The Gentleman from Everywhere Part 7

"Old Aunt Dunk Is a mean old skunk."

She flew into a furious rage, declared that some Unitarian must have perpetrated this insult, and that I must find the culprit.

She never forgave me because I failed to do so, and at her urgent solicitation the minister, after great exertion, secured a few signatures to a pet.i.tion for my discharge on the plea that I chewed tobacco and expectorated on the floor in the presence of my cla.s.s.

As I easily proved that I never chewed tobacco, and as my patrons presented an overwhelming protest, the prayer of the pet.i.tioners was unanimously refused by the school board.

It would have been laughable had it not been so serious and pitiful, to see the frantic attempts of the poor in this town to keep up appearances, and counterfeit the style of those who had grown rich by cheating widows and orphans in bucket shops and stock gambling. The little minnows put on all the sn.o.bbish airs of the whales who had grown so large by devouring all the small fish in their business seas.

One pillar of the church, who was a cas.h.i.+er, ruined his bank by stealing money to enable him, for a while, to live in an elegant house and support servants, equipages, silks and diamonds galore. For a time he was the idol of the town, while he gave costly dinners and showered his ill-gotten gains to embellish his favorite temple, and to build a tower upon it to look down in contempt upon all the lesser shrines.

He barely escaped the sheriff at night-time, and fled beyond the seas, leaving his showy family to poverty and the ill-concealed derision of those who wors.h.i.+pped them while they were supposed to be rich.

Such as these made life very uncomfortable for me, and at the end of my year, I left in disgust; never again to resume the profession in which I had spent so many years of my somewhat checkered existence.

My life seemed a failure; I reflected long upon the question of the Psalmist, "What is man?" and here are the answers which I culled from many thoughtful poets, whose names are appended to their several replies.

In this grand wheel, the world, we're spokes made all;-- (_Brome_.)

He who climbs high, endangers many a fall;--(_Chaucer_.)

A pa.s.sing gleam called life is o'er us thrown,--(_Story_.)

It glimmers, like a meteor, and is gone.--(_Rogers_.)

To-morrow's sun to thee may never rise--(_Congreve_.)

The flower that smiles to-day, to-morrow dies--(_Sh.e.l.ly_.)

And what do we, by all our bustle gain?--(_Pomfret_.)

A drop of pleasure in a sea of pain.--(_Tupper_.)

Tired of beliefs, we dread to live without;--(_Holmes_.)

Yet who knows most, the more he knows to doubt.--(_Daniel_.)

Princes and lords are but the breath of kings.--(_Burns_.)

And trifles make the sum of human things.--(_More_.)

If troubles overtake thee, do not wail;--(_Herbert_.)

Our thoughts are boundless, though our frames are frail.--(_Percival_.)

The fiercest agonies have shortest reign;--(_Bryant_.)

Great sorrows have no leisure to complain.--(_Gaffe_.)

One touch of nature makes the whole world kin,--(_Shakespeare_.)

For we the same are that our sires have been;--(_Knox_.)

Nor is a true soul ever born for naught,--(_Lowell_.)

Yet millions never think a n.o.ble thought.--(_Bailey_.)

Good actions crown themselves with lasting bays,--(_Heath_.)

And G.o.d fulfils Himself in many ways.--(_Tennyson_.)

The world's a wood in which all lose their way--(_Buckingham_.)

A fair where thousands meet, but none can stay;--(_Fawkes_.)

To sport their season, and be seen no more,--(_Cowper_.)

Till tired they sleep, and life's poor play is o'er.--(_Pope_.)

CHAPTER X.

ADVENTURES IN MOSQUITO-LAND.

At the close of the school in July, 1870, a friend of mine, Doctor B----, of Boston, and I, attracted by the alluring prospectus of a new town near Plymouth, North Carolina, visited that place via the Merchant's and Miner's steams.h.i.+p line.

I wrote an account of this pleasure excursion, which was widely copied by northern newspapers in which I figured as the professor and he as the doctor, while both of us combined were called the "Shoo-Fly Club." I quote some extracts from the description of this remarkable excursion.

"On the early morning after our arrival in the Southland, doctor and professor, after a brief sojourn in the arms of Morpheus, awoke to a contest which was enough to daunt the stoutest heart.

"Mosquitoes to the right of them, mosquitoes to the left of them, black flies above them, black flies beneath them, buzzed and stabbed with a vengeance. We lay under our netting appalled at the profanity and ferocity of our foes, caught in a trap from which there seemed to be no escape. The breakfast-bell rang and rang, but we dared not venture out among our bloodthirsty foes, for an array of bristling bayonets was thrust through the bars long enough to hang our clothes on, and fierce enough to suck every drop of blood from our trembling limbs, and our only consolation was that our invariable diet of 'hog and hominy' had so reduced the vital fluid, that our tormentors would starve though we were slain.

"At length a brilliant thought flashed across the mind of the doctor.

'The shoo-fly--the shoo-fly,' said he; 'why didn't we think of that?

and out he went for his carpetbag, pulled out some suspicious looking bottles labeled with the mystic words, and made for the bed, entirely covered with a ferocious cloud of the aforesaid 'skeeters' and flies stabbing him for dear life. We then proceeded to anoint our bodies with this preparation, which the doctor declared to be a panacea for all human ills; then completely clad in our armor, we sallied forth to the crusade. Down came the fiends; they cared not for 'shoo-fly,'

cared not for blows, and our visions of fortunes to be realized from our new discovery vanished away, but not so our tormentors.

"Regardless of Mrs. Grundy, regardless of everything save life, the professor fled, down over the stairs he fled, pants and unmentionables flying in the air, to the astonishment of the contraband servant girls, for the bath-house--here at length plunged beneath the flood he found relief. After copious ablutions the professor went back for his friend, but the valiant doctor had retreated behind the bars, resolved there to starve rather than again to face his foes.

"After much parleying the doctor's desire for hog and hominy overcame all his fears, and the club marched to breakfast. Here two servant girls armed with long fans, fought a cloud of the famished varmints, while the club swallowed hoe cake covered with a copious lather of the flies of the season. At length our appet.i.tes or rather we ourselves, were conquered, and retired in disgust, leaving our foes to bury their dead and divide the spoils of war.

"Our host, who is a true gentleman from Pennsylvania, then ordered the darkies to harness the span. After the inevitable delays which always attend everything that the fifteenth amendments have undertaken to do, we rode out to view the country; and we now congratulated ourselves that our troubles were at an end, but they had but just commenced.

Our host had a lame hand, and the professor volunteered to drive; our friends, the varmints, now confined their kind attentions almost exclusively to the horses, which they butchered unmercifully. Oh, such roads! Boys of New England, if you sigh for 'sunny' North Carolina, go; go by all means, and you will return satisfied that old Ma.s.sachusetts, with all its east winds is a paradise compared with what we saw in the 'old North State,' or in the 'Old Dominion.'

"But to our journey. The horses floundered through quagmires covered in some places with logs, which toss and tumble you till every bone aches, floundered and swam through streams reeking with sc.u.m from the cypress swamps; the roads are about six inches wider than your carriage, and the professor found himself obliged to avoid the sharp corners of fences, on either side the deep ditches on whose very edge ran the wheels; to urge his horses over stumps and fallen trees; to whip them over long snouts of prostrate pigs who refused to budge an inch; to jump them over chasms running dark and deep across his path and to spur them down sharp, perpendicular pitches which threatened to break every bone in his body.

"Here and there we saw a few logs piled up together, flanked by mud and sticks, and dignified by the name of house; the naked piccaninnies rolled in the dust, and the poor-white scowled as he lifted his hat, while we worried our miserable way along.