A Man for the Ages Part 31

"Look here-that's downright selfish," said his wife, "If we tried to keep you here Henry Brimstead would never forgive us. He talks about you morning, noon and night. Any one would think that you was the Samson that slew the Philistines."

"How is Henry?" Samson asked.

"He married my sister and they're about as happy as they can be this side the river Jordan," she went on. "They've got one o' the best farms in Tazewell County and they're goin' to be rich. They've built 'em a splendid house with a big spare room in it. Henry would have a spare room because he said that maybe the Traylors would be comin' here to visit 'em some time."

"Yes, sir; I didn't think o' that," said Peasley. "Henry and his wife would holler if we didn't take ye over there. It's only a quarter of a mile. I'll show ye the way and we'll all come over this evening and have a talkin' bee."

Samson was pleased and astonished by the look of Brimstead and his home and his family and the account of his success. The man from the sand flats had built a square, two-story house with a stairway and three rooms above it and two below. He was cleanly shaved, save for a black mustache, and neatly dressed and his face glowed with health and high spirits. A handsome brown-eyed miss of seventeen came galloping up the road on her pony and stopped near them.

"Annabel, do you remember this man?" Brimstead asked.

The girl looked at Samson.

"He is the man who helped us out of Flea Valley," said the girl.

Brimstead leaned close to the ear of Samson and said in a low tone:

"Say, everything knew how to jump there. I had a garden that could hop over the fence and back ag'in. Sometimes it was there and sometimes it was off on a vacation. I jumped as soon as I got the chance."

"We call it No Santa Claus Land," said Samson. "Do ye remember how the little girl clung to the wagon?"

"That was me," said a small miss of ten who ran out of the door into the arms of the big man and kissed him.

"Would you mind if I kissed you?" Annabel asked.

"I would be sorry if you didn't," said Samson. "Here's my boy, Harry Needles. You wouldn't dare kiss him I guess?'

"I would be sorry, too, if you didn't," Harry laughed as he took her hand.

"I'm afraid you'll have to stay sorry," said Annabel turning red with embarra.s.sment. "I never saw you before."

"Better late than never," Samson a.s.sured her. "You don't often see a better fellow."

The girl laughed, with a subtle look of agreement in her eyes. Then came up from the barn the ragged little lad of No Santa Claus Land--now a st.u.r.dy, bright eyed, handsome boy of eight.

The horses were put out and all went in to supper.

"I have always felt sorry for any kind of a slave?" said Samson as they sat down. "When I saw you on the sand plains you were in bondage."

"Say, I'll tell ye," said Brimstead, as he leaned toward Samson, seeming to be determined at last to make a clean breast of it. "Say, I didn't own that farm. It owned me. I got a sandy intellect. Couldn't get anything out of it but disappointment. My farm was mortgaged to the bank and I was mortgaged to the children. I couldn't even die."

Samson wrote in his diary that night:

"When Brimstead brings his sense of humor into play he acts as if he was telling a secret. When he says anything that makes me laugh, he's terribly confidential. Seems so he was kind of ashamed of it. He never laughs himself unless he does it inside. His voice always drops, too, when he talks business."

"The man that's a fool and don't know it is a good deal worse off," said Samson.

"Say, I'll tell ye he's worse off but he's happier. If it hurts there's hope for ye."

"They tell me you've prospered," said Samson.

Brimstead spoke in a most confidential tone as he answered: "Say, I'll tell ye--no wise man is ever an idiot but once. I wouldn't care to spread it around much but we're gettin' along. I've built this house and got my land paid for. You see we are only four miles from the Illinois River on a good road. I can s.h.i.+p my grain to Alton or St. Louis or New Orleans without much trouble. I've invented a machine to cut it and a double plow and I expect to have them both working next year. They ought to treble my output at least."

After supper Brimstead showed models of a mowing machine with a cut bar six feet long, and a plow which would turn two furrows.

"That's what we need on these prairies," said Samson. "Something that'll turn 'em over and cut the crop quicker."

"Say, I'll tell ye," said Brimstead as if about to disclose another secret. "I found after I looked the ground over here that I needed a brain. I began to paw around an' discovered a rusty old brain among my tools. It hadn't been used for years. I cleaned an' oiled the thing an'

got it workin'. On a little Vermont farm you could git along without it but here the ground yells for a brain. We don't know how to use our horses. They have power enough to do all the hard work, if we only knew how to put it into wheels and gears. We must begin to work our brains as well as our muscles on a farm miles long an' wide."

"It ain't fair to expect the land to furnish all the fertility," said Samson.

Brimstead's face glowed as he outlined his vision:

"These great stretches of smooth, rich land just everlastingly ram the spurs into you and keep your brain galloping. Mine is goin' night and day. The prairies are a new thing and you've got to tackle 'em in a new way. I tell you the seeding and planting and mowing and reaping and thres.h.i.+ng is all going to be done by machinery and horses. The wheel will be the foundation of the new era."

"You're right," said Samson.

"How are you gettin' along?"

"Rather slow," Samson answered. "It's hard to get our stuff to market down in the Sangamon country. Our river isn't navigable yet. We hope that Abe Lincoln, who has just been elected to the Legislature, will be able to get it widened and straightened and cleaned up so it will be of some use to us down there."

"I've heard of him. They call him Honest Abe, don't they?"

"Yes; and he is honest if a man ever was."

"That's the kind we need to make our laws," said Mrs. Brimstead. "There are not many men who get a reputation for honesty. It ought to be easy, but it isn't."

"Men are pretty good in the main," said Samson. "But ye know there are not so many who can exactly toe the mark. They don't know how or they're too busy or something. I guess I'm a little careless, and I don't believe I'm a bad fellow either. Abe's conscience don't ever sit down to rest. He traveled three miles one night to give back four cents that he had overcharged a customer. I'd probably have waited to have her come back, and by that time it might have slipped my mind or maybe she would have moved away. I suppose that in handling dollars we're mostly as honest as Abe, but we're apt to be a little careless with the cents. Abe toed the penny mark, and that's how he got his reputation. The good G.o.d has given him a sense of justice that is like a chemist's balance. It can weigh down to a fraction of a grain. Now he don't care much about pennies. He can be pretty reckless with 'em. But when they're a measure on the balance, he counts 'em careful, I can tell ye."

"Say, I'll tell ye," said Brimstead. "Honesty is like Sapington's pills.

There's nothing that's so well recommended. It has a great many friends.

But Honesty has to pay prompt. We don't trust it long. It has poor credit. When we have to give a dollar's worth of work to correct an error of four cents, we're apt to decide that Honesty don't pay. But that's when it pays best. We've heard the jingle o' them four cents 'way up here in Tazewell County, an' long before you told us. They say he's a smart talker an' that he can split ye wide open laughin'."

"He's a great story-teller, but that's a small part of him," said Samson.

"He's a kind of a four horse team. He knows more than any man I ever saw and can tell it and he can wrestle like old Satan and swing a scythe or an axe all day an' mighty supple. He's one of us common folks and don't pretend to be a bit better. He is, though, and we know it, but I don't think he knows it."

"Say, there ain't many of us smart enough to keep that little piece of ignorance in our heads," said Brimstead. "It's worth a fortune, now--ain't it?"

"Is he going to marry the Rutledge girl?" was the query of Mrs.

Brimstead.

"I don't think so," Samson answered, a little surprised at her knowledge of the attachment. "He's as humly as Sam Hill and dresses rough and ain't real handy with the gals. Some fellers are kind o' fenced in with humliness and awkwardness."