Page:The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14.djvu/688

678 please the public; but, oh, if the public that traded with and liked to patronize him, if the young lads and the old boys who hung about his counters, could have seen him when he shut his shop-door behind him, and went into the back-room where Jessie and he devised the patterns, where she embroidered and lived, where she cooked and washed and ironed, where she nursed Columbia, their daughter, one glance at all this, made with the heart and the understanding, would—ah! might, have been to some of them worth more than all Dexter's pleasant stones, and all the contents of the shop, and all the profits the flag-maker would ever make by trading.

For I can hardly believe, though this story be but of "common life," when I take up the newspapers and glance along the items I am constrained to doubt, that such people as Silas and Jessie live in every house, in every alley, lane, and street, in every square and avenue, on every farm, wherever walls inclose those divine temples of which Apostles talked as belonging to God, which temples, said they, are holy! I can hardly believe that Love, void of fear and of selfishness, speaks through all our domestic policy, and devises those curious arrangements, political, theological, social, whose result has approval and praise, it may be, in the regions of outer darkness.

Dark faces, whose sleekness hides a gulf of waters more dead than those of the dreadful Dead Sea, rise between me and the honest, brave face of Silas,—dreary flats, whose wastes are not figured in utter barrenness by the awful African deserts, where ranks upon ranks of women, like Jessie at least in love and fidelity, must stand, or—"where is the promise of His coming?"

The daughter of Silas and Jessie was called Columbia in honor of some valiant enterprise, nautical or other, which charmed the patriotic spirit of the father; and as he was not a fighting man or a speaking man, he offered this modest comment on the brilliant event by way of showing his appreciation.

Columbia Dexter was a great favorite with the children of Salt Lane for various reasons, and among them this, that in all parades and processions she supplied the banners. Columbia's friend of friends was Silas, son of Andrew Swift,—and thus we come among the children of the neighbors.

They were not dependent on Salt Lane for a play-ground. They had the Long Wharf. Ships from the most distant foreign shores deposited their loads of freightage there, and the children were free to read the foreign brands, to guess the contents, and to watch the sailors,—free to all brain-puzzling calculations, and to clothes-soiling, clothes-rending feats, among the treasures of the ship-hold and the wharf: no mean privileges, with the roar of ocean in their ears, and great ships with their towering masts before their eyes. They had the wharf for bustle, confusion, excitement,—and for this they loved it; but the beach that stretched beyond they had for quiet, and there, for miles and miles, curious shells and pretty pebbles, fish-bones and crabs and sand, sea-weed fine and fair, and the old sycamores, the old dead trees, in the tops of whose white branches the halcyon built its nest. Well the children knew the winter days, so bright and mild, when the brave birds were breeding. Well they knew when the young kingfisher would begin to make his royal progress, with such safe dignity descending, branch by branch, until he could no longer resist Nature, but must dash out in a "fine frenzy" for the bounding waves!

Silas Swift, Dexter's namesake, was a grave, sturdy, somewhat heavy-looking fellow, whose brain teemed with thoughts and projects of which his slow-moving body offered no suggestion. Whoever prophesied of them did so at his hazard. Let him play at his will, and the children even were amazed. But this could not happen every day. Set him at work, and the sanguine were in despair. This was because, when work must be done, he deliberated, and did the thing that must be; so that, while misapprehension