My uncle ridiculed this madness, although as a physician it interested him. "It does people good to stir them up," he declared. "It wakes up their livers and keeps them out of mischief. It is a fine tonic. They will need no bark and camomile while the fever lasts."
We made a pilgrimage to the distant farm of one of the maniacs. With my narrow skirts drawn closely around me, I tiptoed gingerly along the aisles dividing the long tables, and saw the hideous, grayish yellow, three-inch worms—each one armed with a rhinoceros-like horn on his head—devouring leaves for dear life. They had need for haste. Their time was short. Think of the millions of brave men and fair ladies who were waiting for the strong, shining threads it was their humble destiny to spin! Meanwhile, the lazy moths, their raison d'être having been accomplished, enjoyed in elegant leisure the evening of their days of beneficence. I saw the ease with which their spider-web thread was caught in hot water, and wound in balls as easily as I wound the wools for my aunt's knitting.
Nothing came of it all! In time all the Morus multicaulis was dug up, and good, sensible corn planted in its stead. Old Jerry found again his warm seat by the ingleside, where doubtless he
"backward mused on wasted time,"
and many a better man than poor Jerry was stricken with amazement at his own folly. Does not Morus come from the Greek word for "fool"?
Next to his Bible and the Westminster Catechism, my uncle pinned his faith to the Richmond Whig. Henry Clay was his idol. To make Henry Clay President of the United States was something to live for. When the great man passed through Virginia, all Hanover went to Richmond to do him honor, ourselves among the number. He was a son of Hanover, the "Mill boy of the Slashes." The old Mother of Presidents could, never fear, give yet another son to the country! No living man except Webster equalled him in all that the world holds essential to greatness—none was as dear to the mass of people. And yet neither could be elected to the post of Chief Magistrate of those adoring people!
Clay, at the time he visited Richmond, was confident he would win this honor. My uncle resolved I should see "the next President." A procession of citizens was to conduct him to a hall where a banquet awaited him. My uncle found a vacant doorstep on the line of march, and there we awaited the great man's coming. "Ah, there he comes!" exclaimed my uncle. "Look well, little girl! You may never again see the greatest man in the world." But to look was impossible. The crowd thronged us, and my uncle caught me to a vantage-ground on his shoulder. A tumbling sea of hats was all I could see! Presently a space appeared in the procession, and a tall man on the arm of another looked up with a rare smile to the small maiden, lifted his hat, and bowed to her! My uncle never allowed me to forget that one supreme moment in my child-life. To this day I cannot look at the fine bronze statuette of Henry Clay in my husband's library without a sensation born of the pride of that hour.
I am afraid the small maiden dearly loved glory! Nobody would ever have guessed the ambitious little heart beating, the next winter, under the cherry merino; nor the conscious lips deep in her poke-bonnet that followed the prayers at church and implored mercy for a miserable sinner! For she had, during that glorious summer, another shining hour to remember. Those penitent lips had been kissed by a great man all the way from England—a man who had kissed the hand of a queen! She had a dim apprehension of virtue through the laying on of hands in church. What, then, might not come in the way of royal attribute from the laying on of lips!
Great thoughts like these so swelled my bosom that I was fain to reveal them to my little Quaker cousin at Shrubbery Hill. She received them gravely. "Oh, Sara Agnes," she ventured, "I am afraid thee is going to be one of the world's people!" All the same she had just dressed her doll Isabella in black silk, with a lace mantilla! The Princess Isabella, born, like myself, in 1830, was even then known as the future queen of Spain. It was an age of young queens.
Among the strangers from abroad who found their way to Virginia, none was more honored in Hanover than the Quaker author and philanthropist, Joseph John Gurney. He was the brother of Elizabeth Fry, who gave her life to the amelioration of the prison horrors of England.