WHAT MR. MARLOWE FOUND TO TAKE HOME IN THE STATE BUILDINGS.
Stories of Puget Sound Indians, Selected old Story of “The Devil and
Tom Walker,” A Folk-Lore Story of Old Rhode Island Days.
IN THE FISHERIES BUILDING.
“We are now walking in the sea,” said Mr. Marlowe, as the trio moved
along the Fisheries Building; “the inhabitants of the waters are
around us on every hand.”
The Fisheries Building was built of everything beautiful produced by
the sea. It would have charmed Ruskin. It was one thousand feet long
and two hundred wide; two polygons connected by an arch. It was built
of marine forms; and here, for the first time, the visitor might enter
as it were the regions of the waters and travel among the inhabitants
of the deep. Japan and Norway led the exhibits, while Massachusetts
finely presented the industries of Gloucester.
“I find here,” said Mr. Marlowe, “an idea to take into our town life;
it is shell decorations for lawns and houses.”
He took his note-book and wrote down the things that pleased him most
which could be so used.
In the Agricultural Building, Mr. Marlowe found like hints in
structures built of corn and cobs.
In the Kansas Building he saw another home art in the wonders of
taxidermy.
“The Arkansas Building is in the French style,” said Mr. Marlowe, on
entering that beautiful structure. “It is a Folk-Lore Building; the
settlers of Arkansas were French. The floor is made of native pine;
and, see, there is a fountain of Hot Springs’ crystals, a gift of the
ladies of Hot Springs.”
[Illustration: KANSAS BUILDING.]
Here they found a book made of seventy kinds of wood, and Mr. Marlowe
found in this a new idea for the society at home.
The California Building was one of the most imposing and
self-interpreting on the grounds. It was Spanish, and was built after
the manner of the ancient adobe mission-houses, with belfries of old
Spanish bells. Here Mr. Marlowe found a beautiful “roof-garden” as a
feature of note. The exhibits of fruit were a wonder, and led one to
feel the greatness of the State of beneficent climate.
In the Connecticut Building Mr. Marlowe found an old settle, such as
was used for story-telling purposes in colonial times. This he thought
might be reproduced in the furniture of new houses, and used for
historic narratives and folk-tales, as in the times of the Puritans.
[Illustration: FLORIDA BUILDING.]
The Florida Building represented Old Fort Marion, and was adorned with
palm like bamboos, and overflowed with orange cider. Here Mr. Marlowe
developed the idea of a home orange party, in which the decorations
should be of orange color, the refreshments of oranges, with a lecture
on different varieties of oranges, to be illustrated by serving the
fruit as described, and with banjo music and log-cabin songs, or the
music of Spanish guitars.
The Idaho House was a log cabin of gems. It had a very curious room.
Here the rafters were decorated with strings of onions, jerked beef,
bacon, etc., to recall the days of the pioneers. It gave Mr. Marlowe
an idea how to furnish a pioneer kitchen for exhibitions. In the great
Illinois House, costing two hundred and fifty thousand dollars, Mr.
Marlowe found a common-school room of which he made note for home
service. In the Iowa State Exhibition House Mr. Marlowe became greatly
interested in the Corn Palace, which adjoined the main building, in
which corn was enthroned as king. Everything here was made or covered
with corn. He believed that corn should be made our national emblem;
and he saw here how to decorate a room for corn festivals.
In the Kentucky Building Mr. Marlowe found a fireplace in which
a whole log could be burned at once, and a collection of Indian
implements, such as could be imitated elsewhere. The Michigan Building
contained a collection of prairie grasses which was suggestive. The
Minnesota Building had a lambrequin of shells strung by children, and
the Nebraska House, a table made of corn. The New Hampshire House
had a collection of ordinary grasses. The Virginia Building had an
old-time four-post bedstead, such as could be imitated in an antique
room. The New York and Pennsylvania Buildings were palaces; and the
flag-staff in front of the Washington Building was one hundred and
seventy-five feet in height. In many of the buildings were palms, in
many ornaments of corn, and in some of shells.
“Corn and palms are elected here as our national emblems,” said
Mr. Marlowe. “Corn lands and palm lands are we! The two should
go together. Let us put them side by side in our patriotic
decorations,—the Corn and the Palm!”
[Illustration: CALIFORNIA STATE BUILDING.]
[Illustration: ILLINOIS STATE BUILDING.]
The stories told at the Folk-Lore Society at their next gathering
were interesting. A delegate from Washington related tales of the
Puget Sound Indians; and Mr. Marlowe, as a picture of early Boston
superstitions, read the classic tale, by America’s early story-writer,
entitled, “The Devil and Tom Walker.” A Rhode Islander related a story
which was an historical picture of the early days of his own State.
PUGET SOUND INDIANS.
The saddest sight in the streets of the young cities of Puget Sound,
is the remnant of the great tribes of Indians who once possessed the
land. These descendants of the ancient forest kings and warriors come
wandering from their reservations into Seattle, Tacoma, and Olympia
in blankets and moccasins, in yellow paint and rags.
They crouch down in the shadows of alley-ways and street corners,
and wonder at all the strange progress that is going on around them.
Every passer-by reminds them of their inferiority.
Or, borne into the noisy town on his little Cayuse pony, the dusky
pensioner of a vanishing race ambles his way along, amid crowding
vehicles and electric cars, and vaguely comprehends that the steam
whistle has forever drowned the war-whoop of the old forest days.
Wherever he goes he sees the giant trees, two hundred feet high, with
trunks so large that a house might be made within them, tumbling
around him beneath the axe, the blasting powder and fire. Even the
stumps vanish as the domes and spires and flagstaffs rise.
It is all going, the romantic and heroic barbarism; it will soon be
gone, and become a painter’s dream and a poet’s legend.
The old Snohomish tribe still lingers amid the valleys of the
snow-crowned mountains, as do the Spokanes and the Nez Perces. The
tribes of the Walla Wallas and Wallulas or Walloas fall like leaves,
bequeathing to the system which succeeds them only their poetic
names. The Yakimas still hold a considerable territory, as do the
Klickitats. But one fate awaits them all. Their feet vanish wherever
the white man builds his road.
The savage traits and evil dispositions of these Indian races have
long been the subject of sensational writing. Let us speak of what
was and is noble in them,—as a Schoolcraft or a Longfellow would see
them. If the new country is filled with legends of their ignorance
and barbarism, it is also full of beautiful stories of their
gratitude, fidelity, and benevolence.
“Why does not the wonderful city of Seattle in some way pension the
daughter of old Seattle, the chief?” I once asked a wealthy ex-mayor
of that city. “She is a beggar in the streets.”
“Oh,” said the millionnaire, “it would do _her_ no good. She would
give it all away to her own people. Give her fifty dollars to-day,
and she would have nothing to-morrow.”
The reply gave me a feeling of respect for poor old Angeline, the
rag-picking princess of Seattle.
[Illustration: WOMAN’S BUILDING.]
Among the homesteading pioneers, there came to the great timber lands
a New England family by the name, we will say, of Brewster, as it is
a good one. The young people had a battle with the great pines and
firs and the bears, and with a clearing. They had a rich aunt in old
Massachusetts; and as young Brewster was her favorite, she decided to
come and make her home with him.
She was a benevolent old lady, such as are to be found in all the
village churches of New England. Her first concern, upon arriving in
the new country, was to find a way to invest a part of her money in
missionary enterprises.
She saw an Indian graveyard in the trees. Then she met some
Flatheads, and was at once happy in the thought that a special
providence had directed her here, as a pioneer in a mission field.
She secured as a first pupil an Indian by the name of Curley. Finding
that he and his family lived in a tent of skins, she thought that she
would build for him a house, and promised him that she would go and
visit him when it was completed.
“What kind of a house would you like to have, Curley?” she asked, one
day after he had been especially teachable.
“Oh, a white house like the Great Father’s at Washington.”
“Aunt Boston” gave Curley one hundred dollars to build a white house,
and he rode away delighted, on his little Cayuse horse.
Weeks passed; Christmas came, and good Aunt Boston thought that she
would ride over to the reservation and surprise Curley in the new
white house, which she had not yet seen. The thought greatly pleased
her, as Curley had told her that he was raising a Cayuse colt as a
present for her.
So she set out on Christmas morning in a mountain wagon. The air
was clear and warm, for the Puget Sound atmosphere is an almost
continuous springtime. The tops of the giant firs were filled with
sunlight instead of snow. Here and there a deer bounded across the
way.
She came at last to a clearing, and saw the white house.
There was no mistaking it. Close by was a tent of skins, which she
took to be the former habitation of Curley. She rode up to the white
house. The window was open.
The rattle of the wheels had caused a commotion in the interesting
place. A pretty Cayuse colt put his head out of the window of the
white house, and Curley at the same time opened the fold of the tent.
Aunt Boston was quite outdone in her plan of benevolence. Curley had
made the white house a stable for _her_ colt, and was as happy as she
in his plans of benevolence and charity.
An Episcopal missionary recently told me, to his own disadvantage,
the following story, which illustrates the same generous trait in the
Puget Sound Indians:—
“There once came to the mission station on a visit an old Christian
Indian, and he continued to make the mission his home. In my early
work in the territory I had lived with him, and had found him very
brotherly and benevolent. He had shared everything with me.
“A month or more passed, and as he gave me no hint of departure, and
did nothing toward the support of himself or the cause, I said to
him,—
“‘Mountain Pine, you have been here two moons; how much longer do you
intend to stay?’
“‘It may be one week, it may be one month, it may be one year, it
may be one life.’
“‘But, Mountain Pine, the Good Book says that if a man do not work,
neither shall he eat.’
“Mountain Pine rose slowly, and drew his blanket around him. He
raised his arm and pointed to the chapel.
“‘Do you _wah-wah_ over there?’
“‘Yes, you know, Mountain Pine, there is where I worship.’
“‘Brother, you _wah-wah_ over there. You came a stranger to me in my
cabin. I say, “You have half; you may stay one week, you may stay one
moon, you may stay one year, you may stay one life. I hunt and give
you half my venison.” I come to your cabin. You say, “How long
you stay?” You say, “You go work!”’
“‘You _wah-wah_ over there. You heap _wah-wah_, but you no good!’
“He drew his blanket closer around him, and majestically strode out
of the house, and I never saw Mountain Pine again.”
The favorite chiefs of the early settlers were Seattle and Pat
Keanim, of the Snoqualmees. Seattle was appointed chief by a
territorial governor, but Pat Keanim had the heart of his people. He
espoused the cause of the pioneers and fought for them, and though
often distrusted, was true in the dark days of the war. He had a
poetic and really beautiful face.
The hop harvest in the Puyallup valley yearly gathers the Indians
there, as they used to meet, according to the old legend, in the
happy valley of the Olympic mountains. The harvest begins in August,
and lasts a month.
The days are bright, and at night the moon hangs clear over the
waters. Working people, young and old, Indians, Chinese, white
people, black people, every one desiring much money for light work,
congregate here.
All is gay and happy. The nights are festivals. Hither the Indians
come on Cayuse horses and in canoes. Their boats fill the harbors.
And here the dying races renew their primitive life.
THE DEVIL AND TOM WALKER
A few miles from Boston, in Massachusetts, there is a deep inlet
winding several miles into the interior of the country from Charles
Bay, and terminating in a thickly wooded swamp, or morass. On one
side of this inlet is a beautiful dark grove; on the opposite side
the land rises abruptly from the water’s edge, into a high ridge,
on which grow a few scattered oaks of great age and immense size.
It was under one of these gigantic trees, according to old stories,
that Kidd, the pirate, buried his treasure. The inlet allowed a
facility to bring the money in a boat secretly, and at night, to the
very foot of the hill. The elevation of the place permitted a good
look-out to be kept, that no one was at hand; while the remarkable
trees formed good landmarks by which the place might easily be found
again. The old stories add, moreover, that the devil presided at the
hiding of the money, and took it under his guardianship; but this, it
is well known, he always does with buried treasure, particularly when
it has been ill gotten. Be that as it may, Kidd never returned to
recover his wealth,—being shortly after seized at Boston, sent out to
England, and there hanged for a pirate.
[Illustration: CHINESE THEATRE.]
About the year 1727, just at the time when earthquakes were prevalent
in New England, and shook many tall sinners down upon their knees,
there lived near this place a meagre, miserly fellow of the name of
Tom Walker. He had a wife as miserly as himself; they were so miserly
that they even conspired to cheat each other. Whatever the woman
could lay hands on she hid away; a hen could not cackle but she was
on the alert to secure the new-laid egg. Her husband was continually
prying about to detect her secret hoards, and many and fierce were
the conflicts that took place about what ought to have been common
property. They lived in a forlorn-looking house, that stood alone,
and had an air of starvation. A few straggling savin-trees, emblems
of sterility, grew near it; no smoke ever curled from its chimney;
no traveller stopped at its door. A miserable horse, whose ribs
were as articulate as the bars of a gridiron, stalked about a field
where a thin carpet of moss, scarcely covering the ragged beds of
pudding-stone, tantalized and balked his hunger, and sometimes he
would lean his head over the fence, look piteously at the passer-by,
and seem to petition deliverance from this land of famine. The house
and its inmates had altogether a bad name. Tom’s wife was a tall
termagant, fierce of temper, loud of tongue, and strong of arm. Her
voice was often heard in wordy warfare with her husband; and his
face sometimes showed signs that their conflicts were not confined
to words. No one ventured, however, to interfere between them: the
lonely wayfarer shrunk within himself at the horrid clamor and
clapper-clawing, eyed the den of discord askance, and hurried on his
way, rejoicing, if a bachelor, in his celibacy.
One day that Tom Walker had been to a distant part of the
neighborhood, he took what he considered a short cut homewards,
through the swamp. Like most short cuts, it was an ill-chosen route.
The swamp was thickly grown with great gloomy pines and hemlocks,
some of them ninety feet high, which made it dark at noon-day, and
a retreat for all the owls of the neighborhood. It was full of pits
and quagmires, partly covered with weeds and mosses, where the green
surface often betrayed the traveller into a gulf of black smothering
mud; there were also dark and stagnant pools, the abodes of the
tadpole, the bull-frog, and the water-snake, and where trunks of
pines and hemlocks lay half drowned, half rotting, looking like
alligators sleeping in the mire.
Tom had long been picking his way cautiously through this treacherous
forest,—stepping from tuft to tuft of rushes and roots which afforded
precarious footholds among deep sloughs; or pacing carefully, like a
cat, along the prostrate trunks of trees,—startled now and then by
the sudden screaming of the bittern, or the quacking of a wild duck,
rising on the wing from some solitary pool. At length he arrived at
a piece of firm ground, which ran out like a peninsula into the deep
bosom of the swamp. It had been one of the strongholds of the Indians
during their wars with the first colonists. Here they had thrown up
a kind of fort which they had looked upon as almost impregnable, and
had used as a place of refuge for their squaws and children. Nothing
remained of the Indian fort but a few embankments gradually sinking
to the level of the surrounding earth, and already overgrown in
part by oaks and other forest trees, the foliage of which formed a
contrast to the dark pines and hemlocks of the swamp.
It was late in the dusk of evening that Tom Walker reached the old
fort; and he paused there for a while to rest himself. Any one but
he would have felt unwilling to linger in this lonely melancholy
place,—for the common people had a bad opinion of it from the stories
handed down from the time of the Indian wars, when it was asserted
that the savages held incantations here, and made sacrifices to the
Evil Spirit. Tom Walker, however, was not a man to be troubled with
any fears of the kind.
He reposed himself for some time on the trunk of a fallen hemlock,
listening to the boding cry of the tree-toad, and delving with his
walking-staff into a mound of black mould at his feet. As he turned
up the soil unconsciously, his staff struck against something hard.
He raked it out of the vegetable mould, and lo! a cloven skull with
an Indian tomahawk buried deep in it, lay before him. The rust on the
weapon showed the time that had elapsed since this death-blow had
been given. It was a dreary memento of the fierce struggle that had
taken place in the last foothold of the Indian warriors.
“Humph!” said Tom Walker, as he gave the skull a kick to shake the
dirt from it.
“Leave that skull alone!” said a gruff voice.
Tom lifted up his eyes, and beheld a great black man, seated directly
opposite him on the stump of a tree. He was exceedingly surprised,
having neither seen nor heard any one approach, and he was still
more perplexed on observing, as well as the gathering gloom would
permit, that the stranger was neither negro nor Indian. It is true,
he was dressed in a rude half-Indian garb, and had a red belt or sash
swathed round his body; but his face was neither black nor copper
color, but swarthy and dingy and begrimed with soot, as if he had
been accustomed to toil among fires and forges. He had a shock of
coarse black hair, that stood out from his head in all directions,
and he bore an axe on his shoulder.
He scowled for a moment at Tom with a pair of great red eyes.
“What are you doing in my grounds?” said the black man, with a hoarse
growling voice.
“Your grounds?” said Tom, with a sneer; “no more your grounds than
mine,—they belong to Deacon Peabody.”
“Deacon Peabody be damned,” said the stranger, “as I flatter myself
he will be, if he does not look more to his own sins and less to his
neighbors’. Look yonder, and see how Deacon Peabody is faring.” Tom
looked in the direction that the stranger pointed, and beheld one
of the great trees, fair and flourishing without, but rotten at the
core, and saw that it had been nearly hewn through, so that the first
high wind was likely to blow it down. On the bark of the tree was
scored the name of Deacon Peabody. He now looked round, and found
most of the tall trees marked with the name of some great men of the
colony, and all more or less scored by the axe. The one on which he
had been seated, and which had just been hewn down, bore the name of
Crowninshield; and he recollected a mighty rich man of that name,
who made a vulgar display of wealth, which it was whispered he had
acquired by buccaneering.
“He’s just ready for burning!” said the black man, with a growl of
triumph. “You see I am likely to have a good stock of firewood for
winter.”
“But what right have you,” said Tom, “to cut down Deacon Peabody’s
timber?”
“The right of prior claim,” said the other. “This woodland belonged
to me long before one of your white-faced Yankee race of rascals put
foot upon the soil.”
“And pray, who are you, if I may be so bold?” said Tom.
“Oh, I go by various names. I am the Wild Huntsman in some countries;
the Black Miner in others. In this neighborhood I am known by the
name of the Black Woodsman. I am he to whom the red men devoted this
spot, and now and then roasted a white man by way of sweet-smelling
sacrifice. Since the red men have been exterminated by you white
savages, I amuse myself by presiding at the persecutions of Quakers
and Anabaptists. I am the great patron and prompter of slave-dealers,
and the grand master of the Salem witches.”
“The upshot of all which is, that, if I mistake not,” said Tom,
sturdily, “you are he commonly called Old Scratch.”
“The name at your service!” replied the black man, with a half-civil
nod.
Such was the opening of this interview, according to the old story,
though it has almost too familiar an air to be credited. One would
think that to meet with such a singular personage in this wild lonely
place, would have shaken any man’s nerves; but Tom was a hard-minded
fellow, not easily daunted, and he had lived so long with a termagant
wife, that he did not even fear the devil.
It is said that after this commencement, they had a long and earnest
conversation together, as Tom returned homewards. The black man told
him of great sums of money which had been buried by Kidd the pirate,
under the oak-trees on the high ridge not far from the morass. All
these were under his command and protected by his power, so that
none could find them but such as propitiated his favor. These he
offered to place in Tom Walker’s reach, having conceived an especial
kindness for him; but they were to be had only on certain conditions.
What these conditions were, may be easily surmised, though Tom
never disclosed them publicly. They must have been very hard, for
he required time to think of them, and he was not a man to stick at
trifles where money was in view. When they reached the edge of the
swamp, the stranger paused.
“What proof have I that all you have been telling me is true?” said
Tom.
“There is my signature,” said the black man, pressing his finger on
Tom’s forehead. So saying, he turned off among the thickets of the
swamp, and seemed, as Tom said, to go down, down, down, into the
earth, until nothing but his head and shoulders could be seen, and so
on, until he totally disappeared.
When Tom reached home he found the black print of a finger burnt, as
it were, into his forehead, which nothing could obliterate.
The first news his wife had to tell him was the sudden death of
Absalom Crowninshield, the rich buccaneer. It was announced in the
papers, with the usual flourish, that “a great man had fallen in
Israel.”
Tom recollected the tree which his black friend had just hewn down,
and which was ready for burning. “Let the freebooter roast,” said
Tom; “who cares!” He now felt convinced that all he had heard and
seen was no illusion.
He was not prone to let his wife into his confidence; but as this was
an uneasy secret, he willingly shared it with her. All her avarice
was awakened at the mention of hidden gold, and she urged her husband
to comply with the black man’s terms, and secure what would make
them wealthy for life. However Tom might have felt disposed to sell
himself to the devil, he was determined not to do so to oblige his
wife; so he flatly refused, out of the mere spirit of contradiction.
Many and bitter were the quarrels they had on the subject; but the
more she talked, the more resolute was Tom not to be damned to
please her. At length she determined to drive the bargain on her
own account, and if she succeeded, to keep all the gain to herself.
Being of the same fearless temper as her husband, she set off for
the old Indian fort toward the close of a summer’s day. She was many
hours absent. When she came back she was reserved and sullen in her
replies. She spoke something of a black man whom she had met about
twilight, hewing at the root of a tall tree. He was sulky, however,
and would not come to terms; she was to go again with a propitiatory
offering; but what it was she forbore to say. The next evening
she set off again for the swamp, with her apron heavily laden. Tom
waited and waited for her, but in vain: midnight came, but she did
not make her appearance; morning, noon, night returned, but still she
did not come. Tom now grew uneasy for her safety; especially as he
found she had carried off in her apron the silver tea-pot and spoons,
and every portable article of value. Another night elapsed, another
morning came; but no wife. In a word, she was never heard of more.
[Illustration: A FAMILY OF BERBERINES IN THE STREET OF CAIRO, MIDWAY.]
What was her real fate nobody knows, in consequence of so many
pretending to know. It is one of those facts that have become
confounded by a variety of historians. Some assert that she lost her
way among the tangled mazes of the swamp, and sunk into some pit
or slough; others, more uncharitable, hinted that she had eloped
with the household booty, and made off to some other province;
while others assert that the Tempter had decoyed her into a dismal
quagmire, on top of which her hat was found lying. In confirmation
of this, it was said a great black man, with an axe on his shoulder,
was seen late that very evening coming out of the swamp, carrying a
bundle tied in a check apron, with an air of surly triumph.
The most current and probable story, however, observes that Tom
Walker grew so anxious about the fate of his wife and his property
that he set out at length to seek them both at the Indian fort.
During a long summer’s afternoon, he searched about the gloomy place,
but no wife was to be seen. He called her name repeatedly, but she
was nowhere to be heard. The bittern alone responded to his voice,
as he flew screaming by; or the bull-frog croaked dolefully from a
neighboring pool. At length, it is said, just in the brown hour of
twilight, when the owls began to hoot and the bats to flit about,
his attention was attracted by the clamor of carrion crows that were
hovering about a cypress-tree. He looked, and beheld a bundle tied in
a check apron, and hanging in the branches of the tree, with a great
vulture perched hard by, as if keeping watch upon it. He leaped with
joy, for he recognized his wife’s apron, and supposed it to contain
the household valuables.
“Let us get hold of the property,” said he, consolingly to himself,
“and we will endeavor to do without the woman.”
As he scrambled up the tree, the vulture spread its wide wings, and
sailed off screaming into the deep shadows of the forest Tom seized
the check apron, but, woful sight! found nothing but a heart and
liver tied up in it.
Such, according to the most authentic old story, was all that was
to be found of Tom’s wife. She had probably attempted to deal with
the black man as she had been accustomed to deal with her husband;
but though a female scold is generally considered a match for the
devil, yet in this instance she appears to have had the worst of
it. She must have died game, however, from the part that remained
unconquered. Indeed, it is said Tom noticed many prints of cloven
feet deeply stamped about the tree, and several handfuls of hair,
that looked as if they had been plucked from the coarse black
shock of the woodsman. Tom knew his wife’s prowess by experience.
He shrugged his shoulders as he looked at the signs of a fierce
clapper-clawing. “Egad,” said he to himself, “Old Scratch must have
had a tough time of it!”
Tom consoled himself for the loss of his property by the loss of his
wife; for he was a little of a philosopher. He even felt something
like gratitude toward the Black Woodsman, who he considered had
done him a kindness. He sought, therefore, to cultivate a further
acquaintance with him, but for some time without success: the old
black legs played shy, for whatever people may think, he is not
always to be had for calling for; he knows how to play his cards when
pretty sure of his game.
At length, it is said, when delay had whetted Tom’s eagerness to the
quick, and prepared him to agree to anything rather than not gain
the promised treasure, he met the black man one evening in his usual
woodman dress, with his axe on his shoulder, sauntering along the
edge of the swamp, and humming a tune. He affected to receive Tom’s
advance with great indifference, made brief replies, and went on
humming his tune.
By degrees, however, Tom brought him to business, and they began to
haggle about the terms on which the former was to have the pirate’s
treasure. There was one condition which need not be mentioned, being
generally understood in all cases where the devil grants favors; but
there were others about which, though of less importance, he was
inflexibly obstinate. He insisted that the money found through his
means should be employed in his service. He proposed, therefore, that
Tom should employ it in the black traffic, that is to say, that he
should fit out a slave ship. This, however, Tom resolutely refused;
he was bad enough in all conscience, but the devil himself could not
tempt him to turn slave-dealer.
Finding Tom so squeamish on this point, he did not insist upon it;
but proposed instead that he should turn usurer,—the devil being
extremely anxious for the increase of usurers, looking upon them as
his peculiar people. To this no objections were made, for it was just
to Tom’s taste.
“You shall open a broker’s shop in Boston next month,” said the black
man.
“I’ll do it to-morrow, if you wish,” said Tom.
“You shall lend money at two per cent. a month.”
“Egad, I’ll charge four!” replied Tom Walker.
“You shall extort bonds, foreclose mortgages, drive the merchant to
bankruptcy—”
“I’ll drive him to the devil,” cried Tom, eagerly.
“You are the usurer for my money!” said the black legs, with delight.
“When will you want the rhino?”
“This very night.”
“Done!” said the devil.
“Done!” said Tom Walker. So they shook hands, and struck a bargain.
A few days’ time saw Tom Walker seated behind his desk in a
counting-house in Boston. His reputation for a ready moneyed man, who
would lend money out for a good consideration, soon spread abroad.
Everybody remembers the days of Governor Belcher, when money was
particularly scarce. It was a time of paper credit. The country had
been deluged with government bills; the famous Land Bank had been
established; there had been a rage for speculation; the people had
run mad with schemes for new settlements, and for building cities
in the wilderness; land-jobbers went about with maps of grants,
and townships, and Eldorados, lying nobody knew where, but which
everybody was ready to purchase. In a word, the great speculating
fever which breaks out every now and then in the country, had raged
to an alarming degree, and everybody was dreaming of making sudden
fortunes from nothing. As usual, the fever had subsided; the dream
had gone off,—and the imaginary fortunes with it,—the patients were
left in doleful plight, and the whole country resounded with the
consequent cry of “hard times.”
At this propitious time of public distress did Tom Walker set up as
a usurer in Boston. His door was soon thronged with customers. The
needy and the adventurous, the gambling speculator, the dreaming
land-jobber, the thriftless tradesman, the merchant with cracked
credit,—in short, every one driven to raise money by desperate
means and desperate sacrifices,—hurried to Tom Walker. Thus Tom was
the universal friend of the needy, and he acted like “a friend in
need,”—that is to say, he always exacted good pay and good security.
In proportion to the distress of the applicant was the hardness of
his terms. He accumulated bonds and mortgages, gradually squeezed his
customers closer and closer, and sent them at length dry as a sponge
from his door.
In this way he made money hand over hand, became a rich and mighty
man, and exalted his cocked hat upon ’Change. He built himself a vast
house out of ostentation, but left the greater part of it unfinished
and unfurnished out of parsimony. He even set up a carriage in the
fulness of his vain-glory, though he nearly starved the horses which
drew it; and as the ungreased wheels groaned and screeched on the
axle-trees, you would have thought you heard the souls of the poor
debtors he was squeezing.
As Tom waxed old, however, he grew thoughtful. Having secured the
good things of this world, he began to feel anxious about those of
the next. He thought with regret on the bargain he had made with
his black friend, and set his wits to work to cheat him out of
the conditions. He became, therefore, all of a sudden, a violent
church-goer. He prayed loudly and strenuously, as if Heaven were
to be taken by force of lungs. Indeed, one might always tell when
he had sinned most during the week, by the clamor of his Sunday
devotion. The quiet Christians who had been modestly and steadfastly
travelling Zionward, were struck with self-reproach at seeing
themselves so suddenly outstripped in their career by this new-made
convert. Tom was as rigid in religious as in money matters; he was a
stern supervisor and censurer of his neighbors, and seemed to think
every sin entered up to their account became a credit on his own
side of the page. He even talked of the expediency of reviving the
persecution of Quakers and Anabaptists. In a word, Tom’s zeal became
as notorious as his riches.
Still, in spite of all this strenuous attention to forms, Tom had a
lurking dread that the devil, after all, would have his due. That he
might not be taken unawares, therefore, it is said he always carried
a small Bible in his coat pocket. He had also a great folio Bible
on his counting-house desk, and would frequently be found reading
it when people called on business; on such occasions he would lay
his green spectacles on the book to mark the place, while he turned
around to drive some usurious bargain.
Some say that Tom grew a little crack-brained in his old days, and
that, fancying his end approaching, he had his horse new shod,
saddled, and bridled, and buried with his feet uppermost; because
he supposed that at the last day the world would be turned upside
down,—in which case he should find his horse standing ready for
mounting, and he was determined at the worst to give his old friend
a run for it. This, however, is probably a mere old wives’ fable. If
he really did take such a precaution, it was totally superfluous; at
least so says the authentic old legend, which closes his story in the
following manner:
On one hot afternoon in the dog-days, just as a terrible black
thunder-gust was coming up, Tom sat in his counting-house in his
white linen cap and India silk morning-gown. He was on the point
of foreclosing a mortgage, by which he would complete the ruin of
an unlucky land-speculator, for whom he had professed the greatest
friendship. The poor land-jobber begged him to grant a few months’
indulgence. Tom had grown testy and irritated, and refused another
day.
“My family will be ruined, and brought upon the parish,” said the
land-jobber.
[Illustration: MASONIC TEMPLE.]
“Charity begins at home,” replied Tom; “I must take care of myself in
these hard times.”
“You have made so much money out of me,” said the speculator.
Tom lost his patience and his piety. “The devil take me,” said he,
“if I have made a farthing!”
Just then there were three loud knocks at the street door. He stepped
out to see who was there. A black man was holding a black horse,
which neighed and stamped with impatience.
“Tom, you’re come for!” said the black fellow, gruffly. Tom shrunk
back, but too late. He had left his little Bible at the bottom of his
coat pocket, and his big Bible on the desk, buried under the mortgage
he was about to foreclose. Never was sinner taken more unawares. The
black man whisked him like a child astride the horse, and away he
galloped in the midst of a thunder-storm. The clerks stuck their pens
behind their ears, and stared after him from the windows. Away went
Tom Walker, dashing down the streets, his white cap bobbing up and
down, his morning-gown fluttering in the wind, and his steed striking
fire out of the pavement at every bound. When the clerks turned to
look for the black man he had disappeared.
Tom Walker never returned to foreclose the mortgage. A countryman who
lived on the borders of the swamp, reported that in the height of the
thunder-gust he had heard a great clattering of hoofs and a howling
along the road, and that when he ran to the window he just caught
sight of a figure, such as I have described, on a horse that galloped
like mad across the fields, over the hills and down into the black
hemlock swamp toward the old Indian fort; and that shortly after a
thunder-bolt fell in that direction, which seemed to set the whole
forest in a blaze.
The good people of Boston shook their heads and shrugged their
shoulders, but had been so much accustomed to witches and goblins and
tricks of the devil in all kinds of shapes from the first settlement
of the colony, that they were not so much horror-struck as might
have been expected. Trustees were appointed to take charge of Tom’s
effects. There was nothing, however, to administer upon. On searching
his coffers, all his bonds and mortgages were found reduced to
cinders. In place of gold and silver, his iron chest was filled with
chips and shavings; two skeletons lay in his stable instead of his
half-starved horses; and the very next day his great house took fire
and was burnt to the ground.
Such was the end of Tom Walker and his ill-gotten wealth. Let all
griping money-brokers lay this to heart. The truth of it is not to
be doubted. The very hole under the oak-trees, from whence he dug
Kidd’s money, is to be seen to this day; and the neighboring swamp
and old Indian fort is often haunted in stormy nights by a figure on
horseback, in a morning-gown and white cap, which is doubtless the
troubled spirit of the usurer. In fact, the story has resolved itself
into a proverb, and is the origin of that popular saying, prevalent
throughout New England, of “THE DEVIL AND TOM WALKER.”
THE OLD SMOKE CHAMBER.
A PICTURE OF THE MOUNT HOPE LANDS, AND THEIR LEGENDS.
That the old Royall house was haunted had long been a legend in the
Mount Hope lands. Nearly all of the old houses in this part of New
England were haunted, or supposed to be. A house without its ghost
lore would have been regarded in old colony days as a place of but
little interest. Did not evil spirits tempt all good people, and
frighten all wrong-doers? And what a colorless family that must have
been to have been wholly neglected by the ghost-world! All old women
had their ghost-stories, and not a few claimed that the “Prince
of the Power of the Air” had made them, or some of their antique
relatives, a special visit. There seems to have been few good spirits
in those lively and dramatic old times. The Puritan imagination
had no fairy-land, or Hebraic or mediæval angels. The telling of
ghost-stories to children was held to be a very wholesome and pious
occupation, but the relation of fairy tales would have been a sin.
No historian has overdrawn these colonial superstitions. Witches
walked the air, the dead did not sleep well nights, but were ever
getting up out of their graves and returning to their old places to
warn the living. The spirit-world of darkness was an ever-present
reality, a nightly terror, and there were no angel chariots in the
clouds, nor angel feet in the ways of sorrow and death. New England
was a goblin-land. Going to bed in some distant chamber in an old oak
house was a specially perilous journey for the young Puritan to make;
one could never tell whether one’s dead grandfather was in his grave
at that hour or not. Young folks with disturbed consciences went to
bed with alacrity, and drew the sheets over their heads quickly, in
Cotton Mather’s day.
The Mount Hope lands! How beautiful they were and are! But the old
houses on them were filled with dark superstitions. This is not
strange, for the Mount Hope lands had been the fields of great
events. Few places in America had such a romantic history.
“Here once red warriors were wont to assemble,
Here lurid and ghostly their council fires shone,
Here the word of the chief made the ancient tribes tremble,
And the war-whoop rung out from Pometacom’s throne.
“Gone, gone are the tribes from the scenes that they cherished,
The forests no longer encompass the tide,
The happy flocks sleep where Pometacom perished,
And wanders the heron where Wetamoo died.
“And here on this ocean mound silently lying,
Where tidal waves falling the far seas intone,
Where the sail on the bay like the osprey is flying,
The olden tribes rest from their warfare unknown.
“The mild air of spring-time embeds them in flowers,
The orioles here from the tropics return,
The grain ripens on them in midsummer’s hours,
And mellowing falls by the river sides burn.”
If the archæologists may be trusted, here came Leif Ericson in
A. D. 1000, and wintered in Mount Hope Bay. A rock is still
shown at a place called the Narrows, on which is a partly effaced
inscription, which is claimed to have been made by the Northmen.
On the Mount Hope lands, it is probable, was the first temporary
settlement ever made in the territory which is now the United States.
This was nearly five hundred years before the Columbian discovery.
Here lived Massasoit, whose great heart protected the infant colony
of Plymouth for forty or more years. Massasoit was a poet by nature;
he loved inspiring scenery, and he made the glacier-carved slope of
land overhanging these bright waterways to the sea his royal seat. On
this neck of land, between the Narragansett and the Mount Hope bays,
were his three royal villages, or places of lodges, each hard by a
living spring of water. There was passed the boyhood of Alexander
(Wamsutta) and King Philip (Pometacom). Here the forests were full of
game, the shores of shell-fish, and the bays were rich fishing-fields
for the white and airy birch canoes. There came young John Hampden,
the English patriot and commoner, already inspired to defend popular
rights against kingly power. He made the visit with Edward Winslow,
and found Massasoit at Sowams (now Warren, Rhode Island), one of the
three royal villages. The chief was sick, and Hampden helped make
broth for him, and to nurse him, and under his and Winslow’s care
the old chief recovered; and it was Indian gratitude for the kindly
offices of these two wonderful men that made him a lifelong friend
to the growing colonies. The scene of John Hampden in the lodge of
Massasoit by the living spring of Sowams, which may still be seen
close to the Warren River, is worthy of a poet or painter. May it one
day find both! Here Captain Kidd, of ballad fame, was supposed to
have hidden treasure. Here came Roger Williams, in exile, and met in
the lodge of Massasoit—what he had not found at Salem—the spirit of
a Christian hospitality. It was here his mind was active in evolving
the great principles of religious liberty that have emancipated
the human conscience from the rule of state throughout the world.
There should be a monument to Massasoit on the Mount Hope lands;
no chieftain ever better deserved a shaft of fame. Here were King
Philip’s war-dances, and here the romantic Wetamoo came to attend
them, crossing the starlit bay in her white canoe. Here Philip was
killed, returning a fugitive to the ancient burying-ground of his
race, and the warrior-queen Wetamoo was drowned, with her heart in
vain longing for the beautiful hills that on either side of the bay
met her eyes. Here Washington came to rest in 1793, and was the guest
of William Bradford, then a United States Senator, who lived at the
Mount. The descendants of Governor Bradford used to relate how the
two statesmen, clad in “black velvet, with ruffles about their wrists
and at their bosoms, and with powdered hair, promenaded the piazza,
and talked together hour after hour.”
Leif Ericson, Massasoit, John Hampden, Roger Williams,
Washington—what an array of great names and noble associations! We
may well claim that there are few spots on American soil which are
so grand in historic events of a highly poetic coloring as the old
Mount Hope lands. As to lesser men, we have not space for more than
an allusion: Church, the Indian-fighter, of cruel memory, the heroes
of the “Gaspee,” and the old privateers. Lafayette was quartered
here, and General Burnside here made his home on the borders of the
beautiful hills after the Union war. In the prosperous colonial years
before the Revolution there came to live on the Mount Hope lands in
summer some grand families whom the world has almost forgotten. Among
them were the Vassals of Boston, and the Royalls, also rich Boston
people, whose home was at the Mount. These people were royalists, and
fled from the country at the beginning of the war, and their estates
were confiscated. The Mount Hope farm of the Royalls was among the
confiscated estates. These people fled to the Windward Islands.
The old Vassal tomb may still be seen in Cambridge churchyard,
Massachusetts, near Harvard College. Of course the confiscated
estate of the Royalls became haunted after the flight of its stately
owners. The white ghost of Penelope Royall is supposed never to have
left the romantic farms, but to have remained to terrify whomsoever
might live upon these enchanted regions of the rightful territories
of good King George. In her happy days this queenly woman used to
ride in her high chariot through Bristol, greatly to the admiration
of the Wardwells, the Bosworths, the Gladdings, the Churches, the
Byfields, and the well-to-do townspeople of the cool old port. The
white sail that bore the Royalls drifted over the tropic seas, but
not in imagination the ghostly form and robes of Penelope Royall.
They stayed to affright the rebels, and to uphold the rights and the
dignities of the Crown. All disloyal Bristol could not arrest the
spirit of Penelope, which seems to have delighted in the freedom
denied to the royalists in the flesh. She was a maiden lady, and a
more stately person than either Anna or Priscilla Royall, the old
royalist’s first and second wives. She loved the Mount Hope lands,
and especially Mount Hope, and used often to visit the white ridge
overlooking the bays, and gaze over the glittering waterways and the
green expanse of Rhode Island, where Bishop Berkeley is said to have
made his immortal prophecy. She died in the old house, and was buried
near it.
[Illustration: JAPANESE HO-O-DEN.]
It was near the close of the last century that Prudence Wardwell,
a rich spinster, came to live on the old Royall farm on the Mount
Hope lands. The house which she occupied was noted for its great
chimney. All the old Bristol houses had enormous chimneys with great
fireplaces. One of these chimneys, it has been said, would furnish
sufficient material to build a modern cottage. Several of them once
stood like monuments, after the houses they had warmed were gone; and
cattle, in the winter, would sometimes find a shelter in their giant
fireplaces.
Prudence Wardwell—“Aunt Prudence,” as she was known—brought to the
great oak mansion a bound boy by the name of Peter Fayerweather. It
had been her wish to live as nearly alone as possible, with but a
single protector, and for this solitary guardian and sentinel she
had chosen Peter. He was a tall, awkward lad, with great eyes and a
shambling gait; but Aunt Prudence believed him to be honest, and she
did not want a “handsome man” on the place. Peter was not handsome.
Peter had objected to going to the Mount on account of the ghost folk
there. His large eyes and large ears seemed to grow as he listened
to the old tales of superstition. He had heard again and again with
terror the awful tale of Captain Kidd: how that recreant son of the
old Scottish minister and martyr had gone forth on the high seas to
destroy pirates, and had turned pirate himself; how he had sunk his
good father’s Bible “in the sand,” and had murdered William Moore,
“as he sailed, as he sailed.”
“And left him in his gore,
As he sailed.”
The old pirate was said to come back to the Mount Hope lands on still
moonlight nights, to see if any had found his buried treasures. None
had. One frightened Bristoller had met the old captain carrying his
head like a bundle under his arm. The old pirate was evidently in a
hurry; if not, the good man who met him most certainly was after the
strange vision.
Peter Fayerweather had no wish to see stately Penelope Royall or
dark-visaged Captain Kidd on moonlit nights, or any other nights, or
any ghost folks who did such odd things as to take off their heads
and carry them under their arms. So, of all places, he begged Aunt
Prudence not to take him to the solemn and lonely old oak house on
the Mount. But Aunt Prudence did not fear ghosts. She “trusted in
the Lord,” as she said, against any wandering visitors from another
world. She was afraid of robbers, and it was on this account that she
had secured the protective services of the giant Peter, who would
have regarded a robber on any dark night as a most welcome friend.
So the two came to the grand old house, Aunt Prudence fearing only
robbers, and young Peter only ghosts.
“If you will protect me from robbers,” said the solitary old lady to
Peter, on the day of their arrival, “I will protect you from spirits.
What do you say, Peter?”
“Aunt Prudence,” said Peter, “I do not fear no mortal flesh, true as
preachin’. Look there, and there.”
He waved his great arms about like a windmill, and swung them round
and round, greatly to the old lady’s admiration.
“I have great confidence in you, Peter; I made a good choice when I
took you, Peter. Do it again.”
Peter swung his great arms again round and round like a wheel. Aunt
Prudence’s sense of security became very firm.
“That will do, Peter. If you should ever see a ghost, you call me;
and if I should ever see a man, I will call you.”
“Heaven forbid that I should ever see a ghost!” said Peter; “it would
just kill me dead, true as preachin’.”
The summer passed; the apples reddened in the shadowy orchards, and
the frosts dropped the walnuts on the light beds of crimson leaves.
The orioles went, and the ospreys. The beautiful Indian summer came
and burned and faded. November, the month of shadows, came, and a
coolness fell from the steel sky over the bay, and soon the light
snow-crystals began to fall. No ghosts were seen in or about the old
house; no robbers. Peter lost his fears, and Aunt Prudence became
full of confidence, and the two were as happy as such a solitary life
could make them. Aunt Prudence, at least, seemed perfectly happy and
contented.
There was in the great chimney an odd receptacle, once common to such
chimneys, but now almost forgotten even in England, known as the
smoke chimney. The door to it, which was iron, opened in this old
house into one of the upper rooms. The chamber consisted of iron bars
on which fresh hams were stored in the fall, and through which the
smoke passed from one of the lower fireplaces. It was in reality a
smoke-house in the chimney; a place to smoke meats, in the days when
such smoked meats were regarded as a greater luxury than now. Peter
Fayerweather had not been slow to discover this fortress-like smoke
chamber. Peter was not what would be called bright, but a bright idea
illumined his dull face when he first opened the iron door.
“Ghosts? Ghosts?” he said to himself. “If I ever should—I know what I
would do if I ever should—Nothing could ever get through that iron
door, true as preachin’. If I ever should—”
A part of the predicate to Peter’s subjunctive sentence was wanting,
but that a very helpful idea had come to him was evident from his
luminous face. He had formed a very definite plan of security “if he
ever should—”
Aunt Prudence too, in a careful survey of the premises, had been
struck with the appearance of security and seclusion of the old smoke
chamber. She too had examined it alone; and as sympathetic minds by a
kind of telegraphy express themselves in like phrases, she also said:—
“If I ever should—No robber would think of such a place as that,
anyhow. I will hang up a quilt over the iron door, and if I ever
should—If I ever should—eh, well, if I ever should—I will.”
She too turned away from the dungeon-like place with a face full of
animation and confidence. Certainly if Peter “ever should,” or if
Aunt Prudence “ever should,” the old smoke chamber would be a very
desirable and convenient seclusion. Now, Peter thought of seclusion
only in the case of a ghost, and Aunt Prudence only in case that
an unknown man of very selfish propensities should “break into the
house;” and each evidently had received a sense of security on
a careful inspection of the old smoke chamber. But neither made
a confidant of what the other would do under certain alarming
circumstances.
Peter, like most cowardly people who recover a sense of security,
became suddenly very bold. He used to visit Bristol evenings, and
return late, greatly to Aunt Prudence’s anxiety. It was the time of
the once famous Episcopal and Methodist Episcopal revivals, and Peter
claimed that he went to attend the meetings, which were the exciting
topics of the old port and of the State. Aunt Prudence, who was a
strict Calvinist, was not deeply in sympathy with these phenomenal
meetings, which were called the “New Light Stir.” She advised Peter
to “read his Bible at home.” But he still felt the necessity of going
elsewhere for the interpretation of that good book, and so, to use
his own expression, he continued to “follow up” the meetings.
Aunt Prudence’s patience at thus being left alone during the long
winter evenings at last came to an end.
“Peter,” she said, one morning after Peter had attended a meeting
that had held very late, “are you never afraid of meeting apparitions
on your way home nights? Suppose you should—what would you do?”
Peter thought of the old smoke chamber, but that would not serve
him in such a case. He knew Aunt Prudence’s purpose in making these
appalling suggestions. He was not a very politic boy, but he was
quite equal to the situation on this particular occasion.
“I would call for _you_, Aunt. You say that you are not afraid of
’em.”
Aunt Prudence felt flattered, but she still recalled amid her feeling
of satisfaction that she must not be left alone.
“But, Peter, I would hate to see the ghost of Captain Kidd, or to
see any of the old Indian apparitions. Don’t you know, Peter, that
Mount Hope is a great Indian graveyard? I would not like to meet old
Penelope Royall all in white going about in the wind; would you,
Peter? It would be awful; now wouldn’t it, Peter?”
Peter’s great eyes and ears began to grow. His old nervous fears were
coming back again, but he still coveted the freedom of his evenings.
“Aunt,” he said at last, very thoughtfully, “where do you suppose old
Penelope Royall went when she died?”
“To heaven, I hope, Peter, even if she was a royalist.”
“Then why don’t she stay there? What would she want to be wanderin’
about in the wind in cold nights for?”
“For vengeance,” said Aunt, in an annoyed tone.
“For vengeance?” said Peter. “I shouldn’t think a woman after she had
gone to heaven would have any more wicked feelings like that. I don’t
believe she wanders about in the wind with thin clothes on anyway.
Now say, do you, Aunt? Do you really think so? They dress comfortable
_up there_. It don’t stand to reason, true as preachin’; now does it?”
Aunt felt the force of Peter’s argument. In fact, Peter was
expressing her own firm convictions about such matters.
“But Captain Kidd, Peter, he was a dreadful man; I don’t think he has
gone to heaven.”
“Where did he go, Aunt?”
Aunt Prudence replied with spirit and emphasis,—
“He went, Peter, where all wicked people go,—to the kingdom of
darkness, where he is shut up for ever and ever. There now!”
Aunt Prudence was “clearing away the table,” as she called her
morning work, when she uttered these startling and decisive words.
She looked steadily at Peter, and felt that she had answered him and
silenced him. She felt a kind of triumph in the pause that followed,
and lifted her spectacles as though to say, “What do you think of
that?”
“But, Aunt Prudence—”
“But what, Peter? This is a very alarming subject.”
“But _who let him out_?”
“Oh, Peter, Peter! You are becoming an awful boy. I always knew
that those Methodist free salvation meetings would do you no good.
You go right out to the wood-pile, and bring me in an armful of wood.
You have no sense of theology, anyway. You are a poor daft fellow.
‘Who let him out?’ Did I ever!”
Peter went out, muttering that he didn’t “see how people can be shut
up forever in another world, and be wandering about this world at the
same time. It don’t stand to reason, nohow, true as preachin’.”
But although Peter’s reasoning seemed convincing, it did not quiet
his superstitious fears. Whenever his conscience became a little
disturbed, the picture of tall Penelope Royall wandering about in
the wind “all in white” was before him. Even grim old Captain Kidd
was not such an alarming object to his fancy as that. Captain Kidd
was a man, and he felt sure that he would let him alone, if he did
not trouble the buried treasure, but old Penelope Royall—_she_ was a
woman.
* * * * *
The Mount Hope lands were full of Indian stories, which were founded
on tricks, and even worse stories of those whose wits cheated the
devil out of his dues, when their grasping souls had bargained
with the latter. Peter thought of these. There was one story that
suggested to him that wit is equal to most conditions of life. It was
a red settle story, but became a poem:—
“Among Rhode Island’s early sons
Was one whose orchards fair
By plenteous and well-flavored fruit,
Rewarded all his care.
“For household use they stored the best,
And all the rest, conveyed
To neighboring mill, were ground and pressed
And into cider made.
“The wandering Indian oft partook
The generous farmer’s cheer;
He liked his food, but better still
His cider fine and clear.
“And as he quaffed the pleasant draught
The kitchen fire before,
He longed for some to carry home,
And asked for more and more.
“The farmer saw a basket new,
Beside the Indian bold,
And smiling said, ‘I’ll give to you
As much as that will hold.’
“Both laughed, for how could liquid thing
Within a basket stay?
But yet, the jest unanswering,
The Indian went his way.
“When next from rest the farmers sprung
So very cold the morn,
The icicles like diamonds hung
On every eping and thorn.
“The brook that babbled by his door
Was deep, and clear, and strong,
And yet unfettered by the frost,
Leaped merrily along.
“The self-same Indian by this brook
The astonished farmer sees;
He laid his basket in the stream,
Then hung it up to freeze.
“And by this process oft renewed,
The basket soon became
A well-glazed vessel, tight and good,
Of most capacious frame.
“The door he entered speedily,
And claimed the promised boon;
The farmer laughed heartily,
Fulfilled his promise soon.
“Up to the basket’s brim he saw
The sparkling cider rise,
And to rejoice his absent squaw,
He bore away the prize.
“Long lived the good man at the farm,
The house is standing still,
And still leaps merrily along
The much diminished rill.
“And his descendants still remain,
And tell to those who ask it,
The story they have often heard
About the Indian’s basket.”
A wonderful reformation seemed to come over Peter. He began to
stay at home, and go to bed very early, often as early as seven
o’clock,—or at least he seemed to do these sober things. Aunt
Prudence had gone to the door of his room once or twice after his
early retiring, but had found it locked, and she had been unable to
awake him, he “slept so sound.” “Boys do,” she said.
“Peter,” she said one morning, “tell me the truth, now; didn’t you
hear me when I pounded and pounded on the door last night?”
“No, Aunt Prudence, true as preachin’ I did not.” And he did not.
The truth was that poor Peter had fallen from his integrity, even in
these times of the great revivals. He had discovered that the great
hall window was as handy as a door, and that he had only to leave it
unfastened to return to the house at any time of the night without
disturbing the sound slumbers of good Aunt Prudence. He was careful
in taking this liberty to first lock his own room. These were wicked
ways, it is true, and very bold ones for a quiet youth, and quite
inconsistent with meeting-going habits. But the meetings at this
period were wonderfully dramatic; everybody talked about them, and
Peter’s curiosity quite overcame his moral sense.
The holidays were at hand. Thanksgiving was Aunt Prudence’s great
annual festival, her Feast of Tabernacles; she made little account
of Christmas, which, she told Peter, was a mere “relic of the Pope
and the Dragon,” and which he associated with an old picture in the
“Pilgrim’s Progress.”
Watch Night was the great annual occasion of the old Bristol
Methodists. It took place on New Year’s Eve, when a great assembly
used to meet to sing the old Wesleyan Watch Night hymns, written by
Wesley for the Old London Foundry, and to watch “the old year out and
the new year in.” The services of the Presiding Elder were sometimes
secured for this memorable night, and if so, a “Love Feast” was held,
and a multitude told their experiences, amid triumphant responses,
ecstatic refrains, and sometimes strange exhibitions of trance, or of
“losing one’s strength,” as the old phenomena were called.
Christmas was the Episcopal festival, and the Episcopal Church in
Bristol was unlike any other at that time. It followed the revival
methods of Whitefield and Lady Huntingdon. Christmas Eve was an
occasion of universal charity. The poor were the guests of the
church, and were entertained like princes. Peter well understood all
these festivals, and he resolved to attend them all,—the old Orthodox
church’s Thanksgiving, the Episcopal festival, and the Methodists’
solemn jubilee on New Year’s Eve. There was nothing sectarian about
him. It was also his intention not to disturb the mind of Aunt
Prudence about these matters,—the easy hall window would make it
unnecessary.
[Illustration: CITY HALL.]
Thanksgiving passed—it fell late this year; December came in mildly,
as though the bright days were loath to go. The stillness before the
winter storms filled the air. The withered grasses were silent now,
without the voice of insect or bird. A white gull sometimes cleaved
the still gray air, and the wild cry of the shore birds was sometimes
heard. The nights were silvery and cold. The Mount Hope Bay and the
Pocassett Hills in the frosty moonlight recalled the silence and
melancholy fate of that ancient race which slumbered in the browned
fields, Pometacom’s cliff and spring. The night air seemed peopled
with shadows of painted chiefs and spectral armies forever gone. The
river weeds were dead, and encased in a thin sheet of ice in the
early mornings. Brown leaves still hung on the oaks, and red leaves
of ivy on the long walls. Husking was over, and the yellow cones of
the stalks of corn fodder glimmered on every farm. The fishing-boats
were hauled upon the shore; everything—the sky, the blue bay, the
fields, the working-men—seemed waiting for the coming of winter. The
mild days grew shorter and shorter; the tall candles burned lower and
lower each evening; the nights were glorious, and Christmas Eve came,
rung in by the resonant bell of good St. Michael’s.
Aunt Prudence had resolved to depart from the Orthodox customs on
this special year, and to make Peter a Christmas present. “He has
become such a good boy of late,” she reasoned, “and so steady. Every
one else is giving presents, and he ought to be rewarded.” She
planned to fill a bag with good things for him, after the manner of
the bountiful bag, and to hang it on his bedroom door on Christmas
Eve. He would, as she thought, find it in the morning, and it would
be a great surprise to him. It certainly would. She made the bag,
purchased some sweetmeats for it, and began to fill it with useful
articles. She knit for it a “comforter,” as a neck-scarf was called,
several pairs of stockings, some “galluses,” and secured for it
various other useful things, among them “Hervey’s Meditations,”
“Young’s Night Thoughts,” and “The Fool of Quality,” all famous books
in those sober days, and “good readin’.”
When the bag was nearly full it occurred to her that she ought to
knit for it a pair of mittens. This happy thought, however, did not
occur to her until the day before Christmas. Aunt Prudence was a
rapid knitter. The needles flew under her skilled fingers so swiftly
as to look like mere glimmers. “I can finish the mittens before
eleven o’clock to-night,” she said to herself, “and then the bag
will be all complete. I had as lief sit up late to-night as not, the
nights are so long now.”
Peter retired early that evening.
“Going?” said Aunt Prudence as he left the room with his candle. “You
seem dreadful sleepy of late. Well, that’s all right, I suppose. Boys
_do_ when they’re growing. Don’t forget to say your prayers, Peter.
You’ve a great deal to be thankful for. Good-night, Peter. The Lord
bless ye!”
Peter closed the door on receiving this serene benediction.
“He’s such a steady boy!” said the good woman, as she resumed her
knitting. “He sha’n’t lose anything by it, either. Any boy will be
steady if he is brought up right. There’s the trouble, people do not
bring their children up right.” Her needles flew. It was inspiring to
recall her great success in training Peter.
It was a still night. There was a faint moon, and the stars glimmered
thick in the cloudless sky. Aunt Prudence looked out of the window
at times, saw the still fields and bare trees, and thought of
the past. The Mount seemed haunted—it always does on calm winter
nights. Not by Leif, or Kidd, or the Royalls, or by Indian fighters,
or Revolutionary heroes, or statesmen, but by that vanished and
mysterious race whose forest capital was here, and whose arrow-heads
still fill the fields and sand.
At nine the old Bristol bell rang out on the clear air.
“I shall have the work all done by ten,” said Aunt Prudence, and her
needles flew again. She was very happy. She got up and looked out of
the window for the tenth time—ghost-land.
The hands on the old English clock pointed to ten. The work was done,
and Aunt Prudence drew the top of the bag together, and pinned upon
the tape handle a sheet of paper, on which was written,
“PETER FAYERWEATHER, a Present.”
It was half-past ten before Aunt Prudence opened the door to go
with the bag bountiful to the door of Peter’s room. As she did so
she thought that she heard a noise in the hall. She stepped back
and listened with a beating heart. She surely heard the hall window
close, and a careful step in the hall. Her heart bounded, and she
gasped for breath; she had long had a presentiment of this danger.
She locked her door at once, withdrew the key, and kneeled down on
the rug and looked through the key-hole very cautiously. There was
only a faint moon and star light in the hall, but she saw the shadow
of a tall man pass, and heard a dull step move in the direction of
Peter’s room. Her house had been entered, surely; the expected event
had really come. What should she do?
She stepped into her bedroom, which opened out of her sitting-room,
where she had been knitting, and sunk down upon the white bed, and
drew the bed-curtains. She would have groaned, but she dared not.
Here she lay and trembled till the old clock struck eleven, the
strokes sounding like a warning through the hollow rooms.
She must alarm Peter. How? Suppose she were to meet the robber in
the hall? Her nervous system was so shaken that she felt that she
could not be quiet any longer. She must do something, at any event.
She arose, put aside the bed-curtains, drew from the bed the white
counterpane, put it over her head like a great shawl, wrapped it
around her, and going into the sitting-room, took the almost extinct
candle, and unlocked the door and stepped cautiously into the hall.
If ever a mortal looked like the traditional spectre, Aunt Prudence
did then.
[Illustration: CEYLON BUILDING.]
The hall was empty; all was still. The grim old portraits were
there—like shadow people they were all.
She left the sitting-room door open, and moved silently and
cautiously along toward Peter’s room. She tried Peter’s door. A great
sense of relief came to her; it was unlocked. She opened it slowly,
but a draught blew out the light. Terrified at this, she glided
to Peter’s bed and seized the boy by the hair, gasping, “Peter,
Peter, there’s a man in the house! Get up, get up! there’s a man in
the house!” She shook him with a nervous energy, and repeated in
stage-like whispers the words. She then vanished out of the room.
Peter awoke at the first touch of the rude hand, and his heart seemed
to stop, and his blood to turn to frozen streams, as he saw an awful
white spectre standing over his bed, and felt its bony fingers in his
hair. Penelope flashed upon him. It surely was the ghost of Penelope;
she had got away from the other world this time, surely, despite his
reason and philosophy. He looked around wildly, saw the shadow of the
old ox-saddle that adorned this room as a curiosity,—and Penelope,
awful Penelope.
Penelope’s final shake of his great shoulders nearly put a period
to his unromantic history. A chill like death came over him, and he
fully believed that his last moments had come. The gasped words,
“There’s a man in the house—get up!” were something of a relief. “A
man!” If he would only appear! Then he beheld the unearthly white
figure vanish through the door. It surely was Penelope. She had gone;
and oh, if _the_ man, if any man, would come!
He lay petrified for a moment, and then thought of the old smoke
chamber. His decision was immediate. He leaped up, drew the dark
patchwork coverlid around him, and darted upstairs. Past loom,
hatchel, and spinning-wheel, he made his way to the iron door, leaped
into the smoke chamber, closed the door behind him, and sank down
in a heap, with a most decided resolution to leave the house in the
morning forever, “true as preachin’.” He drew the industrial coverlid
around him, leaving only an opening for his eyes.
Aunt Prudence went back to her room, and locked the door tremblingly,
and waited for Peter’s step. But no Peter came. Her suspense grew
unbearable again. Suddenly she too thought of the old smoke chamber,
and drawing her ghostly robe again around her, she went into the
hall, and silently and very cautiously made her dark way up the
stairs. She too, past loom, hatchel, and spinning-wheel, found her
way to the iron door, and pulling it open, prepared to enter the dark
grated chamber.
If ever a mind was supped full of horror, it was Peter’s when he
heard a noise at the iron door, and beheld the supposed ghost of
Penelope Royall, tall and avengeful, standing before him. He uttered
a pitiful shriek, slid through the iron bars, and dropped down the
chimney into the fireplace. There he recovered himself at once,
leaped up with a bound, fled from the house, and almost flew toward
the town.
But Aunt Prudence? Shocked on finding the supposed robber in the
old smoke chamber, she too fled precipitately for the outside door,
turning over the spinning-wheel in her flight. Once into the open
air, she made equal speed toward the slumbering village.
She did not see the form of Peter in advance of her; but he paused
a moment for breath, and saw the supposed form of Penelope pursuing
him, “all in white.” It stimulated his resolution to gain the town.
It was a mile or more from the Mount Hope farms to the old village,
and Peter fleeing from the ghost, and Aunt Prudence from the robber,
went over this distance in a very brief part of the midnight hour.
“The Bristol clock struck the hour of twelve. An out-of-town
Christmas Eve party were returning home at this late hour on foot,
and on the skirts of the village were surprised by Peter, wrapped in
his odd blanket. The merry-makers knew him well, laughed, and plied
him with questions.
“The ghost!” he shrieked, as soon as he could recover his voice, and
pointed to the hill. “Penelope!”
The astonished young people looked in the direction in which Peter
had pointed. There surely was a tall white form that seemed to have
wings and to come half flying toward them through the air. They
had heard of such things, but had never seen one before. Had they
numbered but two or three, they would have fled; but there were some
ten or twelve in the party, and they waited the coming of the strange
apparition.
“’Tis me she’s after—Penelope—’tis me,” screamed Peter. “The Lord
have mercy upon me! My time is come now, true as preachin’.”
The white figure was soon before them. It no sooner reached the place
than it sunk down upon the earth.
“Take me home with you; there’s a robber in the house!”
A ghost and a robber!
“It’s Aunt Prudence Wardwell,” said one of the young men, after a
pause, on hearing such a midnight tale. “Why, Aunt Prudence, what
_is_ the matter?”
“Protect me—take me home, somewhere. Oh, there’s a robber in the
house,—a robber!”
“Here’s Peter,” said the young man. “I thought he lived with you.”
“Peter?” gasped the woman all in white.
“Yes. Here, Peter, what _does_ this mean?”
“I—I—thought, oh, I thought, Aunt Prudence, that you was a ghost. I
did, true as preachin’.”
“How did you get here, Peter? Oh, there’s a robber in the house. Did
you hear me when I called you? I saw him enter by the window,—saw
him with my own eyes, Peter. He’s hid in the old smoke chamber. Oh,
Peter, where shall we go, oh! oh!”
It was all clear to Peter now, painfully clear; the cloud had lifted.
“It was _me_, Aunty.”
“What?” Aunt Prudence’s tall form rose slowly.
“It was me who got into the house by the window.”
“You?”
“Yes—I must confess—I run away and went to the town to the festival.
I did—I must confess—true as preachin’.”
“You?”
“Yes.”
“Oh, Peter, let’s go home. What two dreadful-looking objects we are!
I ain’t afraid of ghosts.”
“And I ain’t afraid of no robbers, nor no such. What a time we’ve
made of it!—and the folks will all laugh at us too. Let’s go home.
That’s the place for us, true as preachin’.”
The Robber and Ghost, two spectral figures, departed, with a great
sense of relief, but with many reserved opinions. Peter never
received the present of the bountiful bag, but neither ghosts nor
robbers were ever known to trouble the Royall house again. It became
a very quiet place, and Peter Fayerweather settled down there to his
pastoral and domestic duties, and really fulfilled Aunt Prudence’s
hopes of him, his thrifty farming doing real credit to the beautiful
and historic Mount Hope Lands.[4]
[4] Originally published in Harper’s Weekly.
[Illustration: MANUFACTURES BUILDING.]