THE INHABITANT.
When Albert awoke next morning from a sound sleep on the buffalo-robe in
the loft of the cabin of the Inhabitant, the strange being who had slept
at his side had gone. He found him leaning against the foot of the
ladder outside.
"Waitin', you know," he said when he saw Albert, "tell she gits up. I was
tryin' to think what I _could_ do to make this house fit fer her to stay
in; fer, you see, stranger, they's no movin' on tell to-morry, fer though
the rain's stopped, I 'low you can't git that buggy over afore to-morry
mornin'. But blam'd ef 'ta'n't too bad fer sech as her to stay in sech a
cabin! I never wanted no better place tell las' night, but ever sence
that creetur crossed the door-sill. I've wished it was a palace of
di'monds. She hadn't orter live in nothin' poarer."
"Where did you come from?" asked Charlton.
"From the Wawbosh. You see I couldn't stay. They treated me bad. I had a
idee. I wanted to write somethin' or nother in country talk. I need to
try to write potry in good big dictionary words, but I hadn't but 'mazin
little schoolin', and lived along of a set of folks that talked jes' like
I do. But a Scotchman what I worked along of one winter, he read me some
potry, writ out by a Mr. Burns, in the sort of bad grammar that a
Scotchman talks, you know. And I says, Ef a Scotchman could write poetry
in his sort of bad grammar, why couldn't a Hoosier jest as well write
poetry in the sort of lingo we talk down on the Wawbosh? I don't see why.
Do you, now?"
Albert was captivated to find a "child of nature" with such an idea, and
he gave it his entire approval.
"Wal, you see, when I got to makin' varses I found the folks down in
Posey Kyounty didn' take to varses wrote out in their own talk. They
liked the real dictionary po'try, like 'The boy stood on the burnin'
deck' and 'A life on the ocean wave,' but they made fun of me, and when
the boys got a hold of my poortiest varses, and said 'em over and over
as they was comin' from school, and larfed at me, and the gals kinder
fooled me, gittin' me to do some varses fer ther birthdays, and then
makin' fun of 'em, I couldn' bar it no ways, and so I jist cleaned out
and left to git shed of their talk. But I stuck to my idee all the
same. I made varses in the country talk all the same, and sent 'em to
editors, but they couldn' see nothin' in 'em. Writ back that I'd
better larn to spell. When I could a-spelt down any one of 'em the best
day they ever seed!"
"I'd like to see some of your verses," said Albert.
"I thought maybe you mout," and with that he took out a soiled blue paper
on which was written in blue ink some verses.
"Now, you see, I could spell right ef I wanted to, but I noticed that Mr.
Burns had writ his Scotch like it was spoke, and so I thought I'd write
my country talk by the same rule."
And the picturesque Inhabitant, standing there in the morning light in
his trapper's wolf-skin cap, from the apex of which the tail of the wolf
hung down his back, read aloud the verses which he had written in the
Hoosier dialect, or, as he called it, the country talk of the Wawbosh. In
transcribing them, I have inserted one or two apostrophes, for the poet
always complained that though he could spell like sixty, he never could
mind his stops.
[Illustration: THE INHABITANT.]
WHAT DUMB CRITTERS SAYS
The cat-bird poorty nigh splits his throat,
Ef nobody's thar to see.
The cat-bird poorty nigh splits his throat,
But ef I say, "Sing out, green coat,"
Why, "I can't" and "I shan't," says he.
I 'low'd the crows mout be afeard
Of a man made outen straw.
I 'low'd the crows mout be afeard,
But laws! they warn't the least bit skeered,
They larfed out, "Haw! haw-haw!"
A long-tail squir'l up in th' top
Of that air ellum tree,
A long-tail squir'l up in th' top,
A lis'nin' to the acorns drop,
Says, "Sh! sh-sh!" at me.
The big-eyed owl a-settin' on a limb
With nary a wink nur nod,
The big-eyed owl a-settin' on a limb,
Is a-singin' a sort of a solemn hymn
Of "Hoo! hoo-ah!" at God.
Albert could not resist a temptation to smile at this last line.
"I know, stranger. You think a owl can't sing to God. But I'd like to
know why! Ef a mockin'-bird kin sing God's praises a-singin' trible, and
so on through all the parts--you see I larnt the squar notes oncet at a
singin'--why, I don't see to save me why the bass of the owl a'n't jest
as good praisin' ef 'ta'n't quite sech fine singin'. Do you, now? An' I
kinder had a feller-feelin' fer the owl. I says to him,' Well, ole
feller, you and me is jist alike in one thing. Our notes a'n't
appreciated by the public.' But maybe God thinks about as much of the
real ginowine hootin' of a owl as he does of the highfalugeon whistlin'
of a mockin'-bird all stole from somebody else. An' ef my varses is
kinder humbly to hear, anyway they a'n't made like other folkses; they're
all of 'em outen my head--sech as it is."
"You certainly have struck an original vein," said Albert, who had a
passion for nature in the rough. "I wish you would read some of your
verses to my sister."
"Couldn' do it," said the poet; "at least, I don't believe I could. My
voice wouldn' hold up. Laid awake all las' night tryin' to make some
varses about her. But sakes, stranger, I couldn' git two lines strung
together. You mout as well try to put sunshine inter a gallon-jug, you
know, as to write about that lovely creetur. An' I can't make poetry in
nothin' 'ceppin' in our country talk; but laws! it seems sech a rough
thing to use to say anything about a heavenly angel in. Seemed like as ef
I was makin' a nosegay fer her, and hadn't no poseys but jimson-weeds,
hollyhocks, and big yaller sunflowers. I wished I could 'a' made real
dictionary poetry like Casabianca and Hail Columby. But I didn' know
enough about the words. I never got nary wink of sleep a-thinkin' about
her, and a-wishin' my house was finer and my clo'es purtier and my hair
shorter, and I was a eddicated gentleman. Never wished that air afore."
Katy woke up a little dull and quite hungry, but not sick, and she
good-naturedly set herself to work to show her gratitude to the
Inhabitant by helping, him to get breakfast, at which he declared that he
was never so flustrated in all his born days. Never.
They waited all that day for the waters to subside, and Katy taught the
Poet several new culinary arts, while he showed her his traps and hunting
gear, and initiated the two strangers into all the mysteries of mink and
muskrat catching, telling them more about the habits of fur-bearing
animals than they could have learned from books. And Charlton recited
many pieces of "real dictionary poetry" to the poor fellow, who was at
last prevailed on to read some of his dialect pieces in the presence of
Katy. He read her one on "What the Sunflower said to the Hollyhock," and
a love-poem, called "Polly in the Spring-house." The first strophe of
this inartistic idyl will doubtless be all the reader will care to see.
POLLY IN THE SPRING-HOUSE.
Purtier'n dressed-up gals in town
Is peart and larfin' Polly Brown,
With curly hair a-hangin' down,
An' sleeves rolled clean above her elbow.
Barfeooted stan'in on the rocks,
A-pourin' milk in airthen crocks,
An' kiverin' 'em with clean white blocks--
Jest lis'en how my fool heart knocks--
Shet up, my heart! what makes you tell so?
"You see," he said, blushing and stammering, "you see, miss, I had a sort
of a preju_dice_ agin town gals in them air days, I thought they was all
stuck up and proud like; I didn' think the--the--well--you know I don't
mean no harm nur nothin'--but I didn' expect the very purtiest on 'em all
was ever agoin' to come into my shanty and make herself at home like as
ef I was a eddicated gentleman. All I said agin town gals I take back.
I--I--you see--" but finding it impossible to get through, the Poet
remembered something to be attended to out of doors.
The ever active Charlton could not pass a day in idleness. By ten
o'clock he had selected a claim and staked it out. It was just the place
for his great school. When the country should have settled up, he would
found a farm-school here and make a great institution out of it. The
Inhabitant was delighted with the prospect of having the brother of an
angel for a neighbor, and readily made a bargain to erect for Charlton a
cabin like his own for purposes of pre-emption. Albert's lively
imagination had already planned the building and grounds of his
institution.
During the whole of that sunshiny day that Charlton waited for the waters
of Pleasant Brook to subside, George Gray, the Inhabitant of the lone
cabin, exhausted his ingenuity in endeavoring to make his hospitality as
complete as possible. When Albert saw him standing by the ladder in the
morning, he had already shot some prairie-chickens, which he carefully
broiled. And after they had supped on wild strawberries and another night
had passed, they breakfasted on some squirrels killed in a neighboring
grove, and made into a delicious stew by the use of such vegetables as
the garden of the Inhabitant afforded. Charlton and the Poet got the
horse and buggy through the stream. When everything was ready for a
start, the Inhabitant insisted that he would go "a piece" with them to
show the way, and, mounted on his Indian pony, he kept them company to
their destination. Then the trapper bade Albert an affectionate adieu,
and gave a blushing, stammering, adoring farewell to Katy, and turned his
little sorrel pony back toward his home, where he spent the next few days
in trying to make some worthy verses in commemoration of the coming to
the cabin of a trapper lonely, a purty angel bright as day, and how the
trapper only wep' and cried when she went away. But his feelings were
too deep for his rhymes, and his rhymes were poorer than his average,
because his feeling was deeper. He must have burned up hundreds of
couplets, triplets, and sextuplets in the next fortnight. For, besides
his chivalrous and poetic gallantry toward womankind, he found himself
hopelessly in love with a girl whom he would no more have thought of
marrying than he would of wedding a real angel. Sometimes he dreamed of
going to school and getting an education, "puttin' some school-master's
hair-ile onter his talk," as he called it, but then the hopelessness of
any attempt to change himself deterred him. But thenceforth Katy became
more to him than Laura was to Petrarch. Habits of intemperance had crept
upon him in his isolation and pining for excitement, but now he set out
to seek an ideal purity, he abolished even his pipe, he scrupulously
pruned his conversation of profanity, so that he wouldn' be onfit to love
her any way, ef he didn' never marry her.