Edward Eggleston

“ Come, Ann Eliza, look at yourself and see if you can sing glory-hallelujah. Hey?"
"Let me go," plead the young woman, in terror.
"Not yet, you angelic creature. Now that I come to think of it, piety suits your style of feature. Ann Eliza, I want to ask you one question before we part, to meet down below, perhaps. If you are so pious, why can't you be honest? Why can't you tell Preacher Goodwin what you left Pennsylvania for? Why the devil don't you let him know beforehand what sort of a horse he's getting when he invests in you? ”

“ His frail frame shook with fear and penitence, as it had before shaken with wrath. "O, God! what a wretch I am!" cried he, hiding his face in his hands.
"Thank God for showing it to you, my young friend," responded the preacher. "What a wonder that your sins did not drive away the Holy Ghost, leaving you with your day of grace sinned away, as good as damned already!" And with this he turned and appealed yet more powerfully to the rest, already excited by the fresh contagion of Kike's penitence, until there were cries and sobs in all parts of the house. ”

“ What was life if he could save even one soul?
"But," said Morton to him one day, "you are wrong, Kike. If you had taken care of yourself you might have lived to save so many more."
"Morton, if your eye were fastened on one man drowning," replied Kike, "and you thought you could save him at the risk of your health, you wouldn't stop to calculate that by avoiding that peril you might live long enough to save many others. When God puts a soul before me I save that one if il costs my life. When I am gone God will find others. It is glorious to work for God, but it is awful. ”

“ For men generalize about women, not from many but from one. And men, being egotists, suffer a woman's love for themselves to hide a multitude of sins. And then Morton took refuge in other people's opinions. Everybody thought that Sister Meacham was just the wife for him. It is pleasant to have the opinion of all the world on your side where your own heart is doubtful.
Sometimes, alas! the ghost of an old love flitted through the mind of Morton Goodwin and gave him a moment of fright. But Patty was one of the things of this world which he had solemnly given up. ”

“ Work, Morton could not. After his noonday dinner he lifted his flint-lock gun from the forked sticks upon the wall where it was laid, and set out to seek for deer,—rather to seek forgetfulness of the anxiety that preyed upon him. Excitement was almost a necessity with him, even at ordinary times; now, it seemed the only remedy for his depression. But instead of forgetting Patty, he forgot everything but Patty, and for the first time in his life he found it impossible to absorb himself in hunting. For when a frontierman loves, he loves with his whole nature. ”

“ All girls weave a tapestry of the future; on Patty's the knight wore buck-skin clothes and a wolf-skin cap, and brought home, not the shields or spoils of the enemy, but saddles of venison and luscious bits of bear-meat to a lady in linsey or cheap cotton who looked out of no balcony but a cabin window, and who smoked her eyes with hanging pots upon a crane in a great fire-place. ”

“ If you have ever beheld a rich sunset from the summit of a lofty mountain, you will remember how the world was transfigured before you in the glory of resplendent light, and how, long after the light had faded from the cloud-drapery, and long after the hills had begun to lose themselves in the abyss of darkness, there lingered a glory in the western horizon—a joyous memory of the splendid pomp of the evening. Even so the glory of Kike's dying made all who saw it feel like those who have witnessed a sublime spectacle, which they may never see again. ”

“ The more Morton meditated upon it, the more guilty did he feel. He had acted from the highest motives. He did not know that Ann Eliza's aunt—the weak-looking Sister Sims—had adroitly intrigued to give his kindness the appearance of courtship. How could he suspect Sister Sims or Ann Eliza of any design? Old ministers know better than to trust implicitly to the goodness and truthfulness of all pious people. There are people, pious in their way, in whose natures intrigue and fraud are so indigenous that they grow all unsuspected by themselves. ”

“ Riding thus through the great forests of beech and maple Ann Eliza had reached Cherry Run, only half a mile from her aunt's house, and the old horse, scenting the liberty and green grass of the pasture ahead of him, had quickened his pace after crossing the "run," when what should she see ahead but a man in wolf-skin cap and long whiskers. She had heard of Pinkey, the highwayman, and surely this must be he. Her heart fluttered, she reined her horse, and the highwayman advanced. ”

“ Oftentimes a man was made to feel, in spite of his own better judgment, that he was a veritable Jonah, slinking from duty, and in imminent peril of a whale in the shape of some providential disaster. Kike, indeed, needed none of these urgings to impel him toward the ministry. He was a man of the prophetic temperament—one of those men whose beliefs take hold of them more strongly than the objects of sense. The future life, as preached by the early Methodists, with all its joys and all its awful torments, became the most substantial of realities to him. ”

“ Captain Lumsden fears she will marry and leave him, and yet it angers him that she refuses to marry. His hatred of Methodists has assumed the intensity of a monomania since he was defeated for the legislature partly by Methodist opposition. All his love of power has turned to bitterest resentment, and every thought that there may be yet the remotest possibility of Patty's marrying Morton afflicts him beyond measure. He cannot fathom the reason for her obstinate rejection of all lovers; he dislikes her growing seriousness and her fondness for the prayer-book. ”

“ It would be hard to analyze the emotions with which Morton had listened to Kike's hot exhortation. In vain he argued with himself that a man need not be a Methodist and "go shouting and crying all over the country," in order to be good. He knew that Kike's life was better than his own, and that he had not force enough to break his habits and associations unless he did so by putting himself into direct antagonism with them. He inwardly condemned himself for his fear of Lumsden, and he inly cursed Kike for telling him the blunt truth about himself. ”

“ Only because we may not always begin, like Knickerbocker, at the foundation of the world, is it that we get courage to break somewhere into the interlaced web of human histories—of loves and marriages, of births and deaths, of hopes and fears, of successes and disappointments, of gettings and havings, and spendings and losings. Yet, break in where we may, there is always just a little behind the beginning, something that needs to be told.
I find it necessary that the reader should understand how from childhood Morton had rather worshiped than loved Patty Lumsden. ”

“ The Captain, as he ate his waffles with country molasses, slurred the whole thing, and wanted to know if he was going to refuse to pay a debt of honor and keep the mare, when he had fairly lost her gambling with Burchard. But Patty inly resolved to show her lover more affection than ever. She would make him feel that her love would be constant when the friendship of others failed. She liked to flatter herself, as other young women have to their cost, that her love would reform her lover. ”

“ But after all his effort at courage, and all his praying for grace to help him to "confess Christ before men," he found the cross exceedingly hard to bear; and when he set his foot upon the threshold of the loom-room, his heart was in his mouth and his face was suffused with guilty blushes. Ah, weak nature! He was not blushing for his sins, but for his repentance!
Patty, seeing his confusion, determined to make him feel how full of forgiveness love was. She saw nobleness in his very shame, and she generously resolved that she would not ask, that she would not allow, a confession. ”

“ So, at last, the impatient Morton mounts the impatient Dolly, and gallops away to preach to the impatient brethren and face the impatient ruffians of Jenkinsville Circuit. Kike is left yet in his quiet harbor to recover. The doctor has taken a strange fancy to the zealous young prophet, and looks forward with sadness to the time when he will leave.
Ah, happiest experience of life, when the flood tide sets back through the veins! You have no longer any pain; you are not well enough to feel any responsibility; you cannot work; there is no obligation resting on you but one—that is rest. ”

“ At the period of life when the animal fights hard for supremacy in the soul of man, destiny often hangs very perilously balanced. It was at that day a question in many cases whether a young man of force would become a rowdy or a class-leader.
When once our hunters had entered the settlement they became more depressed than ever. Morton's eyes searched Captain Lumsden's house and yard in vain for a sight of Patty. Kike looked sternly ahead of him, full of rage that he should have to be reminded of his uncle's existence. ”

“ Morton's offer of marriage was accepted with a readiness that annoyed him. When he rode away to his next appointment, he did not feel so much relieved by having done his duty as he had expected to. He could not get rid of a thought that the high-spirited Patty would have resented an offer of marriage under these circumstances, and on such terms as Ann Eliza had accepted. And yet, one must not expect all qualities in one person. What could be finer than Ann Eliza's lustrous piety? ”

“ The news that he was to preach had set the Hissawachee Settlement afire with eager curiosity to hear him. Even Patty declared her intention of going, much to the Captain's regret. The meeting was not to be held at Wheeler's, but in the woods, and she could go for this time without entering the house of her father's foe. She had no other motive than a vague hope of hearing something that would divert her; life had grown so heavy that she craved excitement of any kind. She would take a back seat and hear the famous Methodist for herself. But Patty put on all of her gold and costly apparel. ”

“ From Morton's previous knowledge of the people, he was convinced that in the mob were some men more than suspected of belonging to Micajah Harp's gang of thieves. Others were allies of the gang—of that class which hesitates between a lawless disposition and a wholesome fear of the law, but whose protection and assistance is the right foot upon which every form of brigandage stands. Besides these there were the reckless young men who persecuted a camp-meeting from a love of mischief for its own sake; men who were not yet thieves, but from whose ranks the bands of thieves were recruited. ”

“ No religious meeting is ever so delightful as a meeting held in the forest; no forest is so satisfying as a forest of beech; the wide-spreading boughs—drooping when they start from the trunk, but well sustained at the last—stretch out regularly and with a steady horizontalness, the last year's leaves form a carpet like a cushion, while the dense foliage shuts out the sun. ”

“ She was vexed that Morton should stay away from his appointments on this part of his circuit to see anybody die. He might know that it would be a disappointment to her. She satisfied herself, however, by picturing to her own imagination the half-coldness with which she would treat Brother Goodwin when she should meet him. She inly rehearsed the scene. But with most people there is a more secret self, kept secret even from themselves. And in her more secret self, Ann Eliza knew that she would not dare treat Brother Goodwin coolly. ”