HOW FICTION MADE FACT.
What may become a streak of proper modern chivalry in the man is but a
fantastic imagining in the boy. Some one has said that but for the
reading of "Ivanhoe" in the South, there would have been no war of the
rebellion, that the sentiment of knightliness and desire to uphold
opinions in material encounter was so fostered by the presence of the
book in thousands of households that, when the issue came, a majority
was for war which might have been otherwise inclined under more
practical teaching. This may or may not have been the case. There
would be nothing strange in it were the theory correct; the influence
of great novels is always underrated; but certain it is that the
reading of the age influences much the youth, and that many a bent of
mind is made by the books that lie about the house when some strong
young intellect is forming. So with this boy. The same force which
made of him a great savage marauder of the South Sea islands, though
modified by a keener perception and a broader intelligence, affected
him as he grew older. There were a few books available to him; and
what a reader he was, and what a listener! His father would sometimes
read aloud at night from current weeklies, and then the boy would
sprawl along the floor, his feet toward the great fireplace, his head
upon a rolled-up sheepskin, and drink in every word. "East Lynne" was
running as a serial then, and he would have given all his worldly
possessions to have had Sir Francis Levison alone in the wood, and had
his spear, and at his back some half-dozen of the boys whom he could
name. In some publication, too, at about that time, appeared the tale
of the adventures of Captain Gardiner and Captain Daggett in antarctic
wastes, seeking the sea-lions' skins, and the story of pluckiness and
awful trial affected his imagination deeply. Years afterward, when he
himself was at death's portal once, because of a grievous injury, and
when ice was bound upon his head to keep away the fever from his brain,
he imagined in his delirium that he was Captain Gardiner, and called
aloud the orders to the crew which he had heard read when a boy, and
which had so long lain in his memory's storehouse among the
unconsidered lumber.
The boy's reading included all there was in his home, and the small
collection was not a bad one. "Chambers' Miscellany" was in the
accidental lot, and good for him it was. "Chambers' Miscellany" is
better reading than much that is given to the world to-day, and the boy
rioted in the adventure-flavored tales and sketches. Scott's poetical
works were there, and Shakespeare, but the latter was read only for the
story of the play, and "Titus Andronicus" outranked even "Hamlet" among
the tragedies. As for Scott, the stirring rhymes had marked effect,
and this had one curious sequence. Tales of the lance and tilting have
ever captivated boys, and Grant was no exception. Alf did not read so
much, was of a nature less imaginative, and his younger brother,
Valentine, read not at all, but among them was enacted a great scene of
chivalry which ended almost in a tragedy. Grant, his mind absorbed in
jousting and its laurels, explained the thing to Alf and induced him to
read the tales of various encounters. Alf was more or less affected by
the literature and ready to do his share toward making each of them a
proper warrior fit for any fray. They considered the situation with
much earnestness, and concluded that the only way to joust was to
joust, and that Valentine should act as marshal of the occasion, for a
marshal at a tourney, they discovered, was a prime necessity. As for
coursers, barbs, destriers, or whatever name their noble steeds might
bear, they had no choice. There were but a couple of clumsy farm mares
available to them, and these the knights secured, their only equipments
being headstalls abstracted from the harness in the barn, while the
course fixed upon was a meadow well out of sight from the houses and
the eyes of the elders. Valentine was instructed in his duties,
particularly in the manner of giving the word of command. _Laissez
aller_, as found in "Ivanhoe," Grant did not understand, but a passage
from "The Lady of the Lake":
"Now, gallants! for your ladies' sake,
Upon them with the lance!"
seemed to answer every purpose, and Valentine was instructed to commit
it to memory, as the event proved, with but indifferent success. He
comprehended, in a vague way, that the warriors were to do battle for
the honor of their true loves, but, at the critical moment, the lines
escaped him and he had to improvise. The lances were rake-handles,
and, as this was not to be a fray _a l'outrance_, about the end of each
formidable weapon was wadded and tied an empty flour bag.
The unwilling, lumbering mares were brought upon the ground, and
Valentine held the headstall reins while a preliminary ceremony was
performed, for your perfect knight omits no courteous detail. Gloves
were unknown about the farm, but Grant drew from his pocket a buckskin
mitten, and with it slapped Alf suddenly in the face. It was to be
regretted that the aggressor had somewhat exaggerated the mediaeval
glove idea, and had not previously explained to Alf that to fling one's
glove in a foeman's face was one proper form of deadly insult preceding
mortal combat, for, ignoring lances, steeds and all about them, the
assailed personage immediately "clinched," and the boys rolled over in
a struggle, earnest, certainly, but altogether commonplace. It was
with the greatest difficulty, while defending himself, that Grant was
enabled to explain that his act was one rendered necessary by the laws
of chivalry and a part of the preliminaries of the occasion, instead of
an attack in cold blood upon an unwarned adversary. Alf accepted the
apology gloweringly, and manifested great anxiety to secure his lance,
and mount. It was evident the encounter would be deadly.
Some hundred yards apart, with the perplexed, astonished old mares
facing each other, sat the warriors in their saddles, or, rather, in
the place where their saddles would have been had they possessed them.
Each grasped the headstall reins firmly in his left hand, and with his
right aimed his top-heavy lance in a somewhat wobbling manner at his
adversary. It must soon be known to all the world of knighthood which
was the grimmer champion! At middle distance and well to one side,
stood Grand Marshal Valentine, racking his brains for the lines which
should give the signal for the shock, but all in vain. Desperation
gave him inspiration. "Let 'er go for your girls!" he roared.
Never, even in the gentle and joyous passage of arms at Ashby, or on
the Field of the Cloth of Gold, was afforded a more thrilling spectacle
than when these two paladins rushed to the onset and met in mid-career.
Each gave a yell and dug his heels into his charger, and whacked her
with the butt end of his lance, and forced her into a ponderous gallop
for the meeting. It matters not now what was the precise intent of
either jouster, which of them aimed at gorget or head-piece, or at
shield, for--either because the flour bags made the lances difficult to
manage or of some unevenness in the ground--each missed his enemy in
the encounter! Not so the two old mares! They came together with a
mighty crash and rolled over in a great cloud of dust and grass and
mane and tail and boy and spear and flour-bag!
There is a providence that looks after reckless youth especially, else
there would have been broken bones, or worse; but out of the confusion
two warriors scrambled to their feet, dazed somewhat and dirty, but
unharmed, and two old mares floundered into their normal attitude a
little later, evidently much disgusted with the entire proceeding. And
Valentine, grand marshal, who had chanced to have a little difficulty
with his elder brother the day before, promptly awarded the honors of
the tournament to Grant on the ground that old Molly, the horse ridden
by Alfred, seemed a little more shaken up than the other.
Of course there were other books than those of chivalric doings which
appealed to this young reader so addicted to putting theory into
practice at all risks. "Robinson Crusoe," and Byron, and D'Aubigne's
"History of the Reformation," and "Midshipman Easy," and "Snarleyow,"
and the "Woman in White," "John Brent," and Josephus, and certain old
readers, such as the American First Class Book, made up the odd country
library, and there was not a book in the lot which was not in time
devoured. There was another book, a romance entitled "Don Sebastian,"
to which at length a local tragedy appertained. The scene was laid in
Spain or Portugal and the hero of the story was a very gallant
character, indeed, one to be relied upon for the accomplishment of
great slaughter in an emergency, but who was singularly unlucky in his
love affair, in the outcome of which Grant became deeply interested,
too deeply, as the event proved. Upon the country boy of eleven or
twelve devolve always, in a new country, certain responsibilities not
unconnected with the great fuel question,--the keeping of the wood-box
full,--and these duties, in the absorption of the novel, the youth
neglected shamefully. A casual allusion or two, followed by a direct
announcement of what must come, had been entirely lost upon him, and,
one day, as he was lying by the unreplenished fire, deep in the pages
of the book, the volume was lifted gently from his hands, and, to his
horror, dropped upon the blazing coals against the back-log. Many
things occurred to him in later life of the sort men would avoid, but
never came much greater mental shock than on that black occasion.
Stunned, dazed, he went outside and threw himself upon the grass and
tried to reason out what could be done. Was he never to know the fate
of Don Sebastian? It was beyond endurance! A cheap quality of
literature the book was, no doubt, but he was not critical at that age,
and in later years he often sought the volume out of curiosity to learn
what in his boyhood had entranced him, but he never found it. It was a
small, fat volume, very like a pocket Bible in shape, bound cheaply in
green cloth, and printed in England, probably somewhere in the '30's,
but it had disappeared. The bereaved youth was, henceforth, in as sore
a retrospective strait over "Don Sebastian" as Mr. Andrew Lang declares
he is, to-day, with his "White Serpent" story.
Byron--"Don Juan," in particular--had an effect upon the youth, and
"The Prisoner of Chillon" gave him dreams. "Snarleyow" was the book,
though, which struck him as something great in literature. The demon
dog tickled his fancy amazingly. He was somewhat older when he read
"Jane Eyre" and "John Brent," and could recognize a little of their
quality, but "Snarleyow" came to him at an age when there was nothing
in the world to equal it.
Meanwhile the whole face of nature was changing, and the boy was
necessarily keeping up with the procession of new things. Broad
meadows were where even he, a mere boy still, had seen dense woodland;
there were highways, and it was far from the farmhouse door to the
forests edge. The fauna had diminished. The bear and wolverine had
gone forever. The fox rarely barked at night; the deer and wild turkey
were far less plentiful, though the ruffed grouse still drummed in the
copses, and the quail whistled from the fences. Different, even, were
the hunters in their methods. The boy, whose single-barreled shot-gun
had known no law, now carried a better piece, and scorned to slay a
sitting bird. Both he and Alf became great wing shots, and clever
gentlemen sportsmen from the city who sometimes came to hunt with them
could not hope to own so good a bag at the day's end. Wise as to dogs
and horses were they, too, and keen riders at country races. And
ridges of good muscles stiffened now their loins, and their chests were
deepening, and at "raisings," when the men and boys of the region
wrestled after their work was done, the two were not uncounted. For
them the country school had accomplished its mission. The world's
geography was theirs. Grammar they had memorized, but hardly
comprehended. As for mathematics, they were on the verge of algebra.
Then came the force of laws of politics and trade, a shifting of
things, and Grant strode out of nature to learn the artificial. His
family was removed to town.
Western, or rather Northwestern, town life, when the town has less than
ten thousand people, varies little with the locality. There is the
same vigor everywhere, because conditions are so similar. It is odd,
too, the close resemblance all through the great lake region in the
local geography of the towns. Small streams run into larger ones, and
these in turn enter the inland seas, or the straits, called rivers,
which connect them. Where the small rivers enter the larger ones, or
where the larger enter the straits or lakes, men made the towns. These
were the water cross-roads, the intersections of nature's highways, and
so it comes that to so many of these towns there is the great blue
water front intersected at its middle by a river. There is a bridge in
the town's main street, and the smell of water is ever in the air.
Boys learn to swim like otters and skate like Hollanders, and their
sisters emulate them in the skating, though not so much in the swimming
as they should. There is a life full of great swing. The touch
between the town and country is exceedingly close, and the country
family which comes to the community blends swiftly with the current.
So with the family of Grant Harlson and so with him personally. A year
made him collared and cravatted, short-cropped of hair, mighty in
high-school frays, and with a new ambition stirring him, of a quality
to compare with that of one Lucifer of unbounded reputation and
doubtful biography. There was something beyond all shooting and riding
and wrestling fame and the breath of growing things. There was another
world with reachable prizes and much to feed upon. He must wear
medals, metaphorically, and eat his fill, in time.
The high-school is really the first telescope through which a boy so
born and bred looks fairly out upon this planet. The astronomer who
instructs him is often of just the sort for the labor, a being also
climbing, one not to be a high-school principal forever, but using this
occupation merely as a stepping-stone upon his ascending journey. If
he be conscientious, he instils, together with his information that all
Gaul is divided and that a parasang is not something to eat, also the
belief that the game sought is worth the candle, and that hard study is
not wasted time. Such a teacher found young Harlson; such a teacher
was Professor--they always call the high-school principal "Professor"
in small towns--Morgan, and he took an interest in the youth, not the
interest of the typical great educator, but rather that of an older and
aspiring jockey aiding a younger one with his first mount, or of a
railroad engineer who tells his fireman of a locomotive's moods and
teaches him the tricks of management. They might help each other some
day. Well equipped, too, was Morgan for the service. No shallow
graduate of some mere diploma-manufactory, but one who believed in the
perfection of means for an end,--an advocate of thoroughness.
So it came that for four years Grant Harlson studied
feverishly,--selfishly might be almost the word,--such was the impulse
that moved him under Morgan's teaching, and so purely objective all his
reasoning. In his vacations he hunted, fished, and developed the more
thews and sinews, and acquired new fancies as to whether an Irish
setter or a Gordon made the better dog with woodcock, and upon various
other healthful topics, but his main purpose never varied. In his
classes there were fair girls, and in high-schools there is much callow
gallantry; but at this period of his life he would have none of it. He
was not timid, but he was absorbed. Morgan told him one day that he
was ready for college.