Ralph Hardwick was the village blacksmith. His shop stood on the bank of
the river, not far from the dam. The great wheel below the flume rolled
all day, throwing over its burden of diamond drops, and tilting the
ponderous hammer with a monotonous clatter. What a palace of wonders to
the boys was that grim and sooty shop!--the roar of the fires, as they
were fed by the laboring bellows; the sound of water, rushing, gurgling,
or musically dropping, heard in the pauses; the fiery shower of sparkles
that flew when the trip-hammer fell; and the soft and glowing mass held by
the smith's tongs with firm grasp, and turning to some form of use under
his practised eye! How proud were the young amateur blacksmiths when the
kind-hearted owner of the shop gave them liberty to heat and pound a bit
of nail-rod, to mend a skate or a sled-runner, or sharpen a pronged fish-
spear! Still happier were they, when, at night, with his sons and nephew,
they were allowed to huddle on the forge, sitting on the bottoms of old
buckets or boxes, and watching the fire, from the paly blue border of
flame in the edge of the damp charcoal, to the reddening, glowing column
that shot with an arrowy stream of sparks up the wide-throated chimney.
How the dark rafters and nail-pierced roof grew ruddy as the white-hot
ploughshare or iron bar was drawn from the fire!--what alternations of
light and shadow! No painter ever drew figure in such relief as the
blacksmith presented in that wonderful light, with his glistening face,
his tense muscles, and his upraised arm.
Alas! the hammer is still; the wheel dashes no more the glittering spray;
the fire has died out in the forge; the blacksmith's long day's work is
done!
He settled in Innisfield when it was but a district attached to a
neighboring town. There were but three or four houses in the now somewhat
populous village. He came on foot, driving his cow; his wife following in
the wagon, with their little stock of household goods,--not forgetting his
hammer, more potent than Prospero's wand. The minister, the doctor, and
Squire Kinloch, who constituted the aristocracy, yielded precedence in
date to Ralph Hardwick, Knight of the Ancient Order of the Anvil.
So he toiled, faithful to his calling. By day the din of his hammer rarely
ceased, and by night the flame and sparks from his chimney were a Pharos
to all travellers approaching the town. Children were born to him, for
which he blessed God, and worked the harder. He attained a moderate
prosperity, secure from want, but still dependent upon labor for bread. At
length his wife died; he wept like a true and faithful husband as he was,
and thenceforth was both mother and father to his babes.
During all his life he kept Sunday with religious scrupulousness, and with
his family went to the house of worship in all weathers. From the very
first he had been leader of the choir, and had given the pitch with a fork
hammered and tuned by his own hands. With a clear and sympathetic voice,
he had such an instinctive taste and power of expression, that his song of
penitence or praise was far more devotional than the labored efforts of
many more highly cultivated singers. Music and poetry flowed smoothly and
naturally from his lips, but in uttering the common prose of daily life
his organs were rebellious. The truth must be spoken,--he stammered badly,
incurably. Whether it was owing to the attempt to overcome his impediment
by making his speech musical, or to the cadences of his hammer beating
time while his brain was shaping its airy fancies, his thoughts ran
naturally in verse.
Do not smile at the thought of Vulcan's callused fingers touching the
chords of the lyre to delicate music. The sun shone as lovingly upon the
swart face of the blacksmith in his shop-door, as upon the scholar at his
library-window. "Poetry was an angel in his breast," making his heart glad
with her heavenly presence; he did not "make her his drudge, his maid-of-
all-work," as professional verse-makers do.
Mr. Hardwick's younger sister was married to a hard-working, stern,
puritanical man named Davenport, (not her first love,) who removed to a
Western State when it was almost a wilderness, cleared for himself a farm,
and built a log-house. The toil and privations of frontier life soon
wrought their natural effects upon Mrs. Davenport's delicate constitution.
She fell into a rapid decline and died. Her husband was seized with a
fever the summer after, and died also, leaving two children, Mark and
Anna. The blacksmith had six motherless children of his own; but he set
out for the West, and brought the orphans home with him. He thenceforth
treated them like his own offspring, manifesting a woman's tenderness as
well as a father's care for them.
Mark was a comely lad, with the yellow curling hair, the clear blue eyes,
and the marked symmetry of features that belonged to his uncle. He had an
inborn love of reading and study; he was first in his class at every
winter's school, and had devoured all the books within his reach. Then he
borrowed an old copy of Adam's Latin Grammar from Dr. Greenfield, and
committed the rules to memory without a teacher. That was his introduction
to the classics.
But Mr. Hardwick believed in the duty and excellence of work, and Mark, as
well as his cousins, was trained to make himself useful. So the Grammar
was studied and Virgil read at chance intervals, when a storm interrupted
out-door work, or while waiting at the upper mill for a grist, or of
nights at the shop by the light of the forge fire. The paradigms were
committed to memory with an anvil accompaniment; and long after, he never
could scan a line of Homer, especially the oft-repeated
[Greek: Tou d'au | Taelema | chos pep | numenos | antion | aeuda],
without hearing the ringing blows of his uncle's hammer keeping tune to
the verse.
At sixteen years of age he was ready to enter college, though he had
received little aid in his studies, except when some schoolmaster who was
versed in the humanities chanced to be hired for the winter. But his uncle
was not able to support him at any respectable university, and the lad's
prospects for such an education as he desired seemed to be none of the
best.
At this point an incident occurred which changed the course of our hero's
life, and as it will serve to explain how he came to give his notes to Mr.
Kinloch, on which the administrators are about to bring suit, it should
properly be related here.
Mark Davenport was at work on a farm a short distance from the village. He
hoped to enter college the following autumn, and he knew no means to
obtain money for a portion of his outfit except by the labor of his hands.
He could get twenty dollars a month for the summer season. Sixty, or
possibly seventy dollars!--what ideas of opulence were suggested by the
sound of those words!
It was a damp, drizzly day; there was not a settled rain, yet it was too
wet to work in the corn. Mark was therefore busy in picking loose stones
from the surface of a field cultivated the year before, and now "seeded
down" for grass. A portion of the field bordered on a pond, and the alders
upon its margin formed a dense green palisade, over which might be seen
the gray surface of the water freckled by the tiny drops of rain. Low
clouds trailed their gauzy robes over the top of Mount Quobbin, and flecks
of mist swept across the blue sides of the loftier Mount Elizabeth.
"What a perfect day for fishing!" thought Mark. "If I had my tackle here,
and a frog's leg or a shiner, I would soon have a pickerel out from
under those lilypads."
But he kept at work, and, having his basket full of stones, carried them
to the pond and plumped them in. A growl of anger came up from behind the
bushes.
"What the Devil do you mean, you lubber, throwing stones over here to
scare away the fish?"
The bushes parted at the same time, showing Hugh Branning sitting in the
end of his boat, and apparently just ready to fling out his line.
"If I had known you were there fishing," said Mark, "I shouldn't have
thrown the stones into the water. But," he continued, while every fibre
tingled with indignation, "I will have you to know that I am not to be
talked to in that way by you or anybody else."
"I would like to know how you are going to help yourself," said Hugh,
stepping ashore and advancing.
"You will find out, Mr. Insolence, if you don't leave this field. You
a'n't on the quarter-deck yet, bullying a tar with his hat off."
"Bless me! how the young Vulcan talks!"
"I have talked all I am going to. Now get into your boat and be off!"
"I don't propose to be in a hurry," said Hugh, with provoking coolness,
standing with his arms a-kimbo.
The remembrance of Hugh's usual patronizing airs, together with his
insulting language, was too much for Mark's impetuous temper. He was in a
delirium of rage, and he rushed upon his antagonist. Hugh stood warily
upon the defensive, and parried Mark's blows with admirable skill; he had
not the muscle nor the endurance of the young blacksmith, but he had
considerable skill in boxing, and was perfectly cool; and though Mark
finally succeeded in grappling and hurling to the ground his lithe and
resolute foe, it was not until he had been pretty severely pommelled
himself, especially in his face. Mark set his knee on the breast of his
adversary and waited to hear "Enough." Hugh ground his teeth, but there
was no escape; no feint nor sudden movement could reverse their positions;
and, out of breath, he gave up in sullen despair.
"Let me up," he said, at length. Mark arose, and being by this time
thoroughly sobered, he walked off without a word and picked up his basket.
Hugh, on the other hand, was more and more angry every minute. The
indignity he had suffered was not to be tamely submitted to. He got into
the boat and took his oar; he looked back and saw Mark commencing work
again; the temptation was too strong. He picked up one of the largest of
the stones that Mark had emptied into the shallow margin of the pond; he
threw it with all his force, and hurriedly pushed off from shore without
stopping to ascertain the extent of the mischief he had done. He knew that
the stone did not miss, for he saw Mark fall heavily to the ground, and
that was enough. The injury was serious. Mark was carried to the farm-
house and was confined to his bed for six weeks with a brain fever, being
delirious for the greater part of the time. Hugh Branning found the town
quite uncomfortable; the eyes of all the people he met seemed to scorch
him. He was bold and self-reliant; but no man can stand up singly against
the indignation of a whole community. He went on a visit to Boston, and
not long after, to the exceeding grief of his mother, entered the navy.
When Mark was recovering, Mr. Rook,
the clergyman, called and offered to aid him in his college course, if he
would agree to study for the ministry. But the young man declined the
proposal, because he thought himself unfitted for the sacred calling.
"No," he added, with a smile, "I'm not made for an evangelist; not much
like the beloved disciple at all events, but rather like peppery Peter,--
ready, if provoked, to whisk off an ignoble ear."
Mr. Rook returned home sorrowful; and at the next meeting of the sewing-
circle the unfortunate Mark received a full share of attention; for the
offer of aid came partly from this society. When this matter had been the
talk of the village for a day or two, Squire Kinloch made some errand to
the house where Mark was. What passed between them the young man did not
choose to relate, but he showed his Uncle Hardwick the Squire's check for
two hundred and fifty dollars, and told him he should receive a similar
sum each year until he finished his collegiate course.
The promise was kept; the yearly supply was furnished; and Mark graduated
with honor, having given notes amounting to a thousand dollars. With
cheerful alacrity he commenced teaching in a popular seminary, intending
to pay his debts before studying a profession.