Sarah Pratt McLean Greene

“ Grandma Bartlett, superannuated as she was, was the most trite of the Wallencampers.
Aunt Sibylla Cradlebow accepted the lifeless phrase with something almost like a smile of disdain in her magnificent eyes.
"Oh, it's like everything else," she whispered. "It's a mixter! It's a mixter!"
Once the door of the little bedroom opened softly, and Emily appeared on the scene.
"He's got most to the end of his rope," she said, dryly, in answer to the inquiring faces lifted to her own. There was an unnatural brightness in Emily's tearless eyes, and her tone was as sprightly as ever. ”

“ Kobbe and Miss Pray had done, I was now a startlingly marked object of ridicule.
Little cared we. That adventure down the slip, ignominious though it was, had put fire into my heart. I entered eagerly into the captain's scheme of hauling and rifling the Millport lobster-traps, in the convenient fog which, as if sent by heaven, hid us for a little space from the land. The blood of ancestral pirates and robbers bounded hilariously once more in my long-easeful, sluggish veins. ”

“ I fancied that I had detected a personally aggressive quality in Madeline's indignant tone.
"I don't see why we should feel that way about Rebecca," I said. "The more one gets acquainted with her, the more lovable and worthy of respect she seems. I knew a great many girls, at school—girls with every advantage of wealth and culture, too, who had not half of Rebecca's grace and refinement, nor a tenth part of her beauty!"
Madeline said nothing, bending to her work with the same bitter compression of the lips.
"It's right you should stand up for her, teacher," said Grandma Keeler, pleasantly. ”

“ I sighed. "What do you think he would tell me about the weather?"
"What we all say: 'The wind's canting in from the west, and you'll see this fog hop.'"
"It is what I say, and shall say forever, in such a case. 'The wind's canting in from the west, and you'll see this fog hop.'"
"You only pretend to be a Basin!"
"God forgive you! No; I don't pretend. I shall never get over it. I shall be one forever and ever, wherever I go, Vesty." ”

“ It was on one of the blackest nights of the season that the fuel, which less grand and poetic souls would doubtless have reserved for another winter's use, was borne in jubilant triumph by the Wallencampers up the sides of this sacred and illustrious steep, and there consumed in a most glorious conflagration. The spectacle was appalling. At intervals in the roaring and crackling of the flames was heard the roar of the near ocean, while the familiar features of the landscape and the faces of the encircling spectators, stood out with unreal and terrible distinctness in the hellish light. ”

“ So it seems that, at the Basin, even one poor and afflicted may have good hope to be sustained!
There was a woman once, beautiful and high, who, spurning me, would have married me for my wealth and name.
But pity is sweet and true. I am not ashamed of pity. Some time—if all things failed her—should I even say, "Vesty, could you marry me, for pity—for pity, Vesty?" For it was the thought of the Basins that compassion was greater than love, in some way the diviner side of love.
Then should I turn on her and say, sly as Captain Leezur—alas! so much slyer: "My lady! ”

“ I walk among the hills. The horizon widens. The air grows thin. I see the solemn streaks of dawn appearing through the gloom. Ah," he murmured, again; "weak and erring though I undoubtedly am, I have a kinship with the living Christ. Yes, even such kinship as human worthlessness may have with infinite perfection. People will say to you about here, Miss Hungerford; 'Oh, never mind Godfrey Cradlebow. He's always being converted, why, he has been converted twenty times already!' very true, ay, and a hundred times, and I trust I shall taste the sweets of conversion many times more before I die. ”

“ Mrs. Kobbe and Miss Pray, leaving me with an encouraging smile, both sat themselves down, and by the simplest means of descent slid safely and swiftly down the incline, amid ringing cheers and acclamation from the wharf.
"Come on, major!" called the captain. "Touch-and-go——"
And I! Where now are my faithful henchmen, the men of mighty stature who do my bidding, the liveried giants who open the door of my carriage? The breeze blew in my face, and the "Eliza Rodgers" waited below, and I heard the rough audience from the wharf shouting that I should be up to that much! ”

“ One of those insects which infest ancient church edifices has been hovering about Captain Keeler's mouth. It has been drawn in. It has disappeared. Such are we, hovering on the vortex of eternity. How calm and undisturbed the old captain's face! how utterly unconscious of the tragedy just enacted! So eternity swallows us and leaves no trace behind, and no ripple marks its surface. How infer—how more than odd the old captain looks, anyway! I say, she ought to have touched up his eyebrows a little, you know, while she was at the nefarious business, Miss Hungerford. ”

“ As I stooped down to detach it, sheltered behind those fine draperies, I gave Vesty such a side glance that a smile and color came over her face in spite of herself.
"Such power of attraction!" said Notely, turning to the lady his laughing eyes, with that unconscious pathos which a lovely woman never failed to discover in them; "even the dust-pans"—he swept the strings of the violin—"even the dust-pans become attached to you." ”

“ I could distinguish Madeline wandering lightly about among the rocks, scraping off mussels with her hoe; and the Modoc, the champion clam-digger of all, spreading her tentacles here and there, and never failing to come up with a bivalve. It was a picturesque scene, viewed from the great rock; and when the tide began to sweep in again, George Olver sent a piercing whistle along shore, to call the stragglers together; clams, children, and all were loaded into the cart, and jostled gayly homeward erased by the fresh sea breezes. ”

“ She wore a heavenly, trustful expression of countenance. Her lips moved as if in prayer.
Aunt Sibylla Cradlebow rose in her place—majestic and weird she looked, like some old Eastern prophetess, a grand forecasting in her shadowy eyes.
"Gether in the sheaves," she began; "the bright sheaves, early ripe and ready for the harvestin'; and begrudge not the Master of His harvestin'. Why, O Lord, Lord, this sheaf, while there be them that stand, late harvest day, bowed and witherin' in the cornfield? Because He reckons not o' time. Glory, glory, to the Lord o' the harvestin'! ”

“ She took my hand; the tenderness in her eyes covered their pity. I felt no sting. "I feel safe when you will come sometimes," she said; "you are so strong—so strong!" She touched my hand admonishingly; it was as though she lifted me.
"I misjudged your husband, Vesty; rather, I did not know him. He is a good lad, this Gurdon."
"Oh, he is!" A dream swept over her face, as dreams will; the mad birds whistling "love" down by the sea-wall, the gay waters flashing—Notely Garrison. ”

“ But, on the whole, I'm very glad I'm not your brother. Shall I tell you Why? Miss Hungerford," the fisherman continued, after a pause, "do you know I've always heard that auburn-haired people come, by right, into possession of the worst tempers. Your hair is brown—dark brown, and mine is red, almost—don't you think so?—and yet my mind is all peace within, and hope, and joy, and
'What is the blooming tincture of the skin,
To peace of mind and purity, within?'
Miss Hungerford, it has been full two minutes, by my watch, since I caught the last beam from your eye. ”

“ So Vesty's heart was broken in her, and to me she came, as to a father, or more as to a friendly, favoring ghost.
"Take me back to the Basin!"
"Yes."
She sat in a kind of patient apathy, numb, her heart faithful with the dead.
"How little Gurd will call for you when he sees you again!" I spoke; but to waken her was to bring such a torrent of tears, choking, she entreated me not.
But, "It is well, I believe," I said to her; "there is life enough! Be sure he does not lack for life. What! do you think we have found the best of it, and all of it, here? I imagine God has enough! ”

“ Anything will do for these grovelling Wallencampers, but just as soon as it comes to me, all the extenuating circumstances of my life—that I was left so early orphaned, sisterless, brotherless, my nearest of kin a wicked, carousing old uncle; taken to see the world here, and to see the world there; homeless, if ever one was homeless; never trained to any correct way of thinking, or settled manner of life, but just to spend my money and aim at enjoying myself—they all amount to nothing in my case. ”

“ Her eyes looked infinitely sorrowful into his; blushes, like pain, dyed her cheeks.
"O Vesty, my pure one!—then tell me that you love me still—love me as you used to do—and I'll go away content, and not come any more. Touch my head as you used to do; kiss me once more, with those words, and——"
The baby's white, sleeping palm pressed hard against the mother's burning cheek.
"Such words must not be any more, Notely. Go away and be the good, powerful man God meant you to be, and I shall love you more than I ever did in my life." ”

“ The ultimatum has been reached, at last, in the possessor of a pretty face and a broken fiddle! and dreams for the restoration of the race are to end in a broken-down hovel by the sea, in darning the Cradlebow's socks, and dressing the clams for dinner, while the bucolic George Olver and the versatile Harvey, and all the rest of the awkward, moon-gazing crew, take turns in sitting on the door-step, and dilating on the weather! ”

“ You were piqued, proud, angry, and so you gave yourself, body and soul, to this mad leap."
"I don't care for my body (sob) or soul (sob) if Notely isn't sick."
"There is One who is above Notely, to punish as well as to pity, Vesty."
"God"—very softly—"oh, yes!" The bewildered, grief-tormented eyes looked faith into mine. "I didn't mean that. I asked Him. I could only find one way. He won't let Notely come to harm, but help him to make the best of himself."
"Your lover is a brave man. He would not have been selfish toward you as this great hulk, Gurdon. He knew you intelligently. ”

“ I had called myself a student of human nature. It seemed to me, now, that in those dingy Wallencamp houses, I stood for the first time, awed and delighted before the real article. Sometimes the men sent out great volumes of smoke from their pipes, in the low rooms, that were not delightful; but as far as they knew, they exerted themselves to the utmost, men and women both, to make their homes pleasant and attractive to me.
Godfrey Cradlebow's place was as small and poor as any. There was one room that served as kitchen, dining-room, and parlor, with a corresponding medley of furniture. ”

“ We recognize that life is not a draught, either of joy or misery, but a sweet, stern task set us, in a failing tenement; and half between smiles and tears we dream how, to that darkening school-house, when the shadows grow heartbroken and weary, some loving Basin, only great because of the faith that was in him, shall come to lead us home. ”

“ Lydia, Godfrey Cradlebow's wife, was tall and slight, with dark hair and eyes—a perfect face, though worn and sad. She invariably wore over her cotton gown, on occasions when she went out, a very fine, very thin old-fashioned mantilla, bordered with a deep black fringe. This pathetic remnant of gentility, borne rudely about by the Wallencamp winds, with Lydia's refined face and melancholy dark eyes, gave her a very interesting and picturesque appearance; though I never thought she wore the mantilla during the winter for effect. ”

“ What will you have? I have growing fame, prosperity, an accomplished society woman for my wife. Was not that what you wished for me?" His words stung.
Vesty had her dim look; she had turned cold; her speech groped pitifully. "But I think I saw—I think I understood a little, after all—because I loved you—what are you doing it for, Notely?"
"Ah, there, indeed!—what for? I have lost my object, you know, Saint Vesta. For fame and frolic and the devil, I suppose—since we are talking face to face with an immortal Basin—and to fill up the time generally." ”

“ These idle fancies of ours soon pass away, Luther, and will look laughable and grotesque enough to us by and by. Life is so full of changes, and people change, oh, so much!"
In spite of the vanity of my soul, I comforted myself with the reflection that Luther would not care long. I did not really believe that he would go to sea. I stood with him a moment in the door of Grandma's kitchen. ”

“ Uncle Benny, dying, slept with a smile on his lips; and little Gurd, homeless, fatherless, laid in this poor habitation or in that, humbly and roughly, slept in beautiful health with a smile on his lips; and we, unwise, watched dolefully.
"You must not stay," said Vesty. "You are not used to lose your rest. I am so used to watching, and—I am not afraid. Lunette said she would come to help me before morning." ”

“ My terror of the Wallencamp horn had waxed daily. I believed that there was nothing in the whole world of inanimate things on which I would not sooner have attempted to sound a funeral dirge. Though capable of some variety of expression, it had never yet been seduced into emitting any sound in the least indicative of the designs struggling in the mind of the blower. The human was paralyzed before it—a mere machine to blow into it and let come what would. ”

“ As for Fluke Rafe, he is a good fellow, but he was always wild as a hawk."
"O Notely! if you would only help such men, as you might, instead of being as wild as a hawk with them!"
"It takes a hawk to catch a hawk, my dear: all the ministers will tell you that."
"Is that what you are doing it for?"
"Well, no; since you are a Basin, and only truth avails, there has been hitherto no deep moral design in my merry orgies at the Neck. But to-night, Vesty, is my grand affair; to be hallowed by the presence of all the Basins: my feast and ball to them, you know—my oldest and best friends. ”

“ I could only murmur, as I turned to enter the Ark; "inspired, delightful soul!"
It was in March that the Wallencamp sun-bonnets came forth, all in a single day, a curious and startling pageant. The Modoc, who had gone bareheaded through the winter, assumed hers as a turban of impressive altitude, while the diminutive Carietta and the infant Sophronia appeared but as vagrant telescopes on insufficient pegs. ”

“ VESTY OF THE BASINS
I THE MEETIN'
Now is it to be rain or a storm of wind at the Basin?
I love that foam out on the sea; those boulders, black and wet along the shore, they are a rest to me; the clouds chase one another; in this dim north country the wind is cool and strong, though it is now midsummer; at sunset you shall see such color!
From a little, low, storm-beaten building comes the sound of a fog-horn. That is the gift of Melchias Tibbitts, deceased, to the Basin school-house. ”

“ I answered, with that unyielding sweetness of demeanor for which I fancied I had ever been distinguished in the family circle.
I began to make my preparations for departure without delay.
Tender remonstrances, studied expostulations, were alike of no avail, and they helped me to pack, finally—those dear good people at home—putting as brave a face as they could upon it, and hoping for the best. My father assured my mother, though with trembling lip and tearful eye, that "God would temper the wind to the shorn lamb." ”

“ As he spoke, Vesty seemed to see again a pale face with a great light upon it, turning without question to its stern duty.
"Notely, Gurdon gave me up, and the baby that he worshipped; though I clung to him, he put us by, because, though it was hard, it was right—it was the only way. I think it is often so between those two, the right and what we want. I think that love, somehow, in this world seems to be putting by—putting by what we want." ”