Complete Works of Harriet Beecher Stowe

by Harriet Beecher Stowe

  Papa and mamma behaved with the utmost circumspection and discretion, and though surrounded on all sides by such pitfalls and labyrinths of mystery, moved about with an air of the most unconscious simplicity possible.

  But little Ally, from her privileged character, became a very spoil-sport in the proceedings. Her small fingers were always pulling open parcels prematurely, or lifting pocket handkerchiefs ingeniously thrown down over mysterious articles, and thus disconcerting the very profoundest surprises that ever were planned; and were it not that she was still within the bounds of the kingly state of babyhood, and therefore could be held to do no wrong, she would certainly have fallen into general disgrace; but then it was “Ally,” and that was apology for all things, and the exploit was related in half whispers as so funny, so cunning, that Miss Curlypate was in nowise disconcerted at the head shakes and “naughty Allys” that visited her offences.

  “What dis?” said she, one morning, as she was rummaging over some packages indiscreetly left on the sofa.

  “O Emma! see Ally!” exclaimed Eliza, darting forward; but too late, for the flaxen curls and blue eyes of a wax doll had already appeared.

  “Now she’ll know all about it,” said Eliza, despairingly.

  Ally looked in astonishment, as dolly’s visage promptly disappeared from her view, and then turned to pursue her business in another quarter of the room, where, spying something glittering under the sofa, she forthwith pulled out and held up to public view a crochet bag sparkling with innumerable steel fringes.

  “O, what be dis!” she exclaimed again.

  Miss Emma sprang to the rescue, while all the other children, with a burst of exclamations, turned their eyes on mamma. Mamma very prudently did not turn her head, and appeared to be lost in reflection, though she must have been quite deaf not to have heard the loud whispers—”It’s mamma’s bag! only think! Don’t you think, Tom, Ally pulled out mamma’s bag, and held it right up before her! Don’t you think she’ll find out?”

  Master Tom valued himself greatly on the original and profound ways he had of adapting his presents to the tastes of the receiver without exciting suspicion: for example, he would come up into his mother’s room, all booted and coated for a ride to town, jingling his purse gleefully, and begin, —

  “Mother, mother, which do you like best, pink or blue?”

  “That might depend on circumstances, my son.”

  “Well, but, mother, for a neck ribbon, for example; suppose somebody was going to buy you a neck ribbon.”

  “Why, blue would be the most suitable for me, I think.”

  “Well, but mother, which should you think was the best, a neck ribbon or a book?”

  “What book? It would depend something on that.”

  “Why, as good a book as a fellow could get for thirty-seven cents,” says Tom.

  “Well, on the whole, I think I should prefer the ribbon.”

  “There, Ned,” says Tom, coming down the stairs, “I’ve found out just what mother wants, without telling her a word about it.”

  But the crowning mystery of all the great family arcana, the thing that was going to astonish papa and mamma past all recovery, was certain projected book marks, that little Ally was going to be made to work for them. This bold scheme was projected by Miss Emma, and she had armed herself with a whole paper of sugar plums, to be used as adjuvants to moral influence, in case the discouragements of the undertaking should prove too much for Ally’s patience.

  As to Ally, she felt all the dignity of the enterprise — her whole little soul was absorbed in it. Seated on Emma’s knee, with the needle between her little fat fingers, and holding the board very tight, as if she was afraid it would run away from her, she very gravely and carefully stuck the needle in every place but the right — pricked her pretty fingers — ate sugar plums — stopping now to pat Rover, and now to stroke pussy — letting fall her thimble, and bustling down to pick it up — occasionally taking an episodical race round the room with Rover, during which time Sister Emma added a stitch or two to the work.

  I would not wish to have been required, on oath, to give in my undisguised opinion as to the number of stitches the little one really put into her present, but she had a most genuine and firm conviction that she worked every stitch of it herself; and when, on returning from a scamper with pussy, she found one or two letters finished, she never doubted that the whole was of her own execution, and, of course, thought that working book marks was one of the most delightful occupations in the world. It was all that her little heart could do to keep from papa and mamma the wonderful secret. Every evening she would bustle about her father with an air of such great mystery, and seek to pique his curiosity by most skilful hints, such as, —

  “I know somefing! but I s’ant tell you.”

  “Not tell me! O Ally! Why not?”

  “O, it’s about — a New ‘Ear’s pes — —”

  “Ally, Ally,” resounds from several voices, “don’t you tell.”

  “No, I s’ant — but you are going to have a New ‘Ear’s pesant, and so is mamma, and you can’t dess what it is.”

  “Can’t I?”

  “No, and I s’ant tell you.”

  “Now, Ally,” said papa, pretending to look aggrieved.

  “Well, it’s going to be — somefin worked.”

  “Ally, be careful,” said Emma.

  “Yes, I’ll be very tareful; it’s somefin — weall pretty — somefin to put in a book. You’ll find out about it by and by.”

  “I think I’m in a fair way to,” said the father.

  The conversation now digressed to other subjects, and the nurse came in to take Ally to bed; who, as she kissed her father, in the fulness of her heart, added a fresh burst of information. “Papa,” said she, in an earnest whisper, “that fin is about so long” — measuring on her fat little arm.

  “A fin, Ally? Why, you are not going to give me a fish, are you?”

  “I mean that thing,” said Ally, speaking the word with great effort, and getting quite red in the face.

  “O, that thing; I beg pardon, my lady; that puts another face on the communication,” said the father, stroking her head fondly, as he bade her good night.

  “The child can talk plainer than she does,” said the father, “but we are all so delighted with her little Hottentot dialect, that I don’t know but she will keep it up till she is twenty.”

  It now wanted only three days of the New Year, when a sudden and deadly shadow fell on the dwelling, late so busy and joyous — a shadow from the grave; and it fell on the flower of the garden — the star — the singing bird — the loved and loving Ally.

  She was stricken down at once, in the flush of her innocent enjoyment, by a fever, which from the first was ushered in with symptoms the most fearful.

  All the bustle of preparation ceased — the presents were forgotten or lay about unfinished, as if no one now had a heart to put their hand to any thing; while up in her little crib lay the beloved one, tossing and burning with restless fever, and without power to recognize any of the loved faces that bent over her.

  The doctor came twice a day, with a heavy step, and a face in which anxious care was too plainly written; and while he was there each member of the circle hung with anxious, imploring faces about him, as if to entreat him to save their darling; but still the deadly disease held on its relentless course, in spite of all that could be done.

  “I thought myself prepared to meet God’s will in any form it might come,” said Winthrop to me; “but this one thing I had forgotten. It never entered into my head that my little Ally could die.”

  The evening before New Year’s, the deadly disease seemed to be progressing more rapidly than ever; and when the doctor came for his evening call, he found all the family gathered in mournful stillness around the little crib.

  “I suppose,” said the father, with an effort to speak calmly, “that this may be her last night with us.”

  The doctor made no answ
er, and the whole circle of brothers and sisters broke out into bitter weeping.

  “It is just possible that she may live till to-morrow,” said the doctor.

  “To-morrow — her birthday!” said the mother. “O Ally, Ally!”

  Wearily passed the watches of that night. Each brother and sister had kissed the pale little cheek, to bid farewell, and gone to their rooms, to sob themselves to sleep; and the father and mother and doctor alone watched around the bed. O, what a watch is that which despairing love keeps, waiting for death! Poor Rover, the companion of Ally’s gayer hours, resolutely refused to be excluded from the sick chamber. Stretched under the little crib, he watched with unsleeping eyes every motion of the attendants, and as often as they rose to administer medicine, or change the pillow, or bathe the head, he would rise also, and look anxiously over the side of the crib, as if he understood all that was passing.

  About an hour past midnight, the child began to change; her moans became fainter and fainter, her restless movements ceased, and a deep and heavy sleep settled upon her.

  The parents looked wistfully on the doctor. “It is the last change,” he said; “she will probably pass away before the daybreak.”

  Heavier and deeper grew that sleep, and to the eye of the anxious watchers the little face grew paler and paler; yet by degrees the breathing became regular and easy, and a gentle moisture began to diffuse itself over the whole surface. A new hope began to dawn on the minds of the parents, as they pointed out these symptoms to the doctor.

  “All things are possible with God,” said he, in answer to the inquiring looks he met, “and it may be that she will yet live.”

  An hour more passed, and the rosy glow of the New Year’s morning began to blush over the snowy whiteness of the landscape. Far off from the window could be seen the kindling glow of a glorious sunrise, looking all the brighter for the dark pines that half veiled it from view; and now a straight and glittering beam shot from the east into the still chamber. It fell on the golden hair and pale brow of the child, lighting it up as if an angel had smiled on it; and slowly the large blue eyes unclosed, and gazed dreamily around.

  “Ally, Ally,” said the father, bending over her, trembling with excitement.

  “You are going to have a New ‘Ear’s pesent,” whispered the little one, faintly smiling.

  “I believe from my heart that you are, sir!” said the doctor, who stood with his fingers on her pulse; “she has passed through the crisis of the disease, and we may hope.”

  A few hours turned this hope to glad certainty; for with the elastic rapidity of infant life, the signs of returning vigor began to multiply, and ere evening the little one was lying in her father’s arms, answering with languid smiles to the overflowing proofs of tenderness which every member of the family was showering upon her.

  “See, my children,” said the father gently, “this dear one is our New Year’s present. What can we render to God in return?”

  THE OLD OAK OF ANDOVER.

  A REVERY.

  Silently, with dreamy languor, the fleecy snow is falling. Through the windows, flowery with blossoming geranium and heliotrope, through the downward sweep of crimson and muslin curtain, one watches it as the wind whirls and sways it in swift eddies.

  Right opposite our house, on our Mount Clear, is an old oak, the apostle of the primeval forest. Once, when this place was all wildwood, the man who was seeking a spot for the location of the buildings of Phillips Academy climbed this oak, using it as a sort of green watchtower, from whence he might gain a view of the surrounding country. Age and time, since then, have dealt hardly with the stanch old fellow. His limbs have been here and there shattered; his back begins to look mossy and dilapidated; but after all, there is a piquant, decided air about him, that speaks the old age of a tree of distinction, a kingly oak. To-day I see him standing, dimly revealed through the mist of falling snows; to-morrow’s sun will show the outline of his gnarled limbs — all rose color with their soft snow burden; and again a few months, and spring will breathe on him, and he will draw a long breath, and break out once more, for the three hundredth time, perhaps, into a vernal crown of leaves. I sometimes think that leaves are the thoughts of trees, and that if we only knew it, we should find their life’s experience recorded in them. Our oak! what a crop of meditations and remembrances must he have thrown forth, leafing out century after century. Awhile he spake and thought only of red deer and Indians; of the trillium that opened its white triangle in his shade; of the scented arbutus, fair as the pink ocean shell, weaving her fragrant mats in the moss at his feet; of feathery ferns, casting their silent shadows on the checkerberry leaves, and all those sweet, wild, nameless, half-mossy things, that live in the gloom of forests, and are only desecrated when brought to scientific light, laid out and stretched on a botanic bier. Sweet old forest days! — when blue jay, and yellow hammer, and bobalink made his leaves merry, and summer was a long opera of such music as Mozart dimly dreamed. But then came human kind bustling beneath; wondering, fussing, exploring, measuring, treading down flowers, cutting down trees, scaring bobalinks — and Andover, as men say, began to be settled.

  Staunch men were they — these Puritan fathers of Andover. The old oak must have felt them something akin to himself. Such strong, wrestling limbs had they, so gnarled and knotted were they, yet so outbursting with a green and vernal crown, yearly springing, of noble and generous thoughts, rustling with leaves which shall be for the healing of nations.

  These men were content with the hard, dry crust for themselves, that they might sow seeds of abundant food for us, their children; men out of whose hardness in enduring we gain leisure to be soft and graceful, through whose poverty we have become rich. Like Moses, they had for their portion only the pain and weariness of the wilderness, leaving to us the fruition of the promised land. Let us cherish for their sake the old oak, beautiful in its age as the broken statue of some antique wrestler, brown with time, yet glorious in its suggestion of past achievement.

  I think all this the more that I have recently come across the following passage in one of our religious papers. The writer expresses a kind of sentiment which one meets very often upon this subject, and leads one to wonder what glamour could have fallen on the minds of any of the descendants of the Puritans, that they should cast nettles on those honored graves where they should be proud to cast their laurels.

  “It is hard,” he says, “for a lover of the beautiful — not a mere lover, but a believer in its divinity also — to forgive the Puritans, or to think charitably of them. It is hard for him to keep Forefathers’ Day, or to subscribe to the Plymouth Monument; hard to look fairly at what they did, with the memory of what they destroyed rising up to choke thankfulness; for they were as one-sided and narrow-minded a set of men as ever lived, and saw one of Truth’s faces only — the hard, stern, practical face, without loveliness, without beauty, and only half dear to God. The Puritan flew in the face of facts, not because he saw them and disliked them, but because he did not see them. He saw foolishness, lying, stealing, worldliness — the very mammon of unrighteousness rioting in the world and bearing sway — and he ran full tilt against the monster, hating it with a very mortal and mundane hatred, and anxious to see it bite the dust that his own horn might be exalted. It was in truth only another horn of the old dilemma, tossing and goring grace and beauty, and all the loveliness of life, as if they were the enemies instead of the sure friends of God and man.”

  Now, to those who say this we must ask the question with which Socrates of old pursued the sophist: What is beauty? If beauty be only physical, if it appeal only to the senses, if it be only an enchantment of graceful forms, sweet sounds, then indeed there might be something of truth in this sweeping declaration that the Puritan spirit is the enemy of beauty.

  The very root and foundation of all artistic inquiry lies here. What is beauty? And to this question God forbid that we Christians should give a narrower answer than Plato gave in the old times befo
re Christ arose, for he directs the aspirant who would discover the beautiful to “consider of greater value the beauty existing in the soul, than that existing in the body.” More gracefully he teaches the same doctrine when he tells us that “there are two kinds of Venus, (beauty;) the one, the elder, who had no mother, and was the daughter of Uranus, (heaven,) whom we name the celestial; the other, younger, daughter of Jupiter and Dione, whom we call the vulgar.”