the event of the day.
A dozen or more carriages were in the road before the shabby frame house I had heard spoken of as “old Mrs. O’Hara’s,” but which I had never entered. Eight or ten horses were tethered to the fence, and a group of men loitered about the door. As we went up the steps I saw that the parlor was full of villagers. Some were sitting; more were standing in a kind of expectant way; all were so grave that my spirits fell to church-temperature. Something solemn was going on. Just inside of the parlor door the mother of my most intimate girl-friend sat in a rocking-chair. She had on a black silk dress and her best bonnet. Every woman present wore black. I saw Mrs. D. beckon up Major Goode, an elderly beau who was a notable figure in the neighborhood, and whisper audibly to him, “If you want more chairs, you may send over to our house for them.”
It was evidently a great function, for Mrs. D. was a notable housekeeper, and her furniture the finest in the place. Her drawing-room chairs were heavy mahogany, and upholstered with black horsehair. Her house, altogether the best within a radius of several miles, was not a hundred yards from the O’Hara cottage; but that she should make the neighborly offer thrilled me into nameless awe.
My mother moved forward slowly, holding my hand fast in hers, and I was led, without warning, up to a long, black, open box, set upon two chairs, one at each end. In the long, black box lay a woman I had never seen before. She was awfully white; her eyes were shut; she looked peaceful, even happy; but she was not asleep. No sleeping creature was ever so moveless and marble-pale. Her terrible stillness impressed me most painfully by its very unlikeness to the heaving, palpitating crowd about her. A mob-cap with a closely fluted border framed the face; she was dressed in a long cambric gown of a pattern entirely new to me. It lay in moveless plaits as stiff as paper from her chin to her feet, which it hid; it was pinked in tiny points at the bottom of the skirt and the cuffs; the hands, crossed at the wrists as no living hands are ever laid, were bound at the crossing with white satin ribbon. Under the moveless figure was a cambric sheet, also pinked at the edges, that fell straight to the floor over the sides of the coffin.
I must have pinched my mother’s hand with my tightening fingers, for she eyed me in grave surprise, not unmixed with reproof, in taking a seat and drawing me to her side. There was no place for children to sit down. I am sure that she had not an inkling of the unspeakable fright that possessed my ignorant mind.
From that day to this I have never gone to a funeral when I could possibly keep away from it upon any decent pretext. When constrained by circumstance to be one of the party collected about a coffin, I invariably have a return, in some measure, of the choking horrors of that awful day. For days, sometimes for weeks afterward, the dread is an obsession I cannot dispel by any effort of will. Argue and struggle as I may, I am haunted night and day by the memory of the woman whom I never saw while she lived.
As if the brooding hush, so deadly to my childish senses; the funeral sermon, delivered in Uncle Carus’s most sepulchral chest tones, and the wild, wailing measures of
“Why should we mourn departing friends?”
sung to immemorial “China”—were not enough to rivet the scene forever upon my soul, a final and dramatic touch was superadded. Two men brought forward a long, black top, which they were about to fix in place upon the dreadful box, when a young woman in black rushed from a corner, flung herself upon her knees beside the coffin, and screamed: “Mother, mother! You sha’n’t take her away!” making as if she would push back the men.
“Harriet! Harriet!” remonstrated a deep voice, and Major Goode, the tears rolling down his cheeks, stooped and lifted the daughter by main force. “This won’t do, child!”
Fifteen years later, sitting in the calm moonlight upon the porch-steps at “Homestead,” the dwelling of my chum, Effie D., I heard from Mrs. D.’s lips the story of Mrs. O’Hara. Her cottage, subsequently our school-house, had been pulled down long ago as an eyesore to the fastidious mistress of Homestead. At least I got that section of the old lady’s life that had to do with the gray-haired Major Goode, a veteran of the War of 1812. Both the actors in the closing scene seemed, in the review of my childish impressions of the funeral, to have been too old to figure in the tale.
“You can understand why nobody in the village could visit her,” concluded the placid narrator to whom I am indebted for numberless traditions and real life-romances. “The funeral was another matter. Death puts us all upon a level.”
There was the skeleton of a chronique scandaleuse in the bit of exhumed gossip.
VI
OLD-FASHIONED HUSBAND’S LOVE-LETTER—AN ALMOST HOMICIDE—“SLAUGHTERED MONSTER”—A WESLEYAN SCHOOLMISTRESS.
“Roxbury, July 26th, 1838.
“My dear Wife—Your esteemed letter of the 20th is at hand, and it has relieved my mind to hear that you are all doing so well. I suppose you expect a history of my movements here. Well, on Saturday morning went to Boston; in the evening took mother and called on all my Dorchester friends—stayed with some five minutes, with others fifteen, etc. Sunday, went to church; very dry sermon in morning; evening attended Mr. Abbot’s church; was much pleased with the preaching—text—‘And there came one running and kneeling to Him, and said,’ etc. At night attended at same place what they call a ‘Conference Meeting’—quite an interesting time. Monday, went to Brookline—visited sisters. Tea at Mr. Davis’s; music of the best kind in abundance. Tuesday to Boston in morning, evening at home to receive company. Quite a pleasant afternoon; a good many Dorchester friends calling. Wednesday morning as usual in the city; evening held a grand levee: the street filled with chaises and carriages; some twenty or more to tea. Really, my visit has created quite a sensation among our good friends; some met yesterday afternoon who have not seen each other for ten or more years. Don’t you think I had better come here oftener to keep up the family acquaintance? for it seems to require some extraordinary event to set these good folks to using their powers of locomotion. By-the-by, you must not be jealous, but I had a lady kiss me yesterday, for the first time it was ever done here, and who do you think it was? My cousin Mary, of whom you have heard me speak. I have so much love given in charge for you, my own dear wife, that it will be necessary to send a part of it in this letter for fear that I should not be able to travel with it all. I am especially directed to bear from a lady two kisses to you from her, and they shall be faithfully delivered when we are permitted to meet. You don’t know how many inquiries have been made after you, and regrets expressed that you did not come on with me. Mother says, ‘Tell Anna I should like for Samuel to stay longer, but know that he is wanting at home, so will not say a word at his leaving.’ She sends much love to her daughter Anna. Father keeps coming in, and from his movements I judge he is waiting for me to finish. You know he is clock-work, so adieu once more. Give my love to the girls, and all at the parsonage. Kiss the children for father. I must now close my letter by commending you to the care and protection of Him who preserves, guides, and directs us in all things. May His choicest blessing rest on you, my dear wife, and on the children of our love! Adieu, my dear wife.
“Your husband,
“Samuel.”
Thus cheerily runs the old-fashioned family epistle. The writer, who never demitted the habit of going to church twice every Sunday, and sometimes thrice, does not comment upon the coincidence that he hears again a sermon from the text used and “improved” by a Virginia divine, two years ago. His mind was full of other things just now. This one of his annual visits to his mother was a glad holiday. The world was going smoothly with him, and the hearty congratulations of townspeople and kindred
