*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 10723 ***

BETTY'S BRIGHT IDEA

also

DEACON PITKIN'S FARM,

and

THE FIRST CHRISTMAS OF NEW ENGLAND.

BY HARRIET BEECHER STOWE.

With Illustrations.

1875.








[Illustration: The Children in the Churchyard.]






BETTY'S BRIGHT IDEA.



"When He ascended up on high, He led captivity captive, and gave gifts
unto men."--Eph. iv. 8.

Some say that ever, 'gainst that season comes
Wherein our Saviour's birth is celebrate,
The bird of dawning singeth all night long.
And then, they say, no evil spirit walks;
The nights are wholesome; then no planets strike,
No fairy takes, no witch hath power to charm,--
So hallowed and so gracious is the time.

And this holy time, so hallowed and so gracious, was settling down over
the great roaring, rattling, seething life-world of New York in the good
year 1875. Who does not feel its on-coming in the shops and streets, in
the festive air of trade and business, in the thousand garnitures by
which every store hangs out triumphal banners and solicits you to buy
something for a Christmas gift? For it is the peculiarity of all this
array of prints, confectionery, dry goods, and manufactures of all kinds,
that their bravery and splendor at Christmas tide is all to seduce you
into generosity, and importune you to give something to others. It says
to you, "The dear God gave you an unspeakable gift; give you a lesser
gift to your brother!"

Do we ever think, when we walk those busy, bustling streets, all alive
with Christmas shoppers, and mingle with the rushing tides that throng
and jostle through the stores, that unseen spirits may be hastening to
and fro along those same ways bearing Christ's Christmas gifts to men--
gifts whose value no earthly gold or gems can represent?

Yet, on this morning of the day before Christmas, were these Shining
Ones, moving to and fro with the crowd, whose faces were loving and
serene as the invisible stars, whose robes took no defilement from the
spatter and the rush of earth, whose coming and going was still as the
falling snow-flakes. They entered houses without ringing door-bells, they
passed through apartments without opening doors, and everywhere they were
bearing Christ's Christmas presents, and silently offering them to
whoever would open their souls to receive. Like themselves, their gifts
were invisible--incapable of weight and measurement in gross earthly
scales. To mourners they carried joy; to weary and perplexed hearts,
peace; to souls stifling in luxury and self-indulgence they carried that
noble discontent that rises to aspiration for higher things. Sometimes
they took away an earthly treasure to make room for a heavenly one. They
took health, but left resignation and cheerful faith. They took the babe
from the dear cradle, but left in its place a heart full of pity for the
suffering on earth and a fellowship with the blessed in heaven. Let us
follow their footsteps awhile.



SCENE I.


A young girl's boudoir in one of our American palaces of luxury, built
after the choicest fancy of the architect, and furnished in all the
latest devices of household decoration. Pictures, statuettes, and every
form of _bijouterie_ make the room a miracle of beauty, and the little
princess of all sits in an easy chair before the fire, and thus revolves
with herself:

"O, dear me! Christmas is a bore! Such a rush and crush in the streets,
such a jam in the shops, and then _such_ a fuss thinking up presents for
everybody! All for nothing, too; for nobody Wants anything. I'm sure _I_
don't. I'm surfeited now with pictures and jewelry, and bon-bon boxes,
and little china dogs and cats--and all these things that get so thick
you can't move without upsetting some of them. There's papa, he don't
want anything. He never uses any of my Christmas presents when I get
them; and mamma, she has every earthly thing I can think of, and said the
other day she did hope nobody'd give her any more worsted work! Then Aunt
Maria and Uncle John, they don't want the things I give them; they have
more than they know what to do with, now. All the boys say they don't
want any more cigar cases or slippers, or smoking caps. Oh, dear!"

Here the Shining Ones came and stood over the little lady, and looked
down on her with faces of pity, which seemed blent with a serene and
half-amused indulgence. It was a heavenly amusement, such as that with
which mothers listen to the foolish-wise prattle of children just
learning to talk.

As the grave, sweet eyes rested tenderly on her, the girl somehow grew
graver, leaned back in her chair, and sighed a little.

"I wish I knew how to be better!" she said to herself. "I remember last
Sunday's text, 'It is more blessed to give than to receive.' That must
mean something! Well, isn't there something, too, in the Bible about not
giving to your rich neighbors that can give again, but giving to the poor
that cannot recompense you? I don't know any poor people. Papa says there
are very few deserving poor people. Well, for the matter of that, there
aren't many _deserving rich_ people. I, for example, how much do I
_deserve_ to have all these nice things? I'm no better than the poor
shop-girls that go trudging by in the cold at six o'clock in the morning--
ugh! it makes me shiver to think of it. I know if I had to do that _I_
shouldn't be good at all. Well, I'd like to give to poor people, if I
knew any."

At this moment the door opened and the maid entered.

"Betty, do you know any poor people I ought to get things for, this
Christmas?"

"Poor folks is always plenty, miss," said Betty.

"O yes, of course, beggars; but I mean people that I could do something
for besides just give cold victuals or money. I don't know where to hunt
them up, and should be afraid to go if I did. O dear! it's no use. I'll
give it up."

"Why, Miss Florence, that 'ud be too bad, afther bein' that good in yer
heart, to let the poor folks alone for fear of goin' to them. But ye
needn't do that, for, now I think of it, there's John Morley's wife."

"What, the gardener father turned off for drinking?"

"The same, miss. Poor boy, he's not so bad, and he's got a wife and two
as pretty children as ever you see."

"I always liked John," said the young lady. "But papa is so strict about
some things! He says he never will keep a man a day if he finds out that
he drinks."

She was quite silent for a minute, and then broke out:

"I don't care; it's a good idea! I say, Betty, do you know where John's
wife lives?"

"Yes, miss, I've been there often."

"Well, then, this afternoon I'll go with you and see if I can do anything
for them."

[Decoration]



SCENE II.


An attic room, neat and clean, but poorly furnished; a bed and a trundle-
bed, a small cooking-stove, a shelf with a few dishes, one or two chairs
and stools, a pale, thin woman working on a vest.

Her face is anxious; her thin hands tremble with weakness, and now and
then, as she works, quiet tears drop, which she wipes quickly. Poor
people cannot afford to shed tears; it takes time and injures eyesight.

This is John Morley's wife. This morning he has risen and gone out in a
desperate mood. "No use to try," he says. "Didn't I go a whole year and
never touch a drop? And now just because I fell once I'm kicked out! No
use to try. When a fellow once trips, everybody gives him a kick. Talk
about love of Christ! Who believes it? Don't see much love of Christ
where I go. Your Christians hit a fellow that's down as hard as anybody.
It's everybody for himself and devil take the hindmost. Well, I'll trudge
up to the Brooklyn Navy Yard and see if they'll take me on there--if they
won't I might as well go to sea, or to the devil," and out he flings.

"Mamma!" says a little voice, "what are we going to have for our
Christmas?"

It is a little girl, with soft curly hair and bright, earnest eyes, that
speaks.

A sturdy little fellow of four presses up to the mother's knee and
repeats the question, "Sha'n't we have a Christmas, mother?"

It overcomes the poor woman; she leans forward and breaks into sobbing,--
a tempest of sorrow, long suppressed, that shakes her weak frame as she
thinks that her husband is out of work, desperate, discouraged, and
tempted of the devil, that the rent is falling due, and only the poor pay
of her needle to meet it with. In one of those quick flashes which
concentrate through the imagination the sorrows of years, she seems to
see her little home broken up, her husband in the gutter, her children
turned into the street. At this moment there goes up from her heart a
despairing cry, such as a poor, hunted, tired-out creature gives when
brought to the last gasp of endurance. It was like the shriek of the hare
when the hounds are upon it. She clasps her hands and cries out, "O my
God, help me."

There was no voice of any that answered; there was no sound of foot-fall
on the staircase; no one entered the door; and yet that agonized cry had
reached the heart it was meant for. The Shining Ones were with her; they
stood, with faces full of tenderness, beaming down upon her; they brought
her a Christmas gift from Christ--the gift of trust. She knew not from
whence came the courage and rest that entered her soul; but while her
little ones stood wondering and silent, she turned and drew to herself
her well-worn Bible. Hands that she did not see guided her as she turned
the pages, and pointed the words: _He shall deliver the needy when he
crieth; the poor also and him that hath no helper. He shall spare the
poor and needy, and shall save the souls of the needy. He shall redeem
their soul from deceit and violence, and precious shall their blood be in
his sight._

She laid down her poor wan cheek on the merciful old book, as on her
mother's breast, and gave up all the tangled skein of life into the hands
of Infinite Pity. There seemed a consoling presence in the room, and her
tired heart found rest.

She wiped away her tears, kissed her children, and smiled upon them. Then
she rose, gathered up her finished work, and attired herself to go forth
and carry it back to the shop.

"Mother," said the children softly, "they are dressing the church, and
the gates are open, and people are going in and out; mayn't we play there
by the church?"

The mother looked out on the ivy-grown walls of the church, with its
flocks of twittering sparrows, and said:

"Yes, my little birds; you may play there if you'll be very good and
quiet."

The mother had only her small, close attic room for her darlings, and to
satisfy all their childish desire for variety and motion, she had only
the refuge of the streets. She was a decent, godly woman, and the bold
manners and evil words of street vagrants were terrible to her; and so,
when the church gates were open for daily morning and evening prayers,
she had often begged the sexton to let her little ones come in and hear
the singing, and wander hand in hand around the old church walls. He was
a kindly old man, and the children, stealing round like two still,
bright-eyed little mice, had gained upon his heart, and he made them
welcome there. It gave the mother a feeling of protection to have them
play near the church, as if it were a father's house.

So she put on their little hoods and tippets, and led them forth, and saw
them into the yard; and as she looked to the old gray church, with its
rustling ivy bowers and flocks of birds, her heart swelled within her.
"Yea, the sparrow hath found a house and the swallow a nest where she may
lay her young, even thine altars, O Lord of hosts, my king and my God!"
And the Shining Ones walking with her said, "Fear not; ye are of more
value than many sparrows."

[Decoration]



SCENE III.


The little ones went gayly into the yard. They had been scared by their
mother's tears; but she had smiled again, and that had made all right
with them. The sun was shining brightly, and they were on the sunny side
of the old church, and they laughed and chirped and chittered to each
other as merrily as the little birds in the ivy boughs.

The old sexton came to the side door and threw out an armful of refuse
greens, and then stopped a moment and nodded kindly at them.

"May we play with them, please, sir?" said the little Elsie, looking up
with great reverence.

"Oh, yes, to be sure; these are done with--they are no good now."

"Oh, Tottie!" cried Elsie, rapturously, "just think, he says we may play
with all these. Why, here's ever and ever so much green, enough to play
house. Let's play build a house for father and mother."

"I'm going to build a big house for 'em when I grow up," said Tottie,
"and I mean to have glass bead windows in it."

Tottie had once had presented to him a box of colored glass beads to
string, and he could think of nothing finer in the future than unlimited
glass beads.

Meanwhile, his sister began planting pine branches upright in the snow,
to make her house.

"You see we can make believe there are windows and doors and a roof," she
said, "and it's just as good. Now, let's make believe there is a bed in
this corner, and we will lie down to sleep."

And Tottie obediently couched himself in the allotted corner and shut his
eyes very hard, though after a moment he remarked that the snow got into
his neck.

"You must play it isn't snow--play it's feathers," said Elsie.

"But I don't like it," persisted Tottie, "it don't feel a bit like
feathers."

"Oh, well, then," said Elsie, accommodating herself to circumstances,
"let's play get up now and I'll get breakfast."

Just now the door opened again, and the sexton began sweeping the refuse
out of the church. There were bits of ivy and holly, and ruffles of
ground-pine, and lots of bright red berries that came flying forth into
the yard, and the children screamed for joy. "O Tottie!" "O Elsie!" "Only
see how many pretty things--lots and lots!"

The sexton stood and looked and laughed as he saw the little ones so
eager for the scraps and remnants.

"Don't you want to come in and see the church?" he said. "It's all done
now, and a brave sight it is. You may come in."

They tipped in softly, with large bright, wondering eyes. The light
through the stained glass windows fell blue and crimson and yellow on the
pillars all ruffled with ground-pine and brightened with scarlet bitter-
sweet berries, and there were stars and crosses and mottoes in green all
through the bowery aisles, while the organist, hid in a thicket of
verdure, was practicing softly, and sweet voices sung:

"Hark! the herald angels sing
Glory to the new-born King."

The little ones wandered up and down the long aisles in a dream of awe
and wonder. "Hush, Tottie!" said Elsie when he broke into an eager
exclamation, "don't make a noise. I do believe it's something like
heaven," she said, under her breath.

They made the course of the church and came round by the door again,
where the sexton stood smiling on them.

"You can find lots of pretty Christmas greens out there," he said,
pointing to the door; "perhaps your folks would like to have some."

"Oh, thank you, sir," exclaimed. Elsie, rapturously. "Oh, Tottie, only
think! Let's gather a good lot and go home and dress our room for
Christmas. Oh, _won't_ mother be astonished when she comes home, we'll
make it so pretty!"

And forthwith the children began gathering into their little aprons
wreaths of ground-pine, sprigs of holly, and twigs of crimson bitter-
sweet. The sexton, seeing their zeal, brought out to them a little cross,
fancifully made of red alder-berries and pine.

Then he said, "A lady took that down to put up a bigger one, and she gave
it to me; you may have it if you want it."

"Oh, how beautiful," said Elsie. "How glad I am to have this for mother!
When she comes back she won't know our room; it will be as fine as the
church."

Soon the little gleaners were toddling off out of the yard--moving masses
of green with all that their aprons and their little hands could carry.

The sexton looked after them. "Take heed that ye despise not these little
ones," he said to himself, "for in heaven their angels--"

A ray of tenderness fell on the old man's head; it was from the Shining
One who watched the children. He thought it was an afternoon sunbeam. His
heart grew gentle and peaceful, and his thoughts went far back to a
distant green grove where his own little one was sleeping. "Seems to me
I've loved all little ones ever since," he said, thinking far back to the
Christmas week when his lamb was laid to rest. "Well, she shall not
return to me, but I shall go to her." The smile of the Shining One made a
warm glow in his heart, which followed him all the way home.

The children had a merry time dressing the room. They stuck good big
bushes of pine in each window; they put a little ruffle of ground-pine
round mother's Bible, and they fastened the beautiful red cross up over
the table, and they stuck sprigs of pine or holly into every crack that
could be made, by fair means or foul, to accept it, and they were
immensely satisfied and delighted. Tottie insisted on hanging up his
string of many-colored beads in the window to imitate the effect of the
stained glass of the great church window.

"It looks pretty when the light comes through," he remarked; and Elsie
admitted that they might play they were painted windows, with some show
of propriety. When everything had been stuck somewhere, Elsie swept the
floor, and made up a fire, and put on the tea-kettle, to have everything
ready to strike mother favorably on her return.

[Decoration]



SCENE IV.


A freezing, bright, cold afternoon. "Cold as Christmas!" say cheery
voices, as the crowds rush to and fro into shops and stores, and come out
with hands full of presents.

"Yes, cold as Christmas," says John Morley. "I should think so! Cold
enough for a fellow that can't get in anywhere--that nobody wants and
nobody helps! I should think so."

John had been trudging all day from point to point, only to hear the old
story: times were hard, work was dull, nobody wanted him, and he felt
morose and surly--out of humor with himself and with everybody else.

It is true that his misfortunes were from his own fault; but that
consideration never makes a man a particle more patient or good-natured--
indeed, it is an additional bitterness in his cup. John was an
Englishman. When he first landed in New York from the old country, he had
been wild and dissipated and given to drinking. But by his wife's earnest
entreaties he had been persuaded to sign the temperance pledge, and had
gone on prosperously keeping it for a year. He had a good place and good
wages, and all went well with him till in an evil hour he met some of his
former boon-companions, and was induced to have a social evening with
them.

In the first half hour of that evening were lost the fruits of the whole
year's self-denial and self-control. He was not only drunk that night,
but he went off for a fortnight, and was drunk night after night, and
came back to find that his master had discharged him in indignation. John
thinks this over bitterly, as he thuds about in the cold and calls
himself a fool.

Yet, if the truth must be confessed, John had not much "sense of sin," so
called. He looked on himself as an unfortunate and rather ill-used man,
for had he not tried very hard to be good, and gone a great while against
the stream of evil inclination? and now, just for one yielding, he was
pitched out of place, and everybody was turned against him! He thought
this was hard measure. Didn't everybody hit wrong sometimes? Didn't rich
fellows have their wine, and drink a little too much now and then? Yet
nobody was down on _them_.

"It's only because I'm poor," said John. "Poor folks' sins are never
pardoned. There's my good wife--poor girl!" and John's heart felt as if
it were breaking, for he was an affectionate creature, and loved his wife
and babies, and in his deepest consciousness he knew that he was the one
at fault. We have heard much about the sufferings of the wives and
children of men who are overtaken with drink; but what is not so well
understood is the sufferings of the men themselves in their sober
moments, when they feel that they are becoming a curse to all that are
dearest to them. John's very soul was wrung within him to think of the
misery he had brought on his wife and children--the greater miseries that
might be in store for them. He was faint of heart; he was tired; he had
eaten nothing for hours, and on ahead he saw a drinking saloon. Why
shouldn't he go and take one good drink, and then pitch off a ferry-boat
into the East River, and so end the whole miserable muddle of life
altogether?

John's steps were turning that way, when one of the Shining Ones, who had
watched him all day, came nearer and took his hand. He felt no touch; but
at that moment there darted into his soul a thought of his mother, long
dead, and he stopped irresolute, then turned to walk another way. The
hand that was guiding him led him to turn a corner, and his curiosity was
excited by a stream of people who seemed to be pressing into a building.
A distant sound of singing was heard as he drew nearer, and soon he found
himself passing with the multitude into a great prayer-meeting. The music
grew more distinct as he went in. A man was singing in clear, penetrating
tones:

"What means this eager, anxious throng,
Which moves with busy haste along;
These wondrous gatherings day by day;
What means this strange commotion, say?
In accents hushed the throng reply,
'Jesus of Nazareth passeth by!'"

John had but a vague idea of religion, yet something in the singing
affected him; and, weary and footsore and heartsore as he was, he sank
into a seat and listened with absorbed attention:

"Jesus! 'tis he who once below
Man's pathway trod in toil and woe;
And burdened ones where'er he came
Brought out their sick and deaf and lame.
The blind rejoiced to hear the cry,
'Jesus of Nazareth passeth by!'

"Ho, all ye heavy-laden, come!
Here's pardon, comfort, rest, and home.
Ye wanderers from a Father's face,
Return, accept his proffered grace.
Ye tempted ones, there's refuge nigh--
'Jesus of Nazareth passeth by!'"

A plain man, who spoke the language of plain working-men, now arose and
read from his Bible the words which the angel of old spoke to the
shepherds of Bethlehem:

"_Fear not, for behold, I bring you tidings of great joy, which shall be
to all people, for unto you is born this day a Saviour, which is Christ
the Lord._"

The man went on to speak of this with an intense practical earnestness
that soon made John feel as if _he_, individually, were being talked to;
and the purport of the speech was this: that God had sent to him, John
Morley, a Saviour to save him from his sins, to lift him above his
weakness, to help him overcome his bad habits; that His name was called
Jesus, because he shall save his people _from their sins_. John listened
with a strange new thrill. This was what he needed--a Friend, all-
powerful, all-pitiful, who would undertake for him and help him to
overcome himself--for he sorely felt how weak he was. Here was a Friend
that could have compassion on the ignorant and them that were out of the
way. The thought brought tears to his eyes and a glow of hope to his
heart. What if He _would_ help him? for deep down in John's heart, worse
than cold or hunger or weariness, was the dreadful conviction that he was
a doomed man, that he should drink again as he had drunk, and never come
to good, but fall lower and lower, and drag all who loved him down with
him.

And was this mighty Saviour given to him?

"Yes," cried the man who was speaking; "to _you;_ to you, who have lost
name and place; to you, that nobody cares for; to you, who have been down
in the gutter. God has sent you a Saviour to take you up out of the mud
and mire, to wash you clean, to give you strength to overcome your sins,
and lead you home to his blessed kingdom. This is the glad tidings of
great joy that the angels brought on the first Christmas day. Christ was
_God's Christmas gift_ to a poor, lost world, and you may have him now,
to-day. He may be your own Saviour--yours as much as if there were no
other one on earth to be saved. He is looking for you to-day, coming
after you, seeking you; he calls you by me. Oh, accept him now!"

There was a deep breathing of suppressed emotion as the speaker sat down,
a pause of solemn stillness.

A faint strain of music was heard, and the singer began singing a
pathetic ballad of a lost sheep and of the Shepherd going forth to seek
it:

"There were ninety and nine that safely lay
  In the shelter of the fold,
But one was out on the hills away,
  Far off from the gates of gold--
Away on the mountains wild and bare,
Away from the tender Shepherd's care.

"'Lord, Thou hast here Thy ninety and nine;
  Are they not enough for Thee?'
But the Shepherd made answer: ''Tis of mine
  Has wandered away from me;
And although the road be rough and steep
I go to the desert to find my sheep.'"

John heard with an absorbed interest. All around him were eager
listeners, breathless, leaning forward with intense attention. The song
went on:

"But none of the ransomed ever knew
  How deep were the waters crossed;
Nor how dark was the night that the Lord went through
  Ere He found His sheep that was lost.
Out in the desert He heard its cry--
Sick and helpless, and ready to die."

There was a throbbing pathos in the intonation, and the verse floated
over the weeping throng; when, after a pause, the strain was taken up
triumphantly:

"But all through the mountains thunder-riven,
  And up from the rocky steep,
There rose a cry to the gates of heaven,
  'Rejoice! I have found my sheep!'
And the angels echoed around the throne,
'Rejoice, for the Lord brings back His own!'"

All day long, poor John had felt so lonesome! Nobody cared for him;
nobody wanted him; everything was against him; and, worst of all, he had
no faith in himself. But here was this Friend, _seeking_ him, following
him through the cold alleys and crowded streets. In heaven they would be
glad to hear that he had become a good man. The thought broke down all
his pride, all his bitterness; he wept like a little child; and the
Christmas gift of Christ--the sense of a real, present, loving, pitying
Saviour--came into his very _soul_.

He went homeward as one in a dream. He passed the drinking-saloon without
a thought or wish of drinking. The expulsive force of a new emotion had
for the time driven out all temptation. Raised above weakness, he thought
only of this Jesus, this Saviour from sin, who he now believed had
followed him and found him, and he longed to go home and tell his wife
what great things the Lord had done for him.

[Decoration]



SCENE V.


Meanwhile a little drama had been acting in John's humble home. His wife
had been to the shop that day and come home with the pittance for her
work in her hands.

"I'll pay you full price to-day, but we can't pay such prices any
longer," the man had said over the counter as he paid her. "Hard times--
work dull--we are cutting down all our work-folks; you'll have to take a
third less next time."

"I'll do my best," she said meekly, as she took her bundle of work and
turned wearily away, but the invisible arm of the Shining One was round
her, and the words again thrilled through her that she had read that
morning: "He shall redeem their soul from deceit and violence, and
precious shall their blood be in his sight." She saw no earthly helper;
she heard none and felt none, and yet her soul was sustained, and she
came home in peace.

When she opened the door of her little room she drew back astonished at
the sight that presented itself. A brisk fire was roaring in the stove,
and the tea-kettle was sputtering and sending out clouds of steam. A
table with a white cloth on it was drawn out before the fire, and a new
tea set of pure white cups and saucers, with teapot, sugar-bowl, and
creamer, complete, gave a festive air to the whole. There were bread, and
butter, and ham-sandwiches, and a Christmas cake all frosted, with little
blue and red and green candles round it ready to be lighted, and a bunch
of hot-house flowers in a pretty little vase in the centre.

A new stuffed rocking-chair stood on one side of the stove, and there sat
Miss Florence De Witt, our young princess of Scene First, holding little
Elsie in her lap, while the broad, honest countenance of Betty was
beaming with kindness down on the delighted face of Tottie. Both children
were dressed from head to foot in complete new suits of clothes, and
Elsie was holding with tender devotion a fine doll, while Tottie rejoiced
in a horse and cart which he was maneuvering under Betty's
superintendence.

The little princess had pleased herself in getting up all this tableau.
Doing good was a novelty to her, and she plunged into it with the zest of
a new amusement. The amazed look of the poor woman, her dazed expressions
of rapture and incredulous joy, the shrieks and cries of confused delight
with which the little ones met their mother, delighted her more than any
scene she had ever witnessed at the opera--with this added grace, unknown
to her, that at this scene the invisible Shining Ones were pleased
witnesses.

She had been out with Betty, buying here and there whatever was wanted,--
and what was _not_ wanted for those who had been living so long without
work or money?

She had their little coal-bin filled, and a nice pile of wood and
kindlings put behind the stove. She had bought a nice rocking-chair for
the mother to rest in. She had dressed the children from head to foot at
a ready-made clothing store, and bought them toys to their hearts'
desire, while Betty had set the table for a Christmas feast.

And now she said to the poor woman at last:

"I'm so sorry John lost his place at father's. He was so kind and
obliging, and I always liked him; and I've been thinking, if you'd get
him to sign the pledge over again from Christmas Eve, never to touch
another drop, I'll get papa to take him back. I always do get papa to do
what I want, and the fact is, he hasn't got anybody that suited him so
well since John left. So you tell John that I mean to go surety for him;
he certainly won't fail _me_. Tell him _I trust him_." And Miss Florence
pulled out a paper wherein, in her best round hand, she had written out
again the temperance pledge, and dated it "_Christmas Eve, 1875_."

"Now, you come with John to-morrow morning, and bring this with his name
to it, and you'll see what I'll do!" and, with a kiss to the children,
the little good fairy departed, leaving the family to their Christmas
Eve.

What that Christmas Eve was, when the husband and father came home with
the new and softened heart that had been given him, who can say? There
were joyful tears and solemn prayers, and earnest vows and purposes of a
new life heard by the Shining Ones in the room that night.

"And the angels echoed around the throne,
Rejoice! for the Lord brings back his own."



SCENE VI.


"Now, papa, I want you to give me something special to-day, because it's
Christmas," said the little princess to her father, as she kissed and
wished him "Merry Christmas" next morning.

"What is it, Pussy--half of my kingdom?"

"No, no, papa; not so much as that. It's a little bit of my own way that
I want."

"Of course; well, what is it?"

"Well, I want you to take John back again."

Her father's face grew hard.

"Now, please, papa, don't say a word till you have heard me. John was a
capital gardener; he kept the green-house looking beautiful; and this
Mike that we've got now, he's nothing but an apprentice, and stupid as an
owl at that! He'll never do in the world."

"All that is very true," said Mr. De Witt, "but _John drinks_, and I
_won't_ have a drinking man."

"But, papa, _I_ mean to take care of that. I've written out the
temperance pledge, and dated it, and got John to sign it, and _here it
is_," and she handed the paper to her father, who read it carefully, and
sat turning it in his hands while his daughter went on:

"You ought to have seen how poor, how very poor they were. His wife is
such a nice, quiet, hardworking woman, and has two such pretty children.
I went to see them and carry them Christmas things yesterday, but it's no
good doing anything if John can't get work. She told me how the poor
fellow had been walking the streets in the cold, day after day, trying
everywhere, and nobody would take him. It's a dreadful time now for a man
to be out of work, and it isn't fair his poor wife and children should
suffer. Do try him again, papa!"

"John always did better with the pineapples than anybody we have tried,"
said Mrs. De Witt at this point. "He is the only one who really
understands pineapples."

At this moment the door opened, and there was a sound of chirping voices
in the hall. "Please, Miss Florence," said Betty, "the little folks says
they wants to give you a Christmas." She added in a whisper: "They thinks
much of giving you something, poor little things--plaze take it of 'em."
And little Tottie at the word marched in and offered the young princess
his dear, beautiful, beloved string of glass beads, and Elsie presented
the cross of red berries--most dear to her heart and fair to her eyes.
"We wanted to give _you something_" she said bashfully.

"Oh, you lovely dears!" cried Florence; "how sweet of you! I shall keep
these beautiful glass beads always, and put the cross up over my
dressing-table. I thank you _ever_ so much!"

"Are those John's children?" asked Mr. De Witt, winking a tear out of his
eye--he was at bottom a soft-hearted old gentleman.

"Yes, papa," said Florence, caressing Elsie's curly hair,--"see how sweet
they are!"

"Well--you may tell John I'll try him again." And so passed Florence's
Christmas, with a new, warm sense of joy in her heart, a feeling of
something in the world to be done, worth doing.

"How much joy one can give with a little money!" she said to herself as
she counted over what she had spent on her Christmas. Ah yes! and how
true that "It _is_ more blessed to give than to receive." A shining,
invisible hand was laid on her head in blessing as she lay down that
night, and a sweet sense of a loving presence stole like music into her
soul. Unknown to herself, she had that day taken the first step out of
self-life into that life of love and care for others which brought the
King of Glory down to share earth's toils and sorrows. And that precious
experience was Christ's Christmas gift to her.

[Decoration]





DEACON PITKIN'S FARM.



[Illustration: The Pitkin Homestead. ]



CHAPTER I.


MISS DIANA.

Thanksgiving was impending in the village of Mapleton on the 20th of
November, 1825.

The Governor's proclamation had been duly and truly read from the pulpit
the Sunday before, to the great consternation of Miss Briskett, the
ambulatory dressmaker, who declared confidentially to Deacon Pitkin's
wife that "she didn't see nothin' how she was goin' to get through
things--and there was Saphiry's gown, and Miss Deacon Trowbridge's cloak,
and Lizy Jane's new merino, not a stroke done on't. The Governor ought to
be ashamed of himself for hurrying matters so."

It was a very rash step for Miss Briskett to go to the length of such a
remark about the Governor, but the deacon's wife was one of the few women
who are nonconductors of indiscretion, and so the Governor never heard of
it.

This particular Thanksgiving tide was marked in Mapleton by exceptionally
charming weather. Once in a great while the inclement New England skies
are taken with a remorseful twinge and forget to give their usual snap of
September frost which generally bites off all the pretty flowers in so
heart-breaking a way, and then you can have lovely times quite down
through November.

It was so this year at Mapleton. Though the Thanksgiving proclamation had
been read, and it was past the middle of November, yet marigolds and
four-o'clocks were all ablaze in the gardens, and the golden rod and
purple aster were blooming over the fields as if they were expecting to
keep it up all winter.

It really is affecting, the jolly good heart with which these bright
children of the rainbow flaunt and wave and dance and go on budding and
blossoming in the very teeth and snarl of oncoming winter. An autumn
golden rod or aster ought to be the symbol for pluck and courage, and
might serve a New England crest as the broom flower did the old
Plantagenets.

The trees round Mapleton were looking like gigantic tulip beds, and
breaking every hour into new phantasmagoria of color; and the great elm
that overshadowed the red Pitkin farm-house seemed like a dome of gold,
and sent a yellow radiance through all the doors and windows as the
dreamy autumn sunshine streamed through it.

The Pitkin elm was noted among the great trees of New England. Now and
then Nature asserts herself and does something so astonishing and
overpowering as actually to strike through the crust of human stupidity,
and convince mankind that a tree is something greater than they are. As a
general thing the human race has a stupid hatred of trees. They embrace
every chance to cut them down. They have no idea of their fitness for
anything but firewood or fruit bearing. But a great cathedral elm, with
shadowy aisles of boughs, its choir of whispering winds and chanting
birds, its hush and solemnity and majestic grandeur, actually conquers
the dull human race and asserts its leave to be in a manner to which all
hearts respond; and so the great elms of New England have got to be
regarded with a sort of pride as among her very few crown jewels, and the
Pitkin elm was one of these.

But wasn't it a busy time in Mapleton! Busy is no word for it. Oh, the
choppings, the poundings, the stoning of raisins, the projections of pies
and puddings, the killing of turkeys--who can utter it? The very chip
squirrels in the stone-walls, who have a family custom of making a
market-basket of their mouths, were rushing about with chops incredibly
distended, and their tails had an extra whisk of thanksgiving alertness.
A squirrel's Thanksgiving dinner is an affair of moment, mind you.

In the great roomy, clean kitchen of the deacon's house might be seen the
lithe, comely form of Diana Pitkin presiding over the roaring great oven
which was to engulf the armies of pies and cakes which were in due course
of preparation on the ample tables.

Of course you want to know who Diana Pitkin was. It was a general fact
about this young lady that anybody who gave one look at her, whether at
church or at home, always inquired at once with effusion, "Who is she?"--
particularly if the inquirer was one of the masculine gender.

This was to be accounted for by the fact that Miss Diana presented to the
first view of the gazer a dazzling combination of pink and white, a
flashing pair of black eyes, a ripple of dimples about the prettiest
little rosy mouth in the world, and a frequent somewhat saucy laugh,
which showed a set of teeth like pearls. Add to this a quick wit, a
generous though spicy temper, and a nimble tongue, and you will not
wonder that Miss Diana was a marked character at Mapleton, and that the
inquiry who she was was one of the most interesting facts of statistical
information.

Well, she was Deacon Pitkin's second cousin, and of course just in that
convenient relationship to the Pitkin boys which has all the advantages
of cousinship and none of the disadvantages as may be plain to an
ordinary observer. For if Miss Diana wished to ride or row or dance with
any of the Pitkin boys, why shouldn't she? Were they not her cousins? But
if any of these aforenamed young fellows advanced on the strength of
these intimacies a presumptive claim to nearer relationship, why, then
Diana was astonished--of course she had regarded them as her cousins! and
she was sure she couldn't think what they could be dreaming of--"A cousin
is just like a brother, you know."

This was just what James Pitkin did not believe in, and now as he is
walking over hill and dale from Cambridge College to his father's house
he is gathering up a decided resolution to tell Diana that he is not and
will not be to her as a brother--that she must be to him all or nothing.
James is the brightest, the tallest, and, the Mapleton girls said, the
handsomest of the Pitkin boys. He is a strong-hearted, generous, resolute
fellow as ever undertook to walk thirty-five miles home to eat his
Thanksgiving dinner.

[Illustration: Diana.]

We are not sure that Miss Diana is not thinking of him quite as much as
he of her, as she stands there with the long kitchen shovel in one hand,
and one plump white arm thrust into the oven, and her little head cocked
on one side, her brows bent, and her rosy mouth pursed up with a solemn
sense of the importance of her judgment as she is testing the heat of her
oven.

Oh, Di, Di! for all you seem to have nothing on your mind but the
responsibility for all those pumpkin pies and cranberry tarts, we
wouldn't venture a very large wager that you are not thinking about
cousin James under it all at this very minute, and that all this pretty
bustling housewifeliness owes its spice and flavor to the thought that
James is coming to the Thanksgiving dinner.

To be sure if any one had told Di so, she would have flouted the very
idea. Besides, she had privately informed Almira Sisson, her special
particular confidante, that she knew Jim would come home from college
full of conceit, and thinking that everybody must bow down to him, and
for her part she meant to make him know his place. Of course Jim and she
were good friends, etc., etc.

Oh, Di, Di! you silly, naughty girl, was it for this that you stood so
long at your looking-glass last night, arranging how you would do your
hair for the Thanksgiving night dance? Those killing bows which you
deliberately fabricated and lodged like bright butterflies among the dark
waves of your hair--who were you thinking of as you made and posed them?
Lay your hand on your heart and say who to you has ever seemed the best,
the truest, the bravest and kindest of your friends. But Di doesn't
trouble herself with such thoughts--she only cuts out saucy mottoes from
the flaky white paste to lay on the red cranberry tarts, of which she
makes a special one for each cousin. For there is Bill, the second
eldest, who stays at home and helps work the farm. She knows that Bill
worships her very shoe-tie, and obeys all her mandates with the faithful
docility of a good Newfoundland dog, and Di says "she thinks everything
of Bill--she likes Bill." So she does Ed, who comes a year or two behind
Bill, and is trembling out of bashful boyhood. So she does Rob and Ike
and Pete and the whole healthy, ramping train who fill the Pitkin farm-
house with a racket of boots and boys. So she has made every one a tart
with his initial on it and a saucy motto or two, "just to keep them from
being conceited, you know."

All day she keeps busy by the side of the deacon's wife--a delicate,
thin, quiet little woman, with great thoughtful eyes and a step like a
snowflake. New England had of old times, and has still, perhaps, in her
farm-houses, these women who seem from year to year to develop in the
spiritual sphere as the bodily form shrinks and fades. While the cheek
grows thin and the form spare, the will-power grows daily stronger;
though the outer man perish, the inner man is renewed day by day. The
worn hand that seems so weak yet holds every thread and controls every
movement of the most complex family life, and wonders are daily
accomplished by the presence of a woman who seems little more than a
spirit. The New England wife-mother was the one little jeweled pivot on
which all the wheel work of the family moved.

"Well, haven't we done a good day's work, cousin?" says Diana, when
ninety pies of every ilk--quince, apple, cranberry, pumpkin, and mince--
have been all safely delivered from the oven and carried up into the
great vacant chamber, where, ranged in rows and frozen solid, they are to
last over New Year's day! She adds, demonstratively clasping the little
woman round the neck and leaning her bright cheek against her whitening
hair, "Haven't we been smart?" And the calm, thoughtful eyes turn
lovingly upon her as Mary Pitkin puts her arm round her and answers:

"Yes, my daughter, you have done wonderfully. We couldn't do without
you!"

And Diana lifts her head and laughs. She likes petting and praising as a
cat likes being stroked; but, for all that, the little puss has her claws
and a sly notion of using them.



CHAPTER II.


BIAH CARTER.

It was in the flush and glow of a gorgeous sunset that you might have
seen the dark form of the Pitkin farm-house rising on a green hill
against the orange sky.

The red house, with its overhanging canopy of elm, stood out like an old
missal picture done on a gold ground.

Through the glimmer of the yellow twilight might be seen the stacks of
dry corn-stalks and heaps of golden pumpkins in the neighboring fields,
from which the slow oxen were bringing home a cart well laden with farm
produce.

It was the hour before supper time, and Biah Carter, the deacon's hired
man, was leaning against a fence, waiting for his evening meal; indulging
the while in a stream of conversational wisdom which seemed to flow all
the more freely from having been dammed up through the labors of the day.

[Illustration: Biah]

Biah was, in those far distant times of simplicity a "mute inglorious"
newspaper man. Newspapers in those days were as rare and unheard of as
steam cars or the telegraph, but Biah had within him all the making of a
thriving modern reporter, and no paper to use it on. He was a walking
biographical and statistical dictionary of all the affairs of the good
folks of Mapleton. He knew every piece of furniture in their houses, and
what they gave for it; every foot of land, and what it was worth; every
ox, ass and sheep; every man, woman and child in town. And Biah could
give pretty shrewd character pictures also, and whoever wanted to inform
himself of the status of any person or thing in Mapleton would have done
well to have turned the faucet of Biah's stream of talk, and watched it
respectfully as it came, for it was commonly conceded that what Biah
Carter didn't know about Mapleton was hardly worth knowing.

"Putty piece o' property, this 'ere farm," he said, surveying the scene
around him with the air of a connoisseur. "None o' yer stun pastur land
where the sheep can't get their noses down through the rocks without a
file to sharpen 'em! Deacon Pitkin did a putty fair stroke o' business
when he swapped off his old place for this 'ere. That are old place was
all swamp land and stun pastur; wa'n't good for raisin' nothin' but
juniper bushes and bull frogs. But I tell _yeu_" preceded Biah, with a
shrewd wink, "that are mortgage pinches the deacon; works him like a dose
of aloes and picry, it does. Deacon fairly gets lean on't."

"Why," said Abner Jenks, a stolid plow boy to whom this stream of remark
was addressed; "this 'ere place ain't mortgaged, is it? Du tell, naow!"

"Why, yis; don't ye know that are? Why there's risin' two thousand
dollars due on this 'ere farm, and if the deacon don't scratch for it and
pay up squar to the minit, old Squire Norcross'll foreclose on him. Old
squire hain't no bowels, I tell yeu, and the deacon knows he hain't: and
I tell you it keeps the deacon dancin' lively as corn on a hot shovel."

"The deacon's a master hand to work," said Abner; "so's the boys."

"Wai, yis, the deacon is," said Biah, turning contemplatively to the
farmhouse; "there ain't a crittur in that are house that there ain't the
most work got out of 'em that ken be, down to Jed and Sam, the little
uns. They work like tigers, every soul of 'em, from four o'clock in she
morning' as long as they can see, and Mis' Pitkin she works all the
evening--woman's work ain't never done, they say."

"She's a good woman, Mis' Pitkin is," said Abner, "and she's a smart
worker."

In this phrase Abner solemnly expressed his highest ideal of a human
being.

"Smart ain't no word for 't," said Biah, with alertness. "Declar for 't,
the grit o' that are woman beats me. Had eight children right along in a
string 'thout stoppin', done all her own work, never kep' no gal nor
nothin'; allers up and dressed; allers to meetin' Sunday, and to the
prayer-meetin' weekly, and never stops workin': when 'tan't one thing
it's another--cookin', washin', ironin', making butter and cheese, and
'tween spells cuttin' and sewin', and if she ain't doin' that, why, she's
braidin' straw to sell to the store or knitting--she's the perpetual
motion ready found, Mis' Pitkin is."

"Want ter know," said the auditor, as a sort of musical rest in this
monotone of talk. "Ain't she smart, though!"

"Smart! Well, I should think she was. She's over and into everything
that's goin' on in that house. The deacon wouldn't know himself without
her; nor wouldn't none of them boys, they just live out of her; she kind
o' keeps 'em all up."

"Wal, she ain't a hefty woman, naow," said the interlocutor, who seemed
to be possessed by a dim idea that worth must be weighed by the pound.

"Law bless you, no! She's a little crittur; nothin' to look to, but every
bit in her is _live_. She looks pale, kind o' slips round still like
moonshine, but where anything's to be done, there Mis' Pitkin is; and her
hand allers goes to the right spot, and things is done afore ye know it.
That are woman's kind o' still; she'll slip off and be gone to heaven
some day afore folks know it. There comes the deacon and Jim over the
hill. Jim walked home from college day 'fore yesterday, and turned right
in to-day to help get in the taters, workin' right along. Deacon was
awful grouty."

"What was the matter o' the deacon?"

"Oh, the mortgage kind o' works him. The time to pay comes round putty
soon, and the deacon's face allers goes down long as yer arm. 'Tis a
putty tight pull havin' Jim in college, losin' his work and havin' term
bills and things to pay. Them are college folks charges _up_, I tell you.
I seen it works the deacon, I heard him a-jawin' Jim 'bout it."

"What made Jim go to college?" said Abner with slow wonder in his heavy
face.

"Oh, he allers was sot on eddication, and Mis' Pitkin she's sot on't,
too, in her softly way, and softly women is them that giner'lly carries
their p'ints, fust or last.

"But _there's_ one that _ain't_ softly!" Biah suddenly continued, as the
vision of a black-haired, bright-eyed girl suddenly stepped forth from
the doorway, and stood shading her face with her hands, looking towards
the sunset. The evening light lit up a jaunty spray of golden rod that
she had wreathed in her wavy hair, and gave a glow to the rounded
outlines of her handsome form. "There's a sparkler for you! And no saint,
neither!" was Biah's comment. "That crittur has got more prances and
capers in her than any three-year-old filly I knows on. He'll be cunning
that ever gets a bridle on her."

"Some says she's going to hev Jim Pitkin, and some says it's Bill," said
Abner, delighted to be able to add his mite of gossip to the stream while
it was flowing.

"She's sweet on Jim while he's round, and she's sweet on Bill when Jim's
up to college, and between um she gets took round to everything that
going. She gives one a word over one shoulder, and one over t'other, and
if the Lord above knows what's in that gal's mind or what she's up to, he
knows more than I do, or she either, else I lose my bet."

Biah made this admission with a firmness that might have been a model to
theologians or philosophers in general. There was a point, it appeared,
where he was not omniscient. His universal statistical knowledge had a
limit.



CHAPTER III.


THE SHADOW.

There is no moment of life, however festive, that does not involve the
near presence of a possible tragedy. When the concert of life is playing
the gayest and airiest music, it requires only the change of a little
flat or sharp to modulate into the minor key.

There seemed at first glance only the elements of joyousness and gayety
in the surroundings at the Pitkin farm. Thanksgiving was come--the
family, healthy, rosy, and noisy, were all under the one roof-tree. There
was energy, youth, intelligence, beauty, a pair of lovers on the eve of
betrothal--just in that misty, golden twilight that precedes the full
sunrise of avowed and accepted love--and yet behind it all was walking
with stealthy step the shadow of a coming sorrow.

"What in the world ails James?" said Diana as she retreated from the door
and surveyed him at a distance from her chamber window. His face was like
a landscape over which a thunder-cloud has drifted, and he walked beside
his father with a peculiar air of proud displeasure and repression.

At that moment the young man was struggling with the bitterest sorrow
that can befall youth--the breaking up of his life-purpose. He had just
come to a decision to sacrifice his hopes of education, his man's
ambition, his love, his home and family, and become a wanderer on the
face of the earth. How this befell requires a sketch of character.

Deacon Silas Pitkin was a fair specimen of a class of men not uncommon in
New England--men too sensitive for the severe physical conditions of New
England life, and therefore both suffering and inflicting suffering. He
was a man of the finest moral traits, of incorruptible probity, of
scrupulous honor, of an exacting conscientiousness, and of a sincere
piety. But he had begun life with nothing; his whole standing in the
world had been gained inch by inch by the most unremitting economy and
self-denial, and he was a man of little capacity for hope, of whom it was
said, in popular phraseology, that he "took things hard." He was never
sanguine of good, always expectant of evil, and seemed to view life like
a sentinel forbidden to sleep and constantly under arms.

For such a man to be harassed by a mortgage upon his homestead was a
steady wear and drain upon his vitality. There were times when a positive
horror of darkness came down upon him--when his wife's untroubled,
patient hopefulness seemed to him like recklessness, when the smallest
item of expense was an intolerable burden, and the very daily bread of
life was full of bitterness; and when these paroxysms were upon him, one
of the heaviest of his burdens was the support of his son in college. It
was true that he was proud of his son's talents and sympathized with his
love for learning--he had to the full that sense of the value of
education which is the very vital force of the New England mind--and in
an hour when things looked brighter to him he had given his consent to
the scheme of a college education freely.

James was industrious, frugal, energetic, and had engaged to pay the most
of his own expenses by teaching in the long winter vacations. But
unfortunately this year the Mapleton Academy, which had been promised to
him for the winter term, had been taken away by a little maneuver of
local politics and given to another, thus leaving him without resource.
This disappointment, coming just at the time when the yearly interest
upon the mortgage was due, had brought upon his father one of those
paroxysms of helpless gloom and discouragement in which the very world
itself seemed clothed in sack-cloth.

From the time that he heard the Academy was gone, Deacon Silas lay awake
nights in the blackness of darkness. "We shall all go to the poorhouse
together--that's where it will end," he said, as he tossed restlessly in
the dark.

"Oh no, no, my dear," said his wife, with those serene eyes that had
looked through so many gloomy hours; "we must cast our care on God."

"It's easy for women to talk. You don't have the interest money to pay,
you are perfectly reckless of expense. Nothing would do but James must go
to college, and now see what it's bringing us to!"

"Why, father, I thought you yourself were in favor of it."

"Well, I did wrong then. You persuaded me into it. I'd no business to
have listened to you and Jim and got all this load on my shoulders."

Yet Mary Pitkin knew in her own calm, clear head that she had not been
reckless of expense. The yearly interest money was ever before her, and
her own incessant toils had wrought no small portion of what was needed
to pay it. Her butter at the store commanded the very highest price, her
straw braiding sold for a little more than that of any other hand, and
she had calculated all the returns so exactly that she felt sure that the
interest money for that year was safe. She had seen her husband pass
through this nervous crisis many times before, and she had learned to be
blamed in silence, for she was a woman out of whom all selfness had long
since died, leaving only the tender pity of the nurse and the consoler.
Her soul rested on her Saviour, the one ever-present, inseparable friend;
and when it did no good to speak to her husband, she spoke to her God for
him, and so was peaceful and peace-giving.

Even her husband himself felt her strengthening, rest-giving power, and
for this reason he bore down on her with the burden of all his tremors and
his cares; for while he disputed, he yet believed her, and rested upon
her with an utter helpless trust, as the good angel of his house. Had
_she_ for a moment given way to apprehension, had _her_ step been a
thought less firm, her eye less peaceful, then indeed the world itself
would have seemed to be sinking under his feet. Meanwhile she was to him
that kind of relief which we derive from a person to whom we may say
everything without a fear of its harming them. He felt quite sure that,
say what he would, Mary would always be hopeful and courageous; and he
felt some secret idea that his own gloomy forebodings were of service in
restricting and sobering what seemed to him her too sanguine nature. He
blindly reverenced, without ability fully to comprehend, her exalted
religious fervor and the quietude of soul that it brought. But he did not
know through how many silent conflicts, how many prayers, how many tears,
how many hopes resigned and sorrows welcomed, she had come into that last
refuge of sorrowful souls, that immovable peace when all life's anguish
ceases and the will of God becomes the final rest.

But, unhappily for this present crisis, there was, as there often is in
family life, just enough of the father's nature in the son to bring them
into collision with each other. James had the same nervously anxious
nature, the same intense feeling of responsibility, the same tendency
towards morbid earnestness; and on that day there had come collision.

His father had poured forth upon him his fears and apprehensions in a
manner which implied a censure on his son, as being willing to accept a
life of scholarly ease while his father and mother were, as he expressed
it, "working their lives away."

"But I tell you, father, as God is my witness, I _mean_ to pay all; you
shall not suffer; interest and principal--all that my work would bring--I
engage to pay back."

"You!--you'll never have anything! You'll be a poor man as long as you
live. Lost the Academy this Fall--that tells the story!"

"But, father, it wasn't my fault that I lost the Academy."

"It's no matter whose fault it was--that's neither here nor there--you
lost it, and here you are with the vacation before you and nothing to do!
There's your mother, she's working herself to death; she never gets any
rest. I expect she'll go off in a consumption one of these days."

"There, there, father! that's enough! Please don't say any more. You'll
see I _will_ find something to do!"

There are words spoken at times in life that do not sound bitter though
they come from a pitiable depth of anguish, and as James turned from his
father he had taken a resolution that convulsed him with pain; his strong
arms quivered with the repressed agony, and he hastily sought a distant
part of the field, and began cutting and stacking corn-stalks with a
nervous energy.

"Why, ye work like thunder!" was Biah's comment. "Book l'arnin' hain't
spiled ye yet; your arms are good for suthin'."

"Yes, my arms are good for something, and I'll use them for something,"
said Jim.

There was raging a tempest in his soul. For a young fellow of a Puritan
education in those days to be angry with his father was somewhat that
seemed to him as awful a sacrilege as to be angry with his God, and yet
he felt that his father had been bitterly, cruelly unjust towards him. He
had driven economy to the most stringent extremes; he had avoided the
intimacy of his class fellows, lest he should be drawn into needless
expenses; he had borne with shabby clothing and mean fare among better
dressed and richer associates, and been willing to bear it. He had
studied faithfully, unremittingly, for two years, but at the moment he
turned from his father the throb that wrung his heart was the giving up
of all. He had in his pocket a letter from his townsman and schoolmate,
Sam Allen, mate of an East Indiaman just fitting out at Salem, and it
said:

"We are going to sail with a picked crew, and we want one just such a
fellow as you for third mate. Come along, and you can go right up, and
your college mathematics will be all the better for us. Come right off,
and your berth will be ready, and away for round the world!"

Here, to be sure, was immediate position--wages--employment--freedom from
the intolerable burden of dependence; but it was accepted at the
sacrifice of all his life's hopes. True, that in those days the
experiment of a sea-faring life had often, even in instances which he
recalled, brought forth fortune and an ability to settle down in peaceful
competence in after life. But there was Diana. Would she wait for him?
Encircled on all sides with lovers, would she keep faith with an
adventurer gone for an indefinite quest? The desponding, self-distrusting
side of his nature said, "No. Why should she?" Then, to go was to give
up Diana--to make up his mind to have her belong to some other. Then
there was his mother. An unutterable reverential pathos always to him
encircled the idea of his mother. Her life to him seemed a hard one. From
the outside, as he viewed it, it was all self-sacrifice and renunciation.
Yet he knew that she had set her heart on an education for him, as much
as it could be set on anything earthly. He was her pride, her hope; and
just now that very thought was full of bitterness. There was no help for
it; he must not let her work herself to death for him; he would make the
household vessel lighter by the throwing himself into the sea, to sink or
swim as might happen; and then, perhaps, he might come back with money to
help them all.

All this was what was surging and boiling in his mind when he came in
from his work to the supper that night.



CHAPTER IV.


THE GOOD-BY.

Diana Pitkin was like some of the fruits of her native hills, full of
juices which tend to sweetness in maturity, but which when not quite ripe
have a pretty decided dash of sharpness. There are grapes that require a
frost to ripen them, and Diana was somewhat akin to these.

She was a mettlesome, warm-blooded creature, full of the energy and
audacity of youth, to whom as yet life was only a frolic and a play
spell. Work never tired her. She ate heartily, slept peacefully, went to
bed laughing, and got up in a merry humor in the morning. Diana's laugh
was as early a note as the song of birds. Such a nature is not at first
sympathetic. It has in it some of the unconscious cruelty which belongs
to nature itself, whose sunshine never pales at human trouble. Eyes that
have never wept cannot comprehend sorrow. Moreover, a lively girl of
eighteen, looking at life out of eyes which bewilder others with their
brightness, does not always see the world truly, and is sometimes judged
to be heartless when she is only immature.

Nothing was further from Diana's thoughts than that any grave trouble was
overhanging her lover's mind--for her lover she very well knew that James
was, and she had arranged beforehand to herself very pretty little
comedies of life, to be duly enacted in the long vacation, in which James
was to appear as the suitor, and she, not too soon nor with too much
eagerness, was at last to acknowledge to him how much he was to her. But
meanwhile he was not to be too presumptuous. It was not set down in the
cards that she should be too gracious or make his way too easy. When,
therefore, he brushed by her hastily, on entering the house, with a
flushed cheek and frowning brow, and gave no glance of admiration at the
pretty toilet she had found time to make, she was slightly indignant. She
was as ignorant of the pang which went like an arrow through his heart at
the sight of her as the bobolink which whirrs and chitters and tweedles
over a grave.

She turned away and commenced a kitten-like frolic with Bill, who was
always only too happy to second any of her motions, and readily promised
that after supper she would go with him a walk of half a mile over to a
neighbor's, where was a corn-husking. A great golden lamp of a harvest
moon was already coming up in the fading flush of the evening sky, and
she promised herself much amusement in watching the result of her
maneuver on James.

"He'll see at any rate that I am not waiting his beck and call. Next
time, if he wants my company he can ask for it in season. I'm not going
to indulge him in sulks, not I. These college fellows worry over books
till they hurt their digestion, and then have the blues and look as if
the world was coming to an end." And Diana went to the looking-glass and
rearranged the spray of golden-rod in her hair and nodded at herself
defiantly, and then turned to help get on the supper.

The Pitkin folk that night sat down to an ample feast, over which the
impending Thanksgiving shed its hilarity. There was not only the
inevitable great pewter platter, scoured to silver brightness, in the
center of the table, and piled with solid masses of boiled beef, pork,
cabbage and all sorts of vegetables, and the equally inevitable smoking
loaf of rye and Indian bread, to accompany the pot of baked pork and
beans, but there were specimens of all the newly-made Thanksgiving pies
filling every available space on the table. Diana set special value on
herself as a pie artist, and she had taxed her ingenuity this year to
invent new varieties, which were received with bursts of applause by the
boys. These sat down to the table in democratic equality,--Biah Carter
and Abner with all the sons of the family, old and young, each eager,
hungry and noisy; and over all, with moonlight calmness and steadiness,
Mary Pitkin ruled and presided, dispensing to each his portion in due
season, while Diana, restless and mischievous as a sprite, seemed to be
possessed with an elfin spirit of drollery, venting itself in sundry
little tricks and antics which drew ready laughs from the boys and
reproving glances from the deacon. For the deacon was that night in one
of his severest humors. As Biah Carter afterwards remarked of that night,
"You could feel there was thunder in the air somewhere round. The deacon
had got on about his longest face, and when the deacon's face is about
down to its wust, why, it would stop a robin singin'--there couldn't
nothin' stan' it."

To-night the severely cut lines of his face had even more than usual of
haggard sternness, and the handsome features of James beside him, in
their fixed gravity, presented that singular likeness which often comes
out between father and son in seasons of mental emotion. Diana in vain
sought to draw a laugh from her cousin. In pouring his home-brewed beer
she contrived to spatter him, but he wiped it off without a smile, and
let pass in silence some arrows of raillery that she had directed at his
somber face.

When they rose from table, however, he followed her into the pantry.

"Diana, will you take a walk with me to-night?" he said, in a voice husky
with repressed feeling.

"To-night! Why, I have just promised Bill to go with him over to the
husking at the Jenks's. Why don't you go with us? We're going to have
lots of fun," she added with an innocent air of not perceiving his
gravity.

"I can't," he said. "Besides I wanted to walk with you alone. I had
something special I wanted to say."

"Bless me, how you frighten one! You look solemn as a hearse; but I
promised to go with Bill to-night, and I suspect another time will do
just as well. What you have to say will _keep_, I suppose," she said
mischievously.

He turned away quickly.

"I should really like to know what's the matter with you to-night," she
added, but as she spoke he went up-stairs and shut the door.

"He's cross to-night," was Diana's comment. "Well, he'll have to get over
his pet. I sha'n't mind it!"

Up-stairs in his room James began the work of putting up the bundle with
which he was to go forth to seek his fortune. There stood his books,
silent and dear witnesses of the world of hope and culture and refined
enjoyment he had been meaning to enter. He was to know them no more.
Their mute faces seemed to look at him mournfully as parting friends. He
rapidly made his selection, for that night he was to be off in time to
reach the vessel before she sailed, and he felt even glad to avoid the
Thanksgiving festivities for which he had so little relish. Diana's
frolicsome gaiety seemed heart-breaking to him, on the same principle
that the poet sings:

"How can ye chant, ye little birds,
And I sae weary, fu' o' care?"

To the heart struck through with its first experiences of real suffering
all nature is full of cruelty, and the young and light-hearted are a
large part of nature.

"She has no feeling," he said to himself. "Well, there is one reason the
more for my going. _She_ won't break her heart for me; nobody loves me
but mother, and it's for her sake I must go. She mustn't work herself to
death for me."

And then he sat down in the window to write a note to be given to his
mother after he had sailed, for he could not trust himself to tell her
what he was about to do. He knew that she would try to persuade him to
stay, and he felt faint-hearted when he thought of her. "She would sit
up early and late, and work for me to the last gasp," he thought, "but
father was right. It is selfish of me to take it," and so he sat trying
to fashion his parting note into a tone of cheerfulness.

"My dear mother," he wrote, "this will come to you when I have set off on
a four years' voyage round the world. Father has convinced me that it's
time for me to be doing something for myself; and I couldn't get a school
to keep--and, after all, education is got other ways than at college.
It's hard to go, because I love home, and hard because you will miss me--
though no one else will. But father may rely upon it, I will not be a
burden on him another day. Sink or swim, I shall _never_ come back till I
have enough to do for myself, and you too. So good bye, dear mother. I
know you will always pray for me, and wherever I am I shall try to do
just as I think you would want me to do. I know your prayers will follow
me, and I shall always be your affectionate son.

"P.S.--The boys may have those chestnuts and walnuts in my room--and in
my drawer there is a bit of ribbon with a locket on it I was going to
give cousin Diana. Perhaps she won't care for it, though; but if she
does, she is welcome to it--it may put her in mind of old times."'

And this is all he said, with bitterness in his heart, as he leaned on
the window and looked out at the great yellow moon that was shining so
bright as to show the golden hues of the overhanging elm boughs and the
scarlet of an adjoining maple.

A light ripple of laughter came up from below, and a chestnut thrown up
struck him on the hand, and he saw Diana and Bill step from out the
shadowy porch.

"There's a chestnut for you, Mr. Owl," she called, gaily, "if you _will_
stay moping up there! Come, now, it's a splendid evening; _won't_ you
come?"

"No, thank you. I sha'n't be missed," was the reply.

"That's true enough; the loss is your own. Good bye, Mr. Philosopher."

"Good bye, Diana."

Something in the tone struck strangely through her heart. It was the
voice of what Diana never had felt yet--deep suffering--and she gave a
little shiver.

"What an _awfully_ solemn voice James has sometimes," she said; and then
added, with a laugh, "it would make his fortune as a Methodist minister."

The sound of the light laugh and little snatches and echoes of gay talk
came back like heartless elves to mock Jim's sorrow.

"So much for _her_," he said, and turned to go and look for his mother.



CHAPTER V.


MOTHER AND SON.

He knew where he should find her. There was a little, low work-room
adjoining the kitchen that was his mother's sanctum. There stood her
work-basket--there were always piles and piles of work, begun or
finished; and there also her few books at hand, to be glanced into in
rare snatches of leisure in her busy life.

The old times New England house mother was not a mere unreflective drudge
of domestic toil. She was a reader and a thinker, keenly appreciative in
intellectual regions. The literature of that day in New England was
sparse; but whatever there was, whether in this country or in England,
that was noteworthy, was matter of keen interest, and Mrs. Pitkin's small
library was very dear to her. No nun in a convent under vows of
abstinence ever practiced more rigorous self-denial than she did in the
restraints and government of intellectual tastes and desires. Her son was
dear to her as the fulfillment and expression of her unsatisfied craving
for knowledge, the possessor of those fair fields of thought which duty
forbade her to explore.

James stood and looked in at the window, and saw her sorting and
arranging the family mending, busy over piles of stockings and shirts,
while on the table beside her lay her open Bible, and she was singing to
herself, in a low, sweet undertone, one of the favorite minor-keyed
melodies of those days:

"O God, our help in ages past,
  Our hope for years to come,
Our shelter from the stormy blast
  And our eternal home!"

An indescribable feeling, blended of pity and reverence, swelled in his
heart as he looked at her and marked the whitening hair, the thin worn
little hands so busy with their love work, and thought of all the bearing
and forbearing, the waiting, the watching, the long-suffering that had
made up her life for so many years. The very look of exquisite calm and
resolved strength in her patient eyes and in the gentle lines of her face
had something that seemed to him sad and awful--as the purely spiritual
always looks to the more animal nature. With his blood bounding and
tingling in his veins, his strong arms pulsating with life, and his heart
full of a man's vigor and resolve, his mother's life seemed to him to be
one of weariness and drudgery, of constant, unceasing self-abnegation.
Calm he knew she was, always sustained, never faltering; but her victory
was one which, like the spiritual sweetness in the face of the dying, had
something of sadness for the living heart.

He opened the door and came in, sat down by her on the floor, and laid
his head in her lap.

"Mother, you never rest; you never stop working."

"Oh, no!" she said gaily, "I'm just going to stop now. I had only a few
last things I wanted to get done."

"Mother, I can't bear to think of you; your life is too hard. We all have
our amusements, our rests, our changes; your work is never done; you are
worn out, and get no time to read, no time for anything but drudgery."

"Don't say drudgery, my boy--work done for those we love _never_ is
drudgery. I'm so happy to have you all around me I never feel it."

"But, mother, you are not strong, and I don't see how you can hold out to
do all you do."

"Well," she said simply, "when my strength is all gone I ask God for
more, and he always gives it. 'They that wait on the Lord shall renew
their strength.'" And her hand involuntarily fell on the open Bible.

"Yes, I know it," he said, following her hand with his eyes--while
"Mother," he said, "I want you to give me your Bible and take mine. I
think yours would do me more good."

There was a little bright flush and a pleased smile on his mother's face--

"Certainly, my boy, I will."

"I see you have marked your favorite places," he added. "It will seem
like hearing you speak to read them."

"With all my heart," she added, taking up the Bible and kissing his
forehead as she put it into his hands.

There was a struggle in his heart how to say farewell without saying it--
without letting her know that he was going to leave her. He clasped her
in his arms and kissed her again and again.

"Mother," he said, "if I ever get into heaven it will be through you."

"Don't say that, my son--it must be through a better Friend than I am--
who loves you more than I do. I have not died for you--He did."

"Oh, that I knew where I might find him, then. You I can see--Him I
cannot."

His mother looked at him with a face full of radiance, pity, and hope.

"I feel sure you _will_" she said. "You are consecrated," she added, in a
low voice, laying her hand on his head.

"Amen," said James, in a reverential tone. He felt that she was at that
moment--as she often was--silently speaking to One invisible of and for
him, and the sense of it stole over him like a benediction. There was a
pause of tender silence for many minutes.

"Well, I must not keep you up any longer, mother dear--it's time you were
resting. Good-night." And with a long embrace and kiss they separated. He
had yet fifteen miles to walk to reach the midnight stage that was to
convey him to Salem.

As he was starting from the house with his bundle in his hand, the sound
of a gay laugh came through the distant shrubbery. It was Diana and Bill
returning from the husking. Hastily he concealed himself behind a clump
of old lilac bushes till they emerged into the moonlight and passed into
the house. Diana was in one of those paroxysms of young girl frolic which
are the effervescence of young, healthy blood, as natural as the
gyrations of a bobolink on a clover head. James was thinking of dark
nights and stormy seas, years of exile, mother's sorrows, home perhaps
never to be seen more, and the laugh jarred on him like a terrible
discord. He watched her into the house, turned, and was gone.



CHAPTER VI.


GONE TO SEA.

A little way on in his moonlight walk James's ears were saluted by the
sound of some one whistling and crackling through the bushes, and soon
Biah Carter, emerged into the moonlight, having been out to the same
husking where Diana and Bill had been enjoying themselves. The sight of
him resolved a doubt which had been agitating James's mind. The note to
his mother which was to explain his absence and the reasons for it was
still in his coat-pocket, and he had designed sending it back by some
messenger at the tavern where he took the midnight stage; but here was a
more trusty party. It involved, to be sure, the necessity of taking Biah
into his confidence. James was well aware that to tell that acute
individual the least particle of a story was like starting a gimlet in a
pine board--there was no stop till it had gone through. So he told him in
brief that a good berth had been offered to him on the _Eastern Star_,
and he meant to take it to relieve his father of the pressure of his
education.

"Wal naow--you don't say so," was Biah's commentary. "Wal, yis, 'tis hard
sleddin' for the deacon--drefful hard sleddin.' Wal, naow, s'pose you're
disapp'inted--shouldn't wonder--jes' so. Eddication's a good thing, but
'taint the only thing naow; folks larns a sight rubbin' round the world--
and then they make money. Jes' see, there's Cap'n Stebbins and Cap'n
Andrews and Cap'n Merryweather--all livin' on good farms, with good, nice
houses, all got goin' to sea. Expect Mis' Pitkin'll take it sort o' hard,
she's so sot on you; but she's allers sayin' things is for the best, and
maybe she'll come to think so 'bout this--folks gen'ally does when they
can't help themselves. Wal, yis, naow--goin' to walk to the cross-road
tavern? better not. Jest wait a minit and I'll hitch up and take ye over.

"Thank you, Biah, but I can't stop, and I'd rather walk, so I won't
trouble you."

"Wal, look here--don't ye want a sort o' nest-egg? I've got fifty silver
dollars laid up: you take it on venture and give me half what it brings."

"Thank you, Biah. If you'll trust me with it I'll hope to do something
for us both."

Biah went into the house, and after some fumbling brought out a canvas
bag, which he put into James's hand.

"Wanted to go to sea confoundedly myself, but there's Mariar Jane--she
won't hear on't, and turns on the water-works if I peep a single word.
Farmin's drefful slow, but when a feller's got a gal he's got a cap'n; he
has to mind orders. So you jest trade and we'll go sheers. I think
consid'able of you, and I expect you'll make it go as fur as anybody."

"I'll try my best, you may believe, Biah," said James, shaking the hard
hand heartily, as he turned on his way towards the cross-roads tavern.

The whole village of Maplewood on Thanksgiving Day morning was possessed
of the fact that James Pitkin had gone off to sea in the _Eastern Star_,
for Biah had felt all the sense of importance which the possession of a
startling piece of intelligence gives to one, and took occasion to call
at the tavern and store on his way up and make the most of his
information, so that by the time the bell rang for service the news might
be said to be everywhere. The minister's general custom on Thanksgiving
Day was to get off a political sermon reviewing the State of New England,
the United States of America, and Europe, Asia, and Africa; but it may be
doubted if all the affairs of all these continents produced as much
sensation among the girls in the singers' seat that day as did the news
that James Pitkin had gone to sea on a four years' voyage. Curious eyes
were cast on Diana Pitkin, and many were the whispers and speculations as
to the part she might have had in the move; and certainly she looked
paler and graver than usual, and some thought they could detect traces of
tears on her cheeks. Some noticed in the tones of her voice that day, as
they rose in the soprano, a tremor and pathos never remarked before--the
unconscious utterance of a new sense of sorrow, awakened in a soul that
up to this time had never known a grief.

For the letter had fallen on the heads of the Pitkin household like a
thunderbolt. Biah came in to breakfast and gave it to Mrs. Pitkin, saying
that James had handed him that last night, on his way over to take the
midnight stage to Salem, where he was going to sail on the _Eastern Star_
to-day--no doubt he's off to sea by this time. A confused sound of
exclamations went up around the table, while Mrs. Pitkin, pale and calm,
read the letter and then passed it to her husband without a word. The
bright, fixed color in Diana's face had meanwhile been slowly ebbing
away, till, with cheeks and lips pale as ashes, she hastily rose and left
the table and went to her room. A strange, new, terrible pain--a
sensation like being choked or smothered--a rush of mixed emotions--a
fearful sense of some inexorable, unalterable crisis having come of her
girlish folly--overwhelmed her. Again she remembered the deep tones of
his good-by, and how she had only mocked at his emotion. She sat down and
leaned her head on her hands in a tearless, confused sorrow.

Deacon' Pitkin was at first more shocked and overwhelmed than his wife.
His yesterday's talk with James had no such serious purpose. It had been
only the escape-valve for his hypochondriac forebodings of the future,
and nothing was farther from his thoughts than having it bear fruit in
any such decisive movement on the part of his son. In fact, he secretly
was proud of his talents and his scholarship, and had set his heart on
his going through college, and had no more serious purpose in what he
said the day before than the general one of making his son feel the
difficulties and straits he was put to for him. Young men were tempted at
college to be too expensive, he thought, and to forget what it cost their
parents at home. In short, the whole thing had been merely the passing
off of a paroxysm of hypochondria, and he had already begun to be
satisfied that he should raise his interest money that year without
material difficulty. The letter showed him too keenly the depth of the
suffering he had inflicted on his son, and when he had read it he cast a
sort of helpless, questioning look on his wife, and said, after an
interval of silence:

"Well, mother!"

There was something quite pathetic in the appealing look and voice.'

"Well, father," she answered in subdued tones; "all we can do now is to
_leave_ it."

LEAVE IT!

Those were words often in that woman's mouth, and they expressed that
habit of her life which made her victorious over all troubles, that habit
of trust in the Infinite Will that actually could and did _leave_ every
accomplished event in His hand, without murmur and without conflict.

If there was any one thing in her uniformly self-denied life that had
been a personal ambition and a personal desire, it had been that her son
should have a college education. It was the center of her earthly wishes,
hopes and efforts. That wish had been cut off in a moment, that hope had
sunk under her feet, and now only remained to her the task of comforting
the undisciplined soul whose unguided utterances had wrought the
mischief. It was not the first time that, wounded by a loving hand in
this dark struggle of life, she had suppressed the pain of her own hurt
that he that had wounded her might the better forgive himself.

"Dear father," she said to him, when over and over he blamed himself for
his yesterday's harsh words to his son, "don't worry about it now; you
didn't mean it. James is a good boy, and he'll see it right at last; and
he is in God's hands, and we must leave him there. He overrules all."

When Mrs. Pitkin turned from her husband she sought Diana in her room.

"Oh, cousin! cousin!" said the girl, throwing herself into her arms.
"_Is_ this true? Is James _gone_? Can't we do _any_ thing? Can't we get
him back? I've been thinking it over. Oh, if the ship wouldn't sail! and
I'd go to Salem and beg him to come back, on my knees. Oh, if I had only
known yesterday! Oh, cousin, cousin! he wanted to talk with me, and I
wouldn't hear him!--oh, if I only had, I could have persuaded him out of
it! Oh, why didn't I know?"

"There, there, dear child! We must accept it just as it is, now that it
is done. Don't feel so. We must try to look at the good."

"Oh, show me that letter," said Diana; and Mrs. Pitkin, hoping to
tranquilize her, gave her James's note. "He thinks I don't care for him,"
she said, reading it hastily. "Well, I don't wonder! But I _do_ care! I
love him better than anybody or anything under the sun, and I never will
forget him; he's a brave, noble, good man, and I shall love him as long
as I live--I don't care who knows it! Give me that locket, cousin, and
write to him that I shall wear it to my grave."

"Dear child, there is no writing to him."

"Oh, dear! that's the worst. Oh, that horrid, horrid sea! It's like
death--you don't know where they are, and you can't hear from them--and a
four years' voyage! Oh, dear! oh, dear!"

"Don't, dear child, don't; you distress me," said Mrs. Pitkin.

"Yes, that's just like me," said Diana, wiping her eyes. "Here I am
thinking only of myself, and you that have had your heart broken are
trying to comfort me, and trying to comfort Cousin Silas. We have both of
us scolded and flouted him away, and now you, who suffer the most of
either of us, spend your breath to comfort us. It's just like you. But,
cousin, I'll try to be good and comfort you. I'll try to be a daughter to
you. You need somebody to think of you, for you never think of yourself.
Let's go in his room," she said, and taking the mother by the hand they
crossed to the empty room. There was his writing-table, there his
forsaken books, his papers, some of his clothes hanging in his closet.
Mrs. Pitkin, opening a drawer, took out a locket hung upon a bit of blue
ribbon, where there were two locks of hair, one of which Diana recognized
as her own, and one of James's. She hastily hung it about her neck and
concealed it in her bosom, laying her hand hard upon it, as if she would
still the beatings of her heart.

"It seems like a death," she said. "Don't you think the ocean is like
death--wide, dark, stormy, unknown? We cannot speak to or hear from them
that are on it."

"But people can and do come back from the sea," said the mother,
soothingly. "I trust, in God's own time, we shall see James back."

"But what if we never should? Oh, cousin! I can't help thinking of that.
There was Michael Davis,--you know--the ship was never heard from."

"Well," said the mother, after a moment's pause and a choking down of
some rising emotion, and turning to a table on which lay a Bible, she
opened and read: "If I take the wings of the morning and dwell in the
uttermost parts of the sea, even there shall Thy hand lead me, and Thy
right hand shall hold me."

The THEE in this psalm was not to her a name, a shadow, a cipher, to
designate the unknowable--it stood for the inseparable Heart-friend--the
Father seeing in secret, on whose bosom all her tears of sorrow had been
shed, the Comforter and Guide forever dwelling in her soul, and giving
peace where the world gave only trouble.

Diana beheld her face as it had been the face of an angel. She kissed
her, and turned away in silence.



CHAPTER VII.


THANKSGIVING AGAIN.

Seven years had passed and once more the Thanksgiving tide was in
Mapleton. This year it had come cold and frosty. Chill driving autumn
storms had stripped the painted glories from the trees, and remorseless
frosts had chased the hardy ranks of the asters and golden-rods back and
back till scarce a blossom could be found in the deepest and most
sequestered spots. The great elm over the Pitkin farm-house had been
stripped of its golden glory, and now rose against the yellow evening
sky, with its infinite delicacies of net work and tracery, in their way
quite as beautiful as the full pomp of summer foliage. The air without
was keen and frosty, and the knotted twigs of the branches knocked
against the roof and rattled and ticked against the upper window panes as
the chill evening wind swept through them.

Seven long years had passed since James sailed. Years of watching, of
waiting, of cheerful patience, at first, and at last of resigned sorrow.
Once they heard from James, at the first port where the ship stopped. It
was a letter dear to his mother's heart, manly, resigned and Christian;
expressing full purpose to work with God in whatever calling he should
labor, and cheerful hopes of the future. Then came a long, long silence,
and then tidings that the _Eastern Star_ had been wrecked on a reef in
the Indian ocean! The mother had given back her treasure into the same
beloved hands whence she first received him. "I gave him to God, and God
took him," she said. "I shall have him again in God's time." This was how
she settled the whole matter with herself. Diana had mourned with all the
vehement intensity of her being, but out of the deep baptism of sorrow
she had emerged with a new and nobler nature. The vain, trifling,
laughing Undine had received a soul and was a true woman. She devoted
herself to James's mother with an utter self-sacrificing devotion,
resolved as far as in her lay to be both son and daughter to her. She
read, and studied, and fitted herself as a teacher in a neighboring
academy, and persisted in claiming the right of a daughter to place all
the amount of her earnings in the family purse.

And this year there was special need. With all his care, with all his
hard work and that of his family, Deacon Silas never had been able to
raise money to annihilate the debt upon the farm.

There seemed to be a perfect fatality about it. Let them all make what
exertions they might, just as they were hoping for a sum that should
exceed the interest and begin the work of settling the principal would
come some loss that would throw them all back. One year their barn was
burned just as they had housed their hay. On another a valuable horse
died, and then there were fits of sickness among the children, and poor
crops in the field, and low prices in the market; in short, as Biah
remarked, "The deacon's luck did seem to be a sort o' streaky, for do
what you might there's always suthin' to put him back." As the younger
boys grew up the deacon had ceased to hire help, and Biah had transferred
his services to Squire Jones, a rich landholder in the neighborhood, who
wanted some one to overlook his place. The increased wages had enabled
him to give a home to Maria Jane and a start in life to two or three
sturdy little American citizens who played around his house door.
Nevertheless, Biah never lost sight of the "deacon's folks" in his
multifarious cares, and never missed an opportunity either of doing them
a good turn or of picking up any stray item of domestic news as to how
matters were going on in that interior. He had privately broached the
theory to Miss Briskett, "that arter all it was James that Diany (he
always pronounced all names as if they ended in y) was sot on, and that
she took it so hard, his goin' off, that it did beat all! Seemed to make
another gal of her; he shouldn't wonder if she'd come out and jine the
church." And Diana not long after unconsciously fulfilled Biah's
predictions.

Of late Biah's good offices had been in special requisition, as the
deacon had been for nearly a month on a sick bed with one of those
interminable attacks of typhus fever which used to prevail in old times,
when the doctor did everything he could to make it certain that a man
once brought down with sickness never should rise again.

But Silas Pitkin had a constitution derived through an indefinite
distance from a temperate, hard-working, godly ancestry, and so withstood
both death and the doctor, and was alive and in a convalescent state,
which gave hope of his being able to carve the turkey at his Thanksgiving
dinner.

The evening sunlight was just fading out of the little "keeping-room,"
adjoining the bed-room, where the convalescent now was able to sit up
most of the day. A cot bed had been placed there, designed for him to lie
down upon in intervals of fatigue. At present, however, he was sitting in
his arm-chair, complacently watching the blaze of the hickory fire, or
following placidly the motions of his wife's knitting-needles.

There was an air of calmness and repose on his thin, worn features that
never was there in days of old: the haggard, anxious lines had been
smoothed away, and that spiritual expression which sickness and sorrow
sometimes develops on the human face reigned in its place. It was the
"clear shining after rain."

"Wife," he said, "read me something I can't quite remember out of the
Bible. It's in the eighth of Deuteronomy, the second verse."

Mrs. Pitkin opened the big family Bible on the stand, and read, "And thou
shalt remember all the way in which the Lord thy God hath led thee these
forty years in the wilderness, to humble thee and to prove thee and to
know what is in thy heart, and whether thou wouldst keep his commandments
or no. And he humbled thee, and suffered thee to hunger, and fed thee
with manna, which thou knewest not, neither did thy fathers know, that he
might make thee know that man doth not live by bread alone, but by every
word that proceedeth out of the mouth of the Lord doth man live."

"There, that's it," interrupted the deacon. "That's what I've been
thinking of as I've lain here sick and helpless. I've fought hard to keep
things straight and clear the farm, but it's pleased the Lord to bring me
low. I've had to lie still and leave all in his hands."

"And where better could you leave all?" said his wife, with a radiant
smile.

"Well, just so. I've been saying, 'Here I am, Lord; do with me as seemeth
to thee good,' and I feel a great quiet now. I think it's doubtful if we
make up the interest this year. I don't know what Bill may get for the
hay: but I don't see much prospect of raisin' on't; and yet I don't
worry. Even if it's the Lord's will to have the place sold up and we be
turned out in our old age, I don't seem to worry about it. His will be
done."

There was a sound of rattling wheels at this moment, and anon there came
a brush and flutter of garments, and Diana rushed in, all breezy with the
freshness of out-door air, and caught Mrs. Pitkin in her arms and kissed
her first and then the deacon with effusion.

"Here I come for Thanksgiving," she said, in a rich, clear tone, "and
here," she added, drawing a roll of bills from her bosom, and putting it
into the deacon's hand, "here's the interest money for this year. I got
it all myself, because I wanted to show you I could be good for
something."

"Thank you, dear daughter," said Mrs. Pitkin. "I felt sure some way would
be found and now I see _what_." She added, kissing Diana and patting her
rosy cheek, "a very pleasant, pretty way it is, too."

"I was afraid that Uncle Silas would worry and put himself back again
about the interest money," said Diana.

"Well, daughter," said the Deacon, "it's a pity we should go through all
we do in this world and not learn anything by it. I hope the Lord has
taught me not to worry, but just do my best and leave myself and
everything else in his hands. We can't help ourselves--we can't make one
hair white or black. Why should we wear our lives out fretting? If I'd a
known _that_ years ago it would a been better for us all."

"Never mind, father, you know it now," said his wife, with a face serene
as a star. In this last gift of quietude of soul to her husband she
recognized the answer to her prayers of years.

"Well now," said Diana, running to the window, "I should like to know
what Biah Carter is coming here about."

"Oh, Biah's been very kind to us in this sickness," said Mrs. Pitkin, as
Biah's feet resounded on the scraper.

"Good evenin', Deacon," said Biah, entering, "Good evenin', Mrs. Pitkin.
Sarvant, ma'am," to Diana--"how ye all gettin' on?"

"Nicely, Biah--well as can be," said Mrs. Pitkin.

"Wal, you see I was up to the store with some o' Squire Jones's bell
flowers. Sim Coan he said he wanted some to sell, and so I took up a
couple o' barrels, and I see the darndest big letter there for the
Deacon. Miss Briskett she was in, lookin' at it, and so was Deacon
Simson's wife; she come in arter some cinnamon sticks. Wal, and they all
looked at it and talked it over, and couldn't none o' 'em for their lives
think what it's all about, it was sich an almighty thick letter," said
Biah, drawing out a long, legal-looking envelope and putting it in the
Deacon's hands.

"I hope there isn't bad news in it," said Silas Pitkin, the color
flushing apprehensively in his pale cheeks as he felt for his spectacles.

There was an agitated, silent pause while he broke the seals and took out
two documents. One was the mortgage on his farm and the other a receipt
in full for the money owed on it! The Deacon turned the papers to and
fro, gazed on them with a dazed, uncertain air and then said:

"Why, mother, do look! _Is_ this so? Do I read it right?"

"Certainly, you do," said Diana, reading over his shoulder. "Somebody's
paid that debt, uncle!"

"Thank God!" said Mrs. Pitkin, softly; "He has done it."

"Wal, I swow!" said Biah, after having turned the paper in his hands, "if
this 'ere don't beat all! There's old Squire Norcross's name on't. It's
the receipt, full and square. What's come over the old crittur? He must
a' got religion in his old' age; but if grace made him do _that_, grace
has done a tough job, that's all; but it's done anyhow! and that's all
you need to care about. Wal, wal, I must git along hum--Mariar Jane'll be
wonderin' where I be. Good night, all on ye!" and Biah's retreating wagon
wheels were off in the distance, rattling furiously, for, notwithstanding
Maria Jane's wondering, Biah was resolved not to let an hour slip by
without declaring the wonderful tidings at the store.

The Pitkin family were seated at supper in the big kitchen, all jubilant
over the recent news. The father, radiant with the pleasantest
excitement, had for the first time come out to take his place at the
family board. In the seven years since the beginning of our story the
Pitkin boys had been growing apace, and now surrounded the table quite an
army of rosy-cheeked, jolly young fellows, who to-night were in a perfect
tumult of animal gaiety. Diana twinkled and dimpled and flung her
sparkles round among them, and there was unbounded jollity.

"Who's that looking in at the window?" called out Sam, aged ten, who sat
opposite the house door. At that moment the door opened, and a dark
stranger, bronzed with travel and dressed in foreign-looking garments,
entered.

He stood one moment, all looking curiously at him, then crossing the
floor, he kneeled down by Mrs. Pitkin's chair, and throwing off his cap,
looked her close in the eyes.

"Mother, don't you know me?"

She looked at him one moment with that still earnestness peculiar to
herself, and then fell into his arms. "O my son, my son!"

There were a few moments of indescribable confusion, during which Diana
retreated, pale and breathless, to a neighboring window, and stood with
her hand over the locket which she had always worn upon her heart.

After a few moments he came, and she felt him by her.

"What, cousin!" he said; "no welcome from you?" She gave one look, and he
took her in his arms. She felt the beating of his heart, and he felt
hers. Neither spoke, yet each felt at that moment sure of the other.

"I say, boys," said James, "who'll help bring in my sea chest?"

Never was sea chest more triumphantly ushered; it was a contest who
should get near enough to take some part in it's introduction, and soon
it was open, and James began distributing its contents.

"There, mother," said he, undoing a heavy black India satin and shaking
out its folds, "I'm determined you shall have a dress fit for you; and
here's a real India shawl to go with it. Get those on and you'll look as
much like a queen among women as you ought to."

Then followed something for every member of the family, received with
frantic demonstrations of applause and appreciation by the more juvenile.

"Oh, what's that?" said Sam, as a package done up in silk paper and tied
with silver cord was disclosed.

"That's--oh--that's my wife's wedding-dress," said James, unfolding and
shaking out a rich satin; "and here's her shawl," drawing out an
embroidered box, scented with sandal-wood.

The boys all looked at Diana, and Diana laughed and grew pale and red all
in the same breath, as James, folding back the silk and shawl in their
boxes, handed them to her.

Mrs. Pitkin laughed and kissed her, and said, gaily, "All right, my
daughter--just right."

What an evening that was, to be sure! What a confusion of joy and
gladness! What a half-telling of a hundred things that it would take
weeks to tell.

James had paid the mortgage and had money to spare; and how he got it
all, and how he was saved at sea, and where he went, and what befell him
here and there, he promised to be telling them for six months to come.

"Well, your father mustn't be kept up too late," said Mrs. Pitkin. "Let's
have prayers now, and then to-morrow we'll be fresh to talk more."

So they gathered around the wide kitchen fire and the family Bible was
brought out.

"Father," said James, drawing out of his pocket the Bible his mother had
given him at parting, "let me read my Psalm; it has been my Psalm ever
since I left you." There was a solemn thrill in the little circle as
James read the verses:

"They that go down to the sea in ships, that do business in great waters;
these see the works of the Lord and his wonders in the deep. For he
commandeth and raiseth the stormy wind which lifteth up the waves
thereof. They mount up to the heaven; they go down again to the depths:
their soul is melted because of trouble. Then they cry unto the Lord in
their trouble, and he bringeth them out of their distresses. He maketh
the storm a calm, so that the waves thereof are still. Then are they glad
because they be quiet, so he bringeth them unto their desired haven. Oh
that men would praise the Lord for his goodness, and for his wonderful
works to the children of men!"

       *       *       *       *       *

When all had left the old kitchen, James and Diana sat by the yet glowing
hearth and listened to the crickets, and talked over all the past and the
future.

"And now," said James, "it's seven years since I left you, and to-morrow
is the seventh Thanksgiving, and I've always set my heart on getting home
to be married Thanksgiving evening."

"But, dear me, Jim, we can't. There isn't time."

"Why not?--we've got all the time there is!"

"But the wedding-dress can't be made, possibly."

"Oh, that can wait till the week after. You are pretty enough without
it!"

"But what will they all say?"

"Who cares what they say? I don't," said James. "The fact is, I've set my
heart on it, and you owe me something for the way you treated me the last
Thanksgiving I was here, seven years ago. Now don't you?"

"Well, yes, I do, so have it just as you will." And so it was accomplished
the next evening.

And among the wonders of Mapleton Miss Briskett announced it as chief,
that it was the first time she ever heard of a bride that was married
first and had her wedding-dress made the week after! She never had heard
of such a thing.

Yet, strange to say, for years after neither of the parties concerned
found themselves a bit the worse for it.





THE FIRST CHRISTMAS OF NEW ENGLAND.


The shores of the Atlantic coast of America may well be a terror to
navigators. They present an inexorable wall, against which forbidding and
angry waves incessantly dash, and around which shifting winds continually
rave. The approaches to safe harbors are few in number, intricate and
difficult, requiring the skill of practiced pilots.

But, as if with a pitying spirit of hospitality, old Cape Cod, breaking
from the iron line of the coast, like a generous-hearted sailor intent on
helpfulness, stretches an hundred miles outward, and, curving his
sheltering arms in a protective circle, gives a noble harborage. Of this
harbor of Cape Cod the report of our governmental Coast Survey thus
speaks: "It is one of the finest harbors for ships of war on the whole of
our Atlantic coast. The width and freedom from obstruction of every kind
at its entrance and the extent of sea room upon the bay side make it
accessible to vessels of the largest class in almost all winds. This
advantage, its capacity, depth of water, excellent anchorage, and the
complete shelter it affords from all winds, render it one of the most
valuable ship harbors upon our coast."

We have been thus particular in our mention of this place, because here,
in this harbor, opened the first scene in the most wonderful drama of
modern history.

Let us look into the magic mirror of the past and see this harbor of Cape
Cod on the morning of the 11th of November, in the year of our Lord 1620,
as described to us in the simple words of the pilgrims: "A pleasant bay,
circled round, except the entrance, which is about four miles over from
land to land, _compassed about to the very sea_ with oaks, pines,
junipers, sassafras, and other sweet weeds. It is a harbor wherein a
thousand sail of ship may safely ride."

Such are the woody shores of Cape Cod as we look back upon them in that
distant November day, and the harbor lies like a great crystal gem on the
bosom of a virgin wilderness. The "fir trees, the pine trees, and the
bay," rejoice together in freedom, for as yet the axe has spared them; in
the noble bay no shipping has found shelter; no voice or sound of
civilized man has broken the sweet calm of the forest. The oak leaves,
now turned to crimson and maroon by the autumn frosts, reflect themselves
in flushes of color on the still waters. The golden leaves of the
sassafras yet cling to the branches, though their life has passed, and
every brushing wind bears showers of them down to the water. Here and
there the dark spires of the cedar and the green leaves and red berries
of the holly contrast with these lighter tints. The forest foliage grows
down to the water's edge, so that the dash of the rising and falling tide
washes into the shaggy cedar boughs which here and there lean over and
dip in the waves.

No voice or sound from earth or sky proclaims that anything unwonted is
coming or doing on these shores to-day. The wandering Indians, moving
their hunting-camps along the woodland paths, saw no sign in the stars
that morning, and no different color in the sunrise from what had been in
the days of their fathers. Panther and wild-cat under their furry coats
felt no thrill of coming dispossession, and saw nothing through their
great golden eyes but the dawning of a day just like all other days--when
"the sun ariseth and they gather themselves into their dens and lay them
down." And yet alike to Indian, panther, and wild-cat, to every oak of
the forest, to every foot of land in America, from the stormy Atlantic to
the broad Pacific, that day was a day of days.

There had been stormy and windy weather, but now dawned on the earth one
of those still, golden times of November, full of dreamy rest and tender
calm. The skies above were blue and fair, and the waters of the curving
bay were a downward sky--a magical under-world, wherein the crimson oaks,
and the dusk plumage of the pine, and the red holly-berries, and yellow
sassafras leaves, all flickered and glinted in wavering bands of color as
soft winds swayed the glassy floor of waters.

In a moment, there is heard in the silent bay a sound of a rush and
ripple, different from the lap of the many-tongued waves on the shore;
and, silently as a cloud, with white wings spread, a little vessel glides
into the harbor.

A little craft is she--not larger than the fishing-smacks that ply their
course along our coasts in summer; but her decks are crowded with men,
women, and children, looking out with joyous curiosity on the beautiful
bay, where, after many dangers and storms, they first have found safe
shelter and hopeful harbor.

That small, unknown ship was the _Mayflower;_ those men and women who
crowded her decks were that little handful of God's own wheat which had
been flailed by adversity, tossed and winnowed till every husk of earthly
selfishness and self-will had been beaten away from them and left only
pure seed, fit for the planting of a new world. It was old Master Cotton
Mather who said of them, "The Lord sifted three countries to find seed
wherewith to plant America."

Hark now to the hearty cry of the sailors, as with a plash and a cheer
the anchor goes down, just in the deep water inside of Long Point; and
then, says their journal, "being now passed the vast ocean and sea of
troubles, before their preparation unto further proceedings as to seek
out a place for habitation, they fell down on their knees and blessed the
Lord, the God of heaven, who had brought them over the vast and furious
ocean, and delivered them from all perils and miseries thereof."

Let us draw nigh and mingle with this singular act of worship. Elder
Brewster, with his well-worn Geneva Bible in hand, leads the thanksgiving
in words which, though thousands of years old, seem as if written for the
occasion of that hour:

"Praise the Lord because he is good, for his mercy endureth forever. Let
them which have been redeemed of the Lord show how he delivereth them
from the hand of the oppressor, And gathered them out of the lands: from
the east, and from the west, from the north, and from the south, when
they wandered in deserts and wildernesses out of the way and found no
city to dwell in. Both hungry and thirsty, their soul failed in them.
Then they cried unto the Lord in their troubles, and he delivered them in
their distresses. And led them forth by the right way, that they might go
unto a city of habitation. They that go down to the sea and occupy by the
great waters: they see the works of the Lord and his wonders in the deep.
For he commandeth and raiseth the stormy wind, and it lifteth up the
waves thereof. They mount up to heaven, and descend to the deep: so that
their soul melteth for trouble. They are tossed to and fro, and stagger
like a drunken man, and all their cunning is gone. Then they cry unto the
Lord in their trouble, and he bringeth them out of their distresses. He
turneth the storm to a calm, so that the waves thereof are still. When
they are quieted they are glad, and he bringeth them unto the haven where
they would be."

As yet, the treasures of sacred song which are the liturgy of modern
Christians had not arisen in the church. There was no Watts, and no
Wesley, in the days of the Pilgrims; they brought with them in each
family, as the most precious of household possessions, a thick volume
containing, first, the Book of Common Prayer, with the Psalter appointed
to be read in churches; second, the whole Bible in the Geneva
translation, which was the basis on which our present English translation
was made; and, third, the Psalms of David, in meter, by Sternhold and
Hopkins, with the music notes of the tunes, adapted to singing. Therefore
it was that our little band were able to lift up their voices together in
song and that the noble tones of Old Hundred for the first time floated
over the silent bay and mingled with the sound of winds and waters,
consecrating our American shores.

"All people that on earth do dwell,
  Sing to the Lord with cheerful voice:
Him serve with fear, His praise forthtell;
  Come ye before Him and rejoice.

"The Lord, ye know, is God indeed;
  Without our aid He did us make;
We are His flock, He doth us feed,
  And for his sheep He doth us take.

"O enter then His gates with praise,
  Approach with joy His courts unto:
Praise, laud, and bless His name always,
  For it is seemly so to do.

"For why? The Lord our God is good,
  His mercy is forever sure;
His truth at all times firmly stood,
  And shall from age to age endure."

This grand hymn rose and swelled and vibrated in the still November air;
while in between the pauses came the warble of birds, the scream of the
jay, the hoarse call of hawk and eagle, going on with their forest ways
all unmindful of the new era which had been ushered in with those solemn
sounds.



CHAPTER II.


THE FIRST DAY ON SHORE.

The sound of prayer and psalm-singing died away on the shore, and the
little band, rising from their knees, saluted each other in that genial
humor which always possesses a ship's company when they have weathered
the ocean and come to land together.

"Well, Master Jones, here we' are," said Elder Brewster cheerily to the
ship-master.

"Aye, aye, sir, here we be sure enough; but I've had many a shrewd doubt
of this upshot. I tell you, sirs, when that beam amidships sprung and
cracked Master Coppin here said we must give over--hands couldn't bring
her through. Thou rememberest, Master Coppin?"

"That I do," replied Master Coppin, the first mate, a stocky, cheery
sailor, with a face red and shining as a glazed bun. "I said then that
praying might save her, perhaps, but nothing else would."

"Praying wouldn't have saved her," said Master Brown, the carpenter, "if
I had not put in that screw and worked the beam to her place again."

"Aye, aye, Master Carpenter," said Elder Brewster, "the Lord hath
abundance of the needful ever to his hand. When He wills to answer
prayer, there will be found both carpenter and screws in their season, I
trow."

"Well, Deb," said Master Coppin, pinching the ear of a great mastiff
bitch who sat by him, "what sayest thou? Give us thy mind on it, old
girl; say, wilt thou go deer-hunting with us yonder?"

The dog, who was full of the excitement of all around, wagged her tail
and gave three tremendous barks, whereat a little spaniel with curly
ears, that stood by Rose Standish, barked aloud.

"Well done!" said Captain Miles Standish. "Why, here is a salute of
ordnance! Old Deb is in the spirit of the thing and opens out like a
cannon. The old girl is spoiling for a chase in those woods."

"Father, may I go ashore? I want to see the country," said Wrestling
Brewster, a bright, sturdy boy, creeping up to Elder Brewster and
touching his father's elbow.

Thereat there was a crying to the different mothers of girls and boys
tired of being cooped up,--"Oh, mother, mother, ask that we may all go
ashore."

"For my part," said old Margery the serving-maid to Elder Brewster, "I
want to go ashore to wash and be decent, for there isn't a soul of us
hath anything fit for Christians. There be springs of water, I trow."

"Never doubt it, my woman," said Elder Brewster; "but all things in their
order. How say you, Mr. Carver? You are our governor. What order shall we
take?"

"We must have up the shallop," said Carver, "and send a picked company to
see what entertainment there may be for us on shore."

"And I counsel that all go well armed," quoth Captain Miles Standish,
"for these men of the forest are sharper than a thorn-hedge. What! what!"
he said, looking over to the eager group of girls and boys, "ye would go
ashore, would ye? Why, the lions and bears will make one mouthful of ye."

"I'm not afraid of lions," said young Wrestling Brewster in an aside to
little Love Winslow, a golden-haired, pale-cheeked child, of a tender and
spiritual beauty of face. "I'd like to meet a lion," he added, "and serve
him as Samson did. I'd get honey out of him, I promise."

"Oh, there you are, young Master Boastful!" said old Margery. "Mind the
old saying, 'Brag is a good dog, but holdfast is better.'"

"Dear husband," said Rose Standish, "wilt thou go ashore in this
company?"

"Why, aye, sweetheart, what else am I come for--and who should go if not
I?"

"Thou art so very venturesome, Miles."

"Even so, my Rose of the wilderness. Why else am I come on this quest?
Not being good enough to be in your church nor one of the saints, I come
for an arm of flesh to them, and so, here goes on my armor."

And as he spoke, he buried his frank, good-natured countenance in an iron
headpiece, and Rose hastened to help him adjust his corselet.

The clang of armor, the bustle and motion of men and children, the
barking of dogs, and the cheery Heave-o! of the sailors marked the
setting off of the party which comprised some of the gravest, and wisest,
as well as the youngest and most able-bodied of the ship's' company. The
impatient children ran in a group and clustered on the side of the ship
to see them go. Old Deb, with her two half-grown pups, barked and yelped
after her master in the boat, running up and down the vessel's deck with
piteous cries of impatience.

"Come hither, dear old Deb," said little Love Winslow, running up and
throwing her arms round the dog's rough neck; "thou must not take on so;
thy master will be back again; so be a good dog now, and lie down."

And the great rough mastiff quieted down under her caresses, and sitting
down by her she patted and played with her, with her little thin hands.

"See the darling," said Rose Standish, "what away that baby hath! In all
the roughness and the terrors of the sea she hath been like a little
sunbeam to us--yet she is so frail!"

"She hath been marked in the womb by the troubles her mother bore," said
old Margery, shaking her head. "She never had the ways of other babies,
but hath ever that wistful look--and her eyes are brighter than they
should be. Mistress Winslow will never raise that child--now mark me!"

"Take care!" said Rose, "let not her mother hear you."

"Why, look at her beside of Wrestling Brewster, or Faith Carver. They are
flesh and blood, and she looks as if she had been made out of sunshine.
'Tis a sweet babe as ever was; but fitter for the kingdom of heaven than
our rough life--deary me! a hard time we have had of it. I suppose it's
all best, but I don't know."

"Oh, never talk that way, Margery," said Rose Standish; "we must all keep
up heart, our own and one another's."

"Ah, well a day--I suppose so, but then I look at my good Master Brewster
and remember how, when I was a girl, he was at our good Queen Elizabeth's
court, ruffling it with the best, and everybody said that there wasn't a
young man that had good fortune to equal his. Why, Master Davidson, the
Queen's Secretary of State, thought all the world of him; and when he
went to Holland on the Queen's business, he must take him along; and when
he took the keys of the cities there, it was my master that he trusted
them to, who used to sleep with them under his pillow. I remember when he
came home to the Queen's court, wearing the great gold chain that the
States had given him. Ah me! I little thought he would ever come to a
poor man's coat, then!"

"Well, good Margery," said Rose, "it isn't the coat, but the heart under
it--that's the thing. Thou hast more cause of pride in thy master's
poverty than in his riches."

"Maybe so--I don't know," said Margery, "but he hath had many a sore
trouble in worldly things--driven and hunted from place to place in
England, clapt into prison, and all he had eaten up with fines and
charges and costs."

"All that is because he chose rather to suffer affliction with the people
of God than to enjoy the pleasures of sin for a season," said Rose; "he
shall have his reward by and by."

"Well, there be good men and godly in Old England that get to heaven in
better coats and with easy carriages and fine houses and servants, and I
would my master had been of such. But if he must come to the wilderness I
will come with him. Gracious me! what noise is that?" she exclaimed, as a
sudden report of firearms from below struck her ear. "I do believe there
is that Frank Billington at the gunpowder; that boy will never leave, I
do believe, till he hath blown up the ship's company."

In fact, it appeared that young master Frank, impatient of the absence of
his father, had toled Wrestling Brewster and two other of the boys down
into the cabin to show them his skill in managing his father's fowling-
piece, had burst the gun, scattering the pieces about the cabin.

Margery soon appeared, dragging the culprit after her. "Look here now,
Master Malapert, see what you'll get when your father comes home! Lord a
mercy! here was half a keg of powder standing open! Enough to have blown
us all up! Here, Master Clarke, Master Clarke, come and keep this boy
with you till his father come back, or we be all sent sky high before we
know."

       *       *       *       *

At even tide the boat came back laden to the water's edge with the first
gettings and givings from the new soil of America. There is a richness
and sweetness gleaming through the brief records of these men in their
journals, which shows how the new land was seen through a fond and tender
medium, half poetic; and its new products lend a savor to them of
somewhat foreign and rare.

Of this day's expedition the record is thus:

"That day, so soon as we could, we set ashore some fifteen or sixteen men
well armed, with some to fetch wood, for we had none left; as also to see
what the land was and what inhabitants they could meet with. They found
it to be a small neck of land on this side where we lay in the bay, and
on the further side the sea, the ground or earth, sand-hills, much like
the downs in Holland, but much better; the crust of the earth a spit's
depth of excellent black earth; all wooded with oaks, pines, sassafras,
juniper, birch, holly, vines, some ash and walnut; the wood for the most
part open and without underwood, fit either to walk or to ride in. At
night our people returned and found not any people or inhabitants, and
laded their boat with juniper, which smelled very sweet and strong, and
of which we burned for the most part while we were there."

"See there," said little Love Winslow, "what fine red berries Captain
Miles Standish hath brought."

"Yea, my little maid, there is a brave lot of holly berries for thee to
dress the cabin withal. We shall not want for Christmas greens here,
though the houses and churches are yet to come."

"Yea, Brother Miles," said Elder Brewster, "the trees of the Lord are
full of sap in this land, even the cedars of Lebanon, which he hath
planted. It hath the look to me of a land which the Lord our God hath
blessed."

"There is a most excellent depth of black, rich earth," said Carver, "and
a great tangle of grapevines, whereon the leaves in many places yet hung,
and we picked up stores of walnuts under a tree--not so big as our
English ones--but sweet and well-flavored."

"Know ye, brethren, what in this land smelleth sweetest to me?" said
Elder Brewster. "It is the smell of liberty. The soil is free--no man
hath claim thereon. In Old England a poor man may starve right on his
mother's bosom; there may be stores of fish in the river, and bird and
fowl flying, and deer running by, and yet though a man's children be
crying for bread, an' he catch a fish or snare a bird, he shall be
snatched up and hanged. This is a sore evil in Old England; but we will
make a country here for the poor to dwell in, where the wild fruits and
fish and fowl shall be the inheritance of whosoever will have them; and
every man shall have his portion of our good mother earth, with no lords
and no bishops to harry and distrain, and worry with taxes and tythes."

"Amen, brother!" said Miles Standish, "and thereto I give my best
endeavors with sword and buckler."



CHAPTER III.


CHRISTMAS TIDE IN PLYMOUTH HARBOR.

For the rest of that month of November the _Mayflower_ lay at anchor in
Cape Cod harbor, and formed a floating home for the women and children,
while the men were out exploring the country, with a careful and steady
shrewdness and good sense, to determine where should be the site of the
future colony. The record of their adventures is given in their journals
with that sweet homeliness of phrase which hangs about the Old English of
that period like the smell of rosemary in an ancient cabinet.

We are told of a sort of picnic day, when "our women went on shore to
wash and all to refresh themselves;" and fancy the times there must have
been among the little company, while the mothers sorted and washed and
dried the linen, and the children, under the keeping of the old mastiffs
and with many cautions against the wolves and wild cubs, once more had
liberty to play in the green wood. For it appears in these journals how,
in one case, the little spaniel of John Goodman was chased by two wolves,
and was fain to take refuge between his master's legs for shelter.
Goodman "had nothing in hand," says the journal, "but took up a stick and
threw at one of them and hit him, and they presently ran away, but came
again. He got a pale-board in his hand, but they both sat on their tails
a good while, grinning at him, and then went their way and left him."

Such little touches show what the care of families must have been in the
woodland picnics, and why the ship was, on the whole, the safest refuge
for the women and children.

We are told, moreover, how the party who had struck off into the
wilderness, "having marched through boughs and bushes and under hills and
valleys which tore our very armor in pieces, yet could meet with no
inhabitants nor find any fresh water which we greatly stood in need of,
for we brought neither beer nor water with us, and our victual was only
biscuit and Holland cheese, and a little bottle of aqua vitae. So we were
sore athirst. About ten o'clock we came into a deep valley full of brush,
sweet gaile and long grass, through which we found little paths or
tracks; and we saw there a deer and found springs of water, of which we
were heartily glad, and sat us down and drunk our first New England water
with as much delight as we ever drunk drink in all our lives."

Three such expeditions through the country, with all sorts of haps and
mishaps and adventures, took up the time until near the 15th of December,
when, having selected a spot for their colony, they weighed anchor to go
to their future home.

Plymouth Harbor, as they found it, is thus described:

"This harbor is a bay greater than Cape Cod, compassed with a goodly
land, and in the bay two fine islands uninhabited, wherein are nothing
but woods, oaks, pines, walnuts, beeches, sassafras, vines, and other
trees which we know not. The bay is a most hopeful place, innumerable
stores of fowl, and excellent good; and it cannot but be of fish in their
season. Skate, cod, and turbot, and herring we have tasted of--abundance
of mussels (clams) the best we ever saw; and crabs and lobsters in their
time, infinite."

On the main land they write:

"The land is, for a spit's depth, excellent black mould and fat in some
places. Two or three great oaks, pines, walnut, beech, ash, birch, hazel,
holly, and sassafras in abundance, and vines everywhere, with cherry-
trees, plum-trees, and others which we know not. Many kind of herbs we
found here in winter, as strawberry leaves innumerable, sorrel, yarrow,
carvel, brook-lime, liver-wort, water-cresses, with great store of leeks
and onions, and an excellent strong kind of flax and hemp."

It is evident from this description that the season was a mild one even
thus late into December, that there was still sufficient foliage hanging
upon the trees to determine the species, and that the pilgrims viewed
their new mother-land through eyes of cheerful hope.

And now let us look in the glass at them once more, on Saturday morning
of the 23d of December.

The little _Mayflower_ lies swinging at her moorings in the harbor, while
every man and boy who could use a tool has gone on shore to cut down and
prepare timber for future houses.

Mary Winslow and Rose Standish are sitting together on deck, fashioning
garments, while little Love Winslow is playing at their feet with such
toys as the new world afforded her--strings of acorns and scarlet holly-
berries and some bird-claws and arrowheads and bright-colored ears of
Indian corn, which Captain Miles Standish has brought home to her from
one of their explorations.

Through the still autumnal air may now and then be heard the voices of
men calling to one another on shore, the quick, sharp ring of axes, and
anon the crash of falling trees, with shouts from juveniles as the great
forest monarch is laid low. Some of the women are busy below, sorting
over and arranging their little household stores and stuff with a view to
moving on shore, and holding domestic consultations with each other.

A sadness hangs over the little company, for since their arrival the
stroke of death has more than once fallen; we find in Bradford's brief
record that by the 24th of December six had died.

What came nearest to the hearts of all was the loss of Dorothea Bradford,
who, when all the men of the party were absent on an exploring tour,
accidentally fell over the side of the vessel and sunk in the deep
waters. What this loss was to the husband and the little company of
brothers and sisters appears by no note or word of wailing, merely by a
simple entry which says no more than the record on a gravestone, that,
"on the 7th of December, Dorothy, wife of William Bradford, fell over and
was drowned."

That much-enduring company could afford themselves few tears. Earthly
having and enjoying was a thing long since dismissed from their
calculations. They were living on the primitive Christian platform; they
"rejoiced as though they rejoiced not," and they "wept as though they
wept not," and they "had wives and children as though they had them not,"
or, as one of themselves expressed it, "We are in all places strangers,
pilgrims, travelers and sojourners; our dwelling is but a wandering, our
abiding but as a fleeting, our home is nowhere but in the heavens, in
that house not made with hands, whose builder and maker is God."

When one of their number fell they were forced to do as soldiers in the
stress of battle--close up the ranks and press on.

But Mary Winslow, as she sat over her sewing, dropped now and then a tear
down on her work for the loss of her sister and counselor and long-tried
friend. From the lower part of the ship floated up, at intervals,
snatches of an old English ditty that Margery was singing while she moved
to and fro about her work, one of those genuine English melodies, full of
a rich, strange mournfulness blent with a soothing pathos:

"Fear no more the heat o' the sun
  Nor the furious winter rages,
Thou thy worldly task hast done,
  Home art gone and ta'en thy wages."

The air was familiar, and Mary Winslow, dropping her work in her lap,
involuntarily joined in it:

"Fear no more the frown of the great,
  Thou art past the tyrant's stroke;
Care no more to clothe and eat,
  To thee the reed is as the oak."

"There goes a great tree on shore!" quoth little Love Winslow, clapping
her hands. "Dost hear, mother? I've been counting the strokes--fifteen--
and then crackle! crackle! crackle! and down it comes!"

"Peace, darling," said Mary Winslow; "hear what old Margery is singing
below:

"Fear no more the lightning's flash,
  Nor the all-dreaded thunder stone;
Fear not slander, censure rash--
  Thou hast finished joy and moan.
All lovers young--all lovers must
  Consign to thee, and come to dust."

"Why do you cry, mother?" said the little one, climbing on her lap and
wiping her tears.

"I was thinking of dear Auntie, who is gone from us."

"She is not gone from us, mother."

"My darling, she is with Jesus."

"Well, mother, Jesus is ever with us--you tell me that--and if she is
with him she is with us too--I know she is--for sometimes I see her. She
sat by me last night and stroked my head when that ugly, stormy wind
waked me--she looked so sweet, oh, ever so beautiful!--and she made me go
to sleep so quiet--it is sweet to be as she is, mother--not away from us
but with Jesus."

"These little ones see further in the kingdom than we," said Rose
Standish. "If we would be like them, we should take things easier. When
the Lord would show who was greatest in his kingdom, he took a little
child on his lap."

"Ah me, Rose!" said Mary Winslow, "I am aweary in spirit with this
tossing sea-life. I long to have a home on dry land once more, be it ever
so poor. The sea wearies me. Only think, it is almost Christmas time,
only two days now to Christmas. How shall we keep it in these woods?"

"Aye, aye," said old Margery, coming up at the moment, "a brave muster
and to do is there now in old England; and men and boys going forth
singing and bearing home branches of holly, and pine, and mistletoe for
Christmas greens. Oh! I remember I used to go forth with them and help
dress the churches. God help the poor children, they will grow up in the
wilderness and never see such brave sights as I have. They will never
know what a church is, such as they are in old England, with fine old
windows like the clouds, and rainbows, and great wonderful arches like
the very skies above us, and the brave music with the old organs rolling
and the boys marching in white garments and singing so as should draw the
very heart out of one. All this we have left behind in old England--ah!
well a day! well a day!"

"Oh, but, Margery," said Mary Winslow, "we have a 'better country' than
old England, where the saints and angels are keeping Christmas; we
confess that we are strangers and pilgrims on earth."

And Rose Standish immediately added the familiar quotation from the
Geneva Bible:

"For they that say such things declare plainly that they seek a country.
For if they had been mindful of that country from whence they came out
they had leisure to have returned. But now they desire a better--that is,
an heavenly; wherefore God is not ashamed of them to be called their
God."

The fair young face glowed as she repeated the heroic words, for already,
though she knew it not, Rose Standish was feeling the approaching sphere
of the angel life. Strong in spirit, as delicate in frame, she had given
herself and drawn her martial husband to the support of a great and noble
cause; but while the spirit was ready, the flesh was weak, and even at
that moment her name was written in the Lamb's Book to enter the higher
life, in one short month's time from that Christmas.

Only one month of sweetness and perfume was that sweet rose to shed over
the hard and troubled life of the pilgrims, for the saints and angels
loved her, and were from day to day gently untying mortal bands to draw
her to themselves. Yet was there nothing about her of mournfulness; on
the contrary, she was ever alert and bright, with a ready tongue to cheer
and a helpful hand to do; and, seeing the sadness that seemed stealing
over Mary Winslow, she struck another key, and, catching little Love up
in her arms, said cheerily,

"Come hither, pretty one, and Rose will sing thee a brave carol for
Christmas. We won't be down-hearted, will we? Hark now to what the
minstrels used to sing under my window when I was a little girl:

"I saw three ships come sailing in
On Christmas day, on Christmas day,
I saw three ships come sailing in
On Christmas day in the morning.

"And what was in those ships all three
On Christmas day, on Christmas day,
And what was in those ships all three
On Christmas day in the morning?

"Our Saviour Christ and his laydie,
On Christmas day, on Christmas day,
Our Saviour Christ and his laydie
On Christmas day in the morning.

"Pray, whither sailed those ships all three,
On Christmas day, on Christmas day?
Oh, they sailed into Bethlehem,
On Christmas day in the morning.

"And all the bells on earth shall ring
On Christmas day, on Christmas day;
And all the angels in heaven shall sing
On Christmas day in the morning.

"Then let us all rejoice amain,
On Christmas day, on Christmas day;
Then let us all rejoice amain
On Christmas day in the morning."

"Now, isn't that a brave ballad?" said Rose. "Yea, and thou singest like
a real English robin," said Margery, "to do the heart good to hear thee."



CHAPTER IV.


ELDER BREWSTER'S CHRISTMAS SERMON.

Sunday morning found the little company gathered once more on the ship,
with nothing to do but rest and remember their homes, temporal and
spiritual--homes backward, in old England, and forward, in Heaven. They
were, every man and woman of them, English to the back-bone. From Captain
Jones who commanded the ship to Elder Brewster who ruled and guided in
spiritual affairs, all alike were of that stock and breeding which made
the Englishman of the days of Bacon and Shakespeare, and in those days
Christmas was knit into the heart of every one of them by a thousand
threads, which no after years could untie.

Christmas carols had been sung to them by nurses and mothers and
grandmothers; the Christmas holly spoke to them from every berry and
prickly leaf, full of dearest household memories. Some of them had been
men of substance among the English gentry, and in their prosperous days
had held high festival in ancestral halls in the season of good cheer.
Elder Brewster himself had been a rising young diplomat in the court of
Elizabeth, in the days when the Lord Keeper of the Seals led the revels
of Christmas as Lord of Misrule.

So that, though this Sunday morning arose gray and lowering, with snow-
flakes hovering through the air, there was Christmas in the thoughts of
every man and woman among them--albeit it was the Christmas of wanderers
and exiles in a wilderness looking back to bright home-fires across
stormy waters.

The men had come back from their work on shore with branches of green
pine and holly, and the women had, stuck them about the ship, not without
tearful thoughts of old home-places, where their childhood fathers and
mothers did the same.

Bits and snatches of Christmas carols were floating all around the ship,
like land-birds blown far out to sea. In the forecastle Master Coppin was
singing:

"Come, bring with a noise,
 My merry boys,
   The Christmas log to the firing;
 While my good dame, she
 Bids ye all be free,
   And drink to your hearts' desiring.
 Drink now the strong beer,
 Cut the white loaf here.
   The while the meat is shredding
 For the rare minced pie,
 And the plums stand by
   To fill the paste that's a-kneading."

"Ah, well-a-day, Master Jones, it is dull cheer to sing Christmas songs
here in the woods, with only the owls and the bears for choristers. I
wish I could hear the bells of merry England once more."

And down in the cabin Rose Standish was hushing little Peregrine, the
first American-born baby, with a Christmas lullaby:

"This winter's night
I saw a sight--
  A star as bright as day;
And ever among
A maiden sung,
  Lullay, by-by, lullay!

"This lovely laydie sat and sung,
  And to her child she said,
My son, my brother, and my father dear,
  Why lyest thou thus in hayd?
My sweet bird,
Tho' it betide
  Thou be not king veray;
But nevertheless
I will not cease
  To sing, by-by, lullay!

"The child then spake in his talking,
  And to his mother he said,
It happeneth, mother, I am a king,
  In crib though I be laid,
For angels bright
Did down alight,
  Thou knowest it is no nay;
And of that sight
Thou may'st be light
  To sing, by-by, lullay!

"Now, sweet son, since thou art a king,
  Why art thou laid in stall?
Why not ordain thy bedding
  In some great king his hall?
We thinketh 'tis right
That king or knight
  Should be in good array;
And them among,
It were no wrong
  To sing, by-by, lullay!

"Mary, mother, I am thy child,
  Tho' I be laid in stall;
Lords and dukes shall worship me,
  And so shall kinges all.
And ye shall see
That kinges three
  Shall come on the twelfth day;
For this behest
Give me thy breast,
  And sing, by-by, lullay!"

"See here," quoth Miles Standish, "when my Rose singeth, the children
gather round her like bees round a flower. Come, let us all strike up a
goodly carol together. Sing one, sing all, girls and boys, and get a bit
of Old England's Christmas before to-morrow, when we must to our work on
shore."

Thereat Rose struck up a familiar ballad-meter of a catching rhythm, and
every voice of young and old was soon joining in it:

"Behold a silly,[1] tender Babe,
  In freezing winter night,
In homely manger trembling lies;
  Alas! a piteous sight,
The inns are full, no man will yield
  This little Pilgrim bed;
But forced He is, with silly beasts
  In crib to shroud His head.
Despise Him not for lying there,
  First what He is inquire:
An orient pearl is often found
  In depth of dirty mire.

"Weigh not His crib, His wooden dish,
  Nor beasts that by Him feed;
Weigh not His mother's poor attire,
  Nor Joseph's simple weed.
This stable is a Prince's court,
  The crib His chair of state,
The beasts are parcel of His pomp,
  The wooden dish His plate.
The persons in that poor attire
  His royal liveries wear;
The Prince Himself is come from Heaven,
  This pomp is prized there.
With joy approach, O Christian wight,
  Do homage to thy King;
And highly praise His humble pomp,
  Which He from Heaven doth bring."

[Footnote 1: Old English--simple.]

The cheerful sounds spread themselves through the ship like the flavor of
some rare perfume, bringing softness of heart through a thousand tender
memories.

Anon, the hour of Sabbath morning worship drew on, and Elder Brewster
read from the New Testament the whole story of the Nativity, and then
gave a sort of Christmas homily from the words of St. Paul, in the eighth
chapter of Romans, the sixth and seventh verses, which the Geneva version
thus renders:

"For the wisdom of the flesh is death, but the wisdom of the spirit is
  life and peace.

"For the wisdom of the flesh is enmity against God, for it is not subject
  to the law of God, neither indeed can be."

"Ye know full well, dear brethren, what the wisdom of the flesh sayeth.
The wisdom of the flesh sayeth to each one, 'Take care of thyself; look
after thyself, to get and to have and to hold and to enjoy.' The wisdom
of the flesh sayeth, 'So thou art warm, full, and in good liking, take
thine ease, eat, drink, and be merry, and care not how many go empty and
be lacking.' But ye have seen in the Gospel this morning that this was
not the wisdom of our Lord Jesus Christ, who, though he was Lord of all,
became poorer than any, that we, through His poverty, might become rich.
When our Lord Jesus Christ came, the wisdom of the flesh despised Him;
the wisdom of the flesh had no room for Him at the inn.

"There was room enough always for Herod and his concubines, for the
wisdom of the flesh set great store by them; but a poor man and woman
were thrust out to a stable; and _there_ was a poor baby born whom the
wisdom of the flesh knew not, because the wisdom of the flesh is enmity
against God.

"The wisdom of the flesh, brethren, ever despiseth the wisdom of God,
because it knoweth it not. The wisdom of the flesh looketh at the thing
that is great and strong and high; it looketh at riches, at kings'
courts, at fine clothes and fine jewels and fine feastings, and it
despiseth the little and the poor and the weak.

"But the wisdom of the Spirit goeth to worship the poor babe in the
manger, and layeth gold and myrrh and frankincense at his feet while he
lieth in weakness and poverty, as did the wise men who were taught of
God.

"Now, forasmuch as our Saviour Christ left His riches and throne in glory
and came in weakness and poverty to this world, that he might work out a
mighty salvation that shall be to all people, how can we better keep
Christmas than to follow in his steps? We be a little company who have
forsaken houses and lands and possessions, and come here unto the
wilderness that we may prepare a resting-place whereto others shall come
to reap what we shall sow. And to-morrow we shall keep our first
Christmas, not in flesh-pleasing, and in reveling and in fullness of
bread, but in small beginning and great weakness, as our Lord Christ kept
it when He was born in a stable and lay in a manger.

"To-morrow, God willing, we will all go forth to do good, honest
Christian work, and begin the first house-building in this our New
England--it may be roughly fashioned, but as good a house, I'll warrant
me, as our Lord Christ had on the Christmas Day we wot of. And let us not
faint in heart because the wisdom of the world despiseth what we do.
Though Sanballat the Horonite, and Tobias the Ammonite, and Geshem the
Arabian make scorn of us, and say, 'What do these weak Jews? If a fox go
up, he shall break down their stone wall;' yet the Lord our God is with
us, and He can cause our work to prosper.

"The wisdom of the Spirit seeth the grain of mustard-seed, that is the
least of all seeds, how it shall become a great tree, and the fowls of
heaven shall lodge in its branches. Let us, then, lift up the hands that
hang down and the feeble knees, and let us hope that, like as great
salvation to all people came out of small beginnings of Bethlehem, so the
work which we shall begin to-morrow shall be for the good of many
nations.

"It is a custom on this Christmas Day to give love-presents. What love-
gift giveth our Lord Jesus on this day? Brethren, it is a great one and a
precious; as St. Paul said to the Philippians: 'For unto you it is given
for Christ, not only that ye should believe on Him, but also that ye
should suffer for His sake;' and St. Peter also saith, 'Behold, we count
them blessed which endure.' And the holy Apostles rejoiced that they were
counted worthy to suffer rebuke for the name of Jesus.

"Our Lord Christ giveth us of His cup and His baptism; He giveth of the
manger and the straw; He giveth of persecutions and afflictions; He
giveth of the crown of thorns, and right dear unto us be these gifts.

"And now will I tell these children a story, which a cunning playwright,
whom I once knew in our Queen's court, hath made concerning gifts:

"A great king would marry his daughter worthily, and so he caused three
caskets to be made, in one of which he hid her picture. The one casket
was of gold set with diamonds, the second of silver set with pearls, and
the third a poor casket of lead.

"Now it was given out that each comer should have but one choice, and if
he chose the one with the picture he should have the lady to wife.

"Divers kings, knights, and gentlemen came from far, but they never won,
because they always snatched at the gold and the silver caskets, with the
pearls and diamonds. So, when they opened these, they found only a
grinning death's-head or a fool's cap.

"But anon cometh a true, brave knight and gentleman, who chooseth for
love alone the old leaden casket; and, behold, within is the picture of
her he loveth! and they were married with great feasting and content.

"So our Lord Jesus doth not offer himself to us in silver and gold and
jewels, but in poverty and hardness and want; but whoso chooseth them for
His love's sake shall find Him therein whom his soul loveth, and shall
enter with joy to the marriage supper of the Lamb.

"And when the Lord shall come again in his glory, then he shall bring
worthy gifts with him, for he saith: 'Be thou faithful unto death, and I
will give thee a crown of life; to him that overcometh I will give to eat
of the hidden manna, and I will give him a white stone with a new name
that no man knoweth save he that receiveth it. He that overcometh and
keepeth my words, I will give power over the nations and I will give him
the morning star.'

"Let us then take joyfully Christ's Christmas gifts of labors and
adversities and crosses to-day, that when he shall appear we may have
these great and wonderful gifts at his coming; for if we suffer with him
we shall also reign; but if we deny him, he also will deny us."

And so it happens that the only record of Christmas Day in the pilgrims'
journal is this:

"Monday, the 25th, being Christmas Day, we went ashore, some to fell
timber, some to saw, some to rive, and some to carry; and so no man
rested all that day. But towards night some, as they were at work, heard
a noise of Indians, which caused us all to go to our muskets; but we
heard no further, so we came aboard again, leaving some to keep guard.
That night we had a sore storm of wind and rain. But at night the ship-
master caused us to have some beer aboard."

So worthily kept they the first Christmas, from which comes all the
Christmas cheer of New England to-day. There is no record how Mary
Winslow and Rose Standish and others, with women and children, came
ashore and walked about encouraging the builders; and how little Love
gathered stores of bright checker-berries and partridge plums, and was
made merry in seeing squirrels and wild rabbits; nor how old Margery
roasted certain wild geese to a turn at a woodland fire, and conserved
wild cranberries with honey for sauce. In their journals the good
pilgrims say they found bushels of strawberries in the meadows in
December. But we, knowing the nature of things, know that these must have
been cranberries, which grow still abundantly around Plymouth harbor.

And at the very time that all this was doing in the wilderness, and the
men were working yeomanly to build a new nation, in King James's court
the ambassadors of the French King were being entertained with maskings
and mummerings, wherein the staple subject of merriment was the Puritans!

So goes the wisdom of the world and its ways--and so goes the wisdom of
God!

*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 10723 ***