CHAPTER VII.

THE FUNNIEST THING AT THE FAIR.

The next day the sun rose glorious on the blue Lake and White City. Our trio went in the morning to visit Lincoln Park, but returned at noon, and took the Cottage Grove car for the Fair. They entered the grounds again by the way of the long avenue of the Plaisance, and there they found all the world at home again.

They went to the Street in Cairo.

As they passed in they noticed a young colored man and woman, who were talking so loudly as to attract attention. The young woman was gayly dressed indeed. Her hat was conspicuous even in the Street of Cairo. It was a kind of pyramid of feathers, flowers, and streamers. Her dress was as Oriental, and she evidently carried a very happy heart. The young man looked as happy; his face shone.

An Oriental wedding procession was moving through the street, and in it an Asiatic lady was riding on a camel.

How proud she looked, swaying to and fro, her body in graceful motion with that of the camel!

“Wot is that?” asked the young colored woman of one of the guards.

“That is the ship of the desert.”

“Does it make one sick to sail in dat dare ship?”

“No, no; don’t you see how _she_ rides? That is a bridal party.”

“I am a bride; _we_ is. That is wot we are,” said the young woman, happy hearted. The groom looked radiant.

The flags were flying; the music was playing; the bazaars were all life and gayety.

The young colored woman looked enviously on the golden trappings of the procession, and said, with a shadow of despondency, “She outdoes me, she does. I’d like to ride on dat dare camel mysel’.”

“You can do so,” said a listener. “Many people make their wedding tour through the Street of Cairo on the camel.”

The young woman looked happy indeed.

The procession with its gay music and trappings broke up at last, and the tall camel came to a place near the gate and knelt down on a mat in obedience to his keeper.

“Who wants to make a wedding tour through the Street of Cairo?” shouted a manager.

“I—I—I!” answered the young colored woman, her hat bobbing. A crowd gathered around the scene, a comical grin on every face.

The camel lay meek, like a great bundle of bones on the mat. He stretched out his long neck and displayed a vicious-looking mouth.

The young woman mounted the saddle, which was easy.

“You follow me, Ben,” she said to her young husband, “I might need your obsistence.”

There could not have been a happier couple on earth.

The camel driver made a queer sound.

Some one shouted, “Now hold on, Miss Dinah, the camel is going to rise.”

The camel did rise indeed,—not on his fore legs, but he rose up behind, as if his back had been shot up out of the earth.

“Dinah” grasped the saddle, and fell forward, exclaiming, “Holy Moses!” A wild look came into her face. Then the front part of the camel rose up, and the sable bride found herself in the air.

“Here yo’ dar, yo’, let me get off! Stop! dis yere beast am all broke up. No lady can ride in dis yere way. Stop! Whoa!”

But the camel driver did not heed. The camel began his swaying motion, tossing Dinah, if we may so call her, up into the air in this way, and then in another. It was such a comical sight that the good-natured crowd stood laughing, each one looking at the other, to share the humor.

As the camel passed down the street, its upheaving motions increased.

“Whoa, dar!” shouted Dinah. “Stop yer wobblin’ dar! Driver, stop, dar, I’ll fall off! Dar, I’m goin’ right ober now! Whoa! If you don’t stop him I’ll hollar!”

The camel gave a sidling lurch, sending Dinah high up into the air with her ribbons and feathers flying. The crowd followed her, laughing.

Down the street she went, shouting, “Stop, dar! Stop, dar!” tossed this way and that, and once threatening the philosophical driver with—“If you don’t stop dat dare critter, I’ll cry ‘Perlice, murder!’” But the camel driver did not heed.

The camel stopped at length and turned back again, sawing the air. He stopped at length at the mat. Dinah’s face grew happy again, and she laughed with the crowd.

“Ben,” she said, “didn’t I ride like a queen?”

She added, “How am I ever to get down way up here in de air?”

Dinah surveyed the great crowd. There was an acre more or less of people, with mouths stretched from ear to ear. It was not a provoking merriment, not sarcastic, nor that mean mirth that ridicules weakness. It was all sympathetic, good hearted, and good natured.

The camel driver gave another queer sound, somewhat like that at the beginning of the ride.

Dinah’s question as to how she was to get down was suddenly answered, and without any ceremony.

The camel seemed in an instant to collapse, and fall down all in a heap.

When Dinah found the high-backed animal falling as it were all to pieces into a heap of bones, her eyes turned white. But she was landed safely. The camel lay under her as if dead. She stepped from the saddle. The crowd began to cheer. Poor Dinah at first did not know whether to be offended or delighted. She seized the arm of Ben, and looked around her. The crowd was laughing in such a generous-hearted way that she wisely thought it best to join in.

So she shook her head, bridal hat and all, and clapped her hands, and shouted “Giggers!”

Up and down the Street of Cairo ran the merriment and laughter, and the happiest-hearted of all were Dinah and Ben. Peal on peal of laughter rang out on the sunny air, Dinah leading the chorus.

Manton Marlowe looked down the avenue of laughing, friendly, kindly faces, and then turned to the beaming faces of Dinah and Ben.

“I never saw anything on earth so funny as that,” he said.

“No!” said Grandfather Marlowe, “and that is the funniest thing that you will see at the Fair.”

“I think that you are right,” said Mr. Marlowe; “and there is a lesson too in all this light-hearted scene: people may so laugh as not to give offence. Look! Dinah is the happiest of all, and there is not a person here that would not be glad to do her a favor! How happy is everything here! The hearts of all people here beat as one.”

“This is a good world,” said the old Quaker.

A few days afterwards the trio saw a calf run away from a mock sacrifice. The priest ran after him, and a comical scene followed; but Mr. Marlowe did not change his mind in regard to the laughing crowd of the Street of Cairo. That was the funniest scene that he saw at the Fair.

FOLK-LORE STORY.

MIRACULOUS SUSAN OF QUAKER HILL.

_Imprimis_, the reader will ask why the woman in our title with the simple name of Susan was called “miraculous,” and, _secundus_, where is Quaker Hill. I will answer the last question first, and try to give the reader a view of the picturesque elevation where George Fox preached in the glorious old Rhode Island of Governor Coddington and of Roger Williams; and as for that said useful woman, who was indispensable to the old families of the once Indian country of Pokonoket in the trying days of dipping candles, picking live geese, and at “killing-time,” our story will seek to portray the one marvellous and mysterious event of her otherwise uneventful life.

I should say that the quaint, plain Quaker meeting-house on the historic elevation near Portsmouth, R. I., is the most interesting church in all America. It stands for the old Rhode Island principle of soul-liberty, as set forth in Roger Williams’s day—and what could stand for more? It is now very much what it was two hundred years ago, when a rich Rhode Islander proposed to offer George Fox a salary to remain on the Island as preacher,—which caused the good man to flee.

_They_ do not do so now, to be sure, but times have a little changed, even among the hillside farmers on the Garden Island of the New World.

I recently attended a Friends’ meeting at the quaint, roomy church on Quaker Hill. The Narragansett Bay rolled in the distance as clear and blue as when George Fox himself must have beheld it in 1671, or more than two hundred years ago. The Hill is still the Mecca of the Societies of Friends, and may be found on the Old Colony Railroad near Portsmouth, R. I., some eight miles from Newport, and a few miles from the Barton-Prescott house, of historic fame.

The island was Aquidneck when George Fox came there, “a voice crying in the wilderness of the world,” and when Bishop Berkeley became prophetic at Newport, and voiced his inspiration in the immortal line, “Westward the course of empire takes its way.”

There are few spots on the earth more serene and lovely than Quaker Hill. There is an ethereal beauty over the blue waterways and bountiful farms, a “Gulf Stream influence” it is called, that seems almost spiritual, and we do not wonder that the good old Quaker spirit should have found its sympathetic atmosphere here. After the long past, the Gospel of the Inner Light and universal Love is still preached on the self-same serene hill of Portsmouth looking over to Mount Hope,—the ancient burying-ground of the Indian race,—the Narragansett Bay, and the sinking sails of the far sea. It is worth a pilgrimage to spend a Sabbath on Quaker Hill.

The old-time Newport Quakers did not keep holidays, but Thanksgiving was always a benevolent day on the thrifty Quaker farms around the transfigured hill. The mention of the day recalls tables of luxuries that, unhappily, are no more seen. Those were the days of apple dumplings made of Rhode Island greenings, which Rhode Island mythology claims to have come from the original Garden of Eden; of pandowdy in comparison with which the modern apple pie merits little commendation; of No Cake, rightly named, for it consisted of parched corn so deftly cooked that it floated white on milk; of plum porridge, hot and cold; of hasty puddings with toothsome sauces; of bannocks; of whit-pot; of all kinds of game,—wild geese, teal, partridges, and quail; of pound-cake that induced pipes and fireside slumbers and dreams such as never haunted the self-denying soul of George Fox. The old Quakers of Portsmouth were good livers, but they shared all they had with every one.

Blessed are the graves with their mossy stones around the queer church on old Quaker Hill! The precisianers here lived quiet lives, but their principles of soul-liberty emancipated the world. The little square panes in the gray meeting-house windows, to a student of life, are more than all the rose hues of the lights of Cologne Cathedral. It is the soul of things that is great,—and great souls held their visions here.

I vividly recall the whortleberry and blackberry pastures of Portsmouth, where “Miraculous Susan” used to spend the greater part of her time in July and August, gathering berries for the Newport market. I can see the old woman now as she used to pass with her baskets and tin pails, and her bottle of cold coffee for lunch.

I used sometimes to go with her, and when she had filled her baskets with berries she would help me fill mine. “It is what we do for _other_ folks that makes life pleasant,” she often said.

The children used to start back with awe into the roadside alders and witch-hazels as they saw her, and one of the school-group would be likely to say:

“That’s her,—the ’ooman over whose head the miracle-ring appeared, right in the church, hanging in the air on nothing. And some said it was made of silver, and some said it was made of gold, and some of pearls. But they found her out. She didn’t mean it. I’ll tell you what it was—won’t you never, never tell?”

The mystery of the simple history of Susan had been so often told in confidence that when one put one’s finger on one’s lip in speaking of it, it was a sign; there are some things that it is reverent not to tell publicly,—this was one of them.

There was a poem of some unknown author that she used to repeat to me when whortleberrying, which to my simple mind surpassed in lyric beauty anything that Wordsworth ever wrote. It began:

“Why, Phœbe, have you come so soon? Where are your berries, child?”

The unfortunate Phœbe was to my eyes a never-failing source of tears. The earthquake of Lisbon never affected me like _that_.

I shall never forget the tempests that sometimes followed the long August days when we went whortleberrying. If we had an uneventful tour, we yet had eventful skies. The hot forenoon; the ospreys wheeling in the fiery meridian heaven; the fevered air; the pearl-white clouds that rose in the north like mountains, peak rising above peak as in the Alps or Andes; the universal singing of birds in joyous expectation of showers; the hurrying hay-wagons; the rapid motions of the rakes and forks; the scent of new-mown hay; the carrying of water to the haymakers by the farmers’ wives and daughters; the shadow of the cloud; the half-sun and half-shadow on the fields; the muttering of the thunder; the few terrific peals; the thunderbolt that smote some tall tree in the near woodland pasture; the deluge of rain; the dripping leaves; the breaking cloud; the rainbow; the broken sunset; the singing of birds again; the flying of night-hawks, and the cool, starry night that followed,—I can still see that country dog-day, as such a day was called. I still can feel in my imagination as I felt in the changing air from a fevered heat to refreshing cool, as we sheltered ourselves under the thick savin-trees, waiting for the shower to pass.

Miraculous Susan, over whose head the silver ring appeared in the old Orthodox church on the Heights, lived in a small cottage near Quaker Hill. Across a narrow waterway was Tiverton Heights. The water is spanned by a stone bridge now; it was a ferry in Susan’s day.

A strange event had happened to Susan. We never knew of her telling the story but once, and that was at a husking at Tiverton, after her feelings had been a little touched by certain jokes about her that had fallen upon her ears at a husking-party.

“No,” she said, shaking her calash, “I fear sometimes that there’s no miracle ever happened in my poor life—I can’t say; but I’ve had a hard time. I never encouraged any man to marry me—how could I? only Malachi, he just took hold of one end of my apron-string one evening, and opened his mouth, and I said ‘Stop!’ and looked at him just like _that_. Malachi was a likely man, but I wouldn’t be a burden to him. The doctor said that Mother would be a cripple for life, and he had no sooner said that than my mind was made right up. I knew my duty. If a thing is right, it is right, and there need be nothing more said about it; and if a thing is wrong, it is wrong, and there need be nothing more said about that. I’ve had some blessin’s and a pretty even life, take it all in all,—only that miracle that happened to me in church, and nobody was to blame for that! I did think that the ‘angel of the Lord had come down,’ as the choir used to sing, but I fear I was mistaken.”

Miraculous Susan arose and bent over the corn-heap and pulled down a large husking of corn. It was a bright, clear, still November day, with a woody odor in the air that came from the falling leaves of the flaming maples and walnut-trees where the river made an ox-bow. There had been a gusty storm the night before, leaving leaf-wet woods. The crows were cawing in the far tree-tops, and the pilfering jays were swinging in the wild grape-vines. Hither and thither a nimble squirrel, called the “chipmunk,” might have been seen running along the gray stone walls.

The Parson sat next to Miraculous Susan by the husk-heap.

“You never gave Malachi any yarn to wind?” said he, good-naturedly, to lead up to the neighborhood story.

“No, I never encouraged him as much as _that_. I only treated him so well that he came a second time. La, Parson, if I’d only said the word I needn’t ha’ been huskin’ here for one bushel in ten. But my folks, they were all ought-to-be people, and I had to be just what I ought to be. It was born in me. I know that I got spiritually proud, and actually thought that the Lord had appeared to me and set a halo of glory around my head. Think of it, a poor lone woman like me! But the world has been good to me, and it will be a great deal better on the day that I go out of it than it was on the day when I came into it, and none the worse for my being in it—don’t you think so, Parson?”

“Yes, Sister Susan, that is just my own opinion.”

“I can make mince pies equal to Dorothy Hancock’s, though I can’t pull a string as that woman did on the French fleet one day, and have a whole frigate go bang, banging around me. There’s a difference between some folks and others.”

“You are right, Susan,—you _can_ make mince pies.”

“And pandowdy!”

“Yes, I never ate any Thanksgiving pandowdy equal to yours.”

“That’s because I let the crust candy, and then breaks it all up, and kneads it into the apple.—This is a beautiful world!”

It surely was on that day and in that thrifty meadow. The sky was as blue as in April. The hills in their late autumn hues shimmered afar like dreamlands. The long meadows were restful and bright with cool green aftermath. Between the hills ran the way down to the cranberry meadows, the salt marshes, and the purple sea.

The farm lay upon a stretch of land now known as Tiverton Heights, which was already famous in Indian history, but is now also associated with stirring events of the Revolutionary War. There is no place in America that commands more romantic scenes and waterways. At a distance lay the town of Little Compton, the residence of Captain Benjamin Church the Indian-fighter, and the rich hunting-grounds of the Awasonks. In the lowlands at the sea-levels was the island of Rhode Island, where had lived Bishop Berkeley, of prophetic memory. In the town now called Middleton, near Newport, the Aquidians had met their fate; and the same town now is famous as the place where Barton captured General Prescott:—

“’Twas on that dark and stormy night, The winds and waves did roar, Bold Barton then with twenty men Went down upon the shore.”

The old inhabitants still love to tell how Tuck Sisson on that memorable July night broke open the British General’s door by butting against it with his head.

To the west, where now the great stone bridge, costing a quarter of a million, connects the island of Newport the Beautiful with the mainland, was the pleasant ferry. And beyond lay the Narragansett, one of the beautiful inland seas of the world. Here also were the Highlands of the Pocassetts, and thence Queen Wetamoe and her warriors used to cross Mount Hope Bay to unite in the war-dances of King Philip at night. To-day every town on the Heights has its wonderful tales and romantic legends.

The “husk-heap,” as the unharvested corn was called, was many hundred feet long, and covered on the top with thatch and swale meadow-hay. Behind it rose a number of “husk-stacks,” as the heaped husked cornstalks were termed, while in front were two huge ox-carts, with high sides, which were brimming with yellow Indian corn. Over the corn-heaps where the husking had already been done was a long row of pumpkins, “pig corn” and “smutty corn,” on the ground. The crickets were singing cheerily everywhere, as they always did on bright days about the corn-heaps.

The huskers were a merry company. In the middle of the long row of these busy people sat Deacon White, the owner of the seashore farm, and next to him Sally Bannocks, his widowed sister. At his other side sat Parson Brown, who had come over from the parsonage under the great elbowing elm-trees to “lend a hand;” and beside the good Parson sat Miraculous Susan, the woman-of-all-work of the town. An old Indian woman, named Maria, took a place apart from the others at the end of the heap. Miraculous Susan and Indian Maria husked for the Deacon on shares, receiving one bushel in ten of the corn that they basketed for their labor. A dozen or more boys and girls made up a happy party, such as could have been seen in November a hundred years ago on almost any large New England farm.

In these merry days of plenty the young people had a droll song that they used to sing. It was evidently written in derision of the unthrifty farmer, who had no such bounteous corn-heaps as these. It was sung in doleful minor, and the refrain words “Over there” had the most melancholy cadence of anything that I ever heard except the hymn-tune “Windham.” It ran as follows:—

O potatoes they grow small, Over there. O potatoes they grow small, For they plants ’em in the fall, And they eats ’em skins and all, Over there!

O they had a clam pie, Over there. O they had a clam pie, Over there.

O they had a clam pie, And its crust was made of rye, You must eat it or must die, Over there!

The fiddling tune of “Old Rosin the Beau,” and the lively strains of “Money Musk,” the “Virginia Reel,” and “Fisher’s Hornpipe,” were often heard at the husking-parties, played by the village fiddlers, of whom every town had one. For more serious music, the huskers sang the old plaintive Scotch airs.

Miraculous Susan? She was the servant of everybody in distress; the good woman of the town. She heard the first wail of the infant, and stood last by the trembling widow when the sod fell hollow upon the coffin. Did a child have a bad case of measles or throat-ail, she was there; was there a case of typhus fever, her faithful hand fanned that brow. _She_ did not shrink even from a case of smallpox. Did a farm-wife fall sick in haying-time, thither went Miraculous Susan. Did a woman with a great family of children need special help on washing-day, baking-day, or at “killing-time,” there she was found. She used to say that the Lord created her “fists full of days’ work for everybody,” and that that was her mission in life; and always added the reflection of doubtful comfort, “And I shall get through by and by.”

Her name—“Miraculous Susan”—how did she come by that?

Therein is our story, as we have intimated. Other people told it many times; it was a wonder-tale of the old farms. I never knew her to tell the story but once, and that was on this particular day, at the corn-heap.

“Parson Brown,” said she, pulling down a large armful of cornstalks and corn, “do you really think that there are such persons as _ghost-seers_, or that all such things are only just like the ‘House that Jack built,’ just one thing leadin’ into another?”

“Susan,” said the good Parson, “I haven’t believed much in those things since what happened to you, according to Elder Almy’s view of the matter. Don’t be offended, Susan. There are mostly mysterious causes for mysterious things. You are an honest woman, Susan, and it is much good that you have done in the world. As for that miracle, Susan, that was a very peculiar case. It’s husking-time, and we are all your friends; just tell us _your_ side of that story which makes the people—the Lord forgive ’em!—all call you Miraculous Susan.”

Susan drew her Rob-Roy shawl around her, and gave the Parson the same kind of a look that she had given Malachi when he just took hold of her apron-string to get courage to ask _the_ question. Then her face relaxed, and there came into it a kindly look, and she said, “Parson Brown, I will. You have all been proper good to me, and have always meant well, if you do say ‘Ichabod’ to me now; you mean well.”

Susan pulled down a large heap of corn to husk while telling her story, and shook out of it the dry corn-cockles, saying, “First the blade, and then the ear, and then the full corn in the ear,” and adding, “Every cornstalk is a Thanksgiving sermon.” The children drew near to hear, and with them one girl, Susanna, whose eyes grew with the story.

“Tell all you know,” said Deacon White; “and it is mighty interesting to hear a person tell a little _more_ than he knows. I always like people that can see just a little beyond the horizon—what is the imagination for?”

“I shall tell you only the plain truth,” said Susan. “So let me begin with the planting-time, when the bluebirds came with the sky on their wings, and the children dropped the first corn into the ground. I was dreadful poor that year. Mother had just died and left me alone and lonesome, and I began then to be hands and feet for everybody, so as to heal up the great lump in my heart. I had a Rob-Roy shawl that I had worn for years to church, summer and winter, and one June day, as I was coming down the steps of the church, Deacon White here, says he, says he to me, ‘Susan, you ought to have some better things to wear; and if we have a prosperous year, and my ship comes in prosperous-like, I mean to get the folks together in the fall, and to have them make you a present of a real camlet cloak.’

“Could I believe my ears? It was only grand folks that wore camlet cloaks! The wives of people who traded at sea!

“I attended church at Quaker Hill for the most part, because, to tell the truth, I had to dress plain, and my simple clothes did not make me look so poor among the gray Quaker folk as they did among the silk gowns and camlet cloaks at Tiverton. And then, at the hands-shaking after the Quaker meetings, I used often to find something in my hands besides emptiness, and I always felt friendly to the Quaker folk who were led by the Spirit, and who believed their words were Spirit when they preached and exhorted. They are good people, and I wish that the world were full of such, which I say though I am Orthodox.

“Well, I looked at the Deacon. His first wife had a camlet cloak, brought over from the East Indies or some foreign parts where the camels grow.

“But what the Deacon said did touch my heart in a tender place. He was the first person in all the community that had ever seemed to think that I would like to be thought of. My lip trembled, and I pulled down my calash to hide my weakness, because my eyelids began to twitch, and I couldn’t help it. I walked down the steps firmly, and then I took the wood-path home, and sat down on the pine-needles all alone on the way and had a good cry. I didn’t know that I had any such feelings before. It wasn’t the thought of a camlet cloak that made me break up so,—it was that the Deacon had seen that I had had a hard time, and felt for me.

“Well, the corn came up, and the blades waved in the long fields in the June air, and the robins sang everywhere. I was spry that summer, and everywhere I went there arose before me a vision of that camlet cloak. Not that I wanted such a cloak, but I wanted the people to have some regard for me, and what the Deacon said stood for that. Everybody likes to be thought something of sometime.

“The blades of corn turned at last into silk and tassels, and then it was September, and every kernel that had been planted under the April skies had produced an ear, and some two. The green fields turned yellow and rustled, and the crickets piped and the birds sang their last song and flew away. Then came Indian summer, and the Thanksgiving days were near at hand. It had been a prosperous year, and the Deacon’s ship had come in with its gun booming.

“One day the stage came lumbering up the Heights, and the driver drew up the reins before my door, and looked under the great leather boot where the mail-bags were, and brought out a large box, and called,—

“‘Susan, here—I’ve got something for ye, from Newport.’

“‘That’s passing strange,’ said I, throwing my apron over my head. ‘I haven’t any near of kin in Newport.’

“‘Friends,’ said he.

“‘Friends?’ said I. ‘I haven’t many of them anywhere, as for that matter; they’re as scarce as hen’s teeth in this world where there’s so much selfishness. But I hadn’t ought to complain; we all of us get treated better than we deserve. The Lord forgive me for saying such things as those! This is a good world.’

“He handed down a package.

“‘Guess it came from foreign parts,’ said he. ‘Do the best you can, Susan, so that when this bothersome life is all over you will—you will—Go lang;’ and he was out of sight in quick time, the wheels rattling over the stony hill.

“I took the package into the house, and opened it, all alone. Could I believe my eyes? It was a camlet cloak, all made of silk and camel’s hair, and grand enough to have bedecked a queen, and large enough to cover my whole body.

“I first thought that I would just sink right down on my knees and pray. Then my vanity got the better of me, and I held up the cloak before the looking-glass; my cap-border rose when I thought how fine I would look going up the steps of the old church with that garment covering me, like a picture of Queen Vashti in the Bible.

“While I was standing there, grand as a drum-major at a general training, who should come in but old Elder Almy, of Portsmouth Farms.

“‘What has thee got there, Susan?’ said he, looking up queerly from under the broad brim of his hat.

“‘A royal garment fit for a queen,’ said I. ‘Look there, Elder Almy—a camlet cloak!’

“‘I see, I see,’ said he. ‘I heard that the Tiverton folks were about to make thee a present,’ said he, ‘and I hoped it would be such an one as would make thy heart better. It is only the present that makes the heart better that the Lord desires thee to have, Sister Susan.’

“‘Elder Almy,’ said I, ‘I am a plain-spoken woman, and I am going to ask you one question, if you are a Quaker. Why should not a poor woman like me have a camlet cloak?’

“‘Thee shouldst, if it would make thee better, Susan. What hast thou to go with thy camlet cloak? Look at thy shoes, Susan. How is thy meal-chest, Susan? How wouldst thee look in thy green calash and thy camlet cloak, Susan?’

“‘But I’m goin’ to get a whole lot of new things to wear with my camlet cloak,’ said I.

“‘How about thy purse, Susan? Hast thou means to live after the pattern of thy royal garment? And would it be good for thy heart if thou hadst? Simple living is a duty, Susan. I dress as simply as my work-folks, Susan. If I did otherwise, I would encourage extravagance in them. Thy camlet cloak begetteth pride, Susan, and pride resisteth the Spirit, Susan. It is better for thee, Susan, far better, to be poor in spirit.’

“Then I up and fell from grace, the Lord forgive me!

“‘Elder Almy,’ said I, ‘I am just as good as any of the people that wear camlet cloaks. There was no different blood in the veins of Queen Anne than that in my own. Small people make small presents. The Governor has sent forth his proclamation for all people to assemble in the churches on the 20th day of the 11th month, and I am going to assemble.’

“‘_All_ of you, Susan?’

“‘Yes, _all_ of me, and the camlet cloak. It doesn’t make one feel happy to be given pewter spoons. There!’

“‘Nor a gold crown, Susan?’

“I was sorry afterwards that I said these things, for Elder Almy and all the Quakers were the most feeling and generous people, and as for Mrs. Almy, why, she would have given away her bonnet off her own head.

“I had some money that I had hidden away in an old Spanish money-jar, against sickness. I resolved to take that and go to Newport and buy me some silk for a hood, an alpaca dress, and a string of beads, which Elder Almy would have classed among the vanities. I went to Newport, and I found there that I needed so many things to go with the camlet cloak that I spent all the money that I had. ‘The Lord who sent the camlet cloak will provide,’ said I.

“I shall never forget that bright Thanksgiving morning that I was to set out from Quaker Hill, and for Tiverton, in my silk hood and camlet cloak. It was a cold morning, but clear. I could hear the surf roaring at Newport, and the bells ringing.

“As I was getting ready to go, I chanced to open the old saddle-room door, and what should I see there but the very foot-stove that my mother used to carry to church, before they had one stove for all the people. A thought struck me. My pew was in a cold part of the church; I would fill the iron cup inside of the foot-stove with coals, and take the stove along with me under my camlet cloak. No one would ever see it, and it would keep me comfortable all the day.

“My mother was better off than I, and her foot-stove was not one of the ordinary kind. It was made of block tin, was perforated in stars, had a mahogany frame, and a brass pan for the coals. It was always a mystery to me how coals in that little hand-stove would hold fire for so long a time. _She_ used to use hard-wood coal, and mostly walnut. I had some good coals of apple-tree wood in the stove that morning, and I put them into the pan, and closed the stove door, and took the stove in my left hand under my cloak like a basket of eggs. Nobody ever carries a foot-stove now, though there can be found one still in the saddle-rooms and eaves-holes of nearly all the old houses, along with the brass warming-pans, candle-moulds, and shovels and tongs and fenders.

“How bright the water looked at the ferry! How the old ferryman stared when he saw me! How an old crow on a dead tree peered down at me and cried out in the keen air, ‘Haw, haw, haw!’

“I met Elder Almy on the way.

“‘Goin’ to Thanksgiving?’ said he.

“‘How do I look now, Elder?’ said I.

“‘Just like a rag-bag,—a travelling vanity on the road to Vanity Fair. You’ll get there, Susan. Did you hear that crow? What was he talking about, Susan?’

“‘Pewter spoons, I guess,’ said I. And I just gave him _that_ look that I had given Malachi.

“The churchyard was full of people, the dead and alive; for that matter, the dead are always there. The bell was ringing, and carriages were coming from all the neighboring farms. All eyes were bent upon me as I passed through the crowd and went up the church steps. I took my seat in the back pew where I usually sat, and put my feet on the warm foot-stove and spread over it the camlet cloak like a tent, and looked up to the tall pulpit, the red curtains, and sounding-board, and hour-glass.

“Elder Holmes alluded to me in the opening prayer, as one whom ‘celestial charity delighted to honor.’ After the prayer I looked up again and around, and I saw that all the eyes in the church were turned towards me.

“‘The Lord keep me humble!’ prayed I.

“That prayer was answered. Surely it was.

“The text was a curious one—‘Where there is no vision, the people perish.’ Elder Holmes, he gave a Bible history of visions, and of the times when the Lord spake to Israel in visions, and the times when there were no visions, and then he went over history to show that when people lost their prophetic sense the nation declined. It was a wonderful discourse. But while he was giving a picture of the woful Middle Ages, when the people lost their visions in bloody wars, the church suddenly grew still; you could have heard a pin drop. The foot-stove had made such a warmth under my cloak that I had almost gone to sleep. I was glad that the Middle Ages were gone, and was thinking that things in this world must be above all right now, when the stillness of the church awoke me. I started up and looked around wild like, and my heart gave a thump as I saw Elder Holmes standing in the pulpit, silent, with uplifted hands,—and the great silk sleeves of his robe did make his arms appear awful. The Elder was looking straight at me.

“I turned my head. Every eye in the gallery was fixed upon me. I looked towards the deacons’ pew. The four deacons all set, bent forward like, staring straight at me. What had happened?

“I might well ask that. Every one seemed looking at something over my head. I looked up, and there, right over my head, hung a vision. The heavens had come down, or so thought all the people, and so thought I. How shall I describe it as it appeared to me? I seem to see it now.

“Over my head hung a ring, bright as silver and pearls, and full of golden light. A miraculous ring! From the ring there were floating away little silver rings, which I took to be wings of angels, and which melted away as they went up. The sunlight shone through the silver ring as I sat between the windows, and the vision seemed at times like a circle of glass filled with glimmering gold. I never can describe how I felt at that hour. I thought of the hymn—Heaven forgive my vanity!—

“‘The Lord descended from above, And bowed the heavens most high, And underneath his feet he cast The garments of the sky.’

“I lifted up my eyes to the choir. The singers were all looking down upon me as though they were just rising to sing. Even the bass-viol _seemed_ to be looking. Then I dropped my eyes to the pew where the deacons’ wives sat, and Deacon Coon’s wife, she looked just as though her eyes would shoot out of her head, and Deacon Bradford’s wife, she sat looking just like _this_, with a snuff-box in her hands—_so_—and her neck as long as a sea loon’s flying—_so_.

“It was a curious sight. I shall never forget it to the longest day of my life: the choir, all eyes looking down; the deacons on one side of the high pulpit, looking out of their pew; the deacons’ wives on the other side of the pulpit, looking out of their pew, and the parson in his high curtained pulpit under the sounding-board, with his arms in his robe, uplifted—this way.

“‘Signs and wonders!’ said Parson Holmes. ‘Let us gaze on in silence!’ They did. The silence was _awful_.

“My heart beat so violently that I felt that I must get up and go out into the yard. I rose slowly, and went down the aisle, where all the people were sitting like statues. As soon as I got up, there was a great uplifting of what seemed to be pearly angels’ wings around my head—little silvery wings—and then the vision vanished.

“I never felt so proud in all my life as when I went back to Quaker Hill that day, a camlet cloak on my back, and a vision of angels, for aught I could say, hovering over my new silk hood. I imagined I was one of the old patriarchs. What would Quaker Almy say now? Wa’n’t I as good as anybody?

“The news of what had happened spread everywhere. In a day or two Deacon Almy came to see me.

“‘Signs and wonders!’ said I.

“‘Pins and needles!’ said he: ‘The Lord don’t appear in visions to people in camlet cloaks, that talk sassy when reproved. I have a theory about that vision. We are commanded to try the spirit, Susan,’ said he, looking at me with a searching eye. ‘What didst thee carry that day with thee under thy camlet cloak?’

“‘Nothing but my mother’s foot-stove,’ said I.

“‘Did it _smoke_?’ said he.

“‘A little bit,’ said I.

“‘And where did the smoke go to?’ asked he.

“‘I smothered it under my camlet cloak,’ said I. ‘A little of it might have gone out between my shoulders,’ said I, after stopping to think. ‘I sat bent over, and I couldn’t see my back. How could I?’ The word ‘smoke’ made me feel very uncertain.

“‘And a light smoke always forms a circle before it ascends, and in a ray of sunlight the circle would look like gold,’ said he, ‘and then it would all break apart feathery like,’ said he, ‘and’—I couldn’t endure any more.

“I arose and seized the broom.

“‘You unbelieving Philistine!’ said I.

“‘You may spare that carnal weapon,’ said he. ‘Susan, you are a good woman in the main, but you haven’t the kind of spirit that sees visions. I’m sorry for ye.’

“Well, would you believe it? I began to doubt the vision myself, and Elder Almy, he gave out his suspicions among the people, and some thought one thing and some another.

“But right after Thanksgiving there came an awful snowstorm, and though I had a silk hood and a camlet cloak, I hadn’t no meal, nor hardly anything to eat or burn. Then Elder Almy and some of the brethren came over from the Quaker Hill farms, and brought me two cords of wood, and some bags of meal, and a quarter of beef, and a whole sage cheese, and some stout flannel, and Sister Almy, she put five pistareens in my hand, and gave me a braided husk mat and a quilted bed-coverlet, and they all talked to me about the Inner Light, and humility, and loving others better than self, and then they held a meeting in my kitchen as still as the wings of death; and when they were gone I hung up my camlet cloak in the cupboard for good and all, and resolved to love henceforth and forever just such poor creatures as myself, and to serve ’em as best I could; and I never felt so thankful in all my life. Deacon White here, he and the church all meant well, but, as Elder Almy says, ‘Always make presents that will do people good.’ Good presents, of course, make people feel better than poor ones,—but beautiful things may be serviceable, too.

“This is a good world, Deacon, and I will always love you for the camlet cloak; but then, you know, Deacon, and you know, Elder, that—There, the horn is blowing for dinner, and I’ve husked this morning five baskets of corn.”

“_Was_ it a miracle, Susan?” asked one of the huskers,—the girl with large eyes.

“Well, some say it was, like Elder Holmes, and some, like Elder Almy, say it was only smoke; I can’t be sure. It seems to me like the battle of Sheriff Muir, that my old grandfather, who was a Scotchman, used to tell about:

“‘Some say that they ran, Some say that we ran, And some say that nane ran At a’, man.’

“‘But of one thing I’m sure, A battle there was at Sheriff Muir, Which I saw, man, And we ran, and they ran, And they ran, and we ran, Awa’, man.’”

Susan, like ordinary mortals, obeyed the lively dinner-horn, followed by the merry Rhode Islanders.

The Miracle? It is a mystery still. Susan is dead, and the flat gray wall-stone that marked her grave is sinking, moss-covered, into the grass where the sparrows nest, among the many graves that lie on the sunset slope of Quaker Hill.