Oh, helpful friend,
Thy comfort send,
Then grows the burden light.
The Old Town was the county-seat, and the county was large, but I do not remember that there were at any time more than two lawyers. One was good, the other bad. By bad I mean not that he was a bad lawyer, but reputed to be tricky, whereas the other was known to be honor itself. It is therefore perhaps the best character I can give my people when I record the fact—it was so stated, and I have not the least doubt that it was true—that when two farmers quarrelled, each sure that he was right, they made haste to hitch up to get first to the honest lawyer, and usually that was the end of the quarrel; for the last in the race was willing to make peace. They used to tell of two well-to-do neighbors who had fallen out over a line fence and started simultaneously for town. Both had good teams, and they were well matched in the race. For half an hour they drove silently alongside of one another, each on his own side of the road, grimly urging on their horses, but neither gaining a length. At last, as the lights of the town came into sight, for it was evening, a trace broke on one of the rigs and the horses stopped. The other team was whirled away in a cloud of dust.
“Hans!” the beaten one called after him, and he halted and looked back.
“Are you going after Lawyer ——?” naming the square one.
“I am that,” came back.
“Then let’s go back. I am beat;” and back home they went and made it up.
In contrast to this comedy of the highway stands in my memory a human tragedy that made a deep impression upon our childish minds, though we little understood at the time. There was in our street a public house keeper with whose pretty daughter we played at our daily games until she grew out of short skirts into a very handsome but flashy young woman. After a while she disappeared, and rumors reached the town that she was living in Hamburg upon the wages of sin, whereat the little circle in which she had spun her top buzzed mightily, and scandalized mammas turned up their noses with an “I told you so.” Her mother went about red-eyed as if from much crying, but was rarely seen outside her house. As for the father, publican that he was, he said nothing, but grimly held his peace.
Then one day a stylish carriage, the most elegant the town owned, drove up to the door of the public house, and a lady in silks and furbelows, and with a mammoth ostrich-feather sweeping her shoulder, descended and went in. Like a storm wind the report spread through the street that Helene had come home a fine lady, and we boys gathered to see the carriage and the show. We were standing there when the door of the house was opened, and the publican and his daughter came out. She was weeping pitifully, and the feather drooped sadly as he gave her his arm and, with face sternly set but with the dignity of righteous fatherhood, led her to the carriage, helped her in, and, closing the door, bade the coachman drive on. At the window we caught a moment’s glimpse of the mother’s tearful face as the coach turned the corner; then the door closed, and we saw and heard no more. We knew, somehow, that a drama of human sin and sorrow had been enacted in our sight, but little else. Years after, I heard what had happened within. She had come in her paint and her fripperies, unrepenting, to her old home; but barely within its shelter had been met by her father with the hard demand whether she was living honestly.