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SUSANNA AND SUE 
 
Digitized by the Internet Archive 
 
 in 2012 with funding from 
 
 University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill 
 
 http://archive.org/details/susannasueOOwiggi 
 
SUSANNA AND SUE 
 
 By KATE DOUGLAS WIGGIN 
 
 WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY 
 
 ALICE BARBER STEPHENS 
 
 AND N. C. WYETH 
 
 If 
 
 HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY 
 BOSTON AND NEW YORK 
 THE RIVERSIDE PRESS 
 CAMBRIDGE : MDCCCCIX 
 
COPYRIGHT, 1909, BY KATE DOUGLAS RIGGS 
 
 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 
 
 Published October iqoq 
 

 CONTENTS 
 
 
 I. 
 
 Mother Ann's Children 
 
 1 
 
 IT. 
 
 A Son of Adam 
 
 23 
 
 III. 
 
 Divers Doctrines 
 
 43 
 
 IV. 
 
 Louisa's Mind 
 
 67 
 
 V. 
 
 The Little Quail Bird 
 
 87 
 
 VI. 
 
 Susanna speaks in Meeting 
 
 107 
 
 VII. 
 
 "The Lower Plane" 
 
 121 
 
 VIII. 
 
 Concerning Backsliders 
 
 141 
 
 IX. 
 
 Love Manifold 
 
 163 
 
 X. 
 
 Brother and Sister 
 
 177 
 
 XI. 
 
 "The Open Door" 
 
 195 
 
 XII. 
 
 The Hills of Home 
 
 211 
 
ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 Looking up into her mother's face expectantly 
 
 (page 102) Frontispiece 
 
 Do you remember the little Nelson girl and her 
 mother ? 12 
 
 Susanna sat in her corner beside the aged Tabitha 112 
 
 Hetty looking at the lad with all her heart in her 
 
 eyes 
 
 130 
 
I 
 
 MOTHER ANN'S CHILDREN 
 
IT was the end of May, when "spring goeth 
 all in white." The apple trees were scatter- 
 ing their delicate petals on the ground, drop- 
 ping them over the stone walls to the roadsides, 
 where in the moist places of the shadows they 
 fell on beds of snowy innocence. Here and 
 there a single tree was tinged with pink, but 
 so faintly, it was as if the white were blush- 
 ing. Now and then a tiny white butterfly 
 danced in the sun and pearly clouds strayed 
 across the sky in fleecy flocks. 
 
 Everywhere the grass was of ethereal green- 
 ness, a greenness drenched with the pale yel- 
 low of spring sunshine. Looking from earth to 
 
SUSANNA AND SUE 
 
 sky and from blossom to blossom, the little 
 world of the apple orchards, shedding its falling 
 petals like fair-weather snow, seemed made 
 of alabaster and porcelain, ivory and mother- 
 of-pearl, all shimmering on a background of 
 tender green. 
 
 After you pass Albion village, with its 
 streets shaded by elms and maples and its 
 outskirts embowered in blossoming orchards, 
 you wind along a hilly country road that runs 
 between grassy fields. Here the white weed is 
 already budding, and there are pleasant pas- 
 tures dotted with rocks and fringed with spruce 
 and fir; stretches of woodland, too, where the 
 road is lined with giant pines and you lift your 
 face gratefully to catch the cool balsam breath 
 of the forest. Coming from out this splendid 
 shade, this silence too deep to be disturbed by 
 light breezes or vagrant winds, you find your- 
 self on the brow of a descending hill. The first 
 thing that strikes the eye is a lake that might 
 be a great blue sapphire dropped into the ver- 
 
MOTHER ANN'S CHILDREN 
 
 dant hollow where it lies. When the eye reluc- 
 tantly leaves the lake on the left, it turns to rest 
 upon the little Shaker Settlement on the right 
 — a dozen or so large comfortable white barns, 
 sheds, and houses, standing in the wide orderly 
 spaces of their own spreading acres of farm 
 and timber land. There again the spring goeth 
 all in white, for there is no spot to fleck the 
 dazzling quality of Shaker paint, and their 
 apple, plum, and pear trees are so well cared 
 for that the snowy blossoms are fairly hiding 
 the branches. 
 
 The place is very still, although there are 
 signs of labor in all directions. From a window 
 of the girls' building a quaint little gray-clad 
 figure is beating a braided rug ; a boy in home- 
 spun, with his hair slightly long in the back 
 and cut in a straight line across the forehead, 
 is carrying milk-cans from the dairy to one of 
 the Sisters' Houses. Men in broad-brimmed 
 hats, with clean-shaven, ascetic faces, are 
 ploughing or harrowing here and there in the 
 
SUSANNA AND SUE 
 
 fields, while a group of Sisters is busy setting 
 out plants and vines in some beds near a clus- 
 ter of noble trees. That cluster of .trees, did the 
 eye of the stranger realize it, was the very 
 starting-point of this Shaker Community, for 
 in the year 1785, the valiant Father James 
 Whittaker, one of Mother Ann Lee's earliest 
 English converts, stopped near the village of 
 Albion on his first visit to Maine. As he and 
 his Elders alighted from their horses, they 
 stuck into the ground the willow withes they 
 had used as whips, and now, a hundred years 
 later, the trees that had grown from these 
 slender branches were nearly three feet in 
 diameter. 
 
 From whatever angle you look upon the 
 Settlement, the first and strongest impression is 
 of quiet order, harmony, and a kind of austere 
 plenty. Nowhere is the purity of the spring so 
 apparent. Nothing is out of place ; nowhere is 
 any confusion, or appearance of loose ends, or 
 neglected tasks, As you come nearer, you feel 
 
MOTHER ANN'S CHILDREN 
 
 the more surely that here there has never been 
 undue haste nor waste ; no shirking, no putting 
 off till the morrow what should have been done 
 to-day. Whenever a shingle or a clapboard 
 was needed it was put on, where paint was 
 required it was used, — that is evident ; and a 
 look at the great barns stored with hay shows 
 how the fields have been conscientiously edu- 
 cated into giving a full crop. 
 
 To such a spot as this might any tired or sin- 
 ful heart come for rest ; hoping somehow, in the 
 midst of such frugality and thrift, such self- 
 denying labor, such temperate use of God's 
 good gifts, such shining cleanliness of outward 
 things, to regain and wear "the white flower of 
 a blameless life." The very air of the place 
 breathed peace, so thought Susanna Hatha- 
 way; and little Sue, who skipped by her side, 
 thought nothing at all save that she was with 
 mother in the country ; that it had been rather 
 a sad journey, with mother so quiet and pale, 
 and that she would be very glad to see supper, 
 
SUSANNA AND SUE 
 
 should it rise like a fairy banquet in the midst 
 of these strange surroundings. 
 
 It was only a mile and a half from the rail- 
 way station to the Shaker Settlement, and 
 Susanna knew the road well, for she had driven 
 over it more than once as child and girl. A boy 
 would bring the little trunk that contained their 
 simple necessities later on in the evening, so 
 she and Sue would knock at the door of the 
 house where visitors were admitted, and be 
 undisturbed by any gossiping company while 
 they were pleading their case. 
 
 "Are we most there, Mardie?" asked Sue 
 for the twentieth time. "Look at me! I'm 
 being a butterfly, or perhaps a white pigeon. 
 No, I 'd rather be a butterfly, and then I can 
 skim along faster and move my wings!" 
 
 The airy little figure, all lightness and 
 brightness, danced along the road, the white 
 cotton dress rising and falling, the white- 
 stockinged legs much in evidence, the arms 
 outstretched as if in flight, straw hat falling off 
 
MOTHER ANN'S CHILDREN 
 
 yellow hair, and a little wisp of swansdown 
 scarf floating out behind like the drapery of 
 a baby Mercury. 
 
 " We are almost there," her mother answered. 
 "You can see the buildings now, if you will 
 stop being a butterfly. Don't you like them ?" 
 
 "Yes, I 'specially like them all so white. Is 
 it a town, Mardie?" 
 
 "It is a village, but not quite like other 
 villages. I have told you often about the 
 Shaker Settlement, where your grandmother 
 brought me once when I was just your age. 
 There was a thunder-storm ; they kept us all 
 night, and were so kind that I never forgot 
 them. Then your grandmother and I stopped 
 off once when we were going to Boston. I was 
 ten then, and I remember more about it. 
 The same sweet Eldress was there both times." 
 
 "What is an El-der-ess, Mardie?" 
 
 "A kind of everybody's mother, she seemed 
 to be," Susanna responded, with a catch in her 
 breath. 
 
now, Mardie 
 
 "I'm hoping so, but it is eighteen years ago. 
 I was ten and she was about forty, I should 
 think." 
 
 "Then o' course she'll be dead," said Sue, 
 cheerfully, "or either she'll have no teeth or 
 hair." 
 
 "People don't always die before they are 
 sixty, Sue." 
 
 "Do they die when they want to, or when 
 they must?" 
 
 " Always when they must ; never, never when 
 they want to," answered Sue's mother. 
 
 "But o' course they would n't ever want to 
 if they had any little girls to be togedder with, 
 like you and me, Mardie?" And Sue looked 
 up with eyes that were always like two inter- 
 rogation points, eager by turns and by turns 
 wistful, but never satisfied. 
 
 "No," Susanna replied brokenly, "of 
 course they would n't, unless sometimes they 
 
MOTHER ANN'S CHILDREN 
 
 were wicked for a minute or two and for- 
 got." 
 
 "Do the Shakers shake all the time, Mardie, 
 or just once in a while ? And shall I see them 
 doit?" 
 
 "Sue, dear, I can't explain everything in the 
 world to you while you are so little; you really 
 must wait until you're more grown up. The 
 Shakers don't shake and the Quakers don't 
 quake, and when you're older, I'll try to make 
 you understand why they were called so and 
 why they kept the name." 
 
 "Maybe the El-der-ess can make me under- 
 stand right off now ; I'd 'specially like it." And 
 Sue ran breathlessly along to the gate where 
 the North Family House stood in its stately, 
 white-and-green austerity. 
 
 Susanna followed, and as she caught up with 
 the impetuous Sue, the front door of the house 
 opened and a figure appeared on the threshold. 
 Mother and child quickened their pace and 
 went up the steps, Susanna with a hopeless 
 
SUSANNA AND SUE 
 
 burden of fear and embarrassment clogging 
 her tongue and dragging at her feet; Sue so 
 expectant of new disclosures and fresh experi- 
 ences that her face beamed like a full moon. 
 
 Eldress Abby (for it was Eldress Abby) had 
 indeed survived the heavy weight of her fifty- 
 five or sixty summers, and looked as if she 
 might reach a yet greater age. She wore the 
 simple Shaker afternoon dress of drab alpaca ; 
 an irreproachable muslin surplice encircled her 
 straight, spare shoulders, while her hair was 
 almost entirely concealed by the stiffly wired, 
 transparent white-net cap that served as a 
 frame to the tranquil face. The face itself was 
 a network of delicate, fine wrinkles ; but every 
 wrinkle must have been as lovely in God's 
 sight as it was in poor unhappy Susanna 
 Hath away 's. Some of them were graven by 
 self-denial and hard work; others perhaps 
 meant the giving up of home, of parents and 
 brothers or sisters ; perhaps some worldly love, 
 the love that Father Adam bequeathed to the 
 

 
 & 
 & 
 
 
 
MOTHER ANN'S CHILDREN 
 
 human family, had been slain in Abby's youth, 
 and the scars still remained to show the body's 
 suffering and the spirit's triumph. At all 
 events, whatever foes had menaced her purity 
 or her tranquillity had been conquered, and she 
 exhaled serenity as the rose sheds fragrance. 
 
 "Do you remember the little Nelson girl and 
 her mother that stayed here all night, years 
 ago?" asked Susanna, putting out her hand 
 timidly. 
 
 "Why, seems to me I do," assented Eldress 
 Abby, genially. "So many comes and goes it's 
 hard to remember all. Did n't you come once 
 in a thunder-storm?" 
 
 "Yes, one of your barns was struck by light- 
 ning and we sat up all night." 
 
 " Yee, yee. 1 I remember well ! Your mother 
 was a beautiful spirit. I could n't forget her." 
 
 "And we came once again, mother and I, 
 and spent the afternoon with you, and went 
 strawberrying in the pasture." 
 
 1 "Yea" is always thus pronounced by the Shakers. 
 
SUSANNA AND SUE 
 
 "Yee, yee, so we did; I hope your mother 
 continues in health." 
 
 "She died the very next year," Susanna 
 answered in a trembling voice, for the time of 
 explanation was near at hand and her heart 
 failed her. 
 
 "Won't you come into the sitting-room and 
 rest awhile ? You must be tired walking from 
 the deepot." 
 
 "No, thank you, not just yet. I'll step into 
 the front entry a minute. — Sue, run and sit in 
 that rocking-chair on the porch and watch the 
 cows going into the big barn. — Do you re- 
 member, Eldress Abby, the second time I came, 
 how you sat me down in the kitchen with a 
 bowl of wild strawberries to hull for supper? 
 They were very small and ripe ; I did my best, 
 for I never meant to be careless, but the bowl 
 slipped and fell, — my legs were too short to 
 reach the floor, and I could n't make a lap, — 
 so in trying to pick up the berries I spilled juice 
 on my dress, and on the white apron you had 
 
MOTHER ANN'S CHILDREN 
 
 tied on for me. Then my fingers were stained 
 and wet and the hulls kept falling in with the 
 soft berries, and when you came in and saw me 
 you held up your hands and said, 'Dear, dear! 
 you have made a mess of your work!' Oh, 
 Eldress Abby, they 've come back to me all day, 
 those words. I've tried hard to be good, but 
 somehow I've made just such a mess of my 
 life as I made of hulling the berries. The bowl 
 is broken, I have n't much fruit to show, and I 
 am all stained and draggled. I should n't have 
 come to Albion on the five-o'clock train — that 
 was an accident; I meant to come at noon, 
 when you could turn me away if you wanted 
 to." 
 
 "Nay, that is not the Shaker habit," remon- 
 strated Abby. "You and the child can sleep in 
 one of the spare chambers at the Office Build- 
 ing and be welcome." 
 
 "But I want much more than that," said 
 Susanna, tearfully. "I want to come and live 
 here, where there is no marrying nor giving in 
 
SUSANNA AND SUE 
 
 marriage. I am so tired with my disappoint- 
 ments and discouragements and failures that 
 it is no use to try any longer. I am Mrs. Hatha- 
 way, and Sue is my child, but I have left my 
 husband for good and all, and I only want to 
 spend the rest of my days here in peace and 
 bring up Sue to a more tranquil life than I have 
 ever had. I have a little money, so that I shall 
 not be a burden to you, and I will work from 
 morning to night at any task you set me." 
 
 "I will talk to the Family," said Eldress 
 Abby, gravely; "but there are a good many 
 things to settle before we can say yee to all 
 you ask." 
 
 " Let me confess everything freely and fully," 
 pleaded Susanna, "and if you think I'm to 
 blame, I will go away at once." 
 
 "Nay, this is no time for that. It is our duty 
 to receive all and try all ; then if you should be 
 gathered in, you would unburden your heart 
 to God through the Sister appointed to receive 
 your confession." 
 
MOTHER ANN'S CHILDREN 
 
 "Will vSue have to sleep in the children's 
 building away from me?" 
 
 "Nay, not now; you are company, not a 
 Shaker, and anyway you could keep the child 
 with you till she is a little older; that's not for- 
 bidden at first, though there comes a time 
 when the ties of the flesh must be broken ! All 
 you've got to do now's to be 'pure and peace- 
 able, gentle, easy to be entreated, and without 
 hypocrisy.' That's about all there is to the 
 Shaker creed, and that 's enough to keep us all 
 busy." 
 
 Sue ran in from the porch excitedly and 
 caught her mother's hand. 
 
 "The cows have all gone into the barn," she 
 chattered; "and the Shaker gentlemen are 
 milking them, and not one of them is shaking 
 the least bit, for I 'specially noticed; and I 
 looked in through the porch window, and there 
 is nice supper on a table — bread and butter 
 and milk and dried-apple sauce and ginger- 
 bread and cottage cheese. Is it for us, Mardie ? ' ' 
 
SUSANNA AND SUE 
 
 Susanna's lip was trembling and her face was 
 pale. She lifted her swimming eyes to the Sis- 
 ter's and asked, "Is it for us, Eldress Abby?" 
 
 "Yee, it's for you," she answered; "there's 
 always a Shaker supper on the table for all who 
 want to leave the husks and share the feast. 
 Come right in and help yourselves. I will sit 
 down with you." 
 
 Supper was over, and Susanna and Sue were 
 lying in a little upper chamber under the stars. 
 It was the very one that Susanna had slept in 
 as a child, or that she had been put to bed in, 
 for there was little sleep that night for any one. 
 She had leaned on the window-sill with her 
 mother and watched the pillar of flame and 
 smoke ascend from the burning barn ; and once 
 in the early morning she had stolen out of bed, 
 and, kneeling by the open window, had watched 
 the two silent Shaker brothers who were guard- 
 ing the smoldering ruins, fearful lest the wind 
 should rise and bear any spark to the roofs of 
 
MOTHER ANN'S CHILDREN 
 
 the precious buildings they had labored so hard 
 to save. 
 
 The chamber was spotless and devoid of 
 ornament. The paint was robin's egg blue and 
 of a satin gloss. The shining floor was of the 
 same color, and neat braided rugs covered 
 exposed places near the bureau, washstand,and 
 bed. Various useful articles of Shaker manu- 
 facture interested Sue greatly: the exquisite 
 straw-work that covered the whisk-broom; 
 the mending-basket, pincushion, needle-book, 
 spool and watch cases, hair-receivers, pin- 
 trays, might all have been put together by fairy 
 fingers. 
 
 Sue's prayers had been fervent, but a trifle 
 disjointed, covering all subjects from Jack and 
 Fardie, to Grandma in heaven and Aunt Louisa 
 at the farm, with special references to El-der- 
 ess Abby and the Shaker cows, and petitions 
 that the next day be fair so that she could see 
 them milked. Excitement at her strange, unac- 
 customed surroundings had put the child's 
 
SUSANNA AND SUE 
 
 mind in a very whirl, and she had astonished 
 her mother with a very new and disturbing 
 version of the Lord's prayer, ending: "God 
 give us our debts and help us to forget our 
 debtors and theirs shall be the glory, Amen." 
 Now she lay quietly on the wall side of the 
 clean, narrow bed, while her mother listened 
 to hear the regular breathing that would mean 
 that she was off for the land of dreams. The 
 child's sleep would leave the mother free to slip 
 out of bed and look at the stars ; free to pray and 
 long and wonder and suffer and repent, — not 
 wholly, but in part, for she was really at peace 
 in all but the innermost citadel of her con- 
 science. She had left her husband, and for the 
 moment, at all events, she was fiercely glad; 
 but she had left her boy, and Jack was only 
 ten. Jack was not the helpless, clinging sort; 
 he was a little piece of his father, and his favor- 
 ite. Aunt Louisa would surely take him, and 
 Jack would scarcely feel the difference, for he 
 had never shown any special affection for any- 
 
MOTHER ANN'S CHILDREN 
 
 body. Still he was her child, nobody could pos- 
 sibly get around that fact, and it was a stum- 
 bling-block in the way of forgetfulness or ease 
 of mind. Oh, but for that, what unspeakable 
 content she could feel in this quiet haven, this 
 self-respecting solitude ! To have her thoughts, 
 her emotions, her words, her self, to herself 
 once more, as she had had them before she was 
 married at seventeen. To go to sleep in peace, 
 without listening for a step she had once heard 
 with gladness, but that now sometimes stum- 
 bled unsteadily on the stair; or to dream as 
 happy women dreamed, without being roused 
 by the voice of the present John, a voice so 
 different from that of the past John that it 
 made the heart ache to listen to it. 
 
 Sue's voice broke the stillness : " How long 
 are we going to stay here, Mardie?" 
 
 "I don't know, Sue; I think perhaps as long 
 as they '11 let us." 
 
 "Will Fardie come and see us?" 
 
 "I don't expect him." 
 
"She'll scold him awfully, but he never 
 cries; he just says, 'Pooh! what do I care?' 
 Oh, I forgot to pray for that very nicest Shaker 
 gentleman that said he'd let me help him feed 
 the calves ! Had n't I better get out of bed and 
 do it? I 'd 'specially like to." 
 
 "Very well, Sue; and then go to sleep." 
 
 Safely in bed again, there was a long pause, 
 and then the eager little voice began, "Who'll 
 take care of Fardie now?" 
 
 " He 's a big man ; he does n't need anybody." 
 
 "What if he's sick?" 
 
 "We must go back to him, I suppose." 
 
 "To-morrow 's Sunday; what if he needs us 
 to-morrow, Mardie?" 
 
 " I don't know, I don't know ! Oh, Sue, Sue, 
 don't ask your wretched mother any more 
 questions, for she cannot bear them to-night. 
 Cuddle up close to her ; love her and forgive her 
 and help her to know what 's right." 
 
II 
 
 WHEN Susanna Nelson at seventeen 
 married John Hathaway, she had the 
 usual cogent reasons for so doing, with some 
 rather more unusual ones added thereto. She 
 was alone in the world, and her life with an 
 uncle, her mother's only relative, was an un- 
 happy one. No assistance in the household 
 tasks that she had ever been able to render 
 made her a welcome member of the family or 
 kept her from feeling a burden, and she be- 
 longed no more to the little circle at seventeen, 
 than she did when she became a part of it at 
 twelve. The hope of being independent and 
 earning her own living had sustained her 
 
SUSANNA AND SUE 
 
 through the last year ; but it was a very timid, 
 self-distrustful, love-starved little heart that 
 John Hathaway stormed and carried by as- 
 sault. Her girl's life in a country school and 
 her uncle's very rigid and orthodox home had 
 been devoid of emotion or experience ; still, her 
 mother had early sown seeds in her mind and 
 spirit that even in the most arid soil were cer- 
 tain to flower into beauty when the time for 
 flowering came; and intellectually Susanna 
 was the clever daughter of clever parents. She 
 was very immature, because, after early child- 
 hood, her environment had not been favorable 
 to her development. At seventeen she began to 
 dream of a future as bright as the past had been 
 dreary and uneventful. Visions of happiness, 
 of goodness, and of service haunted her, and 
 sometimes, gleaming through the mists of 
 dawning womanhood, the figure, all luminous, 
 of The Man! 
 
 When John Hathaway appeared on the hori- 
 zon, she promptly clothed him in all the beau- 
 
A SON OF ADAM 
 
 tif ul garments of her dreams ; they were a gro- 
 tesque misfit, but when we intimate that women 
 have confused the dream and the realitv before, 
 and may even do so again, we make the only 
 possible excuse for poor little Susanna Nelson. 
 John Hathaway was the very image of the 
 outer world that lay beyond Susanna's village. 
 He was a fairly prosperous, genial, handsome 
 young merchant, who looked upon life as a place 
 furnished by Providence in which to have "a 
 good time." His parents had frequently told 
 him that it was expedient for him to "settle 
 down," and he supposed that he might finally 
 do so, if he should ever find a girl who would 
 tempt him to relinquish his liberty. (The line 
 that divides liberty and license was a little 
 vague to John Hathaway!) It is curious that 
 he should not have chosen for his life-partner 
 some thoughtless, rosy, romping young person, 
 whose highest conception of connubial happi- 
 ness would have been to drive twenty miles to 
 the seashore on a Sunday, and having par- 
 
SUSANNA AND SUE 
 
 taken of all the season's delicacies, solid and 
 liquid, to come home hilarious by moonlight. 
 That, however, is not the way the little love- 
 imps do their work in the world ; or is it pos- 
 sible that they are not imps at all who provoke 
 and stimulate and arrange these strange mar- 
 riages — not imps, but honest, chastening little 
 character-builders ? In any event, the moment 
 that John Hathaway first beheld Susanna Nel- 
 son was the moment of his surrender ; yet the 
 wooing was as incomprehensible as that of 
 a fragile, dainty little hummingbird by a pom- 
 pous, greedy, big-breasted robin. 
 
 Susanna was like a New England anemone. 
 Her face was oval in shape and as smooth and 
 pale as a pearl. Her hair was dark, not very 
 heavy, and as soft as a child's. Her lips were 
 delicate and sensitive, her eyes a cool gray, — 
 clear, steady, and shaded by darker lashes. 
 When John Hathaway met her shy, maidenly 
 glance and heard her pretty, dovelike voice, it 
 is strange he did not see that there was a bit 
 
A SON OF ADAM 
 
 too much saint in her to make her a willing 
 comrade of his gay, roistering life. But as a 
 matter of fact, John Hathaway saw nothing at 
 all; nothing but that Susanna Nelson was a 
 lovely girl and he wanted her for his own. The 
 type was one he had never met before, one that 
 allured him by its mysteries and piqued him 
 by its shy aloofness. 
 
 John had a "way with him," — a way that 
 speedily won Susanna; and after all there was 
 a best to him as well as a worst. He had a 
 twinkling eye, an infectious laugh, a sweet dis- 
 position, and while he was over-susceptible to 
 the charm of a pretty face, he had a chivalrous 
 admiration for all women, coupled, it must be 
 confessed, with a decided lack of discrimina- 
 tion in values. His boyish light-heartedness 
 had a charm for everybody, including Susanna ; 
 a charm that lasted until she discovered that 
 his heart was light not only when it ought to 
 be light, but when it ought to be heavy. 
 
 He was very much in love with her, but there 
 
SUSANNA AND SUE 
 
 was nothing particularly exclusive, unique, in- 
 dividual, or interesting about his passion at that 
 time. It was of the every-day sort which carries 
 a well-meaning man to the altar, and some- 
 times, in cases of exceptional fervor and dura- 
 tion, even a little farther. Stock sizes of this 
 article are common and inexpensive, and John 
 Hathaway's love when he married Susanna 
 was, judged by the highest standards, about 
 as trivial an affair as Cupid ever put upon the 
 market or a man ever offered to a woman. 
 Susanna on the same day offered John, or 
 the wooden idol she was worshiping as John, 
 her whole self — mind, body, heart, and spirit. 
 So the couple were united, and smilingly signed 
 the marriage-register, a rite by which their love 
 for each other was supposed to be made 
 eternal. 
 
 "Will you love me?" said he. 
 "Will you love me?" said she. 
 
 Then they answered together : — 
 "Through foul and fair weather, 
 
 From sunrise to moonrise, 
 
From moonrise to sunrise, 
 
 By heath and by harbour, 
 
 In orchard or arbour, 
 
 In the time of the rose, 
 
 In the time of the snows, 
 
 Through smoke and through smother 
 
 We'll love one another!" 
 
 Cinderella, when the lover-prince discovers 
 her and fits the crystal slipper to her foot, 
 makes short work of flinging away her rags; 
 and in some such pretty, airy, unthinking way 
 did Susanna fling aside the dullness, inhospi- 
 tality, and ugliness of her uncle's home and 
 depart in a cloud of glory on her wedding 
 journey. She had been lonely, now she would 
 have companionship. She had been of no con- 
 sequence, now she would be queen of her own 
 small domain. She had been last with every- 
 body, now she would be first with one, at least. 
 She had worked hard and received neither 
 compensation nor gratitude ; henceforward her 
 service would be gladly rendered at an altar 
 where votive offerings would not be taken as a 
 
SUSANNA AND SUE 
 
 matter of course. She was only a slip of a girl 
 now; marriage and housewifely cares would 
 make her a woman. Some time perhaps the 
 last great experience of life would come to her, 
 and then what a crown of joys would be hers, 
 — love, husband, home, children ! What a 
 vision it was, and how soon the chief glory of 
 it faded ! 
 
 Never were two beings more hopelessly 
 unlike than John Hathaway single and John 
 Hathaway married, but the bliss lasted a few 
 years, nevertheless : partly because Susanna's 
 charm was deep and penetrating, the sort 
 to hold a false man for a time and a true 
 man forever; partly because she tried, as a 
 girl or woman has seldom tried before, to 
 do her duty and to keep her own ideal unshat- 
 tered. 
 
 John had always been convivial, but Su- 
 sanna at seventeen had been at once too in- 
 nocent and too ignorant to judge a man's 
 tendencies truly, or to rate his character at its 
 
A SON OF ADAM 
 
 real worth. As time went on, his earlier lean- 
 ings grew more definite ; he spent on pleasure 
 far more than he could afford, and his conduct 
 became a byword in the neighborhood. His 
 boy he loved. He felt on a level with Jack, 
 could understand him, play with him, punish 
 him, and make friends with him; but little Sue 
 was different. She always seemed to him the 
 concentrated essence of her mother's soul, and 
 when unhappy days came, he never looked in 
 her radiant, searching eyes without a con- 
 sciousness of inferiority. The little creature had 
 loved her jolly, handsome, careless father at 
 first, even though she feared him ; but of late 
 she had grown shy, silent, and timid, for his 
 indifference chilled her and she flung herself 
 upon her mother's love with an almost unchild- 
 like intensity. This unhappy relation between 
 the child and the father gave Susanna's heart 
 new pangs. She still loved her husband, — not 
 dearly, but a good deal; and over and above 
 that remnant of the old love which still en- 
 
SUSANNA AND SUE 
 
 dured she gave him unstinted care and hopeful 
 maternal tenderness. 
 
 The crash came in course of time. John 
 transcended the bounds of his wife's patience 
 more and more. She made her last protests; 
 then she took one passionate day to make up 
 her mind, — a day when John and the boy were 
 away together ; a day of complete revolt against 
 everything she was facing in the present, and, 
 so far as she could see, everything that she had 
 to face in the future. Prayer for light left her in 
 darkness, and she had no human creature to 
 advise her. Conscience was overthrown; she 
 could see no duty save to her own outraged 
 personality. Often and often during the year 
 just past she had thought of the peace, the 
 grateful solitude and shelter of that Shaker 
 Settlement hidden among New England or- 
 chards; that quiet haven where there was 
 neither marrying nor giving in marriage. Now 
 her bruised heart longed for such a life of 
 nun-like simplicity and consecration, where 
 
 s 
 
men ana women 
 
 ters, where they worked side by side with no 
 thought of personal passion or personal gain, 
 but only for the common good of the commu- 
 nity. 
 
 Albion village was less than three hours dis- 
 tant by train. She hastily gathered her plainest 
 clothes and Sue's, packed them in a small 
 trunk, took her mother's watch, her own little 
 store of money and the twenty-dollar gold 
 piece John's senior partner had given Sue on 
 her last birthday, wrote a letter of good-by to 
 John, and went out of her cottage gate in a 
 storm of feeling so tumultuous that there was 
 no room for reflection. Besides, she had re- 
 flected, and reflected, for months and months, 
 so she would have said, and the time had come 
 for action. Susanna was not unlettered, but 
 she certainly had never read Meredith or she 
 would have learned that "love is an affair of 
 two, and only for two that can be as quick, as 
 constant in intercommunication as are sun and 
 
SUSANNA AND SUE 
 
 earth, through the cloud, or face to face. They 
 take their breath of life from each other in 
 signs of affection, proofs of faithfulness, incen- 
 tives to admiration. But a solitary soul drag- 
 ging a log must make the log a God to rejoice 
 in the burden." The demigod that poor, blind 
 Susanna married had vanished, and she could 
 drag the log no longer, but she made one mis- 
 take in judging her husband, in that she re- 
 garded him, at thirty-two, as a finished pro- 
 duct, a man who was finally this and that, and 
 behaved thus and so, and would never be any 
 different. 
 
 The "age of discretion" is a movable feast 
 of extraordinary uncertainty, and John Hatha- 
 way was a little behindhand in overtaking it. 
 As a matter of fact, he had never for an instant 
 looked life squarely in the face. He took a 
 casual glance at it now and then, after he was 
 married, but it presented no very distinguish- 
 able features, nothing to make him stop and 
 think, nothing to arouse in him any special 
 
"growing up," however, sooner or later, at 
 least most of them have, and that possibility 
 was not sufficiently in the foreground of Su- 
 sanna's mind when she finished what she con- 
 sidered an exhaustive study of her husband's 
 character. 
 
 "I am leaving you, John [she wrote], to see 
 if I can keep the little love I have left for you 
 as the father of my children. I seem to have 
 lost all the rest of it living with you. I am not 
 perfectly sure that I am right in going, for 
 everybody seems to think that women, mothers 
 especially, should bear anything rather than 
 desert the home. I could not take Jack away, 
 for you love him and he will be a comfort to 
 you. A comfort to you, yes, but what will you 
 be to him now that he is growing older ? That 
 is the thought that troubles me, yet I dare not 
 take him with me when he is half yours. You 
 will not miss me, nor will the loss of Sue make 
 any difference. Oh, John! how can you help 
 
SUSANNA AND SUE 
 
 loving that blessed little creature, so much bet- 
 ter and so much more gifted than either of us 
 that we can only wonder how we came to be 
 her father and mother ? Your sin against her is 
 greater than that against me, for at least you 
 are not responsible for bringing me into the 
 world. I know Louisa will take care of Jack, 
 and she lives so near that you can see him as 
 often as you wish. I shall let her know my ad- 
 dress, which I have asked her to keep to her- 
 self. She will write to me if you or Jack should 
 be seriously ill, but not for any other reason. 
 
 "As for you, there is nothing more that I 
 can say except to confess freely that I was not 
 the right wife for you and that mine was not 
 the only mistake. I have tried my very best 
 to meet you in everything that was not abso- 
 lutely wrong, and I have used all the argu- 
 ments I could think of, but it only made mat- 
 ters worse. I thought I knew you, John, in the 
 old days. How comes it that we have traveled 
 so far apart, we who began together ? It seems 
 
ip your lite sern 
 is not life, the sorry thing you have lived lately, 
 but I cannot wait any longer ! I am tired, tired, 
 tired of waiting and hoping, too tired to do 
 anything but drag myself away from the sight 
 of your folly. You have wasted our children's 
 substance, indulged your appetites until you 
 have lost the respect of your best friends, and 
 you have made me — who was your choice, 
 your wife, the head of your house, the woman 
 who brought your children into the world — 
 you have made me an object of pity; a poor, 
 neglected thing who could not meet her neigh- 
 bors' eyes without blushing." 
 
 When Jack and his father returned from 
 their outing at eight o'clock in the evening, 
 having had supper at a wayside hotel, the boy 
 went to bed philosophically, lighting his lamp 
 for himself, the conclusion being that the two 
 other members of the household were a little 
 late, but would be in presently. 
 
SUSANNA AND SUE 
 
 The next morning was bright and fair. Jack 
 waked at cockcrow, and after calling to his 
 mother and Sue, jumped out of bed, ran into 
 their rooms to find them empty, then bounced 
 down the stairs two at a time, going through 
 the sitting-room on his way to find Ellen in the 
 kitchen. His father was sitting at the table 
 with the still-lighted student lamp on it; the 
 table where lessons had been learned, books 
 read, stories told, mending done, checkers and 
 dominoes played ; the big, round walnut table 
 that was the focus of the family life — but 
 mother's table, not father's. 
 
 John Hathaway had never left his chair nor 
 taken off his hat. His cane leaned against his 
 knee, his gloves were in his left hand, while 
 the right held Susanna's letter. 
 
 He was asleep, although his lips twitched 
 and he stirred uneasily. His face was haggard, 
 and behind his closed lids, somewhere in the 
 centre of thought and memory, a train of fiery 
 words burned in an ever-widening circle, round 
 
 s 
 
A SON OF ADAM 
 
 and round and round, ploughing, searing their 
 way through some obscure part of him that 
 had heretofore been without feeling, but was 
 now all quick and alive with sensation. 
 
 " You have made me — who was your 
 choice, your wife, the head of your house, the 
 woman who brought your children into the 
 world — you have made me an object of pity ; a 
 poor, neglected thing who could not meet her 
 neighbors'' eyes without blushing :" 
 
 Any one who wished to pierce John Hatha- 
 way's armor at that period of his life would 
 have had to use a very sharp and pointed 
 arrow, for he was well wadded with the belief 
 that a man has a right to do what he likes. 
 Susanna's shaft was tipped with truth and 
 dipped in the blood of her outraged heart. 
 The stored-up force of silent years went into 
 the speeding of it. She had never shot an 
 arrow before, and her skill was instinctive 
 rather than scientific, but the powers were on 
 her side and she aimed better than she knew 
 
SUSANNA AND SUE 
 
 — those who took note of John Hathaway's 
 behavior that summer would have testified 
 willingly to that. It was the summer in which 
 his boyish irresponsibility slipped away from 
 him once and for all ; a summer in which the 
 face of life ceased to be an indistinguishable 
 mass of meaningless events and disclosed an 
 order, a reason, a purpose hitherto unseen and 
 undefined. The boy "grew up," rather tardily 
 it must be confessed. His soul had not added 
 a cubit to its stature in sunshine, gayety, and 
 prosperity; it took the shock of grief, hurt 
 pride, solitude, and remorse to make a man of 
 John Hathaway. 
 
IT was a radiant July morning in Albion 
 village, and when Sue first beheld it from 
 the bedroom window at the Shaker Settlement, 
 she had wished ardently that it might never, 
 never grow dark, and that Jack and Fardie 
 might be having the very same sunshine in 
 Farnham. It was not noon yet, but experience 
 had in some way tempered the completeness 
 of her joy, for the marks of tears were on her 
 pretty little face. She had neither been scolded 
 nor punished, but she had been dragged away 
 from a delicious play without any adequate 
 reason. She had disappeared after breakfast, 
 while Susanna was helping Sister Tabitha with 
 
SUSANNA AND SUE 
 
 the beds and the dishes, but as she was the most 
 docile of children, her mother never thought of 
 anxiety. At nine o'clock Eldress Abby took 
 Susanna to the laundry house, and there under 
 a spreading maple were Sue and the two 
 youngest little Shakeresses, children of seven 
 and eight respectively. Sue was directing the 
 plays : chattering, planning, ordering, and 
 suggesting expedients to her slower-minded 
 and less-experienced companions. They had 
 dragged a large box from one of the sheds and 
 set it up under the tree. The interior had been 
 quickly converted into a commodious resi- 
 dence, one not in the least of a Shaker type. 
 Small bluing-boxes served for bedstead and 
 dining-table, bits of broken china for the 
 dishes, while tiny flat stones were the seats, 
 and four clothes-pins, tastefully clad in hand- 
 kerchiefs, surrounded the table. 
 
 "Do they kneel in prayer before they eat, 
 as all Believers do?" asked Shaker Mary. 
 
 "I don't believe Adam and Eve was Be- 
 
pray, anyway, though clothes-pins don't kneel 
 nicely." 
 
 "I've got another one all dressed," said 
 little Shaker Jane. 
 
 "We can't have any more; Adam and Eve 
 did n't have only two children in my Sunday- 
 school lesson, — Cain and Abel," objected 
 Sue. 
 
 "Can't this one be a company?" pleaded 
 Mary, anxious not to waste the clothes-pin. 
 
 "But where could comp'ny come from?" 
 queried Sue. "There was n't any more people 
 anywheres but just Adam and Eve and Cain 
 and Abel. Put the clothes-pin in your apron- 
 pocket, Jane, and bimeby we'll let Eve have a 
 little new baby, and I'll get Mardie to name it 
 right out of the Bible. Now let's begin. Adam 
 is awfully tired this morning; he says, 'Eve, 
 I've been workin' all night and I can't eat my 
 breakfuss.' Now, Mary, you be Cain, he's a 
 
ex 
 
 ( 
 
 SUSANNA AND SUE 
 
 little boy, and you must say, 'Fardie, play a^ 
 little with me, please!' and Fardie will say, 
 'Child'en should n't talk at the — '" 
 
 What subjects of conversation would have 
 been aired at the Adamic family board before 
 breakfast was finished will never be known, 
 for Eldress Abby, with a firm but not unkind 
 grasp, took Shaker Jane and Mary by their 
 little hands and said, "Morning's not the time 
 for play; run over to Sister Martha and help 
 her shell the peas; then there'll be your seams 
 to oversew." 
 
 Sue watched the disappearing children and 
 saw the fabric of her dream fade into thin air ; 
 but she was a person of considerable individual- 
 ity for her years. Her lip quivered, tears rushed 
 to her eyes and flowed silently down her 
 cheeks, but without a glance at Eldress Abby 
 or a word of comment she walked slowly away 
 from the laundry, her chin high. 
 
 "Sue meant all right, she was only playing 
 the plays of the world," said Eldress Abby, 
 
DIVERS DOCTRINES 
 
 "but you can well understand, Susanna, that 
 we can't let our Shaker children play that way 
 and get wrong ideas into their heads at the be- 
 ginning. We don't condemn an honest, orderly 
 marriage as a worldly institution, but we claim 
 it has no place in Christ's kingdom ; therefore 
 we leave it to the world, where it belongs. The 
 world's people live on the lower plane of Adam ; 
 the Shakers try to live on the Christ plane, 
 in virgin purity, long-suffering, meekness, and 
 patience." 
 
 "I see, I know," Susanna answered slowly, 
 with a little glance at injured Sue walking 
 toward the house, "but we need n't leave the 
 children unhappy this morning, for I can 
 think of a play that will comfort them and 
 please you. — Come back, Sue ! Wait a minute, 
 Mary and Jane, before you go to Sister 
 Martha! We will play the story that Sister 
 Tabitha told us last week. Do you remember 
 about Mother Ann Lee in the English prison ? 
 The soap-box will be her cell, for it was so 
 
SUSANNA AND SUE 
 
 _J small she could not lie down in it. Take some 
 ( of the shingles, Jane, and close up the open 
 side of the box. Do you see the large brown 
 spot in one of them, Mary? Push that very 
 hard with a clothes-pin and there'll be a hole 
 through the shingle; — that's right! Now, 
 Sister Tabitha said that Mother Ann was kept 
 for days without food, for people thought she 
 was a wicked, dangerous woman, and they 
 would have been willing to let her die of 
 starvation. But there was a great key-hole in 
 the door, and James Whittaker, a boy of nine- 
 teen, who loved Mother Ann and believed in 
 her, put the stem of a clay pipe in the hole and 
 poured a mixture of wine and milk through it. 
 He managed to do this day after day, so that 
 when the jailer opened the cell door, expecting 
 to find Mother Ann dying for lack of food, she 
 walked out looking almost as strong and well 
 as when she entered. You can play it all out, 
 and afterwards you can make the ship that 
 brought Mother Ann and the other Shakers 
 
DIVERS DOCTRINES 
 
 from Liverpool to New York. The clothes- 
 pins can be — who will they be, Jane?" 
 
 "William Lee, Nancy Lee, James Whit- 
 taker, and I forget the others," recited Jane, 
 like an obedient parrot. 
 
 "And it will be splendid to have James 
 Whittaker, for he really came to Albion," said 
 Mary. 
 
 "Perhaps he stood on this very spot more 
 than once," mused Abby. "It was Mother 
 Ann's vision that brought them to this land, 
 — a vision of a large tree with outstretching 
 branches, every leaf of which shone with the 
 brightness of a burning torch! Oh! if the 
 vision would only come true! If Believers 
 would only come to us as many as the leaves 
 on the tree," she sighed, as she and Susanna 
 moved away from the group of chattering chil- 
 dren, all as eager to play the history of Shaker- 
 ism as they had been to dramatize the family 
 life of Adam and Eve. 
 
 "There must be so many men and women 
 
i 
 
 SUSANNA AND SUE 
 
 without ties, living useless lives, with no aim or 
 object in them," Susanna said, "I wonder that 
 more of them do not find their way here. The 
 peace and goodness and helpfulness of the life 
 sink straight into my heart. The Brothers and 
 Sisters are so friendly and cheery with one an- 
 other ; there is neither gossip nor hard words ; 
 there is pleasant work, and your thoughts 
 seem to be all so concentrated upon right 
 living that it is like heaven below, only I 
 feel that the cross is there, bravely as you all 
 bear it." 
 
 " There are roses on my cross most beautiful to see, 
 As I turn from all the dross from which it sets me free," 
 
 quoted Eldress Abby, devoutly. 
 
 "It is easy enough for me," continued Su- 
 sanna, "for it was no cross for me to give up my 
 husband at the time ; but oh, if a woman had a 
 considerate, loving man to live with, one who 
 would strengthen her and help her to be good, 
 one who would protect and cherish her, one 
 who would be an example to his children and 
 
DIVERS DOCTRINES 
 
 bring them up in the fear of the Lord — that 
 would be heaven below, too; and how could 
 she bear to give it all up when it seems so good, 
 so true, so right ? Might n't two people walk 
 together to God if both chose the same path ?" 
 
 "It's my belief that one can find the load 
 better alone than when somebody else is going 
 alongside to distract them. Not that the Lord 
 is going to turn anybody away, not even when 
 they bring Him a lot of burned-out trash for a 
 gift," said Eldress Abby, bluntly. "But don't 
 you believe He sees the difference between a 
 person that comes to Him when there is no- 
 where else to turn — a person that's tried all 
 and found it wanting — and one that gives up 
 freely pleasure, and gain, and husband, and 
 home, to follow the Christ life?" 
 
 "Yes, He must, He must," Susanna an- 
 swered faintly. "But the children, Eldress 
 Abby ! If you had n't any, you could perhaps 
 keep yourself from wanting them; but if you 
 had, how could you give them up ? Jesus was 
 
i 
 
 SUSANNA AND SUE 
 
 the great Saviour of mankind, but next to Him 
 it seems as if the children had been the little 
 saviours, from the time the first one was born 
 until this very day!" 
 
 "Yee, I've no doubt they keep the worst 
 of the world's people, those that are living in 
 carnal marriage without a thought of godliness, 
 — I've no doubt children keep that sort from 
 going to the lowest perdition," allowed Eldress 
 Abby ; " and those we bring up in the Commu- 
 nity make the best converts ; but to a Shaker, 
 the greater the sacrifice, the greater the glory. 
 I wish you was gathered in, Susanna, for your 
 hands and feet are quick to serve, your face is 
 turned toward the truth, and your heart is all 
 ready to receive the revelation." 
 
 "I wish I needn't turn my back on one 
 set of duties to take up another," murmured 
 Susanna, timidly. 
 
 "Yee; no doubt you do. Your business is to 
 find out which are the higher duties, and then 
 do those. Just make up your mind whether 
 
DIVERS DOCTRINES 
 
 you'd rather replenish earth, as you've been 
 doing, or replenish heaven, as we're trying to 
 do. — But I must go to my work ; ten o'clock 
 in the morning 's a poor time to be discussing 
 doctrine! You're for weeding, Susanna, I 
 suppose?" 
 
 Brother Ansel was seated at a grindstone 
 under the apple trees, teaching (intermittently) 
 a couple of boys to grind a scythe, when Su- 
 sanna came to her work in the herb-garden, Sue 
 walking discreetly at her heels. 
 
 Ansel was a slow-moving, humorously- 
 inclined, easy-going Brother, who was drifting 
 into the kingdom of heaven without any special 
 effort on his part. 
 
 "I'd 'bout as lives be a Shaker as anything 
 else," had been his rather dubious statement 
 of faith when he requested admittance into 
 the band of Believers. "No more crosses, 
 accordin' to my notion, an' consid'able more 
 chance o' crowns ! ' ' 
 
 His experience of life " on the Adamic plane," 
 
SUSANNA AND SUE 
 
 the holy estate of matrimony, being the chief 
 sin of this way of thought, had disposed him to 
 regard woman as an apparently necessary, but 
 not especially desirable, being. The theory of 
 holding property in common had no terrors 
 for him. He was generous, unambitious, frugal- 
 minded, somewhat lacking in energy, and just 
 as actively interested in his brother's welfare 
 as in his own, which is perhaps not saying 
 much. Shakerism was to him not a craving of 
 the spirit, not a longing of the soul, but a simple, 
 prudent theory of existence, lessening the vari- 
 ous risks that man is exposed to in his journey 
 through this vale of tears. 
 
 "Women-folks makes splendid Shakers," he 
 was wont to say. "They're all right as Sisters, 
 'cause their belief makes 'em safe. It kind o' 
 shears 'em o' their strength ; tames their sper- 
 its; takes the sting out of 'em an' keeps 'em 
 from bein' sassy an' domineerin'. Jest as long 
 as they think marriage is right, they '11 marry 
 ye spite of anything ye can do or say — four of 
 
DIVERS DOCTRINES 
 
 'em married my father one after another, 
 though he fit 'em off as hard as he knew how. 
 But if ye can once get the faith o' Mother Ann 
 into 'em, they 're as good afterwards as they 
 was wicked afore. There 's no stoppin' women- 
 folks once ye get 'em started ; they don't keer 
 whether it's heaven or the other place, so long 
 as they get where they want to go ! " 
 
 Elder Daniel Gray had heard Brother Ansel 
 state his religious theories more than once when 
 he was first "gathered in," and secretly la- 
 mented the lack of spirituality in the new con- 
 vert. The Elder was an instrument more finely 
 attuned ; sober, humble, pure-minded, zealous, 
 consecrated to the truth as he saw it, he labored 
 in and out of season for the faith he held so 
 dear; yet as the years went on, he noted that 
 Ansel, notwithstanding his eccentric views, 
 lived an honest, temperate, God-fearing life, 
 talking no scandal, dwelling in unity with his 
 brethren and sisters, and upholding the banner 
 of Shakerism in his own peculiar way. 
 
 i 
 
SUSANNA AND SUE 
 
 As Susanna approached him, Ansel called 
 out, ' The yairbs are all ready for ye, Susanna ; 
 the weeds have been on the rampage sence 
 yesterday's rain. Seems like the more use- 
 lesser a thing is, the more it flourishes. The 
 yairbs grow; oh, yes, they make out to grow; 
 but you don't see 'em come leapin' an' tearin' 
 out o' the airth like weeds. Then there 's the 
 birds! I've jest been stoppin' my grindin' to 
 look at 'em carry on. Take 'em all in all, 
 there ain't nothin' so lazy an' aimless an' 
 busy'boutnothin' as birds. They go kitin' 
 'roun' from tree to tree, hoppin' an' chirpin', 
 flyin' here an' there 'thout no airthly objeck 
 'ceptin' to fly back ag'in. There 's a heap o' 
 useless critters in the univarse, but I guess 
 birds are 'bout the uselyest, 'less it's grass- 
 hoppers, mebbe." 
 
 "I don't care what you say about the grass- 
 hoppers, Ansel, but you shan'tabuse the birds," 
 said Susanna, stooping over the beds of tansy 
 and sage, thyme and summer savory. "Weeds 
 
DIVERS DOCTRINES 
 
 or no weeds, we're going to have a great crop 
 of herbs this year, Ansel!" 
 
 "Yee, so we be! We sowed more'n usual 
 so's to keep the two 'jiners' at work long's we 
 could. — Take that scythe over to the barn, 
 Jacob, an' fetch me another, an' step spry." 
 
 "What's a jiner, Ansel?" 
 
 " Winter Shakers, I call 'em. They're reg'lar 
 constitooshanal dyed-in-the-wool jiners, jinin' 
 most anything an' hookin' on most anywheres. 
 They jine when it comes on too cold to sleep 
 outdoors, an' they onjine when it comes on 
 spring. Elder Gray 's always hopin' to gather 
 in new souls, so he gives the best of 'em a few 
 months' trial. How are ye, Hannah?" he 
 called to a Sister passing through the orchard 
 to search for any possible green apples under 
 the trees. " Make us a good old-fashioned 
 deep-dish pandowdy an' we'll all do our best 
 to eat it!" 
 
 "I suppose the 'jiners' get discouraged and 
 fear they can't keep up to the standard. Not 
 
SUSANNA AND SUE 
 
 everybody is good enough to lead a self-denying 
 Shaker life," said Susanna, pushing back the 
 close sunbonnet from her warm face, which 
 had grown younger, smoother, and sweeter in 
 the last few weeks. 
 
 "Nay, I s'pose likely; 'less they 're same as 
 me, a born Shaker," Ansel replied. "I don't 
 hanker after strong drink; don't like tobaccer 
 (always could keep my temper 'thout smokin'), 
 ain't partic'lar 'bout meat-eatin', don't keer 
 'bout heapin' up riches, can't 'stand the ways 
 o' worldly women-folks, jest as lives confess my 
 sins to the Elder as not, 'cause I hain't sinned 
 any to amount to anything sence I made my 
 first confession ; there I be, a natural follerer 
 o' Mother Ann Lee." 
 
 Susanna drew her Shaker bonnet forward 
 over her eyes and turned her back to Brother 
 Ansel under the pretense of reaching over to 
 the rows of sweet marjoram. She had never 
 supposed it possible that she could laugh again, 
 and indeed she seldom felt like it, but Ansel's 
 
 S 
 
DIVERS DOCTRINES 
 
 interpretations of Shaker doctrine were almost 
 too much for her latent sense of humor. 
 
 "What are you smiling at, and me so sad, 
 Mardie?" quavered Sue, piteously, from the 
 little plot of easy weeding her mother had given 
 her to do. " I keep remembering my game ! It 
 was such a Christian game, too. Lots nicer 
 than Mother Ann in prison ; for Jane said her 
 mother and father was both Believers, and no- 
 body was good enough to pour milk through 
 the key-hole but her. I wanted to give the 
 clothes-pins story names, like Hilda and Percy, 
 but I called them Adam and Eve and Cain and 
 Abel just because I thought the Shakers would 
 'specially like a Bible play. I love Elderess 
 Abby, but she does stop my happiness, Mar- 
 die. That's the second time to-day, for she 
 took Moses away from me when I was kiss- 
 ing him because he pinched his thumb in the 
 window." 
 
 "Why did you do that, Sue?" remonstrated 
 her mother softly, remembering Ansel's prox- 
 
SUSANNA AND SUE 
 
 imity. "You never used to kiss strange little 
 boys at home in Farnham." 
 
 " Moses is n't a boy ; he 's only six, and that 's 
 a baby; besides, I like him better than any 
 little boys at home, and that 's the reason I 
 kissed him ; there 's no harm in boy-kissing, is 
 there, Mardie?" 
 
 "You don't know anybody here very well 
 yet; not well enough to kiss them," Susanna 
 answered, rather hopeless as to the best way of 
 inculcating the undesirability of the Adamic 
 plane of thought at this early age. "While we 
 stay here, Sue, we ought both to be very careful 
 to do exactly as the Shakers do." 
 
 By this time mother and child had reached 
 the orchard end of a row, and Brother Ansel 
 was thirstily waiting to deliver a little more 
 of the information with which his mind was 
 always teeming. 
 
 "Them Boston people that come over to our 
 public meetin' last Sunday," he began, "they 
 was dretful scairt 'bout what would become o' 
 
DIVERS DOCTRINES 
 
 the human race if it should all turn Shakers. 
 'I guess you need n't worry,' I says; 'it'll take 
 consid'able of a spell to convert all you city 
 folks,' I says, 'an' after all, what if the world 
 should come to an end ? ' I says. ' If half we hear 
 is true 'bout the way folks carry on in New 
 York and Chicago, it's 'bout time it stopped,' 
 I says, 'an' I guess the Lord could do a con- 
 sid'able better job on a second one,' I says, 
 ' after flndin' out the weak places in this.' They 
 can't stand givin' up their possessions, the 
 world's folks ; that's the principal trouble with 
 'em ! If you don't have nothin' to give up, — 
 like some o' the tramps that happen along here 
 and convince the Elder they're jest bustin' 
 with the fear o' God, — why, o' course 't ain't 
 no trick at all to be a Believer." 
 
 "Did you have much to give up, Brother 
 Ansel?" Susanna asked. 
 
 " 'Bout's much as any sinner ever had that 
 jined this Community," replied Ansel, com- 
 placently. "The list o' what I consecrated to 
 
SUSANNA AND SUE 
 
 this Society when I was gathered in was : One 
 horse, one wagon, one two-year-old heifer, one 
 axe, one saddle, one padlock, one bed and bed- 
 ding, four turkeys, eleven hens, one pair o' 
 plough-irons, two chains, and eleven dollars in 
 cash. — Can you beat that?" 
 
 "Oh, yes, things!" said Susanna, absent- 
 mindedly. "I was thinking of family and 
 friends, pleasures and memories and ambi- 
 tions and hopes." 
 
 "I guess it don't pinch you any worse to 
 give up a hope than it would a good two-year- 
 old heifer," retorted Ansel; "but there, you 
 can't never tell what folks '11 hang on to the 
 hardest! The man that drove them Boston 
 folks over here last Sunday, — did you notice 
 him ? the one that had the sister with a bright 
 red dress an' hat on ? — Land ! I could think 
 just how hell must look whenever my eye 
 lighted on that girl's git-up ! — Well, I done 
 my best to exhort that driver, bein' as how we 
 had a good chance to talk while we was hitchin' 
 
7 
 
 DIVERS DOCTRINES 
 
 an' unhitchin' the team; an' Elder Gray al- 
 ways says I ain't earnest enough in preachin' 
 the faith ; — but he did n't learn anything 
 from the meetin'. Kep' his eye on the Shaker 
 bunnits, an' took notice o' the marchin' an' 
 dancin', but he did n't care nothin' 'bout doc- 
 trine. 
 
 " * I draw the line at bein' a cerebrate,' he 
 says. 'I'm willin' to sell all my goods an' 
 divide with the poor,' he says, 'but I ain't 
 goin' to be no cerebrate. If I don't have no 
 other luxuries, I will have a wife,' he says. 
 'I've hed three, an' if this one don't last me 
 out, I'll get another, if it's only to start the 
 kitchen fire in the mornin' an' put the cat in 
 the shed nights! '" 
 
IV 
 LOUISA'S MIND 
 
LOUISA, otherwise Mrs. Adlai Banks, the 
 elder sister of Susanna's husband, was 
 a rock-ribbed widow of forty-five summers, — 
 forty-five winters would seem a better phrase 
 in which to assert her age, — who resided on a 
 small farm twenty miles from the manufactur- 
 ing town of Farnham. 
 
 When the Fates were bestowing qualities of 
 mind and heart upon the Hathaway babies, 
 they gave the more graceful, genial, likable 
 ones to John, — not realizing, perhaps, what 
 bad use he would make of them, — and en- 
 dowed Louisa with great deposits of honesty, 
 sincerity, energy, piety, and frugality, all so 
 
SUSANNA AND SUE 
 
 mysteriously compounded that they turned to 
 granite in her hands. If she had been consulted, 
 it would have been all the same. She would 
 never have accepted John's charm of person- 
 ality at the expense of being saddled with his 
 weaknesses, and he would not have taken her 
 cast-iron virtues at any price whatsoever. 
 
 She was sweeping her porch on that day in 
 May when Susanna and Sue had wakened in 
 the bare upper chamber at the Shaker Settle- 
 ment — Sue clear-eyed, jubilant, expectant, 
 unafraid; Susanna pale from her fitful sleep, 
 weary with the burden of her heart. 
 
 Looking down the road, Mrs. Banks espied 
 the form of her brother John walking in her 
 direction and leading Jack by the hand. 
 
 This was a most unusual sight, for John's 
 calls had been uncommonly few of late years, 
 since a man rarely visits a lady relative for 
 the mere purpose of hearing "a piece of her 
 mind." This piece, large, solid, highly flavored 
 with pepper, and as acid as mental vinegar 
 
could make it, was Louisa Banks's only con- 
 tribution to conversation when she met her 
 brother. She could not stop for any airy persi- 
 flage about weather, crops, or politics when 
 her one desire was to tell him what she thought 
 of him. 
 
 " Good-morning, Louisa. Shake hands with 
 your aunt, Jack." 
 
 " He can't till I'm through sweeping. Good- 
 morning, John; what brings you here?" 
 
 John sat down on the steps, and Jack flew 
 to the barn, where there was generally an 
 amiable hired man and a cheerful cow, both 
 infinitely better company than his highly re- 
 spected and wealthy aunt. 
 
 "I came because I had to bring the boy to 
 the only relation I've got in the world," John 
 answered tersely. "My wife's left me." 
 
 "Well, she's been a great while doing it," 
 remarked Louisa, digging her broom into the 
 cracks of the piazza floor and making no pause 
 for reflection. " If she had n't had the patience 
 
SUSANNA AND SUE 
 
 of Job and the meekness of Moses, she'd have 
 gone long before. Where'd she go?" 
 
 "I don't know; she did n't say." 
 
 "Did you take the trouble to look through 
 the house for her? I ain't certain you fairly 
 know her by sight nowadays, do you?" 
 
 John flushed crimson, but bit his lip in an 
 attempt to keep his temper. "She left a let- 
 ter," he said, "and she took Sue with her." 
 
 "That was all right; Sue's a nervous little 
 thing and needs at least one parent ; she has n't 
 been used to more, so she won't miss anything. 
 Jack's like most of the Hathaways; he'll grow 
 up his own way, without anybody's help or 
 hindrance. What are you going to do with 
 him?" 
 
 " Leave him with you, of course. What else 
 could I do?" 
 
 "Very well, I'll take him, and while I'm 
 about it I'd like to give you a piece of my 
 mind." 
 
 John was fighting for self-control, but he 
 
 s 
 
LOUISA'S MIND 
 
 was too wretched and remorseful for rage to 
 have any real sway over him. 
 
 " Is it the same old piece, or a different one ? " 
 he asked, setting his teeth grimly. " I should n't 
 think you'd have any mind left, you've given 
 so many pieces of it to me already." 
 
 "I have some left, and plenty, too," an- 
 swered Louisa, dashing into the house, banging 
 the broom into a corner, coming out again like 
 a breeze, and slamming the door behind her. 
 "You can leave the boy here and welcome; 
 I'll take good care of him, and if you don't 
 send me twenty dollars a month for his food 
 and clothes, I'll turn him outdoors. The more 
 responsibility other folks rid you of, the more 
 you'll let 'em, and I won't take a feather's 
 weight off you for fear you '11 sink into everlast- 
 ing perdition." 
 
 "I did n't expect any sympathy from you," 
 said John, drearily, pulling himself up from the 
 steps and leaning against the honeysuckle 
 trellis. "Susanna's just the same. Women are 
 
 ^ 
 
devils; it does n't make much difference." 
 
 "I guess you 've found a few soft ones, if 
 report says true," returned Louisa, bluntly. 
 "You'd better go and get some of their sym- 
 pathy, the kind you can buy and pay for. The 
 way you've ruined your life turns me fairly 
 sick. You had a good father and mother, good 
 education and advantages, enough money to 
 start you in business, the best of wives, and 
 two children any man could be proud of, one of 
 'em especially. You've thrown 'em all away, 
 and what for ? Horses and cards and gay com- 
 pany, late suppers, with wine, and for aught I 
 know, whiskey, — you the son of a man who 
 did n't know the taste of ginger beer! You've 
 spent your days and nights with a pack of 
 carousing men and women that would take 
 your last cent and not leave you enough for 
 honest burial." 
 
 "It's a pity we didn't make a traveling 
 
LOUISA'S MIND 
 
 preacher of you ! " exclaimed John, bitterly. 
 "Lord Almighty, I wonder how such women 
 as you can live in the world, you know so little 
 about it, and so little about men." 
 
 "I know all I want to about 'em," retorted 
 Louisa, "and precious little that's good. 
 They 're a gluttonous, self-indulgent, extrava- 
 gant, reckless, pleasure-loving lot! My hus- 
 band was one of the best of 'em, and he 
 would n't have amounted to a hill of beans if 
 I had n't devoted fifteen years to disciplining, 
 uplifting, and strengthening him!" 
 
 "You managed to strengthen him so that he 
 died before he was fifty!" 
 
 "It don't matter when a man dies," said 
 the remorseless Mrs. Banks, "if he's suc- 
 ceeded in living a decent, God-fearing life. As 
 for you, John Hathaway, I'll tell you the truth 
 if you are my brother, for Susanna's too much 
 of a saint to speak out." 
 
 "Don't be afraid; Susanna's spoken out at 
 last, plainly enough to please even you!" 
 
suppose 
 
 spunk enough to resent anything. I shall be 
 sorry to-morrow, 's likely as not, for freeing my 
 mind as much as I have, but my temper's up 
 and I'm going to be the humble instrument of 
 Providence and try to turn you from the error 
 of your ways. You've defaced and degraded 
 the temple the Lord built for you, and if He 
 should come this minute and try to turn out the 
 crowd of evil-doers you 've kept in it, I doubt if 
 He could!" 
 
 "I hope He'll approve of the way you've 
 used your * temple,'" said John, with stinging 
 emphasis. "I should n't want to live in such a 
 noisy one myself; I'd rather be a bat in a bel- 
 fry. Good-by; I've had a pleasant call, as 
 usual, and you've been a real sister to me in 
 my trouble. You shall have the twenty dollars 
 a month. Jack's clothes are in that valise, and 
 there'll be a trunk to-morrow. Susanna said 
 she'd write and let you know her whereabouts." 
 
 So saying, John Hathaway strode down the 
 
LOUISA'S MIND 
 
 path, closed the gate behind him, and walked 
 rapidly along the road that led to the station. 
 It was a quiet road and he met few persons. 
 He had neither dressed nor shaved since the 
 day before ; his face was haggard, his heart was 
 like a lump of lead in his breast. Of what use 
 to go to the empty house in Farnham when he 
 could stifle his misery by a night with his 
 friends ? 
 
 No, he could not do that, either! The very 
 thought of them brought a sense of satiety and 
 disgust; the craving for what they would give 
 him would come again in time, no doubt, but 
 for the moment he was sick to the very soul of 
 all they stood for. The feeling of complete 
 helplessness, of desertion, of being alone in 
 mid-ocean without a sail or a star in sight, 
 mounted and swept over him. Susanna had 
 been his sail, his star, although he had never 
 fully realized it, and he had cut himself adrift 
 from her pure, steadfast love, blinding himself 
 with cheap and vulgar charms. 
 
SUSANNA AND SUE 
 
 The next train to Farnham was not due for 
 an hour. His steps faltered; he turned into a 
 clump of trees by the wayside and flung him- 
 self on the ground to cry like a child, he who 
 had not shed a tear since he was a boy of ten. 
 
 If Susanna could have seen that often 
 longed-for burst of despair and remorse, that 
 sudden recognition of his sins against himself 
 and her, that gush of penitent tears, her heart 
 might have softened once again; a flicker of 
 flame might have lighted the ashes of her dying 
 love; she might have taken his head on her 
 shoulder, and said, "Never mind, John ! Let's 
 forget, and begin all over again!" 
 
 Matters did not look any brighter for John 
 the next week, for his senior partner, Joel 
 Atterbury, requested him to withdraw from the 
 firm as soon as matters could be legally ar- 
 ranged. He was told that he had not been 
 doing, nor earning, his share; that his way of 
 living during the year just past had not been 
 
LOUISA'S MIND 
 
 any credit to " the concern," and that he, Atter- 
 bury, sympathized too heartily with Mrs. John 
 Hathaway to take any pleasure in doing busi- 
 ness with Mr. John. 
 
 John's remnant of pride, completely hum- 
 bled by this last withdrawal of confidence, 
 would not suffer him to tell Atterbury that he 
 had come to his senses and bidden farewell to 
 the old life, or so he hoped and believed. 
 
 To lose a wife and child in a way infinitely 
 worse than death ; to hear the unwelcome truth 
 that as a husband you have grown so offensive 
 as to be beyond endurance ; to have your own 
 sister tell you that you richly deserve such treat- 
 ment ; to be virtually dismissed from a valua- 
 ble business connection; — all this is enough 
 to sober any man above the grade of a moral 
 idiot, and John was not that; he was simply 
 a self-indulgent, pleasure-loving, thoughtless, 
 willful fellow, without any great amount of prin- 
 ciple. He took his medicine, however, said no- 
 thing, and did his share of the business from 
 
SUSANNA AND SUE 
 
 day to day doggedly, keeping away from his 
 partner as much as possible. 
 
 Ellen, the faithful maid of all work, stayed 
 on with him at the old home ; Jack wrote to him 
 every week, and often came to spend Sunday 
 with him. 
 
 " Aunt Louisa's real good to me," he told his 
 father, "but she's not like mother. Seems to 
 me mother's kind of selfish staying away from 
 us so long. When do you expect her back?" 
 
 "I don't know; not before winter, I'm 
 afraid; and don't call her selfish, I won't 
 have it! Your mother never knew she had 
 a self." 
 
 "If she'd only left Sue behind, we could have 
 had more good times, we three together!" 
 
 "No, our family is four, Jack, and we can 
 never have any good times, one, two, or three of 
 us, because we 're four ! When one 's away, 
 whichever it is, it's wrong, but it's the worst 
 when it's mother. Does your Aunt Louisa 
 write to her?" 
 
LOUISA'S MIND 
 
 "Yes, sometimes, but she never lets me post 
 the letters." 
 
 " Do you write to your mother ? You ought 
 to, you know, even if you don't have time for 
 me. You could ask your aunt to enclose your 
 letters in hers." 
 
 "Do you write to her, father?" 
 
 "Yes, I write twice a week," John answered, 
 thinking drearily of the semi-weekly notes 
 posted in Susanna's empty work-table upstairs. 
 Would she ever read them? He doubted it, 
 unless he died, and she came back to settle his 
 affairs ; but of course he should n't die, — no 
 such good luck. Would a man die who break- 
 fasted at eight, dined at one, supped at six, and 
 went to bed at ten? Would a man die who 
 worked in the garden an hour every after- 
 noon, with half a day Saturday; that being 
 the task most disagreeable to him and most 
 appropriate therefore for penance ? 
 
 Susanna loved flowers and had always 
 wanted a garden, but John had been too much 
 
SUSANNA AND SUE 
 
 occupied with his own concerns to give her the 
 needed help or money so that she could carry 
 out her plans. The last year she had lost heart 
 in many ways, so that little or nothing had been 
 accomplished of all she had dreamed. It would 
 have been laughable, had it not been pathetic, 
 to see John Hathaway dig, delve, grub, sow, 
 water, weed, transplant, generally at the wrong 
 moment, in that dream-garden of Susanna's. 
 He asked no advice and read no books. With 
 feverish intensity, with complete ignorance of 
 Nature's laws and small sympathy with their 
 intricacies, he dug, hoed, raked, fertilized, and 
 planted during that lonely summer. His ab- 
 sent-mindedness caused some expensive fail- 
 ures, as when the wide expanse of Susanna's 
 drying ground, which was to be velvety lawn, 
 "came up" curly lettuce; but he rooted out 
 his frequent mistakes and patiently planted 
 seeds or roots or bulbs over and over and over 
 and over, until something sprouted in his beds, 
 whether it was what he intended or not. While 
 
LOUISA'S MIND 
 
 he weeded the brilliant orange nasturtiums, 
 growing beside the magenta portulacca in a 
 friendly proximity that certainly would never 
 have existed had the mistress of the house been 
 the head-gardener, he thought of nothing but 
 his wife. He knew her pride, her reserve, her 
 sensitive spirit ; he knew her love of truth and 
 honor and purity, the standards of life and 
 conduct she had tried to hold him to so val- 
 iantly, and which he had so dragged in the dust 
 during the blindness and the insanity of the 
 last two years. 
 
 He, John Hathaway, was a deserted hus- 
 band; Susanna had crept away all wounded 
 and resentful. Where was she living and 
 how supporting herself and Sue, when she 
 could not have had a hundred dollars in the 
 world? Probably Louisa was the source of 
 income; conscientious, infernally disagreeable 
 Louisa ! 
 
 Would not the rumor of his changed habit of 
 life reach her by some means in her place of 
 
SUSANNA AND SUE 
 
 hiding, sooner or later ? Would she not yearn 
 for a sight of Jack ? Would she not finally give 
 him a chance to ask forgiveness, or had she 
 lost every trace of affection for him, as her 
 letter seemed to imply ? He walked the garden 
 paths, with these and other unanswerable 
 questions, and when he went to his lonely 
 room at night, he held the lamp up to a bit 
 of poetry that he had cut from a magazine and 
 pinned to the looking-glass. If John Hathaway 
 could be brought to the reading of poetry, he 
 might even glance at the Bible in course of 
 time, Louisa would have said. It was in May 
 that Susanna had gone, and the first line of 
 verse held his attention. 
 
 "May comes, day comes, 
 One who was away comes; 
 All the earth is glad again, 
 Kind and fair to me. 
 
 'May comes, day comes, 
 One who was away comes; 
 Set her place at hearth and board 
 As it used to be. 
 
"May comes, day comes, 
 One who was away comes; 
 Higher are the hills of home, 
 Bluer is the sea." 
 
 The Hathaway house was in the suburbs, 
 on a rise of ground, and as John turned to the 
 window he saw the full moon hanging yellow 
 in the sky. It shone on the verdant slopes and 
 low wooded hills that surrounded the town, 
 and cast a glittering pathway on the ocean that 
 bathed the beaches of the near-by shore. 
 
 "How long shall I have to wait," he won- 
 dered, "before my hills of home look higher, 
 and my sea bluer, because Susanna has come 
 back to 'hearth and board'!" 
 
SUSANNA had helped at various house- 
 hold tasks ever since her arrival at the 
 Settlement, for there was no room for drones 
 in the Shaker hive ; but after a few weeks in 
 the kitchen with Martha, the herb-garden had 
 been assigned to her as her particular province, 
 the Sisters thinking her better fitted for it than 
 for the preserving and pickling of fruit, or the 
 basket- weaving that needed special apprentice- 
 ship. 
 
 The Shakers were the first people to raise, 
 put up, and sell garden seeds in our present- 
 day fashion, and it was they, too, who began 
 the preparation of botanical medicines, rais- 
 
SUSANNA AND SUE 
 
 inrr (ratnorinn' rfruitinr onn 
 
 ( 
 
 ing, gathering, drying, and preparing herbs 
 and roots for market; and this industry, 
 driven from the field by modern machinery, 
 was still a valuable source of income in 
 Susanna's day. Plants had always grown for 
 Susanna, and she loved them like friends, 
 humoring their weakness, nourishing their 
 strength, stimulating, coaxing, disciplining 
 them, until they could do no less than flourish 
 under her kind and hopeful hand. 
 
 Oh, that sweet, honest, comforting little 
 garden of herbs, with its wholesome fra- 
 grances ! Healing lay in every root and stem, 
 in every leaf and bud, and the strong aro- 
 matic odors stimulated her flagging spirit or 
 her aching head, after the sleepless nights in 
 which she tried to decide her future life and 
 Sue's. 
 
 The plants were set out in neat rows and 
 clumps, and she soon learned to know the 
 strange ones — chamomile, lobelia, bloodroot, 
 wormwood, lovage, boneset, lemon and sweet 
 
THE LITTLE QUAIL BIRD 
 
 balm, lavender and rue, as well as she knew 
 the old acquaintances familiar to every coun- 
 try-bred child — pennyroyal, peppermint or 
 spearmint, yellow dock, and thoroughwort. 
 
 There was hoeing and weeding before the 
 gathering and drying came ; then Brother Cal- 
 vin, who had charge of the great press, would 
 moisten the dried herbs and press them into 
 quarter and half-pound cakes ready for Sister 
 Martha, who would superintend the younger 
 Shakeresses in papering and labeling them for 
 the market. Last of all, when harvesting was 
 over, Brother Ansel would mount the newly 
 painted seed-cart and leave on his driving trip 
 through the country. Ansel was a capital sales- 
 man, but Brother Issachar, who once took his 
 place and sold almost nothing, brought home 
 a lad on the seed-cart, who afterward became 
 a shining light in the community. ("Thus," 
 said Elder Gray, "does God teach us the 
 diversity of gifts, whereby all may be un- 
 ashamed.") 
 
SUSANNA AND SUE 
 
 If the Albion Shakers were honest and 
 ardent in faith, Susanna thought that their 
 "works" would indeed bear the strictest ex- 
 amination. The Brothers made brooms, floor 
 and dish mops, tubs, pails, and churns, and 
 indeed almost every trade was represented 
 in the various New England Communities. 
 Physicians there were, a few, but no lawyers, 
 sheriffs, policemen, constables, or soldiers, just 
 as there were no courts or saloons or jails. 
 Where there was perfect equality of possession 
 and no private source of gain, it amazed Su- 
 sanna to see the cheery labor, often continued 
 late at night from the sheer joy of it, and the 
 earnest desire to make the Settlement pros- 
 perous. While the Brothers were hammering, 
 nailing, planing, sawing, ploughing, and seed- 
 ing, the Sisters were carding and spinning 
 cotton, wool, and flax, making kerchiefs of 
 linen, straw Shaker bonnets, and dozens of 
 other useful marketable things, not forgetting 
 their famous Shaker apple sauce. 
 
THE LITTLE QUAIL BIRD 
 
 Was there ever such a busy summer, Susanna 
 wondered ; yet with all the early rising, constant 
 labor, and simple fare, she was stronger and 
 hardier than she had been for years. The 
 Shaker palate was never tickled with delicacies, 
 yet the food was well cooked and sufficiently 
 varied. At first there had been the winter 
 vegetables : squash, yellow turnips, beets, and 
 parsnips, with once a week a special Shaker 
 dinner of salt codfish, potatoes, onions, and 
 milk gravy. Each Sister served her turn as 
 cook, but all alike had a wonderful hand with 
 flour, and the whole-wheat bread, cookies, 
 ginger cake, and milk puddings were marvels 
 of lightness. Martha, in particular, could wean 
 the novitiate Shaker from a too riotous de- 
 votion to meat-eating better than most peo- 
 ple, for every dish she sent to the table was 
 delicate, savory, and attractive. 
 
 Dear, patient, devoted Martha! How Su- 
 sanna learned to love her as they worked to- 
 gether in the big sunny, shining kitchen, where 
 
SUSANNA AND SUE 
 
 the cooking-stove as well as every tin plate and 
 pan and spoon might have served as a mirror ! 
 Martha had joined the Society in her mother's 
 arms, being given up to the Lord and placed 
 in "the children's order" before she was one 
 year old. 
 
 "If you should unite with us, Susanna," she 
 said one night after the early supper, when 
 they were peeling apples together, "you'd be 
 thankful you begun early with your little Sue, 
 for she's got a natural attraction to the world, 
 and for it. Not but that she's a tender, loving, 
 obedient little soul ; but when she's among the 
 other young ones, there's a flyaway look about 
 her that makes her seem more like a fairy than 
 a child." 
 
 "She's having rather a hard time learning 
 Shaker ways, but she'll do better in time," 
 sighed her mother. "She came to me of her 
 own accord yesterday and asked : ' Bettent I 
 have my curls cut off, Mardie ? ' " 
 
 "I never put that idea into her head," 
 
THE LITTLE QUAIL BIRD 
 
 Martha interrupted. "She's a visitor and can 
 wear her hair as she's been brought up to 
 wear it." 
 
 "I know, but I fear Sue was moved by other 
 than religious reasons. 'I get up so early, 
 Mardie,' she said, — 'and it takes so long to 
 unsnarl and untangle me, and I get so hot when 
 I'm helping in the hayfield, — and then I have 
 to be curled for dinner, and curled again for 
 supper, and so it seems like wasting both our 
 times ! ' Her hair would be all the stronger 
 for cutting, I thought, as it's so long for her 
 age ; but I could n't put the shears to it when 
 the time came, Martha. I had to take her to 
 Eldress Abby. She sat up in front of the little 
 looking-glass as still as a mouse, while the curls 
 came off, but when the last one fell into Abby's 
 apron, she suddenly put her hands over her 
 face and cried : ' Oh, Mardie, we shall never be 
 the same togedder, you and I, after this ! ' — She 
 seemed to see her 'little past,' her childhood, 
 slipping away from her, all in an instant. I 
 
"You did wrong," rebuked Martha. "You 
 should n't make an idol of your child or your 
 child's beauty." 
 
 "You don't think God might put beauty 
 into the world just to give His children joy, 
 Martha?" 
 
 Martha was no controversialist. She had 
 taken her opinions, ready-made, from those 
 she considered her superiors, and although 
 she was willing to make any sacrifice for 
 her religion, she did not wish to be confused 
 by too many opposing theories of God's in- 
 tentions. 
 
 "You know I never argue when I've got 
 anything baking," she said; and taking the 
 spill of a corn-broom from a table-drawer, she 
 opened the oven door and delicately plunged it 
 into the loaf. Then, gazing at the straw as she 
 withdrew it, she said : "You must talk doctrine 
 with Eldress Abby, Susanna, not with me; 
 
THE LITTLE QUAIL BIRD 
 
 but I guess doctrine won't help you so much 
 as thinking out your life for yourself." 
 
 "No one can sing my psalm for me, 
 Reward must come from labor, 
 I'll sow for peace, and reap in truth 
 God's mercy and His favor !" 
 
 Martha was the chief musician of the Com- 
 munity, and had composed many hymns and 
 tunes — some of them under circumstances 
 that she believed might entitle them to be con- 
 sidered directly inspired. Her clear full voice 
 filled the kitchen and floated out into the air 
 after Susanna, as she called Sue and, darning- 
 basket in hand, walked across the road to the 
 great barn. 
 
 The herb-garden was one place where she 
 could think out her life, although no decision had 
 as yet been born of those thoughtful mornings. 
 
 Another spot for meditation was the great 
 barn, relic of the wonderful earlier days, and 
 pride of the present Settlement. A hundred 
 and seventy-five feet long and three and a half 
 
SUSANNA AND SUE 
 
 stories high, it dominated the landscape. First, 
 there was the cellar, where all the refuse fell, 
 to do its duty later on in fertilizing the farm 
 lands ; then came the first floor, where the stalls 
 for horses, oxen, and cows lined the walls on 
 either side. Then came the second floor, where 
 hay was kept, and to reach this a bridge forty 
 feet long was built on stone piers ten feet in 
 height, sloping up from the ground to the 
 second story. Over the easy slope of this bridge 
 the full haycarts were driven, to add their 
 several burdens to the golden haymows. High 
 at the top was an enormous grain room, where 
 mounds of yellow corn-ears reached from floor 
 to ceiling ; and at the back was a great window 
 opening on Massabesic Pond and Knights' 
 Hill, with the White Mountains towering blue 
 or snow-capped in the distance. There was an 
 old-fashioned, list-bottomed, straight-backed 
 Shaker chair in front of the open window, a 
 chair as uncomfortable as Shaker doctrines to 
 the daughter of Eve, and there Susanna often 
 
THE LITTLE QUAIL BIRD 
 
 sat with her sewing or mending, Sue at her feet 
 building castles out of corn-cobs, plaiting the 
 husks into little mats, or taking out basting 
 threads from her mother's work. 
 
 "My head feels awfully undressed without 
 my curls, Mardie," she said. "I'm most afraid 
 Fardie won't like the looks of me ; do you think 
 we ought to have asked him before we shingled 
 me? — He does despise un-pretty things so!" 
 
 "I think if we had asked him he would have 
 said, 'Do as you think best.' " 
 
 " He always says that when he does n't care 
 what you do," observed Sue, with one of her 
 startling bursts of intuition. "Sister Martha 
 has a printed card on the wall in the chil- 
 dren's dining-room, and I've got to learn all 
 the poetry on it because I need it worse than 
 any of the others : — 
 
 "What we deem good order, we're willing to state, 
 Eat hearty and decent, and clear out your plate; 
 Be thankful to heaven for what we receive, 
 
 And not make a mixture or compound to leave. 
 
SUSANNA AND SUE 
 
 "We often find left on the same China dish, 
 
 Meat, apple sauce, pickle, brown bread and minced fish : 
 Another 's replenished with butter and cheese. 
 
 With pie, cake, and toast, perhaps, added to these." 
 
 "You say it very nicely," commended 
 Susanna. 
 
 " There 's more : — 
 
 "Now if any virtue in this can be shown, 
 
 By peasant, by lawyer, or king on the throne; 
 We freely will forfeit whatever we've said, 
 
 And call it a virtue to waste meat and bread." 
 
 "There's a great deal to learn when you're 
 being a Shaker," sighed Sue, as she finished her 
 rhyme. 
 
 "There's a great deal to learn everywhere," 
 her mother answered. "What verse did El- 
 dress Abby give you to-day?" 
 
 " For little tripping maids may follow God 
 Along the ways that saintly feet have trod," 
 
 quoted the child. "Am I a tripping maid, 
 Mardie?" she continued. 
 "Yes, dear." 
 
THE LITTLE QUAIL BIRD 
 
 "If I trip too much, mightn't I fall?" 
 
 "Yes, I suppose so." 
 
 "Is tripping the same as skipping?" 
 
 "About the same." 
 
 "Is it polite to tripanskip when you're fol- 
 lowing God?" 
 
 "It could n't be impolite if you meant to be 
 good. A tripping maid means just a young one." 
 
 "What is a maid?" 
 
 "A little girl." 
 
 "When a maid grows up, what is she?" 
 
 "Why — she's a maiden, I suppose." 
 
 "When a maiden grows up, what is she?" 
 
 "Just a woman, Sue." 
 
 "What is saintly feet?" 
 
 "Feet like those of Eldress Abby or Elder 
 Gray ; feet of people who have always tried to 
 do right." 
 
 "Are Brother Ansel's feet saintly?" 
 
 "He's a good, kind, hard-working man." 
 
 "Is good - kind - hard - working same as 
 saintly?" 
 
SUSANN 
 
 SUSANNA AND SUE 
 "Well, it's not so very different, perhaps. 
 
 Now, Sue, I've asked you before, don't let your 
 mind grope, and your little tongue wag, every 
 instant ; it is n't good for you, and it certainly 
 is n't good for me!" 
 
 "All right; but 'less I gropeanwag some- 
 times, I don't see how I'll ever learn the things 
 I 'specially want to know?" sighed Sue the 
 insatiable. 
 
 "Shall I tell you a Shaker story, one that 
 Eldress Abby told me last evening?" 
 
 "Oh, do, Mardie!" cried Sue, crossing her 
 feet, folding her hands, and looking up into her 
 mother's face expectantly. 
 
 "Once there was a very good Shaker named 
 Elder Calvin Green, and some one wrote him a 
 letter asking him to come a long distance and 
 found a Settlement in the western part of New 
 York State. He and some other Elders and 
 Eldresses traveled five days, and stopped at 
 the house of a certain Joseph Pelham to spend 
 Sunday and hold a meeting. On Monday 
 
THE LITTLE QUAIL BIRD 
 
 morning, very tired, and wondering where to 
 stay and begin his preaching, the Elder went 
 out into the woods to pray for guidance. When 
 he rose from his knees, feeling stronger and 
 lighter-hearted, a young quail came up to him 
 so close that he picked it up. It was not a bit 
 afraid, neither did the old parent birds who 
 were standing near by show any sign of fear, 
 though they are very timid creatures. The 
 Elder smoothed the young bird's feathers a 
 little while and then let it go, but he thought 
 an angel seemed to say to him, ' The quail is 
 a sign; you will know before night what it 
 means, and before to-morrow people will be 
 coming to you to learn the way to God.' 
 
 "Soon after, a flock of these shy little birds 
 alighted on Joseph Pelham's house, and the 
 Elders were glad, and thought it signified the 
 flock of Believers that would gather in that 
 place; for the Shakers see more in signs than 
 other people. Just at night a young girl of 
 twelve or thirteen knocked at the door and told 
 
SUSANNA AND SUE 
 
 Elder Calvin that she wanted to become a 
 Shaker, and that her father and mother were 
 willing. 
 
 "'Here is the little quail!' cried the Elder, 
 and indeed she was the first who flocked to the 
 meetings and joined the new Community. 
 
 "On their return to their old home across 
 the state the Elders took the little quail girl 
 with them. It was November then, and the 
 canals through which they traveled were 
 clogged with ice. One night, having been fer- 
 ried across the Mohawk River, they took their 
 baggage and walked for miles before they 
 could find shelter. Finally, when they were 
 within three miles of their home, Elder Calvin 
 shortened the way by going across the open 
 fields through the snow, up and down the hills 
 and through the gullies and over fences, till 
 they reached the house at midnight, safe and 
 sound, the brave little quail girl having trudged 
 beside them the whole distance, carrying her 
 tin pail." 
 
THE LITTLE QUAIL BIRD 
 
 Sue was transported with interest, her lips 
 parted, her eyes shining, her hands clasped. 
 
 "Oh, I wish I could be a brave little quail 
 girl, Mardie! What became of her?" 
 
 "Her name was Polly Reed, and when she 
 grew up, she became a teacher of the Shaker 
 school, then an Eldress, and even a preacher. 
 I don't know what kind of a little quail girl you 
 would make, Sue ; do you think you could walk 
 for miles through the ice and snow uncom- 
 plainingly ?" 
 
 "I don' know's I could," sighed Sue; "but," 
 she added hopefully, "perhaps I could teach 
 or preach, and then I could gropeanwag as 
 much as ever I liked." Then, after a lengthy 
 pause, in which her mind worked feverishly, 
 she said, "Mardie, I was just groping a little 
 bit, but I won't do it any more to-night. If the 
 old quail birds in the woods where Elder Cal- 
 vin prayed, if those old birds had been Shaker 
 birds, there would n't have been any little 
 quail birds, would there, because Shakers 
 
SUSANNA AND SUE 
 
 don't have children, and then perhaps there 
 would n't have been any little Polly Reed." 
 
 Susanna rose hurriedly from the list-bot- 
 tomed chair and folded her work. "I'll go up 
 and help you undress now," she said; "it's 
 seven o'clock, and I must go to the family 
 meeting." 
 
VI 
 
 SUSANNA SPEAKS IN MEETING 
 
 hi 
 
VI 
 
 IT was the Sabbath day and the Believers 
 were gathered in the meeting-house, Breth- 
 ren and Sisters seated quietly on their separate 
 benches, with the children by themselves in 
 their own place. As the men entered the room 
 they removed their hats and coats and hung 
 them upon wooden pegs that lined the sides 
 of the room, while the women took off their 
 bonnets; then, after standing for a moment 
 of perfect silence, they seated themselves. 
 
 In Susanna's time the Sunday costume for 
 the men included trousers of deep blue cloth 
 with a white line and a vest of darker blue, 
 exposing a full-bosomed shirt that had a wide 
 
SUSANNA AND SUE 
 
 turned-down collar fastened with three but- 
 tons. The Sisters were in pure white dresses, 
 with neck and shoulders covered with snowy 
 kerchiefs, their heads crowned with their white 
 net caps, and a large white pocket handker- 
 chief hung over the left arm. Their feet were 
 shod with curious pointed-toed cloth shoes of 
 ultramarine blue — a fashion long since gone 
 by. 
 
 Susanna had now become accustomed to 
 the curious solemn march or dance in which 
 of course none but the Believers ever joined, 
 and found in her present exalted mood the 
 songs and the exhortations strangely interest- 
 ing and not unprofitable. 
 
 Tabitha, the most aged of the group of Al- 
 bion Sisters, confessed that she missed the old 
 times when visions were common, when the 
 Spirit manifested itself in extraordinary ways, 
 and the gift of tongues descended. Sometimes, 
 in the Western Settlement where she was gath- 
 ered in, the whole North Family would march 
 
SUSANNA SPEAKS IN MEETING 
 
 into the highway in the fresh morning hours, 
 and while singing some sacred hymn, would 
 pass on to the Centre Family, and together 
 in solemn yet glad procession they would mount 
 the hillside to "Jehovah's Chosen Square," 
 there to sing and dance before the Lord. 
 
 "I wish we could do something like that 
 now!" sighed Hetty Arnold, a pretty young 
 creature, who had moments of longing for the 
 pomps and vanities. "If we have to give up 
 all worldly pleasures, I think we might have 
 more religious ones ! " 
 
 "We were a younger church in those old 
 times of which Sister Tabitha speaks," said 
 Eldress Abby. "You must remember, Hetty, 
 that we were children in faith, and needed signs 
 and manifestations, pictures and object-les- 
 sons. We've been trained to think and reason 
 now, and we've put away some of our picture- 
 books. There have been revelations to tell us 
 we needed movements and exercises to quicken 
 our spiritual powers, and to give energy and 
 
? 
 
 SUSANNA AND SUE 
 
 unity to our worship, and there have been reve- 
 lations telling us to give them up; revelations 
 bidding us to sing more, revelations telling us 
 to use wordless songs. Then anthems were 
 given us, and so it has gone on, for we have 
 been led of the Spirit." 
 
 "I'd like more picture-books," pouted Hetty, 
 under her breath. 
 
 To-day the service began with a solemn 
 song, followed by speaking and prayer from a 
 visiting elder. Then, after a long and pro- 
 found silence, the company rose and joined in 
 a rhythmic dance which signified the onward 
 travel of the soul to full redemption ; the open- 
 ing and closing of the hands meaning the scat- 
 tering and gathering of blessing. There was no 
 accompaniment, and both the music and the 
 words were the artless expression of fervent 
 devotion. ^ 
 
 Susanna sat in her corner beside the aged 
 Tabitha, who would never dance again before 
 the Lord, though her quavering voice joined 
 
SUSANNA SPEAKS IN MEETING 
 
 in the chorus. The spring floor rose and fell 
 under the quick rhythmic tread of the worship- 
 ers, and with each revolution about the room 
 the song gained in power and fervor. 
 
 sag 
 
 ** 
 
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 I am nev - er wea - ry briDg - ing my 
 
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 £ 
 
 life un - to God, I am nev - er wea - ry 
 
 y 
 
 w 
 
 £= 
 
 £3 
 
 =^£ 
 
 sing-ing His way is good. With the voice of an 
 
 
 fczzfr 
 
 with pow - er from a - bove, I would 
 
 IA 
 
 i 
 
 S5 
 
 I 
 
 pub - lish the bless-ing of soul - sav - ing love. 
 
 The steps grew slower and more sedate, the 
 voices died away, the arms sank slowly by 
 
SUSANNA AND SUE 
 
 the sides, and the hands ceased their move- 
 ment. 
 
 Susanna rose to her feet, she knew not how 
 or why. Her cheeks were flushed, her head 
 bent. 
 
 "Dear friends," she said, "I have now been 
 among you for nearly three months, sharing 
 your life, your work, and your worship. You 
 may well wish to know whether I have made 
 up my mind to join this Community, and I can 
 only say that although I have prayed for light, 
 I cannot yet see my way clearly. I am happy 
 here with you, and although I have been a 
 church member for years, I have never before 
 longed so ardently to present my body and soul 
 as a sacrifice unto the Lord. I have tried not to 
 be a burden to you. The small weekly sum 
 that I put into the treasury I will not speak of, 
 lest I seem to think that the 'gift of God may 
 be purchased with money,' as the Scriptures 
 say ; but I have endeavored to be loyal to your 
 rules and customs, your aims and ideals, and to 
 
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 SUSANNA SPEAKS IN MEETING 
 
 the confidence you have reposed in me. Oh, 
 my dear Sisters and Brothers, pray for me that 
 I be enabled to see my duty more plainly. It is 
 not the flesh-pots that will call me back to the 
 world ; if I go, it will be because the duties I 
 have left behind take such shape that they draw 
 me out of this shelter in spite of myself. I 
 thank you for the help you have given me these 
 last weeks ; God knows my gratitude can never 
 be spoken in words." 
 
 Elder Gray's voice broke the silence that 
 followed Susanna's speech. "I only echo the 
 sentiments of the Family when I say that our 
 Sister Susanna shall have such time as she re- 
 quires before deciding to unite with this body 
 of Believers. No pressure shall be brought to 
 bear upon her, and she will be, as she ever has 
 been, a welcome guest under our roof. She has 
 been an inspiration to the children, a comfort 
 and aid to the Sisters, an intelligent comrade 
 to the Brethren, and a sincere and earnest 
 student of the truth. May the Spirit draw 
 
"Yee and amen!" exclaimed Eldress Abby, 
 devoutly: "For thus saith the Lord of hosts: 
 I will shake the heavens, and the earth, and the 
 sea, and the dry land ; and I will shake all na- 
 tions, and the desire of all nations shall come: 
 and I will fill this house with glory, saith the 
 Lord of hosts." 
 
 "O Virgin Church, how great thy light, 
 What cloud can dim thy way?" 
 
 sang Martha from her place at the end of a 
 bench; and all the voices took up the hymn 
 softly as the company sat with bowed heads. 
 
 Then Brother Issachar rose from his cor- 
 ner, saying: "Jesus called upon his disciples 
 to give up everything : houses, lands, relation- 
 ships, and even the selfishness of their own 
 lives. They could not call their lives their 
 own. ' Lo! we have left all and followed thee/ 
 said Peter; 'fathers, mothers, wives, children, 
 houses, lands, and even our own lives also.' 
 
"Yee, we do," said Brother Thomas Scat- 
 tergood, devoutly. "To him that overcometh 
 shall the great prize be given." 
 
 "God help the weaker brethren!" mur- 
 mured young Brother Nathan, in so low a 
 voice that few could hear him. 
 
 Moved by the same impulse, Tabitha, Abby, 
 and Martha burst into one of the most tri- 
 umphant of the Shaker songs, one that was 
 never sung save when the meeting was "full 
 of the Spirit" : — 
 
 "I draw no blank nor miss the prize, 
 I see the work, the sacrifice, 
 And I'll be loyal, I'll be wise, 
 A faithful overcomer!" 
 
 The company rose and began again to 
 march in a circle around the centre of the room, 
 the Brethren two abreast leading the col- 
 umn, the Sisters following after. There was a 
 waving movement of the hands by drawing 
 
SUSANNA AND SUE 
 
 inward as if gathering in spiritual good and 
 storing it up for future need. In the march- 
 ing and countermarching the worshipers fre- 
 quently changed their positions, ultimately 
 forming into four circles, symbolical of the four 
 dispensations as expounded in Shakerism, the 
 first from Adam to Abraham ; the second from 
 Abraham to Jesus; the third from Jesus to 
 Mother Ann Lee ; and the fourth the millennial 
 era. 
 
 The marching grew livelier; the bodies of 
 the singers swayed lightly with emotion, the 
 faces glowed with feeling. 
 
 Over and over the hymn was sung, gathering 
 strength and fullness as the Believers entered 
 more and more into the spirit of their worship. 
 Whenever the refrain came in with its militant 
 fervor, crude, but sincere and effective, the 
 singers seemed faith-intoxicated; and Sister 
 Martha in particular might have been tread- 
 ing the heavenly streets instead of the meet- 
 ing-house floor, so complete was her absorp- 
 
SUSANNA SPEAKS IN MEETING 
 
 tion. The voices at length grew softer, and the 
 movement slower, and after a few moments' 
 reverent silence the company filed out of the 
 room solemnly and without speech. 
 
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 am as sure that heav'n is mine As 
 
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 j=i 
 
 v v y V n 
 
 though my vi - sion could de - fine Or 
 
 s^^a 
 
 ^ 
 
 I — fs & — 
 
 s=g=i=ttg= 
 
 g^^ 
 
 pen - cil draw the boun - da - ry line Where 
 
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 ■* — 
 
 I 
 
 love and 
 
 truth 
 
 shall 
 
 : 
 
 quer. 
 
 "The Lord ain't shaken Susanna hard 
 enough yet," thought Brother Ansel shrewdly 
 from his place in the rear. "She ain't alto- 
 gether gathered in, not by no manner o' means, 
 
SUSANNA AND SUE 
 
 because of that unregenerate son of Adam 
 she's left behind; but there's the makin's of a 
 pow'ful good Shaker in Susanna, if she finally 
 takes holt!" 
 
 "What manner of life is my husband living, 
 now that I have deserted him ? Who is being 
 a mother to Jack?" These were the thoughts 
 that troubled Susanna Hathaway's soul as she 
 crossed the grass to her own building. 
 
VII 
 THE LOWER PLANE 
 
VII 
 
 BROTHER Nathan Bennett was twenty 
 years old and Sister Hetty Arnold was 
 eighteen. They had been left with the Shakers 
 by their respective parents ten years before, and, 
 growing up in the faith, they formally joined 
 the Community when they reached the age of 
 discretion. Thus they had known each other 
 from early childhood, never in the familiar way 
 common to the children of the world, but with 
 the cool, cheerful, casual, wholly impersonal 
 attitude of Shaker friendship, a relation seem- 
 ingly outside of and superior to sex, a relation 
 more like that of two astral bodies than the more 
 intimate one of a budding Adam and Eve. 
 
SUSANNA AND SUE 
 
 When and where had this relationship 
 changed its color and meaning? Neither Na- 
 than nor Hetty could have told. For years 
 Nathan had sat at his end of the young men's 
 bench at the family or the public meeting, 
 with Hetty exactly opposite him at the end 
 of the girls' row, and for years they had looked 
 across the dividing space at each other with 
 unstirred pulses. The rows of Sisters sat in 
 serene dignity, one bench behind another, 
 and each Sister was like unto every other 
 in Nathan's vague, dreamy, boyishly indif- 
 ferent eyes. Some of them were seventy and 
 some seventeen, but each modest figure sat 
 in its place with quiet folded hands. The stiff 
 caps hid the hair, whether it was silver or 
 gold ; the white surplices covered the shoulders 
 and concealed beautiful curves as well as angu- 
 lar outlines; the throats were scarcely visible, 
 whether they were yellow and wrinkled or 
 young and white. The Sisters were simply 
 sisters to fair-haired Nathan, and the Bro- 
 
THE LOWER PLANE 
 
 thers were but brothers to little black-eyed 
 Hetty. 
 
 Once — was it on a Sunday morning ? — 
 Nathan glanced across the separating space 
 that is the very essence and sign of Shakerism. 
 The dance had just ceased, and there was a 
 long, solemn stillness when God indeed seemed 
 to be in one of His holy temples and the earth 
 was keeping silence before Him. Suddenly 
 Hetty grew to be something more than one of 
 the figures in a long row : she chained Nathan's 
 eye and held it. 
 
 "Through her garments the grace of her 
 glowed." He saw that, in spite of the way her 
 hair had been cut and stretched back from the 
 forehead, a short dusky tendril, softened and 
 coaxed by the summer heat, had made its way 
 mutinously beyond the confines of her cap. 
 Her eyes were cast down, but the lashes that 
 swept her round young cheek were quite differ- 
 ent from any other lashes in the Sisters' row. 
 Her breath came and went softly after the 
 
SUSANNA AND SUE 
 
 exertion of the rhythmic movements, stirring 
 the white muslin folds that wrapped her from 
 throat to waist. He looked and looked, until 
 his body seemed to be all eyes, absolutely un- 
 aware of any change in himself; quite obliv- 
 ious of the fact that he was regarding the girl 
 in any new and dangerous way. 
 
 The silence continued, long and profound, 
 until suddenly Hetty raised her beautiful lashes 
 and met Nathan's gaze, the gaze of a boy just 
 turned to man: ardent, warm, compelling. 
 There was a startled moment of recognition, 
 a tremulous approach, almost an embrace, of 
 regard ; each sent an electric current across the 
 protective separating space, the two pairs of 
 eyes met and said, "I love you," in such clear 
 tones that Nathan and Hetty marveled that 
 the Elder did not hear them. Somebody says 
 that love, like a scarlet spider, can spin a thread 
 between two hearts almost in an instant, so fine 
 as to be almost invisible, yet it will hold with 
 the tenacity of an iron chain. The thread had 
 
THE LOWER PLANE 
 
 been spun; it was so delicate that neither 
 Nathan nor Hetty had seen the scarlet spider 
 spinning it, but the strength of both would not 
 avail to snap the bond that held them together. 
 
 The moments passed. Hetty's kerchief rose 
 and fell, rose and fell tumultuously, while her 
 face was suffused with color. Nathan's knees 
 quivered under him, and when the Elder rose, 
 and they began the sacred march, the lad could 
 hardly stand for trembling. He dreaded the 
 moment when the lines of Believers would 
 meet, and he and Hetty would walk the length 
 of the long room almost beside each other. 
 Could she hear his heart beating, Nathan 
 wondered; while Hetty was palpitating with 
 fear lest Nathan see her blushes and divine 
 their meaning. Oh, the joy of it, the terror of 
 it, the strange exhilaration and the sudden sen- 
 sation of sin and remorse! 
 
 The meeting over, Nathan flung himself on 
 the haymow in the great barn, while Hetty sat 
 with her "Synopsis of Shaker Theology" at 
 
SUSANNA AND SUE 
 
 an open window of the girls' building, seeing 
 nothing in the lines of print but visions that 
 should not have been there. It was Nathan 
 who felt most and suffered most and was most 
 conscious of sin, for Hetty, at first, scarcely 
 knew whither she was drifting. 
 
 She went into the herb-garden with Susanna 
 one morning during the week that followed the 
 fatal Sunday. Many of the plants to be used 
 for seasoning — sage, summer savory, sweet 
 marjoram, and the like — were quite ready for 
 gathering. As the two women were busy at 
 work, Susanna as full of her thoughts as Hetty 
 of hers, the sound of a step was heard brushing 
 the grass of the orchard. Hetty gave a ner- 
 vous start; her cheeks grew so crimson and 
 her breath so short that Susanna noticed the 
 change. 
 
 "It will be Brother Ansel coming along to 
 the grindstone," Hetty stammered, burying her 
 head in the leaves. 
 
 "No," Susanna answered, "it is Nathan. 
 
THE LOWER PLANE 
 
 He has a long pole with a saw on the end. He 
 must be going to take the dead branches off 
 the apple trees ; I heard Ansel tell him yester- 
 day to do it." 
 
 "Yee, that will be it," said Hetty, bending 
 over the plants as if she were afraid to look 
 elsewhere. 
 
 Nathan came nearer to the herb-garden. He 
 was a tall, stalwart, handsome enough fellow, 
 even in his quaint working garb. As the Sisters 
 spun and wove the cloth as well as cut and 
 made the men's garments, and as the Brothers 
 themselves made the shoes, there was naturally 
 no great air of fashion about the Shaker rai- 
 ment ; but Nathan carried it better than most. 
 His skin was fair and rosy, the down on his 
 upper lip showed dawning manhood, and 
 when he took off his broad-brimmed straw hat 
 and stretched to his full height to reach the 
 upper branches of the apple trees, he made a 
 picture of clean, wholesome, vigorous youth. 
 
 Suddenly Susanna raised her head and sur- 
 
SUSANNA AND SUE 
 
 prised Hetty looking at the lad with all her 
 heart in her eyes. At the same moment Nathan 
 turned, and before he could conceal the telltale 
 ardor of his glance, it had sped to Hetty. With 
 the instinct of self-preservation he stooped in- 
 stantly as if to steady the saw on the pole, but 
 it was too late to mend matters : his tale was 
 told so far as Susanna was concerned; but it 
 was better she should suspect than one of the 
 Believers or Eldress Abby. 
 
 Susanna worked on in silent anxiety. The 
 likelihood of such crises as this had sometimes 
 crossed her mind, and knowing how frail 
 human nature is, she often marveled that in- 
 stances seemed so infrequent. Her instinct told 
 her that in every Community the risk must 
 exist, even though all were doubly warned and 
 armed against the temptations that flesh is heir 
 to ; yet no hint of danger had showed itself dur- 
 ing the months in which she had been a mem- 
 ber of the Shaker family. She had heard the 
 Elder's plea to the young converts to take up 
 
THE LOWER PLANE 
 
 "a full cross against the flesh"; she had lis- 
 tened to Eldress Abby when she told them that 
 the natural life, its thoughts, passions, feelings, 
 and associations, must be turned against once 
 and forever; but her heart melted in pity for 
 the two poor young things struggling help- 
 lessly against instincts of which they hardly 
 knew the meaning, so cloistered had been the 
 life they lived. The kind, conscientious hands 
 that had fed them would now seem hard and 
 unrelenting; the place that had been home 
 would turn to a prison ; the life that Elder Gray 
 preached, "the life of a purer godliness than 
 can be attained by marriage," had seemed dif- 
 ficult, perhaps, but possible; and now how 
 cold and hopeless it would appear to these two 
 young, undisciplined, flaming hearts ! 
 
 "Hetty dear, talk to me!" whispered Su- 
 sanna, softly touching her shoulder, and won- 
 dering if she could somehow find a way to 
 counsel the girl in her perplexity. 
 
 Hetty started rebelliously to her feet as 
 
1 
 
 SUSANNA AND SUE 
 
 Nathan moved away farther into the orchard. 
 "If you say a single thing to me, or a word 
 about me to Eldress Abby, I'll run away this 
 very day. Nobody has any right to speak to 
 me, and I just want to be let alone! It's all 
 very well for you," she went on passionately. 
 " What have you had to give up ? Nothing but 
 a husband you did n't love and a home you 
 did n't want to stay in. Like as not you'll be 
 a Shaker, and they'll take you for a saint; but 
 anyway you'll have had your life." 
 
 "You are right, Hetty," said Susanna, 
 quietly; "but oh! my dear, the world outside 
 is n't such a Paradise for young girls like you, 
 motherless and fatherless and penniless. You 
 have a good home here ; can't you learn to like 
 it?" 
 
 "Out in the world people can do as they like 
 and nobody thinks of calling them wicked!" 
 sobbed Hetty, flinging herself down, and put- 
 ting her head in Susanna's aproned lap. " Here 
 you've got to live like an angel, and if you 
 
THE LOWER PLANE 
 
 don't, you've got to confess every wrong 
 thought you've had, when the time comes." 
 
 "Whatever you do, Hetty, be open and 
 aboveboard ; don't be hasty and foolish, or you 
 may be sorry forever afterwards." 
 
 Hetty's mood changed again suddenly to 
 one of mutiny, and she rose to her feet. 
 
 "You have n't got any right to interfere with 
 me anyway, Susanna; and if you think it's 
 your duty to tell tales, you'll only make mat- 
 ters worse" ; and so saying she took her basket 
 and fled across the fields like a hunted hare. 
 
 That evening, as Hetty left the infirmary, 
 where she had been sent with a bottle of lini- 
 ment for the nursing Sisters, she came upon 
 Nathan standing gloomily under the spruce 
 trees near the back of the building. It was 
 eight o'clock and quite dark. It had been rain- 
 ing during the late afternoon and the trees were 
 still dripping drearily. Hetty came upon 
 Nathan so suddenly, that, although he had 
 been in her thoughts, she gave a frightened 
 
SUSANNA AND SUE 
 
 little cry when he drew her peremptorily under 
 the shadow of the branches. The rules that 
 govern the Shaker Community are very strict, 
 but in reality the true Believer never thinks of 
 them as rules, nor is trammeled by them. They 
 are fixed habits of the blood, as common, as 
 natural, as sitting or standing, eating or drink- 
 ing. No Brother is allowed to hold any 
 lengthy interview with a Sister, nor to work, 
 walk, or drive with her alone ; but these protec- 
 tive customs, which all are bound in honor to 
 keep, are too much a matter of every-day life 
 to be strange or irksome. 
 
 "I must speak to you, Hetty," whispered 
 Nathan. "I cannot bear it any longer alone. 
 What shall we do?" 
 
 "Do?" echoed Hetty, trembling. 
 
 "Yes, do." There was no pretense of asking 
 her if she loved or suffered, or lived in torture 
 and suspense. They had not uttered a word to 
 each other, but their eyes had "shed mean- 
 
THE LOWER PLANE 
 
 "You know we can't go on like this," he 
 continued rapidly. "We can't eat their food, 
 stay alongside of them, pray their prayers and 
 act a lie all the time, — we cant ! " 
 
 "Nay, we can't!" said Hetty. "Oh, Nathan, 
 shall we confess all and see if they will help 
 us to resist temptation ? I know that 's what 
 Susanna would want me to do, but oh! I 
 should dread it." 
 
 "Nay, it is too late," Nathan answered 
 drearily. "They could not help us, and we 
 should be held under suspicion forever after." 
 
 "I feel so wicked and miserable and un- 
 faithful, I don't know what to do!" sobbed 
 Hetty. 
 
 "Yee, so do I!" the lad answered. "And I 
 feel bitter against my father, too. He brought 
 me here to get rid of me, because he did n't 
 dare leave me on somebody's doorstep. He 
 ought to have come back when I was grown a 
 man and asked me if I felt inclined to be a 
 Shaker, and if I was good enough to be one! " 
 
SUSANNA AND SUE 
 
 "And my stepfather wouldn't have me in 
 the house, so my mother had to give me away ; 
 but they're both dead, and I'm alone in the 
 world, though I've never felt it, because the 
 Sisters are so kind. Now they will hate me — 
 though they don't hate anybody." 
 
 "You've got me, Hetty! We must go away 
 and be married. We'd better go to-night to 
 the minister in Albion." 
 
 "What if he would n't do it?" 
 
 " Why should n't he ? Shakers take no vows, 
 though I feel bound, hand and foot, out of 
 gratitude. If any other two young folks went 
 to him, he would marry them; and if he re- 
 fuses, there are two other ministers in Albion, 
 besides two more in Buryfield, five miles 
 farther. If they won't marry us to-night, I'll 
 leave you in some safe home and we'll walk to 
 Portland to-morrow. I'm young and strong, 
 and I know I can earn our living somehow." 
 
 "But we have n't the price of a lodging or 
 a breakfast between us," Hetty said tearfully. 
 
THE LOWER PLANE 
 
 "Would it be sinful to take some of my basket- 
 work and send back the money next week?" 
 
 "Yee, it would be so," Nathan answered 
 sternly. "The least we can do is to go away 
 as empty-handed as we came. I can work for 
 our breakfast." 
 
 "Oh, I can't bear to disappoint Eldress 
 Abby," cried Hetty, breaking anew into tears. 
 "She'll say we've run away to live on the 
 lower plane after agreeing to crucify Nature 
 and follow the angelic life!" 
 
 "I know; but there are five hundred people 
 in Albion all living in marriage, and we shan't 
 be the only sinners!" Nathan argued. "Oh, 
 Sister Hetty, dear Hetty, keep up your spirits 
 and trust to me!" 
 
 Nathan's hand stole out and met Hetty's in 
 its warm clasp, the first hand touch that the 
 two ignorant young creatures had ever felt. 
 Nathan's knowledge of life had been a journey 
 to the Canterbury Shakers in New Hampshire 
 with Brother Issachar; Hetty's was limited to 
 
SUSANNA AND SUE 
 
 a few drives into Albion village, and half a* 
 dozen chats with the world's people who came 
 to the Settlement to buy basket-work. 
 
 "I am not able to bear the Shaker life!" 
 sighed Nathan. "Elder Gray allows there be 
 such!" 
 
 "Nor I," murmured Hetty. "Eldress Har- 
 riet knows I am no saint!" 
 
 Hetty's head was now on Nathan's shoulder. 
 The stiff Shaker cap had resisted bravely, but 
 the girl's head had yielded to the sweet proxim- 
 ity. Youth called to youth triumphantly; the 
 Spirit was unheard, and all the theories of celi- 
 bacy and the angelic life that had been poured 
 into their ears vanished into thin air. The 
 thick shade of the spruce tree hid the kiss that 
 would have been so innocent, had they not 
 given themselves to the Virgin Church; the 
 drip, drip, drip of the branches on their young 
 heads passed unheeded. 
 
 Then, one following the other silently along 
 the highroad, hurrying along in the shadows 
 
THE LOWER PLANE 
 
 of the tall trees, stealing into the edge of the 
 woods, or hiding behind a thicket of alders at 
 the fancied sound of a footstep or the distant 
 rumble of a wagon, Nathan and Hetty forsook 
 the faith of Mother Ann and went out into the 
 world as Adam and Eve left the garden, with 
 the knowledge of good and evil implanted in 
 their hearts. The voice of Eldress Abby pur- 
 sued Hetty in her flight like the voice in a 
 dream. She could hear its clear impassioned 
 accents, saying, "The children of this world 
 marry ; but the children of the resurrection do 
 not marry, for they are as the angels." The 
 solemn tones grew fainter and fainter as 
 Hetty's steps led her farther and farther away 
 from the quiet Shaker village and its drab-clad 
 Sisters, and at last they almost died into silence, 
 because Nathan's voice was nearer and Na- 
 than's voice was dearer. 
 
VII 
 CONCERNING BACKSLIDERS 
 
VIII 
 
 THERE was no work in the herb-garden 
 now, but there was never a moment 
 from dawn till long after dusk when the busy 
 fingers of the Shaker Sisters were still. When 
 all else failed there was the knitting : socks for 
 the Brothers and stockings for the Sisters and 
 socks and stockings of every size for the chil- 
 dren. One of the quaint sights of the Settle- 
 ment to Susanna was the clump of young Sis- 
 ters on the porch of the girls' building, knit- 
 ting, knitting, in the afternoon sun. Even little 
 Shaker Jane and Mary, Maria and Lucinda, 
 had their socks in hand, and plied their short 
 knitting-needles soberly and not unskillfully. 
 
SUSANNA AND SUE 
 
 The sight of their industry incited the impetu- 
 ous Sue to effort, and under the patient tutelage 
 of Sister Martha she mastered the gentle art. 
 Susanna never forgot the hour when, coming 
 from her work in the seed-room, she crossed 
 the grass with a message to Martha, and saw 
 the group of children and girls on the western 
 porch, a place that caught every ray of after- 
 noon sun, the last glint of twilight, and the first 
 hint of sunset glow. Sister Martha had been 
 reading the Sabbath-school lesson for the next 
 day, and as Susanna neared the building, 
 Martha's voice broke into a hymn. Falteringly 
 the girls' voices followed the lead, uncertain at 
 first of words or tune, but gaining courage and 
 strength as they went on : — 
 
 "As the waves of the mighty ocean 
 
 Gospel love we will circulate, 
 And as we give, in due proportion, 
 
 We of the heavenly life partake. 
 Heavenly Life, Glorious Life, 
 
 Resurrecting, Soul-Inspiring, 
 
The clear, innocent treble sounded sweetly 
 in the virgin stillness and solitude of the Settle- 
 ment, and as Susanna drew closer she stopped 
 under a tree to catch the picture — Sister 
 Martha, grave, tall, discreet, singing with all 
 her soul and marking time with her hands, 
 so accustomed to the upward and downward 
 movement of the daily service. The straight, 
 plain dresses were as fresh and smooth as per- 
 fect washing could make them, and the round 
 childlike faces looked quaint and sweet with 
 the cropped hair tucked under the stiff little 
 caps. Sue was seated with Mary and Jane on 
 the steps, and Susanna saw with astonishment 
 that her needles were moving to and fro and 
 she was knitting as serenely and correctly as a 
 mother in Israel; singing, too, in a delicate 
 little treble that was like a skylark's morning 
 note. Susanna could hear her distinctly as she 
 delightedly flung out the long words so dear 
 
SUSANNA AND SUE 
 
 to her soul and so difficult to dull little Jane 
 and Mary : — 
 
 " Res-ur-rect-ing, Soul-In-spir-ing, 
 Re-gen-er-a-ting Gospel Life, 
 
 It lead-eth a-way from all sin and strife." 
 
 Jane's cap was slightly unsettled, causing its 
 wearer to stop knitting now and then and pull 
 it forward or push it back ; and in one of these 
 little feminine difficulties Susanna saw Sue 
 reach forward and deftly transfer the cap to 
 her own head. Jane was horrified, but rather 
 slow to wrath and equally slow in ingenuity. 
 Sue looked a delicious Shaker with her delicate 
 face, her lovely eyes, and her yellow hair grown 
 into soft rings ; and quite intoxicated with her 
 cap, her knitting, and the general air of holi- 
 ness so unexpectedly emanating from her, she 
 moved her little hands up and down, as the 
 tune rose and fell, in a way that would have 
 filled Eldress Abby with joy. Susanna's heart 
 beat fast, and she wondered for a moment, as 
 she went back to her room, whether she could 
 
CONCERNING BACKSLIDERS 
 
 ever give Sue a worldly childhood more free 
 from danger than the life she was now living. 
 She found letters from Aunt Louisa and Jack 
 on reaching her room, and they lay in her lap 
 under a pile of towels, to be read and reread 
 while her busy needle flew over the coarse 
 crash. Sue stole in quietly, kissed her mother's 
 cheek, and sat down on her stool by the win- 
 dow, marveling, with every "under" of the 
 needle and "over" of the yarn, that it was she, 
 Sue Hathaway, who was making a real stock- 
 ing. 
 
 Jack's pen was not that of an especially 
 ready writer, but he had a practical way of 
 conveying considerable news. His present con- 
 tributions, when freed from their phonetic 
 errors and spelled in Christian fashion, read 
 somewhat as follows : — 
 
 Father says I must write to you every week, 
 even if I make him do without, so I will. I am 
 well, and so is Aunt Louisa, and any boy that 
 
meal. What did Sue get for her birthday? 
 I got a book from father and one from Aunt 
 Louisa and the one from you that you told her 
 to buy. It is queer that people will give a boy 
 books when he has only one knife, and that a 
 broken one. There's a book prize to be given 
 at the school, and I am pretty afraid I will get 
 that, too; it would be just my luck. Teachers 
 think about nothing but books and what good 
 they do, but I heard of a boy that had a grand 
 knife with five sharp blades and a corkscrew, 
 and in a shipwreck he cut all the ropes, so the 
 sail came down that was carrying them on to 
 the rocks, and then by boring a hole with his 
 corkscrew all the water leaked out of the ship 
 that had been threatening to sink the sailors. 
 I could use a little pocket money, as Aunt 
 Louisa keeps me short. ... I have been 
 spending Sunday with father, and had a pretty 
 good time, not so very. Father will take me 
 
CONCERNING BACKSLIDERS 
 
 about more when he stops going to the store, 
 which will be next week for good. The kitchen 
 floor is new painted, and Ellen says it sticks, 
 and Aunt Louisa is going to make Ellen clean 
 house in case you come home. Do you like 
 where you are? Our teacher told the girls' 
 teacher it seemed a long stay for any one who 
 had a family, and the boys at school call me 
 a half orphan and say my mother has left me 
 and so my father has to board me in the coun- 
 try. My money is run out again. I sat down 
 in a puddle this afternoon, but it dried up 
 pretty quick and did n't hurt my clothes, so 
 no more from your son 
 
 Jack. 
 
 This was the sort of message that had been 
 coming to Susanna of late, bringing up little 
 pictures of home duties and responsibilities, 
 homely tasks and trials. "John giving up the 
 store for good"; what did that mean? Had 
 he gone from bad to worse in the solitude that 
 
SUSANNA AND SUE 
 
 she had hoped might show him the gravity 
 of his offenses, the error of his ways ? In case 
 she should die, what then would become of 
 the children? Would Louisa accept the bur- 
 den of Jack, for whom she had never cared ? 
 Would the Shakers take Sue? She would be 
 safe; perhaps she would always be happy; 
 but brother and sister would be divided and 
 brought up as strangers. Would little Sue, 
 grown to big Sue, say some time or other, "My 
 mother renounced the world for herself, but 
 what right had she to renounce it for me ? Why 
 did she rob me of the dreams of girlhood and 
 the natural hopes of women, when I was too 
 young to give consent?" These and other 
 unanswerable questions continually drifted 
 through Susanna's mind, disturbing its bal- 
 ance and leaving her like a shuttlecock bandied 
 to and fro between conflicting blows. 
 
 "Mardie," came a soft little voice from 
 across the room; "Mardie, what is a back- 
 slider?" 
 
CONCERNING BACKSLIDERS 
 
 "Where did you hear that long word, Sue ?" 
 asked Susanna, rousing herself from her dream. 
 
 " 'T is n't so long as ' regenerating' and more 
 easier." 
 
 "Regenerating means 'making over/ you 
 know." 
 
 " There 'd ought to be children's words and 
 grown-up words, — that's what / think," said 
 Sue, decisively; "but what does 'backslider' 
 mean r 
 
 "A backslider is one who has been climbing 
 up a hill and suddenly begins to slip back." 
 
 "Does n't his feet take hold right, or why 
 does he slip?" 
 
 "Perhaps he can't manage his feet; perhaps 
 they just won't climb." 
 
 "Yes, or p'raps he just doesn't want to 
 climb any more; but it must be frightensome, 
 sliding backwards." 
 
 "I suppose it is." 
 
 "Is it wicked?" 
 
 "Why, yes, it is, generally; perhaps always." 
 
SUSANNA AND SUE 
 
 "Brother Nathan and Sister Hetty were 
 backsliders; Sister Tabitha said so. She told 
 Jane never to speak their names again any 
 more than if they was dead." 
 
 "Then you had better not speak of them, 
 either." 
 
 "There's so many things better not to speak 
 of in the world, sometimes I think 't would be 
 nicer to be an angel." 
 
 "Nicer, perhaps, but one has to be very 
 good to be an angel." 
 
 "Backsliders could n't be angels, I s'pose?" 
 
 " Not while they were backsliders ; but per- 
 haps they 'd begin to climb again, and then in 
 time they might grow to be angels." 
 
 "I shouldn't think likely," remarked Sue, 
 decisively, clicking her needles as one who 
 could settle most spiritual problems in a jiffy. 
 " I think the sliding kind is diff 'rent from the 
 climbing kind, and they don't make easy an- 
 gels." 
 
 A long pause followed this expression of 
 
CONCERNING BACKSLIDERS 
 
 opinion, this simple division of the human race, 
 at the start, into sheep and goats. Then pre- 
 sently the untiring voice broke the stillness again. 
 
 "Nathan and Hetty slid back when they 
 went away from here. Did we backslide when 
 we left Fardie and Jack?" 
 
 "I'm not sure but that we did," said poor 
 Susanna. 
 
 "There's children-Shakers, and brother-and- 
 sister Shakers, but no father-and-mother Shak- 
 ers ? " 
 
 "No; they think they can do just as much 
 good in the world without being mothers and 
 fathers." 
 
 "Do you think so?" 
 
 " Ye-es, I believe I do." 
 
 "Well, are you a truly Shaker, or can't you 
 be till you wear a cap?" 
 
 "I'm not a Shaker yet, Sue." 
 
 "You're just only a mother?" 
 
 "Yes, that's about all." 
 
 " Maybe we'd better go back to where there's 
 
SUSANNA AND SUE 
 
 not so many Sisters and more mothers, so you '11 
 have somebody to climb togedder with?" 
 
 "I could climb here, Sue, and so could you." 
 
 "Yes, but who'll Fardie and Jack climb 
 with? I wish they 'd come and see us. Brother 
 Ansel would make Fardie laugh, and Jack 
 would love farm-work, and we 'd all be so 
 happy. I miss Fardie awfully ! He did n't 
 speak to me much, but I liked to look at his 
 curly hair and think how lovely it would be if 
 he did take notice of me and play with me." 
 
 A sob from Susanna brought Sue, startled, 
 to her side. 
 
 "You break my heart, Sue! You break it 
 every day with the things you say. Don't you 
 love me, Sue?" 
 
 "More'n tongue can tell!" cried Sue, throw- 
 ing herself into her mother's arms. "Don't 
 cry, darling Mardie! I won't talk any more, 
 not for days and days ! Let me wipe your poor 
 eyes. Don't let Elder Gray see you crying, or 
 he'll think I've been naughty. He's just going 
 
CONCERNING BACKSLIDERS 
 
 in downstairs to see Eldress Abby. Was it 
 wrong what I said about backsliding, or what, 
 Mardie ? We'll help each udder climb, an' then 
 we'll go home an' help poor lonesome Fardie; 
 shall we?" 
 
 "Abby!" called Elder Gray, stepping into 
 the entry of the Office Building. 
 
 "Yee, I'm coming," Eldress Abby answered 
 from the stairway. "Go right out and sit down 
 on the bench by the door, where I can catch a 
 few minutes more light for my darning; the 
 days seem to be growing short all to once. Did 
 Lemuel have a good sale of basket-work at the 
 mountains ? Rosetta has n't done so well for 
 years at Old Orchard. We seem to be prosper- 
 ing in every material direction, Daniel, but my 
 heart is heavy somehow, and I have to be in- 
 stant in prayer to keep from discouragement." 
 
 "It has n't been an altogether good year with 
 us spiritually," confessed Daniel; "perhaps we 
 needed chastening." 
 
SUSANNA AND SUE 
 
 "If we needed it, we've received it," Abby 
 ejaculated, as she pushed her darning-ball into 
 the foot of a stocking. "Nothing has happened 
 since I came here thirty years ago that has trou- 
 bled me like the running away of Nathan and 
 Hetty. If they had been new converts, we should 
 have thought the good seed hadn't got fairly 
 rooted, but those children were brought to us 
 when Nathan was eleven and Hetty nine." 
 
 "I well remember, for the boy's father and 
 the girl's mother came on the same train; a 
 most unusual occurrence to receive two children 
 in one day." 
 
 "I have cause to remember Hetty in her first 
 month, for she was as wild as a young hawk. 
 She laughed in meeting the first Sunday, and 
 when she came back, I told her to sit behind me 
 in silence for half an hour while I was reading 
 my Bible. 'Be still now, Hetty, and labor to 
 repent,' I said. When the time was up, she said 
 in a meek little mite of a voice, 'I think I'm 
 least in the Kingdom now, Eldress Abby!' 
 
CONCERNING BACKSLIDERS 
 
 'Then run outdoors,' I said. She kicked up her 
 heels like a colt and was through the door in a 
 second. Not long afterwards I put my hands 
 behind me to tie my apron tighter, and if that 
 child had n't taken my small scissors lying on 
 the table and cut buttonholes all up and down 
 my strings, hundreds of them, while she was 
 'laboring to repent.' " 
 
 Elder Gray smiled reminiscently, though he 
 had often heard the story before. "Neither of 
 the children came from godly families," he 
 said, "but at least the parents never interfered 
 with us nor came here putting false ideas into 
 their children's heads." 
 
 "That's what I say," continued Abby ; "and 
 now, after ten years' training and discipline in 
 the angelic life, Hetty being especially promis- 
 ing, to think of their going away together, and 
 worse yet, being married in Albion village right 
 at our very doors ; I don't hardly dare to go to 
 bed nights for fear of hearing in the morning 
 that some of the other young folks have been 
 
SUSANNA AND SUE 
 
 led astray by this foolish performance of Hetty's ; 
 I know it was Hetty's fault ; Nathan never had 
 ingenuity enough to think and plan it all out." 
 
 "Nay, nay, Abby, don't be too hard on the 
 girl ; I 've watched Nathan closely, and he has 
 been in a dangerous and unstable state, even 
 as long ago as his last confession ; but this piece 
 of backsliding, grievous as it is, does n't cause 
 me as much sorrow as the fall of Brother 
 Ephraim. To all appearance he had conquered 
 his appetite, and for five years he has led a 
 sober life. I had even great hopes of him for 
 the ministry, and suddenly, like a great cloud 
 in the blue sky, has come this terrible visitation, 
 this reappearance of the old Adam. 'Ephraim 
 has returned to his idols.' " 
 
 "How have you decided to deal with him, 
 Daniel?" 
 
 "It is his first offense since he cast in his lot 
 with us ; we must rebuke, chastise, and forgive." 
 
 "Yee, yee, I agree to that; but how if he 
 makes us the laughing-stock of the community 
 
CONCERNING BACKSLIDERS 
 
 and drags our sacred banner in the dust? We 
 can't afford to have one of our order picked up 
 in the streets by the world's people." 
 
 "Have the world's people found an infallible 
 way to keep those of their order out of the gut- 
 ters?" asked Elder Gray. "Ephraim seems 
 repentant ; if he is willing to try again, we must 
 be willing to do as much." 
 
 " Yee, Daniel, you are right. Another matter 
 that causes me anxiety is Susanna. I never 
 yearned for a soul as I yearn for hers! She 
 has had the advantage of more education and 
 more reading than most of us have ever en- 
 joyed ; she 's gifted in teaching and she wins 
 the children. She 's discreet and spiritually 
 minded; her life in the world, even with the 
 influence of her dissipated husband, has n't 
 really stained, only humbled her; she would 
 make such a Shaker, if she was once 'con- 
 vinced,' as we have n't gathered in for years 
 and years; but I fear she's slipping, slipping 
 away, Daniel ! ' ' 
 
SUSANNA AND SUE 
 
 "What makes you feel so now, particu- 
 larly?" 
 
 "She's diff'rent as time goes on. She's had 
 more letters from that place where her boy is ; 
 she cries nights, and though she does n't relax 
 a mite with her work, she drags about some- 
 times like a bird with one wing." 
 
 Elder Daniel took off his broad-brimmed 
 hat to cool his forehead and hair, lifting his 
 eyes to the first pale stars that were trembling 
 in the sky, hesitating in silver and then quietly 
 deepening into gold. 
 
 Brother Ansel was a Believer because he had 
 no particular love for the world and no great 
 susceptibility to its temptations ; but what had 
 drawn Daniel Gray from the open sea into 
 this quiet little backwater of a Shaker Settle- 
 ment? 
 
 After an adventurous early life, in which, 
 as if youth-intoxicated, he had plunged from 
 danger to danger, experience to experience, he 
 suddenly found himself in a society of which 
 
CONCERNING BACKSLIDERS 
 
 he had never so much as heard, a company 
 of celibate brothers and sisters holding all 
 goods and possessions in common, and trying 
 to live the "angelic life" on earth. Illness de- 
 tained him for a month against his will, but at 
 the end of that time he had joined the Com- 
 munity; and although it had been twenty-five 
 years since his gathering in, he was still stead- 
 fast in the faith. 
 
 His character was of puritanical sternness; 
 he was a strict disciplinarian, and insisted upon 
 obedience to the rules of Shaker life, "the sa- 
 cred laws of Zion," as he was wont to term 
 them. He magnified his office, yet he was 
 of a kindly disposition easily approached by 
 children, and not without a quaint old-time 
 humor. 
 
 There was a long pause while the two faith- 
 ful leaders of the little flock were absorbed in 
 thought; then the Elder said : "Susanna's all 
 you say, and the child, — well, if she could 
 be purged of her dross, I never saw a creature 
 
SUSANNA AND SUE 
 
 better fitted to live the celestial life ; but we 
 must not harbor any divided hearts here. 
 When the time comes, we must dismiss her 
 with our blessing." 
 
 "Yee, I suppose so," said Eldress Abby, 
 loyally, but it was with a sigh. Had she and 
 Tabitha been left to their own instincts, they 
 would have gone out into the highways and 
 hedges, proselyting with the fervor of Mother 
 Ann's day and generation. 
 
 "After all, Abby," said the Elder, rising to 
 take his leave, still in a sort of mild trance, — 
 "after all, Abby, I suppose the Shakers don't 
 own the whole of heaven. I'd like to think so, 
 but I can't. It's a big place, and it belongs to 
 God." 
 
IX 
 LOVE MANIFOLD 
 
THE woods on the shores of Massabesic 
 Pond were stretches of tapestry, where 
 every shade of green and gold, olive and brown, 
 orange and scarlet, melted the one into the 
 other. The sombre pines made a deep-toned 
 background; patches of sumach gave their 
 flaming crimson ; the goldenrod grew rank and 
 tall in glorious profusion, and the maples out- 
 side the Office Building were balls of brilliant 
 carmine. The air was like crystal, and the land- 
 scape might have been bathed in liquid amber, 
 it was so saturated with October yellow. 
 
 Susanna caught her breath as she threw her 
 chamber window wider open in the early 
 
7 
 
 SUSANNA AND SUE 
 
 morning; for the greater part of the picture 
 had been painted during the frosty night. 
 
 "Throw your little cape round your shoul- 
 ders and come quickly, Sue! " she exclaimed. 
 
 The child ran to her side. "Oh, what a 
 goldy, goldy morning!" she cried. 
 
 One crimson leaf with a long heavy stem 
 that acted as a sort of rudder, came down to 
 the window-sill with a sidelong scooping flight, 
 while two or three gayly painted ones, parted 
 from the tree by the same breeze, floated airily 
 along as if borne on unseen wings, finally 
 alighting on Sue's head and shoulders like 
 tropical birds. 
 
 "You cried in the night, Mardie!" said Sue. 
 " I heard you sniff erling and getting up for 
 your hank'chief ; but I did n't speak 'cause it's 
 so dreadful to be catched crying." 
 
 " Kneel down beside me and give me part of 
 your cape," her mother answered. "I'm go- 
 ing to let my sad heart fly right out of the 
 window into those beautiful trees." 
 
LOVE MANIFOLD 
 
 "And maybe a glad heart will fly right in!" 
 the child suggested. 
 
 " Maybe. — Oh ! we must cuddle close and 
 be still ; Elder Gray 's going to sit down under 
 the great maple ; and do you see, all the Bro- 
 thers seem to be up early this morning, just as 
 we are?" 
 
 "More love, Elder Gray!" called Issachar, 
 on his way to the tool-house. 
 
 "More love, Brother Issachar!" 
 
 "More love, Brother Ansel!" 
 
 "More love, Brother Calvin!" 
 
 "More love!" "More love!" "More love!" 
 So the quaint but not uncommon Shaker 
 greeting passed from Brother to Brother; and 
 as Tabitha and Martha and Rosetta met on 
 their way to dairy and laundry and seed-house, 
 they, too, hearing the salutation, took up the 
 refrain, and Susanna and Sue heard again from 
 the women's voices that beautiful morning 
 wish, "More love!" "More love!" speeding 
 from heart to heart and lip to lip. 
 
SUSANNA AND SUE 
 
 Mother and child were very quiet. 
 
 "More love, Sue!" said Susanna, clasping 
 her closely. 
 
 "More love, Mardie!" whispered the child, 
 smiling and entering into the spirit of the salu- 
 tation. "Let's turn our heads Farnham way! 
 I'll take Jack and you take Fardie, and we'll 
 say togedder, ' More love ' ; shall we?" 
 
 "More love, John." 
 
 "More love, Jack." 
 
 The words floated out over the trees in the 
 woman's trembling voice and the child's treble. 
 
 "Elder Gray looks tired though he's just got 
 up," Sue continued. 
 
 "He is not strong," replied her mother, re- 
 membering Brother Ansel's statement that the 
 Elder "wa'n't diseased anywheres, but did n't 
 have no durability." 
 
 "The Elder would have a lovely lap," Sue 
 remarked presently. 
 
 "What?" 
 
 "A nice lap to sit in. Fardie has a nice lap, 
 
hard lap. I love Elder Gray, and I climbed on 
 his lap one day. He put me right down, but 
 I'm sure he likes children. I wish I could take 
 right hold of his hand and walk all over the 
 farm, but he would n't let me, I s'pose. — More 
 love, Elder Gray!" she cried suddenly, bobbing 
 up above the window-sill and shaking her 
 fairy hand at him. 
 
 The Elder looked up at the sound of the glad 
 voice. No human creature could have failed 
 to smile back into the roguish face or have 
 treated churlishly the sweet, confident little 
 greeting. The heart of a real man must have 
 an occasional throb of the father, and when 
 Daniel Gray rose from his seat under the maple 
 and called, "More love, child!" there was 
 something strange and touching in his tone. 
 He moved away from the tree to his morning 
 labors with the consciousness of something 
 new to conquer. Long, long ago he had risen 
 
SUSANNA AND SUE 
 
 victorious above many of the temptations that 
 flesh is heir to. Women were his good friends, 
 his comrades, his sisters ; they no longer trou- 
 bled the waters of his soul; but here was a 
 child who stirred the depths; who awakened 
 the potential father in him so suddenly and so 
 strongly that he longed for the sweetness of a 
 human tie that could bind him to her. But the 
 current of the Elder's being was set towards 
 sacrifice and holiness, and the common joys of 
 human life he felt could never and must never 
 be his ; so he went to the daily round, the com- 
 mon task, only a little paler, a little soberer 
 than was his wont. 
 
 "More love, Martha!" said Susanna when 
 she met Martha a little later in the day. 
 
 "More love, Susanna!" Martha replied 
 cheerily. "You heard our Shaker greeting, I 
 see ! It was the beautiful weather, the fine air 
 and glorious colors, that brought the inspira- 
 tion this morning, I guess ! It took us all out of 
 doors, and then it seemed to get into the blood. 
 
LOVE MANIFOLD 
 
 Besides, to-morrow 's the Day of Sacrifice, and 
 that takes us all on to the mountain-tops of 
 feeling. There have been times when I had to 
 own up to a lack of love." 
 
 "You, Martha, who have such wonderful 
 influence over the children, such patience, such 
 affection!" 
 
 "It was n't always so. When I was first put 
 in charge of the children, I did n't like the 
 work. They did n't respond to me somehow, 
 and when they were out of my sight they 
 were ugly and disobedient. My natural mother, 
 Maria Holmes, took care of the girls' clothing. 
 One day she said to me, ' Martha, do you love 
 the girls?' 
 
 " ' Some of them are very unlovely,' I replied. 
 
 "'I know that,' she said, 'but you can never 
 help them unless you love them.' 
 
 "I thought mother very critical, for I strove 
 scrupulously to do my duty. A few days after 
 this the Elder said to me : Martha, do you love 
 the girls?' I responded, 'Not very much.' 
 
SUSANNA AND SUE 
 
 "'You cannot save them unless you love 
 them,' he said. 
 
 "Then I answered, 'I will labor for a gift of 
 love.' 
 
 "When the work of the day was over, and 
 the girls were in bed, I would take off my shoes 
 and spend several hours of the night walking 
 the floor, kneeling in prayer that I might ob- 
 tain the coveted gift. For five weeks I did this 
 without avail, when suddenly one night when 
 the moon was full and I was kneeling by the 
 window, a glory seemed to overshadow the crest 
 of a high mountain in the distance. I thought 
 I heard a voice say: 'Martha, I baptize you 
 into the spirit of love ! ' I sat there trembling 
 for more than an hour, and when I rose, I felt 
 that I could love the meanest human being that 
 ever walked the earth. I have never had any 
 trouble with children since that night of the 
 vision. They seem different to me, and I dare 
 say I am different to them." 
 
 "I wish I could see visions!" exclaimed 
 
LOVE MANIFOLD 
 
 Susanna. "Oh, for a glory that would speak 
 to me and teach me truth and duty! Life is 
 all mist, whichever way I turn. I'd like to be 
 lifted on to a high place where I could see 
 clearly." 
 
 She leaned against the frame of the open 
 kitchen door, her delicate face quivering with 
 emotion and longing, her attitude simplicity 
 and unconsciousness itself. The baldest of 
 Shaker prose turned to purest poetry when 
 Susanna dipped it in the alembic of her own 
 imagination. 
 
 "Labor for the gift of sight!" said Martha, 
 who believed implicitly in spirits and visions. 
 "Labor this very night." 
 
 It must be said for Susanna that she had 
 never ceased laboring in her own way for many 
 days. The truth was that she felt herself turn- 
 ing from marriage. She had lived now so long 
 in the society of men and women who regarded 
 it as an institution not compatible with the 
 highest spiritual development that uncon- 
 
SUSANNA AND SUE 
 
 sciously her point of view had changed; 
 changed all the more because she had been so 
 unhappy with the man she had chosen. Curi- 
 ously enough, and unfortunately enough for 
 Susanna Hathaway's peace of mind, the greater 
 aversion she felt towards the burden of the old 
 life, towards the irksomeness of guiding a 
 weaker soul, towards the claims of husband 
 on wife, the stronger those claims appeared. 
 If they had never been assumed ! — Ah, but 
 they had ; there was the rub ! One sight of little 
 Sue sleeping tranquilly beside her; one mem- 
 ory of rebellious, faulty Jack; one vision of 
 John, either as needing or missing her, the 
 rightful woman, or falling deeper in the wiles 
 of the wrong one for very helplessness ; — any 
 of these changed Susanna the would-be saint, 
 in an instant into Susanna the wife and mother. 
 "Speak to me for Thy Compassion's sake," 
 she prayed from the little book of Confessions 
 that her mother had given her. "I will follow 
 after Thy Voice!" 
 
LOVE MANIFOLD 
 
 "Would you betray your trust?" asked con- 
 science. 
 
 "No, not intentionally." 
 
 "Would you desert your post?" 
 
 "Never, willingly." 
 
 "You have divided the family; taken a little 
 quail bird out of the home-nest and left sorrow 
 behind you. Would God justify you in that?" 
 
 For the first time Susanna's "No" rang 
 clearly enough for her to hear it plainly; for 
 the first time it was followed by no vague mis- 
 givings, no bewilderment, no unrest or inde- 
 cision. "J turn hither and thither; Thy pur- 
 poses are hid from me, but I commend my soul 
 to Thee ! " 
 
 Then a sentence from the dear old book 
 came into her memory: "And thy dead things 
 shall revive, and thy weak things shall be made 
 whole." 
 
 She listened, laying hold of every word, till 
 the nervous clenching of her hands subsided, 
 her face relaxed into peace. Then she lay down 
 
SUSANNA AND SUE 
 
 beside Sue, creeping close to her for the warmth 
 and comfort and healing of her innocent touch, 
 and, closing her eyes serenely, knew no more till 
 the morning broke, the Sabbath morning of 
 Confession Day. 
 
X 
 
 IF Susanna's path had grown more difficult, 
 more filled with anxieties, so had John 
 Hathaway 's. The protracted absence of his 
 wife made the gossips conclude that the break 
 was a final one. Jack was only half contented 
 with his aunt, and would be fairly mutinous 
 in the winter, while Louisa's general attitude 
 was such as to show clearly that she only kept 
 the boy for Susanna's sake. 
 
 Now and then there was a terrifying hint of 
 winter in the air, and the days of Susanna's ab- 
 sence seemed eternal to John Hathaway. Yet he 
 was a man about whom there would have been 
 but one opinion : that when deprived of a rather 
 
SUSANNA AND SUE 
 
 superior and high-minded wife and the steady- 
 ing influence of home and children, he would go 
 completely "to the dogs," whither he seemed 
 to be hurrying when Susanna's wifely courage 
 failed. That he had done precisely the opposite 
 and the unexpected thing, shows us perhaps 
 that men are not on the whole as capable of 
 estimating the forces of their fellow men as is 
 God the maker of men, who probably expects 
 something of the worst of them up to the very 
 last. 
 
 It was at the end of a hopeless Sunday when 
 John took his boy back to his aunt's towards 
 night. He wondered drearily how a woman 
 dealt with a ten-year-old boy who from sunrise 
 to sunset had done every mortal thing he ought 
 not to have done, and had left undone every- 
 thing that he had been told to do ; and, as if 
 to carry out the very words of the church ser- 
 vice, neither was there any health in him ; for 
 he had an inflamed throat and a whining, irri- 
 table, discontented temper that could be borne 
 
BROTHER AND SISTER 
 
 only by a mother, a father being wholly inad- 
 equate and apparently never destined for the 
 purpose. 
 
 It was a mild evening late in October, and 
 Louisa sat on the porch with her pepper-and- 
 salt shawl on and a black wool "rigolette" 
 tied over her head. Jack, very sulky and unre- 
 signed, was dispatched to bed under the care 
 of the one servant, who was provided with a 
 cupful of vinegar, salt, and water, for a gargle. 
 John had more than an hour to wait for a re- 
 turning train to Farnham, and although ordi- 
 narily he would have preferred to spend the time 
 in the silent and unreproachful cemetery rather 
 than in the society of his sister Louisa, he was 
 too tired and hopeless to do anything but sit 
 on the steps and smoke fitfully in the semi- 
 darkness. 
 
 Louisa was much as usual. She well knew — 
 who better ? — her brother's changed course 
 of life, but neither encouragement nor compli- 
 ment were in her line. Why should a man be 
 
SUSANNA AND SUE 
 
 praised for living a respectable life ? That John 
 had really turned a sort of moral somersault 
 and come up a different creature, she did not 
 realize in the least, nor the difficulties sur- 
 mounted in such a feat; but she did give him 
 credit secretly for turning about face and be- 
 having far more decently than she could ever 
 have believed possible. She had no conception 
 of his mental torture at the time, but if he kept 
 on doing well, she privately intended to inform 
 Susanna and at least give her a chance of try- 
 ing him again, if absence had diminished her 
 sense of injury. One thing that she did not 
 know was that John was on the eve of losing 
 his partnership. When Jack had said that his 
 father was not going back to the store the next 
 week, she thought it meant simply a vacation. 
 Divided hearts, broken vows, ruined lives — 
 she could bear the sight of these with consider- 
 able philosophy, but a lost income was a very 
 different, a very tangible thing. She almost 
 lost her breath when her brother knocked the 
 
* 
 
 BROTHER AND SISTER 
 
 ashes from his meerschaum and curtly told 
 
 her of the proposed change in his business rela- 
 tions. 
 
 "I don't know what I shall do yet," he said, 
 "whether I shall set up for myself in a small 
 way or take a position in another concern — 
 that is, if I can get one — my stock of popular- 
 ity seems to be pretty low just now in Farnham. 
 I'd move away to-morrow and cut the whole 
 gossipy, deceitful, hypocritical lot of 'em if 
 I was n't afraid of closing the house and so 
 losing Susanna, if she should ever feel like 
 coming back to us." 
 
 These words and the thought back of them 
 were too much for John's self-control. The 
 darkness helped him and his need of comfort 
 was abject. Suddenly he burst out, "Oh, 
 Louisa, for heaven's sake, give me a little 
 crumb of comfort, if you have any! How can 
 you stand like a stone all these months and see 
 a man suffering as I have suffered, without 
 giving him a word?" 
 
SUSANNA AND SUE 
 
 "You brought it on yourself," said Louisa, 
 in self-exculpation. 
 
 "Does that make it any easier to bear?" 
 cried John. "Don't you suppose I remember 
 it every hour, and curse myself the more ? You 
 know perfectly well that I'm a different man 
 to-day. I don't know what made me change; 
 it was as if something had been injected into 
 my blood that turned me against everything 
 I had liked best before. I hate the sight of the 
 men and the women I used to go with, not be- 
 cause they are any worse, but because they re- 
 mind me of what I have lost. I have reached 
 the point now where I have got to have news 
 of Susanna or go and shoot myself." 
 
 "That would be about the only piece of 
 foolishness you haven't committed already!" 
 replied Louisa, with a biting satire that would 
 have made any man let go of the trigger in case 
 he had gone so far as to begin pulling it. 
 
 "Where is she?" John went on, without 
 anger at her sarcasm. "Where is she, how is 
 
as bitter as she was at first, does she ever speak 
 of coming back ? — Tell me something, tell me 
 anything. I will know something. I say I 
 will!" 
 
 Louisa's calm demeanor began to show a little 
 agitation, for she was not used to the sight of 
 emotion. 
 
 "I can't tell you where Susanna is, for I 
 made her a solemn promise I would n't unless 
 you or Jack were in danger of some kind; but 
 I don't mind telling you this much, that she 's 
 well and in the safest kind of a shelter, for 
 she's been living from the first in a Shaker 
 Settlement." 
 
 "Shaker Settlement!" cried John, starting 
 up from his seat on the steps. "What's that? 
 I know Shaker egg-beaters and garden-seeds 
 and rocking-chairs and — oh, yes, I remember 
 their religion's against marriage. That's the 
 worst thing you could have told me ; that ends 
 all hope ; if they once get hold of a woman like 
 
SUSANNA AND SUE 
 
 Susanna, they'll never let go of her; if they 
 don't believe in a woman's marrying a good 
 man, they'd never let her go back to a bad one. 
 Oh, if I had only known this before; if only 
 you'd told me, Louisa, perhaps I could have 
 done something. Maybe they take vows or 
 sign contracts, and so I have lost her alto- 
 gether." 
 
 "I don't know much about their beliefs, and 
 Susanna never explained them," returned 
 Louisa, nervously, "but now that you've got 
 something to offer her, why don't you write and 
 ask her to come back to you? I'll send your 
 letter to her." 
 
 "I don't dare, Louisa, I don't dare," groaned 
 John, leaning his head against one of the pil- 
 lars of the porch. "I can't tell you the fear I 
 have of Susanna after the way I've neglected 
 her this last year. If she should come in at the 
 gate this minute, I could n't meet her eyes ; if 
 you'd read the letter she left me, you'd feel the 
 same way. I deserved it, to the last word, but 
 
BROTHER AND SISTER 
 
 oh, it was like so many separate strokes of 
 lightning, and every one of them burned. It 
 was nothing but the truth, but it was cut in 
 with a sharp sword. Unless she should come 
 back to me of her own accord, and she never 
 will, I have n't got the courage to ask her; just 
 have n't got the courage, that's all there is to 
 say about it." And here John buried his head 
 in his hands. 
 
 A very queer thing happened to Louisa 
 Banks at this moment. A half-second before 
 she would have murmured : — 
 
 "This rock shall fly 
 From its firm base as soon as I!" 
 
 when all at once, and without warning, a 
 strange something occurred in the organ she 
 had always regarded — and her opinion had 
 never been questioned — as a good, tough, 
 love-tight heart. First there was a flutter and 
 a tremor running all along her spine ; then her 
 eyes filled ; then a lump rose in her throat and 
 choked her ; then words trembled on her tongue 
 
SUSANNA AND SUE 
 
 and refused to be uttered; then something 
 like a bird — could it have been the highly 
 respectable good-as-new heart ? — throbbed 
 under her black silk Sunday waist; then she 
 grew like wax from the crown of her head to 
 the soles of her feet ; then in a twinkling, and 
 so unconsciously as to be unashamed of it, 
 she became a sister. You have seen a gray No- 
 vember morning melt into an Indian summer 
 noon? Louisa Banks was like that, when, at 
 the sight of a man in sore trouble, sympathy 
 was born in her to soften the rockiness of her 
 original make-up. 
 
 "There, there, John, don't be so down- 
 hearted," she stammered, drawing her chair 
 closer and putting her hand on his shoulder. 
 "We'll bring it round right, you see if we don't. 
 You've done the most yourself already, for I'm 
 proud of the way you've acted, stiffening right 
 up like an honest man and showing you 've got 
 some good sensible Hathaway stuff in you, 
 after all, and ain't ashamed to turn your back 
 
BROTHER AND SISTER 
 
 on your evil ways. Susanna ain't one to refuse 
 forgiveness." 
 
 " She forgave for a long time, but she refused 
 at last. Why should she change now?" John 
 asked. 
 
 " You remember she has n't heard a single 
 word from you, nor about you, in that out-of- 
 the-way place where she's been living," said 
 Louisa, consolingly. "She thinks you're the 
 same as you were, or worse, maybe. Perhaps 
 she 's waiting for you to make some sign 
 through me, for she don't know that you care 
 anything about her, or are pining to have her 
 back." 
 
 "Such a woman as Susanna must know bet- 
 ter than that!" cried John. "She ought to 
 know that when a man got used to living with 
 anybody like her, he could never endure any 
 other kind." 
 
 "How should she know all that? Jack's 
 been writing to her and telling her the news for 
 the last few weeks, though I have n't said a 
 
SUSANNA AND SUE 
 
 word about you because I did n't know how 
 long your reformation was going to hold out; 
 but I won't let the grass grow under my feet 
 now, till I tell her just how things stand!" 
 
 "You're a good woman, Louisa; I don't see 
 why I never noticed it before." 
 
 "It's because I've been concealing my 
 goodness too much. Stay here with me to- 
 night and don't go back to brood in that dis- 
 mal, forsaken house. We'll see how Jack is in 
 the morning, and if he's all right, take him 
 along with you, so's to be all there together if 
 Susanna comes back this week, as I kind of 
 hope she will. Make Ellen have the house all 
 nice and cheerful from top to bottom, with a 
 good supper ready to put on the table the night 
 she comes. You'd better pick your asters and 
 take 'em in for the parlor, then I'll cut the 
 chrysanthemums for you in the middle of the 
 week. The day she comes I'll happen in, and 
 stay to dinner if you find it's going to be mor- 
 tifying for you ; but if everything is as I expect 
 
BROTHER AND SISTER 
 
 it will be, and the way Susanna always did 
 have things, I'll make for home and leave you 
 to yourselves. Susanna ain't one to nag and 
 hector and triumph over a man when he 's 
 repented." 
 
 John hugged Louisa, pepper-and-salt shawl, 
 black rigolette, and all, when she finished this 
 unprecedented speech; and when he went to 
 sleep that night in the old north chamber, the 
 one he and Louisa had been born in, the one 
 his father and mother had died in, it was with 
 a little smile of hope on his lips. 
 
 "Set her place at hearth and board 
 As it used to be!" 
 
 These were the last words that crossed his 
 waking thoughts. 
 
 Before Louisa went to her own bed, she 
 wrote one of her brief and characteristic epis- 
 tles to Susanna, but it did not reach her, for 
 the "hills of home" had called John's wife so 
 insistently on that Sunday, that the next day 
 found her on her way back to Farnham. 
 
SUSANNA AND SUE 
 
 Dear Susanna [so the letter read], — 
 There's a new man in your house at Farn- 
 ham. His name is John Hathaway, but he's 
 made all over and it was high time. / say it's 
 the hand of God ! He won't own up that it is, 
 but I'm letting him alone, for I've done quar- 
 reling, though I don't like to see a man get 
 religion and deny it, for all the world like Peter 
 in the New Testament. If you have n't used 
 up the last one of your seventy-times-sevens, I 
 think you'd better come back and forgive your 
 husband. If you don't, you'd better send for 
 your son. I'm willing to bear the burdens the 
 Lord intends specially for me, but Jack be- 
 longs to you, and a good-sized heavy burden he 
 is, too, for his age. I can't deny that, if he is a 
 Hathaway. I think he 's the kind of a boy that 
 ought to be put in a barrel and fed through the 
 bung-hole till he grows up ; but of course I 'm 
 not used to children's ways. 
 
 Be as easy with John at first as you can. I 
 know you'll say / never was with my husband, 
 
BROTHER AND SISTER 
 
 but he was different. He got to like a bracing 
 treatment, Adlai did. Many's the time he said 
 to me, "Louisa, when you make up our minds, 
 I'm always contented." But John is n't made 
 that way. He's a changed man; now, what 
 we've got to do is to keep him changed. He 
 does n't bear you any grudge for leaving him, 
 so he won't reproach you. 
 
 Hoping to see you before long, I am, 
 Yours as usual, 
 
 Louisa Banks. 
 
XI 
 
 ON the Saturday evening before the yearly 
 Day of Sacrifice the spiritual heads of 
 each Shaker family call upon all the Believers 
 to enter heartily next day into the humiliations 
 and blessings of open confession. 
 
 The Sabbath dawns upon an awed and sol- 
 emn household. Footfalls are hushed, the chil- 
 dren's chatter is stilled, and all go to the morn- 
 ing meal in silence. There is a strange quiet, 
 but it is not sadness ; it is a hush, as when in 
 Israel's camp the silver trumpets sounded and 
 the people stayed in their tents. "Then," 
 Elder Gray explained to Susanna, " a summons 
 comes to each Believer, for all have been 
 
SUSANNA AND SUE 
 
 searching the heart and scanning the life of the 
 months past. Softly the one called goes to the 
 door of the one appointed by the Divine Spirit, 
 the human representative who is to receive the 
 gift of the burdened soul. Woman confesses to 
 woman, man to man ; it is the open door that 
 leads to God." 
 
 Susanna lifted Eldress Abby's latch and 
 stood in her strong, patient presence ; then all 
 at once she knelt impulsively and looked up 
 into her serene eyes. 
 
 "Do you come as a Believer, Susanna?" 
 tremblingly asked the Eldress. 
 
 "No, Eldress Abby. I come as a child of the 
 world who wants to go back to her duty, and 
 hopes to do it better than she ever did before. 
 She ought to be able to, because you have 
 chastened her pride, taught her the lesson of 
 patience, strengthened her will, purified her 
 spirit, and cleansed her soul from bitterness 
 and wrath. I waited till afternoon when all the 
 confessions were over. May I speak now?" 
 
THE OPEN DOOR 
 
 Eldress Abby bowed, but she looked weak 
 and stricken and old. 
 
 "I had something you would have called a 
 vision last night, but I think of it as a dream, 
 and I know just what led to it. You told me 
 Polly Reed's story, and the little quail bird had 
 such a charm for Sue that I've repeated it to 
 her more than once. In my sleep I seemed to 
 see a mother quail with a little one beside her. 
 The two were always together, happily flying 
 or hopping about under the trees; but every 
 now and then I heard a sad little note, as of a 
 deserted bird somewhere in the wood. I walked 
 a short distance, and parting the branches, 
 saw on the open ground another parent bird 
 and a young one by its side darting hither and 
 thither, as if lost ; they seemed to be restlessly 
 searching for something, and always they ut- 
 tered the soft, sad note, as if the nest had disap- 
 peared and they had been parted from the little 
 flock. Of course my brain had changed the 
 very meaning of the Shaker story and trans- 
 
SUSANNA AND SUE 
 
 lated it into different terms, but when I woke 
 this morning, I could think of nothing but my 
 husband and my boy. The two of them seemed 
 to me to be needing me, searching for me in the 
 dangerous open country, while I was hidden 
 away in the safe shelter of the wood — I and 
 the other little quail bird I had taken out of 
 the nest." 
 
 "Do you think you could persuade your hus- 
 band to unite with us?" asked Abby, wiping 
 her eyes. 
 
 The tension of the situation was too tightly 
 drawn for mirth, or Susanna could have 
 smiled, but she answered soberly, "No ; if John 
 could develop the best in himself, he could be 
 a good husband and father, a good neighbor 
 and citizen, and an upright business man, but 
 never a Shaker." 
 
 "Did n't he insult your wifely honor and dis- 
 grace your home?" 
 
 "Yes, in the last few weeks before I left him. 
 All his earlier offenses were more against him- 
 
THE OPEN DOOR 
 
 self than me, in a sense. I forgave him many a 
 time, but I am not certain it was the seventy 
 times seven that the Bible bids us. I am not 
 free from blame myself. I was hard the last 
 year, for I had lost hope and my pride was 
 trailing in the dust. I left him a bitter letter, 
 one without any love or hope or faith in it, just 
 because at the moment I believed I ought, once 
 in my life, to let him know how I felt toward 
 him." 
 
 "How can you go back and live under his 
 roof with that feeling ? It's degradation." 
 
 "It has changed. I was morbid then, and so 
 wounded and weak that I could not fight any 
 longer. I am rested now, and calm. My pluck 
 has come back, and my strength. I've learned 
 a good deal here about casting out my own 
 devils ; now I am going home and help him to 
 cast out his. Perhaps he won't be there; per- 
 haps he does n't want me, though when he was 
 his very best self he loved me dearly ; but that 
 was long, long ago!" sighed Susanna, drearily. 
 
SUSANNA AND SUE 
 
 " Oh, this thing the world's people call love !" 
 groaned Abby. 
 
 "There is love and love, even in the world 
 outside; for if it is Adam's world it is God's, 
 too, Abby ! The love I gave my husband was 
 good, I think, but it failed somewhere, and I 
 am going back to try again. I am not any too 
 happy in leaving you and taking up, perhaps, 
 heavier burdens than those from which I es- 
 caped." 
 
 "Night after night I've prayed to be the 
 means of leading you to the celestial life," said 
 the Eldress, "but my plaint was not worthy to 
 be heard. Oh, that God would increase our 
 numbers and so revive our drooping faith ! We 
 work, we struggle, we sacrifice, we pray, we 
 defy the world and deny the flesh, yet we fail 
 to gather in Believers." 
 
 "Don't say you've failed, dear, dear Abby !" 
 cried Susanna, pressing the Eldress's work- 
 stained hands to her lips. " God speaks to you 
 in one voice, to me in another. Does it matter 
 
THE OPEN DOOR 
 
 so much as long as we both hear Him ? Surely 
 it's the hearing and the obeying that counts 
 most ! Wish me well, dear friend, and help me 
 to say good-by to the Elder." 
 
 The two women found Elder Gray in the 
 office, and Abby, still unresigned, laid Su- 
 sanna's case before him. 
 
 "The Great Architect has need of many 
 kinds of workmen in His building," said the 
 Elder. "There are those who are willing to 
 put aside the ties of flesh for the kingdom of 
 heaven's sake; 'he that is able to receive it, 
 let him receive it!'" 
 
 "There may also be those who are willing to 
 take up the ties of the flesh for the kingdom of 
 heaven's sake," answered Susanna, gently, but 
 with a certain courage. 
 
 Her face glowed with emotion, her eyes 
 shone, her lips were parted. It was a new 
 thought. Abby and Daniel gazed at her for a 
 moment without speaking, then Daniel said : 
 "It's a terrible cross to some of the Brethren 
 
SUSANNA AND SUE 
 
 and Sisters to live here outside of the world, 
 but maybe it's more of a cross for such as you 
 to live in it, under such conditions as have sur- 
 rounded you of late years. To pursue good 
 and resist evil, to bear your cross cheerfully 
 and to grow in grace and knowledge of truth 
 while you're bearing it — that's the lesson of 
 life, I suppose. If you find you can't learn it 
 outside, come back to us, Susanna." - 
 
 "I will," she promised, "and no words can 
 speak my gratitude for what you have all done 
 for me. Many a time it will come back to me 
 and keep me from faltering." 
 
 She looked back at him from the open door- 
 way, timidly. 
 
 "Don't forget us, Sue and me, altogether," 
 she said, her eyes filling with tears. " Come to 
 Farnham, if you will, and see if I am a credit 
 to Shaker teaching ! I shall never be here again, 
 perhaps, and somehow it seems to me as if you, 
 Elder Gray, with your education and your gifts, 
 ought to be leading a larger life than this." 
 
THE OPEN DOOR 
 
 "I've hunted in the wild Maine forests, in 
 my young days; I've speared salmon in her 
 rivers and shot rapids in a birch-bark canoe," 
 said the Elder, looking up from the pine table 
 that served as a desk. "I've been before the 
 mast and seen strange countries; I've fought 
 Indians; I've faced perils on land and sea; 
 but this Shaker life is the greatest adventure 
 of all!" 
 
 " Adventure ? " echoed Susanna, uncompre- 
 hendingly. 
 
 "Adventure !" repeated the Elder, smiling at 
 his own thoughts. "Whether I fail, or whether 
 I succeed, it's a splendid adventure in ethics." 
 
 Abby and Daniel looked at each other when 
 Susanna passed out of the office door. 
 
 " ' They went out from us, but they were not 
 of us ; for if they had been of us, they would 
 have continued with us,' " he quoted quietly. 
 
 Abby wiped her eyes with her apron. "It's 
 a hard road to travel sometimes, Daniel!" 
 she said. 
 
SUSANNA AND SUE 
 
 " Yee; but think where it leads, Abby, think 
 where it leads ! You 're not going to complain 
 of dust when you 're treading the King's High- 
 way!" 
 
 Susanna left the office with a drooping head, 
 knowing the sadness she had left behind. 
 Brother Ansel sat under the trees near by, 
 and his shrewd eye perceived the drift of com- 
 ing events. 
 
 "Well, Susanna," he drawled, "you're goin' 
 to leave us, like most o' the other 'jiners.' I 
 can see that with one eye shut." 
 
 "Yes," she replied, with a half smile; "but 
 you see, Ansel, I'jined' John Hathaway before 
 I knew anything about Shaker doctrines." 
 
 "Yee; but what's to prevent your on-jinin' 
 him ? They used to tie up married folks in the 
 old times so't they couldn't move an inch. 
 When they read the constitution and by-laws 
 over 'em they used to put in ' till death do us 
 part.' That's the way my father was hitched 
 
 206 
 
THE OPEN DOOR 
 
 to his three wives, but death did 'em part — 
 fortunately for him!" 
 
 "'Till death us do part' is still in the mar- 
 riage service," Susanna said, "and I think of 
 it very often." 
 
 "I want to know if that's there yit!" ex- 
 claimed Ansel, with apparent surprise; "I 
 thought they must be leavin' it out, there's 
 so much on-jinin' nowadays ! Well, accordin' 
 to my notions, if there is anything wuss 'n 
 marriage, it's hevin' it hold till death, for then 
 men-folks don't git any chance of a speritual 
 life till afterwards. They certainly don't when 
 they're being dragged down by women-folks 
 an' young ones." 
 
 "I think the lasting part of the bargain 
 makes it all the more solemn," Susanna argued. 
 
 "Oh, yes, it's solemn enough, but so's a 
 prayer meetin', an' consid'able more ele- 
 vatin' " ; and here Ansel regarded the surround- 
 ing scenery with frowning disapproval, as if it 
 left much to be desired. 
 
SUSANNA AND SUE 
 
 "Don't you think that there are any agree- 
 able and pleasant women, Ansel?" ventured 
 Susanna. 
 
 "Land, yes ; heaps of 'em; but they all wear 
 Shaker bunnits ! ' ' 
 
 "I suppose you know more about the women 
 in the outside world than most of the Brothers, 
 on account of traveling so much?" 
 
 " I guess anybody 't drives a seed-cart or 
 peddles stuff along the road knows enough o' 
 women to keep clear of 'em. They'll come 
 out the kitchen door, choose their papers o' 
 seasonin' an' bottles o' flavorin', worry you 
 'bout the price an' take the aidge off every 
 dime, make up an' then onmake their minds 
 'bout what they want, ask if it's pure, an' 
 when by good luck you git your cart out o' 
 the yard, they come runnin' along the road 
 after ye to git ye to swop a bottle o' vanilla 
 for some spruce gum an' give 'em back the 
 change." 
 
 Susanna could not help smiling at Ansel's 
 
THE OPEN DOOR 
 
 arraignment of her sex. "Do you think they 
 follow you for the pleasure of shopping, or the 
 pleasure of your conversation, Ansel?" she 
 asked slyly. 
 
 "A little o' both, mebbe; though the plea- 
 sure's all on their side," returned the unchiv- 
 alrous Ansel. "But take them same women, 
 cut their hair close to their heads (there's a 
 heap o' foolishness in hair, somehow), purge 
 'em o' their vanity, so they won't be lookin' 
 in the glass all the time, make 'em depend on 
 one another for sassiety, so they won't crave 
 no conversation with men-folks, an' you git 
 an article that's 'bout as good and 'bout as 
 stiddy as a man!" 
 
 "You never seem to remember that men are 
 just as dangerous to women's happiness and 
 goodness as women are to men's," said Su- 
 sanna, courageously. 
 
 "It don't seem so to me ! Never see a man, 
 hardly, that could stick to the straight an' 
 narrer if a woman wanted him to go the other 
 
SUSANNA AND SUE 
 
 way. Weak an' unstable as water, men-folks 
 are, an' women are pow'ful strong." 
 
 "Have your own way, Ansel! I'm going 
 back to the world, but no man shall ever say 
 I hindered him from being good. You'll see 
 women clearer in another world." 
 
 "There'll be precious few of 'em to see!" 
 retorted Ansel. "You're about the best o' the 
 lot, but even you have a kind of a managin' 
 way with ye, besides fillin' us all full o' false 
 hopes that we'd gathered in a useful Believer, 
 one cal'lated to spread the doctrines o' Mother 
 Ann!" 
 
 "I know, I know, Ansel, and oh, how sorry 
 I am! You would never believe howl long 
 to stay and help you, never believe how much 
 you have helped me ! Good-by, Ansel ; you 've 
 made me smile when my heart was breaking. 
 I shan't forget you !" 
 
XII 
 THE HILLS OF HOME 
 
XII 
 
 SUSANNA had found Sue in the upper 
 chamber at the Office Building, and be- 
 gan to make the simple preparations for her 
 homeward journey. 
 
 It was the very hour when John Hathaway 
 was saying : — 
 
 "Set her place at hearth and board 
 As it used to be." 
 
 Sue interfered with the packing somewhat by 
 darting to and fro, bringing her mother sacred 
 souvenirs given her by the Shaker sisters and 
 the children — needle-books, pin-balls, thim- 
 ble-cases, packets of flower-seeds, polished 
 pebbles, bottles of flavoring extract. 
 
SUSANNA AND SUE 
 
 "This is for Fardie," she would say, "and 
 this for Jack and this for Ellen and this for 
 Aunt Louisa — the needle-book, 'cause she's 
 so useful. Oh, I'm glad we're going home, 
 Mardie, though I do love it here, and I was 
 most ready to be a truly Shaker. It's kind of 
 pityish to have your hair shingled and your 
 stocking half-knitted and know how to say 
 'Yee' and then have it all wasted." 
 
 Susanna dropped a tear on the dress she 
 was folding. The child was going home, as she 
 had come away from it, gay, irresponsible, and 
 merry; it was only the mothers who hoped 
 and feared and dreaded. 
 
 The very universe was working toward Su- 
 sanna's desire at that moment, but she was all 
 unaware of the happiness that lay so near. She 
 could not see the freshness of the house in 
 Farnham, the new bits of furniture here and 
 there; the autumn leaves in her own bed- 
 room; her work-table full of the records of 
 John's sorrowful summer; Jack handsomer 
 
THE HILLS OF HOME 
 
 and taller, and softer, also, in his welcoming 
 mood; Ellen rosy and excited. She did not 
 know that Joel Atterbury had said to John 
 that day, "I take it all back, old man, and 
 I hope you'll stay on in the firm!" nor that 
 Aunt Louisa, who was putting stiff, short- 
 stemmed chrysanthemums in cups and tum- 
 blers here and there through the house, was 
 much more flexible and human than was 
 natural to her; nor that John, alternating 
 between hope and despair, was forever hum- 
 ming : — 
 
 "Set her place at hearth and board 
 As it used to be; 
 Higher are the hills of home, 
 Bluer is the sea!" 
 
 It is often so. They who go weeping to 
 look for the dead body of a sorrow, find a vision 
 of angels where the body has lain. 
 
 " I hope Fardie'll be glad to see us and Ellen 
 will have gingerbread," Sue chattered; then, 
 pausing at the window, she added, "I 'm 
 
sorry to leave tne nms, cause 
 them, don't you, Mardie?" 
 
 "We are leaving the Shaker hills, but we 
 are going to the hills of home," her mother 
 answered cheerily. "Don't you remember the 
 Farnham hills, dear?" 
 
 "Yes, I remember," and Sue looked 
 thoughtful ; " they were farther off and covered 
 with woods ; these are smooth and gentle. And 
 we shall miss the lake, Mardie." 
 
 "Yes; but we can look at the blue sea from 
 your bedroom window, Sue!" 
 
 "And we'll tell Fardie about Polly Reed 
 and the little quail bird, won't we?" 
 
 " Yes ; but he and Jack will have a great deal 
 to say to us, and we must n't talk all the time 
 about the dear, kind Shakers, you know!" 
 
 "You're all 'buts,' Mardie!" at which Su- 
 sanna smiled through her tears. 
 
 Twilight deepened into dusk, and dusk into 
 dark, and then the moon rose over the poplar 
 trees outside the window where Susanna and 
 
THE HILLS OF HOME 
 
 Sue were sleeping. The Shaker Brethren and 
 Sisters were resting serenely after their day of 
 confession. It was the aged Tabitha's last 
 Sabbath on earth, but had she known, it would 
 have made no difference; if ever a soul was 
 ready for heaven, it was Tabitha's. 
 
 There was an Irish family at the foot of the 
 long hill that lay between the Settlement and 
 the village of Albion ; father, mother, and chil- 
 dren had prayed to the Virgin before they went 
 to bed; and the gray-haired minister in the 
 low-roofed parsonage was writing his commun- 
 ion sermon on a text sacred to the orthodox 
 Christian world. The same moon shone over 
 all, and over millions of others worshiping 
 strange idols and holding strange beliefs in 
 strange far lands, yet none of them owned the 
 whole of heaven ; for as Elder Gray said, "It is 
 a big place and belongs to God." 
 
 Susanna Hathaway went back to John 
 thinking it her plain duty, and to me it seems 
 beautiful that she found waiting for her at the 
 
SUSANNA AND SUE 
 
 journey's end a new love that was better than 
 the old; found a husband to whom she could 
 say in that first sacred hour when they were 
 alone together, "Never mind, John! Let's 
 forget, and begin all over again." 
 
 When Susanna and Sue alighted at the little 
 railway station at Farnham, and started to 
 walk through the narrow streets that led to the 
 suburbs, the mother's heart beat more and 
 more tumultuously as she realized that the 
 issues of four lives would be settled before 
 nightfall. 
 
 Little did Sue reck of life issues, skipping 
 like a young roe from one side of the road to 
 the other. "There are the hills, not a bit 
 changed, Mardie!" she cried; "and the sea is 
 just where it was ! . . . Here's the house with 
 the parrot, do you remember ? Now the place 
 where the dog barks and snarls is coming next. 
 . . . P'raps he'll be dead ... or p'raps he'll 
 be nicer. . . . Keep close to me till we get 
 
come 
 p'raps he is dead or gone a-visiting. . . . 
 There's that 'specially lazy cow that's always 
 lying down in the Buxtons' field. ... I don't 
 b'lieve she's moved since we came away. . . . 
 Do you s'pose she stands up to be milked, 
 Mardie ? There 's the old bridge over the 
 brook, just the same, only the woodbine's 
 red. . . . There's . . . There's . . . Oh, 
 Mardie, look, look! ... I do b'lieve it's our 
 Jacky!" 
 
 Sue flew over the ground like a swallow, 
 calling " Jack-y! Jack-y! it's me and Mardie 
 come home!" 
 
 Jack extricated himself from his sister's 
 strangling hug and settled his collar. "I'm 
 awful glad to see you, Sukey," he said, "but 
 I'm getting too big to be kissed. Besides, 
 my pockets are full of angleworms and fish- 
 hooks." 
 
 "Are you too big to be kissed even by 
 mother?" called Susanna, hurrying to her 
 
SUSANNA AND SUE 
 
 boy, who submitted to her embrace with bet- 
 ter grace. "O Jack, Jack! say you're glad 
 to see mother ! Say it, say it ; I can't wait, 
 Jack!" 
 
 " Course I'm glad! why wouldn't I be? I 
 tell you I'm tired of Aunt Louisa, though she's 
 easier than she was. Time and again I 've 
 packed my lunch basket and started to run 
 away, but I always made it a picnic and went 
 back again, thinking they 'd make such a row 
 over me." 
 
 "Aunt Louisa is always kind when you 're 
 obedient," Susanna urged. 
 
 "She ain't so stiff as she was. Ellen is real 
 worried about her and thinks she's losing her 
 strength, she's so easy to get along with." 
 
 "How's . . . father . . . ?" 
 
 "Better 'n he was." 
 
 "Has n't he been well?" 
 
 "Not so very; always quiet and won't eat, 
 nor play, nor anything. I'm home with him 
 since Sunday." 
 
THE HILLS OF HOME 
 
 "What is the matter with your clothes?" 
 asked Susanna, casting a maternal eye over 
 him while she pulled him down here and up 
 there, with anxious disapproving glances. 
 "You look so patched, and wrinkled, and 
 grubby." 
 
 "Aunt Louisa and father make me keep my 
 best to put on for you, if you should come. I 
 clean up and dress every afternoon at train 
 time, only I forgot to-day and came fishing." 
 
 "It's too cold to fish, sonny." 
 
 "It ain't too cold to fish, but it's too cold 
 for 'em to bite," corrected Jack. 
 
 "Why were you expecting us just now?" 
 asked Susanna. "I didn't write because, 
 because, I thought . . . perhaps . . . it would 
 be better to surprise you." 
 
 "Father's expecting you every day, not just 
 this one," said Jack. 
 
 Susanna sank down on a stone at the end of 
 the bridge, and leaning her head against the 
 railing, burst into tears. In that moment the 
 
SUSANNA AND SUE 
 
 worst of her fears rolled away from her heart 
 like the stone from the mouth of a sepulchre. 
 If her husband had looked for her return, he 
 must have missed her, regretted her, needed 
 her, just a little. His disposition was sweet, 
 even if it were thoughtless, and he might not 
 meet her with reproaches after all. There 
 might not be the cold greeting she had often 
 feared — " Well, you've concluded to come back, 
 have you ? It was about time! " If only John 
 were a little penitent, a little anxious to meet 
 her on some common ground, she felt her task 
 would be an easier one. 
 
 " Have you got a pain, Mardie ? " cried Sue, 
 anxiously bending over her mother. 
 
 "No, dear," she answered, smiling through 
 her tears and stretching a hand to both chil- 
 dren to help her to her feet. "No, dear, I've 
 lost one!" 
 
 "I cry when anything aches, not when it 
 stops," remarked Jack, as the three started 
 again on their walk. — " Say, Sukey, you look 
 
THE HILLS OF HOME 
 
 bigger and fatter than you did when you went 
 away, and you've got short curls 'stead of 
 long ones. — Do you see how I've grown ? — 
 Two inches!" 
 
 "I'm inches and inches bigger and taller," 
 Sue boasted, standing on tiptoe and stretching 
 herself proudly. "And I can knit, and pull 
 maple candy, and say Yee, and sing 'O 
 Virgin Church, how great thy light.'" 
 
 "Pooh," said Jack, "I can sing 'A sailor's 
 life 's the life for me, Yo ho, yo ho ! ' Step along 
 faster, mummy dear ; it 's 'most supper time. 
 Aunt Louisa won't scold if you're with me. 
 There's the house, see? Father '11 be working 
 in the garden covering up the asters, so they 
 won't freeze before you come." 
 
 "There is no garden, Jack. What do you 
 mean r 
 
 "Wait till you see if there's no garden! 
 Hurrah! there's father at the window, side of 
 Aunt Louisa. Won't he be pleased I met you 
 halfway and brought you home!" 
 
SUSANNA AND SUE 
 
 Oh ! it was beautiful, the autumn twilight, 
 the smoke of her own hearthside rising through 
 the brick chimneys ! She thought she had 
 left the way of peace behind her, but no, the 
 way of peace was here, where her duty was, 
 and her husband and children. 
 
 The sea was deep blue ; the home hills rolled 
 softly along the horizon; the little gate that 
 Susanna had closed behind her in anger and 
 misery stood wide open ; shrubs, borders, 
 young hedge-rows, beds of late autumn flowers 
 greeted her eyes and touched her heart. A 
 foot sounded on the threshold ; the home door 
 opened and smiled a greeting ; and then a voice 
 choked with feeling, glad with welcome, called 
 her name. 
 
 Light-footed Sue ran with a cry of joy into 
 her father's outstretched arms, and then leap- 
 ing down darted to Ellen, chattering like a 
 magpie. Husband and wife looked at each 
 other for one quivering moment, and then 
 clasped each other close. 
 
THE HILLS OF HOME 
 
 "Forgive! O Susanna, forgive!" 
 John's eyes and lips and arms made mute 
 appeals, and it was then Susanna said, "Never 
 mind, John! Let's forget, and begin all over 
 again!" 
 
 40 
 
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