CHAPTER I
IT was a wonderful thing to see the way he rose and stepped forward, and stood before the people, and their cheering was like the shout of winds in a forest.” So spake our old schoolmaster, Appleton Hall, as he told us of Daniel Webster and the famous Bunker Hill address.
His black eyes glowed as he went on: “There was something grand in the look of the man, for he was tall and strong-built, and stood straight as an arrow, and his soul was in his face. A godlike and solemn face it was, like that of St. Paul, as I think of him after reading the twelfth chapter of Romans. He had a wonderful authority in his face, and what a silence it commanded after that first greeting had passed, and before he had opened his mouth to speak. My eyes grew dim as I looked at him. He wore a blue coat, with bright brass buttons on it, and a buff waistcoat, and his great black-crested, swarthy head was nobly poised above his white linen. His dark eyes were deep set under massive brows. Now comes the first sentence of that immortal speech. His voice is like a deep-toned bell as he speaks with great deliberation the opening words: 'This uncounted multitude before me and around me proves the feeling which the occasion has excited.'
“Near him, and looking into his face, were two hundred veterans of the Revolution, some in their old uniforms, many crippled by wounds and bent by infirmities.
“It was a mighty thing to hear when he looked into their faces and said: 'Venerable men, you have come down to us from a former generation. Heaven has bountifully lengthened out your lives that you might behold this joyous day.'
“Well I remember how, when he had ceased, the people were still for half a moment dreading to break the spell. Suddenly they were like a sea in a wind, although many held their places and were loath to go, and lingered awhile talking of the speech, and I among them. And I saw the vast crowd slowly break and go drifting away by thousands, and I fancied that some of the men held their heads a bit higher, and that certain of those near me were trying the Websterian tone. Since then that tone and that manner have become as familiar as the flag. At the inn I heard much talk of the great man—idle words which one may hear to this day and be none the wiser, but possibly much the worse for it.
“Some said that he always took a tumbler of brandy before he made a speech; but I observed that these gossipers had the odor of rum about them. There was, too, a relish of Me and Dan'l in all their talk. However, the tradition has come down to us, and had its effect in the life of this village, and of others like it. However well you may do, young men, there will be those seeking ever to pull you down to their level, and if they cannot move your character they will attack your reputation.”
I have often thought of these words of the schoolmaster. They showed me some of the curious monkey traits of man. Through them I began to know Griggsby, to which I had lately come. I suddenly discovered that I was living in the Websterian age, and a high-headed, reverberating time it was.
But, first, let me introduce myself. People have always called me “Havelock, of Stillwater,” though I am plain Uriel Havelock. I have little in my purse, but there are treasures in my memory, and I am trying here to give them to the world with all my joyous thoughts about them and never a feeling of ill will.
I write of that time when the fame of Webster was on every lip, although his soul had passed some twenty years before. All through the North, from the Atlantic to far frontiers beyond the Mississippi, men in beaver hats and tall collars were playing Daniel Webster. They dressed as he had dressed, and had his grand manners, while their diaphragms were often sorely strained in an effort to deliver his deep, resounding tones. The peace of most farms and villages was disturbed by Websterian shouts of ready-made patriotism from the lips of sires and sons.
Webster was a demi-god, in the imagination of the people, with a voice of thunder and an eye to threaten and command. Countless anecdotes celebrated his wit, his eloquence, and his supposed capacity for stimulants. He was not the only man of that period who suffered from the inventive talent of his successors. Powers of indulgence and of reckless wit were conferred upon them in a way to excite the wonder and emulation of the weak. Daniel Webster especially had been a martyr to such flattery. He never deserved it. Wearied by his great labors, he may now and then have resorted to stimulants; but his reputation as an absorber of strong drink is a baseless fabrication. Those brimming cups of his have been mostly filled with fiction.
Nevertheless, he was handed down to posterity as a product of genius and stimulation—a sublime toper. In that capacity he filled a long-felt need of those engaged in the West Indian trade and the innkeepers. In those days, it should be remembered, an inn-keeper was a man of some account. With that imaginary trait of greatness at the fore, the resounding Websterian age began.
When still a boy I left home and went to live in Griggsby. It was a better place to die in; but that does not matter, since, going to Griggsby to live, I succeeded. At school among my fellow-students was a boy I greatly envied. Bright and handsome, as a scholar he was at one end of the class, and I at the other; and that was about the way we stood in local prophecy. I wonder when people will learn that scholarship should not be the first, or even the second, aim of a schooling. For it is not what the mind takes in that makes the man, but what the mind gives out; it is not the quantity of one's memories, but the quality of one's thoughts. Character makes the man and also the community. It was character that made Griggsby, and Griggsby in turn made characters.
Old John Henry Griggs was the first sample of its finished product. He had been keeping up with Webster, as he thought, ever since he left school, and in that effort was both a drunkard and a “distinguished statesman.” Though he modestly disclaimed these great accomplishments, a majority of his fellow-citizens conferred them upon him. The result was a public peril.
Among the students at school was a girl that I loved. Her name was Florence Dunbar, which had a fine sound, while mine, like many other names of Yankee choosing, was a help to humility and a discouragement to pride. Then, again, Florence was rich and beautiful, while I was poor and plain. She had come to Griggsby from the West, where her father had gone in his youth and had made a fortune. They had sent her and her brother back to the old home to be educated. I had come to Griggsby from a stumpy farm on the edge of the forest ten miles away.
Now, this plainness of mine, I soon discovered, was largely due to my mother's looking-glass, aided and abetted by untiring efforts on the part of all the family to keep me humble. I often wondered how it came about that I was the only one in the house whose looks were a misfortune. It did not seem just that I should be singled out to carry all the ugliness for that generation of Havelocks. I would not have minded a generous share, but it seemed to me that I was the only one who had been hit by the avalanche. One day I confided to my elder brother this overwhelming sense of facial deformity. To my surprise, he assured me that I had a face to be proud of, while his had kept him awake of nights and caused him to despise himself. That exchange of views increased our confidence in ourselves a little, if not our knowledge. By and by a neighbor moved into that lonely part of the world where we were living. I shall never forget the day I went to play with the strange children, and especially the moment when I stood before their looking-glass combing my hair. To my joy and astonishment, I saw a new face, of better proportions and smaller defects, and with only one twist in it. I tarried so long at the glass that the mother of the family smiled and said that she feared I was a rather foolish boy.
When I went home I proceeded with as little delay as possible to my mother's looking-glass, where I found the long, gnarled face of old with its magnified freckles. I wondered at this difference of opinion regarding my personal appearance between the two glasses, but with noble patriotism decided that my mother's mirror was probably right. As a discourager of sinful pride that gilt-bound, oval looking-glass was a great success. It lengthened the face and enlarged every defect; it crumpled the nose and put sundry twists in the countenance. There have been two ministers and three old maids in our family, and in my opinion that looking-glass did it. Of course, other things helped, but the glass was mainly responsible. I myself would have been a minister if it had not fallen to my lot to break a yoke of steers, and that saved me. In the course of this task I acquired an accomplishment inconsistent with the life of a clergyman. I kept it long enough to trim the beech trees about my father's house, and it lasted through many calls to repentance. Then, too, my father discovered that I had an unusual talent for lying. He did his best to destroy it, and would have succeeded if he had not appealed to the wrong side of me—a side which never had much capacity for absorbing information. Now as the cow jumped over the moon in my story book, I could not understand why it should be thought wicked for her to jump over the stable in my conversation. But my story lacked verisimilitude. It wouldn't do. Indeed, for a time I felt as if the cow had landed on me. It was a great monopoly that controlled the output of the human imagination, those days, and while most of my elders were in it, as I knew, they wouldn't give me a chance. I persevered. It cost me great pain, but I persevered. My father lost heart and consulted with the Rev. Appleton Hall, who was principal of the village school at Griggsby, and he undertook to make a man of me. That was how I came to go there, and to live in a small room rudely furnished by my father, where I did my own cooking. The school principal began to call me “Havelock of Stillwater,” Stillwater being our township in the woods, and others followed his example. Mr. Hall did not waste any time in trying to convince me that lying produced pain. I knew that. He took the positive side of the proposition and soon taught me that the truth pays.
In the main, the looking-glasses of Griggsby were kind to me, and the weight of evidence seemed to indicate that my face was not a misfortune, after all. Still, I had no conceit of it.
The big buildings of the town, the high hats and “lofty” manners of the great men, excited my wonder and admiration. At first they were beyond my understanding, and did not even amuse me.
I had a profound sense of inferiority to almost every one I met, and especially to Florence Dunbar. I suppose it was a part of that ample gift of humility which had been pounded into my ancestors and passed on to me with the aid of the beech rod, the looking-glass, and the shrill voice of Elder Whitman in the schoolhouse. For a long time my love for Florence was a secret locked in my own breast.
Summer had returned to the little village in the hills, and one Saturday in June I gathered wild flowers in the fields and took them to Florence. She received them with a cry of joy, and asked me to show her where they grew; so away we went together into the meadows by a wayside, and, when our hands were full, sat under a tree to look at them. Then, poor lad! I opened my heart to her, and I remember it was in full bloom. I shall never forget the sweet, girlish frankness with which she said:
“I'm sorry, but I cannot love you.”
“I didn't think it would be possible,” I said.
“Oh yes, it would be possible,” she explained; “but, you see, I love another.”
I remember well how her frankness hurt me. I turned away, and had trouble to breathe for a moment. She saw the effect of her words, and said, by way of comfort: “But I think you're very, very nice; Henry likes you, too.”
Henry was her brother and my chum at school.
“I wish you would tell me what to do with him,” she went on, after a moment. “He's drinking, and behind in his work, and I am terribly worried.”
“It's nothing to worry about,” I said, though not in perfect innocence. “All great men drink—it helps 'em stand the strain, I suppose.”
“Havelock, you talk like a child,” she answered. “These leading men are leading us in the wrong direction. You boys think that they are so wonderful you begin to take after them. Look at Ralph. He's going to the bad as fast as possible. I'd pack up and go home with Henry if—”
Her eyes filled with tears. I sat silent and full of shame, and quite aware of her secret. She loved Ralph Buckstone, the good-looking son of the great Colonel.
“You love him, don't you?” I said, sorrowfully.
She smiled at me through a spray of clover blossoms with cheeks as red as they, but made no answer.
At that moment Colonel Buckstone himself came galloping along on his big black horse, shotgun in hand, with two hounds at his heels. He pulled up with a knowing look, shook his head, and then rode away with only a wave of his hand.
Florence and I rose and walked along in silence for a while, then she said:
“I'm sorry for you, and I will never tell what you have told me, never.”
“And I will never tell what you have told me,” I said.
“I'm willing you should tell him,” she answered. “He may as well know, even if he doesn't care.”
Temptation beset me even then, but in those first months my natural innocence was like a shield. By and by I began to feel the weight of it, and to lighten the load a little. That wonderful comedy which was being enacted in the life around me had begun to excite my interest when I went home to work in the fields for the summer.
I returned to school in the autumn, a big swarthy youth of seventeen. Before the end of that year the first of these many adventures of mine opened the gate of a better life before me.
It was a day in December. Henry and Florence Dunbar, Ralph Buckstone, and I were skating on the lake. The ice was new, and bent a little under our feet as we flew, out on the glassy plain in pursuit of Florence, more daring and expert than the rest of us. The day was cloudless, and the smooth lake roof shone in the sunlight. An hour later we were returning, with Florence a hundred or more feet ahead of us, when I heard the snap of the breaking ice and saw her go down like a stone falling through a skylight. I skated straight for the break, and, taking a deep breath, crashed among the broken slabs of ice and down into cold, roaring water. My hand touched something, and I seized it—her coat, as I knew by the feeling. Then came that little fraction of a minute in which one must do the right thing and do it quickly. I could see, of course, and could hear the shouts of the boys, the click of skates passing near, and the stir of the shattered ice. That saved us, that sound of the wavering ice. I made for it, got my hand through, and caught a shinny stick in the hands of Henry Dunbar, who was lying flat near the edge of the break. There we hung and lived until the boys came with a pole and got us out. Chilled? No. I was never so hot in my life until I began to feel the wind.
One day soon after that my father came into the village and said that I was to board at the house of Mr. Daniel W. Smead, have three square meals a day, and a room with four windows and a stove in it. Poor lad! I did not know until long after that Florence and Henry paid the bill. My father said that he had sold the big Wilkes mare and her foal, and I supposed that that accounted for his generosity.
Florence would have it that I had saved her life, although the truth is that if I had not gone down after her one of the other boys would have done so, I am sure, or she might even have reached the air alone. How she pitied me after that! Almost every day she tried to show me her gratitude with some little token—a flower, a tender word or look, or an invitation to supper. I loved her with all the steadfastness of the true-born Yankee, but it seemed to me now that my love was hopeless. I could never ask her to marry me, for how could she say no to me with all that burden of gratitude in her heart? How could I have got an honest answer if I had been unfair enough to ask it?