XIV.AN ENTERTAINING MEETING.
THE great chapel question has been decided at last by acoup d’état. Cyrus Fennel had promised to give a lot of land; and the deed was made out some time ago, but not signed. At last, growing impatient with what he called the narrowness of Mr. David and a few others, Cyrus declared that he never would sign the deed, unless it was agreed that any person and every person who might feel moved to speak in their meetings should have liberty to do so. Some one suggested to Mr. David that he come up with Cyrus by giving a lot of land himself. This thunder-clap of a suggestion cleared Mr. David’s mental vision sufficiently to enable him to perceive that the minority should not stand out longer against the majority, and that possibly, by entering their protest, they had done all that was required of them.
Previous to this, however, a plan was proposed,which elicited a curious little bit of information in regard to the law. The plan was, that the sewing-circle should build and own the chapel. Some one queried whether or not this could be done legally; and, to make sure, Mrs. Hale and Adeline Payne went to Elmbridge one day, and consulted a lawyer.
The sewing-circle met here that afternoon; and, on returning from Elmbridge, the two delegates hastened over to announce the result of their mission. The lawyer had assured them, they said, that no company of married women could own a building, or any other property. “Not even a hen-house,” said Adeline. “The lawyer told us, that, if we two should want to set up storekeeping together, we couldn’t own our stock of goods.”
This announcement was followed by a dead calm, and the dead calm by a hurricane of exclamations: “Well, I declare!” “Now, if that isn’t a good one!” “What, not when we earned the money to build it?” “Pretty state of things!” “I don’t see why not!” “The ones that made that law better make it over!”[B]
There was an old lady present,—a frequent visitor in Tweenit,—one Mrs. Heath, commonly called“Aunt Mary,” a white-haired, sallow-faced, but, on the whole, a pleasant-looking old lady. When the storm had subsided, Aunt Mary remarked in her quiet way, that she could tell them a fact or two about law. Her fact or two was as follows. She married, at the age of twenty-six, a seafaring man five years older than herself. Her husband made only one voyage after they were married. He owned a house and a small piece of ground: another piece was bought, partly with her money, both together making quite a snug little farm. She kept boarders some of the time, and made a practice of taking in work (tailoring had been her trade) in order to help along, so that what money was raised from the place might be spent on the place. They had no children. After twenty-eight years of married life she became a widow. The law gave her one-half the personal property, and the improvement of one-third of the real estate: the rest went to her husband’s brother. “A share of the place was set off to me,” said Aunt Mary, “and rights of way ‘allowed me’ across my own premises. I had wine privileges in the house too, besides the rooms that were set off to me; the privilege, for instance, of going through my own front entry, and into my own sink-room. Every thing in the house wasappraised. Samuel took half of the furniture, dishes, beds, and bedding; took some things made of inlaid work and of shell-work,—things I set a good deal o’ store by, because my husband brought them home to me before we were married. Li-zy kind o’ hated to take ’em; but she said, says she, ‘You know everybody likes to have what’s their own.’”
“Couldn’t he have made a will?” asked some one.
“Oh, yes! he could, and he did mean to make one. I was only speaking of the law. He meant to give it all to me.”
While Aunt Mary was telling her story, old Mr. Hale came in, father to the Mr. Hale who spoke in the meeting. The old man said he couldn’t help feeling an interest to know how the lawyers laid down the law.
After hearing the decision, and hearing Aunt Mary’s story, he said, “Wal, ladies, you womankind must make up your minds to let patience have her parfect work. The laws favor ye more than they did. Women have come up considerable since Paul’s day. I don’t believe there’s a minister in the land would stand up and preach a discourse in favor of that text, ‘Women, submit yourselves unto your husbandsin every thing.’ He’d be laughed down. And suppose a writer should write an es-sayto prove that wives ought to keep that command, and send it to that biggest New-York double newspaper. What would the editor do with that es-say? Put it into his head column?
“You jest wait. There’s a great to-do now about a woman’s gittin’ up to speak in a revival-meetin’. Wal, in my father’s day, there was a great to-do about their not wearin’ their veils into the meetin’-house. Ministers took sides, and arter a while it got into the Boston newspapers. The greatest ministers in the State preached for and agin it. There was a famous minister came to our town. I’ve heard my father tell the story many a time. Father said he was among the last of his teens then, and said he used to sit in a square pew in the gallery, back to the pulpit; and the girl he wanted to go with sat down below, jest far enough off, and not too near, for him to keep lookin’ at her, and she at him, now and then; and that kind o’ took up his mind in sermon-time. He had never durst to try to be her beau in earnest. He’d walked alongside once or twice, but never’d had the face to offer his arm; and he’d made dependence on his Sundays, and been steady to meetin’ for reasons aforesaid. Wal, when the veilquestion begun to make a stir, all the girls, and she among ’em, became persuaded in their minds they ought to wear their veils into the meetin’-house, and keep ’em down; and this caused a dreadfuldeprivation to him, and to others likewise.
“And, arter things had gone on so a spell, there came a famous preacher to town, one of the uncommon rare ones; and he preached a sermon with thirteen heads, all goin’ to show that women could keep their veils down, or not keep ’em down, jest as they pleased. That was in the forenoon. Father said, that, in the arternoon, every single girl in that meetin’-house sat all meetin’-time with her veil up. He said ’twas jest like light breakin’ in arter a cloudy shadow.”
“And what about the girl?” asked Martha Fennel. “Did he have the girl?”
“No. The girl had a young man that she didn’t look at, that sat over across in the other gallery.”
“But it can’t be true,” remarked Adeline Payne, “that ministers really did pretend to dictate whether women should wear veils, or not?”
“Jest what Mr. Picket’s wife said, over at Elm Bridge, when I told them this same story. I said ’twas actooally true. And Mr. Picket, said he, ‘I tell you how we’ll prove it. You said ’twas inthe old Boston newspapers. My cousin goes representative to General Court. They keep files of the old Boston papers in the Boston Library,’ says he; ‘and I’ll write my cousin word to look ’em over.’ We reckoned back, and found father must have been among the last of his teens about the year 1800. So Mr. Picket wrote word to his cousin; and his cousin looked the files over, and found a paper that had a piece in it on this very subject; and the name of the paper, if I don’t mistake my memory, was ‘The Columbia Sentinel.’”
I was quite interested in this little story of Mr. Hale’s. Indeed, since my attention has been called to domestic science, I have felt a steadily-increasing interest in whatever relates to the condition of women, past, present, and future. Previous to that, I used to think, or rather took it for granted in an indifferent way without thinking, that, in matters of religion, women were on an equality with men. I had the impression that this equality was claimed for one of the results of Christianity as being enjoined by the text, ending, “Neither male nor female, but all one in Christ Jesus.” A few sarcastic remarks of Nanny Joe (which remarks I had in mind while writing one of the early numbers of these papers), together with some of my own observations, havecaused me to read with close attention the discussions which are so continually going on in the papers in regard to what woman should or should not be allowed to do. And, with all my reading and all my thinking, I can arrive at no other conclusion than that of my friend who sells “Archangel Bitters;” namely, that woman, having been endowed by her Creator with mind and with conscience, should be left to understand Scripture with her own understanding, and to judge for herself what is right, and what is wrong, man not being accountable therefor.