Young Goodman Brown
YOUNG GOODMAN BROWN came forth at
sunset, into the street of Salem village, but put his head back, after
crossing the threshold, to exchange a parting kiss with his young
wife. And Faith, as the wife was aptly named, thrust her own pretty
head into the street, letting the wind play with the pink ribbons of
her cap, while she called to Goodman Brown.
"Dearest heart," whispered she, softly
and rather sadly, when her lips were close to his ear, "pr'y
thee, put off your journey until sunrise, and sleep in your own bed
to-night. A lone woman is troubled with such dreams and such thoughts,
that she's afeard of herself, sometimes. Pray, tarry with me this
night, dear husband, of all nights in the year!"
"My love and my Faith," replied young
Goodman Brown, "of all nights in the year, this one night must I
tarry away from thee. My journey, as thou callest it, forth and back
again, must needs be done 'twixt now and sunrise. What, my sweet,
pretty wife, dost thou doubt me already, and we but three months
married!"
"Then God bless you!" said Faith, with
the pink ribbons, "and may you find all well, when you come
back."
"Amen!" cried Goodman Brown. "Say
thy prayers, dear Faith, and go to bed at dusk, and no harm will come
to thee."
So they parted; and the young man pursued his
way, until, being about to turn the corner by the meeting-house, he
looked back and saw the head of Faith still peeping after him, with a
melancholy air, in spite of her pink ribbons.
"Poor little Faith!" thought he, for
his heart smote him. "What a wretch am I, to leave her on such an
errand! She talks of dreams, too. Methought, as she spoke, there was
trouble in her face, as if a dream had warned her what work is to be
done to-night. But, no, no! 'twould kill her to think it. Well; she's
a blessed angel on earth; and after this one night, I'll cling to her
skirts and follow her to Heaven."
With this excellent resolve for the future,
Goodman Brown felt himself justified in making more haste on his
present evil purpose. He had taken a dreary road, darkened by all the
gloomiest trees of the forest, which barely stood aside to let the
narrow path creep through, and closed immediately behind. It was all
as lonely as could be; and there is this peculiarity in such a
solitude, that the traveller knows not who may be concealed by the
innumerable trunks and the thick boughs overhead; so that, with lonely
footsteps, he may yet be passing through an unseen multitude.
"There may be a devilish Indian behind every
tree," said Goodman Brown to himself; and he glanced fearfully
behind him, as he added, "What if the devil himself should be at
my very elbow!"
His head being turned back, he passed a crook of
the road, and looking forward again, beheld the figure of a man, in
grave and decent attire, seated at the foot of an old tree. He arose,
at Goodman Brown's approach, and walked onward, side by side with him.
"You are late, Goodman Brown," said he.
"The clock of the Old South was striking, as I came through
Boston; and that is full fifteen minutes agone."
"Faith kept me back awhile," replied
the young man, with a tremor in his voice, caused by the sudden
appearance of his companion, though not wholly unexpected.
It was now deep dusk in the forest, and deepest
in that part of it where these two were journeying. As nearly as could
be discerned, the second traveller was about fifty years old,
apparently in the same rank of life as Goodman Brown, and bearing a
considerable resemblance to him, though perhaps more in expression
than features. Still, they might have been taken for father and son.
And yet, though the elder person was as simply clad as the younger,
and as simple in manner too, he had an indescribable air of one who
knew the world, and would not have felt abashed at the governor's
dinner-table, or in King William's court, were it possible that his
affairs should call him thither. But the only thing about him, that
could be fixed upon as remarkable, was his staff, which bore the
likeness of a great black snake, so curiously wrought, that it might
almost be seen to twist and wriggle itself like a living serpent.
This, of course, must have been an ocular deception, assisted by the
uncertain light.
"Come, Goodman Brown!" cried his
fellow-traveller, "this is a dull pace for the beginning of a
journey. Take my staff, if you are so soon weary."
"Friend," said the other, exchanging
his slow pace for a full stop, "having kept covenant by meeting
thee here, it is my purpose now to return whence I came. I have
scruples, touching the matter thou wot'st of."
"Sayest thou so?" replied he of the
serpent, smiling apart. "Let us walk on, nevertheless, reasoning
as we go, and if I convince thee not, thou shalt turn back. We are but
a little way in the forest, yet."
"Too far, too far!" exclaimed the
goodman, unconsciously resuming his walk. "My father never went
into the woods on
such an errand, nor his father before him. We have been a race of
honest men and good Christians, since the days of the martyrs. And
shall I be the first of the name of Brown, that ever took this path
and kept--"
"Such company, thou wouldst say,"
observed the elder person, interrupting his pause. "Well said,
Goodman Brown! I have been as well acquainted with your family as with
ever a one among the Puritans; and that's no trifle to say. I helped
your grandfather, the constable, when he lashed the Quaker woman so
smartly through the streets of Salem. And it was I that brought your
father a pitch-pine knot, kindled at my own hearth, to set fire to an
Indian village, in King Philip's War. They were my good friends, both;
and many a pleasant walk have we had along this path, and returned
merrily after midnight. I would fain be friends with you, for their
sake."
"If it be as thou sayest," replied
Goodman Brown, "I marvel they never spoke of these matters. Or,
verily, I marvel not, seeing that the least rumor of the sort would
have driven them from New England. We are a people of prayer, and good
works to boot, and abide no such wickedness."
"Wickedness or not," said the traveller
with the twisted staff, "I have a very general acquaintance here
in New England. The deacons of many a church have drunk the communion
wine with me; the selectmen, of divers towns, make me their chairman;
and a majority of the Great and General Court are firm supporters of
my interest. The governor and I, too--but these are
state-secrets."
"Can this be so!" cried Goodman Brown,
with a stare of amazement at his undisturbed companion. "Howbeit,
I have nothing to do with the governor and council; they have their
own ways, and are no rule for a simple husbandman like me. But, were I
to go on with thee, how should I meet
the eye of that good old man, our minister, at Salem village? Oh, his
voice would make me tremble, both Sabbath-day and lecture-day!"
Thus far, the elder traveller had listened with
due gravity, but now burst into a fit of irrepressible mirth, shaking
himself so violently that his snake-like staff actually seemed to
wriggle in sympathy.
"Ha! ha! ha!" shouted he, again and
again; then composing himself, "Well, go on, Goodman Brown, go
on; but, pr'y thee, don't kill me with laughing!"
"Well, then, to end the matter at
once," said Goodman Brown, considerably nettled, "there is
my wife, Faith. It would break her dear little heart; and I'd rather
break my own!"
"Nay, if that be the case," answered
the other, "e'en go thy ways, Goodman Brown. I would not, for
twenty old women like the one hobbling before us, that Faith should
come to any harm."
As he spoke, he pointed his staff at a female
figure on the path, in whom Goodman Brown recognized a very pious and
exemplary dame, who had taught him his catechism in youth, and was
still his moral and spiritual adviser, jointly with the minister and
Deacon Gookin.
"A marvel, truly, that Goody Cloyse should
be so far in the wilderness, at night-fall!" said he. "But,
with your leave, friend, I shall take a cut through the woods, until
we have left this Christian woman behind. Being a stranger to you, she
might ask whom I was consorting with, and whither I was going."
"Be it so," said his fellow-traveller.
"Betake you to the woods, and let me keep the path."
Accordingly, the young man turned aside, but took
care to watch his companion, who advanced softly along the road,
until he had come within a staff's length of the old dame. She,
meanwhile, was making the best of her way, with singular speed for so
aged a woman, and mumbling some indistinct words, a prayer, doubtless,
as she went. The traveller put forth his staff, and touched her
withered neck with what seemed the serpent's tail.
"The devil!" screamed the pious old
lady.
"Then Goody Cloyse knows her old
friend?" observed the traveller, confronting her, and leaning on
his writhing stick.
"Ah, forsooth, and is it your worship,
indeed?" cried the good dame. "Yea, truly is it, and in the
very image of my old gossip, Goodman Brown, the grandfather of the
silly fellow that now is. But--would your worship believe it?--my
broomstick hath strangely disappeared, stolen, as I suspect, by that
unhanged witch, Goody Cory, and that, too, when I was all anointed
with the juice of smallage and cinque-foil and wolf's-bane--"
"Mingled with fine wheat and the fat of a
new-born babe," said the shape of old Goodman Brown.
"Ah, your worship knows the recipe,"
cried the old lady, cackling aloud. "So, as I was saying, being
all ready for the meeting, and no horse to ride on, I made up my mind
to foot it; for they tell me, there is a nice young man to be taken
into communion to-night. But now your good worship will lend me your
arm, and we shall be there in a twinkling."
"That can hardly be," answered her
friend. "I may not spare you my arm, Goody Cloyse, but here is my
staff, if you will."
So saying, he threw it down at her feet, where,
perhaps, it assumed life, being one of the rods which its owner had
formerly lent to Egyptian Magi. Of this fact, however, Goodman Brown
could not take cognizance. He had cast up his eyes in astonishment,
and looking down again, beheld
neither Goody Cloyse nor the serpentine staff, but his fellow-traveller
alone, who waited for him as calmly as if nothing had happened.
"That old woman taught me my
catechism!" said the young man; and there was a world of meaning
in this simple comment.
They continued to walk onward, while the elder
traveller exhorted his companion to make good speed and persevere in
the path, discoursing so aptly, that his arguments seemed rather to
spring up in the bosom of his auditor, than to be suggested by
himself. As they went, he plucked a branch of maple, to serve for a
walking-stick, and began to strip it of the twigs and little boughs,
which were wet with evening dew. The moment his fingers touched them,
they became strangely withered and dried up, as with a week's
sunshine. Thus the pair proceeded, at a good free pace, until
suddenly, in a gloomy hollow of the road, Goodman Brown sat himself
down on the stump of a tree, and refused to go any farther.
"Friend," said he, stubbornly, "my
mind is made up. Not another step will I budge on this errand. What if
a wretched old woman do choose to go to the devil, when I thought she
was going to Heaven! Is that any reason why I should quit my dear
Faith, and go after her?"
"You will think better of this
by-and-by," said his acquaintance, composedly. "Sit here and
rest yourself awhile; and when you feel like moving again, there is my
staff to help you along."
Without more words, he threw his companion the
maple stick, and was as speedily out of sight, as if he had vanished
into the deepening gloom. The young man sat a few moments by the
road-side, applauding himself greatly, and thinking with how clear a
conscience he should meet the minister, in his morning-walk, nor
shrink from the eye of good old Deacon Gookin. And what calm sleep
would be his, that very night, which was to have been spent so
wickedly, but purely and sweetly now, in the arms of Faith! Amidst
these pleasant and praiseworthy meditations, Goodman Brown heard the
tramp of horses along the road, and deemed it advisable to conceal
himself within the verge of the forest, conscious of the guilty
purpose that had brought him thither, though now so happily turned
from it.
On came the hoof-tramps and the voices of the
riders, two grave old voices, conversing soberly as they drew near.
These mingled sounds appeared to pass along the road, within a few
yards of the young man's hiding-place; but owing, doubtless, to the
depth of the gloom, at that particular spot, neither the travellers
nor their steeds were visible. Though their figures brushed the small
boughs by the way-side, it could not be seen that they intercepted,
even for a moment, the faint gleam from the strip of bright sky,
athwart which they must have passed. Goodman Brown alternately
crouched and stood on tip-toe, pulling aside the branches, and
thrusting forth his head as far as he durst, without discerning so
much as a shadow. It vexed him the more, because he could have sworn,
were such a thing possible, that he recognized the voices of the
minister and Deacon Gookin, jogging along quietly, as they were wont
to do, when bound to some ordination or ecclesiastical council. While
yet within hearing, one of the riders stopped to pluck a switch.
"Of the two, reverend Sir," said the
voice like the deacon's, I had rather miss an ordination-dinner than
tonight's meeting. They tell me that some of our community are to be
here from Falmouth and beyond, and others from Connecticut and
Rhode-Island; besides several of the Indian powows, who, after their
fashion, know almost as much deviltry as the best of us. Moreover,
there is a goodly young woman to be taken into communion."
"Mighty well, Deacon Gookin!" replied
the solemn old tones of the minister. "Spur up, or we shall be
late. Nothing can be done, you know, until I get on the ground."
The hoofs clattered again, and the voices,
talking so strangely in the empty air, passed on through the forest,
where no church had ever been gathered, nor solitary Christian prayed.
Whither, then, could these holy men be journeying, so deep into the
heathen wilderness? Young Goodman Brown caught hold of a tree, for
support, being ready to sink down on the ground, faint and
overburthened with the heavy sickness of his heart. He looked up to
the sky, doubting whether there really was a Heaven above him. Yet,
there was the blue arch, and the stars brightening in it.
"With Heaven above, and Faith below, I will
yet stand firm against the devil!" cried Goodman Brown.
While he still gazed upward, into the deep arch
of the firmament, and had lifted his hands to pray, a cloud, though no
wind was stirring, hurried across the zenith, and hid the brightening
stars. The blue sky was still visible, except directly overhead, where
this black mass of cloud was sweeping swiftly northward. Aloft in the
air, as if from the depths of the cloud, came a confused and doubtful
sound of voices. Once, the listener fancied that he could distinguish
the accent of town's-people of his own, men and women, both pious and
ungodly, many of whom he had met at the communion-table, and had seen
others rioting at the tavern. The next moment, so indistinct were the
sounds, he doubted whether he had heard aught but the murmur of the
old forest, whispering without a wind. Then came a stronger swell of
those familiar tones, heard daily in the sunshine, at Salem village,
but never, until now, from a cloud of night. There was one voice, of a
young woman, uttering lamentations, yet with an uncertain sorrow, and
entreating for some favor, which, perhaps, it would grieve her to
obtain. And all the unseen multitude, both saints and sinners, seemed
to encourage her onward.
"Faith!" shouted Goodman Brown, in a
voice of agony and desperation; and the echoes of the forest mocked
him, crying
--"Faith! Faith!" as if bewildered wretches were seeking
her, all through the wilderness.
The cry of grief, rage, and terror, was yet
piercing the night, when the unhappy husband held his breath for a
response. There was a scream, drowned immediately in a louder murmur
of voices, fading into far-off laughter, as the dark cloud swept away,
leaving the clear and silent sky above Goodman Brown. But something
fluttered lightly down through the air, and caught on the branch of a
tree. The young man seized it, and beheld a pink ribbon.
"My Faith is gone!" cried he, after one
stupefied moment. "There is no good on earth; and sin is but a
name. Come, devil! for to thee is this world given."
And maddened with despair, so that he laughed
loud and long, did Goodman Brown grasp his staff and set forth again,
at such a rate, that he seemed to fly along the forest-path, rather
than to walk or run. The road grew wilder and drearier, and more
faintly traced, and vanished at length, leaving him in the heart of
the dark wilderness, still rushing onward, with the instinct that
guides mortal man to evil. The whole forest was peopled with frightful
sounds; the creaking of the trees, the howling of wild beasts, and the
yell of Indians; while, sometimes the wind tolled like a distant
church-bell, and sometimes gave a broad roar around the traveller, as
if all Nature were laughing him to scorn. But he was himself the chief
horror of the scene, and shrank not from its other horrors.
"Ha! ha! ha!" roared Goodman Brown,
when the wind laughed at him. "Let us hear which will laugh
loudest! Think not to frighten me with your deviltry! Come witch, come
wizard, come Indian powow, come devil himself! and here comes Goodman
Brown. You may as well fear him as he fear you!"
In truth, all through the haunted forest, there
could be nothing more frightful than the figure of Goodman Brown.
On he flew, among the black pines, brandishing his staff with frenzied
gestures, now giving vent to an inspiration of horrid blasphemy, and
now shouting forth such laughter, as set all the echoes of the forest
laughing like demons around him. The fiend in his own shape is less
hideous, than when he rages in the breast of man. Thus sped the
demoniac on his course, until, quivering among the trees, he saw a red
light before him, as when the felled trunks and branches of a clearing
have been set on fire, and throw up their lurid blaze against the sky,
at the hour of midnight. He paused, in a lull of the tempest that had
driven him onward, and heard the swell of what seemed a hymn, rolling
solemnly from a distance, with the weight of many voices. He knew the
tune; it was a familiar one in the choir of the village meeting-house.
The verse died heavily away, and was lengthened by a chorus, not of
human voices, but of all the sounds of the benighted wilderness,
pealing in awful harmony together. Goodman Brown cried out; and his
cry was lost to his own ear, by its unison with the cry of the desert.
In the interval of silence, he stole forward,
until the light glared full upon his eyes. At one extremity of an open
space, hemmed in by the dark wall of the forest, arose a rock, bearing
some rude, natural resemblance either to an altar or a pulpit, and
surrounded by four blazing pines, their tops aflame, their stems
untouched, like candles at an evening meeting. The mass of foliage,
that had overgrown the summit of the rock, was all on fire, blazing
high into the night, and fitfully illuminating the whole field. Each
pendent twig and leafy festoon was in a blaze. As the red light arose
and fell, a numerous congregation alternately shone forth, then
disappeared in shadow, and again grew, as it were, out of the
darkness, peopling the heart of the solitary woods at once.
"A grave and dark-clad company!" quoth
Goodman Brown.
In truth, they were such. Among them, quivering
to-and-
fro, between gloom and splendor, appeared faces that would be seen,
next day, at the council-board of the province, and others which,
Sabbath after Sabbath, looked devoutly heavenward, and benignantly
over the crowded pews, from the holiest pulpits in the land. Some
affirm, that the lady of the governor was there. At least, there were
high dames well known to her, and wives of honored husbands, and
widows, a great multitude, and ancient maidens, all of excellent
repute, and fair young girls, who trembled lest their mothers should
espy them. Either the sudden gleams of light, flashing over the
obscure field, bedazzled Goodman Brown, or he recognized a score of
the church-members of Salem village, famous for their especial
sanctity. Good old Deacon Gookin had arrived, and waited at the skirts
of that venerable saint, his reverend pastor. But, irreverently
consorting with these grave, reputable, and pious people, these elders
of the church, these chaste dames and dewy virgins, there were men of
dissolute lives and women of spotted fame, wretches given over to all
mean and filthy vice, and suspected even of horrid crimes. It was
strange to see, that the good shrank not from the wicked, nor were the
sinners abashed by the saints. Scattered, also, among their palefaced
enemies, were the Indian priests, or powows, who had often scared
their native forest with more hideous incantations than any known to
English witchcraft.
"But, where is Faith?" thought Goodman
Brown; and, as hope came into his heart, he trembled.
Another verse of the hymn arose, a slow and
mournful strain, such as the pious love, but joined to words which
expressed all that our nature can conceive of sin, and darkly hinted
at far more. Unfathomable to mere mortals is the lore of fiends. Verse
after verse was sung, and still the chorus of the desert swelled
between, like the deepest tone of a mighty organ. And, with the final
peal of that dreadful
anthem, there came a sound, as if the roaring wind, the rushing
streams, the howling beasts, and every other voice of the unconverted
wilderness, were mingling and according with the voice of guilty man,
in homage to the prince of all. The four blazing pines threw up a
loftier flame, and obscurely discovered shapes and visages of horror
on the smoke-wreaths, above the impious assembly. At the same moment,
the fire on the rock shot redly forth, and formed a glowing arch above
its base, where now appeared a figure. With reverence be it spoken,
the figure bore no slight similitude, both in garb and manner, to some
grave divine of the New-England churches.
"Bring forth the converts!" cried a
voice, that echoed through the field and rolled into the forest.
At the word, Goodman Brown stepped forth from the
shadow of the trees, and approached the congregation, with whom he
felt a loathful brotherhood, by the sympathy of all that was wicked in
his heart. He could have well nigh sworn, that the shape of his own
dead father beckoned him to advance, looking downward from a
smoke-wreath, while a woman, with dim features of despair, threw out
her hand to warn him back. Was it his mother? But he had no power to
retreat one step, nor to resist, even in thought, when the minister
and good old Deacon Gookin seized his arms, and led him to the blazing
rock. Thither came also the slender form of a veiled female, led
between Goody Cloyse, that pious teacher of the catechism, and Martha
Carrier, who had received the devil's promise to be queen of hell. A
rampant hag was she! And there stood the proselytes, beneath the
canopy of fire.
"Welcome, my children," said the dark
figure, "to the communion of your race! Ye have found, thus
young, your nature and your destiny. My children, look behind
you!"
They turned; and flashing forth, as it were, in a
sheet of flame, the fiend-worshippers were seen; the smile of welcome
gleamed darkly on every visage.
"There," resumed the sable form,
"are all whom ye have reverenced from youth. Ye deemed them
holier than yourselves, and shrank from your own sin, contrasting it
with their lives of righteousness, and prayerful aspirations
heavenward. Yet, here are they all, in my worshipping assembly! This
night it shall be granted you to know their secret deeds; how
hoary-bearded elders of the church have whispered wanton words to the
young maids of their households; how many a woman, eager for widow's
weeds, has given her husband a drink at bed-time, and let him sleep
his last sleep in her bosom; how beardless youth have made haste to
inherit their father's wealth; and how fair damsels--blush not, sweet
ones--have dug little graves in the garden, and bidden me, the sole
guest, to an infant's funeral. By the sympathy of your human hearts
for sin, ye shall scent out all the places--whether in church,
bed-chamber, street, field, or forest--where crime has been committed,
and shall exult to behold the whole earth one stain of guilt, one
mighty blood-spot. Far more than this! It shall be yours to penetrate,
in every bosom, the deep mystery of sin, the fountain of all wicked
arts, and which inexhaustibly supplies more evil impulses than human
power--than my power at its utmost!--can make manifest in deeds. And
now, my children, look upon each other."
They did so; and, by the blaze of the
hell-kindled torches, the wretched man beheld his Faith, and the wife
her husband, trembling before that unhallowed altar.
"Lo! there ye stand, my children," said
the figure, in a deep and solemn tone, almost sad, with its despairing
awfulness, as if his once angelic nature could yet mourn for our
miserable race. "Depending upon one another's hearts, ye had
still hoped that virtue were not all a dream! Now are ye undeceived!
Evil is the nature of mankind. Evil must be your only happiness.
Welcome, again, my children, to the communion of your race!"
"Welcome!" repeated the
fiend-worshippers, in one cry of despair and triumph.
And there they stood, the only pair, as it
seemed, who were yet hesitating on the verge of wickedness, in this
dark world. A basin was hollowed, naturally, in the rock. Did it
contain water, reddened by the lurid light? or was it blood? or,
perchance, a liquid flame? Herein did the Shape of Evil dip his hand,
and prepare to lay the mark of baptism upon their foreheads, that they
might be partakers of the mystery of sin, more conscious of the secret
guilt of others, both in deed and thought, than they could now be of
their own. The husband cast one look at his pale wife, and Faith at
him. What polluted wretches would the next glance show them to each
other, shuddering alike at what they disclosed and what they saw!
"Faith! Faith!" cried the husband.
"Look up to Heaven, and resist the Wicked One!"
Whether Faith obeyed, he knew not. Hardly had he
spoken, when he found himself amid calm night and solitude, listening
to a roar of the wind, which died heavily away through the forest. He
staggered against the rock, and felt it chill and damp, while a
hanging twig, that had been all on fire, besprinkled his cheek with
the coldest dew.
The next morning, young Goodman Brown came slowly
into the street of Salem village, staring around him like a bewildered
man. The good old minister was taking a walk along the graveyard, to
get an appetite for breakfast and meditate his sermon, and bestowed a
blessing, as he passed, on Goodman Brown. He shrank from the venerable
saint, as
if to avoid an anathema. Old Deacon Gookin was at domestic worship,
and the holy words of his prayer were heard through the open window.
"What God doth the wizard pray to?" quoth Goodman Brown.
Goody Cloyse, that excellent old Christian, stood in the early
sunshine, at her own lattice, catechising a little girl, who had
brought her a pint of morning's milk. Goodman Brown snatched away the
child, as from the grasp of the fiend himself. Turning the corner by
the meeting-house, he spied the head of Faith, with the pink ribbons,
gazing anxiously forth, and bursting into such joy at sight of him,
that she skipt along the street, and almost kissed her husband before
the whole village. But Goodman Brown looked sternly and sadly into her
face, and passed on without a greeting.
Had Goodman Brown fallen asleep in the forest,
and only dreamed a wild dream of a witch-meeting?
Be it so, if you will. But, alas! it was a dream
of evil omen for young Goodman Brown. A stern, a sad, a darkly
meditative, a distrustful, if not a desperate man, did he become, from
the night of that fearful dream. On the Sabbath-day, when the
congregation were singing a holy psalm, he could not listen, because
an anthem of sin rushed loudly upon his ear, and drowned all the
blessed strain. When the minister spoke from the pulpit, with power
and fervid eloquence, and with his hand on the open Bible, of the
sacred truths of our religion, and of saint-like lives and triumphant
deaths, and of future bliss or misery unutterable, then did Goodman
Brown turn pale, dreading lest the roof should thunder down upon the
gray blasphemer and his hearers. Often, awaking suddenly at midnight,
he shrank from the bosom of Faith, and at morning or eventide, when
the family knelt down at prayer, he scowled, and muttered to himself,
and gazed sternly at his wife, and turned away. And when he had lived
long, and was borne to his grave, a hoary corpse,
followed by Faith, an aged woman, and children and grand-children, a
goodly procession, besides neighbors, not a few, they carved no
hopeful verse upon his tombstone; for his dying hour was gloom.