Hoosier Mosaics Part 14

The summer softened into autumn. The maple leaves reddened. The long gra.s.s turned brown and lolled over. A softness and tenderness lurked in the deep blue sky, and the air had a sharp racy fragrance from ripe fruit and grain. Meantime the railroad had been pushed with amazing rapidity nearly to completion. Every day long construction trains went cras.h.i.+ng-across Luke's farm. Pa.s.senger coaches were to be put on in a few days. Luke was the very picture of happiness. He seemed to grow younger every day. His worldly prospects, too, were flattering. A station had been located on his land, around which a town had already begun to spring up. The vast value of Luke's timber, walnut and oak, was just beginning to appear; indeed, immense wealth lay in his hands. But his happiness was of a deeper and purer sort than that generated by simple pecuniary prosperity. Hoiden Pearl was in the focus of all his thoughts; her face lighted his dreams, her voice made the music that charmed him into a wonderland of bliss. He said little about her, even to Betsy, but it needed no sharpness of sight to discover from his face what was going on in his heart. He had even forgotten his pipe. He had not smoked since that first day in the orchard. He had straightened up and looked a span taller.

The girl did not seem to dream of any tender attachment on Luke's part.

In fact he gave her no cause for it. He fed on his love inwardly and never thought of telling it. To be with her was enough. It satisfied all his wants. She was frank and free with him, but tyrannized over him--ordered him about like a servant, scolded him, flattered him, pouted at him, smiled on him, indeed kept him crazy with rapture all the time. Once only she became confidentially communicative. It was one day, sitting on an old mossy log in the Judge's woodland pasture, she told him the story of her past life. How thrillingly beautiful her face became as it sobered down with the history of early orphanage! Her father had died first; then her mother, who left her four years old in the care of Mr. Pearl, her paternal uncle, with whom she had ever since been, going from place to place, as the calls of his nomadic profession made it necessary, from survey to survey, from this State to that, seeing all sorts of people, and receiving her education in small, detached parcels. The story was a sad, unsatisfactory one, breathing neglect, yet full of a certain kind of sprightliness, and touched here and there with the fascination of true romance.

It is hard to say when Luke would have awakened from his tender trance to the strong reality of love. He was too contented for self-questioning, and no act or word of Hoiden's invited him to consider what he was doing or whither he was drifting.

It was well for Luke and the girl, too, that it was a spa.r.s.ely settled neighborhood, for evil tongues might have made much of their constant companions.h.i.+p and childish behavior.

As for the Judge, after it was all over he admitted that he felt some qualms of conscience about allowing such unlimited intimacy to go on, but he excused himself by saying that the girl, when confined to the house, was such an unmitigated nuisance that he was glad for some one to monopolize her company.

"Why," said he, in his peculiar way, "she set the whole house by the ears. She made more clatter and racket than a four-horse Pennsylvania wagon coming down a rocky hill. She would go from garret to cellar like a whirlwind and twist things wrong side out as she went----she was a tart!"

But at length, toward the middle of autumn the end came. Luke had business with some hog-buyers in Cincinnati, whither he was gone several days. Meantime the railroad was completed, and Mr. Pearl came to the Judge's early one morning and called for Hoiden. His business with his employers was ended, and he had just finished an arrangement that had long been on foot to go to one of the South American States and take charge of a vast engineering scheme there. The girl was delighted. Such a prospect of travel and adventure was enough to set one of her temperament wild with enthusiasm. She flew to packing her trunk, her face radiant with joy.

Only an hour later Mr. Pearl and Hoiden stood at the new station on Luke's land, waiting for the east-going train. Mr. Pearl happened to think of a business message he wished to leave for Luke, so he went into the depot building and wrote it. When Hoiden saw the letter was for Luke she begged leave to put in a few words of postscript, and she had her way.

The train came and the man and girl were whirled away to New York, and thence they took s.h.i.+p for South America, never to return.

Next day Luke came back, bringing with him a beautifully carved mahogany box mounted in silver. Betsy met him at the door, and, woman-like, told the story of Hoiden's departure almost at the first breath.

"Gone all the way to South America," she added, after premising that she would never return.

A peculiarly grim, grayish smile mantled the face of Luke. He swallowed a time or two before he could speak.

"Come now, sis" (he always said "sis" when he felt somewhat at Betsy's mercy), "come now, sis, don't try to fool me. I'm goin' right over to see the gal now, an' I've got what'll tickle her awfully right here in this 'ere box."

Out in the yard the blue jays and woodp.e.c.k.e.rs were quarrelling over the late apples heaped up by the cider mill. The sky was clear, but the sunlight, coming through a smoky atmosphere, was pale, like the smile of a sick man. The wind of autumn ran steadily through the shrubby weedy lawn with a sigh that had in it the very essence of sadness.

"I tell you, Luke, I'm not trying to fool you; they've gone clean to South America to stay always," reiterated Betsy.

Luke gazed for a moment steadily into his sister's eyes, as if looking for a sign. Slowly his stalwart body and muscular limbs relaxed and collapsed. The box fell to the floor with a crash, where it burst, letting roll out great hoops of gold and starry rings and pins--a gold watch and chain, a beautiful gold pen and pencil case, and trinkets and gew-gaw things almost innumerable. They must have cost the full profits of his business trip.

Luke staggered into a chair. Betsy just then happened to think of the letter that had been left for her brother. This she fetched and handed to him. It was the note of business from Mr. Pearl. There was a postscript in a different hand:

"_Good-bye, Goosey!_ _Hoidy Pearl._"

That was all. Luke is more morose and petulant than he used to be. He is decaying about apace with Rackenshack, and he smokes constantly. He is vastly wealthy and unmarried.

Betsy is quiet and kind. Up stairs in her chest is hidden the mahogany coffer full of golden testimonials of her brother's days of happiness and the one dark hour of his despair!

THE PEDAGOGUE.

He was one of the farmer princes of Hoosierdom, a man of more than average education, a fluent talker and ready with a story. Knowing that I was looking up reminiscences of Hoosier life and specimens of Hoosier character, he volunteered one evening to give me the following, vouching for the truth of it. Here it is, as I "short-handed" it from his own lips. I omit quotation marks.

The study of one's past life is not unlike the study of geology. If the presence of the remains of extinct species of animals and vegetables in the ancient rocks calls up in one's mind a host of speculative thoughts touching the progress of creation, so, as we cut with the pick of retrospection through the strata of bygone days, do the remains of departed things, constantly turning up, put one into his studying cap to puzzle over specimens fully as curious and interesting in their way as the _cephalaspis_.

The first stratum of my intellectual formation contains most conspicuously the remains of dog-eared spelling books, a score or more of them by different names, among which the _Elementary_ of Webster is the best preserved and most clearly defined. It was finding an old, yellow, badly thumbed and dirt soiled copy of Webster's spelling book in the bottom of an old chest of odds and ends, on the fly-leaf of which book was written "T. Blodgett," that lately brightened my memory of the things I am about to tell you.

The old time pedagogue is a thing of the past--_pars temporis acti_ is the Latin of it, may be, but I'm not sure--I'm rusty in the Latin now.

When I quit school I could read it a good deal. But of the pedagogue.

The twenty years since he ceased to flourish seem, on reflection, like an age--an _aeon_, as the Greeks would say. I never did know much Greek.

I got most of my education from pedagogues of the old sort. They kept pouring it on to me till it soaked in. That's the way I got it. I have had corns and bunions on my back for not being sufficiently porous to absorb the multiplication table rapidly enough to suit the whim of one of those learned tyrants. But the pedagogue became extinct and pa.s.sed into the fossil state some twenty years ago, when free schools took good hold. He scampered away when he heard the whistle of the steam engine along iron highways and the cry of small boys on the streets of the towns hawking the daily papers. He could live nowhere within the pale of innovation. He was born an exemplar of rigidity. The very name of reform was hateful to him. We older fellows remember him well, but to the younger fry he is not even a fossil, he is a myth. Of course pedagogues differed slightly in the matter of particular disposition and real character, but in a _general way_ they had a close family resemblance.

I purpose to write of one Blodgett--T. Blodgett, as it was written in the fly-leaf of Webster's Elementary--and he was an extraordinary specimen of the genus pedagogue. But before I introduce him, let me, by way of preface and prelude, give you a view of the salients of the history of the days when pole-ribbed school houses--log cabin school houses--flourished, with each a pedagogue for supreme, "unquestioned and unquestionable" despot.

In those fine days boys from five to fifteen years of age wore tow linen pants held up by suspenders (often made of tow strings), and having at each side pockets that reached down to about the wearer's knees. These pockets held as much as a moderate sized bushel basket will now. The girls, big and little, wore mere tow linen slips, that hung loose from the shoulders. Democracy, pure and undefiled, flourished like a green buckeye tree. Society was in about the same condition as a boy is when his voice is changing. You know when a boy's voice is changing if you hear him in another room getting his lesson by saying it over aloud, you think there's about fourteen girls, two old men, and a dog barking in the room. Society was much the same. The elements of everything were in it, but not developed and separated yet. Women rode behind their husbands on the same horse, occasionally reaching round in the man's lap to feel if the baby was properly fixed. Sometimes the girls rode to singing school behind their sweethearts. At such times the horses always kicked up, and, of course, the girls had to hold on. The boys liked the holding on part. Young men went courting always on Sat.u.r.day night. The girls wouldn't suffer any hugging before eleven o'clock--unless the old folk were remarkably early to bed. Candles were scarce in those days, so that billing and cooing was done by very dim fire-light. _O, le bon temps!_ I've forgot whether that's Latin or French.

The pedagogue was the intellectual and moral centre of the neighborhood.

He was of higher authority, even in the law, than the Justice of the Peace. He was consulted on all subjects, and, as a rule, his decisions were final, and went upon the people's record as law. His jurisdiction was unlimited, as to subject matter or amount, and, as to the person, was unquestioned. Of course his territory was bounded by the circ.u.mstances of each particular case.

I just now recollect quite a number of pedagogues who in turn ruled me in my youthful days. Of one of them I never think without feeling a strange sadness steal over me. He was a young fellow whom to know was to love; pale, delicate, tender-hearted. He taught us two terms and we all thought him the best teacher in the world. He was so kind to us, so gentle and mild-voiced, so p.r.o.ne to pat us on our heads and encourage us. Some of the old people found fault with him because, as they alleged, he did not whip us enough, but we saw no force in the objection. Well, he took a cough and began to fail. He dismissed us one fine May evening and we saw him no more alive. We all followed him, in a solemn line, to his grave, and for a long time thereafter we never spoke of him except in a low, sad whisper. As for me, till long afterwards, the hushed wonder of his white face haunted my dreams. I have now in my possession a little bead money-purse he gave me.

Blodgett came next, and here my story properly begins. Blodgett--who, having once seen him, could ever forget Blodgett? Not I. He was too marked a man to ever wholly fade from memory. He was, as I have said, a perfect type of his kind, and his kind was such as should not be sneered at. He was one of the humble pioneers of American letters. He was a character of which our national history must take account. He was one of the vital forces of our earlier national growth. He was in love with learning. He considered the matter of imparting knowledge a mere question of effort, in which the physical element preponderated. If he couldn't talk or read it into one he took a stick and mauled it into him. This mauling method, though somewhat distasteful to the subject, always had a charming result--red eyes, a few blubbers and a good lesson. The technical name of this method was "_Warming the Jacket_."

It always seemed to me that the peewee birds sang very dolefully after I had had my jacket warmed. I recollect my floggings at school with so much aversion that I do think, if a teacher should whale one of my little ruddy-faced boys, I'd spread his (the teacher's) nose over his face as thin as a rabbit skin! I'd run both his eyes into one and chew his ears off close to his head, sir! Forgive my earnestness, but I can't stand flogging in schools. It's brutal.

From the first day that Blodgett came circulating his school "articles"

among us, we took to him by common consent as a wonderfully learned man.

I think his strong, wise looking face, and reserved, pompous manners, had much to do with making this impression. We believed in him fully, and for a long time gave him unfaltering loyalty. As for me, I never have wholly withdrawn my allegiance. I look back, even now, and admire him. I sigh, thinking of the merry days when he flourished. I solemnly avow my faith in progress. I know the world advances every day, still I doubt if men and women are more worthy now than they were in the time of the pedagogues. I don't know but what, after all, I am somewhat of a fogy. Any how, I will not, for the sake of pleasing your literary _swallows_--your eclectics of to-day--turn in and berate my dear old Blodgett. In his day men could not and did not skim the surface of things like swallows on a mill pond. They _dived_, and got what they did get from the bottom, and by honest labor. Whenever one of your silk-winged swallows skims past me and whispers progress, I cannot help thinking of Heyne, Jean Paul and--Blodgett. Somehow genius and poverty are great cronies. It used to be more so than it is now. Blodgett was a genius, and, consequently, poor. He was virtuous, and, of course, happy.

He was a Democrat and a Hard Sh.e.l.l Baptist, and he might never have swerved from the path of rect.i.tude, even to the extent of a hair's breadth, if it had not been for the coming of a not over scrupulous rival into the neighboring village. But I must not hasten. A little more and I would have blurted out the whole nub of my story. Bear with me. I have nothing of the "lightning calculator" in me. I must take my time.

It has been agreed that biography must include somewhat of physical portraiture. "What sort of looking man was Blodgett?" I will tell you as nearly as I can, but bear in mind it is a long time since I saw him, and, in the meanwhile, the world has been so washed, and combed, and trimmed, and pearl powdered, that one can scarcely be sure he recollects things rightly. The seedy dandy who teaches the free schools of to-day, is, no doubt, all right as things go; but then the way they go--that's it! As for finding some one of these dapper, umbrella-lugging, green-spectacled, cadaverous teachers to compare with our burly Blodgett, the thing is preposterous.

Our pedagogue, when he first came among us, was, as nearly as I can judge, about forty, and a bachelor, tall, raw-boned, lean-faced, and muscular--a man of many words, and big ones, but not over p.r.o.ne to seek audience of the world. To me, a boy of twelve, he appeared somewhat awful, especially when plying the beech rod for the benefit of a future man, and I do still think that something harder than mere sternness slept or woke in and around the lines of his strong, flat jaws--that something sharper than acid shrewdness lurked in his light gray eyes, and that surely a more powerful expression than ordinary brute obstinacy lingered about his firm mouth and smoothly shaven chin.

Blodgett had a mighty body and a mighty will, joined with a self-appreciation only bounded by his power to generate it. This, added to the deep deference with which he was approached by everybody, made him not a little arrogant and despotic--though, doubtless, he was less so than most men, under like circ.u.mstances, would have been. His years sat lightly on him. His step was youthful though slouching, his raven hair was bright and wavy, his skin had the tinge of vigorous health, and in truth he was not far from handsome. His voice was nasal, but pleasantly so.

I cannot hope to give you more than a faint idea of the absolute power vested in Blodgett by the men, women and children of the school vicinage; suffice it to say that his view was a _sine qua non_ to every neighborhood opinion, his words the basis of neighborhood action in all matters of public interest. If he p.r.o.nounced the parson's last sermon a failure, at once the entire church agreed in condemning it, not only as a failure but a consummate blunder. If he hinted that a certain new comer impressed him unfavorably, the nincomp.o.o.p was summarily kicked out of society. In fact, in the pithy phraseology of these latter days, "it was dangerous to be safe" about where he lived.

Thus, for a long time, Blodgett ruled with an iron hand his little world, with no one to dream of disputing his right or of doubting his capacity, till at length fate let fall a bit of romance into the strong but placid stream of his life, and tinged it all with rose color. He wrote some poetry, but it is obsolete--that is, it is not now in existence. While this streak of romance lasted he looked, for all the world, like a gilt-edged mathematical problem drawn on rawhide.

It was a great event in our neighborhood when Miss Grace Holland, a yellow-haired, blue-eyed, very handsome and well educated young lady from Louisville, Kentucky, came to spend the summer with Parson Holland, our preacher, and the young woman's uncle. Kentucky girls are all sweet.

My wife was a Kentucky girl. All the young men fell in love with Miss Holland right away, but it was of no use to them. Blodgett, in the language of your fast youngsters, "s.h.i.+ed his castor into the ring," and what was there left for the others but to stand by and see the glory of the pedagogue during the season of his wooing? It would have done your eyes good to see the pedagogue "slick himself up" each Sat.u.r.day evening preparatory to visiting the parson's. He went into the details of the toilette with an enthusiasm worthy a better result. Ordinarily he was ostentatiously pious and grave, but now his nature began to slip its bark and disclose an inner rind of real mirthfulness, which made him quite pleasant company for Miss Holland, who, though a mere girl, was sensible and old enough to enjoy the many marked peculiarities of the pedagogue.

On Blodgett's side it was love--just the blindest, craziest kind of love, at first sight. As to Miss Holland, I cannot say. One never can precisely say as to a woman; guessing at a woman's feelings, in matters of love, is a little like wondering which makes the music, a boy's mouth or the jewsharp--a doubtful affair.

Great events never come singly. When it rains it pours. If you have seen a bear, every stump is a bear. A few days after the advent of Miss Holland came a pop-eyed, nervous, witty little fellow with a hand press, and started a weekly paper in our village. A newspaper in town! It was startling.

Blodgett from the first seemed not to relish the innovation, but public sentiment had set in too strongly in its favor for him to jeopardize his reputation by any serious denunciations. A real live paper in our midst was no small matter. Everybody subscribed, and so did Blodgett.

It did, formerly, require a little brains to run a newspaper, and in those days an editor was looked upon as nearly or quite as learned and intelligent as a pedagogue; but everybody, however ignorant himself, could not fail to see that one represented progress, the other conservatism, and formerly most persons were Ultra-Conservatives. This, of course, gave the pedagogue a considerable advantage.

Of course Blodgett and the editor soon became acquainted. The latter, a dapper Yankee, full of "get-up-and-snap," and alert to make way for his paper, measured the pedagogue at a glance, seeing at once that a big bulk of strong sense and a will like iron were enwrapped in the stalwart Hoosier's brain. One of two things must be done. Blodgett must be vanquished or his influence secured. He must be prevailed on to endorse the _Star_ (the new paper), or the _Star_ must attack and destroy him at once.

Meantime the pedagogue grimly waited for an opportunity to demolish the editor. The big Hoosier had no thought of compromise or currying favor.