THE PILGRIMAGE.
'FELIX QUI POTUIT RERUM COGNOSCERE CAUSAS.'
The doctor sate sole in his easy chair,
And his visage was stamped with the marks of care,
And his vacant eye said, as plain as eye could,
That his mind was digesting but meagre food.
At all events, it were safe to say,
That his own wise thoughts were its food that day.
What ails thee, doctor?[15] Are patients thin?
Nay, I know what you mean by that ready grin:
Don't suppose I thought physic would make a man thrive,
When he's specially blessed, if it leaves him alive:
No; I knew that the veriest wretch that lies
On street-pick'd straw, and with wistful eyes
Covets the steam of the baker's bread,
With which he could never afford to be fed,
If he puts in his stomach one nauseous pill,
Will make himself only more retchéd still:
All this I can fathom; but now I mean,
Are your 'visits,' like angels', far between?
The Angel of Death, that is, of course,
That rides the pale steed, alias 'Pallida Mors?'
Pray have you not 'cases' enough, to pay
For your coat of black and your breeches of gray?
Your perpetual mourning for visiting-friends,
Who, (alas for your purse!) met untimely ends?
Or art sad, that the dose, 'hora somni sumendum,'
Which was meant to soothe suff'rings, should very soon end 'em?
And lamentest, with tears such as doctors weep,
That the patient, in consequence, slept his long sleep?
Or art thinking, if longer you could not have kept him,
If your dose had been 'pilulæ, numero septem?'
Now don't be down-hearted; for people enough
Still live who will patronize medical stuff;
And to whom do you think that a man would come quicker
To find out his ailment—in short, be 'made sicker?'[16]
But softly! It's wasting one's breath to ply
A doctor with questions, and get no reply;
{ And indeed, as he's sitting companionless,
{ For a wiser man 't would be hard to guess
{ That I had been making a mental address:
So I'll call into service that eye of the mind,
Which can see though its owner be never so blind,
And in my own absence can safely depend
On the word of my fancy—a poet's best friend;
And will venture to say my report shall compare
With the best ever written, it matters not where.
For the truest reporter, (his minutes will show,)
Though he uses 'short hand,' often draws 'the long bow.'
The doctor, alone, as I said before,
Was pond'ring some mystical subject o'er;
It puzzled him sorely to know what to think,
And, the scales being even, which side to make sink.
Now made he a gesture, with eloquent hand,
As one who explains what he can't understand;
And anon, with his finger laid fast by his nose,
Impatiently heard what he meant to oppose;
Then, with sagest look and a lengthened face,
He seem'd to maintain t' other side of the case;
But however he view'd it, before or behind,
He never could see it at all to his mind;
And he made a wry face, as a doctor will,
When he sets the example of taking a pill.
But one thing he determin'd—at once to set out,
And fathom the matter beyond a doubt.
'The long and the short of the matter is this:
I'll visit this personage—vis-à-vis!
Come, saddle me up my snow-white horse,
That looks like some phthisical donkey's corse,
When, surmounted by me, with my 'phials of wrath,'
He carries me round on my death-dealing path,
{ Hobbling along in the murky night,
{ And glimmering pale through the dim twilight,
{ With a little more spirit, an excellent sprite.
'But alas! he will travel no road beside
The road to that patient's—the last who died!
In that case, to be sure, I used exquisite skill,
But—it's rather too early to carry my bill:
Let him stand—for I'll own he has duty enough,
And 'Recipiat pabuli quantum suff.''
No man who inhabits the smallest room
That ever had tenant, (this side of the tomb,)
Let its shape or its furniture be what they may,
If his seat have been in it for day after day;
If its little odd corners, the hardest to find,
Were familiar as bosom-friends, time out of mind;
If his coat have hung here and his boots lain there,
And his breeches been toss'd about any where;
No man ever left such a well-known spot,
Uncertain if soon to return or not,
But he stopped at the door, though he knew not why,
And took a last look, and perhaps heav'd a sigh.
So the doctor paused at the open door,
With his hat in his hand that he always wore;
(Its crown was low and its brim was wide,
And an old prescription was stuck inside.)
It seemed as the sight of his elbow-chair
Embodied each lurking shade of care;
'What a thankless life is this we lead!'
He murmur'd, as murmurs the broken reed,
That whispers low at the river's side,
To the wind that is ravaging far and wide.
But bless me! where am I? I ought to compare
A Doctor Despondent to something less fair.
'Tis strange what a walk a man's fancy will take
To find out a figure, for simile's sake.
But he said, in a very sad tone indeed,
'What a thankless life is this we lead;[17]
The good Samaritan's part is mine—
Like him I administer 'oil and wine;'[18]
But those who see me depart to-day,
Will think me an incubus, passing away:
Oh!—speaking of incubi—would not a wife
Make something less bitter this dose of a life?
She would clean out my phials, and make out my bills,
And would do to experiment on with my pills:
{ I'll consider——' he said, as he shut the door,
{ And put on the hat that he always wore,
{ In his haste precipitate, 'hind side before.
He hurried on foot to the car-dépôt;
The engine was puffing, in haste to go.
He seated himself on the hindmost seat,
And he lean'd back his head, and he put out his feet,
And he looked a peculiar look with his eye,
And the man who sat opposite, wondered why;
And he wondered more, when he heard him say
That steam locomotion had had its day;
But what he was thinking, or what he could mean,
That man did not know: it remains to be seen.
END OF PART FIRST.
[OUR VILLAGE POST-OFFICE.][19]
BY MISS SEDGWICK.
'Why weep ye then, for him, who, having won
The bound of man's appointed years, at last,
Life's blessings all enjoyed, life's labors done,
Serenely to his final rest has passed;
While the soft memory of his virtues yet
Lingers like twilight hues, when the bright sun is set.'
Bryant.
The master of our village post-office for many years past was an old man; but the real dispenser of its joys and sorrows was his son, a youth who performed its duties with intelligence, exactness, and delicacy. Some persons may not be aware how much the last quality is called into requisition in a village post-master. Having the universal country acquaintance with his neighbors' affairs, he holds the key to all their correspondences. He knows, long before the news transpires, when the minister receives a call, when the speculator's affairs are vibrating; he can estimate the conjugal devotion of the absent husband; but most enviable is his knowledge of those delicate and uncertain affairs so provoking to village curiosity. Letters, directed in well-known characters, and written with beating hearts within locked apartments, pass through his hands. The blushing youth steals in at twilight to receive from him his doom; and to him is first known the results of a village belle's foray through a neighboring district. Our young deputy post-master rarely betrayed his involuntary acquaintance with the nature of the missives he dispersed; but, whenever sympathy was permitted, his bright smile and radiating or tearful eye would show how earnest a part he took in all his neighbors suffered or enjoyed. Never was there a kinder heart than Loyd Barnard's—never a truer mirror than his face.
Every family, however insignificant in the stranger's eye, has a world of its own. The drama and the epic have their beginning, their middle, and their end, in the material world. The true story of human relations never ends, and this seal of immortality it is, that gives a dignity and interest to the affections of the humble and unknown, beyond that which fiction and poetry, even when it makes gods and heroes its actors, can attach to qualities and passions that are limited to this world's stage. This intrinsic dignity I claim for the subjects of my humble village tale.
Loyd Barnard's father, Colonel Jesse Barnard, belonged to that defunct body, the aristocracy of our country. He served in the revolutionary war, he did good service to the state in the subsequent Shay's rebellion, and, though he afterward inexplicably fell into the ranks of the popular or democratic party, he retained the manners and insignia of his caste—the prescribed courtesies of the old régime, with the neatly tied cue, and the garment that has given place to the levelling pantaloon. He even persevered in the use of powder till it ceased to be an article of merchandise; and to the very last he maintained those strict observances of politeness, that are becoming, among us, subjects of tradition and history. These, however, are merely accidents of education and usage. His moral constitution had nothing aristocratic or exclusive. On the contrary, his heart was animated with what we would fain believe to be the spirit of our democratic institutions, a universal good will. The colonel was remarkably exempt (whether fortunately or unfortunately each according to his taste must decide) from the virtue or mania of his age and country; and consequently, at threescore and ten, instead of being the proprietor of lands in the West, or ships on the sea, he possessed nothing but his small paternal estate in B——, a pretty, cottage-looking dwelling, with a garden and an acre of land. As far back as the administration of Jefferson, he had received the appointment of post-master; and, as the village grew with the prosperity of manufactures and agriculture, the income of the office has of late amounted to some five or six hundred dollars. This, with the addition of his pension as a revolutionary officer, made the colonel 'passing rich;' for by this time his sons and daughters were married, and dispersed from Maine to Georgia, and the youngest only, our friend Loyd, remained at home. 'Passing rich' we say, and repeat it, was the colonel. Those who have never seen an income of a few hundred dollars well administered in rural life, can have no conception of the comfort and independence, nay, luxury, it will procure. In the first place, the staples of life, space, pure air, sweet water, and a continual feast for the eye, are furnished in the country, in unmeasured quantity, by the bounty of Providence. Then when, as with the colonel, there are no vices to be pampered, no vanities to be cherished, no artificial distinctions to be sustained, no conventional wants to be supplied, the few hundred dollars do all for happiness that money can do. The king who has to ask his Commons for supplies, and the Crœsuses of our land who still desire more than they have, might envy our contented colonel, or rather might have envied him, till, after a life of perfect exemption from worldly cares, he came, for the first time, to feel a chill from the shadows of the coming day—a distrustful fear that the morrow might not take care of itself.
Among other luxuries of a like nature, (the colonel was addicted to such indulgences,) he had allowed himself to adopt a little destitute orphan-girl, Paulina Morton. She came to the old people after all their own girls were married and gone, and proved so dutiful and so helpful, that she was scarcely less dear to them than their own flesh and blood. Paulina, or Lina—for by this endearing diminutive they familiarly called her—was a pretty, very pretty girl, in spite of red hair, which, since it has lost the favor some beauty, divine or mortal, of classic days, won for it, is considered, if not a blemish, certainly not an attribute of beauty. Paulina's friends and lovers maintained that hers was getting darker every day, and that even were it fire-red, her soft, blue eyes, spirited, sweet mouth, coral lips, and exquisitely tinted skin would redeem it. Indeed, good old Mrs. Barnard insisted it was only red in certain lights, and those certain Ithuriel lights Loyd Barnard never saw it in; for he often expressed his surprise that any one could be so blind as to call auburn red! In these days of reason's supremacy, we have found out there are no such 'dainty spirits' as Ariel, Puck, and Oberon. Still the lover is not disenchanted.
'Lina, my child,' said the old lady, one evening, just at twilight, while the burning brands sent a ruddy glow over the ceiling, and were reflected by the tea-things, our 'neat-handed lass was arranging,' 'Lina, do you expect Mr. Lovejoy this evening?'
'No, ma'am.'
'To-morrow evening, then?'
'No, ma'am; I never expect him again.'
'You astonish me, Lina. You don't mean you have given him his answer?'
Lina smiled, and Mrs. Barnard continued; 'I fear you have not duly considered, Lina.'
'What is the use of considering, ma'am, when we know our feelings?'
'We can't afford always, my child, to consult feelings. Nobody can say a word against Mr. Lovejoy; he made the best of husbands to his first wife.'
'That was a very good reason why she should love him, ma'am.'
Mrs. Barnard proceeded, without heeding the emphasis on she. 'He has but three children, and two of them are out of the way.'
'A poor reason, as I have always thought, ma'am, to give either to father or children for taking the place of mother to them.'
'But there are few that are calculated for the place; you are cut out for a step-mother, Lina—just the right disposition for step-mother, or step-daughter.'
Paulina's ideas were confused by the compliment, and she was on the point of asking whether step-daughter and daughter-in-law expressed the same relation, but some feeling checked her, and instead of asking she blushed deeply. The good old lady continued her soundings.
'I did not, Lina, expect you to marry Mr. Lovejoy for love.'
'For what then, ma'am, should I marry him?' asked Lina, suspending her housewife labors, and standing before the fire while she tied and untied the string of her little black silk apron.
'Girls often do marry, my child, to get a good home.'
'Marry to get a home, Mrs. Barnard! I would wash, iron, sweep, scrub, beg to get a home, sooner than marry to get one; and, beside, have I not the pleasantest home in the world?—thanks to your bounty and the colonel's.'
Mrs. Barnard sighed, took Lina's fair, chubby hand in hers, stroked and pressed it. At this moment, the colonel, who had, unperceived by either party, been taking his twilight nap on his close-curtained bed in the adjoining bedroom, rose, and drew up to the fire. He had overheard the conversation, and now, to poor Paulina's embarrassment, joined in it.
'I am disappointed, Lina,' he said; 'it is strange it is so difficult to suit you with a husband; you are easily suited with every thing else.'
'But I don't want a husband, Sir.'
'There's no telling how soon you may, Lina; I feel myself to be failing daily, and when I am gone, my child, it will be all poor Loyd can do to take care of his mother.'
'Can I not help him? Am I not stronger than Loyd? Would it not be happiness enough to work for Loyd, and Loyd's mother?' thought Paulina; but she hemmed, and coughed, and said nothing.
'It would be a comfort to me,' continued the old man, 'to see you settled in a home of your own before I die.' He paused, but there was no reply. 'I did not say a word when William Strong was after you—I did not like the stock; nor when the young lawyer sent his fine presents—as Loyd said, 'he had more gab than wit;' nor when poor Charles Mosely was, as it were, dying for you, for, though his prospects were fine in Ohio, I felt, and so did Mrs. Barnard, and so did Loyd, as if we could not have you go so far away from us; but now, my child, the case is different. Mr. Lovejoy has one of the best estates in the county; he is none of your flighty, here to-day and gone to-morrow folks, but a substantial, reliable person, and I think, and Loyd said—' Here the brands fell apart; and, while Paulina was breathless to hear what Loyd said, the old colonel rose to adjust them. He had broken the thread, and did not take it up in the right place. 'As I was saying, my child,' he resumed, 'my life is very uncertain, and I think, and Loyd thinks—'
What Loyd thought Paulina did not learn, for at this moment the door opened, and Loyd entered.
Loyd Barnard was of the Edwin or Wilfred order; one of those humble and generous spirits that give all, neither asking nor expecting a return. He seemed born to steal quietly and alone through the shady paths of life. A cast from a carriage in his infancy had, without producing any mutilation or visible injury, given a fatal shock to his constitution. He had no disease within the reach of art, but a delicacy, a fragility, that rendered him incapable of continuous exertion or application of any sort. A merciful Providence provides compensations, or, at least, alleviations, for all the ills that flesh is heir to; and Loyd Barnard, in abundant leisure for reading, which he passionately loved, in the tranquillity of a perfectly resigned temper, and in a universal sympathy with all that feel, enjoy, and suffer, had little reason to envy the active and prosperous, who are bustling and struggling through the chances and changes of this busy life. His wants were few, and easily supplied by the results of the desultory employments he found in the village, in the intervals of his attention to the post-office. As much of what we call virtue is constitutional, so we suppose was Loyd's contentment; if it was not virtue, it was happiness, for, till of late, he had felt no more anxiety for the future than nature's commoners—the birds and flowers.
'Ah, my son,' said the old gentleman, 'you have come just in the right time—but where is Lina gone?'
'She went out as I came in, Sir, and I thought she looked as if she had been weeping.'
'Weeping!' echoed the colonel; and 'Weeping!' reëchoed the old lady; and 'could we have hurt her feelings?' asked both in the same breath.
'Why, what, in the world have you been saying to her, mother?'
'Nothing, Loyd—nothing—nothing—don't look so scared. We were only expostulating a little, as it were, and urging her to accept Mr. Lovejoy's offer.'
Loyd looked ten times paler than usual, and kept his eye rivetted on his mother, till she added, 'But somehow it seems as if she could not any way feel to it.'
'Thank God!' murmured Loyd, fetching a long breath. Both parents heard the unwonted exclamation, and to both it was a revelation. The Colonel rose, walked to the window, and, though the blinds were closed, stood as if gazing out, and the old lady jerked her knitting-needle from the sheath, and rolled up the knitting-work, though she was not in the seam-needle.
It is difficult in any case for parents to realize how soon their children pass the bounds of childhood, and how soon, among other thoughts incident to maturity, love and marriage enter their heads. But there were good reasons why the Colonel and his wife should have fancied the governing passions and objects of ordinary lives had never risen above their son's horizon. They considered him perfectly incompetent to provide for the wants of the most frugal family, and they had forgotten that love takes no counsel from prudence. It was too late now to remember it.
The Colonel, after repeated clearings of his throat, taking off his spectacles, wiping and putting them on again, said, 'Are you attached to Lina, my son?' He used the word in its prescriptive rustic sense.
'Yes, Sir.'
'Strange I never mistrusted it!—How long have you been so, Loyd?'
'Ever since I was old enough to understand my feelings; but I did not, till very lately, know that I could not bear the thoughts of her becoming attached to another.'
'Do you know what Lina's feelings are?'
'No, Sir.'
'But surely you can guess, Loyd,' interrupted his mother.
'I can hope, mother—and I do.'
'The sooner, my son, you both get over it the better, for there is no kind of a prospect for you.'
'My child,' said the good old man, gently laying his hand on the shoulder of his companion of fifty years, 'trust in Providence; our basket and store have been always full, and why should not our children's be? Loyd now does the business of the post-office; while I live they can share with us, and, when I am gone, it may so be, that the heart of the ruler will be so overruled, that the office will be continued to Loyd.'
Loyd, either anticipating his mother's opposing arguments, or himself impelled irresistibly to the argument of love, disappeared, and the old lady, who, it must be confessed, lived less by faith than her gentle spouse, replied:
'The office continued to Loyd! Who ever heard of old Jackson's heart being overruled to do what he had not a mind to?'
'My dear child!'
'Well, my dear, do hear me out; don't the loaves and fishes all go on one side of the table?'
'Why, we have had our plates filled a pretty while, my dear.'
'Well, my dear, old Jackson could not take the bread and butter out of the mouth of a revolutionary officer.'
'I am sure he has proved that he would not.'
'No, my dear, could not. Why, even his own party—and we all know what his party are in old Massachusetts—'
'About like the other party, my dear.'
'My dear! how can you say so! Why, his own party are the most violent, given-over, as it were, and low-lived people; yet they would be ashamed to see you turned out of office.'
'They would be sorry, I know; for we have many good friends, and kind neighbors among them; there's Mr. Loomis, Harry Bishop, and Mr. Barton.'
'Mr. Barton! Lyman Barton! My dear, every body knows, and every body says, Lyman Barton has been waiting this last dozen years to step into your shoes. The post-office is just what he wants. To be sure he is a snug man, and lives within his means; but then he has a large growing family, and they are obliged to be prudent, and there would be enough to say he ought to have the office. And, beside, is he not always working for the party? writing in the paper? and serving them every way? And who was ever a Jackson man, but for what he expected to get for it? No, no, my dear, mark my words! you won't be cold, before Lyman Barton will be sending off a petition to Washington for the office, and signed by every Jackson man in town.'
'I don't believe it, my dear; I don't feel as if Lyman Barton would ask for the office.'
'Well, my dear, you'll see, after you are dead and gone, how it will be—you may laugh—I mean I shall see, if I am spared—you always have, colonel, just such a blind faith in every body.'
'My faith is founded on reason and experience, my dear. Through life I have found friends kind to me beyond my deservings, and far beyond my expectations. I have got pretty near the other shore, and I can't remember that ever I had an enemy.'
While this conversation was in progress, there was a tête-à-tête, on which we dare not intrude, in another apartment of the house. The slight veil that had covered the hearts of our true lovers dropped at the first touch, and both, finding a mine of the only riches they coveted, 'dared be poor' in this world's poor sense. Secured by the good colonel's indulgence, for the present they were too happy to look beyond the sunshine that played around them for any dark entanglements to which their path might conduct them. In any event, they did not risk the miseries of dependence, nor the pains of starvation. Nature, in our land, spreads an abundant table; and there is always a cover awaiting the frugal and industrious laborer (or even gleaner) in her fruitful fields. Any thing short of absolute want, perhaps even that, it seemed to our young friends happiness to encounter together.
Oh ye perjured traffickers in marriage vows! ye buyers and sellers of hearts—hearts! they are not articles of commerce—buyers and sellers of the bodies that might envelope and contain celestial spirits, eat, drink, and be merry, for to-morrow ye die! To-morrow your home, that temple of the affections, which God himself has consecrated, shall be their tomb, within whose walls shall be endured the torpor of death with the acute consciousness of life!
Our simple friends wotted not of the miseries of artificial life. These had never even crossed the threshold of their imaginations. The colonel gave his hearty consent for the asking, and his prudent help-mate was too true-hearted a woman to withhold hers. There are those wise as serpents, if not harmless as doves, in village life; and such shook their heads, and wondered if the colonel calculated to live and be post-master for ever! or if Loyd could be such a fool as to expect to succeed to the office, when every body knew it was just as good as promised to Mr. Barton! Loyd Barnard, a steady, consistent (our own side is always consistent) whig, expect the tender mercies of the Jackson party! No, Loyd Barnard indulged no such extravagant expectation. He had stood by 'old Massachusetts' through her obstinate or her consistent opposition to the general government, and he expected to reap the customary reward of such firmness or—prejudice. To confess the truth, he thought little about the future, and not all of the Malthusian theories. His present happiness was enough, and it was brightened with the soft and equal light of the past. As to Paulina, it was her nature,
'Ne'er to forgather wi' sorrow and care,
But gie them a skelp as they're creepin alang.'
The preliminaries being adjusted, it was agreed on all hands that the wedding should not be deferred. Quilts were quilted—the publishment pasted on the church door—and the wedding-cake made. Never had the colonel seemed better and brighter; his step was firmer, his person more erect than usual; and his face reflected the happiness of his children, as the leafless woods warm and kindle in a spring sunshine.
At this moment came one of those sudden changes that mock at human calculations. An epidemic influenza, fatal to the feeble and the old, was passing over the whole country. Colonel Barnard was one of its first victims. He died after a week's illness; and though he was some years beyond the authorized period of mortality, his death at this moment occasioned a general shock, as if he had been cut off in the prime of life. All—even his enemies, we should have said, but enemies he had none—spoke of the event in a subdued voice, and with the sincerest expressions of regret. The grief of his own little family we have not space to describe, or, if we had, how could we depict the desolation of a home from which such a fountain of love and goodness was suddenly removed? Notwithstanding the day of the funeral was one of the coldest of a severe January, the mercury being some degrees below cipher, and the gusty, cutting wind driving the snow into billows, numbers collected from the adjoining towns to pay the last tribute of respect to the good colonel.
There is a reality in the honor that is rendered at a rustic funeral to a poor, good man, a touching sincerity in sympathy where every follower is a mourner.
The custom, growing in some of our cities, of private funerals, of limiting the attendants to the family and nearest friends of the deceased, is there in good taste. The parade of ceremony, the pomp of numbers, the homage of civility, and all the show and tricks of hollow conventional life, are never more out of place, never more revolting, than where death has come with its resistless power and awful truth. But a country funeral has, beside its quality of general sorrow, somewhat of the nature of the Egyptian court that sat upon the merits of the dead. The simplicity and frankness of country life has truly exhibited the character of the departed, and if judged in gentleness (as all human judgments should be rendered) it is equitably judged.
The colonel's humble home was filled to overflowing, so that there were numbers who were obliged to await the moving of the procession in the intense cold on the outside of the house; and they did wait, patiently and reverently—no slight testimony of their respect.
The coffin was placed in the centre of the largest apartment, in country phrase, the 'dwelling-room.' Within the little bedroom sat the 'mourners;' but a stranger, who should have seen the crowd as they pressed forward one after another, for a last look at their departed friend, might have believed they were all mourning a father. They were remembering a parent's offices. There was the widow, whom he had visited in her affliction; there the orphans, now grown to be thriving men and women, fathers and mothers, whom he had succored, counselled, and watched over; there were those whom he had visited in prison; there were sometime enemies converted to friends by his peace-making intervention; there was the young man reclaimed by his wise counsel and steady friendship, for the good colonel had a 'skeptic smile' for what others deemed hopeless depravity, and believed
——'some pulse of good must live
Within a human nature.'
And there were children with wet eyes, for the rare old man who had always a smile for their joys, and a tear for their troubles; and one, I remember, as her mother lifted her up for the last look, whispered, 'Oh, he is too good a man to bury up in the ground!'
And there, in the midst of this sad company, and with a face quite as sad as his neighbors', stood Lyman Barton. A little urchin, a particular friend of the old colonel's, and of mine too, who stood beside me, pulled my ear down to his lips, and turning his flashing eye upon Barton, whispered,
'Ought not he to be ashamed of himself?'
'Why, Hal, why?'
'He is making believe cry, just like a crocodile! Every body says he has written to old Jackson already to be made post-master. I wish he was in the colonel's place.'
'You could not wish him in a better, my dear.'
'Oh, I did not mean that! I did not mean that!'
He would have proceeded; but I shook my head, and put an end to the explanation he was eager to make.
The funeral was over, the cold wind was howling without, the sigh of the mourners alone was heard, where a few days before all had been cheerfulness and preparation for the happiest event of human life. Paulina had lighted a single lamp, and placed it in the farther part of the room, for there seemed something obtrusive even in the cheerfulness of light. She was seated on a low chair beside the old lady. The passiveness of grief was peculiarly unsuited to her active and happy nature; and, as she sat as if she were paralyzed, not even heeding the Colonel's favorite cat, who jumped into her lap, and purred, and looked up for its accustomed caress, one could hardly believe she was the same girl who was for ever on the wing, laughing and singing from morning till night. Poor Loyd too, who had so gently acquiesced in the evils of his lot, who had bent like the reed before the winds of adversity, suffered now as those only do who resist while they suffer. Perhaps it was not in human nature not to mingle the disappointment of the lover with the grief of the son, and, while he was weeping his loss, to ponder over some of his father's last words. 'Of course, my children,' he had said, 'you will dismiss all thoughts of marriage—for the present, I mean. It will be all, I am afraid more, than you can do, Loyd, when the post-office and the pension are gone, to get bread for your mother. If you marry, you can't tell how many claims there may be upon you. But don't be discouraged, my children; cast your care upon the Lord—something may turn up—wait—blessed are they who wait in faith.'
Both promised to wait, and both, as they now revolved their promise, religiously resolved to abide by it, cost what it might.
Their painful meditations were interrupted by a knock at the outer door, and Loyd admitted Major Perrit, one of his neighbors, and one of those everlasting meddlers in others' affairs, who, if a certain proverb were literal, must have had as many fingers as Argus had eyes.
'I am sorry for your affliction, ma'am,' said he, shaking Mrs. Barnard's extended hand, while a sort of simpering smile played about his mouth, in spite of the appropriate solemnity he had endeavored to assume; 'don't go out, Miss Paulina; what I have to communicate is interesting to you, as well as to the widow and son of the deceased.'
'Some other time, Sir,' interposed Loyd, whose face did not conceal how much he was annoyed by the officiousness and bustling manner of his visitor.
'Excuse me, Loyd; I am older than you, and ought to be a little wiser; we must take time by the fore-lock; others are up and doing; why should we not be?'
Loyd now comprehended the Major's business, and, pained and somewhat shocked, he turned away; but, remembering the intention was kind, though the mode was coarse, he smothered his disgust, and forced himself to say:
'We are obliged to you, Major Perrit, but I am not in a state of mind to attend to any business this evening.'
'Oh, I know you have feelings, Loyd; but you must not be more nice than wise. They must not get the start of us. I always told my wife it would be so, and now she sees I was right. I tell you, Loyd, in confidence, your honored father was not cold, before Lyman Barton was handing round his petition for the office.' It was not in human nature for the old lady to suppress an a-hem! at this exact fulfilment of her prediction to the poor colonel. 'Barton's petition,' continued Perrit, 'will go on to Washington in the mail to-morrow, and ours must go with it; here it is.' He took the paper from his pocket, and, opening it, showed a long list of names. 'A heavy list,' he added; 'but every one of them whigs; we did not ask a Jackson man; there would have been no use, you know; Lyman Barton leads them all by the nose.'
Here Perrit was interrupted by a knock at the entry door. A packet addressed to Loyd was handed to him. Perrit glanced at the superscription, and exclaimed, 'This is too much, by George! He has had the impudence to send you the petition.'
'I could not have believed this of him,' thought Loyd, as he broke the seal; for he, like his father, reluctantly believed ill of any one. There were a few lines on the envelope; he read them to himself, and then, with that emotion which a good man feels at an unexpected good deed, he read them aloud:
'My dear friend Loyd:
'Excuse me for intruding on you, at this early moment, a business matter that ought not to be deferred. You will see by the enclosed, that my friends and myself have done what we could to testify our respect for the memory of your excellent father, and our esteem for you. Wishing you the success you deserve,
'I remain very truly yours,
'Lyman Barton.'
The enclosed paper was a petition, headed by Lyman Barton, and signed by almost every Jackson partisan in the town, that the office of post-master might be given to Loyd Barnard. A short prefix to the petition expressed the signers' respect for the colonel, and their unqualified confidence in his son. Perrit ran his eye over the list, and exclaiming, 'This is the Lord's hand! by George!' he seized his hat and departed, eager to have at least the consolation of first spreading the news through the village.
Few persons comprehend a degree of virtue beyond that of which they are themselves capable.
'It is, indeed, in one sense,' said Loyd, as the door closed after Perrit, 'the hand of the Lord; for He it is that makes his creatures capable of such disinterested goodness.'
Those who heard the fervid language and tone in which Loyd expressed his gratitude, when he that night, for the first time, took his father's place at the family altar, must have felt that this was one of the few cases where it was equally 'blessed to give and to receive.'
Loyd's appointment came by return of mail from Washington. In due time the wedding-cake was cut, and Our Village Post-master is as happy as love and fortune can make him.
It was a bright thought in a philanthropist of one of our cities, to note down the actual good deeds that passed under his observation. We have imitated his example in recording an act of rare disinterestedness and generosity. It certainly merits a more enduring memorial; but it has its fitting reward in the respect it inspires, and in its blessed tendency to vanquish the prejudices and soften the asperities of political parties.