Children of Cloverley

On the other side of the vast Atlantic Ocean, whose countless waves stretch three times a thousand miles between the coasts of our country and the shores of the New World, there lives a great nation, speaking the same language and reading the selfsame Bible as the people of England. Only a narrow strait of sea, which we can look across, separates our native land from France; but if we sailed over that we should find ourselves at once surrounded by people whose speech we could not understand, and whose books we could not read: and so strangely would sound the words they spoke, that we should feel sorrowfully that we were in a foreign country and among strangers. So, though they are so far away, our nearest brethren, and the place where we could feel most at home because we could understand the language, are on the other side of the great Atlantic Ocean in the vast lands of North America, which we could only reach by a long voyage.

There are very few families in England that have not some relation, or friend, or at least an acquaintance, who used to live in the same town or village, who has emigrated across the sea to the United States of North America, or to Canada, the country lying higher towards the north. Perhaps not a single day in the whole year passes by without at least one ship putting out to sea from some English port, and finding its way over the trackless ocean almost as well as if there were landmarks to guide it, sails on by day and by night until it reaches some town on the American coast; while from the American harbours other vessels, laden with many kinds of merchandise, start away for our little island, which, like a small but powerful magnet, attracts all manner of trade and wealth to its busy towns. These ships, crossing and re-crossing day after day upon the Atlantic Ocean, carry to and fro men and women belonging to both countries, who are, and ought to be, bound together by very fast ties of love and friendship; for so many of the American people belong to us by reason of so many families here having sent out one or more of their children to try their fortunes in those newer and larger countries, that the two nations are like brothers. They belong to us, and we belong to them. If every letter which passes over the ocean from us to them and from them to us --loving letters from parents to children and from sisters to brothers, -- if each one of them could weave only one little thread as filmy and weak as the gossamer and spider spins in the summer air, they would altogether form a cable so mighty and strong that no power on earth could break it.

About the time that our story begins a terrible war bad been raging for nearly three years among the nation who inhabit the United States. The great cause of this war was the question whether the people living in the Southern and warmer States, where cotton, and tobacco, and sugar were cultivated, should buy and sell negroes to do their work, or should be compelled by the people dwelling in the Northern States to set their slaves free. It was a very difficult question to settle; and at length the Southerners determined to make a separate country and nation of their own, quite independent of the other. But the people of the North would not permit them to do this; and so North and South went to war, and fought fiercely for a time against each other, perhaps with the greater anger and bitterness because they were so closely related to each other. A few months before they were living as we live in England -- buying and selling, making railways from place to place, visiting one another, worshipping God after the same manner, and dwelling in peace and brotherhood throughout the whole land. Then there suddenly broke out this terrible civil war, which had been smouldering for a long time like a slow fire hidden among embers; and from one end to another of the United States the people were filled with bitter anger against their brothers, and began to look upon them as enemies.

Both in the North and South great armies were raised to fight their battles; and many men who had been living peacefully at home were called upon to leave their families and lands, and go out to the war as soldiers for their country. Among these men in the Northern army there was a Captain Bakewell, whose home was a small farmhouse upon the shores of Lake Huron, where he had lived for many years in quietness and safety, almost from the time when he had emigrated from England in his youth. Not long after the outbreak of the war he had been obliged to leave his farm and his two children in the care of his wife; parting from them all with much anxiety and sorrow, though he went out with a willing heart; for he was a brave and hardy man, and he thought the cause of the war a just one.

The farm on Lake Huron was far away from any town; far away also from any school or place of worship. Only a few farmers lived round about, and their homes were scattered so far apart that Mrs. Bakewell and her children rarely saw any strangers, or conversed with any one out of their own household. It would have been almost a dreary life in its solitude, except that now and then the father came home, bringing stirring accounts of the war; but he could not long be spared from his post, and his visits could only be in the winter, when for a short interval the contending armies were agreed to rest.

Like all her neighbours, it was necessary for Elinor Bakewell to be very active and diligent herself in seeing after the affairs of her husband's farm; and as there was scarcely any help to be had in that distant part of the country, both Ben and Annie, her two children, were obliged to work well with their own hands in order to be useful to her. There were few tasks upon the farm, not requiring a man's strength, which Ben could not manage, from milking the cows and guiding the plough, to chopping wood for the house fires; while within doors Annie could work, as her mother said, like a little woman. The children did not think their life hard; but sometimes the mother would ponder anxiously in her mind about their education, and would long for the opportunity of getting some good instruction for them; but she was far away from any school, and she could not bear the thought of sending them away from her while her husband was absent. The small farmhouse on the shores of Lake Huron would be desolate indeed without Ben and Annie. Besides, every month she expected the war to come to an end, and then Captain Bakewell would come home and decide what was to be done with his boy and girl.

In the meantime, she taught them carefully all that it was in her power to teach, taking especial care that they should learn to read well; so that to hear the children reading in their clear, sweet, natural young voices, as if they fully understood every word, was a greater pleasure than to listen to the careless rattling upon a piano of many young ladies who have wasted several years upon their music. Yet, as often as Ben rode over to the distant post office, and brought home a letter from Mrs. Bakewell's brother in England, and she heard of the learning and accomplishments of his children, she always sighed sorrowfully over her own Ben and Annie, and often shed bitter tears when they were not near to notice them. As for the children, they were never weary of listening to the grand accounts of their cousins in Old England; and many a long conversation had they upon the shores of the lake, and in the deep green glades of the great wood which bounded the farm, concerning Gilbert and Dora, and their home among the beautiful hills of Cloverley, which their mother had so often described to them.

There were as few books in the loghouse as there was little leisure time for reading them; but there was one large picture Bible, which had been an unfailing treasury of interest to Ben and Annie ever since they could first remember it. It had this peculiarity, that a great number of the pictures were of those events and scenes in the Bible history in which angels have taken a part; and so often did they come upon the lovely and tender faces of these heavenly spirits, with their snow-white robes and glistening wings, that the children, while they were little ones, were used to call the picture Bible the 'angel-book;' and for hours together during the quiet Sundays, as there was no church nor chapel near enough for them to attend, Annie nestled in her mother's lap and Ben sat at her feet, while she read over and over again the familiar stories of the visits of angels to this world of ours. Besides this, over the hearth of the little parlour beyond the kitchen there hung a beautiful painting, the work of their uncle Ludlow at Cloverley, which represented a cluster of the faces of angel children, so sweet, and innocent, and happy, that Annie would stand and look up at them until her eyes grew dim with tears. Sometimes Mrs. Bakewell would fancy that her little girl's face had caught the pure and heavenly expression of those angel-children; and many a solitary hour in the night, after the children were in bed, she pondered over Annie's simple talk about heaven and the angels, as if it was a home, and they were companions dearer to her even than her father's house upon Lake Huron.

Mrs. Bakewell need not have suffered as she did from the secret dread which often weighed upon her heart, that God would call upon her to give up her beloved child to the home in heaven and the companionship of the angels. It was the will of her heavenly Father that she should leave Ben and Annie motherless in this wide and busy world, and herself enter into His rest. She felt no dread of appearing in the presence of God, for she knew that the death of His Son Jesus Christ had atoned for her sins and reconciled her to the Father; but the bitterness of death lay in her separation from her children, and her spirit had to pass through a very sore and bitter conflict before she could give them up, and say truly, 'Thy will be done on earth, as it is done in heaven!' When that last trial and agony were over, she entered into a joy and peace such as she had never known before; and, committing Ben and Annie to the loving-kindness and tender care of their Father in heaven, she passed away into the eternal world, calmly and consciously, with her husband and children beside her, listening awe-stricken, but not terrified, to her farewell words of love.