We will not be so ungallant, then, as to inquire too curiously into the age of the schoolmistress; but, without disparagement to her youthfulness, we may be allowed to conjecture that, in order to fit her so well for the duties of her responsible station (and incline her to undertake such labors), a goodly number of years must needs have been required. Yet she bore time well; for, unless married in the meanwhile, at thirty, she was as youthful in manners, as at eighteen.
But this is not surprising: for, even as early as her twelfth year, she had much the appearance of a mature woman—something like that noticed in young quakers, by Clarkson[79]—and her figure belonged to that rugged type, which is adapted to bear, unscathed, more than the ravages of time. She was never above the medium height, for the rigid rule of economy seemed to apply to flesh and blood, as to all other things pertaining to her race; at all events, material had not been wasted in giving her extra longitude—at the ends. Between the extremities, it might be different—for she was generally very long-waisted. But this might be accounted for in the process of flattening out: for like her compeer, the schoolmaster, she had much more breadth than thickness. She was somewhat angular, of course, and rather bony; but this was only the natural correspondence, between the external development, and the mental and moral organization. Her eyes were usually blue, and, to speak with accuracy, a little cold and grayish, in their expression—like the sky on a bleak morning in Autumn. Her forehead was very high and prominent, having, indeed, an exposed look, like a shelterless knoll in an open prairie: but, not content with this, though the hair above it was often thin, she usually dragged the latter forcibly back, as if to increase the altitude of the former, by extending the skin. Her mouth was of that class called “primped,” but was filled with teeth of respectable dimensions.
Her arms were long, and, indeed, a little skinny, and she swung them very freely when she walked; while hands, of no insignificant size, dangled at the extremities, as if the joints of her wrists were insecure. She had large feet, too, and in walking her toes were assiduously turned out. She had, however, almost always one very great attraction—a fine, clear, healthy complexion—and the only blemishes upon this, that I have ever observed, were a little red on the tip of her nose and on the points of her cheek-bones, and a good deal of down on her upper lip.
In manners and bearing, she was brisk, prim, and sometimes a little “fidgety,” as if she was conscious of sitting on a dusty chair; and she had a way of searching nervously for her pocket, as if to find a handkerchief with which to brush it off. She was a very fast walker, and an equally rapid talker—taking usually very short steps, as if afraid of splitting economical skirts, but using very long words, as if entertaining no such apprehension about her throat. Her gait was too rapid to be graceful, and her voice too sharp to be musical; but she was quite unconscious of these imperfections, especially of the latter: for at church—I beg pardon of her enlightened ancestors! I should say at “meeting”—her notes of praise were heard high over all the tumult of primitive singing; and, with her chin thrown out, and her shoulders drawn back, she looked, as well as sounded, the impersonation of melody, as contra-distinguished from harmony!
But postponing, for the present, our consideration of her qualifications as a teacher, we find that her characteristics were still more respectable and valuable as a private member of society. And in this relation, her most prominent trait, like that of her brother teacher, was her stainless piety. In this respect, if in no other, women are always more sincere and single-hearted than men—perhaps because the distribution of social duties gives her less temptation to hypocrisy—and even the worldly, strong-minded, and self-reliant daughter of the church-hating Puritan-Zion, displayed a tendency toward genuine religious feeling.[80]
But in our subject, this was not a mere bias, but a constant, unflagging sentiment, an everyday manifestation. She was as warm in the cause of religion on one day as upon another, in small things as in great—as zealous in the repression of all unbecoming and ungodly levity, as in the eradication of positive vice. Life was too solemn a thing with her to admit of thoughtless amusements—it was entirely a state of probation, not to be enjoyed in itself, or for itself, but purgatorial, remedial, and preparatory. She hated all devices of pleasure as her ancestors did the abominations of popery. A fiddle she could tolerate only in the shape of a bass-viol; and dancing, if practised at all, must be called “calisthenics.” The drama was to her an invention of the Enemy of Souls—and if she ever saw a play, it must be at a museum, and not within the walls of that temple of Baal, the theatre. None but “serious” conversation was allowable, and a hearty laugh was the expression of a spirit ripe for the destination of unforgiven sinners.
Errors in religion were too tremendous to be tolerated for a moment, and the form (or rather anti-form) of worship handed down by her fathers, had cost too much blood and crime to be oppugned. She thought Barebones's the only godly parliament that ever sat, and did not hate Hume half so much for his infidelity, as for his ridicule of the roundheads. Her list of martyrs was made up of the intruders ousted by Charles's “Act of Conformity,” and her catalogue of saints was headed by the witch-boilers of Massachusetts Bay. She abhorred the memory of all popish persecutions, and knew no difference between catholic and cannibal. Her running calendar of living saints were born “to inherit the earth,” and heaven, too: they possessed a monopoly of all truth, an unlimited “indulgence” to enforce conformity, and, in their zeal, an infallible safeguard against the commission of error. She had no patience with those who could not “see the truth;” and he who reviled the puritan mode of worship, was “worse than the infidel.” The only argument she ever used with such, was the argumentum ad hominem, which saves the trouble of conviction by “giving over to hardness of heart.” New England was, to her, the land of Goshen—whither God's people had been led by God's hand—“the land of the patriarchs, where it rains righteousness”[81]—and all the adjacent country was a land of Egyptian darkness.
She was commendably prudent in her personal deportment: being thoroughly pure and circumspect herself, she could forgive no thoughtless imprudence in her sister-woman: but she well-understood metaphysical distinctions, and was tolerant, if not liberal, to marriageable men. These she could hope to reform at some future time: and she had, moreover, a just idea of the weakness of man's nature. But being a woman, and a staid and sober-minded woman, she could never understand the power of temptation upon her own sex, or the commonest impulses of high spirits. Perhaps she was a little deficient in charity: but, as we have seen, it was chiefly toward her female friends, and since none can bear severe judgment more safely than woman, her austerity did little harm.
But she sincerely regretted what she could never palliate; she hated not the guilty, though she could not forgive the sin; and no one was more easily melted to tears by the faults, and particularly by the follies, of the world. Wickedness is a very melancholy thing, but it is to be punished as well as lamented: and like the unfortunate governor who was forced to condemn his own son, she wept while she pronounced judgment. But earthly sorrow, by her, was given only to earthly faults: violations of simple good morals, crimes against heavenly creeds and forms (or rather the form) of worship, claimed no tear. Her blood rose to fever-heat at the mention of an unbeliever, and she would as soon have wept for the errors of the fallen angels, as for those of anti-Robinsonians.
But though thus rigid and austere, I never heard that she was at all disinclined to being courted: especially if it gave her any prospect of being able to make herself useful as a wife, either to herself, her husband, or her country. She understood the art of rearing and managing children, in her capacity as a teacher: she was thus peculiarly well-fitted for matrimonial duties, and was unwilling that the world should lose the benefit of her talents. But the man who courted her must do so in the most sober, staid, and regulated spirit, for it was seldom any unmixed romance about “love and nonsense,” which moved her to the sacrifice: if she entertained notions of that sort, they were such only as could find a place in her well-balanced mind, and, above all, were the subject of no raptures or transports of delight. If she indulged any enthusiasm, in view of the approaching change, it was in the prospect of endless shirt-making, and in calculations about how cheaply (not how happily) she could enable her husband to live. She had no squeamish delicacy about allowing the world to know the scope and meaning of her arrangements, and all her friends participated in her visions of comfort and economy. False modesty was no part of her nature—and her sentiment could be reduced to an algebraic formula—excluding the “unknown quantities” usually represented by the letters b, c, and d: meaning “bliss,” “cottages,” and “devotion.”