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Voices; Birth-Marks; The Man and the Elephant

by Mathew Joseph Holt · English · Gutenberg #35694 · 600,195 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: Voices; Birth-Marks; The Man and the Elephant

Author: Mathew Joseph Holt


        
Release date: February 26, 2011 [eBook #35694]
                Most recently updated: April 1, 2011

Language: English

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Produced by David Garcia, Katherine Ward, and the Online Distributed
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This file was produced from images generously made available by The
Kentuckiana Digital Library


                                 VOICES
                              BIRTH-MARKS
                        THE MAN AND THE ELEPHANT




                              MATT J. HOLT

                     _Author of Chit-Chat, Nirvana_




                               LOUISVILLE
                    THE STANDARD PRINTING CO., Inc.
                                  1922

                            Copyrighted 1922
                             by The Author






INDEX


  - VOICES .........................................................   7

  - BIRTH-MARKS ....................................................  71

  - THE MAN AND THE ELEPHANT ....................................... 341





VOICES


    Knowest thou only the language of man?
    Hast never heard the plaintive flute of Pan,
    Or those gladsome carols that greet the light?
    Or the wild, strange voices of darkest night?
    Each of earth's creatures when at work or play,
    Each of nature's force in some strange way,
    Has a manner of attaining to God's ear,
    And a voice which those attuned may hear.
    Voices of spring are love songs of the birds,
    Fragrant poems of lilacs, lacking words;
    Summer voices are of riper, mellower strain;
    Autumn's, sing of harvest and life not vain;
    Winter tells the story of what has been,
    Season of reflection, of the voice within,
    Promise of tomorrow, freedom from sin.


Big Creek bisects the narrow valley and the road to Hyden follows the
bank, crossing from side to side as the sheerness of the mountain side
makes necessary. Here and there the valley broadens until there is
almost enough level land for a farm; and always where there is a little
width of valley you find a mountain home. The mountain tops and sides
are great wildernesses, though sometimes in a cove or on the plateau a
hermit or outcast family makes its home.

At old man Litman's place the valley is quite narrow, except below the
"Rock House," where there is an old field cleared by his grandfather,
who came from Virginia in 1795. A sprawling rail fence, hedged about by
thrifty bush growth, encircles the old field; pawpaw bushes growing in
the fence corners encroach to the ruts of the road; and each year new
growth of sumac and persimmon appropriate yet more of the old field;
which having been cultivated for near a century and grown unproductive,
is given over to a volunteer crop of broom sedge, which furnishes meager
pasturage for an old mule and two cows.

On the edge of the road at the fence corner nearest the cabin, Litman's
granddaughter has a doll house; if mere tracings of pebbles and shells
gathered from the creek shallows can be called partitions and the bushes
and vines, walls and a roof. The white room is traced in white pebbles
the red room in red pebbles and the kitchen in the commoner blue ones.
The furnishings are bits of broken crockery, glass and shell. The dolls
are small bleached bones or bits of peeled pawpaw sticks, dressed in
blouses made from a worn out sleeve of grandpa's red undershirt and
skirts from scraps of worn and faded calico. She has never seen a doll
house, never a real doll, only pictures. This, her creation, was
suggested by instinctive motherhood and love for home.

A passing traveler would have thought several children were playing at
the fence corner. The little make-believe mother was talking to her
babies and answering for them in even thinner and more subdued voice
than her own; though she had the low voice of a child accustomed to play
alone.

"Now Jeanne, let's make grandpa some nice pone bread; the meal is fresh
and sweet. When it is ready you run to the spring and bring him a cup of
cold milk."

"Granny, while you are mixing the bread maybe I can find an egg in the
loft. I heard Old Speck cackling."

"There is grandpa calling, I will go and see what he wants."

"He says, would you mind moving him a wee bit? His bones shore do ache."

Here the dialogue ended, the girl's attention having been caught by the
voice of an old friend; except for which the valley had the quietude not
alone of a warm mid-afternoon but of a great solitude, so profound that
you might even fancy hearing the smoke curling up from the chimney of
the cabin, a hundred yards away. Yet, if you listen you may hear the
chirping of the grass creatures and the rippling water washing along the
pebbly bed of the creek.

A lone tree, long dead, and bleached to bony whiteness, stands in the
center of the old field and from its topmost snag a lark gives voice to
a series of pensive, dreamy, flute-like notes. The girl, after listening
for some time, resumes the dialogue.

"Children, we will climb on the fence and hear what Yellow Vest has to
say. I think he is whistling to his wife, who hunts crickets in the
broom sedge."

"Maw, tell us what he says?"

"'Love, thou art safe! art safe! I watch for thee! for thee! and
babies.' It is not so much what he says as the way in which he says it."

The feeble voice of the old grandmother calls: "Jeanne, come help your
granny;" and placing her dolls in their little beds of sticks, moss and
bird feathers, and the little baby in its cradle, the half of a mussel
shell, she goes to the house.

                                  ----

John Morgan Allen lived in Lexington, Kentucky. His father was a lawyer
of considerable prominence; his mother, a Morgan, granddaughter of a
distinguished soldier; his grandmother was the daughter of John Calvin
Campbell, an eloquent pioneer preacher; her husband, a lawyer when she
married him, afterwards became a professional gambler and, an exception
to the rule, accumulated a considerable fortune.

It was young Allen's mother's desire that he should be a soldier; his
father's that he should be a lawyer, and his grandmother's that he
should be a preacher. When he finished high school, his mother
insisting, he was sent to Culver Military Institute, where he remained a
year. Then his grandmother, having promised to give him $25,000.00 the
day he should graduate at the Louisville Presbyterian Theological
Seminary; he was sent to that institution. In the beginning of his
senior year she died intestate, leaving an estate of only $60,000.00 to
be divided between three living children and the heirs of three dead
children. As there was no chance of the fulfillment of her promise when
he should graduate at the seminary; and his conduct had been such that
his professors had suggested a reformation in conformity with his
prospective calling, he wrote asking his father's consent to leave the
seminary and take the law course at the University of Virginia; and he
cheerfully consented. In spite of the fact that he gave much of his time
to a local military company and enjoyed the reputation of being the best
poker player at the university, he graduated with class honors in 1912.

Several weeks after his return home, on his twenty-second birthday, his
father took him to the office and with great gladness in his heart,
pointed to the name, Allen & Allen, which had been painted on the office
door the day before; showed him the new embossed stationery on which his
name appeared as a member of the firm; and his own room, newly painted,
carpeted and furnished, with the name John Morgan Allen (Private) on the
door. Though John's face wore a smile of appreciation, it was merely
reflective of his father's love and enjoyment; disposition and
temperament suggested rebellion, but were overcome by a sense of
gratitude and duty.

In the early summer of 1913 the firm were employed by the Lockard heirs
to clear the title to a large boundary of land in Leslie county; and it
became necessary for John and the executor to go to Hyden for that
purpose.

Just at sundown as they were riding by Litman's old field, John's horse
shied and backed through the pawpaw bushes into Jeanne's doll house. He
dismounted and patched the partition walls into shape; then parting the
bushes, showed it to Mr. Lockard.

To John, the little bone and stick dolls, dressed in rags and resting in
their beds of moss and feathers were pathetic. He picked several up, and
was examining them when a slender girl of twelve, in an outgrown, worn
and faded dress, which did not reach to her knees, ran up crying: "Do
not hurt my babies." John rose hastily, somewhat disconcerted by the
accusation, and lifting his hat and gravely bowing, assured her he had
no such intention; whereupon without uttering another word, she turned
and ran into the Litman cabin.

The cabin, built in the days when the family was relatively prosperous,
had a spare room for visitors. As it was now sundown the men asked and
were given shelter for the night.

Jeanne showed them where their horses were to be stabled; and then went
into the house to help with supper. Her grandmother noted that she was
very exact in setting the table; getting out the only white cloth they
had and doing her best with their meager stock of china to make it
attractive. This special attention was due to the lifted hat and formal
bow with which John had greeted the child. It was the first time a man
had ever tipped his hat to her.

After supper John and Mr. Lockard seated themselves for a smoke on a
great rock that jutted into the creek and enjoyed not only the profound
repose but the mystic beauty of the scene, which was accentuated by the
light of a full moon and the deep shadows made by the trees and
mountain.

John, a person of moods and imagination--possibly due to his complex
ancestry--gave expression to his thoughts: "How soothing, how
delightfully peaceful, how homelike, is this humble home. There is no
place here for sorrow and tears, no room for envy, no cause for
covetousness or discontent. Some people, and I believe I am one, might
be happy here, happier than in a city, just getting his part of the
sunlight, just breathing his part of this untainted air."

While he was talking in this strain, Jeanne, coming up, stood listening;
and when he had finished said:

"We have our troubles. You have not seen grandpa. He's sick in bed. He
can't move except his hands and head and they shake all the time. He
says he is a corpse with a chill and lies in his bed with nothing to do
but wait. When I ask 'Wait for what?' He answers, 'Tomorrow.' To me
tomorrow is like today. The cows will go to pasture, the creek will run
over the same pebbles, the mail man will come at noon and stop for
dinner, the lark will sing the same song; but if I stump my toe it will
be well tomorrow. Go in and talk to grandpa. He likes to hear things. He
lies on his bed until his bones ache. He looks out at the same trees and
rocks and the same reach of the creek. I hope when he sleeps there is a
change and he has dreams like mine and hears voices sweeter than those
of the day; though I love the voice of the lark and the red bird and the
wren; the murmur of the water on the rocks and most of all the little
creatures we do not see and will not hear, unless we are very still.
They are hidden in the grass and in the rocks. Alone not one of them can
be heard, but together they make soft music, a chorus of glad hearts.
One little blackbird makes a noise, but when a thousand speak at once it
makes a song. So it seems to me, if I should live here always, with just
grandpa and granny, what I said would be as the chirp of one little bug
or the call of a lost blackbird; but if I chirp or call out with a
thousand, my voice is the thousandth part of a song."

"Jeanne, we will go in and talk with your grandpa. Can he read, or do
you read to him?"

"He used to read before he broke his specks. I am trying hard to learn
to read good, so I can read to him. The teacher sometimes boards with
us; she says I will soon know how. It will be nice then. I try to read
his Bible to him but the words are too big. Teacher says I need a book
to tell me the meaning of big words. I know just the part of the Bible
he loves and I am learning it by heart. I stand and say it to him,
looking in the book and he thinks I read it."

"What do you say to him, Jeanne?"

"'And God shall wipe all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no
more death; neither sorrow nor dying; neither shall there be any more
pain.' And I know all of the fourteenth chapter of John, which tells us
not to let our troubles worry us, because in the Father's house there is
a home of many rooms and one is for me. And when I say, 'Peace I leave
with you, my peace I give unto you; not as the world giveth, give I unto
you;' he makes me read it again. * *"

They went in and spent an hour with the old man. Seeing them was a break
in his bedridden monotony, shifting scene and introducing new
characters.

His had been a calm, relatively happy life until he was seventy years of
age; then misfortune overwhelmed him. He lost his savings; his son,
Sylvester, Jeanne's father, died; a few weeks later he had a stroke of
apoplexy and now a shivering palsy possessed his limbs. For more than
five years he had lain in his bed, nursed by wife and granddaughter.

His wife by most rigid economy had managed to feed the family of three;
though they were poorly clad and were frequently denied many things
deemed essential to life.

                                  ----

Simeon Blair for ten years had been carrying the mail from the mouth of
Big Creek to Hyden, going up one day and returning the next. He usually
ate his noon-day meal at Litman's, which he called the "Half-way House."

About ten days after Mr. Allen and his client had spent the night at the
Litman cabin, Blair rode up on his old gray mare and seeing Jeanne
coming from the spring, took from a gunny sack a parcel post package
about a foot square; and holding it above his head called out: "Guess
whose this is?"

"Grandpa's."

He shook his head, saying: "Guess again."

"Granny's."

"Wrong, guess again."

"Is it for us?"

"Yes."

"Then it must be for me; but I have never had anything before. It is not
Christmas. O! who could have sent it?"

She took it with timid joy and examined it carefully, reading aloud in a
halting way--"Miss Jeanne--no it's not Jeanne; what is it Simeon?"

"Jeannette."

"Miss Jeannette Litman, Big Creek, Leslie County, Ky."

And in the upper left-hand corner--

"From John M. Allen, Lexington, Ky."

"Open it, let's see what's inside."

"Not till grandpa wakes up."

She went to his door, he was awake; so she called her grandmother and
Simeon.

"Look, grandpa, see what's come by mail. Listen: 'Miss Jeannette Litman,
Big Creek, Leslie County, Kentucky. From John M. Allen, Lexington, Ky.'
What can it be?"

"Open it and find out."

"Simeon, you untie the string."

"Cut it, it's dinner time."

(Granny) "No, it's a piece of good whip-cord, undo the knot."

"Well, Miss Jeannette Litman, there it is."

"Can you see, grandpa?"

"Yes, dear."

"Watch close--O! this is for you, grandpa. See your name? Shall I open
it?--Some silver specks, in a bright new case. Now I know why he asked
me for the broken ones."

"Look! Look! this has granny's name on it, what can it be?"

"You open it, dear."

"No, granny, you must open your own bundle."

"Just what I wanted. I remember saying that when I went to Hyden I would
have to buy a pair of shears and a black shawl with the money we got for
the goose feathers. Now we can get a sack of flour and goods for
Jeanne's dress."

"It is my turn now, 'For Jeannette Litman,' such purty shoes; how did he
know my size? O! he had me step in the dusty road and then he measured
the track, saying a fairy had passed this way; and here is a little blue
silk handkerchief and two books. What does this spell, Simeon?
_University Dictionary_? What is a dictionary?"

"A book that tells what big words mean."

"Here is the other book, 'The Little Colonel at Boarding School;' and
here's more, two boxes--dolls! real dolls! all dressed and asleep in
their best clothes, shoes and real hair. O, you beautiful things! You
sweet darlings! Look granny! the top dress is just like spider web with
dew on it. We will name this one after you, granny. I bet you was as
purty when you were a little girl. This is Jane Wilson and the other I
will call Ruth, Ruth Dixon, after mother."

Jeanne insisted on writing the letter thanking Mr. Allen for the gifts;
and it was a momentous undertaking. Simeon brought a stamp, envelope and
two sheets of paper in a thread box from the general store at the mouth
of Big Creek. There was a pen and ink in the house, though it was
necessary to dilute the ink before using it.

At a loss as to how to address the envelope and commence her letter, she
consulted her grandmother; but would hear no other suggestions. At the
end of the second day's series of efforts on her slate she was
sufficiently satisfied to transcribe what she had printed to paper. In
her many attempts to find out how to spell certain words she discovered
that the new dictionary was marvelously arranged in alphabetical order,
and in possession of this key, finally mastered it.

In searching through the dictionary by chance she came upon the word
correspondence and learned its meaning. The word had caught her eye,
because among their few books, all of which had belonged to her great
grandfather, there was a set in old sheep binding of "Jefferson's
Correspondence." She took down Volume IV; and opening it at letter
CXXVIII, was better pleased with the style of address, in writing a
person of Mr. Allen's greatness; and concerning such matters of
importance, than the one her grandmother had given her and adopted it.

So she began tediously to print:

"To John Allen.

"Dear Sir:

"The simultaneous movements in our correspondence have been remarkable
on several occasions. It would seem as if the state of the air, or the
state of the times, or some other unknown cause, produced a sympathetic
effect in our mutual recollections. i has to say grandpas specks was the
first thing we found in the box. you know i could a got along with them
bone dolls dressed in his old red shirt but times would a been hard
outen them specks he lays on the bed with a chair under his head and
reads his bible now when onct he had to wait tell i had time he says now
the windows are open. how did you come to send granny a black shawl you
had not seen her shake with the cold like I has done. my feet is tuf i
could a done outen the shoes but she jest had ter have the shawl and the
shears. i know now why you had me step in the dust. granny says men are
sly and gals must be shy but why dident you jest say Jeannette let me
see your feet i keeps them purty clean.

"o the dolls the purty dolls they is too fine for the fence corner so i
puts them in bed with me and holds them when i says my prayers and sees
them in my dreams. they left the words tuf and purty and outen outen the
dictionary you tell the man what made it i am shore he will hate it he
says ter means three ter with us means same as to. i knows now what
correspondence, dictionary and Colonel mean. i spect when i read the
book ter find out why they calls a gal a little Colonel but i cant say
now. give me time. granny says i is set in my ways like grandpa and i is
set ter learn

"correspondence is nice but hard work but let us correspondence. last
year when Christmas come i had roast chestnuts and to red apples. granny
told me a tale about santaclaws i think you is it. the paper is all
gone. i must stop

"I salute you with all affection. T. J. whats the T. J. fer. i found it
at the end of a letter in Jefferson's Correspondence truly Jeannette i
say that is my name sense you writ it

    T. J."

When Mr. Allen received the letter he was as proud of it as if it had
been written him by the recently inaugurated Democratic president. He
showed it to several of his girl friends, including Miss Bradley, who
insisted upon keeping it, saying she wished to send some little presents
the following Christmas.

At that time he felt the world would have been a barren waste except for
that young lady. The letter passed into her possession; was kept for
several weeks and then forgotten and misplaced. Memory of the little
mountain girl passed from her mind long before Christmas. John
remembered her, merely as one might a visit from a dream fairy.

An hour before John awoke on Christmas morning his mother came to his
room and placing a chair near his bed, piled upon it his Christmas
presents. There was a check from his father, handkerchiefs, neckties,
gloves, a smoking jacket and even a stocking full of nuts and candies
from his mother--he was her only child; still her little boy. There were
several small remembrances from relatives and friends, a box of cigars
from Miss Bradley; and beneath all a parcel in brown wrapping paper and
unadorned by either Christmas seal, holly or ribbon.

The breakfast gong sounded; it scarcely disturbed his dreams. Then the
house boy came to his room and shook him saying: "Mars John, it's near
nine er'clock, your maw says git up. Christmas gift!"

"Christmas morning and a fine day, cool, clear, a white Christmas!
Sammy, you caught me, didn't you? I will give you my last winter's
overcoat; it's as good as new, or three one dollar bills; which shall it
be?"

"Boss, that's a mighty fine overcoat, but I's got ter git that yaller
gal Melinda something, I guess I better take them three dollars."

"Well, here it is, Sammy."

Sammy went down the stairs muttering: "This hayr nigger ain't no fool,
not yit! Unless I gits drunk and loses this place, I'll git that
overcoat for a New Year's gift."

John, slipping on the new smoking jacket, sat on the edge of the bed and
with the pleased curiosity of a boy of twelve inspected his presents.

"Well Pip (meaning his father) must be feeling good this Christmas; his
check will come in handy. What nice things mother buys; she's always
thinking of my comfort. Perfectos from Sally Bradley and strong black
ones; she should know by now I don't like that brand. That's the cigar
that Jelly Bean Stoll smokes. He's been there quite a bit lately. I bet
she sent the brand I like to him; got things mixed up. Oh! what a
beautiful cigar case, and from Fannie Scott! She's the hot stuff! That
girl has some taste! She gets better looking every day. I'll go to see
her tomorrow night; but I really should go to Sally's. Hello! here's a
beefsteak or ten pounds of nails; it looks like it just came from the
butcher shop or the hardware store. No, it's from Big Creek! Where's Big
Creek? Oh, I remember that little girl, all legs and arms. She looked
like a mosquito and talked like a preacher. Well! Well! Well! mittens
and yarn socks; the first I have seen in ten years, and a letter.

                                  ----

    "Big Creek, Kentucky.
    "December 18th, 1914.

"John M. Allen, Esq.

"Dear Friend:

"It is seven months today since you were here and I have grown a lot. My
birthday was last month, November 7th. I am now thirteen. Miss Smith,
the teacher, says: 'Jeannette at last you know how to write a letter. No
wonder, you have spent half your time trying.' The dictionary is nearly
worn out. I look up every word.

"Last summer I hunted 'Sang' on the mountain for three days and when
granny went to Hyden to sell the feathers, the eggs and a basket of
chickens, she sold it and the store man gave her 1 dollar and 60 cents,
all mine.

"Hi Lewis lives up the creek. He has some sheep and I bought 2 pounds of
wool from him with part of my money. I washed the wool until it was as
white as the whiskers of Santa Clans then I spun it into yarn on
granny's spinning wheel and gave Sim Blair the mail man two bit to buy
me some red and blue dyes and some I made red and some blue. With the
blue I made granny some mits and grandpa some socks but I kept the red
for your Christmas gift and last night I finished it.

"I hope you will like your red mittens and red and black socks. They are
just as purty as the red bird that roosts in the cedar trees near the
barn. Granny said most of the men in the blue grass wore black socks but
I said they is not nice enough for you, so to please everybody I made
them red with black toes and tops. Maybe my gay little soldier of the
cedar trees was the cause I made them red and black. He has so much to
whistle about even when it is cold and the snow is deep. Just now he lit
on the window sill, knocking off the snow. I had a good look into his
bright black face. How purty and red his coat was against the snow. If
it was not for him and my dolls and the books you gave me I would be
lonesome. Granny says I am too old to play with dolls; but she does not
know what they whisper to me.

"How still it is in the winter time. By day we hear the red bird and the
crows; at night if it storms, the wind; if it is still and snowing, the
murmur of the flakes; if the moon is full a great owl calls; if I wake
in the night and it is dark and still I hear the whispers of either the
angels or of my dolls who sleep with me. One of the dolls is granny and
the other is my mother, and they tell me what they used to do when they
were girls like me. Sometimes grandpa calls and when I go to him he
asks: 'Did you hear that?' 'What, grandpa?' 'Someone calling, it sounded
like your pa.' Grandma says he is going to die soon. I believe up here
we hear voices you cannot hear where there is so much noise.

"I know Santa Claus will bring you nice things because you are so good.

    "Yours truly,
      "Jeanette."

"Well, it is nice to be remembered, even though the remembrance is
impossible. I will put them and the letter away with other treasured and
impractical things that have been sent me by girl friends. I feel sorry
for that lonesome little half-starved thing. She will grow up into a
scrawny, tired-looking woman; marry some man who will work her to death.
No telling what she might do with advantages and in another
environment."

After breakfast, he telephoned a book store asking that a dictionary and
some appropriate books be sent to Miss Jeannette Litman, Big Creek,
Kentucky. The clerk who took the order, having recently read Mark
Twain's Joan of Arc, mailed a copy of that book with the dictionary.

A week later Mr. Allen received a letter from Jeannette thanking him for
the books.

                                  ----

    Verona, Italy.
    ------ Hospital, Ward 11.
      December 2, 1917.

Dear Little Jeannette:

To children like you nothing is unexpected. You believe witches are
abroad on dark nights, while fairies dance in the moonlight; and that
angels protect you from evil spirits.

When you grow older experience plucks these pinions of fancy; you can no
longer soar but become an earth stained materialist, surprised if your
plans of the morrow miscarry and you find yourself in New York when you
expected to be in Washington.

A year ago today I was defending a suit against the Lexington Railway
Company; had become reconciled to law and expected to continue in that
comparatively thrill-less profession. I might have thought by now I
would be married--but I certainly did not think that I would occupy a
bed in Ward 11 of an army hospital at Verona; so far away that it is
impossible to send you even a book for Christmas.

Looking backward, it is easy enough to explain why I am here. Not
understanding what war was; not appreciating what a government
undertakes that declares war, I grew impatient at our country's apparent
criminal slowness in getting into the war; and in February, 1917, went
to Montreal and enlisted. In March 1,500 of us were loaded aboard the
Burmah and that transport steamed a thousand miles down the St. Lawrence
to the ocean and at the end of a two weeks' voyage by the northern
passage, over a gray fog-burdened ocean by day, a phosphorescent billowy
one by night, we landed at Liverpool.

At a cantonment, a few miles from London, we were subjected to four
months' strenuous training; and presumedly because I had attended a
military school for a year, I was commissioned a lieutenant in the
British army. At the end of the four months our regiment was loaded
aboard a transport and many of us did not learn our destination until we
were landed at ----, Italy. (We are not allowed to name the port.)

We reported to General, the Earl of Cavan, commanding the British forces
in Italy; and after several weeks' training were ordered to the Piave
front.

On the 24th of October at the battle of Caporetto, I experienced the
same sensation as though I had been struck in the chest by a brick, when
it was but a small calibre, soft nosed bullet; and remember having been
loaded into, and it seemed riding for days in, an overfilled ambulance,
just enough alive to have a dull sense of pain and to feel the
concussion of the great guns, though the reports seemed muffled and far
away.

I lost consciousness; was no longer near the battlefield, but at your
home in the mountains of Kentucky. I heard no sounds save the murmur of
running water and the song of a wood thrush. All about was the
implacable serenity of the blue sky and the everlasting hills. The face
of nature was unscarred; there were no shell holes, no splintered trees,
no pools of blood, no dead and dying.

Strange that I should think of you and your mountain home in the midst
of battle, violence and death. Strange that when I went on my journey
into the valley of the shadow, falling, falling, falling, into a
darkness that seemed to freeze my soul, you, a little girl, were the
only one near. Strange that when I came back to consciousness, it was by
way of the creek valley and your home and you were leading me by the
hand. Returning to consciousness I discovered it was not you but a
soft-voiced, patient, white-robed Italian nurse; and I was here. What
brought you so vividly to mind? Can you tell? It must have been the
contrast between your home as I saw it that moonlit night and the battle
field, with its barbarities, vengeances, and human abominations.

There is a sharp pain when I breathe or cough. I am ill, homesick, among
strangers, I feel deserted. To you, a little girl, the acquaintance of a
day, some influence impels me to write, though I have heard nothing
since you sent the red socks and mittens, and wrote thanking me for the
books. Since I have been wounded I have learned there are many things I
may not know.

Tell me of your own life and picture it in your own way; and also of
your part of Kentucky. Even now I see your face and hear your voice; it
seems nearer than my mother's--and she is a wonderful, much-loved woman.

I do not recover my strength as I should and will be here for some
time--if you care to write.

    Your friend,
      John M. Allen.

                                  ----

    Lieutenant John M. Allen,
    ------ Hospital, Ward 11, Verona, Italy.

Dear Mr. Allen:

For several years I have been waiting, not daring to hope, but longing
for a letter--and it came on Christmas Eve. I am answering the afternoon
of Christmas Day.

The earth is mantled in white, and crystals of crisp snow give back
myriad rays of dazzling light stolen from the sun. The cedar trees bend
low with their fluffy white burdens; and the creek is frozen, except the
riffle just above Big Rock. I was just going to say that all life had
taken to itself the silence of the mountain----which is a speaking
silence to its own people--when I saw a hungry little nut-hatch bobbing
up and down the elm; and my red birds, thinking it time I served their
dinner, flew from the cedar trees and are now whistling for me from the
lilac bush.

Granny is quite feeble; so she takes a nap each afternoon in the great
rocking chair, with its padded sheepskin back and bottom; and from the
noise she is making seems to be enjoying it. I also hear an intimate
voice, though I rarely see my friend. He is the cricket of our hearth;
and now since the days are short, begins his chirping when it is time
for me to feed the chickens, milk the cow and look after Silas, the old
mule. We have no earthly use for that mule, but I cannot let him go. He
was in the prime of his days of usefulness when I first saw the light;
and now when I go out to feed him, there is a look in his old
gray-lashed eyes that speaks to my heart with the voice of an old and
trusting friend.

When people live as we do, the fowls of the barnyard and the creatures
of the manger become their friends. They speak with a look; they come
towards you with a caress; they bind themselves to your heart with an
untimid trust. That old mule's look approaches worship; and his trust
shall not be vain.

Grandad is not here. I stand at the door and see his grave on a knoll a
little way up the mountain side. It is hedged about by a white picket
fence, which I repaint each spring.

Last evening as I was wreathing it with holly and mistletoe I thought
how, when I was a little girl, he carried me over the rough places and
when he went to the store on Red Bird or to town, brought back something
he knew would delight a little girl. Then, how the last year or two
before he died, I partly paid the debt by ministering unto him. As I
stood beside his grave it seemed his spirit spoke to me of unutterable
things. * *

I have finished with the chickens, the cow and the old mule. We have had
supper. The cricket is chirping away quite comfortably in his cozy
corner under the warm hearthstones and I hear the click of Granny's
knitting needles.

My thoughts have been mainly of you since your letter came. Joys are the
scarlet buds and tears are the white flowers of life. Your letter has
made this a Christmas of white flowers; yet it brought a gift filigreed
with happiness, as tears are wont to be, except those of despair. It
seems sadness lives next door neighbor to a very pure happiness. I can
pray and weep and the tears are a holy joy. I think if God would speak
to me I would shed tears of joy; and if he comes tonight and tells me he
will make you well and bring you back to Kentucky, I shall shed tears of
great joy. That you return in health is one of the hopes my life lives
on.

You will understand, when I say I have always looked upon you, much as I
imagine the old mule feels towards me. For a long time there was little
in my life, but that little was all joy. Then you came our way and
introduced me to real dolls and to books. While I have outgrown the
dolls, I have many cold but safe friends in my books; friends you leave
at your convenience and return to at your pleasure.

Do not think that I am unhappy or lonely; nor must you think that while
you have been moving along in years, I have remained the same little
girl whose doll house you disturbed. I was seventeen last month; and a
girl of my age in the mountains is supposed to be grown. I am more--a
business woman; the bread winner of the Litman family; and having
outgrown "sang digging," for nearly a year have had the Big Creek
school.

Last June I obtained my teacher's certificate; and in doing so
surrendered my great ambition, which was to be an actress. You can judge
what a creature of fancy I am, when I tell you. I have never been inside
a theatre. I dreamed of a stage career and--landed in a school room. The
very first day of teaching I realized that it was the next best thing. I
had a wonderful audience and a stage setting unique and clever. Teaching
now seems a high-class of play acting--just lots, anyway--and children
are such fun.

I should like for you to see my school room and know the boys and girls.
I would like for you to be associated with certain other experiences of
mine. I'd like--but what's the use? I feel as though, if or when I need
you, you will be my friend. In other words, I trust you.

The glorious fun of being poor is that the little things that come your
way are greatly appreciated. Now Big Creek is my Brook Cherith; and the
school children are the ravens during the stress of high prices incident
to the war. They not only bring bread and meat but a few modest dresses
and a few books and magazines. Should the brook fail and the ravens
receive other commands, Granny and I can depend upon the unfailing jar
of meal and the cruse of oil for our daily bread; and should you like to
play the part of Elijah to the widow and the orphan, you are welcome to
your share. We will give you a cup of water and make you a little cake.

I have even had a beau and a proposal of marriage by a red-headed man
from Red Bird. I answered: "I have no idea of considering such a
proposition for several years as I expect first to graduate at the
University of Kentucky. When my Prince Charming comes wooing, he may
come with empty pockets but he must be able to read and write." The next
day Sandy came to my school, but I refused to take him in. He has since
spread the information that "Jeannette does not want 'a feller' but
expects to remain a 'school marm'"--and so I shall until a real man
comes along. Sandy Blair is as near the "sweet evening breeze" kind as
we have up here. I call him my knight of the pink shirt and green store
clothes. He never misses a dance; and Solomon in all his glory was never
arrayed as he then is.

When the evening is warm and the moon full I often spend an hour or two
on Big Rock; and musing by night, with the water and moon for company, I
feel happy and queer and both. Remembrance frequently retenders that
night of long ago; and I hear you speaking in a voice no bigger than the
heart of a whisper. The reason it is your voice is because you gave me
my first doll and what is a little girl's life without a doll?

The night of October twenty-fourth, the night of the day you were
wounded, I was out on the rock a long while; and never before had I
heard your voice nor seen you as distinctly as then. On that night you
and I held quite a conversation; and this may be the mystical
explanation why I was the one with you as you passed through the valley
of the shadow. Life on Big Creek has taught me, that not alone to the
Elijahs, to the shepherds of the hills and to the Jean d'Arcs come
voices and visitation. All who will may hear.

I knew then that you were snared in the net of tragedy and distress
spread over most of the world by this horrible war; which the honest men
of every land condemn and regret, as utterly useless and wish at an end.
They ask to live in peace and on good terms with everybody. But honest
men have nothing to do with making war or dictating terms of peace. They
are cannon fodder; mere pawns in the game of nations, moved about by one
who sits in the sun and serves the devil.

Before the millennium, there must be a world wide charity, to take the
place of what we call patriotism; which is either national selfishness
or a make-shift provincialism. There must be a development of the
national soul until man knows no nation; and in a national sense loves
his neighbor as himself. The first step towards it is to understand that
those calamities that are destroying an enemy country do not halt at the
yellow map boundary that marks our own land.

When you escape from beneath the sombre shadow of war, come to our
mountains. Here we look at the peaceful face of nature and enjoy the
poetry of silence. We are never very much alone, Granny and I. The soul
in the radiance of its love creates friends and though we are isolated
from the world we are rich in love and happiness.

Bear your sufferings and loneliness as best you may, until your ship
comes home. Know that to suffer is the dowry of God's elect and when all
else is lost you still have Him. I know He cares for the birds; and "are
ye not much better than they?" You know why and when the birds
sing?--because they are building or have a nest. May you soon recover,
find peace and love; and some day your nook-nest lined with soft down,
awaiting treasures God will send.

I have tried to put a few thoughts into words. There is enough of the
seed of thought in my mind and it germinates--but alas, it dies before I
can put it into words. My treasures come forth, half smothered by the
burden of the flesh. I hope you may understand what I have tried to tell
you.

I am, and ever shall be, your friend,

    Jeannette.

                                  ----

Jeannette counted upon receiving an answer to her letter about the first
of March. She waited patiently until the seventh, then there was a great
rain and the creek was so swollen they had no mail until the tenth; and
even then, among the letters and papers that came, there was no letter
from Italy.

She reasoned: he is well and fighting again; he has not gotten my
letter; the censor held it because of my comments upon the war.

                                  ----

Lieutenant Allen was in the hospital at Verona until the twentieth of
April, 1918, when he was discharged as an incurable, his lungs having
been horribly lacerated by a soft-nosed bullet.

When discharged from the hospital he was taken to Genoa and there placed
aboard ship and sent to Liverpool; and on a returning transport which
had brought over fifteen hundred Canadians, he and forty-seven other
helpless, war-wrecked men, were returned to Montreal, Canada, the city
where they had enlisted.

On Sunday, the twenty-sixth of May, he arrived in Lexington and to keep
from frightening his mother, by a mighty effort managed to walk from a
taxicab to his father's door and into the house; when he had a severe
coughing spell which prostrated him. His father and the servants carried
him to his own room; while his mother lay unconscious on a lounge where
they had placed her.

A little space was given to his return, his war record and present
precarious condition in the Lexington and Louisville papers. A few of
his old friends called and not being able to see him, left cards and
sent flowers. Some of the men he had known were on their way to Europe,
some already in France and one of his friends, Lieutenant Gardner, had
been killed. The attention of the public was on those over there or
leaving--not upon the wounded and disabled who were being returned.

For several weeks he seemed to improve, as the weather was pleasant and
he had the most careful nursing. But one night he had a severe
hemorrhage and after it was checked his doctor informed his parents that
there was no chance for his recovery. He did not suffer greatly, but
grew slowly weaker until he knew the end was near.

The postman, several days before his death, brought Jeannette's letter.
It was marked with many addresses; and by the censor "To be held." Then
later stamped, "Passed by base censor No. ----. Verificato per censura."

The letter, which he read several times, first brought a few big tears;
then he seemed to gather resignation; then happiness from it.

                                  ----

Early in June, the month of brides and roses, Jeannette received a
letter from Mrs. Allen:

"Dear Jeannette:

"John, my boy, died last Sunday, with your letter in his hand and it was
buried with him. He requested that his books be sent to you, and they
will be forwarded tomorrow.

"As soon as you can get away from your school and leave your
grandmother, if she will not come too, come and see me. I must have some
one to talk with about John; some one whom he knew and loved. When I try
it with his father, he rushes from the room. John was an only child--now
I am childless.

"He claimed to have seen you before he died, saying: 'Mother, I have
just seen Jeannette; she is very beautiful.' Then he described you. I
believe he really saw; and if his description fits, you can help me now.
You were sitting on the Big Rock by the creek. It was the night of the
fourth of June. I can write no more.

    "John's mother,
      "Mary R. Allen."

Jeannette had always felt that her life, which she knew was a silent,
empty and colorless one without, was gloriously full and lit up within
by a mystical treasure, which in some way she had stumbled upon and
appropriated. She had soul companions who spoke to her with voices she
alone could hear; that told of things in her own and other people's
lives, that she and they might know, if they would but listen. She had
lived a soul life; and it had a far-flung horizon.

When she received Mrs. Allen's letter telling of the death of her son,
who had been her one friend around whom her childlike super-idealism and
innocence had built a gorgeous bower, her heart was rent by its first
great shock. She felt that her God of providence and love had cast her
from heaven into a place of utter darkness where she had been caught by
the net of fate and was now being dragged through all the sorrows and
tragedies of life. Her voices were gone; she hated the silence about
her; the mountain seemed dark and dangerous; the sun seemed harsh and
cold; the grass but to cover graves; and the trees but mourners for the
departed. He is gone! God has deserted me! She had yet to learn that the
voices would return; that other friends would come; that life is neither
tragic nor sad, though it has its hours of sadness and tragedy; and that
sorrows make for themselves deep beds in our hearts wherein they sleep
until life draws near its end and more than half of all our soul loves
has passed to the other side.

All of Thursday night she sat in Granny's great rocking chair, and when
day came, while her joys seemed gone forever, her grief had been dulled.
She found a dulling consolation in working about the house and in
looking after the creatures of the barnyard. In the afternoon her head
ached so, she laid down; and sleep came and comforted her.

Friday night after her grandmother was in bed and asleep, she went out
upon Big Rock and in the quiet of the night listened for her voices, but
they would not come. For more than an hour she cried, her frame shaking
with sobs and low, gasping moans. Then she was still a long
time--thinking of what life had been, what it now was, and hereafter
would be to her broken soul. Gradually she drew out from under the
shadow of her sorrow, until instead of being overwhelmed by it, it was a
sorrow which her soul possessed. She began to think that the wound might
some day close but she knew her heart would always bear the scar and her
days never again be quite so bright. She found that although she was
still unhappy she was consoled, and thanked God that she had this man's
friendship, perhaps his love; and began to look upon death as a very
simple affair; the soul shedding the shackles of flesh.

She slept. In her dreams the voices came back; and her sorrows were cast
off as one does a cloak, serviceable in a shower, but when the sun comes
out an uncomfortable burden. Past midnight she awoke, stiff and sore
from her hard bed, and went to the house.

Sunday afternoon, she wrote Mrs. Allen:

"About four years ago, your son on his way to Hyden, asked for and found
shelter for the night at our home. Ten days later he sent us a few
little things; among them my first real dolls. I have never seen him
since except as fancy pictured nor heard his voice as a materialist may
hear, though many times it seemed he spoke to me in a way I cannot
explain. I have four letters; they are the four treasures of my life.

"His death is my greatest loss; and through life I shall carry a scar
from the wound. But what I suffer is not worth mentioning when compared
with the grief his mother must feel. She who gave him life; who felt his
little chubby, helpless hands moving about over her breasts seeking his
food; who taught him to stand alone; to walk; to lisp his first words;
who tried to teach him first to say father, but nature and his own heart
put the name of mother in his mind and in his mouth. Then you taught him
to say his prayers; and those prayers have been answered. He prayed:
'Thy kingdom come,'--and it has come for him; while you and I weep,
refusing to be comforted; until we learn that those we love must pass to
the other side, in order that His kingdom may come for us, and we escape
death for ourselves and lose the fear of death for our dear ones.

"It is thus we find happiness in our anguish; and love for God while we
suffer from the raw realities of life; knowing he has found us worthy of
both love and unhappiness.

"How I shall love his books when they come. I hope he has marked the
passages which pleased him and noted some of his own thoughts upon their
margins.

"I shall come to you. Just now it is impossible. My school is not out
until July; and teaching to me is more than bread; it is an implacable
duty. Granny is very feeble; her condition may also delay my coming. I
have been planning for a year to take a teacher's course at the State
University. If this hope is realized, Lexington will be my home for some
time; and if you wish it, I will come many times to talk with you about
your son.

    "With love and sympathy,
      "Jeannette."

The following week one of the freight wagons hauling goods from the
railroad to Hyden stopped at the house and unloaded four heavy packing
cases. They contained nearly five hundred books; which had been shipped,
still in the sections of the mahogany sectional book cases; and just as
John had arranged them. She had two of her school boys unpack and set up
the cases in her room.

These, with the books she had accumulated, and those which her father's
grandfather had brought overland from Virginia, gave to her simple bed
room much the appearance of a library.

On Sunday the 18th of August, Jeannette's grandmother, the last of her
blood kin, died, and was buried on the mountain side, where were the
white, picketed graves of her father, mother and grandfather and the
unpicketed, almost unmarked, sunken-in graves of those of the Litmans
she did not know, who had gone before her day.

The day after the funeral she rented the place to Simeon Blair but as
his family was small, they had only a child, a girl of seven, there was
room for Jeannette; so she kept her room and paid four dollars a week
board. The Blairs bought her cows and chickens, but refused the mule as
a gift; so she paid Simeon five dollars a month for looking after old
Silas.

On the fifth of September she left Big Creek for Lexington, Kentucky;
and upon her arrival on the seventh, went directly to the room she had
reserved at the University dormitory; and on the tenth matriculated as a
junior.

The eighth, she spent in most careful shopping. Sunday, the ninth, she
attended services at the First Presbyterian Church and heard her first
pipe organ. As she walked back to the dormitory she drew comparisons
between her new clothes and those of the girls she passed. While
satisfied with her modest blue suit and her shoes and stockings, she
concluded her hat had too great variety and quantity of coloring and on
Monday, as soon as they were dismissed, exchanged it; having first
informed the milliner that she had worn it to church. The milliner
replied: "That's nothing, many of my customers have hats sent on
approval and wear them to church, returning them on Monday."

After exchanging her hat she called upon Mrs. Allen. The Allen home, an
old red brick house with massive colonial pillars, a slate roof, thick
walls and large rooms with high ceilings, was more than sixty years old;
and Judge Allen, who was fifty-five, had been born in it. Several of the
rooms had open fire places. It had first been heated in that way; then
with grates and a large anthracite stove; then a furnace had been
installed. Recently it had been remodeled and fitted with steam heating
and the most modern electrical appliances. These things were now
demanded by the servants, who refused service in houses not having them.

The Judge would not permit the open fire place of the library to be
removed. They used this as a sitting and informal reception room and an
open fire was kept burning from October to May. One of his clients who
had an extensive woodland on Elkhorn, furnished the oak and hickory
logs. It was in this room that Mrs. Allen received Jeannette.

Mrs. Allen was about fifty years of age, with beautiful, wavy, white
hair. She and Jeannette were of the same weight, one hundred and thirty
pounds, though Jeannette was more than an inch taller. Both had the
general appearance of women who trace their lineage from English
ancestry, through the cavalier stock of Colonial Virginia; brunettes, of
clear cut feature and slender, graceful bodies; eyes either gray or
brown--Mrs. Allen's were brown, Jeannette's were gray.

When shown into the library, she took a seat in a great chair in an
alcove which commanded a view of the street, and while waiting sat
thinking how many times John might have sat in that place and perhaps in
that very chair. Mrs. Allen came to the door, where she stood looking at
Jeannette a moment or two, until she turned her head and saw her; then
she stepped forward and took Jeannette's hands and stood looking her in
the face.

"You are just as John said you looked; a serene and beautiful face; eyes
that make even an old mule trust you." Then she put her arms about her
and kissed her; and led her back to the chair in which she had been
sitting.

"Mrs. Allen, I believe I would have known you anywhere. John had your
nose and eyes and the same general expression. I am glad I look as John
said I did. If you had shown surprise at my appearance I would have been
disappointed."

"I do not understand how John could have described you so accurately. I
could have picked you out among the hundreds of girls in the University.
There are many things we will never be able to understand."

Mrs. Allen did most of the talking; telling Jeannette all about John
from the first hour she held him in her arms, until he died with her
arms about him. They shed no tears, feeling that he was with them and
wished they should be happy when together.

When Jeannette rose to go Mrs. Allen said: "No! You must remain for
dinner. My husband will be home soon and he is anxious to see you. Only
the other night he said: 'I am sorry John did not marry Jeannette before
he died. She would be here as our daughter and we would have something
to live for. It would be nice to have the young people coming to our
home again; and we could find a good husband for her; such as our boy
would have made. When she comes do not let her go until I see her'."

Jeannette sat down again.

A little later they heard a step in the hall; the door was opened and a
man stood in the doorway. Just such a looking person as John would have
been at his age, only slightly larger.

"Mary you need not introduce us. It is Jeannette. We are glad to have
you in our home; would be glad to have you make it your own." He came
forward as she arose and took her hand; and as he held it looking into
her face his eyes slowly filled with tears.

From then until after dinner, which was almost immediately announced,
the conversation was general. When they returned to the library
Jeannette had to relate her past life in detail and disclose all her
plans for the future. When they finally let her go it was late, and
though she told them she did not mind walking home alone, they
accompanied her to the dormitory.

Upon their insistent invitation she gave up her room at the dormitory
and came to live with them at the beginning of the mid-winter term;
remaining a welcome guest until the close of the school year in June,
1919, when she returned to Big Creek.

Mrs. Allen wrote repeatedly, addressing her as daughter; and in each
letter insisted that she must return to Lexington and live with them as
such. She also received a letter from Judge Allen in which he stated:
"Mary and I desire formally to adopt you as our daughter." She answered:
"You and Mrs. Allen have taken from life much of its loneliness and
filled it with more happiness and love that I expected to be mine. When
I return, if you still wish it, I will live at your home as a daughter
during my remaining school year; and though I must leave you then, will
always give you a daughter's love. I cannot consent to a formal
adoption, which necessitates a change of name. I owe it to my parents to
bear the name they gave me until I am married. Had your son lived, I
have indulged the dream-like joy, that at his suggestion it would have
been changed to your own."

She telegraphed when she took the train for Lexington. They drove to
Winchester where they met her and taking her into their car brought her
home with them. She was given John's room which was large and cheerful
and was delighted with it.

Mrs. Allen made the young people of her set welcome at her home; and it
was not long before all the time that Jeannette could spare from her
studies was given to entertaining her friends and being entertained by
them. Late in November she gave Jeannette a formal party; and it was
reported in the Lexington and Louisville papers as a brilliant affair.
From then on, the old home, which had been closed to social gayety so
long witnessed many entertainments; the first being a Christmas
house-party of Jeannette's school friends.

She graduated with class honors the following June. Judge Allen, in
order to keep her with them, used his influence to secure a position for
her as a substitute teacher in the university; and it was tendered,
though she was not yet nineteen. She declined, saying: "I am too young
and inexperienced for so responsible a position. They can easily find
some one better fitted for the work; I must return to Big Creek to my
own people; they need me."

She took leave of Judge and Mrs. Allen, who were as a father and mother;
gave up a luxurious home, agreeable society, the association with
educated people; refused a position of some honor, with a salary of
fifteen hundred dollars a year; and returned to Big Creek; where the
only human ties were the hill-side graves; where she had no personal
friends, only the old mule, the birds, her mountain, the creek, Big Rock
and her books.

At a salary of fifty dollars a month she resumed teaching the Big Creek
school. There were thirty-three, boys and girls of all sizes; she had to
mother some, to whip others, to use diplomacy with those too big to
whip; she had to teach them manners and religion; the girls to sew and
read and write; the boys to respect their mothers and their sisters; to
leave moonshine alone; to quit swearing and "chawing" tobacco; to inject
ambition into them--make them understand that the "big man" was not he
who could drink the most moonshine and spit the furthest. It required no
study on her part to teach them; that is the book part, as they were
intelligent. The mental strain was to manage them, to improve their
manners and morals, in the face of adverse home influence in many
instances--this required much patience; and once when very severely
tried, she murmured: "What would Job have done today?"

The Blairs still occupied her house; and she boarded with them, walking
two miles to the school house, except when the creek was up when she
rode the old mule. Her world had suddenly narrowed to the two miles of
creek valley; her companions were the Blairs, the children and her
books; life had grown lonely and serious. She still heard voices, but
they were sad; what they told she wrote into story and verse. These
stories and verses she mailed to the editors of the magazines she read.
They were all returned with printed declarations: "The editor regrets
that the enclosed manuscript is not available for publication, etc.,
etc."

She would then read the verse and stories published by the periodicals
which had rejected her productions; and being satisfied that hers were
equal in thought and literary merit, despite the rejections, persevered
in her attempts, accumulating quite a collection of rejected
manuscripts.

Last week's mail had brought back two poems, which scanned perfectly and
which she thought quite satisfactory. She had called them--"A
Questionnaire," and "Other Little Boats." At the foot of the printed
rejection slip the reader had scribbled in an almost illegible hand:
"Why not select a more cheerful subject and adopt a jazzier style--we of
today would reject Milton's Paradise Lost. M. A." Bearing this criticism
in mind, she wrote and forwarded "A Genealogy" and it was accepted.

These three poems are reproduced in order that the reader may himself
judge of their merit; and because to a certain extent they convey an
idea of Jeannette's mental state at the time.



A Questionnaire.


        I.

    Why was not room made for thy mother in the inn?
    Why wert thou manger-cradled, Lord? Could not heirship
    From Israel's greatest king procure for her
    Who bore thee, more than a pallet of straw in a stall;
    And for thee a cradle of fine linen and soft down?
    Why did not an angel whisper: "Blest inn-keeper,
    Give thy best, this is Christ, Son of the Living Lord?
    Is the world to know only its own? Thankless man,
    Never to practice thy teaching; or see thy star?
    Is he waiting for signs and wonders; believing
    Battalions of angels will compel him to worship?
    Thy birth-night, did not the heavens declare thy glory?
    Did not an angel choir sing thy cradle hymn?
    Yet to man thou remainest the carpenter's son;
    Though the wise of earth waited--and prophets foretold;
    Lauding Bethlehem of Judah as thy birthplace.
      "And thou Bethlehem, Land of Judah,
      Art in no wise least among the princes of Judah,
      For out of thee shall come forth a ruler,
      Who shall be shepherd of thy people Israel."

        II.

    Are only common people, pawns of life, shepherds,
    Who abide in the fields and keep watch day and night,
    To see thy angel herald and hear his evangel:
    "Behold I bring to you good tiding of great joy,
    For unto you is born a saviour--Jesus the Lord?"
    Do only dreamy shepherds like the Maid of France,
    See and hear thy choir as it sings: "Glory to God,
    Exalted One--on earth peace, good will towards men?"
    Do only the old and feeble, living in the past,
    Or waiting for the consolation of Israel,
    Like Simeon; cling to life until they see the Lord?
    Do only the lonely Annas, eighty years widowed,
    Know thy face because of their fasting and prayers?
    When will we who delve for gold, lift our eyes skyward;
    And seeing the star, worshipfully come and give;
    Remembering thou didst come and give--as prophets sang:
      "And thou Bethlehem, Land of Judah,
      Art in no wise least among the princes of Judah,
      For out of thee shall come forth a ruler,
      Who shall be shepherd of thy people Israel."

        III.

    Is thy epiphany known only to wise men,
    Living near the morning sun?--Those who saw thy star
    And followed as it led, came to worship, saying:
    "Israel, where is the One born king of the Jews?"
    Are only those who are led by an angel or a star,
    To know and worship thee? While we, though thou art here,
    In our own town, to be our guest and bear our sins;
    Refuse to take thee in; saying: "There is no room."
    Will but the few, the wise and great, coming a long way,
    Find thee--having found, worship--having worshipped,
    Give treasured gold, frankincense and myrrh; while we,
    When thou knockest at the door of our dwelling,
    Tenanted by false gods, say: There is no room here;
    We entertain more appropriate guests, old friends;
    Go to the public khan; there you will find shelter,
    A stall, a manger and a little straw--Yet the prophets sang:
      "And thou Bethlehem, Land of Judah,
      Art in no wise least among the princes of Judah,
      For out of thee shall come forth a ruler,
      Who shall be shepherd of thy people Israel."

        IV.

    As Herod the King, not loving thy appearing,
    Shall we, when Magi tell us thou hast come, decree
    A massacre of babes; and in blind and willful
    Destruction, mark our mad way with the red blossoms
    Of martyrdom; until Rama is a land of tears
    And Rachel unconsoled weeps for her children?
    Since it was not God's will that the babe should perish,
    The foster-father a dreamer, was angel-warned;
    "Hearken! Arise! take the young child and his mother;
    Flee to Egypt and remain until I bring word;
    At Herod's death return." Thus the child escaped.
    Not so the man, whose mission was death in my place.
    Though he went about doing good, teaching and healing;
    I followed to betray; and after his arrest,
    Cried: "Give us Barabbas! Crucify him! Crucify!"
    He died for his sheep, deserted, though prophets sang:
      "And thou Bethlehem, Land of Judah,
      Art in no wise least among the princes of Judah,
      For out of thee shall come forth a ruler,
      Who shall be shepherd of thy people Israel."



Other Little Boats.


      I.

    For His chosen of the land of Canaan, God made six seas;
    But low-lying Galilee, skirted by oleander trees,
    Resting in the bosom--reflecting the emerald hills
    Of Gennesareth, Valley of Abundance, was God's gift
    To His son; the place to begin his ministry to men.

      II.

    Capernaum, on the western shore, where loved to rest
    Desert-dried camel drivers, traveling to Damascus;
    Was to the Messiah, nearest home, the place loved best.
    These homeless wanderers, by sweet visions were elated,
    Charmed by music of the sea, God had consecrated.

      III.

    The fisher boats of Bethsaida, manned by forceful men,
    Pinnaces of Herod, patrols of the Roman nation,
    Glided over the limpid sea, or rode at their station;
    While near the vine-clad villas, moored to wave-kissed wall,
    Cushioned craft rocked sleepily, waiting twilight's call.

      IV.

    To Capernaum, one day, came a man whose face was sad;
    They should have cried Hosanna! but her people were not glad.
    A few thrilled with gladness and asked: Who might be he?
    Wise blind, among them, answered: "Why, a carpenter, he;"
    And their evil spirits trembled, while gladness lit the sea.

      V.

    With eyes of gladness, He beheld shepherds guarding the flocks;
    Husbandmen hedging tender vines about with walls of rocks;
    And workmen toiling mightily to harvest the ripe grain.
    With eyes of sadness, He saw man, whom God had made master,
    Unprotected; straying, shepherdless, courting disaster.

      VI.

    The father whispered: "The hour is here, shepherd my sheep;
    The wage for atonement." So He gave the call: "Do not weep;
    I come to offer the bread of life to the hungry soul;
    To open the eyes of the blind; to make the broken whole."
    Did his own receive Him? They crowded Him into a boat.

      VII.

    From this floating altar, He spoke to them of the sower:
    "Behold, there went out a sower to sow; it came to pass;"
    And other parables; until twilight, dispersed the mass.
    Then His message delivered and the day's work done at last,
    Said to His disciples: "Let us pass to the other side."

      VIII.

    Following after, "there were with Him other little boats;"
    Bearing those minded to receive him, having heard His call.
    The Master slept, cradled on the bosom of His own sea.
    His deep serenity was not troubled. Why should it be?
    He had spent the day healing; and tendering life to all.

      IX.

    Mid-way a storm arose and whipped the sea to anger.
    His disciples watching the wild, wind-lashed waves pile high,
    Were frightened. Thinking the boat sinking, began to cry:
    "Master, carest thou not that we perish? The boat will fill!"
    And he arose, rebuked the wind, saying: "Peace be still."

      X.

    They wondered at the calm. The wind knew the voice of God.
    They had not said: "O Master! save the other little boats!
    The men following us are in distress! We are with Thee.
    There is no one with them who can still tempest and sea!"
    And the Master wept, knowing His own received Him not.



A Genealogy.


    Fancy, fairest of the fairies,
    Wedded Light, first of creation.
    Unto them was born a daughter,
    Hope, most graceful of earth's creatures.
    Vision, traveling from earth to heaven,
    Saw her flitting in high places;
    Charmed by her face and figure,
    Boldly made her his prisoner.
    When he found all dreams were of her,
    And his thoughts clung close about her,
    Fearful now that he might lose her,
    To increase the ties that bound her,
    Gave her Love and thus he held her.
    Thus was born earth's fairest daughter;
    Eldest child, and the most tender;
    Who brought with her of God's treasure,
    Service in unending measure.
    This was given unto Adam,
    As he slept in peaceful Eden.
    To them came a second daughter,
    Of mystic, immobile figure,
    Who never strayed from her way,
    Nor wavered in her purpose.
    'Twas Faith, invisible virgin;
    Pure priestess of Immortality.
    The incense from her altar fires,
    Bears man's prayers to infinity.
    Next unto them was born Reason,
    Skeptical chemist, who would test.
    All pearls in mind's muddy acid;
    And if found unsoluble bury them,
    Wrapped in the shroud of denial.
    Reason wandering in the dark,
    Met Caution, a sombre maiden;
    To them was given a son, Doubt;
    Dark visaged and night loving;
    Shadow to himself and others;
    Blind leader of the nearly blind.
    Hope saddened by a first shadow,
    Sought relief in fair Tomorrow,
    Land of Sunshine, Realm of Gladness;
    And there found Truth, dwelling sublime,
    In isolation, on a mountain.
    "Come unto man's world, brightest jewel;
    Cure earth's sadness, dispel darkness;
    Bring light to Vision, end Doubt's mission,
    Demonstrate Reason, cure sick Faith."
    Truth, unarrayed, unafraid, came;
    First beseeching from Infinity
    A kindly monitor for man.
    "Give to man's soul to know the right."
    "Thou goest, and thou art the right."
    "But Darkness, Doubt and Reason,
    Hedge him about. What shall be done,
    To keep his soul from strangulation?"
    "I have given Vision, Hope and Faith;
    And Truth when found will make him free."
    "He needs more; Darkness and the Devil,
    Have entered thy fair garden."
    "Take then, and bear to him, O Truth,
    The flame-like, still, small voice, Conscience."

The first month Jeannette resumed teaching was the stormiest; the
children tried her out; she came through victorious, her supremacy
established. By the end of the third month all the children loved her;
and then things ran along so smoothly that she described her life to
Mrs. Allen as: "so contemplative and uneventful as to make the social
dissipations you promise an inducement; a year's shopping, of clothing,
stationery, a typewriter and books, makes the visit almost necessary;
and then I shall see you and Judge Allen, that makes it most
attractive."

During the year her school had slowly grown until it ranked as the best
country school in the county. The children had been transformed in
appearance and disposition, until the neighborhood noticed the change,
and people would say, "there goes one of Jeannette's children."

In the spring of 1922 one of the young men who had graduated in
Jeannette's class came to Hyden. He made inquiry and found out that she
was earning fifty dollars a month teaching a small school on Big Creek.
He then called upon the county superintendent and the county judge and
informed them that a year or so before she had refused a position in the
State University that paid more than three times the salary she was
receiving; giving as the reason, that her duty was to her own people.

This information, with the trimmings that gossip added, made Jeannette a
heroine locally. It was suggested that they should elect her county
school superintendent; but the man who wanted the office called their
attention to the fact that the statute declared the incumbent must be
twenty-four years of age. Then she was suggested as a candidate for
several other county offices by the local newspaper, "The Thousand
Sticks;" but when interviewed, declined with thanks.

Then at a meeting of the school board she was elected principal of the
Hyden public school. When the place was tendered she asked until August
first, to answer; and the board agreed to keep the place open for her.

Jeannette's school in 1922 closed on the twenty-third of June. She was
in the habit of visiting the Allens each year at the beginning of her
vacation, but Mrs. Allen's health being poor they had gone to the sea
shore for a couple of months and did not expect to return until the last
of July. They had written asking her to join them, but this she declined
to do, saying: "I will defer my visit until you return, probably coming
to Lexington the middle of August, unless I can be of real service by
helping you."

About the first of July, Simeon Blair informed her that his cousin Sandy
Blair was coming to spend a few days with him. There was plenty of room
as she had built a wing of two rooms, which she occupied as a study and
bed room.

Although she had never liked Sandy, she could not object. She looked
upon his visit as of little importance; though she was sufficiently
interested to inquire as to what he had been doing since he had joined
the army in 1917. Simeon replied: "Sandy was in Germany three years. He
came back last January and was sent to Mexico. I asked him but he did
not say what he was doing, except that he had quit the army. I guess he
has been dancing and frolicing around with them Mexican senorinas. You
know how he loves to dance and fiddle. He's a big fellow. He hasn't been
working much. There are no corns on his hands; they are almost as soft
as yours, Miss Jeannette. I saw him yesterday at the mouth of Big Creek.
He don't gab as much as he used to."

When Mrs. Blair blew the horn for supper, Jeannette came in from the Big
Rock, where she had been reading. The others were already at the table;
and as she entered the room, a tall, broad shouldered, red headed man,
dressed in blue overalls, a hickory shirt and laced army boots rose up
and came forward to meet her. She saw it was Sandy and was surprised
that he rose to greet her and did not resume his seat until she was
first seated. He also called her Miss Litman, instead of Jeannette, as
he had always done.

She watched him during the meal. He had little to say; did not eat with
his knife or drink his coffee from the saucer as he used to do. All his
clothing except his boots appeared to be new. After watching a while,
she thought: "the same old Sandy; nothing worries him; he has a
pleasant, intelligent face and he certainly is good looking; but his
hands are too white and soft for a working man's. I guess he will marry
some poor woman who will work herself to death supporting his family,
while he fiddles and dances through life."

After supper, Simeon asked him to play. She noticed that his violin was
of German make and evidently a fine instrument. He played "Turkey in the
Straw," "The Arkansaw Traveler" and such other local dance music as had
been played when her granny was a girl. He did it so well that she was
satisfied with training he would make an accomplished musician.

She got out her own violin, an inferior instrument, with the idea of
giving him a lesson; first showing him how to hold the bow properly. For
some cause he could not get his fingers just right until she placed
them. Then they played together. He made many mistakes; but her teaching
had made her very patient. They sat up until eleven o'clock, which was a
late hour for that household, because they arose at daylight, about four
o'clock at that season; when Jeannette said: "I must go to bed; you have
had enough instruction for one lesson."

"But, Miss Litman, play just one piece for me as it should be played."

She got out her most difficult music and by lamplight played it for him.
He seemed enchanted.

"Please just show me how that last part goes."

She did so, saying: "Now you try."

He played well, though he made many mistakes. As she rose to leave, the
clock having struck twelve, he played a few short connected bars, the
part she had found difficult, so divinely, that she said: "Do that
again. You seem gifted of the gods; they have let you stumble into the
perfect way."

He tried; but the way was as strangely closed as it had been opened.

"Oh! it is half past twelve! Good night, Sandy."

She went to bed; and dreamed of choirs invisible. Sandy walked up the
creek until he was beyond hearing at the house; then he played "Angel
Voices" as it should have been played. He came to the house, slept and
dreamed; not of angel choirs, but of graceful wood nymphs; and their
queen's name was Jeannette.

The following evening, Sandy got out his fiddle, saying: "This hayr
fiddle is shore a fine box;" and he played Turkey in the Straw,
improvising variations that put life into their feet and made them think
dancing was close akin to worship.

"Miss Litman, will you give me another lesson?"

She declined; thinking it might lead to a misunderstanding. He might
think that she desired his company; and she only liked educated men.

                                  ----

Sandy Blair, on December 15, 1917, left Red Bird for Louisville and on
the 18th enlisted in the regular army. He was sent to Camp Taylor; and
when fitted out by the supply sergeant, insisted that he must have a
fit. He pursued the policy of the importunate widow so persistently that
when he came forth his well developed chest, broad shoulders and lean
muscular legs were so fittingly encased as to make him the most
conspicuous of the four hundred and sixty "rookies" who that day had
been received and outfitted.

He represented that he had been sergeant in a company of the state
guards for more than two years and in order to substantiate the
declaration paid his corporal to induct him to the manual of arms and
follow up the introduction by several strenuous drills; in the meanwhile
finding an excuse for evading the first drill or two to which his raw
company was subjected; though he stood to one side watching and
listening carefully.

He paid the corporal two dollars to drill him all Sunday afternoon; and
when he suggested that he would be too stiff and sore to drill the
following morning, answered: "Not on your tin type. I may have a rookie
head but my legs are veterans. Don't think these few pranks will worry
these hayr arms and legs; I have put in the last five winters swinging
big fat gals. And I've got a back like a pack mule, made to tote things
on; but it's never been broke to a pack saddle and never will be."

On Monday he took his place with his company and went through the drill
with the snap and precision of a veteran. As intended, he caught the eye
of the captain; and when he was told to step forward, saluted him like a
general; and stood at attention.

"Well, my man, what experience have you had?"

"Two years as drill sergeant, Company C, -------- Regiment of the
Kentucky State Guards."

"What is your name?"

"William L. Blair, though most people call me Sergeant Sandy Blair."

"Return to the ranks." (This order came near getting him--but as the
captain turned away, he resumed his place in line.)

The captain looked his way and wrote something in a note book.

A few days later the company was reorganized and he was made a junior
drill sergeant, the superior of the corporal who had drilled him.

The corporal considered the story too good to keep. It reached the ears
of the captain and he told it to the Colonel, threatening to send Blair
to the guard house. But the Colonel said: "No, send him to me."

Blair presented himself; and after a most deferential salutation, stood
at attention. The Colonel leisurely looked him over. While Blair guessed
the cause of the summons, he never shifted his eyes from a spot about an
inch above the Colonel's head. He stood as a marble statue, and without
the least change of expression; though he heard the Colonel laugh and a
moment later snappily say:

"Sergeant Blair, where are you from?"

"Red Bird, Clay County, Kentucky."

"So you are an accomplished drill sergeant?"

"Have me shot as a liar, if my legs are not veterans."

"Are you a good marksman?"

"The best in America."

"Go at once to the rifle range. I'll be over shortly. We will see if you
are as good a marksman as drill sergeant."

At the rifle range he found about twenty-five other soldiers who had
been selected for a test of marksmanship. As the colonel and his captain
had not yet arrived, he stepped up and from a dozen rifles chose one and
examining it carefully appeared satisfied and laid it to one side. When
the officers came up the men were informed that each was to fire five
rounds at the three hundred yard target.

The Colonel turning to Blair, said: "Blair, you begin the test, as your
nerve might be shattered by the strain of delay."

From the time Blair could hold a rifle out and reach the trigger he had
scarcely laid one aside, except to attend a dance, eat and sleep. His
first shot missed the bull's eye about an inch, the second was on the
edge and all the others went square into it. He made a better score than
any of his competitors. The next day he was promoted to sergeant major
and made instructor on the rifle range.

On the sixth of March, 1918, his company sailed for France. In May they
were doing service in the front line trenches.

After the armistice was signed, Lieutenant Blair was sent to Coblenz,
Germany, where he remained until January, 1922, when he was ordered
home, returning on the transport Crook. He came back as Captain Blair,
of -------- Infantry. During the more than three years he was in
Germany, he gave all of his leisure time to study and music; and when he
left, spoke German and French fluently and played the violin like an
inspired professional.

Upon arrival in New York he retired from the army; and with the
recommendations given him by his general, his former colonel and the
captain who wanted to send him to the guard house, who was now a major,
asked and was given a position in the general offices of the Standard
Oil Company. When it was discovered that he spoke German and French
fluently, had considerable executive ability, particularly in handling
red-blooded men; he was sent as an agent to Tampico, Mexico, to see what
he could do towards straightening out the rows between the Mexican and
American employees. In June he was ordered to return to New York to make
a detailed report and for instructions. The officers were so well
satisfied with his report and what he had accomplished that he was
tendered a responsible position in Mexico at a salary of $300.00 per
month, American money. He accepted; and before returning, asked and was
granted a month's leave, to visit his old home on Red Bird; where he had
not been since December, 1917.

                                  ----

It was late afternoon. Up the valley where the shadow of the mountain
rested, the night creatures were waking up and had begun their chorus,
which would grow in volume as the shadow deepened. Jeannette, who had
been reading under the shade of a great vine, which formed a natural
bower in which she had placed a rude table and chair, came out upon Big
Rock, where the light was stronger. She did not reopen her book, but sat
meditating--how the memory of John Allen, which had clung to and filled
her mind and life for so long, seemed slowly becoming a memory. She had
never loved the real John Allen, but a spiritual personality; a creation
of her own fancy, which she had placed in the body of John Allen as she
had remembered him, and made this creation a living soul; and the
combination a standard by which she gauged all men.

She recalled, how five years before she had rejected Sandy Blair,
feeling his wooing an insult. Had done it because--he was ignorant--was
shiftless--no, but because she measured him by the Allen standard; and
since, looking for her Allen, had discouraged every man who had
attempted to make love to her.

And Sandy Blair--he had again come into her life. Strange, that now
whenever she thought of John, she should think of Sandy. "My books, the
creatures of this quiet nook, the trees, the creek, the mountains, God's
altar for my prayers, these are my companions. John is my thought love,
with whom I enjoy a mystic union that will last through life--as long as
I am faithful. These are my interests, my life, other than teaching, and
form and fill it and keep it free from what might otherwise have made it
a weary materialism. These have transformed my very common, every-day
life, raised me above a dark loneliness to contentment and at rare
intervals into the company of the stars. Yet now the change threatens, I
do not understand, I seem to feel a slow suffocation of the soul
threatening me. Can it mean that--must I find some one to love? Must I
quit weaving the web of my life with that of a mystical love?"

She was just beginning to realize that while her mind spun with this
fantastic thread of life, another part of her being, the flesh, demanded
other company, and held another distaff and spun quite another thread.
She had yet to learn that a perfect love gives not only the mind but the
body. That without the giving of both, love ends in darkness; and that
to find happiness the two threads must be entwined and followed into the
light.

She did not comprehend why now, when she saw John's face, which had
always been so distinct, it seemed gradually to fade and merge into
Sandy's. Sandy as he looked, when several nights before he had sat and
played to her. She was vexed with herself--but even more with Sandy.

Young lady; you are about to have that experience which has come to
every woman since Eve. God's plan is breaking from its chrysalis before
you. The slowly fading spirit of John is entering the lists in conflict
with Sandy's materialism; it is the conflict of the intangible with the
tangible, the memories of yesterday with the hopes of tomorrow. You will
act as second for one or the other. Faithful in the start you may follow
behind the spirit; but if you follow the way of your sisters, and they
go the right way, you will end by wishing you were second to the man who
seeks to drive the wraith away. Mayhap you may shift your allegiance
early in the conflict--who knows? You do not, nor do I. Take care!
Beware! Your long dream of John may end by kissing Sandy.

"Nonsense."

At this inopportune moment Sandy climbed upon the rock, saying:

"This shore is a nice place, may I set down."

"You are welcome to the seat Mr. Blair, but you must excuse me, I was
just going to the house."

He sat down; his face as red as his hair; provoked at Jeannette's abrupt
departure. But when he recalled that she had called him Mr. Blair for
the first time in his life, he was consoled, believing that it evidenced
progress in his suit. He realized that he had made an impression of some
kind; and his experiences, which were not limited, suggested that even
an awakened animosity was better than the indifference of the past
years.

Jeannette felt ashamed for having run away. "Running from Sandy
Blair--sakes alive! Why did I do it? Have I grown timid? Am I afraid of
Sandy Blair? I suppose he's laughing at me. Well, tonight I'll give him
another lesson on the violin, just to show him, light-footed,
empty-headed young men of his class mean nothing to me."

Sandy rose from the supper table and after a yawn remarked: "It's too
quiet around here for me; I think I'll go up to Hiram Lewis'." He took
his fiddle from its case and tucking it under his arm, put on his hat
and stood for a moment in the doorway. Hiram Lewis was their nearest
neighbor and had two daughters of marriageable age.

Jeannette who had read all the afternoon and really desired to hear him
play their mountain music, which he did so capably, was disappointed.
Without understanding the cause, she felt embarrassed at the thought of
asking him to remain; and would not do so directly.

"If you are going you better put your violin in its case. It's going to
rain."

"My what?"

"O, your fiddle then; if it gets wet it will affect its tone."

"O! the sound it makes. If I stay will you teach me to play that hard
piece of yours?"

"That was my intention; but do not let me detain you."

"My intention--is that the name of the piece?"

"No, sit down Sandy, I'll get my fiddle."

Jeannette went to her room for the violin and music. While there the
thought occurred they had better use her reading lamp instead of Mrs.
Blair's smoky, smelly, tin one, which gave but a feeble flame; removing
the green shade, she substituted one of pink silk which was much
prettier and which transformed the light into a more becoming tint.
Carrying it into the other room she placed it on the small table near
the door, and sat down beside it, her face tinted by the shade. The
Blair family were on the porch, just beyond the doorway; and Sandy sat
on the door-step, almost at her feet; his bright red hair and smiling,
healthy face in the full glare of the light.

As he played she noted his mobile features, which betrayed their owner's
feelings by sudden changes of expression. She had always thought his
face an agreeable one; now first she noted its expressiveness and
evidences of character and determination; attributes, which she had said
he lacked.

Her musing was interrupted by the Blair family coming in the door. They
were in the habit of retiring with the chickens; and their cousin's
playing was no reason for a violation of the rule. After they were gone
Sandy seemed to play with even more perfect expression. She marveled at
the ease and certainty with which he played his homely pieces. "He is
quick and with a few lessons would soon learn to play better than I
can--perhaps with training he might make one of the world's great
musicians. I will teach him the notes, and how to hold the bow. His
habits are good; he neither chews nor drinks, as most of our boys. I
believe he would make a good hus--; but he is uneducated."

Just here Sandy looked up: "Listen! I worked this out yesterday and call
it 'Voices Jeannette Hears.'" He played something not much louder than a
whisper, a chorus of all the still small voices she had heard about her
home--the wind, the birds, the brooks, the crickets, the spirits of the
hills and dells; little prayers of praise, little prattlings of joy and
happiness--yes, and of love. She felt so happy; and yet so very, very
lonely, for someone or something to love. A tear found its way down each
cheek and two others nestled on her lashes, loath to leave the fountains
of their birth. When he finished neither spoke. He did not look towards
her, but out into the darkness of the peaceful, starry night.

While thus they sat it seemed to Jeannette that something with a touch
light as a feather and lips soft as the petals of a rose brushed her ear
and a joyous little spirit with a dulcet young voice, such as she had
never heard before, whispered: "Is he not handsome? Do you not see how
quick he is to learn? Teacher, teach him! you can in a few months. How
delightful to educate him; mould his fresh, open, plastic mind; make of
him not alone a husband but a soul companion; which you could not do
were his soul awake to its full strength and vision. Jeannette, it is
springtime for you; be not a virgin of steel; let your soul bud and
flower, the blossom of life is love, let it bear fruit. Would you die a
spinster with a drying heart, knowing only a spirit love, little better
than a dream? Cast off this sombre veil that you have wound about your
heart; open your eyes; do you not love him? I have brought Sandy to
you."

She rose from her seat and in a voice not much louder than the one she
had been listening to, managed to say: "Good night, Sandy," and left the
room.

He did not move, though he answered: "Good night," and as her door
closed added: "O Life! O Life! I have found the place of thy dwelling."

He laid his violin upon the table and went out into the night. The night
was not dark, though there was no moon. The stars were bright, they
seemed to be holding a carnival. The night was not cold; a midsummer
breeze stirred the trees; the leaves whispered of love and threw kisses
to the stars.

Jeannette slept with a red rose on her pillow; and before she slept
looked out the window at the stars and thought of many things.

                                  ----

"Jeannette, have you any letters to mail, I am going to the Big Creek
postoffice?"

She gave him one addressed to the editors of ----, which contained the
manuscript of some verses--"The Heart of Things"--the first of her
published poems. She offered the loan of the old mule, saying: "It's
more than twelve miles; will you be back tonight?"

"Yes, I'm traveling light; twenty-four miles is a mere stroll; and I
shall return, much as I imagine the old mule would, at a brisker gait,
because I'm coming home."

She said nothing more; being surprised by Sandy's speech, which had
suddenly dropped the mountain idiom.

When night came she sat on the porch until after nine o'clock, then she
went to her room, fearful that if Sandy should come and find her there
he might misunderstand; might think she had been waiting--but the idea,
that's impossible. She tried to read, she had not read much lately, she
was not in the mood; blew out the lamp--and just afterward the gate
opened; and she heard him enter the house and go to his room.

She spent most of the following day until late afternoon in her bower
under the great vine; then went for a walk along the path which skirted
the left bank of the creek, the way of the foot-traveler, to avoid
repeated fordings, necessary if one followed the road.

Along the path were scattered scraps of letter paper and a little
further on she saw an empty envelope from the War Department, addressed
to Captain William L. Blair. When she returned, she asked Simeon: "Who
is Captain William L. Blair?"

"I don't know no Captain Blair. Sandy's name is William Lees Blair, but
everybody calls him Sandy. O! I saw that name the other day on a letter
he brought back from Big Creek--'Captain William L. Blair, U. S.
A.'--the letter had been sent him from Coblenz, Germany. Do you reckon
Sandy was a captain?"

Jeannette began to suspect that Sandy might be amusing himself at their
expense. At supper she was formally courteous; she first thought of
calling him Captain Blair, but changed her mind and addressed him as Mr.
Blair.

When the supper dishes had been put away and the chores done, all of
them sat upon the porch until Simeon announced it was his bedtime; when
he and his family retired.

"Jeannette, will you give me a lesson on the fiddle?"

"All right, Sandy. Would you like to know how to read music? In music
there are signs standing for sounds, as the letters of the alphabet in
combination form words, by which we express our thoughts. Do you catch
what I mean?"

"Yes, I guess. But that's funny. I thought you just learned the tune."

"Put your chair near mine; I will show you some of the signs and
symbols. What's a symbol, Sandy?"

"Down in Mexico they tell me the gals play on them; banging them on
their elbows and knees; that is the big ones and the little ones they
click in their fingers."

"Well, Sandy, this is another kind. Now this is a symbol in music,
telling--" and so she went on for some time, Sandy listening
attentively, with his head very near hers and their chairs as close
together as he thought the occasion would justify.

When she finished he said: "Miss Jeannette, please play that fine piece
of yourn?"

She played it through, then arranging his fingers on his bow, showed him
just how he should stand; and playing a few notes at a time, instructed
him to replay them.

That part of the music which was difficult and she felt satisfied she
had not played correctly, it struck her Sandy played with greater ease
and expression than she could do; but he made horribly ludicrous
mistakes in the easy portions. Intentionally, she had misplayed a
portion and when he reached this part he played it correctly. Then she
knew that for some reason he was fooling them.

"Now Sandy, play it alone. Do your best, I shall go out on the porch and
listen."

He started off in a halting amateurish way, making many blunders; as he
played his mistakes became fewer, his touch fuller; gradually he forgot
his purpose to deceive, the music was a favorite; towards the end he
played as she had never dreamed the piece could be played.

He came out on the porch and sat down beside her. Neither spoke. He knew
she was no longer fooled.

"Jeannette, I can read and write."

"Write something so I can see; you may be fooling me."

He felt in his pockets for a scrap of paper but found nothing. Then he
opened a card case and taking out his card, wrote on the back a few
words.

She went into the light and read: "_Chi si marita alla svelta si pente
adagio_. William L. Blair."

She turned the card over and read "William Lees Blair." She called out
the door, "Good night, Captain William Lees Blair;" and went to her
room.

He did not see her again until the next afternoon. He heard her singing
on Big Rock, and walking down to the creek, followed up the bank until
he came to the foot of the rock. It was very steep on that side, almost
unscalable. She heard him climbing up. His hat fell off; a moment later
his bare red head peeped above the surface, then his smiling, ruddy face
rose slowly over the edge, much as she had seen the full red moon rise
over the edge of the cliff that capped her mountain.

"Jeannette, really, I can read."

"Let me see."

And he wrote on another card:

"_Ah vie! Ah vie! Jai trouve la place ou tu demeures._"

She took it saying: "Now since you have had your second lesson in
penmanship, you may go home. I am busy embroidering a Christmas present
for a friend and as this is the twenty-third of July, am too busy upon
it to be disturbed."

That evening Simeon and his wife sat out upon the porch; Jeannette and
Sandy upon the door-step. He had his fiddle and was playing "Turkey in
the Straw," keeping time with his foot, his face lit by a happy smile.
Jeannette's slipper tapped the floor in minor accompaniment. She looked
into his face; saw the brightness of it in the darkness, and whispered:
"Your music is most suggestive: I never felt so much like dancing as I
do tonight."

Sandy thought his cousins had forgotten their rule of retiring with the
chickens. The old rooster crowed. "Listen at Old Speck, he thinks it's
almost day." Simeon gave an enormous yawn; they thought he would never
close his mouth. It went shut with a snap, followed by the remark: "It's
time all honest folks were in bed." It was nearly nine o'clock; and he
and his wife went in.

How glorious the night; how peaceful and starry; a time for visions, not
words, therefore no one spoke. The bold, bad captain, taking advantage
of the darkness, made Jeannette's hand a prisoner. It fluttered as a
frightened bird; then it lay still, either having lost hope of escape or
resigned to a captive fate. Suddenly it escaped.

"Captain, I'm surprised! Get pencil and paper; you must have your third
lesson in penmanship. Look on the mantel and bring me a couple of
matches."

He took a card from his case and wrote: "_Jeannette, Mein Liebchen:
Willst Du mich Heiraten?_"

He handed her the card; she read it; the match went out. There was a
little scuffle, a smothered exclamation. A great owl, whose downy wings
made no noise, lit in the elm by the gate and observing them through his
night optics, exclaimed: "Who! Who!" Surprised, the captain released his
prisoner; she darted into the doorway, calling: "Goodnight, Captain,
hope to see you tomorrow."

Her dream love ended that night; the talisman that drove it from this
material to the spirit world, where it was doubtless happier, was a very
human kiss. Most of you girls know the kind--they were smuggled in from
Europe when our boys came home.

The following afternoon, Jeannette, book in hand, sought the shelter of
her vine-clad bower. On the bench was a note which she read. She had
just finished it, when the Captain stood at the entrance.

"Come in, Captain, it is time for a reading lesson."

He sat down beside her, took the book and read--almost a page.

"If you do not care for the book read this." She handed him a card,
marked in the upper left-hand corner, "Lesson No. 1," and he read:

"_Chi si marita alla svelta si pente Adagio._"

"Translate; I do not read Italian, or is it Spanish?"

"Teacher, I do not want to."

"If you do not I will send you home."

"Well, here goes: 'Marry in haste and repent at leisure'."

"Just such sentiment as I expected. May I ask if you are speaking from
European experience?"

"No, merely quoting an absurd axiom."

She handed him another card, marked "Lesson No. 2."

"Read."

"_Ah vie! Ah vie! Jai trouve la place on tu demeures._"

"Translate."

"O Life! O Life! I have found the place where thou dwellest."

"You may give a more specific interpretation of your meaning at the
close of your lesson. Read this," giving him a card marked: "Lesson No.
3."

"_Jeannette, Mein Liebchen: Willst Du mich Heiraten?_"

"Translate."

"Sure, sure. 'Jeannette, My Love: Will you marry me?'"

"Now you may read the poem I found in here. It seems to be in your
handwriting."



A Voice Jeannette Should Hear.


      I.

    Jeannette, by man though rarely seen;
    Is a friend of Running Water,
    To the Mountain, fairest daughter,
    To the forest, stateliest queen.
    She hears mystic voices whisper
    As a spirit to his sister.
    Songs you and I have never known.
    The trees speak of coming showers,
    Earth creatures of twilight hours;
    The owl tells secrets of the night,
    The robin sings of dawn's delight,
    The lark of harvest and ripe moon;
    But when love whispers I'll call soon,
    She's thinking of the distant moon.

      II.

    Jeannette, think you your paradise
    Will always remain quite this nice,
    Unless real love shall come as guest?
    Fair one, think you the summer sun
    Will last until your life is done
    And spirit love not flit away;
    Nor sun sink low in golden west,
    Nor night come round at end of day?
    Do you not fear those long, black nights,
    Which come with winter's storm and rain,
    And put an end to life's delights,
    Giving voice to trouble and pain?
    Then whisper to love the password,
    And he will enter, having heard.

      III.

    Sentiment may own yesterday,
    But love today has right of way;
    Hope builds castles for tomorrow,
    Of warm sunbeams, not of sorrow;
    Memories drape life with sadness;
    Love walks hand in hand with gladness.
    To the past we dedicate tears,
    Love owns today and coming years;
    Take his warm hand and walk with me;
    Let life be what the future be,
    I wish it spent, Jeannette, with thee;
    And when old age delves in the past,
    May love say, "I have held full sway,
    For memories fair crown each day."

                                  ----

Then, for more than an hour, an angel without the bower, kept strangers
away and enjoined silence. He did not stand with flaming sword, but with
finger on his lips.

                                  ----

They walked down to the old field below the Rock House. Near its center
was an old dead tree; and on the tip of the topmost snag a lark sang.

"Listen, do you hear what he says."

"No, he's whistling like any other meadow lark."

"Translate."

"I do not know the language."

"I do; 'Love, thou art safe! art safe! I watch for thee! for thee!'"

They led the old mule to the barn, and gave him ten ears of corn and two
bundles of oats. Sandy got up at daylight the next morning and repeated
the dose; the old mule knew something was up. Then Sandy came to the
house and put on some clothes that had been sent up from Red Bird.
Jeannette came to breakfast a little late; she had on a short-skirted
riding habit. Simeon and his wife tried not to show their surprise. She
kept still; he exercised less restraint or exhibited more curiosity than
his wife--they say men have more. "What's up, Sandy? Why have you put on
your Sunday clothes, this is Saturday?"

And Sandy answered: "Jeannette and I are going to Hyden to be married."

"Well, I'll be d----d! How're you going?"

"She'll ride the old mule; I'll walk and lead the beast."

"Why it's fifteen miles; it'll take all day."

"That's all right."

"You better take my horse."

"No, Jeannette wants to ride the old mule and wants me to lead him.
She's boss until tomorrow."

"Well, I'll be d----d!"

                                  ----

It was nearly midnight when they came home again. After feeding the old
mule, they sat down on the door-step.

"My Captain, will you get your violin and play some real music?"

"Jeannette, how did that old mule ever manage to travel to Hyden and
back with such a load of sweetness?"

"By dint of placing one foot before the other, Sandy. We were only
sixteen hours on the road; we made nearly two miles an hour. I do not
think I would care to hear 'The Arkansaw Traveler' after that journey;
but suppose you end the day, it must be merging into the morrow, by
playing 'Turkey in the Straw.'"

The old familiar tune awoke Simeon and he awoke his wife. "Listen,
Mandy! those crazy things are back. Hear Sandy, he's playing 'Turkey in
the Straw;' that boy will never settle down." He called out: "Go to bed
and give other people a chance to sleep; or else keep still and start
breakfast."

In a little while the house was very still. There was no sound except
the chirping of the cricket of the hearth. You who dwell in cities and
know nothing of firesides, may not appreciate his simple song.



The Cricket's Song.


      I.

    Chorister of the hearth,
    When stillness reigns, I sing
    To God, Eternal King,
    Praises for the fireside.

      II.

    Thy simple souls dwell here,
    Content throughout the year.
    Love garlands every day;
    Peace keeps harsh words away.

      III.

    Grant the door open wide
    For young and happy bride,
    With husband by her side;
    May their sweet dream come true.

      IV.

    When morning star doth rise
    Joy comes; the baby cries;
    New mother with glad eyes,
    Beholds hers and Thine own.

      V.

    Make this a place of rest;
    The place that God loves best;
    The place where love abides;
    God bless our happy home.




BIRTH-MARKS



CHAPTER I.--"And to Every Seed His Own Body."


When we speak of birth-marks our mind first pictures a physical
impression, probably some bodily characteristic transmitted from an
ancestor; though mental habit or mind trait of ancestry is transmitted
with more consistent regularity than mere physical resemblance.

In a sense our ancestors in us are immortal; not because there is a
human imperishableness, but we are heirs to certain family peculiarities
and sometimes are afflicted with a restlessness that causes us to fan
pinionless wings to reach heights we never fathom and of which we
scarcely dream. My meaning can best be conveyed by example.

On a certain day in May a species of plover appear in great number on
the northern plains of British America. There they nest and rear their
young. The Indians take these birds when unfledged nestlings and make
pets of them; and as they grow pluck their sprouting pinions. By
environment they are robbed of all life suggesting the migration; yet
when the day of southward flight rolls round, the cripples grow restless
and seeking to rise on pinionless wing, end by climbing to a perch,
where for several days, unceasingly, they beat the air with stubby,
outstretched wings; uttering the while that plaintive whistle, which is
never heard, except when the bird is on its migratory flight.

                                  ----

The fire on the hearth, forgotten and dying, cast a faint glow
disclosing a home-like room of good proportions and two men seated at a
red deal table facing each other: Donald McDonald, a Scotch Presbyterian
preacher, and his son, Archibald Campbell, who though a gentleman
farmer, was a kinsman of the Campbells of Argyll. A casual observer
would have noted that the men were nervously anxious, watching, waiting,
perhaps praying for some one dear to both and ill in the adjoining
chamber.

The young farmer, as the silence is broken by a shrill wail of protest
from his for-some-time-expected son and heir, starts from his chair in a
clumsy effort at noiselessness and moves towards the bedroom door. His
companion, rising, lifts his hands as in benediction and prays aloud in
a tense, subdued voice, which seems to blend with the now lowered voice
of the whimpering babe. The father does not hear the old man; his
thoughts are of and for the mother and the babe; and unknown to him,
tears channel an unused course down his cheeks. So they stand for some
time; until the baby, hastily cared for and placed near his mother's
breast, grows quiet, having discovered there is more in life than a
wail; then the fat old mid-wife opening the door tells them that the
baby is asleep and they may see the mother for a moment.

They tiptoe into the other room and to her bedside, trying hard not to
make a noise, though the thick oak floor boards seem to creak as never
before. She holds out a hand to each. Her husband, trembling, bends and
kisses her quivering lips. She draws down the covers and he looks upon a
little red and wrinkled thing, that might almost sleep in comfort in his
hands--his boy! his only son!

For the first time he calls her "mother," saying: "Mother, we shall call
him McDonald Campbell, using your family name, he is more yours than
mine."

"No, neither by my name nor after you, Archibald, but John Calvin. He is
our first born; and the nurse says is without mark or blemish."

And the boy was called John Calvin Campbell.

                                  ----

Prior to the Rebellion, Donald McDonald of the McDonald Clan, had lived
in the vicinity of Fort William. At its close, with his family, a wife
and two daughters, he moved to a small fishing village on the North
Channel in Ulster, to which point most of his congregation had been
transported.

His son-in-law, Archibald Campbell, was born in Argyllshire, in 1740. In
1766, disregarding the protest of his family he married Mary McDonald,
whereupon his father sent word: "In this marriage you have disregarded
my advice and disobeyed me. Your wife, the daughter of Dissenter
McDonald, will not be received as one of my family. You are welcome to
come home when you wish; but it is hardly probable that you will visit
where your wife is not an honored guest."

In the spring of 1766, Donald McDonald and family, with some twenty
members of his small and more or less persecuted congregation, emigrated
to the Virginia Colony; and after several weeks spent in the Tidewater
country, moved westward and settled in the western foothills of the
Virginia Valley, in the vicinity of Jackson River Meeting House.

As Archibald Campbell's family continued to treat his wife as a stranger
and her friends and relatives, except a sister, had gone to America, she
found it very lonely. Seven months after her father and mother sailed
she received letters from them telling how satisfactory they found the
new life and what pleasant prospects the new country offered; and from
that day she persistently importuned and finally prevailed upon her
husband to sell their farm and join the colony.

The day before sailing they sent the effects they intended taking aboard
ship, including a young cow, two heifers and a coop of chickens,
surrendered possession of their home and were just leaving for the inn,
when Mr. Campbell's father, who had been watching them, drove up in the
family carriage and made them go home with him. There his son's wife was
at last received as a daughter. His mother and sisters met her at the
door and cried when they kissed her. They remained over night and when
the time came for sailing, the whole household accompanied them to the
ship.

His father in a voice husky with feeling, though he managed to keep back
his tears, said: "* * * Here is a letter of introduction to Peyton
Randolph of Virginia; he is not as loyal to the Crown as he might be but
he is a good man; and here is a wallet containing three hundred guineas.
This sum with the four hundred and fifty which your cousin paid for your
farm, will give you a fair start. I have paid the passage of Richard
Cameron; you know him, the son of the gatekeeper. He is to go with you
as an indentured servant; but I had first to promise his father that you
would see that the boy is educated and brought up in the Presbyterian
faith and when discharged from your service shall be given seventy
guineas. This sum I will provide, either by forwarding it to you or by
making provision for its payment in my will. I understand that there are
several servants and slaves aboard for sale. I would advise the purchase
of a slave; he becomes your absolute property, whereas the term of
service of an indentured servant seems always to expire at a most
inopportune time. Here are ten guineas to buy a pony for my grandson,
John Calvin. The little Dissenter is every inch a Campbell of Argyll.
God bless and keep you and your family safe on the voyage and in that
far land. I am sorry I ever said anything against your marriage, Mary is
as fine a woman as there is in Scotland. God bless you, boy!"



CHAPTER II.--Emigrants.


Their ship, a large, slow trader, plying between English and Scottish
ports and Norfolk, Virginia, sailed from Greenock on the twenty-seventh
day of August. She belonged to the Colonial Merchant Marine and was
owned and operated by three rich planters, whose exports of tobacco and
imports of plantation supplies and labor guaranteed half a cargo for
each voyage.

The usual passenger list from America consisted of planters with their
families visiting the "Old Country;" or their children coming over to be
educated in European universities. The list and cargo of the return
trip, as usual, consisted of emigrants, slaves and supplies for the
plantations, a few merchants, adventurers and travelers. There were
twenty-five cabin and sixty-three steerage passengers. The majority of
the steerage were indentured servants and slaves; though there were
perhaps as many as twenty emigrants, artisans, trades people and petty
farmers who traveled in that manner, husbanding their small capital to
purchase lands in the new country. Of the cabin passengers, ten were
returning planters and members of their families; the other fifteen
consisted of five gentlemen and their families, who, like Archibald
Campbell and his wife, followed kindred or friends and expected to enjoy
better material conditions and greater freedom in the New World.

Among these were David Clark and his family, natives of Argyllshire and
the only persons aboard Mr. and Mrs. Campbell had known prior to the
voyage. Mrs. Clark, who was Mrs. Campbell's sister, had expected to make
the trip to America with the McDonald Colony, but had been prevented by
a serious illness.

The voyage proved slower than usual, owing to the prevalent light winds.
The ocean was as placid as an inland lake, the weather quite warm and
sultry; and nearly every day there was a light shower or thunder storm.

A friendly spirit, such as exists in isolated rural communities pervaded
the ship. Class distinctions were eliminated. Even those sailing as
steerage passengers were allowed greater deck privileges because of the
extreme heat of their quarters; and thus made the acquaintance of the
planters and their families and shared in the general cordial spirit.

Each planter became a zealous emigrant agent for his community and
plantation, promising employment to such of the passengers as might
settle in his neighborhood. Their efforts induced quite a few to change
their original plans, and decision as to location rather than social
cast finally grouped the passengers, those becoming intimates who
expected to be neighbors in the new country.

There were three distinct groups. Those destined for the Northern Neck
and for the York and James river plantations headed by the three
planters, made the most numerous and affluent party. Those crossing the
Blue Ridge into the Virginia Valley, intending to settle at the McDonald
Settlement on the headwaters of Jackson river, nearly all Presbyterians
from Ulster or Dissenters from Scotland, made a second, nearly as strong
numerically, though not so rich a party. A third group of twenty-two
persons consisting of four former small land owners who had lost their
holdings, three recently released political prisoners and their
families, with a Baptist preacher, William Hickman, driven from home by
misfortune or persecution, intended settling where class and religious
restrictions were unknown or disregarded; and therefore were headed for
the extreme frontier settlements on the Ohio.

One cabin passenger was treated as a pariah by all. Mrs. Campbell asking
her husband about him was told: "O that Spaniard, Carlo Sebastian! 'He's
a spirit,' that is, one who lives in a seaport town and lures young
people to his tavern, where they are kidnapped and held prisoners until
they can be sold and transported to the colonies as indentured servants.
He started in that way and still continues the practice, though his
business has grown until now he contracts with the government and buys
at first hand political prisoners and criminals. Under the English code
there are three hundred offences punishable with death; sometimes the
judge trying the case deems this too severe; and having the option,
sentences such prisoners to transportation. Sebastian buys and resells
them to the planters. He has a third source of supply from rural or
peasant laborers who find conditions of life almost impossible at home
and yet have no means of getting away. Under the law, such can only
labor in the fields of their own parish. When they find it impossible to
subsist on the very small wage they earn at home they indenture
themselves to him, willing to pay five years of service for
transportation to the Colony; where labor is the only thing that is
high. At the end of their bondage, they emigrate to the frontier, take
out a patent for land and start in for themselves as landed proprietors,
usually becoming substantial citizens.

"Yesterday, telling him that I expected to buy a slave or two, he showed
me his stock. He has seven men, three grown women, a girl of fourteen
and three boys about Richard's age, all of whom are indentured. He also
has four black slaves, three men and a clean looking young negro wench.
He holds the indentured servants at prices ranging from twelve to
eighteen guineas delivered at Norfolk and the slaves at twenty-five to
thirty-five guineas. The young white girl seems quite frail, but is
refined looking. I believe she will die during the voyage, confined in
the foul air of her quarters and with such food as Sebastian provides.
We better buy the negro wench at twenty-five guineas to help you; and if
he will shave his price to thirty-three guineas, I will pay that for my
choice of the negro men. Father says the slaves are better investments
than the indentured servants; they stand the climate of the lowlands and
are your absolute property; by the time the indentured servants are
broken in and acclimated they have formed, and are only interested in,
their own plans; and it is almost impossible to hire them after they are
freed."

"Oh, Archibald! We must not buy any slaves. It is wrong. One person
should not be sold to another as a cow or a horse. It is bad enough to
own the right to the services of another for a term of years, even
though he voluntarily sells himself, or is so punished by the law. I
should like to talk with the poor women and the sick girl. Can we not go
down and see them?"

"Not unless Sebastian asks us to do so."

"Here he comes. If you ask, he will show us his servants, the indentured
ones."

"Sebastian, my wife desires to see your indentured women servants. It is
possible we might make you an offer for one."

"Very well, come this way. I am not responsible for their filthy
condition; I offer them clean clothing and water, but they prefer their
dirt."

Mrs. Campbell, when she saw the little girl, was deeply moved and
inclined to express her indignation, but controlling herself, said:

"This girl must have attention at once. She is quite ill."

"No. She is sea sick."

"What do you ask for her? She might help me with the baby and the
housework."

"She is to be bound for seven years and her price is fifteen guineas."

"But Sebastian, you offered her to me yesterday for twelve. I will give
you that for her."

"Yes, but your wife needs the girl."

The girl, roused from the lethargy of her fever by the talking, held out
her hands to Mrs. Campbell and in a voice broken by fear and sickness,
pleaded:

"O, Lady! Take me away! You do not know what I am forced to endure. This
man dragged me aboard and will sell me as a slave. I am very ill and so
dirty. I cannot eat the food. Do not leave me in this place and with
him. I am afraid."

"Dear, we have made him an offer and if he will sell, will give you a
good home. He sees our hearts are moved and has raised the price he
asked. Mr. Sebastian, the girl is ill and you will lose her if she is
not given immediate attention. My husband will give you twelve guineas
and we will move her at once."

"No. If you want her you must pay fifteen."

"Come Mary, that will do. Let the trafficker in human flesh keep her and
bear the loss. Let him have the burden of her murder on his conscience."

"O, Lady! If you do not take me I shall not try to live. I would rather
die than complete the voyage and be sold as a beast of burden. If you
buy me I shall get well and be a faithful and willing servant."

Mrs. Campbell, stooping down, kissed the dirty face of the sick girl and
whispered: "We have every intention of buying you. Refuse to eat
anything except what I send you. I will send Richard down today with
clean clothing and something nice to eat."

Within the hour Richard was sent to the hold with clean clothing, bed
linen and some broth. The Spaniard took the articles saying:

"Hand them to me; you cannot go to my quarters."

As soon as Richard was out of sight he drank the broth; calling it
sloppy stuff; and that evening sold the clothing and bedding to the wife
of an emigrant.

The next day he told the girl: "Your fine friends have forgotten you.
That is the way people do. Some old bachelor or an Indian chief will be
glad to get you."

Each day Mrs. Campbell sent food to the girl and asked to see her, but
Sebastian would not permit it. He ate the food himself or threw it away.

Several days later when he was showing his stock to one of the planters,
he found the girl raving in delirium. Believing that she would die
within a day or two, he hunted up Mr. Campbell and offered to sell her
for twelve guineas.

Mr. Campbell looked at the girl. She was quiet at the moment and
conscious, though her face was flushed, her hands twitched and her
breathing was labored. He believed she would die and regretted not
having bought her for fifteen guineas. To punish the Spaniard for his
inhumanity, he told him the girl was dying; then after some delay
offered eight guineas for her. This he accepted, after much swearing at
his ill luck, complaining that he had paid four guineas for her
transportation and two to her aunt.

Mrs. Campbell immediately arranged for more comfortable quarters and
when she had been moved, removed her filthy clothing and sponged to
cleanliness and comfort her hot, dirty body. With a sigh of exhaustion
she dropped into a deep sleep which lasted several hours. Within a few
days she was convalescent; then she gained strength and flesh rapidly
and before the voyage ended had completely recovered.

One of Sebastian's servants had voluntarily indentured himself for five
years to obtain transportation to America, with the design to become a
landed proprietor at the end of his service. He had seen Mr. Campbell
purchase Ruth Crawford and judging by the act that he would make a
considerate master sent a note to him, stating that he was a farm hand
of experience and proposed to serve his master faithfully until the end
of his service.

Mr. Campbell looked him over; and satisfied with his physical appearance
and appreciating that an experienced and willing servant was a better
investment than a stubborn and inexperienced one; for seventeen guineas,
became the master of John Mason.

Mr. Clark purchased the negro wench and a black man slave. He would not
invest in the indentured servants, giving as his reason that he did not
care to drill a servant five years and lose him just when he was most
needed or had become efficient.

The ship came to anchor in Elizabeth river, off Norfolk, at noon on the
twenty-second day of September. The next day those bound for the
Virginia Valley chartered a river boat to carry them to Ricketts, just
below Richmond, and shifting their belongings to it, sailed up the James
River, making their first landing at Williamsburg.

At Williamsburg, while their wives were shopping, the men called upon
Peyton Randolph and presented the letter which Mr. Campbell's father had
given him. At the time he had more influence than any other man in the
colony.

He read the letter and turning to Mr. Campbell said:

"I recall the very pleasant visit I made your father. We were great
friends and were at the Temple together. He says you desire my advice in
the selection of a location. If you were a man of considerable means you
might buy a plantation on the York or James River or in the Northern
Neck; but he says you have less than a thousand pounds. I therefore
advise that you ascend the James River in boats or canoes to Balcony
Falls and then proceed overland into the Valley. There you and your wife
as Scotch-Presbyterians will feel more at home than with the Conformist
planters of Tidewater, Virginia. You know Virginia was settled by rural
Englishmen, who brought their church and class distinctions with them.
Class distinctions are more closely drawn in the Colony than in England;
and in eastern Virginia it would be some time before you would be
treated as a neighbor. Even though you are a kinsman of the Duke of
Argyll, the women would never forget that your wife is the daughter of
Dissenter McDonald.

"Since 1745 Irish and Scotch Presbyterians have been pouring into the
colony and traveling westward have settled in the valley between the
Blue Ridge and the Alleghanies, where they engage in raising cattle and
growing wheat and Indian corn. They are democratic in their ideals,
insisting upon religions freedom and self-government. On the other hand
planters of the Tidewater country are satisfied with things as they are;
as the law recognizes their church and they as social and political
leaders rule the colony insofar as Parliament has delegated authority to
the colonists. They live in great plantation houses conveniently near to
navigable streams; so as to have access and a highway to the ocean. The
streams swarm with small craft which furnish a way of social intercourse
between plantations and a gateway to salt water.

"About fifteen years ago eastern Virginia was very prosperous. It was
the golden age of the planter. In 1758 the colony exported seventy
thousand hogsheads of tobacco; but its culture is declining, labor is
dearer, the land is becoming impoverished and there are threatened
embargoes and even a prospect of war with the mother country; which
would destroy the industry and bankrupt the planters, as its growing is
almost wholly for export. The labor in its production is severe, the
initial outlay is great and the plantations growing it buy all their
food and forage. Its almost exclusive cultivation and facilities for
water transportation has given a fictitious value to land along
navigable streams and created the slave and bond-servant market, which
in my opinion is a curse to Virginia.

"I therefore advise that you cross the mountains into the Virginia
Valley and there buy a considerable acreage, if possible partly
improved, and engage in raising cattle and growing wheat and Indian
corn, for which products there is always a demand and a local market."

His visitors were not only grateful for, but were impressed by the
advice he gave them and told him they intended to follow it. Then after
an exchange of invitations and pleasant farewells, they joined their
wives in the capitol grounds as had been arranged and returned by
carriage to the landing; where, hailing their boat, they were taken
aboard and the voyage resumed.

A short while after re-embarking they passed Jamestown, where the first
English colony in America maintained an almost futile effort for
existence against starvation, the lowland fevers and, worse still, the
dissensions and jealousies of their leaders. Little was left of the old
settlement. On the low ground a few tumbling ruins washed by the tide
marked the town-site; and on a point above, some ivy grown walls and
moss covered, weather stained tombstones with half obliterated
inscriptions marked the site of a once pretentious church.

They knew the history of those first colonists; how landing they spread
an old sail overhead from the trees, "to shadow them from the sunne,"
and all, one hundred and five, gave thanks to God. How in a few days,
they had a more substantial place of worship, where they held "daily
common prayer, morning and evening, every Sunday two sermons and every
three months holy communion." Here also in 1612 they built "an hospital
with four score lodgings--for the sick and wounded or lame, with keepers
to attend them for their comfort and recoverie."

How in that first winter, when their food was exhausted, Pocahontas came
with burden bearers, bringing hampers of venison and corn, which "saved
many of their lives, that else, for all this had starved of hunger." How
years later, Captain John Smith writing of her to the Queen said:
"During the time of two or three years, she next to God, was still the
instrument to preserve this colony from death, famine and utter
confusion, which if in those days had once been dissolved, Virginia
might have lain as it was at our first arrival to this day."

During the voyage from Norfolk to Richmond, the party learned much of
the country and the people. Archibald Campbell wrote his father
describing people and country:

"The shores of the broad, sluggish, brackish river are a succession of
tobacco and corn fields or marshy overflowed land. The plantation
houses, usually of lumber, have a dozen rooms; and as the family grows
in size or importance, wings are added to the main building to meet
demands. The houses are furnished in such style as to indicate that
tobacco, if not now, has been a paying crop.

"The men and women of the planter class dress in clothing imported from
England or France. The men wear camlet coats, lace ruffles, blue
waistcoat and trousers of broadcloth or velvet; and their shoes are
adorned with silver buckles. You should see the women! They wear
gorgeous silk and satin gowns of bright colors; their bonnets and
petticoats are trimmed with silver and gold lace; their stomachers and
mantles are ornate and gorgeously colored.

"They seem to have everything to eat. Food is cheap and abundant. Great
flocks of duck and geese feed in the salt marshes; they get fish and
oysters from the shallows and inlets; deer and wild turkey are common in
the swamps and in the interior. Their orchards furnish fruit; and they
have such vegetables as we grow in England and also native melons,
cymlins, pumpkins and Indian corn.

"At the public gatherings and entertainments the planters and small
farmers are inclined to a spirit of carousal, but not more so than the
English country gentleman.

"Dancing is commonly engaged in; cards and dice are the gambling games;
the livelier outdoor sports are horse and boat racing, wolf drives, fox
hunting, turkey shooting and at night coon hunts; while fishing, gigging
or striking by torchlight, nine pins and competitive marksmanship are
the quieter outdoor sports.

"Weddings, muster and court days are general holidays. A wedding is a
season of extravagant and protracted gayety, lasting a week. Guests in
the main come from considerable distances, in their private barges or in
carriages, or on horseback, with their wives and daughters riding behind
on pillions. All are entertained at the plantation house, usually
remaining for several days.

"The law requires all to attend church. Thus great crowds gather and
mingle, not alone for worship, but before and after the service, for
social and business intercourse. Many bring their dinners in hampers and
friends gathering in groups share a common spread. The women thus
exhibit their latest gowns and the men talk politics, trade horses and
barter for tobacco.

"The plantation house is the community center and from it a lavish
hospitality is dispensed. The planters are jealous of their social and
political honors, which seem attached as prerogatives to the plantation.
They even object to the establishment of a church in the neighborhood of
the one supported by the plantation. They intermarry with the
neighboring planter's family; and are slow to take up a stranger, though
of good family.

"At Curles landing, at the site of the old Nathaniel Bacon plantation,
we were given and accepted an invitation to spend the night. The house
was a ten room structure, built upon an eminence overlooking distant
reaches of the river. Its white stuccoed walls and commodious pillared
porch, made it very distinguishable in contrast with the background of
green timbered hills. Four less pretentious buildings flanked each
corner and back of all were the whitewashed cabins of the 'quarters.'

"The dining room walls were decorated with English hunting scenes and a
great sideboard held the silver and pewter ware. The library had many
shelves of books, quite a few of which were Elzevir editions. The walls
of the hall were covered with portraits of a cavalier ancestry. All the
furniture of the lower floor was of solid mahogany and imported.

"Two sons of the family are attending Cambridge and have not been home
for a year. The daughter who is at home is to be married before the
Christmas holidays.

"Judging by Mr. Lee and his visitor, the planters are essentially
English; having all of the Englishman's pride of race and love for home.
They spoke of England as home, until the conversation turned to
England's right to tax the colony and the law requiring tobacco to be
exported in British bottoms; then they flared up, declaring: 'We of the
colony will never submit to such unjust and arbitrary laws; and if
necessary will fight before submitting to such tyranny.'

"We are now at Richmond, which was first called 'None Such,' then Forte
Charles, then was known as Byrd's Warehouse. The town, founded by
Colonel Byrd, was incorporated in 1742."



CHAPTER III.--The Settlement.


The Meeting House, or as they were beginning to call it, The McDonald
Settlement, capped a half dozen of the eastern Alleghany foothills at
the head of Jackson River.

It was a community of some twenty farms, grouped for protection and
company in such a way that four farm houses occupied each hill top near
the central intersection of their respective boundaries. All were
huddled about a large hill, capped by a grove of oak and sugar maple
trees, which sheltered the stone church and the community school house
of hewn logs. This arrangement had been possible because the whole
boundary had been purchased and laid off by the trustees of the church.

The settlement was not only prosperous, but peaceful and homelike. Its
inhabitants had never deemed it necessary to build a block house though
more Indians visited their community than the less remote settlements
which had suffered from attack and depredation, while they had escaped;
it may have been in part due to the natural mountain barrier just at
their back, but they attributed it to their treatment of the Indians,
with whom they made friends.

The log houses were ruggedly comfortable. As each house had in turn been
built at a community log rolling, all exhibited a similarity of style
and construction. Each was carefully and cozily built, had four rooms
and an attic, a front and ell porch and two large sandstone chimneys. At
the edge of the side porch was the well with its pole sweep and back of
each house was a barn, the lower story of which was of stone and set in
the hill-side, where possible.

While to the casual observer these homes presented little apparent
difference, individuality of ownership was perceptible in ornamentation
as also prosperity or the reverse by the situation and fertility of the
farm and the live stock in the farm yard and pastures.

The church marked the center of the community and was the most
pretentious building west of Blue Ridge. It was of hewn stone with a
wooden roof and spire; and in the belfry hung a sweet-toned bell which
Angus Cameron had brought from Scotland in 1758. There were two front
doors; the one on the right for the men and the one on the left for the
women; and between, extending from the front wall to within six feet of
the pulpit, exactly bisecting the church, was a six foot partition, over
or through which no one saw except some of the boys and possibly a girl
or two; who during one of the regular two hour services each Sunday, had
surreptitiously with jack-knife or gimlet or hair ornament, perforated
it.

By crowding, three hundred persons could find seats on the slab benches.
They were filled to capacity each Sunday and some of the communicants
and visitors rode more than fifteen miles rather than miss the meeting.

When in 1759, Samuel Davies had preached the dedication sermon, more
than five hundred had crowded it. All the settlers of the valley had
attended as well as many from Blue Ridge, the Shenandoah and Greenaway
Court. Now eleven years old, the church was looked upon as an ancient
landmark and known throughout Virginia as the Jackson River Meeting
House.

More than once its doors had been closed in the name of the law, as
enacted and administered by the Burgesses, most of whom were
conformists. When this had happened Davies and other Scotch and Irish
Presbyterian preachers and long and solemn faced ruling elders, refugees
from Scotland and Ulster, Ireland, had gathered at Williamsburg; and so
insistently and ably petitioned, that the easy-going planter delegates,
worried by importunities; not only rashly promised their influence
against further persecution, but legislation permitting to Presbyterians
religious freedom throughout the colony. When the Baptists and Quakers
learned of these promises, they demanded the same rights for themselves,
but met with less favor.

The school house was a large structure of two rooms. The girls sat in
one and the boys in the other; though the classes made up of both,
recited in either room. There were two teachers, Jeremiah Tyler, a
graduate of Oxford and an elder of the church, who taught the advanced
classes, and Grandma McDonald, who taught the little children.

The Shorter Catechism and the Westminster Creed were printed in the back
of the primer; and were taught all beginners. No one was promoted to the
higher grade until he could recite the catechism without material
blunder and could answer the essentials of doctrine propounded by the
creed. The Bible was the text book of the advanced pupils, not only for
its precepts but for its style and because it was the only book, a copy
of which each family possessed.

Friday afternoon the boys and girls of the advanced grade held spelling
and quotation battles. The sly old teacher watched to catch a boy
exhibiting an interest in a girl pupil; then he chose the boy for
captain of the boys and the girl for captain of the girls. The side lost
whose captain was first quoted or spelled down. All quotations and words
were from the Bible and no quotation once recited could be repeated.
Each captain when first called upon was supposed to recite such
quotations as he knew were known by the opposing captain; but no
quotation could exceed a chapter or psalm in length. One of the lazy
boys, having learned from the little brother that his sweetheart knew
the 119 Psalm memorized and recited the 176 verses as his first
quotation.

When supposed sweethearts were not available as captains, the master
would select the laziest boy and girl. Then the school and sometimes the
whole community, exhibiting an interest, would get behind the captains
and by threat and persuasion urge each to earnest effort.

Jeremiah Tyler had emigrated to Virginia from Ulster and was one of the
first to come to the settlement. He had assisted in building the church
and upon its completion had made the journey to Williamsburg to bring
Rev. Samuel Davies of Princeton for the dedicatory service.

While at Williamsburg, being a thrifty Scotchman, he had patented one
thousand acres of fertile land adjoining the community boundary of seven
thousand acres. His patent included a broad and fertile mountain cove of
several hundred acres, overlooking the settlement.

He married Judith Preston in 1762; and they had built their home in the
outer edge of the cove. From the house you looked down upon the houses
of the settlement; and the white church and school house on the hill
stood out against the grove and the green valley beyond, as two
full-rigged ships, with expanded sails on a calm sea.

There they had lived for four happy years, until the winter of 1776;
when in the night, bears came out of the mountains and breaking into
their sheep shed, killed half the flock.

Then he built a bear pen of great logs and caught a large black bear.
The bear in his struggles for freedom displaced a log, which as Tyler
was passing, fell upon his foot and crushed it. His wife unable to lift
it, leaving their daughter of three months in her cradle, ran to the
nearest neighbor's, more than a mile distance, for help and not waiting
until a horse could be caught and saddled, hastened home. Then unmindful
of her own condition, helped with her husband.

The next day a doctor from Blue Ridge removed her husband's foot and
gave her some medicine for "a misery in her side." Within the week she
died of pneumonia; then Tyler and his little daughter went to live with
Grandma Preston. Since that time, no longer able to farm, he had taught
the school, hobbling back and forth from the Preston farm.

Archibald Campbell, seeking a location, visited the Tyler clearing and,
enchanted by the view, brought his wife to the place. It was a fine
October day; the earth was still and warm; the valley green; the
mountain side clothed in vivid autumnal shades made the view perfect in
its loveliness. She insisted that providence had led them to this
paradise.

When school was out he sought the master and together they rode over the
boundary. Tyler told of the four happy years when Judith and he had
toiled in this, their Eden, counting it play, to make it a place of
beauty and peace and altogether a home. He pointed to a cedar grove upon
the mountain side where she was buried; and reserving a hundred acres
around this spot, sold the place to Mr. Campbell for four hundred
pounds. Thus it was the Campbells found their home on the edge of
civilization.

Through October and until the first snow in late November, they toiled,
fitting and provisioning the place for winter; the family living with
Mr. McDonald, while their servants remained at the farm. The house was
repaired and enlarged, the barn loft filled with forage and the shed
with firewood.

Then on Thanksgiving day, established by the Pilgrim fathers in 1621,
and now observed by all the colonies; after a three hour church service
and a family dinner at the McDonalds; they moved to their own home,
where the servants, though the day was warm, had built great fires to
welcome them.

All were pleased with the location and glad to be at home; though for
the first few nights, a timid strangeness thrilled them when the
mountain owls hooted and wolves howled in dolorous cadence at the edge
of their clearing.

The following spring, needing work horses, and learning that Herman Hite
had several for sale, Mr. Campbell, taking his servant Richard and
accompanied by David Clark, rode northward across the divide, to the
Joist Hite Settlement, more than eighty miles distant.

When they arrived at Mr. Hite's they were celebrating his daughter's
wedding and the festivities were to continue for several days. He
refused to exhibit or sell his horses until the festivities ended. They
were quartered with the men in the big red barn, where they slept
comfortably on the hay wrapped in homespun blankets.

Mr. Clark succeeded in stealing the bride's slipper, which the groomsmen
were supposed to guard; and if stolen they were forced to redeem before
she could dance. One of them was permitted to redeem it with a bottle of
wine, after Mr. Clark had extorted the promise of a kiss from the bride
and the privilege of replacing the slipper, which doings, being a
Dissenter deacon, he failed to mention to either his wife or his
father-in-law.

When the marriage celebration finally ended and the other guests had
departed old man Hite expressed a readiness to transact business. They
purchased four horses from him; and then rode to Winchester.

It was St. Patrick's day, and as they rode down the single business
street they met a procession of Dutchmen carrying crude effigies of St.
Patrick and his wife Sheeley. She wore a necklace of potatoes and
carried a peck or more in the folds of her check apron. As the
procession marched by the mouth of an alley, it was set upon by a half
dozen husky Irishmen, who after a fierce struggle rescued the Saint and
his lady.

Home again, they found Rev. Donald McDonald in conference with the other
three Presbyterian preachers of the Valley churches.

Under the Act of Toleration, all Dissenter ministers were required to
apply in person to the Council at Williamsburg, the capital, for license
to preach and for permits to establish churches. This law, the
Presbyterian preachers had found they could now disregard and had been
doing so for some time; enjoying greater religious freedom than the Act
in letter permitted; or than was enjoyed by any other of the Dissenter
denominations. The Baptists petitioned the House of Burgesses that they
might be given "the same indulgences as the Presbyterians."

This caused the Presbyterians to fear that their privileges might be
curtailed; and learning that a bill was in preparation affecting "His
Majesty's Protestant Subjects in The Colony," the Valley ministers met
at Donald McDonald's and after a lengthy conference and long prayers
decided that he should go to Williamsburg as their representative;
carrying petitions from the Valley churches protesting against the
proposed law. In his absence it was arranged that the schoolmaster, who
was also a ruling elder, should fill the pulpit of the Jackson River
Meeting House.

It was on this first Sunday that he delivered a sermon on "Civil and
Religious Liberty," taking as his text Acts 5:38, 39; which was said to
have roused the Valley settlements to active open opposition against the
Mother Country.

On Sunday morning the church doors were opened regularly at nine
o'clock, though service did not begin until ten. From sunrise a person
might stand in the church yard and looking out over the Valley see the
worshippers leaving their distant homes and in convergent and
ever-increasing numbers approach the church from every direction. They
came in family groups or singly; on foot and on horseback; a few in
carriages and farm wagons; sometimes a family on a single horse; the
wife riding behind her husband, with a baby in her lap and a child of
tender years clinging on behind her.

At nine-thirty, the sweet voiced bell was first tolled; most of the
congregation had already gathered in neighborly little groups under the
trees. The women on their side of the yard discussed family news and
local gossip; while the men on their side talked of crops and sports,
hinted at horse trades to be consummated on the morrow and argued over
politics, taxation and religion.

There was a distinct group of several families from far away Greenaway
Court; in the main conformists who at the time having no church of their
own to attend, came to Jackson River. They were kindly received in the
settlement and welcomed by the congregation. They remained to themselves
until the last church bell rang, when they, too, separated; the men
going in the door to the right and the women to the left, as was the
custom of the Valley congregations. Each mother with her girls about
her, walked down the aisle and shooed them into a pew; while beyond the
partition, over which the top of a tall man's head might be glimpsed,
the fathers found seats for themselves with their boys.

The schoolmaster announced and read the hymn, which was considered
necessary, as books were few; then whanging his tuning fork until the
key suited his trained ear, led in singing the hymn--Reconsecration--by
Rev. Samuel Davies.

    Here at that cross where flows the blood
    That bought my guilty soul for God;
    Thee, my new Master, now I call,
    And consecrate to Thee my all.

As he was in the midst of his first long prayer; the one in which it was
the custom to pray by name for the sick, afflicted and dissolute; and
for the heads and representatives of government from the King to the
county magistrate; he was interrupted by the piping voice of
four-year-old Dorothy Fairfax, of Greenaway Court, who sitting near the
partition and peeping through a gimlet hole made by some bad boy, saw
little John Calvin Campbell, of her own age, not more than a foot away.

In the unsubdued voice of infant innocence, she piped out: "'ittle boy,
peep through the 'ole."

He was the grandson of the minister, and while minister's sons are not
always well behaved, it is said their grandsons are; at least John
Calvin, an infant non-conformist, knew better than to talk to a daughter
of the conformist church during meeting. He remained quiet with his eyes
fixed on the preacher with a sleepy stare, while Dorothy's voice grew
louder and more insistent; to the amusement of the younger members of
the congregation, until the thought occurred, that now all peep holes
would be hunted out and plugged by Deacon Cressler, the carpenter.

The schoolmaster, knowing the ways of and accustomed to interruptions by
children, did not waver in the fervency of his prayer, except as the
child's voice grew louder his own was raised in seeming greater
earnestness.

With eyes apparently fixed on a small gable window in the front church
wall, through which a beam of sunlight made a slanting bar of silver he
began his sermon:

"When a stranger far out in the Valley of Virginia sees this church he
is struck by its location and impressed by its look of age and
permanence. He asks its history and is told: 'It is the Jackson River
Meeting House, built by Dissenters, Presbyterians, who came to this wild
land from far Scotland and Ireland, counting the cost and danger
nothing, if they might but find a place to worship God as conscience
told them God should be worshipped. But they have found that even the
groves of the wilderness are not God's free and holy temples.'

"Christ's mission was to wipe out persecution, to tear out the
partitions of prejudice in his kingdom, to establish a universal faith;
yet history shows that persecution, the murderous offspring of
prejudice, remains; that all that is necessary to unleash it, start the
rack creaking and the stake burning is a minor doctrinal divergence; it
may be as to the form of baptism, belief in trans-substantiation or
predestination.

"Churchmen clothed with a little brief authority become venomously
intolerant; instigate the sovereign to acts of oppression, particularly
against kindred sects; against other spiritual warriors serving under
the banner of the cross; leading lives much as theirs were before they
occupied the seats of the mighty and struggling as they once did against
religious intolerance. The commission, 'Go ye into all the world,' is
neglected and the torch of evangelism kindled in the white flame of
sacrifice to light the way, is perverted to light the pyre of martyrdom
of believers, as they, that the Son of God was crucified that Jew and
Gentile, Greek and barbarian might live.

"During the reign of Ferdinand and Isabella, at the very time Columbus
financed by them was cruising unknown seas and finding a new world,
Torquemada, a Spanish monk, having shown special aptitude for
persecution was raised to Inquisitor General; and carried on against the
Jews the greatest religious persecution that as yet has disgraced a
world drenched scarlet by persecutions; which did not end until 8,000
had been burned at the stake, 90,000 had been imprisoned for life and
800,000 had been expelled from Spain.

"In your prejudice you say: 'But Spain is a Catholic country.' Do not
the Catholics believe that there is a God who made heaven and earth, the
sea and all that in them is; and that there is a Christ who made
atonement for the sins of the world? And what more believe you? And are
not they as charitable as you?

"Has Protestant America clean hands? The New World's record of
persecution, opportunity and environment considered, is no cleaner than
that of the Old. The Pilgrim fathers coming to America, seeking
religious freedom, brought with them their prejudices. The churchman of
the Old World brought his doctrinal issues to the New, as the caravan
camel under his burden of ivory and dates and spices, carries his hump.
He was no sooner established by the finding of shelter for his goods and
chattels than unloading the pack he exhibited the old hump, declaring
that God should only hear prayers of repentance and praise in his
particular church.

"Our age of greater freedom and new thought demands a severance of
church and state; but our colonial government, assuming to know and
prescribing as physician its only remedy for a sick soul and a contrite
heart, commands that the penitent shall only offer prayers and God shall
only answer, if they are offered within the walls of the Church of
England.

"Human laws cannot control men in their attitude of mind and heart
towards God; the state cannot compel uniform prayers and hours of
prayer; and faith is an issue between God and the individual. Coercion
makes opinion stronger and constraint makes hypocrites, not converts.

"Again history demonstrates that the persecutor accomplishes nothing
except his own undoing; while the persecuted one, if an advocate of a
great truth, grows to greater things. By persecution faith grows; it
lifts the vail for the persecuted one and he sees into the Holy of
Holies.

"Truth can stand alone. Truth is inherently inextinguishable. It offers
something the world must have. It will never die an outcast. If Scribes
and Pharisees will not hear, Publicans and sinners will listen.

"Because truth is all powerful and will prevail, the Christian religion
will evangelize the world, led by the light of religions freedom.
Gamaliel recognized the infallibility of this truth when he advised the
Sanhedrin, 'And now I say unto you; refrain from these men and let them
alone; for if this council or this work be of men it will come to
naught, but if it be of God ye cannot overthrow it; lest haply ye be
found even to fight against God.'

"When the path of prophet and believer is too easy, the growth is slow.
The sting of persecution is necessary to fructify the seed, to harrow
the field; then follows occasional abundant harvests--never a failure.

"You have read or been told how our fathers were harassed in the Old
Country until they were driven to the New. From 1745, the year of the
Rebellion, until now, our people have been coming to this colony; and at
infrequent intervals have felt that victory, not of religious liberty,
but of toleration, was at hand.

"The fall and winter of 1758-9, we quarried and hauled the stone for
this church and in the summer of 1759 it was completed. Then Mr. Preston
and I went to Williamsburg, where we met the Rev. Samuel Davies and
brought him back to preach the dedicatory sermon.

"On that day the whole Valley was in attendance, as were many from Blue
Ridge and Greenaway Court and Winchester. There were even a few from
Williamsburg and Richmond. Every Presbyterian within a hundred miles who
was able to ride or walk came; and with them many of their friends among
the Quakers, the Baptists, the Lutherans, the Mennonites, the Dippers
and communicants of the English Church. It was God's House; God's people
filled it; the spirit of the Holy Ghost was upon it; the commandment of
the Son was regarded; and crowded out all thought of sect and doctrinal
intolerance. It looked as though there was to be a religious peace in
the colony: and all rejoiced.

"Who brought this about? That greatest of preachers, Samuel Davies, the
greatest orator who has ever spoken in the colony. But I am wrong--not
all rejoiced. Who strangled the movement? Clergymen of the Conformist
Church.

"The seat of an established church is no birthplace for a new faith. The
birthplace of the Christian faith was not in Jerusalem but on the shores
of that placid inland sea on which the boats of the fisher apostles
rested. To the Christian, the first mind pictures of Jerusalem are of
the Garden, the crucifixion and the resurrection. After these comes the
picture of the Savior's lamentation: 'O Jerusalem! Jerusalem! thou that
killest the prophets, and stonest them that are sent unto thee; how
often would I have gathered thy children together; even as a hen
gathereth her chickens under her wing, and ye would not.'

"When I think of the Church of England, it is not of the communicants,
but of their intolerant clergy; who in selfishness of heart undid the
great work of Davies and smothered with tares the seed he had sown. For
them, the vision of Peter has no significance; the command, 'Rise,
Peter, kill and eat' is not heard; the conclusion, 'of a truth I
perceive God is no respecter of persons,' is impossible.

"The Conformist Church is not without the Kingdom. It is an agency of
God for the salvation of the world. Many a communicant loves his
Presbyterian neighbor as he does himself; but some of their intolerant
clergy, nursing jealousy, loving blindness and perversity, delighting in
persecution, would provoke from the Savior of the World, that scathing
denunciation: 'Woe unto you Scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites--woe for
your injustice and oppression; woe for your hair-splitting doctrinal
folly, which strains the gnat and swallows the camel.'

"Today the old issue of intolerance is resurrected and becomes a vital
one by the pending bill to regulate, 'His Majesty's Protestant
Subjects.' If necessary to bury it past disinterment, many of the people
of the Colony will support the new issue: That the Burgesses of Virginia
shall take precedence of authority over the King; and if need be, these
two issues, religious liberty and self-government for the Colony, shall
become yoke-fellows to drag to destruction giant oppression.

"The Presbyterian Church recognizes the divine origin of government; and
that each subject must 'render to Caesar the things which are Caesar's;'
but the right to worship God as God commands and as conscience dictates
is more sacred than obedience and allegiance to the King. We love peace,
but more our freedom; we love our home, but more our equities in the
Kingdom of God; and we will give all for civil and religious freedom.

"It is as great to give your life to, as for a cause. In the Beatitudes
we are told: 'Blessed are they that are persecuted for righteousness'
sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are ye when men shall
revile you, and persecute you, and shall say all manner of evil against
you falsely for my sake; rejoice and be exceeding glad; for great is
your reward in heaven.'

"Visions come with persecution. Paul tells how, after the stoning at
Lystra, he was caught up into Paradise and saw unutterable things. Again
in the account of Stephen's stoning we are told how he looked
steadfastly up into heaven and saw the glory of God; and while they
stoned him he called upon God, saying, 'Lord Jesus, receive my spirit'
and he kneeled down and cried with a loud voice, 'Lord lay not this sin
to their charge;' and when he had said this, he fell asleep.

"He fell asleep. While asleep, the tears were wiped from his eyes; his
vision was strengthened; he awoke in a land where there was no night, in
the presence of God, who said unto him: 'I will be your God and you
shall be my son.'"



CHAPTER IV.--John Calvin Campbell and Dorothy Fairfax.


John Calvin Campbell was a beautiful child, with strangely clear, deep
blue eyes, close clinging golden curls, a complexion fair to paleness,
though tinted to a delicate ruddiness by exposure. He was thoroughly
self-reliant and independent.

The neighbors spoke of him as a strange boy; not that he was mentally or
physically weak; but his manner and thoughts and method of expression
were unnatural in one so young.

His mother looked after him with such solicitude that his father, half
vexed, said: "You are spoiling that boy; give him a chance to live his
own life; I want him to find interest and pleasure in the same things
other boys do."

"If you do, you are going to be disappointed; he is not like other boys.
He is more like his grandfather than little David Clark. He is not
contentious, yet without apparent effort, for the mere asking, he seems
to have his way with other children. Though he is just seven and wanders
about the mountain side alone, I am not worried. When I remonstrated, he
replied with calm assurance: 'Mother, you need not worry, I will not get
hurt, I am learning things;' I have come to believe that what he said is
true. I asked why he climbed out upon the Pinnacle Rock and he answered:
'When on the big rock, I think and learn and see things I cannot here. I
see earth and heaven as one great whole.' The boy seems not to mind in
the least being alone; though he often acts as guide for one of the
older boys to the rock, any one of whom will quit his games to go.
Several times when he went off alone, I followed and unseen watched him
climb carefully to the Pinnacle, where, finding a seat not too near the
edge, he sat looking out over the Valley and seemed to dream in
wide-eyed wonder. The birds flew about as though he were not there; and
the little ground squirrels that burrow in the rocks came out and sat up
and rubbed their faces and combed their bushy tails within a foot of his
hand. When he rose up to come home he held out his little hands towards
the valley as though he would take all that he saw within his tiny arms
saying: 'O the joy of it! the joy of it!' What are we to do with a boy
like that? Let us watch over him carefully and let us follow the way God
leads. Sometime have him tell you what he sees."

He began making his little journeys to the rocks when he was five years
old; first with his mother or Ruth, then alone. Each day from the spring
of 1773 until the following May, his little feet wore a distinct and
narrow path from the kitchen door to his aerie. The people of the Valley
seeing the little boy on the big rock, called it John Calvin's Rock; and
it is so called to this day, though very few know the reason. A local
historian writing of the early Presbyterian settlements of the Valley,
making fact fit theory, refers to the rock as having in some unknown way
been called after the father of Calvinism.

Mr. Campbell first made the acquaintance of Thomas Fairfax and his wife
on the trip to Winchester in 1771, stopping at their plantation on his
way from the Hite settlement. This acquaintance, renewed at the meeting
house, had ripened into a warm friendship mainly through Dorothy's
instrumentality; who, beginning with the peep hole conversation three
years before, insisted on talking with John Calvin every time she saw
him.

The two families occasionally lunched together in the church grove; or
if it rained, the Fairfaxes spent the night with the Campbells, as the
distance to Greenaway Court was great.

The two men for more than a year had planned a bear hunt in the Kanawha
cliffs and at last Mr. Fairfax had come to the plantation for that
purpose, bringing his wife and little Dorothy, who were to remain with
Mrs. Campbell.

He and Mr. Campbell, accompanied by two servants and half a dozen dogs,
crossing over the mountains, camped on the benches overlooking the
wilderness of the Kanawha.

One day, Mr. Campbell with his servant, John Mason, went down into the
river meadows hunting for deer, and while quietly stalking, themselves
unperceived, saw three Indians traveling the path towards the
settlement. As small parties occasionally visited them or hunted in the
valley of the Kanawha, it never occurred to him that it was a war party;
nor were they decorated with pigments and root stain as a war party.

When he got back to camp he told of seeing the Indians; whereupon Mr.
Fairfax suggested they better return home as he had heard just before
leaving Winchester of trouble between the whites and Indians, growing
out of the recent killing of the Logan family by Captain Cresap and his
men at the mouth of Yellow Creek.

                                  ----

The morning after Dorothy's arrival, John Calvin started for school,
nearly two miles away. Dorothy, who, since the day she had commanded him
to peep through the hole, had continued issuing her commands, demanded
to accompany him and had her way as usual. She insisted on sitting with
him in the boys' room. There they sat together and studied and recited
from the same primer. Dorothy could read almost as well as the boy; but
he knew all the Shorter Catechism, while she knew only the first three
pages.

After they had returned home and had dinner John Calvin started for his
accustomed aerie overlooking the valley and Dorothy waited to be called;
then seeing she was forgotten, followed slowly after, up the narrow
path; too hurt to call out and too anxious to follow to be piqued into
remaining.

The little girl of the valley, half way up and nearly out of breath,
stumbled, and slightly hurt, cried out with pain. The boy looked round,
saw and ran back, saying: "O Dorothy! I did not know you would care to
come. Let me have your hand and help you. I will show you the big valley
and tell you what I see beyond."

Hand in hand they finished the ascent; and on the top in the very center
of the great rock he made a heap of pine straw, where they sat side by
side; the boy blue eyed and golden haired, birth-marked by his
Anglo-Saxon ancestry, and the girl carrying from the centuries past her
Norman birthright of brown eyes and dark tresses. As they sat, looking
down upon the valley, her dark curls, tousled by the wind, played tag
with his golden locks.

How different the two children were. Dorothy's eyes and thoughts were of
the valley, which the distance transformed into toyland. The houses
suited the people, who were tiny dolls. The cattle as they came from the
barns looked like the tiny creatures of a toy ark. These she talked
about in a chirpy, rambling way; but the boy, mind-marked by his
forebears, did not hear. He sat and gazed into the May-blue sky, blotted
at intervals with fluffy, half transparent clouds, wind rolled from the
Blue Ridge towards the Alleghanies.

He began to talk of them: "The clouds are the chariots of the angels and
if you watch closely you may see them driving with reins of gold. Above
the clouds, if you look hard and pray the while, you may see the face of
God. The angels watch over us; and if we do something we should not they
drop a tear to wipe out the deed. Sometimes the tears miss their mark
and fall into the sea, and they become pearls. The little shell fish
which live upon the bottom where it is dark gather and store these
treasures in their homes, because in passing from sky to sea they have
taken into their hearts the colors of the rainbow and the sun. When the
Son of God was nailed upon the cross, the angels hiding their faces lost
track of earth and drove their chariots far out to sea, where, in the
dark, undisturbed depths the sad old shell fish dwell; and as they
traveled most of them were too sad even for tears; but a few great tears
were shed and fell great, perfect pearls into the sea. These the old
shell fish found and gathered up. Once in many years one of these old
fellows is torn from his moorings in the darkness of the deep and washed
towards the shore. A fisherman gathers in and opens the old moss grown
shell and, finding the pearl, is very glad--'Wherefore, do ye spend
money for that which is not bread and your labor for that which
satisfieth not. Hearken diligently unto me, and eat ye that which is
good, and let your soul delight itself in fatness. Incline your ear and
come unto me; hear and you shall live.'"

The boy turned towards the girl; and saw an Indian with uplifted
tomahawk standing over her ready to strike. The girl looking up, saw
too, and cowering in terror, crept close to the boy. He, without fear or
hesitancy, rose and on tiptoe reached up and took him by the arm. So
they stood for several moments; then the Indian, strangely moved by the
face of the boy, in which there with neither fear nor anger but calm
confidence that he would not strike, lowered his arm and smiled; and the
boy smiled back.

The Indian, a Mingo chief, who spoke a little English said: "No hurt
little boy and girl but they must come with Logan." He called the two
braves who stood guard at the foot of the rock and ordered them to take
up the children. The boy uttered no sound, but the little girl whimpered
for her mother.

They were carried hastily over the mountain and by the time the stars
came out were on the head waters of the Kanawha. Resting for an hour or
more, until the moon rose over the tree tops, they traveled an old trail
far into the night and, camping, slept until the first light of day;
then on again until they reached the mouth of Meadow Creek, where they
breakfasted on venison and parched corn. Then while Logan destroyed all
evidences of the camp the other two dragged a canoe from the willows and
paddled to a projecting rock, from which the party embarked.

As they were leaving a small black dog with a bark of joy ran up and
jumped into the canoe. It was Jerry, christened Jeremiah when a puppy by
Mr. Campbell, because he was given to much lamentation; later the name
had been changed to Jerry at the suggestion of the boy's grandfather.

The dog as the canoe left the bank gave a couple of sharp barks which
were answered by some one from the woods. One of the Indians, lifting
the dog out of the canoe, silently placed it in the water; knowing that
if he killed it the children would cry out. They paddled hastily along
the shore screened by the willows. The dog for a moment swam after them,
then turned and swam back to the rock.

As they circled a bend some distance below, a man stepped out on the
rock and stooped and helped Jerry out of the river. It was Richard
Cameron.

School had been out some time; even the older boys and girls who were
kept an hour longer than the little ones, had all gone home; yet the
master sat by the window thinking of his dead wife. Glancing towards the
grove of cedars on the mountain he barely made out the two small
children on John Calvin Rock and beside them he saw three men whom he
supposed were the returned hunters.

When he reached home he learned that the two children were lost and that
a searching party had been sent out into the mountains.

Mrs. Campbell and Mrs. Fairfax becoming uneasy at the long absence of
the children climbed to the rock and not finding them, sent Ruth
Crawford, the servant, to the settlement asking for help. They then
called Richard Cameron and after he had gotten his rifle the three,
followed by Jerry, began the search.

It was not long before Jerry picked up the trail which Richard followed
a weary way to the river landing. On the way, in the moist earth at the
spring he had found a few tracks of the Indians and the foot prints of
the children; searching the willows he had found where the canoe had
been cached.

Realizing that the children were prisoners and that unaided he could not
effect their rescue, he hastened back towards the settlement.

Several hours travel back the trail, he came upon the hunters who had
been joined by Mr. Clark and who, having spent the day in search for the
children, were making camp for the night.

He told what he had learned; and after piecing this with the
schoolmaster's story and what they had discovered, they were satisfied
the children were captives of the three Indians they had seen two days
before and who now were making for the Ohio River country.

Resting several hours, they traveled that night to the mouth of Meadow
Creek and in the morning followed down the river bank; finding on every
portage around the rapids traces of the Indians and the children. At the
Indian lead mines they found a canoe and in that paddled down the river
to Point Pleasant.

Here they found the station of Caleb Smith in ashes; saw a large war
party of Indians and felt assured that from its leader they could get
definite information of the children. Richard Cameron offered to walk to
the camp and surrender as a prisoner to be with the children; but Mr.
Campbell would not hear of it believing that he would be tortured to
death, as it was evident the Indians were on the war path. The whole
Indian country was in arms and the Ohio, about the mouth of the Kanawha,
literally swarmed with war canoes.

For two weeks they sought the children and each day were exposed to the
gravest danger. Even if found, they recognized, that their rescue was
next to impossible; and, disappointed, they decided to return home,
feeling satisfied the children were alive and in no immediate danger,
and hoping when the present trouble blew over to return and rescue them.

The morning after their return to the Campbell plantation, Mr. Fairfax
and his wife left for home. Then he went to Williamsburg, where he made
application for assistance to Lord Dunmore, governor of Virginia, hoping
through his influence with the Indians to procure the release of the
children; as Dunmore was said to be on intimate terms with the tribes of
the Kanawha and Scioto country and was then engaged in buying pelts from
them; from which trade he derived a considerable private revenue.

The Governor gave him very little satisfaction, saying: "I would be glad
to do it if we had the time, but as you know, my whole time is taken up
by pending political troubles."

Governor Dunmore was extremely unpopular. It was charged that through
Connelley and other agents he was then inciting the Mingoes, who had
always been allies of the British to attack the frontier settlements and
thus keep the attention of the western portion of the colony from the
political troubles that exercised and oppressed the people of Tidewater,
Virginia.

Revolution was in the air, England was determined to collect direct
impost duties from the colonies and insist upon an enforcement of the
recently enacted law that any colonist charged with treason or inciting
rebellion should be transported to England for trial. British troops
were quartered in Boston and the Port Bill had been passed, closing
Boston Harbor. Nevertheless, in the Valley and throughout Virginia, the
first of June, 1774, was observed as a day of fasting and prayer because
all recognized that war was impending with the mother country.

In the meanwhile Mr. Campbell began organizing the settlers, looking to
a forcible rescue of the children. This activity was reported to the
Governor, by him construed as treasonable conduct and his arrest was
ordered.

Mrs. Campbell was not greatly depressed by the abduction of her little
son. She felt that he would be restored to her unharmed.



CHAPTER V.--An Unbidden Guest.


Beginning with the abduction of the children, the whole Virginia
frontier was subjected to Indian raids. While the majority of the
settlers attributed the uprising to Governor Dunmore's agency, the
better informed knew that it was traceable to the murder of the Logan
family.

As Jackson River was a frontier settlement, the farmers met at the
school house and made preparations for defense.

All able bodied freemen between the ages of fifteen and fifty were
enrolled in the local militia. All realized that serious days were ahead
for the colony, which must not only suppress the Indians, but be
prepared to join with the other colonies in resisting, even by force of
arms, the oppressive measures adopted by the mother country.

In the reorganization, they insisted upon choosing new and competent
officers to command them; men who had seen military service and whose
loyalty to the colony was not tainted by Toryism.

Mr. Campbell's efforts at organization coupled with the knowledge that
he had been an officer in and seen actual service in the British army
and that a warrant had been issued for his arrest resulted after careful
consideration in his selection as their captain. This selection after
some delay was confirmed upon the recommendation of Mr. Peyton Randolph
and Mr. Fairfax.

After receiving his commission he worked zealously in organizing,
drilling and equipping his company of 170 men; all of whom were
experienced woodsmen and excellent marksmen.

With this command he counted not only upon protecting the frontier; but
if all peaceful means failed, at an opportune time of rescuing his son
and little Dorothy.

His plantation, well up the mountain side, was the first settlement on
the trail coming over the mountain from the Kanawha country, and at
night half a dozen men used his barn as barracks, while he and his two
servants slept in the house, their rifles within easy reach of their
beds. A guard of three men was also placed in the mountain pass to watch
the trail and give warning.

Signal flags were set upon John Calvin Rock to give warning by day and a
great pile of wood and timber, ready for flint and steel, was placed
upon its summit to give a blaze of warning by night.

On the night of the thirtieth of July, the party in the barn were
awakened by Indians stealing the two horses. They gave the alarm by
firing at them just as they were leaving the lot, and then followed up
the mountain trail in close pursuit, occasionally taking a shot when a
rolling stone or the noise made by the horses indicated the location of
the marauders.

The shooting warned the guards at the pass, and they, at close range,
making out the figures of the Indians even in the darkness, killed one
and recovered one of the horses.

When daylight came, Mr. Campbell and his two servants scoured the
western mountain side in search of the other horse and found him. He had
been shot through the fleshy part of the neck and the halter rope was
entangled in a laurel bush.

While they were examining his wounds, Jerry, who had followed them, kept
up an incessant barking and growling in a thick cluster of laurels.
Investigating the cause they found an Indian, shot through the chest and
murmuring in unconscious monotone.

Richard said: "Let's kill him, he is going to die any way and a dead
Indian is always a good Indian." But Mr. Campbell forbade it, not only
from kindness of heart but with the hope that from him he might learn
news of the children.

He was placed upon the horse; and supported on either side by his
captors was carried to the Campbell home. There, exhausted and
delirious, he was put to bed in a small shed used as a store room.

After two weeks' careful nursing he began to recover and shortly after
Mr. Campbell was told by the Valley doctor: "In a few days you will have
a dangerous Indian on your hands, but he is yet too weak to leave his
bed."

The morning after the doctor's visit Mr. Campbell found the bed empty
and the patient gone. Scratched on the wall in charcoal, he read: "One
white man good to Indian; before cahonks fly bring back papoose.
Tah-gah-jute."

Tah-gah-jute, son of Skikellemy, a Cayuga Indian chief, was born in
1725, at Shamokin, on the Susquehanna. He was given the name of Logan,
after John Logan, then Secretary of the Pennsylvania Colony, a man who
many times had shown himself a friend of the Cayugas.

Logan grew to be a man of intelligence and fine personal appearance; and
until he moved westward on the Ohio River in 1770, was of good personal
habits. There, because of his friendliness with the whites, he, with his
family, usually camped in the neighborhood of the stations of the white
traders and by the association not only he but his family acquired
habits of intemperance.

On the twentieth of April, 1774, they moved to the mouth of Yellow
Creek, on the north bank of the Ohio, just across the river from Joshua
Baker's joint and trading station.

Shortly afterwards some land jobbers near the month of Sandy Creek were
robbed by a band of Indians. In retaliation Captain Cresap gathered a
gang of men and began killing Indians in the neighborhood of Wheeling.
On Grave Creek, below Wheeling, they killed two of Logan's kinsmen.
Hearing a rumor of this and wishing to ascertain the truth, Logan on the
twenty-seventh of April accompanied by two braves traveled down to Grave
Creek. In the meantime, Captain Cresap and Daniel Greathouse with their
gang came to Baker's.

Logan's mother, sister and cousin, a little girl, with four Indian men,
crossed in a canoe to Baker's; where after being made drunk, they were
all murdered, except the little girl who was carried off a prisoner.

In retaliation, Logan with several Indians, not being able to find
Cresap, came up the river to the mouth of the Kanawha, where they
murdered several white men; then ascending the Kanawha to its head,
crossed the mountain to Campbell's plantation and stole the two
children. They carried them to Shauane-Town, on the Scioto, near the
present site of Circleville.

The first of July, Logan, accompanied by seven Mingoes, into which
confederacy he had been adopted and made a chief, ascended the west fork
of the Monongahela into what was then West Augusta county where they
came upon William Robinson and two farm hands working in a field. They
killed one of his men and made Robinson and the other prisoners,
carrying them to Shauane-Town; Logan declaring it to be his purpose to
kill or make captive as many whites as they had murdered of his kindred.

Though Logan spoke English he could write very little. He therefore made
Robinson write a note to Captain Cresap, in the nature of a declaration
of war, which was tied to a war club and thrown into the first white
settlement he passed. It read:

    "Captain Cresap:

    "What did you kill my people on Yellow Creek for? The white
    people killed my kin at Conestoga and I let it pass. But you
    killed my kin, even my mother and sister on Yellow Creek and
    took my cousin prisoner. Then I thought I must kill too; and I
    have been three times to war since; but the Indians are not
    angry, only myself.

        "July 21, 1774.
          John Logan."

Cresap, Greathouse and certain other traders continued murdering
Indians, until they stirred up the whole Indian country; then the tribes
in retaliation began killing the settlers west of the Alleghanies,
making no discrimination between the settlers and traders. The settlers
deserting their homes fled eastward across the mountains.

A man by the name of Connelley, the confidential agent of Governor
Dunmore, came to Shauane-Town and there met in council with the chiefs
of the Shauanese, Delawares, Wyandottes and Mingoes; his mission being
to induce them to war with the "Long Knives," or Virginians. He was
successful and war was declared.

Four hundred of the Virginia militia assembled at Wheeling, marched down
the Ohio and up the Muskingum, killing Indians and destroying their
towns.

Jefferson in his "Notes on Virginia," comments upon these incidents as
follows:

"In the spring of the year 1774 a robbery was committed by some Indians
on certain land adventurers on the Ohio River. The whites in that
quarter, according to their custom undertook to punish this outrage in a
summary way. Captain Michael Cresap and a certain Daniel Greathouse
leading on these parties, surprised at different times traveling and
hunting parties of Indians, having their women and children with them
and murdered many. Among these were unfortunately the family of Logan, a
chief celebrated in peace and in war and long distinguished as a friend
of the whites. This unworthy return provoked his vengeance. He
accordingly signalized himself in the war which ensued."

                                  ----

On the fifth of September Captain Campbell received orders from General
Andrew Lewis, directing that he with his company report for service at
Fort Union on the tenth of September, prepared for a sixty day campaign
into the Ohio River country. He and his wife were delighted at the
receipt of the order, believing the opportunity was now presented to
rescue the children.

His company of ninety-seven left the settlement on the morning of the
eighth, and about noon on the ninth reached Fort Union on the western
slope of the Alleghanies.

On September eleventh, General Lewis led his detachment of eleven
hundred men down the mountain side into the Kanawha valley, beginning a
one hundred and sixty mile tramp through the pathless, rough and heavily
timbered wilderness of the valley to Point Pleasant, where they arrived
on the first of October. Here Governor Dunmore was supposed to meet him
with two thousand men, who were to march over the mountains to the
Monongahela River and descend that stream and the Ohio to the rendezvous
in canoes and batteaux.

After waiting nine days he received word that the Governor had changed
his plans, and instead of meeting them as agreed, had come down the Ohio
to the mouth of the Hocking River and ascended that stream to the falls;
declaring it his intention to march across country and attack the Indian
towns on the Scioto.

On the afternoon of the day this information was received, Captain
Campbell and one of his men, thinking to supplement his company's
rations by killing a deer or two, left the camp and traveled more than a
mile back into the timbered river valley.

There a large party of Indians hiding in a cane brake attacked them,
killing the soldier. Two Indians close at hand rushed the captain,
intending to take him a prisoner. He killed one, the other, a powerful
man, throwing him to the ground rolled upon him. Each looked into the
other's face and recognition was mutual. It was Logan. He muttered:
"Throw Indian off and run to camp." This he did, and was so closely
pursued by the chief, who kept even with but apparently could not
overtake him, that the other Indians dared not fire.

General Lewis expecting every day to be joined by Governor Dunmore had
neglected to fortify his camp near the junction of the Ohio and Kanawha
rivers. There the Indians, superior numerically, cornered his detachment
and cut off retreat.

The morning following Captain Campbell's escape, while the camp was
being broken up to join Dunmore's forces, the Indians in great numbers,
began the attack with a well directed fire, howling and screeching as
only wild men can; and for several hours had the best of the conflict.
They were commanded by Chief Cornstalk, who moving back and forth along
their line when it began to waver, could be heard above the din of
conflict, calling out in Indian tongue: "Be strong! Be strong!" The
battle continued throughout the day and by evening it was evident the
whites were victorious. At dark the Indians withdrew, and during the
night crossed the Ohio.

Of the colonists, ten officers, including two colonels and five captains
and more than a hundred private soldiers were killed. Of the Jackson
River Company, seven were killed and eleven were wounded. Among the
wounded was Captain Campbell, who with the other wounded were left
behind at the camp, now strongly entrenched and well guarded, while the
General with most of his men marched up the river to join Lord Dunmore.

Opposite the mouth of the Hocking River they ferried the Ohio in the
Governor's boats and marched rapidly northward expecting to join Dunmore
who had entrenched about five miles east of Shauane-Town, giving the
camp the name of Fort Charlotte.

Learning of General Lewis' approach, he rode out and met him several
miles from his fort, having as his escort several officers and Indian
chiefs, two of whom had been in the Point Pleasant battle. When they met
he peremptorily ordered Lewis to return to Virginia. This order the
General reluctantly obeyed; his men grumbling and threatening, even
charging that the Governor had been cognizant of the contemplated attack
upon them, perhaps had instigated it; and was now showing his
disappointment because they had defeated the Indians.

After the battle of Point Pleasant the Indians had repaired to
Shauane-Town, where Cornstalk convened a general council.

His advice was that they slay their women and children and then fight
until all were slain. Some of the chiefs seemed not to dread surrender
to Lord Dunmore and his proposition was met with silent disapprobation.
Finding the Indians either disheartened or apathetic or anxious for
peace, he drove his tomahawk into a log, the sign of submission, and
said: "I will sue for peace."

The peace council was held at Fort Charlotte. Lord Dunmore and the
Indians had no difficulty in coming to terms. All the chiefs of
prominence were represented except Logan. He had opposed making peace
and disdained to be seen among the suppliants at Fort Charlotte; but
lest the sincerity of the treaty should be distrusted, he sent by
messenger (John Gibson) the following speech to be delivered to Lord
Dunmore:

"I appeal to any white man to say, if ever he entered Logan's cabin
hungry and he gave him not meat; if ever he came cold and naked and he
clothed him not. During the last long and bloody war, Logan remained
idle in his cabin, an advocate for peace. Such was my love for the
whites that my countrymen pointed as they passed and said: 'Logan is the
friend of the white man.' I had even thought to have lived with you but
for the injuries of one man. Colonel Cresap, the last spring, in cold
blood and unprovoked, murdered all the relatives of Logan, not sparing
my women and children. There runs not a drop of my blood in the veins of
any living creature. This called on me for revenge. For my country I
rejoice at the beams of peace. But do not harbor the thought that mine
is the joy of fear. Logan never felt fear. He will not turn on his heel
to save his life. Who is there to mourn for Logan? Not one."

At the peace conference, in the absence of Logan, the usual Speaker,
Cornplanter presented the cause of the Indians. He began by complaining
of the white men who had disregarded their treaties; settling upon
Indian lands without even an offer of purchase; even upon soil which by
treaty had been reserved as sacred from settlement or incursion, then
continued: "* * * and have robbed again and again and murdered Indians
and their families while peacefully hunting. For years we have patiently
endured these wrongs, till at length we were driven into this bloody
war. We do not wish for war; we wish for peace. We know the power of the
white man and that he can overpower the Indian. But this is a white
man's war. Yet had we not resented the wrongs done us even the white man
would have despised us for cowardice."



CHAPTER VI.--The Children.


Logan had brought the two captive children directly to Shauane-Town. As
they were too young to effect their escape, they were allowed to wander
at will in and around the village, where they played with and were
treated as the native children.

A week after his return, at a tribal council he referred to the massacre
of his family at the mouth of Yellow Creek, spoke of his present
loneliness and asked to adopt the two children as his own, saying: "* *
* They are so young they will soon forget their own people and language
and I shall bring them up as my own children." His request having been
granted the two children were brought before the council.

The adoption of the girl was quite simple; she was stripped of her
clothing and sent out naked to play with the other little girls. The
boy's adoption was more formal. After being stripped he was seated in
the center of the council; two old squaws, called in for the purpose,
deliberately plucked out his curls, strand by strand, until only the
scalp lock was left; a small tuft, three inches in diameter on his
crown, which was stiffened and discolored with an ointment of graphite
and bear grease, then certain tribal designs were painted upon his body
with the juice of the puccoon root. This completed the ceremony.

They were just sending him out, when a very old and highly respected
medicine man, the chief priest of the nation, and to whom were
attributed occult powers of a high order; came into the council hall and
walking over to the boy, stooped and removed from his neck a gold chain
to which was attached a cross of ebony and pearl; this he examined
carefully. Then turning to the council he said: "This child is of the
sacred priesthood. He has the look in his face and eyes and his body is
without blemish, as is required by the order. Let no one do him harm or
cross his will, because in what he does he will be guided by the Great
Spirit. The night before Logan brought him I saw the boy in a dream and
was told of his coming and his mission. It is one of peace. He will be
the friend of all men; of Long Knives and Indians alike. He does not
know your language and will be carried home by Logan before the flying
of the cahonks or the first snow-fall. By then he will speak your tongue
as well as your own children and will never forget a word. It is the
will of the Great Spirit. In proof that what I say is true, as he steps
over the threshold of your council lodge he will drop as one dead; and
for some days will lie in coma. When this passes he will not speak the
language of the Long Knives so long as he remains with you. You will see
in him many things that are strange; because his are a mind and spirit
that see where yours cease seeing."

After mumbling certain incantations which no one understood, he drew
from his girdle a case made from a hollow bone and taking from it
needles of fish bone and certain pigments; tattooed upon the chest of
the boy an enlarged likeness of the cross he wore; and beneath it
pricked the tribal sign of the Mingo priesthood. All this the little boy
endured without outcry, though his face was ashy pale and his colorless
lips moved in prayer.

Then the priest took from his own waist a girdle of wampum of unusual
pattern and fastened it about the waist of the boy and extending his
hands above the boy's head, murmured yet more of his incantations. Then
indicating the ceremony was completed, walked away.

The boy was told to go to his lodge. As he stepped over the threshold he
dropped apparently lifeless; and no wonder; he had been subjected to a
terrible strain and his blood was filled with impure pigments.

He was carried by Logan to their lodge and placed upon a pallet of deer
skins. An old woman was called to attend him. He lay in a deep sleep
until sundown, when he sat up and was given food and drink. A few
minutes later he dropped back into unconsciousness which lasted for
eighteen hours; at the end of which time, rousing from his torpor, he
walked to a brook, where he bathed, removing all the grease and pigment.
The tattooed cross and Mingo tribal signs stood out upon his body like a
great blotch of blood on a statue of white marble. He returned to his
pallet, smiled at Dorothy and after eating slept again.

For several days he was in a stupor and slept much of the time. At the
end of a week the tattooed marks were no longer inflamed and he had
recovered.

Not far from the village on the brow of a hill was a green mound, which
rumor said was a place of burial; though the Indians knew not what
people had made or used it. As the view from its summit was extensive,
the timber having been burned away, the mound was used for signal fires
and because of superstition, never visited except for that purpose.

John Calvin, who was the only child in the village permitted to go where
he pleased, even to the council lodge and that of the medicine man, each
day climbed to the summit and for an hour or more sat upon the signal
rock, scarcely moving, lost in dreams or visions. The whole tribe
watched him with superstitious awe.

Rumor of the child's strange conduct spread throughout the Mingo nation
and fierce, wild chiefs and warriors would watch him seated in silence
upon the mound and as he walked about the village deferentially made
room for him. They said: "The boy is so different from other Long
Knives, he says nothing, they talk all the time."

Dorothy grew half afraid of her old playmate, who when she spoke to him
in English answered by a word or two in the Mingo tongue if he answered
at all, having very quickly picked up a few common words. When he was
not alone upon the mound they would go to the playground of the children
and listen to and watch them. It was thus they learned to speak the
language, he very quickly and Dorothy more slowly. In a little while
they were playing with the Indian children, usually on or in the river;
and both soon learned to swim and to paddle about in small canoes.

While they were prisoners at Shauane-Town the widow of Pukeshirrwan,
whose husband was killed in the battle of Point Pleasant, gave birth to
three posthumous children, one of whom was the Prophet. Dorothy grew
very fond of the three little babies and spent much of her time playing
the part of nurse to them.

Tecumseh, a brother of the three babies, was of the same age and a
playfellow of the prisoners. Between them a friendship grew up, which
lasted until he was killed at the battle of the Thames.

These Indian children were of the family or totem of the Panther. The
name Tecumseh 

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