Complete Works of Harriet Beecher Stowe

by Harriet Beecher Stowe

  “If I had a child,” says the precise man, “you should see.”

  He does have a child, and his child tears up his papers, tumbles over his things, and pulls his nose, like all other children, and what has the precise man to say for himself? Nothing; he is like every body else; “a little child may lead him.”

  The hardened heart of the worldly man is unlocked locked by the guileless tones and simple caresses of his son; but he repays it in time, by imparting to his boy all the crooked tricks and callous maxims which have undone himself.

  Go to the jail-to the penitentiary, and find there the wretch most sullen, brutal, and hardened. Then look at your infant son. Such as he is to you, such to some mother was this man. That hard hand was soft and delicate; that rough voice was tender and lisping; fond eyes followed him as he played, and he was rocked and cradled as something holy. There was a time when his heart, soft and unworn, might have opened to questionings of God and Jesus, and been sealed with the seal of Heaven. But harsh hands seized it; fierce goblin lineaments were impressed upon it; and all is over with him forever!

  So of the tender, weeping child, is made the callous, heartless man; of the all-believing child, the sneering sceptic; of the beautiful and modest, the shameless and abandoned; and this is what the world does for the little one.

  There was a time when the divine One stood on earth, and little children sought to draw near to him. But harsh human beings stood between him and them, forbidding their approach. Ah! has it not always been so? Do not even we with our hard and unsubdued feeling, our worldly and unscriptural habits and maxims, stand like a dark screen between our little child and its Saviour, and keep even from the choice bud of our hearts, the sweet radiance which might unfold it for paradise? “Suffer little children to come unto me, and forbid them not,” is still the voice of the Son of God, but the cold world still closes around and forbids. When of old, disciples would question their Lord of the higher mysteries of his kingdom, he took a little child and set him in the midst, as a sign of him who should be greatest in Heaven. That gentle teacher remains still to us. By every hearth and fireside, Jesus still sets the little child in the midst of us.

  Wouldst thou know, O parent, what is that faith which unlocks heaven? Go not to wrangling polemics, or creeds and forms of theology, but draw to thy bosom thy little one, and read in that clear trusting eye the lesson of eternal life. Be only to thy God as thy child is to thee, and all is done! Blessed shalt thou be indeed, “when a little child shall lead thee!”

  THE TWO BIBLES.

  IT was a splendid room. Rich curtains swept down to the floor in graceful folds, half excluding the light, and shedding it in soft hues over the fine old paintings on the walls, and over the broad mirrors that reflect all that taste can accomplish by the hand of wealth. Books, the rarest and most costly, were around, in every form of gorgeous binding and gilding, and among them, glittering in ornament, lay a magnificent Bible-a Bible too beautiful in its appearance, too showy, too ornamental, ever to have been meant to be read-a Bible which every visitor should take up, and exclaim, “What a beautiful edition! what superb binding!” and then lay it down again.

  And the master of the house was lounging on a sofa, looking over a late review-for he was a man of leisure, taste, and reading-but then, as to reading the Bible!-that forms, we suppose, no part of the pretensions of a man of letters. The Bible-certainly he considered it a very respectable ble book-a fine specimen of ancient literature, an admirable book of moral precepts-but then, as to its divine origin he had not exactly made up his mind-some parts appeared strange and inconsistent to his reason, others were very revolting to his taste-true, he had never studied it very attentively, yet such was his general impression about it-but on the whole, he thought it well enough to keep an elegant copy of it on his drawing-room table.

  So much for one picture, now for another.

  Come with us into this little dark alley, and up a flight of ruinous stairs. It is a bitter night, and the wind and snow might drive through the crevices of the poor room, were it not that careful hands have stopped them with paper or cloth. But for all this little carefulness, the room is bitter cold-cold even with those few decaying brands on the hearth, which that sorrowful woman is trying to kindle with her breath. Do you see that pale little thin girl, with large bright eyes, who is crouching so near her mother? hark! how she coughs-now listen:

  “Mary, my dear child,” says the mother, “do keep that shawl close about you, you are cold, I know,” and the woman shivers as she speaks.

  “No, mother, not very,” replies the child, again relapsing into that hollow, ominous cough-”I wish you wouldn’t make me always wear your shawl when it is cold, mother.”

  “Dear child, you need it most-how you cough to-night,” replies the mother, “it really don’t seem right for me to send you up that long street, now your shoes have grown so poor; I must go myself after this.”

  “Oh! mother, you must stay with the baby; what if he should have one of those dreadful fits while you are gone; no, I can go very well, I have got used to the cold, now.”

  “But, mother, I’m cold,” says a little voice from the scanty bed in the corner, “mayn’t I get up and come to the fire?”

  “Dear child, it would not warm you-it is very cold here, and I can’t make any more fire to-night.”

  “Why can’t you, mother? there are four whole sticks of wood in the box, do put one on, and let’s get warm once.”

  “No, my dear little Henry,” says the mother, soothingly, “that is all the wood mother has, and I haven’t any money to get more.”

  And now wakens the sick baby in the little cradle, and mother and daughter are both for some time busy in attempting to supply its little wants, and lulling it again to sleep.

  And now look you well at that mother. Six months ago she had a husband, whose earnings procured for her both the necessaries and comforts of life-her children were clothed, fed, and schooled, without thought of hers. But husband-less and alone, in the heart of a great busy city, with feeble health, and only the precarious resources of her needle, she had come rapidly down from comfort to extreme poverty. Look at her now, as she is to-night. She knows full well that the pale bright-eyed girl, whose hollow cough constantly rings in her ears, is far from well. She knows that cold and hunger, and exposure of every kind, are daily and surely wearing away her life, and yet what can she do? Poor soul, how many times has she calculated all her little resources, to see if she could pay a doctor, and get medicine for Mary-yet all in vain. She knows that timely medicine, ease, fresh air, and warmth, might save her-but she knows that all these things are out of the question for her. She feels, too, as a mother would feel, when she sees her once rosy, happy little boy, becoming pale, and anxious, and fretful; and even when he teases her most, she only stops her work a moment, and strokes his poor little thin cheeks, and thinks what a laughing, happy little fellow he once was, till she has not a heart to reprove him. And all this day she has toiled with a sick and fretful baby in her lap, and her little, shivering, hungry boy at her side, whom poor Mary’s patient artifices cannot always keep quiet; she has toiled over the last piece of work which she can procure from the shop, for the man has told her that after this he can furnish no more. And the little money that is to come from this is already proportioned out in her mind, and after that she has no human prospect of more.

  But yet the woman’s face is patient, quiet, firm. Nay, you may even see in her suffering eye something like peace; and whence comes it? I will tell you.

  There is a Bible in that room, as well as in the rich man’s apartment. Not splendidly bound, to be sure, but faithfully read-a plain, homely, much worn book.

  Hearken now, while she says to her children, “Listen to me, my dear children, and I will read you something out of this book. ‘Let not your heart be troubled, in my Father’s house are many mansions.’ So you see, my children, we shall not always live in this little, cold, dark room. Jesus Christ
has promised to take us to a better home.”

  “Shall we be warm there, all day?” says the little boy earnestly, “and shall we have enough to eat?”

  “Yes, dear child,” says the mother, “listen to what the Bible says, ‘They shall hunger no more, neither thirst any more, for the Lamb which is in the midst of them shall feed them; and God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes.’”

  “I am glad of that,” said little Mary, “for mother, I never can bear to see you cry.”

  “But, mother,” says little Henry, “won’t God send us something to eat to-morrow?”

  “See,” says the mother, “what the Bible says, ‘Seek ye not what ye shall eat, nor what ye shall drink, neither be of anxious mind. For your Father knoweth that ye have need of these things.

  “But, mother,” says little Mary, “if God is our Father, and loves us, what does he let us be so poor for?”

  “Nay,” says the mother, “our Lord Jesus Christ was as poor as we are, and God certainly loved him.”

  “Was he, mother?”

  “Yes, children, you remember how he said, ‘The Son of Man hath not where to lay his head.’ And it tells us more than once, that Jesus was hungry when there was none to give him food.”

  “Oh! mother, what should we do without the Bible!” says Mary.

  Now if the rich man who had not yet made up his mind what to think of the Bible, should visit this poor woman and ask her on what she grounded her belief of its truth, what could she answer? Could she give the argument from miracles and prophecy? Can she account for all the changes which might have taken place in it through translators and copyists, and prove that we have a genuine and uncorrupted version? Not she! But how then does she know that it is true? How, say you? How does she know that she has warm life-blood in her heart? How does she know that there is such a thing as air and sunshine?

  She does not believe these things, she knows them; and in like manner, with a deep heart-consciousness, she is certain that the words of her Bible are truth and life. Is it by reasoning that the frightened child, bewildered in the dark, knows its mother’s voice? No! Nor is it by reasoning that the forlorn and distressed human heart knows the voice of its Saviour, and is still.

  Go when the child is lying in its mother’s arms, and looking up trustfully in her face, and see if you can puzzle him with metaphysical difficulties about personal identity, until you can make him think that it is not his mother. Your reasonings may be conclusive-your arguments unanswerable-but after all, the child sees his mother there, and feels her arms around him, and his quiet unreasoning belief on the subject, is precisely of the same kind which the little child of Christianity feels in the existence of his Saviour, and the reality of all those blessed truths which he has told in his word.

  LETTER FROM MAINE.-NO. 1.

  TO THE EDITOR OF THE NATIONAL ERA.

  THE fashionable complaint of neuralgia has kept back from your paper many “thoughts, motions, and revolutions” of the brain, which, could they have printed themselves on paper, would have found their way towards you. Don’t you suppose, in the marvellous progress of this fast-living age, the time will ever come, when, by some metaphysical daguerreotype process, the thoughts and images of the brain shall print themselves on paper, without the intervention of pen and ink? Then, how many brilliancies, now lost and forgotten before one gets time to put them through the slow process of writing, shall flash upon us! Our poets will sit in luxurious ease, with a quire of paper in their pockets, and have nothing to do but lean back in their chairs, and go off in an ecstacy, and lo! they will find it all written out, commas and all, ready for the printer. What a relief, too, to multitudes of gentle hearts, whose friends in this busy age are too hurried to find much time for writing. Your merchant puts a sheet of paper inside of his vest-over his heart, of course-and in the interval between selling goods and pricing stocks, thinks warm thoughts towards his wife or lady-love-and at night draws forth a long letter, all directed for the post. How convenient! Would that some friend of humanity would offer a premium for the discovery!

  The spiritual rapping fraternity, who are au fait in all that relates to man’s capabilities, and who are now speaking ex cathedra of all things celestial and terrestrial, past, present, and to come, can perhaps immediately settle the minuti of such an arrangement. One thing is quite certain: that if every man wore a sheet of paper in his bosom, on which there should be a true and literal version of all his thoughts, even for one day, in a great many cases he would be astounded on reading it over. Are there not many who would there see, in plain, unvarnished English, what their patriotism, disinterestedness, generosity, friendship, and religion actually amounts to? Let us fancy some of our extra patriotic public men comparing paring such a sheet with their speeches. We have been amused, sometimes, at the look of blank astonishment with which men look for the first time on their own daguerreotype. Is that me? Do I look so? Perhaps this inner daguerreotype might prove more surprising still. “What, I think that? I purpose so-and so? What a troublesome ugly machine! I’ll have nothing to do with it!”

  But to drop that subject, and start another. It seems to us quite wonderful, that in all the ecstacies that have been lavished on American scenery, this beautiful State of Maine should have been so much neglected; for nothing is or can be more wildly, peculiarly beautiful-particularly the scenery of the sea-coast. A glance at the map will show one the peculiarity of these shores. It is a complicated network and labyrinth of islands-the sea interpenetrating the land in every fanciful form, through a belt of coast from fifteen to twenty miles wide. The effect of this, as it lies on the map, and as it lives and glows in reality, is as different as the difference between the poetry of life and its dead matter of fact.

  But supposing yourself almost anywhere in Maine, within fifteen miles of the shore, and you start for a ride to the sea side, you will then be in a fair way to realize it. The sea, living, beautiful, and life-giving, seems, as you ride, to be everywhere about you-behind, before, around. Now it rises like a lake, gemmed with islands, and embosomed by rich swells of woodland. Now you catch a peep of it on your right hand, among tufts of oak and maple, and anon it spreads on your left to a majestic sheet of silver, among rocky shores, hung with dark pines, hemlocks, and spruces.

  The sea shores of Connecticut and Massachusetts have a kind of baldness and

  barenness

  barrenness

  which you never see here. As you approach the ocean there, the trees seem to become stunted and few in number, but here the sea luxuriates, swells, and falls, in the very lap of the primeval forest. The tide water washes the drooping branches of the oak and maple, and dashes itself up into whole hedges of luxuriant arbor vit.

  No language can be too enthusiastic to paint the beauty of the evergreens in these forests The lordly spruce, so straight, so tall, so perfectly defined in its outline, with its regal crest of cones, sparkling with the clear exuded gum, and bearing on its top that “silent finger” which Elliot describes as “ever pointing up to God”-the ancient white pine with its slender whispering leaves, the feathery larches, the rugged and shaggy cedars-all unite to form such a “goodly fellowship,” that one is inclined to think for the time that no son of the forest can compare with them. But the spruce is the prince among them all. Far or near, you see its slender obelisk of dark green, rising singly amid forests of oak or maple, or marshalled together in serried ranks over distant hills, or wooding innumerable points, whose fantastic outlines interlace the silvery sea. The heavy blue green of these distant pines forms a beautiful contrast to the glitter of the waters, and affords a fine background, to throw out the small white wings of sail boats, which are ever passing from point to point among these bays and harbors. One of the most peculiar and romantic features of these secluded wood-embosomed waters of Maine is this sudden apparition of shipping and sea craft, in, such wild and lonely places, that they seem to you, as the first ships did to the simple savages, to be visitants fro
m the spirit land. You are riding in a lonely road, by some bay that seems to you like a secluded inland lake; you check your horse, to notice the fine outline of the various points, when lo! from behind one of them, swan-like, with wings all spread, glides in a ship from India or China, and wakes up the silence, by tumbling her great anchor into the water. A ship, of itself a child of romance-a dreamy, cloud-like, poetic thing-and that ship connects these piney hills and rocky shores, these spruces and firs, with distant lands of palm and spice, and speaks to you, in these solitudes, of groves of citron and olive. We pray the day may never come when any busy Yankee shall find a substitute for ship sails, and take from these spirits of the wave their glorious white wings, and silent, cloud-like movements, for any fuss and sputter of steam and machinery. It will be just like some Yankee to do it. That race will never rest till everything antique and poetic is drilled out of the world. The same spirit which yearns to make Niagara a mill-seat, and use all its pomp and power of cloud, and spray, and rainbow, and its voices of many waters, for accessories to a cotton factory, would, we suppose, be right glad to transform form the winged ship into some disagreeable greasy combination of machinery, if it would only come cheaper. The islands along the coast of Maine are a study for a tourist. The whole sail along the shores is through a never ending labyrinth of these-some high and rocky, with castellated sides, bannered with pines-some richly wooded with forest trees-and others, again, whose luxuriant meadow land affords the finest pasturage for cattle. Here are the cottages of fishermen, who divide their time between farming and fishing, and thus between land and water make a very respectable amphibious living. These people are simple-hearted, kindly, hardy, with a good deal of the genial broad-heartedness that characterizes their old father, the ocean. When down on one of these lonely islands once, we were charmed to find, in a small cottage, one of the prettiest and most lady-like of women. Her husband owned a fishing-smack; and while we were sitting conversing in the house, in came a damsel from the neighborhood, arrayed, in all points, cap-a-pie, according to the latest city fashions. The husband came home from a trip while we were there. He had stopped in Portland, and brought home a new bonnet for his wife, of the most approved style, and a pair of gaiter shoes for his little girl. One of our company was talking with him, congratulating him on his retired situation.