IT was an hour past the usual time for closing the Cross-Roads store,
but no one made a move to go. Listening in the comfortable glow of the
red-hot stove, to the wind whistling down the long pipe, was far
pleasanter than facing its icy blasts on the way home. Besides, it was
the last night of the old year, and hints of forthcoming cider had been
dropped by Jim Bowser, the storekeeper. Also an odour of frying
doughnuts came in from the kitchen, whenever Mrs. Bowser opened the door
into the entry.
Added to the usual group of loungers was the drummer who had spent
Christmas eve with them. He had come in on an accommodation train, and
was waiting for the midnight express. He had had the floor for some time
with his stories, when suddenly in the midst of the laughter which
followed one of his jokes, Bud Hines made himself heard.
"I say, Jim," he exclaimed, turning to the storekeeper, "why don't you
tear off the last leaf of that calendar? We've come to the end of
everything now; end of the day, end of the year, end of the century!
Something none of _us_ will ever experience again. It's always a mighty
solemn thought to me that I'm doing a thing for the la-ast time!"
Jim laughed cheerfully, tilting his chair back against the counter, and
thrusting his thumbs into the armholes of his vest.
"I don't know as I feel any call to mourn over takin' down an old
calendar when I have a prettier one to put in its place, and it's the
same way with the century. There'll be a better one to begin on in the
morning."
"That's so," asserted Cy Akers. "But some people come bang up against a
New Year as if it was a stone wall, and down they set and count up their
sins, and turn over new leaves, and load 'emselves down with so many
good resolutions that they stick in the mud by the end of the first
week. Now I hold that if it wasn't for the almanacs, steppin' from one
year to another, or from one century to another, wouldn't jar you no
more than steppin' over the equator. They're only imaginary lines, and
nobody would ever know where he was at, either in months or meridians,
if he didn't have almanacs and the like to keep him posted. Fourth of
July is just as good a time to take stock and turn over a new leaf as
the first of January."
"Maybe you take stock like a man I used to sell to down in Henderson
County," said the drummer. "He never kept any books, so he never knew
exactly where he was 'at,' as you say. Once a year he'd walk around the
store with his hands in his pockets, and size up things in a general
sort of way. 'Bill,' he'd say to his clerk, cocking his eyes up at the
shelves, 'we've got a right smart chance of canned goods left over. I
reckon there's a half shelf full more than we had left last year. I know
there's more bottles of ketchup.' Then he'd take another turn around the
room. 'Bill, I disremember how many pitchforks we had in this rack.
There's only two left now. Nearly all the calico is sold, and (thumping
the molasses barrel), this here bar'l sounds like it's purty nigh empty.
Take it all around, Bill, we've done first-rate this year, so I don't
know as it's worth while botherin' about weighin' and measurin' what's
left over, so long as we're satisfied.' And maybe that's why Cy makes so
little of New Year," added the drummer, with a sly wink at the others.
"He thinks it's not worth while to weigh and measure his shortcomings
when he can take stock of himself in a general sort of a way, and always
be perfectly satisfied with himself."
There was a laugh at Cy's expense, and Bud Hines began again.
"What worries me is, what's been prophesied about the new century. One
would think we've had enough famines and plagues and wars and rumours of
wars in this here old one to do for awhile, but from what folks say, it
ain't goin' to hold a candle to the trouble we'll see in the next one."
"Troubles is seasonin'. ''Simmons ain't good till they are frostbit,'"
quoted Cy.
"Then accordin' to Bud's tell, he ought to be the best seasoned
persimmon on the bough," chuckled the storekeeper.
"No, that fellow that was here this afternoon goes ahead of Bud,"
insisted Cy, turning to the drummer. "I wish you could have heard him,
pardner. He came in to get a postal order for some money he wanted to
send in a letter, and he nearly wiped up the earth with poor old Bowser,
because there was a two-cent war tax to pay on it.
"'Whose war?' says he. ''Tain't none of _my_ makin',' says he, 'and
I'll be switched if I'll pay taxes on a thing I've been dead set against
from the start. It's highway robbery,' says he, 'to load the country
down with a war debt in times like these. It's kill yourself to keep
yourself these days, and as my Uncle Josh used to say after the Mexican
war, "it's tough luck when people are savin' and scrimpin' at the spigot
for the government to be drawin' off at the bung."'
"Bowser here just looked him over as if he'd been a freak at a
side-show, and said Bowser, in a dry sort of way, he guessed, 'when it
came to the pinch, the spigot wouldn't feel that a two-cent stamp was a
killin' big leakage.'
"The fellow at that threw the coppers down on the counter, mad as a
hornet. 'It's the principle of the thing,' says he. 'Uncle Sam had no
business to bite off more'n he could chew and then call on me to help.
What's the war done for this country, anyhow?'
"He was swinging his arms like a stump speaker at a barbecue, by this
time. 'What's it done?' says he. 'Why it's sent the soldiers back from
Cuba with an itch as bad as the smallpox, and as ketchin' to them
citizens that wanted peace, as to them that clamoured for war. I know
what I'm talkin' about, for my hired man like to 'uv died with it, and
he hadn't favoured the war any more than a spring lamb. And what's it
doin' for us, now?' says he. 'Sendin' the poor fellows back from the
Philippines by the ship-load, crazy as June-bugs. I know what I'm
talkin' about. That happened to one of my wife's cousins. What was it
ever begun for,' says he, 'tell me that!'
"Peck here, behind the stove, sung out like a fog-horn, '_Remember the
Maine!_' Peck knew what a blow the fellow had made at an indignation
meeting when the news first came. No tellin' what would have happened
then if a little darky hadn't put his head in at the door and yelled,
'Say, mistah, yo' mules is done backed yo' wagon in de ditch!' He tore
out to tend to them, or we might have had another Spanish war right here
among Bowser's goods and chattels."
"No danger," said Peck, dryly, "he isn't the kind of a fellow to fight
for principle. It's only when his pocketbook is touched he wants to lick
somebody. He's the stingiest man I ever knew, and I've known some mighty
mean men in my time."
"What's the matter with you all to-night?" said the drummer. "You're
the most pessimistic crowd I've struck in an age. This is the tune
you've been giving me from the minute I lifted the latch." And beating
time with foot and hands in old plantation style, the drummer began
forthwith to sing in a deep bass voice that wakened the little Bowsers
above:
"Ole Satan is loose an' a-bummin'!
De wheels er distruckshin is a-hummin.'
Oh, come 'long, sinner, ef you comin'!"
The door into the entry opened a crack and Mrs. Bowser's forefinger
beckoned.
"Here's good-bye to the old and good luck to the new," cried Jim,
jumping up to take the big pitcher of cider that she passed through the
opening.
"And here's to Mrs. Bowser," cried the drummer, taking the new tin cup
filled for him with the sparkling cider, and helping himself to a hot
doughnut from the huge panful which she brought in. "It's a pretty good
sort of world, after all, that gives you cakes as crisp and sugary as
these. 'Speak well of the bridge that carries you over' is my motto, so
don't let another fellow cheep to-night, unless he can say something
good of the poor old century or the men who've lived in it!"
"Mr. Holmes! Mr. Asa Holmes!" cried several voices.
The old miller, who had been silent all evening, straightened himself up
in his chair and drew his hand over his eyes.
"I feel as if I were parting with an old comrade, to-night," he said.
"The century had only fifteen years the start of me, and it's a long way
we've travelled together. I've been sitting here, thinking how much
we've lived through. Listen, boys."
It was a brief series of pictures he drew for them, against the
background of his early pioneer days. They saw him, a little lad,
trudging more than a mile on a winter morning to borrow a kettle of hot
coals, because the fire had gone out on his own hearthstone, and it was
before the days of matches. They saw him huddled with the other little
ones around his mother's knee when the wolves howled in the night
outside the door, and only the light of a tallow-dip flickered through
the darkness of the little cabin. They saw the struggle of a strong life
against the limitations of the wilderness, and realised what the battle
must have been oftentimes, against sudden disease and accident and
death, with the nearest doctor a three days' journey distant, and no
smoke from any neighbour's chimney rising anywhere on all the wide
horizon.
While he talked, a heavy freight train rumbled by outside; the wind
whistled through the telegraph wires. The jingle of a telephone bell
interrupted his reminiscences. The old man looked up with a smile. "See
what we have come to," he said, "from such a past to a time when I can
say 'hello,' across a continent. Cables and cross-ties and telegraph
poles have annihilated distance. The century and I came in on an
ox-cart; we are going out on a streak of lightning.
"But that's not the greatest thing," he said, pausing, while the
listening faces grew still more thoughtful. "Think of the hospitals! The
homes! The universities! The social settlements! The free libraries! The
humane efforts everywhere to give humanity an uplift! When I think of
all this century has accomplished, of the heroic lives it has produced,
I haven't a word to say about its mistakes and failures. After all, how
do we know that the things we cry out against _are_ mistakes?
"This war may be a Samson's riddle that we are not wise enough to read.
Those who shall come after us may be able to say '_Out of the eater came
forth meat, and out of the strong came forth sweetness!_'"
Somewhere in an upper room a clock struck twelve, and deep silence
fell on the little company as they waited for the solemn passing of the
century. It was no going out as of some decrepit Lear tottering from his
throne. Perhaps no man there could have put it in words, but each one
felt that its majestic leave-taking was like the hoary old apostle's: "I
have fought a good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the
faith."