Tales of the Chesapeake

by George Alfred Townsend

"Oh, Thomas, I thought I had fortitude, but this—"

"Is only to test your faith," he cries. "A poor preacher's wife should be willing to go anywhere—even to Greensburg; but that is not our appointment, dear; we move to Swan Neck."

Then the fun begins in earnest. The church people come to look at our contribution bedquilts, and help us pack up the blue earthenware. The legs of the prodigious box, yclept a milk chest, are summarily amputated and laid away in it, with the parental library, which, we are sorry to say, is equally doubtful in point of both ornament and use. The good gossips slyly peep into the covers of Matthew Henry, and regard their retiring pastor as a more learned man than they had suspected, while the black letter-press of Lorenzo Dow, and John Bunyan, and Fox's "Book of Martyrs" touches them like so much necromancy. The faithful old clock, whose disorders are crises in our humdrum pastoral year, is stopped and disjointed, much to our marvel, and all the spare straw in the barn is brought to protect the large gilt-edged cups and saucers, which say upon their edges, "To our pastor," and "To our pastor's wife." The thin rag carpets are folded away; the potatoes in the bin are sold to Brother Bibb, the grocer, and to a very few of the select sisters we present a can of our preserved quinces, with directions how to prepare them. Poor Em., the black domestic, drops so many tears upon the parlor stove as she carries it out to the wagon that the fresh blackening she has so industriously given it goes for nothing; for Em. is to be discharged, and the fact troubles her, though a preacher's servant has little to eat and plenty to do.

At last the old parsonage is quite bare and deserted, though our successors, box and baggage, have moved in upon us, much to the annoyance of the females, who see with jealousy that the new arrival gets the lion's share of attention, and that Brother Tipp, whose class-book we took from him, and who has backbitten us ever since, is courteous as a dancing-master with our rival. We shall talk for six years to come—that is, our mother—of Bangs's, the new-comer's, impudence in feeding his horse on our oats, and shall never speak of him as Brother Bangs, but simply call him Bangs, emphasized. We are not even sure that he will not turn his poultry loose before ours has been secured, and we boys, with great zeal, run down the roosters and ducks, giving them, if the truth must be told, longer chase than is necessary. The aged muscovy, we are sorry to say, lames himself in the retreat, and the only goose on the premises hides among Powell's, the neighbor's, so that we cannot tell which from which. However, the property is tied up at last in the several wagons; Sister Phœnix's lunch has been eaten, and our father, the itinerant, in his shirt-sleeves, stands up, with pain and perspiration on his brow, to bid his flock good-by.

"Now, brethren," he says, with a quiver at his throat, "my time is passing; I have finished the work appointed for me to do. Renew the kindnesses you have done me and my little ones upon the good steward who is to replace me. My heart weeps to cut the bonds which have held us so long together; but in this world I am a pilgrim and a stranger. Let us all pray!"

As his shrill, broken voice goes up in a mingled wail and hosanna, we children peep by stealth into the working faces of the bystanders, and our own grow tearful, till our little sister cries aloud, and our mother falls into some fond matron's arms.

Immediately our wagons are on the way. The clustering village roofs and the church spire sink down behind. We are too full of excitement to share the silence of our elders, and the passing objects while us to laughter and debate.

Swan Neck is a representative circuit. It lies, as everybody knows, somewhere upon the Eastern shore—that landmark and stronghold of Methodism. The parsonage is in Crochettown, the county-seat, and the circuit comprises half a dozen churches down the neck, among the pine forests and on the bay side. Our father tells our mother on the way of the advantages of the place, till we take it to be quite a metropolis. He says that Wiggins, whom we succeed, gives a first-rate account of it. One of the members (Judd) is a judge, and our church, in short, rules the roast thereabout, and makes the Episcopalians stand around, not to speak of the Baptists, who try as usual to edge us out.

The boys ask with glowing cheeks if there is a river at Crochettown, and are thrown into ecstasy by the reply that a large steamboat touches there twice a week, and that there is a drawbridge. We are less interested in the statement that the schools are good, but hear with delight the history of one Dumple, an innkeeper, who persecutes our church and sells quantities of "rum" to our young men. William, the son of Wiggins, our predecessor, was once seen in the bar-room and reported to his father, who fetched him home by posse comitatus, and found that he smelled strongly of soda water.

As we go along the road in this way, our furniture mean time having been shipped by water, a very compact and knotty young man rides up behind us upon a nag which we at once identify as church property. The sleekness of the flanks betokens his conversance with other people's corn-cribs, and he has a habit of shying at all the farm-house gates as if habituated to stopping whenever he liked and staying to dinner. His Perseus has a semi-gallant, semi-verdant way of lifting his hat, and his voice is hard as his knuckles.