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PROVINCIAL TYPES IN
AMERICAN FICTION
BY
HORACE spe:ncer fiske
EXTENSION LECTURER IN ENGLISH LITERATURE, THE
UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO
AUTHOR OF '* THE BALLAD OF MANILA BAY AND OTHER
VERSES," " CHICAGO IN PICTURE AND POETRY,"
ETC.
NEW YORK CHAUTAUQUA SPRINGFIELD CHICAGO
2ri}e Cl)autauqua i^ress
MCMIII
113
Plf5
Copyright, 1903, by
THE CHAUTAUQUA PRESS.
J. S. Cushing & Co. — Berwick & Smith Co-
Norwood, Mass., U.S.A.
PREFACE
The field of American fiction is so wide and so varied
that only one phase of it has been touched upon in the
present volume, — certain types of American provincial
life as studied since the Civil War by authors in New
England, the South, the Middle West, and the Far West.
The literature of these sections of the country written
since the Civil War is so embarrassingly rich that, with
one exception, nothing of the flood of very recent fiction
is included in the scope of this limited study. The eifort
of the writer has been to confine himself largely to what
is rather indefinitely called " realistic " literature, and to
emphasize the truth of characterization found in such
fiction as has come to be generally recognized for its
special significance and permanent value as a reflection
of certain phases of our national life.
The present volume can, of course, be only suggestive,
but if it succeeds in stimulating to an appreciative study
and enjoyment of the dozen works of fiction considered,
it will have largely accomplished its purpose.
In tracing the development of provincial character in
any particular novel or story, it has seemed best to give
iv Preface
as much as possible of the author's individuality of con-
ception and flavor of style, rather than to indulge in long
descriptive writing and cumbersome paraphrase, — in the
hope that the peculiar charm of the author considered
may stir a desire for more intimate acquaintance, and so
lead on to a genuine appreciation of what is best in
American fiction.
HORACE SPENCER FISKE.
Chicago, April, 1903.
CONTENTS
PROVINCIAL TYPES IN NEW ENGLAND
CHAPTER PAGE
I. A Brief Survey of the Field i
II. "The Rise of Silas Lapham " by William Dean Howells il
III. " Pembroke " by Mary E. Wilkins .... 43
IV. " Deephaven," by Sarah Orne Jewett .... 64
PROVINCIAL TYPES IN THE SOUTH
V. A Brief Survey of the Field 75
VI. " In Ole Virginia " by Thomas Nelson Page . . . 87
VII. " Colonel Carter of Cartersville " by F. Plopkinson Smith 97
VIII. " Uncle Remus : His Songs and His Sayings " by Joel
Chandler Harris 106
IX. " The Grandissimes" by George W. Cable . . .118
X. " The Prophet of the Great Smoky Mountains " by
*' Charles Egbert Craddock " 133
PROVINCIAL TYPES IN THE MISSISSIPPI
VALLEY
XI. A Brief Survey of the Field 144
XII. " The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn " by " Mark
Twain
152
vi Contents
CHAPTER PAGE
XIII. "The Hoosier Schoolmaster " by Edward Eggleston . 167
XIV. *' Main-Traveled Roads " by Hamlin Garland . .179
PROVINCIAL TYPES IN THE FAR WEST
XV. A Brief Survey of the Field 208
XVI. " The Virginian " by Owen Wister . . . .215
, XVII. "The Luck of Roaring Camp " by Bret Harte . . 241
PROVINCIAL TYPES IN NEW
ENGLAND
CHAPTER I
A BRIEF SURVEY OF THE FIELD
If, in the fiction written in America since the Civil War,
there has not yet appeared the long-looked- for great " Ameri-
can " novel, there has nevertheless been written much that
is a true and delightful reflection of genuine American char-
acter, particularly of that character as seen in the country
and in those sections that have been least affected by the
progress of a growing national unity. American literature
may, in fact, be said to be made up of an aggregation of
sectional literatures — the literatures of New England, the
South, the Middle West, and the Far West. This aggrega-
tion naturally lacks unity, but it is all American ; and perhaps
at some time these diverse characteristics may be fused by
some masterly writer of fiction into a harmonious whole,
which shall, by its vast variety yet unifying American spirit,
be recognized as the great American novel.
From the time of the production of" Rip Van Winkle " and
"Sleepy Hollow" by Washington Irving, of the "Leather-
stocking Tales" by James Fenimore Cooper, and of "The
Scarlet Letter" and "The House of the Seven Gables"
by Nathaniel Hawthorne, to the present, the men who have
2 Provincial Types in New England
done the most effective literary work and shown us most
vividly certain phases of American life have usually been
those who wrought in somewhat circumscribed fields —
fields that they personally knew and loved. And among
the writers of so-called " realistic " fiction in America none
has had a more distinct place as a leader or a wider recog-
nition among readers than William Dean Howells. Although
born in the Middle West, Mr. Howells lived for a number
of years in Boston, and notwithstanding his later hfe in New
York, he is still recognized as distinctly and successfully a
portrayer of New England character. Three of his finest
achievements in fiction have to do almost entirely with New
England life, — "A Modern Instance," "The Lady of the
Aroostook," and " The Rise of Silas Lapham." These are
all in what is known as his " earlier " manner, before his
literary art became so subtle, sociological, and photographic,
and give in a remarkably real way various phases of that
typical New England character which the world has come
to believe combines in itself many of the elements of the
American national mind. In the first-mentioned book
Mr. Howells's characterization of Hartley Hubbard as the
" smart " young newspaper man, who is reading law in
'Squire Gaylord's office, and who later wooes and wins and
divorces Marcia, the 'Squire's daughter, is so masterly that
at one time we can hardly help admiring the breeziness and
audacity and acuteness of the character, and at another we
are driven in repulsion from its cheapness and baseness and
brutal cynicism. And when the old 'Squire — " Mr. F. J.
Gaylord, of Equity, Equity County, Maine " — pleads in the
Tecumseh court-house in his own daughter's behalf, and
charges his son-in-law with perjury, the pathos and dramatic
quality of the scene go far to divert from Mr. Howells the
A Brief Survey of the Field 3
oft-repeated charge that he is enamored of the common-
place.
As Mr. Harry Thurston Peck, the editor of The Bookman^
remarks of " The Lady of the Aroostook," it would be diffi-
cult to find in American realistic fiction a more happily
developed and delightful story than that of Lydia Blood,
the provincial New England girl, who, reared in the grim
and almost joyless rural community of South Bradfield in the
hills of Northern Massachusetts, shows herself on board the
sailing vessel Aroostook to be, unconsciously to herself, but
very charmingly to her exclusively male companions, a
genuine " lady," — though to the eye of the European critic
such a middle-class provincial type could hardly come under
the designation of " a lady " at all. And in Venice itself,
under the well-meant but embarrassing surveillance of her
half-Europeanized aunt, Lydia is as easily the true and self-
possessed and irresistible " lady " as she was under the eyes
of the chivalrous old sea-captain Jenness, the vulgar and
drunken Hicks, or the hypercritical and cynical Staniford.
Mr. Howells has given to this unique story a distinctly
provincial setting, his opening and closing chapters bringing
before the mind with almost perfect art the characteristic
figures of fussy but undemonstrative Aunt Maria, Deacon
Latham, the domesticated and uncertain old grandfather,
Ezra Perkins, the dumb and formal driver of the yellow
Concord coach, besides the picture of the " blue-cold "
meeting-house, the savage desolation of the snow-hidden
hills, the graveyard, as animated as the rest of the village,
the sheet-iron stove in the parlor, the horsehair furniture,
and the pea-green lamp with the red woolen wick that fights
up this typical New England village with an immortal glow.
But the most distinctively and broadly national figure that
4 Provincial Types in New England
Mr. Howells has drawn is probably that in " Silas Lapham,"
— the character of the paint manufacturer, that typical
product of the American nouveaux riches, who has struggled
out and up from the bleak Vermont hills into a prosperous
and expanding business in Boston, and who yet hangs sus-
pended above the precipice of social failure when he pitifully
discovers that his hard-earned money cannot buy him posi-
tion or friendships or culture. Here are the braggadocio
of the self-made man who is praising his creator and
is yet self-depreciative, the shrewd and refreshing humor,
the instinctive generosity and genuine nobility, the undying
energy and sure eye to the main chance, and the merciless
conscientiousness that pursues even to self-ruin — these are
all here, united in a Yankee nature that stirs one's sense of
the ridiculous, the pathetic, and the positively heroic. And
much of this is felt even in the first few pages of " The Rise
of Silas Lapham," through the subtle and vivid power of
the novelist, — in that memorable interview with Bartley
Hubbard, who seems unerringly to penetrate every weak
little vanity of the boastful and self-centered man, and
draw from him without reserve the wearisome minutiae of
a commonplace life.
Another convincing study of a rural type under urban
conditions is found in '' The Minister's Charge," in which,
through the unwilling agency of a Boston preacher, Lem-
uel Barker, a raw New England boy from Willoughby
Pastures, smitten with the egotism of literary creation,
comes to the city bent on publishing a poem ; and by
strangely connected causes the poor boy is driven on from
one emergency to another, through love and poverty and
ambition and shame and self-sacrifice, to an apparently
impotent end. And with him are involved such strongly
A Brief Survey of the Field 5
provincial types as his first sweetheart, Statira Dudley,
her garrulous and insuppressible companion, 'Manda Grier,
and his strong-minded, self-forgetting, bloomer-wearing
old mother.
Among the many writers who have attempted to set
forth the salient characteristics of the provincial New
England type, few can be ranked above Miss Wilkins,
whose realistic art has a sure and sympathetic touch for
the grim, gaunt, indomitable figures that move through
the fields and remoter villages of the Puritan's country.
In her " Humble Romance," her " New England Nun and
Other Stories," and her more ambitious work, " Pem-
broke," she has given faithful and vivid pictures of rural
and community life, — in fact, they are often so closely
drawn as to be almost painful in their embodiment of
merciless conscience, unrelenting will, joyless religious
life, a certain moral intolerance, and a lack of the sweet
and lovable and beautiful. Will and conscience dominate
some of her stories like passions, and they sometimes run
to tragic and grotesque excesses in their manifestations,
which may be true enough and characteristic enough, but
which make us exclaim at times, " Why this eternal round
of unrelieved rigidity and self-imposed tragedy and mis-
ery ? " But here and there, in truth to life also, are the
lighter touches of humor and charity and intense but un-
demonstrative love.
Many of Miss Wilkins's people are so "set," as the
Yankees themselves would say, that they almost pass the
bounds of the reader's patience ; and, as in " Pembroke,"
a young man will sooner give up the girl he loves than go
back on a rashly spoken word, — a father will sooner see
his daughter go through a long life unmarried and em-
6 Provincial Types in New England
bittered than suffer himself to speak a word of apology
for a hot-tempered outbreak. This idolatry of self-esteem
and self-will is most vividly shown in the dominating spirit
of Deborah Thayer in ''Pembroke" — a veritable she-
Puritan, who stands before us thin-lipped, insistent, unfor-
giving. And her son, Barney Thayer, is like unto herself
— as "set" and as hopelessly stubborn. With his new
house all but finished, with an attractive and loyal woman,
Charlotte Barnard, ready to marry him, he comes for
almost the last of many visits to woo his sweetheart. But
on that fatal night his will clashes with the equally impe-
rious will of his prospective father-in-law, Cephas Barnard;
the. old man orders him from the house, and Barney Thayer
vows never to cross the threshold again, — "I never will,
by the Lord Almighty." The door slams after him, but
his sweetheart, Charlotte, eagerly follows him, calling his
name ; yet he does not even turn his head. And through
long years he kept his stubborn word, the new house
occupied only by the ghost of a thwarted love, and the
lives of himself and the woman he loved dragging on in
needless misery and daily bitterness.
Yet underneath all this apparent rigidness of nature is
glowing in the book the intense flame of passion that will
not be put out, and in its scorching effect even the grim
stiffness of Deborah Thayer suffers. For her own daugh-
ter, Rebecca, when thwarted by her mother in her strong
love for William Berry, secretly yields to his passion ;
and as the languid, pining girl is submitting to the fitting
of a new dress, which is being made by her mother as a
sort of consoling gift, the truth that she has loved not
wisely but too well is only too evident. Her mother orders
her from the house even in the midst of a snow-storm — •
A Brief Survey of the Field 7
she is more relentless than the fury of the storm itself.
Later, after Rebecca's forced marriage and the birth of
her dead child, her mother seems ignorant of her exist-
ence ; and no one ventures to mention Rebecca's name
in her presence.
The reader is sometimes tempted to inquire if there is
really blood in the veins of some of these people presented
by the pitiless art of Miss Wilkins. Mr. Barrie's " Auld
Lichts," grim as they are, are softly human in comparison
with some of these New England types. But in extenua-
tion it must be said that characters like Deborah Thayer
are often religious in their motives and action, and confuse
their own will with the imagined will of the God of all.
And this is pathetically illustrated in the punishment of
her invalid son, Ephraim, which resulted so unexpectedly
in his death. His mother was doing it, she thought, for
his present and eternal good.
A kindlier, sweeter phase of New England life is seen
in the satisfying art of the books written by Sarah Orne
Jewett, who, for subtle sympathy with her characters, an
appreciation of their finer, higher qualities, and a medium
of expression Greek-like in its simplicity and serenity,
must take a very high place in the portrayal of provincial
New England types. In " Country By-Ways," " Tales of
New England," and " A Country Doctor," and especially
in " A Marsh Island " and " Deephaven," Miss Jewett has
done very much to preserve in permanent literary form
the quaint and beautiful traits of rural New England. As
one recalls the people in " A Marsh Island," the exquisite
and lovable figure of Doris Owen emerges in the dawn-
light of that memorable morning when she made her trem-
bling and heroic way to Westmarket to confess her love
8 Provincial Types in New England
and dissuade her angry lover from embarking for the
Banks. And there is Doris's dear old father with the touch
of sentiment and imagination and love of nature, and the
tireless and ambitious mother, and Jim Fales, and the jeal-
ous but virile and constant Dan Lester, — a group of rural
figures made all the more interesting by the unique back-
ground of quiet beauty and color that Miss Jewett knows
how to draw so easily and so effectively.
In Miss Jewett's " Deephaven " we have a collection of
short sketches and stories that show her art at its highest,
and so realistic as to lead many readers to suppose that
" Deephaven " is a veritable New England seaport known
to themselves. Miss Jewett, however, in her preface, dis-
claims any close identity in her characterizations, and
denies that " Deephaven " is on the actual map of New
England. The two Boston girls who spent that mem-
orable summer in the quaint old Brandon house at Deep-
haven make delightfully fresh and interesting figures
amid the decayed aristocracy and retired sea-captains and
talkative widows and sedate spinsters of the inactive but
charming old seaport. The optimistic and humorous Mrs.
Kew, wife of the lighthouse keeper, the reminiscent " Widow
Jim," who could make rugs and preside at funerals, and
had "faculty"; the pipe-smoking, story-telling old sea-
captains, like Captain Isaac Horn ; Captain Lant, who,
though now devoted to farming, had to take " a day's
fishing every hand's turn, to keep the old hulk clear of
barnacles;" the lame, red-shirted " Danny," with his cat
and hospital stories ; and the visionary Captain Sands,
who had a sort of marine museum and was a specialist in
weather and the mysteries of telepathy, — some of these
types seem done from the life, and over them all is a
A Brief Survey of the Field 9
misty light of remoteness and tradition that softens and
endears.
Another volume that is redolent of New England sea air
is ^' Caleb West, Master Diver," which was written out of
the actual experiences of the author, F. Hopkinson Smith,
who, as is generally known, is a marine engineer and archi-
tect, as well as a painter, lecturer, and novelist. The book
is alive with struggle against wind and wave, with a sense
of the truly heroic in the daily achievements of such honest
and noble types as Captain Joe and Caleb West — two as
real men as often walk in the pages of a novel. They are
rough, weather-beaten men, but not coarse — and their
work as builders of submarine structures is a definitely
shaping influence that accounts for iron in the blood and
a splendid self-reliance. And their moral make-ups are as
wholesome and invigorating as the sea air in which they
work and live. Aunty Bell's kitchen is a place to eat in
and to be happy in, and her husband's gospel of compas-
sion and forgiveness for the " hoodooed " but sweet-
natured Betty, the master diver's young wife, has in it a
touch of the divine. The *' Pocomokian," Major Slocomb,
from the South, is suggestive of that even more delightful
character, Colonel Carter of Cartersville, — a type of
inconsequential, shiftless, but chivalric and engagingly
social, qualities that Mr. Smith has a peculiar aptitude in
depicting.
New England has proved a rich theme for portrayers of
provincial character, as we have already seen, and a long
list of fiction writers covering this particular field might
easily be made out ; but it is sufficient for our present pur-
pose to mention only a few of the more conspicuous, like
Elizabeth Stuart Phelps-Ward, who excels in the emotional
lO Provincial Types in New England
force of her intense characters ; Thomas Bailey Aldrich,
whose " Stillwater Tragedy " presents with great vividness
and charm the life of a New England factory town ; Sally
Pratt McLean, with her minutely finished portraits of
*' Cape Cod Folks " ; and Arlo Bates, whose " Diary of a
Saint " presents, in striking contrast to the title, one of the
most intense local dramas in New England life.
Although New York and Pennsylvania have not been so
prolific a field as New England in furnishing provincial
literary types, the former state found in Harold Frederic
a sympathetic interpreter of his native valley of the Mo-
hawk, and he produced a unique series of local novels in
" Seth's Brother's Wife," " In the Valley," '' The Lawton
Girl," and " The Damnation of Theron Ware." Rebecca
Harding Davis has written several tales with a Pennsylva-
nia background, and Margaret Deland made a village in
Allegheny County the scene of "John Ward, Preacher."
CHAPTER II
"THE RISE OF SILAS LAPHAM " BY WILLIAM DEAN
HOWELLS
Perhaps the most virile and typically American charac-
ter created by Mr. Howells is that of Silas Lapham, the
paint manufacturer, who struggled up the ladder of mate-
rial prosperity out of the hills of Northern Vermont, ex-
panded into a great business in Boston, where for the sake
of his two daughters he made a pathetic effort to achieve
something of a social position, and then through others'
dishonesty, his own speculation, and an unrelenting con-
scientiousness, collapsed financially, and was obliged to
return to his starting-point in the little Vermont town of
hard beginnings.
In the first few pages of the novel, by means of a news-
paper interview, the author has depicted, with a vivid thor-
oughness and a humorous touch, the laborious and self-made
career of the central figure of the story. Bartley Hubbard,
a shrewd and cynical newspaper man, is writing what he
calls the " Solid Men of Boston " series for The Eve?its,
and he desires to include the millionaire paint manufac-
turer in the list. As Bartley waits expectantly, with his
note-book on his lap, Lapham, absorbed in his business
correspondence, suddenly swings in his swivel-chair, so as
to face his interviewer, and asks, with characteristic humor.
12 Provincial Types in New England
" So you want my life, death, and Christian sufferings, do
you, young man ? " Bartley's reply, " Your money or your
life," suggests to Lapham the rather pungent comment,
" I guess you wouldn't want my life without the money."
Bartley, however, insists that he doesn't want Lapham's
money without his lifej. but adds significantly, " You're
just one million times more interesting to the public than
if you hadn't a dollar." And thereupon, while he waited
for Lapham to continue, Bartley jotted down this graphic
individual sketch in his note-book : "In personal appear-
ance Silas Lapham is a fine type of the successful Ameri-
can. He has a square, bold chin, only partially concealed
by the short reddish-gray beard, growing to the edges of
his firmly closing lips. His nose is short and straight;
his forehead good, but broad rather than high ; his eyes
blue, and with a light in them that is kindly or sharp ac-
cording to his mood. He is of medium height, and fills an
average arm-chair with a sohd bulk. . . . His head droops
somewhat from a short neck which does not trouble itself
to rise far from a pair of massive shoulders."
When Lapham expressed a doubt as to where the inter-
viewer wanted him to begin, Bartley rather pleased his
victim by remarking, '' Might begin with your birth ; that's
where most of us begin." Lapham gives the information
that he was born some fifty-five years before, pretty well
up under the Canadian line, but " I was bound to be an
American citizen of some sort, from the word Go ! " " Par-
ents poor, of course," suggested Bartley. " Any barefoot
business ? Early deprivations of any kind, that would en-
courage the youthful reader to go and do likewise ? Or-
phan myself, you know." But the abiding sense of the
hard seriousness of his early struggles stirred the quiet
" The Rise of Silas Lapham " 13
self-respect of Lapham to say that, if the interviewer re-
garded Lapham's early life as a joke, the interview was at
an end. The unabashed Bartley only wrote in his note-
book how Lapham's parents " taught their children the
simple virtues of the Old Testament and Poor Richard's
Almanac."
When Lapham again grew reminiscent he felt a lump in
his throat at the tender thought of his mother's assiduous
care and heroic self-sacrifice for her boys : " She was a lit-
tle, frail thing, not bigger than a good-sized intermediate
schoolgirl ; but she did the whole work of a family of boys,
and boarded the hired men besides. She cooked, swept,
washed, ironed, made, and mended from daylight till dark,
— and from dark till daylight, I was going to say ; for I
don't know how she got any time for sleep." He recalls
how she always found time, too, to go to church, to teach
her boys to read 'the Bible, and to " misunderstand it in the
old way." " She was good. But it ain't her on her knees
in church that comes back to me so much like the sight of
an angel as her on her knees before me at night, washing
my poor, dirty little feet, that I'd run bare in all day, and
making me decent for bed. ... I can feel her hands on
my feet yet 1 " Whereupon Bartley, the unsentimental,
looked down at Silas's No. 10 boots and gently whistled
through his teeth.
Lapham's suggestion that he would like to paint his
mother's hard and stunted life for the modern women who
complain of their empty existence is a cue to the inter-
viewer to swing his subject over to the matter of the min-
eral paint that has proved the foundation of Lapham's
present fortune. The latter eagerly relates how his father
found the deposit of mineral paint in a hole made by the
14 Provincial Types in New England
upturned roots of a tree that had blown down. But the
country at that time was too poor for paint, and Silas's
father had no facilities for putting it on the market. So
that the paint-mine got to be a kind of joke with the Lap-
ham family. Finally all the other boys went West and
took up land, while Silas stayed by the farm, " not because
the paint-mine was on it, but because the old house was —
and the graves." Even Silas himself went off, to try Texas,
but after three months of it he found that Vermont was
** good enough " for him. He married the school-teacher
in Lumberville, and together they ran the hotel. His wife
urged him to "paint up," till at last he yielded, and to-
gether they drove out to the farm and brought back " a
bushel of the stuff." " I tried it crude, and I tried it burnt ;
and I liked it. . . . There wa'n't any painter by trade in
the village, and I mixed it myself. Well, sir, that tavern's
got that coat of paint on it yet." When Silas Lapham got
the first coat on, his sympathetic and filial memory called
up the picture of his old father who had failed, and in
recounting the incident to his interviewer Silas sadly re-
marked, " I've noticed that most things get along too late
for most people." He recalled how his wife Persis came
out from the kitchen with her sleeves rolled up and sat
down beside him on the trestle, and how he asked, " What
do you think, Persis ? " " And says she, ' Well, you hain't
got a paint-mine, Silas Lapham ; you've got a go/d-mine.^ "
As a memorial to his father, Silas wanted to call the
paint the " Nehemiah Lapham Mineral Paint," but finding
the name too long he had stamped on every barrel, keg,
bottle, and package, big or little, the initials and figures
" N. L. f. 1835, S. L. t. 1855," which being interpreted
read, " Father found it in 1835, ^^^ ^ ^^^^^ ^^ ^^ i^SS-"
" The Rise of Silas Lapham " 1 5
By analysis a man from Boston showed that the ore con-
tained seventy-five per cent of the peroxide of iron, and
the scientific phrase was pronounced by Lapham with a
sort of reverent satisfaction, being accented as if it were
spelled " purr-ox-eyed.'^ Silas enthusiastically related
how the expert sat down and told him that he had a
paint that would drive every other mineral paint out of
the market. " ' Why,' says he, * it'll drive 'em right into
the Back Bay ! That paint has got hydraulic cement in
it, and it can stand fire and water and acids. When
you've got your arrangements for burning it properly,
you're going to have a paint that will stand like the ever-
lasting hills, in every climate under the sun.'" And then,
after Lapham himself had indulged in a eulogy of the
manifold virtues of his paint, detailing how it could be
used on the inside of a cistern, or a bath-tub, or a steam-
boiler, or on the outside of a brick wall, or a railroad car,
or a steamboat deck, the newspaper man naively sug-
gested, " Never tried it on the human conscience, I sup-
pose." To which Lapham gravely replied, " I guess you
want to keep that as free from paint as you can, if you
want much use of it. I never cared to try any of it on
mine."
On shelves over his office desk Lapham pointed out with
peculiar pride the finest grade of his paint put up in flaw-
less glass jars, with the different tints showing through ;
and Bartley read on one of the labels, "The Persis Brand,"
which Lapham said, with much satisfaction, he had put
on the market in honor of his wife on her last birthday.
In his grateful pride over the stanch cooperation of his
wife in their early struggles to succeed with the paint,
Lapham reminded his interviewer how he used to say,
1 6 Provincial Types in New England
" It wa'n't the seventy-five per cent of purr-ox-eyed of iron
in the ore that made that paint go ; it was the seventy-five
per cent of purr-ox-eyed of iron in hery
Lapham's esthetic sense could find nothing wrong in
covering the scenery with advertisements of his paint, and,
as he told Hubbard, he never could see anything so very
sacred about a big rock that it wouldn't do to put mineral
paint on it in three colors. " I wish some of the people
that talk about the landscape, and write about it, had to
bu'st one of them rocks out of the landscape with powder,
or dig a hole to bury it in, as we used to have to do up on
the farm ; I guess they'd sing a little diiferent tune about
the profanation of scenery." On Lapham's insisting
that the landscape was made for man, and not man for the
landscape, his interviewer ironically remarked, " Yes, it was
made for the stove-polish man and the kidney-cure man ; "
and when Silas, in his attempt to resume his narrative, asked
where he was, Bartley softly suggested, "decorating the
landscape."
But the Civil War proved too much for the mineral
paint, and Lapham's wife, seeing a providence in the failure
to sell it, recognized that he had a country worth fighting
for. " Well, sir, I went. I knew she meant business.
It might kill her to have me go, but it would kill her sure
if I stayed." And the fruit of his going was a ball in his
leg, which he called his " thermometer." His return from
the war was the beginning of wider operations in the paint
business, and, much against his will but with his wife's
urgent advice, he took a partner with capital, who knew
nothing about paint ; and in a year or two the partner
withdrew with, as Bartley suggested, "the experience."
This episode, as Bartley surmised, was the sore spot in
"The Rise of Silas Lapham " 17
Silas's memory, and was to have a ruinous significance in
his later life. But as he went on, Lapham's enthusiasm
over his paint grew unbounded, — his paint was almost
his religion. " You pass a ton of that paint dry through
a blast-furnace, and you'll get a quarter of a ton of pig-
iron. I believe in my paint. I believe it's a blessing to
the world. When folks come in, and kind of smell round,
and ask me what I mix it with, I always say, ' Well, in the
first place, I mix it with Faith, and after that I grind it up
with the best quality of boiled linseed oil that money will
buy.' "
Leaving his interviewer at the newspaper office, Lapham
drove to Nankeen Square at the South End of Boston,
where he had not built, but had bought very cheap, — with
a characteristic sense for a bargain, — a house that be-
longed to a " terrified gentleman of good extraction who
discovered too late that the South End was not the thing,
and who, in the eagerness of his flight to the Back Bay,
threw in his carpets and shades for almost nothing."
Neither Silas Lapham nor his sensible, self-reliant wife
had ever felt the personal disadvantage of being in an
unfashionable neighborhood ; but after Mrs. Lapham and
her daughters had accidentally, on a summer trip to a
Canadian watering-place, been thrown in somewhat inti-
mate contact with a cultivated and aristocratic Boston
family with an eligible son in it, it began to suggest itself
that a new home " on the water side of Beacon Street "
might be a social advantage to the daughters.
In discussing with her husband the impression these
refined Bostonians had made on her, — they made her feel,
she said, " as if we had always lived in the backwoods,"
— she asked him if he knew them, and added, with
1 8 Provincial Types in New England
reference to the head of the family, '' What busi-
ness is he in ? " "I guess he ain't in anything," said
Lapham. " They were very nice," said Mrs. Lapham, in
impartial tone. "Well, they'd ought to be," returned the
Colonel, — "never done anything else." When his wife
insisted that they never seemed " stuck up," her husband
with the all-sufficient pride of new-won wealth ironically
answered, "They'd no need to — with you. I could buy
him and sell him, twice over." In illustration of his proud
financial ability, when his wife received from Mrs. Corey
a lithographed circular asking for subscriptions to a very
praiseworthy charity, Lapham promptly drew his check
for five hundred dollars, which his wife promptly tore in
two, remarking as she did so that a hundred would do, as
she " didn't want to show off before them."
After much artful broaching of the subject of building
on his new lot in Beacon Street, the Colonel persuaded his
wife to drive over and see the site, and as they jogged
along they talked of the different kinds of architecture along
the streets and admired the worst. Now and then they
noticed a young man lifting his hat in response to some
salutation from a window, and it suggested to Lapham that
his own girls wouldn't " look very bad behind one of those
big panes." This called to the mother's mind the thought
of the young Corey whom they had met the summer before
in Canada and been so much impressed by. Upon her
husband's inquiry as to whether the young man was with
his family in Boston, and her reply that he was on a ranch
in Texas with a friend and had apparently got something
to do, the Colonel sarcastically commented, with all the
confidence of an energetic business man, "Yes; gentie-
maning as a profession has got to play out in a generation
"The Rise of Silas Lapham " 19
or two." At ''tea" that evening, with Penelope and
Irene, the two daughters, his wife, in her affectionate
banter, intimated that if her husband wanted to he could
run his own furnace and shovel his own sidewalk — until
he got over to Beacon Street anyway. Whereupon the
redoubtable Colonel asserted, " A man can be a man on
Beacon Street as well as anywhere, I guess." " Well, I'll do
the wash, as I used to in Lumberville," said Mrs. Lapham.
" I presume you'll let me have set tubs. Si." But, despite
the joking about it, the Colonel seemed really to have made
up his mind to build on " the water side of Beacon."
Lapham's architectural ideas were definite enough, but
they were curiously antiquated and inharmonious. In the
merciless hands of an architect, however, a revolution was
wrought in the Colonel's crude ideas of a house ; for, as
the author remarks, nearly all architects are skillful in
playing upon " that simple instrument, Man." Of all the
construction the pile-driving interested Lapham most, and
every day he would drive over with his wife to see and
hear the engine carry the big iron weight to the top of the
framework and let it drop with a mighty force on the iron-
bound head of the pile. " By gracious 1 " he would say,
" there ain't anything like that in this world for business^
Persis ! " One day, as they were inspecting the new house,
the Colonel's former partner, Rogers, whom Lapham
had crowded out just before his great success came, ap-
peared on the scene and made a very uncomfortable
situation. His wife accused Lapham of having made his
paint his god, and charged him with not being able to look
his old partner in the face, — at which Lapham lost his
temper, turned his horse suddenly toward home, and re-
marked hotly, " I guess you don't want to ride with me
20 Provincial Types in New England
any more to-day." His wife, in her indignation, had the
last word : " Don't you ask me to go to that house with
you any more. You can sell it, for all me. I shan't live
in it. There's blood on it." Yet they ignored their
quarrel later, and the wife recognized that in a way his
paint was something more than a business to him ; it was
a sentiment, and almost a passion, — the poetry of a nature
that was otherwise so intensely prosaic.
A few days later the family went over to look at the
interior arrangements of the house ; and when at the fa-
ther's invitation the daughters sat by his side on a trestle in
the bay window and somewhat scornfully laughed at the
position, the Colonel, rather enjoying their superior ways,
reminded them that their mother wasn't ashamed to sit
with him on a trestle the first time he ever tried his paint
on a house. " Yes ; we've heard that story," said Penel-
ope, " we were brought up on that story."
Upon young Corey's unexpected entrance and ifts intro-
duction to the father, the Colonel, with a little shock to
his rather sensitive daughters, jocularly asked, " Have a
trestle ? " And in a free and somewhat boastful tone the
Colonel enlarged upon his ideas and plans, declaring that
there wouldn't be an unpleasant room in the house, and
that they were going to have the best rooms for themselves,
and that he had the best architect in Boston. " And if
money can do it, I guess I'm going to be suited. ... I
started out to build a forty thousand house. Well, sir !
that fellow has got me in for more than sixty thousand
already, and I doubt if I get out of it much under a hun-
dred. . . . It's just like ordering a picture of a painter.
You pay him enough, and he can afford to paint you a
first-class picture."
" The Rise of Silas Lapham '' li
Young Corey's appreciative remark as to how well the
Memorial Hall and the Cambridge spires worked up from
the bay window started another egotistical strain of garrulity
on the Colonel's part : " Yes, sir, it's about the sightliest
view I know of. I always did like the water side of
Beacon. . . . When they talk about Commonwealth
Avenue, I don't know what they mean. It don't hold a
candle to the water side of Beacon." The Colonel's
continued assertiveness was hard for his daughters to
hear, and when they got home Penelope, the elder, enter-
tained her sister Irene with a very good imitation of
her father's characteristic talk. However, in recounting
his experience at the new Lapham house, Tom Corey
said to his father, with reference to the Colonel : " Do
you know that, in spite of his syntax, I rather like him ? . . .
He struck me as very simple-hearted and rather wholesome.
Of course he could be tiresome ; we all can ; and I suppose
his range of ideas is limited. But he is a force, and not
a bad one." And the Colonel on his part had taken a
great liking to Tom Corey, remarking emphatically to his
wife, " If I had that fellow in the business with me, I
would make a man of him."
What was his delighted surprise, a few days after,
to have the identical young man, son of the well-
known and aristocratic Bromfield Corey, open his office
door and ask if the Colonel would take him into
the mineral paint business ! The Colonel would have
given any sum of money if his wife could have over-
heard the request, the approaches of the aristocratic
are so gratifying to the ambitious pride of the suddenly
rich. But Mrs. Corey's insinuation that young Corey
would feel himself too good for the mineral paint busi-
22 Provincial Types in New England
ness made the Colonel a little resentful, and his first
attitude toward the young man was that of making him
appreciate how good a thing the Lapham paint was.
However, when young Corey declared that he had
already made inquiries about the paint and believed in it,
Lapham warmed and softened toward him in every way.
He enthusiastically showed ^im a photograph of the
locality of the mine, adding, as if the photographic art
had slighted the features of some beloved face, " it don't
half do the place justice." Then he went on and on,
telling his paint story with loving and unsparing detail.
Although the young man offered to represent the business
in foreign parts without salary and purely on a com-
mission, the matter could not be settled so quickly, and
the Colonel took him down to his summer cottage at
Nantasket to consider the proposition more fully. And
when, at the landing, he took the reins from his coachman
and told Corey to get into the back seat with his daughter
Penelope, who had driven to the boat for her father,
the Colonel gave her a wink of supreme content at
having so unexpected and aristocratic a guest, and exulted
in his prospective triumph over Mrs. Lapham. As he
would himself have said, he was feeling "about right."
The matter of business having been fairly settled after
"tea," the family and their guest met in the parlor; and
a volume of " Middlemarch " lying on the table suggested
to Corey a question about George Eliot, which only dis-
closed the fact that the younger daughter, Irene, did not
know who she was. Lapham declared himself in favor of
stereopticon lectures and the theater — something to make
you laugh, and confessed that all he could find time to
read was newspapers. " When the girls want a novel, I
" The Rise of Silas Lapham " 23
tell 'em to get it out of the library. That's what the
library's for." Lapham was hardly a bibliophile, though
as near to being one as many other business men in
modern life.
When, by what he imagined was his finesse, he got the
girls to take Mr. Corey out to show him the night view of
the hotels from the rocks, he exultingly gave his wife a
detailed account of how the young man happened to be
their guest. To his wife's mind the chief significance of
Corey's request to come into the business was its supposed
reference to their younger daughter's hand ; and her hus-
band had evidently thought of the same thing, although he
pretended that it had never occurred to him before. But
his wife penetrated his thin disguise and reminded him
that if the young man didn't " take a fancy " to Irene, the
Colonel could hardly do him justice, even if he had taken
him into the business. The Colonel protested against this
interpretation of his motives and his ambition for his
daughter; but in reality having this scion of a well-known
family, with an assured social position, apply for a place
in his business and possibly, later, for his daughter's hand,
made up one of the sweetest moments in his success. Next
to winning the school-teacher in Lumberville as his wife,
the possibility of Corey's permanent connection with his
family had moved his heavy imagination.
Yet in all his business relations with young Corey he
was careful to preserve the pride that comes from self-
making, and he in no way distinguished the young man
from the rest of his clerks. Indirectly his immense satis-
faction over the presence of Corey in his office would
be illustrated by some such remark as the following:
" Did you notice that fellow at the desk facing my type-
24 Provincial Types in New England
writer girl ? Well, sir, that's the son of Bromfield Corey —
old Phillips Corey's grandson. . . . He's got charge of
the foreign correspondence. We're pushing the paint
everywhere."
His actual liking for the young fellow and genuine ap-
preciation of his parts even deflected the Colonel's earlier
judgment on the qualifications essential to business suc-
cess. '' I used to believe in what old Horace Greeley
said about college graduates being the poorest kind of
horned cattle ; but I've changed my mind a little. You
take that fellow Corey. He's been through Harvard. . . .
Been everywhere, and talks half a dozen languages like
English. I suppose he's got money enough to live with-
out lifting a hand, any more than his father does ; son of
Bromfield Corey, you know. But the thing was in him.
He's a natural-born business man ; and I've had many a
fellow with me that had come up out of the street, and
worked hard all his life, without ever losing his original
opposition to the thing. But Corey likes it. I don't know
where he got it. I guess it must be his grandfather, old
PhilHps Corey; it often skips a generation, you know."
And then the paint manufacturer grew sagely philosophical
and spoke with all the certainty of self-sufficient knowl-
edge : *' What I say is, a thing has got to be born in a
man ; and if it ain't born in him, all the privations in the
world won't put it there, and if it is, all the college train-
ing won't take it out."
All efforts of the Colonel to bring the young Corey
down to Nantasket to see his family were thwarted by the
ridicule of his wife, whose pride forbade any " running
after " the young man as a match for their daughter Irene.
All of Lapham's subterfuges and thin disguises with that
"The Rise of Silas Lap ham " 25
in view were penetrated by his wife's quick intuition, much
to his irritation. But he always had his mare as a last
resort for a spin with Corey out over the Milldam, when
Lapham's chief topics of conversation were his horse and
his paint, the new house and himself.
Lapham's special resentment seemed directed against
Bromfield Corey, the father of his new clerk, because he
made no call upon him and no social advances ; but his
wife, with all her sensitive pride, could see things as they
were and could recognize that the two families had en-
tirely different social relations. Her husband would ask
indignantly: " Are they any better than we are ? My note
of hand would be worth ten times what Bromfield Corey's
is on the street to-day. And I made my money. I haven't
loafed my life away." To which came the penetrating
retort of the wife : '' Oh, it isn't what you've got, and it
isn't what you've done exactly. It's what you are."
By the masterly diplomacy of his architect the Colonel
went on from one outlay to another, under the delusion,
often, that what the architect had deftly won he himself
had seen or perhaps conceived, until his prudent wife was
impelled to call a halt and limit the cost of the new house
to a hundred thousand dollars. Incidentally, in account-
ing for the fact that he had an abundance of money to put
into his building scheme, he confessed that he had been mak-
ing a very good thing in stocks. "■ In stocks ? When did
you take up gambling for a living ? " And the guilty hus-
band protestingly replied, " Gambling? Stuff! What gam-
bUng? Who said it was gambling ? " And when his wife
reminded him that that was what he once called gambling,
his naive defense took this form of explanation : " Oh, yes,
buying and selling on a margin. But this was a bona fide
26 Provincial Types in New England
transaction. I bought at forty-three for an investment,
and I sold at a hundred and seven ; and the money passed
both times." His wife's warning prophecy, however, was,
" Next time you'll buy at a hundred and seven and sell at
forty-three. Then where'll you be?" "Left," admitted
the Colonel. And his wife's final injunction was, " You
better stick to paint awhile yet."
One night the Colonel came down to their summer cot-
tage at Nantasket with a peculiarly radiant air, and after
long guessing on his wife's part he divulged, with much
happiness and a sense of relief, that greatly to his surprise
his former partner Rogers — whom he had crowded out
of the paint business at a time when he saw a large future
for it — had called and asked for a loan, and Lapham
had granted it on practically worthless security. The
loan he made was of the money his wife had prevented
him from putting into the new house. His wife joyfully
saw in the whole transaction a kindly providence, and
said approvingly, "You've taken the one spot — the one
speck — off you that was ever there, and I'm satisfied."
"There wa'n't ever any speck there," Lapham doggedly
protested, "and what I done I done for you, Persis."
But this generosity for his wife's sake, by the irony of fate,
was later to aid in his undoing.
The long-looked-for call from Bromfield Cory had the
effect on Lapham of stirring his characteristic boastfulness,
and there was much self-satisfaction in the Colonel's
praise of young Corey as if he were a mere office-boy.
" I had faith in him, and I saw that he meant business
from the start." All this to illustrate in part his own
shrewd penetration. And when the father modestly and
humorously remarked that he was afraid his son hadn't
" The Rise of Silas Lapham " 27
inherited such business quaUties from him, the Colonel
compassionately said, " Well, sir, we can't help those
things. Some of us have got it, and some of us haven't.
The idea is to make the most of what we have got." Then
he impressed upon his caller that his own (Lapham's)
latent strength came into full consciousness only by the
development of experience ; and he added somewhat
patronizingly : " And I can see that it's going to be just
so with your son. His going through college won't hurt
him, — he'll soon slough all that off, — and his bringing up
won't; don't be anxious about it." He found it neces-
sary, also, to call Mr. Corey's attention to The Events, in
which Lapham's biography had appeared, but unfortu-
nately Bromfield Corey read only the Boston Daily Adver-
tiser. In reporting Corey's call that night to his wife,
Lapham said, " Don't know as I ever saw a much pleas-
anter man. Dunno but what he's about the pleasantest
man I ever did see." And then Mr. Howells, with an illu-
minating touch, makes this significant comment : '' He was
not letting his wife see in his averted face the struggle
that revealed itself there — the struggle of stalwart
achievement not to feel flattered at the notice of sterile
elegance, not to be sneakingly glad of its amiability, but
to stand up and look at it with eyes on the same level."
On the spur of Corey's call the Colonel's social ambition
took a leap, — he told his wife that he was going to push
the new house, and at least invite Corey to " a fish din-
ner at Taft's " ; whereupon his wife's contempt knew no
bounds. That night the Colonel failed to rest well ; he
failed to appear at the office next day, and young Corey
came down to Nantasket to inquire about his health.
Mrs. Lapham insisted on her husband's not showing him-
2 8 Provincial Types in New England
self in his dressing-gown, and when the visitor met the
vanquished Colonel indoors the latter was still buttoning
up his double-breasted frock-coat. But a courteous call
of inquiry after one's health was not the usual thing in
Lapham's circle, and surprise was mingled with gratifica-
tion at the young man's polite solicitude. Corey's re-
peated visits began to make Mrs. Lapham feel that in
some way they were taking advantage of his family's
absence from the city ; but the Colonel remarked that the
young man was of age, and indignantly declared, " To
hear you talk, you'd think those Coreys were too good for
this world, and we wa'n't fit for 'em to walk on." As his
indignation grew his language became more emphatic :
" Once for all, now, don't you ever let me hear you say
anything like that again 1 I'm worth nigh on to a million,
and I've made it every cent myself ; and my girls are
the equals of anybody, I don't care who it is." Thus,
here and there, the pride of his honest manhood mingles
with the pride of his self-created success, despite his sense
of social deficiency.
The Corey invitation to dinner naturally created in the
Lapham family something of a sensation. In the formal
note of invitation, Mrs. Corey had spoken of *' General "
Lapham, and the Colonel's comment at supper had a touch
of his characteristic humor in it; ''I didn't know I was a
general. I guess I shall have to be looking up my back pay. "
In accepting the invitation, Mrs. Lapham, who had no spe-
cial sense " of the awful and binding nature of a dinner invi-
tation," made no mention of the fact that her elder daughter
Penelope had refused to go, and in the hope that her daugh-
ter might relent, cherished the easy belief that her absence
might be readily excused after the Laphams' arrival at the
" The Rise of Silas Lapham " 29
dinner party. In her note of acceptance Mrs. Lapham,
after long hesitation between her husband's given name
and her own, signed herself, *' Yours truly, Mrs. S.
Lapham."
What to wear at a formal dinner party was the next
momentous question to harass the breasts of the Lapham
family. The wife and mother anxiously remarked, " /
don't know what to wear ; or the girls either. I do won-
der — I've heard that people go to dinner in low necks.
Do you suppose it's the custom ? "
"How should /know?" .demanded the Colonel. "I
guess you've got clothes enough. Any rate, you needn't
fret about it. You just go round to White's or Jordan &
Marsh's, and ask for a dinner dress, I guess that'll settle
it ; they'll know. Get some of them imported dresses. I
see 'em in the window every time I pass, lots of 'em."
The Colonel's bravery of attitude began soon, however,
to weaken under all the dress-making effort and discussion
in the house, and vague apprehensions in regard to his
own clothes hovered in the background of his imagination.
" An ideal of the figure in which he should go presented
itself to his mind. He should not wear any dress-coat,
because, for one thing, he considered that a man looked
like a fool in a dress-coat, and, for another thing, he had
none — had none on principle. He would go in a frock-
coat and black pantaloons, and perhaps a white waistcpat,
but a black cravat anyway." But this ideal was too much
for the rest of the family, and particularly his daughter
Irene, who recalled how a few years before he had been
the only person without a dress-coat at a corps reunion
dinner. And she remembered her awful feeling about it
at the time. Even his wife, who would ordinarily have
30 Provincial Types in New England
admired his independent attitude, shook her head, and
remarked apprehensively, " I don't see but what you'll
have to get you one, Si. I don't believe they ever go with-
out 'em to a private house."
Openly confident, he nevertheless, on the next day, " cast
anchor before his tailor's door and got measured for a
dress-coat." Next he was torn with doubt as to his waist-
coat, but, buying a book of etiquette for the purpose, he
found that it decided against white waistcoats. He began,
also, to waver on black cravats, and on the critical subject
of gloves the book of etiquette also said nothing. Drops
of perspiration gathered on the Colonel's forehead in the
strenuousness of this inner debate ; he groaned, and even
swore a little in the " compromise profanity " that was
peculiar to him. His ironical daughter Penelope naively
asked why he didn't go to Jordan & Marsh's and order
one of the imported dresses for himself. This gave them
all the relief of a laugh, but it was a painful laugh for the
Colonel. The Colonel devised in his own mind how, by
an incidental question to young Corey in the office, he
might find out all about dinner gloves, but his provincial
pride kept him from even a mention of the prospective
dinner. However, he finally bought a pair, and on the
night of the dinner, as he stood on the landing of the Corey
staircase waiting for his wife and daughter to come down,
his saffron-tinted gloves (the tint had been recommended
by the shop-girl) on his large fists made them look sug-
gestively "like canvassed hams." "He stood staring at
his hands, now open and now shut, and breathing hard."
Suddenly young Tom Corey appeared, and when the
Colonel discovered that his host's son wore no gloves, he
began with an assumed indifference to pull off his own.
"The Rise of Silas Lap ham " 31
Mrs. Lapham had decided against low necks, and had
*' intrenched herself in the safety of a black silk," while
Irene, her daughter, ''trailed a delicate splendor across
the carpet in her mother's wake." Lapham himself, thank-
ing God that he should have been spared the shame of
wearing gloves where no one else did, yet at the same
time depressed that Corey should have seen him in them,
had " an unwonted aspect of almost pathetic refinement."
Addressing herself to Mr. Lapham, the hostess, Mrs.
Corey, called him " General " Lapham ; the honest man
modestly protested, " No, ma'am, only Colonel," but the
correction was lost upon his hostess. When he failed to
get clearly the name of the person to whom he was intro-
duced, he held the person's hand, and leaning sympatheti-
cally forward, inquired, " What name ? " — a social method
he was quite sure was right because it had been used with
himself by some great man to whom he had been intro-
duced on a public platform. When the hostess, being
under the impression apparently that the elder Lapham
daughter was still in the dressing-room, asked if she could
send any one to be of assistance to her, Mrs. Lapham,
turning fire-red, bluntly said in her embarrassment, " She
isn't upstairs. She didn't feel just like coming to-night.
I don't know as she's feeling very well." Mrs. Corey, the
hostess, "emitted a very small 'O!' — very small, very
cold, — which began to grow larger and hotter and to
burn into Mrs. Lapham's soul " before Mrs. Corey, the
lady, expressed her regret, and her hope that there was
nothing serious.
In their determination not to be the first at the dinner
party, Mrs. Lapham perceived they had really been the
last to arrive and must have kept the other guests waiting.
32 Provincial Types in New England
The hostess slipped her hand through the Colonel's arm,
and they passed out to dinner last of all, though why the
Colonel did not know. As he sank into his seat, a long
sigh of relief came from Mr. Lapham, for he now felt sure
if he only watched the others he could keep himself safe
from blunder. The hostess's cousin, James Bellingham,
had a little mannerism of tucking the corner of his napkin
into his collar, and thereupon the Colonel followed suit ;
but seeing that no one but Bellingham did so, he became
doubtful and slyly pulled it out. On principle the Colonel
was a prohibitionist, and he apprehensively fingered the
wine-glasses in his effort to decide whether to turn them
all down, as he had once seen a well-known politician do.
But it seemed a rather conspicuous thing to do, and so he
let the servant fill them all, and drank from each so as not
to appear peculiar. He was not at all sure that he ought
not to decline some of the dishes or at least leave most of
some of them on his plate. However, in his dilemma he
took everything and ate everything.
The Colonel noted with satisfaction that his wife seemed
to be holding her own with Mr. Corey, the host, and he
himself was getting on famously with the hostess, who had
the intuition to introduce the subject of his new house.
But in the general conversation about the creative side of
architecture, social settlement work, and the function of the
modern novel, the Colonel despairingly lost his bearings ;
and whenever something appropriate to what they were
saying came into his mind he was unable to get it out before
they were off on something else ; '' they jumped about so,
he could not keep up," and he had a general uneasy feel-
ing that he was not doing himself justice. Being thirsty,
and not liking to ask for more water, he freely drank the
" The Rise of Silas Lapham " ^^
wine, and it was beginning to have its effect on his unac-
customed brain.
When the ladies withdrew to the other room and
the Colonel sat with the gentlemen, he felt more at
home with the fuming cigar between his lips. He turned
sidewise in his chair, intertwined the fingers of both
hands, and smoked " at large ease." References were
made to the carnage of a particular battle of the Civil
War in which the Colonel had been engaged as a mem-
ber of a Vermont regiment, and it was evidently expected
that he would have something interesting to say in the
way of reminiscence ; but all he was able to get out was a
slight confirmatory remark. Now and then the haze that
seemed to envelop his mind would clear away, and allow
him some brief significant word that naturally called for
more ; and finally he was able to tell them a little story
about a fellow in his own company that sacrificed his life
for the Colonel's. The story was effective enough, as told
in the Colonel's simple, vivid way, to make an impression.
The Colonel felt it and was going to deepen that impres-
sion, when another glass of wine seemed suddenly to make
his brain a blank, and the host came to the rescue with,
" Shall we join the ladies ? "
The Colonel noticed that his daughter Irene was look-
ing beautiful, but not talking much, and under the exhila-
rating influence of the wine he now perceived that a
dinner party was the place to talk. He had, in fact, a
certain consciousness of having talked very well himself ;
he now carried an air of great dignity, and assumed a
grave and weighty deliberateness. He was invited into
the library, where he, of course, had to give his ideas on
books, remarking, as he did so, that newspapers were
D
34 Provincial Types in New England
about all he could find time for. He thanked Bromfield
Corey for his son's suggestion of books for his new
library, and he also announced that he was going to have
pictures. He even asked Mr. Corey " who was about the
best American painter going now." He rapidly grew
boastful, under the relaxing effect of the wine, and nat-
urally swung off from pictures to his own mineral paint.
He offered to have Mr. Corey run up with him to the
Works, where he could also show him some of the finest
Jersey grades in the country ; he told about his brother
William, the judge in Dubuque, and a farm out there of
his own that paid for itself every year in wheat. Losing all
fear, he lifted his voice and hammered the chair by way
of emphasis. Bromfield Corey seemed impressed, and the
other gentlemen would stop now and then to look at the
Colonel ; so that the latter was surprised himself by his
ease among men whose names he had previously stood in
awe of. He grew familiar, and called his host by his sur-
name alone ; and noticing young Corey, the Colonel took
occasion to tell the company how he had once said to his
wife that he could make a man of him if he had him in
the business. In fact, the Colonel soon had all the talk
to himself, and he talked unceasingly, feeling, as he did
so, that it was all a great social triumph.
Word came that Mrs. Lapham was going, but he refused
to hurry ; he cordially invited each of the gentlemen pres-
ent to drop in and see him at his office, and made them
promise to do so ; and he genially remarked to James
Bellingham that it had always been his ambition to know
him, and that if any one had said, when he first came to
Boston, that in ten years he should be hobnobbing with
Jim BeUingham, he should have told that person he lied.
"The Rise of Silas Lapham " 35
He would also have told anybody he lied that had told
him, ten years ago, that a son of Bromfield Corey would
come and ask him to take him into the business. And
thus the man's real secret feeling of immense gratification
over his present social privilege came vulgarly and piti-
fully to the surface.
The Colonel even specified the amount of his fortune
and how many thousand dollars he had just loaned his
former partner ; with " patronizing affection " he took
leave of the minister, telling him to come around if he got
into " a tight place " with his parish work ; and turning to
his host, Bromfield Corey, he jocularly remarked, " Why,
when your wife sent to mine last fall, I drew a check for
five hundred dollars, but my wife wouldn't take more than
one hundred; said she wasn't going to show off before
Mrs. Corey. I call that a pretty good joke on Mrs.
Corey. I must tell her how Mrs. Lapham done her out of
a cool four hundred dollars." And then he went away
without saying good night to his hostess ! "In the cold
gray light of the [next] morning the glories of the night
before showed poorer. Here and there a painful doubt
obtruded itself and marred them with its awkward
shadow." And in his office that morning he turned to
Tom Corey, son of his host, and demanded, " Was I drunk
last night ? "
The abject self-abasement of his employer, Colonel
Lapham, in the presence of young Corey, as if he were
suddenly made aware of an intrinsic social inferiority that
was hopeless ; the agony of his discovery that the young
man had really been loving his oldest daughter Penelope,
instead of the beautiful but somewhat insipid Irene,
through whom the ambitious Colonel and his wife had
^6 Provincial Types in New England
ardently hoped for a social alliance with the aristocratic
Coreys ; and the Colonel's appeal in his helpless misery
to the minister, Mr. Sewell, whom he met at the Corey
dinner, — are moving and dramatic phases in the develop-
ment of this crude, strong provincial type that is suddenly
called upon to face strange conditions and new forces in
its widening life. His almost inarticulate sympathy with
the stolid suffering of Irene, and his steadfast sense of
justice to the other daughter who had been the innocent
cause of this suffering, illustrate the depth of love and the
spirit of fairness inherent in Lapham's nature.
In his effort to deal generously with his old partner,
Rogers, — whom he had forced out of the paint business
at a time when its future was assured, — Lapham had, as
he phrased it, been throwing good money after bad ; and
for the sake of his wife, who was particularly sensitive as
to the Colonel's former treatment of his partner, Lapham
had gone deeper into Rogers's financial schemes than he
really wanted to or judged was best. He casually but
meaningly remarked to his wife in connection with the
matter that " pretty near everybody but the fellows that
owe me seem to expect me to do a cash business, all of a
sudden." His wife's question of alarm brought out his re-
assurance that it was all right. " I ain't going to let the
grass grow under my feet, though, — especially while
Rogers digs the ground away from the roots." ''If it has
to come to that, I'm going to squeeze him." The Colonel's
face lighted up with the joy of expected revenge. " Milton
K. Rogers is a rascal, if you want to know. . . . But I
guess he'll find he's got his come-uppance." And then the
Colonel proceeded to tell his "wife how Rogers, by dab-
bling in wildcat stocks, patent-rights, land speculations.
" The Rise of Silas Lapham '* 37
and oil claims, had " run through about everything," and
how with a certain big mill property he should have gotten
rich. *' But you can't make Milton K. Rogers rich, any
more than you can fat a hide-bound colt. It ain't in him.
He'd run through Vanderbilt, Jay Gould, and Tom Scott
rolled into one in less than six months, give him a chance,
and come out and want to borrow money of you." The
Colonel's vow was thereupon registered never to let this
Rogers borrow from him again.
In his effort to get back what he had already loaned
Rogers, Lapham had become more deeply implicated, and
in his confession to his wife he made a clean breast of it.
She, recalling how she had urged her husband to make
restitution to his old partner for having forced him out of
the paint business, fixed the blame entirely upon herself.
" She came back to this, with her helpless longing, inbred
in all Puritan souls, to have some one specifically
suffer for the evil in the world, even if it must be
herself."
But when the opportunity presented itself of getting rid
of the mill property that had fallen into Lapham's hands
as security in his dealing with Rogers, Lapham's robust
but tempted honesty and sense of fair play proved so
strong that it stood in the way of his own financial recov-
ery. And this rugged virtue of exact honesty and charac-
teristic sense of fair play were confirmed, though sadly,
by his sympathetic and courageous wife. Her pride in
him was one of his strongest props in the strain of great
emergencies. She was willing to fall with him, so long as
in that fall their honor and honesty were retained. Yet
she tried to be optimistic for his sake : " I don't suppose
but what there's plenty would help you if they knew you
38 Provincial Types in New England
needed it, Si." But the husband sardonically replied :
" They would if they knew I didn't need it."
The fluctuations in Lapham's affairs told upon his face
and temper, — he grew old and thin and irascible, and his
wife and daughter Penelope had to endure in the home
the silence or the petulance of the gloomy, secret man.
His troubles thickened when he was least able to bear
them, — he was obliged to shut down the Works at Lap-
ham, where the fire had never been out since it was first
kindled, a fact he had always bragged about as '' the
last expression of his sense of success " ; a new and
equally good West Virginia paint, which could be pro-
duced by a cheaper fuel, had come into the market,
already overstocked, with a competition that could not
be met; the suddenly roused jealousy of his wife —
though in fact due to a misinterpretation of his unselfish
charity toward a drunken widow and her daughter — for
a time isolated him from her helpful sympathy ; and, last
of all, he was compelled to make up his mind to sell his
new house, which had stood for so much in his hopes and
ideals. Yet the Colonel's depression was often alternated
with the spirit of optimism, when by some vague imagina-
tion it seemed to him that all things would in some mirac-
ulous way be made right. '' The process of Lapham's
financial disintegration was like the course of some
chronic disorder which has fastened itself upon the
constitution, but advances with continual reliefs, with
apparent amelioration, and at times seems not to
advance at all, when it gives hope of final recovery
not only to the sufferer but to the eye of science."
Lapham's adversity was not always like " the adversity
we figure in allegory; it had its moments of being like
"The Rise of Silas Lapham*' 39
prosperity, and if upon ,the whole it was continual, it was
not incessant."
In shrinking from the making of an assignment because
of its publicity, he even determined, as already suggested,
upon the sale of his new house " on the water side of
Beacon Street." But his pride would not allow the prop-
erty to be described or his own name given by the broker
unless ''parties meant business." In fact, there did come
a specific offer from some one who had seen the house in
the fall to pay for it what it had cost up to that time. But
so much of his hope for himself and his children had gone
into the house that the thought of selling it made him
tremulous and sick. With his nerves shaken by want of
sleep and the shock of this sudden question of sale, Lap-
ham left his office early and went at sunset to look at his
house and come to some conclusion. The very street
lamps, as they flared down the beautiful perspective
toward the sunset, seemed to Silas not merely a part of
the landscape, but " a part of his pride and glory, his suc-
cess, his triumphant life's work, which was fading into
failure in his helpless hands." He looked up and recalled
how he and his daughter Irene had stood one night before
the house and she had said that she should never live
there. There was no such facade on the street, he thought ;
the whole design " appealed to him as an exquisite bit of
harmony appeals to the unlearned ear." He went up into
the music room, and the whim seized him to test the chim-
ney by a fire in the grate. He watched the burning shav-
ings and blocks as he sat on a nail-keg and noted the
chimney's success, and the proud resolution came to him
never to sell the house so long as he had a dollar. Hav-
ing optimistically smoked his cigar, he stamped upon
40 Provincial Types in New England
the embers still aglow and went^ home with a buoyant
heart.
But alas ! for human hopes ; as he and his daughter
Penelope, after the theater that night, walked around to
see the new house by starlight, what should be lighting
up the sky with its lurid flames but the burning house of
Silas Lapham ! " I guess I done it. Pen," was all he
said ; and as Penelope drew her father away toward the
nearest carriage, they caught the humorous remark : " He
ought to have had a coat of his non-combustible paint on
it." When he had reached home and his wife falteringly
intimated that people would think he had set fire to the
house to get the insurance, Lapham pathetically set her
mind at rest by his answer : " I had a builder's risk on it,
but it expired last week. It's a dead loss." " Oh, thank
the merciful Lord 1 " cried his wife. " Merciful 1 " said
Lapham. " Well, it's a queer way of showing it.'' And
the sleep that he sank into that night might be called a
torpor rather than a sleep. The next morning he wished
for a moment that he never had wakened.
Though sorely tempted by the offer of his former part-
ner and of English agents to take his mill property at a
good price, — especially since it would mean his own
financial salvation, — the Colonel sturdily held to his
original point of view that the first condition of sale was
to be a complete explanation of the circumstances sur-
rounding the property — namely, that the Great Lacustrine
& Polar Railroad, on which the mills were dependent,
would probably want the mills, and if it did, what it was
willing to pay would fix the ultimate value of the property.
To come to this conclusion against the subtle wiles of
Rogers, his old partner, required an all-night struggle with
" The Rise of Silas Lapham " 41
his conscience, and even without his wife's usual help, but
he was victorious in the end, even to his own undoing.
And likewise, when he had an opportunity to sell an inter-
est in his paint works at Lapham to a willing purchaser,
he had lost his chance and all it would have meant to him
at that crisis in his affairs by conscientiously telling of the
existence of the competing company in West Virginia, and
its facilities for cheaper production.
Finally, after desperate efforts to save himself, and
with spasmodic hopes that he would succeed, the gradual
process of his ruin brought him to the actual consumma-
tion of bankruptcy. And all concerned in his affairs said
that he behaved well, — there was a return to him of his
earlier prudence and good sense which he seemed tempo-
rarily to have lost in his too abundant prosperity ; he
saw the futility of further operations in Boston ; he put
the house at Nankeen Square, with everything he had, into
the payment of his debts ; and recognized heroically that
back in the Vermont hills where he began was the place
where he should have to begin again, although the going
back was as much the end to him of his proud, prosperous
life as death itself could have been.
In truth, life had lost most of its buoyant quality for
him, and even the long-hoped-for alliance with the aristo-
cratic Coreys, through the marriage of Penelope Lapham
with young Corey, failed to bring that sense of gratified
social ambition which would once have been so keen a
delight. Both the Colonel and his wife took a good deal
of satisfaction in his clean-handedness through the whole
process of his business collapse ; and when Mr. Sewell
and his wife, the next summer after Lapham had sold out,
stopped to see him on their way from the White Mountains
42 Provincial Types in New England
to Lake Champlain, he gave the minister his own interpre-
tation of the workings of his hfe, a sort of rude doctrine
about the inescapable influence of evil action : '' Some-
times I get to thinking it all over, and it seems to me I
done wrong about Rogers in the first place ; that the
whole trouble came from that. It was just like starting a
row of bricks. I tried to catch up and stop 'em from
going, but they all tumbled, one after another. It wa'n't
in the nature of things that they could be stopped till the
last brick went."
And when the minister delicately inquired if Lapham
ever had any regrets, the Colonel characteristically re-
plied : *' About what I done ? Well, it don't always seem
as if I done it. Seems sometimes as if it was a hole
opened for me, and I crept out of it. . . . I don't know
as I should always say it paid ; but if I done it, and the
thing was to do over again, right in the same way, I guess
I should have to do it."
This, at the end, is really an essential note in the con-
vincing portrayal of a self-made Yankee type, — strong, yet
crude ; ambitious, yet ludicrously provincial at times ; full
of an unostentatious philanthropy and a grateful loyalty ;
driven with energy, yet kindly and shrewdly humorous ;
proud and boastful of its own creation, yet almost grovel-
ing at times in its effort to accomplish its social advance-
ment ; virile and normal in its ordinary manifestations, but
often coarsely vulgar in its pleasures, and ignorant of the
delightful worlds of art and literary enjoyment ; and reli-
giously conscientious in its steadfast honesty, even when
that honesty meant the cruel blasting of every hope and
achievement.
CHAPTER III
"PEMBROKE" BY MARY E. WILKINS
When the New England short story is mentioned the
mind naturally turns to Miss Wilkins (now Mary Wilkins
Freeman), because of her certain touch in portraying the
various provincial types in that special form of literary art.
But in her more sustained effort of " Pembroke " one gets
more fully the interaction of many village types and a deeper
impression of the prevailing grimness and rigidity of much
of New England's remote community life, — a life that has,
too, its pleasing contrasts, its often unconscious humor, and
its strength of loyal love and self-sacrifice ; yet as painted
by Miss Wilkins it is gaunt and " set," intensely and formally
rehgious, and lacking much in the spirit of mirth and the
love of beauty. As has elsewhere been said, conscience and
will dominate these lives like passions, — they are driven
before them like ships with bare masts before the storm.
Life often ceases to be joy and becomes only duty, —
duty of the most exacting and unrelenting kind ; or else
some cruel stubbornness or inactivity of will works itself out
almost unconsciously into a Hfelong tragedy of suffering and
misery.
Miss Wilkins's opening picture in " Pembroke " is that
of the Thayer family sitting in semicircle about the kitchen
fire, the great leather-bound Bible resting on the knees of
Caleb Thayer, the father, who is reading from it in solemn
43
44 Provincial Types in New England
voice ; while his wife, Deborah, " her large face tilted with
a judicial and argumentative air," sits straight in her chair
and enjoys with much rehsh one of the imprecatory psalms
her husband is reading. Her eyes were gleaming with
warlike energy, — she was confusing " King David's enemies
with those people who crossed her own will." As her eldest
son, Barney, came into the kitchen on his way to make a
Sunday-night call on his sweetheart, Ephraim, the younger
son, stared at his brother's smooth, scented hair, the black
satin vest with a pattern of blue flowers on it, the blue coat
with brass buttons, and the shining boots, and softly whistled
under his breath.
Mrs. Thayer enjoined her son not to stay later than nine
o'clock, and to emphasize her injunction "she jerked her
chin down heavily as if it were made of iron." But Barnabas,
a chip of the maternal block, slammed the door as he went
out, and the mother remarked that if he were a few years
younger, she would make him shut that door " over again."
" Barney " was to be married to Charlotte Barnard in June ;
and as he passed under the apple blossoms and looked up,
he thought of his share of the income from apples, and how
Charlotte after their marriage should have one new silk dress
every year and two new bonnets, — for his mother had often
noted with scorn that Charlotte wore her summer bonnet
with another ribbon on it in winter. In his loving pride he
had once bought Charlotte a little blue-figured shawl, which
her father in the answering pride of poverty had bidden her
return. " I ain't goin' to have any young sparks buyin' your
clothes while you are under my roof."
On his way to Charlotte Barnard's he stopped at the little
story-and-a-half cottage house which he had been building
in anticipation of his marriage. His father, in his inherited
"Pembroke" 45
terror of wind, had urged the safety of a one-story house,
but Barney scornfully insisted on a story and a half. Through
the kitchen window he could see a straight, dark column of
smoke rising from Charlotte's home. He imagined how pleased
she would be with the sunniness of the windows in this cozy
room, and said to himself, " Her rocking-chair can set there."
In the fullness of his emotion at the thought of their happi-
ness the tears came to his eyes, and, laying his cheek against
a partition wall of his new house, he suddenly kissed it. As
he went out of the house, he thought of their long future
together and the solemn end, — "I shall He in my coffin
in the north room, and it will be all over," — but his heart
was leaping with joy and he felt the proud strength of a
soldier.
In the Barnard kitchen, after a somewhat nervous welcome
to the lover on the part of Charlotte's mother and Aunt
Sylvia, the sudden and gruff voice of Cephas Barnard, the
father, bade his daughter hght the candle, although it was
hardly late enough to justify such a proceeding. But the
grim, black-eyed Cephas suspected that the young lover
would be likely to hold his daughter's hand in the dusk,
and he was going to prevent it.
Barnabas listened for the welcome crackle of the fire in
the parlor where he hoped to sit alone with Charlotte, but
this particular Sunday night he failed to hear it. With
aggressive opposition Charlotte's father had sometimes pro-
claimed, " If Barnabas Thayer can't set here with the rest
of us, he can go home." His hard and at times almost
savage manner was loyally interpreted by Mrs. Barnard to
her daughter as "your father's way." As Miss Wilkins
remarks, " Miss Barnard herself had spelt out her husband
like a hard and seemingly cruel text in the- Bible. She
46 Provincial Types in New England
marveled at its darkness in her light, but she believed in it
reverently, and even pugnaciously." But her elder sister
Hannah stood in no particular awe of her brother-in-law,
and his autocratic whims she was quick to characterize in
a somewhat pungent style : " His way ! Keepin' you all
on rye meal one spell, an' not lettin' you eat a mite of
Injun, an' then keepin' you on Injun without a mite of
rye ! Makin' you eat nothin' but greens an' garden stuff,
an' jest turnin' you out to graze an' chew your cuds like
horned animals one spell, an' then makin' you live on meat ! "
Tragically enough, on this eventful night Cephas Barnard
and his prospective son-in-law, — the one a Whig and the
other a Democrat, — fell into an ugly political discussion,
which waxed uglier, until in his sudden rage the father
ordered Barnabas from the house. " Get out of this house,
an' don't you ever darse darken these doors again while the
Lord Almighty reigns ! " Whereupon, in an awful voice,
Barnabas rejoined, " I never will, by the Lord Almighty ! "
and slammed the door behind him. That quarrel and that
vow, in the grimly ordered village tragedy of Miss Wilkins,
affected the life of a whole community. Given the " set "
New England character and the idolatry of self-will, and
some very tragic consequences may result from seemingly
trivial causes.
Against her father's will and even forcibly, Charlotte
pushed out into the night calling after her lover to come
back, but with characteristic stubbornness he never turned
his head ; and there she stood alone, finally shouting to him
imperiously, " If you're ever coming back, you come now ! "
Locked out from her home by her angry father, Charlotte
sat motionless on the door-stone till her Aunt Sylvia's appear-
ance suggested that she spend the night with her. And as
" Pembroke " 47
they went by, all unknown to them, Barnabas Thayer, the
maddened lover, watched them from the window of his new
house, and bewailed the hardness of his fate, which he inevi-
tably connected with the will of God. '* ' What have I done
to be treated in this way ? ' he demanded, setting his face
ahead in the darkness ; and he did not see Cephas Barnard's
threatening countenance, but another, gigantic with its vague
outlines, which his fancy could not Hmit, confronting him
with terrible negative power like a stone image. He struck
out against it, and the blows fell back on his own heart."
Involved in the misery of Charlotte and Barnabas, is the
sweet and lifelike " old maid," Aunt Sylvia Crane, who, de-
tained by the quarrel of Cephas and Barnabas, had missed at
her own home the regular Sunday-night call of Richard
Alger, her quasi-lover for the past eighteen years. The
previous Sunday night he had come so perilously near to
" popping the question " that he had managed to move over
from his chair to the haircloth sofa on which she expectantly
sat ; he had actually begun a sort of declaration of love when
the clock struck ten and startled him into a sense of the late-
ness of the hour, putting a sudden end to his long-delayed
and long-hoped-for proposal. And so through the following
week Sylvia Crane had trembled and sighed and yearned for
the next Sunday night, when, perhaps, Richard would end
his long wooing and add the crown of happiness to her
patient life. But alas ! when he did actually come he found
the stone which the Crane family from time immemorial
had rolled before the front door in their absence blocking
the way, and he abruptly returned to his home. That night,
while her niece, Charlotte Barnard, lay sobbing upstairs and
muttering to herself, " Poor Barney ! Poor Barney ! " her
Aunt Sylvia, below, kept repeating piteously : " Poor Rich-
48 Provincial Types in New England
ard ! Poor Richard ! " And the next morning, after a long
night of restless grief, the old maid felt that the disappoint-
ment of her niece was as nothing in comparison with the
sorrow of her own maturity. " I guess she ain't had any
such night as I have. Girls don't know much about it."
The hopelessness of her sorrow took the surprising form of
petulance and hostile criticism, and the naturally sweet-
tempered woman even dared to strike at the willful eccentric-
ities of her brother-in-law. She maintained with remarkable
audacity that Barney was no more " set " than Cephas ; and
when her sister defended her husband, with the remark,
" Cephas ain't set. It's jest his way," Sylvia grew strangely
ironical : " Folks had better been created without ways,
then. . . . They'd been enough sight happier an' better
off, and so would other folks that they have to do with, than
to have so many ways, an' not sense enough to manage
them." Sylvia even went so far in her sudden reaction
against fate as to inveigh against the doctrine of free will,
which naturally had a horrifying effect on her other sister, the
strong-willed, churchly, and dominating Hannah Berry.
*' Sylvy Crane, you ain't goin' to deny one of the doctrines
of the Church, at your time of life?" And being bravely
answered by Sylvia in the affirmative, Mrs. Berry exclaimed :
" Then all I've got to say is you'd ought to be ashamed of
yourself. Why, I should think you was crazy, Sylvy Crane,
settin' up yourself agin' the doctrines of the Word."
The garrulous and outspoken Hannah was not lacking
either in criticism of her brother-in-law ; but his wife Sarah
came to his defense, recalling his morning's talk on food.
" He said this mornin' that he didn't know but we were
eatin' the wrong kind of food. Lately he's had an idea that
mebbe we'd ought to eat more meat ; he's thought it was
" Pembroke '* 49
more strengthenin', an' we'd ought to eat things as near Uke
what we wanted to strengthen as could be. I've made a
good deal of bone soup. But now he says he thinks mebbe
he's been mistaken, an' animal food kind of quickens the
animal nature in us, an' that we'd better eat green things
an' garden sass." To which the sarcastic Hannah, with a
sniff, retorted : " I guess garden sass will strengthen the
other kind of sass that Cephas Barnard has got in him, full
as much as bone soup has." When later Cephas came over
and marched back, with his wife and daughter following
close behind, Hannah Berry's parting comment was : " Well,
all I've got to say is I'm thankful I ain't got a man like that,
an' you ought to be mighty thankful you ain't got any man
at all, Sylvy Crane." But poor Sylvia could hardly agree.
When, at home, Charlotte had put off her purple gown,
which was to have been a part of the wedding wardrobe,
and clad in a common dress, descended to the kitchen, she
found her mother facing her father with unwonted spirit.
She was remonstrating with him for his latest whim, — he
had turned vegetarian with such a vengeance that he was in-
sisting on sorrel pies, and he wanted them made without lard.
His wife argued the impossibility of such cookery, although
she made the confession that '* Mebbe the sorrel, if it had
some molasses on it for juice, wouldn't taste very bad."
When both wife and daughter leagued against him in the
matter of such pastry, Cephas came out of the pantry carry-
ing the mixing-board and rolHng-pin "like a shield and a
club," and set to work himself with characteristic stubborn-
ness. His wife sofdy intimated that she had some pumpkin
that would make good pies, but the perverse vegetarian said
he knew that pumpkin pies had milk in them, " An' I tell
you I ain't goin' to have anything of an animal nature in
50 Provincial Types in New England
'em." To his wife's observation that she had seen horses
" terribly ugly, an' they don't eat a mite of meat," Cephas
crushingly replied : " Ain't I told ye once horses were the
exceptions. There has to be exceptions. If there wa'n't
any exceptions there couldn't be any rule, an' there bein'
exceptions shows there is a rule. Women can't ever get
hold of things straight. Their minds slant off sideways, the
way their arms do when they fling a stone."
In the midst of his pie-making that she-Puritan, Deborah
Thayer, abruptly entered. " She moved, a stately, high-
hipped figure, her severe face almost concealed in a scoop-
ing, green, barege hood, to the center of the floor, and stood
there with a pose that might have answered for a statue of
Judgment." She came to see what her son Barnabas, the
night before, had done that Cephas Barnard should order
him from the house forever. " If it's anything wrong, I
shall be jest as hard on him as the Lord for it." Charlotte's
exclamation that Barney had done nothing wrong was simply
ignored by his mother, who fiercely assailed Cephas for the
reason. Cephas, grimly silent, at last opened his mouth as
if perforce, declaring that they "got to talkin' about the
'lection," and that, according to his own reasoning, what
they ate had a good deal to do with it. " I think if you'd
kept your family on less meat, and given 'em more garden-
stuff" to eat, Barney wouldn't have been so up an' comin'.
It's what he's eat that's made him what he is." This was
too much for the logical theories of Deborah Thayer, and
she gazed at Cephas in stern amazement. *' You're tryin' to
make out, as near as I can tell, that whatever m}- son has done
wrong is due to what he's eat, and not to original sin. I
knew you had queer ideas, Cephas Barnard, but I didn't
know you wa'n't sound in your faith."
"Pembroke" 51
Suddenly Charlotte leaped up in fierce resentment against
the injustice of her father, and in loyal defense of her lover,
laying the blame for the quarrel largely on the former. And
as Deborah Thayer retired, after discovering the sorrel pies,
she remarked, with fierce conscientiousness : " I'm goin' to
try to make my son do his duty. I don't expect he will,
but I shall do all I can, tempers or no tempers, and sorrel
pies or no sorrel pies."
Mrs. Thayer's daughter Rebecca, in company with Rose
Berry, her cousin, — after the latter's somewhat self-inter-
ested effort to reconcile Barney and Charlotte, — makes a
charming picture in Silas Berry's great country store, as she
stands waiting to sell her basket of eggs, her face blooming
" deeply pink in the green tunnel of her sunbonnet," her
black eyes as ** soft and wary as a baby's," her full red lips
wearing a grave, innocent expression. She is standing be-
fore her lover, Silas Berry's son William, who is ardently
eager to give her a generous allowance of sugar for her eggs,
if only he can escape the watchful supervision of his penuri-
ous father in the rear of the store. The old man's hard
voice sounds out, " You ain't offerin' of her two pound of
sugar for two dozen eggs ? " And when the son replies that
it was two and a half pounds, Silas excitedly cries out, " Be
you gone crazy?" Despite his daughter's petition and his
son's resolute determination to give the modest Rebecca a
full exchange, old Silas pulled himself up " a joint at a time,"
came forward at a stiff halt, and said : " Sugar is fourteen
cents a pound, an' eggs is fetchin' ten cents a dozen ; you
can have a pound and a half of sugar for them eggs if you
can give me a cent to boot." Poor Rebecca colored, and
replied that she hadn't brought her purse, whereupon the
old man enjoined her to tell her mother about it and come
52 Provincial Types in New England
back with the cent by and by. But this mean bargaining
was too much for the young lover, WilUam, who shouldered
his father to one side with sudden energy, sternly whispering
to him to " leave it alone." However, the old man's
chronic " closeness " reasserted itself in the expostulating
remark : " I ain't goin' to stan' by an' see you givin' twice
as much for eggs as they're worth, 'cause it's a gal you're
tradin' with. That wa'n't never my way of doin' business,
an' I ain't goin' to have it done in my store." WiUiam,
with steady resolution, recklessly heaped the sugar on some
paper, and laid it on the steelyards ; the old man pushed
forward and bent over the steelyards, wrathfully exclaiming,
"You've weighed out nigh three." Suddenly something in
the son's face made the old man stop, — the combination of
mental and superior physical force in the son dominated the
father. " His son towered over him in what seemed the
might of his own lost strength and youth, brandishing his
own old weapons." Yet nature reasserted itself, for when
William had put the sugar in Rebecca's basket, the old man
began counting the eggs, only to find that " there ain't but
twenty-three eggs here." Under the fierce whisperings of
William, however, Silas finally subsided into sullen mut-
terings.
Rebecca's arrival at home found her mother, Deborah
Thayer, vigorously making cake, looking as " full of stern
desperation as a soldier on the battlefield. Deborah never
yielded to any of the vicissitudes of life ; she met them in
fair fight like enemies, and vanquished them, not with trum-
pet and spear, but with daily duties. It was a village story
how Deborah Thayer " cleaned all the windows in the house
one afternoon when her first child had died in the morning."
She was now making cake in the midst of her bitter misery
" Pembroke '* 53
over her son's quarrel with Cephas Barnard and his sweetheart
Charlotte. She insisted on Rebecca's staying in the kitchen
to cream the butter and sugar, and she already had her younger
and somewhat invalid son, Ephraim, stoning raisins. Though
forbidden to eat any, Ephraim would fill his mouth when his
mother turned away to watch Barney, the older son, at work
in the field. Ephraim's mouth was " demure with mischief,"
and his " gawky figure perpetually uneasy and twisting, as if
to find entrance into small forbidden places." When his
mother looked suddenly at him there was a curious expres-
sion in his face that continually led his mother to infer that
he had been transgressing, and she would cry out sharply,
"What have you been doin', Ephraim ? " but she was always
routed by Ephraim's " innocent, wondering grin in response."
At the end of his raisin-stoning he plaintively asked, " Can't
I have just one raisin, mother?" "Yes, you may, if you
ain't eat any while you was pickin' of 'em over." Where-
upon little innocent Ephraim selected a large fat " plum,"
and ate it with " ostentatious relish."
As his mother turned to go out, Ephraim whiningly asked
if he couldn't go too. " There were times when the spirit
of rebelhon in him made illness and even his final demise
flash before his eyes like sweet overhanging fruit, since they
were so strenuously forbidden." Meeting her son Barnabas,
who was plowing in the field, Deborah issued her ultima-
tum, and their first silent glances were as if " two wills clashed
swords in advance." " I ain't never goin' to say anything
more to you about it," referring to the proposed apology to
Cephas Barnard, " but there's one thing — you needn't come
home to dinner. You sha'n't ever sit down to a meal in your
father's and mother's house whilst this thing goes on." And
the only response that came from the " set " Barnabas was
54 Provincial Types in New England
" G'lang ! " Caleb, the father, also pleaded with the son,
but without the least effect ; and as he sat sobbing under the
wild cherry tree, — his face in his old red handkerchief, —
Rebecca, coming out to feed the hens, attempted to console
him with the remark, "Barney'll get over it." To which
Caleb despairingly responded : " No, he won't ; no, he
won't. He's jest like your mother."
One of the delightful and relieving pictures in " Pembroke "
is that of the cherry party in Silas Berry's orchard — where
the young people of th'e village were in the habit of picnick-
ing, until old Silas's greed overreached itself and some college
friends of 'Squire Payne's son, refusing to pay the exorbitant
price, went by singing " Who lives here ? " with the mocking
response, " Old Silas Berry, who charges sixpence for a
cherry." The comment of his wife on the impolicy of his
greed, — " You're jest a-puttin' your own eyes out, Silas
Berry," — proved too true a prophecy, for his orchard was
regularly boycotted by the young people and purchasers gen-
erally. This season, however, the old man seemed afflicted
with spasmodic generosity, — he had even offered Rose, his
daughter, the privilege of a cherry party without pay ; whereat
Rose fairly gasped. " The vague horror of the unusual stole
over her. A new phase of her father's character stood be-
tween her and all her old memories like a supernatural pres-
ence." As she said to her mother, she was dreadfully afraid
he was going to have another "shock."
In making the plans for the party Rose and her mother
decided to include all the available young people, — " The
Lord only knows when your father'll have another freak like
this. I guess it's like an eclipse of the sun, and won't come
again very soon." And there was Charlotte Barnard, her
" smooth hair gleaming in the sun, her neck showing pink
"Pembroke" 55
through her embroidered lace kerchief," apparently not see-
ing her old lover, Barnabas, but knowing full well when he
came ; and Barney, in his best suit, slender and handsome,
with a stern and almost martial air, standing apart, and feel-
ing a fierce sense of ownership in Charlotte, whose basket
the 'Squire's son Thomas was fiUing with the ripest cherries
from the top of the tree. .But Barney yielded to the charm
of Rose Berry's frank and winning ways, — of Rose, who, in
the heart of her New England, and bred after the precepts
of orthodoxy, was yet a pagan, and " worshiped Love
himself." " Barney was simply the statue that represented
the divinity ; another might have done as well had the sculp-
ture been as fine."
" Copenhagen " was the favorite game that afternoon
under the cherry trees ; and as the young people clung to
the swaying rope, looping this way and that as the pursuers
neared them, their radiant faces " had the likeness of one
family of flowers, through their one expression." The
tossing cherry boughs above their heads, the old red tavern
wall with a great mass of blooming phlox against it, " vague
with distance like a purple smoke," the glistening fence
rails, a singing bluebird, — these were all unthought of by
the merrymakers, and only one note, the note of joyous
love, they listened to ; even Charlotte and Barney felt
the old touch of love's exhilaration, except that it was Rose
and not Charlotte that Barney kissed so fiercely, for at
that very moment the handsome face of Thomas Payne, his
rival, was meeting Charlotte's. " The girls' cheeks flushed
deeper, their smooth locks became roughened. The laughter
waxed louder and longer ; the matrons looking on doubled
their broad backs with responsive merriment. It became
like a little bacchanalian rout in a New England field on a
56 Provincial Types in New England
summer afternoon, but they did not know it in their simple
hearts."
But on this free-hearted merriment scowled the avaricious
face of the owner of the cherry trees, Silas Berry, whose
predominant trait seemed to " mold his face to itself
unchangeably, as the face of a hunting dog is molded to
his speed and watchfulness." As the happy party were
passing homeward they had confirmed with a chorus of
assents the remark of Thomas Payne that he guessed the
old man wasn't so bad after all, when suddenly Silas himself
advanced toward them, drew out a roll of paper, and handed
it to Thomas Payne. At Thomas's inquiry as to what it
was, the old man's face lighted up with the ingenuous smile
of a child, and he replied in a wheedling whisper, " It's
nothin' but the bill ... for the cherries you eat. Pve
always been in the habit of chargin' more, but I've took off
a leetle this time." Thomas in disgusted surprise crammed
the amount of the bill into the eagerly outstretched hand
of the old man, but before the party had reached the foot
of the hill the running feet of William Berry, the old man's
son, were heard, and a hoarse voice called out to Thomas
Payne to stop. William sternly demanded the amount the
latter had paid his father for the cherries, and paid it back
with trembHng fingers, remarking as he did so, "Take it,
for God's sake ! "
Despite their efforts to ease his chagrin over his father's
unparalleled meanness, William Berry broke from them
and " pelted up the hill with his heart so bitterly sore that
it seemed as if he trod on it at every step." But a voice
kept crying after him, there was "a soft flutter of girhsh
skirts," and presently the hand of Rebecca Thayer touched
his arm. It was the touch of love and sympathy, and
" Pembroke " 57
William blushed. " Don't you feel bad : don't you feel bad.
You aren't to blame." — " Isn't he my father ? " — "You aren't
to blame for that." — " Disgrace comes without blame," said
William bitterly as he moved on. But protesting her desire
to be with him and to sympathize with him, Rebecca raised
both her arms and put them about his neck. " He leaned
his cheek down against her soft hair. ' Poor William,' she
whispered, as if he had been her child instead of her lover."
Yet such spontaneous and heroic love in the presence of
disgrace and public ridicule was destined to melt the con-
ventional bonds of virtue and bring upon itself the nemesis
of social and family ostracism.
Rebecca's mother, Deborah, on her daughter's return
home, cross-examined her as to her lateness, and discover-
ing something of the real situation with reference to William
Berry, pitilessly ordered Rebecca to give up all thought of
marriage with him, threatening, in fact, to disown her if she
married against her parents' wishes : " I shan't have any
child but Ephraim left, that's all ! "
Ephraim, the professional boy invalid, whiningly pleaded
with his mother to know what Rebecca had done, but he
was suddenly sent to the pump to wash his face and hands ;
and as soon as he had filled himself with milk toast and
been denied a piece of pie, he was sent from the table to
begin his nightly study of the catechism. Muttering angrily
under his breath, Ephraim got the catechism out of the top
drawer of his father's desk and began " droning out in his
weak, sulky voice the first question therein, *What is the
chief end of man ? ' " He had been nightly drilled for the
last five years on the " Assembly's Catechism," when his
general health admitted — "and sometimes, it seemed to
Ephraim, when it had not admitted." In fact, his mother,
58 Provincial Types in New England
fearing a sudden death for her youngest son, was striving
to fit him for a higher state to which he might soon be
called. And so, before the " Catechism," Ephraim had
been driven laboriously through the whole Bible, chapter by
chapter. His mother was pitiless in this regard, and with
stern pathos she would say to his protesting and sympathetic
father : " If he can't learn nothin' about books, he's got to
learn about his own soul. He's got to, whether it hurts
him or not."
The iron insistence of Deborah Thayer that her daughter
Rebecca should not marry William Berry, the young man
of her choice, had resulted in the daughter's illustrating her
mother's own obstinacy and in Rebecca's going secretly
with William until she had come to love him not wisely but
too well. The unfortunate result had become the talk of
the Httle community, — especially of the gossipmongers, —
but as yet it had not been revealed to the iron-willed mother.
She had indeed noticed a peculiar change in Rebecca, —
an expression in her face that was foreign to it, a growing
antipathy to society, and a certain air of misery that was
inexplicable ev^n to the penetrating eyes of Deborah
Thayer. She began to relent toward her daughter, to
watch over her with a sort of fierce tenderness. "She
brewed great bowls of domestic medicines from nuts and
herbs, and made her drink whether she would or not. She
sent her to bed early, and debarred her from the night air."
But not a shadow of suspicion ever crossed her mind that
night after night that same daughter slipped across the
north parlor and out the front door into the darkness to
meet her forbidden lover. The mother, in fact, was
secretly dreaming high dreams for her daughter's matrimonial
future ; and late at night, after Rebecca had gone to bed
"Pembroke" 59
in her little room off the north parlor, the sternly ambitious
mother knitted yard after yard of lace that should properly
furnish forth her daughter as a bride. She even drove
alone on a windy and snowy December day to a neighboring
village to buy material for a new dress for Rebecca. It
was snowing hard as she returned, and her green veil was
white as she entered the kitchen. " I kept the dress under
the buffalo-robe, an' that ain't hurt any," she vigorously
remarked ; but when, after proudly shaking out the folds
of the gleaming crimson thibet, she got no answering enthu-
siasm from her daughter, she cried out sharply, " You don't
deserve to have a new dress ; you act like a stick of wood."
The next morning Deborah worked assiduously at cutting
and making the new dress for Rebecca, and about the mid-
dle of the forenoon she was ready to try it on. She made
Rebecca stand up in the middle of the kitchen floor and
began fitting the crimson gown to her ; when, suddenly rec-
ognizing something significant in Rebecca's heavily drooping
form, she gave a great start, pushed her daughter violently
from her, and stood aloof, looking at her, while the clock
ticked in the dreadful silence. " Look at me," said Deb-
orah. " And Rebecca looked ; it was like uncovering a
disfigurement or a sore." The truth of premature passion
was out, and Rebecca's eyes and soul shrank from her mother
as the latter cried, " Go out of this house." And Rebecca
obeyed without a sound. Immediately after dinner Deb-
orah plodded through the snow to her son Barney's, and in
a strange voice bade him go after William Berry and make
him marry Rebecca. And when the startled Barney inquired
Rebecca's whereabouts, his mother harshly retorted : " I
don't know where she is. I turned her out because I
wouldn't have her in the house. You brought it all on us ;
6o Provincial Types in New England
if you hadn't acted so I shouldn't have felt as I did about
her marryin'. Now you can go and find her, and get Wil-
liam Berry an' make him marry her. I ain't got anything
more to do with it."
When this marriage by compulsion was accomplished and
Rebecca was estabhshed in the old Bennett house as Mrs.
WilHam Berry, she lived with curtains down and doors bolted.
Never a neighbor saw her face at door or window, and she
would not go to the door if anybody knocked. Even to her
own brother Barney she was not at home, though he begged
to be admitted, and declared he didn't want to say anything
hard. And WilHam himself was scarcely noticed by his own
father and mother, — such was the unforgiving hardness of
their sense of disgrace and their *' righteous " wrath ; and as
for his mother's going to see her son's wife, " Hannah Berry
would have set herself up in a pillory " sooner than do that.
As for Rebecca's mother, Deborah Thayer, she never spoke
of her daughter ; and when Rebecca's Uttle dead child went
by in the hearse, Deborah would not attend the funeral,
though Rebecca's poor old father did.
Since Rebecca's forced marriage Ephraim, her sickly
younger brother, had had a sterner experience than ever
with his mother, Deborah, who with her strenuous Puritan
soul was bent on fitting her invalid boy for heaven. Since
all her vigorous training had failed in the case of his sister,
the mother redoubled her spiritual discipline over her last
child until his life became an almost intolerable series of
restraints and duties. On account of his chronic illness he
was shut up to a very scanty and simple diet, — no cake, no
pie, no plum from a pie ; and he now had daily a double
stint in the catechism. One briUiant moonlight night, feel-
ing a little better as he lay propped up with pillows in his
"Pembroke" 6i
bedroom, and feeling also the irrepressible boy in him,
Ephraim stole out of the house, when his father and mother
were safely asleep, took his brother's sled, and coasted alone
till midnight, having the one playtime of his life. " He ig-
nored his feeble and laboring breath of Hfe. He trod upon,
he outspeeded, all infirmities of the flesh in his wild triumph
of the spirit." His shouts and halloos rang out as he shot
down the hill ; and when he got home and was ready for
bed once more this invalid boy bethought him of the forbid-
den mince pie in the pantry. He slid as " noiseless as a
shadow in the moonlight " through the kitchen, past his par-
ents' door, climbed a " meal-bucket," reached his pie, broke
out a "great jagged half," and back on the edge of his bed
devoured his juicy feast. He had had his first good time.
The next morning he was actually ill, but kept it from his
mother. As she went out to drive to a neighboring town
for sugar and tea, which she refused to buy of her son-in-law,
she left word with Ephraim to tell his father to finish paring
the apples so that she could make them into " sauce " on her
return. He promised, but when his mother got out of sight
he forgot his promise and played " holly-gull " with his father.
When his mother discovered on her return that Ephraim had
ignored her order she went out to the shed. Meanwhile the
boy, now actually very ill, seemed to have lost all fear of
her ; he felt very strange and " as if he were sinking away
from it all through deep abysses." Deborah returned with
a stout stick, and, against the protests of her husband, led
the way to Ephraim's bedroom. The boy staggered as he
went, and she saw how ill he looked ; but she could not this
time be daunted by that from her high spiritual purpose.
" Ephraim," said his mother, " I have spared the rod with
you all my life because you were sick. Your brother and
62 Provincial Types in New England
your sister have both rebelled against the Lord and against
me. You are all the child I've got left. You've got to mind
me and do right. I ain't goin' to spare you any longer be-
cause you ain't well. It is better you should be sick than
be well and wicked and disobedient. It is better that your
body should suffer than your immortal soul. Stand still."
And with that the stick descended, the boy made a strange
noise, and then sank in a heap upon the floor. All of Deb-
orah Thayer's mustard and hot water, all of her remorseful
agony of prayer, had no effect to stir once more the life in
poor Httle Ephraim's body. Indeed, she prayed all night
for justification, and the watchers over Ephraim's dead body
looked at each other with shocked significance. When later
it became known to Deborah Thayer, through the kind
offices of the doctor's wife, that her boy had indulged, the
night before his death, in hours of coasting and in mince-pie
eating, her agonized mind was somewhat relieved ; but the
recent tragedy of her life and the sudden shock of reUef
proved too much for this fiercely torn soul, driven by the
nemesis of Puritan conscience and her own implacable will,
and she sank out of life as suddenly as the son whom she
had punished for his eternal good.
With patient sweetness amid a secret poverty that finally
brought her " on the town," Sylvia Crane had waited twenty
years for Richard Alger, her regular Sunday-night wooer;
and finally, the morning following the wedding of her niece.
Rose Berry, Sylvia, with a bundle of bedding, a chest, and a
rocking-chair, had started on a wood-sled for the poorhouse.
But, strange to say, as they passed Richard Alger's home,
he appeared as a rescuer, compelled the old man to drive
back to the Crane house, and there made a contrite confes-
sion to Sylvia, who in all her own poverty and blasted hope
" Pembroke " 6;^
kept a heart of sympathy and pity open for Richard. " I've
been meaner than sin," said Richard, " an' I don't know as
it makes it any better because I couldn't seem to help it. I
didn't forget you a single minute, Sylvia, an' I was awful sorry
for you, an' there wasn't a Sabbath night that I didn't want
to come more than I wanted to go to heaven. But I couldn't.
I couldn't nohow. I've always had to travel in tracks, an'
no man livin' knows how deep a track he's in till he gets
jolted out of it an' can't get back. But I've got into a
track now, an' I'll die before I get out of it." And Sylvia's
face flushed " like an old flower revived in a new spring."
He married her one Sunday morning at the minister's, and
then together they went to " meetin'," — although Sylvia's
sister, Hannah Berry, was for having a pubhc wedding, caus-
tically observing : *' If I'd been goin' with a feller as long as
you have with him, I wouldn't get cheated out of a weddin',
anyhow. I'd have a weddin', an' I'd have cake, an' I'd ask
folks, especially after what's happened. I'd let 'em see I wa'n't
quite so far gone, if I had set out for the poorhouse once."
And ten years after his quarrel with Charlotte Barnard
and her father, Barney Thayer, — heroically nursed in the
face of public opinion by the loyal Charlotte, — finally was
able to conquer his constitutional " setness," as Richard
Alger had done ; and resolutely getting up from his sick bed
he marched laboriously up the hill to the Barnard house to
announce to his old and never wavering sweetheart that he
had at last " come back."
By such unrelenting characterization as this has the author
set forth in " Pembroke " the story of a New England com-
munity whose grim rigidity of life would be incredible were
it not confirmed by the strong and subtle art of so realistic
a writer as Miss Wilkins.
CHAPTER IV
"DEEPHAVEN" BY SARAH ORNE JEWETT
Just before his death James Russell Lowell wrote to Miss
Jewett's publishers in London : " I am very glad to hear that
Miss Jewett's delightful stories are to be reprinted in Eng-
land. Nothing more pleasingly characteristic of rural life
in New England has been written, and they have long been
valued by the judicious here." And the world of "judicious "
American readers still agrees with this discriminating judg-
ment. The daughter of " A Country Doctor," Miss Jewett
had all the advantages, as a girl, of going about the country
with her father on his visits to inland farms or along the
seacoast ; and " when the time came that my own world of
imagination was more real to me than any other, I was some-
times perplexed at my father's directing my attention to cer-
tain points of interest in the characters or surroundings of
our acquaintances. I cannot help believing that he recog-
nized, long before I did myself, in what direction the current
of purpose in my life was setting. Now as I write my
sketches of country life, I remember again and again the
wise things he said, and the sights he made me see."
Such peculiar preparation for portraying in permanent
literary form the characteristics of certain provincial types in
New England Hfe bore fruit in " Deephaven," her first Hterary
and artistic success. The fact, too, that her early life was
64
" Deephaven " 6^
spent in the old Maine settlement of Berwick, with its once
flourishing shipping trade, its sailors and " sea-tanned cap-
tains," and that her own grandfather had been a sea-cap-
tain, gave to the writing of such a collection of sketches as
" Deephaven " an authoritative and natural touch that
constitutes much of their charm and value. To all these
favorable conditions must be added the possession by Miss
Jewett of a, literary art that is almost classic in its clearness
and grace, its vital sympathy, and its unaffected sincerity.
If, as she herself says, " the distinction of modern literature
is the evocation of sympathy," and if, as Plato said, the best
thing that can be done for the people of a state is to make
them acquainted with one another. Miss Jewett's hterary
purpose has been very happily accomplished.
The summer that Kate Lancaster spent at the old Bran-
don house in Deephaven, in company with her friend who
recounts the narrative, was indeed a summer of unique
charm and delight — for Deephaven was a quaint old place
with high rocks and woods and hills, and Brandon house
is suggestive of that fine old home in Berwick, Maine, built
in 1750, where Miss Jewett herself was born. Twelve miles
from Deephaven the two girls left the railway and took
passage in a stage-coach, with only one passenger besides
themselves, who was a very large, thin, weather-beaten
woman that looked tired, lonesome, and good-natured.
She was delighted to respond to the remark that it was
very dusty, with another remark to the effect that she
should think everybody was sweeping, and that she always
felt, after being in the cars awhile, as if she "had been
taken all to pieces and left in the different places." This
genial and talkative fellow-passenger, Mrs. Kew, proved to
be the wife of the keeper of the Deephaven light, and she
F
66 Provincial Types in New England
and her husband were destined to give the two young ladies
some very unusual diversions during the summer.
Upon the inquiry as to whether Mrs. Kew knew the
Brandon house in Deephaven, the genial soul replied that
she knew it as well as the meeting-house. " ' He ' wrote me
some o' Mrs. Lancaster's folks were going to take the
Brandon house this summer, an' so you are the ones?
It's a sightly old place ; I used to go and see Miss Kath-
erine. She must have left a power of china ware." Mrs.
Kew also told how she herself would always be " a real up-
country woman" if she lived there a hundred years. "The
sea doesn't come natural to me, it kind of worries me,
though you won't find a happier woman than I be, 'long
shore."
As the stage drove up to the old Brandon " place," the
young ladies noted with satisfaction the row of poplars in
front of the great white house, the tall lilacs, the crowds of
rose bushes still in bloom, the box borders, and the great
elms at the side of the house and down the road. And the
hall door stood wide open. Within, it was a home of great
possibiHties, — four large rooms on the lower floor, and six
above, a wide hall in each story, and a " fascinating garret "
over the whole, where were many mysterious old chests and
boxes, in one of which the girls found the love-letters of
Kate's grandmother. The rooms all had elaborate cornices,
and the lower hall was very fine, with an archway dividing
it, and all kinds of panelings, and a great door at either
end. But "the best chamber" rather inspired dread. It
had a huge curtained bed, and the paper on the walls had
been captured in a French prize some time in the last cen-
tury, — the color of it being an " unearthly pink and a for-
bidding maroon, with dim white spots, which gave it the
" Deephaven " 6j
appearance of having molded." The great lounge made
the girls low-spirited, after hearing that Miss Brandon her-
self didn't like it, because she had seen so many of her rela-
tives lie there dead. There were fantastic china ornaments
from Bible subjects on the mantel, and the only picture was
one of the Maid of Orleans, tied with an " unnecessarily strong
rope to a very stout stake." The west parlor downstairs
proved to be the girls' favorite room, with its great fireplace
framed in blue and white Dutch tiles which represented
graphically the careers of the good and the bad man. The
last two of the series were of very high art, — a great coffin
stood in the foreground of each, and the virtuous man was
being led off by " two disagreeable-looking angels," while
the. wicked one was hastening from an " indescribable but
unpleasant assemblage of claws and horns and eyes which is
rapidly advancing from the distance, open-mouthed, and
bringing a chain with it."
In their visits to Mrs. Kew and the lighthouse Kate and
her friend were particularly interested in a row of marks on
the back of the wide " fore door," where Mrs. Kew had
tried to keep account one summer of the number of people
who innocently inquired about the depredations of the
neighbors' chickens ; and they were also specially interested
in Mrs. Kew's collection of " relations " in the form of pho-
tographs, and in her critical remarks about special features
in the faces. " That's my oldest brother's wife, Clorinthy
Adams that was. She's well-featured, if it were not for her
nose, and that looks as if it had been thrown at her, and she
wasn't particular about having it on firm, in hopes of getting
a better one. She sets by her looks though."
Among the first of Deephaven callers on the two girls
from Boston was a prim little old woman by the name of
68 Provincial Types in New England
Mrs. Patton. She wore a neat cap and " front," but no
bonnet, and had over her shoulders a little three-cornered
shawl. She was very short and straight and thin, and
" darted like a pickerel " when she moved about. She im-
pressed Kate's friend as an undoubtedly capable person with
" faculty." When Kate remarked that she had been inquir-
ing whether Mrs. Patton was still in Deephaven, the prim
little woman excitedly exclaimed : " Land o' compassion !
Where'd ye s'pose I'd be, dear? I ain't like to move away
from Deephaven now, after I've held by the place so long
I've got as many roots as the big ellum."
The care-taking Mrs. Patton hoped that Kate and her
friend had found the house- in " middling order," for " me
and Mis' Dockum have done the best we knew, — opened
the windows and let in the air and tried to keep it from get-
ting damp. I fixed all the woolens with fresh camphire and
tobacco the last o' the winter ; you have to be dreadful care-
ful in one o' these old houses, less every thing gets creaking
with moths in no time. ... I set a trap there, but it was
older'n the ten commandments, that trap was, and the
spring's rusty. ... I see your aunt's cat setting out on the
front steps. She never was no great of a mouser, but it went
to my heart to see how pleased she looks ! Come right
back, didn't she?" She continued in a reminiscent strain
of pleased garrulity, recalling the funeral of Kate's aunt,
Miss Brandon, and pronouncing this unqualified eulogy :
"She was a good Christian woman. Miss Katherine was.
*The memory of the just is blessed'; that's what Mr.
Lorimer said in his sermon the Sunday after she died, and
there wasn't a blood relation there to hear it." So spoke
in grateful stream the " Widow Jim " (to distinguish her from
the widow of Jack Patton), who was a distinctly useful per-
" Deephaven " 69
sonage in the community of Deephaven. She made elab-
orate rugs and carpets, she " cleaned house " at the Carews'
and Lorimers', she had no equal in sickness and could brew
every old-fashioned dose and every variety of herb tea, and
she often served her patient after death by being commander-
in-chief at her funeral, — even to the making out of the
order of the procession, since she had all the local genealogy
and relationship at her tongue's end. In fact, a mistake in
precedence at a funeral was counted an awful thing in Deep-
haven ; and the young ladies once chanced to hear some
bitter remarks because the cousins of the departed wife had
been placed after the husband's relatives, — "the blood
relations ridin' behind them that was only kin by marriage 1 "
The good opinion in which Mrs. Patton was held in the
community was generously reflected by Mrs. Dockum, as
the young ladies were returning from the post-office after
their call on the Widow Jim. " Willin' woman," said Mrs.
Dockum, " always been respected ; got an uncommon
facility o' speech. . . . Dreadful tough time of it with
her husband, shifless and drunk all his time," continued
Mrs. Dockum, in the pleasure of painful reminiscence.
" Noticed that dent in the side of her forehead, I s'pose ?
That's where he liked to have killed her ; slung a stone
bottle at her." At the exclamation of shocked interest on
the part of the young ladies, Mrs. Dockum considerately
went into details : " She don't Hke to have it inquired about ;
but she and I were sitting up with 'Manda Darner one night,
and she gave me the particulars. . . . Had sliced cucum-
bers for breakfast that morning ; he was very partial to them,
and he wanted some vinegar. Happened to be two bottles
in the cellar-way ; were just alike, and one of 'em was
vinegar and the other had sperrit in it at haying-time. He
yo Provincial Types in New England
takes up the wrong one and pours on quick, and out come
the hayseed and flies, and he give the bottle a sUng and it
hit her there where you see the scar ; might put the end of
your finger into the dent. He said he meant to break
the bottle ag'in the door, but it went slantwise, sort of. . . .
He died in debt; drank Hke a fish." And then Mrs.
Dockum rounded her story with a concise eulogy of the
widow : " Yes, 'twas a shame, nice woman; good consistent
church member ; always been respected ; useful among the
sick."
Among the most interesting types in Deephaven society
were the ancient mariners who sunned themselves like
turtles every pleasant summer morning on the wharves.
They were known by etiquette as " captains," though the
author is inclined to believe that some of them took their
title by brevet upon arriving at the proper age. They used
to sit close together because so many of them were deaf,
and their reminiscences ran upon the voyage of the Sea
Duck or the wanderings of the Ocean Rover. The captains
used occasionally to get into violent altercations over the
tonnage of some craft; they pulled away at little black
pipes, consuming tobacco in fabulous quantities ; and, need-
less to say, much of their attention was given to the weather.
The appearance of an outsider was wont to cause a " dis-
approving silence"; but the girls were once bold enough
to overhear from behind the corner of the warehouse the
oldest and wisest of them all. Captain Isaac Horn, who was
evidently giving one of his favorite stories, about some cloth
he had once purchased in Bristol, which the shopkeeper
delayed sending till just as they were ready to sail.
*' I happened to take a look at that cloth," droned the cap-
tain in a loud voice, '' and as quick as I got sight of it, I spoke
(Jop>jn<jht 1S93, fc»/ Hoiiqhum, Miffiin A Co.
The Old Captains,
From ' Deephaven," by Sarah Orne Jewett. By permission of Houghton, Mifflin & Co.
" Deephaven " 71
onpleasant of that swindling English fellow, and the crew,
they stood back. I was dreadful high-tempered in them days,
mind ye ; and I had the gig manned. We was out in the
stream, just ready to sail. 'Twas no use waiting any longer
for the wind to change, and we was going north-about. I
went ashore, and when I walks into his shop ye never see a
creatur' so wilted. Ye see the miser'ble sculpin thought I'd
never stop to open the goods, an' it was a chance I did,
mind ye ! * Lor,' says he, grinning and turning the color of
a biled lobster, ' I s'posed ye were a standing out to sea by
this time.' ' No,' says I, ' and I've got my men out here on
the quay a landing that cloth o' yourn, and if you don't send
just what I bought and paid for down there to go back in
the gig within fifteen minutes, I'll take ye by the collar and
drop ye into the dock.' I was twice the size of him, mind
ye, and master strong. * Don't ye like it?' says he, edging
round ; ' I'll change it for ye, then.' Ter'ble perlite he
was. * Like it ? ' says I, * it looks as if it were built of dog's
hair and divil's wool, kicked together by spiders ; and it's
coarser than Irish frieze ; three, threads to an arm/u/,'
says I."
And there was Captain Lant, who knew all the local family
history and how to bring the conversation around to a point
where he could work in one of his pet stories, — the one he
told with special relish, and with the solemn declaration that
it was true, being a strange story of telepathy, which Miss
Jewett gives in the captain's quaint and vivid language and
with all his love of detail. The last letter received from the
old captain by the young ladies on their return to Boston
was headed with the latitude and longitude of Deephaven,
and was signed, " Respectfully yours with esteem, Jacob
Lant (condemned as unseaworthy)."
72 Provincial Types in New England
One of the fishermen whom Kate and her friend knew
least of all was an odd-looking, silent sort of man, more sun-
burnt and weather-beaten than any of the others. He was
locally known as " Danny," and one morning, finding him at
work cleaning fish in a shed, Kate's friend ventured the
judgment that she thought mackerel were the prettiest fish
that swim. " So do I, miss, not to say but I've seen more
fancy-looking fish down in Southern waters, bright as any
flower you ever see ; but a mackerel," holding up one
admiringly, "why, they're so clean-built and trig-looking!
Put a cod alongside, and he looks as lumbering as an old-
fashioned Dutch brig aside a yacht." And tossing some
fish heads to the cats that suddenly walked in as if they felt
at home, he was reminded of a good cat story, which he
proceeded to tell. At the conclusion of his narrative, when
he expressed his preference for haddock over cod, and
Kate asked whether it was cod or haddock that had a black
stripe along their sides, Kate's friend cried out with superior
knowledge, " Oh, those are haddock ; they say that the
Devil caught a haddock once, and it slipped through his
fingers and got scorched ; so all the haddock had the same
mark afterward." Whereat Danny, smiling at her peculiar
lore, remarked wisely, " Ye mustn't believe all the old
stories ye hear, mind ye ! "
There was also the prominent but somewhat visionary
Captain Sands, who had a sort of marine museum in an
old warehouse and was " a great hand for keeping things."
He took the young ladies out to Black Rock to fish for
cunners, and on the way gave them some of his judgments
on the weather, observing that his " gran'ther " used to say
that " a growing moon chaws up the clouds." " Some folks
lay all the weather to the moon, accordin' to where she
" Deephaven " 73
quarters, and when she's in perigee we're going to have
this kind of weather, and when she's in apogee she's got
to do so and so for sartain ; but gran'ther he used to laugh
at all them things. . . . Well, he did use to depend on
the moon some ; everybody knows we aren't so likely to
have foul weather in a growing moon as we be when she's
waning. But some folks I could name, they can't do noth-
ing without having the moon's opinion on it."
Deephaven had as peculiar types, also, old Mrs. Bonny
and Miss Sally Chauncey — the former, to whom the minister
took the young ladies for a call, living a few miles from the
town in company with a little black horse, a yellow-and-
white dog, and a flock of hens ; and the latter remaining
alone in her ruined home and imagining in her harmless
insanity that she was still part of the social aristocracy
to which she formerly belonged. Mrs. Bonny's costume
was somewhat masculine in its make-up, as she wore a
man's coat, cut off so that it made an odd short jacket, and
a pair of men's boots. She had, besides, short skirts, and
two or three aprons, the inner one being a dress-apron
and the outer ones being thrown aside on the entrance of
the visitors. A tight cap with strings completed her cos-
tume. Behind the stove in the kitchen a sick turkey was
being nursed, while the flock of hens was remorselessly
hustled out with a hemlock broom, since callers were
present.
In the conversation that ensued with the eccentric widow,
the minister's reminder that Parson Reid preached the fol-
lowing Sunday in the neighboring schoolhouse recalled to
Mrs. Bonny old Parson Padelford. " He'd get worked up,
and he'd shut up the Bible and preach the hair ofl" your
head, 'long at the end of the sermon." And she also
74 Provincial Types in New England
described to them with much relish a recent revival where
she found one of her uncertain neighbors praying, — old
Ben Patey, — " he always lays out to get converted, and
he kep' it up diligent till I couldn't stand it no longer;
and by and by says he, ' I've been a wanderer ' ; and I up
and says, 'Yes, you have, I'll back ye up on that, Ben;
ye've wandered around my wood lot and spoilt half the
likely young oaks and ashes I've got, a-stealing your basket
stuff.' And the folks laughed out loud, and up he got and
cleared. He's an awful old thief, and he's no idea of being
anything else. I wa'n't a-goin' to set there and hear him
makin' b'Heve to the Lord."
Like Miss Sally Chauncey there were many in Deephaven
who imagined they were still in the circle of the privileged
class, and who had distinct pity for people who were obliged
to live in other parts of the world. As Miss Honora Carew
loftily remarked, the tone of Deephaven society had always
been very high, and it was very nice that there had never
been any manufacturing element introduced, — any dis-
agreeable foreign population. Truly a dehghtful old sea-
port is Deephaven, even if it is such only in name, — for
Sarah Orne Jewett once dropped anchor there.
PROVINCIAL TYPES IN THE SOUTH
CHAPTER V
A BRIEF SURVEY OF THE FIELD
Since the Civil War the " New South " has made a remarkable
record in creative literature, and among its truest and most
sympathetic and artistic interpreters few have so high a
rank as Thomas Nelson Page. Such books as " The Burial
of the Guns," " Elsket," "The Old Gentleman of the Black
Stock," and "Red Rock" give with close insight and un-
failing charm phases of Southern life that have passed, or
are passing, away ; while " In Ole Virginia," Mr. Page's
best-known collection of short stories, has become almost
a classic in its presentation, through the negro dialect, of the
humor and moving pathos, the hospitality and grace and
heroic chivalry, associated with the best Southern types.
Whether we see the breaking tragedy of war and love when
Miss Anne kisses the dead face of" Marse Chan," or whether
we hear the loyal old negro, — when the minister asks
who gives " Meh Lady" to the Northern " Cun'l," — re-
spond proudly and protectingly, " Ole Billy," we know we
are in the presence of brave, strong, beautiful life that was
the finest fruitage of the Old South.
Few more likable darkies have been created than F.
Hopkinson Smith's Nebuchadnezzar — or " Chad " for short,
— found in " Colonel Carter of Cartersville." As a delightfully
75
76 Provincial Types in the South
humorous and sympathetic characterization of certain Vir-
ginia types the book goes naturally with the literature of the
South ; and while much of it is in the nature of an extrava-
ganza, the figure and face of the inimitable Colonel Carter
will long remain the index of an irresistible personality in
American fiction. Whether he is royally presiding at dinner
with the Major and Fitz, or financing in his imagination
" The Cartersville and Warrentown Air Line Railroad "
which is to furnish " the garden spot of Virginia " an outlet
to the sea, or preparing in dead earnest for " the field of
honah," or gallantly filling his glass to " that greatest of all
blessings — a true Southern lady," — he is a refreshing and
alluring type of Southerly humanity developed by the " old
school." And then there is Miss Nancy with her subtle
generosity and her rustling silk and her perfume of sweet
lavender ; and the pugnacious Major Yancey, late of the
Confederate army, with his affinity for mint julep ; and his
impressive but bibulous friend, the Honorable I. B. Kerfoot,
presiding "jedge" of the district court of Fairfax County,
Virginia.
The Georgia negro and "cracker" have been peculiarly
fortunate in having as an interpreter Joel Chandler Harris,
whose " Free Joe " and " Mingo " have had so wide a read-
ing. As Mr. Howells suggests, Mr. Harris's work as a
student of white character (albeit of low life) has not been
fully recognized, by reason of the remarkable popularity of
" Uncle Remus " and his absorbing animal stories. Yet
" At Teague Poteet's " presents with subde humor and
dramatic sense the unique and adventurous life of the
" moonshining " mountaineers, with its rough but loyal
camaraderie, its sudden raids by revenue officers, its des-
perate daring, and its instinctive hospitality. Hog Moun-
A Brief Survey of the Field 77
tain had its Teague Poteet, with his little fifty-acre farm
overlooking GuUettsville, and it had its wild flowers, chief
of which was Sis Poteet, daughter of Puss Poteet ; and the
time came when Sis must needs be educated in the academy
at GuUettsville. Whereat Sis protested because she had no
" cloze." Teague, her father, tramping skyward for game,
came suddenly upon the cap and worm of a disused whisky
still, and saw the clothes problem solved. Whisky educated
Sis Poteet ; and in time a deputy marshal. Woodward by
name, fell in love with her (who could help it?) ; her neigh-
bors, Mrs. Hightower and Mrs. Parmalee, gave their un-
stinted approval; and when Sis and "Cap" were married,
everybody on Hog Mountain sent a contribution, and even
Uncle Jake Norris set a "jug er licker," that had actually
been " stomped by the govunment," behind Teague's stable
door for the necessary refreshment of the wedding guests.
Teague and Uncle Jake and Sis are strongly individualized,
and the unconventional charm of the mountain girl is an
alluring element in the story.
Mr. Harris's most distinct contribution to American
fiction, however, is of course the legends of old plantation
life as told in the unconsciously droll dialect of "Uncle
Remus," that white-haired old philosopher who is the uni-
versal authority on " Brer Rabbit," " Brer Wolf," " Mr. Pos-
sum," and " Brer Fox," and all their Httle stratagems and
wiles. One's imagination can always see the spectacled old
darky, pegging at his coarse shoes or making horse-collars
out of " wahoo " bark, while the large-eyed " little boy " sits
close and watches his authoritative face for fear of losing a
word about how Brer Rabbit outwitted Brer Fox, or how, for
once, through the inimitable "Tar-Baby," Brer Fox proved
too much for the redoubtable rabbit, or about the " awful
yS Provincial Types in the South
fate of Mr. Wolf" when Brer Rabbit cured him of fleas
by scalding him to death in the big chest. How Mr.
Rabbit finds his match at last in the subtlety of Brer Terra-
pin, who beats him in the race and takes the money, much
to the enjoyment of " Miss Meadows en de gals," and how
Brer Fox, in his envious pursuit of Mr. Rabbit, who was
" fishin' fer suckers " at the bottom of a well, went down in
one bucket as Brer Rabbit came up in the other, singing
philosophically,
" Good-by, Brer Fox, take keer yo' cloze,
Fer dis is de way de worril goes ;
Some goes up en some goes down,
You'll git ter de bottom all safe en sounV —
how all this happened with such beautiful inconsistency no
one but Joel Chandler Harris can tell us.
He has touched in so many delightful phases the old
negro's sublime credulity, unconscious drollery, fellow-sym-
pathy with the more helpless of the animals, and tender love
of the "little boy," that it is difficult to decide whether
" Uncle Remus and his Friends," or " Nights with Uncle
Remus," or " Uncle Remus ; His Songs and Sayings "
should take precedence. But since Mr. Frost has illustrated
the last-mentioned volume with more than a hundred draw-
ings, some of which are a perfect embodiment of the spirit
of the text, one is incHned to give his first choice to this
particular collection of legends. Mr. Harris himself says, in
his dedication of the book to Mr. Frost, "The book was
mine, but now you have made it yours, both sap and pith."
And to one who has delighted in the inimitable illustrations
of the book the praise of Mr. Frost is not unmerited.
Dividing in a way the attention of the literary world to
A Brief Survey of the Field 79
Southern fiction, Mr. George W. Cable stands with Mr.
Harris, — though in so distinct a field that the question of
which is the greater is neither important nor perhaps possi-
ble. Even if Mr. Cable's shorter Creole stories are said in
the judgment of some critics to have had their day (and a
very bright one it was), it is hard to conceive when the
delicate charm and trembling devotion of " Madame Del-
phine " will cease to touch the imagination and sympathy ;
or the rich humanity of Pere Jerome, or the mysterious per-
sonality of Monsieur Vignevielle (alias Capitaine Lemaitre,
the pirate), or the vision of white loveliness he stole that
memorable night when the moon shone and the mocking-
bird broke into song, or the prostrate figure of the dead
mother at the confessional, — the quadroon mother who
sinned for her daughter's happiness. Nor can one easily
forget how under the enthusiastic eye of " Bonaventure "
the children rang the bell for "light, libbuty, and education" ;
or the impressive visit to Bonaventure 's school of the im-
mortal George Washington Tarbox, a forerunner of his
own " Album of Universal Information " ; or the secret but
finally triumphant passion of Bonaventure for the queenlike
Sidonie.
With all the changing conditions that accompanied the
cession of Louisiana in 1803 as a background, with the
pall of slavery hanging over it, and the picturesqueness yet
impossibility of an absurd but heroic devotion to a social
theory of caste as an element in his story, Mr. Cable has
written in " The Grandissimes " one of the most striking and
artistic pieces of fiction in American literature. And although
the Creoles of New Orleans have resented what they consider
a prejudiced presentation of their attitude toward slavery
and the quadroon class, they have great cause for gratifica-
8o Provincial Types in the South
tion that a novelist of such imagination, insight, and delicate
touch has individualized in permanent literary form such rare
and winning types as Honor^ Grandissime, the broad-minded
and gracefully heroic merchant who foresaw the true des-
tiny of his people ; such bewitching, shy, and dainty beings
as Aurore de Grapion and her daughter Clotilde ; and such
free-hearted, naive, and irrepressible traits as go to the mak-
ing of Raoul Innerarity, the painter of " Louisiana rif-using
to hanter de h-Union." The immigrant Joseph Frowenfeld
may perhaps be criticised as a lay figure, but he stands for
sanity and justness, and in the end reaches even the most
fastidious of Creole hearts. Agricola Fusilier, as the em-
bodiment of the unreasoning, ridiculous, but relentless, caste
spirit and of opposition to the new " Am^ricain " government,
may lack a certain definiteness of characterization ; but as,
dying, he joins the hands of Aurore, the daughter of his old
enemy, and Honor^, his nephew, — the promise of all that
was best in the Creole future — he becomes a very signifi-
cant and essential part of the story. As for Palmyre Phi-
losophe, the vengeful practicer of voudou arts, — where in
literature will you find a stranger figure or one that appeals
more directly to the imagination and sympathy? Her hope-
less love for the white Honor^ and the hopeless love of her-
self on the part of the less white Honors, "f. m. c." (free
man of color) , her strange power over the black giant, Bras-
Coup^, and her terrorizing of Agricola himself, bring her
into a wide circle of absorbing interest. Whether the hor-
rible fate of poor Clemence seems, as it does in the judg-
ment of some critics, to be unnecessarily detailed for the
purposes of art, or whether by it Mr. Cable intended to illus-
trate the power of superstition over master as well as slave,
it doubtless is true enough to certain phases of slave life ;
A Brief Survey of the Field 8i
and for dramatic strength and haunting vividness the story
of " Bras-Coup^ " stands out like a picture painted in blood.
Bras-Coupe, with chains on his feet, chains on his wrists, and
an iron yoke about his neck ; Bras-Coup^, with his tiger eyes
softening before Palmyre, whom he loved ; Bras-Coup^, his
gigantic length prostrate in the dust as he worshiped the sister
of Honors Grandissime ; the same imperious giant, at the
wedding, felling his Spanish master to the floor, or amid
snakes and bats and lizards living a hunted outlaw in the
heart of the swamps ; Bras-Coup6, with uplifted palm spread-
ing his malediction over house and fields, or lassoed by the
Spanish police in his wild and drunken dance, or strapped
face down and smitten with the lash, or shorn of his ears
and with severed tendons and bleeding back stretched on
a bed of dry grass ; and last of all the mutilated slave hold-
ing his dead master's little child and dropping his first tears
upon the infant's hand, and inaudibly moving his lips as he
waves his hand abroad and Hfts the dreadful curse, — such
is the series of pictures that Mr. Cable paints in this power-
ful epitome of the savage side of slavery. But, after all, the
surviving impressions of this great novel are not those of
wrong and senseless social systems, but of those delightful
and sparkling women, — Aurore and Clotilde, — drawn with
such exquisite art by Mr. Cable, and of that finished and
masterly type of Creole character, Honor^ Grandissime.
Besides their presentation in the work of Mr. Cable, New
Orleans and Louisiana have been fortunate also in the inti-
mate and sympathetic treatment given them in the short
stories of Grace King, such as "Tales of a Time and
Place," " Monsieur Motte," and " Balcony Stories " ; while
Ruth McEnery Stuart, a native of Louisiana, has written
with convincing closeness to Southern life the tale of
82 Provincial Types in the South
"Babette, A Little Creole Girl," " Sonny " (the story of an
Arkansas boy), and " Napoleon Jackson : The Gentleman
of the Plush Rocker."
Kentucky has a striking phase of her life set forth with
essential truth and dramatic interest in such short stories as
" A Cumberland Vendetta," by John Fox, Jr., — the charac-
teristic family feud, which ends only with the extinction of
the male members of the family, as is so vividly illustrated
by Mr. Clemens in his " Huckleberry Finn," and in some of
the stories of Miss Murfree. The desperate hand-to-hand
fight on the mountain side — as pictured in " A Cumberland
Vendetta " — between Rome Stetson and Jasper Lewallen,
the boyish representatives of those rival families, was a criti-
cal one, for it meant that whichever was " whooped " was
thereby compelled to leave the mountains forever. The
desperation and treachery and sudden death in this encoun-
ter are given with a dramatic vividness that speaks well for
the literary art of the writer ; and the final picture in which
the hunted young outlaw, the last of his family, and Martha
Lewallen, the last survivor of hers, set fire to her home, near
the fresh- made graves of her father and brother, and face
together the dying sunset and the unknown West, is a
graphic and pathetic illustration of the desolating effects of
family hatreds. Kentucky is to be congratulated, also, in
having a citizen who appreciates the romance of her history,
and is able, as is James Lane Allen, to throw over it the
glamor of his own imagination. His " Flute and Violin,
and Other Kentucky Stories," his " Kentucky Cardinal "
and "Choir Invisible," and his romance of the Kentucky
hemp fields, — "The Reign of Law," — abound in poetic
description of their native setting and in loyal sentiment for
the history of the state.
A Brief Survey of the Field 83
Eastern Tennessee found in Miss Murfree, better known
as "Charles Egbert Craddock," an interpreter that was
thoroughly familiar with the background of her stories, ap-
preciated with an artist's love of color the marvelous pano-
rama of sky and mountain scenery, and entered with full
sympathy and loving insight into the strange, free, supersti-
tious, and primitive lives of the isolated mountaineers. So
much of description is given at times to the environment
of sky and peak, that Miss Murfree is sometimes spoken of as
belonging to the "landscape school" in Hterary art; and it
must be confessed that her frequently elaborate descriptive
writing seems now and then to delay the movement of her
stories, and, except to the highly poetic mind, grows somewhat
wearisome. But, nevertheless, when one is past these par-
ticular descriptive portions, and is immersed in the intense
action of her vigorous characters, one is sure to feel the rare
originality of her work and to be absorbed in the dramatic
interest with which she portrays the desperate " moon-
shiner" and the shy mountain lover, the superstitiously
religious folk who get " convicted," the gaunt and work-
worn old women, and the wild, sweet, unsophisticated
beauty and proud strength of will that belong to certain
girlish types among the villages and remote farms of the
mountain regions of Tennessee. The latter type is seen in
the alluring "Euphemy" Sims, who, in "The Juggler,"
makes her lover, Owen Haines, decide between herself and
" prayin' for the power " in public, and who, by the charm
of her great gray eyes and the sparkles of gold in her hair,
and the innocent sweetness of her nature, wins the tempo-
rary love of the "Juggler" himself, Lucien Royce, the
accomplished man of the city and the world.
" In the Clouds," and the collection of short stories enti-
84 Provincial Types in the South
tied " In the Tennessee Mountains," and " In the Stranger
People's Country," contain, also. Miss Murfree's varied and
successful treatment of mountain life ; but it is in " The
Prophet of the Great Smoky Mountains " that one gets the
largest impression of her knowledge of primitive types, and
of her versatile skill in portraying sudden and dramatic
action. The opening dialogue far up the mountain side
between Dorinda Cayce, the old " moonshiner's " daughter,
and her oudawed lover, Rick Tyler, presents a unique
picture, — Dorinda, impressive in her simple beauty and
buoyant youthfulness, plowing the corn with the gaunt old
ox, and Rick, with jingling spurs and dangling pistols, help-
ing her with his horse. A vivid touch of the dramatic is
felt when old " Ground-hog " Cayce, on his return at night,
learns from " Dorindy " that 'Cajah Green, the sheriff in
pursuit of Rick, had threatened her with jail if she refused to
tell the whereabouts of her lover. The fierce old man, hold-
ing his rifle in the moonlight, insisted that his insulted
daughter should make a mark on its barrel in memory of
the sheriff's words ; but she, knowing that the mark meant
certain death to the sheriff, instinctively drew back ; where-
upon her brother seized her hand, which tremblingly held
the long, sharp knife, and guided it in the form of a cross
near the rifle's muzzle.
Rick's desperate visit to the " Settlemint " to reenforce
his powder supply ; his treacherous capture by Gid Fletcher,
the blacksmith, for blood money ; the appealing, tempes-
tuous tones of Parson Kelsey, the *' Prophet of the Great
Smoky Mountains," as he wrestled in prayer on the great
" bald " ; his meeting with the blacksmith, and his heroic
turning of his other cheek when the blacksmith had suddenly
struck him in the face; his uncompromising " prophecy "
A Brief Survey of the Field 85
that Micajah Green would never be reelected sheriff; his
holding the blacksmith at bay with a *' six-shooter " to end
the gander-pulling contest; and the mystifying escape of
Rick from his temporary prison in the blacksmith shop, —
all these are set forth with a picturesque power that makes
them live in the memory.
Brother Jake Tobin's unctuous and dramatic reading of
the Scriptures in the litde log meeting-house on Sunday,
and his desperate calling on Brother Reuben Bates to " lead
in prayer," were only preliminary to the expected sermon
by Hi Kelsey, the " prophet " of the Big Smoky ; and not
even the tragic words of Arthur Dimmesdale on the scaifold,
when he revealed the " scarlet letter " and made his dying
confession, had a more horrifying and sensational effect
than the prophet's confession that he had lost his faith, and
that Hell and the Devil had prevailed against him.
What more satisfying picture than that of the worn and
armed outlaw. Rick, sitting before the fire and stealing a
sweet interview with Dorinda spinning at her wheel. And
how exultant his heart when Dorinda's flashing eyes told
him that she would dare to marry him and live in his house,
even though a rifle's muzzle or a sherifl''s revolver might
peek through the rails of the fence ! And when he finally
announced to her that the real murderer had confessed the
crime with which he himself was charged, his delight over
her faith in his valor took the repeated form of this proud
exclamation : " An' ye warn't afeard ! Ye would hev mar-
ried me and resked it. Ye warn't afeard 1 "
The sudden discovery and destruction of Cayce's illicit still
in the cave ; the later visit of old Ground-hog Cayce him-
self to his dismantled den and the silent nursing of his wrath ;
the growing inflexibility and hopelessness of Dorinda's face
86 Provincial Types in the South
which began to look even hke her father's lowering coun-
tenance ; her continued unswerving sympathy with the ac-
cused •' prophet " and her assumed indifference to her lover
Rick; the acquittal of the parson and his terrific arraign-
ment of his enemies in court ; his strange colloquy with the
murderous Cayces the night of the snow-storm, when he pro-
nounced the direful prophecy of future penalties ; the wild
cry for help in the night when 'Cajah Green was captured,
and the wilder ride to the mouth of the cave ; and then
the truly vicarious sacrifice of the " prophet " as in the con-
fusion of darkness and haste he was hurled to his death
instead of his arch-enemy, the sheriff, — such a narrative im-
presses one not only as a strong piece of dramatic writing
but as a convincing " human document " filled with knowl-
edge of a little-known and peculiar people.
CHAPTER VI
"IN OLE VIRGINIA" BY THOMAS NELSON PAGE
In this collection of short stories, written by a Southerner
about the South, there are two or three that have already
become classic, like " Marse Chan," " Meh Lady," and
" Polly." One speaks of them now as if they were a recog-
nized part of American Hterature ; and it is somewhat sur-
prising to learn that the first-mentioned story, when sent to
the old Scribner's Monthly^ brought but eighty dollars, and
was held for four years before publication, finally appearing
in the new Century magazine.
Despite the widespread prejudice against mere dialect as
a vehicle for literary expression, it must be confessed that
" Marse Chan " and " Meh Lady " would lose much of their
unique charm and their closeness to Southern life if they
did not seem to emanate from the inmost hearts and experi-
ences of those loyal old " darkies," Sam and Billy. These
faithful souls are the natural, unaffected exponents of a phase
of Southern life that has largely passed away, — they were
an integral and essential part of the social system that is
here reflected and characterized in all its free-hearted hos-
pitality, its quick sense of honor and chivalry, its impulsive
hot-headedness, and its instinctive bravery.
Unconsciously typical of the Old South was the negro
standing with a hoe and a watering-pot in his hand, waiting
87
88 Provincial Types in the South
at the " worm- fence " for the advent down the path of a
noble-looking old setter, gray with age and over-round from
too abundant feeding. The setter, like some old-time
planter, sauntered slowly, and in lordly obHvion of the negro,
up to the fence, while the latter began to take down the
rails, talking meanwhile to the dog in a pretended tone of
criticism : " Now, I got to pull down de gap, I suppose !
Yo' so sp'ilt yo' kyahn hardly walk. Jes' ez able to git over
it as I is ! Jes' like white folks — think 'cuz you's white and
I's black, 1 got to wait on yo' all de time. Ne'm mine, I
ain' gwi' do it ! " As his dogship marched sedately through
the " gap " and down the road, the negro suddenly dis-
covered a stranger looking on, and hastened to remark
somewhat apologetically : " He know I don' mean nothin'
by what I sez. He's Marse Chan's dawg, an' he's so ole he
kyahn git long no pearter. He know I'se jes' prodjickin'
wid 'im."
The darky explained to the stranger that " Marse Chan,"
(or Channin') was his young master, that the place with " de
rock gate-pos's " which the stranger had just passed was
" ole Cun'l Chamb'Hn's," and that since the war *' our place "
had been acquired by certain " unknowns " who were prob-
ably " half-strainers."
At the request of the stranger to tell him all about " Marse
Chan " the old negro recalled, " jes' like 'twuz yistiddy," how
"ole marster" (Marse Chan's father), smihng "wusn' a
'possum," came out on the porch with his new-born son in
his arms, and catching sight of Sam (the narrator, who was
then but eight years old), called him up on the porch and
put the baby in his arms, with the solemn injunction that
Sam was to be the young master's body-servant as long as
he lived. " Yo' jes' ought to a-heard de folks sayin', * Lawd !
"In Ole Virginia" 89
marster, dat boy'll drap dat chile ! ' ' Naw, he won't,' sez
marster ; ' I kin trust 'im.' " And then the old master walked
after Sam carrying the young master, until Sam entered the
house and laid his precious burden on the bed.
Sam recalled, too, how Marse Chan, when in school, once
carried Miss Anne, Colonel Chamberlin's little daughter, on
his shoulders across a swollen creek, and how the next day,
when his father gave him a pony to show his pleasure over
his son's chivalry, Marse Chan came walking home from
school, having given his pony to Miss Anne. " ' Yes,' sez
ole marster, laughin', * I s'pose you's already done giv' her
yo'se'f, an' nex' thing I know you'll be givin' her this planta-
tion and all my niggers.' " It was only a fortnight later
that Colonel Chamberlin invited the " ole marster " and his
whole family over to dinner, — expressly naming Marse
Chan in the note, — and after dinner two ponies stood at
the door, the one Marse Chan had given Miss Anne, and
the other a present to Marse Chan from the Colonel. And
after a " gre't " speech by the Colonel, the two young lovers
went off to ride, while the " grown folks " laughed and
chatted and smoked their cigars.
To the eye of Sam's endearing memory those were the
good old times, — " de bes' Sam ever see ! Dey wuz, in
fac' ! Niggers didn' hed nothin' 't all to do — jes' hed to
'ten' to de feedin' an' cleanin' de horses, an' doin' what de
marster tell 'em to do ; an' when dey wuz sick, dey had
things sont 'em out de house, an' de same doctor come
to see 'em whar 'ten' to de white folks when dey wuz po'ly.
Dyar warn' no trouble nor nothin'."
The considerate affection shown for the young Sam by
Marse Chan was illustrated by the Htde incident of the
punishment inflicted on both of them by the " ole marster "
90 Provincial Types in the South
for sliding down the straw-stacks against orders. The master
first whipped young Marse Chan and then began on Sam,
who was using his lungs to lighten the severity of his
punishment. Marse Chan took his own whipping without
a murmur ; " but soon ez he commence warmin' me
an' I begin to holler, Marse Chan he bu'st out cryin',
an' stept right in befo' old marster, an' ketchin' de whup,
sed : —
" ' Stop, seh ! Yo' sha'n't whup 'im ; he b'longs to me,
an' ef you hit 'im another lick I'll set 'im free ! ' . . .
" Marse Chan he warn' mo'n eight years ole, an' dyah
dey wuz — ole marster standin' wid he whup raised up,
an' Marse Chan red an' cryin', hol'in' on to it, an' sayin' I
b'longs to 'im.
" Ole marster, he raise' de whup, an' den he drapt it,
an' broke out in a smile over he face, an' he chuck Marse
Chan onder de chin, an' tu'n right roun' an' went away,
laughin' to hisse'f ; an' I heah 'im teUin' ole missis dat evenin',
an' laughin' 'bout it."
Sam's vivid memory saw again the picture of the dawnlight
on the river when Marse Chan and old Colonel Chamberlin
fought their famous duel that grew out of the unfounded
charges against Marse Chan's father made by the Colonel
in a political speech. Sam could see again the early morn-
ing hght on his young master's face, and could hear the
ominous voice of one of the seconds saying, " Gentlemen,
are you ready? "
" An' he sez, ' Fire, one, two ' — an' ez he said * one ' ole
Cun'l Chamb'Hn raised he pistil an' shot right at Marse
Chan. De ball went th'oo' his hat. I seen he hat sort o'
settle on he head ez de buUit hit it, an' he jes' tilted his
pistil up in de a'r an' shot — bang; an' ez de pistil went
"In Ole Virginia** 91
bang, he sez to Cun'l Chamb'lin, ' I mek you a present to
yo' fam'ly, seh ! ' . . .
" But ole Cun'l Chamb'lin he nuver did furgive Marse
Chan, an' Miss Anne she got mad too. Wimmens is mons'us
onreasonable nohow. Dey's jes' like a catfish : you can
n' tek hole on 'em hke udder folks, an' when you gits 'm
yo' can n' always hole 'em."
In sympathetic and picturesque language the old darky
recounted the last meeting between Marse Chan and Miss
Anne, as they stood together in the moonlight, and Sam
overheard the fateful words of the implacable Southern
woman, "*But I don' love yo'.' (Jes' dem th'ee wuds !)
De wuds fall right slow — like dirt falls out a spade on a
coffin when yo's buryin' anybody, an' seys, *Uth to uth.'
Marse Chan he jes' let her hand drap, an' he stiddy hisse'f
'g'inst de gate-pos', an' he didn' speak torekly."
Sam's relation of how Marse Chan went to the war, of how
in the tent he knocked down Mr. Ronny for speaking con-
temptuously of Colonel Chamberlin and his daughter, and
of the effect on Marse Chan's face of the letter of reconcilia-
tion and love he received from Miss Anne, — brings the
vivid narrative to Marse Chan's splendid charge on the
field at the head of the regiment, carrying its fallen flag up
the hill, and inspiring it by his dauntless leadership. "I
seen 'im when he went, de sorrel four good lengths ahead
o' ev'ry urr boss, jes' hke he use' to be in a fox-hunt, an'
de whole rigimint right arfter him." But suddenly the
sorrel came galloping back with flying mane, and the rein
hanging down on one side to his knee, — and poor Sam
knew that Marse Chan must be killed. He found his mas-
ter among the dead men, still holding in his hand the flag
as he lay beneath one of the guns. '•' I tu'n 'im over an'
92 Provincial Types in the South
call 'im, * Marse Chan ! ' but 't wan' no use, he wuz done gone
home, sho' 'nuff. I pick' 'im up in my arms wid de fleg
still in he han's, an' toted 'im back jes' like I did dat day
when he wuz a baby, an' ole marster gin 'im to me in my
arms, an' sez he could trus' me, an' tell me to tek keer on
'im long ez he lived."
And when Sam reached home with the body in the ambu-
lance and had gone over to let Miss Anne know the awful
news, that " Marse Chan he done got he furlough," and she
had ridden back and prostrated herself before Marse Chan's
old mother, there is the close of the tragic story as told by
the loyal old negro in these words : —
" Ole missis stood for 'bout a minit lookin' down at her,
an' den she drapt down on de flo' by her, an' took her in
bofe her arms.
" I couldn' see, I wuz cryin' so myse'f, an' ev'ybody wuz
cryin'. But dey went in arfter a while in de parlor, an' shet
de do' ; an' I heahd 'em say. Miss Anne she tuk de coffin in
her arms an' kissed it, an' kissed Marse Chan, an' call 'im by
his name, an' her darlin', an' ole missis lef ' her cryin' in dyar
tell some one on 'em went in, an' found her done faint on de
flo'." And it was not long before Miss Anne, broken by nursing
in the hospitals and by fever and sorrow, was laid beside the
body of Marse Chan. So pathetic and brave and illuminating
a story concerning the South at the beginning of the Civil War
it would be difficult to find elsewhere in American literature.
In this collection of short stories "Unc' Edinburg's
Drowndin' " is considered by Mr. Page himself as perhaps
his best picture of old Virginia society ; and it does indeed
present a variety of phases of the plantation and negro
life, drawn with convincing art and a charming element of
relieving humor.
" In Ole Virginia'' 93
"Ole Billy," peeling cedar fish-poles and introducing with
loving detail his story of " Meh Lady," is a typical figure of
the loyal, sympathetic, and humorous old house servant that
Mr. Page delights to use, and somewhat idealizes, as the
spokesman in his dialect stories of the South. Billy, in re-
calling the looks and ways of Meh Lady as a little girl, bent
on following her ambitious brother, Marse Phil, said that she
used to look " white 'mong dem urr chil'ns as a clump o'
blackberry blossoms 'mong de blackberries. . . . An' her
eyes ! I do b'lieve she laugh mo' wid 'em 'n wid her mouf.
She was de 'light o' dis plantation ! When she'd come in
you' house 'twuz like you'd shove back de winder an' let
piece o' de sun in on de flo' — you could almos' see by
her ! " She and Marse Phil, Billy declared, were practically
inseparable in all their pursuits until he went to college, and
even till he went into the war. And then the old darky
relates, with all the vivid detail of an eye-witness, how he
started at dawn with the carriage and the " Mistis " and
Meh Lady to drive to the battle-field where Marse Phil lay
wounded unto death. " I see de soldiers all 'long de road
look at me, an' some on 'em holler to me dat I cyarn' go
dat way ; but I ain't pay no 'tention to 'em, I jes' push on."
Presently he saw in an oat field the house to which Marse
Phil had been taken, and he was urging on the horses when
three or four men standing in the roadway ahead, cried,
"Halt." They cried "Halt" a second time, noticing that
he paid no attention to them ; and finally " a spreckle-face
feller run up an' ketch Remus' head, an' anurr one done
p'int he gun right at me." The old servant protested his
surprise that they didn't have any better sense than to
" ketch holt Mistis' horses," and was just on the point of
using his whip on one of the men, when the door of the car-
-94 Provincial Types in the South
riage opened and the " Mistis " stepped out. She told them
that her son was dying in the house just beyond and she was
going to him. " She talk mighty sorf but mighty 'termined
Hke. Dee sort o' reason wid her, but she jes' walk on by
wid her head up, an' tell me to foller her, an' dat I did,
mon ! an' lef 'em dyah in de road holdin' dee gim. De
whole army couldn' 'a' keep her fum Marse Phil den."
Marse Phil died that night in his mother's arms as peace-
fully as a baby, saying it was just like the old times when he
used to go to sleep in her lap in his own room, with her arms
around him. And the colonel of his regiment wrote Marse
Phil's mother how the Confederacy mourned his loss, and
how he was made a colonel on the day he was shot ; and
the proud negro added in his narrative that Marse Phil's
new title of honor was on the tombstone and that one could
still go into the garden and read it.
The panic among the darkies on the sudden advent of
the Yankees; the insults of the irresponsible Northern sol-
diery ; the protecting attitude of " Ole Billy " standing, ax in
hand ; the gallant entrance of Captain Wilton of the Northern
army — though half Virginian and kinsman to Meh Lady;
the typical unrelenting pride of Meh Lady and the " Mistis" ;
the captain's strenuous ride with a letter from General
McClellan ; the turning of the old Southern home into a hos-
pital for Southern soldiers, with " Mistis " and Meh Lady as
nurses ; the bringing of the wounded Northern soldier to the
house and tenderly nursing him back to life, his interesting
convalescence and his unmistakable love for Meh Lady,
with her reluctant refusal to marry him on the ground that
she couldn't marry a Union soldier, — all come in as striking
incidents in the development of the story. -And the swift
reduction of the " Mistis " and Meh Lady to extremes!
"In Ole Virginia'* 95
poverty ; the mortgaging of the plantation ; the bitter sur-
render of Richmond and General Lee ; the renewed effort
of Colonel Wilton to be recognized as a lover ; Billy's
humorous purchase of the mule to help Meh Lady; her
brave efforts at school teaching ; and the fading out of her
mother's life, — these continue the pathetic narrative to the
terrible isolation of Meh Lady, and the final uncertain visit
of the Northern suitor. Meh Lady's second refusal, old
Hannah's message to the Colonel and her upbraiding him
with being no " pertector to the chile," and the Colonel's
taking of the reins into his own hands and insisting on an
immediate marriage, carry us forward to his important ride
to the court-house, with " Ole Billy " following on the col-
lapsing mule. But alas ! Billy's memory as to Meh Lady's
age was all too misty. " I know her age, 'cause I right dyah
when she born ; but how ole she is, I don' know." It
looked, under the circumstances, as if they would have to
take a forty-mile ride back to the family records, when sud-
denly the old negro connected Meh Lady's birth with that
of Marse Phil, a legal record of his words was made, the
clerk of the court was able himself to confirm the truth of
the negro's memory, and the necessary Hcense was
triumphantly carried back.
Such preparations that morning for the unexpected wed-
ding ! " Hannah she sut'n'y wuz comical, she ironin' an'
sewin' dyah so induschus she oon' le' me come in meh own
house." And when they were all ready for the ceremony,
Hannah suddenly flung the door wide open, "An' Meh
Lady walk out ! Gord ! ef I didn' think 'twuz a angel.
She Stan' dyah jes' white as snow fum her head to way back
down on de flo' behine her, an' her veil done fall roun' her
like white mist, an' some roses in her han'. Ef it didn'
g6 Provincial Types in the South
look like de sun done come th'oo de chahmber do' wid her,
an' blaze all over de styars, an' de Cun'l he look like she
bhne him. . . . An' dyah facin' Mistis' picture an' Marse
Phil's (tooken when he wuz a little boy), lookin' down at
'em bofe, dee wuz married."
The point in the ceremony where the minister asks " Who
gives this woman to this man?" seemed to the faithful
darky to make some demand upon himself. " I don' know
huccome 'twuz, but I think 'bout Marse Jeems an' Mistis
when he ax me dat, an' Marse Phil, whar all dead, an' all de
scufflin' we done been th'oo, an' how de chile ain' got no
body to teck her part now 'sep jes' me ; an' now when he
wait an' look at me dat way, an' ax me dat, I 'bleeged to
speak up ; I jes' step for'ard an' say, ' Ole Billy.' "
" In Ole Virginia " is completed by the weird and
haunting sketch of" No Haid Pawn," " Ole 'Stracted," and
the delightful " Polly," — with its inimitable Colonel, — a
charming kinsman of Hopkinson Smith's " Colonel Carter,"
— its Drinkwater Torm, who was always on the point of
being sold the following morning, and the irresistible Polly
herself, who knew so well the diplomatic uses of mint.
CHAPTER VII
"COLONEL CARTER OF CARTERSVILLE" BY
F. HOPKINSON SMITH
There is probably no happier illustration of F. Hopkin-
son Smith's versatility as a story writer than that found in
his " Colonel Carter of Cartersville," where he has drawn,
with somewhat extravagant hand, perhaps, a Southern type
of rare good fellowship, real bravery and chivalry, bound-
less hospitality, and delightfully visionary schemes. He be-
longs to that group of old-time Southern gentlemen so
attractively portrayed by Thomas Nelson Page in " Marse
Chan " " Meh Lady," and " Polly," and has already become
a genial companion to a host of readers. And Chad — com-
bination of cook, butler, body-servant, and boots — is a
negro type that deserves to associate with Mr. Page's Sam
and Billy and Torm.
The preparations for the Colonel's first dinner are sig-
nificant of the Colonel's improvident but irresistible ways, —
he wrote to his friend, the Major : " Will you lend me half
a dozen napkins — mine are all in the wash, and I want
enough to carry me over Sunday. Chad will bring, with your
permission, the extra pair of andirons you spoke of." As
the Major waited for his host's appearance, he was impressed
by the cozy, charming interior of the Colonel's dining room,
— an irregularly shaped apartment, panelled with a dark wood
H 97
98 Provincial Types in the South
running half way to the low ceiling, and containing two fire-
places — " an open wood fire which laughed at me from be-
hind my own andirons, and an old-fashioned English grate
set into the chimney with wide hobs — convenient and nec-
essary for the various brews and mixtures for which the
Colonel was famous." The Major also had time to notice the
snow-white cloth resplendent in old India blue, the pair of
silver coasters — heirlooms from Carter Hall — the silver
candelabra with candles — as the Colonel despised gas —
and some of the etchings and sketches from his own studio,
which he had loaned to the appreciative Colonel. Suddenly
he heard the Colonel calling down the back stairs : " Not a
minute over eighteen, Chad. You ruined those ducks last
Sunday." And the next moment he had his guest by the
hand. " My dear Major, I am pa'alyzed to think I kep' you
waitin'. . . . Have a drop of sherry and a dash of bitters,
or shall we wait for Fitzpatrick? You don't know Fitz?
Most extraord'nary man ; a great mind, suh ; literature,
science, politics, finance, everything at his fingers' ends. . . .
Put yo' body in that chair and yo' feet on the fender — my
fire and yo' fender ! No, Fitz's fender and yo' andirons !
Charmin' combination ! "
And to make the picture of this hospitable Southerner com-
plete the Major gives this bit of description : " He is per-
haps fifty years of age, tall and slightly built. His iron-gray
hair is brushed straight back from his forehead, overlapping
his collar behind. His eyes are deep-set and twinkhng ;
nose prominent ; cheeks slightly sunken ; brow wide and
high ; and chin and jaw strong and marked. His mustache
droops over a firm, well-cut mouth and unites at its ends
with a gray goatee which rests on his shirt front.
" Like most Southerners living away from great cities, his
" Colonel Carter of Cartersville " 99
voice is soft and low, and tempered with a cadence that is
deUcious.
" He wears a black broadcloth coat — a double-breasted
garment — with similar colored waisxoat and trousers, a
turn-down collar, a shirt of many plaits which is under-
starched and over-wrinkled but always clean, large cuffs
very much frayed, a narrow black or white tie, and low
shoes with white cotton stockings."
This black broadcloth coat, by the way, the Colonel used
to adapt to various functions : for a funeral or other serious
matter on his mind the Colonel wore this coat buttoned
close up under his chin, showing only the upper edge of his
white collar and the stray end of a black cravat ; for dinner
he buttoned it lower down, revealing a bit of his plaited
shirt ; and for a wedding it was thrown wide open, discover-
ing a stiff, starched, white waistcoat with ivory buttons and
snowy neck-cloth.
As the Major incidentally remarks, the Colonel was "hos-
pitable to the verge of beggary," enthusiastic as he was
visionary, tender-hearted and happy as a boy, proud of his
ancestry, his state, and himself, and an unswerving believer
in states' rights, slavery, and the Confederacy ; " and away
down in the bottom of his soul still clinging to the belief
that the poor white trash of the earth includes about every-
body outside of Fairfax County." He was beyond the pos-
sibility of "reconstruction," and he chafed continually under
what he believed to be the tyranny of "the Government,"
which latter term, however, really referred to the distribu-
tion of certain local offices in his own immediate vicinity.
Upon the belated arrival of the thick-set, round-faced
Fitzpatrick, the Colonel sprang forward, seizing him by the
shoulders, and exclaiming, " What the devil do you mean,
lOO Provincial Types in the South
Fitz, by comin' ten minutes late? Don't you know, suh,
that the burnin' of a canvasback is a crime? — Stuck in the
snow? Well, I'll forgive you this once, but Chad won't.
Give me yo' coat — bless me ! it is as wet as a setter
dog. . . . Major, Fitz ! — Fitz, the Major ! Take hold of
each other." And then came the vigorous signal for dinner,
— three raps on the floor with a poker, and a voice rumbled
up from below : " Comin', sah ! " And Chad dished the
dinner. " To dine well was with him an inherited instinct.
... To share with you his last crust was a part of his
religion ; to eat alone, a crime."
Immediately at the close of the next dinner given by the
Colonel, he began the discussion with Fitzpatrick and the
Major of his darhng scheme of furnishing, by his proposed
" Cartersville and Warrentown Air Line Railroad," an outlet
to the sea for "the garden spot of Virginia," a plan for
which he illustrated, — in lieu of the map which he had left
at the office, — by the use at significant points of the mus-
tard-pot, salt-cellar, cheese, and carving-knife. To the
Major's practical inquiry as to the advantage of building
twelve additional miles of road to reach Carter Hall, the
Colonel rose to his feet in indignant reply : " Any advantage?
Major, I am surprised at you ! A place settled mo' than one
hundred years ago, belongin' to one of the vehy fust fam'lies
of Virginia, not to be of any advantage to a new enterprise
like this ! Why, suh, it will give an air of respectability to
the whole thing that nothing else could ever do. Leave
out Caarter Hall, suh, and you pa'alyze the whole scheme."
The prospectus for the new railroad, which Fitz had some-
what modified to meet the requirements of business, seemed
to the Colonel to be deficient in one respect, — it provided
for no subscriptions in Cartersville, although they were to be
"Colonel Carter of Carters ville " loi
opened simultaneously in New York, London, and Rich-
mond. To Fitzpatrick's innocent question as to whether
there was any money in Cartersville, the Colonel proudly
rephed : " No, suh, not much ; but we can subscribe, can't
we? The name and influence of our leadin' citizens would
give tone and dignity to any subscription list. Think of
this, suh ! " Another criticism of the document by the
Colonel was due to Fitzpatrick's inserted phrase, " full pro-
tection guaranteed." When the Colonel was told that pro-
tection meant the right to foreclose the mortgage on the
non-payment of interest, he authoritatively exclaimed :
" Put yo' pencil through that line, quick — none of that for
me. This fo'closure business has ruined haalf the gentlemen
in our county, suh. But for that foolishness two thirds of
our fust fam'lies would still be livin' in their homes. No,
suh, strike it out ! "
One of the Colonel's unique financial measures in con-
nection with his great railroad scheme was the proposed
issuance of Deferred Debentured Bonds. " No, gentlemen,
the plan is not only fair, but reasonable. Two years is not
a long period of time in which to foster a great enterprise
Hke the C. & W. A. L. R. R., and it is for this purpose that
I issue the Deferred Debentures. Deferred, — put off;
Debenture — owed. What we owe we put off. Simple,
easily understood, and honest." And when the Major and
Fitz expressed a willingness to join him in subscribing for
the fifty thousand founders' shares, the Colonel's exhilaration
rose to an ecstatic point : " You overwhelm me, gentlemen,"
rising from his chair and seizing them by the hands. . . .
*' Fill yo' glasses and join me in a sentiment that is dear to
me as my hfe, — * The Garden Spot of Virginia in search of
an Outlet to the Sea.' "
I02 Provincial Types in the South
On one of the Major's calls, when the Colonel himself was
unavoidably detained, Chad grew reminiscent of the good
old days in Virginia when the Colonel's father, General John
Carter, was alive, and when Chad's prospective wife, Henny,
brought him perilously near trouble. Finding a goose roast-
ing in the big oven, Henny cut off a leg and disappeared
round the kitchen corner with the leg in her mouth. Hor-
rified at what might happen when " Marse John " discovered
at dinner the lack of the leg in the presence of " quality,"
Chad attempted to deny the fact that roast goose was in-
tended for dinner and served everything else but that.
When confronted with the evidence that he helped pick the
goose, Chad reluctantly laid it down on the table with the
one leg on the upper side. A young lady guest chose a
goose leg instead of ham, and a gentleman guest asked for
the other leg. " Major, you oughter seen ole Marsa lookin'
for de udder leg ob dat goose ! He rolled him ober on de
dish, dis way an' dat way, an' den he jabbed dat ole bone-
handled caarvin'-fork in him an' hel' him up ober de dish
an' looked under him an' on top ob him, an' den he says,
kinder sad like, * Chad, where is de udder leg ob dat
goose?' *It didn't hab none,' say I. 'You mean ter say,
Chad, dat de gooses on my plantation on'y got one leg?'
* Some ob 'em has an' some ob em ain't. You see, Marsa,
we got two kinds in de pond, an' we was a little boddered
to-day, so Mammy Jane cooked dis one 'cause I cotched it
fust.' " Whereupon the master remarked ominously to
Chad : " I'll settle with you after dinner." After dinner
the master and his guests, accompanied by the trembUng
Chad, walked down to the duck-pond, and " dar was de gooses
sittin' on a log in de middle of dat ole green goose-pond
wid one leg stuck down — so — an' de udder tucked under
"Colonel Carter of Cartersville '* 103
de wing." Chad called the attention of his master to the
peculiar fact, while all the guests laughed. " ' Stop, you black
scoun'rel ! ' Marsa John says, his face gittin' white an* he
a-jerkin' his handkerchief from his pocket. 'Shoo!'" —
" Major, I hope to have my brains kicked out by a lame
grasshopper if ebery one ob dem gooses didn't put down
de udder foot ! " With his cane uplifted to strike, the
master angrily exclaimed, " You lyin' nigger, I'll show you,"
when Chad cried out, " * Stop, Marsa John ! 't ain't fair,
't ain't fair.' * Why ain't it fair? ' says he. * 'Cause,' says I,
* you didn't say " Shoo ! " to de goose what was on de table.' "
And the next day " Marsa John " told Chad he could have
Henny for his wife.
Upon the belated arrival of the Colonel, he told the Major,
with evident feeling in his voice, of all Chad's loyalty to the
house of Carter. " Do you know, Major, that when I was a
prisoner at City Point that darky tramped a hundred miles
through the coast swamps to reach me, crossed both lines
twice, hung around for three months for his chance, and has
carried in his leg ever since the ball intended for me the
night I escaped in his clothes, and he was shot in mine. I
tell you, suh, the color of a man's skin don't make much
diffe'ence sometimes. Chad was bawn a gentleman, and
he'll never get over it."
Some of the Colonel's unique traits are illustrated in his
buying roses for his Aunt Nancy, when she was considerately
and secretly paying his grocery bills ] in his drawing her a
note of hand to relieve his sense of indebtedness and protect
her against personal loss, in which he promises to pay on
demand six hundred dollars, with interest at six per cent,
" payable as soon as possible " ; in his swift challenge of old
Klutchem, the broker, for alluding to the Colonel's railroad
I04 Provincial Types in the South
securities as not worth a yellow dog ; in his sudden drawing
of his will and bequeathing to his aunt, " Ann Carter, spin-
ster," twenty-five thousand shares of " Cartersville and War-
rentown Air Line Railroad " stock, — a railroad that was as
yet only on paper and in the air ; and in his cool attempt,
as preparation for the duel, to snuff, at forty yards, a candle
held by the confident Chad.
The prospective duel brought from Virginia, as a second
for the Colonel, Major Tom Yancey of the Confederate
army, whose personal appearance is described as that of **a
short, oily-skinned, perpetually perspiring man of forty, with
a d^collet^ collar, a double-breasted waistcoat with glass
buttons, and skin-tight light trousers held down to a pair of
high-heeled boots by leather straps. The space between
his waistband and his waistcoat was made good by
certain puckerings of his shirt, anxious to escape the thral-
dom of his suspenders." Unfortunately, the Colonel's
challenge had failed to reach Mr. Klutchem, through lack
of postage ; and it was then diplomatically suggested by
Fitzpatrick that the language used by the satirical Mr.
Klutchem was really not insulting. Whereupon this dialogue
ensued: "Did he call you a yaller dog?" said Yancey.
" No." " Call anybody connected with you a yaller dog ? "
" Can't say that he did." " Call yo' railroad a yaller dog? "
"No, don't think so," said the Colonel, now thoroughly
confused and adrift. Yancey consulted with " Jedge " Ker-
foot, his companion from the "district co'te of Fairfax
County," and said gravely : " Unless some mo' direct insult
is stated. Colonel, we must agree with yo' friend, Mr. Fitz-
patrick, and consider yo' action hasty. Now, if you had
pressed the gemman, and he had csdledyou a yaller dog or
a liar, somethin' might be done. Why didn't you press
"Colonel Carter of Cartersville " 105
him? " " I did, suh. I told him his statements were false
and his manners vulgar." " And he did not talk back ? "
" No, suh ; on'y laughed." " Sneeringly, and in a way that
sounded like ' Yo're another '? " The Colonel had to con-
fess to the belligerent Yancey that he could not remember
that it was. And " Jedge " Kerfoot formulated the general
verdict : " The prisoner, Klutchem, is discharged with a
reprimand, and the plaintiff, Caarter, leaves the co'te-room
without a stain on his cha'acter. The co'te will now take a
recess." And the "Jedge," the Major, and Fitzpatrick dis-
appeared into an underground apartment where they slaked
a true Southern thirst. However, for the poor Colonel,
whose sense of what a gentleman should be was keen, it was
now the only proper thing to call with Mr. Fitzpatrick upon
Mr. Klutchem and make a formal apology for attempting to
send a challenge on insufficient grounds for action.
When at last, on the unexpected sale of his coal land to
the English syndicate, the Colonel actually became as rich
in fact as he had been in hopes and the assurance of his
optimistic nature, he was the same man in bearing, manner,
and speech as he had been in his impecunious days in
Bedford Place ; the same in grateful generosity as he
showed the faithful Chad the Englishman's check and told
his old servant there was no more hard work for him ; and
the same in delightful chivalry as he rose at dinner and
proposed the toast to Miss Nancy, " Fill yo' glasses, gentle-
men, and drink to the health of that greatest of all blessings,
— a true Southern lady ! " Surely Cartersville hes in the
"garden spot" of Virginia and the Colonel will always find
an "outlet" for it in the interest of American readers.
CHAPTER VIII
<' UNCLE REMUS : HIS SONGS AND HIS SAYINGS ; "
"MINGO, AND OTHER SKETCHES IN BLACK AND
WHITE" BY JOEL CHANDLER HARRIS
During his earlier years as one of the editorial writers
on the Atlanta Co7istitution Mr. Harris occasionally enter-
tained the other members of the staff with his stories of
plantation life ; and it occurred to the editor of the paper
that, if these could be put into literary form and published
in the Constitution, they would make a popular journalistic
feature. After much persuasion Mr. Harris wrote out some
of the memories of his boyhood days in Putnam County,
Georgia, and put them into the mouth of an old negro
named "Uncle Remus." These sketches attracted wide
interest, and in 1880 there was published in book form " Uncle
Remus : His Songs and His Sayings," — a book that dis-
closed to the world a unique character in fiction, and fixed
the fame of the author not only in this country but also in
England. "Uncle Remus" as a type of his race presents
in Mr. Harris's work some of the more unusual phases of
the negro character. As the author in his introduction to
the book modestly remarks, " If the language of Uncle
Remus fails to give vivid hints of the really poetic imagina-
tion of the negro ; if it fails to embody the quaint and
hom.ely humor which was his most prominent characteristic ;
if it does not suggest a certain picturesque sensitiveness,
a curious exaltation of mind and temperament not to be
106
" Uncle Remus " 107
defined by words, — then I have reproduced the form of the
dialect merely, and not the essence, and my attempt may
be accounted a failure." One certainly gets, in reading,
the qualities Mr. Harris hopes to give, and also others,
— such as the quaint superstitions, the peculiarly close
sympathy with the weaker of the lower animals, which
doubtless grew out of the negro's own dependent condition,
and his prejudices connected with caste and pride of family.
The little boy to whom Uncle Remus tells his legends is a
product of the reconstruction that has quietly been going
on in the South since the Civil War, while Uncle Remus
himself is a surviving result of that social and political
system which the war destroyed or greatly modified. And
he is a survivor that has only pleasant memories of the time
** befo' the wah."
It is significant to notice that in all the contests of subtlety
and wit between " Brer Rabbit " on the one hand, and the
bear, the wolf, and the fox on the other, the rabbit is almost
uniformly successful, — the hero is the weakest and most
harmless of animals. To use the words of Mr. Harris, " It is
not virtue that triumphs, but helplessness ; it is not malice,
but mischievousness." In other words, the negro's concep-
tion of " Brer Rabbit " seems to be a sort of allegory in
which are reflected in a measure the relations of the black
man to the dominant white race.
" Miss Sally," in search of her seven-year-old httle boy,
looked one evening through the window of Uncle Remus's
cabin and saw the child's head resting against the old man's
arm. His face was turned in intense interest up to the rough,
weather-beaten face of Uncle Remus, who was telling him
of the various wiles of Brer Rabbit and Brer Fox in their
ceaseless contests with each other. They had exchanged
io8 Provincial Types in the South
invitations to dinner, and Brer Rabbit in accepting the fox's
invitation was approaching the latter's home when he heard
groaning within. On opening the door Brer Rabbit found
Brer Fox sitting up in a rocking-chair all wrapped up in
flannel and looking " mighty weak." But he saw no dinner,
— only a dish-pan, and close beside it a carving-knife. Brer
Rabbit remarked that all signs pointed to chicken for dinner ;
and when Brer Fox assented. Brer Rabbit pulled his mus-
tache and asked whether the fox had any calamus root. "I
done got so now dat I can't eat no chicken' ceppin' she's
seasoned up wid calamus root." And thereupon Brer Rab-
bit leaped out of the door and watched among the bushes
for Brer Fox, who soon crept out of the house with his in-
valid's disguise gone and was preparing to close in on his
reluctant guest. Suddenly Brer Rabbit cried out that he
would just lay the fox's calamus root on a neighboring stump,
and that the fox ought to get it while it was fresh, and then
went leaping homeward. Uncle Remus's final comment
was : " En Brer Fox ain't never kotch 'im yit. En wat's mo',
honey, he ain't gwineter."
The fox's most successful stratagem with Brer Rabbit was
the device of the " Tar- Baby," but even that was not entirely
successful, — at least Uncle Remus leaves the little boy and
the rest of us in doubt as to the final issue. Soon after the
calamus root episode Brer Fox fixed up with tar and tur-
pentine "a contrapshun " which he called a Tar- Baby. Put-
ting it in the road. Brer Fox retired to the bushes to watch the
effects. Soon there came pacing down the road Brer Rab-
bit — he came " lippity-clippity, clippity-lippity — dez ez
sassy ez a jay-bird." Suddenly seeing the Tar- Baby, Brer
Rabbit lifted himself on his " behime legs " in curious aston-
ishment. " ' Mavvnin ! ' sez Brer Rabbit, sezee — * nice wed-
" Uncle Remus " 109
der dis mawnin'/ sezee. Tar-Baby ain't sayin' nothin', en
Brer Fox, he lay low. ' How duz yo* sym'tums seem ter
segashuate ? ' sez Brer Rabbit, sezee." But the Tar-Baby
still '*' ain't sayin' nothin'," and Brer Rabbit offers to speak
louder, if this strange little being is deaf. Growing indig-
nant, the rabbit finally comes to the conclusion that the
Tar-Baby is " stuck up " and threatens her : " Ef you don't
take off dat hat en tell me howdy, I'm gwineter bus' you wide
open." At last, all patience exhausted by repeated ques-
tionings. Brer Rabbit draws back and strikes the Tar- Baby
with his fist. " Right dar's whaa he broke his merlasses
jug." His fist clung to the Tar- Baby, and he couldn't pull
it loose. " Ef you don't lemme loose, I'll knock you again,"
said Brer Rabbit, and with that he struck the Tar-Baby
with his other hand, and that also stuck.
" Tu'n me loose, fo' I kick de nat'al stuffin' outen you,"
said the rabbit ; but the Tar-Baby still "ain't sayin' nothin',"
but just held on, and Brer Rabbit lost also the use of both
his feet. " Den Brer Rabbit squall out dat ef de Tar-Baby
don't tu'n 'im loose he butt 'er crank-sided. En den he
butted, en his head got stuck." Whereupon Brer Fox, who
has been lying low, saunters forth looking as innocent as
" one er yo' mammy's mockin'-birds," and remarks gen-
ially : " Howdy, Brer Rabbit. You look sorter stuck up
dis mawnin'." And then Brer Fox rolled on the ground and
laughed and laughed, till he could laugh no more. " I speck
you'll take dinner wid me dis time, Brer Rabbit. I done
laid in some calamus root, en I ain't gwineter take no
skuse," said the hilarious fox. But whether the fox ate the
rabbit or not. Uncle Remus refused to tell the little boy, —
" Dat's all de fur de tale goes ; " and this autocratic ending
was the signal for the little boy to " run 'long."
I lo Provincial Types in the South
In half-soling one of his shoes Uncle Remus was much
irritated by the little boy's persistent handling of his awls and
hammers and knives; and this furnished the old negro a
text for his tale about "The Awful Fate of Mr. Wolf."
" Folks w'at's allers pesterin' people, en bodderin' 'longer
dat w'at ain't dern, don't never come ter no good eend."
And then the old darky proceeded to tell the story of the
alliance of Brer Wolf with Brer Fox against Brer Rabbit,
and how he " got kotch up wid — en he got kotch up wid
monstus bad." The Httle boy's critical attitude of mind
toward the past and present history of Brer Wolf proved too
much for Uncle Remus's complacent egotism as a story-
teller who could not be doubted, and he threateningly re-
minded the little fellow that his mother's voice would soon
be calling him, and that his father might possibly bring up
the rear "wid dat ar strop w'at I made fer 'im." The child
laughingly shook his fist in the simple and serious face of the
venerable old man, and then relapsed into an attitude of
expectant interest.
It seems, according to Uncle Remus's narrative, that the
wolf had torn down a straw house. the rabbit had built, and
also a house made of pine tops and one of bark, — and each
time a child of Brer Rabbit's had been lost. Finally, Brer
Rabbit built himself a house of plank, with rock foundations,
and could then live in some sense of security.
One day, with the dogs hard after him, Brer Wolf took
refuge in Brer Rabbit's house, and begged the latter for
some place to hide in. The rabbit told him to get into a
big chest that stood in the room, and when the wolf was
inside and the hasp that held the cover down had been
shoved into place. Brer Rabbit, in his exultation at having
Mr. Wolf securely in his power, " went ter de lookin'-glass,
*' Uncle Remus " 1 1 1
he did, en wink at hisse'f, en den he draw'd de rockin'-
cheer in front er de fier, he did, and tuck a big chaw ter-
barker."
Soon from the big chest came the anxious voice of Brer
Wolf inquiring about the dogs, and Brer Rabbit informed
him consoHngly that he thought he had just heard one of
them smelhng round the chimney corner. Then Brer Rab-
bit filled a kettle with water and put it on the fire. " I'm
fixin' ter make you a nice cup er tea. Brer Wolf." Next he
proceeded to bore some holes in the cover of the big chest,
to give, as be said, some chance to the wolf to get breath.
Then Brer Rabbit increased the fire, with the purpose, as he
told the wolf, of keeping him from getting cold. Brer
Wolf, in his anxious curiosity to know what was going on,
next inquired what Brer Rabbit was then engaged in. " I'm
a tellin' my chilluns," calmly returned the rabbit, " w'at a
nice man jou is. Brer Wolf." " En de chilluns," Uncle
Remus smilingly continued, " dey had ter put der ban's on
der moufs fer ter keep fum laffin'."
Then Brer Rabbit took the kettle and began to pour the
boiling water through the holes in the cover of the chest,
and this dialogue ensued : " W'at dat I feel, Brer Rabbit ? "
"You feels de fleas a bitin'. Brer Wolf." " Dey er bitin'
mighty hard, Brer Rabbit." " Tu'n over on de udder side.
Brer Wolf." " W'at dat I feel now, Brer Rabbit? " "Still
you feels de fleas. Brer Wolf." " Dey er eatin' me up.
Brer Rabbit," — and these were the last words of Mr. Wolf,
" kase de scaldin' water done de bizness." And Uncle
Remus told the little boy, with a confirmatory touch of
reaHsm, that if he should go to Brer Rabbit's house he
might still find Brer Wolf's hide " hangin' in de back po'ch,
en all bekase he wuz so bizzy wid udder fo'kses doin's."
112 Provincial Types in the South
In " A Story of the War," largely told in the dialect of
Uncle Remus, and also in his shrewd and humorous " Say-
ings," contained in the same volume, various aspects of the
negro's pecuHar character and mental habits are brought
out with a quiet but telling art that readers have come to
expect in Mr. Harris's writings.
Mr. Howells's suggestion that too exclusive a stress has
been laid upon Mr. Harris's authentic portrayal of negro
character, to the neglect of his sketches of Southern white
types, brings to mind his story called " At Teague Poteet's,"
which is included in the volume entitled " Mingo, and
Other Sketches in Black and White."
High up on Hog Mountain and overlooking Gullettsville,
lay the fifty-acre farm of Teague Poteet, a Georgia
" cracker " ; and at the close of the Civil War, little Sis
Poteet, his daughter, had grown old enough to need an
education. But when her father suggested that it was time
for her to become a lady by getting an education down in
Gullettsville, Sis objected in very vigorous terms : " Pap, do
you reckon I'm fool enough to traipse down to Gullettsville
an' mix with them people, wearin' cloze like these? Do you
reckon Pm fool enough to make myself the laughin'-stock
for them folks?" And Teague was quick to see the point
so emphatically made by his self-willed daughter. He took
down his rifle, whistled up his dogs, and tramped skyward
for game. Passing out through his horse-lot, he came acci-
dentally upon the cap and worm of a whisky still, and
turning the apparatus over with his foot, he remarked with a
chuckle : " Pll thes about take you an' set up a calico
factory. Pll heat you up an' make you spin silk an' split it
into ribbens." And so whisky, in the strange movement
of civilization, was to educate Sis Poteet.
"Uncle Remus" iij
Sis, having an unusual brightness of mind and a pecuhar
beauty of face and figure, became a great favorite at the
academy in Gullettsville, and in time became as thoroughly
educated as that somewhat limited institution could be ex-
pected to make her, for she was ambitious and improved
her opportunities to the utmost. She rode from the Moun-
tain to the Valley and from the Valley to the Mountain " in
profound ignorance of the daily sensation she created among
the young men of Gullettsville," to whom her beauty and
unconscious grace were a sort of revelation. It was only
when she met Philip Woodward, — a United States deputy
marshal sent to arrange for a successful raid upon the moon-
shiners of Hog Mountain, who included among their num-
ber her own father, — that Sis began to know the attractions
of a personal magnetism that belonged to a handsome, quick-
witted, and adventurous young man familiar with the outside
world. Woodward was staying in Gullettsville ostensibly to
look up the title of a land- lot somewhere in the vicinity of
Hog Mountain, which was practically all that remained of
an inheritance swept away by the war. There was a tradi-
tion or rumor that the land-lot covered a vein of gold, and
the desire to investigate this wac a part of the young man's
business, though strictly subordinate to his function as a
deputy sheriff. This interest in the possibilities of his land-
lot used to take young Woodward back and forth between
Gullettsville and Hog Mountain, and what so natural in that
informal region but that he should now and then meet Sis
Poteet on her way to school. Sis was a surprise to him, in
that region of social destitution, and her intelligence and
wild beauty in some way won his heart. And here was a
United States deputy sheriff paid to hunt down the moon-
shiners, and at the same time hopelessly in love with a
114 Provincial Types in the South
daughter of one of them ! In this clash between the gov-
ernment and his heart, all he could do was to resign, but
his resignation was not accepted.
In his advances as a wooer of Sis Poteet, Woodward soon
found it necessary to drop all airs of patronage, — here was
a woman of independent mind, frankness, and splendid free-
dom of life, — as the scholarly principal of the academy in
Gullettsville once said, she was " superior to her books."
In his despairing efforts to win her, he finally told her that
he had failed to hunt up blockade whisky, that he had
failed in his search for gold, and that even his resignation
was a failure. At such disclosures Sis started up in a rage
crying, " Oh, you mean, sneaking wretch ! " and passed
swiftly through the kitchen, seized a horn hanging on the
wall, and ran out into the darkness. Suddenly were heard the
notes of a horn, — short, sharp, and strenuous, — thrice
repeated, and then a little later repeated three times again.
And all the dwellers on Hog Mountain knew what it meant,
— it was the notification that the moonshiners would soon
be raided by the revenue men.
At the sound of the horn Teague Poteet, who owned two
stills himself, was looking after some 'doublings"; but all
he did was to pause and listen and smile. Then he re-
marked, " Sis talks right out in meetin' ; " and added by
way of explanation that the message of the horn was to the
effect that the raiders would pass his own door. "An' I
reckon in reason I oughter be home when they go past.
They useter be a kinder coolness betweenst me an' them
revenue fellers." In truth, the news of an approaching raid
was like the taste of illicit whisky to these resolute men, — it
had a sort of exhilarating effect, and meant perhaps a week of
diversion in avoiding and fighting the government posse.
" Uncle Remus" 115
"Come, Tip," said Teague, " yess shet up shop." " Ef
Sis ain't a caution," he said, a httle later, as he moved about,
putting things to rights. " Ef Sis ain't a caution, you kin
shoot me. They hain't no mo' teUin' wher' Sis picked up
'bout thish 'ere raid than nothin' in the worl'. Dang me
ef I don't b'Heve the gal's glad when a raid's a-comin'.
Wi' Sis, hit's movement, movement, day in an' day out.
They hain't nobody knows that gal less'n it's me. She
knows how to keep things a-gwine."
And then the proud father indulged in some domestic
reminiscence. "Sometimes she runs an' meets me, an'
says, se' she : ' Pap, mammy's in the dumps ; yess you an'
me make out we er quollin'. Hit'U sorter stir 'er up ' ; an'
then Sis, she'll light in, an' by the time we git in the house,
she's a-scoldin' an' a-sassin' an' I'm a-cussin', an' airter
awhile hit gits so hot an' natchul-like that I thes has ter drag
Sis out behin' the chimbly and buss 'er to make certain an'
shore that she ain't accidentually flew off the han'le. Bless
your soul an' body ! she's a caution ! "
To the inquiry of Uncle Jake as to what Puss Poteet, the
mother, was doing meanwhile, Teague replied with a laugh :
" Oh, Puss ! Puss, she thes sets thar a-chawin' away at 'er
snuff, an' a-knittin' away at 'er socks tell she thinks I'm
a-pushin' Sis too clost, an' then she blazes out an' blows me
up. Airter that," Teague continued, " things gits more
homelike. Ef 't wa'n't fer me an' Sis, I reckon Puss 'ud
teetotally fret 'erself away." In wise comment Uncle Jake
added, as he took another dram : " St. Paul — St. Paul
says ther' er divers an' many wimmin, an' I reckon he
know'd. Ther' er some you kin fret an' some you can't.
Ther's my ole 'oman ; more espeshually she's one you
can't."
ii6 Provincial Types in the South
On the advice of Teague Poteet the ex-deputy, Wood-
ward, who was spending the night at Poteet's, joined the
band of moonshiners that were starting out to defy the
sheriffs posse. He carried himself well and was protected
from a quarrel by Teague himself. The posse was misled
by the manufactured report of a Jewish peddler that Teague
Poteet had been arrested and taken to Atlanta by a man
named Woodward, and the posse hastened toward that city
to share in the honor of the capture. On their way down
the mountain one of their number recklessly shot a fifteen-
year-old boy who was out squirrel-hunting, and this so
enraged the mountaineers that when Woodward returned
to Poteet's he was strongly advised to leave the region at
once.
The effect on Sis of Woodward's sudden departure was
a mystery to her father. She became variable in her moods,
sometimes as gay as the birds in the trees, and sometimes
taciturn and apparently depressed. As Teague described
it, " One minnit hit's Sis, an' the nex' hit's some un else."
He talked with his wife Puss about it, but got little conso-
lation, for she felt that she was somewhat neglected in the
attention given her attractive daughter. " It's Sis, Sis, Sis,
all the time, an' eternally. Ef the calf s fat, the ole cow
ain't got much choice betwixt the quogmire an' the tan-vat."
Sis once irrelevantly asked her father if he liked Mr.
Woodward, and his reply had no uncertain sound : " Well,
I tell you what, he had mighty takin' ways. Look in his
eye, an' you wouldn't see no muddy water ; an' he had grit.
They hain't no two ways about that." All of his talks with
Sis finally swung round to the subject of Woodward, and
Teague began vaguely to suspect that possibly Woodward
had wronged her. He went to Atlanta with a revolver in
" Uncle Remus " 117
his pocket, bent on finding out from Woodward himself the
true condition of things. Woodward accidentally met him,
took him to his room, and asked him in an embarrassed
way if he thought his daughter would be wiUing to marry
him. Whereupon, vastly relieved, the old mountaineer
rephed : " Lem me tell you the honest truth, Cap," placing
his hand kindly on the young man's shoulder ; " I might
'low she would, an' I might 'low she wouldn't ; but I'm
erbleege to tell you that I dunno nothin' 'bout that gal no
more 'n ef I hadn't a-never seed 'er. Wimmin is mighty
kuse." Some of Sis's actions were inexplicable, but finally
she responded with all the strength of her nature to the
manly love of Woodward. He was strongly in favor of a
quiet wedding, but Teague had different views. "Why,
good Lord, Cap ! " he exclaimed, " what 'ud the boys say?
Poteet's gal married an' no stools [invitations] give out !
No, siree ! Not much. We hain't that stripe up here.
Cap. We hain't got no quality ways, but we allers puts
on the pot when comp'ny comes. Me an' Sis an' Puss
hain't had many weddin's 'mongst us, an' we're ihes a-gwine
to try an' put the bes' foot foremos'." When Hog Mountain
heard the news, sent by special messenger with little pink
missives written by Sis, it was as proud as Teague himself.
Certainly Sis and Puss and Teague, Mrs. Hightower and
the bibulous Uncle Jake Norris, are a " peculiar people," but
they have found in Mr. Harris an author who appreciates
their qualities, and sees their deficiencies in a genial, hu-
morous light.
CHAPTER IX
"THE GRANDISSIMES " BY GEORGE W. CABLE
Mr. Cable found in the influence of slavery and the caste
spirit upon Creole life in New Orleans, at the opening of the
last century, a virgin field that has yielded to American
fiction a highly artistic and captivating book in " The Gran-
dissimes." Notwithstanding a certain resentment on the
part of the Creoles of the South against Mr. Cable's some-
times satirical but always sympathetic portrayal of their race,
they should count themselves fortunate in having so skillful
an artist and so fair a man to perpetuate in exquisite liter-
ary form such charming qualities as are found in types like
Aurore and Clotilde and Honor^ Grandissime ; while Raoul
Innerarity, Palmyre Philosophe, Clemence, and Agricola,
though less distinctly individualized perhaps, are yet unique
additions to our understanding of New Orleans life at the
time of the French cession of Louisiana.
It was at the bal masque^ given for charity, in the Theatre
St. Philippe of New Orleans in the fall of 1803 that the beau-
tiful Aurore Nancanou suddenly unmasked herself to Honor^
Grandissime, on condition that before the following night
he should pay into the hands of the managers two hundred
and fifty dollars for sweet charity's sake. And Honors was
more than repaid, although he saw only a stranger, — the
last of the great Creole family of De Grapion, the long-time
118
" The Grandissimes " 119
rivals to the Grandissimes. She was a young widow, living
a secluded life of poverty in New Orleans with her daughter
Clotilde, and he was the ablest and most progressive Creole
in the famous family of the Grandissimes.
Aurore Nancanou and her daughter lived at No. 19 rue
Bienville, in the right-hand half of a single-story, low-roofed
tenement, washed with yellow ocher. The bedchamber of
the cook was the kitchen and her bed the floor. The only
other protector of the house was a hound, the aim of whose
life was to get thrust out of the ladies' apartments every fif-
teen minutes. They were hving in evident poverty, though
neatness, order, and excellence were prevalent qualities in
all the details of the interior. The furniture was old-fashioned,
rich, French, and imported; the carpets, though not new,
were not cheap ; bits of crystal and silver, here and there,
were as bright as they were antiquated ; and the brasswork
was brilliantly burnished. Their poverty was in a measure
self-inflicted. Aurore's husband, in gambling with Agricola
Fusilier, uncle of Honor^ Grandissime, had staked and lost
his whole plantation, including the slaves, and having accused
Agricola of cheating and having been challenged to a duel,
he fell dead at the first fire of Agricola's pistol. Agricola
offered to restore the whole estate, slaves and all, if only the
widow, Aurore, would sign a document to the effect that she
believed the stakes had been fairly won. But her Creole
pride refused, — that Creole pride of which Dr. Keene,
Aurore's American physician, significantly said, as if making
a diagnosis : " Show me any Creole, or any number of
Creoles, in any sort of contest, and right down at the
foundation of it all, I will find you this same preposterous,
apathetic, fantastic, suicidal pride. It is as lethargic and
ferocious as an alligator."
I20 Provincial Types in the South
In the six months that Aurora and Clotilde had been
living in their present abode it was not surprising that their
neighbors had not been able to decide which was the fairer.
" If some young enthusiast compares the daughter — in her
eighteenth year — to a bursting blush rosebud full of promise,
some older one immediately retorts that the other — in her
thirty-fifth — is the red, red, full-blown, fauUless joy of the
garden. If one says the maiden has the dew of youth, —
' But ! ' cry two or three mothers in a breath, ' that other
one, child, will never grow old. With her it will always be
morning. That woman is going to last forever ; ha-a-a-a ! —
even longer ! ' "
The reception of callers on Monday was always in Creole
eyes an unfortunate event, to be guarded against only by
smearing the front walk or " the banquette " with Venetian
red. And this particular Monday the ominous caller on
mother and daughter proved to be an errand-boy, who
slipped a missive under the door. It read as follows : —
"New Orleans, 20 Feb're, 1804.
" Madame Nancanou : I muss oblige to ass you for rent
of that house whare you living, it is at number 19 Bienville
street whare I do not received thos rent from you not since
tree mons and I demand you this is mabe thirteen time.
And I give to you notice of 19 das writen in Anglish as the
new law requi. That witch the law make necessare only
for 15 das, and when you not pay me those rent in 19 das
till the tense of Marh I will rekes you to move out. That
witch make me to be very sorry. I have the honor to
remain, Madam,
" Your humble servant,
" H. Grandissime,
''per Z. F."
" The Grandissimes " 12 1
The signature was supposedly that of the man to whom
Aurore had laughingly unmasked at the ball for two hundred
and fifty dollars to be paid to charity, but it was in reahty
that of his quadroon brother, the 7'eniier, f. m. c. (free man
of color). So that Aurore's tearful scorn on reading the
letter was misdirected, though just as intense. " H. Gran-
dissime ! Loog ad 'im ! " She held the letter out before
her as if she were lifting something alive by the back of the
neck, and to strengthen her indignation she used the hated
English language enjoined by the new courts. " Loog ad
'im ! dat ridge gen'leman 00 give so mudge money to de
'ozpill ! " " Bud, mamaftj^ suggested her daughter appeas-
ingly, " ee do nod know 'ow we is poor." " Ah ! " retorted
Aurore, '^par example ! Non ? Ee thingue we is ridge,
eh? Ligue his oncle, eh? Ee thing so, too, eh?" She
cast upon her daughter the withering look she intended for
Agricola FusiHer, — the Grandissime who shot her husband
in the duel and kept their estate, — and added scornfully,
"You wan' to tague the pard of dose Grandissime?'"
Clotilde, with a look of agony on her face, replied : *' No,
bud a man wad godd some 'ouses to rend, muz ee nod
boun' to ged 'is rend? " Whereupon the mother ironically
exclaimed : " Boun' to ged — ah ! yez ee muz do 'is possible
to ged 'is rend. Oh ! certain/*?^. Ee is ridge, bud ee need
a lill money, bad, bad. Fo' w'at?" And then Aurore
rose to her feet excitedly and made a show of unfastening
her dress for her daughter to carry off to satisfy the usurious
demands of the Grandissimes. But the daughter's sudden
tears brought the repentant mother to her knees ; she drew
her child's head into her bosom, and wept afresh. Then
she told her daughter that she was going directly to Honor^
Grandissime to demand justice ; but instead she went
122 Provincial Types in the South
to consult Palmyre Philosophe, the worker of voudou
charms.
The room which Aurora — to use Mr. Cable's preferred
spelHng — entered had furniture of a rude, heavy pattern,
Creole-made ; the lofty bedstead was spread and hung with
a blue stuff showing through a web of white needlework.
" The brazen feet of the chairs were brightly burnished, as
were the brass mountings of the bedstead and the brass
globes on the cold andirons. Curtains of blue and white
hung at the single window. The floor, from habitual
scrubbing with the common weed which poHteness has to
call HeleniiiDi aiitumnale, was stained a bright clean yellow.
On it were here and there, in places, white mats woven of
bleached palmetto leaf." There was besides a singular bit
of fantastic carving, — a small table of dark mahogany
supported on the upward-writhing images of three scaly
serpents.
A dwarf Congo woman, black as soot, ushered in Aurora,
who found Palmyre sitting beside this table. Though it
was February, Palmyre was dressed in white. "That barbaric
beauty which had begun to bud twenty years before was
now in perfect bloom. The united grace and pride of her
movement was inspiring, but — what shall we say? — feline?
It was a femininity without humanity, — something that
made her, with all her superbness, a creature that one would
want to find chained." These two women had been chil-
dren together on the De Grapion plantation, and their
greeting was joyously cordial as they advanced toward each
other, laughing and talking in their old-time French.
Aurora's pretended purpose in consulting the voudou
worker of charms was to discover a means of getting her
rent money; but Palmyre was quick to discover that the
" The Grandissimes " 1 23
fluttering little widow was really in love and wanted reas-
surance that her heart's desire might sometime be realized.
The black dwarf brought in a little pound-cake and cordial,
a tumbler half filled with the sirop naturelle of the cane
sugar, and a small piece of candle of the kind made from
the fragrant green wax of the candleberry myrtle. " These
were set upon the small table, the bit of candle standing,
lighted, in the tumbler of sirup, the cake on a plate, the
cordial in a wine-glass." As Palmyre closed out all day-
light from the room and received the offering of silver that
" averted guillons (interferences of outside imps) " Aurora
" went down upon her knees with her gaze fixed on the
candle's flame, and silently called on Assonquer (the imp
of good fortune) to cast his snare in her behalf around the
mind and heart of — she knew not whom." When the
flame rose clear and long it was a sign that the imp was
on her side, but when it sputtered Aurora trembled. The
end of the charred wick suddenly curled down and twisted
away from the devotee, and her hope d.ied down with it;
but the tall figure of Palmyre intervened, the flame brightened
into a cone, and once more the wick turned down, — but
fortunately this time in the direction of Aurora. It finally
fell through the exhausted wax and went out in the sirup.
This was all; and then the charm worker handed Aurora
some basil to hold between her lips as she walked home-
ward. To the departing and agitated little widow Palmyre
Philosophe ominously exclaimed : " These things that you
want, Momselle Aurore, are easy to bring. You have no
charms working against you. But, oh ! I wish to God I
could work the curse /want to work ! " Her blazing eyes,
her heaving bosom, and her clenched hand lifted upward,
reenforced her vengeful vow : " I would give this right hand
124 Provincial Types in the South
off at the wrist to catch Agricola Fusiher where I could work
him a curse ! But I shall ; I shall some day be revenged ! "
The most delightfully inconsequential and free-hearted
character in the book is Raoul Innerarity, cousin of Honor^
Grandissime, who suddenly appeared in the drug store of
Joseph Frowenfeld, the immigrant, where various articles
were wont to be left for sale. Behind him came a little
black boy carrying a large rectangular package. Raoul is
described as " a young, auburn- curled, blue-eyed man,
whose adolescent buoyancy, as much as his delicate, silver-
buckled feet and clothes of perfect fit, pronounced him
all-pure Creole." Advancing like a schoolboy coming in
after recess, Raoul announced to Mr. Frowenfeld : " I 'ave
somet'ing beauteeful to place into yo' window." Tearing
away the wrappings, he disclosed a painting, which he
balanced at arm's length while he admired, and watched
the effect on the proprietor of the pharmacy. Frowenfeld
gazed long and silently, as if in dumb amazement, and then
quietly asked: "What is it?" "Louisiana rif-using to
hanter de h-Union ! " repUed the ecstatic Creole. Joseph
silently wondered at Louisiana's anatomy, and then remarked
that the subject was allegorical. "Allegoricon? No, sir!
Allegoricon never saw that pigshoe. If you insist to know
who make dat pigshoe — de hartis' stan' bif-ore you ! "
And Raoul, the proud, continued : " 'Tis de work of me,
Raoul Innerarity, cousin to de distingwish Honore Grandis-
sime. I swear to you, sir, on stack of Bible' as 'igh as yo'
head ! " When asked if he wanted the picture put into the
window on sale, Raoul hesitatingly replied : " 'Sieur Frowen-
fel', I think it is a fooHshness to be too proud, eh? I want
you to say, * My frien', 'Sieur Innerarity, never care to sell
anything; 'tis for egshibbyshun ; ' inais — when somebody
" The Grandissimes " 125
look at it, so," Raoul cast upon his work a look of languish-
ing covetousness, " You say, ^foudre tonnere / what de dev' !
— I take dat ris-pon-sibble-ty — you can have her for two
hun'red fifty doUah ! ' Better not be too proud, eh, 'Sieur
Frowenfel' ?"
Raoul then proceeded to show how thoroughly the artistic
ideal had gotten hold of him by explaining that only a week
before he was making out bills of lading for his cousin
Honors, *' an' now I ham a hartis' ! So soon I foun' dat, I
say, * Cousin Honor^ ... I never goin' to do anoder lick
o' work so long I live ; adieu.' " As an artist M. Raoul
Innerarity was a crude specimen of laughable Creole egotism,
but as a drug clerk for Mr. Joseph Frowenfeld, — a student
of the community, — the irrepressible Creole was " a key, a
lamp, a lexicon, a microscope, a tabulated statement, a book
of heraldry, a city directory, a glass of wine, a Book of
Days, a pair of wings, a comic almanac, a diving bell, a
Creole Veritas.^'
Mr. Joseph Frowenfeld's first call upon Aurora and
Clotilde Nancanou discloses his own rational and equitable
nature, while it serves to bring out as by a foil the deliciously
amiable and scintillating qualities of the Creole mother and
daughter, whom Mr. Cable has painted with so deft and
loving a touch. The story of " Bras-Coup^," told simultane-
ously by Honore Grandissime and Raoul Innerarity, is a
series of pictures drawn in blood that present with startling
effect the almost incredible horrors inherent in the savagery
of slavery. It helps to account for the present uncanny
and dangerous characteristics of Palmyre Philosophe, the
weaver of voudou charms, and suggests causes that later may
lead to the undoing of that pompous embodiment of unre-
lenting caste spirit, Agricola Fusilier.
126 Provincial Types in the South
The sensational end of Frowenfeld's effort to help the
sick Dr. Keene, by caring for the wounded Palmyre, re-
sulted in his finding, dramatically enough, Clotilde Nancanou
waiting for him in his shop that she might make some
arrangement to pay the next day's rent bill by the sale of
her heaviest bracelet. His sudden appearance in the door-
way, with the sweat^of anguish on his brow and the matted
blood on the back of his head, — the mark left by the billet
of Palmyre's Congo dwarf — transformed the timid Creole
woman into a brave nurse, who bathed his head with her own
handkerchief, took him by the arm, and cried : " Asseyez-
vous, Mofisieu' — pliz to give you'sev de pens to see down,
'Sieu' Frowenfel'." Pressing back his forehead with a tremu-
lous tenderness and wiping off the blood, she said, " Mague
yo' 'ead back. . . . Were you is 'urted?" Raoul's un-
comfortable question as to where Frowenfeld had left his
hat brought out a general defense of himself by the apothe-
cary, in which he despairingly protested his innocence,
reaching out both his hands and quite losing his customary
self-control. " 'Sieu' Frowenfel' ! " impulsively exclaimed
Clotilde, the tears springing to her eyes, " I am shoe of it ! "
But realizing that in this case the truth only would seem incredi-
ble, the wounded man gave way to the hopelessness of the
situation until Clotilde revived him by a glass of water, and
by the heroic and confident assertion : " 'Sieu' Frowenfel',
you har a hinnocen' man ! Go, hopen yo' do's an' stan' juz
as you har ub biffo dad crowd and sesso ! " Suddenly
recovering the full stature of his manhood, Frowenfeld
called a blessing on her and a reward from God : " You
believe in me, and you do not even know me." But saying
more than she meant to reveal, and blushing violently at
her own words, Clotilde answered : " Mais, I does know you
" The Grandissimes " 1 27
— betteh'n you know annyt'in' 'boud it ! " And Frowenfeld
started at this delightful revelation of her secret love.
Even the cynical and abrupt Dr. Keene used to remark
that Clemence — the old negress that sold calas and secretly
carried voudou charms for the Philosophe — was a thinker.
It was revealed both in the cunning aptness of her songs and
in the droll wisdom of her sayings ; and her shrewd obser-
vations on the condition of the black race under slavery and
the Creole attitude toward it are something of an index,
doubtless, to Mr. Cable's own views concerning slavery and
the caste spirit which have, directly and indirectly, so large
a place in the book.
Once, in the course of chaffering over the price of calas^
Dr. Keene proclaimed the old current conviction, which is
still sometimes heard expressed, that the slaves were "the
happiest people under the sun." To which Clemence was
bold enough to make indignant denial, and was told in re-
tort that she had " promulgated a falsehood of magnitude."
" W'y, Mawse ChawHe," she replied, " does you s'pose one
po' nigga kin tell a big lie? No, sah ! But w'en de whole
people tell w'at ain' so — if dey know it, aw if dey don'
know it — den dat is a big He ! "
Asked if she charged white people with lying, Clemence
pretended to make this defense of the whites : " Oh, sakes,
Mawse Chawlie, no ! De people don't mek up dat ah ; de
debble pass it on 'em. Don' you know de debble ah de
grett cyount'feiteh? Ev'y piece o' money he mek he tek
an' put some debblemen' on de under side, an' one o' his
pootiess Hes on top ; an' 'e gilt dat lie, and e' rub dat lie on
'is elbow, an' 'e shine dat lie, an' 'e put 'is bess licks on dat
lie ; entel ev'ybody say, ' Oh, how pooty ! ' An' dey tek it
fo' good money, yass — and pass it ! Dey b'Heb it ! "
128 Provincial Types in the South
The quizzing remark of a bystander, to the effect that the
" niggers " didn't know when they were happy, called out
the retort on the part of Clemence, " Dass so, Mawse —
c'est vrai, out/ we donno no mo'n white folks ! " This natu-
rally won the laugh against the speaker ; and when Clemence
naively asked the doctor whether all " niggas " were free
in Europe, and he replied that something hke that was true,
the shrewd negress observed : " Well now, Mawse Chawlie,
I gwan t' ass you a riddle. If dat is so, den fo' w'y I yeh
folks bragg'n 'bout de * stayt o' s'iety in Eu'ope '?"
Making a gesture of attention she continued : " D'y' ebber
yeh w'at de cya'ge-hoss say w'en 'e see de cyaht-hoss tu'n
loose in de sem pawstu'e wid he, an' knowed dat some'ow
de cyaht gotteh be haul' ? W'y 'e jiz snawt an' kick up 'is
heel'" — she suited the action to the word — "an' tah'
roun' de fiel' an' prance up to de fence an' say, * Whoopy !
shoo ! shoo ! dis yeh country gittin' too free ! ' " Another
laugh on the part of the onlookers, and Clemence resumed :
" Oh, white folks is werry kine. Dey wants us to b'lieb we
happy — dey wants to b'lieb we is. W'y, you know, dey
'bleeged to b'heb it — fo' dey own cyumfut. 'Tis de sem
weh wid de preache's ; dey buil' we ow own sep'ate meet'n'-
houses ; dey b'leebs us lak it de bess, an' A^y knows dey lak
it de bess."
Such speeches as these, though smiled at, were not en-
tirely forgotten by the more prejudiced element among the
Creoles, and when later poor Clemence was caught at night
in a trap and made to confess at the mouth of a pistol the
sender of voudou charms, her often expressed views had
not a litde influence in determining her awful fate.
Events like Honor^ Grandissime's heroic restitution to
Aurore and Clotilde of the Nancanou estate that had come
" The Grandissimes " 129
to his uncle Agricola as the result of a gambling contest, and
his still more difficult defiance of the implacable Grandissime
caste spirit in recognizing his less-white half-brother and
admitting him into the business under the new firm-name
of " Grandissime Brothers," — such revolutionary things had
happened in the absence of Dr. Keene in the West Indies
in search of health. Fortunately for him, Raoul Innerarity,
artist and new bridegroom, in his impatience to get back to
his wife, boarded the schooner bearing the doctor to New
Orleans, and became without effort newspaper and local
gossip. Raoul's first words were : " My cousin Honor^, —
well you kin jus' say 'e bitray' 'is 'ole fam'ly." And when
asked to explain so strong and startling a statement, Raoul
indignantly continued : " Well, — ce't'nly 'e did ! Di'n' 'e
gave dat money to Aurora de Grapion ? — one 'undred five
t'ousan' dolla'? Jis' as if to say, 'Yeh's de money my
h-uncle stole from you' 'usban'.' Hah ! w'en I will swear
on a stack of Bible' as 'igh as yo' head, dat Agricole win
dat 'abitation fair ! — If I see it? No, sir; I don't 'ave to
see it ! I'll swear to it ! Hah ! " And Raoul added the
surprising statement that the receivers of all this money
were "livin' in de rue Royale in ma.g-nifycen^ style on top
de drug-sto' of Profis-or Frowenfel'." "An Hsten ! You
think Honor^ di'n' bitrayed 'is family? Madame Nan-
canou an' heh daughtah livin' upstair' an' rissy-ving de finess
soci'ty in de Province ! — an me? — down-stair' meckin' pill' !
You call dat justice ? " Ignoring the doctor's inquiry as
to whether Honors and Frowenfeld were callers in the new
quarters, the prejudiced Creole addressed a question of his
own : " Doctah Keene, I hask you now, plain, don' you find
dat mighty disgressful to do dat way, lak Honor^?" And
at the doctor's expression of ignorance as to the way, the
130 Provincial Types in the South
excited Raoul asked : " Wat ? You dunno ? You don' yeh
'ow 'e gone partner' wid a nigga? . . . Yesseh ! 'e gone
partner' wid dat quadroon w'at call 'imself Honore Gran-
dissime, seh ! " " What do the family say to that? " " But
w'at can dey say ? It save dem from ruin ! At de sem time,
me, I think it is a disgress. Not dat he h-use de money,
but it is dat name w'at 'e give de h-establismen' — Gran-
dissime Freres ! H-only for 'is money we would 'ave catch'
dat quadroon gen'leman an' put some tar and fedder. Gran-
dissime Freres ! Agricole don' spik to my cousin Honore
no mo*."
After the capture of Clemence, the voudou agent of
Palmyre, and the ruling of Agricola out of the council of
vengeance, this fierce and irrational embodiment of caste
spirit, carrying in one hand his screed on the ** Insanity of
Educating the Masses," and in the other hand a staff, set out
for Frowenfeld's pharmacy. While Agricola was there in
conversation with the proprietor, who should walk in for a
prescription but Honor^ Grandissime f. m. c. (free man of
color). Agricola's wrathful demand that Frowenfeld should
turn that negro out, was followed by another, made directly
to the quadroon himself, to take off his hat. The quadroon
slowly slipped his thin right hand into his bosom and replied
in his soft, low voice, " I wear my hat on my head."
Whereupon the furious Agricola struck the quadroon on the
head with his staff, and before the onlookers could interfere
the men had grappled and fallen, the quadroon beneath.
Suddenly from below a long knife was lifted and thrust three
times into the old Agricola's back. He was carried upstairs
to the apartments of Aurora and Clotilde, the wife and child
of his old enemy, and there with his dying words he ex-
claimed against the new regime — the Americain in Louisi-
" The Grandissimes " 131
ana. " Your Yankee government is a failure, Honore, a
drivelling failure. It may live a year or two, not longer.
Truth will triumph. The old Louisiana will rise again.
She will get back her trampled rights. When she does,
remem — " but his voice suddenly failed. Addressing him-
self later to Frowenfeld, he falteringly said : " Beware, my
son, of the doctrine of equal rights — a bottomless iniquity.
Master and man — arch and pier — arch above — pier be-
low. . . . Society has pyramids to build which make
menials a necessity, and Nature furnishes the menials all in
dark uniform." His last act, most unexpected and dramatic
of all, was to unite with his waning strength the hands of his
nephew, Honor^ Grandissime, with those of Aurora de
Grapion, saying as he did so that he had pledged this union
to Aurora's father twenty years before. His last words —
and they were appropriately put upon his tomb — were,
" Louisian — a — for — ever ! "
But a deathbed union, such as that performed by Agric-
ola Fusilier, was not binding in the eyes of Aurora Nanca-
nou ; and although her love for Honore Grandissime was
beyond doubt in her own mind, she feared that he was
merely carrying out the wish of his dying uncle. "An'
w'en someboddie git'n ti'ed livin' wid 'imsev an' big'n to fill
ole, an' wan' someboddie to teg de care of 'im an' wan' me
to gid marri'd wid 'im — I thing 'e's in love wid me." And
this love seems to the little Creole widow — who is living at
the advanced age of thirty-five — to bring back her youth.
"Some day', 'Sieur Grandissime, — id mague me fo'gid my
hage ! I thing I'm young ! " She has " so mudge troub'
wit dad hawt " of hers that it seems at times to herself that
she is " crezzy " and that she " muz be go'n' to die toreckhe."
She feels that in some way Honor^ is under obligation to
132 Provincial Types in the South
marry her : " You know, 'Sieur Grandissime, id woon be
righd ! Id woon be juztiz to you ! An' you de bez man I
evva know in my life, 'Sieur Grandissime ! " But finally,
after his long and ardent persistency, filled with tormenting
doubt, and even with a repeated " no " upon her wayward
lips, she bursts into tears and laughter, and allows her splen-
did suitor, head of a hostile house, to take her in his arms.
And all the world rejoices in this dramatic union of beautiful
love and high romance.
CHAPTER X
"THE PROPHET OF THE GREAT SMOKY MOUNTAINS"
BY "CHARLES EGBERT CRADDOCK"
When Thomas Bailey Aldrich, then editor of the Atlantic
Monthly, invited Oliver Wendell Holmes and William Dean
Howells to dine with " Charles Egbert Craddock," there was
a novel running serially in the Atlantic under the title of
" The Prophet of the Great Smoky Mountains." The virility
of the work, as well as that of the preceding short stories
collected under the head of " In the Tennessee Mountains,"
had apparently marked the owner of the pseudonym as un-
doubtedly a man. There was, too, a certain legal acumen
displayed in some of the stories which might belong to a
lawyer who had turned to hterature for recreation. And
then there was the bold, manly handwriting of the heavily
inked manuscripts, which once led Mr. Aldrich to remark, " I
wonder if Craddock has laid in his winter's ink yet ; perhaps
I can get a serial out of him." " Mr." Craddock proved to
be Miss Murfree, and the serial was realized in "The
Prophet of the Great Smoky Mountains."
There is little cause for wonderment that for six years
Miss Murfree's identity was unknown — such intimate knowl-
edge of the pent-up, ignorant, law-defying, hard-headed
mountaineers of Tennessee must argue a man's life among
the mountains themselves as the only means of obtaining
such unique literary material. In reahty, Miss Murfree's
134 Provincial Types in the South
family had been in the habit of spending their summers in
the Tennessee mountains, and with her keenness of observa-
tion, her swift insight into character, and her poetic sensi-
bihty Miss Murfree was able to portray her strange types and
their impressive environment with truth and picturesque
effect.
Above Dorinda Cayce, as she plowed with her one
ox down the corn-rows, rolled the mists and vapors of
the Great Smoky Mountains, amid which, at times, the
" Prophet " used to take refuge and wrestle in prayer for his
own soul. Dorinda, the daughter of the old moonshiner,
*' Ground-hog " Cayce, was being helped in her plow-
ing by her ardent lover. Rick Tyler, — at that time a
hunted outlaw with a price upon his head. In their inter-
mittent conversation, Dorinda suddenly remarked, referring
to Parson Kelsey, the " Prophet" : " He 'lowed ter me ez
he have been gin ter view strange sights a many a time in
them fogs, an' sech." Presently, turning her eyes on her
lover, who was plowing with his horse near by, she leaned
lightly on the plow-handles and continued : " I 'lowed ter
him ez mebbe he hed drempt them visions. I knows I hev
thunk some toler'ble cur'ous thoughts myself, ef I war tired
an' sleepin' hard. But he said he reckoned I hed drempt
no sech dreams ez his'n. I can't holp sorrowin' fur him
some. Pie 'lowed ez Satan hev hunted him like a pa'tridge
on the mounting."
Rick, the lover, was somewhat jealous of the Prophet,
who, as Dorinda said, stopped to rest occasionally at the
Cayces' on his way down from " the bald," where he went to
pray. " In the name o' reason," exclaimed the young lover
petulantly, "why can't he pray somewhar' else? A man ez
hev got ter h'ist hisself on the bald of a mounting ten mile
" Prophet of the Great Smoky Mountains " 135
high — except what's lackin' — to git a purchase on prayer
hain't got no religion wuth talkin' 'bout. Sinner ez I am, I
kin pray in the valley — way down yander in Tuckaleechee
Cove — ez peart ez on enny bald in the Big Smoky."
But soon, catching the sound of a horse's hoof striking on
a stone far down the mountain road, Rick swiftly saddled
his horse, from which Dorinda had deftly taken the plow-
gear, and disappeared in the dense laurel that screened the
mountain fastnesses.
Dorinda, at twilight time, was hunting for the vagrant cow
and now and then calling " soo-cow ! soo ! " when she heard
a sound alien to the echoes of her own cry. Now and again
from the great *' bald " above her came the appealing, tem-
pestuous tones of the Prophet, and Dorinda said, with a sort
of pity in her voice, " He hev fairly beset the throne o'
grace ! " As she passed along singing, she came suddenly, a
little later, upon the Prophet himself, standing by his yoke
of weary oxen, which he was allowing a few moments of rest
after a hard day of plowing. The Prophet was of medium
height, "slender but sinewy, dressed in brown jeans, his
trousers thrust into the legs of his boots, a rifle on his shoulder,
and a broad-brimmed old wool hat surmounting his dark hair,
that hung down to the collar of his coat." His eyes had a
peculiar luster of fire or inspiration or frenzy, — in strange
contrast to his otherwise dullard aspect. Dorinda asked
solemnly as to how the moral vineyard was thriving, and
then remarked encouragingly, " I hearn tell ez thar war a
right smart passel o' folks baptized over yander in Scola-
cutta River." The Prophet replied that he had baptized
fourteen, and Dorinda exclaimed, "They hed all fund
grace ! " " They 'lowed so," returned the parson. " I
hopes they'll prove it by thar works." Asked by Dorinda
136 Provincial Types in the South
if he had been praying for them on " the bald,'* he answereci,
" Naw, I war a-prayin' for myself"
Upon these two in strange dialogue came riding Gid
Fletcher, the blacksmith, bringing the news of the capture
of Rick Tyler while he was attempting to buy powder at the
Settlement. The news made the trees unsteady before the
eyes of Dorinda, and the stars became a circle of dazzling
gleams. She caught at the yoke, leaned against one of the
oxen, and bent every sense into the act of listening. Sud-
denly there came a change in Parson Kelsey's manner. His
fiery eyes turned upon the blacksmith, his face was trans-
formed with light and life, his figure grew erect and tense,
and he stretched forth an accusing gesture. '' 'Twar you-
uns, Gid Fletcher, ez tuk the boy ! " This in the minds of
the blacksmith and Dorinda was only another confirmation
of the parson's power in the mysterious matter of abnormal
foreknowledge. And when the blacksmith, with rising
blood, inquired why the Prophet should think it was he
rather than others that had effected the treacherous capture,
the mind-reader fearlessly responded : " Yer heart air ez
hard ez yer anvil, Gid Fletcher. Thar ain't another man on
the Big Smoky ez would stir himself ter gin over ter the
gallus or the pen'tiary the frien' ez trested him, who hev
done no harm, but hev got tangled in a twist of a unjest
law."
The blacksmith's exonerating suggestion that the gov-
ernor of Tennessee had offered a reward of two hundred
dollars for Rick's capture called out the uncompromis-
ing comment of the parson, " Blood money." The black-
smith's insistence that the earning of the reward was
lawful prompted the fierce exclamation of the Prophet :
" Lawful ! Judas war a law-abidin' citizen. He mos' lawfully
" Prophet of the Great Smoky Mountains " 137
betrayed his Frien' ter the law. Them thirty pieces o'
silver ! Sech currency ain't out o' circulation yit ! "
Quick as a flash the blacksmith's heavy hand struck the
Prophet in the face, but the next moment his anger was
plunged into fear; for there stood the assaulted and out-
raged man with a loaded rifle in his hands, and the light-
nings of heaven flashing in his eyes. But hardly had the
blacksmith time to draw the breath he thought would be
his last, when the Prophet turned to him the other cheek,
and said, with all the dignity of his calling, " In the name of
the Master."
As the blacksmith rode away, he felt that the parson's
rifle-ball would have been better than his own loss of moral
and spiritual reputation, for in the Big Smoky, piety, or its
simulacrum, was the point of honor. What an illustration
of iniquity he would furnish for the parson's sermons, what
a text ! The blacksmith, cast down and indignant, pon-
dered on his homeward way the uncomfortable situation in
these words : " Fur Hi Kelsey ter be a-puttin' up sech a
pious mouth, an' a-turnin' the t'other cheek, an' sech, ter
me, ez hev seen him hold his own ez stiff" in a many a free-
handed fight, an' hev drawed his shootin'-irons on folks
agin an' agin ! An' he fairly tuk the dep'ty, at that thar
disturbamint at the meet'n'-house, by the scruff" o' the neck,
an' shuck him ez ef he hed been a rat or suthin', an' drapped
him out'n the door. An' now ter be a-turnin' the t'other
cheek ! "
The parson's fearless interruption of the gander-pulling
sport, his uncompromising prediction of 'Cajah Green's
failure to be reelected, and the mysterious escape of Rick
Tyler, with which the parson's cooperation was vaguely hinted
at, bring us to the time when the parson, riding along the
138 Provincial Types in the South
valley road and looking up at the mountain heights, was
lifted into a sort of spiritual exaltation by the thought
that "on a mountain the ark rested; on a mountain the
cross was planted; the steeps beheld the glories of the
transfiguration ; the lofty solitudes heard the prayers of
Christ ; and from the heights issued the great sermon in-
stinct with all the moralities of every creed." But this
mood of special exaltation, in which he was almost happy,
was miserably broken as he rode along reading his Bible,
by the unconscious flattery of a roadside mountaineer, who
cried out in the fervor of his admiration, " Kin ye read
yer book, pa'son, an' ride yer beastis all ter wunst? " Alas !
" that tree of knowledge, — ah, the wily serpent ! GaHlee,
— it was thousands of miles away across the deep salt seas."
Closing his book with an exulting smile of pride in his
own superior achievement, he said: "The beast don't
hender me none. I kin read ennywhar." Whereupon the
admiring mountaineer declared his intention of taking the
whole family the following Sunday to hear the parson's
sermon. " I 'low ez a man what kin ride a beastis an' read
a book all ter wunst mus' be a powerful exhorter, an'
mebbe ye'll lead us all ter grace."
The Prophet's momentary pleasure in this admiration and
unconscious flattery fled before the sense of his own vanity
and unworthiness. " He remembered Peter, the impetuous,
and Thomas, the doubter, and the warm generosities of the
heart of him whom Jesus loved, and he * reckoned ' that
they would not have left Him standing in the road for the
joy of hearing their learning praised." " The Lord lifts
me up," he said, " ter dash me on the groun' ! "
The afternoon of the same day he reached the house of
the Cayces on the slope of the mountain, and being asked
" Prophet of the Great Smoky Mountains " 139
by the old woman to stop and " rest his bones," he tarried
awhile in conversation with Dorinda and her mother. To
the latter's question, " Be you-uns a-goin' ter hold fo'th or
Brother Jake Tobin ? " the parson replied : " It air me ez
air a-goin' ter preach." Whereupon the old woman promptly
declared : " Then I'm a-comin'. It do me good ter hear
you-uns fairly make the sinners spin. Sech a gift o' speech
ye hev got ! I fairly see hell when ye talk o' thar doom.
I see wrath an' I smell brimstone. Lord be thanked, I hev
fund peace ! An' I'm jes' a-waitin' fur the good day ter
come when the Lord '11 rescue me from yearth ! " Unfortu-
nately her daughter Dorinda, as the mother told the parson,
was not yet " convicted," and the old woman demanded of
him: "Why n't ye speak the truth ter her, pa'son? Fix
her sins on her." " Sometimes," responded the parson in
strange depression, " I dunno ef I hev enny call ter say a
word. I hev preached ter others, an' I'm like ter be a
castaway myself."
In the little log meeting-house at the Notch on the fol-
lowing Sunday, after a long preliminary service by the unc-
tuous Brother Jake Tobin and a labored prayer by Brother
Reuben Bates, Parson Kelsey stepped forward to the table
and opened the book, while the congregation expectantly
composed itself to listen to the sermon. He turned the
leaves of the New Testament for a text, but suddenly into
his mind came skulking a " grewsome company of doubts.
In double file they came : fate and free agency, free will
and foreordination, infinite mercy and infinite justice, God's
loving-kindness and man's intolerable misery, redemption
and damnation." They proved too strong for this crudely
logical, morbidly conscientious mountain preacher — the very
opposite type from Edward Eggleston's Mr. Bosaw — and
140 Provincial Types in the South
he closed the Bible with a sudden impulse and the galvanic
announcement, *' My frien's, I stan' not hyar ter preach
ter-day, but fur confession." Amid the intense silence
following the announcement, he agonizingly cried out : " I
hev los' my faith ! God ez gin it — ef thar is a God —
hev tuk it away. You-uns kin go on. You-uns kin b'heve.
Yer paster b'lieves, an' he'll lead ye ter grace, — leastwise
ter a better hfe. But fur me thar's the nethermost depths
of hell, ef — ef thar be enny hell." At the rising protest of
Parson Tobin, the Prophet lifted his hand in deprecation —
" bear with me a little ; ye'll see me hyar no more. Fur
me thar is shame, ah ! an' trial, ah ! an' doubt, ah ! an'
despair, ah ! . . . My name is ter be a by-word an' a
reproach 'mongst ye. . . . An' I hev hed trials, — none
like them ez air comin', comin*, down the wind."
He stood erect, he looked bold and youthful, and in his
eyes shone the strange light that always marked his inspira-
tion or frenzy. "I will go forth from 'mongst ye, — I that
am not of ye. Another shall gird me an' carry me where I
would not. Hell an' the devil hev prevailed agin me.
Pray fur me, brethren, ez I cannot pray fur myself. Pray
that God may yet speak ter me, — speak from out o' the
whirlwind."
There was a sound upon the air, a thrill ran through the
horrified congregation, galloping hoof-beats came nearer,
the sheriff strode up the aisle and laid his hand upon the
preacher's shoulder, and the Prophet was under arrest in his
own pulpit ! Self-convicted of the blasphemy of infidehty and
arrested as a culprit before the law ! He was accused of
having rescued Rick Tyler from the hands of the law, and
in his utter innocence he cried in a tense voice, " I never
rescued Rick Tyler ! " Brother Jake Tobin consolingly
" Prophet of the Great Smoky Mountains '* 141
remarked, " Yer sins hev surely fund ye out, Brother Kel-
sey," while the Prophet, with a fierce inward struggle,
allowed himself to be led away from among them.
Despite the efforts of Dorinda Cayce to persuade her
jealous lover. Rick Tyler, — who had been exonorated of
his alleged crime, — to testify in behalf of Parson Kelsey, or
even to have his testimony put in the form of an affidavit,
to the effect that Rick was his own rescuer, the innocent
parson was brought to trial. The judge strongly charged
the jury in favor of the defendant, and, after the verdict of
acquittal, stated indignantly that there had been practically
no evidence against the parson, and that the whole case was
one of flagrant malice. Gid Pletcher, the blacksmith, who
was a witness at the trial, reported that the Prophet had
risen and reviled both himself and 'Cajah Green, the sheriff,
in open court. " Tears like he hed read the Bible so con-
stant jes' ter Tarn ev'ry creepy soundin' curse ez could be
called down on the heads o' men."
With the return of Parson Kelsey to the Big Smoky came
a snow-storm, covering the ground with a thick whiteness.
As he trudged along up the mountain he came to the log-
cabin of old Ground-hog Cayce, whose still had been de-
stroyed through information furnished by 'Cajah Green, the
ex-sheriff. Knocking at the door, the Prophet was admitted
to a circle of alert, expectant men, — Cayce and his stalwart
sons. Kelsey noted their aspect of repressed excitement
and how uneasily they shifted their chairs, which grated
harshly on the puncheon floor. The conversation finally
ran upon 'Cajah Green and the destruction wrought in the
cave where the Cayces' illicit still had stood. One of the
sons suddenly turned to Kelsey and asked, "Ye w'wants
him shot, hey, pa'son?" And with flashing eye Kelsey
142 Provincial Types in the South
replied, " I pray that the Lord may cut him off." The par-
son was thinking of his arrest by Green and of his unjust
trial due to the malevolence of the same man. But when
he fully realized that the moonshiners were really bent on
murdering the ex-sheriff, his mind changed into compassion
and into horror at the thought of such cold-blooded crime.
Lifting his hand suddenly, with an imperative gesture, and
with the old-time religious light in his eyes, the Prophet
exclaimed : " Listen ter me ! Ye'll repent o' yer deeds this
night ! An' the jedgmint o' the Lord will foller ye ! Yer
father's gray hairs will go down in sorrow ter the grave, but
his mind will die before his body. An' some o' you-uns
will languish in jail, an' know the despair o' the bars. . . .
An' but for the coward in the blood, ye would take yer own
life then ! An' ye'll look at the grave before ye, an' hope ez
it all ends thar." He was transfigured before them, and they
quailed momentarily in the presence of so dire and authori-
tative a prophecy. But the effect soon was lost, and when
Kelsey attempted to leave, one of the sons threw himself
against the door and prevented.
The night wore on, the fire roared, and the men sat
intently listening about the hearth. Suddenly there was a
growl from the dogs under the house, and then the sound of
crunching hoofs on the snow. The men moved out, swift and
silent as shadows, there was a struggle in the road, a wild cry
for help, the firing of a pistol, and 'Cajah Green was a prisoner
in the hands of the murderous Cayces. Kelsey, who had no
horse, was made to ride with the prisoner and just in front
of him, and about them rode the silent squad of moon-
shiners. Micajah Green begged for his life as he went, —
he denied, and explained, and promised ; but old man
Cayce savagely and briefly commented : " Ye cotton ter
" Prophet of the Great Smoky Mountains '* 143
puttin* folks in jail, 'Cajah ! Yer turn now ! We'll put
ye whar the dogs won't bite ye." And so in the still night
they wound their way through the dense laurel to the
mouth of the cave where the Cayce whisky still once
stood. They could hear the sound of the dark, cold water
rippling in the vaulted place where the dammed current now
rose halfway to the roof. The wretched prisoner, foreseeing
the savage form of his death, made a last despairing struggle,
and Pete Cayce, reaching up, cried out to Kelsey, " Lemme
git a holt of him. Hi." " Hyar he be," gasped the parson ;
there was another frantic struggle as they tore the doomed
man from the horse, a splash, a muffled cry, and a man dis-
appeared in the black water. A great bowlder hard by was
given a push, and fell, completely blocking the cave's mouth.
Then the terrorized men mounted their horses in the dark-
ness and rode away in all directions as if pursued. The
next day it was reported that just at daybreak that morning
Micajah Green was seen riding by on his big gray horse at a
wild rate of speed ; and slowly it dawned on the inhabitants
of the Big Smoky that. Christlike, the Prophet had sacrificed
himself for his inveterate enemy, and lay dead in the black
waters of the cave.
PROVINCIAL TYPES IN THE
MISSISSIPPI VALLEY
CHAPTER XI
A BRIEF SURVEY OF THE FIELD
It is a little difficult for a professional humorist to make
people think that he is making a positive addition to the
knowledge of any section of the country or of its indige-
nous types ; but even in " Life on the Mississippi " Mr.
Clemens has given us some very distinct and picturesque
impressions of provincial character in the Southwest. And
this is particularly true in " Huckleberry Finn," whose hero
became familiar to the world as the notorious son of the
town drunkard in " The Adventures of Tom Sawyer." If,
as Mr. Howells thinks, Mark Twain's humor is, at its best,
" the foamy break of the strong tide of earnestness in him,"
we should expect to find even in such a work as " Huckle-
berry Finn " much that is vital in characterization and in-
teresting for its very truth's sake. Many readers will be
surprised to know that one of the most authoritative critics
of the world, Mr. Andrew Lang, says that " Huckleberry
Finn " is already " an historical novel and more valuable,
perhaps, to the historian than ' Uncle Tom's Cabin,' for it
is written without partisanship and without *a purpose.'
. . . The world appreciates it, no doubt, but ' cultured
critics' are probably unaware of its singular value."
144
A Brief Survey of the Field 145
The homely but inimitable tale of how Huck, with his
new-found fortune, at interest, yielding a dollar a day —
" more than a body could tell what to do with " — became
the adopted son of the Widow Douglass ; and how he re-
belled from respectability and new clothes and regularity,
and particularly from the moral " pecking " of the " slim
old maid," Miss Watson ; and how he escaped in the night
to relieve the terrible ennui and joined Tom Sawyer's rob-
ber gang in the cave ; how he consulted Miss Watson's
"nigger," Jim, — with his prophetic "hair-ball," — about
Huck's drunken father and his purposes ; and how the
father went to law about him with the widow and finally
carried his son off up the Mississippi in a skiff and kept
him a sort of prisoner in an old log hut, until the restraint
and the cowhiding and his father's delirium tremens got
to be too much for Huck, and he made his escape down
the river in a canoe, — such is the beginning of this unique
and dramatic story, that gives so many vivid impressions of
life on the river and along the fringes of the adjoining
states. Huck's night arrival at Jackson's Island, his silent
watching of the efforts to raise his supposed dead body
from the river by means of the cannon-firing, his sensa-
tional discovery on the island of Miss Watson's runaway
"nigger," Jim, their adventurous life together in the cavern,
Huck's disguise as a girl, and the swift penetration of it
by Mrs. Judith Loftus of St. Petersburg, and the sudden
slipping away of slave and boy from their dangerous island,
— these are part of the absorbing narrative. And the wreck
with its murderous gang, the Winding fogs and measure-
less depths of star-lit skies, the hopeless missing of Cairo
in the night, the smashing of the raft by the big steamer,
all pass before us like a panorama of the great stream.
L
146 Provincial Types in the Mississippi Valley
And then, what strokes of dramatic power in the descrip-
tion of the vendetta, — the family feud of the fighting
Shepherdsons and Grangerfords, — and what teUing char-
acterizations in Huck himself, his besotted and brutalized
father, the loyal and superstitious Jim, Colonel Sherborne,
who 'coolly shoots old Boggs and superbly quells the
mob ; the various old aunts and uncles ; and those humor-
ous impostors, the " Duke," and the " King." A great
variety of phases in the Hfe of the Southwest, forty or fifty
years ago, is set forth with reahstic power — such phases as
camp-meetings and circuses and funerals and entertain-
ments. And nights on the great river, storms, sketches of
decayed towns and of changing landscape, woods, and
cotton fields are painted with a simple and direct power
that makes them the vivid environment of all these varied
types of peculiar character. The story, indeed, lapses into
a long-drawn and rather tedious burlesque, in the formal
freeing of the already free Jim according to Tom Sawyer's
^' best authorities " ; yet here is a realism of such intense
interest and authenticity that occasional defects in taste
can easily be overlooked. And through it all is illustrated
that humorous power of calm exaggeration which the world
has come to recognize as Mr. Clemens's distinctive gift.
Before the state of Indiana had become a center of
literary activity and interest, and the ways of primitive
Hoosier life had been little studied, there appeared in 1872
" The Hoosier Schoolmaster," written by a man who was
born in the southern part of the state in the memorable
year of 1837, and who spent his boyhood there in farm
labor and as a clerk in a country store. His mother, after
the death of his father, had married a Methodist doctor of
divinity in Indiana ; and this gave him what people of his
A Brief Survey of the Field 147
neighborhood would have called " a right smart chance of
travel." At nineteen this boy became a circuit rider in
Indiana for his chosen church ; and in this way Edward
Eggleston became peculiarly fitted by environment and
experience to portray the provincial and unique types that
move so vigorously through the pages of " The Circuit
Rider," ''The End of the World," " Roxy," and "The
Hoosier Schoolmaster." The opening chapter of the last-
mentioned book presents a strange picture of one of those
crude and almost repulsive families that must have existed
in early Indiana history, — old Jack Means, the school
trustee, to whom Ralph Hartsook made application for the
place of schoolmaster in the Flat Crick school ; " Bud "
Means, who seemed to be measuring the young applicant
by the standard of muscle alone ; the giggling " Sis," who was
evidently delighted at the prospect of seeing the bulldog
take hold of the somewhat disheartened teacher ; " Bill,"
who on the first morning of school put the puppy in the
master's desk ; and " Bull " himself, who, despite his threat-
ening looks, was a bulldog to teach by example the advan-
tages of "nerve," — " Ef Bull once takes a holt, heaven
and yarth can't make him let go."
What with fighting the boys ; incurring the hostility of a
gang of horse-thieves and burglars, who have at their head
the principal physician among the Flat Crickers ; narrowly
escaping with his Hfe from the instigated mob ; and being
driven to public trial for alleged complicity in robbery, —
the young schoolmaster has a somewhat tragic history. But
he makes his innocence and courage clear in the trial, and
finally succeeds in marrying Hannah, the " bound gal," who
had proved victorious over him in that most dramatic of
events, the country spelling-match.
148 Provincial Types in the Mississippi Valley
Hannah's brother, Shocky, whom '' God forgot," — at
least for a time, — is a pathetic httle figure, made doubly
so by the misery of his mother in the poorhouse and of his
sister, Hannah, bound out to service. Old pipe-smoking
Mrs. Means, with her thrifty proverb of " Git a plenty while
you're a-gittin' " ; ' Squire Hawkins, with his black gloves,
waxen-colored wig, glass eye, and false teeth ; Jeems Phil-
lips, that genius in " Webster's Elementary " ; and the
insinuating but silent Dr. Small, — are all distinctly indi-
viduahzed from the life. And so are Pete Jones, with his
educational theory of " No lickin' no larnin' " ; Granny
Sanders, the fountain-head of gossip ; Miss Martha Hawkins,
whose reminiscence always began, "When I was to Bos-
ting " ; and the generous-hearted, one-legged, warlike old
basket-maker who summed up his observations with the
despairing remark that "we're all selfish akordin' to my
tell."
In the midst of all the crude religious sects of the
time stands out the Rev. Mr. Bosaw of the " Hardshell "
Baptist denomination, — otherwise known as the " Whisky
Baptists " and the " Forty-gallon Baptists," — and Mr.
Eggleston gives verbatim the incredible sermon preached
by the reverend gentleman with the rich, red nose, the
nasal resonance, and the melancholy minor key, — whose
opening words were, " the ox-ah knoweth his owner-ah,
and-ah the ass-ah his master's crib-ah." A fit companion
type with Mr. Bosaw is " Brother Sodom," who always " shook
his brimstone wallet " over the people and pushed them to
the edge of hell.
What might be called a secondary hero of the book is
" Bud " Means, the young giant whom the schoolmaster won
over by his grit an.d his character. He has become famous
A Brief Survey of the Field 149
for his founding of " The Church of the Best Licks," which
included all who would " put in their best hcks for Jesus
Christ" (who was himself "a kind of a Flat Cricker").
Another piece of capital character- drawing is that of Miss
Nancy Sawyer, the old maid who was a benediction to the
whole town as well as to the young schoolmaster and
Shocky. And the unspeakable conditions under which
Shocky's mother lived in the poorhouse could not have
been more repellently described by Dickens himself than
they have been in Mr. Eggleston's chapter on " A Charitable
Institution." The book as a whole is a convincing study
of types and a time that were a significant part of the
development of the great Middle West.
In such short stories as " Ma' Bowlin'," " Whitsun Harp,
Regulator," " Sist' Chaney's Black Silk " and " The Mortgage
on Jeffy," which appear in the two collections called " Knitters
in the Sun " and " Otto the Knight," Miss AHce French,
more familiarly known by her pseudonym, " Octave Thanet,"
has given sketches of life as seen from a plantation in
Arkansas, which the author makes her winter home ; and
phases of character in other parts of the South are touched
in "The Bishop's Vagabond" and "Haifa Curse." But
her best-known sketches are those contained in " Stories of
a Western Town," in which she shows special knowledge of
average types in Iowa and other communities west of the
Mississippi. Her portrayal is intimate, vigorous, and sym-
pathetic, and helps to give a somewhat adequate conception
of what the actual life and feeling and aspiration are in
certain parts of the Mississippi Valley.
In his preface to " The Story of a Country Town " Mr.
Edgar Watson Howe tells us that the book was written at
night after the editorial work of the day was done. Such
150 Provincial Types in the Mississippi Valley
conditions of production may not have influenced its point
of view and its prevailing tone. But the book, Uke the
Kansas town that it portrays, lacks a certain sunny quality
of ease and geniality, which is doubtless due to the nature of
the social life it sets forth so convincingly. Kansas has,
also, in William Allen White an interpreter of certain
phases of her life, and the interpretation is exceedingly
keen in its insight and humorous and vigorous in its
expression, as is shown in his volume of sketches entitled
"The Real Issue " and in his juvenile " Court of Boyville."
Hamlin Garland's early life in Wisconsin, Iowa, and Da-
kota gave him abundant opportunity to study and appreciate
the crude, earnest, aspiring, self-sacrificing men and women
who made up the bone and sinew of the pioneer population
of the great Northwest. Whether in the story of " A Little
Norsk," with its Dakota blizzard, its helpless child, and its
pathetic burial of " Flaxen's " mother, or in " Prairie Folks "
and the remarkable development of a young farm girl's na-
ture in " Rose of Dutcher's Coolly," or in the depressing
short stories of " Main-Traveled Roads," Mr. Garland shows
a penetration and a knowledge and a sincerity of sympathy
that make his work vital and effective, even if at times it
seems to be too regularly keyed to misery and hopelessness.
But any one who has lived in the Northwest, and is at all
familiar with the grim conditions of the average farmer's
family even a few years ago, will be likely to feel that Mr.
Garland's relentless depiction is, though heart-sickening,
essentially true.
Few* more convincing and powerful pictures of Western
provincial types can be found than those in "A Branch
Road," "Up the Coolly," and "Under the Lion's Paw";
while underneath the tenderness and patient suffering of "The
A Brief Survey of the Field 1 5 1
Return of the Private " is felt the steel-like edge of a right-
eous satire. " Mrs. Ripley's Trip " has in it a sort of sad
humor and a closeness of sympathetic characterization that
makes an irresistible appeal to the heart of every man who
perchance recalls the laborious and conscientious days of his
own unselfish mother.
The jubilant young farmer, Will Hannan, singing in the
September dawn, or, fiercely jealous, laboring with might
and main in the strenuous threshing, or at meal-time appar-
ently ashamed of his sweetheart's open preference for him-
self in the presence of the other threshers ; his savage
resentment at their use of Agnes Dingman's name in connec-
tion with his own ; and his bitter refusal to wait and take
supper with his comrades and his sweetheart, — this is the
very human and unconventional opening to "A Branch
Road." And then the young fellow's eager preparations for
the county fair, his swift morning ride behind the lively colts,
the maddening accident and delay, the silent house and the
drawn curtains and no waiting sweetheart, and his blinding,
merciless rage, with all it involved in long years of absence,
misery of married hfe for Agnes Dingman, and bitter repent-
ance for himself, — such is the tragic development from
small beginnings ; — until he at length enters into the cruelty
of his old sweetheart's fate, and desperately carries her and
her child out into a world of hope and the happiness of love.
Such a story as this — with all its sympathy for nature and
for human nature — comes near to reality, and confirms,
like the other stories in the volume, the impression of un-
relenting hardness in much of the farmers' experience in the
great Northwest during the latter half of the nineteenth cen-
tury.
CHAPTER XII
"THE ADVENTURES OF HUCKLEBERRY FINN" BY
"MARK TWAIN"
In his sense of duty and of honor, his abounding humor,
his energy and dauntless pluck, his simplicity and sympathy
and fidelity, Mr. Clemens is justly regarded as a high type
of an American citizen. He naturally enough comprehends
pretty fully the salient characteristics of American types,
and has, besides, the literary art to embody them in enter-
taining and convincing form. The impression of artistry in
his work, however, is likely to be lost in a laugh, — the truth
and power and dramatic quality in his characterizations are
often overlooked in the effects of his humor. As Mr. How-
ells suggests, " Mark Twain portrays and interprets real
types, not only with exquisite appreciation and sympathy,
but with a force and truth of drawing that makes them per-
manent." And the especial praise of the literary critics is
given to " Huckleberry Finn " for its essential truthfulness
to certain aspects of provincial life and character along the
Mississippi and the borders of adjoining states. Professor
Barrett Wendell in our own country and Andrew Lang in
England have both borne strong testimony to the value and
charm of this portrayal of life in the Mississippi Valley some
fifty years ago.
Mr. Clemens's own boyhood life at Hannibal, Missouri,
on the Mississippi River, and his years as a pilot on the
152
" The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn " 153
same river, gave him a vivid background and a close famil-
iarity with various Southwestern types that proved invaluable
in the production of such a book as " Huckleberry Finn."
Huckleberry Finn first became known to the reading
world as the companion of Tom Sawyer, of whose " Adven-
tures " he was a part. Their good luck in finding the
money hidden by the robbers in a cave left Huck in such
affluent circumstances that he was getting a dollar a day in
interest — " more than a body could tell what to do with."
He had been adopted by the Widow Douglass, who was
bent on civilizing him ; but he found it rough Hving in the
house all the time, considering how " dismal regular and
decent the widow was in all her ways." Her attempt to
spiritualize Huck is thus described by himself: "After
supper she got out her book and learned me about Moses
and the Bulrushers, and I was in a sweat to find out all
about him ; but by and by she let it out that Moses had been
dead a considerable long time ; so then I didn't care no
more about him, because I don't take no stock in dead peo-
ple." And Miss Watson, the slim old-maid sister of the
Widow, " took a set " at Huck, also, with the spelling-book
and frequent injunctions on conduct. Miss Watson would
say, "Don't put your feet up there. Huckleberry;" and,
" Don't scrunch up Hke that. Huckleberry — set up straight ; "
and a little later she would say, " Don't gap and stretch
like that. Huckleberry — why don't you try to behave?"
All of which had a wearisome effect on Huck. He called it
" pecking " at him. " Then she told me all about the bad
place, and I said I wished I was there. She got mad then,
but I didn't mean no harm. All I wanted was to get some-
wheres ; all I wanted was a change ; I warn't particular.
She said it was wicked to say what I said ; said she wouldn't
154 Provincial Types in the Mississippi Valle
say it for the whole world ; she was going to live so as to go
to the good place. Well, I couldn't see no advantage in
going where she was going, so I made up my mind I
wouldn't try for it." The morning after a night escapade
with Tom Sawyer, Miss Watson took Huck into a closet and
prayed with him, and told him to pray every day, remarking
as an inducement that whatever he prayed for he would get.
" But it warn't so. I tried it. Once I got a fishHne, but
no hooks. It warn't any good to me without hooks. I
tried for the hooks three or four times, but somehow I
couldn't make it work. By and by, one day, I asked Miss
Watson to try for me, but she said I was a fool." However,
the widow explained to her prot^g^ that he must pray for
" spiritual gifts."
The unexpected appearance of Huck's drunken and vaga-
bond father in the boy's room at the widow's had, for a
moment, a terrifying effect on Huck. After looking his son
all over, the father said, with a critical and injured air :
"Starchy clothes — very. You think you're a good deal of
a big-bug, don't yow.}^^ To which Huck was non-commit-
tal ; and the father continued : " You've put on considerable
many frills since I been away. I'll take you down a peg
before I get done with you. You're educated, too, they
say — can read and write. You think you're better'n your
fiither, now, don't you, because he can't? /'// take it out
of you. Who told you you might meddle with such hifalut'n
foolishness, hey? " On Huck's reply that it was the widow,
the father threatened to " learn her how to meddle," and
then added, ominously : " And looky here — you drop that
school, you hear ? I'll learn people to bring up a boy to
put on airs over his own father, and let on to be better'n
what he is. You lemme catch you fooling around that school
From " The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn."
Copyright, 1896, by Harper & Brothers.
"The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" 155
again, you hear? Your mother couldn't read, and she
couldn't write, nuther, before she died. None of the family
couldn'*t write before they died. I can't ; and here you're
a-swelling yourself up like this. I ain't the man to stand it
— you hear?" Asked by his father to read a little, as an
example of what he could do, Huck read something about
General Washington and the wars ; when suddenly the father
struck the book from his son's hand and cried out angrily :
*' It's so. You can do it. I had my doubts when you told
me. Now, looky here ; you stop that putting on frills. I
won't have it. I'll lay for you, my smarty ; and if I catch
you about that school, I'll tan you good. First you know
you'll get religion. I never see such a son."
To show his superiority to the widow who had adopted
Huck, his father carried him off up the river to an old log
hut he had made the headquarters for his vagrant life. The
intolerable monotony of a respectable life with the widow
was thus done away with; but Huck soon found that his
father's restraint, ugly temper, and drunkenness, finally
culminating in a night of delirium tremens, were as hard
to bear as the widow's respectability, and he escaped down
the river to Jackson's Island. The next morning after his
arrival he lay and listened to the booming of the cannon
by which they were endeavoring to find his dead body ; and
a little later the ferry-boat, carrying his own father. Judge
Thatcher, who had invested Huck's money for him, and
Tom Sawyer, his boon companion, came floating down
close to the island in its effort to find some trace of the
dead Huck, who was lying behind a log and watching the
anxious faces of his friends.
It was on this island that he discovered Miss Watson's
runaway " nigger," Jim, just as he was waking at dawn by
156 Provincial Types in the Mississippi Valley
the side of his camp-fire. Jim, in his amazement at seeing
Huck, who had been reported murdered, suddenly sprang
up, and then dropped upon his knees and put his hands
together, crying superstitiously : " Doan' hurt me — don't !
I hain't ever done no harm to a ghos'. I awlus hked dead
people, en done all I could for 'em. Yo go en git in de
river agin, whah you b'longs, en doan' do nuffin' to Ole
Jim, 'at 'uz awluz yo' fr'en'." But Jim was soon so much
reassured that he told Huck all the details of his own
escape. He even grew confidential and told Huck about
his past speculation in stock, — a cow, and in a bank
set up by " Misto Bradish's nigger," — at the end of which
Jim had only ten cents left. " Well, I 'uz gwyne to spen'
it, but I had a dream, 'en de dream tole me to give it to a
nigger name' Balum — Balum's Ass dey call him for short ;
he's one er dem chuckle-heads, you know. But he's
lucky, dey say, en I see I warn't lucky. De dream say let
Balum inves' de ten cents en he'd make a raise for me.
Well, Balum he tuck de money, en when he wuz in church
he hear de preacher say dat whoever give to de po' len' to
de Lord, en boun' to git his money back a hund'd times.
So Balum he tuck en give de ten cents to de po', en laid
low to see what wuz gwyne to come of it." To Huck's
inquiry as to what did come of it, the darky replied :
"Nuffin never come of it. I couldn' manage to k'leck dat
money no way ; en Balum he couldn'. I ain' gwyne to
len' no mo' money 'dout I see de security. Boun' to git
yo' money back a hund'd times, de preacher says ! Ef I
could git de ten cents back, I'd call it squah, en be glad
er de chanst." Huck's hopeful suggestion that Jim was
going to be rich sometime or other — according to Jim's
own prophecy — called to the negro's mind the happy
"The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" 157
thought that he was already rich. " I owns myse'f, en
I's wuth eight hund'd dollars. I wisht I had de money, I
wouldn' want no rao'."
Huck's discovery — in the guise of a girl — that there
was a reward out for the capture of Jim and that Jackson's
Island was a dangerous place, was the signal for their hur-
ried departure from the island by night. The second night
— they concealed themselves in a " towhead " of cotton-
woods during the day — the raft they were on ran between
seven and eight hours, with a current that carried them
along over four miles an hour. " It was kind of solemn,"
as Huck said, "drifting down the big still river, laying on
our backs looking up at the stars, and we didn't ever feel
lilie talking loud, and it warn't often that we laughed —
only a little kind of a low chuckle. . . . Every night we
passed towns, some of them away up on black hillsides
nothing but just a shiny bed of lights ; not a house could you
see. The fifth night we passed St. Louis, and it was like the
whole world lit up. In St. Petersburg they used to say
there was twenty or thirty thousand people in St. Louis,
but I never believed it till I see that wonderful spread of
Hghts at two o'clock that still night. There warn't a sound
there ; everybody was asleep."
Huck's escape from the wreck of the raft that had been
smashed by a steamboat in the night brought him to the big
old-fashioned double log house of Colonel Grangerford,
whose dogs refused to let the dripping Huck go by. After
a very warlike examination of Huck, he was gradually ad-
mitted to the house ; and when it was learned that he was in
no way connected with the rival house of the Shepherdsons,
— between whom and the Grangerfords there was a deadly
feud, — Huck was very hospitably received and compassion-
158 Provincial Types in the Mississippi Valley
ately entertained on the strength of his trumped-up story.
In the admiring words of Huck : "It was a mighty nice
family, and a mighty nice house, too. I hadn't seen no
house out in the country before that was so nice and had so
much style. It didn't have an iron latch on the front door,
nor a wooden one with a buckskin string, but a brass knob
to turn, the same as houses in a town. There warn't no
bed in the parlor, nor a sign of a bed ; but heaps of parlors
in towns has beds in them. There was a big fireplace that
was bricked on the bottom, and the bricks was kept clean
and red by pouring water on them and scrubbing them with
another brick. . . . They had big brass dog-irons that
could hold up a saw-log." There was also a wonderful clock
(" it was beautiful to hear that clock tick "), and some books
piled up with perfect exactness on each corner of the table.
" One was a big family Bible full of pictures. One was * Pil-
grim's Progress,' about a man that left his family, it didn't
say why. I read considerable in it now and then. The
statements was interesting but tough. Another was ' Friend-
ship's Offering,' full of beautiful stuff and poetry; but I
didn't read the poetry. Another was ' Henry Clay's
Speeches,' and another was Dr. Gunn's ' Family Medicine,'
which told you all about what to do if a body was sick or
dead." Among the pictures were some strange crayons
made at the age of fifteen by a daughter who had since died.
" One was a woman in a slim black dress, belted small under
the armpits, with bulges like a cabbage in the middle of the
sleeves, and a large black scoop- shovel bonnet with a black
veil, and white slim ankles crossed about with black tape,
and very wee black slippers, like a chisel, and she was lean-
ing pensive on a tombstone on her right elbow, under a
weeping willow, and her other hand hanging down her side
"The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" 159
holding a white handkerchief and a reticule, and underneath
the picture it said ' Shall I Never See Thee More Alas.' "
A second crayon was entitled "I Shall Never Hear Thy
Sweet Chirrup More Alas/' and another bore the pathetic
announcement, " And Art Thou Gone Yes Thou Art Gone
Alas." Huck has given us his critical judgment on these
pictures and also their effect on his feelings. " These was
all nice pictures, I reckon, but I didn't somehow seem to
take to them, because if ever I was down a little they always
give me the fan-tods."
In the eyes of Huck the proprietor of the place was a
gentleman — "a gentleman all over." Colonel Granger-
ford — and he must have been some near relative of the
colonel's drawn with so much spirit and liking by Mr. Page
and Hopkinson Smith — was " very tall and very slim, and
had a darkish-paly complexion, not a sign of red in it any-
wheres ; he was clean shaved every morning all over his thin
face, and he had the thinnest kind of lips, and the thinnest
kind of nostrils, and a high nose, and heavy eyebrows, and
the blackest kind of eyes, sunk so deep back that they
seemed like they was looking out of caverns at you, as you
may say. His forehead was high, and his hair was black
and straight and hung to his shoulders. His hands was long
and thin, and every day of his life he put on a clean shirt
and a full suit from head to foot made out of linen so white
it hurt your eyes to look at it; and on Sundays he wore a
blue tail-coat with brass buttons on it." He had a personal
dignity that Huck was impressed by, and a pervasive kind-
liness, and his smile was good to see. In his presence man-
ners were instinctively good, and there was a genial sunshine
about the man that every one liked ; " but when he straight-
ened himself up Hke a liberty-pole, and the lightning began
i6o Provincial Types in the Mississippi Valley
to flicker out from under his eyebrows, you wanted to climb
a tree first, and find out what the matter was afterwards."
The tall, handsome older sons, Tom and Bob, dressed, Hke
their father, in white linen from head to foot, and wore broad
Panama hats ; and in their home life they had been reared
to show especial courtesy to the parents. On the latter's
arrival in the dining room the sons always rose from their
chairs and remained standing till their parents were seated ;
and after mixing at the sideboard a glass of bitters for their
father and then for themselves, they would bow and say,
"Our duty to you, sir and madam."
But this Southern f:imily, so chivalrous and courtly toward
one another, were in deadly feud with their neighbors, the
rival family of the Shepherdsons. Huck's ignorance of a
feud was somewhat lessened by Buck Grangerford's defini-
tion : " Well, a feud is this way : A man has a quarrel with
another man, and kills him ; then that other man's brother
kills him ; then the other brothers, on both sides, goes for
one another; then the cousins chip in — and by and by
everybody's killed off, and there ain't no more feud. But
it's kind of slow, and takes a long time." Buck also in-
formed Huck that their own feud started some thirty years
before, when there was " trouble 'bout something," a law-
suit, and a shooting of the man who won the suit by the man
who lost. Buck was entirely ignorant of the cause of the
trouble and whether it was a Grangerford or a Shepherd-
son that did the shooting ; but he thought that perhaps his
father knew. To Huck's question as to whether many had
been killed in the feud. Buck cheerfully replied : " Yes ;
right smart chance of funnerals. But they don't always kill.
Pa's got a few buckshot in him ; but he don't mind it 'cuz
he don't weigh much, anyway. Bob's been carved up some
"The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" i6i
with a bowie, and Tom's been hurt once or twice." " Has
anybody been killed this year, Buck ? " inquired Huck.
"Yes; we got one and they got one."
Buck, in a truly chivalrous spirit, insisted that there wasn't
a coward among " them Shepherdsons," even if they were
inveterate enemies. "Why, that old man [Shepherdson]
kep' up his end in a fight one day for half an hour against
three Grangerfords, and come out winner. They was all
a-horseback ; he lit off of his horse and got behind a little
woodpile, and kep' his horse before him to stop the bullets ;
but the Grangerfords stayed on their horses and capered
around the old man, and peppered away at him, and he
peppered away at them. Him and his horse both went
home pretty leaky and crippled, but the Grangerfords had
to be fetched home, and one of 'em was dead, and another
died the next day. No, sir ; if a body's out hunting for
cowards, he don't want to fool away any time amongst them
Shepherdsons, becuz they don't breed any of that kind''
And Huck himself, from his lookout in a tree, was to see
Buck Grangerford and another young man shot to death
by the merciless Shepherdsons, one of whose number had
run off in the night with Colonel Grangerford's younger
daughter
Mr. Clemens's theme of savage and absurd family wars
in the South, while treated in his own unique and satirical
way, is suggestive of the annihilating contest described by
John T. Fox, Jr., in his "Cumberland Vendetta," and of
the remorseless hatred of the Cayce family for Micajah
Green, as portrayed so dramatically by Miss Murfree in
" The Prophet of the Great Smoky Mountains."
Two sublime types of professional humbugs, such as
must now and then visit gullible small towns along* the
1 62 Provincial Types in the Mississippi Valley
Mississippi in the Southwest, are the " Duke of Bridge-
water " and the " King, " whom Huck, under mental protest,
rescued from an outraged community. The King was
about seventy, with a bald head and very gray whiskers.
He wore an old battered-up slouch hat, a greasy blue
woolen shirt, and ragged old blue jeans breeches stuffed into
his boot-tops, and home-knit "galluses," — or rather only
one ; and when rescued he and his companion, the Duke,
were each carrying a " big, fat, ratty-looking " carpet-bag.
They proved to be strangers to each other, and in ex-
plaining the cause of his trouble the Duke said to his new-
found acquaintance: "Well, I'd been selling an article to
take the tartar off the teeth, — and it does take it off, too,
and gener'ly the enamel along with it, — but I stayed about
one night longer than I ought to, and was just in the act
of sliding out when I ran across you on the trail this side
of town. . . . That's the whole yarn, what's yourn?"
To which the King replied, with a little more detail :
" Well, I'd ben a-runnin' a little temperance revival thar
'bout a week, and was the pet of the women-folks, big and
little, for I was makin' it mighty warm for the rummies, I
tell you, and takin' as much as five or six dollars a night —
ten cents a head, children and niggers free — and business
a-growin' all the time, when somehow or another a little
report got around last night that I had a way of puttin'
in my time with a private jug on the sly. A nigger rousted
me out this mornin' and told me the people was getherin*
on the quiet with their dogs and horses, and they'd be
along pretty soon and give me 'bout half an hour's start,
and then run me down if they could ; and if they got me
they'd tar and feather me and ride me on a rail, sure. I
didn't wait for no breakfast — I warn't hungry."
"The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" 163
It seemed feasible that these two " professionals " should
from this time forth reenforce each other's talents, the Duke
of Bridgewater (the King called it " Bilgevvater ") ex-
plaining first what his " line " was : " Jour printer by trade ;
do a little in patent medicines; theater-actor — tragedy,
you know ; take a turn to mesmerism and phrenology when
there's a chance; teach singing — geography school for a
change ; sling a lecture sometimes — oh, I do lots of things
— most anything that comes handy, so it ain't work."
The King then explained his " lay " : " I've done consider-
able in the doctoring way in my time. Layin' on o' hands is
my best holt — for cancer and paralysis, and sich things ;
and I k'n tell a fortune pretty good when I've got somebody
along to find out the facts for me. Preachin's my line, too,
and workin' camp-meetin's and missionary in' around."
Learning that a camp-meeting was being held in the
woods some two miles back from the little river town near
which the raft was tied up for the day, the King " allowed "
that he would go and " work it " for all it was worth, and
permitted Huck to go with him. The first shed they came
to contained a preacher that was "lining" out a hymn.
He lined out two Hnes and everybody sang them ; and then
he lined out two more for them to sing, and so on indefi-
nitely. The people grew more and more animated, and
sang louder and louder ; and toward the end some began to
groan and some to shout. The preacher was of the loud-
voiced, hortatory, unctuous type that ^r. Eggleston has
illustrated in " Rev. Mr. Bosaw " and Miss Murfree in
" Brother Jake Tobin." In the language of Huck : " He went
weaving first to one side of the platform and then the other,
and then a-leaning down over the front of it, with his arms
and his body going all the time, and shouting his words out
164 Provincial Types in the Mississippi Valley
with all his might ; and every now and then he would hold
up his Bible and spread it open and kind of pass it around
this way and that, shouting, ' It's the brazen serpent in the
wilderness ! Look upon it and live ! ' and people would
shout out, * Glory ! — A-di-j?ien ! ' And so he went on, and
the people groaning and crying and saying Amen : * Oh,
come to the mourners' bench ! come, black with sin !
{amen f) come, sick and sore ! {amen /) come, lame and
halt and blind ! {amen /) come, pore and needy, sunk in
shame ! {a-a-men !) Come, all that's worn and soiled and
suffering ! — come with a broken spirit ! come with a con-
trite heart ! come in your rags and sin and dirt ! the waters
that cleanse is free, the door of heaven stands open — oh,
enter in and be at rest ! {A-a- men, glotj^ glory hallelujah /) ' "
The shouting and crying, as reported by Huck, became so
great that the preacher's words could no longer be distin-
guished. People rose in all parts of the crowd and made
their way by sheer strength to the mourners' bench, with the
tears streaming down their faces ; and when the mourners
had filled the front benches in a throng, they sang and
shouted and flung themselves down on the straw, "just crazy
an(i wild."
By playing the part of a converted pirate who had been
robbed the night before, and was now returning to the
Indian Ocean to convert his brother pirates, the King
was able to carry back to the raft some eighty-seven dollars
and seventy-five cents which he had " gathered in " at the
camp-meeting by a skillful appeal from the platform and
passing the hat for a collection. He promised to say to
every pirate converted, " Don't you thank me, don't you
give me no credit ; it all belongs to them dear people in
Pokeville camp- meeting, natural brothers and benefactors
" The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" 165
of the race, and that dear preacher there, the truest friend
a pirate ever had ! " And the King had brought back with
him, too, a three-gallon jug of whisky, which he had found
under a wagon when he was starting for the raft through the
woods. To use Hack's report : "The King said, take it all
around, it laid over any day he'd ever put in in the mission-
arying line. He said it warn't no use talking, heathens don't
amount to shucks alongside of pirates to work a camp-meet-
ing with."
A truly Southern provincial type is the fierce-natured,
cool-headed Colonel Sherborne who shot down in cold
blood the drunken, good-natured, but abusive Boggs ; and
when the mob threatened him with lynching, his accurate
knowledge of them was shown by his sudden appearance on
the porch of his home and his cool defiance, characteristic-
ally reenforced by a shot gun : " The idea of you lynching
anybody ! It's amusing. The idea of you thinking you had
pluck enough to lynch a man! . . . You didn't want to
come. . . . But if only /la/f-SL-man — like Buck Harkness,
there — shouts * Lynch him ! lynch him!' you're afraid to
back down — afraid you'll be found out to be what you
are — cowards — and so you raise a yell, and hang your-
selves on to that half-a-man's coat-tail, and come raging up
here, swearing what big things you're going to do. The
pitifulest thing out is a mob ; that's what an army is — a
mob ; they don't fight with courage that's born in them,
but with courage that's borrowed from their mass, and from
their officers. But a mob without any man at the head
of it is beneath pitifulness. Now the thing iox you to do is
droop your tails and go home and crawl in a hole. . . . Now
leave — and take your half-a-man with you." As the
Colonel tossed his gun up across his left arm and cocked
1 66 Provincial Types in the Mississippi Valley
it, the mob " washed back sudden," broke apart, and dashed
into a wild run, with the " half-a-man " bringing up the rear.
Old Uncle Silas Phelps, the easy-going, inconsequential
farmer and preacher, who had a little log church down back
of the plantation and "never charged nothing for his
preaching, and it was worth it, too " ; the generous-souled,
credulous, and motherly Aunt Sally ; and the versatile, un-
conscionable Tom Sawyer, who insisted on freeing in formal
and adventurous style the negro Jim that was already free,
— these are additional types in " Huckleberry Finn " that
Mr. Clemens has characterized with easy and inimitable
touch. In fact, much of the characterization in the book
seems wrought out of the closest familiarity with those
strange, crude, virile types that belonged to life along the
Mississippi half a century ago.
CHAPTER XIII
"THE HOOSIER SCHOOLMASTER" BY EDWARD
EGGLESTON
In writing a few years ago, in the Forum, on the " For-
mative Influences " of his own life, Mr. Eggleston remarked
discriminatingly : " If I were a dispassionate critic, and
were set to judge my own novels as the writings of another,
I should have to say that what distinguishes them from other
works of fiction is the prominence which they give to social
conditions ; that the individual characters are here treated
to a greater degree than elsewhere as parts of a study of a
society — as in some sense the logical results of the environ-
ment. Whatever may be the rank assigned to these stories
as works of literary art, they will always have a certain value
as materials for the student of social history. Not that in
wridng them any such purpose was consciously present ; it
is what we do without exactly intending it that is most char-
acteristic."
The old-time residents of Indiana have themselves ac-
cepted "The Hoosier Schoolmaster" as essentially true to
the hfe and manners of Southern Indiana half a century ago.
The sordid, brutal, lawless West of the days before the rail-
roads, with its hardness and wickedness as well as its courage
and heroic industry, Mr. Eggleston seems to have known
and understood. And it is not at all surprising, for his own
life in Indiana on a farm and as a Methodist " circuit rider,"
167
1 68 Provincial Types in the Mississippi Valley
and also on the frontier in Minnesota in search of health,
gave him a vital closeness to primitive types among the pri-
vations and struggles that were a necessary part of the earlier
history of the West. In truth, so close a reflection of provin-
cial life under such conditions is not entirely captivating, hav-
ing a certain repulsiveness ; yet it has great interest because
it is a transcript, and because it is often intensely dramatic.
Few families could be less attractive to a young and some-
what educated man than was that of " old Jack Means," the
school trustee to whom the prospective "schoolmaster" ap-
plied for a place as teacher of the " Flat Crick " district
school. Old Jack was not encouraging the young aspirant :
*' You might teach a summer school, when nothin' but chil-
dren come. But I 'low it takes a right smart mail to be
schoolmaster in Flat Crick in the winter. They'd pitch you
out of doors, sonny, neck and heels, afore Christmas."
" Bud " Means, the elder son, was meanwhile measuring tlie
applicant by the standard of muscle, with that amiable look in
his eye " which a big dog turns on a little one before shak-
ing him." Bud's sister, in the doorway, was giggling over
the prospect of seeing their large brindle bulldog '' take
hold " of the applicant for the school, when the old man
himself called off the dog, remarking as he did so : " Ef you
think you kin trust your hide in Flat Crick schoolhouse I
ha'n't got no 'bjection. But ef you git licked don't come
on us. Flat Crick don't pay no 'nsurance, you bet." He
then suggestively added that the last schoolmaster carried a
black eye for a month. However, Ralph Hartsook, the
applicant, was given permission by Mr. Means to begin work
at the school, and invited to stay over Sunday with the
Means family, in the process of "boardin' roun'." Bud
Means thereupon remarked reassuringly, with reference to
"The Hoosier Schoolmaster** 169
the threatening attitude of the dog, " Ef Bull once takes a
holt, heaven and yarth can't make him let go."
After the first few days of discouraging experience and a
deliberate effort to assume something of the bulldog's per-
tinacity, the young schoolmaster had this judgment passed
upon him by Mr. Pete Jones, an influential neighbor of Mr.
Means : " Don't believe he'll do. Don't thrash enough.
Boys won't I'arn 'less you thrash 'em, says I. Leastways,
mine won't. Lay it on good is what I says to a master.
Lay it on good. . . . Lickin' and I'arnin' goes together.
No lickin', no I'arnin', says L"
One morning before school, while sitting on the broad
hearth smoking her cob pipe, old " Miss " Means grew confi-
dential to the young schoolmaster, letting him know some-
thing of the family's early history, — how on her advice her
husband had invested years before in " Congress " bottom
land at a dollar and a quarter an acre : " I says to my ole
man, * Jack,' says I, * Jack, do you git a plenty while you're
a-gittin'. Git a plenty while you're a-gittin',' says I, * fer
'twon't never be no cheaper'n 'tis now,' and it ha'n't been ;
I knowed 'twould n't." Taking the pipe from her mouth to
indulge in a reminiscent chuckle at her own financial shrewd-
ness, Mrs. Means continued : "Jack didn't git rich by hard
work. Bless you, no ! Not him. That a'n't his way. Hard
work a'n't, you know. 'Twas that air six hundred dollars
he got along of me, all salted down into Flat Crick bottoms
at a dollar and a quarter a' acre, and 'twas my sayin', ' git
a plenty while you're a-gittin',' as done it." And then
Mrs. Means diplomatically suggested that the man who got
her daughter " Mirandy " — a weak-eyed and weak-headed
giggler — would do well — " Flat Crick land's wuth nigh upon
a hundred a' acre."
lyo Provincial Types in the Mississippi Valley
The most important social event in the Flat Crick school
district was the spelling-school. Every family furnished a
candle, and there were yellow " dips " and white dips smok-
ing and flaring. And there was much ogling and giggling,
flirting and courting. " I 'low," said Mr. Means, the prin-
cipal trustee, " I 'low our friend the Square is jest the man
to boss this 'ere consarn to-night. If nobody objects, I'll
app'int him. Come, Square, don't be bashful." The Squire
came to the front, and the new schoolmaster made an in-
ventory of his appearance. He wore an aged swallowtail
coat somewhat too small for him, a pair of black gloves
(gloves in Flat Crick were an anomaly) ; a dirty, waxen-col-
ored wig, which required frequent adjustment to the Squire's
smooth pate and was of the wrong color ; a semicircular row
of whiskers dyed an impossible dead black ; a pair of spec-
tacles with tortoise-shell rim ; a glass eye difi"ering in color
from its natural mate, and perpetually turning in and out ;
and a set of badly-fitting false teeth.
In accepting the honor of presiding. Squire Hawkins re-
marked, with a characteristic twist of his wig : " I feel as if
I could be grandiloquent on this interesting occasion, but
raley I must forego any such exertions. It is spelling you
want. Spelling is the corner-stone, the grand underlying
subterfuge, of a good eddication. I put the spelUn'-book
prepared by the great Daniel Webster alongside the Bible.
I do, raley. I think I may put it ahead of the Bible. For
if it wurn't fer spellin'-books and sich occasions as these,
where would the Bible be? I should like to know. The
man who got up, who compounded this work of inextricable
valoo, was a benefactor to the whole human race or any
other." Hereupon the Squire's spectacles fell ofl", he gave
his wig another twist, and apprehensively felt of his glass eye.
'^.^iji^uuMsm
"The Hoosier Schoolmaster" 171
In the contest Jim Phillips, a tall, lank, " stoop-shoul-
dered " fellow, who had spelled down the last three masters,
was pitted against the new schoolmaster. Jim spelled as if
he ''knew more about the spelling-book than old Noah
Webster himself." It was done eagerly, confidently, and
brilliantly, and the odds, in the eyes of the company, were
all in Phillips's favor, — especially since the young school-
master spelled with a certain hesitation and deliberateness
that seemed to argue lack of confidence, but really meant
only a dogged determination to win. But " theodoHte "
proved too much for the redoubtable Jim ; and as Ralph,
the schoolmaster, spelled it slowly and correctly, the excite-
ment was so great that the spelling was suspended for a few
minutes. " He's powerful smart is the master," said old
Jack Means, the school trustee, exultingly. " He'll beat the
whole kit and tuck of 'em afore he's through. I know'd he
was smart. That's the reason I tuck him." "Yaas, but
he don't lick enough. Not nigh," answered Pete Jones.
" No lickin', no I'arnin', says I."
But what was the excitement when Hannah, the bound
girl at old Jack Means's, stood alone, opposed to the school-
master on the other side, and seemed to be easily holding
her own. The sympathy of everybody went over to her
side ; indeed, even the schoolmaster, as he looked at her
fine, sensitive face, flushing and shining with interest, and
saw upon her the quickening effect of applause and sym-
pathy, began to be smitten with a peculiar feeling of admira-
tion, and he no longer craved a victory. And finally, when
the schoolmaster went down before the serried ranks of new
words that the Squire had found outside the spelling-book, and
Hannah spelled the word he missed, the climax was dramatic
enough to satisfy every one's sense of the unexpected.
172 Provincial Types in the Mississippi Valley
One Saturday afternoon the schoolmaster, in following an
unknown path through the woods from Squire Hawkins's,
came upon Rocky Hollow and the secluded home of old
John Pearson, the one-legged basket-maker, who in his in-
stinctive kindliness had given a home to Shocky, the young
brother of Hannah the bound girl, whose mother had been
obliged to go to the poorhouse. Squire Hawkins's daughter
Martha was already there on the schoolmaster's arrival, and
the old rheumatic wife of Pearson impulsively praised her
to the schoolmaster for her thoughtfulness in coming to
see them so often. Miss Martha blushingly said she came
because Rocky Hollow reminded her of a place she used
to know "at the East," and because Mr. and Mrs. Pear-
son also reminded her of people she knew "at the East."
In fact, Miss Hawkins had a characteristic way of beginning
a sentence, " When I was to Bosting," etc.
The old basket- maker was a pretended cynic in his phi-
losophy of life ; and a favorite judgment of his on the
actions and motives of mankind in general, including him-
self, was put in this laconic form, " We're all selfish akordin'
to my tell." When Shocky protested that the basket-maker
wasn't selfish when he sat up every night for two weeks with
Shocky's sick father, the old man insisted : " Yes, I was, too !
Your father was a miserable Britisher. I'd fit redcoats in
the war of eighteen-twelve, and lost my leg by one of 'em
stickin' his dog-on'd bagonet right through it, that night at
Lundy's Lane ; but my messmate killed him though, which
is a satisfaction to think on. And I didn't Hke your father
'cause he was a Britisher. But ef he'd a died right here in
this free country, 'thout nobody to give him a drink of
water, blamed ef I wouldn't a been ashamed to set on the
platform at a Fourth of July barbecue, and to hold up my
"The Hoosier Schoolmaster'' 173
wooden leg fer to make the boys cheer ! That was the self-
ishest thing I ever done. We're all selfish akordin' to my
tell." His final compHment to Miss Hawkins, their sym-
pathetic caller, was genuine though somewhat paradoxical,
*' Sometimes I'd think you was real benev'lent ef I didn't
know we was all selfish."
The schoolmaster found one Sunday that his only way of
hearing preaching that day at Bethel Meetin'-house was to
ride on the " clay-bank " mare, with Miss Hawkins up
behind. And so, though it was somewhat against his lik-
ing, he went double ; and after a splashing, muddy ride
he took his place on the men's side of the " hewed-log "
church to listen to the sounding words of Rev. Mr. Bosaw,
of the " Hardshell Baptist " school, sometimes known in
that region as the " Whisky Baptists," and the " Forty-
gallon Baptists." Their preachers had a habit of singing
their sermons out for two or three hours at a stretch, and
they were notorious for their illiteracy, not to say frequent
drunkenness and viciousness. Mr. Eggleston vouches for
the accuracy of the following sermon, although he says
that it is impossible to give a picture of the preacher's
rich red nose, his seesawing gestures, his nasal resonance,
his sniffle, and his melancholy minor key : " My respec-
tive hearers-ah, you see-ah as how-ah as my tex'-ah says
that the ox-ah knoweth his owner-ah, and-ah the ass-ah his
master's crib-ah. A-h-h ! Now, my respective hearers-ah,
they're a mighty sight of resemblance-ah atewxt men-ah and
oxen-ah, bekase-ah, you see, men-ah is mighty like oxen-ah.
Fer they's a tremengious defference-ah atwext defferent
oxen-ah, jest as thar is atwext defferent men-ah; fer the
ox knoweth-ah his owner-ah, and the ass-ah his master's
crib-ah. Now, my respective hearers-ah, you all know-ah
174 Provincial Types in the Mississippi Valley
that your humble speaker-ah has got-ah jest the best yoke
of steers-ah in this tovvnship-ah. They a'n't no sech steers
as them air two of mine-ah in this whole kedentry-ah.
Them crack oxen over at CHfty-ah ha'n't a patchin' to
mine-ah. Fer the ox knoweth his owner-ah, and the
ass-ah his master's crib-ah.
" Now, my respective hearers, they's a right smart sight
of defference-ah atwext them air two oxen-ah, jest like they
is atwext defferent men-ah. Fer-ah. [here the speaker
grew vehement in voice and gesticulation, out of all pro-
portion to the importance of the subject-matter] fer-ah,
you see-ah, when I go out-ah in the mornin'-ah to
yoke-ah up-ah them air steers-ah, and I says-ah, *Wo,
Berry-ah ! PVo, Berry-ah ! Wo Berry- ah,' why Berry-ah
jests stands stock still-ah and don't hardly breathe-ah while
I put on the yoke-ah and put in the bovv-ah, and put
in the key-ah, fer, my brethering-ah and sistering-ah, the
ox knoweth his owner-ah, and the ass-ah his master's crib-ah.
Hal-le-lu-ger-ah !
" But-ah, my hearers-ah, but-ah when I stand at t'other
eend of the yoke-ah, and say : ' Come, Buck-ah ! Come^
Buck-ah ! Come, Buck-ah ! COME, BUCK-AH ! ' why,
what do you think-ah? Buck-ah, that ornery ole Buck-ah,
'stid of comin' right along-ah and puttin' his neck under-ah,
acts jest like some men-ah what is fools-ah. Buck-ah jest
kinder sorter stands off-ah, and kinder sorter puts his
head down-ah this 'ere way-ah, and kinder looks mad-ah,
and says, ' ^oo-oo-oo-OO-ah ! ' " As a preacher Rev. Mr.
Bosaw is in a class with the camp-meeting type in " Huckle-
berry Finn " and with Brother Jake Tobin in " The Prophet
of the Great Smoky Mountains."
Unfortunately for the schoolmaster. Bud Means, the
"The Hoosier Schoolmaster" 175
young giant, who was deeply in love with Martha Hawkins,
had watched with fiercely jealous eye the arrival at the
church of Ralph and Miss Hawkins on the same horse ;
and as Bud had previously seen the schoolmaster and Miss
Hawkins together at the Squire's home, Bud thought he
recognized in him a deliberate and dangerous rival for the
hand of her who had been " to Bosting." Little did Bud
realize that the heart of the schoolmaster was set on the
fair, pathetic face of Hannah, the bound girl at Bud's own
home.
In the schoolhouse one day Bud plainly told the master
that the latter would have to leave " these 'ere diggins" or
get a thrashing. At the order of Bud, the schoolmaster
took off his coat preparatory to a " lickin' " ; and the pluck
of Ralph in the presence of such burly and superior strength
as Bud's stirred the latter's admiration. ** Well, you're the
grittiest feller I ever did see, and ef you'd jest kep' off of
my ground I wouldn't a touched you. But I a'n't agoin' to
be cut out by no feller a livin' 'thout thrashin' him in an
inch of his life. You see I wanted to git out of this Flat
Crick way. We're a low-lived set here in Flat Crick. . . .
And when you come I says. There's one as'll help me. And
what did you do with your book-l'arnin' and town manners
but start right out to git away the gal that I'd picked out,
when I'd picked her out kase I thought, not bein' Flat Crick
born herself, she might help a feller to do better ! Now I
won't let nobody cut me out without givin* 'em the best
thrashin' it's in these 'ere arms to give."
When Bud's mistake became known, and also his sister
Miranda's misleading report that her brother was courting
Hannah, the bound girl, Bud's indignation and amazement
knew no bounds : " Mirandy ! Thunder ! You believed
176 Provincial Types in the Mississippi Valley
Mirandy ! Well ! Now, looky here, Mr. Hartsook, ef you
was to say that my sister lied I'd lick you till yer hide
wouldn't hold shucks. But / say, atwixt you and me and
the gate-post, don't you never believe nothing that Mirandy
Means says. Her and marm has set theirselves like fools to
git you." And then Bud and the schoolmaster put on
their coats and shook hands in what proved to be a very
loyal alliance.
It was only a few minutes before Bud, who had left
the school-house, reentered and remarked with much em-
barrassment : " I don't know whether you're a Hardshell or
a Softshell, or a Methodist, or a Campbellite, or a New Light,
or a United Brother, or a Millerite, or what-not. But I
says, the man what can do the clean thing by a ugly feller
like me, and stick to it, when I was }est ready to eat him
up, is a kind of a man to tie to." In fact, Bud was im-
pressed by the schoolmaster's honest, heroic, self-sacrificing
religious spirit, and wanted to turn over a new leaf. So
that when he heard from the schoolmaster's own lips that
the man of Nazareth was " a sort of a Flat Creeker himself "
and that one could be a follower of His without being bap-
tized, Bud expressed his immediate intention of putting in
his "best licks for Jesus Christ," — thus starting in the little
log schoolhouse a genuine church miUtant. And Bud's " first
Hck " was against Pete Jones, who struck little Shocky with
his hog-drover's whip. Pete could only crawl away like a
whipped puppy, muttering that he felt " consid'able shuck
up like."
Bud's next *'lick" was his effort to save the one-legged,
outspoken old basket-maker, John Pearson, whose knowl-
edge of a robbery in the neighborhood, involving some
prominent citizens Uke Pete Jones and Dr. Small, had
" The Hoosier Schoolmaster " 177
brought upon him the imminent danger of being tarred and
feathered. It took a " council of war " to convince the old
soldier that it was the part of valor as well as of discretion
to leave Flat Creek without delay. " No, I won't leave.
You see I jest won't. What would Gin'ral Winfield Scott
say ef he knew that one of them as fit at Lundy's Lane
backed out, retreated, run fer fear of a passel of thieves?
No, sir ; me and the old flintlock will live and die together."
But, finally, seeing the futility of a stubborn delay, the old
basket- maker was glad to take his secret departure in the
night on the back of Bud's roan colt, while Bud himself
trudged along by his side six miles to Buckeye Run to bring
back the colt.
Bud's next " best lick " was in his effort to save little
Shocky — whom "God forgot" — from being bound out,
like his sister Hannah. And this was achieved by the help
of the same colt and the schoolmaster, who rode at dawn,
with Shocky in his arms, to Lewisburg, and found a refuge
for him there with Miss Nancy Sawyer, the old maid who
was a sort of benediction to the community. As the school-
master took the feverish httle boy in his arms, for the long
ride to Lewisburg, Shocky looked up in his face and said :
" You see, Mr. Hartsook, I thought God had forgot. But
he ha'n't."
Bud Means's secret notification to the schoolmaster to
flee from the community, the minds of which had been
subtly instigated against him ; Ralph's finding Squire Haw-
kins in Clifty, a neighboring village, and asking the Squire
to arrest and try him there ; and the public trial in the large
schoolhouse in Clifty, all of whose inhabitants, as well as
those of Flat Creek, attended, — bring the narrative to the
various phases of the strangely conflicting testimony given
lyS Provincial Types ifi the Mississippi Valley
in the trial. The testimony of Walter Johnson, a medical
student in Dr. Small's office, was peculiarly uncertain, due
to the fact that the weak and wavering Johnson, who had
been an eye-witness of the robbery and was sworn to secrecy
by Dr. Small, the actual head of an organized gang of
thieves, — had been taken by the astute Bud to hear the
Rev. Mr. Soden (the scoffers called him " Brother Sodom ").
" Brother Sodom's " sulphurous preaching had so aroused
the conscience of young Johnson that, on the witness stand,
despite the intimidating glances of Dr. Small, he had made
a full confession, exonerating the schoolmaster and directly
implicating the doctor and the Joneses. Through Bud's
influence, also. Hank Banta, the old-time enemy of the
schoolmaster, confessed that his own testimony had been
false ; and even old Jack Means, the school trustee, who had
always had a warm side for the master, proposed three
cheers for him at the conclusion of the trial. But Mrs.
Means gave it as her opinion that " Jack Means allers wuz a
fool ! "
Old Jack Means in his function of school trustee. Bud,
as a founder of the church militant, and Rev. Mr. Bosaw,
the unctuous " Hardshell " preacher ; the pathetic and poetic
little Shocky, the pale and patient bound girl, Hannah, and
the giggling " Mirandy " ; the one-legged basket-maker who
" fit " at Lundy's Lane and believed in the general selfishness
of mankind ; the Squire whose eyes turned different ways
and who was an authority on spelling; and the strenuous
little schoolmaster himself, — these figures for a long time to
come will be associated in the minds of the reading world
with the crude and lawless conditions of pioneer life in
Southern Indiana.
CHAPTER XIV
"MAIN-TRAVELED ROADS " BY HAMLIN GARLAND
" Main-Traveled Roads " has a significant dedication.
It reads : " To my father and mother, whose half-century
pilgrimage on the main-traveled road of Hfe has brought
them only toil and deprivation, this book of stories is dedi-
cated by a son to whom every day brings a deepening sense
of his parents' silent heroism." In fact, the strenuous
early life of Mr. Garland himself, in Wisconsin and on the
prairies of Iowa, gave him certain hard and vivid experi-
ences that later made him so sympathetic with the grim and
tedious lives of a farmer's family in the great Northwest.
A writer in the Atlantic Monthly, in speaking of the effect
produced upon him by the book under consideration, said :
" The best proof of the solid merit of * Main-Traveled
Roads ' is that, in spite of all, it convinces the reader, willy-
nilly, of its general fidelity to fact, and Hfts him off his criti-
cal feet by its sheer brute force. ... It shows strikingly
what may be done by strong native talent, working with the
help of a single sound formula for effective composition;
for here most emphatically Mr. Garland has written of what
he knows. The book is unique in American literature ;
passionate, vivid, written with absolute certainty of touch,
native and virile as the red man." And Mr. Howells, also
bearing witness to the essential truthfulness of the book,
wrote in Harper'' s Magazine : "These stories are full of the
179
i8o Provincial Types in the Mississippi Valley
bitter and burning dust, the foul and trampled slush, of the
common avenues of Hfe, the life of the men who hopelessly
and cheerlessly make the wealth that enriches the aUen and
the idler, and impoverishes the producer."
In the opening of the first sketch in " Main-Traveled
Roads," called "A Branch Road," one gets a fine sense of the
freedom and sweetness of that hour in the country when the
night is losing its sway, — the grass was crisp with frost,
the air was stimulating and resonant, the autumn maples
were flaming amid the still green oaks, and above the tim-
ber belt in the east rose swiftly " a vast dome of pale undaz-
zling gold." " In the windless September dawn a voice
went ringing clear and sweet, a man's voice, singing a cheap
and common air." Such is the note of spontaneous joy
breathed out by nature and human nature in unison, — in
what suggestive contrast to the later depression and grimness
of the story !
The singing voice was that of a young man on his way to
help a neighbor do his " thrashing," a time of the intensest
work for the farmer, who is then getting into final shape the
product of his spring and summer's labor. As Will Hannan,
carrying his pitchfork, came in sight of his neighbors, he
could see the horses in a circle, hitched to the ends of the
six sweeps, and the great red and gold-striped threshing
machine standing among the stacks. Will and his rival, Ed
Kinney, took their places on the highest stack, and the
voice of big David McTurg, the owner of the thresher, was
heard calling out as the men raised the long stacker into
position. "Come, come, every sucker of yeh, git hold
o' something. All ready." And then, to use the words of
Mr. Garland himself in describing this typical, strenuous
phase of Western farm life : " Boo-oo-oo-oom, Boo-woo-woo-
" Main-Traveled Roads " 1 8 1
oom-oom-ow-owm, yarr,yarr ! The whirling cylinder boomed,
roared, and snarled as it rose in speed. At last, when its
tone became a rattling yell, David nodded to the pitchers
and rasped his hands together. The sheaves began to fall
from the stack ; the band-cutter, knife in hand, slashed the
bands in twain ; and the feeder, with easy, majestic move-
ment, gathered them under his arm and rolled them out into
an even belt of entering wheat, on which the cylinder tore
with its smothered, ferocious snarl."
It was only the night before that Agnes Dingman, whose
father was having his wheat threshed, had given Will Han-
nan an assurance of her love ; and so he worked steadily on
the stack beside Ed Kinney with a secure sense of triumph
that made him perfecdy happy. But Agnes's open prefer-
ence for himself at dinner-time, and her pleasant, smiling
ways with some of the other men, in some way irritated and
maddened the lover in his peculiarly sensitive mood ; and
later he was almost plunged into a quarrel with one of the
threshers, because of remarks about Agnes's evident hking
for him. He worked savagely on during the rest of the day,
resenting, with a sense of ownership in her, every pleasant
attention she received from the other men. Even when she
came out near his stack, looking very pretty in her straw
hat, and seeking an explanation for his strange attitude
toward her, he worked fiercely on, with his hat pulled over
his eyes, and with barely a notice of her. At the end of
the day, when all stayed for supper at the Dingmans, Will
refused an invitation to wait and eat with the rest, but turned
away hungry and tired, — " so tired he stumbled and so un-
happy he wept."
It was another beautiful dawn, and Will was busily wash-
ing the mud from his brother's carriage, preparatory to
1 82 Provincial Types in the Mississippi Valley
taking his sweetheart Agnes to the county fair, — an arrange-
ment to that effect having been made with her the Sunday
before. He had not seen her, however, since Monday, —
the day of the threshing, — and it was now Thursday. He
sang at his work ; " he had regained his real self, and, hav-
ing passed through a bitter period of shame, was now joyous
with anticipation of forgiveness. He looked forward to the
day, with its chances of doing a thousand little things to
show his regret and his love."
Will, in his best suit, sprang into the carriage, after an
early breakfast, and started off with the lively colts for
Agnes Dingman's home, where he had arranged to meet her
at eight o'clock. But on the way, by an unfortunate acci-
dent, he was delayed till ten o'clock. He imagined his
sweetheart as tearful and pouting, and as sitting by the win-
dow with her hat and gloves on, waiting for him after the
others had gone. Alas for human illusions ! when the lover
drove up, no smiling or tearful face waited at the window ; the
house was silent, and the curtains down. Something rose
chokingly in his throat ; he called " Agnes," and announced
that he was " here at last." There was no response. Sud-
denly an old man came round the corner, grinning as he
came, and said, " She ain't here. She's gone." To Will's
amazed inquiry, "Who'd she go with?" the old man an-
swered, with a malicious grin, " Ed Kinney. I guess your
goose is cooked." And this was the expected sweetness of
reconciliation with Agnes ! He lashed his horses into a
run ; his face was white and his teeth were set ; and when
once more at home he wrote this savage, brutal letter to the
gentle girl that really loved him : " If you want to go to hell
with Ed Kinney, you can. I won't say a word. That's
where he'll take you. You won't see me again." He knew
" Main-Traveled Roads " 1 83
it would tear and sear an innocent, happy heart, but that
thought was a wicked satisfaction to him as he rode away in
the train to the South.
Seven years of hard but successful life among the cliffs
and treeless swells of the Southwest, and Will Hannan was
back in his boyhood home, among the trees and rusthng
cornfields and cattle pastures of Southern Wisconsin. The
very crickets and peacefully feeding cattle were dear to him ;
and the softened sound of the distant reaper seemed like
" the hum of a bluebottle fly buzzing heedlessly about his
ears." Retrospective and repentant, he was filled with a
sort of strange sadness and despair. As he waited by the
roadside for the passing of a drove of cattle he recognized
in the hard-featured old driver the father of his early rival,
Ed Kinney. Will innocently inquired of the old man the
whereabouts of Will Hannan. " William ? Oh ! he's a bad
aig — he lit out f r the West somewhere. He was a hard
boy. He stole a hatful o' my plums once. He left home
kind o' sudden. He ! he ! I s'pose he was purty well cut
up jest about them days." The old man chuckled and con-
tinued : " Well, y' see, they was both courtin' Agnes then,
an' my son cut WilHam out. Then William he Ht out fr
the West, Arizony, 'r Cahfornia, 'r somewhere out West.
Never been back sence."
Will walked on until he came to the old home of Agnes,
his former sweetheart. " The barn had been moved away,
the garden plowed up, and the house, turned into a gran-
ary, stood with boards nailed across its dusty, cobwebbed
windows. The tears started into the man's eyes. ... In
the face of this house the seven years that he had last lived
stretched away into a wild waste of time. It stood as a
symbol of his wasted, ruined life. It was personal, inti-
184 Provincial Types 'ih the Mississippi Valley
mately personal, this decay of her home." And his mind
reverted to that last impression of the Dingman home —
the roar of the threshing machine, the whistle of the driver,
the shouts of the men, and the streaming lamplight as he
turned away from the door, " tired, hungry, sullen with rage
and jealousy. Oh, if he had only had the courage of a
man ! " But his old sweetheart — he must see her just once
more.
The next morning Will drove up to her home. It had
been his own home until it passed from his mother's posses-
sion into the hands of old Kinney. There he had been
born, and there his mother had toiled for thirty years. It
was a strange meeting — this coming together of old-time
lovers in a quick recognition that love was not yet dead.
Will explained his identity to Ed's old father and mother,
the latter exclaiming : " Dew tell ! I want 'o know ! Wal, I
never ! An' you're my little Willy boy who ust 'o be in my
class? Well ! Well ! W'y, pa, ain't he growed tall ! Grew
handsome tew. I ust to think he was a dretful humly boy ;
but my sakes, that mustache — "
But what a change in the old Agnes, with the dimples and
the sunny hair ! She was now plainly a farmer's house
drudge. " She was worn and wasted incredibly. The blue
of her eyes seemed dimmed and faded by weeping, and the
old-time scarlet of her lips had been washed away. The
sinews of her neck showed painfully when she turned her
head, and her trembhng hands were worn, discolored, and
lumpy at the joints." As she moved about, getting dinner
at the demand of the old people. Will listened gloomily to
the " clack " of the old man, and observed the details of the
room. It was a poor little "sitting room," with furniture
"worn and shapeless ; hardly a touch of pleasant color, save
" Main-Traveled Roads " 185
here and there a Httle bit of Agnes's handiwork. The
lounge, covered with caHco, was rickety ; the rocking-chair
matched it, and the carpet of rags was patched and darned
with twine in twenty places. Everywhere was the influence
of the Kinneys. The furniture looked like them, in fact."
Suddenly old Mrs. Kinney's hawkhke eyes discovered
something unheard-of: "Well, I declare, if you hain't put
the butter on in one o' my blue chainy saucers? Now you
know I don't allow that saucer to be took down by nobody.
I don't see what's got into yeh ! Anybody'd s'pose you
never see any comp'ny b'fore — wouldn't they, pa? " " Sh'd
say th' would," said pa. " Seems as if we couldn't keep
anything in this house sep'rit from the rest." Accidentally
Agnes dropped a plate, the crash of which started Granny
Kinney once more. ^^Good land o' Goshen ! " she screamed.
" If you ain't the worst I ever see. I'll bet that's my grape-
vine plate. If it is — Well, of all the mercies, it ain't. But
it might 'a' ben. I never see your beat — never ! that's the
third plate since I came to live here." In the midst of all
this exasperating and characteristic criticism, there sounded
unexpectedly the brutal voice of Agnes's husband, Ed, who
had come home for his Sunday dinner after a horse trade at
a neighbor's : "What the devul is all this row about? Agg,
can't you get along without stirring up the old folks every
time I'm out o' the house?" Ed, clad in greasy overalls
and a hickory shirt, lounged in with insolent swagger, and
greeted his old-time rival with easy familiarity. Then he
led the way to dinner. "Well, let's go out and set up.
Come, Dad, sHng away that Bible and come to grub.
Mother, what the devul are you snifflin' at? Say, now,
look here ! if I hear any more about this row, I'll simply
let you walk down to meetin'."
1 86 Provincial Types in the Mississippi Valley
The dinner conversation was of the same humiliating and
fault-finding tone. When Ed discovered that it was only
a white dish that his wife had broken, he cut short his
mother's whining criticism of her daughter-in-law with a
somewhat vigorous protest : " Well, now, I'll git into that
dog-gasted cubberd some day an' break the whole eternal
outfit. I ain't goin' to have this damned jawin' goin' on."
After dinner, as Ed drove away with his old father and
mother for the " meetin'," the latter screamed at her
daughter-in law : "Don't you leave them dishes f'r me to
wash. An' if we don't git home by five, them caaves orter
be fed."
Out of this heart-sickening round of drudgery and abuse,
Will Hannan persuaded Agnes to go with him, — leaving a
loveless husband and a dreary house, but taking with her
her httle child. Through the open door he pointed to the
sunlight shining on a field of wheat : "That's where I'll take
you, — out into the sunshine," the sunshine of renewed
hope and appreciative love. And forgetful of the mistaken
past, of social custom, and of public prejudice, they went
forth together, into a wider world of new life.
In the story called " Up the Coolly " has been drawn a
pitiless picture of a risen man, who for ten years has been
practically indifferent to the conditions surrounding his
mother and brother out upon a Western farm ; and the suc-
cessful man on his return to his old home is a good deal
irritated and chagrined by the attitude of his brother, who
in the meantime has been struggling in a grinding poverty
and a hopeless condition of debt. The welcome given by
the Western brother is grudging and surly — he has had to
bear the long heat and heavy burden of the day, until he is
past the best possibiUties of his life, which has settled into a
" Main-Traveled Roads '' 1 87
sullen despair. "The Return of the Private" presents that
truly pathetic side of the Civil War — so often unconsidered
amid the reverberations of successful battles — in which the
poor and unknown soldier returns to wring a hard sub-
sistence from the furrows he abandoned for his country's
good ; while " Under the Lion's Paw " is the depressing
story of a farm mortgage and the crushing injustice of com-
pelling a poor renter to pay for his own improvements.
What the poor man, unknown and broken in health, re-
turned to at the close of the Civil War, is grimly and
pathetically portrayed in the " Return of a Private," whose
opening picture is that of a group of veterans expectantly
nearing their home county of La Crosse, in Wisconsin. On
the train from New Orleans they had relieved the tedium of
the long journey by jests and raillery and elaborate discus-
sion of their future plans, now that peace was come ; and at
their entrance on Wisconsin territory, and again at Madison,
their enthusiasm took the form of a cheer. But as they
neared La Crosse, the four or five remaining soldiers grew
thoughtful and silent. They were gaunt and brown, and one
was pale with the effects of fever and ague still upon him.
One carried a scar, another was lame, and all had the pre-
ternatural brightness of eye that goes with emaciation.
In suggestive contrast to their setting out, their home-
coming was lacking in bands of music and the waving of
ladies' handkerchiefs — the enthusiasm of a spectacle was
gone ; and not even the loafers at the depots where the
freight train with its caboose stopped gave any heed to this
grimy, dusty contingent in blue, now become so familiar.
Being a freight train, it naturally was behind time, and it was
two o'clock in the morning before the travel-worn soldiers
heard the engine whistle " down brakes " for La Crosse.
1 88 Provincial Types in the Mississippi Valley
Here they were, in the dead of night, on the station plat-
form — poor farmers whose homes were several miles out in
the districts adjoining the town. The man who showed
signs of fever and ague, Private Smith, remarked economi-
cally : " We've got to stay somewhere till mornin'. Now, I
ain't got no two dollars to waste on a hotel. I've got a wife
and children, so I'm goin' to roost on a bench and take the
cost of a bed out of my hide." " Same here," said another
of the group. " Hide '11 grow on again, dollars come hard.
It's goin' to be mighty hot skirmishin' to find a dollar these
days." A third sarcastically inquired, " Don't think they'll
be a deputation of citizens waitin' to 'scort us to a hotel,
eh?" One of the younger men was so desperately ex-
travagant as to think it necessary to go to a hotel. " I'm
goin' to a hotel, ef I don't never lay up a cent." On
Private Smith's observation that that would hardly do for one
who had a wife and three " young uns " dependent on him,
the younger man cheerfully exclaimed, " Which I ain't,
thank the Lord ! and don't intend havin' while the court
knows itself."
The chilly and deserted waiting-room at the station,
lighted by flaring oil lamps, made a forlorn and uncomfort-
able resting-place for the old soldiers ; but in the midst of
their hard economy a characteristic thoughtfulness shone
out. By robbing themselves, the other soldiers somewhat
softened with their blankets the bench on which Private
Smith, the sick man, attempted to sleep. The two men,
sitting with bowed heads in the chilly night air, grew stiff
with cold and weariness, and now and then rose and walked
about to relieve their uncomfortable situation. Private
Smith, lying stretched on his hard and narrow bench, found
it difficult to sleep, and his mind went wandering out to his
" Main-Traveled Roads " 189
half-cleared farm, with its insatiable mortgage ready to swal-
low half his earnings. And here he was, — after three years
of his life had been given to his country on a mere pittance
of pay, — broken in body and despondent in heart, com-
pelled to look the grim situation in the face. Toward dawn
he fell asleep, his head resting on his knapsack, his thin face
turned toward the ceiling, his hands clasped over his breast ;
and the unconscious figure was touched with an indefinable
effect of mute and pathetic weakness.
In strange contrast to the ugliness of the station and the
unkempt appearance of the weary-looking men was the
beauty and the sweetness of the dawn. " Morning dawned
at last, slowly, with a pale yellow dome of light rising silently
above the bluffs, which stand like some huge storm-devas-
tated castle, just east of the city. Out to the left the great
river swept on its massive yet silent way to the south. Blue-
jays called across the water from hillside to hillside through
the clear, beautiful air, and hawks began to skim the tops
of the hills." The older men had gone out, taking great
care not to waken their sick comrade ; and when he was
finally roused by the switching of an engine, he folded up
his blankets and went out to find his companions.
They stood silently gazing at the familiar river and the
hills. " Looks natcher'l, don't it? " they said to him, as he
came out. "That's what it does. An' it looks good.
D'yeh see that peak? " He pointed to a beautiful, symmet-
rical peak that seemed to overtop the rest. " It was
touched by the morning sun and it glowed like a beacon,
and a light scarf of gray morning fog was rolling up its
shadowed side." Private Smith added that just beyond the
peak lay his own farm, and that if he could only " ketch a
ride " he would be home by dinner time. But one of his
190 Provincial Types in the Mississippi Valley
companions suggested that it was breakfast, rather than
dinner, time he was thinking of; whereupon Private Smith
resignedly remarked, " I guess it's one more meal o' hard-
tack fr me." At a restaurant they got some coffee to
"wash down" their army ration, and Smith, holding up a
piece of hardtack by the corner, commented prophetically,
"Time'U come, when this'll be a curiosity."
" I hope to God it will ! I bet I've chawed hardtack
enough to shingle every house in the coolly. . . . I've took
it dry, soaked, and mashed. I've had it wormy, musty,
sour, and blue-moldy. I've had it in little bits and big
bits ; 'fore coffee an' after coffee. I'm ready f r a change.
I'd like t' git holt jest about now o' some of the hot biscuits
my wife c'n make when she lays herself out fr company."
It was remarked somewhat sarcastically that if the speaker
" set there gabbhn' " any longer, he would never see his
wife. With characteristic American humor under difficulties.
Private Smith invited them to drink, — but it wasn't whisky.
" Wait a moment, boys ; less take suthin'. It's on me."
He led the way to a rusty tin dipper hanging by the side of
a wooden water-pail, and with a humorous grin they all
drank. Then shouldering their blankets and muskets they
started out on their last march, — the march to the home
farms.
Along the turnpike and up the winding river road they
kept together. "The river was very lovely, curving down
along its sandy beds, pausing now and then under broad
basswood trees, or running in dark, swift, silent currents
under tangles of wild grapevines, and drooping alders, and
haw trees." At one of these beautiful spots along the river
bank the three veterans sat down to rest, largely " on Smith's
account." " I tell yeh, boys, this knocks the swamps of
" Main-Traveled Roads " 191
Loueesiana into kingdom come." And the reply came :
" You bet. All they c'n raise down there is snakes, niggers,
and p'rticler hell." "An' fightin' men," suggested the older
man. " An' fightin' men. If I had a good hook an' line I'd
sneak a pick'rel out o' that pond. Say, remember that time
I shot that alligator — ." "I guess we'd better be crawlin'
along," interrupted Smith, rising and shouldering his knap-
sack with an effort that he tried to conceal. With a prac-
tical sympathy born of long comradeship, one of his
companions suggested, "Say, Smith, lemme give you a
lift on that." "I guess I c'n manage," said Smith, un-
willing to seem a burden. " Course. But, yo' see, I may
not have a chance right off to pay yeh back for the times
you've carried my gun and hull caboodle. Say, now, gimme
that gun, anyway." And Smith, rather reluctantly, yielded
it up to his insistent companion.
As they plodded doggedly along through the increasing
heat of the sun, it seemed strange to Smith that no teams
were passing ; and when a comrade recalled that it was
Sunday morning. Smith exultingly thought of how he would
be home in time for Sunday dinner. " Well," said old Jim
Cranby, with a relish in his voice, "Well, I'll git home jest
about six o'clock, jest about when the boys are milkin' the
cows. I'll step into the barn an' then I'll say : ' Hea/i /
why ain't this milkin' done before this time o' day?' An'
then won't they yell ! "
And then Private Smith pictured his home-coming. " I'll
jest go up the path. Old Rover'll come down the road to
meet me. He won't bark ; he'll know me, an' he'll come
down waggin' his tail an' showin' his teeth. That's his way
of laughin'. An' so I'll walk up to the kitchen door, an'
I'll say, ^Dinner f'r a hungry man ! ' An' then she'll jump
192 Provincial Types in the Mississippi Valley
up, an' — ." But his voice choked. And Saunders, the
third man, hardly spoke as he walked silently behind the
others ; for the first year of his service he had lost his wife,
who died of pneumonia due to exposure in the autumn
rains, when she worked in the fields in place of her husband.
At last they came to the parting of the ways, and as they
grounded their muskets Smith remarked : " Well, boys,
here's where we shake hands. We've marched together a
good many miles, an' now I s'pose we're done. I hope
I'll see yeh once in a while, boys, to talk over old times."
" Of course," said Saunders, with a quaver in his voice, " it
ain't exactly like dyin'." And they all found it hard to look
at one another. Cranby and Saunders expressed their anxi-
ety about Smith's further journey alone, and offered to go
with him ; but he characteristically made light of it, rather
cheerfully exclaiming : " Oh, I'm all right ! Don't worry
about me. Every step takes me nearer home, yeh see.
Well, good-by, boys." They shook hands, with " good-
by " and " good luck " ; and just before his two comrades
passed out of sight he waved his cap to them, and they to
him, and all shouted.
On his lonely and toilsome journey his mind was filled
with sad memories of his dead " chum," Billy Tripp, whom
a waiHng " minie " ball had struck through the heart. He
fell face forward in the dirt of the plowed field they were
marching across; and now Private Smith must break the
news to Billy's mother and sweetheart. Yet anticipations
of home gradually conquered the shadows of retrospect;
the fields and houses grew familiar ; now and then he was
greeted by people who recognized him from their doorways,
and once he accepted a drink of milk at a neighbor's well-
side. He labored on through the burning sun, up the slope.
" Main -Traveled Roads " 193
occasionally stopping to rest. " He crawled along like some
minute, wingless variety of fly." When he reached the
summit of the ridge he tried some of the same old hard-
tack, this time reUeved by the juice of wild berries ; and as
he sat there resting he could at last look down into his own
home coolly.
Here was the typical figure of the war-worn man, who
represented in his experience how many thousands, return-
ing from blood and suffering only to be plunged into the
almost harder fate of a strenuous battle against poverty and
loss. To use Mr. Garland's words in describing this lonely
figure : " His wide, round gray eyes gazed down into the
beautiful valley, seeing and not seeing the splendid cloud-
shadows sweeping over the western hills and across the
green and yellow wheat far below. His head drooped for-
ward on his palm, his shoulders took on a tired stoop, his
cheek-bones showed painfully. An observer might have
said, ' He is looking down on his own grave.' "
At the Smith farm on that Sunday morning Mrs. Smith
was alone with her three children. Her farm, rented to a
neighbor, lay at the head of a coolly, or narrow gully, on
either side of which rose the great hills left standing by the
plowshare of the floods. Wakened from dreams of her
absent husband by the noises of the chickens, she went out
into the yard, the fowls clustering about her as she went ;
" a cow called in a deep, musical bass, and a calf answered
from a little pen near by, and a pig scurried guiltily out of
the cabbages." Seeing the effects of neglect all about her, —
the straying pig, the tangled grass in the garden, the broken
fence which she had mended again and again, — the little
woman sat down and cried.
It was only a few years before that they had bought the
194 Provincial Types in the Mississippi Valley
farm, paying for it in part and mortgaging the rest ; and her
husband had worked " nights and Sundays " to clear the
farm of its brush and its insatiable mortgage. Suddenly
came the call of the country for help, and Edward Smith
"threw down his scythe and grub ax, turned his cattle
loose, and became a blue-coated cog in a vast machine for
kilhng men and not thistles." And the little wife left be-
hind had had her special burden and sorrow through the
three years of her husband's service. Two brothers had
been killed ; the renter in whose hands her husband had left
the farm had proved a villain ; one year the farm had had
no crops, and now the overripe grain was waiting till the
new renter had cared for his own crop.
Six weeks before a letter had come, telling of her hus-
band's discharge in the near future ; the papers had brought
news that the army was disbanding : and from day to day
blue-coated survivors were returning to the county, — but
her hero was not among them. Each week she had told the
children he was coming, and she had watched the road so
long for his approach that now her eyes unconsciously wan-
dered down the coolly road from wherever she stood. This
morning Mrs. Smith's disappointment and lonehness became
intolerable; so that, as some measure of relief, she dressed
the little folks in their best caHco dresses and home-made
jackets, and set off down the coolly for the home of her
neighbor, " Widder " Gray, who was the " visible incarnation
of hospitality and optimistic poverty."
The open-hearted, smiling widow came down the path to
meet Mrs. Smith and her children, exclaiming as she came,
" Oh, you little dears ! come right to your granny. Gimme
a kiss ! Come right in, Mis' Smith. How are yeh, anyway?
Nice mornin', ain't it? Come in an' set down. Everything's
" Main-Traveled Roads " 195
in a clutter, but that won't scare you any." And she led the
way into the " best room," — a sunny, square one, — its floor
covered with a faded and patched rag carpet and its walls
with a white-and-green-striped paper ; while here and there
" faded effigies of dead members of the family hung in vari-
ously sized oval walnut frames."
It was a noisy, breezy, hospitable home that Mrs. Smith
and her children had come to visit, and its enlivening influ-
ence was irresistible. There was laughter and singing, and
Mrs. Smith, in the midst of it, forgot her anxiety and laughed
and smiled herself. Toward noon the widow's eldest son
arrived, with all his family, from Sand Lake Coolly, and the
widow began giving orders. " Well, go put out your team,
an' go'n bring me in some taters; an', Sim, you go see if
you c'n find some corn. Sadie, you put on the water to bile.
Come, now, hustle yer boots, all o' yeh. If I feed this yer
crowd, we've got to have some raw materials. If y' think
I'm goin' to feed yeh on pie, you're jest mightily mistaken."
The children went off" into the fields, the girls made some
of the preparations for dinner in the kitchen, and then re-
tired to change their dresses and " fix up," innocently re-
marking as they went that " somebody might come." In
pretended dismay the breezy and knowing mother exclaimed :
" Land sakes, I /wj>e not ! I don't know where in time I'd
set 'em, 'less they'd eat at the second table." Out on the
grass before the house the widow's two older boys, who had
served their time in the army, were whittling and talking
about the war, the crops, and the buying of a threshing
machine ; while the older girls and Mrs. Smith helped in
enlarging the dinner table, putting on the dishes, and swell-
ing the sum total of good-natured but rather incoherent
conversation.
196 Provincial Types in the Mississippi Valley
Finally, the widow had them all for audience in her dis-
sertation on girls in love, and their uselessness. " Girls in
love ain't no use in the whole blessed week," she said.
"Sundays they're a-lookin' down the road, expectin' he'll
come. Sunday afternoons they can't think o' nothin' else
'cause he's here. Monday mornin's they're sleepy and kind
o' dreamy and slimpsy, and good f'r nothin' on Tuesday
and Wednesday. Thursday they git absent-minded, an'
begin to look off toward Sunday agin, an' mope aroun' an'
let the dish water git cold, right under their noses. Friday
they break dishes, an' go off in the best room an' snivel
an' look out o' the winder. Saturdays they have queer
spurts o' workin' like all p'ssessed, an' spurts o' frizzin' their
hair. An' Sunday they begin it all over agin." Whereat
the girls giggled and blushed, and Mrs. Smith remarked
that she ought not to stay to dinner in view of prospective
guests. " Now you set right down ! " said Mrs. Gray, in-
sistently. " If any of them girls' beaus comes, they'll have
to take what's left, that's all. They ain't s'posed to have
much appetite, nohow. No, you're goin' to stay if they
starve, an' they ain't no danger o' that."
At one o'clock one of the girls took down a conch-shell
from a nail and blew a long, free blast that brought the
children from " the forest of corn," from the creek, the
barn-loft, and the garden. " They come to their feed fr
all the world jest hke the pigs when y' holler '■ poo-ee ! '
See 'em scoot ! " said Mrs. Gray, aglow with the sight.
The men " soused " their faces in the cold, hard water of
the horse-trough ; and in a few moments the groaning
table, piled with boiled potatoes, boiled corn on the cob,
squash and pumpkin pies, and hot biscuit and honey, was
surrounded with a merry crowd of ardent eaters, a row of
" Main-Traveled Roads '* 197
hungry- eyed youngsters in the kitchen looking on and wait-
ing their impatient turn.
The widow informed the strenuous circle of diners that
she couldn't afford to give the "young uns " tea, as she was
reserving it for the " women-folks, and 'specially f'r Mis'
Smith an' Bill's wife. We're a-goin' to tell fortunes by it."
One by one the men became satisfied and withdrew, and
one by one the eager-eyed children took their places, and
by two o'clock the women were left to themselves around
the " debris-covered " table, and free to sip their tea and
settle their fortunes. As they got well down to the grounds
in the cup, they shook them with a circular motion in the
hand, and then turned them bottom-side up quickly in the
saucer ; then twirled them three or four times one way, and
three or four times the other, during a breathless pause.
Then Mrs. Gray lifted the cup, and gazing into it with pro-
found gravity, pronounced the impending fate.
At last came Mrs. Smith's turn, and she trembled with
excitement as Mrs. Gray composed her naturally jovial face
into an appropriate solemnity of expression. " Somebody's
comin' to you,'^ said the prophetess, after a long pause.
"He's got a musket on his back. He's a soldier. He's
almost here. See?" She pointed to two little tea stems
that formed a faint resemblance to a man with a musket on
his back, and he had climbed nearly to the edge of the cup.
Mrs. Smith was pale with suppressed excitement, and the
cup shook in her hand as she gazed into it. Suddenly Mrs.
Gray cried out : " It's Ed. He's on the way home. Heavens
an' earth ! There he is now ! " She waved her hand in
the direction of the road, and there, in very truth, was a
man in blue with a musket on his back, toiHng slowly up
the hill, his bent head half hidden by his knapsack. So
198 Provincial Types in the Mississippi Valley
toilsome was his step that walking seemed indeed " a pro-
cess of falling " ; yet so eager was he to get home that he
would not stop, nor look aside, but "plodded on amid the
cries of the locusts, the welcome of the crickets, and the
rustle of the yellow wheat. Getting back to God's country,
and his wife and babies ! "
The little wife, laughing, crying, and calling to him and
the children at the same time, snatched her hat and ran out
into the yard ; but by the time the children had been found
the soldier had disappeared over the hilltop, beyond the
reach of her voice. Yet there was the doubt that it might
not be her husband, after all, for the man refused to turn
his head at their shouts ; and if it had been Edward Smith
he would hardly have passed his old neighbor's without stop-
ping to rest. Wavering between hope and doubt, the little
woman hurried up the coolly as fast as she could push the
baby-wagon, the blue-coated figure moving steadily on
ahead.
When the panting Httle group came in sight of the gate,
they saw the figure in army blue leaning upon the rail fence,
his chin resting on his palms and his eyes gazing at the
empty house, while at his feet in the grass lay his knapsack,
canteen, and blankets. He stood lost in a dream, and his
hungry eyes seemed fairly to devour the scene, — the rough
lawn, the little unpainted house, the field of yellow wheat
behind it, and over it all the level light of the westering sun.
Here was a haunt of old-time peace that the eyes of his
imagination had often seen in the last three struggling years.
" O God ! how far removed from all camps, hospitals, battle
lines*! A little cabin in a Wisconsin coolly, but it was majes-
tic in its peace."
Trembling and weak with emotion, her eyes fixed on the
" Main-Traveled Roads " 199
silent figure, Mrs. Smith hurried noiselessly through the dust
and grass, her oldest boy a little in advance. " Who are
you, sir? " the little woman started to ask; but suddenly the
pale face of the private turned full upon her and the cry of
" Emma ! " broke from his lips. " Edward ! " was all she
could answer, as she sobbingly kissed this strange and bearded
man, the daughter Mary sobbing in sympathy with her
mother. Illness had left the soldier partly deaf, and this
increased the strangeness of his manner. Even after the
girl had kissed her father, the youngest child refused to
come to him, and backing away under the fence stood peer-
ing at him critically. The father called " my litde man " in
vain. Alas ! between him and his baby war had come, and
left him only a strange man with big eyes, a soldier with
mother hanging to his arm and talking to him in an excited
voice. "And this is Tom," said the father, drawing the
older boy to him. " He 'II come and see me ! He knows
his poor old pap when he comes home from the war ! "
Recognizing the pain and remonstrance in her husband's
voice, the mother hastened to explain : " You've changed
so, Ed. He can't know yeh. This is papa, Teddy ; come
and kiss him — Tom and Mary do. Come, won't you?"
But Teddy still peered through the fence with investigating
eyes, well out of reach. " He resembled a half-wild kitten
that hesitates, studying the tones of one's voice." " I'll fix
him," said the soldier, suddenly recalling some of his re-
sources in the knapsack. Sitting down, he undid his knap-
sack and drew out three great red apples. Giving one to
each of the older children, he cried : " Now I guess he'll
come. Eh, my little man? Now come see your pap!"
Teddy crept slowly under the fence, assisted by his zealous
older brother, and soon was kicking in his father's arms.
200 Provincial Types in the Mississippi Valley
Then together they entered the house, going into the " sit-
ting room," poor and bare, with its rag carpet, its two or
three chromos, and its pictures from Harper's Weekly pinned
about upon the walls.
Once in his own home again, the exhausted soldier flung
himself down upon the carpet as he used to do, while his
wife brought a pillow to put under his head, and the children
stood about munching their apples. And then the soldier
talked, question after question pouring forth with regard to
crops and cattle, the renter and the neighbors. He slipped
off the great government brogans from his tired and blistered
feet, and stretched himself in utter and blessed relaxation,
feehng no longer the stress of a soldier under command.
At supper he stopped and hstened and smiled — it was old
Spot, the cow, that he heard. And then came the inquiry
for the old dog Rover. Learning that he had died the winter
before, probably by poison, the soldier, after a pause of sad-
dened memory, spoke with trembling feeling in his voice :
" Poor old feller ! He'd 'a' known me half a mile away. I
expected him to come down the hill to meet me. It 'ud 'a'
been more like comin' home if I could 'a' seen him comin'
down the road, an' waggin' his tail, an' laughin' that way he
has. I tell yeh, it kind o' took hold o' me to see the blinds
down an* the house shut up."
Such was the pathos of his home-coming ; but now even
the sound of the chickens out in the yard was sweet to him,
and of the turkeys and the crickets. " Do you know they
don't have just the same kind o' crickets down South?"
And then he thought of the grain ready to cut, and of his
own inability to do anything, on account of the fever and
ague that now had him in its grip. " I don't know when
I'll get rid of it. I'll bet I've took twenty-five pounds of
" Main-Traveled Roads '* 201
quinine if I've taken a bit. Gimme another biscuit. I
tell yeh, they taste good, Emma. I hain't had anything
like it — Say, if you'd 'a' hear'd me braggin' to th' boys
about your butter 'n' biscuits, I'll bet your ears 'ud 'a'
burnt." The gratification of the private's wife was seen in
her deepening color, as she modestly said : *' Oh, you're
always a-braggin' about your things. Everybody makes
good butter." " Yes ; old lady Snyder, for instance." " Oh,
well, she ain't to be mentioned. She's Dutch." "Or old
Mis' Snively. One more cup o' tea, Mary. That's my girl !
I'm feeling better already. I just b'lieve the matter with me
is, I'm s tanked y
That was one of the sweet hours in the lives of the
private and his wife — they were lovers again ; but their
tenderness was in tones rather than in words. His praise
of her biscuit, she knew, was praise of herself. He showed
her how near the bullets had brought him to death, and she
shuddered to think how near she came to being a soldier's
widow. Finally, they rose and went out together into the
garden, and down to the barn, and he stood beside her as
she milked old Spot. And there they planned for fields
and crops another year. His farm was weedy, a renter had
run off with his machinery, his children needed clothing, he
was sick and thin and weak ; but the heroic soul that fought
on Southern battlefields, because it thought that there lay the
safety of the nation, took up its daily fight against nature
and debt and injustice with the same unflinching resolution.
" Ob, that mystic hour ! the pale man with big eyes
standing there by the well, with his young wife by his side.
The vast moon swinging above the eastern peaks, the cattle
winding down the pasture slopes with jangling bells, the
crickets singing, the stars blooming out sweet and far and
202 Provincial Types in the Mississippi Valley
serene ; the katydids rhythmically calHng, the little turkeys
crying querulously as they settled to roost in the poplar
tree near the open gate. The voices at the well drop lower,
the little ones nestle in their father's arms at last, and Teddy
falls asleep there." Surely, here is a real picture, — this
first night of the private's return ; and here are real pro-
vincial types, — the poor young farmer, filled with sturdy
patriotism, and returning to a life burdened with disease
and debt ; the quick-hearted, driving, breezy, and motherly
Widow Gray ; and the long-suffering, brave, and patiently
waiting little farmer's wife, whose heroism was in some'
regards more difficult than that of her sick and war-worn
husband.
One of the most characteristic and pathetic sketches in
the book is that of " Mrs. Ripley's Trip," in which is set
forth with delicate and intimate sympathy the resolute en-
deavor of old Mrs. Ripley to pay a visit " back to her folks
in York State." She and her husband, Uncle Ethan Ripley,
were sitting, one windy November night, in their poor little
shanty, " set hke a chicken-trap on the vast Iowa prairie."
She was knitting a stocking for her little grandson, after
having " finished the supper dishes," and Uncle Ethan was
mending his old violin. The only light was a tallow candle,
— they could afford "none o' them new-fangled lamps."
The room was small, the chairs hard, the walls bare, — pov-
erty was plainly an ever-present guest. Mrs. Ripley, look-
ing pathetically small and hopeless in her faded, ill-fitting
garments, knitted tirelessly with her knotted, stiffened fin-
gers, but in her little black eyes sparkled a peculiar light,
and " in the straight line of her withered and shapeless lips "
there was written an unusual resoluteness.
Suddenly she stopped, and, looking at her husband, said
" Main-Traveled Roads '* 203
decisively : " Ethan Ripley, you'll haff to do your own cook-
ing from now on to New Year's. I'm goin' back to Yaark
State." Uncle Ethan was naturally amazed, and the ques-
tion of the cost at once leaped to the first place in the old
man's mind. The financial consideration seemed to him to
put the whole idea out of the question. Her intimation
that she would get the money herself, and that if she waited
for him to pay her way the visit would never take place,
aroused the old man to self-defense, in which he insisted he
had done his part. " I don't know what y' call doin' my
part, Ethan Ripley ; but if cookin' for a drove of harvest
hands and thrashin' hands, takin' care o' the eggs and
butter, 'n' diggin' taters an' milkin' ain't 7ny part, I don't
never expect to do my part, 'n' you might as well know it
fust's last."
She declared she was now sixty years old, and had never
had a day to herself, " not even Fourth o' July." " I ain't
been away t' stay over night for thirteen years in this house,
'n' it was just so in Davis County for ten more. For twenty-
three years, Ethan Ripley, I've stuck right to the stove an'
churn without a day or a night off." And during every one
of those years she had "just about promised " herself to go
back and see her " folks."
After Tukey, the little grandson, had been sent upstairs
to bed, the old man, with a sense of having been put in an
ungenerous attitude toward his wife's going, said apologeti-
cally : " Wal, I'm just as willin' you should go as I am for
myself, but if I ain't got no money I don't see how I'm
goin* to send — " But his wife broke in upon him : " I
don't want ye to send ; nobody ast ye to, Ethan Ripley.
I guess if I had what I've earnt since we came on this farm,
I'd have enough to go to Jericho with." He insisted, how-
204 Provincial Types in the Mississippi Valley
ever, though gently, that she had got as much out of it as
he had. " Ain't I been wantin' to go back myself ? And
ain't I kep' still 'cause I see it wa'n't no use? I guess I've
worked jest as long and as hard as you, an' in storms an' in
mud an' heat, ef it comes t' that." To which his wife,
though recognizing the justice of his remarks, replied rather
pungently, "Wal, if you'd 'a' managed as well as I have,
you'd have some money to go with."
The next day, in the midst of cold blustering weather,
the old man was husking alone in the field, his gaunt figure
covered with two or three ragged coats, his hands partly
protected with gloves that lacked most of the fingers, his
thumbs done up in "stalls," and his feet thrust into great
coarse boots. His hands were wet with handling the ears
of corn, and chapped and sore. Meditating on the subject
of his wife's visit, he came to the generous conclusion that
she really needed a " play-spell." " I ain't hkely to be no
richer next year than I am this one ; if I wait till I'm able
to send her she won't never go. I calc'late I c'n git enough
out o' them shoats to send her. I'd kind a* lotted on eat'n'
them pigs done up in sassengers, but if the ol' woman goes
East, Tukey an' me'll kind a' haff to pull through without
'em. . . . Then there is my buffalo overcoat. I'd kind a'
calculated on havin' a buffalo — but that's gone up the
spout along with them sassengers."
Coming in that evening with a big armful of wood, which
he let fall with a crash into the wood-box, he slapped his
mittens together to knock off the ice and snow, and said :
" I was telUn' Tukey t'-day that it was a dum shame our
crops hadn't turned out better. An* when I saw ol' Hat-
field go by I hailed him, an' asked him what he'd gimme
for two o' m' shoats. Wal, the upshot is, I sent t' town for
" Main-Traveled Roads " 205
some things I calc'late you'd need. An' here's a ticket to
Georgetown, and ten dollars." Whereupon Mrs. Ripley,
touched by the unexpected tenderness and sacrifice of her
husband, broke down and sobbed. "She felt like kissing
him, but she didn't."
The unaccustomed tears of his wife made the old man
walk over and timidly touch her hair, explaining as he did
so that he was going to sell the pigs anyway. Suddenly
Mrs. Ripley sprang up, ran into the bedroom, and quickly
returned with a yarn mitten, tied round the wrist, which she
laid on the table with emphasis. " I don't want yer money.
There's money enough to take me where I want to go."
She emptied the contents of the mitten, and there on the
table lay the savings of many years, mostly in silver dimes
and quarters. " They's jest seventy-five dollars and thirty
cents," she said proudly ; " jest about enough to go back
on. Ticket is fifty-five dollars, goin' and comin'. That
leaves twenty dollars for other expenses, not countin' what
I've already spent, which is six-fifty. It's plenty." She de-
clared against such unnecessary expenses on the trip as
sleepers and hotel bills. " I ain't agoin' to pay them pirates
as much for a day's board as we'd charge for a week's, and
have nawthin' to eat but dishes. I'm goin' to take a chicken
an' some hard-boiled eggs, an' I'm goin' right through to
Georgetown."
Her husband finally persuaded her to accept the ticket
he had bought for her, — when she learned that the railroad
company would refuse to take it back ; and the next day
they drove together to the little town where she was to take
the train. The day was cold and raw, there was some snow
on the ground, and the old people sat on a board laid
across the wagon box, an old quilt or two drawn up over
2o6 Provincial Types in the Mississippi Valley
their laps. Mrs. Ripley wore a shawl over her head, and
carried her queer little bonnet in her hand. Her last
words to old Uncle Ethan were : " You'll find a jar o' sweet
pickles an' some crab-apple sauce down suller, 'n' you'd
better melt up brown sugar for 'lasses, 'n' for goodness'
sake don't eat all them mince-pies up the fust week, 'n'
see that Tukey ain't froze goin' to school. An' now you'd
better get out for home. Good-by ! an' remember them
pies."
One cold winter's day a queer little figure was seen strug-
gling along the country road, blocked here and there with
drifts. It was Mrs. Ripley getting back from "Yaark
State." She was laden with bundles, and every now and
then the wind would twist her full-skirted black dress about
her and sail her off into the deep snow outside the track.
But she held bravely on till she reached a neighbor's gate.
To an insistent invitation to stay, she energetically replied :
" 1 must be gittin' back to Ripley. I expec' that man has
jes let ev'ry thing go six ways f r Sunday. ... I s'pose
they have had a gay time of it " (she meant the opposite
of gay). " Wal, as I told Lizy Jane, I've had my spree, an'
now I've got to git back to work. There ain't no rest for
such as we are. . . . I've saw a pile o' this world, Mrs.
Stacey — a pile of it ! I didn't think they was so many big
houses in the world as I saw b'tween here an' Chicago. . . .
Good-by ! I must be gittin' home to Ripley. He'll want
his supper on time."
Uncle Ripley was at the bam when she arrived, and when
he came in she had her " regimentals " on, the stove was
brushed, the room swept, and she was deep in the dish-pan.
" Hullo, mother ! got back, hev yeh? " " I sh'd say it was
about time" she answered curtly, without stopping her work.
" Main-Traveled Roads '* 207
"Has ol' 'Grumpy' dried up yit?" And Mrs. Ripley's
long-considered trip was done.
Such laborious, patient, saving, and unselfish types as
Uncle Ethan Ripley and his resolute little wife lend a pathos
and heroic quality to the history of farm life in the great
Northwest.
PROVINCIAL TYPES IN THE FAR
WEST
CHAPTER XV
A BRIEF SURVEY OF THE FIELD
In such stories as the " Led-Horse Claim," " Coeur
d'Alene," and "John Bodewin's Testimony," Mary Hallock
Foote has presented various phases of Western mining
Hfe with sympathetic feeHng and Uterary art ; and in short
stories hke *' The King of the Broncos," " The Bite of
the Pichucuate," and " Bonifacio's Horse-Thief," Charles F.
Lummis gives us vivid sketches of characteristic life on the
plains of New Mexico and Arizona, — a remote region that
he has made peculiarly his own by patient sympathy, long
residence, and intimate study both of its past and its pres-
ent. Together with Mr. Lummis, Frederic Remington, by
his " Sundown Leflare," his " Crooked Trails," and his " Men
with the Bark On," — and most of all by his remarkably Hfe-
like and vigorous illustrations, — has saved for us the rapidly
changing types in the Southwestern states and territories.
Such Hterary work as these two men have done deserves
wide and long recognition for its uniqueness and virility,
and for the fact that what it has sought to portray is almost
aboriginal and rapidly passing away.
Although nothing else in the flood of very recent fiction
208
A Brief Survey of the Field 209
is included in the scope of the present volume, it was found
impossible to pass by " The Virginian " by Owen Wister,
because, in looking for a broad and convincing character-
ization of the "cow-puncher" of the Western plains, the
mind irresistibly reverts to Miss Molly Wood's cowboy that
rode and shot and won on the high plains of Wyoming. By
his stories in " Red Men and White " and his more sus-
tained effort in " Lin McLean," Mr. Wister, a Philadelphian
and Harvard man, had served a long and careful appren-
ticeship in literary art as a preparation for this really great
book on Western life and character. And his years of close
familiarity with the wide, wild country that reaches from the
plains of Wyoming to the " painted desert " of Arizona and
the ranches of Texas have given him a peculiar right and
privilege to portray it permanently in literature.
From one point of view " The Virginian," as Mr. Wister
himself suggests in the preface, may be looked upon as an
"historical novel," for "Wyoming, between 1874 and 1890
[the period covered by the novel], was a colony as wild
as was Virginia one hundred years earlier. As wild, with a
scantier population, and the same primitive joys and dan-
gers." But, like the buffalo and antelope and roving multi-
tudes of cattle, the horseman will never come again, — at
least on the plains of Wyoming. " He rides in his historic
yesterday."
And so, as the portrayal of a unique and vanishing type of
American provincial life, " The Virginian " is doubly worth
studying, — from the historical and from the literary point of
view. Surely the literary art that has gone into the book is
something fine and refreshing, — one gets that sense of free-
dom and largeness, of nobility and wholesomeness, of being
close to mother earth and also to the star-sown sky of true
p
2IO Provincial Ty*pes in the Far West
romance, which, after all, is the highest effect of great
art.
The gambling Virginian, his hand holding the unaimed
pistol on the card table and his soft, drawhng voice saying
significantly to Trampas, *' When you call me that, smile " ;
the humorous Virginian, sharing his bed with the patronizing
drummer ; the sympathetic Virginian, tenderly helping little
" Em'ly," the spinster hen, in her ludicrous attempts at
motherhood, after puppies and potatoes had failed ; the
strong and chivalric Virginian, lifting the pale little school-
teacher out of the half-submerged stage and carrying her off
through the flood ; and the same somewhat jealous Virgin-
ian, joining with Lin McLean in exchanging babies, — the
versatility and humor of this portraiture are indeed original
and engaging.
The Virginian as an indomitable lover, with his " You're
goin' to love me before we get through" ; his sublimely
humorous frog story, with its significant close, — " Frawgs
are dead, Trampas, and so are you " ; his spiritual, long-
continued vigils with the orthodox and full-fed preacher.
Dr. MacBride ; the wounded, almost dying man, with his
head resting against Molly Wood as she washed away the
blood, near the spring ; his pitiful attempts to ride the five
miles to safety and her heroic efforts to help him on the
way; her brave and admirable nursing; his characteristic
comment on the close of Browning's poem that she read to
him ; his pathetic confession to her that he was not fitted to
make her happy, — "This is no country for a lady" ; and the
two, with the brilliant folds of the Navajo blanket about them,
and Grandmother Stark's picture looking down upon them in
a faint sort of approval, — such phases of the story have in
them a human and dramatic touch that marks real literature.
A Brief Survey of the Field 211
But nowhere in the book does the weirdly dramatic reach
such an intensity as in the night preceding the hanging of
the horse-thieves to the cottonwoods ; and nowhere does
the almost hopelessly tragic reach such a precipice of
breathless interest as when, at sunset, the Virginian overrules
the appealing terror of his sweetheart, and walks cautiously
out to shoot and be shot at. The dead Trampas, with all his
malevolence and murderous cunning while ahve, clears the
horizon for that wonderful honeymoon on the island and up
among the mountain pines, and for that rather humorous
visit back in Bennington among the conventional relatives.
At times it seems as if Molly Wood were hardly worth
the Virginian's while, but in the final test she is seen to be
the true descendant of old Grandmother Stark, — a woman
of heart and soul, of nerve and will, that came into a full
appreciation of the Virginian's unusual and genuinely noble
and lovable qualities, which proved to be in such combina-
tion as to win and hold her love.
In Hamlin Garland, also, the Far West has found a fortu-
nate interpreter ; and in the " Eagle's Heart," " Her Moun-
tain Lover," and most of all in the " Captain of the Gray
Horse Troop," there is felt a full familiarity with its Hfe, a
strong power of characterization, and, in the last-mentioned
volume, a remarkable sympathy with the Indian mind in its
highest and truest outworkings. The same fine sympathy
with the Indian character is seen in Helen Hunt Jackson's
" Ramona," — that beautiful romance of Southern CaHfor-
nia life, — even if the author has attempted to read into her
Indian types many of the emotions and aspirations of her
own poetic and philanthropic nature.
In such unique short stories as the " Pearls of Lore to,"
the "Bells of San Gabriel," and **When the Devil was
212 Provincial Types in the Far West
Well," — found in the collection entitled " Before the Gringo
Came," — Mrs. Gertrude Atherton has made striking studies
in fiction of the earlier mixed Spanish and American life in
California ; and being herself a native of San Francisco, with
a commingling of blood from Louisiana and New England,
and having deliberately lived some of her later life in old
towns and hamlets where some of the older Spanish customs
and types survive, she seems pecuHarly fitted by experience
and natural endowment to picture with sympathy and an ap-
proach to truthfulness the traits and types that differentiate
dwellers on the Southern Pacific slope from Americans of
other sections of the country. There is much of the spirit of
romance in her work, as is illustrated in " The Californians " ;
but it grows easily out of the social conditions and the nat-
ural environment which Mrs. Atherton so fully comprehends
and feels. Mr. Ambrose Bierce has also touched phases of
California character and scenery in his book of weird short
stories called " Can Such Things Be ? "
But for a certain side of earlier and more picturesque
California life, — the crude, primitive, daring life of the
miner and the gambler, the fallen woman and the philan-
thropic schoolmistress, and all the free, resolute types of a
transplanted and heterogeneous civilization that characterize
the frontier, the American, and especially the English, reader
will instinctively turn to Bret Harte, whose best work was
done while he was still a resident of California himself. For
removal to the East, under the stress of great popularity,
and later to England for the rest of his life, seems not to
have given him much new literary material, but rather to
have sent his imagination and affection back to the once
virgin fields of the great Pacific slope, where lived (and still
live, thanks to their creator) the improvised midwife
A Brief Survey of the Field 213
Stumpy, the heroic Kentuck that dying took " The Luck "
with him, and the wilful but loyal M'liss ; the imperturbable,
smooth-handed Oakhurst, "who struck a streak of bad
luck " and " handed in his checks " on a certain December
day of 1850 ; the tactful Higgles and her collapsing charge ;
Yuba Bill, the reminiscent and facetious stage-driver; and
"Tennessee's Partner," who vainly argued for Tennessee
with a full bag of gold. And where shall we find a more
dramatic ride than that of Dick BuUen and the swift-footed
Jovita, dashing through the night over Rattlesnake Hill in
quest of Christmas toys for poor little Johnny, who had
"a fevier, and childblains and roomatiz " ? Such a theme,
with all its movement and human quality, might fitly have
been celebrated by the author of " How They Brought the
Good News from Ghent to Aix." The broken-armed Dick,
arriving at Simpson's Bar at dawn and fainting on the thresh-
old, with the remark that " Sandy Claus has come," is a
picture of pioneer sentiment and pathos that only Bret
Harte knows how to paint with poetic touch.
It was as far back as 1868, when Mr. Harte became,
with Noah Brooks, the editor of the Overland Monthly in
San Francisco, that " The Luck of Roaring Camp " made
its appearance in the second number of the magazine ; and
the first issue of the monthly in 1869 contained another
short story that suddenly showed the literary world a genius
of a new order, — it was the thrilling short drama of " The
Outcasts of Poker Flat." " M'liss," "Higgles," "Tennes-
see's Partner," and " How Santa Claus Came to Simpson's
Bar," with the two short stories just mentioned, make up a
collection as unique and dramatic as anything in American
literature. And with all that seems melodramatic in their
make-up and with all their peculiar insistence on certain
214 Provincial Types in the Far West
traits that might not be celebrated in the most "respect-
able " literature, these short stories have a vital quaHty, a
subtlety of humorous sense, and a power of swift character-
ization that make them a fresh delight to each new circle
of readers. They have, too, a sensitive poetical feeling for
the grandeur and beauty of the California mountains, for
the brilliant depths of the California sky, and the impress-
iveness of the great woods that constitute a unique setting
for the strange, picturesque types Mr. Harte has drawn with
so light and yet so strong a hand. Some of these provincial
characters are as truly rescued from oblivion by the art of
Bret Harte as the Creole types have been by Mr. Cable, the
Tennessee mountain types by Miss Murfree, or the Hoosier
types by Edward Eggleston. Although in his longer-sustained
effort of " Gabriel Conroy," Mr. Harte seems not to be at
his best, in his other short stories, like " Found at Blazing
Star " and " A Ship of '49," included in the collection
entitled " Frontier Stories," and " The Rose of Tuolomne "
and " An Heiress of Red Dog," included in " Tales of the
Argonauts," one feels the same sense of easy power in
dialogue and- characterization, the same spontaneous and
satirical humor, and the same sympathy with the crude,
picturesque life of early CaUfornia, that was felt in his first
famous book of stories.
So brief a survey of the field of fiction that portrays the
varied phases of provincial life in America can in the
nature of things be only suggestive, — no pretense is made
that it is comprehensive or exhaustive ; but enough has been
glanced at in the groupings of this volume to show how at-
tractive is the field, and how much richness of enjoyment
lies in the reading and study of American literature from
fhis point of view.
CHAPTER XVI
"THE VIRGINIAN" BY OWEN WISTER
A CLOSE scrutiny of heroes in fiction is likely to reveal the
fact that very few of them are actually men, and the highest
praise bestowed on " Tom Jones " is said to be that of a
great critical authority who remarked of the novel, " This
is not a book, but a man." It would not, perhaps, be far
from a fair critical estimate to say of " The Virginian " that
this is a man ; a Virginian, to be sure, with his soft, drawl-
ing tones and his chivalrous attitude toward the weak, —
but a man also, in the larger sense, who gathers up into
his hard and dramatic life the virile elements of the great
West. This is a real man, who would have been different
in his physical and mental and moral make-up if he had
lived under a less rugged and exacting environment than the
high plains of Wyoming in the period between 1874 and
1890. As a cow-puncher, — a horseman with his "pastur-
ing thousands," he is a vanishing type, broadly and lastingly
portrayed. And it is a matter of good fortune that one so
conversant with the type and its environment should have
had the privilege of giving them a permanent place in
American literature ; for, as Mr. Wister himself says of his
plainsman in his suggestive introduction "To the Reader,"
"You will no more see him gallop out of the unchanging
silence than you will see Columbus on the unchanging sea
come sailing from Palos with his caravels."
215
21 6 Provincial Types in the Far West
The first view that the narrator of " The Virginian " got
of his prospective hero was through a Pullman car window
at Medicine Bow, where the roping of some cow ponies in a
corral near the water-tank of the railroad was going on
rather unsuccessfully. One pony in particular defied and
evaded the most skillful of the cowboys, whose humorous
curses could be heard even through the glass of the car
windows. No stratagem or skill in hurling the rope seemed
able to catch the agile and swift-eyed pony. Suddenly a
man sitting on the high gate of the corral, looking on,
cHmbed down " with the undulations of a tiger, smooth
and easy, as if his muscles flowed beneath his skin." The
others had visibly hurled the rope, some even shoulder
high ; but this man's arm seemed neither to Hft nor move.
He apparently held the rope low down, by his leg ; then
" like a sudden snake," the noose shot out its full length
and fell true ; and the thing was done. " As the captured
pony walked in with a sweet, church-door expression, our
train moved slowly on to the station, and a passenger
approvingly remarked, *That man knows his business.'"
A lost trunk had so disconcerted Judge Henry's guest, —
who tells the story, — that he was oblivious of the shin-
ing antelope among the sage-brush and the great sunset
light of Wyoming, when his attention was diverted by a
dialogue between a man with a gentle, drawling Southern
voice, and another who was addressed as "Uncle Hughey."
The narrator stepped to the door of the baggage-room and
noted the man with the Southern drawl. It was "The
Virginian." "Lounging there at ease against the wall was
a slim young giant, more beautiful than pictures." His
soft, broad hat, pushed back, a loose-knotted, dull-scarlet
handkerchief sagging from his throat, one thumb hooked
" The Virginian " 217
into his slanting cartridge-belt, and boots and overalls
white with dust that indicated long travel through the
country, — these were evident at a glance. " The weather-
beaten bloom of his face shone through it [the dust] duskily,
as the ripe peaches look upon their trees in a dry season.
But no dinginess of travel or shabbiness of attire could
tarnish the splendor that radiated from his youth and
strength."
Judge Henry's guest suggested to the Virginian that his
valise would be sufficient for a day or two, — when the lost
trunk might be sent for, — and that they might start for the
Judge's home at once if it didn't bring them there too late.
It was then sunset. Whereat the Virginian coolly remarked :
" It's two hundred and sixty-three miles." So that a night
in Medicine Bow on the top of a counter was the only alter-
native for the Judge's guest. And such a night the " tender-
foot " had never seen ! For it was on that night in a saloon
that the tenderfoot learned what manner of man the soft-
spoken Virginian was.
Five or six players sat in a corner at a round table where
counters were piled, among them the Virginian and Trampas,
the dealer of the cards. Such expressions as " Why didn't
you stay in Arizona?" and "Well, Arizona's no place for
amatures," stirred something of a sensation in the room,
for they were evidently directed at the Virginian, who the
year before had paid a visit to Arizona. The ugliness in the
voice of Trampas, the dealer, was due to the fact that he
was losing to the Virginian, who was a stranger to him.
When it came the Virginian's turn to bet, or leave the
game, he deliberated a moment or two, — long enough for
the insulting Trampas to say, " Your bet, you son-of-a ."
Suddenly the Virginian's pistol came out, and holding it in
2 1 8 Provincial Types in the Far West
his hand, unaimed, on the table, and speaking in his charac-
teristically soft drawl, — though a Uttle longer drawn than
usual — he gave his orders to Trampas, "When you call me
that, smiley " Yes, the voice was gentle. But in my ears it
seemed as if somewhere the bell of death was ringing ; and
silence, like a stroke, fell on the large room." Some were
crouching, and some shifting their positions, while the nar-
rator, in his ignorance of what it all meant, stood stock-still.
It meant to Trampas either "the choice to back down or
draw his steel." And he didn't draw his steel. There were
no more contemptuous remarks on the part of Trampas
about "amatures," for in the person of the black-haired,
soft-voiced Virginian was a proved expert in the art of
self-preservation.
The admiration of one of the card-dealers for the Virgin-
ian's superb quickness and coolness was thus expressed to a
player who had evidently been very nervous over the situa-
tion : " You got ready to dodge. You had no call to be
concerned. . . . It's not a brave man that's dangerous.
It's the cowards that scare me." Having illustrated his
last remark by a recent shooting incident in the saloon, the
dealer continued : " And that's why I never Hke to be
around where there's a coward. You can't tell. He'll
always go to shooting before it's necessary, and there's no
security who he'll hit. But a man Hke that black-headed
guy is " (the dealer indicated the Virginian) " need never
worry you. And there's another point why there's no need
to worry about him : //'// be too late! "
That night Judge Henry's guest learned more of the Vir-
ginian's resourcefulness and humor ; and on their long and
adventurous ride together across the country the Virginian's
personal dignity and strong self-respect, his droll wit and
" The Virginian " 219
shrewd penetration, his courage and splendid " nerve," and
his love and mastery of horses, were all abundantly illus-
trated. Near the end of their journey together they were
met by a friend of the Virginian's — Mr. Taylor by name —
who gave the news that Bear Creek was to have a school-
house and a " schoolmarm." Mr. Taylor handed the
Judge's guest a letter from a possible candidate in the East,
— Miss Mary Stark Wood of Bennington, Vermont, — and
wanted to know how it *' sized up " with the letters " they
write back East." The signature was of especial signifi-
cance to the Virginian, — it read, "Your very sincere spin-
ster " ; whereat Mr. Taylor guessed she was forty, but the
Virginian, twenty. " Her handwriting ain't like any I've
saw," commented Mr. Taylor. " But Bear Creek would
not object to that, provided she knows 'rithmetic and
George Washington and them kind of things." The Vir-
ginian's comment, as he sat looking at the letter, was some-
what penetrating : " I expect she is not an awful sincere
spinster. . . . Your real spinster don't speak of her lot
that easy."
Mr. Wister's talent for humorous narrative of an unusual
sort is seen at its best in the chapter called " Em'ly," which
describes the forlorn and ridiculous attempts of an " old-
maid " hen to be a mother, — her attempts including re-
peated " settings " on potatoes, onions, soap, green peaches,
and oval stones, and her adoptions embracing bantams,
young turkeys, and setter puppies ! The Virginian's joyous
sense of humor, his tender sympathy, and his quick power
of drawing human analogies are made an inseparable part
of this unique chapter, in which the Virginian and the
Judge's guest are drawn so intimately together.
Four days of train and thirty hours of stage had brought
220 Provincial Types in the Far West
Miss Mary Stark Wood to the crossing of a river on the
Western plains. She had refused to marry, back in Ben-
nington, Vermont, the young man of "prospects" whom
she Hked but did not love. This refusal was against her
mother's wishes, but was supported by the stout spirit of
her great-aunt over at Dunbarton, who believed in marry-
ing for love. And thus Molly Wood, with something of
the spirit of her great colonial ancestress, Molly Stark, was
trying to be independent and self-supporting, and had
pledged herself to become the first teacher in the new
Bear Creek schoolhouse in far-off Wyoming.
It was at sunrise, that, eternally lurching along across
the alkali, the stage reached the edge of a river. The
driver had had on the box with him, as a companion, only a
bottle, which had proved too strong for him. As the stage
descended into the river for fording, it lurched over to one
side, two wheels sank down over an edge, and the seat on
which Miss Molly Wood sat careened so threateningly that the
young woman put her head out of the stage door and tremu-
lously asked if anything was wrong. But the driver was too
much absorbed with profanity and the lash to notice her.
However, a tall rider came close against the buried axles,
and took the young woman out of the stage upon his horse
so suddenly that she screamed. There were splashes, she
saw a rolling flood, and then she was Hfted down upon the
bank. The rider gave a word of encouragement, insisted
on the stage-driver's throwing away his bottle, and, swinging
into his saddle, was off before the rescued woman could
frame her belated thanks. Her rescuer was the Virginian ;
and later in the season he came alone to the same crossing
of the river, which now was a bed of dry sand, with here
and there a pool. Regarding the extremely safe channel,
" The Virginian " 221
where the rushing river formerly had been, he meditatively
said : " She cert'nly wouldn't need to grip me so close this
mawnin'. I reckon it will mightily astonish her when I tell
her how harmless the torrent is lookin'." Passing a slice of
bread covered with sardines to his pony he continued :
"You're a plumb pie-biter, you Monte." Monte rubbed
his nose on his master's shoulder. " I wouldn't trust you
with berries and cream. No, seh ; not though yu' did
rescue a drownin' lady."
The dance at the barbecue, given by the Swinton Brothers
at their Goose Egg ranch on Bear Creek, was particularly
notable for the way in which Miss Molly Wood refused to
waltz with the Virginian without an introduction, although
she knew him perfectly well as the man who had rescued her
from her plight in the stage. But the Virginian, not to be
so easily defeated, begged her pardon, and, bringing up a
common friend, asked to be presented in due form. It was
while she was dancing with some of the married men that
the Virginian, with his characteristic love of a practical
joke, exchanged the offspring of these same men, and did
it so skillfully that the fathers and mothers reached home
without recognizing the exchange and the joke. His
finesse in diverting responsibility and his later confession
at the most opportune time are very happily portrayed by
Mr. Wister.
Before the beginning of festivities that evening, while
some of the cowboys, including Chalkeye, Nebrasky,
Trampas, and Honey Wiggin, were stretched on the ground
about the steer that was being roasted whole, some rather
uncomplimentary allusions were made to the new school-
teacher, Miss Molly Wood, by Trampas. Suddenly he found
the Virginian standing over him in a threatening attitude ;
222 Provincial Types in the Far West
and when ordered by the former to stand up and confess
himself a Har, Trampas sullenly obeyed, under the domi-
nating power of the Virginian's eyes. " The eye of a man
is the prince of deadly weapons." Then the Virginian
spoke : " Keep a-standin' still. I ain' going to trouble yu'
long. In admittin' yourself to be a liar you have spoke God's
truth for onced. Honey Wiggin, you and me and the boys
have hit town too frequent for any of us to play Sunday on
the balance of the gang." The Virginian paused to observe
the effect of his action and words on " Public Opinion,
seated around in carefully inexpressive attention," and then
modestly continued : " We ain't a Christian outfit a little
bit, and maybe we have most forgotten what decency feels
like. But I reckon we haven't plumb forgot what it means."
An illustration of the Virginian's mental independence,
which prevented the young school-teacher from playing
constantly the part of patron and superior, was seen in
his characteristic discussion of the idea of equality : " I'll
tell you what, equality is a great big bluff. It's easy called.
... I look around and 1 see folks movin' up or movin'
down, winners or losers everywhere. All luck, of course.
But since folks can be born that different in their luck,
where's your equahty? No, seh ! call your failure luck, or
call it laziness, wander around the words, prospect all yu'
mind to, and yu'U come out the same old trail of inequality."
Pausing a moment, and looking at the woman he intended
to win by his love, he added : " Some holds four aces, and
some holds nothin', and some poor fello' gets the aces and
no show to play 'em; but a man has got to prove himself
my equal before I'll believe him."
The Judge's guest — the narrator of the story — had ex-
pected, on his return visit from the East, to be riding soon
" The Virginian " 223
with the Virginian among " the clean hills of Sunk Creek."
What was his surprise and gratification, as he walked into
Colonel Cyrus Jones's eating palace in Omaha, to see sitting
at a table, alone, the Virginian himself. The palace itself
was a curious phase in the development of Western archi-
tecture. " It was a shell of wood, painted with golden em-
blems, — the steamboat, the eagle, the Yosemite, — and a
live bear ate gratuities at its entrance. Weather permitting,
it opened upon the world as a stage upon the audience.
You sat in Omaha's whole sight and dined, while Omaha's
dust came and settled upon the refreshments. It is gone
the way of the Indian and the buffalo, for the West is grow-
ing old. You should have seen the palace and sat there.
In front of you passed rainbows of men, — Chinese, Indian
chiefs, Africans, General Miles, younger sons, Austrian nobil-
ity, wide females in pink. Our continent drained prismati-
cally through Omaha once."
As the narrator was passing, there came floating out from
" the palace " the language of Colonel Cyrus Jones. He
stood at the rear of his palace in gray flowery mustaches
and a Confederate uniform, and announced the wishes of the
guests to the cook through a hole. After the Virginian's
characteristically undemonstrative welcome of the Judge's
guest, who had entered the restaurant to be " fanned " by
the breezy vocabulary of the Colonel, the cow-puncher
observed, as he looked about on the other guests with critical
attention, that "Them that comes hyeh don't eat. They
feed. ... D' yu' reckon they find joyful di-gestion in this
swallo'-an'-get-out trough ? " To his friend's inquiry as to what
he was in such a place for, he philosophically remarked : " Oh,
pshaw ! When yu' can't have what you choose, yu' just
choose what you have." And he took the bill of fare.
224 Provincial Types in the Far West
The Virginian noticed on the elaborately French menu a
special item, Frogs^ legs a la Delmonico ; and he asked his
friend rather incredulously if they were " true anywheres."
And on its being explained that Delmonico in New York
and Augustin in Philadelphia actually made a specialty of
frogs' legs, the Virginian said, with an engaging smile,
" There's not a little bit o' use in lyin' to me this mawnin'.
I ain't goin' to awdeh anything's laigs." The Judge's guest,
however, was in an experimental mood ; and, curious to see
how Colonel Cyrus Jones would handle the unwonted order,
he asked for frogs' legs. "'Wants frogs' legs, does he?'
shouted Colonel Cyrus Jones. He fixed his eye upon me,
and it narrowed to a slit. * Too many brain workers break-
fasting before yu' came in, professor,' said he. ' Missionary
ate the last leg off me just now. Brown the wheat 1 ' he
commanded, through the hole to the cook, for some one
had ordered hot cakes.
" * I'll have fried aiggs,' said the Virginian. ' Cooked
both sides.'
" ' White wings ! ' sang the Colonel through the hole.
*Let 'em fly up and down.'
" * Coffee an' no milk,' said the Virginian.
" * Draw one in the dark ! ' the Colonel roared.
" ' And beefsteak, rare.'
" ' One slaughter in the pan, and let the blood drip ! '
" * I should like a glass of water, please,' said I. The
Colonel threw me a look of pity. * One Missouri and ice for
the professor 1 ' he said." The process of ordering was
ended, and the Virginian's only comment was, as he looked
at the Colonel, "That fellow's a right live man." The
" Colonel" proved to be Scipio le Moyne, who later served
the Virginian in a crisis as the expert broiler of frogs. Dur-
" The Virginian " 225
ing breakfast the Virginian's curiosity concerning Delmonico
and frogs' legs returned, and his companion was able to give
him a good deal of information aboqt the career of Lorenzo
Delmonico, which the Virginian later put to such briUiant use
in his competing frog story. *' Mighty inter-estin','' he said —
" mighty. He could just take httle old o'rn'ry frawgs, and
dandy 'em up to suit the bloods. Mighty inter-estin'. I
expaict, though, his cookin' would give an outraiged stomach
to a plain-raised man."
Despite the modesty of the Virginian, it developed that he
had been promoted by Judge Henry, his employer, to be
deputy foreman, and was on his way to Chicago with twenty
carloads of steers and half a dozen cowboys. And one of
his chief responsibilities lay in the necessity of getting these
cowboys safely back to the Judge's ranch in Wyoming, past
all the temptations of cities, and in spite of the malevolent
maneuvers of Trampas, his irreconcilable enemy. The cow-
boys beside the railway track in Omaha were indulging in a
game of poker, while the Virginian, sitting with his friend on
the top of a car, was contemplating the sandy shallows of
the Platte. When asked by his friend why he didn't take a
hand in the game, the Virginian contemptuously replied,
"Poker? With them kittens?" He suddenly took out of
his pocket a copy of " Kenilworth " that Miss Molly Wood
had let him have, and turning the volume over slowly in his
hand without opening it, he remarked reflectively, " Queen
Elizabeth would have played a mighty pow'ful game."
" Poker ? " said his friend. " Yes, seh. Do you expaict Europe
has got any queen equal to her at present? " When doubt
was expressed, the Virginian gave one of his historical judg-
ments in characteristic form. " Victoria 'd get pretty nigh
slain sliding chips out agaynst Elizabeth. Only, mos' prob'ly
Q
226 Provincial Types in the Far West
Victoria she'd insist on a half-cent limit. You have read
this hyeh ' Kenilworth ' ? Well, deal Elizabeth ace high, an'
she could scare Robert Dudley, with a full house, plumb out
o' the bettin'." On the unquestioning assent of his com-
panion, the Virginian continued, " And if Essex's play got
next her too near, I reckon she'd have stacked the cyards.
Say, d'yu' remember Shakespeare's fat man?"
An answer in the affirmative led the Virginian to give his
candid judgment on Shakespeare and his literary work, and
to express his regret that the great dramatist was ignorant
of the possibiHties of poker. "Ain't that grand? Why, he
makes men talk the way they do in life. I reckon he couldn't
get printed to-day. It's a right down shame Shakespeare
couldn't know about poker. He'd have had FalstafT playing
all day at that Tearsheet outfit. And the Prince would have
beat him." The Virginian felt sure, too, that Falstaff would
have had enough brains to play whist. "You can play
whist with your brains — brains and cyards. Now, cyards
are only one o' the manifestations of poker in this hyeh
world. One o' the shapes yu' fool with it in when the day's
work is oveh. If a man is built like that Prince boy was
built (and it's away down deep beyond brains), he'll play
winnin' poker with whatever hand he's holdin' when the
trouble begins. Maybe it will be a mean, triflin' army, or an
empty six-shooter, or a lame hawss, or maybe just nothin'
but his natural countenance. 'Most any old thing will do for
a fello' Hke that Prince boy to play poker with."
Leaving the Virginian with his uncertain cowboys and his
two trains of steers bound for Chicago, Judge Henry's pro-
spective guest, on his autumn holiday, was making his way
through the Black Hills in a saddle ; but on account of the
steady downpour he was only too glad to change to a seat
" The Virginian " 227
in the stage. As he climbed in over the wheel somebody
on the inside considerately inquired, "Six legs inside this
jerky to-night?" The asker of the question was none other
than " Colonel " Cyrus Jones, formerly of the eating palace in
Omaha, whose conversational power was wholly undimin-
ished. He gave an early introduction of himself: " Scipio
le Moyne, from Gallipolice, Ohio. The eldest of us always
gets called Scipio. It's French. But us folks have been
white for a hundred years." Scipio was limber and light-
muscled, and skillfully avoided bruises as the "jerky " swayed
or plunged. " He had a strange, long, jocular nose, very
wary-looking, and a bleached blue eye." " Shorty," the
third occupant of the stage, was what his name implied, and
the joltings of the jerky seemed to hurt him almost every
time. " He was light-haired and mild. Think of a yellow
dog that is lost, and fancies each newcomer in sight is going
to turn out his master, and you will have Shorty."
The intimacy of the three travelers was suddenly deep-
ened by their unavailing efforts to catch the Northern Pacific
train at Medora. It had changed its schedule time. Scipio
and Shorty shot from the jerky in advance of the Judge's
guest, who was encumbered by a valise. Tiiey dashed
through sand and " knee-high grease wood " in their race
for the train, a piece of stray wire springing up and clutch-
ing the carrier of the valise, and tin cans spinning from
under his feet. The loss of the train meant to them a loss
of twenty-four hours ; but despite their desperate racing
and shouting and waving of hats they were all left behind.
Scipio, as he saw the train insultingly move off, dropped
philosophically into a walk ; but the other two, overtaking
him, ran madly forward to the empty track.
The carrier of the valise kicked it and then sat on it,
228 Provincial Types in the Far West
speechless with wrath ; Shorty gave way to uncontrollable
lament, detailing all his woes to the unsympathetic air ; but
Scipio, the superior, narrowed his bleached blue eyes to
slits, as he watched the rear car fading to westward, and ad-
dressed the vanishing train : " Think you've got me left,
do yu'? Just because yu' ride through this country on a
rail, do yu' claim yu' can find your way around? I could
take yu' out ten yards in the brush and lose yu' in ten sec-
onds, you spangle-roofed hobo ! Leave me behind ! you
recent blanket-mortgage yearlin' ! You plush-lined, nickel-
plated, whistlin' wash room, d'yu' figure I can't go East
just as soon as West? Or I'll stay right here if it suits me,
yu' dude-inhabited hot-box ! " Scipio's epithets increased
in volume and emphasis till they became unprintable, and
then he gradually descended from his climax to express
sympathy with the train for not having a mother.
To the immense surprise and pleasure of Judge Henry's
guest a slow, drawling Southern voice, the voice of the Vir-
ginian, suddenly expressed his sorrow over his friend's loss
of breath in pursuit of the train, and inquired if the valise
was suffering any. There sat the Virginian, with a news-
paper, on the rear platform of a caboose attached to a
freight train westward bound. His cowboys were inside,
and he himself carried the air of a man for whom things
were "going smooth." He had evidently delivered his
steers in Chicago and was returning to Sunk Creek ranch.
He turned to Scipio with the remark that " these hyeh
steam cyars make a man's language mighty nigh as speedy
as his travel." *' So yu' heard me speakin' to the express,"
said Scipio. " Well, I guess, sometimes I — See here," he
exclaimed, under the grave scrutiny of the Virginian, " I
may have talked some, but I walked a whole lot. You didn't
" The Virginian " 229
catch me squandering no speed." The Virginian remarked
that he had noticed that in Scipio's case thinking came
quicker than running ; whereupon Scipio observed : " Oh,
I could tell yu'd been enjoyin' us ! Observin' somebody
else's scrape always kind o' rests me too. Maybe you're a
philosopher, but maybe there's a pair of us drawd in this deal."
From Scipio's legs the Virginian judged that the former
was used to the saddle, but from his hands he inferred that
he had not been roping steers very recently. And he sud-
denly asked, " Been cookin' or something? " To which the
spirited Scipio retorted : " Say, tell my future some now.
Draw a conclusion from my mouth." " I'm right dis-
tressed," returned the Southerner, "we've not a drop in
the outfit." " Oh, drink with me uptown ! " cried the hos-
pitable Scipio, — " I'm pleased to death with yu'." Glanc-
ing where the saloons stood behind the station, the Virginian
shook his head ; and Scipio plaintively insisted : " Why, it
ain't a bit far to whisky from here! Step down, now.
Scipio le Moyne's my name. Yes, you're lookin' for my
brass ear-rings. But there ain't no ear-rings on me. I've
been white for a hundred years. Step down. I've a forty-
dollar thirst." The Virginian's only response was the be-
ginning of a remark about Scipio's " being white," when
from the inside of the caboose came the howled-out chorus
of a cowboy song, and the train began to move off. Sud-
denly the Virginian stood up and offered to this new-found
acquaintance a forty-dollar job if he would save " that thirst."
" Why, you're talkin' business ! " cried Scipio, and leaped
aboard.
As the Virginian and Scipio le Moyne continued in dia-
logue, one of the group on the inside came out on the
platform of the caboose, slamming the door behind him.
230 Provincial Types in the Far West
" H 1 ! " cried the man, at sight of the distant town. " 1
told you," addressing the Virginian threateningly, " I told
you I was going to get a bottle here." " Have your bottle,
then," said the deputy foreman, and kicked him off into
Dakota. The Virginian's pistol followed the direction of
his boot ; so that the man sat quietly in Dakota, watching
the train moving on into Montana, and making no objection.
At a safe distance, he rose and made his way toward the
region of the saloons. It was the cook that had thus sud-
denly parted company with the Virginian's " outfit," and the
Virginian could not forego expressing his disgust as he bol-
stered his pistol. " This is the only step I have had to take
this whole trip ; " and then he added regretfully, " So nyeh
back home ! "
Scipio's interest in his new-found employer was so much
intensified by this incident that he asked Judge Henry's
guest if he had known the Virginian long. Being answered
" Fairly," Scipio looked with admiration at the Virginian's
back, and spoke judicially, "Well, start awful early when
yu' go to fool with him, or he'll make you feel onpunctual."
The Southerner, tilting his head toward the noise in the
caboose, again expressed his regret that, after having the
cow-punchers under his control for almost three thousand
miles, he should now have been compelled to part with one
of them. " I had the boys plumb contented. Away along
as far as Saynt Paul I had them reconciled to my authority.
Then this news about gold had to strike us." " And they're
a-dreamin' nuggets and Parisian bowleyvards," sympatheti-
cally suggested Scipio. The Virginian smiled his gratitude,
and, regaining his usual relish of things, continued in the line
of Scipio's suggestion, " Fortune is shinin' bright and bHndin'
to their delicate young eyes."
" The Virginian " 231
The Virginian asserted his behef that all his cowboys
would return with him to Sunk Creek, " accordin' to the
Judge's awdehs." " Never a calf of them will desert to
Rawhide, for all their dangerousness. . . . Only one is left
now that don't sing." Turning to Scipio le Moyne, he re-
marked that the man he had parted with was the cook,
" and I will ask yu' to replace him. Colonel." At the word
" colonel " Scipio opened his mouth in astonishment.
" Colonel ! Say ! " He stared at the Virginian and asked
him if he had met him at " the palace " in Omaha. " Not
exackly met," repHed the Southerner. " I was praisent one
mawnin' las' month when this gentleman awdehed frawgs'
laigs."
Hereupon the surprised but versatile Scipio, alias the
"Colonel," explained at length his difficult position in
Omaha. " Sakes and saints, but that was a mean position !
... I had to tell all comers anything all day. Stand up
and jump language hot off my brain at 'em. And the pay
don't near compensate for the drain on the system. I don't
care how good a man is, you let him keep a-tappin' his
presence of mind right along, without taking a lay-off, and
you'll have him sick. Yes, sir. You'll hit his nerves. So I
told them they could hire some fresh man, for I was goin'
back to punch cattle or fight Indians, or take a rest some-
how, for I didn't propose to get jaded, and me only twenty-
five years old."
Scipio confessed that the regular Colonel Cyrus Jones
had long ago departed this life, but because of " the palace's "
large business the management continued a live bear on the
outside and a pretended " Colonel " within. " And it's a
turruble mean position. Course I'll cook for yu'. Yu've
a dandy memory for faces." " I wasn't quite convinced till
232 Provincial Types in the Far West
I kicked him off, and you gave that shut to your eyes again,"
explained the Virginian.
The appearance at the door of the caboose of Trampas,
the Virginian's scheming enemy, and his inquiry for Schoff-
ner, the cook, whom the deputy foreman had kicked from
the platform, called out the reply of the Southerner, " I
expaict he'll have got his bottle by now, Trampas." Tram-
pas, looking from one to another on the platform, asked
curiously, "Didn't he say he was coming back?" "He
reminded me," said the Virginian, " he was going for a
bottle, and afteh that he didn't wait to say a thing." When
Trampas insisted that Schoffner had told him he was coming
back, the Southerner, with his quiet and characteristic
humor, replied : " I don't reckon he has come, not without
he dumb up ahaid somewhere. An' I mns' say, when he
got off he didn't look like a man does when he has the
intention o' returnin'." And after another unsatisfactory
question Trampas abruptly returned to the inside of the
caboose.
"Is he the member who don't sing?" asked the pene-
trating Scipio. " That's the specimen," answered the South-
erner. " He don't seem musical in the face," said Scipio.
"Pshaw ! " returned the Virginian. "Why, you surely ain't
the man to mind ugly mugs — when they're hollow ! " After
the Virginian himself had retreated into the. caboose, Scipio
inquired of Judge Henry's guest his opinion as to whether
the Virginian would succeed in getting his cowboys back to
Sunk Creek. To the answer that the Southerner had said
he would, and that he was a man with the " courage of his
convictions," Scipio skeptically exclaimed : "That ain't near
courage enough to have ! There's times in life when a man
has got to have courage without convictions — without them
" The Virginian " ^ 2^3
— or he is no good. Now your friend is that deep consti-
tooted that you don't know and I don't know what he's
thinkin' about all this." Scipio le Moyne, as a type of the
breezy, slangy, widely experienced Westerner, who is shrewdly
observant, swift in his judgments of human nature and human
motive, and humorously versatile in emergencies, is one of
the best-drawn and most interesting figures in the book ; and
we are not surprised that the Virginian relishes the originality
and imaginative sympathy of the man.
The Virginian's quiet mastery of men as illustrated in his
getting his cowboys back from Chicago despite the temp-
tations of cities, the appeal made to their greediness by the
rumors of gold at Rawhide, and the malevolent influence of
Trampas, — the Virginian's implacable enemy, — recalls the
elaborate and sublimely humorous *' frawg " story, which the
Virginian found it necessary to tell to beat Trampas and his
partisans at their own malicious game of ridicule. That story
meant all the difference between success and failure for the
Virginian in his important trip to the East as deputy fore-
man for Judge Henry, and it was effective enough to ac-
complish its purpose of keeping the men together till they
reached Sunk Creek.
In discussing theology and parsons with Judge Henry's
guest, the Virginian had certain original and unhackneyed
points of view that showed the earnest and rational side of
the man. He had inquired as to the number of religions
in the world, and being told there were at least fifteen that
were supposed to have the same God as an object of worship,
the Virginian rather skeptically exclaimed : " One God and"
fifteen religions. That's a right smart of religions for just
one God." The laugh on the narrator's part at this com-
ment led the Virginian to remark in addition : *' Do you
234 Provincial Types in the Far West
think they ought to be fifteen varieties of good people j
. . . There ain't fifteen. There ain't two. There's onj
kind. And when I meet it I respect it. It is not prayin
nor preaching that has ever caught me and made m^
ashamed of myself, but one or two people I have knowec
that never said a superior word to me. They thought more
o* me than I deserved, and that made me behave bettei
than I naturally wanted to. . . . And if ever I was to hav
a son or somebody I set store by, I would wish their lot to
be to know one or two good folks mighty well — men or
women — women preferred." "As for parsons," he con-
tinued with a somewhat deprecating gesture, " I reckon
some parsons have a right to tell yu' to be good. The
bishop of this hyeh Territory has a right. But I'll tell yu
this : a middlin' doctor is a pore thing, and a middlin
lawyer is a pore thing ; but keep me from a middlin' mar
of God." Such a " middlin' man of God " the Virginian
found in Dr. MacBride, the missionary to the cowboys,
whom he wickedly persuaded to spend most of the night in
prayer and spiritual counsel for the Virginian's sin-stricken
soul.
His promotion to be foreman of Judge Henry's ranch
for a long time prevented the Virginian from riding over to
Bear Creek to see Miss Molly Wood, the school-teacher ; and
finally, at the end of the winter, he was driven to write her
a letter which illustrated, beside his devotion to her, his
improvement in spelling and penmanship, to which he had
given himself in his leisure time during the winter. After
speaking of the early spring, he mentions the fact that
" where the sun gets a chance to hit the earth strong all
day it is green and has flowers too, a good many. You can
see them bob and mix together in the wind." He also tells
By his side the girl walking and cheering him forward."
Page 332.
Copyright by the Macmillan Company.
" The Virginian " 235
his sweetheart what he has been reading, and his Hterary
judgments are sincere and original if not conventional : " I
have read that play ' Othello.' No man should write down
such a thing. Do you know if it is true ? I have seen one
worse affair down in Arizona. He killed his little child as
well as his wife but such things should not be put down in
fine language for the public. I have read Romeo and
Juliet. That is beautiful language but Romeo is no man.
I like his friend Mercutio that gets killed. He is a man.
If he had got Juliet there would have been no foolishness
and trouble."
One part of the letter in particular brought the color into
the teacher's face and made her indignantly exclaim, " The
outrageous wretch ! " It was the part about Emily, the
hen : " Did I ever tell you about a hen Emily we had here?
She was venturesome to an extent I have not seen in other
hens only she had poor judgment and would make no family
ties. She would keep trying to get interest in the ties
of others taking charge of httle chicks and bantams and
turkeys and puppies one time, and she thought most any-
thing was an egg. I will tell you about her sometime. She
died without family ties one day while I was building a
house for her to teach school in." It was an allegory, con-
scious or unconscious, which the Httle school-teacher was
swift to interpret.
The wounded Virginian, lying beside the spring, and the
heroic little descendant of Molly Stark, washing away the
blood, tearing bandages, and loading his revolver, make two
figures of surpassingly dramatic interest. And even of greater
interest are they as he leans helplessly on his horse while
she supports and encourages him till they reach her own
home and she can help the delirious man to lie down on
236 Provincial Types in the Far West
her own bed. And then such persistent nursing, such tactful
attention, such diversions in the way of quiet games at crib-
bage and of reading aloud to the convalescent ! Among the
delightful things in the book is the unique comment of the
Virginian on Shakespeare and Browning. He had apologized
for going to sleep over one of Jane Austen's novels which she
had read to him ; he said by way of excuse that he thought
he could keep awake if she read him " something that was
about something," Hke " Henry the Fourth " for instance.
'* The British king is fighting, and there is his son the prince.
He cert'nly must have been a jim-dandy boy if that is all true.
Only he would go around town with a mighty triflin' gang.
They sported and they held up citizens. And his father
hated his traveling with trash like them. It was right
natural — the boy and the old man ! But the boy showed
himself a man too. He killed a big fighter on the other
side who was another jim-dandy — and he was sorry for
having it to do." The Virginian grew enthusiastic in his
recital of Prince Hal's adventures, and continued : " I under-
stand most all of that. There was a fat man kept every-
body laughing. He was awful natural too ; except yu' don't
commonly meet 'em so fat. But the prince — that play
is bed-rock, ma'am!" Browning's "How They Carried
the Good News from Ghent to Aix " he pronounced good
— and short; while an " Incident of the French Camp" he
thought was even better, only " the last part drops." The
closing stanza, which relates how the wounded boy, having
given his message of victory, tells Napoleon that he is not
only wounded but wounded unto death, fails to meet the
approval of the Virginian. " ' Nay, I'm killed, sire,' "
drawled the Virginian critically. " Now a man who was
man enough to act like he did, yu' see, would fall dead
without mentioning it."
" The Virginian " 237
From the dream and joy of an accepted lover to the
catching and hanging of cattle-thieves (among them his
once intimate friend, Steve) was a swift and painful transi-
tion for the Virginian ; and one of the intensest and most
dramatically written chapters in the book is that entitled
"The Cottonwoods," in which his old friend Steve and
another cattle-thief are portrayed in the terrible moments
preceding death. In contrasting the manner of death of
the two men, the Virginian had only admiration for his old
friend Steve. " Well, he took dying as naturally as he took
living. Like a man should. Like I hope to. . . . No
play-acting nor last words. He just told good-by to the
boys as we led his horse under the limb." In the Vir-
ginian's view failure to die bravely was a sort of " treason to
the brotherhood," and forfeited pity. " It was Steve's per-
fect bearing that had caught his heart so that he forgot even
his scorn of the other man."
In expressing his sympathy for the weak-willed, shallow,
amiable, and easily manipulated Shorty, who fell under the
malign and finally fatal influence of Trampas, the Virginian
differentiated the conditions of the West and the East in a
striking and discriminating way : " Now back East you can
be middling and get along. But if you go to try a thing on
in this Western country, you've got to do it well. You've
got to deal cyards well; you've got to steal well; and if you
claim to be quick with your gun you must be quick, for
you're a public temptation, and some man will not resist
trying to prove he is the quicker. You must break all the
Commandments well in this Western country, and Shorty
should have stayed in Brooklyn, for he will be a novice his
livelong days." And the Virginian's judgment and prophecy
were, alas ! too true ; for a little later, on " Superstition
238 Provincial Types in the Far West
Trail," they found the dead " novice " stretched by his
extinct camp-fire, *'with his wistful, lost-dog face upward,
and his thick yellow hair unparted as it had always been."
He had been murdered from behind, and the treacherous,
merciless hand of Trampas had done it. Shorty had blun-
dered once too often. As the Virginian said, regretfully
looking down on the dead body, " There was no natural
harm in him, but you must do a thing well in this country."
From the edge of a tableland the Virginian and his pro-
spective bride could see the little town where on the fol-
lowing day the bishop of Wyoming was to make them man
and wife. " There lay the town in the splendor of Wyoming
space. Around it spread the watered fields . . . making
squares of green and yellow crops ; and the town was but
a poor rag in the midst of this quilted harvest. After the
fields to the east, the tawny plain began ; and with one faint
furrow of river lining its undulations, it stretched beyond
sight. But west of the town rose the Bow Leg Mountains,
cool with still unmelted snows, and their dull blue gulfs of
pine. From three caiions flowed three clear forks which
began the river. Their confluence was above the town a
good two miles ; it looked but a few paces from up here,
while each side the river straggled the margin cottonwoods,
like thin borders along a garden walk. Over all this map
hung silence like a harmony, tremendous yet serene." No
wonder the girl from the little Vermont hills whispered to
her mountain lover, " How beautiful ! how I love it ! But,
oh, how big it is ! " She leaned against him an instant, as if
seeking a sort of shelter in his splendid strength ; and with
closed eyes she saw a little village street in Vermont, and
an ivy on an old front door, and her mother picking some
yellow roses from a bush !
" The Virginian '* 239
A sudden sound made her open her eyes quickly, only to
see her lover turned in his saddle and reaching for his pistol.
A rider, who was a stranger to her, merely nodded to the
Virginian as he passed by ; but out of his eyes looked " five
years of gathered hate." It was Trampas, — Trampas who,
courageous with whisky and baffled hate, was to give the
Virginian till sundown to get out of town. To meet this
murderous Trampas and run the imminent risk of death at
his hands seemed to the Virginian the only course, — and
this on the eve of his wedding day, the consummation of his
patient and expectant love. The bishop opposed it, and
his New England sweetheart drew back in horror from it,
exclaiming, " If you do this, there can be no to-morrow for
you and me." But despite it all, with a courage and self-
sacrifice that were sublime, he met Trampas as the sun
dropped behind the mountains, — those mountains to which
on the morrow he had hoped to take his bride. He was
standing where no one could approach him except from the
front, for he remembered the fate of Shorty, who had been
shot from behind. " A wind seemed to blow his sleeve off
his arm, and he repUed to it, and saw Trampas pitch for-
ward. He saw Trampas raise his arm from the ground and
fall again, and lie there, this time still. A little smoke was
rising from the pistol on the ground, and he looked at his
own, and saw the smoke flowing upward out of it. * I expect
that's all,' he said aloud ; " although, as he drew near the
treacherous Trampas, he kept him covered with his weapon.
The hand on the ground moved, two fingers twitched, and
then ceased ; it was, in truth, all over. As he stood looking
down at his inveterate enemy, the Virginian remarked aloud,
" I told her it would not be me."
The New England conscience of Molly Wood battled
240 Provincial Types in the Far West
with love and capitulated ; and the next day the Virginian
and his strenuously won bride camped together beneath the
fragrant pines of " the island," where the mountains had
long before stirred the real poetry of the Virginian's virile
but imaginative nature, — an ideal honeymoon for this heroic
horseman of the plains who, so typical of the rough condi-
tions about him, had yet an untainted heart of true romance.
CHAPTER XVII
"THE LUCK OF ROARING CAMP AND OTHER STORIES"
BY BRET HARTE
The year that " The Luck of Roaring Camp " appeared,
— the year 1871, — there was published in Blackwood's
Magazine in Edinburgh, a criticism of the short stories
contained in the volume ; and as from the beginning Bret
Harte has had a large and admiring circle of readers in
Great Britain, who have regarded him as typically and
uniquely American in his literary work, it is of interest to
give a part of this earliest critical opinion. "This sketch
['The Luck of Roaring Camp'], slight'^ and brief as it is,
answers the highest and noblest purpose of fiction. There
is more in it than in scores of three-volume novels. . . .
Nothing can be more rude or less lovely than the life here
portrayed — nothing can be more simply true than the
narrative. Here nothing is hidden, nothing excluded, no
false gloss put on ; and yet the heart is touched, the mind
elevated by the strange tale. There is neither condemna-
tion nor horror of vice in it — vice being a matter of course
in the community ; yet its tendency is more than virtuous,
it is lofty and pure. The reader laughs, but it is with a tear
in his eye, which is one of the highest luxuries of feeling."
And from that day to this "The Luck of Roaring Camp"
and its companion stories have been generally regarded as
unique and convincing dramatic sketches of strange, virile
R 241
242 Provincial Types in the Far West
Western types which could have existed only under the
peculiar conditions of Californian life in the early fifties.
Deaths were common enough in " Roaring Camp," but
births were not only a sensation, they were absolutely un-
known. So that the expected birth of a child to "Cherokee
Sal," the only woman in the camp, despite the fact that she
was of the abandoned sort, was stirring excitement in all
and even sympathy in a few. "You go in there, Stumpy,"
said a prominent member of the camp, familiarly known
as "Kentuck." "Go in there, and see what you can do.
You've had experience in them things." Stumpy, who had
in other parts been the alleged head of two families at one
time, was approved as a choice by the crowd of loungers
outside the rude cabin where the prospective mother lay,
and, bowing to the will of the majority, he disappeared
behind the cabin door to act as extempore surgeon and
midwife.
Outside, the assembled camp sat and waited and smoked.
Among this lounging group of a hundred men there were
some who were actual fugitives from justice, " some were
criminal and all were reckless." Physically, there was no
indication of their past lives written in their faces. " The
greatest scamp had a Raphael face, with a profusion of
blonde hair ; Oakhurst, a gambler, had the melancholy air
and intellectual abstraction of a Hamlet ; the coolest and
most courageous man was scarcely over five feet in height,
with a soft voice and an embarrassed, timid manner." Closer
scrutiny might have brought out certain physical deficiencies
in the matter of fingers, toes, and ears, — the strongest man
had only three fingers on his right hand and the best shot
had only one eye.
About the fire of withered pine boughs bets were freely
" The Luck of Roaring Camp ** 243
offered as to the result within the cabin, — three to five that
" Sal would get through with it " and that the child would
survive. There were side bets also on the sex and complex-
ion of the expected stranger. Suddenly, above the swaying
and moaning of the pines, the rush of the river, and the
crackling of the fire, rose a sharp, querulous cry, — a cry
unheard before in that far-away camp of rough miners.
They rose to their feet as one man ; and although a barrel
of gunpowder was proposed as a proper means of celebrat-
ing, only a few revolvers went off, for report came that
Cherokee Sal was sinking fast.
Within an hour she died, and after the settling of some
details the anxious crowd of men entered the cabin in single
file. On a pine table, swathed in red flannel and deposited
in a candle-box, lay the "last arrival" at Roaring Camp.
And beside the candle-box rested a hat. " Gentlemen,"
said the extempore midwife Stumpy, in a tone of some-
what complacent authority, " Gentlemen will please pass in
at the front door, round the table, and out at the back door.
Them as wishes to contribute anything toward the orphan
will find a hat handy." As the men passed by there were
overheard comments like these : " Is that him? " " Mighty
small specimen;" "Hasn't mor'n got the color;" "Ain't
bigger nor a derringer." Among the contributions to the
hat were a silver tobacco-box, a navy revolver, a gold speci-
men, a beautifully embroidered handkerchief (from Oak-
hurst, the gambler), a diamond breastpin, a slung shot, a Bible
(" contributor not detected "), a silver teaspoon, a pair of sur-
geon's shears, a Bank of England note for five pounds, and
two hundred dollars in loose gold and silver coin. Only one
little incident broke the monotony of this strange procession.
As Kentuck bent over the candle-box the child turned and
244 Provincial Types in the Far West
in a spasm of pain caught at his finger and held it fast for a
moment. When he got outside the cabin Kentuck, holding
up his finger, remarked in a rather pleased tone to a com-
panion, " He rastled with my finger, the d d little cuss ! "
That night neither Stumpy nor Kentuck went to bed.
When every one else had retired, Kentuck walked down to
the river, whistling reflectively, then up the gulch past the
cabin, then part way down to the river again, until finally
he returned and knocked at the cabin door, which was
opened by Stumpy. " How goes it? " said Kentuck, look-
ing at the candle-box. "All serene," returned Stumpy.
" Anything up? " " Nothing." There was an embarrassing
pause, and then the foolishly anxious Kentuck, holding up
his finger, exclaimed : " Rastled with it, — the d d little
cuss," — and withdrew.
In the ways and means suggested for rearing the new-
born infant the suggestion that a female nurse be sent for
met with no favor. No decent woman would be willing to
make Roaring Camp her home, and " they didn't want any
more of the other kind." It was at last decided to have
Stumpy — in cooperation with "Jinny," the ass — con-
tinue to act as wet-nurse, — there was something original and
heroic about the idea that pleased the camp. Certain
necessary articles for the baby were sent for to Sacramento.
" Mind," said the treasurer, as he pressed a bag of gold-
dust into the expressman's hand, " the best that can be got,
— lace, you know, and fiUgree-work and frills, — d n the
cost ! " For some strange reason the child thrived and
grew under the influence of Stumpy and the ass's milk, —
"Me and that ass," Stumpy would say, "has been father
and mother to him ! Don't you," addressing the helpless
bundle in the candle-box, " never go back on us."
" The Luck of Roaring Camp " 245
When the baby was a month old there came the necessity
for a name, — he had generally been known as " The Kid,"
"Stumpy's Boy," and "The Coyote" ("an allusion to his
vocal powers "). These, however, were felt to be vague and
somewhat unsatisfactory ; and on the theory of Oakhurst,
the gambler, that the child had brought " luck " to Roaring
Camp, it was thenceforward to be called " Luck," with
" Tommy " for a convenient prefix. No reference was made
to the mother, and the father was unknown. " It's better,"
said the gambler, " to take a fresh deal all round. Call him
Luck and start him fair." At the baby's christening, which
was intended to be a screaming burlesque for which a muti-
lated church service, a godfather, and an altar had been
prepared, little Stumpy suddenly stepped before the ex-
pectant crowd, and, looking them all stoutly in the faces,
said : " It ain't my style to spoil fun, boys, but it strikes me
that this thing ain't exactly on the squar'. It's playing it
pretty low down on this yer baby to ring in fun on him that
he ain't goin' to understand. And ef there's goin' to be any
godfathers round, I'd like to see who's got any better rights
than me." The first to break the silence that followed was
the satirist himself, who acknowledged the propriety of
Stumpy's position. Whereupon Stumpy proclaimed the
baby, " Thomas Luck, according to the laws of the United
States and the State of California, so help me God."
The unconscious influence of child life on a miners'
camp was soon illustrated and in a remarkable way. The
cabin itself was kept scrupulously clean and whitewashed ; the
rosewood cradle — "packed" eighty miles by mule — had,
as Stumpy observed, " sorter killed the rest of the furniture,"
and so made necessary the rehabilitation of the whole cabin.
The cabin's new interior so affected " Tuttle's grocery " that
246 Provincial Types in the Far West
it imported a carpet and mirrors. And even the personal
appearance and cleanliness of the men was improved, for
one of Stumpy's conditions was that " to hold The Luck " you
had to be clean. One denial of such privilege had made
Kentuck put on a clean shirt every afternoon, and he always
came to see the baby " with his face still shining from his
ablutions." For " Tommy's " repose, also, it seemed best to
stop the shouting and yelHng that had given the unfortunate
name to the camp, but vocal music was regarded as a sooth-
ing element to be desired. So that " Man-o'-War Jack "
was allowed to hold The Luck and sing his sailor song of
"The Arethusa, Seventy-Four " ; and it was a fine sight to see
the rough old English sailor rocking from side to side and
crooning to the child, while the men lay at full length under
the trees at twilight, smoking, and Hstening to the ninety
stanzas of the rather melancholy song. " An indistinct idea
that this was pastoral happiness pervaded the camp." In
the words of " Cockney " Simmons, " This 'ere kind o' think
is 'evingly."
During the long summer days, on a blanket spread over
pine boughs. The Luck would He in the gulch, while the
men were working below in the ditches ; and they got to
decorating this improvised bed with flowers and sweet-smell-
ing shrubs, and bringing him clusters of wild honeysuckle
and azaleas. Unconsciously the child was interpreting for
these rough, hard men the beauty of nature all about them ;
and many were the wonderful treasures rescued from the
woods and hillsides that " would do for Tommy." Natu-
rally some remarkable stories as to The Luck's infantile sa-
gacity were told, sometimes with a tinge of superstition in
them. One day Kentuck, in a state of excitement, related
an experience of his own : " I crep' up the bank just now.
" The Luck of Roaring Camp " 247
and dern my skin if he wasn't a-talking to a jay bird as
was a sittin' on his lap. There they was, just as free and
sociable as anything you please, a-jawin' at each other just
like two cherrybums."
It was a golden summer for Roaring Camp, — the times
were " flush," and the claims yielded enormously. No im-
migration was encouraged, all the available land about the
camp was preempted, and a reputation for good shooting
tended to keep the seclusion of the camp inviolate. But
the expressman used sometimes to gratify outside curiosity
by his wonderful stories of the camp : " They've a street up
there in ' Roaring ' that would lay over any street in Red
Dog. They've got vines and flowers round their houses, and
they wash themselves twice a day. But they're mighty
rough on strangers, and they worship an Ingin baby."
With all this prosperity came the desire to do more for
Tommy, and it was even proposed to build a hotel and
invite one or two decent famihes so that The Luck could
have the advantages of feminine society. But alas for
their high resolves and purposes ! The winter of 185 1 was
remarkable for its heavy snows, and as the spring drew on
every gulch became a roaring watercourse. The North
Fork suddenly leaped its banks, dashed up the triangular
valley of Roaring Camp, and in the night, amid the confu-
sion of rushing water and crashing trees, Stumpy's cabin
was carried away. Stumpy's body was found high up the
gulch, but The Luck had disappeared. A relief boat, how-
ever, brought news that it had picked up a man and an
infant, almost exhausted. The searchers knew at a glance
that here was Kentuck, crushed and bruised, but still hold-
ing The Luck of Roaring Camp in his arms. The child
was dead, and as they bent over Kentuck he opened his
248 Provincial Types in the Far West
eyes. "Dead ?" said Kentuck. "Yes, my man, and you
are dying too." With a smile on his face the expiring man
repeated, " Dying ! he's a-taking me with him. Tell the
boys I've got The Luck with me now." And, together,
Kentuck and the child floated out on the shadowy river that
loses itself in an unknown sea.
As strange, rough types in the picturesque and rugged
mining camp of fifty years ago, Stumpy and Kentuck
will long survive ; and through the art of the author
unsuspected qualities of mind and heart are developed in
them by the mute appeal of an abandoned woman's new-
born child.
A unique and striking figure among the "Outcasts of
Poker Flat " is Mr. John Oakhurst, type of the imperturbable,
smooth, daring, and irresistible Western gambler, who, under
unexpected conditions, develops unexpected qualities, —
the qualities of practical sympathy and heroic self-sacrifice.
He had been included among those who were destined to
leave Poker Flat, for the community had recently lost sev-
eral thousand dollars, two valuable horses, and a prominent
citizen. Two of those destined for exile were already hang-
ing to the boughs of a sycamore in the gulch ; a secret com-
mittee had even considered the hanging of Mr. Oakhurst,
one of the minority contending that " it's agin justice to let
this yer young man from Roaring Camp — an entire stran-
ger — carry away our money." The minority of the com-
mittee, however, was overruled, and Mr. Oakhurst was
included in the "deported wickedness" that was escorted
to the outskirts of Poker Flat by a body of armed men. In
this expatriated company were a young woman familiarly
known as the " Duchess," another called " Mother Shipton,"
and a third person, " Uncle Billy," a suspected sluice-robber
" The Luck of Roaring Camp " 249
and confirmed drunkard. At the outermost edge of Poker
Flat this company was set adrift, with the impHcit injunction
not to return, at the peril of their lives.
The " outcasts " decided on Sandy Bar for their destina-
tion, a camp that lay over a steep mountain range, a hard
day's travel distant. At noon the Duchess refused to go
farther, and the party halted, although scarcely half the
journey to Sandy Bar was accomplished and provisions for
delay were lacking. Mr. Oakhurst, the gambler, called it
*' throwing up their hand before the game was played out."
But they were provided with whisky, if not with any ade-
quate supply of provisions, and they were all soon in a help-
less state of stupor — all except the gambler, who never
drank, — it interfered, he said, with his profession and he
" couldn't afford it." His thought seemed never to be that
of deserting his feebler and more pitiable companions, as they
lay in a drunken stupor amid the encircling pines, — pre-
cipitous cliffs of naked granite rising above them on three
sides, and the crest of a precipice in front overlooking the
valley. They were suddenly reenforced by an eloping couple
going to Poker Flat to be married, and as the prospective
bridegroom had once lost money to Mr. Oakhurst and had it
considerately returned, he greeted the gambler as a genuine
friend and was insistent on camping with his party, assuring
Mr. Oakhurst that he had an extra mule loaded with provi-
sions, and that there was a rude attempt at a log house near
the trail. That night the women spent in the log house and
the men lay before the door. Waking benumbed with cold,
the gambler stirred the dying fire and felt on his cheek the
touch of snow ! Turning to where the thieving Uncle Billy
slept he found him gone, and the tethered mules with him.
At dawn the gambler recognized that they were "snowed
250 Provincial Types in the Far West
in," with all that implied in the loss of the trail and the cut-
ting off of provisions and rescue.
In his unsuspected kindliness of heart Mr. Oakhurst, the
gambler, was unwilling that Tom Simson and Piney, the
eloping couple, should know the real rascahty of Uncle Billy,
and implied that the latter had wandered off from the camp
and stampeded the animals by accident. And through the
gambler's request the Duchess and Mother Shipton also
gave out the same impression as to Uncle Billy's where-
abouts. But Tom seemed rather to look forward to a
week's camping with his sweetheart, and his gayety and Mr.
Oakhurst's professional calm " infected " the others. From
some unaccountable motive Mr. Oakhurst cached the whisky,
and concealed his cards. And Tom somewhat osten-
tatiously produced an accordion from his pack, from which
his sweetheart, Piney, succeeded in plucking a few reluctant
tunes to the accompaniment of Tom's bone castanets. The
lovers sang, too, a rude camp-meeting hymn, joining hands
as they did so, and the defiant covenanters' swing of the
chorus finally led the others to join in the somewhat pro-
phetic refrain : —
" Vm proud to live in the service of the Lord,
And Pm bound to die in His army."
And above these doomed singers the pines rocked and the
storm eddied.
In dividing the watch that night with Tom Simson, Mr.
Oakhurst somehow managed to take upon himself the
greater share of the duty, explaining that he had "often
been a week without sleep " when luck at poker ran high.
"When a man gets a streak of luck, — nigger-luck, — he
don't get tired. The luck gives in first. Luck," continued
" The Luck of Roaring Camp " 251
the gambler meditatively, " is a mighty queer thing. All you
know is that it's bound to change. And it's finding out when
it's going to change that makes you."
The nights were filled with the reedy notes of the accor-
dion, but music failed to fill the aching void of insufficient
food, and story-telling was suggested by Piney. However,
Mr. Oakhurst and his female companions were hardly will-
ing to relate their personal experiences in the presence of
the Innocent, as they called Tom, or of " the child," as the
Duchess and Mother Shipton called Piney; and this plan
of diversion would have fallen through had the Innocent not
been able to recall some of Mr. Pope's translation of the
" Iliad," which he had chanced upon a few months before.
He told the exciting incidents of the epic in the current
vernacular of Sandy Bar. And he got an enthusiastic hear-
ing, while the great pines in the canon seemed to bow to
the wrath of the son of Peleus. Mr. Oakhurst was espe-
cially interested in the fate of " Ash-heels," as the Innocent
insisted on caUing the " swift-footed Achilles."
A week passed over the heads of the outcasts, the sun
again abandoned them, and the leaden skies sifted swiftly
down upon them great banks of snow, till they stood more
than twenty feet above the cabin. It became increasingly
difficult to replenish the fires, and yet no one complained.
The lovers looked into each other's eyes and were happy,
but Mother Shipton seemed to sicken and fade. At mid-
night of the tenth day she called the gambler to her side,
and said, in a querulous weakness of voice : " I'm going, but
don't say anything about it. Don't waken the kids. Take
the bundle from under my head and open it." It contained
the rations she had saved for a week. " Give 'em to the
child," she said, pointing to Piney. Starvation through
252 Provincial Types in the Far West
self-sacrifice was the unexpected ending of this abandoned
woman's life.
With another unselfish motive coming to the surface,
Mr. Oakhurst took the Innocent aside and showed him a
pair of snow-shoes he had fashioned from the old pack-
saddles. The gambler announced that if by the aid of
these Tom could reach Poker Flat in two days, his sweet-
heart could be saved. Oakhurst pretended to accompany
Tom as far as the canon, unexpectedly kissing the Duchess
good-by before he went. It stirred her with emotion and
amazement; but the gambler never came back. The
Duchess, feeding the fire during the fierce storm of wind
and snow on the following night, found that some one had
quietly piled beside the hut enough fuel to last a few days
longer ; and it was not difficult to surmise that it was due
to the thoughtfulness of Oakhurst. The second night the
two women were frozen to death in each other's arms —
the soiled Duchess and the virgin Piney. " And when pity-
ing fingers brushed the snow away from their wan faces,
you could scarcely have told, from the equal peace that
dwelt upon them, which was she that had sinned."
At the head of the gulch the searchers found on one of
the largest pine trees the deuce of clubs pinned to the bark
with a bowie knife ; and on it was written in pencil, with a
firm hand, " Beneath this tree lies the body of John Oak-
hurst, who struck a streak of bad luck on the 23d Novem-
ber, 1850, and handed in his checks on the 7th of December,
1850." And underneath the snow, with a bullet through
his heart and a derringer by his side, lay the calm-faced
gambler, whose hard life was softened and ennobled at its
close by thoughtful sympathy and subHme self-sacrifice.
One of the more unusual and successful of Mr. Harte's
"The Luck of Roaring Camp*' 253
short stories in this volume is the very human and dra-
matic narrative of " How Santa Claus Came to Simp-
son's Bar." By reason of the heavy rains the North Fork
of the Sacranaento had overrun its banks and Rattlesnake
Creek had become impassable. The bowlders that marked
the ford at Simpson's Crossing were lost in the vast sheet
of water reaching to the foot-hills ; and even the stage and
the mail had to be abandoned. The mud lay so deep on the
mountain road that neither force nor profanity could hft the
wagons from the miry ruts, and the way to Simpson's Bar
was marked by broken-down teams and stranded vehicles.
The weather, too, on that Christmas eve in 1862, could
hardly have been worse ; and Simpson's Bar, as it " clung
like a swallow's nest to the rocky entablature and splintered
capitals of Table Mountain," was smitten with high winds
as well as threatened with high water.
That particular Christmas eve most of the population of
Simpson's Bar were snugly gathered at Thompson's grocery,
where a red-hot stove seemed to be the center of social
interest, in lieu of more exciting diversions. For on account
of the high water and consequent suspension of regular em-
ployment on gulch and river, there was naturally lack of
money and whisky, which usually added so much zest to the
somewhat questionable recreations of the inhabitants of the
Bar. Even the professional gambler, Mr. Hamlin, was glad
to get away with fifty dollars in his pocket, — all he could
realize from the large sums he had actually won in the prac-
tice of his profession. His impression of Simpson's Bar was
in the main complimentary, but not entirely favorable to it
as a permanent place for a needy and ambitious gambler.
" Ef I was asked," he once remarked, " ef I was asked to
pint out a purty little village where a retired sport as didn't
254 Provincial Types in the Far West
care for money could exercise hisself, frequent and lively,
I'd say Simpson's Bar ; but for a young man with a large
family depending on his exertions, it don't pay."
The group around the glowing stove in Thompson's store
were sitting in a dull apathy, which not even the sudden
•splashing of hoofs outside was effective enough to arouse.
Dick Bullen, the oracle and leader at Simpson's Bar, only
paused in the act of scraping out his pipe, and lifted his
head ; but no one else in the silent circle made any sign of
interest, or even an effort at recognition, when a man entered.
It was the familiar figure of the " Old Man," who was ap-
parently some fifty years of age, with scant and grizzled
hair, a youthful complexion, and a face of ready sympathy
that changed, chameleon-like, with " the shade and color of
contiguous moods and feelings." Coming, evidently, from
association with hilarious companions, he mistook the tem-
per of the present company, and clapping the nearest man
on the shoulder began to make what he considered an appe-
tizing allusion to " the richest yarn " he had just heard from
Jim Smiley, — " the funniest man in the Bar." When, how-
ever, the solemn judgment of the company was expressed to
the effect that Smiley was a fool and a skunk, the Old Man's
face discreetly changed to one of pessimistic assent, and he
appropriately remarked on the dismalness of the weather.
" Mighty rough papers on the boys, and no show for money
this season. And to-morrow's Christmas." . . . "Yes,"
continued the Old Man in the lugubrious tone he had
unconsciously adopted, "Yes, Christmas, and to-night's
Christmas Eve. Ye see, boys, I kinder thought — that is, I
sorter had an idee, jest passin' like, you know — that maybe
ye'd like to come over to my house to-night and have a
sort of tear round."
" The Luck of Roaring Camp " 255
The only reply to his anxious invitation came from Tom
Flynn, who wanted to know what the Old Man's wife thought
about it. There was hesitation on the part of the Old Man,
for this was his second wife, who had formerly been his cook,
and she was large and aggressive. " Before he could reply,
Joe Dimmick suggested, with great directness, that it was
the * Old Man's house,' and that, invoking the Divine Power,
if the case were his own he would invite whom he pleased,
even if in so doing he imperiled his salvation." Spurred
to unaccustomed boldness by the subtle audacity of this sug-
gestion, the Old Man sympathetically frowned, and replied :
*' Thar's no trouble about fkef. It's my own house, built
every stick on it myself Don't you be afeard o' her, boys.
She may cut up a trifle rough — ez wimmin do — but she'll
come round." He was secretly relying on " the exaltation of
liquor and the power of courageous example to sustain him
in such an emergency."
And now spoke Dick Bullen, the oracle. Taking his pipe
from his mouth, he inquired sympathetically : " Old Man, how's
that yer Johnny gettin' on ? Seems to me he didn't look so
peart last time I seed him on the bluff heavin' rocks at
Chinamen. Didn't seem to take much interest in it. Thar
was a gang of 'em by yar yesterday, — drownded out up the
river, — and I kinder thought o' Johnny, and how he'd miss
*em ! Maybe now, we'd be in the way ef he wus sick ? "
The father hastened to assure the oracle that Johnny was
better and that " a little fun might 'liven him up." Where-
upon Dick Bullen, catching up a blazing brand from the
hearth, made a leap into the night, with a characteristic howl,
and his companions followed his example, leaving the aston-
ished proprietor of Thompson's grocery alone in his deserted
rooms. The gusty night wind put out the torches, but the
256 Provincial Types in the Far West
red brands went dancing and flitting up Pine Creek Canon,
"like drunken will-o'-the-wisps," till they reached a low,
bark-thatched cabin burrowed in the side of the mountain.
It stood at the entrance to the tunnel in which the Old Man
worked when he worked at all.
Pausing out of deference to their host, who was the last to
arrive, they waited under the eaves of the cabin while the
Old Man went in to see that " things is all right." For a few
moments there was no sound but the dripping of water from
the eaves and the " rustle of wrestling boughs " above them.
Then the men began to show anxiety, and their whispered
suspicions passed back and forth : " Reckoned she's caved
in his head the first lick ! " " Decoyed him inter the tunnel
and barred him up, Hkely." " Got him down and sittin' on
him." " Prob'bly biling suthin' to heave on us ; stand clear
the door, boys ! " Suddenly the latch clicked, the door
slowly opened, and the weak treble of a small boy's voice
said hospitably, " Come in out o' the wet." It was a boy's
face that looked up at them, a face that might have been
pretty, and even refined, " but that it was darkened by evil
knowledge from within, and dirt and hard experience from
without." He had a blanket about his shoulders and had evi-
dently just risen from his bed. " Come in, and don't make
no noise. The Old Man's in there talking to mar." As
Dick Bullen caught the small boy up, blanket and all, and
pretended to toss him into the fire, the little fellow queru-
lously swore at him, crying out, " Let me be ; . . . let go
o' me . . . d' ye hear? "
Ranging themselves quietly round a long table of rough
boards, the men watched Johnny as he gravely brought
from a cupboard several articles which he laid upon the
table. " Thar's whisky. And crackers. And red herons.
"The Luck of Roaring Camp" 257
And cheese." He took a bite of the latter, and also scooped
up with his small and very dirty hand a mouthful of the
sugar he was carrying. Finally he added, in the lavishness
of his hospitality : " And terbacker. Thar's dried appils,
too, on the shelf, but I don't admire 'em. Appils is swellin'.
Thar," he concluded, " now wade in, and don't be afeard.
/ don't mind the old woman. She don't b'long to me.
S'long." With that Johnny stepped to the threshold of his
litde room just off from the main apartment, and stood there
a moment, looking at the company and disclosing his bare
feet through the folds of the blanket. When asked by Dick
Bullen why he was going to ^' turn in," Johnny repHed that
he was sick. " I've got a fevier. And childblains. And
roomatiz." With the last word Johnny suddenly vanished ;
and then, after a moment's pause, there came from the
darkness within, and apparently from under the bedclothes,
*'And biles!"
There followed an embarrassing silence, which threatened
to be as prolonged and as deep as that which surrounded
the group at Thompson's grocery, when deprecatingly sounded
from the kitchen the voice of the Old Man, lying to his irate
second wife : " Certainly ! Thet's so. In course they is.
A gang o' lazy, drunken loafers, and that ar Dick Bullen's
the ornariest of all. Didn't hev no more sabe than to come
round yar, with sickness in the house and no provision.
Thet's what I said : * Bullen,' sez I, ' it's crazy drunk you
are, or a fool,' sez I, ' to think o' such a thing.' * Staples,'
I sez, ' be you a man, Staples, and 'spect to raise h — 11 un-
der my roof, and invahds lyin' round?' But they would
come, — they would. Thet's wot you must 'spect o' such
trash as lays round the Bar." Whereupon a burst of laugh-
ter rose from the listening men ; and whether it was overheard
258 Provincial Types in the Far West
in the kitchen or whether the wrathful wife, having exhausted
all her other modes of contempt, was giving her last exhibition
of temper, the back door was suddenly slammed with great
violence. In a moment the Old Man himself, reappeared,
happily unaware of the cause of the recent hilarious out-
break, and smiling blandly, remarked, "The old woman
thought she'd jest run over to Mrs. McFadden's for a
sociable call."
Till nearly midnight the festivities of Christmas eve were
continued, when from Johnny's little room came the queru-
lous cry, " Oh, dad." Dick Bullen, holding up his hand,
said, " Hush," and theOld Man hurriedly disappeared in the
bedroom. " His rheumatiz is coming on bad," said the
father, on his reappearance, "and he wants rubbin'." But,
alas ! the demijohn on the table was empty. The men set
down their tin cups, in their generous anxiety, and the Old
Man hopefully remarked that he reckoned the whisky in
them would be enough. He enjoined them to wait till he
got back, and disappeared with the whisky and an old
flannel shirt.
Through the partly closed door was distinctly audible this
peculiar dialogue: " Hevin' a good time out yar, dad?"
" Yes, sonny." " To-morrer's Chrismiss, — ain't it ? " " Yes,
sonny. How does she feel now?" "Better. Rub a httle
furder down. Wot's Chrismiss, any way? Wot's it all
about ?" "Oh, it's a day." There was a silent interval of
rubbing, and then Johnny's voice was again heard : " Mar
sez that everywhere else but yer everybody gives things to
everybody Chrismiss, and then she jest waded inter you.
She sez thar's a man they call Sandy Claws, not a white man,
you know, but a kind o' Chinemin — comes down the
chimbley night afore Chrismiss and gives things to chillern,
"The Luck of Roaring Camp'* 259
— boys like me. Puts 'em in their butes ! Thet's what she
tried to play upon me. Easy, now, pop, whar are you rub-
bin' to, — thet's a mile from the place. She jest made that
up, didn't she, jest to aggrevate me and you? Don't rub
thar. . . . Why, dad ! "
In the great quiet that followed could be heard the sigh-
ing of the neighboring pines and the dripping of the leaves.
Johnny's voice grew lower as he went on : " Don't you take
on now, for I'm gettin' all right fast. Wot's the boys doin'
out thar?" Through the partly opened door the Old Man
could see his guests sitting there sociably enough, with a few
coins and a lean buckskin purse lying on the table. " Bettin'
on suthin', some little game or 'nother. They're all right,"
he replied to Johnny, and renewed his rubbing. Johnny
expressed a wish that he could take a hand and win some
money, and the Old Man glibly repeated his old formula of
consolation that when he struck it rich in the tunnel Johnny
would have lots of money. " Yes," said Johnny, " but you
don't. And whether you strike it or win it, it's about the
same. It's all luck. But it's mighty cur'o's about Chrismiss,
— ain't it? Why do they call it Chrismiss ? " But whether
from deference to the ears of his guests, or from "some
vague sense of incongruity," the Old Man's reply was so low
as not to reach the outer room. " Yes," said Johnny, with
slighter interest in his voice, " I've heerd o' him before.
Thar, that'll do, dad. I don't ache near so bad as I did."
Asking his father to wrap the blanket tightly about him, and
to sit down by him till he went to sleep, Johnny disengaged
one hand from the blanket, and, taking hold of his father's
sleeve to assure himself that he was there, he finally fell
asleep.
The unusual stillness in the house prompted the Old Man
i6o Provincial Types in the Far West
to open the door with his disengaged hand, and look into
the main room. What was his surprise to find it dark and
apparently deserted. But at that moment a sudden flame
from the smoldering log leaped up and lighted the face of
Dick Bullen, sitting alone before the dying embers. Dick
explained that the rest had gone up the caiion and that he
was waiting for them. The Old Man stared at Dick as if he
were drunk, and, in fact, his face was flushed and his eyes
moist — but not from liquor. Dick defended himself from
the implied charge by remarking : " Liquor ain't so plenty
as that, Old Man. Now don't you git up," he continued,
as the father made a movement to release his sleeve from
Johnny's hand. " Don't you mind manners. Sit jest whar
you be ; I'm goin' in a jiffy. Thar, that's them now." And
saying good-night to his host, he disappeared in the night.
The Old Man, drawing his chair closer to the bed, rested
his head upon it, and under the influence of his earlier
potations soon fell asleep.
Meanwhile, outside, Dick Bullen was preparing for a fifty-
mile ride, through the night and the surging waters, in search
of toys for Johnny's Christmas morning; but before he
started he reentered the cabin, tiptoed into the little room
where the sick Johnny and his father lay asleep, and bent
down over the little boy as if to kiss his forehead. Sud-
denly, however, an inconsiderate blast swept down the chim-
ney and rekindled the hearth, and Dick fled in foolish terror.
Once more with his companions at the crossing, he stood
ready to mount the mare Jovita for his perilous night ride.
Two of them were struggling with her in the darkness. " She
was not a pretty picture. From her Roman nose to her
rising haunches, from her arched spine, hidden by the stiff
machillas of a Mexican saddle, to her thick, straight, bony
"The Luck of Roaring Camp" 261
Jegs, there was not a line of equine grace. In her half-blind
but wholly vicious white eyes, in her protruding under lip,
in her monstrous color, there was nothing but ugliness and
vice." " Now, then," said Staples, " stand cl'ar of her heels,
boy, and up with you." A leap, a struggle, a play and jingle
of spurs, a plunge, — and then the voice of Dick Bullen
sounded out from the darkness, "All right ! "
At one o'clock he had only gained Rattlesnake Hill, owing
to Jovita's rearing and plunging and mad shooting off on a
tangent with the bit in her teeth. Down the long hill that
led to Rattlesnake Creek Dick pretended to hold her in by
swearing at her and by well-feigned cries of alarm; where-
upon Jovita ran away, as Dick intended she should, and
made the long descent to the creek in a record-breaking
time that became a tradition of Simpson's Bar. At Rattle-
snake Creek, under her acquired momentum, they made a
mighty leap into the rushing current, and after much kick-
ing and wading and swimming she brought Dick safely
through to the opposite bank. At two o'clock he had
passed Red Mountain, and a few minutes later the driver
of the fast Pioneer coach was overtaken. At half-past two
Dick rose in his stirrups and gave a great shout, for there
beneath the stars that glittered through the cloud rifts
towered two spires and a flagstaff, and in a few minutes
Jovita and her rider drew up before " The Hotel of All
Nations " in Tuttleville.
Giving Jovita over to the care of a sleepy hostler, " whom
she at once kicked into unpleasant consciousness," Dick
Bullen made a sally with the barkeeper through the sleeping
town. Avoiding the few saloons and gambling houses that
were still open, they knocked at several closed shops, whose
proprietors sometimes cursed but oftener showed interest in
262 Provincial Types in the Far West
Dick's unusual errand of buying some Christmas toys for a
sick little boy in Simpson's Bar. At three o'clock Dick had
his toys for Johnny snugly safe in a small waterproof bag
strapped on his shoulders, and springing to his saddle he
dashed down the deserted street and out into the lonelier
plain, from which the lights of the town, the spires, and the
flagstaff sank gradually into the earth behind him.
Toward dawn, as Dick was singing and allowing the reins
to rest lightly on Jovita's neck, she suddenly shied. A high-
wayman grasped her bridle, and another commanded Dick
to throw up his hands. Jovita rose straight in the air,
threw off the figure with a vicious shake of her head, and
" charged with deadly malevolence on the impediment
before her." There was an oath, a pistol shot, and then
Jovita was a hundred yards away, with the arm of her rider,
shattered by a bullet, hanging helplessly at his side. His
only fear now was that he would be too late. The morning
stars had begun to pale, and the distant peaks stood out
blackly against a lighter sky. He felt a roaring in his ears,
due perhaps to exhaustion from loss of blood ; but he at
last had reached Rattlesnake Creek, which now had doubled
its volume and rolled a resistless river. For the first time
the heart of Richard Bullen sank within him ; but casting
off his coat, his pistol, his boots and saddle, and binding
his precious bag of toys tightly to his shoulders, he gripped
the bare flanks of Jovita with his naked knees, and with a
shout dashed into the rushing water. A cry arose from the
opposite bank at sight of the struggling man and horse, and
then horse and rider were swept down the mad current
in the midst of uprooted trees and whirhng driftwood.
A Httle later, at the log cabin in Simpson's Bar, the Old
Man woke at dawn to hear a sudden rapping on the door ;
" The Luck of Roaring Camp " 263
and as he opened it he fell back with a cry before the drip-
ping, half-naked figure that staggered against the doorpost.
It was Dick BuUen, and his first question was, " Is he awake
yet?" Assured that the sick little Johnny was still asleep,
he asked for some whisky. But alas ! for the exhausted
rider, when the Old Man returned it was only with an empty
bottle. Dick caught at the handle of the door and said
eagerly : " Thar's suthin' in my pack yer for Johnny. Take
it off. I can't." And when the Old Man unstrapped the
pack and laid it before Dick, there were only a few cheap
toys covered with tinsel and paint — one broken, one ruined
by the water, and one stained with a cruel spot of blood.
*^ It don't look hke much, that's a fact," said Dick regret-
fully. ... " But it's the best we could do. . . . Take
'em, Old Man, and put 'em in his stocking, and tell him —
tell him, you know," — the Old Man hastened to support
Dick's sinking figure, — " tell him," said Dick with a foolish
little laugh, " tell him Sandy Glaus has come." And Richard
Bullen, who came in so unexpected a guise as Santa Claus,
fell fainting on the threshold, as the Christmas dawn came
slowly up, " touching the remoter peaks with the rosy warmth
of ineffable love. And it looked so tenderly on Simpson's
Bar that the whole mountain, as if caught in a generous
action, blushed to the skies."
Of such generous impulses, easy daring, and unconsidered
self-sacrifice as Dick Bullen's were some of these pioneer
types compounded, even if with these qualities went others
that were sadly incongruous. And the same strange mix-
ture of traits is seen in the dirty and profane little Johnny,
who was yet as hospitable in heart and as tender in his
affection as the Old Man who sat patiently by his bed that
Christmas night and showed the real love of a father.
264 Provincial Types in the Far West
Whether one becomes absorbed in the story of " MHss,"
the willful but devoted little schoolgirl of Smith's Pocket ;
or in the pathetic sketch of " Higgles " and her helpless
" baby " Jim, who had once been her extravagant admirer,
but had been smitten into imbecility by a " stroke " ; or in
the unavaihng generosity of "Tennessee's Partner"; or in
that dramatic ride of Dick BuUen and Jovita, across the
torrent of Rattlesnake Creek, that " Sandy " Claus might
come in time to Simpson's Bar, — it would be difficult to
say in which of these stories may be found the deftest
touches in the characterization of those strange pioneer
types that live again through the picturesque genius of
Bret Harte.
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AMERICAN HISTORY AND ACHIEVEMENT will be the "key topic" for a
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THE RACIAL COMPOSITION OF THE
AMERICAN PEOPLE
By John R. Commons
A series of nine illustrated articles showing how the different nationalities have con-
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leave the old world for the new, and the effect their residence and citizenship are
having on our national life. Outline of Chapters: I. The Race Problem in Gen-
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OF THE UNITED STATES
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AMERICAN SCULPTORS AND THEIR ART
By William Ordway Partridge
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173 Provincial types in
P7F5 American fiction
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