ART AND LITERATURE

Wellington Independent, Volume I, Issue 13, 14 May 1845, Page 4

ART AND LITERATURE

PAOLI. A STORY OF PENNSYLVANIA. CHAP. I. A being not too bright nor good For human nature's daily food, For transient sorrows, simple wiles, Praise, blame, love, kisses, tears, and smiles. Wordsworth. On a pleasant slope of a hill, in Chester county, Pennsylvania, stands an old stone mansion, a staid venerable structure, whose small windows, huge eaves, and antique doorways, tell of the colonial times. The Bouse is indeed in its second century, having been built about twenty years prior to the old French war, by a Quaker farmer of some fortune, when on the eve of marriage. Here he lived until age overtook him, an exemplary member of his sect, happy in his family, and happy also in the consciousness of having striven to do good; for Friend Paxson—such he was called in the homely language of his people—had the kindest of hearts and an ear ever open to misery. No beggar went from the kitchen porch until his case had been inquired into, and relief administered if the object were worthy, or, even being unworthy, were very necessitous. And a kind admonition from the mild Quaker was known, more than once, to have led to the reformation of those who had defied law and been deaf to the reproaches of friends. Friend Paxson eventually grew to be regarded by the neighbourhood in the light of a father. If an erring son were to be reformed, the good Quaker's counsel was called in. If any of the young people showed a disposition to put off the habilments of the sect, the gentle au'.horily of Friend Paxson was invoked. In the hour of joy, at the couch of sickness, by the bedside of the dying, lie was alike the friend and comforter, a humble pattern of the earlier disciples of him who went about doing good. He carried out to their full extent the forgiving doctrines of the gospel. Once, a drunken labourer insulted him : Friend Paxson sent his needy wife firewood for the winter, and the man came in tears and begged his pardon. What the good Friend was to other men, his wife was to other women. The same kind heart beat in each: the same humanity characterized both. On one point only they differed, and on that but rarely. With her sex's greater tenderness, the wife was sometimes disposed to pass over offences leniently, which sterner sense of justice in the husband regarded in a stronger light; for if undue severity in anything were the fault of Friend Paxson, it was in the almost Jiulaical strictness with which he maintained the peculiar discipline of his people. Few men there are whose minds are not warped in some way ; and he could more easily forgive a breach of the moral law than an infraction of the rules of his sect. The aged couple had an only daughter, a sweet gentle creature, the very counterpart of her mother. But under the plain dress and rigid etiquette of her people, Rachel Paxson had a heart alive to every womanly sympathy, one that felt it could love, and, if need be, suffrr. She was just such a being as Wordsworth has described in those exquisite verses, part of which we have placed at the head of this chapter. Nor was it long before the affections of that true heart were fixed, and with the concurrence of her parents. The one who had won her plighted troth was the orphan son of an early friend of her father, who, left destitute at an eaily age, had been taken in and brought up by the kind Quaker. The children had played together when neither was ashamed to gather buttercups in the fields, and parting to go to school at a distance, did not meet again until after a separation of several years. In that period Rachel had sprung up into a graceful but timid girl, and Henry Abbott had become a tall, ruddy, frank, bold stripling. We need not tell how these two young people, living together in the same farm-house, in a neighbourhood were there were few to associate with, gradually came to regard each other with an affection different from that of friends. By walks down the lane on the Sabbath; by hours under the old buttonwood at starlight; by a thousand littly acts of kindness mutually extended to each other, they learned to love. The old folks looked on and said nothing; but when Rachel, blushing as if ashamed to rehearse the story even to herself, hid her face on her mother s lap, and told that Henry had sought her ove, the mother tenderly raised her up, and, kissing her forehead, said, 'Thou hast done right. Thy father and I will not say nay. Henry is very dear to us, and I am glad thee thinks he can make thee happy.' The tears of emotion that fell from the speaker's eye on the cheek of her daughter was more eloquent than her words. So it was arranged that the young couple should be married when Henry should attain his twenty-first and Rachel her eighteenth year.

CHAPTER 11. O! mornin' life, O ! mornin , hive I Motherwett. Oh! the first love of youth. Poets have sung of it and rhapsodists eulogized it, but they who have once felt that emotion find no language, in after-life, to do it justice. There is something so holy, something so aspiring, something so free from the base alloy of earth in the first serious passion we experience, that we often think it is very wisely sent by God to lift us heavenward. He who truly loves is so far forth a better man. We never knew one under the influence of a first affection whose heart was not expanded to all humanity, and who did not feel more keenly the miseries as well as sympathise more fervently with the joys of his brother men. And there is a poetry in a first affection such as we never again experience. ' It flings a glow around all things, brightening the hill side,

oeautifying the vale and making those we love still lovelier. How can we describe its emo'tiona? It is like going out early on afresh morning in summer, when the dew on the grass, the songs of birds, the breezy woods and the fragrance rising from every flower, make the heart run over, only, that the joy and gush of feeling in a first love is infinitely more ecstatic. And the memory of those hours lives with us through life; and though we may form other ties and be happy, yet we look back on this as a traveller on a pleasant hill, when his journey is done, gazes afar on the smiling meadow whence he started at morning. The love of Henry and Rachel was of this character. To be by her side listening to her mild voice, or to walk with her leaning relyingly on his arm, even though no words were spoken, was bliss. And, with Rachel, to do any little kind act for him, to watch for his return when absent, though blushing to acknowledge her eagerness to her own heart, was happiness supreme. No jealousy ever disturbed their affection; no difference planted barbs in their hearts to rankle in after years : they were like two rivers, that rise in different hills, but meet-1 ing flow on tnrough a pleasant plain, unruffled and fringed with woode and flowers. But the hand of fate was forging a bolt that was soon to destroy this happiness. We have said that Henry was frank and bold: we should have added, he had aheartindignant at outrage. At the school where he was educated he had, unconsciously to himself, imbibed notions scarcely compatible with the peaceful character of his sect. He had learned to read with enthusiasm the lives of the great military commanders of his own and former times; and over the pages of Plutarch he had often dreamed wild boyish dreams of glory. But these visions gave way, on his return home, to a more engrossing passion. When, however, the Revolutionary war broke out, and every week brought some new tale of outrage, or some freeh story of patriotic resistance, the young man's bosom began again to glow with his old feelings. Rachel saw them and endeavoured to check them. She triumphed ; but a second time his passion awoke more powerful than before. It may appear strange that Henry, knowing the inflexible sentiments of her father on points of discipline, gave way for an instant to temptation; but it must be remembered it was not only one, but many passions which were at work in his heart —love of glory, the thirst of youth for enterprise, indignation at wrong, and, lastly, the conviction that his oppressed country needed the aid of all her sons. But even with these influences, the love he bore for Rachel might have conquered, but for an incident which decided his wavering course beyond the possibility of change. He was, one evening, returning from Philadelphia, whither he had been on business, when he saw a party of refugees—for the country was already infested with these men —robbing a poor man's house and barn, who, tied to a tree, was forced to see his wife and little ones driven from their home iw tears, without the possibility of help. Henry came so suddenly upon them as to be unperceived. His natural indignation at wrong prompted him instantly to rescue the man, and he succeeded accordingly in cutting the bonds before he was discovered. The two then made a successful rush for the muskets of the refugees, which had been set against the side of the house, while the'r owners were engaged in plunder. The parties were two to one, but the result was not long doubtful; for the man, smarting with his wrongs, shot the leader of the refugees at once, and Henry, suddenly assailed by two, was forced to despatch one of his antagonists in the same way. The rest then took to flight. But no sooner had he turned away from the labourer, after receiving his grateful thanks, than the consequences of his late act rose up before him. He had done that which would for ever cut him off from his sect, and which, he feared, would bring down the marked disapprobation of his benefactor. It was night when he reached home, and the family had retired. Before breakfast, on the ensuing morning, the story had reached the farm-house, and Henry met at the table, for the first time in his life, countenances of cold disapprobation. He turned to Rachel. She looked anxious and alarmed. Several times he resolved to broach the subject, but pride or an evil fate prevented him. On rising, the father calmly bade him remain, while the women left the room. What passed at the interview it is needless to tell in detail. The benefactor was, for once, stern, perhaps unjust, but he deemed he was doing right, and he spoke the truth when he said his heart had never been so pained. Henry endeavoured to defend himself, and in so doing assailed the Quaker's prejudices. A discuseion ensued: the young man became warm, because he felt his excuses were unjustly disregarded: the inflexible Friend, knowing that his conduct in this affair would be canvassed by the neighbourhood, and believing himself called on to cast away any earthly weakness he might feel, pronounced sentence on his protege, by telling him never thereafter to think of Rachel as his wife. Henry left the room, smarting with a sense of wrong. He sought an interview with Rachel, but it was denied. Neither mother nor daughter were visible. Had he waited a few hours, he would have learned that they had been forbidden to see him by the husband and father, but who soon relented sufficiently to withdraw this prohibition ; and he might from this have drawn a hope, that, eventually, he would be forgiven. But he did not wait: in the bitterness of his heart, thinking that all had turned against him mansion, and before night had enlisted in the army. From that hour the doors of the farm-house were shut against him irrevocably. Even Rachel's mother, whose heart at first had secretly blamed her husband for over strictness, gave Henry up, and the poor girl was left to weep over his dereliction and her own breaking heart in the solitude of her chamber And no one can tell her sufferings who has not experienced the struggle between notions of duty which lead one way, and the pleadings of a heart which would take her another

CHAPTER in. And home and heaven were in her meek blue eyes. — Anon. It was a mild September afternoon a,uHhe tea-table were spread at Friend Paxsoi s. iiie nenof snowy white nearly to the floo, leaving space only for the claw feet ot the wai nut able to be visible. A pleasant breeze stole fn at the open window, occasionally waving the damask cloth, and filling the room w.th coolness and fragrance. The slanting beams of the setSun, breaking through the bowed shutters of Lther window, slept on the floor by the side of a cat that lay quietly punuig. By a thud window sat the motlier, soberly attired m diab, her white kerchief neatly folded across her bosom, and her cap of studious neatness rising above a brow placid and nearly unwnnkled. and suggesting thoughts of a life of gentle benevolence, even without the meek blue eyes and kind motherly expression which dwelt on the face. She had just put her needle in its silver sheath, and-laid her knitting in her lap, as if in thought, when a step was heard and her husband entered the room. .. He was her exact counterpart, only that Ins broad, square brow, though more ample than her's, was, if possible, a shade less sunny; but the smile which rose to his face on entering was kind, open, and eloquent of many years of loving affection for her he was now approaching. His first inquiry showed that he had been absent all day, and how youthfiU was still the affection he entertained for his wife. ' Art thou better, Hannah,' he said, m a mild kind tone, seating himself opposite to her, and taking her hand in his,' than when I went away this morning?' ' I feel much better, it was but a morning headache,' she said, kindly, with her eyes bent lovingly upon him. ' We have been waiting for thee this hour. I thought thee would be hungry, so I got James to go out this afternoon and he brought in some fine woodcock.' A pleasant smile, showing how much this delicate little attention was appreciated, glowed on her husband's face. But it soon faded. It was evident there was care at his heart. ' What ails thee 1' said the wife, in a tone of some anxiety. 'Art thou sick?' and she rose from her chair as if to hasten to him. ' No, Hannah, but my heart is heavy. I am in a strait and know not what to do. I have looked within, but all is doubt. . He paused, but his wife remained silent, tho' a look of anguish was on her face. Her husband soon resumed. ' I have heard that the English meditate a secret attack on Wayne—thou knowest Anthony, he was a wild lad in his youth—and, if he is not apprised of it, he will be murdered with aJI his troops in cold blood. The intelligence I have is sure, I heard it by accident, and none know it. Now what can I do ? Shall I sit here and let my t'ellnw men be butchered, or shall I go and warn Wayne? If I do the latter, may he not await the attack, and thus I become an abettor in the crime of war? Yet, if he should be murdered,' and the Quaker, forced out of his usual composure, arose and paced the room, 'and the good cause suffer! —for Washington surely is in the right, much as I disavow resistance —since we had better submit to wrong than right it forcibly.' He paused in his walk, his countenance exhibiting the struggle in his bosom. And well as he knew his own heart, the good Quaker was yet ignorant of all the influences now at work in it. His soul was in the American cause, and he had already begun secretly to look on Henry's devotion to it with less stern disapprobation than at first. Though he reprobated the war, he daily prayed that the king's heart might be turned, for so he innocently hoped to settle the difficulty. .And now, when the disastrous battle of the Brandywine was fresh in his memory, and when he had seen day after day in his own immediate neighbourhood, the rapacity of the British soldiery, the idea that a detachment of his country's troops, many of them yeomanry of his own acquaintance, should fall victims to a midnight massacre, stirred his soul to its depths. Had he been a less strict sectarian, or possessed one whit less benevolence of heart, the conflict would soon have been over. With his wife the question was instantly decided, and her inclination, unknown to herself, furnished her with arguments. But it is ever thus with human nature. ' I see thy way clear, Joseph,' she said; ' that is, I am prompted how to act if I was placed as thou art, I would send instant word to Wayne. We must not,' she continued rising, the colour mounting to her mild cheeek in her excitement; 'we must not sit quietly and suffer our brothers to be m urdered, or their blood will be on our heads. Warn Wayne to fly, for he cannot withstand the enemy, and thy duty is done.' The husband was thoughtful for an instant, and he raised his eyes as if in silent prayer. Suddenly a light flashed over his face, dissipating the look of care, as the sun scatters the morning mists from the valley. 'The bright sunshine,' he said, solemnly, hath shown my path. I see my way before me. The feeling of duty is strong upon me to send word to Wayne, and prevent this foul crime.' 1 But who canst thou send V said his wife in perplexity. The husband caught her mood, for he saw that he had no one in the household whom he could trust on so delicate a mission. A silence ensued. 'If Henry were here— , began the wife, but suddenly . recollecting the forbidding subject she stopped. / 'Say on, Honnab,' said the husband, mildly, and his eye met hers. There was something in it, apart from the words, which encouraged her to proceed. 'Then if Henry were here, he might be trusted; or if we could send James to the camp he might find out Henry, and so the boy's story might be credited.' ' ( 'Nay, , said her husband, shaking his head • James is over wild now, and I would not place him in the way of temptation. Would indeed hat Henry were here. . He spoke gently when he mentioned the youth s name, for in the last half hour, much Jight had broken in on them. We never feel for others so much as when we have been

tempted in the same way; and the late struo-ol in his mind had revealed to him, clearer ffim lie had ever guessed before, the character of th young man's feelings. And that revelation brought with it charity for what the Quaker stlN regarded as a heinous error. "' 'I will go myself, , he said, after a Paus . ' They will believe me; and I will urge Wavnp to retreat, and, perhaps, may thus save bloodshed. , 'You will come to harm, surely,' said his wife, tremulously, alarm depicted on every fen ture of her countenance. • ' God will be with me,' said he, in a tone of mild reproach, ' whether there or here. A slight meal, Hannah, and then I will depart.' The wife said no more, but bowed meekly for she felt the justice of the remark. In I minute, Rachel entered. The eyes of both p a rents turned gently ou her, and the father noticed, for the first time, how very pale she had become. His heart smote him. He had never before seen, in allits force, that resigned look • nor guessed from it the sufferings of his inhcent daughter. He heaved an involuntary sigh, but said nothing of his intended journey, leaving that for his wife to explain after he had deoar ted. . par

CHAPTER IV. Litlies! and I sail tell you tyll The bataile of Halidon Hyll.— Minot. The sky had become overcast, and a sharp rain was falling, when, toward nine o'clock, the good Quaker reached the camp of Wayne. He was instantly conducted to the general, who heard his story with attention. 'Ha!' exclaimed Wayne; 'this must be looked to. Your information is positive, Mr. Paxson, and we are indebted to you for this warning, which, I hope, may be timely. But excuse me for a minute, , and, turning to an aid-de-camp, he issued order 3to push out videttes in every direction, and patrol the road leading to the enemy's camp, as well as to post two new picquets, one on a third path leading to the Warren Tavern, and another on a road in the rear. The position of Wayne was about two miles from the Paoli Tavern, in a spot inaccessible by public roads. Here he was awaiting the arrival of General Smithwood, to move on the enemy in the direction of the river Schulkill, but the Quaker's information at once thwarted his plans. He saw that the British would probabiy outnumber him, and that no alternative was lelt but to hazard a precarious battle or to retreat.

(7b be continued in our next. J