the lantern’s light, “it’s powerful mizzable to be borned with ways
that you can’t help; but don’t you go to takin’-on about it, for
we’re bound to outgrow it—so gran’daddy says. And there’s another
thing where you’re worse off than me: gran’daddy says you was borned
mad at everybody all the time—that must be powerful mizzable too, but
I reckon you’ll outgrow that too.”
They parted at Sumter’s door and then Grover Cleveland and Dixie sped
homeward. Noiselessly the little fellow entered the house, crept into
bed beside his Aunt Carliny and straightway forgot his “mizzable”
inheritance.
But he had it embarrassingly recalled to his mind next morning at
breakfast when Aunt Carliny said as she gave him his second helping
of hominy:
“Grover Cleveland’s getting right good ’bout stayin’ in bed o’
nights; he ain’t tried to get up in a dog’s age. Of course he
couldn’t get up without my catchin’ him, for I’m always sleepin’ with
one eye open, but seem like he don’t try any more.”
“I reckon he’s outgrowin’ them kind of capers,” gran’daddy reached
out, stroked the yellow pate and the yellow pate bent lower and lower
and finally the whole boy went down under the table.
He next appeared tagging dumbly at the heels of the old gentleman as
he was making his morning tour among his stock, who, when a sudden
turn brought them into collision, reached behind him and brought the
boy out of his obscurity.
“’Pears like you ain’t a mite peart this morning, Grover Cleveland;
you got something on your mind?”
The child bored the soil with his toes:
“I—wasn’t in bed _all_ night, gran’daddy, not _every minute_, I
wasn’t.”
“You been a-walkin’ in your sleep again?”
The child nodded guiltily and a very awkward pause ensued. Gran’daddy
looked serious, but as soon as distressful symptoms began to develop
in the little culprit, he applied, as usual, the healing balm of
consolation.
“I wouldn’t take-on about it, Grover Cleveland, not a mite, I
wouldn’t, for you’re plumb sure to outgrow it. Gran’daddy used to be
up to them same tricks but he’s outgrowed ’em. I jes’ go to bed and
I lay there as firm as a island in a goose pond and you couldn’t
drag me out—not with Butterfly and Bonaparte you couldn’t—not unless
something was the matter with Grover Cleveland and _he_ wanted me in
the night; if he did, if he ever does, I’ll shoot out of that bed
like lightning out of a thunder cloud.” And so he coaxed and petted
until the shamed little face was ready to look the world squarely in
the eyes again.
“Where was you at, last night, eh?”
“When I come to, I was up to Sundown Hill where them wa’nut trees is.”
“Was you ’way off there, grandson?” Gran’daddy settled to a seat on
a wagon tongue and put a snug arm about the boy who grew suddenly
voluble in the recollection of stirring times.
“Hi, gran’daddy! Cap’n Sumter, _he_ walks in his sleep jes’ like me!
He does a heap of things in his sleep! An’ he talks right out loud
too; that’s a heap worse’n me, ain’t it?”
“If he does it, it’s a heap worse’n you. Did you meet up with him
last night?”
“Why he was a-doin’ mischief, _he_ was! He was choppin’ up that ar
curly wa’nut and every lick he hit, he says, ‘_Now_ will you bring
twelve-hundred dollars for veneerin,’ and he chopped big holes in it!”
“_That curly?_”
“Ye-e-s, that ar one that lays furtherest up the hill.”
The old man loosened his hold of the lad and rose slowly to his feet,
a look on his face that Grover Cleveland had never seen there before
and that he could only vaguely interpret, but it made him feel sorry
for his companion in misery. So he took his grandfather’s hand and as
they walked toward the house he discoursed:
“He can’t help doin’ things in his sleep for he was borned
that-a-way, and he can’t help bein’ mad all the time for he was
borned that-a-way too; and I reckon he feels mighty shamed of hisself
now—that’s the way I feel.”
Receiving no response he squeezed the hand he held in both his own
demanding recognition of his reiterated sentiment:
“It’s powerful mizzable to be borned with ways that you can’t help.”
And gran’daddy replied:
“So it is, Grover Cleveland, so it is.”
* * * * *
For two or three days the lives of our heroes ran along in the usual
quiet channels, and then one morning Colonel Ledbetter drove up in
front of Captain Sumter’s broken-spirited-looking dwelling-place. On
the seat beside him was a “city-dressed fellow” and Grover Cleveland
swung his legs over the pendant tail board.
In response to a call old man Sumter appeared.
“This yer man” (the mountaineer is apt to be off-hand in his
introductions), “is the owner of that veneerin’ mill in Kentucky.
He’s come to look at that ar curly wa’nut and to make you a offer for
it; and here’s two letters from two other men that runs that kind of
mills. One of ’em bids ’leven-hundred-an’-fifty dollars for it and
the other a hundred or two more.”
Sumter fumbled with the letters, affecting even more than his
habitual gruffness.
“Looks like you ain’t been to look at your property lately. That ar
curly wa’nut ain’t no good for veneerin’ nor nothin’ else; it’s done
chopped to pieces.”
Apparently his neighbour was absorbed in switching a fly off the
white mule’s back, for he replied with his eye following the fly:
“I was up thar yesterday evening an ’twas all right then. You jump in
thar ’long side of my boy and we’ll go up and look at it,” and the
embarrassed old man got in because he didn’t know what else to do or
what to say.
When next they halted they were among the felled trees. It was
strange, but Colonel Ledbetter’s eyes never happened to light on that
scarred log as he led his party past it and toward the summit of the
hill.
“There’s only ten trees lying here,” he said, “that curly I left
standing. Sometimes the man that buys it will give more for it
that-a-way because he wants to have it cut particular; sometimes they
count on gettin’ root and all.”
“Thar she is neighbour,” he said to the Kentuckian, slapping the
old tree’s sides as proudly as if it had been a three-year-old
thoroughbred and his own, “and if you don’t ’low she’s a giant and a
beauty, you want to go out of the lumber business.”
He waited to hear his sentiment confirmed and then hand in hand with
his grandson walked away leaving Sumter to make his own bargain.
“You see, Grover Cleveland,” he said as they came up to the hacked
log, “he was too mad to see straight and he lit on the wrong tree.”
“Why gran’daddy, he was walkin’ in his sleep!”
“Sure ’nough; gran’daddy plumb forgot _that_ part of the story”—he
sorted some chips about with the toe of his boot—“but, Grover
Cleveland, don’t you never go to actin’ _that_ spiteful, sleepin’ or
wakin’.”
Two days afterward Sal stood sampling a pile of choice limber-twigs
while her master sat on the Ledbetter porch. It is difficult to
describe the expression of his hard old face. Its obduracy was there
but less marked; as if a thin lava-flow of astonishment had hardened
upon his features.
“That thar feller,” he said, “’lowed me fo’teen hundred dollars for
the curly wa’nut and yesterday evening I druv over to the cou’t-house
and—nary man’s got a nickel’s worth of claim on my farm now.”
Colonel Ledbetter grabbed his hand and shook it heartily.
“I certainly am glad, Sam,” he said, “I certainly am.”
“Looks like you think as you say, Jake.” The old fellow hoisted
himself on his feet and, after the distortions of figure necessary to
get possession of his pocket-book, said: “Here’s the thirty dollars
you give me for the curly and here’s another thirty for the log that
got hacked.” Without another word he stumped clumsily out to his
wagon, Colonel Ledbetter following in a neighbourly way.
“That’s a fine heifer you’ve got tied behind, Sam; tollable much
Holstein in her, ain’t there?”
“Looks like thar is; g’long!”
He turned into the road, but a second thought made him look back.
“See here”; Colonel Ledbetter went to him.
“That thar line fence that Higgins has been a-snarlin’ ’bout for
twenty year—he says it b’longs on my side the branch. It was on
yon side when the property come into my hands but, ’cordin’ to the
records over to the cou’t-house, looks like there’s a chance of him
bein’ in the right of it. And I’m like you and Grover Cleveland,
Jake; I don’t want nothin’ ’tain’t mine. I don’t reckon Higgins’ll
have anything to say to me, but if you’re a mind to go over and talk
to him ’bout it, we’ll have it straightened out. G’long.”
Over the hill he went, jerked Sal to a stand in front of Mis’
Jimson’s log-cabin, clambered out of the wagon, and began to untie
the cow. The old woman came limping down the walk with surprise but
no welcome in her face.
“Where’ll you have her?” he asked with his eyes on his fingers.
“Whatever do you mean, Sam Sumter?”
“Mis’ Jimson, you ’lowed I’d put my brand onto the ears of your calf.
This ’ere creeter run with mine up on the mounting the whole season
and when they brought my cattle down she was with ’em; but if you say
she’s yours——”
“She _is_ mine, I know her by the shape of the white blanket on her
back. ’Tain’t hard to know your own when one is all you’ve got.”
“Here she is,” he opened the gate, put the animal into the yard and
had regained his seat before she recovered her speech.
“How’s all the folks, Cap’n Sumter?”
“Tollable; g’long!”
The cow was too wild to let her mistress come near so she stood and
admired her afar off:
“Looks like the millenyum has done come,” she said, “and I’m mighty
glad I’ve lived to see it.”
* * * * *
“Well what about it!” exclaimed Aunt Dicey the next Sunday, pointing
to her dingy little wooden clock, “she’s done stopped—a hour ago for
all I know. We’ll be late to church an’ I wouldn’t miss what Preacher
Carr has got to say this mornin’—not for a pretty. Why, Zeb’lon,
they’re a-sayin’ that ole man Sumter’s sure ’nough got religion!”
“You say he has!” Zeb’s tone was as wrathy as it was incredulous.
“Sure ’nough; Mis’ Campbell says he’s a-restorin’ fourfold!”
“Thar’s the old sinner now,” grumbled Zeb; “talk about good folks and
they’re plumb sure to heave into sight.”
“Well, what about it? He’s a-drivin’ up!”
“Hullo in there! Zeb’lon!”
Just within the door but out of the old man’s sight, Aunt Dicey
counseled her grandson:
“You speak him fair, Zeb’lon, for they say he sure has got religion;
but I’ll stand on the porch with the gun whar he can see me good;
maybe that’ll keep him from backslidin’ all of a suddent.”
They went out together. Zeb said “Mornin’” but his tone was not
conciliatory.
“I’ve got a mighty pretty year-old colt up to my place; come of
first-class Kentucky stock. If you’re a mind to, you can come up and
git him, to pay for that thar tame deer I shot. G’long!”
Church was “in” when Aunt Dicey and Zeb drove up, and before they had
alighted and found a place to hitch among the two score beasts of
draught or burden that were disposed in the surrounding woods, church
was “out.” But the congregation didn’t disperse; they stood about in
groups discussing the wonderful events of the past week. Preacher
Carr came and stood in the doorway:
“Give me that old-time religion,” he sang out lustily, and his people
joined joyously in the refrain. Arsula Garrett always led the singing
and she followed him with:
“It was good for the Hebrew children,” and they kept on chanting
the efficacy of the “old-time religion” in the case of “the prophet
Daniel,” “the good Elijah,” “the psalmist David,” “poor old Noah,”
“the patriarch Abr’ham,” and, when they had exhausted Arsula’s list
of sacred-history heroes, they sang:
“It was good for my old mother,”
“It will be good in the time of trouble,”
“It will be good when the world’s on fire,”
and finally they rounded up the catalogue of human experiences and
human apprehensions with:
“It will be good when I am dying,
It is good enough for me.”
But Grover Cleveland wasn’t ready to go home yet and, tugging at
Arsula’s skirt, he piped timorously:
“It will be good while I’m a-livin,”—probably it was only dislike of
the thought of dying that inspired his improvisation, but Arsula and
the rest took it up with all their heart:
“It will be good while I am living,
It is good enough for me.”
Transcriber’s Notes
pg 72 Changed: an “understanding,” existed betwen
to: an “understanding,” existed between