In the evening we again walked abroad; and, having followed the windings of the creek to its junction with the Schuylkill, we seated ourselves upon the mouldering trunk of a gigantic, fallen button-wood tree. The bank of the stream was here about twenty feet in height, and descended perpendicularly to the water, which was very deep. Toward the opposite side the water shoaled, and was bordered by a low, muddy shore.
“This,” said I, after a short pause in the conversation, “has been a magnificent tree.”
The Captain laughed, and said, rather suddenly, “Do you remember Condy O’Neal, a little Irishman, who formerly lived in this neighborhood?”
“I have but a faint recollection of the man; he has been dead many a year since.”
“This tree has recalled to my mind a droll adventure of Condy’s, in which the tree bore a part.
“Condy came into the county about the year 1770, and opened a school. He was a true son of Erin, fond of fun, the bottle, and the girls, and seemed to have been, by nature, designed for amusement. He was a short, fat, little mortal, with a bald patch on his carroty poll; his face was flat and nearly square, his mouth was large, and puckered with a smile of habitual drollery, and his little gray eyes twinkled like those of a cat. No one had ever seen Condy looking sad; and he never spoke but to excite a smile by his humor or his bulls. Withal he was by no means touchy, and could laugh very heartily at a joke even at his own expense. But it was among the girls that his powers were most fully displayed; no professor of blarney could outshine Condy in the art of flattery. When in the society of the fair, Condy’s eloquence was unbounded: the torrent of compliments, jokes, and blunders flowed with unpausing rapidity. It is, therefore, not to be wondered at that he became a leading man in conversation, and that our country beau, one and all, felt themselves below par in his presence. Condy was not slow to remark this, and infinite was the pleasure he took in teasing them as often as opportunity offered. No sooner did he observe a beau looking particularly tender at one of the lasses, than Condy took upon himself to cut him out; and many an evening has he thus consumed in wronging a poor dog of a lover.
“The man whom Condy chiefly delighted to torment was a young farmer, named John Bingaman, a man of great stature and prodigious strength—the hero of all the broils and boxing-matches in the country. These boxing-matches are now out of fashion, but at the time of which I am speaking, they were very common; each county having one or more champions, who often tried their prowess against those of the neighboring counties. In these contests John had never yet found his match; and his temper had, in consequence, become so proud and overbearing, as to render him an object of dislike to all his acquaintance. John’s air of superiority was intolerable to Condy. He felt himself to be John’s superior in all but brute force; and was grieved to think that so thick-skulled a mortal should be at all noticed by the side of a man of mind like Condy O’Neal. On the other hand, John was equally chagrined by the deference paid to so diminutive a creature as Condy. He was perpetually galled by Condy’s remarks on the superiority of mind over muscle—of wit over strength. He felt that his former influence was sadly impaired; and how to re-establish it, was beyond his contrivance. To attempt to pick a quarrel with Condy and flog him, would, he was aware, be useless; for, in the first place, Condy was too well acquainted with his rival’s bodily powers to risk a battle; and, secondly, Condy’s superiority, resting in his wit, could not be beaten out of him by kicks and cuffs. John, therefore, concluded that it would be best to bear Condy’s presence with patience; certain that the roving disposition natural to school-masters must, ere long, remove the evil from his sight. In the mean time, however, he resolved to wreak his vengeance by playing all manner of boorish practical jokes upon Condy.
“One evening, late in autumn, Condy, John, and a number more, found themselves assembled at a husking frolic, where John, whose Dulcinea was of the party, exerted himself to the utmost to get the better of Condy; and, by dint of tripping up his heels and then burying him beneath a huge heap of corn-husks, or pushing him headlong over a row of lasses seated at their work, he contrived to keep the laughers on his own side. Condy bore all this with his characteristic good humor, until, the business of the evening having been nearly completed, and his scheme of vengeance matured, he suddenly assumed the air of a man whose patience is exhausted, and let fall a menace of revenge. Irritated by such a speech from a man like Condy, John roughly seized him by the shoulder, and demanded to know what he was threatening. ‘What I may never be able to undo,’ replied Condy, gravely. ‘And what may that be?’ asked John. ‘Why, Mister Bingaman, I could clap a horse’s head upon your shoulders, and that is more than I could take off again.’ John burst into an outrageous fit of laughter, and dared Condy to the trial. ‘No! no!’ said Condy, ‘I don’t want to do you an injury. I could easily put a horse’s head upon you, but if I should do so, there it must stick as long as you live: I could not take it off.’ ‘Try your best,’ again cried John; ‘I am not afraid of you.’ ‘Well, well,’ replied Condy, ‘as you doubt my ability, I’ll just do something for a small bit that shall harm no one, and convince you of the truth of what I said about the horse’s head. Now, John, strong as you are, I will undertake to make a cat pull you across that creek by a rope. Will you bet me a joe upon it?’ ‘Done,’ cried John; ‘post your joe.’ The money was regularly staked, when Condy, turning to the company, requested them to adjourn to the farm-house, where he would presently join them, in order to make some necessary preparations. Condy went to his school-room, which was not very far off, and in a few minutes returned, bearing a sheet of paper, a pencil, a pair of dividers, and a Gunter’s scale. Entering the house, he found the company very merry upon the occasion. At first, all was laughter and jesting at Condy’s expense; but he, nothing moved thereby, seated himself with the most imperturbable gravity by the side of a table; while John, with a grin of anticipated triumph on his visage, seated himself opposite and watched his motions. Condy pored intently upon his scale, then adjusted his dividers upon it, and proceeded to draw three concentric circles upon the paper. In the central circle he wrote John Bingaman, and within the two outer he drew a number of strange figures of animals, birds, insects, etc. During this process, which was conducted with great solemnity and extreme slowness, John’s phiz gradually lost its comic expression, and assumed a dolorous cast. The whole company caught the infection of solemnity, and, to noise and merriment, there succeeded a silence so dead, that the sound of Condy’s pencil was distinctly audible as it slowly passed over the paper. Having now tickled his audience to the proper point, Condy arose, and, in a solemn tone, said, ‘John Bingaman!’ John rose from his seat with a visage rueful as his who drew King Priam’s curtains in the night, to tell him that his warlike son was dead. ‘John Bingaman!’ Condy repeated, ‘put your finger upon this magic circle and acknowledge it for your hand and seal.’ Spite of his natural intrepidity, John’s superstitious fears had completely overpowered him, and he stood gazing upon Condy, while his knees almost smote together with apprehension. ‘John Bingaman!’ again said Condy, ‘do you refuse to acknowledge this to be your hand and seal?’ John muttered something unintelligibly. ‘Well,’ said Condy, ‘then the bet is lost—the joe is mine.’ The idea of so easily parting with his joe, and the fear of the ridicule which began already to manifest itself in the titters of the company, recalled John from his stupor, and, hastily clapping his finger upon the fatal circle, he said, ‘This is my hand and seal, confound you!—now make what you please of it.’ ‘’Tis well!’ said Condy, with solemnity, folding his paper and gathering up his drawing instruments: ‘now I must ask the assistance of the company in this affair. The cat must be black, a female which has never had kittens, and must weigh two pounds exactly.’ He also informed them that the proposed feat could be performed only when both sun and moon were below the horizon.
“The company dispersed. John went away with a feeling of dread for which he could not account, and which, with his utmost exertions, he failed to dispel. Could Condy be serious? Could he really make so diminutive a creature perform what he had proposed? Yet there was nothing like jesting in Condy’s manner, and he was not the man to throw away a joe and at the same time risk a dozen kicks from John, besides incurring the ridicule of the whole vicinity. John shook his wise head again and again, but could not attain to any satisfactory conclusion. Condy sought his home in a very different mood. He laughed heartily as soon as he was in his own room: for now he had his mighty rival in his power, and could, without fail, expose him, a laughing-stock, to the whole county.
“As to the rest of the company, they viewed the matter in various lights. The more superstitious portion, awed by the solemnity of the pedagogue, looked upon him with mingled fear and admiration; while the less credulous part, most of them young, laughed, chatted, jested, and laid wagers upon the success of the plot. As more than a week must pass before the day fixed upon for the decision of the wager, there was full time for gossiping; and innumerable were the tales of witchcraft, ghosts, and horrors which that interval brought forth. Each veteran talker, male or female, had one or more marvellous tales wherewith to entertain the fireside assembly, and send the children to bed half terrified out of their reason.