The book of Saint Nicholas

by James Kirke Paulding

Master Tim, as they came to call him when they got to be a little acquainted, was a rare fellow, such as seldom rains down anywhere, much less on a country village. He was of “merry England,” as they call it—lucus a non lucendo—at least so he said and I believe, although he belied his nativity, by being the merriest rogue in the world, even when the fog was at the thickest. In truth, he was ever in a good humour, unless it might be when a rare bug or gorgeous butterfly, that he had followed through thick and thin, escaped his net at last. Then, to be sure, he was apt to call the recreant all the “vagabonds” he could think of. He was a middle-sized man, whose person decreased regularly, from the crown of his head to the—I was going to say, sole of his foot—but it was only to the commencement of the foot, to speak by the card. The top of his head was broad and flat, and so was his forehead, which took up at least two thirds of his face, that tapered off suddenly to a chin, as sharp as the point of a triangle. His forehead was indeed a large field, diversified like the country into which he had rained down, with singular varieties of hill and dale, meadow and plough land, hedge and ditch, ravine and watercourse. It had as many points as a periwinkle. The brow projected exuberantly, though not heavily, over a pair of rascally little cross-firing, twinkling eyes, that, as the country people said, looked at least nine ways from Sunday. His teeth were white enough, but no two of them were fellows. But his head would have turned the brains of a phrenologist, in exploring the mysteries of its development; it was shaped somewhat like Stony Point—which everybody knows as the scene of a gallant exploit of Pennsylvanian Wayne—and had quite as many abruptnesses and quizzical protuberances to brag about. At the upper extremity of his forehead, as he assured us, he carried his money, in the shape of a piece of silver, three inches long and two wide, inserted there in consequence of a fracture he got by falling down a precipice in hot chase of a “vagabond of a beetle,” as he was pleased to call him. Descending towards terra firma, to wit, his feet, we find his body gradually diminishing to his legs, which were so thin, everybody wondered how they could carry the great head. But, like Captain Wattle, each had a foot at the end of it, full as large as the Black Dwarf. It is so long ago that I almost forget his costume. All I recollect is, that he never wore boots or pantaloons, but exhibited his spindles in all weathers in worsted stockings, and his feet in shoes, gorgeously caparisoned in a pair of square silver buckles, the only pieces of finery he ever displayed.

In the merry months of spring and summer, and early in autumn, Master Timothy was most of his time chasing bugs and butterflies about the fields, to the utter confusion of the people, who wondered what he could want with such trumpery. Being a genius and an idler by profession, I used to accompany him frequently in these excursions, for he was fond of me, and called me vagabond oftener than he did anybody else. He had a little net of green gauze, so constructed as to open and shut as occasion required, to entrap the small fry, and a box with a cork bottom, upon which he impaled his prisoners with true scientific barbarity, by sticking a pin in them. Thus equipped, this Don Quixote of butterfly catchers, with myself his faithful esquire, would sally out of a morning into the clovered meadows and flower-dotted fields, over brook, through tangled copse and briery dell, in chase of these gentlemen commoners of nature. Ever and anon, as he came upon some little retired nook, where nature, like a modest virgin, shrouded her beauties from the common view—a rocky glen, romantic cottage, rustic bridge, or brawling stream, he would take out his little portfolio, and pointing me to some conspicuous station to animate his little landscape, sketch it and me together, with a mingled taste and skill I have never since seen surpassed. I figure in all his landscapes, although he often called me a vagabond, because he could not drill me into picturesque attitudes. But the finest sport for me, was to watch him creeping slily after a humming bird, the object of his most intense desires, half buried in the bliss of the dewy honeysuckle, and just as he was on the point of covering it with his net, to see the little vagrant flit away with a swiftness that made it invisible. It was an invaluable sight to behold Master Timothy stand wiping his continent of a forehead, and blessing the bird for a “little vagabond.” These were happy times, and at this moment I recall them, I hardly know why, with a melancholy yet pleasing delight.

During the winter season, Master Timothy was usually employed in the daytime painting pleasure sleighs, which, at that period, it was the fashion among the farmers to have as fine as fiddles. Timothy was a desperate hand at a true lover's knot, a cipher, or a wreath of flowers; and as for a blazing sun! he painted one for the squire, that was seriously suspected of melting all the snow in ten leagues round. He would go ten or a dozen miles to paint a sleigh, and always carried his materials on a board upon the top of his head—it was before the invention of high-crowned hats. Destiny had decreed he should follow this trade, and nature had provided him a head on purpose. It was as flat as a pancake. In the long winter evenings it was his pleasure to sit by the fireside, and tell enormous stories to groups of horrorstruck listeners. I never knew a man that had been so often robbed on Hounslow Heath, or had seen so many ghosts in his day, as Master Tim Canty. Peace to his ashes! he is dead, and, if report is to be credited, is sometimes seen on moonlight nights in the churchyard, with his little green gauze net, chasing the ghosts of moths and beetles, as he was wont in past times.

But it is high time to return to my story; for I candidly confess I never think of honest Tim that I don't grow as garrulous as an old lady, talking about the revolution and the Yagers. In all country villages I ever saw or heard of, whenever anything strange, new, horrible, or delightful happens, or is supposed to have happened, all the male inhabitants, not to say female, make for the tavern as fast as possible, to hear the news, or tell the news, and get at the bottom of the affair. I don't deny that truth is sometimes to be found at the bottom of a well; but in these cases she is generally found at the bottom of the glass. Be this as it may—when Cobus Yerks looked into the village inn, just to say How d'ye do to the landlady, he beheld a party of some ten or a dozen people, discussing the affair of my being poisoned with Souchong tea, which by this time had been extended to the whole family, not one of whom had been left alive by the bloody-minded damsel, Rumour.

Cobus could not resist the fascination of these horrors. He edged himself in among them, and after a little while they were joined by Master Timothy, who, on hearing of the catastrophe of his old fellow-labourer in butterfly catching, had strode over a distance of two miles to our house to ascertain the truth of the story. He of course found it was a mistake, and had now returned with a nefarious design of frightening them all out of their wits by a story of more than modern horrors. By this time it was the dusk of the evening, and Cobus had a long way to travel before he could reach home. He had been so fascinated with the story, and the additions every moment furnished by various new comers, that he forgot the time till it began to grow quite dark; and then he was so horrorstruck at what he had heard, that he grew fast to his chair in the chimney corner, where he had intrenched himself. It was at this moment Master Timothy came in with the design aforesaid.

The whole party gathered round him to know if the story of the poisoning was true. Tim shook his head, and the shaking of such a head was awful. “What! all the family?” cried they, with one voice. “Every soul of them,” cried Tim, in a hollow tone—“every soul of them, poor creatures; and not only they, but all the cattle, horses, pigs, ducks, chickens, cats, dogs, and guinea hens, are poisoned.” “What! with Souchong tea?” “No—with coloquintida.” Coloquintida! the very name was enough to poison a whole generation of Christian people. “But the black bulldog!” cried Timothy, in a sepulchral voice, that curdled the very marrow of their innermost bones. “What of the black bulldog?” quoth little Cobus. “Why, they do say that he came to life again after laying six hours stone dead, and ran away howling like a d—l incarnate.” “A d—l incarnate!” quoth Cobus, who knew no more about the meaning of that fell word than if it had been Greek. He only knew it was something very terrible. “Yes,” replied Timothy; “and what's more, I saw where he jumped over the barnyard gate, and there was the print of a cloven foot, as plain as the daylight this blessed minute.” It was as dark as pitch, but the comparison was considered proof positive. “A cloven foot!” quoth Cobus, who squeezed himself almost into the oven, while the thought of going home all alone in the dark, past the churchyard, the old grave at the cross roads, and, above all, the spot where John Ryer was hanged for shooting the sheriff, smote upon his heart, and beat it into a jelly—at least it shook like one. What if he should meet the big black dog, with his cloven foot, who howled like a d—l incarnate! The thought was enough to wither the heart of a stone.

Cobus was a little, knock-kneed, broad-faced, and broad-shouldered Dutchman, who believed all things, past, present, and to come, concerning spooks, goblins, and fiends of all sorts and sizes, from a fairy to a giant. Tim Canty knew him of old, for he had once painted a sleigh for him, and frightened Cobus out of six nights' sleep, by the story of a man that he once saw murdered by a highwayman on Hounslow Heath. Tim followed up the story of the black dog with several others, each more appalling than the first, till he fairly lifted Cobus's wits off the hinges, aided as he was by certain huge draughts upon a pewter mug, with which the little man reinforced his courage at short intervals. He was a true disciple of the doctrine that spirit and courage, that is to say, whiskey and valour were synonymous.

It now began to wax late in the evening, and the company departed, not one by one, but in pairs, to their respective homes. The landlady, a bitter root of a woman, and more than a match for half the men in the village, began to grow sleepy, as it was now no longer worth her while to keep awake. Gradually all became quiet within and without the house, except now and then the howling of a wandering cur, and the still more doleful moaning of the winds, accompanied by the hollow thumpings of the waves, as they dashed on the rocky shores of the river that ran hard by. Once, and once only, the cat mewed in the garret, and almost caused Cobus to jump out of his skin. The landlady began to complain that it grew late, and she was very sleepy; but Cobus would take no hints, manfully keeping his post in the chimney corner, till at last the good woman threatened to call up her two negroes, and have him turned neck and heels out of doors. For a moment the fear of the big black dog with the cloven foot was mastered by the fear of the two stout black men, and the spirit moved Cobus towards the door, lovingly hugging the stone jug, which he had taken care to have plentifully replenished with the creature. He sallied forth in those graceful curves, which are affirmed to constitute the true lines of beauty; and report says that he made a copious libation of the contents of the stone jug outside the door, ere the landlady, after assisting to untie his patient team, had tumbled him into his wagon. This was the last that was seen of Cobus Yerks.

That night his faithful, though not very obedient little wife, whom he had wedded at Tappan, on the famous sea of that name, and who wore a cap trimmed with pink ribands when she went to church on Sundays, fell asleep in her chair, as she sat anxiously watching his return. About midnight she waked, but she saw not her beloved Cobus, nor heard his voice calling her to open the door. But she heard the raven, or something very like it, screaming from the Raven Rock, the foxes barking about the house, the wind whistling and moaning among the rocks and trees of the mountain side, and a terrible commotion among the poultry, Cobus having taken the great house dog with him that day. Again she fell asleep, and waked not until the day was dawning. She opened the window, and looked forth upon as beautiful an autumnal morning as ever blessed this blessed country. The yellow sun threw a golden lustre over the many-tinted woods, painted by the cunning hand of Nature with a thousand varied dies; the smoke of the neighbouring farmhouses rose straight upward to heaven in the pure atmosphere, and the breath of the cattle mingled its warm vapour with the invisible clearness of the morning air. But what were all these beauties of delicious nature to the eye and the heart of the anxious wife, who saw that Cobus was not there?

She went forth to the neighbours to know if they had seen him, and they good-naturedly sallied out to seek him on the road that led from the village to his home. But no traces of him could be found, and they were returning with bad news for his anxious wife, when they bethought themselves of turning into a byroad that led to a tavern, that used whilome to attract the affections of honest Cobus, and where he was sometimes wont to stop and wet his whistle.