Becoming America - An Exploration of American Literature from Precolonial to Post-Revolution, 2018a

BECOMING AMERICA
REVOLUTIONARY AND EARLY NATIONAL PERIOD LITERATURE
“Yes, Miss Hope, I know your heart always linked into such things; but it will
be heathen
Greek to my wife—so you must make out a better reason for her.”
“Then tell her that I like to have my own way.”
“Ah, that will I,” replied Digby, chuckling; “that is what every woman can
understand. I always said, Miss Hope, it was a pure mercy you chose the right way,
for you always had yours.”
“Perhaps you think, Digby, I have been too headstrong in my own way.”
“Oh, no! my sweet mistress, no; why, this having our own way is what everybody
likes; it’s the privilege we came to this wilderness world for; and though the gentles
up in town there, with the governor at their head, hold a pretty tight rein, yet I
can tell them that there are many who think what blunt Master Blackstone said,
‘That he came not away from the Lord’s-bishops to put himself under the Lord’sbrethren.’
No, no. Miss Hope, I watch the motions of the straws—I know which
way the wind blows. Thought and will are set free, it was but the other day, so to
speak—in the days of good Queen Bess, as they called her—when, if her majesty did
but raise her hand, the Parliament folk were all down on their knees to her; and
now, thank God, the poorest and the lowest of us only kneel to Him who made us.
Times are changed—there is a new spirit in the world—chains are broken—fetters
are knocked o—and the liberty set forth in the blessed Word is now felt to be
every man’s birthright. But shame on my prating, that wags so fast when I might
hear your nightingale voice.”
Hope’s mind was preoccupied, and she found it dicult to listen to Digby’s
speculations with interest, or to respond with animation; but she was too benignant
to lose herself in sullen abstraction; and when they arrived at the cottage, she roused
her faculties to amuse the children, and to listen to the mother’s stories of their
promising smartness. She commended the good wife’s milk and cakes, and sat for
half an hour after the table was removed, talking of the past, and brightening the
future prospects of her good friends with predictions of their children’s prosperity
and respectability: predictions which, Digby afterward said, the dear young lady’s
bounty brought to pass.
Suddenly she sprang from her chair: “ Digby,” she exclaimed, “I think the east
is lighting up with the rising moon—is it not ?”
“If it is not, it soon will,” replied Digby, understanding and favouring her
purpose.
“Then,” said Hope, “I will take a walk around the island; and do not you, Betsy,
sit up for me.” Betsy, of course, remonstrated. The night air was unwholesome;
and, though the sky overhead was clear, yet she had heard distant thunder; the
beach-birds had been in ocks on Shore all the day; and the breakers on the east
side of the island made a boding sound. These and other signs were ‘urged as
arguments against the unseasonable walk. Of course they were unheeded by our
heroine, who, declaring that, with shelter so near, she was in no danger, mued
herself in her cloak and sallied forth. She bent her steps around the cli which
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