Papers from Overlook-House

I remember that we were once walking along the avenue which led to the house, and I quoted to him a line of poetry which he did heartily appreciate. The scene around had little power to prepare his mind for the impression. Two huge old cherry trees were near us. These were gradually withering away; as if to remind him, as he continually passed them, that the days of his full strength were gone, and that infirmities of old age were creeping upon him.

Had I perused all our volumes of poetry, I could not have selected a sentence, which he could relish more than the one which I repeated. It was the well-known line of Cowper, that God made the country, but man made the town.

It was really curious to observe how this arrested all his mind. It seemed as if his soul was deeply impressed with a sense of the goodness of God, in giving man this beautiful green world, on which he does not labor in vain. He appeared also to have respect for the poet who could utter such a truth. Had all the tribe of bards risen from their graves, been capable of participating in our earthly food, and come to us that day, Cowper would have been treated to Benjamin's portion.

His histories proved to me how his nature was the same in early life, and in age, as to fearlessness, and to a rough opposition to those by whom he was excited.

Once his step-mother, during the strife of the revolution, and while his father was absent from home in the service of his country, sent him with a claim to a British officer. He was to demand payment for some produce which the soldiers of the king had taken from the farm.

He found him seated at a table, at a place not far from Bustleton, and presenting himself made known the object of his visit.

"Where is your father?" said the officer.

The boy was shrewd enough to know that discretion was now the better part of valor. But mingled emotions overcame his wisdom. The British soldiers around him were the oppressors of his country.

Regardless of the wrath which he would assuredly awaken, and scattering, manifestly, all hope of success in his mission to the wind, he saucily replied, "Why, he is at the camp with General Washington; where he ought to be." Perhaps he also regarded this as a defence of his father. A grasp at a sword, an angry oath, – an assurance that he was a vile little rebel, and must quickly vanish, were the evidences that he had given his receipt in full for all that had been taken as spoils from the farm.

I have said that he was a man of the most sterling honesty. His extreme care to ascertain that all his accounts were correct, was actually a trouble to the vestry of the church, while he was treasurer of the body. He was above the least meanness in all his dealings with men. As he was rather too suspicious of others, sometimes imagining that they had some evil design, where they had none, it was the more remarkable that he had no cunning in his own heart, was open in all his aims, and free from those arts which entangle weak consciences.

He had manners which were a study. Few men are not, in some degree affected by their dress. He was the same man in self-respect and courtesy, whether you met him in his soiled working-clothes, or in his best array. Summoned suddenly from the work in the field, or from the barn, with chaff and dust upon him, his calm courtesy in receiving any guest, whatever his station in life, the utter absence of all apology for his appearance, his entire devotion to the attentions due to his visitors, elicited your decided admiration. Not in his conduct, to his guests, but in some slight expression, when we were alone, could any of us detect that he felt any peculiar pleasure, when any of our most aristocratic inhabitants had called to see him and his household, manifesting their respect. I have never seen him more devoted and kind to any visitor, than to a poor friend, – one who had lagged far behind him, in the ascent of the hill of fortune.

It could not be expected that his wild portion of the country would be exempted from those rude scenes of violence, where men take the laws into their own hands. Nor can it be surprising, that with his physical strength, boldness, and wild life at sea and on land, he should sometimes be prominent in these wars on a little scale.

I remember how I heard one of his narratives with mingled interest and sorrow, when he told of a victory fought and won.

It was a contest with a party of butchers, who had come from a distance and taken possession of the tavern, maltreating some of the country people, who had, to say the least, a better right to the injurious comforts of the inn.

He was summoned from his sleep, and became the leader of the avenging party. When they reached the scene of noisy revelry, he proved that he did not rely on physical strength alone, but summoned a "moral effect" to his aid. A pretended roll was to be called. Many names of persons not present, perhaps not in existence, were, by his order, pronounced; and their "Here," was heard clearly uttered in the night air. The effect of this act of generalship soon became apparent. Silence, indicative of dismay reigned in the place of the former noisy laughter. The rough fellows were sorely thrashed, and taught that there was a high law which the quiet dwellers in the field could put in force.

In after days my old friend would have deprecated the recurrence of such scenes. There is always a tendency to law and order, and to gentle virtues where a man has a great fondness for children – and this love for little ones he possessed in a great degree.

It would have been a good scene for a painter, when they gathered round the white-haired man and elicited his attention and his smile. The large form sinking into its most quiet repose, as if there was no need that it should be braced now as if prepared for any struggle of life, and the rough features softened to gentle sympathy, would have been worthy of lasting perpetuation on the canvass. I have no doubt that the passage of Scripture recording the benediction of the children by our Lord, touched his heart powerfully, and allured him the more to the One who bore our nature in the perfection of every excellence.

If an able painter, I would strive to represent our Redeemer, as I could fancy that He appeared in the scene to which I have referred. Who can attempt to satisfy even the least imaginative disciple, by any picture of the countenance of our Lord? How difficult even to unite the infinite tenderness with the determination of the perfect man, whom nothing could move from his true purpose, because holiness was the necessity of a heart without sin? One shrinks, in some degree, from a multitude of representations of Him, as if they, failing to meet the inspiration of the soul, were not reverent. Might we not more easily conceive of his blended love and dignity, if he was painted among those who could not trouble him, whom He would not have sent away, whom he took in his arms, and on whom he caused to rest a blessing, that ever waits now to descend on the children of those who diligently seek him.

Some of the quaint narratives of the old man have proved, as I have repeated them, a source of much amusement to the young.

For instance, he said that he was returning from a journey of some miles into the interior of the country. He had taken his heavy wagon, and aided a neighbor who was removing his goods to a new home.

The night had overtaken him as he returned. Just as he crossed a small stream, he heard a voice of one in great distress, calling for aid. "Oh! come here, – come here," – were the piteous cries from an adjoining field.

Stopping his horses, and clambering a bank, he soon secured a "reconnoissance" of a field of strife.

By the dim light of the moon, he saw a scene sufficiently ludicrous, but demanding immediate activity. He had not come a moment too soon. A small man, a shoemaker, the one who cried for aid, and sadly in need of it had, it seems, been crossing a field, when an ugly-tempered bull rushed upon him, and would have gored him to death but for his presence of mind and dexterity. The poor fellow had skill enough to dodge the assault; and as the animal, missing his aim, rushed by him, he caught it by the tail. The vicious brute made every effort to reach his disagreeable parasite. In doing this he ran around in endless circles, very wearying to the little legs of the little man, and exhausting his strength.

As my old friend had come and seen, what had he to do but conquer? He hastened to the side of the living whirligig. The shoemaker was wearing out his shoe-soles more rapidly than any of his customers.

Seizing also the tail of the bull, he informed the exhausted man that he might now let go.

The animal continued the same tactics, but his foe-man was armed with his heavy whip, and this was wielded by a powerful right hand. A few blows, and the victory was won. The hero was left alone in his glory; for the rescued had vanished as soon as he could release his hold on the tail, and he did not return to see the result of the strife. Let us hope that he was grateful, although I doubt the gratitude of one who could thus run away, and leave all the battle to his deliverer. A benefactor in things small and great, who has a noble mind, though wounded by insensibility to his kindness, may receive benefit from the unthankful; for he may learn more deeply the example of the Lord, and he may free his heart the more to do good, and look for no return – learn to do good to the unthankful and the evil.

I have represented the farmer at Riversdale as openness and honesty itself in all his dealings. Men will be men. In country life, as in the city you will find a sad abundance of mean and tricky persons.

It is not a little curious to see our city friends come into the country, and take for granted that the sojourners there are all simple-minded and honest men. That is a weakness which is soon dissipated. The wisdom is purchased with the loss of gold and silver. They find that they are charged by many, probably the obtrusive ones, the most extravagant prices for all things. The more free they are with their money, the more they are required to pay. The value fixed on the substance offered for sale, is all that can possibly be extorted from any one who is imprudent enough to buy, and make no inquiries. There comes a danger of reaction. They change the theory concerning men of the field, which they have learned from poets and novelists, and are tempted to imagine that they all are like these thieves. I thank God, that I know well to the contrary.

Some men of large means imagine that if they are very free in spending their money, and allow those whom they employ, to take advantage of them, to extort unfair prices, that they will thereby cultivate good feeling, a grateful regard. This is an entire mistake. The man who cheats you never will be grateful. He comes to you, in all his relations to you, with meanness of soul. That is no soil for good will. He also fears, that at any time, you may be conscious of the fraud. He expects therefore an hour when you will be angry, and despise him. He judges of your coming enmity, by his own lasting bitterness and revengeful mind, toward any one who has overreached him. He has also some contempt for you, because you have been less cunning than himself.

Pay fair generous prices. When a man gains from you more than the fair price, let it be a gift. Do not expect anything from the man, who does in two days the labor that should be accomplished in one. Alas, as we reflect on the want of truth and gratitude towards us, we have to remember that we can apply these lessons to ourselves, as we labor in the vineyard where we have been sent to toil!

I have spoken of the hospitality of the house at Riversdale. This never could have been exercised as it was, but for the admirable arrangements of the good wife and excellent daughters. I look back, and marvel how all could be done in that house and farm, and yet time be found for the entertainment of so many guests.

I am deeply grieved to look back to those bachelor days, and find that I had a senseless conviction, that a house pretty much took care of itself. It was a delusion which must often have caused me to be troublesome, when I had not any idea that I was in the way. I now honor the statemanship which adorns domestic affairs, and hope I no longer am found at any time, a wheel out of place in the machinery of any house. Never too late to mend. A good proverb, friends. But as we apply its hopefulness, let us take care to remember that when the present time shall have become the past, and we have done wrong in things small and great, it is too late to mend the sin and error. We cannot mend the evil of the past.

I see the good old mother of the household now. Always neat in her dress, – erect in form, – kind, – thoughtful, self-possessed. You could not know her long, and not perceive that she was a pre-eminent representative of the wife and parent. Her love for others had its true source, the love of God. Thence it flowed gently a stream of tenderness for her family, and then spread freely far and wide to all others. Her religion was of a very grand character. She knew, in all the trials of life, what it was to have her Creator for her Rock, – to have His rod and His staff. Real to her indeed, the divine love which brought our Redeemer to our form from Heaven, and caused Him to expiate our sins on the cross.

Once we were speaking hopelessly, of some reprobate. The opinion was advanced, or implied, that he was never to be reformed. I never forgot the sorrow she manifested, and her heart-felt but gentle reproof, while she corrected us in the abiding spirit of the hope in Christ for any one who yet lives. While the lamp holds out to burn, she asked, could not he return?

She was one of the most unpretending Christians, and therefore her deep piety could not be concealed. When she was unconscious of the revelation, she taught us in a living subject of the Lord, the power that can be given for holiness in this scene, where all gold can be well tried in the fire.

She was ever busy. In hours of ease she had her knitting-needle. How pleasant it was to see her at her work, in the warm days of summer, as she sat in her high-backed chair on the piazza which overlooked the River. With the steamboats, then beginning their course, she was never satisfied. "The boats with sails," she said, "glided away so natural like: but with the steamboats it was all forced work." No doubt she often regarded these different vessels, as emblematic of those who moved under gentle and approved agencies, and those who were out of harmony with nature around us, – the working of the hands that are infinite in power, – those who cared only for hire, and needed, in order to their activity, some of those goads which happily abound for the idle.

The aged woman came to us what she was, to remind us what endless influences are ever ready to mould us to increasing piety, and love for others. To the sick and sorrowing out of her household she had been an angel of charity. Her life had been a golden cord. He had strung it for her with jewels from the mine. Is that mine exhausted? The glories we know lie near at hand for all that will gather them.

Well can I realize after the lapse of years, the sorrow of the aged wife when it was manifest that my old friend must soon close his eyes on the world for ever. There he lay, his strong form promising hope, which the decision of the physician denied. Could he be dying, who was bound to the scene around him by so many ties? As he had gained these fields by such a life of labor, and held them so firmly in his grasp, as every tree seemed so surely his, as you felt the impress of his firm and undisputed will in all the arrangements of his broad farm, you might ask can all these bonds which bind him here be sundered? But God sunders all, as he will, in a moment.

And now he was on the verge of the world to come. In infancy his life had hung by the most attenuated thread. Was it better for him that he was to die an old man, one who had passed through life's trials, had received such endless mercies, had so many calls to so many duties? Or would it have been better for him that he had died in infancy, passing to the ineffable joy, but to less glory and honor than those who have borne the cross, endured in true manly toil, the burden and heat of the day in the vineyard of the Master?

It was in a quiet house, quiet as one so soon to be forsaken of its owner, that we assembled to receive with him the precious emblems of the great sacrifice made for us, in infinite love. If he received consolation, it was indeed given also to the aged wife. Her quiet sorrow, without a tear, was reverent, and full of submission. Its evenness, – not rising or falling with every hope or fear, – was a seal of its great depth. You read in her fixed countenance that she had the past with all its memories, and the future with all its solitude clearly before her. She was henceforth to be as the shattered vase, just waiting some small trial of its strength, to fall to pieces. But the lamp within was to burn on, and fed with ever increasing supplies of aliment for its flame, to glow with increasing radiance. Such lights in the temple of God never go out.

My aged friends! your ashes lie where you hoped that your mortal remains would find their resting-place. Years have passed, and yet I recall you to remembrance more affectionately, than when I stood by your opened grave. One cause of this, is, I presume, that the more I become acquainted with men, the more I learn to value those who have risen in their integrity, above the low level of ordinary character.

Changed is your dwelling. A vast and costly pile occupies the place where once it stood. But could you, the former inhabitants, of that which has undergone such alteration, reappear among us, we should recognize what is eternal in its nature. What is of earth, alters and passes away. But love, and truth, and faith, all the nobleness given by the Redeemer, – these endure. These are extended and glorified in the world to come.

XI.

DR. SAMUEL STANHOPE SMITH AND THE HAUNTED HOUSE

When I was at Princeton College, Dr. Samuel Stanhope Smith was its president. A learned and able man, and an eloquent preacher, blameless in his life, his influence was great, not only over his college, but far and wide over the surrounding country.

I trust that it is one of the merits of our Republic, that truly great and good men will always have this influence and respect. Surely we have cast off those impediments to human progress which exist in other lands, where tributes due to real merit are paid to men for their accumulation of riches. Our offices in the states will almost always be bestowed on the deserving. The tricks of the politician will be generally unknown, because our people will hold them in abhorrence. In the old countries legislative bodies have felt the force of bribes. But I will boldly turn prophet here, and say, that no such practices will ever be known in such deliberative bodies in New Jersey. I can imagine the shame which the pure-minded people of this common-wealth must be ready to visit on one proven guilty of such a detestable enormity. Indeed he would incur the risk of being burnt alive at the stake.

The influence which Dr. Smith attained by the purest means, he exercised for the public good. His mind was of a philosophic cast, and he abhorred all superstition. Hence he was always eager to dispel the errors of the ignorant, and to remove the fears excited by diseased imaginations.

One day I was plodding over a page of Sophocles. No doubt it contained beauties whose discovery would repay toil. I was, however, unable to say, as I pondered it, lexicon by my side, with the Frenchman, "hang these ancients, they are always anticipating our bright thoughts," for I was not yet able to compare the idea of the Greek with the scintillations of genius which had flashed through my mind, and which were laid up for the future edification of the world, because I could not determine what the old dramatist had intended to say to us.

While I was in this state of most unpleasant perplexity, there was a knock at my door. I knew it at once to be that of our tutor. He informed me that the great doctor wished to see me and the rest of my class at his study.

We were thus invited, – that is, we had as strict a summons as any soldiers could receive from their commander, – to appear at his residence, the famous house under whose roof so many illustrious men have found shelter. Long may it stand!

It could not take much time to collect the designated young gentlemen together. Before we met, each individual brain was greatly exercised with speculations, concerning the cause of our being thus summoned to the study of our venerable head. When we were a collective body the various streams of conjecture being thrown in a torrent together, the effervescence exceeded all my powers of description.

It was a trying hour when any one of us had to come face to face with Dr. Smith.

We were not aware that any evil deed had been committed of late in the college. We all felt a bold conviction of individual innocence. Indeed, all college fellows are innocent always, until they are proved to be guilty.

One poor fellow, whose shaggy head could never be reduced to smooth order by comb or brush, more than the tossing waves are subdued to a placid mirror by the shadows of passing clouds, with a nose that always reminded you of a sun-dial, and an eye, which sometimes gave him the nickname of Planet, from its ceaseless twinkling, – had indeed some troubles of conscience concerning a duck which had been killed, cooked, and eaten in his room a few nights before, after he had taken a long rural ramble in the evening. He had some reasonable fear that he could not produce the bill of its sale for the scrutiny of the President, should it be demanded. Still, on the whole, we were calm. All felt the necessity of a general sunshine of countenances. It was our wisdom to look as if we expected some compliment from the head of the college. Indeed, one fellow, who had a manly, harmless wildness in him, whom all loved and confided in, who was a good and kind adviser of us all, – whose intense life was a good element for the formation of the noble minister which he afterwards became, – was audibly preparing a reply to the doubtfully anticipated commendation of the President. It contained the most ludicrous assertion of our great modesty, and sense of unworthiness, – in which he said, we all most cordially concurred, – while in the presence in which we stood. Curiosity was in every mind. No one had the slightest clue, which appeared to guide us satisfactorily one step in the darkness.

But we reached the door of the study. One of the most respectful knocks ever given proclaimed our presence, – or rather inquired if we could be admitted. The fine, manly voice which we so well knew, called on us to enter. We were received with that courteous dignity which characterized the doctor. All scanned the noble head, and no thunder-clouds were there. It is something to have seen Dr. Smith in the pulpit, in the class-room, or in the study. He was somewhat taller than men in general, and had a frame of fine proportions. His countenance easily kindled with intelligence. A large blue eye seemed to search your secret thoughts – and yet in all manliness of inquiry – promising cordial sympathy with all that was elevated, and a just indignation at the contemplation of any moral evil. His brow was spacious. His whole face spoke of hard study – polish of mind – of patient thought – of one who walked among men as a king. His voice was full and harmonious. His address was dignified and urbane. The stranger must trust him, and his friends confided in him, not to discover that he ever could forsake them.

Before he spoke we were at our ease. Our surprise took a new channel as he entered on the business of the hour.

"Gentlemen," said he, "I have sent for you, that I might have your co-operation in a plan, which may greatly benefit a worthy farmer, and remove superstitious fears from some ignorant minds.

"Mr. Hollman, who has a farm about two miles from the college, cannot persuade any of the laboring families to reside in a lonely stone house on his property. It is a dwelling that should be a comfortable, happy home. The situation is rather picturesque; standing, as it does, near the shade of a thick wood, and on the bank of a small stream which empties into our classical run. The people say that the house is haunted. Family after family has forsaken it in dread. I have not had patience to listen to the various narratives told concerning it. One man who is quite intelligent, and evidently honest, declares that he will take his oath that he has heard terrible noises at midnight, and has smelt strange fumes.