Page 83 - HSLChristmasAnthology

HSL Christmas Anthology page 83

204. SAINT BERNARD AND OTHER PAPERS

at it carelessly in its repose, but commonly it seemed
cheerful, full of thought and generosity, and handsome
withal ; for, as her brother told her, " God administered
to you the sacrament of beauty in your childhood,
and you will walk all your life in the loveliness
thereof."Uncle Nathan had been an India merchant from his

twenty-fifth to about his fiftieth year, and had now,
for some years, been living with his sister in his fine,
large house — rich and well-educated, devoting his life
to study, works of benevolence, to general reform and
progress. It was he who had the first anti-slavery
lecture delivered in the town, and actually persuaded
Mr. Homer, the old minister, to let Mr. Garrison stand
in the pulpit on a Wednesday night and preach de
liverance unto the captives; but it could be done only
once, for the clergymen of the neighborhood thought
anti-slavery a desecration of their new wooden meet
ing-houses. It was he, too, who asked Lucy Stone
to lecture on woman's rights; but the communicants
thought it would not do to let a " woman speak in the
church," and so he gave it up. All the country knew
and loved him, for he was a natural overseer of the
poor, and guardian of the widow and the orphan.
How many a girl in the Normal School every night
put up a prayer of thanksgiving for him ; how many
a bright boy in Hanover and Cambridge was equally
indebted for the means of high culture, and if not so
thankful, why, Uncle Nathan knew that gratitude is
too nice and delicate a plant to grow on common soil.
Once, when he was twenty-two or three, he was engaged
to a young woman of Boston, while he was a clerk in a
commission store. But her father, a skipper from
Beverly or Cape Cod, who continued vulgar while he