says the man of the hills. Melvine, a great horse-breeder, one day took sides in a quarrel between a horse and its master, fought the man for abusing his horse—fought him hard and long: 'twas "t'other and which" with them for a while. "I wouldn't have done it," said his neighbor, Squire Greffern: "I wouldn't have fought the man. I'd have reasoned with him kindly. I'd have said, 'See here, now, this horse isn't to blame: he ain't human,' says I, 'and you ought not to abuse him,' says I. And says I, 'You ought to know better than to hurt a horse: it injures him,' says I. 'He has more sense than you have' (getting excited). 'You deserve to be licked yourself, by hoky! Why, Gosh Almighty! get out, or I'll thrash the daylights out of your darned rotten hide!'" So ended the squire's reproof.
The old hill-farmer has an old dog grown from indulgence, like his horses, in the habit of going his own gait. He will trot to church on Sundays, and trot, trot, down the aisle after meeting has begun, or, if he likes, up into the gallery. When two of these obstinate old dogs once met before the pulpit they indulged in a whirlwind of fight. The minister requested the sexton to put them out, but they showed him their teeth and fought until satisfied. Then the minister administered a grave rebuke to the farmers for desecrating the house of God by bringing dogs to church. Whether the dogs understood it or not, one of them never went to church again.
Another luxury of the hill-farmer is unabridged hospitality. He would agree with Doctor Johnson that nothing promotes happiness so much as conversation. Blazing fires—beacons of company—often flame up his best rooms' chimney-stacks, pouring their blue wood-smoke high in the clear air of the hills. Thanksgiving Day in the hills would do for a festival in honor of Jupiter, the patron of friendship, 'tis a day of such hospitality. It is the only day of the year when the boy has enough to eat. Not that there is not plenty all the year round. It is always jam and never satis with the boy, to borrow Tom Hood's joke. In killing-time they put down hecatombs of beef in snow and of ham and sausage in hot lard, and they have stores of cod-fish to be cooked with cream, and of chickens for potpies, which are never made properly, for some mysterious reason, save by a farmer's wife. A fearful fate, though, has been known to befall a farmhouse among the wintry hills when the farmer's wife has put too much sage in the sausage. Too much sage all winter, ah! Nothing short of being "clyed," as the farmer's wife pronounces it, will satisfy a boy who works on the hills; and that he is on Thanksgiving. 'Tis a day of perfect bliss to him, when he sleeps long, and after his morning's work is done goes to skate in his best clothes on a very glary pond where a crowd of other boys are skating. He skates until he is tired and hungry, and comes home late, stopping on the way to climb the fences of the orchards in search of frozen apples, delicious food to his famished lips. When he reaches home the turkey smells away out to the gate, and in the kitchen everything is all cluttered up and "t'other end to," and dinner is nowhere near ready yet. 'Tis a joyous hour for the boy when it is ready, and for the hired man too. The hired man's pleasure is somewhat damped by hearing the hired girl remark that his mouth is like a barn-door with a load of hay in it. "I declare for it if 'taint," says she. He informs her that she is always "bellerin'" about something, and she requests him not to be so "putchy;" nor does that end the matter. Guests like the Melvines of Melvine Farm, the Bligh boys of Bligh's Corners, the Plunkett girls and Deacon Buckingham's hired girl, and Yem Finny and Sam Bab's folks, are the kind to invite to a party. They are the kind to keep up a rumble of talk in the parlor, and in the other rooms a rush of games—Hide the Handkerchief, Hunt the Slipper, and so on: Achilles's troops did not play Whirl the Platter on the sands of Troy with a greater gusto.
Very hospitable people are not particular as to who comes to see them, if only some one comes: therefore, pack-peddlers, stove-peddlers, drovers, the old crazy man and the old crazy woman, and other wanderers, are welcome at the hill farmhouse. These vagabonds come from all directions—up the Red Mill road, down from Windy Row, over from the Huddle and the Hollow, and across from Ranger's Field Centre, sometimes meeting two or three together. The boy is glad to see them, particularly the peddlers, they bring such an uproar of talk with them. The brown Bohemian or Hungarian receives a bombardment of questions at the farmhouse that breaks all bounds to his loquacity: he tells everything he knows of foreign lands, as well as news of what is going on in ten counties round. Two only of the vagrant tribe the boy dislikes, the colporteur and the travelling Spiritualist—two cold, shabby, sniffling beings, each wrapped in a shawl and each driving an old horse afflicted with poll-evil. Whenever the boy goes to put up one of these men's horses he wants to break his wagon and whip, and he does give them a few ferocious shakes in the solitude of the stable. The boy worships the clockmaker, who comes once a year on a Saturday and stays over Sunday, mending all the clocks in the house, the tall, timeworn wooden one up in the boy's bedroom as well as the rest. This fellow has a taste for pugilism. While working at the clocks he holds discussions with the hired folks about Heenan, Sayers, Morrissey, dogs, cocks and horses, and lets out secrets about mills coming off in London and New York next week. This is delightful. But once let the horse-pitchfork man arrive, and there is a regular sitting up at night, a grand debauch of talk on politics, patent-rights, improved agricultural implements and other themes, the whole interspersed with original jokes. The old farmer is obtuse about jokes—
An owl might make him laugh, if only it would wink,
but nothing less could—yet the horse-pitchfork man's jokes penetrate him.
The boy thinks it dull when there is no company at the farmhouse of a winter evening. He then sets a pitcher of cider to warm by the fire, and makes himself as comfortable as he can over a book. The few books he reads are fastened minutely in his memory. He obtains The Perfect Gentleman from the district school library, and thenceforth knows what is proper behavior for an Englishman under all circumstances. He reads The Vestiges of Creation, and in afterlife is amazed to find half the world fighting the ancient theory of evolution. His love of society causes him to plunge into the vortex of the mite society and singing school if he has anything decent to wear. Cheerfully he works in pantaloons whose legs have been cut off and turned hind side before, in order that the thin and faded places may come on the back of his legs and the unfaded ones on his knees; contentedly he sustains them by one suspender twisted from a solitary button in front around to another on his right side: he knows the farmer's wife has no time to take care of his clothes. But when old Mrs. Lyburn, a woman who can no more design a suit of clothes than a theatre-ceiling fresco, is commissioned to make him a coat out of an old goose-green overcoat, and a pair of trousers out of some thick, old light cloth breeches, and when she cuts the legs of those breeches off at top and bottom, leaving them broad enough for a Turk, with pockets like large bags hanging down inside of them, then the boy rebels and refuses to go anywhere. If he goes he takes his road through Stone's Woods, and comes home the back way by the wagon-house. The boy has grit, real grindstone grit: therefore he keeps this up, and sooner or later he has it out with the old farmer about his clothes. "Well, well, don't rare and pitch like a flax-break: we'll see about it," says the old gentleman. The old farmer takes the boy to town and buys him a sleek, shiny black suit—the coat is a long-waisted, long-tailed frock—and he adds a pair of good "stubbid" shoes, having strings made of leather.
"You're stuck, and stuck bad," says the hired man compassionately when he sees the suit. A boy who is as keen as a brier and smart as a whip cannot be expected to wear "humbly" clothes forever. A neat suit made by the village tailor, and a necktie, hat and boots that put him into positively ethereal spirits, are articles that he finally attains. In these clothes he joins the debating society and the choir. Saul Lapham, a friend of his, plays the cornet at the choir-rehearsals. Saul lays down the dignity of a human being to puff out his cheeks, bulge his eyes and grow red in the face blowing a brass horn. Saul is a tyro in the business—can't blow softly, though he tries hard to do so, and completely drowns the singers except when he breaks down, which occurs rather often, to their extreme relief. The little spats and sensations of the choir-rehearsals are entertainment for the sylvan boy. One evening Miss Tway was so "worked up" about failing in a solo she was trying to sing that she fainted twice, the first time with her mouth shut, the second time with it open; and Saul, not knowing what else to do, put a gum-drop into it, which offended Miss Tway, for she thought it was his finger.
The lad is a gallant figure in his new suit galloping on horseback from his highlands down to the village on the flats to attend some rustic diversion. In the tavern ballroom there is a little stage with a curtain hung across it, and on that stage the boy sees the most charming performance he ever beholds. It consists of a regular play, with a ballet between the acts, and a minstrel performance introducing the celebrated scene of a negro teaching another negro to tune the banjo, where the pupil climbs up the back of his chair while endeavoring to ascend the scale; and all ending with a puppet-show, the whole being done by three young fellows. "Why-ee! 'twas wonderful!" says the boy.
Balzac remarks: "People who are very happy are naturally stupid." Perhaps it is because he is not stupid that the boy is unhappy on the many-fountained hills. The longed-for evening soon appears—his last on the farm. He sleeps no moment that night in his soft farmhouse bed under homemade blankets hemmed with woollen thread. He does not know that he will be homesick for his old bedroom—homesick for the Gothic chest, the picture from The Pirate and Three Cutters, and the toilet-table holding nothing but a hairbrush, which, with its half dozen bristles, resembles a Captain Cook club. He will be homesick for the very closet under the roof that makes his clothes smell of hops, wool and dried apples. How glows the morn when he leaves! He goes to success, for he carries power—power as great as Fate.