"And will the minister be there?" asked Pearl. "And will he
hold out both his hands to me, as when thou ledst me to him
from the brook-side?"
"He will be there, child," answered her mother, "but he will not
greet thee to-day, nor must thou greet him."
"What a strange, sad man is he!" said the child, as if speaking
partly to herself. "In the dark nighttime he calls us to him,
and holds thy hand and mine, as when we stood with him on the
scaffold yonder! And in the deep forest, where only the old
trees can hear, and the strip of sky see it, he talks with thee,
sitting on a heap of moss! And he kisses my forehead, too, so
that the little brook would hardly wash it off! But, here, in
the sunny day, and among all the people, he knows us not; nor
must we know him! A strange, sad man is he, with his hand always
over his heart!"
"Be quiet, Pearl--thou understandest not these things," said her
mother. "Think not now of the minister, but look about thee, and
see how cheery is everybody's face to-day. The children have
come from their schools, and the grown people from their
workshops and their fields, on purpose to be happy, for, to-day,
a new man is beginning to rule over them; and so--as has been
the custom of mankind ever since a nation was first
gathered--they make merry and rejoice: as if a good and golden
year were at length to pass over the poor old world!"
It was as Hester said, in regard to the unwonted jollity that
brightened the faces of the people. Into this festal season of
the year--as it already was, and continued to be during the
greater part of two centuries--the Puritans compressed whatever
mirth and public joy they deemed allowable to human infirmity;
thereby so far dispelling the customary cloud, that, for the
space of a single holiday, they appeared scarcely more grave
than most other communities at a period of general affliction.
But we perhaps exaggerate the gray or sable tinge, which
undoubtedly characterized the mood and manners of the age. The
persons now in the market-place of Boston had not been born to
an inheritance of Puritanic gloom. They were native Englishmen,
whose fathers had lived in the sunny richness of the Elizabethan
epoch; a time when the life of England, viewed as one great
mass, would appear to have been as stately, magnificent, and
joyous, as the world has ever witnessed. Had they followed their
hereditary taste, the New England settlers would have
illustrated all events of public importance by bonfires,
banquets, pageantries, and processions. Nor would it have been
impracticable, in the observance of majestic ceremonies, to
combine mirthful recreation with solemnity, and give, as it
were, a grotesque and brilliant embroidery to the great robe of
state, which a nation, at such festivals, puts on. There was
some shadow of an attempt of this kind in the mode of
celebrating the day on which the political year of the colony
commenced. The dim reflection of a remembered splendour, a
colourless and manifold diluted repetition of what they had
beheld in proud old London--we will not say at a royal
coronation, but at a Lord Mayor's show--might be traced in the
customs which our forefathers instituted, with reference to the
annual installation of magistrates. The fathers and founders of
the commonwealth--the statesman, the priest, and the
soldier--seemed it a duty then to assume the outward state and
majesty, which, in accordance with antique style, was looked
upon as the proper garb of public and social eminence. All came
forth to move in procession before the people's eye, and thus
impart a needed dignity to the simple framework of a government
so newly constructed.