Complete Works of Harriet Beecher Stowe

by Harriet Beecher Stowe

  “Your son is designed for the bar, I trust,” said the venerable Judge L. to the father of James, at the commencement dinner. “I have seldom seen a turn of mind better fitted for success in the legal profession. And then his voice! his manner! let him go to the bar, sir, and I prophesy that he will yet outdo us all.”

  And this was said in James’s hearing, and by one whose commendation was not often so warmly called forth. It was not in any young heart not to beat quicker at such prospects. Honor, station, wealth, political ambition, all seemed to offer themselves to his grasp; but long ere this, in the solitude of retirement, in the stillness of prayer and self-examination, the young graduate had vowed himself to a different destiny; and if we may listen to a conversation, a few evenings after commencement, with a classmate, we shall learn more of the secret workings of his mind.

  “And so, Stanton,” said George Lennox to him, as they sat by their evening fireside, “you have not yet decided whether to accept Judge L.’s offer or not.”

  “I have decided that matter long ago,” said James.

  “So, then, you choose the ministry.”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, for my part,” replied George Lennox, “I choose the law. There must be Christians, you know, in every vocation; the law seems to suit my turn of mind. I trust it will be my effort to live as becomes a Christian, whatever be my calling.”

  “I trust so,” replied James.

  “But really, Stanton,” added the other, after some thought, “it seems a pity to cast away such prospects as open before you. You know your tuition is offered gratis; and then the patronage of Judge L., and such influences as he can command to secure your success — pray, do not these things seem to you like a providential indication that the law is to be your profession? Besides, here in these New England States, the ministry is overflowed already — ministers enough, and too many, if one may judge by the number of applicants for every unoccupied place.”

  “Nay,” replied James, “my place is not here. I know, if all accounts are true, that my profession is not overflowed in our Western States, and there I mean to go.”

  “And is it possible that you can contemplate such an entire sacrifice of your talents, your manners, your literary and scientific tastes, your capabilities for refined society, as to bury yourself in a log cabin in one of our new states? You will never be appreciated there; your privations and sacrifices will be entirely disregarded, and you placed on a level with the coarsest and most uneducated sectaries. I really do not think you are called to this.”

  “Who, then, is called?” replied James.

  “Why, men with much less of all these good things — men with real coarse, substantial, backwoods furniture in their minds, who will not appreciate, and of course not feel, the want of all the refinements and comforts which you must sacrifice.”

  “And are there enough such men ready to meet the emergencies in our western world, so that no others need be called upon?” replied James. “Men of the class you speak of may do better than I; but, if after all their efforts I still am needed, and can work well, ought I not to go? Must those only be drafted for religious enterprises to whom they involve no sacrifice?”

  “Well, for my part,” replied the other, “I trust I am willing to do any thing that is my duty; yet I never could feel it to be my duty to bury myself in a new state, among stumps and log cabins. My mind would rust itself out; and, missing the stimulus of such society as I have been accustomed to, I should run down completely, and be useless in body and in mind.”

  “If you feel so, it would be so,” replied James. “If the work there to be done would not be stimulus and excitement enough to compensate for the absence of all other stimulus, — if the business of the ministry, the saving of human souls, is not the one all-absorbing purpose, and desire, and impulse of the whole being, — then woe to the man who goes to preach the gospel where there is nothing but human souls to be gained by it.”

  “Well, Stanton,” replied the other, after a pause of some seriousness, “I cannot say that I have attained to this yet. I don’t know but I might be brought to it; but at present I must confess it is not so. We ought not to rush into a state and employment which we have not the moral fortitude to sustain well. In short, for myself, I may make a respectable, and, I trust, not useless man in the law, when I could do nothing in the circumstances which you choose. However, I respect your feelings, and heartily wish that I could share them myself.”

  A few days after this conversation the young friends parted for their several destinations — the one to a law school, the other to a theological seminary.

  It was many years after this that a middle-aged man, of somewhat threadbare appearance and restricted travelling conveniences, was seen carefully tying his horse at the outer enclosure of an elegant mansion in the town of —— , in one of our Western States; which being done, he eyed the house rather inquisitively, as people sometimes do when they are doubtful as to the question of entering or not entering. The house belonged to George Lennox, Esq., a lawyer reputed to be doing a more extensive business than any other in the state, and the threadbare gentleman who plies the knocker at the front door is the Reverend Mr. Stanton, a name widely spread in the ecclesiastical circles of the land. The door opens, and the old college acquaintances meet with a cordial grasp of the hand, and Mr. Stanton soon finds himself pressed to the most comfortable accommodations in the warm parlor of his friend; and even the slight uneasiness which the wisest are not always exempt from, when conscious of a little shabbiness in exterior, was entirely dissipated by the evident cordiality of his reception. Since the conversation we have alluded to, the two friends pursued their separate courses with but few opportunities of personal intercourse. In the true zeal of the missionary, James Stanton had thrown himself into the field, where it seemed hardest and darkest, and where labor seemed most needed. In neighborhoods without churches, without school houses, without settled roads, among a population of disorganized and heterogeneous material, he had exhorted from house to house, labored individually with one after another, till he had, in place after place, brought together the elements of a Christian church. Far from all ordinances, means of grace, or Christian brotherhood, or coöperation, he had seemed to himself to be merely the lonely, solitary “voice of one crying in the wilderness,” as unassisted, and, to human view, as powerless. With poverty, and cold, and physical fatigue he had daily been familiar; and where no vehicle could penetrate the miry depths of the forest, where it was impracticable even to guide a horse, he had walked miles and miles, through mud and rain, to preach. With a wife in delicate health, and a young and growing family, he had more than once seen the year when fifty dollars was the whole amount of money that had passed through his hands; and the whole of the rest of his support had come in disconnected contributions from one and another of his people. He had lived without books, without newspapers, except as he had found them by chance snatches here and there,[1] and felt, as one so circumstanced only can feel, the difficulty of maintaining intellectual vigor and energy in default of all those stimulants to which cultivated minds in more favorable circumstances are so much indebted. At the time that he is now introduced to the reader, he had been recently made pastor in one of the most important settlements in the state, and among those who, so far as worldly circumstances were concerned, were able to afford him a competent support. But among communities like those at the west, settled for expressly money-making purposes, and by those who have for years been taught the lesson to save, and have scarcely begun to feel the duty to give, a minister, however laborious, however eloquent and successful, may often feel the most serious embarrassments of poverty. Too often is his salary regarded as a charity which may be given or retrenched to suit every emergency of the times, and his family expenditures watched with a jealous and censorious eye.

  On the other hand, George Lennox, the lawyer, had by his talents and efficiency placed himself at the head of his profession, and was real
izing an income which brought all the comforts and elegances of life within his reach. He was a member of the Christian church in the place where he lived, irreproachable in life and conduct. From natural generosity of disposition, seconded by principle, he was a liberal contributor to all religious and benevolent enterprises, and was often quoted and referred to as an example in good works. Surrounded by an affectionate and growing family, with ample means for providing in the best manner both for their physical and mental development, he justly regarded himself as a happy man, and was well satisfied with the world he lived in.

  Now, there is nothing more trying to the Christianity or the philosophy which teaches the vanity of riches than a few hours’ domestication in a family where wealth is employed, not for purposes of ostentation, but for the perfecting of home comfort and the gratification of refined intellectual tastes; and as Mr. Stanton leaned back, slippered and gowned, in one of the easiest of chairs, and began to look over periodicals and valuable new books from which he had long been excluded, he might be forgiven for giving a half sigh to the reflection that he could never be a rich man. “Have you read this review?” said his companion, handing him one of the leading periodicals of the day across the table.

  “I seldom see reviews,” said Mr. Stanton, taking it.

  “You lose a great deal,” replied the other, “if you have not seen those by this author — altogether the ablest series of literary efforts in our time. You clerical gentlemen ought not to sacrifice your literary tastes entirely to your professional cares. A moderate attention to current literature liberalizes the mind, and gives influence that you could not otherwise acquire.”

  “Literary taste is an expensive thing to a minister,” said Mr. Stanton, smiling: “for the mind, as well as the body, we must forego all luxuries, and confine ourselves simply to necessaries.”

  “I would always indulge myself with books and periodicals, even if I had to scrimp elsewhere,” said Mr. Lennox; and he spoke of scrimping with all the serious good faith with which people of two or three thousand a year usually speak of these matters.

  Mr. Stanton smiled, and waived the subject, wondering mentally where his friend would find an elsewhere to scrimp, if he had the management of his concerns. The conversation gradually flowed back to college days and scenes, and the friends amused themselves with tracing the history of their various classmates.

  “And so Alsop is in the Senate,” said Mr. Stanton. “Strange! We did not at all expect it of him. But do you know any thing of George Bush?”

  “O, yes,” replied the other; “he went into mercantile life, and the last I heard he had turned a speculation worth thirty thousand — a shrewd fellow. I always knew he would make his way in the world.”

  “But what has become of Langdon?”

  “O, he is doing well; he is professor of languages in —— College, and I hear he has lately issued a Latin Grammar that promises to have quite a run.”

  “And Smithson?”

  “Smithson has an office at Washington, and was there living in great style the last time I saw him.”

  It may be questioned whether the minister sank to sleep that night, amid the many comfortable provisions of his friend’s guest chamber, without rebuking in his heart a certain rising of regret that he had turned his back on all the honors, and distinctions, and comforts which lay around the path of others, who had not, in the opening of the race, half the advantages of himself. “See,” said the insidious voice—”what have you gained? See your early friends surrounded by riches and comfort, while you are pinched and harassed by poverty. Have they not, many of them, as good a hope of heaven as you have, and all this besides? Could you not have lived easier, and been a good man after all?” The reflection was only silenced by remembering that the only Being who ever had the perfect power of choosing his worldly condition, chose, of his own accord, a poverty deeper than that of any of his servants. Had Christ consented to be rich, what check could there have been to the desire of it among his followers? But he chose to stoop so low that none could be lower; and that in extremest want none could ever say, “I am poorer than was my Savior and God.”

  The friends at parting the next morning shook hands warmly, and promised a frequent renewal of their resumed intercourse. Nor was the bill for twenty dollars, which the minister found in his hand, at all an unacceptable addition to the pleasures of his visit; and though the November wind whistled keenly through a dull, comfortless sky, he turned his horse’s head homeward with a lightened heart.

  “Mother’s sick, and I’m a-keeping house!” said a little flaxen-headed girl, in all the importance of seven years, as her father entered the dwelling.

  “Your mother sick! what’s the matter?” inquired Mr. Stanton.

  “She caught cold washing, yesterday, while you were gone;” and when the minister stood by the bedside of his sick wife, saw her flushed face, and felt her feverish pulse, he felt seriously alarmed. She had scarcely recovered from a dangerous fever when he left home, and with reason he dreaded a relapse.

  “My dear, why have you done so?” was the first expostulation; “why did you not send for old Agnes to do your washing, as I told you.”

  “I felt so well, I thought I was quite able,” was the reply; “and you know it will take all the money we have now in hand to get the children’s shoes before cold weather comes, and nobody knows when we shall have any more.”

  “Well, Mary, comfort your heart as to that. I have had a present to-day of twenty dollars — that will last us some time. God always provides when need is greatest.” And so, after administering a little to the comfort of his wife, the minister addressed himself to the business of cooking something for dinner for himself and his little hungry flock.

  “There is no bread in the house,” he exclaimed, after a survey of the ways and means at his disposal.

  “I must try and sit up long enough to make some,” said his wife faintly.

  “You must try to be quiet,” replied the husband. “We can do very well on potatoes. But yet,” he added, “I think if I bring the things to your bedside, and you show me how to mix them, I could make some bread.”

  A burst of laughter from the young fry chorused his proposal; nevertheless, as Mr. Stanton was a man of decided genius, by help of much showing, and of strong arms and good will, the feat was at length accomplished in no unworkmanlike manner; and while the bread was put down to the fire to rise, and the potatoes were baking in the oven, Mr. Stanton having enjoined silence on his noisy troop, sat down, pencil in hand, by his wife’s bed, to prepare a sermon.

  We would that those ministers who feel that they cannot compose without a study, and that the airiest and pleasantest room in the house, where the floor is guarded by the thick carpet, the light carefully relieved by curtains, where papers are filed and arranged neatly in conveniences purposely adjusted, with books of reference standing invitingly around, could once figure to themselves the process of composing a sermon in circumstances such as we have painted. Mr. Stanton had written his text, and jotted down something of an introduction, when a circumstance occurred which is almost inevitable in situations where a person has any thing else to attend to — the baby woke. The little interloper was to be tied into a chair, while the flaxen-headed young housekeeper was now installed into the office of waiter in ordinary to her majesty, and by shaking a newspaper before her face, plying a rattle, or other arts known only to the initiate, to prevent her from indulging in any unpleasant demonstrations, while Mr. Stanton proceeded with his train of thought.

  “Papa, papa! the teakettle! only look!” cried all the younger ones, just as he was again beginning to abstract his mind.

  Mr. Stanton rose, and adapting part of his sermon paper to the handle of the teakettle, poured the boiling water on some herb drink for his wife, and then recommenced.

  “I sha’n’t have much of a sermon!” he soliloquized, as his youngest but one, with the ingenuity common to children of her standing, had contrived to t
ip herself over in her chair, and cut her under lip, which for the time being threw the whole settlement into commotion; and this conviction was strengthened by finding that it was now time to give the children their dinner.

  “I fear Mrs. Stanton is imprudent in exerting herself,” said the medical man to the husband, as he examined her symptoms.

  “I know she is,” replied her husband, “but I cannot keep her from it.”

  “It is absolutely indispensable that she should rest and keep her mind easy,” said the doctor.