Chapter V (2)

This exploit was his last. Red Dog and Sandy Bar made common cause against the highwayman. Tennessee was hunted in very much the same fashion as his prototype, the grizzly. As the toils closed around him, he made a desperate dash through the Bar, emptying his revolver at the crowd before the Arcade Saloon, and so on up Grizzly Cañon; but at its farther extremity he was stopped by a small man on a gray horse. The men looked at each other a moment in silence. Both were fearless, both self-possessed and independent, and both types of a civilization that in the seventeenth century would have been called heroic, but in the nineteenth simply "reckless."

"What have you got there?--I call," said Tennessee quietly.

"Two bowers and an ace," said the stranger as quietly, showing two revolvers and a bowie-knife.

"That takes me," returned Tennessee; and, with this gambler's epigram, he threw away his useless pistol and rode back with his captor.

It was a warm night. The cool breeze which usually sprang up with the going down of the sun behind the chaparral-crested mountain was that evening withheld from Sandy Bar. The little cañon was stifling with heated resinous odors, and the decaying driftwood on the Bar sent forth faint sickening exhalations. The feverishness of day and its fierce passions still filled the camp. Lights moved restlessly along the bank of the river, striking no answering reflection from its tawny current. Against the blackness of the pines the windows of the old loft above the express-office stood out staringly bright; and through their curtainless panes the loungers below could see the forms of those who were even then deciding the fate of Tennessee. And above all this, etched on the dark firmament, rose the Sierra, remote and passionless, crowned with remoter passionless stars.

The trial of Tennessee was conducted as fairly as was consistent with a judge and jury who felt themselves to some extent obliged to justify, in their verdict, the previous irregularities of arrest and indictment. The law of Sandy Bar was implacable, but not vengeful. The excitement and personal feeling of the chase were over; with Tennessee safe in their hands, they were ready to listen patiently to any defense, which they were already satisfied was insufficient. There being no doubt in their own minds, they were willing to give the prisoner the benefit of any that might exist. Secure in the hypothesis that he ought to be hanged on general principles, they indulged him with more latitude of defense than his reckless hardihood seemed to ask. The Judge appeared to be more anxious than the prisoner, who, otherwise unconcerned, evidently took a grim pleasure in the responsibility he had created. "I don't take any hand in this yer game," had been his invariable but good-humored reply to all questions. The Judge--who was also his captor--for a moment vaguely regretted that he had not shot him "on sight" that morning, but presently dismissed this human weakness as unworthy of the judicial mind. Nevertheless, when there was a tap at the door, and it was said that Tennessee's Partner was there on behalf of the prisoner, he was admitted at once without question. Perhaps the younger members of the jury, to whom the proceedings were becoming irksomely thoughtful, hailed him as a relief. For he was not, certainly, an imposing figure. Short and stout, with a square face, sunburned into a preternatural redness, clad in a loose duck "jumper" and trousers streaked and splashed with red soil, his aspect under any circumstances would have been quaint, and was now even ridiculous. As he stooped to deposit at his feet a heavy carpetbag he was carrying, it became obvious, from partially developed legends and inscriptions, that the material with which his trousers had been patched had been originally intended for a less ambitious covering. Yet he advanced with great gravity, and after shaking the hand of each person in the room with labored cordiality, he wiped his serious perplexed face on a red bandana handkerchief, a shade lighter than his complexion, laid his powerful hand upon the table to steady himself, and thus addressed the Judge:--

"I was passin' by," he began, by way of apology, "and I thought I'd just step in and see how things was gittin' on with Tennessee thar,--my pardner. It's a hot night. I disremember any sich weather before on the Bar."

He paused a moment, but nobody volunteering any other meteorological recollection, he again had recourse to his pocket-handkerchief, and for some moments mopped his face diligently.

"Have you anything to say on behalf of the prisoner?" said the Judge finally.

"Thet's it," said Tennessee's Partner, in a tone of relief. "I come yar as Tennessee's pardner,--knowing him nigh on four year, off and on, wet and dry, in luck and, out o' luck. His ways ain't aller my ways, but thar ain't any p'ints in that young man, thar ain't any liveliness as he's been up to, as I don't know. And you sez to me, sez you,--confidential-like, and between man and man,--sez you, 'Do you know anything in his behalf?' and I sez to you, sez I,--confidential-like, as between man and man,--'What should a man know of his pardner?'"

"Is this all you have to say?" asked the Judge impatiently, feeling, perhaps, that a dangerous sympathy of humor was beginning to humanize the court.

"Thet's so," continued Tennessee's Partner. "It ain't for me to say anything agin' him. And now, what's the case? Here's Tennessee wants money, wants it bad, and doesn't like to ask it of his old pardner. Well, what does Tennessee do? He lays for a stranger, and he fetches that stranger; and you lays for _him_, and you fetches _him_; and the honors is easy. And I put it to you, bein' a fa'r-minded man, and to you, gentlemen all, as fa'r-minded men, ef this isn't so."

"Prisoner," said the Judge, interrupting, "have you any questions to ask this man?"

"No! no!" continued Tennessee's Partner hastily. "I play this yer hand alone. To come down to the bed-rock, it's just this: Tennessee, thar, has played it pretty rough and expensive-like on a stranger, and on this yer camp. And now, what's the fair thing? Some would say more, some would say less. Here's seventeen hundred dollars in coarse gold and a watch,--it's about all my pile,--and call it square!" And before a hand could be raised to prevent him, he had emptied the contents of the carpetbag upon the table.

For a moment his life was in jeopardy. One or two men sprang to their feet, several hands groped for hidden weapons, and a suggestion to "throw him from the window" was only overridden by a gesture from the Judge. Tennessee laughed. And apparently oblivious of the excitement, Tennessee's Partner improved the opportunity to mop his face again with his handkerchief.

When order was restored, and the man was made to understand, by the use of forcible figures and rhetoric, that Tennessee's offense could not be condoned by money, his face took a more serious and sanguinary hue, and those who were nearest to him noticed that his rough hand trembled slightly on the table. He hesitated a moment as he slowly returned the gold to the carpetbag, as if he had not yet entirely caught the elevated sense of justice which swayed the tribunal, and was perplexed with the belief that he had not offered enough. Then he turned to the Judge, and saying, "This yer is a lone hand, played alone, and without my pardner," he bowed to the jury and was about to withdraw, when the Judge called him back:--

"If you have anything to say to Tennessee, you had better say it now."

For the first time that evening the eyes of the prisoner and his strange advocate met. Tennessee smiled, showed his white teeth, and saying, "Euchred, old man!" held out his hand. Tennessee's Partner took it in his own, and saying, "I just dropped in as I was passin' to see how things was gettin' on," let the hand passively fall, and adding that "it was a warm night," again mopped his face with his handkerchief, and without another word withdrew.

The two men never again met each other alive. For the unparalleled insult of a bribe offered to Judge Lynch--who, whether bigoted, weak, or narrow, was at least incorruptible--firmly fixed in the mind of that mythical personage any wavering determination of Tennessee's fate; and at the break of day he was marched, closely guarded, to meet it at the top of Marley's Hill.

How he met it, how cool he was, how he refused to say anything, how perfect were the arrangements of the committee, were all duly reported, with the addition of a warning moral and example to all future evil-doers, in the "Red Dog Clarion," by its editor, who was present, and to whose vigorous English I cheerfully refer the reader. But the beauty of that midsummer morning, the blessed amity of earth and air and sky, the awakened life of the free woods and hills, the joyous renewal and promise of Nature, and above all, the infinite serenity that thrilled through each, was not reported, as not being a part of the social lesson. And yet, when the weak and foolish deed was done, and a life, with its possibilities and responsibilities, had passed out of the misshapen thing that dangled between earth and sky, the birds sang, the flowers bloomed, the sun shone, as cheerily as before; and possibly the "Red Dog Clarion" was right.

Tennessee's Partner was not in the group that surrounded the ominous tree. But as they turned to disperse, attention was drawn to the singular appearance of a motionless donkey-cart halted at the side of the road. As they approached, they at once recognized the venerable "Jenny" and the two-wheeled cart as the property of Tennessee's Partner, used by him in carrying dirt from his claim; and a few paces distant the owner of the equipage himself, sitting under a buckeye-tree, wiping the perspiration from his glowing face. In answer to an inquiry, he said he had come for the body of the "diseased," "if it was all the same to the committee." He didn't wish to "hurry anything"; he could "wait." He was not working that day; and when the gentlemen were done with the "diseased," he would take him. "Ef thar is any present," he added, in his simple, serious way, "as would care to jine in the fun'l, they kin come." Perhaps it was from a sense of humor, which I have already intimated was a feature of Sandy Bar,--perhaps it was from something even better than that, but two thirds of the loungers accepted the invitation at once.

It was noon when the body of Tennessee was delivered into the hands of his partner. As the cart drew up to the fatal tree, we noticed that it contained a rough oblong box,--apparently made from a section of sluicing,--and half filled with bark and the tassels of pine. The cart was further decorated with slips of willow and made fragrant with buckeye-blossoms. When the body was deposited in the box, Tennessee's Partner's drew over it a piece of tarred canvas, and gravely mounting the narrow seat in front, with his feet upon the shafts, urged the little donkey forward. The equipage moved slowly on, at that decorous pace which was habitual with Jenny even under less solemn circumstances. The men--half curiously, half jestingly, but all good-humoredly--strolled along beside the cart, some in advance, some a little in the rear of the homely catafalque. But whether from the narrowing of the road or some present sense of decorum, as the cart passed on, the company fell to the rear in couples, keeping step, and otherwise assuming the external show of a formal procession. Jack Folinsbee, who had at the outset played a funeral march in dumb show upon an imaginary trombone, desisted from a lack of sympathy and appreciation,--not having, perhaps, your true humorist's capacity to be content with the enjoyment of his own fun.

The way led through Grizzly Cañon, by this time clothed in funereal drapery and shadows. The redwoods, burying their moccasined feet in the red soil, stood in Indian file along the track, trailing an uncouth benediction from their bending boughs upon the passing bier. A hare, surprised into helpless inactivity, sat upright and pulsating in the ferns by the roadside as the cortège went by. Squirrels hastened to gain a secure outlook from higher boughs; and the blue-jays, spreading their wings, fluttered before them like outriders, until the outskirts of Sandy Bar were reached, and the solitary cabin of Tennessee's Partner.

Viewed under more favorable circumstances, it would not have been a cheerful place. The unpicturesque site, the rude and unlovely outlines, the unsavory details, which distinguish the nest-building of the California miner, were all here with the dreariness of decay superadded. A few paces from the cabin there was a rough inclosure, which, in the brief days of Tennessee's Partner's matrimonial felicity, had been used as a garden, but was now overgrown with fern. As we approached it, we were surprised to find that what we had taken for a recent attempt at cultivation was the broken soil about an open grave.

The cart was halted before the inclosure, and rejecting the offers of assistance with the same air of simple self-reliance he had displayed throughout, Tennessee's Partner lifted the rough coffin on his back, and deposited it unaided within the shallow grave. He then nailed down the board which served as a lid, and mounting the little mound of earth beside it, took off his hat and slowly mopped his face with his handkerchief. This the crowd felt was a preliminary to speech, and they disposed themselves variously on stumps and boulders, and sat expectant.

"When a man," began Tennessee's Partner slowly, "has been running free all day, what's the natural thing for him to do? Why, to come home. And if he ain't in a condition to go home, what can his best friend do? Why, bring him home. And here's Tennessee has been running free, and we brings him home from his wandering." He paused and picked up a fragment of quartz, rubbed it thoughtfully on his sleeve, and went on: "It ain't the first time that I've packed him on my back, as you see'd me now. It ain't the first time that I brought him to this yer cabin when he couldn't help himself; it ain't the first time that I and Jinny have waited for him on yon hill, and picked him up and so fetched him home, when he couldn't speak and didn't know me. And now that it's the last time, why"--he paused and rubbed the quartz gently on his sleeve--"you see it's sort of rough on his pardner. And now, gentlemen," he added abruptly, picking up his long-handled shovel, "the fun'l's over; and my thanks, and Tennessee's thanks, to you for your trouble."

Resisting any proffers of assistance, he began to fill in the grave, turning his back upon the crowd, that after a few moments' hesitation gradually withdrew. As they crossed the little ridge that hid Sandy Bar from view, some, looking back, thought they could see Tennessee's Partner, his work done, sitting upon the grave, his shovel between his knees, and his face buried in his red bandana handkerchief. But it was argued by others that you couldn't tell his face from his handkerchief at that distance, and this point remained undecided.

In the reaction that followed the feverish excitement of that day, Tennessee's Partner was not forgotten. A secret investigation had cleared him of any complicity in Tennessee's guilt, and left only a suspicion of his general sanity. Sandy Bar made a point of calling on him, and proffering various uncouth but well-meant kindnesses. But from that day his rude health and great strength seemed visibly to decline; and when the rainy season fairly set in, and the tiny grass-blades were beginning to peep from the rocky mound above Tennessee's grave, he took to his bed.

One night, when the pines beside the cabin were swaying in the storm and trailing their slender fingers over the roof, and the roar and rush of the swollen river were heard below, Tennessee's Partner lifted his head from the pillow, saying, "It is time to go for Tennessee; I must put Jinny in the cart"; and would have risen from his bed but for the restraint of his attendant. Struggling, he still pursued his singular fancy: "There, now, steady, Jinny,--steady, old girl. How dark it is! Look out for the ruts,--and look out for him, too, old gal. Sometimes, you know, when he's blind drunk, he drops down right in the trail. Keep on straight up to the pine on the top of the hill. Thar! I told you so!--thar he is,--coming this way, too,--all by himself, sober, and his face a-shining. Tennessee! Pardner!"

And so they met.

NOTES

=Sandy Bar=:--The imaginary mining-camp in which Bret Harte laid the scenes of many of his stories.

=dungaree=:--A coarse kind of unbleached cotton cloth.

=I call=:--An expression used in the game of euchre.

=bowers=:--_Bower_ is from the German word _bauer_, meaning a peasant,--so called from the jack or knave; the right bower, in the game of euchre, is the jack of trumps, and the left bower is the other jack of the same color.

=chaparral=:--A thicket of scrub-oaks or thorny shrubs.

=euchred=:--Defeated, as in the game of euchre.

=Judge Lynch=:--A name used for the hurried judging and executing of a suspected person, by private citizens, without due process of law. A Virginian named Lynch is said to have been connected with the origin of the expression.

"=diseased=":--Tennessee's Partner means _deceased_.

=sluicing=:--A trough for water, fitted with gates and valves; it is used in washing out gold from the soil.

SUGGESTIONS FOR STUDY

Why is the first sentence a good introduction? Compare it with the first sentence of _Quite So_, page 21. In this selection, why does the author say so much about names? Of what value is the first paragraph? Why is it necessary to tell about Tennessee's Partner's earlier experiences? Who were "the boys" who gathered to see the shooting? Why did they think there would be shooting? Why was there not? Why does the author not give us a fuller picture of Tennessee? What is the proof that he had "a fine flow of humor"? Try in a few words to sum up his character. Read carefully the paragraph beginning "It was a warm night": How does the author give us a good picture of Sandy Bar? Tell in your own words the feelings of the judge, the prisoner, and the jury, as explained in the paragraph beginning "The trial of Tennessee." What does the author gain by such expressions as "a less ambitious covering," "meteorological recollection"? What does Tennessee's Partner mean when he says "What should a man know of his pardner"? Why did the judge think that humor would be dangerous? Why are the people angry when Tennessee's Partner offers his seventeen hundred dollars for Tennessee's release? Why does Tennessee's Partner take its rejection so calmly? What effect does his offer have on the jury? What does the author mean by "the weak and foolish deed"? Does he approve the hanging? Why does Tennessee's Partner not show any grief? What do you think of Jack Folinsbee? What is gained by the long passage of description? What does Tennessee's Partner's speech show about the friendship of the two men? About friendship in general? Do men often care so much for each other? Is it possible that Tennessee's Partner died of grief? Is the conclusion good? Comment on the kind of men who figure in the story. Are there any such men now? Why is this called a very good story?

Some time after you have read the story, run through it and see how many different sections or scenes there are in it. How are these sections linked together? Look carefully at the beginning of each paragraph and see how the connection is made with the paragraph before.

THEME SUBJECTS

Two Friends A Miner's Cabin The Thief The Road through the Woods The Trial A Scene in the Court Room Early Days in our County Bret Harte's Best Stories The Escaped Convict The Highwayman A Lumber Camp Roughing It The Judge The Robbers' Rendezvous An Odd Character Early Days in the West A Mining Town Underground with the Miners Capturing the Thieves The Sheriff

SUGGESTIONS FOR WRITING

=Two Friends=:--Tell where these two friends lived and how long they had known each other. Describe each one, explaining his peculiarities; perhaps you can make his character clear by telling some incident concerning him. What seemed to be the attraction between the two friends? Were they much together? What did people say of them? What did they do for each other? Did they talk to others about their friendship? Did either make a sacrifice for the other? If so, tell about it rather fully. Was there any talk about it? What was the result of the sacrifice? Was the friendship ever broken?

=Early Days in our County=:--Perhaps you can get material for this from some old settlers, or from a county history. Tell of the first settlement: Who was first on the ground, and why did he choose this particular region? What kind of shelter was erected? How fast did the settlement grow? Tell some incidents of the early days. You might speak also of the processes of clearing the land and of building; of primitive methods of living, and the difficulty of getting supplies. Were there any dangers? Speak of several prominent persons, and tell what they did. Go on and tell of development of the settlements and the surrounding country. Were there any strikingly good methods of making money? Was there any excitement over land, or gold, or high prices of products? Were there any misfortunes, such as floods, or droughts, or fires, or cyclones? When did the railroad reach the region? What differences did it make? What particular influences have brought about recent conditions?

=The Sheriff=:--Describe the sheriff--his physique, his features, his clothes, his manner. Does he look the part? Do you know, or can you imagine, one of his adventures? Perhaps you will wish to tell his story in his own words. Think carefully whether it would be better to do this, or to tell the story in the third person. Make the tale as lively and stirring as possible. Remember that when you are reporting the talk of the persons involved, it is better to quote their words directly. See that everything you say helps in making the situation clear or in actually telling the story. Close the story rather quickly after its outcome has been made quite clear.

COLLATERAL READINGS

How Santa Claus Came to Simpson's Bar Bret Harte The Outcasts of Poker Flat " " The Luck of Roaring Camp " " Baby Sylvester " " A Waif of the Plains " " How I Went to the Mines " " M'liss " " Frontier Stories " " Tales of the Argonauts " " A Sappho of Green Springs and Other Stories " " Pony Tracks Frederic Remington Crooked Trails " " Coeur d'Alène Mary Hallock Foote The Led-Horse Claim " " " Wolfville Days Alfred Henry Lewis Wolfville Nights " " " The Sunset Trail " " " Pathfinders of the West Agnes C. Laut The Old Santa Fé Trail H. Inman Stories of the Great West Theodore Roosevelt California and the Californians D.S. Jordan Our Italy C.D. Warner California Josiah Royce The West from a Car Window R.H. Davis The Story of the Railroad Cy Warman Roughing It S.L. Clemens Poems Joaquin Miller

Appropriate poems by Bret Harte:--

John Burns of Gettysburg In the Tunnel The Lost Galleon Grizzly Battle Bunny The Wind in the Chimney Reveille Plain Language from Truthful James (The Heathen Chinee)

Highways and Byways in the Rocky Mountains Clifton Johnson Trails of the Pathfinders G.B. Grinnell Stories of California E.M. Sexton Glimpses of California Helen Hunt Jackson California: Its History and Romance J.S. McGroarty Heroes of California G.W. James Recollections of an Old Pioneer P.H. Bennett The Mountains of California John Muir Romantic California E.C. Peixotto Silverado Squatters R.L. Stevenson Jimville: A Bret Harte Town (in _Atlantic Monthly_, November, 1902) Mary Austin The Prospector (poem) Robert W. Service The Rover " " " The Life of Bret Harte H.C. Merwin Bret Harte Henry W. Boynton Bret Harte T.E. Pemberton American Writers of To-day, pp. 212-229 H.C. Vedder Bookman, 15:312 (see also map on page 313).

For stories of famous friendships, look up:--

Damon and Pythias (any good encyclopedia). Patroclus and Achilles (the Iliad). David and Jonathan (the Bible: 1st Samuel 18:1-4; 19:1-7; chapter 20, entire; 23:16-18; chapter 31, entire; 2d Samuel, chapter 1, entire). The Substitute (Le Remplaçant) François Coppée (In _Modern Short-stories_ edited by M. Ashmun.)

THE COURSE OF AMERICAN HISTORY

WOODROW WILSON

(In _Mere Literature_)

Our national history has been written for the most part by New England men. All honor to them! Their scholarship and their characters alike have given them an honorable enrollment amongst the great names of our literary history; and no just man would say aught to detract, were it never so little, from their well-earned fame. They have written our history, nevertheless, from but a single point of view. From where they sit, the whole of the great development looks like an Expansion of New England. Other elements but play along the sides of the great process by which the Puritan has worked out the development of nation and polity. It is he who has gone out and possessed the land: the man of destiny, the type and impersonation of a chosen people. To the Southern writer, too, the story looks much the same, if it be but followed to its culmination,--to its final storm and stress and tragedy in the great war. It is the history of the Suppression of the South. Spite of all her splendid contributions to the steadfast accomplishment of the great task of building the nation; spite of the long leadership of her statesmen in the national counsels; spite of her joint achievements in the conquest and occupation of the West, the South was at last turned upon on every hand, rebuked, proscribed, defeated. The history of the United States, we have learned, was, from the settlement at Jamestown to the surrender at Appomattox, a long-drawn contest for mastery between New England and the South,--and the end of the contest we know. All along the parallels of latitude ran the rivalry, in those heroical days of toil and adventure during which population crossed the continent, like an army advancing its encampments, Up and down the great river of the continent, too, and beyond, up the slow incline of the vast steppes that lift themselves toward the crowning towers of the Rockies,--beyond that, again, in the gold-fields and upon the green plains of California, the race for ascendency struggled on,--till at length there was a final coming face to face, and the masterful folk who had come from the loins of New England won their consummate victory.

It is a very dramatic form for the story. One almost wishes it were true. How fine a unity it would give our epic! But perhaps, after all, the real truth is more interesting. The life of the nation cannot be reduced to these so simple terms. These two great forces, of the North and of the South, unquestionably existed,--were unquestionably projected in their operation out upon the great plane of the continent, there to combine or repel, as circumstances might determine. But the people that went out from the North were not an unmixed people; they came from the great Middle States as well as from New England. Their transplantation into the West was no more a reproduction of New England or New York or Pennsylvania or New Jersey than Massachusetts was a reproduction of old England, or New Netherland a reproduction of Holland. The Southern people, too, whom they met by the western rivers and upon the open prairies, were transformed, as they themselves were, by the rough fortunes of the frontier. A mixture of peoples, a modification of mind and habit, a new round of experiment and adjustment amidst the novel life of the baked and untilled plain, and the far valleys with the virgin forests still thick upon them: a new temper, a new spirit of adventure, a new impatience of restraint, a new license of life,--these are the characteristic notes and measures of the time when the nation spread itself at large upon the continent, and was transformed from a group of colonies into a family of States.

The passes of these eastern mountains were the arteries of the nation's life. The real breath of our growth and manhood came into our nostrils when first, like Governor Spotswood and that gallant company of Virginian gentlemen that rode with him in the far year 1716, the Knights of the Order of the Golden Horseshoe, our pioneers stood upon the ridges of the eastern hills and looked down upon those reaches of the continent where lay the untrodden paths of the westward migration. There, upon the courses of the distant rivers that gleamed before them in the sun, down the farther slopes of the hills beyond, out upon the broad fields that lay upon the fertile banks of the "Father of Waters," up the long tilt of the continent to the vast hills that looked out upon the Pacific--there were the regions in which, joining with people from every race and clime under the sun, they were to make the great compounded nation whose liberty and mighty works of peace were to cause all the world to stand at gaze. Thither were to come Frenchmen, Scandinavians, Celts, Dutch, Slavs,--men of the Latin races and of the races of the Orient, as well as men, a great host, of the first stock of the settlements: English, Scots, Scots-Irish,--like New England men, but touched with the salt of humor, hard, and yet neighborly too. For this great process of growth by grafting, of modification no less than of expansion, the colonies,--the original thirteen States,--were only preliminary studies and first experiments. But the experiments that most resembled the great methods by which we peopled the continent from side to side and knit a single polity across all its length and breadth, were surely the experiments made from the very first in the Middle States of our Atlantic seaboard.

Here from the first were mixture of population, variety of element, combination of type, as if of the nation itself in small. Here was never a simple body, a people of but a single blood and extraction, a polity and a practice brought straight from one motherland. The life of these States was from the beginning like the life of the country: they have always shown the national pattern. In New England and the South it was very different. There some of the great elements of the national life were long in preparation: but separately and with an individual distinction; without mixture,--for long almost without movement. That the elements thus separately prepared were of the greatest importance, and run everywhere like chief threads of the pattern through all our subsequent life, who can doubt? They give color and tone to every part of the figure. The very fact that they are so distinct and separately evident throughout, the very emphasis of individuality they carry with them, but proves their distinct origin. The other elements of our life, various though they be, and of the very fibre, giving toughness and consistency to the fabric, are merged in its texture, united, confused, almost indistinguishable, so thoroughly are they mixed, intertwined, interwoven, like the essential strands of the stuff itself: but these of the Puritan and the Southerner, though they run everywhere with the rest and seem upon a superficial view themselves the body of the cloth, in fact modify rather than make it.

What in fact has been the course of American history? How is it to be distinguished from European history? What features has it of its own, which give it its distinctive plan and movement? We have suffered, it is to be feared, a very serious limitation of view until recent years by having all our history written in the East. It has smacked strongly of a local flavor. It has concerned itself too exclusively with the origins and Old-World derivations of our story. Our historians have made their march from the sea with their heads over shoulder, their gaze always backward upon the landing-places and homes of the first settlers. In spite of the steady immigration, with its persistent tide of foreign blood, they have chosen to speak often and to think always of our people as sprung after all from a common stock, bearing a family likeness in every branch, and following all the while old, familiar, family ways. The view is the more misleading because it is so large a part of the truth without being all of it. The common British stock did first make the country, and has always set the pace. There were common institutions up and down the coast; and these had formed and hardened for a persistent growth before the great westward migration began which was to re-shape and modify every element of our life. The national government itself was set up and made strong by success while yet we lingered for the most part upon the eastern coast and feared a too distant frontier.

But, the beginnings once safely made, change set in apace. Not only so: there had been slow change from the first. We have no frontier now, we are told,--except a broken fragment, it may be, here and there in some barren corner of the western lands, where some inhospitable mountain still shoulders us out, or where men are still lacking to break the baked surface of the plains and occupy them in the very teeth of hostile nature. But at first it was all frontier,--a mere strip of settlements stretched precariously upon the sea-edge of the wilds: an untouched continent in front of them, and behind them an unfrequented sea that almost never showed so much as the momentary gleam of a sail. Every step in the slow process of settlement was but a step of the same kind as the first, an advance to a new frontier like the old. For long we lacked, it is true, that new breed of frontiersmen born in after years beyond the mountains. Those first frontiersmen had still a touch of the timidity of the Old World in their blood: they lacked the frontier heart. They were "Pilgrims" in very fact,--exiled, not at home. Fine courage they had: and a steadfastness in their bold design which it does a faint-hearted age good to look back upon. There was no thought of drawing back. Steadily, almost calmly, they extended their seats. They built homes, and deemed it certain their children would live there after them. But they did not love the rough, uneasy life for its own sake. How long did they keep, if they could, within sight of the sea! The wilderness was their refuge; but how long before it became their joy and hope! Here was their destiny cast; but their hearts lingered and held back. It was only as generations passed and the work widened about them that their thought also changed, and a new thrill sped along their blood. Their life had been new and strange from their first landing in the wilderness. Their houses, their food, their clothing, their neighborhood dealings were all such as only the frontier brings. Insensibly they were themselves changed. The strange life became familiar; their adjustment to it was at length unconscious and without effort; they had no plans which were not inseparably a part and a product of it. But, until they had turned their backs once for all upon the sea; until they saw their western borders cleared of the French; until the mountain passes had grown familiar, and the lands beyond the central and constant theme of their hope, the goal and dream of their young men, they did not become an American people.

When they did, the great determining movement of our history began. The very visages of the people changed. That alert movement of the eye, that openness to every thought of enterprise or adventure, that nomadic habit which knows no fixed home and has plans ready to be carried any whither,--all the marks of the authentic type of the "American" as we know him came into our life. The crack of the whip and the song of the teamster, the heaving chorus of boatmen poling their heavy rafts upon the rivers, the laughter of the camp, the sound of bodies of men in the still forests, became the characteristic notes in our air. A roughened race, embrowned in the sun, hardened in manner by a coarse life of change and danger, loving the rude woods and the crack of the rifle, living to begin something new every day, striking with the broad and open hand, delicate in nothing but the touch of the trigger, leaving cities in its track as if by accident rather than design, settling again to the steady ways of a fixed life only when it must: such was the American people whose achievement it was to be to take possession of their continent from end to end ere their national government was a single century old. The picture is a very singular one! Settled life and wild side by side: civilization frayed at the edges,--taken forward in rough and ready fashion, with a song and a swagger,--not by statesmen, but by woodsmen and drovers, with axes and whips and rifles in their hands, clad in buckskin, like huntsmen.

It has been said that we have here repeated some of the first processes of history; that the life and methods of our frontiersmen take us back to the fortunes and hopes of the men who crossed Europe when her forests, too, were still thick upon her. But the difference is really very fundamental, and much more worthy of remark than the likeness. Those shadowy masses of men whom we see moving upon the face of the earth in the far-away, questionable days when states were forming: even those stalwart figures we see so well as they emerge from the deep forests of Germany, to displace the Roman in all his western provinces and set up the states we know and marvel upon at this day, show us men working their new work at their own level. They do not turn back a long cycle of years from the old and settled states, the ordered cities, the tilled fields, and the elaborated governments of an ancient civilization, to begin as it were once more at the beginning. They carry alike their homes and their states with them in the camp and upon the ordered march of the host. They are men of the forest, or else men hardened always to take the sea in open boats. They live no more roughly in the new lands than in the old. The world has been frontier for them from the first. They may go forward with their life in these new seats from where they left off in the old. How different the circumstances of our first settlement and the building of new states on this side the sea! Englishmen, bred in law and ordered government ever since the Norman lawyers were followed a long five hundred years ago across the narrow seas by those masterful administrators of the strong Plantagenet race, leave an ancient realm and come into a wilderness where states have never been; leave a land of art and letters, which saw but yesterday "the spacious times of great Elizabeth," where Shakespeare still lives in the gracious leisure of his closing days at Stratford, where cities teem with trade and men go bravely dight in cloth of gold, and turn back six centuries,--nay, a thousand years and more,--to the first work of building states in a wilderness! They bring the steadied habits and sobered thoughts of an ancient realm into the wild air of an untouched continent. The weary stretches of a vast sea lie, like a full thousand years of time, between them and the life in which till now all their thought was bred. Here they stand, as it were, with all their tools left behind, centuries struck out of their reckoning, driven back upon the long dormant instincts and forgotten craft of their race, not used this long age. Look how singular a thing: the work of a primitive race, the thought of a civilized! Hence the strange, almost grotesque groupings of thought and affairs in that first day of our history. Subtle politicians speak the phrases and practice the arts of intricate diplomacy from council chambers placed within log huts within a clearing. Men in ruffs and lace and polished shoe-buckles thread the lonely glades of primeval forests. The microscopical distinctions of the schools, the thin notes of a metaphysical theology are woven in and out through the labyrinths of grave sermons that run hours long upon the still air of the wilderness. Belief in dim refinements of dogma is made the test for man or woman who seeks admission to a company of pioneers. When went there by an age since the great flood when so singular a thing was seen as this: thousands of civilized men suddenly rusticated and bade do the work of primitive peoples,--Europe _frontiered_!

Of course there was a deep change wrought, if not in these men, at any rate in their children; and every generation saw the change deepen. It must seem to every thoughtful man a notable thing how, while the change was wrought, the simples of things complex were revealed in the clear air of the New World: how all accidentals seemed to fall away from the structure of government, and the simple first principles were laid bare that abide always; how social distinctions were stripped off, shown to be the mere cloaks and masks they were, and every man brought once again to a clear realization of his actual relations to his fellows! It was as if trained and sophisticated men had been rid of a sudden of their sophistication and of all the theory of their life, and left with nothing but their discipline of faculty, a schooled and sobered instinct. And the fact that we kept always, for close upon three hundred years, a like element in our life, a frontier people always in our van, is, so far, the central and determining fact of our national history. "East" and "West," an ever-changing line, but an unvarying experience and a constant leaven of change working always within the body of our folk. Our political, our economic, our social life has felt this potent influence from the wild border all our history through. The "West" is the great word of our history. The "Westerner" has been the type and master of our American life. Now at length, as I have said, we have lost our frontier; our front lies almost unbroken along all the great coast line of the western sea. The Westerner, in some day soon to come, will pass out of our life, as he so long ago passed out of the life of the Old World. Then a new epoch will open for us. Perhaps it has opened already. Slowly we shall grow old, compact our people, study the delicate adjustments of an intricate society, and ponder the niceties, as we have hitherto pondered the bulks and structural framework, of government. Have we not, indeed, already come to these things? But the past we know. We can "see it steady and see it whole"; and its central movement and motive are gross and obvious to the eye.

Till the first century of the Constitution is rounded out we stand all the while in the presence of that stupendous westward movement which has filled the continent: so vast, so various, at times so tragical, so swept by passion. Through all the long time there has been a line of rude settlements along our front wherein the same tests of power and of institutions were still being made that were made first upon the sloping banks of the rivers of old Virginia and within the long sweep of the Bay of Massachusetts. The new life of the West has reacted all the while--who shall say how powerfully?--upon the older life of the East; and yet the East has moulded the West as if she sent forward to it through every decade of the long process the chosen impulses and suggestions of history. The West has taken strength, thought, training, selected aptitudes out of the old treasures of the East,--as if out of a new Orient; while the East has itself been kept fresh, vital, alert, originative by the West, her blood quickened all the while, her youth through every age renewed. Who can say in a word, in a sentence, in a volume, what destinies have been variously wrought, with what new examples of growth and energy, while, upon this unexampled scale, community has passed beyond community across the vast reaches of this great continent!

NOTES

=Jamestown=:--A town in Virginia, the site of the first English settlement in America (1607).

=Appomattox=:--In 1865 Lee surrendered to Grant at Appomattox, Virginia.

=epic=:--A long narrative poem recounting in a stirring way some great series of events.

=Governor Spotswood=:--Governor of Virginia in the early part of the eighteenth century.

=Knights of the Golden Horseshoe=:--In 1716 an exploring expedition under Governor Spotswood made a journey across the Blue Ridge. The Governor gave each member of the party a gold horseshoe, as a souvenir.

=Celts=:--One of the early Aryan races of southwestern Europe; the Welsh and the Highland Scotch are descended from the Celts.

=Slavs=:--The race of people inhabiting Russia, Poland, Bohemia, and Servia.

=Latin races=:--The French, Spanish, and Italian people, whose languages are derived chiefly from the Latin.

=Orient=:--The far East--India, China, Japan, etc.

=Norman=:--The Norman-French from northern France had been in possession of England for the greater part of a century (1066-1154) when Henry, son of a Saxon princess and a French duke (Geoffrey of Anjou) came to England as Henry II, the first of the Plantagenet line of English kings.

=Stratford=:--A small town on the Avon River in England; the birthplace of Shakespeare.

=dight=:--Clothed. (What does an unabridged dictionary say about this word? Is it commonly used nowadays? Was it used in Shakespeare's time? Why does the author use it here?)

=see it steady and see it whole=:--A quotation from the works of Matthew Arnold, an English poet and critic.

SUGGESTIONS FOR STUDY

What has been the disadvantage of having our history written by New England men? Do you know what particular New England men have written of American history? What state is President Wilson from? What is meant by the "Suppression of the South"? Why does the author put in the phrase "we have learned"? Does he believe what he is saying? Show where he makes his own view clear. What "story" is it that one "almost wishes" were true? _Went out from the North_: Where? How are the Northerners and the Southerners changed after they have gone West? What "new temper" do they have? How do they show their "impatience of restraint"? What eastern mountains are meant here? How did our nation gain new life when the pioneers looked westward from the eastern ridges? Why are we spoken of as a "great compounded nation"? What are our "mighty works of peace"? The author now shows how the Middle Seaboard States were a type of the later form of the nation, because they had a mixed population. What does he think about the influence of the Puritan and the Southerner? Note the questions that he asks regarding the course of American history. See how he answers them in the pages that follow. Why does he say that the first frontiersmen were "timid"? When, according to the author, did the "great determining movement" of our history begin? Why does he call the picture that he draws a "singular" one? What is meant by "civilization frayed at the edges"? How do the primitive conditions of our nation differ from the earliest beginnings of the European nations? (See the long passage beginning "How different.") What is meant by "Europe frontiered"? Look carefully on page 261, to see what the author says is "the central and determining fact of our national history." What is the "great word" of our history? Has the author answered the questions he set for himself on page 256? What is happening to us as a nation now that we have lost our frontier? What is the relation between the East and the West? Perhaps you will like to go on and read some more of this essay, from which we have here only a selection. Do you like what the author has said? What do you think of the way in which he has said it?

THEME SUBJECTS

Life in the Wilderness The Log Cabin La Salle My Friend from the West My Friend from the East Crossing the Mountains Early Days in our State An Encounter with the Indians The Coming of the Railroad Daniel Boone A Home on the Prairies Cutting down the Forest The Homesteader A Frontier Town Life on a Western Ranch The Old Settler Some Stories of the Early Days Moving West Lewis and Clark The Pioneer The Old Settlers' Picnic "Home-coming Day" in our Town An Explorer My Trip through the West (or the East) The President

SUGGESTIONS FOR WRITING

=La Salle=:--Look up, in Parkman's _La Salle_ or elsewhere, the facts of La Salle's life. Make very brief mention of his life in France. Contrast it with his experiences in America. What were his reasons for becoming an explorer? Give an account of one of his expeditions: his plans; his preparations; his companions; his hardships; his struggles to establish a fort; his return to Canada for help; his failure or success. Perhaps you will want to write of his last expedition, and its unfortunate ending. Speak of his character as a man and an explorer. Show briefly the results of his endeavors.

=Daniel Boone=:--Look up the adventures of Daniel Boone, and tell some of them in a lively way. Perhaps you can imagine his telling them in his own words to a settler or a companion. In that case, try to put in the questions and the comments of the other person. This will make a kind of dramatic conversation.

=Early Days in our State=:--With a few changes, you can use the outline given on page 249 for "Early Days in our County."

=An Encounter with the Indians=:--Tell a story that you have heard or imagined, about some one's escape from the Indians. How did the hero happen to get into such a perilous situation? Briefly describe his surroundings. Tell of his first knowledge that the Indians were about to attack him. What did he do? How did he feel? Describe the Indians. Tell what efforts the hero made to get away or to protect himself. Make the account of his action brief and lively. Try to keep him before the reader all the time. Now and then explain what was going on in his mind. This is often a good way to secure suspense. Tell very clearly how the hero succeeded in escaping, and what his difficulties were in getting away from the spot. Condense the account of what took place after his actual escape. Where did he take refuge? Was he much the worse for his adventure?

COLLATERAL READINGS

The Course of American History (in _Mere Literature_) Woodrow Wilson The Life of George Washington " " The Winning of the West Theodore Roosevelt Stories of the Great West " " Hero Tales from American History Roosevelt and Lodge The Great Salt Lake Trail Inman and Cody The Old Santa Fé Trail H. Inman Rocky Mountain Exploration Reuben G. Thwaites Daniel Boone " " " How George Rogers Clark Won the Northwest " " " Daniel Boone and the Wilderness Road H.A. Bruce The Crossing Winston Churchill The Conquest of Arid America W.E. Smythe The Last American Frontier F.L. Paxon Northwestern Fights and Fighters Cyrus Townsend Brady Western Frontier Stories The Century Company The Story of Tonty Mary Hartwell Catherwood Heroes of the Middle West " " " Pony Tracks Frederic Remington The Different West A.E. Bostwick The Expedition of Lewis and Clark J.K. Hosmer The Trail of Lewis and Clark O.D. Wheeler The Discovery of the Old Northwest James Baldwin Boots and Saddles Elizabeth Custer La Salle and the Discovery of the Great West Francis Parkman The Oregon Trail " " Samuel Houston Henry Bruce The Story of the Railroad Cy Warman The Pioneers Walt Whitman The Story of the Cowboy Emerson Hough Woodrow Wilson W.B. Hale Recollections of Thirteen Presidents John S. Wise Presidential Problems Grover Cleveland The Story of the White House Esther Singleton

WHAT I KNOW ABOUT GARDENING

CHARLES DUDLEY WARNER

(From _My Summer in a Garden_)

NINTH WEEK