SYLVESTER JUDD

(1813-1853)

YLVESTER JUDD was a figure in his place and time, as clergyman, lecturer, and author. And he is still a figure in American literature; for he wrote a novel-Margaret' — which must be recognized in the evolution of the native fiction, and is, judged by critical standards, a work of remarkable literary and spiritual power.

Judd was born at Westhampton, Massachusetts, July 23d, 1813. His father was a noted antiquarian. The son got his Yale degree in 1836, and then declined a professorship in Miami College to enter the Harvard Divinity School. In 1840 he became pastor of the Unitarian Church at Augusta, Maine, continuing in the one parish until his death, January 20th, 1853. While yet a theological student he published 'A Young Man's Account of his Conversion from Calvinism,' interesting as showing his serious nature and subjective tendency. At thirty he was working on 'Margaret,' which was printed in 1845: a revised edition in 1851; and a fine edition, with illustrations by Darley, in 1856.

SYLVESTER JUDD

In his ministerial work Judd developed the idea that all his congregation were born into full church privileges, and many other Maine parishes accepted his teaching. He was much in demand as a lecturer on temperance and other social topics. The same spirit of earnest didacticism runs through his noted novel. It is a loosely constructed story of old New England life, with fine descriptions of nature. The tale is made the vehicle of the conveyance of Judd's views on liberal Christianity, temperance, and universal peace. Thus it is a pioneer example of "purpose" fiction in American literature. The full title of the story, 'Margaret: A Tale of the Real and Ideal, Blight and Bloom; including sketches of a place not before described, called Mons Christi,' conveys a sense of this in language that now sounds stilted and sentimental.

But were 'Margaret' nothing more than an ill-disguised sermon, it would not be the remarkable book it indubitably is. Judd was first of all a literary man when he made it. It was written, as he says in the preface to the edition of 1851, "out of his heart and hope." And again: "This book was written for the love of the thing." It depicts with vigor and picturesqueness the crude, hearty New England. country life of the period transitional between the Revolution and the settled Republic. Judd's genius puts before the reader the essential homely details of that life, described realistically and with great sympathy; the realism being relieved by descriptive passages of delicate beauty, or mystical imaginings in a high vein of poetry. And in the midst of the other admirable character sketches is the striking central conception of Margaret herself, child of nature and of dreams, a wood-flower growing up wild, to turn out a noble woman who rebukes even as she transcends the harshness, narrowness, and illiteracy that surround her. She is a lovely creation, which only a writer of rare gifts could have evolved. The book is unequal in parts; but the earlier portion of the novel, dealing with the heroine's childhood, is still an unsurpassed picture in its way.

Judd's other works include 'Philo: An Evangeliad' (1850), a didactic poem defending the Unitarian position; 'Richard Edney and the Governor's Family' (1850), another novel not dissimilar from 'Margaret' in purpose, but without its charm; and a posthumous work, The Church: In a Series of Discourses' (1854). He left in manuscript a tragedy called 'White Hills,' showing the evils of avarice. Arethusa Hall in 1854 published 'The Life and Character of Sylvester Judd.'

IT

THE SNOW-STORM

From Margaret'

Is the middle of winter, and is snowing, and has been all night, with a strong northeast wind. Let us take a moment when the storm intermits, and look in at Margaret's and see how they do. But we cannot approach the place by any ordinary locomotion: the roads, lanes, and by-paths are blocked up; no horse or ox could make his way through this great Sahara of snow. If we are disposed to adopt the means of conveyance formerly so much in vogue, whether snow-shoes or magic, we may possibly get there. The house or hut is half sunk in the general accumulation, as if it had foundered and was going to the bottom; the face of the pond is smooth, white, and stiff as

death; the oxen and the cow in the barn-yard, in their storm fleeces, look like a new variety of sheep. All is silence and lifelessness, and if you please to say, desolation. Hens there are none, nor turkeys, nor ducks, nor birds, nor Bull, nor Margaret. If you see any signs of a human being, it is the dark form of Hash, mounted on snow-shoes, going from the house to the barn. Yet there are what by a kind of provincial misnomer is called the black growth,-pines and firs, green as in summer,-some flanking the hill behind, looking like the real snowballs, blossoming in midwinter and nodding with large white flowers. But there is one token of life,- the smoke of the stunt gray chimney, which, if you regard it as one, resembles a large, elongated, transparent balloon; or if you look at it by piecemeal, it is a beautiful current of bluish-white vapor, flowing upward unendingly and prettily is it striped and particolored, as it passes successively the green trees, bare rocks, and white crown of Indian's Head; nor does its interest cease even when it disappears among the clouds. Some would dwell a good while on that smoke, and see in it many outshows and denotements of spiritualities; others would say, the house is buried so deep it must come from the hot, mischief-hatching heart of the earth; others still would fancy the whole region to be in its windingsheet, and that if they looked into the house they would behold the dead faces of their friends. Our own notion is that that smoke is a quiet, domestic affair; that it even has the flavor of some sociable cookery, and is legitimately issued from a grateful and pleasant fire; and that if we should go into the house we should find the family as usual there: a suggestion which, as the storm begins to renew itself, we shall do well to take the opportunity to verify.

Flourishing in the midst of snowbanks, unmoved amid the fiercest onsets of the storm, comfortable in the extremity of winter, the family are all gathered in the kitchen, and occupied as may be. In the cavernous fireplace burns a great fire, composed of a huge green backlog and forestick, and a high cobwork of crooked and knotty refuse wood. The flame is as bright and golden as in Windsor Palace, or Fifth Avenue, New York. The smoke goes off out-doors with no more hesitancy than if it was summer-time. The wood sings, the sap drops on the hot coals, and explodes as if it was Independence Day. Great red coals. roll out on the hearth, sparkle a semibrief, lose their grosser XIV-526

substance, indicate a more ethereal essence in prototypal forms of white down-like cinders, and then dissolve into brown ashes. To a stranger the room has a sombre aspect, rather heightened. than relieved by the light of the fire burning so brightly at midday. The only connection with the external world is by a rude aperture through the sides of the building;-yet when the outer light is so obscured by a storm, the bright fire within must anywhere be pleasant. In one corner of the room is Pluck, in a red flannel shirt and leather apron, at work on his kit mending shoes; with long and patient vibration and equipoise he draws the threads, and interludes the strokes with snatches of songs, banter, and laughter. The apartment seems converted into a workshop, for next the shoemaker stands the shingle-maker, Hash, who with froe in one hand and mallet in the other, by dint of smart percussion is endeavoring to rive a three-cornered billet of hemlock. In the centre sits Brown Moll, with bristling and grizzly hair, and her inseparable pipe, winding yarn from a swift. Nearer the fire are Chilion and Margaret: the latter with the 'Orbis Pictus,' or World Displayed, a book of Latin and English, adorned with cuts, which the Master lent her; the former with his violin, endeavoring to describe the notes in Dr. Byles's 'Collection of Sacred Music,' also a loan of the Master's, and at intervals trailing on the lead of his father in some popular air. We shall also see that one of Chilion's feet is raised on a stool, bandaged, and apparently disabled. Bull, the dog, lies rounded on the hearth, his nose between his paws, fast asleep. Dick, the gray squirrel, sits swinging listlessly in his wire wheel, like a duck on a wave. Robin, the bird, in its cage, shrugs and folds itself into its feathers, as if it were night. Over the fireplace, on the rough stones of the chimney, which day and night through all the long winter never cease to be warm, are Margaret's flowers: a blood-root, in the marble pot Rufus Palmer gave her, and in wooden moss-covered boxes, pinks, violets, and buttercups, green and flowering. Here also, as a sort of mantel-tree ornament, sits the marble kitten that Rufus made, under a cedar twig. At one end of the crane, in the vacant side of the fireplace, hang rings of pumpkin-rinds drying for beer. On the walls, in addition to what was there last summer, are strings of dried apples. There is also a draw-horse, on which Hash smooths and squares his shingles; and a pile of fresh, sweet-scented white shavings and splinters. Through the yawns of the back door,

and sundry rents in the logs of the house, filter in unweariedly fine particles of snow; and thus along the sides of the rooms rise little cone-shaped, marble-like pilasters.

Within doors is a mixed noise of miscellaneous operations; without is the rushing of the storm. Pluck snip-snaps with his wife, cracks on Hash, shows his white teeth to Margaret; Chilion asks his sister to sing; Hash orders her to bring a coal to light his pipe; her mother gets her to pick a snarl out of the yarn. She climbs upon a stool and looks out of the window. The scene is obscured by the storm; the thick driving flakes throw a brownish mizzly shade over all things,-air, trees, hills, and every avenue the eye has been wont to traverse. The light tufts hiss like arrows as they shoot by. The leafless butternut, whereon the whippoorwill used to sing and the yellow warbler make its nest, sprawls its naked arms and moans pitifully in the blast; the snow that for a moment is amassed upon it falls to the ground like a harvest of alabaster fruit. The peach-tree that bears Margaret's own name, and is of her own age, seems to be drowning in the snow. Water drops from the eaves, occasioned by the snow melting about the chimney.

"I shouldn't wonder if if we had a snow-storm before it's over, Molly," said Pluck, strapping his knife on the edge of the kit.

"And you are getting ready for it fast," rejoined his wife. "I should be thankful for those shoes any time before next July. I can't step out without wetting my feet.”

"Wetting is not so bad after all," answered Pluck. << For my part I keep too dry. Who did the Master tell you was the god of shoemakers?" he asked, addressing Margaret.

"St. Crispin," replied the child.

"Guess I'll pay him a little attention," said the man, going to the rum bottle that stood by the chimney. "I feel some interest in these things, and I think I have some reason to indulge a hope that I am among the elect."

"He wouldn't own you," said his wife, tartly.

"Why, dear?"

"Because you are not a man; you are not the thrum of one. Scrape you all up, and we shouldn't get lint enough to put on Chilion's foot."

"Look at that," said her husband, exposing his bare arm, flabby and swollen; "what do you think now?"