Home as Found - James Fenimore Cooper (moboreader TXT) 📗

claims of mere animal force, and unfavourable to those of the higher qualities.

This period may be termed, perhaps, the happiest of the first century of a settlement. The great cares of life are so engrossing and serious, that small vexations are overlooked, and the petty grievances that would make us seriously uncomfortable in a more regular state of society, are taken as matters of course, or laughed at as the regular and expected incidents of the day. Good-will abounds; neighbour comes cheerfully to the aid of neighbour; and life has much of the reckless gaiety, careless association, and buoyant merriment of childhood. It is found that they who have passed through this probation, usually look back to it with regret, and are fond of dwelling on the rude scenes and ridiculous events that distinguish the history of a new settlement, as the hunter is known to pine for the forest.

To this period of fun, toil, neighbourly feeling and adventure, succeeds another, in which society begins to marshal itself, and the ordinary passions have sway. Now it is, that we see the struggles for place, the heart-burnings and jealousies of contending families, and the influence of mere money. Circumstances have probably established the local superiority of a few beyond all question, and the conditioese serves as a goal for the rest to aim at. The learned professions, the ministry included, or what, by courtesy, are so called, take precedence, as a matter of course, next to wealth, however, when wealth is at all supported by appearances. Then commence those gradations of social station, that set institutions at defiance, and which as necessarily follow civilization, as tastes and habits are a consequence of indulgence.

This is, perhaps, the least inviting condition of society that belongs to any country that can claim to be free and removed from barbarism. The tastes are too uncultivated to exercise any essential influence; and when they do exist, it is usually with the pretension and effort that so commonly accompany infant knowledge. The struggle is only so much the more severe, in consequence of the late pèle mèle , while men lay claim to a consideration that would seem beyond their reach, in an older and more regulated community. It is during this period that manners suffer the most, since they want the nature and feeling of the first condition, while they are exposed to the rudest assaults of the coarse-minded and vulgar; for, as men usually defer to a superiority that is long established, there being a charm about antiquity that is sometimes able to repress the passions, in older communities the marshalling of time quietly regulates what is here the subject of strife.

What has just been said, depends on a general and natural principle, perhaps; but the state of society we are describing has some features peculiar to itself. The civilization of America, even in its older districts, which supply the emigrants to the newer regions, is unequal; one state possessing a higher level than another. Coming as it does, from different parts of this vast country, the population of a new settlement, while it is singularly homogenous for the circumstances, necessarily brings with it its local peculiarities. If to these elements be added a sprinkling of Europeans of various nations and conditions, the effects of the commingling, and the temporary social struggles that follow, will occasion no surprise.

The third and last condition of society in a "new country," is that in which the influence of the particular causes enumerated ceases, and men and things come within the control of more general and regular laws. The effect, of course, is to leave the community possession of a civilization that conforms to that of the whole region, be it higher or be it lower, and with the division into castes that are more or less rigidly maintained, according to circumstances.

The periods, as the astronomers call the time taken in a celestial revolution, of the two first of these epochs in the history of a settlement, depend very much on its advancement in wealth and in numbers. In some places, the pastoral age, or that of good fellowship, continues for a whole life, to the obvious retrogression of the people, in most of the higher qualities, but to their manifest advantage, however, in the pleasures of the time being; while, in others, it passes away rapidly, like the buoyant animal joys, that live their time, between fourteen and twenty.

The second period is usually of longer duration, the migratory habits of the American people keeping society more unsettled than might otherwise prove to be the case. It may be said never to cease entirely until the great majority of the living generation are natives of the region, knowing no other means of comparison than those under which they have passed their days. Even when this is the case, there is commonly so large an infusion of the birds of passage, men who are adventurers in quest of advancement, and who live without the charities of a neighbourhood, as they may be said almost to live without a home, that there is to be found, for a long time, a middle state of society, during which it may well be questioned whether a community belongs to the second or to the third of the periods named.

Templeton was properly in this equivocal condition, for while the third generation of the old settlers were in active life, so many passers-by came and went, that the influence of the latter nearly neutralized that of time and the natural order of things. Its population was pretty equally divided between the descendants of the earlier inhabitants, and those who flitted like swallows and other migratory birds. All of those who had originally entered the region in the pride of manhood, and had been active in converting the wilderness into the abodes of civilized men, if they had not been literally gathered to their fathers, in a physical sense had been laid, the first of their several races, beneath those sods that were to cover the heads of so many of their descendants. A few still remained among those who entered the wilderness in young manhood, but the events of the first period we have designated, and which we have imperfectly recorded in another work, were already passing into tradition. Among these original settlers some portion of the feeling that had distinguished their earliest communion with their neighbours yet continued, and one of their greatest delights was to talk of the hardships and privations of their younger days, as the veteran loves to discourse of his marches, battles, scars, and sieges. It would be too much to say that these persons viewed the more ephemeral part of the population with distrust, for their familiarity with changes accustomed them to new faces; but they had a secret inclination for each other, preferred those who could enter the most sincerely into their own feelings, and naturally loved that communion best, where they found the most sympathy. To this fragment of the community belonged nearly all there was to be found of that sort of sentiment which is connected with locality; adventure, with them, supplying the place of time; while the natives of the spot, wanting in the recollections that had so many charms for their fathers, were not yet brought sufficiently within the influence of traditionary interest, to feel that hallowed sentiment in its proper force. As opposed in feeling to these relics of the olden time, were the birds of passage so often named, a numerous and restless class, that, of themselves, are almost sufficient to destroy whatever there is of poetry, or of local attachment, in any region where they resort.

In Templeton and its adjacent district, however, the two hostile influences might be said to be nearly equal, the descendants of the fathers of the country beginning to make a manly stand against the looser sentiment, or the want of sentiment, that so singularly distinguishes the migratory bands. The first did begin to consider the temple in which their fathers had worshipped more hallowed than strange altars; the sods that covered their fathers' heads more sacred than the clods that were upturned by the plough; and the places of their childhood and childish sports dearer than the highway trodden by a nameless multitude.

Such, then, were the elements of the society into which we have now ushered the reader, and with which it will be our duty to make him better acquainted, as we proceed in the regular narration of the incidents of our tale.

The return of the Effinghams, after so long an absence, naturally produced a sensation in so small a place, and visiters began to appear in the Wigwam as soon as propriety would allow. Many false rumours prevailed, quite as a matter of course; and Eve, it was reported, was on the point of being married to no less than three of the inmates of her father's house, within the first ten days, viz: Sir George Templemore, Mr. Powis, and Mr. Bragg; the latter story taking its rise in some precocious hopes that had escaped the gentleman himself, in the "excitement" of helping to empty a bottle of bad Breton wine, that was dignified with the name of champagne. But these tales revived and died so often, in a state of society in which matrimony is so general a topic with the young of the gentler sex, that they brought with them their own refutation.

The third day, in particular, after the arrival of our party, was a reception day at the Wigwam; the gentlemen and ladies making it a point to be at home and disengaged, after twelve o'clock, in order to do honour to their guests. One of the first who made his appearance was a Mr. Howel, a bachelor of about the same age as Mr. Effingham, and a man of easy fortune and quiet habits. Nature had done more towards making Mr. Howel a gentleman, than either cultivation or association; for he had passed his entire life, with very immaterial exceptions, in the valley of Templeton, where, without being what could be called a student, or a scholar, he had dreamed away his existence in an indolent communication with the current literature of the day. He was fond of reading, and being indisposed to contention, or activity of any sort, his mind had admitted the impressions of what he perused, as the stone receives a new form by the constant fall of drops of water. Unfortunately for Mr. Howel, he understood no language but his mother tongue; and, as all his reading was necessarily confined to English books, he had gradually, and unknown to himself, in his moral nature at least, got to be a mere reflection of those opinions, prejudices, and principles, if such a word can properly be used for such a state of the mind, that it had suited the interests or passions of England to promulgate by means of the press. A perfect bonne foi prevailed in all his notions; and though a very modest man by nature, so very certain was he that his authority was always right, that he was a little apt to be dogmatical on such points as he thought his authors appeared to think settled. Between John Effingham and Mr. Howel, there were constant amicable skirmishes in the way of discussion; for, while the latter was so dependent, limited in knowledge by unavoidable circumstances, and disposed to an innocent credulity, the first was original in his views, accustomed to see and think for himself, and, moreover, a little apt to estimate his own advantages at their full value.

"Here comes our good neighbour, and my old school-fellow, Tom Howel." said Mr. Effingham, looking out at a window, and perceiving the person mentioned crossing the