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Continental Monthly Volume 1 Issue 3 by Various

V >> Various >> Continental Monthly Volume 1 Issue 3





PART III.

But the narrative does not end with the events described in the last
chapter. There is a reverse to every medal, and even daylight would not
be so charming were it not followed by night. However good and perfect
woman may, generally, be, there are some who by no means share the easy
disposition of Gudbrand's better half. Need I say that the fault is,
usually, in the husband? If he were only to yield, on all occasions,
would he be troubled? Yield? exclaim some fierce moustachioed
individuals. Yes, indeed, yield, or hear the penalty that awaits you.


PART IV.

PETER THE GRAYBEARD.


Peter the Graybeard did not at all resemble Gudbrand. He was
self-willed, imperious, passionate, and had no more patience than a dog
when you snatch away his bone or a cat when you're trying to strangle
her. He would have been insufferable, had not Heaven, in its mercy,
given him a wife who was a match for him. She was headstrong,
quarrelsome, discontented and morose--always ready to keep quiet when
her husband preserved silence, and just as ready to scream at the top of
her voice the moment he opened his mouth.

It was great good fortune for Peter to have such a spouse. Without her,
would he ever have known that patience is not the merit of fools?

One day, in the mowing Season, when he came home, after a fifteen hours'
spell of hard work, in worse humor than usual, and was swearing, cursing
and execrating all women and their laziness, because his soup was not
yet ready for him, his wife exclaimed,--

'Good Lord! Peter, you talk away at a fine rate. Would you like to
change places? To-morrow, I will mow, instead of you, and you stay at
home here and play housekeeper. Then, we'll see which of us will have
the hardest task and come out of it the best.'

'Agreed!' thundered Peter; 'you'll have a chance to find out, once for
all, what a poor husband has to suffer. The trial will teach you a
lesson of respect--something you greatly need.'

So, the next morning, at day-break, the wife set out afield with the
rake over her shoulder and the sickle by her side, all joyous at the
sight of the bright sunshine, and singing like a lark.

Now, who felt not a little surprised, and a little foolish too, to find
himself shut up at home? Our friend Peter the Graybeard. Still, he
wasn't going to own himself beaten, but fell to work churning butter, as
though he had never done anything else all the days of his life.

It's no hard matter to get over-heated when one takes up a new trade,
and Peter soon, feeling very dry, went down into the cellar to draw a
mug of beer from the cask. He had just knocked out the bung and was
applying the spigot, when he heard an ominous crunching and grunting
overhead. It was the sow, devastating the kitchen.

'Oh Lord! my butter's lost!' yelled Peter the Graybeard, as he rushed
pell-mell up the steps, with the spigot in his hand. What a spectacle
was there! the churn upset, the cream spilt all over the floor, and the
huge sow fairly wallowing in the rich and savory tide.

Now even a wiser man would have lost all patience; as for Peter, he
rushed upon the brute, who, with piercing screams, strove to escape; but
it was a hapless day to the thief, for her master caught her in the
doorway and dealt her so well applied and vigorous a blow on the side of
her skull with the spigot that the sow fell dead on the spot.

As he drew back his novel weapon, now covered with blood, Peter
recollected that he had not closed the bung-hole of his cask, and that
all this time his beer was running to waste. So down he rushed again to
the cellar. Fortunately, the beer had ceased to run, but then that was
because not a drop remained in the cask.

He had now to begin his morning's work again, and churn some more butter
if he expected to see any dinner that day. So Peter visited the
dairy-house, and there found enough cream to replaced what he had just
lost. At it he goes again, and churns and churns away, more vigorously
than ever. But, in the midst of his churning, he remembers--a little
late to be sure, but better late than never--that the cow was still in
the stable, and that she had neither food nor water, although the sun
was now high above the horizon. Away he runs then to the stable. But
experience has made him wise: 'I've my little child there rolling on the
floor; now, if I leave the churn, the greedy scamp will turn it over,
and something worse might easily happen!' Whereupon, he takes up the
churn on his back and hastens to the well to draw water for the cow. The
well was deep, and the buckets did not go down far enough. So Peter
leans with all his might, in hot haste, on the rope, and away goes the
cream out of the churn, over his head and shoulders, into the well!

'Confound it!' said Peter between his teeth, 'it's clear that I'm to
have no butter to-day. Let's attend to the cow; it's too late to take
her out to pasture, but there's a fine lot of hay on the house-thatch
that hasn't been cut, and so she'll lose nothing by staying at home.' To
get the cow out of the stable and to put her on the house-roof was no
great trouble, for the dwelling was set in a hollow in the hill-side, so
that the thatch was almost on a level with the ground. A plank served
the purpose of a bridge, and behold the cow comfortably installed in her
elevated pasture! Peter, of course, could not remain upon the roof to
watch the animal; he had to make the mid-day porridge and take it to the
mowers. But he was a prudent man, and did not want to leave his cow
exposed to the risk of breaking her bones; so he tied a small rope
around her neck, and this rope he passed carefully down the chimney of
the cottage into the kitchen below. Having effected this, he descended
himself, and, entering the kitchen, attached the other end of the rope
to his own leg.

'In this way,' said he, 'I make sure that the cow will keep quiet, and
that nothing bad can happen to her.'

He now filled the kettle, dropped into it a good 'lump' of lard, the
necessary vegetables and condiments, placed it on the well-piled fagots,
struck fire with flint and steel, and was applying the match to the
wood, blowing it well the while, when, all at once, crish--crash! away
goes the cow, slipping down over the roof, and dragging our good man,
with one leg in the air and head downwards, clear up the chimney. What
would have become of him, no one could tell, had not a thick bar of iron
arrested his upward flight. And now there they are, both together,
dangling in the air, the cow outside and Peter within; both, too,
uttering the most frightful cries of distress.

As good luck would have it, the wife was just as impatient as her
husband, and, when she had waited just three seconds to see whether
Peter would bring her porridge at the stated time, she darted off for
the house as though it were on fire. When she saw the cow swinging
between heaven and earth, she drew her sickle and cut the rope, greatly
to the delight of the poor brute, who now found herself safe again, on
the only sort of floor she liked. It was a chance no less fortunate for
Peter, who was not accustomed to gazing at the sky with his feet in the
air. But he fell smack into the kettle, head foremost. It had been
decreed, however, that all should come out right with him, that day; the
fire had died out, the water was cold, and the kettle awry, so that he
got off with nothing worse than a scratched forehead, a peeled nose, and
two well scraped cheeks, and, thank Heaven! nothing was broken but the
saucepan.

When his better half entered the kitchen, she found Master Graybeard
looking very sheepish and bloody.

'Well! well!' said she, planting her arms akimbo and her two fists on
her haunches: 'who's the best housekeeper, pray? I have mowed and
reaped, and here I am as good as I was yesterday, while you, _you_,
Mister Cook, Mister Stay-at-home, Mr. Nurse, where is the butter,
where's the sow, where's the cow, and where's our dinner? If our little
one's alive yet, no thanks to you. Poor little fellow!--what would
become of it without kind and careful mamma?'

Whereupon, Mrs. Peter begins to snivel and sob. Indeed, she has need to,
for is not sensibility woman's field of triumph, and are not tears the
triumph of sensibility?

Peter bore the storm in silence, and did well, for resignation is the
virtue of great souls!


PART V.

There, you have my story exactly as it is related, on winter evenings,
to impress ideas of wisdom on the minds of the young Norwegians. Between
the wife of Gudbrand and the wife of Peter the Graybeard they must
choose, at their own risk and peril.

'The choice is an easy one,' says an amiable lady-friend of mine, who
has just become a grandmother. 'Gudbrand's wife is the one to imitate,
not only on account of her prudence, but for her worth. You men are much
more amusing than you fancy: when your own self-esteem is at stake, you
love truth and justice about as much as bats love a glare of light. The
greatest enjoyment these gentlemen experience is in pardoning us when
they are guilty, and in generously offering to overlook our errors when
they alone are in the wrong. The wisest thing we can do is to let them
talk, and to pretend to believe them. That is the way to tame these
proud, magnificent creatures, and, by pursuing the plan perseveringly,
one may lead them about by the nose, like Italian oxen.

'But, aunty,' says a fair young thing beside us, 'one can't keep quiet
all the time. Not to yield when you're not in the wrong, is a right.'

'And when you're wrong, my dear niece, to yield is a royal pleasure.
What woman ever abandoned this exalted privilege? We are all somewhat
akin to that amiable lady who, when all other arguments had been
exhausted, crushed her husband with a magnificent look, as she said,--

'"Sir, I give you my word of honor that I am in the right."

'What could he reply? Can one contradict the veracity of one's own wife?
And what is strength fit for if not to yield to weakness? The poor
husband hung his head, and did not utter another word. But to keep still
is not to acknowledge defeat, and _silence is not peace_!'

'Madame,' says a young married woman, 'it seems to me that there is no
choice left; when a woman loves her husband all is easy; it is a
pleasure to think and act as he does.'

'Yes, my child, that is the secret of the comedy. Every one knows it,
but no one avails herself of it. So long as even the last glow of the
honey-moon illuminates the chamber of a young couple, all goes along of
itself. So long as the husband hastens to anticipate every wish, we have
merit and sense enough to let him do it. But at a later moment, the
scene changes. How, then, are we to retain our sway? Youth and beauty
decay, and the charm of wit and intelligence is not sufficient. In order
to remain mistresses of our homes, we must practice the most divine of
all the virtues--gentleness--a blind, dumb, deaf gentleness of demeanor,
that pardons everything for the sake of pardoning.'

To love a great deal,--to love unconditionally, so as to be loved a
little in return,--that is the whole moral of the story of Gudbrand.

* * * * *

THE HUGUENOT FAMILIES IN AMERICA.

II.


The brave Admiral Coligny first conceived the plan of a colony in
America for the safety of his persecuted Huguenot brethren of France.
Such an enterprise was undertaken as early as the year 1555, with two
vessels, having on board mechanics, laborers, and gentlemen, and a few
ministers of the Reformed faith. They entered the great river which the
Portuguese had already named _Rio Janeiro_, and built a fort, calling it
'Coligny.' Here they sought a new country, where they might adore God in
freedom. Unforeseen difficulties, however, discouraged these bold
Frenchmen, and the pious expedition failed, some dispersing in different
directions, while others regained the shores of France with great
difficulty. A second attempt was also unsuccessful. Coligny, in 1562,
obtained permission from Charles IX. to found a Protestant colony in
Florida. Two ships left Dieppe with emigrants, and, reaching the
American shores, entered a large, deep river called _Port Royal_, which
name it still retains, and is, by coincidence, the spot recently
captured by the United States forces.[F] Fort Charles, in honor of the
reigning king of France, was built near by, and in a fertile land of
flowers, fruits, and singing birds. The country itself was called
_Carolina_. Reduced to the most cruel extremities of famine and death,
the remaining colonists returned to Europe.

Still undismayed by these two disastrous attempts, Coligny, the Huguenot
leader, dispatched a third expedition of three vessels to our shores,
making another attempt near the mouth of the St. John's River (Fort
Caroline). Philip II. was then on the throne, and would not brook the
heresy of the Huguenots, or Calvinism, in his American provinces.
Priests, soldiers, and Jesuits were dispatched to Florida, where the new
settlers, 'Frenchmen and Lutherans,' were destroyed in blood. Such was
the melancholy issue of the earliest attempts to establish a Huguenot or
Protestant settlement in North America. And nearly one hundred years
before it was occupied by the English, Carolina, for an instant, as it
were, was occupied by a band of Christian colonists, but, through the
remorseless spirit of religious persecution, again fell under the
dominion of the uncivilized savages. We refer to these earliest efforts
as proper to the general historical connection of our subject, although
not absolutely necessary to its investigation.

At the commencement of the seventeenth century, England, on her own
behalf, took up the generous plans of Coligny. Possessing twelve
colonies in America, when the edict of Nantes was revoked, that nation
resolved here to offer peaceful homes to persecuted Huguenots from
France. This mercy she had extended to them in England and Ireland; now
her inviting American colonies were thrown open for the same generous
purpose. Even before that insane and fatal measure of Louis XIV., the
Revocation, and especially after the fall of brave La Rochelle, numerous
Protestant fugitives, mostly from the western provinces of France, had
already emigrated, for safety, to British America. In 1662 the French
government made it a crime for the ship-owners of Rochelle to convey
emigrants to any country or dependency of Great Britain. The fine for
such an offence was ten livres to the king, nine hundred for charitable
objects, three hundred to the palace chapel, one hundred for prisoners,
and five hundred to the mendicant monks. One sea-captain, Brunet, was
accused of having favored the escape of thirty-six young men, and
condemned to return them within a year, or to furnish a legal
certificate of their death, on pain of one thousand livres, with
exemplary punishment.[G] It is imagined that these young voluntary
Huguenot exiles emigrated to Massachusetts, from the fact that the same
year when this strange cause was tried in France, Jean Touton, a French
doctor, requested from the authorities of that colony the privilege of
sojourning there. This favor was immediately granted; and from that
period _Boston_ possessed establishments formed by Huguenots, which
attracted new emigrants.

In 1679, Elie Nean, the head of an eminent family from the principality
of Soubise, in Saintonge, reached that city. This refugee, sailing
afterwards in his own merchant vessel for the island of Jamaica, was
captured by a privateer, carried back to France, confined in the
galleys, and only restored to his liberty through the intercession of
Lord Portland.

One of the first acts of the Boston Huguenots was to settle a minister,
giving him forty pounds a year, and increasing his salary afterwards.
Surrounded by the savages on every side, they erected a fort, the traces
of which, it is said, can still be seen, and now overgrown with roses,
currant bushes, and other shrubbery. Mrs. Sigourney, herself the wife of
a Huguenot descendant, during a visit to this time-honored spot, wrote
the beautiful lines,--

'Green vine, that mantlest in thy fresh embrace
Yon old gray rock, I hear that thou with them
Didst brave the ocean surge.
Say, drank thus from
The dews of Languedoc? or slow uncoiled
An infant fibre 'mid the faithful mold
Of smiling Roussillon? Didst thou shrink
From the fierce footsteps of fighting unto death
At fair Rochelle?
Hast thou no tale for me?'

Their fort did not render the French settlers safe from the murderous
assaults of savage enemies. A.W. Johnson, with his three children, were
massacred here by them; his wife was a sister of Mr. Andrew Sigourney,
one of the earliest Huguenots. After this murderous attack the French
Protestants deserted their forest home, repairing to Boston in 1696,
where vestiges of their industry and agricultural taste long remained;
to this day many of the pears retain their French names, and the region
is celebrated for its excellence and variety of this delicious fruit.
The Huguenots erected a church at Boston in 1686, and ten years
afterwards received as pastor a refugee minister from France, named
Diaille.[H] The Rev. M. Lawrie is also mentioned as one of their
pastors. But from official records we learn more of the Rev. Daniel
Boudet, A.M. He was a native of France, born in 1652, and studied
theology at Geneva. On the revocation, he fled to England, receiving
holy orders from the Lord Bishop of London. In the summer of 1686 he
accompanied the Huguenot emigrants to Massachusetts; and Cotton Mather
speaks of him as a faithful minister 'to the French congregation at New
Oxford, in the _Nipmog_ (Indian) counties.' This was New Oxford, near
Boston. He labored for eight years, 'propagating the Christian faith,'
both among the French and the Indians. He complains, as we do in our
day, of the progress of the sale of rum among the savages,'_without
order or measure_' (July 6, 1691). We shall learn more of him at New
Rochelle, where he removed, probably, in 1695, and could preach to both
English and French emigrants. Soon after the revocation of the Edict of
Nantes, Joseph Dudley, with other proprietors, introduced into
Massachusetts thirty French Protestant families, settling them on the
easternmost part of the 'Oxford tract.'[I]

Massachusetts, peopled in part by the rigid Protestant Dissenters,
naturally favored these new victims, persecuted by a church still more
odious to them than that of England. Their sympathies were deeply
excited by the arrival of the French exiles. The destitute were
liberally relieved, the towns of Massachusetts making collections for
this purpose, and also furnishing them with large tracts of land to
cultivate. In 1686 the colony at Oxford thus received a noble grant of
11,000 acres; and other provinces followed the liberal example. Every
traveler through New England has seen 'Faneuil Hall,' which has been
called the 'Cradle of Liberty,' and where so many assemblages for the
general good have been held. This noble edifice was presented to Boston,
for patriotic purposes, by the son of a Huguenot.

Much of our knowledge concerning the Huguenots of New York has been
obtained from the documentary papers at Albany. Some of the families,
before the revocation, as early as the year 1625, reached the spot where
the great metropolis now stands, then a Dutch settlement. The first
birth in New Amsterdam, of European parents, was a daughter of George
Jansen de Rapelje, of a Huguenot family which fled to Holland after the
St. Bartholomew's massacre, and thence sailed for America. Her name was
Sarah. Her father was a Walloon from the confines of France and Belgium,
and settling on Long Island, at the _Waal-bogt_, or Walloon's Bay,
became the father of that settlement. In 1639 his brother, Antonie
Jansen de Rapelje, obtained a grant of one hundred 'morgens,' or nearly
two hundred acres of land, opposite Coney Island, and commenced the
settlement of Gravesend. Here most numerous and respectable descendants
of this Walloon are met with to this day. Jansen de Rapelje, as he was
called, was a man of gigantic strength and stature, and reputed to be a
Moor by birth. This report, probably, arose from his adjunct of _De
Salee_, the name under which his patent was granted; but it was a
mistake; he was a native Walloon, and this suffix to his name, we doubt
not, was derived from the river Saale, in France, and not Salee, or Fez,
the old piratical town of Morocco. For many years after the Dutch
dynasty, his farm at Gravesend continued to be known as Anthony Jansen's
Bowery. The third brother of this family, William Jansen de Rapelje, was
among the earliest settlers of Long Island and founders of Brooklyn.
Singularly, the descendants of _Antonie_ have dropped the Rapelje, and
retained the name of Jansen, or Johnson, as they are more commonly
called. On the contrary, George's family have left off Jansen, and are
now known as Rapelje or Rapelyea.

Most of the Huguenots who went to Ulster, N.Y., at first sought
deliverance from persecutions among the Germans, and thence sailed for
America. Ascending the Hudson, these emigrants landed at Wiltonyck, now
Kingston, and were welcomed by the Hollanders, who had prepared the way
in this wilderness for the enjoyment of civil and religious liberty.
Here was a Reformed Dutch church, and Hermanus Blomm, its pastor,
commissioned by the Classis of Amsterdam to preach 'both on water and on
the land, and in all the neighborhood, but principally in _Esopus_.'
This region, selected by the French Protestants for their future land,
was like their own delightful native France for great natural beauties.
Towards the east and west flowed the waters of the noble ever-rolling
Hudson, while on the north the Shamangunk Mountains, the loftiest of our
Fishkill monarchs, looked like pillars upon which the arch of heaven
there rested. No streams can charm the eye more than those which enrich
this region,--the Rosendale, far from the interior, the Walkill, with
its rapid little falls, 'the foaming, rushing, warsteed-like' Esopus
Creek, with the dashing, romantic Saugerties, fresh from the
mountain-side. Both the Dutch and the French emigrants followed these
beautiful rivers towards the south, and made their earliest settlements
there. On these quiet and retired banks their ashes repose. Hallowed be
their memories, virtues, and piety! In those regions thousands of their
descendants now enjoy the rich and glorious patrimony which have
followed their industry and frugality.

In the year 1663, the savages attacked Kingston and massacred a part of
its inhabitants, slaying twenty-four, and took forty-five prisoners.
The dominie, Blomin, escaped, and has left a description of the tragical
event.[J] 'There lay,' he writes, 'the burnt and slaughtered bodies,
together with those wounded by bullets and axes. The last agonies and
the moans and lamentations were dreadful to hear.... The houses were
converted into heaps of stones, so that I might say with Micah, "We are
made desolate;" and with Jeremiah, "A piteous wail may go forth in his
distress." With Paul I say, "Brothers, pray for us." I have every
evening, during a whole month, offered up prayers with the congregation,
on the four points of our fort, under the blue sky.... Many heathen have
been slain, and full twenty-two of our people have been delivered out of
their hands by our arms. The Lord our God will again bless our arms, and
grant that the foxes who have endeavored to lay waste the vineyard of
the Lord shall be destroyed.'

Among the prisoners were Catharine Le Fever, the wife of Louis Dubois,
with three of their children. These were Huguenots; and a friendly
Indian gave information where they could be found. The pursuers were
directed to follow the Rondout, the Walkill, and then a third stream;
and a small, bold band, with their knapsacks, rifles, and dogs,
undertook the perilous journey. Towards evening, Dubois, in advance of
the party, discovered the Indians within a few feet of him, and one was
in the act of drawing his bow, but, missing its string, from fear or
surprise, the Huguenot sprang forward and killed him with his sword, but
without any alarm. The party then resolved to delay the attack until
dark; at which hour the savages were preparing for slaughter one of
their unfortunate captives, which was none other than the missing wife
of Dubois himself. She had already been placed upon the funeral pile,
and at this trying moment was singing a martyr's psalm, the strains of
which had often cheered the pious Huguenots in days of the rack and
bloody trials. The sacred notes moved the Indians, and they made signs
to continue them, which she did, fortunately, until the approach of her
deliverers. 'White man's dogs! white man's dogs!' was the first cry
which alarmed the cruel foes. They fled instantly, taking their
prisoners with them. Dubois calling his wife by name, she was soon
restored to her anxious friends, with the other captives. At the moment
of their rescue, the prisoners were preparing for the bloody sacrifice
to savage cruelty, and singing the beautiful psalm of the 'Babylonish
Captives.' Heaven heard those strains, and the deliverance came. During
this fearful expedition the Ulster Huguenots first discovered the rich
lowlands of Paltz.

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