THE ELECTION BONFIRE
The election had been on Tuesday, November 4th. Our paper, containing
the news of the result, was to be expected at the Corners on Friday
morning. But long before that date we had learned—I think it was Hurley
who found it out—that the Abolitionists had actually been beaten in
our Congressional district. It was so amazing a thing that Abner could
scarcely credit it, but it was apparently beyond dispute. For that
matter, one hardly needed further evidence than the dejected way in
which Philo Andrews and Myron Pierce and other followers of “Jee”
Hagadorn hung their heads as they drove past our place.
Of course it had all been done by the vote in the big town of Tecumseh,
way at the other end of the district, and by those towns surrounding it
where the Mohawk Dutch were still very numerous. But this did not at
all lessen the exhilaration with which the discovery that the Radicals
of our own Dearborn County had been snowed under, filled our breasts.
Was it not wonderful to think of, that these heroes of remote Adams and
Jay Counties should have been at work redeeming the district on the
very day when the two votes of our farm marked the almost despairing
low-water mark of the cause in Agrippa?
Abner could hardly keep his feet down on the ground or floor when he
walked, so powerfully did the tidings of this achievement thrill his
veins. He said the springs of his knees kept jerking upward, so that
he wanted to kick and dance all the while. Janey Wilcox, who, though a
meek and silent girl, was a wildly bitter partisan, was all eagerness
to light a bonfire out on the knoll in front of the house Thursday
night, so that every mother's son of them down at the Corners might
see it, but Abner thought it would be better to wait until we had the
printed facts before us.
I could hardly wait to finish breakfast Friday morning, so great was
my zeal to be off to the post-office. It was indeed not altogether
daylight when I started at quick step down the hill. Yet, early as
I was, there were some twenty people inside Lee Watkins's store
when I arrived, all standing clustered about the high square row of
glass-faced pigeon-holes reared on the farther end of the counter,
behind which could be seen Lee and his sour-faced wife sorting over the
mail by lamp-light. “Jee” Hagadorn was in this group and Squire Avery,
and most of the other prominent citizens of the neighborhood. All were
deeply restless.
Every minute or two some one of them would shout: “Come, Lee, give us
out one of the papers, anyway!” But for some reason Mrs. Watkins was
inexorable. Her pursed-up lips and resolute expression told us plainly
that none would be served till all were sorted. So the impatient
waiters bided their time under protest, exchanging splenetic remarks
under their breath. We must have stood there three-quarters of an hour.
At last Mrs. Watkins wiped her hands on the apron over her bloomers.
Everybody knew the signal, and on the instant a dozen arms were
stretched vehemently toward Lee, struggling for precedence. In another
moment wrappers had been ripped off and sheets flung open. Then
the store was alive with excited voices. “Yes, sir! It's true! The
Copperheads have won!” “_Tribune_ concedes Seymour's election!” “We're
beaten in the district by less'n a hundred!” “Good-by, human liberty!”
“Now we know how Lazarus felt when he was licked by the dogs!” and so
on—a stormy warfare of wrathful ejaculations.
In my turn I crowded up, and held out my hand for the paper I saw in
the box. Lee Watkins recognized me, and took the paper out to deliver
to me. But at the same moment his wife, who had been hastily scanning
the columns of some other journal, looked up and also saw who I was.
With a lightning gesture she threw out her hand, snatched our _World_
from her husband's grasp, and threw it spitefully under the counter.
“There ain't nothing for _you_!” she snapped at me. “Pesky Copperhead
rag!” she muttered to herself.
Although I had plainly seen the familiar wrapper, and understood her
action well enough, it never occurred to me to argue the question
with Mrs. Watkins. Her bustling, determined demeanor, perhaps also
her bloomers, had always filled me with awe. I hung about for a time,
avoiding her range of vision, until she went out into her kitchen. Then
I spoke with resolution to Lee:
“If you don't give me that paper,” I said, “I'll tell Abner, an' he'll
make you sweat for it!”
The postmaster stole a cautious glance kitchenward. Then he made a
swift, diving movement under the counter, and furtively thrust the
paper out at me.
“Scoot!” he said, briefly, and I obeyed him.
Abner was simply wild with bewildered delight over what this paper had
to tell him. Even my narrative about Mrs. Watkins, which ordinarily
would have thrown him into transports of rage, provoked only a passing
sniff. “They've only got two more years to hold that post-office,” was
his only remark upon it.
Hurley and Janey Wilcox and even the Underwood girl came in, and
listened to Abner reading out the news. He shirked nothing, but waded
manfully through long tables of figures and meaningless catalogues
of counties in other States, the names of which he scarcely knew how
to pronounce: “'Five-hundred and thirty-one townships in Wisconsin
give Brown 21,409, Smith 16,329, Ferguson 802, a Republican loss of
26.' Do you see that, Hurley? It's everywhere the same.” “'Kalapoosas
County elects Republican Sheriff for first time in history of
party.' That isn't so good, but it's only one out of ten thousand.”
“‘Four-hundred-and-six townships in New Hampshire show a net Democratic
loss of—’ pshaw! there ain't nothing in that! Wait till the other towns
are heard from!”
So Abner read on and on, slapping his thigh with his free hand whenever
anything specially good turned up. And there was a great deal that we
felt to be good. The State had been carried. Besides our Congressman,
many others had been elected in unlooked-for places—so much so that
the paper held out the hope that Congress itself might be ours. Of
course Abner at once talked as if it were already ours. Resting between
paragraphs, he told Hurley and the others that this settled it. The
war must now surely be abandoned, and the seceding States invited to
return to the Union on terms honorable to both sides.
Hurley had assented with acquiescent nods to everything else. He seemed
to have a reservation on this last point. “An' what if they won't
come?” he asked.
“Let 'em stay out, then,” replied Abner, dogmatically. “This war—this
wicked war between brothers—must stop. That's the meaning of Tuesday's
votes. What did you and I go down to the Corners and cast our ballots
for?—why, for peace!”
“Well, somebody else got my share of it, then,” remarked Hurley, with a
rueful chuckle.
Abner was too intent upon his theme to notice. “Yes, peace!” he
repeated, in the deep vibrating tones of his class-meeting manner.
“Why, just think what's been a-goin' on! Great armies raised, hundreds
of thousands of honest men taken from their work an' set to murderin'
each other, whole deestricks of country torn up by the roots, homes
desolated, the land filled with widows an' orphans, an' every house a
house of mournin'.”
Mrs. Beech had been sitting, with her mending-basket on her knee,
listening to her husband like the rest of us. She shot to her feet now
as these last words of his quivered in the air, paying no heed to the
basket or its scattered contents on the floor, but putting her apron
to her eyes, and making her way thus past us, half-blindly, into her
bedroom. I thought I heard the sound of a sob as she closed the door.
That the stately, proud, self-contained mistress of our household
should act like this before us all was even more surprising than
Seymour's election. We stared at one another in silent astonishment.
“M'rye ain't feelin' over 'n' above well,” Abner said at last,
apologetically. “You girls ought to spare her all you kin.”
One could see, however, that he was as puzzled as the rest of us.
He rose to his feet, walked over to the stove, rubbed his boot
meditatively against the hearth for a minute or two, then came back
again to the table. It was with a visible effort that he finally shook
off this mood, and forced a smile to his lips.
“Well, Janey,” he said, with an effort at briskness, “ye kin go ahead
with your bonfire, now. I guess I've got some old bar'ls for ye over
'n' the cow-barn.”
But having said this, he turned abruptly and followed his wife into the
little chamber off the living-room.