T
he one we call Johnny Keats is well enough known as Karl St. John. He was a Grassy Fordshire boy and Letitia's pupil, as I have said, till he left us, only to like us better, as he once told me, by seeing the world beyond our hills. He went gladly, I should say, judged by the shining in his eyes. He was a homely, slender, quiet lad, except when roused, when he was vehement and obstinate enough, and somewhat given, I am told, to rhapsody and moonshine. He read much rather than studied as a school-boy, and was seen a good deal on Sun Dial and along Troublesome where he never was known to fish, but wandered aimlessly, wasting, it was said, a deal of precious time which might have been bettered in his father's shop. Letitia liked him for a certain brightness in his face when she talked of books, or of other things outside the lessons; otherwise he was not what is termed in Grassy Ford a remarkable boy. We have lads who "speak pieces" and "accept," as we say it, "lucrative" positions in our stores.
Karl drifted off when barely twenty, and as time went by was half forgotten by the town, when suddenly the news came home to us that he had written, and what is sometimes considered more, had published, and with his own name on the title-page, a novel!—Sleepington Fair, the thing was called. There are those who say Sleepington Fair means Grassy Ford, and that the river which the hero loved, and where he rescued a maid named Hilda from an April flood, is really our own little winding Troublesome, widened and deepened to permit the wellnigh tragic ending of the tale. You can wade Troublesome; Hilda went in neck-deep. They say also that the man McBride, who talks so much, is our old friend Colonel Shears; the fanciful McBride is tall in fact, and the actual Shears is tall in fancy. Be that as it may, the book was excellent, considering that it was written by a Grassy Fordshire boy, and it set at least two others of our lads, and a lady, I believe, to scribbling—further deponent sayeth not.
Sleepington Fair was read by the ladies of the Longfellow Circle, our leading literary club. Our Mrs. Buhl, acknowledged by all but envious persons to be the most cultured woman in Grassy Ford, pronounced it safely "one of the most pleasing and promising novels of the past decade," and, in concluding her critical review before the club, she said, smilingly: "From Mr. St. John—our Mr. St. John, for let me call him so, since surely he is ours to claim—from our Mr. St. John we may expect much, and I feel that I am only voicing the sentiments of the Longfellow Circle when I wish for him every blessing of happiness and health, that his facile pen may through the years to come trace only what is pure and noble, and that when, as they will, the shadows lengthen, and his sun descends in the glowing west, he may say with the poet—"
What the poet said I have forgotten, but the words of Mrs. Buhl brought tears to the eyes of many of her auditors, who, at the meeting's close, pressed about her with out-stretched hands, assuring her that she had quite outdone herself and that never in their lives had they heard anything more scholarly, anything more thoughtfully thought or more touchingly said. Would she not publish it, she was asked, pleadingly? No? It was declared a pity. It was a shame, they said, that she had never written a book herself, she who could write so charmingly of another's.
"Ladies! Ladies!" murmured Mrs. Buhl, much affected by this ovation, but her modest protest was drowned utterly in a chorus of—
"Yes, indeed!"
Sleepington Fair aroused much speculation as to its author's rise in the outer world, chiefly with reference to the money he must be making, the sum being variously estimated at from five to twenty-five thousand a year.
"Too low," said Shears. "Suppose he makes half a dollar on every book, and suppose he sells—well, say he sells one hundred thousand—"
"One hundred thousand!" cried Caleb Kane. "Go wan!"