"The lad haint got a wakeniss," he said, disconsolately. "Not a wakeniss," he repeated, as he walked gloomily into the school-house, took down a switch and proceeded to punish Pete Sniger, who, as the worst boy in the school, and a sort of evil genius, often suffered on general principles when the master was out of humor.
Was Kike unhappy when he made his way to the distant Pottawottomie Creek circuit?
Do you think the Jesuit missionaries, who traversed the wilds of America at the call of duty as they heard it, were unhappy men? The highest happiness comes not from the satisfaction of our desires, but from the denial of them for the sake of a high purpose. I doubt not the happiest man that ever sailed through Levantine seas, or climbed Cappadocian mountains, was Paul of Tarsus. Do you think that he envied the voluptuaries of Cyprus, or the rich merchants of Corinth? Can you believe that one of the idlers in the Epicurean gardens, or one of the Stoic loafers in the covered sidewalks of Athens, could imagine the joy that tided the soul of Paul over all tribulations? For there is a sort of awful delight in self-sacrifice, and Kike defied the storms of a northern winter, and all the difficulties and dangers of the wilderness, and all the hardships of his lonely lot, with one saying often on his lips: "O Lord, I have kept back nothing!"
I have heard that about this time young Lumsden was accustomed to electrify his audiences by his fervent preaching upon the Christian duty of Glorying in Tribulation, and that shrewd old country women would nod their heads one to another as they went home afterward, and say: "He's seed a mighty sight o' trouble in his time, I 'low, fer a young man." "Yes; but he's got the victory; and how powerful sweet he talks about it! I never heerd the beat in all my born days."
CHAPTER XXIII.
RUSSELL BIGELOW'S SERMON.
Two years have ripened Patty from the girl to the woman. If Kike is happy in his self-abnegation, Patty is not happy in hers. Pride has no balm in it. However powerful it may be as a stimulant, it is poor food. And Patty has little but pride to feed upon. The invalid mother has now been dead a year, and Patty is almost without companionship, though not without suitors. Land brings lovers—land-lovers, if nothing more—and the estate of Patty's father is not her only attraction. She is a young woman of a certain nobility of figure and carriage; she is not large, but her bearing makes her seem quite commanding. Even her father respects her, and all the more does he wish to torment her whenever he finds opportunity. Patty is thrifty, and in the early West no attraction outweighed this wifely ordering of a household. But Patty will not marry any of the suitors who calculate the infirm health of her father and the probable division of his estate, and who mentally transfer to their future homes the thrift and orderliness they see in Captain Lumsden's. By refusing them all she has won the name of a proud girl. There are times when out of sight of everybody she weeps, hardly knowing why. And since her mother's death she reads the prayer-book more than ever, finding in the severe confessions therein framed for us miserable sinners, and the plaintive cries of the litany, a voice for her innermost soul.
Captain Lumsden fears she will marry and leave him, and yet it angers him that she refuses to marry. His hatred of Methodists has assumed the intensity of a monomania since he was defeated for the legislature partly by Methodist opposition. All his love of power has turned to bitterest resentment, and every thought that there may be yet the remotest possibility of Patty's marrying Morton afflicts him beyond measure. He cannot fathom the reason for her obstinate rejection of all lovers; he dislikes her growing seriousness and her fondness for the prayer-book. Even the prayer-book's earnestness has something Methodistic about it. But Patty has never yet been in a Methodist meeting, and with this fact he comforts himself. He has taken pains to buy her jewelry and "artificials" in abundance, that he may, by dressing her finely, remove her as far as possible from temptations to become a Methodist. For in that time, when fine dressing was not common and country neighborhoods were polarized by the advent of Methodism in its most aggressive form, every artificial flower and every earring was a banner of antagonism to the new sect; a well-dressed woman in a congregation was almost a defiance to the preacher. It seemed to Lumsden, therefore, that Patty had prophylactic ornaments enough to save her from Methodism. And to all of these he added covert threats that if any child of his should ever join these crazy Methodist loons, he would turn him out of doors and never see him again. This threat was always indirect—a remark dropped incidentally; the pronoun which represented the unknown quantity of a Methodist Lumsden was always masculine, but Patty did not fail to comprehend.
