Where all were serious the melancholy of an individual was not conspicuous; and Mr Fletcher’s sadness would probably have passed unnoticed, but for the reserve of his manners, which piqued the pride of his equals, and provoked the curiosity of his inferiors.
The first probably thought that the apostolic principle of community of goods at least extended to opinions and feelings; and the second always fancy when a man shuts the door of his lips that there must be some secret worth knowing within.
Like many other men of an ardent temperament and disinterested love of his species, Mr Fletcher was disappointed at the slow operation of principles, which, however efficient and excellent in the abstract, were to be applied to various and discordant subjects. Such men, inexperienced in the business of life, are like children, who, setting out on a journey, are impatient after the few first paces to be at the end of it. They cannot endure the rebuffs and delays that retard them in their course. These are the men of genius – the men of feeling – the men that the world calls visionaries; and it is because they are visionaries – because they have a beau-ideal in their own minds, to which they can see but a faint resemblance in the actual state of things, that they become impatient of detail, and cannot brook the slow progress to perfection. They are too rapid in their anticipations. The character of man, and the institutions of society, are yet very far from their possible and destined perfection. Still, how far is the present age in advance of that which drove reformers to a dreary wilderness! – of that which hanged Quakers! – of that which condemned to death, as witches, innocent, unoffending old women! But it is unnecessary to heighten the glory or our risen day by comparing it with the preceding twilight.
To return to Mr Fletcher. He was mortified at seeing power, which had been earned at so dear a rate, and which he had fondly hoped was to be applied to the advancement of man’s happiness, sometimes perverted to purposes of oppression and personal aggrandizement. He was shocked when a religious republic, which he fancied to be founded on the basis of established truth, was disturbed by the outbreak of heresies; and his heart sickened when he saw those, who had sacrificed whatever man holds dearest to religious freedom, imposing those shackles on others from which they had just released themselves at such a price. Partly influenced by these disgusts, and partly by that love of contemplation and retirement that belongs to a character of his cast, especially when depressed by some early disappointment, he refused the offices of honour and trust that were, from time to time, offered to him; and finally, in 1636, when Pynchon, Holioke, and Chapin formed their settlement at Springfield, on Connecticut river, he determined to retire from the growing community of Boston to this frontier settlement.
Mrs Fletcher received his decision as all wives of that age of undisputed masculine supremacy (or most of those of our less passive age) would do, with meek submission. The inconveniencies and dangers of that outpost were not unknown to her, nor did she underrate them; but Abraham would as soon have remonstrated against the command that bade him go forth from his father’s house into the land of the Chaldees, as she would have failed in passive obedience to the resolve of her husband.
The removal was effected early in the summer of 1636. Springfield assumed, at once, under the auspices of its wealthy and enterprising proprietors, the aspect of a village. The first settlers followed the course of the Indians, and planted themselves on the borders of rivers – the natural gardens of the earth, where the soil is mellowed and enriched by the annual overflowing of the streams, and prepared by the unassisted processes of nature to yield to the indolent Indian his scanty supply of maize and other esculents. The wigwams which constituted the village, or, to use the graphic aboriginal designation, the ‘smoke’ of the natives gave place to the clumsy, but more convenient dwellings of the pilgrims.
Where there are now contiguous rows of shops, filled with the merchandise of the east, the manufactures of Europe, the rival fabrics of our own country, and the fruits of the tropics; where now stands the stately hall of justice – the academy – the bank – churches, orthodox and heretic, and all the symbols of a rich and populous community – were, at the early period of our history, a few log houses, planted around a fort, defended by a slight embankment and palisade.
The mansions of the proprietors were rather more spacious and artificial than those of their more humble associates, and were built on the well known model of the modest dwelling illustrated by the birth of Milton – a form still abounding in the eastern parts of Massachusetts, and presenting to the eye of a New Englander the familiar aspect of an awkward friendly country cousin.
The first clearing was limited to the plain. The beautiful hill that is now the residence of the gentry (for there yet lives such a class in the heart of our democratic community) and is embellished with stately edifices and expensive pleasure grounds, was then the border of a dense forest, and so richly fringed with the original growth of trees, that scarce a sunbeam had penetrated to the parent earth.
Mr Fletcher was at first welcomed as an important acquisition to the infant establishment; but he soon proved that he purposed to take no part in its concerns, and, in spite of the remonstrances of the proprietors, he fixed his residence a mile from the village, deeming exposure to the incursions of the savages very slight, and the surveillance of an inquiring neighbourhood a certain evil. His domain extended from a gentle eminence, that commanded an extensive view of the bountiful Connecticut to the shore, where the river indented the meadow by one of those sweeping graceful curves by which it seems to delight to beautify the land it nourishes.
The border of the river was fringed with all the water loving trees; but the broad meadows were quite cleared, excepting that a few elms and sycamores had been spared by the Indians, and consecrated, by tradition, as the scene of revels or councils. The house of our pilgrim was a low-roofed modest structure, containing ample accommodation for a patriarchal family; where children, dependants, and servants were all to be sheltered under one roof-tree. On one side, as we have described, lay an open and extensive plain; within view was the curling smoke from the little cluster of houses about the fort – the habitation of civilized man; but all else was a savage howling wilderness.
Never was a name more befitting the condition of a people, than ‘Pilgrim’ that of our forefathers. It should be redeemed from the puritanical and ludicrous associations which have degraded it, in most men’s minds, and be hallowed by the sacrifices made by these voluntary exiles. They were pilgrims, for they had resigned, for ever, what the good hold most dear – their homes. Home can never be transferred; never repeated in the experience of an individual. The place consecrated by parental love, by the innocence and sports of childhood, by the first acquaintance with nature; by the linking of the heart to the visible creation, is the only home. There there is a living and breathing spirit infused into nature: every familiar object has a history – the trees have tongues, and the very air is vocal. There the vesture of decay doth not close in and control the noble functions of the soul. It sees and hears and enjoys without the ministry of gross material substance.
Mr Fletcher had resided a few months in Springfield when he one day entered with an open letter in his hand, that apartment of his humble dwelling styled, by courtesy, the parlour. His wife was sitting there with her eldest son, a stripling of fourteen, busily assisting him in twisting a cord for his crossbow. She perceived that her husband looked disturbed; but he said nothing, and her habitual deference prevented her inquiring into the cause of his discomposure.
After taking two or three turns about the room, he said to his son, “Everell, my boy – go to the door, and await there the arrival of an Indian girl; she is, as you may see, yonder by the riverside, and will be here shortly. I would not that Jennet should, at the very first, shock the child with her discourteous ways.”
“Child! coming here!” exclaimed the boy, dropping his bow and gazing through the window – “Who is she? – that tall girl, father – she is no more a child than I am!”
His mother smiled at an exclamation that betrayed a common juvenile jealousy of the honour of dawning manhood, and bade the boy obey his father’s directions. When Everell had left the apartment, Mr Fletcher said, “I have just received letters from Boston –