As the juggler stepped back to the platform he took up the table-cloth and shook it out, that they might all be assured that there was nothing concealed in its folds.
“Now, ladies and gentlemen,” he said, taking heart of grace and his former manner of covert half-banter and mock politeness together, “we all know that it is by the action of the sun on the soil, and the dew and the rain, that the seeds of plants germinate and the green herb grows for the service of men. I propose to show you now a small agricultural experiment which I venture to hope will be of special interest to this assembly, as most of you are engaged in the noble pursuit of tilling the soil, when other diversions cannot by any means be had.”
As he clattered off his sentences, garnished now and then with trite bits of Latin, the solemn, stolid, uncomprehending faces ministered to a certain mocking humor which he had, and which was now becoming a trifle bitter with the reluctant realization of a lurking danger.
“Will some gentleman come forward and tell me what kind of a seed this is?”
He held the small object up between his finger and thumb for a moment, but no one approached. He perceived in a sort of helpless dismay that the dread of him was growing. He was fain to step down from the platform and hand the seed to the old man on the front bench, whose bleared eyes were glittering with delight in the greatest sensation that had ever fallen to his lot; for the juggler judged that of all the audience he was nearest the masculine counterpart of the progressive Jane Ann Sims. The old man, in his circle, was not a person of consideration nor accustomed to deference. He was all the more easily flattered to be thus singled out by the juggler, the conspicuous cynosure of all eyes, to give his judgment and pronounce upon the identity of the seed. The love of notoriety is a blasting passion, deadening all considerations of the conformable. Even in these secluded wilds, even in the presence of but a handful of his familiars, even in the lowly estate of a cumberer of the ground, lagging superfluous, it smote Josiah Cobbs. He rose to his feet, whirled briskly around, and, with a manner founded on the sprightly style of the juggler, yet compounded with the diction of the circuit rider, exclaimed, “Yea, my brethren, this hyar be a seed,—yea, it be actially a persimmon seed, though so dry I ain’t so sure whether or not it’ll ever sot off ter grow like a fraish one might. Yea, my brethren, I ain’t sure how long—ah—this hyar persimmon seed hev—ah—been kem out o’ the persimmon. Yea”—
He progressed not beyond this point, for the audience had no mind to be entertained with the rhetoric of old Josiah Cobbs, resenting his usurpation of so prominent a position, and his presumption in undertaking to address the meeting. Certain people in this world are given to understand that although their estate in life be not inferior to that of their neighbors, humility becomes them, and a low seat is their appropriate station. More than one sunbonnet had rustlingly communed with another as to the fact that Josiah Cobbs would hardly be heard at an experience meeting, the state of his humble soul not interesting the community. So simultaneous a storm of giggles swept the cluster of girls as to demonstrate that their gravity was of the same tenuous quality as that of their age and sex elsewhere. It was wonderful that they did not sustain some collapse, and this furnishes a pleasing commentary upon the strength of the youthful diaphragm. The men exchanged glances of grim derision, and finally one, with the air of a person not to be trifled with, rose up and stretched out his hand for the bewitched seed, forgetting for the moment all his quondam qualms of distrust.
Josiah Cobbs rendered it up without an instant’s hesitation. Precious as was the opportunity in his eyes, preëmpted by his own courage, his was not the type which makes resistance. The hand to despoil him had hardly need to be strong. The will to have what he possessed was sufficient for his pillage. He hardly claimed the merits appertaining to the pioneer. He stood meekly by as the seed was passed from one set of horny finger-tips to another, and the dictum, “It’s a persimmon seed, stranger,” was repeated with a decision which implied no previous examination.
“A persimmon seed, is it?” said the juggler airily, receiving it back. “Now, gentlemen, you see that there is nothing in this pail of earth but good pulverized soil.” He passed his fingers through the surface, shaking them daintily free from the particles afterward, while the hands of the practical farmers went boldly grappling down to the bottom with no thought of dirt. “You see me plant this persimmon seed. There! Now I throw over the pail this empty cloth,—let it stand up in a peak so as to give the seed air; now I place the whole on the table, where you can all see it and assure yourselves that no one goes near it. While awaiting developments I shall try to entertain you by singing a song. It may be unknown to you—yet why this suggestion in the presence of so much culture?—that in the days of eld certain wandering troubadours came to be in some sort men of my profession. In the intervals of minstrelsy they entertained and astonished their audiences with feats of the miraculous,—strange exploits of legerdemain and such light pastimes,—and were therefore termed jongleurs. I shall seek to follow my distinguished Provençal predecessors in the gay science haud passibus æquis, and pipe up as best I may.”
There was a pause while the juggler, standing at one end of the platform, seemed to run over in his mind the treasures of his répertoire. The mellow lamplight shone in his reflective brown eyes, cast down as he twisted one end of the long red-brown mustache, and again thrown up as if he sought some recollection among the old rafters. These had the rich reserves of color characteristic of old wood, and the heavy beams of oak showed all their veinous possibilities in yellow and brown fibrous comminglements against the deep umber shadows of the high peak of the roof. The cobwebs adhering here and there had almost the consistency of a fabric, so densely woven they were. One pendulous gauze fragment moved suddenly without a breath of air, for a light living creature had run along the beam beneath it, and now stood looking down at the audience with a glittering eye and a half-spread bat-like wing,—a flying squirrel, whose nest was secreted in the king-post and entered from the outside. So still was the audience,—the grizzled, unkempt men, the sunbonneted women, even the giggling girls in the corner,—he might have been meditating a downward plunge into the room.
Then slightly frowning, but smiling too, the juggler began to sing.