The little town, as I recall it, was of just enough
dignity and dearth of the same to be an ordinary
county seat in Indiana--"The Grand Old
Hoosier State," as it was used to being howlingly
referred to by the forensic stump orator from the
old stand in the court-house yard--a political
campaign being the wildest delight that Zekesbury
might ever hope to call its own.
Through years the fitful happenings of the town
and its vicinity went on the same--the same! Annually
about one circus ventured in, and vanished,
and was gone, even as a passing trumpet-blast; the
usual rainy season swelled the "Crick," the driftage
choking at "the covered bridge," and backing water
till the old road looked amphibious; and crowds
of curious townfolk struggled down to look upon
the watery wonder, and lean awestruck above it,
and spit in it, and turn mutely home again.
The usual formula of incidents peculiar to an
uneventful town and its vicinity: The countryman
from "Jessup's Crossing," with the corn-stalk coffin-
measure, loped into town, his steaming little gray-
and-red-flecked "roadster" gurgitating, as it were, with that
mysterious utterance that ever has
commanded and ever must evoke the wonder and
bewilderment of every boy; the small-pox rumor
became prevalent betimes, and the subtle aroma of
the asafetida-bag permeated the graded schools
"from turret to foundation-stone"; the still
recurring expose of the poor-house management; the
farm-hand, with the scythe across his shoulder,
struck dead by lightning; the long-drawn quarrel
between the rival editors culminating in one of them
assaulting the other with a "sidestick," and the other
kicking the one down-stairs and thenceward ad
libitum; the tramp, suppositiously stealing a ride,
found dead on the railroad; the grand jury returning
a sensational indictment against a bar-tender
non est; the Temperance outbreak; the "Revival;"
the Church Festival; and the "Free Lectures on
Phrenology, and Marvels of Mesmerism," at the
town hall. It was during the time of the last-mentioned
sensation, and directly through this scientific
investigation, that I came upon two of the
town's most remarkable characters. And however
meager my outline of them may prove, my material
for the sketch is most accurate in every detail, and
no deviation from the cold facts of the case shall
influence any line of my report.
For some years prior to this odd experience
I had been connected with a daily paper at the
state capital; and latterly a prolonged session of
the legislature, where I specially reported, having
told threateningly upon my health, I took both the
advantage of a brief vacation, and the invitation of a
young bachelor senator, to get out of the city for
a while, and bask my respiratory organs in the
revivifying rural air of Zekesbury--the home of my
new friend.
"It'll pay you to get out here," he said cordially,
meeting me at the little station, "and I'm glad you've
come, for you'll find no end of odd characters to
amuse you." And under the very pleasant sponsorship
of my senatorial friend, I was placed at
once on genial terms with half the citizens of the
little town--from the shirt-sleeved nabob of the
county office to the droll wag of the favorite loafing-
place--the rules and by-laws of which resort, by
the way, being rudely charcoaled on the wall above
the cutter's bench, and somewhat artistically
culminating in an original dialect legend which ran
thus:
F'r instunce, now, when SOME folks gits
To relyin' on theyr wits,
Ten to one they git too smart
And SPILE it all, right at the start!
Feller wants to jest go slow
And do his THINKIN' first, you know,
'F I CAST'T THINK UP SOMEPIN' GOOD,
I SET STILL AND CHAW MY COOD!
And it was at this inviting rendezvous, two or
three evenings following my arrival, that the general
crowd, acting upon the random proposition of
one of the boys, rose as a man and wended its
hilarious way to the town hall.
"Phrenology," said the little, old, bald-headed
lecturer and mesmerist, thumbing the egg-shaped head
of a young man I remembered to have met that afternoon
in some law office; "phrenology," repeated
the Professor--"or rather the TERM phrenology--is
derived from two Greek words signifying MIND
and DISCOURSE; hence we find embodied in phrenology-
proper, the science of intellectual measurement,
together with the capacity of intelligent communication
of the varying mental forces and their flexibilities,
etc., etc. The study, then, of phrenology is,
to simplify it wholly--is, I say, the general
contemplation of the workings of the mind as made
manifest through the certain corresponding depressions
and protuberances of the human skull when, of
course, in a healthy state of action and development,
as we find the conditions exemplified in the subject
before us."
Here the "subject" vaguely smiled.
"You recognize that mug, don't you?" whispered
my friend. "It's that coruscating young ass, you
know, Hedrick--in Cummings' office--trying to
study law and literature at the same time, and
tampering with 'The Monster that Annually,' don't
you know?--where we found the two young students
scuffling round the office, and smelling of
peppermint?--Hedrick, you know, and Sweeney.
Sweeney, the slim chap, with the pallid face, and
frog-eyes, and clammy hands! You remember I
told you 'there was a pair of 'em'? Well, they're
up to something here to-night. Hedrick, there on
the stage in front; and Sweeney--don't you see?--
with the gang on the rear seats."
"Phrenology--again," continued the lecturer, "is,
we may say, a species of mental geography, as it
were; which--by a study of the skull--leads also
to a study of the brain within, even as geology
naturally follows the initial contemplation of the
earth's surface. The brain, thurfur, or intellectual
retort, as we may say, natively exerts a molding
influence on the skull contour; thurfur is the expert
in phrenology most readily enabled to accurately
locate the multitudinous intellectual forces, and
most exactingly estimate, as well, the sequent
character of each subject submitted to his scrutiny. As,
in the example before us--a young man, doubtless
well known in your midst, though, I may say, an
entire stranger to myself--I venture to disclose
some characteristic trends and tendencies, as
indicated by this phrenological depression and
development of the skull proper, as later we will show,
through the mesmeric condition, the accuracy of our
mental diagnosis."
Throughout the latter part of this speech my
friend nudged me spasmodically, whispering something
which was jostled out of intelligent utterance
by some inward spasm of laughter.
"In this head," said the Professor, straddling
his malleable fingers across the young man's bumpy
brow--"In this head we find Ideality large--abnormally
large, in fact; thurby indicating--taken in
conjunction with a like development of the perceptive
qualities--language following, as well, in the
prominent eye--thurby indicating, I say, our
subject as especially endowed with a love for the
beautiful--the sublime--the elevating--the refined and
delicate--the lofty and superb--in nature, and in all
the sublimated attributes of the human heart and
beatific soul. In fact, we find this young man
possessed of such natural gifts as would befit him for
the exalted career of the sculptor, the actor, the
artist, or the poet--any ideal calling; in fact, any
calling but a practical, matter-of-fact vocation;
though in poetry he would seem to best succeed."
"Well," said my friend seriously, "he's FEELING
for the boy!" Then laughingly: "Hedrick HAS written
some rhymes for the county papers, and Sweeney
once introduced him, at an Old Settlers' Meeting,
as 'The Best Poet in Center Township,' and never
cracked a smile! Always after each other that way,
but the best friends in the world. SWEENEY'S strong
suit is elocution. He has a native ability that way
by no means ordinary, but even that gift he abuses
and distorts simply to produce grotesque, and oftentimes,
ridiculous effects. For instance, nothing
more delights him than to 'loathfully' consent to
answer a request, at The Mite Society, some evening,
for 'an appropriate selection,' and then, with
an elaborate introduction of the same, and an
exalted tribute to the refined genius of the author,
proceed with a most gruesome rendition of 'Alonzo
The Brave and The Fair Imogene,' in a way to
coagulate the blood and curl the hair of his fair
listeners with abject terror. Pale as a corpse, you
know, and with that cadaverous face, lit with those
malignant-looking eyes, his slender figure, and his
long thin legs and arms and hands, and his whole
diabolical talent and adroitness brought into play--
why, I want to say to you, it's enough to scare 'em
to death! Never a smile from him, though, till he
and Hedrick are safe out into the night again--
then, of course, they hug each other and howl
over it like Modocs! But pardon; I'm interrupting
the lecture. Listen."
"A lack of continuity, however," continued the
Professor, "and an undue love of approbation,
would, measurably, at least, tend to retard the
young man's progress toward the consummation of
any loftier ambition, I fear; yet as we have intimated,
if the subject were appropriately educated
to the need's demand, he could doubtless produce
a high order of both prose and poetry--especially
the latter--though he could very illy bear being
laughed at for his pains."
"He's dead wrong there," said my friend;
"Hedrick enjoys being laughed at; he's used to it--gets
fat on it!"
"Is fond of his friends," continued the Professor,
"and the heartier they are the better; might even
be convivially inclined--if so tempted--but prudent
--in a degree," loiteringly concluded the speaker,
as though unable to find the exact bump with which
to bolster up the last named attribute.
The subject blushed vividly--my friend's right
eyelid dropped, and there was a noticeable, though
elusive sensation throughout the audience.
"BUT!" said the Professor explosively, "selecting
a directly opposite subject, in conjunction with the
study of the one before us [turning to the group at
the rear of the stage and beckoning], we may find
a newer interest in the practical comparison of these
subjects side by side." And the Professor pushed
a very pale young man into position.
"Sweeney!" whispered my friend delightedly;
"now look out!"
"In THIS subject," said the Professor, "we find
the practical business head. Square--though small
--a trifle light at the base, in fact; but well balanced
at the important points at least; thoughtful
eye--wide-awake--crafty--quick--restless--a policy
eye, though not denoting language--unless, perhaps,
mere business forms and direct statements."
"Fooled again!" whispered my friend; "and I'm
afraid the old man will fail to nest out the fact
also that Sweeney is the cold-bloodedest guyer on
the face of the earth, and with more diabolical
resources than a prosecuting attorney; the Professor
ought to know this, too, by this time--for these
same two chaps have been visiting the old man in
his room at the hotel,--that's what I was trying to
tell you a while ago. The old chap thinks he's
'playing' the boys, is my idea; but it's the other way,
or I lose my guess."
"Now, under the mesmeric influence--if the two
subjects will consent to its administration," said
the Professor, after some further tedious preamble,
"we may at once determine the fact of my assertions,
as will be proved by their action while in
this peculiar state." Here some apparent
remonstrance was met with from both subjects, though
amicably overcome by the Professor first manipulating
the stolid brow and pallid front of the imperturbable
Sweeney--after which the same mysterious
ordeal was loathfully submitted to by Hedrick--
though a noticeably longer time was consumed in
securing his final loss of self-control. At last, however,
this curious phenomenon was presented, and there
before us stood the two swaying figures, the heads
dropped back, the lifted hands, with thumb and
finger-tips pressed lightly together, the eyelids
languid and half closed, and the features, in
appearance, wan and humid.
"Now, sir!" said the Professor, leading the limp
Sweeney forward, and addressing him in a quick
sharp tone of voice.--"Now, sir, you are a great
contractor--own large factories, and with untold
business interests. Just look out there! [pointing
out across the expectant audience] look there, and
see the countless minions toiling servilely at your
dread mandates. And yet--ha! ha! See! see!--
They recognize the avaricious greed that would thus
grind them in the very dust; they see, alas! they see
themselves, half-clothed--half-fed, that you may
glut your coffers. Half-starved, they listen to the
wail of wife and babe, and with eyes upraised in
prayer, they see YOU rolling by in gilded coach, and
swathed in silk attire. But--ha! again! Look--
look! they are rising in revolt against you! Speak
to them before too late! Appeal to them--quell
them with the promise of the just advance of wages
they demand!"
The limp figure of Sweeney took on something
of a stately and majestic air. With a graceful and
commanding gesture of the hand, he advanced a
step or two; then, after a pause of some seconds
duration, in which the lifted face grew pale, as it
seemed, and the eyes a denser black, he said:
"But yesterday
I looked away
O'er happy lands, where sunshine lay
In golden blots,
Inlaid with spots
Of shade and wild forget-me-nots."
The voice was low, but clear, and even musical.
The Professor started at the strange utterance,
looked extremely confused, and, as the boisterous
crowd cried "Hear, hear!" he motioned the subject
to continue, with some gasping comment interjected,
which, if audible, would have run thus:
"My God! It's an inspirational poem!"
"My head was fair
With flaxen hair--"
resumed the subject.
"Yoop-ee!" yelled an irreverent auditor.
"Silence! silence!" commanded the excited Professor
in a hoarse whisper; then, turning enthusiastically
to the subject--"Go on, young man! Go
on!--'Thy head was fair with flaxen hair----' "
"My head was fair
With flaxen hair,
And fragrant breezes, faint and rare,
And, warm with drouth
From out the south,
Blew all my curls across my mouth."
The speaker's voice, exquisitely modulated, yet
resonant as the twang of a harp, now seemed of itself
to draw and hold each listener; while a certain
extravagance of gesticulation--a fantastic movement
of both form and feature--seemed very near
akin to fascination. And so flowed on the curious
utterance:--
"And, cool and sweet,
My naked feet
Found dewy pathways through the wheat;
And out again
Where, down the lane,
The dust was dimpled with the rain."
In the pause following there was a breathlessness
almost painful. The poem went on:
"But yesterday
I heard the lay
Of summer birds, when I, as they
With breast and wing,
All quivering
With life and love, could only sing.
"My head was leant
Where, with it, blent
A maiden's, o'er her instrument:
While all the night,
From vale to height,
Was filled with echoes of delight.
"And all our dreams
Were lit with gleams
Of that lost land of reedy streams,
Along whose brim
Forever swim
Pan's lilies, laughing up at him."
And still the inspired singer held rapt sway.
"It is wonderful!" I whispered, under breath.
"Of course it is!" answered my friend. "But
listen; there is more:"
"But yesterday! . . . .
O blooms of May,
And summer roses-where away?
O stars above;
And lips of love,
And all the honeyed sweets thereof!--
"O lad and lass,
And orchard pass,
And briered lane, and daisied grass!
O gleam and gloom,
And woodland bloom
And breezy breaths of all perfume!--
"No more for me
Or mine shall be
Thy raptures--save in memory,--
No more--no more--
Till through the Door
Of Glory gleam the days of yore."
This was the evident conclusion of the remarkable
utterance, and the Professor was impetuously
fluttering his hands about the subject's upward-
staring eyes, stroking his temples, and snapping his
fingers in his face.
"Well," said Sweeney, as he stood suddenly
awakened, and grinning in an idiotic way, "how did
the old thing work?" And it was in the consequent
hilarity and loud and long applause, perhaps,
that the Professor was relieved from the explanation
of this rather astounding phenomenon of the
idealistic workings of a purely practical brain--or, as
my impious friend scoffed the incongruity later,
in a particularly withering allusion, as the "blank-
blanked fallacy, don't you know, of staying the
hunger of a howling mob by feeding 'em on spring
poetry!"
The tumult of the audience did not cease even
with the retirement of Sweeney, and cries of "Hedrick!
Hedrick!" only subsided with the Professor's
high-keyed announcement that the subject was even
then endeavoring to make himself heard, but
could not until utter quiet was restored, adding
the further appeal that the young man had already
been a long time under the mesmeric spell, and
ought not be so detained for an unnecessary period.
"See," he concluded, with an assuring wave of the
hand toward the subject, "see; he is about to address
you. Now, quiet!--utter quiet, if you please!"
"Great heavens!" exclaimed my friend stiflingly;
"just look at the boy! Get on to that position for a
poet! Even Sweeney has fled from the sight of
him!"
And truly, too, it was a grotesque pose the young
man had assumed; not wholly ridiculous either,
since the dwarfed position he had settled into
seemed more a genuine physical condition than an
affected one. The head, back-tilted, and sunk between
the shoulders, looked abnormally large, while
the features of the face appeared peculiarly child-
like--especially the eyes--wakeful and wide apart,
and very bright, yet very mild and very artless; and
the drawn and cramped outline of the legs and feet,
and of the arms and hands, even to the shrunken,
slender-looking fingers, all combined to convey most
strikingly to the pained senses the fragile frame
and pixy figure of some pitiably afflicted child,
unconscious altogether of the pathos of its own deformity.
"Now, mark the cuss, Horatio!" gasped my
friend.
At first the speaker's voice came very low, and
somewhat piping, too, and broken--an eery sort of
voice it was, of brittle and erratic timbre and undulant
inflection. Yet it was beautiful. It had the
ring of childhood in it, though the ring was not pure
golden, and at times fell echoless. The SPIRIT of its
utterance was always clear and pure and crisp and
cheery as the twitter of a bird, and yet forever ran
an undercadence through it like a low-pleading
prayer. Half garrulously, and like a shallow brook
might brawl across a shelvy bottom, the rhythmic
little changeling thus began:--
"I'm thist a little crippled boy, an' never goin' to grow
An' git a great big man at all!--'cause Aunty told me so.
When I was thist a baby onc't I falled out of the bed
An' got 'The Curv'ture of the Spine'--'at's what the Doctor
said.
I never had no Mother nen--fer my Pa runned away
An' dassn't come back here no more--'cause he was drunk one day
An' stobbed a man in thish-ere town, an' couldn't pay his fine!
An' nen my Ma she died--an' I got 'Curv'ture of the Spine'!"
A few titterings from the younger people in the
audience marked the opening stanza, while a certain
restlessness, and a changing to more attentive positions
seemed the general tendency. The old Professor,
in the meantime, had sunk into one of the
empty chairs. The speaker went on with more gaiety:--
"I'm nine years old! An' you can't guess how much I weigh, I
bet!--
Last birthday I weighed thirty-three!--An' I weigh thirty yet!
I'm awful little fer my size--I'm purt' nigh littler 'an
Some babies is!--an' neighbers all calls me 'The Little Man'!
An' Doc one time he laughed an' said: 'I 'spect, first think
you know,
You'll have a little spike-tail coat an' travel with a show!'
An' nen I laughed-till I looked round an' Aunty was a-cryin'--
Sometimes she acts like that, 'cause I got 'Curv'ture of the
Spine'!"
Just in front of me a great broad-shouldered
countryman, with a rainy smell in his cumbrous
overcoat, cleared his throat vehemently, looked
startled at the sound, and again settled forward, his
weedy chin resting on the knuckles of his hands as
they tightly clutched the seat before him. And it
was like being taken into a childish confidence as the
quaint speech continued:--
"I set--while Aunty's washin'--on my little long-leg stool,
An' watch the little boys an' girls a-skippin' by to school;
An' I peck on the winder, an' holler out an' say:
'Who wants to fight The Little Man at dares you all to-day?'
An' nen the boys climbs on the fence, an' little girls peeks
through,
An' they all says: 'Cause you're so big, you think we're 'feard
o' you!'
An' nen they yell, an' shake their fist at me, like I shake
mine--
They're thist in fun, you know, 'cause I got 'Curv'ture of the
Spine'!"
"Well," whispered my friend, with rather odd
irrelevance, I thought, "of course you see through
the scheme of the fellows by this time, don't you?"
"I see nothing," said I, most earnestly, "but a
poor little wisp of a child that makes me love him
so I dare not think of his dying soon, as he surely
must! There; listen!" And the plaintive gaiety
of the homely poem ran on:--
"At evening, when the ironin' 's done, an' Aunty's fixed the
fire,
An' filled an' lit the lamp, an' trimmed the wick an' turned it
higher,
An' fetched the wood all in fer night, an' locked the kitchen
door,
An' stuffed the ole crack where the wind blows in up through the
floor--
She sets the kittle on the coals, an' biles an' makes the tea,
An' fries the liver an' the mush, an' cooks a egg fer me,
An' sometimes--when I cough so hard--her elderberry wine
Don't go so bad fer little boys with 'Curv'ture of the Spine'!"
"Look!" whispered my friend, touching me with
his elbow. "Look at the Professor!"
"Look at everybody!" said I. And the artless
little voice went on again half quaveringly:--
"But Aunty's all so childish-like on my account, you see
I'm 'most afeard she'll be took down--an' 'at's what bothers
ME!--
'Cause ef my good ole Aunty ever would git sick an' die,
I don't know what she'd do in Heaven--till _I_ come, by an' by:--
Fer she's so ust to all my ways, an' ever'thing, you know,
An' no one there like me, to nurse an' worry over so!--
'Cause all the little childerns there's so straight an' strong
an' fine,
They's nary angel 'bout the place with 'Curv'ture of the
Spine'!"
The old Professor's face was in his handkerchief;
so was my friend's in his; and so was mine in mine,
as even now my pen drops and I reach for it again.
I half regret joining the mad party that had gathered
an hour later in the old law office where these
two graceless characters held almost nightly revel,
the instigators and conniving hosts of a reputed
banquet whose MENU'S range confined itself to herrings,
or "blind robins," dried beef, and cheese, with
crackers, gingerbread, and sometimes pie; the whole
washed down with anything but
"----Wines that heaven knows when
Had sucked the fire of some forgotten sun,
And kept it through a hundred years of gloom
Still glowing in a heart of ruby."
But the affair was memorable. The old Professor
was himself lured into it and loudest in his praise
of Hedrick's realistic art; and I yet recall him at the
orgie's height, excitedly repulsing the continued
slurs and insinuations of the clammy-handed
Sweeney, who, still contending against the old man's
fulsome praise of his more fortunate rival, at last
openly declared that Hedrick was NOT a poet, NOT a
genius, and in no way worthy to be classed in the
same breath with HIMSELF--"the gifted but unfortunate
SWEENEY, sir--the unacknowledged author,
sir 'y gad, sir!--of the two poems that held you
spellbound to-night!"