CHAPTER III.
"I give thee to thy God,--the God that gave thee A well-spring of deep gladness to my heart! And, precious as thou art, And pure as dew of Hermon, He shall have thee! My own, my beautiful, my undefiled! And thou shalt be his child."
While the student sleeps, we will make the reader acquainted with hisshort and simple annals.
His maternal grandfather had been among the Puritan emigrants who soughtthe rock-bound coast of New England. He was a man of worth and property,had been educated at Oxford, and distinguished for classical learningand elegant pursuits. But at the call of conscience he left theluxurious halls of his fathers, the rank, and ancestral honors thatwould have descended to him, to share the hardships, privations, andsufferings of the meanest of his companions. He brought with him hiswife and an only child, a daughter of twenty years.
Like her mother, she had been carefully nurtured, and had lived in muchluxury, although in the strict seclusion of the daughters of thePuritans.
The wives and daughters of the Pilgrims have never been honored as theydeserved to be. Except the Lady Arbella Johnson, is there a single namethat has descended with pride and honor to their daughters, and beencherished as a Puritan saint?
It is true they lived in an age when the maxim that a woman shouldconsider it her highest praise to have nothing said about her was infull force; and when the remark of Coleridge would have been applauded,"That the perfection of a woman's character is to be _characterless_."
But among the wives of the Pilgrims there were heroic women that enduredsilently every calamity. Mrs. Hemans says, with poetry and truth,--
"_There_ was woman's _fearless_ eye, Lit by her deep love's truth."
But how many _fearful_ days and nights they must have passed, tremblingwith all a mother's timidity for their children, when they heard thesavage cry, that spared neither the touching smile of infancy, nor theagonized prayer of woman!
They had left the comforts, and even the luxuries, of their Englishhomes,--the hourly attendance of servants, to meet the chilling skiesof a shelterless wilderness. She whose foot had trodden the softestcarpets, whose bed had been of down, who had been accustomed to thoseminute attentions that prevent the rose-leaf from being crumpled, mustnow labor with her own hands, endure the cold of the severest winter,and leave herself unsheltered; all she asked was to guard her infantchildren from suffering, and aid by her sympathy, her husband.
It is indeed true, that the sentiment of love or religion has power toelevate above all physical suffering, and to ennoble all those homelycares and humble offices that are performed for the beloved object witha smile of patient endurance; and it asks, in return, but confidence andtenderness.
The wife of Mr. Seymore soon sank under the hardships of the times, andthe severity of the climate of New England. Her grave was made in thesolitude of the overshadowing forest, and her daughter, who had broughtwith her a fine, hardy, English constitution, lived to console herwidowed father.
He died about five years after his wife, and then his daughter marriedan Englishman of small fortune, who had come over with his family: hisfather and mother, both advanced in life, had settled on the small farmwe have attempted to describe. He built the cottage for his parents, andthen, with his wife, the mother of our young friend Seymore, returned toEngland.
She lived not long after her return. The religious enthusiasm of thetime had taken possession of her mind, and, before her death, shededicated this, her only child, to the service of the church, andrequested her husband to send him to America, where poverty presented noinsurmountable barrier to his success.
His father, in sending him to America in his twelfth year, promised toadvance something for his education; but unfortunate circumstancesprevented, and the boy was left to make his own fortune under the roofof his grandparents.
His disappointment was great to find his grandparents in so narrowcircumstances, and himself condemned to so obscure a station. He hadaspirations, as we have seen, beyond his humble circumstances. The fewbooks he brought with him were his consolation. They were read, reread,and committed to memory; and then he longed for more. An accident, orwhat we term an accident--the instrument that Providence provides toshape our destiny--threw some light upon the gloom that seemed to havesettled on his prospects.
He met at C----, where he had gone on some business connected with hisagricultural labors, the clergyman of the place.
Mr. Grafton was interested by his fine intellectual expression, andpleased with the refined and intelligent remarks that seemed unsuited tohis coarse laborer's frock and peasant's dress.
He took him to his house, lent him the books that were necessary toprepare him for our young college, and promised his aid to have himplaced on the list of those indigent scholars who were devoted to thechurch.
From this time his industry and ambition were redoubled, and we haveseen the poor aspirant for literary distinction striving to unite twothings which must at last break down the body or the mind,--heavy dailylabor, with severe mental toil at night.
He was young and strong; his health did not immediately fail, and wemust now leave him where thousands of our young men have been left, withaspirations and hopes beyond their humble fortunes.
Delusion; or, The Witch of New England Page 3