Complete Works of Harriet Beecher Stowe

by Harriet Beecher Stowe

  HOW TO FIGHT THE DEVIL.

  “LOOK here, boys,” said Sam, “don’t you want to go with me up to the Devil’s Den this arternoon?”

  “Where is the Devil’s Den,” said I, with a little awe.

  “Wal, it’s a longer tramp than I’ve ever took ye. It’s clear up past the pickerel pond, and beyond old Skunk John’s pasture-lot. It’s a ‘mazin’ good place for raspberries; shouldn’t wonder if we should get two three quarts there. Great rocks there higher ‘n yer head; kinder solemn, ’tis.”

  This was a delightful and seductive account, and we arranged for a walk that very afternoon.

  In almost every New-England village the personality ality of Satan has been acknowledged by calling by his name some particular rock or cave, or other natural object whose singularity would seem to suggest a more than mortal occupancy. “The Devil’s Punch-bowl,” “The Devil’s Wash-bowl,” “The Devil’s Kettle,” “The Devil’s Pulpit,” and “The Devil’s Den,” have been designations that marked places or objects of some striking natural peculiarity. Often these are found in the midst of the most beautiful and romantic scenery, and the sinister name seems to have no effect in lessening its attractions. To me, the very idea of going to the Devil’s Den was full of a pleasing horror. When a boy, I always lived in the shadowy edge of that line which divides spirit land from mortal life, and it was my delight to walk among its half lights and shadows. The old graveyard where, side by side, mouldered the remains of Indian sachems and the ancients of English blood, was my favorite haunt. I loved to sit on the graves while the evening mists arose from them, and to fancy cloudy forms waving and beckoning. To me, this spirit land was my only refuge from the dry details of a hard, prosaic life. The schoolroom-with its hard seats rudely fashioned from slabs of rough wood, with its clumsy desks, hacked and ink-stained, with its unintelligible textbooks and its unsympathetic teacher-was to me a prison out of whose weary windows I watched the pomp and glory of nature,-the free birds singing, the clouds sailing, the trees waving and whispering,-and longed, as earnestly as ever did the Psalmist, to flee far away, and wander in the wilderness.

  Hence, no joy of after life-nothing that the world has now to give-can equal that joyous sense of freedom and full possession which came over me on Saturday afternoons, when I started off on a tramp with the world all before me,-the mighty, unexplored world of mysteries and possibilities, bounded only by the horizon. Ignorant alike of all science, neither botanist nor naturalist, I was studying at firsthand all that lore out of which science is made. Every plant and flower had a familiar face to me, and said something to my imagination. I knew where each was to be found, its time of coming and going, and met them year after year as returning friends.

  So it was with joyous freedom that we boys rambled bled off with Sam this afternoon, intent to find the Devil’s Den. It was a ledge of granite rocks rising in the midst of a grove of pines and white birches. The ground was yellow and slippery with the fallen needles of the pines of other days, and the glistening white stems of the birches shone through the shadows like ivory pillars. Underneath the great granite ledges, all sorts of roots and plants grappled and kept foothold; and whole armies of wild raspberries matured their fruit, rounder and juicier for growing in the shade.

  In one place yawned a great rift, or cavern, as if the rocks had been violently twisted and wrenched apart, and a mighty bowlder lodging in the rift had roofed it over, making a cavern of most seductive darkness and depth. This was the Devil’s Den; and after we had picked our pail full of berries, we sat down there to rest.

  “Sam, do you suppose the Devil ever was here?” said I. “What do they call this his den for?”

  “Massy, child! that ‘are was in old witch times. There used to be witch meetins’ held here, and awful doins’; they used to have witch sabba’ days and witch sacraments, and sell their souls to the old boy.”

  “What should they want to do that for?”

  “Wal, sure enough; what was it for? I can’t make out that the Devil ever gin ’em any thing, any on ‘em. They warn’t no richer, nor didn’t get no more ‘n this world than the rest; and they was took and hung; and then ef they went to torment after that, they hed a pretty bad bargain on’t, I say.”

  “Well, people don’t do such things any more, do they?” said I.

  “No,” said Sam. “Since the gret fuss and row-de-dow about it, it’s kind o’ died out; but there’s those, I s’pose, that hez dealins’ with the old boy. Folks du say that old Ketury was a witch, and that, ef ‘t ben in old times, she’d a hed her neck stretched; but she lived and died in peace.”

  “But do you think,” said I, now proposing the question that lay nearest my heart, “that the Devil can hurt us?”

  “That depends consid’able on how you take him,” said Sam. “Ye see, come to a straight out-an’-out fight with him, he’ll git the better on yer.”

  “But,” said I, “Christian did fight Apollyon, and got him down too.”

  I had no more doubt in those days that this was an historic fact than I had of the existence of Romulus and Remus and the wolf.

  “Wal, that ‘ere warn’t jest like real things: they say that ‘ere’s an allegory. But I’ll tell ye how old Sarah Bunganuck fit the Devil, when he ‘peared to her. Ye see, old Sarah she was one of the converted Injuns, and a good old critter she was too; worked hard, and got her livin’ honest. She made baskets, and she made brooms, and she used to pick young wintergreen and tie it up in bunches, and dig sassafras and ginsing to make beer; and she got her a little bit o’ land, right alongside o’ Old Black Hoss John’s white-birch wood-lot.

  “Now, I’ve heerd some o’ these ‘ere modern ministers that come down from Cambridge college, and are larnt about every thing in creation, they say there ain’t no devil, and the reason on’t is, ‘cause there can’t be none. These ‘ere fellers is so sort o’ green!-they don’t mean no harm, but they don’t know nothin’ about nobody that does. If they’d ha’ known old Black Hoss John, they’d ha’ been putty sure there was a devil. He was jest the crossest, ugliest critter that ever ye see, and he was ugly jest for the sake o’ ugliness. He couldn’t bear to let the boys pick huckleberries in his paster lots, when he didn’t pick ’em himself; and he was allers jawin’ me ‘cause I would go trout-fishin’ in one o’ his pasters. Jest ez if the trout that swims warn’t the Lord’s, and jest ez much mine as his. He grudged every critter every thing; and if he’d ha’ hed his will and way, every bird would ha’ fell down dead that picked up a worm on his grounds. He was jest as nippin’ as a black frost. Old Black Hoss didn’t git drunk in a regerlar way, like Uncle Eph and Toddy Whitney, and the rest o’ them boys. But he jest sot at home, a-soakin’ on cider, till he was crosser’n a bear with a sore head. Old Black Hoss hed a special spite agin old Sarah. He said she was an old witch and an old thief, and that she stole things off’n his grounds, when everybody knew that she was a regerlar church-member, and as decent an old critter as there was goin’. As to her stealin’, she didn’t do nothin’ but pick huckleberries and grapes, and git chesnuts and wannuts, and butternuts, and them ‘ere wild things that’s the Lord’s, grow on whose land they will, and is free to all. I’ve hearn ’em tell that, over in the old country, the poor was kept under so, that they couldn’t shoot a bird, nor ketch a fish, nor gather no nuts, nor do nothin’ to keep from starvin’, ‘cause the quality folks they thought they owned every thing, ‘way down to the middle of the earth and clear up to the stars. We never hed no sech doin’s this side of the water, thank the Lord! We’ve allers been free to have the chesnuts and the wannuts and the grapes and the huckleberries and the strawberries, ef we could git ‘em, and ketch fish when and where we was a mind to. Lordy massy! your grandthur’s old Cesar, he used to call the pond his pork-pot. He’d jest go down and throw in a line and ketch his dinner. Wal, Old Black Hoss he know’d the law was so, and he couldn’t do nothin’ agin her by law; but he sarved her out every mean trick he could think of. He u
sed to go and stan’ and lean over her garden-gate and jaw at her an hour at a time; but old Sarah she had the Injun in her; she didn’t run to talk much: she used to jest keep on with her weedin’ and her work, jest’s if he warn’t there, and that made Old Black Hoss madder’n ever; and he thought he’d try and frighten her off’n the ground, by makin’ on her believe he was the Devil. So one time, when he’d been killin’ a beef critter, they took off the skin with the horns and all on; and Old Black Hoss he says to Toddy and Eph and Loker, ‘You jest come up tonight, and see how I’ll frighten old Sarah Bunganuck.’

  “Wal, Toddy and Eph and Loker, they hedn’t no better to do, and they thought they’d jest go round and see. Ye see ’twas a moonlight night, and old Sarah-she was an industrious critter-she was cuttin’ white-birch brush for brooms in the paster-lot. Wal, Old Black Hoss he wrapped the critter’s skin round him, with the horns on his head, and come and stood by the fence, and begun to roar and make a noise. Old Sarah she kept right on with her work, cuttin’ her brush and pilin’ on’t up, and jest let him roar. Wal, Old Black Hoss felt putty foolish, ‘specially ez the fellers were waitin’ to see how she took it. So he calls out in a grum voice,-

  “Wal, I’m the Devil, sez he.”-Page 199.

  “‘Woman, don’t yer know who I be?”

  “‘No,’ says she quite quiet, ‘I don’t know who yer be.’

  “‘Wal, I’m the Devil,’ sez he.

  “‘Ye be?’ says old Sarah. ‘Poor old critter, how I pity ye!’ and she never gin him another word, but jest bundled up her broom-stuff, and took it on her back and walked off, and Old Black Hoss he stood there mighty foolish with his skin and horns; and so he had the laugh agin him, ‘cause Eph and Loker they went and told the story down to the tavern, and he felt awful cheap to think old Sarah had got the upper hands on him.

  “Wal, ye see, boys, that ‘ere’s jest the way to fight the Devil. Jest keep straight on with what ye’re doin’, and don’t ye mind him, and he can’t do nothin’ to ye.”

  HE’S COMING TOMORROW

  OR, CHRIST IS COMING

  “The night is far spent; the day is at hand.”

  MY soul vibrated for a moment like a harp. Was it true? The night, the long night of the world’s groping agony and blind desire? Is it almost over? Is the day at hand?

  Again: “They shall see the Son of man coming in a cloud, with power and great glory. And when these things come to pass, look up and rejoice, for your redemption is nigh.”

  Coming! — The Son of man really coming into this world again with power and great glory?

  Will this really ever happen? Will this solid, commonplace earth see it? Will these skies brighten and flash? and will upturned faces in this city be watching to see Him coming?

  So our minister preached in a solemn sermon; and for moments, at times, I felt a thrill of reality in hearing. But as the well-dressed crowd passed down the aisle, my neighbor, Mr. Stockton, whispered to me not to forget the meeting of the bank directors on Monday evening, and Mrs. Goldthwaite poured into my wife’s ear a charge not to forget her party on Thursday; and my wife, as she came out, asked me if I had observed the extravagant toilet of Mrs. Rennyman.

  “So absurd,” she said, “when her income, I know, cannot be half what ours is! and I never think of sending to Paris for my things; I should look on it as morally wrong.”

  I spoke of the sermon. “Yes,” said my wife, “what a sermon! — so solemn. I wonder that all are not drawn to hear our rector. What could be more powerful than such discourses? My dear, by the by, don’t forget to change Mary’s opal ring for a diamond one. Dear me! the Christmas presents were all so on my mind that I was thinking of them every now and then in church; and that was so wrong of me!”

  “My dear,” said I, “sometimes it seems to me as if all our life were unreal. We go to church, and the things that we hear are either true or false. If they are true, what things they are! For instance, these Advent sermons. If we are looking for that coming, we ought to feel and live differently from what we do! Do we really believe what we hear in church? or is it a dream?”

  “I do believe,” said my wife earnestly — she is a good woman, my wife—”yes, I do believe, but it is just as you say. Oh, dear! I feel as if I am very worldly — I have so many things to think of!” and she sighed.

  So do I; for I knew that I, too, was very worldly. After a pause I said: “Suppose Christ should really come this Christmas and it should be authoritatively announced that He would be here to-morrow?”

  “I think,” said my wife, “there would be some embarrassment on the part of our great men, legislators, and chief councilors, in anticipation of a personal interview. Fancy a meeting of the city council to arrange a reception for the Lord Jesus Christ!”

  “Perhaps,” said I, “He would refuse all offers of the rich and great. Perhaps our fashionable churches would plead for His presence in vain. He would not be in palaces.”

  “Oh!” said my wife earnestly, “if I thought our money separated us from Him, I would give it all — yes, all — might I only see Him.”

  She spoke from the bottom of her heart, and for a moment her face was glorified.

  “You will see Him some day,” said I, “and the money we are willing to give up at a word from Him will not keep Him from us.”

  That evening the thoughts of the waking hours mirrored themselves in a dream.

  I seemed to be out walking in the streets, and to be conscious of a strange, vague sense of something just declared, of which all were speaking with a suppressed air of mysterious voices.

  There was a whispering stillness around. Groups of men stood at the corners of the street, and discussed an impending something with suppressed voices.

  I heard one say to another: “Really coming! What? to-morrow?” And the others said: “Yes, to-morrow; on Christmas Day He will be here.”

  It was night. The stars were glittering with a keen and frosty light; the shops glistened in their Christmas array; but the same sense of hushed expectancy pervaded every thing. There seemed to be nothing doing; and each person looked wistfully upon his neighbor as if to say, Have you heard?

  Suddenly, as I walked, an angel-form was with me, gliding softly by my side. The face was solemn, serene, and calm. Above the forehead was a pale, tremulous, phosphorous, radiance of light, purer than any on earth — a light of a quality so different from that of the street-lamps, that my celestial attendant seemed to move in a sphere alone.

  Yet, though I felt awe, I felt a sort of confiding love as I said: “Tell me, is it really true? Is Christ coming?”

  “He is,” said the angel. “To-morrow He will be here!”

  “What joy!” I cried.

  “Is it joy?” said the angel. “Alas, to many in this city it is only terror! Come with me.”

  In a moment I seemed to be standing with him in a parlor of one of the chief palaces of the city. A stout, florid, bald-headed man was seated at a table covered with papers, which he was sorting over with nervous anxiety, muttering to himself as he did so. On a sofa lay a sad-looking, delicate woman, her emaciated hands clasped over a little book. The room was, in all its appointments, a witness of boundless wealth. Gold and silver, and gems, and foreign furniture, and costly pictures, and articles of virtu — everything that money could buy — were heaped together; and yet the man himself seemed to me to have been neither elevated nor refined by the confluence of all these treasures. He seemed nervous and uneasy. He wiped the sweat from his brow, and spoke:

  “I don’t know, wife, how you feel; but I don’t like this news. I don’t understand it. It puts a stop to everything I know anything about.”

  “Oh, John!” said the woman, turning towards him a face pale and fervent, and clasping her hands, “how can you say so?”

  And as she spoke, I could see breaking out above her head a tremulous light, like that above the brow of an angel.

  “Well, Mary, it’s the truth. I don’t care if I say it. I don
’t want to meet — well I wish He would put it off! What does He want of me? I’d be willing to make over — well, three millions to found an hospital, if He’d be satisfied and let me go on. Yes, I’d give three millions — to buy off from to-morrow.”

  “Is He not our best friend?”

  “Best friend!” said the man, with a look half fright, half anger. “Mary, you don’t know what you are talking about! You know I always hated those things. There’s no use in it; I can’t see into them. In fact, I hate them.”

  She cast on him a look full of pity. “Cannot I make you see?” she said.

  “No, indeed, you can’t. Why, look here,” he added, pointing to the papers. “Here is what stands for millions! To-night it’s mine; and to-morrow it will be all so much waste paper; and then what have I left? Do you think I can rejoice? I’d give half; I’d give — yes, the whole, not to have Him come these hundred years.” She stretched out her thin hand towards him; but he pushed it back.

  “Do you see?” said the angel to me solemnly. “Between him and her there is a “GREAT GULF fixed.” They have lived in one house with that gulf between them for years! She cannot go to him; he cannot go to her. To-morrow she will rise to Christ as a dewdrop to the sun; and he will call to the mountains and rocks to fall on him — not because Christ hates him, but because he hates Christ.”

  Again the scene was changed. We stood together in a little low attic, lighted by one small lamp — how poor it was! — a broken chair, a rickety table, a bed in the corner where the little ones were cuddling close to one another for warmth. Poor things! the air was so frosty that their breath congealed upon the bedclothes, as they talked in soft, baby voices. “When mother comes, she will bring us some supper,” said they. “But I’m so cold!” said the little outsider. “Get in the middle, then,” said the other two, “and we’ll warm you. Mother promised she would make a fire when she came in, if that man would pay her.” “What a bad man he is!” said the oldest boy; “he never pays mother if he can help it.”