Papers from Overlook-House

Stopping his horses, and clambering a bank, he soon secured a "reconnoissance" of a field of strife.

By the dim light of the moon, he saw a scene sufficiently ludicrous, but demanding immediate activity. He had not come a moment too soon. A small man, a shoemaker, the one who cried for aid, and sadly in need of it had, it seems, been crossing a field, when an ugly-tempered bull rushed upon him, and would have gored him to death but for his presence of mind and dexterity. The poor fellow had skill enough to dodge the assault; and as the animal, missing his aim, rushed by him, he caught it by the tail. The vicious brute made every effort to reach his disagreeable parasite. In doing this he ran around in endless circles, very wearying to the little legs of the little man, and exhausting his strength.

As my old friend had come and seen, what had he to do but conquer? He hastened to the side of the living whirligig. The shoemaker was wearing out his shoe-soles more rapidly than any of his customers.

Seizing also the tail of the bull, he informed the exhausted man that he might now let go.

The animal continued the same tactics, but his foe-man was armed with his heavy whip, and this was wielded by a powerful right hand. A few blows, and the victory was won. The hero was left alone in his glory; for the rescued had vanished as soon as he could release his hold on the tail, and he did not return to see the result of the strife. Let us hope that he was grateful, although I doubt the gratitude of one who could thus run away, and leave all the battle to his deliverer. A benefactor in things small and great, who has a noble mind, though wounded by insensibility to his kindness, may receive benefit from the unthankful; for he may learn more deeply the example of the Lord, and he may free his heart the more to do good, and look for no return – learn to do good to the unthankful and the evil.

I have represented the farmer at Riversdale as openness and honesty itself in all his dealings. Men will be men. In country life, as in the city you will find a sad abundance of mean and tricky persons.

It is not a little curious to see our city friends come into the country, and take for granted that the sojourners there are all simple-minded and honest men. That is a weakness which is soon dissipated. The wisdom is purchased with the loss of gold and silver. They find that they are charged by many, probably the obtrusive ones, the most extravagant prices for all things. The more free they are with their money, the more they are required to pay. The value fixed on the substance offered for sale, is all that can possibly be extorted from any one who is imprudent enough to buy, and make no inquiries. There comes a danger of reaction. They change the theory concerning men of the field, which they have learned from poets and novelists, and are tempted to imagine that they all are like these thieves. I thank God, that I know well to the contrary.

Some men of large means imagine that if they are very free in spending their money, and allow those whom they employ, to take advantage of them, to extort unfair prices, that they will thereby cultivate good feeling, a grateful regard. This is an entire mistake. The man who cheats you never will be grateful. He comes to you, in all his relations to you, with meanness of soul. That is no soil for good will. He also fears, that at any time, you may be conscious of the fraud. He expects therefore an hour when you will be angry, and despise him. He judges of your coming enmity, by his own lasting bitterness and revengeful mind, toward any one who has overreached him. He has also some contempt for you, because you have been less cunning than himself.

Pay fair generous prices. When a man gains from you more than the fair price, let it be a gift. Do not expect anything from the man, who does in two days the labor that should be accomplished in one. Alas, as we reflect on the want of truth and gratitude towards us, we have to remember that we can apply these lessons to ourselves, as we labor in the vineyard where we have been sent to toil!

I have spoken of the hospitality of the house at Riversdale. This never could have been exercised as it was, but for the admirable arrangements of the good wife and excellent daughters. I look back, and marvel how all could be done in that house and farm, and yet time be found for the entertainment of so many guests.

I am deeply grieved to look back to those bachelor days, and find that I had a senseless conviction, that a house pretty much took care of itself. It was a delusion which must often have caused me to be troublesome, when I had not any idea that I was in the way. I now honor the statemanship which adorns domestic affairs, and hope I no longer am found at any time, a wheel out of place in the machinery of any house. Never too late to mend. A good proverb, friends. But as we apply its hopefulness, let us take care to remember that when the present time shall have become the past, and we have done wrong in things small and great, it is too late to mend the sin and error. We cannot mend the evil of the past.

I see the good old mother of the household now. Always neat in her dress, – erect in form, – kind, – thoughtful, self-possessed. You could not know her long, and not perceive that she was a pre-eminent representative of the wife and parent. Her love for others had its true source, the love of God. Thence it flowed gently a stream of tenderness for her family, and then spread freely far and wide to all others. Her religion was of a very grand character. She knew, in all the trials of life, what it was to have her Creator for her Rock, – to have His rod and His staff. Real to her indeed, the divine love which brought our Redeemer to our form from Heaven, and caused Him to expiate our sins on the cross.

Once we were speaking hopelessly, of some reprobate. The opinion was advanced, or implied, that he was never to be reformed. I never forgot the sorrow she manifested, and her heart-felt but gentle reproof, while she corrected us in the abiding spirit of the hope in Christ for any one who yet lives. While the lamp holds out to burn, she asked, could not he return?

She was one of the most unpretending Christians, and therefore her deep piety could not be concealed. When she was unconscious of the revelation, she taught us in a living subject of the Lord, the power that can be given for holiness in this scene, where all gold can be well tried in the fire.

She was ever busy. In hours of ease she had her knitting-needle. How pleasant it was to see her at her work, in the warm days of summer, as she sat in her high-backed chair on the piazza which overlooked the River. With the steamboats, then beginning their course, she was never satisfied. "The boats with sails," she said, "glided away so natural like: but with the steamboats it was all forced work." No doubt she often regarded these different vessels, as emblematic of those who moved under gentle and approved agencies, and those who were out of harmony with nature around us, – the working of the hands that are infinite in power, – those who cared only for hire, and needed, in order to their activity, some of those goads which happily abound for the idle.

The aged woman came to us what she was, to remind us what endless influences are ever ready to mould us to increasing piety, and love for others. To the sick and sorrowing out of her household she had been an angel of charity. Her life had been a golden cord. He had strung it for her with jewels from the mine. Is that mine exhausted? The glories we know lie near at hand for all that will gather them.

Well can I realize after the lapse of years, the sorrow of the aged wife when it was manifest that my old friend must soon close his eyes on the world for ever. There he lay, his strong form promising hope, which the decision of the physician denied. Could he be dying, who was bound to the scene around him by so many ties? As he had gained these fields by such a life of labor, and held them so firmly in his grasp, as every tree seemed so surely his, as you felt the impress of his firm and undisputed will in all the arrangements of his broad farm, you might ask can all these bonds which bind him here be sundered? But God sunders all, as he will, in a moment.

And now he was on the verge of the world to come. In infancy his life had hung by the most attenuated thread. Was it better for him that he was to die an old man, one who had passed through life's trials, had received such endless mercies, had so many calls to so many duties? Or would it have been better for him that he had died in infancy, passing to the ineffable joy, but to less glory and honor than those who have borne the cross, endured in true manly toil, the burden and heat of the day in the vineyard of the Master?

It was in a quiet house, quiet as one so soon to be forsaken of its owner, that we assembled to receive with him the precious emblems of the great sacrifice made for us, in infinite love. If he received consolation, it was indeed given also to the aged wife. Her quiet sorrow, without a tear, was reverent, and full of submission. Its evenness, – not rising or falling with every hope or fear, – was a seal of its great depth. You read in her fixed countenance that she had the past with all its memories, and the future with all its solitude clearly before her. She was henceforth to be as the shattered vase, just waiting some small trial of its strength, to fall to pieces. But the lamp within was to burn on, and fed with ever increasing supplies of aliment for its flame, to glow with increasing radiance. Such lights in the temple of God never go out.

My aged friends! your ashes lie where you hoped that your mortal remains would find their resting-place. Years have passed, and yet I recall you to remembrance more affectionately, than when I stood by your opened grave. One cause of this, is, I presume, that the more I become acquainted with men, the more I learn to value those who have risen in their integrity, above the low level of ordinary character.

Changed is your dwelling. A vast and costly pile occupies the place where once it stood. But could you, the former inhabitants, of that which has undergone such alteration, reappear among us, we should recognize what is eternal in its nature. What is of earth, alters and passes away. But love, and truth, and faith, all the nobleness given by the Redeemer, – these endure. These are extended and glorified in the world to come.

XI.

DR. SAMUEL STANHOPE SMITH AND THE HAUNTED HOUSE

When I was at Princeton College, Dr. Samuel Stanhope Smith was its president. A learned and able man, and an eloquent preacher, blameless in his life, his influence was great, not only over his college, but far and wide over the surrounding country.

I trust that it is one of the merits of our Republic, that truly great and good men will always have this influence and respect. Surely we have cast off those impediments to human progress which exist in other lands, where tributes due to real merit are paid to men for their accumulation of riches. Our offices in the states will almost always be bestowed on the deserving. The tricks of the politician will be generally unknown, because our people will hold them in abhorrence. In the old countries legislative bodies have felt the force of bribes. But I will boldly turn prophet here, and say, that no such practices will ever be known in such deliberative bodies in New Jersey. I can imagine the shame which the pure-minded people of this common-wealth must be ready to visit on one proven guilty of such a detestable enormity. Indeed he would incur the risk of being burnt alive at the stake.

The influence which Dr. Smith attained by the purest means, he exercised for the public good. His mind was of a philosophic cast, and he abhorred all superstition. Hence he was always eager to dispel the errors of the ignorant, and to remove the fears excited by diseased imaginations.

One day I was plodding over a page of Sophocles. No doubt it contained beauties whose discovery would repay toil. I was, however, unable to say, as I pondered it, lexicon by my side, with the Frenchman, "hang these ancients, they are always anticipating our bright thoughts," for I was not yet able to compare the idea of the Greek with the scintillations of genius which had flashed through my mind, and which were laid up for the future edification of the world, because I could not determine what the old dramatist had intended to say to us.

While I was in this state of most unpleasant perplexity, there was a knock at my door. I knew it at once to be that of our tutor. He informed me that the great doctor wished to see me and the rest of my class at his study.

We were thus invited, – that is, we had as strict a summons as any soldiers could receive from their commander, – to appear at his residence, the famous house under whose roof so many illustrious men have found shelter. Long may it stand!

It could not take much time to collect the designated young gentlemen together. Before we met, each individual brain was greatly exercised with speculations, concerning the cause of our being thus summoned to the study of our venerable head. When we were a collective body the various streams of conjecture being thrown in a torrent together, the effervescence exceeded all my powers of description.

It was a trying hour when any one of us had to come face to face with Dr. Smith.

We were not aware that any evil deed had been committed of late in the college. We all felt a bold conviction of individual innocence. Indeed, all college fellows are innocent always, until they are proved to be guilty.

One poor fellow, whose shaggy head could never be reduced to smooth order by comb or brush, more than the tossing waves are subdued to a placid mirror by the shadows of passing clouds, with a nose that always reminded you of a sun-dial, and an eye, which sometimes gave him the nickname of Planet, from its ceaseless twinkling, – had indeed some troubles of conscience concerning a duck which had been killed, cooked, and eaten in his room a few nights before, after he had taken a long rural ramble in the evening. He had some reasonable fear that he could not produce the bill of its sale for the scrutiny of the President, should it be demanded. Still, on the whole, we were calm. All felt the necessity of a general sunshine of countenances. It was our wisdom to look as if we expected some compliment from the head of the college. Indeed, one fellow, who had a manly, harmless wildness in him, whom all loved and confided in, who was a good and kind adviser of us all, – whose intense life was a good element for the formation of the noble minister which he afterwards became, – was audibly preparing a reply to the doubtfully anticipated commendation of the President. It contained the most ludicrous assertion of our great modesty, and sense of unworthiness, – in which he said, we all most cordially concurred, – while in the presence in which we stood. Curiosity was in every mind. No one had the slightest clue, which appeared to guide us satisfactorily one step in the darkness.

But we reached the door of the study. One of the most respectful knocks ever given proclaimed our presence, – or rather inquired if we could be admitted. The fine, manly voice which we so well knew, called on us to enter. We were received with that courteous dignity which characterized the doctor. All scanned the noble head, and no thunder-clouds were there. It is something to have seen Dr. Smith in the pulpit, in the class-room, or in the study. He was somewhat taller than men in general, and had a frame of fine proportions. His countenance easily kindled with intelligence. A large blue eye seemed to search your secret thoughts – and yet in all manliness of inquiry – promising cordial sympathy with all that was elevated, and a just indignation at the contemplation of any moral evil. His brow was spacious. His whole face spoke of hard study – polish of mind – of patient thought – of one who walked among men as a king. His voice was full and harmonious. His address was dignified and urbane. The stranger must trust him, and his friends confided in him, not to discover that he ever could forsake them.

Before he spoke we were at our ease. Our surprise took a new channel as he entered on the business of the hour.

"Gentlemen," said he, "I have sent for you, that I might have your co-operation in a plan, which may greatly benefit a worthy farmer, and remove superstitious fears from some ignorant minds.

"Mr. Hollman, who has a farm about two miles from the college, cannot persuade any of the laboring families to reside in a lonely stone house on his property. It is a dwelling that should be a comfortable, happy home. The situation is rather picturesque; standing, as it does, near the shade of a thick wood, and on the bank of a small stream which empties into our classical run. The people say that the house is haunted. Family after family has forsaken it in dread. I have not had patience to listen to the various narratives told concerning it. One man who is quite intelligent, and evidently honest, declares that he will take his oath that he has heard terrible noises at midnight, and has smelt strange fumes.

"Now this short story must be put an end to. Such superstition must not exist under the shadow of an institution celebrated for its learning. I should regard it as a blot on our fair reputation.

"I have been engaged in devising a plan for the refutation of this folly. It is this. I propose that you, gentlemen of the senior class, shall spend a night in the house. This will soon be known over the neighborhood. There has been much expenditure of words, over the silly narratives of people alarmed at less than their own shadows. All who have talked of the ghost, will talk of your act as having cast shame on those who pretend to see supernatural sights. You will soon have the pleasure of finding that the deserted house has become the home of some worthy family. You will do much to put an end to the belief in ghosts – for the history of your act will be narrated far and wide. Mr. Hollman will be a debtor to you for securing him from loss, and from great inconvenience. You have no fear of ghosts. In all probability you will hear no sounds to disturb you, or call for investigation. If you hear any peculiar noise, you will be assured that it is caused by some designing person, – who avails himself of the credulity of the ignorant to gain his corrupt or foolish purpose. I leave this matter in your hands. I am confident that the trust that I repose in you will be attended with the result that I desire."

We, one and all, became the personification of delight. The president was informed that it was a most agreeable adventure which he thus proposed. One fellow, who was awfully alarmed, and who had late at night told stories of ghosts who appeared in Virginia, until some of his companions were afraid to separate, was the loudest in expressing his readiness to go with the rest. He became pale with fright, when one of his class-mates suggested that it would have more effect if one stayed all night in the house alone, and that he should be selected for that solitude.

It was agreed that we should say nothing about our plan in the college. Hence, on our return from the doctor's study, our mysterious conduct, and sundry vague hints caused some eyes to be opened so wide, that one might question how they would ever close again. In vain every attempt to discover what had happened in the study of the great divine and philosopher.

Late in the afternoon a deputation from our class waited on Mr. Hollman. I had the honor to be appointed on this committee. The estimable man, a well-educated farmer, and having that simple address which enables a benevolent heart to declare itself through its courtesy, expressed great pleasure on hearing of our proposition, and uttered his thanks to us, and to the venerable doctor.

He corroborated the remark of our president, that if we put an end to the ghost story connected with the house where we were to spend the night, we should also, simultaneously, succeed in preventing the growth of superstition elsewhere. "All true – very true," he said; "I always notice that the doctor's remarks on all subjects run on alike, each of value like the other, like links in a gold chain. There is danger that this fear of ghosts will spread. I have some symptoms of it already in my household. The woman who attends to the milk, begins to look round her, and hurry home from the milk-house in the dusk of the evening with a very rapid pace, and to the neglect of some of her duties. And I think that Pompey has a decided seriousness at times, – as of a man destined to see something terrible. Perhaps this will occur on his first lonely drive at night by the grave-yard at our village beyond us. Tell me what I can do to make you comfortable to-night. I will see that the house is warmed at once, and provided with lights."

We walked with him over to the haunted dwelling. On our way he gave us some good practical advice, as we conversed on various subjects. It came from a practical spring of knowledge which he had acquired by reflection on all that he saw of men, and on the affairs that transpired. Indeed Saner, a lazy fellow, who smelt the instruction so amply spread for us at the literary table of Nassau Hall, but who never tasted or digested one crumb or other fragment, said to us, as we returned home afterwards – and that with a malicious sense of triumph over Latin, Greek, Philosophy, mental and moral, – Algebra, and like kindred venerable foes, – "You see a man can get sense of more real value out of the world than out of books."

"Saner," said I, "my dear fellow, is this worthy man possessed of the widely-extended sense of Dr. Smith? And do you think that any one to whom Providence has given the opportunity of collegiate education, and who will turn out an ignorant blockhead, will ever learn anything from observation? Besides our class, – or at least the deputation to the house of the ghost, – have their minds enlightened by our instruction. Now, I want to know whether this has not prepared us to glean instruction from the sensible remarks of Mr. Hollman? Do you think that the ignorant men who work for him, learn of him in a year what we do, or some of us do, in a day?"

But this is a digression. – To return to our survey of the dwelling. Unfortunately there was nothing very romantic in the structure. The frowning shadows of larch, and other forest trees; the massive walls were not there to call forth associations with some of the descriptions of castles which were the scenes of ghosts and of banditti – such as were common in the novels of the day.

The house looked desolate only because it was deserted, and had a dark history. There were two rooms on the first floor; one was a kitchen of considerable size. The other the sitting-room, – stove-room, – or parlor, – as it might happen to be called by the inmates. This was an apartment opened a few times in the year for company on great State occasions. Yet it gave all the year round, – a fact which weak critics often overlook when they talk about a useless room, and laugh in their dreaded but unproductive way, – gave all the year round a sense of ample accommodation and dignity to the mansion. From the kitchen a winding staircase ascended to the upper rooms. The small landing-place rested on the back wall of the house. Small garrets were over these rooms. The cellar was of the size of the dwelling, and afforded no hiding-place, nor any means of access to the interior from without, which we could not easily secure. A small shed rested against the back of the house, from the inside of which there was no door by which you could enter either room. It was obvious, from the pathway to this shed from the kitchen door, that the access of the family to it, was in the open air.

The most desolate thing to me was the well. It was one of those still seen in the little State – so elbowed by its big brothers of New York and Pennsylvania, and able to bear a great deal of such pressure. It was lorded over by that huge apparatus of the great long scale-beam, with a pole and bucket on one end, and a great weight on the other. A vine had crept up the pole, which must be torn away before water could be drawn. When had the matron called the good man to draw water from the deep and damp abode of truth? when had the children, returning from school, slaked their thirst from the bucket, covered in places by the green moss?

We could discover no manner by which any one disposed to disturb the inmates of the house, could secretly enter. It was amusing to notice how some of the students, had no conception of pranks to be played upon us in any other way than those known among collegians. However, we all agreed that our regulations for self-defence must be very simple. We had to wait for the demonstrations of the enemy, before we could do more than draw up our forces in a simple line for attack or defence.

The night, of course, came on. The whole class entered the house. We had good fires in the two rooms below, and in one above. Mr. Hollman sent chairs and tables, and a good stock of solid provisions. Lights had been provided, and we had with us a number of lanterns – two of which were to be kept burning all night. Some excellent cider had been sent to us; and if any had desired it, we would not have permitted the introduction of stronger drink. Our honor was concerned; Dr. Smith having reposed such entire confidence in our proceedings. There was an implied contract between us, and there were men in the class who would see that it was complied with, not only in letter, but in spirit. It was also obvious that if we had any intoxicating beverage among us, and should report strange sights, men would account for it in their own way. Indeed, if the young gents had engaged in a noisy revel, and their intellects had become clouded, we should have tempted some mischievous creature to try and create an alarm.