CHAPTER 8.

“For here the exile met from every clime,
And spoke, in friendship, every distant tongue.”—Campbell.

We have made our readers acquainted with some variety in character and
nations, in introducing the most important personages of this legend
to their notice; but, in order to establish the fidelity of our
narrative, we shall briefly attempt to explain the reason why we have
been obliged to present so motley a dramatis personae.

Europe, at the period of our tale, was in the commencement of that
commotion which afterward shook her political institutions to the
centre.  Louis the Sixteenth had been beheaded, and a nation once
esteemed the most refined among the civilized people of the world was
changing its character, and substituting cruelty for mercy, and
subtlety and ferocity for magnanimity and courage.  Thou sands of
Frenchmen were compelled to seek protection in distant lands.  Among
the crowds who fled from France and her islands, to the United States
of America, was the gentleman whom we have already mentioned as
Monsieur Le Quoi.  He had been recommended to the favor of Judge
Temple by the head of an eminent mercantile house in New York, with
whom Marmaduke was in habits of intimacy, and accustomed to exchange
good offices.  At his first interview with the Frenchman, our Judge
had discovered him to be a man of breeding, and one who had seen much
more prosperous days in his own country.  From certain hints that had
escaped him, Monsieur Le Quoi was suspected of having been a West-
India planter, great numbers of whom had fled from St. Domingo and the
other islands, and were now living in the Union, in a state of
comparative poverty, and some in absolute want The latter was not,
however, the lot of Monsieur Le Quoi.  He had but little, he
acknowledged; but that little was enough to furnish, in the language
of the country, an assortment for a store.

The knowledge of Marmaduke was eminently practical, and there was no
part of a settler's life with which he was not familiar.  Under his
direction, Monsieur Le Quoi made some purchases, consisting of a few
cloths; some groceries, with a good deal of gunpowder and tobacco; a
quantity of iron-ware, among which was a large proportion of Barlow’s
jack-knives, potash-kettles, and spiders; a very formidable collection
of crockery of the coarsest quality and most uncouth forms; together
with every other common article that the art of man has devised for
his wants, not forgetting the luxuries of looking-glasses and Jew’s-
harps.  With this collection of valuables, Monsieur Le Quoi had
stepped behind a counter, and, with a wonderful pliability of
temperament, had dropped into his assumed character as gracefully as
he had ever moved in any other.  The gentleness and suavity of his
manners rendered him extremely popular; besides this, the women soon
discovered that he had taste.  His calicoes were the finest, or, in
other words, the most showy, of any that were brought into the
country, and it was impossible to look at the prices asked for his
goods by” so pretty a spoken man,” Through these conjoint means, the
affairs of Monsieur Le Quoi were again in a prosperous condition, and
he was looked up to by the settlers as the second best man on the
“Patent.”*

  * The term “Patent” which we have already used, and for which we may
    have further occasion, meant the district of country that had been
    originally granted to old Major Effingham by the “king’s letters
    patent,” and which had now become, by purchase under the act of
    confiscation, the property of Marmaduke Temple.  It was a term in
    common use throughout the new parts of the State; and was usually
    annexed to the landlord’s name, as “Temple’s or Effingham’s Patent,”

Major Hartmann was a descendant of a man who, in company with a number
of his countrymen, had emigrated with their families from the banks of
the Rhine to those of the Mohawk.  This migration had occurred as far
back as the reign of Queen Anne; and their descendants were now
living, in great peace and plenty, on the fertile borders of that
beautiful stream.

The Germans, or “High Dutchers,” as they were called, to distinguish
them from the original or Low Dutch colonists, were a very peculiar
people.  They possessed all the gravity of the latter, without any of
their phlegm; and like them, the “High Dutchers” were industrious,
honest, and economical, Fritz, or Frederick Hartmann, was an epitome
of all the vices and virtues, foibles and excellences, of his race.
He was passionate though silent, obstinate, and a good deal suspicious
of strangers; of immovable courage, in flexible honesty, and
undeviating in his friendships.  In deed there was no change about
him, unless it were from grave to gay.  He was serious by months, and
jolly by weeks.  He had, early in their acquaintance, formed an
attachment for Marmaduke Temple, who was the only man that could not
speak High Dutch that ever gained his en tire confidence Four times in
each year, at periods equidistant, he left his low stone dwelling on
the banks of the Mohawk, and travelled thirty miles, through the
hills, to the door of the mansion-house in Templeton.  Here he
generally stayed a week; and was reputed to spend much of that time in
riotous living, greatly countenanced by Mr. Richard Jones.  But every
one loved him, even to Remarkable Pettibone, to whom he occasioned
some additional trouble, he was so frank, so sincere, and, at times,
so mirthful.  He was now on his regular Christmas visit, and had not
been in the village an hour when Richard summoned him to fill a seat
in the sleigh to meet the landlord and his daughter.

Before explaining the character and situation of Mr. Grant, it will be
necessary to recur to times far back in the brief history of the
settlement.

There seems to be a tendency in human nature to endeavor to provide
for the wants of this world, before our attention is turned to the
business of the other.  Religion was a quality but little cultivated
amid the stumps of Temple’s Patent for the first few years of its
settlement; but, as most of its inhabitants were from the moral States
of Connecticut and Massachusetts, when the wants of nature were
satisfied they began seriously to turn their attention to the
introduction of those customs and observances which had been the
principal care of their fore fathers.  There was certainly a great
variety of opinions on the subject of grace and free-will among the
tenantry of Marmaduke; and, when we take into consideration the
variety of the religious instruction which they received, it can
easily be seen that it could not well be otherwise.

Soon after the village had been formally laid out into the streets and
blocks that resembled a city, a meeting of its inhabitants had been
convened, to take into consideration the propriety of establishing an
academy.  This measure originated with Richard, who, in truth, was
much disposed to have the institution designated a university, or at
least a college.  Meeting after meeting was held, for this purpose,
year after year.  The resolutions of these as sembiages appeared in
the most conspicuous columns of a little blue-looking newspaper, that
was already issued weekly from the garret of a dwelling-house in the
village, and which the traveller might as often see stuck into the
fissure of a stake, erected at the point where the footpath from the
log-cabin of some settler entered the highway, as a post-office for an
individual.  Sometimes the stake supported a small box, and a whole
neighborhood received a weekly supply for their literary wants at this
point, where the man who “rides post’ regularly deposited a bundle of
the precious commodity.  To these flourishing resolutions, which
briefly recounted the general utility of education, the political and
geographical rights of the village of Templeton to a participation in
the favors of the regents of the university, the salubrity of the air,
and wholesomeness of the water, together with the cheapness of food
and the superior state of morals in the neighbor hood, were uniformly
annexed, in large Roman capitals, the names of Marmaduke Temple as
chairman and Richard Jones as secretary.

Happily for the success of this undertaking, the regents were not
accustomed to resist these appeals to their generosity, whenever there
was the smallest prospect of a donation to second the request.
Eventually Judge Temple concluded to bestow the necessary land, and to
erect the required edifice at his own expense.  The skill of Mr., or,
as he was now called, from the circumstance of having received the
commission of a justice of the peace, Squire Doolittle, was again put
in requisition; and the science of Mr. Jones was once more resorted
to.

We shall not recount the different devices of the architects on the
occasion; nor would it be decorous so to do, seeing that there was a
convocation of the society of the ancient and honorable fraternity “
of the Free and Accepted Masons,’ at the head of whom was Richard, in
the capacity of master, doubtless to approve or reject such of the
plans as, in their wisdom, they deemed to he for the best.  The knotty
point was, however, soon decided; and, on the appointed day, the
brotherhood marched in great state, displaying sundry banners and
mysterious symbols, each man with a little mimic apron before him,
from a most cunningly contrived apartment in the garret of the “Bold
Dragoon,” an inn kept by one Captain Hollister, to the site of the
intended edifice.  Here Richard laid the corner stone, with suitable
gravity, amidst an assemblage of more than half the men, and all the
women, within ten miles of Templeton.

In the course of the succeeding week there was another meeting of the
people, not omitting swarms of the gentler sex, when the abilities of
Hiram at the “square rule” were put to the test of experiment.  The
frame fitted well; and the skeleton of the fabric was reared without a
single accident, if we except a few falls from horses while the
laborers were returning home in the evening.  From this time the work
advanced with great rapidity, and in the course of the season the
Labor was completed; the edifice Manding, in all its heatity and
proportions, the boast of the village, the study of young aspirants
for architectural fame, and the admiration of every settler on the
Patent.

It was a long, narrow house of wood, painted white, and more than half
windows; and, when the observer stood at the western side of the
building, the edifice offered but a small obstacle to a full view of
the rising sun.  It was, in truth, but a very comfortless open place,
through which the daylight shone with natural facility.  On its front
were divers ornaments in wood, designed by Richard and executed by
Hiram; but a window in the centre of the second story, immediately
over the door or grand entrance, and the “steeple” were the pride of
the building.  The former was, we believe, of the composite order; for
it included in its composition a multitude of ornaments and a great
variety of proportions.  It consisted of an arched compartment in the
centres with a square and small division on either side, the whole
incased in heavy frames, deeply and laboriously moulded in pine-wood,
and lighted with a vast number of blurred and green-looking glass of
those dimensions which are commonly called ”eight by ten.” Blinds,
that were intended to be painted green, kept the window in a state of
preservation, and probably might have contributed to the effect of the
whole, had not the failure in the public funds, which seems always to
be incidental to any undertaking of this kind, left them in the sombre
coat of lead-color with which they had been originally clothed.  The
“steeple” was a little cupola, reared on the very centre of the roof,
on four tall pillars of pine that were fluted with a gouge, and loaded
with mouldings.  On the tops of the columns was reared a dome or
cupola, resembling in shape an inverted tea-cup without its bottom,
from the centre of which projected a spire, or shaft of wood,
transfixed with two iron rods, that bore on their ends the letters N.
S.  E.  and W, in the same metal.  The whole was surmounted by an
imitation of one of the finny tribe, carved in wood by the hands of
Richard, and painted what he called a “scale-color.” This animal Mr.
Jones affirmed to be an admirable resemblance of a great favorite of
the epicures in that country, which bore the title of “lake-fish,” and
doubtless the assertion was true; for, although intended to answer the
purposes of a weathercock, the fish was observed invariably to look
with a longing eye in the direction of the beautiful sheet of water
that lay imbedded in the mountains of Templeton.

For a short time after the charter of the regents was received, the
trustees of this institution employed a graduate of one of the Eastern
colleges to instruct such youth as aspired to knowledge within the
walls of the edifice which we have described.  The upper part of the
building was in one apartment, and was intended for gala-days and
exhibitions; and the lower contained two rooms that were intended for
the great divisions of education, viz., the Latin and the English
scholars.  The former were never very numerous; though the sounds of
“nominative, pennaa—genitive, penny,” were soon heard to issue from
the windows of the room, to the great delight and manifest edification
of the passenger.

Only one laborer in this temple of Minerva, however, was known to get
so far as to attempt a translation of Virgil.  He, indeed, appeared at
the annual exhibition, to the prodigious exultation of all his
relatives, a farmer’s family in the vicinity, and repeated the whole
of the first eclogue from memory, observing the intonations of the
dialogue with much judgment and effect.  The sounds, as they proceeded
from his mouth, of

“Titty-ree too patty-lee ree-coo-bans sub teg-mi-nee faa-gy

Syl-ves-trem ten-oo-i moo-sam, med-i-taa-ris, aa-ve-ny.”

were the last that had been heard in that building, as probably they
were the first that had ever been heard, in the same language, there
or anywhere else.  By this time the trustees discovered that they had
anticipated the age and the instructor, or principal, was superseded
by a master, who went on to teach the more humble lesson of “the more
haste the worst speed,” in good plain English.

From this time until the date of our incidents, the academy was a
common country school, and the great room of the building was
sometimes used as a court-room, on extraordinary trials; sometimes for
conferences of the religious and the morally disposed, in the evening;
at others for a ball in the afternoon, given under the auspices of
Richard; and on Sundays, invariably, as a place of public worship.

When an itinerant priest of the persuasion of the Methodists,
Baptists, Universalists, or of the more numerous sect of the
Presbyterians, was accidentally in the neighborhood, he was ordinarily
invited to officiate, and was commonly rewarded for his services by a
collection in a hat, before the congregation separated.  When no such
regular minister offered, a kind of colloquial prayer or two was made
by some of the more gifted members, and a sermon was usually read,
from Sterne, by Mr. Richard Jones.

The consequence of this desultory kind of priesthood was, as we have
already intimated, a great diversity of opinion on the more abstruse
points of faith.  Each sect had its adherents, though neither was
regularly organized and disciplined.  Of the religious education of
Marmaduke we have already written, nor was the doubtful character of
his faith completely removed by his marriage.  The mother of Elizabeth
was an Episcopalian, as indeed, was the mother of the Judge himself;
and the good taste of Marmaduke revolted at the familiar colloquies
which the leaders of the conferences held with the Deity, in their
nightly meetings.  In form, he was certainly an Episcopalian, though
not a sectary of that denomination.  On the other hand, Richard was as
rigid in the observance of the canons of his church as he was
inflexible in his opinions.  Indeed, he had once or twice essayed to
introduce the Episcopal form of service, on the Sundays that the
pulpit was vacant; but Richard was a good deal addicted to carrying
things to an excess, and then there was some thing so papal in his air
that the greater part of his hearers deserted him on the second
Sabbath—on the third his only auditor was Ben Pump, who had all the
obstinate and enlightened orthodoxy of a high churchman.

Before the war of the Revolution, the English Church was supported in
the colonies, with much interest, by some of its adherents in the
mother country, and a few of the congregations were very amply
endowed.  But, for the season, after the independence of the States
was established, this sect of Christians languished for the want of
the highest order of its priesthood.  Pious and suitable divines were
at length selected, and sent to the mother country, to receive that
authority which, it is understood, can only be transmitted directly
from one to the other, and thus obtain, in order to reserve, that
unity in their churches which properly belonged to a people of the
same nation.  But unexpected difficulties presented themselves, in the
oaths with which the policy of England had fettered their
establishment; and much time was spent before a conscientious sense of
duty would permit the prelates of Britain to delegate the authority so
earnestly sought.  Time, patience, and zeal, however, removed every
impediment, and the venerable men who had been set apart by the
American churches at length returned to their expecting dioceses,
endowed with the most elevated functions of their earthly church.
Priests and deacons were ordained, and missionaries provided, to keep
alive the expiring flame of devotion in such members as were deprived
of the ordinary administrations by dwelling in new and unorganized
districts.

Of this number was Mr. Grant.  He had been sent into the county of
which Templeton was the capital, and had been kindly invited by
Marmaduke, and officiously pressed by Richard, to take up his abode in
the village.  A small and humble dwelling was prepared for his family,
and the divine had made his appearance in the place but a few days
previously to the time of his introduction to the reader, As his forms
were entirely new to most of the inhabitants, and a clergyman of
another denomination had previously occupied the field, by engaging
the academy, the first Sunday after his arrival was allowed to pass in
silence; but now that his rival had passed on, like a meteor filling
the air with the light of his wisdom, Richard was empowered to give
notice that “Public worship, after the forms of the Protestant
Episcopal Church, would be held on the night before Christmas, in the
long room of the academy in Templeton, by the Rev.  Mr. Grant.”

This annunciation excited great commotion among the different
sectaries.  Some wondered as to the nature of the exhibition; others
sneered; but a far greater part, recollecting the essays of Richard in
that way, and mindful of the liberality, or rather laxity, of
Marmaduke’s notions on the subject of sectarianism, thought it most
prudent to be silent.

The expected evening was, however, the wonder of the hour; nor was the
curiosity at all diminished when Richard and Benjamin, on the morning
of the eventful day, were seen to issue from the woods in the
neighborhood of the village, each bearing on his shoulders a large
bunch of evergreens.  This worthy pair was observed to enter the
academy, and carefully to fasten the door, after which their
proceedings remained a profound secret to the rest of the village; Mr.
Jones, before he commenced this mysterious business, having informed
the school-master, to the great delight of the white-headed flock he
governed, that there could be no school that day.  Marmaduke was
apprised of all these preparations by letter, and it was especially
arranged that he and Elizabeth should arrive in season to participate
in the solemnities of the evening.

After this digression, we shall return to our narrative.