Abraham Page, esq. A novel ..

Front matter

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Cornell University Library PS 1999.H28A2

Chapter XXVI 288 Chaptek XXVII 297

Chapter XXVm 308

Chapter XXIX 311

Chapter XXX 330

Chapter XXXI 341

Chapter XXXII .' 851

PREFACE, BY MR. PAGE'S EXECUTOR.

I AM perfectly aware that to pretend to have found the manuscript in some unlikely place, or to have had it left to one by last will and testament, is an old and hackneyed method of introducing a story ; but if it be true in any case, the fact should not be ignored for that.

The first time I ever saw Mr. Page was when he made a visit to my father, his old friend and schoolmate. It was on the occasion of his flight from the persecutions of Miss Sophia Walker, which he has mentioned in his Life ; at least I judge it was at that time ; for, although I never heard of Miss Walker until I saw Mr. Page's manuscript, he never made but the one visit to our part of the country. I was then a very small boy, but remember perfectly the impression made upon me by the old gentleman. He was, I suppose, forty-eight or fifty years of age, and was of medium height, very neat in his person and brisk in his movements. He had mild, benevolent, gray eyes, a rather prominent Roman nose and a broad and high forehead. But what attracted me to him was his great simplicity and fondness for children. For hours at a time he would play with me and my sisters (often at games he must have invented, for I have never seen them since) or would tell us the most comical and wonderful stories. We thought there 1 •» 5 was never such a man as he, and when he left us to return to his home our keenest desire was to see him again.

One of my first attempts at letter-writing was a letter to him, which he answered by due course of mail; and from that time, though our correspondence sometimes languished, it was kept up, when I was not with him, untU the beginning of the late war.

When I became a law-student, my father, acceding to my strong desire, and to frequent and pressing invitations, allowed me to go on to Mr. Page's, where I remained nearly two years. Certainly no young man ever had a more kind, capable, and conscientious preceptor. The amount of his information upon all subjects was prodigious. He had been a hard student all his life, and seemed to forget nothing he had ever heard or read, and yet he was more free of dry scholasticisms than any man I have ever met of half his erudition. He never used a technicality when it could be avoided, and the most abstruse subjects, when explained by him, were within the comprehension of any one of ordinary mind. Every fact or system of facts seemed by some powerful process of mental digestion to be reduced by him to its simplest elements, and the most complex and dryest parts of law, theology, and pohtics became simple and attractive.

He appeared to be perfectly aware of this peculiar faculty of his mind, and, indeed, sometimes to indulge himself in a little self-flattery on account of it. "There now! Master John!" he would say sometimes, "consult your new lights upon that subject, and see if they are more profound, or nigh so simple."

Mr. Page had his little vanities — what man has not? — but they were all of the most inoffensive character. It gratified him extremely to be referred to by his neighbors for any information, or to decide any point which seemed to requu-e more learning than they possessed; and such demands were being constantly made, for he was almost as much esteemed in his county as an oracle as he was beloved as a true philanthropist.

To tell half the good he did is impossible. I find that he has said of his father what could equally well be said of himself: "His knack for encountering objects of pity on his road, and his luck for having poor orphan children thrown upon his hands by bequest of parents, or devise of circumstances, was at all times extraordinary. ' ' I believe it to be true that at no time from his full maturity untU his death did he have fewer than two orphans wholly dependent upon him for support and education, while he partially supported others, and was the providence of all the poor widows in his neighborhood. He has omitted all this in his Life ; but some of his experience with his orphans, as I have heard it related by his neighbors, was discouraging enough for any man less warm-hearted than he, and some of it was very comical. He would never admit in so many words that gratitude was the rarest of virtues, but I feel sure that his various experiences inclined him to believe it so. For instances of ingratitude to himself— and from all that I heard they were frequent — he had many excuses ; as that it ran in their blood, or that they had been so hardly dealt with before that their souls were narrowed; but his chief consolation was that what he did was not for their gratitude, but for his own sake ; and he insisted that he was really selfish in all his charities. His philosophy in this matter is certainly the strongest with which a man bent on doing good can fortify himself, for without it one or two ragingly or whiningly unreasonable widows, and a mean, ungrateful orphan or two, will put a stop to the warmest benevolence. The only change which could be perceived in Mr. Page's plans of benevolence was, that he, after a while, found it more pleasant to support his orphans and others away from his own house.

In the winter of 1862-3 I met Mr. Page, old as he was, at C , very busy in his attention about the army hospitals, and know that by dint of persuasion he finally procured permission for two of the sick to go home with him to be nursed. After the surrender at Appomattox Court House I took his house on my route home, for I was sadly fagged and in want, and knew that I should get relief with him.

I arrived at a sad time. During the whole war his house had been a perfect hospital for sick and wounded soldiers, and two or three months before my arrival a raiding party of the enemy had visited the old man and had treated him most shamefully. Besides breaking up much of his furniture and robbing him of almost everything they could carry away, whether useful to them or not, they had terribly cursed and abused him as "a d — d old rebel," and had drawn their guns upon him with the intention, as they said, of shooting him ; and he had borne it all like the noble old gentleman he was.

It would do no good to dwell upon the scene of wanton mischief and cruel malice as it was truly related to me, but not by him. Such things it will do to pass over, but not to forget untU a time of peace and unity shall make forgetfulness desirable. At any rate, the disasters of the war, together with these personal outrages, were too much for the enfeebled constitution of the old man — nearly eighty years of age — and I found him in a very critical state of health.

He said that my arrival was all that was wanted to make him contented again, and he insisted that I should remain with him at least a few days.

The third day of my stay I thought I perceived that in spite of his cheerful, hopeful conversation he was rapidly declining in strength, and'yentured to ask him if he felt as strong as he had the previous day, "No, my son," he replied. " I do not wish to deceive you. My days will be very few, and it is principally on that account I have insisted on your remaining with me. _ You will find my last win in my large desk, which was fortunately among the lumber in the garret when the raiding party came, or it too might have been destroyed. I have named you my executor, for I had a strong presentiment that the war would spare you, and I find myself greatly blessed in having you with me, and being able to tell you my wishes more fully than I could possibly have written them.

"I have been a very fortunate man all my life, my son, and I wish to impress upon your mind my testimony to the goodness and power of God. I can say with perfect truth that in the checkered scenes of my life, though I have had many sorrows, I have always afterwards seen that His goodness has been manifested in them towards me. It has been invariably the case that the right thing has happened at the right time, and I have full confidence that it shall be so still, both to me and my country." (He and I had been talking a great deal about public affairs.) "We are very wise in our own conceit, and very rebellious, sometimes, towards God, but the Judge of all tie earth will do right. There could be no better time than this for an old man to die, for great troubles have yet to come, and, though I feel sure they will end for the best, I am glad to escape them."

At another time the same day he said to me: "Do not be downcast about our cause, for, after all, if the principle of strict constitutional governriient, for which alone we contended, shall be established, is it not better that it should be over the whole than over only a part of the country? I acknowledge that I sometimes have great fears and doubts about the fate of our country ; but when I reflect that the promised days of peace and true religion on earth must soon be here, and that it would in the natural course of events take ages to settle this country in peace under any other form or forms of government than that we now have — and which is perfectly feasible if the rights of the separate States and the other restrictions of the Constitution shall be strictly observed-^I have great hopes that the late war and the present and prospective troubles and confusion shall end in the triumph and firm establishment of our principles as the only true basis of constitutional government. If it be so, our people shall have fought and suffered and triumphed gloriously. But, however it may be, remember at all times that it is God who rules, and that His kingdom shall come, and His will shall be done on earth as it is in heaven."

In like discourse, and in telling me his desires with regard to his property and dependants, and the proceeds of the cotton he still had on hand, which had neither been stolen nor destroyed, and the reasons why he did not make me his heir, were passed the very few days Mr. Page was able to sit up at all and converse at any length. The old gentleman was particularly concerned that I should fully appreciate his reasons for leaving Miss Boiling the bulk of his property. He said that the events of the war had rendered what she possessed almost entirely valueless; and he intimated more than once that he had long had a desire that she and some one he also loved should live iii his house, the representatives of himself and his Mary; and said that he knew the property alone was not sufficiently valuable to warrant me, as I was already married, or either of my brothers, to leave our old home and our prospects there, and he could not bear to have it pass into the hands of strangers. He said, moreover, that my brothers were excellent gentlemen and brave soldiers; and he could see no reason in the word why, now that Eobert Harley was dead, one of them should not come on and try for Miss Kate's hand. And as he drew nearer his end, the idea seemed to seize him more and more forcibly, and he declared that it was impossible there should be a more fit or happier match. To gratify him, I promised to use my influence to bring it about; and perhaps it may yet take place, though I doubt it. I have found that Miss Kate, though she fully justifies Mr. Page's love and admiration, has a firm will of her own, and my brothers are quite as indisposed as she to have their afieotions directed.

To describe the death of my good old friend would be as painful to me as it would be uninteresting to the general reader. He died peacefully, and, as he had lived, a good and loving man.

I have tried my utmost to carry out his intentions. The very considerable legacy of money to his grand-niece I have paid over, and she is spending a portion of it in contesting his will, upon the ground of his insanity. The orphan children he had in his care have been well and permanently provided for ; and when the decision of the court shall allow me, I will hand over to Miss Kate her property, and thus finish my executorship, except with regard to the manuscripts left in my charge.

This "Life" of Mr. Page I publish, not only because I think it due to his memory to do so, but also because I believe that it teaches sound principles of living and of thinking, which ought to be disseminated. I have no apology to make for his style or matter, for although both could, doubtless, be improved in some respects, it is beyond my power, and I think in violation of my duty, to improve or attempt to improve them. To judge from the handwriting of the manuscript, as well as the tone of the book, I think it was written at different ages. The first chapter appears to have been written many years before the remainder, and at a time when Mr. Page was in a discontented mood with himself I know that even so late in his life as when I went on to visit him he used sometimes to declare that he was a "Failure." He seems afterwards to have justified himself in his own mind (as the old are prone to do) for not having reached the high public position and accumulated the large fortune his more youthful ambition declared to be his due.

As the whole book was written before and during the early part of the late war, I need not tell the reader that Mr. Page's political sentiments do not agree with those of the present ruling party. But they are just those of the gentlemen of his class at the time they were written ; and if they are now settled to be unsound, it can surely do no harm to publish, without change, an old man's opinion of them.

His ideas about the Church may also be regarded by the mass of priests, preachers, and women as very heterodox. But the subject is of so vital importance that every man should be entitled to his opinion about it; and, for my own part, I think Mr. Page's opinion worthy of serious consideration, although he has not indulged himself in a display of learning in elucidating it.

There are only two things I would ask the reader to remark about his ' ' Life. ' ' The first is, his perfect freedom from a desire to be thought learned or over- wise ; and the second is, the tone of quiet humor which pervades the whole work. And I would say to the reader about the more pathetic parts of the book, as Mr. Page once said to me about a touching passage he was reading in another's writings : ' ' You are fortunate if you understand that, for you could only do so by having an affectionate heart yourself."

The publication of Mr. Page's other manuscripts will depend upon the success of this with the public. The proceeds of the book or books are to be devoted to the support, education, and start in life of a little boy in whom Mr. Page took a great interest, though he has thought fit not to mention him in his Life.

JOHN CAPELSAY,

OP NATCHEZ,

Executor.

LIFE AND OPINIONS

Abraham Page, Esq.

Chapter I

IT is a fine sight to see an old man whose heart still beats with generous emotions, whose cares have not made him selfish, whose own vicissitudes have but made his charity more gentle and universal.

I once knew such a man, and he stands alone in my memory. By honest industry he had raised himself above the thousand evils of want, and he was revered by all the country round for his wisdom, learning, and humble piety. No excesses had wasted his powers, and though age had somewhat unstrung the high tension of his organization, his gray hairs crowned a body still erect and energetic, and covered a brain still teeming with cheerful thought. I often saw him look with a smile of tenderest love upon the trustful wife of his youth, now old and wrinkled, to whom many years before, when he first clasped her in his warm embrace, he had made vows of love he had never broken. Standing with her, and surrounded by the amiable and intelligent children with whom they had been blessed, he could look to heaven and say with deepest gratitude and love : " Behold me, and those Thou hast given me !"

The old man is dead now, and his old wife has joined him ; but it seems to me he had reached a grandeur of human dignity the greatest worldly honors would but lessen. I venture to say that had his ease been presented to the heathen doctors who held to the two hundred and eighty different opinions as to the principal end of human actions, all would have agreed that he had acted, at least, as though he had found the truth.

Many winters have silvered my hair, and in the course of nature I must soon lie in the cold grave, where all my rosy hopes have long since gone ; and I am sometimes tempted to wish that such a destiny as his had been reserved for me. But such a wish would be both foolish and unphilosophic — foolish, because impossible of fulfillment; and unphilosophic, because everything is for the best, and because such a change would require a total reorganization of society and aiiairs in my own State, and consequently in America, and consequently all over the world; and Heaven alone knows what would be the upshot. In this regard every man is of the utmost importance, and he should console himself or be proud accordingly.

My life, like that of most other men, has been one of mercies and duties neglected. My youth was promising, for I was gifted with a vigorous and comely person and a sprightly mind. There are few things I could not have accomplished had I so willed. I feel convinced that I should have made a good carpenter or machinist, for to this day I am fond of tinkering; and after age had sobered my enthusiasm a little, I am pretty sure I should have made a notable archbishop — for I always had a turn for the Church. As a painter I should have sue-

ABRAHAM PAGE, ESQ. I'f

ceeded finely ; but not as a painter of portraits, for besides that I could not be precise long enough to paint a portrait, my sense of the ludicrous was so strong I would certainly have offended my patrons by caricaturing them. I could have become a distinguished musician, for I had a coiTect ear and was passionately fond of music. I could tip off "Stay, Sweet Enchanter," and "Robin Adair," in a manner to be applauded, and I even for awhile led the choir in the principal church of my native village — there were three churches there — but the young ladies of the choir got married, or moved away, or got offended with each other, and would no longer sit and sing together, and the best of the two male singers died, and the other got the bronchitis ; so that I was finally left alone, and the congregation seeming to think soon that I could sing enough for all of us, it began to look too much like work, and I quit it. After that, I sang only on occasions. I should not have made a good tailor, for the trade is too confining and laborious; but I know of no one who could have excelled me as a cutter-out for fancy young gentlemen. Neither should I have made a good physician, for, besides that I abhor bad smells, my anxiety to relieve the suffering would have warped my judgment. Finally, I should now, as a lawyer, be very high in my profession if I had really desired it, and had had more perseverance.

"Much virtue in if," quoth Touchstone, Much sorrow there is in it too, Master Touchstone, although the sorrow may be unphilosophic. There are a great many things more desirable than high position, and even than wealth.

It is not from vanity that I have here detailed part of my various talents, but merely that the true nature of my life may be known. I know of no vanity more unreasonable than that which is based merely upon superior capacity or opportunities. If it produced that noble ambition which leads to true greatness — which I consider to be only superiority in the performance of duty and in conferring benefits upon our fellow-men — it could be excused, and even cultivated. But in general this feeling, known as self-conceit, is an opiate to which the poor victim has recourse when the labors of life seem too hard ; and lulled into delicious repose, his imagination revels in bright visions of the future, and he satisfies himself with feverish dreams of the fame he could accomplish.

He sees himself at some future time, and on some great but indefinite occasion, mounting the rostrum to address vast multitudes. He pictures to himself how, as he warms with his subject, he is interrupted by loud huzzas. I^ouder and louder they increase, until at last, when he has finished, in an excess of enthusiasm they lay hands upon him and bear him on their shoulders, and hail him as the man of the people, the orator, the demigod.

Or else he heads a charge of cavalry in some great imaginary battle. He hears the roar of the artillery, the sharp fire of the riflemen, the huzzas of the soldiers. It is a critical moment. He rides in front of his men. In an ecstasy of glory he calls upon them to follow him, and with a clash and flash of sabres and a shout, amid the shrieks of the wounded and the groans of the dying, they ride in furious career through the ranks of the

ABRASAM PAGE, ESQ. ]9

enemy, trampling their scattered hosts. His name, like that of David, becomes a song in the mouth of the people, and he too has a Saul over whom he triumphs by genius and virtue to arrive at supreme power.

Or, seated at the foot of some spreading beech beside a gurgling brook, his imagination is soothed by the genial warmth and the thousand beauties and pleasant odors of a day in early spring, the hum of busy insects, and the songs and twittering of birds, and he makes himself rJcb from the ready foundation of an "if," or a still more certain process worked out by his ingenious fancy, and he constructs and reconstructs to its minutest detail the plan of a house he will build in the shady grove, to be the abode of love and contentment to himself and some transcendent wife he has yet to see in reality — though she may, indeed, be an existing Dulcinea.

And so the poor victim dreams on, so he warms himself with his imaginings, careless of his fortune and heedless of time, till, at last, he wakes to find himself old and poor, his time and talents gone to waste ; all his past confusion, all the future a blank, to be filled as the crazed fill the present.

I am an old man now, with neither wife nor child to cheer my age. Though I have many friendly acquaintances, I have few friends. Those of my youth have either died around me or removed, long years ago, to distant sections of the country, where most of them have died, and I have been left to make new friendships — as though, the old vine once untwined from its support could ever adapt itself and cling to another I I am solitary, yet never lonely. God has spared me my memory, and as I travel across the desert of life 1 am unconscious of the burning sun and drifting sands, and have ever present with me the happy forest, with its flowers and gushing springs, its singing birds and its pleasant breezes, from which I started, the cooling shades which I have passed through here and there along the way, the dear companions who left me before the journey was half over; and, thank God 1 I have now at last upon the horizon the bright prospect of a happier and more beautiful country to which I am going. I see there, even at this distance, scenes and forms which bring to mind the places where I have enjoyed myself, and the faces I have loved long ago. Ah, me! I wish to hasten my steps ; and when I see so many young men and maidens, old persons and infants, gliding rapidly ahead of me, it seems that I go very slowly. Yet all in good time ! all in good time! An old man ought not to be impatient.

I used to think it strange, and even false, that any one in his senses and free of pain should be impatient to die. But it is not strange to me now, and I am very glad that it can be true. I saw my old father and my blessed mother, my Mary, and my little son die, and I am sure I can pass easily through what they did. I heard their last sighs, and saw them lie pallid before me; kissed their cold foreheads after they were laid in their coffins, and heard the cruel clods rattle down as their graves were filled, and I went with torn but hopeful heart from each spot to continue my journey. Yet I see them now, yonder in that happy land, blooming more fresh and joyous than ever, and with smiles and outstretched arms waiting for the old man to come to them. A little longer, my darlings! Wait a little longer, and he will be with you.

Will not that be a happy meeting ? And can any one wonder I should wish it to be hastened ?

It is only when long solitary my fancy get overcharged with remembrances of the past, and my dormant affections become aroused to feel, as I imagine they once felt in my vigor, that such rhapsodies as this affect me. They warn me that, though my feelings are yet strong, they are fast becoming those of a doting old man. Falstaff, when ''a babbled of green fields," showed just such an effort of energy in weakness. And yet I need not be ashamed of it and call it a rhapsody. It is surely better to look with glorious hopes and imaginings to the future than with gloom and regret upon the past.

The amount of sorrow for myself I have expended in my lifetime is past gathering up. It has been a great waste of time and feeling, for the simple reason that it has never done any good. A sorrow that leads to repentance is most wholesome ; but, if you will remember it, the most contrite persons you ever saw in your life were precisely those who were the weakest, and most certain to repeat their fault upon the first temptation. I always forebode much misery to a child who too readily acknowledges a fault and is glib in his promises for the future. Where there is obstinacy before contrition there is apt to be firmness in repentance.

One other result of my observation and experience I would remark just here. It is equally as harassing and as great a waste of time to spend it in brooding over the past as in conjecturing about the future. Neither past nor future can be changed, and the present is made wretched.

Chapter II

THE historians of Amadis de Gaul, King Arthur, and such like, and the monkish biographers of saints of the Middle Ages, magnified their heroes by carrying them triumphantly through desperate adventures with men, dragons, and Satan with all his hosts; and their brethren of the present day follow somewhat the same course. Even the writers of unar dulterated fiction treat only of extraordinary men who have met with extraordinary fortunes or misfortunes.

I have often been vexed with shame at not being able even to understand the laughter-provoking Latin puns, or Greek conundrums, or Hebrew jeux d'esprit popped oif, I judged by the context, at the most opportune time, by some hero of fifteen or sixteen years of age, who has already passed through more learning, loves, wars, and adventures than Methusaleh, though he lived nine hundred and sixty-nine years, and begat Lamech and other sons and daughters, ever dreamed about. It is true that these adjuncts of superiority please and excite the minds of mankind, who have a natural reverence for a superior ; but I do not see how they benefit them. They can neither imitate the good, nor take warning by the mistakes, of these fictitious gentry, simply because the ordinary capacities, course, and occurrences of life are of a totally diflferent stamp.