I START IN A LONG WAY

I journeyed to Canton in the midst of the haying season. After the long stretches of forest road we hurried along between fragrant fields of drying hay. At each tavern we first entered the barroom where the landlord—always a well-dressed man of much dignity and filled with the news of the time, that being a part of his entertainment—received us with cheerful words. His housekeeper was there and assigned our quarters for the night. Our evenings were spent playing cards or backgammon or listening to the chatter of our host by the fireside. At our last stop on the road I opened my trunk and put on my best suit of clothes.

We reached Canton at six o'clock in the evening of a beautiful summer day. I went at once to call upon the Dunkelbergs and learned from a man at work in the dooryard that they had gone away for the summer. How keen was my disappointment! I went to the tavern and got my supper and then over to Ashery Lane to see Michael Hacket and his family. I found the schoolmaster playing his violin.

"Now God be praised—here is Bart!" he exclaimed as he put down his instrument and took my hands in his. "I've heard, my boy, how bravely ye've weathered the capes an' I'm proud o' ye—that I am!"

I wondered what he meant for a second and then asked:

"How go these days with you?"

"Swift as the weaver's shuttle," he answered. "Sit you down, while I call the family. They're out in the kitchen putting the dishes away. Many hands make light labor."

They came quickly and gathered about me—a noisy, happy group. The younger children kissed me and sat on my knees and gave me the small news of the neighborhood.

How good were the look of those friendly faces and the full-hearted pleasure of the whole family at my coming!

"What a joy for the spare room!" exclaimed the schoolmaster. "Sure I wouldn't wonder if the old bed was dancin' on its four legs this very minute."

"I intend to walk up to the hills to-night," I said.

"Up to the hills!" he exclaimed merrily. "An' the Hackets lyin' awake thinkin' o' ye on the dark road! Try it, boy, an' ye'll get a crack with the ruler and an hour after school. Yer aunt and uncle will be stronger to stand yer comin' with the night's rest upon them. Ye wouldn't be routin' them out o' bed an' they after a hard day with the hayin'! Then, my kind-hearted lad, ye must give a thought to Michael Henry. He's still alive an' stronger than ever—thank God!"

So, although I longed for those most dear to me up in the hills, I spent the night with the Hackets and the schoolmaster and I sat an hour together after the family had gone to bed.

"How are the Dunkelbergs?" I asked.

"Sunk in the soft embrace o' luxury," he answered. "Grimshaw made him; Grimshaw liked him. He was always ready to lick the boots o' Grimshaw. It turned out that Grimshaw left him an annuity of three thousand dollars, which he can enjoy as long as he observes one condition."

"What is that?"

"He must not let his daughter marry one Barton Baynes, late o' the town o' Ballybeen. How is that for spite, my boy? They say it's written down in the will."

I think that he must have seen the flame of color playing on my face, for he quickly added:

"Don't worry, lad. The will o' God is greater than the will o' Grimshaw. He made you two for each other and she will be true to ye, as true as the needle to the north star."

"Do you think so?"

"Sure I do. Didn't she as much as tell me that here in this room—not a week ago? She loves ye, boy, as true as God loves ye, an' she's a girl of a thousand.

"Her father is a bit too fond o' money. I've never been hard struck with him. It has always seemed to me that he was afflicted with perfection—a camellia man!—so invariably neat and proper and conventional! Such precise and wearisome rectitude! What a relief it would be to see him in his shirt-sleeves or with soiled boots or linen or to hear him say something—well-unexpected! Six shillings a week to the church and four to charity, as if that were the contract—no more, no less! But did ye ever hear o' his going out o' his way to do a good thing—say to help a poor woman left with a lot o' babies or a poor lad that wants to go to school? 'No, I'm very sorry, but I give four shillings a week to charity and that's all I can afford.'"

"Why did they go away? Was it because I was coming?"

"I think it likely, my fine lad. The man heard o' it some way—perhaps through yer uncle. He's crazy for the money, but he'll get over that. Leave him to me. I've a fine course o' instruction ready for my Lord o' Dunkelberg."

"I think I shall go and try to find her," I said.

"I am to counsel ye about that," said the schoolmaster. "She's as keen as a brier—the fox! She says, 'Keep away. Don't alarm him, or he'll bundle us off to Europe for two or three years.'

"So there's the trail ye travel, my boy. It's the one that keeps away. Don't let him think ye've anything up the sleeve o' yer mind. Ye know, lad, I believe Sally's mother has hold o' the same rope with her and when two clever women get their wits together the divvle scratches his head. It's an old sayin', lad, an' don't ye go out an' cut the rope. Keep yer head cool an' yer heart warm and go right on with yer business. I like the whole plan o' this remarkable courtship o' yours."

"I guess you like it better than I do," was my answer.

"Ah, my lad, I know the heart o' youth! Ye'd like to be puttin' yer arms around her—wouldn't ye, now? Sure, there's time enough! You two young colts are bein' broke' an' bitted. Ye've a chance now to show yer quality—yer faith, yer loyalty, yer cleverness. If either one o' ye fails that one isn't worthy o' the other. Ye're in the old treadmill o' God—the both o' ye! Ye're bein' weighed an' tried for the great prize. It's not pleasant, but it's better so. Go on, now, an' do yer best an' whatever comes take it like a man."

A little silence followed. He broke it with these words:

"Ye're done with that business in Cobleskill, an' I'm glad. Ye didn't know ye were bein' tried there—did ye? Ye've stood it like a man. What will ye be doin' now?"

"I'd like to go to Washington with the Senator."

He laughed heartily.

"I was hopin' ye'd say that," he went on. "Well, boy, I think it can be arranged. I'll see the Senator as soon as ever he comes an' I believe he'll be glad to know o' yer wishes. I think he's been hopin', like, that ye would propose it. Go up to the farm and spend a happy month or two with yer aunt an' uncle. It'll do ye good. Ye've been growin' plump down there. Go an' melt it off in the fields."

"How is Deacon Binks?" I asked presently.

"Soul buried in fat! The sparkler on his bosom suggests a tombstone stickin' out of a soiled snowbank."

A little more talk and we were off to bed with our candles.

Next morning I went down into the main street of the village before leaving for home. I wanted to see how it looked and, to be quite frank, I wanted some of the people of Canton to see how I looked, for my clothes were of the best cloth and cut in the latest fashion. Many stopped me and shook my hand—men and women who had never noticed me before, but there was a quality in their smiles that I didn't quite enjoy. I know now that they thought me a little too grand on the outside. What a stern-souled lot those Yankees were! "All ain't gold that glitters." How often I had heard that version of the old motto!

"Why, you look like the Senator when he is just gittin' home from the capital," said Mr. Jenison.

They were not yet willing to take me at the par of my appearance.

I met Betsy Price—one of my schoolmates—on the street. She was very cordial and told me that the Dunkelbergs had gone to Saratoga.

"I got a letter from Sally this morning," Betsy went on. "She said that young Mr. Latour was at the same hotel and that he and her father were good friends."

I wonder if she really enjoyed sticking this thorn into my flesh—a thorn which made it difficult for me to follow the advice of the schoolmaster and robbed me of the little peace I might have enjoyed. My faith in Sally wavered up and down until it settled at its wonted level and reassured me.

It was a perfect summer morning and I enjoyed my walk over the familiar road and up into the hill country. The birds seemed to sing a welcome to me. Men and boys I had known waved their hats in the hay-fields and looked at me. There are few pleasures in this world like that of a boy getting home after a long absence. My heart beat fast when I saw the house and my uncle and Purvis coming in from the twenty-acre lot with a load of hay. Aunt Deel stood on the front steps looking down the road. Now and then her waving handkerchief went to her eyes. Uncle Peabody came down the standard off his load and walked toward me.

"Say, stranger, have you seen anything of a feller by the name o' Bart Baynes?" he demanded.

"Have you?" I asked.

"No, sir, I ain't. Gosh a'mighty! Say! what have ye done with that boy of our'n?"

"What have you done to our house?" I asked again.

"Built on an addition."

"That's what I've done to your boy," I answered.

"Thunder an' lightnin'! How you've raised the roof!" he exclaimed as he grabbed my satchel. "Dressed like a statesman an' bigger'n a bullmoose. I can't 'rastle with you no more. But, say, I'll run ye a race. I can beat ye an' carry the satchel, too."

We ran pell-mell up the lane to the steps like a pair of children.

Aunt Deel did not speak. She just put her arms around me and laid her dear old head upon my breast. Uncle Peabody turned away. Then what a silence! Off in the edge of the woodland I heard the fairy flute of a wood-thrush.

"Purvis, you drive that load on the floor an' put up the hosses," Uncle Peabody shouted in a moment. "If you don't like it you can hire 'nother man. I won't do no more till after dinner. This slave business is played out."

"All right," Purvis answered.

"You bet it's all right. I'm fer abolition an' I've stood your domineerin', nigger-driver ways long enough fer one mornin'. If you don't like it you can look for another man."

Aunt Deel and I began to laugh at this good-natured, make-believe scolding of Uncle Peabody and the emotional strain was over. They led me into the house where a delightful surprise awaited me, for the rooms had been decorated with balsam boughs and sweet ferns. A glowing mass of violets, framed in moss, occupied the center of the table. The house was filled with the odors of the forest, which, as they knew, were dear to me. I had written that they might expect me some time before noon, but I had begged them not to meet me in Canton, as I wished to walk home after my long ride. So they were ready for me.

I remember how they felt the cloth on my back and how proudly they surveyed it.

"Couldn't buy them goods 'round these parts," said Uncle Peabody. "Nor nothin' like 'em—no, sir."

"Feels a leetle bit like the butternut trousers," said Aunt Deel as she felt my coat.

"Ayes, but them butternut trousers ain't what they used to be when they was young an' limber," Uncle Peabody remarked. "Seems so they was gettin' kind o' wrinkled an' baldheaded-like, 'specially where I set down."

"Ayes! Wal I guess a man can't grow old without his pants growin' old, too—ayes!" said Aunt Deel.

"If yer legs are in 'em ev'ry Sunday they ketch it of ye," my uncle answered. "Long sermons are hard on pants, seems to me."

"An' the longer the legs the harder the sermons—in them little seats over 't the schoolhouse—ayes!" Aunt Deel added by way of justifying his complaint. "There wouldn't be so much wear in a ten-mile walk—no!"

The chicken pie was baking and the strawberries were ready for the shortcake.

"I've been wallerin' since the dew was off gittin' them berries an' vi'lets—ayes!" said Aunt Deel, now busy with her work at the stove.

"Aunt, you look as young as ever," I remarked.

She slapped my arm and said with mock severity:

"Stop that! W'y! You know better—ayes!"

How vigorously she stirred the fire then.

"I can't return the compliment—my soul! how you've changed!—ayes!" she remarked. "I hope you ain't fit no more, Bart. I can't bear to think o' you flyin' at folks an' poundin' of 'em. Don't seem right—no, it don't!"

"Why, Aunt Deel, what in the world do you mean?" I asked.

"It's Purvis's brain that does the poundin', I guess," said my uncle. "It's kind o' got the habit. It's a reg'lar beetle brain. To hear him talk, ye'd think he an' you could clean out the hull Mexican nation—barrin' accidents. Why, anybody would suppose that yer enemies go to climbin' trees as soon as they see ye comin' an' that you pull the trees up by the roots to git at 'em."

"A certain amount of such deviltry is necessary to the comfort of Mr. Purvis," I remarked. "If there is nobody else to take the responsibility for it he assumes it himself. His imagination has an intense craving for blood and violence. It's that type of American who, egged on by the slave power, is hurrying us into trouble with Mexico."

Purvis came in presently with a look in his face which betrayed his knowledge of the fact that all the cobwebs spun by his fancy were now to be brushed away. Still he enjoyed them while they lasted and there was a kind of tacit claim in his manner that there were subjects regarding which no honest man could be expected to tell the truth.

As we ate our dinner they told me that an escaped slave had come into a neighboring county and excited the people with stories of the auction block and of negroes driven like yoked oxen on plantations in South Carolina, whence he had escaped on a steamboat.

"I b'lieve I'm goin' to vote for abolition," said Uncle Peabody. "I wonder what Sile Wright will say to that."

"He'll probably advise against it, the time isn't ripe for so great a change," was my answer. "He thinks that the whole matter should be left to the glacial action of time's forces."

Indeed I had spoken the view of the sounder men of the North. The subject filled them with dread alarm. But the attitude of Uncle Peabody was significant. The sentiment in favor of a change was growing. It was now to be reckoned with, for the abolition party was said to hold the balance of power in New York and New England and was behaving itself like a bull in a china shop.

After dinner I tried to put on some of my old clothes, but found that my nakedness had so expanded that they would not cover it, so I hitched my white mare on the spring wagon and drove to the village for my trunk.

Every week day after that I worked in the fields until the Senator arrived in Canton about the middle of August. On one of those happy days I received a letter from old Kate, dated, to my surprise, in Saratoga. It said:

I understood now why the strong will and singular insight of this woman had so often exercised themselves in my behalf. I could not remember the far day and the happy circumstance of which she spoke, but I wrote her a letter which must have warmed her heart I am sure.

Silas Wright arrived in Canton and drove up to our home. He reached our door at eight in the morning with his hound and rifle. He had aged rapidly since I had seen him last. His hair was almost white. There were many new lines in his face. He seemed more grave and dignified. He did not lapse into the dialect of his fathers when he spoke of the ancient pastimes of hunting and fishing as he had been wont to do.

"Bart," he said when the greetings were over, "let's you and me go and spend a day in the woods. I'll leave my man here to help your uncle while you're gone."

We went by driving south a few miles and tramping in to the foot of the stillwater on our river—a trail long familiar to me. The dog left us soon after we took it and began to range over thick wooded hills. We sat down among small, spire-like spruces at the river's edge with a long stretch of water in sight while the music of the hound's voice came faintly to our ears from the distant forest.

"Oh, I've been dreaming of this for a long time," said the Senator as he leaned back against a tree and filled his lungs and looked out upon the water, green with lily-pads along the edge and flecked with the last of the white blossoms. "I believe you want to leave this lovely country."

"I am waiting for the call to go," I said.

"Well, I'm inclined to think you are the kind of man who ought to go," he answered almost sadly. "You are needed. I have been waiting until we should meet to congratulate you on your behavior at Cobleskill. I think you have the right spirit—that is the all-important matter. You will encounter strange company in the game of politics. Let me tell you a story."

He told me many stories of his life in Washington, interrupted by a sound like that of approaching footsteps. We ceased talking and presently a flock of partridges came near us, pacing along over the mat of leaves in a leisurely fashion. We sat perfectly still. A young cock bird with his beautiful ruff standing out, like the hair on the back of a frightened dog, strode toward us with a comic threat in his manner. It seemed as if he were of half a mind to knock us into the river. But we sat as still as stumps and he spared us and went on with the others.

The baying of the hound was nearer now. Suddenly we saw a big buck come down to the shore of the cove near us and on our side of the stream. He looked to right and left. Then he made a long leap into the water and waded slowly until it covered him. He raised his nose and laid his antlers back over his shoulders and swam quietly down-stream, his nose just showing above the water. His antlers were like a bit of driftwood. If we had not seen him take the water his antlers might easily have passed for a bunch of dead sticks. Soon the buck slowly lifted his head and turned his neck and looked at both shores. Then very deliberately he resumed his place under water and went on. We watched him as he took the farther shore below us and made off in the woods again.

"I couldn't shoot at him, it was such a beautiful bit of politics," said the Senator.

Soon the hound reached the cove's edge and swam the river and ranged up and down the bank for half an hour before he found the buck's trail again.

"I've seen many a rascal, driven to water by the hounds, go swimming away as slyly as that buck, with their horns in the air, looking as innocent as a bit of driftwood. They come in from both shores—the Whig and the Democratic—and they are always shot at from one bank or the other."

I remember it surprised me a little to hear him say that they came in from both shores.

"Just what do you want to do?" he asked presently.

"I should like to go down to Washington with you and help you in any way that I can."

"All right, partner—we'll try it," he answered gravely. "I hope that I don't forget and work you as hard as I work myself. It wouldn't be decent. I have a great many letters to write. I'll try thinking out loud while you take them down in sound-hand. Then you can draft them neatly and I'll sign them. You have tact and good manners and can do many of my errands for me and save me from those who have no good reason for taking up my time. You will meet the best people and the worst. There's just a chance that it may come to something worth while—who knows? You are young yet. It will be good training and you will witness the making of some history now and then."

What elation I felt!

Again the voice of the hound which had been ringing in the distant hills was coming nearer.

"We must keep watch—another deer is coming," said the Senator.

We had only a moment's watch before a fine yearling buck came down to the opposite shore and stood looking across the river. The Senator raised his rifle and fired. The buck fell in the edge of the water.

"How shall we get him?" my friend asked.

"It will not be difficult," I answered as I began to undress. Nothing was difficult those days. I swam the river and towed the buck across with a beech withe in his gambrel joints. The hound joined me before I was half across with my burden and nosed the carcass and swam on ahead yelping with delight.

We dressed the deer and then I had the great joy of carrying him on my back two miles across the country to the wagon. The Senator wished to send a guide for the deer, but I insisted that the carrying was my privilege.

"Well, I guess your big thighs and broad shoulders can stand it," said he.

"My uncle has always said that no man could be called a hunter until he can go into the woods without a guide and kill a deer and bring it out on his back. I want to be able to testify that I am at least partly qualified."

"Your uncle didn't say anything about fetching the deer across a deep river without a boat, did he?" Mr. Wright asked me with a smile.

Leaves of the beeches, maples and basswoods—yellowed by frost—hung like tiny lanterns, glowing with noonday light, above the dim forest-aisle which we traveled.

The sun was down when we got to the clearing.

"What a day it has been!" said Mr. Wright when we were seated in the wagon at last with the hound and the deer's head between his feet and mine.

"One of the best in my life," I answered with a joy in my heart the like of which I have rarely known in these many years that have come to me.

We rode on in silence with the calls of the swamp robin and the hermit thrush ringing in our ears as the night fell.

"It's a good time to think, and there we take different roads," said my friend. "You will turn into the future and I into the past."

"I've been thinking about your uncle," he said by and by. "He is one of the greatest men I have ever known. You knew of that foolish gossip about him—didn't you?"

"Yes," I answered.

"Well, now, he's gone about his business the same as ever and showed by his life that it couldn't be true. Not a word out of him! But Dave Ramsey fell sick—down on the flat last winter. By and by his children were crying for bread and the poor-master was going to take charge of them. Well, who should turn up there, just in the nick of time, but Delia and Peabody Baynes. They fed those children all winter and kept them in clothes so that they could go to school. The strange thing about it is this: it was Dave Ramsey who really started that story. He got up in church the other night and confessed his crime. His conscience wouldn't let him keep it. He said that he had not seen Peabody Baynes on that road the day the money was lost but had only heard that he was there. He knew now that he couldn't have been there. Gosh t'almighty! as your uncle used to say when there was nothing else to be said."

It touched me to the soul—this long-delayed vindication of my beloved Uncle Peabody.

The Senator ate supper with us and sent his hired man out for his horse and buggy. When he had put on his overcoat and was about to go he turned to my uncle and said:

"Peabody Baynes, if I have had any success in the world it is because I have had the exalted honor and consciousness that I represented men like you."

He left us and we sat down by the glowing candles. Soon I told them what Ramsey had done. There was a moment of silence. Uncle Peabody rose and went to the water-pail for a drink.

"Bart, I believe I'll plant corn on that ten-acre lot next spring—darned if I don't," he said as he returned to his chair.

None of us ever spoke of the matter again to my knowledge.

ON THE SUMMIT

My mental assets would give me a poor rating I presume in the commerce of modern scholarship when I went to Washington that autumn with Senator and Mrs. Wright. Still it was no smattering that I had, but rather a few broad areas of knowledge which were firmly in my possession. I had acquired, quite by myself since leaving the academy, a fairly serviceable reading knowledge of French; I had finished the Æneid; I had read the tragedies of Shakespeare and could repeat from them many striking passages; I had read the histories of Abbott and the works of Washington Irving and certain of the essays of Carlyle and Macaulay. My best asset was not mental but spiritual, if I may be allowed to say it, in all modesty, for, therein I claim no special advantage, saving, possibly, an unusual strength of character in my aunt and uncle. Those days the candles were lighting the best trails of knowledge all over the land. Never has the general spirit of this republic been so high and admirable as then and a little later. It was to speak, presently, in the immortal voices of Whittier, Emerson, Whitman, Greeley and Lincoln. The dim glow of the candles had entered their souls and out of them came a light that filled the land and was seen of all men. What became of this mighty spirit of democracy? My friend, it broke down and came near its death in a long, demoralizing war which gave to our young men a thorough four-year course in the ancient school of infamy.

The railroads on which we traveled from Utica, the great cities through which we passed, were a wonder and an inspiration to me. I was awed by the grandeur of Washington itself. I took lodgings with the Senator and his wife.

"Now, Bart," said he, when we had arrived, "I'm going to turn you loose here for a little while before I put harness on you. Go about for a week or so and get the lay of the land and the feel of it. Mrs. Wright will be your guide until the general situation has worked its way into your consciousness."

It seemed to me that there was not room enough in my consciousness for the great public buildings and the pictures and the statues and the vast machinery of the government. Beauty and magnitude have a wonderful effect when they spring fresh upon the vision of a youth out of the back country. I sang of the look of them in my letters and soon I began to think about them and imperfectly to understand them. They had their epic, lyric and dramatic stages in my consciousness.

One afternoon we went to hear Senator Wright speak. He was to answer Calhoun on a detail of the banking laws. The floor and galleries were filled. With what emotion I saw him rise and begin his argument as all ears bent to hear him! He aimed not at popular sentiments in highly finished rhetoric, as did Webster, to be quoted in the school-books and repeated on every platform. But no words of mine—and I have used many in the effort—are able to convey a notion of the masterful ease and charm of his manner on the floor of the Senate or of the singular modesty, courtesy, aptness and simplicity of his words as they fell from his lips. There were the thunderous Webster, the grandeur of whose sentences no American has equaled; the agile-minded Clay, whose voice was like a silver clarion; the farseeing, fiery Calhoun, of "the swift sword"—most formidable in debate—but I was soon to learn that neither nor all of these men—gifted of heaven so highly—could cope with the suave, incisive, conversational sentences of Wright, going straight to the heart of the subject and laying it bare to his hearers. That was what people were saying as we left the Senate chamber, late in the evening; that, indeed, was what they were always saying after they had heard him answer an adversary.

He had a priceless and unusual talent for avoiding school-reader English and the arts of declamation and for preparing a difficult subject to enter the average brain. The underlying secret of his power was soon apparent to me. He stood always for that great thing in America which, since then, Whitman has called "the divine aggregate," and seeing clearly how every measure would be likely to affect its welfare, he followed the compass. It had led him to a height of power above all others and was to lead him unto the loneliest summit of accomplishment in American history.

Not much in my term of service there is important to this little task of mine. I did my work well, if I may believe the Senator, and grew familiar with the gentle and ungentle arts of the politician.

One great fact grew in magnitude and sullen portent as the months passed: the gigantic slave-holding interests of the South viewed with growing alarm the spread of abolition sentiment. Subtly, quietly and naturally they were feeling for the means to defend and increase their power. Straws were coming to the surface in that session which betrayed this deep undercurrent of purpose. We felt it and the Senator was worried I knew, but held his peace. He knew how to keep his opinions until the hour had struck that summoned them to service. The Senator never played with his lance. By and by Spencer openly sounded the note of conflict.

The most welcome year of my life dawned on the first of January, 1844. I remember that I arose before daylight that morning and dressed and went out on the street to welcome it.

I had less than six months to wait for that day appointed by Sally. I had no doubt that she would be true to me. I had had my days of fear and depression, but always my sublime faith in her came back in good time.

Oh, yes, indeed, Washington was a fair of beauty and gallantry those days. I saw it all. I have spent many years in the capital and I tell you the girls of that time had manners and knew how to wear their clothes, but again the magic of old memories kept my lady on her throne. There was one of them—just one of those others who, I sometimes thought, was almost as graceful and charming and noble-hearted as Sally, and she liked me I know, but the ideal of my youth glowed in the light of the early morning, so to speak, and was brighter than all others. Above all, I had given my word to Sally and—well, you know, the old-time Yankee of good stock was fairly steadfast, whatever else may be said of him—often a little too steadfast, as were Ben Grimshaw and Squire Fullerton.

The Senator and I went calling that New Year's day. We saw all the great people and some of them were more cheerful than they had a right to be. It was a weakness of the time. I shall not go into details for fear of wandering too far from my main road. Let me step aside a moment to say, however, that there were two clouds in the sky of the Washington society of those days. One was strong drink and the other was the crude, rough-coated, aggressive democrat from the frontiers of the West. These latter were often seen in the holiday regalia of farm or village at fashionable functions. Some of them changed slowly and, by and by, reached the stage of white linen and diamond breast-pins and waistcoats of figured silk. It must be said, however, that their motives were always above their taste.

The winter wore away slowly in hard work. Mr. Van Buren came down to see the Senator one day from his country seat on the Hudson. The Ex-president had been solicited to accept the nomination again. I know that Senator Wright strongly favored the plan but feared that the South would defeat him in convention, it being well known that Van Buren was opposed to the annexation of Texas—a pet project of the slave-holders. However, he advised his friend to make a fight for the nomination and this the latter resolved to do. Thenceforward until middle May I gave my time largely to the inditing of letters for the Senator in Van Buren's behalf.

The time appointed for the convention in Baltimore drew near. One day the Senator received an intimation that he would be put in nomination if Van Buren failed. Immediately he wrote to Judge Fine, of Ogdensburg, chairman of the delegation from the northern district of New York, forbidding such use of his name on the ground that his acquiescence would involve disloyalty to his friend the Ex-president.

He gave me leave to go to the convention on my way home to meet Sally. I had confided to Mrs. Wright the details of my little love affair—I had to—and she had shown a tender, sympathetic interest in the story.

The Senator had said to me one day, with a gentle smile:

"Bart, you have business in Canton, I believe, with which trifling matters like the choice of a president and the Mexican question can not be permitted to interfere. You must take time to spend a day or two at the convention in Baltimore on your way.... Report to our friend Fine, who will look after your comfort there. The experience ought to be useful to a young man who, I hope, will have work to do in future conventions."

I took the stage to Baltimore next day—the twenty-sixth of May. The convention thrilled me—the flags, the great crowd, the bands, the songs, the speeches, the cheering—I see and hear it all in my talk. The uproar lasted for twenty minutes when Van Buren's name was put in nomination.

Then the undercurrent! The slave interest of the South was against him as Wright had foreseen. The deep current of its power had undermined certain of the northern and western delegations. Ostensibly for Van Buren and stubbornly casting their ballots for him, they had voted for the two-thirds rule, which had accomplished his defeat before the balloting began. It continued for two days without a choice. The enemy stood firm. After adjournment that evening many of the Van Buren delegates were summoned to a conference. I attended it with Judge Fine.

The Ex-president had withdrawn and requested his friends in the convention to vote for Silas Wright. My emotions can be more readily imagined than described when I heard the shouts of enthusiasm which greeted my friend's name. Tears began to roll down my cheeks. Judge Fine lifted his hand. When order was at last restored he began:

"Gentlemen, as a friend of the learned Senator and as a resident of the county which is the proud possessor of his home, your enthusiasm has a welcome sound to me; but I happen to know that Senator Wright will not allow his name to go before the convention."

He read the letter of which I knew.

Mr. Benjamin F. Butler then said:

"When that letter was written Senator Wright was not aware that Mr. Van Buren's nomination could not be accomplished, nor was he aware that his own nomination would be the almost unanimous wish of this convention. I have talked with the leading delegates from Missouri and Virginia to-day. They say that he can be nominated by acclamation. Is it possible that he—a strong party man—can resist this unanimous call of the party with whose help he has won immortal fame? No, it is not so. It can not be so. We must dispatch a messenger to him by horse at once who shall take to him from his friend Judge Fine a frank statement of the imperious demand of this convention and a request that he telegraph a withdrawal of his letter in the morning."

The suggestion was unanimously approved and within an hour, mounted on one of the best horses in Maryland—so his groom informed me—I was on my way to Washington with the message of Judge Fine in my pocket. Yes, I had two days to spare on my schedule of travel and reckoned that, by returning to Baltimore next day I should reach Canton in good time.

It was the kind of thing that only a lithe, supple, strong-hearted lad such as I was in the days of my youth, could relish—speeding over a dark road by the light of the stars and a half-moon, with a horse that loved to kick up a wind. My brain was in a fever, for the notion had come to me that I was making history.

The lure of fame and high place hurried me on. With the Senator in the presidential chair I should be well started in the highway of great success. Then Mr. H. Dunkelberg might think me better than the legacy of Benjamin Grimshaw. A relay awaited me twenty-three miles down the road.

Well, I reached Washington very sore, but otherwise in good form, soon after daybreak. I was trembling with excitement when I put my horse in the stable and rang the bell at our door. It seemed to me that I was crossing the divide between big and little things. A few steps more and I should be looking down into the great valley of the future. Yet, now that I was there, I began to lose confidence.

The butler opened the door.

Yes, the Senator was up and had just returned from a walk and was in his study. I found him there.

"Well, Bart, how does this happen?" he asked.

"It's important business," I said, as I presented the letter.

Something in his look and manner as he calmly adjusted his glasses and read the letter of Judge Fine brought the blood to my face. It seemed to puncture my balloon, so to speak, and I was falling toward the earth and so swiftly my head swam. He laid the letter on his desk and, without looking up and as coolly as if he were asking for the change of a dollar, queried:

"Well, Bart, what do you think we had better do about it?"

"I—I was hoping—you—you would take it," I stammered.

"That's because the excitement of the convention is on you," he answered. "Let us look at the compass. They have refused to nominate Mr. Van Buren because he is opposed to the annexation of Texas. On that subject the will of the convention is now clear. It is possible that they would nominate me. We don't know about that, we never shall know. If they did, and I accepted, what would be expected of me is also clear. They would expect me to abandon my principles and that course of conduct which I conceive to be best for the country. Therefore I should have to accept it under false pretenses and take their yoke upon me. Would you think the needle pointed that way?"

"No," I answered.

Immediately he turned to his desk and wrote the telegram which fixed his place in history. It said no.

Into the lives of few men has such a moment fallen. I am sure the Lord God must have thought it worth a thousand years of the world's toil. It was that moment in the life of a great leader when Satan shows him the kingdoms of the earth and their glory. I looked at him with a feeling of awe. What sublime calmness and serenity was in his face! As if it were a mere detail in the work of the day, and without a moment's faltering, he had declined a crown, for he would surely have been nominated and elected. He rose and stood looking out of the open window. Always I think of him standing there with the morning sunlight falling upon his face and shoulders. He had observed my emotion and I think it had touched him a little. There was a moment of silence. A curious illusion came to me then, for it seemed as if I heard the sound of distant music. Looking thoughtfully out of the window he asked:

"Bart, do you know when our first fathers turned out of the trail of the beast and found the long road of humanity? I think it was when they discovered the compass in their hearts."

So now at last we have come to that high and lonely place, where we may look back upon the toilsome, adventurous way we have traveled with the aid of the candle and the compass. Now let us stop a moment to rest and to think. How sweet the air is here! The night is falling. I see the stars in the sky. Just below me is the valley of Eternal Silence. You will understand my haste now. I have sought only to do justice to my friend and to give my country a name, long neglected, but equal in glory to those of Washington and Lincoln.

Come, let us take one last look together down the road we have traveled, now dim in the evening shadows. Scattered along it are the little houses of the poor of which I have written. See the lights in the windows—the lights that are shining into the souls of the young—the eager, open, expectant, welcoming souls of the young!—and the light carries many things, but best of all a respect for the old, unchanging way of the compass. After all that is the end and aim of the whole matter—believe me.

My life has lengthened into these days when most of our tasks are accomplished by machinery. We try to make men by the thousand, in vast educational machines, and no longer by the one as of old. It was the loving, forgiving, forbearing, patient, ceaseless toil of mother and father on the tender soul of childhood, which quickened that inextinguishable sense of responsibility to God and man in these people whom I now leave to the judgment of my countrymen.

I have lived to see the ancient plan of kingcraft, for self-protection, coming back into the world. It demands that the will and conscience of every individual shall be regulated and controlled by some conceited prince, backed by an army. It can not fail, I foresee, to accomplish such devastation in the human spirit as shall imperil the dearest possession of man.

If one is to follow the compass he can have but one king—his God.

I am near the end. I rode back to Baltimore that forenoon. They had nominated Mr. Polk, of Tennessee, for president and Silas Wright for vice-president, the latter by acclamation. I knew that Wright would decline the honor, as he did.

I hurried northward to keep my appointment with Sally. The boats were slowed by fog. At Albany I was a day behind my schedule. I should have only an hour's leeway if the boats on the upper lakes and the stage from Plattsburg were on time. I feared to trust them. So I caught the west-bound train and reached Utica three hours late. There I bought a good horse and his saddle and bridle and hurried up the north road. When he was near spent I traded him for a well-knit Morgan mare up in the little village of Sandy Creek. Oh, I knew a good horse as well as the next man and a better one than she I never owned—never. I was back in my saddle at six in the afternoon and stopped for feed and an hour's rest at nine and rode on through the night. I reached the hamlet of Richville soon after daybreak and put out for a rest of two hours. I could take it easy then. At seven o'clock the mare and I started again, well fed and eager to go on.

It was a summer morning that shortens the road—even that of the young lover. Its air was sweet with the breath of the meadows. The daisies and the clover and the cornflowers and the wild roses seemed to be waving a welcome to me and the thorn trees—shapely ornament of my native hills—were in blossom. A cloud of pigeons swept across the blue deep above my head. The great choir of the fields sang to me—bobolinks, song sparrows, meadowlarks, bluebirds, warblers, wrens, and far away in the edge of a spruce thicket I heard the flute of the white-throated sparrow in this refrain: