Some Account of Thomas Tucker

“ Whom now seekinge, O Diogenes! have I found: ye Sunne’s shine Beinge more Discoverable untoe that whiche is Sunne-like, than Thy poore Blinkinge Lanthorne.”

MARRIAGES OF YE DEADE.

AMASA TUCKER and his wife lived on a lonely farm in Vermont, remote from villages or neighbors. Amasa’s work was that hardest of all work, forcing from rocky and reluctant fields enough produce to feed and clothe his family ; to do more, with the most strenuous exertion, was impossible, and he did not expect it. To him life was a brief and bitter pilgrimage toward heaven. If it had amenities, they were snares; its pleasures were unknown to him. Rugged, stern, hard as the granite rocks beneath the sward he tilled, he found no consolations in the outer world, on which he walked as they that have eyes and see not, ears and hear not, nor even human interests to cloud their awed and reverent look into the world which is to come. Alone in his arid fields, Amasa Tucker revolved within himself the vast problems of theology, — freewill, election, infant damnation, the origin of evil, and like dogmas; for to such thoughts had he been trained from childhood by the widowed mother who owned and inhabited this solitary mountain farm. Duty was ground into the very bone and sinew of his life. He walked always between a dreadful hell and an awful heaven, set aside from the ordinary temptations of life, and taught to believe that every leaning toward transgression was the whisper of an omnipresent devil, eager to enlist him in his own service; and learning to feel that untruth, disobedience, a thought he could not utter to his mother, or a wish that could not be uplifted to God, were crimes of total and fatal depravity.

He plowed the brown sod of the sad New England hills under the full force of the primeval curse: uncomplaining, because Adam had sinned for him, and he must bear the doom ; and unquestioning, because Job, under a worse pressure of suffering, had taught him that he who challenges the will of God does so in vain.

He saw the sun rise above the purple mountains, and wheel its splendid way through the sky, life-giving and wonderful, with only a sombre thought of that impending day when the sun shall be turned into darkness and the moon into blood, for which it behooved him to be ready and waiting. The melancholy glory of the moon and the keen sparkle of the starry heavens gave him no joy; their story was alone of that creative and judging Lord who should roll them away as a scroll. To him the fear of God was not only the beginning of wisdom, but its course and end; the perfect love that casteth out fear was strange to him as heaven; he knew not its soft steppings about him, nor its clear shining in the beauty that beset his path. He lived only to prepare for death, and to see that his kindred followed in that straight way.

Philura, whom he had married from a sense of the fitness of things, was a meek, spiritless creature, with no sentiment and little feeling; always conscious that she was an unprofitable servant, afraid to love her children lest it should be idolatry, and struck with as keen a pang as her slender nature could know if her butter was streaky or her cheese crumbled.

She considered her husband lord and head, after the old-fashioned Scriptural order, and listened to his daily prayers with deep reverence for such striking piety ; though she knew very well that Amasa was a hard man, gathering where he had not strewed, and reaping where he had not sown, and a tyrant where a man can be tyrannical in safety,—in his own home.

Two children out of ten survived to this pair. Abundant dosing, insufficient food, and a neglected sink drain had killed all the others who outlived their earliest infancy ; but these two evaded the doom that had fallen on their brothers and sisters by the fate which modern science calls the survival of the fittest, and spindled up among the mulleinstalks of their stone-strewn pastures as gray, lank, dry, and forlorn as the mulleins themselves, with pale eyes, straight white hair, sallow faces, and the shy aspect of creatures who live in the woods, and are startled at a strange footstep.

They were taught to work as soon as they could walk, to consider sin and holiness the only things worth consideration, to attend meeting as a necessity, and take deserved punishment in silence. To obedience and endurance their physical training, or want of training, conduced also ; alternate pie and pork are not an enlivening diet to soul or body, and play was an unknown factor in their dreary existence. Keziah grew up a repetition of her mother, dull, simple, and dutiful ; but Thomas, from the moment he entered the little red schoolhouse, two miles away, to complete the education his father had begun by the evening fire at home, showed a hunger for books and knowledge that amounted to a passion.

Not a particle did he care for the girls who laughed at him, or the boys who tried to torment him. His soul was filled with the joy of the born student, to whom every fresh study is a rapture that never palls, every new book a possession outvaluing gold; to whom the daily needs and pangs of life are as a tale that is told.

It was but a very little while before Thomas knew all his teacher could impart far better than the teacher herself knew it, but his thirst was scarcely appeased. He longed for ampler opportunity, for better instruction, as earnestly as Amasa longed for the kingdom of heaven, and at last plucked up shamefaced courage enough to beg his father that he might go to the Academy at Bantam, ten miles down the valley.

If one of his oxen had made a like request, Amasa Tucker could not have been more astounded. What his boy could want with more knowledge than sufficed himself was past his imagining. To farm an upland in Vermont, after the hereditary fashion of those lonely hills, did not seem to him to require any especial science. Hard work, perpetual battle with the elements and the soil, primarily doomed to bear thorns and thistles, — surely this could be carried on with no higher education !

Yet, though he neither answered the boy’s request nor the entreating look in his eyes, his inmost heart softened with pride in his son. No genuine New Englander ever despises a desire for knowledge, or sneers at learning without an inward feeling of having been profane ; and Amasa Tucker was a typical New Englander of the old sort, now so fast passing away.

When Thomas turned back to his work, in that habit of dumb obedience which is stronger than nature, he did not know that he had dropped into his father’s mind a seed that would take root and grow as surely as the corn he had just dropped into the furrow, or that the harvest of its planting would he for him ; and it was not till that corn had sprouted, grown to rustling, glittering blades, tasseled out, ripened, been husked, and heaped in shining golden ears in the corn-house, till the apples were brought in to their long bins, and purple-streaked turnips and yellow carrots stored in the barn cellar, that the boy knew how this other grain had at last come to the full ear.

One Saturday night, as they put the last cow into the stanchions after milking was done, his father said, grimly,

“ Thomas, ef you want more edication than what you have had, and can pay your way to go to Bantam ’Cademy this winter, why I ’ll give ye your time.”

Thomas was not demonstrative ; the dark blood rushed up to his face, and it seemed to him as if the sudden joy seized him by the throat; but he only answered, “ I ’ll try.”

So the next week he walked down to Bantam, applied at once to Parson Lathrop for advice, and, arriving at the nick of time, when Semanthy Pratt, the parson’s old housekeeper, was threatened with her annual attack of “ rheumatiz,” he was taken at once into the minister’s house to “ do chores ” for his board. His schooling was free, since he lived in the county of which Bantam was the shire town ; for Parsons Academy was an endowed school, and only pupils from other counties paid for instruction ; and there were many such, for the school had a wide reputation.

Perhaps Thomas was not the best chore-boy in the world. Absorbed in pure mathematics, Greek roots, or the proportions and problems of chemistry, he too often forgot the kindlings, or neglected to comb and curry the old white horse. But then he never went out nights ; no husking, or apple-bee, or quilting frolic, no sleigh-ride or turkeyshoot, tempted him from his beloved books.

If anybody complained of him it was Semanthy, who declared to her cronies, “Well, he’s good enough, for’t I know. He don’t fault his vittles, nor yet he don’t set by ’em no great. He’s as big a dreamer as Joseph in the Bible. I don’t more ’n half believe he knows what he doos eat. But land ! he ain’t no company; you might as well set down along of a rake-tail, an’ try to visit with it; he’s dumber ’n a dumb critter, for they do make a sound. I say, mabbe, * Come, Thomas, you fetch me in a pail o’ water, real spry ; and take that air squash off ’n the hooks, and get me a piggin o’ soft soap down sullar.' Well, he ’ll lay down his book, and fetch them things slow as molasses, — not a peep nor mutter, — and smack right to ag’in at that book o’ his’n, and peg away at it till bed-time. I do mistrust he takes it to bed along with him ; he would ef I’d let him have a taller dip !

I’d jest as lives have old Bose around, as fur as talkin’ goes ; p’r’aps ruther, for he does wag his tail real knowin’, jest as though he’d speak ef he could ; but Thomas, he would n’t ef he could, now I tell ye! ”

Parson Lathrop grew interested in the lad because he was such a student, for there was nothing lovable about Thomas. His aspect was more ungainly than ever since age had added to his Height, without rounding or filling out his lank and angular figure; and by long study in imperfect light—for Semanthy’s “ taller dips ” served for little more than to show the darkness — he had become very near-sighted, winking and blinking like an owl when he looked away from his book, and wearing the perpetual anxious frown of imperfect vision. In the summer he returned to his work on the farm, more dull than ever to the outer world’s beauty and joy. One thing alone possessed his soul, — an eager longing for winter and his return to the precious opportunities of Bantam ; regardless entirely of Semanthy ’s scorn, the laughter of his companions, or any lack or discomfort in his daily existence, if he could resume the study that was his delight and life. Before the second winter was over, Parson Lathrop, observing the boy as he had done from day to day, made up his mind as to Thomas’s vocation, and determined to come up to his aid in fulfilling so marked and earnest a call. So one day he had the old white horse put into the high-backed sleigh, bundled himself up in his fox-skin coat, put in a hot brick to set his feet upon, tied his otter cap close about his ears, drew on his double-knit mittens, and, tucking a big buffalo robe closely about him, set off for the Tucker farm.

It is a great strain on a man’s benevolence to drive an old horse ten miles of an up-hill country road, with the thermometer below zero; but Parson Lathrop was one of the uncanonized saints who used to glorify the waste places of New England, and of whom the world was not worthy. It was enough for him that he was about his Master’s work ; in that, he did not consider himself or his inconveniences.

It was “borne in upon his mind,” as he phrased it, that Thomas Tucker’s devotion to study was an open indication of Providence concerning his future career, and therefore he must talk with his father about it. Amasa had met the parson now and then, when business took him to Bantam, so they were not strangers. He laid down the axe with which he was chopping wood when the parson drove into the yard, and went out to meet him. A man of softer nature and less faith might have feared that this visit meant some harm had happened to his boy, but Amasa’s soul was firm in a confidence that was half nature and half grace ; he was not afraid.

“ ’Mazin’ cold weather, Parson Lathrop,” was his greeting ; and after hospitably stabling the old horse he followed the minister into the house, where, before the blazing kitchen fire, and over a mighty mug of steaming flip, still hissing from its hot guest the poker, the two “ reasoned high ” as the recalcitrant spirits of hell, and on the same themes, until the parson, at least, wearied of mystic theological doctrine, and came to the point of his errand. He set down the blue and yellow mug, and opened the subject abruptly : “ Well, Brother Tucker, I came up especially to say to you that I believe your son Thomas hath a call to minister in divine things.”

“ I dono ! ” said Amasa. Thomas was as yet his boy ; he could not look upon him in any other light without further experience.

“I think it is even so,” went on the parson. “ He is like Samuel of old in that he was early called ; I have found him a close walker, strict in attention to ordinances, well grounded in Scripture ; not given to foolishness such as youths are too apt to seek after, but one that studies to be quiet. And such a lover of knowledge, such a hungerer after learning, I have skerce ever met with.”

“ Well, Parson Lathrop, I should as lieves take your judgment as any man’s. I had calc’lated on Thomas’s keepin’ right along here, and cultivatin’ the airth in the sweat of his brow, same as I do, and his grandsir did afore me. I don’t want to stand in the way ef he’s got a call to the ministry, though. I would n’t hold him back from the Lord’s work, no way ; but yet I ain’t clear in my mind, I’m free to confess, how to fetch it. This farm has gin me and mine a livin’, no more ; it’s ‘ sows, an’ grows, and goes,’ as the sayin’ is : but I have striv’ always, havin’ food and raiment, therewith to be content, but I hain’t laid up a cent, nor I ain’t in debt, nuther. I did n’t rightly know how to spare Thomas to the ’Cademy ; I could n’t, only that he paid his way ; and I don’t know how he can get through college. Seems as though there was a lion in the path, don’t there ? ”

“ I foresaw this, Brother Tucker,” answered the parson gently. “It has been a trial to me that in that day I cannot say to the Master, ' Lo, here am I, and the children that thou gavest me.’ I have a silent house. My beloved wife was under a weary dispensation of bodily ailment all her days, and it pleased the Lord to deny us offspring. It was the last drop in her bitter cup of suffering that she had to leave me, humanly speaking, alone; and I have always purposed to use the small portion of earthly riches she left behind her for the good of those who had the blessing I wanted, and needed the gifts I had. If so be you can spare Thomas, I will help him to his desired education ; not so that he shall cease from self-help, — I would not have him weighted with a sense of utter dependence. I propose to have him teach a school when his academic course is over, and remain with me till I can fit him for college myself. He will have laid up something then, and can further teach in vacations. I will see that his funds do not come short. All this if you consent.”

Amasa pushed back his chair with a sharp, creaking scrape, his face set, his eyes cold and stern as ever. The most acute observer could not have seen one softening quiver, one tremulous line, to indicate gratitude or assent; yet the heart within him glowed, chill and rayless as it seemed. “ I ’m obleeged to ye,” he said at last, in the driest fashion, tilting his chair back against the wall and clearing his throat, as if that said all. But Parson Lathrop knew the man and the race ; nor was he himself one of those uneasy souls who exact their pound of effusive gratitude for every ounce of good expended on their fellows. His left hand did not know nor inquire what his right hand did, nor even shake that comrade palm in self-congratulation. He had obtained the father’s consent to take care of Thomas; now he would go home and do it. So, with a kindly farewell, the good man replaced his wraps, and took his way down the mountain, meditating on heavenly things, an unconscious saint, if indeed saints ever are conscious !

Thomas Tucker’s school-teaching, however, did not prove efficient. Wrapped up in his studies, he was so absent-minded that he lacked that modified omniscience which is the sine qua non of a country school-teacher. The boys played marbles under his very nose, and he did not see them; they told him the most audacious lies, and he believed them, because he had never told a lie himself ; they filched his pens and spilt his ink ; they put burrs in the crown of his hat, and smeared his mittens with pitch scraped from the pine-logs in the open fireplace; they ate his dinner, and tied his comforter into knots. But he endured it all with amazement and patience, never thinking his pupils could or would be hard of heart. Then they began to serenade him with the old nursery rhymes of Little Tommy Tucker ; to draw pictures of him on the slate, with that vivacious legend attached ; and in short to learn so little and misbehave so much that after one term Thomas was " advised to resign,” and Parson Lathrop saw that his protégé would never earn even the clothes needful to his college course. But the good man had counted the cost when he set out to build this tower of learning, and he sent Thomas at once to the nearest college ; becoming answerable for all his expenses, which were somewhat lessened by the fact that a brother clergyman at Deerford gave Thomas his board, on condition that he did the “ chores ” of the family and took care of the horse.

During his first year in this institution the mountain farm where he was born, always heretofore considered beyond the reach of fevers such as haunted the lowlands, was suddenly stricken. Amasa Tucker and his wife both fell ill with one of those malignant diseases that were once regarded with a mystical horror as “ visitations of God,” but are now referred to contaminated wells and neglected drainage. Amasa came in from the woods where he was chopping, one afternoon, livid and ghastly with pain, exclaiming, like the child of the Shunammite woman, “ My head! my head ! ” and fell upon the bed senseless. He lay there unconscious all night, and the next morning Keziah set out at dawn to walk two miles to the nearest neighbor, and send him to Bantam for a doctor. He went at once, but when she got home her father was still senseless, and her mother sat by his side, with both hands clasped about her own head, and her face scarcely less changed than her husband’s. Amasa was dead when Dr. Knight arrived, and in twenty-four hours Philura had followed him ; both dying speechless, without one parting word or look for their bereft daughter, and before Thomas could come from Deerford. It was a strange, sad funeral at which Parson Lathrop officiated, early on a sweet spring day, the air fragrant with the new buds and fresh scent of the upturned earth, birds twittering among the lofty pine-trees, that set the north winds at defiance on two sides of that quiet grave-yard, and the tiny lake below repeating the fair blue heaven above. A divine peace seemed to fill that solitude among the sheltering mountains, and as the good man looked about him he reverently removed his hat, and before the dead were laid among their kindred dust he burst involuntarily into the sublime cadences of that psalm so fitted for the time and place : —

But the triumphant submission, the lofty ascription, awoke no thrill in Thomas’s heart. He stood by the double grave like one in a dream; no tear dimmed his eye, no quiver moved his set lips. He knew well that these deaths were no real loss to him, and he was too vitally and thoroughly honest to put on any outward aspect of mourning. Neither father nor mother had ever tried to awaken in their children one spark of affection. Duty, grim, hard duty, had been the spring of Amasa Tucker’s life toward God and man. He had toiled, and prayed, and striven to fulfill his tale of debt toward One whom he knew only as an exacting Master, and to “ set loose by the things of this world,” as he expressed it, lest he might not be ready for the summons to another ; and from him Keziah had learned to dread the indulgence of natural affection as idolatry and a weakness of the carnal heart, which was always “ at enmity with God.” Consequently the children had grown up unloving, because they were unloved. There were no tender recollections to wring their souls to-day ; no unspeakable longings for the hand that had been ever ready to guide, or the voice always eager to cheer. Even Parson Lathrop was astonished and grieved to see that prim composure of the one and dreamy indifference of the other, and forbore to pray that God would bind up the broken in heart, being too honest to be conventional.

Happily for Keziah, Parson Lathrop’s widowed sister had come to Bantam to “ make it home with him,” as the country phrase is; and, never weary in welldoing, the good man took Keziah home, and sent her to Parsons Academy ; and in due time she became a school-teacher, more successful than Thomas, for she only attempted to teach little children, whom her dull, quiet nature enabled her to drill in their earliest education with unwearied patience and smiling endurance.

Thomas himself went on in his college course, utterly unmoved by the tricks of sophomores or the contempt of seniors. He was called “ little Tommy Tucker ” through the recurring terms in every tone of scorn, amusement, and disgust, without seeming to know that it was not his proper title. Nothing interested him but his books. Society was a meaningless waste of time in his eyes, and he respected holidays only because he could spend them undisturbed in the college library, without need to stir for any purpose save the necessities of food and rest, always at their minimum with him. He went to the end of the career here with absolute success as far as learning goes, graduated with the highest honors, and passed on into the theological seminary in Hartland, an epitome of learning, but without a single friend.

Here he reveled in Greek and Hebrew ; became still more lank, bent, pale, and introverted than ever ; and when he was at last through with his divinity course knew more of his studies and less of his fellow-creatures than any other man of his class. He was temporarily placed in charge of the college chapel when he returned to Deerford, its pulpit being vacant for the time, and he preached to the students before him such discourses as might have edified a body of old Puritan divines ; erudite, doctrinal, logical, orthodox, but without one spark of human sympathy or divine love. The eager crowd refused such husks, and expressed their disgust, as a crowd of boys will; but Thomas Tucker took no more notice of their scuffling feet, their laughter, their feigned sleep, or their simultaneous attacks of cold in the head or distressing cough than he took of the wintry winds without that dashed the elm-tree boughs against the lofty chapel windows, or the streaming rain that pattered on its roof. He was there to preach, and preach he did ; gladly, however, retiring from the office when the clergyman for whom he had been locum tenens arrived. It was evident to those who knew him best in the city that it was not his vocation to preach; and as he was respected among those learned men for his devotion to study and his vast acquisition of knowledge for so young a man, and as the professor of ancient languages was about to resign his position, and his life too, it was brought about that Thomas Tucker should be offered his place. It was true, he was comparatively young ; but there was no real youth about him. He went his way with the absorption of a sexagenarian, only that his were the cares of learning and meditation rather than of this world and declining years.

Soon after his acceptance of the professorship he was sent for to say goodby to Parson Lathrop. For this good man, who had been a real father to him in the best fatherly sense, Thomas felt all the affection in his power; and as he stood by his death-bed, the dreamy, deep-set eyes sparkled with unshed tears, and the melancholy lips trembled. He could not speak ; lie eould only grasp the emaciated and burning hand held out to him, and see through a dim haze the faint, sweet smile on the old man’s face.

“ 1 am going home, my son,” whispered the parson. “ I sent for you to say it is best now that you should take lveziah to be with you. Sister Keery has gone before me, having had an abundant entrance into the kingdom.” Here he paused, and Keziah gave him a sip of restorative. “ My tongue is parched, even as the tongue of Dives, but I am not afraid of his fate. I know in whom I have believed. Thomas, as I said, take Keziah home with you. Well sayeth the Apocrypha, though it be not with inspiration, ‘ Without women cannot men live.’ It is better for you, in this new honor that hath come to you, to have the dignity of a home, and it is best that she should have its comfort. ' He setteth the solitary in families,’and what better earthly thing could he do for them ? ”

“ I will! ” said Thomas, as solemnly as if this were a marriage ceremony.

The parson smiled, but the wandering of death was on him. It seemed as if his will had controlled the fluttering of the spirit, eager to break its chrysalis and soar, until he had finished his good work on earth ; now he ceased from his labors, but his heart yet beat, and his disordered mind babbled on those claycold lips.

“ They ’re all in the yard, Celia,” he said ; “ and the sun isn’t down yet; it’s above Saltash ; and I cocked all the hay on the lower meadow. Tell Semanthy to fetch the milk-pails.”Then he muttered something they could not hear. Celia was his wife’s name, and that recurred audibly over and over. Suddenly his look changed, his eyes opened, a radiant gleam broke across the pallid face, and, lifting one hand upward, he said, “ Why, Celia! Come! rise! let us be going ; the Master calleth for thee;” so he went as bidden.

Thomas and Keziah walked behind the coffin, when Parson Lathrop’s funeral train wound its way along the shore of the tranquil lake to the same lonely grave-yard where their parents lay, feeling in their hearts that here and now they buried a nearer and dearer friend than either father or mother had been ; and the silent crowd who followed them were all alike mourners, for the parson had been a power and a presence of goodness in their midst for many a long year. They stayed, too, after they had lain the worn-out body to sleep in the tender shadow of the hills he loved, to hear his funeral sermon, preached by a neighboring brother, who was in such pathetic earnest that his misuse of speech could not stir a smile in the attentive audience, even when he said, in describing the good man’s last hours, that “ a heavenly smile eradicated his countenance.”

Then the brother and sister went back to Deerford, and, hiring a small house, began their life together. Parson Lathrop had left his little property to Keziah, and these few thousands, added to the yearly rental of the old farm and the house in Bantam, kept her independent soul from feeling that she was a burden upon Thomas, and his salary was more than sufficient for their daily needs. So for a year or two they lived in peace, until Satan, or some lesser minion of evil, put it into the head of a student, whose mischief always overrode his manners, to play a joke upon “ old Tommy.”

Professor Tucker, throughout his college life, had never been known to address the least attention, scarcely the least civility, to any woman ; he avoided all society but that of his books, refused all invitations, and lived in his room like a hermit in his cell. But when his sister arrived, and he became a householder, the maids and matrons collateral to the faculty of which he was a member at once felt it their duty to call on Keziah, and welcome her to their social enjoyments. But she was as shy as her brother, and proved impracticable to almost every one. Her nearest neighbor alone, a maiden lady, of good family and fine, cheerful presence, well-to-do, and having the courageous aplomb that all these gifts bestow on a woman, made some headway in the good graces of the quiet rustic spinster. Miss Eleanor Yale would, welcomed or not, invade Keziah’s solitude now and then, insist on driving her out to show her the beautiful environs of Hartland, send her flowers from her own elaborate garden and fruit from her peach and pear trees, all out of the most frank and free benevolence ; for she pitied the solitary creature, knowing in her own heart how forlorn loneliness is to any woman, though all the other good things of life be poured out abundantly into her hands. Miss Keziah had a heart, — somewhat torpid for want of exercise, perhaps, but still a heart, — and she felt Miss Yale’s kindness, without finding words to express it to that lady ; but she spoke of her so often to the professor that he learned to know her name, and thereby precipitated a certain impending catastrophe, set in motion by Jack Mason, the aforesaid student. On Valentine’s Day — a day of which Thomas Tucker was no more conscious and no better informed than Confucius or Aristotle — he received by mail a flowing ditty, of the most tender sort, written in a woman’s hand, and signed “ Eleanor.” The professor stood aghast. Poetry had no charms for him ; he had not the remotest idea of its figurative speech, its license, or its “ tricks and manners ; ” to him it was merely curiously arranged prose, and this devoted and tender valentine seemed neither more nor less than an offer of marriage. His hair fairly stood on end, and his forehead was knit with perplexity. Who could have done this thing ? Suddenly he remembered that Eleanor was the name of his sister’s friend, and even on his learned and abstracted soul dawned a glimmer of the man’s instinctive contempt for women, as he bethought himself how this woman had sought his sister’s friendship and done her such kindnesses all for his sake. Still, being an exceptional man, he was moved rather to pity than scorn, on further reflection, thinking of all this wasted trouble and useless feeling on the lady’s part. There was but one thing to be done. He did not want to marry any one ; he had not planned or intended any such thing; his life and love were all centred in his studies, his books, his profession. And was not Keziah able and willing to do for him all those services which some men had no sisters to attend to, and therefore were obliged to marry ?

But this poor woman, — she must not be deluded with so futile a hope. iI was unpleasant to contemplate, but Thomas Tucker never shrank from duty ; he must be honest or die. So he put on his hat and coat, and, presenting himself at Miss Yale’s door, asked to see that lady. Miss Yale was astonished, but she received the professor a little more kindly because she was astonished, and afraid she should not put him entirely at his ease, But he was more formal, more awkward, more stiff, than ever before. He sat down on the highest chair in the room, and, drawing the luckless missive from his breast-pocket, plunged at once into the middle of things.

“Madam!” he began, sternly. “I have received this epistle, bearing your name in superscription, which doubtless you recognize. I thank you for the regard herein expressed, but as an honest man, and one who is in bonds to the truth, I come to say to you that marriage has not entered into my plans at any time, nor is there any likelihood that it will.”

Miss Yale looked at him with wide eyes. “ What ? ” she cried, in amazement.

“ I refer to this letter you have sent me, couched in the mode of verse,” replied the professor, grim as a lion on a sign-post of old time, and full as wooden.

“ Give me the letter, if you please,” said Miss Yale, her color rising, and her eyes full of a dangerous glow. But the professor knew nothing of the sex and its ways, except theoretically; he handed her the document, without any fear of its explosive tendencies. Miss Yale read it through, and looked up at him. He was already lost in some problem, or evolving some theory, but her voice roused him.

“ Do you think I sent you this ? ” she asked, in a very quiet voice, — altogether too quiet to be reassuring.

“ Is not that your given name by which it is signed ? ” returned the professor.

“ Yes. But I want to understand what you considered this letter to mean,” she went on, with the same ominous quietness of manner, holding herself in leash, as it were, till the time for a spring.

“ I think it has but one meaning, which he that runs may read: that you are desirous of entering the state of matrimony.”

“ With you ? ”

“ With me,” responded Thomas Tucker, with curt and ghastly honesty.

Miss Yale rose to her feet, and her clear eyes flashed. The professor felt danger ; he shrank visibly into himself, yet fixed an undaunted gaze upon her. She looked at him a moment, and, with the vivid speed of thought, remembered herself, her position, his nature and his habits. Her anger died ; she threw herself back on the sofa, and laughed till the tears rolled down her fair face.

The professor was entirely speechless ; he knew not what to say, but at last, in honest indignation, opened his mouth, much like his Scriptural prototype, to the angel in the path : —

“It seems, madam, unsavory subject for mirth. I am in earnest.”

“ And so am I,” said Miss Yale, drying her bedewed cheeks, and trying to be sober. “ Professor Tucker, I did not write that letter. Some silly and impertinent boy sent it to you to deceive and disturb you. If I wished to marry you, I should not take that method of obtaining my wish. I am a woman and a lady: good women and true ladies do not do such things.”

She looked directly at him as she said this, and her eyes sparkled. Some manly shame stirred in the professor’s bosom; he extracted a great red and yellow handkerchief, with much contortion, from his coat-tail pocket, and used it sonorously.

Miss Yale’s lips quivered a little, and a sudden dimple flashed in her cheek; but she went on, certain, with her own perfect tact, that this man must be treated with absolute truth, like his own: “ Moreover, in order to show

you convincingly that I had no such intention, beside not having written that letter, I will tell you, in confidence, —a trust I feel will be safe in your hands, — that I have promised to marry President Winthrop some time next summer.”

As Professor Tucker looked at the warm flush that covered the fine face of Eleanor Yale, and perceived the soft glow of her eyes, he thought that the widowed president was a happy man, but he did not say so. “ Madam, I ask your pardon,” he said, humbly. “ And for that son of Belial, who hath made me his music, I trust due punishment is somewhere reserved,” he gloomily added, and departed in a shambling fashion, that once more provoked Miss Yale’s dimples and set her eyes dancing. And, alas for tine feminine malice of which a grain lurks in the best woman’s heart, that very night President AVinthrop was entertained with a resume of her afternoon’s experience ; and that genial gentleman roared and rolled with laughter, for he knew Thomas Tucker far better than Miss Yale did, and could more thoroughly enjoy the situation.

After this occurrence, which Hebrew points and crabbed Syriac idioms soon drove from the professor’s mind, he went his way for a while quite undisturbed ; but he was so unsuccessful as a teacher that, on some excellent pretext, it pleased the trustees of the college to remove him from his position. They recommended him to a church in the city, seeking for a clergyman to fill its pulpit, and then advised him to accept the call. It was at first an irksome employment for the professor, but he did not love teaching; it was far easier for him to produce two sermons a week, in the seclusion of his study, than to face daily a class of youths, more or less refractory, if they were students, and try to beat into them the beauties and intricacies of the dead languages.

The social duties of a settled clergyman might have pressed on him onerously, but as if Providence saw that he was best fitted for a life of solitude, just as the Green Street church had listened to their learned and pious pastor for the first time after his installation in their pulpit, Keziah, his sister, was seized with a sudden and dangerous illness. The kind women of the church rallied around Thomas Tucker in this hour of his need, and nursed Keziah with unremitting kindness ; but all in vain. She dropped out of life as silently and patiently as she had endured living, and it remained only to say that the place which knew her should now know her no more ; for she left behind her no dear friends but her brother, and not an enemy. Even Thomas missed her rather as a convenience than a companion ; profiting in a certain sense by her death, as it aroused keenly the sympathy of the church for his loss and loneliness, and attached them to him by those links of pity that are proverbially almost as strong as love. In any other circumstances the Green Street church would no doubt have discovered, early in their relation, that Mr. Tucker was as unfit for any pastoral position as he had been for that post in the college chapel; but much was forgiven him out of his people’s abundant kindness ; and their respect for his learning, his simplicity, and his sincere piety forbade their objecting at first to his great deficiencies in those things considered quite as needful to pulpit success as the power of preaching and the abundance of knowledge. It happened, soon after Keziah’s death, that Mr. Tucker was called to officiate at the funeral of one of his wealthiest parishioners, a man who had just come back from Europe, and been killed in a railroad accident on the way to his home in Deerford. He was personally unknown to Thomas Tucker, but his character was notorious, He went to church, and bought an expensive pew there, merely as a business speculation; it gave him weight in the eyes of his fellows to be outwardly respectable as well as rich; but he was niggardly to his family, ostentatious, overreaching, and cruel as death to the poor and struggling who crossed his path or came into his employ.

The Reverend Mr. Tucker improved the occasion. He took for the text of that funeral address, “ What shall it profit a man if he gain the whole world, and lose his own soul ? ” and after a pungent comparison between the goods of this world and the tortures of a future state, he laid down his spectacles, and wound up with, “ And now, beloved, I have laid before you the two conditions. Think ye that to-day he whose mortal part lietli before you would not utter a loud Amen to my statement? Yea, if there be truth in the word of God, he who hath left behind him the gain of life and greed is now crying aloud for a drop of water to cool his parched tongue, and longing for an hour of probation wherein to cast off the fetters of ill-gotten gold, and sit with Lazarus gathering crumbs in the company of dogs. Wherefore, seeing that God hath spoken sharply to you all in the sudden requirement of this rich man’s soul, let his admonition sink into your souls; seek ye first the kingdom of God, and cast in your lot with the poor of this world, rich in faith, and be ready to answer joyfully when the Master calls.”

Of course, the community was outraged ; but for a few kindly souls who stood by the poor parson, and insisted that Keziah’s death had unsettled his mind, and not a few who felt that he had manfully told the truth, without fear or favor, and could not help feeling a certain respect for him, he would have been asked, forcibly, to resign, that very week. As it was, the indignant widow went over to another denomination without delay. “ I will never set foot in that church again! ” she said. “ How can one be safe where a man is allowed to say whatever he chooses in the pulpit? A ritual never can be personal or insulting. I shall abide by the Prayer Book hereafter ! ”

In due time this matter faded out of the popular mind, as all things do in course of time, and nothing came between pastor and people, except a gradual sense on their part that Solomon was right when he said, “ Much study is a weariness to the flesh;” not only the student’s flesh, but also theirs who have to hear reiterated all the dry outcome of such study.

But Parson Tucker’s career was not to be monotonous. His next astonishing performance was at a wedding. A very pretty young girl, an orphan, living in the house of a relative, equally poor but grasping and ambitious, was about to marry a young man of great wealth and thoroughly bad character; a man whom all men knew to be a drunkard, a gambler, and a dissolute fellow, though the only son of a cultivated and very aristocratic family. Poor Emily Manning had suffered all those deprivations and mortifications which result from living in a dependent condition, aware that her presence was irksome and unwelcome, while her delicate organization was overtaxed with work whose limits were as indefinite as the food and clothing which were its only reward. She had entered into this engagement in a sort of desperation, goaded on by the widowed sister-in-law with whom she lived, and feeling that nothing could be much worse than her present position. Parson Tucker knew nothing of this, but he did know the character of Royal Van Wyck ; and when he saw the pallid, delicate, shrinking girl beside this already wornout, debased, bestial creature, ready to put herself into his hands for life, the “daimon ” laid hold upon him, and spake again. He opened the service, as was customary in Hartland, with a short address ; but surely never did such a bridal exhortation enter the ears of man and woman before.

“ My friends,” he began, “matrimony is not to be lightly undertaken, as the matter of a day; it is an awful compact for life and death that ye enter into here. Young man, if thou hast not within thyself the full purpose to treat this woman with pure respect, loyal service, and tender care ; to guard her soul’s innocence as well as her bodily welfare; to cleave to her only, and keep thyself from evil thoughts and base indulgences for her sake, — if thou art not fit, as well as willing, to be priest and king of a clean household, standing unto her in character and act in God’s stead so far as man may, draw back even now from thine intent; for a lesser purpose is sacrilege here, and will be damnable infamy hereafter.”

Royal Van Wyck opened his sallow green eyes with an insolent stare. He would have sworn roundly had not some poor instinct of propriety restrained him ; as it was, he did not speak, but looked away. He could not bear the keen, deep-set eyes fixed upon him; and a certain gaunt majesty in the parson’s outstretched arm and severe countenance daunted him for the moment. Put Thomas Tucker saw that he had no intention of accepting this good advice, so he turned to Emily.

“ Daughter,” he said, “ if thou art about to enter into this solemn relation, pause and consider. If thou hast not such confidence in this man that thy heart faileth not an iota at the prospect of a life-long companionship with him; if thou canst not trust him utterly, respect him as thy lord and head, yield him an obedience joyful and secure next to that thou givest to God ; if he is not to thee the one desirable friend and lover ; if thou hast a thought so free of him that it is possible for thee to imagine another man in his place without a shudder ; if thou art not willing to give thyself to him in the bonds of a life-long, inevitable covenant of love and service; if it is not the best and sweetest thing earth can offer thee to be his wife and the mother of his children, stop now ; stop at the very horns of the altar, lest thou commit the worst sin of woman, sell thy birthright for a mess of pottage, and find no place for repentance, though thou seek it carefully and with tears.”

Carried away with his zeal for truth and righteousness, speaking as with the sudden inspiration of a prophet, Parson Tucker did not see the terror and the paleness deepening, as he spoke, on the bride’s fair countenance. As he extended his hand toward her, she fell in a dead faint at his feet. All was confusion in an instant. The bridegroom swore and Mrs. Manning screamed, while the relations crowded about the insensible girl, and tried in vain to revive her. She was taken at once up-stairs to her room, and the wedding put off till the next day, as Mrs. Manning announced.

“ And you won’t officiate at it, old fellow ! I ’ll swear to that! ” roared the baffled bridegroom, with a volley of profane epithets, shaking his fist in the parson’s calm face.

“ Having taken the sword, I am content to perish thereby, even as Scripture saith,” answered Thomas Tucker, stalking out of the door.

That night, as he sat in his study, the door opened softly, and Emily Manning came in and knelt at the side of the parson’s chair. “ I have no place to go to, sir,” she whispered, with trembling lips. “You saved me to-day; will you help me now ? I was going to sin, but I did

n’t know it till you told me.”

“ Then it was not sin, my child,” said Parson Tucker, gently. “ Sin is conscious transgression, and from that thou hast instantly departed.”

“ But what could I do ? ” she asked, her eyes full of tears. “ I have no home. Marcia is tired of me, and I have no other friends. I wanted a home so much. Oh, I was wrong, for I did not love him. And now I have run away from Marcia, — she was so dreadful, — and what shall I do ? ”

“ Poor child ! ” he said, tenderly. “ Sit here. I will help. My old woman, in the kitchen below, shall fetch thee to a chamber. Keziah brought her with us; she is kind, and will care for thee, while I go to bring a friend.” So saying, the parson rung his bell for old Jane, gave the girl over to her care, and set out himself for President Winthrop’s house.

“ I have brought you a good work,” he said abruptly to Mrs. Winthrop.

“ Come with me ; there is a soul in need at my house.”

Mrs. Winthrop was used to this sort of summons from the parson. They had been good friends ever since the eccentric interview brought about by Jack Mason’s valentine, and when charity was needed, Eleanor Winthrop’s heart and hand were always ready for service. She put on hat and shawl, and went with the parson to his house, hearing on the way all the story.

“ Mr. Tucker,” she said, as he finished the recital, “ are n’t you going to make much trouble for yourself by your aggressive honesty ? ”

Thomas looked at her, bewildered.

“ But the truth is to be spoken ! ” he replied, as if that were the end of controversy. And she was silent, recognizing the fact that here conventions were useless, and self-preservation not the first law of grace, if it is of nature.

All Mrs. Winthrop’s kindliness was aroused by the pitiful condition of Emily Manning. She consoled and counseled her like a mother, and soon after took her into her household as governess to the little girls whom Mr. Winthrop’s first wife had left him ; making for the grateful girl a happy home, which in afteryears she left to become the wife of a good man, toward whom she felt all that Parson Tucker had required of her on that painful day which she hated now to remember. And as the parson performed this ceremony he turned, after the benediction, to Eleanor Winthrop, and said, with a beam of noble triumph on his hollow visage, “ Blessed be the Lord ! I have saved a soul alive ! ”

But long before this happy sequel came about, he had other opportunities to distinguish himself. There came a Sunday when the service of infant baptism was to be performed ; and when the fair, sweet babes, who had behaved with unusual decorum, were returned to their mothers’ arms, and the parson, according to order, said, “ Let us pray,” he certainly offered the most peculiar petition ever heard in the Green Street church. After expressing the usual desire that the baptized children might grow up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord, he went on: “ But if it please thee, O Father, to recall these little ones to thyself in the innocence of their infancy, we will rejoice and give thanks, and sound thy praises upon the harp and timbrel. Yea ! with the whole heart we will praise thee ; for we know the tribulations and snares, the evil and folly and anguish, of this life below ; and we know that not one child of Adam, coming to man’s estate, is spared that bitter and woful cup that is pressed out from the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil, which our progenitors ate of in thy garden of Paradise, and thereby sinned and fell, and bequeathed to us their evil longings and habitual transgression. They are the blessed who are taken away in their infancy, and lie forever by green pastures and still waters in the fields of heaven. We ask of thee no greater or better gift for these lambs than early to be folded where none shall hurt or destroy in all thy holy mountain, and the love that is above all mother’s love shall cradle them throughout eternity. Amen ! ”

Not a mother in that congregation failed to shiver and tremble at this prayer, and tears fell fast and thick on the babes who slumbered softly in the tender arms that had gathered them home, after consecrating them to that God whom yet they were so unwilling should literally accept their offering. Fifty pairs of eyes were turned on Parson Tucker with the look of a bear robbed of its cubs, but far more were drowned in tears of memory and regret, poignant still, but strangely soothed by this vivid presentation of the blessedness wherein their loved and lost were safely abiding.

Much comment was exchanged in the church porch, after service, on the parson’s prayer.

“ We ought to hold a special meeting to pray that the Lord will not answer such a petition! ” cried one indignant mother, whose little flock were clinging about her skirts, and who had left twin babies, yet unbaptized, at home.

“It is rather hard on you, aunty ! ” said graceless Jack Mason, the speaker’s nephew, now transformed into an unpromising young lawyer in Hartland.

“ You’d rather have your babies sin and suffer with you than have ’em safe in their little graves, had n’t you ? !

don't go with the parson myself. I did n’t so much mind his funeral gymnastic over old Baker, and his disposition of that party’s soul in Hades, because I never before supposed Roosevelt Baker had a soul, and it was quite reassuring to be certain he met with his dues somewhere ; but he’s worse than Herod about the babies ! ”

However, the parson did not hear or know what was said of him, and in an ignorance that was indeed bliss continued to preach and minister to his people in strict accordance with his own views of duty. His next essay was a pastoral visit to one of his flock, recently a widow, a woman weak in body and mind both ; desirous above all things to be proper and like other people, to weep where she must, smile when she ought, wear clothes like the advance guard of fashion, and do “ the thing ” to be done always, whether it was the right and true thing or not.

Her husband had spent all her fortune in speculation, taken to drink as a refuge from folly and reproach at home, and, under the influence of the consoling fluid, had turned his wife out-ofdoors whenever he felt in the mood; kicked her, beaten her, and forced her, in fear of her life, over and over to steal from her own house, and take refuge with the neighbors, and ask from them the food she was not allowed at home. At last the end came. Parson Tucker was sent for to see the widow and arrange for funeral services. She had not been present at the Baker funeral, or indeed been in Deerford for some years after that occasion, so she adhered to the conventions ; and when Parson Tucker reached the house he was shown into a darkened room, where the disconsolate woman sat posed already in deep mourning, a widow’s cap perched upon her small head. A woman would have inferred at once that Mrs. Spring had anticipated the end of Joe’s last attack of mania a potu, and prepared these funeral garments beforehand, but Thomas Tucker drew no such conclusions, He sat down silently and grimly, after shaking hands with Mrs. Spring, and said nothing. She began the conversation : —

“ This is a dreadful affliction, Mr. Tucker. I don’t know how I shall live through it.”

“ It is terrible indeed,” said the parson. “ I do not wonder, madam, that you mourn to see your partner cut off in his sins, without time for repentance ; but no doubt you feel with gratitude the goodness which hath delivered you from so sore a burden.”

“ What! ” screamed the widow.

“ I speak of God’s mercy in removing from your house one who made your life a terror, and your days full of fear and suffering; you might have been as others, bereaved and desolate, and mourning to your life’s end.”

“ I don’t know what you mean, Parson Tucker,” said Mrs. Spring, sharply, removing a dry handkerchief from unwet eyes. " Poor dear Joseph is taken away from me, and I’m left a desolate widow, and you talk in this way ! I’m sure he had the best of hearts that ever was ; it was only, as you may say, accidental to him to be a little overcome at times, and I ’m — I 'm — 0—h ! ”

Here she gave a little hysterical scream, and did some well-executed sobbing ; but the parson did not mind it. He rose up before her, gaunt and gray.

“ Madam, did not this man beat, and abuse, and insult, and starve you, when he was living? Or have I been misinformed ? ”

“ Well — Oh dear, what dreadful questions ! ”

“ Did he ? ” thundered the parson.

“ He did n’t mean to ; he was excited, Mr. Tucker. He ” —

“ He was drunk. And is that excuse ? Not so, madam. You know, and I know, that his death is a relief and a release to you. I cannot condole with you on that which is not a sorrow,” and he walked rigidly out of the door.

Is it necessary to say that Mr. Spring’s funeral did not take place in Deerford ? His widow suddenly remembered that he had been horn in a small town among the hills of West Massachusetts, and she took his body thither, to be “ laid beside his dear payments,” as she expressed it.

Things had now come to a bad pass for Parson Tucker. The church committee had held more than one conference over their duty toward him. It was obvious that they had no real reason for dismissing him but his ghastly honesty, and that hardly offers a decent excuse to depose a minister of the gospel. They hardly knew how to face the matter, and were in this state of perplexity when Mr. Tucker announced, one Sunday, after the sermon, that he would like to see the church committee at his study on Tuesday night, and accordingly they assembled there, and found President Winthrop with the parson.

“ Brethren,” said Thomas Tucker, after the preliminary welcome had passed, “ I have sent for you to-night to say, that having now been settled over your church eight years, I have found the salary you pay me so much more than was needed for my bodily support that I have laid by each year as the surplus came to hand, that I might restore to you your goods. The sum is now something over eight thousand dollars, and is placed, to the credit of your chairman, in the First Deerford Bank.” The committee stared at each other as if each one were trying to arouse himself from sleep. The chairman at last spoke : —

“ But, Mr. Tucker, this is unheard of ! The salary is yours ; we do not desire to take it back ; we can’t do it.”

“That which I have not earned, Brother Street is not mine. I am a solitary man ; my expenses are light. It must be as I said. Moreover, I have to say that I hereby withdraw from your pulpit, of necessity. I have dealt with our best physicians concerning a certain anguish of the breast, which seizes me at times unawares, and they all concur that an evil disease lieth upon me. I have not much time to live, and I would fain withdraw from activities and duties that are external, and prepare for the day that is at hand.”

The committee were pained as well as shocked. They felt guilty to think how they had plotted this very thing among themselves; and they felt, too, a certain awe and deep respect for this simple, unworldly nature, this supernatural integrity. Mr. Street spoke again ; his voice was husky: —

“ If this is so, Mr. Tucker, we must of course accept your resignation ; but, my dear pastor, keep the money ! You will need care and comforts, now this trouble has come on you. We can’t take it back.”

Parson Tucker looked at him with a grave, sweet smile. “ I thank you, brother, but I have a private store. My sister left her worldly goods to me, and there is enough and to spare for my short sojourn,” he answered.

“But it is n’t according to the fitness of things that we should take your salary back, Parson Tucker,” put in bustling Mr. Taylor. “ What upon earth should we do with it ? ”

“ Friend,” said the parson, “ the eternal fitness of things is but the outcome of their eternal verity. I have not, as I said, earned that wage, and I must restore it: it is for you to decide what end it shall serve in the church.”

A few more words passed between them, and then each wrung the parson’s hand and left him, not all with unmoved hearts or dry eyes.

“ I don’t wonder he’s going to die ! ” exclaimed Mr. Street, as the committee separated at a street corner. “ He’s altogether too honest to live ! ”

From that day Thomas Tucker sank quietly toward his grave. Friends swarmed about him, and if delicacies of food could have saved him, the dainty stores poured in upon him would have renewed his youth; but all was in vain.

President Winthrop sat by him, one summer day, and, seeing a sad gleam in his sunken eye, asked gently, “ You are ready and willing to go, Brother Tucker ? ” nothing doubting a glad assent.

But the parson was honest to the last. “ No,” he said, “ I do not want to die ; I am afraid. I do not like strange and new things. I do not want to leave my books and my study.”

“ But, dear brother,” broke in the astonished president, “ it is a going home, to your Father’s house ! ”

“ I know not what a home is, friend, in the sense of regret or longing for one. My early home was but as the egg to the bird, a prison wherein I was born, from which I fled ; nor was my knowledge of a father one that commends itself as a type of good. I trust, indeed, that the Master will take me by the hand, even as he did Peter upon the water; but the utterance of my secret soul is even that of the apostle with the keys : ‘ Lord, save, or I perish ! ’ ”

“ Yet you have been a power for good and a close follower of Peter’s Lord,” said Mr. Winthrop, altogether at a loss for the proper thing to say to this peculiar man.

“ One thing alone have I been enabled to do, Brother Winthrop, for which I can with heart and soul thank God even at this hour. Yea, I thank him that I have been enabled to speak the truth even in the face of lies and deceptions, through his upholding.” A smile of unearthly triumph filled every line of the wasted face, and lit his eyes with a flash of divine light as he said this. He grasped close the friendly hand he was holding, turned his cheek to the pillow, and closed his eyes ; passing into that life of truth and love that awaited him, even as a child that lies down in the darkness, trembling, fearful, and weary, but awakes in the dawn of a new day, in the heart of home.

“ Still,” said President Winthrop to his wife, as they walked home, after the funeral, “ I believe in the good old proverb, Eleanor, that the truth is not to be spoken at all times.”

“ And I never believed in it so little ! ” she cried indignantly. “ Think what a record he has left, what respect hangs about his memory! Do we know how many weak souls have relied on his example, and held to the truth when it was hard, because he did and could ? It is something to be heroic in these days, even if it is unpopular ! ”

The president shrugged his shoulders.

Rose Terry Cooke.