The Pioneers; Or, The Sources of the Susquehanna

by James Fenimore Cooper

  CHAPTER VIII.

  "For here the exile met from every clime, And spoke, in friendship, every distant tongue." --Campbell.

  We have made our readers acquainted with some variety in character andnations, in introducing the most important personages of this legend totheir notice; but, in order to establish the fidelity of our narrative,we shall briefly attempt to explain the reason why we have been obligedto present so motley a dramatis personae.

  Europe, at the period of our tale, was in the commencement of thatcommotion which afterward shook her political institutions to thecentre. Louis the Sixteenth had been beheaded, and a nation onceesteemed the most refined among the civilized people of the world waschanging its character, and substituting cruelty for mercy, and subtletyand ferocity for magnanimity and courage. Thou sands of Frenchmen werecompelled to seek protection in distant lands. Among the crowds who fledfrom France and her islands, to the United States of America, was thegentleman whom we have already mentioned as Monsieur Le Quoi. He hadbeen recommended to the favor of Judge Temple by the head of an eminentmercantile house in New York, with whom Marmaduke was in habitsof intimacy, and accustomed to exchange good offices. At his firstinterview with the Frenchman, our Judge had discovered him to be a manof breeding, and one who had seen much more prosperous days in his owncountry. From certain hints that had escaped him, Monsieur Le Quoi wassuspected of having been a West-India planter, great numbers of whom hadfled from St. Domingo and the other islands, and were now living in theUnion, in a state of comparative poverty, and some in absolute want Thelatter was not, however, the lot of Monsieur Le Quoi. He had but little,he acknowledged; but that little was enough to furnish, in the languageof the country, an assortment for a store.

  The knowledge of Marmaduke was eminently practical, and there was nopart of a settler's life with which he was not familiar. Under hisdirection, Monsieur Le Quoi made some purchases, consisting of a fewcloths; some groceries, with a good deal of gunpowder and tobacco; aquantity of iron-ware, among which was a large proportion of Barlow'sjack-knives, potash-kettles, and spiders; a very formidable collectionof crockery of the coarsest quality and most uncouth forms; togetherwith every other common article that the art of man has devised for hiswants, not forgetting the luxuries of looking-glasses and Jew's-harps.With this collection of valuables, Monsieur Le Quoi had stepped behinda counter, and, with a wonderful pliability of temperament, had droppedinto his assumed character as gracefully as he had ever moved in anyother. The gentleness and suavity of his manners rendered him extremelypopular; besides this, the women soon discovered that he had taste. Hiscalicoes were the finest, or, in other words, the most showy, of anythat were brought into the country, and it was impossible to look at theprices asked for his goods by "so pretty a spoken man," Throughthese conjoint means, the affairs of Monsieur Le Quoi were again in aprosperous condition, and he was looked up to by the settlers as thesecond best man on the "Patent."*

  * The term "Patent" which we have already used, and for which we may have further occasion, meant the district of country that had been originally granted to old Major Effingham by the "king's letters patent," and which had now become, by purchase under the act of confiscation, the property of Marmaduke Temple. It was a term in common use throughout the new parts of the State; and was usually annexed to the landlord's name, as "Temple's or Effingham's Patent."

  Major Hartmann was a descendant of a man who, in company with a numberof his countrymen, had emigrated with their families from the banks ofthe Rhine to those of the Mohawk. This migration had occurred as farback as the reign of Queen Anne; and their descendants were now living,in great peace and plenty, on the fertile borders of that beautifulstream.

  The Germans, or "High Dutchers," as they were called, to distinguishthem from the original or Low Dutch colonists, were a very peculiarpeople. They possessed all the gravity of the latter, without any oftheir phlegm; and like them, the "High Dutchers" were industrious,honest, and economical, Fritz, or Frederick Hartmann, was an epitome ofall the vices and virtues, foibles and excellences, of his race. Hewas passionate though silent, obstinate, and a good deal suspicious ofstrangers; of immovable courage, in flexible honesty, and undeviating inhis friendships. In deed there was no change about him, unless it werefrom grave to gay. He was serious by months, and jolly by weeks. He had,early in their acquaintance, formed an attachment for Marmaduke Temple,who was the only man that could not speak High Dutch that ever gainedhis en tire confidence Four times in each year, at periods equidistant,he left his low stone dwelling on the banks of the Mohawk, and travelledthirty miles, through the hills, to the door of the mansion-house inTempleton. Here he generally stayed a week; and was reputed to spendmuch of that time in riotous living, greatly countenanced by Mr. RichardJones. But every one loved him, even to Remarkable Pettibone, to whom heoccasioned some additional trouble, he was so frank, so sincere, and, attimes, so mirthful. He was now on his regular Christmas visit, and hadnot been in the village an hour when Richard summoned him to fill a seatin the sleigh to meet the landlord and his daughter.

  Before explaining the character and situation of Mr. Grant, it willbe necessary to recur to times far back in the brief history of thesettlement.

  There seems to be a tendency in human nature to endeavor to provide forthe wants of this world, before our attention is turned to the businessof the other. Religion was a quality but little cultivated amid thestumps of Temple's Patent for the first few years of its settlement;but, as most of its inhabitants were from the moral States ofConnecticut and Massachusetts, when the wants of nature were satisfiedthey began seriously to turn their attention to the introduction ofthose customs and observances which had been the principal care of theirfore fathers. There was certainly a great variety of opinions on thesubject of grace and free-will among the tenantry of Marmaduke; and,when we take into consideration the variety of the religious instructionwhich they received, it can easily be seen that it could not well beotherwise.

  Soon after the village had been formally laid out into the streets andblocks that resembled a city, a meeting of its inhabitants had beenconvened, to take into consideration the propriety of establishing anacademy. This measure originated with Richard, who, in truth, was muchdisposed to have the institution designated a university, or at leasta college. Meeting after meeting was held, for this purpose, yearafter year. The resolutions of these as sembiages appeared in the mostconspicuous columns of a little blue-looking newspaper, that was alreadyissued weekly from the garret of a dwelling-house in the village, andwhich the traveller might as often see stuck into the fissure of astake, erected at the point where the footpath from the log-cabin ofsome settler entered the highway, as a post-office for an individual.Sometimes the stake supported a small box, and a whole neighborhoodreceived a weekly supply for their literary wants at this point, wherethe man who "rides post" regularly deposited a bundle of the preciouscommodity. To these flourishing resolutions, which briefly recounted thegeneral utility of education, the political and geographical rights ofthe village of Templeton to a participation in the favors of the regentsof the university, the salubrity of the air, and wholesomeness of thewater, together with the cheapness of food and the superior state ofmorals in the neighbor hood, were uniformly annexed, in large Romancapitals, the names of Marmaduke Temple as chairman and Richard Jones assecretary.

  Happily for the success of this undertaking, the regents were notaccustomed to resist these appeals to their generosity, wheneverthere was the smallest prospect of a donation to second the request.Eventually Judge Temple concluded to bestow the necessary land, and toerect the required edifice at his own expense. The skill of Mr., or,as he was now called, from the circumstance of having received thecommission of a justice of the peace, Squire Doolittle, was again put inrequisition; and the science of Mr. Jones was once more resorted to.

  We shall not recount the different devices of the architects on theoccasion; nor would it be decorous so to do, see
ing that there was aconvocation of the society of the ancient and honorable fraternity "ofthe Free and Accepted Masons," at the head of whom was Richard, in thecapacity of master, doubtless to approve or reject such of the plans as,in their wisdom, they deemed to be for the best. The knotty pointwas, however, soon decided; and, on the appointed day, the brotherhoodmarched in great state, displaying sundry banners and mysterioussymbols, each man with a little mimic apron before him, from a mostcunningly contrived apartment in the garret of the "Bold Dragoon," aninn kept by one Captain Hollister, to the site of the intended edifice.Here Richard laid the corner stone, with suitable gravity, amidst anassemblage of more than half the men, and all the women, within tenmiles of Templeton.

  In the course of the succeeding week there was another meeting of thepeople, not omitting swarms of the gentler sex, when the abilities ofHiram at the "square rule" were put to the test of experiment. The framefitted well; and the skeleton of the fabric was reared without a singleaccident, if we except a few falls from horses while the laborers werereturning home in the evening. From this time the work advanced withgreat rapidity, and in the course of the season the Labor was completed;the edifice Manding, in all its heatity and proportions, the boast ofthe village, the study of young aspirants for architectural fame, andthe admiration of every settler on the Patent.

  It was a long, narrow house of wood, painted white, and more thanhalf windows; and, when the observer stood at the western side of thebuilding, the edifice offered but a small obstacle to a full view of therising sun. It was, in truth, but a very comfortless open place, throughwhich the daylight shone with natural facility. On its front were diversornaments in wood, designed by Richard and executed by Hiram; but awindow in the centre of the second story, immediately over the door orgrand entrance, and the "steeple" were the pride of the building. Theformer was, we believe, of the composite order; for it included in itscomposition a multitude of ornaments and a great variety of proportions.It consisted of an arched compartment in the centres with a square andsmall division on either side, the whole incased in heavy frames, deeplyand laboriously moulded in pine-wood, and lighted with a vast number ofblurred and green-looking glass of those dimensions which are commonlycalled "eight by ten." Blinds, that were intended to be painted green,kept the window in a state of preservation, and probably might havecontributed to the effect of the whole, had not the failure in thepublic funds, which seems always to be incidental to any undertaking ofthis kind, left them in the sombre coat of lead-color with which theyhad been originally clothed. The "steeple" was a little cupola, rearedon the very centre of the roof, on four tall pillars of pine that werefluted with a gouge, and loaded with mouldings. On the tops of thecolumns was reared a dome or cupola, resembling in shape an invertedtea-cup without its bottom, from the centre of which projected a spire,or shaft of wood, transfixed with two iron rods, that bore on their endsthe letters N. S. E. and W, in the same metal. The whole was surmountedby an imitation of one of the finny tribe, carved in wood by the handsof Richard, and painted what he called a "scale-color." This animal Mr.Jones affirmed to be an admirable resemblance of a great favorite ofthe epicures in that country, which bore the title of "lake-fish," anddoubtless the assertion was true; for, although intended to answer thepurposes of a weathercock, the fish was observed invariably to look witha longing eye in the direction of the beautiful sheet of water that layimbedded in the mountains of Templeton.

  For a short time after the charter of the regents was received, thetrustees of this institution employed a graduate of one of the Easterncolleges to instruct such youth as aspired to knowledge within the wallsof the edifice which we have described. The upper part of the buildingwas in one apartment, and was intended for gala-days and exhibitions;and the lower contained two rooms that were intended for the greatdivisions of education, viz., the Latin and the English scholars. Theformer were never very numerous; though the sounds of "nominative,pennaa--genitive, penny," were soon heard to issue from the windowsof the room, to the great delight and manifest edification of thepassenger.

  Only one laborer in this temple of Minerva, however, was known to get sofar as to attempt a translation of Virgil. He, indeed, appeared at theannual exhibition, to the prodigious exultation of all his relatives,a farmer's family in the vicinity, and repeated the whole of the firsteclogue from memory, observing the intonations of the dialogue with muchjudgment and effect. The sounds, as they proceeded from his mouth, of

  "Titty-ree too patty-lee ree-coo-bans sub teg-mi-nee faa-gy Syl-ves-trem ten-oo-i moo-sam, med-i-taa-ris, aa-ve-ny."

  were the last that had been heard in that building, as probably theywere the first that had ever been heard, in the same language, thereor anywhere else. By this time the trustees discovered that they hadanticipated the age and the instructor, or principal, was superseded bya master, who went on to teach the more humble lesson of "the more hastethe worst speed," in good plain English.

  From this time until the date of our incidents, the academy was a commoncountry school, and the great room of the building was sometimes used asa court-room, on extraordinary trials; sometimes for conferences of thereligious and the morally disposed, in the evening; at others for a ballin the afternoon, given under the auspices of Richard; and on Sundays,invariably, as a place of public worship.

  When an itinerant priest of the persuasion of the Methodists, Baptists,Universalists, or of the more numerous sect of the Presbyterians,was accidentally in the neighborhood, he was ordinarily invited toofficiate, and was commonly rewarded for his services by a collection ina hat, before the congregation separated. When no such regular ministeroffered, a kind of colloquial prayer or two was made by some of themore gifted members, and a sermon was usually read, from Sterne, by Mr.Richard Jones.

  The consequence of this desultory kind of priesthood was, as we havealready intimated, a great diversity of opinion on the more abstrusepoints of faith. Each sect had its adherents, though neither wasregularly organized and disciplined. Of the religious education ofMarmaduke we have already written, nor was the doubtful character of hisfaith completely removed by his marriage. The mother of Elizabeth wasan Episcopalian, as indeed, was the mother of the Judge himself; and thegood taste of Marmaduke revolted at the familiar colloquies whichthe leaders of the conferences held with the Deity, in their nightlymeetings. In form, he was certainly an Episcopalian, though not asectary of that denomination. On the other hand, Richard was as rigid inthe observance of the canons of his church as he was inflexible inhis opinions. Indeed, he had once or twice essayed to introduce theEpiscopal form of service, on the Sundays that the pulpit was vacant;but Richard was a good deal addicted to carrying things to an excess,and then there was some thing so papal in his air that the greater partof his hearers deserted him on the second Sabbath--on the third hisonly auditor was Ben Pump, who had all the obstinate and enlightenedorthodoxy of a high churchman.

  Before the war of the Revolution, the English Church was supported inthe colonies, with much interest, by some of its adherents in the mothercountry, and a few of the congregations were very amply endowed. But,for the season, after the independence of the States was established,this sect of Christians languished for the want of the highest order ofits priesthood. Pious and suitable divines were at length selected,and sent to the mother country, to receive that authority which, it isunderstood, can only be transmitted directly from one to the other, andthus obtain, in order to reserve, that unity in their churches whichproperly belonged to a people of the same nation. But unexpecteddifficulties presented themselves, in the oaths with which the policy ofEngland had fettered their establishment; and much time was spent beforea conscientious sense of duty would permit the prelates of Britain todelegate the authority so earnestly sought. Time, patience, and zeal,however, removed every impediment, and the venerable men who had beenset apart by the American churches at length returned to their expectingdioceses, endowed with the most elevated functions of their earthlychurch. Priests and deacons were ordaine
d, and missionaries provided,to keep alive the expiring flame of devotion in such members aswere deprived of the ordinary administrations by dwelling in new andunorganized districts.

  Of this number was Mr. Grant. He had been sent into the county of whichTempleton was the capital, and had been kindly invited by Marmaduke, andofficiously pressed by Richard, to take up his abode in the village. Asmall and humble dwelling was prepared for his family, and the divinehad made his appearance in the place but a few days previously to thetime of his introduction to the reader, As his forms were entirely newto most of the inhabitants, and a clergyman of another denomination hadpreviously occupied the field, by engaging the academy, the first Sundayafter his arrival was allowed to pass in silence; but now that hisrival had passed on, like a meteor filling the air with the light of hiswisdom, Richard was empowered to give notice that "Public worship, afterthe forms of the Protestant Episcopal Church, would be held on the nightbefore Christmas, in the long room of the academy in Templeton, by theRev. Mr. Grant."

  This annunciation excited great commotion among the different sectaries.Some wondered as to the nature of the exhibition; others sneered; buta far greater part, recollecting the essays of Richard in that way, andmindful of the liberality, or rather laxity, of Marmaduke's notions onthe subject of sectarianism, thought it most prudent to be silent.

  The expected evening was, however, the wonder of the hour; nor was thecuriosity at all diminished when Richard and Benjamin, on the morning ofthe eventful day, were seen to issue from the woods in the neighborhoodof the village, each bearing on his shoulders a large bunch ofevergreens. This worthy pair was observed to enter the academy, andcarefully to fasten the door, after which their proceedings remaineda profound secret to the rest of the village; Mr. Jones, before hecommenced this mysterious business, having informed the school-master,to the great delight of the white-headed flock he governed, thatthere could be no school that day. Marmaduke was apprised of all thesepreparations by letter, and it was especially arranged that he andElizabeth should arrive in season to participate in the solemnities ofthe evening.

  After this digression, we shall return to our narrative.