The Minute Man of the Frontier Part 4

"Mought that be your young un, stranger?" asked Paxton.

"As nigh as one can say, that mought be mine."

"And a fine chap he be, surely."

"A purty fine one, I reckon myself."

"How many young ones mought you have, my friend?"

"Well, stranger, that's where you have me. Sally, I say, come to the door there! You count them childer while I name 'em--no, you name 'em, and I'll count."

So they counted out seventeen children. Paxton had his cue now, and was ready.

"Stranger, I say," he said, "this seems to me a curious kind of a kidntry."

"Why so, stranger?"

"Because, when I axed ye how many hogs ye had, ye could tell me plum off; but when I axed ye how many children ye had, ye had to count right smart before ye could tell. Seems to me ye pay a lettle more attention to your hogs than ye do to your childer."

"Stranger," shouted M----, "ye mought sure be the missioner.

You've got me, sure! You shall have the church in the holler next Sunday, and me and my wife and my seventeen shall all be there."

True to his word, he helped Paxton to establish a school.

When I was in St. Louis, there was a Sunday-school convention there. A fine-looking young man came up to Father Paxton, who was then in charge of the Sunday-school Depository, and said,--

"Don't ye know me, Father Paxton?"

"No," said Paxton; "I reckon I don't recall ye."

"Well, I am from ----; and I am one of the seventeen children of M----. And I am a delegate here, representing over one hundred Sunday-schools sprung from that one."

VI.

LIGHTS AND SHADOWS.

Perhaps no man gets such a vivid idea of the dark and bright sides of frontier life as the general missionary. One week among the rich, entertained sumptuously, and housed with all the luxuries of hot air and water and the best of cooking; and then, in less than twelve hours, he may find himself in a lumber-wagon, called a stagecoach, b.u.mping along over the wretched roads of a new country, and lodged at night in a log house with the wind whistling through the c.h.i.n.ks where the mud has fallen out, to sit down with a family who do not taste fresh meat for weeks together, who are twelve miles from a doctor and as many from the post-office.

Nowhere in the world can a man so soon exchange the refinements of civilized life for one of hards.h.i.+p and toil as in a new country. Our minute-man must share with the settler all his toils, and yet often forego the settler's hope. The life among frontiersmen is apt to unfit a man for other work. His scanty salary will not allow many new books, and often his papers are out of date. The finding of a home is one of the worst of hards.h.i.+ps. Let us start with the missionary to the front; our way lies through a rich valley. The moon is at her full, and we pa.s.s fine farms. The scent of the hay floats in at the car windows; fine orchards surround the houses, while great flocks of sheep are seen feeding, and herds resting, comfortably chewing the cud.

But morning comes, and we must change cars. We are in a city of 80,000 people, with 498 factories with 15,000 employees, where a few years ago a few log houses only were in sight. As we change cars we change company too. We left the train at a Union Station, with its green lawns and trim garden, to find a station with old oil-barrels around it, the mud all over everything, the train filled with lumbermen, with their red mackinaw s.h.i.+rts and great boots spiked on the bottoms, and a comforter tied around the waist.

A few women are on the train, often none at all. Our new road is poorly ballasted, and the train bounces along like a great b.u.mble-bee.

The men are all provided with pocket-pistols that are often more deadly than a revolver. At the first station--a little mouse-colored affair, sometimes without a ticket-agent--we notice the change. The stumps are thick in the fields; many of the houses have the building-paper fluttering in the wind; the streets are of sawdust. You can see the flags growing up from the swamp beneath. The saloons are numerous; and as the train is a mixed one in more senses than one, abundant time is given while shunting the freight-cars for the men to reload their pocket-pistols and get gloriously drunk.

"Kings may be blest, but Tam was glorious."

And so on we go again for forty miles, when all leave the train but one solitary man, who lies prostrate in the car, too big for our little conductor to lift, and so he goes to the terminus with us. It is getting late, and the last ten miles are through a wilderness of dead pines, with here and there a winding line of timothy and clover that has sprung up from seeds dropped by the supply teams. But presently we see a pretty stream with bosky glades, and visions of speckled trout come up; then an immense mill, and a village of white houses with green Venetian blinds, and a pert little church. We had expected some good deacon to meet us and take us home to dinner; but, alas! no deacon is waiting, or dinner either for some time. For out of eight hundred people only five church-members can be found, four of them women.

It well nigh daunts the minute-man's courage as he sees the open saloons, the big, rough men, the great bull-terriers on the steps of the houses. The awful swearing and vile language appal him, and the thought of bringing his little ones to such a place almost breaks his spirits; but here he has come to stay and work. The hotel is his home until he can find a house for his family. There is but one place to rent in the town, and that is in a fearful condition. It is afterwards whitewashed and used as a chicken-coop. But at length a family moves away, and the house is secured just in time; for the new schoolmaster is after it, and meets the man on the way with a long face.

"You got the house?"

"Yes."

"What can I do? my goods are on the way!"

"Oh, they will build one for you, but not for a preacher."

"No, they won't. Could I get my things in for eight or ten days?"

"Oh, yes." The minister is so glad to get the place that he feels generous. But the good man stays eleven months; and he has besides his wife and child, a mother-in-law, a grandmother-in-law, a niece, a _protegee_, and a young man, a nephew, who has come to get an education and do the ch.o.r.es. They are all very nice people, but it leaves the minute-man and his wife and four children with but three rooms. The beds must stand so that the children have to climb over the head-boards to get at them. The family sit by the big stove at their meals, and can look out on the glowing sand and see the swifts darting about; while in the winter the study is sitting-room and playground too.

But this is luxury. Often the minute-man must be content with one room, for which the rent charged may be extortionate. Even then he must keep his water in a barrel out in the hall. In cold weather perhaps it must be chopped before getting it into the kettle.

I knew of one man who lived in a log house. It had been lathed and plastered on the inside, and weather-boarded on the outside, so that it was very warm, and so thick that you could not hear the storms outside, which raged at times for days together.

One day late in March a fearful snowstorm arose, and for three days and nights the snow came thick and fast. Luckily it thawed fast too.

On the fourth day there was need for the minute-man to go for the doctor, who lived some miles away. On the road he engaged a woman to go to his house, where her services were in demand. After he had summoned the doctor the good man took his time, and reached home in the afternoon. He was greeted by a duet from two young strangers from a far land.

Night closed in fast; the house was so thick that no one suspected another storm; but on going out to milk the cow, it was storming again, and the man saw he had need to be careful or he would not find his way back from the barn, though it was only a few yards away.

When he reached the house, the good lady visitor, who had insisted that she could not stay later than evening, gave up all hope of getting home that night. She stayed a fortnight! For this time the storm raged without thawing, and for three nights and days the snow piled up over the windows, and almost covered the little pines, in drifts fifteen feet deep. Not a horse came by for two weeks.

Once another man started in a storm on a similar errand; but in spite of his love, courage, and despair, he was overwhelmed, and sinking in agony in the drift, he never moved again. When the storm was over, the sun came out; and what a mockery it seemed! The squirrels ran nimbly up the trees, the blue jays called merrily; but the settlers looked over the white expanse, and missed the gray smoke that usually rose from the little log shanty.

The men gathered to break the roads; the ox-team and snow-plough were brought out, and the dogs were wild with delight as they ploughed up the snow with their snouts, and barked for very joy; but the men were sorrowful, and worked as for life and death. Half way to the house the husband was found motionless as a statue, his blue eyes gazing up into the sky. The men redoubled their efforts, and gained the house. The stoutest heart quailed. A poor cat was mewing piteously in the window.

And when at last the oldest man went in, he found mother and new-born child frozen to death.

VII.

SAt.u.r.dAY AFTERNOON IN THE SOUTH.

The South has two kinds of frontier,--that which has never been settled, and once thickly settled parts that have grown up to wild woods and wastes since the war. In old times the slave had a half-holiday on Sat.u.r.day, which custom the colored brother still keeps up; and a more picturesque scene is not to be found than that presented by a town, say of three thousand inhabitants, where the county has seven colored people to one white.

Never was such a motley company gathered in one place,--old men with grizzled heads, all with a rabbit-foot in their pocket, a necklace for a charm around their necks, their bronzed b.r.e.a.s.t.s open to view; old mammies with scarlet bandannas; young belles of all shades--here a mulatto girl in pale-blue dress and pointed shoes, her waist as disfigured as any Parisian's, there a mammoth, coal-black negro driving a pair of splendid mules.

Here is an original turnout; it was once a sulky. The shafts stick out above the great ears of the mule; the seat has been replaced by an old rocking-chair; the wheels are wired-up pieces of a small barrel that have replaced some of the spokes, while fully half the harness is made up of rope, string, and wire. The owner's clothes are one ma.s.s of patchwork, and his hat is full of holes, out of which the unruly wool escapes and keeps his hat from blowing off.

The sidewalk presents a moving panorama unmatched for richness of color. As we leave the town, we ride past plantations that once had palatial residences, whose owners had from one to three thousand slaves, the little log cabins arranged around and near the house. In many cases the houses are still there, but dilapidated.