[Illustration: THE BACKWOODS PHILOSOPHER
_(Frontispiece. See page 40.)_]
The End of the World.
A LOVE STORY,
BY
EDWARD EGGLESTON
AUTHOR OF "THE HOOSIER SCHOOLMASTER," ETC.
WITH THIRTY-TWO ILLUSTRATIONS.
1872
PREFACE.
[IN THE POTENTIAL MOOD.]
It is the pretty unanimous conclusion of book-writers that prefaces are
most unnecessary and useless prependages, since nobody reads them. And
it is the pretty unanimous practice of book-writers to continue to write
them with such pains and elaborateness as would indicate a belief that
the success of a book depends upon the favorable prejudice begotten of u
graceful preface. My principal embarrassment is that it is not customary
for a book to have more than one. How then shall I choose between the
half-dozen letters of introduction I might give my story, each better
and worse on many accounts than either of the others? I am rather
inclined to adopt the following, which might for some reasons be
styled the
PREFACE SENTIMENTAL.
Perhaps no writer not infatuated with conceit, can send out a book full
of thought and feeling which, whatever they may be worth, are his own,
without a parental anxiety in regard to the fate of his offspring. And
there are few prefaces which do not in some way betray this nervousness.
I confess to a respect for even the prefatory doggerel of good Tinker
Bunyan--a respect for his paternal tenderness toward his book, not at
all for his villainous rhyming. When I saw, the other day, the white
handkerchiefs of my children waving an adieu as they sailed away from
me, a profound anxiety seized me. So now, as I part company with August
and Julia, with my beloved Jonas and my much-respected Cynthy Ann, with
the mud-clerk on the Iatan, and the shaggy lord of Shady-Hollow Castle,
and the rest, that have watched with me of nights and crossed the ferry
with me twice a day for half a year--even now, as I see them waving me
adieu with their red silk and "yaller" cotton "hand-kerchers," I know
how many rocks of misunderstanding and criticism and how many shoals of
damning faint praise are before them, and my heart is full of misgiving.
--But it will never do to have misgivings in a preface. How often have
publishers told me this! Ah! if I could write with half the heart and
hope my publishers evince in their advertisements, where they talk about
"front rank" and "great American story" and all that, it would doubtless
be better for the book, provided anybody would read the preface or
believe it when they had read it. But at any rate let us not have a
preface in the minor key.
A philosophical friend of mine, who is addicted to Carlyle, has
recommended that I try the following, which he calls
THE HIGH PHILOSOPHICAL PREFACE.
Why should I try to forestall the Verdict? Is it not foreordained in the
very nature of a Book and the Constitution of the Reader that a certain
very Definite Number of Readers will misunderstand and dislike a given
Book? And that another very Definite Number will understand it and
dislike it none the less? And that still a third class, also definitely
fixed in the Eternal Nature of Things, will misunderstand and like it,
and, what is more, like it only because of their misunderstanding? And
in relation to a true Book, there can not fail to be an Elect Few who
understand admiringly and understandingly admire. Why, then, make bows,
write prefaces, attempt to prejudice the Case? Can I change the Reader?
Will I change the Book? No? Then away with Preface! The destiny of the
Book is fixed. I can not foretell it, for I am no prophet. But let us
not hope to change the Fates by our prefatory bowing and scraping.
--I was forced to confess to my friend who was so kind as to offer to
lend me this preface, that there was much truth in it and that truth is
nowhere more rare than in prefaces, but it was not possible to adopt it
for two reasons: one, that my proof-reader can not abide so many
capitals, maintaining that they disfigure the page, and what is a
preface of the high philosophical sort worth without a profusion of
capitals? Even Carlyle's columns would lose their greatest ornament if
their capitals were gone. The second reason for declining to use this
preface was that my publishers are not philosophers and would never be
content with an "Elect Few," and for my own part the pecuniary interest
I have in the copyright renders it quite desirable that as many as
possible should be elected to like it, or at least to buy it.
After all it seems a pity that I can not bring myself to use a
straightforward
APOLOGETIC AND EXPLANATORY PREFACE.
In view of the favor bestowed upon the author's previous story, both by
the Public who Criticise and the Public who Buy, it seems a little
ungracious to present so soon, another, the scene of which is also laid
in the valley of the Ohio. But the picture of Western country life in
"The Hoosier School-Master" would not have been complete without this
companion-piece, which presents a different phase of it. And indeed
there is no provincial life richer in material if only one knew how to
get at it.
Nothing is more reverent than a wholesome hatred of hypocrisy. If any
man think I have offended against his religion, I must believe that his
religion is not what it should be. If anybody shall imagine that this is
a work of religious controversy leveled at the Adventists, he will have
wholly mistaken my meaning. Literalism and fanaticism are not vices
confined to any one sect. They are, unfortunately, pretty widely
distributed. However, if--
--And so on.
But why multiply examples of the half-dozen or more that I might, could,
would, or should have written? Since everybody is agreed that, nobody
reads a preface, I have concluded to let the book go without any.
BROOKLYN, September, 1872.
"_And as he [Wordsworth] mingled freely with all kinds of men, he found
a pith of sense and a solidity of judgment here and there among the
unlearned which he had failed to find in the most lettered; from obscure
men he heard high truths.... And love, true love and pure, he found was
no flower reared only in what was called refined society, and requiring
leisure and polished manners for its growth.... He believed that in
country people, what is permanent in human nature, the essential
feelings and passions of mankind, exist in greater simplicity and
strength_."--PRINCIPAL SHAIRP.
* * * * *
A DEDICATION.
It would hardly be in character for me to dedicate this book in good,
stiff, old-fashioned tomb-stone style, but I could not have put in the
background of scenery without being reminded of the two boys,
inseparable as the Siamese twins, who gathered mussel-shells in the
river marge, played hide-and-seek in the hollow sycamores, and led a
happy life in the shadow of just such hills as those among which the
events of this story took place. And all the more that the generous boy
who was my playmate then is the generous man who has relieved me of many
burdens while I wrote this story, do I feel impelled to dedicate it to
GEORGE CARY EGGLESTON, a manly man and a brotherly brother.
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER I.--In Love with a Dutchman.
CHAPTER II.--An Explosion.
CHAPTER III.--A Farewell.
CHAPTER IV.--A Counter-Irritant.
CHAPTER V.--At the Castle.
CHAPTER VI.--The Backwoods Philosopher.
CHAPTER VII.--Within and Without.
CHAPTER VIII.--Figgers won't Lie.
CHAPTER IX.--The New Singing-Master.
CHAPTER X.--An Offer of Help.
CHAPTER XI.--The Coon-dog Argument.
CHAPTER XII.--Two Mistakes.
CHAPTER XIII.--The Spider Spins.
CHAPTER XIV.--The Spider's Web.
CHAPTER XV.--The Web Broken.
CHAPTER XVI.--Jonas Expounds the Subject.
CHAPTER XVII.--The Wrong Pew.
CHAPTER XVIII.--The Encounter.
CHAPTER XIX.--The Mother.
CHAPTER XX.--The Steam-Doctor.
CHAPTER XXI.--The Hawk in a New Part.
CHAPTER XXII.--Jonas Expresses his Opinion on Dutchmen.
CHAPTER XXIII.--Somethin' Ludikerous.
CHAPTER XXIV.--The Giant Great-heart.
CHAPTER XXV.--A Chapter of Betweens.
CHAPTER XXVI.--A Nice Little Game.
CHAPTER XXVII.--The Result of an Evening with Gentlemen.
CHAPTER XXVIII.--Waking up an Ugly Customer.
CHAPTER XXIX.--August and Norman.
CHAPTER XXX.--Aground.
CHAPTER XXXI.--Cynthy Ann's Sacrifice.
CHAPTER XXXII.--Julia's Enterprise.
CHAPTER XXXIII.--The Secret Stairway.
CHAPTER XXXIV.--The Interview.
CHAPTER XXXV.--Getting Ready for the End.
CHAPTER XXXVI.--The Sin of Sanctimony.
CHAPTER XXXVII.--The Deluge.
CHAPTER XXXVIII.--Scaring a Hawk.
CHAPTER XXXIX.--Jonas takes an Appeal.
CHAPTER XL.--Selling out.
CHAPTER XLI.--The Last Day and What Happened in it.
CHAPTER XLII.--For Ever and Ever.
CHAPTER XLIII.--The Midnight Alarm.
CHAPTER XLIV.--Squaring Accounts.
CHAPTER XLV.--New Plans.
CHAPTER XLVI.--The Shiveree.
* * * * *
ILLUSTRATIONS.
BY FRANK BEARD
The Backwoods Philosopher
Taking an Observation
A Talk with a Plowman
A little rustle brought her to consciousness
Gottlieb
The Castle
The Sedilium at the Castle
"Look at me"
"Don't be oncharitable, Jonas"
The Hawk
"Tell that to Jule"
Tempted
"Now I hate you"
At Cynthy's Door
Cynthy Ann had often said in class-meeting that temptations abounded on
every hand
Jonas
Julia sat down in mortification
"Good-by!"
The Mother's Blessing
Corn-Sweats and Calamus
"Fire! Murder! Help!"
Norman Anderson
Somethin' Ludikerous
To the Rescue
A Nice Little Game
The Mud-Clerk
Waking up an Ugly Customer
Cynthy Ann's Sacrifice
A Pastoral Visit
Brother Goshorn
"Say them words over again"
"I want to buy your place"
THE END OF THE WORLD.
* * * * *
CHAPTER I.
IN LOVE WITH A DUTCHMAN.
"I don't believe that you'd care a cent if she did marry a Dutchman! She
might as well as to marry some white folks I know."
Samuel Anderson made no reply. It would be of no use to reply. Shrews
are tamed only by silence. Anderson had long since learned that the
little shred of influence which remained to him in his own house would
disappear whenever his teeth were no longer able to shut his tongue
securely in. So now, when his wife poured out this hot lava of
_argumentum ad hominem_, he closed the teeth down in a dead-lock way
over the tongue, and compressed the lips tightly over the teeth, and
shut his finger-nails into his work-hardened palms. And then,
distrusting all these precautions, fearing lest he should be unable to
hold on to his temper even with this grip, the little man strode out of
the house with his wife's shrill voice in his ears.
Mrs. Anderson had good reason to fear that her daughter was in love with
a "Dutchman," as she phrased it in her contempt. The few Germans who had
penetrated to the West at that time were looked upon with hardly more
favor than the Californians feel for the almond-eyed Chinaman. They were
foreigners, who would talk gibberish instead of the plain English which
everybody could understand, and they were not yet civilized enough to
like the yellow saleratus-biscuit and the "salt-rising" bread of which
their neighbors were so fond. Reason enough to hate them!
Only half an hour before this outburst of Mrs. Anderson's, she had set a
trap for her daughter Julia, and had fairly caught her.
"Jule! Jule! O Jul-y-e-ee!" she had called.
And Julia, who was down in the garden hoeing a bed in which she meant to
plant some "Johnny-Jump-ups," came quickly toward the house, though she
know it would be of no use to come quickly. Let her come quickly, or let
her come slowly, the rebuke was sure to greet her all the name.
"Why don't you come when you're called, _I'd_ like to know! You're never
in reach when you're wanted, and you're good for nothing when you
are here!"
Julia Anderson's earliest lesson from her mother's lips had been that
she was good for nothing. And every day and almost every hour since had
brought her repeated assurances that she was good for nothing. If she
had not been good for a great deal, she would long since have been good
for nothing as the result of such teaching. But though this was not the
first, nor the thousandth, nor the ten thousandth time that she had
been told that she was good for nothing, the accustomed insult seemed to
sting her now more than ever. Was it that, being almost eighteen, she
was beginning to feel the woman blossoming in her nature? Or, was it
that the tender words of August Wehle had made her sure that she was
good for something, that now her heart felt her mother's insult to be a
stale, selfish, ill-natured lie?
"Take this cup of tea over to Mrs. Malcolm's, and tell her that it a'n't
quite as good as what I borried of her last week. And tell her that
they'll be a new-fangled preacher at the school-house a Sunday, a
Millerite or somethin', a preachin' about the end of the world."
Julia did not say "Yes, ma'am," in her usually meek style. She smarted a
little yet from the harsh words, and so went away in silence.
Why did she walk fast? Had she noticed that August Wehle, who was
"breaking up" her father's north field, was just plowing down the west
side of his land? If she hastened, she might reach the cross-fence as he
came round to it, and while he was yet hidden from the sight of the
house by the turn of the hill. And would not a few words from August
Wehle be pleasant to her ears after her mother's sharp depreciation? It
is at least safe to conjecture that some such feeling made her hurry
through the long, waving timothy of the meadow, and made her cross the
log that spanned the brook without ever so much as stopping to look at
the minnows glancing about in the water flecked with the sunlight that
struggled through the boughs of the water-willows. For, in her thorough
loneliness, Julia Anderson had come to love the birds, the squirrels,
and the fishes as companions, and in all her life she had never before
crossed the meadow brook without stooping to look at the minnows.
All this haste Mrs. Anderson noticed. Having often scolded
[Illustration: TAKING AN OBSERVATION.]
Julia for "talking to the fishes like a fool," she noticed the omission.
And now she only waited until Julia was over the hill to take the path
round the fence under shelter of the blackberry thicket until she came
to the clump of alders, from the midst of which she could plainly see
if any conversation should take place between her Julia and the comely
young Dutchman.
In fact, Julia need not have hurried so much. For August Wehle had kept
one eye on his horses and the other on the house all that day. It was
the quick look of intelligence between the two at dinner that had
aroused the mother's suspicions. And Wehle had noticed the work on the
garden-bed, the call to the house, and the starting of Julia on the path
toward Mrs. Malcolm's. His face had grown hot, and his hand had
trembled. For once he had failed to see the stone in his way, until the
plow was thrown clean from the furrow. And when he came to the shade of
the butternut-tree by which she must pass, it had seemed to him
imperative that the horses should rest. Besides, the hames-string wanted
tightening on the bay, and old Dick's throat-latch must need a little
fixing. He was not sure that the clevis-pin had not been loosened by the
collision with the stone just now. And so, upon one pretext and another,
he managed to delay starting his plow until Julia came by, and then,
though his heart had counted all her steps from the door-stone to the
tree, then he looked up surprised. Nothing could be so astonishing to
him as to see her there! For love is needlessly crafty, it has always an
instinct of concealment, of indirection about it. The boy, and
especially the girl, who will tell the truth frankly in regard to a love
affair is a miracle of veracity. But there are such, and they are to be
reverenced--with the reverence paid to martyrs.
On her part, Julia Anderson had walked on as though she meant to pass
the young plowman by, until he spoke, and then she started, and blushed,
and stopped, and nervously broke off the top of a last year's iron-weed
and began to break it into bits while he talked, looking down most of
the time, but lifting her eyes to his now and then. And to the
sun-browned but delicate-faced young German it seemed, a vision of
Paradise--every glimpse of that fresh girl's face in the deep shade of
the sun-bonnet. For girls' faces can never look so sweet in this
generation as they did to the boys who caught sight of them, hidden
away, precious things, in the obscurity of a tunnel of pasteboard
and calico!
This was not their first love-talk. Were they engaged? Yes, and no. By
all the speech their eyes were capable of in school, and of late by
words, they were engaged in loving one another, and in telling one
another of it. But they were young, and separated by circumstances, and
they had hardly begun to think of marriage yet. It was enough for the
present to love and be loved. The most delightful stage of a love affair
is that in which the present is sufficient and there is no past or
future. And so August hung his elbow around the top of the bay horse's
hames, and talked to Julia.
It is the highest praise of the German heart that it loves flowers and
little children; and like a German and like a lover that he was, August
began to speak of the anemones and the violets that were already
blooming in the corners of the fence. Girls in love are not apt to say
any thing very fresh. And Julia only said she thought the flowers seemed
happy in the sunlight In answer to this speech, which seemed to the
lover a bit of inspiration, he quoted from Schiller the lines:
"Yet weep, soft children of the Spring;
The feelings Love alone can bring
Have been denied to you!"
With the quick and crafty modesty of her sex, Julia evaded this very
pleasant shaft by saying: "How much you know, August! How do you
learn it?"
[Illustration: A TALK WITH A PLOWMAN.]
And August was pleased, partly because of the compliment, but chiefly
because in saying it Julia had brought the sun-bonnet in such a range
that he could see the bright eyes and blushing face at the bottom of
this _camera-oscura_. He did not hasten to reply. While the vision
lasted he enjoyed the vision. Not until the sun-bonnet dropped did he
take up the answer to her question.
"I don't know much, but what I do know I have learned out of your Uncle
Andrew's books."
"Do you know my Uncle Andrew? What a strange man he is! He never comes
here, and we never go there, and my mother never speaks to him, and my
father doesn't often have anything to say to him. And so you have been
at his house. They say he has all up-stairs full of books, and ever so
many cats and dogs and birds and squirrels about. But I thought he never
let anybody go up-stairs."
"He lets me," said August, when she had ended her speech and dropped her
sun-bonnet again out of the range of his eyes, which, in truth, were too
steadfast in their gaze. "I spend many evenings up-stairs." August had
just a trace of German in his idiom.
"What makes Uncle Andrew so curious, I wonder?"
"I don't exactly know. Some say he was treated not just right by a woman
when he was a young man. I don't know. He seems happy. I don't wonder a
man should be curious though when a woman that he loves treats him not
just right. Any way, if he loves her with all his heart, as I love Jule
Anderson!"
These last words came with an effort. And Julia just then remembered
her errand, and said, "I must hurry," and, with a country girl's
agility, she climbed over the fence before August could help her, and
gave him another look through her bonnet-telescope from the other Hide,
and then hastened on to return the tea, und to tell Mrs. Malcolm that
there was to be a Millerite preacher at the school-house on Sunday
night. And August found that his horses were quite cool, while he was
quite hot. He cleaned his mold board, and swung his plow round, and
then, with a "Whoa! haw!" and a pull upon the single line which Western
plowmen use to guide their horses, he drew the team into their place,
and set himself to watching the turning of the rich, fragrant black
earth. And even as he set his plowshare, so he set his purpose to
overcome all obstacles, and to marry Julia Anderson. With the same
steady, irresistible, onward course would he overcome all that lay
between him and the soul that shone out of the face that dwelt in the
bottom of the sun-bonnet.
From her covert in the elder-bushes Mrs. Anderson had seen the parley,
and her cheeks had also grown hot, but from a very different emotion.
She had not heard the words. She had seen the loitering girl and the
loitering plowboy, and she went back to the house vowing that she'd
"teach Jule Anderson how to spend her time talking to a Dutchman." And
yet the more she thought of it, the more she was satisfied that it
wasn't best to "make a fuss" just yet. She might hasten what she wanted
to prevent. For though Julia was obedient and mild in word, she was none
the less a little stubborn, and in a matter of this sort might take the
bit in her teeth.
And so Mrs. Anderson had recourse, as usual, to her husband. She knew
she could browbeat him. She demanded that August Wehle should be paid
off and discharged. And when Anderson had hesitated, because he feared
he could not get another so good a hand, and for other reasons, she
burst out into the declaration:
"I don't believe that you'd care a cent if she did marry a Dutchman! She
might as well as to marry some white folks I know."