My Summer With Dr. Singletary
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John Greenleaf Whittier >> My Summer With Dr. Singletary
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TALES AND SKETCHES
MY SUMMER WITH DR. SINGLETARY.
A FRAGMENT.
CHAPTER I.
DR. SINGLETARY is dead!
Well, what of it? All who live die sooner or later; and pray who was
Dr. Singletary, that his case should claim particular attention?
Why, in the first place, Dr. Singletary, as a man born to our common
inheritance of joy and sorrow, earthly instincts and heavenward
aspirations,--our brother in sin and suffering, wisdom and folly, love,
and pride, and vanity,--has a claim upon the universal sympathy.
Besides, whatever the living man may have been, death has now invested
him with its great solemnity. He is with the immortals. For him the
dark curtain has been lifted. The weaknesses, the follies, and the
repulsive mental and personal idiosyncrasies which may have kept him
without the sphere of our respect and sympathy have now fallen off, and
he stands radiant with the transfiguration of eternity, God's child, our
recognized and acknowledged brother.
Dr. Singletary is dead. He was an old man, and seldom, of latter years,
ventured beyond the precincts of his neighborhood. He was a single man,
and his departure has broken no circle of family affection. He was
little known to the public, and is now little missed. The village
newspaper simply appended to its announcement of his decease the
customary post mortem compliment, "Greatly respected by all who knew
him;" and in the annual catalogue of his alma mater an asterisk has been
added to his name, over which perchance some gray-haired survivor of his
class may breathe a sigh, as he calls up, the image of the fresh-faced,
bright-eyed boy, who, aspiring, hopeful, vigorous, started with him on
the journey of life,--a sigh rather for himself than for its unconscious
awakener.
But, a few years have passed since he left us; yet already wellnigh all
the outward manifestations, landmarks, and memorials of the living man
have passed away or been removed. His house, with its broad, mossy roof
sloping down on one side almost to the rose-bushes and lilacs, and with
its comfortable little porch in front, where he used to sit of a
pleasant summer afternoon, has passed into new hands, and has been sadly
disfigured by a glaring coat of white paint; and in the place of the
good Doctor's name, hardly legible on the corner-board, may now be seen,
in staring letters of black and gold, "VALENTINE ORSON STUBBS, M. D.,
Indian doctor and dealer in roots and herbs." The good Doctor's old
horse, as well known as its owner to every man, woman, and child in the
village, has fallen into the new comer's hands, who (being prepared to
make the most of him, from the fact that he commenced the practice of
the healing art in the stable, rising from thence to the parlor) has
rubbed him into comparative sleekness, cleaned his mane and tail of the
accumulated burrs of many autumns, and made quite a gay nag of him. The
wagon, too, in which at least two generations of boys and girls have
ridden in noisy hilarity whenever they encountered it on their way to
school, has been so smartly painted and varnished, that if its former
owner could look down from the hill-slope where he lies, he would
scarcely know his once familiar vehicle as it whirls glittering along
the main road to the village. For the rest, all things go on as usual;
the miller grinds, the blacksmith strikes and blows, the cobbler and
tailor stitch and mend, old men sit in the autumn sun, old gossips stir
tea and scandal, revival meetings alternate with apple-bees and
bushings,--toil, pleasure, family jars, petty neighborhood quarrels,
courtship, and marriage,--all which make up the daily life of a country
village continue as before. The little chasm which his death has made
in the hearts of the people where he lived and labored seems nearly
closed up. There is only one more grave in the burying-ground,--that is
all.
Let nobody infer from what I have said that the good man died
unlamented; for, indeed, it was a sad day with his neighbors when the
news, long expected, ran at last from house to house and from workshop
to workshop, "Dr. Singletary is dead!"
He had not any enemy left among them; in one way or another he had been
the friend and benefactor of all. Some owed to his skill their recovery
from sickness; others remembered how he had watched with anxious
solicitude by the bedside of their dying relatives, soothing them, when
all human aid was vain, with the sweet consolations of that Christian
hope which alone pierces the great shadow of the grave and shows the
safe stepping-stones above the dark waters. The old missed a cheerful
companion and friend, who had taught them much without wounding their
pride by an offensive display of his superiority, and who, while making
a jest of his own trials and infirmities, could still listen with real
sympathy to the querulous and importunate complaints of others. For one
day, at least, even the sunny faces of childhood were marked with
unwonted thoughtfulness; the shadow of the common bereavement fell over
the play-ground and nursery. The little girl remembered, with tears,
how her broken-limbed doll had taxed the surgical ingenuity of her
genial old friend; and the boy showed sorrowfully to his playmates the
top which the good Doctor had given him. If there were few, among the
many who stood beside his grave, capable of rightly measuring and
appreciating the high intellectual and spiritual nature which formed the
background of his simple social life, all could feel that no common loss
had been sustained, and that the kindly and generous spirit which had
passed away from them had not lived to himself alone.
As you follow the windings of one of the loveliest rivers of New
England, a few miles above the sea-mart, at its mouth, you can see on a
hill, whose grassy slope is checkered with the graceful foliage of the
locust, and whose top stands relieved against a still higher elevation,
dark with oaks and walnuts, the white stones of the burying-place. It
is a quiet spot, but without gloom, as befits "God's Acre." Below is
the village, with its sloops and fishing-boats at the wharves, and its
crescent of white houses mirrored in the water. Eastward is the misty
line of the great sea. Blue peaks of distant mountains roughen the
horizon of the north. Westward, the broad, clear river winds away into
a maze of jutting bluffs and picturesque wooded headlands. The tall,
white stone on the westerly slope of the hill bears the name of
"Nicholas Singletary, M. D.," and marks the spot which he selected many
years before his death. When I visited it last spring, the air about it
was fragrant with the bloom of sweet-brier and blackberry and the
balsamic aroma of the sweet-fern; birds were singing in the birch-trees
by the wall; and two little, brown-locked, merry-faced girls were making
wreaths of the dandelions and grasses which grew upon the old man's
grave. The sun was setting behind the western river-bluffs, flooding
the valley with soft light, glorifying every object and fusing all into
harmony and beauty. I saw and felt nothing to depress or sadden me. I
could have joined in the laugh of the children. The light whistle of a
young teamster, driving merrily homeward, did not jar upon my ear; for
from the transfigured landscape, and from the singing birds, and from
sportive childhood, and from blossoming sweetbrier, and from the grassy
mound before me, I heard the whisper of one word only, and that word
was PEACE.
CHAPTER. II.
SOME ACCOUNT OF PEEWAWKIN ON THE TOCKETUCK.
WELL and truly said the wise man of old, "Much study is a weariness to
the flesh." Hard and close application through the winter had left me
ill prepared to resist the baleful influences of a New England spring.
I shrank alike from the storms of March, the capricious changes of
April, and the sudden alternations of May, from the blandest of
southwest breezes to the terrible and icy eastern blasts which sweep our
seaboard like the fabled sanser, or wind of death. The buoyancy and
vigor, the freshness and beauty of life seemed leaving me. The flesh
and the spirit were no longer harmonious. I was tormented by a
nightmare feeling of the necessity of exertion, coupled with a sense of
utter inability. A thousand plans for my own benefit, or the welfare of
those dear to me, or of my fellow-men at large, passed before me; but I
had no strength to lay hold of the good angels and detain them until
they left their blessing. The trumpet sounded in my ears for the
tournament of life; but I could not bear the weight of my armor. In the
midst of duties and responsibilities which I clearly comprehended, I
found myself yielding to the absorbing egotism of sickness. I could
work only when the sharp rowels of necessity were in my sides.
It needed not the ominous warnings of my acquaintance to convince me
that some decisive change was necessary. But what was to be done? A
voyage to Europe was suggested by my friends; but unhappily I reckoned
among them no one who was ready, like the honest laird of Dumbiedikes,
to inquire, purse in hand, "Will siller do it?" In casting about for
some other expedient, I remembered the pleasant old-fashioned village of
Peewawkin, on the Tocketuck River. A few weeks of leisure, country air,
and exercise, I thought might be of essential service to me. So I
turned my key upon my cares and studies, and my back to the city, and
one fine evening of early June the mail coach rumbled over Tocketuck
Bridge, and left me at the house of Dr. Singletary, where I had been
fortunate enough to secure bed and board.
The little village of Peewawkin at this period was a well-preserved
specimen of the old, quiet, cozy hamlets of New England. No huge
factory threw its evil shadow over it; no smoking demon of an engine
dragged its long train through the streets; no steamboat puffed at its
wharves, or ploughed up the river, like the enchanted ship of the
Ancient Mariner,--
"Against the wind, against the tide,
Steadied with upright keel."
The march of mind had not overtaken it. It had neither printing-press
nor lyceum. As the fathers had done before them, so did its inhabitants
at the time of my visit. There was little or no competition in their
business; there were no rich men, and none that seemed over-anxious to
become so. Two or three small vessels were annually launched from the
carpenters' yards on the river. It had a blacksmith's shop, with its
clang of iron and roar of bellows; a pottery, garnished with its coarse
earthen-ware; a store, where molasses, sugar, and spices were sold on
one side, and calicoes, tape, and ribbons on the other. Three or four
small schooners annually left the wharves for the St. George's and
Labrador fisheries. Just back of the village, a bright, noisy stream,
gushing out, like a merry laugh, from the walnut and oak woods which
stretched back far to the north through a narrow break in the hills,
turned the great wheel of a grist-mill, and went frolicking away, like a
wicked Undine, under the very windows of the brown, lilac-shaded house
of Deacon Warner, the miller, as if to tempt the good man's handsome
daughters to take lessons in dancing. At one end of the little
crescent-shaped village, at the corner of the main road and the green
lane to Deacon Warner's mill, stood the school-house,--a small, ill-
used, Spanish-brown building, its patched windows bearing unmistakable
evidence of the mischievous character of its inmates. At the other end,
farther up the river, on a rocky knoll open to all the winds, stood the
meeting-house,--old, two story, and full of windows,--its gilded
weathercock glistening in the sun. The bell in its belfry had been
brought from France by Skipper Evans in the latter part of the last
century. Solemnly baptized and consecrated to some holy saint, it had
called to prayer the veiled sisters of a convent, and tolled heavily in
the masses for the dead. At first some of the church felt misgivings as
to the propriety of hanging a Popish bell in a Puritan steeple-house;
but their objections were overruled by the minister, who wisely
maintained that if Moses could use the borrowed jewels and ornaments of
the Egyptians to adorn and beautify the ark of the Lord, it could not be
amiss to make a Catholic bell do service in an Orthodox belfry. The
space between the school and the meeting-house was occupied by some
fifteen or twenty dwellings, many-colored and diverse in age and
appearance. Each one had its green yard in front, its rose-bushes and
lilacs. Great elms, planted a century ago, stretched and interlocked
their heavy arms across the street. The mill-stream, which found its
way into the Tocketuek, near the centre of the village, was spanned by a
rickety wooden bridge, rendered picturesque by a venerable and gnarled
white-oak which hung over it, with its great roots half bared by the
water and twisted among the mossy stones of the crumbling abutment.
The house of Dr. Singletary was situated somewhat apart from the main
street, just on the slope of Blueberry Will,--a great, green swell of
land, stretching far down from the north, and terminating in a steep
bluff at the river side. It overlooked the village and the river a long
way up and down. It was a brown-looking, antiquated mansion, built by
the Doctor's grandfather in the earlier days of the settlement. The
rooms were large and low, with great beams, scaly with whitewash,
running across them, scarcely above the reach of a tall man's head.
Great-throated fireplaces, filled with pine-boughs and flower-pots, gave
promise of winter fires, roaring and crackling in boisterous hilarity,
as if laughing to scorn the folly and discomfort of our modern stoves.
In the porch at the frontdoor were two seats, where the Doctor was
accustomed to sit in fine weather with his pipe and his book, or with
such friends as might call to spend a half hour with him. The lawn in
front had scarcely any other ornament than its green grass, cropped
short by the Doctor's horse. A stone wall separated it from the lane,
half overrun with wild hop, or clematis, and two noble rock-maples
arched over with their dense foliage the little red gate. Dark belts of
woodland, smooth hill pasture, green, broad meadows, and fields of corn
and rye, the homesteads of the villagers, were seen on one hand; while
on the other was the bright, clear river, with here and there a white
sail, relieved against bold, wooded banks, jutting rocks, or tiny
islands, dark with dwarf evergreens. It was a quiet, rural picture,
a happy and peaceful contrast to all I had looked upon for weary,
miserable months. It soothed the nervous excitement of pain and
suffering. I forgot myself in the pleasing interest which it awakened.
Nature's healing ministrations came to me through all my senses. I felt
the medicinal virtues of her sights, and sounds, and aromal breezes.
From the green turf of her hills and the mossy carpets of her woodlands
my languid steps derived new vigor and elasticity. I felt, day by day,
the transfusion of her strong life.
The Doctor's domestic establishment consisted of Widow Matson, his
housekeeper, and an idle slip of a boy, who, when he was not paddling
across the river, or hunting in the swamps, or playing ball on the
"Meetin'-'us-Hill," used to run of errands, milk the cow, and saddle the
horse. Widow Matson was a notable shrill-tongued woman, from whom two
long suffering husbands had obtained what might, under the
circumstances, be well called a comfortable release. She was neat and
tidy almost to a fault, thrifty and industrious, and, barring her
scolding propensity, was a pattern housekeeper. For the Doctor she
entertained so high a regard that nothing could exceed her indignation
when any one save herself presumed to find fault with him. Her bark was
worse than her bite; she had a warm, woman's heart, capable of soft
relentings; and this the roguish errand-boy so well understood that he
bore the daily infliction of her tongue with a good-natured unconcern
which would have been greatly to his credit had it not resulted from his
confident expectation that an extra slice of cake or segment of pie
would erelong tickle his palate in atonement for the tingling of his
ears.
It must be confessed that the Doctor had certain little peculiarities
and ways of his own which might have ruffled the down of a smoother
temper than that of the Widow Matson. He was careless and absent-
minded. In spite of her labors and complaints, he scattered his
superfluous clothing, books, and papers over his rooms in "much-admired
disorder." He gave the freedom of his house to the boys and girls of
his neighborhood, who, presuming upon his good nature, laughed at her
remonstrances and threats as they chased each other up and down the
nicely-polished stairway. Worse than all, he was proof against the
vituperations and reproaches with which she indirectly assailed him from
the recesses of her kitchen. He smoked his pipe and dozed over his
newspaper as complacently as ever, while his sins of omission and
commission were arrayed against him.
Peewawkin had always the reputation of a healthy town: and if it had
been otherwise, Dr. Singletary was the last man in the world to
transmute the aches and ails of its inhabitants into gold for his own
pocket. So, at the age of sixty, he was little better off, in point of
worldly substance, than when he came into possession of the small
homestead of his father. He cultivated with his own hands his corn-
field and potato-patch, and trimmed his apple and pear trees, as well
satisfied with his patrimony as Horace was with his rustic Sabine villa.
In addition to the care of his homestead and his professional duties,
he had long been one of the overseers of the poor and a member of the
school committee in his town; and he was a sort of standing reference in
all disputes about wages, boundaries, and cattle trespasses in his
neighborhood. He had, nevertheless, a good deal of leisure for reading,
errands of charity, and social visits. He loved to talk with his
friends, Elder Staples, the minister, Deacon Warner, and Skipper Evans.
He was an expert angler, and knew all the haunts of pickerel and trout
for many miles around. His favorite place of resort was the hill back
of his house, which afforded a view of the long valley of the Tocketuck
and the great sea. Here he would sit, enjoying the calm beauty of the
landscape, pointing out to me localities interesting from their
historical or traditional associations, or connected in some way with
humorous or pathetic passages of his own life experience. Some of these
autobiographical fragments affected me deeply. In narrating them he
invested familiar and commonplace facts with something of the
fascination of romance. "Human life," he would say, "is the same
everywhere. If we could but get at the truth, we should find that all
the tragedy and comedy of Shakespeare have been reproduced in this
little village. God has made all of one blood; what is true of one man
is in some sort true of another; manifestations may differ, but the
essential elements and spring of action are the same. On the surface,
everything about us just now looks prosaic and mechanical; you see only
a sort of bark-mill grinding over of the same dull, monotonous grist of
daily trifles. But underneath all this there is an earnest life, rich
and beautiful with love and hope, or dark with hatred, and sorrow, and
remorse. That fisherman by the riverside, or that woman at the stream
below, with her wash-tub,--who knows what lights and shadows checker
their memories, or what present thoughts of theirs, born of heaven or
hell, the future shall ripen into deeds of good or evil? Ah, what have
I not seen and heard? My profession has been to me, in some sort, like
the vial genie of the Salamanca student; it has unroofed these houses,
and opened deep, dark chambers to the hearts of their tenants, which no
eye save that of God had ever looked upon. Where I least expected them,
I have encountered shapes of evil; while, on the other hand, I have
found beautiful, heroic love and self-denial in those who had seemed to
me frivolous and selfish."
So would Dr. Singletary discourse as we strolled over Blueberry Hill, or
drove along the narrow willow-shaded road which follows the windings of
the river. He had read and thought much in his retired, solitary life,
and was evidently well satisfied to find in me a gratified listener. He
talked well and fluently, with little regard to logical sequence, and
with something of the dogmatism natural to one whose opinions had seldom
been subjected to scrutiny. He seemed equally at home in the most
abstruse questions of theology and metaphysics, and in the more
practical matters of mackerel-fishing, corn-growing, and cattle-raising.
It was manifest that to his book lore he had added that patient and
close observation of the processes of Nature which often places the
unlettered ploughman and mechanic on a higher level of available
intelligence than that occupied by professors and school men. To him
nothing which had its root in the eternal verities of Nature was "common
or unclean." The blacksmith, subjecting to his will the swart genii of
the mines of coal and iron; the potter, with his "power over the clay;"
the skipper, who had tossed in his frail fishing-smack among the
icebergs of Labrador; the farmer, who had won from Nature the occult
secrets of her woods and fields; and even the vagabond hunter and
angler, familiar with the habits of animals and the migration of birds
and fishes,--had been his instructors; and he was not ashamed to
acknowledge that they had taught him more than college or library.
CHAPTER III.
THE DOCTOR'S MATCH-MAKING.
"GOOD-MORNING, Mrs. Barnet," cried the Doctor, as we drew near a neat
farm-house during one of our morning drives.
A tall, healthful young woman, in the bloom of matronly beauty, was
feeding chickens at the door. She uttered an exclamation of delight and
hurried towards us. Perceiving a stranger in the wagon she paused, with
a look of embarrassment.
"My friend, who is spending a few weeks with me," explained the Doctor.
She greeted me civilly and pressed the Doctor's hand warmly.
"Oh, it is so long since you have called on us that we have been talking
of going up to the village to see you, as soon as Robert can get away
from his cornfield. You don't know how little Lucy has grown. You must
stop and see her."
"She's coming to see me herself," replied the Doctor, beckoning to a
sweet blue-eyed child in the door-way.
The delighted mother caught up her darling and held her before the
Doctor.
"Does n't she look like Robert?" she inquired. "His very eyes and
forehead! Bless me! here he is now."
A stout, hale young farmer, in a coarse checked frock and broad straw
hat, came up from the adjoining field.
"Well, Robert," said the Doctor, "how do matters now stand with you?
Well, I hope."
"All right, Doctor. We've paid off the last cent of the mortgage, and
the farm is all free and clear. Julia and I have worked hard; but we're
none the worse for it."
"You look well and happy, I am sure," said the Doctor. "I don't think
you are sorry you took the advice of the old Doctor, after all."
The young wife's head drooped until her lips touched those of her child.
"Sorry!" exclaimed her husband. "Not we! If there's anybody happier
than we are within ten miles of us. I don't know them. Doctor, I'll
tell you what I said to Julia the night I brought home that mortgage.
'Well,' said I, 'that debt's paid; but there's one debt we can never pay
as long as we live.' 'I know it,' says she; 'but Dr. Singletary wants
no better reward for his kindness than to see us live happily together,
and do for others what he has done for us.'"
"Pshaw!" said the Doctor, catching up his reins and whip. "You owe me
nothing. But I must not forget my errand. Poor old Widow Osborne needs
a watcher to-night; and she insists upon having Julia Barnet, and nobody
else. What shall I tell her?"
"I'll go, certainly. I can leave Lucy now as well as not."
"Good-by, neighbors."
"Good-by, Doctor."
As we drove off I saw the Doctor draw his hand hastily across his eyes,
and be said nothing for some minutes.
"Public opinion," said he at length, as if pursuing his meditations
aloud,--"public opinion is, in nine cases out of ten, public folly and
impertinence. We are slaves to one another. We dare not take counsel
of our consciences and affections, but must needs suffer popular
prejudice and custom to decide for us, and at their bidding are
sacrificed love and friendship and all the best hopes of our lives. We
do not ask, What is right and best for us? but, What will folks say of
it? We have no individuality, no self-poised strength, no sense of
freedom. We are conscious always of the gaze of the many-eyed tyrant.
We propitiate him with precious offerings; we burn incense perpetually
to Moloch, and pass through his fire the sacred first-born of our
hearts. How few dare to seek their own happiness by the lights which
God has given them, or have strength to defy the false pride and the
prejudice of the world and stand fast in the liberty of Christians! Can
anything be more pitiable than the sight of so many, who should be the
choosers and creators under God of their own spheres of utility and
happiness, self-degraded into mere slaves of propriety and custom, their
true natures undeveloped, their hearts cramped and shut up, each afraid
of his neighbor and his neighbor of him, living a life of unreality,
deceiving and being deceived, and forever walking in a vain show? Here,
now, we have just left a married couple who are happy because they have
taken counsel of their honest affections rather than of the opinions of
the multitude, and have dared to be true to themselves in defiance of
impertinent gossip."