Marion Harland's Autobiography. Marion Harland
at his leaving.’ She sends much love to her daughter Anna. Father keeps coming in, and from his movements I judge he is waiting for me to finish. You know he is clock-work, so adieu once more. Give my love to the girls, and all at the parsonage. Kiss the children for father. I must now close my letter by commending you to the care and protection of Him who preserves, guides, and directs us in all things. May His choicest blessing rest on you, my dear wife, and on the children of our love! Adieu, my dear wife.
“Your husband,
“Samuel.”
Thus cheerily runs the old-fashioned family epistle. The writer, who never demitted the habit of going to church twice every Sunday, and sometimes thrice, does not comment upon the coincidence that he hears again a sermon from the text used and “improved” by a Virginia divine, two years ago. His mind was full of other things just now. This one of his annual visits to his mother was a glad holiday. The world was going smoothly with him, and the hearty congratulations of townspeople and kindred were a-bubble. His mother was happy in her second marriage. The good deacon was “father” to her son and his wife, and filled the rôle well.
My father’s namesake son, Samuel Horace, was born earlier in the summer.
Although the month was June, the weather must have been cold or damp, for a low wood fire burned upon the hearth one afternoon as I crept into the “chamber” to get a peep at the three-days-old baby, and perchance to have a talk with my mother. The nurse, before leaving the room on an errand, had laid the infant upon a pillow in a rocking-chair (I have it now!) There was no cradle in the house, and one had been ordered from Richmond. My mother was asleep, and, I supposed, had the baby beside her. Stealing noiselessly across the floor, I backed up to the Boston rocker, in childish fashion, put my hands upon the arms of the chair, and raised myself on tiptoe, when the child (aroused, I fancy, by his guardian angel, prescient of the good he would accomplish in the world he had just entered, and compassionate of the remorseful wight whose life would be blighted by the impending deed) stretched out his arms and yawned. I saw the movement under my lifted arm, and dropped flat upon the rug. I must have crouched there for half an hour, a prey to horrible imaginings of what might have been. My mother did not awaken, and the baby went to sleep again. The shock would have been terrific to any child. To a dreamer like myself, the visions that flitted between me and the red embers were as varied as they were fearful. Lucy Bragg’s tragic death had killed her mother and the baby-boy. If I had crushed our new baby, my own sweet mother would have died with him. I saw myself at their funeral, beside the coffin holding them both, and my father shrinking in abhorrence from the murderess. Forecasting long years to come, I pictured a stricken and solitary woman, shunned by innocent people who had never broken the sixth commandment, and cowering beside a brier-grown grave, crying as I had read somewhere, “Would to God I had died when I was born!”
I do not think I shed a tear. Tears were dried up by the voiceless misery. I know I could not sleep that night for hours and hours. I know, too, that I never told the shameful thing—the almost murder—to a living creature until it was ten years old.
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. I look back upon it as a chrism.
Later in the year, another incident that might have been a tragedy, stirred the even flow of domestic life. We had finished prayers and breakfast, and my father was half-way down the avenue on his way to the village when we saw him stop suddenly, retrace his steps hurriedly, enter the yard, and shout to the colored butler who was at the dining-room window. The man ran out and came back shortly, dragging Argus and Rigo into the hall with him, shutting the front door. My father was taking down his gun from the hooks on the wall of the hall, and, without a word, began to load it.
One of the earliest of our nursery lessons was, “Never ask questions of busy people!” My mother set the example of obedience to this precept now by silence while her husband, with set lips and resolute eyes, rammed down a charge of buckshot into the barrel, and, saying, “Keep the children in the house!” ran down the steps and down the avenue at the top of his speed toward the big gate opening upon the village street a hundred yards away.
From the front windows we now saw a crowd of men and boys, tramping down the middle of the highway, firing confusedly and flinging stones at a great yellow dog trotting ahead of them, and snapping right and left as he ran. Before my father reached the gate, the dog had turned sharply to the right down a cross-street skirting our lower grounds. A low fence and a ditch divided the meadow from the thoroughfare. My father kept on our side of the fence, raising his gun to cover the brute, which, as we could now see, was slavering and growling hoarsely. A cry arose from the crowd, and my mother groaned, as the dog, espying the man across the ditch, rushed down one side of it and up the other, to attack the new foe. My father held his hand until the dog was within a few feet of him, then fired with steady aim. The brute rolled over to the bottom of the ditch—dead.
That evening we were allowed to walk down the field to see the slaughtered monster. That was what I named him to myself, and forthwith began a story in several chapters, with my father as the hero, and an astonishing number of beasts of prey as dramatis personæ, that lasted me for many a night thereafter.
The title I had chosen was none too large for the dog as he lay, stark and still, his big head straight with his back, his teeth showing savagely in the open jaws. A trickle of water was dammed into a pool by his huge bulk.
I held my father’s hand and laid my cheek to it in reverence I had not words to express, when my mother said:
“You ran a terrible risk, love! What if your gun had missed fire, or you had not hit him?”
“I had settled all that in my mind. I should have stood my ground and tried to brain him with the butt.”
“As your forefathers did to the British at Bunker Hill!” exulted I, inwardly.
Be sure the sentence was not uttered. The recollection of the inner life, in which I was wont to think out such sayings, has made me more tolerant with so-called priggish children than most of their elders are prone to be.
One paragraph of our next letter has a distinctly modern flavor. By substituting millions for thousands in the estimate of the defalcation, we might date it in this year of our Lord.
“Richmond, April 11th, 1839. “(Saturday night.)
“My dear Wife—The general subject, and, in fact, the only one which at present occupies the minds of the citizens here, is the late discovery of defalcations of my old friend D., first teller of the Bank of Virginia, for the sum, as reports say, of nearly, or quite half a million. He has absconded, but some individuals here have had part of the cash; among the number is the great speculator, W. D. G., who has ruined and also severely injured many persons in this place by borrowing, or getting them to endorse for him. I never have before witnessed so general an excitement here. Mr. G. has been arrested to-day, and taken before the mayor. It is now nine o’clock, and the court is still in session. It is probable he will be sent to the higher court for trial, etc. I expect a good many of our plain country folks will be afraid of Bank of Virginia notes when they hear of the loss. I hope it will make some of them shell out and pay me all that they owe. I should like to find a few thousands waiting for me on my return home. I expect to-morrow to attend the Sabbath-school at the Second Church, conducted by Mr. Reeve. It is said to be the best school in the city. Tell Herbert I have bought a book called Cobwebs to Catch Flies, and I hope it will be the means of catching from him many good lessons. He must learn fast, as I have bought for him Sanford and Merton, with plates, and when he can read he shall have it for his own. May I not hope for a letter from you on Tuesday?—for it seems a long time since we parted.”
Mrs. Bass, the meek widow of a Methodist clergyman, succeeded the eighteen-year-old girl in the conduct of the neighborhood school. It is doubtful if we learned anything worth relating