It is my opinion, that great injustice is done to widows. The opinion of St. Jerome, who never was a widow, and knew nothing about it, that they should never marry again, is perfectly absurd; for there are some men, whose constitutional timidity would close the matrimonial highway forever, were it not for that peculiar species of encouragement, which none but widows can ever administer. For my own part, I would have a widow speak out, and spare not; for I am very fearful, that the opposite course is productive of great moral mischief, and tends to perpetuate a system of terrible hypocrisy. But let a sound discretion be exercised. I disapprove altogether of conditional engagements, made durante vita mariti.
No. XCIX.
Jonny Moorhead was a man of a kind heart and a pleasant fancy. He came hither from Belfast, in 1727. He became pastor of the Presbyterian Church in Long Lane, in 1730.—Tempora mutantur—Long Lane, and Jonny Moorhead, and the little, old, visible temple, and Presbyterianism itself, are like Rachel’s first born—they are not. But in 1744, the good people built a new church, for Jonny Moorhead; in due time, Long Lane became Federal Street; and, Jonny’s church bore the bell, which had rung so many peals, and the gilded tell-tale, which, for so many years, had done obeisance to all the winds of Heaven, upon the old Brattle Street Church. These, upon the demolition of that church, in 1774, were the gift of John Hancock. Jonny Moorhead had little comfort from that bell, for he died December 3, 1774, and could he have lived to see that Presbyterian weathercock go round, in after-times, it would have broken the tough, old strings of Jonny Moorhead’s Irish heart.
About one hundred years ago, Jonny Moorhead, upon a drowsy summer afternoon, gave out the one hundred and eighty-seventh psalm—the chief minstrel, with infinite embarrassment, suggested, that there were not so many in the Book—and tradition tells us, that Jonny replied—“Weel, then, sing as mony as there be.”
My recollection of this anecdote of Jonny Moorhead will be painfully revived, when I send forth the one hundredth number of these dealings with the dead. They have been prepared like patch-work, from such fragments, as my common-place book supplied, and at such broken hours of more than ordinary loneliness, as might otherwise have been snoozed, unconsciously away. I had cast all that I had written into a particular drawer; and great was my surprise, to find, that the hundredth was the last, and that, with that number, I shall have sung—“as mony as there be.”
One hundred—thought I—is an even number—few individuals care to survive one hundred. When these dealings with the dead had reached the number of four-score, I had serious misgivings, that their strength, to my weary reader, might prove nothing better than labor and sorrow; notwithstanding the occasional tokens of approbation, from some exceedingly old-fashioned people, who were altogether behind the times.
Having attained this point d’appui, which appears well enough adapted for the long home of an old sexton, it occurred to me, that I could not possibly do a better thing, for myself, or a more acceptable thing for the public, than to gather up my tools, as snugly as possible, and quietly give up the ghost. But giving up the ghost, even in the sacristan sense of that awful phrase, is not particularly agreeable, after all. If I look upon each one of these hundred dealings, as a sepulchre of my own digging—I cannot deny, that the employment of my spade has been a particular solace to me. But there are other solaces—I know it—there are an hundred according to the exiled bard of Sulmo—
“——centum solatia curæ
Et rus, et comites, et via longa dabunt.”
Other suggestions readily occur, and are as readily, discarded. Parents, occasionally, experiment upon the sensibility of their children, by fondly discoursing of the uncertainty of human existence, and mingling deep drawn sighs, with shadowy allusions to wills and codicils.