Chapter 20

Time passed; with change of hopes and fears, And in the self-same place, Two women, gray with middle years, Stood, wondering, face to face.

With wakened memories, as they met, They queried what had been "A poor man's wife am I, and yet," Said one, "I am a queen.

"My realm a little homestead is, Where, lacking crown and throne, I rule by loving services And patient toil alone."

The other said: "The great world lies Beyond me as it lay; O'er love's and duty's boundaries My feet may never stray.

"I see but common sights of home, Its common sounds I hear, My widowed mother's sick-bed room Sufficeth for my sphere.

"I read to her some pleasant page Of travel far and wide, And in a dreamy pilgrimage We wander side by side.

"And when, at last, she falls asleep, My book becomes to me A magic glass: my watch I keep, But all the world I see.

"A farm-wife queen your place you fill, While fancy's privilege Is mine to walk the earth at will, Thanks to the Wishing Bridge."

"Nay, leave the legend for the truth," The other cried, "and say God gives the wishes of our youth, But in His own best way!"

1882.

HOW THE WOMEN WENT FROM DOVER.

The following is a copy of the warrant issued by Major Waldron, of Dover, in 1662. The Quakers, as was their wont, prophesied against him, and saw, as they supposed, the fulfilment of their prophecy when, many years after, he was killed by the Indians.

To the constables of Dover, Hampton, Salisbury, Newbury, Rowley, Ipswich, Wenham, Lynn, Boston, Roxbury, Dedham, and until these vagabond Quakers are carried out of this jurisdiction. You, and every one of you, are required, in the King's Majesty's name, to take these vagabond Quakers, Anne Colman, Mary Tomkins, and Alice Ambrose, and make them fast to the cart's tail, and driving the cart through your several towns, to whip them upon their naked backs not exceeding ten stripes apiece on each of them, in each town; and so to convey them from constable to constable till they are out of this jurisdiction, as you will answer it at your peril; and this shall be your warrant. RICHARD WALDRON. Dated at Dover, December 22, 1662.

This warrant was executed only in Dover and Hampton. At Salisbury the constable refused to obey it. He was sustained by the town's people, who were under the influence of Major Robert Pike, the leading man in the lower valley of the Merrimac, who stood far in advance of his time, as an advocate of religious freedom, and an opponent of ecclesiastical authority. He had the moral courage to address an able and manly letter to the court at Salem, remonstrating against the witchcraft trials.

THE tossing spray of Cocheco's fall Hardened to ice on its rocky wall, As through Dover town in the chill, gray dawn, Three women passed, at the cart-tail drawn!

Bared to the waist, for the north wind's grip And keener sting of the constable's whip, The blood that followed each hissing blow Froze as it sprinkled the winter snow.

Priest and ruler, boy and maid Followed the dismal cavalcade; And from door and window, open thrown, Looked and wondered gaffer and crone.

"God is our witness," the victims cried, We suffer for Him who for all men died; The wrong ye do has been done before, We bear the stripes that the Master bore!

And thou, O Richard Waldron, for whom We hear the feet of a coming doom, On thy cruel heart and thy hand of wrong Vengeance is sure, though it tarry long.

"In the light of the Lord, a flame we see Climb and kindle a proud roof-tree; And beneath it an old man lying dead, With stains of blood on his hoary head."

"Smite, Goodman Hate-Evil!--harder still!" The magistrate cried, "lay on with a will! Drive out of their bodies the Father of Lies, Who through them preaches and prophesies!"

So into the forest they held their way, By winding river and frost-rimmed bay, Over wind-swept hills that felt the beat Of the winter sea at their icy feet.

The Indian hunter, searching his traps, Peered stealthily through the forest gaps; And the outlying settler shook his head,-- "They're witches going to jail," he said.

At last a meeting-house came in view; A blast on his horn the constable blew; And the boys of Hampton cried up and down, "The Quakers have come!" to the wondering town.

From barn and woodpile the goodman came; The goodwife quitted her quilting frame, With her child at her breast; and, hobbling slow, The grandam followed to see the show.

Once more the torturing whip was swung, Once more keen lashes the bare flesh stung. "Oh, spare! they are bleeding!"' a little maid cried, And covered her face the sight to hide.

A murmur ran round the crowd: "Good folks," Quoth the constable, busy counting the strokes, "No pity to wretches like these is due, They have beaten the gospel black and blue!"

Then a pallid woman, in wild-eyed fear, With her wooden noggin of milk drew near. "Drink, poor hearts!" a rude hand smote Her draught away from a parching throat.

"Take heed," one whispered, "they'll take your cow For fines, as they took your horse and plough, And the bed from under you." "Even so," She said; "they are cruel as death, I know."

Then on they passed, in the waning day, Through Seabrook woods, a weariful way; By great salt meadows and sand-hills bare, And glimpses of blue sea here and there.

By the meeting-house in Salisbury town, The sufferers stood, in the red sundown, Bare for the lash! O pitying Night, Drop swift thy curtain and hide the sight.

With shame in his eye and wrath on his lip The Salisbury constable dropped his whip. "This warrant means murder foul and red; Cursed is he who serves it," he said.

"Show me the order, and meanwhile strike A blow at your peril!" said Justice Pike. Of all the rulers the land possessed, Wisest and boldest was he and best.

He scoffed at witchcraft; the priest he met As man meets man; his feet he set Beyond his dark age, standing upright, Soul-free, with his face to the morning light.

He read the warrant: "These convey From our precincts; at every town on the way Give each ten lashes." "God judge the brute! I tread his order under my foot!

"Cut loose these poor ones and let them go; Come what will of it, all men shall know No warrant is good, though backed by the Crown, For whipping women in Salisbury town!"

The hearts of the villagers, half released From creed of terror and rule of priest, By a primal instinct owned the right Of human pity in law's despite.

For ruth and chivalry only slept, His Saxon manhood the yeoman kept; Quicker or slower, the same blood ran In the Cavalier and the Puritan.

The Quakers sank on their knees in praise And thanks. A last, low sunset blaze Flashed out from under a cloud, and shed A golden glory on each bowed head.

The tale is one of an evil time, When souls were fettered and thought was crime, And heresy's whisper above its breath Meant shameful scourging and bonds and death!

What marvel, that hunted and sorely tried, Even woman rebuked and prophesied, And soft words rarely answered back The grim persuasion of whip and rack.

If her cry from the whipping-post and jail Pierced sharp as the Kenite's driven nail, O woman, at ease in these happier days, Forbear to judge of thy sister's ways!

How much thy beautiful life may owe To her faith and courage thou canst not know, Nor how from the paths of thy calm retreat She smoothed the thorns with her bleeding feet.

1883.

SAINT GREGORY'S GUEST.

A TALE for Roman guides to tell To careless, sight-worn travellers still, Who pause beside the narrow cell Of Gregory on the Caelian Hill.

One day before the monk's door came A beggar, stretching empty palms, Fainting and fast-sick, in the name Of the Most Holy asking alms.

And the monk answered, "All I have In this poor cell of mine I give, The silver cup my mother gave; In Christ's name take thou it, and live."

Years passed; and, called at last to bear The pastoral crook and keys of Rome, The poor monk, in Saint Peter's chair, Sat the crowned lord of Christendom.

"Prepare a feast," Saint Gregory cried, "And let twelve beggars sit thereat." The beggars came, and one beside, An unknown stranger, with them sat.

"I asked thee not," the Pontiff spake, "O stranger; but if need be thine, I bid thee welcome, for the sake Of Him who is thy Lord and mine."

A grave, calm face the stranger raised, Like His who on Gennesaret trod, Or His on whom the Chaldeans gazed, Whose form was as the Son of God.

"Know'st thou," he said, "thy gift of old?" And in the hand he lifted up The Pontiff marvelled to behold Once more his mother's silver cup.

"Thy prayers and alms have risen, and bloom Sweetly among the flowers of heaven. I am The Wonderful, through whom Whate'er thou askest shall be given."

He spake and vanished. Gregory fell With his twelve guests in mute accord Prone on their faces, knowing well Their eyes of flesh had seen the Lord.

The old-time legend is not vain; Nor vain thy art, Verona's Paul, Telling it o'er and o'er again On gray Vicenza's frescoed wall.

Still wheresoever pity shares Its bread with sorrow, want, and sin, And love the beggar's feast prepares, The uninvited Guest comes in.

Unheard, because our ears are dull, Unseen, because our eyes are dim, He walks our earth, The Wonderful, And all good deeds are done to Him.

1883.

BIRCHBROOK MILL.

A NOTELESS stream, the Birchbrook runs Beneath its leaning trees; That low, soft ripple is its own, That dull roar is the sea's.

Of human signs it sees alone The distant church spire's tip, And, ghost-like, on a blank of gray, The white sail of a ship.

No more a toiler at the wheel, It wanders at its will; Nor dam nor pond is left to tell Where once was Birchbrook mill.

The timbers of that mill have fed Long since a farmer's fires; His doorsteps are the stones that ground The harvest of his sires.

Man trespassed here; but Nature lost No right of her domain; She waited, and she brought the old Wild beauty back again.

By day the sunlight through the leaves Falls on its moist, green sod, And wakes the violet bloom of spring And autumn's golden-rod.

Its birches whisper to the wind, The swallow dips her wings In the cool spray, and on its banks The gray song-sparrow sings.

But from it, when the dark night falls, The school-girl shrinks with dread; The farmer, home-bound from his fields, Goes by with quickened tread.

They dare not pause to hear the grind Of shadowy stone on stone; The plashing of a water-wheel Where wheel there now is none.

Has not a cry of pain been heard Above the clattering mill? The pawing of an unseen horse, Who waits his mistress still?

Yet never to the listener's eye Has sight confirmed the sound; A wavering birch line marks alone The vacant pasture ground.

No ghostly arms fling up to heaven The agony of prayer; No spectral steed impatient shakes His white mane on the air.

The meaning of that common dread No tongue has fitly told; The secret of the dark surmise The brook and birches hold.

What nameless horror of the past Broods here forevermore? What ghost his unforgiven sin Is grinding o'er and o'er?

Does, then, immortal memory play The actor's tragic part, Rehearsals of a mortal life And unveiled human heart?

God's pity spare a guilty soul That drama of its ill, And let the scenic curtain fall On Birchbrook's haunted mill

1884.

THE TWO ELIZABETHS.

Read at the unveiling of the bust of Elizabeth Fry at the Friends' School, Providence, R. I.

A. D. 1209.

AMIDST Thuringia's wooded hills she dwelt, A high-born princess, servant of the poor, Sweetening with gracious words the food she dealt To starving throngs at Wartburg's blazoned door.

A blinded zealot held her soul in chains, Cramped the sweet nature that he could not kill, Scarred her fair body with his penance-pains, And gauged her conscience by his narrow will.

God gave her gifts of beauty and of grace, With fast and vigil she denied them all; Unquestioning, with sad, pathetic face, She followed meekly at her stern guide's call.

So drooped and died her home-blown rose of bliss In the chill rigor of a discipline That turned her fond lips from her children's kiss, And made her joy of motherhood a sin.

To their sad level by compassion led, One with the low and vile herself she made, While thankless misery mocked the hand that fed, And laughed to scorn her piteous masquerade.

But still, with patience that outwearied hate, She gave her all while yet she had to give; And then her empty hands, importunate, In prayer she lifted that the poor might live.

Sore pressed by grief, and wrongs more hard to bear, And dwarfed and stifled by a harsh control, She kept life fragrant with good deeds and prayer, And fresh and pure the white flower of her soul.

Death found her busy at her task: one word Alone she uttered as she paused to die, "Silence!"--then listened even as one who heard With song and wing the angels drawing nigh!

Now Fra Angelico's roses fill her hands, And, on Murillo's canvas, Want and Pain Kneel at her feet. Her marble image stands Worshipped and crowned in Marburg's holy fane.

Yea, wheresoe'er her Church its cross uprears, Wide as the world her story still is told; In manhood's reverence, woman's prayers and tears, She lives again whose grave is centuries old.

And still, despite the weakness or the blame Of blind submission to the blind, she hath A tender place in hearts of every name, And more than Rome owns Saint Elizabeth!

A. D. 1780.

Slow ages passed: and lo! another came, An English matron, in whose simple faith Nor priestly rule nor ritual had claim, A plain, uncanonized Elizabeth.

No sackcloth robe, nor ashen-sprinkled hair, Nor wasting fast, nor scourge, nor vigil long, Marred her calm presence. God had made her fair, And she could do His goodly work no wrong.

Their yoke is easy and their burden light Whose sole confessor is the Christ of God; Her quiet trust and faith transcending sight Smoothed to her feet the difficult paths she trod.

And there she walked, as duty bade her go, Safe and unsullied as a cloistered nun, Shamed with her plainness Fashion's gaudy show, And overcame the world she did not shun.

In Earlham's bowers, in Plashet's liberal hall, In the great city's restless crowd and din, Her ear was open to the Master's call, And knew the summons of His voice within.

Tender as mother, beautiful as wife, Amidst the throngs of prisoned crime she stood In modest raiment faultless as her life, The type of England's worthiest womanhood.

To melt the hearts that harshness turned to stone The sweet persuasion of her lips sufficed, And guilt, which only hate and fear had known, Saw in her own the pitying love of Christ.

So wheresoe'er the guiding Spirit went She followed, finding every prison cell It opened for her sacred as a tent Pitched by Gennesaret or by Jacob's well.

And Pride and Fashion felt her strong appeal, And priest and ruler marvelled as they saw How hand in hand went wisdom with her zeal, And woman's pity kept the bounds of law.

She rests in God's peace; but her memory stirs The air of earth as with an angel's wings, And warms and moves the hearts of men like hers, The sainted daughter of Hungarian kings.

United now, the Briton and the Hun, Each, in her own time, faithful unto death, Live sister souls! in name and spirit one, Thuringia's saint and our Elizabeth!

1885.

REQUITAL.

As Islam's Prophet, when his last day drew Nigh to its close, besought all men to say Whom he had wronged, to whom he then should pay A debt forgotten, or for pardon sue, And, through the silence of his weeping friends, A strange voice cried: "Thou owest me a debt," "Allah be praised!" he answered. "Even yet He gives me power to make to thee amends. O friend! I thank thee for thy timely word." So runs the tale. Its lesson all may heed, For all have sinned in thought, or word, or deed, Or, like the Prophet, through neglect have erred. All need forgiveness, all have debts to pay Ere the night cometh, while it still is day.

1885.

THE HOMESTEAD.

AGAINST the wooded hills it stands, Ghost of a dead home, staring through Its broken lights on wasted lands Where old-time harvests grew.

Unploughed, unsown, by scythe unshorn, The poor, forsaken farm-fields lie, Once rich and rife with golden corn And pale green breadths of rye.

Of healthful herb and flower bereft, The garden plot no housewife keeps; Through weeds and tangle only left, The snake, its tenant, creeps.

A lilac spray, still blossom-clad, Sways slow before the empty rooms; Beside the roofless porch a sad Pathetic red rose blooms.

His track, in mould and dust of drouth, On floor and hearth the squirrel leaves, And in the fireless chimney's mouth His web the spider weaves.

The leaning barn, about to fall, Resounds no more on husking eves; No cattle low in yard or stall, No thresher beats his sheaves.

So sad, so drear! It seems almost Some haunting Presence makes its sign; That down yon shadowy lane some ghost Might drive his spectral kine!

O home so desolate and lorn! Did all thy memories die with thee? Were any wed, were any born, Beneath this low roof-tree?

Whose axe the wall of forest broke, And let the waiting sunshine through? What goodwife sent the earliest smoke Up the great chimney flue?

Did rustic lovers hither come? Did maidens, swaying back and forth In rhythmic grace, at wheel and loom, Make light their toil with mirth?

Did child feet patter on the stair? Did boyhood frolic in the snow? Did gray age, in her elbow chair, Knit, rocking to and fro?

The murmuring brook, the sighing breeze, The pine's slow whisper, cannot tell; Low mounds beneath the hemlock-trees Keep the home secrets well.

Cease, mother-land, to fondly boast Of sons far off who strive and thrive, Forgetful that each swarming host Must leave an emptier hive.

O wanderers from ancestral soil, Leave noisome mill and chaffering store: Gird up your loins for sturdier toil, And build the home once more!

Come back to bayberry-scented slopes, And fragrant fern, and ground-nut vine; Breathe airs blown over holt and copse Sweet with black birch and pine.

What matter if the gains are small That life's essential wants supply? Your homestead's title gives you all That idle wealth can buy.

All that the many-dollared crave, The brick-walled slaves of 'Change and mart, Lawns, trees, fresh air, and flowers, you have, More dear for lack of art.

Your own sole masters, freedom-willed, With none to bid you go or stay, Till the old fields your fathers tilled, As manly men as they!

With skill that spares your toiling hands, And chemic aid that science brings, Reclaim the waste and outworn lands, And reign thereon as kings

1886.

HOW THE ROBIN CAME.

AN ALGONQUIN LEGEND.

HAPPY young friends, sit by me, Under May's blown apple-tree, While these home-birds in and out Through the blossoms flit about. Hear a story, strange and old, By the wild red Indians told, How the robin came to be:

Once a great chief left his son,-- Well-beloved, his only one,-- When the boy was well-nigh grown, In the trial-lodge alone. Left for tortures long and slow Youths like him must undergo, Who their pride of manhood test, Lacking water, food, and rest.

Seven days the fast he kept, Seven nights he never slept. Then the young boy, wrung with pain, Weak from nature's overstrain, Faltering, moaned a low complaint "Spare me, father, for I faint!" But the chieftain, haughty-eyed, Hid his pity in his pride. "You shall be a hunter good, Knowing never lack of food; You shall be a warrior great, Wise as fox and strong as bear; Many scalps your belt shall wear, If with patient heart you wait Bravely till your task is done. Better you should starving die Than that boy and squaw should cry Shame upon your father's son!"

When next morn the sun's first rays Glistened on the hemlock sprays, Straight that lodge the old chief sought, And boiled sainp and moose meat brought. "Rise and eat, my son!" he said. Lo, he found the poor boy dead!

As with grief his grave they made, And his bow beside him laid, Pipe, and knife, and wampum-braid, On the lodge-top overhead, Preening smooth its breast of red And the brown coat that it wore, Sat a bird, unknown before. And as if with human tongue, "Mourn me not," it said, or sung; "I, a bird, am still your son, Happier than if hunter fleet, Or a brave, before your feet Laying scalps in battle won. Friend of man, my song shall cheer Lodge and corn-land; hovering near, To each wigwam I shall bring Tidings of the corning spring; Every child my voice shall know In the moon of melting snow, When the maple's red bud swells, And the wind-flower lifts its bells. As their fond companion Men shall henceforth own your son, And my song shall testify That of human kin am I."

Thus the Indian legend saith How, at first, the robin came With a sweeter life from death, Bird for boy, and still the same. If my young friends doubt that this Is the robin's genesis, Not in vain is still the myth If a truth be found therewith Unto gentleness belong Gifts unknown to pride and wrong; Happier far than hate is praise,-- He who sings than he who slays.

BANISHED FROM MASSACHUSETTS.

1660.

On a painting by E. A. Abbey. The General Court of Massachusetts enacted Oct. 19, 1658, that "any person or persons of the cursed sect of Quakers" should, on conviction of the same, be banished, on pain of death, from the jurisdiction of the common-wealth.