But though Miss Blake took Laura into favor, she was by no means inclined to do the same by Mrs. Jaynes, who, having found to her cost that the ill-will of the humble sempstress was not to be lightly contemned, was now plainly anxious to conciliate her. But Statira was proof against all the wheedling and flattery of the parson's wife, behaving towards her always with the same cool civility, and with great self-control,—using none of the frequent opportunities afforded her to make some taunt, or fling, or reproachful allusion to Mrs. Jaynes's former conduct. Once, to be sure, when urged by the parson's wife and a committee of the Dorcas Society to invite that respectable body to convene at the Bugbee mansion for labor and refreshment, Statira returned a reply so plainly spoken that it was deemed rude and ungracious.
"Cornelia is mistress of this house, Miss Jaynes," said she, "and if she belonged to your society, and wanted to have its weekly meetin's here in turn, I'd do my best to give 'em somethin' good to eat and drink. But as she has left the matter to me, I say 'No,' without any misgivin' or doubt; and for fear I may be called stingy or unsociable, I'll tell the reason why I say so,—and besides, it's due to you to tell it. There's poor women, even in this town, put to it to get employment by which they can earn bread for themselves and their children. They can't go out to do housework, for they've got young ones too little to carry with 'em, and maybe a whole family of 'em. Takin' in sewin' is their only resource. Well, ma'am, for ladies, well-to-do and rich, to get together, under pretence of good works and charity, and take away work from these poor women, by offerin' to do it cheaper, underbiddin' of 'em for jobs, which I've known the thing to be done, and then settin' over their ill-gotten tasks, sewin', and gabblin' slander all the afternoon, to get money to buy velvet pulpit-cushions or gilt chandeliers with, or to help pay some missionary's passage to the Tongoo Islands, is, in my opinion, a humbug, and, what's worse, a downright breach of the Golden Rule. At any rate, with my notions, it would be hypocrisy in me to join in, and that's why I don't invite the society here. I don't know but I have spoke too strong; if so, I'm sorry; but I've had to earn my own livin', ever since I was a girl, with my needle, and I know how hard the lot of them is that have to do so too. Besides, I can't help thinkin', what, perhaps, you never thought of, yourselves, ladies, that every person, who, while they can just as well turn their hands to other business, yet, for their own whim, or pleasure, or convenience, or profit, chooses to do work, of which there a'n't enough now in the world to keep in employment them that must get such work to do, or else beg, or sin, or starve,—when I think, I say, that every such person helps some poor cretur into the grave, or the jail, or a place worse than both, I feel that strong talk isn't out of place; and I've known this very Dorcas Society to send to Hartford and get shirts to make, under price, and spend their blood-money afterwards to buy a new carpet for the minister's parlor. That was a fact, Miss Jaynes, though perhaps it wa'n't polite in me to speak on't; and so for fear of worse, I'll say no more."
When this speech of his housekeeper came to the Doctor's ears, he expressed so warm an approval of its sentiments, that several who heard him began to be confirmed in suspicions they had previously entertained, the nature of which may be inferred from a remark which Mrs. Prouty confided to the ear of a trusty friend and crony. "Now do you mind what I say, Miss Baker," said she, shaking her snuffy forefinger in Mrs. Baker's face; "Doctor Bugbee'll marry Tira Blake yet. Now do you just stick a pin there."
But the revolving seasons twice went their annual round, the great weeping-willow-tree in the burying-ground twice put forth its tender foliage in the early spring, and twice in autumn strewed with yellow leaves the mound of Mrs. Bugbee's grave, while the predictions of many, who, like Mrs. Prouty, had foretold the Doctor's second wedding, still remained without fulfilment. Nay, at the end of two years after his wife's death, Doctor Bugbee seemed to be no more disposed to matrimony than in the first days of his bereavement. There were, to be sure, floating on the current of village gossip, certain rumors that he was soon to take a second wife; but as none of these reports agreed touching the name of the lady, each contradicted all the others, and so none were of much account. Besides, there was nothing in the Doctor's appearance or behavior that seemed to warrant any of these idle stories. It is the way with many hopeful widowers (as everybody knows) to become, after an interval of decorous sadness, more brisk and gay than even in their youthful days; bestowing unusual care upon their attire and the adornment of their persons, and endeavoring, by a courteous and gallant demeanor towards every unmarried lady, to signify the great esteem in which they hold the female sex. But these signs, and all others which betoken an ardent desire to win the favor of the fair, were wanting in the Doctor's aspect and deportment. Though, as my reader knows, he was by nature a man of lively temper, he was now grown more sedate than he had ever been before; and instead of attiring himself more sprucely than of old, he neglected his apparel to such a degree, that, although few would have noticed the untidy change, Statira was filled with continual alarms, lest some invidious housewife should perceive it, and lay the blame at her door. Except when called abroad to perform some professional duty, he spent his time at home, although his family observed that he secluded himself in his office, among his books and gallipots, more than had been his wont, and that he sometimes indulged in moods of silent abstraction, which had never been noticed in his manner until of late. But these changes of demeanor seemed to betoken an enduring sorrow for the loss of his wife, rather than to indicate a desire or an intention to choose a successor to her. My readers, therefore, will not be surprised to learn, by a plain averment of the simple truth, that not one of all the score of ladies, whose names had been coupled with his own, would Doctor Bugbee have married, if he could, and that to none of them had he ever given any good reason for believing that she stood especially high in his esteem.
[To be continued in the next Number.]
[WHERE WILL IT END?]
Wise men of every name and nation, whether poets, philosophers, statesmen, or divines, have been trying to explain the puzzles of human condition, since the world began. For three thousand years, at least, they have been at this problem, and it is far enough from being solved yet. Its anomalies seem to have been expressly contrived by Nature to elude our curiosity and defy our cunning. And no part of it has she arranged so craftily as that web of institutions, habits, manners, and customs, in which we find ourselves enmeshed as soon as we begin to have any perception at all, and which, slight and almost invisible as it may seem, it is so hard to struggle with and so impossible to break through. It may be true, according to the poetical Platonism of Wordsworth, that "heaven lies about us in our infancy"; but we very soon leave it far behind us, and, as we approach manhood, sadly discover that we have grown up into a jurisdiction of a very different kind.
In almost every region of the earth, indeed, it is literally true that "shades of the prison-house begin to close upon the growing boy." As his faculties develope, he becomes more and more conscious of the deepening shadows, as well as of the grim walls that cast them on his soul, and his opening intelligence is earliest exercised in divining who built them first, and why they exist at all. The infant Chinese, the baby Calmuck, the suckling Hottentot, we must suppose, rest unconsciously in the calm of the heaven from which they, too, have emigrated, as well as the sturdy new-born Briton, or the freest and most independent little Yankee that is native and to the manner born of this great country of our own. But all alike grow gradually into a consciousness of walls, which, though invisible, are none the less impassable, and of chains, though light as air, yet stronger than brass or iron. And everywhere is the machinery ready, though different in its frame and operation in different torture-chambers, to crush out the budding skepticism, and to mould the mind into the monotonous decency of general conformity. Foe or Fetish, King or Kaiser, Deity itself or the vicegerents it has appointed in its stead, are answerable for it all. God himself has looked upon it, and it is very good, and there is no appeal from that approval of the Heavenly vision.
In almost every country in the world this deification of institutions has been promoted by their antiquity. As nobody can remember when they were not, and as no authentic records exist of their first establishment, their genealogy can be traced direct to Heaven without danger of positive disproof. Thus royal races and hereditary aristocracies and privileged priesthoods established themselves so firmly in the opinion of Europe, as well as of Asia, and still retain so much of their prestige there, notwithstanding the turnings and overturnings of the last two centuries. This northern half of the great American continent, however, seems to have been kept back by Nature as a tabula rasa, a clean blackboard, on which the great problem of civil government might be worked out, without any of the incongruous drawbacks which have cast perplexity and despair upon those who have undertaken its solution in the elder world. All the elements of the demonstration were of the most favorable nature. Settled by races who had inherited or achieved whatever of constitutional liberty existed in the world, with no hereditary monarch, or governing oligarchy, or established religion on the soil, with every opportunity to avoid all the vices and to better all the virtues of the old polities, the era before which all history had been appointed to prepare the way seemed to have arrived, when the just relations of personal liberty and civil government were to be established forever.