[COMFORT MAKEPEACE.]
A NEW-ENGLAND SKETCH: BY THE AUTHOR OF 'MASSANIELLO, A TALE OF NAPLES.'
'A man severe he was, and stern to view.'—Goldsmith.
There is no employment more pleasant or profitable to the reflective mind, than that of scanning the various characters that come within the scope of one's acquaintance. Even though that acquaintance be limited to the precincts of a retired village, there will be found the same variety of character, though perhaps less strongly developed than in the great city of the world. In its business transactions and social relations, the same passions are found to agitate, that in a wider sphere of action convulse entire continents, and fill the world with wonder. Many an obscure person would have been a hero, in time and place of heroic actions.
Comfort Makepeace was a lineal descendant from one of the original puritans. The name of his ancestor stood recorded with those of Carver, Winslow, Brewster, and Standish; and no lordly stem of a noble stock ever prided himself more on the score of descent. His father, and his grandfather, and every other descendant of the primitive settler, that went before them, were as decided puritans as ever trod the turf. The name, as he himself bore it, had been transmitted from father to son, as far back as could be traced the genealogical tree of the family. The old homestead on which he lived had been cleared and settled by a grandson of the first Comfort that crossed the Atlantic; it had descended regularly from thence through every first son to the worthy owner in the time of my childhood, and there stood, ready to take the noble patrimony, at his father's death, a Comfort, junior, in every way worthy to connect the stout chain with remotest posterity. Of course Comfort made proud show of the strongly-marked characteristics for which his ancestors and their compeers were distinguished. A follower of Old Noll himself never walked more zealously in the rigid puritanical path, nor could any one have kept more faithfully every observance that had been handed down from the passengers in the good bark that first anchored off Plymouth-rock. While in his family, one might readily imagine himself transported back to that of some Roundhead Captain Fight-and-Praise-God, or Colonel Smite-'em-Hip-and-Thigh, in the service of the Great Protector.
Comfort Makepeace had married early in life, and he displayed no ordinary depth of judgment in the selection of one, scarce if any less than himself attached to the devotional customs of his puritanical ancestry. Faithful was an obedient wife and managed the household concerns with a prudence and care that would have done credit to the noblest. She rivalled the emblematic bee in industry, and helped her husband to make some substantial additions to the ample means that had descended to them. She bore him sons and daughters, in no stinted number; and under her maternal oversight, they grew up strong and comely, the pride of both. Comfort often spoke of her as a crown to her husband, and no one ever repeated with more sincerity the saying of the wise man of old.
Yet Faithful would have been wanting in the common attributes of her sex, not to have displayed some qualities less suited to the rigid temper and habits of her spouse. She had not escaped censure for some indications of worldly-mindedness, such as every good puritan was in duty bound to set his heart and face against. But all the sober teachings of a score of five-hour discourses could not eradicate from the breast of woman the unfailing distinctions of her sex. Faithful was in early youth, despite her rigid education, fond of what her husband was wont to denominate worldly show. The cut of her dress was apt to depart from some of the plain features of that of her grand-mother, and accord itself with some of the later and more gaudy fashions, worn by the less puritanical matrons of the village; and Comfort was often fain to think there were more lively colors in the ribbon with which she decked her bonnet, than comported with the strictness of the principles which they had inherited. So, too, he sometimes imagined his natural discernment had not failed him in detecting a lack of heart in some of the services which were maintained. Faithful had indeed professed her belief, that fatiguing exertions, continued early and late during six days of the week, formed ample excuse for nodding irregular measure to the drowsy god during some of the services on the Sabbath.
But the good puritan was most alarmed at a foreboding that the tinge of worldliness which affected the moral character of his wife, might interfere with the course he should pursue to train up his children in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. Perchance all these might have passed unheeded in the presence of more striking fallings-off within the limits that confined the earthly pilgrimage of the puritan; but he was a restless being, and for want of others more important, the trivial backslidings of his help-meet furnished ample incentive to the wailing of spirit in which he so often indulged.
Eleven children—six sons and five daughters—blessed the union of Comfort and Faithful Makepeace, and the expressive appellations which they received, denoted well the vocabulary from which the names were selected. Comfort, junior, Ezekiel, Hezekiah, Micah, Habakkuk, and Preserved, told the males of the family, and those of the other sex were distinguished by names of equal import; Patience, Hope, Faith, Peace, and Charity. One after another, in regular succession, they grew up, and with the labor of older days sought to repay the care expended in their training. Their parents had entailed upon them no feeble constitutions, and the rigid rules by which they were reared, permitted of no such fashion of dress as should endanger the proper harmony of the system. Though a connoisseur might have applied to the features of the girls some more expressive epithet than that of mere plainness, they boasted of ruddy cheeks, and sparkling eyes, and healthful forms, that many a pale-looking belle might have envied. Comfort had little faith in the teachings of later sages, who waged war with the precepts of Solomon, and he felt no inclination to spoil the child by spare use of the correcting rod. Many a puritanical principle, that illy accorded with the free spirit of childhood, was drummed into the characters of his progeny; and the same effective engine was often put in requisition to check them from the commission of some worldly action. One could not look upon that staid household, from the iron-framed father down to the little tottering urchin who, ex-officio, as youngest, claimed all the privileges of pet, without comprehending at a glance the grave and rigid creed by which its concerns were regulated.