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Hugh Wynne, Free Quaker

by S. Weir Mitchell · English · Gutenberg #6485 · 816,778 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: Hugh Wynne, Free Quaker

Author: S. Weir Mitchell


        
Release date: September 1, 2004 [eBook #6485]
                Most recently updated: November 15, 2016

Language: English

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HUGH WYNNE

FREE QUAKER

Sometime Brevet Lieutenant-Colonel on the Staff of his Excellency
General Washington.

By S. Weir Mitchell, M.D., LL.D.

With Four Illustrations By Howard Pyle




[Frontispiece Illustration: “IS IT YES OR NO, DARTHEA?”]

[Transcriber’s Note: The drawing depicts a man and woman riding on
horseback side-by-side.]




PREFACE TO NINETEENTH EDITION


Since Hugh Wynne was published in book form in 1896, it has been many
times reprinted, and now that again there is need for a new edition, I
use a desired opportunity to rectify some mistakes in names, dates, and
localities. These errors were of such a character as to pass unnoticed
by the ordinary reader and disturb no one except the local archaeologist
or those who propose to the novelist that he shall combine the accuracy
of the historical scholar with the creative imagination of the writer of
what, after all, is fiction.

Nevertheless, the desire of the scientific mind even in the novel is
for all reasonable accuracy, and to attain it I used for six years
such winter leisures as the exacting duties of a busy professional life
permitted, to collect notes of the dress, hours, sports, habits and talk
of the various types of men and women I meant to delineate. I burned
a hundred pages of these carefully gathered materials soon after I had
found time, in a summer holiday, to write the book for which these notes
were so industriously gathered.

It is probable that no historical novel was ever paid the compliment
of the close criticism of details which greeted Hugh Wynne. I was most
largely in debt for the pointing out of errors in names and localities
to a review of my book in a journal devoted to the interest of one of
the two divisions of the Society of Friends.

I deeply regretted at the time that my useful critic should have
considered my novel as a deliberately planned attack on the views
entertained by Friends. It was once again an example of the assumption
that the characters of a novel in their opinions and talk represent the
author’s personal beliefs. I was told by my critic that John Wynne is
presented as “the type of the typical character of the Friends.” As well
might Bishop Proudie be considered as representative of the members and
views of the Church of England or Mr. Tulkinghorn of the English lawyer.

A man’s course in life does not always represent simple obedience to the
counsels of perfection implied in an accepted creed of conduct, but is
modified by his own nature. He may therefore quite fail to secure from
his beliefs that which they produce in more assimilative natures. Age
softens some hard characters, but in John Wynne the early development
of senile dementia deprived him of this chance. I drew a peculiar and
happily a rare type of man who might have illustrated failure to get the
best out of any creed.

The course of this great revolutionary struggle made or marred many men,
and the way in which such a time affects character affords to the novel
of history its most interesting material.

Erroneous statements in regard to the time and place of Friends’
Meetings have been pointed out. As concerns these and the like, I may
here state that the manuscript of my novel was read with care by a
gentleman who was a birthright member of the Society and both by age
and knowledge competent to speak. He remarked upon some of my technical
errors in regard to the meetings and discipline of Friends, but advised
against change and said that it was traditionally well known that at the
time of the Revolution there was much confusion in their assemblies and
great bitterness of feeling when so many like Wetherill chose to revolt
against the doctrine of absolute obedience to what, whether rightfully
or not, they regarded as oppression. Needless to say that I meant no
more than to delineate a great spiritual conflict in a very interesting
body of men who, professing neutrality, were, if we may trust
Washington, anything but neutral.

The amount of accuracy to be allowed in historic fiction aroused fresh
interest when Hugh Wynne first appeared. In romances like Quentin
Durward and Ivanhoe the question need not be considered. What may annoy
the historian in the more serious novel of history does not trouble the
ordinary reader nor does it detract from the interest of the story. How
little the grossest errors in biography and history affect the opinions
of the public concerning a novel long popular may be illustrated by the
fact that one of my critics referred me to Henry Esmond for an example
of desirable accuracy. It was an unfortunate choice, for in Esmond there
is hardly a correct historical statement. The Duke of Hamilton described
as about to marry Beatrix was the husband of a second living wife and
the father of seven children--an example of contemplated literary
bigamy which does not distress the happily ignorant, nor are they at all
troubled by the many other and even more singular errors in statement,
some of them plainly the result of carelessness. A novel, it seems, may
sin sadly as concerns historic facts and yet survive.

The purpose of the novel is, after all, to be acceptably interesting.
If it be historical, the historic people should not be the constantly
present heroes of the book. The novelist’s proper use of them is to
influence the fates of lesser people and to give the reader such sense
of their reality as in the delineation of characters, is rarely possible
for the historian.

With these long intended comments, I leave this book to the many readers
whose wants a new edition is meant to supply. I may say in conclusion
that I should have been less eager to alter, correct, and explain if it
were not that in schools and colleges Hugh Wynne has been and is
still used in a variety of ways so that the example of accuracy and a
definition of its desirable extent in historic fiction becomes in some
sense a literary duty.

S. WEIR MITCHELL.

August, 1908.




INTRODUCTORY


It is now many years since I began these memoirs. I wrote fully a third
of them, and then put them aside, having found increasing difficulties
as I went on with my task. These arose out of the constant need to use
the first person in a narrative of adventure and incidents which chiefly
concern the writer, even though it involve also the fortunes of many in
all ranks of life. Having no gift in the way of composition, I knew not
how to supply or set forth what was outside of my own knowledge, nor how
to pretend to that marvellous insight, as to motives and thoughts, which
they affect who write books of fiction. This has always seemed to me
absurd, and so artificial that, with my fashion of mind, I have never
been able to enjoy such works nor agreeably to accept their claim to
such privilege of insight. In a memoir meant for my descendants, it was
fitting and desirable that I should at times speak of my own appearance,
and, if possible, of how I seemed as child or man to others. This, I
found, I did not incline to do, even when I myself knew what had been
thought of me by friend or foe. And so, as I said, I set the task aside,
with no desire to take it up again.

Some years later my friend, John Warder, died, leaving to my son, his
namesake, an ample estate, and to me all his books, papers, plate, and
wines. Locked in a desk, I found a diary, begun when a lad, and kept,
with more or less care, during several years of the great war. It
contained also recollections of our youthful days, and was very full
here and there of thoughts, comments, and descriptions concerning events
of the time, and of people whom we both had known. It told of me much
that I could not otherwise have willingly set down, even if the matter
had appeared to me as it did to him, which was not always the case; also
my friend chanced to have been present at scenes which deeply concerned
me, but which, without his careful setting forth, would never have come
to my knowledge.

A kindly notice, writ nine years before, bade me use his journal as
seemed best to me. When I read this, and came to see how full and clear
were his statements of much that I knew, and of some things which I
did not, I felt ripely inclined to take up again the story I had left
unfinished; and now I have done so, and have used my friend as the third
person, whom I could permit to say what he thought of me from time to
time, and to tell of incidents I did not see, or record impressions and
emotions of his own. This latter privilege pleases me because I shall,
besides my own story, be able to let those dear to me gather from the
confessions of his journal, and from my own statements, what manner
of person was the true gentleman and gallant soldier to whom I owed so
much.

I trust this tale of an arduous struggle by a new land against a great
empire will make those of my own blood the more desirous to serve their
country with honour and earnestness, and with an abiding belief in the
great Ruler of events.

In my title of this volume I have called myself a “Free Quaker.” The
term has no meaning for most of the younger generation, and yet
it should tell a story of many sad spiritual struggles, of much
heart-searching distress, of brave decisions, and of battle and of camp.

At Fifth and Arch streets, on an old gable, is this record:

  BY GENERAL SUBSCRIPTION,
  FOR THE FREE QUAKERS.
  ERECTED A.D. 1783,
  OF THE EMPIRE, 8.

In the burying-ground across the street, and in and about the sacred
walls of Christ Church, not far away, lie Benjamin Franklin, Francis
Hopkinson, Peyton Randolph, Benjamin Rush, and many a gallant soldier
and sailor of the war for freedom. Among them, at peace forever, rest
the gentle-folks who stood for the king--the gay men and women who were
neutral, or who cared little under which George they danced or gambled
or drank their old Madeira. It is a neighbourhood which should be
forever full of interest to those who love the country of our birth.




I


A child’s early life is such as those who rule over him make it; but
they can only modify what he is. Yet, as all know, after their influence
has ceased, the man himself has to deal with the effects of blood and
breed, and, too, with the consequences of the mistakes of his elders in
the way of education. For these reasons I am pleased to say something of
myself in the season of my green youth.

The story of the childhood of the great is often of value, no matter
from whom they are “ascended,” as my friend Warder used to say; but even
in the lives of such lesser men as I, who have played the part of simple
pawns in a mighty game, the change from childhood to manhood is not
without interest.

I have often wished we could have the recorded truth of a child’s life
as it seemed to him day by day, but this can never be. The man it is who
writes the life of the boy, and his recollection of it is perplexed by
the sittings of memory, which let so much of thought and feeling escape,
keeping little more than barren facts, or the remembrance of periods of
trouble or of emotion, sometimes quite valueless, while more important
moral events are altogether lost.

As these pages will show, I have found it agreeable, and at times
useful, to try to understand, as far as in me lay, not only the men who
were my captains or mates in war or in peace, but also myself. I have
often been puzzled by that well-worn phrase as to the wisdom of knowing
thyself, for with what manner of knowledge you know yourself is a
grave question, and it is sometimes more valuable to know what is
truly thought of you by your nearest friends than to be forever teasing
yourself to determine whether what you have done in the course of your
life was just what it should have been.

I may be wrong in the belief that my friend Warder saw others more
clearly than he saw himself. He was of that opinion, and he says in one
place that he is like a mirror, seeing all things sharply except that
he saw not himself. Whether he judged me justly or not, I must leave to
others to decide. I should be glad to think that, in the great account,
I shall be as kindly dealt with as in the worn and faded pages which
tell brokenly of the days of our youth. I am not ashamed to say that my
eyes have filled many times as I have lingered over these records of
my friend, surely as sweet and true a gentleman as I have ever known.
Perhaps sometimes they have even overflowed at what they read. Why are
we reluctant to confess a not ignoble weakness, such as is, after all,
only the heart’s confession of what is best in life? What becomes of the
tears of age?

This is but a wearisome introduction, and yet necessary, for I desire
to use freely my friend’s journal, and this without perpetual mention of
his name, save as one of the actors who played, as I did, a modest
part in the tumult of the war, in which my own fortunes and his were so
deeply concerned. To tell of my own life without speaking freely of the
course of a mighty story would be quite impossible. I look back, indeed,
with honest comfort on a struggle which changed the history of three
nations, but I am sure that the war did more for me than I for it. This
I saw in others. Some who went into it unformed lads came out strong
men. In others its temptations seemed to find and foster weaknesses
of character, and to cultivate the hidden germs of evil. Of all the
examples of this influence, none has seemed to me so tragical as that of
General Arnold, because, being of reputable stock and sufficient means,
generous, in every-day life kindly, and a free-handed friend, he
was also, as men are now loath to believe, a most gallant and daring
soldier, a tender father, and an attached husband. The thought of the
fall of this man fetches back to me, as I write, the remembrance of my
own lesser temptations, and with a thankful heart I turn aside to the
uneventful story of my boyhood and its surroundings.

I was born in the great city Governor William Penn founded, in
Pennsylvania, on the banks of the Delaware, and my earliest memories are
of the broad river, the ships, the creek before our door, and of grave
gentlemen in straight-collared coats and broad-brimmed beaver hats.

I began life in a day of stern rule, and among a people who did not
concern themselves greatly as to a child’s having that inheritance of
happiness with which we like to credit childhood. Who my people were
had much to do with my own character, and what those people were and had
been it is needful to say before I let my story run its natural and, I
hope, not uninteresting course.

In my father’s bedroom, over the fireplace, hung a pretty picture done
in oils, by whom I know not. It is now in my library. It represents a
pleasant park, and on a rise of land a gray Jacobean house, with, at
either side, low wings curved forward, so as to embrace a courtyard shut
in by railings and gilded gates. There is also a terrace with urns and
flowers. I used to think it was the king’s palace, until, one morning,
when I was still a child, Friend Pemberton came to visit my father
with William Logan and a very gay gentleman, Mr. John Penn, he who was
sometime lieutenant-governor of the province, and of whom and of
his brother Richard great hopes were conceived among Friends. I was
encouraged by Mr. Penn to speak more than was thought fitting for
children in those days, and because of his rank I escaped the reproof I
should else have met with.

He said to my father, “The boy favours thy people.” Then he added,
patting my head, “When thou art a man, my lad, thou shouldst go and see
where thy people came from in Wales. I have been at Wyncote. It is a
great house, with wings in the Italian manner, and a fine fountain in
the court, and gates which were gilded when Charles II came to see the
squire, and which are not to be set open again until another king comes
thither.”

Then I knew this was the picture upstairs, and much pleased I said
eagerly:

“My father has it in his bedroom, and our arms below it, all painted
most beautiful.”

“Thou art a clever lad,” said the young lieutenant-governor, “and I must
have described it well. Let as have a look at it, Friend Wynne.”

But my mother, seeing that William Logan and Friend Pemberton were
silent and grave, and that my father looked ill pleased, made haste to
make excuse, because it was springtime and the annual house-cleaning was
going on.

Mr. Penn cried out merrily, “I see that the elders are shocked at thee,
Friend Wynne, because of these vanities of arms and pictures; but there
is good heraldry on the tankard out of which I drank James Pemberton’s
beer yesterday. Fie, fie, Friend James!” Then he bowed to my mother very
courteously, and said to my father, “I hope I have not got thy boy into
difficulties because I reminded him that he is come of gentles.”

“No, no,” said my mother.

“I know the arms, madam, and well too: quarterly, three eagles displayed
in fesse, and--”

“Thou wilt pardon me, Friend Penn,” said my father, curtly. “These are
the follies of a world which concerns not those of our society. The
lad’s aunt has put enough of such nonsense into his head already.”

“Let it pass, then,” returned the young lieutenant-governor, with good
humour; “but I hope, as I said, that I have made no trouble for this
stout boy of thine.”

My father replied deliberately, “There is no harm done.” He was too
proud to defend himself, but I heard long after that he was taken to
task by Thomas Scattergood and another for these vanities of arms and
pictures. He told them that he put the picture where none saw it but
ourselves, and, when they persisted, reminded them sharply, as Mr. Penn
had done, of the crests on their own silver, by which these Friends of
Welsh descent set much store.

I remember that, when the gay young lieutenant-governor had taken his
leave, my father said to my mother, “Was it thou who didst tell the
boy this foolishness of these being our arms and the like, or was it my
sister Gainor?”

Upon this my mother drew up her brows, and spread her palms out,--a
French way she had,--and cried, “Are they not thy arms? Wherefore should
we be ashamed to confess it?”

I suppose this puzzled him, for he merely added, “Too much may be made
of such vanities.”

All of this I but dimly recall. It is one of the earliest recollections
of my childhood, and, being out of the common, was, I suppose, for that
reason better remembered.

I do not know how old I was when, at this time, Mr. Penn, in a neat
wig with side rolls, and dressed very gaudy, aroused my curiosity as
to these folks in Wales, It was long after, and only by degrees, that
I learned the following facts, which were in time to have a great
influence on my own life and its varied fortunes.

In or about the year 1671, and of course before Mr. Penn, the
proprietary, came over, my grandfather had crossed the sea, and settled
near Chester on lands belonging to the Swedes. The reason of his coming
was this: about 1669 the Welsh of the English church and the magistrates
were greatly stirred to wrath against the people called Quakers, because
of their refusal to pay tithes. Among these offenders was no small
number of the lesser gentry, especially they of Merionethshire.

My grandfather, Hugh Wynne, was the son and successor of Godfrey Wynne,
of Wyncote. How he chanced to be born among these hot-blooded Wynnes I
do not comprehend. He is said to have been gay in his early days, but in
young manhood to have become averse to the wild ways of his breed,
and to have taken a serious and contemplative turn. Falling in with
preachers of the people called Quakers, he left the church of the
establishment, gave up hunting, ate his game-cocks, and took to straight
collars, plain clothes, and plain talk. When he refused to pay the
tithes he was fined, and at last cast into prison in Shrewsbury Gate
House, where he lay for a year, with no more mind to be taxed for a
hireling ministry at the end of that time than at the beginning.

His next brother, William, a churchman as men go, seems to have loved
him, although he was himself a rollicking fox-hunter; and, seeing that
Hugh would die if left in this duress, engaged him to go to America.
Upon his agreeing to make over his estate to William, those in authority
readily consented to his liberation, since William had no scruples as
to the matter of tithes, and with him there would be no further trouble.
Thus it came about that my grandfather Hugh left Wales. He had with
him, I presume, enough of means to enable him to make a start in
Pennsylvania. It could not have been much. He carried also, what no
doubt he valued, a certificate of removal from the Quarterly Meeting
held at Tyddyn y Garreg. I have this singular document. In it is said of
him and of his wife, Ellin (“for whom it may concern”), that “they are
faithfull and beloved Friends, well known to be serviceable unto Friends
and brethren, since they have become convinced; of a blameless and
savory conversation. Also are P’sons Dearly beloved of all Souls. His
testimony sweet and tender, reaching to the quicking seed of life; we
cannot alsoe but bemoan the want of his company, for that in difficult
occasion he was sted-fast--nor was one to be turned aside. He is now
seasonable in intention for the Plantations, in order into finding his
way clear, and freedom in the truth according to the measure manifested
unto him,” etc. And so the strong-minded man is commended to Friends
across the seas. In the records of the meetings for sufferings in
England are certain of his letters from the jail. How his character
descended to my sterner parent, and, through another generation, to me,
and how the coming in of my mother’s gentler blood helped in after-days,
and amid stir of war, to modify in me, this present writer, the ruder
qualities of my race, I may hope to set forth.

William died suddenly in 1679 without children, and was succeeded by
the third brother, Owen. This gentleman lived the life of his time, and,
dying in 1700 of much beer and many strong waters, left one son, Owen, a
minor. What with executors and other evils, the estate now went from
ill to worse. Owen Wynne 2d was in no haste, and thus married as late
as somewhere about 1740, and had issue, William, and later, in 1744, a
second son, Arthur, and perhaps others; but of all this I heard naught
until many years after, as I have already said.

It may seem a weak and careless thing for a man thus to cast away
his father’s lands as my ancestor did; but what he gave up was a poor
estate, embarrassed with mortgages and lessened by fines, until the
income was, I suspect, but small. Certain it is that the freedom to
worship God as he pleased was more to him than wealth, and assuredly
not to be set against a so meagre estate, where he must have lived among
enmities, or must have diced, drunk, and hunted with the rest of his
kinsmen and neighbours.

I have a faint memory of my aunt, Gainor Wynne, as being fond of
discussing the matter, and of how angry this used to make my father. She
had a notion that my father knew more than he was willing to say, and
that there had been something further agreed between the brothers,
although what this was she knew not, nor ever did for many a day. She
was given, however, to filling my young fancy with tales about the
greatness of these Wynnes, and of how the old homestead, rebuilded in
James I.’s reign, had been the nest of Wynnes past the memory of man.
Be all this as it may, we had lost Wyncote for the love of a freer air,
although all this did not much concern me in the days of which I now
write.

Under the mild and just rule of the proprietary, my grandfather Hugh
prospered, and in turn his son John, my father, to a far greater extent.
Their old home in Wales became to them, as time went on, less and less
important. Their acres here in Merion and Bucks were more numerous and
more fertile. I may add that the possession of many slaves in Maryland,
and a few in Pennsylvania, gave them the feeling of authority and
position, which the colonial was apt to lose in the presence of his
English rulers, who, being in those days principally gentlemen of the
army, were given to assuming airs of superiority.

In a word, my grandfather, a man of excellent wits and of much
importance, was of the council of William Penn, and, as one of his
chosen advisers, much engaged in his difficulties with the Lord
Baltimore as to the boundaries of the lands held of the crown. Finally,
when, as Penn says, “I could not prevail with my wife to stay, and
still less with Tishe,” which was short for Laetitia, his daughter, an
obstinate wench, it was to men like Logan and my grandfather that he
gave his full confidence and delegated his authority; so that Hugh Wynne
had become, long before his death, a person of so much greater condition
than the small squires to whom he had given up his estate, that he was
like Joseph in this new land. What with the indifference come of large
means, and disgust for a country where he had been ill treated, he
probably ceased to think of his forefathers’ life in Wales as of a thing
either desirable or in any way suited to his own creed.

Soon the letters, which at first were frequent, that is, coming twice a
year, when the London packet arrived or departed, became rare; and if,
on the death of my great-uncle William, they ceased, or if any passed
later between us and the next holder of Wyncote, I never knew. The
Welsh squires had our homestead, and we our better portion of wealth and
freedom in this new land. And so ended my knowledge of this matter for
many a year.

You will readily understand that the rude life of a fox-hunting
squire or the position of a strict Quaker on a but moderate estate in
Merionethshire would have had little to tempt my father. Yet one thing
remained with him awhile as an unchanged inheritance, to which, so far
as I remember, he only once alluded. Indeed, I should never have guessed
that he gave the matter a thought but for that visit of Mr. John Penn,
and the way it recurred to me in later days in connection with an
incident concerning the picture and the blazoned arms.

I think he cared less and less as years went by. In earlier days he may
still have liked to remember that he might have been Wynne of Wyncote;
but this is a mere guess on my part. Pride spiritual is a master
passion, and certain it is that the creed and ways of Fox and Penn
became to him, as years created habits, of an importance far beyond the
pride which values ancient blood or a stainless shield.

The old house, which was built much in the same fashion as the great
mansion of my Lord Dysart on the Thames near to Richmond, but smaller,
was, after all, his family home. The picture and the arms were hid away
in deference to opinions by which in general he more and more sternly
abided. Once, when I was older, I went into his bedroom, and was
surprised to find him standing before the hearth, his hands crossed
behind his back, looking earnestly at the brightly coloured shield
beneath the picture of Wyncote. I knew too well to disturb him in these
silent moods, but hearing my steps, he suddenly called me to him.
I obeyed with the dread his sternness always caused me. To my
astonishment, his face was flushed and his eyes were moist. He laid his
hand on my shoulder, and clutched it hard as he spoke. He did not turn,
but, still looking up at the arms, said, in a voice which paused between
the words and sounded strange:

“I have been insulted to-day, Hugh, by the man Thomas Bradford. I
thank God that the Spirit prevailed with me to answer him in Christian
meekness. He came near to worse things than harsh words. Be warned,
my son. It is a terrible set-back from right living to come of a
hot-blooded breed like these Wynnes.”

I looked up at Mm as he spoke. He was smiling, “But not all bad, Hugh,
not all bad. Remember that it is something, in this nest of disloyal
traders, to have come of gentle blood.”

Then he left gazing on the arms and the old home of our people, and said
severely, “Hast thou gotten thy tasks to-day?”

“Yes.”

“It has not been so of late. I hope thou hast considered before
speaking. If I hear no better of thee soon thou wilt repent it. It is
time thou shouldst take thy life more seriously. What I have said is for
no ear but thine.”

I went away with a vague feeling that I had suffered for Mr. Bradford,
and on account of my father’s refusal to join in resistance to the Stamp
Act; for this was in November, 1765, and I was then fully twelve years
of age.

My father’s confession, and all he had said following it, made upon me
one of those lasting impressions which are rare in youth, but which
may have a great influence on the life of a man. Now all the boys were
against the Stamp Act, and I had at the moment a sudden fear at being
opposed to my father. I had, too, a feeling of personal shame because
this strong man, whom I dreaded on account of his severity, should have
been so overwhelmed by an insult. There was at this period, and later,
much going on in my outer life to lessen the relentless influence of the
creed of conduct which prevailed in our home for me, and for all of our
house. I had even then begun to suspect at school that non-resistance
did not add permanently to the comfort of life. I was sorry that my
father had not resorted to stronger measures with Mr. Bradford, a
gentleman whom, in after-years, I learned greatly to respect.

More than anything else, this exceptional experience as to my father
left me with a great desire to know more of these Wynnes, and with a
certain share of that pride of race, which, to my surprise, as I think
it over now, was at that time in my father’s esteem a possession of
value. I am bound to add that I also felt some self-importance at being
intrusted with this secret, for such indeed it was.

Before my grandfather left Wales he had married a distant cousin, Ellin
Owen, and on her death, childless, he took to wife, many years later,
her younger sister, Gainor [Footnote: Thus early we shed the English
prejudice against marriage with a deceased wife’s sister.] for these
Owens, our kinsmen, had also become Friends, and had followed my
grandfather’s example in leaving their home in Merionethshire. To this
second marriage, which occurred in 1713, were born my aunt, Gainor
Wynne, and, two years later, my father, John Wynne. I have no
remembrance of either grandparent. Both lie in the ground at Merion
Meeting-house, under nameless, unmarked graves, after the manner of
Friends. I like it not.

My father, being a stern and silent man, must needs be caught by his
very opposite, and, according to this law of our nature, fell in love
with Marie Beauvais, the orphan of a French gentleman who had become a
Quaker, and was of that part of France called the Midi. Of this marriage
I was the only surviving offspring, my sister Ellin dying when I was an
infant. I was born in the city of Penn, on January 9, 1753, at 9 P.M.




II


I have but to close my eyes to see the house in which I lived in my
youth. It stood in the city of Penn, back from the low bluff of Dock
Creek, near to Walnut street. The garden stretched down to the
water, and before the door were still left on either side two great
hemlock-spruces, which must have been part of the noble woods under
which the first settlers found shelter. Behind the house was a separate
building, long and low, in which all the cooking was done, and upstairs
were the rooms where the slaves dwelt apart.

The great garden stretched westward as far as Third street, and was full
of fine fruit-trees, and in the autumn of melons, first brought hither
in one of my father’s ships. Herbs and simples were not wanting, nor
berries, for all good housewives in those days were expected to be
able to treat colds and the lesser maladies with simples, as they were
called, and to provide abundantly jams and conserves of divers kinds.

There were many flowers too, and my mother loved to make a home here for
the wildings she found in the governor’s woods. I have heard her regret
that the most delicious of all the growths of spring, the ground-sweet,
which I think they now call arbutus, would not prosper out of its forest
shelter.

The house was of black and red brick, and double; that is, with two
windows on each side of a white Doric doorway, having something portly
about it. I use the word as Dr. Johnson defines it: a house of port,
with a look of sufficiency, and, too, of ready hospitality, which was
due, I think, to the upper half of the door being open a good part
of the year. I recall also the bull’s-eye of thick glass in the upper
half-door, and below it a great brass knocker. In the white shutters
were cut crescentic openings, which looked at night like half-shut eyes
when there were lights within the rooms. In the hall were hung on pegs
leathern buckets. They were painted green, and bore, in yellow letters,
“Fire” and “J.W.”

The day I went to school for the first time is very clear in my memory.
I can see myself, a stout little fellow about eight years old, clad in
gray homespun, with breeches, low shoes, and a low, flat beaver hat.
I can hear my mother say, “Here are two big apples for thy master,” it
being the custom so to propitiate pedagogues. Often afterward I took
eggs in a little basket, or flowers, and others did the like.

“Now run! run!” she cried, “and be a good boy; run, or thou wilt be
late.” And she clapped her hands as I sped away, now and then looking
back over my shoulder.

I remember as well my return home to this solid house, this first day of
my going to school. One is apt to associate events with persons, and my
mother stood leaning on the half-door as I came running back. She was
some little reassured to see me smiling, for, to tell the truth, I had
been mightily scared at my new venture.

This sweet and most tender-hearted lady wore, as you may like to know, a
gray gown, and a blue chintz apron fastened over the shoulders with wide
bands. On her head was a very broad-brimmed white beaver hat, low in the
crown, and tied by silk cords under her chin. She had a great quantity
of brown hair, among which was one wide strand of gray. This she had
from youth, I have been told. It was all very silken, and so curly that
it was ever in rebellion against the custom of Friends, which would have
had it flat on the temples. Indeed, I never saw it so, for, whether at
the back or at the front, it was wont to escape in large curls. Nor do
I think she disliked this worldly wilfulness, for which nature had
provided an unanswerable excuse. She had serious blue eyes, very large
and wide open, so that the clear white was seen all around the blue, and
with a constant look as if of gentle surprise. In middle life she
was still pliant and well rounded, with a certain compliment of fresh
prettiness in whatever gesture she addressed to friend or guest. Some
said it was a French way, and indeed she made more use of her hands in
speech than was common among people of British race.

Her goodness seems to me to have been instinctive, and to have needed
neither thought nor effort. Her faults, as I think of her, were mostly
such as arise from excess of loving and of noble moods. She would be
lavish where she had better have been merely generous, or rash where
some would have lacked even the commoner qualities of courage. Indeed,
as to this, she feared no one--neither my grave father nor the grimmest
of inquisitive committees of Friends.

As I came she set those large, childlike eyes on me, and opening the
lower half-door, cried out:

“I could scarce wait for thee! I wish I could have gone with thee, Hugh;
and was it dreadful? Come, let us see thy little book. And did they
praise thy reading? Didst thou tell them I taught thee? There are girls,
I hear,” and so on--a way she had of asking many questions without
waiting for a reply.

As we chatted we passed through the hall, where tall mahogany chairs
stood dark against the whitewashed walls, such as were in all the rooms.
Joyous at escape from school, and its confinement of three long, weary
hours, from eight to eleven, I dropped my mother’s hand, and, running a
little, slid down the long entry over the thinly sanded floor, and then
slipping, came down with a rueful countenance, as nature, foreseeing
results, meant that a boy should descend when his legs fail him. My
mother sat down on a settle, and spread out both palms toward me,
laughing, and crying out:

“So near are joy and grief, my friends, in this world of sorrow.”

This was said so exactly with the voice and manner of a famous preacher
of our Meeting that even I, a lad then of only eight years, recognised
the imitation. Indeed, she was wonderful at this trick of mimicry, a
thing most odious to Friends. As I smiled, hearing her, I was aware of
my father in the open doorway of the sitting-room, tall, strong, with
much iron-gray hair. Within I saw several Friends, large rosy men in
drab, with horn buttons and straight collars, their stout legs clad in
dark silk hose, without the paste or silver buckles then in use. All
wore broad-brimmed, low beavers, and their gold-headed canes rested
between their knees.

My father said to me, in his sharp way, “Take thy noise out into the
orchard. The child disturbs us, wife. Thou shouldst know better. A
committee of overseers is with me.” He disliked the name Marie, and was
never heard to use it, nor even its English equivalent.

Upon this the dear lady murmured, “Let us fly, Hugh,” and she ran on
tiptoe along the hall with me, while my father closed the door. “Come,”
 she added, “and see the floor. I am proud of it. We have friends to eat
dinner with us at two.”

The great room where we took our meals is still clear in my mind. The
floor was two inches deep in white sand, in which were carefully
traced zigzag lines, with odd patterns in the corners. A bare table of
well-rubbed mahogany stood in the middle, with a thin board or two
laid on the sand, that the table might be set without disturbing the
patterns, In the corners were glass-covered buffets, full of silver and
Delft ware; and a punch-bowl of Chelsea was on the broad window-ledge,
with a silver-mounted cocoanut ladle.

“The floor is pretty,” she said, regarding it with pride, “and I
would make flowers too, but that thy father thinks it vain, and Friend
Pemberton would set his bridge spectacles on his nose, and look at me,
until I said naughty words, oh, very! Come out; I will find thee some
ripe damsons, and save thee cake for thy supper, if Friend Warder does
not eat it all. He is a little man, and eats much. A solicitous man,”
 and she became of a sudden the person she had in mind, looking somehow
feeble and cautious and uneasy, with arms at length, and the palms
turned forward, so that I knew it for Joseph Warder, a frequent caller,
of whom more hereafter.

“What is so--solicitous?” I said.

“Oh, too fearful concerning what may be thought of him. Vanity, vanity!
Come, let us run down the garden. Canst thou catch me, Hugh!” And with
this she fled away, under the back stoop and through the trees, light
and active, her curls tumbling out, while I hurried after her, mindful
of damsons, and wondering how much cake Friend Warder would leave for my
comfort at evening.

Dear, ever dear lady, seen through the mist of years! None was like you,
and none as dear, save one who had as brave a soul, but far other ways
and charms.

And thus began my life at school, to which I went twice a day, my father
not approving of the plan of three sessions a day, which was common,
nor, for some reason, I know not what, of schools kept by Friends. So
it was that I set out before eight, and went again from two to four. My
master, David Dove, kept his school in Vidall’s Alley, nigh to Chestnut,
above Second. There were many boys and girls, and of the former John
Warder, and Graydon, who wrote certain memoirs long after. His mother, a
widow, kept boarders in the great Slate-roof House near by; for in those
days this was a common resource of decayed gentlewomen, and by no means
affected their social position. Here came many officers to stay, and
their red coats used to please my eyes as I went by the porch, where at
evening I saw them smoking long pipes, and saying not very nice things
of the local gentry, or of the women as they passed by, and calling
_“Mohair!”_ after the gentlemen, a manner of army word of contempt for
citizens. I liked well enough the freedom I now enjoyed, and found it
to my fancy to wander a little on my way to school, although usually I
followed the creek, and, where Second street crossed it, lingered on
the bridge to watch the barges or galleys come up at full of tide to the
back of the warehouses on the northeast bank.

I have observed that teachers are often eccentric, and surely David Dove
was no exception, nor do I now know why so odd a person was chosen by
many for the care of youth. I fancy my mother had to do with the choice
in my case, and was influenced by the fact that Dove rarely used the
birch, but had a queer fancy for setting culprits on a stool, with the
birch switch stuck in the back of the jacket, so as to stand up behind
the head. I hated this, and would rather have been birched _secundum
artem_ than to have seen the girls giggling at me. I changed my opinion
later.

Thus my uneventful life ran on, while I learned to write, and acquired,
with other simple knowledge, enough of Latin and Greek to fit me for
entrance at the academy, which Dr. Franklin had founded in 1750, in the
hall on Fourth street, built for Whitefield’s preaching.

At this time I fell much into the company of John Warder, a lad of my
own age, and a son of that Joseph who liked cake, and was, as my mother
said, solicitous. Most of the games of boys were not esteemed fitting
by Friends, and hence we were somewhat limited in our resources; but
to fish in the creek we were free; also to haunt the ships and hear sea
yarns, and to skate in winter, were not forbidden. Jack Warder I took
to because he was full of stories, and would imagine what things might
chance to my father’s ships in the West Indies; but why, in those early
days, he liked me, I do not know.

Our school life with Dove ended after four years in an odd fashion. I
was then about twelve, and had become a vigorous, daring boy, with,
as it now seems to me, something of the fortunate gaiety of my mother.
Other lads thought it singular that in peril I became strangely
vivacious; but underneath I had a share of the relentless firmness of my
father, and of his vast dislike of failure, and of his love of truth. I
have often thought that the father in me saved me from the consequences
of so much of my mother’s gentler nature as might have done me harm in
the rude conflicts of life.

David Dove, among other odd ways, devised a plan for punishing the
unpunctual which had considerable success. One day, when I had far
overstayed the hour of eight, by reason of having climbed into Friend
Pemberton’s gardens, where I was tempted by many green apples, I was
met by four older boys. One had a lantern, which, with much laughter,
he tied about my neck, and one, marching before, rang a bell. I had seen
this queer punishment fall on others, and certainly the amusement
shown by people in the streets would not have hurt me compared with
the advantage of pockets full of apples, had I not of a sudden seen
my father, who usually breakfasted at six, and was at his warehouse by
seven. He looked at me composedly, but went past us saying nothing.

On my return about eleven, he unluckily met me in the garden, for I
had gone the back way in order to hide my apples. I had an unpleasant
half-hour, despite my mother’s tears, and was sent at once to confess to
Friend James Pemberton. The good man said I was a naughty boy, but
must come later when the apples were red ripe, and I should take all
I wanted, and I might fetch with me another boy, or even two. I never
forgot this, and did him some good turns in after-years, and right
gladly too.

In my own mind I associated David Dove with this painful interview with
my father. I disliked him the more because, when the procession entered
the school, a little girl for whom Warder and I had a boy friendship, in
place of laughing, as did the rest, for some reason began to cry. This
angered the master, who had the lack of self-control often seen in
eccentric people. He asked why she cried, and on her sobbing out that it
was because she was sorry for me, he bade her take off her stays. These
being stiff, and worn outside the gown, would have made the punishment
of the birch on the shoulders of trifling moment.

As it was usual to whip girls at school, the little maid said nothing,
but did as she was bid, taking a sharp birching without a cry. Meanwhile
I sat with my head in my hands, and my fingers in my ears lest I should
hear her weeping. After school that evening, when all but Warder and I
had wandered home, I wrote on the outside wall of the school-house with
chalk, “David Dove Is A Cruel Beast,” and went away somewhat better
contented.

Now, with all his seeming dislike to use the rod, David had turns of
severity, and then he was far more brutal than any man I have ever
known. Therefore it did not surprise us next morning that the earlier
scholars were looking with wonder and alarm at the sentence on the wall,
when Dove, appearing behind us, ordered us to enter at once.

Going to his desk, he put on his spectacles, which then were worn
astride of the nose. In a minute he set on below them a second pair, and
this we knew to be a signal of coming violence. Then he stood up, and
asked who had written the opprobrious epithet on the wall. As no
one replied, he asked several in turn, but luckily chose the girls,
thinking, perhaps, that they would weakly betray the sinner. Soon he
lost patience, and cried out he would give a king’s pound to know.

When he had said this over and over, I began to reflect that, if he had
any real idea of doing as he promised, a pound was a great sum, and to
consider what might be done with it in the way of marbles of Amsterdam,
tops, and of certain much-desired books, for now this latter temptation
was upon me, as it has been ever since. As I sat, and Dove thundered, I
remembered how, when one Stacy, with an oath, assured my father that his
word was as good as his bond, my parent said dryly that this equality
left him free to choose, and he would prefer his bond. I saw no way to
what was for me the mysterious security of a bond, but I did conceive
of some need to stiffen the promise Dove had made before I faced the
penalty.

Upon this I held up a hand, and the master cried, “What is it?”

I said, “Master, if a boy should tell thee wouldst thou surely give a
pound?”

At this a lad called “Shame!” thinking I was a telltale.

When Dove called silence and renewed his pledge, I, overbold, said,
“Master, I did it, and now wilt thou please to give me a pound--a king’s
pound?”

“I will give thee a pounding!” he roared; and upon this came down from
his raised form, and gave me a beating so terrible and cruel that at
last the girls cried aloud, and he let me drop on the floor, sore and
angry. I lay still awhile, and then went to my seat. As I bent over my
desk, it was rather the sense that I had been wronged, than the pain of
the blows, which troubled me.

After school, refusing speech to any, I walked home, and ministered to
my poor little bruised body as I best could. Now this being a Saturday,
and therefore a half-holiday, I ate at two with my father and mother.

Presently my father, detecting my uneasy movements, said, “Hast thou
been birched to-day, and for what badness?”

Upon this my mother said softly, “What is it, my son? Have no fear.” And
this gentleness being too much for me, I fell to tears, and blurted out
all my little tragedy.

As I ended, my father rose, very angry, and cried out, “Come this way!”
 But my mother caught me, saying, “No! no! Look, John! see his poor neck
and his wrist! What a brute! I tell thee, thou shalt not! it were a sin.
Leave him to me,” and she thrust me behind her as if for safety.

To my surprise, he said, “As thou wilt,” and my mother hurried me away.
We had a grave, sweet talk, and there it ended for a time. I learned
that, after all, the woman’s was the stronger will. I was put to bed and
declared to have a fever, and given sulphur and treacle, and kept out of
the paternal paths for a mournful day of enforced rest.

On the Monday following I went to school as usual, but not without fear
of Dove. When we were all busy, about ten o’clock, I was amazed to hear
my father’s voice. He stood before the desk, and addressed Master Dove
in a loud voice, meaning, I suppose, to be heard by all of us.

“David Dove,” he said, “my son hath been guilty of disrespect to thee,
and to thy office. I do not say he has lied, for it is my belief
that thou art truly an unjust and cruel beast. As for his sin, he has
suffered enough [I felt glad of this final opinion]; but a bargain was
made. He, on his part, for a consideration of one pound sterling, was to
tell thee who wrote certain words. He has paid thee and thou hast taken
interest out of his skin. Indeed, Friend Shylock, I think he weighs less
by a pound. Thou wilt give him his pound, Master David.”

Upon this a little maid near by smiled at me, and Warder punched me in
the ribs. Master Dove was silent a moment, and then answered that there
was no law to make him pay, and that he had spoken lightly, as one might
say, “I would give this or that to know.” But my father replied at once:

“The boy trusted thee, and was as good as his word. I advise thee to
pay. As thou art Master to punish boys, so will I, David, use thy birch
on thee at need, and trust to the great Master to reckon with me if I am
wrong.”

All this he said so fiercely that I trembled with joy, and hoped that
Dove would deny him; but, in place of this, he muttered something about
Meeting and Friends, and meanwhile searched his pockets and brought out
a guinea. This my father dropped into his breeches pocket, saying, “The
shilling will be for interest” (a guinea being a shilling over a king’s
pound). After this, turning to me, he said, “Come with me, Hugh,” and
went out of the school-house, I following after, very well pleased, and
thinking of my guinea. I dared not ask for it, and I think he forgot
it. He went along homeward, with his head bent and his hands behind his
back. In common, he walked with his head up and his chin set forward, as
though he did a little look down on the world of other men; and this in
truth he did, being at least sis feet three inches in his stocking-feet,
and with no lack of proportion in waist or chest.

Next day I asked my mother of my guinea, but she laughed gaily, and
threw up her hands, and cried, “A bad debt! a bad debt, Hugh! Dost thou
want more interest? My father used to say they had a proverb in the
Midi, ‘If the devil owe thee money it were best to lose it.’ _Le
diable!_ Oh, what am I saying? _Mon fils_, forget thy debt. What did thy
father say?” And I told it again to her amusement; but she said at last,
very seriously:

“It has disturbed thy father as never before did anything since he would
not join with Friend Bradford against the Stamp Act. I would I had seen
him then, or this time. I like sometimes to see a strong man in just
anger. Oh, _mon Dieu!_ what did I say! I am but half a Quaker, I fear.”
 My mother never would turn away from the creed of her people, but she
did not altogether fancy the ways of Friends.

“Eh, _mon fils_, sometimes I say naughty words. Give me a sweet little
pat on the cheek for my badness, and always come to me with all thy
troubles.” Then I kissed her, and we went out to play hide-and-find in
the orchard.

My father’s grim, sarcastic humour left him as years went on, and he
became as entirely serious as I ever knew a man to be. I think on this
occasion his after-annoyance, which endured for days, was more because
of having threatened Dove than for any other cause. He no doubt regarded
me as the maker of the mischief which had tempted him for a moment to
forget himself, and for many a day his unjust severity proved that he
did not readily forgive. But so it was always. My mother never failed to
understand me, which my father seemed rarely able to do. If I did ill he
used the strap with little mercy, but neither in these early years,
nor in those which followed, did he ever give me a word of praise. Many
years afterward I found a guinea in a folded paper, laid away in my
father’s desk. On the outer cover he had written, “This belongs to Hugh.
He were better without it.”

My mother scarce ever let slip her little French expletives or phrases
in my father’s hearing. He hated all French things, and declared the
language did not ring true--that it was a slippery tongue, in which
it was easy to lie. A proud, strong man he was in those days, of fixed
beliefs, and of unchanging loyalty to the king. In his own house he was
feared by his son, his clerks, and his servants; but not by my mother,
who charmed him, as she did all other men, and had in most things her
desire.

Outside of his own walls few men cared to oppose him. He was rich, and
coldly despotic; a man exact and just in business, but well able, and
as willing, to help with a free hand whatever cause was of interest to
Friends. My Aunt Gainor, a little his senior, was one of the few over
whom he had no manner of control. She went her own way, and it was by no
means his way, as I shall make more clear by and by.

Two days later I was taken to the academy, or the college, as some
called it, which is now the university. My father wrote my name, as you
may see it in the catalogue, and his own signature, with the date of 6th
month 4th, 1765. Beneath it is the entry of John Warder and his father,
Joseph; for Jack had also been removed from Dove’s dominion because of
what my father said to Joseph, a man always pliable, and advised to do
what larger men thought good. Thus it came about that my friend Jack and
I were by good fortune kept in constant relation. Our schoolmate, the
small maid so slight of limb, so dark and tearful, was soon sent away to
live with an aunt in Bristol, on the Delaware, having become an orphan
by the death of her mother. Darthea Peniston passed out of my life for
many years, having been, through the accident of her tenderness, the
means for me of a complete and fortunate change.




III


The academy was, and still is, a plain brick building, set back from
Fourth street, and having a large gravelled space in front and also at
the back. The main school-room occupied its whole westward length, and
upstairs was a vast room, with bare joists above, in which, by virtue of
the deed of gift, any Christian sect was free to worship if temporarily
deprived of a home. Here the great Whitefield preached, and here
generations of boys were taught. Behind the western playground was the
graveyard of Christ Church. He was thought a brave lad who, after school
at dusk in winter, dared to climb over and search around the tombs of
the silent dead for a lost ball or what not.

I was mightily afraid of the academy. The birch was used often and with
severity, and, as I soon found, there was war between the boys and the
town fellows who lived to north and east. I was also to discover other
annoyances quite as little to the taste of Friends, such as stone fights
or snowball skirmishes. Did time permit, I should like well to linger
long over this school life. The college, as it was officially called,
had a great reputation, and its early catalogues are rich with names of
those who made an empire. This task I leave to other pens, and hasten to
tell my own personal story.

In my friend Jack Warder’s journal there is a kind page or two as to
what manner of lad I was in his remembrance of me in after-years. I like
to think it was a true picture.

“When Hugh Wynne and I went to school at the academy on Fourth street,
south of Arch, I used to envy him his strength. At twelve he was as tall
as are most lads at sixteen, but possessed of such activity and muscular
power as are rarely seen, bidding fair to attain, as he did later, the
height and massive build of his father. He was a great lover of risk,
and not, as I have always been, fearful. When we took apples, after the
fashion of all Adam’s young descendants, he was as like as not to give
them away. I think he went with us on these, and some wilder errands,
chiefly because of his fondness for danger, a thing I could never
comprehend. He still has his mother’s great eyes of blue, and a fair,
clear skin. God bless him! Had I never known him I might perhaps have
been, as to one thing, a happier man, but I had been less deserving of
such good fortune as has come to me in life. For this is one of the uses
of friends: that we consider how such and such a thing we are moved to
do might appear to them. And this for one of my kind, who have had--nay,
who have--many weaknesses, has been why Hugh Wynne counts for so much to
me.

“We, with two other smaller boys, were, at that time, the only sons
of Friends at the academy, and were, thanks to the brute Dove, better
grounded in the humanities than were some, although we were late in
entering.”

I leave this and other extracts as they were writ. A more upright
gentleman than John Warder I know not, nor did ever know. What he meant
by his weaknesses I cannot tell, and as to the meaning of one phrase,
which he does not here explain, these pages shall perhaps discover.

Not long after our entrance at the academy, my father charged me one
morning with a note to my aunt, Gainor Wynne, which I was to deliver
when the morning session was over. As this would make me late, in case
her absence delayed a reply, I was to remain and eat my midday meal. My
father was loath always to call upon his sister. She had early returned
to the creed of her ancestors, and sat on Sundays in a great square
pew at Christ Church, to listen to the Rev. Robert Jennings. Hither, in
September of 1763, my aunt took me, to my father’s indignation, to hear
the great Mr. Whitefield preach.

Neither Aunt Gainor’s creed, dress, house, nor society pleased her
brother. She had early made clear, in her decisive way, that I was to be
her heir, and she was, I may add, a woman of large estate. I was allowed
to visit her as I pleased. Indeed, I did so often. I liked no one
better, always excepting my mother. Why, with my father’s knowledge of
her views, I was thus left free I cannot say. He was the last of men to
sacrifice his beliefs to motives of gain.

When I knocked at the door of her house on Arch street, opposite the
Friends’ Meeting-house, a black boy, dressed as a page, let me in. He
was clad in gray armozine, a sort of corded stuff, with red buttons, and
he wore a red turban. As my aunt was gone to drive, on a visit to that
Madam Penn who was once Miss Allen, I was in no hurry, and was glad
to look about me. The parlour, a great room with three windows on the
street, afforded a strange contrast to my sober home. There were Smyrna
rugs on a polished floor, a thing almost unheard of. Indeed, people came
to see them. The furniture was all of red walnut, and carved in shells
and flower reliefs. There were so many tables, little and larger, with
claw-feet or spindle-legs, that one had to be careful not to overturn
their loads of Chinese dragons, ivory carvings, grotesque Delft beasts,
and fans, French or Spanish or of the Orient. There was also a spinet,
and a corner closet of books, of which every packet brought her a
variety. Upstairs was a fair room full of volumes, big and little, as
I found to my joy rather later, and these were of all kinds: some good,
and some of them queer, or naughty. Over the wide, white fireplace was
a portrait of herself by the elder Peale, but I prefer the one now in my
library. This latter hung, at the time I speak of, between the windows.
It was significant of my aunt’s idea of her own importance that she
should have wished to possess two portraits of herself. The latter was
painted by Sir Joshua Reynolds when she was in England in 1750, and
represents her as a fine, large woman with features which were too big
for loveliness in youth, but in after-years went well with her abundant
gray hair and unusual stature; for, like the rest of us, she was tall,
of vigorous and wholesome build and colour, with large, well-shaped
hands, and the strength of a man--I might add, too, with the
independence of a man. She went her own way, conducted the business of
her estate, which was ample, with skill and ability, and asked advice
from no one. Like my father, she had a liking to control those about
her, was restlessly busy, and was never so pleased as when engaged in
arranging other people’s lives, or meddling with the making of matches.

To this ample and luxurious house came the better class of British
officers, and ombre and quadrille were often, I fear, played late into
the long nights of winter. Single women, after a certain or uncertain
age, were given a brevet title of “Mistress.” Mistress Gainor Wynne lost
or won with the coolness of an old gambler, and this habit, perhaps more
than aught beside, troubled my father. Sincere and consistent in his
views, I can hardly think that my father was, after all, unable to
resist the worldly advantages which my aunt declared should be mine. It
was, in fact, difficult to keep me out of the obvious risks this house
and company provided for a young person like myself. He must have
trusted to the influence of my home to keep me in the ways of Friends.
It is also to be remembered, as regards my father’s motives, that my
Aunt Gainor was my only relative, since of the Owens none were left.

My mother was a prime favourite with this masterful lady. She loved
nothing better than to give her fine silk petticoats or a pearl-coloured
satin gown; and if this should nowadays amaze Friends, let them but look
in the “Observer,” and see what manner of finery was advertised in 1778
as stole from our friend, Sarah Fisher, sometime Sarah Logan, a much
respected member of Meeting. In this, as in all else, my mother had her
way, and, like some of the upper class of Quakers, wore at times such
raiment as fifty years later would have surely brought about a visit
from a committee of overseers.

Waiting for Aunt Gainor, I fell upon an open parcel of books just come
by the late spring packet. Among these turned up a new and fine edition
of “Captain Gulliver’s Travels,” by Mr. Dean Swift. I lit first, among
these famous adventures, on an extraordinary passage, so wonderful,
indeed, and so amusing, that I heard not the entrance of my father,
who at the door had met my aunt, and with her some fine ladies of the
governor’s set. There were Mrs. Ferguson, too well known in the politics
of later years, but now only a beautiful and gay woman, Madam Allen, and
Madam Chew, the wife of the Attorney-General.

They were eagerly discussing, and laughingly inquiring of my father,
what colour of masks for the street was to be preferred. He was in no
wise embarrassed by these fine dames, and never, to my thinking, was
seen to better advantage than among what he called “world’s people.” He
seemed to me more really at home than among Friends, and as he towered,
tall, and gravely courteous in manner, I thought him a grand gentleman.

As I looked up, the young Miss Chew, who afterward married Colonel Eager
Howard, was saying saucily, “Does not Madam Wynne wear a mask for her
skin! It is worth keeping, Mr. Wynne.”

“Let me recommend to you a vizard with silver buttons to hold in the
mouth, or, better, a riding-mask,” cried Aunt Gainor, pleased at this
gentle badgering, “like this, John. See, a flat silver plate to hold
between the teeth. It is the last thing.”

“White silk would suit her best,” cried Mrs. Ferguson, “or green, with a
chin-curtain--a loo-mask. Which would you have, sir?”

“Indeed,” he said quietly, “her skin is good enough. I know no way to
better it.”

Then they all laughed, pelting the big man with many questions, until he
could not help but laugh, as he declared he was overwhelmed, and would
come on his business another day. But on this the women would not stay,
and took themselves and their high bonnets and many petticoats out of
the room, each dropping a curtsey at the door, and he bowing low, like
Mr. John Penn, as never before I had seen him do.

No sooner were they gone than he desired me to give him the note he had
written to his sister, since now it was not needed, and then he inquired
what book I was reading. Aunt Gainor glanced at it, and replied for me,
“A book of travels, John, very improving too. Take it home, Hugh, and
read it. If you find in it no improprieties, it may be recommended to
your father.” She loved nothing better than to tease him.

“I see not what harm there could be in travels,” he returned. “Thou hast
my leave. Gainor, what is this I hear? Thou wouldst have had me sell
thee for a venture threescore hogsheads of tobacco from Annapolis. I
like not to trade with my sister, nor that she should trade at all: and
now, when I have let them go to another, I hear that it is thou who art
the real buyer. I came hither to warn thee that other cargoes are to
arrive. Thou wilt lose.”

Aunt Gainor said nothing for a moment, but let loose the linen safeguard
petticoat she wore against mud or dust when riding, and appeared in a
rich brocade of gray silken stuff, and a striped under-gown. When she
had put off her loose camlet over-jacket, she said, “Will you have a
glass of Madeira, or shall it be Hollands, John? Ring the bell, Hugh.”

“Hollands,” said my father.

“What will you give me for your tobacco to-day, John?”

“Why dost thou trifle?” he returned.

“I sold it again, John. I am the better by an hundred pounds. Two
tobacco-ships are wrecked on Hinlopen. An express is come. Have you not
heard?”

“Farewell,” he said, rising. He made no comment on her news. I had an
idea that he would not have been unhappy had she lost on her venture.

Joseph Warder was her agent then and afterward. She rarely lost on her
purchases. Although generous, and even lavish, she dearly loved a good
bargain, and, I believe, liked the game far more than she cared for
success in the playing of it.

“Come, Hugh,” she said, “let us eat and drink. Take the book home, and
put it away for your own reading. Here is sixpence out of my gains. I
hope you will never need to trade, and, indeed, why should you, whether
I live or die? How would the king’s service suit you, and a pair of
colours?”

I said I should like it.

“There is a pretty tale, Hugh, of the French gentlemen, who, being
poor, have to make money in commerce. They leave their swords with a
magistrate, and when they are become rich enough take them back again.
There is some pleasing ceremony, but I forget. The Wynnes have been
long enough in drab and trade. It is time we took back our swords, and
quitted bow-thouing and bow-theeing.”

I said I did not understand.

“Oh, you will,” said Aunt Gainor, giving me a great apple-dumpling.
“Take some molasses. Oh, as much as you please. I shall look away, as I
do when the gentlemen take their rum.”

You may be sure I obeyed her. As to much that she said, I was shocked;
but I never could resist a laugh, and so we made merry like children, as
was usual, for, as she used to say, “To learn when to laugh and when not
to laugh is an education.”

When my meal was over, and my stomach and my pockets all full, Aunt
Gainor bade me sit on her knees, and began to tell me about what fine
gentlemen were the Wynnes, and how foolish my grandfather had been to
turn Quaker and give up fox-hunting and the old place. I was told, too,
how much she had lost to Mr. Penn last night, and more that was neither
well for me to hear nor wise for her to tell; but as to this she cared
little, and she sent me away then, as far too many times afterward,
full of my own importance, and of desire to escape some day from the
threatened life of the ledger and the day-book.

At last she said, “You are getting too heavy, Hugh. Handsome Mrs.
Ferguson says you are too big to be kissed, and not old enough to kiss,”
 and so she bade me go forth to the afternoon session of the academy.

After two weeks at the academy I got my first lesson in the futility
of non-resistance, so that all the lessons of my life in favour of this
doctrine were, of a sudden, rendered vain. We were going home in the
afternoon, gay and happy, Jack Warder to take supper with me, and to use
a boat my aunt had given me.

Near to High street was a vacant lot full of bushes and briers. Here the
elder lads paused, and one said, “Wynne, you are to fight.”

I replied, “Why should I fight? I win not.”

“But it is to get your standing in the school, and Tom Alloway is to
fight you.”

“This was a famous occasion in our lives,” writes my friend Jack; “for,
consider: I, who was a girl for timidity, was sure to have my turn next,
and here were we two little fellows, who had heard every First-day, and
ever and ever at home, that all things were to be suffered of all men
(and of boys too, I presume). I was troubled for Hugh, but I noticed
that while he said he would not fight he was buttoning up his jacket and
turning back the cuff of one sleeve. Also he smiled as he said, ‘No, I
cannot;’ and many times since I have seen him merry, in danger.

“For, of a truth, never later did he or I feel the sense of a great
peril as we did that day, with the bigger boys hustling us, and Alloway
crying, ‘Coward!’ I looked about for some man who would help us, but
there was no one; only a cow hobbled near by. She looked up, and then
went on chewing her cud. I, standing behind Hugh, said, ‘Run! run!’

“The counsel seemed good to me who gave it. As I think on it now, I was
in great perplexity of soul, and had a horrible fear as to bodily hurt.
I turned, followed by Hugh, and ran fleetly across the open ground and
through the bushes. About midway I looked back. Two lads were near upon
us, when I saw Hugh drop upon his hands and knees. Both fellows rolled
over him, and he called out, as they fell to beating him, ‘Run, Jack!’

“But I was no longer so minded. I kicked one boy, and struck another,
and even now recall how a strange joy captured me when I struck the
first blow.”

There was a fine scrimmage, for no quarter was asked or given, and I saw
my poor Jack’s girl face bloody. This was the last I remember clearly,
for the lust of battle was on me, and I can recall no more of what
chanced for a little, than I could in later years of the wild melley
on the main street of Germantown, or of the struggle in the redoubt at
Yorktown.

Presently we were cast to right and left by a strong hand, and, looking
up, as I stood fierce and panting, I saw Friend Rupert Forest, and was
overwhelmed with fear; for often on First-day I had heard him preach
solemnly, and always it was as to turning the other cheek, and on the
wickedness of profane language. Just now he seemed pleased rather than
angered, and said, smiling:

“This is a big war, boys. What is it about?”

I said, “I must fight for my standing, and I will not.”

“I think thou wert scarcely of that mind just now. There will be bad
blood until it is over.”

To this I replied, “It is Alloway I am to fight.”

To my surprise, he went on to say, “Then take off thy jacket and stand
up, and no kicking.”

I asked nothing better, and began to laugh. At this my foe, who was
bigger and older than I, cried out that I would laugh on the other side
of my mouth--a queer boy phrase of which I could never discover the
meaning.

“And now, fair play,” said Friend Forest. “Keep cool, Hugh, and watch
his eyes.”

I felt glad that he was on my side, and we fell to with no more words.
I was no match for the practised fists of my antagonist; but I was the
stronger, and I kept my wits better than might have been expected.
At last I got his head under my arm with a grip on his gullet, and so
mauled him with my right fist that Friend Forest pulled me away, and my
man staggered back, bloody, and white too, while I was held like a dog
in leash.

“He hath enough, I think. Ask him.”

I cried out, “No! Damn him!” It was my first oath.

“Hush!” cried Forest. “No profane language.”

“I will not speak to him,” said I, “and--and--he is a beast of the pit.”
 Now this fine statement I had come upon in a book of Mr. William Penn’s
my father owned, wherein the governor had denounced one Mr. Muggleton.

Friend Forest laughed merrily. “Thou hast thy standing, lad.” For
Alloway walked sullenly away, not man enough to take more or to confess
defeat. Jack, who was still white, said:

“It is my turn now, and which shall it be?”

“Shade of Fox!” cried Friend Forest. “The war is over. Come, boys,
I must see you well out of this.” And so reassuring us, he went down
Fourth street, and to my home.

My father was in the sitting-room, taking his long-stemmed reed pipe at
his ease. He rose as we followed Friend Forest into the room.

“Well,” he said, “what coil is this?” For we were bloody, and hot with
fight and wrath, and our garments in very sad disorder.

Friend Forest very quietly related our story, and made much of his own
share in the renewal of our battle. To my surprise, my father smiled.

“It seems plain,” he said, “that the lads were not to blame. But how
wilt thou answer to the Meeting, Rupert Forest?”

“To it, to thee, to any man,” said the Quaker.

“It is but a month ago that thy case was before Friends because of thy
having beaten Friend Wain’s man. It will go ill with thee--ill, I fear.”

“And who is to spread it abroad?”

“Not I,” said my father.

“I knew that,” returned the Friend, simply. “I am but a jack-in-the-box
Quaker, John. I am in and out in a moment, and then I go back and
repent.”

“Let us hope so. Go to thy mother, Hugh; and as to thee, John Warder,
wait until I send with thee a note to thy father. There are liquors on
the table, Friend Forest.”

My mother set us in order, and cried a little, and said:

“I am glad he was well beaten. Thou shouldst never fight, my son; but if
thou must, let it be so that thy adversary repent of it. _Mon Dieu! mon
Dieu! j’en ai peur_; the wild Welsh blood of these Wynnes! And thy poor
little nose--how ‘t is swelled!”

Not understanding her exclamations, Jack said as much, but she answered:

“Oh, it is a fashion of speech we French have. I shall never be cured of
it, I fear. This wild blood--what will come of it?” And she seemed--as
Jack writes long after, being more observing than I--as if she were
looking away into the distance of time, thinking of what might come to
pass. She had, indeed, strange insight, and even then, as I knew later,
had her fears and unspoken anxieties. And so, with a plentiful supper,
ended a matter which was, I may say, a critical point in my life.




IV


After this my days went by more peacefully. The help and example of Jack
assisted me greatly in my lessons, which I did little relish. I was
more fond of reading, and devoured many books as I sat under our orchard
trees in the spring, or nestled up to the fire on the long winter
evenings, coiled on the settle, that its high back might keep off
drafts. My aunt lent me an abundance of books after that famous
“Travels” of Mr. Gulliver. Now and then my father looked at what she
gave me, but he soon tired of this, and fell asleep in the great oak
chair which Governor Penn gave my grandfather.

Many volumes, and some queer ones, I fell upon in my aunt’s house,
but, save once, against the naughtiness of Mrs. Aphra Behn, she never
interfered. We liked greatly a book called “Peter Wilkins,” by one
Paltock, full of a queer folk, who had winged “graundees,” a sort of
crimson robe made of folds of their own skin. None read it now. My dear
Jack fancied it much more than I.

I was nigh to fifteen before we read “Robinson Crusoe,” but even earlier
I devoured at my aunt’s “Captain Jack” and “The History of the Devil.”
 The former book filled us with delight. Jack and I used to row over to
Windmill Island, on the great Delaware, and there at the south end we
built a hut, and slew bullfrogs, and found steps on the sand, I being
thereafter Friday, and Jack my master. We made, too, a sail and mast
for my boat, and, thus aided, sailed of Saturdays up and down the noble
river, which I have always loved.

A still greater joy was to go in our chaise with my mother to the
governor’s woods, which extended from Broad street to the Schuylkill,
and from Callowhill to South street. There we tied the horse, and under
the great trees we found in spring arbutus, even beneath the snow,
and later fetched thence turkey-foot ferns, and wild honeysuckle, and
quaker-ladies, with jack-in-the-pulpits and fearful gray corpse-lights
hid away in the darker woods. In the forest my mother seemed even
younger than at home, and played with us, and told us quaint tales of
her French people, or fairy stories of Giant Jack and others, which were
by no means such as Friends approved.

In our house one same stern, unbending rule prevailed. I have been
told by my aunt, Gainor Wynne, that when he was young my father was not
always so steadfast in conduct as to satisfy Friends. When I was old
enough to observe and think, he had surely become strict enough; but
this severity of opinion and action increased with years, and showed in
ways which made life difficult for those near to him. In fact, before
I attained manhood the tinted arms and the picture of Wyncote were
put away in the attic room. My mother’s innocent love of ornament also
became to him a serious annoyance, and these peculiarities seemed at
last to deepen whenever the political horizon darkened. At such times
he became silent, and yet more keen than usual to detect and denounce
anything in our home life which was not to his liking.

The affairs of a young fellow between the ages of childhood and younger
manhood can have but meagre interest. Our school life went on, and while
we worked or played, our elders saw the ever-increasing differences
between king and colonies becoming year by year more difficult of
adjustment. Except when some noisy crisis arose, they had for us lads
but little interest.

Most people used the city landings, or lightered their goods from ships
in the stream. We, however, had a great dock built out near to the mouth
of Dock Creek, and a warehouse. Hither came sloops from my father’s
plantation of tobacco, near Annapolis, and others from the “permitted
islands,” the Cape de Verde and the Madeiras. Staves for barrels,
tobacco, and salt fish were the exports, and in return came Eastern
goods brought to these islands, and huge tuns of Madeira wine. Rum,
too, arrived from New England, and salted mackerel. What else my father
imported, of French goods or tea, reached us from England, for we were
not allowed to trade with the continent of Europe nor directly with
India.

Once my father took me with him to Lewes, near Cape Hinlopen, on one of
his ships, and to my joy we were met there by Tom, our black slave, with
horses, and rode back during two days by Newcastle and Chester. As I
rode ill, of course, and was sore for a week, my father thought it well
that I should learn to ride, and this exercise I took to easily. Just
before I was sixteen my aunt gave me a horse, and after we had separated
abruptly a few times, and no harm to any, I became the master, and soon
an expert rider, as was needful in a land where most long journeys were
made on horseback.

It seems to me now, as I look back, that the events of life were
preparing me and my friend Jack for what was to follow. Our boating made
every part of the two rivers familiar. Now that I had a horse, Jack’s
father, who would always do for him readily what my Aunt Gainor did
for me, yielded to his desire to ride; and so it was that we began, as
leisure served, to extend our rides to Germantown, or even to Chestnut
Hill. Thus all the outlying country became well known to both of us, and
there was not a road, a brook, or a hill which we did not know.

Until this happy time I had been well pleased to follow my aunt on
a pillion behind her servant, Caesar, but now I often went with her,
perched on my big horse, and got from my aunt, an excellent horsewoman,
some sharp lessons as to leaping, and certain refinements in riding that
she had seen or known of in London.

A Captain Montresor--he who afterward, when a colonel, was Howe’s
engineer--used to ride with her in the spring of ‘69. He was a tall,
stout man of middle age, and much spoken of as likely to marry my Aunt
Gainor, although she was older than he, for, as fat Oliver de Lancey
said years after, “There is no age to a woman’s money, and guineas are
always young.” My aunt, Gainor Wynne, was still a fine gentlewoman, and
did not look her years. As concerned this question of age, she was like
a man, and so in fact she was in some other ways. She would tell any one
how old she was. She once informed Mr. de Lancey that she was so much
more of a man than any British officer she knew that she did not see how
she could decently marry any of them.

I think it was about this time that I saw a little scene which much
impressed me, and which often recurs to my memory. We--that is, Mr.
Montresor, and my Aunt Gainor and I--of a Saturday afternoon rode
over by the lower ferry and up Gray’s Lane, and so to Mr. Hamilton’s
country-seat. “The Woodlands,” as it was called, stood on a hill amid
many beautiful trees and foreign shrubs and flowers. Below it ran the
quiet Schuylkill, and beyond, above the governor’s woods, could be
seen far away Dr. Kearsley’s fine spire of Christ Church. No better did
Master Wren himself ever contrive, or more proportioned to the edifice
beneath it.

On the porch were Mr. Hamilton and Mrs. Penn, with saucy gray eyes, and
Mrs. Ferguson. A slim young girl, Rebecca Franks, was teasing a cat. She
teased some one all her days, and did it merrily, and not unkindly. She
was little and very pretty, with a dark skin. Did she dream she should
marry a British soldier--a baronet and general--and end her days in
London well on in the century yet to come?

Andrew Allen, whose father, the chief justice, took his wife, Margaret,
from this house, sat on the steps near Miss Franks, and beside her
little Peggy Shippen, who already gave promise of the beauty which
won for her so pitiful a life. Nothing in this garden of gay women and
flowers foretold the tragedy of West Point. I think of it now with sad
wonder.

In one or another way these people became known in our annals. Most of
them were of the more exclusive party known as the governor’s set, and
belonged to the Church of England. With the Galloways, Cadwaladers,
Willings, Shippens, Rawles, and others, they formed a more or less
distinct society, affecting London ways, dining at the extreme hour
of four, loving cards, the dance, fox-hunting, and to see a main of
game-cocks. Among them--not of them--came and went certain of what were
called “genteel” Quakers--Morrises, Pembertons, Whartons, and Logans.
They had races too,--that is, the governor’s set,--and one of my
delights was, on the way to the academy, to stop in Third street, above
Chestnut, and see the race-horses in the Widow Nichols’s stables at the
sign of the Indian Queen.

But I have left the laughter of the last century echoing among the
columns of Andrew Hamilton’s home. The guests were made welcome, and had
a dish of tea or a glass of punch; and those desiring no more bohea set
a spoon across the cup, and fell into groups. My aunt opened the velvet
bag which hung at her waist, to pay Mrs. Ferguson a small gambling debt
of the night before.

“Ah, here!” she cried gaily, “Mr. Montresor, this is for you. One of
Mr. Grenville’s stamps; I kept two. I was lucky enough to get them from
Master Hughes, the stamp officer--a great curiosity. You shall have
one.”

Mr. Montresor bowed. “I will keep it,” he said, “until it comes into use
again.”

“That will be never,” said Andrew Allen, turning.

“Never!” repeated Miss Wynne. “Let us hope, sir, it may be a lesson to
all future ministers.”

“A man was wanted in New York in place of Mr. Gage,” cried Mrs.
Ferguson. “As to those New England Puritans, they were in rebellion
before they came over, and have been ever since.”

“And what of New York, and this town, and Virginia?” said my Aunt
Gainor, with her great nose well up.

“I would have put an end to their disloyal ways, one and all,” cried
Mrs. Ferguson.

“It is curious,” said Mr. Galloway, “that the crown should be so
thwarted. What people have more reason to be contented?”

“Contented!” said Miss Wynne. “Already they talk of taxes in which we
are to have no voice. Contented! and not a ship dare trade with France.
It amazes me that there is a man in the plantations to sit quiet under
it.”

“I am of your opinion, madam,” said Mr. Macpherson, “and I might go
still further.”

“They consider us as mere colonials, and we may not so much as have a
bishop of our own. I would I had my way, sir.”

“And what would you do, Mistress Wynne?” asked Mr. Chew.

“I would say, ‘Mr. Attorney-General, give us the same liberty all the
English have, to go and come on the free seas!’”

“And if not?” said Montresor, smiling.

“And if not,” she returned, “then--” and she touched the sword at his
side. I wondered to see how resolute she looked.

The captain smiled. “I hope you will not command a regiment, madam.”

“Would to God I could!”

“I should run,” he cried, laughing. And thus pleasantly ended a talk
which was becoming bitter to many of this gay company.

Destiny was already sharpening the sword we were soon to draw, and of
those who met and laughed that day there were sons who were to be set
against fathers, and brothers whom war was to find in hostile ranks. A
young fellow of my age, the son of Mr. Macpherson, sat below us on the
steps with the girls. He was to leave his young life on the bastion at
Quebec, and, for myself, how little did I dream of what I should get out
of the devil-pot of war which was beginning to simmer!

Very soon I was sent with Rebecca Franks and Miss Chew to gather
flowers. Miss Franks evidently despised my youth, and between the two
little maids I, being unused to girls, had not a pleasant time, and was
glad to get back to the porch, where we stood silent until bidden to be
seated, upon which the girls curtseyed and I bowed, and then sat down to
eat cakes and drink syllabub.

At last my aunt put on her safeguard petticoat, the horses came, and
we rode away. For a while she was silent, answering the captain in
monosyllables; but just beyond the ferry his horse cast a shoe, and went
so lame that the officer must needs return to Woodlands leading him,
there to ask a new mount.

For yet a while my aunt rode on without a word, but presently began to
rally me as to Miss Chew. I had to confess I cared not for her or the
other, or, indeed, for maids at all.

“It will come,” said she. “Oh, it will come soon enough. Peggy Chew has
the better manners. And, by the way, sir, when you bow, keep your back
straight. Mr. Montresor has a pretty way of it. Observe him, Hugh. But
he is a fool, and so are the rest; and as for Bessy Ferguson, I should
like to lay a whip over her back like that,” and she hit my horse
sharply, poor thing, so that I lost a stirrup and came near to falling.

When the beast got quiet I asked why these nice people, who had such
pleasant ways, were all fools.

“I will tell you,” she said. “There are many and constant causes of
trouble between us and the king. When one ends, like this Stamp Act,
another is hatched. It was the best of us who left England, and we are
trained to rely on ourselves, and have no need of England. You will live
to see dark days, Hugh--just what, God alone can tell; but you will live
to see them, and your life will have to answer some questions. This may
seem strange to you, my lad, but it will come.”

What would come I knew not. She said no more, but rode homeward at
speed, as she liked best to do.

Thus time went by, until I was full sixteen, having been at the college
a year later than was usual. I had few battles to fight, and contrived
to keep these to myself, or to get patched up at my Aunt Wynne’s, who
delighted to hear of these conflicts, and always gave me a shilling
to heal my wounds. My dear, fair-haired Jack, Aunt Gainer thought a
girl-boy, and fit only to sell goods, or, at best, to become a preacher.
His father she used and disliked.

Meanwhile we had been through Horace and Cicero,--and Ovid for our moral
improvement, I suppose,--with Virgil and Sallust, and at last Caesar,
whom alone of them all I liked. Indeed, Jack and I built over a brook in
my Aunt Gainor’s garden at Chestnut Hill a fair model of Caesar’s great
bridge over the Rhine. This admired product of our ingenuity was much
praised by Captain Montresor, who was well aware of my aunt’s weakness
for a certain young person.

My father’s decisions came always without warning. In the fall of 1769
I was just gone back to the academy, and put to work at mathematics and
some Greek under James Wilson, at that period one of the tutors, and
some time later an associate judge of the Supreme Court. This great
statesman and lawyer of after-days was a most delightful teacher. He
took a fancy to my Jack, and, as we were inseparable, put up with my
flippancy and deficient scholarship. Jack’s diary says otherwise, and
that he saw in me that which, well used, might make of me a man of
distinction. At all events, he liked well to walk with us on a Saturday,
or to go in my boat, which was for us a great honour. My father approved
of James Wilson, and liked him on the holiday to share our two-o’clock
dinner. Then, and then only, did I understand the rigour and obstinacy
of my father’s opinions, for they ofttimes fell into debate as to the
right of the crown to tax us without representation. Mr. Wilson said
many towns in England had no voice in Parliament, and that, if once
the crown yielded the principle we stood on, it would change the whole
political condition in the mother-land; and this the king would never
agree to see. Mr. Wilson thought we had been foolish to say, as many
did, that, while we would have no internal taxes, we would submit to
a tax on imports. This he considered even worse. My father was for
obedience and non-resistance, and could not see that we were fighting
a battle for the liberty of all Englishmen. He simply repeated his
opinions, and was but a child in the hands of this clear-headed thinker.
My father might well have feared for the effect of Mr. Wilson’s views
on a lad of my age, in whose mind he opened vistas of thought far in
advance of those which, without him, I should ever have seen.

John Wynne was, however, too habitually accustomed to implicit obedience
to dream of danger, and thus were early sown in my mind the seeds of
future action, with some doubt as to my father’s ability to cope with
a man like our tutor, who considerately weighed my father’s sentiments
(they were hardly opinions), and so easily and courteously disposed of
them that these logical defeats were clear even to us boys.

Our school relations with this gentleman were abruptly broken. One
day, in late October of 1769, we went on a long walk through the
proprietary’s woods, gathering for my mother boughs of the many-tinted
leaves of autumn. These branches she liked to set in jars of water in
the room where we sat, so that it might be gay with the lovely colours
she so much enjoyed. As we entered the forest about Eighth street Mr.
Wilson joined us, and went along, chatting agreeably with my mother.
Presently he said to me: “I have just left your father with Mr.
Pemberton, talking about some depredations in Mr. Penn’s woods. He
tells me you boys are to leave school, but for what I do not know. I am
sorry.”

Jack and I had of late expected this, and I, for one, was not grieved,
but my friend was less well pleased.

We strolled across to the Schuylkill, and there, sitting down, amused
ourselves with making a little crown of twisted twigs and leaves of the
red and yellow maples. This we set merrily on my mother’s gray beaver,
while Mr. Wilson declared it most becoming. Just then Friend Pemberton
and my father came upon us, and, as usual when the latter appeared, our
laughter ceased.

“I shall want thee this afternoon, Hugh,” he said. “And what foolishness
is this on thy head, wife? Art thou going home in this guise?”

“It seems an innocent prettiness,” said Pemberton, while my mother, in
no wise dismayed, looked up with her big blue eyes.

“Thou wilt always be a child,” said my father.

“_Je l’espere_,” said the mother; “must I be put in a corner? The _bon
Dieu_ hath just changed the forest fashions. I wonder is He a Quaker,
Friend Pemberton?”

“Thou hast ever a neat answer,” said the gentle old man. “Come, John, we
are not yet done.”

My father said no more, and we boys were still as mice. We went homeward
with our mirth quite at an end, Jack and Wilson leaving us at Fourth
street.

In the afternoon about six--for an hour had been named--I saw my aunt’s
chaise at the door. I knew at once that something unusual was in store,
for Mistress Wynne rarely came hither except to see my mother, and then
always in the forenoon. Moreover, I noticed my father at the window,
and never had I known him to return so early. When I went in he said at
once:

“I have been telling thy aunt of my intention in regard to thee.”

“And I utterly disapprove of it,” said my aunt.

“Wait,” he said. “I desire that thou shalt enter as one of my clerks;
but first it is my will that, as the great and good proprietary decreed,
thou shouldst acquire some mechanic trade; I care not what.”

I was silent; I did not like it. Even far later, certain of the stricter
Friends adhered to a rule which was once useful, but was now no longer
held to be of imperative force.

“I would suggest shoemaking,” said my Aunt Gainor, scornfully, “or
tailoring.”

“I beg of thee, Gainor,” said my mother, “not to discontent the lad.”

“In this matter,” returned my father, “I will not be thwarted. I asked
thee to come hither, not to ridicule a sensible decision, but to consult
upon it.”

“You have had all my wisdom,” said the lady. “I had thought to ask my
friend, Charles Townshend, for a pair of colours; but now that troops
are sent to Boston to override all reason, I doubt it. Do as you will
with the boy. I wash my hands of him.”

This was by no means my father’s intention. I saw his face set in an
expression I well knew; but my mother laid a hand on his arm, and, with
what must have been a great effort, he controlled his anger, and said
coldly: “I have talked this over with thy friend, Joseph Warder, and
he desired that his son should share in my decision as to Hugh. Talk to
him, Gainor.”

“I do not take counsel with my agent, John. He does as I bid him. I
could shift his opinions at a word. He is a Tory to-day, and a Whig
to-morrow, and anything to anybody. Why do you talk such nonsense to me?
Let me tell you that he has already been to ask me what I think of
it. He feels some doubt, poor man. Indeed, he is disposed to consider.
Bother! what does it matter what he considers?”

“If he has changed his mind I have not. Joseph hath ever a coat of many
colours.”

“I shall tell him,” she cried, laughing. The Quaker rule of repression
and non-resistance by no means forbade the use of the brutal bludgeon
of sarcasm, as many a debate in Meeting could testify. She rose as she
spoke, and my mother said gently:

“Thou wilt not tell him, Gainor.”

Meanwhile I stood amazed at a talk which so deeply concerned me.

“Shall it be a smithy?” said my father.

“Oh, what you like. The Wynnes are well down in the world--trade,
horseshoeing. Good evening.”

“Gainor! Gainor!” cried my mother; but she was gone in wrath, and out of
the house.

“Thou wilt leave the academy. I have already arranged with Lowry, in
South street, to take thee. Three months should answer.”

To this I said, “Yes, yes,” and went away but little pleased, my mother
saying, “It is only for a time, my son.”




V


Says my friend Jack in his journal:

“The boys were in these times keen politicians whenever any unusual
event occurred, and the great pot was like soon to boil furiously, and
scald the cooks. Charles Townshend’s ministry was long over. The Stamp
Act had come and gone. The Non-importation Agreement had been signed
even by men like Andrew Allen and Mr. Penn. Lord North, a gentle and
obstinate person, was minister. The Lord Hillsborough, a man after the
king’s heart, had the colonial office. The troops had landed in Boston,
and the letters of Dickinson and Vindex had fanned the embers of
discontent into flame.

“Through it all we boys contrived to know everything that was happening.
I had a sense of fear about it, but to Hugh I think it was delightful.
A fire, a mob, confusion, and disorder appeal to most boys’ minds as
desirable. My father was terrified at the disturbance of commerce, and
the angry words which began to be heard. Mr. John Wynne very coolly
adjusted his affairs, as I have heard, and settled down with the
Friends, such as Wain and Shoemaker and Pemberton and the rest, to
accept whatever the king might decree.”

Jack and I talked it all over in wild boy fashion, and went every day
at six in the morning to Lowry’s on South street. At first we both
hated the work, but this did not last; and, once we were used to it, the
business had for fellows like ourselves a certain charm. The horses we
learned to know and understand. Their owners were of a class with which
in those days it was not thought seemly for persons of our degree to be
familiar; here it was unavoidable, and I soon learned how deep in the
hearts of the people was the determination to resist the authority of
the crown.

The lads we knew of the gay set used to come and laugh at us, as we
plied the hammer or blew the bellows; and one day Miss Franks and Miss
Peggy Chew, and I think Miss Shippen, stood awhile without the forge,
making very merry. Jack got red in the face, but I was angry, worked
on doggedly, and said nothing. At last I thrashed soundly one Master
Galloway, who called me a horse-cobbler, and after that no more trouble.

I became strong and muscular as the work went on, and got to like our
master, who was all for liberty, and sang as he struck, and taught me
much that was useful as to the management of horses, so that I was not
long unhappy. My father, pleased at my diligence, once said to me that
I seemed to be attentive to the business in hand; and, as far as I
remember, this was the only time in my life that he ever gave me a word
of even the mildest commendation.

It was what Jack most needed. His slight, graceful figure filled out
and became very straight, losing a stoop it had, so that he grew to be
a well-built, active young fellow, rosy, and quite too pretty, with his
blond locks. After our third month began, Lowry married a widow, and
moved away to her farm up the country and beyond the Blue Bell tavern,
where he carried on his business, and where he was to appear again to me
at a time when I sorely needed him. It was to be another instance of how
a greater Master overrules our lives for good.

Just after we had heard the news of the widow, my father came into the
forge one day with Joseph Warder. He stood and watched me shoe a horse,
and asked Lowry if I had learned the business. When he replied that we
both might become more expert, but that we could make nails, and shoe
fairly well, my father said:

“Take off these aprons, and go home. There will be other work for both
of you.”

We were glad enough to obey, and, dropping our leathern aprons, thus
ended our apprenticeship. Next week Tom Lowry, our master, appeared with
a fine beaver for me, saying, as I knew, that it was the custom to give
an apprentice a beaver when his time was up, and that he had never been
better served by any.

My Aunt Gainor kept away all this time, and made it clear that she did
not wish my black hands at her table. My father, no doubt, felt sure
that, so far as I was concerned, she would soon or late relent. This, in
fact, came about in midwinter, upon her asking my mother to send me to
see her. My father observed that he had no will to make quarrels, or to
keep them alive. My mother smiled demurely, knowing him as none other
did, and bade me go with her.

In her own room she had laid out on the bed a brown coat of velveteen,
with breeches to match, and stockings with brown clocks, and also a
brown beaver, the back looped up, all of which she had, with sweet
craftiness, provided, that I might appear well before my Aunt Gainor.

“Thou wilt fight no one on the way, Hugh. And now, what shall be done
with his hands, so rough and so hard? Scrub them well. Tell Gainor I
have two new lilies for her, just come from Jamaica. Bulbs they are; I
will care for them in the cellar. I was near to forget the marmalade
of bitter orange. She must send; I cannot trust Tom. Thy father had him
whipped at the jail yesterday, and he is sulky. Put on thy clothes, and
I will come again to see how they fit thee.”

In a little while she was back again, declaring I looked a lord, and
that if she were a girl she should fall in love with me, and then--“But
I shall never let any woman but me kiss thee. I shall be jealous. And
now, sir, a bow. That was better. Now, as I curtsey, it is bad manners
to have it over before I am fully risen. Then it is permitted that _les
beaux yeux se rencontrent. Comme ca. Ca va bien_. That is better done.”

“What vanities are these?” said my father at the door she had left open.

She was nowise alarmed. “Come in, John,” she cried. “He does not yet bow
as well as thou. It would crack some Quaker backs, I think. I can hear
Friend Wain’s joints creak when he gets up.”

“Nonsense, wife! Thou art a child to this day.”

“Then kiss me, mon pere.” And she ran to him and stood on tiptoe, so
engaging and so pretty that he could not help but lift up her slight
figure, and, kissing her, set her down. It was a moment of rare
tenderness. Would I had known or seen more like it!

“Thou wilt ruin him, wife.”

As I ran down the garden she called after me, “Do not thou forget to
kiss her hand. To-morrow will come the warehouse; but take the sweets of
life as they offer. Adieu.” She stood to watch me, all her dear heart
in her eyes, something pure, and, as it were, virginal in her look. God
rest her soul!

It was late when I got to my aunt’s, somewhere about eight, and the
hum of voices warned me of her having company. As I entered she rose,
expecting an older guest, and, as I had been bid, I bowed low and
touched her hand with my lips, as I said:

“Dear Aunt Gainor, it has been so long!” I could have said nothing
better. She laughed.

“Here is my nephew, Mr. Etherington”--this to an English major; “and,
Captain Wallace of the king’s navy, my nephew.”

The captain was a rough, boisterous sailor, and the other a man with too
much manner, and, as I heard later, risen from the ranks.

He saluted me with a lively thump on the shoulder, which I did not
relish. “Zounds! sir, but you are a stout young Quaker!”

“We are most of us Quakers here, captain,” said a quiet gentleman, who
saw, I fancy, by my face that this rude greeting was unpleasant to me.

“How are you, Hugh?” This was the Master of the Rolls, Mr. John Morris.
Then my aunt said, “Go and speak to the ladies--you know them;” and as
I turned aside, “I beg pardon, Sir William; this is my nephew, Hugh
Wynne.” This was addressed to a high-coloured personage in yellow velvet
with gold buttons, and a white flowered waistcoat, and with his queue in
a fine hair-net.

“This is Sir William Draper, Hugh; he who took Manilla, as you must
know.” I did not, nor did I know until later that he was one of the
victims of the sharp pen of Junius, with whom, for the sake of the
Marquis of Granby, he had rashly ventured to tilt. The famous soldier
smiled as I saluted him with my best bow.

“Fine food for powder, Mistress Wynne, and already sixteen! I was in
service three years earlier. Should he wish for an ensign’s commission,
I am at your service.”

“Ah, Sir William, that might have been, a year or so ago, but now he may
have to fight General Gage.”

“The gods forbid! Our poor general!”

“Mistress Wynne is a rank Whig,” put in Mrs. Ferguson. “She reads
Dickinson’s ‘Farmer’s Letters,’ and all the wicked treason of that man
Adams.”

“A low demagogue!” cried Mrs. Galloway. “I hear there have been
disturbances in Boston, and that because one James Otis has been beaten
by our officers, and because our bands play ‘Yankee Doodle’ on Sundays
in front of the churches--I beg pardon, the meetings--Mr. Robinson, the
king’s collector, has had to pay and apologise. Most shameful it is!”

“I should take short measures,” said the sailor.

“And I,” cried Etherington. “I have just come from Virginia, but not
a recruit could I get. It is like a nest of ants in a turmoil, and the
worst of all are the officers who served in the French war. There is,
too, a noisy talker, Patrick Henry, and a Mr. Washington.”

“I think it was he who saved the wreck of the king’s army under Mr.
Braddock,” said my aunt. “I can remember how they all looked. Not a wig
among them. The lodges must have been full of them, but their legs saved
their scalps.”

“Is it for this they call them wigwams?” cries naughty Miss Chew.

“Fie! fie!” says her mamma, while my aunt laughed merrily.

“A mere Potomac planter,” said Etherington, “‘pon my soul--and with such
airs, as if they were gentlemen of the line.”

“Perhaps,” said my aunt, “they had not had your opportunities of knowing
all grades of the service.”

The major flushed. “I have served the king as well as I know how, and I
trust, madam, I shall have the pleasure to aid in the punishment of some
of these insolent rebels.”

“May you be there to see, Hugh,” said my aunt, laughing.

Willing to make a diversion, Mrs. Chew said, “Let us defeat these Tories
at the card-table, Gainor.”

“With all my heart,” said my aunt, glad of this turn in the talk.

“Come and give me luck, Hugh,” said Mrs. Ferguson. “What a big fellow
you are! Your aunt must find you ruffles soon, and a steenkirk.”

With this I sat down beside her, and wondered to see how eager and
interested they all became, and how the guineas and gold half-joes
passed from one to another, while the gay Mrs. Ferguson, who was at the
table with Mrs. Penn, Captain Wallace, and my aunt, gave me my first
lesson in this form of industry.

A little later there was tea, chocolate, and rusks, with punch for the
men; and Dr. Shippen came in, and the great Dr. Rush, with his delicate,
clean-cut face under a full wig. Dr. Shippen was full of talk about some
fine game-cocks, and others were busy with the spring races in Centre
Square.

You may be sure I kept my ears open to hear what all these great men
said. I chanced to hear Dr. Rush deep in talk behind the punch-table
with a handsome young man, Dr. Morgan, newly come from London.

Dr. Rush said, “I have news to-day, in a letter from Mr. Adams, of
things being unendurable. He is bold enough to talk of separation from
England; but that is going far, too far.”

“I think so, indeed,” said Morgan. “I saw Dr. Franklin in London. He
advises conciliation, and not to act with rash haste. These gentlemen
yonder make it difficult.”

“Yes; there is no insolence like that of the soldier.” And this was all
I heard or remember, for my aunt bade me run home and thank my mother,
telling me to come again and soon.

The plot was indeed thickening, and even a lad as young as I could scent
peril in the air. At home I heard nothing of it. No doubt my father read
at his warehouse the “Pennsylvania Journal,” or more likely Galloway’s
gazette, the “Chronicle,” which was rank Tory, and was suppressed in
1773. But outside of the house I learned the news readily. Mr. Warder
took papers on both sides, and also the Boston “Packet,” so that Jack
and I were well informed, and used to take the gazettes when his father
had read them, and devour them safely in our boat, when by rare chance I
had a holiday.

And so passed the years 1770, 1771, and 1772, when Lord North
precipitated the crisis by attempting to control the judges in
Massachusetts, who were in future to be paid by the crown, and
would thus pass under its control. Adams now suggested committees of
correspondence, and thus the first step toward united action was taken.

These years, up to the autumn of 1772, were not without influence on my
own life for both good and evil. I was, of course, kept sedulously at
work at our business, and, though liking it even less than farriery,
learned it well enough. It was not without its pleasures. Certainly it
was an agreeable thing to know the old merchant captains, and to talk
to their men or themselves. The sea had not lost its romance. Men could
remember Kidd and Blackbeard. In the low-lying dens below Dock Creek and
on King street, were many, it is to be feared, who had seen the black
flag flying, and who knew too well the keys and shoals of the West
Indies. The captain who put to sea with such sailors had need to be
resolute and ready. Ships went armed, and I was amazed to see, in the
holds of our own ships, carronades, which out on the ocean were hoisted
up and set in place on deck; also cutlasses and muskets in the cabin,
and good store of pikes. I ventured once to ask my father if this were
consistent with non-resistance. He replied that pirates were like to
wild beasts, and that I had better attend to my business; after which I
said no more, having food for thought.

These captains got thus a noble training, were splendid seamen, and not
unused to arms and danger, as proved fortunate in days to come. Once I
would have gone to the Madeiras with Captain Biddle, but unluckily my
mother prevailed with my father to forbid it. It had been better for me
had it been decided otherwise, because I was fast getting an education
which did me no good.

“Indeed,” says Jack later on in his diary, “I was much troubled in those
seventies” (he means up to ‘74, when we were full twenty-one) “about my
friend Hugh. The town was full of officers of all grades, who came and
went, and brought with them much licence and contempt for colonists
in general, and a silly way of parading their own sentiments on all
occasions. Gambling, hard drinking, and all manner of worse things
became common and more openly indulged in. Neither here nor in Boston
could young women walk about unattended, a new and strange thing in our
quiet town.

“Mistress Gainor’s house was full of these gentlemen, whom she
entertained with a freedom only equalled by that with which she spoke
her good Whig mind. The air was full of excitement. Business fell off,
and Hugh and I had ample leisure to do much as we liked.

“I must honestly declare that I deserve no praise for having escaped the
temptations which beset Hugh. I hated all excess, and suffered in body
if I drank or ate more than was wise. As regards worse things than
wine and cards, I think Miss Wynne was right when she described me as a
girl-boy; for the least rudeness or laxity of talk in women I disliked,
and as to the mere modesties of the person, I have always been like some
well-nurtured maid.

“Thus it was that when Hugh, encouraged by his aunt, fell into the
company of these loose, swaggering captains and cornets, I had either to
give up him, who was unable to resist them, or to share in their vicious
ways myself. It was my personal disgust at drunkenness or loose society
which saved me, not any moral or religious safeguards, although. I trust
I was not altogether without these helps. I have seen now and then that
to be refined in tastes and feelings is a great aid to a virtuous life.
Also I have known some who would have been drunkards but for their heads
and stomachs, which so behaved as to be good substitutes for conscience.
It is sometimes the body which saves the soul. Both of these helps I
had, but my dear Hugh had neither. He was a great, strong, masculine
fellow, and if I may seem to have said that he wanted refined feelings,
that is not so, and to him, who will never read these lines, and to
myself, I must apologise.”

I did come to see these pages, as you know. I think he meant, that
with the wine of youth and at times of other vintages, in my veins, the
strong paternal blood, which in my father only a true, if hard, religion
kept in order, was too much for me. If I state this awkwardly it is
because all excuses are awkward. Looking back, I wonder that I was not
worse, and that I did not go to the uttermost devil. I was vigorous, and
had the stomach of a temperate ox, and a head which made no complaints.
The morning after some mad revel I could rise at five, and go out in my
boat and overboard, and then home in a glow, with a fine appetite for
breakfast; and I was so big and tall that I was thought to be many years
older than I was.

I should have been less able unwatched to go down this easy descent, had
it not been for a train of circumstances which not only left me freer
than I ought to have been, but, in the matter of money, made it only too
possible for me to hold my own amid evil or lavish company. My aunt had
lived in London, and in a society which had all the charm of breeding,
and all the vices of a period more coarse than ours. She detested my
father’s notions, and if she meant to win me to her own she took an
ill way to do it. I was presented to the English officers, and freely
supplied with money, to which I had been quite unused, so long as
my father was the only source of supply. We were out late when I was
presumed to be at my Aunt Gainor’s; and to drink and bet, or to see a
race or cock-fight, or to pull off knockers, or to bother the ancient
watchmen, were now some of my most reputable amusements. I began to be
talked about as a bit of a rake, and my Aunt Gainor was not too greatly
displeased; she would hear of our exploits and say “Fie! fie!” and
then give me more guineas. Worse than all, my father was deep in his
business, lessening his ventures, and thus leaving me more time to sow
the seed of idleness. Everything, as I now see it, combined to make easy
for me the downward path. I went along it without the company of Jack
Warder, and so we drew apart; he would none of it.

When my father began to withdraw his capital my mother was highly
pleased, and more than once in my presence said to him: “Why, John, dost
thou strive for more and more money? Hast thou not enough? Let us
give up all this care and go to our great farm at Merion, and live as
peaceful as our cattle.” She did not reckon upon the force with which
the habits of a life bound my father to his business.

I remember that it was far on in April, 1773, when my Aunt Gainer
appeared one day in my father’s counting-house. Hers was a well-known
figure on King street, and even in the unpleasant region alongshore to
the south of Dock street. She would dismount, leave her horse to the
groom, and, with a heavily mounted, silver-topped whip in hand, and her
riding-petticoat gathered up, would march along, picking her way through
mud and filth. Here she contrived to find the queer china things she
desired, or in some mysterious way she secured cordials and such liquors
as no one else could get.

Once she took my mother with her, and loaded her with gods of the Orient
and fine China pongee silks.

“But, Hugh,” said the dear lady, “_il n’est pas possible de vous la
decrire. Mon Dieu!_ she can say terrible words, and I have seen a man
who ventured some rudeness to me--no, no, mon cher, nothing to anger
you; il avait peur de cette femme. He was afraid of her--her and her
whip. He was so alarmed that he let her have a great china mandarin
for a mere nothing. I think he was glad to see her well out of his low
tavern.”

“But the man,” I urged; “what did he say to thee, mother?”

“N’importe, mon fils. I did want the mandarin. He nodded this way--this
way. He wagged his head as a dog wags his tail, like Thomas Scattergood
in the Meeting. Comme ca.” She became that man in a moment, turning
up the edge of her silk shawl, and nodding solemnly. I screamed with
laughter. Ever since I was a child, despite my father’s dislikes, she
had taught me French, and when alone with me liked me to chatter in her
mother language. In fact, I learned it well.

On the occasion of which I began just now to speak, my Aunt Gainor
entered, with a graver face than common, and I rising to leave her with
my father, she put her whip across my breast as I turned, and said, “No;
I want you to hear what I have to say.”

“What is it, Gainor?”

“This business of the ship ‘Gaspee’ the Rhode Island men burned is
making trouble in the East. The chief justice of Rhode Island, Hopkins,
has refused to honour the order to arrest these Rhode-Islanders.”

“Pirates!” said my father.

“Pirates, if you like. We shall all be pirates before long.”

“Well, Gainor, is that all? It does not concern me.”

“No; I have letters from London which inform me that the Lord North is
but a puppet, and as the king pulls the wires he will dance to whatever
tune the king likes. He was a nice, amiable young fellow when I stayed
at his father’s, my Lord Guilford’s, and not without learning and
judgment. But for the Exchequer--a queer choice, I must say.”

“It is to be presumed that the king knows how to choose his ministers.
Thou knowest what I think, Gainor. We have but to obey those whom the
Lord has set over us. We are told to render unto Caesar the things which
are Caesar’s, and to go our ways in peace.”

“The question is, What are Caesar’s?” said my aunt. “Shall Caesar judge
always? I came to tell you that it is understood in London, although not
public, that it is meant to tax our tea. Now we do not buy; we smuggle
it from Holland; but if the India Company should get a drawback on tea,
we shall be forced to take it for its cheapness, even with the duty on
it of threepence a pound.”

“It were but a silly scheme, Gainor. I cannot credit it.”

“Who could, John? and yet it is to be tried, and all for a matter of a
few hundred pounds a year. It will be tried not now or soon, but next
fall when the tea-ships come from China.”

“And if it is to be as thou art informed, what of it?”

“A storm--a tempest in a teapot,” said she.

My father stood still, deep in thought. He had a profound respect for
the commercial sagacity of this clear-headed woman. Moreover, he was
sure, as usual, to be asked to act in Philadelphia as a consignee of the
India Company.

She seemed to see through her brother, as one sees through glass. “You
got into trouble when the stamps came.”

“What has that got to do with this?”

“And again when you would not sign the Non-importation Agreement in
‘68.”

“Well?”

“They will ask you to receive the tea.”

“And I will do it. How can I refuse? I should lose all their India
trade.”

“There will soon be no trade to lose. You are, as I know, drawing in
your capital. Go abroad. Wind up your affairs in England; do the same in
Holland. Use all your ships this summer. Go to Madeira from London. Buy
freely, and pay at once so as to save interest; it will rise fast. Come
home in the fall of ‘74 late. Hold the goods, and, above all, see that
in your absence no consignments be taken. Am I clear, John?”

I heard her with such amazement as was shared by my father. The boldness
and sagacity of the scheme impressed a man trained to skill in commerce,
and ever given to courageous ventures.

“You must sail in October or before; you will need a year. No less will
do.”

“Yes--yes.”

I saw from his look that he was captured. He walked to and fro, while
my Aunt Gainor switched the dust off her petticoat or looked out of the
window. At last she turned to me. “What think you of it, Hugh?”

“Mr. Wilson says we shall have war, aunt, and Mr. Attorney-General Chew
is of the same opinion. I heard them talking of it last night at thy
house. I think the king’s officers want a war.” I took refuge, shrewdly,
in the notions of my elders. I had no wiser thing to say. “I myself do
not know,” I added.

“How shouldst thou?” said my father, sharply,

I was silent.

“And what think you, John?”

“What will my wife say, Gainor? We have never been a month apart.”

“Let me talk to her.”

“Wilt thou share in the venture?” He was testing the sincerity of her
advice. “And to what extent?”

“Five thousand pounds. You may draw on me from London, and buy powder
and muskets,” she added, with a smile.

“Not I. Why dost thou talk such folly?”

“Then Holland blankets and good cloth. I will take them off your hands
at a fair profit.”

“I see no objection to that.”

My aunt gave me a queer look, saying, “The poor will need them. I shall
sell them cheap.”

It was singular that I caught her meaning, while my father, reflecting
on the venture as a whole, did not.

“I will do it,” he said.

“Then a word more. Be careful here as to debts. Why not wind up your
business, and retire with the profit you will make?” It was the same
advice my mother had given, as I well knew.

“Hast thou been talking to my wife?” he said.

“No,” she replied, surprised; “may I?”

“Yes. As to going out of business, Gainor, I should be but a lost man. I
am not as well-to-do as thou dost seem to think.”

“Stuff and nonsense!” cried my aunt. “I believe Thomas Willing is no
better off in what you call this world’s gear, nor Franks, nor any
of them. You like the game, and, after all, what is it but a kind of
gambling? How do you know what hands the ocean holds? Your ventures are
no better than my guineas cast down on the loo-table.” These two could
never discuss anything but what it must end in a difference.

“Thou art a fool, Gainor, to talk such wicked nonsense before this boy.
It is not worth an answer. I hear no good of Hugh of late. He hath been
a concern to James Pemberton and to my friend, Nicholas Wain, and to
me--to me. Thy gambling and idle redcoats are snares to his soul. He has
begun to have opinions of his own as to taxes, and concerning the plain
duty of non-resistance. As if an idle dog like him had any right to have
an opinion at all!”

“Tut! tut!” cried Miss Wynne.

“I am not idle,” I said, “if I am a dog.”

He turned and seized me by the collar. “I will teach thee to answer thy
elders.” And with this he shook me violently, and caught up a cane from
a chair where he had laid it.

And now, once again, that disposition to be merry came over me, and,
perfectly passive, I looked up at him and smiled. As I think of it, it
was strange in a young fellow of my age.

[Illustration: “I WILL TEACH THEE TO ANSWER THY ELDERS” Page 84 Hugh
Wynne]

[Transcriber’s Note: In the illustration, two men and a woman stand in
a room. One of the men is holding a stick over his head; the woman has
grabbed his hand at the wrist. The other man looks on.]

“Wouldst thou laugh?” he cried. “Has it gone that far?” and he raised
his stick. My Aunt Gainor jerked it out of his hand, and, standing,
broke it over her knee as if it had been a willow wand.

He fell back, crying, “Gainor! Gainor!”

“My God! man,” she cried, “are you mad? If I were you I would take some
heed to that hot Welsh blood. What would my good Marie say? Why have you
not had the sense to make a friend of the boy? He is worth ten of you,
and has kept his temper like the gentleman he is.”

It was true. I had some queer sense of amusement in the feeling that
I really was not angry; neither was I ashamed; but an hour later I was
both angry and ashamed. Just now I felt sorry for my father, and shared
the humiliation he evidently felt.

My aunt turned to her brother, where, having let me go, he stood with
set features, looking from her to me, and from me to her. Something in
his look disturbed her.

“You should be proud of his self-command. Cannot you see that it is your
accursed repression and dry, dreary life at home that has put you two
apart?”

“I have been put to scorn before my son, Gainor Wynne. It is thy evil
ways that have brought this about. I have lost my temper and would
have struck in anger, when I should have reflected, and, after prayer,
chastised this insolence at home.”

“I heard no insolence.”

“Go away, Hugh, and thou, Gainor. Why dost thou always provoke me? I
will hear no more!”

“Come, Hugh,” she said; and then: “It seems to me that the boy has had a
good lesson in meekness, and as to turning that other cheek.”

“Don’t, Aunt Gainor!” said I, interrupting her.

“Oh, go!” exclaimed my father. “Go! go, both of you!”

“Certainly; but, John, do not mention my news or my London letter.”

“I shall not.”

“Then by-by! Come, Hugh!”




VI


There must have been in this troubled country many such sad scenes as
I have tried to recall. Father and son were to part with hot words,
brother to take sides against brother. My unpleasant half-hour was but
prophetic of that which was to come in worse shape, and to last for
years.

My Aunt Gainor said, “Do not tell your mother,” and I assuredly did not.

“He will tell her. He tells her everything, soon or late. I must see
her at once. Your father is becoming, as the French say, impossible.
The times, and these wrangling Friends, with their stupid testimonies,
irritate him daily until he is like a great, strong bull, such as the
Spaniards tease to madness with little darts and fireworks. You see,
Hugh, events are prickly things. They play the deuce with obstinate
people. Your father will be better away from home. He has never been in
England, and he will see how many, like Mr. Pitt and Colonel Barre, are
with us. As for myself, I have been a bit of a fool about you, and your
father is more or less right. We must abjure sack and take physic.”

“What?” said I.

“To be plain, we must--that is, you must--play less and drink less, and
in your father’s absence look sharply, with my help, to his business.”

I was to need other doctors before I mended my ways. I said my aunt was
right, and I made certain good resolutions, which were but short-lived
and never reached adult maturity of usefulness.

My aunt walked with me north between the warehouses, taverns, and
ship-chandlers on the riverfront, and so across the bridge over Dock
Creek, and up to Third street. She said I must not talk to her. She had
thinking to do, and for this cause, I suppose, turning, took me down
to Pine street. At St. Peter’s Church she stopped, and bade me wait
without, adding, “If I take you in I shall hear of it; wait.”

There was a midday service at this time, it being Lent. I waited idly,
thinking of my father, and, as I before said, vexed and sorry and
ashamed by turns. Often now I pause before I enter this sacred edifice,
and think of that hour of tribulation. I could hear the fine, full voice
of the Rev. Dr. Duche as he intoned the Litany. He lies now where I
stood, and under the arms on his tomb is no record of the political
foolishness and instability of a life otherwise free from blame. As I
stood, Mrs. Ferguson came out, she who in days to come helped to get the
unlucky parson into trouble. With her came my aunt.

“I said a prayer for thee, Hugh,” she whispered. “No; no cards in Lent,
my dear Bess. Fie! for shame! This way, Hugh;” and we went east, through
Pine street, and so to the back of our garden, where we found a way in,
and, walking under the peach-trees, came to where my mother sat beneath
a plum-tree, shelling peas, her great Manx cat by her side.

She wore a thin cap on top of the curly head, which was now wind-blown
out of all order. “Come, Gainor,” she cried, seeing us; “help me to
shell my peas. Thou shalt have some. They are come in a ship from the
Bermudas. What a pretty pale green the pods are! I should like an apron
of that colour.”

“I have the very thing, dear. Shall it be the minuet pattern, or plain?”

“Oh, plain. Am I not a Friend? _Une Amie? Ciel!_ but it is droll in
French. Sarah Logan is twice as gay as I, but John does not love such
vanities. _Quant a moi, je les adore_. It seems odd to have a colour to
a religion. I wonder if drab goodness be better than red goodness. But
what is wrong, Gainor? Yes, there is something. Hugh, thy collar is
torn; how careless of me not to have mended it!”

Then my Aunt Gainor, saying nothing of my especial difficulty, and
leaving out, too, her London news, related with remarkable clearness the
reasons why my father should go overseas in the early fall and be gone
for a year. The mother went on quietly shelling the peas, and losing
no word. When Gainor had done, the bowl of peas was set aside, and my
mother put back her curls, fixed her blue eyes on her sister-in-law,
and was silent for a moment longer. At last she said, “It were best,
for many reasons best. I see it,” and she nodded her head affirmatively.
“But my son? my Hugh?”

“You will have him with you at home. Everything will go on as usual,
except that John will be amusing himself in London.”

At this the little lady leaped up, all ablaze, so to speak. Never had
I seen her so moved. “What manner of woman am I, Gainer Wynne, that I
should let my husband go alone on the seas, and here and there, without
me? I will not have it. My boy is my boy; God knows I love him; but my
husband comes first now and always, and thou art cruel to wish to part
us.”

“But I never wished to part you. Go with him, Marie. God bless your
sweet heart! Leave me your boy; he cannot go. As God lives, I will take
care of him!”

Upon this the two women fell to weeping in each other’s arms, a thing
most uncommon for my Aunt Gainor. Then they talked it all over, as if
John Wynne were not; when it would be, and what room I was to have,
and my clothes, and the business, and so on--all the endless details
wherewith the cunning affection of good women knows to provide comfort
for us, who are so apt to be unthankful.

It amazed me to see how quickly it was settled, and still more to learn
that my father did not oppose, but fell in with all their plans.

Now back of all my weaknesses and folly I had, as I have said, some
of the sense of honour and proud rectitude of my father, who strictly
abided by his creed and his conscience. I returned no more that day to
the counting-house, but, saying to my mother I had business, I went off,
with a hunk of bread, to my boat, and down the creek to the Delaware. I
pulled out, past our old playground on the island, and far away toward
the Jersey shore, and then, as the sun fell, drifted with the tide,
noting the ruddy lines of the brick houses far away, and began to think.

The scene I had gone through had made a deep impression. It has been
ever so with me. Drinking, gaming, betting, and worse, never awakened my
conscience or set me reflecting, until some sudden, unlooked-for thing
took place, in which sentiment or affection was concerned. Then I would
set to work to balance my books and determine my course. At such times
it was the dear mother who spoke in me, and the father who resolutely
carried out my decision.

The boat drifted slowly with the flood-tide, and I, lying on the bottom,
fell to thought of what the day had brought me. The setting sun touched
the single spire of Christ Church, and lit up yellow squares of light
in the westward-looking windows of the rare farm-houses on the Jersey
shore. Presently I was aground on the south end of Petty’s Island,
where in after-years lay rotting the “Alliance,” the remnant ship of the
greatest sea-fight that ever was since Grenville lay in the “Revenge,”
 with the Spanish fleet about him. I came to ground amid the reeds
and spatter-docks, where the water-lilies were just in bud. A noisy
orchestra of frogs, with, as Jack said, fiddles and bassoons in their
throats, ceased as I came, and pitched headlong off the broad green
floats. Only one old fellow, with a great bass voice, and secure on the
bank, protested loudly at intervals, like the owl in Mr. Gray’s noble
poem, which my Jack loved to repeat.

At last he--I mean my frog--whose monastery I had disturbed, so vexed
me, who wanted stillness, that I smacked the water with the flat of an
oar, which he took to be a hint, and ceased to lament my intrusion.

I was now well on to twenty, and old enough to begin at times to deal
thoughtfully with events. A young fellow’s feelings are apt to be
extreme, and even despotic, so that they rule the hour with such
strength of sway as may be out of proportion to the cause. I might have
seen that I had no just cause to blame myself, but that did not help
me. The mood of distressful self-accusation was on me. I had no repeated
impulse to smile at what, in my father’s conduct, had appeared to me a
little while ago odd, and even amusing. I could never please him. I had
grinned as I always did when risks were upon me. He never understood me,
and I was tired of trying. What use was it to try? I had one of those
minutes of wishing to die, which come even to the wholesome young. I
was well aware that of late I had not, on the whole, satisfied my
conscience; I knew this quite too well; and now, as I lay in the boat
discontented, I felt, as the youthful do sometimes feel, as if I were
old, and the ending of things were near. It was but a mood, but it led
up to serious thought. There are surely hours in youth when we are older
than our years, and times in age when we are again young. Sometimes I
wonder whether Jack was right, who used to say it may be we are never
young or old, but merely seem to be so. This is the queer kind of
reflection which I find now and then in Jack’s diary, or with which he
used to puzzle me and please James Wilson. Of course a man is young or
is old, and there’s an end on ‘t, as a greater man has said. But Jack
has imagination, and I have none.

I asked myself if I had done wrong in what I had said. I could not see
that I had. With all my lifelong fear of my father, I greatly honoured
and respected him, finding in myself something akin to the unyielding
firmness with which he stood fast when he had made up his mind.

That this proud and steadfast man, so looked up to by every one, no
matter what might be their convictions religious or political, should
have been humiliated by a woman, seemed to me intolerable; this was the
chief outcome of my reflections. It is true I considered, but I fear
lightly, my own misdoings. I made up my mind to do better, and then
again the image of my father in his wrath and his shame came back anew.
I turned the boat, and pulled steadily across the river to our landing.

My father was in the counting-house in his own room, alone, although it
was full late. “Well?” he said, spinning round on his high stool. “What
is it? Thou hast been absent, and no leave asked.”

“Father,” I said, “if I was wrong this morning I wish to ask thy
pardon.”

“Well, it is full time.”

“And I am come to say that I will take the punishment here and now. I
did not run away from that.”

“Very good,” he replied, rising. “Take off thy fine coat.”

I wished he had not said this of my coat. I was in a heroic temper, and
the sarcasm bit cruelly, but I did as I was bid. He went to the corner,
and picked up a rattan cane. To whip fellows of nineteen or twenty was
not then by any means unusual. What would have happened I know not,
nor ever shall. He said, “There, I hear thy mother’s voice. Put on thy
coat.” I hastened to obey him.

The dear lady came in with eyes full of tears, “What is this, John, I
hear? I have seen Gainor. I could not wait. I shall go with thee.”

“No,” he said; “that is not to be.” But she fell on his neck, and
pleaded, and I, for my part, went away, not sorry for the interruption.
As usual she had her way.

I remember well this spring of ‘73. It was early by some weeks, and
everything was green and blossoming in April. My father and mother
were not to sail until the autumn, but already he was arranging for the
voyage, and she as busily preparing or thinking over what was needed.

When next I saw my Aunt Gainor, she cried out, “Sit down there, bad boy,
and take care of my mandarin. He and my great bronze Buddha are my only
counsellors. If I want to do a thing I ask Mr. Mandarin--he can only nod
yes; and if I want not to do a thing I ask Buddha, and as he can neither
say no nor yes, I do as I please. What a wretch you are!”

I said I could not see it; and then I put my head in her lap, as I sat
on the stool, and told her of my last interview with my father, and how
for two days he had hardly so much as bade me good-night.

“It is his way, Hugh,” said my aunt. “I am sorry; but neither love nor
time will mend him. He is what his nature and the hard ways of Friends
have made him.”

I said that this was not all, nor the worst, and went on to tell her my
latest grievance. Our family worship at home was, as usual with Friends
in those days, conducted at times in total silence, and was spoken of
by Friends as “religious retirement.” At other times, indeed commonly,
a chapter of the Bible was read aloud, and after that my father would
sometimes pray openly. On this last occasion he took advantage of the
opportunity to dilate on my sins, and before our servants to ask of
Heaven that I be brought to a due sense of my iniquities. It troubled
my mother, who arose from her knees in tears, and went out of the room,
whilst I, overcome with anger, stood looking out of the window. My
father spoke to her as she opened the door, but she made no answer, nor
even so much as turned her head. It brought to my memory a day of my
childhood, when my father was vexed because she taught me to say the
Lord’s Prayer. He did not approve, and would have no set form of words
taught me. My mother was angry too, and I remember my own amazement that
any one should resist my father.

When I had told my aunt of the indignity put upon me, and of the fading
remembrance thus recalled, she said, “John Wynne has not changed, nor
will he ever.” She declared that, after all, it was her fault--to have
treated me as if I were a man, and to have given me too much money. I
shook my head, but she would have it she was to blame, and then said of
a sudden, “Are you in debt, you scamp? Did John pray for me!” I replied
that I owed no one a penny, and that she had not been remembered. She
was glad I was not in debt, and added, “Never play unless you have
the means to pay. I have been very foolish. That uneasy woman, Bessy
Ferguson, must needs tell me so. I could have slapped her. They will
have thy sad case up in Meeting, I can tell thee.”

“But what have I done!” I knew well enough.

“Tut! you must not talk that way to me; but it is my fault. Oh, the time
I have had with your mother! I am not fit, it seems, to be left to take
care of you. They talk of leaving you with Abijah Hapworthy--sour old
dog! I wish you joy of him!”

“Good heavens!” I exclaimed; for among my aunt’s gay friends I had
picked up such exclamatory phrases as, used at home, would have
astonished my father.

“Rest easy,” said Mistress Wynne; “it is not to be. I have fought your
battle, and won it. But I have had to make such promises to your father,
and--woe is me!--to your mother, as will damn me forever if you do not
help me to keep them. I can fib to your father and not care a snap, but
lie to those blue eyes I cannot.”

“I will try, Aunt Gainor; indeed I will try.” Indeed, I did mean to.

“You must, you must. I am to be a sort of godmother-in-law to you, and
renounce for you the world, the flesh, and the devil; and that for one
of our breed! I shall be like a sign-post, and never go the way I point.
That was Bessy Ferguson s malice. Oh, I have suffered, I can tell you.
It is I, and not you, that have repented.”

“But I will; I do.”

“That is all very well; but I have had my whipping, and you got off
yours.”

“What do you mean, aunt?”

“What do I mean? Here came yesterday Sarah Fisher, pretty gay for a
Quaker, and that solemn Master Savory, with his sweet, low voice like
a nice girl’s tongue, and his gentle ways. And they are friends of thy
people, who are distressed at thy goings on; and Nicholas Waln has seen
thee with two sons of Belial in red coats, come out of the coffeehouse
last month at evening, singing songs such as are not to be described,
and no better able to take care of yourself than you should be. They did
think it well and kind--hang ‘em, Hugh!--to consider the matter with me.
We considered it--we did, indeed. There be five people whose consciences
I am to make you respect. And not one of them do I care for, but Mother
Blue-eyes. But I must! I must! It was all true, sir, what Friend Wain
said; for you had reason enough left to come hither, and did I not put
you to bed and send for Dr. Chovet, who grinned famously, and said,
‘_Je comprends_’ and went to call on your father on a hint from me, to
declare you were _enrhume’_, and threatened with I know not what; in
fact, he lied like a gentleman. You made a noble recovery, and are a
credit to the doctor. I hope you will pay the bill, and are ashamed.”

I was, and I said so.

“But that is not all. These dear Quakers were the worst. They were
really sorry, and I had to put on my best manners and listen; and now
everybody knows, and you are the talk of the town. Those drab geese must
out with the whole naughtiness, despite the company which came in on
us, and here were Mr. Montresor and that ape Etherington grinning, and,
worst of all, a charming young woman just come to live here with her
aunt, and she too must have her say when the Quakers and the men were
gone.”

“And what did she say?” I did not care much. “And what is her name?”

“Oh, she said the Quakers were rather outspoken people, and it was a
pity, and she was sorry, because she knew you once, and you had taken
her part at school.”

“At school?”

“Yes. She is Darthea Peniston, and some kin of that Miss de Lancey, whom
Sir William Draper will marry if he can.”

“Darthea Peniston?” I said, and my thoughts went back to the tender
little maid who wept when I was punished, and for whom I had revenged
myself on Master Dove.

“Quite a Spanish beauty,” said my Aunt Wynne; “a pretty mite of a girl,
and not more money than will clothe her, they say; but the men mad about
her. Come and see her to-morrow if you are sober.”

“O Aunt Gainor!”

“Yes, sir. I hear Mr. Montresor has leave from Anthony Morris to invite
you to ‘The Colony in Schuylkill’ to-morrow. It is well your father has
gone to visit Mr. Yeates at Lancaster.”

“I shall behave myself, Aunt Gainer.”

“I hope so. The Fish House punch is strong.”

I went home thinking of Miss Darthea Peniston, and filled with desire to
lead a wiser life. It was full time. My aunt’s lavish generosity had, as
I have said, given me means to live freely among the officers, who were,
with some exceptions, a dissolute set. To be with them made it needful
to become deceitful and to frame excuses, so that, when I was supposed
to be at my aunt’s, or riding, I was free that past winter to go on
sleighing-parties or to frequent taverns, pleased with the notice I got
from men like Montresor and the officers of the Scotch Grays.

I have dwelt not at all on these scenes of dissipation. It is enough
to mention them. My father was wrapped up in his business, and full
of cares both worldly and spiritual; for now Friends were becoming
politically divided, and the meetings were long and sometimes agitated.

My good mother was neither deceived nor unconcerned. She talked to me
often, and in such a way as brings tears to my eyes even now to think of
the pain I gave her. Alas! it is our dearest who have the greatest power
to wound us. I wept and promised, and went back to my husks and evil
company.

I have no wish to conceal these things from my children. It is well that
our offspring when young should think us angels; but it were as well
that when they are older they should learn that we have been men of like
passions with themselves, and have known temptation, and have fought,
and won or lost, our battles with sin. It is one of the weaknesses
of nations, as well as of children, that they come to consider their
political fathers as saints. I smile when I think of the way people
nowadays think of our great President, as of a mild genius, incapable of
being moved to anger or great mirth, a man unspotted of the world. They
should have heard him at Monmouth, when Lee failed him in a time of
peril, or seen him, as I have seen him, soberly merry over his wine with
Knox. But some day you shall see him as my friend Jack and I saw him,
and you will, I trust, think no worse of him for being as human as he
was just.

The day of my more honest repentance was near, and I knew not that it
was to be both terrible and of lasting value. I sometimes reflect upon
the curious conditions with which my early manhood was surrounded.
Here was I, brought up in the strictest ways of a sect to which I do no
injustice if I describe it as ascetic. At home I saw plain living, and
no luxury, save in regard to food, which my father would have of the
best money could buy. I was taught the extreme of non-resistance, and
absolute simplicity as to dress and language. Amusements there were
none, and my father read no books except such as dealt with things
spiritual, or things commercial. At my aunt’s, and in the society I saw
at her house, there were men and women who loved to dance, gamble, and
amuse themselves. The talk was of bets, racing, and the like. To be
drunk was a thing to be expected of officers and gentlemen. To avenge an
insult with sword or pistol was the only way to deal with it. My father
was a passive Tory, my aunt a furious Whig. What wonder that I fell a
victim to temptation?




VII


The next day, having seen to matters of business in the morning, I set
out after dinner in my finest clothes to join my friends. I fear that I
promised my mother to be careful, and to be at home by nine o’clock.

I met Captain Montresor at the London Coffeehouse, at High and Front
streets, and, having taken a chaise, drove out through the woods to the
upper ferry, and thence to Egglesfield, the seat of Mr. Warner, from
whom the club known then as “The Colony in Schuylkill” held under a
curious tenure the acre or two of land where they had built a log cabin
and founded this ancient and singular institution. Here were met
Anthony Morris, who fell at Trenton, Mr. Tench Francis, sometime
Attorney-General, Mifflin, and that Galloway who later became a Tory,
with Mr. Willing, and others of less note, old and young. I was late for
the annual ceremony of presenting three fish to Mr. Warner, this being
the condition on which the soil was held, but I saw the great pewter
dish with the Penn arms, a gift from that family, on which the fish were
offered.

It was a merry and an odd party; for, clad in white aprons, the
apprentices, so called, cooked the dinner and served it; and the punch
and Madeira went round the table often enough, as the “king’s health”
 was drunk, and “success to trade,” and “the ladies, God bless them!”

I liked it well, and, with my aunt’s warning in mind, drank but little,
and listened to the talk, which was too free at times, as was the bad
custom of that day, and now and then angry; for here were some who were
to die for their country, and some who were to fail it in the hour of
need.

Despite my English friends, and thanks to Mr. Wilson and my Aunt Gainor,
I was fast becoming an ardent Whig, so that the talk, in which I had
small share, interested me deeply. At last, about seven, the pipes
having been smoked and much punch taken, the company rose to go, some of
them the worse for their potations.

We drove into town, and at the coffee-house put up and paid for our
chaise. I said good-by to Mr. Montresor, who, I think, had been charged
by Miss Wynne to look after me, when a Captain Small, whom I knew,
stopped me. He was well known as one of the most reckless of the
younger officers, a stout, short man, rather heroically presented long
afterward, in Trumbull’s picture of the “Death of Warren,” as trying to
put aside the bayonets. As I paused to reply, I saw Jack Warder standing
on the other side of the street. He nodded, smiling, and made as if he
were about to cross over. He had many times talked with me seriously
this winter, until I had become vexed, and told them he was a milksop.
After this I saw little of him. Now I was annoyed at the idea that he
was spying upon my actions, and therefore, like a fool, merely nodded,
and, turning my back on him, heard Mr. Small say: “You must not go yet,
Mr. Wynne. We are to have supper upstairs, and you will like to see a
gentleman of your name, Mr. Arthur Wynne, of the Scots Grays. He tells
me he is of distant kin to you.”

Montresor said I had better go home, but Etherington asked if I wanted
my bottle and nurse; and so at last, partly from pride and partly out of
curiosity to see this other Wynne, I said I would remain long enough to
welcome the gentleman and take a social glass. When we entered the
room upstairs, I found a supper of cold meats and, as usual, punch and
liquors. There were two dozen or more officers in undress jackets, their
caps and swords in the corners, and also two or three of the younger men
of the Tory or doubtful parties.

Several officers called to me to sit with them, for I was a favourite,
and could troll a catch or sing parts fairly well. My companion, Small,
said, “This way, Wynne,” and, followed by Montresor and the colonel of
the Scots Grays, whose name I forget, we moved to a table remote from
the door. Here Montresor, pushing past Small, said: “Captain Wynne, I
have the honour to present to you Mr. Hugh Wynne, one of your family, I
hear.”

Upon this there rose to greet me a gentleman in the undress uniform of
the Grays. He was tall and well built, but not so broad or strong as we
other Wynnes; certainly an unusually handsome man. He carried his head
high, was very erect, and had an air of distinction, for which at that
time I should have had no name. I may add that he was dressed with
unusual neatness, and very richly; all of which, I being but a
half-formed young fellow, did much impress me.

He looked at me so steadily as we came near that it gave me a rather
unpleasant impression; for those who do not meet the eye at all are
scarcely less disagreeable than those who too continually watch you, as
was this man’s way. I was rather young to be a very careful observer
of men’s faces, but I did see that Captain Wynne’s bore traces of too
convivial habits.

As I recall his dark, regular features, I remember, for we met often
afterward, that the lower part of his face was too thin, and that in
repose his mouth was apt not to remain fully shut, a peculiarity, as I
now think, of persons of weak will.

My first feeling of there being something unpleasing about him soon left
me. He rose, and, with graciousness and the ease and manner of one used
to the best society, moved around the table and took my hand.

“I am but a far-away kinsman,” he said, “but I am charmed to make your
acquaintance. You are like the picture of old Sir Robert at Wyncote,
where I was last year for the otter-hunting.”

I greeted him warmly. “And art thou living at Wyneote?” I asked rather
awkwardly.

“No, I do not live at home. I am but a cadet, and yours is the elder
branch.” Then he added gaily, “I salute you, sir, as the head of our
old house. Your very good health!” And at this, with a charm of manner I
have seen but rarely, he put a hand on my shoulder, and added, “We must
be friends, Cousin Wynne, and I must know your father, and above all
Mistress Wynne. Montresor never ceases talking of her.”

I said it would give me pleasure to present him; then, delighted to
hear of Wyncote, I sat down, and, despite a warning look from Montresor,
began to take wine with this newly found kinsman.

Mr. Arthur Wynne was a man fully ten years my senior. He had served in
the Guards, and in the Indies, and was full of stories of court and camp
and war, such as every young fellow of spirit likes to hear.

Captain Montresor lingered awhile, and then, finding it vain to
persist in his purpose, gave it up, and fell to talking with one of his
fellow-officers, while I went on questioning my cousin as to the Wynnes
to their uttermost generation. Either he cared little about them, or he
knew little, for he seemed much to prefer to tell queer stories about
the court ladies, and my Lord Chesterfield’s boor of a son, who had such
small manners and such a large appetite, and of Sir Guy Carleton, whom
he was about to join in Canada. He advised me to get a pair of colours
as my aunt had once desired, and seemed surprised when I paraded my
friend Mr. Wilson’s opinions as my own, and talked of taxation and the
oppression under which commerce had to be carried on. In fact, as to
this I knew something; but in this, as in other matters, he deferred to
me as one does to a well-informed talker of one’s own age, now setting
me right with admirable courtesy, and now cordially agreeing.

What with his evident desire to be friendly, and the wine I was taking,
I fell an easy prey to one who rarely failed to please when he was so
minded. Too well amused to reflect that the hours were swiftly passing,
I sat, taking glass after glass mechanically. As the night went on we
had more punch, and the dice began to rattle on the tables, despite the
landlord’s remonstrance, who feared to fall into the hands of the
law and lose his licence. But a lively major called out that here
was licence enough, and hustled him out of the room, calling for more
rum-punch, and stronger.

Meanwhile the smoke grew thick and thicker. Here and there a song broke
out, and the clink of coin and the rattle of dice went on. Then, when at
last Montresor came to our table and said he was going, and would I come
too, I rose, and, bidding my kinsman good-by, went with the captain. I
heard him swear as he found the door locked. No one seemed to know who
had the key, and as for me, not ill-pleased, and past feeling regret, I
turned back and stood over a table where some officers were throwing a
main.

Then I saw in a corner a poor fellow who used to be an usher at the
academy, and who, having taken to drink, had lost his place. Now he was
a sort of servitor in the coffee-house, and had gotten locked up in the
room and could not escape. He had taken refuge in a corner at a deserted
table, and, sitting unnoticed, was solacing himself with what was left
of a bowl of punch. A sense of not altogether maudlin pity came upon me,
and I went over and sat down beside him. No one took any heed of us.
The air was heavy with pipe-smoke, oaths, mad catches of song, clink of
glasses, and rattle of dice noisily cast, with here and there a toast
cried; so that it was hard to see for the smoke, or to hear a man speak.

“Why, Savoy! How earnest thou here?” I said.

“The devil fetched me, I guess.”

He was far gone in liquor. “I am like Mr. Sterne’s starling: ‘I can’t
get out.’ Ever read Mr. Sterne’s--what is it?--oh, his ‘Sentimental
Journey’?”

Here was one worse than I, and I felt inclined to use what Friends call
a precious occasion, a way being opened.

“This is a sad business, Savoy,” I said.

“Dre’ful,” he returned. “_Facilis descensus taverni._ No use to talk to
me. I am tired of life. I am going to die. Some men shoot themselves,
some like the rope, and some cold water. You know what Bishop
what’s-his-name--I mean Jeremy Taylor--says about ways to die:
‘None please me.’ But drink is the best. I mean to drink myself
dead--dead--d--dead,” and here he fell on to my shoulder. Letting him
down easily, I loosed his neckerchief, and stood beside him, pitiful and
shocked. Then in a moment I felt that I was drunk. The room whirled, and
with an effort I got to the open window, stumbling over legs of men, who
looked up from their cards and cursed me.

Of what chanced after this I knew for a time but little, until I was in
one instant sobered. This was an hour later, and nigh to twelve o’clock.
What took place I heard from others; and, as it concerns a turning-point
in my life, I shall try to relate it as if I myself had been conscious
all the while.

The better for air, I went over to a table in the centre of the room not
far from the door. Leaning heavily on Captain Small’s shoulder, I threw
on the table the last gold joe my aunt had given me with her final
lesson in morals.

“Best in three, Etherington.”

“Take it,” he cried.

I threw double sixes, he threes, and I deuce ace. Then he cast some
numbers as good. Certainly the devil meant to have me. I threw a third
time; a six and a five turned up, and he an ace and a four. I had won.
“Double or quits,” I said; “one throw.” I won again, and at this I went
on until the pile of gold grew beneath my eyes, amid laughter, curses,
and all manner of vileness. Presently I heard the colonel exclaim, “This
won’t do, gentlemen,” and I felt some one trying to draw me from the
table. It was Captain Wynne. I cried out, “Hands off! no liberties with
me! I am the head of thy house; thou art only a cadet.” He laughed as I
pushed him aside.

“You said double or quits,” cried the stout major. How he got into the
game I knew not.

“It is a mere boy! for shame!” cried the colonel. “I forbid it.”

“I am a gentleman,” I said. “Thou canst order thy officers; thou canst
not order me,” and as I spoke I cast so hard that I crushed the box.
I heard some one cry, “A damn pretty Quaker! By George, he has lost! A
clean hundred pounds!” Even in this drunken revel there was a pause for
a moment. I was, after all, but a tipsy lad of twenty, and some were
just not far enough gone to feel that it might look to others an ugly
business. The colonel said something to Major Milewood as to disrespect,
I hardly know what; for at this moment there was a loud knocking at the
door. In the lull that followed I heard the colonel’s voice.

Then the tumult broke out anew. “By Jove, it is a woman!” cried Wynne.
“I hear her. Wine and women! A guinea to a guinea she’s pretty!”

“Done!” cried some one.

“Here’s the key,” said the major; “let’s have her in.”

“_Place aux dames_,” hiccoughed a cornet.

The colonel rose, but it was too late. Wynne, seizing the key, unlocked
the door and threw it wide open, as my mother, followed by Jack Warder,
entered the room, and stood still a moment, dazed.

Captain Wynne, leering and unsteady, caught at her waist, exclaiming,
“By George! she might be younger, but I’ve won. A toast! a toast! A
Quaker, by George!”

Whether I was sobered or not, I know not. I can only say that of a
sudden I was myself, and strangely quiet. I saw the dear lady, brave,
beautiful, and with her curls falling about her neck, as she shrank back
from the man’s touch.

“Come, Hugh,” she said.

“Yes, mother,” I said; “but first--” and I struck Captain Wynne full in
the face, so that, unprepared as he was, he fell over a table and on to
the floor.

Every one started up. There was instant silence.

In a moment he was on his feet, and, like myself, another man. Turning,
he said, with amazing coolness, wiping the blood away, for I was strong,
and had hit hard, “Madam, I beg your pardon; we have been behaving like
beasts, and I am fitly punished. As to you, Mr. Wynne, you are a boy,
and have undertaken to rough it with men. This shall go no further.”

“It shall go where I please,” I cried.

“No, no; Hugh, Hugh!” said my mother.

“‘We will talk it over to-morrow,” said the captain; and then, turning,
“I mean, gentlemen, that this shall stop here. If any man thinks I am
wrong, let him say so. I shall know how to settle accounts with him.”

“No, no,” said the colonel; “you are right, and if any officer thinks
otherwise, I too am at his service.” In the silence which came after
he added, “Permit me, madam;” and offering his arm to my mother, we
following, they went downstairs, Jack and I after them, and so into the
street and the reproachful calm of the starlit April night.




VIII


“Even so far away as now,” says Jack, writing in after-days, “it
grieves me to think of that winter, and of this mad scene at the London
Coffee-house. When I saw Hugh go in with the officers, I waited for an
hour, and then went away. Returning later, I learned that he was still
upstairs. I felt that if I stayed until he came forth, although he might
not be in a way to talk to me, to know that I had waited so long might
touch him and help him to hear me with patience. I walked to and fro
until the clock had struck twelve, fearful and troubled like a woman.
Sometimes I think I am like a woman in certain ways, but not in all.

“There were many people who loved Hugh, but, save his mother, none as I
did. He had a serious kindliness in his ways, liking to help people, and
for me at certain times and in certain crises a reassuring directness
of swift dealing with matters in hand, most sustaining to one of my
hesitating nature. His courage was instinctive, mine the result of
obedience to my will, and requiring a certain resolute effort.

“I think of him always as in time of peril, throwing his head up and
his shoulders back, and smiling, with very wide-open eyes, like his
mother’s, but a deeper blue. The friendship of young men has often for a
partial basis admiration of physical force, and Hugh excelled me there,
although I have never been considered feeble or awkward except among
those of another sex, where always I am seen, I fear, to disadvantage.

“Just after twelve I saw a woman coming hastily up Front street. As she
came to a pause in the light which streamed from the open door, I
knew her for Madam Marie, as she had taught me to call her. She wore a
_caleche_ hood, fallen back so that I saw her hair, half tumbled from
under the thin gauze cap worn on the top of the head by most Quakers.
She was clad quite too slightly, and had for wrap only a thin, gray silk
shawl.

“‘_Mon Dieu!_’ she exclaimed, ‘I had to come. Jack, is he here? _Il faut
que je monte_, I must go upstairs.’ In excitement she was apt to talk
French, and then to translate. ‘Let me go,’ said I; but she cried out,
‘No, no! come!’

“There were many rough folks without, and others called together by the
noise above, and no wonder. I said,’ Come in; I will go up with
thee.’ She pushed me aside, and, with staring eyes, cried, _‘Ou est
l’escalier?’_ As we went through the coffee-room, the loungers looked at
her with surprise. She followed me without more words, ran by me on the
stairs, and in a moment beat fiercely on the door, crying, _‘Ouvrez!_
open! quick!’ Then there was that madhouse scene.”

And this was how it came about, as Jack has here told, that, still hot
and angry, but much sobered, I, her son, walked beside my mother till we
came to our door, and Jack left us, saying:

“Wilt thou see me to-morrow?”

I said, “Yes. God bless thee! Thou art the real son,” and we entered.

Then it was sweet to see her; she said no word of reproach except,
“_Il ne faut pas me donner ton baiser du soir._ No, no; I am not to be
kissed.” And so I went, sorrowful and still dizzy, up to my sleepless
couch.

At the first gray light of dawn I rose, and was soon away half a mile
from shore in my boat. As I came up from my first plunge in the friendly
river, and brushed the water from my eyes, I do assure you the world
seemed different. The water was very cold, but I cared nothing for
that. I went home another and a better man, with hope and trust and
self-repose for company. That hour in the water at early morn forever
after seemed to me a mysterious separation between two lives, like a
mighty baptismal change. Even now I think of it with a certain awe.

I pulled home as the sun rose, and lingered about until our servants
came in for the early worship of the day. Soon I had the mother’s kiss,
and underwent a quick, searching look, after which she nodded gaily, and
said, “_Est-ce que tout est bien, mon fils?_ Is all well with thee, my
son?” I said, “Yes--yes.” I heard her murmur a sweet little prayer in
her beloved French tongue. Then she began to read a chapter. I looked up
amazed. It was the prodigal’s story.

I stood it ill, thinking it hard, that she should have made choice of
that reproachful parable. I stared sideways out at the stream and the
ships, but lost no word, as, with a voice that broke now and then,
she read the parable to its close. After this should have come prayer,
silent or spoken; but, to my surprise, she said, “We will not pray this
morning,” and we went in to breakfast at once.

As for me, I could not eat. I went out alone to the garden and sat down.
I knew she would come to me soon. It seemed to me a long while. I sat on
the grass against a tree, an old cherry, as I remember, and waited.

I can see her coming toward me under the trees, grave and quiet and
sweet. The great beauty, Sarah Lukens, who married in mid-war the
gallant Lennox, used to say of my mother that she put some sugar into
all her moods; and it was true. I have seen her angry. I had rather have
faced my father in his wildest rage than her. Why was she not angry now?
She had vast reason for displeasure. After men have become wise enough
to understand woman, I protest there will remain the mother, whom no man
will ever comprehend.

“What a beautiful day, Hugh! And you had a good swim? was it cold f Why
may not girls swim? I should love it.”

Next she was beside me on the grass, my head on her bosom, saying, with
a little sob, as if she had done some wrong thing:

“I-I did not choose it, dear; indeed I did not. It came in order with
the day, as your father reads; and I--I did not think until I began it,
and then I would not stop. It is strange for it to so chance. I wonder
where that prodigal’s mother was all the while? Oh, you are better
than that wicked, wicked prodigal. I never would have let him go at
all--never if I could have helped it, I mean. _Mon Dieu!_ I think we
women were made only for prayer or for forgiveness; we can stop no sin,
and when it is done can only cry, ‘Come back! come back! I love you!’”

If I cried on that tender heart, and spoke no word, and was but a child
again, I am sure that it was of all ways the best to tell her that never
again should she be hurt by any act of mine.

“See, there is Judith at the door, wondering where I am,” she said, “and
what is to be for dinner. I must go and get ready the fatted calf. Ah,
I would not have left one alive. Yes, yes, I can jest, because I am no
more afraid, _mon fils_, nor ever shall be.”

Upon this I would have said something of my deep shame, and of the swine
among whom I had wallowed.

“No,” she cried; “_c’est fini, mon cher_. It is all over. The swine will
eat alone hereafter.” She would hear no more, only adding, “As for me,
I want to be told once how brave I was. Jack said so; indeed he did. I
_was_ brave, was I not?”

“Don’t, dear mother! please! I cannot bear it.” Somehow this plea, so
childlike, to be praised for what must have cost so much, quite overcame
me.

“Yes, yes,” she said; “I understand thee, and I shall always. How strong
thou art, _mon fils!_ I was proud of thee, even in that sty of pigs
in red coats. And he behaved like a gentleman, and hath wondrous
self-command. I would see him again; who is he?”

I told her his name.

“_Que c’est drole_. That is curious. Thy cousin! No doubt we shall see
him to-day, and thy father. I shall tell him all--all. He must know.”

“Yes, he must know,” I said; “but I will tell him myself.”

“He will be angry, but that is part of thy punishment.”

Then I told her, too, I had lost an hundred pounds, as I believed, and
she said:

“That is, after all, the least. There are pearls of my sister’s I never
wear. Thy aunt must take them and pay this debt. Go now to thy business
as if nothing had happened, and I will send thee the pearls by Tom. No,
no; it is to be as I say; I must have my way.”

What could I do? I kissed her, and we parted. I made no promises, and
she asked for none. I like to think of how, after all, I left with her
this sense of quiet trust.

I have said that the daily march of events never so influenced my life
as did critical occasions. This was surely one of them. I do not now
regret the knowledge of a baser world which I thus acquired. It has been
of use to me, and to some with whose lives I have had to deal.

Of the wrath of my father, when I humbly confessed my sins, it is not
needful to speak at length. For business calamities he was ready enough,
and lacked not decision; but in this matter he was, as I could see,
puzzled. He strode up and down, a great bulk of a man, opening and
shutting his hands, a trick he had in his rare moments of doubt or of
intense self-repression.

“I know not what to do with thee,” he said over and over; “and thou
didst strike the man, thy cousin? Well, well! and hurt him, I am told?
And he did not return the blow!”

I had not said so. Thus I knew that other busy tongues had been at work.
For my life, I could not see whether he looked upon the blow as my worst
iniquity, or deep in his heart was hardly grieved at it.

“Thou didst strike him? I must consider of thee; I must take counsel.
Go! thou wilt bring my gray hairs in sorrow to the grave.” And so I left
him, still striding to and fro, with ever the same odd movement of his
hands. He took counsel, indeed, and for me and for him the most unwise
that ever a troubled man could have taken. It was some days before this
unpleasant scene took place, and meanwhile I had seen my aunt.

She was taking snuff furiously when I entered, and broke out at once,
very red in the face, and walking about in a terrible rage. My mother
used to say that the first thing one saw of my Aunt Gainor was her nose.
It had been quite too much of a nose for the rest of her face, until
gray hair and some change wrought by time in the architecture of
her fine head helped to make it more in harmony with the rest of her
features. Somehow it arrested my attention now, and Heaven knows why it
seemed to me more odd than ever.

“This is a fine repentance indeed! What are you staring at, you fool?
Here has been that wild curlew, Bess Ferguson, with an awful tale of how
you have gambled and lost an hundred pounds, and half killed an unlucky
cousin. Who the deuce is the man? A nice godchild you are! A proper rage
I am in, and Dr. Rush tells me I am never to get excited! You should
hear Mrs. Galloway; duels and murder are the least of her talk; and,
upon my word, you know no more of the small sword than of--I know not
what. I must send you to Pike for lessons. When is it to be?”

“My dear aunt,” I cried, “I wish all these Tory cats of yours were
dead!”

At this she broke into laughter, and sat down.

“Cats! and didn’t they miaow! That sweet girl-boy, Jack Warder, has
been here too; sent, I suppose, by that dear Jesuit, your mother. How he
blushes! I hear you behaved like a gentleman even in your cups. I like
the lad; I did not use to. He is a manly miss. Sit down, and tell me all
about it. Bless me! how hot I am!”

Upon this I knew I had won my battle, and went on to tell the whole
story. When I produced my pearls, of which I was horribly ashamed, she
broke out anew, declaring we were all mere traders, and did we think her
a pawnbroker? and ended by giving me an hundred pounds, and bidding me
to be careful and pay at once, as it was a debt of honour. “As to the
pearls, let Madam Marie keep them for thy wife.”

Thus ended a sorry business. It was to be told, and I have told it; but
none, not even my mother or Jack, knew how deep a mark it left upon my
character, or how profoundly it affected my life.

My friend Jack shall say the requiescat of this chapter of my life,
which I have so unwillingly recorded. There was one more thing needed to
complete its misery. Says Jack:

“Hugh Wynne and I fell apart this last winter of ‘72 and ‘73. It was
my fault.” This I do not understand. “Came then that hideous night in
April, and all the rest; and Hugh I saw the day after, and begged him to
forgive me because I had so easily deserted him. I took him later a kind
message from Mr. James Wilson; for our small city knew it all. Friends
looked at him as one disgraced, except Friend Rupert Forest, who, to
my amusement, seemed to enjoy to hear the whole story, saying, ‘Alas!
alas!’ and yet, as I saw, far more pleased than distressed. It brought
to my mind the battle he had set us to fight out when we were boys. For
a week or two Hugh was dispirited, but after that, when the colonel had
called, and his cousin, Arthur Wynne, began to be more and more with
him, he took heart, and faced our little world, and would let no one,
except myself, say a word to him of the time of his downfall; this I
think I never did, save perhaps once, and that long after.

“There was no need to preach. Converted devils make the best saints. I
never was as good as Hugh, because I lacked courage to be wicked. Hugh
was no saint, but he drank no more for a long while; and was ever after
moderate. As to cards and dice, it was much the same.”

What Jack has here written is all nonsense. He was a better man than I,
and never was nor could have been a bad one.




IX


I have said that one event had to be recorded before I completed the
story of that episode of which I was weary of hearing. My father--and it
was against all his habits in regard to most matters--reminded me almost
daily of my misdeeds. He hoped I did not drink any more, and he would
even look at the square flasks on the shelf to see, as I suspected, if
they had been used. To be prayed for was worst of all, and this he did
more than once. It was all of it unwise, and but for my mother I should
have been even more unhappy. I can see now that my father was this while
in distress, feeling that he must do something, and not knowing what to
do.

In his business life there had always been a way opened, as Friends say.
He did not see that what I needed was what it was not in his nature to
give, and thus it came about that we drew apart, and perhaps neither
then nor at any later time were, or could ever have been, in the
kindlier relation which makes the best of friendships that of the
grown-up son with the elderly father.

At last, after a month or more, when it was far on in June, he ceased to
trouble me, and to walk up and down, opening and shutting his hands, as
he recounted my sins. He had reached an unfortunate decision, of which I
was soon to feel the results.

In the mean time my cousin, Mr. Arthur Wynne, had come into very close
intimacy with all our family circle. As he had much to do with my later
life, it is well to return a little, and to detail here what followed
after the night of my mother’s visit to the coffee-house.

Next day, in the evening, came the colonel of the Scots Grays, and
desired to see me in the sitting, room, my father being still in
Lancaster.

“Mr. Wynne,” he said, “Captain Wynne has asked me to call in reference
to that unhappy business of last night. He begs to make his excuses to
Mrs. Wynne in this letter, which may I ask you to deliver? And after
this action on his part I trust you will see your way to regret the blow
you struck.”

I was quiet for a moment, feeling that I must be careful what answer I
made. “I cannot feel sorry,” I said; “I do not regret it.”

“That is a pity, Mr. Wynne. You should remember that Mr. Arthur Wynne
could not have known who the lady was. A blow is a thing no gentleman
can, as a rule, submit to; but this has been discussed by Sir William
Draper and myself, and we feel that Mr. Arthur Wynne cannot challenge a
boy of eighteen.”

“I am twenty,” I replied.

“Pardon me--of twenty, who is his cousin. That is the real point I would
make. You have the best of it. You were right, quite right; but, by St.
George, you are a hard hitter! Mr. Wynne would have come in person,
but he is hardly fit to be seen, and a sign-painter is just now busy
painting his eyelids and cheek, so as to enable him to appear out of
doors.”

The colonel treated me with the utmost respect, and, as a young fellow
naturally would be, I was embarrassed more than a little, but not at all
dissatisfied with the condition of my cousin. I said awkwardly that il
he was willing to forget it I supposed I ought to be.

“I think so,” said the colonel. “Suppose you leave it with me, and in
a day or two talk it over with him. Indeed, he is a most charming
gentleman, and a worthy member of a good old house.”

I said I would leave it with the colonel, and upon this he said,
“Good-by, and come and dine with the mess some day, but don’t hit any
more of us;” and so, laughing, he went away, leaving me flattered, but
with the feeling that somehow he had gotten the better of me.

My mother declared it was a beautiful letter, writ prettily, but
ill-spelled (neither George the king nor our own George could spell
well). She would not let me see it. I did years afterward. In it he
spoke of me as a boy, and she was cunning enough to know that I should
not like that.

It was a week before we saw Mr. Arthur Wynne. My father had meanwhile
vented his first wrath on me, and I was slowly getting over the strong
sense of disgust, shame, contrition, and anger, and had settled down
earnestly to my work. I hardly recognised the man who came in on us
after supper, as my mother and I sat in the orchard, with my father in
a better humour than of late, and smoking a churchwarden, which, you may
like to know, was a long clay pipe. The smoke sailed peacefully up, as
I sat looking at its blue smoke-rings. How often since have I seen them
float from the black lips of cannon, and thought of my father and his
pipe!

We discussed the state of trade, and now and then I read aloud bits
from the Boston “Packet” of two weeks back, or my mother spoke of their
September voyage, and of what would be needed for it, a voyage being
looked upon as a serious affair in those times.

“I found your doors hospitably open,” said the captain, appearing, “and
the servant said I should find you here; so I have taken my welcome for
granted, and am come to make my most humble excuses to Mrs. Wynne.”

We all rose as he drew near, my mother saying in my ear as he
approached, “It is Arthur Wynne. Now, Hugh, take care!”

This newly found cousin was, like all of us, tall, but not quite so
broad as we other Wynnes. He was of swarthy complexion from long service
in the East, and had black hair, not fine, but rather coarse. I noticed
a scar on his forehead. He shook hands, using his left hand, because, as
I learned, of awkwardness from an old wound. But with his left lie
was an expert swordsman, and, like left-handed swordsmen, the more
dangerous.

“We are glad to see thee, Cousin Wynne,” said my mother.

Seeing the marks of my handiwork still on his cheek, I took his greeting
with decent cordiality, and said, “Sit down; wilt thon smoke a pipe,
Cousin Arthur?”

He said he did not smoke, and set himself, with the address of a man
used to a greater world than ours, to charm those whom no doubt he
considered to be quite simple folk. In a few minutes the unpleasantness
of the situation was over. He and my father were at one about politics,
and I wisely held my peace. He let fall a discreet sentence or two about
the habits of soldiers, and his own regrets, and then said, laughing:

“Your son is not quite of your views as a Friend in regard to warfare.”

“My son is a hasty young man,” said my father, and I felt my mother’s
touch on my arm.

Our cousin was in no way upset by this. He said, “No, no, cousin; he is
young, but not hasty. I was fitly dealt with. We are hot-blooded people,
we Wynnes. The ways of Friends are not our ways of dealing with an
injury; and it was more--I wish to say so--it was an insult. He was
right.”

“There is no such thing as insult in the matter,” said my father. “We
may insult the great Master, but it is not for man to resent or punish.”

“I fear as to that we shall continue to differ.” He spoke with the
utmost deference. “Do you go to Wyncote? I hear you are for England in
the autumn.”

“No; I shall be too full of business. Wyncote has no great interest for
me.”

“Indeed? It might perhaps disappoint you--a tumble-down old house, an
embarrassed estate. My brother will get but a small income when it falls
to him. My father fights cocks and dogs, rides to hounds, and, I grieve
to say, drinks hard, like all our Welsh squires.”

I was surprised at Ms frank statement. My mother watched him curiously,
with those attentive blue eyes, as my father returned;

“Of a certainty, thou dost not add to my inducements to visit Wyncote. I
should, I fear, be sadly out of place.”

“I am afraid that is but too true, unless your head is better than mine.
We are a sad set, we Wynnes. All the prosperity, and I fear much of the
decency of the family, crossed the ocean long ago.”

“Yet I should like to see Wyneote,” said I. “I think thou didst tell me
it is not thy home.”

“No; a soldier can hardly be said to have a home; and a younger brother,
with a tough father alive, and an elder brother on an impoverished
estate, must needs be a wanderer.”

“But we shall make thee welcome here,” said my father, with grave
kindness. “We are plain people, and live simply; but a Wynne should
always find, as we used to say here, the latch-string outside.”

With a little more talk of the Wynnes, the captain, declining to remain
longer, rose, and, turning to me, said, “I hear, Cousin Hugh, that you
refused to say that you were sorry for the sharp lesson you gave me the
other night. I have made my peace with your mother.”

“I shall see that my son behaves himself in future. Thou hast heard thy
cousin, Hugh?”

I had, and I meant to make it up with him, but my father’s effort as
a peacemaker did not render my course the more easy. Still, with the
mother-eyes on me, I kept my temper.

“I was about to say thou hast done all a man can do,” said I.

“Then let us shake hands honestly,” he replied, “and let bygones be
bygones.”

I saw both my parents glance at me. “I should be a brute if I did not
say yes, and mean it, too; but I cannot declare that I am sorry, except
for the whole business.” And with this I took his left hand, a variety
of the commonplace ceremony which always, to my last knowledge of
Captain Wynne, affected me unpleasantly.

He laughed. “They call us hi Merionethshire the wilful Wynnes. You will
find me a good friend if you don’t want the things I want, I am like
most younger brothers, inclined to want things. I thank you all for a
pleasant hour. It is like home, or better.” With this he bowed low to
my mother’s curtsey, and went away, chatting as I conducted him to the
door, and promising to sail with me, or to fish.

Naturally enough, on my return I found my parents discussing our newly
found relative. My mother thought he talked much of himself; and had
been pleasanter if he had not spoken so frankly of his father. My father
said little, except that there seemed to be good in the young man.

“Why should we not forgive that in him which we must forgive in our own
son?”

My father had some dreadful power to hurt me, and to me only was he an
unjust man; this may have been because my wrong-doing troubled both
his paternal and his spiritual pride. I was about to say that there
was little likeness between my sin and that of my cousin; but I saw my
mother, as she stood a little back of my father’s great bulk, shake her
head, and I held my tongue. Not so she.

“If thou hadst been a woman in my place, John Wynne, thou wouldst be far
from saying the thing thou hast said.”

Never had I heard or seen in our house a thing like this. I saw, in the
fading light, my father working his hands as I have described, a signal
of restrained anger, and, like anything physically unusual in one we
love, not quite pleasant to see. But my mother, who knew not fear of him
nor of any, went on, despite his saying, “This is unseemly--unseemly,
wife.”

“Thou art unjust, John, to my son.”

“Thy son?”

“Yes; mine as well as thine. I have faith that thou, even thou, John,
wouldst have done as my boy did.”

“I? I?” he cried; and now I saw that he was disturbed, for he was moving
his feet like some proud, restrained horse pawing the grass. At last he
broke the stillness which followed his exclamations: “There is but one
answer, wife. Both have been brutes, but this boy has been kept near to
godly things all his life. Each First-day the tongues of righteous men
have taught him to live clean, to put away wrath, to love his enemies;
and in a day--a minute--it is gone, and, as it were, useless, and I the
shame of the town.”

I hoped this was all; but my mother cried, “John! John! It is thy pride
that is hurt. No, it is not seemly to dispute with thee, and before thy
son. And yet--and yet--even that is better than to let him go with the
thought that he is altogether like, or no better than, that man. If thou
hast a duty to bear testimony, so have I.” And thus the mother of the
prodigal son had her say. No doubt she found it hard, and I saw her dash
the tears away with a quick hand, as she added, “If I have hurt thee,
John, I am sorry.”

“There is but one answer, wife. Love thy enemy; do good to them that
despitefully use thee. Thou wilt ruin thy son with false kindness, and
who shall save him from the pit?”

I turned at last in a storm of indignation, crying, “Could I see my
mother treated like a street-wench or a gutter-drab, and lift no hand? I
wish I had killed him!”

“See, wife,” said my father. “Yes, even this was to be borne.”

“Not by me!” I cried, and strode into the house, wondering if ever I was
to be done with it.

The day after no one of us showed a sign of this outbreak. Never had
I seen the like of it among us; but the Quaker habit of absolute
self-repression, and of concealment of emotion again prevailed, so that
at breakfast we met as usual, and, whatever we may have felt, there
was no outward evidence of my mother’s just anger, of my father’s
bitterness, or of my own disgust.




X


I was not yet to see the end of my iniquity, and was to feel the
consequences in ways which, for many a day, influenced my life and
actions.

It was toward the end of June. The feeling of uneasiness and dread
was becoming more and more felt, not only in commerce, which is so
sensitive, but also in the social relations of men. The king’s officers
were more saucy, and, like all soldiers, eager for active service,
imagining an easy victory over a people untrained in war. Such Tory
pamphleteers as the foul-tongued Massachusetts writer, Daniel Leonard,
were answering “Vindex” (Mr. Adams) and the widely read letters of
“An American Farmer.” The plan of organised correspondence between the
colonies began to be felt in some approach to unity of action, for at
this time the out-spoken objection to the views of the king and his
facile minister was general, and even men like Galloway, Chew, the
Allens, and John Penn stood with varying degrees of good will among
those who were urging resistance to oppression. As yet the too mighty
phantom of independence had not appeared on the horizon of our stormy
politics, to scare the timid, and to consolidate our own resistance.

I worked hard with my father at our lessening and complicated business,
riding far into the country to collect debts, often with Jack, who had
like errands to do, and with whom I discussed the topics which were
so often, and not always too amiably, in question at my Aunt Gainor’s
table. I was just now too busy to be much with my old favourites, the
officers. Indeed, I was wise enough to keep away from them.

My cousin I saw often, both at my aunt’s, as I shall relate, and
elsewhere; for he came much to our house, and my father found it
agreeable to talk over with him the news of the day. My mother did not
like him as well, but she held her peace, and, like every other man,
he was attracted by her gaiety, and quaint way of looking at men and
things.

Mr. Wilson I saw at times, as he still had, I know not why, a fancy for
me, and loved well to sail with me of evenings over to Kaighn’s Point
to fish, or down to Gloucester to bob for crabs. I owed him much. A
profound knowledge of law, variety of reading, and a mind which left
broadly on our after-history the marks of his powerful intellect, were
at my service. He used to caution me how I spoke of his opinions to
others, and he would then discuss with freedom politics and the men
whose figures were fast rising into distinctness as leaders to be
listened to and trusted. Many of them he knew, and thus first I heard
clearly what manner of persons were Patrick Henry and the Adamses,
Dickinson, Peyton Randolph, and others less prominent. In this way I
came to be more and more confirmed in the opinions my Aunt Gainor so
resolutely held, and also more careful how I expressed them. Indeed,
although but twenty years of age, I was become quite suddenly an older
and graver man. Mr. Wilson surprised me one day by saying abruptly, as
he pulled up a reluctant crab, “Do you never think, Hugh, that we shall
have war!”

I was indeed amazed, and said so. Then he added, “It will come. My place
will not be in the field, but, whether you like it or not, you will see
battles. You were made for a soldier, Hugh, Quaker or no Quaker.”

I thought it odd that two people as different as my Aunt Gainor and he
should have the same belief that we were drifting into war. She had said
to me the night before that she had known Lord North as a boy, and that
the king was an obstinate Dutchman, and would make his minister go his
way, adding, “When it comes you will be in it; you can’t escape.”

No one else whom I knew had any such belief. Wilson’s views and
prediction sent me home thoughtful enough.

That evening my father said to me, “We go to Merion the day after
to-morrow.” It was there we spent our summers. “To-morrow will be
Fourth-day. It is our last day of Meeting in the town. There will,
perhaps, be some wise words said as to present confusions, and I wish
thee to hear them, my son.”

I said, “Yes; at seven, father?” I was, however, astonished; for these
occasional night Meetings in the middle of the week were but rarely
attended by the younger Friends, and, although opened with such
religious observances as the society affected, were chiefly reserved for
business and questions of discipline. I had not the least desire to go,
but there was no help for it.

Our supper took place at six on this Wednesday, a little earlier than
usual, and I observed that my father drank several cups of tea, which
was not his habit. Few people took tea since the futile tax had been
set upon it; but my father continued to drink it, and would have no
concealment, as was the custom with some Whigs, who in public professed
to be opposed to the views of the crown as to the right to collect
indirect taxes.

Seeing that I did not drink it, and knowing that I liked nothing better
than a good dish of tea, he asked me why I did not partake of it. Not
willing to create new trouble, I said I did not want any. He urged the
matter no further, but I saw he was not well pleased. We set off soon
after in silence, he walking with hands behind his back clasping his
gold-headed cane, his collarless coat and waistcoat below his beaver,
and the gray hair in a thick mass between. He wore shoes, fine drab
short-clothes, and black silk stockings, all without buckles; and
he moved rapidly, nodding to those he met on the way, to the Bank
Meeting-house, in Front Street, above Arch.

It was a simple, one-story, brick building, set a few feet above the
level of the roadway. The gables and shutters were painted white, as was
also the plain Doric doorway, which had a pillar on each side. I judged
by the number of both sexes entering that it was an unusual occasion.
There were many drab-coated men, and there were elderly women, in gowns
of drab or gray, with white silk shawls and black silk-covered cardboard
bonnets. Here and there a man or woman was in gayer colours or
wore buckles, and some had silver buttons; but these were rare. The
Meeting-room was, so to speak, a large oblong box with whitewashed
walls. A broad passage ran from the door to the farther end; on the
right of it sat the men, on the left the women; against the remoter
wall, facing the rude benches, were three rows of seats, one above the
other. On these sat at the back the elders, and in front of them the
overseers. The clerk of the Meeting had a little desk provided for him.
Over their heads was a long sounding-board.

To me the scene had been familiar for years; but to-day it excited my
attention because of an air of expectation, and even of excitement,
among the few more youthful Friends. I saw, as we entered, furtive
glances cast at my father and myself; but as to this I had grown to be
of late more or less indifferent, and had no anticipation of what was to
follow later.

I had become, since my sad downfall, a more serious and thoughtful young
man, and far better fitted to feel the beauty and the spirituality of
these Meetings than I had been before. When the doors were closed I sat
silent in prayer; for some ten minutes increasing stillness came upon
one and all of the three or four hundred people here met together.

As I waited, with long-trained patience, for full twenty minutes, a yet
deeper quiet fell on the figures seated on each side of the aisle. For
a time none of the men uncovered, but soon a few took off their broad
hats, having remained with them on their heads long enough to satisfy
custom by this protest against the ways of other men. The larger number
kept their hats on their heads. Then a strange incident took place:
a woman of middle age, but gray, her hair fallen about her shoulders,
entered noisily, and, standing before the elders, cried out in a loud
voice, as though in affliction and sore distress, “See to your standing;
the Lord is about to search and examine your camp. Ho! ye of little
faith and less works, the hand of God is come upon you--the mighty hand
of punishment.” As she spake thus wildly she swayed to and fro, and
seemed to me disordered in mind. Finally she passed across the space
in front of the overseers, to the women’s side, and then back again,
repeating her mad language. My Aunt Gainor’s great bronze Buddha was
not more motionless than they who sat on the elders’ seats. At last the
woman faced the Meeting, and went down the aisle, waving her hands, and
crying out, “I shall have peace, peace, in thus having discharged my
Lord’s errand.” The many there met did justice to their discipline.
Scarce a face showed the surprise all must have felt. No one turned to
see her go out, or seemed to hear the door banged furiously after her.
The covered heads remained silent and undisturbed; the rows of deep
bonnets were almost as moveless. Fully ten minutes of perfect silence
followed this singular outburst. Then I saw the tall, gaunt figure of
Nicholas Wain rise slowly, a faint but pleasant smile on his severe
face, while he looked about him and began:

“Whether what ye have heard be of God I cannot say. The time hath
troubled many souls. The woman, Sarah Harris, who hath, as some
are aware, borne many sweet and pleasing testimonies to Friends in
Wilmington, I know not. Whether what ye have heard be of God or but a
rash way of speech, let us feel that it is a warning to Friends here
assembled that we be careful of what we say and do. It hath been borne
in upon me that Friends do not fully understand one another, and that
some are moved to wrath, and some inclined to think that Friends should
depart from their ways and question that which hath been done by the
rulers God hath set over us. Let us be careful that our General Epistles
lean not to the aiding of corrupt and wicked men, who are leading
weak-minded persons into paths of violence.” And here he sat down.

A moment later got up Thomas Scattergood, grim and dark of visage. None
of his features expressed the slightest emotion, although even from the
beginning he spoke with vehemence and his body rocked to and fro.

“The days are darkening; the times are evil. Our master, set over us by
God, has seen fit to tax certain commodities, that means may be raised
for the just government of these colonies, where we and our fathers have
prospered in our worldly goods, under a rule that has left us free to
worship God as seems best to us. And now we are bid by men, not of our
society, ungodly self-seekers, sons of darkness, to unite with them in
the way of resistance to the law. There have even been found here among
us those who have signed agreements to disobey such as are set over us,
unmindful of the order to render to Caesar that which is his. Let there
be among Friends neither fear nor any shortcoming. Let us bear testimony
against evil-doers, whether they be of us or not. Let us cut down and
utterly cast forth those who depart from righteousness. Are they not of
the scum which riseth on the boiling pot? There is a time for Friends to
remonstrate, and a time to act. I fear lest these too gentle counsels
of Friend Waln be out of time and out of place. Away with those who,
hearing, heed not. Let them be dealt with as they should be, with
love for the sinner, but with thought as to the evil which comes of
unscourged examples, so that when again we are met in the Quarterly
Meeting there shall be none among us to stir up discord, and we can say
to other Meetings, ‘As we have done, so do ye. Make clean the house of
the Lord.’”

The night was now upon us, and the ringing tones of the speaker were
heard through the darkness before he sat down. While all waited, two
Friends lit the candles set in tin sconces against the pillars of the
gallery, and, in the dim light they gave, the discussion went on.

Then I saw that Arthur Howell was about to speak. This able and
tender-minded man usually sat in Meeting with his head bent, his
felt hat before his eyes, wrapped in thought, and lifted above all
consideration of the things of this earth. As he began, his rich, full
voice filled the space, and something in its pleading sweetness appealed
to every heart. He spoke as one who, having no doubt, wondered that any
one else should doubt, and he brought the discussion to a decisive point
at once.

“It is well,” he said, “that all should be convinced by those who,
from age and influence among Friends, have the best right of speech.
Nevertheless, since this is a Meeting for discipline, let all be heard
with fairness and order. Men have gone astray. They have contended for
the asserting of civil rights in a manner contrary to our peaceable
profession and princ

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