“Can there be a better man than Father Harris, and have you ever heard of one less influenced by the visible and tangible, and more guided by faith in the unseen?”
“True—but it is his goodness, his attainment in that grace which enable him to dispense with the visible. You white men cut and blaze the trees of the forest so that you may recognize the course by which you are to reach a desired point, but the Indian passes onward through the densest wood, with no visible sign, no outward evidence of the path.”
“But, Rebecca, the white men find that their cuttings and blazings are imitated, so that it is difficult to tell in time which is the right mark, and resort must be had yet to the invisible to correct the visible. The former deceives us often—the latter never.”
Hand in hand the pair returned to the mansion of Mr. Harris, and the day thus begun in sacrifice and prayer, was closed in festivity. And William received to his arms his Indian bride.
The little enclosure at Harrisburg is a frail but eloquent memorial of the virtue and sufferings of Mr. Harris, and the fidelity of Pompey. The former handed down his name and his virtues to a numerous posterity.
Pompey, undoubtedly, is represented by some of his own color even in the present day. The great reward which he claimed for his successful exertions to save his master’s life, was permission to introduce a fiddle into the settlement; and for years afterward the banks of the Susquehanna were made melodious by the joyful notes which Pompey drew from his favorite instrument, while blithely and strong was heard the footfall of the young at night, as they danced to the music of the Orpheus of their time.
William’s descendents are in and around Harrisburg, holding office when they can get it, and dividing themselves between the two, or occasionally among the many parties, so that the advantage of ascendency by either fraction may not be entirely lost by all. These are not the children of Rebecca; she died young—her frame of mind was not favorable to long life. She died a Christian, firm, consistent, active, growing always in faith, and full of good works; and yet it was remarked by the excellent clergyman whose teaching she followed, that her mind seemed never to have dismissed entirely the creed of her childhood—and all her pure faith, all her Christian zeal, all her holy life, appeared to have some tinge of the creed of her fathers—not to alter the body of her faith, but merely to give it, at times, a color. “And,” said a successor of that clergyman, “have not the teachings she adopted, teachings of Christianity, always been thus affected by the previous character of the community or individuals by which they have been received?” No requirement diminished, no duty changed, no obligation dispensed, but a sort of reservation of a non-essential, which served to reflect a separate ray upon the admitted and the requisite. Religious truth, though enforced by divine grace, must in general be conveyed by a human medium, which will impart a portion of itself or its accidents, as the color of the atmosphere through which light is conveyed to earth gives hue and tinge to the rays, without diminishing essentially their powers to guide by their light, or invigorate by their heat. Nay, when we concentrate these rays to convey them to particular objects, the light not only takes the tinge of the medium, but it has also the divergency and eccentricity consequent upon the inequalities of surface, or the impurities of the glass through which it comes.
Rebecca lived to bless her husband by her domestic virtues and her unfailing affection. Her death was mourned wherever her beautiful example of womanly virtue and Christian integrity was known.
[After the above narrative was prepared for the press, numerous letters that passed between Rebecca and her school-mates—one or two to Mr. Harris—and some to her lover, and two to her husband, near the close of her life, were supplied to the writer by the same person who furnished the materials for the story. They could not well be introduced with the narrative, but may be given hereafter, should it appear that they have interest enough for the pages of this Magazine.]