It was in time of the long drought, when fire ran over Grayface, and a great comet appeared in the sky. Some of the people of Whitefield thought the world was coming to an end. The comet stayed for weeks, visible even at noon-day, stretching its tail from the zenith far toward the western horizon, and at night staring in at windows with its eye of fire. It was the talk of the people, who pondered over it with a helpless wonder. I recall two Whitefield women as they stood, one morning, bare-armed in a doorway, staring at and chattering about it. One says they “might as well stop work” and “take it easy” while they can. The other thinks the better way is to “keep on a stiddy jog until it comes.” They wish they knew “how near it is,” and “what the tail means anyway.”
Betsy comes along with a pail, which she sets down, and then looks up to the comet. The air is dense with smoke from Grayface, and the dry earth is full of cracks. Betsy declares that it is “going on two months since there has been any rain.” Everything is “going to wrack and ruin,” and “if that thing up there should burst, there’ll be an end to Whitefield.”
Then she catches sight of me listening wide-mouthed, and she tells me that I needn’t suppose she is “going home to iron my pink muslin,” for she thinks the tail of the comet “has started, and is coming right down to whisk it off from the line.” I believe her, and distinctly remember the terror that took hold of me as I rushed home and tore the pink muslin from the line, lest it should be whisked off by the comet’s tail.
When the drought broke, a single day’s rain washed all the smoke from the air. Directly, the tail of the comet began to fade, and all of a sudden its fiery eye went out of the sky.
Some of the villagers thought it had “burst,” others that it had “burned out.” Betsy said: “Whatever it was, it was a humbug;” and the wisest man in Whitefield could neither tell whence it came nor whither it went. One thing, however, was certain: Farmer Lathem said that never, since his orchard began to bear, had he gathered such a crop of apples as he did, despite the drought, in the year of the great comet.
MRS. MEEKER.
BY E.H. ARR.
When I read of Roman matrons I always think of Mrs. Meeker. Her features were marked, and her eyes of deepest blue. She wore her hair combed closely down over her ears, so that her forehead seemed to run up in a point high upon her head: Its color was of reddish-brown, and, I am sorry to say, so far as it was seen, it was not her own. It was called a scratch, and Betsy said Mrs. Meeker “would look enough sight better if she would leave it off.” Whether any hair at all grew upon Mrs. Meeker’s head was a great problem with the village children, and nothing could better illustrate the dignity of this woman than the fact that for more than thirty years the whole neighborhood tried in vain to find out.
PARSON MEEKER.
BY E.H. ARR.
Every Sunday he preached two long sermons, each with five heads, and each head itself divided. After the fifthly came an application, with an exhortation at its close. The sermons were called very able, or, more often, “strong discourses.” I used to think this was because Mrs. Meeker had stitched their leaves fast together. Betsy said they were just like Deacon Saunders’s breaking-up plough, “and went tearing right through sin.” The parson, when I knew him, was a little slow of speech and dull of sight. He sometimes lost his place on his page. How afraid I used to be lest, not finding it, he should repeat his heads! He always brought himself up with a jerk, however, and sailed safely through to the application.
When that came, Benny almost always gave me a jog with his elbow or foot. Once he stuck a pin into my arm, which made me jump so that Deacon Saunders, who sat behind, waked up with a loud snort. The deacon was always talking about the sermons being “powerful in doctrine.” When Benny asked Betsy what doctrines were, she told him to “let doctrines alone;” that they were “pizen things, only fit for hardened old sinners.”
There are many delightful articles which must be merely alluded to in passing, as the “Old Salem Shops,” by Eleanor Putnam, so delicate and delicious that, once read, it will ever be a fragrant memory; Louise Stockton’s “Woman in the Restaurant” I want to give you, and Mrs. Barrow’s “Pennikitty People;” a chapter from Miss Baylor’s “On This Side,” and the opening chapters of Miss Phelps’s “Old Maids’ Paradise;” also the description of “Joppa,” by Grace Denio Litchfield, in “Only an Incident.” There are others from which it is not possible to make extracts. Miss Woolson’s admirable “For the Major,” though pathetic, almost tragic, in its underlying feeling, is, at the same time, a story of exquisite humor, from which, nevertheless, not a single sentence could be quoted that would be called “funny.” Her work, and that of Frances Hodgson Burnett, as well as that of Miss Phelps and Mrs. Spofford, shine with a silver thread of humor, worked too intimately into the whole warp and woof to be extracted without injuring both the solid material and the tinsel. To appreciate the point and delicacy of their finest wit, you must read the whole story and grasp the entire character or situation.
Mrs. E.W. Bellamy, a Southern lady, published in last year’s Atlantic Monthly a sketch called “At Bent’s Hotel,” which ought to have a place in this volume; but my publisher says authoritatively that there must be a limit somewhere; so this gem must be included in—a second series!
There is so much truth as well as humor in the following article, that it must be included. It gives in prose the agonies which Saxe told so feelingly in verse:
A FATAL REPUTATION.
BY ISABEL FRANCES BELLOWS.
I am impelled to write this as an awful warning to young men and women who are just entering upon life and its responsibilities. Years ago I thoughtlessly took a false step, which at the time seemed trivial and of little import, but which has since assumed colossal proportions that threaten to overshadow much of the innocent happiness of my otherwise placid existence. What wonder, then, that I try to avert this danger from young and inexperienced minds who in their gay thoughtlessness rush into the very jaws of the disaster, and before they are well aware find they are entrapped for life, as there is no escape for those who have thus brought their doom upon themselves.
I will try and relate how, like the Lady of Shalott, when I first began to gaze upon the world of realities “the curse” came upon me. It was in this wise:
I lived in my youth an almost cloistral life of seclusion and self-absorption, from which I was suddenly shaken by circumstances, and forced to mingle in the busy world; to which, after the first shock, I was not at all averse, but found very interesting, and also—and there was the weight that pulled me down—tolerably amusing. For I met some curious people, and saw and heard some remarkable things; and as I went among my friends I often used to give an account of my observations, until at last I discovered that wherever I went, and under whatever circumstances (except, of course, at the funeral of a member of the family), I was expected to be amusing! I found myself in the same relation to society that the clown bears to the circus-master who has engaged him—he must either be funny or leave the troupe.
Now, I am unfortunate in having no particular accomplishments. I cannot sing either the old songs or the new; neither am I a performer on divers instruments. I can paint a little, but my paintings do not seem to rouse any enthusiasm in the beholder, nor do they add an inspiring strain to conversation. I can, indeed, make gingerbread and six different kinds of pudding, but I hesitate to mention it, because the cook is far in advance of me in all these particulars, not to mention numerous other ways in which she excels. I have thus but one resource in life; and when I give one or two instances of the humiliation and distress of mind to which I have been subjected on its account I am sure I shall win a sympathizing thought even from those who are more favored by nature, and possibly save a few young spirits from the pain of treading in my footsteps.