USA > Rhode Island > Washington County > Narragansett > South county studies of some eighteenth century persons, places & conditions in that portion of Rhode Island called Narragansett > Part 17
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The hideous voyage was over at last, and the young American soon found himself taking part in scenes of a widely different character. He was suddenly trans- ferred from the surroundings of squalor to those of splendor. "To-day dined with the Bishop of Rochester. The dining-hall, vast and composed of marble arched above, and twenty feet high. We [the company of can- didates for orders] sat down with his Lordship, the Bishop of London's lady, and others, being twenty-one, and were served with twenty-four dishes, dressed in such an elegant manner that many of us could scarce eat a mouthful."
The excited fancy of the untravelled young pro- vincial transmuted the Bishop's heavily plated din- ner service into "solid gold." One readily divines that this memorable occasion of awful honor was often described by the worthy participant in later years, and that his parishioners of the backwoods of Maine or Nova Scotia may have had as much reason to com- plain of the recital as the retainers of Scott's Lady
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Margaret had to dread her references to the visit of His Sacred Majesty to Tillietudlem Castle.
The minister is no sooner comfortably settled at Pownalborough, on a goodly glebe, with a roomy house, and with one of the finest gardens in New Eng- land, planted and cultivated by his own hands, than the summons of the Revolution sounds, bringing dis- may and alarm to the quiet fireside. Comfort, elegance, domestic security and tranquillity, disappear in a mo- ment. The respected clergyman has become a hunted exile. He expresses very genuine feeling in very artifi- cial verse, sending it to an English friend. The follow- ing stanza of the poem was read in a London coffee- house, and drew tears of admiration and sympathy from the assembled wits and politicians.
" Once more with heavy parting sighs, We roll around our misty eyes ; My partner calls to mind Her babes beneath the heaving ground, And mourns and weeps with grief profound, To leave their dust behind."
The Parson's flight to Halifax was not without an occasional touch of adventure. A curious incident vividly illustrates certain phases of New England character. Stopping for dinner at a house on the Maine frontier, "Mrs. Bailey was dressed with a small roll upon her head, which induced the mistress of the house and her father to exclaim vehemently against the wick- edness of the times; and when they perceived that she was a minister's wife, they conceived the wearing of the roll to be an unpardonable crime."
Another incident en voyage, from the deck of a
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schooner: "A sailor put over a line and caught two codfish; when the two brothers in command, coming on deck, reproved him sharply for his wickedness in profaning the Sabbath, and when they could not re- strain him they swore a multitude of oaths. Thus the New England Saints worship the Sabbath."
The boldness of the American privateers in their repeated attacks upon the coast, almost under the guns of Halifax, arouses the admiring indignation of the expatriated Yankee. The exploits of his hardy coun- trymen might well have reminded him of the daring deeds, so dear to English pride, of Drake and Haw- kins, when, "in great Eliza's golden prime," a like spirit of adventure was abroad. But time had mellowed the lurid colors of Protestant piracy; it had not yet gilded the acts of American Revolutionists. Few mor- tals are gifted with insight that penetrates even the near future, and the vision of our honest narrator was no dimmer than that of his neighbors.
"I am persuaded," he says, " that my countrymen exceed all mankind in a daring and enterprising dis- position. Their bold and adventurous spirit more es- pecially appears with distinguishing éclat when they are engaged in any unjust or vicious undertaking; and their courage commonly increases in proportion to the badness and villany of the cause they seek to sup- port. Let a New England man once throw off the re- straints of education and he becomes a hero in wick- edness, and the more strict and religious he has been in his former behavior, the greater will be his impiety in his present situation. It has often been remarked by foreigners who have been engaged in commerce with
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our Puritans, that when they first come abroad no people alive have such a sacred regard for the Sabbath, and none have such an aversion to profanity, yet they quickly become the most docile scholars in the courses of vice, making the greatest proficiency in every kind of profanity. They openly ridicule their former devo- tion; are very expert at framing new and spirited oaths, and when they have any extraordinary mischief to perform they always choose to perpetrate it on Sun- day."
Mr. Bailey's remarks upon certain traits of his trav- elled countrymen are in the same vein with those of his friend Dr. Peters, but his judgments on these inno- cents abroad, though expressed with no lack of empha- sis, are not marred by the extravagance of the satirical Doctor's gibes. Our authority finds his opinion con- cerning Puritan character confirmed by the observa- tions of an English acquaintance, who "made several shrewd remarks upon the behavior of my countrymen who formerly used the Halifax trade. Some he found to be as honest and fair dealers as ever he met with, but in general he found them to be the profoundest hypocrites in nature, and the cunningest knaves upon earth, for though men advanced in life were averse to swearing, and would pucker up their mouths, and roll their eyes towards Heaven, at the mention of an oath, yet they would not scruple to lie, and deliberately appeal to the Almighty in confirmation of a falsehood. He had known some young fellows from Boston gov- ernment, who, upon their arrival in Halifax, would not swear, upon the greatest provocation, but when highly exasperated, would only exclaim, 'I vow, you are a
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sarpently Satan, a'most!' And yet in a few weeks these very conscientious travellers would free themselves from all the restraints of education, and exceed the most abandoned sailors in bold impiety. They would take the Sacred Name in vain, practice the most horrid oaths, and even make a public scoff and ridicule of all religion."
But why, it may be asked, should we inquire so closely into the weaknesses and follies of the darkened past? Why let in light upon those traits of New Eng- land character that a generous forgetfulness would con- ceal? A New England poet shall give the answer; and in Whittier's words we shall find a fit authority for our strictures upon the provincial spirit.
"And will ye ask me, why this taunt Of memories sacred from the scorner, And why with ruthless hand I plant A nettle on the graves ye honor ?
Not to reproach New England's dead This record from the past I summon.
No-for yourselves alone I turn The pages of intolerance over ; That in their spirit, dark and stern, Ye haply may your own discover !"
Are those discordant traits which were noted by our acute diarist so completely things of the past that we shall find it altogether unprofitable to review them with an application to the present? The town of Rowley, as it was in Bailey's day, no longer exists; but certain qualities of character which marked its men and wo-
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men still survive in villages more favored by time and circumstance. Unhappily, intolerance, uncharitable- ness, and ignorance are not yet extinct. Generous cul- ture and cosmopolitan advantages must remain the portion of the few; but the influences of free thought in religion and free government in the State should shed such fulness of light upon the obscurest hamlet that, in the time to come, the typical New England village shall have left a record far different from that which perpetuates the shame of Rowley.
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THE PIOUS DREAMER
T HE record of a vision which has been preserved for more than a hundred years is prefaced by the seer's letter, or, rather, the fragments of it now remain- ing. The circumstances of its preservation indicate that it was addressed to some member of a certain North Kingstown family. Of this household the "Lillis" affec- tionately referred to in the letter was an inmate. A young Connecticut woman, coming to Rhode Island as a teacher, she never returned to her early home, but was interred in the farm burial-ground, among the family with whom she had lived. The letter, as it now remains, opens thus :
I wish I could write you better news than at present, although if I go back a year and a half past I could write you blessed news, when God did marvels amongst us, which I imagine you have heard of and rejoiced at ; but alas ! the gold is become dim and the most fine gold changed, although I hope there is some movings on the minds of some few, yet I think the saints are not so ac- tive for God and the good of souls as in months past; but iniquity abounds amongst us, and the love of many waxes cold, for which the Lord is frowning. He is send- ing His armies of insects that are cutting off the fruits of the earth. It is thought that in general where they expected 50 bushels they won't have one. Seth Wet- more is one of our greatest farmers. He sowed 14 acres of new ground, expecting a large crop; plowed it up and planted it with corn. Deacon Bacon told me the other day he did not expect half a bushel this year. And O!
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that we, as a people, now the judgments of God are evi- dently abroad in the earth, might learn righteousness.
I am removed from the farms, and live at widow Bacon's, in Westfield, where I hope to receive a letter from you soon, and don't let it be long. Your friends would be glad to see you here. I and my wife send our kindest love, not only to you, but to your father and mother and all the family, not forgetting my Lillis. And now I conclude, wishing that the good-will of Him that dwelt in the burning bush may dwell in all our hearts, is and shall be the prayer of your affec- tionate friend, and I humbly hope, your brother in the best relation.
ZACCHEUS BEEBE.
Middletown, June 16, 1787.
I send you enclosed a copy of a vision I had the same day that I wrote this letter, soon after I finished it, and if it may refresh your soul as much as it did mine you will bless God for it all the days of your life.
The Vision-It is written in the Word of God that in the last days He will pour out His spirit upon His servants and handmaidens, and old men shall dream dreams and young men shall see visions. I had been writing a letter to a friend at a distance, and being weak and feeble I lay down on my bed with my face toward the wall, to take repose, and soon fell into a sound sleep, when I thought I was amongst a charm- ing number of saints worshipping the living God. I thought I never saw a greater union and sweeter agree- ment among a people in all my life, the power and love of God seemed to be evidently among them. I
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thought I cast my eyes toward heaven and saw the blue vault of heaven split asunder, through which I thought I saw a stream of light and love proceeding from the throne of God, clear as crystal. To give you my idea, as the rays of the sun in the firmament at its first rising shine into a door or window so the stream through the whole house will be lighter than anywhere else, so the whole stream of light from heaven to where I stood shin'd with light and love. Never did I see any- thing so strait, and on either side the stream it were decked with thousands of little rays of light, all point- ing one way, even toward heaven. I thought that every drop of light and love that God bestows is to be re- turned to Him again, and while I stood wondering at the sight, I thought I saw the fiery chariot of God's love come through a gap that was in the vault, com- ing through the midst of the stream a hundred times swifter than I ever saw an eagle fly. I thought it was all over glorious and in color like to a rainbow, and was carried on wings of love. In a few moments it was just by where I stood and turned short about with the fire part toward heaven, and rested on its wings, keep- ing its wings in a slow motion to bear it up, and wait- ing for me to come in. I thought my soul was trans- ported; I thought I stood with my heart and hands extended to heaven, crying "Glory, glory to God in the highest!" and just as I was about to mount into the chariot I turned to my brethren, crying, "Glory, glory to God; I am going to glory in the fiery chariot of His love! and I as much believe I shall see you in glory in a little while as I believe I ever had an exist- ence." While I was thus speaking to them I thought
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I saw three lads among the people making mouths and mocking at what I said. I thought I spoke out to tell them the consequence of so doing, and awoke out of sleep. But O! the disappointment. My wife sat near the bed, and, seeing me all in tears, asked what I had been dreaming about. "O!" said I, "I had the most glorious news since I lay down that ever I had in my life. O! that I had been suffered to take my flight. O!" said I, "if one view of the glory and love of God will fill a soul with such joy even in a dream, what will the open vision and full fruition be in glory ?" I don't know that the thoughts of it has been out of my mind when I have been awake since that time.
The writer, a rude worthy of our primitive time, has left in this characteristic letter a sufficient indication of his mental personality, with its stern and rugged fea- tures and the gloom of its environment. He uncon- sciously sets forth a map of his narrow spiritual ter- ritory, manifest in all the limitations of its poverty, the stubbornness of the soil, and the harsh nature of its growths. A mind like his, unenlightened and arid, resembled one of his own rocky pastures, never pene- trated by the genial powers of sun and dew. But as the brief New England summer sees the magnolia come into bloom on the stern coast of Cape Ann, so the hard and prosaic nature of the Puritan had its fervid flowering time of religious emotion. The higher elements of that experience are not wanting in the pious vision of our untaught mystic, and his crude imagery appeals to such as hold the sentiment more Christian than heathen, that to man nothing is alien that belongs to humanity.
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There is a week-day and a Lord's-day side to this double epistle. The more familiar half of the missive is the sufficient explanation of the record which follows it. One is the natural complement of the other, and in both we trace the traits of the same undeveloped in- telligence. The confused strivings of a mind oppressed by the grievous conditions of nature, as interpreted by the harsh spirit of Calvinism, are evident in the nar- rative, and in its style. Not that "cant" is a just re- proach to the ignorance which delights in the special speech that it accepts and esteems as a savor of god- liness. The craving after a mystical phrasing in which to enshrine spiritual truths is no less natural than the use of an exact terminology in physical science. The writer of this pious epistle seems to have been an ear- nest, honest man, unwittingly nurturing and cultivating such blemishes of character as harsh judgment, spir- itual pride, and pietistic narrowness, while laboring to form himself on such imperfect models of manhood as he took for exemplars of sanctity. He strives after the habits of thought suitable to the "saints," and takes their language on his lips, hoping some day to be counted among them, not only, as we may guess, by the Recording Angel, but by his near friends and neigh- bors. Some touch of egotism, some frailties of self-seek- ing, must be pardoned to humanity, even in its most cherished types. In these secret weaknesses of the soul our old worthy was not much more guilty than many of his superiors in wisdom and culture.
How irreverent the "ingenious dreamer," as Cowper called Bunyan, would find the plain, modern way of accounting for his sacred vision! His feeble health and
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lack of wholesome air and exercise; his daily medita- tions, and the influence of the godly men whom he stud- ied from books or report; the unhappy dissensions in his church, the existence of which we may safely as- sume as suggesting the contrast of the "charming num- ber of saints in sweet agreement"; the exalted opinion of hisown holiness, which summoned a fiery chariot for his translation; the occasional disrespect shown him by reck- less youth, which evidently so rankled in the good man's breast as to call up the disturbing sight of the "three lads among the people making mouths and mocking," so effectually as to destroy the frail air-woven tissue of the dreamer's self-pleasing imaginations-these bodily and mental conditions surely afford material for the vision strangely preserved through the chances of a century which has swept away many records of greater worth.
The story of his visionary transports is certainly conceived in a higher tone than the reader of the pre- ceding letter would readily have expected. The pietist now emerges from the bounds of sectarian cant into the large speech of the Hebrew writers, whose words recur naturally to his awakened imagination. Strong feeling creates its own style, and the dreamings of the unknown Puritan are told in a manner not below that of the learned Swedish seer. The mysticism of the Book of Revelation had permeated the mind that conceived of "the stream of light and love," the "throne as clear as crystal," the "chariot coming a hundred times swifter than ever I saw an eagle fly," and "in color like to a rainbow," with "its wings in a slow motion." The real- ism of the writer mingles forcibly with the lofty East- ern imagery, and brings us within the range of his
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actual experiences, as in his homely illustration of the sunbeam shining "into a door or window," and in that quiet, unconscious touch by which we share with him the sight of the eagle of our lonely coast.
But whence did the musing yeoman evolve a thought like this: "Every drop of light and love that God be- stows is to be returned to Him again." Before Emerson taught the absorption of the spirit in the ocean of in- finity,
"Lost in God, in Godhead found";
before the craving for Nirvana had found expression in the western mind, or pantheism had become a word of common usage, the solitary and unlearned pietist, brood- ing over the mystical speculation that set his mind free from the sordid round of his dull labors, had arrived at a dim dream-reading of metaphysical subtleties.
But what said his brethren in the church of his mysterious vision ? Found they aught unorthodox in its dark sayings, and did they bid him go dream by rule another time?
Let them dispute as they would, they could not shut out this provincial Bunyan from the one source to which he looked for authority, and whence he unconsciously derived that Oriental fervor of his dreams which con- trasts strangely with the hard routine of his working hours. The Scriptures were the sole origin of whatever elevation of thought, tenderness of emotion, or poetry of expression was cultivated by the Puritan. Sternly re- jecting all worldly learning, he dwelt within the influ- ences of an unrecognized culture, which softened the atmosphere in which he moved, and enriched it with an unsuspected beauty.
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SUNDRY SAVORY RECIPES TO CURE DIVERS DISEASES
T HE credulity of our Puritan ancestors was not wholly expended upon matters of religious super- stition. The belief in witchcraft was natural enough to people who put faith in the repulsive recipes which were not confined to household medicine, but were the prescriptions of the most learned physicians of the time. But perhaps it should not surprise us, in view of the inexact nature of medical science, that inert sub- stances and injurious practices should long have con- tinued in credit. The average custom of dispelling an eclipse by an energetic beating of drums and sounding of gongs is a perfectly rational one, from an empirical point of view. It is certainly a sovereign method of abating the infliction, for no sooner has the ceremony been piously performed than the threatening phenom- enon yields to its efficacy. It is no wonder that a scheme always crowned with success should be commended by tradition and endorsed by practice. So, not unlike the exorcist, the leech diligently strove to affright the evil spirit of illness by exhibiting his most villainous com- pounds. Finally, the patient, if strong enough to over- come both the disease and its treatment, recovered- glory to Esculapius! Or he, perchance, died, in which case glory was still due, of course, to Esculapius and his pious servant, but maledictions dire were poured upon those baffling agencies, the malignant humors and the critical days.
Does not medicine still suffer more from solemn pre- tension and ignorant meddling than any other profes-
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sion? Not only is it wounded in the house of its friends by the followers of "yon gentle bird, that rides upon the stream, and is the patron of their noble calling," but it suffers from the self-sufficiency of patients, nurses, and their friends, for everybody claims to know some- thing about medicine. New Englanders have long since lost their Byzantine zest for theological speculations. Those metaphysical niceties which once engaged in endless controversies the Greek artisans and their spir- itual successors, the Yankee farmers, are now left to professional disputants. Law has lost its attractions for the popular mind, since it has disused those fine, manly practices of the Middle Ages, by which a knotty point might be settled at small expense of brain power, and the weight of the plaintiff's arm, rather than the weight of his arguments, gained him his cause. But medi- cine continues to be the prey of that general interest with which it must always be regarded as long as the touching story of his aches and ails shall be dear to the heart of the valetudinarian. No doubt there may be good as well as harm in that most common form of "scientific curiosity" which appears in the interest we take in our neighbor's ailments, and especially in our own. If medicine is, as its teachers sometimes style it, the common-sense profession, it cannot wholly repel the claims of its laity to a certain right of private judgment.
Some curious illustrations of the practice of house- hold medicine in New England more than 200 years ago may be gleaned from family manuscripts such as the notes of John Saffin of Boston, son-in-law of Cap- tain Thomas Willett, the early settler of Plymouth, and
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first mayor of New York. Saffin's quaint language has furnished the heading for this article, and a few quota- tions from his pages will serve as indications of the regimen of his time.
Under the note "this is a receipt procured by Mrs. Wyng from a skilful physician and communicated to my wife October third, 1675," we find the heading of "An eye water for salt rhumes, chataracts, or felmes." The ingredients are "faire running water, white sugar candy, white copperis, white rose water," "the herb eye bright," with the "oyle of snailes." The living ingre- dients are to be kept one night in a "basket of sweet pott herbs, or grape leaves." The mixture is to be strained through lawn, and exposed to the sun in "a single glass bottle." The application is made by drop- ping in each eye, "though both be not injerure."
Another remedy for the same ailment is marked pro- batim est, and consists of a mixture of "winter wheat and raisen white wine, steeped for six days in a cop- per vessell." Afterwards the liquor is to be strained and the wheat "brused in a morter." Then the standing and straining process is to be repeated until, at the end of a week, the water is ready for use, "and will smart a little, but in a short time it will recover the eyes."
" Almonde milke" is the name given to a concoction of stewed chicken, mutton broth, blanched almonds, and rose water, "cinemon and loafe sugar," precisely as if it were a dish of Persian luxury prepared for "the Sultan Shah Jehan, when he goes to the city Ispahan." It is to be served on "a chaffeing dish of coales," and it is "good against a consumption."
"A golden water" may be prepared from "unslake't
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lime" and spring water, and is intended for a lotion. This also is a probatim est.
" An excellent medicene" for "a patient grieved" is the external application of "an egge boyled very hard, then pill off the shell, and use it hot as you can .. . and it will cure." This is at least a more available remedy for acute attacks than some of the receipts given in these pages, not a few of which call for processes of twelve hours' duration.
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