R. CROCKET played a bass horn which had belonged to his father. He had much to say about “the cause of good music in Hearts-dale,” and both he and Mr. Boggs were members of its Comet Band. Therein lay the weakest point in Mr. Crocket's character. He did not lie or use tobacco or strong drink or profanity, but I have thought sometimes that he would have done well to change his sin for one more private and compact, for the old horn cut a swath a mile wide in the silence. It had a part in the string as well as the brass band of the village.
One night, more than a year after my initiation to the shop, there was to be a celebration of the nomination of Lincoln for President and an address by Colonel Remington. Capes and helmets for the musicians had been sent to the marble-shop and were stored away in a closet. Swipes and I had discovered them. Now, it should be explained that Swipes regarded his shingle-nail with growing apprehension. He had come to work with a poultice of mustard that morning. I had seen him spitefully withdraw it from his bosom and fling it under his bench. When the Messrs. Crocket had gone home we talked of the shingle-nail, and I observed that he had great respect for the mustard and more confidence in his future. He declared that his pains had been drawn to the outside of his body, and he thought that a safer place for them. He showed me the blister, and as we surveyed the same an evil purpose entered the mind of Swipes, and I regret to say that it overflowed into my own.
The helmets had a partial lining of thin cloth attached to the visor. Beneath the lining of each one we spread a mustard paste where it would afflict the forehead of the player. That done, we ate our suppers and went out to see the crowd. At half-past seven the musicians appeared in front of the Opera-House, and began work at once. Soon I observed that three or four of the players had begun to perspire, and were moving the skin of their foreheads. The clarionet lagged and fell out of time. Mr.
Crocket lost the run of the score, and went roaring on for a moment and abandoned the chase. Swipes nudged me as the marble-cutter removed his helmet. The others were struggling with their parts.
The clarionet player began to talk to himself. The crowd was laughing at the discords. The Heartsdale Cornet Band suddenly gave up, and, oddly enough, on the first phrase of Hail Columbia. Every player uncovered and felt his forehead and began to talk.
Mr. Boggs muttered and seemed to threaten his neighbor.
“I feel as if I'd blown my brains out,” said the clarionet player.
“This helmet ought to be spelt with a double l,” said Mr. Crocket, as he felt the inside of his head-cover.
Unfortunately, we stayed too long and laughed too much. Mr. Crocket discovered us, and had a stern and suspicious look. We retreated promptly, and heard no more from the band until next morning. We met on the street and entered the shop together.
“Boys,” said the Judge, “I've got a present for you.”
“What's that?” Swipes inquired.
“Hellmets,” said the marble-cutter, spelling the word with a double l, after he had spoken it—“a pair of 'em; one for each of you. Try 'em on.”
I did not dare refuse the honor, and poor Swipes had the same feeling. The helmets were on our heads in a minute.
“They're becoming,” said Mr. Crocket. “I like to see 'em on you.”
He pulled them down and fastened them with a strong cord. He seemed to enjoy tying the knot beneath our chins, and drew it tight.
We began our work, and were presently in the tortures of full atonement. Swipes dropped his tools by-and-by, and tried in vain to raise the helmet a little.
“I guess somebody has put some mustard in this helmet,” said he, in a loud voice.
“Mustard!” Mr. Crocket exclaimed. “Nobody would be mean enough for that.”
“It must be,” Swipes persisted.
“I guess you're mistaken,” said Mr. Crocket, calmly, as he resumed his work. “Leastways, if there is mustard in 'em, it's only meant for a joke.”
Mr. Boggs, who sat in his corner, began to roar.
“It's hard when ye have to invent the joke an' take it, too,” said Mr. Crocket.
Swipes seized the cord and put all his strength upon it.
“You fool, don't you know it's funny?” said the marble-cutter.
Swipes could see no occasion for laughter, and continued to pull the string until it came free.
“Look here, boy, if you can't take your own medicine you'll have to take mine,” said Mr. Crocket, sternly. “You may pick up your things an' go; I'm done with you.”
Poor Swipes! Things had come to a bad turn for him, and his lips were trembling as he prepared to leave.
The thought of him, then, was more to me than my own torture. He was poor and sorely needed his place. I should not have done, or permitted him to do, an act so foolish as that we had been guilty of.
So I spoke up for him with odd mendacity: “It was my fault, Mr. Crocket. Swipes is not to blame. I put the mustard into those helmets.”
It is past finding out—the things a boy will do when he is put to it.
“Oh, you did,” said the marble-cutter, “you little-souled, narrer, contracted cuss!”
His eyes seemed to be searching me for other qualities likely to serve his scorn. He added, with a look of sternness: “Boy, you've done a great injury to the cause of good music in Heartsdale!”
I wondered if music had suffered more than I, and, answered, timidly: “It was only meant for a joke.”
“Well, the joke is on you,” said Mr. Crocket, with a rude look at me. “You are both discharged.”
So my second trial in business came to its end, and people began to shake their heads and say that I was a wild boy and would come to no good.
I went to the shop of my old friends, “Pearl & Barker,” and told of my trouble. The Pearl had a thoughtful look on his face, and said nothing for a few moments.
“Confound that dog!” he exclaimed, presently, and began to call Mr. Barker. The dog stood up before him.
“You rascal!” the Pearl began, “you'll have to take another dose. I trust that you will soon be a dog, Mr. Barker, an' get over bein' a puppy. Not that I would have you too good—there are no angels in this world, Mr. Barker. But I am moved to suggest that you always show proper respect for age.”
Every word that he said to “Mr. Barker” sank into my soul, and made me see how foolish I had been.
“Those in favor of reform will please say aye,” said the Pearl, and Mr. Barker and I both voted loudly. “It seems to be carried—it is carried,” the Pearl went on, and then, turning to me, he added: “That dog is getting a good deal of useful knowledge. It may be worth your while to whack up with him.”
It was said gently, and yet, somehow, the words fell like a lash. I went home sore with remorse and wrote a letter of apology to Judge Crocket, and fully confessed my folly.
HAT evening there came a rap at our door, and when I opened it who should walk in upon us but Sam—the apprehensive and affectionate Sam.
I presented him to my mother and sister, and he removed his cap and coat and sat down with us. In his Sunday suit and manners Sam was neither cheerful nor communicative. I tried to talk with him of the days we had known together, but he only smiled and shook his head with, now and then, a timid exclamation. When my mother and sister had gone to bed he nudged my leg and whispered:
“Le' 's go outdoors.”
We went down the road together, and he turned to me and said:
“I'm up a stump.”
“What's the matter?” I asked.
“Deviltry, which is a caution,” said he.
“Married life?”
“The Colonel,” said Sam.
“Why don't you leave him?”
“Can't,” he answered.
“Why not?”
“It's my duty to stan' it, an' I'll have to. Don't have much to do but sleep with the Colonel, an' that's a man's work. It takes an uncommon kind of a man, too. You have to praise his strength an' look at his wounds an' hear him sing an' be shoved around the bedroom an' get your head thumped on the wall, an' run for your life when he chases ye. He wants to rassle an' pull fingers about every night. Sometimes he comes home drunk an' sets an' sings like a bird at two o'clock in the morning. I have to get up an' pull his boots off an' let him shove me around. It ain't an easy job, but it's better than some, an' we can't leave Jo alone with him. I've got to put up with it. One night he drove me all over the place with a kind of a spear. I didn't know but he was goin' to stick me with it. By-an'-by I see that he wasn't vicious.
“One evenin' a young feller come there when the Colonel was away, an' behaved himself improper. Jo told Fannie, an' I went an' kicked him out o' the house. The Colonel was wild when he heard of it. He wouldn't allow a boy on the place after that. The first one that come he grabbed a sword off the wall an' made for him. The boy run like a scairt deer, an' the Colonel chased him acrost the door-yard an' half-way to the bridge.
“One day the Colonel found a letter from you to Jo. He see that you was in love with her, an' flew mad an' forbid her to write to you, an' I come to tell ye. He won't let her go on the street alone, which is agoin' too fur—altogether. Jo is a lady—don't you forget it. There's only one man that comes to the house, an' he's a friend o' the Colonel. I guess he's a gentleman.”
Jo's silence had worried me, and now this attitude of her father filled me with alarm.
“Do you—do you think she cares for me?” I asked.
“You bet I do,” he answered, promptly. “There's every sign of it. She promised him that she wouldn't write to you—she had to do it, I guess, an' she wanted me to come an' bring you this.”
He paused and gave me a small package.
“The Colonel has had a fortune come to him,” my friend went on. “He's goin' to move to the old homestead in Merrifield, an' it ain't over twenty mile from here. They'll move in the spring—soon as the snow's off—an' maybe things 'll change by then, so you can come an' see us.”
“You write me when to come, and I'll be there if it's a possible thing,” was my answer..
Sam questioned me as to my work and pay, and I gave him all the particulars.
“You'll have to get into bigger business,” he suggested. “Jo's a lady. I ain't goin' to tell 'em that you're smoothin' rocks. It don't fit ye—someway.”
“It's respectable,” I said, “and I've been studying every day.”
I didn't have the courage to speak of my discharge, and I hoped, too, that Mr. Crocket would soon take me back.
“You've got to be a big gun if you're goin' to fit her, there ain't any two ways about that. You'd better go to school, an', if you need it, I'll lend you a little money.”
I thanked the big-hearted fellow, and said that I would consult my mother about it.
“You set down an' write her a letter,” said he, “an' I'll see that she gets it.”
“But the Colonel—” I began.
“He ain't forbid you to write, has he?” Sam went on. “You write her a good, long, high-toned letter, such as a lady ought to get. You know how to do it. Don't speak o' the rocks. I've told 'em that you was a gentleman, an' very partic'lar fine in every way, shape, an' manner, an' I guess she b'lieves it. She can marry the best chap in the land if she wants to.”
I took his hard hand in mine. “Sam, you're a friend worth having,” I said.
“You done me a favor once,” he went on, “an' I ain't forgot it, an' never will, an' I'm goin' to help you in any way that I can. Do you remember when I was married? She just took hold o' my bit an' give me a slap on the side, an' walked me up to the neck-yoke where I belonged, an', old boy, I'd go through fire an' water for her.”
“I shall not write to Jo at present,” I said. “It wouldn't be fair to the Colonel. We must win him over.”
We climbed the hanging stair, and I conducted Sam to the spare room.
“Thank God,” Sam exclaimed, “I ain't got to hear about battles or the last rose o' summer, an' prob'ly I won't have to jump out an' rassle in the dead o' the night!”
I took the little package Sam had given me to my room, and when it was undone there lay the horruck, wrapped in a sheet of paper which contained these words:
I have read the delightful message of the horruck. I send it back, and it will do for a letter.
I sat for hours trying to solve the riddle, and fell asleep in my chair by-and-by. When I awoke the horruck was gone. It had dropped from my hand, no doubt, but, although I looked high and low, I was not able to find it. Had Lizzie McCormick returned in my sleep and taken it away? The thing had left me as mysteriously as it came.
I went to bed and lay awake, hearing the roar of the falling water, and the thought came to me that my own life was like a river now, creeping over the flats. Maybe it would gather power and go on with a rush by-and-by.
Y sister was now in the Heartsdale Academy, and my mother and I had a wholesome pride in her. It was partly for her sake, I must confess to you, that I had been in a when my desire would have sent me to school. One of us had to work, and there were many reasons for my sacrifice, and no credit due me. In a dozen houses I knew one might have seen better deeds: mothers working nights, sons and daughters hired for long hours and hard labor, and with no clothes fit for a holiday, so that some one of the children could go to college or the normal school.
My sister had many friends—boys and girls of her own age—who came to visit her. She was a comely girl, and sprightly and light of heart as a bird in the springtime.
At home I had either a book or a biscuit in my hand always—so my mother said of me. The supper dishes out of the way, our table was drawn to the fireside and our big lamp glowed upon us until past ten o'clock. What a magic in its light and the silent hours! Far tribes and peoples, the sayings of wise men, immortal tales and poems, the wonders of art and invention, were gathered into the lamplight. Above all, I enjoyed the poets, even the best of them, and committed pages of classic verse, and had burning thoughts of great accomplishment.
We went one night to the Thanksgiving ball at Jones'—I and my sister and some of her schoolmates—in a big sleigh. It was, I may say, historic, being the last of its kind in the neighborhood. We were not to see again the careless, old-time frolic. The bass horn, also, was thenceforth banished from like scenes forever. The big fire came, and the telegraph followed in the early spring, and the railroad in the summer; and new brick buildings, including that of the Hearts-dale Academy, and many students and workingmen. A new editor appeared who began to poke fun at the old fashions. Then came the dress-suit, and novel forms of entertainment, and a big fire-engine. All these things had their effect upon us.
Mr. Crocket appeared at this last of the oldtime dances. He sat with the fiddler, and came in, now and then, with a long streak or a sudden splash of bass.
Between dances we heard the bells ringing and hurried out-of-doors. A light rose high in the heavens above Heartsdale. The village was afire, and we made a rush for coats and caps, and our horses were soon speeding along the road.
The Rogers block was burning, and what a scene it was! A squad worked on a force-pump at the town well. Men rushed aimlessly about shouting orders mingled with profanity. Others swore back at them with equal emphasis. Every one had a plan of his own. A few were arguing loudly face to face. Mr. Boggs stood looking on with an “I-told-you-so” expression.
Some were bravely at work in the heat passing water-buckets. One was on a roof near the fire playing the hose. They said he was H. M. Pearl. I saw the ladder he had climbed, and the thought came to me that here was my chance at last, and I made my way up it through heat and smoke to the side of my friend. As I fought the falling cinders I wondered if Jo would ever hear of it.
“The fire has got more power than we have!” Pearl shouted to me.
He worked for a few minutes only when the water gave out. The fire had been forcing us back, and a blast now and then scorched our faces.
“We'll have to adjourn,” said Pearl; and we slid down the smoking ladder with blistered hands and faces, and our coats afire.
Heartsdale was more than half destroyed that night, and the marble-shop was in ruins. Pearl had seen the truth—the village had not power enough for its foe. Every day or two some town or city was burning up for that reason.
“The country is like a boy that has outgrown his strength,” Pearl said to me. “It needs more power; that stream o' water didn't have squirt enough to drown a bee.”
“And better management,” I suggested.
“Power and management go hand in hand,” said he. “When power comes it will bring brains along with it.”
I wrote an account of my adventure on the roof for the weekly Courier. It was published over my full name, and not since have I so pleased myself. Did not the editor speak of me as “a polished writer” and “a brave lad”? I read it over again and again, and sent a marked copy to my friends in Summerville.
The Courier of that week was full of history.
There were lines in it by some unknown writer which put an end to the despotic sway of the bass horn. These lines were, in a way, the Magna Charta of Heartsdale, which thereafter might have been described as a limited monarchy. Let me read a moment:
To Jones' tavern, near the ancient wood,
Come young and old from many a neighborhood.
Here comes B. Crocket with his old bass horn,
Its tone less fit for melody than scorn.
They say that thro' its tubes from first to last
A century's caravan of song has passed.
The boys and girls, their mirthful sports begun,
With noisy kisses punctuate the fun.
O careless youths and red-lipped little misses!
O blush that marks the sweet disgrace of kisses!
The fiddler comes, his heart a merry store,
And shouts of welcome greet him at the door.
Tho' fashioned rough and rude the jest he flings,
What power has he to wake the tuneful strings!
The old folks smile and tell how, long ago,
Their feet obeyed the swaying of his bow,
And how the God-sent magic of his art
To thoughts of love inclined the youthful heart,
And shook the bonds of care from aged men
Who, 'neath the spell, returned to youth again.
He raps the fiddle-back as t'were a drum,
The raw recruits of Cupid's army come,
And heeding not the praise his playing wins,
The ebullition of his soul begins.
The zeal of Crocket, turned to scornful sound,
Pursues the measure like a baying hound;
The sprightly phrases fall like gusts of rain,
The dancers sway like wind-swept fields of grain;
And, midst the storm, to maddening fury stirred,
The thunder of the old bass horn is heard.
HOSE days they were stringing wires through the North, and even there human thought had begun to move faster. Now one could fling his words far over the distant hills in a moment. Men gathered in groups and talked of the wonder of it, and looked with awe upon the operator; for had not tidings of far capitals come to him out of the sky, and news of death which had made the strong tremble?
Pearl had been helping to install a new line. For a time—a long time, as it seemed to me—the shop door was locked.
The night of his return I found him overhauling instruments at his bench, but as I came in he dropped his work and his face brightened.
“How goes it?” I asked.
“Swift,” he answered. “I've been helping 'em lay a track for lightning. A stream o' power is flashing over the hills to Merrifield this minute. Do you see that wire that goes by the window there? Well, it's a nerve out o' the brain o' the universe, an' we're connected. It makes us a part o' the great body o' the world, as ye might say.
“There's goin' to be a war between life an' death in this country. In Heartsdale you an' I will lead the new army. Boggs an' Crocket will command the old.”
That little shop was for me “the House of the Interpreter,” and there I began to get the drift of things.
He gave me a book which contained the Morse alphabet, and taught me to make the letters on a telegraph key, and showed me how it checked the current and so produced the dots and dashes.
“I'll run a wire to your house,” he promised, “an' we'll string our thoughts on it an' learn some useful knowledge. I can get a place for you as soon as you can read an' send the current, I never liked the headstone business. It's at the wrong end o' the line. If it was the cradle business, I'd like it better. Life is the thing for you an' me, not death.
“There's four churches and two cemeteries in this little town. Life here has been a kind o' preparation for the grave, an' not much else. Death has done most o' the business. It's time we had a change.”
I was to help the swift, mysterious current of power to quicken the minds of the people.
Pearl lent me a telegraph key, and I stayed at home with my mother and sister for a few weeks, learning how to sound the letters on it. I went often to Pearl's shop of an evening and talked with him by telegraphy, and he was pleased with my progress, and within a month said I was good enough for any place on the line. We felt his kindness deeply there in the Mill House, and my mother wrote her thanks to him, and begged him to come and sup and spend the evening with us any day.
“My friend and fellow-citizen,” said Mr. Pearl, when I saw him again, “nothing would please me better than to sit by your fireside and enjoy all that exalts and embellishes civilized life. But, firstly, I am not decent enough; and, secondly, my clothing is fit only for the 'sacred precinks' o' my own shop, as Mr. Boggs would say; and, thirdly, I have a lot to do an' only sixteen hours a day to do it in.”
So he never came to the Mill House, and, although my mother had called twice at his shop to tell her gratitude, she had not been able to find him.
One day he gave me glad news in this manner: “How would ye like a job?”
“What kind of a job?” I inquired.
“To jerk lightnin'.”
That was his way of describing the work of an operator.
“I'd like it very much.”
“You're to take the office in Heartsdale at forty dollars a month on trial,” he said.
It staggered me—the prospect of such opulence—and that very day I began my work. I have been lucky and prospered rather handsomely since then, but I have never received a sum so enduring and massive as that which came to me at the end of every month. I always hurried home with the roll of bills and flung it into my mother's lap proudly. Oh, what a lavish hand was mine those days! About the best happiness of all my life was in the few moments of sublime generosity at the month's end when I renounced the money and saw the look in my mother's face and hurried away to my chores. And when I saw the splendor of my sister's hats and gowns, and the neatness of her shoes, and heard people speak of her beauty, I was about as happy as one may be.
I had “jerked lightning” some eight months and had become a figure in the life of Heartsdale, for I guided the flying horse of God that sped in and out of the village on its slender highway, and I was looked upon as a kind of sorcerer. Moreover, I—a boy of seventeen—received the princely income of forty dollars a month!
In all this time, although I had written to Jo about the loss of the horruck and my ignorance of its secret and my growing curiosity, no word of her had come to me save a letter from Sam, which told me that Jo was well and hoped those few lines would find me the same.
One afternoon my call came clicking into the sounder with the letters M. F. behind it. I knew that M. F. stood for the office at Merrifield.
The operator said that he would have an important message for me at eight that evening, and, asked if I could be at the key to take it. The request was not unusual, for mine was the repeating office at the junction of two lines. I promised to be on hand, and went to the office at eight o'clock.
Soon I got the call and answered it, and these words flashed into the sounder:
“Is this Mr. Heron?”
And I answered, “Yes; who are you?”
“I am the operator at Merrifield, and I have a message for you.”
“Well, go ahead,” I clicked, impatiently. I could see it was a new operator with a rather timid hand. So the message ran:
To Jacob Ezra Heron:
Do you still care to hear from an old friend?
Jo.
I answered that very moment:
To Jo:
I am dying for news of you. Answer.
Cricket.
Then I asked, “Can you deliver the message to-night?”
“Yes; it has been delivered. I am Jo,” the sounder clicked. “This is confidential. See if any one is on the line.”
I rang off the calls of the hill circuit and got no answer, and knew we had the wire to ourselves.
“Are you an operator?” I asked.
“Yes. I had to have a talk with you, and so here I am, at last.”
“I'd rather talk face to face than with lightning,” I said. “Why can't I go and see you?”
“Not now. Wait a little while,” she answered.
“Why?”
“Well, it's a long story. There's a young man who came here from New York last summer. He's a friend of father's, and knows you. Since they met, my father has asked me not to see or write to you until he could get some information.”
“Who is the young man?”
“Mr. Bonaparte Squares.”
“Oh, it's Bony Squares!” I clicked. “I know him very well.”
“And I know him better than I ever wished to,” she went on. “He has tried to make love to me.”
“Tried to make love to you!” I exclaimed, with indignation. “I cannot believe it. Your father had better get some information about him. Tell him to write to the postmaster of Heartsdale. Any one here or at Mill Pond could tell him all about Bony. He couldn't marry you!”
There was a pause of two or three seconds, and then the sounder answered, timidly:
“Why?”
“Because I wouldn't let him,” I said.
“There's no danger,” she answered.
“Except for Bony,” I flashed back.
I held my ear close to the sounder for fear of missing a word.
“I am too young to think of marriage.”
“Until you have consulted me,” I said. “I know things that you must know before then.”
“I will ask father to write to your postmaster about his friend,” she continued, as if she thought I had things to tell about Bony.
“Don't let them turn you against me,” I urged.
“Don't fear. If I had another horruck I would send it to you.”
“I was never able to read the horruck's riddle,” I said.
“Oh, you didn't know!” she exclaimed. “I thought you meant it for me.”
“I cannot say until I know the message.”
“But I wouldn't dare tell you. It's one thing to say it yourself, and another to speak with the horruck. You must find and study it. Goodnight! My dear old father is dozing here beside me, and doesn't dream that I am talking to you. I feel guilty, but I was afraid that you would come here.”
“Don't say good-night. I'm not half through talking.”
“But we mustn't say everything at once, and he is tired. We'll have another talk. Goodnight!”
I closed the office, and started for my home. As I walked alone in the darkness under the singing wires, I got my first broad view of their mission. My sweetheart and I were miles apart, but that rushing power on the string of metal had almost removed the distance and helped us to understand each other. Would it not, by-and-by, remove seas and continents and make all the races of one mind, and keep them in peace and good-will?
EARL had invented a water-turbine, a dynamo, and a method of producing light by electricity, and many valuable devices, but had been able to patent only two of them. It is curious how, when there is universal need of a thing, men agree, without ever a word between them, that it shall be done, and nothing is so wonderful as the likeness of their energy and inspiration, as the rhythm of their hammer-strokes, the world over.
Pearl, struggling in the privacy of his little shop, was marching, step by step, with the great inventors, and never even suspected it until his best devices were a matter of record in the Patent Office to the credit of other men.
One evening I found him asleep on his bench. A hand hung over the edge, and a letter had dropped from it. His scarred face had a weary look. I turned to leave without disturbing him when he awoke and greeted me.
“Jake, I'm tired,” said he, as he rose, yawning, and began to fill his pipe. “I ain't up to the mark.”
“What's the matter?”
“Had a fall,” he said, passing the letter. “Read that.”
I read the news which had disappointed him, and he said:
“Yesterday I was a great man, an' wouldn't have sold out for a million dollars. I've rolled off the lap of luxury an' hit the floor with a bump. Old Aunt Luxury is a long lady, an' no mistake. It's forty feet to her knees, an' a good deal of a tumble. You see before you a melancholy ruin.”
“Here,” I said, “let me lend you some money. I'll trust you with all I've got.”
I had just received my pay, and showed it to him.
“I'm so poor that I wouldn't trust myself,” he answered; “an' that bein' so, I wouldn't ask you to trust me.”
He left me to get some wood for the fire, and I saw a Bible lying on his desk and put a twenty-dollar bill between its leaves, at the eleventh chapter of Job, and closed it again. I talked with him for an hour or so, and asked, when I was leaving, if he had read the Book of Job.
“Not sence I was a boy,” he answered.
“Read the eleventh chapter before you go to bed,” I suggested, and went away.
Next day he came to my office.
“We're off this evenin', with all our tools and implements,” said he. “If it hadn't been for you an' Job we couldn't have got away. You're a strong pair. I read in that chapter, 'Thou shalt forget thy misery and remember it as waters that pass away.' It was the very sermon I needed. My misery is gone. We have given you a vote o' thanks. It was hearty an' unanimous.”
He was to take the freight and accommodation which left Heartsdale about eleven o'clock. He did not tell me his destination, but said that I should hear from him by-and-by. I went to the depot with Pearl and Barker, and saw them off.
As I passed the house of the postmaster on my way home, a man in a tall beaver hat came out of its front door and walked hurriedly to a carriage and drove away. It was a cool night in November, and the collar of his overcoat was up around his ears. Something familiar in the step of the man caused me to turn and look at him and remember the incident.
Three evenings later M. F. was with me on the wire of the hill circuit, deserted by all save us, and I was taking my part in this dialogue:
“I have important news,” said Jo.
“What?”
“Father has had a letter from the postmaster of Heartsdale about Mr. Squares. The letter says that he is a man of good character and excellent family.”
I saw, then, that mine was a rival who had the will and cunning to win his point. It was strange that I had failed to recognize that swagger of his when I had seen him walk to his carriage the night I passed the postmaster's house.
“It's enough to make lightning laugh,” I said. “Your father told him what he was going to do, and Bony drove to Heartsdale on Tuesday night and made friends with the postmaster. He came late in the evening and did not intend to be observed, but I saw him.”
“It is too bad,” she clicked.
“I can bear it as long as you think well of me,” I said. “Suppose I go to Merrifield and have a talk with your father?”
“Not now; there's time enough.”
“No, there isn't! You seem to forget that I'm getting along in life.”
“Poor boy!—you're almost eighteen!”
“I'm older than most gentlemen of twenty.”
“Why can't you wait?”
“Because I have something to tell you,” I wrote.
“To tell me?”
“Yes, and it's too sacred for the wires. I must look into your eyes and hear your answer.”
“I wonder what it can be,” the receiver clicked. “I shall let you come as soon as I can. I want to see you very, very much. Good-night. Father has come for me. We are going to Washington in a day or two.”
At that moment I caught the first words of a thrilling message on the main line. It said: “Fort Sumter has been fired upon. It is the beginning of war.”
I took the news to my mother, and declared my wish to go and fight for the North.
“No,” she said; “your father gave his life in the war with Mexico. Now my health is gone and you are all that's left to us. You are enlisted in a war with Poverty, and I can't spare you.”
She put her arms around me and cried, and I promised to stay at home, if possible, and it seemed a hard fate in spite of my happiness.
I wrote a long letter to the Colonel and confessed my love for his daughter, and begged him not to think ill of me without full information as to my character, and referred him to a number of good people.
This brief and suggestive letter came promptly:
Dear Sir,—As to your character, I have had all the information I desire. I should think better of it if you were to cease communicating with my daughter against my wishes.
It hurt like the blow of a hammer, and I could not think of the Colonel with any degree of charity for a week or more, but, after all, it helped to make a man of me. In the heat of such days a man shapes his character—as the smith his iron that is hot from the forge—and tempers it in cool reflection. Soon I got a letter from Sam that told of the departure of Jo and the Colonel for Washington.