THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 LOS ANGELES

 
 BLUFFTON: 
 
 A STORY OF TO-DAY. 
 
 BY 
 
 M. J. SAVAGE. 
 
 BOSTON: 
 LEE AND SHEPARD, PUBLISHERS. 
 
 NEW YORK: 
 
 CHARLES T. DILLINGHAM. 
 1878.
 
 COPYRIGHT, 1878, 
 BY LEE AND SHEPARD. 
 
 Franklin Prett: 
 
 Eltctrotyped and Printed by 
 
 Rand, At'ery, & Co., 
 
 Motion.
 
 > 
 
 NOTE. 
 
 THE incidents of this story are chiefly facts. This is 
 specially true of those things that may to some readers 
 appear forced or exaggerated. The facts, however, do not all 
 belong to any one place, nor to the experience of any one per 
 son. 
 
 The people who live in Bluffton will doubtless recognize 
 some touches of local scenery ; but, if they look to find the 
 characters among their friends and neighbors, they will most 
 certainly be mistaken. 
 
 By bringing out in strong relief some of the evils of one 
 phase of religion, and some of the good of the opposite, the 
 writer would not be understood to assert that the evil is all 
 on one side and the good all on the other. He has simply 
 emphasized those things that were essential to his present 
 purpose. Good and evil are both human, and not confined to 
 any one religious type. 
 
 MAY, 1878. 3 

 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 i. 
 
 AT THE LEVEE 7 
 
 II. 
 ON THE STEAMER 14 
 
 III. 
 RETROSPECT 23 
 
 IV. 
 
 FIRST SUNDAY AT BLUFFTON ....... 30 
 
 V. 
 To THE CAVE 39 
 
 VI. 
 
 THE CONVALESCENCE 52 
 
 VII. 
 OTHER STRANDS IN THE THREAD ..... .61 
 
 VIII. 
 MARK AND TOM TALK 72 
 
 IX. 
 
 A GAME OF CROQUET, AND WHO WON ..... 84 
 
 X. 
 
 THE MINISTER IN His WORK ....... 96 
 
 5
 
 6 CONTENTS. 
 
 XL 
 UNDERGROUND RUMBLINGS I0 4 
 
 XII. 
 MR. FORREST AND MRS. GREY " 2 
 
 XIII. 
 A SOUL COME TO JUDGMENT 123 
 
 XIV. 
 THE OFFENCE *34 
 
 XV. 
 MADGE ENTREATS 146 
 
 XVI. 
 A TERRIBLE SUSPICION 156 
 
 XVII. 
 AN EXCHANGE AT MAPLE CITY 162 
 
 XVIII. 
 THE COUNCIL . . . . 174 
 
 XIX. 
 TOM SPEAKS 186 
 
 XX. 
 THE BROKEN RING 196 
 
 XXI. 
 RECONSIDERATION 208 
 
 XXII. 
 THE REVENGE OF SLIGHTED LOVE 219 
 
 XXIIL 
 ADRIFT 229 
 
 XXIV. 
 A STRANGE MEETING 238
 
 BLUFFTON: 
 A STORY OF TO-DAY. 
 
 I. 
 
 AT THE LEVEE. 
 
 WHY do you call it Maple City? " said Mark, as, after 
 an hour's walk about the town, he and his friend 
 Tom were slowly strolling down the street cut through 
 the bluff that led to the levee. 
 
 " Oh ! I don't know," replied Tom, " unless it may be for 
 the reason that the place isn't a city, and hasn't a maple-tree 
 in its limits. As for the matter of names, you know all the 
 towns East have a Spruce Street, and a Pine Street, and gen 
 erally there isn't a spruce or a pine in sight. Perhaps the 
 mental suggestion has some shade and comfort in it." 
 
 " And as for your cities, Tom, I understand that all cross 
 roads are cities out here." 
 
 "Yes," said he, "just as the peddler shouted ' Hot pies ! ' 
 because that was ' what they called 'em.' They name towns 
 here on the same principle that mothers christen their chil 
 dren George Washington and Napoleon Bonaparte, seem- 
 
 7
 
 8 BLUFFTON. 
 
 ing to have the notion that the quality of the name will 
 somehow strike in, and make Congressmen out of 'em 
 some day." 
 
 "Towns grow so fast," replied Mark, "that I suppose 
 they want the name big enough to cover the future. Now, I 
 am assured by the committee from Bluffton that the place will 
 at least double in five years. And if they get the Great 
 Central Railroad, for which this and all the neighboring 
 places are fighting, they will even double on that." 
 
 '"They all do it, 1 " drolly replied Tom. " All the places 
 are going to double in three to five years. But, if some of 
 them don't ' flat out ' on their expectations, they'll have to 
 import the inhabitants of the neighboring planets to furnish 
 people enough. And then, as to railroads, they seem to 
 overlook one thing, that it is just as easy to get out of 
 town on a new road as it is to get in, and that people may 
 leave as well as come." 
 
 "But, at any rate," said Mark, "it indicates the young. 
 blood, the vigor, the hope, of a great nation whose life is 
 ahead, a prophecy, and not a page in history illustrated by 
 ruins. A burly, growing boy is always extravagant: he 
 always wants the biggest boots and trousers he can get, be 
 cause he feels the undeveloped man in him, and wants to 
 appear like one. Little old men I never took to anyhow. 
 The boy who is forty years old at thirteen will be too tame 
 for usefulness by the time he is thirty, and ought to be 
 buried at thirty-five. So I say, Hail to the awkward but 
 irrepressible vigor of the New West." 
 
 " Well," said Tom, " you've made your peroration just in
 
 AT THE LEVEE. 9 
 
 time ; for there is the smoke of the steamer rising just over 
 the point yonder, and you'll hear your first Mississippi whis 
 tle in a moment." 
 
 The two young men now stood on the levee. The Rev. 
 Mark Forrest, after a year of two of outpost duty, now, at 
 the age of twenty-five, was on his way to take charge of an 
 evangelical church at Bluffton, a " city " some miles farther 
 down the river. Tom was an old school-friend, five years 
 his senior, who, taking to business, had gone West, made 
 and lost one or two fortunes, married, and with his Western 
 wife and two bright children, was now living at Maple City. 
 Mark, who had never seen the Mississippi before, had tele 
 graphed his friend to meet him for the hour between the 
 arrival of the train and the time for the steamer on her 
 down trip. He had met the church committee in the 
 East, and, after consultation, had consented to go out like 
 Abraham, " not knowing whither he went." And here he 
 was so far on his way. His trunk and small library had 
 been sent on by express, so that he stood with only his 
 travelling-bag in his hand. As it was Saturday, and he must 
 preach his first sermon to his new people on the following 
 day, he could only pay his friend this flying visit on the way. 
 They could now, being so near each other, tie up the bro 
 ken threads of their old intimacy at their leisure. 
 
 And now the steamer, rounding the headland, swept into 
 full view, at the same time sending out an unearthly scream, 
 as if to strike terror into the heart of the western wilds, and 
 give the woods warning of the speedy approach of the rail 
 road and the steam-plough. To Mark, who had seen only
 
 I0 BLUFFTON. 
 
 ocean-steamers before, she was a new sensation. A tall pole 
 tipped with a gilded ball rose into the air from the extreme 
 end of her bow ; two smoke-stacks, high above every thing 
 else, belched out enormous volumes of black, soft-coal 
 smoke, that floated lazily on the still, bright June air; a 
 black mass of men, relieved by the gayer colors of the 
 women, crowded forward on the shoreward side. She looked 
 all decks and cabins and saloons ; while the bow end of her 
 low hulk was piled up with bales and boxes and barrels, 
 sprinkled all over which were the tow-colored rags and 
 ebony faces of the " roustabouts," whose business it was to 
 " tote " the freight aboard and ashore. 
 
 " Well, what do you think of her, Mark? " said Tom. 
 
 " I think," replied Mark, " that a party of friends on an 
 outdoor boat like this, floating on such a glassy river, and 
 through such a perfect air, and under such a soft sky, drifting 
 on through sweeps of wide prairie, and along dark woods, 
 and past bright young towns, might easily fancy themselves 
 to have found the ' earthly paradise ' with modern improve 
 ments. As I'm in no hurry to get aboard, let's stand here, 
 and see the people, and the process of landing." 
 
 The steamer now headed in toward the shore, and, with a 
 grating noise on the bottom, ran her " nose " against the 
 levee. The river-current caught the stern, and slowly swung 
 her round until she rested quartering on the bank, and 
 headed up stream. And now, as the planks were run out, 
 belated hacks came tearing down the streets, carts rattled 
 over the stones, and numberless " men and brothers " yelled 
 on their bony steeds attached to their two-wheeled drays;
 
 AT THE LEVEE. II 
 
 and others came with trunks, boxes, or casks on their shoul 
 ders, from the warehouses or the neighboring station. But, 
 above all the noise of the crowd, one sound caught and 
 fixed the attention of Mark : it was the stupendous swearing 
 of the mate. He had witnessed displays of profanity before, 
 so elaborate as to entitle them to rank as works of art ; but 
 as he stood here, and saw him pile Ossa upon Pelion, beheld 
 " Alps on Alps arise," and looked down into yawning gulfs 
 of blasphemy, it seemed to him that here was a Titan play 
 ing with the gigantic upheavals of language, while ordinary 
 men only walked along on the commonplace flats of the dic 
 tionary. Of course he was shocked ; but, while he was one 
 who shrunk from every touch of irreverence, his sense of 
 the ludicrous was so developed that sometimes the absurd 
 ity of a thing made him forget, for the time, its wickedness. 
 Turning to Tom, he said, 
 
 " Is that a specimen of Western ability in the profanity 
 line?" 
 
 " Yes," he replied with a shade of irony in his tone : " in 
 this glorious Western world you must expect to find the 
 proportions of things maintained. The man, you see, is 
 ambitious to have his swearing on the same magnificent scale 
 as our ' mighty ' rivers and our ' boundless ' prairies." 
 
 " But do they all swear like that ? Listen now ! It rattles 
 through the clouds of his words like the jerk and crash of 
 lightning in a thunder-storm." 
 
 " All the mates do," Tom replied : " it seems to be their 
 special business to swear at the deck-hands. They hurl 
 oaths at them as if they were stones, and crack them over
 
 12 BLUFFTON. 
 
 the back with a sharp phrase as if it were the sting of a lash. 
 They get so used to it, that I doubt if they would move at 
 all if they were spoken to in ordinary language. They are 
 like the old man's oxen that we used to laugh about. You 
 know they got so used to being sworn at, that, when the old 
 fellow was converted, the only way he could get them along 
 was to sit on the cross-board, and shout at them profane- 
 sounding selections from the New Testament. So these 
 fellows would ' slow up ' till you couldn't see them move, if 
 he didn't swear all the time." 
 
 But just here Mark's eye caught sight of some one going 
 up the plank, and in an instant the mate was forgotten. 
 
 " Tom," he said, " I'm in luck. There goes old Judge 
 Hartley. Now, you see, I'm in for good company down 
 the river." 
 
 " Judge Hartley," said Tom : " what brings him out here ? " 
 
 " Oh ! I forgot to tell you that he has sold out East, and is 
 moving to Bluffton. He's going to be in my church." 
 
 "Then I pity you," growled Tom. 
 
 "Why?" briefly inquired Mark. 
 
 "Why? Don't you remember how in the old church at 
 home he was always on the scent for heresy? He even 
 suspected the old minister's soundness in the faith. And 
 now let me warn you beforehand, that, if you happen to 
 learn any thing that hasn't been in the old 'Bodies of 
 Divinity' long enough to get rusty, he'll make it hot for 
 you." 
 
 " Oh ! but you're too hard on him, Tom," answered Mark. 
 " He's just my idea of a typical Puritan ; neither better nor
 
 AT THE LEVEE. 1$ 
 
 worse. He's sunny and sweet and kind in his home. But 
 all his natural tenderness has been laid on what he thinks the 
 altar of God. So it is a matter of duty with him to hate and 
 fight any departures from orthodoxy. He's of the stuff of 
 which martyrs are made ; and, being ready himself to die 
 for God's truth, his sense of duty would stifle all tenderness 
 toward one that he looked upon as an enemy of divine reve 
 lation. But he'll broaden a little out here, and we'll get on 
 capitally." 
 
 " Well, I hope so," said Tom. " But who was that young 
 lady that followed the judge up the plank? " 
 
 " I don't know," replied Mark, " unless it is one of his 
 daughters. I haven't seen them since they were girls." 
 
 " Whoever it is, hurry up, Mark, for they are taking in the 
 plank. Perhaps you'll find light enough in the daughter to 
 relieve the sombreness of the old judge." 
 
 "Haven't time to think of those things yet," said Mark. 
 " But good-by : I'll write after Sunday." 
 
 So saying, he leaped aboard. The bell had ceased ringing, 
 and the boat swung off into the river. He stood a minute 
 on the lower deck, as she swept out into the current ; and 
 then went up the gangway to find the judge. 
 
 Judge Hartley was a tall, close-shaven, gray-eyed man of 
 sixty. Having once been a probate judge, the title still re 
 mained. Retired from active business with a competency, 
 he had decided to move West, and make his future home 
 near the residence of his only surviving brother.
 
 BLUFFTON. 
 
 II. 
 
 ON THE STEAMER. 
 
 MARK really thought and no wonder; for older and 
 wiser men have done the same before him that his 
 head and heart were too full of other things to have any 
 room in them for love. He was going to study ; he was 
 going to travel ; he was going to test himself, and find out 
 what was in him and what he could do, and so make him 
 self a permanent footing somewhere, before he allowed 
 himself to think of a home. He would make himself and 
 his position a worthy gift before he would presume to offer 
 them to such a woman as he would love. He had not yet 
 learned, that, though " marriages of convenience " are always 
 in order, real love does not come at a beck, nor wait to be 
 sent for. He knew not as yet that no head nor heart can 
 be crammed so full but that love will find himself a place, 
 and come in even though the doors are shut. 
 
 So, while he looked after the judge, he found the beginning 
 of a pain that would not let him rest, and that yet he would 
 not have been free from for all the study and travel and am 
 bitions of which he had dreamed since boyhood. While he 
 thought he was only walking a common plank-deck, he, in
 
 ON THE STEAMER. 15 
 
 reality, stumbled across the threshold and through the gate 
 way of an enchanted "castle in Spain," where he was to 
 find dungeons of darkness, and instruments of exquisite 
 torture, as well as galleries of pictures, halls of song, and 
 lofty towers of vision. 
 
 Stepping into the saloon long enough to register his name, 
 pay his fare, and leave his satchel at the office, he passed 
 out on to the forward deck. Leaning against the starboard 
 rail, he stopped entranced with the beauty of the scene ; for 
 it seemed to him that he had walked into a waking dream. 
 It was about four o'clock in the afternoon. The right bank 
 of the river was a continuous wood-crowned bluff. The 
 river itself at this point curved south-east, so that the sun 
 seemed caught in the ragged tops of the trees straight 
 ahead. What would have been its unbearable brightness in 
 the open sky was broken into a golden mist and spray 
 among the branches, as sometimes the falling waters of a cas 
 cade are turned into a sort of impalpable cloud of glory by 
 jagged rocks and the height of their fall. The river was a 
 veritable " sea of glass." The air was mellow and soft, and 
 spread over the scene a saffron-colored haze that seemed 
 the stuff of which dreams are made. For the moment 
 every thing was still save the distant murmur of voices and 
 the plash of the paddle-wheels, that only seemed to deepen 
 the silence. 
 
 The steamer drifted so softly that it was almost like float 
 ing in air. There was in his mind a curious blending of 
 memory and anticipation. His home, his childhood, and 
 his old life were behind ; and he was drifting on into a future
 
 1 6 BLUFFTON. 
 
 of unspeakable glory. This was the Mississippi, and around 
 him was a new world. He was in the boat of De Soto ; and 
 just around that headland yonder would spring into view the 
 fadeless beauty of the " earthly paradise " that the eager 
 Spanish eyes so looked for in this strange, far-off land. And 
 these fancies melted into the visions of the seer of Patmos. 
 The river of life, and the mystic trees, and the sea of 
 crystal, and the blinding glory, were blended with the 
 landscape. He gazed straight on into the light ; and with 
 his eyes half closed, and lost in thought, the illusion was 
 complete. Had a traditional Bible angel floated silently 
 across the glory, he would hardly have roused from his brief 
 revery ; for it would have been a part of his dream. But 
 what he did see startled him into a confused self-conscious 
 ness. Turning his head a little, as he became aware of a 
 presence near him, he found himself looking straight into 
 the face of what seemed to him the most beautiful girl he 
 had ever looked upon. He had read of such in poem and 
 romance ; but he had never yet believed that there was in 
 flesh and blood a face and form like this. In one rapid 
 glance, in less time than it takes to tell it, he took in 
 the fact that her figure was faultless, her dress so perfect as 
 to be forgotten, her face oval in shape and brunette in com 
 plexion. Her heavy masses of hair were black, as were the 
 long lashes that shaded her eyes ; and her eyes themselves 
 were liquid and deep, like the bottomless lakes that lie tree- 
 fringed at the feet of lofty mountains. 
 
 He had only time to note these parciculars, and to accuse 
 himself of rudeness for thus staring in the face of a stran-
 
 ON THE STEAMER. I/ 
 
 ger, when, in a voice that betrayed only girlish unconscious 
 ness and the frank simplicity of a guileless nature, she said, 
 
 "Isn't this Mr. Forrest?" 
 
 There was a moment of confusion before he could fully 
 believe that this human angel, that had so suddenly stepped 
 out of his vision of glory, had really spoken to him ; but, 
 seeing her look frankly in his face for reply, he answered, 
 
 " Certainly, that is my name ; but you must pardon me if 
 I do not remember you. I have never seen a face " " so 
 beautiful as yours," he just saved himself from saying; and 
 finished not very elegantly, by adding " like yours." 
 
 She recognized the broken and awkward phrase by a 
 quizzical look, which soon passed, leaving only her simple 
 unconsciousness once more, and added, 
 
 " Why, I thought you would know me. Have I really 
 changed so much in six years? I am Margaret Hartley. 
 You used to call me Madge when I was a little girl." 
 
 " You really must forgive me for forgetting you," said he. 
 " I was in a day-dream when I first caught sight of your 
 face. If you hadn't spoken, I fear I should have taken you 
 for a part of my vision ; but, indeed, you have changed from 
 the fly-away Madge I knew at school." 
 
 " Not for the worse, I hope," said she ; and then, without 
 waiting for the reply that she knew courtesy at least would 
 make complimentary, she continued, 
 
 "Perhaps I recognized you the more readily because 
 father and I have been speaking of you. We knew to-mor 
 row was to be your first Sunday in Bluffton, and we were 
 wondering what sort of minister you had grown to be. We 
 are to be of your flock, you know."
 
 IS BLUFFTON. 
 
 "Yes: I had heard that you were moving West; and, 
 indeed, as I stood on the levee at Maple City, I saw your 
 father go up the plank, but, not seeing your face, I did not 
 recognize you as the one who was with him." 
 
 " Mother is dead, you know ; and the other girls we 
 have left in Chicago with aunt, until we get the house 
 ready to receive them. I am the housekeeper now. But 
 father must be wondering what has become of me. Don't 
 you want to see him? " 
 
 " Of course I do. It was he I had started to find when 
 the wonder of this new river scenery threw me into the day 
 dream in which your face appeared. I was more glad than 
 I can tell when I saw him ; for I did not like to enter on my 
 new field alone. It will make the strange church seem like 
 home to see his face among the pews. Where have you left 
 him?" 
 
 " Aft, I believe the sailors call it : on the deck at the rear 
 of the saloon. I had been at my stateroom for a moment, 
 and strayed this way, on coming out, to take a look down 
 the river. I have visited here before, and the scenery seems 
 like an old acquaintance. Uncle James lives at Bluffton, you 
 know." 
 
 This was said as they walked together down the saloon. 
 There was a friendly, old-time greeting on the part of Mr. 
 Forrest and Judge Hartley. And, drawing three camp-stools 
 together, they sat down and talked over the past, and went 
 over the causes that brought them all out to their new 
 Western home. 
 
 The boat glided onward, opening up behind them an
 
 ON THE STEAMER. IQ 
 
 ever-changing panorama of loveliness. Now a bluff stood 
 out boldly, and with its rocky front looked down upon them 
 as they drifted through its shadows. On the other shore, 
 the prairie stretched off for miles, till a range of hills, tipped 
 with the rays of the slanting sun, closed in the horizon. 
 Then a green valley, down which a tree-shaded creek ran 
 darkly in the deepening shadow, wound off and up, and hid 
 itself in the mystery of the hills. And here and there were 
 islands that were emeralds set in crystal. 
 
 Pointing out to each other the beauties of scenery as they 
 passed, they fell to talking of their coming life and work. 
 
 "This Western country is grand and wonderful," said the 
 judge. " But I imagine that, religiously, it is not much like 
 New England. There is a little colony of the Puritan ele 
 ment at Bluffton ; and we must try to be like the leaven of 
 the Scriptures, and see if we can't bring them to our New- 
 England ways." 
 
 " I have only seen two or three of the people," answered 
 Mr. Forrest, " and do not know much about the rest of the 
 inhabitants." 
 
 "I'm afraid they're a godless set," replied the judge. 
 " My brother writes me, that it is a sabbath-breaking, horse- 
 racing, drinking place, not much like the God-fearing town 
 we are used to." 
 
 "We must show them a better style of morals, then," 
 said Mr. Forrest. 
 
 " Morals ! " rather emphatically exclaimed the judge. 
 " Morals are good enough as far as they go ; but they need 
 something deeper than that. Morals never yet saved a
 
 2O BLUFFTON. 
 
 town any more than an individual. It's the gospel they 
 need, the pure, unadulterated gospel; and I hope that 
 you are ready to preach it to them fearlessly, Mr. Forrest." 
 
 " I trust," modestly replied he, " that I shall be able to 
 preach God's truth to them, and help them mend their 
 ways." 
 
 " Good, hard doctrine," continued the judge, " the wrath 
 of God against sin, the 'sincere milk of the word,' salvation 
 only through the atoning blood, that is what they need." 
 
 " We must expect," he replied, " to find their ways differ 
 ent from ours. All new countries are rough at first. It's a 
 lower type of civilization." 
 
 " Don't talk of ' civilization,' and ' different ways,' " said 
 the judge. " Such words savor too strongly of worldly wis 
 dom, and 'philosophy falsely so called.' Sin is the same 
 thing, and comes from the same Devil, all the world over. 
 We must be uncompromising. The strongholds of Satan's 
 kingdom must be attacked by the ' sword of the Lord and of 
 Gideon.' " 
 
 Mr. Forrest was as earnest in his faith, and thought him 
 self as sound in his orthodoxy, as the judge. But, though he 
 remembered the tone in his conversation that used to be so 
 familiar in the old prayer-meeting talks at home, it had 
 now a strange, far-away sound in his ears. He had become 
 accustomed to put his religious meanings into the talk of 
 every day, thinking it better to translate divine messages 
 into the language of the street. So he was not sorry when 
 Madge jumped to her feet, as the whistle blew its shrill blast, 
 and said,
 
 ON THE STEAMER. 21 
 
 " Come, father and Mr. Forrest, let's leave theology now, 
 and see the steamer pass through the bridge." 
 
 They rose and hurried through the saloon, and stood 
 together on the forward deck. They were just in time. 
 The draw had swung to its place, and the quickening cur 
 rent, as it rushed between the piers, was bearing the steamer 
 on with its rapid flow. The boat seemed to thrill with the 
 lift of the waters ; and she shot through the opening as if 
 rejoicing in the intelligence and grace of motion of a living 
 thing. 
 
 And now Bluffton itself was in sight, and the boat was all 
 astir with the preparation for landing. They stood for a 
 moment to take in the natural features of the town. Mark 
 first noticed the tall bluff at its southern end, from which it 
 took its name. Sheer up it rose a hundred and fifty feet, 
 crowned with one lone tree on the edge of its summit, whose 
 gnarled and crooked roots stretched out and curled down 
 over its rocky face. A lower and irregular range of hills 
 stretched round in a semicircle, bounding the horizon at 
 the back of the town, and jutting out boldly again on the 
 river-bank above the city in another bluff only less noticeable 
 than the first. A stream ran through the city, dividing it 
 irregularly into an upper and lower town. Its nearer side 
 had all the dingy and ill-kept appearance that marks so 
 many of these river-towns ; but it looked very picturesque 
 and beautiful as it stretched back from the river-front, and 
 climbed past the open square and up to the tops of the hills 
 that were brilliant with the glory of the setting sun. 
 
 The scene on the levee only repeated that at Maple City ;
 
 22 BLUFFTON. 
 
 save that the judge and Margaret recognized and beckoned 
 to the friends that waited for them on shore. Mr. Forrest 
 himself saw a member of the church committee that had 
 met him at the East, come to welcome him to his new field. 
 As they passed down the plank, he shook the judge a hearty 
 good-night, saying, 
 
 " We shall meet again to-morrow." 
 
 And now for the first time, at parting, he took the hand 
 of Margaret, thrilled with the consciousness that it was no 
 longer a child's hand to be touched or dropped indifferently, 
 but the hand of a woman. He had shaken the hands of a 
 thousand women before, and only regarded it as a formal 
 piece of ceremony. But this soft touch tingled in his veins, 
 and throbbed wildly through his heart. All pure, new love 
 has about it a sense of reverent awe. So while he would not 
 have dared to hold her hand, or give it conscious pressure, a 
 new sense of loss came over him when it was withdrawn ; 
 and he trembled as he waked up to the fact that the power 
 of control over his own future happiness had passed out of 
 his hands, and now lay in the touch and look of one, who, so 
 far as he knew, was utterly indifferent to him except on the 
 one point as to whether she was going to like or dislike him 
 as a minister. 
 
 So, while he was driven to the hotel, he became aware that 
 Bluffton now had in it, for his weal or woe, something besides 
 a church.
 
 RETROSPECT. 23 
 
 III. 
 
 RETROSPECT. 
 
 AND now, while the young minister is resting from his 
 journey, and preparing for the word he must speak 
 to-morrow, and which is to strike the keynote to the work 
 which he is to undertake in Bluffton, let us glance back a 
 little, and see who and what kind of a man he is. 
 
 In person he was a little above the medium height, straight, 
 broad-shouldered, and rather muscular in his build. His 
 head was large, and covered with wavy, soft brown hair. 
 His forehead was high and broad, and terminated at the base 
 by cliffs of brows that reminded one of Tennyson's " bar of 
 Michael Angelo ; " while beneath these were a pair of large 
 gray eyes, set so deep that they looked smaller than they 
 were, except when he was animated in private or roused in 
 public speech. His nose was large, straight, and prominent. 
 A long and firm upper-lip was completely concealed by a 
 heavy moustache, with the exception of which his face was 
 smooth. The face which was strong and striking rather 
 than handsome was rounded by a chin no way remarkable, 
 but only in keeping with the rest of his features. He dressed 
 in accordance with the one canon of perfect taste that he
 
 24 BLUFFTON. 
 
 was always ready to advocate for both man and woman, 
 so well and so simply that no one would think any thing 
 about the dress, but only notice and remember the person. 
 
 He had behind him such a memory of struggle and toil as 
 fitted him to understand, and brought him into keen and 
 ready sympathy with, all 
 
 " The low, sad music of humanity." 
 
 Born in poverty, a hard-working farmer's son, he kept ever 
 hanging in his study, as an ideal portrait of his remem 
 bered childhood, the picture of Whittier's " Barefoot Boy." 
 Many a time, sleeping up under the bare, sloping roof of 
 the little old brown farmhouse garret, while the wild winter 
 storm rocked and sung him to sleep, had he waked in the 
 morning to find a snowdrift sifted through the broken roof, 
 and lying across his bed. Rising, the winter through, at 
 four o'clock in the morning, to do his father's and the neigh 
 bors' " chores," and cut the wood for the day's fire, before the 
 time for school, he was used to trudging through the snow, 
 thin-clad, to the old district schoolhouse, and struggling 
 hard, or playing hard, to keep back the tears that the nip 
 ping cold would extort. 
 
 He was strongly religious in his natural bent, and he was 
 nursed and trained in all the traditional views and ways of 
 orthodoxy. Dreaming from childhood of the work of Jesus 
 in Judaea, and of the still dark wastes of heathendom that 
 had not heard his name, he used to wonder why all men 
 were not ministers of his gospel ; and he could not remem 
 ber the time when he did not plan to be one himself.
 
 RETROSPECT. 25 
 
 He was cradled amid scenes of such idyllic country beauty 
 as naturally gave an aesthetic and poetic turn to his sensitive 
 mind. The farmhouse was on a hill-top overlooking a 
 lovely river, that wound away past intervale and wood, till it 
 lost itself in the hills that rose higher and higher northward 
 in a range of mountains that closed in the horizon about the 
 region of the lakes. A brook, the scene of childhood sports, 
 of adventures of hunting and fishing, wound through the 
 meadow, and poured its tiny tribute into the river at the foot 
 of the hill. 
 
 He rummaged through the village library, and feasted on 
 the wit, humor, and satire of the first series of the " Biglow 
 Papers ; " he devoured Pope and Dryden and Cowley, and 
 twice read through " Paradise Lost," long before he had any 
 idea of general literature, or the rank to which these writers 
 were entitled on the world's roll of fame. He also had the 
 attack, inevitable as teething, to which all thoughtful 
 children are subject, of verse-making himself. He wrote 
 verse enough for a book by the time he was fifteen, which 
 bashfulness perhaps, more than compassion for a suffering 
 humanity, prevented his inflicting on a patient world. 
 
 Such were some of the salient outlines on the background 
 of his memory. 
 
 At his first entry of the seminary for theological training, 
 his reverence for professors and learned lecturers was such 
 that he did little but receive and absorb their teachings. 
 He even regarded as presumptuous the hardihood of some 
 occasional student who dared to question the dictum of a 
 master in divinity ; and he thought it was good enough for
 
 26 BLUFFTON. 
 
 him when a sharp retort and a " settler " took the place of 
 an explanation. A student asked Dr. Wayland, one day, 
 why divine inspiration was necessary for the writing of the 
 Book of Proverbs. The doctor crushed him by asking him 
 to go and write as good a chapter himself. At this time 
 Mark would have looked at such a rejoinder as conclusive. 
 He did not stop, till afterwards, to think that because " not 
 twenty men in Boston could have written Shakspeare," as a 
 critic once profoundly said, that hardly proved that Othello 
 was inspired and infallible. 
 
 But toward the latter part of his seminary-life he began to 
 use his own brain, and think for himself. Not, by any means, 
 that he questioned the system of orthodoxy, very far from 
 it ; but he began to feel, that, while such and such things 
 might be true, he could not preach as a mere echo of others' 
 thoughts. It must be true to him before he could dare to 
 speak it. Thus, without his knowing it, he admitted a prin 
 ciple fatal to his soundness, and that was to lead him a long 
 and weary and painful way. 
 
 He did not read or study outside of his system, except as 
 special books were pointed out to him ; and these he was 
 taught to consider already abolished, or as profane quibblers 
 who chose "darkness rather than light," and were therefore 
 " given over to a reprobate mind." A perfect divine revela 
 tion had been given to men ; and only the wilfully wicked 
 refused to see it. One prominent professor from Union 
 Seminary advised the students not to read any books later 
 than the seventeenth century. A prominent, successful D.D. 
 and pastor told them that the books that attacked their
 
 RETROSPECT. 2/ 
 
 system were weak, if not venomous, and they ought not 
 to waste their time in reading them, but spend it in saving 
 souls. Beside, Satan was able to make " the worse appear 
 the better reason;" and since man was fallen, and the 
 divine light blotted from his mind, to follow " profane and 
 carnal reason" was chasing a will-o'-the-wisp that would 
 lead them into the swamps of corruption, and endanger their 
 souls' eternal welfare. 
 
 Through such influences he passed to his work. God was 
 to be found only in the Bible as interpreted in the popular 
 writings. Man was corrupt ; nature was only to be used to 
 illustrate revelation ; and the great scientific thinkers of the 
 world had lost their spiritual vision by long contact with a 
 debasing materialism. 
 
 When his theological course was completed, he said to 
 his chum, 
 
 " If the rest of you choose to settle down in some little 
 quiet nook, and wither into a petty routine, I do not. I'm 
 off for the frontiers." 
 
 "But what -will you get on the frontiers except rough 
 work?" said his chum. 
 
 " I'll get a knowledge of humanity ; I'll measure the size 
 of the continent ; I'll see how my theology works in practi 
 cal life," said he. " Then, if I wish to settle East, I can 
 labor in view of the whole field." 
 
 So off he went, by the way of the Isthmus, to California 
 and Oregon. He went up and down the country, exploring 
 the field, the wants of this place and that, and at last located 
 in a mining-camp, and began preaching in schoolhouses 
 and on the street-corners as he could get a hearing.
 
 28 BLUFFTON. 
 
 He learned one thing that was of infinite use to him in his 
 after-life ; and that was, to stand strong on his own feet, and 
 place the man before the minister. The " Rev." attached 
 to his name, he soon found out, instead of giving him cur 
 rency as sterling coin, was looked upon with suspicion as a 
 surface indication of counterfeit and religious swindle. His 
 being a minister, instead of being a proof of manhood, was 
 rather against him. After he had proved himself a man, 
 then they began, for the first time, to respect the minister. 
 Not that they had any thing against ministers, as such ; they 
 remembered home too well for that : but the title had so often 
 been used to cloak a sham, that they wanted to know what 
 was under a black coat. Wrecked and tumble-down minis 
 ters, with the manhood gone out, were scattered, like desert 
 ed and broken-roofed cabins, all through the mining-regions. 
 
 So after Mark had " cleaned out " some " roughs " that 
 came in to break up his prayer-meeting; after he had 
 knocked down a brute on the street for abusing a little boy ; 
 when they found that he was always on the side of right, 
 " meant business " as they said, and was always ready to 
 " help a feller in trouble," they " took to " him wonderfully. 
 One rough old miner told him privately that " he didn't know 
 but he liked him 'bout as well ez ef he warn't a minister." 
 And he added, " Ef yer want any dust to help a boy whose 
 mine has ' petered out,' an' who's got sick, jes' show yer 
 hand, and I'm yer man. Or ef any shufflin' bilk interferes 
 with your meetin's, I'll clean him out quicker'n greased light- 
 nin'. Yer can count on me." 
 
 And another lesson he learned ; and that was, that when
 
 RETROSPECT. 2Q 
 
 dealing with men who cared nothing for traditions, who got 
 right down to " hard-pan " on all questions, and who believed 
 with their whole souls that it took just a hundred cents in 
 gold to make a dollar, he must appeal to their common 
 sense and reason, must talk home to their every-day life, or 
 else he might as well not talk at all. 
 
 Along with this kind of life, he had read and studied widely 
 and deeply as his time and means for purchasing books per 
 mitted ; for he wished to be master of the problems of the day 
 in the scholarly world, as well as master of the human heart 
 in its every-day manifestations of common life. 
 
 When you stand by a river-bank, and know its source and 
 general trend, you can with tolerable accuracy forecast its 
 onward course, and tell into what ocean it will empty. So it 
 was needful that so much of the past course of the young 
 minister should be indicated, in order to a better under 
 standing of what is to follow.
 
 3<D BLUFFTON. 
 
 IV. 
 
 FIRST SUNDAY AT BLUFFTON. 
 
 BY eight o'clock on Sunday morning, Mr. Forrest had 
 eaten a light breakfast, the slight nervous anxiety he 
 always felt when he was to speak in public usually took away 
 his appetite, and was on his way to Bowman's Hill, as the 
 keeper of the " Cosmopolitan Hotel " informed him they 
 had christened the bluff at the northern end of the town. 
 As he turned in the street, and looked back at what in his 
 Eastern home would have been popularly called a " tarvern," 
 he smiled at the ludicrous suggestion, that, if the name had 
 been any bigger for so little a hotel, the signboard would 
 have stuck out at both ends of the building. And the term 
 " Cosmopolitan " had in it painful suggestions of the bound 
 less hospitality the house afforded to all the inferior forms of 
 animate life. 
 
 But he soon forgot the unpleasant breaks in his "visions of 
 the night," as he thought that " God made the country, but 
 man made the town." The scene of beauty about him was, 
 at any rate, God's work, whatever might be said of the hotel. 
 He slowly climbed the hill ; for as he was to speak, not read, 
 that day, he wisely thought a breath of the divine inspiration 
 of nature would be fitting preparation.
 
 FIRST SUNDAY AT BLUFFTON. 3! 
 
 When he had gained the hill, he looked slowly round, and 
 drank in the scene. As he gazed down and up the river, 
 and over the prairie beyond, and saw the city so silent at his 
 feet, while the still sunlight, like magic alchemist, transmuted 
 every base thing, even the filthy streets, to burnished gold, 
 his lips moved, and his thoughts found involuntary utterance 
 in those words that have become a part of so many fair 
 nature-pictures, 
 
 " Oh, what is so rare as a day in June ? 
 Then if ever come perfect days." 
 
 And glancing up at the tender blue that seemed so near, 
 and then away to where it softly rested on the as tender green 
 of the prairie, he continued, 
 
 " Then heaven tries the earth, if it be in tune, 
 
 And over it softly her warm ear lays, 
 Whether we look, or whether we listen, 
 We hear life murmur, or see it glisten." 
 
 And he exclaimed in sincere and simple devoutness, " O 
 Lord, how manifold are thy works ! in wisdom hast thou 
 made them all." 
 
 His musing was interrupted by a rough voice that ex 
 claimed, 
 
 " Waal, young man, I reckon as how ye must be fresh in 
 these parts, or ye wouldn't be up here at this time in the 
 mornin' alone, gawkin' round ez ef ye'd never seen a river 
 nur a payrarie before." 
 
 Mark turned, and faced a man bare-headed and in his 
 shirt-sleeves, who appeared to belong to an odd-looking and
 
 32 BLUFFTON. 
 
 diminutive cottage not far away. When he saw he was good- 
 natured, and disposed to be neighborly, he was not alto 
 gether sorry to be interrupted in his meditations; for he 
 thought he could ask him a few questions about the city 
 below. So he answered pleasantly, 
 
 " Yes : I presume I am one that you'd call ' fresh,' having 
 come to town for the first time by last night's boat ; and I 
 never saw the Mississippi till yesterday." 
 
 " Raally ! " said he, " that seems sorter strange to one who's 
 looked at it night and mornin' for nigh thirty year. I reckon 
 it's natur' though. 'F I should go to Chicago or St. Louis, 
 I reckon I sh'd stare round same's you do here. Ye don't 
 look like a hotel-runner nur a book-agent ? " 
 
 The tone of voice in which the last sentence was uttered 
 turned it into a question ; and, as Mr. Forrest had no objec 
 tion to his knowing his mission, he said, 
 
 " No : I'm a minister. I preach my first sermon here to- 
 day. Perhaps you attend what is to be my church." 
 
 " Haven't been ter church this ten year," said he, " 'cept 
 to funerals. I don't take much stock in what the churches 
 calls religion any more, nohow. I b'long ter the church o' 
 all-out-doors, where all the pews is free, and it don't cost 
 nothin' for choirs, coz the birds do the music. The church 
 es is full o' ornery critters, that cheats week-days, and prays 
 Sundays. Now, thar's the Congregational church been 
 raarin' up a mighty fine meetin'-'us, but ain't got religion 
 enough ter go half way round. Presbyterians 'bout the 
 same, only their heaven's a leetle smaller'n the Congrega- 
 tionalists'. The Tiscopals runs the Church of the Tostolic
 
 FIRST SUNDAY AT BLUFFTON. 3$ 
 
 Succession, where they have sech ' a gentlemanly mode of 
 worship,' as one on 'em said t'other day. 'N' then, wuss'n 
 all the rest, is the Christ-yuns and Baptists, always fightin' 
 'bout a leetle more or less water, that wouldn't hurt 'em any 
 outside, nur do 'em much good in. They talk so much 
 'bout water, that it always seems sort 'er swampy and soggy 
 like, round a Baptist church, and makes ye feel 'z ef 'twas 
 a kindo' speritooal fever- 'n'-ager country they live in." 
 
 " Oh ! but you're rather hard on the churches, aren't 
 you?" said Mr. Forrest. "I know they're not all saints; 
 but that is because they don't live out the beauty of their 
 religion. It's more religion, not less, that we all need." 
 
 " Maybe, young man," said he ; " but you'll be wiser when 
 ye git older. Ask yer parding for speakin' rough ; but I 
 like yer, and am sorry ye ain't doing something better'n 
 preachin.' Now, they had a feller here not long sence, that 
 looked so ornery 't I thought the Lord must be short on't 
 fer hands when he made a 'postle er him. But you look 
 like a squar' man, az ef yer hed it in yer." 
 
 "Thank you for your good opinion," answered Mark. 
 " Perhaps you'll think better of my religion when you know 
 its better side." 
 
 "Ez ter that," said he, "I don't own up ter bein' 'thout 
 religion now : only I've got my own kind. I've my own 
 notions 'bout God an' this ere universe. I don't believe 
 that bluff over yander wuz made in six days. An' I think 
 th' Almighty knew what he was 'bout from the fust. I 'low 
 it don't stan' ter reason, that after he'd got things done, and 
 called 'em ' good,' he found himself dis'pinted in the way
 
 34 BLUFFTON. 
 
 the machine run, and had ter come in an' fix 't all over 
 again, and lose the biggest part o' the job at that. 'Cordin' 
 ter you ministers, the Lord gits euchred every time, coz the 
 other feller holds all the trumps." 
 
 " Well," said Mark, " I haven't time to talk longer now. 
 I've heard you through, and some day I'll give you my side 
 of these questions. I must be getting ready for church. 
 Good day what may I call you?" 
 
 " Call me Uncle Zeke, if you will. That's my every-day 
 name. I live over thar' in the cabin. Latch-string's allers 
 out." 
 
 Mr. Forrest now started down, the hill, and walked leisure 
 ly in the direction of the church. He was not at all troubled 
 by what he tolerantly regarded as the natural prejudices of 
 one who had doubtless received rather ill usage at the 
 hands of the world. 
 
 As he went on, he saw Major Ward, the gentleman who 
 had met him East, and who drove him to his hotel. He had 
 now come to walk with him to the church. Mr. Forrest 
 related his adventure ; and the major gave him some account 
 of Uncle Zeke, whom he spoke of as a "good, honest man, 
 but a little peculiar." 
 
 The bells were now ringing out on the soft, luminous air ; 
 and the streets were full of people on their way to church. 
 Seeing Mr. Forrest with the major, they knew he must be the 
 new minister, and so scanned him curiously as they passed. 
 
 "The people are taking my measure, major," said he. 
 " They are looking to see if I am a ' reed shaken by the 
 wind.' "
 
 FIRST SUNDAY AT BLUFFTON. 35 
 
 " It'll be an old story after a little, and I think you'll enjoy 
 it when you get settled into the work. This is a field of 
 most capital promise." 
 
 They had now reached the church, a plain but nice brick 
 structure, on the corner of Seventh and Linden Streets, 
 facing the public square. Mr. Forrest saw, through the open 
 door, that it was filled by a pleasant and attractive-looking 
 congregation. He passed up the aisle, and took his seat in 
 the pulpit. He was used to facing congregations by this 
 time ; and so, while modest in demeanor, he was not flurried. 
 For the first time in his life, however, he was afraid of eyes ; 
 not of the hundreds, but of one solitary pair. These 
 the eyes of the angel that floated into his yesterday's vision 
 looked at him, and pierced him through and through. 
 He trembled, and looked down. To him this large audience 
 was now reduced to one. He wished she might have staid 
 at home on this first Sunday, until he had once been heard. 
 He did not care whether the people liked the sermon : 
 would she like it ? It was not a sense 'of pride in his work, 
 but only the crushing thought that he could not bear to have 
 her hold a mean opinion of him. The sweetest flowers 
 would have shrivelled to a poor and unworthy gift, if he had 
 thought of offering them to her. And so his highest and 
 best thoughts seemed poor, because she was to listen. 
 Would she think him awkward? This thought almost par 
 alyzed his movements. 
 
 But the time came to speak ; and he bravely flung away 
 his timidity, and began the service. 
 
 He took for his text, " God was in Christ, reconciling the
 
 36 BLUFFTON. 
 
 world unto himself." He preached a sermon of nature and 
 of life. The sweet world and the blue sky, and the high 
 hope of a young and noble heart, got into his words. He 
 spoke of God as the living and loving God to-day ; of Christ 
 as a manifestation of his saving grace that waited not to be 
 sent for, but went out after the lost ; of man as able to turn 
 from evil when he would ; and he closed by saying, that, if 
 any men were finally lost, it would only be because they 
 " would not come and have life." 
 
 At the close of service he had what to him was the exqui 
 site pleasure of touching Miss Margaret's hand once more. 
 And, though she said no word of the sermon, there was that 
 in her eyes that told him she had been melted and moved. 
 And he went out of church as light as air, feeiing that all 
 the world might hate and despise him, if it would, provided 
 only her eyes might look upon him with approval. 
 
 After being introduced to everybody, he accepted an invi 
 tation to dine with Major Ward. And we will leave him now 
 in his care, while we listen to a few comments in the vesti 
 bule and on the street. 
 
 " Oh ! that was a sweet, gentle, loving sermon, wasn't it ? " 
 said old Mr. Buck. 
 
 "Yis," said aunt Sally Rawson; "but I don't think he'll 
 never do. He'll be too foppish, I'm afeared : his hair curls 
 too much for a minister." 
 
 " And there's another thing," said old Mrs. Buck : " he'd 
 orter be married. A minister ain't wuth nothin' till he's got 
 a wife to help him do his parish work. An' I guess there 
 won't be much spiritooality about him as long's he's gallivan-
 
 FIRST SUNDAY AT BLUFFTON. 3/ 
 
 tin' round with all the handsome gals. Now, my old man 
 was nothin' till I took him in hand, and settled him down ; 
 and he ain't a minister neither." 
 
 " Oh, yes ! " tartly replied Jane Ann Rawson, " of course 
 you'll talk that way, because you ain't got any girls. If you 
 had one fit to be married, you'd think he was a special prov 
 idence." 
 
 And so the chatter ran on. The quiet ones went away 
 and thought. The rattlers went away, and rattled as they 
 went. But they meant no harm by their gossip, and were 
 as ready to like the new minister as anybody. 
 
 The only thing that boded trouble was the comments of 
 three that went up the street by themselves, Judge Hart 
 ley, Mr. Richard Smiley, and Deacon Putney, who, on ac 
 count of his plastic nature, was generally called Deacon Putty 
 by any one who was speaking of, and not to, him. If you 
 wanted to know his opinion, you must hunt up the last 
 strong-minded man who had spoken to him. He meant 
 well : so of all stupid tools and blunderers. Meaning to 
 serve the Lord, he was always ready to do the Devil's work, 
 if his highness only came playing his popular part of the 
 "angel of light." 
 
 " I like him capitally," said Deacon Putney : " that was 
 just a splendid sermon." 
 
 " Well," replied Judge Hartley, " I'm afraid it savors a 
 little too much of tenderness towards sin. Of course God 
 is love ; but he's justice too. The wickedness of man needs 
 the wrath preached. God is love toward the elect ; but to 
 the hardened sinner he is a ' consuming fire.' But I won't
 
 38 BLUFFTON. 
 
 judge too soon : he may give us the other side next Sun 
 day." 
 
 "And I think," said Mr. Richard Smiley, "that such 
 preaching is fast verging toward infidelity. Not a word 
 about 'justification by faith ;' not a word about the 'rags 
 of our own righteousness ; ' not a word about total deprav 
 ity, and the uselessness of a man's trying to help himself 
 and lead a good life in his own strength ! I believe that 
 the ' works of the law ' are a curse, and that what we need 
 is ' free grace ' through the blood of Christ." 
 
 He didn't know enough of the true meaning of scrip 
 ture to understand that it was just the "works of the law," 
 in Paul's sense of the term, to which he was really trusting. 
 And Uncle Zeke on the bluff sometimes shrewdly observed, 
 that, if " Dick Smiley ever is saved, it will have to be by 
 faith, sure 'nough. For, d'ye see, he hain't got rags o' self- 
 righteousness 'nough round his whole place to rig out a 
 'spectable scarecrow." 
 
 But Deacon Putney, after the ex-cathedra opinion of Mr. 
 Smiley, made nimble work of getting over the critical fence ; 
 and said, 
 
 " Well, yes : I guess p'raps there's a deal in what you say. 
 We'll have to keep our eyes open, and see that he don't win 
 the affections of the church, and lead 'em into infidelity." 
 
 Meantime, at the house of Major Ward, Mr. Forrest was 
 finding pleasant and appreciative entertainment. The major 
 wholly approved of the sermon, and gave him a hearty right 
 hand on the promise of his first Sunday in Bluffton.
 
 TO THE CAVE. 39 
 
 V. 
 
 TO THE CAVE. 
 
 MR. FORREST had now been several weeks at Bluffton, 
 and was quietly settled down to his work. The 
 other two of the judge's daughters had come on from 
 Chicago, and the family was established in its new home. 
 Mr. Forrest had wearied of the hotel, and been admitted into 
 the house of a family close by the judge's, and had fitted up 
 the " best room " as his study. The people had exhausted 
 their petty criticisms, and, when they were done, found out 
 that they really liked him amazingly. So thoroughly had he 
 gained the ear and respect of the town by his straight-out, 
 simple manliness, that even Mr. Richard's Smiley's instinc 
 tive dislike was hidden beneath a cloak of seeming admira 
 tion. And of course Deacon Putney was loud in his 
 praises. Judge Hartley, who, where he did not consider the 
 honor of God or the integrity of the gospel at stake, was as 
 gentle and loving as a child, had been thoroughly won over 
 into a genuine admirer of Mr. Forrest, and tried to make 
 him feel that his house was a sort of home. He was at 
 liberty to come and go as he would ; and always there was a 
 chair for him at the table. And yet there was no house
 
 4O BLUFFTON. 
 
 where he felt less free. Perfectly well-bred, and accustomed 
 to pass at ease through all phases and forms of society, 
 having the perfect assurance and self-control which always 
 seems to fascinate women, who, weak themselves, instinct 
 ively admire the strong, he yet felt in Madge's presence a 
 certain awe and constraint such as a Catholic might feel in 
 approaching the shrine of a saint. 
 
 So much at home did he at length become in the family, 
 that they talked, read, walked, and rode together. He could 
 not decline these common courtesies without appearing to 
 be unaccountably odd : he did not wish to decline them, for 
 he was irresistibly drawn to her side. And yet he could not 
 conceal from himself the fact that he was risking the peace 
 and happiness of his life. She had become a part of his 
 waking and sleeping thoughts. He could not bear to think 
 of the future with her face and form left out ; and still he was 
 compelled to confess that he had no reason to suppose he 
 could win her. And indeed it seemed like infinite presump 
 tion to think of calling her his own. All first, true love is 
 worship ; and it seems like profanation for a mortal to ex 
 pect any thing more than a smile, or permission to kiss her 
 hand, from the goddess he adores. The ground she trod on 
 was holy. If her dress accidentally brushed him in passing, 
 it thrilled him through and through as young trees thrill at 
 the touch of the spring-time sun. The commonest article 
 of apparel that she had worn was consecrated, and fit to 
 become a sacred relic. 
 
 The house where he boarded was just across the street ; 
 and her chamber was opposite and facing his. As the
 
 TO THE CAVE. 41 
 
 Parsee salutes the rising sun, and then goes to his labor, so 
 he felt stronger for his daily task if, in her fresh morning 
 wrapper, she bestowed upon him a smile and a nod as she 
 threw open her window to breathe the sweet summer air, 
 and sprinkle the thirsty flowers and vines that turned the 
 window-seat into a sort of hanging garden. And sometimes 
 he would sit by his window, and read his own thoughts and 
 longings in the dainty verse of Aldrich : 
 
 " With lash on cheek she comes and goes ; 
 I watch her when she little knows : 
 
 I wonder if she dreams of it. 
 Sitting and working at my rhymes, 
 I weave into my verse at times 
 
 Her sunny hair, or gleams of it. 
 
 Upon her window-ledge is set 
 A box of flowering mignonnette : 
 
 Morning and eve she tends to them, 
 The careless flowers that do not care 
 About that loosened strand of hair, 
 
 As prettily she bends to them. 
 
 If I could once contrive to get 
 Into that box of mignonnette, 
 
 Some morning when she tends to them 
 She comes I I see the rich blood rise 
 From throat to cheek ! down go the eyes 
 
 Demurely as she bends to them." 
 
 He would have given the world to know that she would 
 care to have him as near to her as the mignonnette. Then 
 he would torture himself with deliberately making up his
 
 42 BLUFFTON. 
 
 mind that of course she cared nothing for him, and never 
 would. " She," he would think to himself, " is a native-born 
 princess. Some rich man will come, and fill her hair with 
 jewels, and spread soft, deep carpets for her dainty feet, and 
 make her at home in rooms full of pictures and the art-treas 
 ures of the world. I am only a poor minister. What can I 
 offer her ? A parsonage and parish work ; and take her into 
 the midst of a set of meddling, criticising fools, who think 
 the minister's affairs are public property, who will find fault 
 with every rose she wears in her hair, and will think her 
 merry laughter is sinful levity in a minister's wife. Bah ! it 
 would be an insult to ask her to do it, and she is too proud 
 and wise ever to consent. By as much as I love and worship 
 
 her image, 
 
 1 1 must tear it from my bosom, 
 
 Though my heart be at the root.' " 
 
 And then he would plunge into his study, or rush out and 
 dive into his parish work, or wander off for a walk upon the 
 hills. 
 
 Three or four miles down the river was a cave, a sort of 
 Mammoth Cave on a smaller scale. It was full of chambers, 
 and passage-ways, and natural wonders. As, then, it was 
 always of interest in itself, and as there was a fine open 
 grassy glade in front of its mouth, where grand old trees gave 
 abundance of pleasant shade, and through whose branches 
 was a lovely view of the river, it was a favorite resort for 
 picnic and pleasure parties. To the cave, therefore, the 
 young people had now arranged an excursion ; and of course 
 they invited the minister to accompany them. They had
 
 TO THE CAVE. 43 
 
 engaged the little steamer, the Eagle Wing, to carry the 
 party. But Mr. Forrest had discovered that Miss Margaret 
 as near familiarity as he could persuade himself to approach 
 in addressing her was extravagantly fond of horseback 
 riding ; and, as this was one of his California accomplish 
 ments, he determined to offer her the pleasure of a gallop. 
 Thinking she might shrink from going with him alone, he 
 invited one of her sisters and a gentleman friend to make up 
 their equestrian party of four. 
 
 They started an hour before the merry steamer-load ; and, 
 taking a circuitous and unfamiliar road, they determined to 
 enjoy a leisurely 'lope, and, coming in to the river below the 
 cave, be on hand to meet the party on the boat as they landed. 
 It was a wild, merry ride. Mr. Forrest often said that he 
 knew of nothing like the sense of thrilling, exulting, godlike 
 power that one experiences mounted on a nervous but well- 
 trained horse, so adapted to his rider that they become one 
 like the half-divine centaurs of old. The only thing that 
 ever reminded him of it was the similar sense of mastery that 
 he sometimes experienced when preaching at his best, with 
 no fence of a desk between him and his audience ; and 
 when he was grasping in his hands, like reins, the invisible 
 threads of sympathy that ran to every heart, and gave him 
 power to sway, to rouse, to soothe, to make smile or weep, 
 at will, the exercise of a power that only the orator knows. 
 So on they galloped through shade and sun ; Mr. Forrest 
 and Miss Hartley being mounted on a pair of splendid grays. 
 They chatted merrily as they walked their horses up some 
 rising ground, or stopped to breathe them for a moment in
 
 44 BLUFFTON. 
 
 the shade. It was a pretty picture of health and vigor and 
 beauty : their light and happy laughter ringing out on the 
 fresh morning air ; their young blood keeping time to the 
 rhythmic motion, mounting to the red cheek, and giving 
 the eye an added lustre ; the while they sped onward through 
 the checkered sunlight beneath the trees, plunged through a 
 shady thicket, leaped some narrow stream, and then shot 
 out into the gleaming sunshine again ; themselves a part of 
 the old world's everlasting youth. The Tennysonian ride of 
 Queen Guinevere kept dancing through his brain ; and, could 
 he but be her Launcelot, he felt he could ride the world for 
 ever, if she would but lead, and make him rich in payment 
 of her smile. They were surprised at every turn by pictures 
 of beauty, that, but for the more thrilling fascination of sim 
 ple motion, they would have liked to stop and enjoy. But 
 when they gained the highest point of their ride, as they 
 turned toward the river, such a panorama spread around 
 them that they all, as if by common consent, reined in their 
 horses. For thirty miles the magnificent river wound, gleam 
 ing and sparkling, in full view. It was a stream of silver, 
 gemmed with islands of perfect green. Ten miles up stream 
 curled the smoke of a steamer, too far away to be any thing 
 but a silent part of the picture. Ten miles down stream, 
 climbing up on to and crowning the top of a bluff, gleamed 
 the white and shone the red of a city, while a light cloud 
 of smoke hung over it in the still air. Across the river, the 
 prairie, farms, farmhouses, villages, a train of cars shooting 
 across the green, and a low range of hills that cut off the 
 view. Behind them a wondrously diversified country, of hill
 
 TO THE CAVE. 45 
 
 and vale, made picturesque by strips of red country road and 
 the varied shade of green or brown of the different crops 
 of corn or grain or grass. 
 
 " Never was any thing fairer than this seen since Moses 
 stood on Pisgah ! " exclaimed Mr. Forrest. 
 
 " I don't see how heaven can be any finer," said Miss 
 Hartley. 
 
 They were too full of the wondrous beauty of the scene 
 for common conversation. As they sat and simply gazed, 
 Mr. Forrest glanced at his watch, and said, 
 
 " It's almost time for the boat : we must hurry on." 
 
 They spurred their now rested horses in a merry race, and 
 soon stood on the river road that ran along close by the bank. 
 They found themselves about a quarter of a mile below the 
 cave ; and the Eagle Wing was in sight. But she was 
 getting on after a fashion that Mr. Forrest had never seen 
 before. He was too keen an observer to pass by any 
 important thing without learning its use : so he had already 
 discovered that the two spars, attached to either side of the 
 upright pole on the bow of a river-boat, were used for 
 " creeping " over sand-bars. 
 
 " Hallo ! " called out Mr. Snyder, the knight of Miss Mar 
 garet's sister Sue, " the Eagle Wing doesn't fly very well to 
 day, does she ? " 
 
 And, as they could do nothing but look on, they trotted 
 leisurely along to get a better view of the situation. 
 
 " I'd no idea the river was so shallow," said Mr. Forrest. 
 
 " It's deep enough," returned Mr. Snyder, " if one can 
 only keep the channel. But during the high water, and when
 
 46 BLUFFTON. 
 
 the current is rapid, the bottom shifts so that it is hard for 
 even the best pilots to keep the run of it. Then, as the 
 water falls rapidly, no one knows when he may get aground. 
 So, you see, they always go prepared for a ' creep.' " 
 
 " See her lift," said Miss Margaret. " It must be a queer 
 sensation to sail on stilts in that style." 
 
 The little steamer was doing bravely. The two long spars, 
 fastened together at the top of the upright pole, were thrust 
 out forward and on either side, forming a sort of letter A 
 without the cross-stroke. Then, as they put on all steam, the 
 spars acted as a lever to raise the bottom from the sand ; and 
 she sprang forward until the spars pointed toward the stern, 
 and she was resting on the bar again. As her load was 
 light, and the bar was not a very extensive one, a few lifts 
 like this took her over into free water again. The party on 
 the boat set up a shout, which was answered from the shore ; 
 and in a few minutes the planks were out, and the happy 
 crowd were scattered under the trees, and making ready to 
 explore the cave. 
 
 With bits of tallow-candles for torches, and strips of news 
 paper for candlesticks, they threaded the narrow passage 
 ways, passed through lofty chambers, or stood on the edge of 
 abysses, and listened to the drip of unseen waters that tum 
 bled down the dark ways of the eternal night below. Some 
 of the chambers they illuminated with red and purple and 
 yellow lights. One was like a cathedral with fretted roof, 
 and pillared by the meeting and joining-together of stalac 
 tite and stalagmite. They tried to fling a ray down into 
 St. Ronan's Well, a circular deep, to which no bottom had
 
 TO THE CAVE. 47 
 
 ever been discovered. A rock flung down passed into utter 
 silence, and, when it struck, gave up no sound. 
 
 When tired of the cave, they had games and walks and 
 talks, and then the lunch spread under the trees; and so 
 the day flew on. Who ever knew a day to be long when 
 measured off by the laughter and song and play and con- 
 .versation of young men and women, with a grassy carpet be 
 neath their feet, and a bright sun and a blue sky over their 
 heads ? 
 
 At last the party had re-embarked, and the riders were re 
 mounted. Instead of returning the way they came, they 
 determined, for the sake of variety, to go home by the river 
 road ; and the playful project entered their heads, of letting 
 the Eagle Wing get thoroughly under way, and then trying a 
 race with her for the town. So, taking position, Mr. Forrest 
 waved his hat in air, was answered by fluttering handker 
 chiefs from the steamer, and on they flew. For some dis 
 tance they kept what would have been "neck and neck," 
 supposing the steamer had had a neck ; and then the horses 
 got excited. The grays being the faster of the four, Mr. 
 Forrest and Miss Hartley soon left their companions out of 
 sight round a curve in the road. The wind fairly whistled 
 by them, as it does through the rigging of a ship at sea. 
 But, so long as the horses seemed happy, their riders cared 
 not how fast they sped. Mr. Snyder and Sue Hartley, hav 
 ing given up the chase as useless, had reined in their horses, 
 and were coming on by an easy lope, but still out of sight 
 on the winding road. Mr. Forrest and Miss Margaret still 
 sped on ; when, suddenly turning a sharp curve in the road,
 
 48 BLUFFTON. 
 
 her horse caught the quick gleam of a white bowlder that 
 sprang into view so quickly, through the half-hiding trees, 
 that he had not time to see what it was. He reared and 
 plunged for a moment ; but so firmly and naturally did she 
 ride, that she seemed in no danger of being unseated. But 
 the fright had maddened him ; and now he plunged forward 
 so like the wind that even Mr. Forrest could not keep up. 
 She tried to rein him in, but he took the bit in his teeth ; 
 and as he turned another curve, and shot out of sight under 
 the trees, Mr. Forrest saw, with a horror that almost stopped 
 the beating of his heart, that one rein was broken, and she 
 could control him no longer. He spurred his own horse to 
 the utmost, and rushed on in pursuit. What next he saw 
 almost paralyzed him. The horse was out of sight ; and the 
 whole universe to him was now only that one white, still face 
 beside the road. " O God ! " he cried, " she is dead, and I 
 have killed her ! " His head whirled, and the light of 
 heaven seemed to go out in awful night, as he not dis 
 mounted, but flung himself from his horse. What he did he 
 hardly knew, till he found himself some distance away, sit 
 ting on the grass by a little spring that trickled out of the 
 side of the hill, with her head on his knee, and bathing her 
 face with the cold water. An hour before, he would have 
 thought it presumption to dream of her being his : now his 
 heart leaped up and claimed her, and rebelled at fate for 
 thus perilling his title. He felt that she was his own, and 
 that some horrible power was snatching her away. Was she 
 dead ? There was a slight bruise on her temple. She did 
 not seem to breathe. He chafed her hands, and felt for her
 
 TO THE CAVE. 49 
 
 pulse, which was only a feeble and irregular flutter. He 
 called to her, " Madge ! Madge ! " in passionate familiarity, 
 for love and grief made formality a mockery : " would God 
 I had died for you, or with you ! " 
 
 The trees on the bank at this point shut out the steamer 
 from view ; and the party on board had not seen the acci 
 dent. He tenderly laid her head upon his coat, which he 
 stripped off for a pillow, and rushed into the road to see if 
 her sister and friend were in sight. They were evidently 
 taking the ride leisurely, and were nowhere to be seen. He 
 rushed back, and again took her head upon his knee. He 
 passionately kissed her forehead, and called to her again to 
 see if his voice would wake her. 
 
 The tears fairly started for joy, as she now moved slightly, 
 and a half-sigh escaped her. Her eyes opened just a little, 
 and then closed again. Her lips moved as if they would 
 speak ; but were silent. He watched her breathlessly, with a 
 joy and anxiety that did not seek for utterance. At last a 
 murmuring came from her lips, that out of inarticulate noth 
 ings shaped broken fragments of speech, 
 
 " Mr. For-rest ! Mark ! Save me ! " 
 
 " Yes, Madge ! dear Madge ! I'd die to save you. Can 
 you hear me ? " 
 
 But she was still again. The blood now began to mount 
 to her cheeks; and, as he watched her, he uttered his 
 thought aloud : 
 
 " Oh, what a lovely face ! " 
 
 Just then she roused a little, and, having half-consciously 
 caught the last words, said, in a dazed sort of way,
 
 5O BLUFFTON. 
 
 "Who spoke of love?" 
 
 And then she blushed deeply, as she suddenly became 
 conscious of where she was, and what she had said. 
 
 Mark saw that she had half caught his secret from those 
 dimly-divined words ; and hardly knew whether to be glad 
 or sorry to have her guess the truth thus early. But it was 
 now no time for any thing but gladness to see her wake, and 
 hear her speak again. 
 
 As she roused, and recovered from her faint, the old awe 
 with which he regarded her came back : she seemed to slip 
 from his hands, and the gulf was between them again. 
 
 "Thank God, Miss Hartley, it is no worse!" he ex 
 claimed. 
 
 At this point, her sister and Mr. Snyder appeared. A few 
 words explained all. Astonished that no bones were bro 
 ken, and that she had so soon recovered from the fainting 
 fit into which fear as much as the fall had thrown her, they 
 found, on examination, that a clump of bushes had broken 
 the force of her fall, and still contained fragments of her 
 dress. Beside these bushes Mr. Forrest had found her, but 
 he was too anxious at the time to notice it. A carriage 
 was now procured from a neighboring farmhouse ; and, while 
 she leaned upon her sister, Mr. Forrest drove them home. 
 Mr. Snyder, riding his own horse, led the other two, and 
 found the fourth in his stall. 
 
 When arrived at Mr. Hartley's house, Mr. Forrest was 
 obliged to take the still weak Miss Margaret in his arms, and 
 half carry, half assist her to her chamber. He then hastened 
 for a physician ; and, learning that probably there was noth-
 
 TO THE CAVE. 51 
 
 ing more serious than a nervous shock that would confine 
 her to her room and lounge for a few days, he left, with 
 many expressions of self-blame for her fall, and of wishes 
 for a night of quiet sleep.
 
 52 BLUFFTON. 
 
 VI. 
 
 THE CONVALESCENCE. 
 
 MR. FORREST slept little that night ; for his brain ran 
 on like a music-box wound up, with the case fastened, 
 and of which he had lost the key. The tunes it played 
 were beyond his control. It wailed or danced, sang hope 
 or despair, apparently according to its own mood. And, 
 when it did lull enough to let him sleep, it appeared to 
 whirl on still in dreams. He rode wild horses, and was 
 flung down bottomless abysses. The face of Miss Hartley 
 was by his side, he held her hand, and was about to tell her 
 his love, when suddenly the figure would fade away, and he 
 would find himself alone in some wild place, listening to 
 voices of mocking laughter. Again, she was dead, and he, 
 as minister, was tortured with the thought that he must 
 attend her funeral, while no one knew that it was his right 
 to sit broken-hearted as chief mourner. Or it was a wed 
 ding scene in church, where she was bride and he the happy 
 groom ; and then suddenly it was some one else that held 
 her hand, and he was the minister, in hopeless agony, 
 reading the marriage-service that was separating her from 
 him forever.
 
 THE CONVALESCENCE. 53 
 
 But all mornings break at last, and so did this. As early 
 as he thought propriety permitted, he went over to call upon 
 her. He was shown up to her room, and found her in 
 morning wrapper, upon her lounge, half sunk in easy pillows. 
 She was suffering no pain, and was only weak and pale. 
 But her sickness so became her, that he thought she never 
 looked so beautiful. Her dark masses of loosened hair so 
 framed the round, fair face and the lustrous eyes, and mouth 
 that was a Cupid's bow, that he wished he were a painter, 
 that he might keep the picture forever. 
 
 " Good-morning, Miss Margaret," said he. " I hope the 
 results of my yesterday's mischief are not serious." 
 
 " Oh, no ! " she replied. " I feel quite well, only they will 
 make me lie still." 
 
 "Did you sleep?" 
 
 "Very well indeed. I always do. A good conscience, 
 you know," she added with a playful smile. 
 
 " No trouble with your conscience in this instance : it is 
 my conscience that is now at fault. The whipping furies 
 have lashed me severely for putting you in such peril." 
 
 "Why, it was no fault of yours. I had a glorious ride, 
 and I'd try it again : only I think I would see if the bridle 
 was strong." 
 
 "You're a brave girl," said he ; "and I am happier than I 
 can tell you, to find you so well, and to learn that you do 
 not blame me. I shall blame myself, however, just the 
 same. And now, to prove that you forgive me, you must 
 grant me permission to help assist in your cure." 
 
 "That, perhaps, will depend upon your medicine."
 
 54 BLUFFTON. 
 
 "Well, I know you are fond of reading, and yet you 
 mustn't read to-day. The hours will be long, if you do 
 nothing. May I read to you a while? " 
 
 " But isn't your parish work taking all your time ? " 
 
 "Aren't you a part of my parish? And isn't my first 
 duty to the sick?" said he, with a mock solemnity. 
 
 " Yes ; but I've heard you say you didn't like parish 
 work," said she archly. 
 
 " Well, then," said he laughing, " since you have such a 
 good memory, I'll spend the day in reading to you ' from 
 a sense of duty,' or for any other mentionable motive what 
 soever, only so you will let me have my way." 
 
 So it was arranged that he was to read. As he rose to go 
 to his study for some books, she said, 
 
 " If you are to be my servant to-day, will you promise to 
 obey orders?" 
 
 "Any thing in the wide world," said he. 
 
 " Well, then, read what else you will, but I command you 
 to bring along some of your own verses ; for I've heard that 
 you write." 
 
 " I did not think you would use your new-found power in 
 tyranny like this so soon. Indeed, I never confessed to being 
 a poet." 
 
 "But people don't always confess their sins in public. 
 I know you write ; and, if you wish my forgiveness for it, you 
 must read me some of your verses." 
 
 " If I must, I must : I've a few little snatches. And, if 
 you make the conditions of my sitting with you so hard, of 
 course I must comply."
 
 THE CONVALESCENCE. 55 
 
 " I am inexorable," she said : " so you know your fate." 
 He said to himself, as he looked over his portfolio, 
 " If I must read my own lines, I'll take my revenge by 
 making her hear the echoes of my own heart, and see if I 
 can thus make out her own. I'll invent a Hamlet plot, and 
 see if her face confesses any care for me." 
 
 He soon returned. He read first from Tennyson's " Prin 
 cess," and they talked over some of its many problems. 
 Then they went over some of the sweeter " Idyls of the King," 
 and discussed the virtues of knighthood and the old ideals 
 of womankind. At last she said," Now let me hear your own." 
 " ' Oh, what a fall was there, my countrymen ! ' " said 
 he, laughing. " From Tennyson to Forrest, the author 
 only of several unpublished manuscripts. But I may as well 
 be slaughtered now as to anticipate it longer." 
 
 He picked up some loose papers, and continued, 
 "The first is a foolish little song. You know I only 
 scratch off rhymes for recreation, and because my thoughts 
 will sometimes jingle. I have entitled it 
 
 THE QUESTION. 
 
 ' Oh ! tell me how to woo and win,' 
 The shepherd sang. The echoes flew 
 
 Adown the vale, now loud, now thin, 
 And answered only, ' Win and woo I ' 
 
 ' But I am not a shepherd lad : 
 
 So tell me, echo sweet,' said I, 
 ' How shall my heart's long wish be had ? ' 
 
 ' Had wish you had,' was its reply.
 
 56 BLUFFTON. 
 
 ' No common word can make her mine ; 
 
 No common love do I adore : 
 Toward me does her heart incline ? ' 
 
 But echo would reply no more. 
 
 " No, Miss Margaret, " said he as soon as he finished : " I 
 shall not wait, and make you struggle between courtesy and 
 veracity ; but, without letting you rest, you must listen again. 
 You've brought it on yourself, you know. 
 
 WILL LOVE DESCEND? 
 
 A heaven-born goddess is sweet Love : 
 
 Will she descend to common cares ? 
 
 And breathe our dusty, earthly airs 
 In narrow paths, nor pine to rove ? 
 
 She'll want soft carpets for her feet ; 
 She'll want rich jewels in her hair, 
 From out her windows landscapes rare, 
 
 And in must float all perfumes sweet 
 
 She'd weary of a petty round 
 
 Of household tasks that every day 
 
 Fritter and fret the life away, 
 Though husband worshipped, children crowned. 
 
 Yes, heart that thought the heavens to scale, 
 And pluck a star from her bright zone, 
 Stars are too high to call thine own : 
 
 Go, seek a rushlight in the vale." 
 
 "Well, I can't let you go on any farther until I protest 
 against that," said she. "It isn't a heaven-born goddess
 
 THE CONVALESCENCE. 57 
 
 that looks upon life in that way. True love is always hum 
 ble. I know nothing of men's hearts ; but it seems to me, 
 that, if a woman should love a man, she would always look up 
 to him, and be exalted by her love, whatever his station 
 might be. Stars that will not shine in vales are no true stars. 
 And any man would be degraded who should stoop to what 
 he would be compelled to think of as beneath him." 
 
 " You think a true woman, then, would marry a man with 
 out regard to his station? " 
 
 " Of course I think so." 
 
 " But isn't Tennyson's line too true ? 
 
 ' Every door is barred with gold, and opens but to golden keys.' " 
 
 " I don't think it is, except with some who can appreciate 
 nothing else. It isn't strange that a woman should like fine 
 houses, horses, and money, any more than that a man should, 
 I suppose." 
 
 " Certainly not. But what if a man, recognizing that, should 
 hesitate to ask a woman's love because he lacks them? " 
 
 "Then he deserves to go without her love. If he has 
 brains, or character, why not offer them? A true woman 
 must despise a man who thinks she is in the market to be 
 sold to the highest bidder. I know some women do sell 
 themselves for homes ; but so do men too, for that matter, 
 when they hunt for rich wives. But what are those other 
 verses ? " 
 
 Mark felt that he had learned one thing, at least ; and his 
 minister's lot did not seem so poor as when he feared she 
 might have higher worldly aspirations. So he read on,
 
 58 BLUFFTON. 
 
 What shall one do with a hopeless love ? 
 
 If he bury it in his heart, 
 Too strong for its prison it will prove, 
 
 And burst its walls apart. 
 
 If he bury it in the sea, 'twill arise 
 
 When the evening love-star gleams, 
 And, mocking him with its deathless eyes, 
 
 Will haunt him in his dreams. 
 
 If he bury himself in his books, and seek 
 
 To hide him from its sight, 
 'Twill laugh at his Hebrew and his Greek, 
 
 And mock him as in spite. 
 
 If he do not seek its face to flee, 
 
 And yet no hope is given, 
 'Twill make of life a misery, 
 
 And make a hell of heaven. 
 
 "We won't say any thing about that," said he : "it helps 
 pass the time. But here is the last. I have named it, 
 
 THE CRIME AGAINST LOVE. 
 
 Love was a judge, and he held a court 
 
 With the culprit in the box. 
 He had flung him into his jail, Despair, 
 
 Close under double locks. 
 
 The crier cried, and the court began. 
 
 The attorney rose and said, 
 'The prisoner at the bar, my lord, 
 
 We charge, as shall be read.'
 
 THE CONVALESCENCE. 59 
 
 And he read a long indictment through, 
 
 That charged contempt of love. 
 ' He has spoken slightingly of you, 
 
 As I'll proceed to prove. 
 
 ' He has said, " I'll travel other lands ; 
 
 I'll wed my books and lore : 
 Divine philosophy alone 
 
 Shall my fond heart adore. 
 
 ' " Love is the passion of weak minds : 
 
 I will not be its slave. 
 Love is a blindness of the eyes, 
 
 And it is reason's grave." ' 
 
 The indictment through, the attorney said, 
 
 'My lord, whom heaven defend! 
 If words like these unpunished go, 
 
 Your kingdom's at an end.' 
 
 ' Speak, prisoner ! ' then the stern judge cried, 
 
 ' If you have aught to say.' 
 ' I did not know you, mighty Love : 
 
 I therefore pardon pray, 
 
 4 If ignorance may be excuse.' 
 
 ' Then hear me,' Love replied. 
 ' Go seek the loveliest one you know, 
 
 And by her word abide. 
 
 ' If she forgives you, then will I : 
 
 You have six months' release.' 
 And now he wanders up and down, 
 
 And nowhere fmdeth peace,
 
 6O BLUFFTON. 
 
 He's seen the loveliest ; but in vain I 
 
 He cannot bring his heart 
 To risk the trial, lest he die 
 
 If she should say, 'Depart! ' " 
 
 ' " Well," said Miss Margaret, " that is very prettily told. 
 If you can write like that, you'll give the world a volume of 
 verse some day. But I don't think the culprit is specially 
 brave; do you?" 
 
 Mark was about to reply ; and perhaps might have owned 
 to being the culprit himself, had not the reading been 
 suddenly cut short by the calling of some friends who had 
 been on the excursion the preceding day. Having learned 
 of the accident, they had come to see how seriously she was 
 hurt. 
 
 She thanked him heartily for his kindness, and asked him 
 to read again ; then, taking his papers and books, he hur 
 riedly withdrew.
 
 OTHER STRANDS IN THE THREAD. 6 1 
 
 VII. 
 
 OTHER STRANDS IN THE THREAD. 
 
 AND now we must take note of other strands that were 
 being woven into the thread of Mr. Forrest's destiny. 
 Life is not all love; and those things that seem farthest 
 removed from its tender pleasure and its tender pain are so 
 intimately wound up with it in human experience, that we 
 cannot understand either strand when taken by itself. As 
 one could not comprehend the turbid tide of the Mississippi, 
 below its junction with the Missouri, unless he knew that two 
 different rivers had become one, so the turbid, mingling, 
 dividing, darkening, brightening current of Mr. Forrest's 
 onward career can only be understood as we take note how 
 the one stream of his life is henceforth compounded of love 
 not only, but also of hope and fear, of inclination and duty, 
 of old tradition and new thought, all in relentless struggle. 
 The sphinx's riddle had been given him to answer ; and he 
 felt that he must answer it, to the satisfaction at least of his 
 own soul, or conscience, manhood, and self-respect would 
 die. And, even if he could have won Miss Hartley with 
 a lie in his hand, he would have felt he was offering her a 
 hollow, rotten-hearted sham, and not the oak-hearted man 
 hood that she deserved.
 
 62 BLUFFTON. 
 
 So all the time since he had been in Bluffton, he had 
 been fighting a battle, that, to his thought, meant life or 
 death. Several times he had been on the point of offering 
 Miss Hartley his hand ; and then had shrunk back, deterred 
 by the thought that he had no right to do it until she fully 
 knew all that was in his head as well as what was in his heart. 
 
 To find what this was that was in his head, the elements 
 of his great conflict, we must go back, and take a brief 
 glance at the more immediate past. 
 
 It has been already intimated, that, even in the theological 
 seminary, Mr. Forrest admitted into his thinking a principle 
 fatal to his " soundness." He had asserted the ultimate 
 principle of Protestantism, " the right of private " individual 
 " judgment ; " and this, not only in interpreting the stand 
 ards of the faith, but even as to the solidity of the founda 
 tions on which rested the faith itself. It is easy enough for 
 an unprejudiced outsider to see that the Protestant principle, 
 " the right of private judgment," leads logically to ration 
 alism. For he who assumes to question the basis of author 
 ity, in that very act becomes a rationalist ; that is, asserts the 
 supreme right of reason to pass upon these ultimate prob 
 lems ; and that is what rationalism means. But, like many 
 a young man who launches his craft on this Protestant sea, 
 and feels in his sails the fresh and inspiring impulse of this 
 Protestant free air, he had little thought out over what wide 
 and pathless oceans, and under what threatening skies, he 
 would drift before he rested again in any quiet harbor. 
 
 In his California life, he had found himself in a free and 
 bracing air. Men there cared more for practical religion
 
 OTHER STRANDS IN THE THREAD. 63 
 
 than for theoretical details of thought. And though he made 
 himself, so far as he could, familiar with the best modern 
 thought on scientific and critical subjects, he was still so busy 
 in practical affairs, that he did not often stop to think whether 
 there was place in his old theology for his new ideas. The 
 gospel of the Christian life was what he cared for ; and if 
 now and then the critical question came up as to whether 
 the system of his old faith could stand the strain of his newer 
 knowledge, he allowed himself to be easily satisfied with the 
 never-failing new exegesis that never hesitated in its attempt 
 to reconcile the most seemingly hostile opposites. So he 
 entered on his work in Bluffton, supposing himself orthodox, 
 so far as he had given it any attention. 
 
 He had been there but a little while, however, before the 
 subject loomed up on his mental horizon as a cloud that had 
 lightning in it, and threatened storm. Several causes con 
 duced to this ; and now for a little it must be our business 
 to trace them. 
 
 On coming to Bluffton, he had come into sharp, practical 
 contact with the " five points of Calvinism " embodied in 
 the unsympathetic, unyielding angularities of real people. 
 The shock of this contact waked him up to the conscious 
 ness that that was not the kind of religion he believed in. 
 A man may go on for years supposing himself to be holding 
 faithfully to a system of thought that he has inherited and 
 learned to reverence, while all the time the play of study 
 and experience about it has totally changed its structure, 
 and he wakes up to find that the old has disappeared. Just 
 as an iceberg starts out, blue and hard and angular, from its
 
 64 BLUFFTON. 
 
 northern birthplace among the glaciers : it floats majesti 
 cally and threateningly on, appearing like its original self, 
 while all the time the warmer airs have played around it, the 
 warmer seas have rippled against its sides, and it has become 
 honeycombed through and through. Now let it strike some 
 rock of reality, or encounter some ocean storm, and, like a 
 mirage, it is gone : the seas have swallowed it forever. 
 
 So Mr. Forrest was rudely roused to the thought that the 
 gospel he held and preached was not what was popularly 
 held as orthodox. He did not welcome the thought, nor 
 yield it an easy victory. All the drift of inheritance and 
 tradition was in the old channel. His childhood's home 
 was an* orthodox home. The sacred memories of father, of 
 mother, of the old fireside circle, of household prayer and 
 song, of Sunday bells still chiming in memory over the old 
 fields, all seemed bitterly to reproach the new thoughts that 
 appeared to be traitor to the old. Loved ones had died 
 looking forward to the orthodox heaven, and pleading with 
 him to meet them there. Here were the associations and the 
 friends of his life. Along this path lay the apparent way to 
 the attainment of all his earthly ambitions. Dark shadows 
 also from the future seemed to threaten him. He started 
 appalled sometimes at the thought, that, after all, these mis 
 givings of his reason might be only the darkened wanderings 
 of a fallen nature. The angel of darkness, robed as an 
 angel of light, might be thus playing with and tempting his 
 soul. He would say, " Get thee behind me, Satan ! " 
 
 And then, on the other hand, he would reason, that, from 
 the beginning of the world, all who, like Abraham, like
 
 OTHER STRANDS IN THE THREAD. 65 
 
 Jesus himself, like Paul, like Luther, had left a past dear to 
 sentiment and rich in precious memories, must have gone 
 through substantially the same struggle of foreboding, of 
 doubt, of misgiving. And, the more deeply he thought, the 
 more he became convinced that this new light was not a will- 
 o'-the wisp, leading him astray, but really the faint streaks 
 of a new morning. 
 
 But now he would grow heart-sick at the thought, " Miss 
 Margaret is thoroughly, fixedly orthodox in all her training 
 and ways. The new light if it be from heaven will 
 still lead me away from her." And this was to him bitterer 
 agony than all the rest. He had hours when he felt like 
 Adam in "Paradise Lost," when he found that Eve had 
 eaten the apple. The outer wilderness with her would be 
 dearer than paradise alone ; and he hardly knew if he 
 would enter the open gate of heaven if it meant letting go 
 her hand. 
 
 Another thing turned his thought into the same channel. 
 He was talking with Judge Hartley one day, concerning the 
 practical effects of religion on the life, when he ventured to 
 remark, 
 
 " There's one thing, judge, that troubles me immensely in 
 my preaching. There are many people in the church not 
 half so good as many that are out of it." 
 
 " So far as man can see, perhaps it may be so," cautiously 
 answered the judge. 
 
 " And it seems almost hypocrisy in me to preach to those 
 outside as sinners, and exhort them to repentance," he con 
 tinued, " while the lightning ought to strike inside if any 
 where."
 
 66 BLUFFTON. 
 
 " But, Mr. Forrest, these outside fair livers are doubtless 
 trusting to their own righteousness, which is a broken reed 
 There is no evidence that they have the grace of God in 
 their hearts." 
 
 " If these others had as much of the grace of God in 
 their hearts as they pretend, wouldn't they have a little better 
 character among men ? What's the evidence of grace that 
 doesn't show itself in works ? " 
 
 "When one gets to talking too much of works, he is on 
 dangerous ground," said the judge. " The curse of the law 
 is on him who trusts in works." 
 
 " But isn't it a part of Christianity to have works ? " 
 
 "Yes, morals are desirable, even necessary, in a true 
 Christian. But they are worth nothing to a man who is not 
 converted. They may even be a snare, a soul-destroying 
 snare. If a man trusts in them, he is gone. Of course a 
 man had better be sober than to be a drunkard ; he had 
 better be honest, and pay his debts, than to be a swindler ; 
 he had better be kind than cruel in his family. But, after 
 all, Mr. Forrest, morals don't touch the question of salvation. 
 The vilest sinner that trusts to the atoning blood is safer 
 than the best man that ever lived, who comes into the pres 
 ence of God in his own righteousness." 
 
 "Why, Judge Hartley," said Mr. Forrest, "that seems to 
 me like putting a premium on immorality." 
 
 " Mr. Forrest," returned the judge, " however it seems to 
 the carnal reason, it is the teaching of divine revelation ; 
 and I am astonished that a minister of the gospel should use 
 such language."
 
 OTHER STRANDS IN THE THREAD. 6/ 
 
 "Well," he replied, "I may be all wrong: but upright 
 living is better for this world than a religion that is consistent 
 with dishonesty and uncharitableness ; and, since the same 
 God rules in the next world who governs this, it seems 
 strange that the same principle shouldn't apply over there." 
 
 Mr. Forrest had been led on by his own thought, as he 
 spoke, to the taking of a more advanced ground than he had 
 foreseen when he began; and he found he had shocked 
 the judge beyond measure. As they separated, the judge 
 remarked, 
 
 " Mr. Forrest, your first sermon troubled me just a little ; 
 not what you said, but what you didn't say. I feared you 
 were not quite sound on some important doctrines. But 
 you've been so manly and successful, that I'd been hoping 
 the other side would be soon brought out with no uncertain 
 sound. But you mustn't preach such thoughts as you've 
 spoken to-day. You would make the whole gospel of no 
 effect. What's the need of the cross, if such things are 
 true?" 
 
 And the judge walked sadly away. 
 
 After this Mr. Forrest noticed that he watched him more 
 narrowly as he preached, and that he was a little less cordial 
 as they met. He found also, little by little, that he had let 
 fall a word here and there, and that the more strictly doctrinal 
 ones in the church were slightly changed in their manner 
 toward him. He was still made formally welcome at his 
 house ; though now and then the judge made him remember 
 their conversation, by advising him to a prayerful, humble 
 study of the divine mystery of salvation by faith.
 
 68 BLUFFTON. 
 
 And one thing more was at this time moulding his pres 
 ent, and so shaping the future. When first roused to face 
 the fact, that, for better or worse, his opinions were largely 
 changed, he did not follow the denominationally safe method 
 of rushing back out of the glare whether of hell or heaven 
 he knew not that was blinding him, into the quiet shadows 
 of the old traditions. Many is the man, in his case, who has 
 refused to read what would " lead him astray." He has kept 
 to denominational papers and reviews and books, and re 
 fused, by sheer force of will, to harbor unwelcome and un 
 settling thoughts. This seemed to Mr. Forrest the course 
 of a sneak and a coward, and as such he despised it. But 
 it also appeared to him downright dishonesty of thought. 
 " We expect heathen and sceptics," he would say, " to drop 
 all prejudice, and at least examine our claims. Then I'll at 
 least be as brave. If I can't hold my religion in daylight, I'll 
 fling it to the bats." So he began a course of systematic 
 reading and study as to the foundations of his belief. He 
 soon found that it was whispered about the parish, that he 
 " actually had scientific and Unitarian books in his library ; " 
 and aunt Sally Rawson remarked at the sewing-circle, 
 
 " What such things'll lead to, the Lord only knows." 
 
 Still he kept on studying and reading. He would have a 
 "reason for the faith that was in him." 
 
 And he not only read and studied, but he went over with 
 his friend Tom all the great questions of the age ; and they 
 tried to look at them before and behind. 
 
 As already intimated, he and his friend Tom Winthrop had 
 been separated since they left college ; and, while they had
 
 OTHER STRANDS IN THE THREAD. 69 
 
 kept up occasional friendly interchanges, neither of them 
 had taken the trouble to keep acquainted with the drift of 
 the other's thinking. Mark had known Tom they were 
 still Mark and Tom to each other as a somewhat fearless 
 and independent thinker, even in college ; and as one in 
 clined always to probe things to the bottom, to see what they 
 were made of. He was less emotional and enthusiastic than 
 Mark ; and at times Mark was inclined to charge him with 
 being hard, and even inclined to a slight shade of cynicism, 
 in his conclusions. But still he was loving and generous ; 
 and only anxious to know that either a thought or a man 
 was sound to the core, no sham, and he would stand 
 by them in good report or ill. He had a keen logical mind, 
 and what is very rare in this world a keen insight as to 
 the value of proof. For it is a strange fact that those men 
 even educated men are few who can weigh evidence 
 carefully, and so tell when a certain proposition is proved to 
 be true, and when it is not. Most men's minds are like ill- 
 constructed scales : they turn without much regard to the 
 weights. 
 
 With a mind like this, and with a well-prepared basis of 
 scholarship, Mark found that his friend had found time, dur 
 ing the years of their separation, to follow out his old lines 
 of study. Though busy as a man of business, he had still 
 pursued his private investigations. He had even written an 
 occasional article of local scientific importance, or had con 
 tributed to some theological discussion in the reviews. Mark 
 found him well " up " in all the great questions of the day ; 
 and that he not only had very positive opinions of his own,
 
 7O BLUFFTON. 
 
 but was quite prepared to do battle in their behalf. He was 
 an out-and-out rationalist in his opinions concerning religion, 
 though by no means bitter toward the training of his child 
 hood. He had the tolerance of a wise believer in evolution 
 toward the past ; and would no more think of quarrelling 
 with it than of whipping a boy for not being a man, or find 
 ing fault with the twilight because it wasn't noon. But, as 
 he sometimes said, he had very little respect for a man who 
 would keep his eyes shut tight at noon, and take his own 
 stupidity for twilight. He felt like shaking such a man 
 rather roughly, and telling him to open his eyes. 
 
 All these points, as to the mental condition of his friend, 
 Mark gradually discovered as the months of his life in Bluff- 
 ton had passed. They had renewed their old intimacy. 
 Mark frequently took Monday for his rest-day, and would 
 run up to Maple City, and pass it with Tom. And, when 
 he could get leisure, Tom would come down and spend half 
 a day with him. They would walk and talk together by the 
 hour. 
 
 Mr. Forrest's association with his friend was a new point 
 that gave the " straiter sect " in the church much trouble. 
 Mr. Winthrop was a gentleman well known in Bluffton as a 
 sharp, clear, and by no means orthodox thinker. Particu 
 larly was he obnoxious to Mr. Richard Smiley. 
 
 This Mr. Smiley, to whom we have already seen Deacon 
 Putney so obsequious, was what Uncle Zeke called "the 
 Great Mogul of the town." He employed the most men, 
 and did the largest business. Though not superintendent, 
 he had much to do with the Sunday school. Having an
 
 OTHER STRANDS IN THE THREAD. /I 
 
 oily tongue, and a good memory for anecdote, he capti 
 vated the children. In a fifteen-minutes talk he would 
 have half of them in tears over the " dime-novel " style of 
 piety which he cultivated. He gave lavishly to the church 
 and public benevolent objects ; and the church bowed down 
 at his feet. As being able to bring the most tears, he was 
 the favorite speaker in prayer-meeting. He was the pet of 
 all the old women of the parish, because he would call, and 
 kneel down and pray and cry with them over " the state of 
 Zion." He had been a sore puzzle to the new minister ; for, 
 while stoutest in his defence of traditional orthodoxy, he 
 bore a most doubtful repute, as to his business-character, 
 among outside business-men. Even Deacon Putney one 
 day took Mr. Forrest aside, as they met on the sidewalk, 
 
 
 
 and said, 
 
 " I tell you what it is : I don't know what to make of Mr. 
 Smiley. When you talk about his being a Christian, to the 
 best business-men down town, they think it's a good joke ; 
 and I've known of some things myself that weren't straight. 
 And yet, when he talks to me, blamed if he don't make me 
 believe he's a persecuted saint." 
 
 This was the man, then, that most strongly and loudly 
 objected to his minister's associating with "an infidel." 
 Mark did not know, at this time, what good reason Mr. 
 Smiley had for disliking Mr. Winthrop.
 
 72 BLUFFTON. 
 
 VIII. 
 
 MARK AND TOM TALK. 
 
 THE day on which Mr. Forrest had read with Miss 
 Hartley was Saturday. On Sunday he was very busy, 
 as usual, with his public duties ; and on Monday it had 
 been arranged that Mr. Winthrop was to spend the day with 
 him. He had no time, then, to do more than call at the 
 door, send up his regards, and ask after Miss Hartley's 
 health. Finding that she was steadily improving, and was 
 likely to be out in a few days, he returned to his study, 
 wrote a few letters, and then went down to the levee to meet 
 his friend. 
 
 " Well, Tom, is it up at the study, or off for a walk on the 
 hills, this morning?" was Mark's first greeting as his friend 
 stepped off the plank. 
 
 " I think," replied Tom, " it would be almost wicked to 
 spend such a glorious Indian-summer day as this in the 
 house. Let's stretch our legs on the hills." 
 
 They leisurely climbed Bowman's Hill, and stood for a 
 moment to fill their lungs, and take in the wide beauty of 
 the scene. 
 
 " Tom," said Mark, " I've been over this country a good
 
 MARK AND TOM TALK. 73 
 
 deal ; but, do you know, I've never seen weather so fine as 
 the fall here in Bluffton : not even California excels it." 
 
 "Yes," replied Tom : "I do think it is unequalled. Just 
 look over the river and the prairie yonder. The still air in 
 the yellow sunlight is just liquid gold. And then it con 
 tinues so, day after day, for weeks." 
 
 "Suppose," said Mark, "we take a run up the river, then 
 strike inland and make the circuit of the hills, and come out 
 on the bluff below the town. We haven't been up there yet 
 together; and it is perhaps the finest view the city can 
 boast." 
 
 So off they started. In a couple of hours they had made 
 a round of six or eight miles, and stood on the crown of the 
 great bluff. They now sat down to rest, and look about 
 them. For a time they drank in the scene in silence. The 
 city was at their feet ; and it came so close to the foot of 
 the bluff on one side, that they could have flung down a 
 stone upon the roofs of the houses. On the river-side where 
 they sat upon a knoll that formed a natural shelf, the bluff 
 sank sheer down a hundred and fifty feet, to where the river 
 rippled against the pebbles on the shore. A steamer was 
 just passing ; and they could almost have leaped upon its 
 deck. Through the valley two or three miles away beyond 
 the city, a train of cars was winding along like a serpent, and 
 silently approaching the town. The little people, for such 
 they looked from their high seats, were hurrying to and fro in 
 the streets beneath, while Mark and Tom could easily ima 
 gine themselves like gods on Olympus, calmly overlooking 
 the turmoil in which they had no part.
 
 74 BLUFFTON. 
 
 Here they sat, and fell into a long conversation, like many 
 in which, during these times, they had been engaged. 
 
 " Mark, do you notice that long line of low bluffs about 
 six miles away, across the prairie beyond the river, and run 
 ning parallel with it north and south as far as we can see? " 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 " Well, that must be the old bank of the river, which ages 
 ago filled this whole basin, and covered the place where all 
 these farms and towns and railroads now are." 
 
 "Do you think so?" 
 
 " ' Think ' isn't the word : I know so. The waters have 
 left the story of their own past work. The whole prairie 
 yonder is a river-deposit ; and the wave-marks are on the 
 bluffs." 
 
 " How long ago do you reckon it was ? " 
 
 " Oh ! several thousand years. In geological time, ages 
 are minutes ; and a few more or less don't matter." 
 
 " You do not believe much in Moses, then, I suppose." 
 
 " Believe in Moses," said Tom : " why should I ? " 
 
 " Why should you not ? Couldn't God inspire a man to 
 write a record of His work? " 
 
 " The question isn't whether he could, but whether he did; 
 and that is a question of fact, to be settled on the evidence. 
 Now Moses or Genesis says God created the world in 
 six days, about six thousand years ago. And yet Niagara 
 Falls are thundering in the ears of all the world, that will 
 listen, the fact that it has taken at least two hundred thou 
 sand years for it to cut through a. couple miles of rock from 
 the present fall to the end of the rapids."
 
 MARK AND TOM TALK. 75 
 
 " But what of the new interpretation of Genesis, that 
 makes the six days six periods of indefinite length ? " 
 
 " Only a make-shift. The record says distinctly days, with 
 evening and morning. And if the word ' day ' doesn't mean 
 day, how do you know what any other word means ? And 
 then the order of the world's growth does not agree with the 
 Mosaic account, in spite of all the Procrustes stretching and 
 clipping. And there is one principle I think it is safe to go 
 by. Whether God wrote the Bible, or not, one thing we do 
 know, the world is his work : nature is his book. What that 
 says, then, is true, whether all the old-world guesses and 
 dreams about it are true or not." 
 
 " But do you think that Moses wrote what he knew was 
 not true?" 
 
 " Now, look here, Mark, that starts a large question. Let's 
 go over the Bible a little, and see what we really know about 
 it." 
 
 " At any rate, we know how long it has stood against all 
 assaults, and how it has guided and comforted men." 
 
 " True enough so far : so have the Veda and the Tripitaka 
 and Confucius and the Koran held their own ; all but the 
 last one, longer than the Bible. And they to-day comfort 
 more people than all Christendom, several times over. We 
 mustn't think we are everybody in the world." 
 
 " But at least the Bible is the book of civilization." 
 
 " Yes, because the races that have the Bible happen to be 
 the ones that have in them the stuff to make a civilization 
 out of." 
 
 " You do not think the Bible, then, the cause of civiliza 
 tion."
 
 76 BLUFFTON. 
 
 " Why should I, when its firmest adherents have fought 
 advancing civilization at every step?" 
 
 "But that is the re-actionary spirit of Roman-Catholic 
 conservatism." 
 
 " No, Mark, not at all. Protestantism in the churches 
 has fought science as bitterly as Romanism. Luther was as 
 severe against the knowledge that did not accord with his 
 notions of revelation as ever the Pope was. Did you never 
 read how he abused and ridiculed those who dared to think 
 the world was round, and had inhabitants on the other 
 side?" 
 
 " I had not noticed it." 
 
 "Well, what but that is the history of orthodoxy all 
 through ? It fights every thing new as long as it can. Then 
 it re-interprets the Bible, and finds it all there, and benevo 
 lently takes it under the wing of revelation. It won't be ten 
 years before a fast and firm alliance will be patched up be 
 tween even Darwin and Moses. Moses will be made out the 
 original Darwinian. Just so they treated Newton : they cursed 
 his gravitation as long as they could ; and now for two hun 
 dred years have been using the great law to glorify the Jew 
 ish conception of a God who taught a flat world ' founded on 
 the seas and established on the floods.' " 
 
 "But is it not' significant, that the Bible nations are the 
 only ones to make progress? " 
 
 " First, it isn't true ; and, next, if it were it would not be 
 strange. The Bible didn't create religion : religions create 
 Bibles. The highest, most moral, and most intellectual 
 nations will produce the highest and purest sacred books ;
 
 MARK AND TOM TALK. 77 
 
 just as the most intellectual nations produce the grandest 
 epics, dramas, and works of art. 
 
 "But look here, Mark, let us look the Bible over, and 
 see what claims it actually makes, and what its character 
 really is. If there is any reason why we should always 
 be fenced in with texts, all right : if not, then let us look 
 over God's universe freely, and see things as they are, and 
 not as people ages ago thought they were." 
 
 " Well," said Mark, " I have a thousand reasons for wish 
 ing to believe the Bible ; but I were a coward to shrink from 
 investigating it. If it is God's book, it will bear looking at." 
 
 "What proof is there, then, that it is inspired?" 
 
 " Of course no intelligent man now holds the old theories 
 of inspiration. Old Dr. Owen, you know, held that even 
 the Massoretic points in the Hebrew must be inspired, or 
 else we had no certainty as to its meaning. The verbal 
 theories are now abandoned." 
 
 "But Dr. Owen was right," said Tom. "And, if it isn't 
 verbal, it is all afloat. You say you only hold its essential 
 teaching. But Christendom has never agreed as to what 
 that is ; and now men, getting cornered on its scientific mis 
 takes, say it is only inspired to teach morals. But its morals, 
 even, are not always the best. So the cloud foundation 
 shifts. Does the Bible claim to be inspired? " 
 
 "It says, 'All scripture is given by inspiratign of God, 
 and is profitable,' &c." 
 
 " Beg your pardon, but it doesn't," replied Tom. " Bishop 
 Ellicott says the passage ought to read : ' All scripture, 
 that is given by inspiration of God, is profitable, ' &c. It
 
 78 BLUFFTON. 
 
 doesn't say what scripture ; and since, when that was 
 written none of the New Testament was gathered, it couldn't 
 refer to that, in any case." 
 
 " But the writers claim to have had divine guidance. Do 
 you think they lied ? " 
 
 " No : I think they were mistaken. The people of all the 
 early ages supposed themselves to receive divine messages. 
 They thought dreams and ecstasies, and all abnormal and 
 mysterious manifestations of power and life, indicated super 
 natural presences and communications. I do not think any 
 of the old religious founders and prophets, in any nation, 
 were conscious impostors. They took for divine what we 
 now know to be natural : that is all." 
 
 " But," said Mark, " how did a man living in Moses' time 
 have such exalted ideas of God's nature and character, when 
 all the rest of the world was in deep darkness? He must 
 have been supernaturally illuminated." 
 
 " That starts just what I wanted to say. It is now settled 
 conclusively, by modern criticism, that Moses was not the 
 author of the Pentateuch, at all. In its present shape it is the 
 product of the highest and latest thought of the Hebrew race. 
 The grandeur of the first verse of Genesis represents the 
 highest peak of Jewish civilization, and not the low starting- 
 point. The Pentateuch is full of traces of a later age. It is 
 just as if we should find in Shakspeare references to the 
 telegraph and ocean-steamers. The five books are full of 
 the finger-marks of the few centuries just preceding Christ. 
 And then, what would be thought in a court of justice, of 
 such proof as that on which men take the Old Testament ? "
 
 MARK AND TOM TALK. 79 
 
 "Why, what do you mean? " 
 
 " I mean this : Nearly the whole Old Testament is anony 
 mous. It is a national literature. Nobody knows who wrote 
 it, nor where nor when : only that we know it was not writ 
 ten the most of it in the way popularly supposed. It 
 is just a mass of traditions, national legends, and wonder- 
 stories, wrought into its present shape by unknown hands." 
 
 " But a moment ago you spoke disparagingly of its morals. 
 It is often urged as conclusive proof of its inspiration, that it 
 is a 'morally-winnowed' book." 
 
 " ' Morally-winnowed,' indeed ! It isn't pleasant business 
 to pick flaws in the morals of the Bible ; but it is safe to 
 say that the average tone of society to-day is infinitely 
 above the ordinary levels of the Old Testament. The char 
 acter of Yahweh himself is such that he would not make 
 a respectable citizen of Bluffton to-day. Study it carefully, 
 and see. What of the morals of God's commanding the 
 Jews to capture and sack a city, to kill all the men, married 
 women, and children, and keep the virgins for the vilest pur 
 poses?" 
 
 " Is that in the Old Testament? " 
 
 "You haven't read it carefully if you haven't found it. 
 What of the morals of polygamy and slavery? What of the 
 morals of supporting God's temple by bands of prostitutes, 
 as the Greeks did that of Venus ? What of the morals of 
 the hundred and ninth Psalm? what of human sacrifices 
 practised clear down to the eighth century B. C. ? what of a 
 cruel, jealous, revengeful God? Morals!" he exclaimed ia 
 some excitement, " if a heathen nation were found practis-
 
 8O BLUFFTON. 
 
 ing Old-Testament morality, there would be new activity in 
 the Bible Society to send them a new religion. These things 
 are overlooked in the Bible, because a part of them are veiled 
 in an obscure translation, and partly because people read 
 with such a veil of superstitious reverence that they cannot 
 see any defect in the idol they worship." 
 
 " But, whatever you think of the Old Testament, you must 
 admit the divinity in the New." 
 
 " Well, let us see. Even some of the best orthodox crit 
 ics like Professor Smith of Aberdeen admit that the 
 Gospels are only ' non-apostolic digests ' of earlier traditions. 
 Such a man as Baring-Gould, orthodox and High-Church 
 chaplain of the Queen, confesses that the New Testament is 
 only 'the expression of the belief of the early Church.' 
 No one knows who wrote either of the Gospels, except that 
 it is pretty well known that John did not write the one attrib 
 uted to him by after-tradition. Nearly the whole New Tes 
 tament is anonymous, except the few genuine Epistles of 
 Paul. And, even if it were not so, it only means that per 
 sons sixteen or seventeen hundred years ago believed so and 
 so. I can't see why that is any reason why I should believe 
 the same, apart from any evidence." 
 
 " But the morality of the New Testament " 
 
 " Isn't absolute," broke in Tom, " any more than the Old. 
 A man like Beecher confesses that it would overthrow soci 
 ety to put into wide practice the Sermon on the Mount. 
 It is a beautiful ideal ; but much of the best of modern 
 civilization has come from not obeying it." 
 
 "What do you mean?" said Mark.
 
 MARK AND TOM TALK. 8 1 
 
 "Why, for instance, Christ forbids struggling for your 
 rights, and commands non-resistance. Now, the whole prog 
 ress of English liberty and the rights of man has come from 
 disobeying it. It commands meekness and self-abnegation. 
 All advance has come from self-development, and the Occi 
 dental spirit of daring, so opposed to the Oriental mysticism 
 out of which the doctrines spring." 
 
 "Well," said Mark, "what else?" 
 
 " Not much more now, but only a word or two as illustra 
 tion. Jesus teaches communism and against property. Civ 
 ilization is based on the exact opposite of such teaching. 
 It might be easy enough in the out-door life of Galilee to 
 live like lilies and sparrows, ' taking no thought ; ' but it 
 won't do here. And even there somebody had to work, and 
 think, and plan ahead, or even the sparrows would have gone 
 hungry. 
 
 " And then, Paul's morality is far from faultless. His doc 
 trine of women is thoroughly degrading. They are only for 
 the use of men, to keep those from being immoral who are 
 not strong enough to lead a celibate life. He laid the foun 
 dation for all the monasticism of the middle ages." 
 
 "Well, Tom," said Mark, "you notice I've let you do all 
 the talking ; for I wanted to hear the utmost you would say. 
 I've only asked questions enough to keep you moving. 
 Don't think I can swallow it all." 
 
 " Don't swallow any of it until you are sure it is true," 
 replied Tom. 
 
 " No," said Mark ; " and when, if ever, I am convinced it 
 is true, I will not shrink. Truth only is God; and truth 
 must be followed, even if the Bible is lost."
 
 82 BLUFFTON. 
 
 " But you don't lose the Bible. Why will men talk in that 
 way? You only find it : you find what it is. It isn't strange 
 that it should have errors, and lower ideas of morals, if it is 
 a human work. And then, the fact that so much of psalm 
 and prophet and gospel and epistle is grand and noble 
 and inspiring, gives the grandest promise for humanity, 
 the moment you allow it to be a human work. The human 
 ity that makes a Bible in its infancy, what may it not be in 
 its fully-developed manhood?" 
 
 "But, Tom, it touches me more closely than you can 
 think. It is every thing to me, religion, my past life, my 
 future prospects, and " hesitating "something I hardly 
 dare think of." 
 
 "Why, what is it?" 
 
 " You remember your thoughtless remark about the judge's 
 daughter, as we stood on the levee ? " 
 
 " Yes ; but what has she to do with this? " 
 
 "Every thing. I haven't spoke to you about it before, 
 because I did not wish to confess my care for her until I 
 had some reason to think she cared for me. I love her 
 madly. I think she is not indifferent to me. But she 
 would think me lost forever, did she know my religious 
 thoughts, and guess the possibility of my becoming a here 
 tic." 
 
 "Why don't you tell her, and see? " 
 
 "I'm a coward. I can't bear to think of paining her. 
 And the judge would never consent. He'd think hell 
 yawned beneath his daughter's feet." 
 
 " Are you engaged ? "
 
 MARK AND TOM TALK. 83 
 
 " No ; and I can't think it quite honest to ask her hand 
 till she knows my doubts, and where my convictions may 
 lead me." 
 
 " Well, Mark, old fellow," said Tom sympathetically, " I 
 believe, if I had known all this, I'd have almost talked on the 
 other side. At least, I wouldn't have tried to influence you 
 any." 
 
 " But, my dear fellow, don't think you are the cause of all 
 my doubts. You only echo to me what is in all the air ; 
 what learned books are saying. I have been thinking and 
 studying this long while, and I am not afraid to face facts." 
 
 "And yet," remarked Tom, "the tragic side of these 
 things comes over me sometimes as horrible. In a world 
 like this, it costs fearfully to follow truth. The world has paid 
 its pioneers and leaders generally with tombstones, after re 
 fusing them bread. Jesus said you couldn't follow him, in 
 his day, without ' giving up all : ' it's the same to-day." 
 
 " But, Tom, let's go home for some lunch. We've sat here 
 long enough." And as they went down the bluff, and up the 
 streets, they continued their conversation. At last, just be 
 fore they got to his boarding-house, Mark said, 
 
 " Well, of one thing I am sure : righteousness is better 
 than unrighteousness ; and, whatever becomes of the records, 
 I believe in the ever-present spirit and the everlasting love of 
 God. That's enough to preach for a while. I will busy my 
 self in the practical work of trying to make my people better, 
 and let the ferment of my mind work itself clear. So much 
 is safe, any way."
 
 84 BLUFFTON. 
 
 IX. 
 
 A GAME OF CROQUET, AND WHO WON. 
 
 THE resolve at which Mr. Forrest arrived, at the close 
 of the last chapter, gave him at least a temporary rest 
 from his struggle with doubt. He had had hours when he 
 had felt as though he could preach no longer. He seemed 
 to be climbing the shifting side of a mountain of sand, that 
 gave way at every step. He could find no solid place on 
 which to plant his feet. And yet he must struggle on. He 
 had left the quiet of tradition. He could not now go back, 
 for he knew too much of the real uncertainty of those things 
 that tradition takes for granted. The only course open was 
 for him to press forward until he gained that other calm that 
 comes of intelligent conviction. 
 
 But he could find as others have done a temporary 
 peace by taking refuge in the practical, though he after 
 wards learned that no deep thinker can permanently rest so 
 long as the theoretical and practical are out of harmony. 
 But for the time he flung his doubts aside. He walked his 
 study, and thought aloud : 
 
 " Whatever else is doubtful, there is no doubt about the 
 Golden Rule. What the world means by practical Christian-
 
 A GAME OF CROQUET, AND WHO WON. 8$ 
 
 ity is practical righteousness ; and by that law every intelli 
 gent man is bound. Wherever it came from, whatever theory 
 is held concerning inspiration, or the nature of Christ, on 
 which it is supposed historically to rest, still Christianity is 
 a fact. And every man ought to be a practical Christian, 
 because that means loving God and your fellow-men. This, 
 after all, is the heart of the whole matter ; and in this spirit 
 I will preach and work." 
 
 In such a mood it was easy for him to persuade himself 
 that his theological troubles were, after all, not of chief im 
 portance, and that they did not necessarily touch the great 
 essentials of life. His natural temperament was buoyant and 
 hopeful, and so he was inclined to make too little of a trouble 
 that was past. He even began to wonder that he had allowed 
 it to trouble him so much. And he sat down at his desk, 
 and sketched a sermon for the next Sunday that he would 
 preach " to doubters ; " and in it he planned to take the 
 ground, that, whatever theoretical difficulties any one might 
 have, all were agreed that they should help build up " the 
 kingdom of heaven " on earth, and that was the essential 
 thing in religion. 
 
 He hardly knew it himself; and yet, to one who could have 
 analyzed his motives, it would have been apparent that love 
 was one of the main links of his logic. " For, since these 
 things are so," he thought, " I have been a fool to think I 
 would be doing Miss Margaret a wrong to tell her of my 
 love. We shall be practically agreed in the work of life. 
 And if, as I cannot help hoping, she really cares for me, I 
 might even be doing her an injury to turn away from her on 
 account of a theological whim."
 
 86 BLUFFTON. 
 
 Do not blame him too severely, O reader, for his apparent 
 inconsistency. Much may be forgiven to love. And, even 
 if not, who of us but has sometimes seen the strong horse, 
 Logic, harnessed in unconscious sophistries, and reined and 
 driven by inclination? . 
 
 Miss Margaret was now quite herself again. The won- 
 drously beautiful autumn weather continued, a hazy, golden 
 Indian summer, without a thought of chill in the balmy air. 
 In front of the house was a narrow lawn, which extended 
 widely on each side, and stretched far back at the rear. 
 Tall elms and spreading chestnuts were scattered about 
 irregularly, having the charm of native wildness, while th 
 ground beneath was kept like a garden. Little lawn and 
 croquet parties were common where the facilities were so 
 tempting : so, on one of these fine autumn afternoons, Miss 
 Hartley invited some of the young people of the society to 
 tea, and to the croquet-matches that were to follow. Natu 
 rally Mr. Forrest was among the number. Being skilful in 
 all games and out-door sports, having a ready fund of wit 
 and anecdote, no such company was quite complete without 
 him. And then it was proper and customary to invite the 
 minister, particularly as he was young and single. We may 
 guess, also, that possibly Miss Hartley may have had a-nother 
 and a more personal motive ; for the young people who 
 have eyes for such things had taken note of the fact that 
 she seemed to take pleasure in his company; and aunt 
 Sally Rawson had remarked in the sewing-circle, 
 
 " I wonder if none on ye hain't noticed it. Sure's yer 
 born, the minister's shinin' up to Judge Hartley's oldest gal ;
 
 A GAME OF CROQUET, AND WHO WON. 8/ 
 
 and they say she 'pears to like it's well's he does. Reckon 
 that's the reason he ain't called on me fer more'n a month. 
 I hope, when he gits settled down, he'll find time to 'tend to 
 his parish work a leetle better." 
 
 But, in blissful unconsciousness of sewing-circle criticisms, 
 Mr. Forrest accepted the invitation to the croquet-party. 
 Nor did he trouble himself about the motive that prompted 
 his invitation. He was only too glad of any reason that 
 brought him near Miss Hartley ; and he had already begun 
 to reproach himself that he had not made better use of his 
 opportunities at the readings, to find out whether his guesses 
 and .hopes concerning her were true. 
 
 Tea passed, as such teas do, in pleasant chat about " airy 
 nothings ; " except that now and then the judge tried, with 
 poor success, to give the conversation a theological turn, as 
 following the bent of his own inclinations, and what he also 
 considered the proprieties when a minister was present. But 
 in the party of young and spirited people there was too 
 much of the flesh-and-blood life of this world to incline 
 them to take kindly to discussions about the other. 
 
 When tea was over they all adjourned to the lawn, some 
 to promenade and talk, some to sit under the trees and look 
 on. The grounds were large enough to admit of several 
 croquet-sets, and so of several different parties at the play. 
 Mr. Forrest and Miss Hartley, well matched as to skill, were 
 among the best players on the grounds, and so were rarely 
 allowed to play together on the same side. 
 
 At last they had distinguished themselves so well, that 
 some one proposed they should play alone, one against the
 
 88 BLUFTTON. 
 
 other, for the evening's championship ; and gayly they entered 
 upon the pleasant contest. Mr. Forrest, being the stronger 
 of the two, might have had an advantage in striking, and 
 especially in croqueting his opponent's balls ; but of course 
 he was too chivalrous to take it. At the same time he con 
 sidered it a poor compliment to her, and a real lack of 
 respectful courtesy, to give her a not-fairly-won game by 
 purposely playing poorly. So he determined to do his best. 
 
 They began, and played very evenly down the field to the 
 first stake ; and then, as they turned up on the home play, 
 a curious and superstitious feeling came over him, that some 
 how, as he struck the balls, he was driving about his own 
 destiny, and that winning or losing here was winning or 
 losing Miss Hartley forever. 
 
 There was something in the time and the air that helped 
 the weird sensation. It was now twilight, with a rising moon, 
 as yet behind an eastern hill, though its light was soft and 
 beautiful on the tops of the trees and the hills to the west. 
 And then his love for her was now grown so great that even 
 the slightest and most fanciful thing that in any way con 
 nected itself with her relations to him took on a most exag 
 gerated importance. 
 
 Lest his fancy should seem too fantastic, it will be well 
 for us to remember that there is something of the fetish-wor 
 shipper still left in us all ; something of the feeling that in 
 the world's childhood, and among credulous and undevel 
 oped people still, makes it easy to attach a magical and un 
 reasonable importance to charms, to relics, and to fanciful 
 coincidences. When calm, and in daylight, many men and
 
 A GAME OF CROQUET, AND WHO WON. 89 
 
 women will laugh merrily over things, that, in reason's de 
 spite, they pay a sort of superstitious regard to when nervous 
 or weary, or in the silence and weirdness of night. People 
 still regard Fridays, and seeing new moons over left shoul 
 ders, and thirteen at table, who would be ashamed to de 
 fend themselves for doing it. Dr. Johnson could bend all 
 his ponderous learning to a care to enter a room right 
 foot first, or to touching all the posts by the wayside with 
 his cane as he passed. Byron's boldness became cowardice 
 when salt was spilled at table. Similar whims or fancies 
 have their times of dominating us all. Thus is our civiliza 
 tion still branded with the birthmark of the old world's 
 superstitions. 
 
 It must not be supposed that Mr. Forrest held his whim 
 sical fancy as sober fact, even in his own mind. Being 
 absorbed in the play, and musing and dreaming deeply of 
 his passionate love, he simply felt the fantastic spell of the 
 idea creep over him, and did not care to resist it. He let 
 Ais weird fancy run on, and whisper to his anxious love that 
 he was playing for the high stake of her hand and the happi 
 ness of a life. So he played in quiet and as if spell-bound. 
 He was proud that she played so well ; and yet it was with 
 a sort of despair that he saw her take the lead. And when 
 her ball passed through the last wicket, and rebounded from 
 the sharp stroke by which it was driven against the home 
 stake, so absorbed was he in his revery that he exclaimed, 
 
 " Oh, heaven ! I've lost her ! " 
 
 He had felt cut by a sharp pang at his heart, as though 
 some demonic power had seized her forever out of his sight.
 
 9O BLUFFTON. 
 
 He was really startled to find what an impulse he had felt 
 to seize upon her before she should be spirited away. He 
 looked about with some confusion as he became conscious 
 of what he had said, and was relieved to see that only Miss 
 Hartley had noticed his words. A strange look on her face 
 made him think that she guessed the half-understood utter 
 ance had some reference to herself; but of course she made 
 no allusion to it. 
 
 "Hurrah," said Miss Sue, "for the honor of our sex! 
 Madge has won the game ! " 
 
 " It's only a short-lived victory," said Miss Margaret ; 
 " for Mr. Forrest hasn't played his best to-night." 
 
 " Well," chimed in the other girlish voices, " we'll triumph 
 while we may. A victory is a victory, for one night at 
 least." 
 
 "A victory well earned," said Mr. Forrest. "No one 
 shall dispute or deny the honors. Miss Margaret has the 
 field ; and to no other would I more readily yield up my 
 mallet, and submit as the conquered must." 
 
 And so the playful chat went on. But soon the company 
 had dispersed, all but Mr. Forrest and Miss Margaret, for 
 Miss Sue had herself stepped into the house. 
 
 " Come, Miss Margaret," said Mr. Forrest, " the night is 
 too lovely to go in as yet. Now that you have beaten me 
 so badly, would it not be magnanimous in you to grant me 
 a favor?" 
 
 " After my triumph, of course I ought to feel gracious 
 and condescending. What favor? " 
 
 " A stroll over the hill yonder, toward the moon and the 
 river. It is so mild, you cannot take cold."
 
 A GAME OF CROQUET, AND WHO WON. 9! 
 
 " If you ask nothing harder than that, you will make it a 
 pleasure to comply. I think, myself, it is too bad to lose an 
 evening like this in the house." 
 
 And so through the moonlight and the shadows the two 
 young and hopeful hearts went slowly up the sloping hill 
 side toward the east. The outer landscape of which they 
 were a part was wondrously beautiful ; but the inner world 
 of high. and pure imagination and brilliant hope, through 
 which they moved together, was an enchanted land of ro 
 mance and beauty. Is there any thing on earth so fair as 
 the worlds that are created by youthful and pure love ? He 
 would have given all he possessed, to know that the fair 
 creature beside him could find it in her heart to keep step 
 with him on the pathway of life. And she shall we re 
 veal it? knew, by her woman's instinct, that the strong 
 and noble man by her side was her slave ; but in her soul 
 she looked up to him, and crowned him as the king of all 
 the men she had ever seen. 
 
 They made a beautiful picture in the tender light. As the 
 ascent of the hill grew steeper, she leaned happily upon his 
 offered arm ; and, -though usually looking down or at the new 
 scene of loveliness that opened at every step, now and then 
 she stole a quick glance at his face, and tried to guess his 
 thoughts. He was the image of strong, straight, and vigorous 
 manhood. Her lithe and graceful form, covered but not 
 concealed by the light crocheted shawl thrown loosely about 
 her shoulders, was fit for a sculptor's model. Her dark eyes 
 glowed in the shadow, or gleamed as the moonlight shone 
 full in upon her face. He only wished such night and such 
 companionship might never end.
 
 92 BLUFFTON. 
 
 " Miss Madge," said he, breaking the happy silence, 
 " if I may dare to be so familiar," 
 
 " Yes, call me Madge : I've often wished you would," said 
 she. " It brings back the old school-days, and makes me a 
 little girl again." 
 
 " And yet I wouldn't have you a little girl again." 
 
 "Why not?" 
 
 " Because you would not be what you are," he replied. 
 
 They now stood on the crown of the hill ; and they invol 
 untarily stood still. 
 
 " And this is in the night, most glorious night 1 
 Thou wert not sent for slumber 1 " 
 
 exclaimed Mr. Forrest. " Just see what a night, and what 
 a picture ! The city is now at our feet. See the sharp con 
 trast of brilliant house-tops and dark-shadowed streets. How 
 still the busy life has become ! " 
 
 " And the sky," said Madge : " it is so bright that hardly 
 a star dares try to rival the moon. How vivid those lines 
 of Wordsworth ! 
 
 ' The moon doth with delight 
 Look round her when the heavens are bare.' " 
 
 "And only look at the river ! " said he. " No one knows 
 how beautiful water can be till he sees it on such a night as 
 this. The high bank throws out there a ragged shadow; 
 and all the rest is polished silver. The brown bluff yonder, 
 and the shadowy prairie beyond, make the contrasts per 
 fect." 
 
 " Here, under these trees, are some rocky seats. Let's 
 sit down, and enjoy the scene for a little," said she.
 
 A GAME OF CROQUET, AND WHO WON. 93 
 
 When they were seated together Mark said, 
 
 " It makes my heart ache still, to think what I suffered the 
 last time I was as near to you as this." 
 
 " If proximity to me is painful, I will move," said she 
 with an air of saucy banter. 
 
 " Now, it is too bad to torture my meaning so, even in 
 fun," said he. "You can never know what I suffered." 
 
 "Why, how do you mean, and when? " said she, pretend 
 ing an ignorance that was hardly real. 
 
 " Do you not know that I mean when I held your head 
 on my knee, and watched in an agony of suspense to see 
 your breath come back? I should have hated life unless 
 you had breathed again." 
 
 He noticed that she blushed faintly in the moonlight as 
 she said, 
 
 " You did not tell me before that my head had been in 
 your lap." 
 
 " But I had a right," said he in self-defence, " for I was 
 your physician then." 
 
 He drew closer to her, and gently took the hand that lay 
 in her lap, and which she did not withdraw. 
 
 " Madge," said he in a lower tone, " do you know, that, 
 when you were unconscious, you called me Mark, and clung 
 to me as if I were your protector? " 
 
 She did not answer, except by a far-away look in her eyes, 
 and a hardly-perceptible flutter of her prisoned hand j and 
 Mark continued, 
 
 " And do you know, that, when the blood came back in 
 your face, I was the happiest man alive ? and that since that
 
 94 BLUFFTON. 
 
 time, whether looking at you in church, or walking or talk 
 ing or reading with you, I have been trying to guess a 
 riddle that only you can answer, and that means life or 
 death to all I care for in the world ? " 
 
 " Was it being absorbed in trying to guess that riddle, that 
 made you play so badly at croquet to-night?" said she. 
 
 " Did I play worse than usual? " 
 
 " Never so poorly, or I shouldn't have won. I know you 
 were dreaming, for you talked in your dream." 
 
 " O Madge ! " said he, " it was a horrible fancy for a mo 
 ment." 
 
 "What was horrible?" 
 
 " I thought I had lost what was not mine to lose ; and 
 yet the wild fancy almost broke my heart." 
 
 " Why, what do you mean, Mr. Forrest? " said she, glan 
 cing in his face, and then quickly looking away again. 
 
 "I mean," said he passionately, "whatever I say, and 
 whatever I do, I mean always but one word : only that one 
 word is the universe to me : I mean love, dear Madge ! 
 Oh, do not speak at all, Miss Hartley, if you must say what I 
 dread ! and yet do speak ; for I cannot wait longer to know 
 if my dream is a lie." 
 
 She did not speak; but, turning and looking up in his 
 eyes one moment, the tears started, and her head sunk on his 
 shoulder. He clasped her in his arms, and held her close 
 to his heart, both of them too happy to care for speech. 
 For perhaps it is true that two persons never know each 
 other perfectly till they can be completely happy in the mere 
 fact of companionship, without feeling the need of words.
 
 A GAME OF CROQUET, AND WHO WON. 95 
 
 What they said and did in the moments that followed, 
 lovers need not be told, and others have no business to 
 know. It was a beautiful world, of prairie and river and 
 bluff and town, lighted by the moon, of which these happy 
 lovers were a part ; but within and before was a world that 
 was fairer still, illumined with a light that " never was on sea 
 or land." At last Mr. Forrest said, 
 
 " Come, Madge, for here I renounce the Margaret for 
 ever, they'll be wondering what is become of us. We 
 must return to the house." 
 
 And, as they went, the new love created for them a " new 
 heaven and a new earth." They were new-born son and 
 daughter of God, treading the fair, moon-kissed world, not 
 envying even the angels ; for were they not dwellers, too, in 
 one of the starlit rooms of the divine house where the 
 Father of both angels and men had given them their beauty 
 and their bliss ?
 
 96 BLUFFTON. 
 
 X. 
 
 THE MINISTER IN HIS WORK. 
 
 THE autumn flew on ; for to Mr. Forrest its wings were 
 well matched, love for his work, and love for Madge. 
 His individual and private love, instead of hindering his uni 
 versal, only broadened and deepened it, as giving him loftier 
 and sweeter conceptions of the meaning and possibilities of 
 human life. 
 
 Madge was troubled with only one thing, and this she did 
 not reveal to him. Her father, the judge, when he learned of 
 the engagement, gave a not over hearty consent. He was 
 democratic enough to be willing to see her many a man with 
 no great means or high social position ; but so intense was 
 his dogmatic belief and zeal, that he would grimly have 
 buried her, as though making her an offering to the Lord, 
 rather than see her wedded to one with liberal that to him 
 meant infidel tendencies. So he said to her, 
 
 " I hope it will all turn out right, Margaret ; but I fear, I 
 fear. The best thinkers look upon our minister as danger 
 ously tolerant towards error. He may come out of it ; but, 
 if not, it must not be. ' Be ye not unequally yoked together 
 with unbelievers,' saith the Lord. So I charge you to use
 
 THE MINISTER IN HIS WORK. 9/ 
 
 what influence you have over him, to keep him in the way 
 of sound doctrine." 
 
 Margaret said not a word of this to Mr. Forrest, but only 
 shut it up as a pain in her heart. For, while she loved him 
 devotedly, she also idolized her father, and believed thor 
 oughly in his opinions, knowing no reason why she should 
 believe otherwise. While not lacking in intellect, but, on 
 the contrary, having more than usual brain, she was yet, like 
 most women, strongest on the side of sentiment, reverence, 
 and love. She was not even familiar with theological distinc 
 tions, having no taste nor training that way. If she had seen 
 a heresy, she would hardly have known it. And yet she was, 
 by inheritance and training, thoroughly and strictly ortho 
 dox. She had been taught that all honest and sound think 
 ing was the same. So, in her heart, she resented the impu 
 tation against Mark, as though his moral character or his 
 mental ability had been impugned. If it were so, she could 
 not love him less, but she would pity, and try to save. 
 
 But Mr. Forrest knew nothing of these things ; and, for 
 the time, he had flung his doubts and troubles aside. 
 
 As the weather grew cold, the religious fervor of the 
 churches grew warm. To one who regards the natural phi 
 losophy of religious excitement and revival work, there is 
 nothing strange in the fact that all revivals occur in the win 
 ter, and that they are most marked in times of popular de 
 pression ; but from the supernatural standpoint it is a little 
 puzzling to see why God doesn't "save souls" in the sum 
 mer, and to trace the relation between the Holy Ghost and 
 distress in the money-market.
 
 98 BLUFFTON. 
 
 But the time for the annual revival had come, and the 
 churches set their machinery in motion. Mr. Forrest had 
 no sympathy with what a famous orthodox professor once 
 called " importing the Holy Ghost ; " believing, as he often 
 said, that if God were not always present, and ready to help 
 and save men from sin, then there wasn't any God. 
 
 So he organized his work after a different fashion. He 
 believed in a present, living, loving God, who, any day or 
 hour, was ready to help any man, high or low, who was 
 ready to help himself. He believed in repentance and con 
 version as the manly recognition of evil in the life, and a 
 resolute turning-away from that evil. He believed in the 
 church as the banding together of true men for mutual 
 religious help, and the purification and uplifting of society ; 
 and in this spirit he labored. He saw no reason why men 
 should not pay special and prolonged attention to these 
 high matters of character, as well as to the work of carrying 
 a political campaign. 
 
 Thus every evening, week after week, he spoke from his 
 heart to a church full of attentive but rational and calm 
 hearers. He labored to persuade men through their convic 
 tions ; naturally enough claiming, that, since men had brains, 
 doubtless the Lord intended that they should use them con 
 cerning these grave affairs. Mr. Smiley was very much 
 troubled at the class of men that came and listened j and he 
 was more troubled still, when they said that Mr. Forrest 
 talked sense, and they were ready to be his kind of Chris 
 tians. Even old Uncle Zeke came in, and dropped down on 
 a back seat, and listened with open mouth, as though a new 
 prophet had come.
 
 THE MINISTER IN HIS WORK. 99 
 
 Mr. Smiley put his arm through the arm of Deacon 
 Putney, as they left the door of the church to go home 
 one evening, and said, 
 
 " Deacon, what do you think of the way things are going 
 on?" 
 
 " Well," said the deacon cautiously, for he was not sure 
 yet what others thought, " I have my times of hardly know- 
 in' " as though he ever had any other times : "what do 
 you think? " 
 
 " I think this," said he, with great and unctuous positive- 
 ness : " that, when the unregenerate like a minister of the 
 gospel, there is something wrong. ' The natural heart is en 
 mity against God : ' and, when the vital gospel is preached, 
 the natural heart rebels. It don't look well to see lawyers 
 and doctors, and so many moral men, present and approving. 
 If they were on their knees and in tears, it would be an 
 other thing. But they simply listen and approve, and say, 
 'That is reasonable and right, and we ought to do it.' That 
 ain't much like the preaching of Nettleton and Finney." 
 
 " Waal," broke in Uncle Zeke, who had come up behind 
 on the sidewalk, and caught the last words, " what would ye 
 like? ter hev 'em say they don't like it, and won't do it? 
 Now, / call that preachin' a nat'ral and sensible religion. 
 I'd like ter be that kin' o' Christian myself." 
 
 "Yes : that is the self-righteousness of a sinful heart," said 
 Mr. Smiley. " The real gospel isn't natural, and men ought 
 not to like it. Their stubborn wills should be broken, and 
 they prostrated before the just wrath of an angry God." 
 
 " I don't go much fer breakin' folks's wills," said Uncle
 
 IOO BLUFFTON. 
 
 Zeke. "Break yer mainspring, and then 'spect yer watch 
 ter make time." 
 
 But as Mr. Forrest was making an undoubted success of 
 his sensible and natural gospel, and as there was a pros 
 pect of a large addition of paying members to the church, 
 the scruples gave way for the time, and he was allowed to 
 "build up Zion " in his own way. For cavillers have some 
 times noted the apparent fact, that the meshes of the sieve 
 through which candidates for admission to the church are 
 sifted have a somewhat peculiar way of expanding, and let 
 ting large but wealthy and respectable sinners through, while 
 they automatically contract at the approach of social insig 
 nificance or questionable poverty. 
 
 At the other churches the usual drama was played. Mr. 
 Forrest, one night at the close of his own service, stepped in 
 
 at the church, to see the explanation of the strange 
 
 hullabaloo that he heard. He knew they were sometimes 
 noisy; but he thought something really unusual must this 
 time have occurred. As he entered, a scene broke on him 
 to which only the combined pencils of Dord and Hogarth 
 could have done justice. 
 
 The minister stood inside the " altar." He had preached 
 a sermon of great "unction," and wrought the people up to a 
 pitch of intense excitement. His text had been, " How can 
 ye escape the damnation of hell? " He had now come out 
 of and before the pulpit, and was leading the " conference- 
 meeting," and trying to gather in the fruits of his sermon. 
 He stood with a glowing and exultant face, rubbing and 
 occasionally clapping his hands, and now and again when
 
 THE MINISTER IN HIS WORK. IOI 
 
 there was any appearance of lulling into quiet shout 
 ing, "Glory!" "Hallelujah!" "That's good, brethren!" 
 " Praise the Lord ! " and other such phrases, to whip on the 
 rushing excitement. He had just called on brother Baker to 
 pray. The said brother happened to be in the back part of 
 the house, and near to Mr. Forrest, who was by the door. 
 The hubbub did not stop, nor did the minister even sit down 
 or kneel. He seemed to be overlooking the field of action, 
 like a general from a rising ground watching the progress of 
 a battle. The irreverence of the whole thing to Mr. Forrest 
 was such as to fill him with a shocking sense of disgust. 
 Meantime brother Baker dropped on his knees, and began 
 in so low a tone, that, in the general confusion, he could not 
 be heard two pews away. Mr. Forrest caught his opening 
 sentences, 
 
 " O Lord ! we would not persume ter dictate, but we 
 would humbly segest the perpriety of havin' a small bit of a 
 revival in this place." 
 
 His voice went on rising and swaying until he fairly 
 shrieked and screamed in his vehemence, 
 
 " It is time for thee, O Lord, to work ! " 
 
 And now his yell for it was nothing less shrilled out 
 above all the tumult ; and though two or three volunteers in 
 other parts of the house had also begun praying at the same 
 time, on their own account, he could still be heard above 
 them all. He now gasped for breath : his hands clutched 
 the seat, and the perspiration rolled from his forehead. 
 Each separate word was a gasp ; and between them were 
 interjected syllables, on which he seemed to rest for an 
 instant while catching his breath for a still higher scream.
 
 IO2 BLUFFTON. 
 
 " O God-er, poor-er sinners-er droppin' into hell-er ! 
 Shake-er 'em, Lord-er, and wake 'em up-er, to see-er the 
 gulf-er under their feet-er ! " 
 
 And, when no more breath was left, with one wild shriek 
 he gasped out " Amen ! " and rolled over on the floor. 
 And around swelled the chorus, "Amen ! " "Glory to God ! " 
 " Glory, glory, glory ! " 
 
 Then one of the brethren who recognized Mr. Forrest, and 
 wanted him to understand the spiritual artillery with which 
 his church was armed, touched him on the shoulder, and, 
 pointing to brother Baker's unconscious form, said, 
 
 " Oh, but he's a mighty man at the throne of grace ! a 
 powerful wrastler with the Lord ! " 
 
 " Yes," said another, " he jest storms the kingdom, and 
 brings the marcy down." 
 
 " And," remarked a third, " he's a wonderful pious man. 
 The trances and visions the Lord hez granted him is re 
 markable. He always goes off arter prayer." 
 
 Mr. Forrest inwardly thought that most people did "go 
 off" when they'd used up their limited supply of breath, but 
 he was too polite to say it. 
 
 But now their attention was turned another way. By this 
 time several hysterical women were crawling about the aisles 
 on their hands and knees ; and several more were laid away 
 on the seats, having shouted till they too had " gone off," 
 out of their senses in reality, but that here was supposed to 
 mean into heaven. One enthusiastic brother now grasped 
 with both hands what he typiqally called the " horns of the 
 altar," but which, in reality, was the railing around the pul-
 
 THE MINISTER IN HIS WORK. IO3 
 
 pit ; and, as he pulled and exhorted, a section of the " altar " 
 gave way. He now seized one of the round, upright pieces, 
 about the length and size of an ordinary cane, and 
 while he shouted, 
 
 " Flee, sinners ! flee for your lives into the ark ! The 
 storm is comin' : hasten while yet the door stands open ! " 
 he rushed wildly back and forth, punching in the ribs with 
 his stick the brothers and sisters that seemed indisposed 
 to hasten. 
 
 Mr. Forrest had now got all of this kind of religion he 
 could bear. As he went out, he heard a drunken teamster, 
 who had run his wheel against a lamp-post, swearing at his 
 horse. 
 
 "Well," said he to himself, " I don't know which is worse, 
 the religious profanity inside, or the irreligious out. What 
 strange ideas they must have about God, and the way to 
 please him ! "
 
 IO4 BLUFFTON. 
 
 XI. 
 
 UNDERGROUND RUMBLINGS. 
 
 MRS. GREY was a sore puzzle to the good church 
 people of Bluffton. She was a widow of about forty- 
 five years of age, well-preserved, and with a face singularly 
 sweet and refined. Her hair, silvered as much with sorrow 
 as with age, formed a saintly aureole about a face that pure 
 thoughts, noble aspirations, and kindly deeds had sculptured 
 into a more than fleshly beauty. She had come to Bluffton 
 a few years before, hoping that a Western air would, if not 
 restore to health, at least prolong the life of, a husband 
 whose vitality was gradually burning away in the slow fire of 
 consumption. She had watched and cared for him tenderly 
 to the last. But when he had faded out of sight, instead 
 of shutting herself up, and brooding over her own grief in 
 the insidious selfishness of sorrow, she had said to Mr. For 
 rest, as he called upon her after the funeral, 
 
 " I mustn't permit myself to brood here alone. I can't 
 endure to sit still and only think of the past : it will distract 
 me. Tell me what I can do. I can do no more for him. 
 I can help the living, if I can't the dead." 
 
 And so she became a ministering angel. Having been
 
 UNDERGROUND RUMBLINGS. 10$ 
 
 "made perfect through suffering," she carried with her the 
 power of a genuine sympathy, that all the sick and poor 
 could feel as a babe feels its mother's care, though they 
 could not tell the tear-watered root from which it sprung. 
 No one could help loving her. She was first in all the city 
 work of benevolence ; and her shadow, like Peter's in the 
 Acts, was a shadow of healing wherever it fell. 
 
 Still, in spite of all this, nay, because of all this, she 
 sorely troubled the church. Logically she ought to have 
 been the worst woman in town. For as was whispered 
 about, and as was really true she was an infidel; that is, 
 she utterly rejected their church creeds and ways. It is well 
 to note that the word " infidel " is one whose definition shifts 
 according to geographical, social, and theological latitudes. 
 Christians are all infidels to the Turks. Socrates was an infi 
 del and an atheist in Athens. Galileo and Newton were infi 
 dels ; and Darwin is still. So Mrs. Grey, though faithful to 
 all known essential laws of God and man, was yet an " infi 
 del " in Bluffton. Let us see some of her " strange peculiari 
 ties." 
 
 She would not go to church regularly, for the sake of 
 going, and as a religious duty. She said, 
 
 " I go to church to be fed. If there is nothing on the 
 table, it seems to me a waste of time to sit down to it. I'll 
 go to my own cupboard for crumbs." 
 
 And so she would search her small library for what she 
 thought profitable as Sunday reading. She was not ecclesi 
 astically strict on Sunday. She would even sew, if she 
 found some poor family was suffering for work done. This
 
 IO6 BLUFFTON. 
 
 strange conduct she justified by references to the ass in the 
 pit in the Gospels, and the beasts led away to watering. She 
 also said there was no command in the Bible, and no ground 
 in history, for keeping any such idle Sunday as they claimed 
 she ought. And, because they could not contradict her, 
 they were all the more angry, and louder in their abuse. 
 She did not believe in prayer either, as popularly under 
 stood. She said she did not believe in teasing God ; and 
 she thought it an imputation on his goodness to suppose he 
 needed urging, and an insult to his intelligence to suppose 
 he needed information. Prayer with her was only heart- 
 communion, and was just as good when silent. 
 
 No wonder they called her names. It was the instinct of 
 self-defence. For indeed the churches, as organized in 
 Bluffton, had no excuse for existence if her ideas were 
 true. 
 
 This, then, was the character that was " gone over " in the 
 gossip of the sewing-circle. 
 
 " Well, now, I think it's jest a shame, Mis Howett," broke 
 out old Mrs. Buck, " fer you to let your Looizer go 'round 
 with Mis Grey so much." 
 
 " Pray tell me why," said Mrs. Howitt. Mrs. Howitt was 
 a quiet, firm, ladylike woman, who, while evangelical, 
 believed that a tree might safely be judged by its fruits; 
 and she preferred a good apple grown on a heterodox tree 
 to a rotten one whose trunk was orthodox. 
 
 " Why ? " said Aunt Sally Rawson, " 'pears as ef it needn't 
 take long to know why. Don't the whole town know she's 
 'n infidel?"
 
 UNDERGROUND RUMBLINGS. IO/ 
 
 " Yis ; an' I think she's just splendid ! " broke in the ir 
 repressible Jane Ann Rawson. 
 
 "Jane Ann, speak when you're spoken to," said her 
 mother. "Her insinuatin' ways is even leadin' my darter 
 astray from the teachin's I give her in her childhood. That's 
 what comes of sich examples as you set, Mis Howitt. Jane 
 Ann sees Looizer with her, an' she follers on." 
 
 "But," said Mrs. Howitt, "what do you mean by her 
 being an infidel ? " 
 
 " Why," exclaimed Mrs. Buck, " she don't read the Bible ; 
 an' my old man said he saw a book onct on her table, that 
 he thought looked like Tom Paine, though I wouldn't 
 hev you think he ever saw Tom Paine." 
 
 " An' that ain't all," said Aunt Sally : " she don't go to 
 church ; an' she scoffs at prayer-meetings." 
 
 "Well, I don't care 'f she doos," burst out Jane Ann 
 again : " I think prayer-meetin's is just horrid ! " 
 
 " Why, Jane Ann. Rawson ! I should think you'd be afeard 
 the lightnin' 'd strike you. Don't you ever let me hear you 
 speak like that agin." 
 
 " But," said Mrs. Howitt, " while I am sorry Mrs. Grey 
 doesn't look at some things as we do, we must all confess 
 that her life is a rebuke to the Christianity of all of us." 
 
 "Well, that won't never do," said Mrs. Buck : " I think it's 
 all the worse. Twould be better for the community 'f she 
 was a bad woman. When Satan comes as a angel o' light 
 then look out for 'im, I say." 
 
 "Anyhow," said Jane Ann, "there's some folks in town 
 that talks 'bout the ' higher life/ claims to be ' sanctified,'
 
 IO8 BLUFFTON. 
 
 and says they hain't sinned fer a year, that would be might 
 ily improved to git a little o' her goodness." 
 
 "Jane Ann, who you squintin' at now?" inquired Mrs. 
 Buck, with a severe tone of voice ; for she herself was among 
 those who had " attained perfection." 
 
 " You needn't jump till yer hit," said Jane Ann, not over- 
 respectfully. " I don't mean you. I do mean the Hinmans, 
 though." 
 
 " Why, what o' them, I sh'd like to know? Mis Hinman's 
 a saint. She don't do nothin' from mornin' to night 'cept 
 go to meetin', an' pray." 
 
 " Yis, she do, though," said Jane Ann. 
 
 "What?" 
 
 " Why, nothin', only spin street-yarn, and let th' old man 
 swear coz she hain't got dinner ready ; and Jim and Jake go 
 cussin' round, out o' school, and their trousers all rags." 
 
 " And Mrs. Hinman's brother, another ' sanctified ' one," 
 said Mrs. Howitt, "and who says he hasn't had a sinful 
 thought for six months, he rents his stores for grog-shops, 
 and has an agent run a house of bad repute for him. Now, 
 ladies, if this is religion, I am seriously thinking of turning 
 Mrs. Grey's kind of infidel." 
 
 " Well, 'f I ever did hear sich talk ! and from a church- 
 member too ! No wonder your Looizer hain't got religion. 
 Might know the Lord 'd pass by a house where sich senti 
 ments is believed in," said Mrs. Buck. 
 
 " When the Lord does come to my house, as you say, 
 Mrs. Buck," remarked Mrs. Howitt, " I hope he'll not make 
 my Louisa such a Christian as the Hinmans are."
 
 UNDERGROUND RUMBLINGS. 
 
 "Mr. Forrest thinks Mis Grey's as good's a Christian, 
 anyway," said Jane Ann. 
 
 "Yis, I've no doubt he doos," tartly replied Mrs. Buck, 
 "and not much to his credit, neither. He's too much taken 
 with Mis Grey's infidel notions, 'cordin' to my thinkin'." 
 
 "That's where ye're right, Mis Buck," said aunt Sally. 
 " On'y last sabbath he had a hit agin people's goin to meet- 
 in' reg'lar ; said some folks 't went to meetin' so much 'd 
 better stay to home, and look after their fam'lies, do their 
 duties, and pay their debts." 
 
 " Now, I call that infidel," said Mrs. Buck. " When a 
 minister of the gospel gits to preachin' morality, then, I say, 
 it looks like Unitarianism. I said to my old man on'y last 
 Monday, sez I, 'John,' sez I, ' all this morality's well enough ; 
 but when I go to church, I go t' enjoy religion, an' I don't 
 want no cold hashin' up er duties and sich stuff.' " 
 
 "But are there no duties and morality in religion?" in 
 quired Mrs. Howitt. " For my part, I only wish Mr. Forrest 
 could make all the church live as well as Mrs. Grey does." 
 
 Just at this point the door of the church-vestry opened., 
 and in walked Mrs. Grey and Mr. Forrest. They had not 
 come together, but had met at the street-corner. They 
 looked about for a moment, and saw the usual scene. Here 
 one or two ladies were standing at tables, cutting out gar 
 ments ; and, scattered in groups here and there, many others 
 were sewing and chatting. Tongue and needle generally 
 went together ; but over at one side they noticed that the 
 needles had stopped, and the tongues ran on alone. This 
 was the place where was seated the little knot whose rather 
 interesting conversation we have been overhearing.
 
 IIO BLUFFTON. 
 
 The new-comers, recognizing Mrs. Howitt, stepped over to 
 speak with her. All the rest also jumped to their feet with 
 the most profuse demonstrations of pleasure. 
 
 " Why, Mr. Forrest, so glad to see you ! " said Mrs. Buck. 
 
 " Yis ; speak of angels, and they allus shows theirselves," 
 exclaimed aunt Sally Rawson. " We's jest sayin' how the 
 Lord was prosperin' his work, and buildin' up the walls of 
 Zion. That sermon o' your'n last sabbath was jest bread 
 from heaven." 
 
 " And, Mis Grey, how do you do ? It's a long time sence 
 we had the privilege o' seein' you 't our circle," said Mrs. 
 Buck, as though she really meant it. 
 
 "We was jest a-sayin', Mis Grey," remarked aunt Sally, 
 "how much the young gals o' the s'iety thinks o 1 you." She 
 framed the sentence ingeniously, so as not formally to lie, 
 while getting the advantage of the reality, a popular de 
 vice by which many suppose they keep on the side of truth. 
 Neither Mr. Forrest nor Mrs. Grey said any thing worth 
 our recording. They talked pleasantly and politely for a 
 few moments, and then passed on to greet other acquaint 
 ances. As soon as they were out of hearing, Jane Ann ex 
 ploded. 
 
 " If lyin's a proof of people's bein' ' perfected ' and 'sanc 
 tified,' then I know lots o' folks that's in danger o' bein' 
 translated 'fore they knows it," said she, in a tone of biting 
 sarcasm. 
 
 Mrs. Buck's hands went up in horror. 
 
 " Sich impidence and sich impiety I never did hear," she 
 exclaimed. " This is what comes o' Mis Grey's influence, 
 an' Mr. Forrest's lettin' down the tone o' his preachin'."
 
 UNDERGROUND RUMBLINGS. Ill 
 
 " Jane Ann, you put on yer things, and go right straight 
 home. I'll have a season o' prayer with you 'fore you go to 
 bed. I wonder the Lord don't smite ye for sech talk," said 
 her mother. 
 
 " 'F the Lord should go to smitin', some other folks might 
 git hit," muttered Jane Ann under her breath, as she de 
 parted. 
 
 Mrs. Howitt now left them ; and they had an edifying talk 
 on the condition of parish affairs, garnished with sundry 
 choice bits of scandal that seemed equally as dear to them 
 as did the state of religion. 
 
 When they had gone the rounds, Mrs. Grey said to Mr. 
 Forrest, 
 
 '' Are you engaged this afternoon ? " 
 
 " Not so but that I am at your disposal," said he. 
 
 " If, then, you have no objection, I'd like a little talk with 
 you." 
 
 " Will you go to my study? " 
 
 " No, if you please. You come up to my house. It will 
 do you good to get out of your parish atmosphere for a 
 little."
 
 112 BLUFFTON. 
 
 XII. 
 
 MR. FORREST AND MRS. GREY. 
 
 MRS. GREY'S small, neat house was on a slope of the 
 hill overlooking the town. From the little bay- 
 window where Mr. Forrest sat in a cosey rocking-chair, he 
 could see the river on one side, the uneven but beautiful 
 and tree-crowned ranges of hills back of the city, while the 
 city itself made a picture in the foreground. 
 
 "There," said Mrs. Grey, pulling the curtains clear up so 
 as to give an unobstructed view in all directions, " we are 
 here raised, at least in space, above the petty superstitions, 
 the unreasoning traditions and narrow views, of the thought 
 less mass that makes up the town below us." 
 
 " If elevation in space," said he, " was only intellectual 
 elevation, I would certainly try to get them all to build on 
 the hills." 
 
 " But," said she, " you'll forgive me for speaking plainly ; 
 you know me well enough now to understand me : do you 
 think you are doing all you might to help them ? " 
 
 " I mean to. Where do I fail? " 
 
 " Will you pardon me if I tell you ? " 
 
 "Certainly. Why not?"
 
 MR. FORREST AND MRS. GREY. 113 
 
 " Well, I believe you will. If I didn't believe in you, I 
 shouldn't talk at all. And you know I look upon you as a 
 sort of boy of mine. And I don't think you ought to be 
 where you are." 
 
 " But you said you'd tell me where I failed." 
 
 " I think," said she slowly, and looking him full in the 
 face, " that you are not quite frank enough." 
 
 " You don't think I deceive my people ? " 
 
 " Not consciously or purposely, by any manner of means ; 
 but, really, yes." 
 
 " Pray tell me wherein." 
 
 "Well, the atmosphere you breathe is not a natural, 
 healthy one." 
 
 " Explain." 
 
 " Why, you are not orthodox. I feel it every time I hear 
 you preach. That in you which touches and moves men is 
 your heresy. Of course I rejoice in it ; and I hope 
 much for you when you once get where you belong. But 
 you ought to be orthodox, or you ought not to hold your 
 position. Every time you rise and stand in your pulpit, 
 your people think that means that you believe things that I 
 know you are too intelligent to hold." 
 
 "Perhaps I'm not so intelligent as you suppose. So I 
 may believe more than you think I do." 
 
 " May I catechise you a little? " 
 
 "Nothing would suit me better. I like to talk these 
 things over ; and you know me well enough to know that 
 I haven't any beliefs I prize so much as I do the simple 
 truth."
 
 I 14 BLUFFTON. 
 
 " I believe it, and therein is my hope for you. If it were 
 not so, you would not have dared to have preached what 
 you already have." 
 
 " Do you think I've really gone far out of the way of 
 * sound doctrine ' ? I haven't thought of being brave, for I 
 have only spoken what seemed to me simple reason and 
 truth." 
 
 "That's your offence. They don't want you to preach 
 reason. I'm aware that the majority of the church like you, 
 for they do not think deeply on theological points. But the 
 leaders don't ; and, as sure as the world, there's trouble 
 brewing. Your being my friend is a crime. That you 
 study and read science, is against you. Things are not 
 going as they are now for a great while." 
 
 "Well, let it come if it must. But the catechism? " 
 
 "All right, then. Last Sunday you closed your prayer 
 with the words, For Christ's sake.' Why ? " 
 
 Mr. Forrest thought a moment, and then answered frank 
 ly, " Training and habit, perhaps ; for I am aware the phrase 
 has no New-Testament authority." 
 
 " And did you never think the implication is almost im 
 piety ? It is a figure borrowed from the habits of Oriental 
 courts and despots. When the sultan will not grant a favor 
 for the suppliant's need's sake, or because it is beneficent or 
 right, still he sometimes will for the sake of a court favorite. 
 Do you think God is that kind of a being? " 
 
 " I fear I never thought of its implication before." 
 
 " Well, do you think Christ has any thing to do with our 
 prayers, any way ? "
 
 MR. FORREST AND MRS. GREY. 115 
 
 " Only this : I do think he is the manifestation of that 
 character and disposition, on the part of God, that invites our 
 prayers." 
 
 " You do not, then, hold that Christ's death as a sacrifice 
 has any thing to do with God's ability or willingness to hear 
 prayer, and forgive sin?" 
 
 " Indeed I do not. That was only an expression of an 
 eternal willingness. I could not love a being whose nature 
 it was not to save." 
 
 " You are aware, I suppose, that these views are not quite 
 consistent with the old ideas of the Trinity?" 
 
 " Yes ; and for that, I confess I don't much care. I'm 
 not the only orthodox minister who doesn't believe the Trin 
 ity." 
 
 " How do you hold things, then ? " 
 
 " Well, something like this. The doctrine of the Trinity 
 is utterly meaningless. I can't even understand its terms." 
 
 " Perhaps I'm not theologian enough to understand what 
 those terms are." 
 
 " These, then : I am expected to believe that God is three 
 persons, and am told in the same breath that the word 'per 
 son ' doesn't mean person, but something else. I ask what 
 else, and nobody knows. Then these three persons are only 
 one person. I have asked a great many laymen to tell me 
 what the Trinity is, and I have never found one who could 
 do it. They always give me Unitarianism in some form, or 
 Tritheism. And I don't wonder." 
 
 " What, then, do you believe ? " said she. 
 
 " I believe in the universal and omnipresent God, who is
 
 I 1 6 BLUFFTON. 
 
 a spirit. That's the first person. Christ, to me, is only a 
 manifestation of this unseen spirit in the sphere of humanity. 
 The Father, as a separate personality, nothing." 
 
 " You say you are not the only orthodox minister who 
 holds such views?" 
 
 " I have a good deal of company. It isn't much wonder 
 if many people are a little mixed over what nobody can un 
 derstand." 
 
 " But how can you claim to be orthodox? " 
 
 "Why," said he, " I follow Jesus. He never claimed to 
 be God." 
 
 " How about ' I and my Father are one ' ? " 
 
 " But right in immediate connection he prays that the dis 
 ciples may be one with him as he is one with the Father. If 
 one verse makes him God, the other makes all the disciples 
 God as well. It proves too much." 
 
 " I am glad to hear you say it. But what of the first 
 chapter of John? Do you think that teaches it? " 
 
 " I used to, but I know better now. Even if it did, it 
 would only prove that the unknown author of John believed 
 it, not that it is true. It is only the opinion of the writer, 
 at best. But it doesn't mean that." 
 
 "What does it mean?" 
 
 " It means," said he, " a mystical, metaphysical notion of 
 the Gnostics. They held to all sorts of gods and semi-gods, 
 secns and emanations, to bridge over the gulf between God 
 and matter. The New Testament's later documents are full 
 of the technical terms of Gnosticism, showing how much 
 that philosophy influenced the writers."
 
 MR. FORREST AND MRS. GREY. 1 17 
 
 " But they say that Christ is spoken of as the creator of 
 the world, and that only God can create." 
 
 " The Gnostic belief of the writer was the precise opposite. 
 This sect held that the supreme God was too high and pure 
 to come into contact with matter, and so did not and 
 could not create the world. They taught that the world was 
 created by a being they called the Demi-urgus, and whom 
 they identified with Christ. To call Christ creator, then, was 
 the most forcible way of saying he was not God." 
 
 " The genealogical tables of the Gospels have always sur 
 prised me, Mr. Forrest." 
 
 " Well they might. They do not agree with each other, 
 nor with the Old-Testament tables ; and, since they trace 
 Jesus back to Joseph, of course have nothing whatever to do 
 with him unless Joseph was his father." 
 
 " How do you account, then, for them as they stand?" 
 
 " Oh ! they are part of an older tradition, that had changed 
 its form by the time the Gospels came into their present 
 shape. The old tradition was, that Joseph was his father, 
 and the Holy Ghost his mother." 
 
 " How strange ! " 
 
 "No, not strange. It was common enough in ancient 
 times for men to believe in superhuman births, where either 
 father or mother was divine." 
 
 " But isn't it remarkable that we know no more of the 
 childhood of Jesus? " 
 
 " I think not : we know but very little about him anyway. 
 We do not know when he was born, nor when he died. The 
 Gospels disagree as to the length of his ministry, one making
 
 Il8 BLUFFTON. 
 
 it three years, the rest one ; and John seems to imply that 
 he lived till he was on toward the age of fifty. But, if we 
 had known all about his childhood, we should never have 
 had the dogma of the incarnation. There must be mystery 
 and uncertainty to give room for the imagination to create 
 myths." 
 
 " It seems so strange that men can believe that God was 
 ever born as a man ! " 
 
 " Yes, just think of it ! God born a baby, puling, whin 
 ing, crying in the arms of a nurse ; God going to school, and 
 getting his lessons ; God sitting at the feet of quibbling, hair 
 splitting rabbins in the synagogue, and learning his own law. 
 It seems blasphemy to me sometimes. It was easy enough 
 to think such childish thoughts when men thought the uni 
 verse was only a little three-story house, with hell for cellar, 
 and heaven for upper story. God could then come down 
 stairs, and see what was going on, disguising himself in a 
 human body. But, in our present knowledge of the universe, 
 it is most stupendous absurdity to think such things." 
 
 "But these ideas are not altogether ancient, are they? " 
 
 " No : in certain grades of civilization it seems easy to be 
 lieve such things. Within fifty years some of the tribes of 
 India have deified, and are now worshipping, an English 
 officer." 
 
 " But you just referred to hell as the ' cellar ' of the old 
 universe. I have noticed you do not preach it ; and this, I 
 understand, is one ground of parish complaint." 
 
 " This is a horrible subject to me, Mrs. Grey. Oh, what a 
 childhood it gave me ! However beautiful the day or the
 
 MR. FORREST AND MRS. GREY. 119 
 
 landscape, or however joyous the plays, this haunting horror 
 used to come to blot out the light, and make me tremble. A 
 blue sky, fields full of flowers, and hell ! what a mixture for 
 childhood ! And if ever, during boyhood, there was a fire, a 
 house burnt, you cannot imagine what I suffered. I feared 
 I was not one of the ' elect ; ' and I saw myself livid and 
 red-hot, and writhing in the flames. And it was forever / 
 Oh, how I used to rush home, and bury my face in the bed 
 clothes, to try to shut out the inner vision, and then at night 
 cry and shiver myself to sleep ! " 
 
 " When did you cease believing it ? " 
 
 "I hardly know as I have ceased believing it yet, in 
 some form. My views have changed greatly with more 
 study and thought, since I came to Bluffton. The first thing 
 that fairly started my thinking on the subject was a tract I 
 once came across. I was trained as a child to think Univer- 
 salism synonymous with every thing evil. And, indeed, the 
 old form of Universalism now seems to me the height of 
 absurdity. I can't believe that any magic at death can make 
 all souls, so unlike five minutes before, equally fit for heaven 
 five minutes after." 
 
 " But what of this tract? " 
 
 " I got hold of it somehow, and read it in my study in 
 California. What an agony of mind I went through ! I 
 wanted so to believe it ! One moment I would ; and then 
 my heart burst out singing ; and all the world seemed to 
 break forth in glad rejoicing that hell was no more. And 
 then I dared not believe it. It was Satan tempting me. I 
 was being led astray. I was falling over into an abyss. The 
 mental struggle was awful.
 
 I2O BLUFFTON. 
 
 " But though I did not accept the teaching then, for fear 
 I was going astray, it had started thoughts that would not 
 rest. I felt impelled to re-examine the grounds of the 
 belief." 
 
 " Well, what have you found ? For, though the teachings 
 of all the Bibles in the world couldn't make me believe it, 
 yet I like to know how it lies in other thoughtful minds." 
 
 " In the first place, I have gone over the Bible as bearing 
 on the subject; and I am surprised to find how large a 
 part of the common belief is based on ignorance, mistransla 
 tion, and change in the meaning of words. For instance, 
 there isn't a trace of everlasting punishment in the Old Tes 
 tament. Indeed, the Jews had no fixed or clear belief in a 
 future life at all. It was a late growth, and largely received 
 from the Persians at the time of the captivity. So there is 
 not one single place in the Old Testament where ' hell ' 
 means hell as the word is used to-day. It is false to honesty 
 and the Bible itself, to let the word stand there. And then, 
 leaving out repetitions of the same sayings in the different 
 Gospels, there are no more than six places in the New Tes 
 tament where the word ' hell ' ought to be in the text, even if 
 it ought to be there at all. As to these six, it is simply 
 begging the question to say that the original ' Gehenna ' 
 means what we mean by hell." 
 
 " But, though I do not believe it any the more for that, 
 it seems to me the Bible teaches it. It says everlasting 
 punishment, and everlasting life, putting the two on the 
 same level." 
 
 "Begging your pardon, no. The word, aionios, is used
 
 MR. FORREST AND MRS. GREY. 121 
 
 many times where it doesn't and can't mean everlasting. 
 The true translation is eternal; but the word does not deter 
 mine the duration, referring sometimes rather to quality and 
 kind than quantity, and in any case leaving the term in 
 definite." 
 
 " But you say you still believe it." 
 
 "Not everlasting: I cannot. I believe ^future punish 
 ment. For the same laws of right and wrong, of reward and 
 penalty, are everywhere. Results, good or bad, inevitably 
 attach themselves to our deeds, and must do so always and 
 everywhere." 
 
 " Do you believe man is too good to be punished for 
 ever? " 
 
 " I'd rather say, I believe he is not oaa enougn to be pun 
 ished forever. It seems monstrous injustice. No man, in a 
 long life, could commit crimes enough to deserve it." 
 
 " But you know it is often said, that the man will keep on 
 sinning, and so will keep on suffering." 
 
 " Not if God is king, and can have his own way. The 
 worst of the whole doctrine is its blasphemy toward God. 
 He either can, or can't, some time save all. If he can't, he 
 isn't God ; for his power is limited. If he can, and will not, 
 then he's no God, but a devil." 
 
 " But, they say, he is limited by man's free-will, and must 
 let him take his own course." 
 
 "I know that is urged; but it is a quibble. We talk 
 much of human obligation : isn't there any divine obliga 
 tion ? I say it reverently ; but God has no right to create 
 a cause that he cannot control, and that he knows will result
 
 122 BLUFFTON. 
 
 in evil. To do so would make the evil his own. It is so 
 simple a principle of justice, that all human laws recognize 
 it concerning human actions. The creation of the world, if 
 its outcome is to be irremediable evil to a single human soul, 
 is a gigantic crime. For even God has no right to do other 
 than right. And what would be a crime on earth can't be 
 goodness in heaven." 
 
 " With such beliefs as these, how can you remain in an 
 orthodox church? " 
 
 " I wake up and find these things forcing themselves on 
 me in the orthodox church, and I do not as yet see my way." 
 
 " Go into another church." 
 
 "Where? I am not a Universalist. I am not a Uni 
 tarian. Both hold beliefs I cannot accept. Neither of their 
 systems will be the church of the future. There is nowhere 
 to go. I have plenty of company. Other ministers are in the 
 same position. And yet I stay so far, more because I know 
 not how to leave, than because I think I ought to stay." 
 
 "But you do not preach what you do not believe? I 
 can't think that of you." 
 
 " Never. I simply keep still concerning my doubts. I 
 preach positively what I do believe, the great principles 
 of righteousness, the central ideas of a Christian life." 
 
 " Well, Mr. Forrest, I think I feel the difficulties of your 
 position. And I fear your enemies, that smile upon you, 
 will help you settle the question." 
 
 " I am ready to face whatever comes." 
 
 But, as he walked toward his. study, he said to himself, 
 
 "Can I face all?"
 
 A SOUL COME TO JUDGMENT. 123 
 
 XIII. 
 
 A SOUL COME TO JUDGMENT. 
 
 FROM the sitting-room of Mrs. Grey, Mr. Forrest went 
 alone to his study. 
 
 The great battles of the world are fought alone. Before 
 men appear in the great crises of the world, to head for 
 lorn-hopes, guide nations, or lead others to victory, they 
 have first met, fought, and conquered themselves, on the 
 unseen battle-fields of the soul. There is no shouting, no 
 noise of cannon, no waving of flags above the smoke ; but 
 only a cry of prayer, or a sigh of agony breathed out, that, 
 like the puff of steam from a volcano, tells of the infernal 
 strife below. It is the Armageddon battle-field, where the 
 hosts of good and evil clutch in deadly encounter. He 
 who has won here is safe. No other is fit to trust as 
 leader when grand human destinies are hanging in the 
 balance. Here Moses, and Sakya-muni, and Jesus, and 
 Mohammed, and Luther, and Wesley, and Channing, and 
 Parker fought, and raised their monuments of triumph. 
 Here all true souls are tested. This battle is the soul's 
 crisis or judgment-seat, in the true New-Testament sense.
 
 124 BLUFFTON. 
 
 It is the man's ordeal, through which he passes while 
 above him "the throne is set, and the books are opened." 
 
 Here, then, is Mr. Forrest come at last. He had caught 
 glimpses of the gathering hosts before. He had already 
 been in the edge of the fray more than once, but had with 
 drawn again, and postponed the decision. But now he 
 neither could nor cared to escape. His conscience sounded 
 the bugle, and he prepared himself for the issue. He felt 
 he was fighting for the prize of his own soul. His manhood 
 was to be lost or won. The combatants are to be found in 
 every live and earnest human heart. Progress fought re 
 action ; freedom struggled with tradition, and bondage to the 
 letter of other men's thoughts ; honesty was matched against 
 a compromising conformity; the faith of Abraham, that 
 " went out, not knowing whither," only knowing that God 
 had called, was met by the timidity that doubted whether 
 God ever led into new lands ; worldly favor sought to seduce 
 the loyalty that prompted to choose duty at the cost of any 
 loss ; a passionate love sought to make duty conform to its 
 own sweet interests ; while reverence for the past tried to 
 make his independent search seem a traitor to the ancient 
 wisdom that claims with authority to represent God. 
 
 Well may you offer him your sympathy ; for it was a Geth- 
 semane struggle. He would almost rather have died than 
 enter the battle. And though he should struggle, and come 
 off victor, still he felt that it must be at such a cost as might 
 leave him stripped of all he cared to live for. So it was the 
 bitterness of death on either hand, 
 
 He sat down at his desk, rested his elbows on its top, and
 
 A SOUL COME TO JUDGMENT. 12$ 
 
 his temples on the palms of both his hands, and listened to 
 the cries that came up from the deeps of his soul. 
 
 " O God ! " he cried, " if there be a God, why must 
 one so doubt and suffer in trying to find thee, and the way 
 of thy truth?" 
 
 And then he sat, and thought over the pathway of human 
 progress, and noted how it was tear- sprinkled and blood- 
 marked all the way. 
 
 " It has been one long martyrdom," he said. " From the 
 dwellers in caves, clear on, it has been one long agony and 
 martyrdom. Only they who have been willing to be useless, 
 to live lives of mere animal content, have been comfortable. 
 The thinkers, the inventors, the prophets, they who have 
 tried to give something to mankind, have been like Prome 
 theus, have paid for it by endless vulture-gnawings at their 
 vitals." 
 
 Here he sprang to his feet, and walked the room. And 
 out of his terrible doubt he exclaimed, 
 
 " Can it be, after all, that the eternal God is only a Jove- 
 like tyrant, jealous of man's welfare, and so torturing those 
 who would be his benefactors, leading to higher thoughts 
 and better ways? If not, why are the prophets cast out? 
 why do they have to pay, in tears and torture, for the help 
 they would render their fellow-men? " 
 
 " But this," he continued aloud, " is blasphemy. ' Shall 
 not the Judge of all the earth do right ? ' There could be no 
 sense of right at all, were God not righteous. That the uni 
 verse is orderly at all, proves that order rules. That there is 
 any moral order, proves right supreme. And yet the price 
 of it ! Could not the pain be spared? "
 
 126 BLUFFTON. 
 
 Then he caught up his New Testament, and read how 
 Jesus, " though he were a son, yet became perfect through 
 the things that he suffered." But, as he mused, he said, 
 
 " But this does not make it seem right. It only shows 
 that the greatest souls are subject to the inevitable law." 
 
 And then he turned to " In Memoriam, " and read, 
 
 " I falter where I firmly trod, 
 
 And, falling with my weight of cares, 
 Upon the world's great altar-stairs 
 That slope through darkness up to God, 
 
 I stretch lone hands of faith, and grope, 
 
 And gather dust and chaff, and call 
 
 To what I feel is Lord of all, 
 And faintly trust the larger hope." 
 
 " After all," he said, " whatever is dark, there is no doubt, 
 that, if I am to be a man, I must hear and obey my con 
 science, and not falter when duty calls. They who die for 
 right are victors, though they go down into the dust and 
 endless night ; and they who live, and pay their manhood 
 for the privilege, are buried forever beneath the debris of 
 their own souls." 
 
 This point of the battle, then, he had won. He would be 
 true to himself at any cost. 
 
 "But I'm not true to myself," he exclaimed, "so long as 
 I occupy this equivocal position. I must leave Bluffton. I 
 go and stand in my pulpit, and feel that I am acting a lie. I 
 am understood to be orthodox : my standing there proclaims 
 the fact. I can't endure it ! I shall get so that my soul
 
 A SOUL COME TO JUDGMENT. 127 
 
 will consent to be false ; and then what shall I be worth to 
 anybody ? Since all things are so uncertain, I almost wish 
 I had never thought and studied. But I have thought and 
 studied, and the fate is on me." 
 
 And then came the tempting suggestion, 
 
 "But the most of your people like the doctrine you 
 preach; and you can mould them to your will. The few 
 who oppose, you can drive away, and have the field to your 
 self." 
 
 It was a sweet thought for a moment, and he almost 
 yielded. Then he trembled to think what traitor forces were 
 in him ; and an imagination a little more vivid would have 
 made him fling his inkstand, like Luther, at the haunting 
 devil of deceit. 
 
 " Yes, of course I might do it, if I could play an under 
 hand game like that. I know they like my doctrine ; but 
 they would not if they knew its name. When I lead 
 churches into new truth, I will do it with open colors, and 
 not in uniforms that are stolen." 
 
 While he had walked his study, and thought, and read, 
 and struggled, the twilight had come on. The tea- bell 
 rang, but he sent down word that he would not eat to-night. 
 Then he went to his window, and looked out to the east, and 
 saw that the moon was rising. It threw a bridge of silver 
 beams across the river, as fair as the streets that the angels 
 tread. And then his eyes wandered over to Madge's win 
 dow; and his heart beat wildly at the thought of her 
 womanly beauty and his great love. 
 
 " O Madge ! " he cried, " you little know the bitterness
 
 128 BLUFFTON. 
 
 that comes to my heart as I think of your sweet love. But 
 I can endure this here no longer. I must get out into the 
 night." 
 
 He caught his hat, and started for the hills. He walked 
 for an hour with no other purpose than to do the impossi 
 ble, get away from himself. At last the attraction of the 
 spot and the memory of that night brought him to the place 
 where Madge's silence had confessed her love. He sat 
 down, and looked about him. The picture of ragged bluffs, 
 and wide river, and starry sky, brought to his thought those 
 lines of Byron : 
 
 " 'Tis midnight : on the mountains brown 
 The cold, round moon shines deeply down. 
 Blue roll the waters ; blue the sky 
 Seems, like an ocean hung on high, 
 Bespangled with those isles of light 
 So wildly, spiritually bright. 
 Who ever looked upon them shining, 
 And turned to earth without repining, 
 Nor wished for wings to flee away 
 And mix with their eternal ray ? " 
 
 "They look peaceful," thought he ; "and ever since man 
 suffered they have tormented him with the spectacle of their 
 inaccessible peace. But now even the dream of their peace 
 is gone. The suns are torn with storm and tempest com 
 pared with which our earthly tornadoes are quiet. And our 
 modern knowledge tells us that the most distant planets are 
 like our own old earth, upheaved with earthquakes, and torn 
 with volcanic fires. And the inhabitants are doubtless like
 
 A SOUL COME TO JUDGMENT. 1 29 
 
 us. Perhaps on Venus yonder (to whose people our earth 
 is the most beautiful planet in heaven) some man like me 
 may be looking up to the earth, and longing for the peace 
 and beauty that appears to be our lot. There is no longer 
 refuge in the stars. Each must fight his own battle for him 
 self, and find heaven or hell where he is." 
 
 And then his thought turned to his love ; and he medi 
 tated, 
 
 " It were easy enough to fight the battle, if you were not 
 involved in it, Madge. It isn't easy to turn one's back on 
 friends and old associations, to have those who love us 
 think we have given up God, and fallen forever into the 
 hands of evil. But all this could be borne. But to pain 
 your heart, perhaps to lose you ! O Madge, I can't en 
 dure it ! " 
 
 For he had learned so much of her nature, and knew her 
 past training so well, that he feared her sense of duty 
 which was no less strong than his own might make her 
 sacrifice even her love, though at the price of desolating her 
 life, rather than yield to what she had always been taught to 
 hate and fear as the enemy of God. And it was just this 
 grand heroism of her character that made him admire her. 
 She was of the same moral fibre as the judge, her father. 
 She would have been a martyr, and sung and gloried in the 
 flames, in the days when such things were. And her love 
 only intensified this. She loved as passionately as she wor 
 shipped : only the love and the worship must not conflict. 
 And Mr. Forrest saw, with admiration mingled with terror, 
 that her present light would drive her very noblest qualities
 
 I3O BLUFFTON. 
 
 into opposition to the now roused sense of duty in his own 
 soul. It would be conscience against conscience, God 
 against God. 
 
 " And herein," he said, " is the tragedy of duty. What 
 shall become of poor, weak, human hearts between two such 
 forces, neither of which can give way? And yet, O God ! I 
 must be true, though it means being ' damned for thy glory.' 
 I shall lose her, if I am true ; and yet, if I am not, I shall 
 not be fit to win her. Charybdis and Scylla, on one of you 
 I shall wreck." 
 
 He now rose again, but could not bear to go into the 
 house. He was in no mood for sleep. He wandered and 
 thought till he found himself on the summit of Bowman's 
 Hill, above the calm river that held the stars on its bosom. 
 He looked over toward the cottage ; and there was uncle 
 Zeke, leaning over his fence and looking up at the sky, as 
 though he had come out for a breath of fresh air before 
 going to bed. 
 
 " Uncle," said Mr. Forrest " it looks peaceful up there. 
 I wish the world was as quiet as the heavens seem to be." 
 
 " Why, Mr. Forrest ! what's turned you into a night-walker ? 
 Folks ain't gin'ally trampin' round up here at bedtime." 
 
 " Well, I'm restless, and don't feel like sleep." 
 
 " In love, mebbe. I was in love onct ; but " (rubbing his 
 eyes with his rough fist) " she died, and I never cared for 
 nobody else. But when I fust loved, and before the shad- 
 der come, I used to couldn't stay in the house sech nights 
 as this ; used to wander round, arid think how much more 
 light ther' wuz in her eyes fer me than there wuz in all the 
 stars."
 
 A SOUL COME TO JUDGMENT. 13! 
 
 By this time uncle Zeke and Mr. Forrest were fast friends. 
 The old man had found in the new minister a touch of fresh, 
 true manhood, and a rational view of religion, that won his 
 respect, and -now he would have done any thing for him 
 that a Newfoundland would have done for his master ; and 
 Mr. Forrest found in him a bit of true and sound wood, 
 though gnarly in the grain, that gave him a new respect for 
 the raw material of healthy human nature. 
 
 So, though he did not resent the reference to his love, 
 the subject was too sore and sacred to be handled by any 
 human touch ; and he therefore waived the point, and sim 
 ply said, 
 
 " I'm thinking, uncle Zeke, that I'll have to leave Bluff- 
 ton." 
 
 " Why, you only come in June ; and now it's jest gittin' 
 well on into spring. Not a year yet. What do you mean? " 
 
 " I mean, I can't stay, and be an honest man." 
 
 "Why, Mr. Forrest, I'se goin' ter say you's a'most the 
 only honest man here ; an' you oughtn't to talk o' goin'." 
 
 " But what if I can't be honest if I stay ? " 
 
 "Your remarks is way off color to me. I don't sense 
 what yer drivin' at." 
 
 "Well, I'm driving at this. The church is orthodox. 
 You know I am not, or you wouldn't like me as I think 
 you do, and so I am where I do not belong. Does it 
 look clear now?" 
 
 " Yis, Mr. Forrest, it doos ; clearer'n I wish it did. You 
 know how I've larned to like you ; an' you've throwed light 
 fer the fust time on tough things that used ter trouble me.
 
 132 BLUFFTON. 
 
 You know," he huskily added, for his voice was getting low 
 in his throat, " I told yer I liked the looks o' ye, the fust time 
 I sot eyes on ye that Sunday mornin' arter you come by the 
 boat ; and I know how the pious cusses beg parding, Mr. 
 Forrest, but I can't help it are raisin' a rumpus behind 
 yer back. I knowed a fuss was comin'. But can't ye fight 
 it out, and stay?" 
 
 " But I ought not to stay in an orthodox church if I don't 
 belong there." 
 
 " No more ye'd ought," said uncle Zeke, " though it tugs 
 a mighty heap at my heart to say so. 'Twill be orful lone 
 some. An' yit I shouldn't 'spect you ef you warn't true to 
 yer convictions ; coz that's what I take to yer fur." 
 
 If Mr. Forrest had had any hesitation, the re-enforcement 
 of uncle Zeke's simple clear-headedness would have given 
 his conscience the victory. 
 
 But as he turned to go back to his study, uncle Zeke said 
 cheerily, 
 
 "Well, Mr. Forrest, mebbe 'twon't come to that now. 
 They may have sense 'nough to own up you're right, and 
 change ter your platform. But ye '11 be a man, anyhow." 
 And, as he wrung his hand with a hearty but rough grip, he 
 added, " God bless you ! God bless you ! The world's big, 
 my dear boy; an' somewhere ther's folks that'll listen to 
 you, though I'll be hungry for a relig'n 'thout the brains 
 out on't. 
 
 " But 'tain't come yit ; and p'raps ye'll see yer way out 
 now." 
 
 The ordeal was over ; and the recording angel had written
 
 A SOUL COME TO JUDGMENT. 133 
 
 it down, that another soul had stood before the eternal judg 
 ment-seat, and passed among those who were on the right 
 hand of the Judge. 
 
 And, as Mr. Forrest walked home, his heart was as quiet as 
 the stars appeared, though still a sadness, like a minor chord 
 in music, made itself heard in the song of triumph that 
 the angel thoughts sung in his soul.
 
 134 BLUFFTON. 
 
 XIV. 
 
 THE OFFENCE. 
 
 IT was now toward the first of May. What with private 
 thought and study, with regular preaching, and the extra 
 labor of the revival season ; with parish work, and efforts 
 among the poor ; with the endless routine, and the thousand 
 and one calls that come to the man who is everybody's ser 
 vant and who yet is generally regarded as having nothing to 
 do, Mr. Forrest found himself much worn, and needing, if 
 no more, a brief rest. A little matter of business also re 
 quired his attention. And, besides this, it seemed to him 
 that the change of a short trip among new scenes might 
 help clear his head, and strengthen his right resolves, after 
 the internal ferment he had passed through. Who knew but 
 something might occur to open a way for him out of his 
 present wilderness ? 
 
 It being now for some time well known that he was en 
 gaged to Miss Margaret, he was accustomed to spend much 
 of the little leisure he had by her side. He forgot all evil 
 and trouble in the light of her face. With her he was in 
 paradise ; and only when he left her did he go out and down 
 into the confusion and struggle of life. But, when he was
 
 THE OFFENCE. 135 
 
 out, the thought that some day he might be shut out, and 
 see only the cherub and flaming sword forbidding entrance 
 again, made him faint and sick at heart. 
 
 He could hardly bear to leave her long enough for his 
 contemplated trip. 
 
 " Madge," said he, as he stood by her side at her window, 
 looking out on the fresh spring morning, " I can't bear to be 
 away from you long enough for ths trip. I feel as though 
 some horrible power were waiting to steal you from me as 
 soon as I am away." 
 
 " Why Mark, what a sickly fancy ! That very feeling is a 
 reason why you should go. It's because you are nervously 
 worn with your work. You'll come back with the clouds all 
 out of your brain." 
 
 " You want me to go, then? " 
 
 " Please don't be cruel, Mark. You know how I love to 
 have you near me. But I love you enough to want you 
 away when duty calls, and it is for your good." 
 
 " Two weeks seems so long now ! " 
 
 " I shall indeed be homesick for you. But think of me 
 as happy and glad for you, and as looking East till you are 
 West again." 
 
 He drew her to him, smoothed a loose lock of hair on 
 her forehead with his hand, and then, lifting her fair round 
 face till it looked in his own, gazed long and lovingly in 
 her eyes, and kissed her a passionate good-by. 
 
 Little did he dream, in spite of his words of foreboding 
 to Madge, that his trip to New York was to be the rising of 
 a little cloud out of the east, that, gathering blackness, was 
 to spread west, and darken all his horizon.
 
 136 BLUFFTON. 
 
 It is no part of our purpose to describe his journey, what 
 he saw, said, or did. He looked after his business affairs : 
 he visited several friends, one an old physician, at whose 
 house he spent several days. When he returned, he had in 
 his care a stranger, a lady, whom he left at the house of his 
 friend Mr. Winthrop, at Maple City. There was much con 
 fidential talk between him and Tom ; but nothing that, as 
 yet, we have any right to overhear. 
 
 Before Mr. Forrest left Bluffton, the excessive heat that in 
 spring visits these low-lying river towns had already raised 
 the fear of a coming epidemic. Occasional cases of cholera 
 had been heard of in towns farther down the river. And 
 now the hot May, combined with the lack of any proper 
 sanitary care, had prepared a way for it at Bluffton. 
 
 At its first appearance, many of those who could afford to 
 do so left the place. Or those who lived on the hills, where 
 the air was pure, shut themselves in their homes, and left 
 the town to shift for itself. As usual in such cases, those most 
 exposed, living in the lower and poorer parts of the city 
 were unable either to flee, or to defend themselves where 
 they were : so the disease cut them down. The physicians 
 stood bravely at their posts ; but their great difficulty was to 
 get any one to nurse and look after their patients. The fear 
 of the ravager drove even family friends and relatives into 
 the selfish struggle to save themselves. 
 
 But a few heroic souls remained, and, passing from one 
 house to another, did what they could for the dying, and 
 helped pay the last rites for the dead. Among the foremost 
 of these was Mrs. Grey. She was everywhere the tireless
 
 THE OFFENCE. 137 
 
 watcher and nurse, night as well as day. Mr. Smiley re 
 marked to a friend, 
 
 " I have no doubt this is a judgment of God on the wick 
 edness of the city ; and it isn't for us to interfere. When 
 he has taken vengeance, he will stay his hand." 
 
 And he sent a note to Mrs. Grey, one extract from which 
 read as follows : 
 
 " You know I have always been interested in the welfare of your 
 soul. You have been an infidel, and a scoffer at the ordinances of 
 God ; and I warn you not to peril your life in this way until you make 
 your peace with him." 
 
 She sat down where she was, beside a sick-bed, and, turn 
 ing the note over, she wrote on its back, and returned it with 
 these words : 
 
 " You think this is a supernatural judgment of God on the wicked. 
 Unless, then, you regard yourself as one of the wicked, and liable to 
 its stroke, why do you not leave the safety of your hillside, and come 
 down and help us? Do you think God cannot smite the hill, or 
 that he cannot keep you here ? I think it the natural result of the 
 ignorance and filth of the people. But, though they have brought it 
 on themselves, still I must help them what I can. I haven't time now 
 to ' save my soul : ' I am too busy saving the bodies of others. Would 
 it not be well for you to read the words of him you regard as God ? 
 ' He that saveth his life will lose it ; and he that loseth it for my sake 
 will save it.' " 
 
 He was astonished, and felt insulted, at an " infidel's " 
 daring to rebuke kim, the leading man in the church. But 
 she went on with her work.
 
 138 BLUFFTON. 
 
 But the prolonged watching, and the breathing of the 
 malarious air, were telling upon her. And when the epi 
 demic began to abate, and when she thought her labors were 
 well-nigh over, she awoke to a recognition of the symptoms 
 in herself; and, the very morning on which Mr. Forrest 
 returned from New York, she was carried to her hillside 
 cottage, to pay the penalty of her devotion with her own life. 
 
 Uncle Zeke met Mr. Forrest at the levee; and, as he 
 grasped his hand, he said, 
 
 " Bad news for ye, Mr. Forrest. She's jist ben an angel 
 while ye ben gone ; and now she's took." 
 
 Mr. Forrest had learned of the epidemic ; but not having 
 heard of Madge since leaving New York, his first thought 
 was of her ; and he exclaimed, 
 
 " Who, Uncle Zeke ? Miss. Hartley " 
 
 " No, no : Miss Hartley is well, though she's done all she 
 could. But Mrs. Grey is took, and I'se afraid for the wust." 
 
 " But where is she ? " he hurriedly inquired. 
 
 " They've car'ed her home," said he. 
 
 " Thank you, uncle, for telling me. I must go to her at 
 once." 
 
 And before going even to speak to Madge, he hastened to 
 the house of Mrs. Grey. He found his worst fears justified. 
 She was sinking rapidly. Her face lighted with joy and 
 welcome as he went in, and took her hand, already clammy 
 and cold. 
 
 "O Mrs. Grey!" he exclaimed, while the tears blinded 
 his eyes, " I can't have it so ! I've learned to love you like 
 a mother."
 
 THE OFFENCE. 139 
 
 "Thanks, Mr. Forrest," she whispered. "I'm so glad to 
 hear you say so ! But the clock is running down." 
 
 " Only two weeks gone," he cried. " I didn't think of 
 this." 
 
 " But," she whispered again, " it is all right. I have done 
 what I could. It was such a comfort to see how glad and 
 grateful they were ! I couldn't desert them. 
 
 " And," she added, " I haven't any fear. It's as well now 
 as ever. It must come ; and it had better come in the way 
 of duty. Life purchased by neglect of the suffering isn't 
 worth having " and her voice sunk away. 
 
 "But speak to me once more," he cried. "Is it all 
 well?" 
 
 " All well," she added, rousing for a moment. " If, as I 
 hope, there's a future, we'll meet. If not, still God does us 
 no wrong. We've had life, a chance to help our fellow- 
 men. Be true, and all is well." 
 
 And she sunk into a lethargy, from which she roused no 
 more. Mr. Forrest put his cheek to her lips to find if he 
 could feel her breath ; and, seeing that she breathed no 
 more, he kissed her forehead, and sprinkled it with tears. 
 
 "O God!-" he exclaimed, "whatever she is called, here 
 sleeps one of thine own saints." 
 
 The town was full of grief, and loud were her praises on 
 the lips of all the common people, when they heard that she 
 had given up her life for them ; and for a time all criticism 
 of her opinions was shamed into silence in the presence of 
 her noble life and nobler death. 
 
 As her house was small, and so many of those she had
 
 I4O BLUFFTON. 
 
 befriended clamored for the privilege of following her to the 
 grave, it was determined that the funeral should be in the 
 church. Under ordinary circumstances it would have been 
 opposed as a profanation of the sanctuary; but any such 
 move now would have been so frowned upon by the public 
 sentiment, that it was not to be thought of. 
 
 So the very next afternoon the church was crowded with 
 a sorrowing throng. As Mr. Forrest looked over them he 
 could not help thinking of the story of Dorcas, and how, 
 when she was dead, the widows came together weeping, and 
 showing the garments that Dorcas had made ; and, indeed, 
 he read this story as a part of the scripture-service appropri 
 ate to the scene. 
 
 When a hymn had been sung, he rose, and gave out his 
 text, 
 
 " I have fought a good fight, I have finished my course, I 
 have kept the faith : henceforth there is laid up for me the 
 crown which the Lord, the righteous judge, shall give me at 
 that day." 
 
 After his long struggles and her motherly friendship, and 
 this heroic sacrifice of herself, he was in no mood to pay 
 regard to theological prejudices. He must speak his heart 
 out, if he spoke at all. 
 
 He began with a brief sketch of her life, as she had given 
 it to him in their many conversations. He pictured her 
 hard, puritanical childhood ; how she had longed for fa 
 therly and motherly kisses and love, when only severe care 
 and the hard training of duty had been accorded her ; how 
 she had been repressed and discouraged to keep back, as
 
 THE OFFENCE. 14! 
 
 they thought, any sinful pride. He spoke of restricted Sun 
 days, and how church and religion had been made hateful 
 to her by showing her only its angular side ; how even her 
 love for birds and flowers was repressed and denied, as 
 savoring of idle vanity; then, how she had fought her way 
 out of this into a belief in and love for a God who was the 
 tender, loving Father of us all. He spoke of her married 
 life, of her devotion and sacrifice to her husband; and 
 then, amid the broken sobs of the many she had helped, he 
 pictured her life of beneficence in Bluffton. And when he 
 reached the last two weeks, and what she had dared and 
 borne for others, and with no thought of or hope for reward, 
 his own voice faltered, and he could hardly command his 
 words. 
 
 Pausing then a moment, he said, 
 
 " Such, friends, is her past life, and such her death. I 
 well know the odium that attaches to her in this city on 
 account of her theological opinions. But to me it seems 
 paltry, in the presence of her high and holy sacrifice, to 
 speak of such superficial distinctions. If ye cannot gather 
 grapes of thorns, nor figs of thistles, as the Master says, then 
 by what name shall we call her? Grapes and figs of noble 
 character and unselfish service for her fellows she most 
 assuredly has borne. And, since the tree is known by its 
 fruits, she can have been none other than sound-hearted and 
 true. I dare to call hers a noble Christian life. Let those 
 criticise her who have lived as well. And, if none others 
 lift their voices, there will be the silence of reverent praise. 
 
 " She has fought a good fight, a fight for all good and
 
 142 BLUFFTON. 
 
 noble causes. She has kept the faith, a faith in God, in 
 duty, in mankind. She has finished her course, a course 
 back over which she can look, and see no cause for shame. 
 And now, I trust, there is indeed kept for her a crown; 
 for the Lord, being a righteous judge, must love and reward 
 righteousness in his children. 
 
 " It seems almost an insult, in the presence of her pure 
 spirit, to defend her. But, if ' in all nations he who doeth 
 the will of God is accepted of him,' then surely there will 
 be welcome for her. What she has thought is little : what 
 she has done is much. The creed is little if it do not make 
 the deed. And, when the deed is found, the creed may be 
 inferred. And if indeed there be a heaven where righteous 
 souls are after death, then at her coming there must have 
 risen the cry, ' Lift up your heads, O ye gates,' that the right 
 eous one may enter in ! " 
 
 He then closed his simple service by reading the follow 
 ing verses : 
 
 " O apple, apple, on the bough, 
 
 What of your root ? " cried he : 
 " Thou lookest sweet and very fair ; 
 
 But tell me about the tree." 
 
 The apple replied, " Come, taste the fruit : 
 
 Thou need'st not dig about 
 The root, nor saw the trunk in two, 
 
 To find its nature out. 
 
 If I be sound in core, and sweet, 
 
 Then trust the tree and root ; 
 For the juices of the tree do make 
 
 The flavor of the fruit
 
 THE OFFENCE. 143 
 
 If the fruit is bitter, no matter then 
 
 How fair the trunk may be ; 
 It cumbers the ground : so take thine axe, 
 
 And, gardener, hew down the tree." 
 
 So is it in the lives of men : 
 
 The fair outside may show 
 Like a tree of paradise ; but God 
 
 If it bear good fruit doth know. 
 
 The procession formed, after the great multitude had 
 taken their last look, and wound its slow way round the bluff 
 to the hillside cemetery as it sloped down to the river. The 
 grave had been opened beside her husband ; and the loving 
 thought of the poor, who could pay her no other tribute, 
 had covered all the freshly thrown-out clods with evergreens, 
 arjd with the same material had completely lined the grave. 
 So as the coffin was lowered it seemed to be let down into 
 an amaranthine bower of fadeless green. The repulsiveness 
 of the grave was gone ; and she was only put away to sleep 
 on the green bed of the branches. 
 
 The scene was one of wondrous though saddening beauty. 
 The sun was low in the west, and his sloping beams fell 
 through and slipped under the trees, and lay like golden 
 bars upon the green of the grass. The ripples on the river 
 twinkled and sparkled in the light, and stretched off, crink 
 ling and shimmering by the islands, till lost as the headlands 
 closed in. The air was soft and still, hardly moving a leaf, 
 save where now and then a silver poplar kept up its perpet 
 ual aspen tremble. And, as Mr. Forrest read the last words
 
 144 BLUFFTON. 
 
 of the service, it seemed to him he could ask no more 
 fitting or sunny close to a life in whose sky had been so 
 much of cloud and storm. When he had pronounced the 
 benediction, he murmured under his breath, 
 
 " ' So He giveth his beloved sleep.' " 
 
 And now when the formal ceremony was over, they gath 
 ered about him, this one and that, to tell him of some little 
 deed of mercy of which he had never heard before. 
 
 When all else had gone, Mr. Forrest staid beside the 
 old sexton, who was filling in the grave. He lived m a little 
 cottage near the cemetery- gate, a mile or more from the 
 town. He stopped in the midst of his work, leaning on his 
 spade ; and, when he had wiped his eyes with his rough 
 sleeve, he said, 
 
 " O Mr. Forrest, I didn't think she'd come so soon arter 
 I'd put my own little one in the ground ! " 
 
 " Have you, then, lost a child lately? " 
 
 " Yes, sir : little Clary's gone since you been away. Mrs. 
 Grey heard we's sick, and come clear up the hill here to 
 help us, though she's all wore out then. We're too poor to 
 have a doctor ; and, 'sides, the doctors was too driven down 
 to the city. An' then, when she died there warn't no minister 
 't I felt I could ask, because I don't go nowhere to church. 
 An' this blessed angel, she come up an' put her little white 
 dress on Clary, and put a rose in her hand; an' then," 
 here he choked a minute, and buried his face in his hands, 
 "I couldn't 'ford no hearse : so we two, and mother all 
 broke down, an' leadin' Johnny and Fred, we took the little 
 white pine coffin on my old wheel-barrow ; and she helped
 
 THE OFFENCE. 145 
 
 me put her away to sleep over under that little tree in the 
 corner. God bless her ! she was like the sunshine, ready to 
 look down soft and sweet on all on us." 
 
 And here he sat down on the heap of earth, and sobbed 
 like a child.
 
 146 BLUFFTON. 
 
 XV. 
 
 MADGE ENTREATS. 
 
 ONLY a few days had passed before Mr. Forrest learned 
 that the words he had spoken of Mrs. Grey were to 
 come back to trouble him. His breath had started a breeze 
 that might gather to a storm. At first, in the excitement 
 and fresh sorrow of her loss, the unchurched reverence for 
 her was a sentiment too strong to be overlooked. But all 
 these sorrows pass away, and people become absorbed in 
 their own life again. Then his words were remembered; 
 and the orthodox party in all the churches took the alarm. 
 A minister of the gospel had dared to set up as a pattern- 
 saint, and even profanely open the gates of heaven to, an 
 " infidel." It was not to be endured. Those who had kept 
 at a safe distance when the cholera was abroad now came 
 out boldly to depreciate the services of her who had given 
 her life for those in danger. Her devotion counted for 
 little : her opinions only were remembered. " He that 
 believeth and is baptized shall be saved ; and he that be- 
 lieveth not shall be damned," said the Baptists. Each 
 different church thought her soul was certainly lost, because 
 she was not "of them." For very few of the people in
 
 MADGE ENTREATS. 147 
 
 Bluffton had any hope of the salvation of members of other 
 churches even, except their own. So of course there was 
 small hope for one not in any church at all. 
 
 Mr. Smiley made a special visitation of the parish, and, in 
 the claimed interests of the church, prayed and wept with 
 all the old ladies over their pastor's heresy. He said, 
 
 " Why, only think what it means ! If Mrs. Grey is to be 
 sent right to heaven, what need is there of our blessed gos 
 pel of salvation? Where is salvation by faith? What is the 
 use of prayer and revival meetings ? Why send the gospel 
 to the heathen? The other churches all about us are point 
 ing their fingers at us, and wondering that we allow such 
 things to go on." 
 
 And when he met Mr. Forrest, coming out of a house 
 after one of these visits, he smiled the same sweet smile as 
 ever, the one he ordinarily wore, and grasped his hand 
 with a 
 
 " I'm so glad, my dear pastor, that you were away during 
 this fearful divine visitation ! We did what we could ; but 
 the will of God will take its way. Mrs. Grey will be a great 
 loss to the poor. A woman of great benevolence was Mrs. 
 Grey. Only it is a pity she had not the grace of God in 
 her heart." 
 
 Mr. Forrest had to bite his lips to keep back a sharp 
 retort on his cant, that now he had learned to estimate ; but, 
 crowding back his words, he turned abruptly, and walked 
 away. 
 
 And now the town was beginning to whisper under its 
 breath something more appetizing to its vulgar taste, if not
 
 148 BLUFFTON. 
 
 so great a theological crime as heresy. Rumor, particularly 
 if scandalous, seems to have been in league with Puck, and 
 to have learned from him how to " put a girdle round the 
 earth in forty minutes." 
 
 Mr. Forrest had hardly been back from New York a day 
 before Mr. Smiley heard that at which he appeared to be 
 unspeakably shocked ; though in reality he caught at it, as 
 something that would help him in his opposition to the min 
 ister. This opposition was by this time well known to Mr. 
 Forrest, though it had been kept carefully masked. So far 
 as he could learn, it dated from the first, and had no other 
 motive than the instinctive dislike of a man to hearing per 
 petually recommended that which he had the least of, viz., 
 character. 
 
 " Deacon," said Mr. Smiley, addressing Deacon Putney, as 
 they met on the sidewalk, "just come up in my office a 
 minute." 
 
 And when seated, he said, 
 
 " I didn't want to speak of it on the street, for fear some 
 body should overhear ; but it is my painful duty to inform 
 you that the purity and honor of our Zion are threatened." 
 
 It was always his " painful duty " to say those things that 
 he knew were going to hurt; but no man living was ever 
 more ready to perform " painful duties " of this kind. 
 
 " Why, Mr. Smiley," said the deacon, his dull eyes kind 
 ling with curiosity, " what do you mean? " 
 
 "Haven't you heard it?" He knew he hadn't, but he 
 wanted to make it appear as though any one might have told 
 him.
 
 MADGE ENTREATS. 149 
 
 " Why, no : I haven't heard any thing." 
 
 " Well, I'm so thankful. I feared it might have got out ; 
 and I am so anxious to spare the church ! " 
 
 In reality he was " so anxious " to have the privilege of 
 first telling it, and appearing to be anxious for the " good of 
 the cause." 
 
 " But what is it ? " anxiously inquired the deacon. 
 
 " Oh ! I can't bear to speak of it : only the officers of the 
 church, the ' watchmen that stand on the towers of Zion,' 
 and whose duty it is to warn the people, ought to know. 
 But who would have thought it ? He seemed so upright, if 
 he wasn't orthodox." 
 
 " Well, do tell me what it is ! " burst out the deacon, who 
 was getting very impatient. 
 
 Then Mr. Smiley laid his hand on the deacon's knee, and, 
 leaning forward and looking him in the face, said in a low 
 and awe-ful whisper, 
 
 " Why, I've just got it from good authority, that Mr. For 
 rest, when in New York, was seen to go, with another man, 
 to a house of notorious reputation." 
 
 " You don't say ! " slowly and emphatically exclaimed 
 the deacon. 
 
 "And that isn't all, nor the worst," continued Mr. Smiley; 
 " for he took a woman from this very house, and brought her 
 on the cars all the way West with him ; and she is now con 
 cealed somewhere in Maple City. And, though he has been 
 home but a few days, he has already been up there once to 
 see her. Where will such things end? " 
 
 And when they had talked it over in all its bearings, and
 
 I5O BLUFFTON. 
 
 agreed that it ought to be kept quiet, they went out, and 
 whispered it all over the town. 
 
 But Mr. Forrest neither knew nor cared for any of these 
 things. He was not anxious as to what Bluffton thought of 
 him now ; for he had a sorer trial in the state of mind of 
 Miss Hartley. 
 
 It was a rainy spring afternoon, when, having spent his 
 morning in his study, and the weather making it impossible 
 for him to do out-door work, he thought he would spend an 
 hour or two with Madge. 
 
 Judge Hartley had heard the whispered scandal ; but he 
 was just enough not to believe all he heard, and he would 
 not trouble his daughter with such things until it became 
 necessary. So neither Miss Hartley nor Mr. Forrest knew 
 the underground gossip of the town. But the judge and 
 many others had talked to her about his theological heresies. 
 She had as yet too much faith in him to think that he could 
 be seriously out of the way. Still the increase of criticism 
 since the funeral of Mrs. Grey determined her to have a talk 
 with him. 
 
 "Mark," said she, as they sat together in her chamber, 
 and watched and listened to the rain on the window, " do 
 you know there is one thing that is beginning to trouble 
 me very much?" 
 
 " Why, what is it, Madge ? Nothing ought to trouble one 
 I love so much ; and it shall not, if in my power to prevent 
 it." 
 
 " It makes me glad to hear you speak like that ; for you 
 are just the one that can prevent it."
 
 MADGE ENTREATS. 151 
 
 " Well, tell me what it is that I can do." 
 
 " You can be "like other ministers, Mark. I can't bear to 
 hear you talked about so." 
 
 "What do they say?" 
 
 " They say you are drifting away from the truth. Tell me, 
 are you?" 
 
 " O Madge ! you've touched the one sore spot of my life. 
 Yes, Madge, I suppose I am drifting, or sailing, away from 
 what many think is the truth." 
 
 "You will help me, then, by coming back? " 
 
 " I fear you've asked me the one thing that is out of my 
 power. One cannot believe at will." 
 
 " But, .dear Mark, why can't you preach as other ministers 
 do?" 
 
 " Would you respect me if I preached what I do not be 
 lieve?" 
 
 " Why, no, of course I could not ; but why can't you be 
 lieve?" 
 
 " Because I have thought and read and studied." 
 
 " But why need you read and study the books that upset 
 your faith? They can't be any good books that do that." 
 
 " I believe them to be wise and good books, Madge." 
 
 " But you are young, Mark. May you not be mistaken ? 
 The Church that has believed these things so long, the great 
 majority of learned men, they all must be right. They can't 
 be mistaken." 
 
 " The truth doesn't go by majorities, Madge : Christianity 
 was once in the minority." 
 
 " Of course ; but that came by inspiration. But it has 
 been settled so long, it must be true."
 
 152 BLUFFTON. 
 
 " But even the majority of learned men are not orthodox." 
 
 " I know, the great numbers of scientific men and philos 
 ophers : they follow their own wisdom, and get led astray. 
 But father thinks it is wilful blindness on their part." 
 
 "Well, Madge, it almost kills me to have to give you 
 pain." 
 
 " But you don't have to give me pain, Mark. You have 
 only to be like other men in this matter. Why can't you at 
 least let these disputed questions alone, and only preach the 
 simple gospel ? " 
 
 "These problems haunt me. And then, all these ques 
 tions are linked together. I can't treat one, and let the rest 
 alone. I sometimes think I shall have to leave the. church." 
 
 " O Mark ! don't talk that way unless you want to break 
 my heart. It would kill father to have me follow you 
 out of the church. And I couldn't leave him in his old 
 age, and have him think me lost. His dear old face would 
 haunt me forever. I don't know much about these great 
 questions. I only know I love you, I trust you. But oh, 
 isn't there some way that you can let these things rest? " 
 
 "But, dear Madge " 
 
 " Oh, don't say there isn't ! " she broke in passionately. 
 " If you love me, I entreat you, dear Mark, don't think and 
 study these horrible things. It frightens me, Mark. May it 
 not be that Satan is tempting you, and leading you astray? 
 Father says he often comes in the guise of human wisdom, 
 to lead men away from the simplicity of the gospel." 
 
 "There, Madge," he cried, ^'please don't talk so any 
 more. I'll try: for your sake I'll try to do any and all 
 things save such as you would despise me for doing."
 
 MADGE ENTREATS. 153 
 
 " Do find some way," she added. " I can't abandon 
 father. And yet I fear it would kill me to stay with him, 
 and lose you. I'm only a weak woman, Mark. I only 
 know I love you dearly. I am not wise enough to help 
 your thinking. You must settle that. I suppose, if father 
 did not hold me by cords of duty as well as love, I should 
 believe any thing you told me was true. But O Mark, don't 
 leave me, don't leave me ! " 
 
 And she flung herself into his waiting arms, and poured 
 out her trouble and anxiety in weeping. 
 
 Mark soothed and comforted her as well as he knew how ; 
 but did not tell her of the horrible fear, that weighed down 
 his heart, that this was not the first nor worst of their 
 sorrow. 
 
 In his study that evening, when the night outside was dark 
 as the rayless heaven of his soul, he went over again his 
 lonely struggle. It was no longer a question as to whether 
 he was to be true to his own soul ; and he was too clear 
 headed not to see that he must be prepared to face the 
 worst. So his battle was only a desperate struggle with the 
 inevitable. 
 
 He plainly saw that leaving Bluffton and orthodoxy was 
 separation from Madge. Not that she did not love him 
 enough to follow him to the world's end. He knew she did. 
 But he knew also that she loved her father not only, but 
 that she felt bound to him in this matter by the whole 
 strength of her moral nature. He would think her lost to 
 God and him forever ; and she could not " bring down his 
 gray hairs with sorrow to the grave." Even could he have
 
 154 BLUFFTON. 
 
 persuaded her to break this bond of her moral nature, that 
 linked her to her childhood and her father so firmly, he 
 would not have dared to do it. It was just this moral force 
 of character in her, that made the tenderness of her woman 
 hood so lovely. He could not pluck his flower with such 
 violence as to strip it of its petals. 
 
 " O God ! " he cried, " could I not have been spared this? 
 Must love, too, be sacrificed ? I could give all else gladly ; 
 but this is more than I can bear ! " 
 
 He walked his study in silence, and alone with his sorrow. 
 And, as he walked and thought, he took from his pocket- 
 book a scrap that he had cut from a newspaper, and read 
 over again some verses in which he had found an echo of 
 his own sadness. He had looked at them often of late, and 
 he saw himself between the lines. 
 
 THE LONE VOYAGER. 
 
 Twas ever so, that he who dared 
 
 To sail upon a sea unknown 
 Must go upon a voyage unshared, 
 
 And brave its perils all alone. 
 
 Columbus, with his faith alone, 
 
 Sailed for new worlds beyond the sea ; 
 
 Trusted behind by few or none, 
 Around him faithless mutiny. 
 
 And he who, not content to sit 
 And dream upon the shores of truth, 
 
 Watching the sea-bird fancies flit, 
 And wavelets creep, through all his youth,
 
 MADGE ENTREATS. 155 
 
 Must sail unblest of those behind, 
 While love turns to reproach her tone : 
 
 The loving God alone is kind 
 To him who dares to sail alone. 
 
 "But is even God kind?" he exclaimed. "I cry, but he 
 does not answer. O truth, truth ! wilt thou strip thy votaries 
 of all, leaving them only their weary search for thee ? "
 
 156 BLUFFTON. 
 
 XVI. 
 A TERRIBLE SUSPICION. 
 
 IN small towns the store is to the men what the sewing- 
 circle is to the women, their intellectual and gossip ex 
 change ; and the staple conversation is commonly no whit 
 more important or dignified in the one place than it is in the 
 other. 
 
 Deacon Putney's hardware store was the favorite place 
 of resort. From the nature of the trade, the men could sit 
 and smoke, and were not likely to be interrupted. The dea 
 con himself was always much readier to talk than to work ; 
 so he left his not overcrowded custom to his clerks, while he 
 sat in a basket-work armchair by the stove, and assisted in 
 settling the last question of public moment. 
 
 The question naturally uppermost now was the new scan 
 dal about the minister. If you saw two or three people 
 stopping together on a street-corner, you were safe in sup 
 posing that this was the theme of their conversation. If 
 Mr. Forrest came by, they spoke of something else, gave 
 him a pleasant greeting, and then, as he passed, some one 
 would remark, 
 
 "Nobody 'd 'a' thought it, would they? Just look at 
 him. Fine-looking man. Pity ! "
 
 A TERRIBLE SUSPICION. 
 
 And then they would go on speculating about it again. 
 
 About this time aunt Sally Rawson "felt it to be her duty" 
 to speak to Miss Hartley on the subject. Some one always 
 " feels bound " to tell what is none of his or her business 
 to just the wrong person. So she put on her bonnet and 
 striped shawl, and started up to the judge's. 
 
 " Miss Hartley," said she, " air you aware what a name 
 Mr. Forrest is gittin' 'bout town?" 
 
 "What do you mean?" said she with some severity; for, 
 whatever had happened, she felt it no business of an out 
 sider to speak, so long as her father kept silence. 
 
 " Well, 'f you're goin' to git your back up when one 
 means to do you a service, then no matter." 
 
 "What have you to say?" 
 
 " Well, I thought 't you'd ought to know that Mr. Forrest 
 was seen with a woman in sarcumstances where 't didn't 
 look jest right, an " 
 
 " Mrs. Rawson, you can leave the house, if you please," 
 said she quietly. " I can learn all I wish to know of Mr. 
 Forrest, from those who have a better right to speak to me 
 on the subject." 
 
 And aunt Sally flounced out of the house in a rage. She 
 went straight over to Mrs. Buck, and exclaimed, 
 
 " Well, if Miss Hartley ain't the sauciest, stuck-up-est, 
 pert body I ever see ! " 
 
 And then they guessed that any " gal " that would act 
 that way " warn't no better'n she should be, herself." She 
 " was goin'," aunt Sally said, " to do her a favor ; " but she 
 "guessed she'd wait one while 'fore she offered to do 
 another."
 
 158 BLUFFTON. 
 
 Meantime Miss Hartley had such faith in Mr. Forrest, 
 and in her father too, that she did not even care to question 
 as to what aunt Sally was hinting at. 
 
 It was only natural that the smouldering material should 
 flame out at the store. Here, then, let us go and listen, and 
 see into what voices it will hiss. 
 
 " It's only natural, I say," said Clem. Haydon : " when 
 a man gets loose in doctrine, then look out to see him loose 
 in morals next. You know I told you so when he first come." 
 
 Clem. Haydon, so called familiarly after the Western 
 fashion, was a middle-aged man, and an elder in the United 
 Presbyterian church. He looked upon the Congregational 
 church as lacking in soundness, anyway. And while very 
 zealous for the kingdom of God, like many others, he was 
 not over-sorry to see any other than the United Presbyterian 
 branch going down. 
 
 Deacon Putney had learned from the majority opinion 
 of those immediately about him, that Mr. Forrest was not 
 sound ; and yet he did not enjoy having a member of a rival 
 church get any handle against his own. So he replied with 
 a bit of vinegar in his tone, 
 
 "P'raps your memory's better'n mine. I disremember 
 your ever saying any thing about it when he first come." 
 
 " But I did, though, right here in this store. I saw well 
 enough 'twas comin'." 
 
 " Some folks' hind-sight's a heap better'n their foresight," 
 observed uncle Zeke sarcastically. " I don't 'low you 
 seen it comin' ; for I don't believe ther's nothin' come, 
 nohow, 'cept a lot o' mare's-nests you fellers 's a-settin' on."
 
 A TERRIBLE SUSPICION. 159 
 
 "Oh ! he means well," patronizingly observed Mr. Smiley, 
 "but of course he don't know what we know. And then 
 what does he know about the doctrines of the gospel that 
 Mr. Forrest slights ?" 
 
 " Waal, I d' know, and I don't care much 'bout yer doc 
 trines o' the gospel. But Mr. Forrest preaches the practice 
 of the gospel a blamed sight better'n you foller him, any 
 how." 
 
 " Oh, yes ! you think so," sneered Mr. Smiley. " His trip 
 to New York was nice practice of the gospel, wasn't it? " 
 
 "All I got ter say is," responded uncle Zeke, "that, till 
 folks shows their evidence, to be talkin' round and blackenin' 
 folks' characters looks a big sight to me like breakin' one o' 
 the c'mandments anyway. Ain't there suthin' in ther' bout 
 ' bearin' false witness ' ? " 
 
 " Well hit for you, uncle Zeke," broke in Judge Harring 
 ton, a rough-spoken but ardent admirer of Mr. Forrest. 
 ' You all know I don't go much on your churches anyhow ; 
 but I do like an honest man. I don't care about your fights 
 over doctrine, and I haven't been to church for five years 
 before Mr. Forrest came. I understand he's suffering now 
 because we outsiders like him. But do you want to know 
 
 why I go to hear him ? Because there isn't another 
 
 minister in town that dares to preach out what he believes. 
 You make liars of them anyhow. You stand them up in 
 your pulpits, and then say to them, ' Don't you dare to find 
 out and tell us any thing we don't already know, or, snap ! 
 goes the bread and butter out of your mouths.' I wonder 
 they ain't a bigger set of pudding-heads than the most of 
 them already are."
 
 160 BLUFFTON. 
 
 " I can't countenance such language by my presence," 
 said Mr. Smiley, and pompously withdrew. 
 
 " I don't wonder," said uncle Zeke with an air of dry 
 humor : " do you know, I never saw a man what seemed to 
 be so lonesome-like round where three or four fellers was 
 tellin' the truth." 
 
 " Well," said Clem. Haydon, who, from prudence or from 
 some other reason, didn't see fit to pick up uncle Zeke's 
 remark, " there isn't any other foundation for a pure moral 
 ity but faith in the Bible and the Church ; and whatever 
 else Mr. Forrest has done, or has not, he has undermined 
 respect for these." 
 
 " But," replied Judge Harrington, who, though rough, was 
 a good lawyer and a man well read in history, " perhaps, if 
 that is so, you will be kind enough to explain how it hap 
 pens that the historical ' ages of faith,' when nobody dared 
 to doubt either Bible or Church, were the most completely 
 immoral ages of Christendom." 
 
 Knowing his business and his " confession of faith," he 
 could only reply, 
 
 " I don't believe they were. My minister would know it 
 if it was so." 
 
 " But," responded the judge, " just as I told you, he 
 wouldn't dare say it, if he did know it. If he did, you'd 
 ' send him in his resignation,' as black Jim said the other 
 day about their minister. And he knows it mighty well." 
 
 " But doesn't morality rest on the Bible ? " he feebly pro 
 tested. 
 
 "No," said the judge. "Nations that never heard of
 
 A TERRIBLE SUSPICION. l6l 
 
 your Bible are a big sight more moral than many of the church- 
 members in town. Morality and religion made the Bible in 
 the first place ; though religion had more to do with some 
 parts of it than morality did." 
 
 "Well, I do' know," said Deacon Putney: "/ think if 
 there weren't no Bible and no Devil, there wouldn't be 
 much goodness." 
 
 " When people behave because they're afraid of the Devil, 
 do you want to know what I think of 'em?" inquired the 
 judge. He expected no reply, and so continued, " I think 
 they're sneaks and cowards instead of Christians. Mr. For 
 rest preaches the best rules and principles of right living 
 I ever heard in Bluffton ; and I have my opinion which 
 isn't a very high one of the people that are trying to 
 undermine him." 
 
 By this time the judge and Uncle Zeke had withdrawn. 
 Clem. Hay don and the Deacon and one or two more of their 
 kind now had it all to themselves. Knowing about what 
 they would say, it is hardly worth our while to listen longer.
 
 l62 BLUFFTON. 
 
 XVII. 
 
 AN EXCHANGE AT MAPLE CITY. 
 
 ON the next Sunday Mr. Forrest was to be at Maple 
 City on exchange with the minister there. 
 
 On the Friday preceding, Mr. Smiley called a meeting 
 of personal sympathizers at his office. Here they canvassed 
 the condition of affairs ; and Mr. Forrest was officially noti 
 fied, that, at the church-meeting that evening, steps would 
 be taken to call a council of the neighboring churches to 
 pass upon the matter of his doctrinal soundness. "Letters- 
 missive " would be sent out Saturday ; the churches could 
 appoint delegates on Sunday ; and the council was to meet 
 on the following Thursday. 
 
 Mr. Forrest was not at all surprised ; for he supposed it 
 would come soon. He did not care to stand the trial, for 
 his own part; but ministerial friends, with whom he had 
 discussed the coming possibility, urged him to stand for 
 their sakes. They preached similar doctrine themselves; 
 and they wanted the matter brought to a test, as to whether 
 there was any freedom in the church. 
 
 Though his sympathies were -all with Mr. Smiley's party, 
 yet Judge Hartley took but little active part in the matter;
 
 AN EXCHANGE AT MAPLE CITY. 163 
 
 for he saw how distressed it made his daughter. It was 
 indeed a sad blow to her ; for she saw Mark branded, and 
 cast out of the church, in her foreboding fancy ; and that 
 meant torn from her, or breaking her father's heart. She 
 had always been his pet ; and now in his old age he leaned 
 upon her. So she plead with Mr. Forrest, whenever she 
 saw him now, until he hardly dared to meet her, lest her 
 sorrow and his own love should persuade him to warp or 
 twist the truth from its straight uprightness. 
 
 By this time Mr. Forrest was well aware of the whispers 
 concerning his character about town ; and yet he kept per 
 fectly still, and made no explanation. He had no doubt 
 these rumors would complicate affairs at the council, and yet 
 he kept still. He only hoped Madge had heard nothing that 
 might add a new pang to her sorrow ; but he dared not ask 
 her, lest his question should be a revelation of what he 
 hoped she did not know. 
 
 Sunday came, and with it the opportunity Mr. Forrest 
 wanted to talk affairs over with Tom. Of course he stopped 
 at his house. After dinner was over, they had the long 
 afternoon to themselves. The house faced the street ; and 
 a long piazza, ran round three sides, the two ends and the 
 rear. Vines clambered over it; and through their leafy 
 arches one looked out on a scene of wondrous loveliness. 
 The sloping river-bank, covered with native trees, stretched 
 away, and by natural terraces reached the water, which here 
 and there glistened between the branches. The ground 
 was laid out in lawn and flower-bed, with now and then an 
 artificial lake or fountain. The whole was ornamented
 
 164 BLUFFTON. 
 
 with casts of statuary, or piles of shell, or stone covered 
 with lichen and moss. 
 
 Here, then, in the warm May afternoon, the two friends 
 sat, tilted back in their chairs, and with their feet on the 
 rail about the piazza., as men always love to sit to rest and 
 talk. Tom smoked his pipe on such occasions, and with 
 the clouds of smoke filled in the pauses of their conversa 
 tion ; and, though he did not care for it alone, Mark would 
 then take a cigar, and keep him company. 
 
 They had talked for a few minutes, when Tom took out 
 his pipe, and said, 
 
 " What did she say when you talked with her this morn 
 ing, Mark? Isn't she ready for you to speak yet? " 
 
 " No, Tom : she can't bring her mind to it ; and I don't 
 much wonder, after all that has passed." 
 
 "But it's a mighty pity, old boy, for you to submit to 
 have the puppies wagging their tongues about you all over 
 Bluffton, when a word would end it." 
 
 " No matter : I can stand it. I promised her in New 
 York that she should take her own time to speak ; and she 
 shall, at whatever cost to me." 
 
 " But if she only knew " 
 
 " But she shall not know, Tom. She shall not risk every 
 thing now for the sake of saving me a little inconvenience." 
 
 " It will make things hot for you at the council." 
 
 " Then let it be hot. She shall know that I did for her 
 every thing I could." 
 
 " Then you won't speak anyhow, even then? " 
 
 " No, of course not. And you must not, either. You 
 know you've promised me."
 
 AN EXCHANGE AT MAPLE CITY. 165 
 
 "Yes, I know I have; but I wish I had not." He 
 thought a little, and added, 
 
 " It was a foolish promise. She might as well speak now 
 as any time." 
 
 " She shall wait till she's forty, if she chooses, Tom." 
 
 " But what of Madge? Does she know? " 
 
 " I hope not. But, if she does, she has sense, if the rest 
 haven't. That's the smallest of my troubles about her." 
 
 " Women are jealous and suspicious, Mark! You mustn't 
 ask too much of them." 
 
 " If she can't trust me a little now, I'd like to find it out." 
 
 " Well, you'll have your own way, I suppose." 
 
 " But, Tom, look here. To change the subject," said 
 Mark, " I've noticed, ever since I've been in Bluffton, that my 
 intimacy with you has been a crime in the eyes of Smiley. 
 Beside your heresy, has he any special reason for disliking 
 you?" 
 
 " The same reason that all shams have for disliking the 
 man that finds them out. I know him too well : that's all." 
 
 " Have you ever had business transactions with him? " 
 
 " I should think I had. Having paid a tolerably high 
 price for the recollection, I don't think I'll forget it soon 
 either." 
 
 " He makes a good impression on one at first." 
 
 " Yes : he's one of your devil-an-angel-of-light kind of 
 fellows. That smile of his, and his pious tone, have a com 
 mercial value, Mark, and he always wears them." 
 
 " I don't see how a man can assume to be what he isn't." 
 
 " Why, his face has got to have some sort of look on it,
 
 1 66 BLUFFTON. 
 
 you know ; and it don't cost any more to have a holy one 
 than any other." 
 
 " He has always appeared friendly to me, Tom." 
 
 " Of course : why not ? Appearing friendly isn't much 
 trouble." 
 
 " But what have I done to offend him ? I hardly under 
 stand it. He hasn't so gigantic an intellect but that I can 
 claim, without immodesty, to satisfy him that way." 
 
 "That's good, Mark. I'm almost afraid you're simple. 
 His instincts are sound. He feels, from the first, that he has 
 no standing on the basis of the kind of gospel you preach. 
 He's got to be saved by emotion and an external atonement, 
 or there's no show for him. You preach character all the 
 time, and he don't like it ; for, don't you see, you're ' bull 
 ing ' the market on just that commodity that he happens 
 to be out of. Unless he can ' bear ' you on that line, he's 
 bankrupt." 
 
 "But, Tom, do you think he means to be dishonest? or 
 does he cheat himself as well as others? " 
 
 " I hardly know : he's a puzzle to me." 
 
 " I've noticed," continued Mark, " that sometimes a man 
 gets into ways of doing business where he's hard and dis 
 honest so long as the effects are remote, and don't touch 
 his feeling by an actual sight of the results; and at the 
 same time he's tender and kind in cases of actual want 
 about him." 
 
 " Yes, I know : conscience is a queer thing. He seems to 
 have his conscience under as thorough control as his face : 
 it will smile on any thing he wants it to."
 
 AN EXCHANGE AT MAPLE CITY. l6/ 
 
 " Now, as touching this matter, no man would willingly 
 tell things to his own discredit. But he has himself told me 
 of transactions of his that were simply outrageous ; and he 
 seemed to be perfectly unconscious of there being any thing 
 about them but smartness." 
 
 " I know : conscience seems to get rusty, like old scales, 
 don't indicate the weight accurately." 
 
 " And yet, again, I occasionally find myself compelled to 
 think that he purposely goes wrong. He seems deliberately 
 to choose his way. Now, not long ago he told me frankly that 
 even if I was right and he wrong on doctrinal matters, he 
 didn't want to know it ; for he didn't propose to change 
 ' choosing darkness rather than light.' " 
 
 " Of course he doesn't. His business character is simply 
 rotten. His ' scheme of salvation ' still gives him a chance. 
 Yours doesn't : don't you see ? " 
 
 " But what do you know about his business, Tom? " 
 
 "Well, several things. And I've paid a good price for 
 my knowledge. For instance, I owned a share in a silver- 
 mine in Colorado. It was a stock-company. I had been 
 out and inspected it, found it all right, and was going to buy 
 more shares. He also found out its value. Then, by secret 
 agents, he got in his hands enough of the stock to control 
 it, and then turned the water into it, filled it full, and let 
 it stand. The rest of us, being in a minority, could do noth 
 ing. He ' froze us all out,' as it is called ; i.e., made the 
 mine so valueless that stock was worth nothing, and the own 
 ers had to sell for a song. I could stand it ; but it ruined 
 some who had invested there all they had. After he got
 
 1 68 BLUFFTON. 
 
 that is, stole all the other stock, then he turned to, cleared 
 the mine, and made a pile out of it. 
 
 " That's the kind of money he helps on the Lord's cause 
 with." 
 
 " Does he do such things often? " 
 
 " No oftener than he gets a chance. He's always honest 
 when he can't help it. I happen to know that he is in the 
 habit of ' doctoring ' his accounts and books so as to make 
 them look all right to the men whose money he is using ; and 
 then suddenly, through a mysterious dispensation of Provi 
 dence, he will fail. And then he is able to get a new car 
 riage and a span." 
 
 " It doesn't seem possible that a man can live like that." 
 
 " But facts ' lay over ' possibilities. Take another little 
 transaction. I owned a piece of ground that he wanted. 
 I also wanted it, and so refused to sell. He went and 
 hunted up all the old titles from the first, and found some 
 where, forty or fifty years back, a legal flaw, of which I 
 knew nothing, and that in equity of course did not 
 touch my right of possession. Then he comes and 
 says, ' You can sell at my price, or I'll take it away from 
 you.' I was helpless, and had to submit. Now, it isn't any 
 particular wonder that a man whose 'best holt,' as they say, 
 is piety, should look with slight disfavor on a man who 
 knows such things about him." 
 
 " Well, I should think not." 
 
 "I must give you just one more taste of his righteous 
 ness. Not long since, through, the failure of a man he was 
 dealing with, about three hundred barrels of flour came into
 
 AN EXCHANGE AT MAPLE CITY. 169 
 
 his hands. It was of the very poorest quality, made of 
 damaged wheat. While it lay in the storehouse, he sent a 
 man to remove all the brands, and with a little fresh paint 
 transformed the whole lot into the finest quality of St. Louis 
 flour, making, by a simple mark on the head, a difference 
 of some three or four dollars a barrel. 
 
 " But the best of it was afterward. The next Sunday he 
 addressed the Sunday school on the cross of Christ, and 
 mingled his tears with theirs over his own pathos. And at 
 the close, he told them that since the Lord had been 
 singularly kind to him during the past week, and had 
 specially blessed his humble efforts to make money for His 
 own cause, he would therefore make them a present of a 
 new library, the old one to be sent to some other needy 
 school; and he also had some pictures and mottoes hung 
 up about the room, the two most conspicuous of them 
 being, ' Honesty is the best policy,' and ' Virtue is its own 
 reward.' 
 
 " Oh, but he's a model ! " 
 
 " Well, Tom, no wonder he dislikes you." 
 
 " But," said he with an ironical tone, " it's only my ' in 
 fidelity ' he dislikes." 
 
 "You know, Tom," said Mark, changing the subject with 
 the air of one who had got all of that he wanted, " that 
 Smiley had a sister ; did you not? " 
 
 " Yes : I know a good deal about her, but I never saw 
 her." 
 
 " Well, what do you know about her? I have my reasons 
 for wishing to know."
 
 I/O BLUFFTON. 
 
 " I know this : All the family is dead except Smiley and 
 this one sister, Mary. She was the youngest child, and must 
 be about nineteen or twenty, I should guess. I have heard 
 she was frail, apparently timid, and yet has a will of her 
 own." 
 
 " Has Smiley been kind to her ? " 
 
 " Yes, before people. But he is her legal guardian ; and 
 the father, a hard old man, left her share of the property in 
 Smiley's hands, so that she comes into it only on condition 
 that she marries to suit him. The old gentleman thought 
 women and girls should never be trusted, but ought to obey 
 the father or brothers ; and Smiley was his pet, a boy after 
 his own heart. So the story runs. And indeed, when I first 
 met Smiley, he pretended confidences, and told me much 
 of it himself." 
 
 " But she hasn't been in Bluffton since I came West." 
 
 " No : she lives a part of the time East ; has been at 
 school, and visiting with friends. So of course you haven't 
 seen her either." 
 
 " I am quite familiar with her face," said Mark equiv 
 ocally. And he added, " I have often seen her photograph, 
 so I should know her anywhere. She is quite a favorite in 
 Bluffton ; and, indeed, Madge has taken a great fancy to 
 her. So I almost feel as if I knew her." 
 
 "But do you know Smiley's latest persecution of her?" 
 
 "About her engagement? " 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 "I have heard something. What is it?" For Mark 
 wished to know if it corresponded with what he had heard 
 from another source.
 
 AN EXCHANGE AT MAPLE CITY. 171 
 
 " Well, she became engaged, without consulting the high 
 and mighty Smiley, to a capital fellow from Denver City. 
 His crime was, that he had his fortune still to make, though 
 he was in a fair way to make it. Smiley himself had fixed 
 it up, that she was to marry one of his partners in a big 
 speculation, so that he could get a bigger finger in the af 
 fair through family influence. For his sister, like every thing 
 and everybody else, is only to him so much available means 
 in the money market." 
 
 "Yes, that sounds like what she told me," mused Mark, 
 without thinking what he was saying. 
 
 " She told you : who told you ? " quickly inquired Tom. 
 
 Mark saw that he had almost let slip his secret prema 
 turely ; but he rallied, and replied, 
 
 " Oh, a lady friend I met in New York ! She seemed to 
 know all about it, and we talked it over together." 
 
 " Oh, yes ! " said Tom : " your answer was so queer that it 
 startled me a bit." 
 
 Mark did not choose to explain, and so continued, 
 
 " But do you know what is to come of it? " 
 
 "Only that she rushed East suddenly a year ago, just 
 before you came, to escape Smiley's persecutions, and said 
 she'd die before she'd marry at anybody's dictation. And 
 a strange rumor is afloat within the last month, that she dis 
 appeared suddenly from her friends in Boston, and Smiley 
 has been writing everywhere to get on the track of her. I 
 reckon he doesn't care much, only for the ' honor ' of his 
 family. He'll do almost any thing to save the family 
 reputation. He'd even let her marry her own choice, I 
 think, if public opinion touched his pride in the matter."
 
 BLUFFTON. 
 
 " Good ! I'm glad to hear you say that, Tom ; for perhaps 
 his pride will help me through the matter." 
 
 " Help you through what matter ? You're talking riddles 
 now. What have you got to do about it anyway?" 
 
 " Perhaps more than you know. She didn't want me to 
 let you know, if I could help it." 
 
 " Well, what are you talking about, Mark ? " 
 
 "You said a little while ago, that you had never seen 
 Miss Smiley." 
 
 " Of course I said so ; for I haven't." 
 
 "Yes, you have, Tom; for she dined with us to-day." 
 
 " Good heavens ! you don't mean it ! This beautiful 
 young woman you brought from New York " 
 
 " Is Smiley's sister, Tom. There, it's out now." 
 
 " Well, this is dramatic enough. Why in creation didn't 
 you tell me so before?" 
 
 " It was her wish that I shouldn't, and you are not to 
 know her even now. I told you because I thought perhaps 
 you might help me work on Smiley so as to save her." 
 
 " But this is stranger than what usually goes for fiction. 
 If it was Smiley himself, I don't think I should be over 
 anxious to save him. But, by Jove, I do pity the girl ; and 
 I'm with you to the extent of any thing I can do." 
 
 "And yet, remember, I've promised her not to reveal 
 her till she consents. She's evidently afraid of her brother, 
 and thinks he will cast her off." 
 
 "Let him cast, if he will. I know the man she's en 
 gaged to, and he's a generous, noble fellow. When he 
 knows her story, he's a different man from what I think him,
 
 AN EXCHANGE AT MAPLE CITY. 1/3 
 
 if he doesn't take her to his heart. Her suffering, and 
 even the touch of sin, if there is any, was all for his 
 sake ; and he's a villain if he deserts her." 
 
 " I'm glad to hear you say that of him, for it looks like a 
 streak of daylight. If men were only a little more sensible, 
 there'd be less ruin in the world."
 
 1/4 BLUFFTON. 
 
 XVIII. 
 
 9 THE COUNCIL. 
 
 THURSDAY came, and with it the gathering of minis 
 ters and delegates from all the Bluffton association. 
 The town was excited. It was usually dull; for only the 
 commoner class of peripatetic amusements and theatrical 
 troupes ever visited the place ; and these did not furnish 
 entertainment for the church-members, because they never 
 attended such things except when they were away from 
 home. Perhaps it would be unjust to say that hundreds 
 of people were glad there was going to be a trial ; and yet, 
 since there was going to be a trial, hundreds were glad they 
 could go. Perhaps people do not like to have their neigh 
 bors houses burn up ; but, if they are going to burn, they do 
 like to see the fire. So everybody prepared to be present, 
 and see the permitted entertainment that was going to 
 be exhibited free. 
 
 Mr. Forrest had had a most painful meeting and parting 
 with Madge. He knew by her face that the night had 
 been spent in weeping more than in sleep. But now she 
 was calm with the calmness of one prepared in prison for 
 the inevitable execution. It was not Mark only, who was
 
 THE COUNCIL. 1/5 
 
 to be tried : her own destiny was to be passed upon ; and 
 already she saw herself alone, with all she had learned to 
 look upon as fairest and sweetest in the future, blasted and 
 turned to a desolation. 
 
 They sat together a half-hour in silence, brooding over 
 their own thoughts. Then the tears started in Madge's eyes, 
 and she cried, 
 
 " O Mark, Mark ! Is there no way out of it even yet ? " 
 
 " I can only take the next step that is clear, dear Madge ; 
 and what will follow, God only knows." 
 
 And now for a moment she lost control of herself, and, 
 out of the anguish of her love, entreated, plead, and almost 
 upbraided him, as though he had willingly brought it upon 
 them. Then she begged his forgiveness, and said, 
 
 " I don't know what I say. I'm cruel : as though it were 
 not hard for you, as well as for me ! " 
 
 He comforted her as best he could, and then they parted. 
 Once more he was to see her, and then what then, he 
 dared not allow himself to think. 
 
 The hour for the council was called. The church was 
 full. The moderator and scribe were chosen, and they 
 were ready for business. 
 
 On behalf of the church, Mr. Smiley had been chosen 
 to present the charges against their pastor's orthodoxy; 
 and, when he was through, it was understood that any of 
 the ministers of the association were at liberty to relate any 
 conversations or teachings, of which they might have knowl 
 edge, that bore on either side of the question. 
 
 Being called on to present his charges, Mr. Smiley rose 
 and said,
 
 1/6 BLUFFTON. 
 
 "Mr. Moderator, and gentlemen of the council, you 
 will pardon me, if, out of the fulness of my heart, I say 
 one personal word before I proceed to read the paper I 
 hold in my hand. I loved our minister like a brother." 
 Here he stopped, took out and carefully unfolded a scented 
 handkerchief, and delicately wiped his eyes. " Excuse me," 
 he said, " for thus obtruding my personal feelings on a 
 public audience; but you do not know how hard it is to 
 testify against your own minister of the gospel." 
 
 " Oh, but he's just an angel, he is ! " whispered Mrs. Buck 
 to aunt Sally Rawson. 
 
 " Angel a heap ! " said Jane Ann, who overheard the 
 aside. "Take my word for it, he's got more hoofs than 
 wings." 
 
 "Jane Ann, shet your mouth," said Aunt Sally, "and 
 don't you let me hear you slanderin' yer betters agin." 
 
 But Brother Smiley proceeded, 
 
 "Yes, I loved him like a brother. And I wish that it 
 might fall to other lips than mine to speak what stern duty 
 compels me to say." (As a fact, he had log-rolled for the 
 position of prominence and leadership, like a ward-room 
 politician.) " And now," he continued, " I must intimate 
 beforehand that theological looseness is bad enough, yes, 
 bad enough," he repeated emphatically ; " but what shall be 
 said when looseness concerning the gospel issues in its 
 natural results of looseness of life? Yes," he repeated, 
 seeing the sensation his last words created, "looseness of 
 life, my brethren. But, however, let that pass for the present, 
 my brethren. It must come up in its own place. We will
 
 THE COUNCIL. I// 
 
 attend to one thing at a time ; and either one or the other 
 will be enough to sadden all our hearts, yes, sadden all our 
 hearts, my brethren. Excuse these tears, but nature will 
 have way." 
 
 " Oh the old hound ! " vehemently exclaimed uncle Zeke 
 to Judge Harrington, as they stood with a little knot of 
 sympathizers just out of the door, in the edge of the vesti 
 bule. " I know he's a-lying when he speaks agin Mr. 
 Forrest's character." 
 
 "Of course he's a-lying," replied Judge Harrington. 
 " You take that as a matter of course, unless you know the 
 contrary; and in this case the fee is on the Devil's side, 
 and you don't catch him telling the truth unless it pays 
 high." 
 
 " Ef the days o' mericles weren't over, we might see Ana 
 nias and Sapphiry over agin," added uncle Zeke. 
 
 Meantime, sublimely unconscious of comments, and 
 swelling with pious importance, Mr. Smiley continued, 
 
 " First, then, Mr. Moderator, it is my painful duty to 
 present charges and specifications as to his theological 
 soundness ; or, to speak more accurately, unsoundness, my 
 brethren. Allow me, then, to read the following paper. 
 
 'CHARGE FIRST. 
 
 " 'The Rev. Mark Forrest, being a minister of the orthodox 
 church, and a member of this association, and pastor of the 
 church in Bluffton, has been unfaithful to his position as a 
 maintainer of the pure faith of the gospel. 
 
 " ' Specification First. He is in the habit of using very
 
 BLUFFTON. 
 
 doubtful language in respect to fundamental doctrines. His 
 trumpet does give a most uncertain sound. For instance, 
 in sundry sermons and prayer-meeting talks, and in essays 
 read at various associations, he has spoken heretically, or 
 neglected to speak at all, concerning the following doctrines, 
 to wit : the fall of man in Adam, and their just condemna 
 tion therefore to all the ills that the human race has suffered ; 
 the doctrine of total depravity ; the atonement through the 
 sacrificial blood of Christ ; election by grace ; the infallibil 
 ity of the Bible; and the everlasting punishment of the 
 wicked. 
 
 " ' Specification Second. He is known to fraternize with 
 such men as Judge Harrington and uncle Zeke on the hill ; 
 and when they say they like his doctrine because it is differ 
 ent from the old style, instead of rebuking them, he accepts 
 of their approval. 
 
 "'Specification Third. In an essay read at the associa 
 tion held in Slidell, he expressed his belief in the horrible 
 : teachings of Darwin and modern science ; and, further, in a 
 debate, defended the character of that arch-infidel Theodore 
 Parker. 
 
 " ' Specification Fourth. At the funeral of the late Mrs. 
 Grey, a notorious infidel, who by guile had won the hearts 
 of many of our young people from the truth, he dared to 
 hold her up as a model ; and he accompanied his remarks 
 with certain ill- concealed hits at those who hold to 'salva 
 tion by faith,' and do not trust, as she did, to works. 
 
 " ' Specification Fifth. He- has preached against the 
 special providence of God, and assigned matters of his
 
 THE COUNCIL. 1/9 / 
 
 government to natural causes. As, for example, referring , 
 to a fire in the neighboring town, he denied that there was / 
 any proof that it was a judgment of God; and said that 
 he thought the cow that kicked the lamp over had more 
 to do with it than the sins of the people. And in like! 
 manner he has charged diseases on a lack of sanitary care: 
 rather than the wrath of God.' 
 
 " These, brethren, are enough. We had written out sev- 1 
 eral more ; but they are unnecessary. We lay this charge 
 before you for your consideration. I would not prejudice 
 your minds beforehand ; and yet it is only fair to intimate 
 that the matter of our second charge is far more serious, so \ 
 far as his character is concerned, though this one touches 
 far more closely the integrity of the gospel. For one may 
 be a great sinner, as I fear he is, my brethren, and yet 
 be forgiven and saved by the atoning blood ; but, if the 
 ' foundation be destroyed, what shall the righteous do?' ' 
 
 And he sat down as though he felt sure that so fitting a 
 Scripture-quotation must touch all right-feeling hearts. 
 
 Then followed remarks from various neighboring minis 
 ters, telling how they had been scandalized by the position 
 Mr. Forrest had taken at different ministerial and church 
 gatherings. His influence, they thought, over the neighbor 
 ing part of the State, was unfortunate. And particularly did 
 
 it appear, that in their several towns, when Mr. Forrest came 
 
 
 to speak and preach, various and sundry sinners, never at 
 
 other times seen in the sanctuary, would come out in full 
 force, and praise his sermons, and say they would go to hear 
 such common-sense preaching as that every Sunday in ^he \
 
 ISO BLUFFTON. 
 
 year ; all of which was to the great detriment of the pure 
 word of life as they dispensed it. 
 
 "And," said one, "it is not to be put up with, my 
 brethren. Shall carnal men, led astray by their carnal rea 
 son, say the gospel is common sense? It is not common 
 sense, my brethren : it is a mystery, the mystery of god 
 liness, known only to the elect." 
 
 " Yis," said uncle Zeke, familiarly tucking Judge Harring 
 ton in the ribs : " that's so. I heard that feller preach onct ; 
 and, sure 'nough, 'twas a mystery, couldn't make head 
 nor tail out on't." 
 
 But now the minister from Maple City, one of those who 
 had urged Mr. Forrest to stand the trial, rose and said, 
 
 "Mr. Moderator, and brethren, it is now time that at 
 least a word were spoken on the other side. There are 
 several of us ministers in this association, who feel that we 
 are on trial as well as Mr. Forrest. If he belongs out of 
 our ministry, then we have no right to remain. We have 
 urged him to stand this trial, that the matter might he 
 brought to a test. We are perpetually being taunted by the 
 men of science, and the freer newspaper press, because, as 
 they say, we orthodox churches allow no intellectual freedom 
 in our pulpits. I have been accustomed to resent and deny 
 this charge. And yet, if Mr. Forrest is to-day condemned, 
 my mouth will be shut, and I shall have to confess, that, 
 so far as this association is concerned, the charge is true. 
 
 "What, my friends, has Mr. Forrest done? He has 
 preached a gospel of character and life. Are you ready to 
 confess that you do not want these things preached ? Then
 
 THE COUNCIL. l8l 
 
 indeed will the street taunt, that church-morality is below the 
 market, be justified. He has also studied all the modern 
 questions of the world in the light of science and scientific 
 criticism. Can we afford to confess that we are unwilling to 
 have the foundations of our faith examined? The bank 
 that is not willing to have its accounts looked into is the one 
 from which sensible and honest men will withdraw their 
 deposits. 
 
 " I, for one, am ashamed of the course which so many 
 churches take with their ministers. Do the pews pretend to 
 have studied and understood all these great themes ? The 
 idea is preposterous. And yet, in their ignorance, they 
 undertake to decide as to what the minister shall declare 
 to be true." 
 
 " Ugh ! the insultin' wretch ! To call us ignorant ! " ex 
 claimed aunt Sally Rawson, under her breath. 
 
 "Give it to 'em ! good for you ! " chuckled uncle Zeke. 
 
 But the minister, unconscious of these " asides," con 
 tinued, 
 
 "You put a premium on the ignorance and dishonesty 
 of your ministers. You make it a crime to study and learn 
 any thing new ; and you make it a virtue in them to cover 
 up and refuse to speak any new word of the Lord that may 
 come to them. You make the bread and butter of their 
 wives and children depend on their echoing your threadbare 
 thoughts, instead of inviting them to go forward and be 
 your leaders. Do you think that God is dead, or that he 
 has no way of getting access to human hearts to-day ? 
 
 " If the ministers of our churches are not to be per-
 
 1 82 BLUFFTON. 
 
 mitted to study all through God's universe, and take his truth 
 wherever they find it as their rightful heritage as his chil 
 dren, then there are many of us who will be glad to find it 
 out; and we shall discover ways of making for ourselves 
 platforms where we can speak, and where free and brave 
 and intelligent men and women will listen to us." 
 
 A vigorous round of applause followed this brave chal 
 lenge. But when the vote was called, stupidity and preju 
 dice as is usually the case were found to have a 
 numerical majority ; and Mr. Forrest was condemned as 
 heretical by a majority of three votes on the part of the 
 qualified members of the council. 
 
 And now Mr. Smiley, with the air of one whose righteous 
 course Providence had at last justified, arose again. He 
 pulled out his handkerchief, and prepared for another spon 
 taneous display of emotion. 
 
 " Brethren," said he, " satisfaction at the vindication of 
 the cause of the Lord, and sorrow for my erring brother, 
 contend so for mastery in my soul, that you must not be 
 surprised if you see me agitated. A righteous judgment 
 has been reached, my brethren, as to these theological vaga 
 ries, in spite of the unwise and ungodly defence of some 
 whom pride of heart has led astray," he looked around 
 at the Maple City minister, "and yet, as I gave you 
 timely warning, this is not all, my brethren, this is not all. 
 I might wish that the honor of God's Zion could have been 
 spared this disgrace ; but, my brethren, the ways of the 
 Lord are mysterious, and perhaps -we needed this chastise 
 ment. Perhaps, my brethren, only a humble member of
 
 THE COUNCIL. 183 
 
 this branch of our common Zion, perhaps I needed to be 
 humbled by being a member of a church whose minister 
 should do such an unheard-of thing hi the camp of the 
 Lord. 
 
 " It is now my painful duty, brethren, to read our 
 
 'SECOND CHARGE. 
 
 " ' We charge that the Rev. Mark Forrest, being a min 
 ister of the gospel, and pastor of this church in particu 
 lar, has grossly shamed his office, and brought disgrace 
 upon the cause of Christ, as shall be indicated in the follow 
 ing specifications. 
 
 "' Specification First. While on a recent visit to New 
 York, the said Rev. Mark Forrest was seen, by those pre 
 pared to testify to the same, to visit a certain house of noto 
 rious character, in a disreputable part of the city.' " 
 
 " Mark, I'm not going to stand this," fiercely exclaimed 
 Tom Winthrop in a hoarse whisper, where he sat by the 
 side of his friend. 
 
 "Yes, you are : keep still," calmly replied Mark. 
 
 " But it's an outrage on public decency." 
 
 " No matter. I've promised ; keep still. He can't out 
 rage any decency," said he with quiet contempt. " At any 
 rate, hear him through." 
 
 "' Specification Second. This same Rev. Mark Forrest, 
 on leaving New York, travelled in company with an un 
 known woman, whom he has left concealed at Maple City. 
 
 "'Specification Third. And only last Sunday beside at 
 least one previous visit he visited this aforesaid unknown 
 woman, and was actually seen in her company.'
 
 184 BLUFFTON. 
 
 "And now, my brethren," and he stopped once more to 
 cough, and wipe his eyes, though there appeared a lament 
 able dearth of moisture, " my painful duty is accom 
 plished. No one knows so well as my humble self, with 
 what painful reluctance it has been performed. But, my 
 brethren, the Lord's cause must be vindicated, and his 
 Church purged from corruption. I therefore wish to bring 
 this unspeakably painful scene to a close. To that end, 
 with your permission, Mr. Moderator, I will read a resolution 
 which has just been handed me." (He had written it him 
 self that morning, and put it into the hands of a clerk to 
 give to him at the proper time. He wished it to appear as 
 prepared by some one else equally anxious with himself for 
 the purity of Zion.) " This resolution is as follows : 
 
 " Resolved, That it is the sense of this council of ministers and 
 fathers in the Church, that the Rev. Mark Forrest be deposed from 
 the ministry of the gospel, of which he has shown himself unworthy ; 
 and that the churches of our common faith be duly apprised of his 
 misdemeanors, and warned that he is not a suitable person to admit to 
 their pulpits." 
 
 He had hardly finished reading, when the smothered 
 excitement and indignation broke out ; and cries of " No, 
 no ! " "No gag-law ! " " Proof, proof ! " arose from several 
 parts of the house. 
 
 " Why do the heathen rage agin the Lord's anointed ? " 
 piously ejaculated old Mrs. Buck. 
 
 " It's a confounded outrage ! " shouted old uncle Zeke. 
 
 " Mr. Moderator," called out Judge Harrington, " though 
 not a member of this council, I am a member of this town,
 
 THE COUNCIL. 185 
 
 and a friend of Mr. Forrest. This is indecent and lawless ; 
 and in the name of justice I protest." 
 
 The apoplectic face of Mr. Smiley was now flushed and 
 red with disappointment, and then lividly pale with rage. 
 His policy forsook him for a moment ; his smile that he 
 wore was lost in the underlying deep sea of hate that came 
 to the surface, and swamped it as bubbles are lost in a storm. 
 He tried to gain the ear of the house ; but there were 
 enough present who were in no mood to hear him further, 
 to prevent it. In the midst of the general excitement, Mr. 
 Winthrop jumped to his feet, and closed an excited consul 
 tation with Mr. Forrest by exclaiming, 
 
 " No, Mark, I'll bear it no longer. This is too much for 
 any promise made in the dark. It's better so. I see day 
 light now." 
 
 He leaped on the platform by the pulpit, and stood 
 silent, pale, and determined. The sight of Mr. Forrest's well- 
 known friend in this unusual position roused everybody's 
 curiosity, and startled the house into sudden silence. 
 
 Mr. Smiley looked as though he would like to rend him 
 like a tiger ; but policy, now uppermost again, and the 
 will of the council, kept him still in his seat.
 
 1 86 BLUFFTON. 
 
 XIX. 
 
 TOM SPEAKS. 
 
 MR. MODERATOR," calmly and deliberately began 
 Mr. Winthrop, " I am perfectly well aware that this 
 is not formal. But this is no time for forms. I am not a 
 member of this council ; and without your permission I 
 .have no right to speak." " Go on ! go on ! " rose in deter 
 mined cries all over the house. " But I suppose what you 
 want is the truth, something on the basis of which you can 
 render an impartial decision. I happen to be in possession 
 of facts that have a vital bearing on the question before you ; 
 but if you do not care to listen to them in this place, from 
 me, I shall find other ways of bringing them to your atten 
 tion." 
 
 At this point Mr. Smiley rose placidly to his feet, and 
 said, 
 
 "Mr. Moderator, this is an unusual and extraordinary 
 proceeding. I protest " 
 
 " Sit down ! Sit down ! " " Hear Mr. Winthrop ! Hear 
 Mr. Winthrop ! " " Fair all round, I say ! " and other such 
 impatient cries, broke from all parts of the house. 
 
 Mr. Smiley saw it was no use, and angrily gave way.
 
 TOM SPEAKS. IS/ 
 
 Mr. Winthrop proceeded, 
 
 " If you should not hear me, friends, it would not balk 
 my purpose ; and yet I thank you for permitting me to go 
 on." 
 
 Mr. Forrest now sat with his face in his hands, and, since 
 he could do no otherwise, let his friend have his way. 
 
 He said, 
 
 " I am the life-long personal friend of Mr. Forrest. I am 
 proud of the honor ; and I will not see him unjustly 
 harmed, so long as I have power to stand in his defence. 
 Having known him from a boy, I know on what good 
 ground I speak, when I say that he is incapable of a mean 
 or unmanly thing. 
 
 "You know me well enough to understand that I do not 
 care to meddle in your purely theological quarrels ; though 
 what better a church ever can do than to build up true 
 manhood and womanhood in society, as your minister has 
 tried to help you do, is more than I pretend to understand. 
 
 " I think I know enough of the men and passions of 
 Bluffton to know with whom all this trouble has originated." 
 
 " Do you mean me, sir? " severely asked Mr. Smiley, who 
 now rose to a point of order. 
 
 "Mr. Moderator," continued Mr. Winthrop, "if I am 
 not mistaken, this is an occasion on which personalities that 
 bear on the trial are permitted ; and, since the character of 
 a witness has some important relation to his testimony,. I am 
 willing to answer the gentleman's question ; " and, turning 
 and looking him full in the face, he said, 
 
 " Yes, Mr. Smiley, I mean you. And," proceeding rapidly
 
 1 88 BLUFFTON. 
 
 before he could again be interrupted, " whenever the church 
 will proceed to investigate them, I am ready to present 
 charges that will convince the most prejudiced that it is 
 Mr. Smiley, and not Mr. Forrest, that ought to be on trial." 
 
 While this was being said, Mr. Smiley was terribly excited, 
 in spite of his herculean effort to appear the typical meek and 
 lowly disciple. He had on his office-look when only clerks 
 and strangers were in ; and all his prayer-meeting face was 
 gone. But his efforts to control himself made him look as 
 though a compressed blood-vessel might burst at any 
 moment. 
 
 The scene over the house was one to be remembered. 
 Judge Harrington looked happy ; uncle Zeke was radiant ; 
 Deacon Putney, the conflict not being settled, did not yet 
 know how he ought to look, and so really did look confused 
 and foolish. Aunt Sally and Mrs. Buck were horror-stricken 
 at an infidel's being in the pulpit, and appeared to expect 
 a lightning- stroke to smite the church for such "goings-on." 
 Jane Ann added to her mother's horror by ejaculations of 
 unregenerate delight at seeing Mr. Smiley getting, for once, 
 what she ambiguously termed "his come-uppance." 
 
 But the apparent determination of the house to hear Mr. 
 Winthrop through brought everybody at last to quiet again, 
 and he went on, 
 
 " But the main thing on which I wish to be heard is not a 
 theological one. I happen to know the facts of the visit of 
 Mr. Forrest to New York. He would have kept still, and 
 allowed himself to be condemned through his honorable 
 fidelity to a sacred promise. I also little knowing that
 
 TOM SPEAKS. 189 
 
 things would come to such a pass as this had promised to 
 keep his secret. And I might do so even now, did I think the 
 lady's interest would be perilled by my speaking. But, since 
 I now believe otherwise, I cannot allow a true man to be 
 slaughtered by the lying tongue of scandal. I have an 
 interesting story to tell, a story whose interest may be pain 
 ful to some before I am through, and that ought to make 
 the ears burn that listen. 
 
 " A certain beautiful young lady was the ward of a domi 
 neering brother. She lived, no matter where as yet. She 
 was in love with and engaged to a noble man, that this 
 brother opposed. Being of a timid and yielding disposi 
 tion, and all her inherited property being in her brother's 
 hands, he easily frightened and coerced her to his will. This 
 in all ordinary matters. But even the weakest will some 
 times rebel; and when this brother proposed to compel 
 her to marry another man against her will, for the purpose 
 of helping on some business schemes of his own, she fled 
 from home, and went to visit friends in an Eastern city. 
 She would have sent for the one to whom she was engaged, 
 and been secretly married, only that she was too proud to 
 tell .him her reasons, and he was not in a business position 
 to make it seem desirable as yet for some time. Meanwhile 
 her brother refused to send her money, and she became 
 despondent. She thought of suicide, or, at any rate, did 
 not seem to care what became of her. Her friends watched 
 her, fearing she might lose her reason. One day she disap 
 peared. They traced her to Fall River, and aboard the New 
 York boat, and then lost the track. She sat up late, and
 
 BLUFFTON. 
 
 meditated flinging herself into the Sound. She would walk 
 the saloon, go out on the deck, and watch the black water 
 as it sped past, and then, shuddering, enter the saloon again. 
 This she did several times. She wished for death, but 
 lacked the resolution. 
 
 " She had noticed that she was watched by two men ; but 
 she did not think of fear on a public boat, and she was too 
 much absorbed in Jier own sorrow to keep watch of their 
 movements. Toward midnight, as she passed, with her 
 head down, by the long rows of staterooms, a door suddenly 
 opened, she felt herself dragged irresistibly in, and, before 
 she could open her lips to scream, she was gagged and 
 bound. 
 
 " When she came to herself she awoke in a room most 
 gorgeously furnished, and, to her horror, discovered what had 
 passed and where she was. She was an involuntary inhabit 
 ant of one of the gilded dens of vice in the great metropo 
 lis. Here was something worse than the death she sought. 
 At first she was frantic : she determined to escape at all 
 hazards. And then the appalling thought came over her, 
 that she was branded now, and past hope. No one would 
 believe her story. They would think she had come there 
 by her own fault. If her brother had been cruel before, 
 what would his wounded pride make him now? And she 
 knew him so well as to feel that perhaps, since she would 
 not marry the man he had chosen to further his own inter 
 ests, he would be glad to be rid of her, and so get her fortune 
 that he now held only in trust. . And then her lover, of 
 course he was now lost forever : he would never take a wife
 
 TOM SPEAKS. IQI 
 
 whose reputation was tainted. And how could she face the 
 world? They would point their fingers, and hiss through 
 their teeth, in whatever station she might move. What won 
 der if, under such considerations, her resolution to escape 
 gave way, and she made up her mind to submit to what 
 seemed the inevitable? 
 
 " Just now Mr. Forrest was in New York." 
 At this point the listening was breathless ; and Mr. Smiley, 
 in particular, looked on Mr. Winthrop like a fascinated 
 thing. But he went on, 
 
 " He visited at the house of a friend, who is an old phy 
 sician. He had an patient among this class of women 
 where the poor victim was now a prisoner. One morning 
 as he started on his calls, if I ever believed in special 
 
 
 
 providences, I should say the Divine Spirit prompted him to 
 invite Mr. Forrest to go with him. 
 
 " ' Come,' he said, ' I must make a professional call. Go 
 with me, and we can talk as we go.' 
 
 " Thus invited, he went. And this is the substance of Mr. 
 Smiley's first specification under his second charge. But 
 more is to come. 
 
 "As they passed through the hall, Mr. Forrest caught sight 
 of a face that was familiar from photographs he had seen. 
 Having a singular memory for faces, he was sure he was not 
 mistaken. He looked again ; and, astonished though he was, 
 he felt sure of the identity. As the woman passed, he said, 
 looking her full in the face, 
 
 " ' Good-morning, Mary.' 
 
 " Mr. Smiley started as if some one had struck him, but 
 was perfectly still.
 
 I Q2 BLUFFTON. 
 
 " She, not being willing to be recognized in a place like 
 this, looked on him calmly as she could, and said, 
 
 " ' My name is not Mary. Why do you speak to me ? I 
 do not know you.' 
 
 " ' Yet your name is Mary,' said he ; and she passed on. 
 
 " When the medical call was over, and they were return 
 ing through the hall again, Mr. Forrest noticed that the par 
 lor door was open ; and, as he glanced in, the same woman 
 stood by the mantel, and beckoned to him. Excusing him 
 self from the doctor, he went in, and stood before her. 
 
 " ' Why did you call me Mary ? ' said she. 
 
 " ' Because that is your name/ he quietly replied. ' I have 
 seen your photograph too often not to know you. Why are 
 you here ? ' 
 
 " She knew him also by pictures of him she had seen, 
 though till now she was not ready to acknowledge it. 
 
 " ' Mr. Forrest,' she said, and broke down, sobbing, ' I am 
 lost.' 
 
 " ' Perhaps not,' said he. ' Do you want to stay here ? ' 
 
 " ' O God, no ! ' she sobbed ; ' but where can I go ? what 
 can I do ? ' 
 
 " ' Sit down here calmly, and let us talk,' said he. 
 
 "When she had told him her whole story, she con 
 tinued, 
 
 " ' But I can't go back to my brother : he'll not take me. 
 The man I was to marry will turn away from me. I may as 
 well stay here. Only don't tell any one where I am,' she 
 desperately pleaded. 
 
 " ' But, since you do not want to stay here, it is worth while
 
 TOM SPEAKS. 193 
 
 to try what can be done. Go West with me. I will keep 
 your secret till you are ready to speak. I will sound your 
 brother, and find what he will do. I will explain every thing 
 to your lover : he is a man, and will do right.' 
 
 " ' Perhaps,' she said, ' there is hope. I found myself here 
 only yesterday. I am pure of any voluntary stain. I will 
 let you try ; yes, you may try.' 
 
 " And so Mr. Forrest ordered a carriage, took her to a 
 hotel, paid her bills, and has brought her West to my house, 
 where she is now concealed, as the second specification 
 charges. 
 
 " As to the third, he has been to Maple City to see her. 
 He was in her company last Sunday. He tried to get her 
 consent to speak with her friends ; but, timid and frightened, 
 she would not yet give it. His promise, that, unlike some, 
 he chooses to honor, has kept him silent, and made it pos 
 sible for his enemies to abuse a man whose shoes they are 
 not fit to carry. Though, did she know now much depended 
 on the words I have spoken, she would have been here her 
 self for the deliverance of her savior." 
 
 All eyes were now turned toward Mr. Forrest, who still 
 did not look up ; but, as Mr. Winthrop proceeded, they fas 
 tened on him again. 
 
 " Only a word more is to be said. That word, I am gen 
 uinely sorry and pained to say, must be one of disgrace. 
 But, mind you, the disgrace does not attach to my friend 
 Mr. Forrest. It does, however, attach to him who is the 
 underhand leader and instigator of this whole not prose 
 cution, but persecution. It only remains for me to add,
 
 IQ4 BLUFFTON. 
 
 that this young lady, the victim of her brother's avarice and 
 lack of heart, a brother who covers his selfish plans' deep 
 down under a sniffling piety, this mysterious Maple City 
 lady, now at my house and under my care, is the sister of 
 your noble prosecutor, Mr. Richard Smiley." 
 
 A silence struck dumb with astonishment followed ; and 
 then it burst into uproarious applause. Uncle Zeke flung 
 his hat up to the ceiling, and shouted, 
 
 " Hooray ! I knowed he was all right ! I knowed it ! In 
 course I did ! " 
 
 Deacon Putney rushed forward, and grasped Mr. Forrest's 
 hand ; and he now was thronged by congratulations on every 
 side. 
 
 And even old Mrs. Buck and aunt Sally looked wise, 
 and mutually remarked in a breath, 
 
 "Of course ! anybody might 'a' knowed such a nice man 
 as Mr. Forrest was all right ; " and they actually made them 
 selves think they had always been of the same opinion. 
 
 But where was Mr. Smiley? He had followed Mr. Win- 
 throp's narrative with breathless and passionate attention. 
 He had seen the possibility of its conclusion, and shrunk 
 from it while his heart stood still, as if terror-struck in a tem 
 pest. And yet he had hoped it was about some one else ; 
 and he did not dare to speak, or show his conflicting emo 
 tions, for that would be confession at least of a parallel 
 story on his own part. So he sat in speechless horror as the 
 tale proceeded ; and when the climax came, he saw, in one 
 vivid flash of thought, as though his brain had been lighted 
 by an electric blaze, his power and prestige gone. He was
 
 TOM SPEAKS. 195 
 
 unmasked. No more in city or church could he be the 
 leader again ; and to live, and not lead, was to him worse 
 than death. So, while the confusion raged about him, a 
 worse chaos and struggle went on within. He was flushed 
 and livid by turns ; and, as at last he clutched his nails into 
 his palms in the effort at self-control, he suddenly fainted 
 and fell. 
 
 A physician who was present was hurriedly called ; and 
 he had him taken up, and carried to the door. But when 
 he got there, and felt for his pulse, it was only a flicker; 
 
 B 
 
 and even that soon ceased. The doctor said a blood-vessel 
 had burst in his excitement. And Richard Smiley was no 
 more.
 
 196 BLUFFTON. 
 
 XX. 
 
 THE BROKEN RING. 
 
 MR. FORREST cared little for his triumph, little for 
 the excited change in the feelings of the fickle pub 
 lic, that, by as much as it had degraded him, now exalted 
 him in its enthusiastic reverence as a hero. It was little 
 to him that the church, almost in a body, now came and 
 begged him to stay with them. For, even had he not been 
 condemned as heretic by a formal council, still he felt 
 that in an orthodox church was not his proper field of 
 work. He could not remain without contracting his range 
 of study, and clipping the wings of his thought ; and these 
 things he could not do, and maintain his self-respect. For 
 to call it freedom of thought, where you were bound under 
 penalty to come to certain foregone conclusions, now seemed 
 to him a sad intellectual confusion in the use of words, 
 even if you overlooked its reprehensible moral quality. 
 
 He cared, I say, for none of these things ; for the reason 
 that he saw inevitably before him the darkest sorrow of his 
 life. It seemed to him worse than death : for death leaves 
 tender regret and inspiring, memories ; and also it leaves 
 one the hope, at least, of meeting again those so rudely torn
 
 THE BROKEN RING. 197 
 
 from us here. But a separation like that which he foresaw 
 was coming was bereft of all these consolations. It could 
 leave behind it only useless, gnawing regrets ; and, should 
 they meet in any future, still he would have no claim based 
 on any past possession. 
 
 So keenly did he feel this, that he could not nerve him 
 self up to face the meeting and the parting. He must post 
 pone it, and collect himself after his excitement. So, send 
 ing Madge a note appointing a meeting for the following 
 Sunday evening, and excusing himself till then, he deter 
 mined to return with Tom to Maple City. 
 
 "I can't bear even to see my friends now," said he. 
 " They will talk to me kindly, but about things of no con 
 cern to-day. A husband waiting for the funeral of his wife 
 doesn't care to discuss the market rates." 
 
 And so he took himself away. The two days passed 
 quickly, as do the last hours to the criminal awaiting the 
 clock-stroke that knells his execution. Here at Maple City, 
 he walked up and down the levee as the steamer came and 
 went, and thought over the crowded events of this one year. 
 His life seemed short, compared with its hurried events. 
 
 "How many tragedies," thought he, "are beginning, pro 
 gressing, or ending, in the midst of these apparently thought 
 less passengers, as they come and go ! " 
 
 He went .over the past, step by step, and lived it all 
 again. He and Tom, two happy, careless young men, stood 
 on the levee once more. They jested together about the 
 little lady that tripped so heart-free up the plank ; and now 
 he and that lady dared not look each other in the face, for
 
 198 BLUFFTON. 
 
 the great agony that was tugging at both their hearts. A 
 little year ago, and he stood on the forward deck, and 
 sailed out into the fairy world of enchantment, and in that 
 world he had found the princess of his soul ; but the dragon 
 of old theologic superstition held her in the midst of a magic 
 circle from which she could escape only over her father's 
 heart ; and this her very goodness forbade. His new-found 
 friend, Mrs. Grey, was gone. He must clasp the honest old 
 hand of uncle Zeke, and try to say good-by. His life-work 
 was blasted. The past had turned to ashes ; and the future 
 as yet was a desolate wilderness, through which he could 
 not even catch the glimpse of a path. 
 
 And now, as he turned away, his soul was wrung with 
 questionings. 
 
 In such a mood as this, for the past year haunted him, 
 he started out in the evening for a lonely walk. He had 
 talked himself tired with Tom ; and for a little, before he 
 went to bed, he must be alone. He strolled beyond the 
 edge of the town, and on the bank of the river. The sky 
 was full of stars, and their far-off silence was as near to sym 
 pathy as any thing he could bear. And now the flood swept 
 over him. Moods changed so rapidly that he seemed to 
 possess several selves; and now and then he would lose 
 himself in the fancy that he was listening to a raging contest 
 in which he had no concern except to hear ; and then he 
 would wake, and come to himself with a new and added pang 
 of sorrow. 
 
 " Oh, I've been a fool ! " he cried. "Why need I seek to 
 be wiser than my fathers ? I've tasted the spring of knowl-
 
 THE BROKEN RING. 1 99 
 
 edge, and its waters have madness in them. Thousands 
 have lived and died happy in the old faith. Why need I 
 undermine the house in which I might have sheltered and 
 delighted in my love?" 
 
 And then he would think again, 
 
 " The first intellectual and religious houses of the race were 
 caves and huts. And, as the first steps of upward progress 
 were made, doubtless the same questions came then from 
 hearts with the same world-old agony. It is always a crime 
 to tear down the old, even for the sake of a better. Our 
 present houses, perchance, are but primeval huts to those 
 which shall give palatial religious shelter to the men who 
 shall look upon us as, in comparison, superstitious and bar 
 barous. The destructive builders of the past are the ones 
 we worship, though their ages cast them out. And some 
 one must do the work of to-day for the future. But need 
 / do it? Oh that I might escape ! But I have heard the 
 voice of God ; and now woe is me if I preach not his better 
 gospel. And, O Madge ! woe is me if I do ! " 
 
 On Saturday the two friends again walked together down 
 to the boat. 
 
 "Mark," said Tom, as arm in arm they strolled slowly 
 down the street, " I haven't felt like speaking to Miss Smiley 
 after all that has occurred : how do you find her? " 
 
 " As badly as her brother treated her, still, you know, the 
 ties of blood are strong, and he was the last of her family. 
 The manner, also, of his taking-off, was a great shock to her. 
 Still I can't but think she feels a sense of relief. He wasn't 
 one that anybody could love overmuch."
 
 2OO BLUFFTON. 
 
 " And since he has never married, and left no will, she, 
 as next heir, comes now into his property as well as her 
 own." 
 
 "Yes; and, best of all, the odious dependence on him, 
 created by her father's will, is of course broken now, and 
 she is free." 
 
 "But what does she say, Mark, about my breaking the 
 silence of her secret ? " 
 
 "Of course her delicacy would have had it kept; but, 
 under the circumstances, she blesses you for it. She up 
 braided me most severely for not letting her know how my 
 relations to her were complicating my own affairs. I think 
 she'd have appeared at the council, and told her own story, 
 rather than have had me suffer by her silence." 
 
 " But now, Mark, it's almost boat-time, and I must ask 
 you a word or two about Miss Hartley." 
 
 "O Tom ! I can hardly speak on that subject now. She's 
 lost to me forever, I fear. Fear? I know it, Tom. I wish I, 
 too, had fallen beside Smiley. ' Wherefore is light given to 
 him that is in misery, and life unto the bitter in soul? ' I've 
 nothing left to live for." 
 
 " Why don't she leave the old curmudgeon of a judge, 
 Mark? What's the use of spoiling a living happiness for a 
 dying superstition?" 
 
 " Don't speak that way, Tom, if you love me. You don't 
 know the judge, or Madge either. We three are simply the 
 fated personages in an inevitable tragedy. In his circum 
 stances, the judge could be no other than he is. And of his 
 kind he's a noble specimen, a true man. And, beside, he's
 
 THE BROKEN RING. 2OI 
 
 too old to change. The brain gets stiff, as the joints do, 
 with age. And, in my circumstances, I can be no other 
 without deliberate surrender of my manhood ; and I won't 
 offer Madge a shell with only a lie wrapped up in it. And 
 as for Madge herself, dear, sweet girl, I couldn't change her 
 without spoiling her high womanhood. If she could trample 
 on her father's heart, then by and by she might on mine. 
 No, Tom, it's tragedy. Just as in the old Greek plays the 
 characters are inmeshed by the fates in circumstances where 
 death is the only way out, so it is now. What the gods 
 mean by it all, perhaps we'll know some day ; but I can't 
 make it out now." 
 
 " Well, Mark, old fellow, I wish I could help you ; but it's 
 one of those battles where only one can fight." 
 
 Meantime Madge also was struggling alone with her des 
 tiny. Mark had been condemned by the council ; but she 
 did not know enough of the technical points in dispute fully 
 to appreciate what his awful heresy was. But her heart rose 
 up in admiration of his manliness and sincerity. And par 
 ticularly did her heart throb with a new and deeper love at 
 the revelation of his tenderness toward the fallen, and his 
 faithfulness to his delicate sense of honor at whatever cost. 
 In her soul she bowed down before the image of his 
 nobility, and worshipped, as one does homage to the figure 
 of some grand heroism in history or romance. 
 
 But then, she was one of those whose roots strike deeply 
 into the reverence and sentiment of the past. All she had 
 ever known or thought of God, of duty, of sanctities, of 
 religion in the present, or hope for the future, were linked
 
 2O2 BLUFFTON. 
 
 indissolubly with her father's thought and the training of her 
 home. As she had conceived no other thought, to give up 
 that seemed bald, blank atheism, the blotting all high, sweet 
 spiritualities out of the universe. She knew Mark must 
 see something; but to her it was all chaos and darkness. 
 When she thought of these things as gone, her soul seemed 
 to wander up and down a desert world, like the Wandering 
 Jew, driven on and on ; or like the dove from the ark, seeing 
 no place of rest, but only a dreary waste of waters that had 
 buried every sweet and beautiful and green thing. All her 
 childhood memories plead with her. The past rebuked her 
 as an impious traitor. The future threatened ; for, having 
 vividly in her mind the whole evangelical scheme of things, 
 her guardian angel seemed to weep for her possible defec 
 tion. And in her dreams she found herself standing outside 
 the fast-shut gate of the celestial city into which she had 
 just seen father and mother and sisters enter ; and, as weep 
 ing she turned hopelessly away, she saw Mark, with haggard 
 look and downcast eyes, ready to plead with her for an 
 impossible forgiveness for having led her astray. And, as 
 she waked, she would think that even outside with him was 
 better than any heaven from which his honesty could cast 
 him out. But then her conscience stood up stoutly in her 
 soul ; and all her moral, tender, loving nature revolted at the 
 thought of trampling on her father's heart for the sake of 
 gratifying a selfish love. 
 
 " No," she cried, " I can not, will not. It may kill me, it 
 will kill me ; but I will not be ignoble ! If I cannot be a 
 true daughter, I cannot be a true wife. If I am untrue here,
 
 THE BROKEN RING. 2O3 
 
 I shall only be giving Mark, not what he seeks, a whole, 
 true woman, but one whose conscience has been violated, 
 the tone of whose life has been lowered." 
 
 Such, then, were the two hearts that fate had driven 
 together in the passionate collision of a hopeless love. 
 They could only touch hands, and learn how sweet it was to 
 look in each other's eyes, and then find growing up between 
 them the stern, hard, cold face of Duty, and see her fixed 
 finger pointing them each a separate way. 
 
 Their meeting on Sunday evening was a passionate one ; 
 for, while Mark held her convulsively to his heart, their 
 tears did eloquent duty for words. They needed only brief 
 speech for mutual understanding. The electric wires of 
 love and grief carry subtle messages, and need not the 
 clumsy medium of language. 
 
 " Madge," at last he said, " I must leave Bluffton to 
 morrow. I cannot endure it here* Let us take one more 
 walk before I go." 
 
 And, as they stepped out into the night, they seemed 
 instinctively to feel that there was only one place to which 
 they could go, and that the now sacred spot that had such 
 sweet, and was to have such bitter, memories. They sat 
 down again beneath the old chestnut-tree ; while the moon 
 once more came up large and round and yellow in the 
 dense atmosphere that belted the horizon, and looked across 
 the shimmering river full into their saddened faces. 
 
 " Madge," said he, as he caressed a loosened lock of 
 hair upon her forehead, " do you love me still, as you did 
 when we sat here before ? "
 
 2O4 BLUFFTON. 
 
 " Don't break my heart with a question like that. I've 
 only learned to love you more and more." 
 
 "And yet you cannot follow me," said he with a slight 
 tinge of reproach in his tone. 
 
 " Mark, if you loved me" she cried almost fiercely, " you 
 would not make it harder for me than it is. It is already 
 more than I can bear." 
 
 " But, Madge, I've only done my duty." 
 
 " Oh, if you could only have let these awful things alone ! 
 It cannot be God that has led you to what is killing me." 
 
 "Can you not follow me even yet, since you do love, 
 me?" 
 
 " Oh, I can't, I can't ! I dare not ! Father has not 
 spoken much of late ; but oh, he looks at me so ! His 
 white face would haunt me forever, could I desert him 
 now." 
 
 "But, Madge" 
 
 " Mark ! " she broke in hurriedly and abruptly, " do you 
 know what you ask of me? Would you have me at the 
 price of making me unworthy of you? One falsity in life 
 would taint me all through. I can't, I can't ! " she sobbed : 
 " do not tempt me, or I shall fall." 
 
 " But at the worst, Madge, may I not think of it as a tem 
 porary separation? Years of waiting will be nothing, if I 
 may hope." 
 
 The struggle now in Madge's soul was fearful. This to 
 her was not a new suggestion. She had battled with it in 
 the long days, and it had haunted her in her dreams. Long 
 before this she thought she had settled it, that she must not
 
 THE BROKEN RING. 
 
 consent even to this. Her father was hale and strong, and 
 would live for years. Meantime she should change, and 
 Mark would change. Men loved, she said to herself, then 
 went away, and learned to love again. So it might be with 
 him. He would go away, and find another field of activity. 
 Others would smile upon and flatter him. Meanwhile she 
 would be losing her freshness as she lived on at home, and 
 waited on her father's declining years. Her delicate sensi 
 tiveness made her feel she would be doing him a wrong to 
 keep him tied to a promise that anyway must wait for years, 
 and that he might come to wish himself freed from. She 
 had said to herself, 
 
 "True love will live without promises; and, though it 
 break my heart, I must be true to his real interests, even if I 
 appear cruel. I do not love him as I ought, if I cannot 
 take up this cross." 
 
 So as he repeated his question, 
 
 "May I hope, Madge?" she said slowly, and with a sort 
 of desperate firmness, 
 
 " Yes, Mark, we will both hope for the best ; for heaven 
 if not for earth. But here and now we must separate and be 
 free. It is better so ; " and she bit her lips, and crowded 
 back the tears. 
 
 " Madge," he said, rising to his feet, " I had hoped for 
 more than this." 
 
 " Mark," said she, " the years will be many before I am 
 free. I shall change. You will change. I cannot wrong 
 you by holding to you a pledge you may wish to break." 
 
 " But I can never love any one else," pleaded he.
 
 2O6 BLUFFTON. 
 
 "The years will tell." 
 
 "You will not, then?" 
 
 " Mark, not will not : I can not ; I ought not." 
 
 "Madge, I cannot think this kind; and it will leave a 
 bitter memory in my heart. I must think you have some 
 motive I do not know." And out of the strong passion of 
 his love, and his bitter hopelessness,, he uttered cruel words, 
 that gave him many an after-pang : " I have been told that 
 women were fickle, but I thought it not of you." 
 
 She did not reply; for she could not. She dared not 
 trust herself. She would have broken down weeping like a 
 child in his arms. "I have done right," she thought. 
 " The bond must be snapped at any cost." 
 
 She now rose, and the two stood a silent moment in the 
 moonlight. At last she held out her hand, that hand that 
 had brought him to her feet, and was now pushing him away. 
 He caught it, kissed it, and wet it with his tears. 
 
 Then she slowly, without trusting herself to look toward 
 him again, began to move away. 
 
 "But Miss Hartley," the distant address stung her, 
 " I must at least see you to your gate." 
 
 " No, please," she faltered. " It is only a little way ; and 
 the evening is light. I cannot part with you there." 
 
 He flung himself upon the ground, and buried his face in 
 his hands. When he again looked up, he was alone with the 
 pitiless stars. 
 
 As that night, after long tossing, at last he lay in a troubled 
 sleep, he dreamed all over the sad tragedy of Jean Ingelow's 
 " Divided," a poem he had long ago committed to mem-
 
 THE BROKEN RING. 2O/ 
 
 ory; and ever and ever through his brain there sounded 
 the sad refrain, 
 
 " No backward path ; ah I no returning : 
 
 No second crossing that ripple's flow : 
 ' Come to me now, for the west is burning ; 
 Come ere it darkens ! ' Ah, no ! ah, no I 
 
 " Then cries of pain, and arms outreaching 
 
 The beck grows wider and swift and deep : 
 Passionate words as of one beseeching 
 The loud beck drowns them : we walk, and weep."
 
 2O8 BLUFFTON. 
 
 XXI. 
 
 RECONSIDERATION. 
 
 THE very next day saw Mr. Forrest's hurried good-by 
 to Bluffton. He could not bear even to see his 
 friends. He could not leave, however, without one last 
 word with uncle Zeke, and one more grip of his honest 
 hand. 
 
 " It's mighty rough on me, Mr. Forrest ; but it's jest what 
 I expected," said he. M That ar' Sunday mornin' here on 
 the hill, I told ye you's too likely a feller to be a minister ; 
 and ye be, fur sich ornery critters." 
 
 " Well, uncle, I've done my duty, and paid the price for 
 it. At least I'll take away with me my self-respect." 
 
 " 'Deed ye will, Mr. Forrest. An' ye '11 take away, beside, 
 the lovin' gratitude o' many a poor man an' woman you've 
 helped. An' ye'll take along the daylight o' lots on us that's 
 long sot in darkness for the want o' a little sense in reli 
 gion." 
 
 And, as they parted, uncle Zeke grasped his hand, and 
 almost crushed it in the warmth of his emotion, while he 
 turned his head away, and pretended to be blowing his 
 nose ; though, in reality, he was dashing away the moisture 
 from his eyes, that he was ashamed to have his friend see.
 
 RECONSIDERATION. 2CX) 
 
 He spent one hurried day with Tom ; for in his present 
 mood of mind he did not wish to stay long, even in the 
 region of Bluffton, a region now so thronged with unpleas 
 ant memories. There being no longer any reason for Miss 
 Smiley's remaining at Maple City, she was preparing to put 
 her brother's affairs into the hands of an attorney for settle 
 ment, intending herself to return to her friends at the East. 
 Her parting with Mr. Forrest was such an one as only their 
 strange relations could have made possible. 
 
 "I shall always think of you as my savior," said she. 
 " It makes me shudder with horror," and she covered her 
 face with her hands, as though shutting out some fearful 
 picture, " to think of what the future would have been to 
 me, but for you." 
 
 " But I was only human," he replied. " Any one, not a 
 brute, would save a sparrow from the hawk." 
 
 " Nevertheless," she replied, " it was you who saved me. 
 I can never forget that. I shall worship you always as my 
 saint." 
 
 Mr. Forrest had some friends in a northern city on the 
 lake ; and he determined to spend a few days there, while 
 making up his mind what future course to pursue. Drop 
 ping into one of the public reading-rooms one morning, he 
 met two prominent doctors of divinity, belonging to two dif 
 ferent but representative branches of the great orthodox 
 body. He had met them before, on some public occasion, 
 and so had sufficient acquaintance to form the basis of a 
 conversation. The daily papers those innumerable inky 
 tongues of the goddess Rumor had caught the echoes of
 
 2IO BLUFFTON. 
 
 Bluffton affairs, so that they knew something of what Mr. 
 Forrest had gone through. They were chatting together in 
 one corner of the room as he entered. Rising, and shaking 
 him cordially by the hand, and one of them drawing a third 
 chair into the corner, they all three sat down together. 
 
 " So. they've been having you on the theological gridiron, 
 have they?" remarked, rather than inquired, the Rev. Dr. 
 Thomes. 
 
 "Yes," replied Mr. Forrest; "and they've fried me so 
 well, that I'm completely done with orthodoxy." 
 
 " And I think it's a perfect outrage," continued Dr. 
 Thomes, "that there should always be just enough old 
 fogies from the middle ages, in every conference, to kill off 
 any young man that's bright enough to have a new idea. 
 If they can have their own way, they'll condemn the Church 
 to perpetual mediocrity. They seem to think stupidity and 
 piety are synonymous." 
 
 " You never said a truer word, Dr. Thomes, in your life," 
 said Dr. Hay. "I don't know of an exceptionally bright 
 man anywhere, who isn't spotted by somebody as a heretic. 
 Nowadays, that only means that he's got, and dares to utter, 
 a new idea." 
 
 "And," said Dr. Thomes, "if no new ideas are to be 
 allowed, I'd like to have somebody explain to me how the 
 world is ever to grow any. These theological purists, if they 
 were gardeners, would be cutting off, in the spring, every 
 new leaf and twig, as innovations ; and seeing to it that the 
 tree staid where it was last year." 
 
 " Yes ; but," said Mr. Forrest, " after all my painful and
 
 RECONSIDERATION. 211 
 
 forced attention to the matter, I am inclined to think they 
 are right. Being acquainted with your reputation as what 
 has come, curiously enough, to be called Liberal Orthodox, 
 I am not at all surprised at your opinions. But I must differ 
 with you." 
 
 " And / must differ with you" said Dr. Hay. " Now, in 
 your own case, I think you have made a decided mistake. 
 When, as I see by the morning paper, your people gathered 
 about you, and urged you to remain, I think you ought to 
 have done it. You had a good opportunity to help us fight 
 out this battle." 
 
 " But," replied Mr. Forrest, " I have come to feel that I 
 have no right to fight the battle in any such Trojan-horse 
 style. Strategy and deception are counted fair in war ; but 
 it seems questionable to me, to fight the battles of truth and 
 God in underhand and deceptive ways." 
 
 "I do not quite admit your point," said Dr. Thomes. 
 "Has a man no rights in the church in which he was 
 born?" 
 
 "Yes," answered Mr. Forrest, "the right either to re 
 main loyal to it, or to leave it." 
 
 " But may he not remain in it and reform it? " 
 
 " I think not," said he, " if I understand what you mean 
 by reform, that is, change it to something else. If a man 
 is in a Shakspeare Club, and concludes that he would pre 
 fer a Philosophical Society, the simple and honest way would 
 be to leave the first, and organize the second, not undertake 
 to break up the club while still claiming to be loyal to it." 
 
 "But doctrines change," said Dr. Hay, "just as modern
 
 212 BLUFFTON. 
 
 Italian has grown out of the Latin. Must one leave his 
 country on that account? " 
 
 " No," said Mr. Forrest ; " but I wouldn't confuse things 
 that differ. You don't go on claiming that modern Italian is 
 just the genuine old Latin. You call it what it is, and let 
 people take their choice." 
 
 " But there are such stupid prejudices on the part of the 
 common people, that they will not hear the whole truth. 
 They have to be led along like children, as they are able." 
 
 " But," returned Mr. Forrest, " I think that if you will 
 pardon me for saying it the cowardice of the pulpit is 
 responsible for much of the prejudice ; at least, for its con 
 tinuance." 
 
 " And yet," said Dr. Thomes, " the minister must preach 
 what people will hear, if he is going to preach at all. If he 
 gets branded as heretical, then he loses all his influence, and 
 his power is gone. If he is prudent, and gives out his new 
 views as they will bear it, then he can gradually lead them 
 into broader ways." 
 
 " I have looked all these arguments over ; and you are 
 not the first ones that have urged me to act in accordance 
 with them. But I cannot see my way." 
 
 "But consider the case of Mr. Blank, now holding his 
 services in our great hall. He's doing an immense good. 
 Occupying as he does a middle position, he draws about 
 him the conservative liberals and the liberal orthodox, and 
 holds the throngs of both in his hands." 
 
 " I know it all, and have thought of it all," Mr. Forrest 
 replied. " And if one, in all honesty and sincerity, can hold
 
 RECONSIDERATION. 213 
 
 such a position, he will appeal to the largest numbers in 
 these transition times. For, let a man be pronounced and 
 clear on either side, and of course he loses those on the 
 other. The times are hazy ; and the hazy man, Mr. Facing- 
 both-ways, will see the biggest houses, for he has the largest 
 constituency. An honest Facing-both-ways may do much 
 temporary good. But they are not the builders : they raise 
 only temporary huts till the house gets framed and boarded 
 in." 
 
 "If they can hold the position honestly, you said," 
 broke in Dr. Hay : " don't you think they are honest ? " 
 
 " Some of them, undoubtedly. But it's a strain on any 
 man's conscience. Now, this Mr. Blank you spoke of said 
 only the other day to a friend of mine who was visiting the 
 city, 'Mr. Winthrop, what I think and believe in my study is 
 one thing ; and what I think it best, as I consider the con 
 dition of my people, to give them as food, and to build them 
 up in the Christian life, that is another thing." What do you 
 call that?" 
 
 " I'm too much astonished to call it any thing," said Dr. 
 Hay. 
 
 " But I call it the worst kind of Jesuitry," said Mr. For 
 rest ; " lying for the glory of God, and to build up his king 
 dom of truth. And yet pardon me for saying that it seems 
 to me only the logical carrying-out of your own principle. 
 Were you not just urging me to do the same? " 
 
 " I was not looking at it in that light," said Dr. Thomes. 
 
 " Now, let me give you my opinion just a little at length," 
 said Mr. Forrest. " Catholicism, for example, is a fixed and
 
 214 BLUFFTON. 
 
 definite system. To change it is, of course, to make some 
 thing else out of it, to destroy it. The something else may 
 be better ; but it certainly isn't the same. To change it all 
 over, then, and still call it Roman Catholic, would be an 
 absurdity as well as a falsehood. Therefore it seems to me 
 that Pius IX. was clear-headed and logical when, in his last 
 encyclical, he anathematized those who said the Church 
 ought to progress, and conform to modern civilization. 
 
 "And the same is true of orthodoxy in any form. It 
 claims to be based on a clear, explicit, and finished scheme 
 of divine revelation. Now, the world may change in its 
 relations toward an infallible revelation ; but to say that 
 // can change, either to retrograde or advance, is simply 
 confusion of thought, or misuse of language. If, then, 
 orthodoxy ever was orthodoxy, the true doctrine, then 
 it must remain so forever. There can't be any progress in 
 the facts of the multiplication-table. But if you admit that 
 orthodoxy has changed, or can change in any degree, then 
 it isn't orthodoxy any longer : it admits no past mistake. 
 If there was a past mistake, then there is no certainty but 
 there may be one now. You're all afloat. Instead of 
 orthodoxy, it is rationalism, or the application of reason to 
 all the problems involved." 
 
 " But may not orthodoxy grow like a tree ? " asked Dr. 
 Hay. 
 
 " No, I think not," replied Mr. Forrest. " If last year an 
 infallible revelation had fixed the number of boughs and 
 leaves for a maple, it would have no right to vary. And I 
 cannot help feeling that this whole movement called Liberal
 
 RECONSIDERATION. 21 5 
 
 Orthodoxy is a misnomer, a mongrel, that has no right to 
 exist. If it is liberal, it cannot be orthodox ; and, if it is 
 orthodox, it has no right to be liberal. It is very like that 
 often-mentioned but rather mythical creature, the white 
 blackbird. It seems to me to be a logical vagrant, without 
 the slightest 'visible means of support.' If one believes 
 in the Garden of Eden and the fall of man, then, of course, 
 the incarnation, the atonement, heaven and hell, logically 
 follow. It is a linked chain ; it is a complete logical arch. 
 But Liberal Orthodoxy knocks the keystone out, and thinks 
 the rest will stand. It snaps out one link, and thinks the 
 chain will still hold the clear-headed thinkers of the world. 
 It knocks the foundations out from under its house, and 
 then proceeds calmly up stairs and sits down as if nothing 
 had happened. Such feats are only possible in castles in 
 the air. But men will knock their brains out against logical 
 impossibilities, and still go on unconscious of any accident. 
 
 " I know I am preaching you a long sermon ; but just 
 think of it. Here are men in every direction, who think 
 they are orthodox, who do not believe in any fall. They 
 know too much of modern science to still believe the tradi 
 tions about an apple's bringing death and total depravity into 
 the world. And yet, if there wasn't any fall, there isn't 
 the slightest need of any incarnation or atonement ; and the 
 whole scheme of orthodoxy tumbles like a card house." 
 
 " But," inquired Dr. Hay, " must the whole orthodox 
 body be deprived of the light of all later knowledge, just 
 because it is orthodox?" 
 
 " If it will stay orthodox, yes ; but if it chooses to accept
 
 2l6 BLUFFTON. 
 
 modern knowledge, and give up this and that doctrine, then 
 let it be honest enough to own that it is not orthodox. 
 Now, there's a great excitement just now over the question 
 of hell. The moral sense of civilization, having got too 
 clear-sighted and true to be able any longer to think God is 
 a devil, of course has to give up hell. But why can't men 
 see that they can't give up hell, and still keep all the rest ? 
 If man is under natural moral laws of invariable justice and 
 inevitable execution in this and all worlds, so that he goes 
 up or down as he gets sick or well, according to character 
 and conduct, then, of course, a sacrificial atonement by a 
 dying God is absurd. Redemption, atonement, and all such 
 ideas, are outgrown. 
 
 " And of course it also becomes absurd to hold to the 
 divine inspiration of a book that plainly teaches doctrines 
 that are given up. However perpetual some of its moral 
 precepts, it is henceforth only a human book, a record of a 
 past phase of the world's religious life." 
 
 " But," remarked Dr. Thomes, " I think we'd better hold 
 to the Bible till the world gets a better book." 
 
 "Certainly," replied Mr. Forrest, "by all means. But 
 let's tell the truth about it at the same time. Give it to men 
 for what it is, not what it is not. It's curious how men hold 
 the Bible." 
 
 " Why, what do you mean ? " said the doctor again. 
 
 " I mean this : its infallibility really means to them the 
 infallibility of the interpretation put upon it by their sect. 
 So you've really got as many Bibles as you have sects. And 
 then they hold tenaciously to hosts of things the Bible does
 
 RECONSIDERATION. 
 
 not enjoin, or even forbids, as the keeping 4 of Sunday ; and 
 at the same time universally practise what it everywhere con 
 demns, as usury for example. Where would be the support 
 of the churches if the members never took interest on their 
 money?" 
 
 "But," said Dr. Hay, "not every thing in the Bible is 
 intended to be perpetual. Some of it is local and tem 
 porary." 
 
 "There you have it again," said Mr. Forrest. "That's 
 rationalism pure and simple. If reason picks and chooses, 
 then reason decides." 
 
 " Well, we differ on these points," said Doctor Hay ; "but 
 now tell us where you propose to go. If you can't stay in 
 Liberal Orthodoxy, will you go to the Unitarians ? " 
 
 " I hardly know as yet." 
 
 " He'd find them, in many cases, more bigoted than we 
 are," said Dr. Thomes. "I know many a Liberal Orthodox 
 who would lift the hair of some of the old-line Unitarians 
 like 'quills upon the fretful porcupine.' There's so much 
 bigotry in the world, that you can't keep it all in any one 
 denomination." 
 
 " But that isn't my chief objection," said Mr. Forrest. 
 
 "What, then?" 
 
 " Why, this : Textual Unitarianism or Universalism, that 
 builds itself on verses of Scripture, and claims to be a fixed 
 system, however broad, I can have nothing to do with." 
 
 "How broad must a church be, to suit you?" inquired 
 Dr. Hay. 
 
 " Just the width of the universe of God. I don't expect
 
 2l8 BLUFFTON. 
 
 to occupy it all at once. But, so far as I am able, I claim 
 the right for all of any man to go wherever God has 
 been before me." 
 
 " What's your Bible, then? " 
 
 " All ascertained truth, however and wherever found." 
 
 "You say all ascertained truth. Don't you believe in 
 faith?" 
 
 " Yes, as faith ; but not as knowledge. I believe in not 
 abusing the dictionary. I believe a lot of things I do not 
 know : so I call those things beliefs. I am not aware that 
 I know any thing that I don't know. I don't know much ; 
 but I keep the word knowledge for that little." 
 
 "You have a short creed, then." 
 
 " The universe is large. The brain is small. I am willing 
 to stand on what little I know, and work out from that. I 
 value less than I used to my theological possessions 'in 
 Spain.' Eternity is long : I can wait.' 
 
 When he had gone out, the Rev. Dr. Thomes and the 
 Rev. Dr. Hay looked at each other, and one nodded while 
 the other said, 
 
 " A clear-headed fellow. Yes ; but he carries things a 
 little too far. It won't do. You can't get the people up to 
 it. He goes too far."
 
 THE REVENGE OF SLIGHTED LOVE. 2 19 
 
 XXII. 
 
 THE REVENGE OF SLIGHTED LOVE. 
 
 THREE years had now passed away. Miss Hartley 
 had devoted herself untiringly to her father's comfort 
 and happiness. She had anticipated all his wants, and done 
 her best to make his home sunny and bright. He had for 
 her a tender, almost a doting love. And thus, though he 
 had rejoiced at her separation from Mr. Forrest, as an 
 escape from a threatened peril to her soul, he still could 
 not avoid a constantly questioning anxiety as to whether she 
 yet carried any lasting wound. So, as these three years 
 passed, he watched her. He was too proud to show curios 
 ity, and too respectful toward her right of silent reserve 
 to ask questions. But though there never fell from her lips, 
 in his hearing, one word of regret or complaint, he could 
 not help noticing that the old spontaneity of her gladness 
 was gone. It was no change of feature, but only a paling 
 of the light that shone behind the features. Her bird-song 
 was hushed, or tuned to a minor key. She did and said 
 the same things as ever; but, instead of bubbling like a 
 spring, her life seemed moved by the machine-pressure of 
 duty. He noticed that in the mornings, as the months went
 
 220 BLUFFTON. 
 
 by, something of the old freshness was out of her face. A 
 dark-colored line grew beneath her eyes, like a pen-stroke 
 under a word, to emphasize her sadness. Sometimes, when 
 he came upon her suddenly, he would find her standing 
 with a far-away, absent look on her face ; or she would 
 quickly dash away a tear, and start up with a forced smile. 
 Her friends noticed that she cared less for their society, 
 and was less forward in the season's entertainments. And 
 now and then Jane Ann Rawson would remark to her 
 mother, 
 
 " I think it's a burnin' shame ! Madge Hartley's jest 
 a-dyin' by inches for Mr. Forrest. Anybody 't 's got half an 
 eye can see it. 'F that old sour-face of a judge 'd only 
 minded his own business ! " 
 
 " Yis," said aunt Sally, who, now that he was gone, only 
 remembered Mr. Forrest's good qualities, while the present 
 angularities of the judge were easily seen : " sich a nice man 
 as he was ! He was too good for any of the tribe o' sich 
 a sharp-cornered old hard-head as he is." 
 
 So all the old ladies who used to say " Margaret Hartley 
 was reskin' her immortal soul for a carnal affection," now 
 bestowed all their useless sympathy on the separated lovers 
 when it was too late. They were good-natured old souls, 
 only lacking any rational stability. They were blown about 
 by the veering gusts of their passionate whims, as paper 
 kites are whiffled around by every current of air. 
 
 Margaret kept up bravely so long as she was with others, 
 or any demand was made upon her. But in the night her 
 struggles came, and she fought with the memories of the
 
 THE REVENGE OF SLIGHTED LOVE. 221 
 
 past. After she had locked herself in her chamber, she 
 would sit by the hour like a statue at her window, where she 
 could see what was once his window, from which used, in 
 those glad young mornings, to come across the way his 
 manly greeting. Then, from her side-window, she could 
 see in the shadow, the top of the old chestnut, reaching 
 above the crown of the hill, where they met and parted, 
 She would look, and look ; and then clasp her hands over 
 her eyes, as if to shut out what she could bear no longer to 
 see. Sitting thus, she burst out at last, as she had done 
 many times before, 
 
 " Oh, I was cruel that night ! and yet I couldn't help it. 
 It was not I. Fate spoke through my lips words that I 
 hated. And he he must have known it ! He can't be so 
 blind ! He must have known how I loved him. I can't 
 endure the thought that he went away with the feeling that 
 /was cruel. And yet it had to be so. Something is cruel, 
 to play such games with human hearts ! " 
 
 Then she would sit, and go over all that long year. She 
 felt again the sensation of guilty, glad surprise at having 
 heard those words spoken to her supposed unconsciousness 
 after her fall. Again she looked up with pride, as he spoke 
 his brave, manly words from the pulpit ; and she remem 
 bered how she felt they were her words, for he was hers. 
 She lived over once more the afternoon in which he had 
 read his verses ; and she recalled how, while she shrunk 
 from having him avow himself just then, still she had exulted 
 in seeing his heart at her feet. Her whole life now seemed 
 divided only into two parts. She had not lived at all till she
 
 222 BLUFFTON. 
 
 met him. Then there had been one bright year; and all 
 since then was a wilderness. 
 
 She knelt down to pray, as she had always done since her 
 unconscious childhood at her mother's knee. 
 
 "O God!" she cried, "must it have been? Is there 
 no pity in heaven for broken love on earth? Canst thou 
 not help me even now? But" springing to her feet, as 
 the thought flashed over her " it was religion that took 
 him from me ! How can I hope for help from the God that 
 tore us apart?" 
 
 And then her heart would stand up, and cry out that it 
 could be no true religion that would so harden and cripple 
 the life. Thus, from such experiences, were born many 
 sceptic questionings as to the principles of her father's faith. 
 She came to ask herself often as to whether Mark was not 
 right. 
 
 Then she would get books, and read and think and study. 
 Thus, as the years went by, her outlook grew broader. And, 
 though she had no hope of ever seeing Mr. Forrest again, 
 she was gradually getting nearer and nearer to a possibility 
 of understanding and sympathizing with his thought. 
 
 And now at last her father fell sick. It was a long and 
 wasting fever. Night and day she directed all things, and 
 watched him. He was too old, and his vigor too much ex 
 hausted, to resist the attack. When the fresh sod was above 
 him where he slept on the hillside above the everlasting flow 
 of the river, Margaret herself was sick. The physician told 
 her she had no organic disease that his medicine could 
 reach : she was only worn ; needed to throw off her bur-
 
 THE REVENGE OF SLIGHTED LOVE. 223 
 
 dens, and rest. There was nothing to keep her. Her sister 
 Sue had been a year married to Mr. Snyder, and the 
 younger sister could stay with her. More, then, because 
 there was no reason for doing any thing else in particular, 
 than that she either cared for or expected any thing from 
 the change, it was decided that she should visit California, 
 and spend some months at the house of an old aforetime 
 Eastern friend of her father's. 
 
 For two reasons I shall not describe the journey. It is 
 already familiar in many books of travel ; and, further, we 
 are concerned at present about her inner life. And, should 
 I describe only what she saw, it would be hardly worth 
 while ; for she was in no mood for sight-seeing, and cared 
 but little for the natural wonders through which she passed. 
 While, then, the engine puffed on day after day, whirling her 
 across plains, around the craggy edges of the mountains, 
 through tunnels, and past great new cities, toward a new 
 future, she sat wrapped in her thought, and living in the 
 past. 
 
 She got out at a station in a beautiful valley there was 
 no city, and what could be called even a village only by 
 courtesy. She glanced about her, and saw in the near dis 
 tance a section of a bay ; around her spread a level valley 
 a mile in breadth from bay to foot-hill, springing from which 
 was a chain of irregular mountains stretching parallel with 
 the bay, and forming the other side of the valley. The val 
 ley itself was covered irregularly here and there with scat 
 tered clumps and groups of live-oaks, ranging from clusters 
 of three to several hundreds. Instead of city or village
 
 224 BLUFFTON. 
 
 there, it was a place of villas or country-seats such as she 
 had never seen at the East. Here lived the wealthy gold or 
 silver kings of the great Occidental metropolis. Climbing 
 up on the foot-hills, or rising above the oak tree-tops, she 
 caught glimpses of fanciful towers ; and everywhere were 
 the strange new vans of the windmills that she had never 
 seen before. 
 
 Her father's old schoolmate met her at the station, and 
 gave her so cordial a welcome that she felt at once as though 
 she should be more at home here than in places that were 
 thronged with the ghosts of painful associations. If she 
 could only forget the past, here were all the external mate 
 rials for a paradise. But she was learning now, what so 
 many in all ages had learned before her, that heaven and 
 hell are in the heart, or nowhere. 
 
 It was a charming spot in the foot-hills to which she was 
 driven. Perfect in natural beauty, the place had all the 
 added charm that the landscape-gardener's art could give it. 
 Winding walks and drives ; arbors ; rustic bridges and 
 mimic waterfalls ; trees of every latitude, in their native 
 forms, or cut into all weird, fantastic, and beautiful shapes ; 
 the wide, fresh stables, carriages, harnesses, horses ; foreign 
 and domestic animals, wild and tame ; birds for sweet song, 
 or beautiful plumes ; a spacious house with endless piazzas, 
 with rustic chairs and hammocks ; odd gables, and fanciful 
 turrets, and hanging windows, and angles that gave out 
 looks toward every fair thing that came in range of the eye, 
 such was now her home. 
 
 But the irrevocable past haunted her. It made a part of
 
 THE REVENGE OF SLIGHTED LOVE. 22$ 
 
 every landscape. It shimmered with the ripples on the 
 surface of the bay. It sat by her side in her drives. It 
 lurked in every clump of trees. It was a part of the lonely 
 mountain summit. It was her waking dream; it was her 
 night vision. 
 
 One day they made a little party to visit the summit of 
 the mountain. Back through the foot-hills to the very feet 
 of the mountains themselves, there ran, or rather wound 
 and twisted, a creek. It was low and clear in summer, 
 but in the rainy season full and turbid. It was now in 
 June; and it ran part-way full, and cool and clear. For 
 four miles the road followed the windings of the creek. 
 The road itself was arched with trees so completely, that for 
 the whole way there was no sight of the blue sky, except 
 through the irregular breaks in the green. Sun-flecked, and 
 carpeted with leaf-shadows, the road was a fairy turnpike 
 into a fairy world. Here and there, as they turned some 
 new curve, the gray limestone cliff, wrought by the elements 
 into some fantastic shape or almost human form, would 
 spring into view through the green trees, fifty feet up the 
 side of the gorge that on either hand hemmed in the narrow 
 valley. 
 
 At the end of the four miles was a green glade, a lovely, 
 open spot, where were a hotel and a group of cottages, that 
 had grown up about a mineral-spring. From this point 
 they struck the direct ascent. This was by a fine turnpike 
 that wound about the mountain, doubling on itself, and 
 going two or three miles of turnings to bring the party to 
 a point just above where they were half an hour before, and
 
 226 BLUFFTON. 
 
 so near the road along which they had passed that they 
 could fling a pebble over into it. 
 
 When they reached the summit, the scene that burst 
 upon them was magnificent beyond the painting power of 
 words. Twenty miles northward the mountain-range ran, 
 and terminated in the promontory on the bay-ward slope 
 of which lay the metropolis of the Pacific, revealing its 
 location by the cloud of smoke that hung above it. To the 
 left, and sweeping every way to the far horizon, lay and 
 shimmered and glistened the wide ocean, its surface heaving 
 in the long and restless roll of the sea, but unbroken by a 
 single ripple. A sail here and there suggested the far-off 
 ports all round the world. Turning to the right, there was 
 first the San Francisco Bay, an unbroken reach of water 
 forty-five miles long, and from four to fifteen in breadth. 
 On both sides of the bay, the valley stretched, dotted with 
 native oak-woods and ranches, and homes and vineyards, 
 and orchards of every fruit from pole to tropic, cut with 
 creeks, and threaded with roads. At intervals, towns and 
 cities sprang in sight on both sides the bay, and spires 
 lifted white above the green of trees. In the distance was 
 San Jose; and, sweeping round beyond the bay, another 
 range of mountains, with old Monte del Diablo king above 
 them all. 
 
 " Do you see that grove of oaks over yonder, and looking 
 as if it were almost at our feet? " inquired Mr. Harrold, her 
 host. 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 " Well, ten miles away on an air-line, that is now your 
 home."
 
 THE REVENGE OF SLIGHTED LOVE. 22? 
 
 " Can it be possible ? " 
 
 " Not only possible, but a fact." 
 
 " But this, it seems to me, must be as fine a view as earth 
 can show. I never dreamed of any thing so grand." 
 
 " Of course we Californians think it cannot be sur 
 passed." 
 
 " And I am a Californian now, so far as that opinion is 
 concerned. But what is that smoke just outside the Golden 
 Gate there?" 
 
 " An incoming steamer from somewhere. Probably from 
 Oregon or China ; for, if it were on the Panama line, it 
 would have passed by here." 
 
 And then a pang of remembrance shot through her heart 
 as she thought of Mark, who, when last she heard of him, 
 had sailed for some far-off port. And as she thought of 
 meetings and partings, of the tragedies of human life, 
 woven into its web by the flitting shuttles of swift-passing 
 steamers and cars shooting to and fro over the earth, there 
 ran through her brain the old, sad lines, 
 
 " A ship comes up from under the world. 
 
 ' What do you bring, O ship ? ' he cried. 
 The answer came : ' 'Neath flag unfurled, 
 
 Laughter and song, and a fair dead bride. 
 " ' I bring fool's jests, and a heart's deep woe ; 
 News of a friend, and a word of despair ; 
 I bring bright hopes from the world below, 
 
 And a soul storm-tossed and worn with care. 
 " ' I bring a child whose mother is dead ; 
 I bring a man deserting his wife, 
 Light and shadow, and poison and bread, 
 The tragical comedy of life.
 
 228 BLUFFTON. 
 
 " ' Perhaps I bring a gift for you ; 
 
 But do not covet it, do not shrink : 
 You know not whether 'tis false or true, 
 Or better or worse than you can think.' " 
 
 She roused from the mood with a deep-drawn sigh. 
 
 " What is it? " said Mr. Harrold. " In a day-dream? " 
 
 " I was thinking," she replied, " what freightage of good 
 and evil, of hope and fear, those steamers carry. Who 
 knows what of dread or joy that ship may be bringing to 
 land?" 
 
 " Has it any thing for you, do you think? " 
 
 " No. My ship has gone down, I fear. If not, I do not 
 know on what sea it sails." 
 
 She answered gayly, but meant more than she cared her 
 tone should betray. Could she have seen the deck as the 
 steamer drew up to the dock, would she have been glad, or 
 sorry? Who knows? 
 
 The next Monday morning, when the mail came down 
 from the city, she took up the "Alta" to glance over the 
 news. Then she hurriedly dropped it, turned pale, and 
 hastened to her room. Mrs. Harrold picked up the paper, 
 and looked it over to see what affected her so, but could 
 find nothing. But she read listlessly the following item : 
 
 "The Rev. Mark Forrest, just arrived per steamer from China, 
 preached yesterday in the Free Presbyterian church, on the Ethnic 
 Religions as related to Christianity." 
 
 Laying down the paper, she merely remarked, 
 
 " I do not see any thing here that concerns Margaret."
 
 ADRIFT. 229 
 
 XXIII. 
 
 ADRIFT. 
 
 IT was in the year 1864 when Mr. Forrest left Bluffton. 
 " If I cannot be engaged in the cure of souls, at least 
 I can in the care of bodies," said he to himself; and thus 
 saying, he threw all his energy into the work of the Sanitary 
 Commission in the South- West. Through his experiences 
 here we shall not care to follow him. We only need to know, 
 that, in his present mood of mind, he did not care to spare 
 himself; and that, if any was to do dangerous work, or oc 
 cupy a dangerous post, he rather sought than shunned the 
 opportunity. He was too manly to seek death ; and yet he 
 was compelled to confess to himself that he did not care to 
 flee from it. If it came in the way of duty, he would wel 
 come it as a friend. He had been trained as a minister, and 
 all his tastes ran that way. And yet an impassable wall 
 seemed to shut him out from any farther progress in that 
 direction. And, even if a way had been open, it seemed 
 to him he could not walk it without the face of Margaret 
 Hartley by his side. Sometimes he would have moments of 
 anger at her apparent coldness during their last interview ; 
 and yet he held her in too high respect to believe she was 
 capable of caprice.
 
 23O BLUFFTON. 
 
 "Whether I understand her or not, or agree with her or 
 not," he would think, " I know she is incapable of giving any 
 one causeless pain. She did only what she thought was 
 duty." 
 
 So he could not invent even a poor excuse for either anger 
 or hate. She still nestled in his heart, the one fair image of 
 the only woman he had ever loved. But this image was 
 only a memory, sinking farther and farther down the horizon 
 of the past, a setting and not a rising star : so he had not 
 even the inspiration of hope. At least, however, he could 
 help the wounded, and write out the last love-messages of 
 the dying. To this best comfort for a hopeless sorrow, 
 the consolation of helping bear the burden of another, 
 he now devoted himself. 
 
 He followed the march of Sherman to the sea. Thence 
 he came North to assist in the last battles and marches, and 
 see the sword of Lee given into the persistent hand of 
 Grant. But when the last shout of triumph went up, and 
 the war was over, he again found himself with nothing to do, 
 and his heart only sorer with its still unhealed hurt. Going 
 on to New York, he sat down and wrote Tom : 
 
 NEW YORK, 186-. 
 
 DEAR TOM, The war is over, and I can be of no more service 
 here. Nothing opens to me as yet ; and, even if it did, I am now fit 
 for nothing. I shall recover my balance some day, and be man enough 
 to pick up some life-work, and pay the world for my standing-room and 
 the lunch I get from the common cupboard. But meanwhile I am 
 off, nobody knows where, and nobody cares ; least of all, myself. 
 In a couple of weeks I shall sail for, Europe ; and then go nowhere in 
 particular and everywhere in general. I am going to attempt the im-
 
 ADRIFT. 23 1 
 
 possible, to get away from my shadow. The effort will amuse me, 
 if nothing else ; and I may stumble on to experiences and information 
 that will be of service to me when I come to myself. I shall be 
 hard to keep track of after I am anight ; and you may not often hit me 
 with your letters. But let me hear from you once more before I sail. 
 I need not tell you what I most care to know. 
 
 Not quite myself, but always the same to my old friend, 
 
 MARK. 
 
 The answer soon came. 
 
 MAPLE CITY, 186-. 
 
 MY DEAR OLD FELLOW, You're not the man I take you for, 
 Mark, if you allow any woman that lives to crush the heart out of you. 
 Remember, " there's good fish in the sea as ever was caught." And 
 yet I suppose it's hard for me to sympathize with you. My wife 
 God bless her ! was stupid and prosaic enough to fall right into my 
 arms in the most natural way in the world : so that I haven't any 
 romantic and heart-breaking experience by which I can interpret yours. 
 They say, " The course of true love never did run smooth ; " but mine 
 runs so smoothly, that, if the proverb is true, there must be some de 
 fect in the quality of my affection. 
 
 But you know, Mark, you have my deepest love and sympathy. 
 I'd gladly give up a part of my comfort if I could transfer the title to 
 you. Be brave, old fellow, and " fight it out on this line," however 
 long it takes. 
 
 I'm glad you're going away ; though, now I've known you again, I 
 shall be confoundedly lonesome. But it will do you good. So may the 
 winds blow you to some harbor where you will find as good as you've 
 lost! 
 
 The last I heard of Miss Hartley, she was living quietly with, and 
 taking care of, the old judge. They say she's just a trifle sadder, and 
 looks worn ; but otherwise I hear of nothing. 
 
 You will be glad to learn the end of your adventure with Miss Smi 
 ley. Hank Tyler, the man I told you she was engaged to before you
 
 232 BLUFFTON. 
 
 found her, like the true fellow I thought he was, has married her, and 
 they are living in Colorado. She has come into her own and her 
 brother's money ; and " the days of her mourning are ended." She 
 has your photograph in her chamber ; and, I think, worships you as 
 her saint. 
 
 Now Mark, my dear boy, good-by. If in your wanderings you do 
 
 not 
 
 " Suffer a sea-change 
 
 Into something rich and strange," 
 
 Keep me posted, as well as you can, of your doings. And, when you 
 " drop anchor," hoist a signal for 
 
 Your old friend, TOM. 
 
 Beyond the mere curiosity of travel, the thing that most 
 interested Mr. Forrest was, naturally, a study of the practical 
 phases of the religious life of the countries he visited. Every 
 man lawyer, farmer, artist, doctor, merchant carries 
 about him his own personality and training, and necessa 
 rily sees the world through his own eyes. If he doesn't 
 always " talk shop," still it is inevitable that he will see shop 
 and feel shop. So, as Mr. Forrest was a minister, he looked 
 over the world with a minister's eyes. The evil of this is 
 when the manhood withers into a mere profession, instead 
 of wielding the profession as the sculptor handles his chisel. 
 
 He had run through France and Spain, and stood at last 
 in Rome. Here he met an American gentleman. Talking 
 over their views of things one day, Mr. Forrest remarked, 
 
 " There's one thing, Mr. Gordon, that strikes a religious 
 man strangely ; and that is, to observe that these European 
 countries that have the most Christianity are the least moral 
 and intelligent."
 
 ADRIFT. 233 
 
 "Why, what do you mean?" he asked with some aston 
 ishment. 
 
 " I mean what I say. The independent intelligence that 
 makes the freedom and civilization of England and Amer 
 ica seems to loosen the grip of the Church, and to tend 
 toward individuality and scepticism." 
 
 "But that which you thus criticise is not Christianity. 
 Look at Rome. Do you call this flummery Christianity? 
 It is the Roman-Catholic corruption of Christianity," said 
 Mr. Gordon. 
 
 "At least, I think the question has two sides," replied 
 Mr. Forrest. " You can regard any system of religion as a 
 doctrine, or an institution." 
 
 "How?" 
 
 " Why, when we speak of Buddhism, for example, we 
 may mean the simple moral teachings of Sakya, or we may 
 mean practical Buddhism as it really exists. We judge 
 Buddhism by the effects of the system as it actually works 
 to-day. Why not treat Christianity in the same fashion?" 
 
 " Well, explain a little more, and perhaps I'll see what 
 you're after." 
 
 " So be it. We Protestants a little minority of Chris 
 tendom go back and say that Christianity is only the pre 
 cepts Jesus taught. Unitarians go farther yet, and pick out 
 the Sermon on the Mount, or the Golden Rule, and say 
 ' That's all there is of Christianity,' and then denounce the 
 Catholic growth of all the Christian centuries as a parasite." 
 
 "And isn't it so?" 
 
 " Is a parasite usually larger than the whole tree ? Is a
 
 234 BLUFFTON. 
 
 tree simply the roots, or the total development of those 
 roots and the surrounding circumstances? When the 
 Church was organized, it was ' called Christian at Antioch ; ' 
 and why isn't the natural result of the growth of seventeen 
 centuries to be called Christianity ? " 
 
 " You think that Roman-Catholicism, then, is true Chris 
 tianity?" 
 
 " I do not see why not, as truly as the present institutions 
 and practices of Buddhism are to be regarded as true 
 Buddhism. When we speak of so-called heathen nations, 
 we think we treat them fairly by pointing to the life of the 
 common people who profess them as illustrating their natural 
 effects and value. If we treat Christianity that way, then it 
 will fare as hardly as most religions of heathendom ; while, 
 if we treat the heathen religions as we want Christianity 
 treated, that is, judge them by the best utterances of their 
 highest and purest minds, we shall find them more nearly 
 on a level with our own faith." 
 
 " You think Christianity, then, no better than Buddhism," 
 said Mr. Gordon. 
 
 "By no means. But I think they should be treated 
 equally ; judged, in both cases, either by their best or their 
 worst. And I further think, that, when we speak of what 
 Christianity has done for civilization, we ought to remember 
 what civilization has done for Christianity. If Christianity 
 does it all, why isn't the Christianity of the Turkish Empire 
 up to the level of Boston ? And how does it happen that 
 the constituted expounders and defenders of Christianity 
 have persistently fought, so long as they could, almost all
 
 ADRIFT. 235 
 
 
 
 the growing elements and forces that make up modern civ 
 ilization?" 
 
 "But have they?" 
 
 "Please point out an exception. The ruling orthodoxy 
 never yet originated a new thing for civilization, and never 
 accepted it till it had to." 
 
 " Holding such views as this, how do you account for the 
 fact that religion is always the foundation and bulwark of 
 morality, on which all civilization rests?" 
 
 " I don't account for it : I deny it. It is so far from the 
 truth, that the leading moral sense of the world is frequently 
 in advance of any form of instituted religion. And naturally 
 so ; for institutions stand still, or try to, while the moral 
 sense of the world is a growth that each new year puts forth 
 new leaves. Otherwise there would be no hope of any bet 
 ter future." 
 
 This conversation is quoted merely as a specimen of one 
 of his states of mind, and of the critical spirit with which he 
 looked upon society and religion in the lands through which 
 he travelled. 
 
 Having visited Egypt, and passed through Palestine, 
 he determined to make a tour of the world. So by the 
 Suez Canal he made his way to Calcutta. Thence he 
 passed to Hong Kong. Making what study he could, or 
 cared to, of the life and religions of India and China, he 
 took steamer for San Francisco, and, as we have already 
 seen, entered the Golden Gate little thinking what eyes 
 were watching the ship from the mountain summit far down 
 the coast.
 
 236 BLUFFTON. 
 
 
 
 When in California years before, he had known a Pres 
 byterian minister, at that time strong in his orthodoxy. He 
 was surprised and pleased to learn that he had now aban 
 doned his old position, and had established a flourishing 
 liberal society, under the title of "The First Free Presby 
 terian Church of San Francisco." 
 
 Thinking he would like to go over old times with him, 
 trace the growth of his thought, and find how nearly they 
 were at one, he called upon him. He found him, not 
 fairly sick, but confined to the house, and somewhat 
 troubled as to the supply of his pulpit for the next Sunday. 
 
 " If it was an orthodox church," said Mr. Brimmer, " I 
 could find a man to preach for me on any street-corner. 
 But men that will stand in a free pulpit are rare. Now, you 
 must preach for me." 
 
 "But how can I?" said Mr. Forrest. "I haven't 
 preached these three years ; and, besides, I haven't a sermon." 
 
 "Must you have a written one? " 
 
 " No. I can talk, after a fashion, if I have any thing to 
 say. But the only thing I've been thinking of in a religious 
 way, of late, is, the characteristic points of the heathen 
 religions, and their relations to Christianity." 
 
 "But that's capital. Why won't you talk on that? 
 Nothing would suit my people better." 
 
 " Well, if it will help you out, I'll try it." 
 
 And so the next Sunday he stood once more in the pul 
 pit. But how were all things changed ! His old friends 
 thought he had given up all. He felt that he had gained 
 all. God was no more an exclusive God, and religion no
 
 ADRIFT. 237 
 
 longer a petty squabble of sects. The universe was his 
 Bible ; of which the old Hebrew and Christian Scriptures, 
 still dear and sacred, were, after all, only chapters. 
 
 He announced as his subject, "The Natural Develop 
 ment of Religions." As a part of his lesson, he read "The 
 Problem " of Emerson ; and he gave special emphasis to the 
 
 words, 
 
 " Not from a vain or shallow thought 
 
 His awful Jove young Phidias brought; 
 Never from lips of cunning fell 
 The thrilling Delphic oracle : 
 Out of the heart of Nature rolled 
 The burdens of the Bible old; 
 The litanies of nations came, 
 Like the volcano's tongue of flame, 
 Up from the burning core below. 
 The temples grew as grows the grass. 
 The word unto the prophet spoken 
 Was writ on tables yet unbroken. 
 One accent of the Holy Ghost 
 The heedless world hath never lost." 
 
 Then he developed the idea, that all religions are the nat 
 ural growth of the religious nature of man : that no one 
 is supreme above all others by virtue of any supernatural 
 pre-eminence ; but, if it be supreme at all, it is so only as 
 one man or one nation surpasses another, or as one tree 
 overtops all others in a forest. 
 
 And, as he looked over the report in the "Alta " the next 
 morning, what would he not have giv.cn to know what other 
 eyes had been startled by his simple thought, and then in 
 secret been blinded by tears !
 
 238 BLUFFTON. 
 
 XXIV. 
 
 A STRANGE MEETING. 
 
 MR. HARROLD and the Rev. Mr. Brimmer were inti 
 mate friends. They were frequently together, both in 
 town and at the country-seat of the former. 
 
 So on Monday, when Mr. Forrest called on his friend to 
 see how he was getting on, and after they had talked a while 
 on general topics, Mr. Brimmer said, 
 
 "Are you tied up with any engagements this week?" 
 
 " No," he replied : " unfortunately I am not tied up to 
 any thing these days. I am the Wandering Jew ; and my 
 only limitation is, that I shall not keep still anywhere for 
 long." 
 
 " When you were on the coast before, did you know any 
 thing of the San Josd Valley?" 
 
 "I have only passed through it hurriedly; but I saw 
 enough to learn that it's a paradise." 
 
 " Well, then, I've a pleasant day for you, if you like." 
 
 "Why, what is up?" 
 
 " You see, Harrold, one of our leading bankers, has the 
 perfection of a lovely villa dow_n the bay. He's an old friend 
 of mine; and on Thursday I'll be out by that time a
 
 A STRANGE MEETING. 239 
 
 party of friends is going down to his place for the afternoon. 
 I am at liberty to take any one along I please. Wouldn't 
 you like to go?" 
 
 " What's to be done ? and who's to be there ? " 
 
 " Oh ! it will be only a quiet knot of right pleasant people, 
 ladies and gentlemen. And there will be bowling and bil 
 liards and croquet and walks and drives, if any one 
 pleases, and lounging under the trees. The only law is, 
 that you must do just as you've a mind to, make yourself at 
 home, and be happy." 
 
 "Well, that's a pleasant programme. I think I'll join 
 you." 
 
 So it was arranged. Thus the great world swings round, 
 wantonly flinging us apart, and as wantonly tossing us near 
 again ; as the wind scatters and then piles up the autumn 
 leaves. 
 
 Meanwhile Mr. Forrest received his mail from the East, 
 and in it a short note from his old friend Mr. Winthrop. 
 And while he reads we will look over his shoulder, and copy 
 one brief extract. 
 
 "If it has not already come to hand, you will very soon receive 
 a letter from New York, that will be worthy of your most serious 
 attention. A party of wealthy and intelligent gentlemen in that city, 
 having become dissatisfied with the existing churches, have determined 
 to form a religious society that shall be fearless enough to face the 
 light, and competent to deal with the living movements of the age. 
 
 " They have every thing for immediate organization, except a minis 
 ter. They have heard of you, and the battle you fought out here. It 
 so happened that the leading one of their number is a business ac 
 quaintance of mine ; and, finding that you and I were old chums, he has
 
 24O BLUFFTON. 
 
 written me about you. Knowing my love for you, and my admiration 
 for your course, you will readily understand what sort of character 
 I have given you. I have also hinted to him, that your fitness for such 
 a task will be very largely enhanced by your journey, observation, and 
 study. 
 
 " As soon as I received your last letter, and learned the probable 
 date of your arrival in San Francisco, I sent him notice at once. And 
 now I have just gotten word that a letter was sent to you last week, 
 inviting you, as soon as you would consent, to come East, and take 
 charge of their new movement. 
 
 " Now, my dear fellow, don't say no." 
 
 " Here at last, then," said he, " is a door open. And 
 perhaps it is open soon enough. I have learned much in 
 my wanderings. And besides that, by the struggle and 
 sorrow I have gone through, I have learned that it is no 
 quick and easy thing to slip out of an old faith, and slip into 
 a new. So, instead of being hard and impatient toward 
 those just learning to walk after wearing shackles for years, 
 I trust I shall be tender and helpful in my rationalism." 
 
 The next day came the letter from New York, which he 
 read and pondered well, and determined to accept. But 
 how his heart still ached with the memory of the past ! He 
 was not a man to be crushed by it. He would fling it off, 
 and do a man's wtfrk, though with sadness in his soul. 
 " Fling it off ? " No : it would not be flung off. Neither 
 did he really desire that. It was the sunniest spot in all 
 his history. And he would remember it, though now and 
 henceforth he walked under a cloud. But he would treasure 
 it in the sacred privacy of his soul, and walk his way alone. 
 So perhaps he would be less trammelled in his work. At
 
 A STRANGE MEETING. 24! 
 
 any rate, whether it were well or ill, no present face, how 
 ever fair, could for a moment seduce him from his tender 
 loyalty to the remembered image. 
 
 On Thursday a large party gathered at the depot, and 
 took special train for Mr. Harrold's villa. He was surprised 
 to see so many. 
 
 " Why, Brimmer," said he, " I didn't suppose the whole 
 town was going." 
 
 " Oh, this is nothing unusual ! It is often many hundreds 
 that make such a party. The grounds are so large, and the 
 accommodations so ample, that there will seem to be no 
 crowd. These men think nothing of spending a few thou 
 sands in this way on an afternoon. They charter a special 
 train, and take a caterer from the city." 
 
 " At any rate, one will have a better chance to be alone, 
 if he chooses. A crowd, next to the forest, is the place for 
 solitude." 
 
 "But have I told you, Forrest, the occasion of this 
 party?" 
 
 " I don't remember that you have." 
 
 " Well, then, get ready for a vision of loveliness. It's all 
 in honor of a wonderful beauty that is visiting Harrold from 
 the States, daughter of an old schoolmate of his, or some 
 thing of the sort. It is lucky for me that I'm married. 
 But you, old fellow, may be in danger." 
 
 " I'm past all that," said he with an air of careless gayety ; 
 though he meant it with a sad emphasis down in his heart. 
 
 Meantime the cars were rushing down the valley, reveal 
 ing, on either hand, glimpses of mountain and bay, of oak-
 
 242 BLUFFTON. 
 
 grove and orchard, lovely nooks in the foot-hills, and villages 
 across the water. 
 
 The most of the party were old acquaintances, and had 
 been there before. So, when they reached the villa, without 
 any formality they scattered rapidly over the grounds, each 
 following the bent of his or her 6*wn fancy. 
 
 Mr. Forrest and Mr. Brimmer amused themselves a while 
 in the billiard-room, and then strolled through the walks, 
 and up in the tower that overlooked the place. 
 
 " Let's sit here, and talk a bit," said Mr. Forrest. " This 
 must be a lovely way to live." 
 
 " Yes, when a man has made his pile. We ministers are 
 in no special danger of doing that, I take it." 
 
 " No : I've never heard of ministers getting rich off their 
 salaries. They sometimes marry a fortune, though they do 
 preach that money is the root of all evil.'-' 
 
 " Bah ! " exclaimed Mr. Brimmer, " what a humbug all 
 that trash is ! Everybody knows money makes civilization. 
 In the first ages there was some sense in the common talk 
 about worldliness, and the separation of saints and sinners. 
 But with the passing-away of paganism, and the growth of 
 our modern life, there's no excuse for it. It's pretty hard 
 to tell sometimes, whether there is more worldliness in the 
 Church, or more godliness in the world. 
 
 "But what's the matter, Forrest? you look pale. You 
 don't faint, do you?" 
 
 Mr. Forrest did not answer, for he did not hear. He sat 
 utterly lost and confounded at what he saw. 
 
 Mr. Brimmer looked in the direction in which he was
 
 A STRANGE MEETING. 243 
 
 staring, and saw nothing more wonderful than a party of 
 half a dozen people coming up the pathway toward the 
 tower. 
 
 "Why don't you speak, Forrest? " exclaimed Mr. Brimmer. 
 " Did you never see a group of people before ? Why, that 
 must be the stranger. But she is handsome though, isn't 
 she?" 
 
 "Brimmer," exclaimed Mr. Forrest excitedly, springing 
 to his feet, " I can't bear to meet her here. She's coming 
 up the tower." 
 
 "Well, why not? I suppose you've met women before 
 in your travels round the globe." 
 
 "Yes, and I've met her before; and that is why I 
 can't." 
 
 But before he could explain, and find a way of escape, 
 the party appeared, headed by Mr. Harrold. He grasped 
 Mr. Brimmer by the hand, who then introduced him to Mr. 
 Forrest. By this time all were up the stairs. The eyes of 
 the two old-time lovers met. Margaret grew very white, 
 and grasped the rail to support herself; and, as they were 
 introduced, faltered out, addressing Mr. Harrold, 
 
 " Yes, we have met before at the East." 
 
 The friends noticed how strange and forced the greeting 
 was, but were too courteous to mark it, and so make it more 
 embarrassing. So, though they wondered what it meant, 
 they tried to have all trace of it forgotten. After they had 
 looked about a little, Mr. Harrold said, 
 
 " Come, the whole party is going for a walk up the foot 
 hills. Let's join them."
 
 244 BLUFFTON. 
 
 Though it was torture for Mr. Forrest to be so near Miss 
 Hartley, and not be able to ask her a thousand questions, 
 of past, of present, how she came here, and of other things 
 more personal still, and though he knew it must be equal 
 ly hard for her, there seemed to be no way of escape. 
 
 As the merry company climbed the easy slope, and broke 
 out at every fresh resting-place into new exclamations of 
 delight at the -widening view of the valley, the beauty of 
 the shadows flitting in endless panorama over the sides and 
 tops of the farther mountains, or the lengthening reach of 
 bay with here and there the white of a sail, Mr. Forrest 
 spoke in an undertone to Miss Hartley, and said, 
 
 " For God's sake, Miss Hartley, don't say No. I must 
 speak with you a moment." 
 
 "But how, here?" she replied. 
 
 "The company is gay and absorbed. They'll not miss 
 us. May we not fall behind for a little ? " 
 
 So, excusing herself to Mr. Harrold, she walked more 
 slowly, and let the party precede her up the mountain. 
 
 " Here," said Mr. Forrest, " they're lost in the trees. 
 May we not sit down under this oak? " 
 
 Though much constrained at first, they were soon speak 
 ing of the past in at least the tone of their old-time friend 
 ship. Mr. Forrest could not help noting how her eyes 
 brightened, and the color came and went in her face, and 
 that she seemed glad to be in his company once more. 
 His heart leaped up with hope again ; though he hardly 
 dared ask what changes the years had brought, or whether 
 the flight of time had left her free.
 
 A STRANGE MEETING. 245 
 
 "Miss Hartley," said he, "am I forgiven beforehand for 
 asking what perhaps I have no right to ask?" 
 
 " You have a right to ask all things you will." 
 
 " Has any other, then, gained the heaven from which I 
 was cast out ? " 
 
 " Mr. Forrest, did you once believe I loved you ? " 
 
 " I did believe ; and that one trust is the sunny spot in a 
 life all dark beside." 
 
 " I do not think it is in me to love but once," she quietly 
 replied. 
 
 He sprang to his feet, as he exclaimed, 
 
 " Then, Madge, you " 
 
 Just then she rose, laid her hand upon his arm, and 
 said, 
 
 " See, they are returning down the hill. We must join 
 them." 
 
 But so changed was he in heart and appearance, that Mr. 
 Brimmer exclaimed to him, as they linked arms, and the rest 
 of the party sauntered on in irregular groups, 
 
 " Why, Forrest, you look as if you'd seen a vision on the 
 mountain. I don't think Moses' face shone brighter than 
 yours." 
 
 " Banter away, old fellow. I can stand it now, for I have 
 seen a vision." 
 
 " Have the astrologers and soothsayers of your court wis 
 dom enough to interpret it?" said he. "If not, perhaps 
 you'd better bring it to me for light." 
 
 " I think I can guess it. Nevertheless I think you can 
 help me. I must stay here to-night."
 
 246 BLUFFTON. 
 
 " Well, here's an adventure. Is it about the beauty ? I 
 think I can fix it, whatever it is." 
 
 Mr. Forrest then told him his whole story ; . to which he 
 listened as though it were a chapter out of a new novel. 
 When he was done, he exclaimed, 
 
 " But this is a queer old world. How things do come 
 about ! To run away round the world from a broken ring, 
 and find it ready to be mended again, on the other side 
 the globe ! 
 
 " It's lucky I happened along. I am perfectly at home 
 with Harrold. We'll both stay down to-night, and you shall 
 have your opporunity. But she's a beauty though, Forrest. 
 And here I am a minister. Lucky all round ! Why, I'll 
 marry you for half a price." 
 
 Mr. Brimmer seemed as happy for his friend as he did 
 for himself. 
 
 The party returned to the city, and evening came. Mr. 
 Brimmer explained affairs to Mr. Harrold ; and so the two 
 found themselves at liberty to be alone. As the sun set, and 
 twilight came on, they went for a walk through the grounds, 
 and entered an arbor overhung with grape-vines. 
 
 " O Madge ! " he cried, " the horror of these three endless 
 years ! " 
 
 As he spoke, her own three years of waiting and heart- 
 hunger crowded, a dismal procession, through her brain. 
 She glanced up at his face ; and then, as if fleeing from the 
 pursuing phantoms of the past, with one word, " Mark ! " 
 half spoken, half sobbed, she rushed into his arms, and 
 was folded close to his heart. He lifted her face towards his
 
 A STRANGE MEETING. 247 
 
 with one hand, while he clasped her with the other, and 
 fairly rained his kisses on forehead, eyelid, and lips. 
 
 "But let us be glad, Madge," said he at last: "this 
 crowning happiness pays for it all." 
 
 " O Mark, if you only knew what it cost me to even seem 
 to be cruel to you ! " 
 
 " It was an awful dream," said he ; " but now we are 
 awake and in heaven. Let us sit down and talk. 
 
 "And now, Madge," he continued, "though you are in 
 my arms once more, and it would kill me to lose you again, 
 I dare not ask you to lay your hand in mine, until I tell you 
 what I am, and the path of life that is opening before me. 
 I have wandered and studied and suffered, as you know," 
 said he, in a lower tone, " since that dreadful night at 
 Bluffton. But, religiously, I am only more and more con 
 vinced that God is the God of the whole earth, and of all 
 religions. If I work again, it must be as one absolutely free 
 to find God's truth any and every where, and speak it in all 
 simplicity, but in all fearlessness." 
 
 "And I," she replied, "have greatly changed. I have 
 tried to read and study, these years, and think I understand 
 you now. You know through what a bitter struggle I clung 
 to father and what I thought was duty. I'm thankful now 
 that I was strong enough to suffer, and not to break his 
 heart. But now he may look upon it as he was too old to 
 look upon it here." 
 
 " I have just received this letter from New York." And 
 here he unfolded and read it all aloud. " You see," he con 
 tinued, " it is to be on the broadest basis. We shall not put
 
 248 BLUFFTON. 
 
 in our creed any thing we do not know. It will be a church 
 of and for this world, which is God's world. We shall only 
 try to make men and women noble here ; to build up and 
 purify society ; to build God's kingdom out of solid truths, on 
 solid ground. We shall trust the future to Him who alone 
 knows any thing about it. We shall have faiths and hopes 
 and sentiments and poetry ; but we shall try and remember 
 that they are such, and not make our guesses and imagina 
 tions and wishes into sharp stones with which to strew the 
 path of life, and make the feet bleed that travel over them. 
 
 " Can you find, Madge, any thing in a work like this, to 
 engage your head, and enlist your heart ? " 
 
 Saying which, he reached out toward her his hand. In 
 this strong hand she quietly laid her own, as she replied, 
 
 " In the dear old Bible story that mother read to me as 
 a child, you have my answer : ' Whither thou goest I will 
 go, and where thou lodgest I will lodge ; thy people shall 
 be my people, and thy God my God.' " 
 
 He drew her head down upon his shoulder, just as the 
 yellow moon came up, looking through the vines, and shed 
 ding her tender benediction upon their happy love. 
 
 Franklin Press: Rand, Avery, &> Co., Boston.
 
 TIE! IE 
 
 FALL OF DAMASCUS. 
 
 AN HISTORICAL NOVEL. 
 BY CHARLES WELLS RUSSELL. 
 
 I2tno. Cloth. $1.50. 
 
 "A book of no common order. The scene, in the eternal city of Damascus ; 
 the time, during the reign of Heraclius ; the personages, Roman, Greek, 
 Syrian, and Saracen ; the mingling of solid fact and exuberant fancy, all go 
 to make up a romance as different as one can easily imagine from the conven 
 tional and familiar modern novel. The opening chapter introduces us at once 
 to the very presence of the persons of the author's creation, who assume a 
 reality to the mind rarely possessed by the children of the brain, and to scenes 
 so vividly depicted, that one feels as if walking with the hero along the marble 
 pavements and amting the rose-bowers of the Eastern paradise. The descrip 
 tion is rich, sensuous, Oriental. Characters are drawn with sharp, clear indi 
 viduality, and the interest awakened in them is sure to be retained. Indeed, 
 ' The Fall of Damascus ' is 
 
 A BOOK HARD TO PUT DOWN, ONCE TAKEN UP, 
 
 till the covers close on its last page. The style is clear, pure, and direct, the 
 use of language unexceptionable, and the dramatic spirit more than ordinarily 
 marked." Boston Post. 
 
 THIS IS A STORY OF RARE BEAUTY. 
 
 " It has received the highest praise from literary reviewers, and will evidently 
 take rank with the best class of fiction. Those who delight in something to 
 read that is elevated above the trashy novel of the day should invest." 
 Nashua Telegraph. 
 
 LEE & SHEPAKD, Publishers - - - Boston.
 
 Voyage of the Paper Canoe; 
 
 A Geographical Journey of 2,300 Miles, from Quebec 
 to the Gulf of Mexico, 
 
 BY NATHANIEL H. BISHOP, 
 
 A uthor of" A Thousand Miles' Walk across South A merica." Embellished with 
 spirited illustrations, and ten maps of the route. 
 
 8vo. CLOTH, $2.50. 
 
 " A fascinating narrative of a very venturesome journey. In following 
 his adventures during this unique and daring voyage, we have found 
 the province of the reviewer quite lost in the pleasure of perusal. Geo 
 graphical observations and bits of science and history add to the value 
 of the volume; and incidents, amusing or thrilling, colloquies with 
 ' crackers ' and negroes,, and glimpses of Southern life and character 
 among the high and the low, enhance the interest of the narrative, and 
 lend it life and piquancy. The story of fictitious travels and adventures 
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 direct, and fluent. There is no attempt at fine writing, but the story is 
 exceedingly well told. There are a dozen or more wood-engravings, 
 illustrating the most noteworthy incidents of the trip. There are, in 
 addition, ten maps, showing the minutest details of the journey, from 
 beginning to end. These have been made for the author by the United- 
 States Coast-Survey Bureau, and are probably the most complete and 
 accurate maps of the Atlantic coast anywhere obtainable. They are 
 engraved with exquisite delicacy." Boston Journal. 
 
 " The perils encountered by the author are related with a charming 
 modesty, but are of thrilling interest. The 'Voyage of the Paper 
 Canoe ' is suited to all classes of readers. The scientific man will find 
 many interesting facts ; the geographical, the only complete account of 
 the interior coast-water route ever published ; the naturalist, various 
 items of interest ; the student of character, new and peculiar types ; the 
 canoeist, a true and faithful guide from the Gulf of St. Lawrence to the 
 Gulf of Mexico." Sunday Herald. 
 
 Sold by all Booksellers and Newsdealers, and sent by mail, post 
 paid, on receipt of price. 
 
 LEE & SHEPARD, Publishers, Boston.
 
 FROM HAND TO MOUTH, 
 
 BY 
 
 MISS A. M. DOUGLAS, 
 
 AUTHOR OF 
 
 IN TRUST, STEPHEN DANE, NELLY KINNARD'S KINGDOM, 
 
 CLAUDIA, SYDNIE ADRIANCE, HOME NOOK, 
 
 KATHIE STORIES, ETC. 
 
 13mo. Cloth. &1.5O. 
 
 tt This volume, like all the works of this author, is well written and 
 intensely interesting, though there is nothing sensational or strained in 
 the plot, scenes, or characters. It is a story of homely, every-day life, 
 just such as any of us may have seen ; and herein lies without doubt 
 no little of the charm with which the gifted author has invested her 
 story. It is a book that will be popular, and will survive the passing 
 hour. Bridgeport Farmer. 
 
 " Another of Miss DOUGLAS'S pure and sensible stories, fully equal 
 to ' Nelly Kinnard's Kingdom,' to say which is no slight praise. We 
 know of no American author who excels Miss Douglas in her partic 
 ular line, stories of every-day American home-life. We are glad to 
 learn that the sale of her books is steadily on the increase. This fact 
 shows that she is appreciated, and speaks well for the taste of our 
 story-reading public. Christian Leader. 
 
 " The charm of the story is the perfectly natural and homelike air 
 which pervades it. The young ladies are not stilted and shown off in 
 their 'company manners/but are just jolly home-girls, such as we like 
 to find, and can find any day. There is real satisfaction in reading this 
 book, from the fact that we can so readily 'take it home' to our 
 selves. Portland Argus. 
 
 " Amanda Douglas is one of the favorite authors among American 
 novel-readers. She writes in a free, fresh, and natural way, and her 
 characters are never overdrawn." Manchester Mirror. 
 
 SOLD BY ALL BOOKSELLERS AND NEWS-DEALERS. 
 
 LEE & SHEPARD, PUBLISHERS, 
 
 BOSTO3ST.
 
 Latest Sensation in the Literary World 
 
 SEOLA. 
 
 A ROMANCE BY AN ANONYMOUS AUTHOR. 
 i6mo. Cloth. $1.50. 
 
 The "Boston Transcript" says: 
 
 "Will attract a multitude of readers, and shows great power of 
 imagination." 
 
 The "Boston Traveller" devotes a column to a notice of it, 
 and says : 
 
 " ' SEOLA' must make a mark in the literary world. It stands out 
 simple and single in its character; and it must be a very dull, apathetic, 
 and unimpassioned reader, who is unable to find within its pages that 
 which will surprise, affect deeply, and gratify." 
 
 The "Boston Journal" says: 
 
 " There are none of the staple incidents and catastrophes of the tra 
 ditional novel, nothing of social intrigue, drawing-room chatter, or 
 conventional love-making ; but, redolent with the atmosphere of the 
 Orient, it has all the fascination of a fantastic and beautiful dream." 
 
 The " Danbury News" says: 
 
 " The strangeness and the magnitude of the machinery of the tale 
 are very impressive, and enchain the attention till the end of the story 
 is reached." 
 
 The "New-York Herald" says: 
 
 "Made so interesting that one reads the book through without 
 pause." 
 
 The "Home Journal" says: 
 
 " It will be perused by cultivated readers with lively interest. The 
 work is written, it is evident, by an accomplished scholar ; and the 
 style is one of perfect purity and refinement. The character of 
 ' SEOLA ' is drawn with exquisite beauty." 
 
 SOLD BY ALL BOOKSELLERS AND NEWS-DEALERS. 
 
 LEE & SHEPARD, PUBLISHERS, 
 
 BOSTOICT.
 
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