Mr. Marsden, one of the village merchants, went to Boston yesterday, and aunt commissioned him to tell Alfred Cullen, with whom he deals largely, to come up and spend New Year with her and uncle. Now heaven forbid!
Uncle says--“Come, Monde, come and hear what that rascally Louis Napoleon is doing.” I go, for France is, as it were, our next door neighbor in these days.
Isn’t this outrageous bad, Edith? Mr. Marsden brought along, when he came back, a note from Alfred Cullen, saying that he will come to D----; a box of oysters from him for uncle, another of figs for aunt, (and she wants to see me eat them every five minutes; I think it is much the same as if she saw me eating the giver.)
Aunt is so glad to have him come that she hardly knows her head from her feet. She is in danger of stumbling over Ponto, or a foot-cushion, at every turn. She gives more directions to Bessy and Hamlet than ten Bessys and Hamlets could follow. It is well for them that she revokes half of them on the spot; that she modifies the rest according to their liking, and ends with telling them both to go on and do just what they see needs to be done, and to do it in the way they think best. She has no doubt, she says, that it will be done better than she can advise. And so it will assuredly. Bessy has been in the family ten years, Hamlet three; they both have clear brains and strong hands, and, as Bessy says, “have got the hang of every thing from garret to cellar.” This is no light achievement, for one does not often see so large a house, or such overflowing abundance. By the by, do you know that uncle has paid our house rent for the last ten years, and given us money and other things beside? I am thinking that, if you do not, you may be calling him “a miserly old fellow.” He has offered my father land, but my mother dreads leaving the city where she was reared. Now I hope you think, as Aunt Alice and I do, that uncle is the best man on earth, except Kossuth--I must say, except Kossuth always; for I believe he is the best man that breathes, or that has breathed, since the days of Christ. Uncle and I talk about him, we read his speeches, and I keep saying in my heart--“the Christ of the nations! the Christ of the nations!” And often a great fear comes over me, that, in another sense than his truth, his self-immolating goodness, his destiny is to be like that of the Christ. My heart is aching for him now--still I can put back the pain, and say, “Father, let it be as seemeth good in Thy sight; for, whether he lives or dies, in him the great cause of freedom and human progress shall be glorified; and he is strong and patient to drink of the cup that Thou givest him.”