A quiet smile played over the features of Uncle Isaac, as he replied, “I do love to see a mud-puddle in a squall.”
Pulling a bulrush out of a clump that grew beside the spring, he flung it across one of the enormous roots of the birch that towered above them.
“You speak of beating me, young man. What that rush is to this birch would you be in my hands. You have drunk too much liquor to have any strength, even if you was made for it, which you are not. Just open these fists, which look more like potato-balls than anything else. Sit down on that flat rock, and listen to what I have to say, or I shall be tempted to call you a fool, which is contrary to Scripture. ‘A little pot soon biles over.’ If I had no more government over myself than you have, I should set you on your head in this spring, when you would probably die by water, which is a much more respectable death than the one you seem to be preparing yourself for.”
“I will leave you, at any rate,” replied Welch, in a much more subdued tone; for he now bethought himself that he was in the woods, miles from any human being, and entirely in the power of a man whom he had most grossly insulted and threatened, and whose forbearance he might well distrust.
“No, you won’t, except you can outrun a man who has run down a bull-moose more than once or twice. Did you hear me tell you to sit down?”
This was spoken in a tone so peremptory that Welch obeyed at once, trembling with passion and fear. James Welch was the idol of his parents, and with an overweening affection by no means uncommon, they had injured him by indulgence.
Uncle Isaac, with that instinctive discernment of character that can neither be learned nor taught, had become aware of this. He had also, during their long and familiar intercourse, obtained an accurate knowledge of his character; as he would have phrased it, “knew just how much of sound wood there was in him to nail to.”
In view of the estimate thus formed, he had resolved, as he told Ben, to give him quicksilver. This was a metaphoric term for stringent measures, borrowed by Uncle Isaac from the practice of physicians in his day, who were accustomed, in severe cases of stoppage, where life was at stake, to give quicksilver, which, by its weight, was sure to force a passage, either by the ordinary channel, in which event the patient recovered, or through the walls of the intestines, when death was the result. Thus it became a synonyme for “kill or cure.”
“I have said,” he continued, addressing his involuntary listener, “that you are a profane swearer and a drunkard. You have sworn in my presence. I found you drunk in my birch, and it is well known that these are your customary habits. You are also a pauper. All property, everything that goes to support life, in these parts, of any amount, comes by the hard work of somebody,—either bone labor or brain labor,—the labor of those who now possess it, or of those from whom they inherited it. That, I take it, you can’t deny, though you’ve been to school and I ’aint. If a great, stout, hearty feller, able to work, should go about the country, eating the bread and wearing the clothes somebody else earned, sleeping in the beds and warmed by the fires that others provided, I take it there wouldn’t be much doubt he was a pauper. That’s just the way with you. You have eaten your three meals a day ever since you was born, and never earned one—no, not the salt that seasoned them. That makes you out to be a pauper, and it’s only your father that keeps you off the town. Everybody who lives in society is bound to do something for the society in which he lives—to help bear its burden, and return something for the benefits he receives from his neighbor, and be a man among men. If he don’t do it, he’s not one whit better than a thief, because he takes from the common stock, eats up what ought to go to those who ain’t able to earn it, and he makes no return to society for what he draws. That’s just what you are doing. You are useless, which seems to me to be the meanest of all things, just about as bad as being a drunkard or thief. You are not of so much account as one of the clams in these flats, or one of the frogs in this spring, for they answer the end of their existence, and get an honest living, which you don’t. Your father and mother begun the world with nothing but their heads and hands; and your father, moreover, had to support your grandfather after his misfortune, and pay his debts; but by industry, good principles, and the blessing of God on their labor, they have got together a large property, and bear nobly their share of the burdens of society. They have spent—I would say, thrown away—a mint of money on you; given you the best of larning, the best of opportunities to go into business, do for yourself and others, make something of yourself, and be looked up to; but here you are at two-and-twenty years of age. You’ve done nothing, you’re good for nothing, and are going to the devil as fast as you can. Look at Charlie Bell. He came to Elm Island a poor, ragged orphan. See what he’s made of himself. Talk about beating me! He could lay you on your back faster than you could get up. Look at Fred Williams. His father and mother never knew how to treat a child, always hectoring and fretting him; and now that his father is poorly, and can do but little, that boy is at work from daylight till dark, tending mill and store, making fish, and seeing to the whole family; while you are lazing round here, and can’t be trusted with yourself, spending money you never earned a dollar of, and killing the best of parents by inches. Look at John Rhines. Yes, there’s a case in pint. Look at that boy. He might have staid at home, worked or played, laid abed or got up, as he liked; for his father is indulgent, and as well off as yours, considering the small expense at which he lives, and that he hasn’t got a reprobate son to break his heart, and spend his hard earnings. There he is, larning a blacksmith’s trade; up early and late, sweating at the anvil. He scorns to live on his father and grandsir’s substance. Yes, and I may say your grandsir, for Elm Island stood in his name, though he would have lost it shortly, for the mortgage had nearly eaten it up, when your father, from his own earnings, cleared it. Yes, and took care of your grandsir in his old age. When your father is in his grave, which will be shortly unless you turn over a new leaf, you will be living on what he leaves, gnawing the bones of the dead—a business that I never knew any dumb cretur to foller for a living but a wolf. When you die, you’ll be no more missed than yonder dead limb on that leaning beech. Now, if you ain’t the smallest, pitifulest consarn there is round here, I should like to know who is. There’s another thing to be thought of, young man. Where God has given great capacity and great privileges, there’s great accountability; there’s Holy Scripture for that. You may see the time that you will wish you had been born a fool, or not born at all. Come, it’s time we were going.”
Welch uttered not a word in reply, or on the way home.