Eben Holden Part 14

wood, but we don't count that. It's war an' speakin', they are the two great talents of the Yankee. But his greatest talent is the gift o'

gab. Give him a chance t' talk it over with his enemy an' he'll lick 'im without a fight. An' when his enemy is another Yankee--why, they both git licked, jest as it was in the case of the man thet sold me lightnin'

rods. He was sorry he done it before I got through with him. If we did not encourage this talent in our sons they would be talked to death by our daughters. Ladies and gentlemen, it gives me pleasure t' say that the best speakers in Faraway towns.h.i.+p have come here t' discuss the important question:

'Resolved, that intemperance has caused more misery than war?

'I call upon Moses Tupper to open for the affirmative.'

Moses, as I have remarked, had a most unlovely face with a thin and bristling growth of whiskers. In giving him features Nature had been generous to a fault. He had a large red nose, and a mouth vastly too big for any proper use. It was a mouth fas.h.i.+oned for odd sayings. He was well to do and boasted often that he was a self-made man. Uncle Be used to say that if Mose Tupper had had the 'makin' uv himself he'd oughter done it more careful.'

I remember not much of the speech he made, but the picture of him, as he rose on tiptoe and swung his arms like a man fighting bees, and his drawling tones are as familiar as the things of yesterday.

'Gentlemen an' ladies,' said he presently, 'let me show you a pictur'.

It is the drunkard's child. It is hungry an' there ain't no food in its home. The child is poorer'n a straw-fed hoss. 'Tain't hed a thing t' eat since day before yistiddy. Pictur' it to yourselves as it comes cryin'

to its mother an' says:

'"Ma! Gi' me a piece o' bread an' b.u.t.ter."

'She covers her face with her ap.r.o.n an' says she, "There am none left, my child."

'An' bime bye the child comes agin' an' holds up its poor little han's an' says: "Ma! please gi' me a piece O' cake."

'An' she goes an' looks out O' the winder, er mebbe pokes the fire, an'

says: "There am' none left, my child."

'An' bime bye it comes agin' an' it says: "Please gi' me a little piece O' pie."

'An' she mebbe flops into a chair an' says, sobbin', "There ain' none left, my child."

'No pie! Now, Mr Chairman!' exclaimed the orator, as he lifted both hands high above his head, 'If this ain't misery, in G.o.d's name, what is it?

'Years ago, when I was a young man, Mr President, I went to a dance one night at the village of Migleyville. I got a toothache, an' the Devil tempted me with whiskey, an' I tuk one gla.s.s an' then another an' purty soon I began t' thank I was a mighty hefty sort of a character, I did, an' I stud on a corner an' stumped everybody t' fight with me, an'

bime bye an accomanodatin' kind of a chap come along, an' that's all I remember O' what happened. When I come to, my coat tails had been tore off, I'd lost one leg O' my trousers, a bran new silver watch, tew dollars in money, an a pair O' spectacles. When I stud up an' tried t'

realise what hed happened I felt jes' like a blind rooster with only one leg an' no tail feathers.'

A roar of laughter followed these frank remarks of Mr Tupper and broke into a storm of merriment when Uncle Eb rose and said:

'Mr President, I hope you see that the misfortunes of our friend was due t' war, an' not to intemperance.'

Mr Tupper was unhorsed. For some minutes he stood helpless or shaking with the emotion that possessed all. Then he finished lamely and sat down.

The narrowness of the man that saw so much where there was so little in his own experience and in the trivial events of his own towns.h.i.+p was what I now recognise as most valuable to the purpose of this history.

It was a narrowness that covered a mult.i.tude of people in St Lawrence county in those days.

Jed Feary was greeted with applause and then by respectful silence when he rose to speak. The fame of his verse and his learning had gone far beyond the narrow boundaries of the towns.h.i.+p in which he lived. It was the biggest thing in the county. Many a poor sinner who had gone out of Faraway to his long home got his first praise in the obituary poem by Jed Feary. These tributes were generally published in the county paper and paid for by the relatives of the deceased at the rate of a dollar a day for the time spent on them, or by a few days of board and lodging glory and consolation that was, alas! too cheap, as one might see by a glance at his forlorn figure. I shall never forget the courtly manner, so strangely in contrast with the rude deportment of other men in that place, with which he addressed the chairman and the people. The drawling dialect of the vicinity that flavoured his conversation fell from him like a mantle as he spoke and the light in his soul shone upon that little company a great light, as I now remember, that filled me with burning thoughts of the world and its mighty theatre of action. The way of my life lay clear before me, as I listened, and its days of toil and the sweet success my G.o.d has given me, although I take it humbly and hold it infinitely above my merit. I was to get learning and seek some way of expressing what was in me.

It would ill become me to try to repeat the words of this venerable seer, but he showed that intemperance was an individual sin, while war was a national evil. That one meant often the ruin of a race; the other the ruin of a family; that one was as the ocean, the other as a single drop in its waters. And he told us of the full of empires and the millions that had suffered the oppression of the conqueror and perished by the sword since Agamemnon.

After the debate a young lady read a literary paper full of clumsy wit, rude chronicles of the countryside, essays on 'Spring', and like topics--the work of the best talent of Faraway. Then came the decision, after which the meeting adjourned.

At the door some other boys tried 'to cut me out'. I came through the noisy crowd, however, with Hope on my arm and my heart full of a great happiness.

'Did you like it?' she asked.

'Very much,' I answered.

'What did you enjoy most?'

'Your company,' I said, with a fine air of gallantry.

'Honestly?'

'Honestly. I want to take you to Rickard's sometime?'

That was indeed a long cherished hope.

'Maybe I won't let you,' she said.

'Wouldn't you?'

'You'd better ask me sometime and see.'

'I shall. I wouldn't ask any other girl.'

'Well,' she added, with a sigh, 'if a boy likes one girl I don't think he ought to have anything to do with other girls. I hate a flirt.'

I happened to hear a footfall in the snow behind us, and looking back saw Ann Jane Foster going slow in easy hearing. She knew all, as we soon found out.

'I dew jes love t' see young folks enjoy themselves,' said she, 'it's entrancin'.'

Coming in at our gate I saw a man going over the wall back of the big stables. The house was dark.

'Did you see the night man?' Elizabeth Brower whispered as I lit the lamp. 'Went through the garden just now. I've been watching him here at the window.'

Chapter 13

The love of labour was counted a great virtue there in Faraway. As for myself I could never put my heart in a hoe handle or in any like tool of toil. They made a blister upon my spirit as well as upon my hands. I tried to find in the sweat of my brow that exalted pleasure of which Mr Greeley had visions in his comfortable retreat on Printing House Square.

But unfortunately I had not his point of view.

Hanging in my library, where I may see it as I write, is the old sickle of Uncle Eb. The hard hickory of its handle is worn thin by the grip of his hand. It becomes a melancholy symbol when I remember how also the hickory had worn him thin and bent him low, and how infinitely better than all the harvesting of the sickle was the strength of that man, diminis.h.i.+ng as it wore the wood. I cannot help smiling when I look at the sickle and thank of the soft hands and tender amplitude of Mr Greeley.

The great editor had been a playmate of David Brower when they were boys, and his paper was read with much reverence in our home.

'How quick ye can plough a ten-acre lot with a pen,' Uncle Eb used to say when we had gone up to bed after father had been reading aloud from his Tribune.

Such was the power of the press in that country one had but to say of any doubtful thing, 'Seen it in print,' to stop all argument. If there were any further doubt he had only to say that he had read it either in the Tribune or the Bible, and couldn't remember which. Then it was a mere question of veracity in the speaker. Books and other reading were carefully put away for an improbable time of leisure.

'I might break my leg sometime,' said David Brower, 'then they'll come handy.' But the Tribune was read carefully every week.