PIONEER TYPES.

Otago Witness, Issue 2396, 1 February 1900, Page 57

PIONEER TYPES.

By Jessie Mackay.

IV.— THE PILGRIM MOTHER.

The second part of " The Pilgrim's Progress " has never aroused the thrilling interest that centres in the first. The quiet convoying of Christiana and Mercy is fere to be tame after the marvellous adventures in "Vanity Fair" and "Doubting Castle." There is no defect in the pourtraj^al of the second pilgrimage ; the lines of holy women were never mirrowed in quainter sweetness than by the untaught tinker of Bedford ; no troubadour or minnesinger sang of a chivalry more simple, more enduring, or more winning than the selfless loyalty of Greatheart and Valiant-tor-truth. This lack of interest in the gentler phases of the journey to the Celestial city extends to near and terrestrial types of wayfarers. We have much to say of our pilgrim fathers. Every stroke they laid on the stubborn woods reverberates to later generations. But the Pilgrim Mothers? — were their hands folded in the heat of the day, or did they strike on felt, thai we hear so little of them? Surely a truer moral perspective would restore a picture of the Pilgrim Mother in full keeping with the grand nature forces she faced. An ear more finely tuned would catch an echo of her voice that "would not mock the memory of the great primeval silence as many a foolish voice of ours mocks it now.

The Pilgrim Mother's girlhood was passed in the stitching of samplers and the learning of collects. When her eager little mind looked back on the j>ast, it was fed on " Hangnail's Questions " and Rollin's "Ancient History." When it would look on the future or into the world of fancy it was fed on the Book of Revelation and "The Pilgrim's Progress." But this little soul had longings after some earthly delectable mountains ; she had heard tales of drooping trees of fern, and great breadfruit palms, and plains where one man held as much land as an English earldom ; from forbidden sources she had formed pictures.

of shining savages, children of the sun, with all the beauty of Mayne Reid's Oceola, all the loyalty of Fenimorc Cooper s Uncas. Since the mane of Mew Zealand called up this glorious medley of fancy, it was not likely that Love should need to beckon twice when the dream fulfilled itself, and .she was asked to sliare a pioneer's lot. She sewed and planned now with the sad gladness of one whom the gods have separated from the common way. But she woke with tears out of her self-centred tk;,tii'hls when at last she left the old home and pictured suddenly how her mother would lay by her little old dresses in the empty room as one lays by the playthings of a dead child. And &o the pioneer bride set out on the Long Trail — long, indeed, in those days.

No breadfruit, no feathery palm, no Oceola or (Jncas greeted her at her journey's end. She found herself in the midst of a dreary little handful of wattle and dab huts which they called "the town." All around were anxious homesick settlers, — the men preparing to s=py out the Land of Promise in the interior, the women trying to adjust their dainty sampler stitches to sack and canvas, as need required, and mournfully scanning the fine Italian caligraphy in their recipe books to find something possible to- manufacure oui of ,vuet, musty flour, and treacly sugar. Ignorance .saved the poor little bride the full shock ot realising the prohibitive prices she paid, for the necessities of life ; she could not ignore the indigestion caused by her own first baking, or the winds that strewed her shell of a house tin inch thick with dust. But her buoyant spirits rose after ■ -'me. .U'd could laugh at the urban sights around, — cows chewing tussock in

„ _ t/uoioughiare. while another centre of traffic was closed until such time as a bogged bullock dray could be again brought into the light of day.

But it was a glad day when she left " the town " and followed her bridegroom to the hut he had made for her at the Back of Beyond.

The wild white ranges shut her in and appalled lfer utterly. Then she found out their infinite moods, their superhuman tenderness, and loved them for ever. Over the cradle of her first child she came to x'eahse the inalienable tie between a woman and her baby's birthplace, even though the yearning for her lost home under the English elms had never been deeper than then. And now began the quiet nation-building of our Christiana. She had always been a power at the Back of Beyond ; first as a baby queens it over the house iv the regality of utter helplessness ; then in the maturing strength oi resource and devotion. She was"" a being to serve and worship. The weak wastrels who taught her to make candles and boil doughboys looked on her hearth as a beacon star,,, and twice out of three times passed the accommodation house by to come and talk of vanished days in Britain ! She grew skilful with cuts and bruises ; her currant drinks cured many a cold ; she did not disdain the sheepish confidences of the mountain swains, and patiently untangled many a Cupid's knot. She was ever great at contrivance ; a thousand little shifts beautified life once the first gaunt struggle with necessity subsided a little. She had now a thriving orchaid ; she was wise in jams, cunning in jellies, and hens throve mightily with her. She could afford to smile over the hungry desert days vihcn lillapee masqueraded as pudding ; when the everlasting chop and leg of mutton greeted the morning and the evening board as regularly as the sun rose and set, and when every slice of the burnt loaf recalled the surface of a mourning envelope. She had tremors about inventing patterns, but grew bolder at last, and the station babies hunted lizards and gathered snow berries in quaint overalls and sunbonnets that foreshadowed the days of Kate Greenaway. Her husband was a famous member of the Provincial Council ; but few realised how much his public life owed to the practical suggestion and tireless sympathy of his wife. The cluster of huts had struggled into a real town, and one by one their children had gone away to school ; for the first time an alien influence came between the Pilgrim Mother and her nestlings — until now ,«he had been all in all. But there was to be a reunion some day — a long, peaceful reunion before the lifelong scattering. So dreamed our Christiana in breathing times, for she was still doing Hie work of three or four women, upheld by the dear sense of power and self-sacrifice. In their time the wilderness had blossomed ; schools had risen, homes were planted here and there by many a wild crossing : and many a rough ride had the Pilgrim Mother undertaken to help a sick child or sit with a new made widow, when the cruel floods and crueller quicksands had claimed .their prey. In her simple way she had blended nurse, teacher, missionary, and half a dozen humbler vocations with the all-suffi-cient role of housemother.

But that reunion of the family receded like rainbow gold. Two boys went away to take up new country ; two girls had married almost straight from school, and when the last ones straggled home, the pilgrim pair yielded to long persuasion and went to live in town, where the flax had waved long ago. Then the Pilgrim Mother suddenly bowed with nervous weariness, learning hei last lesson in the school of necessity, the lesson of folding hands in quietude. She saw behind her five-and-thirty years of ceaseless, honourable doing, and the twilight of supercession, of triviality, oppressed her to death. No one knew how the early wilderness behind the great white ranges had mellowed into an Eden of memory ; nor how the long-taxed powers of mind and body had asserted their wrongs at last. '

But she wus> a sweet and patient woman to the end, and as she had made the crooked straight and the rough smooth for all but hci'self, so her way down the valley was made swit'fc and easy at last. There is no statue of our Christiana in the town ; her name is on no scroll of Fame, but no truer nation-moulder ever lived than the Pilgrim Mother.

Ethel R. Penjamin, Barrister and Solicitor, Albert Buildings, Princes street, Dunedm (oi«£&9ite C.P.0.), liaa trust moneys to lend Q4 apptfivecl secwritj.-r Advi