Books: The Home Mission
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T.S. Arthur >> The Home Mission
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A short time before parting from her, he said--
"Miss Wyman, may I have the pleasure of calling upon you at your
father's house?"
"Oh, yes, sir; I shall be most happy to see you." She spoke with
feeling.
"Then I shall visit you frequently. In your society I promise myself
much happiness."
Anna's eyes fell to the floor, and the colour deepened on her
cheeks. When she looked up, Elliott was gazing steadily in her face,
with an expression of admiration and love.
Her heart was lost. Carpenter, that love of a man, was not thought
of--or, only as one of her rejected lovers.
When Anna laid her head upon her pillow that night, it was not to
sleep. Her mind was too full of pleasant images, central to all of
which was the elegant, accomplished, handsome Mr. Elliott. He had,
she conceived, as good as offered himself, and she, much as she
wished to reject three lovers before she accepted one, felt strongly
inclined to accept him, and so end the matter.
Now, who was Mr. Thomas Elliott? A few words will portray him. Mr.
Elliott was twenty-six; he kept a store in the city; had been in
business for some years, but was not very successful. His habits of
life were not good; his principles had no sound, moral basis. He
was, in fact, just the man to make a silly child like Anna Wyman
wretched for life. But why did he seek for one like her? That is
easily explained. Mr. Wyman was reputed to be pretty well off in the
world, and Mr. Elliott's affairs were in rather a precarious
condition; but he managed to keep so good a face upon the matter,
that none suspected his real condition.
After visiting Anna for a short time, he offered his hand. If it had
not been that her sixteenth birthday was so near, Anna would have
declined the offer, for Thomas Elliott did not grow dearer to her
every day. There were young men whom she liked much better; and if
they had only come forward and presented their claims to favour, she
would have declined the offer. But time was rapidly passing away.
Anna was ambitious of being engaged before she was sixteen, and
married, if possible. Her mother had rejected two offers, and she
was anxious to do as much. Here was a chance for one rejection--but
was she sure of another offer in time? No! There was the difficulty.
For some days she debated the question, and then laid it before her
mother. Mrs. Wyman consulted her husband, who did not much like
Elliott; but the mother felt the necessity of an early marriage, and
overruled all objections. Her advice to Anna was to accept the
offer, and it was accepted, accordingly.
A fond, wayward child of sixteen may chance to marry and do well,
spite of all the drawbacks she will meet; but this is only in case
she happen to marry a man of good sense, warm affections, and great
kindness, who can bear with her as a father bears with a capricious
child; can forgive much and love much. But give the happiness of
such a creature into the keeping of a cold, narrow-minded, selfish,
petulant man, and her cup will soon run over. Bitter, indeed, will
be her lot in life.
Just such a man was Thomas Elliott. He had sought only his own
pleasures, and had owned no law but his own will. For more than ten
years he had been living without other external restraints than
those social laws that all must observe who desire to keep a fair
reputation. He came in when he pleased and went out when he pleased.
He required service from all, and gave it to none--that is, so far
as he needed service, he exacted it from those under him, but was
not in the habit of making personal sacrifices for the sake of
others. Thus, his natural selfishness was confirmed. When he
married, it was with an end to the good he should derive from the
union--not from a generous desire to make another happy in himself.
Anna was young, vivacious, and more than ordinarily intelligent and
pretty. There was much about her that was attractive, and Elliott
really imagined that he loved her; but it was himself that he loved
in her fascinating qualities. These were all to minister to his
pleasure. He never once thought of devoting himself to her
happiness.
On the night of the wedding, which took place soon after Anna's
sixteenth birthday, the bride was in that bewildered state of mind
which destroys all the rational perceptions of the mind. Her whole
soul was in a pleasing tumult, and yet she did not feel happy; and
why? Spite of the solemn promise she had made to love and honour her
husband above all men, she felt that there were others whom she
could have loved and honoured more than him, were they in his place.
But this, reason told her, was folly. They had not presented
themselves, and he had. They could be nothing to her--he must be
every thing. To secure a husband early was the great point, and that
had been gained. This thought, whenever it crossed her mind, would
cause her to look around upon her maiden companions with proud
self-complacency, They were still upon the shores of expectancy. She
had launched her boat upon the sunny sea of matrimony, and was
already moving steadily away under a pleasant breeze.
Alas! young bride, thy hymeneal altar is an altar of sacrifice. Love
is not the deity who is presiding there. Little do they dream who
have led thee, poor lamb! garlanded with flowers, to that altar, how
innocent, how true, how good a heart they were offering up upon its
strange fires. But they will know in time, and thou wilt know when
it is too late.
Two years from the period of their marriage, Elliott and his wife
were seated in a small room moderately well furnished. He was
leaning back in a chair, with arms folded, and his chin resting on
his bosom. His face was contracted into a gloomy scowl. Anna, who
looked pale and troubled, was sewing and touching with her foot a
cradle, in which was a babe. The little one seemed restless. Every
now and then it would start and moan, or cry out. After a time it
awoke and commenced screaming. The mother lifted it from the cradle
and tried to hush it upon her bosom, but the babe still cried on. It
was evidently in pain.
"Confound you! why don't you keep that child quiet?" exclaimed the
husband, impatiently casting at the same time an angry look upon his
wife.
Anna made no reply, but turned half away from him, evidently to
conceal the tears that suddenly started from her eyes, and strove
more earnestly to quiet the child. In this she soon succeeded.
"I believe you let her cry on purpose, whenever I am in the house,
just to annoy me," her husband resumed in an ill-natured tone.
"No, Thomas, you know that I do not," Anna said.
"Say I lie, why don't you?"
"Oh, Thomas, how can you speak so to me?" And his young wife turned
toward him an earnest, tearful look.
"Pah! don't try to melt me with your crying. I never believed in it.
Women can cry at any moment."
There was a convulsive motion of Mrs. Elliott's head as she turned
quickly away, and a choking sound in her throat. She remained
silent, ten minutes passed, when her husband said in a firm voice,
"Anna, I'm going to break up."
Mrs. Elliott glanced around with a startled air.
"It's true, just what I say--your father may think that I'm going to
make a slave of myself to support you, but he's mistaken. He's
refused to help me in my business one single copper, though he's
able enough. And now I've taken my resolution. You can go back to
him as quick as you like."
Before the brutal husband had half finished the sentence, his wife
was on her feet, with a cheek deadly pale, and eyes almost starting
from her head. Thomas Elliott was her husband and the father of her
babe, and as such she had loved him with a far deeper love than he
had deserved. This had caused her to bear with coldness and neglect,
and even positive unkindness without a complaint. Sacredly had she
kept from her mother even a hint of the truth. Thus had she gone on
almost from the first; for only a few months elapsed before she
discovered that her image was dim on her husband's heart.
"You needn't stand there staring at me like one moon-struck"--he
said, with bitter sarcasm and a curl of the lip. "What I say is the
truth. I'm going to give up, and you've got to go home to them that
are more able to support you than I am; and who have a better right,
too, I'm thinking."
There was something so heartless and chilling in the words and
manner of her husband, that Mrs. Elliott made no attempt to reply.
Covering her face with her hands, she sunk back into the chair from
which she had risen, more deeply miserable than she had ever been in
her life. From this state she was aroused by the imperative
question,
"Anna, what do you intend doing?"
"That is for you to say"--was her murmured reply.
"Then, I say, go home to your father, and at once."
Without a word the wife rose from her chair, with her infant in her
arms, and pausing only long enough to put on her shawl and bonnet,
left the house.
Mr. and Mrs. Wyman were sitting alone late on the afternoon of the
same day, thinking about and conversing of their child. Neither of
them felt too well satisfied with the result of her marriage. It
required not even the close observation of a parent's eye, to
discover that she was far from happy.
"I wish she were only single"--Mr. Wyman at length said. "She
married much too young--only eighteen now, and with a cold-hearted
and, I fear, unprincipled and neglectful husband. It is sad to think
of it."
"But I was married as young as she was, Mr. Wyman?"
"Yes; but I flatter myself you made a better choice. Your condition
at eighteen was very different from what hers is now. As I said
before, I only wish she were single, and then I wouldn't care to see
her married for two or three years to come."
"I can't help wishing she had refused Mr. Elliott. If she had done
so, she might have been married to a much better man long before
this. Mr. Carpenter is worth a dozen of him. Oh dear! this marriage
is all a lottery, after all. Few prizes and many blanks. Poor Anna!
she is not happy."
At this moment the door opened, and the child of whom they were
speaking, with her infant in her arms, came hurriedly in. Her face
was deadly pale, her lips tightly compressed, and her eyes widely
distended and fixed.
"Anna!" exclaimed the mother, starting up quickly and springing
toward her.
"My child, what ails you?" was eagerly asked by the father, as he,
too, rose up hastily.
But there was no reply. The heart of the child was too full. She
could not utter the truth. She had been sent back to her parents by
her husband, but her tongue could not declare that! Pride, shame,
wounded affections, combined to hold back her words. Her only reply
was to lay her babe in her mother's arms, and then fling herself
upon the bosom of her father.
All was mystery then, but time soon unveiled the cause of their
daughter's strange and sudden appearance, and her deep anguish. The
truth gradually came out that she had been deserted by her husband;
or, what seemed to Mrs. Wyman more disgraceful still, had been sent
home by him. Bitterly did she execrate him, but it availed nothing.
Her ardent wish had been gratified. Anna was engaged at sixteen, and
married soon after; but at eighteen, alas! she had come home a
deserted wife and mother! And so she remained. Her husband never
afterward came near her. And now, at thirty, with a daughter well
grown, she remains in her father's house, a quiet, thoughtful,
dreamy woman, who sees little in life that is attractive, and who
rarely stirs beyond the threshold of the house that shelters her.
There are those who will recognise this picture.
So much for being engaged at sixteen!
THE DAUGHTER.
IT often happens that a daughter possesses greatly superior
advantages to those enjoyed, in early years, by either her father or
mother. She is not compelled to labour as hard as they were obliged
to labour when young; and she is blessed with the means of education
far beyond what they had. Her associations, too, are of a different
order, all tending to elevate her views of life, to refine her
tastes, and to give her admission into a higher grade of society
than they were fitted to move in.
Unless very watchful of herself and very thoughtful of her parents,
a daughter so situated will be led at times to draw comparisons
between her own cultivated intellect and taste and the want of such
cultivation in her parents, and to think indifferently of them, as
really inferior, because not so well educated and accomplished as
she is. A distrust of their judgment and a disrespect of their
opinions will follow, as a natural consequence, if these thoughts
and feelings be indulged. This result often takes place with
thoughtless, weak-minded girls; and is followed by what is worse, a
disregard to their feelings, wishes, and express commands.
A sensible daughter, who loves her parents, will hardly forget to
whom she is indebted for all the superior advantages she enjoys. She
will also readily perceive that the experience which her parents
have acquired, and their natural strength of mind, give them a real
and great superiority over her, and make their judgment, in all
matters of life, far more to be depended upon than hers could
possibly be. It may be that her mother has never learned to play
upon the piano, has never been to a dancing-school, has never had
any thing beyond the merest rudiments of an education; but she has
good sense, prudence, industry, economy; understands and practises
all the virtues of domestic life; has a clear, discriminating
judgment; has been her husband's faithful friend and adviser for
some twenty or thirty years; and has safely guarded and guided her
children up to mature years. These evidences of a mother's title to
her respect and fullest confidence cannot long be absent from a
daughter's mind, and will prevent her acting in direct opposition to
her judgment.
Thoughtless indeed must be that child who can permit an emotion of
disrespect toward her parents to dwell in her bosom for more than a
single moment!
Respect and love toward parents are absolutely necessary to the
proper formation of the character upon that true basis which will
bring into just order and subordination all the powers of the mind.
Without this order and subordination there can be no true happiness.
A child loves and respects his parents, because from them he derived
his being, and from them receives every blessing and comfort. To
them, and to them alone, does his mind turn as the authors of all
the good gifts he possessed. As a mere child, it is right for him
thus to regard his parents as the authors of his being and the
originators of all his blessings. But as reason gains strength, and
he sees more deeply into the nature and causes of things, which only
takes place as the child approaches the years of maturity, it is
then seen that the parents were only the agents through which life,
and all the blessings accompanying it, came from God, the great
Father of all. If the parents have been loved with a truly filial
love, then the mind has been suitably opened and prepared for love
toward God, and an obedience to his divine laws, without which there
can be no true happiness. When this new and higher truth takes
possession of the child's mind, it in no way diminishes his respect
for his earthly parents, but increases it. He no longer obeys them
because they command obedience, but he regards the truth of their
precepts, and in that truth hears the voice of God speaking to him.
More than ever is he now careful to listen to their wise counsels,
because he perceives in them the authority of reason, which is the
authority of God.
Most young ladies, on attaining the age of responsibility, will
perceive a difference in the manner of their parents. Instead of
opposing them, as heretofore, with authority, they will oppose them
with reason, where opposition is deemed necessary. The mother,
instead of saying, when she disapproves any thing, "No, my child,
you cannot do it;" or, "No you must not go, dear;" will say, "I
would rather not have you do so;" or, "I do not approve of your
going." If you ask her reasons, she will state them, and endeavour
to make you comprehend their force. It is far too often the case,
that the daughter's desire to do what her mother disapproves is so
active, that neither her mother's objections nor reasons are strong
enough to counteract her wishes, and she follows her own
inclinations instead of being guided by her mother's better
judgment. In these instances, she almost always does wrong, and
suffers therefore either bodily or mental pain.
Obedience in childhood is that by which we are led and guided into
right actions. When we become men and women, reason takes the place
of obedience; but, like a young bird just fluttering from its nest,
reason at first has not much strength of wing; and we should
therefore suffer the reason of those who love us, like the
mother-bird, to stoop under and bear us up in our earlier efforts,
lest we fall bruised and wounded to the ground. To whose reason
should a young girl look to strengthen her own, so soon as to her
mother's, guided as it is by love? But it too often happens that,
under the first impulses of conscious freedom, no voice is regarded
but the voice of inclination and passion. The mother may oppose, and
warn, and urge the most serious considerations, but the daughter
turns a deaf ear to all. She thinks that she knows best.
"You are not going to-night, Mary?" said a mother, coming into her
daughter's room, and finding her dressing for a ball. She had been
rather seriously indisposed for some days, with a cold that had
fallen upon her throat and chest, which was weak, but was now
something better.
"I think I will, mother, for I am much better than I was yesterday,
and have improved since morning. I have promised myself so much
pleasure at this ball, that I cannot think of being disappointed."
The mother shook her head.
"Mary," she replied, "you are not well enough to go out. The air is
damp, and you will inevitably take more cold. Think how badly your
throat has been inflamed."
"I don't think it has been so _very_ bad, mother."
"The doctor told me it was badly inflamed, and said you would have
to be very careful of yourself, or it might prove serious."
"That was some days ago. It is a great deal better now."
"But the least exposure may cause it to return."
"I will be very careful not to expose myself. I will wrap up warm
and go in a carriage. I am sure there is not the least danger,
mother."
"While I am sure that there is very great danger. You cannot pass
from the door to the carriage, without the damp air striking upon
your face, and pressing into your lungs."
"But I must not always exclude myself from the air, mother. Air and
exercise, you know, the doctor says, are indispensable to health."
"Dry, not damp air. This makes the difference. But you must act for
yourself, Mary. You are now a woman, and must freely act in the
light of that reason which God has given you. Because I love you,
and desire your welfare, I thus seek to convince you that it is
wrong to expose your health to-night. Your great desire to go blinds
you to the real danger, which I can fully see."
"You are over-anxious, mother," urged Mary. "I know how I feel much
better than you possibly can, and I know I am well enough to go."
"I have nothing more to say, my child," returned the mother. "I wish
you to act freely, but wisely. Wisely I am sure you will not act if
you go to-night. A temporary illness may not alone be the
consequence; your health may receive a shock from which it will
never recover."
"Mother wishes to frighten me," said Mary to herself, after her
mother had left the room. "But I am not to be so easily frightened.
I am sorry she makes such a serious matter about my going, for I
never like to do any thing that is not agreeable to her feelings.
But I must go to this ball. William is to call for me at eight, and
he would be as much disappointed as myself if I were not to go. As
to making more cold, what of that? I would willingly pay the penalty
of a pretty severe cold rather than miss the ball."
Against all her mother's earnestly urged objections, Mary went with
her lover to the ball. She came home, at one o'clock, with a sharp
pain through her breast, red spots on her cheeks, oppression of the
chest, and considerable fever. On the next morning she was unable to
rise from her bed. When the doctor, who was sent for, came in, he
looked grave, and asked if there had been any exposure by which a
fresh cold could be taken.
"She was at the ball last night," replied the mother.
"Not with your approval, madam?" he said quickly, looking with a
stern expression into the mother's face.
"No, doctor. I urged her not to go; but Mary thought she knew best.
She did not believe there was any danger."
A strong expression rose to the doctor's lips, but he repressed it,
lest he should needlessly alarm the patient. On retiring from her
chamber, he declared the case to be a very critical one; and so it
proved to be. Mary did not leave her room for some months; and when
she did, it was with a constitution so impaired that she could not
endure the slightest fatigue, nor bear the least exposure. Neither
change of climate nor medicine availed any thing toward restoring
her to health. In this feeble state she married, about twelve months
afterward, the young man who had accompanied her to the ball. One
year from the period at which that happy event took place, she died,
leaving to stranger hands a babe that needed all her tenderest care,
and a husband almost broken-hearted at his loss.
This is not merely a picture from the imagination, and highly
coloured. It is from nature, and every line is drawn with the pencil
of truth. Hundreds of young women yearly sink into the grave, whose
friends can trace to some similar act of imprudence, committed in
direct opposition to the earnest persuasions of parents or friends,
the cause of their premature decay and death. And too often other,
and sometimes even worse, consequences than death, follow a
disregard of the mother's voice of warning.
PASSING AWAY.
[From our story of "The Two Brides," we take a scene, in which some
one sorrowing as those without hope may find words of consolation.]
IN the very springtime of young womanhood, the destroyer had come;
and though he laid his hand upon her gently at first, yet the touch
was none the less fatal. But, while her frail body wasted, her
spirit remained peaceful. As the sun of her natural life sunk low in
the sky, the bright auroral precursor of another day smiled along
the eastern verge of her spiritual horizon. There was in her heart
neither doubt, nor fear, nor shrinking.
"Dear Marion!" said Anna, dropping a tear upon her white transparent
hand, as she pressed it to her lips, a few weeks after the alarming
hemorrhage just mentioned; "how can you look at this event so
calmly?"
They had been speaking of death, and Marion had alluded to its
approach to Anna, with a strange cheerfulness, as if she felt it to
be nothing more than a journey to another and far pleasanter land
than that wherein she now dwelt.
"Why should I look upon this change with other than tranquil
feelings?" she asked.
"Why? How can you ask such a question, sister?" returned Anna. "To
me, there has been always something in the thought of death that
made the blood run cold about my heart."
"This," replied Marion, with one of her sweet smiles, "is because
your ideas of death have been, from the first, confused and
erroneous. You thought of the cold and pulseless body; the pale
winding-sheet; the narrow coffin, and the deep, dark grave. But, I
do not let my thoughts rest on these. To me, death involves the idea
of eternal life. I cannot think of the one without the other. Should
the chrysalis tremble at the coming change?--the dull worm in its
cerements shrink from the moment when, ordained by nature, it must
rise into a new life, and expand its wings in the sunny air? How
much less cause have I to tremble and shrink back as the hour
approaches when this mortal is to put on immortality?"
"Yours is a beautiful faith," said Anna. "And its effects, as seen
now that the hour from which all shrink approaches, are strongly
corroborative of its truth."
"It is beautiful because it is true," replied Marion. "There is no
real beauty that is not the form of something good and true."
"If I were as good as you, I might not shrink from death," remarked
Anna, with a transient sigh.
"I hope you are better than I am, dear; and think you are," said
Marion.
"Oh, no!" quickly returned Anna.
"Do you purpose evil in your heart?" asked Marion, seriously.
Anna seemed half surprised at the question.
"Evil! Evil! I hope not," she replied, as a shadow came over her
face.
"It is an evil purpose only that should make us fear death, Anna;
for therein lies the only cause of fear. Death, to those who love
themselves and the world above every thing else, is a sad event; but
to those who love God and their neighbour supremely, it is a happy
change."
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