“Wuz a real noble, big-hearted, womanly thing to do,” declared Mrs. Crankett, snatching off her spectacles; “an’ I’d hev done it myself ef I’d been her.”
The deacon gave his old wife an enthusiastic hug; upon seeing which Miss Peekin hastily departed, with a severely shocked expression of countenance and a nose aspiring heavenward.
MAKING HIS MARK.
BLACK HAT was, in 1851, about as peaceful and well-regulated a village as could be found in the United States.
It was not on the road to any place, so it grew but little; the dirt paid steadily and well, so but few of the original settlers went away.
The march of civilization, with its churches and circuses, had not yet reached Black Hat; marriages never convulsed the settlement with the pet excitement of villages generally, and the inhabitants were never arrayed at swords’ point by either religion, politics or newspapers.
To be sure, the boys gambled every evening and all day Sunday; but a famous player, who once passed that way on a prospecting-trip, declared that even a preacher would get sick of such playing; for, as everybody knew everybody else’s game, and as all men who played other than squarely had long since been required to leave, there was an utter absence of pistols at the tables.
Occasional disagreements took place, to be sure—they have been taking place, even among the best people, since the days of Cain and Abel; but all difficulties at Black Hat which did not succumb to force of jaw were quietly locked in the bosoms of the disputants until the first Sunday.