The Bondage of Ballinger

The Bondage of Ballinger
By Roswell Field

Copyright 1903
By Fleming H. Revell Company

To George Record Peck Friend, Scholar, Bookman
What renegades would blush to own the stamp Of pleasing slavery to the evening lamp? Or boast that in their treachery they took The bookman from the bondage of his book? Their blustering we flout, their acts contemn; Such knaves are not for us, nor we for them. With you, Erasmus, have we joined our oaths: First the Greek authors, then, perhaps, some clothes!

THE rambling house, with its chain of gables, its old-fashioned windows, and its covered passageway leading back to the woodshed and the row of outer buildings, was known for many years, and is still known, for anything that has been certified to the contrary, as the parsonage. In the summer-time the honeysuckle and the clematis spread and bloom over the porches, as if apologizing for the disappearance of the paint that once was the free offering of the parish, and up the little back passage the nasturtium and morning-glory climb and cluster, briskly doing their share in the work of hiding the ruins of former splendor. Their fragrance dissipates the musty scent that steals from the battered boards, and is likened respectfully to the odor of sanctity with which the premises have been so long invested. But when the blossoms have blown across the road, and the fall rains have come and gone, and the New England winter has set in, the snow drifts furiously around the parsonage, and piles itself over the porches and up to the lower windows; while the old house, that has valiantly withstood the storms of nearly two centuries, creaks and groans under the assault, as it stands exposed in its brown ugliness.
Some histories relate that in the days when Englishmen conspired against their king and contended for the godly life and liberty of religious purpose, there was a Giles Ballinger, a stanch Puritan, who fought with Cromwell at Marston Moor, and was ever among the first of those who saw the battle's front and at last drove Prince Rupert back across the Lancashire hills. Again at Naseby and at Dunbar the lusty young Roundhead bore a charmed life, and at Worcester he was in the thick of the fight that shattered the power of the Royalists and sent Charles flying over the sea. This intrepid Giles came often under the eye of "Ironsides/* who commended him as "serving with all faithfulness and honour* ' ; but what became of him afterward no chronicles have distinctly set down. Certain traditions of the Connecticut Valley have it that when Cromwell was no more, and the second Charles came to the throne, Giles fled from England with Goffe and Whalley, and buried himself under an assumed name among the Massachusetts colonists. And there are those who say that he was the sturdiest among the determined men of the new country, and a marvelous fighter, who proved his mettle and experience in the dark hours of the Indian wars and massacres; that after he had grown old in service and in the honor and esteem of his neighbors, he assumed his former name and lived thereafter in peace and prosperity, as mighty for his counsel and wisdom as for his physical prowess.
Whatever of truth may have been in these stories, they are not mentioned in the family records compiled by the Reverend Jabez Ballinger, who occupied the old parsonage forty years later, and who speaks modestly and joyfully of his descent from 'good old Puritan stock. ' Perhaps it was this very modesty that silenced the Reverend Jabez, for to the good man it might savor of boastfulness that he should parade the military exploits of his ancestors, and dwell with satisfaction on the accomplishment of the sword and deeds of worldly cunning. So he scrupulously contented himself with fighting the Devil as valorously as ever the warlike Giles assailed the forces of the English king, bequeathing the eternal conflict to his son, the Reverend Thaddeus Ballinger, who in turn and the fulness of time handed the spiritual sword and buckler to the Reverend Jacob Ballinger in direct family descent,
Now, the Ballingers, in the exercise of their duties in the colony ministry, did not find time hanging oppressively on their hands, yet with all their obligations, spiritual and social, domestic and parochial, they were a reading clan, a family of bibliophiles, as the word with its somewhat restricted opportunities was understood a century ago. But as a line of clergymen, in a sequestered village, with constantly increasing offices of an arduous and varied type, they laid the foundations of an important library, as it is now regarded, with more attention to godly instruction and pious beneficence than to allurement. The old bookcase, which stood stern and rigid in the