter, and, looking into the room usually occupied by Hannah, turned and said: “She lies there on the bed,—she is dead.”

“The dream is ended,” said the other. “Poor soul, she was a good woman. God has taken her to Himself.”

The window was forced. The worn body was tenderly cared for, and preparations were made for the funeral. Her will was found. She had given her property to the poor of the town, and requested that she might be buried from the church. The will also contained this strange request: “Since I leave all I have to the town, I hope the Selectmen will ask Rev. John Leland to attend my funeral, and that the bell may be tolled when my body is taken into the church, and rung when it is borne to the grave. I have given my life, and all I have of property, to the people of this town. May I ask, as a return for this, that the people will, in kindness, grant my last request?”

The funeral was appointed for the morning of Thanksgiving Day, and a messenger was dispatched to Elder John Leland, of Cheshire, the eloquent evangelist, who was then in Boston, to ask him if he would conduct the services. The tender-hearted old man heard the story of Hannah’s life with deep sympathy.

“I will come,” said he, “but not to mourn for the dead. She does not need our tears. God has cleared her vision, and has taken her to Himself. Let us do as she wished. Your town had glorious names among its founders, and your church is closed, even though it is the harvest time. I shall preach not a funeral, but a Thanksgiving sermon, and I hope that every one who has been blessed during the year will be there. When the year has made a good harvest, and one has made a good life, all men should be thankful.”

The news was received with gladness in the thrifty community, which had so long lifted the pagan idols of theology over the religion of the heart and life. All the people of the rural towns who could leave their farms, prepared to attend the funeral of old Hannah, who sung countre, for in her death they had recognized her worth. No event had awakened so much interest for years.

The name of John Leland was at that time a household word. It lives now chiefly in connection with the almost Ambrosian hymn, “The day is past and gone,” and the story of the great Cheshire Cheese. He was a friend of Madison and Jefferson; at one time a member of the Massachusetts General Court,—a truly wonderful man in all relations of life. He used to travel any weather, praying along the roads, mounting the pulpit singing; always democratic, and a friend to all men.

It was an Indian summer day, calm and clear. The sun grew warm; and the heat dropped the frost-crimsoned leaves in showers. Early in the day people began to gather about the church. Most of them were glad that the blind day of theological disputation was to be broken by the ringing of the old bell. They came from neighboring towns in all kinds of conveyances.

The old sexton came with a claw hammer, and drew the nails out of the door, and dusted the pews, and aired the musty aisles, and tied a bell rope again to the bell. The church soon filled with people; afterward, the steps, and then the graveyard. The gathering was so great that it was difficult to keep a vacant place for poor old Hannah’s body.

Toll! The bell smote reproachfully on the glimmering air. Toll! The pine coffin was coming with fringed gentians upon it. Toll! Every heart there felt a moral shrinkage, as the coffin broke its way through the people.

They set it down at last under the high pulpit, near the deacon’s seat. But the crowd out of doors was larger than that in the house, and all were eager to hear what Elder Leland would have to say.

“Let us hold the services outside,” said the venerable evangelist. “Take the body out into the graveyard, and set it down in the middle of the graves of those to whom she was always so faithful, and I will preach where she used to preach to the birds and to the dead, from the meeting-house steps.”

They bore out the body, and set it down under the great cool trees, where the crisp leaves were dropping upon the graves. They opened the lid on the calm, sweet, face, where the people on the high ground could see it, and the tears of those in whose homes she had been a blessing to the sick and a comfort to the dying, fell like rain. Tender and eloquent were the words spoken by the white-haired Elder, over that still, dead, untroubled face.

The old trustees of the church were stirred as they had never been before. Soon after the close of the sermon, one of them mounted the steps, with a word to say to the people.

“She has opened these doors with her dead hand,” he said. “May they never be closed again by the living. The trustees have just had a meeting, and have agreed once more to open the house. This is a fitting ending to this day of mourning, and of Thanksgiving. Now, let the old bell ring.”

They closed the lid of the coffin forever, and bore the body to the open earth. The bell began to ring. The voice of the Elder rose in a sublime thanksgiving Psalm, as the bell pealed on, and the grave closed over all that was mortal of Hannah, who sang countre.

The people left the grounds, one by one. The struggle was ended. The work of this lone, feeble woman was done. She rested at last on the day of the Great Thanksgiving, of which she had prophesied. And she had been there, and the countre tone of her life had never made sweeter harmony.

She lies in a grave long neglected; but should one kneel down beside the stone that is sinking slowly into the earth, and peel away the moss, and follow the light carving on the blue slate under some quaint pictures of cherubs, one might read,—

Hannah Semple, who sang Countre
in the Choir, Ætat. 90.

The old generation has been gathered to their fathers, but the new generation still feels the beneficent influence of that Great Thanksgiving.

CHAPTER XI.
WHAT MR. MARLOWE FOUND TO TAKE HOME IN THE STATE BUILDINGS.
Stories of Puget Sound Indians, Selected old Story of “The Devil and Tom Walker,” A Folk-Lore Story of Old Rhode Island Days.
IN THE FISHERIES BUILDING.

W E are now walking in the sea,” said Mr. Marlowe, as the trio moved along the Fisheries Building; “the inhabitants of the waters are around us on every hand.”

The Fisheries Building was built of everything beautiful produced by the sea. It would have charmed Ruskin. It was one thousand feet long and two hundred wide; two polygons connected by an arch. It was built of marine forms; and here, for the first time, the visitor might enter as it were the regions of the waters and travel among the inhabitants of the deep. Japan and Norway led the exhibits, while Massachusetts finely presented the industries of Gloucester.

“I find here,” said Mr. Marlowe, “an idea to take into our town life; it is shell decorations for lawns and houses.”

He took his note-book and wrote down the things that pleased him most which could be so used.

In the Agricultural Building, Mr. Marlowe found like hints in structures built of corn and cobs.

In the Kansas Building he saw another home art in the wonders of taxidermy.

“The Arkansas Building is in the French style,” said Mr. Marlowe, on entering that beautiful structure. “It is a Folk-Lore Building; the settlers of Arkansas were French. The floor is made of native pine; and, see, there is a fountain of Hot Springs’ crystals, a gift of the ladies of Hot Springs.”

Here they found a book made of seventy kinds of wood, and Mr. Marlowe found in this a new idea for the society at home.

The California Building was one of the most imposing and self-interpreting on the grounds. It was Spanish, and was built after the manner of the ancient adobe mission-houses, with belfries of old Spanish bells. Here Mr. Marlowe found a beautiful “roof-garden” as a feature of note. The exhibits of fruit were a wonder, and led one to feel the greatness of the State of beneficent climate.

In the Connecticut Building Mr. Marlowe found an old settle, such as was used for story-telling purposes in colonial times. This he thought might be reproduced in the furniture of new houses, and used for historic narratives and folk-tales, as in the times of the Puritans.

The Florida Building represented Old Fort Marion, and was adorned with palm like bamboos, and overflowed with orange cider. Here Mr. Marlowe developed the idea of a home orange party, in which the decorations should be of orange color, the refreshments of oranges, with a lecture on different varieties of oranges, to be illustrated by serving the fruit as described, and with banjo music and log-cabin songs, or the music of Spanish guitars.

The Idaho House was a log cabin of gems. It had a very curious room. Here the rafters were decorated with strings of onions, jerked beef, bacon, etc., to recall the days of the pioneers. It gave Mr. Marlowe an idea how to furnish a pioneer kitchen for exhibitions. In the great Illinois House, costing two hundred and fifty thousand dollars, Mr. Marlowe found a common-school room of which he made note for home service. In the Iowa State Exhibition House Mr. Marlowe became greatly interested in the Corn Palace, which adjoined the main building, in which corn was enthroned as king. Everything here was made or covered with corn. He believed that corn should be made our national emblem; and he saw here how to decorate a room for corn festivals.

In the Kentucky Building Mr. Marlowe found a fireplace in which a whole log could be burned at once, and a collection of Indian implements, such as could be imitated elsewhere. The Michigan Building contained a collection of prairie grasses which was suggestive. The Minnesota Building had a lambrequin of shells strung by children, and the Nebraska House, a table made of corn. The New Hampshire House had a collection of ordinary grasses. The Virginia Building had an old-time four-post bedstead, such as could be imitated in an antique room. The New York and Pennsylvania Buildings were palaces; and the flag-staff in front of the Washington Building was one hundred and seventy-five feet in height. In many of the buildings were palms, in many ornaments of corn, and in some of shells.

“Corn and palms are elected here as our national emblems,” said Mr. Marlowe. “Corn lands and palm lands are we! The two should go together. Let us put them side by side in our patriotic decorations,—the Corn and the Palm!”

The stories told at the Folk-Lore Society at their next gathering were interesting. A delegate from Washington related tales of the Puget Sound Indians; and Mr. Marlowe, as a picture of early Boston superstitions, read the classic tale, by America’s early story-writer, entitled, “The Devil and Tom Walker.” A Rhode Islander related a story which was an historical picture of the early days of his own State.

Puget Sound Indians.

The saddest sight in the streets of the young cities of Puget Sound, is the remnant of the great tribes of Indians who once possessed the land. These descendants of the ancient forest kings and warriors come wandering from their reservations into Seattle, Tacoma, and Olympia in blankets and moccasins, in yellow paint and rags.

They crouch down in the shadows of alley-ways and street corners, and wonder at all the strange progress that is going on around them. Every passer-by reminds them of their inferiority.

Or, borne into the noisy town on his little Cayuse pony, the dusky pensioner of a vanishing race ambles his way along, amid crowding vehicles and electric cars, and vaguely comprehends that the steam whistle has forever drowned the war-whoop of the old forest days.

Wherever he goes he sees the giant trees, two hundred feet high, with trunks so large that a house might be made within them, tumbling around him beneath the axe, the blasting powder and fire. Even the stumps vanish as the domes and spires and flagstaffs rise.

It is all going, the romantic and heroic barbarism; it will soon be gone, and become a painter’s dream and a poet’s legend.

The old Snohomish tribe still lingers amid the valleys of the snow-crowned mountains, as do the Spokanes and the Nez Perces. The tribes of the Walla Wallas and Wallulas or Walloas fall like leaves, bequeathing to the system which succeeds them only their poetic names. The Yakimas still hold a considerable territory, as do the Klickitats. But one fate awaits them all. Their feet vanish wherever the white man builds his road.

The savage traits and evil dispositions of these Indian races have long been the subject of sensational writing. Let us speak of what was and is noble in them,—as a Schoolcraft or a Longfellow would see them. If the new country is filled with legends of their ignorance and barbarism, it is also full of beautiful stories of their gratitude, fidelity, and benevolence.

“Why does not the wonderful city of Seattle in some way pension the daughter of old Seattle, the chief?” I once asked a wealthy ex-mayor of that city. “She is a beggar in the streets.”

“Oh,” said the millionnaire, “it would do her no good. She would give it all away to her own people. Give her fifty dollars to-day, and she would have nothing to-morrow.”

The reply gave me a feeling of respect for poor old Angeline, the rag-picking princess of Seattle.

Among the homesteading pioneers, there came to the great timber lands a New England family by the name, we will say, of Brewster, as it is a good one. The young people had a battle with the great pines and firs and the bears, and with a clearing. They had a rich aunt in old Massachusetts; and as young Brewster was her favorite, she decided to come and make her home with him.

She was a benevolent old lady, such as are to be found in all the village churches of New England. Her first concern, upon arriving in the new country, was to find a way to invest a part of her money in missionary enterprises.

She saw an Indian graveyard in the trees. Then she met some Flatheads, and was at once happy in the thought that a special providence had directed her here, as a pioneer in a mission field.

She secured as a first pupil an Indian by the name of Curley. Finding that he and his family lived in a tent of skins, she thought that she would build for him a house, and promised him that she would go and visit him when it was completed.

“What kind of a house would you like to have, Curley?” she asked, one day after he had been especially teachable.

“Oh, a white house like the Great Father’s at Washington.”

“Aunt Boston” gave Curley one hundred dollars to build a white house, and he rode away delighted, on his little Cayuse horse.

Weeks passed; Christmas came, and good Aunt Boston thought that she would ride over to the reservation and surprise Curley in the new white house, which she had not yet seen. The thought greatly pleased her, as Curley had told her that he was raising a Cayuse colt as a present for her.

So she set out on Christmas morning in a mountain wagon. The air was clear and warm, for the Puget Sound atmosphere is an almost continuous springtime. The tops of the giant firs were filled with sunlight instead of snow. Here and there a deer bounded across the way.

She came at last to a clearing, and saw the white house.

There was no mistaking it. Close by was a tent of skins, which she took to be the former habitation of Curley. She rode up to the white house. The window was open.

The rattle of the wheels had caused a commotion in the interesting place. A pretty Cayuse colt put his head out of the window of the white house, and Curley at the same time opened the fold of the tent.

Aunt Boston was quite outdone in her plan of benevolence. Curley had made the white house a stable for her colt, and was as happy as she in his plans of benevolence and charity.

An Episcopal missionary recently told me, to his own disadvantage, the following story, which illustrates the same generous trait in the Puget Sound Indians:—

“There once came to the mission station on a visit an old Christian Indian, and he continued to make the mission his home. In my early work in the territory I had lived with him, and had found him very brotherly and benevolent. He had shared everything with me.

“A month or more passed, and as he gave me no hint of departure, and did nothing toward the support of himself or the cause, I said to him,—

“‘Mountain Pine, you have been here two moons; how much longer do you intend to stay?’

“‘It may be one week, it may be one month, it may be one year, it may be one life.’

“‘But, Mountain Pine, the Good Book says that if a man do not work, neither shall he eat.’

“Mountain Pine rose slowly, and drew his blanket around him. He raised his arm and pointed to the chapel.

“‘Do you wah-wah over there?’

“‘Yes, you know, Mountain Pine, there is where I worship.’

“‘Brother, you wah-wah over there. You came a stranger to me in my cabin. I say, “You have half; you may stay one week, you may stay one moon, you may stay one year, you may stay one life. I hunt and give you half my venison.” I come to your cabin. You say, “How long you stay?” You say, “You go work!”’

“‘You wah-wah over there. You heap wah-wah, but you no good!’

“He drew his blanket closer around him, and majestically strode out of the house, and I never saw Mountain Pine again.”

The favorite chiefs of the early settlers were Seattle and Pat Keanim, of the Snoqualmees. Seattle was appointed chief by a territorial governor, but Pat Keanim had the heart of his people. He espoused the cause of the pioneers and fought for them, and though often distrusted, was true in the dark days of the war. He had a poetic and really beautiful face.

The hop harvest in the Puyallup valley yearly gathers the Indians there, as they used to meet, according to the old legend, in the happy valley of the Olympic mountains. The harvest begins in August, and lasts a month.

The days are bright, and at night the moon hangs clear over the waters. Working people, young and old, Indians, Chinese, white people, black people, every one desiring much money for light work, congregate here.

All is gay and happy. The nights are festivals. Hither the Indians come on Cayuse horses and in canoes. Their boats fill the harbors. And here the dying races renew their primitive life.

The Devil and Tom Walker

A few miles from Boston, in Massachusetts, there is a deep inlet winding several miles into the interior of the country from Charles Bay, and terminating in a thickly wooded swamp, or morass. On one side of this inlet is a beautiful dark grove; on the opposite side the land rises abruptly from the water’s edge, into a high ridge, on which grow a few scattered oaks of great age and immense size. It was under one of these gigantic trees, according to old stories, that Kidd, the pirate, buried his treasure. The inlet allowed a facility to bring the money in a boat secretly, and at night, to the very foot of the hill. The elevation of the place permitted a good look-out to be kept, that no one was at hand; while the remarkable trees formed good landmarks by which the place might easily be found again. The old stories add, moreover, that the devil presided at the hiding of the money, and took it under his guardianship; but this, it is well known, he always does with buried treasure, particularly when it has been ill gotten. Be that as it may, Kidd never returned to recover his wealth,—being shortly after seized at Boston, sent out to England, and there hanged for a pirate.

About the year 1727, just at the time when earthquakes were prevalent in New England, and shook many tall sinners down upon their knees, there lived near this place a meagre, miserly fellow of the name of Tom Walker. He had a wife as miserly as himself; they were so miserly that they even conspired to cheat each other. Whatever the woman could lay hands on she hid away; a hen could not cackle but she was on the alert to secure the new-laid egg. Her husband was continually prying about to detect her secret hoards, and many and fierce were the conflicts that took place about what ought to have been common property. They lived in a forlorn-looking house, that stood alone, and had an air of starvation. A few straggling savin-trees, emblems of sterility, grew near it; no smoke ever curled from its chimney; no traveller stopped at its door. A miserable horse, whose ribs were as articulate as the bars of a gridiron, stalked about a field where a thin carpet of moss, scarcely covering the ragged beds of pudding-stone, tantalized and balked his hunger, and sometimes he would lean his head over the fence, look piteously at the passer-by, and seem to petition deliverance from this land of famine. The house and its inmates had altogether a bad name. Tom’s wife was a tall termagant, fierce of temper, loud of tongue, and strong of arm. Her voice was often heard in wordy warfare with her husband; and his face sometimes showed signs that their conflicts were not confined to words. No one ventured, however, to interfere between them: the lonely wayfarer shrunk within himself at the horrid clamor and clapper-clawing, eyed the den of discord askance, and hurried on his way, rejoicing, if a bachelor, in his celibacy.

One day that Tom Walker had been to a distant part of the neighborhood, he took what he considered a short cut homewards, through the swamp. Like most short cuts, it was an ill-chosen route. The swamp was thickly grown with great gloomy pines and hemlocks, some of them ninety feet high, which made it dark at noon-day, and a retreat for all the owls of the neighborhood. It was full of pits and quagmires, partly covered with weeds and mosses, where the green surface often betrayed the traveller into a gulf of black smothering mud; there were also dark and stagnant pools, the abodes of the tadpole, the bull-frog, and the water-snake, and where trunks of pines and hemlocks lay half drowned, half rotting, looking like alligators sleeping in the mire.

Tom had long been picking his way cautiously through this treacherous forest,—stepping from tuft to tuft of rushes and roots which afforded precarious footholds among deep sloughs; or pacing carefully, like a cat, along the prostrate trunks of trees,—startled now and then by the sudden screaming of the bittern, or the quacking of a wild duck, rising on the wing from some solitary pool. At length he arrived at a piece of firm ground, which ran out like a peninsula into the deep bosom of the swamp. It had been one of the strongholds of the Indians during their wars with the first colonists. Here they had thrown up a kind of fort which they had looked upon as almost impregnable, and had used as a place of refuge for their squaws and children. Nothing remained of the Indian fort but a few embankments gradually sinking to the level of the surrounding earth, and already overgrown in part by oaks and other forest trees, the foliage of which formed a contrast to the dark pines and hemlocks of the swamp.

It was late in the dusk of evening that Tom Walker reached the old fort; and he paused there for a while to rest himself. Any one but he would have felt unwilling to linger in this lonely melancholy place,—for the common people had a bad opinion of it from the stories handed down from the time of the Indian wars, when it was asserted that the savages held incantations here, and made sacrifices to the Evil Spirit. Tom Walker, however, was not a man to be troubled with any fears of the kind.

He reposed himself for some time on the trunk of a fallen hemlock, listening to the boding cry of the tree-toad, and delving with his walking-staff into a mound of black mould at his feet. As he turned up the soil unconsciously, his staff struck against something hard. He raked it out of the vegetable mould, and lo! a cloven skull with an Indian tomahawk buried deep in it, lay before him. The rust on the weapon showed the time that had elapsed since this death-blow had been given. It was a dreary memento of the fierce struggle that had taken place in the last foothold of the Indian warriors.

“Humph!” said Tom Walker, as he gave the skull a kick to shake the dirt from it.

“Leave that skull alone!” said a gruff voice.

Tom lifted up his eyes, and beheld a great black man, seated directly opposite him on the stump of a tree. He was exceedingly surprised, having neither seen nor heard any one approach, and he was still more perplexed on observing, as well as the gathering gloom would permit, that the stranger was neither negro nor Indian. It is true, he was dressed in a rude half-Indian garb, and had a red belt or sash swathed round his body; but his face was neither black nor copper color, but swarthy and dingy and begrimed with soot, as if he had been accustomed to toil among fires and forges. He had a shock of coarse black hair, that stood out from his head in all directions, and he bore an axe on his shoulder.

He scowled for a moment at Tom with a pair of great red eyes.

“What are you doing in my grounds?” said the black man, with a hoarse growling voice.

“Your grounds?” said Tom, with a sneer; “no more your grounds than mine,—they belong to Deacon Peabody.”

“Deacon Peabody be damned,” said the stranger, “as I flatter myself he will be, if he does not look more to his own sins and less to his neighbors’. Look yonder, and see how Deacon Peabody is faring.” Tom looked in the direction that the stranger pointed, and beheld one of the great trees, fair and flourishing without, but rotten at the core, and saw that it had been nearly hewn through, so that the first high wind was likely to blow it down. On the bark of the tree was scored the name of Deacon Peabody. He now looked round, and found most of the tall trees marked with the name of some great men of the colony, and all more or less scored by the axe. The one on which he had been seated, and which had just been hewn down, bore the name of Crowninshield; and he recollected a mighty rich man of that name, who made a vulgar display of wealth, which it was whispered he had acquired by buccaneering.

“He’s just ready for burning!” said the black man, with a growl of triumph. “You see I am likely to have a good stock of firewood for winter.”

“But what right have you,” said Tom, “to cut down Deacon Peabody’s timber?”

“The right of prior claim,” said the other. “This woodland belonged to me long before one of your white-faced Yankee race of rascals put foot upon the soil.”

“And pray, who are you, if I may be so bold?” said Tom.

“Oh, I go by various names. I am the Wild Huntsman in some countries; the Black Miner in others. In this neighborhood I am known by the name of the Black Woodsman. I am he to whom the red men devoted this spot, and now and then roasted a white man by way of sweet-smelling sacrifice. Since the red men have been exterminated by you white savages, I amuse myself by presiding at the persecutions of Quakers and Anabaptists. I am the great patron and prompter of slave-dealers, and the grand master of the Salem witches.”

“The upshot of all which is, that, if I mistake not,” said Tom, sturdily, “you are he commonly called Old Scratch.”

“The name at your service!” replied the black man, with a half-civil nod.

Such was the opening of this interview, according to the old story, though it has almost too familiar an air to be credited. One would think that to meet with such a singular personage in this wild lonely place, would have shaken any man’s nerves; but Tom was a hard-minded fellow, not easily daunted, and he had lived so long with a termagant wife, that he did not even fear the devil.

It is said that after this commencement, they had a long and earnest conversation together, as Tom returned homewards. The black man told him of great sums of money which had been buried by Kidd the pirate, under the oak-trees on the high ridge not far from the morass. All these were under his command and protected by his power, so that none could find them but such as propitiated his favor. These he offered to place in Tom Walker’s reach, having conceived an especial kindness for him; but they were to be had only on certain conditions. What these conditions were, may be easily surmised, though Tom never disclosed them publicly. They must have been very hard, for he required time to think of them, and he was not a man to stick at trifles where money was in view. When they reached the edge of the swamp, the stranger paused.

“What proof have I that all you have been telling me is true?” said Tom.

“There is my signature,” said the black man, pressing his finger on Tom’s forehead. So saying, he turned off among the thickets of the swamp, and seemed, as Tom said, to go down, down, down, into the earth, until nothing but his head and shoulders could be seen, and so on, until he totally disappeared.

When Tom reached home he found the black print of a finger burnt, as it were, into his forehead, which nothing could obliterate.

The first news his wife had to tell him was the sudden death of Absalom Crowninshield, the rich buccaneer. It was announced in the papers, with the usual flourish, that “a great man had fallen in Israel.”

Tom recollected the tree which his black friend had just hewn down, and which was ready for burning. “Let the freebooter roast,” said Tom; “who cares!” He now felt convinced that all he had heard and seen was no illusion.

He was not prone to let his wife into his confidence; but as this was an uneasy secret, he willingly shared it with her. All her avarice was awakened at the mention of hidden gold, and she urged her husband to comply with the black man’s terms, and secure what would make them wealthy for life. However Tom might have felt disposed to sell himself to the devil, he was determined not to do so to oblige his wife; so he flatly refused, out of the mere spirit of contradiction. Many and bitter were the quarrels they had on the subject; but the more she talked, the more resolute was Tom not to be damned to please her. At length she determined to drive the bargain on her own account, and if she succeeded, to keep all the gain to herself. Being of the same fearless temper as her husband, she set off for the old Indian fort toward the close of a summer’s day. She was many hours absent. When she came back she was reserved and sullen in her replies. She spoke something of a black man whom she had met about twilight, hewing at the root of a tall tree. He was sulky, however, and would not come to terms; she was to go again with a propitiatory offering; but what it was she forbore to say. The next she set off again for the swamp, with her apron heavily laden. Tom waited and waited for her, but in vain: midnight came, but she did not make her appearance; morning, noon, night returned, but still she did not come. Tom now grew uneasy for her safety; especially as he found she had carried off in her apron the silver tea-pot and spoons, and every portable article of value. Another night elapsed, another morning came; but no wife. In a word, she was never heard of more.

What was her real fate nobody knows, in consequence of so many pretending to know. It is one of those facts that have become confounded by a variety of historians. Some assert that she lost her way among the tangled mazes of the swamp, and sunk into some pit or slough; others, more uncharitable, hinted that she had eloped with the household booty, and made off to some other province; while others assert that the Tempter had decoyed her into a dismal quagmire, on top of which her hat was found lying. In confirmation of this, it was said a great black man, with an axe on his shoulder, was seen late that very evening coming out of the swamp, carrying a bundle tied in a check apron, with an air of surly triumph.

The most current and probable story, however, observes that Tom Walker grew so anxious about the fate of his wife and his property that he set out at length to seek them both at the Indian fort. During a long summer’s afternoon, he searched about the gloomy place, but no wife was to be seen. He called her name repeatedly, but she was nowhere to be heard. The bittern alone responded to his voice, as he flew screaming by; or the bull-frog croaked dolefully from a neighboring pool. At length, it is said, just in the brown hour of twilight, when the owls began to hoot and the bats to flit about, his attention was attracted by the clamor of carrion crows that were hovering about a cypress-tree. He looked, and beheld a bundle tied in a check apron, and hanging in the branches of the tree, with a great vulture perched hard by, as if keeping watch upon it. He leaped with joy, for he recognized his wife’s apron, and supposed it to contain the household valuables.

“Let us get hold of the property,” said he, consolingly to himself, “and we will endeavor to do without the woman.”

As he scrambled up the tree, the vulture spread its wide wings, and sailed off screaming into the deep shadows of the forest Tom seized the check apron, but, woful sight! found nothing but a heart and liver tied up in it.

Such, according to the most authentic old story, was all that was to be found of Tom’s wife. She had probably attempted to deal with the black man as she had been accustomed to deal with her husband; but though a female scold is generally considered a match for the devil, yet in this instance she appears to have had the worst of it. She must have died game, however, from the part that remained unconquered. Indeed, it is said Tom noticed many prints of cloven feet deeply stamped about the tree, and several handfuls of hair, that looked as if they had been plucked from the coarse black shock of the woodsman. Tom knew his wife’s prowess by experience. He shrugged his shoulders as he looked at the signs of a fierce clapper-clawing. “Egad,” said he to himself, “Old Scratch must have had a tough time of it!”

Tom consoled himself for the loss of his property by the loss of his wife; for he was a little of a philosopher. He even felt something like gratitude toward the Black Woodsman, who he considered had done him a kindness. He sought, therefore, to cultivate a further acquaintance with him, but for some time without success: the old black legs played shy, for whatever people may think, he is not always to be had for calling for; he knows how to play his cards when pretty sure of his game.

At length, it is said, when delay had whetted Tom’s eagerness to the quick, and prepared him to agree to anything rather than not gain the promised treasure, he met the black man one evening in his usual woodman dress, with his axe on his shoulder, sauntering along the edge of the swamp, and humming a tune. He affected to receive Tom’s advance with great indifference, made brief replies, and went on humming his tune.

By degrees, however, Tom brought him to business, and they began to haggle about the terms on which the former was to have the pirate’s treasure. There was one condition which need not be mentioned, being generally understood in all cases where the devil grants favors; but there were others about which, though of less importance, he was inflexibly obstinate. He insisted that the money found through his means should be employed in his service. He proposed, therefore, that Tom should employ it in the black traffic, that is to say, that he should fit out a slave ship. This, however, Tom resolutely refused; he was bad enough in all conscience, but the devil himself could not tempt him to turn slave-dealer.

Finding Tom so squeamish on this point, he did not insist upon it; but proposed instead that he should turn usurer,—the devil being extremely anxious for the increase of usurers, looking upon them as his peculiar people. To this no objections were made, for it was just to Tom’s taste.

“You shall open a broker’s shop in Boston next month,” said the black man.

“I’ll do it to-morrow, if you wish,” said Tom.

“You shall lend money at two per cent. a month.”

“Egad, I’ll charge four!” replied Tom Walker.

“You shall extort bonds, foreclose mortgages, drive the merchant to bankruptcy—”

“I’ll drive him to the devil,” cried Tom, eagerly.

“You are the usurer for my money!” said the black legs, with delight. “When will you want the rhino?”

“This very night.”

“Done!” said the devil.

“Done!” said Tom Walker. So they shook hands, and struck a bargain.

A few days’ time saw Tom Walker seated behind his desk in a counting-house in Boston. His reputation for a ready moneyed man, who would lend money out for a good consideration, soon spread abroad. Everybody remembers the days of Governor Belcher, when money was particularly scarce. It was a time of paper credit. The country had been deluged with government bills; the famous Land Bank had been established; there had been a rage for speculation; the people had run mad with schemes for new settlements, and for building cities in the wilderness; land-jobbers went about with maps of grants, and townships, and Eldorados, lying nobody knew where, but which everybody was ready to purchase. In a word, the great speculating fever which breaks out every now and then in the country, had raged to an alarming degree, and everybody was dreaming of making sudden fortunes from nothing. As usual, the fever had subsided; the dream had gone off,—and the imaginary fortunes with it,—the patients were left in doleful plight, and the whole country resounded with the consequent cry of “hard times.”

At this propitious time of public distress did Tom Walker set up as a usurer in Boston. His door was soon thronged with customers. The needy and the adventurous, the gambling speculator, the dreaming land-jobber, the thriftless tradesman, the merchant with cracked credit,—in short, every one driven to raise money by desperate means and desperate sacrifices,—hurried to Tom Walker. Thus Tom was the universal friend of the needy, and he acted like “a friend in need,”—that is to say, he always exacted good pay and good security. In proportion to the distress of the applicant was the hardness of his terms. He accumulated bonds and mortgages, gradually squeezed his customers closer and closer, and sent them at length dry as a sponge from his door.

In this way he made money hand over hand, became a rich and mighty man, and exalted his cocked hat upon ’Change. He built himself a vast house out of ostentation, but left the greater part of it unfinished and unfurnished out of parsimony. He even set up a carriage in the fulness of his vain-glory, though he nearly starved the horses which drew it; and as the ungreased wheels groaned and screeched on the axle-trees, you would have thought you heard the souls of the poor debtors he was squeezing.

As Tom waxed old, however, he grew thoughtful. Having secured the good things of this world, he began to feel anxious about those of the next. He thought with regret on the bargain he had made with his black friend, and set his wits to work to cheat him out of the conditions. He became, therefore, all of a sudden, a violent church-goer. He prayed loudly and strenuously, as if Heaven were to be taken by force of lungs. Indeed, one might always tell when he had sinned most during the week, by the clamor of his Sunday devotion. The quiet Christians who had been modestly and steadfastly travelling Zionward, were struck with self-reproach at seeing themselves so suddenly outstripped in their career by this new-made convert. Tom was as rigid in religious as in money matters; he was a stern supervisor and censurer of his neighbors, and seemed to think every sin entered up to their account became a credit on his own side of the page. He even talked of the expediency of reviving the persecution of Quakers and Anabaptists. In a word, Tom’s zeal became as notorious as his riches.

Still, in spite of all this strenuous attention to forms, Tom had a lurking dread that the devil, after all, would have his due. That he might not be taken unawares, therefore, it is said he always carried a small Bible in his coat pocket. He had also a great folio Bible on his counting-house desk, and would frequently be found reading it when people called on business; on such occasions he would lay his green spectacles on the book to mark the place, while he turned around to drive some usurious bargain.

Some say that Tom grew a little crack-brained in his old days, and that, fancying his end approaching, he had his horse new shod, saddled, and bridled, and buried with his feet uppermost; because he supposed that at the last day the world would be turned upside down,—in which case he should find his horse standing ready for mounting, and he was determined at the worst to give his old friend a run for it. This, however, is probably a mere old wives’ fable. If he really did take such a precaution, it was totally superfluous; at least so says the authentic old legend, which closes his story in the following manner:

On one hot afternoon in the dog-days, just as a terrible black thunder-gust was coming up, Tom sat in his counting-house in his white linen cap and India silk morning-gown. He was on the point of foreclosing a mortgage, by which he would complete the ruin of an unlucky land-speculator, for whom he had professed the greatest friendship. The poor land-jobber begged him to grant a few months’ indulgence. Tom had grown testy and irritated, and refused another day.

“My family will be ruined, and brought upon the parish,” said the land-jobber.

“Charity begins at home,” replied Tom; “I must take care of myself in these hard times.”

“You have made so much money out of me,” said the speculator.

Tom lost his patience and his piety. “The devil take me,” said he, “if I have made a farthing!”

Just then there were three loud knocks at the street door. He stepped out to see who was there. A black man was holding a black horse, which neighed and stamped with impatience.

“Tom, you’re come for!” said the black fellow, gruffly. Tom shrunk back, but too late. He had left his little Bible at the bottom of his coat pocket, and his big Bible on the desk, buried under the mortgage he was about to foreclose. Never was sinner taken more unawares. The black man whisked him like a child astride the horse, and away he galloped in the midst of a thunder-storm. The clerks stuck their pens behind their ears, and stared after him from the windows. Away went Tom Walker, dashing down the streets, his white cap bobbing up and down, his morning-gown fluttering in the wind, and his steed striking fire out of the pavement at every bound. When the clerks turned to look for the black man he had disappeared.

Tom Walker never returned to foreclose the mortgage. A countryman who lived on the borders of the swamp, reported that in the height of the thunder-gust he had heard a great clattering of hoofs and a howling along the road, and that when he ran to the window he just caught sight of a figure, such as I have described, on a horse that galloped like mad across the fields, over the hills and down into the black hemlock swamp toward the old Indian fort; and that shortly after a thunder-bolt fell in that direction, which seemed to set the whole forest in a blaze.

The good people of Boston shook their heads and shrugged their shoulders, but had been so much accustomed to witches and goblins and tricks of the devil in all kinds of shapes from the first settlement of the colony, that they were not so much horror-struck as might have been expected. Trustees were appointed to take charge of Tom’s effects. There was nothing, however, to administer upon. On searching his coffers, all his bonds and mortgages were found reduced to cinders. In place of gold and silver, his iron chest was filled with chips and shavings; two skeletons lay in his stable instead of his half-starved horses; and the very next day his great house took fire and was burnt to the ground.

Such was the end of Tom Walker and his ill-gotten wealth. Let all griping money-brokers lay this to heart. The truth of it is not to be doubted. The very hole under the oak-trees, from whence he dug Kidd’s money, is to be seen to this day; and the neighboring swamp and old Indian fort is often haunted in stormy nights by a figure on horseback, in a morning-gown and white cap, which is doubtless the troubled spirit of the usurer. In fact, the story has resolved itself into a proverb, and is the origin of that popular saying, prevalent throughout New England, of “The Devil and Tom Walker.”

The Old Smoke Chamber. a Picture of the Mount Hope Lands, and Their Legends.

That the old Royall house was haunted had long been a legend in the Mount Hope lands. Nearly all of the old houses in this part of New England were haunted, or supposed to be. A house without its ghost lore would have been regarded in old colony days as a place of but little interest. Did not evil spirits tempt all good people, and frighten all wrong-doers? And what a colorless family that must have been to have been wholly neglected by the ghost-world! All old women had their ghost-stories, and not a few claimed that the “Prince of the Power of the Air” had made them, or some of their antique relatives, a special visit. There seems to have been few good spirits in those lively and dramatic old times. The Puritan imagination had no fairy-land, or Hebraic or mediæval angels. The telling of ghost-stories to children was held to be a very wholesome and pious occupation, but the relation of fairy tales would have been a sin. No historian has overdrawn these colonial superstitions. Witches walked the air, the dead did not sleep well nights, but were ever getting up out of their graves and returning to their old places to warn the living. The spirit-world of darkness was an ever-present reality, a nightly terror, and there were no angel chariots in the clouds, nor angel feet in the ways of sorrow and death. New England was a goblin-land. Going to bed in some distant chamber in an old oak house was a specially perilous journey for the young Puritan to make; one could never tell whether one’s dead grandfather was in his grave at that hour or not. Young folks with disturbed consciences went to bed with alacrity, and drew the sheets over their heads quickly, in Cotton Mather’s day.

The Mount Hope lands! How beautiful they were and are! But the old houses on them were filled with dark superstitions. This is not strange, for the Mount Hope lands had been the fields of great events. Few places in America had such a romantic history.

“Here once red warriors were wont to assemble,

Here lurid and ghostly their council fires shone,

Here the word of the chief made the ancient tribes tremble,

And the war-whoop rung out from Pometacom’s throne.

“Gone, gone are the tribes from the scenes that they cherished,

The forests no longer encompass the tide,

The happy flocks sleep where Pometacom perished,

And wanders the heron where Wetamoo died.

“And here on this ocean mound silently lying,

Where tidal waves falling the far seas intone,

Where the sail on the bay like the osprey is flying,

The olden tribes rest from their warfare unknown.

“The mild air of spring-time embeds them in flowers,

The orioles here from the tropics return,

The grain ripens on them in midsummer’s hours,

And mellowing falls by the river sides burn.”

If the archæologists may be trusted, here came Leif Ericson in A. D. 1000, and wintered in Mount Hope Bay. A rock is still shown at a place called the Narrows, on which is a partly effaced inscription, which is claimed to have been made by the Northmen. On the Mount Hope lands, it is probable, was the first temporary settlement ever made in the territory which is now the United States. This was nearly five hundred years before the Columbian discovery. Here lived Massasoit, whose great heart protected the infant colony of Plymouth for forty or more years. Massasoit was a poet by nature; he loved inspiring scenery, and he made the glacier-carved slope of land overhanging these bright waterways to the sea his royal seat. On this neck of land, between the Narragansett and the Mount Hope bays, were his three royal villages, or places of lodges, each hard by a living spring of water. There was passed the boyhood of Alexander (Wamsutta) and King Philip (Pometacom). Here the forests were full of game, the shores of shell-fish, and the bays were rich fishing-fields for the white and airy birch canoes. There came young John Hampden, the English patriot and commoner, already inspired to defend popular rights against kingly power. He made the visit with Edward Winslow, and found Massasoit at Sowams (now Warren, Rhode Island), one of the three royal villages. The chief was sick, and Hampden helped make broth for him, and to nurse him, and under his and Winslow’s care the old chief recovered; and it was Indian gratitude for the kindly offices of these two wonderful men that made him a lifelong friend to the growing colonies. The scene of John Hampden in the lodge of Massasoit by the living spring of Sowams, which may still be seen close to the Warren River, is worthy of a poet or painter. May it one day find both! Here Captain Kidd, of ballad fame, was supposed to have hidden treasure. Here came Roger Williams, in exile, and met in the lodge of Massasoit—what he had not found at Salem—the spirit of a Christian hospitality. It was here his mind was active in evolving the great principles of religious liberty that have emancipated the human conscience from the rule of state throughout the world. There should be a monument to Massasoit on the Mount Hope lands; no chieftain ever better deserved a shaft of fame. Here were King Philip’s war-dances, and here the romantic Wetamoo came to attend them, crossing the starlit bay in her white canoe. Here Philip was killed, returning a fugitive to the ancient burying-ground of his race, and the warrior-queen Wetamoo was drowned, with her heart in vain longing for the beautiful hills that on either side of the bay met her eyes. Here Washington came to rest in 1793, and was the guest of William Bradford, then a United States Senator, who lived at the Mount. The descendants of Governor Bradford used to relate how the two statesmen, clad in “black velvet, with ruffles about their wrists and at their bosoms, and with powdered hair, promenaded the piazza, and talked together hour after hour.”

Leif Ericson, Massasoit, John Hampden, Roger Williams, Washington—what an array of great names and noble associations! We may well claim that there are few spots on American soil which are so grand in historic events of a highly poetic coloring as the old Mount Hope lands. As to lesser men, we have not space for more than an allusion: Church, the Indian-fighter, of cruel memory, the heroes of the “Gaspee,” and the old privateers. Lafayette was quartered here, and General Burnside here made his home on the borders of the beautiful hills after the Union war. In the prosperous colonial years before the Revolution there came to live on the Mount Hope lands in summer some grand families whom the world has almost forgotten. Among them were the Vassals of Boston, and the Royalls, also rich Boston people, whose home was at the Mount. These people were royalists, and fled from the country at the beginning of the war, and their estates were confiscated. The Mount Hope farm of the Royalls was among the confiscated estates. These people fled to the Windward Islands. The old Vassal tomb may still be seen in Cambridge churchyard, Massachusetts, near Harvard College. Of course the confiscated estate of the Royalls became haunted after the flight of its stately owners. The white ghost of Penelope Royall is supposed never to have left the romantic farms, but to have remained to terrify whomsoever might live upon these enchanted regions of the rightful territories of good King George. In her happy days this queenly woman used to ride in her high chariot through Bristol, greatly to the admiration of the Wardwells, the Bosworths, the Gladdings, the Churches, the Byfields, and the well-to-do townspeople of the cool old port. The white sail that bore the Royalls drifted over the tropic seas, but not in imagination the ghostly form and robes of Penelope Royall. They stayed to affright the rebels, and to uphold the rights and the dignities of the Crown. All disloyal Bristol could not arrest the spirit of Penelope, which seems to have delighted in the freedom denied to the royalists in the flesh. She was a maiden lady, and a more stately person than either Anna or Priscilla Royall, the old royalist’s first and second wives. She loved the Mount Hope lands, and especially Mount Hope, and used often to visit the white ridge overlooking the bays, and gaze over the glittering waterways and the green expanse of Rhode Island, where Bishop Berkeley is said to have made his immortal prophecy. She died in the old house, and was buried near it.

It was near the close of the last century that Prudence Wardwell, a rich spinster, came to live on the old Royall farm on the Mount Hope lands. The house which she occupied was noted for its great chimney. All the old Bristol houses had enormous chimneys with great fireplaces. One of these chimneys, it has been said, would furnish sufficient material to build a modern cottage. Several of them once stood like monuments, after the houses they had warmed were gone; and cattle, in the winter, would sometimes find a shelter in their giant fireplaces.

Prudence Wardwell—“Aunt Prudence,” as she was known—brought to the great oak mansion a bound boy by the name of Peter Fayerweather. It had been her wish to live as nearly alone as possible, with but a single protector, and for this solitary guardian and sentinel she had chosen Peter. He was a tall, awkward lad, with great eyes and a shambling gait; but Aunt Prudence believed him to be honest, and she did not want a “handsome man” on the place. Peter was not handsome. Peter had objected to going to the Mount on account of the ghost folk there. His large eyes and large ears seemed to grow as he listened to the old tales of superstition. He had heard again and again with terror the awful tale of Captain Kidd: how that recreant son of the old Scottish minister and martyr had gone forth on the high seas to destroy pirates, and had turned pirate himself; how he had sunk his good father’s Bible “in the sand,” and had murdered William Moore, “as he sailed, as he sailed.”

“And left him in his gore,

As he sailed.”

The old pirate was said to come back to the Mount Hope lands on still moonlight nights, to see if any had found his buried treasures. None had. One frightened Bristoller had met the old captain carrying his head like a bundle under his arm. The old pirate was evidently in a hurry; if not, the good man who met him most certainly was after the strange vision.

Peter Fayerweather had no wish to see stately Penelope Royall or dark-visaged Captain Kidd on moonlit nights, or any other nights, or any ghost folks who did such odd things as to take off their heads and carry them under their arms. So, of all places, he begged Aunt Prudence not to take him to the solemn and lonely old oak house on the Mount. But Aunt Prudence did not fear ghosts. She “trusted in the Lord,” as she said, against any wandering visitors from another world. She was afraid of robbers, and it was on this account that she had secured the protective services of the giant Peter, who would have regarded a robber on any dark night as a most welcome friend. So the two came to the grand old house, Aunt Prudence fearing only robbers, and young Peter only ghosts.

“If you will protect me from robbers,” said the solitary old lady to Peter, on the day of their arrival, “I will protect you from spirits. What do you say, Peter?”

“Aunt Prudence,” said Peter, “I do not fear no mortal flesh, true as preachin’. Look there, and there.”

He waved his great arms about like a windmill, and swung them round and round, greatly to the old lady’s admiration.

“I have great confidence in you, Peter; I made a good choice when I took you, Peter. Do it again.”

Peter swung his great arms again round and round like a wheel. Aunt Prudence’s sense of security became very firm.

“That will do, Peter. If you should ever see a ghost, you call me; and if I should ever see a man, I will call you.”

“Heaven forbid that I should ever see a ghost!” said Peter; “it would just kill me dead, true as preachin’.”

The summer passed; the apples reddened in the shadowy orchards, and the frosts dropped the walnuts on the light beds of crimson leaves. The orioles went, and the ospreys. The beautiful Indian summer came and burned and faded. November, the month of shadows, came, and a coolness fell from the steel sky over the bay, and soon the light snow-crystals began to fall. No ghosts were seen in or about the old house; no robbers. Peter lost his fears, and Aunt Prudence became full of confidence, and the two were as happy as such a solitary life could make them. Aunt Prudence, at least, seemed perfectly happy and contented.

There was in the great chimney an odd receptacle, once common to such chimneys, but now almost forgotten even in England, known as the smoke chimney. The door to it, which was iron, opened in this old house into one of the upper rooms. The chamber consisted of iron bars on which fresh hams were stored in the fall, and through which the smoke passed from one of the lower fireplaces. It was in reality a smoke-house in the chimney; a place to smoke meats, in the days when such smoked meats were regarded as a greater luxury than now. Peter Fayerweather had not been slow to discover this fortress-like smoke chamber. Peter was not what would be called bright, but a bright idea illumined his dull face when he first opened the iron door.

“Ghosts? Ghosts?” he said to himself. “If I ever should—I know what I would do if I ever should—Nothing could ever get through that iron door, true as preachin’. If I ever should—”

A part of the predicate to Peter’s subjunctive sentence was wanting, but that a very helpful idea had come to him was evident from his luminous face. He had formed a very definite plan of security “if he ever should—”

Aunt Prudence too, in a careful survey of the premises, had been struck with the appearance of security and seclusion of the old smoke chamber. She too had examined it alone; and as sympathetic minds by a kind of telegraphy express themselves in like phrases, she also said:—

“If I ever should—No robber would think of such a place as that, anyhow. I will hang up a quilt over the iron door, and if I ever should—If I ever should—eh, well, if I ever should—I will.”

She too turned away from the dungeon-like place with a face full of animation and confidence. Certainly if Peter “ever should,” or if Aunt Prudence “ever should,” the old smoke chamber would be a very desirable and convenient seclusion. Now, Peter thought of seclusion only in the case of a ghost, and Aunt Prudence only in case that an unknown man of very selfish propensities should “break into the house;” and each evidently had received a sense of security on a careful inspection of the old smoke chamber. But neither made a confidant of what the other would do under certain alarming circumstances.

Peter, like most cowardly people who recover a sense of security, became suddenly very bold. He used to visit Bristol evenings, and return late, greatly to Aunt Prudence’s anxiety. It was the time of the once famous Episcopal and Methodist Episcopal revivals, and Peter claimed that he went to attend the meetings, which were the exciting topics of the old port and of the State. Aunt Prudence, who was a strict Calvinist, was not deeply in sympathy with these phenomenal meetings, which were called the “New Light Stir.” She advised Peter to “read his Bible at home.” But he still felt the necessity of going elsewhere for the interpretation of that good book, and so, to use his own expression, he continued to “follow up” the meetings.

Aunt Prudence’s patience at thus being left alone during the long winter evenings at last came to an end.

“Peter,” she said, one morning after Peter had attended a meeting that had held very late, “are you never afraid of meeting apparitions on your way home nights? Suppose you should—what would you do?”

Peter thought of the old smoke chamber, but that would not serve him in such a case. He knew Aunt Prudence’s purpose in making these appalling suggestions. He was not a very politic boy, but he was quite equal to the situation on this particular occasion.

“I would call for you, Aunt. You say that you are not afraid of ’em.”

Aunt Prudence felt flattered, but she still recalled amid her feeling of satisfaction that she must not be left alone.

“But, Peter, I would hate to see the ghost of Captain Kidd, or to see any of the old Indian apparitions. Don’t you know, Peter, that Mount Hope is a great Indian graveyard? I would not like to meet old Penelope Royall all in white going about in the wind; would you, Peter? It would be awful; now wouldn’t it, Peter?”

Peter’s great eyes and ears began to grow. His old nervous fears were coming back again, but he still coveted the freedom of his evenings.

“Aunt,” he said at last, very thoughtfully, “where do you suppose old Penelope Royall went when she died?”

“To heaven, I hope, Peter, even if she was a royalist.”

“Then why don’t she stay there? What would she want to be wanderin’ about in the wind in cold nights for?”

“For vengeance,” said Aunt, in an annoyed tone.

“For vengeance?” said Peter. “I shouldn’t think a woman after she had gone to heaven would have any more wicked feelings like that. I don’t believe she wanders about in the wind with thin clothes on anyway. Now say, do you, Aunt? Do you really think so? They dress comfortable up there. It don’t stand to reason, true as preachin’; now does it?”

Aunt felt the force of Peter’s argument. In fact, Peter was expressing her own firm convictions about such matters.

“But Captain Kidd, Peter, he was a dreadful man; I don’t think he has gone to heaven.”

“Where did he go, Aunt?”

Aunt Prudence replied with spirit and emphasis,—

“He went, Peter, where all wicked people go,—to the kingdom of darkness, where he is shut up for ever and ever. There now!”

Aunt Prudence was “clearing away the table,” as she called her morning work, when she uttered these startling and decisive words. She looked steadily at Peter, and felt that she had answered him and silenced him. She felt a kind of triumph in the pause that followed, and lifted her spectacles as though to say, “What do you think of that?”

“But, Aunt Prudence—”

“But what, Peter? This is a very alarming subject.”

“But who let him out?”

“Oh, Peter, Peter! You are becoming an awful boy. I always knew that those Methodist free salvation meetings would do you no good. You go right out to the wood-pile, and bring me in an armful of wood. You have no sense of theology, anyway. You are a poor daft fellow. ‘Who let him out?’ Did I ever!”

Peter went out, muttering that he didn’t “see how people can be shut up forever in another world, and be wandering about this world at the same time. It don’t stand to reason, nohow, true as preachin’.”

But although Peter’s reasoning seemed convincing, it did not quiet his superstitious fears. Whenever his conscience became a little disturbed, the picture of tall Penelope Royall wandering about in the wind “all in white” was before him. Even grim old Captain Kidd was not such an alarming object to his fancy as that. Captain Kidd was a man, and he felt sure that he would let him alone, if he did not trouble the buried treasure, but old Penelope Royall—she was a woman.

The Mount Hope lands were full of Indian stories, which were founded on tricks, and even worse stories of those whose wits cheated the devil out of his dues, when their grasping souls had bargained with the latter. Peter thought of these. There was one story that suggested to him that wit is equal to most conditions of life. It was a red settle story, but became a poem:—

“Among Rhode Island’s early sons

Was one whose orchards fair

By plenteous and well-flavored fruit,

Rewarded all his care.

“For household use they stored the best,

And all the rest, conveyed

To neighboring mill, were ground and pressed

And into cider made.

“The wandering Indian oft partook

The generous farmer’s cheer;

He liked his food, but better still

His cider fine and clear.

“And as he quaffed the pleasant draught

The kitchen fire before,

He longed for some to carry home,

And asked for more and more.

“The farmer saw a basket new,

Beside the Indian bold,

And smiling said, ‘I’ll give to you

As much as that will hold.’

“Both laughed, for how could liquid thing

Within a basket stay?

But yet, the jest unanswering,

The Indian went his way.

“When next from rest the farmers sprung

So very cold the morn,

The icicles like diamonds hung

On every eping and thorn.

“The brook that babbled by his door

Was deep, and clear, and strong,

And yet unfettered by the frost,

Leaped merrily along.

“The self-same Indian by this brook

The astonished farmer sees;

He laid his basket in the stream,

Then hung it up to freeze.

“And by this process oft renewed,

The basket soon became

A well-glazed vessel, tight and good,

Of most capacious frame.

“The door he entered speedily,

And claimed the promised boon;

The farmer laughed heartily,

Fulfilled his promise soon.

“Up to the basket’s brim he saw

The sparkling cider rise,

And to rejoice his absent squaw,

He bore away the prize.

“Long lived the good man at the farm,

The house is standing still,

And still leaps merrily along

The much diminished rill.

“And his descendants still remain,

And tell to those who ask it,

The story they have often heard

About the Indian’s basket.”

A wonderful reformation seemed to come over Peter. He began to stay at home, and go to bed very early, often as early as seven o’clock,—or at least he seemed to do these sober things. Aunt Prudence had gone to the door of his room once or twice after his early retiring, but had found it locked, and she had been unable to awake him, he “slept so sound.” “Boys do,” she said.

“Peter,” she said one morning, “tell me the truth, now; didn’t you hear me when I pounded and pounded on the door last night?”

“No, Aunt Prudence, true as preachin’ I did not.” And he did not.

The truth was that poor Peter had fallen from his integrity, even in these times of the great revivals. He had discovered that the great hall window was as handy as a door, and that he had only to leave it unfastened to return to the house at any time of the night without disturbing the sound slumbers of good Aunt Prudence. He was careful in taking this liberty to first lock his own room. These were wicked ways, it is true, and very bold ones for a quiet youth, and quite inconsistent with meeting-going habits. But the meetings at this period were wonderfully dramatic; everybody talked about them, and Peter’s curiosity quite overcame his moral sense.

The holidays were at hand. Thanksgiving was Aunt Prudence’s great annual festival, her Feast of Tabernacles; she made little account of Christmas, which, she told Peter, was a mere “relic of the Pope and the Dragon,” and which he associated with an old picture in the “Pilgrim’s Progress.”

Watch Night was the great annual occasion of the old Bristol Methodists. It took place on New Year’s Eve, when a great assembly used to meet to sing the old Wesleyan Watch Night hymns, written by Wesley for the Old London Foundry, and to watch “the old year out and the new year in.” The services of the Presiding Elder were sometimes secured for this memorable night, and if so, a “Love Feast” was held, and a multitude told their experiences, amid triumphant responses, ecstatic refrains, and sometimes strange exhibitions of trance, or of “losing one’s strength,” as the old phenomena were called.

Christmas was the Episcopal festival, and the Episcopal Church in Bristol was unlike any other at that time. It followed the revival methods of Whitefield and Lady Huntingdon. Christmas Eve was an occasion of universal charity. The poor were the guests of the church, and were entertained like princes. Peter well understood all these festivals, and he resolved to attend them all,—the old Orthodox church’s Thanksgiving, the Episcopal festival, and the Methodists’ solemn jubilee on New Year’s Eve. There was nothing sectarian about him. It was also his intention not to disturb the mind of Aunt Prudence about these matters,—the easy hall window would make it unnecessary.

Thanksgiving passed—it fell late this year; December came in mildly, as though the bright days were loath to go. The stillness before the winter storms filled the air. The withered grasses were silent now, without the voice of insect or bird. A white gull sometimes cleaved the still gray air, and the wild cry of the shore birds was sometimes heard. The nights were silvery and cold. The Mount Hope Bay and the Pocassett Hills in the frosty moonlight recalled the silence and melancholy fate of that ancient race which slumbered in the browned fields, Pometacom’s cliff and spring. The night air seemed peopled with shadows of painted chiefs and spectral armies forever gone. The river weeds were dead, and encased in a thin sheet of ice in the early mornings. Brown leaves still hung on the oaks, and red leaves of ivy on the long walls. Husking was over, and the yellow cones of the stalks of corn fodder glimmered on every farm. The fishing-boats were hauled upon the shore; everything—the sky, the blue bay, the fields, the working-men—seemed waiting for the coming of winter. The mild days grew shorter and shorter; the tall candles burned lower and lower each evening; the nights were glorious, and Christmas Eve came, rung in by the resonant bell of good St. Michael’s.

Aunt Prudence had resolved to depart from the Orthodox customs on this special year, and to make Peter a Christmas present. “He has become such a good boy of late,” she reasoned, “and so steady. Every one else is giving presents, and he ought to be rewarded.” She planned to fill a bag with good things for him, after the manner of the bountiful bag, and to hang it on his bedroom door on Christmas Eve. He would, as she thought, find it in the morning, and it would be a great surprise to him. It certainly would. She made the bag, purchased some sweetmeats for it, and began to fill it with useful articles. She knit for it a “comforter,” as a neck-scarf was called, several pairs of stockings, some “galluses,” and secured for it various other useful things, among them “Hervey’s Meditations,” “Young’s Night Thoughts,” and “The Fool of Quality,” all famous books in those sober days, and “good readin’.”

When the bag was nearly full it occurred to her that she ought to knit for it a pair of mittens. This happy thought, however, did not occur to her until the day before Christmas. Aunt Prudence was a rapid knitter. The needles flew under her skilled fingers so swiftly as to look like mere glimmers. “I can finish the mittens before eleven o’clock to-night,” she said to herself, “and then the bag will be all complete. I had as lief sit up late to-night as not, the nights are so long now.”

Peter retired early that evening.

“Going?” said Aunt Prudence as he left the room with his candle. “You seem dreadful sleepy of late. Well, that’s all right, I suppose. Boys do when they’re growing. Don’t forget to say your prayers, Peter. You’ve a great deal to be thankful for. Good-night, Peter. The Lord bless ye!”

Peter closed the door on receiving this serene benediction.

“He’s such a steady boy!” said the good woman, as she resumed her knitting. “He sha’n’t lose anything by it, either. Any boy will be steady if he is brought up right. There’s the trouble, people do not bring their children up right.” Her needles flew. It was inspiring to recall her great success in training Peter.

It was a still night. There was a faint moon, and the stars glimmered thick in the cloudless sky. Aunt Prudence looked out of the window at times, saw the still fields and bare trees, and thought of the past. The Mount seemed haunted—it always does on calm winter nights. Not by Leif, or Kidd, or the Royalls, or by Indian fighters, or Revolutionary heroes, or statesmen, but by that vanished and mysterious race whose forest capital was here, and whose arrow-heads still fill the fields and sand.

At nine the old Bristol bell rang out on the clear air.

“I shall have the work all done by ten,” said Aunt Prudence, and her needles flew again. She was very happy. She got up and looked out of the window for the tenth time—ghost-land.

The hands on the old English clock pointed to ten. The work was done, and Aunt Prudence drew the top of the bag together, and pinned upon the tape handle a sheet of paper, on which was written,

“Peter Fayerweather, a Present.”

It was half-past ten before Aunt Prudence opened the door to go with the bag bountiful to the door of Peter’s room. As she did so she thought that she heard a noise in the hall. She stepped back and listened with a beating heart. She surely heard the hall window close, and a careful step in the hall. Her heart bounded, and she gasped for breath; she had long had a presentiment of this danger.

She locked her door at once, withdrew the key, and kneeled down on the rug and looked through the key-hole very cautiously. There was only a faint moon and star light in the hall, but she saw the shadow of a tall man pass, and heard a dull step move in the direction of Peter’s room. Her house had been entered, surely; the expected event had really come. What should she do?

She stepped into her bedroom, which opened out of her sitting-room, where she had been knitting, and sunk down upon the white bed, and drew the bed-curtains. She would have groaned, but she dared not. Here she lay and trembled till the old clock struck eleven, the strokes sounding like a warning through the hollow rooms.

She must alarm Peter. How? Suppose she were to meet the robber in the hall? Her nervous system was so shaken that she felt that she could not be quiet any longer. She must do something, at any event. She arose, put aside the bed-curtains, drew from the bed the white counterpane, put it over her head like a great shawl, wrapped it around her, and going into the sitting-room, took the almost extinct candle, and unlocked the door and stepped cautiously into the hall. If ever a mortal looked like the traditional spectre, Aunt Prudence did then.

The hall was empty; all was still. The grim old portraits were there—like shadow people they were all.

She left the sitting-room door open, and moved silently and cautiously along toward Peter’s room. She tried Peter’s door. A great sense of relief came to her; it was unlocked. She opened it slowly, but a draught blew out the light. Terrified at this, she glided to Peter’s bed and seized the boy by the hair, gasping, “Peter, Peter, there’s a man in the house! Get up, get up! there’s a man in the house!” She shook him with a nervous energy, and repeated in stage-like whispers the words. She then vanished out of the room.

Peter awoke at the first touch of the rude hand, and his heart seemed to stop, and his blood to turn to frozen streams, as he saw an awful white spectre standing over his bed, and felt its bony fingers in his hair. Penelope flashed upon him. It surely was the ghost of Penelope; she had got away from the other world this time, surely, despite his reason and philosophy. He looked around wildly, saw the shadow of the old ox-saddle that adorned this room as a curiosity,—and Penelope, awful Penelope.

Penelope’s final shake of his great shoulders nearly put a period to his unromantic history. A chill like death came over him, and he fully believed that his last moments had come. The gasped words, “There’s a man in the house—get up!” were something of a relief. “A man!” If he would only appear! Then he beheld the unearthly white figure vanish through the door. It surely was Penelope. She had gone; and oh, if the man, if any man, would come!

He lay petrified for a moment, and then thought of the old smoke chamber. His decision was immediate. He leaped up, drew the dark patchwork coverlid around him, and darted upstairs. Past loom, hatchel, and spinning-wheel, he made his way to the iron door, leaped into the smoke chamber, closed the door behind him, and sank down in a heap, with a most decided resolution to leave the house in the morning forever, “true as preachin’.” He drew the industrial coverlid around him, leaving only an opening for his eyes.

Aunt Prudence went back to her room, and locked the door tremblingly, and waited for Peter’s step. But no Peter came. Her suspense grew unbearable again. Suddenly she too thought of the old smoke chamber, and drawing her ghostly robe again around her, she went into the hall, and silently and very cautiously made her dark way up the stairs. She too, past loom, hatchel, and spinning-wheel, found her way to the iron door, and pulling it open, prepared to enter the dark grated chamber.

If ever a mind was supped full of horror, it was Peter’s when he heard a noise at the iron door, and beheld the supposed ghost of Penelope Royall, tall and avengeful, standing before him. He uttered a pitiful shriek, slid through the iron bars, and dropped down the chimney into the fireplace. There he recovered himself at once, leaped up with a bound, fled from the house, and almost flew toward the town.

But Aunt Prudence? Shocked on finding the supposed robber in the old smoke chamber, she too fled precipitately for the outside door, turning over the spinning-wheel in her flight. Once into the open air, she made equal speed toward the slumbering village.

She did not see the form of Peter in advance of her; but he paused a moment for breath, and saw the supposed form of Penelope pursuing him, “all in white.” It stimulated his resolution to gain the town. It was a mile or more from the Mount Hope farms to the old village, and Peter fleeing from the ghost, and Aunt Prudence from the robber, went over this distance in a very brief part of the midnight hour.

“The Bristol clock struck the hour of twelve. An out-of-town Christmas Eve party were returning home at this late hour on foot, and on the skirts of the village were surprised by Peter, wrapped in his odd blanket. The merry-makers knew him well, laughed, and plied him with questions.

“The ghost!” he shrieked, as soon as he could recover his voice, and pointed to the hill. “Penelope!”

The astonished young people looked in the direction in which Peter had pointed. There surely was a tall white form that seemed to have wings and to come half flying toward them through the air. They had heard of such things, but had never seen one before. Had they numbered but two or three, they would have fled; but there were some ten or twelve in the party, and they waited the coming of the strange apparition.

“’Tis me she’s after—Penelope—’tis me,” screamed Peter. “The Lord have mercy upon me! My time is come now, true as preachin’.”

The white figure was soon before them. It no sooner reached the place than it sunk down upon the earth.

“Take me home with you; there’s a robber in the house!”

A ghost and a robber!

“It’s Aunt Prudence Wardwell,” said one of the young men, after a pause, on hearing such a midnight tale. “Why, Aunt Prudence, what is the matter?”

“Protect me—take me home, somewhere. Oh, there’s a robber in the house,—a robber!”

“Here’s Peter,” said the young man. “I thought he lived with you.”

“Peter?” gasped the woman all in white.

“Yes. Here, Peter, what does this mean?”

“I—I—thought, oh, I thought, Aunt Prudence, that you was a ghost. I did, true as preachin’.”

“How did you get here, Peter? Oh, there’s a robber in the house. Did you hear me when I called you? I saw him enter by the window,—saw him with my own eyes, Peter. He’s hid in the old smoke chamber. Oh, Peter, where shall we go, oh! oh!”

It was all clear to Peter now, painfully clear; the cloud had lifted.

“It was me, Aunty.”

“What?” Aunt Prudence’s tall form rose slowly.

“It was me who got into the house by the window.”

“You?”

“Yes—I must confess—I run away and went to the town to the festival. I did—I must confess—true as preachin’.”

“You?”

“Yes.”

“Oh, Peter, let’s go home. What two dreadful-looking objects we are! I ain’t afraid of ghosts.”

“And I ain’t afraid of no robbers, nor no such. What a time we’ve made of it!—and the folks will all laugh at us too. Let’s go home. That’s the place for us, true as preachin’.”

The Robber and Ghost, two spectral figures, departed, with a great sense of relief, but with many reserved opinions. Peter never received the present of the bountiful bag, but neither ghosts nor robbers were ever known to trouble the Royall house again. It became a very quiet place, and Peter Fayerweather settled down there to his pastoral and domestic duties, and really fulfilled Aunt Prudence’s hopes of him, his thrifty farming doing real credit to the beautiful and historic Mount Hope Lands.[4]

[4]Originally published in Harper’s Weekly.

MANUFACTURES BUILDING.