The coming of Mr. Clem had a great effect upon our household. It was
like a new breeze, blowing in from afar off where the woods are fresh.
With his foot he was ever ready to press upon a tradition, and to
leave off if the annoyance was too great; he experimented constantly
with the sentiments and prejudices of anyone who happened to be near
him. He joked with Old Miss, something ever dangerous to undertake,
and at times he wrought sorely upon Old Master by arguing abolition
with him. But no matter how hot might be the discussion, it was always
pleasantly tempered, in the end, by some joke borrowed from the sturdy
men who were busy with the building of a new political empire in the
West. Lincoln was his hero. He had lived in Springfield, and had seen
the great stump-speaker striding across a pasture land with a naked
youngster on his back, and with the Galilean's smile upon his face.
From his saddle-bags he brought forth newspapers with abstracts of
the backwoodsman's speeches, words that rang like an axe on a frosty
morning, and he never was weary of declaring that the man was inspired.
"He is Peter come back to the earth," I remember hearing him say, "and
upon a rock he is going to build a great church not for caste, but for
man."
"If you are going to worship a man, let him be a hero," Old Master
cried. We were in the library and the elder brother was walking up
and down in the fire-light. I was hunting a book for Young Master and
purposely made a lag of my errand.
"I don't know what you mean by a hero," said Mr. Clem, looking up from
his pipe in the corner.
"A man who does something for his country," Old Master retorted, still
walking with his hands behind him.
Mr. Clem smiled. "Yes, that is a hero," said he. "But what would you
have a man do? Overcome a band of Mexicans and win a new territory, or
save his entire country?"
Old Master halted, posing to make an impressive reply, but at that
moment Mr. Clem sprang to his feet, threw open the window and thrusting
forth his head shouted: "Hi, there, don't you want to swap that horse
for a better one?"
He had heard the sounds of hoofs and had seen a man riding past the
gate. The man reined up and looked round. "I don't know but I might,"
he answered. "Well, just wait a minute," Mr. Clem shouted and turned
about to leave the room. Old Master frowned. "You are not going to swap
horses here on a Sunday morning," he said. "It will bring a scandal
upon us."
"Now, Guilford, that's nonsense," Mr. Clem protested. And then he
shouted again from the window: "Ride on down to the end of the lane and
I'll meet you there."
He hastened away, and just before dinner he came back leading a
trim horse, so much better than his old nag that his brother racked
himself with a loud laugh. His shrewdness was indeed remarkable. He
came to us on a woolly-looking plow horse, and before he was in the
neighborhood two months, he was the owner of three as fine mares as I
have ever seen. The negroes looked upon him in the light of a vastly
superior being, and about the fire at night they told tales of his
marvelous power. He would permit none of them to call him master, and
at first this told against him, bespeaking as they thought a very
humble station; but their prejudice was overturned when they perceived
that among the high-born he could hold his head with a lofty pride.
Sometimes he talked in a way almost to chill my blood. I have often
mused upon his meeting me one evening as I strolled along the shores of
the little creek, listening to the music bursting with more boldness as
the twilight settled down. Spring was come and I smelt the smoke of the
dead grass burning in the fields. I had halted and was standing on a
rock when he came up to me.
"Fishing?" he asked.
"No, sir; listening to the water."
"And yet they tell us that the negro has no soul," he said.
"No gentleman has ever told me that," I ventured to reply.
"No," he rejoined, stepping upon the rock. "The gentlemen acknowledge
your soul so that the pulpit may continue to hold you in slavery. I
know that you and Bob are great friends, know all that, but if I were
in your place I would leave."
"Mr. Clem!" I cried.
"Yes, I would. Here, you are a young fellow of parts waiting for what?
Nothing. Why, you could go North and make a man of yourself."
"I am going to make a man of myself as it is," I replied, actually
trembling.
"Make a man of yourself for someone else. Young man, the world is
becoming too enlightened to permit of slavery much longer. They tell
you that God made slaves. That's an insult to the Almighty. I don't
really advise you to leave your master, for I can see that Bob makes
your bed as easy as it could well be made; but it is an infamous shame
that a young man as intelligent as you can have nothing but a life
of bondage to look forward to. It is true that as compared with the
others, you walk on rose-buds and sleep on feathered palm, but you are
a slave for all that."
He moved up closer to me, put his hand on my shoulder and turned me
about as if in the growing darkness he would study the expression of
my face, the effect his words had wrought. I trembled under the light
weight of his hand, for it was as if freedom from afar off had touched
me; but I could give no ear to this bold man's suggestion. I had read
many a book conceived by great minds that abhored servility, poets
that had shaken their fists in the faces of the earth's annointed,
orators whose last utterances were cried aloud for the freedom of man,
not the white man alone, but man. All my life I had been tapping upon
the head the ambitions that arose within me, killing them and seeing
their skeletons bleach in the desert of my fancy; and with a stout and
determined heart I could have turned my back upon Old Master, for his
years were nearly spent; but I could not leave the young man, though
the incense of freedom filled my nostrils. Not many miles away flowed
the Ohio River. Beyond that stream were thousands of people who would
be glad to help me, would regard it a duty which they owed to their
religion; and farther away was a British domain, where all men were
free--the way was clear, but in that direction I could not have stirred
from that rock. My heart was my real master.
"Mr. Clem," said I, and I must have sobbed, for he turned away to
hide his own face, "I may be a fool, but I cannot be a traitor to
my affections. I wear a chain, but it is made of gold, and I would
rather exchange it for one of iron than to know that Bob Gradley had
lost confidence in me. I know that I could amount to something in the
world--I feel it; I am convinced that I could go to the North and help
free the wretched creatures in the far South, but I should have to
speak against my Young Master and that I could not do." He caught my
hand with a tight grip, and I continued: "I value your kindness; I know
that it is genuine, but I must ask you not to tempt me again."
And still harder did he grip my hand as he replied: "There is a salt of
the earth and it never loses its savor, and you are of that salt. If
you had come to me and begged me to point out the road to freedom, I
might have sent you to your Master; your fidelity and strength caused
me to speak to you in your behalf. But I did not know the full measure
of that strength and fidelity. I know now and I honor you. But keep to
your books; the time will come."
Suddenly he broke away and turned on a trot toward the turn-pike, not
far off. I heard the hoofs of a horse beating on the hard macadam, and
soon I heard this queer man shout, "Hi, there; who ever you are. Hold
on a minute. Believe I can give you a better horse for the one you are
riding." The hoofs fell slower, and a voice replied: "That you, Clem
Gradley? Don't want to transact that sort of business with you--Came in
one of having to walk after the last swap. Another whet and I couldn't
more than crawl."
The hoofs fell faster and Mr. Clem, chuckling mirthfully, returned to
the rock. It was now quite dark and I could not see his face, but I
knew that he was in favor with himself, for he had clapped his hat on
the back part of his head (a good-humored bravado characteristic of
him) and continued to shake with joviality.
"I think that was Lige Berry," he said. "They told me that he had
nipped everybody in this county, but I guess I skinned him a little.
That's the way to do, Dan. When they try to skin you, skin them.
Suppose we go on toward the house? Yes, sir-ree," he continued as we
walked along, "skin the skinners in a horse trade. And skin anybody
else for that matter. Everything is fair in a horse trade--you've got
to be slick and believe nothing. I remember starting out once on an
old mule. I had owned a steamboat and it had burnt up without a copper
of insurance. I thought I'd make my way to St. Louis and there get
something to do. A captain offered me passage on his boat, but I told
him no, that I would try the luck of going overland. Well, as I tell
you, I set out on that old mule, bought on credit for twenty-three
dollars. I was a long time on the road, months, I might say, but when I
got to St. Louis I drove in about as fine a lot of horses as you ever
saw. And three weeks afterward I steamed up the Illinois River on a
boat of my own. I swapped it for a stock of goods in old Salem--always
somebody in that town ready to swap off his store, knowing that he
couldn't get the worst of it--and I staid there until I went broke. I
don't know why I never could hold on to anything. I am great up to a
certain point, and then I go to pieces. Why, if I had owned this farm
I would have made it three times as large and then lost it all. I've
done most everything except to sponge on people, and I never could do
that. Set up a drug store in a little place called 'Prophet's Town'
on Rock River. Didn't know anything about drugs--helped a feller too
liberally to something his prescription called for and poisoned him. He
didn't die, but I thought it was time for me to get out of that sort
of business. Yes, and I practiced law. Didn't know anything about law,
but I could talk. Defended a feller and they hanged him. Of course
that might have happened with anybody--with Lincoln himself, for that
matter--but a prejudice was raised against me. It tickled Lincoln. Of
course he didn't want to see the man hanged, but he had to laugh at
me. 'Gradley,' he said to me shortly afterward, 'I want you to do me a
favor. I have an enemy, a man that has always stood in my path, and I
want him removed. You can do it. I will have it whispered about that he
is a thief; you defend him and they'll send him to the penitentiary for
life!'"
The supper bell was now ringing and I hastened into the house to take
my place behind Young Master's chair. He had many a time commanded me
to leave off this useless act of servitude, but such a favoritism would
have inflamed Old Miss against me, so I insisted upon a continuance of
the office.
Old Master and Old Miss were Hard-Shell Baptists and at supper there
was present an old and honored exponent of that faith, Elija Brooks.
He visited us often, but Bob and I had a stronger cause than this to
call him to mind. Once we had taken his rubber overshoes and made a
town-ball of them and had been severely whipped for our enterprise.
The old gentleman refused to erase this, our act of meanness, from his
mind, and whenever he looked at me I felt that my soul was surely lost.
Upon this visit he was in higher spirits. Out in his neighborhood, we
were soon informed, a man discovered to be an abolitionist had been
tarred and feathered, an example of God's avenging wrath; and the old
man's mouth appeared to water with the delicious recollection of the
sight. "They came to my house," he said as he passed his plate for a
Shanghai rooster's breast, "and asked my opinion in case the fellow
was found guilty. I took down the good book and sought instruction,
and I think that I modified his punishment when I recommended tar and
feathers. Ah, Brother Guilford, the ways of the devil are many and sly;
we must keep a constant lookout for him."
"He is never idle a moment," said Old Miss with a sigh.
Old Master didn't say much. He wasn't a very strong believer in the
devil, and but for his negroes and his blue-grass land, he had surely
been turned out of the church for saying, in the midst of a God-loving
assembly upon his own veranda, "the devil be damned!"
"What had the man done?" Mr. Clem asked, and I saw his face harden.
"Why, sir," returned Mr. Brooks, "he had openly set our institutions at
defiance and proclaimed abolition. He said that no Christian could own
human flesh and blood."
"Had he been in the community very long?" Mr. Clem asked.
"Several years," the preacher answered. "And there comes in a strange
part of the affair," he continued. "He had lived among us for that
length of time and had never been known to steal anything or to commit
any sort of depredation."
"Marvelous," Mr. Clem cried, setting his cup violently upon the table.
"Hadn't stolen anything! Why, sir, I expected you to tell me that he
had murdered women and children."
The unsuspecting preacher was deeply moved by the earnestness of Mr.
Clem, but Old Master slily shook his head as a warning not to go too
far, and Old Miss cleared her throat. "It is a thousand wonders," Mr.
Brooks went on, "that he had not committed murder; and now it comes to
mind that certain little pilferings throughout our neighborhood may
justly be laid to him."
"No doubt of it," Mr. Clem cried.
"It is at least a well-founded suspicion," said the preacher.
"He ought to be burned at the stake!" Mr. Clem shouted, and the
preacher, his suspicions aroused at this outbreak of vehemence, looked
searchingly at the man from the West. "I would not advise quite so
stringent a measure," said he, turning his eyes upon Old Master and
then directly his gaze again at Mr. Clem.
"Oh, yes," Mr. Clem insisted, "I would even go further than that.
I would burn him at the stake and if he has any children I would
skin them for the delight of the Sunday school. But I forget. Your
denomination has no Sunday schools."
"Sir," said the preacher, "I will waive your sarcasm to refute your
attack upon my church," and he had squared himself to deliver a
harangue when Old Master struck the table with his fist. "I want an end
of this right now," he snorted, shaking his head, and with his nose
looking more than ever like an eagle's beak.
The preacher took no part of this reprimand to himself; indeed, he
struck in with an approval of Old Master's violence. "You are scarcely
expected to restrain yourself, Brother Guilford," said he. "The Lord
has not asked us to put up with everything, and most of all with
sentiments that seek the destruction of our country."
Is it not singular, I must stop to reflect, that only a few years
ago a large part of our country believed that liberty and prosperity
depended upon slavery? This old preacher I knew to be an honest man,
a God-serving and a generous man. His plantation was large, his soil
strong, his crops bountiful, and he gave nearly everything to the poor;
but, viewing him in the broad light of to-day, his heart was narrow
and his soul was blind. Such was the atmosphere in which we lived,
beautiful and romantic, but filled with an inflammable gas; and one
hot word would serve to set it off. I remember that at a store not far
from our house a man sat on a box, reading the "New York Tribune." A
deputy sheriff, standing near, discovered the name of the publication,
tore it from the man's grasp, threw it upon the ground, spurned it with
his foot and swore that he would shoot the person who attempted to
take it up. The paper was not taken up, but the question was discussed
at the polls, and the deputy was elected sheriff. Still the wise men
in the East were at work quietly with the pen which soon should be
supported by the sword.
Conversation that evening fell pleasantly enough, after Old Master's
forceful veto, and out upon the veranda where the air was soft they sat
until a late hour, Young Master with them, and I, seated on the steps.
Mr. Clem sang a dolefully-comic song, "The State of Illinois," which
moved the preacher to gracious laughter, and Old Master told many a
humorous story. But in the height of this pleasantry Old Miss broke in
with the trouble that was hers, one daughter dead and the other married
and gone afar off. This I thought was to tell the preacher that it was
time to pray and go to bed. And he must have accepted it as a hint,
for shortly afterward he said: "Brother Guilford, let us pray!" Then
came a solemn shuffle as they followed the preacher to his knees. I was
included in the invitation to ask God to help me and I knelt upon the
stone walk at the bottom of the steps. From a distance came the song
of the ignorantly-happy negro; I heard the opening notes of a pack of
hounds on a hill-side far away, and the creek lifted its voice in a
sweeter prayer than man could utter. The preacher implored the Lord
to bless Old Master's household, white and black; to hasten the day
when the holy word of the Savior should be acknowledged throughout the
earth. He prayed that all evil might be stricken from the sin-inclined
mind of man; that the benighted politician who strove to prevent the
admission into the union of more slave territory might be persuaded
to see the error of interfering with the progress of the South, and
closed with asking God to bless all mankind. The hanging lamp in the
hall had been lighted, and as the old preacher passed under it I
could see from where I now stood on the veranda that he tottered with
emotion, so fervent had been his supplication; and I thought of the
prayers in another part of our country; the gray men imploring our
Father to hasten the time when the chain should drop from the slave.
Ah, man, self-appointed keeper of the Maker's seal, you pray that your
brother may be cleansed and then you shoot him. But I will not moralize
against you, for I am earthly enough to believe that war is sometimes
a blessing, that the world's greatest progress has been sprinkled with
blood--blood, the emblem of the soul's salvation.