Since my father's death, my mother had made her home with my Uncle Jacob, her health was delicate, and she preferred to enjoy the honors of a grandmother at a little distance. My Uncle Jacob had no children. Aunt Polly, his wife, was just the softest, sleekest, most domestic dove of a woman whose wings were ever covered with silver. I always think of her in some soft, pearly silk, with a filmy cap, and a half-handkerchief crossed over a gentle, motherly bosom, soft moving, soft speaking, but with a pair of bright, hazel eyes, keen as arrows to send their glances into every place in her dominions. Let anybody try sending in a false account to Aunt Polly, and they will see that the brightness of her eyes was not merely for ornament. Yet everything she put her hand to went so exactly, so easily, you would have said those eyes were made for nothing but reading, for which Aunt Polly had a great taste, and for which she found abundance of leisure.
My mother and she were enjoying together a long and quiet Saturday afternoon of life, reading to each other, and quietly and leisurely discussing all that they read,—not merely the last novel, as the fashion of women in towns and cities is apt to be, but all the solid works of philosophy and literature that marked the times. My uncle's house was like a bookseller's stall,—it was overrunning with books. The cases covered the walls; they crowded the corners and angles; and still every noteworthy book was ordered, to swell the stock.
My mother and aunt had read together Lecky, and Buckle, and Herbert Spencer, with the keen critical interest of fresh minds. Had it troubled their faith? Not in the least; no more than it would that of Mary on the morning after the resurrection! There is a certain moral altitude where faith becomes knowledge, and the bat-wings of doubt cannot fly so high. My mother was dwelling in that land of Beulah, where the sun always shineth, and the bells of the heavenly city are heard, and the shining ones walk. All was clear to her, all bright, all real, in "the beyond;" but that kind of evidence is above the realm of heavy-footed reason. The "joy unspeakable," the "peace that passeth understanding," are things that cannot be passed from hand to hand. Else I am quite sure my mother would have taken the crown of joy from her head and the peace from her bosom, and given them to me. But the "white stone with the new name" is Christ's gift to each for himself, and "no man knoweth it save he that receiveth it."
But these witnesses who stand gazing into heaven are not without their power on us who stand lower. It steadied my moral nerves, so to speak, that my mother had read and weighed the words that were making so much doubt and shaking; that she fully comprehended them, and that she smiled without fear.
She listened without distress, without anxiety, to all my doubts and falterings. "You must pass through this; you will be led; it will all come right," she said; "and then perhaps you will be the guide of others."
I had feared to tell her that I had abandoned the purpose of the ministry, but I found it easy.
"I would not have you embrace the ministry for anything but a true love," she said, "any more than I would that you should marry a wife for any other reason. If ever the time comes that you feel you must be that, it will be your call; but you can be God's minister otherwise than through the pulpit."
"Talk over your plans with your uncle," she said; "he is in your father's place now."
In fact, my uncle, having no children of his own, had set his heart on me, and was disposed to make me heir, not only to his very modest personal estate, but also to his harvest of ideas and opinions,—all that backwater of thoughts and ideas that accumulate on the mind of a man who thinks and reads a great deal in a lonely neighborhood. So he took me up as a companion in his daily rides over the country.
"Well, Harry, where next?" he said to me the day after my return, as we were driving together. "What are you about? Going to try the ministry?"