Marion Harland

“ Richmond was a Whig city, and the very air seemed oppressed by what we reckoned as a National woe. It is not easy to appreciate in this century that the defeat of a Presidential candidate imported so much to the best men in the country.
“How did you know what had happened, father?” I ventured to ask that night when the silent meal was over. We had moved and spoken as if the beloved dead lay under our roof. I stole out to the long back porch as we arose from table, and stood there, leaning over the railing and listening to the dirge chanted by the river. ”

“ I grew insanely sensitive on the subject of my failing health. When, after walking quickly up the stairs, or climbing the hill from the lower town to our home, a fit of coughing brought the blood to my lips, I stanched it with my handkerchief and kept the incident to myself. I went into a shop, or turned a corner, to avoid meeting any one who would be likely to question me as to my health, or remark upon my pallor. At home, the routine of work knew no break; I attended and presided at charitable and parish meetings, as if nervous prostration were a figment of the hypochondriacal imagination. ”

“ In July, a telegram from Richmond had informed me of my mother’s death. So battered and worn was I that the full import of the tidings did not reach my mind and heart, until my brother Herbert sought in the balsam forests relief from the cares of home and parish, and we talked together of our common loss in the quiet woods fringing the lake. I shall never forget the strange chill that froze my heart during one of these talks, when I bethought myself that I now belonged to the “passing generation.” ”

“ We were a family of mad book-lovers, and the libraries of seminary and college were to my eyes twin Golcondas of illimitable possibilities. Up to now, novel-reading had been a questionable delight in which I hardly dared indulge freely. I was taught to abhor deceit and clandestine practices, and my father had grave scruples as to the wisdom of allowing young people to devour fiction. We might read magazines, as we might have confectionery, in limited supplies. A bound novel would be like a dinner of mince-pie and sweetmeats, breeding mental and moral indigestion. ”

“ To drop business and jesting together—it is very hard to realize that, if Providence permit, one little fortnight will bring such a change into my life. Here, in the home of my girlhood, where all else is unaltered, and I seem to be welded, as it were, into the household chain, I cannot believe that my place is so soon to be vacant. Brain and heart are so full of crowding thoughts and emotions that I marvel how I preserve a composed demeanor. ”

“ The handsome Yankee governess opened the door of a new life for me. Some of the parents complained that she “did not bring the children on as fast as Mr. Tayloe had done.” Me, she inspired. I comprehended, as by a special revelation, that hard study might be a joy, and gain of knowledge rapture. With her I began Vose’s Astronomy, Comstock’s Natural Philosophy, and Lyell’s Elements of Geology, and revelled in them all. Her smile was my present reward, and when she offered to join me in my seemingly aimless rambles in the woods and “old fields,” I felt honored as by a queen’s favor. ”

“ If I had never loved women before, and held in especial and tender regard those of my own country, I must have learned the sweet lesson in the unescorted itineraries from Syracuse, N.Y., to Chicago; from Vermont to Michigan; from Richmond, Va., to Cincinnati. And in all the thousands of miles, and in the intercourse with tens of thousands of people whose faces I had never seen before, I had, in the three lecture seasons in which I took part, not one unkind word—received nothing but kindness, and that continually. ”

“ No human creature was visible until, winding through the grove that hides the house from the highway, we saw the whole family collected about the door. All were in holiday garb; wreaths of goldenrod hung in the windows, and above the porch was tacked a scroll with the word “Welcome” wrought upon it in the same flowers. Yet more amazed were we when, as Doctor Terhune stepped from the carriage, Conrad knelt suddenly and embraced the knees of his employer, with an inarticulate shout of joy, tears raining down his tanned cheeks. ”

“ That evening James Ivey reported for escort duty. Even elderly women seldom travelled alone at that date. About young girls were thrown protective parallels that would widen our college-woman’s mouth with laughter and her eyes with amazement. There were no footpads on the stage-road from Richmond to Powhatan, and had these gentry abounded in the forests running down to the wheel-tracks, stalwart Spotswood and a shot-gun would have kept them at bay. Maid and outrider were the outward sign of unspoken and unwritten conventions rooted in love of womankind. ”

“ He had gained rank as a student in the university of which he was a graduate.
At heart and in grain he was a coarse, cruel tyrant, beloved by none of his pupils, hated by my brother Herbert and myself with an intensity hardly conceivable in children of our tender years. I owe him one evil debt I can never forget. Up to now I had had my little gusts of temper and fleeting grudges against those who angered me. Save for the episode of the doll-whipping recorded in an earlier chapter, I had never cherished—if I had felt—an emotion of vindictiveness or a desire for revenge. ”

“ Willis D., our nearest neighbor, was with my mother, and when the tear-bedraggled procession from the school-room filed into the porch where the two friends were sitting with three other of the villagers, and Virginia Winfree threw herself into her aunt’s arms with a strangled sob of: “Oh, Aunt Betty, he did preach so hard!”—the dry-eyed composure of the Hawes girls was regarded with disfavor.
“Your daughters have so much fortitude!” remarked one, mopping her girl’s eyes with a compassionate handkerchief.
Another, “They show wonderful self-control for their age.” ”

“ On your wedding-day!” was his exclamation. “Even the tie of kindred blood would not have justified the intermeddling of a stranger at that time.”
We made up for the delay of a quarter-century by full and glad recognition of the blood-claim. He was a master in Israel; eloquent in the pulpit; as a writer, strong and convincing; in parish ministrations, as tender as a woman and helpful as a brother. He adorned his profession; as a citizen he fought evil with a lion’s strength, and succored the erring with the wisdom of Paul, the gentleness of John. ”

“ Mea, Effie, Virginia [309] Graves, and myself, wrapped up as for a winter journey, but in as high spirits as if the sun had shone and birds sung blithely in trees that shivered and shrank and streamed under the weight of the bitter rain. Poor Tom—for the nonce, the footman whose duty it was to jump down from his perch at every door before which we signalled Sampson to stop, to receive the enveloped card upon a silver tray, and to scamper up a walk or up a flight of steps, his umbrella held low over the precious consignment—had the worst of it all. ”

“ From the hour of her advent, Baby Alice was her father’s idol. Why, we could not say then. The fact—amusing at times—always patent—of the peculiar tenderness binding together the hearts of the father and the girl-child—remained, and was gradually accepted, without comment, by us all.
It was an unspeakable comfort to be able once more to talk of “the children.” One never divines the depth of sweetness and significance in the term until one has been robbed of the right to use it, through months of missing what has been. ”

“ And grown people should know what they were talking of in asserting that “Virginia made up her mind, the day she was five years old, that she would turn over a new leaf, and be no longer a dunce at her books.” It may be, too, as I now see, that the solemn parental homily (I always dreaded the lecture succeeding a whipping more than the stripes) —it may be, I grant, that something was stirred in my fallow intellect akin to the germination of the “bare grain” under spring showers. ”

“ We had meant to pass the first winter in Paris, but the most beautiful city of the world was unfriendly to my sore and aching lung. After an experiment of six weeks, we broke camp and sped southward. Ten days in the fair Florence I was to learn in after years to love as a second home, repeated the doleful tale of fog, rain, and chill that pierced our bones.
An old Richmond friend, with whom I had had many a jolly frolic in my early girlhood, was now Reverend Doctor Taylor, a resident of Rome. ”

“ For the same dozen young fellows to call at least once a week upon as many young girls; to read, chat, jest, flirt, drive, ride, and walk with them, month after month, and year after year, perhaps choosing one of the dozen as a lifelong partner, and quite as often running off for a season to another county or State, and bringing home a wife, with whom the philosophic coterie speedily got acquainted amiably, widening the circle to take her in, with never a thought of chagrin. ”

“ The longer I live, and the more I see of the things that perish with the using, the more firmly persuaded am I that there is but one reality in life, and that is Religion. Why not make it an every-day business? Since the loving care of the Father is the only thing that may not be taken from us, why do we not look to it for every joy, and cling to it for every comfort?... ”

“ A WHIG RALLY AND MUSTER DAY
The day dawned heavenly fair, and waxed gloriously bright by the time the preparations for the reception of the guests were completed. The dust had been laid by an all-day rain forty-eight hours before. Every blade of grass and the leaves, which rustled joyously overhead, shone as if newly varnished. At ten o’clock all the sitting-space was occupied, three-fourths of the assembly being of the fairer sex. Half an hour later there was not standing-room within the sound of the orators’ voices. A better-dressed, better-mannered crowd never graced a political “occasion.” ”

“ The father, to whom was awarded the title of “The Nestor of the Southern Press,” was a dignified gentleman who had won the esteem of his fellow-citizens by a long life spent under the limelight that beats more fiercely nowhere than upon a political leader who is also an editor. In morals, stainless, in domestic and social life, exemplary and beloved, the elder Ritchie enjoyed, in the evening of his day, a reputation unblurred by the rancor of partisan spite. The policy of his paper was fearless, but never unscrupulous. To the Democratic party, the Enquirer was at once banner and bulwark. ”

“ Hopkins would ever go to the White House. Nevertheless, I always associated that amiable and courtly gentleman with our probable expatriation.
Election Day was ever an event of moment with us children. From the time when I was tall enough to peep over the vine-draped garden-fence—until I was reckoned too big to stand and stare in so public a place, and was allowed to join the seniors who watched the street from behind the blinds and between the sprays of the climbing roses shading the front windows—it was my delight to inspect and pronounce upon the groups that filled the highway all day long. ”

“ THE CLOUDS RETURN AFTER THE RAIN—ABROAD AGAIN—HEALING AND HEALTH—IDYLLIC WINTER IN FLORENCE
What one of Doctor Terhune’s biographers has alluded to as his “splendid vitality,” had been cruelly taxed by his professional labors in his first charge in Brooklyn. With a strong man’s aversion to the acknowledgment of physical weakness, he had fought, with heroic courage and reserve, the inroads of a disease that was steadily sapping his constitution and vigor. None except his physician and myself dreamed of the gnawing pain that was never quiet during his waking hours, and robbed the nights of rest. ”

“ Ritchie ran in, two or three evenings in a week, to read to her for half an hour in the rich, thrilling voice that had held hundreds enchanted in bygone days.
To me she was a revelation of good-will to men. She lectured me sometimes, as a mother might and ought, always in infinite tenderness.
“I cannot have you say that, my child!” she said once, when I broke into a tirade against the hypocrisy and general selfishness of humankind at large, and certain offenders in particular. “Nobody is all-wicked. There is more unconquered evil in some natures than in others. ”

“ This was Christmas snow. We exulted in it as if we had had a hand in the making. Our gallant outrider, albeit a staid youth of three-and-twenty, fell in with our humor. He made feeble fun of his own appearance as each wrinkle in his garments became a drift, and his dark hair was like a horsehair wig such as we had seen in pictures of English [164] barristers. His bay horse was a match to our iron-grays, and the twelve hoofs were ploughing through a level fall of six inches before we espied the tremulous sparks we recognized as village windows. ”

“ I appreciate, most clearly of all, that my baby-brother became from that hour, in some sort, my especial property. The peculiar tenderness that has characterized our feeling for each other, the steadfast affection and perfect confidence in our mutual love that have known no variableness or shadow of turning, for all our united lives, may not have been rooted in the vigil of unutterable horror and unspeakable thankfulness. ”