Miss Meechim and Dorothy looked brighter and happier as every
revolution of the wheels brought us nearer their old home, and they
talked about Robert Strong and other old friends I never see.
"Be it ever so humbly,
There is no place like hum."
My heart sung them words and carried two parts, one sulferino and one
bear tone. The high part caused by my lofty emotions and sweet
recollections of home, that hallowed spot; the minor chords caused by
feelin's I have so often recapitulated. Tommy, as the day wore on,
went to sleep, and I covered him tenderly on the seat with my little
shoulder shawl, and sot there alone; alone, as the cars bore us
onward, sometimes through broad green fields of alfalfa, anon over a
bridge half a mile long, from whence you could look down and see the
flowing stream beneath like a little skein of silver yarn glistening
in the sun fur below, agin forests and valleys and farms and
homesteads, and anon in an opening through a valley, high bluffs,
beautifully colored, could be seen towering up over blue waters, up,
up as if they wuz bent on touching the fleecy clouds overhead. And
then a green sheltered valley, and then a high range of mountains seen
fur off as if overlookin' things to see that all wuz well, anon a big
city, then a village, then the green country agin, and so the pictures
passed before me as I sot there.
I had put on a pair of new cuffs and a collar, made for me and
hemstitched by Waitstill Webb, and gin to me by her, though I wanted
to pay her. Sweet little creeter! how good she wuz to me and to
everybody, and I thought of her sad history, and hoped that brighter
days wuz ahead on her. I d'no as I've told the reader much about her
history, and mebby I might as well whilst we are rushin' on so fast,
and Tommy is asleep.
Alan Thorne, the young man she wuz engaged to, wuz brung up by a uncle
who had a family of his own to love and tend to, but he did his duty
by Alan, gin him a good education and a comfortable, if not
affectionate, home in his family. But it wuz a big family all bound up
in each other, and Alan had seemed like one who looks on through a
winder at the banquet of Life and Love, kinder hungry and lonesome
till he met Waitstill Webb. Then their two hearts and souls rushed
together like two streams of water down an inclined plane. They
literally seemed to be two bodies with one heart, one soul, one
desire, one aspiration. He had always been industrious, honest and
hard workin'. Now he had sunthin' to work for; and for the three years
after he met Waitstill he worked like a giant. He wuz earning a home
for his wife, his idol; how happy he wuz in his efforts, his work, and
how happy she wuz to see it, and to work herself in her quiet way for
the future.
He had bought a home about a mile out of the city, where he was
employed, and had got it all payed for. It wuz a beautiful little
cottage with a few acres of land round it, and he had got his garden
all laid out and a orchard of fruit trees of all kinds, and trees and
flowering shrubs and vines around the pretty cottage. There wuz a
little pasture where he wuz to keep his cow and a horse, that she
could take him with to his work mornings and drive round where she
wanted to, and there wuz a meadow lot with a little rivulet running
through it, and they had already planned a rustic bridge over the
dancing stream, and a trout pond, and she had set out on its borders
some water lilies, pink and white, and Showy Ladies and other wild
flowers, and she jest doted on her posy garden and strawberry beds,
and they'd bought two or three hives of bees in pretty boxes and took
them out there; they had rented the place to a old couple till they
wanted it themselves. And every holiday and Sunday they walked out to
their own place, and the sun did not shine any brighter on their
little home than the sun of hope and happiness did in their hearts as
they pictured their life there in that cozy nest.
And Alan Thorne, after he loved Waitstill, not only tried to win
outward success for her sake; he tried to weed out all the weaknesses
of his nater, to make himself more worthy of her. He said to himself
when he would go to see her, he would "robe his soul in holiest
purpose as for God himself." His pa had at one time in his life drank
considerable, but he wuz not a drunkard, and he wuz a good bizness man
when the fever carried him off, and his young wife out of the world
the same year. Well, Alan wuz jest as industrious as he could be, and
with his happy future to look forward to and Waitstill's love and
beloved presence to prop up his manhood, everything promised a fair
and happy life for them both; till, like a thunder-cloud out of a
clear sky come that deafening report from Spanish brutality that blew
up the _Maine_ and this nation's peace and tranquility. Dretful deed!
Awful calamity! that sent three hundred of our brave seamen onprepared
to meet their God--without a second's warning. Awful deed that cried
to heaven for pity! But did it bring back these brave fellows sleeping
in Havana harbor to their mothers, wives and sweethearts, to have
thousands more added to the list of the slain?
"Remember the _Maine_!" How these words echoed from pulpit and Senate
and palace and hovel; how they wuz sung in verse, printed in poems,
printed in flaming lines of electric light everywhere! From city to
country, you saw and heard these words, "Remember the _Maine_!"
I wondered then and I wonder now if the spirit of revenge that swep'
through our nation at that time wuz the spirit of the Master.
I d'no nor Josiah don't, whether it wuz right and best to influence
the souls of the young till they burnt at white heat with the spirit
that our Lord said his disciples must avoid, for said he: "Vengeance
is mine, saith the Lord."
Well, it is a deep question, deeper than I've got a line to measure;
and Josiah's line and mine both tied together don't begin to touch the
bottom on't, for we've tried it time and agin. We've argyed aginst
each other about it, and jined on and hitched our arguments together,
and they didn't touch bottom then, nor begin to. As Mrs. Browning said
(a woman I set store by, and always did, I've hearn Thomas J. read
about her so much): "A country's a thing men should die for at need."
Yes, to die for, if its safety is imperilled, that I believe and
Josiah duz, but I have eppisoded about it a sight, I've had to. I
methought how this nation wuz stirred to its deepest depths; how it
seethed and boiled with indignation and wrath because three hundred of
its sons wuz killed by ignorant and vicious means; how it breathed out
vengeance on the cause that slew them; how it called To Arms! To Arms!
Remember the _Maine_! But how cool and demute it stood, or ruther sot,
and see every year sixty thousand of its best sons slain by the
saloon, ten-fold more cruel deaths, too, since the soul and mind wuz
slain before their bodies went. No cry for vengeance as the long
procession of the dead wheeled by the doors of the law-makers of the
land; no cry: "To arms! to arms! Remember the Saloon." And more
mysterious still, I eppisoded to myself, it would have looked to see
the Government rig out and sell to the Spaniards a million more bombs
and underground mines to blow up the rest of our ships and kill
thousands more of our young men. Wouldn't it have looked dog queer to
the other nations of the world to have seen it done?
But there they sot, our law-makers, and if they lifted their eyes at
all to witness the long procession of the dead drift by, sixty
thousand corpses yearly slain by the Saloon, if they lifted their eyes
at all to look at the ghastly procession, they dropped 'em agin quick
as they could so's not to delay their work of signin' licenses, makin'
new laws, fixin' over old ones, and writin' permits to the murderers
to go on with their butchery. Queer sight! queer in the sight of other
nations, in the sight of men and angels, and of me and Josiah.
Well, to stop eppisodin' and resoom backwards for a spell. Alan Thorne
hearn that cry: "To arms! To arms!" And his very soul listened. His
grandfathers on both sides wuz fighting men; at school and college
he'd been trained in a soldier regiment, and had been steeped full of
warlike idees, and they all waked up at his cry for vengeance. He had
just got to go; it wuz to be. Heaven and Waitstill couldn't help it;
he had to go; he went.
Well, Waitstill read his letters as well as she could through her
blindin' tears; letters at first full of love--the very passion of
love and tenderness for his sweetheart, and deathless patriotism and
love for his country.
But bime-by the letters changed a little in their tones--they wuzn't
so full of love for his country. "The country," so he writ, "wuz
shamefully neglecting its sons, neglecting their comfort." He writ
they wuz herded together in quarters not fit for a dog, with
insufficient food; putrid, dretful food, that no dog would or could
eat. No care taken of their health--and as for the health of their
souls, no matter where they wuz, if half starved or half clad, the
Canteen was always present with 'em; if they could git nothin' else
for their comfort, they could always git the cup that the Bible sez:
"Cursed is he that puts it to his neighbor's lips." Doubly cursed
now--poisoned with adulteration, makin' it a still more deadly pizen.
Well, sickened with loathsome food he could not eat, half starved, the
deadly typhoid hovering over the wretched soldier, is it any wonder
that as the tempter held the glass to his lips (the tempter being the
Government he wuz fightin' for) the tempted yielded and drank?
The letters Waitstill got grew shorter and cooler, as the tempter led
Alan deeper and deeper into his castle of Ruin where the demon sets
and gloats over its victims. When the Canteen had done its work on the
crazed brain and imbruted body, other sins and evils our Government
had furnished and licensed, stood ready to draw him still further
along the down-grade whose end is death.
Finally the letters stopped, and then Waitstill, whose heart wuz
broke, jined the noble army of nurses and went forward to the front,
always hunting for the one beloved, and, as she feared, lost to her.
And she found him. The very day that Alan Thorne, in a drunken brawl,
killed Arvilly's husband with a bullet meant for another drunken
youth, these wimmen met. A rough lookin' soldier knelt down by the
dead man, a weepin' woman fell faintin' on his still, dead heart; this
soldier ('twas Arville) wuz sick in bed for a week, Waitstill tendin'
him, or her I might as well say, for Arville owned to her in her
weakness that she wuz a woman; yes, Waitstill tended her faithfully,
white and demute with agony, but kep' up with the hope that the
Government that had ruined her lover would be lenient towards the
crime it had caused. For she reasoned it out in a woman's way. She
told Arvilly "that Alan would never have drank had not the Government
put the cup to his lips, and of course the Government could not
consistently condemn what it had caused to be." She reasoned it out
from what she had learnt of justice and right in the Bible.
But Arvilly told her--for as quick as she got enough strength she wuz
the same old Arvilly agin, only ten times more bent on fightin' aginst
the Drink Demon that murdered her husband. Sez Arvilly: "You don't
take into consideration the Tariff and Saloon arguments of apologizin'
Church and State, the tax money raised from dead men, and ruined
lives and broken hearts to support poor-houses and jails and police to
take care of their victims." No; Waitstill reasoned from jest plain
Bible, but of course she found out her mistake. Arvilly said: "You'll
find the nation that opens its sessions with prayer, and engraves on
its money, 'In God We Trust,' don't believe in such things. You'll
find their prayers are to the liquor dealers; their God is the huge
idol of Expediency."
Alan Thorne wuz hung for the murder, guilty, so the earthly court
said. But who wuz sot down guilty in God's great book of Justice that
day? Arvilly believes that over Alan Thorne's name wuz printed:
"Alan Thorne, foolish boy, tempted and ondone by the country he was
trying to save." And then this sentence in fiery flame:
"The United States of America, guilty of murder in the first degree."
Dretful murder, to take the life of the one that loved it and wuz
tryin' to save it.
Well, Arvilly's last thing to love wuz taken from her cruelly, and
when she got strong enough she sot off for Jonesville in her soldier
clothes, for she thought she would wear 'em till she got away, but she
wuz brung back as a deserter and Waitstill stood by her durin' her
trial, and after Alan's death she too wuz smit down, like a posy in a
cyclone. Arvilly, in her own clothes now, tended her like a mother,
and as soon as she wuz able to travel took her back to Jonesville,
where they make their home together, two widders, indeed, though the
weddin' ring don't show on one of their hands.
Waitstill goes about doin' good, waitin' kinder still, some like her
name, till the Lord sends her relief by the angel that shall stand one
day in all our homes. She don't talk much.
But Arvilly's grief is different. She told me one day when I wuz
tellin' her to chirk up and be more cheerful and comfortable:
"I don't want to be comfortable; I don't want to feel any different."
"Whyee, Arvilly!" sez I, "don't you want to see any happiness agin?"
"No, I don't," sez she, "I don't want to take a minute's comfort and
ease while things are in the state they be." Sez she, "Would you want
to set down happy, and rock, and eat peanuts, if you knew that your
husband and children wuz drowndin' out in the canal?"
"No," sez I, "no, indeed! I should rush out there bareheaded, and if I
couldn't save 'em, would feel like dyin' with 'em."
"Well," sez she, short as pie crust, "that's jest how I feel."
I believe and so Josiah duz that Arvilly would walk right up to a
loaded cannon and argy with it if she thought it would help destroy
the Saloon, and after she had convinced the cannon she would be
perfectly willin' to be blowed up by it if the Saloon wuz blowed up
too.
Well, I sot thinkin' of all this till Tommy waked up and we all went
out into the dining car and had a good meal. We wuz a little over two
days goin' from Salt Lake City to San Francisco, and durin' that time
I calculated that I eat enough dirt, that bitter alkali sand, to last
lawful all my life. I believe one peck of dirt is all the law allows
one person to consume durin' their life. It seems as if I eat more
than enough to meet legal requirements for me and Josiah, and I seemed
to have a thick coatin' of it on my hull person. And poor little
Tommy! I tried to keep his face clean and that wuz all I could do.
But as we drew nearer to California the weather became so balmy and
delightful that it condoned for much that wuz onpleasant, and I sez to
myself, the lovely views I have seen between Chicago and California I
shall never forgit as long as memory sets up in her high chair.
What a panorama it wuz--beautiful, grand, delightful, majestic,
sublime--no words of mine can do it justice. No. I can never describe
the views that opened on our admirin' and almost awe-struck vision as
the cars advanced through natural openin's in the mountains and anon
artificial ones.
Why, I had thought that the hill in front of old Grout Nickelson's wuz
steep, and the road a skittish one that wound around it above the
creek. But imagine goin' along a road where you could look down
thousands of feet into running water, and right up on the other side
of you mountains thousands of feet high. And you between, poor specks
of clay with only a breath of steam to keep you agoin' and prevent
your dashin' down into that enormous abyss.
But Grandeur sot on them mountain tops, Glory wuz enthroned on them
sublime heights and depths, too beautiful for words to describe, too
grand for human speech to reproduce agin, the soul felt it and must
leave it to other souls to see and feel.
On, on through mountain, valley, gorge and summit, waves of
green foliage, rocks all the beautiful colors of the rainbow,
majestic shapes, seemin'ly fashioned for a home for the gods; white
peaks--sun-glorified, thousands of feet high with blue sky above;
ravines thousands of feet deep with a glint of blue water in the
depths, seemin' to mirror to us the truth that God's love and
care wuz over and under us. And so on and on; valleys, mountains,
clear lakes, forests and broad green fields, tree sheltered
farms, and anon the broad prairie. It wuz all a panorama I never
tired of lookin' at, and lasted all the way to California.
As our stay wuz to be so short in San Francisco, Miss Meechim and
Dorothy thought it would be best to go to a hotel instead of openin'
Dorothy's grand house; so we all went to the tarven Miss Meechim
picked out, the beautifullest tarven that ever I sot eyes on, it
seemed to me, and the biggest one. Havin' felt the swayin', jiggerin'
motion of the cars so long, it wuz indeed a blessin' to set my foot on
solid ground once more, and Tommy and I wuz soon ensconced in a cozy
room, nigh Miss Meechim's sweet rooms. For she still insisted on
callin' their rooms sweet, and I wouldn't argy with her, for I spoze
they did seem sweet to her.
Tommy wuz tired out and I had to take him in my arms and rock him,
after we'd had our supper, a good meal which Miss Meechim had brung up
into their settin'-room, though I insisted on payin' my part on't
(she's a good creater, though weak in some ways). Well I rocked Tommy
and sung to him:
"Sweet fields beyend the swellin' flood."
And them sweet fields in my mind wuz our own orchard and paster, and
the swellin' flood I thought on wuzn't death's billers, but the waters
that rolled between California and Jonesville.
Not one word had I hearn from my pardner sence leavin' New York.
"Oh, dear Josiah! When shall I see thee agin?" So sung my heart, or
ruther chanted, a deep solemn chant. "Where art thou, Josiah, and when
shall we meet agin? And why, why do I not hear from thee?"
The next mornin' after we arrived at San Francisco, Robert Strong
appeared at the hotel bright and early, and I don't know when I've
ever seen anybody I liked so well. Miss Meechim invited me into her
settin'-room to see him.
Havin' hearn so much about his deep, earnest nater and deathless
desire to do all the good he could whilst on his earthly pilgrimage, I
expected to see a grave, quiet man with lines of care and conflict
engraved deep on his sober, solemn visage.
But I wuz never more surprised to see a bright, laughin', happy face
that smiled back into mine as Albina Meechim proudly introduced her
nephew to me.
Why, thinkses I to myself, where can such strength of character, such
noble purpose, such original and successful business habits be hidden
in that handsome, smilin' face and them graceful, winnin' ways, as he
laughed and talked with his aunt and Dorothy.
But anon at some chance word of blame and criticism from Miss Meechim,
makin' light of his City of Justice and its inhabitants, a light
blazed up in his eyes and lit up his face, some as a fire in our open
fireplace lights up the spare-room, and I see stand out for a minute
on the background of his fair handsome face a picture of heroism,
love, endeavor that fairly stunted me for a time. And I never felt
afterwards anything but perfect confidence in him; no matter how light
and trifling wuz his talk with Dorothy, or how gay and boyishly happy
wuz his clear laughter.
He had worked well and faithful, givin' his hull mind and heart to his
endeavor to do all the good he could, and now he wuz bound to play
well, and git all the good and rest he could out of his play spell.
And I hadn't been with 'em more'n several hours before I thought that
I had seen further into his heart and hopes and intentions than Miss
Meechim had in all her born days.
Robert Strong, before he went away, invited us all to go and see his
City of Justice, and we agreed with considerable satisfaction to do
so, or at least I did and I spoze the rest did. Miss Meechim would be
happy in any place where her nephew wuz, that you could see plain, as
much as she disapproved of his methods. Dorothy, I couldn't see so
plain what she did think, she bein' one that didn't always let her
lips say everything her heart felt, but she used Robert real polite,
and we all had a real agreeable visit.
Robert got a big carriage and took us all out driving that afternoon,
Miss Meechim and I settin' on the back seat, and Robert and Dorothy
facing us, and Tommy perched on Robert's knee; Tommy jest took to
him, and visey-versey. Robert thought he wuz just about the brightest
little boy he had ever seen, and Tommy sot there, a little pale but
happy, and wonnered about things, and Robert answered all his
"wonners" so fur as he could.
We drove through beautiful streets lined with elegant houses, and the
dooryards wuz a sight. Think of my little scraggly geraniums and
oleanders and cactuses I've carried round in my hands all winter and
been proud on. And then think of geranium and oleander trees just as
common as our maples and loaded with flowers. And palm and bananna
trees, little things we brood over in our houses in the winter, and
roses that will look spindlin' with me, do the best I can, in
December, all growin' out-doors fillin' the air with fragrance.
Robert Strong said we must go to the Cliff House, and Tommy wanted to
see the seals.
Poor things! I felt bad to see 'em and to think there wuz a war of
extermination tryin' to be waged aginst 'em, because they interfered
with the rights of a few. One of the most interesting animals on the
Western continent! It seems too bad they're tryin' to wipe 'em out of
existence because the fishermen say they eat a sammon now and then.
Why shouldn't they who more than half belong to the water-world once
in a great while have a little taste of the good things of that world
as well as to have 'em all devoured by the inhabitants of dry land?
And they say that the seals eat sharks too--I should think that that
paid for all the good fish they eat. But to resoom. Tommy didn't think
of the rights or the wrongs of the seals, he had no disquietin'
thoughts to mar his anticipations, but he wonnered if he could put his
hands through 'em like he could his ma's seal muff. He thought that
they wuz muffs, silk lined--the idee! And he "wonnered" a sight when
he see the great peaceable lookin' creeters down in the water and on
the rocks, havin' a good time, so fur as we could see, in their own
world, and mindin' their own bizness; not tryin' to git ashore and
kill off the fishermen, because they ketched so many sammons. And
Tommy had to feed the seals and do everything he could do, Robert
Strong helpin' him in everything he undertook, and he "wonnered" if
they would ever be changed into muffs, and he "wonnered" if they would
like to be with "ribbon bows on."
At my request we went through Lone Mountain Cemetery, a low mountain
rising from the sandy beach full of graves shaded by beautiful trees
and myriads of flowers bending over the silent sleepers, the
resistless sea washing its base on one side--just as the sea of Death
is washing up aginst one side of Life--no matter how gay and happy it
is.
We rode home through a magnificent park of two thousand acres. Money
had turned the sandy beach into a wealth of green lawns, beautiful
trees and myriads of flowers. I had always sposed that them Eastern
Genis in the "Arabian Nights" had palaces and things about as grand
and luxurious as they make, but them old Genis could have got lots of
pinters in luxury and grand surroundin's if they'd seen the homes of
these nabobs in the environins of San Francisco. No tongue can tell
the luxury and elegance of them abodes, and so I hain't a goin' to git
out of patience with my tongue if it falters and gins out in the
task.