CHAPTER XIX

RURAL SAINTS AND PROPHETS
" Die when I may, I always want it said of me by those who know me best, that I always plucked a thistle, and planted a flower where I thought a flower would grow." -ABRAHAM L.NCOLN.
N New England fifty years ago one condition of rural life was universal ; and to- day it exists to a consider- able extent. This was the personal reserve and repres- sion of feeling of social and domestic life. Not only did this reserve exist between acquaintances and friends
(where it had a vast and on the whole a good in- fluence), but it permitted no public and scarcely any private expression of affection or warm interest between lovers, were they married or affianced. Man and wife, whose affection was never doubted in a community where all bore the same reserve, moved throughout life in different though precisely similar circles of revolution — as do double stars. They were never, even when shaken by sorrow or startled by the unexpected, brought into abso-
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lute union or moved into any open familiarity or tenderness. Their daily speech had a certain re- moteness ; they referred to each other vaguely, even when talking among kinsfolk ; the wife called her husband " he," or " your father," or " Mr. Stone." Sad it was when a great sorrow like the death of a child found the twain still wearing a mask of reserve which had been fastened on their foreheads by cen- turies of Puritanism. It seems somewhat anomalous that this should have been the result of Puritanism, since to the early Puritans we certainly owe the first true establishment of the English home and home life. All the sources of history, the letters and journals of that day, prove this true ; and those first Puritans displayed a tenderness which had wholly vanished — or rather the display of it had vanished — two centuries later. Read the exquisite love-letters of John Winthrop to his wife — his ex- pressions to others about her. Read of his passion of tears at a public reception when attempting to speak of leaving his home and family to cross the seas. John Eliot, Roger Williams, and the Mathers were as tender as true. In Roger Williams's letters are some exquisite passages of prose like purest poetry telling of his affection for his friends.
Betrothed folk in later New England concealed their betrothal as long as possible ; and they were never betrayed in public into any of the affectionate expressions which might be expected — and forgiven them. Nor was applauded the exchange of frequent gifts between lovers save in a few lines of offer- ing, such as delicate food, fruit, nuts, raisins, etc., in
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the days when these took the place of sweetmeats. Flowers have ever been a true lover's gift; and any lover could show his affection for his sweetheart very properly by assisting her in the care of her flowers, as well as in gifts of flowers. I know one case where the working together in her garden was the only expression of mutual interest indulged in for twenty years by this twain who, nevertheless, loved each other long and deeply.
He was the son of the Presbyterian minister of the town. She was the child of the minister's best friend in his youth. This friend was a dazed, be- wildered soul, of some great mental gifts and others of equal weakness, such as the extreme religious atmosphere of New England often evolved. After a childhood and early manhood torn with alterna- tions between deep despair and intense religious ex- altation, he finally settled into open infidelity. He had studied, too, to be a minister, and had broken down his health and his hope and his trust by that fierce struggle for an education of one who " works his way' through a New England college. He had had an interval of renewed hope and confi- dence in God, in which interval he married ; but the death of his wife at the birth of Mercy once more unsettled his faith, and left him the prey of every fanatic influence in book or human form which reached the little village which was his home. His crowning offence was that he was moved often to attempt to argue and confute the faith of others. Parson Holmes treated this vagary with silent con- tempt ; but the infidel always could catch a deacon
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with his bait ; and generally the deacon was sadly worsted, for he was not as well fortified for the controversy as the " impious Bible student." The parson would have been a stouter adversary, but he
Sun-dial at Wroxton Abbey.
scorned to fight, and in that was wise. There had been another and a worse thing which darkened this man's life, — he had once attempted suicide. It mattered little in the judgment of the villagers that
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he had been very ill with a raging fever, and when he ran from his bed and jumped from the open win- dow that it might have been in an access of delirium. He seemed sane enough when they picked him up after his terrible fall, and sorry only at being unsuc- cessful. This was a finishing climax and a cause for unending odium in a community that still had a law authorizing the burial of a successful suicide at the cross-roads, with a stake driven in his heart.
We can scarcely enter into the profound abhor- rence of the minister and his wife, even at the thought that the son whose life they had conse- crated to God could in his maturity wish to give that life to the daughter of an unbeliever, and an aggressive, loud-voiced unbeliever, too, such a one as a century earlier would have been stood on Sab- bath days upon a block or in a cage, and labelled large that all might read and abhor, "A WANTON GOSPELLER," or perhaps even whipped with many stripes. Their only reason for gratitude was that he had never spoken to the girl of love — but she knew. He had walked home with her from sing- ing-school ; and they had gone Maying together, driven out to gather the sweet Trailing Arbutus, and that was an open act of keeping company, an hereditary transmission from the old world of May- day customs. His father and mother spoke to him but once, and then besought him not to proceed further in his love-making; and though he made no promise, nor did he cease to walk home with her from singing-school and prayer-meeting, still they knew he spoke no direct word of love to her.
4i 6 Sun-dials and Roses of Yesterday
Dragon Gnomon.
Even after the death of both minister and infidel, the widow of Dr. Holmes, simply through her horror of an infidel and a suicide, could keep her son silent as to his love for the daughter of such a one, though he loved the girl far too well ever to heed thought of another sweetheart during all those
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years. The twain had had one long and untram- melled talk after ten years of silence ; it could scarce be called a lovers' scene, though he told her that he loved her and would never marry another. The reserved girl in an agony of plain speech which seemed to her fairly immodest, implored with him for her happiness ; she told of her infinite patience,

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and she quoted the Scriptures in her favor, and she pleaded that she was and ever had been a consistent Christian, a faithful church-member, and should not be sacrificed for the wrong thinking of another; but still his answer came that he " hated to cross " his mother.
During all those weary years there was one solace for the girl and her lover --her pretty strip of a garden. He worked frequently in it with her, and with no adverse comment of friend or neighbor ; even his mother made no opposition. He eagerly secured for her rare seeds and slips wherever he could obtain them, lavishing in this impersonal fashion the affection he should have bestowed di- rectly upon her. And he watched with her their growth and unfolding, lingering over and cherish- ing a special plant with something of the tender care and thought which should have been bestowed on a child. There was one delicate Rose tree, which he had acquired with much difficulty, and which had needed most constant care. Every known and un- known insect seemed to assail it, and every blemish and blight. John Holmes had spent many an hour bathing with care each delicate leaf and stem with tobacco water, or intently searching for injuring in- sects. The green fly did not deter him, nor white scale, nor even the "loathly worm," the slug, — these he attacked bare-handed. But this Rose-bush seemed fated to disaster; when a great limb was blown from the elm tree it was borne by the wind and hurled on the Rose-bush. When the strong acid for a solution to assail the Rose-beetle came
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with misprinted directions, — the word gram instead of grain, — it was this tender Rose-bush which re- ceived the withering liquid in its cruel strength. Sometimes they despaired of rearing it, and with sensible reasoning tried to persuade themselves into digging it up and destroying it. But as with a delicate child or pet of any kind, they really loved
Chinese Pedestal for Dial, Floral Park, Long Island.
it the more for the very labor they spent on it — and they loved it, too, though they had never seen it in bloom. Mercy said a little impatiently that she " never expected to see that Rose-bush blossom." One year, by the extraordinary advice of a Rose- growing and avowedly Rose-wise friend, they picked off the buds to try to strengthen the sickly bush ; then came a curious blight ever unexplained ; then a
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frost — and in June, too — a frost hoary enough to nip again the promise of bloom. But this year the Rose-bush bore in triumph a beautiful crown of a score of pressing, rounded buds, a glorious promise of fullest beauty ; but it was part of the fate of the Rose-bush and of Mercy, that on the day when this rich coronal burst into its fulfilment of glowing ruby bloom — patient Mercy died.
After the death of this gentle girl a singular change came over her lover ; he certainly was not insane, but the delicate adjustment of the brain was somehow awry. His friends declared that a slow fever which he had for some weeks had " turned his head." He gave up any careful attention to his farm, raising only enough crops for food ; and from the time when the first green leaf opened in the spring until winter snows covered the ground, he seemed to be filled with two ideas,- -to help the sick and weakly, and to scatter Roses far and wide. Not the flower ! No one ever saw him gather or carry a Rose. Nor did he linger to gaze upon Roses in the gardens of others. His thought was turned toward Rose planting. This certainly should not be deemed an evidence of insanity, when it was the only important evidence there was. It was not the deed, however, but the manner of its doing that made him adjudged a little mad. He would thrust a Rose cutting without words into the hand of some woman as she worked in her little garden, or he would press upon a stranger a dozen Rose hips to be planted. He cared not to know of the growth of these Rose seeds ; he simply was filled with a
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desire to give Rose-bushes to those who wished and, for that matter, to those who did not wish them. But when he gave Roses he also gave many a day's hard work in field or garden to help the widowed
or afflicted. Instead of bitterness and resent- ment over his grief, a great love of humanity filled his soul.
In an humble way this man lived up to the fine words of Abraham Lincoln : —
" Die when I may, I want it said of me by those who know me best, that I always plucked a thistle, and planted a flower where I thought a flower would grow."
It was not given to John Holmes to pluck such a great Thistle as slavery, nor to plant the flower of liberty throughout the land; he literally gave simple garden Roses, roots and seeds and cuttings, wherever he thought a Rose might be loved or should grow.
There was no doubt, so said the neighbors who knew him from childhood, that this curious "wheel in his brain " came in some way through uncon-
Sun-dial at Saffron Walden, Essex.
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Sun-dial at Princeton, New Jersey.
scious or insane imitation of a harmless character whom he had often seen in his early life, one " Dr. Jones," who, for many years previous to his death in 1796, wandered through a circle of towns in southern New Hampshire, devoting himself to the spread of choice Apple trees. This man was said to have the first grafted orchard in Hollis, New Hamp- shire ; and while he sold medicinal herbs and herb medicines, he freely gave away Apple scions for graft- ing. He carried two baskets, one labelled Charity, the other Pity. Dressed in a long plaid banyan, or
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dressing gown, and a broad-brimmed hat with a flaring mourning weed, Dr. Jones made a queer fig- ure that would be likely to influence the mind of a
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wondering boy, and later that of a brain-sick man. Holmes had often heard of the love story of Dr. Jones in rhyme, for it was sung by young people in Hollis. The doctor sold his ballad with his "Liberty Tea" and his bunches of herbs and sim- ples. The story was akin to John's own. Dr. Jones had been educated as a preacher and was about to "settle," when he fell in love with a girl to whom his family bitterly objected —
" Because she came of a poor family."
Her father became angry at this scorning of his daughter, and angrily forbade young Jones to visit her.
She promptly pined away and died, while he — so ran his ballad —
" Dressed in black from top to toe And after that distracted run And so forever was undone."
He endeared himself to every one in these New Hampshire communities through his gifts of Apple trees and his kindly succor to the sick. His epitaph, in the Hollis churchyard reads: —
"In youth he was a scholar bright In learning he took a great delight He .was a Major's only son - It was for Love he was undone."
A similar prophet roamed through what was then the " far West." This singular person was called
Sun-dial and Roses at Van Cortlandt Manor.
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Appleseed Johnny, and he was well known through- out Pennsylvania, New York, Ohio, and Indiana for nearly fifty years. During these years he ob- tained from the Pennsylvania cider-mills enormous quantities of Apple seeds, and made it his life work to start Apple trees in all pioneer communities. At first he bore these Apple seeds in bags on his back, then he had a small horse with leather panniers. Starting out on the Indian trails he planted seeds in the most picturesque spots in the new country ; and as pioneers came to settle he had on hand every- where plantations of young trees to sell to any who cared to buy, or to give away freely. He abhorred grafting, just as he thought it a sin to kill any living creature, even an insect. He mourned deeply kill- ing a rattlesnake that sprang at him ; and as he ever went barefoot, it is a wonder he was not often bitten. In his earlier life he wore any cast-off clothing given him, but in later years he had a strange garb, — simply a coffee sack with holes cut for his arms, which were usually bare ; and his hat was of paste- board,— a box. With flowing hair and beard he seemed a prophet. He had a Brahminical horror of eating any but vegetable food, nor would he eat that till he was sure no hungry person could be found who needed it. A Swedenborgian in belief, he expounded his faith and taught goodness and the Spirit of the Lord in every household ; and uncouth as was his dress, he was welcome and even beloved. The Indiana farmer owes to him one ill-turn. He became convinced of the usefulness of Dog-fennel as a cure for malaria, and for years he gathered and
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sowed the seed in vast quantities by every roadside. It is now in these localities a pestiferous weed, under special state legislation for its eradication. He died when seventy-two years old in a farm-house where he stopped to spend the night, and he was sincerely mourned in all farm communities throughout the state. He practically stocked Ohio and Indiana with Apple trees, and was an important factor in the comfortable settlement of both states.
Such characters as these were not unusual in New England ; often their " queerness " came from reli- gious excitement. There was the Leatherman, " clad all in Leather," and the " Man with the Scythe." These were perhaps a natural result of the first notions of change in religious feeling in those who had been reared in Puritan rigidity. Nor were these odd creatures as alarming to their neighbors as might be imagined. People were wonted to queer- ness ; they saw and heard such preachers as Lorenzo Dow, the personification of eccentricity. Uncouth in gait and bearing, ill-favored of countenance, deeply pitted with the small-pox, wearing a long ragged beard, " when," says Peter Parley, " nobody among us but old Jagger the beggar had such an appendage," harsh of voice and grotesque in speech, it is a wonder he could have been tolerated ; and he was respected and admired. He tells in his autobiography of his strange great-coat which he wished to be buried in, and the two hats which he wore at the same time. His wife Lucy also wore two calashes. He married Peggy Miller after a courtship of barbaric simplicity, he having in his first words to her " made a motion
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of marriage." After her death he wrote, "My loss was too sensible in contemplating my feelings. Hence my judgment dictated a departure from usual custom, and to change my condition again on the journey of life." He acted upon his judgment with great celerity. When preaching in Norwich he alluded to his wife's virtues and his loss and closed by calling out, " Is there any one in this congre- gation willing to take the place of my departed Peggy ? ' Up rose Lucy Dolbeare, a gigantic woman six feet tall and as broad as she was long, and called out, " I will " — and she did.