It will be my luck to have Pap come to Mt. Pleasant with the
doughnuts and find us all gone. We left last night. I wrote you
we was going but I didn't know it until Palmer woke me up in the
middle of the night. Reverend Gideon left two days before.
Someone pulled me out of bed. I hollered, "Here, here, hold on!"
Then I knew it was Palmer. I jumped up. He ordered me to dress
quickly.
I dressed and looked for Tom. I asked Palmer where he was. He
said: "I've called him as often as I'm going to." I called Tom
and had to wait so long for him to dress that when I got out
doors there was Jake sitting up in the front seat of the wagon,
and Mrs. Palmer beside him. She looked to me as if she was
cryin'. Jake told us to "get in, she's going to go."
Palmer was locking the doors. I heard something splash down in
the well. His wife asked for the keys. "They're down in the
well; old Lane, the landlord, can look for them." Mrs. Palmer
looked very much worried. They left all their things excepting a
few bedclothes and the sewing machine.
Palmer spread the bedclothes on the panorama in the bottom of
the wagon; Tom, me and him slept all the way here. Poor Mrs.
Palmer set up all night beside Jake on the seat. If she ain't
got the newralgy she'll katch it sure. Mrs. Palmer wouldn't get
out of the wagon to eat breakfast when we stopped on the road at
a country house, and Palmer spoke real cross to her and she
cried. It's the only time I've seen Jake's face without a smile
and he looks a different man when he ain't smiling. I like Jake
and he likes me. He wants to see Pap.
Reverend Gideon met us here. Palmer forgot his clothes and I
heard him tell Gideon they'd have to go, he had flung the keys
in the well and if Gideon went back after his clothes they was
liable to fling him in jail.
I believe Palmer's run off owing everybody. This thing's bound
to make money. I'm sorry I came for twenty a month. If he does
well he'll have to raise me.
Your affectionate son,
ALFRED GRIFFITH HATFIELD.
P. S. The hound was to be a dog, not another kind.
Palmer, the wife and Gideon, were a source of much speculation to
Alfred; he could not fix their standing in his mind. The facts were that
Palmer was one of those soldiers of fortune who had experimented with
many things and failed in everything. He fitted Dryden's description of:
"A man so various, that he seemed to be
Not one, but all mankind's epitome;
Stiff in opinions, always in the wrong
Was everything by starts, and nothing long;
But, in the course of one revolving moon,
Was chemist, fiddler, statesman, and buffoon."
The only aim Palmer seemed to have in life was to create the impression
that he might have been worse. Store clerk, school teacher, politician,
preacher, scene painter, amateur showman; such were the pursuits he had
been engaged in, not successful in any of them. Abusive of all, save
that one he was engaged in, blaming the world for his failures. He
respected no man or woman. He approached no man save with a selfish
motive; could he but injure those with whom he dealt he was happy,
though he did not profit thereby. Yet he did not so speak, but all his
actions conveyed this impression of the man to Alfred. And thus his
character was impressed on the boy's intuitive mind as strongly as were
the scenes on the canvas of the panorama.
[Illustration: Palmer]
The wife was only another of that type of woman who has blasted a life,
one full of hope, by clinging to a man who was unworthy of one day of
her life. It was a pathetic spectacle to see the faded wife standing
helpless in the shadow of her husband's selfishness, having sacrificed
youth, beauty and everything that woman holds dear. It did not matter
to Palmer that she was once a school teacher, more than a fair musician,
courted by numbers who could have made her useful to society and happy
in her life. It did not matter to Palmer that she had burned up much of
her attractiveness over the cooking stove; that she lost more of it at
the washtub; in caring for and rearing the children that had
unfortunately come to them. The slaving she had gone through in all
their married life to help her husband to get on in the world was all
lost upon the selfish man who never gave a thought to her sufferings. He
actually treated her if as she had been the cause of his failures, and
seemed ashamed of her when younger and more attractive women were near.
Her two children, somewhere in Missouri in the keeping of her mother,
seemed her only hope in life and the only time the poor crushed soul
evidenced interest in anything was when tidings came from the children
or she could prevail upon their thankless father to send them a little
money. The mother's wardrobe was scanty that the darlings of her heart
might be better clad.
Aunt Susan wore a sun-bonnet almost continuously that she might better
keep in place mustard plasters and horse radish leaves to relieve the
neuralgia pains. Alfred presumed that Mrs. Palmer was similarly affected
since she always wore a sun-bonnet. That was before they left Palmer's
house. Afterwards he became convinced that the woman wore the sun-bonnet
to conceal the lines of sorrow in her once fine face.
Rev. Gideon was the last of the trio whom Alfred figured out. He had
married Palmer's sister. They went to a foreign country as missionaries;
Gideon's health gave way under the tropical climate. He returned to this
country and had since made his home with the Palmers. But little was
learned of the wife. She still lived, and if remittances were not
forthcoming, Gideon was on the rack. In fact, each one of her
complaining letters made Gideon turn more yellow in color, sit up later
and get up earlier than usual, no matter how poor Gideon suffered. If he
was ailing and Palmer noticed it, he would sneer and jerk out: "Huh! Got
a letter from Sis, did you? S'pose she wants you to go back to China.
Say Gideon, that must have been a hell of a job to instill the gospel
into heathen when you can't make an impression upon those who understand
what you say. It must have been discouraging to waste your eloquence
upon those copper-colored thieves. There's many a game to catch suckers
in this world but that foreign mission play is the rawest ever sprung.
Say, Gideon, how much did you get? So much for each sinner saved or did
you lump the job?"
Under such cynicism Gideon would turn about and walk off as though
nothing had been said to him. Palmer took an especial delight in teasing
Gideon as to his mission labors. Gideon never deigned to notice the
ridicule of Palmer, at least in words. Yet there was one thing that
impressed Alfred. Palmer always deferred to Gideon in any business
proposition under consideration; he would bluster and rave a little but
always in the end gave in to Gideon's judgment.
In addition to the receipts that came to him from the exhibition of the
panorama, Palmer had a large, framed, steel plate engraving of John
Bunyan which he sold while soliciting subscriptions for several
religious publications. He worked diligently. He never desisted when he
once went after preacher, deacon or the entire congregation, and he
generally sold what he offered or secured their names to one of his
numerous subscription lists.
He worked so adroitly that he made many his aides. Not infrequently a
minister would get up during an intermission in the Pilgrim's Progress
exhibition and announce one or more of Palmer's offerings. These
announcements invariably wound up with the statement that the proceeds
were for the benefit of a retired minister who had lost his health in an
endeavor to carry the gospel to the heathen in foreign lands.
Alfred became curious as to what effect these announcements would have
upon Gideon and he often peeped from behind the scenes to note it. But
Gideon was never in sight. He would step out of the door as the speaker
began. Alfred noticed that Mrs. Palmer always lowered her face over the
keys of the piano or organ when the announcement of this character was
being made. Palmer, behind the scenes, standing near the curtain his
head bent to one side his hand up to his ear. If the speaker's efforts
pleased him he would pull his tuft of beard with his free hand and
ejaculate: "Good! Fine! Capital! Good boy, go it old Beeswax. I didn't
think it was in you. Go it boots, you'll win in a walk. They're gittin'
their pocket books out now; Gideon will do well tonight, ha, ha, ha."
Did the speaker not measure up to his ideas, he would say: "Wade in!
Wade in! Wade in! Dam you, the water's not cold. Warm up now or you'll
freeze them to the pews. Oh, what you tryin' to git through you? Just
listen to that crack; he'll make them think he's going to take up a
collection for the foreign missions. You can't get seventeen cents. It's
been worked to death. Come off, come off your perch, you poll parrot!
Come off! Well you ought to be studying your primer instead of
preaching; you don't know as much as Gideon."
Palmer, through the influence of the church members, procured a half
dozen young girls, at each place visited, to represent the multitude
passing through the gates in the final scene of Pilgrim's Progress.
Although these girls were before the audience but a moment or two at the
very end of the panorama, amateur like, instead of remaining in front
witnessing the exhibition, they would repair to the rear of the curtain,
don their robes and stand around during the entire performance, to the
annoyance of everybody working the panorama, and, more frequently than
otherwise, be late for their cue.
One night, an old preacher was laboring with an announcement Palmer had
written and rehearsed him in, Palmer was most vicious in his comments.
The old speaker's daughter was one of the virgins, standing near she
heard every word uttered and there was enough and there would have been
more, had not Alfred, by a nudge and a whisper, checked him. Palmer
grasped the situation at once. He stepped nearer the girls. Then with a
start, he shaded his eyes, dramatically gazed at the girls and began:
"Oh, woman, lovely woman, nature made thee to temper man; we had been
brutes without you. Angels are painted fair to look like you. There is
in you all we believe of heaven, amazing brightness, purity, truth,
eternal joy and everlasting love."
He was never at a loss, his quick wit extricating him from embarrassment
at all times.
* * * * *