Книга - All the Days of My Life: An Autobiography

All the Days of My Life: An Autobiography
Amelia Barr




Barr Amelia E.

All the Days of My Life: An Autobiography / The Red Leaves of a Human Heart




CONFIDENCES

This is to be a book about myself but, even before I begin it, I am painfully aware of the egotistical atmosphere which the unavoidable use of the personal pronouns creates. I have hitherto declared that I would not write an autobiography, but a consideration of circumstances convinces me that an autobiography is the only form any personal relation can now take. For the press has so widely and so frequently exploited certain events of my life – impossible to omit – that disguise is far out of the question. Fiction could not hide me, nor an assumed name, nor even no name at all.

Why, then, write the book? First, because serious errors have constantly been published, and these I wish to correct; second, there has been a long-continued request for it, and third, there are business considerations not to be neglected. Yet none, nor all of these three reasons, would have been sufficient to induce me to truck my most sacred memories through the market-place for a little money, had I not been conscious of a motive that would amply justify the book. The book itself must reveal that reason, or it will never be known. I am sure, however, that many will find it out, and to these souls I shall speak, and they will keep my memory green, and listen to my words of strength and comfort long after the woman called Amelia Huddleston Barr has disappeared forever.

Again, if I am to write of things so close and intimate as my feelings and experiences, I must claim a large liberty. Many topics usually dilated on, I shall pass by silently, or with slight notice; and, if I write fully and truly, as I intend to do, I must show many changes of opinion on a variety of subjects. This is only the natural growth of the mental and spiritual faculties. For the woman within, if she be of noble strain, is never content with what she has attained; she unceasingly presses forward, in lively hope of some better way, or some more tangible truth. If any woman at eighty years of age was the same woman, spiritually and mentally, she was at twenty, or even fifty, she would be little worthy of our respect.

Also, there are supreme tragedies and calamities in my life that it would be impossible for me to write down. It would be treason against both the living and the dead. But such calamities always came from the hand of man. I never had a sorrow from the hand of God that I could not tell to any good man or woman; for the end of God-sent sorrow is some spiritual gain or happiness. We hurt each other terribly in this world, but it is in ways that only the power which tormented the perfect man of Uz would incite.

I write mainly for the kindly race of women. I am their sister, and in no way exempt from their sorrowful lot. I have drank the cup of their limitations to the dregs, and if my experience can help any sad or doubtful woman to outleap her own shadow, and to stand bravely out in the sunshine to meet her destiny, whatever it may be, I shall have done well; I shall not have written this book in vain. It will be its own excuse, and justify its appeal.



    AMELIA BARR




CHAPTER I

THE BORDER LAND OF LIFE


“Date not God’s mercy from thy nativity, look beyond to the Everlasting
Love.”


…

“Ask me not, for I may not speak of it – I saw it.” – Tennyson.

I entered this incarnation on March the twenty-ninth, A.D. 1831, at the ancient town of Ulverston, Lancashire, England. My soul came with me. This is not always the case. Every observing mother of a large family knows that the period of spiritual possession varies. For days, even weeks, the child may be entirely of the flesh, and then suddenly, in the twinkling of an eye, the mystery of the indwelling spirit is accomplished. This miracle comes not by observation; no mother ever saw it take place. She only knows that at one moment her child was ignorant of her; that at the next moment it was consciously smiling into her face, and that then, with an instinctive gladness, she called to the whole household, “the baby has begun to notice.”

I brought my soul with me – an eager soul, impatient for the loves and joys, the struggles and triumphs of the dear, unforgotten world. No doubt it had been aware of the earthly tabernacle which was being prepared for its home, and its helper in the new onward effort; and was waiting for the moment which would make them companions. The beautifully fashioned little body was already dear, and the wise soul would not suffer it to run the risks of a house left empty and unguarded. Some accident might mar its beauty, or cripple its powers, or still more baneful, some alien soul might usurp the tenement, and therefore never be able effectually to control, or righteously use it.

I was a very fortunate child, for I was “possessed by a good spirit, yea rather being good, my spirit came into a body undefiled and perfect” (Wisdom of Solomon, 8:20). Also, my environments were fair and favorable; for my parents, though not rich, were in the possession of an income sufficient for the modest comforts and refinements they desired. My father was the son of Captain John Henry Huddleston, who was lost on some unknown sea, with all who sailed in his company. His brother, Captain Thomas Henry Huddleston, had a similar fate. His ship, The Great Harry, carrying home troops from America, was dashed to pieces on the Scarlet Rocks, just outside Castletown, the capital of the Isle of Man. When the storm had subsided the bodies of the Captain and his son Henry were found clasped in each other’s arms, and they were buried together in Kirk Malew churchyard. During the years 1843 and 1844 I was living in Castletown, and frequently visited the large grave with its upright stone, on which was carved the story of the tragedy. Fifteen years ago my sister Alethia went purposely to Castletown to have the lettering on this stone cleared, and made readable; and I suppose that it stands there today, near the wall of the inclosure, on the left-hand side, not far from the main entrance.

When my grandmother, Amelia Huddleston, was left a widow she had two sons, John Henry and William Henry, both under twelve years of age. But she seems to have had sufficient money to care well for them, to attend to their education, and to go with them during the summer months to St. Ann’s-by-the-Sea for a holiday; a luxury then by no means common. She inspired her sons with a great affection; my father always kept the anniversary of her death in solitude. Yet, he never spoke of her to me but once. It was on my eleventh birthday. Then he took my face between his hands, and said: “Amelia, you have the name of a good woman, loved of God and man; see that you honor it.”

After the death of their mother, I believe both boys went to their uncle, Thomas Henry Huddleston, collector of the port of Dublin. He had one son, the late Sir John Walter Huddleston, Q. C., a celebrated jurist, who died in 1891 at London, England. I was living then at East Orange, New Jersey. Yet, suddenly, the sunny room in which I was standing was thrilled through and through by an indubitable boding token, the presage of his death – a presage unquestionable, and not to be misunderstood by any of his family.

Sir John Walter was the only Millom Huddleston I ever knew who had not “Henry” included in his name. This fact was so fixed in my mind that, when I was introduced to the one Huddleston in the city of New York, a well-known surgeon and physician, I was not the least astonished to see on his card “Dr. John Henry Huddleston.” Again, one day not two years ago, I lifted a newspaper, and my eyes fell on the words “Henry Huddleston.” I saw that it was the baptismal name of a well-known New Yorker, and that he was seriously ill. Every morning until his death I watched anxiously for the report of his condition; for something in me responded to that singular repetition, and, though I never heard any tradition concerning it, undoubtedly there is one.

Millom Castle and lands passed from the Huddleston family to the Earls of Lonsdale, who hold them with the promise that they are not to be sold except to some one bearing the name of Huddleston. Not more than ten years ago, the present Earl admitted and reiterated the old agreement. One part of the castle is a ruin covered with ivy, the rest is inhabited by a tenant of the Earl. My sister stayed with this family a few days about twelve years ago. Soon afterwards Dr. John Henry Huddleston, accompanied by his wife, visited Millom and brought me back some interesting photos of the church and the Huddleston monuments.

The Millom Huddlestons have always been great ecclesiastics. There lies upon my table, as I write, a beautifully preserved Bible of the date A.D. 1626. It has been used by their preachers constantly, and bears many annotations on the margins of its pages. It is the most precious relic of the family, and was given to me by my father on my wedding-day. Their spiritual influence has been remarkable. One tradition asserts that an Abbot Huddleston carried the Host before King Edward the Confessor, and it is an historical fact that Priest Huddleston, a Benedictine monk, found his way up the back stairs of Windsor Castle to King Charles the Second’s bedroom, and gave the dying monarch the last comforting rites of his church.

When they were not priests they were daring seamen and explorers. In the seventeenth century India was governed by its native princes, and was a land of romance, a land of obscure peril and malignant spells. An enchanted veil hung like a mist over its sacred towns on the upper Ganges, and the whole country, with its barbaric splendors and amazing wealth, had a luring charm, remote and unsubstantial as an ancient fable. In that century, there was likely always to be some Captain Huddleston rounding the Cape, in a big, unwieldy Indiaman. That the voyage occupied a year or two was no deterrent. Their real home was the sea, their Millom home only a resting-place. By such men the empire of England was builded. They gave their lives cheerfully to make wide her boundaries, and to strengthen her power.

My father and his brother both chose theology, and they were suitably educated for the profession. John Henry, on receiving orders, sailed for Sierra Leone as one of the first, if not the first missionary of the English Church to the rescued slaves of that colony. My father finally allied himself with the Methodist Church, a decision for which I never heard any reason assigned. But the reason must have been evident to any one who considered the character and movements of William Henry Huddleston. In that day the English Church, whatever she may do now, did not permit her service to be read, in any place not sanctified by a bishop with the proper ceremonies. My father found in half a dozen shepherds on the bare fells a congregation and a church he willingly served. To a few fishers mending their nets on the shingly seashore, he preached as fine a sermon as he would have preached in a cathedral. It was his way to stroll down among the tired sailormen, smoking and resting on the quiet pier in the gloaming, and, standing among them, to tell again the irresistible story of Christ and Him Crucified.

He was indeed a born Evangelist, and if he had been a contemporary of General Booth would certainly have enrolled himself among the earliest recruits of his evangelizing army. In the Methodist Church this tendency was rather encouraged than hindered, and that circumstance alone would be reason most sufficient and convincing to a man, who believed himself in season and out of season in charge of souls. In this decision I am sure there was no financial question; he had money enough then to give his conscience all the elbow-room it wanted.

Soon after this change my father married Mary Singleton —

“A perfect woman, nobly planned,
To trust, to comfort, and command.”

Physically she was small and delicately formed, but she possessed a great spirit, a heart tender and loving as a child’s, and the most joyous temper I ever met. Every fret of life was conquered by her cheerfulness. Song was always in her heart, and very often on her lips. She brooded over her children like a bird over its nest, and was exceedingly proud of her clever husband, serving and obeying him, with that touching patience and fidelity which was the distinguishing quality of English wives of that period.

And it was to this happy couple, living in the little stone house by the old chapel in Ulverston, I came that blessed morning in March, A.D. 1831. Yes, I will positively let the adjective stand. It was a “blessed” morning. Though I have drunk the dregs of every cup of sorrow,

“My days still keep the dew of morn,
And what I have I give;
Being right glad that I was born,
And thankful that I live.”

I came to them with hands full of gifts, and among them the faculty of recollection. To this hour I wear the key of memory, and can open every door in the house of my life, even to its first exquisite beginnings. The thrills of joy and wonder, of pleasure and terror I felt in those earliest years, I can still recapture; only that dim, mysterious memory of some previous existence, where the sandy shores were longer and the hills far higher, has become fainter, and less frequent. I do not need it now. Faith has taken the place of memory, and faith is “the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.”

Childhood is fed on dreams – dreams waking, and dreams sleeping. My first sharp, clear, positive recollection is a dream – a sacred, secret dream, which I have never been able to speak of. When it came to me, I had not the words necessary to translate the vision into speech, and, as the years went on, I found myself more and more reluctant to name it. It was a vision dim and great, that could not be fitted into clumsy words, but it was clearer and surer to me, than the ground on which I trod. It is nearly seventy-eight years since I awoke that morning, trembling and thrilling in every sense with the wonder and majesty of what I had seen, but the vision is not dim, nor any part of it forgotten. It is my first recollection. Beyond – is the abyss. That it has eluded speech is no evidence of incompleteness, for God’s communion with man does not require the faculties of our mortal nature. It rather dispenses with them.

When I was between three and four years old I went with my mother to visit a friend, who I think was my godmother. I have forgotten her name, but she gave me a silver cup, and my first doll – a finely gowned wax effigy – that I never cared for. I had no interest at all in dolls. I did not like them; their speechlessness irritated me, and I could not make-believe they were real babies. I have often been aware of the same perverse fretful kind of feeling at the baffling silence of infants. Why do they not talk? They have the use of their eyes and ears; they can feel and taste and touch, why can they not speak? Is there something they must not tell? Will they not learn to talk, until they have forgotten it? For I know

“Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting
The soul that rises with us, our Life’s Star,
Hath had elsewhere its setting;
And cometh from afar.
Not in entire forgetfulness,
And not in utter darkness,
But trailing clouds of glory do we come
From God, who is our home.”

At this house, overlooking the valley of the Duddon, I needed nothing to play with. Every room in it was full of wonders, so also was the garden, with its dark walls shaded by yews, and pines, and glistening holly, the latter cut into all kinds of fantastic shapes. The house had a large entrance hall, and, rising sheer from it, was the steep, spiral stairway leading to the upper rooms. The stairs were highly polished and slippery, but they were the Alps of my baby ambition. Having surmounted them, there was in the corridor to which they led, queer, dark closets to be passed swiftly and warily, and closed guest rooms – obscure, indistinct, and shrouded in white linen. It gave me a singular pleasure to brave these unknown terrors, and after such adventures I returned to my mother with a proud sense of victory achieved; though I neither understood the feeling, nor asked any questions about it. Now I can accurately determine its why and its wherefore, but I am no happier for the knowledge. The joy, of having conquered a difficulty, and the elation of victory because of that conquest had then a tang and a savor beyond the power of later triumphs to give me. I know too much now. I calculate probabilities and attempt nothing that lacks strong likelihoods of success. Deservedly, then, I miss that exulting sense of accomplishment, which is the reward of those who never calculate, but who, when an attempt is to be made, dare and do, and most likely win.

There was also a closed room downstairs, and I spent much time there when the weather was wet, and I could not get into the garden. It had once been a handsome room, and the scene of much gaiety, but the passage of the Reform Bill had compelled English farmers to adopt a much more modest style of living; and the singing of lovers, and the feet of dancing youths and maidens was heard no more in its splendid space. But it was yet full of things strange and mysterious – things that ministered both to the heaven and hell of my imagination; beautiful images of girls carrying flowers and of children playing; empty shells of resplendent colors that had voices in them, mournful, despairing voices, that filled me with fear and pity; dreadful little heathen gods, monstrous, frightful! with more arms and hands and feet than they ought to have; a large white marble clock that was dead, and could neither tick nor strike; butterflies and birds motionless, silent, and shut up in glass cases; and what I believed to be a golden harp, with strings slack or broken, yet crying out plaintively if I touched them.

One afternoon I went to sleep in this room, and, as my mother was out, I was not disturbed; indeed when I opened my eyes it was nearly dark. Then the occult world, which we all carry about with us, was suddenly wide awake, also; the place was full of whispers; I heard the passing of unseen feet, and phantom-like men and women slipped softly about in the mysterious light. My heart beat wildly to the visions I created, but who can tell from what eternity of experiences, the mind-stuff necessary for these visions floated to me? Who can tell?

It was, however, the long, long nights, far more than the wonderful days, which impregnated my future – the dark, still nights full of hints and fine transitions, shadowy terrors, fleeting visions and marvelous dreams. I shall remember as long as I live, nights that I would not wish to dream through again, neither would I wish to have been spared the dreams that came to me in them. The impression they made was perhaps only possible on the plastic nature of a child soul, but, though long years lay between the dream and the event typified, the dream was unforgotten, and the event dominated by its warning. All education has this provisional quality. In school, as well as in dreams, we learn in childhood a great deal that finds no immediate use or expression. For many years we may scarcely remember the lesson, then comes the occasion for it, and the information needed is suddenly restored.

There is then no wonder that, in the full ripeness of my mental growth, I look back with wondering gratitude to these first apparently uneventful years on the border land of being. In them I learned much anteceding any reasoning whatever. There is nothing incredible in this. Heaven yet lies around infancy, and we are eternally related to heavenly intelligences “a little lower” that is all. Thus, in an especial manner,

“Our simple childhood sits,
Our simple childhood sits upon a throne,
That hath more power than all the elements.”

For it is always the simple that produces the marvelous, and these fleeting shadowy visions and intimations of our earliest years, are far from being profitless; not only because they are kindred to our purest mind and intellect, but much rather because the soul

“Remembering how she felt, but what she felt
Remembering not; retains an obscure sense
Of possible sublimity.”

I have a kind of religious reluctance to inquire too closely into these almost sacred years. Yet when I consider the material education of the children of this period, I feel that I have not said enough. For a boy educated entirely on a material basis, is not prepared to achieve success, even financial success. The work of understanding must be enlightened by the emotions, or he will surely sink to the level of the hewers of wood and drawers of water. The very best material education will not save a child who has no imagination. Therefore do not deprive childhood of fairy tales, of tales of stirring adventure and courage, and of the wondrous stories of the old Hebrew world. On such food the imagination produces grand ideals and wide horizons. It is true we live in a very present and very real world, and many are only too ready to believe that the spiritual world is far-off and shadowy. On the contrary, the spiritual world is here and now and indisputably and preëminently real. It is the material world that is the realm of shadows.

I doubt if any child is born without some measure of that vision and faculty divine which apprehends the supernatural. This is “the light within which lighteth every man that cometh into the world.” If that light be neglected, and left to smoulder and die out, how great is the darkness it leaves behind! Precious beyond price are the shadowy recollections of a God-haunted childhood,

“Which be they what they may,
Are yet the fountain light of all our day;
Are yet the master light of all our seeing.”

A child is a deep mystery. It has a life of its own, which it reveals to no one unless it meets with sympathy. Snub its first halting confidences concerning the inner life, or laugh at them, or be cross or indifferent, and you close the door against yourself forever. Now there is no faculty given us that the soul can spare. If we destroy in childhood the faculty of apprehending the spiritual or supernatural, as detrimental to this life, if there be left

“… no Power Divine within us,
How can God’s divineness win us?”




CHAPTER II

AT SHIPLEY, YORKSHIRE


“Sweet childish days that were as long
As twenty days are now.”


…

“A child to whom was given
So much of earth, so much of heaven.”

Before I was three years old my father removed to Yorkshire, to Shipley, in the West Riding. I never can write or speak those two last words, “West Riding,” without a sensible rise of temperature, and an intense longing to be in England. For the West Riding is the heart of England, and, whatever is distinctively English, is also distinctively West Riding. Its men and women are so full of life, so spontaneously cheerful, so sure of themselves, so upright and downright in speech and action, that no one can for a moment misunderstand either their liking or disliking. Their opinions hold no element of change or dissent. They are as hearty and sincere in their religion, as their business, and if they form a friendship with a family, it will likely be one to the third and fourth generation. I correspond today with people whom I never saw, but whose friendship for my family dates back to a mutual rejoicing over the victory of Waterloo.

Of course I was not able to make any such observations on West Riding humanity when I first went there, but I felt the goodness of the people then, and in later years I both observed and experienced it. And it was well for me in my early childhood to live a while among such a strong, happy people. They impressed upon my plastic mind their confidant cheerfulness, and their sureness that life was a very good thing.

Shipley was then a pretty country town, though it is now a great manufacturing city, not far behind Bradford and Leeds. I was three years there and during those years gradually dropped all remains of infancy, and became a child, a child eager for work and for play, and half-afraid the world might not last until I found out all about it. At first I went to a dame’s school. She did not take children over five years of age, and to these babies she taught only reading and needlework and knitting. We sat on very low benches in a room opening into a garden, and we spent a good deal of time in the garden. But she taught me to hem, and to seam, to fell and to gather, to stroke and to backstitch, and when I left her I could read any of the penny chap books I could buy. Most of them contained an abbreviated adventure from the “Arabian Nights” collection.

Soon after we removed to Shipley a woman came into our lives, called Ann Oddy, and my sister and I were told to be respectful to her and to obey her orders. She was a clever housekeeper, a superior cook, and had many domestic virtues; but she was authoritative, tyrannical, and quite determined to have things her own way. Fortunately I won her favor early, and for two simple reasons: first, my hair was easy to curl, and Sister Jane’s had to be carefully put in papers, and then did not “keep in.” Second, because she thought Jane was always ready to go “neighboring” with Mother, and then was so secret as to where she had been, and so “know nothing” of what was said; but I was better pleased to stay in the children’s room with a book and herself for company.

Indeed I liked Ann’s society. She had a grewsome assortment of stories, chiefly about bad fellows and their young women, but sometimes concerning bad children who had come to grief for disobeying their good parents, or for breaking the Sabbath Day. There was generally, however, an enthralling climax, relating to a handsome young man, whom she saw hanged at York Castle for murdering his sweetheart. At this narration I usually laid down my book, and listened with trembling interest to the awful fate of this faithless lover, and Ann’s warnings against men of all kinds who wanted helpless women to marry them. In those days I felt sure Ann Oddy had the true wisdom, and was quite resolved to look upon all handsome young men as probable murderers.

The three years I spent at Shipley were happy years. I enjoyed every hour of them, though the days were twenty times as long as days are now. There was a great deal of visiting, and visiting meant privileges of all kinds. We were frequently asked out to tea with our parents, especially if there were children in the house to which we were going, and there were children’s parties nearly every week at somebody’s house.

It was a good thing, then, that our usual fare was very plain, and not even the quantity left to our own desire or discretion. Breakfast was always a bowl of bread and milk boiled, and a rather thick slice of bread and butter after it. Fresh meat was sparingly given us at dinner, but we had plenty of broth, vegetables, and Yorkshire pudding. Our evening meal was bread and milk, rice or tapioca pudding, and a thick slice of sweet loaf – that is, bread made with currants, and caraway seeds, and a little sugar. But when we went out for dinner or tea, we had our share of the good things going; and, if the company was at our house, Ann Oddy usually put a couple of Christ Church tarts, or cheesecakes, among our plain bread. She always pretended to wonder where they came from; and, if I said pleadingly, “Don’t take them away, Ann,” she would answer in a kind of musing manner, “I’ll be bound the Missis put them there. Some people will meddle.” Then Jane would help herself, and I did the same, and we both knew that Ann had put the tarts there, and that she intended us to eat them. Yet this same little pretense of surprise was kept up for many years, and I grew to enjoy the making of it more perfect, and the changing of the words a little.

The house at which I liked best of all to visit was that of Jonathan Greenwood. He had a pretty place – with a fine strawberry bed – at Baildon Green. He was then a handsome bachelor of about forty years of age, and I considered him quite an old man. I knew also that he was Miss Crabtree’s sweetheart, and Ann’s look of disapproval, and the suspicious shake of her head made me anxious about both of them. What if Miss Crabtree should have another sweetheart! And what if Jonathan killed her because she had deceived him! Then there might be the York tragedy over again. These thoughts troubled me so much that I ventured to suggest their probability to Ann. She laughed my fears to scorn.

“Martha Crabtree have another sweetheart! Nay, never my little lass! It will be the priest, not the hangman, that will tie Jonathan up.”

“Tie Jonathan up, Ann!” I ejaculated.

“To be sure,” she answered. “Stop talking.”

“But, Ann – ”

“Do as I bid you.”

Then I resolved to ask Jonathan that afternoon. It was Thursday, and he would be sure to call for a cup of tea as he came from Leeds market. I did not do so, because he asked permission for me to go to Baildon Green with him, and stay until after the fair, and during the visit I knew I should find many better opportunities for the question. To go to Baildon Green, was the best holiday that came to me, unless it was to go to Mr. Samuel Wilson’s, at the village of Baildon. He had a much finer house, and a large shop in which there were raisins and Jordan almonds, and he had also a handsome little son of my own age, with whom I loved to play. But one visit generally included the other, and both were very agreeable to all my desires.

At Baildon Green I had many pleasures. I liked to be petted and praised and to hear the women say, “What a pretty child it is! God bless it!” and I liked to hang around them, and listen to their conversation as they made nice little dinners. I liked in the evening to look at the Penny Magazine, and to have Mr. Greenwood explain the pictures to me, and I certainly liked to go with him in his gig to Leeds on Leeds market day. Sometimes he took me with him into the Cloth Hall; sometimes also men would say, “Why, Jonathan, whose little lass is that?” And he would answer, “It is Mr. Huddleston’s little lass.” “Never!” would be the ejaculation, but I knew the word was not intended for dissent, but somehow for approval.

When I was at Baildon Green Saturday was the great day. Very early in the morning the weavers began to arrive with the web of cloth they had woven during the week. In those days there were no mills – all the cloth was made in the weavers’ homes. Baildon Green was a weaving village. In every cottage there was a loom and a big spinning wheel. The men worked at the loom, the women and children at the wheel. At daybreak I could hear the shuttles flying, and the rattle of the unwieldy looms in every house. On Saturday they brought their webs to Jonathan Greenwood. He examined each web carefully, measured its length, and paid the weaver whatever was its value. Then, giving him the woolen yarn necessary for next week’s web, he was ready to call another weaver. There were perhaps twenty to thirty men present, and, during these examinations many little disputes arose. I enjoyed them. The men called the master “Jonathan,” and talked to him in language as plain, or plainer, than he gave them. Sometimes, after a deal of threaping, the master would lose his temper, then I noticed he always got the best of the argument. In the room where this business took place there was a big pair of scales, and I usually sat in them, swinging gently to and fro, and listening.

These weavers were all big men, the master bigger than any of them; and they all wore blue-checked linen pinafores covering them from neck to feet. Underneath this pinafore the master wore fine broadcloth and high shoes with silver latchets. I do not know what kind of cloth the men wore, but it was very probably corduroy, as that was then the usual material for workingmen’s clothes, and on their feet were heavy clogs clasped with brass, a footgear capable of giving a very ugly and even dangerous kick.

I have never seen a prouder or more independent class of men than these home weavers; and just at this time they had been made anxious and irritable by the constant reports of coming mills and weaving by machinery. But their religion kept them hopeful and confident, for they were all Methodists, made for Methodists, and Methodism made for them. And it was a great sight on a Sabbath morning to see them gathering in their chapel, full of that incompatible spiritual joy which no one understands but those who have it, and which I at that time, took for simple good temper. But I know now that if I was a preacher of the Word, I would not ask to be sent to an analyzing, argumentative, cold Scotch kirk; nor to a complacent, satisfied English church; nor even to a meditative, tranquil Quaker meeting-house; I would say, “Send me to an inspiring, joyful, West Riding Methodist chapel.”

This visit to Baildon Green was the last of my Shipley experiences. During it Mr. Greenwood told me that he would have “a handsome wife” when I came again, and that she would take me about a bit. I was not much pleased at the prospect. Men were always kinder to me than women, and not so fussy about my hair being in curl, and my frock clean. So I did not speak, and he asked, “Are you not pleased, Milly?”

“No,” I answered bluntly.

“But why?” he continued.

“Because I like you – all to myself.” Then he laughed and was much pleased, and I learned that day that you may wisely speak the truth, if it is complimentary.

The event of this visit was Baildon Feast, a great public rejoicing on the anniversary of the summer solstice. It had been observed beyond the memory of man, beyond historical notice, beyond even the traditions of the locality. There was no particular reason for its observance that I could ever learn; it was just Baildon Feast, and that was all anybody knew about it.

I was awakened very early on the first day of the feast by the bands “playing the sun up,” and before we had finished breakfast the procession was forming. Now Baildon Green is flat and grassy as a meadow, and when I was six years old it had a pond in the center, while from the northwest there rose high hills. Only a narrow winding path led to the top of these hills, and about half way up, there was a cave which tradition averred had been one of Robin Hood’s retreats – a very probable circumstance, as this whole country-side was doubtless pretty well covered with oak forests.

A numerous deputation from the village of Baildon, situated on the top of the hill, joined the procession which started from Baildon Green at an early hour. The sun was shining brightly, and I had on a clean white frock, pretty white sandals, a new blue sash, and a gypsy hat trimmed with blue ribbons. When the music approached it put a spirit into my feet and my heart kept time to the exciting melody. I had never walked to music before, and it was an enchanting experience.

The procession appeared to my childish apprehension a very great one. I think now it may have consisted of five hundred people, perhaps less, but the great point of interest was two fine young heifers garlanded with flowers, and ornamented with streaming ribbons of every color. Up the winding path they went, the cattle lowing, the bands playing, the people singing and shouting up to the high places on which the village of Baildon stood. There at a particular spot, hallowed by tradition, the cattle garlanded for sacrifice were slain. I do not know whether any particular method or forms were used. I was not permitted to see the ceremony attending their death, and I confess I was much disappointed.

“It isn’t fit for a little lass to see,” said my friend Jonathan, “and I promised thy father and mother I wouldn’t let thee see it, so there now! Nay, nay, I wouldn’t whimper about such a thing as that. Never!”

I said I wasn’t whimpering, and that I didn’t care at all about seeing the animals killed, but I did care, and Baildon Fair without its tragedy no longer interested me, yet I stayed to see the flesh distributed among all who asked for it. There was an understanding, however, that those who received a festival roast should entertain any stranger claiming their hospitality. This ancient rite over, the people gave themselves up to sports of all kinds.

But their Methodism kept them within the bounds of decency, for there were favorite preachers invited from all the towns around, and if the men and boys were busy in the cricket fields all day, they were sure to be in the chapel at night. There was also a chapel tea party the last afternoon of the feast, and after it a great missionary meeting at which Bishop Heber’s hymn, “From Greenland’s Icy Mountains,” was sung with such mighty fervor as made me thrill and tremble with an emotion I can yet recall. That night I solemnly determined to be a missionary. I would go to the darkest of all heathen lands, and be the first to tell the story of Jesus. I went home in a state of beatific surrender, and whenever I think of that night, I am aware of a Presence, and the face I wore when I was a little child turns to me. And I am troubled and silent before that little ghost with its eager eyes and loving enthusiasms, for I have done none of the things I promised to do, and an intangible clutch of memory gives me a spell of sadness keen and regretful.

This Baildon experience was one of those instances of learning in childhood things of no immediate use. I was hardly six years old then; I was seventy-six when it struck me, that I had perhaps taken part in a non-intentional sacrifice to the God Baal. For four years ago I was much interested in discovering that the Shetlanders, even to the close of the nineteenth century, kept the same feast at the summer solstice, and also made their children in some of the lonely islands pass through the Beltane fires, in fact paying the old God Bel or Baal the same services as the Hebrew prophets so often reproached the Israelites with performing. But I believe that wherever Druidical remains are found, relics of this worship may be traced either in names, superstitions, signs or traditions. In a letter I received from a Bradford lady dated September twenty-seventh, A.D. 1911, she says, “It was rather strange but we had a man at our house from Thornton the other day, and he was telling us how they paraded the cattle they were going to kill at the feast through the streets, and I thought of you, and what you remembered of it in Baildon.”

These details may seem to the reader trivial and futile; on the contrary, they were the very material from which life was building character. For all that surrounds a child, all that it sees, hears, feels or touches, helps to create its moral and intellectual nature. See then how fortunate were my first six years. My physical being was well cared for by loving parents in a sweet orderly home, and my mental life well fed by books stimulating the imagination. Through the “Arabian Nights” tales I touched the domestic life of the wonderful East, China, India, Persia and Arabia; and at the missionary meetings, and at my home, I met men who had been to these far away places, and brought back with them curious and beautiful things, even the very gods they worshipped. There had been hitherto in other respects a good deal of judicious neglect in my education. Books had never been anything but a source of wonder and delight to me. I had never heard of a grammar and an arithmetic, and had never been deprived of a visit or a holiday because if I did not go to school, I would miss a mark, or lose my place in a class.

Fortunately this desultory education was marbled all through with keen spiritual incidents and issues. For the spiritual sight of children turns more sharply upon the world within the breast, than they show, or that anyone imagines. They hold in their memories imperishable days which all others have forgotten, visions beautiful and fearful, dreams without name or meaning, and they have an undefined impression of the awful oldness of things. They see the world through doors very little ajar, and they know the walking of God through their dreaming sleep.

The happy and prosperous children are those, who had before all else the education that comes by reverence. This education is beyond all doubt the highest, the deepest, the widest and the most perfect of all the forms of education ever given to man. A child that has not been taught to reverence God, and all that represents God to man – honor, honesty, justice, mercy, truth, love, courage, self-sacrifice, is sent into the world like a boat sent out to sea, without rudder, ballast, compass or captain.

But the education by reverence must begin early. Children of very tender years may be taught to wander through those early ages of faith, when God took Enoch, and no one was astonished; when Abraham talked with God as friend with friend; when the marvelous ladder was let down by Jacob’s pillow; when Hagar carrying her dying child in the desert saw without surprise the angel of the Lord coming to help her. Nor is there any danger in permitting them to enter that dimmer world lying about childhood, to which Robinson Crusoe and Scheherazade hold the keys. The multiplication table can wait, until the child has been taught to reverence all that is holy, wise and good, and the imagination received its first impulse. So I do not call such events as I have chronicled trifling; indeed, I know that in the formation of my character, they had a wide and lasting influence.

A few days after the fair, Jonathan Greenwood was going to Bradford so he left me at my home as he passed there, and as soon as I came in sight of our house, I saw my sister running to the gate to meet me.

“I have a little brother!” she cried. “I have a little brother, Amelia.”

“Mine, too,” I asserted; and she answered, “Yes, I dare say.”

“Is he nice?” I asked.

“Middling nice. You should see how everyone goes on about him.”

“My word!” cried Jonathan, “you girls will be nobodies now. But, I shall stick by you, Milly.”

“Yes,” I answered dubiously, for I had learned already that little girls were of much less importance than little boys. So I shook my head, and gave Jonathan’s promise a doubtful “yes.”

“Tell Ann Oddy,” he said, “that I will be in for a cup of tea at five o’clock.” Then he drove away, and Jane and I walked slowly up the garden path together.

“Father called him John Henry, first thing,” said Jane, “and Mother is proud of him, as never was.”

“I want to see him,” I answered. “Let us go to the children’s room.”

“He is in Mother’s room, and Mother is sick in bed, and Ann is so busy with the boy, she forgot my breakfast, so I had breakfast with Father.”

“Breakfast with Father! Never!”

“Yes, indeed, and dinner, too, for three days now. Perhaps as you have come home, Ann will remember that girls need something for breakfast. Father wasn’t pleased at her forgetting me.”

“What did she say?”

She said, “Mr. Huddleston, I cannot remember everything, and the Mistress and the little lad do come first, I should say.”

“Was Father angry?” I asked.

“He said something about Mrs. Peacock.”

“What is Mrs. Peacock doing here?”

“She is hired to help, but I think she never leaves her chair. Ann sniffed, and told Father, Mrs. Peacock had all she could do to take care of Mrs. Peacock. Then Father walked away, and Ann talked to herself, as she always does, when she is angry.”

This conversation and much that followed I remember well, not all of it, perhaps, but its spirit and the very words used. It occurred in the garden which was in gorgeous August bloom, full of splendid dahlias and holly-hocks, and August lilies. I have never seen such holly-hocks since. We called them rose-mallows then which is I think a prettier name. The house door stood open, and the rooms were all so still and empty. There was a bee buzzing outside, and the girl Agnes singing a Methodist hymn in the kitchen, but the sounds seemed far away, and our little shoes sounded very noisy on the stairway.

I soon had my head on my mother’s breast, and felt her kisses on my cheek. She asked me if I had a happy visit, but she did not take as much interest in my relations as I expected; she was so anxious to show me the new baby, and to tell me it was a boy, and called after his father’s brother. I was jealous and unhappy, but Mother looked so proud and pleased I did not like to say anything disagreeable, so I kissed Mother and the boy again, and then went to the children’s room and had a good cry in Ann Oddy’s arms.

“Ann,” I said, “girls are of no account;” and she answered, “No, honey, and women don’t signify much either. It is a pity for us both. I have been fit to drop with work ever since you went away, Amelia, and who cares? If any man had done what I have done, there would be two men holding him up by this time.”

“Ann, why do men get so much more praise than women, and why are they so much more thought of?”

“God only knows child,” she answered. “Men have made out, that only they can run the world. It’s in about as bad a state as it well can be, but they are proud of their work. What I say is, that a race of good women would have done something with the old concern by this time. Men are a poor lot. I should think thou would want something to eat.”

I told her I was “as hungry as could be,” but that Jonathan was coming to tea at five o’clock.

“Then he’ll make it for himsel’,” she said. “Mr. Huddleston has gone to Windhill to some sort of meeting. Mrs. Huddleston can’t get out of bed. I have the baby on my hands, and Mrs. Peacock makes her own tea at five o’clock – precisely.”

“Then Ann let me make Jonathan’s tea. I am sure I can do it, Ann. Will you let me?”

“I’ll warrant thee.” Then she told me exactly what to do, and when Jonathan Greenwood came, he found a good pot of tea and hot muffins ready, and he had given Agnes some Bradford sausage, with their fine flavoring of herbs, to fry, and Agnes remembered a couple of Kendal wigs[1 - Kendal wig, a very fine tea cake raised with yeast. It is baked and allowed to cool, then cut apart, toasted and buttered.] that were in the house and she brought them in for a finishing dish. I sat in my mother’s chair, and poured out tea; but I sent for Jane when all was ready, and she gave me a look, still unforgotten, though she made no remark to disturb a meal so much to her liking. Later, however, when we were undressing for bed, and had said our prayers, she reminded me that she was the eldest, and that I had taken her place in making tea for Mr. Greenwood. Many a time I had been forced to receive this reproof silently, but now I was able to say:

“You are not the oldest any longer, Jane. John is the oldest now. Girls don’t count.”

In my childhood this eldest business was a sore subject, and indeed to this day the younger children in English families express themselves very decidedly about the usurpation of primogenital privileges, and the undue consideration given to boys.

A few weeks after the advent of my brother, John Henry, we removed to Penrith in Cumberland, and the night before leaving, a circumstance happened which made a great impression on me. There was a circle of shrubs in the garden, and a chair among them on which I frequently sat to read. This night I went to meet Mother at the garden gate, and as we came up the flagged walk, I saw a man sitting on the chair. “Let us go quickly to the house,” said Mother; but a faint cry of “Mary!” made her hesitate, and when the cry was repeated, and the man rose to his feet, my mother walked rapidly towards him crying out, “O Will! Will! O my brother! Have you come home at last?”

“I have come home to die, Mary,” he said.

“Lean on me, Will,” she replied. “Come into the house. We leave for Penrith to-morrow, and you can travel with us. Then we shall see you safely home.”

“What will your husband say?” the man asked.

“Only kind words to a dying man. Are you really so ill, Will?” And the man answered, “I may live three months. I may go much sooner. It depends – ”

Then my mother said, “This is your uncle, Dr. Singleton, Milly;” and I was very sorry for a man so near death, and I went and took his hand, but he did not seem to care about me. He only glanced in my face, and then remarked to Mother, “She seems a nice child.” I felt slighted, but I could not be angry at a man so sick.

When I went upstairs I told Ann that my uncle had come, and that he said he was going home to Kendal to die. “He will travel with us to-morrow as far as Kendal; Mother asked him to do so,” I added.

“I dare say. It was just like her.”

“Don’t you like my uncle, Ann? I thought he was a very fine gentleman.”

“Maybe he is. Be off to your bed now. You must be up by strike-of-day to-morrow;” and there was something in Ann’s look and voice, I did not care to disobey.

Indeed Ann had every one up long before it was necessary. We had breakfast an hour before the proper time; but after all, it was well, for the house and garden was soon full of people come to bid us “good-bye.” Some had brought lunches, and some flowers and fruits, and there was a wonderful hour of excitement, before the coach came driving furiously up to the gate. It had four fine horses, and the driver and the guard were in splendid livery, and the sound of the horn, and the clatter of the horses’ feet, and the cries of the crowd stirred my heart and my imagination, and I believe I was the happiest girl in the world that hour. I enjoyed also the drive through the town, and the sight of the people waving their handkerchiefs to Father and Mother from open doors and windows. I do not think I have ever since had such a sense of elation and importance; for Father and I had relinquished our seats inside the coach to Uncle Will Singleton, and I was seated between the driver and Father, seeing well and also being well seen.

Never since that morning have I been more keenly alive in every sense and more ready for every event that might come; the first of which was the meeting and passing of three great wains loaded high with wheat, and going to a squire’s manor, whose name I have forgotten. There were some very piquant words passed between the drivers about the coach going a bit to the wrong side. On the top of the three wagons about a dozen men were lying at their ease singing the prettiest harvest song I ever heard, but I only caught three lines of it. They went to a joyful melody thus:

“Blest be the day Christ was born!
We’ve gotten in the Squire’s corn,
Well bound, and better shorn.
Hip! Hip! Hurrah!”

But as they sang the dispute between the drivers was growing less and less friendly, and the driver of the coach whipped up his horses, and took all the road he wanted, and went onward at such a rattling pace as soon left Shipley forever behind me.




CHAPTER III

WHERE DRUIDS AND GIANTS DWELT


“… upon the silent shore
Of memory, we find images and precious thoughts,
That shall not die, and cannot be destroyed.”

I was greatly delighted with Penrith. It was such a complete change from Shipley, and youth is always sure that change must mean something better. In the first place the town was beautiful, and generally built of the new red sandstone on which it stands; but our house was white, being I think of a rough stucco, and it stood on one of the pleasantest streets in the town, the one leading up to the Beacon. Its rooms appeared very large to me then; perhaps I might not think so highly of them now. Its door opened directly into the living-room, and it was always such a joy to open it, and step out of the snow or rain into a room full of love and comfort. Since those days I have liked well the old English houses where the front door opens directly into the living-room. Ten or twelve years ago a lady built in Cornwall-on-Hudson a handsome house having this peculiarity, and I often went to see her, enjoying every time that one step from all out doors, into the sweet home influence beyond it.

The sound of the loom and the shuttle were never heard in the broad still streets of Penrith. Business was a thing rather pushed into a corner, for Penrith was aristocratic, and always had been. The great earls of Lonsdale lent it their prestige, and circling it were some of the castles and seats of the most famous nobility. It had been often sacked, and had many royal associations. Richard the Third had dwelt in its castle when the Duke of Gloucester, and Henry the Eighth’s last wife, Catherine Parr, came from Kendal. The castle itself had been built by Edward the Third, and destroyed by Cromwell. All these and many more such incidents I heard the first day of my residence in the town from a young girl we had hired for the kitchen, and she mingled with these facts the Fairy Cup of Eden Hall, and the great Lord Brougham, Long Meg and her daughters, and the giant’s grave in Penrith churchyard; and I felt as if I had stepped into some enchanted city.

Up to this time I had never been to what I called a proper school. The dame’s school at Shipley I had far outstepped, and I was so eager to learn, that I wished to begin every study at once. There were two good schools in Penrith, one kept by a Miss Pearson, and the other by a man whose name I have forgotten. I wanted to go to Miss Pearson. She had the most select and expensive school. The man’s school was said to be more strict and thorough, and much less expensive; but there was a positive prejudice against boys and girls being taught together. I could tell from the chatter of the girl in the kitchen, that it was looked down upon, and considered vulgar by the best people. I was anxious about the result. Jane and I whispered our fears to each other, but we did not dare to express any opinion to our parents. At last I talked feelingly to Ann Oddy about the situation, and was glad to find her most decidedly on our side.

“I am for the woman,” she said straight out, “and I shall tell the Master so plainly. What does that man know about trembling shy little girls?” she asked indignantly, “and I’ve heard,” she continued, “that he uses the leather strap on their little hands – even when they are trying to do the best they know how. His own children look as if they got plenty of ‘strap.’ I’ve told your mother what I think of him.”

“What did Mother say, Ann?” we eagerly asked.

“She said such a man as that would never do. So I went on – ‘Mrs. Huddleston, our society wouldn’t like it. He teaches girls to write a big, round man’s hand. You may see it yourself, Mrs. Huddleston, if you’ll lift his letter to you – good enough for keeping count of what money is owing you, but for young ladies, I say it isn’t right – and his manners! if he has any, won’t be fit to be seen, and you know, Mrs. Huddleston, how men talk, he won’t be fit to be heard at times; at any rate that is the case with most men – except Mr. Huddleston.’”

With such words Ann reasoned, and if I remembered the very words used it would be only natural, for I heard them morning, noon and night, until Mother went to see Miss Pearson, and came home charmed with her fine manners and method of teaching. Then our dress had to be prepared, and I shall never forget it; for girls did not get so many dresses then as they do now, and I was delighted with the blue Saxony cloth that was my first school dress. Dresses were all of one piece then, and were made low with short baby sleeves, but a pelerine was made with the dress, which was really an over-waist with two little capes over the shoulders. My shoes were low and black, and had very pretty steel buckles; my bonnet, a cottage one of coarse Dunstable straw. It had a dark blue ribbon crossed over it, and a blue silk curtain behind, and some blue silk ribbon plaited just within the brim, a Red Riding Hood cloak and French pattens for wet weather completed my school costume, and I was very proud of it. Yet it is a miracle to me at this day, how the children of that time lived through the desperate weather, deep snows and bitter cold, in such insufficient clothing. I suppose it was the survival of the fittest.

My first school day was one of the greatest importance to me. I have not forgotten one incident in all its happy hours. I fell in love with Miss Pearson as soon as I saw her; yes, I really loved the woman, and I love her yet. She was tall and handsome, and had her abundant black hair dressed in a real bow knot on the top of her head; and falling in thick soft curls on her temples, and partly down her cheeks. An exceedingly large shell comb kept it in place. Her dress was dark, and she wore a large falling collar finely embroidered and trimmed with deep lace, and round her neck a long gold chain. She came smiling to meet us, and as soon as the whole school was gathered in front of the large table at which she sat, she rose and said,

“Young ladies, you have two new companions. I ask for them your kindness – Jane and Amelia Huddleston. Rise.”

Then the whole school rose and curtsied to us, and as well as we were able, we returned the compliment. As soon as we were seated again, Miss Pearson produced a large book, and as she unclasped it, said,

“Miss Huddleston will come here.”

Every eye was turned on Jane, who, however, rose at once and went to Miss Pearson’s table. Then Miss Pearson read aloud something like the following words, for I have forgotten the exact form, though the promises contained in it have never been forgotten.

“I promise to be kind and helpful to all my schoolmates.

“I promise to speak the truth always.

“I promise to be honorable about the learning and repeating of my lessons.

“I promise to tell no malicious tales of any one.

“I promise to be ladylike in my speech and manners.

“I promise to treat all my teachers with respect and obedience.”

These obligations were read aloud to Jane and she was asked if she agreed to keep them. Jane said she would keep them all, and she was then required to sign her name to the formula in the book, which she did very badly. When my turn came, I asked Miss Pearson to sign it for me. She did so, and then called up two girls as witnesses. This formality made a great impression on me, the more so, as Miss Pearson in a steady positive voice said, as she emphatically closed the book, “The first breaking of any of these promises may perhaps be forgiven, for the second fault there is no excuse – the girl will be dismissed from the school.”

I was in this school three years and never saw one dismissed. The promise with the little formalities attending it had a powerful effect on my mind, and doubtless it influenced every girl in the same way.

After my examination it was decided that writing was the study to be first attended to. I was glad of this decision, for I longed to write, but I was a little dashed when I was taken to a long table running across the whole width of the room. This table was covered with the finest sea sand, there was a roller at one end, and the teacher ran it down the whole length of the table. It left behind it beautifully straight lines, between which were straight strokes, pothooks, and the letter o. Then a brass stylus was given me, and I was told to copy what I saw, and it was on this table of sand, with a pencil of brass, I took my first lessons in writing. When I could make all my letters, simple and capital, and knew how to join, dot, and cross them properly, I was promoted to a slate and slate pencil. In about half a year I was permitted to use paper and a wad pencil, but as wad, or lead, was then scarce and dear, we were taught at once how to sharpen and use them in the most economical manner. While I was using a wad pencil I was practicing the art of making a pen out of a goose quill. Some children learned the lesson easily. I found it difficult, and spoiled many a bunch of quills in acquiring it.

I remember a clumsy pen in my father’s desk almost as early as I remember anything. It was a metal tube, fastened to an ivory handle, and originated just before I was born. I never saw my father use it; he wrote with a quill all his life. In 1832, the year after my birth, thirty-three million, one hundred thousand quills were imported into England, and I am sure that at the present date, not all the geese in all the world would meet the demand for pens in the United States alone. Penny postage produced the steel pen. It belonged to an age of machinery, and could have belonged to no other age; for the great problem to be solved in the steel pen, was to convert iron into a substance as thin as the quill of a dove’s wing, yet as strong as the strongest quill of an eagle’s wing. When I was a girl not much over seven years old, children made their own pens; the steam engine now makes them.

A short time before Christmas my mother received the letter from Uncle Will Singleton she had been expecting. It came one Saturday morning when the snow lay deep, and the cold was intense. Jane and I were in the living-room with Mother. She had just cut a sheet down the middle, where it was turning thin, and I had to seam the two selvedge edges together, thus turning the strong parts of the sheet into the center. This seam required to be very neatly made, and the sides were to be hemmed just as neatly. I disliked this piece of work with all my heart, but with the help of pins I divided it into different places, for the pins represented the cities, and I made up the adventures to them as I sewed. Jane, who was a better needlewoman than I, had some cambric to hem for ruffling, but the hem was not laid, it had to be rolled as it was sewn between the thumb and first finger of the left hand. Jane was always conceited about her skill in this kind of hemming, and as I write I can see her fair, still face with its smile of self-satisfaction, as her small fingers deftly and rapidly made the tiny roll, she was to sew with almost invisible needle and thread. Mother was singing a song by Felicia Hemans, and Father was in the little parlor across the hall reading a book called “Elijah, the Tishbite;” for he had just been in the room to point out to Mother how grandly it opened. “Now Elijah the Tishbite,” without any weakening explanations of who or what Elijah was, and Mother had said in a disconcerting voice, “Isn’t that the way it opens in the Bible, William?” There was a blazing fire above the snow-white hearth, and shining brass fender, and a pleasant smell of turpentine and beeswax, for Ann Oddy was giving the furniture a little rubbing. Suddenly there was a knock at the door, and Ann rose from her knees and went to open it. The next moment there was evident disputing, and Ann Oddy called sharply, “Mr. Huddleston, please to come here, sir.”

When Father appeared, Mother also went to the door, and Jane and I stopped sewing in order to watch and to listen. It was the postman and he had charged a shilling for a letter, that only ought to be eight pence and while Ann was pointing out this mistake, my mother took the letter from her hand and looked at it.

“William,” she said, “it is a death message, do not dispute about that toll.” So Father gave the postman the shilling, and the door was shut, and Mother went to the fireside and stood there. Father quickly joined her. “Well, Mary,” he said, “is it from your brother? What does he say?”

“Only eight words, William,” Mother answered; and she read them aloud, “Come to me, Mary. The end is near.”

Father was almost angry. He said she could not go over Shap Fells in such weather, and that snow was lying deep all the way to Kendal. He talked as though he was preaching. I thought Mother would not dare to speak any more about going to Kendal. But when Father stopped talking, Mother said in a strange, strong way,

“I shall certainly go to my brother. I shall try to get a seat in the coach that passes through here at ten o’clock to-night.” I had never seen Mother look and talk as she did then, and I was astonished. So was Father. He watched her leave the room in silence, and for a few minutes seemed irresolute. Then Ann came in and lifted the beeswax, and was going away when Father said,

“Where is your mistress, Ann?”

“In her room, Mr. Huddleston.”

“What is she doing?”

“Packing her little trunk. She says she is going to Kendal.”

“She ought not to go to Kendal. She must not go.”

“She’s right enough in going, Mr. Huddleston, and she is sure to go.”

“I never heard anything like this!” cried Father. He really was amazed. It was household rebellion. “Ann,” he continued, “go upstairs and remind your mistress that John Henry has been sickly for two weeks. I have myself noticed the child looking far from well.”

“Yes, sir, the child is sickly, but her brother is dying.”

“Do you think the child should be left?”

“It would be worse if the brother died alone. I will look after John, Mr. Huddleston.”

Then Father went upstairs, and Mother went by the night mail, and we did not see her again for nearly three weeks.

I do not apologize for relating a scene so common, for these simple intimacies and daily events, these meetings and partings, these sorrows and joys of the hearth and the family, are really the great events of our life. They are our personal sacred history. When we have forgotten all our labors, and even all our successes, we shall remember them.

Mother was the heart and hinge of all our home and happiness, and while she was away, I used to lie awake at nights in my dark, cold room and think of death entering our family. In his strange language he whispered many things to my soul that I have forgotten, but one thing I am sure of – I had no fear of death. My earliest consciousness had been a strong and sure persuasion of God’s goodness to men. And I had no enmity towards God; though a dozen catechisms told me so, I would not admit the statement. I loved God with all my child heart. He was truly to me “my Father who art in heaven.” Well then, death whom He sent to every one, even to little babies, must be something good and not evil. Also, I thought, if the dead are unhappy, their faces would show it, and I had never seen a dead face without being struck by its strange quiet. The easiest way to my school lay through the graveyard, and though it was in the midst of the town, I knew no quiet like the quiet of the dead men in that churchyard. I have felt it like an actual pressure on my ear drum.

In the day I talked to my sister of the changes Uncle’s death would make in our lives. When Christmas came, father would not permit us to go to any parties, and Jane was sure we would have to wear mourning, a kind of clothing I hated, I reminded her that the Pennants had not worn black when Mary Pennant died, and Jane reminded me that the Pennants were Quakers, and that when Frances and Eliza Pennant came back to school wearing their brown dresses, it was all the girls could manage, not to scorn them.

Of course we talked at school of our uncle, Dr. Singleton, and his expected death, and I do not understand how this circumstance imparted to us a kind of superiority, but it did. Jane put on airs, and was always on the point of crying, and I heard Laura Patterson correct the biggest pupil in the school for “speaking cross to a girl whose uncle was dying.” I dare say I had my own plan for collecting sympathy, for some of my classmates asked to walk home with me, others offered to help me with my grammer, and Adelaide Bond gave me the half of her weekly allowance of Everton toffy.

At last Mother returned home and, oh, how glad we were to see her! She came into the lighted room just as we were sitting down to supper, and an angel from heaven would not have been as welcome. My father was somewhere in the Patterdale country, where he went for a week or two at regular intervals; and, oh, how good, how glorious a thing it was, to have Mother home again!

The first thing Mother did the following day was to send for black stuff and the dressmaker. I pleaded in vain, though Mother, being of Quaker descent, was as averse to mourning dresses as I was, but she was sure Father would insist on them, because of what the Society, and people in general would say. Jane made no objections. She was very fair, and had that soft pearly complexion which is rendered more lovely by black. As for Ann, she could only look at the wastefulness of putting new dresses away in camphor for a year. She said, “Girls will grow long and lanky, and in a year the skirts will be short and narrow, and the waists too small, and the armholes too tight, and the whole business out of fashion and likelihood.”

In a few days Father came home. The girl was pipeclaying the hearth and building up the fire for the evening, and Ann laying the table for Mother’s tea as he entered. He was so delighted to find Mother at home that he said to her, “Let the girls stay and have a cup of tea with us tonight.” Then when he had set down by the fire, Jane drew her stool close to him, and I slipped on to his knee, and whispered something in his ear I shall never tell to any one. Such a happy meal followed, but little was said about Uncle Singleton. Father asked if all was well with him? Mother answered almost joyfully, “All is well!”

“Poor fellow,” continued Father. “His life was defeat from its beginning to its end.”

“No, William,” cried Mother, “at the end it was victory!” and she lifted her radiant face, and her eyes rained gladness, as she said the word “victory” with that telling upward inflection on the last syllable, common in the North Country. I can never forget either the words or the look with which they were uttered. I thought to myself, “How beautiful she is!”

I waited after tea, hoping that Mother would tell us more about Uncle’s death, but she talked of our black dresses and the bad weather, and then some neighbors came in, and I went upstairs to Ann. She had one of those high peaked sugar loaves before her, and was removing the thick dark purple paper in which they were always wrapped. The big sugar nippers were at her side, and I knew she was going to nip sugar for the next day’s use. It was, however, a kind of work it was pleasant to loiter over, and after talking awhile Ann said, “What did Mrs. Huddleston say about her brother?” Then I repeated what Mother said, and involuntarily tried to imitate her look and the tones of her voice. Ann asked if that was all, and I answered, “Yes.” Then I said, “Was he a bad man, Ann, or a good man, tell me;” and she said, “He was bad and good, like the rest of men. Don’t ask me any questions. Your mother will tell you all about him when the right time comes.”

And the right time did not come until eleven years afterwards.

In a week our dresses were ready, and we went back to school. We met with great sympathy. Jane looked beautiful, and received the attentions shown her with graceful resignation. I looked unlike myself, and felt as if I had somebody’s else frock on. But I had a happy heart, ready to make the best of any trouble, beside I knew I was unreasonable, since Ann, who was generally on my side, told me that I ought to be thankful I had any dress at all to wear, and so many nicer little girls than myself without one to put on their backs. And as for color, one color was just as good as another.

That was not true in my case, but I knew that it was no use telling Ann that story. Yet it is a fact, that I am, and have always been powerfully affected both by color and smell – the latter’s influence having a psychical or spiritual tendency. But how could I explain so complex a feeling to Ann, when I could not even understand it myself?

Queen Victoria ascended the throne of England a few weeks before I went to Penrith, but she was not crowned until a year afterwards. I remember the very June day so bright and exquisite it was! The royal and loyal town of Penrith was garlanded with roses, flags were waving from every vantage point, and the musical bells of the ancient church rang without ceasing from dawn until the long summer gloaming was lost in the mid-summer night. Yet child as I was, I noticed and partly understood, the gloom and care on the faces of so many who had no heart to rejoice, and no reason to do so.

Without much explanation the story of ordinary English life at this period would be incredible to us, and I shall only revert to it at points where it touched my own life and character. Is it not all written in Knight’s and many other histories at every one’s hand? But I saw the slough of despair, of poverty and ignorance, in which the working class struggled for their morsel of bread. And the root of all their trouble was ignorance. For instance, the wealthy town of Penrith had not, when I first saw it, one National or Lancastrian school, nor yet one free school of any kind, but the little Sunday school held in the Methodist chapel two hours on Sunday afternoons. Fortunately it was the kind of Sunday school Raikes intended. There were no daintily dressed children, and fashionably attired teachers in it – not one. The pupils were semi-starved, semi-clothed, hopeless, joyless little creatures; their teachers were hard working men and women, who took from their Sabbath rest a few hours for Christ’s sake. For how could such little ones come unto Him, if there were none to show the way?

There was even at this date, 1838, villages in England without either church or school, though Methodism had swept through the land like a Pentecostal fire half a century before; and at this same time, the big cities of London, Liverpool, Manchester, Birmingham, Bristol had not one ragged school in them. A parliamentary investigation two years afterward found plenty of villages such as Dunkirk with one hundred and thirteen children, of whom only ten could read and write; and Boughton with one hundred and nineteen children, where only seven went to a school that taught writing, and thirty-two to a Sunday school. Learning and literature were not in fashion then, especially for women. Yes, indeed, it is true that I knew in my youth, many women of wealth, beautiful women who managed their large houses with splendid hospitality and were keenly alive to public affairs, who looked on books as something rather demoralizing, and likely to encroach in some way upon works more in the way of their duty. I was very often reproved for “wasting my time over a book” so that my reading had a good deal of that charm which makes forbidden fruit “so good for food, so pleasant to the eyes, so much to be desired to make one wise.”

And in Penrith I began a new set of books which charmed me quite as much as “Robinson Crusoe” and the “Arabian Nights” had done. On my seventh birthday my father gave me Cook’s “Voyages Round the World,” and this volume was followed by Anson’s “Voyage,” by Mungo Park’s “Travels in Africa,” and Bruce’s “Travels in Abyssinia.” Twenty-two years ago I stood one afternoon at the grave of Bruce in a lonely kirk yard a few miles outside Glasgow. It was a neglected mound with the stone slanting down above it. I remembered then, as I do now, how severely his book had been criticized and even discredited. But later travellers substantiated all that Bruce had said and added to his recital still more unlikely stories.

There was also another book which at this time thrilled and charmed me beyond expression. I doubt if there is a single copy of it in America, and not many in England, such as remain I dare say being hid away in the old libraries of ancient farm or manor houses. It was called “News From the Invisible World,” by John Wesley. It was really a book of ghostly visitations and wonderful visions. My father took it out of my hands twice and then put it, as he supposed, out of my reach; but by putting a stool upon a chair, and climbing upon the chair and then upon the stool I managed to reach it. I can see myself today in a little gingham frock, and a white pinafore performing this rather dangerous feat. We were dressed very early in the morning, but never so early as not to find a good fire in the study; and the coal used in the north of England, is that blessed soft material, which gives in its bright manifold blazes, the light of half a dozen candles. Lying face downward upon the hearthrug, I could read with the greatest ease, and often spent an hour in “the invisible world” very much to my liking before the day really began.

One morning while thus engaged, Ann Oddy came in and I asked her to put the book back in its place. She looked at me suspiciously, and said, “Who put it up there?”

“My father,” I answered.

“What for?” she continued.

“Because it is about ghosts, Ann, and such stories as you often tell me. Put it up or Father will be cross with me.”

“Well, Amelia,” she said in a kind of dreamy way, “your father ought to know, but he isn’t a bit well lately, so I won’t bother him at this time.”

Then I promised to tell her the stories, and added, “They are all true, Ann, for John Wesley wrote them.”

“True!” she ejaculated. “Well, well, I am astonished at Mr. Huddleston’s putting anything John Wesley wrote out of the way. I am that.” About A.D. 1890 I asked a learned doctor connected with the Methodist Book Concern, if they had a copy of it, and he answered very sharply, “I never heard of the book.” Yet I know it existed in my childhood, and that during my seventh and eighth years, I read it frequently.

The first year of my life in Penrith went happily onward in the regularity of its duties and pleasures. At home I remember but few changes. Soon after the Queen’s coronation, I had another brother, who was called William Henry, and when he was about two months old, my father went to Manchester, and brought back with him the greatest of household comforts of that day – a dozen boxes of Congreve or Lucifer matches. Only those who have stood shivering over the old tinder box on a bitter winter night, trying to get a spark while the baby screamed in the darkness, can form any estimate of the pleasure which these few boxes of matches made in our house. My father took us all into a dark room, and then permitted each person to strike a light. Laughter and exclamations of wonder and pleasure greeted every fresh match as it burst into instantaneous flame, even Ann was enthusiastic. “This time,” she admitted, “Mr. Huddleston has brought home something sensible and good for everybody” – a covert slur upon Father’s gifts, which usually took the form of books, or a bit of spar for the parlor chimney piece, or perhaps a likeness of Mr. Wordsworth, or a view of Derwentwater. We had both read and heard wonderful things of these matches for nearly three years, but the first put upon the market were intended only for the rich; for they were in more or less costly caskets, the cheapest of which was sold for a guinea. In a short time a phial full of matches were sold for five shillings, and when my father bought our first “light boxes” they were a shilling each. Then came the practical chemist and the factory system, and the penny box of matches was in every home. Yet I have no doubt that in many a home in England the empty five shilling box is affectionately preserved; for during their vogue, they were sensible and highly prized wedding gifts, among a large class of respectable people of limited means.

At the beginning of my second school year, I was promoted to a copy book. I could write pretty well with wad, and did not very often spoil a goose quill. That first copy book! Never shall I forget it. Its cover was canary color, and on the front was a picture of a negro. He was loaded with chains and hoeing cotton, while a white man stood over him using an impossible whip, and there were four lines by Cowper underneath the two figures:

“I would not have a slave to till my ground,
To carry me, to fan me while I sleep,
And tremble when I wake, for all the wealth
That sinews bought and sold, have ever earned.”

At that time I had never seen a negro, and my sense of amazement, fright and repugnance was so great, that I feel sure I had not even seen the picture of one. The tremendous excitement attending the enfranchisement of the slaves belonging to England was over before I was two years old, and after it, I think the nation must have repented their extravagant sympathy, for I am sure that at this time I had never heard either my father or any one else allude to the event.

Miss Pearson laid the book on my desk with evident pleasure, and I looked at the picture, covered my eyes with my hands, and burst into tears. I was never a crying child, and my teacher was astonished, and asked me rather sternly, “What is the matter with you, Amelia? Are you sick?”

“No,” I whispered. “I am afraid. Take it away.”

“Afraid?”

“I have not been bad,” I continued. “I do not like that picture. Please take it away.”

Then she sat down by my side and told me a story about the black man, and what England had just done for him. I hardly heard or understood her, until she said, “I shall leave the book with you. You must look at the picture every day until you at least feel pity for the slave. See, this is your copy for today. Let me see how cleanly, and well you can do it.”

I had ceased crying. I was ashamed of my own emotion, and I went courageously to work with a quill pen of my own cutting; but as soon as I returned home, I went to my mother and told her all. She soothed and petted me, but advised me to make no remarks about the picture. “There has been a deal of hard feeling about the negro, Milly, and we find it best to let that subject alone. No one talks of it now. Lucy Lowthian was here this morning. She is going to have a party on Saturday afternoon.”

“Are we going to it, Mother?”

“Yes,” she answered cheerily. “Look at this lace and white satin ribbon. I am going to trim your dresses with it.”

I instantly turned to the more personal and interesting subject, but I could not forget, nor yet have I ever forgotten that picture on my first copy book. Undoubtedly it was an exaggeration of even the Congo type, but why did I cry at the sight of it? I was neither a fearful nor a crying child. Why did I cry? It puzzled me then, but I know now, that there was undoubtedly some sudden soul shock, some prophetic apprehension, which my inner woman trembled before, and which my physical woman could only interpret by tears.

In my studies I was progressing well, even my musical efforts were beginning to make a little show. I had distinctly told my teacher that I wished to learn “tunes” and “songs” and without regarding my wishes, she had compelled me to make an astonishing study of what she called the gamut. To the study of the gamut was added an hour’s practice of the scales daily, and as the necessary noise would have been distracting to my father, I went to my teacher’s home to make it. This practicing often stood in the way of pleasures, and Jane, who had urgently entreated not to learn music, had many self-complacent little observations to make on her own prudence. For while I was studying scales, major and minor, she went with Mother to shop, or to make calls. And she had a nice ladylike way of comparing things, that was very discouraging. Yet I had not the slightest intention of stopping my music lessons, and indeed I feel sure Father would not have permitted me to do so, except for some good reason. Once only I made a remark tending in that direction, and he answered,

“I allowed you to learn music, Milly, at your own eager request. Are you going to give it up because it is difficult? I should feel ashamed of you!” and he spoke with such scorn that I hastened to assure him, “I would not give up music for anything.”

My third year in Penrith remains very clearly in my memory. It was an anxious year to all, for Chartism was keeping the country in constant rioting and turmoil. I can remember well, the terror and hatred which the very name “Chartist” called forth; for the scenes of the French Revolution were yet red and flaming in the memories of men and women. The very day Victoria was crowned, the military were compelled to put down the rebellion led by John Thom, who claimed to be the Messiah, and if the numbers who followed him had been larger and better educated, the worst scenes of the French Days of Terror might have been repeated.[2 - Judging Chartists by their own words we should not now think they merited exile, hard labor, and life imprisonment. I do not suppose I ever understood their claims, but I have looked up their record and I find they were fighting for five not very wicked points: first, universal suffrage, excluding women, which was the great mistake of Chartism; second, the division of England into equal electoral districts; third, votes by ballot; fourth, annual Parliaments and no property qualifications for members; fifth, payments to every member for his legislative services. For advocating these demands, I saw in 1843, at Liverpool Railway Station, a long row of these Chartists chained together on their way to a convict ship which was to carry them to Botany Bay, or Norfolk Island.]

For ten years after the coronation Chartism was a living, constant anxiety to the government and the people. Yet in the midst of this general fear, and the decay of business which it entailed, there occurred a serious quarrel agitating the whole country, about the Ladies of the Queen’s Bedchamber. The Melbourne government having lost the confidence of both Houses, a new Administration was to be formed, and Sir Robert Peel was entrusted with the duty. In performing it, Sir Robert removed the Ladies who had been long in attendance on Her Majesty, and gave their high positions, with the large emoluments accruing therefrom, to the wives of the nobles who had assisted him in forming the new government. The Queen was indignant and refused to part with her old friends. Sir Robert visited her, and declared a government could not be formed unless the high offices in her household were filled by ladies of the ruling party. Her Majesty in a firm, but polite letter told Sir Robert she could not agree to a course so repugnant to her feelings.

The discussions in and out of Parliament on this question, were long and violent. Every man and woman, every boy and girl in England, took part in them. The women were largely in favor of the Queen, and a great number of men, remembering her youth, thought she ought to be humored in a matter so personal. But in political and administrative circles, she was severely blamed, and that very often in unkind and even disrespectful and disloyal terms.

For some reason my father strongly disapproved her conduct. He said she was a child, and ought to be obedient to the advice given her by the active heads of the government; and over and over he declared there were far more important things to be attended to than the Ladies of her Bedchamber. I heard him telling my mother that the planters in the West Indies were ruined and asking relief from Parliament, the freed negroes having absolutely refused to work; and then in a voice full of anger he demanded why twenty millions of pounds had been spent to give the negro a complete life of laziness, while clever English mechanics were working twelve hours every day for a mouthful of bread – starving as they worked. And Mother would shake her head and answer, “It does seem hard, William.”

“Mary,” he would continue, almost in a whisper, “Mary! Mary! only think of what twenty millions of pounds could have done for our own poor men, and their starving, ignorant children! We had no right to give it. It was not our duty, until we had done our duty to the needy and oppressed of our own people.”

And I wonder today, if Father knew that he was talking Chartism. At any rate, it was the only time, and only way, I ever heard him name the Great Emancipation of 1833.

None of these arguments moved my mother’s loyalty; she was a warm – my father called her a most unreasonable – advocate for the Queen’s rights. Ann was equally loyal, and greatly elated when Mother ranged herself on the Queen’s side.

“It is more than I expected,” she said, “for Missis do always say ‘Amen’ to whatever Mr. Huddleston says. But the Queen is right!” she added. “That I will declare and maintain;” and Ann, who was rolling pastry struck the table a mighty blow with the rolling pin, which if it intimated her way of “maintaining” would certainly be effective.

In our school the quarrel was a very simple one. There were only three girls in it who were for Sir Robert Peel, and the father of one was in the post office, the father of the other a supervisor in the excise, and the third girl was called “Peel,” and was, or thought she was, a connection of the Peel family. Miss Pearson expressed no opinion on the subject, except, that it was not to be named in school hours; but as we walked to-and-from school, we talked only of the Queen, and of any fresh news that might have come to us. By “news” I mean solely the effects of this quarrel in the schools of Penrith, for in the man’s school, it had full swing. The boys had constant fisticuff fights, and the master enjoyed and encouraged them. He said they were making good soldiers for Her Majesty and that they ought to be proud of their swollen eyes, and bruises.

So the quarrel went on, making a grim sort of amusement in days of great public anxiety and alarm; until finally a specially called meeting of the Cabinet, decided in a kind of half-and-half way, in favor of the Queen retaining the Ladies of her Bedchamber, there being a precedent in the case of Queen Anne, who retained the Ladies of her Bedchamber a year and a half after their husbands had been dismissed from office. Father was then satisfied. There was a precedent. It was then and there I learned the word “precedent,” and its meaning. I wondered then, and I wonder yet at the power vested in these three syllables. It seems to settle constantly and satisfactorily difficult questions in law, and other departments of social affairs. In some way probably, every generation has associated it with,

“A land of settled government,
A land of just and old renown,
Where freedom broadens slowly down
From precedent to precedent.”

After the Cabinet decided the Bedchamber question, a dull quiet settled over Penrith, and I suppose also over the whole country; for even a little domestic dispute has usually this convalescent period of silence. And as the holidays were on, and we were leaving Penrith in August, Jane and I were set free from school for a short time. There was some talk of a visit to Ambleside and Ulverston, but my brother William was ill and suddenly became alarmingly worse, and after an interval of great suffering he went away from us forever.

The child had died at midnight, but when I awoke in the morning I was quite sensible of the change that had taken place. The presence of death was felt all through the house, and not only in that dim chamber veiled in white, where the dead boy lay. As I went down stairs, I opened very softly the door of this room. My father was kneeling by the little crib praying. His words fell wet with tears at God’s feet, as in low agonizing tones, he poured out his love and his grief. I stole noiselessly away, feeling shocked and unhappy, lest I had unlawfully witnessed a soul pleading with God. A little later, I went with Mother to look at my dead brother. In a simple little night gown he lay in his usual crib but, oh, how grandly tranquil, how distant, how far, far different, he was!

He was buried in Penrith churchyard, and his funeral was after the manner then prevalent in the North Country. A little table covered with a white cloth, and holding salt, and sprigs of boxwood was placed just within the open door. This was to notify all passers-by of the presence of death in the house, and also to assure them, of the faith of the living in the resurrection, and in eternal life. On the third day after his death, the funeral took place, the coffin being carried by six boys of about ten years of age, by means of white linen scarfs passed through brass rings on the sides of the coffin, which was uncovered, but strewn with pansies. As they went through the town, the child-bearers sang a hymn very sweetly. Father and Mother, Jane and I, and a large company of friends walked behind. Willie’s small grave was not far from the famous Grant’s grave, and I think I could find my way there without hesitation. A little grave was all the child of ten months old asked, a little grave that we could step across, but it separated him from us, further than all the starry space.

After this event I knew that I had done with Penrith. School opened in July, but I did not go back to it, and I had a childish feeling of offence because Miss Pearson did not ask me to do so. I thought it was because she had many new pupils, and I had a heartache about it. Yes, there are plenty of school girls who will understand me. A child’s love for a teacher is a very strong and pure love, and even a fancied slight can hurt like a wound. Only two months since, I had a letter from a little girl whom I taught fifty-six years ago. She was then about nine or ten years old, she is now a very handsome woman, white-haired but full of hope and pleasure, and large social interests in the beautiful city of Los Angeles. And she loves me still, and has never forgotten me. I think such a love as that is well worth the winning.

I spent the next few weeks in wandering about the adjacent country, with Father. We went first to Eden Hall, and got a sight of its wonderful fairy cup, which carries the luck of the Musgraves; for if it

“breek or fall,
Farewell to the luck of Eden Hall.”

One never to be forgotten day I spent at Lowther Castle. The magnificence of its furnishings amazed me, but after all I was more interested in the three large caves near the castle, cut out of the red sandstone, and said to have been the residence of Owen Cæsarius, the giant whose grave is in Penrith churchyard. He was according to tradition a man of colossal size, who ruled Cumberland before Saxon times, when “there were giants in the land,” and no giant killer had appeared.

I had seen Long Meg and her daughters twice, but I begged Father to take me once more to Little Salkeld near which she keeps her long, long vigil. I cannot tell why these old Druid temples fascinate me, why I both fear and like them, nor yet say to what feeling their charm finds response in me. Long Meg is, however, one of the most important Druid temples in England. Meg is a square column of red sandstone eighteen feet high and fifteen feet in circumference, with no sign of a tool having been used on it. Her daughters are sixty-seven in number, some of them ten feet high, and they stand in a circle three hundred and fifty yards in circumference. Wordsworth wrote a poem about these stones, and Father taught me a few lines of it, all of which I have long forgotten, except his questioning,

“At whose behest arose on British ground
That sisterhood in hieroglyphic round;
Forth-shadowing the infinite, the inviolable God?”

Long and earnestly I looked at these, for I knew I should never see them again. Will any one tell me what is the influence they exert over many and widely different personalities? No, it is a thing to be felt, and not explained.

“stones of power,
By Druids raised in magic hour,”

Two days after the visit to Long Meg we left Penrith for Ripon, one of the three great religious centres of Yorkshire, the other two being York and Beverly. I was glad to leave Penrith, and yet no town in which I have ever sojourned, has left on my memory such a clear and beautiful picture. In its calm retirement all the charm of its storied past, and its picturesque present were so appealing, for any day and every day its streets were made notable by the people likely to be met on them – the Earl of Lonsdale, the great Chancellor, Lord Brougham, the fortunate Musgrave of Eden Hall, or the lordly Howards from their Castle of Greystoke standing in a park of five thousand acres. Other famous men of a different kind were also to be met there. Wordsworth was frequently in Penrith, for he married his cousin a Miss Hutchinson of Penrith. So were Coleridge, Southey, and other writers of that period. Wordsworth in my time was a very old man, and I thought also a very disagreeable one.

Young as I was, I noticed also the difference with which the two sets of notables were regarded by the public. If the Earl, or Lord Brougham appeared, every hat was lifted, every face was full of interest, and many women curtsied if they had to pass them. For the men of the land were easily recognized by their splendid equipages, and other insignia of their rank. The men of the pen walked without notice, along the streets until they settled in some book store.

And entirely apart from this living and present source of interest, there was that sense of the occult world brooding over the town, which I feel sure, few people staying long there, could escape. The old Druid priests were not dead; unseen and afar, they could still influence, and they who doubted this, had only to go and sit silent and attent in one of their deserted temples. I know, that while I was certainly impressed by Lonsdale and Brougham, I was far more so by the “stones of power” in old sacrificial, holy places, and by the three giant caves, close to Lowther Castle, wherein the giant Owen Cæsarius had dwelt. He represented to me the mighty men of Old Britain, for there were “giants” in the land in his day. Mythical! No, he is no more mythical than Julius Cæsarius. Have I not sat, and talked, and played around his grave in Penrith churchyard?




CHAPTER IV

AT RIPON AND THE ISLE OF MAN


“My Memory is the frame of a thousand pictures.”


…

“The blithe April weather of a child’s life.”

As soon as I saw Ripon, I disliked the place. There were no hills to which I could lift up my eyes, it was a little town squatting among fat green meadows, and by the still waters of three rivers, the Laver, the Ure, and the Skell. The houses were generally small, and roofed with red tiles, and the atmosphere of the place self-satisfied, and decently prosperous. The theological element was distinctly ascendent and I, though a daughter of Levi, did not like it. There were also at that time many ancient customs prevailing, and the queer little place only wanted a few monks strolling about the quiet streets, to make one wonder if they had stepped back into the twelfth century. The modern spirit touching so vividly the West Riding and other parts of England, had not reached Ripon. It retained a monastic air, though there was neither a monastery nor a monk in it. Still the people looked as if they were always going to church, and indeed they did go to church a great deal. I found out later that the whole history of Ripon was blended with churchism, though its one famous manufacture was spurs. “As true steel as Ripon rowels,” is a proverb still applied to men of mettle, trusty and faithful. When I was there it appeared to me that all the craftsmen were saddle-makers.

The dominant power in Ripon was not, however, the bishop; it was the Earl of Grey and Ripon, a man of immense wealth and of great political influence. I saw him frequently, but somehow he lacked the romance that fixed Lonsdale in my memory. I forgot him for nearly fifty years, and then this thing happened. In 1891 I wrote to London for a full set of the Saturday Review, stipulating that it should be second-hand and in good condition. When it arrived at Cherry Croft, I opened the boxes that contained the books eagerly, and lifted one out to examine it. The set was fine and perfect, and contained a most elaborate and beautiful book plate of the Earl of Grey and Ripon. Nearly the whole sixty volumes were ornamented with the Earl’s plate, though in some it was more ornate, than in others. But by what chance these volumes had been cast out of the magnificent library of Studley Royal, the grandest residence in England, and found their way to my little cottage on Storm King, New York, I do not know. Their once lordly owner I had forgotten for fifty years, but now I often remember the handsome, aristocratic George, Frederick, Samuel, Earl of Grey and Ripon.

But withal it was a comfortable well-to-do place and Mother put away cheerfully all fault-finding. Yet our house was not well situated and was much too small. My father looked around dubiously. Ann Oddy wondered if Ripon chapel people knew that Mr. Huddleston had three children, and Jane cast her eyes down on the tesselated brick floor of the living-room, and remarked in a general manner, “The floor is made of brick.”

“This will never do, Mary,” Father said.

“Oh, yes, William!” Mother answered. “I will carpet the floor, and the woman who was here waiting to receive us, pointed out the brick floor and called it ‘beautiful.’ She said they are favorite floors in Ripon. I shall make all pretty and comfortable in a few days.”

Mother kept her promise. In a few days the little house was a pretty place, and even Ann could find nothing against it, but its small size. “There are three children,” she said, “and God willing there may be four, and where are we to sleep them all?”

“Plenty of room, Ann,” answered Mother. “Mr. Huddleston is going to make the parlor his study. His books will furnish the four bare walls handsomely.”

“And what about company, ma’am?” asked Ann. “There will be lots of trouble, if they are put in the parlor, and the Master writing his sermon.”

“When Mr. Huddleston is writing a sermon, we will bring them in here, Ann.”

“And suppose we are just ready for dinner or tea? What then, ma’am?”

“Then Ann, we will ask them to join us,” and Mother laughed pleasantly, and added, “Your cooking, Ann, would be a great treat to them.”

In a fortnight the house being settled, the question was schools. There was no choice on this subject, there being only one ladies’ school. It was kept by the Misses Johnston, three very handsome women who were daughters of one of the old hunting, racing, drinking squires, called “fine old English gentlemen.” At his death, there was nothing left for his daughters, and they opened a school. Jane and I were entered as pupils there, but I did not find in any of the three, another Miss Pearson. They were unfitted for teachers and appeared to dislike the office, and though I learned the lessons set me, I made no particular progress in anything but music. In this study my teacher was a French emigrant, and I learned rapidly under his tuition.

We had not been half a year in this school, when a momentous question arose. A girl called Mary Levine came one day, and she was entered for all the senior classes, as well as for music, dancing, drawing and French. We all concluded that her father must be very rich, but Miss Grey, the daughter of one of the Canons of the Cathedral, said she had never heard of the Levines, and she did not believe they were anybody at all. For a few days suppositions as to Miss Levine’s social standing were rife. Then it was discovered that she was the daughter of Daniel Levine, a Jewish jeweler and money lender. Instantly every one drew away from the girl, and she was shocked and amazed at the scorn and animosity shown towards her. I saw her tearfully talking to Miss Johnston one evening as the dismissed school was leaving the room, and when I reached home I told Mother what I had heard and seen.

Mother advised us not to name the subject in my father’s presence, but this advice was rendered nugatory by events which had to be met and decided on; for Mr. Downes, the banker, the Reverend Mr. Eamont, Canon Grey and several others removed their daughters the next day from school, pending Miss Johnston’s decision as to opening her school to Jewish children. Every day there were more defections, and the distracted ladies sent a messenger to each patron of the school, asking them to answer by “yes” or “no” the following question:



“Do you object to your daughters associating with the Jewess, Mary Levine, in the classes of our school?

    “The Misses Johnston.”

The long roll of patron’s names came to Father among the last, and Mother noticed that the answer in every case had been a positive “yes.” Father took the roll, and without consulting any one, wrote hurriedly but decidedly, “Yes, I object.”

I do not believe there was one reply favorable to the Jewish girl, and yet I could see no fault in her, nor any reason for her dismissal; and the school was much thinned by the circumstances, and I disliked it more than ever. Nor did her ejection from the school restore confidence. Several of the older pupils went to a celebrated boarding school at York, and others to Harrogate, and an air of dissatisfaction pervaded the class rooms.

As the spring opened I was sick. Father said, “No wonder!” He himself felt the change “from the clear, mountain air of Penrith, to the damp heavy atmosphere of Ripon.” The doctor said I had some kind of an ague, and gave me Jesuit’s bark. I had never been sick in all my life, and the feeling of inertia, and the abominable Jesuit’s bark, made me miserable. I was taken from school, and told to “amuse myself.” But books had become uninteresting. I had a headache, and it hurt me to read, and the Jesuit’s bark made every day a sickening terror. We call Jesuit’s bark quinine now, and have it in little white capsules, and are not conscious of its taste; but any one needing quinine in those days had to take a decoction of the bark of the tree – a whole tumbler full of the black, nauseous liquid three times a day. Jane had no ague, and was quite happy at school; for she was fond of embroidery, and was working a petticoat for Mother in a new kind of that art – the same kind that has been fashionable for the last three or four years, which is accomplished by cutting holes in the cloth and then seaming them around.

One day in early June, I was lying on a sofa which stood in the parlor-study, and Father was writing. I can listen now as I write, and hear the scratching of his quill pen upon the paper. Suddenly a gentleman came riding rapidly to our door, and asked for Mr. Huddleston. My father lifted his head at the sound of the voice, listened a moment, threw down his pen and rose to go out of the room, but before he could do so the stranger entered, and then it was “William!” “Thomas!” and they clasped hands and sat down together. I had no mind to go away, unless sent, and I closed my eyes and lay still as if asleep.

Their conversation soon became animated and argumentative, though it was about people and places I had no knowledge of; but finally reached a subject then interesting all clever and thoughtful minds – the Tractarian or High Church Movement. As I had read to Father several small pamphlets “Tracts for the Times” I was familiar with the names they constantly quoted – Newman, Keble, Froude, et cetera, but it was Newman they disputed over. The stranger seemed to dislike Newman. He said he was no better than a Calvinist, and had been brought up by his Calvinistic mother on Watts and Romaine and such teachers, that he was pale and thin, had a poor presence, and was more like a Wesleyan preacher than a pillar of the Church. Father spoke hotly, and said he never thought of Newman’s appearance, his influence was something like magic, and that you could not be fifteen minutes in his company, and not feel yourself invited to take an onward step. I liked the stranger for not liking Newman, for Newman’s writing was the hardest and least interesting reading I did for Father.

I was enjoying the dispute, when Ann Oddy tapped at the door, and told father he was wanted a few minutes. Then I stepped off the sofa, and went to the stranger.

“Well now!” he cried, “who are you, my little maid?”

I said I was Mr. Huddleston’s daughter, and my name was Amelia.

“And you were on the sofa all the time?” he continued.

“Yes,” I replied, “I am sick.”

“Nonsense!” he ejaculated, but I assured him the doctor said I had an ague, and I had been obliged to take Jesuit’s bark.

“Jesuit’s bark! That is enough to make any one sick. Come with me to Richmond farm, and I will give you new milk in place of it. You can get up early, and go with the dawn maids and see the big Durhams milked. I will have a pony saddled for you, and you can ride all over the farm at my side. And the red Morella cherries are just ripe, and the strawberries coming on, and the raspberries not a month behind. And there are hundreds of hens, and you could go with Tabitha, the hen-wife, and see her clear the nests, and feed the chickens – such a lot of them! And I have the prettiest and kindest of house-keepers; she is called Mary, and she will be good and kind to you. Will you come to Richmond farm with me?”

I told him that I would like it better than anything else in the world, and then I asked, “Would you like me to come?”

“That I would!” he answered heartily, and as he did so, my father re-entered the room with Mother on his arm. Mother had put on her new muslin gown; it was a white muslin, with a tiny pink rosebud in it, and her black hair was beautifully dressed in that Madonna style introduced by Queen Victoria. “I have the prettiest mother in all the world,” I thought, and I went to her side, and clasped her hand.

So the stranger, whom I heard introduced to my mother as Mr. Thomas Richmond ate dinner with us, and this proposal to take me for a few weeks to Richmond farm, was gladly accepted.

I was to stay a few weeks, but I stayed most of my time at this farm for two years and a half, and if to be innocently joyful and busy and perfectly free from all care and anxiety is to be happy, then surely these years were the happiest years of my life. A child in Paradise may be as happy, but no earth child could have been more fortunate than I was. Everything was so much better than I expected; yes, I can see the widespreading house amid its trees and gardens as I write, and when I go to Heaven, I would like my angel to pass it on the road, and let me look once more into its sunny rooms.

I soon learned to manage my pony, and I usually rode into Ripon with Mr. Richmond on market days, took my music lesson, and then went home until I was called for. The housekeeper Mary taught me all about milk, cream and butter. I pulled cherries, ate cherries, and made cherry pies, and I knew every hen and chicken on the place. I was very friendly with the gardener, and from him I learned all about vegetables, fruits and flowers. If there was a superstition or story about any flower, he knew it; and he told it to me, generally with the flower in my hand. Thus a lady to whose house I often went to practice my music, gave me one day a pot of myrtle, and I took it at once to the old man. I said, “I want it planted.”

“Well then, Missie, you must plant it yourself,” he replied; “for when myrtle is planted, you must spread out your skirt, and look as proud as you can. I say put it in your window, for myrtle is the luckiest plant for the window, and water it morning and night, looking as proud as you can while doing so. Myrtle is a proud plant, and it loves proud people.” On another day, I was going into the house with a branch of flowering white hawthorn.

“Nay! nay!” he cried to me, “you mustn’t carry white hawthorn into the house. You might go to sleep where it is, and then would come great misfortune.” He looked very differently on a handful of rosemary. “That is all right, is all right,” he said. “Rosemary stands for success in everything.” In the very centre of the garden he had a little bed of grass, and he would not suffer tool of any kind to touch it. He called it “good man’s croft,” and told me that in order “to bring luck, we must always leave a bit of land unplanted for the fairies.”

After I had been about a month at the farm, Mr. Richmond said to me one wet day, “Milly, I have had all my grandfather’s books taken into the library. I want you to sort and shelve them for me. Would you like to do that?”

I knew of nothing I would like half as much, for, as soon as I was well, the thought of books was again a joy to me. We went to the library together, and men were unpacking large boxes of books, and bringing a long table on which to sort them, and a set of library steps, pens, ink, pencils, paper, and so forth. I promised only to sort the books in the afternoon, or when too wet to take my usual morning ride with him about the farm. Then he gave me the key of the room, and left me among a thousand books.

I was so happy! I was so happy! So peacefully, innocently happy! I read more than I sorted; I found so many wonderful books, that it was impossible to pass over. I met Ivanhoe first in that room, and Little Nell, and Pamela, and the Scottish Chiefs, and in a pile of unbound Family Heralds I made acquaintance with the short love story. Never shall I forget what thrilling hours I spent in that room with the “Children of the Abbey.” A year or two ago a lady to whom I named this book, said she had a copy, and would send it to me. I sat down, full of expectation, but alas! though the book was there, I could not summon back the child heart to read it. The tale that stole my heart away when I was eleven years old had nothing to say to me when I was seventy-seven. Yet I touched it tenderly as I whispered, “It charmed me once – I will not spoil that memory,” and so closed it forever.

I thank God that ere any change came over days so beautiful and blessed, they ceased. The library was scarce finished, when I had to leave it; the farm life was just as happy and desirable, when I tearfully bade it good-bye forever. The pretty, clever Mary loved me well, and I had become a real companion to my affectionate friend, who liked me to call him “Uncle Thomas.” It was well to part ere any desire for parting came. Mr. Richmond said he would come for me the following summer, but I knew he would not. I felt sure he would marry Mary, and other interests would occupy him. I said good-bye to Richmond Farm in a fortunate hour. Its memory has sweetened my long, long life, and what I learned in its pleasant rooms, its hay fields, and wheat fields, and cool, sweet dairy, has helped me in many a stress of life, that I then never dreamed of.

The inevitable has always found me ready and hopeful, and I was glad we were going to the Isle of Man. I had never consciously seen the sea, but its tides were surely in my blood. I was much excited at the prospect, and Father was as eager and restless as a boy. It called him now, as it had called his fathers before him, and he was impatient of delay. We went in a little steamer called The King Orry, sailing from Liverpool. And, as I walked with him about the deck, we were both silent with emotion. But I felt quite at home. The motion of the boat was natural, and, when I walked to the wheel, I could scarcely keep my hands off it. I knew I could manage it. The salt breeze, and the smell of the sea, went to my head like wine.

“Oh, Father!” I cried. “I wish that I might live always on the tide-top.”

“The tide-top!” he echoed. “Who taught you those words, Milly?”

“Nobody,” I answered. “They just came to me. Are they not right words, Father?”

“Yes,” he answered slowly. “Your grandfather used them frequently. The last words he said to my mother were, ‘Fear not, Milly! I shall try to keep my ship on the tide-top.’”

“But he did not, Father.”

“No – no! He found a sailor’s grave. I will go and bring John here.”

In a few minutes he returned with an armful of pillows, and then he carried my brother in his arms to the deck. I have never seen since such a transfiguration of Joy. The boy clapped his thin, white hands, and cried out, “The Sea! The Sea! The Sea!” His face glowed and shone, and he took deep breaths of the salt air. So he sat all day, feeding his heart on the sight of the blue, tossing waves, and some wild pageant of memories far far off, and hardly to be caught, as they threw the accumulated past upon his consciousness, very much as that last vision clangs and flashes for a drowning man.

A never-to-be-forgotten, quiet, thoughtful day, and in the autumn gloaming we landed at Douglas, and the next morning took a carriage for the ten-mile ride, which would take us to Castletown, then the capital of Man, and the place of our destination. With a lavish hand Nature has beautified this wonderful little island, thirty-three miles long, by thirteen miles wide, with the most exquisite scenes of sylvan loveliness, while the Gulf Stream laves all its rocky shores, giving it a climate such as we may have in Paradise. In the hottest month of the year the temperature is a little below sixty degrees, in the coldest month it is a little above forty-one.

Our ride to Castletown was an enchanting one. It was on a day at the end of August, sunny and pleasantly warm. Such wealth of flowers! such multitudes of singing birds! I had never before seen or heard. And the sea was on every side of us! As we approached the capital we saw first the noble old fortress of the Lords of Man, lifting its huge bulk in the very centre of the town. It was but a small place, built of gray stone, in narrow winding streets, and so old that its very origin is lost in the mists of antiquity. Certainly it is one of the oldest, if not the oldest, town in Great Britain. It looked to me as if it had always existed.

As we passed through the square of which the castle forms one side, we saw a fine regiment of Highlanders, in their picturesque costume, drilling, and a few ladies and some old gentlemen were sauntering along, stopping occasionally to watch some manœuver that interested them. An air of the utmost serenity pervaded the place, as we turned into a long crooked street called Malew Street, and stopped finally at a house whose door stood open to receive us. It was a large-roomed, sunny house, of three stories, and had a fine garden at the back, stretching almost to the river side. The rooms were comfortably furnished, and full of peace, and I caught and answered my mother’s look of pleasure and satisfaction. In a few days all was in order, and we settled down to what promised to be three years of delightful life.

For two years all our hopes were amply satisfied. I was at a good school: I was in the fishers’ cottages. I was in a boat with John and my father, or I was off with Father to the preachings at Ballasalla, or Ballabeg. I had many friends, and among them was Chrisna, the daughter of the master of Rushen Castle. With her I wandered about the wonderful old palace, learning its history in the very rooms wherein that history was made. The whole huge fabric was an historical romance written in stone. Chrisna was a Manx girl, of long Manx descent, and she knew all the traditions and superstitions of her people. She believed in fairies as firmly as she believed in the Gospels, and indeed I never met either a Manx man or a Manx woman who did not believe in fairies. Chrisna told me with perfect honesty that she had seen them often, and heard their music, and she quite convinced me that she had.

Seventy years ago the Isle of Man was little more than a name to the average Briton. It had its own government, its own laws, and its own House of Parliament, which was called the “House of Keys.” There were no Custom Houses, and no duties. There were no Poor Laws. When I was there those in need were empowered to knock at the door of every householder, once a week, and receive what could be given. There was no stipulated sum, but a penny and a few groceries, or a little clothing, was cheerfully spared. The number of such callers were few, and they were kindly treated.

The small sum it cost then to live in the Isle of Man was a great temptation to retired army and naval officers, and Castletown was full of these interesting gentry. They gave to the place an air of refinement, which was still further increased by the professors and students of King William’s College. I saw this college burned to the ground on the second of January, A.D. 1844, and I remember well that I had no wrap on, and the night was so warm I did not miss it. Yet January is the coldest month in the mild Manx winter.

We went to Castletown in the autumn, and the following spring two events happened affecting our household. My mother had another daughter, whom Father christened Alethia Mona. Alethia being, with Jane or Joan, and Isabel, the three prominent names of the Huddleston women, just as William, John, Thomas, and Henry are the family names of the men. Mona was added, because it was the ancient name of the island of her birth.

Soon after this event Ann Oddy left us. I am rather ashamed to say that we were all privately very glad. She had become a kind of household tyrant, whom we had to constantly conciliate, and we had long ago discovered that the old family servant was just as serious a problem as the modern monthly one. Our emancipation from Ann’s rule came very unexpectedly. She entered the parlor one afternoon, with a letter in her hand, and, with great excitement, said: “Mrs. Huddleston, I am sorry, but I must go back to England at once.”

Mother told her she was not out of England, and asked why she must go in such a hurry, and Ann answered:

“You see, ma’am, Adam Bradley wants me. We were to have been wed ten years ago, but one night Adam he walked home from chapel with Sarah Sykes, and I had words with him about Sarah, so he married Sarah to spite me. But she’s dead now, and Adam wants me. I think it is best to go to him, Mrs. Huddleston.”

So Ann went. We hardly said to each other how glad we were, and we all pressed any gift we could spare on her. Mother even gave her one of her silk gowns, which I am pretty sure she missed a little later. But, until we knew Ann was safely away in the Douglas coach, we did not talk about her; then I shall never forget Mother’s smile, and sigh of relief, and Jane’s neatly expressed opinion, that “the Irish Sea was always rough with the wind in the present direction.” Jane had never liked Ann; and she knew Ann was both sick and terrified, when at the mercy of wind and waves. A middle-aged Manx woman was easily found to take Ann’s place, and Jane, who was now well grown and womanly, took charge of many things relating to the household.

It was about this time I began to seriously try to write. I commenced a tragedy which I called “Seneca.” I do not remember anything about the work, except that it was laid in ancient Rome, and that Seneca was a philosopher and a senator. I showed the first act to Father, and he gave it back to me with a smile, and the opinion that “it might have been worse.” I used to take pencil and paper and go out to Scarlet Stack, and there alone, with the sun and the wind and the sea and the sky, try to reconstruct the men and women and life of ancient Rome. It was a presumptuous effort, but perhaps the gain to myself was in the effort; for I had become very ambitious. I had abandoned the missionary idea, and longed to write books, and to travel and to see the great cities and the strange peoples I had read about.

We had fully expected to remain at Castletown for three years, but, at the end of the second year, my Father was removed to the Whitehaven Circuit. I shall never forget the morning the news came to us. Mother was making sandwiches for Father, John and I were going to row as far as Ballasalla, then land, and go to the Silverburn River for trout. But Father was so shocked, he put off the trip. I wondered that he should do so, and said:

“Whitehaven is your birthplace, Father; it will surely please you to go there.”

“I would rather go to the most desolate spot on the earth,” he answered with a passion that silenced me.

“It is a much larger circuit, William,” said Mother, “and your income will be larger, and you will have an assistant – a very popular young man, your letter says.”

“I have heard of him, Mary. Popular young men are not always nice young men. He is a nephew of Sir William Morley, and his name is William Morley Punshon.”

Then I took an instant dislike to the popular young man called Punshon. “Such a name!” I ejaculated.

That afternoon Father called Mother in a strange, thick voice of alarm, and she found him looking ill and terrified. “I have had a singular sensation all down my right side, Mary,” he said. “It frightens me.” And my brave little mother said, “Nonsense, William! As we grow old, we have such sensations. I have them myself now and then; my father had them often. Come down and talk with me and the girls,” and she laughed softly and took his arm. But I am sure she knew that this “sensation” was the first touch of a hand that would finally prevail.

As for me, I threw off the thought of trouble by a conscious effort, just as I would throw off my clothes; for I was yet an easy-hearted child, who could say to sorrow, “Let it go.”




CHAPTER V

SORROW AND CHANGE




“The Leaves of Memory seem to make a mournful rustling in the dark.”



…



“We try in the darkness of Sorrow the wings that shall bear us out of it.”


We took leave of the Isle of Man with heavy hearts, and sailed direct from Douglas to Whitehaven, landing there in the evening of a wet August day. The town was finely situated, and the wide haven filled with ships of all kinds. There was even a man-of-war lying at the long new pier. But the scene was not cheerful; how could it be, after a steady, soft rain from morning to night? Two officers of the church met us, and, in a few minutes, we were at the dwelling which was to be our home for the next three years. It was a handsome-looking house, and stood midway in a block of similar ones. There was a table laid for supper in the living-room, but the room itself was a dreary one. I do not know why, unless it was the want of fire on the hearth, and the dark-green moreen curtaining. A gray-haired woman served tea, and said she was ready to stay with us, if so be Mr. and Mrs. Huddleston were agreeable.

So in a few days the house was in order, and Mother professed to be much pleased with our new quarters. She pointed out the large size and number of the rooms, and the quiet of the locality, and, with a pleasant laugh, said she supposed we were among the aristocrats of Whitehaven.

“My cousin’s curate lives two doors below us,” Father said, and then, for the first time, he spoke of his cousin, Dr. Andrew Huddleston, who was at that time rector of the parish of Whitehaven, and also had the living of another parish a few miles distant, both being the presentation of the Earl of Lonsdale. He said he was a bachelor, of about fifty years of age, and was seldom in England; his curates performed his duties for him. But he was in Whitehaven when we arrived there, for I saw him walking up Duke Street with Father, two or three days after our arrival. There was a singular resemblance between them, though Dr. Andrew Huddleston was portly and robust, and dressed in extreme clerical fashion, while my Father was tall and thin, and ascetic in appearance, with the slight stoop forward of one used to looking into things invisible. But the tie was felt and acknowledged; I knew it by the way they stood with clasped hands a moment or two at our open door.

There were many other Huddleston families in Whitehaven, all of them sailors, excepting one fine young man whom the Earl was educating, and who was painting a portrait of Lonsdale the first time I saw him. It happened that my father and mother received an invitation to dine at Captain Thomas Huddleston’s. Father said the thing was impossible, that the company and the conversation alike, would be antagonistic to his office, and his personal feelings; and the kindness which was intended, would be turned into offence. So I was sent with a note of regrets, and orders to make myself as agreeable as possible.

The latter injunction was easy to obey. I found that Captain Huddleston’s family consisted of his mother, and sister, and the youth I have mentioned, who was the grandson of Captain Huddleston. Their house was a large one, in a queer court close to the waters of the harbor, and the big low rooms looked like museums; for it seemed as if every rare and lovely thing from strange lands and strange seas were there; and the footstool of the old lady was a living tortoise of great size, which had an inscription on its shell, showing it to be nearly ninety years old.

The old lady was dressed in a gown of gay colors, open very low in front, and filled in with clear-starched muslin. Her apron was of black silk, trimmed with black Spanish lace, and she had a cap of white Spanish lace on her plentiful white hair, and a very long gold chain around her neck. Her knitting lay on the table beside her, but she was adding up a bill as I entered the room, and though she looked at me, she did not speak until the total was satisfactorily reached.

With this family I became familiar, and I wish I had space to say more about them. I spent much time in their company, and liked nothing better; especially when young Tom Huddleston, a midshipman on The Royal George, came home. This handsome young sailor was my first dream of a lover. I cried when he went away, and was not comforted by his promise to bring me “lots of lace from Malta.” Poor lad! He never came home, but died in the West Indies of yellow fever.

There was really a little sailor settlement around Captain Tom’s home, and I was soon welcome in it, a strange, happy-go-lucky company, full of sharp transitions; for in their lives they knew not what a day or an hour might bring forth. However unexpectedly my visits were made, I was sure to find some gathering rejoicing over the return of a husband or son, or perhaps mourning over his detention or death. And among people so affectionate and emotional it was easy for me to rejoice with those who did rejoice, and to weep with those who wept. They did not attract Jane; they were too extravagant and reckless, and Jane liked everything done decently and in order.

Perhaps this sailor society prevented me from making as high an estimate of the Reverend William Morley Punshon as I ought to have done. He came a great deal to our home, and used to recite for our entertainment fine examples of prose and poetry from the great writers. As long as John was able to bear it, he frequently read aloud, and I considered him an extraordinarily clever man. And, if one looked only at his fine eyes and forehead, he was also a very handsome man. I am sure all the religious young women in Whitehaven thought so, and he was much praised and courted, the chapel being crowded whenever he preached. Young ladies wore white veils then, and I used to watch them from the organ loft coming into the chapel, and compare them to an army with white banners; for I played the organ, which was immediately behind the pulpit, so that everything was before my vision.

During the Christmas holidays of this year, 1844, my brother Henry was born. We welcomed him as a gift and a compensation, and the shadow of suffering and death passed gradually away. After the holidays I went to a fashionable school kept by Miss Penelope Flinders. I only remained there three months, and, as far as study was concerned, they were of little service to me; for Miss Flinders had a lawsuit in progress at this time, and she made me her confidant, and discussed endlessly the pros and cons with me. I was very sorry for her, and feverishly anxious that she might succeed. She told me that her lover had been prevented from marrying her by the bitter opposition of his mother; that he had left England in consequence, and, when dying in India had made a will, leaving every shilling of his wealth to her. The mother was fighting the carrying out of this will, and Miss Flinders could not sleep or eat, and how, then, could she teach pending the court’s verdict? One morning I went to school a little late, and found the class rooms empty. The school had been dismissed forever. She had won her case. I sat and talked with her a long time, and she told me she would never teach another hour, for she had now five thousand pounds a year to be happy with.

I went to no other school, but I read a great deal, and kept up the practice of my music and drawing. There was a good public library, and there was my father’s library, and the public one suited me best now; for I wanted Scott, Dickens and Thackeray, and I also read many novels by Mrs. Gore, a writer nearly forgotten, but whose pictures of the lives led by the highest society of that day were interesting and instructive. One day Mr. Punshon was sitting in our parlor when I came in with my hands full of books. He looked at them and asked, “Does your father know, Amelia?” I answered, “No, but Mother does. She says it is right. We do not trouble Father about little things. He is not very well lately.”

“Amelia,” he continued, “I want some books out of the library, but I do not like to go for them.”

“Novels?” I asked.

“Yes,” he answered.

“I will get them for you. I am sorry for people who want novels, and do not feel able to ask for them.”

He said something about his position, and my father not liking him to go to a public library for novels, and I understood the situation. I wonder now why I did not fall in love with him. He could be so charming, and I certainly thought his recitations marvelous, and his own poetry full of genius. But I liked Tom Huddleston in his open collar, and sailor jacket, with a sailor’s song on his lips, far better. Once I wondered about it to Jane, and she looked at me incredulously, if not scornfully, as she answered, “The idea of being in love with Mr. Punshon!”

“Why not?” I demanded.

“For one thing, Milly, he does not wear straps.” Gentlemen at that time wore their trousers strapped down under their feet. “His trousers are sloppy, and he looks quite common.”

“He is handsome,” I returned, “and he has fine eyes, and beautiful brown hair; it is curly, too.”

“I dare say he puts it in papers every night. Miss Annie Townley thinks so. But if he was ten times as handsome, I would not marry him. He is a Wesleyan preacher, and could never give his wife a home of her own. I hate living in a Chapel House.”

Under conditions and surroundings like these, our lives went on. John was dying daily, and Mother was very anxious about Father, who seemed possessed by a never ceasing passion for preaching. It appeared to her, that he worked and preached as if he feared he would not have time to say all he wanted to say. The “sensations” of which he had complained at intervals, grew more frequent, and in the autumn of our second year in Whitehaven, he partially lost the use of his right hand. Then I wrote his letters and sermons as he dictated them to me. But, oh, how it pained him! I could not bear to see the sorrow in his eyes, and what was coming he knew not; for the doom that walks by our side from the cradle to the grave, never warns us. At this time of my life my thoughts turn to his memory with a great tenderness. His heart was then given to all humanity, his soul was all God’s, and his life but a flesh and blood conductor of eternal spirit.

At the close of the second year, John died after great suffering, and he was laid among his kindred in a small cemetery in Charles Street. As a burial ground it was no longer used, except by the families who had originated it more than one hundred years previously. It was a neglected enclosure, over-grown with tall grasses and rank weeds, and surrounded by the decaying untidy houses of poverty. A more dreary, ghastly place I never saw, and my heart ached for the little lad laid there. I was thankful my mother was too ill to go to the mournful service, but Father was consoled by the fact, that he was among his kindred; and it seemed to me, there was no one but Huddlestons buried there. Every stone I read was in memoriam of a Huddleston, and always that same persistence of the name “Henry.”

Not more than a month afterwards, our baby Henry was laid beside his brother in the desolate place. I have no heart to write of his death. He was taken in the midst of health, and went laughing to seize the bowl of boiling milk, from which he drank a cruel death. It is better to be silent about such calamities; at the time we were all dumb with grief. Yet it was an accident, and accident is always God’s part in any event; so to this knowledge we bowed our hearts in submission. There is a difference, however, in silence. Mother’s quiet was full of heavenly hope and trust; Father’s speechless, tearless grief, was almost despair, and many times afterward, I heard Mother rejoice over a trouble treading close upon Henry’s death, because it roused the physical man to wrath, and broke up the spiritual torpor into which Father had fallen.

This trouble came in a letter, which was handed into the parlor where we were together one afternoon three weeks after Henry’s death. Mother and Jane were sewing. I was copying music – a song of Balfe’s, I believe, and father was walking up and down – up and down the room. All was so still I could hear the ashes dropping from the grate to the hearth. Then came the postman’s knock, and the delivery of the letter to Father.

He read it without a word, growing every moment grayer and more angry. As he finished, he slowly tore the paper into fragments, his passion growing with every movement of his hands, and stamping on them, gave way to an inconceivable rage, accompanied by words that shocked and terrified us. It was not Father, it was some madman who had taken possession of him. Mother went to him, put her hands on his shoulders, and said softly, “William! William!”

“Mary! Forgive me!” he cried. “You see now, what I have to struggle against. Every day I have this temper to fight; it will conquer me some time, and then I shall be lost – but this trouble is my own fault. You have warned me, and I would not listen to you. Yes, I have been warned twice by dreams I understood, but would not obey. If I could suffer alone! If I could suffer alone, I would not care. It is my great punishment. You and the children must suffer with me.”

“What punishment? What has happened, William?” asked Mother.

“I have lost every shilling. That scoundrel Philip Blackpool has gone to Australia with my money, a month ago.”

“My dear, we can live without it.”

“We cannot live without it, Mary,” he answered. “What is the good of talking nonsense?”

Then Mother was silent. She sat down and lifted her work, Jane followed her example, and I went on copying my song, while from the next room came the faint sounds of Alethia and Mary playing. Before our silence and assumed indifference his anger waned; he said again, “Forgive me, Mary! I will go to my study now, and come down when I am better. Disturb me for nothing.”

Mother was wretched. She put down her work, and I went to her. “What does Father mean?” I asked.

“He means that we shall now be poor, Milly. This money stolen from him was the best part of our living. I do not know how much it was, for he never told me the amount, and often I have advised him to put it in some reputable bank. But Philip Blackpool was his friend, at least he supposed so. I have always doubted it. We must send away one servant to-morrow; we shall have to do with much less new clothing, and many good things that we have thought necessary, we must learn to do without. Great changes will have to be made; my dear girls, let us make them cheerfully.”

Then I spoke to Mother about turning my education into money, and she was pleased with my readiness. “Father is ill,” she said, “and I fear he will not be able to preach much longer. I have thought of these things often,” she continued, “and wondered how we were to live, when he had only his retiring income, and this idea has come to me – that if we knew how to conduct a small ladies’ boarding-school, it might suffice. Jane and I could look after the house and children, and you, Milly, could, with the help of teachers, conduct the school. Of course you would have to be trained for such a task.”

We were all pleased with this idea, and discussed it over our tea, in which Father did not join us. Then it appeared that this school project was an old thought with Mother. She asked us if we remembered a certain Miss Sarah Berners who stayed a week with us when we were in Penrith, adding, “She was my friend through all the years in which I was at school, and we used to talk of starting a school together, and being independent of our stepmothers; for we both had stepmothers, and not very kind ones – but I married, you know.”

“Yes,” said Jane, “and what did Miss Berners do?”

“She opened a school at Downham Market, Norfolk, fifteen years ago, and has done well. Suppose, Milly, you went to her for a year, and learned how to manage a school.”

I answered, “I would like to do so, Mother. I would like it very much.”

So Mother wrote to Miss Berners, and received a glad consent to her wish. I was to go as second teacher, and assist in the music, drawing and English classes; and she promised to give me twenty-five pounds a year with my board and lodging, and the opportunity to study the French language if I wished, as I would room with Miss Stromberg, a Russian, who spoke it, and nearly every other European language, perfectly.

When this news came, Father was told of our plans. There was some opposition, but not much, and I began with a hopeful heart to prepare for the change before me. This event appeared to break up the storm of sorrow and ill fortune which had assailed us. We had feared Father’s next appointment lest it should be some large manufacturing city, demanding more strength than he had to give, but when it came, it was to Kendal. Nothing could have been better. It was my mother’s birthplace; she had many friends there, and my father was a great favorite with Kendal Methodists; and there was a pleasant preacher’s house in a pretty garden, surrounded by poplar trees.

It was a joyful removal. We bid farewell to the little graves we had to leave behind us, and then turned our faces, as it were, homeward. And as I was not wanted in Norfolk, until early in September, I went to Kendal with my family, and helped to settle them in their new home. I was very happy in my own prospects. I had no fears, and I had a great many hopes and pleasant expectations. My life was yet to me like a book of uncut leaves. I had finished the preface, and the first chapter was to open in Norfolk. I put behind me all past sorrows, and was just an eager girl leaning over the narrow rim of my small world, and gladly anticipating the wide, wide world into which I was going. And I was made strangely happy, because on the night before I left home, when I lifted the little red Bible that lay upon my dressing-table, my eyes lighted on this verse, “Fear not: for I have redeemed thee, I have called thee by thy name; thou art mine.” (Isaiah, 43:1.)




CHAPTER VI

IN NORFOLK




“No one knows what capacities they have for doing and suffering till the occasion comes. When water is ice, we have no idea what latent heat is in it.”



…

“Life – all things here are but beginnings.”

I was sixteen years and five months old, when I left home to go to Downham Market, and take my place among the workers of the world. The thought pleased me. I was tired of being a mere looker-on at life’s great game, and wanted my share in it. It was on the fourth of September, A.D. 1847, and my father was to go as far as Hull with me. There he would see me on board a little steamer sailing down the Wash to Lynn Regis, from which place a carriage would carry me the few miles inland to Downham Market.

I had put on long dresses that morning, and coiled my hair in a knot under my bonnet, and looked quite eighteen; and I think Father was proud of me. I certainly was very proud of Father’s company; not entirely because of his beautiful countenance, I valued far more, that air of distinction which never left him, and to which every one deferred. We had a pleasant journey to Hull, where we arrived soon after noon. I had wondered why this way to Downham Market had been chosen for me, but as soon as we reached Hull, I knew why. It was a large seaport, excepting London and Liverpool, the largest in England; and Father wanted me to see the ancient town, and its wonderful docks.

We went to an hotel and had lunch, and then to the Queen’s and Humber docks, and I got my first glimpse of what a great commercial city must be on its water side. I heard all the languages of Northern Europe on those great walls. I saw woolpacks from Germany; hides, hemp and tallow from Russia; corn from Dantzic, and other Baltic ports; and strange thin bars of iron from Sweden. Father told me this metal would all go to Sheffield to be made into steel. On the Humber dock I saw great bales of cotton and woolen cloth from Manchester and the West Riding of Yorkshire; and other bales of lace and net, from Nottingham. They were going to France and Germany, and all over Northern Europe.

After the docks, we went to the famous Trinity House, a very rich and powerful guild, that supports disabled seamen of the merchant service and their widows, and has been doing this good work for nearly five hundred years. For it is not only wealthy in bequeathed property, but receives a shilling a month from the wages of all seamen leaving the port. We went through the wonderful old place, and were told there were nearly one hundred inmates, and nearly one thousand outside pensioners. The whole place was as clean and neat as the decks of a man-of-war and every apartment, even the council room, was strewn with fresh green rushes, after the fashion of the days of its erection.

I noticed in the entrance hall a Greenland kayak hung from the ceiling. It was picked up at sea with a man in it in A.D. 1613. The man refused to eat, and died in a few days; but the figure in the kayak wears his clothes, et cetera. I made some remark to Father afterwards about Hull sailors being in such a latitude at that date, and he said “they were commonly there then, and indeed were famous whalers as early as A.D. 1590.”

“Are they whalers now?” I asked.

“They are not extinct as whalers even now, though they are fast passing away. Why, Milly,” he added, “it was the whaler Isabella, Captain Humphries, from the port of Hull, that found and saved Sir John Ross and his company of Arctic explorers, after they had been shut up in the ice for four years. He brought them home with him to Hull, and Hull gave them a grand triumph, opened their hearts and homes to them, and the whole nation went into rejoicing. You were only two years old then, Milly, and do not remember, but I do. They had won nothing; they had lost every thing, but they had endured cheerfully till their deliverance came; and endurance is victory. Don’t forget that, Milly.”

We visited the Charter House next, and saw many curious things, but I have forgotten them. I saw too much, and Hull remains in my memory like an amazing dream of masts a-rake, intertangled rigging, black barges, ponderous black hulls floating silently past, as if they had no weight. Influences from times long past, and places far off, found their way unerringly to me. The streets and the gray afternoon seemed unreal – like a dream all floated away.

I have a far clearer memory of the dinner we had on our return to the hotel. In my long life, I am sure there are not a dozen dinners I recollect as accurately as this one. Yet it was a very simple meal – just hare soup, and roast duck, and green peas. My father also had celery and cheese, and a glass of port wine, and I had two small raspberry tartlets. But I have that dinner over again today as I write, have it in the same little dingy parlor, with its two open windows. I hear the noise of the streets; I see the picture of Victoria above the chimney piece, and the colored, fancifully cut tissue papers, screening the empty grate; I am sitting at the neatly set table, with its daisy pattern damask cloth and napkins, its old-fashioned knives and forks, and queer-shaped drinking-glasses, and cruet stand. I have never happened to taste hare soup since that day, but I can taste it now. It was a well-cooked meal, eaten with smiles and pleasant conversation and little happy glances at each other. It is dinner number one in my book of memory, though there were neither flowers nor finger bowls on the table. Indeed I do not remember having ever seen a finger bowl at this time and I am not sure, but what I should have considered them as an unpleasant, unmannerly introduction.

Presently we heard a church clock strike, and Father took out his watch and looked at me. “It is time we were going, Milly,” he said cheerfully and I rose and put on my bonnet and gloves. At the wharf we found all in confusion, and The Queen of the Wash ready to sail. There was only time for Father to see me safely on board; then with a few cheerful words and a smiling face he put me in God’s care, and bid me good-bye. I watched him as long as I could see his tall, straight figure among the moving crowd, but he never looked back. I should have been astonished if he had. It was always onward and upward and forward with Father; there was no looking back in his nature, and his physical attitude generally illustrated the feelings and desires of the inner man.

I went at once to my cabin, and being thoroughly weary with my day’s travel and sightseeing I fell asleep, and did not awaken until a woman roused me with the information, that we were near Lynn Regis. It was barely light when I stepped on to the pier, and the ancient place seemed to be fast asleep. No one was in sight, and I asked the captain to send a boy to bring me a carriage. He did so, and I was shortly at The Cross Keys, a hotel standing in the Tuesday Market Place; but feeling still tired and only half-awake I asked for a bedroom, and slept until ten o’clock. This day I had a sense of the most absolute freedom. I could do as I liked; there was no one to obey, and no one to please but myself, and sleep appeared to me at that hour, the most desirable of luxuries. But when I awoke at ten, I was satisfied and fully refreshed, and I dressed myself prettily, and went down stairs and ordered breakfast. After it, I made inquiries about reaching Downham Market, and found there was a kind of stage running between Lynn Regis and Downham Market. The next would leave at noon, which would hurry me, and the last one at three o’clock, and this I resolved to take. For it seemed a great waste of opportunity, not to see something of the old town, when I had the day at my disposal.

I was tired of ships and of water, and wandered up the High Street looking at the shops, and when I came upon a church in Black Goose Street with the door standing open, I went inside. It contained nothing attractive and I was about to leave the building, when an old gentleman led me back to make me notice its three aisles, and the rich and peculiar tracery of the windows and clerestory, and many other things of that kind. But I was not much interested, until he showed me a slab in the pavement, “In memoriam of Thomas Hollingsworth, an eminent bookseller, a man of strictest integrity in his dealings, and much esteemed by gentlemen of taste, for the neatness and elegance of his bindings.”

At this point I remember asking my guide if that inscription was good grammar, adding it does not sound right to me, but then I do not understand grammar.

“Do you know what it means?” he asked sharply.

“Oh, yes!” I answered.

“Then it’s good grammar,” he said decisively.

This remark about grammar, however, brought on me a little lecture concerning a Dominican friar called Galfridus Grammaticus, who lived in Lynn Regis, and compiled and printed the first English and Latin dictionary; and this learned monk introduced another, who may have a rather general interest at this date – Nicholas of Lynn, a Carmelite monk, who in A.D. 1330 sailed to the most northern land in the world – the first Polar expedition on record. Friar Nicholas says, that at the Pole he discovered four indraughts of the ocean, from the four opposite quarters of the world; and I have had good reason during the last three years to retell this story of the first Polar visitor, and to point out that he discovered more than the two latest visitors, and that his narrative is better authenticated.

After leaving St. Nicholas’ Church I sauntered up a street leading me back to the hotel and in doing so passed a jeweler’s shop. My eyes fell upon a bracelet – an old-fashioned bracelet very wide and illuminated by a large stone. I had never possessed a piece of jewelry in all my life, but now I had some money, and I longed for this bracelet. Many times I left the tempting window, but always returned, and finally I went into the shop and asked its price. It was five shillings, and I had twenty shillings. Why not buy it? I hesitated, but at last paid the five shillings and went proudly out of the shop, with the bauble in my pocket. When I reached the hotel, I put it on my arm and felt just a little disappointed at the result. However, I fancied myself wearing it with my silk dress, and thought it would give me an air of great gentility. Then the stage was ready, and I and my silly bracelet went together to Downham Market.

It was perhaps well, that I saw nothing but St. Nicholas’ Church for the mental notes I made there were so few, and so individual, that they settled themselves persistently in my memory. Also, as I had adopted the profession of a teacher, it was creditable to know who made our first dictionary. The Polar expedition lay dormant in my remembrance, until the disputing of the last three years made me recall the information given me so many years ago. Then I came to the conclusion, that any one of the three claims would be just as good as the other, so that if England should stand by her monk’s discovery, it would be hard to disprove her claim; but —

“The fault of the English is the fault of the Dutch,
They never know when they are claiming too much.”

It was about half-past four when I reached Downham Market. The ride was interesting, for the country was quite different from any that I had ever seen. Such green, such deep, living green of the pastures! Such tall strong trees, garlanded at this time of the year with hop vines, twining from branch to branch, and dropping down from their tips, so that the hand could reach them. I saw two fine old manor houses and many lovely cottages. A small, sweet, purple grape climbed over the front, and over the thatched roofs of most of them, and this astonished me, for I had never before known that grapes would grow in the open air in any part of England.

When we approached Miss Berners’, I knew the place. I had dreamed of it when I was a child – a large double-Georgian house, standing amid lawns and trees, and surrounded by a hedge higher than a man. As we came closer I saw from my point of vantage on the top of the coach, about twenty girls of varying ages, scattered about the grounds; some were playing battledore and shuttlecock, others reading, others walking about in pairs, and a couple of nearly grown girls, were taking riding lessons in a paddock, at the side of the house. It was a pretty scene, and the whole party struck me as freely and genuinely happy. I felt a little nervous at the prospect of walking through this bevy of scrutinizing girls, but I saw Miss Berners come to the front door, and I went forward with as much confidence as I could assume; and as soon as I clasped her hand, and looked into her smiling face, I was quite at ease.

After a cup of tea I was taken to my room. My trunk was already there, and Miss Stromberg, my room-mate, was sitting at the open window darning her stockings. She was an odd-looking woman, small and very thin, with slant black eyes, and a great quantity of very coarse black hair. Her face had a flat look, but was full of fire; and her complexion was bad and dark beyond belief.

But if one notices the circumstances, people of nearly the same age readily fraternize with each other. Two old men will sit down in a car and in a few minutes open a conversation, but an old man and young man sitting together, have no courtesies or conversation for each other. It is much the same with women; two mothers will talk of their children, two girls of their lovers, two old women of their past, but an old woman and a young girl sit far apart, no matter how close they may be together.

So when Miss Berners left Miss Stromberg and I alone, we had plenty to say to each other. I asked her if she liked the school and she answered, “I have been here one week, but that is long enough for an opinion. Yes, I like it.”

“What is it that you teach?” I continued.

“I teach the elegant French language to these slow, stupid English girls. It is incredible, but it is the truth, that they can not understand that French is to be spoken with the eyes, the shoulders, and the hands, as well as the tongue. One impertinent little girl as fat as an ox, told me it was not decent to talk in such a way, and that people would call her a mountebank, if she did so. I wish to swear a little, when I think of such stupidity.”

“French!” I ejaculated. “Is that all?”

“That is all. Many other things I could teach, but I keep quiet about them. I have seen that it is wise to do, but a very great folly to overdo. Maria Stromberg has learned many things since she began to teach. Will you not dress a little for the evening? Put on a white dress if you have one. White is your color.”

“Will you not dress first?” I asked. “In this small room, two cannot dress together.”

“Dress, while I finish my stockings. I wish that the Strombergs of Riga and Uleaborg could take notice that their daughter is compelled to darn her stockings. Is there any more plebeian occupation? And my feet abhor a darned stocking. They will pinch me all the time I wear them.”

As I dressed we chattered, yet when I had finished my toilet, I was rather pleased with the result. But Miss Stromberg rose impetuously, threw down her darning, and pushing me into a chair, uncoiled the hair I had so carefully arranged.

“Mon Dieu!” she cried. “It is impossible. Look here!” and in a few minutes she had it raised in puffs, and knots, that added two inches or more to my height, and imparted to me an air of great intellectuality.

“How can it be?” I cried. “I do not look like the same girl.”

“No, but you look as you ought to look. You were masquerading in a madonna front, and a Grecian knot at the nape of your neck. Do you not know that throwing back the hair from the brow, reveals whatever is good in you?”

Then I lifted my bracelet and asked her to fasten it. An expression of pity, or contempt, flashed over her face, but she said kindly, “Ah! but you can not wear it here. Jewelry is forbidden. Put it at the bottom of your trunk; it will be safe there.”

She did not resume her darning, but slipped into a silver gray dress of lustrous silk. A pair of gray slippers stood on a table, and I was sure no full grown human foot could get its toes into them, but she stepped into them with the greatest ease. Then we went down stairs, and Miss Berners introduced me to the girls, and after tea we had a pleasant evening together.

I shall not detain my readers with any account of this school. It was the usual boarding school of its date, under very delightful surroundings and conditions. I remained until the following June in Downham Market, working hard, but willingly, and forming many agreeable acquaintances, but not one among them, that had any influence or bearing upon my future life. I remember their names, and their personalities, and can go all through their simple or splendid homes, but that is all. Doubtless we were merely introduced to each other for our next reincarnation. Then we may have a more fortunate meeting.

I liked all the people I was brought into constant contact with, but if I had not liked them, Miss Stromberg would have been sufficient. I really loved the clever little woman. She spoke five languages; she played with the magical tang and touch of a gypsy with a violin; she danced like a fairy; and when she sang her North Russian songs, you wept with pity for the lonely souls, on the great snow plains, who out of their own deep sadness, caused their very music to weep. She made all her dresses, and we envied their cut and style, and she knew perfectly all the feminine arts of the toilet.

It was not her fault that I did not become a creditable French scholar. She did her best with me but I had no aptitude for languages; and like the other “stupid English girls” I found it silly to talk with four of my members at once; my eyes at that time had not learned speech, my shoulders I had been told from my childhood, to keep down and well back, and my hands had a hundred duties of their own. But for many, many other things, I thank her even to this day. I kissed her good-bye in June. I was sure we would meet in September, but I never saw her again – never, never, even heard from her. But I remember yet, how patiently she rubbed off the crudities of my insular education, and how day by day her kind tactful ways, led me to a far lower estimate of my own attainments; for measuring myself by Maria Stromberg, I could not but see how little I knew, how unpolished I really was, and especially how far behind the mark in that control of temper and sweetness of thought and intention, that made all Maria Stromberg said and did, agreeable and welcome. I have never forgotten her; I wonder if she still lives! Wherever in God’s universe she now dwells, I hope she is happy, and still remembers me.

On the last evening of my stay in Downham Market, Miss Berners asked me to walk with her in the garden, and while doing so, she told me she intended to remove her school to some London suburb. She thought probably to Richmond. I was glad to hear this. The thought of London was an enchantment, and I promised to come to her as soon as I could in any way help the settlement of the new home. We parted mutually pleased and hopeful, and the next morning I took a train for London, and from thence one direct to Kendal.

I had twenty pounds in my pocket book, and I felt that my ten months’ faithful work had given me a right to turn homeward, and then as soon as I did so, I was impatient of any delay. I found the whole family at tea, and how happily I joined the party, any one can imagine. I had so much to tell about the school, and was so proud that we were going to remove it to London. Downham Market had become almost contemptible, and I spoke of it as a dull, country village, where nothing ever happened but a horse or a cattle fair. After tea, Father went to his study, and I followed and laid the twenty sovereigns beside him.

“They are yours, dear Father,” I said. “I do not need them, and they will help Mary’s and Alethia’s school bills.”

He looked at them, and at me, and his eyes filled. “Milly! Milly!” he answered, “you are a good child, and I thank God for you, but you must keep your money; Father does not need it. You know about your Uncle Bell, do you not?”

“I know nothing of Uncle Bell, Father. I wrote to him once, but he never answered my letter.”

“Then I must tell you, that on the fifth of last February, your mother’s birthday, he called on Mother and gave her the row of cottages standing on Tenter Fell. Now, Milly, the income from there, just about balances the loss I made through that villain, Blackpool. So, my dear, we have enough, and even a little to spare; what more does a child of God want?” and as he spoke, he gently pushed the sovereigns towards me.

“No one told me about Uncle Bell,” I said. “I wish I had known.”

“I remember, we thought it best not to name it. You would not have saved twenty pounds if you had known of the gift, and you might have missed some fine lessons, that only a sense of poverty teaches.”

I soon went back to Mother. I found her sitting quiet in the gloaming. I told her about the twenty pounds, and said, “Dear Mother, you and I will divide it. Will you take half?”

“I will take it gladly,” she answered. “There are so many little things a woman wants, that I do not like to ask Father for.”

“I know that, Mother,” I answered. “Have I not seen you alter the dressing of your hair, because you broke one of your side combs, and did not wish to trouble Father about a new pair. I can recall twenty things, that were a distress to you to want, and which you did without rather than – ”

“Milly, that ten pounds puts all right. I shall get what I want out of it.”

“Did not Uncle Bell leave you some money, Mother?”

“Did Father tell you so?”

“Yes, he said it covered the loss he made. Now you will have a small income, Mother. Will it begin soon?”

“It began at once. The cottages were a gift. Father went the next morning and drew February’s rents.”

“How much did they amount to, Mother?”

“I do not know, Milly. He never told me. He has drawn them now for five months, but I have never seen a farthing of the money. I have felt sometimes, as if it would be pleasant – just to see it, and have it in my hands,” and the tears welled slowly into her soft brown eyes.

“But I do not understand,” I continued. “Father would not touch my money, yet he takes all of yours without leave or license. What does it mean?”

“It means that I am a wife. All I had, or might have, became your father’s as soon as I was his wife. You are yet a spinster, and have some rights in your own earnings.”

“But suppose you have no legal rights, all the more Father ought to give your every right. It is unkind, unjust, utterly contemptible!” I cried in something of a passion. “I am ashamed of Father!”

“No! No! All men do as he does, and many do a great deal worse. Father has never seen, or heard of wives treated any differently. If he knew better, he would do better.”

“Then, Mother,” I said, “he ought to know better for he will not escape punishment on the plea of ignorance. I have often wondered why John Bunyan makes Ignorance go into hell by the back door. He is right. Such ignorance as you make an excuse for Father is a sneaking sin. It suits back doors. I would rather be a brazen thief, and go in swearing by the main entrance. Father ought to be told the truth, and you ought to ask for your money.”

“It is too late, Milly. Say no more. I have got so far through life without money. Until I was married, I had to go to my father for every shilling – since then, I have gone to your father. But I have ten pounds now. I never had as much money before, to spend as I liked. I feel quite rich.”

This conversation sunk into my soul. A great pity for this sweet, patient, penniless mother, suffering so unnoticed and uncomplaining the need of many womanly trifles, made me childishly angry. The next day I went to Father with “Pilgrim’s Progress” in my hand, and asked him what Bunyan meant “by putting Ignorance into hell in such an ignominious manner?” I followed this question with others, which made him look at me with a queer, thoughtful expression, and then relapse into a silence so marked, as to be virtually a dismissal.

It is a joy to me this day to remember that on this visit, I was able to do many little things for Mother which made life pleasanter to her; for Father was certainly much worse, and it appeared almost wrong to permit him to preach. Yet I could see that in the pulpit the spiritual man had not lost control; for the same lucid, telling sentences followed each other with a fiery eloquence, as in the past years. “Mr. Huddleston isn’t sick in the pulpit,” people would say as they walked thoughtfully home, from one of those last passionate exhortations.




CHAPTER VII

OVER THE BORDER




“The latest Gospel is, know thy work, and do it.”


Late in August I had a letter from Miss Berners saying, she was now at home in Richmond, and wished me to come to her, as soon as I could. This summons to duty was pleasant, although I left home with a heavy heart. A presentiment of sorrow was on me, and I could not help following my soul back and forward, in endless ways of reminiscence and foreboding. About my father especially, I had a sort of sacred terror. And if any of my readers think that I was too much bound to my family, let me remind them that our families are the chief thing, except in societies like Lacedæmon, which went in for “efficiency” and righteously perished from the face of the earth. Father! Mother! Child! Is there any holier Trinity than this?

I arrived in Richmond after a hard day’s travel, late in the evening. It was almost dark when my cabman found the house in a rather out-of-the-way suburb. It did not jump to my eyes pleasantly, as did the house in Downham Market. It was a lonely place, and there was no sign of light or habitation about it. But Miss Berners welcomed me gladly, and as I drank a cup of tea beside her, she spoke to me of her prospects. They were far from hopeful, for only three of her old pupils were coming to Richmond.

“Miss Stokes has opened a school in my old home,” she said mournfully, “and the girls have just gone back there.”

“She was their principal teacher when you were there,” I answered.

“I know. It was very clever of her to step into my shoes, but I fear it will ruin me.”

“It is a wonder you did not anticipate this move,” I ventured. “It was so natural.”

“It was very unkind and dishonorable, if that is natural,” she answered, nor was she able to see the matter in any other light.

It was an uncomfortable settling to work. The furniture of the old home did not look as if it belonged to this mournful relic of a once splendid mansion, and there ought to have been many things bought, which Miss Berners would not spend money for, while the result of her speculation was uncertain. For the new scholars came in so slowly, that I took on myself all the teaching there was to do, excepting French. The busy school, the public recitals and receptions, we had been promised, were very far off; and the days were set to notes of constant disappointment. The work was hard, for I taught individually; the school hours were lengthened, and music lessons were to be given when their work was over.

I was not happy, but I had a letter to deliver, which I believed would bring me a little change and pleasure; and on the second Sunday afternoon after the service in the Wesleyan Chapel was over, I waited for the preacher, who was the famous Dr. Farrar, and gave him the following note from my father:



Dear Brother Farrar,

My daughter Amelia is likely to be teaching in Richmond this winter. I know you will give her counsel, and show her kindness, if needed. Your brother in Christ,

    William Henry Huddleston.

Dr. Farrar read the note with a pleasant countenance, and then smiled at me. “So you are Amelia?” he asked, and I answered, “Yes, sir.” Then he called three ladies who were standing a little apart, and said, “Esther, this is Amelia Huddleston. You remember my correspondence with her father, I am sure.”

“Oh, yes, about that weary Tractarian Movement. I remember it very well,” she answered, and then turning to me continued, “I am glad to see you, Amelia. Come home with us, and spend the evening with my girls.” This was the beginning of a friendship that enabled me to endure cheerfully the weariness and monotony of my duties. For amid many outside annoyances I built silently on my trust in God, and I did my day’s work loyally.

Richmond was then, and may be yet, the seat of a great Wesleyan college for the preparation of young men for the ministry; and of this college Dr. Farrar was the principal. His family consisted of his wife and two lovely daughters, the eldest being just my own age. We were friends at once, our mutual knowledge of Mr. Punshon, forming an excellent basis for our intimacy. And after this introduction, I spent all my spare hours at Dr. Farrar’s, where I was always made freely welcome.

Joyful or sorrowful the days go by, and at the end of October we had eight pupils, but only three of these eight were boarders, and the great empty house that should have been full of youth and happiness, was a lonely anxious place. And it was at this time I heard that the sorrow so long expected had arrived. My father after preaching to a crowded chapel had hurried home, and fallen across the threshold in a strong, and not to be disputed epileptic fit. Then with heart-breaking reluctance, he had signed his resignation from the active ministry, and had seen another take his place. In great anguish he had prayed that this cup might pass from him; but, no, he had to drink it to the very dregs. Yet Mother wrote me, that he had not missed the vision of the comforting angel; for vision is the cup of strength only given in some great calamity.

I felt severely the grief that I knew filled every room in my home, but God had sent it, and He knew what was best. This trust was not a mere formula of words; it was a veritable and active faith with me. I trusted God. I leaned my child heart upon the everlasting Love of “our Father in heaven” and the days went on, and I did my work, and believed that all would come right.

Miss Berners’ affairs, however, grew every week worse and worse, and just before Christmas, I went into her room one morning, and found her lying on the bed weeping bitterly. She opened her eyes, and looked sadly at me and I asked, “Is it worth while continuing the fight? You are growing thin and gray, and you have not gained a step.”

“O Amelia!” she answered, “I have made a great mistake.”

“Every day is making it worse. Why not stop it?”

“My expenses are double my income.”

“Then it is robbery to continue them.”

“What would you do? Tell me truly, Amelia.”

“I would close the school this very hour,” I answered. “I would tell those three Downham Market girls to pack their trunks, and send them home by the noon train. At nine o’clock I would send those five unhappy-looking day scholars home also. Give all you have to your creditors, and go home yourself, and rest awhile. Then you can doubtless retrieve this great mistake.”

“And what will you do, Amelia?” she asked.

“I do not know yet,” I answered. “I must think.”

After the Downham Market girls had been sent home, I went to my room and began to consider my own affairs. I remembered first, the loss in my father’s income. That was an irreparable loss. I thought of all the expenses incident to constant sickness in a house, of the education of Mary and Alethia, of the necessity of Jane’s presence to assist Mother and I said to myself, “You, Amelia, are the one person not needful, and you must in some way provide for yourself.” I opened my purse, and found I had fourteen shillings. How was I to provide for myself? I was a stranger in Richmond. I knew no one but the Farrars. Perhaps Mr. Farrar might – and then I tried to imagine what Mr. Farrar might do for me. I thought until my head burned, but thank God! there was no fear in my thoughts. That paltering, faltering element, was not among my natural enemies. Far from it, I found something magnetic in extremities. If I was ever indifferent to events, it was because they were only moderate. To possess my soul in patience was a difficulty; to possess it in resistance and struggle was more natural, and more agreeable.

I bathed my hot head and face, and then did what I ought to have done at first – I went to my Father in heaven, and told Him all my sorrow and perplexity. And as I talked with Him, tears like a soft rain fell upon my prayer, and I rose up full of strength and comfort, whispering as I dressed myself for the street, “Why art thou cast down, O my soul, and why art thou disquieted within me? The Lord is thy refuge, and underneath are the everlasting arms.”

I went quickly to Dr. Farrar, and I found him at home; then without hesitation I told him all that troubled me. He answered, “You are right, Amelia, and I can find work for you, if you are not too proud to take it.”

“Pride has nothing to do with my duty,” I replied.

“Then listen,” he continued. “You must have noticed that during the last ten years there has been a tremendous output of national energy and wealth for the education of the lower classes. National schools, and Bell and Lancaster schools, are going up all over England; and we Wesleyans, could not sit still when all other churches were working. Indeed we are going to build a school in all towns where the chapel membership is able to support one.”

“I believe there is such a school in Kendal,” I said.

“Our wisest men have decided, that a certain form of teaching called the Stowe method, will be best for the class of children we wish to reach; and this method is taught in the Normal School at Glasgow, where we have now nearly forty young men and women studying it. Now, Amelia, if you will go to Glasgow to learn this method, I will promise you a good school, and a good salary, and you could bring your father and mother to wherever you are located, and make your homes together.”

Then with the daring decision of young fresh faculties, I cried out, “O Dr. Farrar! I should like that better than anything else.”

“The children may be mostly poor children,” he added.

“I used to long to be a missionary. I can call it a mission work. Oh, I should enjoy it! But – ” and I looked doubtfully at him – “but this course of instruction, will it cost much money?” I asked.

“Our Board of Education will look after that,” he answered. “They pay the Normal School so much for every pupil, and they will also give you one pound every week for your rooms and food. You can live on that, I should say?”

“Very well indeed.”

“The Board will also allow you five pounds for traveling expenses, but – ”

“Yes, Dr. Farrar, but what?”

“When you have won your diploma, and have been appointed to a school, the Board will expect you to gradually pay back what it spends for your education.”

“That is right,” I answered. “I should like to pay it back, but if I should die, would my father have to pay it for me?”

“No, no, child! Death pays all debts. You are more likely to marry, than to die.”

“And what then, Doctor?”

“If you marry well, the Board will not count its loss in your gain.”

We talked over this subject thoroughly, and I assured him of my perfect satisfaction, and even pleasure, in the proposition. “If that is so,” he said, “go and pack your trunk, take it in the morning to the Easton Square Railway Station, and leave it in the baggage room; then come to me at this address,” and he wrote a few lines for my direction. “The Board meets there to-morrow at ten o’clock to examine applicants, and you will be questioned a little, no doubt, but I think they will not puzzle you.”

“Not unless they are grammarians, and ask me to parse a sentence.”

As I was leaving he asked, “Have you money enough to take you to London?”

“I have fourteen shillings,” I said. “Miss Berners can give me nothing.”

“Fourteen shillings is enough. The rest of your traveling expenses will be provided.”

So I went back to the defunct school, and packed my clothes, and helped Miss Berners to pack all her personal belongings. We talked very little. The past was done with, the future uncertain, but she promised to send the money due me to my mother as soon as she saw her friends in Reading.

“Will you remain in Reading?” I asked.

“No!” she answered. “I will take passage on a good ship, that intends to be at sea for a year, or more. I wish to be where I can never get a bill, or a dunning letter, or hear the postman’s knock.”

We rose early in the morning, and had a hurried cup of coffee and then said good-bye. It was an uneasy and uncomfortable parting, and I was astonished that I could not feel any regret in it. There was only a sense of something finished and done with, and I believe Miss Berners forgot me, as soon as my cab was out of sight. But within a week she sent the money owing me, and said she was going to Louisiana. At that time Louisiana was as little known to the average Englishman or woman, as Timbuctoo. We asked a young man who had been shooting game in Canada, “Where is Louisiana?” and he answered, “It is one of the West Indian Islands, belonging to France.” Then I reflected that Miss Berners spoke French pretty well, and could probably take care of herself.

I left my luggage as directed by Dr. Farrar, and went to the Wesleyan Board of Education. It had begun to rain by this time, and the place looked mean and unhappy. But there was a good fire in the small waiting-room, and three young men, and one young woman already there. For a moment I had a sickening terror of what I was doing, but I quickly put my foot upon it. “Why art thou cast down, O my soul?” I asked almost angrily, and my soul knew better than to shirk, or shrink before that question.

All was more favorable than I expected. Dr. Farrar had evidently spoken to the Board, which consisted of six or eight nice, clerical old gentlemen. Probably all of them had daughters of their own, for they were very kind, and before considering my case, spoke in the most sympathetic manner of my father’s affliction. Every one had some pleasant memory of him, or some particular message to send. And they were so cheerful, that I looked into the faces of my inquisitors with confiding smiles. Upon the whole, the examination was an easy one, and nobody named grammar. I came off with flying colors, and I really think the Board believed themselves to have secured an unusually bright and clever teacher. There was nothing more to do, except sign a paper enrolling myself among the Wesleyan pupils at the Glasgow Normal School, which paper also contained the Board’s obligation to pay me one pound weekly. My traveling expenses were given to me in hand, and then I bid all good morning, feeling truly in my heart the sweetest and strongest gratitude, for their kindness towards me.

I got a train for Kendal about one o’clock, but did not arrive there until late. The door had been locked, and Mother unlocked it with such a joyful cry of “Milly! Milly! Milly!” as brought every one to meet me. I shall never forget that home-coming. Father came down stairs again, the fire was rebuilt, and a nice little meal prepared, while Jane, Mary and Alethia hung round me as if I had been lost and found again.

The best part of that happy meeting was the pleasure it gave Father to hear of the sympathy and praise, that had followed the mention of his name to the Board of Education. I repeated every pleasant word twice over. He did not ask me to do so, but I knew the friendly messages were the sweetest music in his ears. And when I finally told them I was going to Glasgow, Father said,

“It is a Providence, Milly! I had a letter not a month ago from my old friend John Humphreys, who is now Collector of Excise for the port of Glasgow. Either he, or Mrs. Humphreys, will look for proper rooms for you. They will know just what you want.”

The letter to the Humphreys asking this favor was written at once, and in four days we received something like the following answer to it:



Dear William,

We have rented your daughter a parlor and bedroom with the sister of my grocer. His shop is in Sauchiehall Street, and they live above it. They are most respectable people, and have no other boarders. It is also near the school. She will be very comfortable there. Let us know exactly when she is coming, and either Mrs. Humphreys or I will meet her train, and see her safely housed.

    Your true friend,
    John Humphreys.

Then it was decided I should go to Glasgow on the third of January, 1849, by the ten o’clock morning train, which would allow me to reach my destination before it was dark. Until that day I rested myself body and soul in the sweetest influences of love and home, and when the third of January came, I was full of new strength and new hope, and ready for whatever had been appointed to happen unto me.

My dear mother went with me as far as Penrith. She intended to visit my brother Willie’s grave, and perhaps spend a night with her friend, Mrs. Lowther. Fortunately we had the railway carriage to ourselves and, oh, how sweet were the confidences that made that two hours’ drive ever memorable to me! At Penrith we parted. Penrith is a mile or more from the Caledonian Line, but there were vehicles there to meet the train, and I watched Mother pass from my sight with smiles, and the pleasant flutter of her handkerchief.

Then by a real physical effort I cast off the influences I had indulged for a week, and began to allow my nature to imbibe the strength of the hills through which I was passing – hills beyond hills, from blue to gray – hills sweeping round the horizon like a great host at rest. Down their sides the living waters came dancing and glancing, and, oh, but the lift of His hills, and the waft of His wings, filled my heart with joy and strength. Now and then we passed a small stone house, rude and simple, with a moorland air, and I felt that the pretty English cottages with their thatched roofs and blooming gardens, would have been out of place in the silent spaces of these mountain solitudes.

It grew very cold as we neared Carlisle. Every one I saw was buttoned-up and great-coated, and I was sensible of as great a change in humanity as in nature. I had missed all the way from Kendal the workingman’s paper cap, the distinctive badge of labor in those days. If there were workingmen around Carlisle they did not wear it. All the men I saw wore large caps of heavy blue flannel, sometimes bordered with red – an ugly head-gear, but apparently just the thing wanted by the big, bony men who had adopted it. I saw a crowd of them at Gretna Green, where a woman got into the train, and rode with me as far as Ecclefechan. She was not a pleasant woman, but I asked her about this big blue cap, and with a look of contempt for my ignorance, she answered, “They are just the lad’s bonnets. Every one wears them. Where do you come from?”

“London,” I replied with an “air.”

“Ay, I thought so. You’re a queer one, not to know a blue bonnet, when you see it.”

Then I had the clue to a dashing, stirring song which had always puzzled me a little, “All the Blue Bonnets are over the Border.” It meant, that these blue-bonneted giants, were over the English border, raiding and harrying the shepherds and farmers of the northern counties. And I smiled to myself, as I remembered the kind of welcome always waiting for them, whenever the slogan passed from fell to fell:

“Cumberland hot,
Westmoreland hot,
Prod the Scot!
For all the blue bonnets are over the Border!”




CHAPTER VIII

LOVE IS DESTINY




“Love is the secret of life. Love redeemeth. Love lifts up. Love enlightens. Love advances the soul. Love hath everlasting remembrance. Love is a ransom, and the tears thereof are a prayer. Oh, little Soul, if rich in Love thou art mighty.

“Love is Destiny. The heart is its own fate.”


In the cold, hard light of the winter afternoon, we reached Glasgow; entering the city by the Buchanan Street Station. I stepped quickly out of the carriage, and saw Mr. Humphreys looking for me. He was about fifty-six years old, tall, and rather stout, with a pleasant face, and snow-white hair. I walked towards him, and the moment he saw me, he smiled, and nodded his head.

“I was looking in the first-class carriages,” he said.

“I was in the second-class,” I answered. “I could not waste money on the first, just for a short ride.” Then he laughed, and, clasping my hand, asked, “How many trunks have you?”

“One,” I answered.

“Any parcels, valises, or bandboxes?”

“Nothing of the sort.”

“I never heard the like. What kind of a girl are you? Stand right here until I bring a carriage; then I will take both you, and your one trunk, to Miss Pollock’s.”

In a few minutes he came with a carriage, and we were driven rapidly up Sauchiehall Street, until we came to an Arcade. Here we stopped, and, as there was a large grocer’s shop there, I knew it was at the end of my journey.

“Pollock,” said Mr. Humphreys, “let a couple of your big lads carry Miss Huddleston’s trunk upstairs;” and then I was introduced, and told Miss Pollock had been looking for me, and my rooms were ready and comfortable.

I thought I would go through the shop, but no, Mr. Humphreys took me to a stone stairway in the Arcade – a stairway pipe-clayed white as snow – and, after climbing three flights, I saw an open front door and a nice-looking woman, about forty years old, waiting to receive me. Mr. Humphreys would not go into the house, but told me to be dressed at five o’clock the next day. “Mrs. Humphreys wishes you to dine with us,” he said, “and we shall also have a few friends, so you must make yourself smart. Five o’clock!”

Then I heard him going rapidly down the stairway, and I turned to Miss Pollock with a smile. She took me into a little parlor, plainly furnished, but clean and neat. There was a bright fire in the grate, and a small, round table, set for one person, before it. She brought me tea and lamb chops, and some orange marmalade, and delicious rolls, and I thoroughly enjoyed myself. The next morning I unpacked my trunk, put my clothing in convenient places, and took my books into the parlor. I had a silver lamp that Miss Berners gave me, and many pretty little knick-knacks, and I was delighted with my sitting-room, when I had arranged these ornaments.

At four o’clock I had a cup of tea, and then dressed myself in readiness for Mr. Humphreys’ call. I was a little at a loss to know how to dress, but white could not be out of place on a girl, so I put on a white lustrous alpaca, trimmed with narrow bands of white satin. My hair was well and becomingly arranged, and I had my satin slippers, and long, white, lace mitts, in a bag over my arm. I thought I looked very pretty, and Mr. Humphreys said so, as he gave me a fresh camilla to pin in front of my dress.

As I entered the Humphreys’ house Mrs. Humphreys gave me a hearty welcome, and, as soon as I was ready, introduced me to a number of middle-aged ladies and gentlemen, who were sitting or walking about in the large parlors. I wondered at seeing no young people, but every one was so kind, I never thought of disappointment. I was particularly attracted by a Mrs. Semple, a tall, dark woman, with unmistakable signs of having been a great beauty. The moment I was introduced to her, she said,

“You can leave the lassie wi’ me, Mistress Humphreys. I’ll make her as wise as mysel’ anent the notables in the room. I’m feared there’s few to brag about, but there’s nae use in letting strangers ken we’re just common folk.”

In pursuance of this intention, she said, as I was seated beside her, “Look at Peter McIntosh. Do you see the man?”

“I do not know him,” I answered.

“Then I’ll make you acquaint. Peter is a good man to know, and his wife is weel worthy o’ him. Peter is a notable shoemaker. He makes shoes by the thousands, and sends them to America for sale.”

“Really?”

“Yes. His factory is in the Goose Dubs. He’ll take you to see it willingly. Ship loads o’ his shoes go to the Yankees, but they are getting on to his ways, and he had better make shoes while he can, for they’ll beat him at his own game soon. The little body in violet silk is his wife; she is aye trotting after him. How long have you known John Humphreys?”

“A few hours, but he is an old friend of my father’s.”

“Weel, that’s a fine beginning. John is another Glasgow notable. He’s only an exciseman, if you come dawn to facts, but they ca’ him a Supervisor. It’s a grand place for John, and he fills it wi’ great credit to himsel’. The big man he is talking to is called Sage. His wife hasna’ ta’en her e’en off you since you came into the room. She’ll be telling hersel’ that you will make a braw wife for her son Alick. Alick will be here anon. Tak’ care, or you’ll lose your heart to him. Thanks be! there’s the dinner bell at the last, but it is three minutes past ordered time. Annie Humphreys ought to be reprimanded – only her husband daurna do it,” and she lifted her long velvet train, and took Mr. Sage’s arm as she expressed this opinion.

I never was at such a dinner before, and I never saw such dinners outside of Scotland. I do not remember a thing we had to eat, except ice cream, and, as it was the first time I ever saw, or tasted ice cream, there is no wonder it has a place in my memory. It was a lingering pleasure of food eaten with constant merriment that charmed me. Then, when there was nothing on the shining mahogany but the nuts and fruits and the big toddy bowl, then, indeed, if it was not the feast of reason, it was the flow of soul. Song followed song, and story followed story. At first the songs were comic, such as the “Laird o’ Cockpen,” or “O Johnnie Cope, Are You Waking Yet?”, but, as the music opened their hearts, these easily passed into the most passionate national songs; and, in an hour, there were only sentimental Scotchmen present. Every one was then tearful about Prince Charlie. Two generations previously, the dinner would have been broken up as a Jacobite meeting. But, oh, how I enjoyed it! A little later I said so to Mrs. Semple, and she answered,

“Dinna delude yoursel’ anent thae men wiping their eyes, as they sing, they are only specimens of the after-dinner Scot.”

“They are full of patriotic feeling,” I said.

“To be sure, after dark, and over the toddy, but they have been in Union Street, and Buchanan Street, Virginia Street, and the Cowcaddens all day long, doing what? Getting their shilling’s worth for their shilling, ay, their farthing’s worth for their farthing. Where was their patriotism then? Wait till the Sawbath Day, and I’ll show you the Scot who is a Son of the Covenant, and who wouldn’t lose his soul – on that occasion – for the whole world.”

Just as she said these words, she rose hurriedly to her feet, crying pleasantly, “There’s my Willie! We’ll hae the dancing now,” and immediately a bevy of girls and young men pushed aside the portières, and curtsied to the company. Then the elder men and women went into the out-of-the-way corners, and played “Catch the Ten” or “Bagatelle,” though some men of fifty years old, or even more, danced with great spirit in the national reels and strathspeys. I danced once with Mr. Humphreys, and was stepping a pretty measure with Mrs. Semple’s Willie, when Mrs. Sage’s son, Alick, entered. Immediately I caught his look of pleasure and admiration, and something I knew not what, passed between us, so that, when he was introduced to me, we both felt it to be a supernumerary ceremony.

I have been a little diffuse concerning this dinner, because it represented fairly the household hospitality of that time. I dare say that they have a more stylish mode now, but I doubt if, with the elegant restraint of later days, they have preserved the old delightful flow of song and story, and that intense national spirit, which made one involuntarily listen for the bagpipes, though the music was all in the imagination. Many such entertainments I went to that winter; always on Saturday nights to the McIntoshes’, where there was sure to be a boiled turkey stuffed with oysters and served with oyster sauce. In another house, to which I went frequently, they had roast turkey stuffed with plum pudding, and an old negro cook in Texas told me his old master always had his turkeys stuffed in the latter way. If any one thinks it could not be good, I advise them just to try the recipe.

The two following days being Saturday and Sunday I rested, looked over my clothing, and wrote long letters home. I also wrote Dr. Farrar, and told him how comfortably all had been arranged for me. I was a little nervous about my entry into the Normal School, but when Monday morning came, I was ready for what it demanded, and more curious than frightened. It was a foggy morning, and the big building amid the small, poor buildings around it, loomed up gray and forbidding in its bare black yard, where a lot of children were trying to be playful, in the most discouraging surroundings. The janitor took me to the recitation hall, opened the door, and left me. There were groups of men and groups of women standing about, talking in an unconstrained way; others sat alone on the benches of the great gallery, which rose, bench above bench, nearly to the ceiling. No one spoke to me, and I sat down and looked curiously at the women, who could be guilty of such unkindness. I am sure many of them wished to speak, but did not know how to take the initiative. If they would only have trusted their hearts, and said a word of welcome, they need not have feared they were breaking any social law. Kindness is always fashionable, and always welcome.

In a few minutes an exceedingly tall, fair, thin man slowly entered, and every one went instantly to their places. I presented to him Dr. Farrar’s letter of introduction, and he threw it on a small table, and said irritably, “Third row, left corner.” Somehow I walked straight to the place indicated.

I am not going to describe this school, or the method of teaching used there. I have but an imperfect remembrance of all concerning it, and the system is likely superseded long ago by something better. Yet, I was much interested in the hall recitations and exercises; and the teaching of men and women together, on the basis of perfect mental equality, was then a great novelty, and far from being universally approved. My own impression was that in every department the women excelled the male students. Certainly Professor Hyslop appeared to think so, and to please himself hugely and frequently, by illustrations of the fact.

During my first hour in that room, I saw him call a young man to the blackboard, and give him an algebraic problem to solve. He failed completely. Another young man was called, and also failed. Then the Professor said, with an air of assurance, “Miss Grace Laing,” and a girl of about eighteen stepped lightly forward, made a few figures, and, to me, cabalistic signs. The Professor’s face brightened, and he said decidedly, “correct,” and Miss Grace Laing walked back to her place. The men, however, were not ungenerous, for a half-audible murmur of admiration followed the Professor’s verdict of “correct.”

The theological lessons were exceedingly interesting, for theology touches the average Scot on both his weakest and strongest side, and a barely veiled dispute was always lingering between the Calvinistic and Arminian students. Every lesson, however, in that school turned to argument; the system provoked it, and was intended to do so.

I liked the life at the school, but very early felt within myself that it was only a stepping-stone to my real destiny; and the remembrance we give to stepping-stones, is washed out by every other tide. But I did all my duty and enjoyed doing it, so the days were full of pleasant work, the evenings of pleasant company, and the time went swiftly by, though it left none of those sharp, indelible etchings on memory which direct personality gives. I was in a crowd there, and all my recollections of the place are evasive and uncertain.

With the advent of June I began to look forward to home and home influences; then I received an invitation to join an excursion party, going with Captain Scott on his own steamer to “Fife and all the lands about it,” north as far as St. Andrews, and then further north, even to the Orkneys and Shetland Islands. I could not bear to think of missing such an opportunity, and I wrote Dr. Farrar and asked him to obtain liberty for me to accept the invitation. He sent me a kind permission to do so, saying he had no doubt many would afterward see the places I visited through my eyes. And, as I have written “Jan Vedder’s Wife,” “A Daughter of Fife,” “Prisoners of Conscience,” “Paul and Christina,” “Thyra Varrick,” “Sheila Vedder,” “The Heart of Jessie Laurie,” and so forth, from material and impressions gathered on this voyage, Dr. Farrar’s estimate has brought forth fruit a thousand-fold. I need not enter into details here: the above books will amply reveal to their readers the noble men and women of “the ancient kingdom,” and of the Ultima Thule of the Shetlands.

When the trip was over I did not return to Glasgow; we landed at Leith, and from Edinburgh I got a train direct to Kendal, where I arrived about tea time. I found all better than I expected. My father had assumed the duty of visiting the poor and the sick in their affliction, of comforting the broken in heart, and of going as far as a mortal man may go with the dying. Mother thought he was happy in his self-imposed charge, but he must have had terrible hours among the books he no longer used; for he was only fifty-five years old at this time, and still retained much physical strength and beauty.

I had two weeks of perfect peace and happiness, and then, just as I was thinking of returning to Glasgow, I received a letter from Mrs. Humphreys, telling me that the government had removed Mr. Humphreys to Liverpool, and that they were on the point of leaving for that city. She said further, that she had had a conversation with Mrs. Semple about me, and that Mrs. Semple was anxious I should stay with her; she pointed out the advantages of living in such respectable care and surroundings, and urged me to accept Mrs. Semple’s offer.

Here was another stepping-stone towards destiny: where would it lead me? Mrs. Semple had a large circle of friends, and entertained and went out frequently. I should meet at her house a different class of people; traders, perhaps, but traders with gentry behind them; ministers, lawyers, and men who had to do with books and literature, and doubtless women who might be more stylish, and perhaps less kind, than Mrs. Humphreys or Mrs. McIntosh. It looked pleasant enough in prospect, and, I may as well say, it proved pleasant enough in reality.

I found, on my return to Glasgow, that Miss Pollock and her brother were on their way to Australia; then, my course being quite clear, I went to Mrs. Semple. She received me joyfully, and at first would not hear of my paying a farthing for my board; but I soon convinced her that she would have to take the sum it had cost me to live with Miss Pollock. Of course, even then, I had greatly the best of the bargain – handsome rooms to dwell in, an excellent table, and ready sympathy in all my perplexities, likes and dislikes. In a way I made the balance more even by giving to my hostess those little helps and personal attentions I would have given to my mother, if in her place, and we were mutually pleased and satisfied.

When I returned to the school, Professor Hyslop looked glumly at me, and hoped I had “enough of stravaging,” and was ready to attend to my duty. I assured him I was glad to do so, but I was not glad in my heart. A kind of dissatisfaction lurked in all my plans. I wanted, I knew not what. I worked steadily, but with a kind of eager looking forward to something beyond the work.

One morning Mrs. Semple and I were eating a luxurious little breakfast. The sunshine and the fresh air came in through the open window, and some working men were going up West Regent Street, whistling delightfully. I was happy, but thoughtful, and Mrs. Semple said, “You’re thinking lessons, and that isna in our bargain – lovers would be mair wise-like. What did you dream last night?”

“Why,” I answered, “I had a singular dream. I was thinking about it, when you said lessons.”

“Tell me, then.”

“I dreamed of going into a large warehouse, full to the roof of bundles of gray and white wool. Many men were at desks writing, but no one spoke, and I walked forward, until I came to a door covered with green baize, and pushed it open. Then a young man, who sat writing at a handsome desk, turned and looked at me, saying in a pleasant, authoritative way, ‘Come in, Milly. I have been waiting for you.’ The dream passed away as he spoke.”

“What kind of a young man? Handsome?”

“Yes, very handsome. He was dressed in a suit of shepherd tartan.”

“That is likely enough. Every other man you meet, is wearing shepherd tartan. It is precious few that look decent in it.”

“My dream-man looked well in it.”

“A red or green necktie with it, of course.”

“No, a black one.”

“Wonderful! It is either red or green wi’ most men. My Willie would have naething but white. He thinks he looks ministerial in the black and white, and he is trying to behave accordingly. You must have noticed him?”

“Yes, I have. Perhaps Willie’s dress gave me my queer dream.”

“Reason the dream awa’, of course. That’s what fools do wi’ a dream. I think you dreamed of the man who will be your husband.”

“Then,” I said, “my husband is not among the men I know. I never saw the young man of my dream before.”

“There’s few people in town yet,” explained Mrs. Semple. “They are at Arran, or Bute, or somewhere down the water. It will be September ere they get back to Glasgow.” At these words she lifted the morning paper, but in a few moments threw it down in great excitement, crying, “Milly! Milly! the Queen, and Prince Albert, and the Prince o’ Wales are coming to Glasgow; every blessed wife, and mother, and maid, will be here to see the Royalties. We, also, we must see them! We must hae a window; some one must get one for us!”

“Do you know any one who can?”

“Yes. When you come back from school, we will go and ask him.”

“Need I go?”

“I’ll not go a step wanting you.”

So I came home without delay, put on a clean white frock, and went with Mrs. Semple to a street called Virginia Street. The warehouse we entered was so old that the stone steps at its entrance were nearly worn away. A kind of porter stood at the door, and Mrs. Semple told him she wished to see his master. He led us through a long room piled to the ceiling with bundles of wool, and through a green baize door into a handsome office, where the young man of my dream sat writing.

He turned as we entered, and Mrs. Semple said, “Weel, Robert, how’s a’ with you?”

For a moment he did not answer. He was looking at me – perhaps expecting an introduction, but his smiling face appeared to be saying, just the words I heard in my sleep, “Come in, Milly! I have been waiting for you.”

Really what he said was an effusive welcome to Mrs. Semple, and a polite offer of his chair to me. It was a large office chair, but I took it; after a little while he asked me if I was comfortable, and then laughing lowly added, “Now I shall forever dream dreams in that chair.”

“Weel,” answered Mrs. Semple, “maybe the dreams will come true.” Then she explained the reason for our call, magnifying very much my desire to see the Queen. And Mr. Barr assured her there would be tickets for a good window at her house before nine o’clock that night, if it was possible to get them. It was a pleasant call, a fateful call, for I knew I had met the man whose fate – good or bad – I must share. A feeling of deep sadness overcame me. I said I was sick, lay down on my bed, and fell into a deep sleep.

Before nine o’clock Mr. Barr brought the tickets, and, on the day appointed, went with us to see what there was to see. It was not much. Her Majesty disappointed me. Prince Albert was not as handsome as his pictures represented him to be, and the Prince of Wales was in a bad temper, and showed it as plainly as a boy nine years old could do. The Queen wore a royal Stuart tartan shawl; it was heavy and cumbersome, and she looked ungraceful in it. But this bit of sightseeing was the beginning of a new order of things. My life took a turn then and there, and, as I look back, I could weep at the memory of that fateful royal visit; but through the years that hour had been fixed, and the dormant love in my soul needed but a look to awaken it.

Until the New Year Mr. Barr was all the most devoted lover could be, then there was a pause in his attentions. It would be folly to say I did not care. I did care. I went about my duties with a heavy heart. “It is his mother,” said Mrs. Semple. “She is a hard, old soul, and she wouldna be willing for Robert to marry an angel from heaven, if she hadna plenty o’ siller. Forbye, you are English and an Arminian, when you should be a Calvinist, and, worse than that, you are over-educated.”

“I thought the Scotch believed in education.”

“They do – for men – not for women. They prefer them to watch cheese parings and candle-ends. It doesna need an educated woman to sweep, and darn, and cook, and save a farthing, wherever it can be saved.”

One evening in February Mr. Barr called. He said he had been “on a long business journey through the West Riding,” and those two words softened my heart, and we began to talk of some mutual acquaintance there. Then, before he knew it, without his will or effort, love broke into audible words. It was the healing love, the comforting love, and one little word, and one long kiss, made all things fast and sure. But that night I knew the old troubler and heartache of the world had me in his power, and would have, until life with all its troubles and heartaches was over.

I had told Robert that the first thing was to get my father’s and my mother’s consent to our marriage, and he went to Kendal the following day for this purpose, arriving there about four in the afternoon. Father was out visiting the sick, Mary and Alethia were at school, and Jane had been recently married, and had gone to live in Manchester. Mother was making some school pinafores for Alethia, and Robert’s knock did not interest her at all. Lots of people in those days came after Mr. Huddleston, and she thought it was some case of sickness or trouble. But when the girl opened the parlor door and Robert entered she was astonished. However, my name and the letter he brought from me put him at once in Mother’s favor, and in a few minutes he was telling her how dear I was to him, and that I had promised to be his wife in July, if my father and mother approved it. He stayed to tea with my parents, and had a long conversation with them, and they were thoroughly satisfied that I had chosen well and wisely. As if I had had any choice in the matter! The event had been destined, even when I was born, and Robert Barr only a lad of seven years old.

In my mother’s letter to me on the subject, she said, “I will tell you something, Milly, that I suspect neither Mr. Barr nor your father will tell you, yet you will be glad to know it, and you ought to know it. It is this. Your father told Mr. Barr about your indebtedness to the school board, and Mr. Barr asked how much it was. When Father said he thought about seventy pounds, Mr. Barr laughed, and answered, ‘Suppose, Father, we sent a donation of two hundred pounds to the school board. Won’t that be best?’ Then Father laughed, and Mr. Barr took from his valise a small book, and wrote a check for two hundred pounds, asking Father to send it the next day, which Father did.”

In this letter I was urged to come home at once, and so I went next day to the school to remove my name from the list of Wesleyan students. Professor Hyslop looked angrily at me.

“You will get no diploma,” he said.

“I am going to be married, sir,” I answered.

“I have heard – I have heard!” he continued, “and I think a marriage certificate will be the best diploma for you – Reverend Dr. Barr’s son, is it not?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Then, Miss, where will your Arminianism be? You will become a Calvinist!” And, with this Parthian fling, he left the room so quickly I had no opportunity for a denial.

After this event I returned home, and the days went by in a dream of happiness. Robert came every Friday or Saturday to Kendal, and we rode over to Windermere, if it was fine weather, and strolled about its laurel woods, whispering to each other those words which lovers have always said, and always will say, even till time shall be no more – unless, the march of what is called “progress and efficiency” put love out of the question altogether. It was a wooing that fitted wonderfully into my happy girlhood, blending itself with my childhood’s memories, with the wind and the sun, and the mountains and lakes I loved. And I took with a grateful heart the joy sent me – a joy glorified by all the enchanting glamours and extravagant hopes of youth and love. It was always the old antiphony of love:

“I love you, sweet, how can you ever learn
How much I love you?” “You I love even so,
And so I learn it.” “Sweet, you cannot know
How fair you are.” “If fair enough to earn
Your love, so much is all my love’s concern.”
“My love grows hourly sweet.” “Mine, too, doth grow,
Yet love seemed full so many hours ago.”
Thus lovers speak. – Rossetti.

If the weather was wet we discussed damasks and cretons and books about furniture, which Robert brought with him every week – the colors to be dominant in various rooms – and every trifle of housekeeping; and were as happy as birds building their first nest. Or, I showed any new addition to my wardrobe, about which I had been very fortunate. For it happened that thirty years previously my mother’s uncle had spent four years in Glasgow, and had been very happy there; so he was pleased I was going to marry a Glasgow man. When he met Robert he liked him, and he liked me “for choosing so fine a fellow,” and as a reward gave me a hundred pounds to buy things for the wedding. I went to Bradford for a couple of weeks, had my wedding frock made there, and brought home with me alpacas and mozambiques, baréges and chantilly muslins, and lots of other pretty things. But what pleased me more than anything were the full sets of ready-made underclothing which Mrs. Humphreys sent. I had never even heard of ready-made clothing, and I was delighted with the beautifully trimmed slips and gowns, and so forth, which far exceeded anything I had ever seen. Indeed they were talked about so much that many Kendal ladies asked to look at them.

My sister Jane had married quietly, almost secretly, only my father and sisters and a friend of the groom being present; but Robert would hear of no such privacy. He wished the whole town to witness his happiness, and I was not averse to his desire. So the dawn of our wedding-day, the eleventh of July, 1850, was ushered in by the beautiful chimes of Kendal church, and the ringers, being well paid, marked, every hour of the day by a carillon until night covered the earth. The ceremony was nine o’clock in the morning, but the church was full, and the sidewalks full, and every one had a smile and a good wish for us.

Robert looked exceedingly handsome, and his sister and brother-in-lave, David Colville, the great iron and steel manufacturer of Glasgow, were at his side. I had only one bridesmaid, a lovely Yorkshire girl, who had been my playmate in childhood. Robert had one attendant also, a young Scot, called James Sinclair. I wore the usual white satin dress consecrated to brides, but it was not made as bridal dresses are made now. It was of ordinary length, and had three deep ruffles of lace on the skirt. A small polka jacket – they were just coming in then – made of white lace, and trimmed with white satin, covered my neck and arms, and a very small bonnet of white lace, trimmed with orange flowers, was on my head. My sandals were of white satin, and my gloves of white kid, but I had no veil. I walked to the altar on my father’s arm; I left it leaning on my husband’s. That seems but a small change, but it typified the wrench of life and destiny. For that hour had broken the continuity of life. I could never! never! go back to where I stood before it.

There was a pretty wedding breakfast at my father’s house, where everything was profusely adorned with large white pansies; for, in Kendal there was, and likely yet is, a miraculous profusion and perfection of this exquisite flower in July and August. My father blessed the breakfast, which was happily and leisurely taken, then Robert glanced at me, and I went upstairs to put on a pale blue dress, a white silk India shawl, and a little bonnet trimmed with blue flowers. The shawl was of wonderful beauty and of great value, but what girl of nineteen would now wear a shawl? Yet, it was far from unbecoming, and it shared my fortunes in a remarkable manner.

It was considered proper and elegant in those days for brides to show great emotion, and even to weep as they left their home and father and mother. I could not do so. I loved my home and my kindred with a deep and strong attachment, but I knew from that moment when I first saw the man who was now my husband that, among the souls allied to mine, he was of

“… nearer kindred than life hinted of;
Born with me somewhere that men forget,
And though in years of sight and sound unmet,
Known for my soul’s birth-partner well enough.”




CHAPTER IX

THE HOME MADE DESOLATE




“There is a warm impression, an instinctive sagacity, by which we anticipate future events.”



…



“Life is filled with issues.”


With renunciation life begins. For nineteen years I had been a receiver: I was now to learn the grace of surrender, and of giving up. I was to drink the cup of pain, and to go through the valley of humiliation. As far as my home and kindred were concerned, we had counted the price together, and accepted the inevitable toll of marriage, understanding well, that marriage, as well as death, makes barren our lives. This fact was soon illustrated by the attitude assumed by my old friends in Glasgow. I thought I should be treated even with additional éclat, and they had apparently cut me out of their lives. I met Mrs. Sage one morning, soon after my return from my wedding journey, and greeted her with glad excitement. She was polite, but restrained, and when I asked her to call on me, regretted she had no time. The girls were going off to school, and her son Alick was going to Australia as representative of the Western Bank of Scotland. She gave me this information with a great deal of pride, and just a tone of resentment, then said, “Good morning,” and virtually passed out of my life.

I was much troubled by her behavior for a week, then I went one morning to Campbell’s for some muslin, and there I saw Mrs. McIntosh. She was such a good-hearted, sweet-tempered soul, I never doubted her kindness; but she, also, was changed. Civil, of course, but she never once spoke of their Saturday evenings, or asked, “When are you coming to see us?” I told Robert of these meetings, and he smiled and said that the behavior of my friends was quite natural. I was no longer available for young parties. I was out of the race, as it were, and my presence among the youths and girls was restraining and unpleasant to them. “You will have to be contented with the married women, now, Milly, and I think the girls are glad of your absence.” That was all his comment, and he did not seem to think it a matter of any importance.

Now I had always held my own with the girls – with the married women it was different. I thought them cold and critical, and, unfortunately, I gave them plenty of opportunities for criticism. I was ignorant of many things that were only to be learned by years of social experience, unless one was to the manner born. My dress, though handsome and becoming, was not like unto theirs, and I was innocently, but constantly, offending some national feeling or tradition. Thus, when I went to Campbleton to pay a week’s visit to my sister-in-law, I wore at a special entertainment a satin gown of the Royal Stuart tartan. I thought I was paying Scotland a compliment, but I could hardly have done anything more offensive to every Campbell in Campbleton. They could not believe any one was so densely ignorant, as not to know that the Campbells hated the Stuarts. To the local dominie I was an ignoramus, because I was not familiar with the smallest fact regarding the Great Disruption, and the founding of the Free Kirk. He wondered where I had been born, “not to have heard of Chalmers and Guthrie and the Highland Host they led to a great spiritual victory.” Yet, honestly, never even in Dr. Farrar’s, where embryo clergy congregated, had I heard of the Scottish Disruption. And this ignorance was astounding to them, if it was real, and impertinence, if it was only pretended.

I dislike to make the acknowledgment, but even Mrs. Semple was changed. She was offended because she was not asked to be present at our wedding. I explained to her the circumstances making her visit impossible – the smallness of my father’s house, and the likelihood of sickness at any hour, and she appeared quite satisfied at the time; but, when Robert brought his sister and brother-in-law to Kendal, she thought she ought to have been included in his party. I think she ought, and I would have been glad of her presence. There was somehow a mistake, and the fault was said to be mine; and I saw that Robert would be annoyed if I made a question about it, so I accepted the wrong and the blame.

Three months after my marriage I should have been quite disheartened but for the kindness of two admirable women, who had the intelligence to divine the whole situation. They were Marion, the wife of Walter Blackie, and her sister, Isabel Brodie. John Blackie, the father of Walter Blackie, had been the guardian of my husband, and the publishers of my husband’s father’s books, consequently there was an old tie of friendship between the families. But, in spite of this, Marion Blackie warmly and openly stood my friend. She advised me in private, and defended me in public. Indeed, she told my critics that they and herself, also, must appear as peculiar to me as I did to them. “Of course,” she continued, “the Barr women don’t like her. She has not a feeling in common with them, and how can she defend herself against innuendoes? I only hope they will not sneer and shrug her husband’s love away.” Only these two women remain in my memory to sweeten the story of my three years’ residence in Glasgow, as a wife and mother.

These were the social conditions in which I found myself, and I did not long struggle against them. Those who should have been kind to me were irreconcilable enemies; and they were old leaders of public opinion, and understood thoroughly the people with whom they lived. I felt that my case was hopeless, because victory in it might bring defeat in a nearer and dearer relation; for Robert would have certainly stood by me, if my attitude demanded his support; but I was sure I could not prevent a sense of anger and injury, if his interference was called for. It was not worth while provoking such a danger; I resolved to retire and make myself happy in other ways. I had a very handsome home to care for, and in it there was a library of about two hundred of the latest books in fiction, poetry, and travel. I began to use my needle, and grew expert in embroidery. I ran down to Kendal now and then for a day, and Father paid me one visit, and Mother several. In two or three months I had forgotten society, and it held its regular sessions without remembering me.

But the time passed happily – long sweet days in which I thought as I sewed, or read, or sang, or sometimes took a walk up to the old cathedral, or even through the busy thoroughfares of Argyle and Buchanan Streets. In the evenings I read aloud to Robert, or he taught me how to sing the Scotch songs he loved. We had a copy of Hamilton’s large edition of them, and I began with the initial lyric of “Braw Braw Lads of Gala Water,” and then went straight through the book, which took us about a month. Then we began it over again, and I do not remember wearying, at least not of the older songs, for they were never written: they sprung from the heart and went direct to the heart.

Sometimes we walked quietly to Glover’s Theatre, especially if there was a play like “Rob Roy,” with the great Mackay in the title rôle. I shall never forget the night I saw this play. The theatre was decorated with Rob Roy tartan, and every woman wore conspicuously some ornament of Rob Roy ribbon – a large bow, long streamers from her fan, or a handsome satin scarf of the red and black checks, and I think there was not a man present without a Rob Roy rosette on the lapel of his coat. If there was, he must have been some benighted Englishman who had no acquaintance with Walter Scott and his famous robber hero. The human stir and enthusiasm was wonderful; the players moved and spoke as if they were enchanted, and they carried every soul in the theatre with them. It was good to feel, if only for a couple of hours, something of the intense emotion of which the soul is capable. No wonder the Scotch are so Scotch; they nurse their patriotism continually, feed it with song and story, music and dancing, and the drama, and they regard the Sabbath Day as peculiarly a Scottish institution. Surely all this was better than exchanging suspicious courtesies with critical acquaintances.

As the days lengthened and grew warmer, we went at the week ends to Bute, or Arran, or Stirling, and very often to Edinburgh; for, at the latter place, we always heard a fine sermon at the old Greyfriar’s Kirk. The first anniversary of our marriage we spent in Kendal and Windermere, and somehow, after that event, there was a shadow I could feel, but could not see or define. Things appeared to go on as usual, but a singular sense of uncertainty troubled them; and, though I have said, “things went on as usual,” they did not quite do so. There was one change – it was in Robert’s movements. A few months previously he had gone into partnership with a man in Huddersfield, who had large woolen mills, and he left his business in Glasgow for two days every two weeks to go to Huddersfield. At first he always returned buoyant, and apparently well contented. I supposed, therefore, the woolen mill was doing well; but, true to his Scotch instincts, natural and educated, he had never explained anything about the transaction to me. It was, of course, necessary to say why he took this regular journey to England, but, beyond that information, the subject was not named, and I do not know unto this day, what kind of woolen goods were made in the Huddersfield mills.

This reticence about their business, is, I think, a Scotch trait of the most pronounced kind. It is scarcely an exaggeration to say, that no Scotchman ever tells his wife the truth, and the whole truth, about his affairs. Robert in this respect only followed out his strongest inherited instincts, the example set before him on every hand, and the precepts inculcated by parents and guardians. When we were first married, I tried to win his confidence and share his hopes and plans, and I was kindly but decisively made to understand that I was going beyond my sphere. And, as I write, and remember the position occupied by English and Scotch wives of sixty years ago, my heart burns with indignation, and I wonder not at any means they now take to emancipate themselves. I knew women at this time who spent weeks and months in fears and anxieties, that could have been dispelled by one word plainly and honestly spoken. But, when a husband says only, “Yesterday I was rich, today I am poor; you must do as well as you can,” his silence about his position has been not only cruel, but humiliating. He might make just such a speech to an affectionate and faithful dog. This is a digression, but it will not be lost, if it makes one man reflect, or one woman resolve.

As for myself, I was not destitute of rebellious thoughts. Once Robert had brought his Huddersfield partner home with him to dinner, and I had carefully scrutinized the man, and his speech, and manner. After he had left, Robert, in a kind of incidental way, as if it was a matter of no consequence, asked me what I thought of Mr. P.

“Do you wish me to tell you the truth, Robert,” I answered, “or shall I only say pleasant words?”

“Tell the truth, Milly, by all means,” he replied, “though I suppose you are going to say unpleasant words.”

“I am, but they are true words, be sure of that, Robert. I think Mr. P. is a rascal, from his beard to his boots. Nature has set his eyes crooked; she has put her mark on the man, and said plainly, ‘Beware of him!’ His voice is false. I watched his feet, he turned them out too much, and he had trod his shoes down at the sides. ‘He could not tread his shoes straight,’ is a Yorkshire proverb for a rogue. I would not trust him with a penny piece, further than I could see him.”

“You saw all this, Milly, while he was here a short hour or two?” And Robert laughed and drew me to his side. So the subject dropped, but I could see that my suspicions had allied themselves to similar ones in his own mind.

One incident of this year I must not forget – the meeting with Mrs. Stowe and Mr. Beecher. I saw them first on the platform of the City Hall, where I had a seat with some friends on the invitation committee. I was not attracted by Mrs. Stowe, who was quiet, and apparently bored or tired; but Mr. Beecher won every heart. Afterwards, at a reception, I had a long talk with him about America. Once more I saw him, and the conversation was renewed, and finally Mr. Beecher said, “I think you will come to America. If you come to New York, hunt me up; I shall not be hard to find. You will want help in seeing New York, and I will do anything I can for you.” Seventeen years afterwards I reminded Mr. Beecher of this promise, and he cheerfully and helpfully redeemed it.

So the time went on, and I was happy, for the pleasure of “use and wont” of things tried and confidential was mine. I found myself constantly singing, for I was busy about a very diminutive wardrobe. I delighted in making some of the tiny articles with my own hands, sewing into them prayers and hopes and blessings for the child who was to wear them, and whose advent was expected about the New Year. In these days I thought a great deal about my own infancy. I recalled its first exquisite beginnings, its wonder and joy in the mere fact of living. I thought of the dream I had, when I was too young to find words to tell it, and blessed God I was not too young for Him to think of me.

Even the dark November days, with their thick yellow fogs, and muffled melancholy sounds, could not sadden me. Nor was I much depressed by that haunting fear, which all women – however often they are mothers – are subject to before the birth of a child. I might die; many mothers did. What then? I answered my heart fearlessly, “I shall have had a perfect life, a happy childhood, a true love, a blessed marriage. The finite over, the infinite will begin. I shall be satisfied.” And I am sure I could then have trod the common road into the great darkness, without fear and with much hope.

But one day in this November I awoke both fearful and sad. It was with difficulty I preserved the cheerful morning face, that I had been taught from early childhood was the first duty of every day and, as soon as Robert left for his office, and I knew I should be alone until evening, I lay down upon my bed and wept with an unreasonable passion. I knew not why I wept, but my soul knew. She heard what was coming from afar, and knew that I was now to leave the walled garden of my happiness, and to take my share in those great sorrows, which are needed to give life its true meaning.

I had noticed, when at breakfast, that Robert was unusually silent, and I had not felt able to rise above the atmosphere of gloom and worry; but in the afternoon it struck me, that perhaps I only was to blame, and I resolved to dress prettily and be ready to carry the evening through with songs and smiles. So I rose and put on a gown that Robert liked to see me wearing, a handsomer garment than I usually wore, but I told myself that if trouble should be coming, I would meet it dressed like one who meant to conquer. And I remember that all the time I was brushing out my hair, I was saying over and over a few lines that came ready to my lips, though I knew not when, or where, I had learned them:

“Empire o’er the land and main,
Heaven who gave, can take again;
But a mind that’s truly brave,
Stands despising,
Storms arising,
And defies the wind and wave.”

I had forgotten the last line, but my mind involuntarily supplied it. And at that moment I felt able to defy sorrow, and to shut the door against it. But alas! how poorly we love those whom we love most. Our love sinks below our earthly cares, and we bruise ourselves against the limitations of our own love, as well as against the limitations of others.

I was sitting very still, thinking these things out, and talking reproachfully to my soul – who has always been a talkative soul, fond of giving me from the little chest wherein she dwells, reproofs and admonitions more than I like – when I heard Robert put his latch-key in the lock, and enter the house. He was an hour before his time, and I wondered at the circumstance. Generally he came to me in the parlor first, and then went to dress for dinner, but this night he went straight to his room. I stood up and considered. Fear tormented me with cruel expectations, and I would not give place to that enemy, so I went quickly down the passage, singing as I went, and at the door asked cheerfully,

“Are you there, Robert?”

“Yes,” he answered; “come in, Milly.”

Then I entered smiling, and he looked at me with all his soul in his eyes, and, without speaking, covered his face with his hands.

“Robert!” I cried. “Dear Robert, are you sick?”

“No, no!” he answered. “Sit down here at my side, and I will tell you. Milly, I have lost nearly all I possess. The Huddersfield mills have failed.”

“Never mind them,” I said; “your business here is sufficient, and you can pay it more attention.”

“It has today been sequestered by the English creditors.”

“What is ‘sequestered’?” I asked. I had never heard the word before.

“It means that I cannot have any use of my business here, until the court decides, whether it can be made to pay the debts of the Huddersfield concern. O my dear, dear Milly, forgive me!”

“My love, you have done me no wrong.”

“I have. I have taken risks that I ought not to have taken. You thought you were marrying a rich man, Milly.”

“I married you, yourself, Robert. Rich or poor, you are dearer than all to me. I do not count money in the same breath with you.”

“You love me, dear?”

“Better tonight, than ever before.”

“I am sick with anxiety.”

“Let me share it. That is all I ask. And you must be brave, Robert. Things are never as bad as you think they are. You are only twenty-seven years old; you have health and friends. We can half the expenses. Let the English place go. You will get your business here back soon, will you not?”

“I hope so. I cannot tell. I must leave you, and go to England tomorrow and you ought not to be alone now.”

“Nothing will harm me. Go, and find out the worst, then you know what you have to fight. Dinner is ready. You need a good meal; you will feel better after it.”

“How can I? I fear that I am ruined.”

“Now, Robert,” I said, “that depends on yourself. No man was ever ruined from without; the final ruin comes from within, when you turn hopeless and lose courage. I have heard my father tell young men that, many times.”

I suppose that most American husbands and wives would have spent the evening in talking over this trouble, and considering what steps were wisest to take. Robert did not speak of it again. During the meal, when the girl was coming in and out with the various dishes, he talked of a big fire in the High Street, and the appearance of Harrison in “The Bohemian Girl,” saying he was sorry I could not hear him sing “I Dreamt I Dwelt in Marble Halls.” When dinner was over, he asked me to go on with the book I was reading to him. It was “The Newcomes,” and I lifted it, and he lay down on the sofa with his cigar. But I did not know what I was reading. The lights seemed dim, my voice sounded far away, there was a tumult in my senses that was prelusive of fainting.

“I am not well, Robert,” I murmured, “I must stop,” and I laid “The Newcomes” down, and have never touched a book of Thackeray’s since.

Robert rose immediately. “I must leave for England very early in the morning,” he said. “I will try and get some sleep first.”

The next morning he went away before daylight, and I had to bear the uncertainty and suspense as well as I could; and these journeys continued until the twentieth of December, when all court business stopped until after the twelfth day in January. I did not write home about this trouble. Father had been ill, and Mother was coming to me, on the second or third day of the New Year; and I hoped afresh every morning, that some good news would come to brighten the sad story. But all I heard was that professional accountants were going over the books of both the Glasgow and the Huddersfield business, and that it was tedious work, and required Robert’s presence constantly to explain transactions. This appeared sensible and necessary, and I made the best of the week ends, when Robert usually hurried home, traveling all night, so as to reach me early Saturday morning.

So Christmas came and went, the saddest Christmas I ever spent in all my life; but Christmas was not Christmas in Scotland, at that date. It had too strong a likeness to Episcopacy, yes, even to Popery, for the Calvinistic Scot; and savored of monkish festivals, and idolatrous symbols. I never saw a nativity pie in Glasgow, but those I made; and I really think they caused Robert a twinge of conscience to have them on the table. He certainly never tasted them. But the New Year was a modest kind of saturnalia, kept very much as the Calvinistic Dutch settlers of New York kept it in the days of the Dutch governors. It was a quiet day with us, and I could not help contrasting it with the previous New Year’s when we had our minister, and the Blackies and Brodies, and a few others to dinner, and all drank the New Year in, standing with full glasses. At the moment we did so, my conscience smote me. I was cold and trembled as the clock slowly struck twelve, for I had always been used to solemnly keep the Watch Night, and, if not on my knees in the chapel, I was certain to be praying in my own room. “The ill year comes in swimming,” says an old proverb, and I have proved its truth.

On the third day of the New Year, Robert’s mother called in the afternoon. Robert had gone to Stirling, and I was alone and much astonished to see her; but I said, as cheerfully as possible, “Good afternoon, Mother, and a Happy New Year to you.” Then, noticing that she was much agitated, I grew frightened about Robert, and said anxiously, “You look troubled, Mother; is anything wrong with Robert?”

“Is there anything right with the man now? I got this letter from him on New Year’s Day – a nice-like greeting it was to send me.”

I looked at her inquiringly, but did not speak, and she asked, “Do you know what is in it?”

“No; Robert did not tell me he had written to you at all.”

“Of course, he didn’t! Mother may be heartbroken with shame and sorrow, but you! You must not have your precious feelings hurt.”

“Robert,” I answered, “would not willingly hurt a hair of your head, Mother. I know that. If he has told you of more trouble, I wish to share it with you.”

“You shall,” she replied. “He writes me that he fears the creditors – sorrow take them! – are trying to attach the furniture of this house, and he asks me, if they do, to buy it for him, at their valuation. That is a modest request to make, on the first of the year!”

“Mother, no one can touch this furniture. It is mine. It was given to me before my marriage, made legally over to me in my antenuptial contract. The furniture, silver, napery, books, and every item in the house is especially and carefully named, as the property of Amelia Huddleston.”

“Where is the contract?”

“With John Forbes, the writer. Go and see it.”

“I am thinking that the English law makes all that was yours, on your marriage day, become Robert’s, and all that is Robert’s belongs to his creditors, until the creatures are satisfied. But I came on a kind errand, if you will take it so. I came to tell you that, though you have been the ruin of my son, I will not see you put on the street. I will buy the furniture and rent it to you.”

“I would not rent it from any one. It is mine. If I am robbed of it, I will not countenance the robbery, by renting it.”

“What will you do with yourself?”

“I shall come to no harm.”

“You can maybe find a boarding-house?”

“I shall not need one.”

“And there is your own home.”

“I shall not go there.”

“I think Robert might have told you of this sore strait.”

Then, in a sudden passion of anger, I cried out, “I think so, too. He treats me as if I was a doll or a dog. He tells me nothing. I have the cruelest part of every sorrow to bear – the part not sure. It is a shame! It is a great wrong! My heart is sick with anxiety that does no good. At the last, he has to tell. I cannot bear it!”

“All the women have it to bear.”

“Then shame to the men who lay on them such a useless burden.”

“We have a saying that women’s counsel is ill luck.”

“It is the want of it that is ill luck. I never saw that Huddersfield man but once, yet I told Robert to beware of him.”

“People say that you have been a gey, extravagant wife, Amelia.”

“People lie!” I answered hotly. “I have saved two hundred and eight pounds in eighteen months, out of the money given me for housekeeping expenses.”

“Then Robert has been extravagant, and given you too much money.”

“He gave me exactly what he gave you, for the same purpose. He told me so.”

“And you have saved two hundred and eight pounds! Well, well! Where is it?”

“In my bank.”

She looked at me not unkindly, and I said, “Mother! Mother! If you and Jessy would have only directed me, I would gladly have obeyed your desires. If you would have only stood by me, no one would have seen any faults in my way of dressing, and doing things. Amelia Barr is no different from Amelia Huddleston, and under that name every one loved and praised me.”

“Well, well, married women are little thought of – except by the one man – and not always much thought of by him.”

“Try to like me, Mother. I could so easily love you, and I will do all as you wish it,” and, as I spoke, I went to her side and lifted her hand.

“Please God,” she answered, “there is plenty of time to put wrong right. Will you give me a cup of tea now?”

“Forgive me, I forgot.”

“That is just it,” she answered. “You forget. You should have offered it to me, when I first came in.”

Then I did all I could to redeem the forgetting, and she said, “Take a cup yourself; it will do you good, and tomorrow send for John Forbes.”

“I do not trust John Forbes.”

“Neither do I,” she answered quickly, “it is little he knows of the English law about any matter. What will you do then?”

“Go to a Councillor, who never yet deceived me.”

“I understand, but I’m not sure if that is right, Amelia. Going to God about chairs and tables, and the like of such things is not at all respectful.”

“We are told to pray about our bread and clothing, because ‘God knows we have need of such things.’”

“Your own way, be it. Tell Robert I am willing to help – if needs be.”

“There will be no need, Mother.”

“You’re a queer woman.” She rose as she spoke, and said it would soon be dark, and she must hurry, for lots of drunken men and women would be on the streets seeing it was the New Year. Then I fastened her cloak and furs, and said,

“Kiss me, Mother.”

A look of the uttermost discomfiture and confusion came into her face. She hesitated, and fingered her bonnet strings, but finally bent her head slightly, and allowed me to kiss her. Then suddenly I recollected that the family kiss was a thing practically unknown in Scotch households, and that Robert had more than once told me that he never remembered his mother kissing him, in all his life. But the momentary disconcertion passed, and I believed I had won a step in the old lady’s favor, and I was glad of it, for she had some excellencies, and her faults were the faults of race, education, and life-long habit and experiences.

Within an hour after her departure, my own dear mother came to me, and two days later, my daughter Mary was born, “a bonnie wee lassie, world-like, and wise-like,” said the old nurse pleasantly. She kept her sixtieth birthday a week ago, and may God spare her to keep her eightieth as well, and as joyfully. After the birth of Mary, her father’s affairs began to settle, and it was not necessary for him to travel so constantly between Glasgow and Huddersfield. And the furniture question gave me neither trouble nor anxiety. I took it to the Highest Court, and the Best Councillor known to man, and I never heard of it again. Robert did not speak of it to me, and I asked him no questions. There are times in life when it is wisest to let sleeping dogs lie, and I thought this subject was one of such occasions. About May Robert received his certificate of just and lawful bankruptcy, and was free to reopen his warehouse and recommence his business.

But I could see it was hard and discouraging work. An American can hardly estimate how cruel an English bankruptcy is. On its business side, I could only form opinions from Robert’s depression and remarks; but I could see, and feel, and hear on every hand, the social ostracism it entails. The kindest heart quickly drops the friend who has failed. The man is never forgiven by his family. Years cannot efface the stain, nor future success give back his former social position, or ever dispel the uncertainty of his business reputation. Now bankruptcy is not the unpardonable sin in the United States that it is – or was – in England and Scotland, and one of the things which struck me most forcibly, when I came to America, was the indifference with which men spoke of “being broke,” or having failed here or there, or in this, or that line of business, taking misfortune as cheerily as good fortune, and beginning again and again until they at last succeeded.

With small economies, small anxieties, and one man’s ceaseless struggle against misfortune, the next year passed away. Hitherto, I had always felt a contempt for struggling men; I had told myself, that their opportunities were so many, there was no excuse for the strife. If one thing, or one place was unfavorable, they could go elsewhere; the whole world was a market-place for their hands, or their brains. But during this year I discovered my mistake. Robert was tied by invisible bonds, and he had not the strength – perhaps not the will – to burst them asunder.

As for myself, I was busy with my house, and my child, my music, and books, my needle, and my correspondence with my home, and I could have been quite content with these sources of pleasure, if Robert had been in any measure satisfied and successful. But he could not hide from me the anxiety which was making his life a burden hard to bear. It was then the idea of exile, of a new country, new surroundings, and an entirely new effort, unhampered by the débris of an old failure, took possession of my mind; for this one year’s dismaying results satisfied me that nothing but the most radical changes would be of any use. But I was daily expecting the birth of my second child, and I told myself that nothing could be done for another month. I was, however, mistaken. Robert came home one night in such evident distress, that I was sure it arose from some social slight, and I asked, “Whatever has vexed you so much today, Robert?”

“Why, Milly,” he said, “three things: My old Sunday school teacher, to whom I am much attached, passed me without a word, and then turned back and said angrily, ‘Man Robert! I’m disappointed in you. I’m sair disappointed! I thought you were going to be a rich man, and a pillar o’ the Kirk.’ I said, ‘It is not my fault, Deacon.’ ‘It is your fault,’ he continued, ‘whatna for, did you buy Alexander Hastie’s business, if you didna ken how to run it? Hastie is now our member to Parliament, and you hae disgraced the whole city o’ Glasgow, by letting a business so weel kent in his name, go to the dogs. I wonder me, what your good father would say to the disgrace you hae brought on his name, and I am sorry, Dod! I’m heart sorry for your poor mother.’”

“O Robert! How cruel! How unjust!”

“I cannot live down such prejudice, Milly. It is impossible. He had scarcely left me, when I saw Mrs. Semple coming towards me. She hesitated a moment, then went into a small jeweler’s shop to avoid the meeting. This afternoon Mother came to my office, and we had some very hard words, about a piece of property that is solely and entirely my own.”

“Have you anything left, that is your own?”

“This piece of property is. Once, when I had plenty of money, I helped Donald McLeod to save it, and when he died, three months ago, he left it to me.”

“Hold to it fast, Robert,” I said. “I beg you not to touch it for anything.”

“Donald told me he had left it for an ‘emergency,’ and I am keeping it till that time arrives.”

“That time is now here, dear Robert. As soon as my trouble is past, let us go far away from Scotland, and begin a new life. You are not twenty-nine years old, and I am only twenty-two. Shall we give up our lives to a ceaseless, contemptible struggle, that brings us neither money nor respect? Somewhere in the world, there is peace and good fortune for us. We will go and find it.”





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notes



1


Kendal wig, a very fine tea cake raised with yeast. It is baked and allowed to cool, then cut apart, toasted and buttered.




2


Judging Chartists by their own words we should not now think they merited exile, hard labor, and life imprisonment. I do not suppose I ever understood their claims, but I have looked up their record and I find they were fighting for five not very wicked points: first, universal suffrage, excluding women, which was the great mistake of Chartism; second, the division of England into equal electoral districts; third, votes by ballot; fourth, annual Parliaments and no property qualifications for members; fifth, payments to every member for his legislative services. For advocating these demands, I saw in 1843, at Liverpool Railway Station, a long row of these Chartists chained together on their way to a convict ship which was to carry them to Botany Bay, or Norfolk Island.