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OLD EBENEZER.
* * * * *
OPIE READ'S
SELECT WORKS
Old Ebenezer
The Jucklins
My Young Master
A Kentucky Colonel
On the Suwanee River
A Tennessee Judge
Works of Strange Power and Fascination
Uniformly bound in extra cloth,
gold tops, ornamental covers, uncut
edges, six volumes in a box,
$6.00
Sold separately, $1.00 each.
* * * * *
[Illustration: couple sitting under tree]
Opie Read's Select Works
OLD EBENEEZER
by
OPIE READ
Author of "My Young Master," "The Jucklins," "On the Suwanee
River," "A Kentucky Colonel," "A Tennessee Judge," "The Colossus,"
"Emmett Bonlore," "Len Gansett," "The Tear in the Cup and Other
Stories," "The Wives of the Prophet."
Illustrated
Chicago
Laird & Lee, Publishers
Copyrighted 1897, by Wm. H. Lee.
(All Rights Reserved.)
CONTENTS
Chapter Page
1. Sam Lyman 7
2. The Noted Advocate 14
3. The Timely Oracle 21
4. A Fog Between Them 38
5. The Belle of the Town 49
6. Humbled Into the Dust 55
7. The Wedding Breakfast 63
8. Suppressing the News 70
9. At Church 83
10. The Old Fellow Laughed 91
11. In the Lantern Light 100
12. Wanted to Dream 112
13. In a Magazine 122
14. Nothing Remarkable in It 132
15. Must Leave the Town 143
16. Sawyer's Plan 155
17. At the Creek 164
18. At the Wagon Maker's Shop 174
19. A Restless Night 181
20. Afraid in the Dark 191
21. With Old Jasper 197
22. The "Boosy" 207
23. After an Anxious Night 222
24. At Mt. Zion 235
25. At Nancy's Home 249
26. Out in the Dark 262
27. The Revenge 270
28. A Gentleman Mule-Buyer 278
29. Gone Away 294
30. The Home 306
31. There Came a Check 316
32. Laughed at His Weakness 326
33. The Petition 338
OLD EBENEZER.
CHAPTER I.
SAM LYMAN.
In more than one of the sleepy neighborhoods that lay about the drowsy
town of Old Ebenezer, Sam Lyman had lolled and dreamed. He had come
out of the keen air of Vermont, and for a time he was looked upon as a
marvel of energy, but the soft atmosphere of a southwestern state
soothed the Yankee worry out of his walk, and made him content to sit
in the shade, to wait for the other man to come; and, as the other man
was doing the same thing, rude hurry was not a feature of any business
transaction. Of course the smoothing of Lyman's Yankee ruffles had
taken some time. He had served as cross-tie purchaser for a new
railway, had kept books and split slabs for kindling wood at a saw
mill; then, as an assistant to the proprietor of a cross-roads store,
he had counted eggs and bargained for chickens, with a smile for a
gingham miss and a word of religious philosophy for the dame in
home-spun. But he was now less active, and already he had begun to
long for easier employment; so he "took up" school at forty dollars a
month. In the Ebenezer country, the school teacher is regarded as a
supremely wise and hopelessly lazy mortal. He is expected to know all
of earth, as the preacher is believed to know all of heaven, and when
he has once been installed into this position, a disposition to get
out of it is branded as a sacrilege. He has taken the pedagogic veil
and must wear it. But Lyman was not satisfied with the respect given
to this calling; he longed for something else, not of a more active
nature, it is true, but something that might embrace a broader swing.
The soft atmosphere had turned the edge of his physical energy, but
his mind was eager and grasping. His history was that dear fallacy,
that silken toga which many of us have wrapped about ourselves--the
belief that a good score at college means immediate success out in the
world. And he had worked desperately to finish his education, had
taken care of horses and waited upon table at a summer resort in the
White Mountains. His first great and cynical shock was to find that
his "accomplishment" certificate was one of an enormous edition; that
it meant comparatively nothing in the great brutal world of trade;
that modesty was a drawback, and that gentleness was as weak as
timidity. And repeated failures drove him from New England to a
community where, it had been said, the people were less sharp, less
cold, and far less exacting. He was getting along in years when he
took up the school--past thirty-five. He was tall, lean, and inclined
toward angularity. He had never been handsome, but about his honest
face there was something so manly, so wholesome, so engaging, that it
took but one touch of sentiment to light it almost to fascinating
attractiveness. Children, oftener than grown persons, were struck with
his kindly eyes; and his voice had been compared with church music, so
deep and so sacred in tone; and yet it was full of a whimsical humor,
for the eyes splashed warm mischief and the mouth was a silent, half
sad laugh.
It was observed one evening that Lyman passed the post-office with
two sheep-covered books under his arm, and when he had gone beyond
hearing, old Buckley Lightfoot, the oracle, turned to Jimmie Bledsoe,
who was weighing out shingle nails, and said:
"Jimmie, hold on there a moment with your clatter."
"Can't just now, Uncle Buckley. Lige, here, is in a hurry for his
nails."
"But didn't I tell you to hold on a moment? Look here, Lige," he
added, clearing his throat with a warning rasp, "are you in such a
powerful swivit after you've heard what I said? I ask, are you?"
"Well," Lige began to drawl, "I want to finish coverin' my roof before
night, for it looks mighty like rain. And I told him I was in a
hurry."
"You told him," said the old man. "You did. I have been living here
sixty odd year, and so far as I can recollect this is about the first
insult flung in upon something I was going to say. Weigh out his nails
for him, Jimmie, and let him go. But I don't know what can be expected
of a neighborhood that wants to go at such a rip-snort of a rush.
Weigh out his nails, Jimmie, and let him go."
"Oh, no!" Lige cried, and Jimmie dropped the nail grabs into the keg.
"Oh, yes," Uncle Buckley insisted. "Just go on with your headlong
rush. Go on and don't pay any attention to me."
"Jimmie," said Lige, "don't weigh out them nails now, for if you do I
won't take 'em at all."
"Now, Lige," the old man spoke up, "you are talking like a wise and
considerate citizen. And now, Jimmie, after this well merited rebuke,
are you ready to listen to what I was going to say?"
"I am anxious and waiting," Jimmie answered.
"All right," the old oracle replied. He cleared his throat, looked
about, nodded his head in the direction taken by Sam Lyman, and thus
proceeded: "Observation, during a long stretch of years, has taught me
a great deal that you younger fellows don't know. Do you understand
that?"
"We do," they assented.
"Well and good," the old man declared, nodding his head. "I say well
and good, for well and good is exactly what I mean. You know that's
what I mean, don't you, Jimmie?"
"Mighty well, Uncle Buckley."
"All right; and how about you, Lige?"
"I know it as well as I ever did anything," Lige agreed.
"Well and good again," said the old man. "And this leads up properly
to the subject. You boys have just seen Sam Lyman pass here. But did
you notice that he had law books under his arm?"
"I saw something under his arm," Jimmie answered.
"Ah," said the old man, tapping his forehead. "Ah, observation, what a
rare jewel! Yes, sir, he had law books, and what is the meaning of
this extraordinary proceedin'? It means that Sam Lyman is studying
law, and that his next move will be to break away from the
school-teaching business."
"Impossible," Lige cried.
The old man shook his head. "It might seem so to the unobservant," he
replied, "but in these days of stew, rush and fret, there is no
telling what men may attempt to do. Yes, gentlemen, he is studying
law, and the first thing we know he will leave Fox Grove and try to
break into the town of Old Ebenezer. And it is not necessary for me to
point out the danger of leaving this quiet neighborhood for the
turmoil and ungodly hurry of that town. Now you can weigh out the
nails, Jimmie."