It is fashionable now to speak of words like these as fragments of ancient Hebrew literature, interesting and curious indeed, but relating to scenes, events, and states of society long gone by. But it is a most remarkable property of this old Hebrew literature, that it seems to be enchanted with a divine and living power, which strikes the nerve of individual consciousness in every desolate and suffering soul. It may have been Judah or Jerusalem ages ago to whom these words first came, but as they have travelled down for thousands of years, they have seemed to tens of thousands of sinking and desolate souls as the voice of God to them individually. They have raised the burden from thousands of crushed spirits; they have been as the day-spring to thousands of perplexed wanderers. Ah! let us treasure these old words, for as of old Jehovah chose to dwell in a tabernacle in the wilderness, and between the cherubim in the temple, so now he dwells in them; and to the simple soul that seeks for him here he will look forth as of old from the pillar of cloud and of fire.
The poor, ill-used, forsaken, forgotten creature who lay there trembling on the verge of life felt the presence of that mighty and generous, that godlike spirit that inspired these words. And surely if Jehovah ever did speak to man, no words were ever more worthy of Him. She lay as in a blessed trance, as passage after passage from the Scriptures rolled over her mind, like bright waves from the ocean of eternal peace.
“Fear thou not, for I am with thee; be not dismayed, for I am thy God. When thou passest through the waters I will be with thee, and through the rivers, they shall not overflow thee. When thou walkest through the fire, thou shalt not be burned, neither shall the flame kindle upon thee; for I am the Lord thy God, the Holy One of Israel, thy Saviour.”
The little boy, who had heard his mother’s first distressful cry, sat by her anxiously watching the changes of her face as she lay there. He saw her brow gradually grow clear and calm, and every line of trouble fade from her face, as shadows and clouds roll up from the landscape at day-dawn, till at last there was a rapt, peaceful expression, an evenness of breathing, as if she slept, and were dreaming some heavenly dream. It lasted for more than an hour, and the child sat watching her with the old, grave, tender look which had come to be the fashion of his little face when he looked upon his mother.
This boy had come to this mother as a second harvest of heart, hope, and joy, after the first great love and hope of womanhood had vanished. She felt herself broken-hearted, lonely, and unloved, when her first-born son was put into her arms, and she received him as did the first mother, saying, “I have gotten a man from the Lord.” To him her desolate heart had unfolded its burden of confidence from the first dawning hours of intelligence. His tiny faculties had been widened to make room for her sorrows, and his childish strength increased by her leaning. There had been hours when this boy had stood between the maniac rage of a drunken father and the cowering form of his mother, with an unchildlike courage and steadiness that seemed almost like an inspiration. In days of desertion and poverty he had gone out with their slender stock of money and made bargains such as it is pitiful to think that a little child should know how to make; and often, in moments when his mother’s heart was overwhelmed, he would come to her side with the little prayers and hymns which she had taught him, and revive her faith and courage when it seemed entirely gone.
Now, as he thought her sleeping, he began with anxious care to draw the coverlet over her, and to move his little sister back upon the bed. She opened her eyes, – large, clear blue eyes, the very mirror of his own, – and, smiling with a strange sweetness, stretched out her hand and drew him towards her. “Harry, my dear good boy, my dear, dear child, nobody knows what a comfort you have been to me.”
Then holding him from her, and looking intently in his eyes, she seemed to hesitate for words to tell him something that lay on her mind. At last she said, “Harry, say your prayers and psalms.”
The child knelt by the bed, with his hands clasped in his mother’s, and said the Lord’s Prayer, and then, standing up, repeated the beautiful psalm beginning, “The Lord is my shepherd.” Then followed a hymn, which the Methodists had made familiar in those times: –
One there is above all others
Well deserves the name of Friend;
His is love beyond a brother’s,
Costly, free, and knows no end.
“Which of all our friends, to save us,
Could or would have shed his blood
But this Saviour died to have us
Reconciled in him to God.
“When he lived on earth abased,
Friend of Sinners was his name;
Now, above all glory raised,
He rejoiceth in the same.
O for grace our hearts to soften!
Teach us, Lord, at length to love;
We, alas! forget too often
What a friend we have above.”
“Harry,” said his mother, looking at him with an intense earnestness, “I want to tell you something. God, our Father, has called me to come home to him; and I am going. In a little while – perhaps to-morrow – I shall be gone, and you cannot find me. My soul will go to God, and they will put my body in the ground; and then you will have no friend but Jesus, and no father but the Father in heaven.”
The child looked at her with solemn, dilated gaze, not really comprehending the full mystery of that which she was trying to explain; yet the tears starting in his eyes, and the twitching of the muscles of his mouth, showed that he partly understood.
“Mother,” he said, “will papa never come back?”
“No, Harry, never. He has left us and gone away. He does not love us, – nobody loves us but our Father in heaven; but He does. You must always believe this. Now, Harry, I am going to leave your little sister to your care. You must always keep with her and take care of her, for she is a very little girl.”
“Yes, mother.”
“This is a great charge for a little boy like you; but you will live and grow up to be a man, and I want you never, as long as you live, to forget what I say to you now. Promise me, Harry, all your life to say these prayers and hymns that you have just been saying, every morning and every night. They are all I have to leave you; but if you only believe them, you will never be without comfort, no matter what happens to you. Promise me, dear.”
“Yes, mother, I will.”
“And, Harry, no matter what happens, never doubt that God loves you, – never forget that you have a Friend in heaven. Whenever you have a trouble, just pray to Him, and He will help you. Promise this.”
“Yes, mother.”
“Now lie down by me; I am very, very tired.”
The little boy lay down by his mother; she threw her arms around him, and both sunk to sleep.
CHAPTER VIII.
MISS ASPHYXIA.
“THERE won’t be no great profit in this ‘ere these ten year.”
The object denominated “this ‘ere” was the golden-haired child whom we have spoken of before, – the little girl whose mother lay dying. That mother is dead now; and the thing to be settled is, What is to be done with the children? The morning after the scene we have described looked in at the window and saw the woman, with a pale, placid face, sleeping as one who has found eternal rest, and the two weeping children striving in vain to make her hear.
Old Crab had been up early in his design of “carting the ‘hull lot ever to the poor-house,” but made a solemn pause when his wife drew him into the little chamber. Death has a strange dignity, and whatsoever child of Adam he lays his hand on is for the time ennobled, – removed from the region of the earthly and commonplace to that of the spiritual and mysterious. And when Crab found, by searching the little bundle of the deceased, that there was actually money enough in it to buy a coffin and pay ‘Zekiel Stebbins for digging the grave, he began to look on the woman as having made a respectable and edifying end, and the whole affair as coming to a better issue than he had feared.
And so the event was considered in
the neighborhood, in a melancholy way, rather an interesting and auspicious one. It gave something to talk about in a region where exciting topics were remarkably scarce. The Reverend Jabez Periwinkle found in it a moving Providence which started him favorably on a sermon, and the funeral had been quite a windfall to all the gossips about; and now remained the question, What was to be done with the children?
“Now that we are diggin’ the ‘taters,” said old Crab, “that ‘ere chap might be good for suthin’, pickin’ on ’em out o’ the hills. Poor folks like us can’t afford to keep nobody jest to look at, and so he ‘ll have to step spry and work smart to airn his keep.” And so at early dawn, the day after the funeral, the little boy was roused up and carried into the fields with the men.
But “this ‘ere” – that is to say, a beautiful little girl of seven years – had greatly puzzled the heads of the worthy gossips of the neighborhood. Miss Asphyxia Smith, the elder sister of old Crab, was at this moment turning the child round, and examining her through a pair of large horn spectacles, with a view to “taking her to raise,” as she phrased it.
Now all Miss Asphyxia’s ideas of the purpose and aim of human existence were comprised in one word, – work. She was herself a working machine, always wound up and going, – up at early cock-crowing, and busy till bedtime, with a rampant and fatiguing industry that never paused for a moment. She conducted a large farm by the aid of a hired man, and drove a flourishing dairy, and was universally respected in the neighborhood as a smart woman.
Latterly, as her young cousin, who had shared the toils of the house with her, had married and left her, Miss Asphyxia had talked of “takin’ a child from the poor-house, and so raisin’ her own help”; and it was with the view of this “raisin’ her help,” that she was thus turning over and inspecting the little article which we have spoken of.
Apparently she was somewhat puzzled, and rather scandalized that Nature should evidently have expended so much in a merely ornamental way on an article which ought to have been made simply for service. She brushed up a handful of the clustering curls in her large, bony hand, and said, with a sniff, “These ‘ll have to come right off to begin with; gracious me, what a tangle!”
“Mother always brushed them out every day,” said the child.
“And who do you suppose is going to spend an hour every day brushing your hair, Miss Pert?” said Miss Asphyxia. “That ain’t what I take ye for, I tell you. You ‘ve got to learn to work for your living; and you ought to be thankful if I ‘m willing to show you how.”
The little girl did not appear particularly thankful. She bent her soft, pencilled eyebrows in a dark frown, and her great hazel eyes had gathering in them a cloud of sullen gloom. Miss Asphyxia did not mind her frowning, – perhaps did not notice it. She had it settled in her mind, as a first principle, that children never liked anything that was good for them, and that, of course, if she took a child, it would have to be made to come to her by forcible proceedings promptly instituted. So she set her little subject before her by seizing her by her two shoulders and squaring her round and looking in her face, and opened direct conversation with her in the following succinct manner.
“What ‘s your name?”
Then followed a resolved and gloomy silence, as the large bright eyes surveyed, with a sort of defiant glance, the inquisitor.
“Don’t you hear?” said Miss Asphyxia, giving her a shake.
“Don’t be so ha’sh with her,” said the little old woman. “Say, my little dear, tell Miss Asphyxia your name,” she added, taking the child’s hand.
“Eglantine Percival,’’ said the little girl, turning towards the old woman, as if she disdained to answer the other party in the conversation.
“Wh–a–t?” said Miss Asphyxia. “If there ain’t the beatin’est name ever I heard. Well, I tell you I ain’t got time to fix my mouth to say all that ‘ere every time I want ye, now I tell ye.”
“Mother and Harry called me Tina,” said the child.
“Teny! Well, I should think so,” said Miss Asphyxia. “That showed she ‘d got a grain o’ sense left, anyhow. She ‘s tol’able strong and well-limbed for her age,” added that lady, feeling of the child’s arms and limbs; “her flesh is solid. I think she ‘ll make a strong woman, only put her to work early and keep her at it. I could rub out clothes at the wash-tub afore I was at her age.”
“O, she can do considerable many little chores,” said Old Crab’s wife.
“Yes,” said Miss Asphyxia; “there can a good deal be got out of a child if you keep at ‘em, hold ’em in tight, and never let ’em have their head a minute; push right hard on behind ‘em, and you get considerable. That’s the way I was raised.”
“But I want to play,” said the little girl, bursting out in a sobbing storm of mingled fear and grief.
“Want to play, do you? Well, you must get over that. Don’t you know that that ‘s as bad as stealing? You have n’t got any money, and if you eat folks’s bread and butter, you ‘ve got to work to pay for it; and if folks buy your clothes, you ‘ve got to work to pay for them.”
“But I ‘ve got some clothes of my own,” persisted the child, determined not to give up her case entirely.
“Well, so you have; but there ain’t no sort of wear in ‘em,” said Miss Asphyxia, turning to Mrs. Smith. “Them two dresses o’ hern might answer for Sundays and sich, but I ‘ll have to make ‘er up a regular linsey working dress this fall, and check aprons; and she must set right about knitting every minute she is n’t doing anything else. Did you ever learn how to knit?”
“No,” said the child.
“Or to sew?” said Miss Asphyxia.
“Yes; mother taught me to sew,” said the child.
“No! Yes! Hain’t you learned manners? Do you say yes and no to people?”
The child stood a moment, swelling with suppressed feeling; and at last she opened her great eyes full on Miss Asphyxia, said, “I don’t like you. You ain’t pretty, and I won’t go you.”
“O now,” said Mrs. Smith, “little girls must n’t talk so; that ‘s naughty.”
“Don’t like me? – ain’t I pretty?” said Miss Asphyxia, with a short, grim laugh. “May be I ain’t; but I know what I ‘m about, and you ‘d as goods know it first as last. I ‘m going to take ye right out with me in the waggin, and you ‘d best not have none of your cuttin’s up. I keep a stick at home for naughty girls. Why, where do you suppose you ‘re going to get your livin’ if I don’t take you?”
“I want to live with Harry,” said the child, sobbing. “Where is Harry?”
“Harry ‘s to work, – and there ‘s where he ‘s got to be,” said Miss Asphyxia. “He’s got to work with the men in the fields, and you ‘ve got to come home and work with me.”
“I want to stay with Harry, – Harry takes care of me,” said the child, in a piteous tone.
Old Mother Smith now toddled to her milk-room, and, with a melting heart, brought out a doughnut. “There now, eat that,” she said; “and mebbe, if you ‘re good, Miss Asphyxia will bring you down here some time.”
“O laws, Polly, you allers was a fool!” said Miss Asphyxia. “It’s all for the child’s good, and what ‘s the use of fussin’ on her up? She ‘ll come to it when she knows she ‘s got to. ‘T ain’t no more than I was put to at her age, only the child ‘s been fooled with and babied.”
The little one refused the doughnut, and seemed to gather herself up in silent gloom.
“Come, now, don’t stand sulking; let me put your bonnet on,” said Miss Asphyxia, in a brisk, metallic voice. “I can’t be losin’ the best part of my day with this nonsense!” And forthwith she clawed up the child in her bony grasp, as easily as an eagle might truss a chick-sparrow.
“Be a good little girl, now,” said the little gray woman, who felt a strange swelling and throbbing in her poor old breast. To be sure, she knew she was a fool; her husband had told her so at least three times every day for years; and Miss Asphyxia only con
firmed what she accepted familiarly as the truth. But yet she could not help these unprofitable longings to coddle and comfort something, – to do some of those little motherly tendernesses for children which go to no particular result, only to make them happy; so she ran out after the wagon with a tempting seed-cake, and forced it into the child’s hand.
“Take it, do take it,” she said; “eat it, and be a good girl, and do just as she tells you to.”
“I ‘ll see to that.” said Miss Asphyxia. as she gathered up the reins and gave a cut to her horse, which started that quadruped from a dream of green grass into a most animated pace. Every creature in her service – horse, cow, and pig – knew at once the touch of Miss Asphyxia, and the necessity of being up and doing when she was behind them; and the horse, who under other hands would have been the slowest and most reflective of beasts, now made the little wagon spin and bounce over the rough, stony road, so that the child’s short legs flew up in the air every few moments.
Complete Works of Harriet Beecher Stowe Page 247