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.