“Heaven doth with us, as we with torches do:
Not light them for themselves; for if our virtues
Did not go forth of us, 't were all alike
As if we had them not.”
For the good of the race, or of any (male) individual, she would immolate herself, even upon the altar of Hymen; and, since the number, who were to be benefited by such self-devotement, was small in New England, but large in the west, she did well to seek a field for her benign dedication, beyond the Alleghenies! Honor to the all-daring self-denial, which brought to the forlorn bachelor of the west, a companion in his labors, a solace in his afflictions, and a mother to his children!
Her name was invariably Grace, Charity, or Prudence; and, if names had been always descriptive of the personal qualities of those who bore them, she would have been entitled to all three.
In the early ages of the world, names were, or, at least, were supposed to be, fair exponents of the personal characters of those, upon whom they were bestowed. But, then, the qualities must be manifested, before the name could be earned, so that all who had never distinguished themselves, in some way, were said to be “nameless.” In more modern times, however, an improvement upon this system was introduced: the character was anticipated, and parents called their children what they wished them to be, in the hope that they would grow to the standard thus imposed. And it is no doubt, true, that names thus bestowed had much influence in the development of character—on the same principle, upon which the boards, to which Indian women lash their infants soon after birth, have much to do with the erect carriage of the mature savage. Such an appellation is a perpetual memento of parental counsels—a substitute for barren precept—an endless exhortation to Grace, Charity, or Prudence.
I do not mean, that calling a boy Cicero will certainly make him an orator, or that all Jeremiahs are necessarily prophets; nor is it improbable, that the same peculiarities in the parents, which dictate these expressive names, may direct the characters of the children, by controlling their education; but it is unquestionable, that the characteristics, and even the fortunes of the man, are frequently daguerreotyped by a name given in infancy. There is not a little wisdom in the advice of Sterne to godfathers—not “to Nicodemus a man into nothing.”—“Harsh names,” says D'Israeli, the elder, “will have, in spite of all our philosophy, a painful and ludicrous effect on our ears and our associations; it is vexatious, that the softness of delicious vowels, or the ruggedness of inexorable consonants, should at all be connected with a man's happiness, or even have an influence on his fortune.”
“That which we call a rose,
By any other name would smell as sweet;”
but this does not touch the question, whether, if it had not smelt as sweet we would not have given it some other name. The celebrated demagogue, Wilkes, is reported to have said, that, “without knowing the comparative merits of the two poets, we would have no hesitation in preferring John Dryden to Elkanah Settle, from the names only.” And the reason of this truth is to be found in the fact, that our impressions of both men and things depend upon associations, often beyond our penetration to detect—associations with which sound, depending on hidden laws, has quite as much to do, as sense.
Among those who have carried the custom of picturesque or expressive naming, to an extent bordering on the ridiculous, were the hard-headed champions of the true church-militant, the English puritans—as Hume, the bigoted old Tory, rather ill-naturedly testifies! And the puritans of New England—whatever advancing intelligence may have made them in the present—were, for a long time, faithful representatives of the oddities, as well as of the virtues, of their fathers.
And, accordingly, we find the schoolmistress—being a descendant of the Jason's-crew, who landed from the Argo-Mayflower, usually bearing a name thus significant, and manifesting, even at her age, traits of character justifying the compellation. What that age precisely was, could not always be known; indeed, a lady's age is generally among indeterminate things; and it has, very properly, come to be considered ungallant, if not impertinent, to be curious upon so delicate a subject. A man has no more right to know how many years a woman has, than how many skirts she wears; and, if he have any anxiety about the matter, in either case, his eyes must be the only questioners. The principle upon which the women themselves proceed, in growing old, seems to be parallel to the law of gravitation: when a **storm** stone, for example, is thrown into the air the higher it goes the slower it travels; and the momentum toward Heaven, given to a woman at her birth, appears to decrease in about the same ratio.