CHAPTER THE FIRST.
The Reverend Caleb Ellison had an odd way of doing every thing; but he was so good a man, and so adored a clergyman, that his being in love was an interesting circumstance to a large proportion of the inhabitants of the country town in which he lived. When he looked up at the chimney-pots as he walked the streets, or went slowly skipping along the foot-pavement to the Reading-room in the market-place, the elders of his congregation might wish that he would walk more like other men, and the children giggled at the sight; but the ladies, young and old, regarded these things as a part of the "originality" which they admired in him; and Joanna Carey would scarcely admit to herself that such freaks required forbearance.
On Friday evening Mr. Carey returned before the rest of his party from a strawberry feast, to tell his wife that their dear girl had shown him by a look, that she must now decide on her lot for life. Ellison had certainly spoken. Joanna must decide for herself. If she was satisfied to have the greatest blessings that a woman could have—high moral and spiritual excellence in a man who loved her—and could, for these, make light of the daily drawbacks of his oddities, it was not for any one else to object. Mr. Carey could not say that his own temper would bear with so eccentric a companion; but perhaps he was narrow: perhaps his wife's nice household ways for twenty-five years had spoiled him. Joanna knew what she was undertaking. She knew that it was as much as the clerk and the deacons could do, to get the pastor into the pulpit in proper time every Sunday, and that this would be her business now. She knew that he seldom remembered to shave, and how he had burned his marble chimney-piece black; and—Well; perhaps these were trifles. Perhaps it was a fault not to regard them as such. If a father was fortunate enough to have a man of eminent single-mindedness for his son-in-law, and genius to boot, he ought not, perhaps, to require common sense also; but it had always been Mr. Carey's belief that good sense was the greatest part of genius.
By Sunday evening Mr. Carey was little disposed to desire any thing more in his intended son-in-law than had appeared that day. Joanna had engaged herself to him on Saturday evening. On Sunday morning there was something in the tone of his pathetic voice so unusual, in the very first verses of the Psalm, that many hearers looked up; and then they saw something very unusual in his countenance. He so preached, that a stranger inquired earnestly who this Mr. Ellison was, and whence he came; and his admirers in the congregation said he was inspired.
"Joanna behaved very well, did not she?" whispered Mrs. Carey to her husband, as they were returning from chapel.
"Very well, indeed. And it was extremely fine, his preaching to-day. Extremely fine!"
And this particular day, the father feared as little for Joanna as Joanna for herself.
There was no reason for delay about the marriage. Mr. Ellison had three hundred pounds a year from his office, and was never likely to have any more. The interest of Joanna's portion—one thousand pounds—was hers whenever she married. She was four-and-twenty, and Mr. Ellison was five years older. They were no children; there was no reason for delay; so every body knew of the engagement immediately, and the preparations went on diligently.
A pastor's marriage is always a season of great interest and amusement. In this case it was unusually diverting from the singular innocence of the gentleman about all household affairs. He showed all the solicitude of which he was capable to have every thing right and comfortable for Joanna; but his ideas were so extraordinary, that his friends suspected that he had been quizzed by certain youths of his congregation, who had indeed made solemn suggestions to him about dredging-boxes and rolling-pins, and spigots, and ball-irons, and other conveniences, the names of which were strange to him. He had promised to leave the whole concern of furnishing in the hands of a discreet lady and her daughters, with a power of appeal to Mrs. Carey in doubtful cases; but when these mysterious names had been lying on his mind for some days, he could not help making inquiries and suggestions, which brought nothing but laughter upon him. Mr. and Mrs. Carey thought the quizzing went rather too far; but Joanna did not seem to mind it.
"His head should not be stuffed with nonsense," observed Mr. Carey to his wife, "when business that he really ought to be attending to is left undone."
"You mean the Life Insurance," replied she. "Why do you not remind him of it?"
"I believe I must. But it is not a pleasant thing to do. No man in his circumstances ought to need to be spoken to more than once. However, I have to suggest to him to insure all this pretty furniture that his friends are giving him; and while I am speaking about the Fire Insurance, I can easily mention the more important one."
"I should feel no difficulty," observed Mrs. Carey. "He will be purely thankful to you for telling him what he ought to do."
An opportunity soon occurred. The presents came in fast: the Careys were consulted about how to stow them all. One evening at supper, the conversation naturally turned—as it probably does in every house—on what should be saved first in case of fire. Mr. Carey asked Mr. Ellison whether his landlord had not insured the cottage, and whether he himself was not thinking of insuring the furniture from fire.
Instant opposition arose from Mr. Carey's second daughter, Charlotte, who declared that she could not bear to think of such a thing. She begged that nobody would speak of such a thing. Indeed, she wondered that any body could. When induced to explain the emotions with which her mind was laboring, she declared her horror that any one belonging to her could feel that any money could compensate for the loss of the precious things, such as old letters, and fond memorials, which perish in a fire.
"How old are you, my dear?" inquired her father.
"Sixteen, papa."
"Indeed! I should have taken you to be six years younger. I should wonder at a child of ten talking so sillily as you are doing."
Mr. Ellison stared; for his sympathy with Charlotte's sentiment was so strong, that he was looking at her with beaming eyes, and softly ejaculating, "Dear Charlotte! dear child!"
It took some time to convince both (for young ladies of sixteen sometimes see things less clearly than six years before and ten years after that age) that, if precious papers and gifts are unhappily lost in a fire, that is no reason why tables and chairs, and fish-kettles and dredging-boxes, and carpets and house linen should not be paid for by an Insurance Office; but at last both young lady and pastor saw this. Still, Charlotte did not look satisfied; and her father invited her to utter what was in her mind. After some fencing about whether her thoughts were silly, and whether it would be silly to speak them, out came the scruple. Was there not something worldly in thinking so much about money and the future?
"Dear Charlotte! dear child!" again soliloquized Mr. Ellison.
Mr. Carey did not think the apprehension silly; but, in his opinion, the danger of worldliness lay the other way. He thought the worldliness lay in a man's spending all his income, leaving wife and children to be maintained by their neighbors, in case of accidents which may happen any day to any body, and which do happen to a certain proportion of people, within an assigned time, as regularly as death happens to all. Charlotte had nothing to say against life insurance, because every man knows that he shall die; and there is no speculation in the case. But she was extremely surprised to hear that there is an equal certainty, though of a narrower extent, about fire, and other accidents; that it is a fact that, out of so many householders, such and such a number will have their houses burned down.
"Is it indeed so?" asked Joanna.
"It is indeed so. Moreover, out of so much property, such and such an amount will perish by fire. Every householder being bound in with this state of things for his share of the risk, he owes it equally to others and to himself to secure the compensation, in case of accident. Does he not?"
"How to others?"
"Because he should contribute his share to the subscription, if you like to call it so, by which the sufferer from fire, whoever he be, is to be compensated. Thus, you see, Charlotte, that which seems to you an act of worldliness is a neighborly act, as well as a prudent one."
When reminded, Charlotte admitted that she had herself said so about the Cow Club at B——. She had told many people how the cottagers at B——, were now saved from all danger of ruin by the loss of a cow—a loss fatal to so many cottagers elsewhere. The farmers at B——, who could ill afford to lose from nine pounds to fifteen pounds at a stroke by the death of a cow, had joined with the cottagers in setting up a Cow Life-insurance. The club employed a skillful cow-doctor. The members paid in a small portion of the weekly profits of their milk-selling; and had the comfort of knowing that, whenever their cow died, they would be supplied with another, or with a part of the value of one, according to the length of time, or the yearly amount they had paid. Charlotte admitted that she had been delighted with the scheme, but now asserted that she was much more pleased about the Quakers and their ship.
"Ha! Quakers?" said Mr. Ellison.
Yes; those Quakers, now, were the sort of people whom Charlotte admired. So unworldly! so trusting! There was a rich India ship, belonging to some Quakers, lately wrecked in the Channel, very near her port. The whole cargo was lost. It had been a total loss to the owners, because their principles would not allow them to insure—to put themselves out of the hands of Providence, and speculate in "the stormy winds fulfilling his word." That had been their statement; and was there not something very beautiful in it? Charlotte looked at her father for an answer.
"Tell me, first, my dear," he replied, "whether you admire Tasker, the shoemaker, for refusing to have his children vaccinated, saying that it was taking them out of the hands of the Lord?"
Charlotte could not think of poor little Mary Tasker, disfigured and half blind, and not wish that she had been vaccinated; and yet Tasker had acted in a resigned spirit.
"Well: exactly as much as you admire Tasker, I admire your Quakers. I honor their motive, but I am sorry for their mistake—sorry that they refuse one safeguard against worldliness."
"Worldliness, papa!"
Mr. Carey explained how the moral dangers of commercial pursuits are in proportion to their gambling character. Large gains and great hazards must be more engrossing to the mind, and more stimulating to the passions than small and secure profits. The great drawback upon commerce with very remote countries is, or was, its gambling character, from the variety and seriousness of the risks, and the largeness of the profits laid on to cover them. By means of insurance against sea risks and other dangers, the losses are spread over so large a number that they cease to be losses, and become a mere tax, such as men may willingly pay for security. When a man has so introduced moderation into his gains and his losses, as to detach himself from "the cares of the world and the deceitfulness of riches," he may listen with a quiet pulse (as far as his own affairs are concerned) to the wind roaring over the sea, and need not be "afraid of evil tidings." It was quite a new view to Charlotte that her Quakers had been gambling, in fact, when they should have been trading safely; but she could not deny that it was so. Nobody wished her to give them up, in regard to their spirit of faith and trust; but nobody could stand up for their prudence.
The most striking view to Charlotte was that there is nothing accidental in storms and tempests; and that it is only our ignorance which makes us call them so. The realm of Meteorology is, no doubt, governed by laws as invariable as that of Astronomy. We know this fact, though we, as yet, know little of these laws. Something more we know: and that is, the average of shipwrecks and conflagrations, in a certain condition of society; in the same way that we know the average of men that will die, out of a certain number, in a certain time: and it is this knowledge of the averages which justifies the resource of insurance in all the three cases. When Mr. Ellison at length comprehended that there were thousands of prudent men now paying their mite to compensate him for the loss of his new furniture, in case of its being burned, on the simple condition of his paying his mite also, he was so struck by their neighborly conduct, that he could scarcely express his sense of it. The ladies considered it impossible that he should feel so strongly, and be heedless about the condition on his own part. Mr. Carey shook his head.
Mr. Carey was right. The wedding-day came, and the insurance was not effected.—Joanna did not like to tease her betrothed about worldly affairs. If the subject was mentioned, and the train of thought revived, he went into an enthusiasm about the benevolent class of insurers: but he did not become one himself.