The ways of the hour

by James Fenimore Cooper

The meeting between these two charming young women was frank and cordial, though slightly qualified by the forms of the world. A watchful and critical observer might have detected less of nature in Mary Monson’s manner than in that of her guest, even while the welcome she gave her visitor was not without cordiality and feeling. It is true that her courtesy was more elaborate and European, if one may use the expression, than it is usual to see in an American female, and her air was less ardent than that of Anna; but the last was highly struck with her countenance and general appearance, and, on the whole, not dissatisfied with her own reception.

The power of sympathy and the force of affinities soon made themselves felt, as between these two youthful females. Anna regarded Mary as a stranger most grievously wronged; and forgetting all that there was which was questionable or mysterious in her situation, or remembering it only to feel the influence of its interest, while she submitted to a species of community of feeling with John Wilmeter, as she fancied, and soon got to be as much entranced with the stranger as seemed to be the fate of all who approached the circle of her acquaintance. On the other hand, Mary Monson felt a consolation and gratification in this visit to which she had long been a stranger. Good Mrs. Gott was kind-hearted and a woman, but she had no claim to the refinement and peculiar sensibilities of a lady; while Marie Moulin, discreet, respectful, even wise as she was in her own way, was, after all, nothing but an upper servant. The chasm between the cultivated and the uncultivated, the polished and the unpolished, is wide; and the accused fully appreciated the change, when one of her own class in life, habits, associations, and, if the reader will, prejudices, so unexpectedly appeared to sympathize with, and to console her. Under such circumstances, three or four hours made the two fast and deeply-interested friends, on their own accounts, to say nothing of the effect produced by the generous advances of one, and the perilous condition of the other.

Dunscomb returned to town that evening, leaving Anna Updyke behind him, ostensibly under the care of Mrs. Gott. Democracy has been carried so far on the high road of ultraism in New York, as in very many interests to become the victim of its own expedients. Perhaps the people are never so far from exercising a healthful, or indeed, any authority at all, as when made to seem, by the expedients of demagogues, to possess an absolute control. It is necessary merely to bestow a power which it is impossible for the masses to wield with intelligence, in order to effect this little piece of legerdemain in politics, the quasi people in all such cases becoming the passive instruments in the hands of their leaders, who strengthen their own authority by this seeming support of the majority. In all cases, however, in which the agency of numbers can be felt, its force is made to prevail, the tendency necessarily being to bring down all representation to the level of the majority. The effect of the change has been pretty equally divided between good and evil. In many cases benefits have accrued to the community by the exercise of this direct popular control, while in probably quite as many the result has been exactly the reverse of that which was anticipated. In no one instance, we believe it will be generally admitted, has the departure from the old practice been less advantageous than in rendering the office of sheriff elective. Instead of being a leading and independent man, who has a pride in his position, and regards the character of his county as he does his own, this functionary has got to be, nine times in ten, a mere political manœuvrer, who seeks the place as a reward for party labours, and fills it very much for his personal benefit, conferring no dignity on it by his own position and character, lessening its authority by his want of the qualities calculated to increase it, and, in a good many instances, making it quite as difficult to wrest money from his hands, as from those of the original debtor.

It is a consequence of this state of things that the sheriff has quite lost all, or nearly all of the personal consideration that was once connected with his office; and has sunk, in most of the strictly rural counties, into a gaoler, and the head of the active bailiffs. His object is altogether money; and the profit connected with the keeping of the prisoners, now reduced almost entirely to felons, the accused, and persons committed for misdemeanors, is one of the inducements for aspiring to an office once so honourable.

In this state of things, it is not at all surprising that Dunscomb was enabled to make such an arrangement with Mrs. Gott as would place Anna Updyke in a private room in the house attached to the gaol, and which formed the sheriff’s dwelling.[dwelling.] The counsellor preferred leaving her with Mrs. Horton; but to this Anna herself objected, both because she had taken a strong dislike to the garrulous but shrewd landlady, and because it would have separated her too much from the person she had come especially to console and sympathize with.

The arrangement made, Dunscomb, as has already been mentioned, took his departure for town, with the understanding that he was to return the succeeding week; the Circuit and Oyer and Terminer sitting on Monday; and the District Attorney, Mr. Garth, having given notice to her counsel that the indictment against Mary Monson would be certainly traversed the second day of the sitting, which would be on Tuesday.

CHAPTER XVI.

“Let her locks be the reddest that ever were seen,

And her eyes may be e’en any colour but green;