CHAPTER XV.
‘AND now, Mary,’ said Mrs. Scudder, at five o’clock the next morning,‘to-day, you know, is the doctor’s fast, and so we won’t get anydinner, and it will be a good time to do up all our little odd jobs.Miss Prissy promised to come in for two or three hours this morning, toalter the waist of that black silk, and I shouldn’t be surprised if wecould get it all done and ready to wear by Sunday.’
We will remark, by way of explanation to a part of this conversation,that our doctor, who was a specimen of life in earnest, made a practicethrough the greater part of his pulpit course of spending everySaturday as a day of fasting and retirement in preparation for theduties of the Sabbath.
Accordingly, the early breakfast things were no sooner disposed of thanMiss Prissy’s quick footsteps might have been heard pattering in thekitchen.
‘Well, Miss Scudder, how _do_ you do this morning? and how _do_ youdo, Mary? Well, if you aint the beaters! up just as early as ever, andeverything cleared away! I was telling Miss Wilcox that there didn’tever seem to be anything done in Miss Scudder’s kitchen, and I didverily believe you made your beds before you got up in the morning.Well, well; wasn’t that a party last night!’ she said, as she sat downwith the black silk and prepared her ripping-knife. ‘I must rip thismyself, Miss Scudder; for there’s a great deal in ripping silk, so asnot to let anybody know where it has been sewed.
‘You didn’t know that I was at the party, did you? Well, I was. Yousee, I thought I’d just step round there to see about that money to getthe doctor’s shirt with, and there I found Miss Wilcox with so manythings on her mind, and says she, “Miss Prissy, you don’t know how muchit would help me if I had somebody like you just to look after thingsa little here;” and says I, “Miss Wilcox, you just go right to yourroom and dress, and don’t you give yourself one minute’s thought aboutanything, and you see if I don’t have everything just right.” And sothere I was in for it, and I just stayed through; and it was well Idid, for Dinah, she wouldn’t have put ne’er enough egg in the coffee ifit hadn’t been for me. Why, I just went and beat up four eggs with myown hand, and stirred ’em into the grounds.
‘Well, but really; wasn’t I behind the door, and didn’t I peep intothe supper-room! I saw who was a-waitin’ on Miss Mary. Well, they dosay he’s the handsomest, most fascinating man; why, all the ladies inPhiladelphia are in a perfect quarrel about him; and I heard he saidthat he hadn’t seen such a beauty, he didn’t remember when.’
‘We all know that beauty is of small consequence,’ said Mrs. Scudder.‘I hope Mary has been brought up to feel that.’
‘Oh, of course,’ said Miss Prissy; ‘it’s just like a fading flower; allis to be good and useful, and that’s what she is; and I told ’em thather beauty was the least part of her, though I must say that dress didfit like a biscuit, if it was my own fitting. But, Miss Scudder, whatdo you think I heard ’em saying about the good old doctor?’
‘I am sure I don’t know,’ said Mrs. Scudder; ‘I only know they couldn’tsay anything bad.’
‘Well, no, not bad exactly,’ said Miss Prissy; ‘but they say he’sgetting such strange notions in his head; why, I heard some of ’em sayhe was going to come out and preach against the slave trade; and I’msure I don’t know what Newport folks will do if that’s wicked; thereaint hardly any money here that’s made any other way: it’ll certainlymake a great noise and talk, and make everybody angry; and I hope theDoctor aint a-going to do anything of that sort.’
‘I believe he is, Miss Prissy,’ said Mrs. Scudder; ‘he thinks it’s agreat sin that ought to be rebuked, and I think so too,’ she said,bracing herself resolutely; ‘that was Mr. Scudder’s opinion when Ifirst married him, and it’s mine.’
‘Oh, ah, yes. Well, if it’s a sin, of course,’ said Miss Prissy; ‘butthen, dear me! Why, just think how many great houses are living onit. Why, there’s General Wilcox himself, and he’s a very nice man;and then there’s Major Seaforth; and why, I could count you off nowa dozen—all our very first people. Why, Doctor Styles doesn’t thinkso, and I’m sure he’s a good Christian. Doctor Styles thinks it’s adispensation for giving the light of the gospel to the Africans; why,now I’m sure, when I was a-working at Deacon Stebbins’, I stopped overSunday once, ’cause Miss Stebbins she was weakly; ’twas when she wasgetting up after Samuel was born. No, on the whole, I believe ’twasNehemiah, ’cause I remember he had curly hair; but any way, I rememberI stayed there, and I remember as plain as if ’twas yesterday, justafter breakfast, how a man went driving by in a chaise, and the Deacon,he went out and stopped him for travelling on the Lord’s day (’cause,you know, he was a justice of the peace), and who should it be butTom Seaforth, and he told the Deacon his father had got a shiploadof negroes just come in, and the Deacon he just let him go, ’cause Iremember he said _that_ was a plain work of necessity and mercy.[A]Well now, who would have thought it? I believe the Doctor is betterthan most folks; but then the best people may be mistaken, you know.’
‘The Doctor has made up his mind that it’s his duty,’ said Mrs.Scudder. ‘I’m afraid it’ll make him very unpopular; but I, for one,shall stand by him.’
‘Oh, certainly, Miss Scudder, you’re doing just right, exactly. Well,there’s one comfort, he’ll have a great crowd to hear him preach,’cause as I was going round through the entries last night, I heard ’emtalking about it; and Colonel Burr said he should be there, and so didthe General, and so did Mr. What’s-his-name there, that senator fromPhiladelphia. I tell you you’ll have a full house.’
It was to be confessed that Mrs. Scudder’s heart rather sank thanotherwise at this announcement, and those who have felt what itis to be almost alone in the right, in the face of all the ‘firstfamilies’ of their acquaintance, may perhaps find some compassion forher; since after all, truth is invisible, but ‘first families’ arevery evident. First families are often very agreeable, undeniablyrespectable—fearfully virtuous; and it takes great faith to resistan evil principle which incarnates itself in the suavities of theirbreeding and amiability; and therefore it was that Mrs. Scudder felther heart heavy within her, and could with a very good grace havejoined the Doctor’s Saturday fast.
As for the Doctor, he sat the while tranquil in his study, with hisgreat Bible and his Concordance open before him, culling, with thatpatient assiduity for which he was remarkable, all the terrible textswhich that very unceremonious and old-fashioned book rains down sounsparingly on the sin of oppressing the weak. First families, whetherin Newport or elsewhere, were as invisible to him as they were toMoses during the forty days that he spent with God on the Mount. Hewas merely thinking of his message, thinking only how he should shapeit so as not to leave one word of it unsaid, not even imagining inthe least what the result of it was to be: he was but a voice, but aninstrument,—a passive instrument through which an Almighty will wasto reveal itself: and the sublime fatalism of his faith made him asdead to all human considerations as if he had been a portion of theimmutable laws of nature herself.
So the next morning, although all his friends trembled for him when herose in the pulpit, he never thought of trembling for himself: he hadcome in the covered way of silence from the secret place of the MostHigh, and felt himself still abiding under the shadow of the Almighty.It was alike to him whether the house was full or empty. Whoever weredecreed to hear the message would be there; whether they would hear orforbear was already settled in the counsels of a mightier will thanhis: he had the simple duty of utterance.
The ruinous old meeting-house was never so radiant with station andgentility as on that morning: a June sun shone brightly, the seasparkled with a thousand little eyes, the birds sang all along theway, and all the notables turned out to hear the Doctor.
Mrs. Scudder received into her pew, with dignified politeness, ColonelBurr, and Colonel and Madame de Frontignac.
General Wilcox and his portly dame, Major Seaforth, and we know not,what not of Vernons and De Wolfs, and other grand old names werepres
ent there. Stiff silks rustled, Chinese fans fluttered, and thelast court fashion stood revealed in bonnets; everybody was lookingfresh and amiable: a charming and respectable set of sinners come tohear what the Doctor would find to tell them about their transgressions.
Mrs. Scudder was calculating consequences, and, shutting her eyes onthe too evident world about her, prayed that the Lord would overruleall for good: the Doctor prayed that he might have grace to speak thetruth, and the whole truth.
We have yet on record, in his published works, the great argument ofthat day, through which he moved with that calm appeal to the reason,which made his results always so weighty.
‘If these things be true,’ he said, after a condensed statement ofthe facts of the case, ‘then the following terrible consequences,which may well make all shudder and tremble who realize them, forcethemselves upon us, that all who have had any hand in this iniquitousbusiness, whether directly or indirectly, or have used their influenceto promote it, or have consented to it, or even connived at it, or havenot opposed it by all proper exertions of which they are capable—allthese are in a greater or less degree chargeable with the injuries andmiseries which millions have suffered and are suffering, and are guiltyof the blood of millions who lost their lives by this traffic in thehuman species. Not only the merchants who have been engaged in thistrade, and the captains who have been tempted by the love of money toengage in this cruel work, and the slaveholders of every description,are guilty of shedding rivers of blood, but all the legislatures whohave authorized, encouraged, or even neglected to suppress it to theutmost of their power, and all the individuals in private stations whohave in any way aided in this business, consented to it, or have notopposed it to the utmost of their ability, have a share in this guilt.This trade in the human species has been the first wheel of commercein Newport, on which every other movement in business has chieflydepended. This town has been built up and flourished in times past atthe expense of the blood, the liberty, and the happiness of the poorAfricans; and the inhabitants have lived on this, and by it have gottenmost of their wealth and riches. If a bitter woe is pronounced on himwho buildeth his house by unrighteousness and his chambers by wrong(Jer. xxii. 13), to him who buildeth a town by blood, and establishetha city by iniquity (Hab. ii. 12), to the bloody city (Ezek. xxiv.6), what a heavy, dreadful woe hangs over the heads of all thosewhose hands are defiled by the blood of the Africans—especially theinhabitants of this state and this town, who have had a distinguishedshare in this unrighteous and bloody commerce!’ He went over the recenthistory of the country; expatiated on the national declaration solately made, that all men are born equally free and independent, andhave a natural and inalienable right to liberty, and asked with whatface a nation declaring such things could continue to hold thousands oftheir fellow-men in abject slavery.
He pointed out signs of national disaster which foreboded the wrathof heaven: the increase of public and private debts; the spirit ofmurmuring and jealousy of rulers among the people; divisions andcontentions and bitter party alienations; the jealous irritation ofEngland constantly endeavouring to hamper our trade; the Indians makingwar on the frontiers; the Algerines taking captive our ships, andmaking slaves of our citizens; all evident tokens of the displeasureand impending judgment of an offended justice.
The sermon rolled over the heads of the gay audience deep and dark as athunder-cloud which in a few moments changes a summer sky into heaviestgloom. Gradually an expression of intense interest and deep concernspread over the listeners; it was the magnetism of a strong mind, whichheld them for a time under the shadow of his own awful sense of God’salmighty justice.
It is said that a little child once described his appearance in thepulpit by saying, ‘I saw God there, and I was afraid.’
Something of the same effect was produced on the audience now, and itwas not till after sermon, prayer, and benediction were all over, thatthe respectables of Newport began gradually to unstiffen themselvesfrom the spell, and to look into each other’s eyes for comfort, andto reassure themselves that after all they were the first families,eminently respectable, and going on in the good old way the worldhad always gone, and that the Doctor, of course, was a Radical and afanatic.
When the audience streamed out, crowding the broad aisle, Marydescended from the singers’ seat, and stood with her psalm book inhand, waiting at the door to be joined by her mother and the Doctor.She overheard many hard words from people who an evening or two beforehad smiled so graciously upon them. It was, therefore, with no littledetermination of manner that she advanced and took the Doctor’s arm, asif anxious to associate herself with his well-earned unpopularity; andjust at this moment she caught the eye and smile of Colonel Burr, as hebowed gracefully, yet not without a suggestion of something sarcasticin his eye.
FOOTNOTE:
[A] A fact.