Skookum Chuck Fables Part 8

"A company of thirty was soon raised." They were to receive two s.h.i.+llings and sixpence per day each, "out of which he was to maintain himself";--very little to risk one's life for; but in those days it was no concern with a man whether he was killed or not. Besides, it was worth something to get killed and have Francis Parkman write about you more than a century later. Perhaps they antic.i.p.ated this perpetuation of their names and deeds.

However, "Lovewell was chosen captain; Farwell lieutenant, and Robbins, ensign. They set out towards the end of November, and reappeared at Dunstable early in January, bringing one prisoner and one scalp." It does not seem to us to have paid the interest on the investment of two s.h.i.+llings and sixpence per day, "out of which he was to maintain himself," and, for anything we know to the contrary, perhaps the captain was getting more than this--it has not been recorded. "Towards the end of the month Lovewell set out again, this time with eighty-seven men.

They ascended the frozen Merrimac, pa.s.sed Lake Winnepesaukee, pushed nearly to the White Mountains, and encamped on a branch of the upper Saco. Here they killed a moose--a timely piece of luck, for they were in danger of starvation, and Lovewell had been compelled by want of food to send back a good number of his men. The rest held their way, filing on snowshoes through the deathlike solitude that gave no sign of life except the light track of some squirrel on the snow, and the brisk note of the hardy little chickadee, or black-capped t.i.tmouse, so familiar in the winter woods."

Now here is where the foolhardiness of the expedition begins to appeal to us. Supposing just here they had met five hundred crazy Indians with five hundred crazy bows and arrows? And they must have expected it. They were searching for Indians. Perhaps they were seeking martyrdom? But the New Englander of the frontier was nothing if not foolhardy. They mistook it for bravery, and there must have been some bravery amalgamated with it, because a man must have a certain quant.i.ty of that rarity before he can lend himself out as a target at two s.h.i.+llings and sixpence a day, "out of which he was to maintain himself."

Now, if you have patience to follow you will learn that they ultimately met the very thing which you expect--which they must have expected.

"Thus far the scouts had seen no human footprints; but on the twentieth of February they found a lately abandoned wigwam, and following the snowshoe tracks that led from it--" Right into the lion's jaw, as it were. Perhaps they were anxious to be shot to get out of their misery--"at length saw smoke rising at a distance out of the gray forest." They saw their finish, and their hearts were filled with joy.

"The party lay close till two o'clock in the morning; then, cautiously approaching, found one or more wigwams, surrounded them, and killed all the inmates, ten in number." They were to pay dear for this, as anyone could have told them. "They brought home the scalps in triumph, ... and Lovewell began at once to gather men for another hunt.... At the middle of April he had raised a band of forty-six." One of the number was Seth Wyman, ... a youth of twenty-one, graduated at Harvard College, in 1723, and now a student of theology. Chaplain though he was, he carried a gun, knife and hatchet like the others, and not one of the party was more prompt to use them.... They began their march on April 15th." After leaving several of their number by the way for various causes, we find thirty-seven of them on the night of May 7th near Fryeburg lying in the woods near the northeast end of Lovewell's pond.

"At daybreak the next morning, as they stood bareheaded, listening to a prayer from the young chaplain, they heard the report of a gun, and soon after an Indian.... Lovewell ordered his men to lay down their packs and advance with extreme caution." Why this caution? "They met an Indian coming towards them through the dense trees and bushes. He no sooner saw them than he fired at the leading men." Naturally. We should have said "leading targets." "His gun was charged with beaver shot and he severely wounded Lovewell and young Whiting; on which Seth Wyman shot him dead, and the chaplain and another man scalped him." As yet they had only entered the lion's den. "And now follows one of the most obstinate and deadly bush-fights in the annals of New England.... The Indians howled like wolves, yelled like enraged cougars, and made the forest ring with their whoops.... The slaughter became terrible. Men fell like wheat before the scythe. At one time the Indians ceased firing; ... they seemed to be holding a 'pow-wow'; but the keen and fearless Wyman crept up among the bushes, shot the chief conjurer, and broke up the meeting.

About the middle of the afternoon young Fry received a mortal wound.

Unable to fight longer, he lay in his blood, praying from time to time for his comrades in a faint but audible voice." One, Keys, received two wounds, "but fought on till a third shot struck him." He declared the Indians would not get his scalp. Creeping along the sandy edge of the pond, he chanced to find a stranded canoe, pushed it afloat, rolled himself into it, and drifted away before the wind. Soon after sunset the Indians drew off.... The surviving white men explored the scene of the fight.... Of the thirty-four men, nine had escaped without serious injury, eleven were badly wounded, and the rest were dead or dying....

Robbins, as he lay helpless, asked one of them to load his gun, saying, 'The Indians will come in the morning to scalp me, and I'll kill another of them if I can.' They loaded the gun and left him." The expected had occurred. Most of them had been killed. Anyone could have told them this before they set out--they could have made the same prophecy for themselves. And after all they had accomplished nothing but their own deaths. The story of their return rivals that of Napoleon's retreat from Moscow. Of the whole number eleven ultimately reached home.

We leave it to the reader to determine whether this was an exhibition of bravery or foolhardiness, or a mixture of both.

We congratulate ourselves that we did not live on the frontier of New England in the year 1725.

Of the Laws of Lycurgus

Lycurgus reigned over a place called Lacedaemon, which is a part of Greece, about the year 820 B.C. Now, this is a great many years ago, and is further back into the archives of history than most of us can remember. There is no doubt, however, that this great ruler, Lycurgus, was crazy, or he was one of those persons whose brains cease to develop after they have left their teens. He certainly secures the first prize as a "whim" strategist. In spite of his insane eccentricities, he was allowed the full exercise of his freedom. Had he flourished in 1915 A.D.

instead of 820 "B.C." (which does not mean British Columbia), the asylum for the insane at New Westminster would not have been strong enough to retain him. Lycurgus did one redeeming thing--he founded a Senate; "which, sharing,"--we are following Plutarch--"as Plato says, in the power of the kings, too imperious and unrestrained before, and having equal authority with them, was the means of keeping them within bounds of moderation, and highly contributed to the preservation of the State.

The establishment of a Senate, an intermediate body, like ballast, kept it in just equilibrium, and put it in a safe posture: the twenty-eight senators adhering to the kings whenever they saw the people too encroaching, and on the other hand, supporting the people, when the kings attempted to make themselves absolute."

Now, what in the world possessed this despotic imbecile to form a senate? His action in this can only be accounted for in the light that it was one of those unpremeditated whims of a narrow-minded faddist. One naturally wonders what the newly created senators were doing while the king was imposing his insane laws. This body was formed for the "preservation of the state." The wonder is that there was any state left, for the king paralyzed commerce, smothered ambition, choked art to death, and placed a ban on modesty. Further than having been "formed,"

the "Senate" never again appears on the pages of the "Lycurgus" book.

Plutarch, who lived in Greece about the year 100 A.D., nine hundred years after the subject of his biography, relates the forming and imposing of those laws with the utmost faith, and the most implicit innocence; which goes to prove that the Grecian idea of government, with all its knowledge, had not advanced much, at least up to the time of Plutarch.

And now for the laws.

"A second and bolder political enterprise of Lycurgus was a new division of the lands. For he found a prodigious inequality; the city overcharged with many indigent persons, who had no land; and the wealth centred in the hands of the few. Determined, therefore, to root out the evils of insolence, envy, avarice, and luxury, and those distempers of a state still more inveterate than fatal--I mean poverty and riches--he persuaded them to cancel all former divisions of land and to make new ones, in such a manner as they might be perfectly equal in their possessions and way of living.

His proposal was put in practice.

"After this he attempted to divide also the movables, in order to take away all appearance of inequality; but he soon perceived that they could not bear to have their goods taken directly from them, and therefore took another method, counterworking their avarice by a stratagem."

Now, this seems to be the only law to which they made objection; and this proves that the love of personal "icties" has very deep roots.

Perhaps the influence of the "senate" sustained them in this, for qualifications for a senator, even in those days, must have called for men of some means, and they, when the shoe began to pinch their own feet, would not care to divide up their sugar and flour with the rank and file. It does not appear, however, that they had any say in the matter, and, beyond the statement that they were formed for a purpose, they seem to have taken no part in the affairs of state; if they had, Lycurgus and his laws would never have been made part of history.

"First he stopped the currency of the gold and silver coin"--thus he paralyzed industry--"and ordered that they should make use of iron money only; then to a great quant.i.ty and weight of this he a.s.signed but a small value.... In the next place he excluded unprofitable and superfluous arts.... Their iron coin would not pa.s.s in the rest of Greece, but was ridiculed and despised, so that the Spartans had no means of purchasing any foreign or curious wares, nor did any merchant s.h.i.+p unlade in their harbor." Even Plutarch sees nothing suicidal in all this voluntary isolating of themselves from the main arteries of commerce.

"Desirous to complete the conquest of luxury and exterminate the love of riches, he introduced a third inst.i.tution, which was wisely enough and ingeniously contrived. This was the use of public tables, where all were to eat in common of the same meat, and such kinds of it as were appointed by law. At the same time they were forbidden to eat at home, or on expensive couches and tables.... Another ordinance levelled against magnificence and expense, directed that the ceilings of houses should be wrought with no tool but the axe, and the doors with nothing but the saw. Indeed, no man could be so absurd as to bring into a dwelling so homely and simple, bedsteads with silver feet, purple coverlets, or golden cups." Thus he smothered art and personal ambition, two of the most requisite essentials to a people on their onward and upward trend to civilization and success. "A third ordinance of Lycurgus was, that they should not often make war against the same enemy, lest, by being frequently put upon defending themselves, they too should become able warriors in their turn."

And thus he made them defenceless against their enemies.

"For the same reason he would not permit all that desired to go abroad and see other countries, lest they should contract foreign manners, gain traces of a life of little discipline, and of a different form of government. He forbade strangers, too, to resort to Sparta who could not a.s.sign a good reason for their coming!"

Improvement with Lycurgus means retrogression with us. He wished, perhaps ignorantly, to arrest the progress of civilization and subst.i.tute a slovenly ideal of his own. His purpose was to cancel the civilization which the race had gained during thousands of years of effort, and bring it back to a semi-savagery. But the world was too big for him. It had things in view which were too great for his small, hampered mind to have any suspicion of. No doubt he was sincere in his little, infinitesimal way; but it is a blessing for the world that his influence was confined to a very small corner of the then civilized world, and that others of broader views succeeded him to manage the affairs of states and nations. With all deference to old Plutarch, the biographer of Lycurgus, we wish to say that however grand the laws of this man may have been as ideals, they were utter failures when brought into practice.

Of Joan of Arc

Some people say the world is getting no better, but if we take a dip into history and consider the conditions which prevailed there from the earliest times up to only a few hundred years ago, we will find a race of human beings which in no wise resemble the present output except in form and stature. And our own forefathers--the people of the British Isles, the Anglo-Saxons who are to-day leading in the social world--were not one iota better throughout those pages than many of the smallest and most unpretentious of obscure tribes living here and there in ignorant, local isolation. One of the strongest points in our argument is the fact that history, as we have it, is composed of the clang of battles and the private lives of kings and despots. The ordinary, everyday life of the peasant people--the working cla.s.ses--the backbone of the nation, so to speak--was beneath the consideration of the historian throughout all times. The only virtue, in his estimation, was a strong arm--a large army to murder and destroy property. And the life of the historian must needs reflect that of the people. There is no doubt that in a great majority they were of a cruel, murderous nature. We get rare glimpses, however (at intervals of sometimes hundreds of years), of the doings, manners, and customs, likes and dislikes of the common people, that we can rely upon as authentic; the rest is poetry and legend, and, although typical, are relations of incidents that did not really occur.

There is no doubt that, although it has been withheld, there was a great deal of virtue, which blushed and bloomed unseen, amid all this blood and war.

As though by accident the historian who immortalized Joan of Arc has let slip a few words in connection with this heroine's early life that are more valuable to us than page upon page of some of our so-called history. "Jeanne d'Arc was the child of a laborer of Domremy, a little village on the borders of Lorraine and Champagne. Just without the cottage where she was born began the great woods of the Vosges, where the children of Domremy drank in poetry and legend from fairy ring and haunted well, hung their flower garlands on the sacred trees and sang songs to the good people who might not drink of the fountain because of their sins. Jeanne loved the forest; its birds and beasts came lovingly to her at her childish call. But at home men saw nothing in her but 'a good girl,' simple and pleasant in her way, spinning and sewing by her mother's side while the other girls went to the fields--tender to the poor and sick."

This is a little domestic scene of the year A.D. 1425, and how homelike and real and familiar it all is. What a sweet peace spot, among all the bloodshed and horror that was going on throughout France at that time.

Joan of Arc is undoubtedly one of the most remarkable characters in all history. She was born at Domremy, France, in 1412, and was executed in 1431. Before she had reached twenty this girl had practically freed France from the English, or at least put the country upon such a footing that a few years accomplished its freedom.

The superst.i.tions of the times are no doubt responsible to a great extent for the success which was attained by this Maid of Orleans. "The English believed in her supernatural mission as firmly as the French did, but they thought her a sorceress who had come to overthrow them by her enchantments," and so on. The fact remains that this innocent peasant girl of eighteen years of age freed France from the English and accomplished things which no man of France at that time was able to do.

Either the French generals.h.i.+p of the times was very incompetent or the army was very much demoralized--at all events they had been awaiting the advent of a leader who was both determined and fearless, for skill does not seem to have been a requisite--and this appeared in the person of Joan of Arc.

It is difficult to believe that an entirely inexperienced person of this kind could take charge of an army of ten thousand men and lead them to victory when the best trained generals of the time could do nothing and suffered defeat at every turn.

With the coronation of the King the Maid felt that her errand was over.

"Oh, gentle king, the pleasure of G.o.d is done," she cried, as she flung herself at the feet of Charles, and asked leave to go home. "Would it were His good will," she pleaded with the archbishop, as he forced her to remain, "that I might go and keep sheep once more with my sisters and my brothers; they would be glad to see me again."

But the policy of the French court detained her. France was depending on one of its peasant girls for its very national existence. The humiliation of the thing should make all good Frenchmen blush with shame. So she fought on with the conviction that she was superfluous in the army, and a slave to the French court. It does not appear that she was even placed upon the payroll, or that she received reward of any kind for her services--and there were no "Victoria crosses" in those days. She fought on without pay; rendered all her services for nothing--perhaps for the love of the thing. During the defence of Compiegne in May, 1430, she fell into the hands of one Vendome, who sold her to the Duke of Burgundy. Burgundy sold her to the English--her remuneration for her self-sacrificing, voluntarily-given services.

And now comes the tragic part of a most pathetic story enacted out at a time when the name civilization, applied to the French and English, is a mockery. "In December she was carried to Rouen, the headquarters of the English, heavily fettered, and flung into a gloomy prison, and at length, arraigned before the spiritual tribunal of the Bishop of Beauvais, a wretched creature of the English, as a sorceress and a heretic, while the dastard she had crowned king left her to die." She was not even granted a legal, judicial trial.

Some say that her sentence was at one time commuted to perpetual imprisonment, which proves that there was a glimmer of humanity hid away in some corner of the world, knocking hysterically in its imprisonment for admission. "But the English found a pretext to treat her as a criminal and condemned her to be burned." And at this juncture it may be well to say that we have good reason to be proud of ourselves to-day, and ashamed of our ancestors.

"She was brought to the stake on May 30th, 1431. The woman's tears dried upon her cheeks, and she faced her doom with the triumphant courage of the martyr." During her last awful moments, as she left this world with the torture of the flames slowly consuming her body, what were the last impressions of this girl of nineteen who left home and happiness to free a people who allowed her to be thus tormented to death? "A court was const.i.tuted by Pope Calixtus III., in 1455, which declared her innocent and p.r.o.nounced her trial unjust. And through the whole civilized world her memory is fittingly commemorated in statuary and literature." But this is poor consolation and does not undo the mischief. So far as Joan of Arc is concerned, she is still burning, scorching, suffering at that stake, and the world and the English are her torturers, still tormenting her, while the man she made king stands looking on indifferently, heartlessly. All the honor and statuary that ever had creation on this green earth cannot atone for this crime of "civilization" on the innocent. But it is only one blot of many with which the world moves on, branded indelibly to its unknown end; and beneath a pleasant exterior we know, but try to hide, those blots, with apologies for our ancestors. And yet some say the world is getting no better. Out of this chaos of blood, crime and heathendom we sprang with all our pride and greatness, and with such a record it behooves us to be rather humble than high-minded, for crime and disgrace are lying at our very door-step.

"The story of Joan has been a rich motive in the world of art, and painter and sculptor have spent their genius on the theme without as yet adequately realizing its simple grandeur."

Of Voices Long Dead

The following is not history, although we have placed it under this heading. It is the literal translation of a poem by Theocritus, a light in the ancient literature of the Greeks. Although the actual incident never occurred, it is typical of what was going on among that long dead people, and it is of as much importance to us as the most valuable record of history, and is of vital interest when viewed in retrospect from the year 1915, because it gives us a rare glimpse into the domestic manners of a people who lived when all the present civilized world was in the hands of savages--and how modern it all seems. The scene might have been enacted yesterday even to the smallest detail.

Imagine yourself in the city of Alexandria about the year 280 B.C.