But this persecution was simply unalloyed felicity when compared with the suffering that came in other forms. I will not attempt to give the number of the letters I received. I cherish a conviction that the mail received at our post-office doubled the first week after Judge Pitman's cure was announced to a hairless world. I think every bald-headed man in the Tropic of Cancer must have written to me at least twice upon the subject of Pulsifer's Renovator and Pitman's hair. Persons dropped me a line to inquire if Pitman's baldness was hereditary; and if so, if it came from his father's or his mother's side. One man, a phrenologist, sent on a plaster head mapped out into town-lots, with a suggestion that I should ink over the bumps that had been barest and most fertile in the case of Pitman. He said he had a little theory which he wanted to demonstrate. A man in San Francisco wrote to inquire if my Pitman was the same Pitman who came out to California in 1849 with a bald head; and if he was, would I try to collect two dollars Pitman had borrowed from him in that year? The superintendent of a Sunday-school in Vermont forwarded eight pages of foolscap covered with an argument supporting the theory that it was impious to attempt to force hair to grow upon a head which had been made bald, because, although Elisha was bald, we find no record in the Bible that he used renovator of any kind. He warned Pitman to beware of Absalom's fate, and to avoid riding mules out in the woods. A woman in Snyder county, Penna., sent me a poem inspired by the incident, and entitled "Lines on the Return of Pitman's Hair." A party in Kansas desired to know whether I thought Pulsifer's Renovator could be used beneficially by a man who had been scalped. Two men in New Jersey wrote, in a manner totally irrelevant to the subject, to inquire if I could get each of them a good hired girl. I received a confidential letter from a man who was willing to let me into a "good thing" if I had five hundred dollars cash capital. Mrs. Singerly, of Frankford, related that she had shaved her dog, and shaved him too close, and she would be relieved if I would inform her if the Renovator would make hair grow on a dog. A devoted mother in Rhode Island said her little boy had accidentally drank a bottle of the stuff, and she would go mad unless I could assure her that there was no danger of her child having his stomach choked up with hair. And over eleven hundred boys inquired what effect the Renovator would have on the growth of whiskers which betrayed an inclination to stagnation.
But the visitors were a more horrible torment. Bald men came to see me in droves. They persecuted me at home and abroad. If I went to church, the sexton would call me out during the prayers to see a man in the vestibule who wished to ascertain if Pitman merely bathed his head or rubbed the medicine in with a brush. When I went to a party, some bald-headed miscreant would stop me in the midst of the dance to ask if Pitman's hair began to grow in the full of the moon or when it was new. While I was being shaved, some one would bolt into the shop and insist, as the barber held me by the nose, upon knowing whether Pitman wore ventilators in his hat. If I attended a wedding, as likely as not a bare-headed outlaw would stand by me at the altar and ask if Pitman ever slept in nightcaps; and more than once I was called out of bed at night by wretches who wished to learn, before they left the town, if I thought it hurt the hair to part it behind.
It became unendurable. I issued orders to the servants to admit to the house no man with a bald head. But that very day a stranger obtained admission to the parlor; and when I went down to see him, he stepped softly around, closed all the doors mysteriously, and asked me, in a whisper, if any one could hear us. Then he pulled off a wig; and handing me a microscope, he requested me to examine his scalp and tell him if there was any hope. I sent him over to see Pitman; and I gloat over the fact that he bored Pitman for two hours with his baldness.
I am sorry now that I ever wrote anything upon the subject of his hair. A bald Pitman, I know, is less fascinating than a Pitman with hair; but rather than have suffered this misery, I would prefer a Pitman without an eye-winker, or fuzz enough on him to make a camel's-hair pencil. But I shall hardly give another certificate of cure in any event. If I should see a patent-medicine man take a mummy which died the year Joseph was sold into Egypt, and dose it until it kicked off its rags and danced the polka mazourka while it whistled the tune, I would die at the stake sooner than acknowledge the miracle on paper. Pitman's hair winds me up as far as medical certificates are concerned.
Bob has succeeded in obtaining from Mr. Magruder an explanation of the interference of that stern parent with the progress of his love affair, and we hope now to secure a happy adjustment of the difficulty.
"When I entered the room," said Bob, "the old man looked gloomy and stiff, as if he regarded me as a totally depraved being, too far gone in iniquity to be worth an effort to effect a reform. I went right at him. I told him I had heard that some one had made certain charges against me which were likely to hurt my reputation, and that it was because of these that he had refused to permit me to marry his daughter.
"He said I had stated the case correctly. Then I asked him to give me the name of the person who had made these accusations. He hesitated for a few moments, and I then declared that the charges were false and slanderous, and asserted that I had a right to know who the author of them was.
"After thinking over the matter for a while, he said,
"'Well, Mr. Parker, I believe you have that right. I have thought lately that I did not perhaps treat you very fairly in not bringing you face to face in the first place with the man who accused you. But I almost pledged myself to regard his statements as confidential; and as the evidence seemed to be overwhelming against you, I concluded not to offer you the opportunity. Mrs. Magruder takes a different view of the matter. She thinks you should not be condemned without a hearing, and she distrusts your accuser. His name is Smiley—Lieutenant Smiley.'
"Then the old man went on," said Bob, "and told me that Smiley had sought a private interview with him, at which Smiley had declared that I was not only a debauchee, but an atheist. He made this statement, he told Mr. Magruder, with reluctance and regret, but he felt that as a friend of the family he had a duty to perform which was imperative. Smiley declared that he had frequently seen me under the influence of liquor, and that I had often attacked him for professing to believe in the Christian religion. A splendid old professor of religion he is!" exclaimed Mr. Parker. "And then," continued Bob, "Mr. Magruder said Smiley produced two letters, one from a man named Dewey who pretended to be the pastor of a church in Philadelphia, from which he said I was dismissed for expressing atheistical opinions, and the other from a certain Samuel Stonebury, wherein Samuel gave me a dreadful character for honesty and sobriety.
"Thereupon I informed Mr. Magruder that I knew of no clergyman named Dewey, and that I didn't believe such a man existed in Philadelphia; that I never belonged to any church, and certainly was never kicked out of one because of my atheistical opinions, for I never entertained such views. I informed him also that Mr. Stonebury was a youth who was once employed in our store, and who was discharged because I discovered that he had been stealing. How Smiley found him I can't imagine. They must have had a natural tendency to gravitate toward each other as children of the same old father of lies.
"Then Mr. Magruder said that if I could prove these facts he would not only hand Bessie over to me again, but he would also make me a very humble apology. I promised to accomplish these results, and to-morrow I will set about the work. I have no doubt at all that Stonebury wrote the letter signed 'Dewey,' and that Smiley suggested that playful little dodge to him. I will move on Smiley's works when I meet him. He is the wickedest kind of a scoundrel."
And so the case of Parker versus Smiley stands at present. I should have a higher respect for Magruder if he had acted more justly with Bob in the first place. If Mrs. Magruder's instinct and common sense had not induced her to regard Smiley with suspicion, I am afraid that Bob's wrongs would never have been righted. The doctor is evidently the wiser and better person of the two, and I am not surprised now that she keeps her husband a little in the background.
Some relatives of the Magruders named Kemper came to the village to live a few weeks ago, and they rented a house not far from mine. We have a life insurance agent in the town named Benjamin P. Gunn, and he is decidedly the most enterprising and indefatigable of the fraternity of which he is a member. He has already bored everybody in the county nearly to death, and it is easy to imagine the delight he feels when a new victim comes within his reach. The Kempers were hardly fixed in their new home when Gunn, who had been awaiting with impatience a chance to attack them, one morning called for the purpose of ascertaining if he could induce Mr. Kemper to take out a policy of insurance upon his life. In response to his summons Mrs. Kemper came into the parlor to see him. The following conversation then ensued:
"I suppose," said Gunn, "Mr. Kemper has no insurance on his life?"
"No," said Mrs. Kemper.
"Well, I'd like to get him to take a policy in our company. It's the safest in the world—the largest capital, smallest rates and biggest dividends."
"Mr. Kemper don't take much interest in such things now," said Mrs. K.
"Well, madam, but he ought to, in common justice to you. No man knows when he will die; and by paying a ridiculously small sum now, Mr. Kemper can leave his family in affluence. I'd like to hand you, for him, a few pamphlets containing statistics upon the subject; may I?"
"Of course, if you wish to."
"Don't you think he can be induced to insure?" asked Gunn.
"I hardly think so," replied Mrs. Kemper.
"He is in good health, I suppose? Has he complained lately of being sick?"
"Not lately."
"May I ask if he has any considerable wealth?"
"Not a cent."
"Then, of course, he must insure. No poor man can afford to neglect such an opportunity. I suppose he travels sometimes—goes about in railroad cars and other dangerous places?"
"No, he keeps very quiet."
"Man of steady habits, I s'pose?"
"Very steady."
"He is the very man I want," said Gunn. "I know I can sell him a policy."
"I don't think you can," replied Mrs. Kemper.
"Why? When will he be home? I'll call on him. I don't know of any reason why I shouldn't insure him."
"I know," replied Mrs. K.
"Why?"
"He has been dead twenty-seven years!" said the widow.
Then Mr. Gunn said "good-morning," and returned to his office. The widow must have told the story to some one, probably to Magruder, for it was soon known all over town, and those who had suffered from an excess of Gunn gloried in his discomfiture. As this was the first time in his career that he had ever been down, it is not surprising that several of his enemies should improve the opportunity by giving him a few vigorous kicks. The most venomous attack upon him, however, appeared in the Argus. It came, I think, from that remarkable medical man Dr. Tobias Jones, who dislikes Gunn because he employs a rival physician, Dr. Brindley, to examine persons who apply for policies. He called the article
His name was Benjamin P. Gunn, and he was the agent for a life insurance company. He came around to my office fourteen times in one morning to see if he could not persuade me to take out a policy. He used to waylay me on the street, at church, in my own house, and bore me about that policy. If I went to the opera, Gunn would buy the seat next to me, and sit there the whole evening talking about sudden death and the advantages of the ten-year plan. If I got into a railway car, Gunn would come rushing in and sit by my side, and drag out a lot of mortality tables and begin to explain how I could gouge a fortune out of his company. If I sat down to dinner in a restaurant, up would come Gunn; and seizing the chair next to me, he would tell a cheering anecdote about a man who insured in his company for $50,000 only last week, and was buried yesterday. If I attended the funeral of a departed friend, and wept as they threw the earth upon his coffin, I would hear a whisper; and turning around, there would be the indomitable Benjamin P. Gunn, bursting to say, "Poor Smith! Knew him well. Insured for ten thousand in our company. Widow left in comfortable circumstances. Let me take your name. Shall I?"
He followed me everywhere, until at last I got so sick of Gunn's persecutions that I left town suddenly one evening and hid myself in a distant city, hoping to get rid of him. At the end of two weeks I returned, reaching home at one o'clock in the morning. I had hardly got into bed before there was a ring at the door-bell. I looked out, and there was Gunn with another person. Mr. Gunn observed that he expected my return, and thought he would call around about that insurance policy. He said he had the doctor with him, and if I would come down he would take my name and have me examined immediately. I was too indignant to reply. I shut the window with a slam and went to bed again. After breakfast in the morning I opened the front door, and there was Gunn sitting on the steps with his doctor, waiting for me. He had been there all night. As I came out they seized me and tried to undress me there on the pavement in order to examine me. I retreated and locked myself up in the garret, with orders to admit nobody to the house until I came down stairs.
But Gunn wouldn't be baffled. He actually rented the house next door and stationed himself in the garret adjoining mine. When he got fixed, he spent his time pounding on the partition and crying, "Hallo! I say! how about that policy? Want to take it out now?" And then he would tell me some more anecdotes about men who were cut off immediately after paying the first premium. But I paid no attention to him and made no noise. Then he was silent for a while.
Suddenly the trap-door of my garret was wrenched off; and upon looking up, I saw Gunn, with the doctor and a crowbar and a lot of death-rates, coming down the ladder at me. I fled from the house to the Presbyterian church close by, and paid the sexton twenty dollars to let me climb up to the point of the steeple and sit astride of the ball. I promised him twenty more if he would exclude everybody from that steeple for a week. Once safely on the ball, three hundred feet from the earth, I made myself comfortable with the thought that I had Gunn at a disadvantage, and I determined to beat him finally if I had to stay there for a month. About an hour afterward, while I was looking at the superb view to the west, I heard a rustling sound upon the other side of the steeple. I looked around, and there was Benjamin P. Gunn creeping up the side of the spire in a balloon, in which was the doctor and the tabular estimates of the losses of his company from the Tontine system. As soon as Gunn reached the ball he threw his grappling-iron into the shingles of the steeple, and asked me at what age my father died, and if any of my aunts ever had consumption or liver complaint.
Without waiting to reply, I slid down the steeple to the ground and took the first train for the Mississippi Valley. In two weeks I was in Mexico. I determined to go to the interior and seek some wild spot in some elevated region where no Gunn would ever dare to come. I mounted a mule, and paid a guide to lead me to the summit of Popocatapetl. We arrived at the foot of the mountain at noon. We toiled upward for about four hours. Just before reaching the top I heard the sound of voices; and upon rounding a point of rocks, whom should I see but Benjamin P. Gunn, seated on the very edge of the crater, explaining the endowment plan to his guide and stupefying him with a mortality table, while the doctor had the other guide a few yards off, examining him to see if he was healthy! Mr. Gunn arose and said he was glad to see me, because now we could talk over that business about the policy without fear of interruption. In a paroxysm of rage I pushed him backward into the crater, and he fell a thousand feet below with a heavy thud. As he struck the bottom I heard a voice screaming out something about "non-forfeiture;" but there was a sudden convulsion of the mountain, a cloud of smoke, and I heard no more.
But on the following Thursday an eruption began, and the first thing that was thrown out was Benjamin P. Gunn, scorched, with his hair singed off and in a profuse perspiration, but still active and ready for business. If I should be killed, I verily believe Gunn would commit suicide in order that he might follow me into the next world.
Of course this is mere burlesque and it is hardly fair treatment of Gunn. But I am gratified to learn that such ridicule does not hurt his feelings. On the day the article appeared he called to see Colonel Bangs. The colonel apprehended an assault; and rallying his clerks and reporters around him, he seized a club and gave orders that Gunn should be admitted. But Benjamin did not intend war. He grasped the colonel's hand; and after thanking him for such a handsome gratuitous advertisement, he pulled a schedule out of his pocket and argued with Bangs until the latter in despair agreed to take out another policy for ten thousand dollars in Gunn's company.
We do not regard Lieutenant Smiley as a very entertaining person at present, and of course he is not quoted with enthusiasm. But during the prevalence of the excitement created by the victory over Pitman's baldness, Smiley related an anecdote bearing upon the subject of hair which combined instruction with amusement in a remarkable degree, and it may be profitable to reproduce it here as an illustration of the demoralizing tendencies of the red man.
During the recent visit of a party of Indians to the East, one of the number, Squatting Bear, was observed to behave himself in a very remarkable and mysterious manner. He separated himself from his companions on one occasion for several hours, and was then seen returning dragging a huge Saratoga trunk behind him through the streets with a string. When he reached his lodgings with the trunk, the other Indians were puzzled. Some of them believed the trunk to be a model for a new kind of wigwam with a Mansard roof, while others conceived the idea that it was a patent bath-tub of some peculiar sort, and that Squatting Bear, in a moment of mental aberration, had been seized with an inexplicable and unprecedented desire to wash himself. The souls of the savages burned with fiery indignation as they contemplated the possibility of the adoption of this revolutionary, enervating and demoralizing practice of the pale faces by the noble red man. But when they questioned Squatting Bear and remonstrated with him, that incomprehensible brave merely placed his copper-colored finger upon his burnt-umber nose and winked solemnly with his right eye.
The trunk was carried through to the wigwam of Squatting Bear unopened, and within the precincts of his home it was hidden finally from view, and was soon entirely forgotten.
In the tribe the brave who killed the largest number of enemies in any given year and secured the usual trophies of victory was entitled to occupy the position as chief. Squatting Bear was known to have ardent aspirations for the office, and he worked hard to win it. For a while after his return he was always foremost in every fight; and when the scalps were counted around the camp-fire, he invariably had secured the greatest number. Gradually, however, certain of the braves were impressed with the notion that Squatting's trophies sometimes did not bear a very correct proportion to the ferocity of the contest or to the number of the slain. Several times, after a brief skirmish in which ten or fifteen men were killed, Squatting would come sidling home with as many scalps as there were dead men; and at the same time the other warriors would together have nearly as many more.
The braves thought it was queer, but they did not give the subject very serious attention until after the massacre of a certain band of emigrants which had passed close by the camp of the tribe. There were just twenty persons in the company, and after the butchery several Indians took the trouble to count the bodies and to keep tally with a butcher-knife upon the side of a chip. That night, when the scalps were numbered, each brave had one or two apiece, but Squatting Bear handed out exactly forty-seven of the most beautiful bunches of human hair that had ever been seen west of the Mississippi. The braves looked cross-eyed at each other and cleared their throats. Two of their number stole out to the battlefield for the purpose of counting the bodies again, and of ascertaining if this had been a menagerie with a few double-headed persons in the party.
Yes, there lay exactly twenty corpses, and, to make matters worse, one of them was a bald-headed man who, for additional security to his scalp, had run a skate-strap over his head and buckled it under his chin.
When they returned, the entire camp devoted itself to meditation and calculation.
Twenty men killed and forty-seven scalps in the possession of a single Indian, without counting those secured by other participants in the contest! The more the warriors pondered over this fact, the more perplexing it became. A brave, while eating his supper and reflecting upon the problem, would suddenly imagine he saw his way clear, and he would stop, with his mouth full of baked dog, and fix his eyes upon the wall and think desperately hard. But the solution invariably eluded him. Then all of them would glide behind their wigwams and perform abstruse mathematical calculations upon their fingers, and they would get sticks and jam the points into the sand and do hard sums out of their aboriginal arithmetic. And they would tear around through the Indian rule of three, and struggle through their own kind of vulgar fractions, and wrestle with something that they believed to be a multiplication table. But in vain. Forty-seven scalps off twenty heads! It seemed incredible and impossible.
They tried it with algebra, and let the number of heads equal x and the number of scalps equal y, and they multiplied x into y and subtracted every letter in the alphabet in succession from the result until their brains reeled; but still the mystery remained unsolved.
At last a secret council was held, and it was determined that Squatting Bear must have some powerful and wonderful charm which enabled him to perform such miracles, and all hands agreed to investigate the matter upon the first opportunity. So the next week there was another fight, in which four persons were killed, and that night Squatting actually had the audacity to rush out one hundred and eighty-seven scalps, and to ask those benighted savages, sitting around their fire, to believe that he had snatched all that hair from those four heads.
It was too much—much too much; they seized him and drove a white oak stake through his bosom to hold him still, and then they proceeded to his wigwam to ascertain how that scalp business was conducted by the Bear family. They burst open the Saratoga trunk the first thing, and there they found fifteen hundred wigs and a keg of red paint, purchased by the disgraceful aboriginal while in Philadelphia.
That concluded his career. They buried him at once in the Saratoga trunk, and the wigs with him; and ever since that time they have elected annually a committee on scalps, whose business it is to examine every hirsute trophy with a double-barreled microscope of nine hundred diameters.
A Certain Remarkable Book—A Few Suggestions Respecting Boston—Delusions of Childhood—Bullying General Gage—Judge Pitman and the Catechism—An Extraordinary Blunder—The Facts in the Case of Hillegass—A False Alarm.
While I was helping one of my youngsters a night or two ago to master a tough little problem in his arithmetic, I picked up the history that he had been studying, and as he went off to bed with the other tiny travelers up the hill of knowledge, I looked through the volume. It was Goodrich's History of the United States, for the use of beginners; and it had a very familiar appearance. I gained my first glimpse of the past from this very book; and not only could I remember the text as I turned over the leaves, but the absurd pictures of General Washington and the surrender of Cornwallis, the impossible portraits of John Smith and Benjamin Franklin, and the unnatural illustration of the manner in which the Pilgrim Fathers landed, seemed like respectable old acquaintances whom I had known and admired in happier days.
The man who can find one of the books that he studied when he was a child at school will experience a pleasant sensation if he will open it and look over its pages. It will recall some delightful memories, and bring him very close again to the almost forgotten time when that wretched little book was to him the mightiest literary achievement in existence. For this reason I love Goodrich's History; and I will continue to regard it with affection even though my judgment may not give it approval as a work of very remarkable excellence.
When Mrs. Adeler descended, after tucking the weary scholars comfortably in bed, I directed her attention to these facts, and to some of the peculiarities of Goodrich's effort:
"This little book, Mrs. A., first unlocked for me the door of history. It is a history of the United States; and as it was written by a man who lived in Boston and believed in Boston, it is hardly necessary to say that in my childhood I obtained from the volume the impression that our beloved native land consisted chiefly of Boston. I do not wish to revile that city. It is in many respects a model municipality. It is, I think, better governed than any other large community in the land, it has greater intellectual force than any of our cities, and its people have a stronger and more demonstrative civic pride. In Boston the best men are usually at the front, and the conduct of public affairs is not entrusted, as it is in Philadelphia and other cities, to blackguardly politicians whom a respectable man would not admit to his house, and who maintain themselves in power by fraudulent elections and by stealing the people's money. Every Boston man believes in the greatness of his city, and is proud of it. That is an excellent condition of public sentiment, and we may pardon it even if it does sometimes produce results that are slightly ridiculous.
"Goodrich was what might be called an excessive Boston man, and his little history is very apt, unintentionally, to convey erroneous impressions to the infant mind. In my early boyhood, being completely saturated with Goodrich, I entertained an indistinct idea that the eye of Columbus rested upon Boston long before any other object appeared above the horizon, and somehow I cherished a conviction that the natives who greeted him and bowed down at his feet were men who inhabited Bunker Hill Monument and disported themselves perpetually among the chambers of Faneuil Hall. I never doubted that every important event in our annals, from the landing of those unpleasant old Puritans of the Mayflower down to the election of Andrew Jackson, occurred in Boston, and was attributable entirely to the remarkable superiority of the people of that city. I scoffed at the theory that John Smith was in Virginia at the time of his salvation by Pocahontas, and I was even disposed to regard the account of the signing of the Declaration of Independence at Philadelphia as a sort of an insignificant 'side show' which should have been alluded to briefly in a foot-note. I honestly believed that the one great mistake of George Washington's life was that he was born elsewhere than in Boston, and I felt that, however hard such retribution might appear, he deserved to be considered a little less great on account of that error.
"As for the war of the Revolution, I could not doubt, while I maintained my faith in Goodrich, that it was begun by the high-spirited citizens of Boston in consequence of the wrongs inflicted upon them by that daring and impious monarch King George III. It was equally clear that the conflict was carried on only by the people of Boston, and that the victory was won at last because of the valor displayed by the citizens of that community.
"In my opinion, and apparently in the opinion of Goodrich, the leading event of the war was that related in chapter eighty-five. The story occupies the whole chapter. The historian evidently intended that the youthful mind, while meditating upon the most important episode of the dreadful struggle, should not be disturbed by minor matters. Chapter eighty-five relates that certain British soldiers demolished snow hills that had been constructed by some boys upon Boston Common, a hallowed spot which Goodrich taught me to regard as the pivotal point of the universe. The boys determined to call upon General Gage, and to protest against this brutal outrage committed by the hireling butchers of a bloated despot. Now listen while I read the account of that interview as it is given by Goodrich:
"General Gage asked why so many children had called upon him. 'We come, sir,' said the tallest boy, 'to demand satisfaction,' 'What!' said the general; 'have your fathers been teaching you rebellion, and sent you to exhibit it here?' 'Nobody sent us, sir,' answered the boy, while his cheek reddened and his eye flashed. 'We have never injured nor insulted your troops; but they have trodden down our snow hills and broken the ice on our skating ground. We complained, and they called us young rebels, and told us to help ourselves if we could. We told the captain of this, and he laughed at us. Yesterday our works were destroyed the third time, and we will bear it no longer.' General Gage looked at them a moment in silent admiration, and then said to an officer at his side, 'The very children here draw in a love of liberty with the air they breathe.'
"The story of this event, which shaped the destinies of a great nation and gave liberty to a continent, I learned by heart. Many and many a night have I lain awake wishing that Philadelphians would organize another war with Great Britain, so that British soldiers could come over and batter down a snow hill that I would build in Independence Square. I felt certain that I should go at once, in such an event, to see the general, and should overwhelm him with another outburst of fiery indignation. It seemed rather hard that Philadelphia boys should never have a chance to surpass the boys of Boston. But still I could not help admiring those young braves and regarding them as the real authors of American independence. I was well assured that if that 'tallest boy' had not entered the general's room and flashed his eye at Gage all would have been lost; the country would have been ground beneath the iron heel of the oppressor, and Americans would have been worse than slaves. Perhaps it did me no harm to believe all this; but it seems to me that we might as well instruct children properly to begin with. Therefore I shall give our boy, Agamemnon, some private lessons in history to supplement the wisdom of Goodrich."
Just as I had concluded my remarks, Judge Pitman came in to ask me to let him look at the evening paper which I had brought with me from the city. I explained to him the nature of the subject that had been considered, and the judge, as usual, had something to say about it.
"Do you know," he observed, "that them school-books that they make now-a-days is perfectly bewilderin' to a man like me? When I went to school, we learned nothin' but readin', writin' and arithmetic. But now—well, they've got clear past me. I could no more rassle with the learnin' they have at the schools now than a babe unborn."
"To what special department of learning do you refer?" I inquired.
"Oh, all of 'em, all of 'em. I had a very cur'ous experience with one o' them books once," said the judge, with a laugh. "Some years ago I took a notion to jine the church, an' they give me the catechism to learn afore I could git in. When I got home, I laid the book away on the shelf, an' didn't go for it for two or three days. When I was ready to study it up, I reached down what I thought was the catechism, an' I was kinder surprised to see that it was called 'Familiar Science.' You understand it was a book my daughter had been learnin' at school. But I knowed no better. I never paid no 'tention to religion afore; an' although it struck me as sorter queer that a catechism should have such questions and answers in it, I thought the church people that give me the book must know what was right, so I said nothin' an' went to work at it."
"How did you succeed?"
"Oh, putty good. I learned three or four pages by heart, an' I thought that was 'bout enough. So after while the minister an' the rest come 'round an' begun examinin' me. I noticed that the questions kinder didn't fit in, but I did my best; an' when they'd ask me about the Scripters, I'd jam in somethin' about carbonic acid gas, an' when they inquired about the whole duty of man, I desp'rately give 'em somethin' relatin' to the functions of lightnin'-rods."
"You must have astonished them."
"You never seen men wuss bewildered," replied the judge; "but I think I really skeered 'em when they asked me about Solomon's temple, an' I lit out with an answer referrin' to smoky chimneys. They thought I was insane. But when I pulled out the book an' showed it to 'em, the preacher laughed an' told me about the mistake. Then we hunted up the catechism an' got the thing straight. The church folks had the laugh on me for a while, but I didn't mind it. An' it was pretty fair for a joke, wasn't it?"
"Excellent."
"But I got a better one on at least one of them fellers. Doctor Brindley was on the examinin' committee, an' he run me harder than any of 'em about it. Well, sir— Do you know old Hillegass?"
"No; I never heard of him."
"He lives out yer on the Wilmington road. Well, sir, some time afore that Hillegass was putty near dead. He was the wust case I ever seen. Broken down, thin an' pale, with no appetite, his lungs weak, his liver good for nothin', his legs full of rheumatics, his heart affected an' his head achin' with neuralger, I really believe that man was the sickest human bein' that ever breathed the breath of life. All the doctors in the country had a shy at him one time an' another; an' as he kep' a-gettin' wuss an' wuss, they made him mad, an' he wouldn't pay their bills."
"He was not much to blame for that."
"Certainly not. Well, one day them doctors met, an' after talkin' the thing over they agreed not to go to Hillegass's again unless he settled up, you understand. They said, 'Now we'll let Hillegass die; we've fooled with him long enough. He's either got to pay or perish. No more Hillegass for us unless we see some cash.' So for about a year they let him alone; an' whenever one of 'em would drive past the house, he would pull up for a minute, look to see if there was crape on the door, an' then go on, shakin' his head an' sayin', 'Poor Hillegass! the stingy old fool's not long for this world.'"
"Did he die?"
"Die! One day Dr. Brindley felt kinder sorry for Hillegass, an' he weakened on his resolution. So he called at the house to see how he was gittin' on. As he went in the yard he seen a stoutish man liftin' a bar'l of flour in a waggin. When the man got the bar'l in, he seen the doctor an' come for'ard. The doctor thought he knew the scar on the man's nose, but he couldn't believe it. Howsomedever, it was old Hillegass, well an' hearty as a buck, an' able to h'ist the roof off the barn if he'd a mind to. You understand that I had a very soft thing on Brindley jes' then; an' he never seemed to take no furder interest in the catechism business when he met me. An' they don't encourage doctors much out that way now; no, sir. They trust to luck an' natur', which in my opinion is the best way, anyhow."
"A great many remarkable things seem to have happened in this place," I said.
"Yes," responded the judge. "You'd hardly think it of such a quiet town as this 'pears to be; but somehow there's 'most always somethin' lively goin' on. There was that fuss 'round at Dr. Hopkins's a couple o' year ago; did you hear 'bout that?"
"Not that I know of."
"Well, we'd jes' got a new fire-engine in the town, an' the men that run her thought they'd play a little joke on the chief of the department by rushin' 'round to his house an' pretendin' it was afire. By a most unfort'nit circumstance, the chief moved out of the house that mornin', and Dr. Hopkins—the preacher, you know—moved in. Them fellers come a-peltin' 'round with the engine, an' they run up their ladders an' begun a-playin' on the roof in a manner that skeered the Hopkinses nearly to death. But the other fire company thought there really was a fire, an' they come out with their engine an' begun to squirt on the house. The others tried to explain how it was, but the new-comers wouldn't believe 'em, an' they kep' a-pourin' water into the winders an' a carryin' on like mad. So at last they got up a fight, an' they fought all over the house an' on the stairs an' up an' down the entries, until Dr. Hopkins was putty near insane; an' when they went home, he counted up about two hundred dollars damages, which them fellers had to pay. Yes, it is astonishin' how they used to keep things a-movin' in this town. An' now I really must be goin'. I'll send back the paper the fust thing in the mornin', for certain."
The judge then went home; and just as he passed out of the door Bob Parker came in with a radiant countenance. He had succeeded in obtaining the evidence that was needed for his vindication.
Settling the Business—Vindication of Mr. Bob Parker—A Complete Reconciliation—The Great Cooley Inquest—The Uncertainty in Regard to Thomas Cooley—A Phenomenal Coronet—Profitable Investigations—How the People Prospered—The Solution of the Mystery.
Mr. Parker had good reason for exultation. He had in his possession testimony which exposed and completely defeated the wretched little conspiracy organized against him by Smiley.
"It was a very easy thing to settle this business," said Bob. "I explained the matter to the members of our firm, and they not only gave me a letter containing very strong expressions of confidence in me and denouncing Stonebury as a wholly untrustworthy and disreputable person, but they insisted that I should make Stonebury confess. Accordingly, a member of the firm accompanied me while I hunted him up. We found that he had a clerkship in one of the municipal offices, and we called to see him. He turned absolutely white when he saw me, and looked as if he would like to beat a retreat. But we went at him, and threatened that if he did not acknowledge in writing that he had maligned me we would prosecute him for the theft committed while he was engaged at the store, and have him ousted from his present position.
"He came down at once, and began to excuse his conduct upon the ground that Smiley had compelled him to do as he did. Then he made a written confession that his statements concerning me were lies, and that he was the real author of the letter which professed to come from Rev. Dr. Dewey. Here it is—here are both letters; and I propose to enlighten the Magruder intellect with them this very night."
"Wouldn't it be better to wait until to-morrow? It is rather late now."
"No, sir. I intend to settle the affair finally and for ever before I go to bed. I have been waiting long enough. Now I am going to enjoy my victory without further delay. Let's go around there at once."
So Bob and I started for the Magruder mansion; and when we reached the street, he strode along at such a rapid gait that I could hardly keep up with him. As we approached the house I ventured to suggest that the dog might perhaps be at large, in which event I thought I would rather remain in the drug store on the other side of the street until he returned.
"I would go into the house," exclaimed Bob, "if there were a million bloodhounds tearing around the front yard."
"Well, I believe I wouldn't. I have less enthusiasm than you. I am growing old and cautious. A much smaller quantity of bloodhound would restrain what little impetuosity I have. Only one vigorous bloodhound stationed in that yard and betraying a disposition to exclude me would dampen my ardor. I should go home at once."
"Magruder's dog won't bite," said Bob. "He knows me well, and we needn't be a bit afraid of him."
"Very well, I will run the risk; but if any accident occurs, I shall blame you for it. I would rather you should lose your lady-love than that I should be deprived of the use of my legs."
"And, of course, I wouldn't. But come along, and never mind the dog."