Twice-told tales
Meanwhile, the venerable stranger, staff in hand, was pursuing his
solitary walk along the centre of the street. As he drew near the
advancing soldiers, and as the roll of their drum came full upon his
ear, the old man raised himself to a loftier mien, while the
decrepitude of age seemed to fall from his shoulders, leaving him in
gray but unbroken dignity. Now he marched onward with a warrior’s step,
keeping time to the military music. Thus the aged form advanced on one
side and the whole parade of soldiers and magistrates on the other,
till, when scarcely twenty yards remained between, the old man grasped
his staff by the middle and held it before him like a leader’s
truncheon.
“Stand!” cried he.
The eye, the face and attitude of command, the solemn yet warlike peal
of that voice—fit either to rule a host in the battle-field or be
raised to God in prayer—were irresistible. At the old man’s word and
outstretched arm the roll of the drum was hushed at once and the
advancing line stood still. A tremulous enthusiasm seized upon the
multitude. That stately form, combining the leader and the saint, so
gray, so dimly seen, in such an ancient garb, could only belong to some
old champion of the righteous cause whom the oppressor’s drum had
summoned from his grave. They raised a shout of awe and exultation, and
looked for the deliverance of New England.
The governor and the gentlemen of his party, perceiving themselves
brought to an unexpected stand, rode hastily forward, as if they would
have pressed their snorting and affrighted horses right against the
hoary apparition. He, however, blenched not a step, but, glancing his
severe eye round the group, which half encompassed him, at last bent it
sternly on Sir Edmund Andros. One would have thought that the dark old
man was chief ruler there, and that the governor and council with
soldiers at their back, representing the whole power and authority of
the Crown, had no alternative but obedience.
“What does this old fellow here?” cried Edward Randolph, fiercely.—“On,
Sir Edmund! Bid the soldiers forward, and give the dotard the same
choice that you give all his countrymen—to stand aside or be trampled
on.”
“Nay, nay! Let us show respect to the good grandsire,” said Bullivant,
laughing. “See you not he is some old round-headed dignitary who hath
lain asleep these thirty years and knows nothing of the change of
times? Doubtless he thinks to put us down with a proclamation in Old
Noll’s name.”
“Are you mad, old man?” demanded Sir Edmund Andros, in loud and harsh
tones. “How dare you stay the march of King James’s governor?”
“I have stayed the march of a king himself ere now,” replied the gray
figure, with stern composure. “I am here, Sir Governor, because the cry
of an oppressed people hath disturbed me in my secret place, and,
beseeching this favor earnestly of the Lord, it was vouchsafed me to
appear once again on earth in the good old cause of his saints. And
what speak ye of James? There is no longer a popish tyrant on the
throne of England, and by to-morrow noon his name shall be a by-word in
this very street, where ye would make it a word of terror. Back, thou
that wast a governor, back! With this night thy power is ended.
To-morrow, the prison! Back, lest I foretell the scaffold!”
The people had been drawing nearer and nearer and drinking in the words
of their champion, who spoke in accents long disused, like one
unaccustomed to converse except with the dead of many years ago. But
his voice stirred their souls. They confronted the soldiers, not wholly
without arms and ready to convert the very stones of the street into
deadly weapons. Sir Edmund Andros looked at the old man; then he cast
his hard and cruel eye over the multitude and beheld them burning with
that lurid wrath so difficult to kindle or to quench, and again he
fixed his gaze on the aged form which stood obscurely in an open space
where neither friend nor foe had thrust himself. What were his thoughts
he uttered no word which might discover, but, whether the oppressor
were overawed by the Gray Champion’s look or perceived his peril in the
threatening attitude of the people, it is certain that he gave back and
ordered his soldiers to commence a slow and guarded retreat. Before
another sunset the governor and all that rode so proudly with him were
prisoners, and long ere it was known that James had abdicated King
William was proclaimed throughout New England.
But where was the Gray Champion? Some reported that when the troops had
gone from King street and the people were thronging tumultuously in
their rear, Bradstreet, the aged governor, was seen to embrace a form
more aged than his own. Others soberly affirmed that while they
marvelled at the venerable grandeur of his aspect the old man had faded
from their eyes, melting slowly into the hues of twilight, till where
he stood there was an empty space. But all agreed that the hoary shape
was gone. The men of that generation watched for his reappearance in
sunshine and in twilight, but never saw him more, nor knew when his
funeral passed nor where his gravestone was.
And who was the Gray Champion? Perhaps his name might be found in the
records of that stern court of justice which passed a sentence too
mighty for the age, but glorious in all after-times for its humbling
lesson to the monarch and its high example to the subject. I have heard
that whenever the descendants of the Puritans are to show the spirit of
their sires the old man appears again. When eighty years had passed, he
walked once more in King street. Five years later, in the twilight of
an April morning, he stood on the green beside the meeting-house at
Lexington where now the obelisk of granite with a slab of slate inlaid
commemorates the first-fallen of the Revolution. And when our fathers
were toiling at the breastwork on Bunker’s Hill, all through that night
the old warrior walked his rounds. Long, long may it be ere he comes
again! His hour is one of darkness and adversity and peril. But should
domestic tyranny oppress us or the invader’s step pollute our soil,
still may the Gray Champion come! for he is the type of New England’s
hereditary spirit, and his shadowy march on the eve of danger must ever
be the pledge that New England’s sons will vindicate their ancestry.
SUNDAY AT HOME
Every Sabbath morning in the summer-time I thrust back the curtain to
watch the sunrise stealing down a steeple which stands opposite my
chamber window. First the weathercock begins to flash; then a fainter
lustre gives the spire an airy aspect; next it encroaches on the tower
and causes the index of the dial to glisten like gold as it points to
the gilded figure of the hour. Now the loftiest window gleams, and now
the lower. The carved framework of the portal is marked strongly out.
At length the morning glory in its descent from heaven comes down the
stone steps one by one, and there stands the steeple glowing with fresh
radiance, while the shades of twilight still hide themselves among the
nooks of the adjacent buildings. Methinks though the same sun brightens
it every fair morning, yet the steeple has a peculiar robe of
brightness for the Sabbath.
By dwelling near a church a person soon contracts an attachment for the
edifice. We naturally personify it, and conceive its massy walls and
its dim emptiness to be instinct with a calm and meditative and
somewhat melancholy spirit. But the steeple stands foremost in our
thoughts, as well as locally. It impresses us as a giant with a mind
comprehensive and discriminating enough to care for the great and small
concerns of all the town. Hourly, while it speaks a moral to the few
that think, it reminds thousands of busy individuals of their separate
and most secret affairs. It is the steeple, too, that flings abroad the
hurried and irregular accents of general alarm; neither have gladness
and festivity found a better utterance than by its tongue; and when the
dead are slowly passing to their home, the steeple has a melancholy
voice to bid them welcome. Yet, in spite of this connection with human
interests, what a moral loneliness on week-days broods round about its
stately height! It has no kindred with the houses above which it
towers; it looks down into the narrow thoroughfare—the lonelier because
the crowd are elbowing their passage at its base. A glance at the body
of the church deepens this impression. Within, by the light of distant
windows, amid refracted shadows we discern the vacant pews and empty
galleries, the silent organ, the voiceless pulpit and the clock which
tells to solitude how time is passing. Time—where man lives not—what is
it but eternity? And in the church, we might suppose, are garnered up
throughout the week all thoughts and feelings that have reference to
eternity, until the holy day comes round again to let them forth. Might
not, then, its more appropriate site be in the outskirts of the town,
with space for old trees to wave around it and throw their solemn
shadows over a quiet green? We will say more of this hereafter.
But on the Sabbath I watch the earliest sunshine and fancy that a
holier brightness marks the day when there shall be no buzz of voices
on the Exchange nor traffic in the shops, nor crowd nor business
anywhere but at church. Many have fancied so. For my own part, whether
I see it scattered down among tangled woods, or beaming broad across
the fields, or hemmed in between brick buildings, or tracing out the
figure of the casement on my chamber floor, still I recognize the
Sabbath sunshine. And ever let me recognize it! Some illusions—and this
among them—are the shadows of great truths. Doubts may flit around me
or seem to close their evil wings and settle down, but so long as I
imagine that the earth is hallowed and the light of heaven retains its
sanctity on the Sabbath—while that blessed sunshine lives within
me—never can my soul have lost the instinct of its faith. If it have
gone astray, it will return again.
I love to spend such pleasant Sabbaths from morning till night behind
the curtain of my open window. Are they spent amiss? Every spot so near
the church as to be visited by the circling shadow of the steeple
should be deemed consecrated ground to-day. With stronger truth be it
said that a devout heart may consecrate a den of thieves, as an evil
one may convert a temple to the same. My heart, perhaps, has no such
holy, nor, I would fain trust, such impious, potency. It must suffice
that, though my form be absent, my inner man goes constantly to church,
while many whose bodily presence fills the accustomed seats have left
their souls at home. But I am there even before my friend the sexton.
At length he comes—a man of kindly but sombre aspect, in dark gray
clothes, and hair of the same mixture. He comes and applies his key to
the wide portal. Now my thoughts may go in among the dusty pews or
ascend the pulpit without sacrilege, but soon come forth again to enjoy
the music of the bell. How glad, yet solemn too! All the steeples in
town are talking together aloft in the sunny air and rejoicing among
themselves while their spires point heavenward. Meantime, here are the
children assembling to the Sabbath-school, which is kept somewhere
within the church. Often, while looking at the arched portal, I have
been gladdened by the sight of a score of these little girls and boys
in pink, blue, yellow and crimson frocks bursting suddenly forth into
the sunshine like a swarm of gay butterflies that had been shut up in
the solemn gloom. Or I might compare them to cherubs haunting that holy
place.
About a quarter of an hour before the second ringing of the bell
individuals of the congregation begin to appear. The earliest is