Wise Saws and Modern Instances Part 9

The native activity of his intellect prevented a prolonged abidance on the mere threshold of opinion: a few months rolled over, and Joe's convictions took a current which they kept for some years. In truth, the formation of his conclusions was hastened by the very circ.u.mstance of his being compelled to pursue his doubts and inquiries in silence. No one around him understood the questions with which his mind was grappling; and the answers which his own judgment gradually gave them, would, he was sensible, create a general horror if broadly proclaimed in the hearing of the simple people by whom he was surrounded.

His faith once shaken in the rules of practice prescribed by the sectarian teachers, since he knew no other way of interpreting the experimental doctrines of the Scriptures than that they pursued,--his reason became gradually distasted with the Scriptures themselves,--and he easily adopted the arguments against the Bible contained in his favourite volume of French philosophy. He began to suspect, and, at length, boldly concluded, that the Jehovah of the Hebrews was, indeed, the mere mythological fiction of a rude and barbarous age,--a Deity scarcely more G.o.dlike in his character and attributes than the savage Moloch of the Ammonites. To cla.s.s the garden of primeval innocence, and the forbidden fruit, and the tempting serpent, and the lapse of the first human pair, among the allegories which, he now learned, the ancient nations were wont to adopt in order to embody their conceptions of things otherwise difficult of narration, was a still easier step. The Prophecies, he thought, were evidently attributable to that prolific Oriental faculty which gave birth and authority to the pagan oracles; and the Miracles, as events opposed to general experience, were to be at once discarded from the catalogue of historic facts, by every true philosopher.

Amid these rapid and decided changes of sentiment, Joe sometimes wondered that he felt none of the inward terror and the "stings of conscience," which he had so perpetually been taught to regard as the sure avenging vicegerents of a Deity, in the b.r.e.a.s.t.s of those who dared to doubt revealed truth. That he was tormented by none of these appalling visitings, was another proof to his mind of the fallacy of his rejected teachers. He was conscious that, in his conclusions, whether right or wrong, he was sincere: he was satisfied that his new mental condition was far preferable to the spirit-degrading and wearisome slavery he had so recently shaken off; and he had not, yet, sufficiently probed the depths of his own heart to know that his self-gratulation was also aided by the pride of thinking diversely from the ma.s.s of his fellows. The ghost story at the market, and its accompanying circ.u.mstances, often ran through his memory, and served, not a little, to enforce his persuasion that the ma.s.s of mankind were the dupes of superst.i.tion; and, at the close of every similar train of reflection, he could not refrain from indulging a self-complacent feeling on his having, himself, thrown off what he gradually deemed to be a blind and implicit trust in fables under the delusive guise of Divine inspiration.

Glowing with the conception that he had hitherto been living in a dream of multiform illusions, but had now broken it, Joe resolved to "gird up the loins of his mind" for the laborious and persevering pursuit of solid knowledge; and said within himself,--"I will henceforth converse with experience, and not with imagination: I will cleave to fact and not to phantasy." The weekly journies to Gainsborough with his aged mistress, which were uninterruptedly kept up from their commencement, afforded him what he conceived to be ample means for carrying this resolve into successful practice. And so, in some measure, it proved; for, by an exchange of volumes with the travelling bookseller, and the casual a.s.sistance of a few shillings from his indulgent G.o.dmother, he reaped an unremitting supply for his intellectual appet.i.te,--a faculty which rapidly "grew with what it fed on." He eagerly devoured whatever came within his reach in the shape of history or chronicle;--he sought industriously to acquire the rudiments of real science;--and strove to sharpen and fortify his reason by the perusal of ancient tomes of logic and philosophy. For records of travel he craved with an incontrollable pa.s.sion: a feeling which was, in reality, but a revivification of the ardour awakened in his boyish mind by the adventures of the shipwrecked Crusoe. But the fervid desire he once cherished, to penetrate vast deserts and visit unknown realms, was now trans.m.u.ted, by the influence of his more sober a.s.sociations and habits of reflection, into a prevalent wish to see the world of men; and the prospect of a new and wider field of observation to be entered upon at the close of his humble servitude began thenceforth to pervade his daily musings, and, eventually, to take a shape in his purposes.

The secrecy which Joe was compelled to observe on religious subjects was a restraint through which he would gladly have broken; but there was not one to whom he could communicate his sceptical views without fear of an explosion of alarm. Observance of caution being repulsive to his feelings, it was, therefore, natural that his real sentiments should occasionally escape. Only, however, when the gross superst.i.tions of his daily a.s.sociates excited very strong disgust within him, did Joe utterly forget his rules of caution. His fellow-apprentices were in little danger of imbibing heretical opinions, from the fact of their understandings being too uninformed to apprehend the real drift of his thinkings when expressed. But Dame Deborah pondered on some of these hasty expressions of opinion, until her aged heart often ached with the suspicion that all was not right in the new religious state of her foster-son. Yet, when she marked the tenour of his daily conduct,--his inviolable regard for truth,--his steady rebuke of every thing coa.r.s.e and unfeeling,--when she listened to the language in which his conceptions, even on ordinary subjects, were uttered,--and when she contrasted his manly cheerfulness with his former gloom and despondency, a confidence arose that dispelled her temporary doubts of the correctness of his heart, and her bosom glowed with pride at the remembrance that she had adopted him for her own.

During the concluding five years of his apprenticeship, Joe had piled together in his mind, though after no prescribed rule, much knowledge of a multifarious character. The acquirement of one of the n.o.ble languages of antiquity was his severest una.s.sisted struggle during this probationary course; but it was a strife from which he reaped the richest after-pleasures. The facts he gleaned from history were stored up faithfully in his memory, not merely as chronological items, but as texts for fertile and profitable reflection; while he a.s.siduously strove to catch the rays of such new truths as were perceptible in his more limited reading of ethics, and to evince their spirit in his thoughts and actions. Thus, without written pattern or oral instructor, the orphan apprentice endeavoured, by the selection of such materials as lay within his grasp, to build up, within himself, a mental fabric of seemly architecture. But, to cut short observations that are already too protracted,--Joe, with all his efforts after mental discipline, was, at twenty-one, what all the lonely self-educated must be at that age, often the slave of his own hypothesis when he believed himself to be following the most legitimate deductions from an authenticated fact,--oftener a visionary than a true philosopher.

On the evening preceding the day of Joe's freedom, the good old Deborah, sitting at her own door, presented a picture almost identical with the sketch attempted at the opening of this brief recital. Except the deeper furrows on her face, there was no token that age had strengthened its empire over her. The fine old woman sat as erect in her arm-chair as she had sat there sixteen years before. Her eyes also beamed with the same wakefulness and kindliness on her neighbours, as they pa.s.sed by, from their labour, and tendered her a respectful recognition,--for she was at peace with all, and beloved by all; and while the light vapour curled and wreathed, as it floated slowly upward from her pipe, and then melted, above her head, into the invisibility of s.p.a.ce, it seemed a type of the serene and healthful course she had trod in her uprightness, that was, in due time, to receive its quiet change into the unseen but felicitous future. The solicitude she had, for seventeen years, increasingly felt respecting the welfare of her foster-son,--now the youth was within a few hours of being at age,--filled her heart so completely, that she could do nothing as she sat in her customary seat, that evening, but con over the probable consequences of Joe's emanc.i.p.ation from the thraldom of apprenticeship, which was to take place the following noon.

"Well, I'm truly thankful," soliloquised the peaceful septuagenarian, puffing away the clouds from her pipe with growing energy, and now and then ending her sentences in an audible tone, through the strength of earnestness,--"that the Lord moved my heart to take care of this poor motherless and faytherless bairn. It's Him, I'm sensible, that inclines us to do any good,--for there's little that's good in us by natur'. I've no reason to repent what I did; for though the dear lad has a few whirligig notions, yet I'm sure there's a vast deal o' good in him. He doesn't like church over well,--but then the parson grows old and stupid, like me; and it's not likely that a young fellow that's grown so very book-larnt as our Joe, should be fond o' spending his time in listening to an old toothless parson's dull drawling. Neighbour Toby Lackpenny says that the lad's ower nat'ral; and not abstrac' enough, in his way o' thinking; but, for my part, I think he's far ower abstrac'

already! At least, I hope he'll grow wiser, in a few years, than to say that the dead never appear to the living. He may talk in that way to green geese like himself, but not to me. Didn't I see my own dear Barachiah, for three nights together, stand in the moonlight, at the foot of my bed, while I was weeping sore for the loss of him?--The Lord forgive me, that I should have grieved so sinfully as to have disturbed his rest! But that's past and gone, and many a deep trouble besides, thank Heaven above! And now, here's this lad. I wished, often, that I had one o' my own;--but it was not G.o.d's will so to bless my poor Barachiah and me,--and how could I have loved a child of my own better than I do love this poor bairn? But I was thinking about what I must do for him before he leaves me,--for he's long talked o' seeing the world when he was out of his time;--and, I make no doubt, he'll want to be off to-morrow, as soon as noontide makes him free. I must say a few words to him about it, to-night,--and yet, I feel so chicken-hearted about his going, that I hardly know how to speak to him."

The good dame's irregular soliloquy was put an end to by the voices of her younger apprentices, who were drawing homewards for the night. Her foster-son soon afterwards made his appearance,--book in hand, as usual, at the end of his evening's walk at the conclusion of labour. The supper-table was spread,--the meal ended,--and Joe and the aged dame were speedily left the sole occupants of the little kitchen. Joe had retaken up his book, and had been buried for more than half-an-hour in deep attention to its contents,--the hour was growing late;--and Dame Deborah, after many inward struggles, began, in a very tremulous tone, to address her foster-child on the most important theme in her recent soliloquy.

"Joe," said she, "I was thinking, since you will be of age, and a freeman, to-morrow----" and there her emotion compelled her to hesitate; but although Joe had laid down his book to attend to his aged protectress, he felt too much agitated to take up the observation where the dame had left it.

"I reckon you are in the same mind about leaving me, Joe," resumed the aged woman, trembling with extreme feeling, and uttering the sentence with a cadence that sounded like the key-note of desolation;--"but I wish you to say what you are intending to do when I give you your indentures, to-morrow at noon."

"My kind mother,--for a true mother you have been to me," replied the youth, forcibly subduing his feelings, and addressing Dame Deborah with a degree of animation and a fervency of look she had seldom witnessed in him,--"it is high time I became acquainted with the world. Believe me,--I do not desire to leave you through ingrat.i.tude for your unremitted kindness to a poor orphan,--but I feel I am fitted for other scenes than these. More than all, man is the great book I wish to read; and the few humble pages of his history which lie around me here I have turned over, till I am weary of the writing. I shall be useless to you if I remain, for I shall never be content, or at rest. I go from you, for a season; but never, never, dear mother, shall I cease to think of you!"

Joe bowed his head, and covered his face with his hands, in deep emotion; and the dame, moved utterly beyond self-possession, arose with trembling haste, and clasping her foster-child in her aged arms, kissed his fair forehead, while the unwonted tears trickled down her furrowed cheeks.

"My dear bairn! my pratty bairn! my n.o.ble bairn!" exclaimed she with a bounding heart, as she stood over him in affectionate admiration.

Joe wept, in spite of his efforts to master tears,--but, at length, recovered sufficient self-possession to lead his aged protectress back to her chair, and to recommence the conversation.

"You will consent, then, I hope, to let me go, kind mother," he said, still holding her hand.

"The Lord's will be done, bairn!" replied Deborah, in a tone of calm and natural piety. "Yes," added she, with resumed cheerfulness, and in her customary firm under-tone,--"thou shal' go, Joey, lad! and thy pocket shall not be empty, nayther!"

"Nay, dear mother," answered the high-minded lad,--"I have already burdened you too heavily, and I will never consent to rob you of the refuge of your old age:--remember, I have hands and health, and can work for my own support."

"G.o.d forbid thou should'st be idle!" answered the dame;--"for idleness leads to sin and crime, while honest labour needs never be ashamed. But a few guineas in thy pocket will do thee no harm, an' thou husbands 'em well. More than that, 'There's no knowing what a man may have to meet when he leaves home,' thou know'st is an old saying, and thou'lt find it so apt, that thou'lt think on't when thou has left me, mayhap."

A calm and provident conversation ensued, during which Joe agreed to accept a purse of twenty spade-aces from the good old dame, after she had a.s.sured him it would by no means straiten her means either of subsistence or plenty.

"And now, dear Joey," said the kind old woman, "let me persuade thee to throw aside some o' thy whirligig notions. Do not contradict every body thou meets who are so old-fashioned as to believe what their forefathers taught 'em. More than all, Joey," continued Deborah, with some warmth, "I'm shocked at your stubbornness in trying to deny what the Scripter says about foul spirits:--the Lord keep us from them!--and, especially at your daring to threap so stoutly that the dead never come again!"

"Indeed, dame," replied Joe, in a tone of conciliation and respect, "I never denied these things out of stubbornness, but because they are opposed to all experience:--who, and where, is the person, now living, that has really seen a ghost?"

"Who--and where--Joe?" echoed Deborah, with a strange and solemn look.

Joe felt amazed that he had not, before he had asked the last question, called to mind the dame's serious observations in the ferry-boat, five years before, and sat gazing upon the changed countenance of his aged mistress with intense earnestness.

"Joe," continued Deborah, after a deep pause succeeding her emphatic echo of the youth's sceptical question,--"I thought to have kept what I am about to reveal of the dead as a solemn secret, and to have buried it with me, in my grave; but to save thee from foul unbelief about such solemn things, I will reveal it to thee.

"Wedded husband and wife could not live in greater happiness than my dear Barachiah and I," continued the aged woman, in a voice faltering with affection:--"the stroke which took him from me raised a murmuring spirit within me, and day after day, as I moved about this dwelling, my rebellious heart dared to say that He who lives on high, and does all things well, had stricken me in wrath that I deserved not. My neighbours would often attempt to soothe me; and some of them treated my sorrow with lightness, and said, I would soon forget my dead husband, and seek another. But they who uttered this mockery little knew me.

Added days and nights only served to increase my grief; and, at length, I began to watch through the night, until my strength failed, and, as I watched, I prayed, in sinful stubbornness and presumption, that my Maker would either take me away to join the dear being that I loved, or bring him once more to me. It was done unto me according to my wicked prayer;--for, one midnight, about ten months after my dear Barachiah's death, as I sat up in bed, with the burning desire in my heart to see my husband once more, and giving full vent to my rebelliousness by the utterance of words which I remember with horror,--behold! he whom I had lost stood at the foot of my bed, but with such a piercing look of reproof as I never saw him wear when alive. He wore a garment of lovely light, and I could have delighted for ever to gaze on him, had it not been for that severe look which ran through my heart, and told me I had done wrong. I sank away, senseless. When I came to myself, and the vision was gone, I vowed that I would never pray more as I had done that night. But, my will was perverse; and, on the next night, I was tempted again to desire, and then to pray, that I might, yet once more, see my departed husband. I was punished as before;--but such was my wickedness, or my weakness, I cannot tell which, that I prayed yet a third time, as presumptuously as ever, and was visited by another and still more reproving apparition of him G.o.d gave to me, and whom He had taken away. The next morning I was unable to attend to my daily cares, and was compelled to send for a physician. I took medicines, but I think they helped less to heal me, than did the kind counsel of the aged man who administered them, and who is now in his grave. I prayed no more the prayer of the presumptuous, but asked for resignation, till He who has promised to be a husband to the widow, filled my bosom therewith."

Deborah ceased, as it seemed, disabled by the fullness of her heart, from prolonging her narrative. Joe had not only listened to her revelation with the profoundest attention, but felt an irresistible awe under the recital. Deborah had never risen so much above her ordinary self, in his eyes, as while she was thus unbosoming a secret she had kept for years. Her att.i.tude, and the expression of her features, her tone of voice, and the very words in which she conveyed her solemn story, indicated an unusual frame of mind, and formed a combined and undeniable proof that the utterer of such unearthly news was as fully persuaded, as of her own existence, that she was delivering truths.

Joe's strong affection for his aged protectress, and his reverence for her sterling uprightness, contributed to fix his mind more absorbingly on what he heard. The relation of the apparition of Barachiah Thrumpkinson, although authenticated solely by this solemn averment of his aged relict, thus made a stronger impression on the faith of the youthful listener than any former narrative of the supernatural, written or oral. The united reasonings of five years seemed to be shaken to atoms; and Joe remained answerless, with his eyes fixed on the floor.

Nor had his reasoning faculty re-a.s.serted its dominion, ere the aged dame rose, and looking parentally upon him, while she uttered her usual evening farewell, "Good night, bairn!" took the way to her rustic couch.

Joe returned the salutation with a faltering voice, and hasted, likewise, to seek his place of repose; but sleep was long ere it visited his eyes, even when he had overcome, in some degree, the strange over-awed feeling which had crept over him while listening to Deborah's story. Amid the solemn stillness of the night, Memory ran through her beaten paths, and Imagination arose, and mingled therewith the scenes of the future. The great event of to-morrow,--the greatest, hitherto, in the life of the humble shoemaker's apprentice,--soon dissipated all other excitements. Would he be happier when he was free, and had entered the world, as a personal observer, instead of learning its varied character from books? Something whispered a doubt. But would he not be wiser? Yes; that, he thought, was certain. He would be able, by the practice of close observation, to compare men with each other: he would have the opportunity of trying, as upon a touch-stone, the truth or fallacy of the peculiar hypotheses he had framed: he would learn to read the human heart. And then he thought of the probability, nay, certainty, of his finding some kindred mind, but farther advanced in great truths, that would be able to set him right where he was wrong; who would teach him the true secret of perfecting his moral nature, and would lead him on to the acquirement of intellectual stores, of the very existence of which, it might be that he had scarcely a faint conception,--thoughts that enfevered him with pleasurable antic.i.p.ation.

Then, reverting to the past, he reminded himself of his orphan condition, of the grat.i.tude he owed his affectionate foster-mother, and of the kind and parental a.s.sistance she had offered him, although he was about to desert her. Often he felt the melting mood come over him so conqueringly, that he was all but resolved to tell the aged dame, in the morning, that he would remain with her, and try to comfort her old age.

And then he thought of the many sensible lessons she had given for his future conduct in the world,--till, wearied out with the variety of his thoughts, and physically, as well as mentally exhausted, he sunk to slumber.

Joe awoke early, after a dreamless and refreshing sleep, and again his mind laboured with its difficulties about Deborah's relation of the apparition; but its labour was vain. The more he reasoned the greater were his difficulties. The healthful effect of these baffled and perplexed thinkings upon Joe's intellect was, the deterring of its powers from precipitant and immature conclusions,--the throwing of its energies back upon fresh and deeper inquiry,--and the in-fixing of a humiliating consciousness that, after all his struggles in pursuit of knowledge, he scarcely knew any thing yet as he ought to know it. Thus, his conscious ignorance for the present was really beneficial to him; and when the voice of his affectionate mistress was heard summoning him to breakfast, he stept down the ladder, shaking his head at himself for a conceited puppy, and applying homeward to his own case the significant rebuke--

"There are more things in heaven and earth, _Joe_, Than are dreamt of in _your_ philosophy."

Labour, the honest dame declared, should not be thought of, in her house, the day that Joe was of age,--according to her reckoning by guess,--and free. And she bustled about, as old as she was, to place her best earthen jugs, filled with mead and ale, in goodly array, on the white and well-scoured table, that every visiter might drink the young freeman's health; and she hasted to prepare a large plumb-pudding, and other homely eates, for dinner,--all the while holding up her head, and striving to look as blythe and merry as if she had been in her teens.

At length, the hour of parting came; and when Joe rose and took up his hat,--and his fellow-apprentices that were,--but a few hours before,--took each a bundle to accompany him a few miles on the way,--Dame Deborah's aged frame shook violently, and the tears streamed, unchecked, down her time-worn face.

"G.o.d speed thee, my dear bairn!" she cried,--"and help thee to take heed of thy ways, that no harm may befall thee!"

Joe felt completely unmanned, and mingled his tears with those of his beloved and revered benefactress, while he bent to receive her parting benediction.

The orphan saw his foster-mother no more alive. When, three years afterwards, he again entered that little village of Haxey, it was to attend the interment of Dame Deborah in the same churchyard to which she had conducted him to witness the burial of his mother. And what an altered man was Joe!

A residence in the manufacturing districts had unveiled to him a world of misery--contention--compet.i.tion--avarice--oppression--and suffering--and famine--that he had never supposed to exist! As for his religious opinions they changed, and changed again,--amidst varnished, high-sounding professors of sanct.i.ty, on the one hand,--and starving thousands, who in the pangs of despair charged G.o.d with the authorship of their wretchedness, on the other. Had Joe been asked, ten years afterwards, what were _now_ his religious sentiments, he would have answered:--"I am wearied with talking about creeds, and I am trying,--by relieving misery as much as I can, and diffusing all the happiness I can,--to show that I believe all men to be my brethren: I think _that_ is the best religion."

TOBY LACKPENNY THE PHILOSOPHICAL:

A DEVOTEE OF THE MARVELLOUS.

Among the most remarkable events which took place in Haxey, towards the close of the last century, was the settlement, in that ancient village, of curious Toby Lackpenny, the philosophical tailor. Toby's coat was usually out at the elbows, but he had long held, throughout the whole Isle of Axholme, a high reputation as a man of deep and singular learning. His "library" was the theme of marvel unceasing to his plain and unsophisticated customers; and though it consisted but of forty or fifty ragged volumes, it const.i.tuted a wealth that the philosophical Toby, himself, priced above rubies. To this treasury of wisdom he, nightly, resorted, with ever-fresh delight, as regularly as his manual labour closed; and many an ecstatic hour did he live over his books in the sweet stillness and solitude of early morning. There were tractates on the whole circle of science, in his bibliographical collection, Toby a.s.serted; for, like all other great philosophers, he aspired to be an encyclopedist in knowledge: but, up to the time at which we are commencing this brief record of Toby's history, it was simply, by his mastery of the erudite pages of Nicholas Culpepper,--and of a very ancient volume comprising treatises on Astrology, Geomancy, Palmistry, and other kindred occult studies,--that Toby had won for himself, throughout the length and breadth of Axholmian land, so high a character for wisdom. None could doubt the profundity of Toby's acquirements; for whoever took a wild flower to his door was sure to be told its name,--its healing virtues,--and the names of its presiding influences, the planets and zodiacal constellations,--those celestial potencies from which, he a.s.sured the visiter, every herb and flower derived their medicinal virtues. And, oh! the decoctions, and the salves, and the ointments, and the plasters, and the poultices, and the liniments, and the electuaries, and the simples, and the compounds, that were made by the old women of Haxey, and all Axholme, by Toby Lackpenny's oracular direction! And then the exultant looks and honied words with which some would return thanks to Toby, and a.s.sure him all their tooth-ache, or head-ache, or elbow-ache, had vanished, like magic, by their diligent attention to his prescription; and then the reach and shrewdness he displayed in answering such as complained that his advice had not been of the service they had apprehended, namely, that they had not plucked the flower in the hour when its own planet presided,--or they had not boiled it before the Moon rose,--and she was in opposition to Jupiter, the lord of the plant wormwood,--or some other convincing reason why the device had not succeeded.

Toby's advancement in the "astral science," also brought him an increasing number of customers,--though the naked condition of his elbows told the fact that this growing knowledge was somewhat profitless in a substantial sense. Nevertheless, every successive day strengthened his confidence that he would soon be "even with Booker, or Lilly, or Gadbury, or any of 'em that his grandfather used to talk about;"--for he had also been eager, in his day, to be able to prognosticate future events by tracing "the stars in their courses." And, now, as surely as the evening returned, Toby might be seen at his own door, seated on a low stool, drawing astrological diagrams on a fragment of slate, and placing the symbols of the planets and signs of the zodiac in due position in the "table of houses."

The vagueness which Toby found to be so characteristic of what astrologers call the "rules of judgment" often brought the zealous student to a pause, as to the real utility of his pursuit; but the extreme credulousness of his const.i.tution usually urged him to put an end to the dubious reasonings that often rose within him. Now and then, a sharp stroke from the village parson,--levelled, in full canonicals, from the pulpit of a Sunday forenoon,--with the marksman's stern eye fixed, meanwhile, on poor Toby,--made him stagger a little. It was a guilty act,--the clergyman a.s.serted,--to rend away the natural veil which the Creator had drawn over man's discernment of futurity: it was a controversion of the order of His Providence: it was an attempt to seize upon the Almighty's own attributes, and wield a power that belonged solely to Himself. Such eloquent sentences bothered Toby still more, when the well-intentioned shepherd rounded them by exclaiming, as he beat the

"----drum ecclesiastic With fist instead of a stick,"

that "star-gazers, and wizards, and enchanters, were, each and all, an abomination to the Lord!"