THE STORY OF A COUNTRY TOWN.

THE
Story of a Country Town

BY E. W. HOWE
AUTHOR OF “A MOONLIGHT BOY,” “THE MYSTERY OF THE
LOCKS,” ETC.

BOSTON AND NEW YORK
HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY
The Riverside Press Cambridge
COPYRIGHT 1883 AND 1884
BY E. W. HOWE
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

PREFACE.

SHOULD “The Story of a Country Town” find readers, it may be interesting to them to know that it was written entirely at night, after the writer had finished a hard day’s work as editor and publisher of a small evening newspaper. I do not think a line of it was written while the sun was shining, but in almost every chapter there are recollections of the midnight bell.

No one can possibly find more fault with it than I have found myself. A hundred times I have been on the point of burning the manuscript, and never attempting it again; for I was always tired while working at it, and always dissatisfied after concluding an evening’s work. I offer this as a general apology for its many defects, and can only hope it will meet with the charity it deserves.

I believe that when I began the story I had some sort of an idea that I might be able to write an acceptable work of fiction, but I have changed it so often, and worried about it so much, that at its conclusion I have no idea whether it is very bad, or only indifferent. I think that originally I had some hope that it might enable me to get rid of my weary newspaper work, and help me to more ease than I have ever known, but I am so tired now that I am incapable of exercising my judgment with reference to it. If it prove a success or a failure I shall not be surprised, for I have no opinion of my own on the subject.

For several years I have felt that I would like an opportunity to address a larger audience than my newspaper’s circulation affords, but I find now that I am very timid about it, and worry a great deal for fear the verdict will not be favorable. A gentleman who once looked over a portion of the manuscript said his first impression was that it was the work of a tired man, and that the pen seemed to drag heavily in making the words. I fear this will be the verdict of the people, and that they will say I should have given up my newspaper writing before attempting it. The reason I did not do this was that I had no confidence in my ability to become an acceptable historian of a country town, therefore I worked harder than I should during the day, and went wearily at the story at night.

Should inquiry be made as to whether any part of the story be true, I could only reply that I have never known anyone who did not furnish some suggestion or idea in the construction of the book, as I have never lived in a town that did not afford some material for the description of Twin Mounds. I meet Jo Errings every day, and frequently lead them up to denounce their particular Clinton Bragg; I have known several John Westlocks, and I am afraid that Mateel Shepherds are more numerous than is desirable. I have known troops of Mrs. John Westlocks, for in the country where I was brought up all the women were pale, timid, and overworked; I hope that Agnes Deming can be duplicated in every community, and I believe that Big Adams are numerous everywhere; but I must confess that I never knew but one Little Biggs, though his wife may be seen hurrying out of the way, should you decide to look for her, in every third or fourth house.

I hope there will be general sympathy for Jo Erring. In writing the history of this creature of my fancy, I have almost come to believe that I have an uncle of that name, and that he lived and died as I have narrated. Sometimes I think of him wandering in the cave, crying, “Help! Help! I am lost!” and his voice is very pitiful and distressed. At other times he has come into my room and sat beside me as I wrote. I have been with him to the cave on a stormy night, and heard the beginning of the few sweet chords of music he describes, but which were immediately broken into by the furious uproar of devils; sometimes I think I have found him in every-day life, and that he is still listening at night to the horrible noise of his skeleton. If some one should confess to me that he is Jo Erring in every particular except that when the keeper of the Twin Mounds jail gave him opportunity he ran away, I believe I should be his friend.

In our part of the country there was a strange man answering to the description of Damon Barker, and I often visited him when a boy, but he lived in a hovel on the prairie, which was dirty beyond description. He had boxes filled with strange wearing-apparel, and brass pistols without number, and he told me stories; but he ran a nursery instead of a mill, though I have heard that he had a sister. I originally intended to make these two central figures in the story, but Jo Erring wandered into my mind, and I am afraid I have made sad work of him.

E. W. H.

Atchison, Kansas, Sept. 4, 1883.

CONTENTS.

THE STORY OF A COUNTRY TOWN.

CHAPTER I.
FAIRVIEW.

OURS was the prairie district out West, where we had gone to grow up with the country.

I believe that nearly every farmer for miles around moved to the neighborhood at the same time, and that my father’s wagons headed the procession. I have heard that most of them gathered about him on the way, and as he preached from his wagon wherever night overtook him, and held camp-meetings on Sundays, he attracted a following of men travelling the same road who did not know themselves where they were going, although a few of the number started with him, among them my mother’s father and his family. When he came to a place that suited him, he picked out the land he wanted—which any man was free to do at that time—and the others settled about him.

In the dusty tramp of civilization westward—which seems to have always been justified by a tradition that men grow up by reason of it—our section was not a favorite, and remained new and unsettled after counties and States farther west had grown old. Every one who came there seemed favorably impressed with the steady fertility of the soil, and expressed surprise that the lands were not all occupied; but no one in the great outside world talked about it, and no one wrote about it, so that those who were looking for homes went to the west or the north, where others were going.

There were cheap lands farther on, where the people raised a crop one year, and were supported by charity the next; where towns sprang up on credit, and farms were opened with borrowed money; where the people were apparently content, for our locality did not seem to be far enough west, nor far enough north, to suit them; where no sooner was one stranger’s money exhausted than another arrived to take his place; where men mortgaged their possessions at full value, and thought themselves rich, notwithstanding, so great was their faith in the country; where he who was deepest in debt was the leading citizen, and where bankruptcy caught them all at last. On these lands the dusty travellers settled, where there were churches, school-houses, and bridges—but little rain—and railroads to carry out the crops should any be raised; and when any one stopped in our neighborhood, he was too poor and tired to follow the others.

I became early impressed with the fact that our people seemed to be miserable and discontented, and frequently wondered that they did not load their effects on wagons again, and move away from a place which made all the men surly and rough, and the women pale and fretful. Although I had never been to the country they had left, except as a baby in arms, I was unfavorably impressed with it, thinking it must have been a very poor one that such a lot of people left it and considered their condition bettered by the change, for they never talked of going back, and were therefore probably better satisfied than they had ever been before. A road ran by our house, and when I first began to think about it at all, I thought that the covered wagons travelling it carried people moving from the country from which those in our neighborhood came, and the wagons were so numerous that I was led to believe that at least half the people of the world had tried to live there, and moved away after an unfortunate experience.

On the highest and bleakest point in the county, where the winds were plenty in winter because they were not needed, and scarce in summer for an opposite reason, the meeting-house was built, in a corner of my father’s field. This was called Fairview, and so the neighborhood was known. There was a graveyard around it, and cornfields next to that, but not a tree or shrub attempted its ornament, and as the building stood on the main road where the movers’ wagons passed, I thought that, next to their ambition to get away from the country which had been left by those in Fairview, the movers were anxious to get away from Fairview church, and avoid the possibility of being buried in its ugly shadow, for they always seemed to drive faster after passing it.

High up in a steeple which rocked with every wind was a great bell, the gift of a missionary society, and when there was a storm this tolled with fitful and uncertain strokes, as if the ghosts from the grave lot had crawled up there, and were counting the number to be buried the coming year, keeping the people awake for miles around. Sometimes, when the wind was particularly high, there were a great number of strokes on the bell in quick succession, which the pious said was an alarm to the wicked, sounded by the devil, a warning relating to the conflagration which could never be put out, else Fairview would never have been built.

When any one died it was the custom to toll the bell once for every year of the deceased’s age, and as deaths usually occur at night, we were frequently wakened from sleep by its deep and solemn tones. When I was yet a very little boy I occasionally went with my father to toll the bell when news came that some one was dead, for we lived nearer the place than any of the others, and when the strokes ran up to forty and fifty it was very dreary work, and I sat alone in the church wondering who would ring for me, and how many strokes could be counted by those who were shivering at home in their beds.

The house was built the first year of the settlement, and the understanding was that my father contributed the little money necessary, and superintended the work, in which he was assisted by any one who volunteered his labor. It was his original intention to build it alone, and the little help he received only irritated him, as it was not worth the boast that he had raised a temple to the Lord single-handed. All the carpenter’s work, and all the plasterer’s work, he performed without assistance except from members of his own household, but I believe the people turned out to the raising, and helped put up the frames.

Regularly after its completion he occupied the rough pulpit (which he built with especial reference to his own size), and every Lord’s Day morning and evening preached a religion to the people which I think added to their other discomforts, for it was hard and unforgiving. There were two or three kinds of Baptists among the people of Fairview when the house was completed, and a few Presbyterians, but they all became Methodists without revolt or question when my father announced in his first preaching that Fairview would be of that denomination.

He did not solicit them to join him, though he probably intimated in a way which admitted of no discussion that the few heretics yet remaining out in the world had better save themselves before it was too late. It did not seem to occur to him that men and women who had grown up in a certain faith renounced it with difficulty; it was enough that they were wrong, and that he was forgiving enough to throw open the doors of the accepted church. If they were humiliated, he was glad of it, for that was necessary to condone their transgression; if they had arguments to excuse it, he did not care to hear them, as he had taken God into partnership, and built Fairview, and people who worshipped there would be expected to throw aside all doctrinal nonsense.

. . . . .

As I shall have something to do with this narrative, there may be a curiosity on the part of the reader to know who I am. I state, then, that I am the only son of the Rev. John Westlock—and the only child, unless a little girl born a year before me, and whom I have heard my mother speak of tenderly as pretty and blue-eyed, is to be called up from her grave and counted; and I have the best of reason for believing (the evidence being my father’s word, a man whose integrity was never doubted) that he moved to the place where my recollection begins, to do good and grow up with the country. Whether my father remarked it in my presence—he seldom said anything to me—I do not now remember, but I believe to this day, in the absence of anything to the contrary, that the circuit he rode in the country which he had left was poor, and paid him but rarely for his services, which induced him to quit preaching as a business, and resolve to evangelize in the West on his own account, at the same time putting himself in the way of growing up with the country, an idea probably new at that time, and very significant.

In the great Bible which was always lying open on a table in our house, between the Old and the New Testament, my name and the date of my birth were recorded in bold handwriting, immediately following the information that Helen Elizabeth Westlock arrived by the mercy of God on the 19th of July, and departed in like manner on the 3d of April; and I did not know, until I was old enough to read for myself, that I had been christened Abram Nedrow Westlock, as I had always been called Ned, and had often wondered if any of the prophets were of that name, for my father, and my mother, and my uncle Jo (my mother’s only brother, who had lived at our house most of his life), and my grandmother, and my grandfather, were all named for some of the people I had heard referred to when the big Bible was read. But when I found Abram before the Nedrow, I knew that I had not been neglected. This discovery caused me to ask my mother so many questions that I learned in addition that the Nedrow part of the name referred to a preacher of my father’s denomination, and not to a prophet, and that my father admired him and named me for him because he had once preached all day at a camp-meeting, and then spent most of the following night in prayer. I therefore concluded that it was intended that I should be pious, and early began to search the Scriptures for the name of Abram, that I might know in what manner he had distinguished himself.

The first thing I can remember, and this only indistinctly, was connected with the removal of our effects from an old house to a new one, and that the book on which I usually sat at the table was mislaid during the day, which made it necessary for me to stand during the progress of the evening meal. I began to cry when this announcement was made, whereupon my father said in a stern way that I was now too old to cry, and that I must never do it again. I remarked it that day, if I never did before, that he was a large, fierce-looking man, whom it would likely be dangerous to trifle with, and that a full set of black whiskers, and a blacker frown, completely covered his face; from that time I began to remember events, and they will appear as this narrative progresses.

Of my youth before this time I have little knowledge except that my mother said once in my presence that I was a very pretty baby, but that I had now got bravely over it, and that as a child I was known in all the country round as a great baby to cry, being possessed of a stout pair of lungs, which I used on the slightest occasion. This, coupled with an observation from my uncle Jo that when he first saw me, an hour or two after birth, I looked like a fish-worm, was all I could find out about my earlier history, and the investigation was so unsatisfactory that I gave it up.

Once I heard my father say, when he was in a good humor, that when the nurse employed for my arrival announced that I was a boy, my mother cried hysterically for half an hour, as she desired a blue-eyed girl to replace the one she had buried, and when I heard my mother tell a few weeks afterwards, in a burst of confidence, to a number of women who happened to be there, that my father stormed for an hour because I was born at all, I concluded that I had never been very welcome, and regretted that I had ever come into the world. They both wanted a girl—when the event was inevitable—to help about the house, as Jo was thought to be all the help necessary in the field, and in the earlier days of my life I remember feeling that I was out of place because I did not wear dresses, and wash dishes, thus saving the pittance paid a farmer’s daughter during the busy season.

The only remarkable thing I ever did in my life—I may as well mention it here, and be rid of it—was to learn to read letters when I was five years old, and as the ability to read even print was by no means a common accomplishment in Fairview, this circumstance gave me great notoriety. I no doubt learned to read from curiosity as to what the books and papers scattered about were for, as no one took the pains to teach me, for I remember that they were all greatly surprised when I began to spell words, and pronounce them, and I am certain I was never encouraged in it.

It was the custom when my father went to the nearest post-office to bring back with him the mail of the entire neighborhood, and it was my business to deliver the letters and papers at the different houses. If I carried letters, I was requested to read them, and the surprise which I created in this direction was so pronounced that it was generally said that in time I should certainly become a great man, and be invited to teach school. If I came to a word which I did not understand I invented one to take its place, or an entire sentence, for but few of the people could read the letters themselves, and never detected the deception. This occupation gave me my first impression of the country where the people had lived before they came to Fairview, and as there was much in the letters of hard work and pinching poverty, I believed that the writers lived in a heavily timbered country, where it was necessary to dig up trees to get room for planting. Another thing I noticed was that they all seemed to be dissatisfied and anxious to get away, and when in course of time I began to write answers to the letters I was surprised to learn that the people of Fairview were satisfied, and that they were well pleased with the change.

I had never thought this before, for they all seemed as miserable as was possible, and wondered about it a great deal. This gave me fresh reason for believing that the country which our people had left was a very unfavored one, and when I saw the wagons in the road I thought that at last the writers of the letters I had been reading had arrived and would settle on some of the great tracts of prairie which could be seen in every direction, but they turned the bend in the road and went on as if a look at Fairview had frightened them, and they were going back another way.

It seems to me now that between the time I began to remember and the time I went out with my father and Jo to work, or went alone through the field to attend the school in the church, about a year elapsed, and that I was very much alone during the interval, for ours was a busy family, and none of them had time to look after me. My father and Jo went to the fields, or away with the teams, at a very early hour in the morning, and usually did not return until night, and my mother was always busy about the house, so that if I kept out of mischief no more was expected of me. I think it was during this year (it may have been two years, but certainly not a longer period) that I learned to read, for I had nothing else to do and no companions, and from looking at the pictures in the books I began to wonder what the little characters surrounding them meant.

In this I was assisted by Jo, who seemed to know everything, and by slow degrees I put the letters together to make words, and understood them. Sometimes in the middle of the day I slipped out into the field to ask him the meaning of something mysterious I had encountered, and although he would good-naturedly inform me, I noticed that he and my father worked without speaking, and that I seemed to be an annoyance, so I scampered back to my loneliness again.

During this time, too, I first noticed that my father was not like other men who came to our house, for he was always grave and quiet, and had little to say at any time. It was a relief to me to hear him ask blessings at the table, and pray morning and evening, for I seldom heard his voice at any other time. I believe I regarded his quiet manner only as an evidence that he was more pious than others of his class, for I could make nothing else out of it, but often regretted that his religion did not permit him to notice me more, or to take me with him when he went away in the wagon. Once I asked my mother why he was always so stern and silent, and if it was because we had offended him, to which she replied all in a tremble that she did not know herself, and I thought that she studied a great deal about him, too. My mother was as timid in his presence as I was, and during the day, if I came upon her suddenly, she looked frightened, thinking it was he, but when she found it was not, her composure returned again. Neither of us had reason to be afraid of him, I am certain of that, but as we never seemed able to please him (though he never said so), we were in constant dread of displeasing him more than ever, or of causing him to become more silent and dissatisfied, and to give up the short prayers in which we were graciously mentioned for a blessing.

The house where we lived, and into which we moved on the day when my recollection begins, was the largest in the settlement; a square house of two stories, painted so white that after night it looked like a ghost. It was built on lower ground than Fairview church, though the location was sightly, and not far away ran a stream fringed with thickets of brush, where I found the panting cattle and sheep on hot days, and thought they gave me more of a welcome than my father and Jo did in the field; for they were not busy, but idle like me, and I hoped it was rather a relief to them to look at me in mild-eyed wonder.

Beyond the little stream and the pasture was the great dusty road, and in my loneliness I often sat on the high fence beside it to watch for the coming of the movers’ wagons, and to look curiously at those stowed away under the cover bows, tumbled together with luggage and effects of every kind. If one of the drivers asked me how far it was to the country town I supposed he had heard of my wonderful learning, and took great pains to describe the road, as I had heard my father do a hundred times in response to similar inquiries from movers. Sometimes I climbed up to the driver’s seat, and drove with him out to the prairie, and I always noticed that the women and children riding behind were poorly dressed, and tired looking, and I wondered if only the unfortunate travelled our way, for only that kind of people lived in Fairview, and I had never seen any other kind in the road.

When I think of the years I lived in Fairview, I imagine that the sun was never bright there (although I am certain that it was), and I cannot relieve my mind of the impression that the cold, changing shadow of the gray church has spread during my long absence and enveloped all the houses where the people lived. When I see Fairview in my fancy now, it is always from a high place, and looking down upon it the shadow is denser around the house where I lived than anywhere else, so that I feel to this day that should I visit it, and receive permission from the new owners to walk through the rooms, I should find the walls damp and mouldy because the bright sun and the free air of Heaven had deserted them as a curse.

CHAPTER II.
THE HELL QUESTION, AND THE REV. JOHN WESTLOCK.

MY father’s religion would have been unsatisfactory without a hell.

It was a part of his hope of the future that worldly men who scoffed at his piety would be punished, and this was as much a part of his expectation as that those who were faithful to the end would be rewarded. Everybody saved, to my father’s thinking, was as bad as nobody saved, and in his well-patronized Bible not a passage for pleasurable contemplation which intimated universal salvation was marked, if such exists.

The sacrifices he made for religion were tasks, and his reward was a conviction that those who refused to make them would be punished, for he regarded it as an injustice of which the Creator was incapable to do as well by His enemies as by His friends. I believe that he would rather have gone to heaven without the members of his family than with them, unless they had earned salvation as he had earned it, and travelled as steadily as himself the hard road marked on his map as leading heavenward.

One of the best evidences to his mind of a compassionate and loving Saviour was the belief that all thought of unfortunate friends in torment was blotted from the memory of the redeemed, and the lake of fire he thought of as a remedy for the great number of disagreeable people with whom he was compelled to come in contact below, and of whom he would be happily rid above. Religion was a misery to be endured on earth, that a reward might be enjoyed after death. A man must spend the ages of his future either in a very pleasant place, with comfortable surroundings and pleasant associates, or in a very unpleasant place, with uncomfortable surroundings and all the mean people turned into devils and imps for companions. It was the inevitable law; every man of moderate sense should be able to appreciate the situation at a glance, and do that which would insure his personal safety. If there was a doubt—the thought was too absurd for his contemplation, but admitting a doubt—his future would be equal to that of the worldly man, for one cannot rot more easily than another, or be more comfortable as dust; but if there was no doubt—and all the authorities agree that there was none—then the difference would be in his favor.

It was the best thing offering under the circumstances, and should therefore be accepted without hesitation. If the conditions were hard, he could not help it; he might have suggested changes in the plan of salvation had his judgment been invited, but the plan had been formulated before his time, and there was nothing left for him but obedience. If he thought he deserved credit for all he possessed (and he was a man very likely to be seized with that suspicion), the Bible said it came from God; that settled the matter finally and forever—he gave thanks (for a punishment was provided if he did not, and a reward if he did), and pretended to have had nothing to do with accumulating his property.

Religion was a matter of thrift and self-interest as much as laying away money in youth and strength for old age and helplessness, and he called upon sinners to flee the wrath to come because he had been commanded to go out and preach to all the world, for it mattered little to him whether the people were saved or not. They had eyes, therefore let them see; ears, therefore let them hear. The danger was so plain that they ought to save themselves without solicitation.

That which he most desired seldom came to pass; that which he dreaded, frequently, but no matter; he gave thanks to the Lord because it was best to do so, and asked no questions. There were jewels for those who earned them, and as a thrifty man he desired a greater number of these than any other citizen of Fairview. He was the principal man in his neighborhood below, and desired to be a shepherd rather than a sheep above; therefore he was foremost in the church, and allowed no one to be more zealous in doing the service of the hard master he had, after careful thought and study, set out to serve, believing the reward worth the service, and determined to serve well if he served at all, as was his custom in everything else.

If I do him an injustice I do not intend it, but I have thought all my life that he regarded children as troublesome and expensive—a practical sort of punishment for sin, sent from time to time as the case seemed to require; and that he had been burdened with but two was no doubt evidence to his mind that his life had been generally blameless, if, indeed, this opinion was not confirmed by the circumstance that one of them had been taken from him in return for good service in the holy cause. Once they had arrived, however, he accepted the trust to return them to their Maker as nearly like they came as possible, for that was commanded of him.

Because he frequently referred to the road to heaven as narrow and difficult, and the highway in the other direction as broad and easy, I came to believe that but for his religion he would have been a man much given to money-getting, and ambitious for distinction, but he put such thoughts aside, and toiled away at his work as if to get out of temptation’s way. When he talked of the broad and easy road it was with a relish, as though he could enjoy the pleasant places by the way-side if he dared; and in his preaching I think he described the pleasures of the world so vividly that his hearers were taken with a wish to enjoy them, though it is not probable that he knew anything about them except from hearsay, as he had always been out of temptation’s way—in the backwoods during his boyhood, and on the prairie during his maturer years. But when he talked of the narrow and difficult path, his manner changed at once; a frown came upon his face; he looked determined and unforgiving, and at every point he seemed to build sign-posts marked “Duty!” It has occurred to me since that he thought of his religion as a vigorous, healthy, successful man thinks in his quiet moments of a wife sick since their marriage; although he may deserve a different fate, and desire it, he dares not complain, for the more wearisome the invalid, the louder the call of duty.

I think he disliked the necessity of being religious, and only accepted and taught religion because he believed it to be the best thing to do, for it did not afford him the peace he professed. To all appearances he was a most miserable man, although he taught that only the sinful are miserable, and the few acquaintances he had who were not equally devout (strangers passing through, or those he met at the country town, for all were pious in Fairview) lived an easy and contented life which he seemed to covet, but nobody knew it, for he reproved them with all the more vigor because of his envy.

When not engaged in reading at night, as was his custom, he sat for hours looking steadily into the fire, and was impatient if disturbed. I never knew what occupied his thoughts at these times; it may have been his preaching, or his daily work, but more likely he was seeing glimpses of forbidden pictures; caravans of coveted things passing in procession, or of hopes and ambitious dwarfed by duty. Perhaps in fancy he was out in the world mingling with people of a class more to his taste than Fairview afforded, and was thinking he could enjoy their pleasures and occupations if they were not forbidden, or wondering if, after all, his principles were not mistakes. I believe that during these hours of silent thinking he was tempted and beckoned by the invisible and mysteriously potent forces he pretended to despise, and that he was convinced that, to push them off, his religion must be made more rigorous and pitiless.

That he coveted riches could be easily seen, and but for his fear of conscience he could have easily possessed himself of everything worth owning in Fairview, for with the exception of Theodore Meek, the next best man in the neighborhood, he was about the only one among the people who read books and subscribed for newspapers. None of them was his equal in intelligence or energy, and had he desired he could have traded them out of what little they possessed, and sold it back again at a comfortable profit. But, “do unto others as you would have others do unto you,” was commanded of him by his inexorable master, and he was called upon to help the weak rather than rob them; therefore he often gave them assistance which he could but poorly afford. This limited him so much that he had no other hope of becoming well-to-do than that the lands which he was constantly buying would finally become valuable by reason of the development and settlement of the country. This he regarded as honorable and fair, and to this work he applied himself with great energy.

I heard little of his father, except that he was noted where he lived as a man of large family, who provided them all with warm clothes in winter and plenty to eat all the year round. His early history was probably as unimportant and eventless as my own. He seldom mentioned his father to any one, except in connection with a story which he occasionally told, that once, when his house was on fire, he called so loud for help that he was heard a mile. Evidently the son succeeded to this extraordinary pair of lungs, for he sang the religious songs common in that day with such excellence that no man attempted to equal him. While his singing was strong and loud, it was melodious, and he had as great a reputation for that as for piety and thrift. His was a camp-meeting voice, though he occasionally sang songs of little children, as “Moses in the Bulrushes,” of which there were thirty-eight verses, and the cradle song commencing, “Hush, my dear, lie still and slumber,” written by a noted hymn-writer, otherwise my father would not have patronized him. Besides a thorough familiarity with all the common, long, short, and particular metres, he had a collection of religious songs preserved in a leather-bound book, the notes being written in buckwheat characters on blue paper fast turning yellow with age, and the words on the opposite page. Feeling the necessity of a knowledge of notes once, he had learned the art in a few weeks, in his usual vigorous way, and sang at sight; and after that he preserved his old songs, and all the new ones he fancied, in the book I have mentioned. The songs to which I refer I have never seen in print, and he sang them on special occasions, as at a camp-meeting when a tiresome preacher had allowed the interest to flag. “Behold Paul a Prisoner,” a complete history of the Apostle requiring almost an afternoon in its performance, or “Christ in the Garden,” nearly as long, never failed to start the interest anew in an emergency, and if the case were very desperate, he called the members of his family into the pulpit, and sang a quartet called “The Glorious Eighth of April,” using for the words the first hymn in the book.

This was usually sufficient to start some one to shouting, and after a short prayer he preached as vigorously and loudly as he sang, and with an equally good effect.

Of his brothers and sisters, although he had a great number, he seldom talked, and I scarcely knew the names of the States in which they lived, as they were scattered in every direction. I had heard him mention a Samuel, a Joseph, a Jacob, an Elias, a Rebecca, a Sarah, a Rachel, and an Elizabeth, from which I came to believe that my grandfather was a religious man (his own name was Amos), and I once heard that his children on Sundays carried their shoes to the brook near the meeting-house before putting them on, that they might last the longer, which confirmed the belief that there had been religion in his family as there was in ours.

Of his mother he said nothing at all, and if they had neighbors he never mentioned them. In short, he did not seem proud of his family, which caused us to wonder why he was so much like his father, which we had come to believe without exactly knowing why. We were certain he was like his father in religion; in the hard way in which he worked; in his capacity to mend his own ploughs and wagons; and in the easy manner in which he adapted himself to his surroundings, whatever they were, for in all these particulars he was unlike any other man we had ever known, and different from his neighbors, who spent half a day in asking advice in a matter which could be remedied in half an hour. The people came to our house from miles around to borrow, and to ask the best time to plant and to sow, but the Rev. John Westlock asked advice of no one, and never borrowed. If he needed an extra harrow, he made one of wood to answer until such a time as he could trade to advantage for a better one; if he broke a plough, he managed somehow to mend it until a rainy day came, when he made it as good as new. Even in cases of sickness he usually had a bottle hid away that contained relief, and in all other things was equally capable and thrifty.

If it be to the credit of a man to say that he was a slave to hard work, I cheerfully add this testimony to the greatness of my father, for he went to the field at daylight only to return with the darkness, winter and summer alike; and never in my life have I seen him idle—except on the day appointed for rest—and even then he devoured the Bible like a man reading at so much per page. He worked hard when he preached, talking rapidly that he might accomplish as much as possible before the people became impatient, and he no sooner finished one song of warning, than he began another.

My father being large and positive, it followed naturally that my mother was small and weak, and thoroughly under his control. I don’t think she was afraid of him, but he managed his own affairs so well that she was willing he should manage hers, as he had given her good reason to respect his judgment. She probably argued—if she argued the question at all—that as his ideas were good in everything else, he would of course know how to manage a boy, so my bringing up was left entirely to him.

She never corrected me except to say that father would not like what I was doing, and she might find it necessary to call his attention to it, but in the goodness of her heart she forgot it, and never told him unless the offence was a very grave one. While she frequently pleaded with me to be good, and cried in vexation if I would not, she never gave commands which were enforced with severe punishments, as he did; therefore I am afraid that I did not appreciate her kindness and favor, but rather enjoyed my freedom when under her care as a respite from restraint at other times. She was as quiet and thoughtful as her husband, but seemed sad rather than angry and discontented, as was the case with him, and it will be readily imagined that as a family we were not much given to happiness. While I never heard my father speak harshly to her, he was often impatient, as though he regretted he had not married a wife as ambitious and capable as himself; but if he thought of it, he gave it no other attention than to become more gloomy, and pacified himself by reading far into the night without speaking to any one.

I could find no fault with him except that he never spoke kindly to me, and it annoyed him if I asked him questions concerning what I read in his books. When Jo and I worked with him in the field, which we both began to do very early in life, he always did that which was hardest and most disagreeable, and was not a tyrant in anything save the ungrumbling obedience he exacted to whatever he thought about the matter in hand, without reference to what others thought on the same subject. We had to be at something steadily, whether it helped him or not, because he believed idle boys grew up into idle men. Other boys in the neighborhood built the early fires, and did the early feeding, but he preferred to do these things himself—whether out of consideration for us, or because it was troublesome to drive us to it, I do not know. After starting the fire in the room in which he slept, he stepped to our door and told us to get up, to which command we mumblingly replied and slept on. After returning from the stables, he spoke to us again, but we still paid no attention. Ten minutes later he would start up the stairs with angry strides, but he never caught us, for we knew that was final and hurried on our clothes. Seeing that we were up and dressing when he reached the head of the stairs, he would say, “Well, you’d better,” and go down again, where we speedily followed. This was his regular custom for years; we always expected it of him, and were never disappointed.

After the morning devotions, which consisted of reading a chapter from the Bible and a prayer always expressed in exactly the same words, he asked a blessing for the meal by this time ready (the blessing was as unvarying as the prayer), and we ate in silence. Then we were warmly clothed, if it was winter, and compelled to go out and work until we were hungry again. I suppose we helped him little enough, but his reasoning convinced him that, to work easily and naturally, work must become a habit, and should be taught from youth up, therefore we went out with him every day and came back only with the darkness.

I think he was kinder with us when at work than at any other time, and we admired him in spite of the hard and exacting tasks he gave us to do—he called them stints—for he was powerful and quick to aid us when we needed it, and tender as a child if we were sick. Sometimes on cold days we walked rather than rode to the timber, where my father went to chop wood while Jo and I corded it. On one of these occasions I became ill while returning home at night—a slight difficulty, it must have been, for I was always stout and robust—and he carried me all the way in his arms. Though I insisted I could walk, and was better, he said I was not heavy, and trudged along like a great giant, holding me so tenderly that I thought for the first time that perhaps he loved me. For weeks after that I tried as hard as I could to please him, and to induce him to commend my work; but he never did, for whether I was good or bad, he was just the same, silent and grave, so that if I became indifferent in my tasks, I fear he was the cause of it.

Other families had their holidays, and owned guns and dogs, which they used in hunting the wild game then so abundant; but there was little of this at our house, and perhaps this was the reason why we prospered more than those around us. Usually Jo and I were given the Saturday afternoons to ourselves, when we roamed the country with some of the idle vagabonds who lived in rented houses, visiting turkey roosts a great distance in the woods, and only returning long after night-fall. I do not remember that we were ever idle in the middle of the week, unless we were sent on errands, as buying young stock at low prices of the less thrifty neighbors, or something else in which there was profit; so that we had little time to learn anything except hard work, and if we learned that well it was because we were excellently taught by a competent master. During those years work became such a habit with me that ever since it has clung to me, and perhaps, after all, it was an inheritance for which I have reason to be thankful. I remember my father’s saying scornfully to me once, as if intimating that I ought to make up by unusual industry for the years of idleness, that I was a positive burden and expense to him until I was seven years old. So it will readily be imagined that I was put to work early, and kept steadily at it.

CHAPTER III.
THE HOUSE OF ERRING.

THE friend and companion of my boyhood was Jo Erring, my mother’s only brother, who had been in the family since before I was born. He was five years my senior, and a stout and ambitious fellow I greatly admired; but as he was regularly flogged when I was, this circumstance gave rise to his first ambition to become a man and whip my father, whom he regarded with little favor.

There was a kind of tradition that when he became of age he was to have a horse and ten dollars in money, but whether this was really the price of his work I never knew. More likely he came to our house with my mother, as he was not wanted at home, and had lived there until other disposition could be made of him. He usually had a horse picked out as the one he desired, and gave it particular attention, but as each of these in turn was disposed of at convenient opportunity, he became more than ever convinced that he was related by marriage to a very unscrupulous man.

I remember him at this period as an overgrown boy always wearing cast-off clothing either too large or too small for him, and the hero and friend of every boy on Fairview prairie. Although he was the stoutest boy in the neighborhood, and we often wondered that he did not sometimes whip all the others simply because he could, he never quarrelled, but was in every dispute a mediator, announcing his decisions in a voice good-natured and hoarse; and as he was honest and just, and very stout, there were no appeals from his decisions. In our rough amusements, which were few enough, he used his strength to secure to the smaller ones their share, and gave way himself with the same readiness that he exacted from the others; therefore he was very popular among the younger portion of the population, and there was great joy at school when it was announced—which pleasure I usually had—that Jo Erring had finished his winter’s work, and was coming the next day, for all forms of oppression must cease from that date. Sometimes he came by the school on a winter evening with a rude sled, to which he had young horses attached to break them, and if the larger boys climbed on to ride home, or as far as he went, he made them all get off, and loading up with those too small to look after their own interests in the struggle, drove gaily away with me by his side.

There were few men more trusty than Jo, and he always made a round in the plough-field after my father had turned out, as if to convince him that he was mistaken in the opinion that boys were good for nothing. When there was corn to gather, he took the slowest team and the lazy hired man, and brought in more loads than my father and I, and if I found any way to aid him in this I always did it. They seemed to hate each other in secret, for the master disliked a boy who was able to equal him in anything, as if his extra years had availed him nothing; and I confess that my sympathies were always with Jo, for the grown people picked at him because of his ambition to become a man, in all other respects than age, a few years sooner than was usual. While nobody disputed that he was a capable fellow, he was always attempting something he could not carry out, and thus became a subject of ridicule in spite of his worth and ability; if he was sent to the timber for wood, he would volunteer to be back at an impossible time, and although he returned sooner than most men would have done, they laughed at him, and regarded him as a great failure.

It was said of him that he exaggerated, but I think that he was only anxious that it be known what he could do if he had an opportunity; and as every one thought less of him than he deserved, he kept on talking of himself to correct a wrong impression, and steadily made matters worse. His activity kept him down, for another thing, for thereby he raised an opposition which would not have existed had he been content to walk leisurely along in the tracks made by his elders. He accepted none of the opinions of the Fairview men, and it was said of him that he was a skeptic for no other reason than that everybody else was religious, and I am not certain but that there was some truth in this.

If the truth of a certain principle was asserted, he denied it, not by rude controversy, but by his actions; and by his ingenuity he often made a poorer one seem better, if the one proposed happened to be right, as was sometimes the case—for the Fairview people had but two ways to guess, and occasionally adopted a right method instead of a wrong one, by accident.

I believe there was nothing he could not do. He shingled hair in a superb manner for any one who applied, and charged nothing for the service. And I helped him learn the art, for he practised on me so much that I was nearly always bald. He made everything he took a fancy for, and seemed to possess himself of the contents of a book by looking through it; for though I seldom found him reading, he was about as well-informed as the books themselves. When the folks were away at camp-meeting, he added my mother’s work to his own, and got along very well with it. I never heard of anything a Fairview boy could do better than Jo Erring, and he did a great many things in which he had no competition; therefore I have often wondered that the only young man there who really amounted to anything was for some reason rather unpopular. Jo was unfortunate in the particular that he seemed to have inherited all the poorer qualities of both his father and mother instead of the good qualities of either one of them, or a commendable trait from one, and an undesirable one from the other. I have heard of men who resembled the less worthy of their parents—I believe this is the rule—but never before have I known a boy to resemble both his parents in everything they tried to hide. His tendency to exaggeration he got honestly from his mother, who was a fluent talker, but Jo was not like her in that. In this Jo was like his father, who would not say a half dozen words without becoming hopelessly entangled, and making long pauses in painful effort to extricate his meaning.

Jo was often sent to a water-mill in the woods with a grist, and while waiting for his wheat or corn to be ground, he regarded the machinery with the closest attention, and at length became impressed with the idea that after he had become a man, and whipped my father, he would like to follow milling for a business. The miller, an odd but kindly man of whom but little was known in our part of the country, admired Jo’s manly way, and made friends with him by good-naturedly answering his questions, and occasionally inviting him to his house for dinner; and Jo talked so much of his ambition and his friend, that he came to be called “The Miller,” and spent his spare time in making models, and trying them in the rivulets which ran through the fields after a rain.

His father’s farm was skirted by Big Creek, and here he picked out a site for his mill when he should be able to build it, at a place called Erring’s Ford (the location really did credit to his judgment), and having hauled a load of stones there one Saturday afternoon for a dam, the circumstance gave rise to the only pleasantry ever known in Fairview. When any one spoke of an event not likely to happen, he said it would probably come about when the sky rained pitchforks on the roof of Jo Erring’s mill; but Jo paid little attention to this banter, and hauled more stones for the dam whenever he had opportunity, in which work I assisted, in preference to idleness without him. He hoped to become apprenticed to his friend the miller to learn the business, and to complete his own enterprise by slow degrees from his small savings. And he never lost sight of this purpose, pursuing it so steadily that a few of those who at first laughed at him spoke at length encouraging words, and said they believed he would finally succeed, although it would be a long time in coming about.

I was secretly very fond of the mill enterprise, and admired Jo more than ever, that he was bold enough to attempt carrying it out. Our plan to run away was altered by this new interest, and we agreed that it would be better to wait patiently until the mill was complete, and buy our liberty from its profits; for Jo had generously agreed to ransom me as well as himself as soon as he was able.

Jo’s mother, a very large woman who was the acknowledged head of the House of Erring, and doctor for half that country, lived four miles from Fairview church, on Big Creek, in a house of hewn logs, the inside of which was a marvel for neatness. Of her husband the people knew nothing except that he was a shingle-maker, and that he was probably a very wicked man, for he was about the only one in the settlement who did not profess religion, and attend the gatherings at the church. The calling of shingle-making he followed winter and summer and he never seemed to raise anything on his farm except a glassy kind of corn with a great many black grains in every ear, which he planted and cultivated with a hoe. After it was gathered, he tied most of it in bunches, and hung it up to dry on the kitchen rafters, where it was understood to be for sale as seed; although I never heard that it was good for anything except to parch, and the only use he ever made of it, that I knew anything about, was to give it to Jo and me with the air of a man conferring a great favor.

My father liked nothing about Dad Erring except his one virtue of attending to his own business, such as it was; and said of him that he selected his piece of land because it was near a spring, whereas the exercise of a little energy would have dug a well affording an equally good supply of water on vastly superior land.

Indeed, no one seemed to like him, and the dislike was mutual, for if he was familiar with any one except Jo, my mother, and myself, I never knew of it. He seldom spoke even to my grandmother when I was about, and I think only very rarely at any other time, for they seemed never to have recovered from some old trouble. There was this much charity for him, however—the people said no more than that he was an exceedingly odd sort of a man (a verdict true of his appearance as well as disposition, for he was very large, very raw-boned, and clean shaven), and let him alone, which of all things he probably most desired.

The people frequently met him walking along the road swinging a stout stick, and taking tremendous strides (he never owned a horse, but took long journeys on foot, refusing a ride if offered him by a wagon going in the same direction), but he did not speak to them unless compelled and apparently had no other desire than to be let alone.

He never went anywhere except to the timber to make shingles, and off on excursions afoot nobody knew whither, from which he always returned in a few days in exactly the same mood as that in which he had started. I have heard that he had relatives living in a settlement south of us, but whether he went to visit them on his journeys, or spent the money he earned in shingle-making in walking about for his health, paying for his entertainment where-ever night overtook him, I did not know then, nor do I know now.

Once in a long while he came to our house, always when my father was away; and, after watching my mother awhile as she went about her work, went away again, sometimes without saying a word, although she always talked kindly to him, and was glad to see him. Occasionally he would accept her invitation to refresh himself with food, but not often; and when he did he would be offended unless she took a present of money to buy something to remember him by. If she was dangerously ill—which was often the case, for she was never strong—he was never sent for. Nobody thought of him as of any use or as caring much about it; but when she had recovered, he would come over, and, after looking at her curiously, return home satisfied. I think that had she died, he would not have been invited to the funeral, but I am certain that after it was all over, he would often have visited her grave, and looked at it in quiet astonishment.

On returning from her visits to the sick, my grandmother usually stopped at our house, and sometimes I was lifted up behind to go home with her to take care of the horse she rode, for my grandfather disliked horses.

Arriving at the house of hewn logs in the edge of the woods, she dismounted and went in, and I went on to the stables. Returning after I had finished my work, I found my grandfather on one side of the fire-place, and my grandmother on the other, looking into the fire, or, if it was summer, into the cavernous recess where the backlog would have been blazing in winter. If it was evening, which was usually the case, I was soon sent out to make the fire for the evening meal, but after this was eaten, we resumed our places at the hearth. Sometimes I told them what I knew was going on in the neighborhood, and caused them to ask questions, and replied to them, and tried to lure them into a conversation, but I never succeeded. If my grandmother told me that one of her patients had died, the information was really intended for her husband; and if he did not fully understand it, he directed his questions to me, and she replied in the same way. In this way they also discussed household affairs of which it was necessary for each to know, storing them up until I came, but never speaking directly to each other.

After I had sat between them for an hour or more, it would suddenly occur to my grandmother that I had been up too long already, and after divesting me of clothing, I was thrown into the centre of a great feather-bed, three of which stood in a row at the back end of the room. I was put into the middle one, as if to keep my grand-parents as far apart as possible again, for I was certain that my grandmother slept in one, and my grandfather in the other. The one which I occupied was also the company bed, for my grandmother evidently desired me to know that my mother, excellent woman though she was, could not hope to learn perfectly the art of making up a feather-bed for many years yet. If I raised my head quietly, and looked out, I found the strange couple sitting by the fire as I had left them, and, in wondering whether they would remain there all night, I fell asleep.

When I awoke in the morning they were up before me, waiting for daylight, as people were early risers in those days; and I never knew certainly that they went to bed at all, but always wondered whether they did not sit beside the fire throughout the long night.

After a while my grandmother came to the bed, pulled me out and into my clothes, and sent me to the spring to wash my face for breakfast, which was soon thereafter ready. When this was over I was started for home, usually carrying a present of butter or eggs for my mother, and a box on the ears for myself.

CHAPTER IV.
THE RELIGION OF FAIRVIEW

ALTHOUGH the people of Fairview frequently did not dress comfortably, and lived in the plainest manner, they never failed to attend the services at the church, to which everybody belonged, with the exception of my grandfather, and Jo, and myself. I have often wondered since that we were not made the subject of a special series of meetings, and frightened into repentance; but for some unaccountable reason we were left alone. They even discussed Jo’s situation, laying it to contrariness, and saying that if all the rest of them were wicked, he would be religious; but they said nothing at all to me about the subject. I often attended the revivals, and sang the songs as loudly as the rest of them, but when I thought that I was one of those whose terrible condition the hymns described, it gave me such a turn that I left that part of the house where the excitement ran highest, and joined Jo on the back seats, who took no other interest in the novel performance than that of looker-on.

As soon as a sufficient number of children reached a suitable age to make their conversion a harvest, a revival was commenced for their benefit, and they were called upon to make a full confession with such energy, and warned to cling to the cross for safety with such earnestness, that they generally did it, and but few escaped. If there was one so stubborn that he would not yield from worldly pride, of which he had not a particle—no one ever supposed it possible that he lacked faith, though they all did—the meetings were continued from Sunday until Monday, and kept up every night of the week at the house where the owner of the obdurate heart lived, so that he finally gave in; for peace and quiet, if for nothing else.

If two or three, or four or five, would not relent within a reasonable time, the people gave up every other work, and gathered at the church in great alarm, in response to the ringing of the bell, and there they prayed and shouted the livelong day for the Lord to come down among them. At these times Jo and I were usually left at home to work in the field, and if we heard the people coming home in the evening shouting and singing, we knew that the lost sheep had been recovered, and I often feared they would form a ring around us in the field, and compel a full surrender. A young woman who lived at our house to help my mother, the daughter of a neighboring farmer, once engaged their attention for nearly a week, but she gave up one hot afternoon, and came down the path which led through the cornfields from the church, shouting and going on like mad, followed by those that had been present when the Lord finally came down, who were singing and proclaiming the event as loudly as they could. This frightened me so much that I ran into the house, and hid under the bed, supposing they would soon go away, and that then I could come out; but they immediately began a prayer-meeting to give the new convert opportunity to face a frowning world by relating her experience, and thus they kept me in my uncomfortable position until I thought I must smother from the heat.

My father received little aid in the conduct of these meetings except from a very good farmer, but very bad exhorter, named Theodore Meek, whose name had been gradually shortened by neighborhood familiarity until he was known as The. Meek; and for a long time I thought he was meant when reference was made to “The Meek and lowly,” supposing that Lowly was an equally good man living in some of the adjoining settlements. This remarkable man laughed his religion rather than preached, or prayed, or shouted, or sang it. His singing would be regarded at this day as a very expert rendering of a laughing song, but to us it was an impressive performance, as were his praying and occasional preaching, though I wonder we were not amused. The. Meek was, after my father, the next best man in Fairview; the next largest farmer, and the next in religion and thrift. In moving to the country I think his wagons were next to ours, which headed the procession. He sat nearest the pulpit at the meetings, was the second to arrive—my father coming first—and always took up the collections. If there was a funeral, he stood next my father, who conducted the services; at the school-meetings he was the second to speak; and if a widow needed her corn gathered, or her winter’s wood chopped, my father suggested it, and The. Meek immediately said it should have been attended to before. He also lived nearer our house than any of the others, and was oftener there; and his house was built so much like ours that only experts knew it was cheaper, and not quite so large. His family, which consisted of a fat wife by a second marriage, and so many children that I never could remember all their names—there was always a new baby whenever its immediate predecessor was old enough to name—were laughers like him, and to a stranger it would have seemed that they found jokes in the Bible, for they were always reading the Bible, and always laughing.

Another assistant was Mrs. Tremaine, the miller’s widowed sister, who had lived in the country before we came, a wax-faced woman who apparently had no other duty to attend to than religion; for although she lived a considerable distance from Fairview church, she was always at the meetings, and I have thought of her as being constantly occupied in coming from or going to church, finding it time to start back again as soon as she reached home. The only assistance she afforded was to pray whenever called upon in a voice so low that there was always doubt when she had finished; but this made little difference, as it gave the others opportunity to be heard in short exclamations concerning the kindness of the Lord if sinners would really renounce the world and make a full confession. Her speeches in the experience meetings were of the same order, and when she sat down the congregation invariably began a song descriptive of a noble woman always battling for the right, and sure to conquer in the end; from which grew an impression that she was a very sainted person, and that the sins of her brother, the miller, were much on her mind. It is certain that he thought little of them himself, never attending the services, or sending his regrets.

It was usually a part of my duty on Sunday to take one of the wagons, Jo taking the other, and to drive about collecting infirm and unfortunate people who would otherwise be unable to attend church; for my father believed in salvation for all who were willing to accept it, though they were poor, and unable to walk, or hear, or see, or understand; and he was kinder to the unfortunate people than to any of the others, favoring them out of his strength and abundance in a hundred ways.

There was always a suspicion in my mind, which may have been an unjust one, that they shouted and went on in response to his preaching because he was their friend, and wanted them to do so. In any event, he could throw them into the greatest excitement, and cause them to exhibit themselves in the most remarkable way, whenever he saw fit, so that they got on very well together.

One of these unfortunates was Mr. Winter, the lame shoemaker, who wheeled himself around in a low buggy. Pushing this into my wagon with the assistance of his wife, after we had first made a run-way of boards, I hauled him to Fairview, where we unloaded him in the same manner. He was a very devout man, and a shouter, and during the revivals he wheeled himself up and down the aisles in his buggy, which frequently squeaked and rattled in a very uncomfortable manner, to shake hands with the people. I suppose that at first this performance was a little odd to people, but they got used to it; for I have noticed that while strangers regarded Mr. Winter as a great curiosity, he attracted no more attention at home than a man unobjectionable in the matter of legs. There was a good deal of talk from time to time of holding special services to restore Mr. Winter’s shrivelled legs by prayer, but if ever it was tried, it was in secret, for I never heard of it. There were probably half a dozen of these unfortunates altogether, and they were always given the best corner, which was near the pulpit, where their piety could be easily seen and heard.

With the addition of a blind woman who cried and lamented a great deal, and whom I also went after nearly every Sunday, those I have mentioned were the ones most conspicuous in the meetings; for while the others were very devout, they had nothing to offer for the general good except their presence and a capacity to rise to their feet and confess the Lord in a few words. My father was the leader, of course, and occupied the time himself when others could not be induced to occupy it, which was often the case after those I have mentioned had appeared in what might be called their specialties.

This, coupled with the unforgiving doctrines of Rev. John Westlock, was the religion to which I was accustomed, and which I believe added greatly to the other miseries of Fairview, for Fairview was afflicted with a melancholy that could have resulted from nothing else. There was little visiting, and there were no public gatherings except those at the church already mentioned, where the business of serving the Lord was dispatched as soon as possible to allow the people to return home and nurse their misery. The people were all overworked, and I still remember how the pale, unhappy women spoke in low and trembling tones at the experience meetings of heavy crosses to bear, and sat down crying as though their hearts were breaking. I was always touched by this pitiful proceeding, and I doubt not their petitions went further into heaven than any of the others.

CHAPTER V.
THE SCHOOL IN THE CHURCH.

WHEN there was nothing else for them to do, the children of Fairview were sent to a school kept in the church, where they studied around a big box stove, and played at noon and recess among the mounds in the grave lot, there being no playground, as it was not intended that the children of Fairview should play.

The older boys told it in low whispers that a sunken grave meant that the person buried there had been carried away by the Devil, and it was one of our amusements to look among the graves from day to day to see if the dreadful visitor had been around during the preceding night.

These sunken graves were always carefully filled up by relatives of the persons buried, and I regarded this as evidence that they were anxious to hide the disgrace which had come upon their families from neglect of my father’s religion. After a funeral—which we were all compelled to attend so that we might become practically impressed with the shortness of life, and where a hymn commencing “Hark, from the tomb, a doleful sound,” was sung to such a dismal measure that the very dogs howled to hear it—I used to lie awake in speechless terror for a great many nights, fearing the Devil would call on me in my room on his way out to the grave lot to see whether the person just buried belonged to him.

The boys and girls who attended from the houses dotted about on the prairie did not differ from other children except that they were a long time in the first pages of their books, and seemed glad to come. I have heard that in some places measures are found necessary to compel attendance on the schools, but in Fairview the children regarded the teacher as their kindest and most patient friend, and the school as a pleasant place of retreat, where grumbling and complaints were never heard.

The. Meek sent so many children that the teacher never pretended to know the exact number. Sometimes there were eleven, and at other times only seven or eight, for the older ones seemed to take turns about, working one day and studying the next. I think The. Meek was about the only man in our country who was as good at home as he was at church, and his family of white-headed boys were laughers like him, and always contented and happy. They never learned anything, and my recollection is that they all studied out of one book while I went to school there, reciting in a class by themselves from the same page. If the teacher came upon them suddenly in their seats, and asked them to name the first letter of the alphabet, the chances were that one of them would know and answer, whereupon they all cried “A!” in a chorus. But if one of the number was called out separately a few moments later, and asked the same question, the round, chubby face would look up into the teacher’s, and after meditating awhile (moving his lips during the time as if recalling the rules governing such a difficult problem) would honestly answer that he didn’t know! He was then sent back to study, with the warning that he would be called out again presently, and asked to name not only the first letter, but the second, and third, and perhaps the fourth. Going back to his seat, the white-headed brothers gathered about him, and engaged in deep contemplation of their book for awhile, but one by one their eyes wandered away from it again, and they became the prey of anyone who had it in his heart to get them into difficulty by setting them to laughing. If they all mastered the first three letters that day they were content, and were so pleased with their progress that they forgot them the next.

It was always safe to go to their house and expect a warm welcome, for there seemed enough love hid away somewhere in the big house in which they lived, not only for all the white-headed boys (with a reserve stock for those yet to come), but also for the friends who came to see them. Their mother, a large, fresh-looking woman, who was noted for a capacity to lead in prayers and blessings when her husband was away, was good-natured, too. It was the happiest family I had ever known, for though they were all beset with difficulties, every one of them having either weak eyes or the scald-head, they seemed not to mind it, but patiently applied sulphur for one and mullein tea for the other, remedies which were kept in saucers and bottles all over the house.

I never heard The. Meek or his wife speak impatiently to any of their children, but they were obedient for all that—much more so than those of us who were beaten on the slightest provocation—and were very fond of one another. While other boys were anxious to get away from home, The. Meek’s children were content, and believed there was not another so pleasant place in the world as the big house, built after the architecture of a packing-box, in which they lived. I often thought of this circumstance to their credit, and thought it was also to the credit of the father and the mother. There were but three rooms in the house, two down stairs, and one above as large as both of those below in which all the boys slept; and here also were the company beds, so that had I ever heard of an asylum at the time of which I write, I should certainly have thought the big room with the nine or ten beds scattered about in it was like one.

I frequently went from school to spend the night with the young Meeks, and, after we had gone to bed in the big room upstairs, I either froze their blood with ghost stories, or convulsed them by telling any foolish event I happened to think of, at which they laughed until I feared for their lives. If the uproar became particularly loud their father and mother came up to see what it was all about, and, on being informed of the cause, laughed themselves, and went down again.

The two sons of the crippled but devout shoemaker, Mr. Winter, were the most remarkable scholars that attended the school, for the reason that they seemed to have mastered all sorts of depravity by sheer force of native genius; for though they possessed all the accomplishments of street Arabs, and we thought they must surely be town boys, the truth was that they were seldom allowed even to go to town, and therefore could not have contracted the vices of civilization from the contagion of evil society. When one of them did go he returned with a knife for nearly every boy in the school, and cloves and cinnamon bark to last for weeks, which were stolen from the stores. If one of us longed for anything in their presence, they said it would be forthcoming immediately if we got them opportunity to go to town. This was only possible by inducing some one to allow them to drive a team, as their father was poor, and did not keep horses.

The older (and I may add the worse) one was probably named Hardy, but he was always known as Hard. Winter, because of his hard character; and his brother’s evil reputation was so woven into his name that we never knew what the latter really was, for he was known as Beef Hide Winter, a rebuke, I believe, for his failure to get away with a hide he had once stolen, but the boys accepted these titles with great cheerfulness, and did not mind them. They were the mildest mannered villains, I have no doubt, that ever lived, for no difference how convincing the proof was against them, they still denied it with tears in their eyes, and were always trying to convince those around them by kindness and civility that they were not so bad as represented (though they were worse), and I fear they were rather popular in spite of their weakness for things not belonging to them. In course of time their petty peculations came to be regarded in about the same light as was their father’s shouting—one of the peculiarities of the neighborhood—and we paid them no other attention than to watch them. At the Fourth of July celebrations in the woods, where all sorts of persons came to set up business, the Winter boys stole a little of everything they saw on exhibition, and generously divided with their friends. If they were sent together to a house near the school after water, one went through the cellar while the other went to the well, and if he secured anything he made a division at the first opportunity.

They always had their pockets full of things to give away, and I am satisfied that they came by none of them honestly, for they were very poor, and at home but seldom had enough even to eat. A habit of theirs was to throw stones with great accuracy, a collection of which they carried around in their pockets, ready for use, making long journeys to the creek bottoms to select them. They always went home with Guinea-hens or geese in their possession, which they said had been “given to them,” but which they had really knocked over in the road near farmers’ houses. They could kill more squirrels and quails by throwing than others of a similar age could by shooting, and it will be imagined that their failings were but seldom mentioned, for they were dangerous adversaries, though usually peaceable enough.

The teacher of this school at the time of which I now write—to be more explicit, when I was eleven years old, for what I have already written is a hurried retrospect covering a period of six years—was a very young and pretty girl named Agnes Deming, certainly not over sixteen and I doubt if that, who came from a neighborhood north of Fairview, where her widowed mother lived with an eccentric brother, and although it was as poor as ours, she spoke of it in such a way—not boastingly, but tenderly and reverently—that we thought of the community of Smoky Hill as a very superior one. Her father, of whom she talked a great deal, had been captain of a sailing vessel, as I learned a little at a time, and before his death they lived in a town by the sea, where his ship loaded. Of the town, however, which was called Bradford, she had but slight recollection, for when a very little girl she was sent away to school, and came home only at long intervals to welcome her father, who was often away a year at a time.

When ten years old, and after the ship had been absent a long time, she was sent for hurriedly one day, and told on her arrival that her father’s ship had gone down at sea; that all on board were lost, and that they were going West to live with her uncle, an eccentric man whom she had never seen. After a few months of preparation, during which time their effects were converted into money, they commenced their journey to the country in which they had since lived. When she was fourteen years old her uncle found her a place to teach a summer school, and, giving satisfaction in spite of her tender years, she had followed the calling since, her second engagement being in our neighborhood. I remember how generally it was said on her arrival that she would not do, as she was very young, but before the summer was over she somehow convinced her patrons that she would do, very well, as she was thoughtful and intelligent, and competent in every way.

This was her brief history, and before she had lived at Fairview a year, nobody was like Agnes Deming, for she was everybody’s friend and adviser, and was kinder to the people than anyone had ever been before. She was a revelation to Fairview—a woman of a kind they had never before seen; one who uttered no complaints, but who listened patiently to the complaints of others, and did what she could to help them. Whoever was in distress received her sympathy and aid, and I think the advent of this friendless little woman, with her unselfish and pretty ways, did more good for Fairview than its religion, for the people tried to become like her, and were better in every way.

From the description she gave I imagined her father to have been a bluff and manly fellow, for I had heard that such followed the sea, and when I found her crying softly to herself, I thought of course she was thinking of him, and often regretted that he was not in Fairview to be proud of his pretty daughter, instead of at the bottom of the restless and angry sea. That they had been very fond of each other I felt sure; and when the winds blew furiously around our house, as they often did, she seemed greatly distressed, as though it was just such a storm as that in which her father’s ship went down. She sang to us at night sometimes, in a sad, sweet voice, but always of storms, and of shipwrecks, as if the frightful manner of her father’s death was much on her mind, and as if she sorrowed always because she could not hope that some day his ship would come in, and the dreadful story of his death prove a mistake.

She said almost nothing of her mother, and in reasoning about it I thought that perhaps Mrs. Deming was so much distressed over the death of her husband as to be poor company, and anxious to be let alone; for Agnes seemed glad when vacation was over, and she was again occupying her old room in our house. Although she was originally expected to divide her time equally with every family sending children to the school, or to “board round,” she was oftener at our house than anywhere else; and once when she apologized in a burst of tears for being there so much, my mother kissed her tenderly, and it was arranged immediately, to the great satisfaction of all, that in future she should be a recognized member of our family. My mother was very fond of her, and so was my father, though he seemed ashamed to be fond of anyone; and being the most influential of the school directors, he saw that her pay was good and prompt, and on bad days took her to school in a wagon.

When Jo and I were busy on the farm, Agnes taught us at night, and was so patient and encouraged us so much that we learned more than we should have done at school. While we were never at school in summer, by this means we were the head scholars in winter, though I am not certain this was much to our credit, for we had little opposition from the children of Fairview.

I have never seen a bird-of-paradise, and have no knowledge of them, except that they are very beautiful; but if their manners are as graceful as their plumage is beautiful, and it is conceded that we of Fairview were as ungainly and ugly as crows, I hope the impression made by the coming of Agnes Deming to the settlement will be understood. I am glad to be able to write it to the credit of the people that they were not envious of her, unless it be envious in one person to strive to be like another he admires, and they all loved her from the day she came until the day she went away.

Although slight in figure she was the picture of health, of which she was as careful as of her dress and manners, which were never anything but mild and gentle. As man and boy I have honestly admired a great many women who afterwards shocked my admiration by a careless habit or manner when they did not know I was about; but Agnes Deming was always the same perfect woman. My admiration for her never had a check, and every day I found in her a new quality to respect, as did everyone who came in contact with her.

Although I was a favorite with her, I believed that when she came into the fortune and position she deserved—I was always expecting some such remarkable thing as this to happen, although I was not certain just what it would be—I was sure she would not speak to me, or any of those she had known at Fairview with whom she had associated temporarily, and made herself agreeable, because that was her disposition; but that she would hurry away as soon as possible, to get rid of thoughts of how uncomfortable and unhappy she had been among us. I do not think I should have blamed her, for I regarded her superiority as such that I should have been content to see her go away to enjoy proud station and rich friends, thankful that she had lived with us at all, and made us happier than we had been.

I am certain that her dress was inexpensive, and that she spent little of her money in this way, for most of it was sent to her family; but her taste and skill were such that she was always neatly and becomingly attired (much more so than many I knew who spent a great deal for that time to attain that end); and she was able to work over an old garment on Saturday, and appear on Sunday the best-dressed woman in the country. I have thought that she was familiar with all the fashions in woman’s dress without ever having seen them, for she was always in advance of the plates in the Lady’s Book taken by my mother.

With more fortunate surroundings she would have been a remarkable woman. But while there were many others less good and pretty who were better off, and while she may have had at one time bright hopes for the future, her good sense taught her that there was really no reason why she should expect anything better now; so she diligently performed her work, and gave up castle-building. And so it came to pass that she was simply mistress of the Fairview school, and mistress of all our hearts, and did what good was possible without vain regret for that which might have come to pass, but did not.

In my recollections of that time, there is nothing pleasant, except the sweet and patient face of Agnes and the memory of Jo, who were always my friends, and who protected me when I did not deserve it, and loved me in spite of all my faults.

CHAPTER VI.
DAMON BARKER.

BARKER’S MILL, visits to which had convinced Jo that he should like to be a miller, was built on Bull River, in the centre of the only woods in all that country.

It was said of its proprietor that he came to the country a great many years before with a train of wagons drawn by oxen, on which was loaded the machinery of what afterwards became the mill, together with his general effects. Nobody seemed to know where he came from, but nobody seemed to care, strangely enough, for he was trusty as a miller, and honorable as a citizen. Occasionally he came to our neighborhood dressed in an odd-fashioned cut-away coat with brass buttons, and vest and pantaloons of an equally aristocratic pattern, but I never heard of his going to the country town. If he had money to pay there, or other important business, he entrusted it to some one to transact for him, preferring to have it half done rather than to go himself. From this circumstance I came to believe that Damon Barker had been an outlaw in his time, and was anxious to avoid people, although he was very well-bred, and the only polished man I had ever known.

He came to our house originally, I believe, on some sort of business, and, becoming acquainted, happened in at long intervals afterwards, but I never knew that he went anywhere else. We all admired him, for he was a man to make himself welcome anywhere, and he sat quietly among us when he came (which was always at night, as though for private reasons he did not walk out during the day), and listened to what was being said. My father had the greatest respect for him, and was often uneasy under his steady gaze, as if he felt that Damon Barker was not a Fairview man, and had knowledge and opinions of his own. They frequently discussed all sorts of questions (or rather my father discussed them in Barker’s presence, who only made short answers indicating that he was familiar with the subject in hand), and I was forced to the belief that, had he seen fit, he could have readily torn to pieces many of the arguments advanced. His knowledge of religious topics was extensive, but he patronized the subject as he would patronize a child, dismissing it with a polite word as though it was of no consequence; and we wondered that a man who understood the subject so well could be indifferent, for it was well known that he was not religious. My father often threatened to “speak” to him about it, but he never did, either fearing that Barker might be able to defend his position, or respecting his disposition to avoid the subject.

Although he was courteous and well-bred, lifting his hat and bowing to my mother in the most courtly manner when he came and went, it was never remarked to his discredit, although a man of his manners had never been seen by us before. Had he been the least awkward in his politeness, I am sure we should have laughed at him, and regarded him as a fop, for we watched him narrowly; but his adieus and greetings were so appropriate, natural, and easy, that we received them as a matter of course, and accepted them as evidences not merely of different but of better breeding than we were accustomed to. During one of his visits to the house he invited Jo and me to the mill, asking it as a favor, and thus it came about that occasionally we went to see him on Saturday afternoons, returning the next day. Indeed, we were rather encouraged to go to Barker’s, my father believing that familiarity with such a courtly gentleman would do us no harm, if no good, and he was not greatly displeased if we did not return until late Sunday evening, although he always inquired what we found so entertaining at his house, and on our replying, he found no objection to it.

The house in which Barker lived was built close to the mill, in a dense growth of trees, but as if the shadow of these was not sufficient to hide him, he had planted other trees among them, until the place was so dark that the sunlight seldom found its way in at his windows. The house was very large and strong, with doors of heavy hard wood, and I thought that if Barker should be attacked, he would make a long defence, for he always had provisions and fuel stored away in great quantities, and there was a well in the cellar which I always disliked to drink out of, fearing there might be dead men in it. There were thick wooden blinds at all the windows, which were usually closed, and heavy iron bars across the doors, and altogether the place was so mysterious and unusual that it occurred to me when I first went there that if either Jo or I should discover some of its secrets by accident, we should be cut into halves, and thrown down the well for fear we should disclose what we had seen.

In his own room, a large apartment occupying the greater part of the second story, were strange and curious things we had never seen before; and these we were free to examine and question him about. Besides brass pistols hid away in every box and drawer, there were swords and knives of odd pattern, and handsome dresses for women and men, many of them ornamented with gold lace, and all of a style we had never seen worn.

In a place for plunder which adjoined his room were kept half a dozen large chests, and in looking through them, when he gave me permission, I half expected to find bones of dead men; but I found nothing except strange instruments, scientific apparatus, maps, drawings I had no knowledge of, curiosities gathered during a long life, and the odd clothing I have mentioned. If I found something more curious than the rest, I took it to him as he sat grave and silent in his own room, and he told me its history, what use it could be put to, and where it came from. There were a great many books, the titles of which I could not pronounce with all my learning, and these gave evidence of being often used, for they were collected on a turning shelf within easy reach of the table at which he usually sat.

If we found a curious stone or leaf, he could tell its nature and kind, and if we asked of something we read in his books, he told us about it in a quiet, simple way, making it quite easy of comprehension. Knowing our ignorance, he took pains to answer the questions with which we plied him, and we often sat on either side of him until far into the night, listening to his explanations of matters we were curious about, sometimes going to sleep in our chairs.

Before he knew Jo and me he had no friends—he told me this himself early in our acquaintance—but we amused him, and he became our companion in everything we did while at the house or mill, instructing and benefiting us in a hundred ways. When I say he became our companion in everything we did, I mean no more than that he was always with us, looking on good-naturedly when we played the games at cards he taught us, accompanying us when we walked through the woods or rowed on the river, and giving suggestions and help in everything. He said but little at any time, except in answer to our questions, and I think his principal enjoyment in our companionship was to listen quietly to what we had stored up to tell him on our different visits.

He was regarded as hard and exacting by those with whom he had business dealings—he dealt in nothing else—but was always kind and liberal with Jo and me, giving us money frequently, and presents when he could get them. If we were in the mill with him, the entrance of a customer would harden his features until we were afraid of him, and we went away until the customer had gone when he soon became himself again, so that we grew to be afraid of him except when we were alone.

In Barker’s room was a great box-stove in which we made wonderful fires in winter, and the fire in it seemed never to go out; so that I have thought in summer that, if the ashes were stirred, live coals could be found at the bottom. Around this we always sat with him during the winter nights (and we had opportunity to visit him oftener in winter than at any other time, for during that season we had the least to do), and did whatever Barker thought would best amuse us. Sometimes he gave us suppers, prepared by his own hands from cans and bottles stored away in other chests we had not yet examined; at other times he told us the story of one of the brass pistols, or of the strange wearing-apparel we had seen, holding the article in his hand to illustrate; or if we found something belonging to a ship, he told us of the sea, of storms, of strange countries, and of wrecks.

In all the stories of robbers and pirates that he told us—and there were many of that kind because we preferred them—I always thought of him as one of the participants, and was pleased when the one I had picked out for Barker freed the captive maiden, flinging back his companions who would murder her, with the declaration that he would have their lives if they persisted, thereupon conducting her within sight of her home, and, having first bidden her a gallant adieu, galloped away. These recitals had much of dashing romance in them, and his robberies were committed generally from motives of daring rather than gain. It was always the mean and stingy misers who were robbed, and if a beautiful maiden was captured at sea she was always taken to her friends, unless she freely consented to marry the pirate captain, which was sometimes the case.

This kind of amusement he kept up at night until we became sleepy, and, lighting us to the room in which we were to sleep, he sat down on the bed if we desired it, and continued the story until we were asleep, when he returned to his own apartment. It seemed to me he dreaded the hour when we would go to sleep and leave him alone; and once when I awoke in the middle of the night, and crept to his door, I found him sitting over the table with his hat and coat on, as if ready to run away.

Barker’s widowed sister, the Mrs. Tremaine already mentioned, whose husband had been a drunkard and a doctor, was his housekeeper (when she was at home, which was seldom the case). I believe she was originally called Betts, or Bett, but this was shortened to B., and by this name she was generally known. It was understood that Dr. Tremaine had been unkind to her before his death, and that their married life had been very miserable, though I never heard either Barker or herself say so. But such was generally thought to be the case nevertheless, for certainly the excellent woman had had trouble. It was also understood that he died in drink, probably from catching fire on the inside, and that with his last breath he referred to his wife as a snake, and to his neighbors as devils. This impression, like the other one with reference to his disposition, had no foundation I ever heard of except that his relict worried a great deal about people who were going to ruin from drink. We supposed, of course, that she was prompted to this by the memory of her late husband, as she was prompted to insist on everybody’s being religious by the wickedness of her brother, the miller. Having no other place to go after her husband’s death, she determined to move West and live with her brother, and had arrived at Fairview a few years before we did. Although there was not a drunkard in the county, she immediately began a war on rum, and when I first encountered the words “Delirium Tremens,” in connection with drunkenness, I remember thinking I was acquainted with his widow.

Next to her desire to save everybody from drunkenness, she wanted to save everybody from sin, and spent most of her time in discussing these two questions; but she had little opposition, for everybody in that country was religious as well as temperate. When she became acquainted with the Rev. John Westlock she at once hailed him as a man raised up to do a great work, and was always with him in the meetings he held in different places, nothing being thought of it if he took her with him and brought her back again.

Together they established a lodge of Good Templars at Fairview, although the people were all sober and temperate, and once a week they met to call upon the fallen brother to shun the cup, and to redeem the country from debauchery and vice. Barker said they spent one-half the evening in “opening” and the other half in “closing.” He also said once that his sister was very much offended that my father preached without pay, for she would have enjoyed making fancy work, to the neglect of her brother’s house, to sell at fairs to pay the minister’s salary, and that she was a brilliant woman at festivals. Barker often criticised her, half in jest and half in earnest, and once when Jo and I were at his house for dinner, and something had been lost, he remarked that if B. were as familiar with her home as she was familiar with the number of gallons of liquor consumed annually, or with the Acts of the Apostles, things would be more comfortable. I think he disliked her because she paid so much attention to other people’s faults and so little to her own; but he treated her courteously, although he appeared to avoid her, and they were not much together. B. frequently left home for days at a time, compelling her patient brother to prepare his own meals or do without, but he never complained unless she chose to construe half-jesting, half-earnest raillery into complaint. At such times she had a way of replying to his light words with a seriousness that I thought disgusted him, and made him resolve never to mention the matter again.

That she was a miserable housekeeper I had frequent occasion to know, and Barker’s house always seemed like a bachelor’s home, as there was nothing about it to indicate that a woman lived there. Jo used to say of Mrs. Tremaine that she talked as the women write who furnish recipes to the newspapers; and when she came to our house the room in which she sat seemed damp for several days thereafter. Once after she had slept there, and I was put into the bed she had occupied a night or two afterward, I amused my mother by asking her to change the sheets, as they seemed like ice and would not thaw out, and the good humor with which she did this convinced me that she did not like B. very well herself. Her face was large and round and of a waxen color, and though it was said by some that she was handsome I never thought so; nor did I admire her dress, which was very rich and expensive, though exceedingly plain. Her teeth were very white, and quite prominent, because she always wore what was intended to be an enchanting smile, and when she kissed me (which she usually did in the earlier days of our acquaintance, as a compliment to a child) I thought she must have just finished washing her face, her lips were so cold and damp. Her hair being very dark, and her face very pale, I thought she resembled a well-dressed and affable corpse risen from the dead, whose business it was to go among the people and warn them that unless they repented of their sins they would very much regret it after death.

CHAPTER VII.
A NEW DISPENSATION.

IN spite of the discontent which prevailed there, Fairview progressed with the years of its history. The hard work of the people paid, and they gradually became well-to-do, although they seemed surprised that they were not in the poor-house, an event they were always promising their families.

The old houses in which they had at first lived were replaced with new ones, the new ones were furnished better than the old ones had been, and there was a general prosperity which surprised them, for they had not expected it so soon, if at all. New people came to settle in spite of the fact that they were neither invited nor expected, and many of those who came first had money ahead, and were regarded by those who came later as of a very old and aristocratic stock. Strangest of all, it was announced that a new minister had been engaged, and that he would arrive with his family, consisting of a wife and one child, in a few days. My father made the announcement at the close of his preaching one spring morning. He had preached to them, he said, because they were too poor to pay a better man; the Lord had prospered them, and he cheerfully made way for a successor who had not only religious enthusiasm, but extensive learning as well. He would continue to exhort his brethren whenever occasion seemed to require, and aid in doing the work of the Master, but he believed the good of the church demanded the arrangement he had made.

There was unusual feeling in his words as he reviewed the hard struggle of the settlement, and when he had finished, The. Meek, though apparently in greater convulsions of laughter than ever, managed to say a few kind words for their pastor, guide, and friend, and two or three of the other men followed in a similar strain. The women began to cry softly, as though the occasion were a funeral, and one by one the people went forward to shake him by the hand, which I thought surprised him, not being certain but that they were glad to get rid of him, while Brother Winter wheeled vigorously about, calling upon everybody to praise the Lord. It was a very unusual occasion, and those who had lounged outside to read the inscriptions on the head-boards in the grave lot came back again to see what it was all about, and heard the news with surprise and astonishment. Finally, the miller’s sister prayed for everybody, but in a voice so low that nobody knew it, after which the meeting broke up, and the congregation gathered in little knots in the church and in the yard to talk of the new minister.

Great curiosity was everywhere expressed, and the curious naturally came to my father for information. He knew nothing except that the new minister had been transferred from an Eastern State at his own request; that his name was the Rev. Goode Shepherd, and that he would be there for the next service a week from that day; that a house had been secured for him in the eastern part of the settlement, and that as he was a minister, he was, of course, a good man, and without question of use to the church, else the Lord would not permit him to preach. This was all he knew, or all he cared to tell, and the people went home to wonder and to talk about it.

. . . . .

Rev. Goode Shepherd came West, I am of the opinion, because the East was crowded with good men, and because he had heard there was a scarcity of such in our direction. Although he had some vague ideas on the subject of growing up with the country, he probably consented to come because somebody recommended it, and not because he was exactly clear himself how the move was to be of benefit.

Had some one in whose judgment he had equal confidence suggested after his arrival that he had better go back again, I have no doubt that he would have become convinced finally that the Lord had said it, instead of a friend, and quietly returned to the place from which he had come; for he was always uncertain whether his convictions were the result of inspiration, or whether they were the result of the gossip he had heard.

I had remarked of my father’s religion that it was a yoke that did not fit him, and which was uncomfortable to wear; but the Rev. Goode Shepherd’s religion was his vocation and pleasure, and he believed in it with all the strength of which he was capable. That he was poor was evidence to him that he was accepted of the Master who had sent him, rather than that his life had been a failure; and the work expected of him he performed cheerfully and with enthusiasm. He had no desire to do anything which was not religious; and the higher walks of his profession, and heaven finally as his reward, were all he desired or expected. There was abundant scope in theology for his ambition, and, far from craving an active business life, he rather chose his profession because it offered excuse for knowing so little about the affairs of men.

I have thought that because he took pleasure in his religion, and loved it, was one reason why it was not so hard and unforgiving as my father’s, for on this question there was nothing in common between them except that both believed that there is a heaven, and that it is desirable to be saved. The Rev. Goode Shepherd believed that learning and luxury could go hand in hand with religion; my father, that luxury was an invention of the Devil to make men forget, and that learning could be trusted to only a very few, because, unless coupled with the most pronounced piety, it was very dangerous. The Rev. Goode Shepherd believed that a religious life was most easily lived, and that a merciful Providence had ordered it that way because the children of men are weak; my father, that the easy road to travel was the broad one which led to torment, and that the other was narrow and difficult, but ending very pleasantly as a recompense for travelling it, and that it was ordered that way so that only the brave and deserving should win the prize, ridding the righteous of the weak and the undeserving by burning them up. The Rev. Goode Shepherd believed that while walking the golden streets of the heavenly city he would meet many of the friends he had worried about, saved by love infinitely greater than he expected; my father, that he would miss many faces in Paradise he had half expected to see, but who had fallen exhausted by the wayside and given up the struggle.

The new dispensation did much for Fairview, and its advancement after the coming of Mr. Shepherd was certainly more rapid than it had ever been before.

I never knew, but it seems probable to me now, that Mr. Shepherd was educated for the ministry because he was quiet and religious as a boy, and had always led a blameless and exemplary life. I think his expenses at school were paid by relatives none too well off themselves, and that he went directly from college to the pulpit. I don’t know what made me think it, but I always believed a widowed mother—aided, perhaps, by an older sister or two engaged in teaching—had provided for his education by the closest economy; that he had always intended to become famous to repay them for their kindness, but finding it a harder task than he had imagined, that he had, in later life, settled down to the conviction that to be good is better than to be great.

When his tall form and pale face appeared above the pulpit at Fairview for the first time, the impression was general among the people that he was older than they expected. The one child he had written he was possessed of turned out to be a pretty girl of nineteen or twenty, who attracted a great deal of attention as she came in with her mother and sat down near the pulpit. Both sat throughout the service without looking around, perhaps because they thought it was not likely they would see much if they should commit that impropriety. His first preaching impressed everyone favorably, though his side whiskers were against him, as was also the tall hat standing on the pulpit beside him. His presence, however, chilled the usual experience meeting following, for only the men talked, and it was short and dull. The. Meek’s laugh was not heard at all, and Brother Winter sat quietly in his corner, as though undecided whether, under the circumstances, he would be warranted in pushing to the front. The miller’s sister had nothing to say either, spending her time in watching the minister’s wife and daughter, who did not recognize the impertinence, and altogether the occasion was not what was expected.

When the meeting was dismissed, my father stepped forward to welcome Mr. Shepherd to Fairview. After him came The. Meek, and so, one by one, the people advanced to be introduced, and, after awkwardly shaking him by the hand, retired again. Mr. Shepherd led my father back to where his respectable wife and pretty daughter were, and performed the ceremony of introduction, and I imagined as my father looked at them that he thought they were birds of too fine plumage for that clime, and would soon fly away again. The. Meek stood immediately behind him, and was next presented, and then came all the congregation in the order of their importance, except the younger ones, who stood near the door looking on, and who crowded out hurriedly when Mr. Shepherd came toward them, followed by his wife and daughter. Although they desired acquaintance with the new minister and his family above all other things, they were so awkward and uncertain in their politeness that they hoped the new minister would somehow gradually become acquainted with them without an introduction, and never discover that they did not know how to be comfortable in the presence of strangers. Jo Erring was among the number of the intimidated, and I thought he was anxious that the new people should not see him until he had gone home and smartened himself up, as if they were of more importance than he had expected, for he kept himself behind the others. Jo had a habit of appearing on Sunday in his every-day attire—because everybody else wore their best on that day, it was said—and this was one of the days he violated the custom of the country, probably for the reason that the occasion was an extraordinary one.

It was my father’s custom to invite the ministers who came to Fairview to spend the day at our house, that they might be convenient for the evening service; and although he hesitated a long while in this case, as if afraid the accommodations he could offer were not good enough, he hurriedly consulted with my mother at the last moment, and walked out to the gate, when they were preparing to start for home. I could not hear from where I stood what was said, but I believed the invitation had been given and accepted, and when he began to look around the yard, I was so certain that I was wanted to drive them home that I put myself in his way, as the wagon road led through lanes and gates, and could not be easily described. My mother had already hurried home by the path through the field, that she might be there to meet them. When I went up to the wagon in response to my father’s beckon, he lifted me into the seat beside Mr. Shepherd, his wife and daughter occupying the back one, and said I would show the way and open the gates.

As we drove off I felt that the bright eyes of the girl were devouring my plain coat, for she sat directly behind me, and I regretted I had not thought to ask Jo to trim my hair that morning. The grease on my rough boots contrasted sharply with the polish of Mr. Shepherd’s patent leathers, and my great red hands were larger than his, which were very white, and shaped like a woman’s. I soon saw he was a poor driver, and asked him to give me the reins, which he willingly did, with a good-natured apology for his incapacity, pleading lack of experience in that direction.

I knew they wanted to talk of Fairview and its people, but were shy of me, so I pretended to be busy in looking after the horses, but they said nothing except that there was a great number present, which was true, as the house was full. I pointed out the houses as we went along, and tried to be entertaining.

“Old Lee lives there,” I said, as we passed the house of the renter on our farm. “He wasn’t at church to-day; he has probably gone over to the turkey roost in Bill’s Creek bottom.”

I had said it to shock them, but they laughed very gayly over it, and the girl—I had heard them call her Mateel—said she presumed that wild turkeys were plentiful. I had secretly been longing to look at her, so I turned partly around, and replied that the woods were full of them. She was a very pretty girl, dressed more expensively than I had ever seen Agnes dressed, but not with so much taste. She was rather pale, too, and I could not help thinking that her health was not very good.

“There’re deer here, too,” I said to them, finding that the subject promised to be amusing.

Mr. Shepherd and the girl looked very much interested, but the minister’s wife was so stately and dignified that I felt sure I could never be comfortable in her presence.

“One came running through our field once when Jo and I were ploughing,” I continued. “The folks were away at camp-meeting, and Jo took the gun and went after it. I heard him shoot after a long while, and then he came back, and said it was too heavy for him to carry home, but that if I would finish the land on which we were ploughing, while he rested, we would hitch to the wagon and go after it. I felt so pleased about it that I finished the work, and when I was through, he looked at the sun, and said we might as well eat supper before starting, and that I had better take the harness off the horses while they were feeding, as they would be more comfortable. At supper he asked me if under the circumstances I didn’t feel it a duty to give him my pie, which I did, and after he had eaten it, he took me to one side, and said that though he was ashamed of it himself, he was compelled to confess that he had missed.”

This amused them more than ever, and the girl asked who Jo was. This reminded me that I had neglected my friend, and I immediately gave a short and glowing history of him, not failing to mention that he knew of more turkey roosts than old Lee, and that we would visit one of them soon, and return by their house with a fat turkey. They thanked me, and Mr. Shepherd even said he would like to go with us, whereupon I explained the process of killing them on moonlight nights, which was by getting them between your gun and the moon, where they could be easily seen.

I should no doubt have told them other things equally ridiculous, but by this time we had reached the gates, and soon thereafter we stopped at the house, where my father came out and took them in. When Jo appeared to help me with the horses, I found that he was smartly dressed, and rightly concluded that he had hurried home to change after seeing the family at the church.

While we were at the stables he asked me a great many questions about the girl, and I pleased him by saying that I had talked so much about him on the way over that she had asked me who he was, and that I had replied he was my uncle, and the principal young man in Fairview.

“What did she say then?” he asked eagerly.

“That she desired to make your acquaintance, and that she was certain she had picked you out in church.”

It was a dreadful lie, but I did not regret it, seeing how well he was pleased.

“Then what did you say?” he asked.

I was not certain what would please him most, so I replied that the conversation then became general, and that Mr. Shepherd had said he would go with us some night to the turkey roost in Bill’s Creek bottom.

When we returned to the house, the three were sitting alone in the best room, looking idly at the books scattered about, and the few ornaments my mother had found time to prepare. As I sat down on the sill of the open door with a view of being handy in case I was wanted, I regretted that Agnes was not there to entertain them, for she had gone home a few weeks before, and I was certain they would have been surprised to find such a bright girl in that dull country.

“Ha!” Mr. Shepherd said, when he saw me. “The young man that drove us over. I suppose you know a great deal about horses?”

I thought he made the last remark as an apology that he had not attended to his team himself, so I replied that I knew something about them, but I was sorry he had chosen that subject, as it was not likely to interest his daughter, whom I was anxious to talk with.

“I am sorry to say I know very little about horses,” he said, “but I intend to learn. I bought mine at the station where we left the railroad. What do you think of them?”

With a view of bringing Jo into the conversation again, I said I would go and ask his opinion, as he was a very good judge. I returned presently, and said Jo thought they would do very well. As if remembering Jo as a very amusing person I had been telling them about, he said:—

“Bring the young man in. I should like to talk with him.”

I went out after Jo, but did not go far, as he had slipped up near the door, which stood open, to listen to what was being said. He was very red in the face, but followed me in.

“This is your uncle Jo, is it?” Mr. Shepherd inquired, after I had sat down again, leaving Jo standing awkwardly in the middle of the room.

“Yes, sir,” I answered, having a vague notion I ought to introduce them, but not knowing how to go about it. “My uncle Jo Erring. He lives here.”

Mr. Shepherd advanced toward him pleasantly, and I thought he reached him just in time to keep him from falling down with fright.

“I am very glad to know you, Mr. Erring,” he said, in his easy way, taking him by the hand. “This is my wife, and this my daughter,” pointing to one, and then to the other, while shaking his hand. “I have no doubt we shall become famous friends.”

Jo raised his eyes to recognize the introduction, and he said to me afterwards that he was just getting ready to bolt out of the room, and run away, when somehow they made it pleasant for him to stay.

My uncle was a very intelligent fellow, and he soon became quite entertaining, giving them accounts of the country and the people which were no doubt very droll, for when I went out presently I heard them laughing merrily at what he said. At dinner Mr. Shepherd observed that since becoming acquainted with Mr. Erring he felt like an old citizen, whereupon my father looked up hurriedly and was about to ask who that was, when he suddenly remembered, and muttered, “Oh! you mean Jo.”

It was sometimes the case that when there was company Jo and I were compelled to wait at dinner, but I was glad that on this day Jo was seated next Mateel, and did not suffer the humiliation. A sort of rude politeness was natural to him, and on this occasion he displayed it to such advantage that I glowed with pride. While the others were talking of graver matters he gave an account of the Fairview revivals, which amused Mateel so much that she asked to be excused for laughing. I had never seen two persons get along better together, and I felt certain that she would regard him as a very intelligent young man, which pleased me, for nobody else seemed to do him justice, and they all tried to humiliate and disgrace him whenever it was possible.

It was a very good dinner to which we sat down, and the Shepherds complimented it so gracefully that my mother was greatly pleased; indeed, they found it convenient to make themselves agreeable to all of us, so that the afternoon was passed very pleasantly, more so than any other Sunday afternoon ever passed in that house; for my father seemed to think that if Mr. Shepherd, with all his learning, could afford to throw aside his Sunday gloom, he would risk it. I had never seen him in so good a humor before, but I knew he would make up for it the next day; for whenever he was good-natured he was always particularly gloomy for a long time after it, as though he had committed an indiscretion of which he was ashamed.

Before night it had been arranged that Jo should drive the Shepherds home after the service, as it would be very dark, tying a horse behind the wagon on which to ride back; and it followed that he drove them to the church. When we arrived there the building was crowded to its utmost capacity; the new minister was a success.

CHAPTER VIII.
THE SMOKY HILL SECRET.

IT having been decided to begin the summer school a few weeks earlier than at first intended, it became necessary for me to go after the teacher; so it was arranged that I should drive over to Smoky Hill on Friday, and return any time the following day.

My mother shared the feeling that the neighborhood where Agnes lived was superior to ours—although none of us knew why we had this impression—and after taking unusual pains with my toilet, she asked Jo to cut my hair, which he kindly did just before I drove away in the wagon, from the high seat of which my short legs barely touched the floor.

I knew nothing of the settlement except the direction, which was north, and that the uncle with whom Agnes lived was named Biggs, but they said I could easily inquire the way. The distance was twenty miles, and by repeated inquiries I found that Mr. Biggs—who was called Little Biggs by those living near him—lived in the first white house after crossing the north fork of Bull River, and when I came in sight of the place I knew it as well as if I had lived within hailing distance all my life. It was just such a place as I expected to find; an aristocratic porch on two sides of a house evidently built after the plans of an architect—the first house of such pretensions I had ever seen—with a gravel walk leading down to the gate, and a wide and neglected yard in front. A broken and dismantled wind-mill stood in the barn-yard, and around it was piled a great collection of farm machinery in an equally advanced stage of decay, all rotting away for lack of care and use. There was a general air of neglect everywhere, and I thought Mr. Biggs was an indifferent farmer, or else an invalid. Boards were off the fences, and gates off the hinges, and pigs roamed in every place where they did not belong. A herd of them, attracted by the sound of my wheels, dashed out from under the porch, and went snorting into the vegetable garden through a broken fence. I noticed these things as I stopped at a large gate intended for wagons to drive through, and while wondering whether I had better drive in there, or tie the team and walk up to the house. While debating the question I saw that a large, boyish-looking young man was pitching hay near the barn, and, noticing that he had stopped his work and was looking at me, I motioned for him to come out. Impatiently throwing down his fork, he came out to the fence, and, resting his chin on the top board, he looked at me with great impudence.

“Does Mr. Biggs live here?” I civilly inquired.

“Yes, Mr. Biggs lives here,” he answered, drawling the first word as if to express disgust.

“Well, then,” I said, “if you will open the gate I’ll come in.”

He threw it open with a bang, as if to express an unfavorable opinion of me, and I drove through, and stopped down by the stables. He followed sullenly, after banging the gate again, and, picking up his fork without looking at me, went on with his pitching. I began to feel uncomfortable at this cool reception, and inquired quite respectfully:—

“Is Mr. Biggs at home?”

“No,” the fellow replied, “he’s not at home,” plunging his fork viciously into the hay as though he were wishing I was under it.

“Is Miss Agnes at home, then?”

“Yes, Miss Agnes is at home.” He looked up in better humor, as though the name of Agnes was not so disagreeable as that of Biggs.

“Well, I’m told to stay here to-night, and take Agnes to her school to-morrow. If you’ll show me where to stand the horses I’ll put them away.”

He laid down his fork at this and went to look through the stables. There seemed to be a spring somewhere near, for the stalls were oozy and wet, and unfit for use, and the fellow was debating in his mind which was the worst or the best one, I could not tell which. Finally he found a place, but the feed boxes were gone; and then another, but it had no place for the hay. I was following him around by this time, and said the last one would do very well, as it was the best one there.

He helped me to unhitch the horses, and while we were about it I looked up at the house and saw Agnes at one of the windows. She went away immediately, however, and I supposed she would be down to welcome me; but she didn’t come, and I began to feel very uncomfortable. I had consoled myself for the rudeness of the young man by the thought that he would be very much ashamed of his incivility when Agnes came running down to meet me; but she didn’t come, and kept away from the window, and I was uncertain whether I had better return home or seek shelter for the night at another house.

I noticed in the meantime that the fellow helping me was a giant in stature, and that he had a very little head, on which was perched a hat evidently bought for one of the children. The band and shape being gone, it looked very much like an inverted V.

“I suppose you are the preacher’s boy?” he said, after eying me a long while, as though that was a very good reason why he should dislike me.

On my replying that such was the case, he looked at me as if thinking I was larger or smaller than he had imagined, and continued apparently in better humor:—

“I have heard of you. I live here. I’m the hired man. My name is Big Adam; lazy Adam, she calls me.”

I had heard that little eyes denoted cunning, and little ears great curiosity, and Big Adam’s were so particularly small that I determined to be very wary of him during my stay.

“She owns the farm, though Biggs pretends to own it,” Big Adam went on, “but, while they do not agree in this, they agree that Big Adam hasn’t enough to do, and is very lazy, and between them I have a great deal of trouble. I do all the work that is done here, and though you may think from looking around that I am not kept very busy, I am. There are four hundred acres here, and they expect me to keep it in a high state of cultivation. You see how well I succeed; it’s the worst-looking place on earth.”

I began to understand him better, and said it looked very well when I drove up.

“May be it does—from the road, but I haven’t been out there for a year to see. I am kept too busy. But if you stay here long I’ll take you out into the field, and show you weeds higher than your head. Instead of spending the money to mend the stables and fences, they buy more land with it, to give Big Adam something to do; for they are always saying that I am fat from idleness. I am fat, but not from idleness. I haven’t had time this spring to comb my hair. Look at it.”

He took off the Λ-shaped hat, and held his head down for me to see. It reminded me of the brush heaps in which we found rabbits at home, and I wished Jo had come along; he would have been delighted to shingle it.

“But you go into the house,” he said, putting on his hat again, and, taking up the fork he had laid down to hunt a stall for my horses: “you’ll hear enough of lazy Adam in there. They’ll tell you I’m lazy and shiftless, because I can’t do the work of a dozen men; and they’ll tell you I am surly, because I can’t cheerfully go ahead and do all they ask me to. A fine opinion of Big Adam you’ll have when you go away; but I ask you to notice while you are here if Big Adam is not always at work: and Agnes will tell you—she is the only one among them who pretends to tell the truth—that she has never seen me idle. But go on into the house; I am not allowed to talk to strangers.”

Accepting this suggestion, I went through a gate which was torn off its hinges and lying flat in the path, and, walking up the steps, I knocked timidly at the front door. While waiting for some one to answer my rap, I noticed a door-plate hanging on one screw, and, careening my head around, read “Lytle Biggs.” I then understood why his neighbors called him Little Biggs—it was his name.

I hadn’t time to congratulate myself on this discovery, for just then the door-plate flew in, and Agnes stood before me. Although she was friendly to me as usual there was a constraint in her manner that I could not understand, and as she led the way in she looked as though she was expecting the house to blow up.

“My uncle is away,” she said, confusedly, after we were seated in a room opening off from the hall where I had entered, “but we expect him home to-night. My mother is not well, and demands a great deal of care, or I should have come down to the gate to meet you when you drove up.”

She was so ill at ease that I hurried to explain my errand, and I thought she was greatly relieved to know I had not come on a visit.

“I shall be ready in the morning at any time you are,” she said; and I wondered she could leave her mother, for I had been fearing that perhaps I should have to go back without her.

There was a great romp and noise in the room above the one in which we sat, and she looked out through the door leading into the hall as if half expecting to see somebody come tumbling down the stairs.

“My uncle’s children,” she said, seeing I wondered at the noise. “He has eight.”

I wondered she had not told of them before, and then I remembered that she seldom talked of her uncle’s family or of her mother.

“How are they all?” I inquired, thinking I must say something.

There was a great crash in the room overhead and a cry of pain, and Agnes went quickly to the door to listen. Being convinced that one of them had fallen over a chair, she came back, and replied to my question.

“Very noisy,” she said, half laughingly. “I fear they will annoy you; it is so quiet at your house, and there is so much confusion here.”

I said, “Oh! not at all,” not knowing what other reply to make.

“My uncle Lytle”—I pricked up my ears at this, as her pronunciation of her uncle’s name was different from that given it by his neighbors—“my uncle Lytle is trying to bring them up in town fashion here in the country, and they are seldom allowed to go out of doors, so that they can’t be blamed for being rude and bad. All of them except the baby would be out at the stables with Big Adam if they were given the opportunity, but their father’s orders are to keep them away from the stables, and in the house. So we make the best of them.”

Just then they all came tearing out into the hall above to the stair rail, and I knew they were peeping over; but some one came out hurriedly after them, and, driving them all back into the room again, shut the door with a bang.

“They are anxious to see you,” Agnes said, smiling. “They have the greatest curiosity imaginable. There will be no peace until they are allowed to look at you.”

Feeling that I was an intruder in the house, for some reason, I suggested that she let them come down, promising I would amuse them as best I could. She thought a moment, and then, excusing herself, went out. After a long time I heard her coming back with them. Six of them rushed into the room ahead of her, and, taking up a position behind the chairs, looked at me curiously. The other two she carried in her arms, one of them being an infant not more than four or five months old.

They seemed a queer lot to me, their clothing being of a pattern I had never seen before, and I noticed that the boys wore their hair in long curls, and that their frocks were braided. All of their faces were pale, which did not result solely from their being lately washed, and the older boys were dressed in short trousers, and wore shoes, though it was summer, a peculiarity which attracted my attention particularly, because most of the boys I had known went barefooted. Agnes placed the baby on my knee, and I soon had all the children about me, asking questions and going through my pockets. Indeed, I succeeded very well in amusing them. While they were playing around, I heard some one come down the stairs, and go down the hall to a door which I judged led into the kitchen. Presently Agnes went out too, and I supposed they were making arrangements for supper, which thought was probably suggested by the fact that it was late, and that I was very hungry. The children amused themselves with me for a considerable time, and were more noisy than ever, when unfortunately one of them fell headlong over a chair and set up a most terrible cry. Immediately a little dried-up old woman came hurrying into the room, who, picking up the screaming one, and roughly taking the baby out of my arms, drove them all up the stairs before her, slapping and banging them as they went, so that they were all screaming by the time the door up stairs closed upon them.

While she was collecting them I saw that the newcomer’s hair was twisted behind her head in a tight little knot, and that she was very slender, and very short; that her features were small and sharp, and dried-up like a mummy’s, and that, altogether, she was the most repulsive-looking creature I had ever seen. I half expected that she would give me a rap as she went out, she looked so sour and ugly. I supposed she was a servant; possibly Adam’s mother, and when Agnes came in, which she did a moment after, looking very much frightened, I had it in my mind to say that the old woman of the sky had swept the children away with a broomstick.

“I was afraid they would annoy you,” she said hurriedly, as though it was necessary to say something before I could remark on the queer little old woman who had driven them away.

I was about to reply that we were getting along very well until one of them fell down, when she continued:—“My uncle has just driven up. He is coming in.”

At that moment the door opened softly, and a very small and handsomely dressed man stepped into the room. He spoke to Agnes pleasantly, and as he looked inquiringly at me, she explained:—

“One of my pupils from Fairview, Ned Westlock. I shall go home with him to-morrow, as the school opens a week earlier than was expected.”

I knew now why his neighbors called him Little Biggs—because he was very short, and very thin, and very little.

“Ah! Ned Westlock.”

After he had said this, he looked at me very attentively while he removed his gloves. Placing them in his tall hat, he set both away, and came back to me.

“I am very glad to know you,” Mr. Biggs said. “I am glad to have you a guest at our house.”

This was encouraging, as nobody else had said as much, and I felt better.

“I need not apologize,” he said, “for the rough but honest ways of us farmers,” looking admiringly at his thin legs, and brushing at a speck of dirt which seemed to be on one of them, “for I believe you come of an agricultural family yourself.”

I was surprised at this reference to his rough ways, for he was extremely fastidious in his dress and manner. I managed to admit, however, that I came of an agricultural family.

“Those of us who live in the country, and earn our bread in the sweat of our brow,” Mr. Biggs went on, seating himself beside me, “cannot be particular. Our clothing, our food, and our ways are rough, but substantial and honest. We have other matters to look after, such as following the plough, sowing the grain, and tossing the hay. We may have our ambitions like other men, but they are dwarfed and bent by holding the plough, and pitching the hay. When did you come, and how long do you stay?”

I replied that I had arrived but a few hours before, and that I would depart the next day at any hour Agnes was ready.

“I am sorry,” Mr. Biggs was good enough to say, “I should be delighted to show you how we carry on a four hundred acre farm. Other great farmers have from four to a dozen hired men about them, but Big Adam and I do all the work here; and we are equal to it, though it keeps us very busy, as you will imagine. We have no time for the fine arts, you may be certain.”

He ran on gayly in this way, making himself out in ignorance and muscle the equal of one of our Fairview farmers, although he was really nothing else to my mind than a fop, until Agnes came in and said we were to walk out to supper. There was no one in the supper room when we entered it, and although I expected other members of the family every moment, none came. Agnes was there most of the time, but did not sit down, and supplied the place of a servant.

“Those of us who live in the country,” said Mr. Biggs, helping me to meat and bread with the greatest ceremony, “cannot be particular as to what we eat, except that it is substantial and hearty. Meat and bread and milk make muscle, and muscle is in great demand on a farm. Big Adam and I find a great deal of it necessary in tilling these four hundred acres, therefore we insist on plenty of plain and substantial food. Excuse me, if I eat like a hog.”

The supper was a very good one, but he talked a great deal about its being plain but hearty; and although he was dainty in his eating, and ate nothing but bread and milk, and toasted bread and tea, he kept apologizing for his ravenous appetite. He had something to say, too, about shovelling in his food with a knife, and bolting it—he did neither, but on the contrary was very delicate—and as he kept watching me, I thought that he must be apologizing for his guest, which made me very uncomfortable at my bad manners, for up to that time I had not been backward in falling to. But as he continued to denounce his unnatural craving for food, and frequently expressed the fear that the meal lacked so much of what I was accustomed to, that I could not possibly make out a comfortable supper, I finally made up my mind he did not mean me at all.

When I had finished he was waiting for me, and we adjourned to the room in which I had played with the children. Lighting a cigar (which he said was a very poor one, but which he observed in the course of the evening, as an example of his extravagance, had cost twenty cents) he took a dressing-gown from a closet, and, putting it on, sat down before me, the picture of luxurious ease.

While we sat there I heard the family of eight, accompanied by their mother and the little old woman who had frightened me, come banging down the stairs, and file into the supper room, where there were a steady noise and wrangle until they had finished and gone up the stairs again. I heard Big Adam protesting to some one that it was not pleasant to be always “jawed at,” and that he did all he could; but when the argument threatened to become boisterous, I heard a pleasanter voice intercede, and establish a peace, and I was sure this was Agnes’s. Mr. Biggs stopped once or twice to listen to the confusion, as if trying to hear what was being said, but recollecting that if he could hear, I could as well, he began talking again to draw my attention from it. He tried to make me believe the children were making the disturbance, and said:—

“There can be no order in a house full of children, and very little comfort.” He stopped to think a moment, but the uproar in the supper room was so great that he went on trying to draw my attention away from it. “I confess to thinking something of them, but every pleasure they bring is accompanied by inconvenience, expense, and annoyance. Have I told you yet that I am a philosopher?”

I had suspected that something was wrong with him, though I could not tell what it was. I replied politely, however, that he had not.

“Well, I am one,” the little man said with a show of pride. “A great many men regard children as blessings. Now I have failed to discover any kind of a blessing or pleasure in being called up in the middle of the night to run for a doctor when there is croup in the house. Usually, too, in such cases the medical man lives a great many miles away, over a rough road. Whenever I go to bed early to make up lost sleep, or come home particularly tired from tossing the hay or holding the plough, either Annie, or Bennie, or Carrie, or Davie, or Effie, or Fannie, or Georgie, or Harry, is sick, and I am compelled to go for a doctor. This never fails if the night is very wet, the roads unusually heavy, or the weather particularly cold. While everybody admires little children, I am sure they would be much more popular if their teeth came more easily; and that there would be a greater demand for them if they did not take a hundred different diseases to which they are not exposed. I am that kind of philosopher.”

The fire in the end of his cigar having about gone out, from holding it in his hand and waving it at me, he revived it with a great deal of puffing, and went on:—

“Understand me, Ned Westlock; I do not complain. I am like other men, except that I am not a fool; and while I accept the bitter with the sweet, I point out the bitter and refuse to call it palatable. I am at a loss to understand, for example, why the Creator is more considerate of pigs than He is of children; for I believe pigs cut their teeth before birth, and seldom die except when fat from good health, and at the hands of a butcher. Children, on the other hand”—he used his right hand to represent the pigs, and his left to represent the children—“are never well, and for every tooth there is an insolent doctor with a bill, to say nothing of measles, coughs, rashes, and fevers. I have seen it estimated that it requires three thousand eight hundred and seventy-nine dollars and thirty-five or forty cents to raise a baby to manhood or womanhood. A pig may be raised to maturity with a few hundred buckets of slop, a few bushels of corn, and a wisp of hay occasionally for a bed. What do you think of that?”

As he looked at me as though I had been stubbornly arguing the cause of the children, I replied that the pigs had the best of it, so far, decidedly.

“If you have never talked with a philosopher before, you may never have had your attention called to the fact, which possibly has escaped your own notice, that children do not appreciate good treatment, as do pigs and other animals. The very worst thing you can do for a boy is to treat him well. Where do you find the good boys?”

He made a pause as if expecting a reply, and I said, “I don’t know,” but I knew at once that he was impatient that I had replied, for he wanted to do all the talking himself.

“In families where boys are always hungry and abused,” he resumed. “Where do you find your bad boys? In families where they are treated well, of course. A boy who has plenty to eat, and plenty to wear, and nothing to do, is always impudent and worthless; and parents who go to trouble and expense that their children may be happy and idle pay a big price for a pestilence. I do not pretend to say that in practice I am more of a philosopher than my neighbors; but it is a fact, nevertheless, that the pig that slips into the house and litters it up is beaten with a broomstick until he understands, when tempted on future occasions, that the practice is dangerous. If the pigs get on the porch, and you open the door suddenly, they run away in great haste, having been taught by harsh means that they are not expected there; and if we would teach children in the same way, we should have more comfort with them. But practically we regard the training of pigs as more important than the training of children, and suffer much discomfort in consequence. I recognize certain inexorable masters, and obey them to avoid uncomfortable consequences; and a child must have a master, or it will become disagreeable and annoying.”

He stopped to listen to the noise made by his family up stairs. It was very uproarious, and I thought he was regretting that his philosophy had not been made to bear some practical fruit.

“If you were a young man,” he continued, coming out of a brown study, “and had driven from Fairview to ask my advice on this question, I should advise you thus: ‘Sir, if you covet the society of little children, hire them to play at your house until you are tired; for then you can send them away, and enjoy the quiet following their absence. You will find that pleasant enough, but if you have a house full of your own, that alters the case; for like the deserving poor, they then are always with you—in sickness as well as in health, and when they are disagreeable as well as when they are not.’ That would be my candid advice; you may accept it, or let it alone, as you choose.”

He waved the hand at me which he had previously used to represent the pigs, as though I had been asking him to counsel me on the subject, and as if he were impatient that I did not accept his advice at once. But recollecting himself, he took a delicate knife from his pocket, and after profuse apologies for his ill-manners, proceeded to pare his finger nails, looking occasionally at me as if doubting my ability to understand his philosophy, for I had scarcely said a word in reply to it.

“I understand your father is a singer,” he said, after his fingers were mentally pronounced satisfactory.

I replied with a show of pride that he had the finest voice ever heard in Fairview church, and that he was famous for it.

“He ought to stop it,” Mr. Biggs abruptly said. “People enjoy his singing, I have no doubt, but if he were a friend of mine—I have not even the pleasure of his acquaintance—I would say to him, ‘Quit singing, Reverend John, if you would become great.’ How does it come he is not in the Legislature? Because he sings. The people do not associate statesmanship with singing. When a man is honored for singing, he is honored for little else. Did you ever know a great man who sang?”

I replied that I had not, for I had never known a great man.

“Well,” he answered curtly, “I know them all, and none of them sing. Or play. The darkey who can sing and dance is popular with an idle crowd, but the solid people who have gardens to spade, or walls to whitewash, avoid the musical negro, for his talent is likely to be exhausted in that direction. I don’t pretend to know why it is against a man that he is able to entertain people with his voice, or with the skill of his fingers; I only know it is the case. It would be a kindness for somebody to say as much to Reverend John; you may convey the information to him, with my compliments, if you wish.”

I had been wishing all evening that Agnes would come in, and ask me to sing, as I thought I had talent in that direction, and even debated in my mind whether I would roar the “Hunter’s Horn,” or “Glorious Day of Rest” for the amusement of my host; but I was now glad she had been so considerate of my feelings, and spared me the humiliation. I was quite certain that if she should ask me to sing after what Mr. Biggs had said, I should declare I had never attempted to do such a ridiculous thing.

“Every man who tells an uncomfortable truth,” Mr. Biggs began again, after lighting a fresh cigar by the remains of the old one, “is called a beast. I am called a beast in this neighborhood (which is known for taxing and voting purposes as Smoky Hill) because I tell a great many unpalatable truths; I have eyes and intelligence, therefore I cannot help noticing (and mentioning) that the people of this country pay more attention to raising thorough-bred stock than to raising thorough-bred children which you must admit is ridiculous. I hear that The. Meek, for instance, has his stable full of fine stock, and his house full of sore-eyed children. The. Meek is evidently an ass; I’m glad I do not know him. If I did, I should make myself disagreeable by mentioning the circumstance.”

I may as well mention here that Mr. Biggs was not the kind of man he claimed to be. On the contrary, he made his living by indorsing the follies of other people, but he had pointed out their mistakes to himself so often that I suppose he really believed he was generally despised for telling the truth.

“We have many of the same kind of men in Smoky Hill. It affords me pleasure to assure you that I am unpopular with them, and they take great comfort in the belief that I am likely to die in a year or two of consumption. But I have already had the satisfaction of attending the funerals of five men who predicted that I was not long for the world; I expect to help bury the rest of them at intervals in the future. While I get a little stronger every year, by care and common sense, they get a little weaker, by carelessness and ignorance, and finally they are buried, with L. Biggs, Esq., the consumptive, looking contentedly on. The trouble with these men is that they eat everything coming in their way, like pigs, lacking observation to teach them that a greater number of people die of over-feeding than die of over-drinking or over-working. The last Smoky Hill glutton that died was the Most Worthy Chief of a temperance society, and he was always quarreling with his wife because she didn’t have pie for breakfast. For my part, I detest pie.”

I was about to say that while I agreed with him in everything else, I should be compelled to make an exception in the pie particular; but he did not give me opportunity, for he proceeded:—

“In my visits to the homes of cultured but unwise people, I am frequently tempted to do violence to my stomach by eating late at night, but recollecting the fate of the Smoky Hill men, I respectfully decline. When I am offered cake, and nightmare in other forms, I do not greedily accept and devour everything set before me, but instead I say, ‘If you have cold oatmeal mush, or a bit of graham bread, I will refresh myself with that, but no cake, I thank you, although the assortment is fine, and reflects great credit on the lady of the house.’ Thus I preserve my health, and prove my philosophy. But no doubt I am wearying you; I will show you to bed.”

He did not ask me whether I was tired of his company, but picked up the light as though he could decide questions for boys without their assistance, and leading the way up stairs, I meekly followed. Opening a door after reaching the upper floor, he gave me the light, said good night, and went down again, as though he had not had enough of his own company, and would sit up a while longer.

There were two comfortable beds in the room to which Mr. Biggs had shown me, and Big Adam occupied one of them already, sound asleep. His clothes were piled up in a heap by the side of it, with the Λ-shaped hat on top, ready to go on the first thing in the morning. He mumbled occasionally in his sleep, and I thought he was saying he did the best he could, and that it wasn’t pleasant to be “jawed at,” which made me think again of the terrible old woman with the parchment face, the little head, the little body, and the little knot of hair on the back of her head. I felt like kneeling down by my bed and praying that the queer woman might not have a habit of walking through the house at night, accompanied by the kitchen butcher-knife freshly sharpened at the grindstone, for there was no lock on the door. But speedily occupying the other bed, and putting out the light, I had hardly begun thinking of the curious family before I was sound asleep.

CHAPTER IX.
THE CHARITY OF SILENCE.

WHEN I went down to breakfast the next morning, I found Agnes waiting for me, and the meal ready; and as was the case the night before, she presided at the table without sitting down. I ate alone, and in silence, as it was explained that Mr. Biggs was not yet up, though it was late, and Agnes did not seem to be in a mood for talking. The circumstance that other members of the family kept out of the room made me think that I was regarded in the house as a sort of a machine likely to explode and hurt somebody, and could be approached only by those who knew where the safety valve was which blew me off; for I supposed Mrs. Biggs and Mrs. Deming to be very aristocratic people, who could not tolerate a country-bred boy. Therefore I did not feel in very good humor myself, thinking that Agnes was ashamed to exhibit me to her friends. Going out to the stables in lazy preparation for returning home, I found Big Adam pitching hay, as I had left him the day before.

“Well, young Westlock, how are you now?” he inquired, leaning on his fork.

I returned his greeting, and said I would hitch up when he had time to help me.

“You needn’t be in a hurry about it,” he said, returning to his work. “If I were you I would manage to get home just at dark, for then you’ll have nothing to do during the day. If you get back too early the preacher may find something for you to do.”

There was a good deal of truth in this, and I thanked him for the suggestion.

“I know something about hired help and boys on a farm. I have had a ripe experience in the service of Biggs. I thought he would talk you to death last night; it’s a terrible death to die. What did he say?”

I repeated portions of the conversation, and gave particular stress to what he had said concerning his and Big Adam’s doing the work of half a dozen men.

“He is always saying that,” Big Adam said indignantly, “but I assure you on my honor that he never held a plough or pitched hay a day in his life. Why, he is not here a third of his time. He came home last night after an absence of four weeks; I don’t know where he has been, but to some of the towns a long way off, probably. At ten or eleven o’clock he will breakfast, and then I shall hitch up and drive him over the place, during which time he will point out and suggest enough work to keep a dozen men busy for months; and after assuring me it ought all to be done before night, he will return to the house to lounge about. In a day or two he will go away again, and come back when he gets ready. That’s the kind of a farmer Biggs is, but I must say for him that he is quiet and peaceable. I wish I could say as much for his sister, the old pelican.”

Up to this time Big Adam had been wearing his Λ-shaped hat so far back on his head that I was wondering it did not fall off; but as if there were some people so contemptible that he could not possibly mention them without showing his temper, he jerked the hat over on his low forehead when he said this, and, looking out from under it with his little eyes, viciously said, “Damn.”

“And who is his sister?” I asked.

“Old Missus Deming, Agnes’s mother; the little old woman they were careful you should not see.”

It came to me all at once—how foolish of me not to have thought of it before—why Agnes never talked about her mother, and why she always seemed to be glad to be away from her; she was disagreeable, not only to Big Adam, but to every one around her. I understood now that Agnes was frightened when I first came for fear I should see her mother, and not for fear her mother would see me, as I had imagined; and I felt so much better that I had a mind to walk in the yard in plain view of the house, that Mrs. Deming might regret not having made my acquaintance. I told Adam that I had seen her, however, and narrated the circumstance of her appearance in the room after the children.

The hired man expressed his satisfaction at this very much as I have seen young colts express it, by kicking his legs out in various directions, and snorting. After he had enjoyed himself in this manner for a while he said:—

“It’s just like her, though. They might have known better than to have left her alone. It’s a wonder she didn’t hit you; I wish she had, for then you would despise her, as I do.”

He continued to chuckle to himself as though it was a satisfaction to him that I had seen his enemy; and putting his finger in his mouth, he drew it out in such a manner that it sounded like pulling a cork; then thumping his jaws he made a sound of liquor coming out of a bottle. This pantomime I interpreted to mean that if he were better off he would celebrate the event with something expensive to drink. I found out afterward that this was a habit with him when in a good humor, and he had acquired such skill by practice that if your back was turned to him the deception was perfect.

“She’s the worst woman on earth,” he continued, leading me behind the barn to be more confidential. “They say she never smiled in her life, and I believe it. She grumbles, and growls, and jaws from morning until night; but what can they do? Bless you, she owns the farm!”

I looked astonished, to induce him to go on.

“Yes, she owns the place, and you bet she looks after it. When she came here with Agnes, six or seven years ago, her brother had a great tract of land bought on credit, and she paid for it with the money she brought along, and built the house you slept in last night. Since then she has been so disagreeable that Biggs is seldom at home, and won’t see her when he is. Did you see his wife?”

I replied that I had been denied that pleasure.