Yankee Doodle's criticism was quite just. He could not see the town because there were so many houses. We need to get away from the crowded streets and narrow lanes and talkative people to win a true perspective. I wanted to sit down alone and think things over. The people, generally, were as strange to me as I was to them, and yet there was a time, when I was as well-known to everybody, as a child is to his own mother, and when I knew everybody in town. All the alterations of things are wondrously complete, but these were nothing to the change of appearance in the faces of the people. The old familiar countenances, where were they? I looked here and I looked there and everywhere but they had largely vanished from above and below the earth. The character of the dog has undergone less change, than that of the human master, to whom he is so strangely attached. Change, that immutable law of nature, had wrought such shifts in the faces among old acquaintances that all smiles of recognition were wanting. But when I look in the glass I see no change. To the people I must have appeared as the veriest Rip Van Winkle. It was not the fault of the thrifty, prosperous place that I had slept so long, but like Rip Van Winkle it was in me to come back, and I am trying to learn to say with him, Everything is changed and I am changed. He recalled the occurrences before he entered upon his extended slumber and returned to find that the place was altered. It was enlarged and more populous and had rows of houses which he had not seen before. The dress of the people, too, was of a different fashion from that to which he was accustomed but whether under the somnolent influences of his lethargies, or free from them, he mused amid all the changes of outward affairs upon one immutable scene, "the lordly river moving on its silent but majestic course."
CHAPTER IX
WHAT HAD BECOME OF THE OLD ECCENTRICITIES
On revisiting the earth nothing is more remarkable than to find that with each man goes one striking characterization. There is usually one prevalent well-founded recollection based upon a temperamental peculiarity, and the impression was made, that the former citizen was fortunate to leave that one item in the memory of the people. You make reference to him, "Oh, yes, he was our town clerk for twenty years." As often as you mention him you are told again the fact which distinguishes him. One beloved character was Abiel Bassett. "Oh yes, he was our good deacon, Deacon Bassett." He was a farmer. As such, he made his living, but that was nothing to the point. "Deacon Bassett"—that was all. Cain stands in the catechism for one fact. There are two things beside, that could be said of him. It is not usual to mention them. Judas must have had excellent qualities or he would not have been made an apostle. One thing attaches to him. If a person's picture is to be taken he might like to designate the occasion and expression, but then he might show self-consciousness which spoils everything. He must not appear to want "to be seen of men." History wants to make his picture a likeness, just as he is, and as his friends see him, every day. On revisiting the earth I find that one act is always stated of my father. It gave him earthly immortality. It was not his greatest act nor his best. He took no pose for the permanent picture. Joseph Jefferson, Kate Claxton and Edwin Booth had, each of them, one part that fitted them like a garment and fully expressed them. It would inevitably become the favorite selected for a "Benefit Night." Audiences in part determined their public character. My father took his permanent position thus by a kind of election.
He was not consulted. History does not say, "How would you like to have your picture taken now?" He is caught like a fly in the amber and there he remains. His repute is imperishable. Thus statuesque is history.
Forgetting all Except One Truth
My mother left one clear-cut impression. It remained like the imprint of a fern leaf on a rock, a suggestive though accidental record of the years gone by. It was a simple picture stamped with a strange indelibility, like the patience of Job, the meekness of Moses, the daring of Daniel, the greed of Shylock, the indecision of Hamlet, the jealousy of Othello, the furious driving of Jehu. One story was told with endless iteration by the old-time neighbors who feel themselves under no obligation to laboriously dig up a second story when the usual one is the best and is so thoroughly characteristic. Thus all other occurrences are suffered to fade from the community's recollection. When a patriarch was returning from battle with his spoils, a priest, meeting him, stretched forth his arms and blessed him. In this pose history's snap-shot was taken. After thousands of years we find that he "abideth a priest continually." Such men are the moral pivots of society. Their claim on remembrance, like William the Silent, Charles the Bold, Richard the Lion-Hearted turned upon one conspicuous thing and history will so nail that one fact down and so hammer it that it is practically impossible to effect a readjustment, as in the matter of Daniel Webster's physical condition while making his Rochester speech and of the obloquy cast upon Chief Justice Taney in the Dred-Scott decision, that the negro "had no rights that the white man was bound to respect." The learned judge never made that affirmation. His sympathies in the recital were against, rather than with, the sentiment he named. In revisiting the earth you find that history did not fasten upon the best form of characterization and you try to argue. Oh never mind now, our story is a good one; it will have to stand. It has been attacked before.
Personalities of Rarest Types
The difficulty has been pointed out of recalling our childhood, exactly as it was, for the reason that as we travel backward, we take our present selves with us. Imagination is now less active, and so things are shorn of their size and of their exaggerated features. On coming to town we miss the lion of the place. Our juvenile Hall of Fame was featured by the Sagamore of the tribe. In the good old days society had its leader, its model, its dictator who would have led an army or governed a kingdom. He merited the description by which the Norse sages so often carried a meaning of high praise when they declared one to be "not an every-day man." His individual life was less lost in the crowd. His isolation reacted on his character. His residence was one of the show places of the town. It was the resort for the itinerant politician, holding out the glad hand, who was to speak in the evening, and was with us to electioneer. In such a community it falls usually to one and the self-same family to entertain. The house is known as the Quaker tavern, or the Methodist tavern. Its hospitality is proverbial. It had its spare room. This became locally quite famous for the celebrities it had welcomed, before they had come to their later fame. Hospitality in this form is the grace of small, remote, detached places. The minister's house had a prophet's chamber, with a "bed and a table and a stool and a candle-stick" so that when any "holy man of God" passed by he could turn in thither. A minister's wife said plaintively that she never knew how many she was cooking a meal for. On one occasion she had provided a custard pie, more than ample, for the few she then had in mind. It was however necessary later to cut it into six pieces and that, notwithstanding the fact that it was imperative, by an unforseen situation, for the mother herself and her daughter not to "care for any" that day. The minister's family adopted a code of S. O. S. signals which it would sound around F. H. B., "Family hold back," M. I. K., "more in the kitchen." To the manse any minister, though a total stranger and unannounced, could come with complete assurance. The itinerant and his horse were now and then forced by a snow-storm to remain a few days until the roads were broken up and settled.