The village of Thessaly took no pains to conceal the fact that it was
very proud of itself. What is perhaps more unique is that the farming
people round about, and even the smaller and rival hamlets scattered
through the section, cordially recognized Thessaly’s right to be proud,
and had a certain satisfaction in themselves sharing that pride.
Lest this should breed misconception and paint a more halcyon picture of
these minor communities than is deserved, let it be explained that they
were not without their vehement jealousies and bickerings among one
another. Often there arose between them sore contentions over questions
of tax equalization and over political neglects and intrigues; and
here, too, there existed, in generous measure, those queer parochial
prejudices--based upon no question whatever, and defying alike inquiry
and explanation--which are so curious a heritage from the childhood days
of the race. No long-toed brachycephalous cave-dweller of the stone
age could have disliked the stranger who hibernated in the holes on
the other side of the river more heartily than the people of Octavius
disliked those of Sidon. In the hop-picking season the young men of
these two townships always fell to fighting when they met, and their
pitched conflicts in and around the Half-way House near Tyre, when
dances were given there in the winter, were things to talk about
straight through until hoeing had begun in the spring. There were many
other of these odd and inexplicable aversions--as, for instance, that
which had for many years impelled every farmer along the whole length of
the Nedahma Creek road to vote against any and all candidates nominated
from Juno Mills, a place which they scarcely knew and had no earthly
reason for disliking. But in such cases no one asked for reasons.
Matters simply stood that way, and there was nothing more to be said.
But everybody was proud of Thessaly. Neighbors took almost as much
pleasure in boasting of its wealth and activity, and prophesying its
future greatness, as did its own sons. The farmers when they came in
gazed with gratified amazement at the new warehouses, the new chimneys,
the new factory walls that were rising everywhere about them, and
returned more satisfied than ever that “Thessaly was just a-humming
along.” Dearborn County had always heretofore been a strictly
agricultural district, full of rich farm-lands and well-to-do
farm-owners, and celebrated in the markets of New York for the
excellence of its dairy products. Now it seemed certain that Thessaly
would soon be a city, and it was already a subject for congratulation
that the industries which were rooting, sprouting, or bearing fruit
there had given Dearborn County a place among the dozen foremost
manufacturing shires in the State.
The farmers were as pleased over this as any one else. It was true that
they were growing poorer year by year; that their lands were gradually
becoming covered with a parchment film of mortgages, more deadly than
sorrel or the dreaded black-moss; that the prices of produce had gone
down on the one hand as much as the cost of living and of labor had
risen on the other; that a rich farmer had become a rarity in a district
which once was controlled by the princes of herds and waving fields:
but all the same the agriculturists of Dearborn County were proud of
Thessaly, of its crowds of foreign-born operatives, its smoke-capped
chimneys, and its noisy bustle. They marched almost solidly to the polls
to vote for the laws which were supposed to protect its industries, and
they consoled themselves for falling incomes and increased expenditure
by roseate pictures of the great “home market” which Thessaly was to
create for them when it became a city.
The village had once been very slow indeed. For many years it had been
scarcely known to the outside world save as the seat of a seminary of
something more than local repute. This institution still nestled under
the brow of the hill whence the boy Reuben Tracy had looked with fondly
wistful vision down upon it, but it was no longer of much importance. It
was yet possible to discern in the quiet streets immediately adjoining
the seminary enclosure, with their tall arched canopies of elm-boughs,
and old-fashioned white houses with verandas and antique gardens, some
remains of the academic character that this institution had formerly
imparted to the whole village. But the centre of activity and of
population had long since moved southward, and around this had grown up
a new Thessaly, which needed neither elms nor gardens, which had use for
its children at the loom or the lathe when the rudiments of the common
school were finished, and which alike in its hours of toil and of
leisure was anything rather than academie.
I suppose that in this modern Thessaly, with its factories and mills,
its semi-foreign saloons, and its long streets of uniformly ugly cottage
dwellings, there were many hundreds of adults who had no idea whether
the once-famous Thessaly seminary was still open or not.
If Thessaly had had the time and inclination for a serious study of
itself, this decadence of the object of its former pride might have
awakened some regret. The seminary, which had been one of the first in
the land to open its doors to both sexes, had borne an honorable part in
the great agitation against slavery that preceded the war. Some of its
professors had been distinguished abolitionists--of the kind who strove,
suffered, and made sacrifices when the cause was still unpopular,
yet somehow fell or were edged out of public view once the cause had
triumphed and there were rewards to be distributed, and they had taken
the sentiment of the village with them in those old days. Then there
was a steady demand upon the seminary library, which was open to
householders of the village, for good books. Then there was maintained
each winter a lecture course, which was able, not so much by money as by
the weight and character of its habitual patrons, to enrich its annual
lists with such names as Emerson, Burritt, Phillips, Curtis, and
Beecher. At this time had occurred the most sensational episode in the
history of the village--when the rumor spread that a runaway negro was
secreted somewhere about the seminary buildings, and a pro-slavery crowd
came over from Tyre to have him out and to vindicate upon the persons of
his protectors the outraged majesty of the Fugitive Slave law, and the
citizens of Thessaly rose and chased back the invaders with celerity and
emphasis.
But all this had happened so long ago that it was only vaguely
remembered now. There were those who still liked to recall those
days and to tell stories about them, but they had only themselves for
listeners. The new Thessaly was not precisely intolerant of the history
of this ante-bellum period, but it had fresher and more important
matters to think of; and its customary comment upon these legends of the
slow, one-horse past was, “Things have changed a good deal since then,”
offered with a smile of distinct satisfaction.
Yes, things had changed. Stephen Minster’s enterprise in opening up the
iron fields out at Juno, and in building the big smelting-works on the
outskirts of Thessaly, had altered everything. The branch road to the
coal district which he called into existence lifted the village at once
into prominence as a manufacturing site. Other factories were erected
for the making of buttons, shoes, Scotch-caps, pasteboard boxes,
matches, and a number of varieties of cotton cloths. When this last
industry appeared in the midst of them, the people of Thessaly found
their heads fairly turned. To be lords of iron and cotton both!
This period of industrial progress, of which I speak with, I hope,
becoming respect and pride, had now lasted some dozen years, and, so far
from showing signs of interruption, there were under discussion four or
five new projects for additional trades to be started in the village,
which would be decided upon by the time the snow was off the ground.
During these years, Thessaly had more than quadrupled its population,
which was now supposed to approximate thirteen thousand, and might be
even more. There had been considerable talk for the past year or two
about getting a charter as a city from the legislature, and undoubtedly
this would soon be done. About this step there were, however, certain
difficulties, more clearly felt than expressed. Not even those who were
most exultant over Thessaly’s splendid advance in wealth and activity
were blind to sundry facts written on the other side of the ledger.
Thessaly had now some two thousand voters, of whom perhaps two-fifths
had been born in Europe. It had a saloon for every three hundred and
fifty inhabitants, and there was an uneasy sense of connection between
these two facts which gave rise to awkward thoughts. The village was
fairly well managed by its trustees; the electorate insisted upon
nothing save that they should grant licenses liberally, and, this apart,
their government did not leave much to be desired. But how would it be
when the municipal honors were taken on, when mayor, aider-men and all
the other officers of the new city, with enlarged powers of expenditure
and legislation, should be voted for? Whenever the responsible business
men of Thessaly allowed their minds to dwell upon a forecast of what
this board of aldermen would probably be like, they frankly owned to
themselves that the prospect was not inviting. But as a rule they did
not say so, and the village was drifting citywards on a flowing tide.
*****
It was just before Christmas that Reuben Tracy took the first step
toward realizing his dream of making this Thessaly a better place than
it was. Fourteen citizens, all more or less intimate friends of his,
assembled at his office one evening, and devoted some hours to listening
to and discussing his plans.
An embarrassment arose almost at the outset through the discovery that
five or six of the men present thought Thessaly was getting on very well
as it was, and had assumed that the meeting was called for the purpose
of arranging a citizens’ movement to run the coming spring elections
for trustees in the interest of good government--by which they of course
understood that they were to be asked to take office. The exposure of
this mistake threatened for a little time to wreck the purpose of the
gathering. Mr. Jones, a gentleman who made matches, or rather had just
taken a handsome sum from the great Ruby Loco-foco Trust as his reward
for ceasing to manufacture them, was especially disposed to resent
what Reuben said about the moral and material state of the village. He
insisted that it was the busiest and most progressive town in that whole
section of the State; it had six streets well paved, was lighted with
gas, had no disorderly houses to speak of, and turned out an annual
production of manufactures worth two and a half times as much as the
industrial output of any other place of its size in the State. He had
the figures at his tongue’s end, and when he finished with a spirited
sentence about being proud of his native town, and about birds fouling
their own nests, it looked as if he had the sense of the little
assemblage with him.
Reuben Tracy found it somewhat difficult to reply to an unexpected
attack of this nature. He was forced to admit the truth of everything
his critic had said, and then to attempt once more to show why
these things were not enough. Father Chance, the Catholic priest, a
broad-shouldered, athletic young man, who preached very commonplace
sermons but did an enormous amount of pastoral work, took up the
speaking, and showed that his mind ran mainly upon the importance of
promoting total abstinence. John Fairchild, the editor and owner of
Thessaly’s solitary daily paper, a candid and warmhearted man, whose
heterodoxy on the tariff question gave concern to the business men of
the place, but whose journal was honest and popular, next explained what
his views were, and succeeded in precipitating, by some chance remark,
a long, rambling, and irrelevant debate on the merits of protection
and the proper relations between capital and labor. To illustrate his
position on these subjects, and on the general question of Thessaly’s
condition, Mr. Burdick, the cashier of the Dearborn County Bank, next
related how he was originally opposed to the Bland Silver bill, and
detailed the mental processes by which his opinion had finally become
reversed. The Rev. Dr. Turner, the rector of St. Matthew’s, a mildly
paternal gentleman, who seemed chiefly occupied by the thought that he
was in the same room with a Catholic priest, tentatively suggested a
bazaar, with ladies and the wives of workingmen mingled together on the
committee, and smiled and coughed confusedly when this idea was received
in absolute silence.
It was Dr. Lester, a young physician who had moved into the village only
a few years before, but was already its leading medical authority, who
broke this silence by saying, with a glance which, slowly circling the
room, finally rested on Reuben Tracy: “All this does not help us. Our
views on all sorts of matters are interesting, no doubt, but they
are not vital just now. The question is not so much why you propose
something, but what do you propose?”
The answer came before the person addressed had arranged his words,
and it came from Horace Boyce. This young gentleman had, with a
self-restraint which he himself was most surprised at, taken no part in
the previous conversation.
“I think this is the idea,” he said now, pulling his chair forward
into the edge of the open space under the light, and speaking with easy
distinctness and fluency. “It will be time enough to determine just what
we will do when we have put ourselves in the position to act together
upon what we may decide to do. We are all proud and fond of our village;
we are at one in our desire to serve and advance its interests. That is
a platform broad enough, and yet specific enough, for us to start
upon. Let us accept it as a beginning, and form an association, club,
society--whatever it may be called--with this primary purpose in view:
to get together in one body the gentlemen who represent what is most
enlightened, most public-spirited, and at once most progressive and most
conservative in Thessaly. All that we need at first is the skeleton
of an organization, the most important feature of which would be the
committee on membership. Much depends upon getting the right kind of men
interested in the matter. Let the objects and work of this organization
unfold and develop naturally and by degrees. It may take the form of
a mechanics’ institute, a library, a gymnasium, a system of
coffee-taverns, a lecture course With elevating popular exhibitions;
and so I might go on, enumerating all the admirable things which similar
bodies have inaugurated in other villages, both here and in Europe.
I have made these matters, both at home and abroad, a subject of
considerable observation; I am enthusiastic over the idea of setting
some such machinery in motion here, and I am perfectly confident, once
it is started, that the leading men of Thessaly will know how to make
it produce results second to none in the whole worldwide field of
philanthropic endeavor.”
When young Mr. Boyce had finished, there was a moment’s hush. Then
Reuben Tracy began to say that this expressed what he had in mind; but,
before he had the words out, the match manufacturer exclaimed:
“Whatever kind of organization we have, it will need a president, and I
move that Mr. Horace Boyce be elected to that place.”
Two or three people in the shadows behind clapped their hands. Horace
protested that it was premature, irregular, that he was too young,
etc.; but the match-maker was persistent, and on a vote there was no
opposition. The Rev. Dr. Turner ceased smiling for a moment or two while
this was going on, and twirled his thumbs nervously; but nobody paid
any attention to him, and soon his face lightened again as his name was
placed just before that of Father Chance on the general committee.
Once started, the work of organization went forward briskly. It was
decided at first to call the organization the “Thessaly Reform Club,”
but two manufacturers suggested that this was only one remove from
styling it a Cobden Club outright, and so the name was altered to
“Thessaly Citizens’ Club,” and all professed themselves pleased. When
the question of a treasurer came up, Reuben Tracy’s name was mentioned,
but some one asked if it would look just the thing to have the two
principal officers in one firm, and so the match-maker consented to take
the office instead. Even the committee on by-laws would have been made
up without Reuben had not Horace interfered; then, upon John Fairchild’s
motion, he was made the chairman of that committee, while Fairchild
himself was appointed secretary.
When the meeting had broken up, and the men were putting on their
overcoats and lighting fresh cigars, Dr. Lester took the opportunity of
saying in an undertone to Reuben; “Well, what do you think of it?”
“It seems to have taken shape very nicely. Don’t you think so?”
“Hm-m! There’s a good deal of Boyce in it so far, and damned little
Tracy!”
Reuben laughed. “Oh, don’t be disturbed about that. He’s the best man
for the place. He’s studied all these things in Europe--the cooperative
institutes in the English industrial towns, and so on; and he’ll put his
whole soul into making this a success.”
The doctor sniffed audibly at this, but offered no further remark. Later
on, however, when he was walking along in the crisp moonlight with John
Fairchild, he unburdened his mind.
“It was positively sickening,” he growled, biting his cigar angrily, “to
see the way that young cub of a Boyce foisted himself upon the concern.
I’d bet any money he put up the whole thing with Jones. They nominated
each other for president and treasurer--didn’t you notice that?”
“Yes, I noticed it,” replied Fairchild, with something between a sigh
and a groan. After a moment he added: “Do you know, I’m afraid Rube will
find himself in a hole with that young man, before he gets through with
him. It may sound funny to you, but I’m deucedly nervous about it. I’d
rather see a hundred Boyces broiled alive than have harm come to so much
as Tracy’s little finger.”
“What could have ailed him to go in blindfold like that into the
partnership? He knew absolutely nothing of the fellow.”
“I’ve told him a hundred times, he’s got no more notion of reading
characters than a mulley cow. Anybody can go up to him and wheedle his
coat off his back, if he knows the first rudiments of the confidence
game. It seems, in this special instance, that he took a fancy to Boyce
because he saw him give two turkeys to old Ben Lawton, who’d lost his
money at a turkey-shoot and got no birds. He thought it was generous and
noble and all that. So far as I can make out, that was his only reason.”
Dr. Lester stopped short and looked at his companion. Then he burst out
in a loud, shrill laugh, which renewed itself in intermittent gurgles
of merriment so many times that Fairchild finally found them monotonous,
and interposed a question:
“There’s something besides fun in all this, Lester. What is it?”
“It isn’t professional to tell, my dear fellow, but there _is_
something--you’re right--and we are Reuben’s friends against all the
world; and this is what I laughed at.”
Then in a low tone, as if even the white flaring moon and the jewelled
stars in the cold sky had ears, he told his secret to his friend--a
secret involving one small human being of whose very existence Mr.
Horace Boyce had no knowledge.
“The girl has come back here to Thessaly, you know,” concluded the
doctor.
Fairchild nodded assent. Then after a moment’s thought he said:
“It’s too bad we changed the name of the organization. That cuss _ought_
to be the president of a Reform Club!”