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MAIN-STREET
By Nathaniel Hawthorne
A
respectable-lookinh individual makes his bow, and addresses the public. In
my daily walks along the principal street of my native town, it has often
occurred to me, that, if its growth from infancy upward, and the vicissitude
of characteristic scenes that have passed along this thoroughfare, during
the more than two centuries of its existence, could be presented to the eye
in a shifting panorama, it would be an exceedingly effective method of
illustrating the march of time. Acting on this idea, I have contrived a
certain pictorial exhibition, somewhat in the nature of a puppet-show, by
means of which I propose to call up the multiform and many-colored Past
before the spectator, and show him the ghosts of his forefathers, amid a
succession of historic incidents, with no greater trouble than the turning
of a crank. Be pleased, therefore, my indulgent patrons, to walk into the
show-room, and take your seats before yonder mysterious curtain. The little
wheels and springs of my machinery have been well oiled; a multitude of
puppets are dressed in character, representing all varieties of fashion,
from the Puritan cloak and jerkin to the latest Oak Hall coat; the lamps are
trimmed, and shall brighten into noontide sunshine, or fade away in
moonlight, or muffle their brilliancy in a November cloud, as the nature of
the scene may require; and, in short, the exhibition is just ready to
commence. Unless something should go wrong,—as, for instance, the
misplacing of a picture, whereby the people and events of one century might
be thrust into the middle of another, or the breaking of a wire, which would
bring the course of time to a sudden period,—barring, I say, the
casualties to which such a complicated piece of mechanism is liable, I
flatter myself, ladies and gentlemen, that the performance will elicit your
generous approbation.
Ting-a-ting-ting! goes the bell; the
curtain rises; and we behold—not, indeed, the Main-street—but the tract
of leaf-strewn forest-land, over which its dusty pavement is hereafter to
extend.
You
perceive, at a glance, that this is the ancient and primitive wood,—the
ever-youthful and venerably old,—verdant with new twigs, yet hoary, as it
were, with the snowfall of innumerable years, that have accumulated upon its
intermingled branches. The white man's axe has never smitten a single tree;
his footstep has never crumpled a single one of the withered leaves, which
all the autumns since the flood have been harvesting beneath. Yet, see!
along through the vista of impending boughs, there is already a
faintly-traced path, running nearly east and west, as if a prophecy or
foreboding of the future street had stolen into the heart of the solemn old
wood. Onward goes this hardly perceptible track, now ascending over a
natural swell of land, now subsiding gently into a hollow; traversed here by
a little streamlet, which glitters like a snake through the gleam of
sunshine, and quickly hides itself among the underbrush, in its quest for
the neighboring cove; and impeded there by the massy corpse of a giant of
the forest, which had lived out its incalculable term of life, and been
overthrown by mere old age, and lies buried in the new vegetation that is
born of its decay. What footsteps can have worn this half-seen path? Hark!
Do we not hear them now rustling softly over the leaves? We discern an
Indian woman—a majestic and queenly woman, or else her spectral image does
not represent her truly—for this is the great Squaw Sachem, whose rule,
with that of her sons, extends from Mystic to Agawam. That red chief; who
stalks by her side, is Wappacowet, her second husband, the priest and
magician, whose incantations shall hereafter affright the pale-faced
settlers with grisly phantoms, dancing and shrieking in the woods, at
midnight. But greater would be the affright of the Indian necromancer, if,
mirrored in the pool of water at his feet, he could catch a prophetic
glimpse of the noon-day marvels which the white man is destined to achieve;
if he could see, as in a dream, the stone-front of the stately hall, which
will cast its shadow over this very spot; if he could be aware that the
future edifice will contain a noble Museum, where, among countless
curiosities of earth and sea, a few Indian arrow-heads shall be treasured up
as memorials of a vanished race!
No such forebodings disturb the Squaw
Sachem and Wappacowet. They pass on, beneath the tangled shade, holding high
talk on matters of state and religion, and imagine, doubtless, that their
own system of affairs will endure for ever. Meanwhile, how full of its own
proper life is the scene that lies around them! The gray squirrel runs up
the trees, and rustles among the upper branches. Was not that the leap of a
deer? And there is the whirr of a partridge! Methinks, too, I catch the
cruel and stealthy eve of a wolf, as he draws back into yonder impervious
density of underbrush. So, there, amid the murmur of boughs, go the Indian
queen and the Indian priest; while the gloom of the broad wilderness impends
over them, and its sombre mystery invests them as with something
preternatural; and only momentary streaks of quivering sunlight, once in a
great while, find their way down, and glimmer among the feathers in their
dusky hair. Can it be that the thronged street of a city will ever pass into
this twilight solitude,—over those soft heaps of the decaying
tree-trunks,—and through the swampy places, green with water-moss,—and
penetrate that hopeless entanglement of great trees, which have been
uprooted and tossed together by a whirlwind! It has been a wilderness from
the creation. Must it not be a wilderness for ever?
Here an acidulous-looking gentleman in
blue glasses, with bows of Berlin steel, who has taken a seat at the
extremity of the front row, begins, at this early stage of the exhibition,
to criticise.
"The whole affair is a manifest
catch-penny," observes he, scarcely under his breath. "The trees
look more like weeds in a garden, than a primitive forest; the Squaw Sachem
and Wappacowet are stiff in their pasteboard joints; and the squirrels, the
deer, and the wolf, move with all the grace of a child's wooden monkey,
sliding up and down a stick."
"I am obliged to you, sir, for the
candor of your remarks," replies the showman, with a bow. "Perhaps
they are just. Human art has its limits, and we must now and then ask a
little aid from the spectator's imagination."
"You will get no such aid from
mine," responds the critic. "I make it a point to see things
precisely as they are. But come! go ahead!—the stage is waiting!"
The showman proceeds.
Casting
our eyes again over the scene, we perceive that strangers have found their
way into the solitary place. In more than one spot, among the trees, an
upheaved axe is glittering in the sunshine. Roger Conant, the first settler
in Naumkeag, has built his dwelling, months ago, on the border of the
forest-path; and at this moment he comes eastward through the vista of
woods, with his gun over his shoulder, bringing home the choice portions of
a deer. His stalwart figure, clad in a leathern jerkin and breeches of the
same, strides sturdily onward, with such an air of physical force and
energy, that we might almost expect the very trees to stand aside, and give
him room to pass. And so, indeed, they must; for, humble as is his name in
history, Roger Conant still is of that class of men who do not merely find,
but make, their place in the system of human affairs: a man of thoughtful
strength, he has planted the germ of a city. There stands his habitation,
showing in its rough architecture some features of the Indian wigwam, and
some of the log-cabin, and somewhat, too, of the straw-thatched cottage in
Old England, where this good yeoman had his birth and breeding. The dwelling
is surrounded by a cleared space of a few acres, where Indian corn grows
thrivingly among the stumps of the trees; while the dark forest hems it in,
and seems to gaze silently and solemnly, as if wondering at the breadth of
sunshine which the white man spreads around him. An Indian, half hidden in
the dusky shade, is gazing and wondering too.
Within the door of the cottage, you
discern the wife, with her ruddy English check. She is singing, doubtless, a
psalm-tune, at her household work; or perhaps she sighs at the remembrance
of the cheerful gossip, and all the merry social life, of her native village
beyond the vast and melancholy sea. Yet the next moment she laughs, with
sympathetic glee, at the sports of her little tribe of children, and soon
turns round, with the home-look in her face, as her husband's foot is heard
approaching the rough-hewn threshold. How sweet must it be for those who
have an Eden in their hearts, like Roger Conant and his wife, to find a new
world to project it into, as they have; instead of dwelling among old haunts
of men, where so many household fires have been kindled and burnt out, that
the very glow of happiness has something dreary in it! Not that this pair
are alone in their wild Eden; for here comes Goodwife Massey, the young
spouse of Jeffrey Massey, from her home hard by, with an infant at her
breast. Dame Conant has another of like age; and it shall hereafter be one
of the disputed points of history, which of these two babies was the first
town-born child.
But see! Roger Conant has other
neighbors within view. Peter Palfrey likewise has built himself a house, and
so has Balch and Norman and Woodbury. Their dwellings, indeed,—such is the
ingenious contrivance of this piece of pictorial mechanism,—seem to have
arisen, at various points of the scene, even while we have been looking at
it. The forest-track, trodden more and more by the hob-nailed shoes of these
sturdy and ponderous Englishmen, has now a distinctness which it never could
have acquired from the light tread of a hundred times as many Indian
moccasins. It will be a street, anon. As we observe it now, it goes onward
from one clearing to another, here plunging into a shadowy strip of woods,
there open to the sunshine, but everywhere showing a decided line, along
which human interests have begun to hold their career. Over yonder swampy
spot, two trees have been felled, and laid side by side, to make a causeway.
In another place, the axe has cleared away a confused intricacy of fallen
trees and clustered boughs, which had been tossed together by a hurricane.
So, now, the little children, just beginning to run alone, may trip along
the path, and not often stumble over an impediment, unless they stray from
it to gather wood-berries beneath the trees. And, besides the feet of grown
people and children, there are the cloven hoofs of a small herd of cows, who
seek their subsistence from the native grasses, and help to deepen the track
of the future thoroughfare. Goats also browse along it, and nibble at the
twigs that thrust themselves across the way. Not seldom, in its more
secluded portions, where the black shadow of the forest strives to hide the
trace of human footsteps, stalks a gaunt wolf, on the watch for a kid or a
young calf; or fixes his hungry gaze on the group of children gathering
berries, and can hardly forbear to rush upon them. And the Indians, coming
from their distant wigwams to view the white man's settlement, marvel at the
deep track which he makes, and perhaps are saddened by a flitting
presentiment, that this heavy tread will find its way over all the land; and
that the wild woods, the wild wolf, and the wild Indian, will alike be
trampled beneath it. Even so shall it be. The pavements of the Main-street
must be laid over the red man's grave.
Behold! here is a spectacle which
should be ushered in by the peal of trumpets, if Naumkeag had ever yet heard
that cheery music, and by the roar of cannon, echoing among the woods. A
procession—for, by its dignity, as marking an epoch in the history of the
street, it deserves that name—a procession advances along the pathway. The
good ship Abigail has arrived from England, bringing wares and merchandise,
for the comfort of the inhabitants, and traffic with the Indians; bringing
passengers too, and, more important than all, a Governor for the new
settlement. Roger Conant and Peter Palfrey, with their companions, have been
to the shore to welcome him; and now, with such honor and triumph as their
rude way of life permits, arc escorting the sea-flushed voyagers to their
habitations. At the point where Endicott enters upon the scene, two
venerable trees unite their branches high above his head; thus forming a
triumphal arch of living verdure, beneath which he pauses, with his wife
leaning on his arm, to catch the first impression of their newfound home.
The old settlers gaze not less earnestly at him, than he at the hoary woods
and the rough surface of the clearings. They like his bearded face, under
the shadow of the broad-brimmed and steeple-crowned Puritan hat;-a visage,
resolute, grave, and thoughtful, yet apt to kindle with that glow of a
cheerful spirit, by which men of strong character are enabled to go joyfully
on their proper tasks. His form, too, as you see it, in a doublet and hose
of sad-colored cloth, is of a manly make, fit for toil and hardship, and fit
to wield the heavy sword that hangs from his leathern belt. His aspect is a
better warrant for the ruler's office, than the parchment commission which
he bears, however fortified it may be with the broad seal of the London
council. Peter Palfrey nods to Roger Conant. "The worshipful Court of
Assistants have done wisely," say they between themselves. "They
have chosen for our governor a man out of a thousand." Then they toss
up their hats,—they, and all the uncouth figures of their company, most of
whom are clad in skins, inasmuch as their old kersey and linsey-woolsey
garments have been torn and tattered bv many a long month's wear,—they all
toss up their hats, and salute their new governor and captain with a hearty
English shout of welcome. We seem to hear it with our own ears; so perfectly
is the action represented in this life-like, this almost magic picture!
But have you observed the lady who
leans upon the arm of Endicott?—a rose of beauty from an English garden,
now to be transplanted to a fresher soil. It may be, that, long
years—centuries, indeed—after this fair flower shall have decayed, other
flowers of the same race will appear in the same soil, and gladden other
generations with hereditary beauty. Does not the vision haunt us yet? Has
not Nature kept the mould unbroken, deeming it a pity that the idea should
vanish from mortal sight for ever, after only once assuming earthly
substance? Do we not recognize, in that fair woman's face, the model of
features which still beam, at happy moments, on what was then the woodland
pathway, but has long since grown into a busy street?
"This is too ridiculous!—positively
insufferable!" mutters the same critic who had before expressed his
disapprobation. "Here is a pasteboard figure, such as a child would cut
out of a card, with a pair of very dull scissors; and the fellow modestly
requests us to see in it the prototype of hereditary beauty!"
"But, sir, you have not the proper
point of view," remarks the showman. "You sit altogether too near
to get the best effect of my pictorial exhibition. Pray, oblige me by
removing to this other bench, and, I venture to assure you, the proper light
and shadow will transform the spectacle into quite another thing."
"Pshaw!" replies the critic:
"I want no other light and shade. I have already told you, that it is
my business to see things just as they are."
"I would suggest to the author of
this ingenious exhibition," observes a gentlemanly person, who has
shown signs of being much interested,—"I would suggest, that Anna
Gower, the first wife of Governor Endicott, and who came with him from
England, left no posterity; and that, consequently, we cannot be indebted to
that honorable lady for any specimens of feminine loveliness, now extant
among us."
Having nothing to allege against this
genealogical objection, the showman points again to the scene.
During this little interruption, you
perceive that the Anglo-Saxon energy—as the phrase now goes—has been at
work in the spectacle before us. So many chimneys now send up their smoke,
that it begins to have the aspect of a village street; although every thing
is so inartificial and inceptive, that it seems as if one returning wave of
the wild nature might overwhelm it all. But the one edifice, which gives the
pledge of permanence to this bold enterprise, is seen at the central point
of the picture. There stands the meeting-house, a small structure,
low-roofed, without a spire, and built of rough timber, newly hewn, with the
sap still in the logs, and here and there a strip of bark adhering to them.
A meaner temple was never consecrated to the worship of the Deity. With the
alternative of kneeling beneath the awful vault of the firmament, it is
strange that men should creep into this pent-up nook, and expect God's
presence there. Such, at least, one would imagine, might be the feeling of
these forest-settlers, accustomed, as they had been, to stand under the dim
arches of vast cathedrals, and to offer up their hereditary worship in the
old, ivy-covered churches of rural England, around which lay the bones of
many generations of their forefathers. How could they dispense with the
carved altar-work?—how, with the pictured windows, where the light of
common day was hallowed by being transmitted through the glorified figures
of saints?—how, with the lofty roof, imbued, as it must have been, with
the prayers that had gone upward for centuries?—how, with the rich peal of
the solemn organ, rolling along the aisles, pervading the whole church, and
sweeping the soul away on a flood of audible religion? They needed nothing
of all this. Their house of worship, like their ceremonial, was naked,
simple, and severe. But the zeal of a recovered faith burned like a lamp
within their hearts, enriching every thing around them with its radiance;
making of these new walls, and this narrow compass, its own cathedral; and
being, in itself, that spiritual mystery and experience, of which sacred
architecture, pictured windows, and the organ's grand solemnity, are remote
and imperfect symbols. All was well, so long as their lamps were freshly
kindled at the heavenly flame. After a while, however, whether in their time
or their children's, these lamps began to burn more dimly, or with a less
genuine lustre; and then it might be seen, how hard, cold, and confined, was
their system,—how like an iron cage was that which they called Liberty!
Too much of this. Look again at
the picture, and observe how the aforesaid Anglo-Saxon energy is now
trampling along the street, and raising a positive cloud of dust beneath its
sturdy footsteps. For there the carpenters are building a new house, the
frame of which was hewn and fitted in England, of English oak, and sent
hither on shipboard; and here a blacksmith makes huge clang and clatter on
his anvil, shaping out tools and weapons; and yonder a wheelwright, who
boasts himself a London workman, regularly bred to his handicraft, is
fashioning a set of wagon-wheels, the track of which shall soon be visible.
The wild forest is shrinking back; the street has lost the aromatic odor of
the pine-trees, and of the sweet fern that grew beneath them. The tender and
modest wild-flowers, those gentle children of savage nature that grew pale
beneath the ever-brooding shade, have shrunk away and disappeared, like
stars that vanish in the breadth of light. Gardens are fenced in, and
display pumpkin-beds and rows of cabbages and beans; and, though the
governor and the minister both view them with a disapproving eye, plants of
broad-leaved tobacco, which the cultivators are enjoined to use privily, or
not at all. No wolf, for a year past, has been heard to bark, or known to
range among the dwellings, except that single one whose grisly head, with a
plash of blood beneath it, is now affixed to the portal of the
meeting-house. The partridge has ceased to run across the too-frequented
path. Of all the wild life that used to throng here, only the Indians still
come into the settlement, bringing the skins of beaver and otter, bear and
elk, which they sell to Endicott for the wares of England. And there is
little John Massey, the son of Jeffrey Massey and first-born of Naumkeag,
playing beside his father's threshold, a child of six or seven years old.
Which is the better-grown infant,—the town or the boy?
The red men have become aware, that the
street is no longer free to them, save by the sufferance and permission of
the settlers. Often, to impress them with an awe of English power, there is
a muster and training of the town-forces, and a stately march of the
mail-clad band, like this which we now see advancing up the street. There
they come, fifty of them, or more; all with their iron breastplates and
steel-caps well burnished, and glimmering bravely against the sun; their
ponderous muskets on their shoulders, their bandaliers about their waists,
their lighted matches in their hands, and the drum and fife playing cheerily
before them. See! do they not step like martial men? Do they not manœuvre
like soldiers who have seen stricken fields? And well they may; for this
band is composed of precisely such materials as those with which Cromwell is
preparing to beat down the strength of a kingdom; and his famous regiment of
Ironsides might be recruited from just such men. In every thing, at this
period, New England was the essential spirit and flower of that which was
about to become uppermost in the mother-country. Many a bold and wise man
lost the fame which would have accrued to him in English history, by
crossing the Atlantic with our forefathers. Many a valiant captain, who
might have been foremost at Marston Moor or Naseby, exhausted his martial
ardor in the command of a log-built fortress, like that which you observe on
the gently rising ground at the right of the pathway,—its banner
fluttering in the breeze, and the culverins and sakers showing their deadly
muzzles over the rampart.
A multitude of people were now
thronging to New England; some, because the ancient and ponderous frame-work
of Church and State threatened to crumble down upon their heads; others,
because they despaired of such a downfall. Among those who came to Naumkeag
were men of history and legend, whose feet leave a track of brightness along
any pathway which they have trodden. You shall behold their lifelike
images,—their spectres, if you choose so to call them,—passing,
encountering with a familiar nod, stopping to converse together, praying,
bearing weapons, laboring or resting from their labors, in the Main-street.
Here, now, comes Hugh Peters, an earnest, restless man, walking swiftly, as
being impelled by that fiery activity of nature which shall hereafter thrust
him into the conflict of dangerous affairs, make him the chaplain and
counsellor of Cromwell, and finally bring him to a bloody end. He pauses, by
the meetinghouse, to exchange a greeting with Roger Williams, whose face
indicates, methinks, a gentler spirit, kinder and more expansive, than that
of Peters; yet not less active for what he discerns to be the will of God,
or the welfare of mankind. And look! here is a guest for Endicott, coming
forth out of the forest, through which he has been journeying from Boston,
and which, with its rude branches, has caught hold of his attire, and has
wet his feet with its swamps and streams. Still there is something in his
mild and venerable, though not aged presence,—a propriety, an equilibrium
in Governor Winthrop's nature,—that causes the disarray of his costume to
be unnoticed, and gives us the same impression as if he were clad in such
grave and rich attire as we may suppose him to have worn in the Council
Chamber of the colony. Is not this characteristic wonderfully perceptible in
our spectral representative of his person? But what dignitary is this
crossing from the other side to greet the governor? A stately personage, in
a dark velvet cloak, with a hoary beard, and a gold chain across his breast;
he has the authoritative port of one who has filled the highest civic
station in the first of cities. Of all men in the world, eve should Ieast
expect to meet the Lord Mayor of London—as Sir Richard Saltonstall has
been, once and again—in a forest-bordered settlement of the western
wilderness.
Farther down the street, we see Emanuel
Downing, a grave and worthy citizen, with his son George, a stripling who
has a career before him; his shrewd and quick capacity and pliant conscience
shall not only exalt him high, but secure him from a downfall. Here is
another figure, on whose characteristic make and expressive action I will
stake the credit of my pictorial puppet-show. Have you not already detected
a quaint, sly humor in that face,—an eccentricity in the manner,—a
certain indescribable waywardness,—all the marks, in short, of an original
man, unmistakeably impressed, yet kept down by a sense of clerical
restraint? That is Nathaniel Ward, the minister of Ipswich, but better
remembered as the simple cobbler of Agawam. He hammered his sole so
faithfully, and stitched his upper-leather so well, that the shoe is hardly
yet worn out, though thrown aside for some two centuries past. And next,
among these Puritans and Roundheads, we observe the very model of a
Cavalier, with the curling lovelock, the fantastically trimmed beard, the
embroidery, the ornamented rapier, the gilded dagger, and all other
foppishnesses that distinguished the wild gallants who rode headlong to
their overthrow in the cause of King Charles. This is Morton of Merry Mount,
who has come hither to hold a council with Endicott, but will shortly be his
prisoner. Yonder pale, decaying figure of a white-robed woman who glides
slowly along the street, is the Lady Arabella, looking for her own grave in
the virgin soil. That other female form, who seems to be talking—we might
almost say preaching or expounding—in the centre of a group of profoundly
attentive auditors, is Ann Hutchinson. And here comes Vane.
"But, my dear sir,"
interrupts the same gentleman who before questioned the showman's
genealogical accuracy, "allow me to observe, that these historical
personages could not possiblv have met together in the Main-street. They
might, and probably did, all visit our old town, at one time or another, but
not simultaneously; and you have fallen into anachronisms that I positively
shudder to think of!"
"The fellow," adds the
scarcely civil critic, "has learned a bead-roll of historic names, whom
he lugs into his pictorial puppet-show, as he calls it, helter-skelter,
without caring whether they were contemporaries or not,—and sets them all
by the ears together. But was there ever such a fund of impudence! To hear
his running commentary, you would suppose that these miserable slips of
painted pasteboard, with hardly the remotest outlines of the human figure,
had all the character and expression of Michael Angelo's pictures.
Well!—go on, sir!"
"Sir, you break the illusion of
the scene," mildly remonstrates the showman.
"Illusion! What illusion?"
rejoins the critic, with a contemptuous snort. "On the word of a
gentleman, I see nothing illusive in the wretchedly bedaubed sheet of
canvass that forms your back-ground, or in these pasteboard slips that hitch
and jerk along the front. The only illusion, permit me to say, is in the
puppet-showman's tongue,—and that but a wretched one, into the
bargain!"
"We public men," replies the
showman, meekly, "must lay our account, sometimes, to meet an uncandid
severity of criticism. But—merely for your own pleasure, sir—let me
treat you to take another point of view. Sit further back, bv that young
lady, in whose face I have watched the reflection of every changing scene;
only oblige me by sitting there; and, take my word for it, the slips of
pasteboard shall assume spiritual life, and the bedaubed canvass become an
airy and changeable reflex of what it purports to represent."
"I know better," retorts the
critic, settling himself in his seat, with sullen, but self-complacent
immovableness. "And, as for my own pleasure, I shall best consult it by
remaining precisely where I am."
The showman bows, and waves his
hand; and, at the signal, as if time and vicissitude had been awaiting his
permission to move onward, the mimic street becomes alive again.
Years have rolled over our scene, and
converted the forest-track into a dusty thoroughfare, which, being
intersected with lanes and cross-paths, may fairly be designated as the
Main-street. On the ground-sites of many of the log-built sheds, into which
the first settlers crept for shelter, houses of quaint architecture have now
risen. These later edifices are built, as you see, in one generally
accordant style, though with such subordinate variety as keeps the
beholder's curiosity excited, and causes each structure, like its owner's
character, to produce its own peculiar impression. Most of them have one
huge chimney in the centre, with flues so vast that it must have been easy
for the witches to fly out of them, as they were wont to do, when bound on
an aerial visit to the Black Man in the forest. Around this great chimney
the wooden house clusters itself, in a whole community of gable-ends, each
ascending into its own separate peak; the second story, with its
lattice-windows, projecting over the first; and the door, which is perhaps
arched, provided on the outside with an iron hammer, wherewith the visitor's
hand may give a thundering rat-a-tat. The timber frame-work of these houses,
as compared with those of recent date, is like the skeleton of an old giant,
beside the frail bones of a modern man of fash ion. Many of them, by the
vast strength and soundness of their oaken substance, have been presented
through a length of time which would have tried the stability of brick and
stone; so that, in all the progressive decay and continual reconstruction of
the street, down to our own days, we shall still behold these old edifices
occupying their long-accustomed sites. For instance, on the upper corner of
that green lane which shall hereafter be North-street, we see the Curwen
House, newly built, with the carpenters still at work on the roof, nailing
down the last sheaf of shingles. On the lower corner stands another
dwelling,—destined, at some period of its existence, to be the abode of an
unsuccessful alchymist,—which shall likewise survive to our own
generation, and perhaps long outlive it. Thus, through the medium of these
patriarchal edifices, we have now established a sort of kindred and
hereditary acquaintance with the Main-street.
Great as is the transformation produced
by a short term of years, each single day creeps through the Puritan
settlement sluggishly enough. It shall pass before your eyes, condensed into
the space of a few moments. The gray light of early morning is slowly
diffusing itself over the scene; and the bellman, whose office it is to cry
the hour at the street-corners, rings the last peal upon his hand-bell, and
goes wearily homewards, with the owls, the bats, and other creatures of the
night. Lattices are thrust back on their hinges, as if the town were opening
its eves, in the summer morning. Forth stumbles the still drowsy cow-herd,
with his horn; putting which to his lips, it emits a bellowing bray,
impossible to be represented in the picture, but which reaches the
pricked-up ears of every cow in the settlement, and tells her that the dewy
pasture-hour is come. House after house awakes, and sends the smoke up
curling from its chimney, like frosty breath from living nostrils; and as
those white wreaths of smoke, though impregnated with earthy admixtures,
climb skyward, so, from each dwelling, does the morning worship—its
spiritual essence bearing up its human imperfection—find its way to the
heavenly Father's throne.
The breakfast-hour being past, the
inhabitants do not, as usual, go to their fields or workshops, but remain
within doors; or perhaps walk the street, with a grave sobriety, yet a
disengaged and unburthened aspect, that belongs neither to a holiday nor a
Sabbath. And, indeed, this passing day is neither, nor is it a common
week-day, although partaking of all the three. It is the Thursday Lecture;
an institution which New England has long ago relinquished, and almost
forgotten, yet which it would have been better to retain, as bearing
relations to both the spiritual and ordinary life, and bringing each
acquainted with the other. The tokens of its observance, however, which here
meet our eyes, are of rather a questionable cast. It is, in one sense, a day
of public shame; the day on which transgressors, who have made themselves
liable to the minor severities of the Puritan law, receive their reward of
ignominy. At this very moment, the constable has bound an idle fellow to the
whipping-post, and is giving him his deserts with a cat-o'-nine-tails. Ever
since sunrise, Daniel Fairfield has been standing on the steps of the
meeting-house, with a halter about his neck, which he is condemned to wear
visibly throughout his lifetime; Dorothy Talby is chained to a post at the
corner of Prison Lane, with the hot sun blazing on her matronly face, and
all for no other offence than lifting her hand against her husband; while,
through the bars of that great wooden cage, in the centre of the scene, we
discern either a human being or a wild beast, or both in one, whom this
public infamy causes to roar, and gnash his teeth, and shake the strong
oaken bars, as if he would break forth, and tear in pieces the little
children who have been peeping at him. Such are the profitable sights that
serve the good people to while away the earlier part of lecture-day. Betimes
in the forenoon, a traveller—the first traveller that has come hitherward
this morning—rides slowly into the street, on his patient steed. He seems
a clergyman, and, as he draws near, we recognize the minister of Lynn, who
was pre-engaged to lecture here, and has been revolving his discourse, as he
rode through the hoary wilderness. Behold, now, the whole town thronging
into the meeting-house, mostly with such sombre visages, that the sunshine
becomes little better than a shadow, when it falls upon them. There go the
Thirteen Men, grim rulers of a grim community! There goes John Massey, the
first town-born child, now a youth of twenty, whose eye wanders with
peculiar interest towards that buxom damsel who comes up the steps at the
same instant. There hobbles Goody Foster, a sour and bitter old beldam,
looking as if she went to curse, and not to pray, and whom many of her
neighbors suspect of taking an occasional airing on a broomstick. There,
too, slinking shamefacedly in, you observe that same poor do-nothing and
good-for-nothing, whom we saw castigated just now at the whipping-post. Last
of all, there goes the tithingman, lugging in a couple ot small boys, whom
he has caught at play beneath God's blessed sunshine, in a back lane. What
native of Naumkeag, whose recollections go back more than thirty years, does
not still shudder at that dark ogre of his infancy, who perhaps had long
ceased to have an actual existence, but still lived in his childish belief;
in a horrible idea, and in the nurse's threat, as the Tidy Man!
It will be hardly worth our while to
wait two, or it may be three, turnings of' the hour-glass, for the
conclusion of the lecture. Therefore, by my control over light and darkness,
I cause the dusk, and then the starless night, to brood over the street; and
summon forth again the bellman, with his lantern casting a gleam about his
footsteps, to pace wearily from corner to corner, and shout drowsily the
hour to drowsy or dreaming ears. Happy are we, if for nothing else, yet
because we did not live in those days. In truth, when the first novelty and
stir of spirit had subsided,—when the new settlement, between the
forest-border and the sea, had become actually a little town,—its daily
life must have trudged onward with hardly any thing to diversify and enliven
it, while also its rigidity could not fail to cause miserable distortions of
the moral nature. Such a life was sinister to the intellect, and sinister to
the heart; especially when one generation had bequeathed its religious
gloom, and the counterfeit of its religious ardor, to the next; for these
characteristics, as was inevitable, assumed the form both of hypocrisy and
exaggeration, by being inherited from the example and precept of other human
beings, and not from an original and spiritual source. The sons and
grandchildren of the first settlers were a race of lower and narrower souls
than their progenitors had been. The latter were stern, severe, intolerant,
but not superstitious, not even fanatical; and endowed, if any men of that
age were, with a far-seeing worldly sagacity. But it was im possible for the
succeeding race to grow up, in Heaven's freedom, beneath the discipline
which their gloomy energy of character had established; nor, it may be, have
we even yet thrown off all the unfavorable influences which, among many good
ones, were bequeathed to us by our Puritan forefathers. Let us thank God for
having given us such ancestors; and let each successive generation thank
him, not less fervently, for being one step further from them in the march
of ages.
"What is all this?"
cries the critic. "A sermon? If so, it is not in the bill."
"Very true," replies
the showman; "and I ask pardon of the audience."
Look now at the street, and
observe a strange people entering it. Their garments are torn and
disordered, their faces haggard, their figures emaciated; for they have made
their way hither through pathless deserts, suffering hunger and hardship,
with no other shelter than a hollow tree, the lair of a wild beast, or an
Indian wigwam. Nor, in the most inhospitable and dangerous of such
lodging-places, was there half the peril that awaits them in this
thoroughfare of Christian men, with those secure dwellings and warm hearths
on either side of it, and yonder meeting-house as the central object of the
scene. These wanderers have received from Heaven a gift that, in all epochs
of the world, has brought with it the penalties of mortal suffering and
persecution, scorn, enmity, and death itself;—a gift that, thus terrible
to its possessors, has ever been most hateful to all other men, since its
very existence seems to threaten the overthrow of whatever else the toilsome
ages have built up;—the gift of a new idea. You can discern it in them,
illuminating their faces—their whole persons, indeed, however earthly and
cloddish—with a light that inevitably shines through, and makes the
startled community aware that these men are not as they themselves are; not
brethren nor neighbors of their thought. Forthwith, it is as if an
earthquake rumbled through the town, making its vibrations felt at every
hearthstone, and especially causing the spire of the meeting-house to
totter. The Quakers have come! We are in peril! See! they trample upon our
wise and well-established laws in the person of our chief magistrate; for
Governor Endicott is passing, now an aged man, and dignified with long
habits of authority,—and not one of the irreverent vagabonds has moved his
hat! Did you note the ominous frown of the white-bearded Puritan governor,
as he turned himself about, and, in his anger, half uplifted the staff that
has become a needful support to his old age? Here comes old Mr. Norris, our
venerable minister. Will they doff their hats, and pay reverence to him? No:
their hats stick fast to their ungracious heads, as if they grew there;
and—impious varlets that they are, and worse than the heathen
Indians!—they eye our reverend pastor with a peculiar scorn, distrust,
unbelief, and utter denial of his sanctified pretensions, of which he
himself immediately becomes conscious; the more bitterly conscious, as he
never knew nor dreamed of the like before.
But look yonder! Can we believe our
eyes? A Quaker woman, clad in sackcloth, and with ashes on her head, has
mounted the steps of the meeting-house. She addresses the people in a wild,
shrill voice,—wild and shrill it must be, to suit such a figure,—which
makes them tremble and turn pale, although they crowd open-mouthed to hear
her. She is bold against established authority; she denounces the priest and
his steeple-house. Many of her hearers are appalled; some weep; and others
listen with a rapt attention, as if a living truth had now, for the first
time, forced its way through the crust of habit, reached their hearts, and
awakened them to life. This matter must be looked to; else we have brought
our faith across the seas with us in vain; and it had been better that the
old forest were still standing here, waving its tangled boughs, and
murmuring to the sky out of its desolate recesses, instead of this goodly
street, if such blasphemies be spoken in it.
So thought the old Puritans. What was
their mode of action may be partly judged from the spectacles which now pass
before your eyes. Joshua Buffum is standing in the pillory. Cassandra
Southwick is led to prison. And there a woman,—it is Ann Coleman,—naked
from the waist upward, and bound to the tail of a cart, is dragged through
the Main-street at the pace of a brisk walk, while the constable follows
with a whip of knotted cords. A strong-armed fellow is that constable; and
each time that he flourishes his lash in the air, you see a frown wrinkling
and twisting his brow, and, at the same instant, a smile upon his lips. He
loves his business, faithful officer he is, and puts his soul into every
stroke, zealous to fulfil the injunction of Major Hawthorne's warrant, in
the spirit and to the letter. There came down a stroke that has drawn blood!
Ten such stripes are to be given in Salem, ten in Boston, and ten in Dedham;
and, with those thirty stripes of blood upon her, she is to be driven into
the forest. The crimson trail goes wavering along the Main-street; but
Heaven grant, that, as the rain of so many years has wept upon it, time
after time, and washed it all away, so there may have been a dew of mercy,
to cleanse this cruel blood-stain out of the record of the persecutor's
life!
Pass on, thou spectral constable, and
betake thee to shine own place of torment! Meanwhile, by the silent
operation of the mechanism behind the scenes, a considerable space of time
would seem to have lapsed over the street. The older dwellings now begin to
look weather-beaten, through the effect of the many eastern storms that have
moistened their unpainted shingles and clapboards, for not Iess than forty
years. Such is the age we would assign to the town, judging by the aspect of
John Massey, the first town-born child, whom his neighbors now call Goodman
Massey, and whom we see yonder, a grave, almost autumnal-looking man, with
children of his own about him. To the patriarchs of the settlement, no
doubt, the Main-street is still but an affair of yesterday, hardly more
antique, even if destined to be more permanent, than a path shovelled
through the snow. But to the middle-aged and elderly men who came hither in
childhood or early youth, it presents the aspect of a long and
well-established work, on which they have expended the strength and ardor of
their life. And the younger people, native to the street, whose earliest
recollections are of creeping over the paternal threshold, and rolling on
the grassy margin of the track, look at it as one of the perdurable things
of our mortal state,—as old as the hills of the great pasture, or the
headland at the harbor's mouth. Their fathers and grandsires tell them, how,
within a few years past, the forest stood here with but a lonely track
beneath its tangled shade. Vain legend! They cannot make it true and real to
their conceptions. With them, moreover, the Main-street is a street indeed,
worthy to hold its way with the thronged and stately avenues of cities
beyond the sea. The old Puritans tell them of the crowds that hurry along
Cheapside and Fleet-street and the Strand, and of the rush of tumultuous
life at Temple Bar. They describe London Bridge, itself a street, with a row
of houses on each side. They speak of the vast structure of the Tower, and
the solemn grandeur of Westminster Abbey. The children listen, and still
inquire if the streets of London are longer and broader than the one before
their father's door; if the Tower is bigger than the jail in Prison Lane; if
the old Abbey will hold a larger congregation than our meeting-house.
Nothing impresses them, except their own experience.
It seems all a fable, too, that wolves
have ever prowled here; and not less so, that the Squaw Sachem, and the
Sagamore her son, once ruled over this region, and treated as sovereign
potentates with the English settlers, then so few and storm-beaten, now so
powerful. There stand some schoolboys, you observe, in a little group around
a drunken Indian, himself a prince of the Squaw Sachem's lineage. He brought
hither some beaver-skins for sale, and has already swallowed the larger
portion of their price, in deadly draughts of firewater. Is there not a
touch of pathos in that picture? and does it not go far towards telling the
whole story of the vast growth and prosperity of one race, and the fated
decay of another?—the children of the stranger making game of the great
Squaw Sachem's grandson!
But the whole race of red men have not
vanished with that wild princess and her posterity. This march of soldiers
along the street betokens the breaking out of King Philip's war; and these
young men, the flower of Essex, are on their way to defend the villages on
the Connecticut; where, at Bloody Brook, a terrible blow shall be smitten,
and hardly one of that gallant band be left alive. And there, at that
stately mansion, with its three peaks in front, and its two little peaked
towers, one on either side of the door, we see brave Captain Gardner issuing
forth, clad in his embroidered buff-coat, and his plumed cap upon his head.
His trusty sword, in its steel scabbard, strikes clanking on the door-step.
See how the people throng to their doors and windows, as the cavalier rides
past, reining his mottled steed so gallantly, and looking so like the very
soul and emblem of martial achievement,—destined, too, to meet a warrior's
fate, at the desperate assault on the fortress of the Narragansetts!
"The mottled steed looks like a
pig," interrupts the critic, "and Captain Gardner himself like the
devil, though a very tame one, and on a most diminutive scale."
"Sir, sir!" cries the
persecuted showman, losing all patience,—for, indeed, he had particularly
prided himself on these figures of Captain Gardner and his horse,—"I
see that there is no hope of pleasing you. Pray, sir, do me the favor to
take back your money, and withdraw!"
"Not I!" answers the
unconscionable critic. "I am just beginning to get interested in the
matter. Come! turn your crank, and grind out a few more of these
fooleries!"
The showman rubs his brow impulsively,
whisks the little rod with which he points out the notabilities of the
scene,—but, finally, with the inevitable acquiescence of all public
servants, resumes his composure, and goes on.
Pass onward, onward, Time! Build up new
houses here, and tear down thy works of yesterday, that have already the
rusty moss upon them! Summon forth the minister to the abode of the young
maiden, and bid him unite her to the joyful bridegroom! Let the youthful
parents carry their firstborn to the meeting-house, to receive the baptismal
rite! Knock at the door, whence the sable line of the funeral is next to
issue! Provide other successive generations of men, to trade, talk, quarrel,
or walk in friendly intercourse along the street, as their fathers did
before them! Do all thy daily and accustomed business, Father Time, in this
thoroughfare, which thy footsteps, for so many years, have now made dusty!
But here, at last, thou leadest along a procession which, once witnessed,
shall appear no more, and be remembered only as a hideous dream of thine, or
a frenzy of thy old brain.
"Turn your crank, I say,"
bellows the remorseless critic, "and grind it out, whatever it be,
without further preface!"
The showman deems it best to comply.
Then, here comes the worshipful Captain
Curwen, Sheriff of Essex, on horseback, at the head of an armed guard,
escorting a company of condemned prisoners from the jail to their place of
execution on Gallows Hill. The witches! There is no mistaking them! The
witches! As they approach up Prison Lane, and turn into the Main-street, let
us watch their faces, as if we made a part of the pale crowd that presses so
eagerly about them, yet shrinks back with such shuddering dread, leaving an
open passage betwixt a dense throng on either side. Listen to what the
people say.
There is old George Jacobs, known
hereabouts, these sixty years, as a man whom we thought upright in all his
way of life, quiet, blameless, a good husband before his pious wife was
summoned from the evil to come, and a good father to the children whom she
left him. Ah! but when that blessed woman went to heaven, George Jacobs'
heart was empty, his hearth lonely, his life broken up; his children were
married, and betook themselves to habitations of their own; and Satan, in
his wanderings up and down, beheld this forlorn old man, to whom life was a
sameness and a weariness, and found the way to tempt him. So the miserable
sinner was prevailed with to mount into the air, and career among the
clouds; and he is proved to have been present at a witch-meeting as far off
as Falmouth, on the very same night that his next neighbors saw him, with
his rheumatic stoop, going in at his own door. There is John Willard too; an
honest man we thought him, and so shrewd and active in his business, so
practical, so intent on every-day affairs, so constant at his little place
of trade, where he bartered English goods for Indian corn and all kinds of
country produce! How could such a man find time, or what could put it into
his mind, to leave his proper calling, and become a wizard? It is a mystery,
unless the Black Man tempted him with great heaps of gold. See that aged
couple,—a sad sight truly,—John Proctor, and his wife Elizabeth. If
there were two old people in all the County of Essex who seemed to have led
a true Christian life, and to be treading hopefully the little remnant of
their earthly path, it was this very pair. Yet have we heard it sworn, to
the satisfaction of the worshipful Chief Justice Sewall, and all the Court
and Jury, that Proctor and his wife have shown their withered faces at
children's bedsides, mocking, making mouths, and affrighting the poor little
innocents in the night-time. They, or their spectral appearances, have stuck
pins into the Afflicted Ones, and thrown them into deadly fainting-fits with
a touch, or but a look. And, while we supposed the old man to be reading the
Bible to his old wife,—she meanwhile knitting in the chimney-corner,—the
pair of hoary reprobates have whisked up the chimney, both on one
broomstick, and flown away to a witch-communion, far into the depths of the
chill, dark forest. How foolish! Were it only for fear of rheumatic pains in
their old bones, they had better have stayed at home. But away they went;
and the laughter of their decayed, cackling voices has been heard at
midnight, aloft in the air. Now, in the sunny noontide, as they go tottering
to the gallows, it is the devil's turn to laugh.
Behind these two,—who help one
another along, and seem to be comforting and encouraging each other, in a
manner truly pitiful, if it were not a sin to pity the old witch and
wizard,—behind them comes a woman, with a dark, proud face that has been
beautiful, and a figure that is still majestic. Do you know her? It is
Martha Carrier, whom the devil found in a humble cottage, and looked into
her discontented heart, and saw pride there, and tempted her with his
promise that she should be Queen of Hell. And now, with that lofty demeanor,
she is passing to her kingdom, and, by her unquenchable pride, transforms
this escort of shame into a triumphal procession, that shall attend her to
the gates of her infernal palace, and seat her upon the fiery throne. Within
this hour, she shall assume her royal dignity.
Last of the miserable train comes a man
clad in black, of small stature and a dark complexion, with a clerical band
about his neck. Many a time, in the years gone by, that face has been
uplifted heavenward from the pulpit of the East Meeting-house, when the
Reverend Mr. Burroughs seemed to worship God. What!—he? The holy
man!—the learned!—the wise! How has the devil tempted him? His
fellow-criminals, for the most part, are obtuse, uncultivated creatures,
some of them scarcely half-witted by nature, and others greatly decayed in
their intellects through age. They were an easy prey for the destroyer. Not
so with this George Burroughs, as we judge by the inward light which glows
through his dark countenance, and, we might almost say, glorifies his
figure, in spite of the soil and haggardness of long imprisonment,—in
spite of the heavy shadow that must fall on him, while Death is walking by
his side. What bribe could Satan offer, rich enough to tempt and overcome
this man? Alas! it may have been in the very strength of his high and
searching intellect, that the Tempter found the weakness which betrayed him.
He yearned for knowledge; he went groping onward into a world of mystery; at
first, as the witnesses have sworn, he summoned up the ghosts of his two
dead wives, and talked with them of matters beyond the grave; and, when
their responses failed to satisfy the intense and sinful craving of his
spirit, he called on Satan, and was heard. Yet—to look at him—who, that
had not known the proof, could believe him guilty? Who would not say, while
we see him offering comfort to the weak and aged partners of his horrible
crime,—while we hear his ejaculations of prayer, that seem to bubble up
out of the depths of his heart, and fly heavenward, unawares,—while we
behold a radiance brightening on his features as from the other world, which
is but a few steps off,—who would not say, that, over the dusty track of
the Main-street, a Christian saint is now going to a martyr's death? May not
the Arch Fiend have been too subtle for the court and jury, and betrayed
them—laughing in his sleeve the while—into the awful error of pouring
out sanctified blood as an acceptable sacrifice upon God's altar? Ah! no;
for listen to wise Cotton Mather, who, as he sits there on his horse, speaks
comfortably to the perplexed multitude, and tells them that all has been
religiously and justly done, and that Satan's power shall this day receive
its death-blow in New England.
Heaven grant it be so!—the great
scholar must be right! so, lead the poor creatures to their death! Do you
see that group of children and half-grown girls, and, among them, an old,
hag-like Indian woman, Tituba by name? Those are the Afflicted Ones. Behold,
at this very instant, a proof of Satan's power and malice! Mercy Parris, the
minister's daughter, has been smitten by a flash of Martha Carrier's eye,
and falls down in the street, writhing with horrible spasms and foaming at
the mouth, like the possessed ones spoken of in Scripture. Hurry on the
accursed witches to the gallows, ere they do more mischief!—ere they fling
out their withered arms, and scatter pestilence by handfuls among the
crowd!—ere, as their parting legacy, they cast a blight over the land, so
that henceforth it may bear no fruit nor blade of grass, and be fit for
nothing but a sepulchre for their unhallowed carcasses! So, on they go; and
old George Jacobs has stumbled by reason of his infirmity; but Goodman
Proctor and his wife lean on one another, and walk at a reasonably steady
pace, considering their age. Mr. Burroughs seems to administer counsel to
Martha Carrier, whose face and mien, methinks, are milder and humbler than
they were. Among the multitude, meanwhile, there is horror, fear, and
distrust; and friend looks askance at friend, and the husband at his wife,
and the wife at him, and even the mother at her little child; as if, in
every creature that God has made, they suspected a witch, or dreaded an
accuser. Never, never again, whether in this or any other shape, may
Universal Madness riot in the Main-street!
I perceive in your eyes, my indulgent
spectators, the criticism which you are too kind to utter. These scenes, you
think, are all too sombre. So, indeed, they are; but the blame must rest on
the sombre spirit of our forefathers, who wove their web of life with hardly
a single thread of rose-color or gold, and not on me, who have a tropic love
of sunshine, and would gladly gild all the world with it, if I knew where to
find so much. That you may believe me, I will exhibit one of the only class
of scenes, so far as my investigation has taught me, in which our ancestors
were wont to steep their tough old hearts in wine and strong drink, and
indulge an outbreak of grisly jollity.
Here it comes, out of the same house
whence we saw brave Captain Gardner go forth to the wars. What! A coffin,
borne on men's shoulders, and six aged gentlemen as pall-bearers, and a long
train of mourners, with black gloves and black hatbands, and every thing
black, save a white handkerchief in each mourner's hand, to wipe away his
tears withal. Now, my kind patrons, you are angry with me. You were bidden
to a bridal-dance, and find yourselves walking in a funeral procession. Even
so; but look back through all the social customs of New England, in the
first century of her existence, and read all her traits of character; and if
you find one occasion, other than a funeral-feast, where jollity was
sanctioned by universal practice, I will set fire to my puppet-show without
another word. These are the obsequies of old Governor Bradstreet, the
patriarch and survivor of the first settlers, who, having intermarried with
the Widow Gardner, is now resting from his labors, at the great age of
ninety-four. The white-bearded corpse, which was his spirit's earthly
garniture, now lies beneath yonder coffin-lid. Many a cask of ale and cider
is on tap, and many a draught of spiced wine and aquavitæ has been quaffed.
Else why should the bearers stagger, as they tremulously uphold the
coffin?—and the aged pall-bearers, too, as they strive to walk solemnly
beside it?—and wherefore do the mourners tread on one another's
heels?—and why, if we may ask without offence, should the nose of the
Reverend Mr. Noyes, through which he has just been delivering the funeral
discourse, glow like a ruddy coal of fire? Well, well, old friends! Pass on,
with your burthen of mortality, and lay it in the tomb with jolly hearts.
People should be permitted to enjoy themselves in their own fashion; every
man to his taste; but New England must have been a dismal abode for the man
of pleasure, when the only boon-companion was Death!
Under cover of a mist that has settled
over the scene, a few years flit by, and escape our notice. As the
atmosphere becomes transparent, we perceive a decrepit grand-sire, hobbling
along the street. Do you recognize him? We saw him, first as the baby in
Goodwife Massey's arms, when the primeval trees were digging their shadow
over Roger Conant's cabin; we have seen him, as the boy, the youth, the man,
bearing his humble part in all the successive scenes, and forming the
index-figure whereby to note the age of his coeval town. And here he is, old
Goodman Massey, taking his last walk,—often pausing,—often leaning over
his staff,—and calling to mind whose dwelling stood at such and such a
spot, and whose field or garden occupied the site of those more recent
houses. He can render a reason for all the bends and deviations of the
thoroughfare, which, in its flexible and plastic infancy, was made to swerve
aside from a straight line, in order to visit every settler's door. The
Main-street is still youthful; the coeval Man is in his latest age. Soon he
will be gone, a patriarch of fourscore, yet shall retain a sort of infantine
life in our local history, as the first town-born child.
Behold here a change, wrought in the
twinkling of an eye, like an incident in a tale of magic, even while your
observation has been fixed upon the scene. The Main-street has vanished out
of sight. In its stead appears a wintry waste of snow, with the sun just
peeping over it, cold and bright, and tinging the white expanse with the
faintest and most ethereal rose-color. This is the Great Snow of 1717,
famous for the mountain-drifts in which it buried the whole country. It
would seem as if the street, the growth of which we have noted so
attentively,—following it from its first phase, as an Indian track, until
it reached the dignity of side-walks,—were all at once obliterated, and
resolved into a drearier pathlessness than when the forest covered it. The
gigantic swells and billows of the snow have swept over each man's metes and
bounds, and annihilated all the visible distinctions of human property. So
that now, the traces of former times and hitherto accomplished deeds being
done away, mankind should be at liberty to enter on new paths, and guide
themselves by other laws than heretofore; if, indeed, the race be not
extinct, and it be worth our while to go on with the march of life, over the
cold and desolate expanse that lies before us. It may be, however, that
matters are not so desperate as they appear. That vast icicle, glittering so
cheerlessly in the sunshine, must be the spire of the meeting-house,
incrusted with frozen sleet. Those great heaps, too, which we mistook for
drifts, are houses, buried up to their eaves, and with their pealed roofs
rounded by the depth of snow upon them. There, now, comes a gush of smote
from what I judge to be the chimney of the Ship Tavern—and
another—another—and another—from the chimneys of other dwellings,
where fireside comfort, domestic peace, the sports of children, and the
quietude of age, are living yet, in spite of the frozen crust above them.
But it is time to change the scene. Its
dreary monotony shall not test your fortitude like one of our actual New
England winters, which leave so large a blank—so melancholy a
death-spot—in lives so brief that they ought to be all summer-time. Here,
at least, I may claim to be ruler of the sea sons. One turn of the crank
shall melt away the snow from the Main-street, and show the trees in their
full foliage, the rose-bushes in bloom, and a border of green grass along
the side-walk. There! But what! How! The scene will not move. A wire is
broken. The street continues buried beneath the snow, and the fate of
Herculaneum and Pompeii has its parallel in this catastrophe.
Alas! my kind and gentle audience, you
know not the extent of your misfortune. The scenes to come were far better
than the past. The street itself would have been more worthy of pictorial
exhibition; the deeds of its inhabitants, not less so. And how would your
interest have deepened, as, passing out of the cold shadow of antiquity, in
my long and weary course, I should arrive within the limits of man's memory,
and, leading you at last into the sunshine of the present, should give a
reflex of the very life that is flitting past us! Your own beauty, my fair
townswomen, would have beamed upon you, out of my scene. Not a gentleman
that walks the street but should have beheld his own face and figure, his
gait, the peculiar swing of his arm, and the coat that he put on yesterday.
Then, too,—and it is what I chiefly regret,—I had expended a vast deal
of light and brilliancy on a representation of the street in its whole
length, from Buffum's Corner downward, on the night of the grand
illumination for General Taylor's triumph. Lastly, I should have given the
crank one other turn, and have brought out the future, showing you who shall
walk the Main-street tomorrow, and, perchance, whose funeral shall pass
through it!
But these, like most other human
purposes, lie unaccomplished; and I have only further to say, that any lady
or gentleman, who may feel dissatisfied with the evening's entertainment,
shall receive back the admission fee at the door.
"Then give me mine," cries
the critic, stretching out his palm. "I said that your exhibition would
prove a humbug and so it has turned out. So hand over my quarter!"
A
Note on the Text:
-
1st
published in Æsthetic Papers (1849) pp. 145-174.
-
Source:
Æsthetic Papers (1849) pp. 145-174.
-
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