THE BACKWOODS PHILOSOPHER.
One reason for Andrew's love of August Wehle was that he was a German.
Far from sharing in the prejudices of his neighbors against foreigners,
Andrew had so thorough a contempt for his neighbors, that he liked
anybody who did not belong to his own people. If a Turk had emigrated to
Clark township, Andrew would have fallen in love with him, and built a
divan for his special accommodation. But he loved August also for the
sake of his gentle temper and his genuine love for books. And only
August or August's mother, upon whom Andrew sometimes called, could
exorcise his demon of misanthropy, which he had nursed so long that it
was now hard to dismiss it.
Andrew Anderson belonged to a class noticed, I doubt not, by every acute
observer of provincial life in this country. In backwoods and
out-of-the-way communities literary culture produces marked
eccentricities in the life. Your bookish man at the West has never
learned to mark the distinction between the world of ideas and the
world of practical life. Instead of writing poems or romances, he falls
to living them, or at least trying to. Add a disappointment in love, and
you will surely throw him into the class of which Anderson was the
representative. For the education one gets from books is sadly
one-sided, unless it be balanced by a knowledge of the world.
Andrew Anderson had always been regarded as an oddity. A man with a good
share of ideality and literary taste, placed against the dull background
of the society of a Western neighborhood in the former half of the
century, would necessarily appear odd. Had he drifted into communities
of more culture, his eccentricity, begotten of a sense of superiority to
his surroundings, would have worn away. Had he been happily married, his
oddities would have been softened; but neither of these things happened.
He told August a very different history. For the confidence of his
"Teutonic friend" had awakened in the solitary man a desire to uncover
that story which he had kept under lock and key for so many years.
"Ah! my friend," said he with excitement, "don't trust the faith of a
woman." And then rising from his seat he said, "The Backwoods
Philosopher warns you. I pray you give good heed. I do not know Julia.
She is my niece. It ill becomes me to doubt her sincerity. But I know
whose daughter she is. I pray you give good heed, my Teutonic friend. _I
know whose daughter she is_!
"I do not talk much. But you have arrived at a critical point--a point
of turning. Out of his own life, out of his own sorrow, the Backwoods
Philosopher warns you. I am at peace now. But look at me. Do you not see
the marks of the ravages of a great storm? A sort of a qualified
happiness I have in philosophy. But what I might have been if the
storm had not torn me to pieces in my youth--what I might have been,
that I am not. I pray you never trust in a woman's keeping the happiness
of your life!"
[Illustration: "LOOK AT ME."]
Here Andrew slipped his arm through Wehle's, and began to promenade with
him in the large apartment up and down an alley, dimly lighted by a
candle, between solid phalanxes of books.
"I pray you give good heed," he said, resuming. "I was always eccentric.
People thought I was either a genius or fool. Perhaps I was much of
both. But this is a digression. I did not pay any attention to women. I
shunned them. I said that to be a great author and a philosophical
thinker, one must not be a man of society. I never went to a
wood-chopping, to an apple-peeling, to a corn-shucking, to a
barn-raising, nor indeed to any of our rustic feasts. I suppose this
piqued the vanity of the girls, and they set themselves to catch me. I
suppose they thought that I would be a trophy worth boasting. I have
noticed that hunters estimate game according to the difficulty of
getting it. But this is a digression. Let us return.
"There came among us, at that time, Abigail Norman. She was pretty. I
swear by all the sacred cats of Egypt, that she was beautiful. She was
industrious. The best housekeeper in the state! She was high-strung. I
liked her all the more for that. You see a man of imagination is apt to
fall in love with a tragedy queen. But this is a digression. Let
us return.
"She spread her toils in my path. While I was wandering through the
woods writing poetry to birds and squirrels, Abby Norman was ambitious
enough to hope to make me her slave, and she did. She read books that
she thought I liked. She planned in various ways to seem to like what I
liked, and yet she had sense enough to differ a little from me, and so
make herself the more interesting. I think a man of real intellect never
likes to have a man or woman agree with him entirely. But let us return.
"I loved Abigail desperately. No, I did not love Abigail Norman at all.
I did not love her as she was, but I loved her as she seemed to my
imagination to be. I think most lovers love an ideal that hovers in the
air a little above the real recipient of their love. And I think we men
of genius and imagination are apt to love something very different from
the real person, which is unfortunate.
"But I am digressing again. To return: I wrote poetry to Abby. I courted
her. I cut off my long hair for a woman, like Samson. I tried to dress
more decently, and made myself ridiculous no doubt, for a man can not
dress well unless he has a talent for it. And I never had a genius for
beau-knots.
"But pardon the digression. Let us return. I was to have married her.
The day was set. Then I found accidentally that she was engaged to my
brother Samuel, a young man with better manners than mind. She made him
believe that she was only making a butt of me. But I think she really
loved me more than she knew. When I had discovered her treachery, I
shipped on the first flat-boat. I came near committing suicide, and
should have jumped into the river one night, only that I thought it
might flatter her vanity. I came back here and ignored her. She broke
with Samuel and tried to regain my affections. I scorned her. I trod on
her heart! I stamped her pride into the dust! I was cruel. I was
contemptuous. I was well-nigh insane. Then she went back to Samuel, and
_made_ him marry her. Then she forced my imbecile old father, on his
death-bed, to will all the property to Samuel, except this piece of
rough hill-land and one thousand dollars. But here I built this castle.
My thousand dollars I put in books. I learned how, to weave the
coverlets of which our country people are so fond, and by this means,
and by selling wood to the steamboats, I have made a living and bought
my library without having to work half of my time. I was determined
never to leave. I swore by all the arms of Vishnu she should never say
that she had driven me away. I don't know anything about Julia. But I
know whose daughter she is. My young friend, beware! I pray you take
good heed! The Backwoods Philosopher warns you!"