“Sir, I am well, but distressfully sober,” said the man addressed.
At fair-time the half-mile track was used only for a big athletic meet, in which every large school in the county was represented. A company of the best metropolitan players amused the people in a large, open amphitheater, for which money had been raised by subscription. A quartette from Boston sang between the acts. The grounds were well policed; everything was done decently and in order.. The citizens of Griggsby and its countryside found enlightenment and inspiration at the fair. Every exhibit of drunkenness went to jail as swiftly as a team of horses and ample help could take him there. The trotting farce was abolished, and the ten-dollar man was out of employment, and no longer the observed of all observers. That living fountain of blasphemy and tobacco juice wandered among the cattle sheds and said the fair was a failure, and went home heartsick and robbed of adulation. And a mere slip of a girl had accomplished all this!
Ralph Buckstone returned by and by, the harbinger of a new era. He was like the wooden horse of the Greeks. He came full of enemies that hastened the fall of Griggsby. He brought in the cigarette. Through him the cocktail, the liqueur, and the cordial entered the gates and leading citizens of the village. They were welcomed without suspicion and with every evidence of regard.
In a short time the flowers of rhetoric began to wither and die. Compliments turned to groans. The leading citizens were in trouble. One retired to Poland Springs, one to Arkansas, two to the old cemetery, and one to a nearer hell of indigestion in his own bed. Dan'l W. Smead had long since gone to his rest, with a name honored above all others in his own county; for, having accomplished our purpose, we sold the Corporal to the man who had done much to make it. I qualified for the bar, and we settled in New York, and our lives have been blessed with children, great happiness, and a fair degree of success.
Ralph left Griggsby, and broke down, and went a fast pace. I heard of him, now and then, in the next few years. He had gone into journalism in Boston, and it was rumored that he had made a handsome success. One day a friend of us both said to me:
“Ralph? Oh, he's getting on famously. He is a typical journalist; talks like the first deputy of the Creator, and regards all things with a knowing and indulgent tolerance.”
Well, on a day in June twenty years after my marriage, I was in court in New York, conducting the defense of a millionaire in trouble. I was examining a witness when the proceedings were interrupted by the arraignment of a prisoner. The clerk read the charge; it was forgery, and the man was Ralph Buckstone. An officer explained that he was a gambler, and had never been arraigned before. Evidently, the prisoner had no defense, and pleaded guilty, as I expected.
Then the recorder said to him: “You understand, I presume, what is involved in the step you are taking? Have you consulted counsel?”
“There is no occasion for it,” said Ralph. “At last I have decided to speak and live the truth. I am guilty. I have been a weak and foolish man, but what I have been, and what I am to be henceforth, all the world is welcome to know. In my life hereafter there shall be no concealment, and I hope never again to be ashamed of the truth about me.”
It was a great moment, and those were great words, simply and modestly spoken, and they were the very words of old Appleton Hall.