Puddleford was like a thousand other new settlements—it had its green state to pass through; and Puddleford's pioneers were like other pioneers—rough, honest, hardy, strong in common sense, but weak in the books. It was not a perfect organization, packed beforehand with men fitted to all the stations of life, like Hooker and his band. But one pioneer came after another—and notions, creeds, and prejudices, were all tumbled in together. Puddleford prospered, nevertheless. Every man was right upon the question of civil and religious liberty. Each person brought this law with him, written on his soul; and, however clumsily he might give it expression, the law was there, and he could not rid himself of it any more than he could throw off his nature. If Longbow administered the details of jurisprudence awkwardly, Longbow was, after all, right in leading principles. If Longbow at times trampled down technicalities, the community, on the average, did not suffer. If Longbow even made a little law now and then, to fill a gap, it was well made, and the gap well filled. Longbow might as well have attempted to shave an elephant with a razor as to manage the raw recruits of early Puddleford with subtle distinctions; and, besides, Longbow, as the reader has discovered, had no knowledge of that kind of instrument, nor was it necessary that he should have. Longbow's legal rules necessarily ran on a sliding-scale, and he fitted them to the case in hand, not to cases in general.
The reader sees, then, a necessity for such men as Longbow in such a community. If it is impossible to find a man capable of preparing a technical set of legal papers, it is important to find a man who is incapable or unwilling to break them down. No man ever slipped through Longbow's fingers upon a mere technicality.
Again, Longbow's judicial duties were not expensive. An expensive judicial tribunal would have ruined Puddleford outright. Puddleford was not only obliged to use such timber as it had for public men, but the timber must also be cheap. Longbow was no mahogany judge, polished and wrought into scrolls, though there were a great many lines and angles about him. He was a plain piece of green-ash, strong, yet elastic enough to bend when justice demanded. He was not an expensive article, and therefore the interest the public paid upon him was small. He would sit all day, amid the war and tumult of contending litigants, and breast the storm of insult that was heaped upon him from the right and the left, for four shillings and sixpence. I do not mean to say that he lacked self-respect—no man respected himself more—but he had, somehow or somewhere, imbibed the idea that pettifoggers were entitled to great latitude of speech, and that he was paid for listening to them. I have seen the Squire many a time passing through one of these conflicts, when his name was used very irreverently, holding as solemn a face as that worn by a marble statue of Solon.
Longbow's annual income amounted to about two hundred dollars a year, and this Puddleford could "stand." But he had many duties to perform outside of his office of magistrate to insure him this amount. As I have said elsewhere, he was the grand Puddleford umpire, and, I am very certain, settled more difficulties as a man than a magistrate. School and highway districts and officers often got twisted in a snarl, and Longbow unravelled the knot—right or wrong it matters not, he put a finish to the matter; and, whether right or wrong, reader, what difference did it make so long as no one else knew it, and everybody had confidence? If confidence will sustain a bank, ought not confidence to sustain Squire Longbow?
And then A.'s pigs broke into B.'s garden—A.'s line-fence stood three feet on B.'s land. A. swore there was a legal, lawful highway across B.'s land; B. swore it was no such thing, and he would shoot the first man who crossed it. A. called B. a thief, and B. called A. another. A. agreed to break up for B., but never did, because B. refused to clear his land. A. and B. exchanged horses; A.'s horse had the heaves, and B.'s was spavined; and so on, trouble after trouble, how often and many in kind I cannot say, Squire Longbow has brought to a compromise. These were extrajudicial services, and the two hundred dollars a year covered all.
If it had been possible to place Chief Justice Marshall, or even a finished city lawyer, in the seat of Squire Longbow, how signally he must have failed! He would have been utterly incompetent to the task, and would have burned his books, and fled from the settlement under cover of night. Confusion is often the best manager of confusion. A clean, clear, analytical mind might have flashed now and then, but it could never have governed the storm. While our finished lawyer was playing about a refined distinction, Longbow would bury all distinctions "ten fathoms deep," and end all controversy by repeating some old saying, and dismiss the whole matter as summarily as the adjournment of a cause.
Longbow was not only a good man, a cheap man, but he was a great man. Greatness is relative, not absolute. I hope my friends do not intend to dispute the truth of this proposition; because I have the documents to prove it, when officially called upon to do so. Great men are like figures on a thermometer—some thermometers, it is true, are much longer, and contain a great many more figures than others. The only question any ambitious man cares to ask is, how many figures there are on the scale above his. The Puddleford thermometer was very short, dear reader, and Longbow's figure was the highest. Is not this fame? Puddleford fame, say you? Puddleford fame, indeed! It will outlast, I will wager my old hat, the fame of nine tenths of the members of Congress, who have for the last ten years blown themselves hoarse making speeches to their outraged and indignant constituency. Why, Longbow's name will be remembered in Puddleford years after his death; and how many names can you repeat of those who strutted through the last Congress, or how many of the members for your own district for the last thirty years? Fame, indeed! But I do not wish to quarrel about so fleeting a thing as fame, and I will, therefore, dismiss that subject.
The politics of Puddleford were a little ridiculous; but Turtle's political fun was used by him as a means to carry out an end. Turtle's patriotism and Turtle's principles were beyond suspicion. Reader, there is no spot of American soil more truly patriotic than Puddleford. There are no great depositories—no central heart—in this country, from which American principles flow; every man is a centre, a law unto himself. Ike Turtle was a centre; he was a kind of political wheel; ran on his own axis; borrowed no propelling power from abroad, but kept himself whirling with the spirit of '76, of which he had always a large supply on hand. He reminded me of a fire-wheel, used on celebration days, he cast off so many colored lights: now he whizzed; then he banged; now he shot forth stars; then spears of flame; but he was still a wheel, and always set himself in motion to some purpose.
What shall I say of the theology of Puddleford? I have already alluded to it in the pages of this work. Permit me to say more. Creeds travel with men wherever they go. Creeds often colonize the wilderness; they have nerved more hearts, stirred and sustained more souls, scattered more civilization, than any or all other agents. But Puddleford was not settled by any particular idea, civil or religious; yet the Puddlefordians brought with them a great many ideas, both civil and religious. They were, however, incidental, not primary. The religious exercises of the country were like its people, ardent, strong, fiery, and often tempestuous. Bigelow Van Slyck was an embodiment of Puddleford theology. He did not argue doctrine, for two reasons: he did not know how, and he would not if he could; but, to use his own language, "he took sin by the horns, and held it by main force."
A quiet religion with a Puddlefordian was synonymous with no religion. Religion with him was something to be seen, to touch, to handle. Puddleford religion was often very noisy, and it manifested itself in many ways. We used to have an outburst at camp-meeting, which was held once in each year by the prevailing sect in the country. A camp-meeting! The reader has attended a camp-meeting, I know; but we had the genuine kind. Puddleford was depopulated on such occasions; and its inhabitants, supplied with the necessaries of life and a tent, went forth into the wilderness to give a high tone to their piety. They wanted air, and space, and time. All this was characteristic, and was like the people. What would they have done inside a temple of springing arches and fretted dome—of statues looking coldly down from their niches—of pictured saints—where organ anthems rolled and trembled?