When Life Was Young: At the Old Farm in Maine

by C. A. Stephens

There was some little force in the reproach, and I did not at once reply to it. "Tell-tale, tell-tale!" he kept calling out, tauntingly, as I was undressing.

"You just wait till Enoch gets hold of you!" I remarked, beginning to grow irritated.

"I'm not afraid of any of your Enochs!" cried Halse.

"What were you on the top of the Elm House for, then?" I asked, sarcastically. "I wouldn't like to be in your shoes the next time Enoch gets his eye on you."

"If he touches me, I'll fix him!" cried Halstead, wrathfully. "And I'll slap you, too, if you don't keep still," he added, giving me a kick under the bedspread, which I did not quite dare to resent, and so turned over to the wall and fell asleep.

Thus ended our first Fourth of July at the farm.

I must add a word here relative to Enoch's clothes, however. The effigy hung there over the road for two days; but word had been sent to Enoch, who lived in another town, and on the third day he made his appearance for the purpose of reclaiming his garments; but meantime, either that morning or the previous evening, the effigy was stolen, or at least captured and carried off. The latter offense was finally traced to a passing tin-peddler, who, when accused of it, declared that he had found the image lying in the road, and deemed the clothes old togs, fit only for paper rags and not worth advertising; he had therefore put them in his cart and driven on. He was subsequently shown to have sold the suit, not as paper rags; and when threatened with legal proceedings, he settled the matter on Enoch's own terms.

On the first day of the "Cattle Show," or County Fair, that fall, Enoch fell in with Alfred Batchelder, in the rear of the cattle sheds, and, to make use of a phrase common among fighting characters, "wiped up the ground with him"—not over clean ground, either—for a space of several minutes. Our Halstead steered clear of him, however, and so far as I know, never received his just deserts for his share in the transaction,—which may, perhaps, be said to lie in the line of a remark which Elder Witham was fond of making in his quaint sermon against the Universalists. "Justice," quoth the Elder, "certainly does not get done in this brief, imperfect life of ours. Many of the worst wrongs men do us go unredressed in spite of our best efforts to square accounts with them!"

I recollect, also, that as we had unharnessed old Sol in the wagon-house that night and led him out, we noticed a great light in the sky, away to the southward. It shone up high in the heavens, but was pale, as if a long distance off. I asked Addison what he thought it could be, and he said there must be a great fire somewhere in that direction. We thought no more about it at the time; but toward evening next day a rumor reached us, afterwards confirmed, that a great part of the city of Portland had burned, entailing a loss of nearly or quite twenty millions of dollars.

But along with all these distracting incidents of the Fourth of July, there was a bit of seriousness and worry that lingered in a back nook of my mind, connected with that funeral which the Old Squire and I had attended. I felt that there was something, some question concerning it, which I must solve, or settle, before I could feel right again. I had never seen a person lying dead before; I tried not to think about it and in part succeeded, when there were a good many other things going on, yet all the time I knew that it was there in my mind and must be thought about before long. When I was very tired and first shut my eyes, on lying down at night, I would see that man in his coffin so plainly that I would fairly jump in bed, and then have to turn over several times and begin talking with Halstead, somewhat to his annoyance, for without quite understanding it, I suppose, he yet perceived that it was not a genuine conversational effort.