XIII
A Pilgrim in the Wilderness
A few years ago we were getting out a special edition of our paper, printed on book-paper, and filled with pictures of the old settlers, and we called it "the historical edition." In preparing the historical edition we had to confer with "Aunt" Martha Merrifield so often that George Kirwin, the foreman, who was kept trotting to her with proof-slips and copy for her to revise, remarked, as he was making up the last form of the troublesome edition, that, if the recording angel ever had a fire in his office, he could make up the record for our town from "Aunt" Martha's scrapbook. In that big, fat, crinkly-leafed book, she has pasted so many wedding notices and birth notices and death notices that one who reads the book wonders how so many people could have been born, married and died in a town of only ten thousand inhabitants. One evening, while the historical edition was growing, a reporter spent the evening with "Aunt" Martha. The talk drifted back to the early days, and "Aunt" Martha mentioned Balderson. To identify him she went to her scrapbook, and as she was turning the pages she said:
"In those days of the early seventies, before the railroad came, when the town awoke in the morning and found a newly arrived covered waggon near a neighbour's house, it always meant that kin had come. If at school that day the children from the house of visitation bragged about their relatives, expatiating upon the power and riches that they left back East, the town knew that the visitors were ordinary kin; but if the children from the afflicted household said little about the visitors and evidently tried to avoid telling just who they were, then the town knew that the strangers were poor kin—probably some of "his folks"; for it was well understood that the women in this town all came from high connections 'back East' in Illinois, Ohio, Indiana, and Iowa. Newcomers sometimes wondered how such a galaxy of princesses and duchesses and ladyships happened to marry so far beneath their station.
"But the Dixons had no children, so when a covered waggon drove up to their place in the night, and a fussy, pussy little man with a dingy, stringy beard, appeared in the Dixons' back yard in the morning, looking after the horses hitched to the strange waggon; the town had to wait until the next week's issue of the Statesman to get reliable news about their prospective fellow-citizen." With that "Aunt" Martha opened her scrapbook and read a clipping from the Statesman, under the head, "A Valuable Acquisition to Our City." It ran:
"It has been many months since we have been favoured with a call from so cultured and learned a gentleman as the Hon. Andoneran P. Balderson, late of Quito, Hancock County, Iowa, who has finally determined to settle in our midst. Cramped by the irritating conventionalities of an effete civilisation, Colonel Balderson comes among us for that larger freedom and wider horizon which his growing powers demand. He comes with the ripened experience of a jurist, a soldier, and a publicist, and, when transportation facilities have been completed between this and the Missouri River, Judge Balderson will bring to our little city his magnificent law library; but until then he will be found over the Elite Oyster Bay, where he will be glad to welcome clients and others.
"Having participated in the late War of the Rebellion, as captain in Company G of Colonel Jennison's famous and invincible army of the border, Colonel Balderson will give special attention to pension matters. He also will set to work to obtain a complete set of abstracts, and will be glad to give advice on real-estate law and the practice of eminent domain, to which subject he has given deep study. All business done with neatness and despatch.
"Before leaving Iowa, and after considerable pressure, Judge Balderson consented to act as agent for a number of powerful Eastern fire insurance companies, and has in contemplation the establishment of the Southwestern distributing point for the Multum in Parvo Farm Gate Company, of which corporation Colonel Balderson owns the patent right for Kansas. This business, however, he would be willing to dispose of to proper parties. Terms on application.
"The colonel desires us to announce that there will be a meeting of the veterans of the late war at the schoolhouse next Saturday night, for the purpose of organising a society to refresh and perpetuate the sacred memories of that gigantic struggle, and to rally around the old flag, touch shoulders again, and come into a closer fellowship for benevolent, social, and other purposes. The judge, on that occasion, will deliver his famous address on the 'Battle of Look Out Mountain,' in which battle Colonel Balderson participated as a member of an Iowa regiment. Admission free. Silver collection to defray necessary expenses."