The efforts put forth by the French to induce the captives to remain in Canada are notorious. A young French officer having fallen in love with Sally Hoyt, a Jesuit priest endeavored to persuade her to the marriage. After a sermon from the texts Deuteronomy xxi., 10-13: "When thou goest forth to war against thine enemies, and the Lord thy God hath delivered them into thine hands, and thou hast taken them captive, and seest among the captives a beautiful woman, and hast a desire that thou wouldest have her to thy wife, then she ... shall remain in thine house, and thou shalt be her husband and she shall be thy wife," and 1 Timothy v., 14: "I will, therefore, that the younger women marry," etc., he addressed her personally before the congregation. Sally, remembering how her random shaft had in time past stirred up Sergeant Wright to an expression of his feelings, and having in mind a bashful lover, a certain shock-headed Ebenezer Nims, more generally known as "the Nims boy," for whom she had an inexplicable good will and who had been "captivated with her," as the ancient chronicle stated with more truth than it knew, answered adroitly that she had no ill will toward marriage as a state, but that she preferred to wed with one of her own people, and requested that "inquisition should be made" whether there were not one willing to become her husband among the captives. A cold shudder ran down Sergeant Wright's spinal column. Who could the child mean but him? Had she misinterpreted his brotherly care and affection? And yet she knew of his love for her sister. It was with a great sigh of relief that he saw "the Nims boy" suddenly start from his seat, a timid, shrinking boy no longer, but transformed on the instant by the girl's challenge to as brave a knight as ever tilted in tourney for lady's love, and running the gauntlet of the eyes of friend and foe, place himself at her side.
The wily Jesuit was caught in his own toils; he acknowledged it by marrying them upon the spot, and adding by way of benediction to the usual Latin formula—"Mulier hominis confusio est."
When the younger sister marries before the elder it is the custom, in some parts of the country, to bring in the brass kettle and make the slighted one dance in it. Neither sister nor kettle were present on this occasion, but the time was not far distant when both would be found again. The captives were to be returned. Sergeant Wright had believed all along, in spite of the mountains of difficulty in the way, that this would be; and yet he said to himself on that homeward march, "Though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, and have not charity," which is love, "it profiteth me nothing." And in the joy of their first meeting, the only words that Mary Hoyt could utter were: "Charity suffereth long—beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things; charity never faileth."
On their wedding day they visited the site of the old homestead. There, in the hollow that had been the cellar, lay the old brass kettle, and in it a flat-iron that had fallen off Mary's ironing-board. The wort with which the kettle had been filled had prevented it from entirely melting, and since she could not dance in it at her sister's wedding, she was lifted in it now by her husband and danced in it at her own.
The kettle has been preserved as a relic by the Wright family. It hangs in the upper part of the old mansion, and is so arranged that by pulling a cord below, the flat iron strikes against it, and so awakens the servants. And this story, which began with a tirade against bells, ends in finding its beloved kettle transformed into one; yet to the whole line and genealogy of the Wrights, by whom it has been cherished, it has brought its blessing of faith and hope, and though but a bit of sounding brass, yet in all its history to these presents it lacketh not that charity which is love.
Lizzie W. Champney.
A ROMAN PICTURE.
Close to the window I wheel my chair,