“Will my brother go?” he inquired, touching
Martin’s shoulder; “my squaws have fine
mat, big wigwam, soft samp, for his young woman.”
“Mary,” said Martin, “the sachem
is impatient; and we must needs go with him.”
Mary did not answer, but her head was reclined upon
his bosom, and the Familist knew that she resigned
herself wholly to his direction. He folded the
shawl more carefully around her, and supported her
down the precipitous and ragged bank of the river,
followed closely by Passaconaway and his companions.
“Come back, Mary Edmands!” shouted Mr.
Ward. “In God’s name come back.”
Half a dozen canoes shot out into the clear moonlight
from the shadow of the shore. “It is too
late!” said the minister, as he struggled down
to the water’s edge. “Satan hath
laid his hands upon her; but I will contend for her,
even as did Michael of old for the body of Moses.
Mary, sister Mary, for the love of Christ, answer me.”
No sound came back from the canoes, which glided like
phantoms, noiselessly and swiftly, through the still
waters of the river. “The enemy hath prevailed,”
said Mr. Ward; “two women were grinding at my
mill, the one is taken and the other is left.
Let us go home, my friends, and wrestle in prayer
against the Tempter.”
The heretic and his orthodox bride departed into the
thick wilderness, under the guidance of Passaconaway,
and in a few days reached the Eldorado of the heretic
and the persecuted, the colony of Roger Williams.
Passaconaway, ever after, remained friendly to the
white men. As civilization advanced he retired
before it, to Pennacook, now Concord, on the Merrimac,
where the tribes of the Naumkeags, Piscataquas, Accomentas,
and Agawams acknowledged his authority.
[1833.]
Heavens! what a revulsion! what an
upheaving from its lowest depths of the inner
spirit! what an apocalypse of the world within me!
Here was a panacea, a pharmakon nepenthes for
all human woes; here was the secret of happiness
about which philosophers had disputed for so
many ages: happiness might be bought for a penny,
and carried in the waistcoat pocket.—DEQUINCEY’s
“Confessions of an Opium Eater.”
He was a tall, thin personage, with a marked brow
and a sunken eye.
He stepped towards a closet of his apartment, and
poured out a few drops of a dark liquid. His
hand shook, as he raised the glass which contained
them to his lips; and with a strange shuddering, a
nervous tremor, as if all the delicate chords of his
system were unloosed and trembling, he turned away
from his fearful draught.
He saw that my eye was upon him; and I could perceive
that his mind struggled desperately with the infirmity
of his nature, as if ashamed of the utter weakness
of its tabernacle. He passed hastily up and down
the room. “You seem somewhat ill,”
I said, in the undecided tone of partial interrogatory.
