Hempfield: A Novel

by David Grayson

If there is one thing I enjoy more than another it is to crack open a hard fellow-mortal, take him apart, as Nort was taking apart his engine, and see what it is that makes him go round. But in Nort, that morning, I found more than a match. We parried and fenced, advanced and retreated, but beyond a firm conclusion on my part that he was no ordinary tramp printer and, indeed, no ordinary human being, he kept me completely mystified, and, as I could plainly see, enjoyed doing it, too. He told me, long afterward, that he thought me that morning an "odd one."

I deny, however, that I was carried away on the spot; I was interested, but I was now too deeply concerned for my friends on the Star to accept him entirely. Even after he brought in his first contribution to our columns, especially the one that began, "There is a man in this town who quarrels regularly with his wife," I was still doubtful about him—but I must not get ahead of my story.

Well, it was wonderful the way Nort went through the office of the Star. As I think of it now, I am reminded of the description of a remarkable plant called the lantana, which I read about recently in an interesting book on the Hawaiian Islands. It was brought in, a humble and lowly shrub, to help ornament a garden in those delectable isles. Finding the climate highly agreeable and its customary enemies absent, it escaped from the garden, and in a wild spirit of vagabondage spread out along the sunny roads and mountainsides, until it has overrun all the islands; and from being an insignificant shrub, it now grows to the size of a small tree. Most painful to relate, however, the once admired shrub has become a veritable pest, and the people of the islands are using their ingenuity in seeking a way to destroy it.

Now, that is very much the early history of Nort in the office of the Star. At first, of course, he was way down in the depths, both in his own estimation and in ours—a man to tinker the engine, run the job presses, sweep the floors, and do the thousand and one other useful but menial things to help Fergus. Moreover, he was on his good behaviour and more than ordinarily subdued. It required a reasonable amount of good honest depression in those days to make Nort tolerable. He was like a high-spirited horse that has to be driven hard for a dozen miles before it is any pleasure to hold the reins. If we had known then—but we knew nothing.

There are two ways by which men advance in this world—one is by doing, the other by being. We Americans, these many years, have been cultivating and stimulating the doers. We have made the doers our heroes, and have, therefore, had no poetry, no art, no music, no personality, and, I was going to say, no religion. Doing leads the way to riches, power, reputation, and if it occasionally lands a man in the penitentiary, still we feel that there is something grand about it, and reflect that the same process also leads to the Senate or the White House or a palace on Fifth Avenue. Ed Smith was a doer, but Nort was only a be-er. And Nort didn't even try to be: he just was. And we planted him, a humble shrub, in the garden of our lives, and in no time at all the vagabond had spread to the sunny uplands of our hearts. And then——

I soon found that every one else in the office, Anthy included, had begun to be interested in Nort

I soon found that every one else in the office, Anthy included, (at that time, anyway), had begun to be interested in Nort, much as I was. It was not that Nort tried to court our favour by working hard, being sober, appearing willing, in order to get ahead; that would have been Ed Smith's way; but Nort had never in all his short life thought of getting ahead. Of whom was he to get ahead? And why should he get ahead?

The fact is that Nort, caught in the rebound from a life that had become temporarily intolerable, found the quietude of Hempfield soothing to him; and the life of the printing-office was so different as to be momentarily amusing to his royal highness. We were a new toy—that's what we were: the rag baby for which the pampered child of wealth temporarily discards her French dolls.