That was the time when every man and woman that was good for anything wished that they were richer and wiser and stronger than they were, that they might be able to do more for their country.
Emily and her friend had hardly time to think, the thing had burst upon them so suddenly, and George Proudie was gone from them in an hour.
That day nobody in the house did anything but walk restlessly about the house and look aimlessly out of the windows, till the Seventh Regiment came down the street with banners flying and drums beating. Then the flags were waved from all the houses, and flowers were showered down, and people shouted and wept as they went by.
“Nobody knows whether we shall ever see George again,” said Emily’s mother, crying.
“Oh, why was I not a man?” said Emily. “Why could I not go with him?”
Emily’s cheeks were flushed and her eyes bright, and she looked full a head taller than usual. She was waked up all through her heart and soul to feel the joy and glory of doing something, of living a strong, active, vigorous life; and she felt that to go out to suffer hardships, and brave dangers, and endure toil and self-denial for a noble object, had something in it happier than to live in ease and luxury.
“I am sick of all these things,” she said to Pussy that night, when they were in their chamber.
The “things” she pointed at were a confused mass of French dresses, and her toilet covered with fancy jewelry.
“I never knew before what a brave boy our George was,” she added. “Do you know he told me that he was going to be in the thickest of all the fighting, and volunteer to go into every danger. Isn’t it splendid of him?”
“Yes, indeed it is,” said Pussy, with sparkling eyes. “I know my brothers have enlisted. Here is the letter mother writes about them. Three of them gone in one regiment, and only one left to help father! He wanted to go, but they felt it was the duty of one to stay, and so he stayed!”
The two girls lay awake half the night, wishing that they too could go for soldiers.
CHAPTER XVI
WELL, the war went on and on and on, and got to be a graver thing every day. What times those were, to be sure! Wasn’t everything for a while turned topsy-turvy? Those were days when all who had any capacity in them that was good for anything were sure to find it out and have it called into use. People who do great things and good things at such times do them because they have been laying up strength beforehand, and training themselves in body and mind. Then, when the time comes to use their faculties, they have them all ready, and know just where to find them.
Very soon came the news of battles and skirmishes, and then of precious blood shed. Then of battles that left ever so many of the noblest and most precious of our Northern soldiers wounded and bleeding. Cannot all of you remember how the mothers and daughters and sisters, all over the country, flew to their relief, — how societies were formed, and women worked day and night to send aid to the brave men who were fighting our battles on the field?
Then, had you been in New York, you must have seen the City Park lined along its edges with barracks thrown up to receive the wounded soldiers. Within were long lines of neat beds where the poor fellows lay. There you might have seen a pretty young girl, dressed in deep mourning, who came every day with her little basket on her arm, leaving at many a couch some token of her gentle presence and loving care. This is the girl that was once the idle, selfish Emily Proudie. What is she now? To the poor suffering men whom she visits every day she seems like an angel; and as she passes among them she leaves a bunch of flowers here, an interesting book or pamphlet there. Sometimes there is a little bottle of cologne, or a palm leaf fan, or a delicate, nicely hemmed handkerchief, — luxuries for the sick-bed of which her kind eye sees the need here and there. Occasionally she will sit for an hour at a time by some poor feverish boy, fanning away the flies, that he may sleep, and perhaps singing a sweet hymn. Once she used to get vast credit for singing French and Italian songs with a great many shakes and trills in them, which it fatigued her very much to learn, and which, when she got through with them, people complimented her for as wonderfully well done. Now she sang some simple airs from a soldier’s tune-book; and when her tender voice rose, it was in words like these: —
“Sweet hour of prayer, sweet hour of prayer.
That calls me from a world of care,
And bids me at my Father’s throne
Make all my wants and wishes known.”
Often, while she was singing, there would be such a stillness all up and down the hospital that you might hear a pin drop, and you might see hard, dark hands brushing away tears quietly; and then the men would speak softly of pious mothers, at whose knees they learned to pray long years ago.
You remember the days when Emily had everybody in the house at her feet, waiting on her, and yet was full of disgust and weariness. In those days her back ached, and her head ached, and everything constantly troubled her; her dresses never were trimmed to suit her, and everything went wrong with her from morning to night.
Now she is a different girl indeed. She wears a plain mourning dress for her dear brother, who was one of the first to lay down his life for his country; but her dress costs her little thought and little care, because her heart is full of sweeter and nobler things. Emily is living no more for self, she is living for others; she has learned the Saviour’s beautiful lesson that it is more blessed to give than to receive, and she finds it so. She uses every day all the strength she has, resolutely and systematically, in some good works of charity. Besides going to the hospital, she went often to the rooms of the Soldiers’ Aid Society to cut out work, and she took some home with her, that every hour might be usefully employed. She wrote letters for the poor fellows who were too feeble to write for themselves, and told distant mothers and friends how their beloved ones were doing. Many of Miss Emily’s letters are treasured in distant dwellings in the country, where her face has never been seen, because they are all the tidings that remain of some dear one forever lost to earth.
Emily’s mamma and aunts declared that the dear child was doing too much, and actually wearing herself out; but Emily found one great secret, and that was, when she had used all her strength in good works, to look humbly to her Father in secret for more, — and this strength always came.
“Aren’t you afraid, Doctor, that Emily will wear herself out with visiting the hospitals and working for the soldiers?” said anxious mamma.
The Doctor gave her a good look through his great round spectacles.
“I think she’ll stand it,” he said, “rather better than she used to stand the opera and the German some winters ago.”
“And if I don’t,” said Emily, “ I’d rather wear out than rust out I have found out what life is good for now.”
As to Pussy Willow, she had a brother who rose to be a general, and had command of a whole State, and she went to the South to keep house for him. One of the largest hospitals in the Southern Department was conducted under her eye and care, and a most capital one it was. She had strength, the result of years of healthy energy, to give to the service of her country. She had experience in the use of her hands, and could do everything in the neatest and quickest way; and when a hundred desperately wounded men are brought in at once to be relieved and made comfortable, nobody without experience can tell how important it is to know how to do exactly the right thing in the least time. The nights that Pussy has been up in her hospital kitchen, making soup and gruel and coffee, when the wounded were being brought in after a battle! She moved so quickly that she seemed to be everywhere; she directed everybody and everything, and wherever anything seemed in danger of going wrong, there she was in a trice, and set it right again.
Nobody knows the amount of work done by fair, delicate women in those days. They did not turn aside from any horror, they did not spare themselves any fatigue, they called no service beneath them whereby they could relieve a pain. Among these heroines our Pussy was foremost. Those blue eyes of h
ers became stars of hope to many a poor fellow, and her ministering hands seemed to have the very gift of healing in them. She overlooked the stores sent by the Sanitary Commission, and saw that they were wisely kept and administered. She wrote to the North for whatever was wanting, and kept her patients well and carefully clothed, fed, tended, and nursed. Many letters passed between her and Emily in this labor of love, and many a nice package of shirts and stockings came down to her from Emily’s Fifth Avenue sewing association. So these two girls were united in the service of their country.
And, in this war, it was the women, no less than the men, that saved the country. If there had not been hundreds of thousands of brave women who did as Miss Emily and our Pussy did, thousands of dear and precious lives must have been wasted, and the war could not have come to so glorious an end.
Well, peace came at last. How glad we all were! And all our generals and colonels came North again, and laid aside their titles, and went to work at their farms and merchandise as quietly as though nothing had happened. But the people where Pussy lives still persist in calling her brother General, and his coat with the gold star on it is hung up with his sword in the little cottage where our story began.
As to Pussy, she has married lately, and gone to live in New York. She lives in a nice brown-stone house in Fifth Avenue, not far from Miss Emily, and the two girls are more intimate than ever. People do say that the General, Pussy’s brother, is going to marry Miss Emily, and so they will, by and by, be sisters. I can’t say certainly as to that; I only know that they are a great deal together; and on the whole, if my young folks will have it so, I guess we will finish up our story that way.
It is agreed that Pussy is always to spend her summers at the old homestead where she first saw the light, where the bright pussy-willow bush tassels out early in March under the chamber windows, and the old grandmotherly ferns, with their woolly nightcaps, peep out to see whether it will do to unroll and come up into this upper world.
Pussy is right, for the good fairies dwell in these quiet country places. Do you want to see one, my dear Charlotte or my blue-eyed Mary? Well, the next time you get a chance to look down into a clear spring, or a deep well all fringed with ferns, if the water is very still and clear, perhaps you will see one smiling and looking amiably at you.
Now remember to be a good girl, and live to help other people. Begin by being, as Pussy was, a kind, helpful daughter to your mother, who has done more for you than you have any idea of; and remember that your happiness consists in what you give and what you do, and not in what you receive and have done for you.
And now good-by.
THE MINISTER’S WATERMELONS
CHAPTER I
IT was a proud day in my life when I first counted myself as an academy boy in Highland Academy.
Highland was about as still and dreamy a little Tillage as one could see among the White Mountains; but it was a grand, lively metropolis, compared to Blueberry, where my tender years were spent, and where I acquired sufficient primary knowledge to enable me to graduate into Highland Academy.
I remember now my emotions, as, seated on the top of the stage, with a very ancient and dilapidated hair trunk as the repository of my worldly goods, we came dashing into Highland in a glorious cloud of dust, which the setting radiance of the afternoon sun illuminated with splendor. “Here we go,” thought I, as two dogs barked, and some roosting hens flew down and cackled, and a cat ran away from before us, and a flock of geese opened their beaks, and flapped their wings, and hissed, and the driver cracked his whip, and the clerks of the one country store, where the post-office was kept, came and stood out in the porch, while a half-dozen boys sat on a fence and waved their hats. “This is something like life,” thought I, and my breast heaved, as I thought of the confined stillness of Blueberry, which was nine miles from any stage station.
The academy I surveyed with awe. It was quite as big as our meeting-house, and had a bell on it, which our meeting-house did not have. My heart fluttered and thumped when I was set down at Deacon Jones’s. I was now, as my father and mother had reminded me, in a long talk the evening before, going to begin life for myself.
I ordered down my hair trunk and paid my fare with a high sense of responsibility. Deacon Jones stood on the doorstep, — a little, thin, wiry man, with a long, sharp nose, attired in a fluttering red calico dressing-gown. He was, at the moment, contemplatively chewing a long bit of straw, for which he appeared to have a relish.
When I gave him a letter from my father, and stood waiting, trunk in hand, he opened it with great crackling, wiped his spectacles a great many times, and read it over as if he found difficulty in making it out, and then, contemplating me through his spectacles, he drawled out, —
“Wal, I calculate we can take you. You’ll have to go into No. 2. Miss Jones’ll show you the way. Miss Jones,” he continued, turning round, with a flutter of the red double gown, “there aint but one boy in No. 2, is there?”
An anxious, hot-looking woman came out of some inner apartment, and, taking a hasty glance at me, said, “This way, if you please,” and I followed, with my hair trunk on my shoulder, up an echoing pair of bare, painted stairs, into a large front room, the windows of which, on one side, opened upon two large maple-trees, and on the other upon a glorious blue vista of mountains.
There was one boy already there, and two more expected. Jimmy Seaforth, the present occupant, was a little, white-haired, blue-eyed, gentle-spoken fellow, who seemed to look up to me with a sort of apprehension as I came in. This rather flattered my self-importance, and forthwith a friendship was struck up between us, and we agreed to be bedfellows, whoever else might come to occupy the other bed.
I felt very grand as I took out my Latin books, and arranged them strikingly on the shelf, instructing Jimmy, all the while, and giving him the benefit, gratis, of the wisdom and sage counsel with which my father, and mother, and aunts had filled my head, on the grand and solemn occasion of my entering Highland Academy.
I examined him concerning his studies, gave him the benefit of my opinion in a most liberal manner, and promised to stand by him in case of any emergency. Jimmy was naturally of a timid, apprehensive disposition, and took to twining around me as naturally as a youthful bean-vine takes to a friendly bean-pole.
The next day we were examined and classed. I was to begin Virgil with three other boys and two girls. Myra Jones was one, and Lucy Sewell the other. Myra was largeboned, dark-complexioned, with a big, heavy waist; but Lucy Sewell was slender and golden-haired, with great blue eyes, and cheeks like a sweet pea. She was the minister’s oldest daughter, and the very first sight of her filled me with the strangest mixture of pleasure and discomfort I had ever experienced. I remembered, with horror, that, in my haste in dressing that morning, I had put on a shirt-collar with a streak of smut upon it. “Who cares?” I thought as I stood before the looking-glass. But then I did not know that I was to sit side by side with Lucy in the Virgil class.
We all had to read and construe in turn, and this miserable bit of smut on my collar became so active in my imagination that I could hardly get my moods and tenses right, and I made one or two mistakes, which further covered me with confusion.
I knew the first book in Virgil almost by heart, and was burning to distinguish myself, but I was so harassed by this little fiend, that I was actually puzzled to translate one of the most familiar phrases. There was a movement and a flutter next me, as of dove’s wings, and Lucy Sewell considerately knocked down a book, and, as she stooped to pick it up, she whispered the right phrase in my ear.
It set me straight. I recovered myself, grew more composed, and went through with credit. I looked up to thank my good angel, but Lucy was blushing redder than I, with her eyes fixed in most innocent ignorance on her Virgil.
Her portion of the lesson was construed charmingly; so was Myra’s; and Myra turned out to be a first-rate comrade, and a real jolly girl — a fine bit of the good, hearty prose of life; but Lucy
was its poetry.
When school was out, I tried to express, in my best style, my thanks for her kindness.
“Kindness, Mr. Somers!” she said; “not at all.”
“Mr. Somers!” and by those pretty lips. At home, in Blueberry, I was only plain Bill Somers. I felt taller and grander at once; yet somehow I felt myself blushing like a girl, but Miss Lucy was as quiet and cool as the white linen collar round her throat. The girl is always mistress of the situation at that age. Lucy, I found afterwards, was only a month or two younger than myself, but full a year older, in womanly gravity.
Nevertheless, she let me carry her Virgil and dictionary for her, and walk beside her home, the most delighted of individuals.
I went to my room, feeling grand and heroic; rushed to the looking-glass, examined the state of my whiskers carefully, and remarked to Jimmy that the way the hair did grow on my cheek and chin was astonishing! It was really necessary to shave every day; and Jimmy admired me accordingly. I studied my Virgil like a hero, overwhelmed Jimmy with good advice and sage counsels till a late hour that night, and went to sleep, feeling that “Life is real, life is earnest’’
I wrote home to my mother that week a letter filled with the most profound moral reflections, which the dear woman carried in her pocket, and read over at least a dozen times a day. On Sunday, I recorded punctually, for her edification, the heads of Mr. Sewell’s two sermons; and my behavior at church was attentive and edifying in the extreme; the more so that Lucy Sewell, all in white, and with a wonderful little bonnet garlanded with sweet peas, sat in the singers’ seat, and I thought now and then gave me a friendly look, as I sat bending over my notes. That first week was a glorified one, but alas —
Complete Works of Harriet Beecher Stowe Page 583