Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 26, July 1880.
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Title: Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 26, July 1880.
Author: Various
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LIPPINCOTT'S MAGAZINE OF POPULAR LITERATURE AND SCIENCE, VOLUME 26, JULY 1880. ***
Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Josephine Paolucci and the
Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net.
LIPPINCOTT'S MAGAZINE
OF
POPULAR LITERATURE AND SCIENCE.
VOLUME XXVI.
[Illustration]
PHILADELPHIA:
J.B. LIPPINCOTT AND CO.
1880.
Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1880, by
J.B. LIPPINCOTT & CO.,
In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington.
LIPPINCOTT'S PRESS,
_Philadelphia._
CONTENTS.
PAGE
A Chapter of American
Exploration. (_Illustrated._) _William H. Rideing_ 393
Adam and Eve _Author of "Dorothy Fox"_ 42, 147,
290, 411, 547, 666
A Forgotten American Worthy _Charles Burr Todd_ 68
A Graveyard Idyl _Henry A. Beers_ 484
A Great Singer _Lucy H. Hooper_ 507
American Aëronauts.
(_Illustrated._) _Will O. Bates_ 137
Americans Abroad _Alain Gore_ 466
An Episode of Spanish Chivalry _Prof. T. F. Crane_ 747
An Historical Rocky-Mountain
Outpost. (_Illustrated._) _George Rex Buckman_ 649
An Old English Home:
Bramshill House _Rose G. Kingsley_ 163
An Open Look at the
Political Situation 118
A Pivotal Point _William M. Baker_ 559
Automatism _Dr. H. C. Wood_ 627, 755
A Villeggiatura in Asisi _Author of_
_"Signor Monaldini's Niece"_ 308
Bauble Wishart _Author of "Flitters, Tatters_
_and the Counsellor"_ 719
Canoeing on the High
Mississippi. (_Illustrated._) _A. H. Siegfried_ 171, 279
Dungeness, General Greene's
Sea-Island Plantation _Frederick A. Ober._ 241
Ekoniah Scrub: Among Florida
Lakes. (_Illustrated._) _Louise Seymour Houghton_ 265
Findelkind of Martinswand:
A Child's Story _Ouida_ 438
Gas-Burning, and
its Consequences _George J. Varney_ 734
Glimpses of Portugal and
the Portuguese. (_Illustrated._) 473
Heinrich Heine _A. Parker_ 604
Horse-Racing in France.
(_Illustrated._) _L. Lejeune_ 321, 452
How she Kept her Vow:
A Narrative of Facts _S. G. W. Benjamin_ 594
"Kitty" _Lawrence Buckley_ 503
Limoges, and its Porcelain _George L. Catlin_ 576
Mallston's Youngest _M. H. Catherwood_ 189
Mrs. Marcellus. By a Guest
at her Saturdays _Olive Logan_ 613
Mrs. Pinckney's Governess 336
National Music an Interpreter
of National Character _Amelia E. Barr_ 181
Newport a Hundred Years Ago _Frances Pierrepont North_ 351
On Spelling Reform _M. B. C. True_ 111
On the Skunk River _Louise Coffin Jones_ 56
Our Grandfathers' Temples.
(_Illustrated._) _Charles F. Richardson_ 678
Paradise Plantation.
(_Illustrated._) _Louise Seymour Houghton_ 19
Pipistrello _Ouida_ 84
Seven Weeks a Missionary _Louise Coffin Jones_ 424
Short Studies in the Picturesque _William Sloan Kennedy_ 375
Studies in the Slums-- _Helen Campbell_
III. Nan; or, A Girl's Life 103
IV. Jack 213
V. Diet and its Doings 362
VI. Jan of the North 498
The [Greek: Apax Aegomena]
in Shakespeare _Prof. James D. Butler_ 742
The Arts of India.
(_Illustrated._) _Jennie J. Young_ 532
The Authors of "Froufrou" _J. Brander Matthews_ 711
The Early Days of Mormonism _Frederic G. Mather_ 198
The Mistakes of Two People _Margaret Bertha Wright_ 567
The Palace of the Leatherstonepaughs.
(_Illustrated._) _Margaret Bertha Wright_ 9
The Practical History of a Play _William H. Rideing_ 586
The Price of Safety _E. W. Latimer_ 698
The Ruin of Me. (Told by
a Young Married Man.) _Mary Dean_ 369
The Ruins of the Colorado Valley.
(_Illustrated._) _Alfred Terry Bacon_ 521
Through the Yellowstone Park
to Fort Custer _S. Weir Mitchell, M. D._ 29
Westbrook _Alice Ilgenfritz_ 218
Where Lightning Strikes _George J. Varney_ 232
Will Democracy Tolerate a
Permanent Class of National Office-holders? 690
LITERATURE OF THE DAY, comprising Reviews of the following Works:
Arr, E. H.--New England Bygones 392
Auerbach, Berthold--Brigitta 775
Ayres, Anne--The Life and Work of William Augustus Muhlenberg 135
Black, William--White Wings: A Yachting Romance 775
Forrester, Mrs.--Roy and Viola 775
Fothergill, Jessie--The Wellfields 775
Green, John Richard--History of the English People 774
Laffan, May--Christy Carew 133
L'Art: revue hebdomadaíre illustrée. Sixième année, Tome II 517
Mahaffy, M. A., Rev. J. P.--A History of Classical Greek Literature 261
Mrs. Beauchamp Brown 518
Nichol, John--Byron. (English Men-of-Letters Series.) 645
Piatt, John James--Pencilled Fly-Leaves:
A Book of Essays in Town and Country 648
Scoones, W. Baptiste--Four Centuries of English Letters 647
Smith, Goldwin--William Cowper. (English Men-of-Letters Series.) 263
Stephen, Leslie--Alexander Pope. (English Men-of-Letters Series.) 389
Symington, Andrew James--Samuel Lover: A Biographical Sketch.
With Selections from his Writings and Correspondence 391
Taylor, Bayard--Critical Essays and Literary Notes 519
" " --Studies in German Literature 519
The American Art Review, Nos. 8 and 9 520
Walford, L. B.--Troublesome Daughters 775
Wikoff, Henry--The Reminiscences of an Idler 135
OUR MONTHLY GOSSIP, comprising the following Articles:
A Child's Autobiography, 770; A Legion of Devils, 257; A Little Ireland
in America, 767; A Natural Barometer, 517; An Unfinished Page of
History, 764; A Plot for an Historical Novel, 385; A Sermon to Literary
Aspirants, 637; Civil-Service Reform and Democratic Ideas, 762;
Concerning Night-Noises, 253; Condition of the People in the West of
Ireland, 514; Conservatory Life in Boston, 511; Edelweiss, 126; Fate of
an Old Companion of Napoleon III., 516; High Jinks on the Upper
Mississippi, 515; Our New Visitors, 388; People's Houses: A Dialogue,
640; Prayer-Meeting Eloquence, 129; Seeing is Believing, 642; Spoiled
Children, 128; Tabarin, the French Merry-Andrew, 255; The Demidoffs,
259; The Jardin d'Acclimatation of Paris, 130; The Miseries of Camping
Out, 387; The Paris Salon of 1880, 381; "Time Turns the Tables," 642;
Unreformed Spelling, 388; Wanted--A Real Gainsborough, 772; "Western
Memorabilia," 250.
POETRY:
A Vengeance _Edgar Fawcett_ 211
Dawn _John B. Tabb_ 612
Delectatio Piscatoria.
The Upper Kennebec _Horatio Nelson Powers_ 367
From Far _Philip Bourke Marston_ 465
Lost _Mary B. Dodge_ 665
My Treasure _H. L. Leonard_ 109
Possession _Eliza Calvert Hall_ 162
Shelley _J. B. Tabb_ 18
Teresa di Faenza _Emma Lazarus_ 83
The Home of the Gentians _Howard Glyndon_ 350
The King's Gifts _Emily A. Braddock_ 718
The Sea's Secret _G. A. Davis_ 240
Three Roses _Julia C. R. Dorr_ 585
Under the Grasses _Dora Reed Goodale_ 502
LIPPINCOTT'S MAGAZINE
OF
_POPULAR LITERATURE AND SCIENCE._
JULY, 1880.
Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1880, by J. B.
LIPPINCOTT & CO., in the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at
Washington.
THE PALACE OF THE LEATHERSTONEPAUGHS.
[Illustration: RUINS OF THE PALACES OF THE CÆSARS.]
Every sentimental traveller to Rome must sometimes wonder if to come to
the Eternal City is not, after all, more of a loss than a gain: Rome
unvisited holds such a solitary place in one's imaginings. It is then a
place around which sweeps a different atmosphere from that of any other
city under the sun. One sees it through poetic mists that veil every
prosaic reality. It is arched by an horizon against which the figures of
its wonderful history are shadowed with scarcely less of grandeur and
glory than those the old gods cast upon the Sacred Hill.
One who has never seen Rome is thus led to imagine that those of his
country-people who have lived here for years have become in a manner
purged of all natural commonplaceness. One thinks of them as
refined--sublimated, so to speak--into beings worthy of reverence and to
be spoken of with awed admiration. For have not their feet wandered
where the Caesars' feet have trod, till that famous ground has become
common earth to them? Have they not dwelt in the shadow of mountains
that have trembled beneath the tramp of Goth, Visigoth and Ostrogoth,
till those shadows have become every-day shadows to them? Have they not
often watched beneath the same stars that shone upon knightly vigils,
till the whiteness of those shining hosts has made pure their souls as
it purified the heroic ones of old? Have they not listened to the
singing and sighing of the selfsame winds that sung and sighed about the
spot where kingly Numa wooed a nymph, till it must be that into the
commoner natures has entered some of the sweetness and wisdom of that
half-divine communion?
Thus the dreamer comes to Rome expecting to enter and become enfolded by
those poetic mists, to live an ideal life amid the tender melancholy
that broods over stately and storied ruin, and to forget for evermore,
while within the wondrous precincts, that aught more prosaic exists than
the heroes of history, the fairest visions of art and dreams of poesy.
[Illustration: "GHOSTS OF FLEAS" (Copied From Sketches Of William
Blake).]
So came the Leatherstonepaughs. And so have the Leatherstonepaughs
sometimes wondered if, after all, to come to Rome is not more of a loss
than a gain in the dimming of one of their fairest ideals. For is there
another city in the world where certain of the vulgar verities of life
press themselves more prominently into view than in the Eternal City?
Can one anywhere have a more forcible conviction that greasy cookery is
bile-provoking, and that it is because the sylvan bovine ruminates so
long upon the melancholy Campagna that one's dinners become such a heavy
and sorrowful matter in Rome? Is there any city in the universe where
fleas dwarf more colossally and fiendishly Blake's famous "ghosts" of
their kind? Does one anywhere come oftener in from wet streets, "a dem'd
moist, unpleasant body," to more tomblike rooms? Is one anywhere so
ceaselessly haunted by the disagreeable consciousness that one pays ten
times as much for everything one buys as a native pays, and that the
trousered descendant of the toga'd Roman regards the Western barbarian
as quite as much his legitimate prey as the barbarian's barelegged
ancestors were the prey of his forefathers before the tables of history
were turned, Rome fallen and breeches supplied to all the world? And are
any mortal vistas more gorgeously illuminated by the red guidebook of
the Tourist than are the stately and storied ruins where the
sentimentalist seeketh the brooding of a tender melancholy, and
findeth it not in the presence of couriers, cabmen, beggars,
photograph-peddlers, stovepipe hats, tie-backs and bridal giggles?
The dreamer thought to find old Rome crystallized amid its glorious
memories. He finds a nineteenth-century city, with gay shops and
fashionable streets, living over the heroic scenes of the ancients and
the actual woe and spiritual mysticism of the mediæval age; and he is
disappointed--nay, even sometimes enraged into a gnashing of the teeth
at all things Roman.
But after many weeks, after the sights have been "done," the mouldy and
mossy nooks of the old city explored, and the marvellous picturesqueness
that hides in strange places revealed--after one has a speaking
acquaintance with all the broken bits of old statues that gather moth
and rust where the tourist cometh not and the guidebook is not known,
and has followed the tiniest thread of legend or tradition into all
manner of mysterious regions,--then the sentimentalist begins to love
Rome again--Rome as it is, not Rome as it seemed through the glamours of
individual imagination.
This is what the Leatherstonepaughs did. But first they fled the
companionship of the beloved but somewhat loudly-shrieking American
eagle as that proud bird often appears in the hotels and _pensions_ of
Europe, and lived in a shabby Roman palace, where only the soft bastard
Latin was heard upon the stairs, and where, if any mediæval ghost
stalked in rusted armor or glided in mouldering cerements, it would not
understand a single word of their foreign, many-consonanted speech.
This palace stands, gay and grim, at the corner of a gay street and a
dingy _vicolo_, the street and alley contrasting in color like a Claude
Lorraine with a Nicholas Poussin. Past one side of the palace drifts all
day a bright tide of foreign sightseers, prosperous Romans, gay models
and flower-venders, handsome carriages, dark-eyed girls with their
sallow chaperones, and olive-cheeked, huge-checked _jeunesse dorée_,
evidently seeking for pretty faces as for pearls of great price, as is
the manner of the jeunesse dorée of the Eternal City; while down upon
the scene looks a succession of dwelling-houses, a gray-walled convent
or two, one of the stateliest palaces of Rome--now let out in apartments
and hiding in obscure rooms the last two impoverished descendants of a
proud race that helped to impoverish Rome--one or two more prosperous
palaces, and a venerable church, looking like a sleepy watchman of Zion
suffering the enemy to do as it will before his closed eyes.
[Illustration: WHAT A ROMAN BUYS FOR TWO CENTS IN THE ETERNAL CITY.]
[Illustration: WHAT A FOREIGNER BUYS FOR TWO CENTS IN THE ETERNAL CITY.]
On the other side is the vicolo, dark of wall and dank of pavement, with
petticoats and shirts dangling from numerous windows and fluttering like
gibbeted wretches in the air; with frowzy women sewing or knitting in
the sombre doorways and squalid urchins screaming everywhere; with
humble vegetables and cheap wines exposed for sale in dirty windows;
with usually a carriage or two undergoing a washing at some stable-door;
and with almost always an amorous Romeo or two from some brighter region
wandering hopefully to and fro amid the unpicturesque gloom of this
Roman lane to catch a wafted kiss or a dropped letter from the rear
window of his Juliet's home. For nowhere else in Europe, Asia, America,
the Oceanic Archipelago or the Better Land can the Romeo-and-Juliet
business be more openly and freely carried on than in the by-streets of
the Eternal City, where girls are thought to be as jealously secluded
from the monster Man as are the women of a Turkish seraglio or the nuns
of a European convent. These Romeos and Juliets usually seem quite
indifferent to the number of unsympathetic eyes that watch their little
drama, providing only Papa and Mamma Capulet are kept in the dark in the
shop below. Even the observation of Signor and Signora Montague would
disturb them little, for it is only Juliet who is guarded, and Romeo is
evidently expected to get all the fun out of life he can. In their dingy
vicolo the Leatherstonepaughs have seen three Romeos watching three
windows at the same twilight moment. One of them stood under an open
window in the third story, from whence a line was dropped down to
receive the letter he held in his hand. Just as the letter-weighted line
was drawn up a window immediately below Juliet's was thrown violently
open, and an unromantic head appeared to empty vials of wrath upon the
spectacled Romeo below for always hanging about the windows of the silly
_pizzicarole_ girls above and giving the house a ridiculous appearance
in the eyes of the passers-by. Romeo answered audaciously that the
signora was mistaken in the man, that he had never been under that
window before in his life, had never seen the Signorina Juliet, daughter
of Capulet the pizzicarole who lived above, but that he was merely
accompanying his friend Romeo, who loved Juliet the daughter of the
_drochiere_ who lived a story below, and who was now wooing her softly
two or three windows away. A shriek was his response as the wrathful
head disappeared, while the lying Romeo laughed wickedly and the
Leatherstonepaughs immoderately, in spite of themselves, to see Juliet,
daughter of the drochiere, electrically abstracted from _her_ window as
if by the sudden application of a four-hundred-enraged-mother-power to
her lofty chignon from behind, while the three Romeos, evidently all
strangers to each other, folded their tents like the Arab and silently
stole away. [Illustration: ROMEO.]
[Illustration: JULIET.]
The Leatherstonepaughs always suspected that no lordly race, from
father's father to son's son, had ever dwelt in their immense palace.
They suspected rather that it was, like many another mighty Roman pile,
reared by plebeian gains to shelter noble Romans fair and proud whom
Fate confined to economical "flats," and whose wounded pride could best
be poulticed by the word _palazzo_.
Hans Christian Andersen knew this palace well, and has described it as
the early home of his _Improvisatore_. In those days two fountains
tinkled, one within, the other just outside, the dusky iron-barred
basement. One fountain, however, has ceased to flow, and now if a
passer-by peeps in at the grated window, whence issue hot strong vapors
and bursts of merry laughter, he will see a huge stone basin into whose
foaming contents one fountain drips, and over which a dozen washerwomen
bend and pound with all their might and main in a bit of chiaroscuro
that reminds one of Correggio.
Over this Correggio glimpse wide stone stairs lead past dungeon-like
doors up five flights to the skylighted roof. Each of these doors has a
tiny opening through which gleams a watchful eye and comes the sound of
the inevitable "_Chi è?_" whenever the doorbell rings, as if each comer
were an armed marauder strayed down from the Middle Ages, who must be
well reconnoitred before the fortress-gates are unbarred.
[Illustration: THE COURT OF THE LEATHERSTONEPAUGHS' PALACE.]
It was in the _ultimo piano_ that the Leatherstonepaughs pitched their
lodge in a vast wilderness of colorful tiled roofs, moss-grown and
lichen-laden, amid a forest of quaintly-shaped and smokeless chimneys.
Their floors, guiltless of rugs or carpets, were of earthen tiles and
worn into hollows where the feet of the palace-dwellers passed oftenest
to and fro. A multitude of undraped windows opened like doors upon stone
balconies, whither the inhabitants flew like a startled covey of birds
every time the king and queen drove by in the street below, and upon
which they passed always from room to room. The outer balcony looks down
upon the Piazza Barberini and its famous Spouting Triton, with an
horizon-line over the roofs broken by gloomy stone-pines and cypresses
that seem to have grown from the buried griefs of Rome's dead centuries.
The inner balcony overlooks the court, where through the wide windows of
every story, amid the potted plants and climbing vines that never take
on a shade of pallor in an Italian winter, and that adorn every Roman
balcony, one could see into the penetralia of a dozen Roman families and
wrest thence the most vital secrets--even to how much _Romano_ Alfredo
drank at dinner or whether lemon-juice or sour wine gave piquancy to
Rosina's salad. Entirely unacquainted with these descendants of ancient
patrician or pleb, the Leatherstonepaughs ventilated original and
individual theories concerning them, and gave them names of their own
choosing.
[Illustration: A CASE OF NON-REMITTANCE.]
"Rameses the Great has quarrelled with the Sphinx and is flirting with
the Pyramid," whispered young Cain one day as some of the family,
leaning over the iron railing, looked into the leafy, azure-domed vault
below, and saw into the dining-room of a family whose mysteriousness of
habit and un-Italian blankness of face gave them a fanciful resemblance
to the eternal riddles of the Orient.
The "Pyramid," whose wide feet and tiny head gave her her triangular
title, was evidently a teacher, for she so often carried exercise-books
and dog-eared grammars in her hand. She chanced at that moment to glance
upward. "Lucia," she cried to the Sphinx, speaking with an Italian
accent that she flattered herself was to the down-gazers an unknown
tongue, "do look up to the fifth _loggia_. If there isn't the Huge Bear,
the Middle-sized Bear and the Wee Bear looking as if they wanted to come
down and eat us up!"
"Y' ain't fat 'nuf," yelled the Wee Bear before the elder Bruins had
time to squelch him.
The studio-salon of the Leatherstonepaughs amid the clouds and chimneys
of the Eternal City was a chapter for the curious. It was as spacious as
a country meeting-house, as lofty as befits a palace. It was frescoed
like some of the modern pseudo-Gothic and pine cathedrals that adorn the
village-greens of New England hamlets, and its _pot-pourri_ of artistic
ideas was rich in helmeted Minervas, vine-wreathed Bacchuses, winged
Apollos and nameless classic nymphs, all staring downward from the
spandrels of pointed arches with quite as much at-homeness as Olympian
heroes would feel amid the mystic shades of the Scandinavian Walhalla.
This room was magnificent with crimson upholstery, upon which rested a
multitude of scarlet-embroidered cushions that seemed to the
color-loving eye like a dream of plum-pudding after a nightmare of
mince-pie. Through this magnificence had drifted, while yet the
Leatherstonepaughs saw Rome in all its idealizing mists, generations of
artists. Sometimes these artists had had a sublime disdain of base
lucre, and sometimes base lucre had had a sublime disdain of them. Some
of the latter class--whose name is Legion--had marked their passage by
busts, statuettes and paintings that served to remind Signora Anina,
their landlady, that promises of a remittance can be as fair and false
as the song of the Sirens or the guile of the Loreley. Crusaders in
armor brandished their lances there in evidence that Michael Angelo
Bivins never sent from Manhattan the bit of white paper to redeem them.
Antignone--usually wearing a Leatherstonepaugh bonnet--mourned that
Praxiteles Periwinkle faded out of the vistas of Rome to the banks of
the Thames without her. Dancing Floras seemed joyous that they had not
gone wandering among the Theban Colossi with Zefferino, instead of
staying to pay for his Roman lodging; while the walls smiled, wept,
simpered, threatened and gloomed with Madonnas, Dolorosas, Beatrices,
sprites, angels and fiends, the authors of whose being had long ago
drifted away on the ocean of poverty which sweeps about the world, and
beneath which sometimes the richest-freighted ships go down. In the
twenty years that Signora Anina has let her rooms to artists many such
tragedies have written significant and dreary lines upon her walls.
That studio-salon was rich not alone in painting and sculpture. The
whatnot was a museum whither might come the Northern Goth and Southern
Vandal to learn what a Roman home can teach of the artistic taste that
Matthew Arnold declares to be the natural heritage only of the nation
which rocked the cradle of the Renaissance when its old Romanesque and
Byzantine parents died. That whatnot was covered with tiny china dogs
and cats, such as we benighted American Goths buy for ten cents a dozen
to fill up the crevices in Billy's and Bobby's Christmas stockings.
Fancy inkstands stood cheek by jowl with wire flower-baskets that were
stuffed with crewel roses of such outrageous hues as would make the
Angel of Color blaspheme. Cut-glass spoon-holders kept in countenance
shining plated table-casters eternally and spotlessly divorced from the
purpose of their being. There were gaudy china vases by the dozen and
simpering china shepherdesses by the score. There were plaster casts of
the whole of Signora Anina's family of nine children, from the elder
fiery Achilles to the younger hysterical Niobe. There were
perfume-bottles enough to start a coiffeur in business, and woolly lambs
enough for a dozen pastoral poems or as many bucolic butchers. But the
piano was piled high with Beethoven's sonatas and Chopin's delicious
dream-music, while a deluge of French novels had evidently surged over
that palace of the Leatherstonepaughs.
When the family took possession of their share of the palazzo a corner
of this studio-salon was dedicated to a peculiar member of their family.
From that corner she seldom moved save as she swept away in some such
elegant costume as the others wore only upon gala-occasions, or in some
picturesque or wildly-fantastic garb that would have lodged her in a
policeman's care had she ever been suffered to escape thus from the
palace. All day long, day after day, she tarried in her corner mute and
motionless, eying all comers and goers with a haughty stare. Sometimes
she leaned there with rigid finger pressed upon her lip, like a statue
of Silence; sometimes her hands were pressed pathetically to her breast,
like a Mater Dolorosa; sometimes both arms hung lax and limp by her
side, like those of a heart-broken creature; and sometimes she wildly
clutched empty air, like a Leatherstonepaugh enthusiastically inebriated
or gone stark, staring, raving mad!
[Illustration: ANTIGNONE.]
Yet never, never, never was Silentia Leatherstonepaugh known to break
that dreadful silence, even though honored guests spoke to her kindly,
and although young Cain Leatherstonepaugh repeatedly reviled her as had
she been Abel's wife. One day came an old Spanish monk of whom Leah and
Rachel would learn the language of Castile. Silentia gloomed in her
dusky corner unseen of the monk, who was left with her an instant alone.
A few moments before, moved perhaps by a dawning comprehension of the
unspeakable pathos of her fate, young Cain had given her a dagger. When,
two minutes after the monk's arrival, Leah and Rachel entered the room,
a black sighing mass cowered in a corner of the sofa, while Silentia
rose spectre-like in the dimness, the dagger pointed toward her heart.
[Illustration: SILENTIA LEATHERSTONEPAUGH.]
"Madonna mia!" giggled the monk hysterically when his petticoats were
pulled decorously about him and he was set on his feet again, "I thought
I should be arrested for murder--_poverino mio_!"
Another day came one of the Beelzebub girls--Lady Diavoletta--who wished
to coax some of the Leatherstonepaughs to paint her a series of fans
with the torments of Dante's Inferno. When the doorbell rang, and while
Cain cried "_Chi è?_" at the peephole, Leah, who was just posing for
Rachel's barelegged gypsy, hastily pulled a long silk skirt from haughty
but unresisting Silentia and hurried it over her own head before Lady
Diavoletta was admitted. The heiress of the Beelzebubs tarried but a
moment, then took her departure grimly, without hinting a word of her
purpose. Said Lady Diavoletta afterward to the Cherubim sisters, "Would
you believe it? I called one day upon those Leatherstonepaughs, and they
never even apologized for receiving me in a room where there was an
insane American just escaped from her keeper, _tray beang arrangée pore
doncy le cong cong_!"
[Illustration: SILENTIA AS SHE APPEARED TO LADY DIAVOLETTA BEELZEBUB.]
Dismal and grim though the exterior of that palazzo was, needing but
towers and machicolated parapets to seem a fortress, or an encircling
wall to seem a frowning monastery where cowled figures met each other
only to whisper sepulchrally, "Brother, we must die," it was yet the
scene of not a few laughable experiences. And perhaps even in this
respect it may not have differed so widely as one might think from
cloistered shades of other days, when out of sad, earth-colored raiment
and the habit of dismal speech human sentiment painted pictures while
yet the fagots grew apace for their destruction as well as for the
funeral-pyre of their scolding and bellowing enemy, Savonarola. For
where Fra Angelico, working from the life, could create a San Sebastian
so instinct with earthly vitality and earthly bloom that pious
Florentine women could not say their prayers in peace in its presence,
there were three easels, each bearing a canvas, in different parts of
the room. Before each easel worked a Leatherstonepaugh, each clad with
classic simplicity in a long blue cotton garment, decorated with many
colors and smelling strongly of retouching varnish, that covered her
from the white ruffle at her throat to the upper edge of her black
alpaca flounce.
The room was silent, and, except for the deft action of brushes,
motionless. Only that from below was heard the musical splash of the
Barberini Tritons, and that from the windows could be seen the sombre
pines of the Ludovisi gardens swaying in solemn rhythmic measure must
have been sometimes unbending from the dole and drear of mediæval
asceticism into something very like human fun.
One day the Leatherstonepaughs were all at work in the immense studio.
Silentia alone was idle, and, somewhat indecorously draped only in a bit
of old tapestry, with dishevelled hair and lolling head, leaned against
the wall, apparently in the last stages of inebriety. There against the
blue sky, all the world would have seemed petrified into the complete
passiveness of sitting for its picture.
[Illustration: YOUNG CAIN INTERVIEWING SILENTIA.]
Marietta was their model. She was posed in a nun's dress, pensive gray,
with virginal white bound primly across her brow. Marietta is a capital
model, and her sad face and tender eyes were upturned with exactly the
desired expression to the grinning mask in the centre of the ceiling.
Silentia kindly consented to pose for the cross to which the nun clung;
that is, she wobbled weakly into the place where the sacred emblem would
have been were this Nature and not Art, and where the cross would be in
the picture when completed. Marietta clung devoutly to Silentia's
ankles, and Silentia looked as cross as possible.
"How unusual to see one of Italia's children with a face like that!"
said a Leatherstonepaugh as she studied the nun's features. "One would
say that she had really found peace only after some terrible suffering."
"She does not give me that impression," said another Leatherstonepaugh.
"Her contours are too round, her color too undimmed, ever to have
weathered spiritual storms. She seems to me more like one of Giovanni
Bellini's Madonnas, those fair, fresh girl-mothers whom sorrow has never
breathed upon to blight a line or tint, and yet who seem to have a
prophecy written upon their faces--not of the glory of the agony, but of
the lifelong sadness of a strange destiny. This girl has some mournful
prescience perhaps. Let me talk with her by and by."
"Marietta," said a Leatherstonepaugh in the next repose, "if you were
not obliged to be a model, what would you choose to be, of all things in
the world?"
This was only an entering-wedge, intended by insidious degrees to pry
open the heart of the girl and learn the mystery of her Madonna-like
sadness.
Marietta looked up quickly: "What would I be, signorina? Dio mio! but I
would wear shining clothes and ride in the Polytheama! Giacomo says I
was born for the circus. Will le signorine see?"
In the twinkling of an eye, before the Leatherstonepaughs could breathe,
the pensive gray raiment was drawn up to the length of a ballet-skirt
and the foot of the Madonna-faced nun was in the open mouth of one of
Lucca della Robbia's singing-boys that hung on the wall about five feet
from the floor!
"Can any of the signorine do _that_?" she crowed triumphantly. "I can
knock off a man's hat or black his eye with my foot."
All the Leatherstonepaughs groaned in doleful chorus, "A-a-a-h-h!"
And it was not until young Cain, ostracised from the studio during the
séance, whistled in through the keyhole sympathetic inquiries concerning
the only woe his little soul knew, "Watty matter in yare? Ennybuddy dut
e tummuck-ache?" that they chorused with laughter at their
"Giovanni-Bellini Madonna."
MARGARET BERTHA WRIGHT.
SHELLEY.
Shelley, the wondrous music of thy soul
Breathes in the cloud and in the skylark's song,
That float as an embodied dream along
The dewy lids of Morning. In the dole
That haunts the west wind, in the joyous roll
Of Arethusan fountains, or among
The wastes where Ozymandias the strong
Lies in colossal ruin, thy control
Speaks in the wedded rhyme. Thy spirit gave
A fragrance to all Nature, and a tone
To inexpressive Silence. Each apart--
Earth, Air and Ocean--claims thee as its own,
The twain that bred thee, and the panting wave
That clasped thee like an overflowing heart.
J. B. TABB.
PARADISE PLANTATION
[Illustration: "THE SPLENDID SADDLE-HOSS."]
"Of course you will live at the hotel?"
"Not at all. The idea of leaving one's work three times a day to dress
for meals!"
"May I ask, then, where you _do_ propose to reside?"
"In the cottage on the place, to be sure."
The Pessimist thrust his hands into his pockets and gave utterance to a
long, low whistle.
"You don't believe it? Come over with us and look at it, and let us tell
you our plans."
"That negro hut, Hope? You never can be in earnest?"
"She is until she has seen it," said the Invalid, smiling. "You had
better go over with her: a sight of the place will be more effectual
than all your arguments."
"But she _has_ seen it," said Merry. "Two years ago, when we were here
and old Uncle Nat was so ill, we went over there."
"And I remember the house perfectly," added Hope--"a charming long, low,
dark room, with no windows and a great fireplace, and the most
magnificent live-oak overhanging the roof."
"How enchanting! Let us move in at once." The Invalid rose from his
chair, and taking Merry's arm, the four descended the piazza-steps.
"Of course," explained Hope as we walked slowly under the grand old
trees of the hotel park--"of course the carpenter and the painter and
the glazier are to intervene, and Merry and I must make no end of
curtains and things. But it will be ever so much cheaper, when all is
done, than living at the hotel, besides being so much more cozy; and if
we are to farm, we really should be on the spot."
"Meantime, I shall retain my room at the hotel," said the Pessimist,
letting down the bars.
"You are expected to do that," retorted Merry, disdaining the bars and
climbing over the fence. "It will be quite as much as you deserve to be
permitted to take your meals with us. But there! can you deny that that
is beautiful?"
The wide field in which we were walking terminated in a high bluff above
the St. John's. A belt of great forest trees permitted only occasional
glimpses of the water on that side, but to the northward the ground
sloped gradually down to one of the picturesque bays which so frequently
indent the shores of the beautiful river. Huge live-oaks stood here and
there about the field, with soft gray Spanish moss swaying from their
dark branches. Under the shadow of one more mighty than the rest stood
the cottage, or rather the two cottages, which formed the much-discussed
residence--two unpainted, windowless buildings, with not a perpendicular
line in their whole superficial extent.
The Pessimist withdrew the stick which held the staple and threw open
the unshapely door. There were no steps, but a little friendly pushing
and pulling brought even the Invalid within the room. There was a
moment's silence; then, from Hope, "Oh, the magnificent chimney! Think
of a fire of four-foot lightwood on a chilly evening!"
"I should advise the use of the chimney as a sleeping-room: there seems
to be none other," said the Pessimist.
"But we can curtain off this entire end of the room. How fortunate that
it should be so large! Here will be our bedroom, and this corner shall
be for Merry. And when we have put one of those long, low Swiss windows
in the east side, and another here to the south, you'll see how pleasant
it will be."
"It appears to me," he remarked perversely, "that windows will be a
superfluous luxury. One can see out at a dozen places already; and as
for ventilation, there is plenty of that through the roof."
"The frame really is sound," said the Invalid, examining with a critical
eye.
"Of course it is," said Hope. "Now let us go into the kitchen. If that
is only half as good I shall be quite satisfied."
The kitchen-door, which was simply an old packing-box cover, with the
address outside by way of doorplate, was a veritable "fat man's misery,"
but as none of the party were particularly fat we all managed to squeeze
through.
"Two rooms!" exclaimed Hope. "How enchanting! I had no idea that there
was more than one. What a nice little dining-room this will make! There
is just room enough."
"'Us four and no more,'" quoted Merry. "But where will the handmaiden
sleep?"
"The kitchen is large," said the Pessimist, bowing his head to pass into
the next room: "it will only be making one more curtain, Merry, and she
can have this corner."
"He is converted! he really is converted!" cried Merry, clapping her
hands. "And now there is only papa, and then we can go to the sawmill to
order lumber."
"And to the Cove to find a carpenter," added Hope. "Papa can make up his
mind in the boat."
We had visited Florida two years before, and, charmed with the climate,
the river, the oaks, the flowers, the sweet do-nothing life, we had
followed the example of so many worthy Northerners and had bought an old
plantation, intending to start an orange-grove. We had gone over all the
calculations which are so freely circulated in the Florida papers--so
many trees to the acre, so many oranges to the tree: the results were
fairly dazzling. Even granting, with a lordly indifference to trifles
worthy of incipient millionaires, that the trees should bear only
one-fifth of the computed number of oranges, and that they should bring
but one-third of the estimated price, still we should realize one
thousand dollars per acre. And there are three hundred and sixty acres
in our plantation. Ah! even the Pessimist drew a long breath.
Circumstances had, however, prevented our taking immediate steps toward
securing this colossal fortune. But now that it had become necessary for
us to spend the winter in a warm climate, our golden projects were
revived. We would start a grove at once. It was not until we had been
three days at sea, southward bound, that Hope, after diligent study of
an old Florida newspaper, picked up nobody knows where, became the
originator of the farming plan now in process of development.
"The cultivation of the crop becomes the cultivation of the grove," she
said with the sublime assurance of utter ignorance, "and thus we shall
get our orange-grove at no cost whatever."
She was so much in earnest that the Invalid was actually convinced by
her arguments, which, to do her justice, were not original, but were
filched from the enthusiastic journal before alluded to. It was decided
that we were to go to farming. It is true none of us knew anything
about the business except such waifs of experience as remained to the
Invalid after thirty years' absence from grandpa's farm, where he used
to spend the holidays. Holidays were in winter in those times, and his
agricultural experience had consisted principally in cracking butternuts
and riding to the wood-lot on the ox-sled. But this was of no
consequence, as Hope and Merry agreed, since there were plenty of books
on the subject, and, besides, there were the Florida newspapers!
"I warn you I wash my hands of the whole concern," the Pessimist had
said. "You'll never make farming pay."
"Why not?"
"Because you won't."
"But why, because?"
"The idea of women farming!"
"Oh, well, if you come to that, I should just like to show you what
women can do," cried Merry; and this unlucky remark of the Pessimist
settles the business. There is no longer any question about farming.
No one could deny that the house was pretty, and comfortable too, when
at last the carpenter and painter had done their work, and the curtains
and the easy-chairs and the bookshelves had taken their places, and the
great fire of pine logs was lighted, and the mocking-bird's song
streamed in with the sunlight through the open door and between the
fluttering leaves of the ivy-screen at the window. The piano was always
open in the evenings, with Merry or the Pessimist strumming on the keys
or trying some of the lovely new songs; and Hope would be busy at her
table with farm-books and accounts; and the Invalid, in his easy-chair,
would be listening to the music and falling off to sleep and rousing
himself with a little clucking snore to pile more lightwood on the fire;
and the mocking-bird in his covered cage would wake too and join lustily
in the song, till Merry smothered him up in thicker coverings.
The first duty was evident. "Give it a name, I beg," Merry had said the
very first evening in the new home; and the house immediately went into
committee of the whole to decide upon one. Hope proposed Paradise
Plantation; Merry suggested Fortune Grove; the Pessimist hinted that
Folly Farm would be appropriate, but this proposition was ignominiously
rejected; and the Invalid gave the casting-vote for Hope's selection.
[Illustration: "I'SE DE SECTION, SAH."]
The hour for work having now arrived, the man was not slow in presenting
himself. "I met an old fellow who used to be a sort of overseer on this
very plantation," the Invalid said. "He says he has an excellent horse,
and you will need one, Hope. I told him to come and see you."
"Which? the man or the horse?" asked Merry in a low voice.
"Both, apparently," answered the Pessimist in the same tone, "for here
they come."
"Ole man Spafford," as he announced himself, was a darkey of ancient and
venerable mien, tall, gaunt and weatherbeaten. His steed was taller,
gaunter and apparently twice as old--an interesting study for the
osteologist if there be any such scientific person.
"He splendid saddle-hoss, missis," said the old man: "good wuk-hoss
too--bery fine hoss."
"It seems to me he's rather thin," said Hope doubtfully.
"Dat kase we didn't make no corn dis year, de ole woman an' me, we was
bofe so bad wid de misery in the leaders" (rheumatism in the legs). "But
Sancho won't stay pore ef you buys corn enough, missis. He powerful good
horse to eat."
Further conversation revealed the fact that old man Spafford was "de
chief man ob de chu'ch."
"What! a minister?" asked the Invalid.
"No, sah, not azatly de preacher, sah, but I'se de nex' t'ing to dat."
"What may your office be, then, uncle?" asked the Pessimist.
"I'se de section, sah," answered the old man solemnly, making a low bow.
"The sexton! So you ring the bell, do you?"
"Not azatly de bell, sah--we ain't got no bell--but I bangs on de
buzz-saw, sah."
"What does he mean?" asked Merry.
The Pessimist shrugged his shoulders without answering, but the
"section" hastened to explain: "You see, missy, when dey pass roun' de
hat to buy a bell dey didn't lift nigh enough; so dey jis' bought a
buzz-saw and hung it up in de chu'ch-house; an' I bangs on de buzz-saw,
missy."
The chief man of the church was found, upon closer acquaintance, to be
the subject of a profound conviction that he was the individual
predestinated to superintend our farming interests. He was so well
persuaded of this high calling that none of us dreamed of questioning
it, and he was forthwith installed in the coveted office. At his
suggestion another man, Dryden by name, was engaged to assist old man
Spafford and take care of Sancho, and a boy, called Solomon, to wait
upon Dryden and do chores. A few day-laborers were also temporarily
hired, the season being so far advanced and work pressing. The
carpenters were recalled, for there was a barn to build, and hen-coops
and a pig-sty, not to speak of a fence. Hope and Merry flitted hither
and thither armed with all sorts of impossible implements, which some
one was sure to want by the time they had worked five minutes with them.
As for the Pessimist, he confined himself to setting out orange trees,
the only legitimate business, he contended, on the place. This work,
however, he performed vicariously, standing by and smoking while a negro
set out the trees.
"My duties appear to be limited to paying the bills," remarked the
Invalid, "and I seem to be the only member of the family who cannot let
out the job."
"I thought the farm was to be self-supporting?" said the Pessimist.
"Well, so it is: wait till the crops are raised," retorted Merry.
"Henderson says," observed Hope, meditatively, "that there are six
hundred dollars net profits to be obtained from one acre of cabbages."
"Why don't you plant cabbages, then? In this seven-acre lot, for
instance?"
"Oh, that would be too many. Besides, I have planted all I could get. It
is too late to sow the seed, but old man Spafford had some beautiful
plants he let me have. He charged an extra price because they were so
choice, but I was glad to get the best: it is cheapest in the end. I got
five thousand of them."
"What sort are they?" asked the Invalid.
"I don't know precisely. Spafford says he done lost the paper, and he
didn't rightly understand the name nohow, 'long o' not being able to
read; but they were a drefful choice kind."
"Oh, bother the name!" said the Pessimist: "who cares what it is? A
cabbage is a cabbage, I presume. But what have you in this seven-acre
lot?"
"Those are peas. Dryden says that in North Carolina they realize four
hundred dollars an acre from them--when they don't freeze."
The planting being now fairly over, we began to look about us for other
amusement.
"Better not ride old Sancho," remarked old man Spafford one day as he
observed the Pessimist putting a saddle on the ancient quadruped.
"Why not, uncle? You ride him yourself, and you said he was a very fine
saddle-horse."
"I rides he bareback. Good hoss for lady: better not put man's saddle
on," persisted the old man.
The Pessimist vaulted into the saddle by way of reply, calling out,
"Open the gate, Solomon," to the boy, who was going down the lane. But
the words were not spoken before Sancho, darting forward, overturned the
deliberate Solomon, leaped the gate and rushed out into the woods at a
tremendous pace. The resounding beat of his hoofs and energetic cries of
"Whoa! whoa!" from his rider were wafted back upon the breeze, gradually
dying away in the distance, and then reviving again as the fiery steed
reappeared at the same "grand galop." The Pessimist was without a hat,
and his countenance bore the marks of many a fray with the lower
branches of the trees.
[Illustration: OVERTURNED SOLOMON.]
"Here, take your old beast!" he said, throwing the bridle impatiently to
Spafford. "What sort of an animal do you call him?"
The "section" approached with a grin of delight; "He waw-hoss, sah.
Young missis rid he afo' the waw, an' he used to lady saddle; but ole
marsa rid he to de waw, an' whenebber he feel man saddle on he back he
runs dat a way, kase he t'ink de Yankees a'ter him;" and he exchanged a
glance of intelligence with Sancho, who evidently enjoyed the joke.
The Invalid, who during the progress of our planting had spent much time
in explorations among our "Cracker" neighbors, had made the discovery of
a most disreputable two-wheeled vehicle, which he had purchased and
brought home in triumph. Its wheels were of different sizes and
projected from the axle at most remarkable angles. One seat was
considerably higher than the other, the cushions looked like so many
dishevelled darkey heads, and the whole establishment had a most uncanny
appearance. It was a perfect match, however, for Sancho, and that
intelligent animal, waiving for the time his objection to having Yankees
after him, consented to be harnessed into the vehicle and to draw us
slowly and majestically about in the pine woods. He never objected to
stopping anywhere while we gathered flowers, and we always returned
laden with treasures to deck our little home withal, making many a rare
and beautiful new acquaintance among the floral riches of pine barren
and hammock.
Meantime, peas and cabbages and many a "green" besides grew and
flourished under old man Spafford's fostering care. Crisp green lettuce
and scarlet radishes already graced our daily board, and were doubly
relished from being, so to speak, the fruit of our own toil. Paradise
Plantation became the admiration of all the darkey and Cracker farmers
for miles around, and it was with the greatest delight that Hope would
accompany any chance visitor to the remotest corner of the farm,
unfolding her projects and quoting Henderson to the open-mouthed
admiration of her interlocutor.
"Have you looked at the peas, lately, Hope?" asked the Pessimist one
lovely February morning.
"Not since yesterday: why?"
"Come and see," was the reply; and we all repaired to the seven-acre lot
in company. A woeful sight met our eyes--vines nipped off and trampled
down and general havoc and confusion in all the ranks.
"Oh, what is it?" cried Merry in dismay.
"It's de rabbits, missy," replied old man Spafford, who was looking on
with great interest. "Dey'll eat up ebery bit o' greens you got, give
'em time enough."
"This must be stopped," said Hope firmly, recovering from her stupor of
surprise. "I shall have a close fence put entirely around the place."
"But you've just got a new fence. It will cost awfully."
"No matter," replied Hope with great decision: "it shall be done. The
idea of being cheated out of all our profits by the rabbits!"
"What makes them look so yellow?" asked the Invalid as the family was
looking at the peas over the new close fence some evenings later.
"Don't they always do so when they blossom?" asked Hope.
"How's that, Spafford?" inquired the Pessimist.
"Dey ain't, not to say, jis' right," replied that functionary, shaking
his head.
"Why, what's the matter?" asked Hope quickly.
"Groun' too pore, I 'spec', missis. Mighty pore piece, dis: lan' all
wore out. Dat why dey sell so cheap."
[Illustration: "IT'S DE RABBITS, MISSY."]
"Then won't they bear?" asked Merry in despairing accents.
"Oh yes," said Hope with determined courage. "I had a quantity of
fertilizers put on. Besides, I'll send for more. It isn't too late, I'm
sure.--We'll use it for top-dressing, eh, Spafford?"
"I declare, Hope, I had no idea you were such a farmer," said the
Invalid with a pleasant smile.
"And then, besides, we don't depend upon the peas alone," continued
Hope, reflecting back the smile and speaking with quite her accustomed
cheerfulness: "there are the corn and the cabbages."
"And the potatoes and cucumbers," added Merry as we returned slowly to
the house by way of all the points of interest--the young orange trees,
Merry's newly-transplanted wisteria and the pig-pen.
"I rather suspect that _there_ is our most profitable crop," said the
Invalid as we seated ourselves upon the piazza which the Pessimist had
lately built before the house. He was looking toward a tree which grew
not far distant, sheltered by two enormous oaks. Of fair size and
perfect proportions, this tree was one mass of glossy, dark-green
leaves, amid which innumerable golden fruit glimmered brightly in the
setting sunlight.
[Illustration: PICKING PEAS.]
"Our one bearing tree," answered Hope. "Yes, if we only had a thousand
like it we might give up farming."
"We shall have them in time," said the Pessimist complacently, looking
abroad upon the straight rows of tiny trees almost hidden by the growing
crops. "Thanks to my perseverance--"
"And Dryden's," interpolated Merry.
"There are a thousand four-year-old trees planted," continued the
Pessimist, not noticing the interruption. "I wonder how many oranges
that tree has borne?"
"I suppose we have eaten some twenty a day from it for the last three
months," said Merry.
"Hardly that," said the Invalid, "but say fifteen hundred. And the tree
looks almost as full as ever."
"What if we should have them gathered and sold?" suggested Hope--"just
to see what an orange tree is really worth. Spafford says that the fruit
will not be so good later. It will shrivel at last; and we never can eat
all those oranges in any case."
Shipping the oranges was the pleasantest work we had yet done. There was
a certain fascination in handling the firm golden balls, in sorting and
arranging, in papering and packing; and there was real delight in
despatching the first shipment from the farm--the more, perhaps, as the
prospect of other shipments began to dwindle. The peas, in spite of the
top-dressing, looked yellow and sickly. The cucumbers would not run, and
more blossoms fell off than seemed desirable. The Pessimist left off
laughing at the idea of farming, and spent a great deal of time walking
about the place, looking into things in general.
"Isn't it almost time for those cabbages to begin to head?" he asked one
day on returning from a tour of inspection.
"Dryden says," observed Merry, "that those are not cabbages at all: they
are collards."
"What, under the sun, are collards?" asked the Invalid.
"They are a coarse sort of cabbage: the colored people like them, but
they never head and they won't sell," said Hope, looking up from a
treatise on agricultural chemistry. "If those should be collards!"
She laid aside her book and went out to investigate. "At any rate, they
will be good for the pigs," she remarked on returning. "I shall have
Behavior boil them in that great pot of hers and give them a mess every
day. It will save corn."
"'Never say die!'" cried the Pessimist. "'Polly, put the kettle on,-'tle
on,-'tle on! Polly, put--'"
The Invalid interposed with a remark. "Southern peas are selling in New
York at eight dollars a bushel," he said.
"Oh, those peas! Why won't they grow?" sighed Merry.
The perverse things would not grow. Quotations went down to six dollars
and to four, and still ours were not ready to ship. The Pessimist
visited the field more assiduously than ever; Merry looked despondent;
only Hope kept up her courage.
"Henderson says," she remarked, closing that well-thumbed volume, "that
one shouldn't look for profits from the first year's farming. The
profits come the second year. Besides, I have learned one thing by this
year's experience. Things should not be expected to grow as fast in
winter--even a Southern winter--as in summer. Next year we will come
earlier and plant earlier, and be ready for the first quotations."
It was a happy day for us all when at last the peas were ready to
harvest. The seven-acre lot was dotted over with boys, girls and old
women, laughing and joking as they picked. Dryden and old man Spafford
helped Hope and Merry with the packing, and the Pessimist flourished the
marking-brush with the greatest dexterity. The Invalid circulated
between pickers and packers, watching the proceedings with profound
interest.
In the midst of it all there came a shower. How it did rain! And it
would not leave off, or if it did leave off in the evening it began
again in the morning with a fidelity which we would fain have seen
emulated by our help. One day's drenching always proved to be enough for
those worthies, and we had to scour the country in the pouring rain to
beat up recruits. Then the Charleston steamer went by in spite of most
frantic wavings of the signal-flag, and our peas were left upon the
wharf, exposed to the fury of the elements.
They all got off at last in several detachments, and we had only to wait
for returns. The rain had ceased as soon as the peas were shipped, and
in the warm, bright weather which followed we all luxuriated in company
with the frogs and the lizards. The fields and woods were full of
flowers, the air was saturated with sweet odors and sunshine and songs
of birds. A messenger of good cheer came to us also by the post in the
shape of a cheque from the dealer to whom we had sent our oranges.
"Forty dollars from a single tree!" said Hope exultantly, holding up the
slip of paper. "And that after we had eaten from it steadily for three
months!"
"The tree is an eighteen-year-old seedling, Spafford says," said the
Invalid, looking at the document with interest. "If our thousand do as
well in fourteen years, Hope, we may give up planting cabbages, eh?"
"The price will be down to nothing by that time," said the Pessimist,
not without a shade of excitement, which he endeavored to conceal, as he
looked at the cheque. "Still, it can't go below a certain point, I
suppose. The newspapers are sounder on the orange question than on some
others, I fancy."
One would have thought that we had never seen a cheque for forty dollars
before, so much did we rejoice over this one, and so many hopes of
future emolument did we build upon it.
[Illustration: PACKING.]
"What's the trouble with the cucumbers, Spafford?" asked the Pessimist
as we passed by them one evening on our way up from the little wharf
where we had left our sailboat.
"T'ink it de sandemanders, sah. Dey done burrow under dat whole
cucumber-patch--eat all the roots. Cucumbers can't grow widout roots,
sah."
"But the Florida _Agriculturalist_ says that salamanders don't eat
roots," said Hope: "they only eat grubs and worms."
Spafford shook his head without vouchsafing a reply.
"The grubs and worms probably ate the roots, and then the salamanders
ate them," observed the Pessimist. "That is poetical justice, certainly.
If we could only eat the salamanders now, the retribution would be
complete."
"Sandemanders ain't no 'count to eat," said old man Spafford. "Dey ain't
many critters good to eat. De meat I likes best is wile-cat."
"Wild-cat, uncle!" exclaimed Merry.
"Do you mean to say you eat such things as that?"
"Why, missy," replied the old man seriously, "a wile-cat's 'most de
properest varmint going. Nebber eats not'ing but young pigs and birds
and rabbits, and sich. Yankee folks likes chicken-meat, but 'tain't nigh
so good."
"Well, if they eat rabbits I think better of them," said Hope; "and here
comes Solomon with the mail-bag."
Among the letters which the Invalid turned out a yellow envelope was
conspicuous. Hope seized it eagerly. "From the market-man," she said.
"Now we'll see."
She tore it open. A ten-cent piece, a small currency note and a one-cent
stamp dropped into her lap. She read the letter in silence, then handed
it to her husband.
"Ha! ha! ha!" laughed the Pessimist, reading it over his shoulder. "This
is the worst I _ever_ heard. 'Thirty-six crates arrived in worthless
condition; twelve crates at two dollars; fifty, at fifty cents;
freights, drayage, commissions;--balance, thirty-six cents.' Thirty-six
cents; for a hundred bushels of peas! Oh, ye gods and little fishes!"
Even Hope was mute.
Merry took the document. "It was all because of the rain," she said.
"See! those last crates, that were picked dry, sold well enough. If all
had done as well as that we should have had our money back; and that's
all we expected the first year."
"There's the corn, at any rate," said Hope, rousing herself. "Dryden
says it's splendid, and no one else has any nearly as early. We shall
have the first of the market."
The corn was our first thought in the morning, and we walked out that
way to console ourselves with the sight of its green and waving beauty,
old Spafford being of the party. On the road we passed a colored woman,
who greeted us with the usual "Howdy?"
"How's all with you, Sister Lucindy?" asked the "section."
"All standin' up, thank God! I done come t'rough your cornfield, Uncle
Spafford. De coons is to wuk dar."
We hastened on at this direful news.
"I declar'!" said old Spafford as we reached the fence. "So dey _is_
bin' to wuk! Done tote off half a dozen bushel dis bery las' night.
Mought as well give it up, missis. Once _dey_ gits a taste ob it,
_good-bye!_"
"Well, that's the worst I _ever_ heard!" exclaimed the Pessimist,
resorting to his favorite formula in his dismay. "Between the coons and
the commission-merchants your profits will vanish, Hope."
"Do you think I shall give it up so?" asked Hope stoutly. "We kept the
rabbits out with a fence, and we can keep the coons out with something
else. It is only a few nights' watching and the corn will be fit for
sale. Dryden and Solomon must come out with their dogs and guns and lie
in wait."
"Bravo, Hope! Don't give up the ship," said the Invalid, smiling.
"Well, if she doesn't, neither will I," said the Pessimist. "For the
matter of that, it will be first-rate sport, and I wonder I haven't
thought of coon-hunting before. I'll come out and keep the boys company,
and we'll see if we don't 'sarcumvent the rascals' yet."
And we _did_ save the corn, and sell it too at a good price, the hotels
in the neighborhood being glad to get possession of the rarity. Hope was
radiant at the result of her determination: the Pessimist smiled a grim
approval when she counted up and displayed her bank-notes and silver.
"A few years more of mistakes and losses, Hope, and you'll make quite a
farmer," he condescended to acknowledge. "But do you think you have
exhausted the catalogue of animal pests?"
"No," said Hope, laughing. "I never dared to tell you about the Irish
potatoes. Something has eaten them all up: Uncle Spafford says it is
gophers."
"What is a gopher?" asked Merry. "Is it any relation to the gryphon?"
"It is a sagacious variety of snapping-turtle," replied the Invalid,
"which walks about seeking what it may devour."
"And devours my potatoes," said Hope. "But we have got the better of the
rabbits and the coons, and I don't despair next year even of the gophers
and salamanders."
"Even victory may be purchased too dearly," said the Pessimist.
"After all, the experiment has not been so expensive a one," said the
Invalid, laying down the neatly-kept farm-ledger, which he had been
examining. "The orange trees are a good investment--our one bearing tree
has proved that--and as for the money our farming experiment has cost
us, we should have spent as much, I dare say, had we lived at the hotel,
and not have been one half as comfortable."
"It _is_ a cozy little home," admitted the Pessimist, looking about the
pretty room, now thrown wide open to the early summer and with a huge
pot of creamy magnolia-blooms in the great chimney.
"It is the pleasantest winter I ever spent," said Merry
enthusiastically.
"Except that dreadful evening when the account of the peas came," said
Hope, drawing a long breath. "But I should like to try it again: I shall
never be quite satisfied till I have made peas and cucumbers
profitable."
"Then, all I have to say is, that you are destined to drag out an
unsatisfied existence," said the Pessimist.
"I am not so sure of that," said the Invalid.
And so we turned our faces northward, not without a lingering sorrow at
leaving the home where we had spent so many sweet and sunny days.
"Good-bye, Paradise Plantation," said Merry as the little white house
under the live-oak receded from our view as we stood upon the steamer's
deck.
"It was not so inappropriately named," said the Invalid. "Our life there
has surely been more nearly paradisiacal than any other we have known."
And to this even the Pessimist assented.
LOUISE SEYMOUR HOUGHTON.
THROUGH THE YELLOWSTONE PARK TO FORT CUSTER.
CONCLUDING PAPER.
It was about 8.30 A. M. before the boat was found, some travellers
having removed it from the place where Baronette had cachéd it. A half
hour sufficed to wrap a tent-cover neatly around the bottom and to tack
it fast on the thwarts. Then two oblongs of flat wood were nailed on ten
feet of pine-stems and called oars; and, so equipped, we were ready to
start.
We had driven or ridden hundreds of miles over a country familiar to any
one who chooses to read half a dozen books or reports; but, once across
the Yellowstone, we should enter a region of which little has been
written since Lewis and Clarke wandered across the head-waters of the
Missouri in 1805, and had their perils and adventures told anonymously
by one who was to become famous for many noble qualities of mind and
heart, for great accomplishments and unmerited misfortunes.[A]
Two or three of us sat on the bluff enjoying our after-breakfast pipes
and watching the transport of our baggage. The gray beach at our feet
stretched with irregular outline up the lake, and offered one prominent
cape whence the boat started for its trips across the stream. By 10.30
all the luggage was over, and then began the business of forcing
reluctant mules and horses to swim two hundred yards of cold, swift
stream. The bell-mare promptly declined to lead, and only swam out to
return again to the shore. Then one or two soldiers stripped and forced
their horses in, but in turn became scared, and gave it up amidst chaff
and laughter. At last a line of men, armed with stones, drove the whole
herd of seventy-five animals into the water with demoniac howls and a
shower of missiles. Once in, they took it calmly enough, and, the brave
little foal leading, soon reached the farther bank. One old war-horse of
recalcitrant views turned back, and had to be towed over.
Finally, we ourselves crossed, and the judge and I, leaving the
confusion behind us, struck off into some open woods over an indistinct
trail. Very soon Major Gregg overtook us, and we went into camp about 4
P. M. on a rising ground two miles from the lake, surrounded by woods
and bits of grass-land. Here Captain G. and Mr. E. left us, going on
with Mr. Jump for a two days' hunt.
Next day, at 7 A. M., we rode away over little prairies and across low
pine-clad hills, and saw to right and left tiny parks with their forest
boundaries, until, after two miles, we came to Pelican Creek, a broad
grayish stream, having, notwithstanding its swift current, a look of
being meant by Nature for stagnation. As we followed this
unwholesome-looking water eastward we crossed some quaking, ill-smelling
morasses, and at last rode out on a spacious plain, with Mounts
Langford, Doane and Stevenson far to the south-east, and Mount Sheridan
almost south-west of us. The first three are bold peaks, while about
them lie lesser hills numberless and nameless. The day seemed absolutely
clear, yet the mountains were mere serrated silhouettes, dim with a
silvery haze, through which gleamed the whiter silver of snow in patches
or filling the long ravines. Striking across the plain, we came upon a
tent and the horses of Captain G. and Mr. E., who were away in the
hills.
Thence we followed the Pelican Valley, which had broadened to a wide
meadowy plain, and about ten miles from the camp we began a rough ride
up the lessening creek from the level. The valley was half a mile wide,
noisome with sulphur springs and steam-vents, with now and then a
gayly-tinted hill-slope, colored like the cañon of the Yellowstone. Some
one seeing deer above us on the hills, Dr. T., Mr. K. and Houston rode
off in pursuit. Presently came a dozen shots far above us, and the
major, who had followed the hunters, sent his orderly back for
pack-mules to carry the two black-tailed deer they had killed. After a
wild scramble through bogs we began to ascend a narrow valley with the
creek on our left. Jack Baronette "guessed some timber might have fell
on that trail." Trail there was none in reality, only steep hillsides of
soft scoriæ, streaming sulphur-vents and a cat's cradle of tumbled dead
trees. Every few minutes the axes were ringing, and a way was cleared;
then another halt, and more axe-work, until we slipped and scrambled and
stumbled on to a little better ground, to the comfort of man and beast.
Eighteen miles of this savage riding brought us to our next camp, where,
as the shooting was said to be good and the cattle needed rest, it was
decided to remain two days. Our tents were pitched on a grassy knoll
overlooking the main valley, which was bounded by hills of some three or
four hundred feet high, between which the Pelican ran slowly with bad
water and wormy trout, though there was no lack of wholesome springs on
the hill.
Mr. C. and Mr. T. went off with Jack, and Mr. K. with Jump, to camp out
and hunt early. The night was clear, the thermometer down to 24°
Fahrenheit, and the ice thick on the pails when we rose. One of our
parties came in with six deer: the captain and Mr. C. remained out. The
camp was pleasant enough to an idling observer like myself, but it was
not so agreeable to find the mountain-side, where Mr. T. and I were
looking for game, alive with mosquitos. I lit on a place where the bears
had been engaged in some rough-and-tumble games: the ground was strewed
with what the lad who was with us asserted to be bears' hair. It looked
like the wreck of a thousand chignons, and proved, on inspection, to be
a kind of tawny-colored moss!
All night long, at brief intervals, our mules were scared by a dull,
distant noise like a musket-shot. A soldier told me it was a mud volcano
which he had seen the day we arrived. I then found it marked on Hayden's
map, but learned that it had not been seen by him, and was only so
located on information received from hunters. On the morning of August
1st I persuaded the major to walk over and look for the volcano. We
crossed the valley, and, guided by the frequent explosions, climbed the
hills to the east, and, descending on the far side, came into a small
valley full of sluggish, ill-smelling rills, among which we found the
remarkable crater, which, as it has not been hitherto examined by any
save hunters, I shall describe at some length.
A gradual rising ground made up of soft sulphureous and calcareous earth
was crowned by a more abrupt rise some thirty-five feet high, composed
of tough gray clay. This was pierced by a cone of regular form about
thirty feet across at top and five feet at the bottom. On the west,
about one-third of the circumference was wanting from a point six feet
above the lowest level, thus enabling one to be at a distance or to
stand close by, and yet see to the bottom of the pit. The ground all
around and the shrubs and trees were dotted thick with flakes of dry
mud, which gave, at a distance, a curious stippled look to the
mud-spattered surfaces. As I stood watching the volcano I could see
through the clouds of steam it steadily emitted that the bottom was full
of dark gray clay mud, thicker than a good mush, and that, apparently,
there were two or more vents. The outbreak of imprisoned steam at
intervals of a half minute or more threw the mud in small fig-like
masses from five to forty feet in air with a dull, booming sound,
sometimes loud enough to be heard for miles through the awful stillness
of these lonely hills. It is clear, from the fact of our finding these
mud-patches at least one hundred yards from the crater, that at times
much more violent explosions take place. The constant plastering of the
slopes of the crater which these explosions cause tends to seal up its
vent, but the greater explosions cleanse it at times, and all the while
the steam softens the masses on the sides, so that they slip back into
the boiling cauldron below. As one faces the slit in the cone there lies
to the right a pool of creamy thin mud, white and yellow, feebly
boiling. It is some thirty feet wide, and must be not more than twenty
feet from the crater: its level I guessed at sixteen feet above that of
the bottom of the crater.
After an hour's observation near to the volcano I retired some fifty
feet, and, sheltering myself under a stunted pine, waited in the hope of
seeing a greater outbreak. After an hour more the boiling lessened and
the frequent explosions ceased for perhaps fifteen minutes. Then of a
sudden came a booming sound, followed by a hoarse noise, as the crater
filled with steam, out of which shot, some seventy-five feet in air,
about a cartload of mud. It fell over an area of fifty yards around the
crater in large or small masses, which flattened as they struck. As
soon as it ended I walked toward the crater. A moment later a second
squirt shot out sideways and fell in a line athwart the mud-pool near
by, crossing the spot where I had been standing so long, and covering
me, as I advanced, with rare patches of hot mud. Some change took place
after this in the character and consistency of the mud, and now, at
intervals, the curious spectacle was afforded of rings of mud like the
smoke-rings cast by a cannon or engine-chimney. As they turned in air
they resembled at times the figure 8: once they assumed the form of a
huge irregular spiral some ten feet high, although usually the figures
were like long spikes, or, more rarely, thin formless leaves, and even
like bats or deformed birds.
I walked back over the hills to camp, where we found Captain G. and the
commissary with the best of two deer they had shot. Later, Mr. C. and
Mr. K. came in with four elk, so that we were well supplied. Of these
various meats the deer proved the best, the mountain-sheep the poorest.
The minimum of the night temperature was 34° Fahrenheit. At eighty-five
hundred feet above tide the change at sundown was abrupt. Our camp-fires
had filled the little valley with smoke, and through it the moon rose
red and sombre above the pine-clad outlines of the eastward hills.
The next day Mr. E. and I, who liked to break the journey by a walk,
started early, and, following a clear trail, soon passed the mules. We
left Pelican Creek on our right, and crossed a low divide into a
cooly,[B] the valley of Broad Creek: a second divide separated this from
Cañon Creek, both of which enter the Yellowstone below the falls.
After some six miles afoot over grassy rolling plains and bits of wood,
the command overtook us, and, mounting, we followed the major for an
hour or two through bogs and streams, where now and then down went a
horse and over went a trooper, or some one or two held back at a nasty
crossing until the major smiled a little viciously, when the unlucky
ones plunged in and got through or not as might chance.
About twelve some of us held up to lunch, the train and escort passing
us. We followed them soon through dense woods, and at last up a small
brook in a deep ravine among boulders big and small. At last we lost the
trail at the foot of a slope one thousand feet high of loose stones and
earth, from the top of which a cry hailed us, and we saw that somehow
the command had got up. The ascent was very steep, but before we made it
a mule rolled down. As he was laden with fresh antelope and deer meat,
the scattering of the yet red joints as he fell made it look as if the
poor beast had been torn limb from limb; but, as a packer remarked,
"Mules has got an all-fired lot of livin' in 'em;" and the mule was
repacked and started up again. "They jist falls to make yer mad,
anyway," added the friendly biographer of the mule.
The sheer mountain-side above us was not to be tried mounted; so afoot,
bridle in hand, we started up, pulling the horses after us. I had not
thought it could be as hard work as it proved. There was a singular and
unfeeling lack of intelligence in the fashion the horse had of differing
with his leader. When the man was well blown and stopped, the horse was
sure to be on his heels, or if the man desired to move the horse had his
own opinion and proved restive. At last, horses and men came out on a
bit of level woodland opening into glades full of snow. We were
eighty-four hundred feet in air, on a spur of Amethyst or Specimen
Mountain. We had meant, having made eighteen miles, to camp somewhere on
this hill, but the demon who drives men to go a bit farther infested the
major that day; so presently the bugle sounded, and we were in the
saddle again, and off for a delusive five-mile ride. As Mr. G. Chopper
once remarked, "De mile-stones to hebben ain't set no furder apart dan
dem in dis yere land;" and I believed him ere that day was done.
The top of this great hill, which may be some ten thousand feet in
height, is large and irregular. Our trail lay over its south-eastern
shoulder. After a little ride through the woods we came out abruptly on
a vast rolling plain sloping to the north-east, and broadening as it
fell away from us until, with intervals of belts of wood, it ended in a
much larger plain on a lower level, quite half a mile distant, and of
perhaps one thousand acres. About us, in the coolies, the "Indian
paint-brush" and numberless flowers quite strange to us all so tinted
the dried grasses of these little vales as to make the general hue seem
a lovely pink-gray. Below us, for a mile, rolled grassy slopes, now
tawny from the summer's rainless heat, and set with thousands of
balsam-firs in groups, scattered as with the hand of unerring taste here
and there over all the broad expanse. Many of them stood alone, slim,
tall, gracious cones of green, feathered low, and surrounded by a
brighter green ring of small shoots extending from two to four feet
beyond where the lowest boughs, touching the earth, were reflected up
from it again in graceful curves. On all sides long vistas, bounded by
these charming trees, stretched up into the higher spurs. Ever the same
flowers, ever the same amazing look of centuries of cultivation, and the
feeling that it would be natural to come of a sudden on a gentleman's
seat or basking cows, rather than upon the scared doe and dappled fawn
which fled through the coverts near us. We had seen many of these parks,
but none like this one, nor any sight of plain and tree and flowers so
utterly satisfying in its complete beauty. It wanted but a contrast,
and, as we rode through and out of a line of firs, with a cry of wonder
and simple admiration the rudest trooper pulled up his horse to gaze,
and the most brutal mule-guard paused, with nothing in his heart but joy
at the splendor of it.
At our feet the mountain fell away abruptly, pine-clad, and at its base
the broad plain of the East Branch of the Yellowstone wandered through a
vast valley, beyond which, in a huge semicircle, rose a thousand
nameless mountains, summit over summit, snow-flecked or snow-clad, in
boundless fields--a grim, lonely, desolate horror of rugged, barren
peaks, of dark gray for the most part, cleft by deep shadows, and right
in face of us one superb slab of very pale gray buttressed limestone,
perhaps a good thousand feet high. I thought it the most savage
mountain-scenery I had ever beheld, while the almost feminine and tender
beauty of the parks which dotted these wild hills was something to bear
in remembrance.
But the escort was moving, the mules crowding on behind our halted
column; so presently we were slipping, sliding, floundering down the
hillside, now on steep slopes, which made one a bit nervous to ride
along; now waiting for the axemen to clear away the tangle of trees
crushed to earth by the burden of some year of excessive snow; now on
the horses, now off, through marsh and thicket. I ask myself if I could
ride that ride to-day: it seems to me as if I could not. One so fully
gets rid of nerves in that clear, dry altitude and wholesome life that
the worst perils, with a little repetition, become as trifles, and no
one talks about things which at home would make a newspaper paragraph.
Yet I believe each of us confessed to some remnant of nervousness, some
special dread. Riding an hour or two at night in a dense wood with no
trail is an experiment I advise any man to try who thinks he has no
nerves. A good steep slope of a thousand feet of loose stones to cross
is not much more exhilarating: nobody likes it.
The command was far ahead of two or three of us when we had our final
sensation at a smart little torrent near the foot of the hill, a
tributary of the main river. The horses dive, in a manner, into a cut
made dark by overgrowth of trees, then down a slippery bank, scuttle
through wild waters surging to the cinche, over vast boulders and up the
farther bank, the stirrups striking the rocks to left or right, till
horse and man draw long breaths of relief, and we are out on the
slightly-rolling valley of the East Yellowstone, and turn our heads away
from Specimen Mountain toward Soda Butte.
Captain G. and I, who had fallen to the rear, rode leisurely northward
athwart the open prairie on a clear trail, which twice crossed the
shallow river, and, leaving the main valley, carried us up a narrowing
vale on slightly rising ground. On either side and in front rose abrupt
mountains some two thousand feet above the plain, and below the
remarkable outline of Soda Butte marked the line of the Park boundary.
Near by was a little corral where at some time herdsmen had settled to
give their cattle the use of the abundant grasses of these well-watered
valleys. When there are no Indian scares, the cattle herdsmen make
immense marches in summer, gradually concentrating their stock as the
autumn comes on and returning to the shelter of some permanent ranche.
The very severity and steadiness of the winters are an advantage to
cattle, which do not suffer so much from low temperature as from lack of
food. Farther south, the frequent thaws rot the dried grasses, which are
otherwise admirable fodder, but in Montana the steady cold is rather
preservative, and the winds leave large parts of the plains so free from
snow that cattle readily provide themselves with food.
The cone of Soda Butte stands out on the open and level plain of the
valley, an isolated beehive-shaped mass eighty feet high, and presenting
a rough appearance of irregular courses of crumbled gray stone. It is a
perfectly extinct geyser-cone, chiefly notable for its seeming isolation
from other deposits of like nature, of which, however, the nearer hills
show some evidence. Close to the butte is a spring, pointed out to us by
the major's orderly, who had been left behind to secure our tasting its
delectable waters, which have immense credit as of tonic and digestive
value. I do not distinctly recall all the nasty tastes which have
afflicted my palate, but I am quite sure this was one of the vilest. It
was a combination of acid, sulphur and saline, like a diabolic julep of
lucifer-matches, bad eggs, vinegar and magnesia. I presume its horrible
taste has secured it a reputation for being good when it is down. Close
by it kindly Nature has placed a stream of clear, sweet water.
A mile or so more brought us (August 3d) to camp, which was pitched at
the end of the valley of Soda Butte. We had had eleven hours in the
saddle, and had not ridden over twenty-eight or thirty miles. The train
came straggling in late, and left us time to sharpen our appetites and
admire the reach of grassy plain, the bold brown summits around us, and
at our feet a grass-fringed lake of two or three acres. This pond is fed
by a quick mountain-stream of a temperature of 45° Fahrenheit, and the
only outlet is nearly blocked up by a tangled network of weeds and
fallen timber which prevents the fish from escaping. The bottom is thick
with long grasses, and food must be abundant in this curious little
preserve. The shores slope, so that it is necessary to use a raft to get
at the deep holes in the middle.
At breakfast next morning some one growled about the closeness of the
night air, when we were told, to our surprise, that the minimum
thermometer marked 36° as the lowest night temperature. Certain it is,
the out-of-door-life changes one's feelings about what is cold and what
is not. While we were discussing this a soldier brought in a five-pound
trout taken in the lake, which so excited the fishermen that presently
there was a raft builded, and the major and Mr. T., with bare feet, were
loading their frail craft with huge trout, and, alas! securing for
themselves a painful attack of sunburn. I found all these large trout to
have fatty degeneration of the heart and liver, but no worms. They took
the fly well.
August 5th, under clear skies as usual, we struck at once into a trail
which for seventeen miles might have been a park bridle-path, a little
steeper, and in places a little boggy. Our way took us east by north
into Soda Butte Cañon, a mile wide below, and narrowing with a gradual
rise, until at Miner's Camp it is quite closely bounded by high
hillsides, the upper level of the trail being over eight thousand feet
above the sea. The ride through this irregular valley is very noble. For
a mile or two on our left rose a grand mass of basalt quite two thousand
feet in height, buttressed with bold outlying rocks and presenting very
regular basaltic columns. A few miles farther the views grew yet more
interesting, because around us rose tall ragged gray or dark mountains,
and among them gigantic forms of red, brown and yellow limestone rocks,
as brilliant as the dolomites of the Southern Tyrol. These wild
contrasts of form and color were finest about ten miles up the cañon,
where lies to the west a sombre, dark square mountain, crowned by what
it needed little fancy to believe a castle in ruins, with central keep
and far-reaching walls. On the brow of a precipice fifteen hundred feet
above us, at the end of the castle-wall, a gigantic figure in full armor
seemed to stand on guard for ever. I watched it long as we rode round
the great base of the hill, and cannot recall any such striking
simulation elsewhere. My guides called it the "Sentinel," but it haunted
me somehow as of a familiar grace until suddenly I remembered the old
town of Innspruck and the Alte Kirche, and on guard around the tomb of
the great Kaiser the bronze statues of knight and dame, and, most
charming of all, the king of the Ostrogoths: that was he on the
mountain-top.
Everywhere on these hills the mining prospector has roamed, and on the
summit of the pass we found a group of cabins where certain claims have
been "staked out" and much digging done. As yet, they are as profitable,
by reason of remoteness, as may be the mines in the lunar mountains.
With careless glances at piles of ore which may or may not be valuable,
we rode on to camp, two miles beyond--not very comfortably, finding
water scarce, some rain falling and a great wealth of midges, such as we
call in upper Pennsylvania "pungies," and needing a smudge for the
routing of them. The night was cold and dewy, and our sufferers were
wretched with sunburn.
The doctor and George Houston here left us, and went on to a salt-lick
famous for game, but this proved a failure, some one having carelessly
set fire to the tract. Indeed, in summer it is hard not to start these
almost endless fires, since a spark or a bit of pipe-cinder will at once
set the grasses ablaze, to the destruction of hunting and the annoyance
of all travellers, to whom a fire is something which suggests man, and
the presence of man needs, sad to say, an explanation. At 6 A. M.,
August 6th, Captain G. and the lad Lee also went off on a side-trail
after game, and with lessened numbers we broke camp rather late, and
rode into dense woods down a steady descent on a fair trail. The changes
of vegetation were curious and sudden--from pines and firs to elders,
stunted willows and sparse cottonwood bending over half-dry beds of
torrents, with vast boulders telling of the fierce fury of water which
must have undermined, then loosened and at last tumbled them from the
hillsides. These streams are, in the early spring, impassable until a
cold day and night check the thaw in the hills, and thus allow the
impatient traveller to ford.
Gradually, as we rode on, the hills to our left receded, and on our
right the summits of Index and Pilot stood up and took the
morning--long, straggling volcanic masses of deep chocolate-brown, black
as against the crystalline purity of cloudless blue skies, rising in the
middle to vast rugged, irregular cones fourteen thousand feet above
tide. From the bewildering desolateness of these savage peaks the eye
wanders to the foot-hills, tree-clad with millions of pines, and lower
yet to the wide valley of the West Branch of Clarke's Fork of the
Yellowstone, through which a great stream rushes; and then, beyond the
river, park over park with gracious boundaries of fir and pine, and over
all black peak and snow-clad dome and slope, nameless, untrodden, an
infinite army of hills beyond hills. The startling combination of black
volcanic peaks with gray and tinted limestone still makes every mile of
the way strange and grand. In one place the dark rock-slopes end
abruptly in a wall of white limestone one hundred to two hundred feet
high and regular as ancient masonry. A little below was a second of
these singular dikes, which run for twenty miles or more.
On a rising ground where we halted to lunch a note was found stating
that Dr. T., failing to find game at the salt-lick, had gone on ahead.
While lingering over our lunch in leisurely fashion, encircled by this
great mass of snow and blackness, an orderly suddenly rode up to hasten
us to camp, as Indian signs had been seen down the valley. In a moment
we were running our horses over a sage-plain, and were soon in camp,
which was pitched on the West Branch in the widening valley. Dr. T. and
George Houston, it appeared, had seen a column of smoke four miles below
on a butte across the river. As the smoke was steady and did not spread,
like an accidental fire, it seemed wise to wait for the party. There
being no news of Indians, and no probability of white travellers, it was
well to be cautious. It might be a hunters' or prospectors' camp, or a
rallying-signal for scattered bands of Sioux, or a courier from Fort
Custer. The doubt was unpleasant, and its effect visible in the men, two
of whom already _saw_ Indians.
"See 'em?" says Jack. "Yes, they're like the Devil: you just doesn't see
'em!"
While we pitched camp sentinels were thrown out, and two guides went off
to investigate the cause of the fire. Houston came back in two hours,
and relieved us by his statement that no trails led to the fire, and
that its probable cause was the lightning of the storm which had
overtaken us in camp the day before.
As the day waned the tints of the great mountains before us changed
curiously. Of a broken chocolate-brown at noon, as the sun set their
eastern fronts assumed a soft velvety look, while little purple clouds
of haze settled in the hollows and rifts, fringing with tender grays the
long serrated ridges as they descended to the plain. As the sun went
down the single huge obelisk of Pilot Mountain seemed to be slowly
growing upward out of the gathering shadows below. Presently, as the sun
fell lower, the base of the mountain being swarthy with the growing
nightfall, all of a sudden the upper half of the bleak cone yet in
sunshine cast upward, athwart the blue sky, upon the moisture
precipitated by the falling temperature, a great dark, broadening shaft
of shadow, keen-edged and sombre, and spreading far away into
measureless space--a sight indescribably strange and solemn.
The next day's ride down Clarke's Fork still gave us morass and mud and
bad trails, with the same wonderful views in the distance of snow-clad
hills, and, nearer, brown peaks and gray, with endless limestone dikes.
We camped at twelve on Crandall's Creek, a mile from the main branch of
Clarke's Fork of the Yellowstone, and learned from the guides that no
fish exist in these ample waters. The doubts I at first had were
lessened after spending some hours in testing the matter. Strange as it
may seem, and inexplicable, I am disposed to think the guides are right.
We saw two "cow-punchers," who claimed to be starving, and were
questioned with some scepticism. In fact, every stranger is looked after
sharply with the ever-present fear of horse-thieves and of the
possibility of being set afoot by a night-stampede of the stock. Our
hunting-parties were still out when I started next morning at 8.30 to
climb a huge butte opposite our camp. I reached the top at about twelve,
and found on the verge of a precipice some twenty-five hundred feet
above the vale a curious semicircle of stones--probably an Indian
outlook made by the Nez Percés in their retreat. Sitting with my back
against it, I looked around me. A doe and fawn leapt away, startled from
their covert close by. Never, even in the Alps, have I so felt the sense
of loneliness--never been so held awestruck by the silence of the hills,
by the boundlessness of the space before me. No breath of air stirred,
no bird or insect hovered near. Away to the north-west Pilot and Index
rose stern and dark; across the valley, to the north, out of endless
snow-fields, the long regular red-and-yellow pyramid of Bear Tooth
Mountain glowed in vivid light with amazing purity of color; while
between me and it the hills fell away, crossed by intersecting bands of
dark firs, and between marvellous deceits of fertile farm-lands, hedges
and orchards. Here and there on the plain tiny lakes lit up the sombre
grasses, and lower down the valley the waters of Clarke's Fork, now
green, now white with foam, swept with sudden curve to the north-east,
and were lost in the walls of its cañon like a scimitar half sheathed.
On my right, across the vast grass-slopes of this great valley, on a
gradual hill-slope, rose the most remarkable of the lime dikes I have
seen. It must enclose with its gigantic wall a space of nearly two miles
in width, in the centre of which a wild confusion of tinted limestone
strata, disturbed by some old convulsion of Nature, resembles the huge
ruins of a great town.
Soon after my return to camp, C. and the doctor came in with great
triumph, having slain four bears. I was not present on this occasion,
but I am inclined to fancy, as regards the doctor, that he verily
believed the chief end and aim of existence for him was to kill bears,
while C. had an enthusiasm of like nature, somewhat toned down.
After a wild ride on cayooses across Clarke's Fork and on the glowing
pink side-slopes of Bear Tooth, and a camp in the hills, the ponies,
which are always astray, were caught, and a game-trail followed among
the mountains. Suddenly, Houston, in a stage-whisper, exclaimed, "We've
got him! He's an old buster, he is!" He had seen a large gray
bear--improperly called a grizzly--feeding a mile away in a long wide
cooly. A rough, scrambling ride under cover of a spur, amid snow-drifts
and tumbled trees, enabled the bear-hunters to tie up their ponies and
push on afoot. If a man desire to lose confidence in his physical
powers, let him try a good run with a Winchester rifle in hand nine
thousand feet above tidewater. Rounding the edge of a hill and crossing
a snow-drift, they came in view of Bruin sixty yards away. He came
straight toward them against the wind, when there appeared on the left
Bruin No. 2, to which the doctor directed his attention. Both bears fell
at the crack of the rifles, and with grunt and snort rolled to the foot
of the cooly. Houston climbed a snowbank to reconnoitre, aware, as there
were no trees to climb, that an open cooly was no good place in which
to face wounded bears. Away went the doctor.
"Let them alone, doctor," said Houston. "Hold up! That valley's full of
bears." For he had seen a third.
The doctor paused a moment, and then there was a rush down the slope. A
second shot finished one bear, and then began a running fight of a mile,
in which wind was of more value than courage. Finally, Bruin No. 2
stopped. Leaving C. to end his days, the doctor and Houston pursued No.
3. As the bear grew weak and they approached him, the doctor's
excitement and Houston's quite reasonable prudence rose together.
"Don't go down that cooly, doctor."
Then a shot or two, a growl, and the doctor gasping, "Do you think I
left my practice to let that bear die in his bed?"
"Well, the place is full of bears," said George; and so on they went,
now a shot and now a growl, and then a hasty retreat of Bruin, until,
utterly blown and in full sight of his prey, the unhappy doctor murmured
in an exhausted voice, "Give me one cool shot, George."
"Darn it!" replied George, "who's been warming your shots?"
And this one cool shot ended the fray. Returning, they found the judge
had driven his bear into a thicket, and, having probably taken out a _ne
exeat_ or an injunction, or some such effective legal remedy against
him, awaited reinforcements. As George and the doctor arrived the bear
moved out into the open, and was killed by a final shot.
Mr. Jump informs us that one gets an awful price out of the Chinese for
bear-galls; and it is the judge's opinion that at this supreme moment
the doctor would have taken a contract to supply all China with bile of
Bruin. I suspect our friend George has since told at many a camp-fire
how the doctor's spurs danced down the coolies, and how the judge
corralled his bear.
We broke camp August 10th at four, after a night of severe cold--27°
Fahrenheit--but perfectly dry and dewless. E. and I, as usual, pushed on
ahead across Lodge Pole Creek, and so down the valley of Clarke's Fork.
An increasing luxury of growth gave us, in wood or swamp, cottonwood,
alder, willow, wild currants and myriads of snow-white lilies, and, in
pretty contrast, the red or pink paint-brush. Losing Pilot and Index as
the windings of the main valley hid them, and leaving them behind us, we
began to see rocks of bright colors and more and more regular walls of
silvery gray stone. At last the widening valley broadened, and from it
diverged five valleys, like the fingers from a hand, each the bed of a
stream. As we turned to the left and crossed the wildly-rolling hills,
and forded Clarke's Fork to camp by Dead Indian Creek, the novelty and
splendor of this almost unequalled view grew and grew. As I close my
eyes it comes before me as at the call of an enchanter. From the main
valley the outlook is down five grass-clad valleys dotted with trees and
here and there flashing with the bright reflection from some hurrying
stream. The mountains between rise from two to ten thousand feet, and
are singular for the contrasts they present. The most distant to the
right were black serrated battlements, looking as if their darkness were
vacant spaces in the blue sky beyond. The next hill was a mass of gray
limestone, and again, on the left, rose a tall peak of ochreous yellows,
sombre reds and grays. The hill above our camp was composed of red and
yellow rocks, fading below to gray débris, bounded beneath by a band of
grasses, and below this another stratum of tinted rock; and so down to
the plain. The side-view of this group showed it to be wildly distorted,
the strata lying at every angle, coming out against the distant
lava-peaks and the green slopes below them in a glory of tenderly-graded
colors.
It seems as if it should be easy to describe a landscape so peculiar,
and yet I feel that I fail utterly to convey any sense of the emotions
excited by the splendid sweep of each valley, by the black fierceness of
the lava-peaks thrown up in Nature's mood of fury, by the great
"orchestra of colors" of the limestone hills, and by a burning red
sunset, filling the spaces between the hills with hazy, ruddy gold,
and, when all was cold and dark, of a sudden flooding each grim
lava-battlement with the dim mysterious pink flush of the afterglow,
such as one may see at rare times in the Alps or the Tyrol. In crossing
the heads of these valleys, some day to be famous as one of the sights
of the world, we forded Clarke's Fork, the major, Jack and I being
ahead. We came out on the far side upon a bit of strand, above and
around which rose almost perpendicularly the eroded banks of the stream,
some fifteen feet high. While the guides broke down the bank to allow of
our horses climbing it, I was struck with a wonderful bit of water. To
my right this tall bank was perforated by numerous holes, out of which
flowed an immense volume of water. It bounded forth between the matted
roots and welled up below from the sand, and, higher up the bank, had,
with its sweet moisture, bribed the ready mosses to build it numerous
green basins, out of which also it poured in prodigal flood.
At this point, Dead Indian, we at first decided to await the looked-for
scout, but on the next morning the major resolved to leave a note on a
tripod for Mr. T., still out hunting, and to camp and wait on top of
Cañon Mountain above us. So we left the noisy creek and the broken
tepees of Joseph and the Nez Percés, and the buffalo and deer-bones and
the rarer bones of men, and climbed some twenty-four hundred feet of the
hill above us: then passed over a rolling plain, by ruddy gravel-hills
and grasses gray- or pink-stemmed, to camp, on what Mr. Baronette called
Cañon Mountain, among scattered groups of trees having a quaint
resemblance to an old apple-orchard. Here we held counsel as to whether
we should wait longer for the scout, push on rapidly to Custer, or
complete our plans by turning southward to see the Black Cañon of the
Big Horn River. Our doubt as to the steam-boats, which in the autumn are
few and far between, and our failing provisions, decided us to push on
to the fort. Having got in all our parties, with ample supplies of game,
we started early next day to begin the descent from these delightful
hills to the plains below. We rode twenty-eight miles, descending about
thirty-seven hundred feet over boundless rolling, grass-clad foot-hills,
behind us, to the left, the long mountain-line bounding the rugged cañon
of Clarke's Fork, and to the right a march of lessening hills, and all
before us one awful vast gray, sad and silent plain, and in dimmest
distance again the gray summits about Pryor's Gap. The space before us
was a vast park, thick with cactus and sage-brush, lit up here and
there--but especially at the point where the cañon sets free the river
on to the plain--by brilliant masses of tinted rocks or clays in level
strata overlapping one another in bars of red, silver, pink, yellow and
gray. With a certain sense of sadness we took a last look at these snowy
summits rising out of their green crowns of pine and fir, and, bidding
adieu to the wholesome hills, rode on to the grim alkali plain with the
thermometer at 92°.
And now the days of bad water had come, each spring being the nastiest,
and the stuff not consoling when once down, but making new and
unquenchable thirst, and leaving a vile and constant taste of magnesia
and chalk. And thus, over sombre prairies and across a wicked
ford--where, of course, the captain and T. got their baggage wet--and
past bones of men on which were piled stones, and the man's breeches
thrown over these for a shroud or as a remembrance of the shrivelled
thing below being human, we followed the Nez Percés' trail, to camp at
four by the broad rattling waters of Clarke. Jack reported Indians near
by--indeed saw them: guessed them to be Bannocks, as Crows would have
come in to beg. Sentinels were thrown out on the bluffs near us and the
stock watched with redoubled care.
I think every man who has camped much remembers, with a distinct
vividness, the camp-fires. I recall happy hours by them in Maine and
Canada and on the north shore of Lake Superior, and know, as every lover
of the woods knows, how each wood has its character, its peculiar
odors--even a language of its own. The burning pine has one speech, the
gum tree another. One friend at least who was with me can recall our
camps in Maine,
Where fragrant hummed the moist swamp-spruce,
And tongues unknown the cedar spoke,
While half a century's silent growth
Went up in cheery flame and smoke.
The cottonwood burns with a rich, ruddy, abundant blaze and a faint
pleasant aroma. Not an unpicturesque scene, our camp-fire, with the
rough figures stretched out on the grass and the captain marching his
solemn round with utterly unfatigable legs, Jack and George Houston
good-humoredly chaffing, and now and again a howl responsive to the
anguish of a burnt boot. He who has lived a life and never known a
camp-fire is--Well, may he have that joy in the Happy Hunting-grounds!
The next day's ride was only interesting from the fact that we forded
Clarke's Fork five times in pretty wild places, where, of course,
Captain G. and the doctor again had their baggage soaked. The annoyance
of this when, after ten hours in the saddle, you come to fill your
tobacco-bag and find the precious treasure hopelessly wet, your
writing-paper in your brushes, the lovely photographs, a desolated
family presented on your departure, brilliant with yellow mud--I pause:
there are inconceivable capacities for misery to be had out of a
complete daily wetting of camp-traps. I don't think the captain ever
quite got over this last day's calamity, and I doubt not he mourns over
it to-day in England.
The ride of the next two days brought us again to rising ground, the
approach to Pryor's Gap. On the 13th I rode on ahead with George
Houston, and had an unsuccessful buffalo-hunt. We saw about forty head,
but by no device could we get near enough for effective shooting. I had,
however, the luck to kill a buck antelope and two does. Rejoining the
command in great triumph, I found Jump, to my amusement, waving over his
head a red cotton umbrella which some wandering Crow had dropped on the
trail. The umbrella being, from the Crow point of view, a highly-prized
ornament, it was not strange to find it on our trail. In an evil moment
I asked Jump to hand it to me. As he did so it fell, open, over the nose
of my cayoose. As to what happened I decline to explain: there have been
many calumnies concerning what Mr. Jump called "that 'ere horse-show."
On this day we rode through the last range of considerable hills, past a
vast rock which meant "medicine" of some kind for the Indian, as its
clefts were dotted with sacrificial beads, arrows and bits of calico. A
brief scramble and a long descent carried us through Pryor's Gap, and
out again on to boundless plains, thick with the fresh dung of the
buffaloes, which must have been here within two days and been hurried
southward by Crow hunting-parties. This to our utter disgust, as we had
been promised abundance of buffalo beyond Pryor's Gap.
A thirty-mile march brought us to a poor camp by a marshy stream. Man
and beast showed the effects of the alkaline waters, which seemed to me
more nasty every day. There is no doubt, however, that it is possible to
become accustomed to their use, and no lands are more capable of
cultivation than these if the water be sufficient for irrigation. The
camp was enlivened by an adventure of the major's, which revenged for us
his atrocious habit of rising at 3 A. M. and saying "Now, gentlemen!" as
he stood relentless at the tent-doors. C. and I had found a cañon near
by about one hundred feet deep and having a good bathing stream. As we
returned toward it at evening we saw the gallant major standing
barelegged on the edge of the cañon, gesticulating wildly, his
saddle-bags and toilette matters far below beside the creek. Still
suffering with the sunburn, he had been cooling his feet in the water
preparatory to a bath, when, lo! a bear standing on his hind legs eating
berries at a distance of only about fifteen feet! The major promptly
availed himself of the shelter offered by the bank of the stream; but
once there, how was he to escape unseen? The water was cold, the bear
big, the major shoeless. Perhaps a bark simulative of a courageous dog
might induce the bear to leave. No doubt, under such inspirations, it
was well done. The bear, amazed at the resources of the army,
fled--alas! not pursued by the happy major, who escaped up the
cañon-wall, leaving his baggage to a generous foe, which took no
advantage of comb or toothbrush. How the whole outfit turned out to hunt
that bear, and how he was never found, I have not space to tell more
fully.
All of twelve hours the next day we rode on under a blinding sunlight, a
cloudless sky, over dreary, rolling, dusty plains, where the only relief
from dead grasses was the gray sage-brush and cactus, from the shelter
of which, now and again, a warning rattle arose or a more timid snake
fled swiftly through the dry grasses. Tinted cones of red and brown
clays or toadstool forms of eroded sandstone added to the strange
desolateness of the view; so that no sorrow was felt when, after forty
miles of it, we came upon a picturesque band of Crows with two chiefs,
Raw Hide and Tin Belly.
It was an amazing sight to fresh eyes--the clever ponies,
these bold-featured, bareheaded, copper-tinted fellows with
bead-decked leggins, gay shirts or none, and their rifles slung in
brilliantly-decorated gun-covers across the saddle-bows. We rode down
the bluffs with them to the flat valley of Beauvais Creek, where a few
lodges were camped with the horses, twelve hundred or more, in a grove
of lordly cottonwood--a wild and picturesque sight. Tawny squaws
surrounded us in crowds, begging. A match, a cartridge, anything but a
quill toothpick, was received with enthusiasm. I rode ahead to the ford
of the Beauvais Creek, and met the squaws driving in the cayooses.
Altogether, it was much like a loosely-organized circus. Our own camp
being set, we took our baths tranquilly, watched by the squaws seated
like men on their ponies. One of them kindly accepted a button and my
wornout undershirt.
The cottonwood tree reigns supreme throughout this country wherever
there is moisture, and marks with its varied shades of green the
sinuous line of every water-course. Despised even here as soft and
easily rotted, "warping inside out in a week," it is valuable as almost
the sole resource for fuel and timber, and as making up in speed of
growth for a too ready rate of decay. Four or five years' growth renders
it available for rails, and I should think it must equal the eucalyptus
for draining moist lands. Many a pretty face is the more admired for its
owner's wealth, and were the now-despised cottonwood of greater
market-value it could not, I think, have escaped a reputation for
beauty. A cottonwood grove of tall trees ten to eighteen feet in
diameter, set twenty to forty feet apart, with dark-green shining leaves
spreading high in air over a sod absolutely free of underbrush, struck
such of us as had no Western prejudices as altogether a noble sight.
Between Forts Custer and Keogh the cottonwoods are still finer, and what
a mocking-bird is among birds are these among trees--now like the apple
tree, now like the olive, now resembling the cork or the red-oak or the
Lombardy poplar, and sometimes quaintly deformed so as to exhibit
grotesque shapes,--all as if to show what one tree can do in the way of
mimicking its fellows.
To our delight, General Sheridan's old war-scout, Mr. Campbell, rode in
with letters at dusk, and we had the happiness to learn that our long
absence had made ill news for none of us. By six next day we were up and
away to see the great Crow camp, which we reached by crossing a long
ford of the swift Big Horn River. There were one hundred and twenty
lodges, about one thousand Crows, about two thousand dogs and as many
ponies. I think it was the commissary who dared to say that every dog
could not have his day among the Crows, as there would not be enough
days to go round; but surely never on earth was such a canine chorus. It
gave one a respect for Crow nerves. Let me add, as a Yankee, my
veneration for the Crow as a bargainer, and you will have the most
salient ideas I carried away from this medley of dogs, horses, sullen,
lounging braves with pipes, naked children warmly clad with dirt,
hideous squaws, skin lodges, medicine-staffs gay with bead and feathers,
and stenches for the describing of which civilized language fails.
Crossing a branch of the Big Horn, we rode away again over these
interminable, lonely grass-plains; past the reaping-machines and the
vast wagons, with a dozen pairs of oxen to each, sent out to gather
forage for the winter use of the fort; past dried-up streams,
whitewashed with snowy alkaline deposits, cheating the eye at a distance
with mockery of foaming water. Still, mile on mile, across rolling
lands, with brief pause at the river to water horses, scaring the gay
little prairie-dogs and laughing at the swift scuttle away of
jack-rabbits, until by noon the long lines of Custer came into sight.
These three days of sudden descent from high levels to the terrible
monotony of the thirsty plains, without shade, with the thermometer
still in the nineties, began to show curiously in the morale of the
outfit. The major got up earlier and rode farther: our English captain
walked more and more around the camp-fire. On one day the coffee gave
out, and on the next the sugar, and everything except the commissary's
unfailing good-humor, which was, unluckily, not edible. Mr. T. rode in
silence beside the judge, grimly calculating how soon he could get a
railroad over these plains. Even the doctor fell away in the "talk"
line. Says Mr. Jump: "These 'ere plains ain't as social as they might
be." Some one is responsible for the following brief effort to evolve in
verse the lugubrious elements of a ride over alkali plains with failing
provender, weary horses, desiccating heat and quenchless thirst:
Silent and weary and sun-baked, we rode o'er the alkaline grass-plains,
Into and out of the coolies and through the gray green of the sage-brush--
All the long line of the horses, with jingle of spur and of bridle,
All the brown line of the mule-train, tired and foot-sore and straggling;
Nothing to right and to left, nothing before and behind us,
Save the dry yellowing grass, and afar on the hazy horizon,
Sullen, and grim, and gray, sunburnt, monotonous sand-heaps.
So we rode, sombre and listless, day after day, while the distance
Grew as we rode, till the eyeballs ached with the terrible sameness.
By this time the command was straggling in a long broken line, all eyes
set on the fort, where, about 1.30, we dismounted from our six hundred
miles in the saddle to find in the officers' club-room a hearty welcome
and the never-to-be-forgotten sensation of a schooner of iced Milwaukee
beer. From Fort Custer we rode a hundred and thirty miles in ambulances
to Fort Keogh. This portion of our journey took us over the line to be
followed by the Northern Pacific Railroad, and gave us a good idea of
the wealthy grass-lands, capable of easy irrigation, bordering the
proposed line of rail. The river is navigable to Custer until the middle
of September, and in wet seasons still later. Already, much of the best
land is taken up, and we were able to buy chickens if we could shoot
them, and eggs and potatoes, the latter the best I have seen in any
country. The river is marked by ample groves of superb cottonwoods and
by immense thickets of the wild prairie-rose and moss-rose, while the
shores are endlessly interesting and curious, especially the left bank,
on account of the singular forms of the mud and sandstone hills, along
which, in places, lie for miles black level strata of lignite. At Fort
Keogh we took a steamer to Bismarck, whence we travelled by rail on the
Northern Pacific road, reaching home September 9th. We had journeyed
sixty-five hundred miles--on horses, six hundred; by ambulances, four
hundred; by boat, six hundred and seventy-five.
S. WEIR MITCHELL, M. D.
FOOTNOTES:
[A] Nicholas Biddle.
[B] A little valley--probably from the French _coulisse_, a narrow
channel.
ADAM AND EVE.
CHAPTER XIX.
Aunt Hepzibah's house stood well up the hill, far enough away from the
village to escape the hubbub and confusion which during the removal of
any considerable store of spirit were most certain to prevail.
Hidden away in the recesses of a tortuous valley, amid hills whose steep
sides bristled with tier after tier of bare, broken rocks, to reach or
to leave Polperro by any other mode than on foot was a task of
considerable difficulty. Wagons were unknown, carts not available, and
it was only at the risk of his rider's life and limbs that any horse
ventured along the perilous descents and ascents of the old Talland
road. Out of these obstacles, therefore, arose the necessity for a
number of men who could manage the drays, dorsals and crooks which were
the more common and favored modes of conveyance. With the natural love
of a little excitement, combined with the desire to do as you would be
done by, it was only thought neighborly to lend a hand at whatever might
be going on; and the general result of this sociability was that half
the place might be found congregated about the house, assisting to the
best of their ability to impede all progress and successfully turn any
attempt at work into confusion and disorder.
To add to this tumult, a keg of spirits was kept on tap, to which all
comers were made free, so that the crowd grew first noisy and
good-tempered, then riotously merry and quarrelsomely drunk, until
occasions had been known when a general fight had ensued, the kegs had
got burst open and upset, the men who were hired to deliver them lay
maddened or helpless in the street, while the spirit for which liberty
and life had been risked flowed into the gutters like so much water.
In vain had Adam, to whom these scenes afforded nothing but anger and
disgust, used all his endeavors to persuade his fellow-workers to give
up running the vessel ashore with the cargo in her. The Polperro men,
except under necessity, turned a deaf ear to his entreaties, and in many
cases preferred risking a seizure to foregoing the fool-hardy
recklessness of openly defying the arm of the law. The plan which Adam
would have seen universally adopted here, as it was in most of the other
places round the coast, was that of dropping the kegs, slung on a rope,
into the sea, and (securing them by an anchor) leaving them there until
some convenient season, when, certain of not being disturbed, they were
landed, and either removed to a more distant hiding-place or conveyed at
once to their final destination. But all this involved immediate trouble
and delay, and the men, who without a complaint or murmur would endure
weeks of absence from their homes, the moment those homes came in sight
grew irritable under control and impatient of all authority.
With a spirit of independence which verged on rebellion, with an
uncertain temperament in which good and bad lay jostled together so
haphazard that to calculate which at any given moment might come
uppermost was an impossibility, these sons of the sea were hard to lead
and impossible to drive. Obstinate, credulous, superstitious, they
looked askant on innovation and hated change, fearing lest it should
turn away the luck which they vaunted in the face of discretion, making
it their boast that so many years had gone by since any mischance had
overtaken the Polperro folk that they could afford to laugh at the
soldiers before their faces and snap their fingers at the cruisers
behind their backs.
Under these circumstances it was not to be supposed that Adam's
arguments proved very effective: no proposition he made was ever
favorably received, and this one was more than usually unpopular. So, in
spite of his prejudice against a rule which necessitated the sequence
of riot and disorder, he had been forced to give in, and to content
himself by using his authority to control violence and stem as much as
possible the tide of excess. It was no small comfort to him that Eve was
absent, and the knowledge served to smooth his temper and keep down his
irritability. Besides which, his spirits had risen to no common height,
a frequent result of the reaction which sets in after great emotion,
although Adam placed his happy mood to the credit of Eve's kind words
and soft glances.
It was late in the afternoon before the kegs were all got out and safely
cleared off; but at length the last man took his departure, the visitors
began to disperse, Uncle Zebedee and Jerrem disappeared with them, and
the house was left to the undisturbed possession of Joan and Adam.
"I shall bring Eve back when I come," Adam said, reappearing from the
smartening up he had been giving to himself.
"All right!" replied Joan, but in such a weary voice that Adam's heart
smote him for leaving her sitting there alone, and with a great effort
at self-sacrifice he said, "Would you like to go too?"
"Iss, if I could go two p'r'aps I should," retorted Joan, "but as I'm
only one p'r'aps I might find myself one in the way. There, go along
with 'ee, do!" she added, seeing him still hesitate. "You knaw if
there'd bin any chance o' my goin' you wouldn't ha' axed me."
A little huffed by this home-thrust, Adam waited for nothing more, but,
turning away, he closed the door after him and set off at a brisk pace
up the Lansallos road, toward Aunt Hepzibah's house.
The light had now all but faded out, and over everything seaward a
cloudy film of mist hung thick and low; but this would soon lift up and
be blown away, leaving the night clear and the sky bright with the
glitter of a myriad stars, beneath whose twinkling light Adam would tell
his tale of love and hear the sweet reply; and at the thought a thousand
hopes leaped into life and made his pulses quicken and his nerves
thrill. Strive as he might, arrived at Aunt Hepzibah's he could neither
enter upon nor join in any general conversation; and so marked was his
silence and embarrassed his manner that the assembled party came to the
charitable conclusion that something had gone wrong in the adjustment of
his liquor; and knowing it was ticklish work to meddle with a man who
with a glass beyond had fallen a drop short, they made no opposition to
Eve's speedy preparations for immediate departure.
"Oh, Eve," Adam exclaimed, giving vent to deep-drawn sighs of relief as,
having turned from the farm-gate, they were out of sight and hearing of
the house, "I hope you're not vexed with me for seeming such a fool as
I've been feeling there. I have been so longing for the time to come
when I could speak to you that for thinking of it I couldn't talk about
the things they asked me of."
"Why, whatever can you have to say of so much importance?" stammered
Eve, trying to speak as if she was unconscious of the subject he was
about to broach; and this from no coquetry, but because of an
embarrassment so allied to that which Adam felt that if he could have
looked into her heart he would have seen his answer in its tumultuous
beating.
"I think you know," said Adam softly; and as he spoke he stooped to
catch a glimpse of her averted face. "It's only what I'd on my lips to
say last night, only the door was opened before I'd time to get the
words out, and afterward you wouldn't so much as give me a look,
although," he added reproachfully, "you sat up ever so long after I was
gone, and only ran away when you thought that I was coming."
"No, indeed I didn't do that," said Eve earnestly: "that was Joan whom
you heard. I went up stairs almost the minute after you left."
"Is that really true?" exclaimed Adam, seizing both her hands and
holding them tight within his own. "Eve, you don't know what I suffered,
thinking you were caught by Jerrem's talk and didn't care whether I felt
hurt or pleased. I lay awake most of the night, thinking whether it
could ever be that you could care for me as by some magic you've made
me care for you. I fancied--"
But here a rustle in the hedge made them both start. Adam turned quickly
round, but nothing was to be discovered. "'Twas, most-like, nothing but
a stoat or a rabbit," he said, vexed at the interruption: "still, 'tis
all but certain there'll be somebody upon the road. Would you mind
crossing over to the cliff? 'Tis only a little bit down the other side."
Eve raised no objection, and, turning, they picked their way along the
field, got over the gate and down through the tangle of gorse and brier
to the path which ran along the Lansallos side of the cliff. Every step
of the way was familiar to Adam, and he so guided Eve as to bring her
down to a rough bit of rock which projected out and formed a seat on a
little flat of ground overhanging a deep gully.
"There!" he said, in a tone of satisfaction, "this isn't so bad, is it?
You won't feel cold here, shall you?"
"No, not a bit," said Eve.
Then there was a pause, which Eve broke by first giving a nervous,
half-suppressed sigh, and then saying, "It's very dark to-night, isn't
it?"
"Yes," said Adam, who had been thinking how he should best begin his
subject. "I thought the mist was going to clear off better than this,
but that seems to look like dirty weather blowing up;" and he pointed to
the watery shroud behind which lay the waning moon.
"I wish a storm would come on," said Eve: "I should so like to see the
sea tossing up and the waves dashing over everything."
"What! while we two are sitting here?" said Adam, smiling.
"No: of course I don't mean now, this very minute, but some time."
"Some time when I'm away at sea?" put in Adam.
Eve gave a little shudder: "Not for the world! I should be frightened to
death if a storm came on and you away. But you don't go out in very bad
weather, do you, Adam?"
"Not if I can help it, I don't," he answered. "Why, would you mind if I
did?" and he bent down so that he could look into her face. "Eh, Eve,
would you?"
His tone and manner conveyed so much more than the words that Eve felt
it impossible to meet his gaze. "I don't know," she faltered. "What do
you ask me for?"
"What do I ask you for?" he repeated, unable longer to repress the
passionate torrent which he had been striving to keep under. "Because
suspense seems to drive me mad. Because, try as I may, I can't keep
silent any longer. I wanted, before I said more, to ask you about
somebody you've left behind you at London; but it's of no use. No matter
what he may be to you, I must tell you that I love you, Eve--that you've
managed in this little time to make every bit of my heart your own."
"Somebody in London?" Eve silently repeated. "Who could he mean? Not
Reuben May: how should he know about him?"
The words of love that followed this surprise seemed swallowed up in her
desire to have her curiosity satisfied and her fears set at rest. "What
do you mean about somebody I've left in London?" she said; and the
question, abruptly put, jarred upon Adam's excited mood, strained as his
feelings were, each to its utmost tension. This man she had left behind,
then, could even at a moment like this stand uppermost in her mind.
"A man, I mean, to whom, before you left, you gave a promise;" and this
time, so at variance was the voice with Adam's former tones of
passionate avowal, that, coupled with the shock of hearing that word
"promise," Eve's heart quailed, and to keep herself from betraying her
agitation she was forced to say, with an air of ill-feigned amazement,
"A man I left? somebody I gave a promise to? I really don't know what
you mean."
"Oh yes, you do;" and by this time every trace of wooing had passed from
Adam's face, and all the love so late set flowing from his heart was
choked and forced back on himself. "Try and remember some fellow who
thinks he's got the right to ask how you're getting on among the country
bumpkins, whether you ain't tired of them yet, and when you're coming
back. Perhaps," he added, goaded on by Eve's continued silence, "'twill
help you if I say 'twas the one who came to see you off aboard the Mary
Jane. I suppose you haven't forgot _him_?"
Eve's blood boiled at the sneer conveyed in Adam's tone and look.
Raising her eyes defiantly to his, she said, "Forgotten him? Certainly
not. If you had said anything about the Mary Jane before I should have
known directly who you meant. That person is a very great friend of
mine."
"Friend?" said Adam.
"Yes, friend--the greatest friend I've got."
"Oh, I'm very glad I know that, because I don't approve of friends. The
woman I ask to be my wife must be contented with me, and not want
anything from anybody else."
"A most amiable decision to come to," said Eve. "I hope you may find
somebody content to be so dictated to."
"I thought I had found somebody already," said Adam, letting a softer
inflection come into his voice. "I fancied that at least, Eve, _you_
were made out of different stuff to the women who are always hankering
to catch every man's eye."
"And pray what should make you alter your opinion? Am I to be thought
the worse of because an old friend, who had promised he would be a
brother to me, offers to see me off on my journey, and I let him come?
You must have a very poor opinion of women, Adam, or at least a very
poor opinion of me."
And the air of offended dignity with which she gave this argument forced
Adam to exclaim, "Oh, Eve, forgive me if I have spoken hastily: it is
only because I think so much more of you--place you so much higher than
any other girl I ever saw--that makes me expect so much more of you. Of
course," he continued, finding she remained silent, "you had every right
to allow your friend to go with you, and it was only natural he should
wish to do so; only when I'm so torn by love as I am I feel jealous of
every eye that's turned upon you: each look you give another seems
something robbed from me."
Eve's heart began to soften: her indignation was beginning to melt away.
"And when I heard he was claiming a promise, I--"
"What promise?" said Eve sharply.
"What promise did you give him?" replied Adam warily, suspicion giving
to security another thrust.
"That's not to the point," said Eve. "You say I gave him a promise: I
ask what that promise was?"
"The very question I put to you. I know what he says it was, and I want
to hear if what he says is true. Surely," he added, seeing she
hesitated, "if this is only a friend, and a friend who is to be looked
on like a brother, you can't have given him any promise that if you can
remember you can't repeat."
Eve's face betrayed her displeasure. "Really, Adam," she said, "I know
of no right that you have to take me to task in this manner."
"No," he answered: "I was going to ask you to give me that right when
you interrupted me. However, that's very soon set straight. I've told
you I love you: now I ask you if you love me, and, if so, whether you
will marry me? After you've answered me I shall be able to put my
questions without fear of offence."
"Will you, indeed?" said Eve. "I should think that would rather depend
upon what the answer may be."
"Whatever it may be, I'm waiting for it," said Adam grimly.
"Let me see: I must consider what it was I was asked," said Eve. "First,
if--"
"Oh, don't trouble about the first: I shall be satisfied of that if you
answer the second and tell me you will accept me as a husband."
"Say keeper."
"Keeper, if that pleases you better."
"Thank you very much, but I don't feel quite equal to the honor. I'm not
so tired yet of doing what pleases myself that I need submit my
thoughts and looks and actions to another person."
"Then you refuse to be my wife?"
"Yes, I do."
"And you cannot return the love I offer you?"
Eve was silent.
"Do you hear?" he said.
"Yes, I hear."
"Then answer: have I got your love, or haven't I?"
"Whatever love you might have had," she broke out passionately, "you've
taken care to kill."
"Kill!" he repeated. "It must have been precious delicate if it couldn't
stand the answering of one question. Look here, Eve. When I told you I
had given you my heart and every grain of love in it, I only spoke the
truth; but unless you can give me yours as whole and as entire as I have
given mine, 'fore God I'd rather jump off yonder rock than face the
misery that would come upon us both. I know what 'tis to see another
take what should be yours--to see another given what you are craving
for. The torture of that past is dead and gone, but the devil it bred in
me lives still, and woe betide the man or woman who rouses it!"
Instinctively Eve shrank back: the look of pent-up passion frightened
her and made her whole body shiver.
"There! there! don't alarm yourself," said Adam, passing his hand over
his forehead as if to brush away the traces which this outburst had
occasioned: "I don't want to frighten you. All I want to know is, can
you give me the love I ask of you?"
"I couldn't bear to be suspected," faltered Eve.
"Then act so that you would be above suspicion."
"With a person always on the watch, looking out for this and that, so
that one would be afraid to speak or open one's mouth, I don't see how
one could possibly be happy," said Eve. "All one did, all one said,
might be taken wrongly, and when one were most innocent one might be
thought most guilty. No: I don't think I could stand that, Adam."
"Very well," he said coldly. "If you feel your love is too weak to bear
that, and a great deal more than that, you are very wise to withhold it
from me: those who have much to give require much in return."
"Oh, don't think I haven't that in me which would make my love equal
yours any day," said Eve, nettled at the doubt which Adam had flung at
her. "If I gave any one my heart, I should give it all; but when I do
that I hope it will be to somebody who won't doubt me and suspect me."
"Then I'd advise you not to give them cause to," said Adam.
"And I'd advise you to keep your cautions for those that need them,"
replied Eve, rising from where she had been sitting and turning her face
in the direction of home.
"Oh, you needn't fear being troubled by any more I shall say," said
Adam: "I'm only sorry that I've been led to say what I have."
"Pray don't let that trouble you: such things, with me, go in at one ear
and out at the other."
"In that case I won't waste any more words," said Adam; "so if you can
keep your tongue still you needn't fear being obliged to listen to
anything I shall say."
Eve gave a little scornful inclination of her head in token of the
accepted silence between them, and in silence the two commenced their
walk and took their way toward home.
CHAPTER XX.
Except the long surging roll of the waves, as in monotonous succession
they dashed and broke against the rocks, not a sound was to be heard.
The night had grown more lowering: the sprinkle of stars was hid behind
the dense masses of cloud, through which, ever and anon, the moon, with
shadowy face, broke out and feebly cast down a glimmering light. Below,
the outspread stretch of water lay dark and motionless, its glassy
surface cold and glittering like steel. Walking a little in the rear of
Adam, Eve shuddered as her eyes fell on the depths, over whose brink
the narrow path they trod seemed hanging. Instinctively she shrank
closer to the cliff-side, to be caught by the long trails of bramble
which, with bracken and gorse, made the steep descent a bristly wall.
Insensibly affected by external surroundings, unused to such complete
darkness, the sombre aspect of the scene filled her with nervous
apprehension: every bit of jutting rock she stumbled against was a
yawning precipice, and at each step she took she died some different
death. The terrors of her mind entirely absorbed all her former
indifference and ill-humor, and she would have gladly welcomed any
accident which would have afforded her a decent pretext for breaking
this horrible silence. But nothing occurred, and they reached the open
piece of green and were close on the crumbling ruins of St. Peter's
chapel without a word having passed between them. The moon struggled out
with greater effort, and, to Eve's relief, showed that the zigzag
dangers of the path were past, and there was now nothing worse to fear
than what might happen on any uneven grassy slope. Moreover, the buzz of
voices was near, and, though they could not see the persons speaking,
Eve knew by the sound that they could not be very far distant. Having
before him the peculiar want of reticence generally displayed by the
Polperro folk, Adam would have given much to have been in a position to
ask Eve to remount the hill and get down by the other side; but under
present circumstances he felt it impossible to make any suggestion:
things must take their course. And without a word of warning he and Eve
gained the summit of the raised elevation which formed a sheltered
background to this favorite loitering-place, at once to find themselves
the centre of observation to a group of men whose noisy discussion they
had apparently interrupted.
"Why, 'tis my son Adam, ain't it?" exclaimed the voice of Uncle Zebedee;
and at the sound of a little mingled hoarseness and thickness Adam's
heart sank within him.--"And who's this he's a got with un, eh?"
"Tis me, Uncle Zebedee," said Eve, stepping down on to the flat and
advancing toward where the old man stood lounging--"Eve, you know."
"Awh, Eve, is it?" exclaimed Zebedee. "Why, how long's t'wind veered
round to your quarter, my maid? Be you two sweetheartin' then, eh?"
"I've been all day up to Aunt Hepzibah's," said Eve quickly, endeavoring
to cover her confusion, "and Adam came to fetch me back: that's how it
is we're together."
"Wa-al, but he needn't ha' fetched 'ee 'less he'd got a mind for yer
company, I s'pose," returned Zebedee with a meaning laugh. "Come, come
now: 't 'ull niver do for 'ee to try to cabobble Uncle Zibedee. So you
and Adam's courtyin', be 'ee? Wa-al, there's nuffin' to be said agen
that, I s'pose?" and he looked round as if inviting concurrence or
contradiction.--"Her's my poor brother Andrer's little maid, ye knaw,
shipmates"--and here he made a futile attempt to present Eve to the
assembled company--"what's dead--and drownded--and gone to Davy's
locker; so, notwithstandin' I'd lashins sooner 'twas our Joan he'd ha'
fix'd on--Lord ha' massy!" he added parenthetically, "Joan's worth a
horsgead o' she--still, what's wan man's mate's another man's pison;
and, howsomedever that lies, I reckon it needn't go for to hinder me
fra' drinkin' their healths in a drap o' good liquor. So come along, my
hearties;" and, making a movement which sent him forward with a lurch,
he began muttering something about his sea-legs, the effect of which was
drowned in the shout evincing the ready satisfaction with which this
proposal for friendly conviviality was hailed.
Eve drew in her breath, trying to gather up courage and combat down the
horrible suspicion that Uncle Zebedee was not quite himself, didn't
exactly know what he was saying, had taken too much to drink. With
congratulatory intent she found herself jostled against by two or three
others near her, whose noisy glee and uncertain gait only increased her
fears. What should she do? Where could she go? What had become of Adam?
Surely he would not go and leave her amongst--
But already her question was answered by a movement from some one
behind, who with a dexterous interposition succeeded in placing himself
between Uncle Zebedee and herself.
"Father," and Adam's voice sounded more harsh and stern than usual,
"leave Eve to go home as she likes: she's not used to these sort o'
ways, and she will not take things as you mean them."
"Eh! what? How not mane 'em?" exclaimed old Zebedee, taken aback by his
son's sudden appearance. "I arn't a said no harm that I knaws by:
there's no 'fence in givin' the maid a wet welcome, I s'pose."
A buzz of dissatisfaction at Adam's interference inspired Zebedee with
renewed confidence, and with two or three sways in order to get the
right balance he managed to bring himself to a standstill right in front
of Adam, into whose face he looked with a comical expression of defiance
and humor as he said, "Why, come 'long with us, lad, do 'ee, and name
the liquor yerself, and see it passes round free and turn and turn
about: and let's hab a song or two, and get up Rozzy Treloar wi' his
fiddle, and Zeke Orgall there 'ull dance us a hornpipe;" and he began a
double-shuffle with his feet, adding, as his dexterity came to a sudden
and somewhat unsteady finish, "Tis a ill wind that blows nobody no good,
and a poor heart what never rejices."
Eve during this time had been vainly endeavoring to make her escape--an
impossibility, as Adam saw, under existing circumstances; and this
decided him to use no further argument; but, with his arm put through
his father's and in company with the rest of the group, he apparently
conceded to their wishes, and, motioning Eve on, the party proceeded
along the path, down the steps and toward the quay, until they came in
front of the Three Pilchards, now the centre of life and jollity, with
the sound of voices and the preparatory scraping of a fiddle to enhance
the promise of comfort which glowed in the ruddy reflection sent by the
bright lights and cheerful fire through the red window-curtain.
"Now, father," exclaimed Adam with a resolute grip of the old man's arm,
"you and me are homeward bound. We'll welcome our neighbors some other
time, but for this evening let's say good-night to them."
"Good-night?" repeated Zebedee: "how good-night? Why, what 'ud be the
manin' o' that? None o' us ain't agoin' to part company here, I hopes.
We'm all goin' to cast anchor to the same moorin's--eh, mates?"
"No, no, no!" said Adam, impatiently: "you come along home with me now."
"Iss, iss, all right!" laughed the old man, trying to wriggle out of his
son's grasp; "only not just yet a whiles. I'm agoin' in here to drink
your good health, Adam lad, and all here's a-comin' with me--ain't us,
hearties?"
"Pack of stuff! Drink my health?" exclaimed Adam. "There's no more
reason for drinking my health to-night than any other night. Come along
now, father: you've had a hard day of it, you know, and when you get
home you can have whatever you want quietly by your own fireside."
But Zebedee, though perfectly good-humored, was by no means to be
persuaded: he continued to laugh and writhe about as if the fact of his
detention was merely a good joke on Adam's part, the lookers-on abetting
and applauding his determination, until Adam's temper could restrain
itself no longer, and with no very pleasant explosion of wrath he let go
his hold and intimated that his father was free to take what course
pleased him most.
"That's right, lad!" exclaimed old Zebedee heartily, shaking himself
together. "You'm a good son and a capital sailor-man, but you'm pore
company, Adam--verra pore company."
And with this truism (to which a general shout gave universal assent)
ringing in his ears, Adam strode away up the street with all possible
speed, and was standing in front of the house-door when he was suddenly
struck by the thought of what had become of Eve. Since they had halted
in front of the Three Pilchards he had seen nothing of her: she had
disappeared, and in all probability had made her way home.
The thought of having to confront her caused him to hesitate: should he
go in? What else could he do? where had he to go? So, with a sort of
desperation, he pushed open the door and found himself within the
sitting-room. It was empty; the fire had burnt low, the wick of the
unsnuffed candle had grown long; evidently Eve had not returned; and
with an undefined mixture of regret and relief Adam sat down, leaned his
arms on the table and laid his head upon them.
During the whole day the various excitements he had undergone had so
kept his mind on the stretch that its powers of keen susceptibility
seemed now thoroughly exhausted, and in place of the acute pain he had
previously suffered there had come a dull, heavy weight of despair,
before which his usual force and determination seemed vanquished and
powerless. The feeling uppermost was a sense of the injustice inflicted
on him--that he, who in practice and principle was so far removed above
his neighbors, should be made to suffer for their follies and misdeeds,
should have to bear the degradation of their vices. As to any hope of
reclaiming them, he had long ago given that up, though not without a
certain disappointment in the omniscience of that Providence which could
refuse the co-operation of his valuable agency.
Adam suffered from that strong belief in himself which is apt, when
carried to excess, to throw a shadow on the highest qualities.
Outstepping the Pharisee, who thanked God that he was not like other
men, Adam thanked himself, and fed his vanity by the assurance that had
the Polperro folk followed his lead and his advice they would now be
walking in his footsteps; instead of which they had despised him as a
leader and rejected him as a counsellor, so that, exasperated by their
ignorance and stung by their ingratitude, he had cast them off and
abandoned them for ever; and out of this disappointment had arisen a dim
shadow of some far-off future wherein he caught glimpses of a new life
filled with fresh hopes and successful endeavors.
From the moment his heart had opened toward Eve her image seemed to be
associated with these hitherto undefined longings: by the light of her
love, of her presence, her companionship, all that had been vague seemed
to take shape and grow into an object which was real and a purpose to be
accomplished; so that now one of the sharpest pricks from the thorn of
disappointment came of the knowledge that this hope was shattered and
this dream must be abandoned. And, lost in moody retrospection, Adam sat
stabbing desire with the sword of despair.
"Let me be! let me be!" he said in answer to some one who was trying to
rouse him.
"Adam, it's me: do look up;" and in spite of himself the voice which
spoke made him lift his head and look at the speaker. "Adam, I'm so
sorry!" and Eve's face said more than her words.
"You've nothing to be sorry for," returned Adam sullenly.
"I want you to forgive me, Adam," continued Eve.
"I've nothing to forgive."
"Yes, you have;" and a faint flush of color came into her cheeks as she
added with hesitating confusion, "You know I didn't mean you to take
what I said as you did, Adam; because"--and the color suddenly deepened
and spread over her face--"because I do care for you--very much indeed."
Adam gave a despondent shake of his head. "No, you don't," he said,
steadily averting his eyes; "and a very good thing too. I don't know who
that wasn't forced to it would willingly have anything to do with such a
God-forsaken place as this is. I only know I'm sick of it, and of myself
and my life, and everything in it."
"Oh, Adam, don't say that--don't say you're sick of life. At least, not
now;" and she turned her face so that he might read the reason.
"And why not now?" he asked stolidly. "What have I now that I hadn't
before?"
"Why, you've got me."
"You? You said you couldn't give me the love I asked you for."
"Oh, but I didn't mean it. What I said was because I felt so hurt that
you should suspect me as you seemed to."
"I never suspected you--never meant to suspect you. All I wanted you to
know was that I must be all or nothing."
"Of course; and I meant that too, only you--But there! don't let's drift
back to that again;" and as she spoke she leaned her two hands upon his
shoulders and stood looking down. "What I want to say is, that every bit
of love I have is yours, Adam. I am afraid," she added shyly, "you had
got it all before ever I knew whether you really wanted it or not."
"And why couldn't you tell me that before?" he said bitterly.
"Why, is it too late now?" asked Eve humbly.
"Too late? You know it can't be too late," exclaimed Adam, his old
irritability getting the better of him: then, with a sudden revulsion of
his overwrought susceptibilities, he cried, "Oh, Eve, Eve, bear with me
to-night: I'm not what I want to be. The words I try to speak die away
upon my lips, and my heart seems sunk down so low that nothing can
rejoice it. To-morrow I shall be master of myself again, and all will
look different."
"I hope so," sighed Eve tremulously. "Things don't seem quite between us
as they ought to be. I sha'n't wait for Joan," she said, holding out her
hand: "I shall go up stairs now; so good-night, Adam."
"Good-night," he said: then, keeping hold of her hand, he drew her
toward him and stood looking down at her with a face haggard and full of
sadness.
The look acted as the last straw which was to swamp the burden of Eve's
grief. Control was in vain, and in another instant, with Adam's arms
around her, she lay sobbing out her sorrow on his breast, and the tears,
as they came, thrust the evil spirit away. So that when, an hour later,
the two said good-night again, their vows had been exchanged and the
troth that bound them plighted; and Adam, looking into Eve's face,
smiled as he said, "Whether for good luck or bad, the sun of our love
has risen in a watery sky."
CHAPTER XXI.
Most of the actions and events of our lives are chameleon-hued: their
colors vary according to the light by which we view them. Thus Eve, who
the night before had seen nothing but happiness in the final arrangement
between Adam and herself, awoke on the following morning with a feeling
of dissatisfaction and a desire to be critical as to the rosy hues which
seemed then to color the advent of their love.
The spring of tenderness which had burst forth within her at sight of
Adam's humility and subsequent despair had taken Eve by surprise. She
knew, and had known for some time, that much within her was capable of
answering to the demands which Adam's pleading love would most probably
require; but that he had inspired her with a passion which would make
her lay her heart at his feet, feeling for the time that, though he
trampled on it, there it must stay, was a revelation entirely new, and,
to Eve's temperament, rather humiliating. She had never felt any
sympathy with those lovesick maidens whose very existence seemed
swallowed up in another's being, and had been proudly confident that
even when supplicated she should never seem to stoop lower than to
accept. Therefore, just as we experience a sense of failure when we find
our discernment led astray in our perception of a friend, so now,
although she studiously avoided acknowledging it, she had the
consciousness that she had utterly misconceived her own character, and
that the balance by which she had adjusted the strength of her emotions
had been a false one. A dread ran through her lest she should be seized
hold upon by some further inconsistency, and she resolved to set a watch
on the outposts of her senses, so that they might not betray her into
further weakness.
These thoughts were still agitating her mind when Joan suddenly awoke,
and after a time roused herself sufficiently to say, "Why, whatever made
you pop off in such a hurry last night, Eve? I runned in a little after
ten, and there wasn't no signs of you nowheres; and then I come upon
Adam, and he told me you was gone up to bed."
"Yes," said Eve: "I was so tired, and my foot began to ache again, so I
thought there wasn't any use in my sitting up any longer. But you were
very late, Joan, weren't you?"
"Very early, more like," said Joan: "'twas past wan before I shut my
eyes. Why, I come home three times to see if uncle was back; and then I
wouldn't stand it no longer, so I went and fetched un."
"What, not from--where he was?" exclaimed Eve.
Joan nodded her head. "Oh Lors!" she said, "'tain't the fust time by
many; and," she added in a tone of satisfaction, "I lets 'em know when
they've brought Joan Hocken down among 'em. I had Jerrem out, and uncle
atop of un, 'fore they knawed where they was. Awh, I don't stand beggin'
and prayin', not I: 'tis 'whether or no, Tom Collins,' when I come, I
can tell 'ee."
"Well, they'd stay a very long time before they'd be fetched by me,"
said Eve emphatically.
"Awh, don't 'ee say that, now," returned Joan. "Where do 'ee think
there'd be the most harm in, then--sittin' comfortable at home when you
might go down and 'tice 'em away, or the goin' down and doin' of it?"
"I've not a bit of patience with anybody who drinks," exclaimed Eve,
evading a direct answer.
"Then you'll never cure anybody of it, my dear," replied Joan. "You'm
like Adam there, I reckon--wantin' to set the world straight in one day,
and all the folks in it bottommost side upward; but, as I tell un, he
don't go to work the right way. They that can't steer 'ull never sail;
and I'll bet any money that when it comes to be counted up how many
glasses o' grog's been turned away from uncle's lips, there'll be more
set to the score o' my coaxin' than ever 'ull be to Adam's
bullyraggin'."
"Perhaps so," said Eve; and then, wishing to avoid any argument into
which Adam could be brought, she adroitly changed the subject, and only
indifferent topics were discussed until, their dressing completed, the
two girls were ready to go down stairs.
The first person who answered the summons to breakfast was Uncle
Zebedee--not heavy-eyed and shamefaced, as Eve had expected to see him,
but bright and rosy-cheeked as an apple. He had been up and out since
six o'clock, looking after the repairs which a boat of his was laid up
to undergo, and now, as he came into the house fresh as a lark, he
chirruped in a quavery treble,
"Tom Truelove woo'd the sweetest fair
That e'er to tar was kind:
Her face was of a booty rare--
That's for all the world what yourn is," he said, breaking off to bestow
a smacking kiss on Joan. "So look sharp, like a good little maid as you
be, and gi'e us sommat to sit down for;" and he drew a chair to the
table and began flourishing the knife which had been set there for him.
Then, catching sight of Eve, whose face, in her desire to spare him,
betrayed an irrepressible look of consciousness, he exclaimed, "Why,
they've bin tellin' up that I was a little over-free in my speech last
night about you, Eve: is there any truth in it, eh? I doan't fancy I
could ha' said much amiss--did I?"
"Oh, nothing to signify, uncle."
"'Twas sommat 'bout you and Adam, warn't it?" he continued with a
puzzled air: "'tis all in my head here, though I can't zackly call it to
mind. That's the divil o' bein' a little o'ertook that ways," he added
with the assurance of meeting ready sympathy: "'tis so bafflin' to set
things all ship-shape the next mornin'. I minds so far as this, that it
had somehow to do with me holdin' to it that you and Adam was goin' to
be man and wife; but if you axes for the why and the wherefore, I'm
blessed if I can tell 'ee."
"Why, whatever put such as that into your head?" said Joan sharply.
"Wa-al, the liquor, I reckon," laughed Zebedee. "And, somehow or
'nother, Maister Adam didn't seem to have overmuch relish for the
notion;" and he screwed up his face and hugged himself together as if
his whole body was tickled at his son's discomfiture. "But there! never
you mind that, Eve," he added hastily: "there's more baws than one to
Polperro, and I'll wager for a halfscore o' chaps ready to hab 'ee
without yer waitin' to be took up by my son Adam."
Poor Eve! it was certainly an embarrassing situation to be placed in,
for, with no wish to conceal her engagement, to announce it herself
alone, and unaided by even the presence of Adam, was a task she
naturally shrank from. In the endeavor to avoid any direct reply she sat
watching anxiously for Adam's arrival, her sudden change of manner
construed by Zebedee into the effect of wounded vanity, and by Joan into
displeasure at her uncle's undue interference. By sundry frowns and nods
of warning Joan tried to convey her admonitions to old Zebedee, in the
midst of which Adam entered, and with a smile at Eve and an inclusive
nod to the rest of the party took a chair and drew up to the table.
"Surely," thought Eve, "he intends telling them."
But Adam sat silent and occupied with the plate before him.
"He can't think I can go living on here with Joan, even for a single
day, and they not know it;" and in her perplexity she turned on Adam a
look full of inquiry and meaning.
Still, Adam did not speak: in his own mind he was casting over the
things he meant to say when, breakfast over and the two girls out of the
way, he would invite his father to smoke a pipe outside, during the
companionship of which he intended taking old Zebedee decidedly to task,
and, putting his intended marriage with Eve well to the front, clinch
his arguments by the startling announcement that unless some reformation
was soon made he would leave his native place and seek a home in a
foreign land. Such words and such threats as these could not be uttered
to a father by a son save when they two stood quite alone; and Adam,
after meeting a second look from Eve, shook his head, feeling satisfied
that she would know that only some grave requirement deterred him from
immediately announcing the happiness which henceforth was to crown his
life. But our intuition, at the best, is somewhat narrow, and where the
heart is most concerned most faulty: therefore Eve, and Adam too, felt
each disappointed in the other's want of acquiescence, and inclined to
be critical on the lack of mutual sympathy.
Suddenly the door opened and in walked Jerrem, smiling and apparently
more radiant than usual under the knowledge that he was more than
usually an offender. Joan, who had her own reasons for being very
considerably put out with him, was not disposed to receive him very
graciously; Adam vouchsafed him no notice whatever; Uncle Zebedee,
oppressed by the sense of former good fellowship, thought it discreet
not to evince too much cordiality; so that the onus of the morning's
welcome was thrown upon Eve, who, utterly ignorant of any offence Jerrem
had given, thought it advisable to make amends for the pettish
impatience she feared she had been betrayed into on the previous
morning.
Old Zebedee, whose resolves seldom lasted over ten minutes, soon fell
into the swing of Jerrem's flow of talk; a little later on and Joan was
forced to put in a word; so that the usual harmony was just beginning to
recover itself when, in answer to a remark which Jerrem had made, Eve
managed to turn the laugh so cleverly back upon him that Zebedee, well
pleased to see what good friends they were growing, exclaimed, "Stop her
mouth! stop her mouth, lad! I'd ha' done it when I was your years twenty
times over 'fore this. Her's too sarcy--too sarcy by half, her is."
Up started Jerrem, but Adam was before him. "I don't know whether what
I'm going to say is known to anybody here already," he burst out, "but I
think it's high time that some present should be told by me that Eve has
promised to be my wife;" and, turning, he cast a look of angry defiance
at Jerrem, who, thoroughly amazed, gradually sank down and took
possession of his chair again, while old Zebedee went through the dumb
show of giving a long whistle, and Joan, muttering an unmeaning
something, ran hastily out of the room. Eve, angry and confused, turned
from white to red and from red to white.
A silence ensued--one of those pauses when some event of our lives seems
turned into a gulf to separate us from our former surroundings.
Adam was the first to speak, and with a touch of irony he said, "You're
none of you very nimble at wishing us joy, I fancy."
"And no wonder, you've a-tooked us all aback so," said old Zebedee. "'T
seems to me I'm foaced to turn it round and round afore I can swaller it
for rale right-down truth."
"Why, is it so very improbable, then?" asked Adam, already repenting the
abruptness of the disclosure.
"Wa-al, 'twas no later than last night that you was swearin' agen and
cussin' everybody from stem to starn for so much as mentionin' it as
likely. Now," he added, with as much show of displeasure as his cheery,
weatherbeaten old face would admit of, "I'll tell 'ee the mind I've got
to'ard these sort o' games: if you see fit to board folks in the smoke,
why do it and no blame to 'ee, but hang me if I can stomach 'ee sailin'
under false colors."
"There wasn't anything of false colors about us, father," said Adam in a
more conciliatory tone; "for, though I had certainly spoken to Eve, it
was not until after I'd parted with you last night that she gave me her
answer."
"Awh!" said the old man, only half propitiated. "Wa-al, I s'pose you can
settle your consarns without my help; but I can tell 'ee this much, that
if my Joanna had took so long afore she could make her mind up, I'm
blamed if her ever should ha' had the chance o' bein' your mother,
Adam--so there!"
Adam bit his lip with vexation. "There's no need for me to enter upon
any further explanations," he said: "Eve's satisfied, I'm satisfied, so
I don't see why you shouldn't be satisfied."
"Awh, I'm satisfied enough," said Zebedee; "and, so far as that goes,
though I ain't much of a hand at speechifyin', I hopes that neither of
'ee 'ull never have no raison to repent yer bargain. Eve's a fine
bowerly maid, so you'm well matched there; and so long as she's ready to
listen to all you say and bide by all you tells her, why 'twill be set
fair and sail easy."
"I can assure you Eve isn't prepared to do anything of the sort, Uncle
Zebedee," exclaimed Eve, unable to keep silence any longer. "I've always
been told if I'd nothing else I've got the Pascals' temper; and that,
according to your own showing, isn't very fond of sitting quiet and
being rode over rough-shod."
The whistle which Uncle Zebedee had tried to choke at its birth now came
out shrill, long and expressive, and Adam, jumping up, said, "Come,
come, Eve: we've had enough of this. Surely there isn't any need to take
such idle talk as serious matter. If you and me hadn't seen some good in
one another we shouldn't have taken each other, I suppose; and, thank
the Lord, we haven't to please anybody but our two selves."
"Wa-al, 'tis to be hoped you'll find that task aisier than it looks,"
retorted Uncle Zebedee with a touch of sarcasm; while Jerrem, after
watching Adam go out, endeavored to throw a tone of regret into the
flattering nothings he now whispered by way of congratulation, but Eve
turned impatiently away from him. She had no further inclination to talk
or to be talked to; and Uncle Zebedee having by this time sought solace
in a pipe, Jerrem joined him outside, and the two sauntered away
together toward the quay.
Left to the undisturbed indulgence of her own reflections, Eve's mood
was no enviable one--the more difficult to bear because she had to
control the various emotions struggling within her. She felt it was time
for plain speaking between her and Adam, and rightly judged that a
proper understanding come to at once would be the safest means of
securing future comfort. Turn and twist Adam's abrupt announcement as
she would, she could assign but one cause for it, and that cause was an
overweening jealousy; and as the prospect came before her of a lifetime
spent in the midst of doubt and suspicion, the strength of her love
seemed to die away and her heart grew faint within her. For surely if
the demon of jealousy could be roused by the sight of commonplace
attentions from one who was in every way like a brother--for so in Eve's
eyes Jerrem seemed to be--what might not be expected if at any time
circumstances threw her into the mixed company of strangers? Eve had
seen very little of men, but whenever chance had afforded her the
opportunity of their society she had invariably met with attention, and
had felt inwardly gratified by the knowledge that she was attracting
admiration; but now, if she gave way to this prejudice of Adam's, every
time an eye was turned toward her she would be filled with fear, and
each time a look was cast in her direction her heart would sink with
dread.
What should she do? Give him up? Even with the prospect of possible
misery staring at her, Eve could not say yes, and before the thought had
more than shaped itself a dozen suggestions were battling down the dread
alternative. She would change him, influence him, convert him--anything
but give him up or give in to him. She forgot how much easier it is to
conceive plans than to carry them out--to arrange speeches than to utter
them. She forgot that only the evening before, when, an opportunity
being afforded, she had resolved upon telling Adam the whole
circumstance of Reuben May and the promise made between them, while the
words were yet on her lips she had drawn them back because Adam had said
he knew that the promise was "nothing but the promise of a letter;" and
Eve's courage had suddenly given way, and by her silence she had led him
to conclude that nothing else had passed between them. Joan had spoken
of the envious grudge which Adam had borne toward Jerrem because he had
shared in his mother's heart, so that this was not the first time Adam
had dropped in gall to mingle with the cup of his love.
The thought of Joan brought the fact of her unexplained disappearance to
Eve's mind, and, full of compunction at the bare suspicion of having
wounded that generous heart, Eve jumped up with the intention of seeking
her and of bringing about a satisfactory explanation. She had not far to
go before she came upon Joan, rubbing and scrubbing away as if the
welfare of all Polperro depended on the amount of energy she could throw
into her work. Her face was flushed and her voice unsteady, the natural
consequences of such violent exercise, and which Eve's approach but
seemed to lend greater force to.
"Joan, I want to speak to you."
"Awh, my dear, I can't listen to no spakin' now," replied Joan hastily,
"and the tables looking as they do."
"But Tabithy always scrubs the tables, Joan: why should you do it?"
"Tabithy's arms ain't half so young as mine--worse luck for me or for
she!"
Having by this time gained a little insight into Joan's peculiarities,
Eve argued no further, but sat herself down on a convenient seat,
waiting for the time when the rasping sound of the brush would come to
an end. Her patience was put to no very great tax, for after a few
minutes Joan flung the brush along the table, exclaiming, "Awh, drabbit
the ole scrubbin'! I must give over. I b'lieve I've had enuf of it for
this time, 't all events."
"Joan, you ain't hurt with me, are you?" said Eve, trying to push her
into the seat from which she had just risen. "I wanted to be the first
to tell you, only that Adam spoke as he did, and took all I was going to
say out of my mouth. It leaves you to think me dreadfully sly."
"Awh, there wasn't much need for tellin' me," said Joan with a sudden
relax of manner. "When I didn't shut my eyes o' purpose I could tell,
from the first, what was certain to happen."
"It was more than I could, then," said Eve. "I hadn't given it a thought
that Adam meant to speak to me, and when he asked me I was quite taken
aback, and said 'No' for ever so long."
"What made 'ee change yer mind so suddent, then?" said Joan bluntly.
Eve hesitated. "I hardly know," she said, with a little confusion. "I
think it was seeing him so cast down made me feel so dreadfully sorry."
"H'm!" said Joan. "Didn't 'ee never feel no sorrow for t'other poor chap
that wanted to have 'ee--he to London, Reuben May?"
"Not enough to make me care in that way for him: I certainly never did."
"And do you care for Adam, then?"
"I think I do."
"Think?"
"Well, I am sure I do."
"That's better. Well, Eve, I'll say this far;" and Joan gave a sigh
before the other words would come out: "I'd rather it should be you than
anybody else I ever saw."
The struggle with which these words were said, their tone and the look
in Joan's face, seemed to reveal a state of feeling which Eve had not
suspected. Throwing her arms round her, she cried out, "Oh, Joan, why
didn't he choose you? You would have been much better for him than me."
"Lord bless the maid!"--and Joan tried to laugh through her tears--"I
wouldn't ha' had un if he'd axed me. Why, there'd ha' bin murder 'tween
us 'fore a month was out: us 'ud ha' bin hung for one 'nother. No: now
don't 'ee take no such stuff as that into yer head, 'cos there's no
sense in it. Adam's never looked 'pon me not more than a sister;" and,
breaking down, Joan sobbed hysterically; "and when you two's married I
shall feel 'zackly as if he was a brother, and be gladder than e'er a
one else to see how happy you makes un."
"That's if I _do_ make him happy," said Eve sadly.
"There's no fear but you'll do that," said Joan, resolutely wiping the
tears from her eyes; "and 'twill be your own fault if you bain't happy
too yourself, Eve. Adam's got his fads to put up with, and his fancies
same as other men have, and a masterful temper to keep under, as nobody
can tell better than me; but for rale right-down goodness I shouldn't
know where to match his fellow--not if I was to search the place
through; and, mind 'ee, after all, that's something to be proud of in
the man you've got to say maister to."
Eve gave a little smile: "But he must let me be mistress, you know,
Joan."
"All right! only don't you stretch that too far," said Joan warningly,
"or no good 'ull come of it; and be foreright in all you do, and spake
the truth to un. I've many a time wished I could, but with this to hide
o' that one's and that to hush up o' t'other's, I know he holds me for a
downright liard; and so I am by his measure, I 'spects."
"I'm sure you're nothing of the sort, Joan," said Eve. "Adam's always
saying how much people think of you. He told me only yesterday that he
was certain more than half the men of the place had asked you to marry
them."
"Did he?" said Joan, not wholly displeased that Adam should hold this
opinion. "Awh, and ax they may, I reckon, afore I shall find a man to
say 'Yes' to."
"That is what I used to think myself," said Eve.
"Iss, and so you found it till Roger put the question," replied Joan
decisively. Then, after a minute's pause, she added, "What be 'ee goin'
to do 'bout the poor sawl to London, then--eh? You must tell he
somehow."
"Oh, I don't see that," said Eve. "I mean to write to him, because I
promised I would; and I shall tell him that I've made up my mind not to
go back, but I sha'n't say anything more. There isn't any need for it,
that I see--at least, not yet a while."
"Best to tell un all," argued Joan. "Why shouldn't 'ee? 'Tis the same,
so far as you'm concerned, whether he's killed to wance or dies by
inches."
But Eve was not to be persuaded. "There isn't any reason why I should,"
she said.
"No reason?" replied Joan. "Oh, Eve, my dear," she added, "don't 'ee let
happiness harden your heart: if love is sweet to gain, think how bitter
'tis to lose; and, by all you've told me, you'll forfeit a better man
than most in Reuben May."
_The Author of "Dorothy Fox._"
[TO BE CONTINUED.]
ON THE SKUNK RIVER.
The Lady of Shalott, looking into the mirror which reflected the highway
"a bowshot from her bower-eaves," saw the villagers passing to their
daily labor in the barley-fields; market-girls in red cloaks and damsels
of high degree; curly shepherd-boys and long-haired pages in gay livery;
an abbot on an ambling pad and knights in armor and nodding plumes; and
her constant pastime was to weave these sights into the magic web on
which she wrought. I undertake, in a modest way, to follow her example,
and weave a series of pictures from the sights that daily meet my eyes.
The highway which runs a bowshot from _my_ bower-eaves is a
much-travelled road, leading from the farms of a prairie country into a
prairie town. It is a stripe of black earth fifteen or twenty feet wide,
the natural color of the soil, ungraded, ungravelled, and just now half
a foot deep in mud from the melting February snows. Looking in the
direction from which it comes, a mile or two of rolling prairie-land is
visible, divided into farms of one hundred, one hundred and forty or one
hundred and sixty acres. Just now it is faded yellow in hue, with
patches of snow in the hollows, and bare of trees, stumps or fences,
except the almost invisible wire-fences which separate the fields from
the road and from each other. Here and there, at wide intervals, a few
farm-houses can be seen, sheltered on the north and west by a
thickly-set row of cottonwood or Lombardy poplar trees, which serve in a
great measure to break the sweep of the pitiless Iowa winds. Most of the
houses are large and comfortable, and are surrounded by barns, haystacks
and young orchards, denoting a long residence and prosperity; but two or
three, far off on the horizon, are small wooden structures, set on the
bare prairie, without a tree or outbuilding near them, and looking bleak
and lonely. To one who knows something of the straitened lives, the
struggles with poverty, that go on in them, they seem doubly pitiful and
desolate.
The town into which the highway leads lies straight before my window,
flat, unpicturesque, uninteresting, marked by the untidiness of
crudeness and the untidiness of neglect. The ungraded streets are
trodden into a sticky pudding by horses' feet, the board sidewalks are
narrow, uneven and broken, and the crossings are deep in mud. In the
eastern part of the town the dwellings are large, comfortable, even
elegant, with well-kept grounds filled with trees and shrubbery, and
there are a few of the same character scattered here and there
throughout the town; but the large majority of houses, those that give
the place its discouraged, unambitious look, are small wooden dwellings,
a story or a story and a half high, with the end facing the street and a
shed-kitchen behind. Those that are painted are white or brown, but many
are unpainted, have no window-shutters and are surrounded by untidy
yards and fences that need repair.
The centre of the town, both in position and importance, is "The
Square." This is an open space planted thickly with trees, which have
now grown to a large size and cast a refreshing shade over the crowd
that gathers there in summer to hear political speeches or to celebrate
the Fourth of July. It is surrounded by hitching-racks, and on Saturdays
and other unusually busy days these racks, on all the four sides of the
Square, are so full of teams--generally two-horse farm-wagons--that
there is not room for another horse to be tied. Facing the Square
and extending a block or two down adjacent streets are the
business-houses--stores, banks, express-office, livery-stables,
post-office, gas-office, the hotels, the opera-house, newspaper and
lawyers' offices. Many of the buildings are of brick, three stories
high, faced or trimmed with stone, but the general effect is marred by
the contiguity of little wooden shanties used as barber-shops and
meat-markets.
Except in the north-east, where the land is rolling and densely wooded,
the horizon-line is flat and on a level with our feet. The sun rises
from the prairie as he rises from the ocean, and his going down is the
same: no far-off line of snowy mountains, no range of green hills nor
forest-crest, intercepts his earliest and his latest rays. Over this
wide stretch of level land the wind sweeps with unobstructed violence,
and more than once in the memory of settlers it has increased to a
destructive tornado, carrying buildings, wagons, cattle and human beings
like chaff before it. Just now, a sky of heavenly beauty and color bends
over it, and through the wide spaces blow delicious airs suggestive of
early spring.
Nearly every day, and often many times a day, farm-wagons drawn by two
horses pass along the highway in front of my window. The wagon-bed is
filled with sacks of wheat or piled high with yellow corn, and on the
high spring-seat in front sits the farmer driving, and by him his wife,
her head invariably wrapped in a white woollen nubia or a little shawl,
worn as a protection against the catarrh-producing prairie winds.
Cuddled in the hay at their feet, but keeping a bright lookout with
round eager eyes, are two or three stout, rosy children, and often there
is a baby in the mother's arms. When "paw" has sold his wheat or corn
the whole family will walk around the Square several times, looking in
at the shop-windows and staring at the people on the sidewalk. When they
have decided in which store they can get the best bargains, they will go
in and buy groceries, calico and flannel, shoes for the children, and
perhaps a high chair for the baby. Later in the day they rattle by
again, the farmer sitting alone on the spring-seat, the wife and
children, as a better protection against the wind, on some hay in the
now empty wagon-bed behind. So they jolt homeward over the rough, frozen
road or toil through sticky mud, as the case may be, well pleased with
their purchases and their glimpse of town, and content to take up again
the round of monotonous life on their isolated prairie farm.
Sometimes on spring-like days, when the roads are good, two women or a
woman and one or two half-grown children drive by in a spring-wagon,
bringing chickens, eggs, and butter to market. Heavy wagons loaded with
large clear blocks of ice go by every day, the men walking and driving
or seated on a board seat at the extreme rear of the wagon. The great
crystal cubes look, as they flash in the sunshine, like
building-material for Aladdin's palace quarried from some mine of
jewels, but they are only brought from the Skunk River, three miles
distant, to the ice-houses in town, and there packed away in sawdust
for summer use. On two days of the week--shipping days for
live-stock--farm-wagons with a high railing round the beds go by, and
inside the railing, crowded as thickly as they can stand, are fat black
or black-and-white hogs, which thrust their short noses between the
boards and squeal to get out. They are unloaded at the cattle-pens near
the railroad, and thence shipped to pork-packers at Chicago.
And sometimes half a dozen Indians, the roving gypsies of the West,
dressed in warm and comfortable clothing and wrapped in red or blue
blankets, ride into town on good horses. They belong to the Sacs and
Foxes, a friendly, well-disposed remnant of people who live half a day's
ride to the north-east of this place. They are better off than the
average of white people, for every man, woman and child owns a quarter
section of land in the Indian Territory, and receives an annuity of
money besides. Immediately after pay-day they visit the neighboring
towns, their pockets full of silver dollars, and buy whatever necessity
or fancy dictates. The women are generally neat and comely in
appearance, and the pappooses that peer from the bags hung on either
side of the ponies are bright-eyed, round-faced youngsters, who never
cry and seldom cause any trouble. They seem to be born with a certain
amount of gravity, and a capacity for patient endurance that forbids
them to lift up their voices at every slight provocation after the
manner of white babies. The Indian ponies too are models of endurance.
The squaws tie their purchases in blankets and hang them across the
backs of their ponies, swing their pappooses to one side and perhaps a
joint of fresh meat to the other, then mount on top astride, dig the
pony's neck with their moccasined heels and start off at a trot.
Sometimes a large party of Indians, men, women and children, camp on
Skunk River and fish. In the spring they make a general hegira to a
wooded section two or three days' journey to the northward for the
purpose of tapping the maple trees and boiling down the syrup into
sugar. As before mentioned, they are friendly and inoffensive in their
dealings with the white people, but their patience must be sorely tried
sometimes. The town-boys hoot at them, throw stones at their ponies, and
try in many ways to annoy them. I remember once seeing them pass through
another town on their annual spring excursion to the sugar-camps. Two of
the pack-ponies had strayed behind the train, and a squaw rode back to
drive them ahead. A number of town-boys, thinking this an excellent
opportunity to have some fun, threw sticks at them and drove them off on
by-streets and up back alleys. The squaw tried patiently again and again
to get them together and join the train, but it was not until a brave
turned back and came to her assistance that she succeeded. Neither of
the Indians uttered a word or betrayed by sign or expression that they
noticed the insults of the boys.
Often, when the mud is too deep for teams, farmers go by on horseback,
with their horses' tails tied into a knot to keep them out of the mud.
They have come to town to learn the price of wheat, corn or hogs, to
bargain for some article of farm use, or perhaps to pay the interest on
their mortgages. Many of them have not yet paid entirely for their
farms, and comparatively few are free from debt in some form. Some,
being ambitious to have large farms, have taken more land than they can
profitably manage or pay for in a number of years, and are what is
called "land poor:" others, though content with modest portions of sixty
or a hundred acres, have not yet been able, by reason of poor crops,
their own mismanagement or some other cause, to clear their farms of
debt. They work along from year to year, supporting their families,
paying the interest, and paying off the principal little by little. When
the last payment is made and the mortgage released, then the owner can
hold the land in spite of all other creditors. His store-bills or other
debts may run up to hundreds of dollars, but his homestead cannot be
taken to satisfy them by any process of law. This is the homestead law
of the State. A single exception is made in favor of one creditor: the
mechanic who has erected the buildings can hold what is called a
mechanic's lien upon the property until his claim is satisfied.
Advantage is often taken of this law for the purpose of defrauding
creditors. In one instance a merchant who owned a good residence in a
city and a valuable store-property, sold or transferred his residence,
moved his family into the rooms above his store, and soon afterward
failed. His creditors tried to get possession of his store-property, and
entered suit, but the testimony proved that it was his dwelling also,
and therefore exempt under the homestead law. The amount of land that
can be held in this way is limited to forty acres.
Beginning life in a new country with small capital involves many years
of hard work and strict economy, perhaps privation and loneliness. This
comes especially hard on the farmers' wives, many of whom have grown up
in homes of comfort and plenty in the older States. Ask the men what
they think of Iowa, and they will say that it is a fine State; it has
many resources and advantages; there is room for development here; the
avenues to positions of profit and honor are not so crowded as they are
in the older States; a good class of emigrants are settling up the
State: that, on the whole, Iowa has a bright future before it. But the
women do not deal in such generalities. Their own home and individual
life is all the world to them, and if that is encompassed with toil and
hardship, if all their cherished longings and ambitions are denied and
their hearts sick with hope deferred, this talk about the undeveloped
resources of Iowa and its future greatness has no interest or meaning
for them. In their isolated homes on the bleak prairie they have few
social opportunities, and their straitened means do not allow them to
buy books or pictures, to take papers or magazines, or to indulge in
many of the little household ornaments dear to the feminine heart. What
wonder, then, if their eyes have a weary, questioning look, as if they
were always searching the flat prairie-horizon for some promise or hope
of better days, something fresh and stimulating to vary the dull
monotony of toil?
"There's a better time coming," the farmer says. "When we get the farm
paid for we will build a new house and send the children to town to
school;" and so the slow years go by. If every new country is not
actually fertilized with the heart's blood of women, the settling and
development of it none the less require the sacrifice of their lives.
One generation must cast itself into the breach, must toil and endure
and wear out in the struggle with elementary forces, in order that those
who come after them may begin life on a higher plane of physical comfort
and educational and social advantages. They have not, like the settlers
of Eastern States, had to fell forests, grub up stumps, and so wrest
their farms from Nature; but they have none the less endured the
inevitable hardships of life in a new, thinly-settled country, far from
markets, railroads, schools, churches and all that puts a market value
on man's labor. I see many women who have thus sacrificed, and are
sacrificing, their lives. Their faces are wrinkled, their hands are hard
with rough, coarse work, they have long ago ceased to have any personal
ambitions; but their hopes are centred in their children. Their
self-abnegation is pathetic beyond words. Looking at them and musing on
their lives, I think truly
The individual withers, and the world is more and more.
Must the old story be repeated over and over again? Must some hearts be
denied all their lives long in order that a possible good may come to
others in the future? Must some lives, full of throbbing hopes and
aspirations, be put down in the dust and mire as stepping-stones, that
those who come after may go over dryshod? Is the individual not to be
considered, but only the good of the mass? Can there be justice and
righteousness in a plan that requires the lifelong martyrdom of a few?
Have not these few as much right to a full and free development, to
liberty to work out their own ambitions, as have any of the multitude
who reap the benefit of their sacrifices? But peace: this little
existence is not all there is of life, and in the sphere of wider
opportunities and higher activity that awaits us there will be room for
these thwarted, stunted lives to grow and flourish and bloom in immortal
beauty. With our limited vision, our blind and short-sighted judgment,
how can we presume to say what is harsh or what is kind in the
discipline of life? The earth as she flies on her track through space
deviates from a straight line less than the eighth of an inch in the
distance of twenty miles. We, seeing only twenty miles of her course,
would declare that it was perfectly straight, that it did not curve in
the slightest degree; yet flying on that same course the earth makes
every year her vast elliptical journey around the sun. Could we see a
hundred million miles of the track, we should discern the curve very
plainly. Could we see a part of the boundless future of a life whose
circumstances in this little span of existence were limited and
depressing, we should discern the meaning of much that viewed separately
seems hard and bitter and useless.
The settlers of this State have chiefly emigrated from the older
States--Indiana, Ohio and the Eastern and Middle States. There are many
foreigners--Swedes, Norwegians, Germans, Dutch and Irish--who generally
live in colonies. The German element predominates, especially in the
cities. In the south-western part of the State there is a colony of
Russian Mennonites, and at Amana, in the eastern part, there are several
flourishing German colonies where the members hold all property in
common. They preserve to some extent the quaint customs and costumes of
the Fatherland, and one set down in the midst of their homes without
knowing where he was might well believe himself in Germany. The Swedes
and Norwegians bear a good character for industry and sobriety: the
young women are in great demand as house-servants and command good
wages.
The emigrants from older States were many of them farmers of small
means, who came through in covered wagons with their families and
household stuff. In pleasant weather this mode of travelling was not
disagreeable, but in rainy or cold weather it was very uncomfortable. No
one could walk in the deep mud: the whole family were obliged to huddle
together in the back part of the wagon, wrapped in bed-quilts or other
covers, while the driver, generally the head of the family, sat on the
seat in front, exposed to the cold or driving rain. The horses slowly
dragged the heavily-laden wagon through the mud, and the progress toward
their new home was tedious in the extreme. The wagons were usually
common farm-wagons with hoops of wood, larger and stouter than barrel
hoops, arched over the bed and covered with white cotton cloth.
Sometimes, as a protection against rain, a large square of black
oil-cloth was spread over the white cover. The front of the wagon was
left open: at the back the cover was drawn together by a string run
through the hem. Before leaving his old home the farmer generally held a
public sale and disposed of his household furniture, farming utensils
and the horses and cattle he did not intend to take with him. Sometimes
this property went by private sale to the purchaser of his farm. He
reserved the bedding, a few cooking utensils and other necessaries.
These were loaded into the wagon, a feed-box for the horses was fastened
behind, an axe strapped to it, and a tar-bucket hung underneath. Flour
and bacon were stored away in a box under the driver's seat, or, if
they expected no chance for replenishing on the way, another wagon was
filled with stores. Then, when all was ready, the farmer and his family
looked their last upon their old home, bade good-bye to the friends who
had gathered to see them off, took their places in the wagon and began
the long, tedious journey to "Ioway." Hitherto they had had a local
habitation and a name: now, for several months, they were to be known
simply as "movers." Among the memories of a childhood spent in a village
on the old National 'Pike those pertaining to movers are the earliest.
It was the pastime of my playmates and myself to hang on the fence and
watch the long train of white-covered wagons go by, always toward the
setting sun. Sometimes there were twenty in a train, and the slow creak
of the wagons, the labored stepping of the horses, had an important
sound to our childish ears. It was
The tread of pioneers
Of nations yet to be.
Looking backward to that time, it seems to me now that they went by
every day. It was a common sight, but one which never lost its interest
to us. The cry of "Movers! movers!" would draw us from our play to hang
idly on the fence until the procession had passed. In some instances
nightfall overtook them just as they reached our village, and they
camped by the roadside, lighting fires on the ground with which to cook
their evening meal. Our timidity was greater than our curiosity, and we
seldom went near their camps. Movers, in our estimation, were above
"stragglers," the name by which we knew the vagrants--forerunners of the
great tribe of tramps--who occasionally passed along the road with a
bundle on a stick over their shoulders; but still, they were a vague,
unknown class, whose intentions toward us were questionable, and we
remained in the vicinity of our mothers' apron-strings so long as they
were in the neighborhood.
When the weeks or months of slow travel during the day and camping out
by night were over, and the new home on the prairie was reached, the
discomforts and privations of the emigrating family were not ended: they
were only fairly begun. There was no house in which to lay their heads,
no sawmill where lumber could be obtained, no tree to shelter them,
unless they had the good fortune to locate near a stream--nothing but a
smooth, level expanse of prairie-sod, bright green and gay with the
flowers of early summer or faded and parched with the droughts of
autumn. Sometimes they camped in the open air until lumber could be
brought from a distance and a rude shanty erected, but often they built
a turf house, in which they passed their first winter. These houses were
constructed by cutting blocks of turf about eighteen inches square--the
roots of prairie-grass being that long--and piling one upon another
until the walls were raised to the desired height. Slender poles were
then laid across from wall to wall, and on these other strips and
squares of turf were piled until a roof thick enough to keep out the
rain was formed. A turf fireplace and chimney were constructed at one
end; the opening left for entrance was braced with poles and provided
with a door; and sometimes a square opening was cut in the end opposite
the chimney and a piece of muslin stretched across it to serve as a
window. The original earth formed the floor, and piles of turf covered
with bedding served as beds. It was only when the family intended to
live some time in the turf house that all these pains were taken to make
it comfortable. Many of these dwellings were dark huts, with floors a
foot or two below the level of the ground and without window or chimney.
These were intended for temporary occupation. A few of this kind, still
inhabited, are to be seen in the sparsely-settled north-western part of
the State. I do not mean this description to apply in a general sense to
the early settlers of Iowa. Many parts of the State are heavily wooded,
and cabins of hewed logs chinked with mud are still to be seen here and
there--specimens of the early homes. In the regions where turf houses
were necessary prairie-hay was burned as fuel.
When his family was housed from the weather the farmer turned his
attention to his land. The virgin sod had to be broken and the rich
black soil turned up in ridges to the air and sunlight. When the ground
was prepared the stock of seed-corn was planted or wheat sown, and the
farmer's old life began again under new and quite different
circumstances. In the eastern and oldest-settled part of the State these
beginnings date back a generation: in the western part they are still
fresh and recent. In the old part well-cultivated fields, large barns,
orchards, gardens and comfortable farm-houses greet the traveller's eye:
in the new he may travel for half a day without seeing a single
dwelling, and may consider himself fortunate if he does not have to pass
the night under the lee side of a haystack.
After a foothold has been gained in a new country and a home
established, a generation, perhaps two, must pass away before a fine
type of humanity is produced. The fathers and mothers have toiled for
the actual necessaries of life, and gained them. The children are
supplied with physical comforts. Plenty of food and exercise in the pure
air give them stalwart frames, good blood and perfect animal health, but
there is a bovine stolidity of expression in their faces, a
suggestion of kinship with the clod. They are honest-hearted and
well-meaning--stupid, not naturally, but because their minds have never
been quickened and stimulated. They grope in a blind way for better
things, and wonder if life means no more than to plough and sow and
reap, to wash and cook and sew. I see young people of this class by the
score, and my heart goes out toward them in pity, though they are all
unconscious of needing pity. Perhaps one out of every hundred will break
from the slowly-stepping ranks and run ahead to taste of the springs of
knowledge reserved for the next generation, but the vast majority will
go down to their graves without ever attaining to the ripeness and
symmetry of a fully-developed life. Their children perhaps--certainly
their grand-children--will attain a fine physical and mental type; and
by that time "the prairies" will cease to be a synonym for lack of
society and remoteness from liberal and refining influences.
The land in this vicinity is largely devoted to wheat, corn and oats:
much, however, is used for pasturage, and several fine stock-farms lie
within a radius of five miles. Sheep-rearing is a profitable industry,
the woollen manufactory at this place affording a convenient and ready
market for the clip. But the statistics of Iowa show that the rearing of
hogs is a more prominent industry than any of these. The agricultural
fairs that are held at the county-seats in August or September every
year serve to display the growth of these and other industries and the
development of the resources of the country, as well as the advance in
material comfort. The fair-ground is generally a smooth plat of ground
several acres in extent just outside the city limits, and besides the
race-track and wooden "amphitheatre" there are sheds for cattle, stalls
for horses, pens for hogs and sheep and poultry, a large open shed for
the exhibition of agricultural machinery and implements, a long wooden
building--usually called "Farmers' Hal
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