Chapter 2

"Go ahead," said the old musket.

"I must tell you how her sweetness and goodness once saved the house from robbery. It was the custom of her father and mother, on Sunday, to lock up the house, while they went to church. A pot of pork and beans, and a pudding of Indian meal was put in the oven to bake for their dinner.

One Sunday, as Alice had a heavy cold, they left her at home. She was then fourteen years old, and felt herself quite equal to taking charge of the house.

It was generally known that the curate's house was locked up on Sunday; and a poor, foolish, as well as wicked fellow, determined to take that opportunity to help himself to the good curate's silver, or any other valuable, he could find in the house. It happened that the man took the Sunday when Alice was left at home for his wicked purpose.

When he came to the door which he intended to break open, he was admitted by Alice, who saw him coming. She asked him to come in and sit down, then inquired if he had travelled far, and set before him some bread and butter and cold water.

"My father is a minister," she said, "and always asks travellers to stay. We have some dinner in the oven, and we shall all of us like to have you stay and dine. You look pale and tired; you had better stay."

These words Alice said with such a sweet, confiding earnestness, that the wicked purpose died away from the heart of the intended thief. He felt as if he was in the presence of an angel. He looked at her in wonder. All the evil in him seemed to depart.

"You are very good," he said. "Do you take care of the house all alone by yourself?"

"O yes," she replied; "it does not take much trouble. There is no one to harm us. Would you like a book to read till papa and mamma come home; here is my Testament; or would you like I should read to you?"

"Read to me," said the man.

As Alice read from the history of Jesus, the tears ran down the robber's cheeks; he said nothing.

When the curate came home, he repeated Alice's invitation to dine. The man accepted it. After dinner, when he thanked Alice and her father for their kindness to him, he said to the curate, "Your daughter is an angel, and has saved me from sin. I go away a better man than I came."

He then confessed the evil intentions with which he had entered the house, told how Alice's trusting, gentle kindness had disarmed him, and promised the curate that he would henceforward be a better man.

I do not mean to say that Alice never did any wrong thing. She was, however, so sorry for a fault, she repented so soon, and then did all she could to repair it, that no one could help forgiving her. She had a trick of squinting now and then. Her mother thought that my curls perplexed the bright eyes under them; and, to prevent the evil, drew up all the pretty locks in a bunch, tied them together, and said, "Now, Alice, your hair is all out of the way, and you will not squint."

Alice was annoyed by this; she was a little vain of my beauty, and the disregard of her looks, which she thought these words indicated, fretted her.

Her father saw this, and, to make the tying less disagreeable, said to her, one day, "Alice, I see you don't like to have your hair tied up; you don't think it reasonable. Come now, bear it patiently for a month; and, at the end of that time, I will give you the little work box I am ornamenting with straw."

Alice agreed, and promised to be patient, and to keep her hair tied up.

During the month, it happened that Alice was invited to a little party of girls at her aunt's.

Alice hoped that her father and mother would absolve her from the promise, that afternoon; but no, her mother only tied up her hair with a new ribbon for the occasion. I, with all my beautiful curls, was drawn away from her dear face as far as possible. Alice found this hard to bear.

As she was on the way to the party, she could hardly keep from crying.

"What is the matter?" said her father.

"Nothing, father," said Alice, "only a little headache; mother has tied my hair too tight."

"Loosen it," said her father.

Alice did loosen it, so that the string was just ready to come off.

When she arrived at her aunt's, where her father left her, I was just escaping from my hateful confinement, and her aunt took hold of the hair as the string fell on the floor.

"Shall I tie it on again, Alice, or shall your pretty hair go just so? I don't see the use of tying it, but, if you really wish it, my dear, just step up stairs, and Jane will do it for you very nicely. Perhaps your mother would choose it to be tied; she is very particular. It is a pity to confine such beautiful curls, but, if it must be so, we can't help it. Will you go up stairs? Here is the string; it dropped on the floor."

"No," said Alice, "it is of no consequence;" and she put the string into her pocket.

Again I fell upon her beautiful forehead, and kissed her rosy cheeks; and every one admired my beauty.

Alice tried to forget that she was breaking her promise, and enjoyed herself pretty well.

When she went home, her mother said, "Why, Alice, your hair is all over your face; how comes that?"

"The string was nearly off when I went in, and then it fell on the floor, and aunt said I looked better without it. Here is the string, which she picked up."

"I should have thought your aunt would have let you go up to Jane, and have it tied properly; you should have asked her leave."

"I suppose," said the father, "that Alice felt too shy. It is no matter for one day. Alice, I dare say, kept her promise as well as she could; and, next week, she shall have her box; a right pretty one it is."

Alice kissed her father and mother, and went to bed; but there was a little cloud between her and the all-pure Being to whom she prayed that night, and her precious tears wetted my locks, ere she went to sleep.

Alice felt that she had not been true to her promise, and her parents' entire trust was the most severe reproach. Still she could not quite make up her mind to say so; and she tried not to think so. She had set her heart upon the little work box made and ornamented by her father whom she loved dearly. One day after another passed away, and every day it became harder to confess her fault. How often I heard her sigh during these days! Nothing makes a perfectly light heart but entire uprightness.

One day, her father called her to him, and said, "Come, Alice, and tell me which color I shall use to ornament the border of your box--blue or green?"

"Just which you please, Father."

"But you know it is for you, and I want to know what you like best."

"If it should ever be mine, Father, I like blue best."

"Blue it shall be," said her father. "It will be finished to-morrow, and then your month for keeping your hair tied will end. I think your eyes are better, and you have learned also that you can keep a promise. You are my good child."

Alice could not speak. She ran out of doors into her garden where her father had made her a little arbor, and there, all alone, she struggled with herself, till courage and truth prevailed. Then she went back into her father's study where she found him still at work on her box.

"Almost done, Alice," said he; "see how pretty it is." "It must not be mine, Father," said Alice, very quietly, for she was determined to command herself. "I have not kept my promise, Father. I have deceived you and mother. I don't deserve the box. Give it to my cousin." Then she told her father the whole story, just as it was. As she went on, she grew braver, and felt happier; so that she was able to look up into her father's face, and say, very calmly, "I could not take any pleasure in your pretty box, for I know I do not deserve it. Please, dear Father, to tell Mother all about it, and put away the box, if you choose not to give it to some one else. It is very pretty, but it is not to be my box."

The tears began to come in her eyes, and she turned to go out of the room. Her father stopped her. "Come here, my Child," he said. "You did wrong, but you have done all you could to repair your fault. You will never again, I think, be guilty of falsehood. At the end of another month, if you feel sure of yourself, come to me for your box."

"No, Father, that would seem like being paid for speaking the truth. I should never ask for the box."

"Would you rather I should give it to your cousin?"

"If you please, I should;" and then the tears ran fast down her cheeks. "You know my cousin Edith has very few pretty things. I should like her to have it."

"Take it, Alice, and give it to her yourself."

"As your present, Father, not as mine. You know it is not, and cannot be mine. I have been so unhappy at my untruth, that I think I shall never commit such a fault again."

Alice never did again, in the slightest thing, depart from the strictest truth and uprightness, in action as well as in word. It was common for her friends to say when there was a question about any thing that had occurred, "We will ask Alice. She always tells the exact truth."

At last, Alice was a woman; and I, of course, led a more sober life, as she became more serious. I grew so long and thick that, when she took out her comb, and shook her head slightly, I fell in curls all around her neck and shoulders, like a golden veil, and you could but just see her laughing blue eyes, and white teeth through me.

You may readily guess that the pretty Alice was beloved by all who knew her; and, ere long, the son of the village apothecary won her heart. He was a good-hearted fellow, but never fitted himself to be of much use in the world. He took Alice to a distant village, where, with his father's assistance, he set up as an apothecary, on rather a small scale, of course; but Alice was used to simple fare and to helping herself.

All would have been well with them but for one thing--the husband became a drunkard; not immediately--his love for his wife kept him sober for some time. Nothing was more beautiful than the way they lived for a year or two; but the habit of drinking a little, a habit which he had formed in his father's shop, and which he intended to cure, returned. The wretched man had not strength to resist it.

He became fretful, and Alice, for the first time in her life, became unhappy. She had never before heard any but the voice of kindness; and now, from him she loved best in the world she received sometimes sharp and disagreeable words. He was very sorry afterwards, and all would seem well again, but he did not really reform, and, many a time, my locks, falling over her innocent round cheek, were wetted with her tears.

Alice was good as an angel. She forgave her husband, believed him when he promised to leave off drinking, and never said a harsh word to him. James kept his promise for a month or two, but fell again, and then more hopelessly; for, after he had drunk a little, he feared his wife would know what he had done, and felt so unhappy that he drank more to drown his feelings; and, for the first time, he was brought home to his wife dead drunk.

Alice tended her husband as if he were only a sick man; she had him put into a nice bed, she washed and mended his soiled and torn clothes, she was near him to catch his first word when he recovered his senses, she never reproached him, she tried, by love, to win him back to sobriety and duty, she wept, she prayed for him.

He suffered all that man can from shame; he could not look her in the face; he had destroyed the charm and glory of life; he was unable, or rather he thought he was, to conquer his enemy; and, before six years were at an end, partly from broken and ruined health, and partly from utter misery, he fell into a rapid decline, and died.

Alice loved her husband; and never was sick man nursed with more loving, cheerful patience than was he. He wept over his sins; he asked her, with every returning and every setting sun, to forgive him and to pray God to pardon him.

She was an angel of pity and mercy to him, to the end. When she leaned over him to kiss him, he would pull her beautiful hair--for I was still beautiful--over his face which he was ashamed to show when he thought of his folly and wickedness. Many a time have I felt his hot tears of contrition as he pressed me against his sunken cheeks, and to his parched lips.

After her husband's death, the vicar of the parish came to see Alice, and did all he could to comfort and aid her.

She found that her husband had died largely in debt; that, when all the stock in his shop was sold, and the creditors paid, there would be nothing left for herself and two children.

She did not want to go back to her old father's house, and burden him with care and expense, and she resolved to open a little school for small children in the cottage in which she lived.

She had one spare room which she could let to an old lady who wanted just such a home as Alice could give her.

With a strong and hopeful heart, did Alice dedicate herself to the work before her, of supporting and educating her two orphan children. Alice's strict honesty had made her give up to her husband's creditors every thing she had, except the barest necessaries; and, now that she wanted to commence her school, she felt very much the want of a little cash to buy a few indispensable things.

The grocer and butcher had offered to supply her on credit, till her first payment from her scholars and boarder should come in. Still a little ready money was essential to her to begin. She would not borrow it, and was one day thinking what she should do, when her eye, wandering over a newspaper which the vicar had kindly lent her, fell on an advertisement offering a high price for handsome hair long and thick enough to make wigs.

Alice heard the good curate say that he was going to London on business in a day or two, and her determination was made in a moment.

I said that Alice had kept nothing that she could do without; she had, however, kept the white muslin gown she wore when she was married. She thought she could not give this up. "I shall never wear a white muslin gown again," she said, as she ripped out one of the breadths and made herself two or three plain caps of it.

The next day she rose early before the children were awake, and, standing before a very small looking glass which she had kept to dress her hair, she looked at me curling all over her precious head, and hanging down upon her shoulders.

"He loved these locks," said she, "and, for his sake, I would keep them; but they had better be devoted to the good of our children. Some school books will be worth more than all these golden locks. I am glad the children are asleep, for they love to play with my hair, and it would grieve them to see me cut it off."

The good Alice took her scissors, and cut off lock after lock, till all were gone, save a few which she left around her forehead. Then she put on her simple muslin cap and tied it with a muslin string under her chin.

Just then, her boy awoke. Alice had laid him down on his bed, and the first sight the little fellow saw, when he awoke, was his mother's hair which almost covered him up.

"Why, Mother, how could you do so? How could you cut off your pretty hair, and put on that ugly cap? What would father say? You said we must do what we thought would please him. It would not please him to have you cut off your pretty hair;" and the child burst into an agony of tears.

"Would it not please him that you should have a spelling book and a slate to write on, William? With this hair I can buy them for you. I have no other riches now."

The poor boy still wept. The hair was more to him, at that time, than all learning. He could not then have believed that the time would come, when he would remember with gratitude his mother's sacrifice for him and his little sister.

Alice gathered the locks, took from a drawer her last bit of blue ribbon, and tied them, saying, "This is the way he liked to see my hair tied when I was at my father's cottage. I shall never tie it so again."

When the good vicar came to see Alice, as he did every day, she met him with me all nicely done up in a paper in her hands, and asked him if he would be so good as to take me to the hair dresser who had advertised for hair, make the best bargain he could for her, and, with the proceeds, get the few necessaries for commencing her small school. The good man cheerfully promised to do so, took the parcel from Alice, and carried it to his own house.

And so I bade farewell to dear Alice, and her neat cottage, and her sweet children. I was parted forever from that innocent head that had cherished only good and pure thoughts. I was no longer to be dressed by her dear hands. I was never again to shade and adorn her lovely face, nor fall in ringlets around her sloping shoulders, nor ever tremble again with the beatings of her gay and generous heart, as I often had when she let me fall over her neck and shoulders.

Nothing that ever had life in it could be insensible to such a sorrow as this. How I envied the few locks she kept around her precious forehead! How I wished that scissors had never been invented!

The good curate, faithful to his promise, took me to the hair dresser in London, according to the direction in the advertisement; and, before opening the paper which contained me, told him the story of Alice, of her trials, and of her excellent character and conduct, of her present need, and of her purpose to support and educate her children by her own efforts. He told him that there never was such a beautiful head of hair, and that he hoped he would be willing to give something handsome for it.

When the old clergyman opened the paper, and exhibited me to the hair dresser, he took me out as fondly as if I had been a baby, and shook me so as to make the ringlets curl again, but they would not.

I felt the difference between the old man's hard fingers, and rough shake, and the soft touch of the dear Alice.

"Is it not beautiful?" said the old man.

"It is well enough," said the dealer. "I shall have to make a man's wig of it. The curls will all boil out."

You may imagine my horror at these words; and, as for the poor vicar, he seemed thunderstruck.

"If I had any money to spare," said he, "I would buy this beautiful hair myself, and have it framed with a glass over it, and hang it up in my best parlor, with that blue ribbon that looks so like her; it's as handsome as a picture; and then her dear children should have it at my death."

Whether it was that the hair dresser was afraid of losing me, or that his heart was slightly touched with compassion for Alice and her orphan children, I know not; but he offered the good curate a sum for me which satisfied him.

As the curate gave me up, he untied the blue ribbon, folded it up nicely, and put it into his pocket; and I think he dropped a tear as he did so.

The wig maker examined me again when he was by himself. "A fine head of hair it really is," said he. "It will make a good wig for a youngish sort of a man; and the curls will make it work easier."

Then he tied me up with a piece of twine, and tossed me into a large drawer with great bunches of hair of all colors and fineness.

Here I remained for I know not how long, without air or light, in this disagreeable company. At last, one day we were all taken out, and what we were made to endure I now shudder to think of. We were boiled, we were pulled and mauled and greased; in short, I wonder we had a whole hair left; but, after undergoing every thing you can imagine, I found myself on a pole in the shape of a gentleman's wig, covered with high-scented pomatum and powder.

No one would have recognized me as the same beautiful hair that had adorned the head of Alice. There were a number of poles with wigs on them close by me, and I knew, as a matter of course, that I must look just like them. They looked perfectly hateful to me, and I felt disgusted with myself, because I knew I resembled them.

It is now a puzzle to me how men could have ever been so foolish as to make such a thing as I am, to put on their heads; these great unmeaning curls, this ugly club, as they called it, hanging down behind, and this horrid grease and powder too.

Most of my life, of course, has been passed in this horrid shape in which you now see me; but the remembrance of my early days clings to me, and the love of freedom, and the sense of beauty which I acquired when the wind played through my natural curls as they covered the head of my dear Alice, have never forsaken me. It was then only that I truly lived. But, forgive me--I have the weakness of old age, and love to talk of youthful pleasures.

One morning, in the year seventeen hundred and seventy-eight, when I was just twenty-eight years old, a gentleman of middle age came into the hair dresser's shop, and asked to look at his wigs. I was shown to him with some others. After examining us all, and trying on several, he chose me, because, he said, he thought I was made of the finest hair.

"This," said he, "will visit the American colonies, and probably remain there, for that will, I think, be my home."

I rejoiced to hear this, for I was weary of my present life, and longed for some variety.

The good gentleman who purchased me seemed well satisfied with my looks; but, when I saw myself in the glass, upon his long, narrow face, with his great bottle nose, and cheeks like the sides of a sulky, and all my pretty curls and my bright color gone, I wonder that each hair did not stand on end with fright; most likely it would have stood up, but for weight of pomatum and powder.

Soon after my owner purchased me, he set sail for America. As I was his new and best wig, I was packed carefully in a box, and knew nothing till he arrived here, and was settled in his place of residence.

The first time I was taken out of my box was on Sunday, when I was carefully adjusted on the Squire's head. I call him Squire, for I soon found that Squire was the title every one gave him, as he was the most important personage in the town in which he lived. I was as well pleased as a wig could be with the appearance of things in and around the house I was to inhabit. It was in a village about thirty miles from Boston, and was like an English country gentleman's house. A wide hall passed through the middle of it, with a grand staircase. From the doors at either end of the hall ran rows of elm trees. One led to the high road, the other up a gentle hill, on the top of which was a pretty burying ground with a path through it leading to a small church.

The Squire had a black man whom he called his boy, and who was, in fact, his slave, but whom he treated like a friend and brother.

Some years after, when slavery was abolished in Massachusetts, the Squire called Cato to him, and said, "Cato, you are no longer my slave; you are free."

"But, massa, you will not sell me."

"No, Cato, you are a freeman; I have no right to sell you. I don't think I ever had any right to sell you; but now the law of the land makes you free, and I am glad of it."

"Then I can stay with you of my own free will, massa."

"Yes, Cato, you can stay or go, just as you please."

"Then, massa, I stay with you for love, and not cause I am your slave. Now I your friend." And Cato never left the Squire till the day of his death. But to return to my story.

The Squire, as I said, put me on very carefully, and then as carefully put over me his three-cornered hat, and took his gold-headed cane, and, with Cato behind him, walked reverently up the hill to church.

I was accustomed to the Episcopal church, where dear Alice went every Sunday; but this was a Presbyterian church, and I had never been in one before.