And then there was the funeral. It was held at Mr. Miller's house and
everybody was there; my grandpa, my grandma, my uncle, John Armstrong
and Aunt Caroline, Willie Wallace, Colonel Lambkin, Nigger Dick, Dinah,
my ma and Myrtle, all the Sunday School children, and George Montgomery.
Only Charley King and George Heigold wasn't there. They were afraid,
bein' partly responsible for Mitch's death. And when everybody was
seated and ready, Zueline and her ma came. They was all dressed up, and
everybody looked at 'em. Mr. Miller, of course, couldn't preach the
sermon for his own boy; so they sent for a wonderful preacher over at
Jacksonville and he talked for about an hour about pearly gates and the
golden streets of Paradise; and there was Mitch lyin' there, pale, his
eyes sealed, just asleep, but in such a deep, breathless sleep. And they
had the church choir there which sang. And one of the songs they sang
was:
I will sing you a song of that beautiful land,
Of the far away home of the soul,
Where no storms ever beat on that glittering strand,
While the years of eternity roll.
And the minister went on to say how good God was, how no sparrow falls
except He knows it, how all our hairs was numbered and how God loves
us, and would comfort the father and mother and brothers and sisters,
and little friends; and how if it hadn't been for the best, Mitch
wouldn't have died; and that God knew best and we didn't; and if we
could look ahead and see the dreadful things that would happen, we'd
know that God was good and wise to take Mitch away before they
happened--while he was yet a boy, and had had no trouble and all the
world was still beautiful to him. And he talked about sin and what
suffering does for people, how it makes 'em humble before God, and
respectful and at last saves 'em if they will heed the lessons and turn
to God. Everybody cried when the last song was sung, especially the
children, who sobbed out loud, and Mr. Miller and Mrs. Miller and the
Miller children--and I looked over at Zueline and her ma. Her ma was
just lookin' down. I thought I saw a tear in Zueline's eyes, but I'm not
sure. So we went out to the cemetery and they buried Mitch not far from
Little Billie. So it was all over. We began to separate and get into
carriages or walk. And pretty soon I was home. There was nothing there.
My ma went in and began to do something. Myrtle went out to the swing. I
went in the house but couldn't stand it; and then came out and hung on
the gate.
After a bit Charley King came along and asked me about everything. Pa
said Mitch had been running with Charley King and George Heigold, and
they got him into things too much for his age, flippin' cars and such
things, and that's how Mitch lost his life. You see I'd been scared
about this; I didn't want Mitch to go with 'em; I didn't know why; but
now it was clear.
And with everything else, it was Sunday, for Mitch had died Friday, four
or five hours after he was run over. And it was only a week now till
school would take up.
The next day I went down to the office with pa. I wanted to be close to
him; he was a man; he was strong, and I was lonesome and grievin', and
at night always dreamin' of Mitch. And after a while Mr. Miller came in,
and Mrs. Miller too. They looked terrible sad and pale. Here was Mr.
Miller out of a church and not makin' much, and here they had lost their
only boy.
So pa went over to his safe and got the $1000; he had it in two
envelopes, one marked with my name and one with Mitch's; and he came
back, holdin' 'em in his hand and he said: "You know that these boys
found that money that belonged to old Nancy Allen. Well, a fellow named
Joe Allen turned up here from Pike County--a third cousin of hers--and
her only livin' relative, and I had this money for him. But when I told
him that these boys had found it while lookin' for treasure, and what
kind of boys they were, the old fellow remembered his own boyhood, his
poverty, and all that and he wanted to do something for these boys. So
he made me take this thousand dollars to divide between 'em." Mrs.
Miller began to sob. And Mr. Miller's voice was broken, but he said,
"Hard, I never heard anything like this--never in my life." "Well,
here's the money," says pa; "and I made Skeet promise not to tell
anybody about it until we got ready to." He stopped; and I, not
thinkin', said: "It was to be a secret till Christmas."
Then Mrs. Miller broke down completely, and for several minutes nothin'
was said. My pa was cryin', so was I. So was Mr. Miller, and just then
the train came in, the same that had killed Mitch, and it seemed like
none of us could stand it.
After a bit pa says: "Of course, half of this money goes to you and Mrs.
Miller under the law, and the other half belongs to Skeet--but I'm not
going to let him take it. He doesn't need it. I can always take care of
him, and I'll inherit quite a lot, and he'll have that. And as far as
that goes, it wasn't his idea to hunt for treasure--he was just a helper
and followed up Mitchie's idea. So now here it is, and it goes with my
blessing and with Skeet's."
And I said, "Indeed it does." And pa handed the envelopes to Mr. Miller,
and he took 'em and fingered 'em in a nervous way and he says: "What
shall we do, ma?--we need the money, but somehow I don't like it, and I
won't take Skeet's share, would you?"
And she says, "No--never--I'd never take Skeet's share; that is
Mitchie's share and his too." "Here," he says, "here's the envelope
marked with Mitchie's name, you take this, Skeet, because you and
Mitchie worked together, and if you want to give me the envelope marked
with your name, I guess I'll take it--I seem to have to."
So that's the way it was done. And he said to pa: "Hard, there never was
a better man than you, or a better name or family than yours, or a
better boy than Skeet." Then the tears came in his eyes, and he and Mrs.
Miller left. And afterwards I said to pa, "I don't want this money. If I
could have had it with Mitch, if we could have spent it together for
velocipedes--and dogs, and sets of tools, for scroll saws, watches and
whatever we wanted, and soda water, when we wanted it, and bananas,
which we never had much because they cost ten cents apiece--for
anything, that would have been different. But now it's just so much rags
or paper, and I haven't got any use for it whatever. I am Huck Finn at
last--the money means nothing to me. It meant nothing to Huck, because
when he got it, he had to put on shoes and dress up. And now I've got
it, I've lost the only thing that made it worth while. I've lost Mitch
who made it interestin' to get, and would have made it interestin' to
spend."
Then I told pa I wanted to give it to the Miller girls, barrin' just a
few dollars to buy a present for ma and grandma and Myrtle, maybe--and I
wanted them to take enough to put up a stone at Mitch's grave with some
words on it, suitable to him.
So pa said he thought that was all right. And I took out $20 and we put
the rest in the bank in the names of the Miller girls--and that ended
the treasure.
So next Monday school commenced, and I sat in my seat lookin' out of the
window. Zueline had been taken to a girls' school in Springfield so as
to get her out of the common schools; and her mother had gone with her
to stay all winter. And every day the train came through that Mitch was
killed on. The days went by; the fall went by; the winter came. The snow
began to fall on Mitch's grave and Little Billie's; and still we went
on. Delia got the meals as before; the washwoman came and did the
washing on Monday; pa was buying wood for the stoves; we had to be
fitted out for winter. Grandma and grandpa came in to see us, cheerful
and kind as they always were. Once he carried a half a pig up the hill
and brought it to us; and they were always giving us things; and grandma
was always knitting me mittens and socks. They had lost a lot of
children, two little girls the same summer, a daughter who was grown, a
grown son who was drowned. They seemed to take Mitchie's death and
Little Billie's death as natural and to be stood. And they said it
wouldn't be long before we'd all be together, never to be separated; and
then we'd all be really happy.
And finally the December court came around and they tried Temple Scott.
Harold Carman testified to what he had said to the woman on the boat.
And Major Abbott was kerflummoxed and lost the case. Temple Scott got
fourteen years in prison--and that ended that. He went there and staid.
And then Christmas came and in the evening I went up to the Millers'.
The girls were playing about the same as before. Mr. Miller was reading
Shakespeare to Mrs. Miller and he looked up finally and said, "Ma, I've
just thought of an epitaph for Mitchie's stone--here it is in 'Hamlet':
'The rest is silence.'" And Mrs. Miller said "yes" and put her knitting
down to count stitches. The girls rushed into the room laughing and
chasing each other. And then I went home.
I had presents, but what was presents? My chum was gone. I thought of
the last Christmas when we was all together--Mitch was here then and
Little Billie. I couldn't enjoy anything. I crept up to bed and fell
asleep and dreamed of Mitch.
* * * * *
You will be surprised to know how I came to write this story. But before
I tell you that I want to say that if Mitch had written it, it would
have been much better. I sit here, dipping my nose in the Gascon wine,
so to speak, as Thackeray wrote of himself; and I know now that Mitch
was a poet. He would have made poems out of his life and mine, beautiful
songs of this country, of Illinois, of the people we knew, of the
honest, kindly men and women we knew; the sweet-faced old women who were
born in Kentucky or Tennessee, or came here to Illinois early in their
youth; the strong, courtly, old-fashioned men, carrying with them the
early traditions of the republic, in their way Lincolns--honest, truth
telling, industrious, courageous Americans--plain and unlettered, many
of them, but full of the sterling virtues. Yes, he would have written
poems out of these people; and he would have done something more--he
would have given us symbols, songs of eternal truth, of unutterable
magic and profound meaning like "La Belle Dame sans Merci." I am sure he
would have done something of this kind--though it is idle to say he
would have written anything as immortal as that. You must only indulge
me in my partiality for Mitch, and my belief in his genius, and hope
with me that he might have done these great things.
And yet! And now why did I write this story? As I was sitting with my
nose in the Gascon wine, which is a strange figure, since there is no
Gascon wine here, and no wine of any sort, since a strange sort of
despot has got control of the country, for the time being only, I
hope--as I said, as I was sitting with my nose in the Gascon wine, I was
also reading, and I was alone. I have had chums, I have had companions,
but none like Mitch, never in all my life. And being alone, I was
reading--what do you suppose? I had been out for the evening, I had
found a book lying on the table of my host, I had looked in the book and
begun to read. My host saw I was intrigued and said, "Take it along." I
did, and was reading before going to bed. The book was the letters of
John Keats to Fannie Brawne.--Well, don't you suppose these letters made
me think of Mitch who had repeated "La Belle Dame sans Merci" to me and
was uttering some of its marvelous lines with his dying breath? But this
was not all. Let me quote one of Keats' letters to Fanny Brawne:
"When you were in the habit of flirting with Brown, you would
have left off, could your own heart have felt one half of one
pang mine did. Brown is a good sort of man--he did not know he
was doing me to death by inches. I feel the effect of every one of
those hours in my side now; and for that cause, though he has done
me many services, though I know his love and friendship for me,
though at this moment I should be without pence were it not for his
assistance, I will never see or speak to him, until we are both old
men, if we are to be. I will resent my heart having been made a
football. You will call this madness. I have heard you say that it
was not unpleasant to wait a few years--you have amusements--your
mind is away,--you have not brooded over one idea as I have, and
how should you? You are to me an object intensely desirable--the
air I breathe in a room empty of you is unhealthy. I am not the
same to you--no--you can wait--you have a thousand activities--you
can be happy without me. Any party, any thing to fill up the day
has been enough. How have you passed this month? Who have you
smiled with? All this may seem savage in me. You do not feel as I
do--you do not know what it is to love--one day you may--your time
is not come. Ask yourself how many unhappy hours Keats has caused
you in loneliness. For myself I have been a martyr the whole time,
and for this reason I speak; the confession is forced from me by
the torture. I appeal to you by the blood of Christ you believe in.
Do not write to me if you have done anything this month which it
would have harried me to have seen. You may have altered--if you
have not--if you still behave in dancing rooms and other societies
as I have seen you--I do not want to live--if you have done so, I
wish this coming night may be my last. I cannot live without you
and not only you but chaste you; virtuous you. The sun rises and
sets, the day passes, and you follow the bent of your inclinations
to a certain extent--you have no conception of the quantity of
miserable feeling that passes through me in a day--Be serious. Love
is not a plaything--and again do not write unless you can do it
with a crystal conscience. I would sooner die for want of you
than--
"Yours forever,
"J. Keats."
Then I turned back a few pages in my disconnected way of reading this
book, and I found these words: Fannie Brawne to whom this agonized
letter of Keats' was written wrote to a Mr. Dilke ten years after Keats'
death in regard to a memoir proposed to the dead, and in the following
unconcerned and ignorant way:
"The kindest act would be to let him rest forever in the
obscurity to which circumstances have condemned him."
No remembrance here for Keats' adoration; no thrill that a human heart,
even if it had been the heart of an ordinary man, had poured out its
last devotion to hers; no pity for his obscurity, if it was such, his
untimely and tragic death; no recognition of his passion for beauty,
including his misguided passion for the beauty which was not in her; no
perception of the goodness in the man, the bravery of his heart; the
white fire of his spirit; no understanding of his greatness, even after
Byron had written that "Hyperion" was as sublime as Æschylus, and
Shelley had poured out in "Adonais" the grief and the passion of a
flaming indignation and scorn in one of the greatest of elegies; no
memory contemplating the agony of a dying youth stricken with
consumption, and torn with the tragic spectacle of defeated ambition.
"Let him rest forever in the obscurity to which circumstances have
condemned him."--These were her words in the face of all these things.
And so, reading these words of Fanny Brawne, my mind turned back to
Mitch, and his life rose before me and took shape in my mind, and I
wrote; just because he had had this boyhood love for Zueline and went
through that summer of torture for losing her. And I could see that he
might have suffered these pangs again; that over and over again,
perhaps, he might have poured out his passion in the endless search for
beauty and faith, and in the search for realization and glimpses of
eternal things through them, and that he would have never found them,
through woman; and so thinking I could look back upon his death at
twelve years of age with complacency, and almost with gladness.
But also if he had lived through as many years as I have lived, he would
have passed through the chaos, the dust, the hate, the untruth that
followed the Civil War. He would have seen an army organization
exercising a control in the affairs of the republic beyond its right,
and ideas that were dead and were never rightfully alive, keeping the
people of his country from pulling themselves out of poverties and
injustices, and from planting themselves upon the new soil of each
succeeding year and its needs. He would have seen wealth amass through
legalized privilege into the hands of treasure hunters; and he would
have seen these treasure hunters make and interpret the laws their own
way, and in behalf of the treasure they had and were seeking. He would
have seen his country go forth to free an island people, and then turn
and subjugate another island people as a part of the same war, and then
depart from the old ways into paths of world adventure and plunder. And
he would have seen his country spend ten times what it spent in the
Civil War and lose in battles or disease half as many young men as it
lost in the Civil War in the crusade of making the world safe for
democracy; and he would have seen democracy throttled and almost
destroyed at home, and democracy abroad helped no whit by this terrible
war. He would have seen that all these things happen for treasure--for
gold which cares nothing for laws, nothing for liberties, nothing for
beauty, nothing for human life, but always seeks its own everywhere and
always, which is its own increase and its own conservation. He would
have seen men jailed for nothing and sacred rights swept away by the
sneers of judges, and written safeguards of the people's liberties by
those very judges sworn to support, overthrown by them, at the bidding
of treasure hunters who stand back of hired orators, hired newspapers,
hired clergymen, hired lawyers, and hired officials. He would have seen
congresses uttering and acting upon lies, and his country bound together
with a network of elaborate falsehood.
The America his father hoped for and the America he would have hoped for
sits for the time being, anyway, in dullness and in dust. And so I am
not sorry that for these nearly thirty years, Mitchie Miller has been
dust, a part of the hill overlooking the Sangamon River, not far from
the deserted village of Old Salem--his dust at one with the hill and
sharing its own eternity!
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Printed in the United States of America.
STARVED ROCK
TOWARDS THE GULF
THE GREAT VALLEY
SONGS AND SATIRES
SPOON RIVER ANTHOLOGY
With Additional Poems