THE GREAT STRANGER
Some strangers came along the road those days--hunters, peddlers and the
like--and their coming filled me with a joy which mostly went away with
them, I regret to say. None of these, however, appealed to my
imagination as did old Kate. But there was one stranger greater than
she--greater, indeed, than any other who came into Rattleroad. He came
rarely and would not be long detained. How curiously we looked at him,
knowing his fame and power! This great stranger was Money.
I shall never forget the day that my uncle showed me a dollar bill and a
little shiny, gold coin and three pieces of silver, nor can I forget how
carefully he watched them while they lay in my hands and presently put
them back into his wallet. That was long before the time of which I am
writing. I remember hearing him say, one day of that year, when I asked
him to take us to the Caravan of Wild Beasts which was coming to the
village:
"I'm sorry, but it's been a hundred Sundays since I had a dollar in my
wallet for more than ten minutes."
I have his old account book for the years of 1837 and 1838. Here are
some of the entries:
"Balanced accounts with J. Dorothy and gave him my note for $2.15,
to be paid in salts January 1, 1838. Sold ten bushels of wheat to
E. Miner at 90 cents, to be paid in goods.
"Sold two sheep to Flavius Curtis and took his note for $6, payable
in boots on or before March the first."
Only one entry in more than a hundred mentions money, and this was the
sum of eleven cents received in balance from a neighbor.
So it will be seen that a spirit of mutual accommodation served to help
us over the rough going. Mr. Grimshaw, however, demanded his pay in cash
and that I find was, mainly, the habit of the money-lenders.
We were poor but our poverty was not like that of these days in which I
am writing. It was proud and cleanly and well-fed. We had in us the best
blood of the Puritans. Our fathers had seen heroic service in the wars
and we knew it.
There were no farmer-folk who thought more of the virtue of cleanliness.
On this subject my aunt was a deep and tireless thinker. She kept a
watchful eye upon us. In her view men-folks were like floors, furniture
and dishes. They were in the nature of a responsibility--a tax upon
women as it were. Every day she reminded me of the duty of keeping my
body clean. Its members had often suffered the tyranny of the soaped
hand at the side of the rain barrel. I suppose that all the waters of
this world have gone up in the sky and come down again since those far
days, but even now the thought of my aunt brings back the odor of soft
soap and rain barrels.
She did her best, also, to keep our minds in a cleanly state of
preservation--a work in which the teacher rendered important service. He
was a young man from Canton.
One day when I had been kept after hours for swearing in a fight and
then denying it, he told me that there was no reason why I shouldn't be
a great man if I stuck to my books and kept my heart clean. I heard with
alarm that there was another part of me to be kept clean. How was it to
be done?
"Well, just make up your mind that you'll never lie, whatever else you
do," he said. "You can't do anything bad or mean unless you intend to
cover it up with lies."
What a simple rule was this of the teacher!--and yet--well the very next
thing he said was:
"Where did you hear all that swearing?"
How could I answer his question truthfully? I was old enough to know
that the truth would disgrace my Uncle Peabody. I could not tell the
truth, therefore, and I didn't. I put it all on Dug Draper, although his
swearing had long been a dim, indefinite and useless memory.
As a penalty I had to copy two maxims of Washington five times in my
writing-book. In doing so I put them on the wall of my memory where I
have seen them every day of my life and from which I read as I write.
"Speak no evil of the absent for it is unjust."
"Labor to keep alive in your breast that little spark of celestial
fire called conscience."
The boys in the school were a sturdy big-boned lot with arms and legs
like the springing bow. Full-lunged, great-throated fellows, they grew
to be, calling the sheep and cattle in the land of far-reaching
pastures. There was an undersized boy three years older who often picked
on me and with whom I would have no peaceful commerce.
I copy from an old memorandum book a statement of my daily routine just
as I put it down one of those days:
"My hardest choar is to get up after uncle calls me. I scramble
down stairs and pick up my boots and socks and put them on. Then I
go into the setting room and put on my jacket. I get some brand
for the sheep. Then I put on my cap and mittens and go out and feed
the sheep. Then I get my breakfast. Then I put on my frock, cap,
mittens and fetch in my wood. Then I feed the horses their oats.
Then I lay away my old clothes until night. I put on my best coat
and mittens and tippet and start for school. By the time I get to
Joe's my toes are cold and I stop and warm them. When I get to
school I warm me at the stove. Then I go to my seat and study my
reader, then I take out my arithmetic, then my spelling book, then
comes the hardest study that ever landed on Plymouth Rock. It is
called geography. After the spelling lesson comes noon. The teacher
plays with me cos the other boys are so big. I am glad when I go
home. Then I do my choars again, and hear my aunt read until
bedtime."
There were girls in the school, but none like Sally. They whispered
together with shy glances in our direction, as if they knew funny
secrets about us, and would then break into noisy jeers. They did not
interest me, and probably because I had seen the lightness and grace and
beauty of Sally Dunkelberg and tasted the sweetness of her fancies.
There were the singing and spelling schools and the lyceums, but those
nights were few and far between. Not more than four or five in the whole
winter were we out of the joyful candle-light of our own home. Even then
our hands were busy making lighters or splint brooms, or paring and
quartering and stringing the apples or cracking butternuts while Aunt
Deel read.
After the sheep came we kept only two cows. The absence of cattle was a
help to the general problem of cleanliness. The sheep were out in the
fields and I kept away from them for fear the rams would butt me. I
remember little of the sheep save the washing and shearing and the lambs
which Uncle Peabody brought to our fireside to be warmed on cold
mornings of the early spring. I remember asking where the lambs came
from when I was a small boy, and that Uncle Peabody said they came from
"over the river"--a place regarding which his merry ignorance provoked
me. In the spring they were driven to the deep hole and dragged, one by
one, into the cold water to have their fleeces washed. When the weather
had warmed men came to shear them and their oily white fleeces were
clipped close to the skin and each taken off in one piece like a coat
and rolled up and put on the wool pile.
I was twelve years old when I began to be the reader for our little
family. Aunt Deel had long complained that she couldn't keep up with her
knitting and read so much. We had not seen Mr. Wright for nearly two
years, but he had sent us the novels of Sir Walter Scott and I had led
them heart deep into the creed battles of Old Mortality.
Then came the evil days of 1837, when the story of our lives began to
quicken its pace and excite our interest in its coming chapters. It gave
us enough to think of, God knows.
Wild speculations in land and the American paper-money system had
brought us into rough going. The banks of the city of New York had
suspended payment of their notes. They could no longer meet their
engagements. As usual, the burden fell heaviest on the poor. It was hard
to get money even for black salts.
Uncle Peabody had been silent and depressed for a month or more. He had
signed a note for Rodney Barnes, a cousin, long before and was afraid
that he would have to pay it. I didn't know what a note was and I
remember that one night, when I lay thinking about it, I decided that it
must be something in the nature of horse colic. My uncle told me that a
note was a trouble which attacked the brain instead of the stomach. I
was with Uncle Peabody so much that I shared his feeling but never
ventured to speak of it or its cause. He didn't like to be talked to
when he felt badly. At such times he used to say that he had the brain
colic. He told me that notes had an effect on the brain like that of
green apples on the stomach.
One autumn day in Canton Uncle Peabody traded three sheep and twenty
bushels of wheat for a cook stove and brought it home in the big wagon.
Rodney Barnes came with him to help set up the stove. He was a big giant
of a man with the longest nose in the township. I had often wondered how
any one would solve the problem of kissing Mr. Barnes in the immediate
region of his nose, the same being in the nature of a defense.
I remember that I regarded it with a kind of awe because I had been
forbidden to speak of it. The command invested Mr. Barnes' nose with a
kind of sanctity. Indeed it became one of the treasures of my
imagination.
That evening I was chiefly interested in the stove. What a joy it was to
me with its damper and griddles and high oven and the shiny edge on its
hearth! It rivaled, in its novelty and charm, any tin peddler's cart
that ever came to our door. John Axtell and his wife, who had seen it
pass their house, hurried over for a look at it. Every hand was on the
stove as we tenderly carried it into the house, piece by piece, and set
it up. Then they cut a hole in the upper floor and the stone chimney and
fitted the pipe. How keenly we watched the building of the fire! How
quickly it roared and began to heat the room!
When the Axtells had gone away Aunt Deel said:
"It's grand! It is sartin--but I'm 'fraid we can't afford it--ayes I
be!"
"We can't afford to freeze any longer. I made up my mind that we
couldn't go through another winter as we have," was my uncle's answer.
"How much did it cost?" she asked.
"Not much differ'nt from thirty-four dollars in sheep and grain," he
answered.
Rodney Barnes stayed to supper and spent a part of the evening with us.
Like other settlers there, Mr. Barnes was a cheerful optimist.
Everything looked good to him until it turned out badly. He stood over
the stove with a stick of wood and made gestures with it as he told how
he had come from Vermont with a team and a pair of oxen and some bedding
and furniture and seven hundred dollars in money. He flung the stick of
wood into the box with a loud thump as he told how he had bought his
farm of Benjamin Grimshaw at a price which doubled its value. True it
was the price which other men had paid in the neighborhood, but they had
all paid too much. Grimshaw had established the price and called it
fair. He had taken Mr. Barnes to two or three of the settlers on the
hills above Lickitysplit.
"Tell this man what you think about the kind o' land we got here,"
Grimshaw had demanded.
The tenant recommended it. He had to. They were all afraid of Grimshaw.
Mr. Barnes picked up a flat iron and felt its bottom and waved it in the
air as he alleged that it was a rocky, stumpy, rooty, God-forsaken
region far from church or market or school on a rough road almost
impassable for a third of the year. Desperate economy and hard work had
kept his nose to the grindstone but, thank God, he had nose enough left.
Now and then Grimshaw (and others like him) loaned money to people, but
he always had some worthless hay or a broken-down horse which you had to
buy before you could get the money.
Mr. Barnes put down the flat iron and picked up the poker and tried its
strength on his knee as he told how he had heard that it was a growing
country near the great water highway of the St. Lawrence. Prosperous
towns were building up in it. There were going to be great cities in
Northern New York. What they called a railroad was coming. There were
rich stores of lead and iron in the rocks. Mr. Barnes had bought two
hundred acres at ten dollars an acre. He had to pay a fee of five per
cent. to Grimshaw's lawyer for the survey and the papers. This left him
owing fourteen hundred dollars on his farm--much more than it was worth.
One hundred acres of the land had been roughly cleared by Grimshaw and a
former tenant. The latter had toiled and struggled and paid tribute and
given up.
Our cousin twisted the poker in his great hands until it squeaked as he
stood before my uncle and said:
"My wife and I have chopped and burnt and pried and hauled rocks an'
shoveled dung an' milked an' churned until we are worn out. For almost
twenty years we've been workin' days an' nights an' Sundays. My mortgage
was over-due, I owed six hundred dollars on it. I thought it all over
one day an' went up to Grimshaw's an' took him by the back of the neck
and shook him. He said he would drive me out o' the country. He gave me
six months to pay up. I had to pay or lose the land. I got the money on
the note that you signed over in Potsdam. Nobody in Canton would 'a'
dared to lend it to me."
The poker broke and he threw the pieces under the stove.
"Why?" my uncle asked.
Mr. Barnes got hold of another stick of wood and went on.
"'Fraid o' Grimshaw. He didn't want me to be able to pay it. The place
is worth more than six hundred dollars now--that's the reason. I
intended to cut some timber an' haul it to the village this winter so I
could pay a part o' the note an' git more time as I told ye, but the
roads have been so bad I couldn't do any haulin'."
My uncle went and took a drink at the water pail. I saw by his face that
he was unusually wrought up.
"My heavens an' earth!" he exclaimed as he sat down again.
"It's the brain colic," I said to myself as I looked at him.
Mr. Barnes seemed to have it also.
"Too much note," I whispered.
"I'm awful sorry, but I've done everything I could," said Mr. Barnes.
"Ain't there somebody that'll take another mortgage?--it ought to be
safe now," my uncle suggested.
"Money is so tight it can't be done. The bank has got all the money an'
Grimshaw owns the bank. I've tried and tried, but I'll make you safe.
I'll give you a mortgage until I can turn 'round."
So I saw how Rodney Barnes, like other settlers in Lickitysplit, had
gone into bondage to the landlord.
"How much do you owe on this place?" Barnes asked.
"Seven hundred an' fifty dollars," said my uncle.
"Is it due?"
"It's been due a year an' if I have to pay that note I'll be short my
interest."
"God o' Israel! I'm scairt," said Barnes.
Down crashed the stick of wood into the box.
"What about?"
Mr. Barnes tackled a nail that stuck out of the woodwork and tried to
pull it between his thumb and finger while I watched the process with
growing interest.
"It would be like him to put the screws on you now," he grunted, pulling
at the nail. "You've got between him an' his prey. You've taken the
mouse away from the cat."
I remember the little panic that fell on us then. I could see tears in
the eyes of Aunt Deel as she sat with her head leaning wearily on her
hand.
"If he does I'll do all I can," said Barnes, "whatever I've got will be
yours."
The nail came out of the wall.
"I had enough saved to pay off the mortgage," my uncle answered. "I
suppose it'll have to go for the note."
Mr. Barnes' head was up among the dried apples on the ceiling. A
movement of his hand broke a string of them. Then he dropped his huge
bulk into a chair which crashed to the floor beneath him. He rose
blushing and said:
"I guess I better go or I'll break everything you've got here. I kind o'
feel that way."
Rodney Barnes left us.
I remember how Uncle Peabody stood in the middle of the floor and
whistled the merriest tune he knew.
"Stand right up here," he called in his most cheerful tone. "Stand
right up here before me, both o' ye."
I got Aunt Deel by the hand and led her toward my uncle. We stood facing
him. "Stand straighter," he demanded. "Now, altogether. One, two, three,
ready, sing."
He beat time with his hand in imitation of the singing master at the
schoolhouse and we joined him in singing an old tune which began: "O
keep my heart from sadness, God."
This irresistible spirit of the man bridged a bad hour and got us off to
bed in fairly good condition.
A few days later the note came due and its owner insisted upon full
payment. There was such a clamor for money those days! I remember that
my aunt had sixty dollars which she had saved, little by little, by
selling eggs and chickens. She had planned to use it to buy a tombstone
for her mother and father--a long-cherished ambition. My uncle needed
the most of it to help pay the note. We drove to Potsdam on that sad
errand and what a time we had getting there and back in deep mud and
sand and jolting over corduroys!
"Bart," my uncle said the next evening, as I took down the book to read.
"I guess we'd better talk things over a little to-night. These are hard
times. If we can find anybody with money enough to buy 'em I dunno but
we better sell the sheep."
"If you hadn't been a fool," my aunt exclaimed with a look of great
distress--"ayes! if you hadn't been a fool."
"I'm just what I be an' I ain't so big a fool that I need to be reminded
of it," said my uncle.
"I'll stay at home an' work," I proposed bravely.
"You ain't old enough for that," sighed Aunt Deel.
"I want to keep you in school," said Uncle Peabody, who sat making a
splint broom.
While we were talking in walked Benjamin Grimshaw--the rich man of the
hills. He didn't stop to knock but walked right in as if the house were
his own. It was common gossip that he held a mortgage on every acre of
the countryside. I had never liked him, for he was a stern-eyed man who
was always scolding somebody, and I had not forgotten what his son had
said of him.
"Good night!" he exclaimed curtly, as he sat down and set his cane
between his feet and rested his hands upon it. He spoke hoarsely and I
remember the curious notion came to me that he looked like our old ram.
The stern and rugged face of Mr. Grimshaw and the rusty gray of his
homespun and the hoarseness of his tone had suggested this thought to
me. The long silvered tufts above his keen, gray eyes moved a little as
he looked at my uncle. There were deep lines upon his cheeks and chin
and forehead. He wore a thin, gray beard under his chin. His mouth was
shut tight in a long line curving downward a little at the ends. My
uncle used to say that his mouth was made to keep his thoughts from
leaking and going to waste. He had a big body, a big chin, a big mouth,
a big nose and big ears and hands. His eyes lay small in this setting of
bigness.
"Why, Mr. Grimshaw, it's years since you've been in our house--ayes!"
said Aunt Deel.
"I suppose it is," he answered rather sharply. "I don't have much time
to get around. I have to work. There's some people seem to be able to
git along without it."
He drew in his breath quickly and with a hissing sound after every
sentence.
"How are your folks?" my aunt asked.
"So's to eat their allowance--there's never any trouble about that,"
said Mr. Grimshaw. "I see you've got one o' these newfangled stoves," he
added as he looked it over. "Huh! Rich folks can have anything they
want."
Uncle Peabody had sat splintering the long stick of yellow birch. I
observed that the jackknife trembled in his hand. His tone had a touch
of unnaturalness, proceeding no doubt from his fear of the man before
him, as he said:
"When I bought that stove I felt richer than I do now. I had almost
enough to settle with you up to date, but I signed a note for a friend
and had to pay it."
"Ayuh! I suppose so," Grimshaw answered in a tone of bitter irony which
cut me like a knife-blade, young as I was. "What business have you
signin' notes an' givin' away money which ain't yours to give--I'd like
to know? What business have you actin' like a rich man when you can't
pay yer honest debts? I'd like to know that, too?"
"If I've ever acted like a rich man it's been when I wa'n't lookin',"
said Uncle Peabody.
"What business have you got enlargin' yer family--takin' another mouth
to feed and another body to spin for? That costs money. I ain't no
objection if a man can afford it, but the money it costs ain't yours to
give. It looks as if it belonged to me. You spend yer nights readin'
books when ye ought to be to work an' you've scattered that kind o'
foolishness all over the neighborhood. I want to tell you one thing,
Baynes, you've got to pay up or git out o' here."
He raised his cane and shook it in the air as he spoke.
"Oh, I ain't no doubt o' that," said Uncle Peabody. "You'll have to have
yer money--that's sure; an' you will have it if I live, every cent of
it. This boy is goin' to be a great help to me--you don't know what a
good boy he is and what a comfort he's been to us!"
I had understood that reference to me in Mr. Grimshaw's complaint and
these words of my beloved uncle uncovered my emotions so that I put my
elbow on the wood-box and leaned my head upon it and sobbed.
"I tell ye I'd rather have that boy than all the money you've got, Mr.
Grimshaw," Uncle Peabody added.
My aunt came and patted my shoulder and said: "Sh--sh--sh! Don't you
care, Bart! You're just the same as if you was our own boy--ayes!--you
be."
"I ain't goin' to be hard on ye, Baynes," said Mr. Grimshaw as he rose
from his chair; "I'll give ye three months to see what you can do. I
wouldn't wonder if the boy would turn out all right. He's big an' cordy
of his age an' a purty likely boy they tell me. He'd 'a' been all right
at the county house until he was old enough to earn his livin', but you
was too proud for that--wasn't ye? I don't mind pride unless it keeps a
man from payin' his honest debts. You ought to have better sense."
"An' you ought to keep yer breath to cool yer porridge," said Uncle
Peabody.
Mr. Grimshaw opened the door and stood for a moment looking at us and
added in a milder tone: "You've got one o' the best farms in this town
an' if ye work hard an' use common sense ye ought to be out o' debt in
five years--mebbe less."
He closed the door and went away.
Neither of us moved or spoke as we listened to his footsteps on the
gravel path that went down to the road and to the sound of his buggy as
he drove away. Then Uncle Peabody broke the silence by saying:
"He's the dam'dest--"
He stopped, set the half-splintered stick aside, closed his jackknife
and went to the water-pail to cool his emotions with a drink.
Aunt Deel took up the subject where he had dropped it, as if no
half-expressed sentiment would satisfy her, saying:
"--old skinflint that ever lived in this world, ayes! I ain't goin' to
hold down my opinion o' that man no longer, ayes! I can't. It's too
powerful--ayes!"
Having recovered my composure I repeated that I should like to give up
school and stay at home and work.
Aunt Deel interrupted me by saying:
"I have an idee that Sile Wright will help us--ayes! He's comin' home
an' you better go down an' see him--ayes! Hadn't ye?"
"Bart an' I'll go down to-morrer," said Uncle Peabody.
I remember well our silent going to bed that night and how I lay
thinking and praying that I might grow fast and soon be able to take the
test of manhood--that of standing in a half-bushel measure and
shouldering two bushels of corn. By and by a wind began to shake the
popple leaves above us and the sound soothed me like the whispered
"hush-sh" of a gentle mother.
We dressed with unusual care in the morning. After the chores were done
and we had had our breakfast we went up-stairs to get ready.
Aunt Deel called at the bottom of the stairs in a generous tone:
"Peabody, if I was you I'd put on them butternut trousers--ayes! an' yer
new shirt an' hat an' necktie, but you must be awful careful of
'em--ayes."
The hat and shirt and necktie had been stored in the clothes press for
more than a year but they were nevertheless "new" to Aunt Deel. Poor
soul! She felt the importance of the day and its duties. It was that
ancient, Yankee dread of the poorhouse that filled her heart I suppose.
Yet I wonder, often, why she wished us to be so proudly adorned for such
a crisis.
Some fourteen months before that day my uncle had taken me to Potsdam
and traded grain and salts for what he called a "rip roarin' fine suit
o' clothes" with boots and cap and shirt and collar and necktie to
match, I having earned them by sawing and cording wood at three
shillings a cord. How often we looked back to those better days! The
clothes had been too big for me and I had had to wait until my growth
had taken up the "slack" in my coat and trousers before I could venture
out of the neighborhood. I had tried them on every week or so for a long
time. Now my stature filled them handsomely and they filled me with a
pride and satisfaction which I had never known before. The collar was
too tight, so that Aunt Deel had to sew one end of it to the neckband,
but my tie covered the sewing.
Since that dreadful day of the petticoat trousers my wonder had been
regarding all integuments, what Sally Dunkelberg would say to them. At
last I could start for Canton with a strong and capable feeling. If I
chanced to meet Sally Dunkelberg I need not hide my head for shame as I
had done that memorable Sunday.
"Now may the Lord help ye to be careful--awful, terrible careful o' them
clothes every minute o' this day," Aunt Deel cautioned as she looked at
me. "Don't git no horse sweat nor wagon grease on 'em."
To Aunt Deel wagon grease was the worst enemy of a happy and respectable
home.
We hitched our team to the grasshopper spring wagon and set out on our
journey. It was a warm, hazy Indian-summer day in November. My uncle
looked very stiff and sober in his "new" clothes. Such breathless
excitement as that I felt when we were riding down the hills and could
see the distant spires of Canton, I have never known since that day. As
we passed "the mill" we saw the Silent Woman looking out of the little
window of her room above the blacksmith shop--a low, weather-stained,
frame building, hard by the main road, with a narrow hanging stair on
the side of it.
"She keeps watch by the winder when she ain't travelin'," said Uncle
Peabody. "Knows all that's goin' on--that woman--knows who goes to the
village an' how long they stay. When Grimshaw goes by they say she
hustles off down the road in her rags. She looks like a sick dog
herself, but I've heard that she keeps that room o' hers just as neat as
a pin."
Near the village we passed a smart-looking buggy drawn by a spry-footed
horse in shiny harness. Then I noticed with a pang that our wagon was
covered with dry mud and that our horses were rather bony and our
harnesses a kind of lead color. So I was in an humble state of mind when
we entered the village. Uncle Peabody had had little to say and I had
kept still knowing that he sat in the shadow of a great problem.
There was a crowd of men and women in front of Mr. Wright's office and
through its open door I saw many of his fellow townsmen. We waited at
the door for a few minutes. I crowded in while Uncle Peabody stood
talking with a villager. The Senator caught sight of me and came to my
side and put his hand on my head and said:
"Hello, Bart! How you've grown! and how handsome you look! Where's your
uncle?"
"He's there by the door," I answered.
"Well, le's go and see him."
Then I followed him out of the office.
Mr. Wright was stouter and grayer and grander than when I had seen him
last. He was dressed in black broadcloth and wore a big beaver hat and
high collar and his hair was almost white. I remember vividly his clear,
kindly, gray eyes and ruddy cheeks.
"Baynes, I'm glad to see you," he said heartily. "Did ye bring me any
jerked meat?"
"Didn't think of it," said Uncle Peabody. "But I've got a nice young doe
all jerked an' if you're fond o' jerk I'll bring ye down some
to-morrer."
"I'd like to take some to Washington but I wouldn't have you bring it so
far."
"I'd like to bring it--I want a chance to talk with ye for half an hour
or such a matter," said my uncle. "I've got a little trouble on my
hands."
"There's a lot of trouble here," said the Senator. "I've got to settle a
quarrel between two neighbors and visit a sick friend and make a short
address to the Northern New York Conference at the Methodist Church and
look over a piece of land that I'm intending to buy, and discuss the
plans for my new house with the carpenter. I expect to get through about
six o'clock and right after supper I could ride up to your place with
you and walk back early in the morning. We could talk things over on the
way up."
"That's first rate," said my uncle. "The chores ain't much these days
an' I guess my sister can git along with 'em."
The Senator took us into his office and introduced us to the leading men
of the county. There were: Minot Jenison, Gurdon Smith, Ephraim
Butterfield, Lemuel Buck, Baron S. Doty, Richard N. Harrison, John L.
Russell, Silas Baldwin, Calvin Hurlbut, Doctor Olin, Thomas H. Conkey
and Preston King. These were names with which, the _Republican_ had
already made us familiar.
"Here," said the Senator as he put his hand on my head, "is a coming man
in the Democratic party."
The great men laughed at my blushes and we came away with a deep sense
of pride in us. At last I felt equal to the ordeal of meeting the
Dunkelbergs. My uncle must have shared my feeling for, to my delight, he
went straight to the basement store above which was the modest sign: "H.
Dunkelberg, Produce." I trembled as we walked down the steps and opened
the door. I saw the big gold watch chain, the handsome clothes, the
mustache and side whiskers and the large silver ring approaching us,
but I was not as scared as I expected to be. My eyes were more
accustomed to splendor.
"Well I swan!" said the merchant in the treble voice which I remembered
so well. "This is Bart and Peabody! How are you?"
"Pretty well," I answered, my uncle being too slow of speech to suit my
sense of propriety. "How is Sally?"
The two men laughed heartily much to my embarrassment.
"He's getting right down to business," said my uncle.
"That's right," said Mr. Dunkelberg. "Why, Bart, she's spry as a cricket
and pretty as a picture. Come up to dinner with me and see for
yourself."
Uncle Peabody hesitated, whereupon I gave him a furtive nod and he said
"All right," and then I had a delicious feeling of excitement. I had
hard work to control my impatience while they talked. I walked on some
butter tubs in the back room and spun around on a whirling stool that
stood in front of a high desk and succeeded in the difficult feat of
tipping over a bottle of ink without getting any on myself. I covered
the multitude of my sins on the desk with a newspaper and sat down
quietly in a chair.
By and by I asked, "Are you 'most ready to go?"
"Yes--come on--it's after twelve o'clock," said Mr. Dunkelberg. "Sally
will be back from school now."
My conscience got the better of me and I confessed about the ink bottle
and was forgiven.
So we walked to the big house of the Dunkelbergs and I could hear my
heart beating when we turned in at the gate--the golden gate of my youth
it must have been, for after I had passed it I thought no more as a
child. That rude push which Mr. Grimshaw gave me had hurried the
passing.
I was a little surprised at my own dignity when Sally opened the door to
welcome us. My uncle told Aunt Deel that I acted and spoke like Silas
Wright, "so nice and proper." Sally was different, too--less playful and
more beautiful with long yellow curls covering her shoulders.
"How nice you look!" she said as she took my arm and led me into her
playroom.
"These are my new clothes," I boasted. "They are very expensive and I
have to be careful of them."
I remember not much that we said or did but I could never forget how she
played for me on a great shiny piano--I had never seen one before--and
made me feel very humble with music more to my liking than any I have
heard since--crude and simple as it was--while her pretty fingers ran up
and down the keyboard.
O magic ear of youth! I wonder how it would sound to me now--the
rollicking lilt of _Barney Leave the Girls Alone_--even if a sweet maid
flung its banter at me with flashing fingers and well-fashioned lips.
I behaved myself with great care at the table--I remember that--and,
after dinner, we played in the dooryard and the stable, I with a great
fear of tearing my new clothes. I stopped and cautioned her more than
once: "Be careful! For gracious sake! be careful o' my new suit!"
As we were leaving late in the afternoon she said:
"I wish you would come here to school."
"I suppose he will sometime," said Uncle Peabody.
A new hope entered my breast, that moment, and began to grow there.
"Aren't you going to kiss her?" said Mr. Dunkelberg with a smile.
I saw the color in her cheeks deepen as she turned with a smile and
walked away two or three steps while the grown people laughed, and stood
with her back turned looking in at the window.
"You're looking the wrong way for the scenery," said Mr. Dunkelberg.
She turned and walked toward me with a look Of resolution in her pretty
face and said:
"I'm not afraid of him."
We kissed each other and, again, that well-remembered touch of her hair
upon my face! But the feel of her warm lips upon my own--that was so
different and so sweet to remember in the lonely days that followed!
Fast flows the river to the sea when youth is sailing on it. They had
shoved me out of the quiet cove into the swift current--those dear,
kindly, thoughtless people! Sally ran away into the house as their
laughter continued and my uncle and I walked down the street. How happy
I was!
We went to the Methodist Church where Mr. Wright was speaking but we
couldn't get in. There were many standing at the door who had come too
late. We could hear his voice and I remember that he seemed to be
talking to the people just as I had heard him talk to my aunt and uncle,
sitting by our fireside, only louder. We were tired and went down to the
tavern and waited for him on its great porch. We passed a number of boys
playing three-old-cat in the school yard. How I longed to be among them!
I observed with satisfaction that the village boys did not make fun of
me when I passed them as they did when I wore the petticoat trousers.
Mr. and Mrs. Wright came along with the crowd, by and by, and Colonel
Medad Moody. We had supper with them at the tavern and started away in
the dark with the Senator on the seat with us. He and my uncle began to
talk about the tightness of money and the banking laws and I remember a
remark of my uncle, for there was that in his tone which I could never
forget:
"We poor people are trusting you to look out for us--we poor people are
trusting you to see that we get treated fair. We're havin' a hard time."
This touched me a little and I was keen to hear the Senator's answer. I
remember so well the sacred spirit of democracy in his words. Long
afterward I asked him to refresh my memory of them and so I am able to
quote him as he would wish.
"I know it," he answered. "I lie awake nights thinking about it. I am
poor myself, almost as poor as my father before me. I have found it
difficult to keep my poverty these late years but I have not failed. I'm
about as poor as you are, I guess. I could enjoy riches, but I want to
be poor so I may not forget what is due to the people among whom I was
born--you who live in small houses and rack your bones with toil. I am
one of you, although I am racking my brain instead of my bones in our
common interest. There are so many who would crowd us down we must stand
together and be watchful or we shall be reduced to an overburdened,
slavish peasantry, pitied and despised. Our danger will increase as
wealth accumulates and the cities grow. I am for the average man--like
myself. They've lifted me out of the crowd to an elevation which I do
not deserve. I have more reputation than I dare promise to keep. It
frightens me. I am like a child clinging to its father's hand in a place
of peril. So I cling to the crowd. It is my father. I know its needs and
wrongs and troubles. I had other things to do to-night. There were
people who wished to discuss their political plans and ambitions with
me. But I thought I would rather go with you and learn about your
troubles. What are they?"
My uncle told him about the note and the visit of Mr. Grimshaw and of
his threats and upbraidings.
"Did he say that in Bart's hearing?" asked the Senator.
"Ayes!--right out plain."
"Too bad! I'm going to tell you frankly, Baynes, that the best thing I
know about you is your conduct toward this boy. I like it. The next best
thing is the fact that you signed the note. It was bad business but it
was good Christian conduct to help your friend. Don't regret it. You
were poor and of an age when the boy's pranks were troublesome to both
of you, but you took him in. I'll lend you the interest and try to get
another holder for the mortgage on one condition. You must let me attend
to Bart's schooling. I want to be the boss about that. We have a great
schoolmaster in Canton and when Bart is a little older I want him to go
there to school. I'll try to find him a place where he can work for his
board."
"We'll miss Bart but we'll be tickled to death--there's no two ways
about that," said Uncle Peabody.
I had been getting sleepy, but this woke me up. I no longer heard the
monotonous creak of harness and whiffletrees and the rumble of wheels; I
saw no longer the stars and the darkness of the night. My mind had
scampered off into the future. I was playing with Sally or with the boys
in the school yard.
The Senator tested my arithmetic and grammar and geography as we rode
along in the darkness and said by and by:
"You'll have to work hard, Bart. You'll have to take your book into the
field as I did. After every row of corn I learned a rule of syntax or
arithmetic or a fact in geography while I rested, and my thought and
memory took hold of it as I plied the hoe. I don't want you to stop the
reading, but from now on you must spend half of every evening on your
lessons."
We got home at half past eight and found my aunt greatly worried. She
had done the chores and been standing in her hood and shawl on the porch
listening for the sound of the wagon. She had kept our suppers warm but
I was the only hungry one.
As I was going to bed the Senator called me to him and said:
"I shall be gone when you are up in the morning. It may be a long time
before I see you; I shall leave something for you in a sealed envelope
with your name on it. You are not to open the envelope until you go away
to school. I know how you will feel that first day. When night falls you
will think of your aunt and uncle and be very lonely. When you go to
your room for the night I want you to sit down all by yourself and open
the envelope and read what I shall write. They will be, I think, the
most impressive words ever written. You will think them over but you
will not understand them for a long time. Ask every wise man you meet to
explain them to you, for all your happiness will depend upon your
understanding of these few words in the envelope."
In the morning Aunt Deel put it in my hands.
"I wonder what in the world he wrote there--ayes!" said she. "We must
keep it careful--ayes!--I'll put it in my trunk an' give it to ye when
ye go to Canton to school."
"Has Mr. Wright gone?" I asked rather sadly.
"Ayes! Land o' mercy! He went away long before daylight with a lot o'
jerked meat in a pack basket--ayes! Yer uncle is goin' down to the
village to see 'bout the mortgage this afternoon, ayes!"
It was a Saturday and I spent its hours cording wood in the shed,
pausing now and then for a look into my grammar. It was a happy day, for
the growing cords expressed in a satisfactory manner my new sense of
obligation to those I loved. Imaginary conversations came into my brain
as I worked and were rehearsed in whispers.
"Why, Bart, you're a grand worker," my uncle would say in my fancy.
"You're as good as a hired man."
"Oh, that's nothing," I would answer modestly. "I want to be useful so
you won't be sorry you took me and I'm going to study just as Mr. Wright
did and be a great man if I can and help the poor people. I'm going to
be a better scholar than Sally Dunkelberg, too."
What a day it was!--the first of many like it. I never think of those
days without saying to myself: "What a God's blessing a man like Silas
Wright can be in the community in which his heart and soul are as an
open book!"
As the evening came on I took a long look at my cords. The shed was
nearly half full of them. Four rules of syntax, also, had been carefully
stored away in my brain. I said them over as I hurried down into the
pasture with old Shep and brought in the cows. I got through milking
just as Uncle Peabody came. I saw with joy that his face was cheerful.
"Yip!" he shouted as he stopped his team at the barn door where Aunt
Deel and I were standing. "We ain't got much to worry about now. I've
got the interest money right here in my pocket."
We unhitched and went in to supper. I was hoping that Aunt Deel would
speak of my work but she seemed not to think of it.
"Had a grand day!" said Uncle Peabody, as he sat down at the table and
began to tell what Mr. Wright and Mr. Dunkelberg had said to him.
I, too, had had a grand day and probably my elation was greater than
his. I tarried at the looking-glass hoping that Aunt Deel would give me
a chance modestly to show my uncle what I had done. But the talk about
interest and mortgages continued. I went to my uncle and tried to
whisper in his ear a hint that he had better go and look into the
wood-shed. He stopped me before I had begun by saying:
"Don't bother me now, Bub. I'll git that candy for ye the next time I go
to the village."
Candy! I was thinking of no such trivial matter as candy. He couldn't
know how the idea shocked me in the exalted state of mind into which I
had risen. He didn't know then of the spiritual change in me and how
generous and great I was feeling and how sublime and beautiful was the
new way in which I had set my feet.
I went out on the porch and stood looking down with a sad countenance.
Aunt Deel followed me.
"W'y, Bart!" she exclaimed, "you're too tired to eat--ayes! Be ye sick?"
I shook my head.
"Peabody," she called, "this boy has worked like a beaver every minute
since you left--ayes he has! I never see anything to beat it--never! I
want you to come right out into the wood-shed an' see what he's
done--this minute--ayes!"
I followed them into the shed.
"W'y of all things!" my uncle exclaimed. "He's worked like a nailer,
ain't he?"
There were tears in his eyes when he took my hand in his rough palm and
squeezed it and said:
"Sometimes I wish ye was little ag'in so I could take ye up in my arms
an' kiss ye just as I used to. Horace Dunkelberg says that you're the
best-lookin' boy he ever see."
"Stop!" Aunt Deel exclaimed with a playful tap on his shoulder. "W'y! ye
mustn't go on like that."
"I'm tellin' just what he said," my uncle answered.
"I guess he only meant that Bart looked clean an' decent--that's
all--ayes! He didn't mean that Bart was purty. Land sakes!--no."
I observed the note of warning in the look she gave my uncle.
"No, I suppose not," he answered, as he turned away with a smile and
brushed one of his eyes with a rough finger.
I repeated the rules I had learned as we went to the table.
"I'm goin' to be like Silas Wright if I can," I added.
"That's the idee!" said Uncle Peabody. "You keep on as you've started
an' everybody'll milk into your pail."
I kept on--not with the vigor of that first day with its new
inspiration--but with growing strength and effectiveness. Nights and
mornings and Saturdays I worked with a will and my book in my pocket or
at the side of the field and was, I know, a help of some value on the
farm. My scholarship improved rapidly and that year I went about as far
as I could hope to go in the little school at Leonard's Corners.
"I wouldn't wonder if ol' Kate was right about our boy," said Aunt Deel
one day when she saw me with my book in the field.
I began to know then that ol' Kate had somehow been at work in my
soul--subconsciously as I would now put it. I was trying to put truth
into the prophecy. As I look at the whole matter these days I can see
that Mr. Grimshaw himself was a help no less important to me, for it was
a sharp spur with which he continued to prod us.