The Crater | Page 9

that a son of his competitor, Doctor Woolston, should profit by this fact,
was utterly insupportable to him. Accordingly he quarrelled with Mark,
the instant he was apprised of the character of his attentions, and
forbade him the house, To do Mark justice, he knew nothing of
Bridget's worldly possessions. That she was beautiful, and
warm-hearted, and frank, and sweet-tempered, and feminine, and
affectionate, he both saw and felt; but beyond this he neither saw
anything, nor cared about seeing anything. The young sailor was as
profoundly ignorant that Bridget was the actual owner of certain three
per cents, that brought twelve hundred a year, as if she did not own a
'copper,' as it was the fashion of that period to say,'_cents_' being then
very little, if at all, used. Nor did he know anything of the farm she had
inherited from her mother, or of the store in town, that brought three
hundred and fifty more in rent. It is true that some allusions were made
to these matters by Doctor Yardley, in his angry comments on the
Woolston family generally, Anne always excepted, and in whose
flavour he made a salvo, even in the height of his denunciations. Still.
Mark thought so much of that which was really estimable and
admirable in Bridget, and so little of anything mercenary, that even

after these revelations he could not comprehend the causes of Doctor
Yardley's harsh treatment of him. During the whole scene, which was
purposely enacted in the presence of his wondering and trembling
daughter, Mark behaved perfectly well. He had a respect for the
Doctor's years, as well as for Bridget's father, and would not retort.
After waiting as long as he conceived waiting could be of any use, he
seized his hat, and left the room with an air of resentment that Bridget
construed into the expression of an intention never to speak to any of
them again. But Mark Woolston was governed by no such design, as
the sequel will show.
Chapter II.

"She's not fourteen." "I'll lay fourteen of my teeth, And yet, to my teen
be it spoken, I have but four,-- She is not fourteen."--
_Romeo and Juliet._
Divine wisdom has commanded us to "Honour your father and your
mother." Observant travellers affirm that less respect is paid to parents
in America, than is usual in Christian nations--we say Christian nations;
for many of the heathen, the Chinese for instance, worship them,
though probably with an allegorical connection that we do not
understand. That the parental tie is more loose in this country than in
most others we believe, and there is a reason to be found for it in the
migratory habits of the people, and in the general looseness in all the
ties that connect men with the past. The laws on the subject of
matrimony, moreover, are so very lax, intercourse is so simple and has
so many facilities, and the young of the two sexes are left so much to
themselves, that it is no wonder children form that connection so often
without reflection and contrary to the wishes of their friends. Still, the
law of God is there, and we are among those who believe that a neglect
of its mandates is very apt to bring its punishment, even in this world,
and we are inclined to think that much of that which Mark and Bridget
subsequently suffered, was in consequence of acting directly in the face
of the wishes and injunctions of their parents.

The scene which had taken place under the roof of Doctor Yardley was
soon known under that of Doctor Woolston. Although the last
individual was fully aware that Bridget was what was then esteemed
rich, at Bristol, he cared not for her money. The girl he liked well
enough, and in secret even admired her as much as he could find it in
his heart to admire anything of Doctor Yardley's; but the indignity was
one he was by no means inclined to overlook, and, in his turn, he
forbade all intercourse between the girls. These two bitter pills, thus
administered by the village doctors to their respective patients, made
the young people very miserable. Bridget loved Anne almost as much
as she loved Mark, and she began to pine and alter in her appearance, in
a way to alarm her father. In order to divert her mind, he sent her to
town, to the care of an aunt, altogether forgetting that Mark's ship lay at
the wharves of Philadelphia, and that he could not have sent his
daughter to any place, out of Bristol, where the young man would be so
likely to find her. This danger the good doctor entirely overlooked, or,
if he thought of it at all, he must