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Children of the Market Place

by Edgar Lee Masters · English · Gutenberg #15534 · 660,001 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: Children of the Market Place

Author: Edgar Lee Masters


        
Release date: April 4, 2005 [eBook #15534]
                Most recently updated: December 14, 2020

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/15534

Credits: E-text prepared by Audrey Longhurst, Mary Meehan, and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CHILDREN OF THE MARKET PLACE ***


E-text prepared by Audrey Longhurst, Mary Meehan, and the Project
Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team



CHILDREN OF THE MARKET PLACE

by

EDGAR LEE MASTERS

1922







TO GEORGE P. BRETT




CHAPTER I


I was born in London on the eighteenth of June, 1815. The battle of
Waterloo was being fought as I entered this world. Thousands were giving
up their lives at the moment that life was being bestowed upon me. My
father was in that great battle. Would he ever return? My mother was but
eighteen years of age. Anxiety for his safety, the exhaustion of giving
me life prostrated her delicate constitution. She died as I was being
born.

I have always kept her picture beside me. I have always been bound to
her by a tender and mystical love. During all the years of my life my
feeling for her could not have been more intense and personal if I had
had the experience of daily association with her through boyhood and
youth.

What girlish wistfulness and sadness there are in her eyes! What a
gentle smile is upon her lips, as if she would deny the deep foreboding
of a spirit that peered into a perilous future! Her dark hair falls in
rich strands over her forehead in an elfin and elegant disorder. Her
slender throat rises gracefully from an unloosened collar. This picture
was made from a drawing done by a friend of my father's four months
before I was born. My old nurse told me that he was invalided from the
war; that my father had asked him to make the drawing upon his return to
London. Perhaps my father had ominous dreams of her ordeal soon to be.

They pronounced me a fine boy. I was round faced, round bodied, well
nourished. The nurse read my horoscope in coffee grounds. I was to
become a notable figure in the world. My mother's people took me in
charge, glad to give me a place in their household. Here I was when my
father returned from the war, six months later. He had been wounded in
the battle of Waterloo. He was still weak and ill. I was told these
things by my grandmother in the succeeding years.

When I was four years old my father emigrated to America. I seem to
remember him. I have asked my grandmother if he did not sing "Annie
Laurie"; if he did not dance and fling me toward the ceiling in a riot
of playfulness; if he did not snuggle me under my tender chin and tickle
me with his mustaches. She confirmed these seemingly recollected
episodes. But of his face I have no memory. There is no picture of him.
They told me that he was tall and strong, and ruddy of face; that my
beak nose is like his, my square forehead, my firm chin. After he
reached America he wrote to me. I have the letters yet, written in a
large open hand, characteristic of an adventurous nature. Though he was
my father, he was only a person in the world after all. I was surrounded
by my mother's people. They spoke of him infrequently. What had he done?
Did they disapprove his leaving England? Had he been kind to my mother?
But all the while I had my mother's picture beside me. And my
grandmother spoke to me almost daily of her gentleness, her
high-mindedness, her beauty, and her charm.

I was raised in the English church. I was taught to adore Wellington, to
hate Napoleon as an enemy of liberty, a usurper, a false emperor, a
monster, a murderer. I was sent to Eton and to Oxford. I was
indoctrinated with the idea that there is a moral governance in the
world, that God rules over the affairs of men. I was taught these
things, but I resisted them. I did not rebel so much as my mind
naturally proved impervious to these ideas. I read the _Iliad_ and the
_Odyssey_ with passionate interest. They gave me a panoramic idea of
life, men, races, civilizations. They gave me understanding of Napoleon.
What if he had sold the Louisiana territory to rebel America, and in
order to furnish that faithless nation with power to overcome England in
some future crisis? Perhaps this very moral governance that I was taught
to believe in wished this to happen. But if the World Spirit be nothing
but the concurrent thinking of many peoples, as I grew to think, the
World Spirit might irresistibly wish this American supremacy to be.

And now at eighteen I am absorbed in dreams and studies at Oxford. I
have many friends. My life is a delight. I arise from sleep with a song,
and a bound. We play, we talk, we study, we discuss questions of all
sorts infinitely. I take nothing for granted. I question everything, of
course in the privacy of my room or the room of my friends. I do not
care to be expelled. And in the midst of this charming life bad news
comes to me. My father is dead. He has left a large estate in Illinois.
I must go there. At least my grandmother thinks it is best. And so my
school days end. Yet I am only eighteen!




CHAPTER II


I am eighteen and the year is 1833. All of Europe is in a ferment, is
bubbling over in places. Napoleon has been hearsed for twelve years in
St. Helena. But the principles of the French Revolution are working.
Charles is king of France, but by the will of the nation first and by
the grace of God afterward. There is no republic there; but the
sovereignty of the people, the prime principle of the French Revolution,
has founded the right of Charles to rule.... And what of England? Fox
had rejoiced at the fall of the Bastille. Coleridge, Wordsworth, and
Southey had sung of liberty, exulting in the emancipation of peoples
from tyranny. Then they had changed. Liberalism had come under the heel
again. Revolution was feared and denounced. Liberal principles were
crushed.... But not for long. We students read Shelley and Byron. They
were now gone from earth, eleven and nine years respectively. They had
not altered their faith, dying in the heyday of youthful power. Would
they have changed at any age to which they might have lived? We believed
they would not have done so. But what of England? It is 1833 and the
reform bill is a year old. The rotten boroughs are abolished. There is a
semblance of democratic representation in Parliament. The Duke of
Wellington has suffered a decline in popularity. Italy is rising, for
Mazzini has come upon the scene. Germany is fighting the influence of
Metternich. We students are flapping our young wings. A great day is
dawning for the world. And I am off to America!

What is stirring there? I am bound for the Middle West of that great
land. What is it like? Shall I ever return? What will my life be? These
are my reflections as I prepare to sail.

I take passage on the _Columbia and Caledonia_. She is built of wood and
is 200 feet long from taffrail to fore edge of stem. Her beam is 34-1/2
feet. She has a gross tonnage of 520 tons. She can sail in favorable
weather at a speed of 12 knots an hour. I laughed at all this when,
something more than twenty years after, I crossed on the _Persia_, 376
feet long, of 3500 tonnage, and making a speed of nearly 14 knots an
hour, with her 4000-horse-power engines.

It is April. The sea is rough. We are no sooner under way than the heavy
swell of the waves tosses the boat like a chip. The prow dips down into
great valleys of glassy water. The stern tips high in the air against an
angry sky. The shoulders of the sea bump under the poop of the boat, and
she trembles like a frightened horse under its rider. I have books to
read. My grandmother has provided me with many things for my comfort and
delight. But I cannot eat, not until during the end of the voyage. I lie
in a little stateroom, which I share with an American. He persists in
talking to me, even at night when I am trying to sleep. He tells me of
America. His home is New York City. He has been as far west as Buffalo.
He gives me long descriptions of the Hudson River, and the boats on it
that run to Albany. He talks of America in terms of extravagant eulogy.
The country is free. It has no king. The people rule. I have read a
little and heard something of America. At Oxford we students had
wondered at the anomaly of a republic maintaining the institution of
slavery. I asked him about this. He said that it did not involve any
contradiction; that the United States was founded by white men for white
men; that negroes were a lower order of beings; that their servitude was
justified by the Bible; that a majority of the clergy and the churches
of the country approved of the institution; that the slaves were well
treated, much better housed and fed than the workers of Europe; better
than the free laborers even in America. His thesis was that the business
of life was the obtaining of the means of life; that all the uprisings
in Europe, the French Revolution included, were inspired by hunger; that
the struggle for existence was bound to produce oppression; that the
strong would use and control the weak, make them work, keep them in a
state where they could be worked. All this for trade. He topped off this
analysis with the remark that negro slavery was a benign institution,
exactly in line with the processes of the business of life; that it had
been lied about by a growing fanaticism in the States; New York had
always been in sympathy, for the most part with the Southern States,
where slavery was a necessary institution to the climate and the cotton
industry. He went on to tell me that about a year before a maniacal
cobbler named William Lloyd Garrison had started a little paper called
_The Liberator_ in which he advocated slave insurrections and the
overthrow of the laws sustaining slavery; and that a movement was now on
foot in New England to found the American Anti-Slavery Society. And that
John Quincy Adams, once President, but now a senile intermeddler, had
been presenting petitions in Congress from various constituencies for
the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia. This would be
finally squelched, he thought. New England had always demanded a tariff
in order to foster her industries, and that policy trenched on the
rights of the states not needing and not wanting a tariff. While slavery
did not in any way harm New England, she intermeddled in a mood of moral
fanaticism.

I was much interested in these revelations by Mr. Yarnell, for such was
his name.... One morning we began to sense land. We had been about three
weeks on the water. We were nearing the harbor of New York.




CHAPTER III


Yarnell was a man of about thirty. He seemed very mature to me. In fact
he was quite a man of the world. I had told him my destination, and
asked him how best to reach it. He had given me some information, but it
was not wholly clear. He advised me to ask for direction at the Franklin
House, which he recommended to me as a comfortable hotel.

As we came into the harbor we stood on the deck together while he
pointed out the places of interest. I was thrilled with its beauty and
its extent. The day was mild. A fresh breeze was blowing. May clouds
floated swiftly in the clear sky. I felt my blood course electrically in
expectation of the wonders of New York. It was now lying before me in
all its color and mystery. Boats of all kinds passed us. There was a
tangled thicket of masts at the piers. I discerned gay awnings over a
walk around a building near the water. Yarnell said this was Castle
Garden, where many diners came for the excellence of the food and the
view of the harbor. I could begin to see up the streets of the city
beyond the Battery. But there was a riot of stir and activity, in
expectation of our boat.

I disembarked and hired a hack. I was traveling with a huge valise.
This the hackman took for me. Yarnell came up to bid me adieu, promising
to call upon me at the Franklin House. The fare was twenty-five cents a
mile. The hotel was at 197 Broadway. Was it more than a mile? I did not
know. I was charged fifty cents for the trip. I was not stinted for
money, and it did not matter. I paid the amount demanded, and walked
into the hotel.

How simple things are at the end of a journey and a daily restlessness
to arrive! My valise was taken to my room. I went with the negro porter.
I looked from my window out upon Broadway. The porter departed. The door
was closed. My journey to New York was over. I was alone. I began to
wish for Yarnell, wish to be back upon the boat. Above all I began to
sense the distance that separated me from England and those I loved.
Here was the afternoon on my hands. Should I not see something of the
city? When should I start west? I took from my pocket the letter written
from Illinois by the lawyer, who had advised this journey and my
presence at Jacksonville, for that was the town where my father's estate
was to be settled. For the first time I was conscious of the fact that
difficulties probably stood in my way. The letter read: "Claims are
likely to be made against the estate that require your personal
attention." What could it mean? Why had my grandmother said nothing to
me of this? She had seen the letter. I began to wonder. But to fight
down my growing loneliness I started out to see the city.

As I passed up the street I bought _Valentine's Manual_ and glanced at
it as I walked. How far up did the city extend? The manual said more
than thirteen miles. I could not make that distance before dark. A
passerby said that there was a horse railway running as far as Murray
Hill. But I strode on, arriving in a little while at Washington Square.
Beyond this I could see that the city did not present the appearance of
being greatly built. On my way I passed the gas works, the City Hall,
many banks, several circulating libraries, saw the signs of almost
innumerable insurance companies. But the people! They were all strange
to me. So many negroes. My manual said there were over 14,000 negroes in
the city, which, added to the white population, made an aggregate of
more than 200,000 souls. I sat for a while in the Park and then retraced
my steps.

On my way back I stopped at Niblo's Garden at Broadway and Prince
Street. It was a gay place. People were feasting upon oysters, drinking,
laughing, talking over the affairs of the day. Here I partook of oysters
for the first time in my life. I walked through the grounds, looking at
the flowers. I stared about at the splendor of the paintings and the
mirrors in the rooms. Then like a ghost I resumed my way to my hotel.
Why? There was nothing there to call me back. Yet it was the only home I
had, and the evening was coming on.

Instead of stopping at the hotel, I went on to Castle Garden. I decided
to dine there. I could look over the harbor and the ships. It was a way
to put myself in touch with England, to travel back over the way I had
come. I found a table and ordered a meal.

I became conscious of the fact that the captain of the _Columbia and
Caledonia_ was at a near table with a gay party. They had wine, and
there was much merriment. This abandonment was in contrast to the
serious, almost dark spirit of a party at another table. This was
composed of men entirely. I had never seen such faces before. Their hair
was long. They wore goatees. They were strangely dressed. They talked
with a broad accent. Excitement and anger rose in their voices. They
were denouncing President Jackson. The matter seemed to be a force bill,
the tariff imposed by New England's enterprise, the duty of the Southern
States to resist it. They were insisting that there was no warrant to
pass a tariff law, that it was clearly a breach of the Constitution, and
that it should be resisted to the death. There was bitter cursing of
Yankees, of the greed of New England, of its disregard of the rights of
the South.... But out upon the harbor the sea gulls were drifting. I
could hear the slapping of the waves against the rocks. And in the midst
of this the orchestra began to play "Annie Laurie." The tears came to my
eyes. I arose and left the place. My mind turned to a theater as a means
of relief to these pressing thoughts. I consulted my manual, and started
for the American theater. It was described as an example of Doric
architecture, modeled after the temple of Minerva at Athens. I found it
on the Bowery and Elizabeth Street, bought a ticket for seventy-five
cents and entered. The play was _Othello_, and I had never seen it
before.

I could not help but overhear and follow the conversation of the people
who sat next to me. They were wondering what moved Shakespeare to depict
the story of a black man married to a white woman. Could such a theme be
dramatized now? How could a woman, fair and high-bred, become the wife
of a sooty creature like Othello? Was it real? If not real, what was
Shakespeare trying to do? And much more to the same effect, together
with remarks about negroes and that slavery should be let alone by New
England, and by everyone else.

The play was dreary to me, played listlessly where it was not ranted and
torn to tatters. I sat it through and then went back to my hotel.... The
loneliness of that room as I entered it has never left my memory. For
long hours I did not sleep. The city had 600 night watch, so the manual
said, and I could hear some of them going their rounds. At last ... I
awoke and it was morning. I awoke with a sense of delight in the
strength and vitality which sleep had restored to me.... I went below
to breakfast and to find the way to travel to Illinois.




CHAPTER IV


The clerk of the hotel told me that the best route was by way of Albany,
the canal, the Great Lakes to Chicago; that when I got there I would
likely find a boat or stage service to Jacksonville. I could leave at
noon for Albany if I wished. Accordingly, I made ready to do so.

I was entranced with the river boat. It was longer than the _Columbia
and Caledonia_. And it was propelled by steam. It had the most enormous
wheels. And no sooner were we under way than I found that we were
gliding along at the rate of twenty miles an hour. The swiftly passing
hills and palisades of the Hudson served to mark our speed. There were
great saloons, lovely awnings under which to read or lounge, promenade
decks. And there was a gay and well-behaved crowd of passengers.... At
dinner we were seated at long tables, and served with every luxury. And
the whole journey cost me less than seven shillings.

On arriving at Albany that night at about nine o'clock I found myself in
the best of luck. I could get passage on a canal boat the next morning
for Buffalo; rather I was permitted to sleep on board.... I got on and
retired. I awoke just as the boat was beginning to start. I had never
seen anything like this before. The boat was narrow, sharp, gayly
painted. It was drawn by three horses, each ridden by a boy who urged
the horses forward. We traveled at the great speed of five miles an
hour.

But it was delightful. We were more than three days going from Albany to
Buffalo. The time was well spent. The scenery was varied and beautiful.
All the while we were climbing, for Lake Erie, to which we had to be
lifted, was much above us. We went through lovely valleys; we ran beside
glistening streams and rivers; we wound around hills. The farms were
large and prosperous. The villages were new, fresh with white paint and
green blinds, hidden among flowers and shrubbery.

You see, I am eighteen and these external objects realize my dreams and
stimulate them. I do not know these people. They are frank, talkative,
often vulgar and presuming. But they are friendly. There is much
merriment on board, for we have to dodge down frequently to save our
heads from the bridges which the farmers build right across the canal.
The ladies have to be warned and assisted. There are narrow escapes and
shouts of laughter. And when the dinner bell is rung by a comical negro
every one rushes for the dining room. I am introduced again to the
American oyster, raw, fried, and stewed. It is the most delicious of
discoveries among the new viands. Then we have wonderful roast turkey,
chicken, and the greatest variety of vegetables and sweets. I am keeping
a daily record of events and impressions to mail to my dear grandmother
when I shall arrive at Buffalo....

Sometimes I get tired of the boat. Then I go on land and run along the
path behind the horses. A young woman on her way to Michigan to teach
school joins me in these reliefs from the tedium of the boat. We
exchange a few words. But I see that I am not old enough for her. I have
already observed her in confiding conversation with a man about the age
of Yarnell. And soon they go together to trot along the path, to stray
off a little into the meadows, or at the base of the picturesque
hills.... I am interested in the talk of the passengers, and cannot
choose but follow it at times.... One man has been reading the _New
Yorker_, printed by H. Greeley and Company. I learn that Horace Greeley
is his full name, and he comes in for a berating at the hands of a man
with one of the characteristic goatees that I first observed at Castle
Garden. The Whigs! I had always associated this party with
latitudinarian principles. Now I hear it called a centralist party, a
monarchist party. A voluble man, who chews tobacco, curses it as a mask
for the old Federalist party, which tried to corrupt America with the
British system, after it had failed as a combination of Loyalists to
keep America under the dominion of Great Britain.... This is all a maze
to me, at least so far as the American application is concerned. Then
the man with the goatee assails New England, and calls her the devotee
of the soured gospel of envy which covers its wolf face of hate with the
lamb's decapitated head of universal brotherhood and slavery abolition.
Surely there is much strife in America.... Also again President
Jackson, the tariff, and the force bill! And will South Carolina secede
from the Union on account of the unjust and lawless tariff? New England
tried to secede once when the run of affairs did not suit her. Why not
South Carolina, then, if she chooses? Another man is reading a book of
poems and talking at intervals to a companion. I hear him say that a Mr.
Willis is one of the world's greatest poets. I glance at the book and
see the name Nathaniel Parker Willis. Also it seems Willis is the editor
of one of the world's greatest literary journals. It is published in New
York and is called the _New York Mirror_.... It is all so strange. Is it
true that in this country, so far from England, there are men who are
the equals of Shelley and Byron, or of Tennyson, whose first book has
given me such delight recently?...

We near the journey's end. At Lockport we are lifted up the precipice
over which the Falls of Niagara pour some miles distant. We are now on a
level with Lake Erie, to which we have climbed by many locks and lifts
over the hills since we left Albany. Soon we travel along the side of
the Niagara River; quickly we drift into Buffalo.




CHAPTER V


Buffalo, they told me, had about 15,000 people. I wished to see
something of it before departing for the farther west. For should I ever
come this way again? I started from the dock, but immediately found
myself surrounded by runners and touters lauding the excellences of the
boats to which they were attached. The harbor was full of steamboats
competing for trade.... They rang bells, let off steam, whistled. Bands
played. Negroes ran here and there, carrying freight and baggage. The
air was vibrating with yells and profanity.... But I made my escape and
walked through the town. It had broad streets, lovely squares,
substantial and attractive buildings and residences. And there was Lake
Erie, blue and fresh, rippling under the brilliant May sun. I had never
seen anything remotely approximating Lake Erie.... "How large is it?" I
inquired of a passerby. I was told that it was 60 miles wide and 250
miles long. Could it be true? Was there anything in all of Europe to
equal it? I could not for the moment remember the extent of the Caspian
Sea. And I stood in wonder and delight.

As I left the dock for my walk I had observed the name _Illinois_ on a
boat that had all the appearances of being brand new. I walked leisurely
toward the dock so as to avoid the touters as much as possible while I
was overlooking the boat. I liked it, but would it take me to Chicago?
The gangplank was lying on the dock and near it stood what seemed to me
to be the captain and the pilot, around them touters and others. I edged
around to the captain and asked him if the _Illinois_ would take me to
Chicago. "In about an hour," he said with a laugh. Immediately I was
besieged by the runners to help me on, to get my baggage, to serve me in
all possible ways. I couldn't hire all of them. I chose one, who got my
valise for me, and I went aboard.

It was a new boat, and this was its maiden trip. All the stewards,
negroes, waiters were brisk and obliging, and bent on making the trip an
event. The captain gave parties. He was a bluff, kindly man, who mingled
much with favorite passengers. Wine flowed freely. The food was abundant
and delicious. We had dances by moonlight on the deck. A band played at
dinner and at night. The boat was distinguished for many quaint and
interesting characters. I enjoyed it all, but made no friends. I did not
understand this free and easy manner of life. The captain noted me, and
asked if I was well placed and comfortable. Various people opened
conversations with me. But I was shy, and I was English. I could not
unbend. I did not desire to do so.

We docked at Erie and at Cleveland, both small places. We came to
Detroit, the capital of Michigan. On the way some one pointed out the
scene of Perry's victory over the hated British. We passed into Lake
Huron.

Then later I was privileged to see Mackinac, an Indian trading post. I
viewed the smoking wigwams from the deck of the _Illinois_. Here were
the savages buying powder, blankets, and whisky. The squaws were selling
beaded shoes. The shore was wooded and high.... I looked below into the
crystalline depths of the water. I could see great fish swimming in the
transparent calms, which mirrored the clouds, the forests, and the boats
and canoes of the Indians.... We ran down to Green Bay, Wisconsin. Here
too there were Indian traders.... We went on to Milwaukee. As there was
no harbor here a small steamer came out to take us off. I went ashore
with some others. A creek flowed from the land to the lake. But the town
was nothing. Only a storehouse and a few wooden buildings. Soon we
proceeded to Chicago. I was told that the northern boundary of Illinois
had been pushed north, in order to give the state the southern shores of
the great lake, with the idea of capturing a part of the emigration and
trade of the East. This fact eventually influenced my life, and the
history of the nation, as will be seen.

Chicago had been a trading post, and to an extent was yet. The
population was less than 1000 people. There was a fort here, too, built
in place of one which had been destroyed in a massacre by the Indians.
There was much activity here, particularly in land speculation. Not a
half mile from the place where we landed there was a forest where some
Indians were camping. I heard that an Indian war was just over. The
Black Hawks had been defeated and driven off. But some friendly remnants
of other breeds were loitering about the town.

Carrying my valise, I began to look for a hotel for the night. Also, how
and when was I to get to Jacksonville? A man came by. I hailed him and
asked to be driven to a hotel. He walked with me north toward the river,
past the fort and landed me at a hostelry built partly of logs and
partly of frames. Surely this was not New York or Buffalo! As I came to
the hotel I saw a man standing at the door, holding the bridle bits of
an Indian pony. He came into the hotel soon, evidently after disposing
of his charge. At that moment I was asking Mr. Wentworth, the hotel
manager, how to get to Jacksonville. The man came forward and in the
kindest of voices interrupted to tell me what the manager evidently
could not. "I am going there myself to-morrow," he said. "You can ride
behind. The pony can carry both of us." I looked at my new-found friend.
He had deep blue eyes, a noble face, a musical and kindly voice. He
looked like the people I had known in England. I was drawn to him at
once in confidence and friendship. He went on to tell me later that he
had been in the Black Hawk War; that he had been spending some time in
Chicago trying to decide whether he would locate there or return to
Jacksonville. He had been offered forty acres of land about a mile south
of the river for the pony. But what good was the land? It was nothing
but sand and scrub oaks. Unless the town grew and made the land
valuable as building property, it would never be of value. For farming
it was worthless. But around Jacksonville the soil was incomparably
fertile and beautiful. He had decided, therefore, to return to
Jacksonville. His eyes deepened. "You see that I am attached to that
country." He smiled. "Yes, I must go back. Some one is waiting for me.
You are heartily welcome to ride behind." How long would it take? A
matter of five days. Meanwhile he had told me how to reach there
independently: by stage to a place 90 miles south on the Illinois River,
then by boat to a town on the river called Bath, then cross country to
Jacksonville. I began to balance the respective disadvantages. "My name
is Reverdy Clayton," he said, extending his hand in the most cordial
way. I could not resist him. "My name is James Miles," I returned with
some diffidence. "James Miles," he echoed. "James Miles ... there was a
man of that name in Jacksonville, poor fellow ... now gone." "Perhaps he
was my father ... did you know my father?" I felt a thrill go through
me. Was this new-found acquaintance before me a friend of my father's?
It turned out to be so. But why "poor fellow"?

Clayton was not over thirty-two, therefore my father's junior by some
years. How well had they known each other? We went to dinner together.
We were served with bacon and greens, strong coffee, apple pie. It was
all very rough and strange. But Clayton told me many things. He knew the
lawyer Brooks who had written me. Brooks was a reliable man. But when I
pressed Clayton for details about my father he grew strangely reticent.
I began to feel depressed, overcome by a foreboding of wonder.

After dinner we separated. Clayton had errands to do preparatory to
leaving and I went forth to see the town. What a spectacle of undulating
board sidewalks built over swales of sand, running from hillock to
hillock! What shacks used for stores, trading offices, marts for real
estate! Truly it was a place as if built in a night, relieved but little
by buildings of a more substantial sort.... Drinking saloons were
everywhere. I heard music and entered one of these resorts. There was a
barroom in front and a dancing room in the rear. The place was filled
with sailors, steamboat captains and pilots, traders, roisterers,
clerks, hackmen, and undescribed characters. Women mingled with the men
and drank with them. They dressed with conspicuous abandon, in loud
colors. Their faces were rouged. They ran in and out of the dance room
with escorts or without, stood at the bar for drinks, entwined their
arms with those of the men. In the dance room a band was playing. A man
with a tambourine added to the hilarity of the music. It was a wild
spectacle, unlike anything I had ever seen. No one accosted me. I could
feel a different spirit in the crowd from that I had seen on the boats
or in New York. There was no talk of politics, negroes, force bills.
They did not seem to know or to care about these things. It was a wild
assemblage, but without meanness or malice. They were occupied solely
with a spirit of carnival, of dancing, drinking, of talk about the
arrival of the _Illinois_; about the price of land and the great future
of Chicago. "It's as plain as day," said a man at the bar. "Here we are
at the foot of the lake. The trade comes our way. The steamboats come
here from the East. Look at the country! No such farm country in the
world! Why, in twenty years this town will have a population of 20,000
people. It's bound to." How could it be? How could such a locality ever
be the seat of a city? So far from the East. And nothing here but wastes
of sand!

I left the place unnoticed and returned to the hotel. I sat down
drearily enough. The feeling that I was far from home, far even from the
civilization and the charm of New York came over me with depressing
effect. I began to wish that Clayton would appear. I had not decided to
accept his kindly offer. I must be off to-morrow. The air seemed
oppressive. Was it so warm? I put my hand to my brow. It was hot.
Perhaps I was not well. The trip I had just ended was after all
wearisome. I had not slept well some nights. I sensed that I was
fatigued. What would a ride of more than 200 miles on a pony do to me?
But on the other hand I had the alternative of 90 miles by stage. For
the first time I began to feel apprehension about the days ahead.

While I was thinking these matters over Clayton came in. He supplemented
my doubts by telling me that if I was not used to riding, a journey of
such length would make me lame; at least a little. I then decided that
I would take the stage, and the boat. The next morning, promising to see
me in Jacksonville and offering to befriend me in any way he could,
Clayton bestrode his pony and was off. In an hour I was rolling in the
stage toward the Illinois River....




CHAPTER VI


We were some hours getting through the sand. Then we came to hilly
country overgrown with oaks and some pines. Later the soil was rocky. We
skirted along a little river; and here and there I had my first view of
the prairie. The air above me was thrilling with the song of spring
birds. I did not know what they were. Some of them resembled the English
skylark in the habit of singing and soaring. But the note was different.

My head felt heavy. I seemed to be growing more listless. But I could
not help but note the prairie: the limitless expanse of heavy grass,
here and there brightened by brilliant blossoms. All the houses along
the way were built of logs. The inhabitants were a large breed for the
most part, tall and angular, dressed sometimes in buckskin, coonskin
caps. Now and then I saw a hunter carrying a long rifle. The wild geese
were flying....

Some of the passengers were dressed in jeans; others in linsey-woolsey
dyed blue. As we stopped along the way I had an opportunity to study the
faces of the Illinoisians. Their jaws were thin, their eyes, deeply
sunk, had a far-away melancholy in them. They were swarthy. Their voices
were keyed to a drawl. They sprawled, were free and easy in their
movements. They told racy stories, laughed immoderately, chewed tobacco.
Some of the passengers were drinking whisky, which was procured anywhere
along the way, at taverns or stores. The stage rolled from side to side.
The driver kept cracking his whip, but without often touching the
horses, which kept an even pace hour after hour. We had to stop for
meals. But the heavy food turned my stomach. I could not relish the
cornbread, the bacon or ham, the heavy pie. When we reached La Salle,
where I was to get the boat, I found myself very fatigued, aching all
through my flesh and bones, and with a dreamy, heavy sensation about my
eyes.

The country had become more hilly. And now the bluffs along the Illinois
River rose with something of the majesty of the Palisades of the Hudson.
The river itself was not nearly so broad or noble, but it was not
without beauty.... More oblivious of my surroundings than I had been
before, I boarded _The Post Boy_, a stern wheeler, and in a few minutes
she blew the most musical of whistles and we were off....

The vision of hills and prairies around me harmonized with the dreamy
sensations that filled my heavy head and tired body. I sat on deck and
viewed it all. I did not go to the table. The very smell of the food
nauseated me. I do not remember how I got to bed, nor how long I was
there. I remember being brought to by a negro porter who told me that we
were approaching Bath where I was to get off. I heard him say to another
porter: "That boy is sure sick." And then a tall spare man came to me,
told me that he was taking the stage as I was, and was going almost to
Jacksonville, and that he would see me through. He helped me in the
stage and we started. I remember nothing further....

I became conscious of parti-colored ribbons fluttering from my body as
if blown by a rapid breeze from a central point of fixture in my breast.
Was it the life going out of me, or the life clinging to me in spite of
the airs of eternity? My eyes opened. I saw standing at the foot of the
bed, an octoroon about fourteen years of age. She was staring at me with
anxious and sympathetic eyes, in which there was also a light of terror.
I tried to lift my hands. I could not. I was unable to turn my body. I
was completely helpless. I looked about the room. It was small, papered
in a figure of blue. Two windows stared me in the face. "Where am I?" I
asked. "Yo's in Miss Spurgeon's house ... yo's in good hands." At that
moment Miss Spurgeon entered. She was slender, graceful. Her hair was
very black. Her eyes gray and hazel. Her nose delicate and exquisitely
shaped. She put her hand on my brow and in a voice which had a musical
quaver, she said: "I believe the fever has left you. Yes, it has. Would
you like something to eat?" I was famished and said: "Yes, something, if
you please." She went out, returning with some gruel. Turning to the
octoroon she said: "Will you feed him, Zoe?" And Zoe came to the chair
by the bed and fed me, for I could not lift a hand. Then I fell into a
refreshing sleep. I had been ill of typhoid. Had I contracted it from
the oysters, or from food on the steamer? But I had been saved. Miss
Spurgeon had refused to let the doctor bleed me. She believed that
careful nursing would suffice, and she had brought me through. But I had
a relapse. I was allowed to eat what I craved. I indulged my inordinate
hunger, and came nearer to death than with the fever itself. But from
this I rallied by the strength of my youth and a great vitality. All the
while Zoe and Miss Spurgeon watched over me with the most tender care.
And one day I came out of a sleep to find Reverdy Clayton by the bed.

A father could not have looked at me with more solicitude. His voice was
grave and tender. His eyes bright with sympathy. "You will soon be well
again," he said. He took my hand, sat down by me, cautioned me not to
worry about my business affairs, told me that nothing would happen
adverse to my interests while I was incapacitated, that Mr. Brooks was
guarding my affairs and that they were not in peril.... And it turned
out that Miss Spurgeon was his fiancée, that it was to her that he had
returned from Chicago. They were soon now to be married. I asked him if
Zoe was a slave. He laughed at this. "No one born in Illinois is a
slave," he said. "This is a free country. Zoe was born here."

Miss Spurgeon came in and I could now see them side by side. They seemed
so kind and noble hearted, so suited to each other. I loved both of
them.

I was stronger now, was sitting up part of each day. I reached out my
hands and took their hands, bringing them together in a significant
contact. Miss Spurgeon bent over me, placing a kiss upon my brow. "You
are a dear boy," she said. And Reverdy said: "The Lord keep you always,
son." Their eyes showed the tears, and as for me my cheeks were suddenly
wet. Then from what they said I learned that Reverdy had been gone many
months, that Sarah, for that was her name, had been in great anxiety,
that Reverdy had just got out of the service the morning I had seen him
in Chicago; and that he had speculated on staying there a while for the
purpose of improving his fortune with a view to his marriage. But now
having returned, they were to be married soon. What had been the delay
thus far? They were waiting for me to get well. I had interfered, no
doubt, with the wedding plans, with the arranging and ordering of the
house for the wedding. But they said they wished me to be present. Sarah
thought there was something well omened in my meeting with Reverdy in
Chicago, and in the fate that had brought me to her house, and she
wished to fulfill the happy auspices to the end by having me for the
chief guest at the wedding. But how had I come to this household?

The stranger who had helped me on the boat at Bath had turned me over to
a young man named Douglas who had brought me here, because of the poor
comforts at the inn of Jacksonville. Douglas had been here but a few
months himself, having come from the state of Vermont. He, too, had
been ill of the same disease; had been confined under wretched
circumstances at Cleveland on his way west; had nearly died. When he saw
me he was moved to do the very best for me. He had brought me to Miss
Spurgeon's and pleaded with her to take me in. And she had consented to
the ordeal of my care, because Zoe insisted upon it, offering to take
the burden of waiting upon me and watching over me. The Spurgeon house
was quite the best in this town of 1000 people. Sarah's father and
mother were both dead, and she was living here with a grandmother, a
woman now of more than eighty, whom I did not see until I began to go
about the house.... Meantime Zoe's face and manner became clearer to me
day by day. She was not very darkly hued, rather lighter than the Hindus
I had seen in England. Her hair was abundant and straight. Her lips were
full but shapely. Her nose rather of a Caucasian type. Her voice was the
most musical one could imagine. And she sang--she sang "Annie Laurie" at
times in a voice which thrilled me. There was grace in her carriage,
charm in her gestures and movements. And she waited upon me with the
affection of a sister.

As I grew better Mr. Brooks came to call upon me. And at last I went to
his office to talk over the matter of my father's estate. It was now
July and the heat was more terrible than I had ever conceived could
prevail outside of a tropical country.




CHAPTER VII


Sarah and Zoe followed me to the door the morning I went to see Mr.
Brooks. Cholera had descended upon the community and they begged me to
go to Mr. Brooks' office and return at once, and not to be in the sun
any more than was necessary. I had no fear. Having come from so serious
an illness I did not feel that another malady would attack me soon. As I
walked along I could see that the boundless prairie was around me. I
inhaled the spaciousness of the scene. I could see the deep woods which
stood beyond the rich prairies of tall and heavy grass. The town was
built roughly of hewn logs. It was like a camp of hastily constructed
shacks. But a college had already been founded. It had two buildings,
one of logs and one of brick. I looked back to see that the Spurgeon
house was substantially built, with care and taste.... Mr. Brooks'
office was in one of the log structures about the square. One entered it
from the street. I counted the signs of eleven lawyers on my way. The
tavern where I had stayed, except for Douglas and Miss Spurgeon, was a
most uninviting place.

Mr. Brooks sat behind a rude table. Back of him on a wall were a
portrait of Washington and a map of Illinois. On the table there was a
law book of some sort. Altogether there were three chairs in the room.
The floor was made of puncheon boards, and was bare. Flies buzzed in the
air and at the rude windows. I felt strong when I left the house. Now I
was not sure how long I should feel so. Mr. Brooks invited me to have a
seat; and after a few words about the heat and the cholera he began to
tell me stories of the people and the country. "Some years ago," he
said, "a man came to this country, I mean over around the river country
which you saw when you took the steamboat at Bath. He didn't have
anything, but he was ambitious to be rich. How could he do it? Well,
you can work and buy land with your savings, and land here under the
Homestead Act has been $1.25 an acre since 1820; still that may not put
you ahead very fast. And if you're ambitious you want to get rich quick.
That's the way every one here feels who is bent on getting rich. Money
is not as plentiful as land; and if land is only $1.25 an acre it takes
$800 to get a section. That's a lot of money to a man who has nothing.
This land around here is rich as the valley of the Nile. It is six feet
or more of black fertility. I'll bet that some say it will be worth $50
an acre."

I began to wonder why these Americans talk so much. I had observed it
everywhere. Here I was come on a matter of business, of my father's
estate; and the lawyer with whom I was forced to deal was talking to me
interminably of things that had nothing to do with it. But I was young
and strange, and not very strong; and it did not occur to me to show
impatience with him. And so he went on.

"This man was fine to look at, prepossessing and engaging. He looked
like a driver, a man of his word too. And one day when he was standing
on the street here he was approached by a stranger who began to get him
into conversation. You see, we don't have slavery here as a regular
thing. The negroes are sort o' apprenticed--free but apprenticed. But
under pretty severe laws, have to be registered, can't testify, and so
forth. This state is part of the Northwest Territory which was made free
by the old Confederate States in 1787; but we actually had an election
here eleven years ago to make it slave. And the people voted it free.
Anyhow we have negroes here; and the people are from Tennessee,
Kentucky, Virginia, and the Carolinas where they do have slavery, and
we're all beginnin' to be scared over the agitation. Now this stranger
was a Southerner and any one could see he was; but of course didn't look
different from some of our own people. So this stranger began to talk to
this man and ask him if he was married, and he wasn't; and asked him if
he would like to make some money, which of course he did.

"And finally the stranger said that he had a daughter that he would like
to introduce, and asked this man to come with him a mile or so, and if
he liked the girl he would pay him to marry her. They started off and
found the girl. She was a mulatto or octoroon as they say, and as
pretty as a red wagon. You see the stranger was pure white and from New
Orleans; but the mother of the girl was a slave and they say kind of
coffee colored. And the upshot of it was that the stranger offered this
man $2500 to marry the octoroon. What he wanted to do was to place her
well. He didn't want her to run the chance of ever being a slave, as she
might be in the South. He was her father and he naturally had a father's
feeling for her, even if she was an octoroon. And this stranger said
that he had been around town and the country for some days looking at
prospective husbands and making some inquiry, and that he had found no
one to equal this man. The man liked the octoroon, the octoroon liked
the man. And they struck a bargain. The man got his $2500; he married
the girl on the spot. The stranger disappeared, and was never seen or
heard of again. It all happened right there. The man bought land, he got
rich. He was one of the best men I ever knew, and one of my best
friends. The octoroon died in childbirth, leaving a daughter still
living and in this town. The man died recently. His name was James
Miles. He was your father. And Zoe is your half-sister, and wants to
share in the estate, and that's why I sent for you."

The flies began a louder buzzing at the window. The heat had increased.
I looked through the open door and saw a man fall over, whether from
heat or cholera I could not tell. I was by now weary and faint. I said:
"I do not know what to say now. If we can agree, I mean if we are
allowed to agree, Zoe and I will have no trouble. I am getting faint.
And I shall come again." With that I arose and walked weakly from the
room.




CHAPTER VIII


What were my thoughts after all? Was I ashamed of my kinship with Zoe?
With this human being who had nursed me so tenderly through my illness?
Did I begrudge her the interest which she had, of right, with me in our
father's estate? She was as closely connected to him by ties of blood as
I was. These things I reflected upon as I felt course through me a deep
undercurrent of regret.

Was it my mother? Her face came before me as I had learned to know it
from her picture. Yes, that seemed to be it. My mother had not been
honored. How could my father for any ambition, for any exigency of
circumstance stoop to a marriage of this sort, with the memory of my
mother still fresh in mind, if not in heart? Ah! that was it! Did he
keep her in his heart? My grandmother's reticence about my father began
to fill in with significance of this sort. She knew that he had married
the octoroon not many years after my mother's death. She resented it and
she preserved silence about him, while keeping me ignorant. Thus without
any preparation for the disclosure, I had encountered it at full speed
in my career. Reverdy had, no doubt, alluded to this matter when he
spoke with such feeling of my father in Chicago. "Poor fellow," he had
said. Did my father suffer for this marriage? What was his secret? Why
"poor fellow?"

With these thoughts I entered the house. I could sense that they knew
that I should return with the secret which they had kept from me. Zoe
was not in sight. Sarah's grandmother sat in her chair by the window
and called me to her. "Come here, Jimmy," she said. "You're a nice
English boy. You know we are all English. My father and mother were
English ... well, to be truthful, my father was half Irish. His mother
was Irish. And that makes us all friends, no matter how much we fight. We
fight and get over it. My husband was in the Revolutionary War; and he's
dead and gone long ago; and here I am in this new country of Illinois
with Sarah and a son-in-law soon to be ... and maybe as lonely sometimes
as you are. Sarah's mother was my pride and she's dead a long time too,
but I don't get over that.... What's the matter, Jimmy? You've had bad
news. O, yes, it had to come. You know now about Zoe. Well, remember that
pretty is as pretty does. For that matter, she is pretty enough, and
good enough too. Change her skin and any boy would be proud to be her
brother. That's what a little color does. And yet the good Lord made us
all, white as well as black. I have always liked the colored people. I
liked them in Tennessee, and I hated to see them mistreated whenever
they were. But I'm like a lot of others, I don't know what we are going
to do with so many of them; and I say let the southern people run their
own business and not try to intermeddle in the business of the Almighty.
If He hadn't wanted slavery He could have prevented it. As for me, I
don't want no slaves. Every one to his own way. Reverdy's father came
down from Tennessee too. He emancipated all his slaves before coming. He
grew to hate slavery. He brought one old nigger woman with him to
Illinois. She's here yet, on a farm not more than fifteen miles away.
And Reverdy's father provided for her, and left a little fortune to
Reverdy ... more than $600, and that gives him a start."

The old lady talked on in this manner without a pause.

Just then Reverdy and Sarah came in. They had been for a walk. Sarah
had gathered a bouquet of wild flowers. They took in the scene, evidently
divined the subject of our talk. For Reverdy sat down and began with
gentleness to pick up its threads. "You have been told, James, I hope,
that Zoe is not trying to take anything from you. She will make no fight
on your father's will." ... "Will," I echoed. "There was a will then?"
"Didn't Mr. Brooks tell you?" ... He hadn't told me. He had scarcely had
the opportunity. But if Zoe had been remembered in the will what was the
danger now? "No, your father was fond of Zoe ... he remembered her; but
not to the same extent that he remembered you. She gets $500 of the
estate and you get the rest. But the hitch is here: we have eleven
lawyers in Jacksonville and another one studying to be a lawyer; this
newcomer, Douglas. And they are as hungry as catfish after a hard
winter. And Mr. Brooks feared that some of these fellows would try to
stir up a little business by using Zoe to attack the will, and he
thought it was best to get it settled. He was a good friend of your
father's, liked him, and he wants to see his wishes carried out. Your
father was one of the best of men. It's a great loss to the
community ... his death."

But as Zoe was my sister why should she not have some of the land that
my father left? Should her dark skin deprive her of that? My father had
evidently thought so. But now I could settle the estate by enforcing the
will, or I could divide the estate with her equally. Could I enforce the
will after all? I knew nothing of such things. I hadn't asked Mr.
Brooks' advice about anything. There I sat then going over these matters
in my mind, in a kind of weariness and sickness of heart. I had heard of
cases where wills had been rejected for fraud or lack of mind on the
part of the maker. Was it possible that my father's mind was disturbed?
What fraud could have been wrought upon him? I, the chief beneficiary,
had not influenced him; no one could have done so for me. What then?

Zoe came in now and began to spread the table. There was only the one
large room downstairs beside the kitchen. But I loved its comforts, its
quaint and substantial furnishings. All brought from North Carolina
originally, Mrs. Spurgeon said. There were silver spoons, hand wrought;
and blue china, and thick blue spreads for the table. There were three
rooms upstairs. The beds were posters, built up with feather beds in the
cold weather; spread now with thick linen sheets. Mrs. Spurgeon had
woven some of these things. Her loom stood yet in one of the outhouses,
on occasion set up in the living room when she brought herself to the
task of weaving, rarely now. She was too old for much labor. Sarah
helped Zoe with the meal. Reverdy stayed to share it with us. But I had
learned that he lived at the tavern, though he disliked it thoroughly.

Some nights later I asked Zoe to walk out with me. She was timid about
the rattlesnakes which she said were everywhere through the woods and
the grass, sometimes crawling into the roads. There were wildcats and
wolves too in the timber; but they were not so likely to be encountered
now as in the winter time. I had a pocket pistol, and taking up a
hickory stick that was in the corner, I urged Zoe to allay her fears and
come. Sarah joined me in prevailing upon her. Zoe doubtless knew that I
wished to talk with her about the estate; and at last she walked with me
out of the house and into the road.

After a few minutes of silence I asked her about my father: what were
his spirits; his way of life; where did he live; did she live with him?
Then Zoe told me some of the things I had learned from Mr. Brooks. And
as her mother had died when Zoe was born she had been taken by Mrs.
Spurgeon to raise. She said that her father, my father, had lived a part
of the time at the inn, and a part of the time at his house on the farm;
that during the last two years of his life she had seen more of him than
formerly, though he was often in St. Louis, and even New Orleans. And
she added with hesitation that he drank a good deal at the last, and was
often depressed and silent. "Was he kind to you?" I asked. Zoe said that
he was never anything but kindness, and that he provided her with
comforts and with schooling whenever any one came along to teach the
children of the community. I had already seen around the house a copy of
the _Spectator_, and Pope's poems. Zoe told me that she had read these
books, part of them over and over, and that she had had a teacher the
year before who had helped her to understand them. I began to delimn Zoe
as a girl of intelligence. Of vital spirits she had an abundance.... The
night was very warm and of wonderful stillness, no breeze. We heard the
cry of what Zoe called "varmints" in the woods. A night bird was
singing. She told me it was the whippoorwill. I never had heard a more
thrillingly melancholy note. Once Zoe stepped upon a stick in the road.
Thinking it was a snake she gave a cry and leaped to one side. But I
calmed her and we kept our way.... I had never seen the stars to the
same advantage, not even on the ocean. They were spread above us in
infinite numbers, and of remarkable brilliancy. And there was the
prairie, stretching as far as the eye could penetrate into the haze of
the horizon, except where a distant forest rimmed the edge of the
visible landscape. Zoe took up my remark about the spaciousness of the
country with telling me that young Douglas had been to supper a few
nights before I had come to myself out of the fever, and that he had
said that the prairie affected him as liberty would affect an eagle
released from a cage; and that he looked back upon the hills of Vermont
as barriers to his vision. "He is nearly your age," said Zoe; "only two
years older. You will like him; every one does. No one can talk like him
that I have ever heard."....

At last I brought forward the subject of our father's will. Zoe was
silent for a moment, for my specific question was what she wished to
have done. Then she said: "It's all foolishness. These lawyers here have
been bothering me to get me to fight the will, and trying to get me to
break the will because my pa drank. I know he drank, but I don't see
what difference that makes. He always knew what he was doing, so far as
I know; and even if he didn't I'd never say nothin' about it. I know my
place; and things is gettin' worse about colored folks, and less chance
for a colored girl to marry a white man even if she wanted to,
'specially if I knew he was marryin' me to get my land. I'm satisfied
with the will the way it is and always have been, or any way you want
it, Mr. James. I know my place, and that there is a kind of curse on me
for bein' dark skinned; and I think my pa was mighty kind to make the
will the way he did. This 5000 acres he left is worth a lot of money,
more than $5000 Mr. Reverdy says; and if I had what the will gives me
I'd have $500, and what would I do with it? For I've always got to work
anyway."

Suddenly we saw lights ahead in the road and heard the rattle of wheels.
It was the stage coming into Jacksonville. It was upon us almost at
once. The lights of the lantern made us blink our eyes. We stepped to
one side. A voice called out: "Well I'll be damned if there ain't a
white feller strollin' with a nigger!" "Shut your trap," said the
driver, and the stage rolled rapidly away from us.

My mind was suddenly made up as to the farm by the remark falling so
brutally from these unknown lips. I took Zoe's hands. I drew her to me.
She was weeping. Was not one half of her blood English blood? Yes, and
what Englishman would not resent with tears an insult which he could
neither deny nor punish? But I would punish it. Zoe should have her
rightful half.... And silently we walked back.




CHAPTER IX


The next morning the alarm over the cholera is more intense. All kinds
of horrifying stories go the rounds. News has been brought by passengers
on the stage that a man and his wife, living near the Illinois River,
died within an hour of each other. They were well at dawn. At noon they
were both under the black soil of the river's shore, buried by three
stalwart sons, who carried their bodies in the bed clothing and let them
down by it into hastily made graves.

Something has happened here. The stage driver who silenced the rowdies
last night is stricken this morning at the tavern. He is dead. By noon
he is buried in the village cemetery where the ashes of my father lie.

Mrs. Spurgeon thinks that Reverdy should leave the tavern and come here
with the rest of us. I am to take the word to him when I go to see Mr.
Brooks. She has seen the ravages of cholera before. There is nothing to
do but to be careful about diet, keep cheerful, and surrender to no
fears. I am not in the least alarmed. But the negroes are panic
stricken. They are calling upon the Lamb to save them. They are singing
and wailing. They are congregating at the hut of Aunt Leah, an aged
negress, who is sanctified and gifted with supernatural power. Zoe is
not in fear, and Sarah goes about the duties of the day with calm
unconcern.

I am off to see Mr. Brooks again. The streets are almost deserted. The
faces of those I meet are white and drawn. Mr. Brooks acts as if his
mind is stretched out of him in apprehension. Yet he is in his office
ready to pick up what business may come his way; and he is waiting to
see me.

I tell Mr. Brooks at once that I want to divide the property equally
with Zoe. He thinks, evidently, that I have weakened before the mere
prospect of a contest; and he assures me that the estate can be settled
as my father intended. Well, but can this plan of mine be carried out?
As easily as the other, he says, and of course more bindingly if there
can be a difference. For he had intended to have the court decree a sale
of the property and divide the money under the sanction of the court.
But according to my plan Zoe could get no more; and therefore no one
could object to it.

I am curious about my father. What is the danger of a contest, even if
Zoe could be brought to make one? Mr. Brooks tells me that my father was
drinking heavily toward the last; that he looked aged and worn. His hair
had turned white, though he was only forty. He acted like a man who had
a corroding sorrow in his heart. When he took the cold it developed
rapidly into lung fever. He was dead in three days. His will was made
just as he took to his bed at the tavern. There were stray scamps about
Jacksonville who would swear to anything. And though Zoe was a colored
girl, and notwithstanding the character of such witnesses in her behalf,
a case so composed might be troublesome. Then there was the treasure at
stake; and the hunger of lawyers and maintainers. Well, I had settled
it. None of these wolves should have a chance. Mr. Brooks scrutinized my
face with large, pensive eyes. After a silence he said: "You are the
boss; but I want you to know that the will can stand. I will guarantee
to win the case if there is one." "Can we see the farm?" I asked. "And
my father's grave?" Mr. Brooks brought up his buggy and we were off.

But first I wished to find Reverdy and give him Mrs. Spurgeon's message.
He had gone out to his little farm. He was raising a crop, having
returned from the war just in time to get it planted. It was only a
little out of our way, and we could stop there on our return.

Almost at once we came to the cemetery, a crude enclosure, fenced with
rough pickets, evidently split with the ax. Mr. Brooks led me to the
spot.

Weeds abounded everywhere. The grasshoppers were flying before our
steps. A long snake glided away from my feet as I stepped near the
yellow clay which tented the body of my father ... and Zoe's
father ... the husband of my lovely mother, so long dead. Here was the
soldier of Waterloo, the adventurer into this Far West, the man who had
died with some secret sorrow, or some sorrow for which he found no words
or no confidant. Above me was the blinding sun, before me the prairie, at
my feet this hillock of clay, where weeds had already begun to sprout.
Mr. Brooks watched me; and seeing me move he started on; and I followed
him through the broken gate to the buggy.

It was two miles to the log house which my father had built on his land.
We drove up and went in. A tenant named Engle was living here with his
wife and numerous children. Some of them crowded around us; others ran
and hid, afterwards peered around the corner, timid and wild. Engle was
not there; but his wife came from her washing to tell us where he could
be found, what he was doing. When Mr. Brooks revealed to her who I was
she stared at me with simple wondering eyes, drying her hands the while
upon her apron. She was terribly upset by the reports of the cholera.
Besides ... she went on: "There's a right smart lot of lung fever this
summer. I 'low the men let their lungs get full of dust in the barn or
somethin'. And I never did see the like of bloody flux among the
children, and the scarlet fever too. We never had nothin' like that in
Kaintucky. But I says to my man this mornin', there ain't nothin' to do
but to stick it out. When yer time comes I guess there ain't no use ter
run. And people do die in Kaintucky, too."

We proceeded to drive around the entire acreage. It took us some hours.
Always the prairie, boundless and colorful. Miles of rich tall grass,
sprinkled everywhere with purple, brick red, yellow, white, and blue
blossoms! Billows of air drove the surface of it into waves. It was a
sea of living green.

We passed forests of huge oak and elm trees, which grew along the little
streams. There were many fields of corn, too, tall and luxuriant; and
wheat ready for harvest. We came upon Engle at last. He wanted me to
come close to see the corn. I got out and stood beside it, stroked its
long graceful banners, turned up the dark soil with my boot and saw how
rich and friable it was. And all this was mine, mine and Zoe's.

My imagination took fire. My ambition rose. I resolved to study the
whole agricultural matter, and to reduce these acres in their entirety
to cultivation. I would raise cattle and sheep. I would build fences.
Above all I would make a house for myself. Here was my place in life and
my work. No delay. I should begin to-morrow with something directed to
the general end.

Returning we went past Reverdy's farm. But he had finished his work and
gone to town. Accordingly we speeded up. When I arrived home I found
Reverdy already there. But he would not leave the tavern. He gave no
reason in particular. He said he was as safe there as anywhere; and it
was more convenient for him.

But there was much doing. Sarah and Zoe were mixing the ingredients of
a cake. A turkey was roasting; we were going to have a guest for supper.
Douglas, the law student, the new school teacher, was coming; and all
was delighted expectation. "For," said Mrs. Spurgeon, "I reckon we ain't
never had such a young feller before around these parts. Talk! You never
heard such talk. It flows just like the water down hill. And there never
was a friendlier soul. I never thought they raised such people up in
Yankeeland as him. You can bet he'll make his mark. He'll be a judge
before he's ten years older; and they do well to get him here. And what
I say is: where did he get his eddication? He is an orphan too, like
you, James ... raised by an uncle so far as he had a raisin'. But the
uncle fooled him. He promised him an eddication, and then went back on
it. And what does young Douglas do? He busts away. He gets awful mad and
comes west to make his fortune. Make a young feller mad, hurt him good
and plenty, and if he has the right stuff you make a man of him. I've
seen it over and over. When a young feller's mad and disappointed, if
he's got the right stuff in him, he gets more energy, like a kettle
blown off. They do, unless they sulk. Now there's other types. There was
your poppy; he warn't mad and he didn't sulk exactly, and yet there was
somethin'. He seemed to simmer and stew a little. But he left five
thousand acres of land. Maybe he was one of these here big speculators
like as is all over Illinois now, that has some kind of a different
secret, and makes a big success some other way. You can never tell. But
you see when Douglas came here he landed from Alton down here at
Winchester and went right to work makin' a few dollars at a auction
where he was a appraiser. And he worked at his trade too. For he's a
cabinet maker. Yes, sir, he has a trade. With all the books he's read he
has a trade. And now he's up here to look over the ground; for they say
he's comin' here next spring to practice law, and even then he'll be
only twenty-one."

Surely, this was a land of haste, of easy expedients. I did not know a
great deal about the legal education of an English lawyer; but enough to
appreciate the difference between the slow and disciplined training
there and the rapid and loose preparation which I heard Mrs. Spurgeon
describe with so much pride. I went into the corner of the room to write
a letter to my grandmother.




CHAPTER X


This is the letter that I wrote:

"Dear Grandmama: I cannot describe to you the conditions that surround
me. The boundless extent of the country, the wildness and beauty of the
prairies, the roughness of this frontier town, above all the people
themselves. The house I am living in is unlike anything you ever saw;
but yet it is very comfortable. And my hostess, Mrs. Spurgeon, as well
as her granddaughter, have treated me with all the consideration that
my own kindred could do. I was very dangerously ill and they took care
of me with wonderful solicitude; particularly Zoe, who nursed me and
scarcely left my side. Now I am well, or nearly so, and they insist on
my living with them. I pay two dollars a week, or about eight shillings.
And everything is clean and nice; the food very good, delicious bacon
smoked with hickory wood; but altogether the diet is unlike what I was
accustomed to in England. It all seems like a story, first that I
should meet Reverdy Clayton when I landed in Chicago from the steamboat
which had brought me from Buffalo. He offered to bring me here on his
Indian pony. But I was afraid to risk so long a ride, especially as at
that time I was beginning to feel very badly. Then it is strange that
I should get here and awake from an illness so serious in the house
of Mrs. Spurgeon, whose granddaughter Sarah is going to marry
Reverdy ... one never knows whether to attribute these things to
Providence or to the accidents of life.... Perhaps you were right never
to tell me about my father's marriage to the octoroon girl; but you must
have known that I would find it out on arriving here. It has caused me
much thought, if not disturbance of mind; but I have worked out my
problems, perhaps impulsively, but still to my own satisfaction. Zoe is
about the color of an Indian from Bombay. She is a beautiful girl, and
shows her English blood in her manner and her active mind. I do not
believe that there was the slightest danger that she would have attacked
the will; but many considerations moved me to divide the estate with her
equally. She took care of me with the most affectionate interest when I
was ill. Besides, the land is not worth so very much, and one half of it
will give her no fortune to mention. She is in danger even now, and the
future for her is not reassuring. Illinois is supposed to be free
territory, but it is not so many years ago that a vote was taken in
Illinois to have slavery here, and it was defeated by no very great
majority. And now the Illinois laws are rather strict as to colored
people. The country is beginning to be feverish about the slavery
question. I saw evidence of this in New York and on the way here; though
just in this place the matter is not so much agitated. Yet the other day
a copy of a periodical arrived here called _The Liberator_, and it made
much angry talk. I will not tire you with this subject, dear grandmama,
but only say that the effort here and everywhere in America seems to be
directed toward hushing the matter up. But to return to Zoe: if her
mother's father wished to secure the mother against misfortune by
bringing her north and marrying her to a white man (my father, as it
turned out) why should not I, her half-brother, try to protect her
against the future that her mother might have incurred? I reason that I
have taken the place of Zoe's grandfather, and must do for her what he
tried to do for Zoe's mother. This inheritance of duty comes to me as the
land comes to me, without my will. Zoe's grandfather gave my father his
start, gave him the $2500 bonus to marry Zoe's mother. I think, in
considering what share of the estate Zoe should have, these things cannot
be ignored. Of course I don't know exactly how much of the $2500 went
into this land. From things I have heard I think my father spent money
freely; he went about a good deal and was not as temperate as he should
have been for his own health and prosperity. Something was evidently
preying upon his mind. Anyway, I have decided the matter, and I hope you
will approve of me. I went to father's grave this morning, and it made me
sad. Afterwards Mr. Brooks, the lawyer, drove me to the farm and around
most of it. I am going to take hold of it at once. This country is
growing rapidly, and I mean to do what my father didn't exactly. I am
going to be rich; that is my ambition. And I must think and work. I am
well again, or nearly so, and full of hope and plans, though sometimes
lonely for you and for England. Some day I shall come back to see you. My
love to you, dear grandmama. And do write me as often as you can.

"Affectionately, James."

And that evening Douglas came. He was of the smallest stature, but with
a huge chest and enormous head. His hair was abundant and flowing,
tossed back from his full forehead like a cataract. His eyes were blue
and penetrating, but kindly. His face rather square. His voice deep and
resonant. His words were clearly spoken, and fell from his lips freely,
as if he were loosening them into a channel worn by long thinking. His
ideas were clearly envisioned. He had read books of which I had never
heard. But apart from books his sallies of wit, the aptness of his
stories and allusions quite dazzled me.

Though he was but two years my senior, I felt like a boy in his
presence. His maturity and self-possession and intellectual mastery of
the hour kept me silent. He recalled what he had done to bring me to the
comforts of Mrs. Spurgeon's house when I arrived in Jacksonville, ill
and helpless. After that he did not exactly ignore me, but I seemed not
to enter into the association of his ideas or their expression. He
talked of the country. There was the matter of Texas, a territory half
as large as central Europe. But if Texas seceded from Mexico he wished
the country absorbed into the domain of the United States. Texas has a
right to secede. All governments derive their powers from the consent of
the governed. Let moralists and dreamers say what they would, the course
of America was toward mastery of the whole of North America. Yes, and
there was Oregon. If the Louisiana Purchase of 1804 did not include
Oregon, what of the Lewis and Clark expedition; what of the founding of
Astoria by Mr. Astor of New York, on the shores of the Columbia River;
what of the restoration of Astoria to the United States in 1818 after it
had been forcibly seized by Great Britain in the War of 1812? Douglas
looked forward to the day when Great Britain would not have an inch of
land from the Gulf of Mexico to the North Pole, and from the Atlantic to
the Pacific. All of this vast territory should be the abiding place of
liberty forever. Homestead laws should be passed with reference to it,
and settlers invited to reduce it to cultivation. It should be tilled by
millions of husbandmen, the most intelligent and progressive of the
world. It should be crossed by railroads and canals. Already there were
the Mohawk and Hudson railroad, the Boston and Albany, and the Baltimore
and Ohio. Illinois should have railroads and canals; the rivers and
harbors should be improved. Lake Michigan should be connected with the
Mississippi River by a canal joining Lake Michigan with the Illinois
River.

What was it all about? National wealth as a foundation for education,
power, the supremacy of the white stocks having the greatest vitality.

Zoe was waiting upon the table, occasionally sitting down to take a
bite. Douglas neither saw her nor was he oblivious of her. He talked
ahead, referring now to the slavery question. He believed the North
should leave the South alone. He had seen the reformer, the
intermeddler, in his native lair in Vermont. Who had brought into this
remote and peaceful town that copy of Garrison's _Liberator_? He was a
half-cracked busybody. People who had no business of their own made the
business of other people their business. He would put all such drivelers
to work upon the roads, and thus make them contribute to the nation's
wealth. He referred to the works of Jefferson, which he had read, to the
_Federalist_, which he had read, and to much else, of which at that time
I did not know a line. I studied Reverdy's face to see whether or not
Reverdy concurred in what Douglas said. I had confidence in Reverdy, and
was willing to go along with Douglas if Reverdy approved of these
programs; although my English blood was stirred to some extent by
Douglas' evident hostility to Great Britain. I sensed that Reverdy did
not wholly agree with Douglas in all his theories and plans. But Reverdy
knew that he could not cope with such a whirlwind as this dynamic
logician. He therefore at times smiled a half disapproval, but did not
express it. For myself I found my mind consenting to the magic of
Douglas' vision. I did not relish the idea of England's surrendering
Oregon; but, on the other hand, since my fortunes were cast in the
United States, did it not behoove me to draw upon the country's
increasing prosperity and to help to increase it? Texas did not matter.
I did not fancy the institution of slavery. It grated upon my
sensibilities; but I had a very slight understanding of it in the
concrete. I was glad that England was rid of it. I had never admired the
Wesleys, the Methodists; but I was glad to give them credit for what
they had done to relieve England of such an abomination. I rejoiced that
more than seven years before I was born Clarkson and Wilberforce had
brought about the abolition of this traffic from the land of my nativity
and its dependencies.

Then here was Zoe. If I was indifferent to slavery I had to be logical
and be indifferent to her becoming a subject of barter. At least what,
but a sentimental reason, could I set up against the enforced servitude
of Zoe? What did it matter in point of justice and civilization that the
South could not carry on her commercial interests without slavery? Was
trade everything? Were the merchants the leaders of civilization? Were
merchants to be permitted to do what they chose in order that they might
create wealth for themselves, or even the nation? In a word, was wealth
everything? My Adam Smith had said no, and I had already read that. He
had classified banks of issue, colonialism, and slavery, as well as some
other things as equal parts of a mercantile program. I was, therefore,
inclined to dissent from any plan that included any one of these things.
And still I was swept along by the torrent of Douglas' thinking. His
vision enthralled me. His outlook upon the country, its increasing power
and wealth, fascinated my imagination. Was I not resolved to be rich
myself? And for moments I was under the spell of his great power. He was
a world thinker, but with his own country forefronted in the playing of
a colossal part. It appealed to my English blood, that blood which does
great deeds through great vision, and then repents the iniquities along
the way and corrects them at last. And who was Douglas in spirit?
Nothing less than the English genius. And so my feelings were mixed, but
admiration for him predominated. I felt his edge and did not like it;
his audacity and resented it; his power and rebelled against it; his
brusqueness and shrank from it; his emphasis upon power and supremacy,
and felt that he might be overlooking finer powers and more lasting
triumphs. But his eyes were full of kindly lights, in spite of their
intellectual penetration; and he was charming to the last degree.

He stood up. I was a head taller than he. But his torso belonged to a
giant, and his head. We all arose. And after a time, saying that he was
spending his evenings in the study of law, he took his leave.




CHAPTER XI


The autumn was coming on. The cholera had abated. The air was cool and
fresh. The country was taking fire from the colors of the changing year.
And I was feeling more rugged than I had ever felt in my life.

As I have said, a college had already been founded in Jacksonville.
Indeed, some years before my coming the one brick building on the campus
had been constructed; and before that the log hut, also on the campus,
in which the young president and his pretty wife had spent their first
winter here in 1829. Reverdy told me that he had helped to hew and place
the logs. I had become acquainted with Mr. Sturtevant, the president;
for he was eager to hear of England, and Oxford and Eton. I was
fascinated with this experiment of a college in the wilderness. He
loaned me many books; and I often spent an evening at his house.

In September I decided to go out to the farm and live with the Engles.
I had many plans for the spring which could be better attended to on the
ground; and then I was getting ready to build me a house. Reverdy knew
where to find the logs, how to prepare them. He knew where to get men to
help him, and I was glad to leave these things to him. Mr. Brooks had
already commenced proceedings to settle the title to the land, dividing
it between Zoe and me. This was off my mind. I had men building fences,
plowing. I was buying horses, cattle, hogs. In all these things Reverdy
was an incalculable help. I could not have succeeded without him. He
knew horses and he helped me to honest dealers.

One day I was walking over my land. I came to a beautiful grove of trees
by the brook. And there in the midst of it was a log hut. I pushed the
rude door open and entered. There was but one room. It had a fireplace
needing repair. I saw a ladder in the corner, climbed it through a loft
hole and looked into the loft. The rafters were rough and crooked, made
only of undressed poles. I could see daylight through the shingles. The
floor was of hewn planks. But I was elated. Why not come here to live? I
did not like the Engle children. They were too numerous. I had no
privacy there. But here! I could be to myself. I could make myself more
comfortable than I was at the Engles'. I could have what food I wanted.
I could kill game, for the country was full of it. I could bring my
books. I could be a lord.

I hurried back to town to tell Reverdy; to ask him to help me to mend
the fireplace, and to put the house in condition for the coming winter.
Reverdy looked at me in astonishment. How could I stand the loneliness?
Did I know what I was getting into? Could I take care of myself
entirely? What if I fell ill again and in the middle of the winter,
when the ways were snowbound?

I thought of Zoe. Why not take her with me? I could teach her. She could
run the house. Reverdy looked at me with a certain dubiety. Sarah would
hate to part with Zoe. Perhaps there were other things; but he did not
express them. However, nothing could deter me.

Zoe was delighted with the plan. She wanted to get away, to be with me,
since I wanted her. Besides, Reverdy and Sarah were to be married in a
few days. He was coming to the house to live and that would make a
difference in the conveniences. And Mrs. Spurgeon, as far as I could
judge, was not averse to Zoe's departure. Thus it was to be as I wished.

Reverdy left off the work on my new house to help me repair the hut. We
had to make a hearth. For this I found stones by the brook. We stopped
the chinks between the logs with heavy, tough clay. We mended the holes
in the roof. We repaired the floor. I bought beds and bedding, utensils
for cooking, a rifle, an ax, and some other tools. I stocked the house
with provisions. And in a week I was installed, listening at night to
the cry of the wild animals, wolves and foxes and owls; and the song of
late whippoorwills when an access of lingering summer warmed the
midnights. I chopped my own wood. I killed quails and squirrels, and
roasted them. I tried my hand at making cornbread. And I awoke in the
delicious mornings, exuberant and happy. Zoe had not come to me yet,
for she was staying on at Mrs. Spurgeon's until Sarah was married. And
at last the wedding was celebrated.

I shall never forget that night. It was unlike anything of which I had
ever heard. The town minister performed the ceremony. Mr. and Mrs.
Sturtevant were present. Douglas had been invited; but whether he failed
to get the message, or whether his new duties of teaching at Winchester
prevented him from coming I do not know. We missed him greatly. An
emergency arose in which his courage and gift of speech might have been
of use. I can imagine how he would have handled the crowd that assembled
outside while the wedding was in progress. In short, we were treated to
a shivaree, or _charivari_.

No sooner had the clergyman pronounced the final words than the most
unearthly noise broke loose right at the door. There was the sound of
tin pans, kettles, horns, drums; and this pandemonium was punctuated by
the firing of shots and the throwing of stones at the door and gravel
upon the window panes. Sarah, already flushed from excitement, took on
an expression of alarm. I thought that we had been attacked by a band of
Indians bent upon massacre. The clergyman, however, smiled. And Reverdy
left the side of his bride and went to the door.

He flung it open. And there burst upon my vision the wildest assemblage
of faces I had ever seen. Some were blacked to resemble the negro. Some
were painted to look like the Indian on the warpath. They were dressed
fantastically, in a variety of colors, with feathers in their hair or
hats or coon caps. They leered, grinned from ear to ear. They yelled,
and again began to beat their pans and kettles and to fire their rifles.
Sarah put her fingers to her lips in a gesture of terror, of violated
privacy. But after all this was but the frontier's hymeneal chant, the
festivities of the uninvited wedding guests. To quiet them it was
necessary to ask them to partake of the wedding delicacies.

They pushed and writhed into the room. Some of them were half drunk.
They trod upon each other. What they might have done if Reverdy had not
managed them out of the kindness of his heart and with a certain
adroitness is past conceiving. It seemed to me that a riot was on the
point of breaking loose at any minute. But having satisfied themselves,
they began to file out. Some lingered to wish the bride and groom a
happy life. Reverdy spoke with each one in such friendliness of voice
and manner, in which there was neither nervousness nor resentment. He
took it all as a matter of course. But Sarah was visibly distrait. I
could see that she was relieved as they began to depart. A few yells, a
few intermittent shots marked their going away. Then all was silent. The
guests now began to leave. And as I was going back to my hut for the
night I came to Reverdy and Sarah to bid them God-speed. I had never
seen Sarah look so charming. Her bridal dress was made of striped
calico. She had a bonnet to match. Reverdy had a new suit of blue jeans.
He looked handsome and strong. And he turned his eyes upon Sarah with a
look of protecting tenderness. I took their hands in mine to emphasize
my blessing with the closeness of affectionate contact. Sarah kissed me
on the cheek; and I left, bestriding my horse at the gate, and riding
through the darkness to my hut.

Zoe was to come to me the next morning.




CHAPTER XII


The next morning while I was sitting near the door, cleaning my rifle, I
heard the soft pounding of a horse's hoofs on the heavy sod, and looking
up saw Reverdy and Sarah. He was in the saddle, she was riding behind. I
was about to ask for Zoe when I saw her peeping mischievously around the
shoulder of Sarah, showing her white teeth in a happy smile. It was not
Reverdy's Indian pony that was carrying so many travelers, but a larger
horse. They all got down and came in to see my hut. Sarah was greatly
pleased with it, and Zoe could not contain her delight. Reverdy and
Sarah were on their way to Winchester to pay a brief visit to Sarah's
aunt. They were soon off, Reverdy giving me the assurance that it would
only be a few days before he would again be at work on my new house.
Meanwhile the other men would continue getting the logs.

Zoe did not delay a minute in taking charge of the house. I had not
cleared the breakfast table. She did so, then made my bed. I told her to
spread it with clean sheets as it was to be hers now, but she would not
hear to this. She was afraid to be on the ground floor where an intruder
could walk in upon her, or a stray wolf push the door open and wake her
with its unfriendly nose against her cheek. I told her then to look at
the loft. She climbed the ladder and took a peek, descended with the
remark that she liked it and would take it for hers. Almost at once we
had perfect order in the hut.

Zoe cooked, and cleaned the rooms. I was busy with my new dwelling. I
killed enough game to keep us in meat. Sometimes standing in the doorway
I could bring down a deer. Then we had venison. But we were never
without quail and ducks and geese. Zoe made the most delicious
cornbread, baking it in a pan in the fireplace. The Engles brought us
some cider. I had bought a fiddle and was learning to play upon it. We
never lacked for diversion. In the evenings I played, or we read. My
days were full of duties connected with the new house, or the crops and
improvements for the next year. And spring would soon be here.

I was beginning to be looked upon as a driving man. They had scoffed at
me as a young Englishman who could not endure the frontier life, and who
knew nothing of farming. But they saw me take hold with so much vigor
and interest that I was soon spoken of as an immediate success. My
coming to the hut and living and doing for myself had helped greatly to
confirm me in their esteem. I saw nothing hazardous or courageous in it.
As for the daily life I could not have been more happily placed.

The fall went by. The winter descended. The brook was frozen. I had to
break the ice with the ax to get water. I had to spend an hour each day
cutting wood for the fireplace and bearing it into the hut. These were
the mornings when the cold bath, which I could never forego, no matter
what the circumstances were, tested my resolution. For I was sleeping in
the loft where the bitter wind fanned my cheeks during the night. Zoe
had found it too rigorous, and preferred the danger of an intruder to
the cold. Even snow sifted on my face from rifts in the shingles which
we had overlooked. But nevertheless I adhered to the morning lustration,
sometimes going to the brook to do it. I had never experienced such
cold.

Yet the months of November and December, which at the time I thought
were the extreme of winter weather, were as nothing to the polar blasts
that poured down upon us in January and February. I had no thermometer.
But judging by subsequent observations I am sure that the temperature
reached twenty degrees below zero. I took no baths in the brook now but
contented myself with a hurried splash from a pan. At night I covered
myself with all the blankets that I could support. I protected my face
with a woolen cap, which was drawn over the ears as well. Zoe, though
sleeping near the immense fire which we kept well fed with logs, got
through but a little better than I. We heated stones in hot water to
take to bed with us. All kinds of wild animals coming forth for food
were frozen in their tracks. I found wolves and foxes in abundance lying
stiffened and defeated in the woods. Some nights, seeing the light of
our candle they would howl for food and shelter; and I heard them run up
and down past the door, wisping it with their tails. Then Zoe would
cling to me. And I would take up the rifle in anticipation of the wind
opening the door and admitting the marauder. We were snowbound the whole
month of February. I had to shovel a path to the brook. But it was out
of the question for any one to go to town, or for any one to come to us.
And of course during these bitter days nothing was done on my new house.
The logs were all cut. They stood piled under the snow, except for a few
that had been put in place.

One brilliant morning in the last of February I had gone to the brook
for water. The cold had moderated to some extent. But the snow remained
deep in the woods and on the fields. For though the sun shone, the sky
was nevertheless hazed with innumerable particles of frozen mist, having
the appearance of illuminated dust, or powdered mica. Somewhere in the
depths of this screen I heard the joyous cry of a jay. And Zoe, who was
by my side, said that spring was at hand.

The next day the air was milder. Soon the snow began to melt. We heard
musical droppings from our eaves. The brook broke from its manacles. I
could see patches of dead grass and dark earth between the disappearing
snow on the fields. At break of day we heard the chirrup of the
chickadee, the sparrow. I now resumed my plunge at the brook. And as we
were depleted of cornmeal and other provisions, Zoe and I went to town,
riding one of the horses which Engle had brought over to me. Bad news
waited us here. Mrs. Spurgeon had died during the bitter weather, about
three weeks before. Sarah was very much depressed. And Reverdy seemed
almost as unhappy over the loss.

He had much to do, but he would now set to work upon my house.

Soon he came out bringing the men. I had made a drawing for the work and
I was much about watching to see that it was followed. We could have had
bricks for the chimney, though it was a good deal of labor to haul them.
But why not a chimney of stone? There were plenty of stones of adequate
size along the bed of the brook. And so we used them. But I did buy
lumber for the floors. I sent to St. Louis for the kind of doors I
wanted, and windows too. I was having a house built with regard to
roominess and hospitable conveniences; a large living room, two
bedrooms, a dining room, a kitchen, downstairs. The second floor was to
have four chambers. I had selected a site back from the road. It was in
a grove of majestic oaks, not far from the brook and the hut. The work
progressed none too rapidly. Some of the men had to be away at times to
attend to their farming. As for myself I had learned to plow, and was at
it from early morning until sundown. I had many laborers working for me,
plowing, sowing, building fences, clearing; in a word, reducing the land
to cultivation. It was a big job.

I had won the respect of the community by the energy with which I had
undertaken the task. The neighbors said I was an improvement on my
father. They wondered, however, if I would be as far-sighted and
acquisitive as he, if I would add to what I had or lose it.

In March I had a letter from my grandmother. She expressed pride in me
for what I had done, approved the spirit I had shown towards Zoe. She
was a great admirer of Wilberforce; and as she disliked America for its
separation from the Crown she wished the institution of slavery no good
on these shores. But she was disturbed about the conditions in England
and Europe. The old order seemed to her to be crumbling. Revolution
might break forth. The middle classes in England, having secured their
rights, as she expressed it, the laborers were now striving for the
franchise. Chartism was rampant. What would it all come to? Was England
safe against such innovation? But how about America, if the colored
people were given freedom, not of the franchise merely, but in civil
rights of property and free activity? But contemporaneous with this
letter, two events came into my life of profound influence. One was my
meeting with Russell Lamborn, the son of one of Jacksonville's numerous
lawyers. And the other was an extraordinary debate between a Whig
politician named John J. Wyatt and young Douglas. It was at the debate
that I met Lamborn.

Douglas had finished his school teaching. He had been licensed to
practice law, though not yet twenty-one years of age. He had opened an
office in the courthouse at Jacksonville. His sharp wit, pugnacity,
self-reliance, had already excited rivalry and envy. He had suddenly
leaped into the political arena, carrying a defiant banner.

Affairs in America were no more tranquil than they were in England.
President Jackson had stirred the country profoundly by his imperious
attitude toward the banking interests on the one hand, and the matter of
South Carolina's nullification of the tariff law on the other hand. This
had weakened the Democratic party in Illinois. And as there was to be an
election in the fall of state officials, it was necessary to success to
satisfy the electorate that President Jackson had not betrayed his
leadership.

Bantering words went around to the effect that Douglas was seizing the
opportunity of this debate to make himself known, to get a start as a
lawyer, and a lift in politics. When a chance to make a hit fits the
orator's opportunity and convictions, it would be difficult for a man of
Douglas' enterprise and audacity to resist it.

For Douglas had, in spite of everything, captured the town. His name was
on every one's tongue. He had lauded President Jackson and his policies
with as much fervor as he had with virulence and vehemence denounced the
humbugging Whigs, as he had characterized them. The village paper, a
Whig publication, had sat upon him. It had dubbed him a turkey gobbler,
a little giant, a Yankee fire-eater. But Douglas gave no quarter to any
one. He returned blow for blow. He had become a terror. He must be
subdued.

John J. Wyatt, a man of ready speech, in the full maturity of his
powers, a debater and campaigner, a soldier in the War of 1812, and a
respected character, was to lay the adventurer, the interloper, low! He
was elected to the task. Was Douglas a youth? No. He was a monstrosity.
He had always been a man. He had never grown up. He had simply appeared
in this part of the world, a creature of mature powers. Yet Wyatt would
subdue him.

We were all in anticipation of the contest. It was to take place in the
courthouse. What was the subject? Anything. Everything. Chiefly Whiggery
and Democracy. I came into town bringing Zoe and leaving her with Sarah.
Reverdy and I went together. Here I met Russell Lamborn. He sat on one
side of me and Reverdy on the other.

I shall never forget this night. Wyatt opened the debate, and he closed
it. The question was: Are the Whig policies best for the country?
Douglas had the negative and, therefore, but one speech. Was it fair?
Had not the young man given away too much? No, for Douglas proved a
match for two or three such minds as Wyatt's. He humiliated to the last
degree the older, and at first confident, antagonist.

It was the most extraordinary exhibition of youth and dash and
confidence and ready wit, and knowledge and dialectic handling of
difficult matter. It furnished the groundwork of my education in the
history of American politics up to that time. It led into almost every
possible matter of constitutional law and party policy.

Wyatt talked for an hour. He jeered at Douglas. He referred to his
diminutive stature. He spoke ironically of his work as a cabinet maker,
and advised Douglas to stick to it and leave the profession of the law
alone. He characterized him as a strolling fellow who was trying to
break into the favor of the community with an impudence as effective as
burglar's tools. What did Douglas know of law? Who would trust his
interests to a lawyer so inexperienced? When had Douglas had time to
master its simplest principles? Who could not see through Douglas' thin
scheme to attach his fortunes to the chariot of the great but misguided
Jackson? Why had Douglas leaped to the defense of Jackson in this
community, like a fice coming to the aid of a mastiff? Why, if not to
get a bone for his own hungry stomach? Everything in the way of a taunt,
a slur, a degrading image, a mockery of youth's ambition, an attack upon
obscurity trying to rise, were thrown by Wyatt at Douglas. All the while
Douglas sat imperturbed, his head at a slight angle, which gave him the
appearance of attentive listening; and with a genial smile on his face
that was lighted a little with ironic confidence. Then Wyatt sat down
amid great cheering.

Reverdy thought that Wyatt had overdone himself, had forfeited to a
degree the sympathy of the audience. There was no call for such rough
handling of a young man. The feelings of the crowd reacted. And as
Douglas arose he was given a loud reception. For there were Democrats
enough in the room. But though Douglas looked like a man while seated,
he seemed a boy when he stood up. His stature told against him. But as
soon as he spoke the first word the silence was profound. The voice was
the voice of a man, and a strong man. It rolled over our heads with
orotund volume. The clearly syllabized words fell upon delighted ears.
He caught the crowd at once.

Who would dare accuse him of subserviency to Jackson or to any man, for
bread or for position? He differed from Jackson about the tariff, and
all Jacksonville could know it. He agreed with Jackson about the bank,
and the whole country would come to approve Jackson's course. Was
nullification right? Perhaps Jefferson knew as much about that as Mr.
Wyatt. Let the laws of the Constitution be obeyed and nullification
would never be provoked. What had created nullification? The vile
policies of the humbug Whig party, the old monarchist harlot
masquerading in the robes of liberalism. How did these people dare to
use the name of Whig, how dare to resort to such false pretenses, when
it was common knowledge that the personnel of that party, having been
put down as Federalists for gross usurpation and monarchist practices
had, being forced to change their skin, adopted the title of the liberal
party of England, remaining more Tory than the party that tried to
destroy American liberty during the Revolution? And now this Whig party
like a masked thief was abroad in the land to pick up what spoils it
could, and to take from trusting hearts sustenance for its misbegotten
existence. It was already beginning to coquette with the slavery
question, hoping to deceive the people with humanitarian and moral
professions. Very well! If it was the Good Samaritan it pretended to be
let it give up its bank and its tariff, which took enough money out of
the mouths of the poor to feed all the niggers in the world. Let the
whiner about wrongs quit his own wrongs. Let the accusing sinner repent
his own sin. Let the people of New England pluck the pine logs from
their own eyes before talking of hickory splinters in the eyes of the
South.

And then Douglas took up the history of the formation of the Union. What
went into the Union? Sovereign states. Who concluded a treaty of peace
with Great Britain after the Revolution? The thirteen sovereign states
that had waged the war. Who formed themselves into the Confederate
States, each retaining its sovereignty? The same states. Who left that
union and formed the present Union? The same states. What did they do?
They retained all the sovereign powers that they did not expressly
grant. They never parted with their sovereignty, but only with sovereign
powers. Where does sovereignty reside under our system? With the people
of the states. What follows from all of this? Why, that each state is
left to decide for itself all questions save those which have been
expressly given over to Washington to decide. Who is trying to nullify
these inestimable principles and safeguards? That is the real
nullification. The humbug Whigs, who would like to centralize all
authority at Washington ... "and Mr. Wyatt here in this new country,
among people of plain speech and industrious lives, is the spokesman of
these encroaching despotisms, which he has vainly attempted to defend
to-night. He dares to assail the great name of Andrew Jackson. He would
like to overcome the state sovereignty which permits Connecticut to
raise cranberries and Virginia to have negro slaves, which leaves
Kentucky with whisky and Maine with water, if Maine ever chooses so. He
does not know that the French Revolution was waged for the great
principle of the people to rule; and he fails to see that the whole
world is coming to accept that doctrine. With the growing wealth and
power of the North, of Illinois, it is necessary that the rights of the
individual and local communities and of the small states as well as the
large states should have the effectual counterbalance of state
sovereignty to protect them against the ambition of centralists, who are
money grabbers wrapping themselves about with the folds of the flag and
with the garments of superior holiness."

He wished to see Illinois crossed by two railroads, from north to south,
and from east to west. He would see the Illinois and Michigan canal
completed, so that the great lake at the north of the state would be
connected with the Mississippi River and with the Gulf of Mexico. What
did it mean? The state would fill up with earners of wealth. Lands would
increase in value. Cities would be built. As for himself, he would do
his utmost to bring these benefits to the state.

By what authority was his right challenged to come to this state to make
his home; and to this town to follow the profession of the law? Was
there any one present who did not wish him to strive for these
achievements for this western country? Perhaps Mr. Wyatt objected. No
matter. He was here to stay. He had left a land walled in by hills and
mountains, where the eye was deprived of its use in forming a vision of
the world. Here he had found his mind liberalized, his vision quickened.
Here he had found a hospitable people, inspired with hope of the future.
And he was glad he had cast his lot with theirs. He had grown in this
brief time to feel that they were his people. And he asked them to adopt
him as their son, trusting him not to forget his filial duties.

The crowd was completely amazed at the vigor and fluency of Douglas'
speech. Such applause arose that Wyatt was visibly embarrassed as he
stood up for his rejoinder. He saw that Douglas had carried the day. He
made a feeble attempt at reply. He tried satire; but it fell on
unreceptive ears. He dropped denunciation. He dared not attempt that.
He took up logical analysis. It left the audience cold. He pecked
timidly at the doctrine of state sovereignty. Then voices began to
question him. He shifted to Jackson. But the audience would not listen.
After using one half of the hour allotted him for a conclusion, he sat
down half wilted and discomfited.

A storm of cheers arose for Douglas. He was surrounded by a host of
admirers. And I saw him now in a new phase. He was winning and gallant,
of open heart, of genial manner. When he saw me he smiled a warm
recognition. I went to where he stood to offer my congratulations. I
asked him to come out and see me, and have a meal with me. He was
already mingling with the young people of his own age at dances and in
sports. That had been his custom at Winchester. He was glad to come,
inquired the way. He was very happy. He knew that he had won his spurs
this night. And from thenceforth he was a notable figure. Had anything
just like this ever occurred in England? I had never heard of it. I
should certainly write my grandmama of this event.




CHAPTER XIII


Russell Lamborn left the courthouse with Reverdy and me. He lingered at
the gate as if he wished an invitation to go into Reverdy's house; but
Reverdy did not invite him. He would have asked Douglas to come in for
the remainder of the evening, such as it was, except for Sarah's
condition.

Douglas had quite carried Reverdy away. And yet there lurked in him
something that was not intellectually convinced and morally satisfied. I
felt a little the same way. I did not know how to describe my state of
mind. With Douglas' vision of the country, his hopes for it, the part he
wished to play, I felt my English blood stir. But was there enough moral
depth to him? Did he reckon enough with the forces which made for
culture, enlightenment? Was he really high-minded? Did he not have the
gesture and the touch of the magician, the abandonment of the
indifferent demigod--indifferent to the higher and the deeper currents
of man's life? I tried to formulate some of these nebulous ideas to
Reverdy, but found myself running into denials, facts of contradiction
in Douglas' attitude and thinking. Reverdy was equally unable to state
the case against Douglas, which he felt a keener critic of thought would
easily do. Meanwhile young Lamborn stood with us while we fumbled these
doubtful things. He seemed reluctant to leave. I wondered in a vague way
what kept him from going. What did he want?

And when Douglas did come to see me, which was within a few days of the
night of the debate, Lamborn came with him. It was in the afternoon and
they were on their way to a country dance. I could not help but observe
that Lamborn had been drinking. What a strange taste--this whisky
drinking! We did it in England, to be sure. But here it was done
everywhere and at all hours and in all degrees of immoderation and
vulgarity. Lamborn, however, was not unduly under the influence of
drink; he was rather laughing and genial and humorously familiar.
Douglas had doubtless taken as much as Lamborn, but he was quite equal
to resisting its relaxing effects.

Douglas and I sat under a tree by the brook. The buds were coming out.
There was the balmy warmth of spring in the air. I had a chance now to
revise my first impressions of him. His charm could not be denied. His
frankness, the quickness of his thought, his intellectual power, his
vitality, his capacity for work, the tirelessness of his energies, were
manifested in his speech, his movements, the clear and rapid glances of
his eyes.

At the same time I found angles to him. I sensed a ruthlessness in him.
I saw him as a fearless and sleepless antagonist, but always open and
fair. There was only once when his nature broke ground and revealed
something of his inner self, something of a sensitiveness which suffers
for subtler things and penetrates to finer understandings. This was when
he was telling me of the effect of his uncle's broken promise to educate
him. He had suffered deeply for this; and he was sure his whole life
would be influenced by it. It had stirred all the reserve ambition and
power of his nature. It had thrown him forward in a redoubled
determination to overcome the default, to succeed in spite of the lost
opportunity.

Hence he had read many books. He had studied the history of America, and
other countries as well. His mind ran to statecraft. He thought of
nothing else. He sensed men as groups--thinking, desiring, trading,
building--and for these ends organized into neighborhoods, villages,
cities, and states. His genius, even then, was interested in using these
groups for progressive ends, such as he had in view. He was a super-man
who sees empires of progress and achievement for the race through the
haze of the unformed future, and who takes the responsibility of carving
that future out and of forcing history into the segment that his
creative imagination has opened. He would guide and make the future,
while serving men.

Here he was then just past twenty-one, born on April 23d, the reputed
birthday of Shakespeare; young, and yet old with a maturity with which
he was invested at his entrance into the world. He was in every way a
new type to me. We were mutually drawn to each other. I knew that his
courage could never stoop to littleness. His integrity, even when his
judgment might err, seemed to me an assured quality of nature. As for
me, he doubtless thought that I was one of the coming men of the
community. Whatever I was, I was dependable. If I should become attached
to him he could rely upon me in case of need. This, I think, made him
regard me at this early stage of our friendship as a person not to be
neglected in his business of creating adherents. When I spoke to him in
terms of wonder and congratulation of his defeat of Wyatt, he took it
with a smile and as a matter of course. He had found it an easy thing to
rout Wyatt. Wyatt had stirred his fighting blood; and everything
pertinent to the discussion had come to his mind in the heat of the
debate....

And now we began to hear the sound of a fiddle, scraped in a loose and
erratic fashion and giving forth an occasional note of a tune. I looked
around and saw Lamborn sitting in the doorway of the hut. Zoe was near
him, laughing at his half-drunken attempts to manage the instrument.
Douglas looked up. A quick smile shot across his face. He glanced into
my eyes in a searching manner which mystified me and sent a sudden
thrill through me. What was he thinking? Surely he knew of my relation
to Zoe. I caught out of his expression the prejudice of the time against
the social equality that I was maintaining in standing by Zoe and having
her with me. I had not shirked my heritage. Perhaps Douglas admired me
too much to speak what was in his mind; or perhaps he was too much of
the politician to trench upon ground so personal. At all events, we
were silent for a moment. And then Douglas called to Lamborn. It was
time to go. Lamborn rose to his feet, swaying a little as he did so, and
came to where we sat. He looked me over in a scrutinizing way, then shot
forth his hand for me to take it. It was an awkward act and out of
place! Yet I felt compelled to give him my hand. And with good-bys they
bestrode their horses and were gone. I began to have ominous
reflections.

I went to the hut and asked Zoe what Lamborn had been saying to her. She
laughed and seemed reluctant to tell me. I pressed her then; and she
said that he had followed her through the house and tried to kiss her;
that she had come around to the front door so as to be in sight of
Douglas and me; then that Lamborn had taken the fiddle down and had
begun to play it.

All the possibilities of Lamborn's attitude dawned on me instantly. How
dearly might I pay in some way for my father's desire to be rich! If
Douglas had taken his initial hurt in life from his uncle's failure to
educate him, I had begun the weaving of my destiny with these threads
which my father had bequeathed to me. What would my complications be if
Zoe eloped with a wild fellow like Lamborn, bringing his personality
into the texture of my affairs; the matter of this land, and Zoe's
interest in it? I could sense ahead an unending difficulty, an ever
deepening annoyance, or even tragedy. Had I gone too far in dividing the
estate with Zoe? For the first time the presence of the negro in the
state, the complications that it created, were forced upon me
concretely and with impressive effect. My heart registered a vague
apprehension. I warned Zoe against Lamborn, and decided that he should
not come about me again.

The work on my house was now progressing rapidly. I wished to move into
it on my birthday, June 18th. I watched its completion day by day, and
in addition I had much to do around the farm. I had made a start with a
few calves toward raising cattle. In every way I was forging ahead as
fast as I could. But my greatest delight was the house. I wanted to make
it as beautiful as possible, and I did not need to spare expense. I
decided to go to St. Louis for curtains and chairs, for beds and
lounges, chests and bureaus. When the last of May came I set out for the
city.




CHAPTER XIV


This June weather in Illinois! Such glorious white clouds floating in
the boundless hemisphere of fresh blue! The warmth and the vitality of
the air! The glistening leaves of the forest trees! The deep green
shading into purples and blues of the distant woodlands! The sweet
winds, bending the prairie grasses for miles and miles! Glimpses of cool
water in little ponds, in small lakes, in the brook! The whispering of
rushes and the song of thrushes, so varied, so melodious! The call of
the plowman far afield, urging the horses ahead in the great work of
bringing forth the corn! The great moon at night, and the spectacle of
the stars in the hush of my forest hut!

I was superbly well. And for diversion went farther into the woods to
hear a fiddler and to have him teach me the art which fled my dull
fingers and the unwieldy bow. And this fiddler! His curly hair, always
wet from his lustrations for the evening meal; his cud of tobacco; his
racy locutions; his happy and contented spirit; and his merry wife and
the many children, wild like woodland creatures, with sparkling eyes and
overflowing vitality! Many evenings I spent at this fiddler's hut. And
such humbleness! Only the earth for a floor! Only one room where all his
family ate and slept and lived!

In going to St. Louis I took the same stage that had brought me to
Jacksonville. This time I rode on the _City of Alton_, a better boat
than the one that had brought me from La Salle to Bath; but all the
conditions were the same. There was the same roistering and sprawling
crowd; the same loudness and profanity; the same abundance of whisky and
its intemperate indulgence; the same barbaric hilarity of negroes,
driven and cursed. And now many goatees, and much talk of politics, of
Whigs and Democrats.

St. Louis was languid, weary and old. The buildings had an air of decay.
The stream of life moved sluggishly, not swiftly as in New York or
Buffalo, or even in the village of Chicago. There were luxury here and
wealth. There were slaves and a slave market. I went to it, saw the
business of selling these creatures, saw a woman of thirty, no darker
than Zoe, sold to a man with a goatee, evidently from further south, who
took her and led her away submissively. Whatever the institution might
be of necessity and even of gentleness in good hands, here no less was
the vile business of the sale. What would become of Zoe, was constantly
in my thought. I turned away from the slave market to continue my
shopping; but I could not drive Zoe from my thoughts.

Here was I in St. Louis and necessarily withdrawn from care of Zoe. I
could not always watch over her. Even if I did, what was her life to be?
How could she establish herself? With whom, and where? I was glad that
I had not left her at the hut during my absence, that I had taken her to
Sarah. Nothing could happen to her while she was with Sarah. Sarah had
need of her too. Sarah's baby was soon to be born. Dorothy Clayton,
Reverdy's sister, was coming to Jacksonville from Nashville to be a part
of Reverdy's household for a time; and the house had to be set in order
for her arrival. Turning Zoe over to Sarah was, therefore, a great help
to her at this time.

I completed my purchases, arranged for their transportation and returned
to Jacksonville. I arrived in the evening and went at once to Reverdy's.
I had been gone a week. All were here to greet me. But Zoe was subdued
in manner. Her smile was forced. She avoided me, going in and out of the
room about the work of clearing the table. She did not pause to listen
to the story of my trip. Was she perhaps ill? Reverdy and Sarah
prevailed upon me to stay over night. And I did; but early the next
morning all of us went to the country together; for Reverdy was now
pushing the house to completion.

When we arrived at the hut, as Zoe remained silent and subdued, I began
to question her. She protested at first that nothing was the matter; but
I knew better, and I persisted in my attempts to draw her out. She began
to cry at last. She came to me and rested her head on my shoulder. "Tell
me now," I urged. And she relieved herself of the secret in broken
words, in half-formed phrases.

She had gone walking one night with Lamborn. He had led her into the
woods in search of a rabbit's nest he said was there. He had seized
her, put his hand over her mouth, threatened her with harm, with being
sold down South. He had overcome her. She had returned to Reverdy's
afraid to tell him what had happened. She did not know what Lamborn
would do to her if Reverdy went after him. She felt that she was in the
wrong for having gone walking with Lamborn, and that she would be blamed
by Sarah. Therefore she had not told her secret before. She was sure
that neither Sarah nor Reverdy suspected it.

What was I to do? I could not conceive of a wrong like this going
unpunished. But my brain refused to plan, to think out what was best to
do. I did not know the community well enough, nor enough of the laws to
make a decision by myself. I decided that I must consult with Reverdy. I
hurried away from Zoe, telling her on no account to leave the hut; and
went to find Reverdy. He was at work on my house, looked at me
wonderingly as if to question what had brought me over so soon. I drew
him aside and told him what I knew.

Reverdy's blue eyes grew terribly deep. They darkened like clouds in a
rapidly gathering storm. They were full of comprehending compassion.
They expressed alarm, but also an inexorable sense of futility, as if
there was nothing to be done. He was silent. He had fought the Indians;
he was used to the rough life of the West. He did not betray fear;
rather he acted as if there was nothing to be done. When he began to
speak that was the tenor of his words. He revealed to me possibilities
that I had never dreamed of. I could see that I was caught in
unforeseen circumstances. Some of the dangers involved in the situation
he only hinted at. For example, the matter of my living with Zoe. There
might be people in Jacksonville who believed that my attitude toward Zoe
was not of a brotherly nature. Such a suspicion seemed horrible to me.
But Reverdy went on to show me why it might be entertained. This remote
country, lacking in opportunity for legitimate expression, held secrets
of bestial and gross departures from nature. Here was Zoe, young and
beautiful. What did our kindred blood have to do with the matter of my
desire? I had not grown up with her, and it would be natural enough if I
did not feel toward her as a brother. Incest was common enough around
here. As to Lamborn, Zoe was a nigger, and the spoil of any one who
wanted her. These were some of the things that Reverdy hinted at. If I
prosecuted Lamborn, the countercharge would be made that I had been
intimate with Zoe myself. If she had a child I would be proclaimed its
father, especially if I raised an issue, and tried to fix the paternity
upon Lamborn. If I went to see the state's attorney and asked him to
act, there was danger that he would not wish to do so, because the
present state's attorney was about to lose the office. He would not wish
to start a social hostility that would react upon himself. In fact,
Douglas was now trying to supplant him. I was known as a friend of
Douglas'. Perhaps I would be trying to involve the state's attorney in
an unpopular prosecution. If the prosecuting attorney refused to act
that refusal would be known, and credit might be given to any reports
that might arise that Zoe was mine before she was Lamborn's, if she ever
was his. And if I resented the prosecuting attorney's refusal to act,
then I might be accused of acting with Douglas in his ambition to get
the office. Above all, under the law of Illinois, Zoe could not testify
against Lamborn, a white man. Thus, in any prosecution that was to be
made, evidence independent of Zoe's word had to be procured. Where was
such evidence? That really settled the whole matter. But I had gone
through the whole range of deliberation before finding out that Zoe's
word would not be received in court.

But why had Reverdy not warned me against taking Zoe to live with me?
There was the matter, too, of my equal division of the estate with Zoe.
I had done this with the purest of motives. Now the edge of it was
turned against me. For why would I surrender so much when I did not have
to?

What was I now to do? Should I send Zoe away? Should I keep her in my
household and let the tongues wag, as they were doing, or clatter if Zoe
should have a child? The secret would be out soon. Lamborn would be sure
to betray the fact that he had captured Zoe. There seemed nothing to do
then but to settle down with British tenacity to live it out, and brave
whatever came to me out of the complications. I was sure of the
friendship of Reverdy and Sarah.

With these reflections I went back to the hut. Zoe was still in tears.
She asked me if she had not better go away. If I would give her some of
her money she would leave and never come back. "No," I said. "I am going
to see you through, Zoe. We will face this out together; only do you
consult me about what to do, and help me to stand by you."

I sat down and began to think it all over again. Here were all the
pretty things I had bought in St. Louis soon to arrive, and the house
would be ready to occupy in a few days. Yet these happy events were
clouded for me. There was real bitterness in my cup now.




CHAPTER XV


The house was done. My furnishings were delivered. There were curtains
to make, many feminine touches were needed to settle the rooms. Sarah
did all that she could, but Dorothy Clayton had come. She was just a
year younger than I, and of charming appearance and manner. We had
become friends almost at once. She was with me daily, as we put the
house in order for occupancy. Reverdy thought that Sarah must be
apprised of what had happened to Zoe. She was terribly wounded and
distressed. But she approved of my course in keeping Zoe with me.

On my birthday, June 18th, we had the housewarming. I gave a party,
inviting all the young people from Jacksonville and the country around:
those that I knew and those that I didn't--all but Lamborn. The omission
would be notable, but I could not invite him. The matter was promptly
gossiped about. Lamborn himself was stirred to talk now. He made the
most detestable references to Zoe and me; and I was told of them. At the
party Douglas drew me aside and confided to me that Lamborn was in an
ugly rage.

Douglas was quite the life of my party. He mingled freely with all the
company, making himself charming to every one. He danced with every
girl present, and more than once with Dorothy. His short figure gave him
a certain comical appearance. But he was graceful and adept at the
dances. And his wit and good humor kept every one in high spirits.
Reverdy, too, participated in the joy of the occasion with generous
enthusiasm. Altogether, we were a merry crowd. I had strengthened my
hold upon the affections of the community. For the time I had forgotten
my embarrassing troubles. They came back to my mind after the guests had
departed. And there was something else to disturb me. Dorothy had gained
more than my passing interest.

Work was now my salvation, and I had plenty to do. I had learned in this
year a vast amount about running a farm; and I was blessed with
excellent health. But meanwhile Zoe! It was not long before it was
certain that she was to bear a child; and it would not be many months or
even weeks when she could not walk out or go to town without betraying
her secret to the world. But then what should the explanation be? Should
I tell what I knew? Should I remain silent?

Except for engrossing duties, with time to think and brood, I should
have been thrown into tortures with the possibilities. There was always
the chance, too, that Zoe in the desperation of the moment might run
away from me. She had the English blood of my father in her veins,
venturesome, perhaps reckless. Perhaps it was well that she had no
control of the profits of the farm which had thus far been allotted to
her, nor her share of the ready money which my father had left. I had
had Reverdy appointed her guardian, making myself accountable to him. I
deemed this the fitting thing; and I was also brought to do it because I
might be absent at times in the future when she would need money. But if
Zoe should run away what would become of her? The chance of her being
kidnapped and sold into slavery filled me with terror. Yet the days went
on without change.

Except that Sarah's boy was born! What a father Reverdy was! So
wondering and gentle. And he guarded Sarah like a lover and father in
one. Zoe was wild to see Sarah's boy; but that was out of the question
now. She wanted to deed some of her land to the boy, or better perhaps,
to Sarah. But she would have to wait until she became of age to do this.

The birth of Sarah's boy affected Zoe profoundly. She was now about two
months advanced in her own pregnancy. She was beginning to think of the
ordeal herself, of the fate of the child, what it was being born to....
What, indeed? I noticed that Zoe had hours of deep depression. Would it
not be best for me to have a woman in the house with Zoe? Mrs. Engle
knew of a widow about fifty whose husband had been killed in the War of
1812. And I got her, a Mrs. Brown. Zoe was now free of the housework.
She had a companion when I was away on my work about the farm. And I
felt relieved. But my mind and heart were full of problems. There was
always Zoe! There was always Lamborn, skulking in the shadows of my
speculations. How would I unravel this tangle with him?

Then there was Dorothy. Some of the talk must reach her eventually. It
might come to her as a smudge upon me. Then I could not expect to
continue my attentions to her without explanations. How could I go into
explanations with Dorothy? But even if Dorothy only knew that Zoe was my
sister, what would she think of me? Could she have an interest in a man
with a family relationship of this sort? Could Dorothy, bred in
Tennessee, look with favor upon my attentions? Had Reverdy and Sarah
kept this relationship from Dorothy? Had some one else told her? But if
she had not found these circumstances a reason for turning from me could
she tolerate the rest of my difficulties?

And one night I came home to find Zoe in bed. She was in great pain and
very weak. She was scarcely able to talk. She took my hand and pressed
it, only saying: "I have done something for you. If I die, it will be
best anyway. If I live it will be all right. I could not bear to bring
you such shame and trouble. Don't worry ... don't."

Mrs. Brown came in and stood by the bed. She did not speak. She looked
at me as if to say that sometimes desperate things have to be done. I
understood. I acquiesced. Did Mrs. Brown do it? I never asked. Zoe's
sufferings were very great. All this for Lamborn's drunken madness. And
then Zoe began to mend. She was out of her difficulty. She became
herself in a few weeks. But her spirit had changed. She was wiser, more
self-possessed. She was more a woman. A great load had been lifted from
me; yet I now faced a new Zoe. What would this mature Zoe do to me?




CHAPTER XVI


There was the law against Zoe taking this step, and against any one
having any part in it. Still would it be known? I was content to wait
for developments and meanwhile to put the whole thing behind me. Work
helped me to do this.

I had Sarah's boy to interest me too. They had named him Amos. I had
taken five twenty-dollar gold pieces and tied them in a package, bound
them with a ribbon, and placed them in his tiny hand. I could not
foresee the time when I should touch his hand on an occasion of very
different import and with Zoe standing by. Zoe had made Amos some pretty
little things and sent them by me. Sarah's only regret was that her
grandmother could not see the boy. Her great happiness was wholly
beautiful. And Reverdy seemed impressed with a greater dignity and a
more gracious heart, if that were possible. I had found Mrs. Brown well
adapted to my household. She liked the place; and the prospect was that
she would be long in my service. Life was moving on.

I kept in touch with affairs in England and Europe through the London
_Times_. I was also a subscriber to Greeley's _New Yorker_; and I did
not slight the local paper, which belabored Douglas in proportion as he
increased in popularity and power. I read many books as well.

For I felt the stir of a new age. I saw the North, the country around
me, growing in wealth and dominance. I saw old despotisms giving way and
new ones coming to take their place. The factory system was arising, due
to machinery. Weaving and spinning processes had improved. The cry of
women and children crowded in the factories of Pennsylvania began to be
heard. The hours of toil were long. And if the whip descended upon the
back of the negro in the South, the factory overseer in Philadelphia
flogged the laborer who did not work enough to suit him, or who was
tardy at the task. Women and children there were feeling the lash of the
whip. Just now there was talk of a machine which would cut as much grain
in a day as six men could cut with scythes. I ordered two of these
machines for the next year, for I was farming more and more on a big
scale. But what seemed most wonderful to me was an instrument now being
talked about which sent messages by electricity. It was not perfected
yet. It was treated with skepticism. But if it could be! If I could get
a message from St. Louis, a distance of more than a hundred miles, in a
few minutes or an hour!

Douglas came out to see me one night to tell me what was on his mind. He
wanted to be the prosecuting attorney. Consider the straits of a young
man who must make his way and get a place in the world! Is there
anything more desperate at times? What was the law business in this
community, divided, as it was, by eleven lawyers, shared in by visiting
lawyers? Douglas had to live. Youth is forced to push ahead or be
crushed. I know he has been accused of manipulation in having the law
passed by which he could be appointed to the office and supplant a
rival. Well, if he had not had the gifts and the energies to do such
things, how could he have served the country and maintained himself? The
next February before he was twenty-two, he was state's attorney for the
district. No wonder that lesser men railed at him. But what one of them
would not have done the same thing if he could?

And now I was seeing much of Dorothy. What did it mean? Was she only my
friend? Reverdy, her brother, was my most intimate friend. Did she
receive my attentions on account of the relations between him and me? If
she knew anything about Zoe she never betrayed it to me. Surely she
could not be in Jacksonville so long and be ignorant that Zoe was my
half-sister. At last I decided to explore Dorothy's mind. I went at it
forthrightly. Did she know that Zoe and I had the same father?

She had heard it. That was a common enough thing in the South; not
common there, however, for a colored mother to be the wife of a white
father. "I have suffered on account of this," said Dorothy. "You knew
nothing about it and had nothing to do with it. It is too bad--too bad,
Jimmy!"

There remained Zoe's misadventure. How could I approach that? But if
Dorothy had heard of it would she continue to receive me? If she knew
about it would not the present association of ideas bring it to mind
and bespeak it to me by change of color or expression? I looked at
Dorothy quizzically. I discovered nothing in her face. Then I began to
think of the certain probability that some one had come to her breathing
rumors upon her. So I said: "Promise me something, Dorothy. If any one
ever tells you anything about me, say, for example, that I haven't been
perfectly fair with Zoe in every way, and honorable as far as I know how
to be, will you withhold belief until you give me a chance? Do you
promise me that?" And Dorothy stretched her hand to me in a warm-hearted
way. "You are Reverdy's friend, aren't you, and he is yours. Well, I
promise you. But it isn't necessary, for it would have to be something
that I could believe you capable of. Then Reverdy would have to believe
it, and then I might have a mind of my own after all. Why, how could
anyone say anything about you? You have been as good to Zoe as if she
were as white as I."

And so Dorothy didn't know. I left the matter where it was. I could not
go on. You see I was nineteen and Dorothy was eighteen and the year was
1834.

But Lamborn. I had made an enemy of him. Rather, he had turned himself
into my enemy. He was running with a gang of rough fellows called the
McCall boys. They drank and fought, using clubs or stones or knives.
They were suspected of trying to rob the stage when it was driven by the
poor wretch who had died of the cholera two summers before. That driver
was noted for his courage, his ready use of the rifle; and he had
frightened the marauders off, and had wounded one of them, who limped
away until the trail of his blood was obscured.

Every time I came into town I was subjected to wolfish leers from some
member of this gang. Evidently they had taken up Lamborn's cause.
Something was preying upon him. He was drinking more heavily. Perhaps he
was tormented with the thought that I knew his secret and abided some
vengeance upon him. Perhaps his conscience tortured him. At any rate he
had become a skulking figure of hatred, showing his teeth and snarling
when he saw me and sidling away like a wolf. He had muttered curses as
he hurried to one side. "Bloody Englishman" and the like were his
remarks. Something told me to watch him, to watch the McCall boys. I
began to take pains to guard my house in the country, sleeping always
with my rifle by my side; and I had provided my men with rifles,
instructing them to shoot if trespassers approached during suspicious
hours or when warned away.

The autumn was the most delicious weather I had experienced since coming
to America. Enough of the summer was carried over into October, and even
November, to keep the days warm and full of sunlight, while the nights
were clear and frosty, and always over this boundless prairie the far
scattered stars. I had bought an astronomical chart and located the
constellations, in which Zoe had joined me in increasing wonder. Then I
had a taste of real hunting. Reverdy and I had gone to marshes a few
miles away for wild geese and ducks; and we had come back loaded with
game for ourselves and friends. There were many parties and what were
called "shucking bees," where the company set to to assist the host in
ridding the corn of its sheath; and quilting bees; and apple parings.
These were occasions of festival, the local rituals of Dionysius.
Earlier in the fall I had gone to a county fair and had seen the
products of the field on display; and had studied the people: the tall
angular gawks, the men carrying whips, the dust, the noise, the cheap
fakirs and gamblers, the fights, the drunkenness, the women tired and
perspiring carrying their babies and leading a brood. To me it was more
like a cattle pen befogged with dust than an assemblage of human beings.
And there was no happiness, no real joy; only barbaric breaking away
from hard labor and the silence of the farms; only a reeling and a
howling and a war dance; and only here and there a flash of breeding and
fineness, and intelligent use of the occasion for sweeter joys and
fuller life.

The winter came down; but I was better prepared for it than I was the
year before. My house with its walls a foot thick of solid oak and
tightly plastered against the penetrating winds kept out the cold. And
my fireplaces built under my very eye threw a steady heat into the
rooms. I was giving parties from time to time and attending them as
well. Douglas always came. He was unfailingly the life of the party. He
had reënforced his political successes with a genuine hold upon the
hearts of the young people and the older people. He was attacked weekly
by the Whig newspaper. But he was not without defense. Almost upon
arriving at Jacksonville he had written a letter of praise to the editor
of a newly started journal. The editor was greatly pleased at this
spontaneous expression of interest and had become Douglas' friend and
stanch champion. Ah! Douglas was only manipulating. He had written this
letter to win a newspaper to his support. The wily schemer! "Genius has
come into our midst," wrote the editor. "No one can doubt this who heard
Mr. Douglas expound Democratic doctrine in his wonderful debate with
John Wyatt. This country is richer for having attracted Douglas to it.
He is here to stay. And he will be one of the great men of the country
as President Jackson is now the greatest figure since Washington; and
Illinois will send him forth as her son to speak and to act on the great
questions that are already beginning to fill the minds of the people."

Douglas often came out to stay for the night or for a day or two. He had
little law business, but his energies were always employed in shaping
his powers toward a participation in the politics of the country. His
superhuman energy was intensified by the fact that he had been deprived
of an opportunity to educate himself. It was the gadfly that drove him
forward with such restless industry. I could see that he had no patience
for a detailed study of the law; that he might be ignorant of the
technical steps to be taken in the collection of a promissory note, but
he would know something about the resources of a treaty; that if he did
not know how to settle the title to a farmer's field, he had considered
ways to put at rest any claim of England to the territory of the Oregon.
Yet he had to live as a lawyer before he could flourish as a statesman.
And he had become the prosecuting attorney. His enemies said it was by a
trick; that he had had the state law changed so that the legislature
could appoint him state's attorney for the district of Jacksonville. The
accusation proved too much. Douglas was not quite twenty-two when he
reached this office. He had been in the state but two years, not quite
that. How had such a youth first won the confidence of enough people who
wished to give him this office and were able to do it; and then won the
legislature to do the extraordinary thing of changing the law to give
him the office, while at the same time supplanting a seasoned and
experienced man in the place? How? Was every one corrupt, people and
legislature? But it was February and he was the prosecuting attorney for
the people.

He came out to see me, and we drank his health and fortune. It was on
this occasion that Douglas talked to me with the greatest freedom about
my own affairs. His frankness and sincerity, his friendship for me,
relieved this broaching of my intimate interests of intrusiveness. I
felt no inclination to resent it. He had glanced at Zoe who had come
into the room once or twice, remarking that she was an unusual young
woman. Then he said: "Your father must have been much of a man. I think
his marriage worked upon his feelings ... and Zoe. Don't let this get on
your imagination. You are handling it in the right way ... just go on.
Let me warn you. The McCall gang is a desperate one. Do not on any
account come to an issue with them. There are too many of them. They
will sneak up upon you. They carry grudges ... and another thing,
there's Lamborn ... as bad as the McCalls. He's been talking too, making
threats against you. I tell you this for your own good. He has been
boasting of Zoe's interest in him ... to speak euphemistically of the
matter ... but just be careful." Whatever else he had in his mind he
communicated it to me by the look of his speaking eyes, keen and blue.
Then he arose and went.

Dorothy had returned to Nashville for the winter. She expected to take
her place again in Reverdy's household in the spring. And we were
writing. I had thought of proposing marriage to her the night before she
left. But I could not bring myself to do so. I needed some one in my
life. But I was just twenty, and Dorothy seemed so much more mature and
wise than I. Then always there was this matter of Zoe. I lived in the
expectation that something would come out of Zoe's misfortune; and if it
did my name was bound to be connected with it. What would Dorothy say if
in the midst of our engagement, if she engaged herself to me, the word
should be brought to her that I was the father of Zoe's aborted child
and that by some one, perhaps Mrs. Brown, Zoe had been saved the open
shame of giving birth to the child and while an inmate of my house? I
could see the probative force of these facts against me. This is what
kept me from speaking to Dorothy on the subject of becoming my wife and
having it settled before she went to Nashville. And then something
happened that made my situation infinitely worse before it was any
better.

The spring had come on early and I had much to do. I was buying
machinery. The mowers that I had ordered were soon to be delivered and I
had need to be in town almost daily. There were always loafers about the
streets; and among them, not infrequently, the McCall boys or Lamborn.
Reverdy had told me that Lamborn had been talking in the barber shop,
saying that I was living in a state of adultery with my nigger sister.
At the same time I knew, and Reverdy knew, that Lamborn was trying to
get Zoe to meet him. He had sent her a note to that effect, which Zoe
had turned over to me. Once he had accosted Zoe as she was coming from
Reverdy's to join me at the courthouse preparatory to starting home.
Reverdy thought that the fellow was eaten up with insane jealousy and
had brought himself to the belief that I had taken Zoe from him, if he
could be said ever to have had a right to her.

It is an April day and I have come into town and am rushing from place
to place attending to many things. Reverdy has met me at the bank to
tell me of another opportunity to buy a team of horses and some oxen;
for we use the latter mostly to draw the plows that turn up the heavy
sod of the prairie. Reverdy has just told me of Lamborn's threat to come
to my farm and take Zoe: that when a girl was once his she was always
his. He had said these things at the barber shop. Something came over
me. I resolved that this intolerable state of affairs, of anxiety for
Zoe, of misunderstanding for myself, of dread of the future, of a sort
of brake on my life as of something holding me back and impeding my
happiness and peace of mind ... all this had to end somehow and soon. I
could not live and go on with things as they were.

We stepped from the bank. And there, not ten feet away, stood Lamborn.
His mouth became a scrawl, he uttered a growl, he swayed with passion,
he moved his hands at his side in a sort of twisting motion. And I
thought: there are Zoe and Dorothy, and I may create a feud against me
that will follow me for years ... yet this man must die. And I drew my
pistol and fired ... Lamborn sank to the ground without a groan. Some of
the McCall boys ran out. I fired at them. They fled. I walked forward a
step or two. Then I asked Reverdy if he had seen Lamborn reach for his
pistol. Reverdy had seen this. I had not. In fact, Lamborn did nothing
of the sort. But if Reverdy saw this he could swear to it and help me.
The excitement of the precise moment was now over. I felt weak and
anxious. I wanted to see Douglas. As state's attorney he could help me.
Douglas was soon on the scene. He had heard what I had done. I wanted
to talk with him. He waved me off saying: "You must have counsel of your
own. You must not talk to me. I would be compelled in the discharge of
my duty to use against you anything you might tell me." With that he
walked away.

He could not be my friend in this hour of need! What was I to do? Yes,
there was Reverdy. But when it came to the matter of locking me up
Douglas said: "If Mr. Clayton signs the bond ... make the bond $1000 ...
don't lock him up. Get a coroner's jury."

There was not a member of this jury who had not been exposed to some of
this vile talk about Zoe and me, in the general contagion of the village
gossip. How should this examination be managed? Of course the single
question, they told me, was the manner of Lamborn's meeting his death.
But the coroner's jury had the power to bind me to the grand jury for an
indictment, and that I wished to escape. Well, I had been threatened, to
be sure. But why? If Lamborn wanted Zoe and I had her in my house and
kept him from seeing her, was it for a good or a selfish reason? Were we
not rivals for the same favor? Did one have her and one lose her? Had I
killed Lamborn for jealousy, or in self-defense? The single fact that I
had shot him stood against the background of all this gossip and village
understanding, and was necessarily read into it for my undoing or my
freedom.

There was the note that Lamborn had written Zoe! That proved that
Lamborn was seeking her; but it might be used to prove that I resented
his pursuit. And why? As Zoe's brother, or as her unnatural lover? My
brain was in a whirl. I could not think for myself. I talked these
subjects over with Reverdy and with Mr. Brooks, who was my counsel. All
these things were done the day of the killing. The next morning, with
the body of Lamborn lying in the room, I mounted the witness chair in my
own behalf, after Reverdy had testified that he had seen Lamborn reach
to his pocket, and that it was not until then that I drew my pistol and
fired.

Was Douglas turned against me? He plunged into the matter of Zoe almost
at once in his cross examination of me. And at last I told the whole
story ... with but two exceptions: I did not produce Lamborn's note to
Zoe and I did not tell of Zoe's illness and its cause; of returning from
St. Louis and finding Zoe in tears, of what she had told me, of the
embarrassment I then found myself in, of my perplexity, of my failure to
invite Lamborn to my housewarming and the reason for it, of Lamborn's
attitude toward me after that, his menacing looks, his growling insults
when he saw me ... of all these things I told with full
circumstantiality under the examination of the new state's attorney, and
with the whole of the countryside looking on, Whigs and Democrats, and
with the audience permeated with slavery and with slavery feeling, at
least so far as the present case was concerned. What would Douglas now
do? He rose and in his deep voice, with perfect command of himself,
looking over the audience as if it was a great instrument whose keys he
knew, he spoke these brief words: "Gentlemen, it makes no difference to
me whether this girl is white or black; if you bind this young man over
to the grand jury, I will do what I can to prevent an indictment; and if
the grand jury indicts him I will do what I can to have him acquitted.
This dead man here met his just fate."

The audience cheered. The jury acquitted me without leaving their seats.
I walked a free man into the soft air of April. Douglas came out. His
manner was changed. He spoke to me in freedom and in the old tone of
friendship. "The boil is now open," he said. "The cut place will heal."

And he walked with me down the street followed by a cheering crowd.
Douglas had won the people; and I was free!




CHAPTER XVII


I began to see myself as boring through opposition with lowered head and
indomitable will. I was strengthened by the fact that I had never
swerved from my duty to Zoe. And now that the beast was out of the way
who had caused her so much agony, my whole life seemed cleared. The
McCall gang might cause me trouble, but they would need to come
prepared, or to catch me off my guard. The opening up of the whole case
had had a wholesome effect upon my reputation. The brotherly innocence
of my relation to Zoe was the generally accepted one. Reverdy assured me
of this. Douglas was a valiant friend to me in this clarification of my
nature and my character before the community. The whole atmosphere of my
life was now freer; but it had cost Lamborn his life to make it so. It
seemed best, however, that I should leave town for a while. I decided to
go to Cincinnati and then to Nashville. I wanted to see Dorothy. I felt
that I must make myself clear to her, and face to face.

Having made all arrangements for Zoe and Mrs. Brown to keep the house
while I was gone and having laid out the work for my men, I set forth
for Vandalia, the capital of Illinois, by stage. There I took the
Cumberland Road, passed through Indianapolis, a small place; arrived in
good time at Cincinnati, a city of more than 30,000 people; a busy place
of manufacturers, distillers, and pork packers, since Kentucky, Ohio,
and Indiana shipped their hogs to this market to be converted into hams
and bacon and lard. I saw the town, the residence of the great Nicholas
Longworth, who had grown fabulously rich by making wine. And at the
hotel, this latter part of April being warm, I was treated to the
spectacle of the men in the dining room taking off their coats and
dining in their shirt sleeves amid the not inelegant appointments that
surrounded the table. But I was becoming Americanized now and was not as
sensitive as formerly to deportment of this sort.

The vastness of America came over me as I descended from Cincinnati to
Nashville. Yet there was the southern territory still south of me; and
beyond the Mississippi the unsettled empire of Louisiana. Cincinnati had
something of the activity and the character of other northern cities;
but as I passed through the domain of Kentucky and Tennessee I could not
help but see that here was an agricultural country which owed its
prosperity to slavery. But what was all that I saw here of industry and
utilization of the resources of the land compared to what I saw growing
up as a system around Jacksonville?

Yet the loveliness of the country around Nashville enchanted me. I was
in a mood to be won, to be sure; for I was completely captivated by
Dorothy and the delightful hospitality that was accorded me. Dorothy's
mother treated me with such gentle and thoughtful attention, as if she
received me not less upon the basis of my friendship to Reverdy than
upon my own appeal to her. And as for Dorothy--she was as kind to me as
a sister; and yet....

I loved the country and this little city of 6000 people on the hills
above the Cumberland valley. Still, so many negroes. In this whole state
of about 700,000 people, nearly 150,000 were slaves, so Dorothy told me.
It amazed me. Negro slavery, so far as England was concerned, had never
to me been a visible thing. But here in America, here in Tennessee, and
in this city, it struck one at every turn. It entered into all the daily
thinking and plans of every one. It was omnipresent. It touched every
life.

This was the town of James K. Polk, whose name meant nothing to me; but
Dorothy spoke of him as a leading man in Congress from Tennessee. Here
also was the residence of President Jackson, a place called the
"Hermitage," a few miles into the country. Dorothy and I drove to it.
These were the places of interest to see; and everywhere the southern
mansion: the upper and lower porch in front, the spacious windows, the
Dorian or Ionic columns, as the case might be; the great entrance door
set between mullioned panes at either side, and beneath a lunette of
woodwork and glass. The Clayton house was like this, for Dorothy's
father had been a man of wealth, a slave owner too in his prosperous
days. He had failed and died, Reverdy had gone to the newer country of
Illinois to seek his fortune, leaving Dorothy and the mother to the
possession of the diminished property which Mr. Clayton had left.

But above everything in the way of delight, for the beauty of the
prospect, for the opportunity it gave me to be with Dorothy, were the
hills that overlooked the Cumberland valley and the river. We climbed
here daily and sat beneath the lovely oaks that shaded the richness of
the grass. To the west and north the river flowed to its confluence with
the Ohio. Around us the hills. The valley between. The silence of
nature, the intensity of unfolding life around us. Always on my mind was
the thought of Dorothy as my wife. And why not speak my heart? I could
not tell why. Was it Zoe; Dorothy's knowledge of Zoe? Was I investing
Dorothy with my own thoughts, putting into her mouth the objections that
I could make against myself? I could not tell what Zoe might bring into
the life of the woman I married, as well as my own. Surely I was not
very robust, very hearty in my speculations. For Dorothy had received
me. There was nothing lacking in the warmth of her hospitality ... and
yet I sensed at times such a temperate feeling in her glance, in her
voice. Even her frankness had that character, or enhanced it perhaps.

And one afternoon as we were walking along the river I spoke what was in
my heart. I had this competence. I had built the house. I could make a
fortune in time. I was beginning to need some one to help me, to be with
me. And no sooner had I spoken than I saw myself: Zoe was my half-sister
and I was proposing marriage to a girl who had no feeling that did not
bespeak to her the inferiority of the colored skin, no matter if it were
lightened, no matter by whom. Dorothy's attitude was that of the
high-bred and kindly southerner: the negroes must be kept in slavery as
a solution of the social question and for the prosperity of the South;
but at the same time the negro should be treated with kindness. And here
was Zoe, the half-sister of the man who was asking her to be his
companion for life. To what extent, then, the associate on a basis of
equality with Zoe too? This was not all. My name had been coupled with
Zoe's. Above all, I had killed a man, my rival or Zoe's hunter, as one
might choose to believe.

Thus I saw myself. My very hair began to rise and to tingle. How had I
dared to make this proposal to Dorothy? And as Dorothy was silent, and
looked down as we walked, poking with her parasol at pebbles in the
road, I was in a tense anxiety to know with what words she would break
the oppressive pause between us. "I could see," she said, "that you
liked me; and of course you wouldn't come so far to see me if you
didn't. And you must know that Reverdy's friendship for you makes a
difference. Do you know...?"

Dorothy lost her voice. The tears came out of her eyes. As she did not
speak I began again, trying to say for her what she did not say for
herself. "There's Zoe," I said. And then Dorothy quite lost control of
herself. She wept piteously. And then she grew calmer. She had faced the
reluctant fact when I spoke Zoe's name. We had stumbled up and over
that roughness in the road. Any rut or obstacle in it might now be
easier endured ... if worse was not to come.

Yes, these stories about me. Had Dorothy heard them? And the life I had
taken for Zoe's sake. I was sure Dorothy had not heard of that. Even the
first was a subject difficult to approach. I was twenty, Dorothy was
nineteen. But the greatest obstacle was the age in which we lived. Women
now draped themselves in mystery. There were whole realms of subjects
that were not talked between the sexes. We managed things by mild
indirections, by absurd circumlocutions.

I began to think of the letter that Lamborn had written Zoe. I was
carrying it in my pocket. Did it not prove Lamborn's interest in Zoe? I
handed it to Dorothy, thinking that it would disprove my interest in
Zoe, of which I had been made self-conscious by the accusations; and not
realizing that Dorothy probably knew nothing of all these charges. "Read
this," I said, handing it to Dorothy.

Dorothy took it in at a glance, for it was only a few lines beginning
"Dear Zoe." It was an invitation to Zoe to meet Lamborn again at the
same place. Dorothy's face turned crimson. She handed the note back to
me without a word. I had to struggle with the tough materials of the
revelation that I wished to make. And I went on to tell Dorothy that the
author of the note was Lamborn. "You remember him?" I asked. Dorothy
nodded her head. "Well," I continued, "he is dead, thank God. I killed
him."

Dorothy was overcome. She reeled. After a moment, in which she found her
breath again, she faced about and began to walk toward the town.

I followed, hurt and crushed; for Dorothy had suddenly changed her whole
manner. Her face was impenetrable; and it had paralyzed my hope with its
expression of self-withdrawal, something almost of anger. I could not go
on now and tell my story: that I had killed Lamborn because of his
offense against Zoe, because of his menacing attitude toward me, because
of the vile things he had said about Zoe. No! nothing I could say now
would be in place. I had blundered, perhaps. We walked to the house,
silent all the way.

Dorothy went to her room, leaving me in the hands of her mother. Mrs.
Clayton, thinking that we had had a lovers' quarrel, endeavored by extra
attention to me to overcome Dorothy's absence, and to say to me in this
way that she did not share in Dorothy's attitude.

And so it was that Mrs. Clayton and I dined together; and I now had
opportunity to tell her of little Amos, of my life in England, of my
farm, my new house, my plans for the future. Mrs. Clayton was outspoken
enough. She said that Reverdy admired my father for many things, and did
not particularly censure his marriage. As for that it was a common
enough thing in the South for the planters to have children by negro
women, or by the prettier quadroons and octoroons. For herself she
hated slavery, but did not know what would be done if the negroes were
free.

Dorothy did not appear. We rose from the table and went out to sit under
one of the great trees in the yard. I thought I saw an opportunity. Why
not talk to Mrs. Clayton? She could tell Dorothy what I was unable to
say to her. I set my will to the task.

"You seem to know about my father, Mrs. Clayton. And I want you to know
about me. I want Dorothy for my wife. We had a kind of a flare-up this
afternoon. I was trying to make my case clear, and Dorothy fell to
crying. That's all. You see I came to America in ignorance of
everything. No one had told me about my father's marriage; and I blame
my grandmother that she did not tell me. Well, I got to Jacksonville and
was terribly ill, almost died. Zoe took care of me. And that won me. But
in addition to that she is as much my father's child as I am. I found
that out as soon as I got up. Then I took her to live with me, to help
me with the house, without thinking that there would be talk, not only
by those who didn't know that she was my sister as well as by those who
did know it. I went to St. Louis to buy furnishings for my new house.
While I was gone a man named Lamborn wronged her. This made great
trouble for me. And one thing led to another. He was saying vile things
about me and about Zoe. And my life was getting more and more
unendurable day by day on account of this fellow. And at last I was
coming down the street with Reverdy one day, and this Lamborn suddenly
confronted me. I drew and killed him. The state's attorney, Mr. Douglas,
brought out all the facts before the coroner's jury. The jury acquitted
me before leaving their seats. Mr. Douglas told the jury that he would
not prosecute me if an indictment was found against me. And so..." I was
about to say that I had come to Nashville to get away from the
circumstances. But I caught myself and forebore.

Mrs. Clayton had followed me with rapt attention, leaning more and more
toward me as my story progressed. She put out her hand to take mine. I
could not tell whether it was the hand of pity or admiration. Her eyes
were kindly, but they searched me. She seemed to say: "What difficulty
in this boy's life is he trying to mingle with my daughter's life?" She
spoke. "It is too bad. You are too young to have such tragedy." That was
all. Then we went in.

As I arose the next morning I began to wonder what reception would be
accorded me by Mrs. Clayton, not to say Dorothy. No one was astir but
the colored butler and the maids. Yes, slavery was very well for them. I
could see that all that was said in favor of the benevolence of the
institution had verification in them and perhaps in all slaves doing
like service. But what of the field hands, the heavier workers? I was
thinking of these things, but mostly of the desperate situation I was in
and of this day ahead of me. Would Dorothy see me again? Would I be the
honored guest of yesterday? This silence of the mansion made me feel
that its hospitality had cooled toward me. But in a little while Mrs.
Clayton appeared on the stair and descended to find me rather restlessly
pacing the room.

I could not specify any change in her manner. Perhaps as a matter of
breeding I was to be bowed out with all possible courtesy. She smiled me
a "Good morning," said that Dorothy would not be down until later. We
two went in to breakfast.

I began to feel embarrassed. I could not be at ease. Mrs. Clayton sensed
my diffidence. We managed the conversation in broken sentences and
forced remarks. My pride asserted itself. I had done nothing myself for
which I could be blamed. For the rest, if I was not wanted I should go
my way. I asked Mrs. Clayton when I could get a boat to St. Louis. She
did not know, but one ran almost every day either directly, or I could
change boats at a place called Freesland on the Ohio River. Accordingly,
after breakfast, I went to the steamboat landing to make inquiries ...
and without seeing Dorothy.

A kind of rebellion and resentment were rising in me. Dorothy was
Reverdy's sister; but surely she was of a different spirit if she
disapproved of me for what I had done. Perhaps it would be well to be
free of my love for Dorothy, to be once more without any feeling that my
life needed completion by uniting it with a woman's life. I had offered
myself. I was not accepted. My dignity, and place in the world, as I
saw them, were dishonored.

When I returned to the house Dorothy had appeared. She smiled gently in
recognition of me. I broke the silence by telling her that I could get a
boat the next day, and that I must be off. She made no reply.

Later we went to the yard, under one of the great trees. Dorothy was
evidently tortured in her mind and did not know what to say to me. She
looked worn and as if she had not slept. I searched her face. A tear
stole down her cheek. She averted her eyes and clasped her hands
together nervously. I could endure the suspense no longer.

"It is best for me to go," I said. She made no reply. "I am sorry that I
have made you suffer. Let me erase everything by withdrawing what I have
said to you." "You can't," said Dorothy. "You are Reverdy's friend; you
know how I love him. You couldn't suppose that anything that has
affected you so deeply would not affect him and therefore me. I never
believed that I could be so unhappy. You are going and that leaves me to
think and think."

My heart took fire again. I stretched my hand to take Dorothy's. She
removed hers gently out of reach. "Go your way, my friend," she said.
"Later I may write you. You are only a boy yet ... and many things may
happen. But be sure that I suffer, and that I remember and that I need
help."

She arose and preceded me back to the house. Mrs. Clayton seemed to
direct her influence toward smoothing our way. But nothing could be
done. I had met defeat and I wished to depart.

The next day I was on the Ohio but not bound for St. Louis. I had
decided to see New Orleans. Change of scene might allay my thoughts.




CHAPTER XVIII


I did not tell Dorothy where I was going. I left her to suppose that I
was returning to Jacksonville.

In passing to the boat landing I stumbled and fell, bruising myself
painfully. I was hurrying to get away and in my haste and sorrow I was
oblivious of my surroundings. As I limped along on the deck, I was
approached by a kindly man who offered me some ointment which he said
was made from the oil that escaped over the surface of the water in the
salt wells of Kentucky and elsewhere, in spite of anything that could be
done and much to the inconvenience of the business of getting salt. This
man said that the oil was being subjected to experiments for use in
illumination. As an ointment it was magical, and in a few days my
lameness disappeared.

Both on the Ohio and the Mississippi we saw flatboats tied together
heaped with coal, which had been loaded into them from the sides of the
hills of the Alleghanies and elsewhere. They were being floated down to
New Orleans. I had found coal in several places on my land in Illinois.
Sometimes one could dig it out of the surface of the ground. But no
expeditious means were yet in use in Illinois in mining it.

The Mississippi is a wonder scene to me. The river is full of islands
and the boat winds about in endless turns of the stream. There are
swamps, and melancholy cypress and funereal live oaks. There are the
solitary huts of the woodcutters, and bars of sand covered with cane
brake, and impenetrable forests, and the forbidding depths of the
jungle. Farther on there are the sugar plantations, and the levees, and
the great houses of the planters, and the huts of the negroes, and the
vivid greens of fields of sugar cane standing many feet high; and around
these the cypress swamp. And on every side in the midst of each
plantation the tall white towers of the sugar mills. It is all novel and
wonderful to me; and it helps me to forget my insistent thoughts of
Dorothy.

The steamer stopped to get wood. It was at a creole plantation. There
was a procession of carts here, each drawn by a team of mules, driven by
negroes, laughing and joking with each other. They were slaves hauling
wood to the sugar mills. We were soon off again on the silent river,
which had now broadened to the dimensions of a great lake.

Then we saw steeples, a dome; then the masts of numerous vessels, and
steamboats, and tall chimneys. Then we reached the levee of the city.
The boat was fastened, and I walked upon the streets of New Orleans. The
heat was no greater than I had felt in Illinois. And at night a breeze
stirred briskly from the harbor and the gulf beyond. This city of 50,000
people had immediate fascination for me.

In the evening I went to the Place d'Armes where a military band was
playing. There were races during the day just out of town. The cafés
were filled with people smoking and drinking, playing billiards and
dominoes. Ladies in gay costumes sat in the balconies, making
observations on the scene, the players, the passersby. French was spoken
everywhere. And everywhere was the creole beauty, with black eyes and
long silken lashes, and light skin faintly suffused with rose. I plunged
into these festivities in order to forget Dorothy.

I went to the Spanish Cathedral the next day, and saw on the porch
groups of gray-haired negroes waiting for alms. There were candles on
the altar, paintings of the stations of the cross on the pillars, and
confessional closets near the door. And here the lovely creole knelt
side by side with pure black descendants of the African negro.

Not anywhere did I see the negro treated worse than in Illinois, except
on one occasion. I was loitering on the dock looking at the steamboats
being loaded by slaves. A negro driving a wagon almost collided with a
wagon being driven by a white man. I saw the whole of it. The white man
was at fault. Yet he began to curse the negro, who laughingly spoke the
truth, that the white man had suddenly veered. With that a man,
apparently an officer of some sort, stepped from a patrol box carrying a
rifle and with an oath and a vile epithet commanded the negro to drive
on. And he did quickly and without returning a word. There was something
about the injustice of this that aroused my resentment. It was a
partiality that had nothing to do with the circumstances, but only with
the persons.

I visited the slave market and again saw the auctioning of human
beings, some as light of color as Zoe and of as much breeding. Again I
began to speculate on Zoe's future. What would become of her? How would
her fate tangle itself with mine? If Douglas had taken an impetus in
life from his uncle's failure to educate him, what direction had my life
been given by my father's marriage and Zoe? Already I had killed a man
for Zoe's sake; and I had been rejected by Dorothy because of Zoe, or
because of the circumstances which Zoe had created around my life.

Wherever I wandered on Canal Street, on the wharves, in the French
quarter, out to the battlefield where Jackson had won a victory over
Packenham, Dorothy was habitually in my thoughts. But always a door
closed against any communication with her; anything to be done for her
as a remembrance of her generosity; any step to be taken toward making
whole what I conceived to be our wounded friendship. Should I write
Dorothy? But what? So many exquisite things in the shop windows: jewels,
artistries of silver and gold. How I longed to select something for
Dorothy! But the door was closed against it. In the antique shops lovely
tables, chests, writing desks! If I could only buy many of such things
for our home--Dorothy's and mine. But was that home to be? The door
softly closed.

And thus I went about the city. It was so colorful, so gay, so
continental, so unlike anything I had ever dreamed of. And all the while
I was trying to order my thoughts, wondering what I should do. And if
ever Douglas in his political ambitions got entangled, to his own
undoing, with this mass of human beings, white and black, moving about
the carcass of life, what was to be my fate, both on the score of my
individual lot, and as one of the units in this racial hostility, and
the political and economic forces that generated it?

I tried several times to write a letter to Dorothy. I could not find the
exact thing I wanted to say, or the words with which to express it. What
should I say? Should I urge Dorothy to a marriage with me? Should I
attempt to argue down her misgivings? Should I tell her that I would
return to Jacksonville and send Zoe away? Should I write Dorothy that I
relinquished any hope of making her my wife? I wrote letters of these
various imports and then destroyed them. A kind of paralysis was upon my
thinking. And then I would leave my room and wander into the streets,
visit the cafés, and find temporary forgetfulness in lively scenes and
gay faces.

And one night when I was in the French quarter at dinner I became alert
to the conversation of two men sitting at a near table. They spoke
familiarly to each other, almost as brothers. But I sensed that they had
been separated for some time. At last one of them made references to
France and England, and I concluded that he had been abroad. Both were
typical planters, with goatees and broad hats, coats of elegant material
but widely and loosely tailored. As I followed their words almost the
whole condition of America unfolded itself to my understanding.

The tenor of the talk was concerning cotton, the demand for it abroad
and at home, and the effect that that demand had upon the South and the
whole social and political life of America. Within thirty years past all
the Northern States but Delaware had abolished slavery. What would have
kept slavery alive after all except for the cotton gin and Eli Whitney,
what but England's great machinery development for spinning and weaving,
which made the demand for cotton more and more?

The demand! Where there is a demand it must be supplied, and everything
must give way to the processes of furnishing that supply: land, slavery,
what not. Then there are general references to life and to labor. After
all, all labor is slavery they say. Apprentices, farm hands, factory
workers are slaves. All this struggling mass of toilers must, in the
fate of life, be consumed in the great drama of furnishing clothes and
food and roofs for those who can pay. But cotton needs more land. And is
not the territory of the United States, the great commons and domains of
all the states, North and South, to be used by them for their several
and common benefit, for the intromission of property: slaves or cattle
or utensils? It seems to me, now that I hear these men talk, that I am
compelled to listen everywhere in America to schemes of trade, material
progress, the accumulation of money. These planters go on to ask why
lines should be drawn across the territory of the United States
forbidding slavery north of the line and permitting it south of the
line. This territory had been paid for equally by the treasure and blood
of all the states. Blood for land! Then slavery on the land to raise
cotton! And was not Jefferson prophetic when he wrote that the extension
of this divisional line in 1820 alarmed him like a fire bell at
midnight? It betokened sectional strife: the North against the South.
And about trade! For as the Southern States grew richer they would have
more political power, could dominate the North. Some one must dominate.
There must be a supremacy. And what would this growing hostility lead
to? What would future inventions do to exacerbate it? What of the steam
engine, what of machinery, what of unknown developments?

I could not help but think of the bearing that all of this had on my own
life.

But finally as they paid for their dinner, lighted cigars, and became
less energetic of mood, one asked the other: "Have you ever heard from
the girl?" The reply was: "Not a word. How could I? I didn't leave my
name. It was best to close the matter by leaving no trace of myself."
And the first asked: "Wasn't your name on the draft?" "I had gold, a bag
of gold. I simply turned it over to the new husband and went my way."

I was all ears now, studying, too, the face of the man who was
confessing to the bag of gold. Was there a trace of Zoe in him? I could
not be sure. I seemed to see something about the eyes, but it faded
under my scrutiny. At best this man was only Zoe's grandfather; and my
father's blood was nearer to Zoe than his.

They started to arise from the table. I wished to follow them. But I had
not paid for my meal. I beckoned to a waiter. While he was coming the
two planters strolled leisurely from the café arm in arm and in intimate
conversation.

I was hurrying to be away and to follow them--I scarcely knew why. They
were gone when my waiter came. I asked him who the planters were. He
didn't know their names; only knew them as rich planters who often
visited the café. I left the café and tried to find them, but they had
disappeared. And I stood on the curb watching the iridescent ooze of the
sewage in a runnel of the street seep along like a sick snake.

Creole beauties, negroes, planters, roughs, gamblers, passed me. The
streets were noisy with trucks. The air was hot and lifeless. The scene
about me suspired like the brilliant and deadly scales of a poisonous
reptile. I was sick at heart. I was overcome with terrible loneliness. I
was in love with Dorothy and I was Zoe's brother. I was caught in this
great dramatic ordeal of America without any fault on my part. What
should I do? Yes, my ambition. To get rich. That was labor enough. And
there was my farm back in Illinois. Why was I here after all? Was it
some dream? I would wake myself. I would return to my place, my duty.
What else could I do? I went to the wharf to find a boat to St. Louis.




CHAPTER XIX


I was listless all the way home. Passing through Jacksonville I seemed
to sense a coldness in the manner of some of the people. Even where
there was a smile and a bow, to which I could take no exception, I
interpreted an attitude which said: "The Englishman: the fellow who
killed Lamborn."

Was the town dividing as to me? I was sure of Reverdy and Sarah, and
Douglas, and the president of the college and his wife, and some others;
but for the rest I suspected that envy had seized upon a pretext for its
exercise. For I was rich; I had availed myself of mowers and all the new
machinery for farming and I was a competitor, a man possibly growing
more and more in the way. My reception in many quarters seemed distant.

I went directly to the farm. There was my house which I had built with
many hopes. There was the hearth to which I longed to bring a wife. But
here it was, only for me, for my habitation and rest from labors in the
ambition to be rich! Mrs. Brown opened the door and welcomed me with a
diffidence. "Where is Zoe?" I asked. Mrs. Brown replied quickly: "Zoe
has not been seen nor heard of for more than a week. I got up one
morning, and as she didn't appear I went and called her. She was gone.
I saw Mr. Clayton about it. The last I heard no one had seen her."

My feelings were mixed of regret and relief. I was fond of Zoe. My sense
of justice was enlisted in her behalf. I was fearful for her future,
both for the misfortune that might befall her and for the complications
that might accrue to me in her living away from my guidance. For there
was Zoe's property. But on the other hand, if Zoe were completely out of
my life I might win Dorothy.

I walked reflectively toward the fireplace. Should I not write to
Dorothy and tell her of Zoe's disappearance? For surely Zoe would not go
away unless she meant to stay. She had roving, adventurous blood in her,
and an English will. Could I rely upon the hope of her staying away, and
that she would not figure in my life in the future except as to the
land, the money? Yes, here my hands were stuck as in honey. And when
could they be freed and cleaned of it? While I was reflecting upon these
things Mrs. Brown walked to the mantle and taking a letter from it
handed it to me. It was from Dorothy.

"Dear James," the letter read, "I was never more depressed in my life
than I was after your departure; you must know that I would be. In the
first place, Reverdy is so very fond of you and esteems you so much, and
that counts with me. For he is the best and truest man I have ever
known. And I am sure that you are honorable and kind; and you have asked
me to be your wife, and any woman worth noticing is moved by a request
like that if she has any respect for the man whatever. But this seems to
me the most terrible situation that a girl could be placed in. I have
thought it over until my mind goes around in a circle, and I cannot
relate things clearly any more. And of course I have talked it all over
with mother. You can be sure I would not take the pains to do this, nor
the pains to write you in detail, if you had not entered my mind in a
serious way. Frankly the only misgivings I have of you, and I beg you to
forgive me for saying this, is the fact that your father would do such a
thing. I cannot understand it, my mother can't. What was he that he
could do such a thing with the prospect that he would injure you, his
son by another marriage, in so many ways and so deeply? He could not
have overlooked these things; nor the feeling that exists in America,
particularly in the South, against such an alliance. But putting these
things out of mind, you cannot possibly assure me, or any other woman,
against the future. There are the property interests; but if these were
out of the way there is the relationship. And I blame myself deeply, for
I knew that Zoe was your sister almost as soon as I first came to
Jacksonville. With this knowledge I should not have come to your parties
or put myself in a way to be liked by you. I should have only been
polite to you when you came to Reverdy's house. For any other
association, I ask you to forgive me. I have written you many letters,
and then torn them up. Perhaps I shall send this one. It is as good as
I can do. It says everything now except that I am profoundly unhappy,
that I shall never see you again--and to wish you happiness under the
circumstances fills my throat with a kind of suffocation. And so I write
farewell--and can hardly mean it--and yet it must be farewell."

A kind of calmness came over me as I read the last word. There are
anxiety and fear, and stir and ministration while the sick are alive.
But with death there is quiet in the house. Calmness comes to those who
have striven to heal and to save. And with the words "farewell" before
my eyes a dumb resignation came into my heart. Dorothy was gone from me
and forever! But here was my life left to me to work out, and my
ambition to pursue. I grew suddenly strong and full of will. I walked to
the door and gazed for some minutes over the prairie. Then I saddled a
horse and went to find Reverdy.

It was something to see the brother of the woman I loved; but I must
find Zoe if possible.

Reverdy was off somewhere with Douglas. Douglas was working upon the
plan of introducing the political convention system in Illinois, as it
prevailed in New York. He wished to step from the state's attorneyship
into the legislatureship. He had newspaper supporters; he had many
friends, as well as many foes. But he was fighting his way.

I talked with Sarah of my trip to New Orleans and played with little
Amos. I asked Sarah at last about Zoe. Reverdy had already done all he
could to trace her. The stage driver had been questioned, but knew
nothing. Some one had seen a girl, probably Zoe, walking north from
town. Outside of that nothing had been heard. The facilities for finding
her were so primitive. How could posters be sent around, how phrased?
How could constables and sheriffs in the surrounding counties be
notified? And if an advertisement should be published in the local
newspaper where would it reach? Upon what basis could I seek to regain
Zoe, if she did not wish to return? Sarah and I discussed these
problems. But if she had met foul play how could that be discovered? I
seemed quite helpless, yet since it was the best I could do I placed an
advertisement with the newspaper. Then telling Sarah that I wished to
see Reverdy, I returned to the farm.




CHAPTER XX


I had much to do, and work kept me from brooding. It was three days
after I had gone to find Reverdy that he came to see me, bringing
Douglas. My first words to Reverdy were concerning Zoe; but Douglas at
once took a hand in that subject. She would either turn up after a
little wandering about the country or she was gone for good. If she had
met her death it would be known by now, in all probability. I could be
sure that she knew better than to go south. Her likely destination was
Canada, or northern Illinois. There was much going on in Chicago to
attract an adventurous girl. Should I not go there for her? But it was
only a chance that I would find her. What of her property, her
interests? Let them rest until an emergency arose.

In truth Reverdy and Douglas had not come to see me about Zoe, but to
enlist my support in Douglas' ambition to go to the legislature. Douglas
was now twenty-three years of age. He had been in Illinois just three
years. During that time he had become a lawyer, had had the law changed
so as to be appointed state's attorney. He had only held that office
from February to April of this year, when he had organized a convention
at Vandalia to choose delegates to the national convention for next
year. He had fought down opposition to the convention system; he had
successfully managed a county convention in which he had been nominated
for the legislature. Now he was out upon the stump, speaking in behalf
of state policies like canals and railroads; and there was the question
too of removing the state capital from Vandalia to Springfield, which
might constitute a leverage for a vote for internal improvements.
Douglas was in favor of both. While slave interests were seeking land
for cotton, the agrarian interests in Illinois were awake to the need of
transportation facilities and markets. As I had wheat and corn to sell
besides cattle and hogs, and would have them in increasing quantities, I
should use my influence in behalf of these measures and in behalf of
Douglas, who had a vision of their need and a practical mind for
securing them. Douglas did not hesitate on the matter of internal
improvements. He believed that they should be made by the state. That
obviated the centralization flowing from national aid. Let Illinois use
its own resources for building canals and railroads. Let the state's
credit be pledged. What state had greater natural riches? The Illinois
and Michigan canal must be completed. The rivers must be made navigable.
At least two railroads must be constructed, which should cross the state
from north to south, and from east to west. The credit of the state must
be pledged for a loan of money; and the interest on the loan should be
paid by the sales of the land, which Illinois had been granted by the
Federal government for the canal.

Douglas was full of youthful enthusiasm for this work of building up
the state. I could see his great energies moving like a restless tide
through them as he talked these projects over with Reverdy and me. I was
only too glad to lend him my help. It was to my interest. I trusted his
judgment, too. I saw moderation and wisdom in his policies.

Already it was apparent that Douglas stood upon no idealistic
immovability when the main thing was at stake. And hence, when the bill
which was brought in on the subject of railroads, appropriated the money
for eight railroads instead of Douglas' two, and bestowed consolations
here and there to counties in order to get their support, Douglas showed
his reluctance, but gave his vote. The state capital was moved to
Springfield as a part of the give and take of logrolling.

But on the occasion of this call Douglas stood for a very moderate
program, as I have already said. When he was elected and had legislative
power he surrendered his moderation in order to get the railroads. In
fact the people were moving in this direction; there was much
magnificent dreaming and hazardous experimentation and the general
result could not be prevented.

I had gone to see Reverdy, partly to inquire about Zoe, partly with the
hope that I could gain help as to Dorothy. Now he had come to me with
Douglas; and all the talk was of politics, with no chance to draw
Reverdy aside for a private word. When they arose to leave Reverdy took
my hand. His eyes grew wonderfully deep and sympathetic. Then with a
slap upon my back and a congratulation that I would help Douglas, the
two departed.

Then I began to think whether I should write Dorothy. Yes, her letter
demanded some reply. As I sat down to write, Dorothy's view became mine
in a flood of emotion of love's willingness to sacrifice. And I wrote:

"Dear Dorothy: The only thing I can say in my own behalf is that I found
myself suddenly placed in this position as Zoe's brother, without
understanding, or only understanding gradually what it meant to me, or
would mean to any one else. I have been learning all of these things;
and your letter makes them clear to me. I did not come straight home but
went to New Orleans; and your letter had been here some days when I
returned. I must tell you that Zoe disappeared in my absence. I don't
know where and cannot learn. I am fearful for her; and there are many
possible complications. But I am powerless to do anything at this time.
She may never return. She may fall into strange hands and make some new
relations which will come back upon me and upon any one I cared for with
embarrassing results. I am in a position where I can make no assurances.
I feel like asking you to forgive me for causing you any suffering or
anxiety. I should not have asked you to marry me. It was thoughtless;
but I could not with my experience and knowledge of things understand
all that my request might mean. As you are Reverdy's sister I can't help
but feel a tender and protecting interest in you, whatever may come of
it. And I hope life may deal with both of us in such a way that any harm
I have done you will be overcome by some good that I may be to you. And
without asking to see you again I still keep the hope that fate will be
good enough to let me meet you sometime when a clasp of the hand will be
welcome to you and with no consequences that are not pleasant."

And then I sealed the letter for mailing and retired; but not to sleep,
rather to turn restlessly for some hours in the night.




CHAPTER XXI


Fortunately for my peace of mind I had much to do and much to interest
me. The country was developing rapidly under my eyes. Thousands of farms
were coming into cultivation. The prairie grass was vanishing before the
corn. Villages were springing up everywhere. Jacksonville was growing. A
furor of land selling, the selling of lots and blocks in the newly
formed towns, swept over the state. And my own farm had increased in
value, both because of the care I had given it and because of the
growing population. For in truth, while Illinois had about 160,000
inhabitants when I came to it, now as we approached the year 1837 it was
estimated that there were nearly 400,000 souls within its borders.

Douglas had no sooner become a member of the legislature, as it seemed
to me, than he resigned to take the office of register of land in
Springfield, which was now the capital of the state. He was reported to
me to be making a great deal of money now, sometimes as much as $100 a
day. I saw him in the summer. He was a figure of dash, self-possession,
energy and clear-headedness. He confided to me that he intended to run
for Congress. He was now twenty-four, a political leader in his party,
fearless, dreaded, and resourceful.

Douglas had advised me to read political history. Accordingly, during
the long evenings at the farm, I had gone through Elliott's _Debates_
and the _Federalist_. My grandmother sent me De Tocqueville's _De la
Démocratie en Amérique_, which I read in French.

But now I began to see that abolition sentiment was growing. Societies
were being formed and had been for about two years in the northern part
of the state. Here in Jacksonville the agitation of the slavery question
was frowned upon; but it was fermenting under the surface of southern
sentiment.

I was now treated to an American panic, and times were hard. The East
wanted a tariff to protect its manufacturers; the South wanted land and
slaves. Texas had been filling up with Americans since 1820. She seceded
from Mexico and declared her independence now; and General Houston, a
Virginian by birth, a Tennesseean by residence, had taken command of the
Texas troops, and after the Alamo massacre, had defeated the Mexicans
with terrible slaughter in the battle of San Jacinto. The New England
conscience excoriated these things and attributed them to the
machinations of the slavocracy. But while Douglas had no mastery of the
tariff question in its details, his mind shot through to the general
philosophy of it. He often said to me that books and works of art should
be admitted free of duty. He was wont to laugh at the New England
conscience which could swallow the tariff and the growing factory
system, and yet reject with such holy loathing cotton and slavery. He
could not handle statistics, but he was a master of principles.

As my grandmother was writing me regularly of affairs in England, of the
progress of events, of the building of railroads, of Charles
Wheatstone's electric telegraph, and of the new books of moment, I on my
part was attempting to keep her informed of my life, and of the swiftly
moving panorama of Illinois life. And here I insert one of my letters to
her because it covers so much of the ground of this time of my life.

"Dear Grandmama: I have before written you of my friend Mr. Douglas who
came to Illinois just a little while before I did, and who has had such
a phenomenal rise in life in this new country. He is now making ready to
go to Congress, and I am to be one of the delegates to the convention
which is expected to nominate him. Having resigned a very lucrative post
in the Land Office, he has gone into the practice of law and the pursuit
of politics. For the latter he has a positive genius, as his whole mind
is taken up with visions and plans for the development of the country,
and for the aggrandizement of the United States. He is honest and
outspoken, courageous even to audacity; but he is sometimes accused of
devious ways, and of taking up anything that has a stomach in it. But no
one can say that he changes his principles; rather he avails himself of
opportune conditions, which are many, to advance himself and the things
he believes in. The country has no truer friend. Though I am an alien I
am a resident, and therefore I can participate in political affairs and
help him without being naturalized. At the present time Douglas is in
Springfield, and is much in the office of one of the newspapers there,
to which he contributes editorials sometimes. Recently the office was
attacked by some men who had been accused of trickery of some sort by
the newspaper. Douglas was present; and, though he is a little fellow,
he helped to beat off the attacking parties; and in the general assault
the sheriff was stabbed by one of the editors; but the matter has all
blown over.

"My own unfortunate affair has the appearance now of dying down.

"A very terrible thing has happened in the killing the Reverend Lovejoy
at Alton, a town not far from Jacksonville. He was running an abolition
newspaper which was offensive to the slave interests or the peace
interests, if you want to call them that. And persisting in his
agitation of the slave question they undertook to destroy his press. In
the altercation Lovejoy was shot. There is great feeling over the
matter.

"It is impossible for me to convey to you the intellectual atmosphere of
the country. It is so full of contradictions and cross currents. For
example, you come to believe that a Whig is against slavery. Then some
one comes forward to propose a certain General Harrison, a leading Whig,
for President in 1840; and some one arises to show that when he was
Governor of Indiana, when it was a territory, he tried to introduce
slavery, contrary to the Ordinance of 1787. I wrote you of this
Ordinance before. Then there are the most numerous groups of people of
every sort of weird convictions; some organized to oppose Masonry;
others to curb the Irish and the Catholics; others to prohibit the use
of wine and all intoxicants; others to advance the cause of free love;
others to socialize the state. There are also religious societies here
of every description, such as the Millerites who are now preparing for
the Second Advent of Christ which they believe will take place in 1843.
They are already making ready to leave their business, get their white
robes, and await the Epiphany. In this state, at Nauvoo, a group called
Mormons, who came here from Missouri, founded their faith upon a new
revelation brought to light by two miraculous stones, said to have been
discove

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