Home as Found, James Fenimore Cooper [bookreader txt] 📗

the same objects, hear the same names, and see

the same faces for their entire lives. I have had the curiosity to

inquire, and have ascertained that none of the old, permanent

families have been active in this affair of the Point, but that all

the clamour has been made by those you call the birds of passage. But

what of that? These people fancy everything reduced to the legal six

months required to vote; and that rotation in persons is as necessary

to republicanism as rotation in office."

 

"Is is not extraordinary that persons who can know so little on the

subject, should be thus indiscreet and positive?"

 

"It is not extraordinary in America. Look about you, Ned, and you

will see adventurers uppermost everywhere; in the government, in your

towns, in your villages, in the country, even. We are a nation of

changes. Much of this, I admit, is the fair consequence of legitimate

causes, as an immense region, in forest, cannot be peopled on any

other conditions. But this necessity has infected the entire national

character, and men get to be impatient of any sameness, even though

it be useful. Everything goes to confirm this feeling, instead of

opposing it. The constant recurrences of the elections accustom men

to changes in their public functionaries; the great increase in the

population brings new faces; and the sudden accumulations of property

place new men in conspicuous stations. The architecture of the

country is barely becoming sufficiently respectable to render it

desirable to preserve the buildings, without which we shall have no

monuments to revere. In short, everything contributes to produce such

a state of things, painful as it may be to all of any feeling, and

little to oppose it."

 

"You colour highly, Jack; and no picture loses in tints, in being

retouched by you."

 

"Look into the first paper that offers, and you will see the _young

men_ of the country hardily invited to meet by themselves, to consult

concerning public affairs, as if they were impatient of the counsels

and experience of their fathers. No country can prosper, where the

ordinary mode of transacting the business connected with the root of

the government, commences with this impiety."

 

"This is a disagreeable feature in the national character, certainly;

but we must remember the arts employed by the designing to practise

on the inexperienced."

 

"Had I a son, who presumed to denounce the wisdom and experience of

his father, in this disrespectful mariner, I would disinherit the

rascal!"

 

"Ah, Jack, bachelor's children are notoriously well educated, and

well mannered. We will hope, however, that time will bring its

changes also, and that one of them will be a greater constancy in

persons, things, and the affections."

 

"Time _will_ bring its changes, Ned; but all of them that are

connected with individual rights, as opposed to popular caprice, or

popular interests, are likely to be in the wrong direction."

 

"The tendency is certainly to substitute popularity for the right,

but we must take the good with the bad; Even you, Jack, would not

exchange this popular oppression for any other system under which you

have lived."

 

"I don't know that--I don't know that. Of all tyranny, a vulgar

tyranny is to me the most odious."

 

"You used to admire the English system, but I think observation has

lessened your particular admiration in that quarter;" said Mr.

Effingham, smiling in a way that his cousin perfectly understood.

 

"Harkee, Ned; we all take up false notions in youth, and this was one

of mine; but, of the two, I should prefer the cold, dogged domination

of English law, with its fruits, the heartlessness of a

sophistication without parallel, to being trampled on by every arrant

blackguard that may happen to traverse this valley, in his wanderings

after dollars. There is one thing you yourself must admit; the public

is a little too apt to neglect the duties it ought to discharge, and

to assume duties it has no right to fulfil."

 

This remark ended the discourse.

Chapter XVI. (Her breast was a brave palace, a broad street, Where all heroic,)

ample thoughts did meet, Where nature such a tenement had ta'en,

That other souls, to hers, dwelt in 'a lane.

 

JOHN NORTON.

 

The village of Templeton, it has been already intimated, was a

miniature town. Although it contained within the circle of its

houses, half-a-dozen residences with grounds, and which were

dignified with names, as has been also said, it did not cover a

surface of more than a mile square; that disposition to

concentration, which is as peculiar to an American town, as the

disposition to diffusion is peculiar to the country population, and

which seems almost to prescribe that a private dwelling shall have

but three windows in front, and a _facade_ of twenty-five feet,

having presided at the birth of this spot, as well as at the birth of

so many of its predecessors and contemporaries. In one of its more

retired streets (for Templeton had its publicity and retirement, the

latter after a very village fashion, however,) dwelt a widow--

bewitched of small worldly means, five children, and of great

capacity for circulating intelligence. Mrs. Abbott, for so was this

demi-relict called, was just on the verge of what is termed the "good

society" of the village, the most uneasy of all positions for an

ambitious and _ci-devant_ pretty woman to be placed in. She had not

yet abandoned the hope of obtaining a divorce and its _suites_; was

singularly, nay, rabidly devout, if we may coin the adverb; in her

own eyes she was perfection, in those of her neighbours slightly

objectionable; and she was altogether a droll, and by no means an

unusual compound of piety, censoriousness, charity, proscription,

gossip, kindness, meddling, ill-nature, and decency.

 

The establishment of Mrs. Abbott, like her house, was necessarily

very small, and she kept no servant but a girl she called her help, a

very suitable appellation, by the way, as they did most of the work

of the _menage_ in common. This girl, in addition to cooking and

washing, was the confidant of all her employer's wandering notions of

mankind in general, and of her neighbours in particular; as often,

helping her mistress in circulating her comments on the latter, as in

anything else.

 

Mrs. Abbott knew nothing of the Effinghams, except by a hearsay that

got its intelligence from her own school, being herself a late

arrival in the place. She had selected Templeton as a residence on

account of its cheapness, and, having neglected to comply with the

forms of the world, by hesitating about making the customary visit to

the Wigwam, she began to resent, in her spirit at least, Eve's

delicate forbearance from obtruding herself, where, agreeably to all

usage, she had a perfect right to suppose she was not desired. It was

in this spirit, then, that she sat, conversing with Jenny, as the

maid of all work was called, the morning after the conversation

related in the last chapter, in her snug little parlour, sometimes

plying her needle, and oftener thrusting her head out of a window

which commanded a view of the principal street of the place, in order

to see what her neighbours might be about.

 

"This is a most extraordinary course Mr. Effingham has taken

concerning the Point," said Mrs. Abbott, "and I _do_ hope the people

will bring him to his senses. Why, Jenny, the public has used that

place ever since I can remember, and I have now lived in Templeton

quite fifteen months.--What _can_ induce Mr. Howel to go so often to

that barber's shop, which stands directly opposite the parlour

windows of Mrs. Bennett--one would think the man was all beard."

 

"I suppose Mr. Howel gets shaved sometimes," said the logical Jenny.

 

"Not he; or if he does, no decent man would think of posting himself

before a lady's window to do such a thing.--Orlando Furioso," calling

to her eldest son, a boy of eleven, "run over to Mr. Jones's store,

and listen to what the people are talking about, and bring me back

the news, as soon as any thing worth hearing drops from any body; and

stop as you come back, my son, and borrow neighbour Brown's gridiron.

Jenny, it is most time to think of putting over the potatoes."

 

"Ma'--" cried Orlando Furioso, from the front door, Mrs. Abbott being

very rigid in requiring that all her children should call her 'ma','

being so much behind the age as actually not to know that 'mother'

had got to be much the genteeler term of the two; "Ma'," roared

Orlando Furioso, "suppose there is no news at Mr. Jones's store?"

 

"Then go to the nearest tavern; something must be stirring this fine

morning, and I'm dying to know what it can possibly be. Mind you

bring something besides the gridiron back with you. Hurry, or never

come home again as long as you live! As I was saying, Jenny, the

right of the public, which is our right, for we are a part of the

public, to this Point, is as clear as day, and I am only astonished

at the impudence of Mr. Effingham in pretending to deny it. I dare

say his French daughter has put him up to it. They say she is

monstrous arrogant!"

 

"Is Eve Effingham, French," said Jenny, studiously avoiding any of

the usual terms of civility and propriety, by way of showing her

breeding--"well, I had always thought her nothing but Templeton

born!"

 

"What signifies where a person was born? where they _live_, is the

essential thing; and Eve Effingham has lived so long in France, that

she speaks nothing but broken English; and Miss Debby told me last

week, that in drawing up a subscription paper for a new cushion to

the reading-desk of her people, she actually spelt 'charity'

'carrotty.'"

 

"Is that French, Miss Abbott?"

 

"I rather think it is, Jenny; the French are very niggardly, and give

their poor carrots to live on, and so they have adopted the word, I

suppose. You, Byansy-Alzumy-Ann, (Bianca-Alzuma-Ann!)"

 

"Marm!"

 

"Byansy-Alzumy-Ann! who taught you to call me marm! Is this the way

you have learned your catechism? Say, ma', this instant."

 

"Ma'."

 

"Take your bonnet, my child, and run down to Mrs. Wheaton's, and ask

her if any thing new has turned up about the Point, this morning;

and, do you hear, Byansy-Alzumy-Ann Abbott--how the child starts

away, as if she were sent on a matter of life and death!"

 

"Why, ma', I want to hear the news, too."

 

"Very likely, my dear, but, by stopping to get your errand, you may

learn more than by being in such a hurry. Stop in at Mrs. Green's,

and ask how the people liked the lecture of the strange parson, last

evening--and ask her if she can lend me a watering-pot, Now, run, and

be back as soon as possible. Never loiter when you carry news,

child."

 

"No one has a right to stop the man, I believe, Miss Abbott," put in

Jenny, very appositely.

 

"That, indeed, have they not, or else we could not calculate the

consequences. You may remember, Jenny, the pious, even, had to give

up that point, public convenience being; too strong for them. Roger-

Demetrius-Benjamin!"--calling to a second boy, two years younger than

his brother--"your eyes are better than mine--who are all those

people collected together in the street. Is not Mr. Howel among

them?"

 

"I do not know, ma'!" answered Roger-Demetrius-Benjamin, gaping.

 

"Then run, this minute, and see, and don't stop to look for your hat.

As you come back, step into the tailor's shop and ask if your new

jacket is most done, and what the news is? I rather think, Jenny, we

shall find out something worth hearing, in the course of the day. By

the way, they do say that Grace Van Cortlandt, Eve Effingham's

cousin, is under concern."

 

"Well, she is the last person I should think would be troubled about

any thing, for every body says she is so desperate rich she might eat

off of silver, if she liked; and she is sure of being married, some

time or other."

 

"That ought to lighten her concern, you think. Oh! it does my heart

good when I see any of those flaunty people right well exercised!

Nothing would make me