Eighty Years and More; Reminiscences 1815-1897
of the human heart soon shortened our newborn hopes. His appearance in
the pulpit on these memorable occasions is indelibly impressed on my
mind. I can see him now, his great eyes rolling around the congregation
and his arms flying about in the air like those of a windmill. One
evening he described hell and the devil and the long procession of
sinners being swept down the rapids, about to make the awful plunge
into the burning depths of liquid fire below, and the rejoicing hosts in
the inferno coming up to meet them with the shouts of the devils echoing
through the vaulted arches. He suddenly halted, and, pointing his index
finger at the supposed procession, he exclaimed:
"There, do you not see them!"
I was wrought up to such a pitch that I actually jumped up and gazed in
the direction to which he pointed, while the picture glowed before my
eyes and remained with me for months afterward. I cannot forbear saying
that, although high respect is due to the intellectual, moral, and
spiritual gifts of the venerable ex-president of Oberlin College, such
preaching worked incalculable harm to the very souls he sought to save.
Fear of the judgment seized my soul. Visions of the lost haunted my
dreams. Mental anguish prostrated my health. Dethronement of my reason
was apprehended by friends. But he was sincere, so peace to his ashes!
Returning home, I often at night roused my father from his slumbers to
pray for me, lest I should be cast into the bottomless pit before
morning.
To change the current of my thoughts, a trip was planned to Niagara, and
it was decided that the subject of religion was to be tabooed
altogether. Accordingly our party, consisting of my sister, her husband,
my father and myself, started in our private carriage, and for six weeks
I heard nothing on the subject. About this time Gall and Spurzheim
published their works on phrenology, followed by Combe's "Constitution
of Man," his "Moral Philosophy," and many other liberal works, all so
rational and opposed to the old theologies that they produced a profound
impression on my brother-in-law's mind. As we had these books with us,
reading and discussing by the way, we all became deeply interested in
the new ideas. Thus, after many months of weary wandering in the
intellectual labyrinth of "The Fall of Man," "Original Sin," "Total
Depravity," "God's Wrath," "Satan's Triumph," "The Crucifixion," "The
Atonement," and "Salvation by Faith," I found my way out of the darkness
into the clear sunlight of Truth. My religious superstitions gave place
to rational ideas based on scientific facts, and in proportion, as I
looked at everything from a new standpoint, I grew more and more happy,
day by day. Thus, with a delightful journey in the month of June, an
entire change in my course of reading and the current of my thoughts, my
mind was restored to its normal condition. I view it as one of the
greatest crimes to shadow the minds of the young with these gloomy
superstitions; and with fears of the unknown and the unknowable to
poison all their joy in life.
After the restraints of childhood at home and in school, what a period
of irrepressible joy and freedom comes to us in girlhood with the first
taste of liberty. Then is our individuality in a measure recognized and
our feelings and opinions consulted; then we decide where and when we
will come and go, what we will eat, drink, wear, and do. To suit one's
own fancy in clothes, to buy what one likes, and wear what one chooses
is a great privilege to most young people. To go out at pleasure, to
walk, to ride, to drive, with no one to say us nay or question our right
to liberty, this is indeed like a birth into a new world of happiness
and freedom. This is the period, too, when the emotions rule us, and we
idealize everything in life; when love and hope make the present an
ecstasy and the future bright with anticipation.
Then comes that dream of bliss that for weeks and months throws a halo
of glory round the most ordinary characters in every-day life, holding
the strongest and most common-sense young men and women in a thraldom
from which few mortals escape. The period when love, in soft silver
tones, whispers his first words of adoration, painting our graces and
virtues day by day in living colors in poetry and prose, stealthily
punctuated ever and anon with a kiss or fond embrace. What dignity it
adds to a young girl's estimate of herself when some strong man makes
her feel that in her hands rest his future peace and happiness! Though
these seasons of intoxication may come once to all, yet they are seldom
repeated. How often in after life we long for one more such rapturous
dream of bliss, one more season of supreme human love and passion!
After leaving school, until my marriage, I had the most pleasant years
of my girlhood. With frequent visits to a large circle of friends and
relatives in various towns and cities, the monotony of home life was
sufficiently broken to make our simple country pleasures always
delightful and enjoyable. An entirely new life now opened to me. The old
bondage of fear of the visible and the invisible was broken and, no
longer subject to absolute authority, I rejoiced in the dawn of a new
day of freedom in thought and action.
My brother-in-law, Edward Bayard, ten years my senior, was an
inestimable blessing to me at this time, especially as my mind was just
then opening to the consideration of all the varied problems of life. To
me and my sisters he was a companion in all our amusements, a teacher
in the higher departments of knowledge, and a counselor in all our
youthful trials and disappointments. He was of a metaphysical turn of
mind, and in the pursuit of truth was in no way trammeled by popular
superstitions. He took nothing for granted and, like Socrates, went
about asking questions. Nothing pleased him more than to get a bevy of
bright young girls about him and teach them how to think clearly and
reason logically.
One great advantage of the years my sisters and myself spent at the Troy
Seminary was the large number of pleasant acquaintances we made there,
many of which ripened into lifelong friendships. From time to time many
of our classmates visited us, and all alike enjoyed the intellectual
fencing in which my brother-in-law drilled them. He discoursed with us
on law, philosophy, political economy, history, and poetry, and together
we read novels without number. The long winter evenings thus passed
pleasantly, Mr. Bayard alternately talking and reading aloud Scott,
Bulwer, James, Cooper, and Dickens, whose works were just then coming
out in numbers from week to week, always leaving us in suspense at the
most critical point of the story. Our readings were varied with
recitations, music, dancing, and games.
As we all enjoyed brisk exercise, even with the thermometer below zero,
we took long walks and sleighrides during the day, and thus the winter
months glided quickly by, while the glorious summer on those blue hills
was a period of unmixed enjoyment. At this season we arose at five in
the morning for a long ride on horseback through the beautiful Mohawk
Valley and over the surrounding hills. Every road and lane in that
region was as familiar to us and our ponies, as were the trees to the
squirrels we frightened as we cantered by their favorite resorts.
Part of the time Margaret Christie, a young girl of Scotch descent, was
a member of our family circle. She taught us French, music, and dancing.
Our days were too short for all we had to do, for our time was not
wholly given to pleasure. We were required to keep our rooms in order,
mend and make our clothes, and do our own ironing. The latter was one of
my mother's politic requirements, to make our laundry lists as short as
possible.
Ironing on hot days in summer was a sore trial to all of us; but Miss
Christie, being of an inventive turn of mind, soon taught us a short way
out of it. She folded and smoothed her undergarments with her hands and
then sat on them for a specified time. We all followed her example and
thus utilized the hours devoted to our French lessons and, while reading
"Corinne" and "Télémaque," in this primitive style we ironed our
clothes. But for dresses, collars and cuffs, and pocket handkerchiefs,
we were compelled to wield the hot iron, hence with these articles we
used all due economy, and my mother's object was thus accomplished.
As I had become sufficiently philosophical to talk over my religious
experiences calmly with my classmates who had been with me through the
Finney revival meetings, we all came to the same conclusion--that we had
passed through no remarkable change and that we had not been born again,
as they say, for we found our tastes and enjoyments the same as ever. My
brother-in-law explained to us the nature of the delusion we had all
experienced, the physical conditions, the mental processes, the church
machinery by which such excitements are worked up, and the impositions
to which credulous minds are necessarily subjected. As we had all been
through that period of depression and humiliation, and had been
oppressed at times with the feeling that all our professions were arrant
hypocrisy and that our last state was worse than our first, he helped us
to understand these workings of the human mind and reconciled us to the
more rational condition in which we now found ourselves. He never grew
weary of expounding principles to us and dissipating the fogs and mists
that gather over young minds educated in an atmosphere of superstition.
We had a constant source of amusement and vexation in the students in my
father's office. A succession of them was always coming fresh from
college and full of conceit. Aching to try their powers of debate on
graduates from the Troy Seminary, they politely questioned all our
theories and assertions. However, with my brother-in-law's training in
analysis and logic, we were a match for any of them. Nothing pleased me
better than a long argument with them on woman's equality, which I tried
to prove by a diligent study of the books they read and the games they
played. I confess that I did not study so much for a love of the truth
or my own development, in these days, as to make those young men
recognize my equality. I soon noticed that, after losing a few games of
chess, my opponent talked less of masculine superiority. Sister Madge
would occasionally rush to the defense with an emphatic "Fudge for these
laws, all made by men! I'll never obey one of them. And as to the
students with their impertinent talk of superiority, all they need is
such a shaking up as I gave the most disagreeable one yesterday. I
invited him to take a ride on horseback. He accepted promptly, and said
he would be most happy to go. Accordingly I told Peter to saddle the
toughest-mouthed, hardest-trotting carriage horse in the stable. Mounted
on my swift pony, I took a ten-mile canter as fast as I could go, with
that superior being at my heels calling, as he found breath, for me to
stop, which I did at last and left him in the hands of Peter, half dead
at his hotel, where he will be laid out, with all his marvelous
masculine virtues, for a week at least. Now do not waste your arguments
on these prigs from Union College. Take each, in turn, the ten-miles'
circuit on 'Old Boney' and they'll have no breath left to prate of
woman's inferiority. You might argue with them all day, and you could
not make them feel so small as I made that popinjay feel in one hour. I
knew 'Old Boney' would keep up with me, if he died for it, and that my
escort could neither stop nor dismount, except by throwing himself from
the saddle."
"Oh, Madge!" I exclaimed; "what will you say when he meets you again?"
"If he complains, I will say 'the next time you ride see that you have a