The life-line of the Lone One; or, Autobiography of the world's child

Preface

This little volume — a true and literal history of the struggles of an ardent and ambitious mind to rise from a dishonorable birth, and the lowest condition of poverty and New England slavery — is published more for a guide and advice to those who live in the humble walks of life, and for a rebuke on the tyrannical and malignant spirit of arrogant and selfish individuals and societies, who ever attempt to trample upon and despise such reformers as attempt to rise, by individual effort, to distinction or fame, than for the book market, or for the pecuniary reward it may bring the author. The name is only left in obscurity to those who are unacquainted with the subject of the narrative ; and to such it is of no value. The subject of the narrative has passed to a plane of reconciliation and harmony, in which he feels only a spirit of forgiveness for those whose consciences have already punished them for their physical abuse, or moral and religious misrepresentations, slanders, and falsehoods, or their political curses. In every relation and condition of life he is now beyond their shafts, and hence is in a condition to forgive. As the persecuted Jesus, when the malignity of his enemies had done its worst, and he was about to triumph in the personal demonstration of his own theory, could afford to forgive Peter and Judas, and say of those who took his life, " Father, forgive them : for they know not

IV PEFACE.

what they do ; " so the Lone One has often exclaimed of those who attempted to crucify his reputation, and destroy his efforts to make others happy, " They are forgiven : for they know not what they do."

" Speak gently to the erring one, For, ! ye may not know The untold weight of suffering That bows his spirit low.

" A kind and gentle word, perchance, May call all back to him, — The pleasant dreams of early youth, Ere the light of life was dim.

" Harsh words may be the only ones His ear hath ever heard ; Then like an angel's loving voice Will sound your gentle word.

11 In joyous hours, with friends around, Rich with the love they give, You hear of wicked deeds, and say, He is not fit to live.

" But only think, if yours had been, Like his, a cheerless life, Your soul, perchance, might then have been, Like his, as full of strife.

" There 's seldom found a heart so hard But love may enter in ; And love hath ever magic power To chase away all sin.

« Then spare not gentle words, that bring The erring unto God, To learn that life is beautiful, When spent in doing good."

LIFE-LISE OF THE LOSE ONE.

Chapter I, First Decade Of The Lone One

The Unwelcome Birth. — The Unhappy Childhood. — The Untimely Deaths. — The Uncharitable Bondage. — The Unmerciful Treatment.

Section I. THE IMPERFECT LINEAGE

Not long after the Pilgrim Fathers made their homes on the rocky and bleak coast of Massachusetts, a vessel from the European side of the ocean landed, among her passengers, from the "sea-girt isle," three brothers, who brought to this country the name which has since gained many a niche in the records of our country's local and general history, and which may now be seen permanently or temporarily posted in many business villages of the nation, but which I shall dispense with, as too common for my narrative. The history of these three brothers, and of several generations of their descendants, is robed in a mantle of obscurity, and cannot now be easily unwrapped and spread before their descendants, even by those who seek through it a fortune of dollars. Most that is well known is, that they had Abraham's blessing, to increase and multiply. It is deeply to be regretted that there are not more and better words on the hard old granite and marble tomb-stones of New England, bearing to us more of the history of the each one each bears the name of. But our Christian style of epitaphing brings us little knowledge, except the name of the 1* person whose body lies under the stone. Had the sextons placed over the graves permanent records of the three great events which constitute the important part of many lives, — birth, marriage, and death, — it would often aid the searcher after lineage, when the human posts with memory-marks had all been swept away by the merciless besom of time. ur generation has a better chance of leaving individual records on the blank pages in the grave-yard of Jewish history furnished us by the Bible societies ; which records may be of more value to coming generations than the printed pages, when the march of science has carried away the idolatry and superstition of this age, and the centuries have removed the tall steeples and stingy creeds of the nineteenth Christian century.

But we must still grope among the tomb-records, to renew the search after the lineage of the Lone One. We find the records of both grave-yards very imperfect, from which we can only glean sufficient to make out the following : In the third, fourth, or fifth generation of these three brothers, among the descendants of the one of them who bore the singular cognomen of Aquila, was a family of eight children — four sons and four daughters. The younger of the four sons joined a small group of hardy pioneers, who had procured a title to a piece of God's earth (from some regular descendant of the original owner, as is supposed by the land reformers, who assert that God never gave any " fee simple " title-deeds, but only heirships), then far up in the wild regions of New Hampshire, on a small stream now called Suncook. Near the middle of the eighteenth century this little group began to fell the tall old pines and sorry-looking hemlocks, and let down the sunlight and dews upon the soil and rocks (mostly rocks) of this little spot of their heavenly Father's earth ; or rather on their own spot, for they had bought a few acres of surface running inward to a point at the centre of the globe, but not outward, for the atmosphere and sunlight were still owned by the Father, and free for the use of all his children. They arranged the trees across the rattling Suncook, and, the river being dammed and heaped up, its waters, in their wrath, plunged, foaming in madness, over the obstacle, such as no red man had ever placed in their way ; or, forced through the narrow aperture, for many years turned a clattering old mill-wheel, to make boards for the settlers; or, twirling the circular and poised rock, cracked the corn for the lesser grinders of the bipeds.

Long ago the mill was " torn away, and a factory dark and high looms like a tower " beside the stream. How changed the place in a century ! And what is a century in the midst of eternal time ? Not even as a drop in the ocean. The red man and his fur-clad quadruped companions are gone [where ?] ; and civilized man, with his domesticated animals and labor-saving machinery, his cottage homes, his noisy shops, and busy stores, has taken their place, and driven them, not to, but beyond, the wall. Wonder often seized the red man, as he watched his white Cainlike brothers fell the trees, remove the rocks, till the soil, build warmer wigwams, and plant more " heap of corn ; " but he passed in wonder away, stupefied in soul, and poisoned in body, by the rum and tobacco of God's whiter Christian children. Now the spires of the Puritan's descendants point upward in place of the red man's forest spires, from which, two centuries ago, the prayers and praises of man and beast were sounded to the sky in simple strains of nature's music, as acceptable to God as the best harmonies of our time. Now the slender fingers of the factory-girl guide the cotton thread, through whirling machinery, into webs of sheeting, to wrap the more tender forms of the white mother's babes of a Christian land ; but it is not certain that these babes or mothers live purer lives, or give more pure devotion to God, than did the fur-clad mothers and naked babes of the forest-homes ; and certain it is that the belief in a future life entertained by the red man of the forest was far more natural, more rational, more honorable to God, and more desirable to man, than that of the Christian which has supplanted it.

Soon after a shanty was prepared by this descendant of Aquila wide enough for two, the loved one, selected from the daughters of a neighboring settlement, came to share its hardships with the occupant. Not a score of moons had been reported, new or old, ere the pair had to make room for a third, a darling boy, whose origin was between them ; the first white face of male child born in the settlement, and of course it would have a place and name. Simon (not Simon Peter) was the cognomen by which this shanty boy was designated from his fellows. When peopling the settlement by births was fairly begun, it was not carried on slowly in the several homes, but especially in this one. The family record was soon filled up ; for Simon's name was followed by eleven more, marking, as milestones, the line of domestic life, nearly in biennial periods. Seven received female names, rights, and duties, and five male names, rights, and duties. The eldest, born when the trials and hardships of life were most severe, was of course the brightest and smartest, although the parents were less developed and matured than at the birth of Joseph (for they had a Joseph). Two of the dozen went early and young to reside on the other side of Jordan, " to join a choir of juvenile singers in the land of spirits." Four more have since followed them, at various times, and six were still lingering here in the autumn of 1855,, timeworn humanity-marks of the last century, and of the generation which has been mainly transplanted into the other life. The old pioneer parents, too, whose hold on life enabled them to stay almost a century on earth, and live more than half a century in wedded life, have joined those, who, according to the new theory of spirit-spheres, are living in families and societies of harmonious and congenial life in the land of the dead. ? T is a beautiful thought, whether true or not, for the lone pilgrim here, that, at the end of life's journey, he or she shall lay the " staff and sandals down " for the wreath and robe of a brighter and happier home, and join there, in happy life, the " loved ones gone before."

We have now done nearly all we can to register the genealogy of the Lone One, and will here leave the ancestors, all except the first-born of the sons of the new settlement. Of him we have more to say, for, in matured life, he became the father of the Lone One, by a mother fully ripened into womanhood ; the last child of each, and the only child of the twain. This Simon-son, of the Pittsfield town, has now no tomb-stone monument to mark where his body lies, and no epitaph inscribed to record his religious belief, or pious character ; but only the memory-marks made, during his life, on those around him which have not faded. His parents, and brothers, and sisters, all accorded to him the qualification of good and smart ; but his early life had not the advantage of schools, and books, and sermons, and lectures, as the youth of our time have. Hard work by day-light, and rude plays by fire-light, occupied his youth, and the former did not cease when manhood came. Those still living who knew him say he was physically and mentally more than a common man, and morally not less, but religiously at zero. Many of his trite sayings, and some of his doings, still linger around the memories of those who knew him half a century ago.

Such were the father and the paternal lineage of the Lone One, which, with one more brief notice in its proper place, must be left to the fast-fading shadows of memory ; for lineal descents are difficult to trace, and not very reliable when written. When forty years had worn away upon the records, these were nearly all the links the Lone One could find in the chain to connect him, through his sire, with the Puritan Fathers. The great fortune said to be waiting some heir in name and line had never arrested his attention, for he was not registered in the records of lineal descent, but dwelt alone, and away from all kindred of name and descent from Aquila. It is doubtful whether, if he had died before this record was published, or before the days of modern spiritualism, he could have received a Christian burial, with head to the west, to meet at the resurrection of the bodies, the Saviour, who is to come from the east, when the trump of the angel shall call up the dead and decayed forms from the earth. But he has already outlived most of the follies, superstitions, and prejudices, of the Christians, and expects at death to find a home with the spirits, if not with the Christians, of the other world, and not so cold and unwelcome a reception as he found in this world.

Section II. THE MOTHER AND CHILD

" Silently, strangely, the darkness Has fallen upon thy way, And the hands of no earthly morning For thee shall open the day.

" And yet in a world of sunshine

Thou seemest to dwell the while ; For the light of thy soul looks on us In the light of thy beautiful smile.

" And much for that one affliction Shall this recompense atone — On the path of thine earthly journey Thou shalt not walk alone.

" For when human love shall leave thee, Thy wanderings almost done, Then the hands of invisible angels Shall softly lead thee on.

" And their arms shall be round about thee, Till thy feet through that gate have trod Standing dark at the end of the pathway Which leads from the world to God.

" And then what an over-payment For the night of thy mortal ills, Shall come with the light of that morning That breaks o'er eternity's hills ! "

On the fifth day of the first month of the eighteen hundred and thirteen, at the opening of the morning light upon the snow-clad hills and vales of New England, a poor, lonely, and sorry mother, with a newly-born and unwelcome babe, might have been seen in an old, shattered, and oft-deserted house, through which the winter winds and New England snow-storms played almost unobstructed ; a house long since gone to " dust and ashes," leaving only the hole in the ground to mark the spot where its frame once protected, as well as society then did, the entrance of the Lone One on his earthly pilgrimage. Few marks of a modern New England home were to be seen there, except the bright eye of the sorry mother, and the quiet face of the babe, sleeping in innocence and ignorance both of its " totally depraved nature " and totally deprived condition (especially of the comforts of life). The mother's eye grew dim and weak as it dropped its tears fresh-wrung from the heart, while she pondered on the fate of herself and child. What would become of them she knew not. Her hands, so used to toil for her support, were now confined to a new task, to which maternal love alone called her, and which returned a reward only in the satisfaction to her heart, but which would neither feed nor clothe herself and babe. A few — only a few — persons were willing to be known as the friends of this poor mother and babe ; but probably as many as were willing to be seen and known to be friends of the mother and child in a stable in Bethlehem, once on a time. The few did call to see the mother and child, but they were mostly from that class of persons whose entire wealth is in charity, sympathy, and love, and who, however much disposed, were unable to relieve the wants of the sufferers. Death would indeed have been a welcome visitor then and there, if willing to take both to his home ; and far more welcome to the child, could he have seen the path of life before him. Thus dark and gloomy, and sad, hopeless, and loveless, uncalled for, a curse, not a blessing, was the earthly dawning of the Lone One's life. Well might that saddened mother say, with a sweet sister of song, on a bank of the Ohio, #

" For me, in all life's desert sand,

No well is made, no tent is spread ; No father's nor a brother's hand Is laid with blessing on my head.

ct The radiance of my mortal star

Is crossed with signs of woe to me, And all my thoughts and wishes are Sad wanderers toward eternity.

* Alice Cary.

" Stricken, riven, helplessly apart

From all that blessed the path I trod, 0, tempt me, tempt me not, my heart, To arraign the goodness of my God !

se For suffering hath been made sublime, And souls that lived and died alone Have left an echo for all time.

As they went wailing to the throne.

" There have been moments when I dared Believe life's mystery a breath, And deem Faith's beauteous bosom bared To the betraying arms of Death.

66 For the immortal life but mocks The soul that feels its ruin dire 7 And like a tortured demon rocks Upon the cradling waves of fire.

*' To mine is pressed no loving lip,

Around me twines no helping arm; And, like a frail dismasted ship, I blindly drift before the storm."

This was the mother and child. Nobody owned the mother, for no priest had bade her obey and serve any man ; and hence no one man was bound to feed and clothe her. She owned herself and child ; and we never heard that she attributed its origin to a spirit, or to spirits, or spiritual influence of any kind, although she was a Christian woman. Whether she repented the hasty and imprudent bestowal of her love on that Simon-son of Nathaniel, from an overflowing heart, we cannot say ; but that she deeply deplored her sad fate is but too well known, however much she may now rejoice over its results. Few had pity for her. Some had scorn ; more had contempt ; but the angels smiled on her ; and when the heart of man cast her out, the heart of God took her in. But Simon, 0, Simon ! where art thou ? What screen can hide thee from her suffering ?

When the nation's second war with England sent its notes echoing among the granite hills of New Hampshire, it called to the field and the ocean many brave hearts from among her hardy sons, Among them was Simon, the son of Nathaniel, who speedily released himself from home and relatives, and sought associates in the camp, with the frontier army, on the Canada side of New England, His restless soul and troubled mind sought and found food and interest in the army for a brief period, until the terrible battle of Plattsburgh, after which the army record contained, among the names of the wounded and died, this same Simon, thus shortening the journey of life, and abruptly terminating the path to fame and glory, by a precipice and a plunge in oblivion's stream. Here ends all the Lone One could glean in 1855 of a father's history. In his ripened years, he was never much inclined to search among the tombs for relics, while living subjects of more interest were ever around him. At this infancy period of life, which we have now introduced, dark clouds with heavy storms hung lowering over his horizon ; and this burst and crash in a father's death was distant and faint, compared with many others that follow ; but fate would have its fixed course. In riper years, he often wondered why God (if there were a God) had sent him here without consulting his choice to come and be thus born, and also whether he could be accountable for involuntary life and actions resulting therefrom ; but none could answer or tell why God had done thus, by special or by general laws. Some power had certainly, without consulting the will of either, sent the child into earthly consciousness and the father out. The eager, ardent, restless spirit of the father (but not a spirit of wrangling) had been transmitted to the child, to mark him, in the babe, the boy, and the man, through life. Here our history leaves the father for the more minute detail of life and character by the numerous relatives, while we follow the Life-Line of the mother and boy. The babe would not die, although many wished it would, to relieve the mother from a burthen, and them from deeds of charity they felt so unable to perform. It lived and grew, and the mother 2 loved it, perhaps the more, for the hard fate which had befallen her. She sometimes thought, perhaps,

" Heaven her nuptials did record, Though man did deem her love abhorred ; "

and that her babe might yet live to bless and love her and others, and be useful in life, if she could only raise him to manhood. But joyless poverty in a hard country! — 0, who can describe its trials ! — its withering blasts, its pinching wants, its trampled and despised condition? Then add to it the disgrace of being a mother without the sacred mantle of legal marriage, and you can scarcely imagine the depths of a mother's woe forty years ago. Marriage might, indeed, have screened the mother from public scorn ; but how much guilt, and of what nature, attached to the child, society did never define. But it long despised him. When the rude cold winds reached their icy fingers for the heart-strings of her babe, and the rattling boards, nor tattered garments, could save him* then the mother folded him to her bosom, and fed and warmed from her scantily-supplied body, and bade the cold and hunger take her with her babe, or leave both together. She was a mother worthy a better fate, who might have filled, with honor and love, a stately mansion, had fortune favored her with one, instead of a hovel. It was, indeed, a hard task to supply by her labor the wants of both, for few would hire her with her boy. Susan did not name her boy for either family, nor borrow a name from either record of ancestors, but selected a name left on the scroll of fame by one who fell at the battle of Bunker's Hill, where the tall monument marks the spot of conflict and death ; and that name he is still known by, as much as by the sire-name. But a name of one beloved by thousands did not bring even friends to the Lone One, for now the

" years pressed hard upon him,

And his living friends were few ; And from out the sombre future Troubles drifted into view. ' '

Never yet did a child start on the pathway to fame, even in New England, with harder prospects, and through a darker and colder social atmosphere, than this unblessed babe ; and yet his eyes sparkled with gladness, and his heart leaped with joy, at each kind look, loving smile, or gentle word, of mother or friend. He had not yet learned that the world around him was full of scorn, contempt, neglect, and slander, for his sensitive soul to meet and overcome with its own love and devotion, which alone could overcome such obstacles to happiness. The meagre pittance which Susan could obtain for unwearying industry enabled her to feed and clothe herself and babe. It was no doubt a blessing to her to have the screen over coming events sufficient to obscure all vision of the terrible fate that awaited her and her boy ; else she would have earnestly prayed (for she did pray) that the cup might pass undrained by each or either. How oft, in riper years, have the eye and smile of the Lone One rested on a mother and child in a home of poverty, while the mind has turned back to his own mother and his childhood, and wondered if here, as there, love alone constituted the wealth of mother and child ! Tears and sympathy never have, and never can, abandon the heart once schooled in the experience of the Lone One ; nor can it ever fail to appreciate, reciprocate, and feel, the genial love of kindred souls.

Four times our latitude felt the freezing winds and drifting snows of a winter solstice ; cold without, and cold within ; cold the forms, and colder the hearts, around the tender germ in earthly mould, born, out of time and out of place, of a mother, but not of a wife. The father had gone to Paradise, with Jesus and the thief; but the child was not taught to speak of his father, even the Father in heaven ; and although he saw other children with fathers to accept and instruct them, yet he knew not that he had a father, living or dead, till many years after the transition of Simon. The mother enjoyed tolerable health ; the heart only was diseased ; and whose heart would not be, in such a world, and under such trials, — a widow in fact, but not in law ? The messenger from the " Kingdom of Ponemah " had already started after her ; and the car of death was moving toward earth, to bear her to the " Islands of the Blessed ; " but she knew it not ; for still the earthly form swayed to the will obedient, still " the magic car moved on." Avon's bard has truly said, " Misfortunes never come single ; " and the Song of Hiawatha truly sings, in lines of Longfellow measure,

" So disasters come not singly ; But, as if they watched and waited, Scanning one another's motions, When the first descends, the others Follow, follow, gathering fiockwise Hound their victim, sick and wounded.

First a shadow, then a sorrow, Till the air is dark with anguish."

But there is no hardest fate, no deepest woe in the trial-lives of wandering souls. Superlatives are meaningless. Comparatives alone are appropriate. Every hard trial has a harder, every sad time a sadder, and every dark day a darker ; so of the bright, the beautiful, the good, and the happy, with a superlative only in the Perfect, the Infinite, the Omniscient. The child, or boy (for at this age he was both or either), was deposited with a Quaker family on the mountain, while the mother went to watch by the bedside of a relative, where the camp-fires of life were slowly expiring, little suspecting the angel of death was reaching for her to go first to the " Land of the Hereafter," and welcome there the dying one, and leave here her lonely babe to buffet the storms alone. She retired from the sick bed late one night, and lay her wearied body on its couch for repose, and quietly arose into the regions of eternal dream ; for, ere she awoke she died, — died without a struggle, apparently without the motion of a muscle, for the quiet face wore still its genial smile. In the morning they found the pale, cold form at rest ; but the spirit had been called, and obeyed the summons, — taken passage with the messenger to the sphere where the angels bid her welcome to their home. But she could not stay quietly there, for her boy was lingering and struggling in the wrangling world below ; and she asked and obtained permission to return, and guard him for a few years, to aid his feeble soul in its trial-hours and combats with a world of scorn and contempt. The Infidel laughed at the idea of her being a spirit, and the Christian ridiculed the idea of a spirit coming to earthly friends ; but both were ignorant and in error; for she was a spirit, and did come back from her happy home, to fill a mission to earth and to the lonely child. The physician said she died by a nightmare. She says she died by a disease of the heart. No matter ; she was dead to the world of touch and sight, to the outer sense and earthly form, and only alive to herself and the spiritual senses of others ; and the Lone One now inherited his name and organization, and nothing more. No wonder the neighbors said they sometimes saw her form, pale and shadowy, sitting on the bier which stood long over her grave, in the orchard where they laid her body to rest near its kindred ! No wonder the timid and superstitious said they heard her voice moaning in the breeze, as it whistled through the orchard, answering to the wind, which " sat in the pines, and gave groan for groan ! " No wonder the whip-poor-will flew directly from the house to the grave, and from the grave to the house, and sang mournfully his sad song at each end of his short journey ! No wonder all who knew her asked each of each, " What will become of her boy ? " Few, very few, in that day, knew that our parents dead were living still, our spirit-guides. Her blessing came in the lines of the angel, F. S. Osgood :