Page:Seventy-six, or, Love and battle (IA seventysixlove00nealrich).pdf/9

 can but just recollect him. He was a very erect, stately, stern old man, of few words, and remark able stature. This is all that I can recollect of him, except that he used to talk to the militia of the day, as if they were children, and relate, with a distinctness that made my young heart swell violently, many an inroad of the Indians.

My father, as most of you well remember, was a pacific, mild, kind-hearted man and if I add to this, that, after he removed from Providence plantations to the Jerseys, he never saw blood drawn, till the flame of the revelation had broken out, you will then know about all that any man knows of his early life. Till within the last ten years of his life, there was the same plain, unpretending, substantial good sense in all that he did and during many years that we lived together, I do not remember that I ever saw him in a passion but twice or three times and the first left such an impression on my mind, that I will relate it—it was on seeing my good mother, in the pride of her beauty, equipped in a new calico gown, flowered ail over with yellow and blue roses, about the size of cabbages—after the new importation confederacy had been adopted. The affair had been managed secretly, and my mother might have passed it all off without the loss of her finery, or the rebuke that she received, had she been able to suppress, a little more, her natural spirit for display; but unfortunately, she could not, and she had passed, and repassed, before my father, during the first day, so frequently, in her flaming ruffles and furbelows, that human patience could endure it no longer. "Peggy," said my father, "what is the meaning of this?" She smiled, coloured, bridled a little, and turned about, so as to exhibit all the proportions of her finely turned waist, before she answered.

I was but a little fellow, scarcely old enough to speak my own name, so as to be understood; but my father s anger so frightened me, it being the first explosion, that I could not think of it for some time afterward, without looking behind me, and holding my breath.

My mother was the "lady" of the neighbourhood, and but for one other lady, would have been the happiest of human creatures.

"O, my dear," said she, coaxingly "only a little spec of mine; I was going to take tea with our neighbour Arnauld, and I thought—"

"Drink tea!" said my father, shutting his bible, with a clap that made me start, and standing erect—You remember his height—few men carried such a front with them, and of all our blood, he was the tallest, I believe—"Drink tea, Peggy! Do you not know, child, that tea, is one of the prohibited things?"

My father alluded to the confederacy that had just been entered into, by all the substantial men of the country, some in shame, some in terror, and some from downright honesty and virtue, not to purchase or consume any article whatever, supplied by the mother country to the colonies and tea was one of the enumerated articles.

My mother turned pale, I remember, but continued for a moment or two to defend the visit and tea-drinking stoutly, but my father was immoveable.

"Woman!" said he, putting his large hand kindly, but authoritatively, upon her shoulder. "while you are my wife, not one cup of tea shall pass your lips, unless the confederacy be abandoned. "And if your neighbour—"

This neighbour, by the way, lived eight miles off, at the end of an almost inaccessible wood, and was the lady rival of my mother.

"—be weak and wicked enough to treat her visitors, in the present state of her country, with tea. you shall never, with my leave, set your foot within her doors again."

"High times indeed!" said my mother, bouncing away from his hand, (she was the younger, by at least twelve years, and that gave her an advantage, not to be overlooked by a handsome and adroit woman) "High times indeed! Jonathan Oadley" (his name, too, was Jonathan, as you will recollect)—"when a body cannot be allowed to take a drop of tea for medicine—"

"A drop of hell-fire!" cried my father, stamping with wrath—"A woman of America! the wife of Jonathan Oadley—whose husband has signed a paper with his own blood" (a literal fact, my children, for in the feeling of the time, no solemnity, and I might say, no superstition was spared) "calling down the anger of God upon his house, and his wife, and children, if he kept it not—shall she be the first to laugh his obligation to scorn—give his household to destruction, and her husband's name to dishonour? O, for shame!"

I am sure, even now, that, had my father been, less violent, by a little, than he was, there would have been no trouble in the affair; but my mother was a high-spirited woman, remarkably well bred for the time, and had married him, in the face and eyes of all her family—

"Ye—ye—yes", said she, sobbing "just what I expected. I was always t—t—told so—I—"

"That I was a tyrant?" said my father, gently—"no, Peggy, no—I am no tyrant—but much as I love you, and that boy yonder, I would rather lose you both, rather see you taking a mortal poison, both of you, than a cup of this accursed tea:—but what is this—what is the meaning of this? (taking hold of the long ruffle, or flounce, at the elbow of her glittering calico)—new,is it, Peggy?"

My mother held down her head, whether in shame and mortification, or in sullenness, I know not; but there was an awful stillness for a minute or two, and then my father went up to her, and took her in his arms and kissed her—I declare to you, my children, like some high priest, about to offer up a living creature that he loved, in sacrifice.

He was very pale, and, after uttering a few words, my mother began, very reluctantly, to unfasten her girdle. My notion was, from my own experience in such matters and the sternness of his countenance, and the terror and shame in her, that he was going to beat her, and I began to cry lustily ; but they gave no heed to my bawling, and I never stopped, even to get my breath, till I had seen the beautiful calico gown torn into five hundred pieces, and burnt in the fire my another clad anew, in a dark brown cotton of her own weaving, and my father sitting by her, with his arn round her waist, and her head leaning upon his shoulder, full of affection and duty.

Thus much for my father's temper: it will give you some notion of his general deportment, when I tell you that I never saw him transported so far on any other occasion, for more than twenty years