Delusion; or, The Witch of New England

"Ay, call it holy ground,

The soil where first they trod:

They have left unstained what there they found,-

Freedom to worship God."

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New England scenery is said to be deficient in romantic and poetic associations. It is said that we have no ruins of ancient castles, frowning over our precipices; no time-worn abbeys and monasteries, mouldering away in neglected repose, in our valleys.

It is true that the grand and beautiful places in our natural scenery are not marred by the monuments of an age of violence and wrong; and our silent valleys retain no remnant of the abodes of self-indulgent and superstitious devotion; but the descendant of the Pilgrims finds, in many of the fairest scenes of New England, some memento to carry back the imagination to those heroic and self-sacrificing ancestors. His soul is warmed and elevated when he remembers that devoted company, who were sustained amid hardship and every privation, on the trackless ocean, and in the mysterious and appalling solitudes of the forest, by a firm devotion to duty, and an all-pervading sense of the immediate presence of God.

The faults of our ancestors were the faults of their age. It is not now understood-and how wide from it was the conviction then!-that even toleration implies intoleration. Who is to judge what opinions are to be tolerated? He whom circumstance has invested at the moment with power?

The scene I wish to describe was on the borders of one of the interior villages of New England,-a mountain village, embosomed in high hills, from which the winter torrents, as they met in the plain, united to form one of those clear, sparkling rivers, in whose beautiful mirror the surrounding hills were reflected. The stream, "winding at its own sweet will," enclosed a smooth meadow. At the extremity of the meadow, and shadowed by the mountain, nestled one of the poorest farm-houses, or cottages, of the time.

It was black and old, apparently containing but two rooms and a garret. Attached to it were the common out-houses of the poorest farms: a shed for a cow, a covering for a cart, and a small barn were all. But the situation of this humble and lonely dwelling was one of surpassing beauty. The soft meadow in front was dotted with weeping elms and birches; the opposite and neighboring hills were covered to their summits with the richest wood, while openings here and there admitted glimpses of the distant country.

A traveller coming upon this solitary spot, and seeing the blue smoke curling against the mountain side, would have rejoiced. There is something in the lonely farmhouse, surrounded with its little garden, and its homely implements of labor, that instantly touches our sympathy. There, we say, human hearts have experienced all the changes of life; they have loved and rejoiced, perhaps suffered and died.

The interior consisted of only two rooms. In the ample chimney of that which served for the common room, was burning a bright flame of pine knots; for, although it was the middle of summer, the sun sank so early behind the hills, and the evenings were so chilly, that the warmth was necessary, and the light from the small window cheered the laborer returning late from his work.

An old man sat by the chimney, evidently resting from the labors of the day. He was bent by time, but his brilliant eye and his flowing gray locks gave a certain refinement to his appearance, beyond that which his homely garments would warrant.

A woman, apparently as aged as himself, sat by the little window, catching the last rays of evening, as they were reflected from her white cap and silvery hair. Before her was a table on which lay a large Bible. She had just placed her spectacles between the leaves, as she closed it and resumed her knitting.

These two formed a picture full of the quiet repose of old age. But there was another in the room,-a youth, apparently less than twenty, kneeling before the flaming pine, over the leaves of a worn volume that absorbed him wholly.

The ruddy flame imparted the glow of health to a countenance habitually pale. Over his dark, enthusiastic eye was spread a clear and noble brow, so smooth and polished that it seemed as if at seventy it would be as unwrinkled as at seventeen. His piercing eye had that depth of expression that indicates dark passions or religious melancholy. He was slender in form, and very tall; but a bend in the shoulders, produced by agricultural labor, or by weakness in the chest, impaired somewhat the symmetry of his form.

They had been silent some moments. The young man closed his worn volume, an imperfect copy of Virgil, and walked several times, with hurried steps, across the little room.

At length he stopped before the woman, and said, "Mother, let me see how much your frugal care has hoarded. Let me know all our wealth. Unless I can procure another book, I cannot be prepared for the approaching examination. If I cannot enter college the next term, I never can. I must give up all hope of ever being any thing but the drudge I am now, and of living and dying in this narrow nook of earth."

"No, no, my son," answered the woman; "if my prayers are heard, you will be a light and a blessing to the church, though I may not live to see it."

The young man sighed deeply, and, taking the key she gave him, he opened an old-fashioned chest, and, from a little cup of silver tied over with a piece of leather, he poured the contents into his hand. There were several crowns and shillings, and two or three pieces of gold.

Apparently the examination was unsatisfactory, for he threw himself into a chair, and covered his face with his hands.

The old woman rose after looking at him a few moments in silence, and laid her hand gently on his shoulder.

"My son," she said, "where is the faith that sustained your ancestors when they left all their luxuries and splendor, their noble homes for conscience' sake. Yes, my son, your fathers were among the distinguished of England's sons, and they left all for God."

"Mother," said he, "would that they had been hewers of wood and drawers of water. Then I should have been content with my lot. Mother, all your carefully hoarded treasure will not be enough to pay my first term in college. Without books, without friends, I must give up the hope of an education," and the large tears trickled between his fingers.

"You forget," she said, "your good friend at C. who has lent you so many books. Why not apply to him again?"

A deep blush flushed the young man's countenance, but he made no answer, and seemed to wish to change the subject.

"It is almost evening," he said; "shall we not have prayers?" and, placing himself near the window to catch the last rays of departing daylight, he read one of the chapters from the Old Testament.

The aged man, who had not spoken during the discussion, stood up and prayed with great fervency.

His prayer was made up, indeed, by quotations from the Old Testament, and he used altogether the phraseology of the Scriptures. He prayed for the church in the wilderness, "that it might be bright as the sun, fair as the moon, beautiful as Tirzah, and terrible as an army with banners;" "that our own exertions to serve the church and our strivings after the Holy Spirit might not be like arrows in the air, traces in the sea, oil upon the polished marble, and water spilt upon the ground."

He asked for no temporal blessing; all his petitions were in language highly figurative, and he closed with a prayer for his grandson, "that God would make him a polished shaft in the temple of the Lord, a bright and shining light in the candlestick of the church."

When he had finished his prayer,-"My son," he said, "do not be cast down; you forget that the great Luther begged his bread. The servants of the church, in every age, have been poor and despised; even the Son of God," and he looked reverently upwards, "knew not where to lay his head. You have only to labor. The peat at the bottom of the meadow is already dry; there is more than we shall need for winter fuel; take it, in the morning, to C--, and with the produce buy the book you need."

"No," said the young man, "there are many repairs necessary to make you and my grandmother comfortable for the winter. I cannot rob you of more. I can borrow the book."

He lighted his lamp, made from rushes dipped in the green wax of the bay bush, which affords a beautiful, but not brilliant flame, and went up a few steps to his chamber in the garret. The old woman gathered the ashes over the kindling coal, and, with her aged partner, retired to the bed-room opposite the narrow entrance.

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"Deep thought oft seemed to fix his infant eye;

Silent when glad, affectionate, though shy:

And now his look was most demurely sad,

And now he laughed aloud, yet none knew why.

The neighbors stared and sighed, yet blessed the lad;

Some deemed him wondrous wise, and some believed him mad."

Beattie.

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Our young student retired to his garret, a small room in the roof of the cottage, heated by the summer sun resting on its roof almost to the heat of a furnace. One small window looking towards the east admitted the evening breeze.

In the remotest corner was a low and narrow pallet, by the side of which hung the indispensable articles of a man's apparel.

A small table, covered with ink spots, and a solitary chair stood in the centre of the little apartment. A few deal shelves contained the odd and worn volumes of the student's library. A Greek Testament, several lexicons, half a volume of Horace, lay scattered on the table. Virgil was the book he had brought with him from the pine-knot torch, and it was the old Grecian, Homer that he was so anxious to possess.

The uncarpeted floor was thickly strewn with sheets half written over, and torn manuscripts were scattered about. Wherever the floor was visible, the frequent ink spots indicated that it was not without mental agitation that these manuscripts had been produced.

It was not to repose from the labors of the day that the young man entered his little chamber: to bodily labor must now succeed mental toil.

He cast a wistful look towards his little pallet; he longed to rest his limbs, aching with the labor of the day; but no; his lamp was on the table, and, resolutely throwing off his coarse frock, he sat down to think and to write.

Wearied by a long day of labor, the student in vain tried to collect his thoughts, to calm his weakened nerves. He rose and walked his chamber with rapid steps, the drops of heat and anguish resting on his brow.

"Oh!" said he, "that I had been content to remain the clod, the toil-worn slave that I am!"

Little do they know, who have leisure and wealth, and all the appurtenances of literary ease-the lolling study-chair, the convenient apartment, the brilliant light-how much those suffer who indulge in aspirations beyond their lowly fortune.

The student sat down again to write. His hands were icy cold, while his eyes and brow were burning hot. He was engaged on a translation from the Greek. His efforts to collect and concentrate his thoughts on his work, exhausted as he was with toil, were vain and unavailing. At length he threw down his pen.

"Oh God!" thought he, "is this madness? am I losing my memory, my mind?" Again he walked his little room, but with gentler steps; for he would not disturb his aged relatives, who slept beneath.

"Have I deceived myself?" he said; "were all my aspirations only delusions, when, yet a boy, I followed the setting sun, and the rainbow hues of the evening clouds, with a full heart that could only find relief in tears?-when I believed myself destined to be other than a hewer of wood and a drawer of water, because I felt an immeasurable pity for my fellow-men, groping, as I did myself, under all the evils of ignorance and sin? Was it only vanity, when I hoped to rise above the clods of the earth, and aspired to have my lips, as Isaiah's, touched by a coal from the holy altar? Was it only impatience at my lot which destined me to inexorable poverty?"

"Let me not despair of myself;" and he took from his table a manuscript of two or three sheets, and began to read it.

As he went on, his dissatisfaction seemed to increase. With the sensitiveness and humility of true genius, when under the influence of despondency, every line seemed to him feeble or exaggerated; all the faults glared out in bold relief; while the real beauty of the composition escaped his jaded and toil-worn attention.

"Oh Heaven!" he said, "I have deceived myself; I am no genius, able to rise above the lowliness of my station. The bitter cup of poverty is at my lips. I have not even the power to purchase a single book. Shall I go again to my good friend at C--? Shall I appear as a beggar, or a peasant, to beg the trifling pittance of a book?"

A burning blush for a moment passed over his pale countenance. "Will they not say, and justly, 'Go back to your plough; it is your destiny and proper vocation to labor?'"

He sat down on the side of his little pallet, and burst into tears. He wept long, and, as he wept, his mind became more calm. The short summer's night, in its progress, had bathed the earth in darkness, and cooled the heated roof of his little apartment. The night breeze, as it came in at his window, chilled him, and he rose to close it.

As he looked from his little window, the dawn was just appearing in the east, and the planet Venus, shining with the soft light of a crescent moon, was full before him.

"O beautiful star!" he thought, "the same that went before the sages of the East, and guided them to the manger of the Savior! I aspire only to be a teacher of the sublime wisdom of that humble manger. Let me but lift up my weak voice in his cause, and let all worldly ambition die within me.

'-- Thou, O Spirit! who dost prefer,

Before all temples, th' upright heart and pure,'

I consecrate my powers to thee."

The morning breeze, as it blew on his temples, refreshed him. The young birds began to make those faint twitterings beneath the downy breast of the mother, the first faint sound that breaks the mysterious silence of early dawn.

He turned from the window; the rush-light was just expiring in its rude candlestick. He threw himself on his bed, and was soon lost in deep and dreamless slumbers.

* * *

"I give thee to thy God,-the God that gave thee

A well-spring of deep gladness to my heart!

And, precious as thou art,

And pure as dew of Hermon, He shall have thee!

My own, my beautiful, my undefiled!

And thou shalt be his child."

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While the student sleeps, we will make the reader acquainted with his short and simple annals.

His maternal grandfather had been among the Puritan emigrants who sought the rock-bound coast of New England. He was a man of worth and property, had been educated at Oxford, and distinguished for classical learning and elegant pursuits. But at the call of conscience he left the luxurious halls of his fathers, the rank, and ancestral honors that would have descended to him, to share the hardships, privations, and sufferings of the meanest of his companions. He brought with him his wife and an only child, a daughter of twenty years.

Like her mother, she had been carefully nurtured, and had lived in much luxury, although in the strict seclusion of the daughters of the Puritans.

The wives and daughters of the Pilgrims have never been honored as they deserved to be. Except the Lady Arbella Johnson, is there a single name that has descended with pride and honor to their daughters, and been cherished as a Puritan saint?

It is true they lived in an age when the maxim that a woman should consider it her highest praise to have nothing said about her was in full force; and when the remark of Coleridge would have been applauded, "That the perfection of a woman's character is to be characterless."

But among the wives of the Pilgrims there were heroic women that endured silently every calamity. Mrs. Hemans says, with poetry and truth,-

"There was woman's fearless eye,

Lit by her deep love's truth."

But how many fearful days and nights they must have passed, trembling with all a mother's timidity for their children, when they heard the savage cry, that spared neither the touching smile of infancy, nor the agonized prayer of woman!

They had left the comforts, and even the luxuries, of their English homes,-the hourly attendance of servants, to meet the chilling skies of a shelterless wilderness. She whose foot had trodden the softest carpets, whose bed had been of down, who had been accustomed to those minute attentions that prevent the rose-leaf from being crumpled, must now labor with her own hands, endure the cold of the severest winter, and leave herself unsheltered; all she asked was to guard her infant children from suffering, and aid by her sympathy, her husband.

It is indeed true, that the sentiment of love or religion has power to elevate above all physical suffering, and to ennoble all those homely cares and humble offices that are performed for the beloved object with a smile of patient endurance; and it asks, in return, but confidence and tenderness.

The wife of Mr. Seymore soon sank under the hardships of the times, and the severity of the climate of New England. Her grave was made in the solitude of the overshadowing forest, and her daughter, who had brought with her a fine, hardy, English constitution, lived to console her widowed father.

He died about five years after his wife, and then his daughter married an Englishman of small fortune, who had come over with his family: his father and mother, both advanced in life, had settled on the small farm we have attempted to describe. He built the cottage for his parents, and then, with his wife, the mother of our young friend Seymore, returned to England.

She lived not long after her return. The religious enthusiasm of the time had taken possession of her mind, and, before her death, she dedicated this, her only child, to the service of the church, and requested her husband to send him to America, where poverty presented no insurmountable barrier to his success.

His father, in sending him to America in his twelfth year, promised to advance something for his education; but unfortunate circumstances prevented, and the boy was left to make his own fortune under the roof of his grandparents.

His disappointment was great to find his grandparents in so narrow circumstances, and himself condemned to so obscure a station. He had aspirations, as we have seen, beyond his humble circumstances. The few books he brought with him were his consolation. They were read, reread, and committed to memory; and then he longed for more. An accident, or what we term an accident-the instrument that Providence provides to shape our destiny-threw some light upon the gloom that seemed to have settled on his prospects.

He met at C--, where he had gone on some business connected with his agricultural labors, the clergyman of the place.

Mr. Grafton was interested by his fine intellectual expression, and pleased with the refined and intelligent remarks that seemed unsuited to his coarse laborer's frock and peasant's dress.

He took him to his house, lent him the books that were necessary to prepare him for our young college, and promised his aid to have him placed on the list of those indigent scholars who were devoted to the church.

From this time his industry and ambition were redoubled, and we have seen the poor aspirant for literary distinction striving to unite two things which must at last break down the body or the mind,-heavy daily labor, with severe mental toil at night.

He was young and strong; his health did not immediately fail, and we must now leave him where thousands of our young men have been left, with aspirations and hopes beyond their humble fortunes.

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