Hettys Strange History | Page 3

No one can estimate the
results on a character of these slow absorptions, these unconscious
biases, from daily contact. All precepts, all religions, are insignificant
agencies by their side. They are like sun and soil to a plant: they make a
moral climate in which certain things are sure to grow, and certain
other things are sure to die; as sure as it is that orchids and pineapples
thrive in the tropics, and would die in New England.
When old Squire Gunn was buried, all the villages within twenty miles
turned out to his funeral. He was the last revolutionary hero of the
county. An oration was delivered in the meeting-house; and the brass
band of Welbury played "My country, 'tis of thee," all the way from the
meeting-house to the graveyard gate. After the grave was filled up,
guns were fired above it, and the Welbury village choir sang an anthem.
The crowd, the music, the firing of guns, produced an ineffaceable
impression upon Hetty's mind. While her grandfather's body lay in the
house, she had wept inconsolably. But as soon as the funeral services
began, her tears stopped; her eyes grew large and bright with
excitement; she held her head erect; a noble exaltation and pride shone
on her features; she gazed upon the faces of the people with a
composure and dignity which were unchildlike. No emperor's daughter
in Rome could have borne herself, at the burial of her most illustrious
ancestor, more grandly and yet more modestly than did little Hetty
Gunn, aged twelve, at the burial of this unfamed Massachusetts
revolutionary soldier: and well she might; for a greater than royal
inheritance had come to her from him. The echoes of the farewell shots
which were fired over the old man's grave were never to die out of
Hetty's ears. Child, girl, woman, she was to hear them always: signal
guns of her life, they meant courage, cheerfulness, self-sacrifice.
Of Hetty's father, the "young Squire," as to the day of his death he was
called by the older people in Welbury, and of Hetty's mother, his wife,
it is not needful to say much here. The young Squire was a lazy,
affectionate man to whom the good things of life had come without his
taking any trouble for them: even his wife had been more than half

wooed for him by his doting father; and there were those who said that
pretty Mrs. Gunn had been quite as much in love with the old Squire,
old as he was, as with the young one; but that was only an idle village
sneer. The young Squire and his wife loved each other devotedly, and
their only child, Hetty, with an unreasoning and unreasonable affection
which would have been the ruin of her, if she had been any thing else
but what she was, "the old Squire over again." As it was, the only effect
of this overweening affection, on their part, was to produce a slow
reversal of some of the ordinary relations between parents and children.
As Hetty grew into womanhood, she grew more and more to have a
sense of responsibility for her father's and mother's happiness. She was
the most filially docile of creatures, and obeyed like a baby, grown
woman as she was. It was strange to hear and to see.
"Hetty, bring me my overcoat," her father would say to her in her
thirty-fifth year, exactly as he would have said it in her twelfth; and she
would spring with the same alacrity and the same look of pleasure at
being of use. But there was a filial service which she rendered to her
parents much deeper than these surface obediences and attentions. They
were but dimly conscious of it; and yet, had it been taken away from
them, they had found their lives blighted indeed. She was the link
between them and the outside world. She brought merriment, cheer,
hearty friendliness into the house. She was the good comrade of every
young woman and every young man in Welbury; and she compelled
them all to bring a certain half-filial affection and attention to her father
and mother. The best tribute to what she had accomplished in this
direction was in the fact, that you always heard the young people
mention Squire Gunn and his wife as "Hetty Gunn's father" or "Hetty
Gunn's mother;" and the two old people were seen at many a gathering
where there was not a single old face but theirs.
"Hetty won't go without her father and mother," or "Hetty'll be so
pleased if we ask her father and mother," was frequently heard. From
this free and unembarrassed association of the old and the young, grew
many excellent things. In this wholesome atmosphere honesty and good
behavior