JABEZ PUFFWATER,
Of Oggsville, Kentucky
JABEZ PUFFWATER might have been so much physically, mentally and publicly and has been so little any way that a tattered moral must hang sadly upon the gaunt tree of his career.
He might have been many things—he might have been a successful theatrical manager, or only an artistic one—he might have been a naval commander, or a psychoanalyst, or a Christian Science healer—he might have imparted to the United States Senate that infinitesimal something which would probably have proved to be the greatest comfort, especially in the cold weather.
If Mr. Belasco had not preferred Mr. David Warfield, Jabez Puffwater might have made an enormous success in "The Return of Peter Grimm"—had he but possessed an aptitude for histrionic achievement. He might have sung at the Metropolitan year after year without ceasing if Miss Geraldine Farrar had not taken an instantaneous dislike to him at sight—and had he but possessed a flamboyant temperament and an elementary knowledge of Puccini. In fact there is almost nothing he couldn't have been if only Fate had but weaned him at the breast of opportunity instead of ordaining his life drama to be played out in lonely dignity in the drab but intensely political village of Oggsville, Ken.
Oggsville, Ken. has been for many years a hotbed of occasionally seditious, but always subtle intrigue, the constructive and progressive policy of the upper part of the town, near the railway bridge, being in direct opposition to the destructive statesmanship and constitutional conventionality of the lower residential quarter embracing the timber-yard, Elijah Square, and Aunt Martha's Soda Fountain. Naturally Jabez Puffwater, whose modest store stood figuratively and literally at the crossing of the ways, was always in a somewhat uncertain state of mind as to which side he should ultimately pin his colours. Perhaps on a Tuesday St. John Eddle, a staunch upholder of the C. and P.P., would enter Jabez's store and hit him in the face because he'd sent a tin of sardines to the Furdlehoe Mansion on the other side of the River. And maybe on a Friday Moses Whortleberry, a leading light of the D. S. and C. C. would belabour him with one of his own hams for daring to acquaint old Hiram Holdit, the station master, with the result of the cocoa coupon competition.
One thing stood out firmly amid the turmoil of Jabez's environment—and that was his idealistic and almost fanatical admiration of the exploits of Buffalo Bill as depicted on the screen and retailed in small paper-bound books. Indeed so struck was he by the verve and virility of this astounding man that he took to attiring his lower limbs—which seldom showed above the counter—in the breeches, leggings, belt and pistol so well known to all lovers of the limitless prairie. The infinite pathos of Jabez Puffwater's blind devotion to one whom he had never seen will not fail to strike home to the stoniest heart. The tragedy of this man whose dauntless spirit so far outgrew his physical appearance—being compelled to sell cheeses, hams, molasses, etc, in order to live, is far more pitiful to me than the stern virginity of Queen Elizabeth, or even the nose of Cyrano de Bergerac.
It was when Jabez Puffwater had just reached his forty-third birthday that he first became seriously implicated in that political bombshell, the Goodge-Keewee Treaty made out with masterful cunning by Albert Goodge and Nicholas Keewee, with the sole motive of undermining the transcontinental railroad system to a devastating degree. The various reasons both for and against this daring policy are so excellently and clearly put forward in Vernon Treeby's "When Southern Blood is Dripping" that I will not attempt to go into it here. Enough that it caused an unparalleled sensation in Oggsville, Ken. and was indirectly the means of introducing into the heart of Jabez Puffwater the secret fear which was destined to grow ever larger and larger until eventually its black wings beat his battered soul into eternity. "The fear of a Black Rising!" Jabez was undoubtedly a man of more than average courage but after reading the Goodge-Keewee Treaty he went back to his store a harassed man. What did it all mean? Nobody knew. Ah, God! If only Jabez Puffwater had possessed the inspiring rhetoric of a Bernard Proon, or the imposing presence of a Freddie Hooter, what a lot he could have done. As it was he just went home—aching—yet withal as yet subconsciously—for the ability to be of use in some way, the opportunity of distinguishing himself and saving his belovéd home town from the awful effects of the fear that was fated from now onward to be with him always—the dreaded Black Rising.
For many years after that fateful conference Jabez was to be seen every evening seated outside his store with a horse pistol in his hand ever pointed in the direction of the wooded hills to the Southward. Little boys on their way home from school would throw mud at him, but he never heeded them; little girls would make rude noises quite near him with their rubber overshoes, but he ignored them utterly. I often wonder on looking back what Douglas Bogtoe would have been had he but possessed one half of Puffwater's concentrated repose. That celebrated appeal for the Louisiana Canal installation would have been worded very differently and as for his world-famed piscatorial argument with Olaf Campbell in the Brooke Club—that would have probably been approached from an entirely opposite angle.
To analyse and compare Bogtoe's electrical psychology with the phlegmatic determination and boyish zeal of Puffwater would take, alas, too long; so I will not seek to say more than that had the two widely differentiated spirits but been combined within the same material tissues—that a quainter nor a more peculiar juxtaposition of entities it would have been hard to find, search where you may.