CHAPTER VI.
PARSON GOODHUE AND THE WILD GANDER.
During the last year Sally had woven cloth for curtains to her best bed, and also for the windows of the rooms, when they should be finished; but for the last two or three weeks she and Sally Merrithew had been very busily employed bleaching the linen, making the curtains, and scouring the woodwork, which had been soiled in the putting up. It was not the fashion to paint in those days—everything was scoured.
The cause of this extraordinary industry was at length revealed by Sally herself, who said to Ben, “Now that the house is done, I’ve got good help, the baby is well, and mother is here, I think we ought to have a meeting. I’m afraid we shall get to be just like the heathen, for we can’t get to meeting but once or twice in the winter, and not a great deal in the summer. I want Parson Goodhue to come on to the island, preach a lecture, and make us a real good visit. He’s our old minister that we have known and loved ever since we were children, and we haven’t seen him since we were married, except in the pulpit.”
“Nothing would suit me better, and I think we’d better have it right off, before Joe goes away with the schooner; then we can bring him on and take him back in her, while she’s sweet and clean.”
“Yes, and we can have Joe and Henry Griffin to sing, and Uncle Isaac to lift the tune. Your father will come, and bring the girls. They are first-rate singers; so is Fred Williams; and we can have as good singing as they do in the meeting-house on Lord’s day.”
“I’ll go off to-night, and if he can come, we’ll have the meeting next week.”
Notwithstanding Ben differed so much from the minister in respect to temperance, it produced not the least alienation of feeling. Ben, though very firm in his opinions, had not a particle of bitterness in his composition. On the other hand, he was much attached to the pastor, who was a very devoted man, and greatly beloved and respected by his people, although he thought him in an error respecting that matter, still his ideas were in harmony with the almost universal sentiments and practice of the age in which he lived. He was a good man, by no means a free liver, and sought what he supposed to be the good of his people with all his heart. Wedded to this pernicious habit by early usage, and the example of those he had been accustomed to revere as models of all that was great and good, he failed to perceive its fatal tendency, although the proofs were daily accumulating before his eyes, and also that the distinction between the use and abuse, which he and Captain Rhines strongly insisted upon, was, in the great majority of cases, a distinction without a difference.