Chapter 3

The question of veils seems to have rocked the Massachusetts Colony to its foundations, and was fully discussed at Thursday Lecture, March 7th, 1634. Holy Mr. Cotton was utterly and unalterably opposed to veils, regarding them as a token of submission to husbands in an unscriptural degree. It is pleasant to think that there could be an unscriptural extent of such submission, in those times. But Governor Endicott and Rev. Mr. Williams resisted stoutly, quoting Paul, as usual in such cases; so Paul, veils, and vanity carried the day. But afterward Mr. Cotton came to Salem to preach for Mr. Skelton, and did not miss his chance to put in his solemn protest against veils; he said they were a custom not to be tolerated; and so the ladies all came to meeting without their veils in the afternoon. Probably the most astounding visible result from a single sermon within the memory of man.

Beginning with the veils, the eye of authority was next turned on what was under them. In 1675 it was decided, that, as the Indians had done much harm of late, and the Deity was evidently displeased with something, the General Court should publish a list of the evils of the time. And among the twelve items of contrition stood this: "Long hair like women's hair is worn by some men, either their own or others' hair made into periwigs;--and by some women wearing borders of hair, and their cutting, curling, and immodest laying out of their hair," (does this hint at puff-combs?) "which practice doth increase, especially among the younger sort." Not much was effected, however,--"divers of the elders' wives," as Winthrop lets out, "being in some measure partners in this disorder." The use of wigs also, at first denounced by the clergy, was at last countenanced by them: in portraits later than 1700 they usually replace the black skull-cap of earlier pictures, and in 1752 the tables had so far turned that a church-member in Newbury refused communion because "the pastor wears a wigg." Yet Increase Mather thought they played no small part in producing the Boston Fire. "Monstrous Periwigs, such as some of our church-members indulge in, which make them resemble the Locusts that came out of y'e Bottomless Pit. Rev. ix. 7, 8,--and as an eminent Divine calls them, _Horrid Bushes of Vanity_; such strange apparel as is contrary to the light of Nature and to express Scripture. 1 Cor. xi. 14, 15. Such pride is enough to provoke the Lord to kindle fires in all the towns in the country."

Another vexation was the occasional arrival of false prophets in a community where every man was expected to have a current supply of religious experiences always ready for circulation. There was a certain hypocritical Dick Swayn, for instance, a seafaring man, who gave much trouble; and E.F.,--for they mostly appear by initials,--who, coming to New Haven one Saturday evening, and being dressed in black, was taken for a minister, and asked to preach: he was apparently a little insane, and at first talked "demurely," but at last "railed like Rabshakeh," Cotton Mather says. There was also M.J., a Welsh tanner, who finally stole his employer's leather breeches and set up for a preacher,--less innocently apparelled than George Fox. But the worst of all was one bearing the since sainted name of Samuel May. This vessel of wrath appeared in 1699, indorsed as a man of a sweet gospel spirit,--though, indeed, one of his indorsers had himself been "a scandalous fire-ship among the churches." Mather declares that every one went a-Maying after this man, whom he maintains to have been a barber previously, and who knew no Latin, Greek, Hebrew, nor even English,--for (as he indignantly asserts) "there were eighteen horrid false spells, and not one point, in one very short note I received from him." This doubtful personage copied his sermons from a volume by his namesake, Dr. Samuel Bolton,--"Sam the Doctor and Sam the Dunce," Mather calls them. Finally, "this eminent worthy stranger," Sam, who was no dunce, after all, quarrelled with his parish for their slow payments, and "flew out like a Dragon, spitting this among other fire at them:--'I see, no longer pipe, no longer dance,'--so that they came to fear he was a cheat, and wish they had never seen him." Then "the guilty fellow, having bubbled the silly neighbors of an incredible number of pounds, on a sudden was gone," and Cotton Mather sent a letter after him, which he declares to have been the worst penalty the man suffered.

It is safer to say little of the theological scheme of the Puritan ministers, lest the present writer be pronounced a Wanton Gospeller, and have no tithingman to take his part. But however it may be with the regular standards of theology of that period, every one could find a sufficient variety to suit him among its heresies. Eighty-two "pestilent heresies" were counted as having already sprung up in 1637; others say one hundred and six; others, two hundred and ten. The Puritans kept Rhode Island for what housekeepers call an "odd drawer," into which to crowd all these eccentricities. It was said, that, if any man happened to lose his religious opinion, he might be sure to find it again at some village in Rhode Island. Thither went Roger Williams and his Baptists; thither went Quakers and Ranters; thither went Ann Hutchinson, that extraordinary woman, who divided the whole politics of the country by her Antinomian doctrines, denouncing the formalisms around her, and converting the strongest men, like Cotton and Vane, to her opinions. Thither went also Samuel Gorton, a man of no ordinary power, who proclaimed a mystical union with God in love, thought that heaven and hell were in the mind alone, but esteemed little the clergy and the ordinances. The colony was protected also by the thoughtful and chivalrous Vane, who held that water baptism had had its day, and that the Jewish Sabbath should give place to the modern Sunday. All these, and such as these, were called generally "Seekers" by the Puritans,--who claimed for themselves that they had found that which they sought. It is the old distinction; but for which is the ship built, to be afloat or to be at anchor?

Such were those pious worthies, the men whose names are identified with the leadership of the New-England colonies,--Cotton, Hooker, Norton, Shepard, the Higginsons, the Mathers. To these might be added many an obscurer name, preserved in the quaint epitaphs of the "Magnalia":--Blackman, "in spite of his name, a Nazarene whiter than snow";--Partridge, "a hunted partridge," yet "both a dove and an eagle";--Ezekiel Rogers, "a tree of knowledge, whose apples the very children might pluck";--Nathaniel Rogers, "a very lively preacher and a very preaching liver, he loved his church as if it had been his family and he taught his family as if it had been his church";--Warham, the first who preached with notes, and who suffered agonies of doubt respecting the Lord's Supper;--Stone, "both a loadstone and a flint stone," and who set the self-sacrificing example of preaching only one hour.

These men had mingled traits of good and evil, like all mankind,--nobler than their descendants in some attributes, less noble in others. The most strait-laced Massachusetts Calvinist of these days would have been disciplined by them for insufferable laxity, and yet their modern successor would count it utter shame, perhaps, to own a slave in his family or to drink rum-punch at an ordination,--which Puritan divines might do without rebuke. Not one of them has left on record a statement so broad and noble as that of Roger Williams:--"To be content with food and raiment,--to mind, not our own, but every man the things of another,--yea, and to suffer wrong, and to part with what we judge to be right, yea, our own lives, and, as poor women martyrs have said, as many as there be hairs upon our heads, for the name of God and for the Son of God's sake,--this is humanity, this is Christianity; the rest is but formality and picture-courteous idolatry, and Jewish and Popish blasphemy against the Christian religion." And yet the mind of Roger Williams was impulsive, erratic, and unstable, compared with theirs; and in what respect has the work they left behind them proved, after the testing of two centuries, less solid or durable than his?

These men were stern even to cruelty against all that they held evil,--Satan and his supposed emissaries, witches, Quakers, Indians, negligent parishioners, disobedient offspring, men with periwigs, and women in slash apparel. Yet the tenderest private gentleness often lay behind this gloomy rigor of the conscience. Some of them would never chastise a son or daughter, in spite of Solomon; others would write in Greek characters in their old almanacs quaint little English verses on the death of some beloved child. That identical "Priest Wilson" who made the ballad at Mary Dyer's execution attended a military muster one day. "Sir," said some one, "I'll tell you a great thing: here's a mighty body of people, and there's not seven of them all but loves Mr. Wilson." "Sir," it was replied, "I'll tell you as good a thing: here's a mighty body of people, and there's not one of them all but Mr. Wilson loves him." Mr. Cotton was a terror to evil-doers, yet, when a company of men came along from a tavern and said, "Let us put a trick upon Old Cotton," and one came and cried in his ear, "Cotton, thou art an old fool,"--"I know it, I know it," retorted cheerily the venerable man, and pungently added, "The Lord make both me and thee wiser!" Mr. Hooker was once reproving a boy in the street, who boldly replied, "I see you are in a passion; I will not answer you," and so ran away. It contradicts all one's notions of Puritan propriety, and yet it seems that the good man, finding afterwards that the boy was not really guilty, sent for him to apologize, and owned himself to have been wrong.

What need to speak of the strength and courage, the disinterestedness and zeal, with which they bore up the fortunes of the colony on their shoulders, and put that iron into the New-England blood which has since supplied the tonic for a continent? It was said of Mr. Hooker, that he was "a person who, while doing his Master's work, would put a king in his pocket"; and it was so with them all: they would pocket anything but a bribe to themselves or an insult to God or their profession. They flinched from no reproof that was needed: "Sharp rebukes make sound Christians" was a proverb among them. They sometimes lost their tempers, and sometimes their parishes, but never their independence. I find a hundred anecdotes of conscientious cruelty laid up against them, but not one of cowardice or of compromise. They may have bored the tongues of others with a bar of iron, but they never fettered their own tongues with a bar of gold,--as some African tribes think it a saintly thing to do, and not African tribes alone.

There was such an absolute righteousness among them, that to this day every man of New-England descent lives partly on the fund of virtuous habit they accumulated. And, on the other hand, every man of the many who still stand ready to indorse everything signed by a D.D.--without even adding the commercial E.E., for Errors Excepted--is in part the victim of the over-influence they obtained. Yet there was a kind of democracy in that vast influence also: the Puritans were far more thorough Congregationalists than their successors; they recognized no separate clerical class, and the "elder" was only the highest officer of his own church. Each religious society could choose and ordain its own minister, or dispense with all ordaining services at will, without the slightest aid or hindrance from council or consociation. So the stern theology of the pulpit only reflected the stern theology of the pews; the minister was but the representative man. If the ministers were recognized as spiritual guides, it was because they were such to the men of their time, whatever they might be to ours. Demonax of old, when asked about the priests' money, said, that, if they were really the leaders of the people, they could not have too much payment,--or too little, if they were not. I believe that on these conditions the Puritan ministers well earned their hundred and sixty pounds a year, with a discount of forty pounds, if paid in wampum-beads, beaver-skins, and musket-balls. What they took in musket-balls they paid back in the heavier ammunition of moral truth. Here is a specimen of their grape-shot:--"My fathers and brethren," said John Higginson, "this is never to be forgotten, that our New England is originally a plantation of religion, and not a plantation of trade. Let merchants and such as are making cent. per cent. remember this. Let others who have come over since at sundry times remember this, that worldly gain was not the end and design of the people of New England, but religion. And if any man among us make religion as twelve and the world as thirteen, let such a man know he hath neither the spirit of a true New-England man, nor yet of a sincere Christian."

* * * * *

THOREAU'S FLUTE.

We, sighing, said, "Our Pan is dead; His pipe hands mute beside the river;-- Around it wistful sunbeams quiver, But Music's airy voice is fled. Spring mourns as for untimely frost; The bluebird chants a requiem; The willow-blossom waits for him;-- The Genius of the wood is lost."

Then from the flute, untouched by hands, There came a low, harmonious breath: "For such as he there is no death;-- His life the eternal life commands; Above man's aims his nature rose: The wisdom of a just content Made one small spot a continent, And tuned to poetry Life's prose.

"Haunting the hills, the stream, the wild, Swallow and aster, lake and pine, To him grew human or divine,-- Fit mates for this large-hearted child. Such homage Nature ne'er forgets, And yearly on the coverlid 'Neath which her darling lieth hid Will write his name in violets.

"To him no vain regrets belong, Whose soul, that finer instrument, Gave to the world no poor lament, But wood-notes ever sweet and strong. O lonely friend! he still will be A potent presence, though unseen,-- Steadfast, sagacious, and serene: Seek not for him,--he is with thee."

* * * * *

MR. MARTIN'S DISAPPOINTMENTS.

The circumstances of a first meeting so color long years of acquaintanceship, that, should these circumstances be comic in their nature, the intercourse which follows partakes much of the grotesque. Thus, perhaps, it is, that the misfortunes of Edward Martin, apart from the whimsical demeanor of the man himself, provoke in my memory a smile rather than a sigh.

Some years ago, journeying on foot through Northern Connecticut, it became necessary for me to stop overnight at the quiet inn of Deacon S----.

Sharon I had visited, fair as Berkshire, but less an old story; I had lingered about the twin lakes of Salisbury; I had carried away many sweet memories of Warramaug and its mountain; and I now found myself in the neighborhood of Gramley Bridge, eager for fresh water, clean towels, and the plenty of a country tea-table,--not averse to strawberry short-cake, or the snowy delights of cottage-cheese.

It was rapidly growing dark, when, as I hurried on toward my cheerful welcome, a bend in the road brought me in sight of a figure that filled me with curiosity and amazement.

"Was it a man? A devil infernal? An angel supernal?"

Was it were-wolf spectral, or bear aboriginal? It lived and moved, and, as I cautiously neared the spot, I seemed to recognize a human being in the singular form,--stooping, squatting, and groping before me.

The man, for such it proved, was performing most wondrous gymnastics upon the ground,--smelling here, smelling there, too agile to be tipsy, too silent to be mad. I had no desire to be alone in a lonely road at nightfall with a maniac, and I was not sorry when my nearer approach resolved these strange phenomena into a well-dressed pedestrian on all-fours in the middle of a dusty highway.

He rose as I approached, and I smiled to see that the spectacles astride his handsome nose were minus one lens. He seemed half blind and wholly bewildered. I looked at once for the lost glass, and there it lay shining at me from the very spot where he had been so industriously peering. He laughed grimly as I handed it to him, fitted his treasure into its wonted rim, took out his watch, and with a low chuckle said,--

"Twenty-five minutes is a long time to search for a bit of such small circumference. Thank you. Do you go to the Deacon's?"

"Yes."

"So do I."

We walked on together in silence, till we reached our journey's end,--I too tired, he too reserved, too preoccupied, or too shy, to speak again; but when, at last, we were seated with our cigars on the Deacon's door-step, he turned suddenly to me and asked,--

"Are you fond of the country?"

"Why, yes! What else is there?" I answered, laughing.

"Ah, you are an artist!"

"I hope to be one."

"Its a bad business," said he, testily,--"a very bad business. If I were you, I would give it up."

"Have you ever tried it?"

"Tried it?" he ejaculated, kicking the gravel-walk,--"yes, and everything else, I believe. If I thought it would do you any good, I would give you the benefit of my experience; but you'd only laugh, and make a good story of it to your wife."

"Alas! I have no such incumbrance."

"The worse for you, if you have genius and the modesty of genius. A true artist, who seeks to interpret Nature in its purest and most exquisite relations, who penetrates the deepest temples of the woods and the silent sanctuaries of the mountains, must be a true, pure, and good man. He must be a happy man,--happy in a sweet and natural way. A man whose life is passed in a daily delight that gently stirs without feverish excitement will be tender and most lovely to women. He _ought_ to marry."

"Did you ever write poetry?" I asked.

"I began to compose when I was six years old. I wrote a poem on the sea, commencing,--

'O thou earthly sea, Every person thinks of thee,-- The sailor, and the busy bee, And the Chinese drinking tea!'

I thought it very fine. I have written many things since then, and they seemed good to me at the time. I would not venture to say how they struck others."

He smiled pleasantly.

"Do not be frightened by the shadow of a possible wife from unfolding your history," said I. "Chance has thrown us together; befriend me with your experience."

"Take warning, then, if need be.

"In college I was thought 'a very able fellow,' one 'who held the pen of a ready writer'; and I graduated as vain of my supposed talents as a young miss of her first conquest.

"My earliest literary essay was in a new magazine, which, as it was just rising into notice, would be, I imagined, greatly assisted by my condescension. It was a charity, indeed, to give my support to this fledgling, and I sent to it a long article, entitled, 'The Cultivated, as Moving and Educational Powers.' My manuscripts were returned, with this quiet bit of advice:--'Before "X.Y.Z." institutes any other reforms, we would advise him to reperuse his English Grammar.' Far from having a salutary effect, this rebuff only rankled in my soul. I determined to revenge myself on the paltry malignant who dared to despise my efforts. I therefore wrote a slashing criticism for one of the evening papers, demolishing (as I thought) the delinquent periodical, and denouncing its whole corps of writers as frivolous and almost illiterate. My satire was returned, being too personal for publication.

"Just at this time I chanced to fall in love with Miss Ellen Wilson, now Mrs. Martin. Fancying my passion unrequited, I poured forth my feelings in ten melancholy stanzas, beginning,--

'Oh! what avails it, if the spring be bright?'

These verses were very morbid and dreary, but they were published in the 'Tri-Weekly Tribune,' and 'Hope revived again.'

"The drama I next deemed worthy of my attention, and wrote a play, the plot of which I thought quite new and original. A large fortune is left to my hero, who forthwith becomes enamored of a fair damsel; but, fearful lest the beloved object should worship his money more than his merits, he disguises himself in a wig and blue spectacles, becomes tutor to her brother, and wins her affections while playing pedagogue. On her acknowledging her attachment, he flings his disguises into the sea, and, in the wildness of his joy at being adored for his profundity in Latin, Greek, Hebrew, French, Spanish, German, Mathematics, Natural Science, and Civil Engineering, folds his loved one in his arms, and springs into the surf, where both are drowned.

"This, you see, was quite new."

"Quite," I replied, laughing.

"I published it at my own expense, and I must say I have yet to receive the first remittance for this truly original work.

"During the next season, I met with Hans Andersen's inimitable 'Märchen,' and, immediately setting myself to work, I wrote 'Uncle Job's Legacies,' a series of children's tales, full, as I fondly fancied, of poetry, pleasantry, and information. I sent them to 'The Juvenile Weekly,' then published in the city. They were accepted with a profusion of thanks; and in a few days I called, by request, at the office, expecting large compensation for services so eagerly received.

"I went up a dirty staircase, into a mean, slovenly back-office, where a small, uncleanly man sat tipped back in his chair, picking his teeth. He seemed the personification of _nonchalance_, impudence, and conceit. As I entered, he looked up with a lazy insolence, which, had I been a woman, would have brought a hot flush of indignation to my face, and, on my mentioning my name, he rose and extended a very dirty hand.

"'Glad to see you, Sir,--hope you'll continue your contributions,--Uncle Job,--good idea, Sir,--love the little ones? So do we, Sir,--work very hard for them,--don't pay at all,--poor business,--pure charity,--that's all.'

"'But you don't mean to say,' I exclaimed, 'that your contributors are expected to work from charity?'

"'Glad to pay them, if we could, but we can't afford it,--more contributions than we can use,--best authors in the country write for us,--pure love for the little ones, I assure you.'

"'Will you give me my manuscripts?' I said. 'I do not vouchsafe to bestow my time and thoughts for nothing. If you do not pay, I can offer them to others who do.'

"'You won't find a child's paper in the United States that pays,' he growled. 'We don't care for contributions. Me and my partner writes most of the articles ourselves.'

"'Will you give me my manuscripts?' I said again, anxious to put an end to the interview, and disgusted with the fellow's falsehood.

"'Hallo! Mortimer, do you know where them are?'

"'Sorry I can't oblige you,' said a fat man, dirtier and greasier than the first, emerging from an inner den; 'they're gone to press.'

"'If you tell me any more lies,' cried I, becoming furious, 'I shall take measures that you will not at all relish. If you will not _give_ me my manuscripts, I shall _take_ them'; and, suiting the action to the word, I snatched them from a shelf, where they lay conspicuous, and carried them off without further parley.