At this moment, by the luck that always brings in the person people are talking of, Miss Mehitable came in, with the identical old wonder on her head. Now, outside of our own blood-relations, no one that came within our doors ever received a warmer welcome than Miss Mehitable. Even the children loved her, with that instinctive sense by which children and dogs learn the discerning of spirits. To be sure she was as gaunt and brown as the Ancient Mariner, but hers was a style of ugliness that was neither repulsive nor vulgar. Personal un-comeliness has its differing characters, and there are some very homely women who have a style that amounts to something like beauty. I know that this is not the common view of the matter; but I am firm in the faith that some very homely women have a certain attraction about them which is increased by their homeliness. It is like the quaintness of Japanese china, - not beautiful, but having a strong, pronounced character, as far remote as possible from the ordinary and vulgar, and which, in union with vigorous and agreeable traits of mind, is more stimulating than any mere insipid beauty.
In short, Miss Mehitable was a specimen of what I should call the good-goblin style of beauty, and people liked her so much that they came to like the singularities which individualized her from all other people. Her features were prominent and harsh; her eyebrows were shaggy, and finished abruptly half across her brow, leaving but half an eyebrow on each side. She had, however, clear, trustworthy, steady eyes, of a greenish gray, which impressed one with much of that idea of steadfast faithfulness that one sees in the eyes of some good, homely dogs. "Faithful and true," was written in her face as legibly as eyes could write it.
For the rest, Miss Mehitable had a strong mind, was an omnivorous reader, apt, ready in conversation, and with a droll, original way of viewing things, which made her society ever stimulating. To me her house was always full of delightful images, - a great, calm, cool, shady, old-fashioned house, full of books and of quaint old furniture, with a garden on one side where were no end of lilies, hollyhocks, pinks, and peonies, to say nothing of currants, raspberries, apples, and pears, and other carnal delights, all of which good Miss Mehitable was free to dispense to her child-visitors. It was my image of heaven to be allowed to go to spend an afternoon with Miss Mehitable, and establish myself, in a shady corner of the old study which contained her father's library, over an edition of ?sop's Fables illustrated with plates, which, opened, was an endless field of enchantment to me.
Miss Mehitable lived under the watch and charge of an ancient female domestic named Polly Shubel. Polly was a representative specimen of the now extinct species of Yankee serving-maids. She had been bred up from a child in the Rosseter family of some generations back. She was of that peculiar kind of constitution, known in New England, which merely becomes drier and tougher with the advance of time, without giving any other indications of old age. The exact number of her years was a point unsettled even among the most skilful genealogists of Oldtown. Polly was a driving, thrifty, doctrinal and practical female, with strong bones and muscles, and strong opinions, believing most potently in early rising, soap and sand, and the Assembly's Catechism, and knowing certainly all that she did know. Polly considered Miss Mehitable as a sort of child under her wardship, and conducted the whole business of life for her with a sovereign and unanswerable authority. As Miss Mehitable's tastes were in the world of books and ideas, rather than of physical matters, she resigned herself to Polly's sway with as good a grace as possible, though sometimes she felt that it rather abridged her freedom of action.
Luckily for my own individual self, Polly patronized me, and gave me many a piece of good advice, sweetened with gingerbread, when I went to visit Miss Rossiter. I counted Miss Mehitable among my personal friends; so to-night, when she came in, I came quickly and laid hold of the skirt of her gown, and looked admiringly upon her dusky face, under the portentous shadow of a great bonnet shaded by nodding bows of that preternatural color which people used to call olive-green. She had a word for us all, a cordial grasp of the hand for my mother, who sat silent and thoughtful in her corner, and a warm hand-shake all round.
"You see," she said, drawing out an old-fashioned snuff-box, and tapping upon it, "my house grew so stupid that I must come and share my pinch of snuff with you. It 's windy out to-night, and I should think a storm was brewing; and the rattling of one's own window-blinds, as one sits alone, is n't half so amusing as some other things."
"You know, Miss Rossiter, we 're always delighted to have you come in," said my grandmother, and my Aunt Lois, and my Aunt Keziah, all at once. This, by the way, was a little domestic trick that the females of our family had; and, as their voices were upon very different keys, the effect was somewhat peculiar. My Aunt Lois's voice was high and sharp, my grandmother's a hearty chest-tone, while Aunt Keziah's had an uncertain buzz between the two, like the vibrations of a lose string; but as they all had corresponding looks and smiles of welcome, Miss Mehitable was pleased.
"I always indulge myself in thinking I am welcome," she said. "And now pray how is our young scholar, Master William Badger? What news do you bring us from old Harvard?"
"Almost anything you want to hear Miss Mehitable. You know that I am your most devoted slave."
"Not so sure of that, sir," she said, with a whimsical twinkle of her eye. "Don't you know that your sex are always treacherous? How do I know that you don't serve up old Miss Rossiter when you give representations of the Oldtown curiosities there at Cambridge? We are a set here that might make a boy's fortune in that line, - now are n't we?"
"How do you know that I do serve up Oldtown curiosities?" said Bill, somewhat confused, and blushing to the roots of his hair.
"How do I know? Can the Ethiopian change his skin, or the leopard his spots? and can you help being a mimic, as you were born, always were and always will be?"
"O, but I 'm sure, Miss Mehitable, Bill never would, - he has too much respect," said Aunt Keziah and Aunt Lois, simultaneously again.
"Perhaps not; but if he wants to, he 's welcome. What are queer old women for, if young folks may not have a good laugh out of them now and then? If it 's only a friendly laugh, it 's just as good as crying, and better too. I 'd like to be made to laugh at myself. I think generally we take ourselves altogether too seriously. What now, bright eyes?" she added, as I nestled nearer to her. "Do you want to come up into an old woman's lap? Well, here you come. Bless me, what a tangle of curls we have here! Don't your thoughts get caught in these curls sometimes?"
I looked bashful and wistful at this address, and Miss Mehitable went on twining my curls around her fingers, and trotting me on her knee, lulling me into a delicious dreaminess, in which she seemed to me to be one of those nice, odd-looking old fairy women that figure to such effect in stories.
The circle all rose again as Major Broad came in. Aunt Lois thought, with evident anguish, of the best room. Here was the major, sure enough, and we all sitting round the kitchen fire! But my grandfather and grandmother welcomed him cheerfully to their corner, and enthroned him in my grandfather's splint-bottomed rocking-chair, where he sat far more comfortably than if he had been perched on a genteel, slippery-bottomed stuffed chair with claw feet.
The Major performed the neighborly kindnesses of the occasion in an easy way. He spoke a few words to my mother of the esteem and kindness he had felt for my father, in a manner that called up the blood into her thin cheeks, and made her eyes dewy with tears. Then he turned to the young collegian, recognizing him as one of the rising lights of Oldtown.
"Our only nobility now," he said to my grandfather. "We 've cut off everything else; no distinction now, sir, but educated and uneducated."
"It is a hard struggle for our human nature to give up titles and ranks, though," said Miss Mehitable. "For my part, I have a ridiculous kindness for them yet. I know it 's all nonsense; but I can't help looking back to the court we used to have at the Government House in Boston. You know it was something to hear of the goings and doings of my Lord this and my Lady that., and of Sir Thomas and
Sir Peter and Sir Charles, and all the rest of 'em."
"Yes," said Bill; "the Oldtown folks call their minister's wife Lady yet."
"Well, that 's a little comfort," said Miss Mehitable; "one don't want life an entire dead level. Do let us have one titled lady among us."
"And a fine lady she is," said the Major. "Our parson did a good thing in that alliance."
While the conversation was thus taking a turn of the most approved genteel style, Aunt Keziah's ears heard alarming premonitory sounds outside the door. "Who 's that at the scraper?" she said.
"O, it 's Sam Lawson," said Aunt Lois, with a sort of groan. "You may be sure of that."
"Come in, Sam, my boy," said Uncle Bill, opening the door. "Glad to see you."
"Wal now, Mr. Badger," said Sam, with white eyes of veneration, "I 'm real glad to see ye. I telled Hepsy you 'd want to see me. You 're the fust one of my Saturday afternoon fishin' boys that 's got into college, and I 'm 'mazing proud of 't. I tell you I walk tall, - ask ' em if I don't, round to the store."
"You always were gifted in that line," said Bill. "But come, sit down in the corner and tell us what you 've been about."
"Wal, you see, I thought I 'd jest go over to North Parish this afternoon, jest for a change, like, and I wanted to hear one of them Hopkintinsians they tell so much about; and Parson Simpson, he 's one on 'em."
"Yu ought not to be roving off on Sunday, leaving your own meeting," said my grandfather.
"Wal, you see, Deacon Badger, I 'm interested in these 'ere new doctrines. I met your Polly a goin' over, too," he said to Miss Mehitable.
"O yes," said Miss Mehitable, "Polly is a great Hopkinsian. She can hardly have patience to sit under our Parson Lothrop's preaching. It 's rather hard on me, because Polly makes it a point of conscience to fight every one of his discourses over to me in my parlor. Somebody gave Polly an Arminian tract last Sunday, entitled, 'The Apostle Paul an Arminian.' It would have done you good to hear Polly's comments. ''Postle Paul an Arminian! He 's the biggest 'lectioner of 'em all.'"
"That he is," said my grandmother, warmly. "Polly 's read her Bible to some purpose."
"Well, Sam, what did you think of the sermon?" said Uncle Bill.
"Wal," said Sam, leaning over the fire, with his long, bony hands alternately raised to catch the warmth, and then dropped with an utter laxness, when the warmth became too pronounced, "Parson Simpson 's a smart man; but, I tell ye, it 's kind o' discouragin'. Why, he said our state and condition by natur was just like this. We was clear down in a well fifty feet deep, and the sides all round nothin' but glare ice; but we was under immediate obligations to get out, 'cause we was free, voluntary agents. But nobody ever had got out, and nobody would, unless the Lord reached down and took 'em. And whether he would or not nobody could tell; it was all sovereignty. He said there wa' n't one in a hundred, - not one in a thousand, - not one in ten thousand, - that would be saved. Lordy massy, says I to myself, ef that 's so they 're any of 'em welcome to my chance. And so I kind o' ris up and come out, 'cause I 'd got a pretty long walk home, and I wanted to go round by South Pond, and inquire about Aunt Sally Morse's toothache."
"I heard the whole sermon over from Polly," said Miss Mehitable, "and as it was not a particularly cheerful subject to think of, I came over here." These words were said with a sort of chilly, dreary sigh, that made me turn and look up in Miss Mehitable's face. It looked haggard and weary, as of one tired of struggling with painful thoughts.
"Wal," said Sam Lawson, "I stopped a minute round to your back door, Miss Rossiter, to talk with Polly about the sermon. I was a tellin' Polly that that 'ere was puttin' inability a leetle too strong."
"Not a bit, not a bit," said Uncle Fly, "so long as it 's moral inability. There 's the point, ye see, - moral, - that 's the word. That makes it all right."
"Wal," said Sam, "I was a puttin' it to Polly this way. Ef a man 's cut off his hands, it ain't right to require him to chop wood. Wal, Polly, she says he 'd no business to cut his hands off; and so he ought to be required to chop the wood all the same. Wal, I telled her it was Adam chopped our hands off. But she said, no; it was we did it in Adam, and she brought up the catechise plain enough, - We sinned in him, and fell with him.'"
"She had you there, Sam," said Uncle Fly, with great content. "You won't catch Polly tripping on the catechism."
"Well, for my part," said Major Broad, "I don't like these doctrinal subtilties, Deacon Badger. Now I 've got a volume of Mr. Addison's religious writings that seem to me about the right thing. They 're very pleasing reading. Mr. Addison is my favorite author of a Sunday."
"I 'm afraid Mr. Addison had nothing but just mere morality and natural religion," said my grandmother, who could not be withheld from bearing her testimony. "You don't find any of the discriminating doctrines in Mr. Addison. Major Broad, did you ever read Mr. Bellamy's 'True Religion Delineated and Distinguished from all Counterfeits '?"
"No, madam, I never did," said Major Broad.
"Well, I earnestly hope you will read that book," said my grandmother.
"My wife is always at me about one good book or another," said my grandfather; "but I manage to do with my old Bible, I have n't used that up yet."
"I should know about Dr. Bellamy's book by this time," said Miss Mehitable, "for Polly intrenches herself in that, and preaches out of it daily. Polly certainly missed her vocation when she was trained for a servant. She is a born professor of theology. She is so circumstantial about all that took place at the time the angels fell, and when the covenant was made with Adam in the Garden of Eden, that I sometimes question whether she really might not have been there personally. Polly is particularly strong on Divine sovereignty. She thinks it applies to everything under the sun except my affairs. Those she chooses to look after herself."
"Well," said Major Broad, "I am not much of a theologian. I want to be taught my duty. Parson Lothrop's discourses are generally very clear and practical, and they suite me."
"They are good as far as they go," said my grandmother; "but I like good, strong, old-fashioned doctrine. I like such writers as Mr. Edwards and Dr. Bellamy and Dr. Hopkins. It 's all very well, your essays on cheerfulness and resignation and all that; but I want something that takes strong hold of you, so that you feel something has got you that can hold."
"The Cambridge Platform, for instance," said Uncle Bill.
"Yes, my son, the Cambridge platform. I ain't ashamed of it. It was made by men whose shoe-latchet we are n't worthy to unloose. I believe it, - every word on 't. I believe it, and I 'm going to believe it."
"And would if there was twice as much of it," said Uncle Bill. "That 's right, mother, stand up for your colors. I admire your spirit. But, Sam, what does Hepsy think of all this? I suppose you enlighten her when you return from your investigations."
"Wal, I try to. But lordy massy, Mr. Badger, Hepsy don't take no kind o' interest in the doctrines, no more 'n nothin' at all. She 's so kind o' worldly, Hepsy is. It 's allers meat and drink, meat and drink, with her. That 's all she 's thinkin' of."
"And if you would think more of such things, she would n't have to think so much," said Aunt Lois, sharply. "Don't you know the Bible says, that the man that provideth not for his own household hath denied the faith, and is worse than an infidel?"
"I don't see," said Sam, slowly flopping his great hands up and down over the blaze, - "I railly don't see why folks are allers a throwin' up that 'ere text at me. I 'm sure I work as hard as a man ken. Why, I was a workin' last night till nigh twelve o'clock, doin' up odd jobs o' blacksmithin'. They kin o' cumulate, ye know."
"Mr. Lawson," said my grandmother, with a look of long-suffering patience, "how often and often must I tell you, that if you 'd be steadier round your home, and work in regular hours, Hepsy would be more comfortable, and things would go on better?"
"Lordy massy, Mis' Badger, bless your soul and body, ye don't know nothin' about it - ye don't know nothin' what I undergo. Hepsy, she is at me
from morning till night. First it 's one thing, and then another. One day it rains, and her clothes-line breaks. She 's at me 'bout that. Now I tell her, 'Hepsy, I ain't to blame, - I don't make the rain.' And then another day she 's at me agin 'cause the wind 's east, and fetches the smoke down chimbley I tell her, 'Hepsy, now look here, - do I make the wind blow?' but it 's no use talkin' to Hepsy."
"Well, Sam, I take your part," said Bill. "I always knew you was a regular martyr. Come, boys, go down cellar and draw a pitcher of cider. We 'll stay him with flagons, and comfort him with apples. Won't we, Sam?"
As Sam was prime favorite with all boys, my brother Bill and I started willingly enough on this errand, one carrying the candle and the other a great stone pitcher of bountiful proportions, which always did hospitable duty on similar occasions.
Just as we returned, bearing our pitcher, there came another rap at the outside door of the kitchen, and Old Betty Poganut and Sally Wonsamug stood at the door.
"Well, now, Mis' Badger," said Betty, "Sally and me, we thought we must jest run in, we got so scar't. We was coming through that Bill Morse's woods, and there come such a flash o' lightin' it most blinded us, and the wind blew enough to blow a body over; and we thought there was a storm right down on us, and we run jest as fast as we could. We did n't know what to do, we was so scar't. I 'm mortal 'fraid of lightning,"
"Why, Betty, you forgot the sermon to-day. You should have said your prayers, as Parson Lothrop tells you," said my grandfather.
"Well, I did kind o' put up a sort o' silent 'jaculation, as a body may say. That is, I jest said, 'O Lord,' and kind o' gin him a wink, you know."
"O, you did?" said my grandfather.
"Yes, I kind o' thought He 'd know what I meant."
My grandfather turned with a smile to Miss Mehitable. "These Indians have their own wild ways of looking at things after all."
"Well, now, I s'pose you have n't had a bit of supper, either of you," said my grandmother, getting up. "It 's commonly the way of it."
"Well, to tell the truth, I was sayin' to Sarah that if we come down to Mis' Deacon Badger's I should n't wonder if we got something good," said Betty, her broad, coarse face and baggy cheeks beginning to be illuminated with a smile.
"Here, Horace, you come and hold the candle while I go into the buttery and get 'em some cold pork and beans," said my grandmother, cheerily. "The poor creturs don't get a good meal of victuals very often; and I baked a good lot on purpose."