Chapter IV: Part 4

"Thank you, but 'taint only the shake. It's not knowin' how the thing is goin' to come out, or how helpless it's goin' to make one, or in what way it's goin' to upset all his plans an' calculations--why, it teaches absolute dependence on a higher power, an' 'tisn't only folks that make most fuss 'bout it in church that feels it. After one gets that feelin', he's lots more of a man than he ever was before. I think malary has been the makin' of human nature out West here, an' in some parts of the East too. Why, do you know that almost every one of our greatest Presidents was born or brought up in malary-soaked country? Washington was, I know; for I had chills all over his part of Virginia, in war time, an' more'n a hundred thousand other men kept me comp'ny at it. Jackson, Lincoln, Grant, was some of the other Presidents that knowed malary better than they afterwards knowed their own Cabinets. As to smaller men, but mighty big, nevertheless--all the big cities of the land's full of 'em. Look up the record of a city's great business man, an' I'm told you'll find he never was born an' raised there, but in the back country somewhere, generally out West, an' nine times in ten can tell you more 'bout his ager spells than you care to hear. Still, such cases don't bear on the subject o' means o' grace, though they come from the same causes. Out in these parts malary does more'n ministers to fill the churches. So long as men feel first-rate, they let the church alone mighty hard, but just let 'em get into a hard tussle with malary an' they begin to come to meetin'. The worse it treats 'em, the more they come, which is just what they need. That's the way the church got me; though that ain't particularly to the p'int, for one swaller don't make a summer. But I've been watchin' the signs for twenty year, an' I'm not gettin' off guess-work when I say that malary's been one of the leadin' means o' grace in this great Western country, an' of pretty much ev'rythin' else that's worth havin'; the states that have most of it produce more good people to the thousan' than any other states, besides more great men, an' great ideas, an' first-class American grit. Now you can laugh if you feel the least bit like it."

"I don't, Caleb. But do answer me one question. If malaria has done so much good, and is doing it, do you think it ought to be preserved,--say as an American institution?"

"Well," said Caleb, "ev'rythin' an' ev'rybody, from Moses an' manna to Edison an' electricity, has had a mission, an' when the work was done, the mission took a rest an' gave somethin' else the right o' way. When malary's accomplished its mission, I, for one, would like to assist in layin' it away. I think I'm entitled to a share in the job, for malary an' me has been powerful close acquaintances for a mighty long time."

XI--CALEB'S NEWEST PROJECT

"ALONG about now," said Caleb to Philip and Grace one morning in midspring, "is the easiest time o' year that a merchant ever gets in these parts; for, between the earliest ploughin' for spring wheat to the latest ploughin' for corn, the farmers that 'mount to anythin' are too busy to come to town when the weather's good; when the rain gives 'em a day off from work, they've got sense enough to take a rest as well as to give one to the hosses. I thought I'd mention the matter, in case you'd had anythin' on your mind to be done, an' hadn't found time to do it."

"H'm!" said Philip, rubbing his forehead, as if to extract some special mental memoranda.

"Thank you, Caleb, for the suggestion," Grace said, "but I believe every foot of our garden ground is fully planted."

"Yes, so I've noticed. Twill be a big advertisement, too, if the things turn out as good as the pictur's an' readin' matter in the plant catalogues you got; for there ain't many things in them boxes of plants you bought that was ever seen or heerd of in these parts. How'd you come to know so much about such things?"

"Oh, I kept window-gardens in the city all summer, and indoor gardens in winter."

"I want to know! What give you that idee?"

"The beauty of flowers, I suppose--and their cheapness," Grace replied. "Besides, flowers in the winter were a good test of the air in our rooms, for air that kills plants is not likely to be good enough for human beings."

"Je--ru--salem! I must tell that to Doc Taggess, so that word about it can get to some of our country folks. Some of them keep their houses so tight shut in winter that the folks come out powerful peaked in the spring, just when they need all the stren'th they can get. But ain't you got nothin' else on your mind to do, besides exercisin' your hoss once in a while?"

As he asked the question his eyes strayed from Grace to Philip, and an amused expression came over the little man's face, so that Grace asked:--

"What is so funny in Philip's appearance?"

"Nothin'," said Caleb, quickly pretending to arrange the goods on a shelf.

"Don't say 'Nothing' in that tantalizing way, when your every feature is saying that there is something."

"Out with it, Caleb," said Philip. "I promise that I shan't feel offended."

"Well, the fact is, I was thinkin' o' somethin' I overheard you tell your uncle, first time you came here. He asked you what you was goin' to the city for. 'To continue my studies,' says you. 'What studies?' says he. 'Literature an' art,' says you. Then Jethro come pretty nigh to bustin' hisself. After you was gone he borried some cyclopeedy volumes from Doc Taggess, an' in odd moments he opened 'em at long pieces that was headed 'Literature' an' 'Art.' I watched him pretty close, to know when he was through, so I could pump him about 'em, for his sake as well as mine; for I've most generally found that a man ain't sure of what he knows till he has to tell it to somebody else. But Jethro would most generally drop asleep 'long about the second or third page, an' one day he slapped one of the books shut an' hollered, 'Dog-goned nonsense!' Like enough he was wrong about it, though, for afterwards I dipped into the same pieces myself, a little bit at a time, and 'peared to me there was a mighty lot of pleasant things in the subjects, if one could spend his whole life huntin' for 'em."

"You're quite right as to the general fact," said Philip, "and also as to the time that may be given to it."

"Am, eh? Glad I sized it up so straight. Well, then, I reckon you didn't finish the job in the city, an' that you're still peggin' away at it."

Philip looked at Grace, and both laughed as he replied:--

"I don't believe I've opened any book but the Bible in the past month."

"I want to know! Then the hundreds of books in your house are about like money that's locked up in the safe instead o' bein' out at interest, or turnin' itself over in some other way, ain't they?"

"Quite so."

Caleb went into a brown study, and Philip and Grace chatted apart, and laughed--occasionally sighed--over what they had intended to buy and read, when they found themselves well off. Suddenly Caleb emerged from his brown study and said:--

"Ain't them books like a lot of clothes or food that's locked up, doin' no good to their owner, while other folks, round about, are hungry, or shiverin'?"

"Caleb," said Philip, after a long frown in which his wife did not join, although distinctly invited, "my practised eye discerns that you think our books, which are about as precious to us as so many children might be, ought to be lent out, to whoever would read them."

"Well, why not? Ev'rybody else in these parts that's got books lends 'em. Doc Taggess does it, the minister does it, an' a lot of others. The trouble is that a good many families has got the same books. Once in a while some book agent with head-piece enough to take his pay in truck has gone through this county like a cyclone--an' left about as much trash behind him as a cyclone usually does."

"Aha! And yet you'd have me believe that the people who have bought such trash would enjoy the books which my wife and I have been selecting with great care for years?"

"Can't tell till you give 'em the chance, as the darkey said when he was asked how many watermelons his family could tuck away. I don't s'pose you knowed there was the makin' of a first-class country merchant in you, did you, till you got the chance to try? Besides, as I reckon I've said before, you mustn't judge our people by their clothes. I don't b'lieve they average more fools to the thousan' than city folks."

"Neither do I, Caleb; but tastes differ, even among the wisest, and to risk my darling books among a lot of people who might think me a fool for my pains--oh, 'tis not to be thought of. Next, I suppose, you'll suggest that I take my pictures from the walls and lend them around, say a week to a family."

"No; I wouldn't be so mean as that. Besides, pictures, an' bang-up ones, are plentifuller than books in these parts, for people that like that sort o' thing."

"Indeed? I wouldn't have thought it. Well, 'Live and learn.' Do tell me what kind of pictures you refer to, and who has them?"

Caleb looked embarrassed for a moment; then he assumed an air of bravado, and replied:--

"Well, I haven't missed a sunrise or sunset in nigh onto twenty year, unless I was too busy or too sick to see 'em. An' I've put lots o' other folks up to lookin' at 'em, an' you'd be astonished to know how many has stuck to it."

"Bravo, Caleb! Bravo!" Grace exclaimed.

"Much obliged; reckon you enjoy 'em, too. As Doc Taggess says, when you look at that kind o' pictur', you don't have to hold in until you can hunt up a book an' find out if the painter was first-class. But there's plenty more pictur's in the sky an' lots o' other places out doors, for folks that like 'em. To be sure, you can't always find 'em, as if they was in frames on a wall, but they show up often enough to keep 'emselves in mind. But books--well, books are different."

"Caleb, I weaken. I'm willing to compromise. I promise you that I will set apart a certain number of my books--volumes that ought to be of general interest--to be loaned to customers!"

"Good! I knowed you'd see your duty if 'twas dumped right before your face. But what's the matter with doin' somethin' more? I've had a project for a long time, that--"

Caleb suddenly ceased speaking and looked hurt, for he detected a peculiar interchange of glances between Philip and Grace.

"Go on," said Philip.

"Never mind," Caleb replied.

"Please go on, Caleb," Grace begged.

"I may be a fool," said Caleb, "but it does gall me to be laughed at ahead of time."

"Really, Caleb, we weren't laughing at you. Both of us chanced to think, at the same time, of something--something that we had read. Some husbands and wives have a way of both getting the same thought at an unforeseen instant. Do go on; haven't we proved to you that we think your projects good?"

"Sorry I made a baby of myself," apologized Caleb. "Well, I've read in newspapers that books never was so cheap as they are now, an' from some of the offers that come to us by letter I should say 'twas so. I know more'n a little about the names o' books an' o' their writers, an' some of the prices o' good ones look as if the printers stole their paper an' didn't pay their help. Now, we don't make much use o' the back room o' the store. S'pose you fetch in there your cyclopeedy, an' dictionary, an' big atlas, to be looked at by anybody that likes. Then buy, in the city, a couple of hundred books,--say a hundred dollars' worth,--not too wise, an' not too silly, an' let it be knowed that at Somerton's store there's a free circulating library."

"For Somerton's customers only," added Philip.

"No, for ev'rybody--not only for the sake o' the principle, but to draw trade. The first man that does that thing in this town won't ever be forgot by folks whose hearts are in the right place--not unless I'm all wrong on human nature."

"Which is as unlikely as the wildest thing ever dreamed," said Philip. "I don't doubt that you're entirely right about the advertising value of your project. My atlas, dictionary, and cyclopedia will serve me quite as well in the back room as if in the house, and the cost of the other books will be repaid by the first new farmer-customer we catch by means of the library."

"Then the thing is to be a go?"

"Certainly it is."

"When?"

"Now--at once--as soon as my books can be brought from the house and the others bought in the city."

"And I," Grace added, "am to be a librarian, and to select the new books. I remember well the names of all the most popular books in the public library of the little town I was born in, and all the best--never mind the worst--that my fellow-shopgirls used to read, and I know the second-hand bookshops in New York, where many good books may be had at a quarter of their original price; so if a hundred dollars is to be spent, I'll engage to get three or four hundred volumes, instead of two hundred. Meanwhile, don't either of you men breathe a word of Caleb's project, until the books are here; otherwise some other merchant may get ahead of us."

"That's sound business sense," said Caleb, "but I wish you hadn't--I mean I wish one of us had said it instead of you."

"Oh, Caleb! Do you think that my interest in the business of the store is making me sordid--mercenary--grasping?"

"Well, I never saw any signs of it before, but--"

"Nor have you seen them to-day. You'll have to take to eye-glasses, Caleb, if only in justice to me. The only reason I don't wish any one else to start the library is that I think the laborer is worthy of his hire. You were the laborer--that is, you devised the plan,--and I wouldn't for anything have you deprived of your pay, which will consist of your pleasure at seeing your old acquaintances supplied with good reading matter. Honor to whom honor is due. Now do you understand?"

Caleb's small gray face grew rosy, albeit a bit sheepish, and to hide it, he tiptoed over to Philip, who was staring into vacancy, apparently in search of something, and said:--

"As I b'lieve I've said before, ain't she a peeler?"

"Yes; oh, yes," Philip answered mechanically.

"You don't seem so sure of it as you might be," complained Caleb. "Have you struck a stump?"

"No; oh, no."

"What is the matter, Mr. Owl?" asked Grace, moving toward the couple.

"I'm puzzled--that's all, yet 'tis not a little," Philip replied. "I don't think I'm a fool about business. Even Caleb here, who is too true a friend to flatter, says I've done remarkably well, and increased the number of our customers and the profits of the business, yet 'tis never I who devise the new, clever plans by which the increase comes. This matter of the free circulating library is only one of several cases in point; they began months ago, with the use of our piano in church. I don't believe I'd have done them solely with a view to business, but I couldn't have helped seeing that they would have that effect in the end, so I wonder why I, myself, shouldn't have thought of them. Perhaps you can tell me, Caleb; don't be afraid of hurting my feelings, and don't be over-modest about yourself; 'tis all between friends, you know."

Caleb leaned on the counter, from which he brushed some imaginary dust; then he contemplated the brushed spot as if he were trying to look through the counter, as he replied:--

"Mebbe it's because we have different startin'-places. In a book of sermons I've got up in my room--though 'tain't by one o' our Methodists--there's a passage that tells how astronomers find certain kinds o' stars. It 'pears that they don't p'int their telescopes here, there, an' ev'rywhere, lookin' for the star an' nothin' else, but they turn the big concern on a rather dark bit o' sky, somewhere near where the star ought to be, an' they work it 'round, little by little, lookin' at ev'rythin' they can see, until they've took in the whole neighborhood, so to speak, an' what stars of ev'ry kind is around, an' what all of 'em is doin', an' so workin' in'ard, little by little, they stumble on what they was really lookin' for. Well, that's 'bout my way in business. First, I think about the neighborhood, the people, an' what they're doin', an' what ought to be done for 'em, an' all of a sudden they're all p'intin' right at the business, like the little stars for the big one, and couldn't keep from doin' it if they tried their level best. Now, p'raps you don't work that way, but try the other, 'cause--well, p'raps 'cause it's the quickest. P'raps I ought to say that mebbe my way ain't the best, but--"

"Don't say it," interrupted Philip, "because I shan't believe it, nor shall I believe that you yourself thought there was any possibility of its not being the better way of the two."

XII--DEFERRED HOPES

THE library arrived, and the books were covered, labelled, numbered, and shelved before the probable beneficiaries knew of their existence; then Master Scrapsey Green was employed to walk through the village streets, ringing a bell, and shouting:--

"Free--circulating--library--now--open--at--Somerton's--store!"

Notices to the same effect had already been mailed to all possible readers in the county. The self-appointed librarian had not believed that more than one in four of the inhabitants of the town or county would care to read, but neither had she taken thought of the consuming curiosity of villagers and country-folk. Within an hour the back room of the store was packed to suffocation, although Grace pressed a book on each visitor, with a request to make way for some one else.

After several hours of issuing and recording, Grace found herself alone; so she gladly escaped to the store proper to compare notes with Philip and Caleb, who had taken turns at dropping in to "see the fun," as Philip called it, and to announce, at the librarian's request, that only a single book a week would be loaned to a family, and to request the borrowers to return the books as soon as read.

On entering the store, Grace found herself face to face with Doctor and Mrs. Taggess and Pastor Grateway, all of whom greeted her cordially, and congratulated her on the successful opening of the Somerton Library.

"That's a cruel proof of the saying that one sows and another reaps," she replied; "but please understand in future that this is not the Somerton Library. It is the Caleb Wright Library."

"Je--ru--salem!" exclaimed Caleb, "an' I didn't put a cent into it!"

"You devised it," Grace replied. "'Twas like Columbus making the egg stand on end; any one could do it after being told how."

About this time some responses, in the forms of half-grown boys and girls on foot, began to arrive from the farming district, and Grace had occasionally to leave the store. As she returned from one of these excursions, Mrs. Taggess took her hands and exclaimed:--

"What a good time you must have had!"

"Oh, wife!" protested the Doctor. "Is this the place for sarcasm? The poor girl looks tired to death."

"Nevertheless, Mrs. Taggess is entirely right," said Grace. "It was a good time, indeed. How I wish I could sketch from memory! Still, I shall never forget the expression of some of those faces. What a dear lot of people there are in this town!"

"Hurrah!" shouted the Doctor. "I was afraid that, coming from the city, you mightn't be able to find it out. I apologize with all my heart."

"'Tis high time you did," said his wife. "The idea that a doctor, of all men, shouldn't know that a woman's heart rules her eyes."

"Yes," said the Doctor, affecting a sigh. "It's dreadful to be a man, and know so much that sometimes an important bit of knowledge gets hidden behind something else at the very time it's most needed. How many books have you remaining, to satisfy the country demand, Mrs. Somerton?"

"Not enough, I fear. We ought to have bought one or two hundred more volumes."

"Which means," said Philip, with a pretence at being grieved at having been forgotten during the congratulations, "that they will have to be purchased at once, and paid for, by the mere nobody of the concern."

"Nobody, indeed!" exclaimed Grace, with a look which caused the Taggesses to exchange delighted pinches, and the minister to say:--

"I don't think any one need go far to find a proof of the blessed mystery that one and one need make only one, if rightly added."

"No, indeed," said the Doctor, "but at least one-half of the one in question is so tired that it ought to get some rest, which it won't and can't while we visitors stay here to admire and ask questions. Come along, wife; we'll find some better time to talk her and these other good people to death about what they've done. I've only to say that if Brother Grateway doesn't give you his benediction in words, he will leave one for you all the same, and there'll be two others to keep it company--eh, wife?"

"Phil," Grace said, as soon as the visitors had departed, "I've a new idea. 'Tis not as good as Caleb's which has made this library, but 'twill give no end of surprise and satisfaction to people, as well as lots of fun to me and bring some business to the store. I want a camera. I don't see how we were so stupid as not to bring one with us from New York."

"A camera?" said Caleb. "What sort of a thing is it?"

"A contrivance for taking photographs. There are small cheap ones that any amateur can use. Two or three girls in our store in New York had them, and took some very fair pictures."

"I want to know! Well, if any gals done it, I reckon you can."

"You shall see. I want one at once, Phil; order it by the first mail, please, and with all the necessary outfit."

"Your will is law, my dear, but I shall first have to learn where to send the order and exactly what to get."

"Let me attend to it. I can order direct from the store in which I worked; they sold everything of the kind."

"There'll be no mail eastward till to-morrow. Won't you oblige your husband, at once, by going to the house, and making a picture of yourself, on a lounge, with your eyes shut?"

"Yes--if I must. But oh, what lots of fun I shall have with that camera!"

Caleb's eyes followed Grace to the door; then he said:--

"Been workin' about four hours, harder'n I ever see a Sunday-school librarian work, looked tired almost to death, an' yet full to the eyes with the fun she's goin' to have. Ah, that's what health can do for human nature. I wonder if you two ever know how to thank Heaven that you are as you are--both well-built an' healthy? 'Pears to me that if I was either of you, I'd be wicked enough, about a hundred times a day, to put up the Pharisee's prayer an' thank Heaven that I was not like other men."

"No man can be everything, Caleb," said Philip. "I don't doubt that there are thousands of men who'd gladly exchange their health for your abilities."

"Well, I s'pose it's human nature, an' p'r'aps divine purpose too, that folks should hanker most for what they haven't got; if it wa'n't so, ev'rybody'd be a stick-in-the-mud all his life, an' nobody'd amount to much; but I do tell you that for a man to spend most of his grown-up years in makin' of himself as useful a machine as he can, an' not especially with a view to Number One either, an' all the time bein' reminded that he hain't got enough steam in his b'iler to work the machine except by fits an' starts, an' there don't seem to be any way of gettin' up more steam except by gettin' a new b'iler, which ain't possible in the circumstances, why, it's powerful tough, an' that's a fact."

"We can't all run thousand-horse-power engines, Caleb," said Philip, hoping to console his friend. "If we could, I'm afraid a great lot of the world's necessary work would go undone. Watches, worked with what might be called half-mouse-power, are quite as necessary and useful in their way as big clocks run by ton weights; and a sewing machine, worked by a woman's foot, can earn quite as much, over running expenses, as a plough with a big horse in front and a big man behind it."

"Like enough. But the trouble with me is that the machine I've been makin' o' myself is the kind that needs an awful lot o' power, an' the power ain't there an' can't be put there."

"There are plenty more machines with exactly the same defect, old chap," said Philip, with a sigh, "so you've no end of company in your trouble. I could tell you of a machine of my own that lacks the proper power--sufficient steam, as you've expressed it."

"I want to know! An' you the pictur' of health!"

"Oh, yes. Health is invaluable, so far as it goes, but 'tisn't everything. Going back to steam for the sake of illustration, you know it comes of several other things--water, a boiler, some fuel, and draught, each in proper proportion to all the others. I don't doubt there's a similar combination necessary to human force, and its application, and that I haven't the secret of it, for I know I've failed at work I've most wanted to do, and succeeded best at what I liked least."

"Reckon you must have hated storekeepin' then, for you've made a powerful go of it."

"Thank you; I'm not ashamed to confess to you that 'tis the last business in the world that I'd have selected."

"Well, as to that, there's no difference of opinion between us, an' yet, here I've been storekeepin'--an' not for myself either--'most twenty year."

"And doing it remarkably well, too. As to not doing it for yourself, you may change your position and have an interest in the business whenever you wish it. I'm astonished that my uncle didn't say the same to you."

"But he did--after his fashion. He meant fair, but I said 'No,' for I hadn't given up hopes of what I'd wanted to do, so I didn't want to give the store all my waking hours, as an owner ought to do most of the time."

"Indeed he ought. If it isn't an impertinent question, what had you selected as your life's work?"

"The last thing you'd suspect me of, I s'pose. Long ago--before the war--I set my heart on bein' a great preacher, an' on beginnin' by gettin' a first-class education. I don't need to tell you that I missed both of 'em about as far as a man could. I wasn't overconceited about 'em at the start, for about that time there was a powerful movement in our denomination for an educated ministry. We had a few giants in the pulpit, but for ev'ry one of 'em there was dozens of dwarfs that made laughin'-stocks of 'emselves an' the church. Well, I was picked out as a young man with enough head-piece to take in an education an' with the proper spirit an' feelin' to use it well after I'd got it. Just then the war broke out, an' I went to it; when I got back I had a crippled leg, an' a dull head, an' a heavy heart--afterwards I found 'twas the liver instead of the heart, but that didn't make me any the less stupid. The upshot was that I was kind o' dropped as a candidate for the ministry, an' that made me sicker yet, an' I vowed that I'd get there in the course o' time, if I could get back my health an' senses. Once in a while, for many years, I had hopes; then again I'd get a knock-down--an extry hard lot o' chills an' fevers, or some other turn of malary that made my mind as blank an' flat as a new slate. I tried to educate myself, bein' rather old to go to school or college, an' I plodded through lots o' books, but I had to earn my livin' besides, an'--well, I reckon you can see about how much time a man workin' in a store has for thinkin' about what he's read."

"Oh, can't I!"

"An' you know, now, what losin' health an' not findin' it again has been to me."

"Indeed I do, and you've my most hearty sympathy. Perhaps good health would have seen you through; perhaps not. Your experience is very like mine, in some respects. I didn't start with the purpose of being a preacher, but I was going to become educated so well that whenever I had a message of any sort to give to the world,--for every man occasionally has one, you know,--I should be able to do it in a manner that would command attention. I was fortunate enough to get into a business position in which my duties were almost mechanical, so at night my mind was fresh enough for reading and study. My wife's tastes were very like my own, so we read and studied together; but my message has never come, and here I am where the only writing I'll ever do will be in account books and business correspondence. As to my art studies--"

"They help you to arrange goods on the shelves in a way that attracts attention; there can't be any doubt about that," Caleb interrupted.

"Thank you, Caleb. That is absolutely the first and only commendation that my art education has ever earned for me, and I assure you that I shall remember and prize it forever."

"I'm not an art-sharp," said Caleb, "but I shouldn't wonder if I could show you lots more signs of what you've learned an' think haven't come to anythin'. Same way with literature; nobody in this town, but you an' your wife, could an' would have got up that circulatin' library, an' knowed the names o' three hundred good books for it. Other towns'll hear of it, an' men there'll take up the idea--"

"Which was yours--not ours."

"Never mind; ideas don't come to anythin' till they're froze into facts. Other merchants'll hear of the library an' write you for names o' books an' other p'ints, an' the thing'll go on an' on till it'll amount to more than most any book that was ever writ. Bein' set on makin' a hit in literature an' art an' fetchin' up at dressin' store-shelves an' settin' up a circulatin' library reminds me of Jake Brockleband's steam engine. You hain't met Jake, I reckon?"

"I don't recall the name."

"He's in the next county below us, near the mouth of the crick. He goes in these parts by the name of the Great American Traveller, for he's seen more countries than anybody else about here, an' it all came through a steam engine. It 'pears that years ago Jake, who was a Yankee with a knack at anythin' that was mechanical, was picked out by some New Yorkers to go down to Brazil to preserve pineapples on a large scale for the American market: he was to have a big salary and some shares of the company's stock. Part of his outfit was a little steam engine an' b'iler an' two copper kettles as big as the lard kettles in your pork-house. Well, he got to work, with the idee o' makin' his fortune in a year or two, an' pretty soon he started a schooner load o' canned pineapples up North; but most o' the cans got so het up on the way that they busted, an' when the company found how bizness was, why, 'twas the comp'ny's turn to get het up an' bust. Jake couldn't get his salary, so he 'tached the engine an' kettles, an' looked about for somethin' to do with 'em. He shipped 'em up to a city in Venezuela, where there was plenty of cocoanut oil and potash to be had cheap, and started out big at soap-makin', but pretty soon he found that the Venezuelans wouldn't buy soap at any price: they hadn't been educated up to the use of such stuff. But there wa'n't no give-up blood in Jake, so he packed the engine an' soap over to a big town in Colombia--next country to Venezuela,--an' started a swell laundry, I b'lieve he called it,--a place where they wash clothes at wholesale. He 'lowed that as Colombia was a very hot country, an' the people was said to be of old Spanish stock an' quite up to date, there'd be a powerful lot o' stockin's an' underclothes to be washed. Soon after he'd hung out his shingle, though, he heerd that no Colombians wore underclothes, an' mighty few of 'em wore socks.

"Well, 'Never say die' was Jake's family brand, so he built a boat with paddle-wheels an' fitted the steam engine to it, an' started in the passenger steamboat business on a Colombian river; the big copper kettles he fixed, one on each side, with awnin's over 'em, to carry passengers' young ones, so they couldn't crawl about an' tumble overboard. He did a good business for a spell, but all of a sudden the revolution season come on an' a gang of the rebels seized his boat, an' the gov'ment troops fired on 'em an' sunk it.

"But Jake managed to save the engine an' kettles, an' thinkin' 'twas about time to go north for a change, he got his stuff up to New Orleans, where he got another little boat built to fit the engine, an' started up-stream in the tradin'-boat business. He got along an' along, an' then up the Missouri River; but when he got up near the mouth of our crick he ran on a snag, close inshore, that ripped the bottom an' sides off o' the boat an' didn't leave nothin' that could float.

"That might have been a deadener, if Jake had been of the dyin' kind, but he wasn't; an' as he was wrecked alongside of a town an' a saw-mill, he kept his eye peeled for business, an' pretty soon he'd put up a slab shanty, an' got a little circular saw, for his engine to work, an' turned out the first sawed shingles ever seen in these parts, an' when folks saw that they didn't curl up like cut shingles, he got lots o' business an' is keepin' it right along.

"''Tain't makin' me a millionnaire,' he says, 'an' the sight o' pineapples would make me tired, but at last I've struck a job that me an' the engine fits to a T, an' an angel couldn't ask more'n that, if he was in my shoes.'"

"That story, Caleb," said Philip, "is quite appropriate to my case. But see here, old chap, didn't it ever occur to you to apply it to yourself?"

"Can't say that it did," Caleb replied. "What put that notion into your head?"

"Everybody and everything, my own eyes included. You started to be a preacher--not merely for the sake of talking, but for the good that your talk would do. I hear from every one that for many years you've been everybody's friend, doing all sorts of kind, unselfish acts for the good of other people. Mr. Grateway says that your work does more good than his preaching, and Doctor Taggess says you cure as many sick people as he. It seems to me that your disappointments, like Jake Brockleband's, have resulted in your finding a place that fits you to a T."

"I want to know! Well, I'm glad to hear it--from you. Kind o' seems, then, as if you an' me was in the same boat, don't it?"

XIII--FARMERS' WAYS

AS the spring days lengthened there was forced upon Grace a suspicion, which soon ripened into a conviction, that the West was very hot. She had known hot days in the East; for is there in the desert of Sahara any air hotter than that which overlies the treeless, paved streets, walled in by high structures of brick, stone, and iron, of the city of New York? But in New York the wind, on no matter how hot a day, is cool and refreshing; at Claybanks and vicinity the wind was sometimes like the back-draught of a furnace, and almost as wilting. To keep the wind out of the house--not to give it every opportunity to enter, as had been the summer custom in the East--became Grace's earnest endeavor, but with little success. At times it seemed to her that the heat was destroying her vitality; her husband, too, feared for her health and insisted that she should go East to spend the summer; but Grace insisted that she would rather shrivel and melt than go away from her husband, so Philip appealed to Doctor Taggess, who said:--

"Quite womanly, and wifely, and also sensible, physiologically, for no one can become climate-proof out here if he dodges any single season. If your wife will follow my directions for a few months, she will be able to endure next season's heat well enough to laugh at it. Indeed, it might help her through the coming summer to make excuses to laugh at it: she's lucky enough to know how to laugh at slight provocation."

But the dust! Grace could remember days when New York was dusty, and any one who has encountered a cloud of city dust knows that it is of a quality compared with which the dust of country roads is the sublimation of purity. Nevertheless, the dust at Claybanks had some eccentric methods of motion. For it to rise in a heavy, sullen cloud whenever a wagon passed through a street was bad enough, especially if the wind were in the direction of the house. Almost daily, however, and many times a day, it was picked up by little whirlwinds that came from no one knew where, and an inverted cone of dust, less than a foot in diameter at the base, but rapidly increasing in width to the height of fifty or more feet, would dash rapidly along a street, or across one, picking up all sorts of small objects in its way--leaves, bits of paper, sometimes even bark and chips. At first Grace thought these whirlwinds quite picturesque, but when one of them dashed across her garden, and broke against the side of the house, and deposited much of itself through the open windows, the lover of the picturesque suddenly began to extemporize window-nettings.

With the heat and the dust came a plague of insects and one of reptiles. One day the white sugar on the table seemed strangely iridescent with amber, which on investigation resolved itself into myriads of tiny reddish yellow ants. Caleb, who was appealed to, placed a cup of water under each table leg, which abated the plague, but the cups did not "compose" with the table and the rug. Bugs of many kinds visited the house, by way of the windows and doors, until excluded by screens. At times the garden seemed fuller of toads than of plants, and not long afterward Grace was frightened almost daily by snakes. That the reptiles scurried away rapidly, apparently as frightened as she, did not lessen her fear of them. She expressed her feelings to Doctor Taggess, who said:--

"Don't let them worry you. They're really wonderfully retiring by disposition. This country is alive with them, but in my thirty years of experience I've never been called to a case of snake-bite."

"But, Doctor, isn't there any means of avoiding the torment of--snakes, toads, bugs, and ants?"

"Only one, that I know of--'tis philosophy. Try to think of them as illustrations of the marvellous fecundity of the great and glorious West."

"How consoling!"

"I don't wonder you're sarcastic about it. Still, they'll disappear in the course of time, as they have from the older states."

"But when?"

"Oh, when the country becomes thoroughly subdued and tilled."

"Again I must say, 'How consoling!'"

Besides the wind, and dust, and insects, and reptiles, there was the sun, for Jethro Somerton had never planted a tree near his house. Tree-roots had a way of weakening foundations, he said; besides, trees would grow tall in the course of time, and perhaps attract the lightning. Still more, trees shaded roofs, so the spring and autumn rains remained in the shingles to cause dampness and decay, instead of drying out quickly.

But her own house seemed cool by comparison with some which she entered in the village and in the farming districts: houses such as most new settlers in the West have put up with their own hands and as quickly as possible; houses innocent of lath and plaster, and with only inch-thick wooden walls, upon which the sun beat so fiercely that by midday the inner surface of the wall almost blistered the hand that touched it. Not to have been obliged to enter such houses would have spared Grace much discomfort, but it was the hospitable custom of the country to hail passers-by, in the season of open doors and windows, and Grace, besides being bound by the penalties peculiar to general favorites everywhere, was alive to the fear of being thought "stuck up" by any one.

Quickly she uprooted many delicate, graceful vines which she had planted to train against the sides of her own house, and replaced them with seeds of more rampant varieties. For days she made a single room of the house fairly endurable by keeping in it a large block of ice, brought from the ice-house by Philip in mid-morning; but the season's stock of the ice-house had not been estimated with a view to such drafts, so for the sake of the "truck" in cold storage she felt obliged to discontinue the practice. Wet linen sheets hung near the windows and open doors afforded some relief; but when other sufferers heard of them and learned their cost, and ejaculated "Goodness me!" or something of similar meaning, Grace was compelled to feel aristocratic and uncomfortable. She expressed to Caleb and to Doctor Taggess her pity for sufferers by the heat, and asked whether nothing could be done in alleviation.

"My dear woman, they don't suffer as much as you imagine," the Doctor replied. "In the first place, they are accustomed to the climate, as you are not; most of them were born in it. Another cooling fact is that neither men nor women wear as much clothing in hot weather as you Eastern people. They, or most of them, are always hard at work, and therefore always perspiring, which is nature's method of keeping people fairly comfortable in hot weather. I don't doubt that I suffer far more as I drive about the county, doing no harder work than holding the reins, than any farmer whom I see ploughing in the fields."

"I'm very glad to hear it, for their sakes, though not for your own. But how about the sick, and the poor little babies?"

"Ah, this is a sad country for sick folks, and for weaklings of any kind. Stifle in winter--roast in summer; that is about the usual way. Imagine, if you can, how an honest physician feels when he's called to cases of sickness in some houses that you've seen."

"Caleb," Grace said, "was it as hot in the South, during the war, as it is out here?"

"No," said Caleb, promptly, "though the Eastern men complained a great deal."

"What did the soldiers do when they became sick in hot weather?"

"They died, generally, unless they was shipped up North, or to some of the big camps of hospitals, where they could get special attention."

"But until then were there no ways of shielding them from the heat of the sun?"

"Oh, yes. If the camp hospital was a tent, it had a fly--an extra thickness of canvas, stretched across it to shade the roof an' sides. Then, if any woods was near by, and usually there was,--there's more woodland in old Virginia than in this new state,--some forked sticks an' poles an' leafy tree-boughs would be fetched in, an' fixed so that the ground for eight or ten feet around would be shady."

"Do you remember just how it was done?"

"Do I? Well, I reckon I was on details at that sort o' work about as often as anybody."

"Won't you do me a great favor? Hire a man and wagon to-morrow--or to-day, if there's time--and go to some of our woodland near town, and get some of the material, and put up such a shade on the south and west sides of our house; that is, if you don't object."

"Object? 'Twould be great fun; make me feel like a boy again, I reckon. But I ought to remind you that the thing won't look a bit pretty, two or three days later, when the leaves begin to fade. Dead leaves an' a white house don't 'compose,' as I heard you say one day to a woman about two calicoes that was contrary to each other. Besides, 'tain't necessary, for double-width sheetin', or two widths of it side by side, an' right out of the store here, would make a better awnin', to say nothin' o' the looks, an' you can afford it easy enough."

"Perhaps, but there are other people who can't, and I want to show off a tree-bough awning to some who need contrivances like it."

"I--see," said Caleb, departing abruptly, while Doctor Taggess exclaimed:--

"And here I've been practising in some of those bake-ovens of houses for thirty years, and never thought of that very simple means of relief! Good day, Mrs. Somerton; I'll go home and tell my wife what I've heard, then I think I'll read some of the penitential Psalms and some choice bits of Proverbs on the mental peculiarities of fools."

The arbor was completed by dark, and on the next day, and for a fortnight afterward, almost every woman who entered the store was invited to step into the garden and see how well, and yet cheaply, the house was shaded from the sun. All were delighted, though some warned the owner that the shade would kill her vines, whereupon Doctor Taggess, who spent parts of several hours in studying the structure, suggested that if the probable copyists were to set their posts and frameworks securely, they might serve as support for quick-growing hardy vines that might be "set" in the spring of the following year, and clamber all over the skeleton roof before the hottest days came. Thereupon Grace volunteered to write a lot of nursery men to learn what vines, annual or perennial, grew most rapidly and cost least, and to leave the replies in the store for general inspection.

"Doctor," Grace asked during one of the physician's visits of inspection, "where did the settlers of this country come from, that they never think of certain of their own necessities? Don't scold me, please; I'm not going to abuse your darling West; besides, 'tis my West as well as yours, for every interest I have is here. But Eastern farmers and villagers plant shade trees and vines near their houses, unless they can afford to build piazzas,--and perhaps in addition to piazzas. They shade their village streets, too, and many of their highways. Aren't such things the custom in other parts of the United States?"

"They certainly are in my native state, which is Pennsylvania," the Doctor replied, "and some of the handsomest villages and farm-houses I've seen are in Ohio and Kentucky. But I imagine the work was done by the second or third or fourth generation; I don't believe the original settlers could find the time and strength for such effort. As to our people, they came from a dozen or more states--East, West, and Middle, with a few from the South. I honestly believe they're quite as good as the average of settlers of any state, but I shouldn't wonder if you've failed to comprehend at short acquaintance the settler or the farmer class in general. In a new country one usually finds only people who've been elbowed out of older ones, either by misfortune or bad management, or through families having become too large to get a living out of their old homesteads, and with no land near by that was within reach of their pockets. There are as many causes in farming as in any other business for men trying to make a start somewhere else, but a starter in the farming line is always very poor. Almost any family you might name in this county brought itself and all its goods and implements in a single two-horse wagon. Your things, Caleb told me, filled the greater part of a railway car. Quite a difference, eh?"

"Yet most of the things were ours, when we thought ourselves very poor."

"Just so. So you can't imagine the poverty of these people. They lived in their wagons until they had some sort of roof over their heads; a man who could spend a hundred dollars for lumber and nails and window-sash passed for one of the well-to-do class. Some of them had no money whatever; their nearest neighbors would help them put up a log house, but afterward they had to work pretty hard to keep the wolf from the door until they could grow something to eat and to sell. They had hard times, of so many varieties, that now when they are sure of three meals a day, some cows, pigs, and chickens, credit at a store, and a crop in the ground, they think themselves well off, no matter how many discomforts they may have to endure."

"But, Doctor, they're human; they have hearts and feelings."

"Yes, but they have more endurance than anything else. It has become second nature to them; so some of them would long endure a pain or discomfort rather than relieve it. Doubt it, if you like, but I am speaking from a great mass of experience. I've heard much of the endurance of the North American Indian, but the Indian is a baby to these farmer-settlers. Endurance is in their every muscle, bone, and nerve, and they pass it down to their children. Eastern babies would scream unceasingly at maladies that some of our youngsters bear without a whimper. Many of the Presidents of the United States were born of just such stock; of course they were examples of the survival of the fittest, for any who are weak in such a country must go to the wall in a hurry, if they chance to escape the grave--and the graveyards are appallingly full."

"And 'tis the women and children that fill them!" Grace said.

"Yes," assented the Doctor. "If I could have my way, no women and children would be allowed in a new section until the men had made decent, comfortable homes, with crops ready for harvest, all of which shows what an impracticable old fool a man of experience may become."

"But a little work, by the men of some of these places, would make the women and children so much more comfortable!"

"Yes, but the women and children don't think to ask it, and the men don't notice the deficiency."

"But why shouldn't they? Many men elsewhere are perpetually contriving to make their families more comfortable."

"Yes, but seldom unless the necessity of doing so is forced to their attention in some way. Besides, to do so, they must have the contriving, inventive faculty, which is one of the scarcest in human nature!"

"Oh, Doctor! I've often heard that we Americans are the most inventive people in the world."