9. The Member From Luzerne
During this revival regret was often expressed, that Mark Bonamy was absent. If He were at home he might be converted, and his conversion would tell upon the other young men of the town. And then he might come to be a preacher. What a preacher he would make ! He would doubtless become a famous presiding elder like John Strange or Allen Wiley. He might some day get to be a great bishop like Elijah Hedding. But he waa away attending the session of the legislature. None regretted this more than his mother, a devout Methodist, who prayed day and night that the son who " had wandered into paths of worldly pleasure and ambition " might be " led to ground the arms of his rebellion and enlist under the banner of the cross."
As for Mark, his ambition seemed in a fair way to be gratified. For the first time the state government was in the control of the Whigs. He had happened to change just in time to come in on the rising wave, and all Luzerne recognized him now as destined to become a distinguished citizen. Some days before the time for the legislature to meet, Mark buckled on his leggings, packed his saddle-bags, and mounted his horse. He rode for four days through thick yellow clay, soft enough to let hia horse sink down one or two feet at nearly every step, arriving late in the evening of the fourth day at Indianapolis, a straggling muddy village in a heavily wooded morass. The newly projected capital had been laid off with true Huosier magnificence and hopefulness. The governor's house remarkable for a homely bigness and a dirty color stood in the middle, surrounded by a circu lar street which left his excellency's family no back yard all sides were front. Around this focus most of the new wooden churches were built, so that the people going to meeting might inspect the governor's wood-pile and count the inmates of his chicken-coop, whose death-warrants had not yet been signed. Outside of the "circle" the city was laid off with nice rectangularity, except that four o-reat diagonal avenues running from the center of the town, on the map, the appearance of a blazing sun in a cheap picture. Nowadays, when more than a hundred thousand people have filled up this radiant outline with many costly buildings, and when the unsightly " governor's mansion " having ceased to exist, no longer presents its back door to the Episcopal church, the beautif"! Hoosier metropolis has justified the hopes of its projec tors. But in Bonamy's time the stumps stood in the streets ; the mud was only navigable to a man on a tall horse ; the buildings were ugly and unpainted ; the people were raw immigrants dressed in butternut jean8, and for the most part afflicted either with the " agur " or the "yaller janders"; the taverns were new wooden buildings with swinging sisnis that creaked in the wind, their floors being well coated with a yellow adobe from the boots of the guests. The alkaline biscuits on the table were yellow like the floors; the fried "middling" looked much the same, the general yellowness had extended to the walls and the bed-clothing, and combined with the butternut jeans and copperas-dyed linsey-woolsey of the clothes, i L , gave the universe an air of having the jaundice.
It is quite depressing to a man who has been the great man of his town, and who has been duly commissioned to eome deliberative body, to find that all his fellow-members consider themselves the central objects of inteiest, Mark was neglected at first by all except those members who wanted to get state roads or other projects of local interest carried through the house. He was only "the young fellow from Luzerne." Nevertheless, after he had made his maiden speech on the necessity for internal improvements by the general government, he was more highly esteemed. A young man with so telling a style of declamation was not to be slighted. A shrewd old member nodded to his neighbor as Mark sat down at the close of his effort, and said, " Congress some day." For that was the day before the reign of newspapers. Declamation was the key to promotion.
One day when the session was drawing to its close, a messenger came for Bonamy. The man had ridden hard over frozen ground for two days, and now with horse worn out, he came to tell Mark that his mother was dying of one of those bilious fevers which made the West a graveyard in those davs. Mark was a man of strong feeling. He had often disregarded the advice of his mother, but she was the good influence of his life, so that it was with a mixed emotion of grief and remorse that he mounted his horse and turned his back upon the legislature, I hen in its last week, to make a forced ride of eighty miles in two days over frozen roads of horrible roughness, with only the faintest hope of seeing his mother alive.
But Death does not wait for us. When Mark rode his tired horse up to his father's gate, the serious faces of those who met him at the door told that he was too late.
It only remained to receive her blessing at second-hand from the old women who had been with her to the last, and who save her messages to Mark in a tone that seemed to say : " Now, you reprobate, you ! don't you feel mean that you did not repent as your mother wanted you to ? Now you see in a time like this how superior to you we pious people are ; aha ! " It is the persuasive way of some people this crowing over a sinner. Mark wouldn't have taken a short step in the direction of Paradise, on any account just then.
His two sisters were full of sorrow, though Amanda, the elder, showed it in a severe and dignified way quite becoming in a Bonamy. Even Colonel Bonamy looked softened just a little.
Mrs. Bonamy was buried after the village custom. The funeral tickets were distributed on the day of her death. The little printing-office conducted by the editor, publisher, proprietor, and printer of the " Weekly Palladium," and one small boy, kept a black ornamental border all set up for funeral tickets. The type of the set phrases, such as "Yourself and family are respectfully invited," were never distributed; the name, and date, and hour only were changed as occasion required. As soon as the tickets for Mrs. Bcnamy's funeral were ordered, the printer set the form of the funeral ticket on the imposing-stone and proceeded to make the alterations needful to render it appropriate to the present occasion. He pulled it apart, placed the lines needing change in his composing-stick, took out the name of Job .Raymond, the last deceased, and replaced it with Mrs. Bonamy's, changed the dates and other particulars, "justified" the lines, and then replaced them in the form, and proceeded to " lock it up." In a short time the small inky boy was rolling and the editor was working off with an old hand-press little tickets like this:
Yourself and family are respectfully invited to attend the funeral of Olivia W. Bonamy, from the residence of her husband, Daniel K. Bonamy, on Wednesday, February 19th, 1841, at one o'clock P.M.
You will find many of these tickets laid away between the leaves of old books in Luzerne. When the proper number were printed, the inky, impish-looking lad made a feint of washing his hands, put on his round-about, and started out to distribute them, with the greater part of his face in appropriate mourning. He did not go to certain select families set down on a pre-arranged list. A small town is democratic ; the tickets were left at every house, and you might have seen the village folks discussing the matter over their division fences. For people must discuss something it is the great preventive of insanity. So now every symptom of Mrs. Bonamy's disease was gone over, and what Mrs. So-and-so said about it three days ago, and what the doctor thought, and when " the change " took place, and who were " sitting up the night she died," and whether she " died happy " or not, and what she said, and whether the corpse looked " natural," and bow old she was, and "what time Mark got home," and how he "took it," and how "the old colonel took it," and whether he would stay an infidel or not, and how Amanda "took it," and whether the girl had much heart or not, and whether the old man would marry again, and what he would do about his family, and whether Mark would get " under conviction " or not, and whether he would make a preacher if he was converted. But everybody was agreed that, coming just at this time, it was a " mighty solemn call " to Mark, and Jemima Dumbleton expressed herself very positively on this point. She said he needed a solemn call, "Fer that ere Mark Bonamy," she went on, " liaint got no other god but Mark Bonamy. And worshipin' his self is mighty like bowing down to a god of brass, or to Aaron's calf, so it seems to me."
The funeral took place like all the other village funerals of that day! First the minister preached a sermon of warning and consolation to the living, reviewing and eulogizing the life of the deceased. Then there was a procession, which included, beside the wagon on which the coffin rested, some old family carriages or carry-alls, several buggies, one gig, fifteen people from the country on horseback, and a long line afoot, with the usual number of stragglers and small boys, who ran alongside because it was a procession. These small boys reached the graveyard m advance of the rest and perched themselves high on tne fences, where they could see all that might take place. They were not noisy, though they showed much excitement this was a spectacle, and any spectacle is a godsend to a village lad. Whether it is a muster, or a funeral, a circus, or a " baptizing," matters not to him, so that something goes on and he sees it.
The coffin was lowered, the Methodist service was read the grave was quickly filled and rounded up with the spades of kindly neighbors, after which the minister said that he " was requested on behalf of the family of the deceased to thank the friends who had shown so much kindness during her illness." Theu he pronounced the benediction, and the small boys leaped from tbe fences and hurried away pell-mell for the town, while the friends slowly dispersed, the wintry winds playing a pathetic requiem in the frozen and vibrant boughs of the clump of weeping willows which keep, even unto this day, a perpetual vigil over the graves of the village dead, while generation follow? generation to the lonely sleeping-place.
It was some time during the next dav that Mark Bonamy went to see Roxy Adams, to thank her for her faithful kindness to his mother, and receive some messages that the mother had left in the keeping of Roxy. In his present state of mind Mark was a little afraid of Roxy. But he was ill at ease in his conscience, and he gave himself much credit for submitting to Roxy's exhortations. It showed that he was not so very bad, after all.
Roxy did not take the lofty and patronizing stand he expected. There was something so strange "and persuasive in the earnestness with which the eager girl spoke of his mother, something so touching in her enthusiastic appeals to his conscience through his natural affection, that Bonamy, who was full of sensibility, found himself strangely affected by it. He was always susceptible to female influence, but he found that Roxy called out what was best in him. He readily promised her that he would go to meeting that night, and he kept his word.
He expected to be touched by the absence of his mother, who had always been a prominent figure in the meetings, But there was so much change, that he did not feel her mother's absence as he thought to feel it. The old, unpainted and unfenced, brick meeting-house with its roundtop front windows and its fan-light over the door, was the same Within there were the same stiff benches with awkward backs consisting of two narrow boards far apart, the same unpainted pulpit with posts on either side supporting candles in brass candlesticks, the same rusty boxutove sitting in the middle of the aisle, and the same hanging tin chandeliers with candles at every stage of consumption. The same tall, kindly sexton, a man with one eye, went round as before, taking careful sight on a candle and then, when sure of his aim, suddenly snuffing it, gently parting the wick afterward to increase the light, then opening the stove door with a clatter and pushing in a piece of wood. It was all as of old, but all so different. The young men with whom Mark had had many a wild spree, sat no longer back near the door in the seat of the scornful but in the " amen corner ; " the giddiest girls he had ever waltzed with were at this moment joining with Roxy and the rest in singing that plaintive melody :
" Our bondage here shall end,
By and by by and by."
When one follows in the track of a storm one measures the force by the uprooted trees and the shattered branches. So Mark, seeing all at once the effects of the revival, felt that the town had been subjected to a fearful power, and the sense of this invisible power almost overwhelmed him. Then, too, he was as one who beholds all his friends sitting guests at a feast while he shivers without in cold and darkness. The preacher's words were evidently leveled at him. Dale knew, as all revivalists do, the value of natural sensibility as a sort of priming for religious feeling; he touched with strong emphasis on " praying mothers, " and " friends gone before," and on probable separations in the world to come, and Mark felt the full force of the whole tide of magnetic feeling in the audience turned on himself.
He sought diversion in looking about. But this was vain. Those who had not yet " made a start," looked full of grave apprehension. One or two stood like trees unscathed bv the blast. Ben Thomas was as full of mockery as ever. He looked at Mark and nodded, saying:
" He means you, Mark. He loves a shining Mark ! Ain't you under conviction yet? "
But his horrible scoffing at everything, which to anybody else seemed sacred, only reacted on Mark, and made him ready to put any gap between himself and Ben. Near Ben sat Major Tom Lathers, tall and stringy and solemn. He kept himself forever " in an interesting state of mind " in order that religious people might encourage him by furthering his political aims. Lathers made every church in the village believe that he " leaned toward " it, in preference to the others. He talked to the Methodists about his Methodist wife, "now dead and in heaven ; " he told the Baptists about his " good Baptist bringing up," and spoke feelingly to the Presbyterians about his "good old Presbyterian grandmother," wl> taught him to say his prayers. Thus did this exemplary man contrive to keep in a perpetual bond of S3 T mpathy with his fellow-men, regardless of sect or creed. Had there been any Catholics and Jews in the town he would doubtless have discovered a Catholic ancestor somewhere, and a strong leaning toward Judaism on account of his lineal descent from Noah. Provided always that the said Catholics and Jews had at the least filed a declarati;n of their intention to become citizens of this great republic.
Mark knew Lathers's hypocrisy and hated it. But what A\ashis disgust when, catching the major's solemn eye and following its direction, he saw on the women's side of the church, decked out in cheap finery, Nancy Kirtley. She sat next the aisle and her splendid and self-conscious face was posed on purpose to attract his attention. She had come to town to spend two days at the house of her brother, the drayman, and had prolonged her stay when she heard that Mark had been sent for. She had not felt the revival excitement. Roxy had besought her, the minister had preached at her, the sisters had visited her. All this flattered and pleased her. She liked to be the center of attention, and she had managed on occasion to squeeze out a tear or two by way of encouraging the good people to keep up their visits. But for her healthy, full-blooded, well-developed, beautiful animal there was no world but this. Such people are enough to make one doubt whether immortality be a gift so generally distributed as we sometimes think. On this evening the radiant Nancy sat smiling among the solemn and even tearful people about her. Her shallow nature had no thought now for anything but her appearance and its probable effect on Mark.
Little did Nancy imagine what a goblin her face was to the young man. In his present state of mind she was the ghost of his former sins and weakness. The very attraction he found in her face startled him. So at last when he went forward to be prayed for, it was not altogether repentance, nor altogether a fear of perdition, even, but partly a desire to get out of the company in which he found himself. Mark was hardly a free agent. He was a man of impulsive temperament. His glossy, black, curly hair and well-rounded, mobile face expressed this. In this matter he floated in on the tide, just as he would have floated out on an evil tide had the current set in the other direction.
That night Twonnet went home with Roxy. For how can girls be friends without sleeping together ? Is it that a girl's imagination is most impressed by secrets told in the dark? I am not a girl ; the secret of this appetency for nocturnal friendship is beyond me, but I know that when two girls become friends their favorite trusting place is sure to be the land of Nod. So Twonnet, having attended the Methodist meeting, went home with Roxy. And they discussed the " start " which Mark had made.
"I don't just like it," said the Swiss girl. " You see Mark is grieved by his mother's death ; he is sorry in a general sort of a way that he didn't do as she wanted him to. But is he sorry for any particular sins 'I Now, when a body repents I don't believe in their saying, ' I'm sorry I'm a sinner.' When I can say, ' I am sorry that I get mad so quick and that I trouble other people,' then I repent. Now, if Mark could say, " I'm sorry I was drunk on such a night, and that I gambled at such a time/ it would all be well enough."
" How do you know he can't ? " asked Roxy, somewhat warmly. For Mark was a friend of hers, and now that his conversion was partly the result of her endeavor, she felt a sort of proprietary interest in his Christian life.
" I tell you what, Twonnet," she added with enthusiasm, " it's a grand thing to see a young man who has the glittering prizes of this world in his reach, bring all his splendid gifts and lay them as a sacrifice on the altar of the Lord, as Mark did tonight."
" You give Mark more credit than he deserves," per sisted the uncharitable Twonnet, with a toss of her curls. " He didn't do anything very deliberately tonight. He felt bad at his mother's death and sorry that he had treated her badly. Wait till he actually gives up some thing before you praise him."