THIS SERIES OF TRACTS Is addressed to the honest and the bold; not to any man or woman, because he or she happens to be, or not to be, a Christian, or a Jew, or a Mahometan, or a Sceptic; but to the honest and the bold, however named, and whatever their opinions, by HE BV4510 DARBY AND SUSAN. THERE lived, in a pretty rural village, a homely, industrious, sensible, and contented couple, (Darby and Susan. The tidy cottage that stood beside the village green, with the moss rose-bush and the sweetbriar before it, and the gravelled path edged with rows of box that led to its rustic porch, and the honeysuckle climbing over the walls, till it half hid the little arched windows, and stretched its fragrant tendrils up to the brown thatch-that was their cottage. It was their garden that looked so gay and neat behind that pretty cottage; and it was their cow that fed in the little pasture beside it. Darby and Susan were, in truth, a notable and a happy couple. Nobody brought such sweet scented hay to market as honest Darby, for so his neighbors were wont to call him; and not undeservedly; for nobody gave juster weight or fuller measure than he, in all the country round. Susan's fame had gone far and wide. She was a very pattern of housewives: up with the day, at work like her own bees, and as merry as the lark when it rises in the summer sunbeams. No honey was so transparent as that from Susan's hives; no cheese or butter, in all the parish, so good, as that she made. Her 'kerchief was the whitest at the village festival, and her step the lightest at the village dance. You might hear, as you passed her door, the busy hum of her wheel; and no lass, within twenty miles of that village, spun a smoother thread, or a stronger. You might hear, too, at intervals, a song, whose merry tones cheered your very heart; and that was Susan's, the sweetest and the blithest singer in all the country side. Darby always found a well-swept hearth, and a blazing fire, and a pair of laughing eyes, when he returned from market, cold and weary. And a blazing fire and laughing eyes are excellent specifics against care and dulness. As he sat, in the long winter evenings, platting willow baskets, while his notable partner spread the spotless napkin and arranged his frugal supper, you might scarcely chance upon a happier man. And, after supper, when Susan always sung her merriest ditties, Darby would listen for hours, and forget to tell the strokes of the village clock. He was surely not sentimental, and he had heard all her songs for the hundredth time. Yet would his neighbors roguishly tell, that as they stopped before Darby's window to catch the last words of some favorite old ballad, they had seen him lay down his half-finished basket, and slip behind Susan's chair, to steal a kiss, with almost as much fondness, though certainly with less awkward bashfulness, than when he stole the first from her rosy lips. Around, as within the cottage,-on Darby's little farm and in Susan's garden, every thing spoke the careful eye and the busy hand of its possessors. Their thoughts, indeed, centered in their pleasant home; and for the world beyond, it was to them as though it existed not, except when Darby filled Dobbin's panniers, and proceeded to dispose of the produce of their industry, and to gaze for the thousandth time with undiminished wonder on the marvels and the rary-shows of a market town. Yet, even there, Darby seldom saw a merrier eye or a rosier cheek than his pretty Susan's, and seldom found a neater garden or a tidier home than his own: and so Darby was not given to inconstancy. Thus passed their quiet lives, without fear for the future or regret for the past; with scarcely a wish beyond their little possessions, and scarcely a care beyond the passing hour. They lived in the present, and enjoyed it, undisturbed by dreams of rich inheritance, either in this world, or the next. It chanced, one dark November evening, that a stranger rode into the village. He wore a long black Spanish-looking cloak; and the boys, attracted by the unusual sight, followed him to the door of the village inn, where he alighted. As he entered the busy kitchen, he threw aside his upper garment, discovering beneath a dress of the same color, very plainly cut, and somewhat threadbare. There was a merry party gathered round a fire that blazed and sparkled as a November fire ought; and there the officious landlady placed a chair for the stranger, who saluted the circle with a solemn "God be with you!" and then seated himself in silence. The laugh and the jest were hushed in a moment; each jogged his neighbor with a side glance at their visiter; and, after a few commonplaces about the weather and the crops, first one, and then another, rose and departed. "Who can he be ?" said the landlady to her help-mate, as the last guest prepared to retire. "Ask him," was the laconic reply. But this was not so easy, even for the assurance of Mrs. Margery. Her first remark about the weather was answered in a monosyllable; and there the conversation ended; for the landlady thought, as she expressed it afterwards, "that he was an uncomfortable looking man ;" and so she smothered her curiosity, and left him to his own meditations. Margery's remark was not inapplicable to the stranger. His figure was tall and spare, and he stooped from his shoulders. Care was imprinted on the wrinkled brow, over which his straight black hair was formally combed; and care and restlessness were in his dark gray eyes. There was a strange, absent, uneasy swimming expression, too, about those eyes. You might at times have imagined they were turned on the inward man, rather than occupied in scanning outward objects; so dead and unsettled they seemed. And then again you might have supposed that they looked through the vulgar realities of sense to something of a vaguer nature, distant and longed for and unseen; for in the frequent fixedness of his gaze, there was rather the excitement of eager and dissatisfied expectation, than the calmer expression of actual perception. Let it not be imagined that all these reflections passed through Margery's brain, and elicited the remark, "that he was an uncomfortable looking man." No; she was not one of those who looked beyond the outward show; but the outward show of that pale, thin visage, and gaunt figure, was unpromising enough. And, in truth, the appearance of the stranger did not belie his avocation. His labors and his thoughts were not of this world. His body, indeed, sojourned on our earth, but his spirit had wandered out of it. He walked through life with the careless indifference of a hasty pilgrim, who scarcely bestows a glance or a thought on the scenes that open around him; so deeply and solely occupied is his imagination with other lands and future prospects. He walked through life, not only without tasting its joys, but even unconscious that it contained any. As he conceived it the duty, so he made it the business of his life, to render others as careless of time and its labors and its pleasures, and as careful for eternity, as he was himself In a word, he was a preacher-a zealous, enthusiastic, untiring, consistent preacher. The morning after his arrival, Jem, the town-crier, sallied forth with a manuscript in one hand, and his well known bell in the other; Jem was considered, and he considered himself, a scholar. Yet he conned his task for the space of several minutes, puzzling over the hurried abbreviations it contained, and the blots that disfigured it, before he contrived to inform the curious and impatient crowd which had meanwhile gathered around him, "that a friend to the welfare of their eternal souls would meet them, God willing, in the parish church, an hour before curfew." "Darby," said Susan, as they returned to their cottage, after listening to Jem's oratory, "what does all this mean ?” "Did not you hear what Jem said?" rejoined her partner. 66 To be sure I did. He said somebody would meet us in the church. But what can we do in the church to-day? It's only Thursday. What could the man mean ?” "He meant what he said," replied Darby, very sagely. “He meant, that somebody would preach in the church to-night." "La! Darby! To-night! on Thursday night!" "Why not?" (6 Why not? How droll you are! Who ever heard of preaching except on Sunday? What would be the use of it?" "The use? why, what's the use of it on Sundays ?” "Oh fie! Darby. You know it's proper to preach on Sunday; and you know it's proper for us to go to church then. But we need not go to-day." 76 No," ," said Darby, as they entered the cottage, "we need not." "But must I put on my Sunday gown if I go?" And Susan carefully took down a new straw bonnet, with bright yellow ribbons, that hung, pinned up in a white handkerchief, against the wall. "Just as you like," said Darby. “But won't the neighbors laugh if I wear my Sunday bonnet on a Thursday ?" persisted Susan; at the same time smoothing and adjusting the rumpled bows. "I dont know," replied he. But, if it's proper to preach to-day," reasoned Susan, "it must be proper to wear a Sunday bonnet too." |