WOE!!

WOEL

saying,

PUBLISHED IN BOSTON, 1843.

freedom; scurrying away in a foaming rage; shooting under the bridge of the main street straight into the meshes of the paper-mill, from whose black raceway it made a mad rush for the forest again; muttering, as one child interpreted its sullen roar, that it would never, never be heard from again. Then there was the belt of hoary pines watching the clearing from over the inner wall of beeches and maplesforever watching, it seemed to me, for some one to whom they could beckon, so melancholy were they with being left out there alone in the wind and the storm. It had been sweet waking some morning and finding them gone, if one had never known who cut them down. But the view of a spur of the Adirondacks from a near hill top was an important part of my life in X-; those far-off heights I dreamed of climbing some day.

Never a spire or turret in the place, nothing but the chimney in ruins for an architectural aspiration. The meeting-house, a mile or less through the woods from the corners, was one of those weather-palsied representations of Zion happily disappearing from the land. The school-house, a poor, lonesome, little red school-house, was a half mile away from the corners in another direction. To have concentrated the religious and educational institutions of X nearer the post-office would have caused heartburning in the country round about, no doubt. The "Holler" could not expect to monopolize everything.

A commonplace picture, but a happy home, nevertheless. My father's good people were devoted to him, and he had no higher ambition than spending his days where he had found prosperity and honor. We children used to receive many presents, I remember, nor did we fall short of expecting gifts as a matter of course. Will anything ever bring the joy that came with a red flannel rabbit one old lady gave me when the story of the loss of my pet in a neighbor's trap caused so much feeling in the parish? These glimpses of the picture of my childhood are so closely related to what came to pass, they may hardly be spared from reminiscences of the fanaticism sweeping over that home like a withering

blast.

II.

It was in the early summer of 1843 that my father became a convert to the doctrines of William Miller. He was in attendance upon Anniversary Week in New York when he heard the lectures upon the prophecies concerning the second coming, which led him to announce his decision to "leave all" and proclaim the "midnight cry." Leaving all for him meant severing his connection with the publication house, giving up his pastorate, burning his ships behind him, in short. But what need had he of ships if the world was to come to its end that year of our Lord eighteen hundred and forty-three?

My first remembrance of the "tidings" is hearing the doctrine ridiculed. Everybody was laughing at my father's believing what he did, calling him a Millerite, and asking to see our ascension robes. I can remember a consciousness that we had become peculiar — a thrust-out feeling which was very painful, a conviction that my father was unjustly and wickedly treated, and that by those he had believed to be his friends. If the world was to be burned up very soon, why should he not make it known? If he did not know the truth of the matter, who did? It was terrible to hear the subject laughed about. Father had taken us children into his study directly upon his return from New York, and, having prayed with us, had told us very clearly what was coming to pass, and that speedily. If we were good children, we would be caught up to meet the Lord in the air, when that terrible trumpet sounded and the mountains were falling and the dead coming out of their graves. We believed every word he said, and the end of one world came to us while he spake.

The excitement in the little settlement was something to be remembered. In the hail of ridicule and persecution my father's faith intensified of course. He could bear ridicule better than the pleading of near friends. We children heard it all, lived it all-what the committee said, what the congregation said, why so-and-so would not hear him preach his farewell sermon, and who had been converted to his new gospel, with all the

worldly gossip about the struggle for the postoffice and the editorship. Our going away from X to live in a great city, the little while longer that time should last, was a merciful diversion for us who saw a martyr's halo around our father's head.

Can any of my readers imagine, unless their early religious experience has something in common with mine, what it was for a child truly to believe all the little Millerite did: that at any moment, terribly near at the latest, there would come that fearful upheaval of the earth, that fiery rending apart of the heavens, and in the indescribable confusion of angelic trumpets, and the shrieking of the damned, God himself would descend with a great shout to burn up the world, the sea, and the dry land?

That was a faith sapping the well-springs of a child's joy-making its life like a path through a jungle; the wild beast, ready to spring, was surely in the thicket, and some day there would be an end of the dread of him. It was something that made waking in the still night a painful experience, and a thunder-storm a fearful ordeal, while every sunset brought the inner voice, "The morning may never come." When I think of the years I repeated in my child's prayer every night, "Have mercy upon me, O Lord, if you come before morning," I see how much in common I had with the little Hindoos; but they were never snatched from their beds at midnight to see a sign of Siva, the destroyer, coming down in his wrath.

There were notable saints among those Millerite children. "Millerite! Millerite! when are you going up?" was shouted at us from the market-place. We were, in a sense, isolated-not considered safe comrades for children whose parents were on the rock of respectable orthodoxy. We looked at the doomed world with wistful regret, and envied those children who did not go to a Millerite hall or a tent upon Sunday, but to a fine church with an organ. But then we were not permitted to forget that the "churches" were" Babylon," and that by and by Babylon would fall, and then would come our reward. It was in the office at X- that I remember seeing Father Miller, a gentle old man, shaking with palsy. That was the album and acrostic age. An old lady has shown me what Father Miller wrote in her album one day while he sat there in the office, surrounded by converts and opponents:

'Midst wreck of matter when this world shall end? Amid the storm of wrath in that dread hour. Most Holy Father grant thee wisdom's power, Rouse up the slumbering mind to watch and pray — Salvation's coming, he will not delayHaste thee and meet him while he's on his way. "WM. MILLER."

a

February, 1844, saw us moving away from X-—, some of my father's old parishioners, converts to Millerism, carrying us and our goods in their big sleighs as far as Utica long journey, the weather bitter cold, the roads blocked with snow. It was a "shovelbrigade," and to cheer our hearts, father and the brethren would sing of "the coming" when they could. They left leaflets at many of the houses we passed,-warnings and expositions of prophecy,- and father preached at the inns where we stopped at night; but the converts were few, if any.

I remember looking back at the old house as we drove by the red pickets which seemed trying to get a good-bye glimpse of us over the drifts, thinking how soon everything would pass away with a great noise. But then my new bonnet was becoming, and I had a smart white muff-a stumbling-block to the good Millerite sister who could not see how father could have bought it, and the last winter so nearly over. But another good soul, a dimeyed old lady who said she never expected to see me again until the grand "rizin”,” had slipped a package of molasses-candy inside my muff. So, taking all in all, farewell to the "Holler" was not so depressing as it might have been.

I can hear my father answering in his calm, measured voice, when asked by the landlord how long we would want the house we had taken in R—, "Until the Lord comes." "If time lasts" was the condition of every anticipation and promise. Father brought little furniture for the new home, only what was needed for the free hospitality of a " Pilgrims' Hotel." The walls were covered with charts illustrating apocalyptic and prophetical visions-those realistic conceptions of the supernatural, bewildering one uninitiated in their mysteries. There was a difficulty in keeping a servant in the house, of course, which, with the unreliability and undesirability of the sisters as helpers in domestic affairs, gave my mother little time for attending the meetings-something she did not mourn over. Once, when rebuked for her absorption in the things of this life, she replied that the ascension of saints from her outlook depended entirely upon the stepping-stones they found in sinners.

That was the summer before the tenth day of the seventh month, the 24th of October,