Around The Tea-Table Part 13

Sh.e.l.lS FROM THE BEACH.

Our summer-house is a cottage at East Hampton, Long Island, overlooking the sea. Seventeen vessels in sight, schooners, clippers, hermaphrodite brigs, steamers, great craft and small. Wonder where they come from, and where they are going to, and who is aboard? Just enough clovertops to sweeten the briny air into the most delightful tonic. We do not know the geological history of this place, but imagine that the rest of Long Island is the discourse of which East Hampton is the peroration. There are enough bluffs to relieve the dead level, enough gra.s.s to clothe the hills, enough trees to drop the shadow, enough society to keep one from inanity, and enough quietude to soothe twelve months of perturbation. The sea hums us to sleep at night, and fills our dreams with intimations of the land where the harmony is like "the voice of many waters." In smooth weather the billows take a minor key; but when the storm gives them the pitch, they break forth with the clash and uproar of an overture that fills the heavens and makes the beach tremble. Strange that that which rolls perpetually and never rests itself should be a psalm of rest to others! With these sands of the beach we help fill the hour-gla.s.s of life. Every moment of the day there comes in over the waves a flotilla of joy and rest and health, and our piazza is the wharf where the stevedores unburden their cargo. We have sunrise with her bannered hosts in cloth of gold, and moonrise with her innumerable helmets and shields and swords and ensigns of silver, the morning and the night being the two b.u.t.tresses from which are swung a bridge of cloud suspended on strands of sunbeam, all the glories of the sky pa.s.sing to and fro with airy feet in silent procession.

We have wandered far and wide, but found no such place to rest in. We can live here forty-eight hours in one day, and in a night get a Rip Van Winkle sleep, waking up without finding our gun rusty or our dog dead.

No wonder that Mr. James, the first minister of this place, lived to eighty years of age, and Mr. Hunting, his successor, lived to be eighty-one years of age, and Doctor Buel, his successor, lived to be eighty-two years of age. Indeed, it seems impossible for a minister regularly settled in this place to get out of the world before his eightieth year. It has been only in cases of "stated supply," or removal from the place, that early demise has been possible. And in each of these cases of decease at fourscore it was some unnecessary imprudence on their part, or who knows but that they might be living yet? That which is good for settled pastors being good for other people, you may judge the climate here is salutary and delectable for all.

The place was settled in 1648, and that is so long ago that it will probably never be unsettled. The Puritans took possession of it first, and have always held it for the Sabbath, for the Bible and for G.o.d. Much maligned Puritans! The world will stop deriding them after a while, and the caricaturists of their stalwart religion will want to claim them as ancestors, but it will be too late then; for since these latter-day folks lie about the Puritans now, we will not believe them when they want to get into the ill.u.s.trious genealogical line.

East Hampton has always been a place of good morals. One of the earliest Puritan regulations of this place was that licensed liquor-sellers should not sell to the young, and that half a pint only should be given to four men--an amount so small that most drinkers would consider it only a tantalization. A woman here, in those days, was sentenced "to pay a fine of fifteen dollars, or to stand one hour with a cleft stick upon her tongue, for saying that her husband had brought her to a place where there was neither gospel nor magistracy." She deserved punishment of some kind, but they ought to have let her off with a fine, for no woman's tongue ought to be interfered with. When in olden time a Yankee peddler with the measles went to church here on the Sabbath for the purpose of selling his knick-knacks, his behavior was considered so perfidious that before the peddler left town the next morning the young men gave him a free ride upon what seems to us an uncomfortable and insufficient vehicle, namely, a rail, and then dropped him into the duck-pond. But such conduct was not sanctioned by the better people of the place. Nothing could be more unwholesome for a man with the measles than a plunge in a duck-pond, and so the peddler recovered one thousand dollars damage. So you see that every form of misdemeanor was sternly put down. Think of the high state of morals and religion which induced this people, at an early day, at a political town-meeting, to adopt this decree: "We do sociate and conjoin ourselves and successors to be one town or corporation, and do for ourselves and our successors, and such as shall be adjoined to us at any time hereafter, enter into combination and confederation together to maintain and preserve the purity of the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ which we now possess."

The pledge of that day has been fully kept; and for sobriety, industry, abhorrence of evil and adherence to an unmixed gospel, we know not the equal of this place.

That doc.u.ment of two centuries ago reads strangely behind the times, but it will be some hundreds of years yet before other communities come up to the point where that doc.u.ment stops. All our laws and inst.i.tutions are yet to be Christianized. The Puritans took possession of this land in the name of Christ, and it belongs to Him; and if people do not like that religion, let them go somewhere else. They can find many lands where there is no Christian religion to bother them. Let them emigrate to Greenland, and we will provide them with mittens, or to the South Sea Islands, and we will send them ice-coolers. This land is for Christ. Our Legislatures and Congresses shall yet pa.s.s laws as radically evangelical as the venerable doc.u.ment above referred to. East Hampton, instead of being two hundred years behind, is two hundred years ahead.

Glorious place to summer! Darwin and Stuart, Mill and Huxley and Renan have not been through here yet. May they miss the train the day they start for this place! With an Atlantic Ocean in which to wash, and a great-hearted, practical, sympathetic gospel to take care of all the future, who could not be happy in East Hampton?

The strong sea-breeze ruffles the sheet upon which we write, and the "white caps" are tossing up as if in greeting to Him who walks the pavements of emerald and opal:

"Waft, waft, ye winds, His story, And you, ye waters, roll, Till, like a sea of glory, It spreads from pole to pole."

CHAPTER XLIV.

CATCHING THE BAY MARE.

It may be a lack of education on our part, but we confess to a dislike for horse-races. We never attended but three; the first in our boyhood, the second at a country fair, where we were deceived as to what would transpire, the third last Sabbath morning. We see our friends flush with indignation at this last admission; but let them wait a moment before they launch their verdict.

Our horse was in the pasture-field. It was almost time to start for church, and we needed the animal harnessed. The boy came in saying it was impossible to catch the bay mare, and calling for our a.s.sistance. We had on our best clothes, and did not feel like exposing ourself to rough usage; but we vaulted the fence with pail of water in hand, expecting to try the effect of rewards rather than punishments. The horse came out generously to meet us. We said to the boy, "She is very tame. Strange you cannot catch her." She came near enough to cautiously smell the pail, when she suddenly changed her mind, and with one wild snort dashed off to the other end of the field.

Whether she was not thirsty, or was critical of the manner of presentation, or had apprehensions of our motive, or was seized with desire for exercise in the open air, she gave us no chance to guess. We resolved upon more caution of advance and gentler voice, and so laboriously approached her; for though a pail of water is light for a little way, it gets heavy after you have gone a considerable distance, though its contents be half spilled away.

This time we succeeded in getting her nose inserted into the bright beverage. We called her by pet names, addressing her as "Poor Dolly!" not wishing to suggest any pauperism by that term, but only sympathy for the sorrows of the brute creation, and told her that she was the finest horse that ever was. It seemed to take well. Flattery always does--with horses.

We felt that the time had come for us to produce the rope halter, which with our left hand we had all the while kept secreted behind our back. We put it over her neck, when the beast wheeled, and we seized her by the point where the copy-books say we ought to take Time, namely, the forelock.

But we had poor luck. We ceased all caressing tone, and changed the subjunctive mood for the imperative. There never was a greater divergence of sentiment than at that instant between us and the bay mare. She pulled one way, we pulled the other. Turning her back upon us, she e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed into the air two shining horse-shoes, both the shape of the letter O, the one interjection in contempt for the ministry, and the other in contempt for the press.

But catch the horse we must, for we were bound to be at church, though jute then we did not feel at all devotional. We resolved, therefore, with the boy, to run her down; so, by the way of making an animated start, we slung the pail at the horse's head, and put out on a Sunday morning horse-race.

Every time she stood at the other end of the field waiting for us to come up. She trotted, galloped and careered about us, with an occasional neigh cheerfully given to encourage us in the pursuit. We were getting more unprepared in body, mind and soul for the sanctuary. Meanwhile, quite a household audience lined the fence; the children and visitors shouting like excited Romans in an amphitheatre at a contest with wild beasts, and it was uncertain whether the audience was in sympathy with us or the bay mare.

At this unhappy juncture, she who some years ago took us for "better or for worse" came to the rescue, finding us in the latter condition. She advanced to the field with a wash-basin full of water, offering that as sole inducement, and gave one call, when the horse went out to meet her, and under a hand, not half as strong as ours, gripping the mane, the refractory beast was led to the manger.

Standing with our feet in the damp gra.s.s and our new clothes wet to a sop, we learned then and there how much depends on the way you do a thing. The proposition we made to the bay mare was far better than that offered by our companion; but ours failed and hers succeeded. Not the first nor the last time that a wash-basin has beaten a pail. So some of us go all through life clumsily coaxing and awkwardly pursuing things which we want to halter and control. We strain every nerve, only to find ourselves befooled and left far behind, while some Christian man or woman comes into the field, and by easy art captures that which evaded us.

We heard a good sermon that day, but it was no more impressive than the besweated lesson of the pasture-field, which taught us that no more depends upon the thing you do than upon the way you do it. The difference between the clean swath of that harvester in front of our house and the ragged work of his neighbor is in the way he swings the scythe, and not in the scythe itself. There are ten men with one talent apiece who do more good than the one man with ten talents. A basin properly lifted may accomplish more than a pail unskillfully swung. A minister for an hour in his sermon attempts to chase down those brutish in their habits, attempting to fetch them under the harness of Christian restraint, and perhaps miserably fails, when some gentle hand of sisterly or motherly affection laid upon the wayward one brings him safely in.

There is a knack in doing things. If all those who plough in State and Church had known how to hold the handles, and turn a straight furrow, and stop the team at the end of the tiled, the world would long ago have been ploughed into an Eden. What many people want is gumption--a word as yet undefined; but if you do not know what it means, it is very certain you do not possess the quality it describes. We all need to study Christian tact.

The boys in the Baskinridge school-house laughed at William L. Dayton's impediment of speech, but that did not hinder him from afterward making court-room and senate-chamber thrill under the spell of his words.

In our early home there was a vicious cat that would invade the milk-pans, and we, the boys, chased her with hoes and rakes, always. .h.i.tting the place where she had been just before, till one day father came out with a plain stick of oven-wood, and with one little clip back of the ear put an end to all of her nine lives. You see everything depends upon the style of the stroke, and not upon the elaborateness of the weapon. The most valuable things you try to take will behave like the bay mare; but what you cannot overcome by coa.r.s.e persuasion, or reach at full run, you can catch with apostolic guile. Learn the first-rate art of doing secular or Christian work, and then it matters not whether your weapon be a basin or a pail.

CHAPTER XLV.

OUR FIRST AND LAST CIGAR.

The time had come in our boyhood which we thought demanded of us a capacity to smoke. The old people of the household could abide neither the sight nor the smell of the Virginia weed. When ministers came there, not by positive injunction but by a sort of instinct as to what would be safest, they whiffed their pipe on the back steps. If the house could not stand sanctified smoke, you may know how little chance there was for adolescent cigar-puffing.

By some rare good fortune which put in our hands three cents, we found access to a tobacco store. As the lid of the long, narrow, fragrant box opened, and for the first time we own a cigar, our feelings of elation, manliness, superiority and antic.i.p.ation can scarcely be imagined, save by those who have had the same sensation. Our first ride on horseback, though we fell off before we got to the barn, and our first pair of new boots (real squeakers) we had thought could never be surpa.s.sed in interest; but when we put the cigar to our lips, and stuck the lucifer match to the end of the weed, and commenced to pull with an energy that brought every facial muscle to its utmost tension, our satisfaction with this world was so great, our temptation was never to want to leave it.

The cigar did not burn well. It required an amount of suction that tasked our determination to the utmost. You see that our worldly means had limited us to a quality that cost only three cents. But we had been taught that nothing great was accomplished without effort, and so we puffed away.

Indeed, we had heard our older brothers in their Latin lessons say, Omnia vincet labor; which translated means, If you want to make anything go, you must scratch for it.

With these sentiments we pa.s.sed down the village street and out toward our country home. Our head did not feel exactly right, and the street began to rock from side to side, so that it was uncertain to us which side of the street we were on. So we crossed over, but found ourself on the same side that we were on before we crossed over. Indeed, we imagined that we were on both sides at the same time, and several fast teams driving between. We met another boy, who asked us why we looked so pale, and we told him we did not look pale, but that he was pale himself.

We sat down under the bridge and began to reflect on the prospect of early decease, and on the uncertainty of all earthly expectations. We had determined to smoke the cigar all up and thus get the worth of our money, but were obliged to throw three-fourths of it away, yet knew just where we threw it, in case we felt better the next day.

Getting home, the old people were frightened, and demanded that we state what kept us so late and what was the matter with us. Not feeling that we were called to go into particulars, and not wishing to increase our parents' apprehension that we were going to turn out badly, we summed up the case with the statement that we felt miserable at the pit of the stomach. We had mustard plasters administered, and careful watching for some hours, when we fell asleep and forgot our disappointment and humiliation in being obliged to throw away three-fourths of our first cigar. Being naturally reticent, we have never mentioned it until this time.

But how about our last cigar? It was three o'clock Sabbath morning in our Western home. We had smoked three or four cigars since tea. At that time we wrote our sermons and took another cigar with each new head of discourse.

We thought we were getting the inspiration from above, but were getting much of it from beneath. Our hand trembled along the line; and strung up to the last tension of nerves, we finished our work and started from the room.

A book standing on the table fell over; and although it was not a large book, its fall sounded to our excited system like the crack of a pistol. As we went down the stairs their creaking made our hair stand on end. As we flung ourselves on a sleepless pillow we resolved, G.o.d helping, that we had smoked our last cigar, and committed our last sin of night-study.

We kept our promise. With the same resolution went overboard coffee and tea. That night we were born into a new physical, mental and moral life.

Perhaps it may be better for some to smoke, and study nights, and take exciting temperance beverages; but we are persuaded that if thousands of people who now go moping, and nervous, and half exhausted through life, down with "sick headaches" and rasped by irritabilities, would try a good large dose of abstinence, they would thank G.o.d for this paragraph of personal experience, and make the world the same bright place we find it--a place so attractive that nothing short of heaven would be good enough to exchange for it.

The first cigar made us desperately sick; the throwing away of our last made us gloriously well. For us the croaking of the midnight owl hath ceased, and the time of the singing of birds has come.

CHAPTER XLVI.

MOVE, MOVING, MOVED.

The first of May is to many the beginning of the year. From that are dated the breakages, the social startings, the ups and downs, of domestic life.

One-half New York is moving into smaller houses, the other half into larger. The past year's success or failure decides which way the horses of the furniture-wagon shall turn their heads.

Days before, the work of packing commenced. It is astonishing how many boxes and barrels are required to contain all your wares. You come upon a thousand things that you had forgotten, too good to throw away and too poor to keep: old faded carpet-bags that would rouse the mirth of the town if you dared to carry them into the street; straw hats out of the fashion; beavers that you ought to have given away while they might have been useful; odd gloves, shoes, coats and slips of carpet that have been the nest of rats, and a thousand things that you laid away because you some day might want them, but never will.