Chapter VI: Front Matter (6)

It happened to me, some years since, in the course of some historical inquiries, to wish for fuller information in regard to the barbarous feudal codes of the Middle Ages,--as the Salic, Burgundian, and Ripuarian,--before the time of Charlemagne. The common historians, even Hallam, gave no very satisfactory information and referred to no very available books; and supposing it to be a matter of which every well-read lawyer would at least know something, I asked help of the most scholarly member of that profession within my reach. He regretted his inability to give me any aid, but referred me to a friend of his, who was soon to visit him, a young man, who was already eminent for legal learning. The friend soon arrived, but owned, with some regret, that he had paid no attention to that particular subject, and did not even know what books to refer to; but he would at least ascertain what they were, and let me know. (N.B. I have never heard from him since.) Stimulated by ill-success, I aimed higher, and struck at the Supreme Bench of a certain State, breaking in on the mighty repose of His Honor with the name of Charlemagne. "Charlemagne?" responded my lord judge, rubbing his burly brow,--"Charlemagne lived, I think, in the sixth century?" Dismayed, I retreated, with little further inquiry; and sure of one man, at least, to whom law meant also history and literature, I took refuge with Charles Sumner. That accomplished scholar, himself for once at fault, could only frankly advise me to do at last what I ought to have done at first,--to apply to Theodore Parker. I did so. "Go," replied he instantly, "to alcove twenty-four, shelf one hundred and thirteen, of the College Library at Cambridge, and you will find the information you need in a thick quarto, bound in vellum, and lettered 'Potgiesser de Statu Servorum.'" I straightway sent for Potgiesser, and found my fortune made, it was one of those patient old German treatises which cost the labor of one man's life to compile and another's to exhaust, and I had no reason to suppose that any reader had disturbed its repose until that unwearied industry had explored the library.

Amid such multiplicity of details he must sometimes have made mistakes, and with his great quickness of apprehension he sometimes formed hasty conclusions. But no one has a right to say that his great acquirements were bought by any habitual sacrifice of thoroughness. To say that they sometimes impaired the quality of his thought would undoubtedly be more just; and this is a serious charge to bring. Learning is not accumulation, but assimilation; every man's real acquirements must pass into his own organization, and undue or hasty nutrition does no good. The most priceless knowledge is not worth the smallest impairing of the quality of the thinking. The scholar cannot afford, any more than the farmer, to lavish his strength in clearing more land than he can cultivate; and Theodore Parker was compelled by the natural limits of time and strength to let vast tracts lie fallow, and to miss something of the natural resources of the soil. One sometimes wished that he had studied less and dreamed more,--for less encyclopedic information, and more of his own rich brain.

But it was in popularizing thought and knowledge that his great and wonderful power lay. Not an original thinker, in the same sense with Emerson, he yet translated for tens of thousands that which Emerson spoke to hundreds only. No matter who had been heard on any subject, the great mass of intelligent, "progressive" New-England thinkers waited to hear the thing summed up by Theodore Parker. This popular interest went far beyond the circle of his avowed sympathizers; he might be a heretic, but nobody could deny that he was a marksman. No matter how well others seemed to have hit the target, his shot was the triumphant one, at last. Thinkers might find no new thought in the new discourse, leaders of action no new plan, yet, after all that had been said and done, his was the statement that told upon the community. He knew this power of his, and had analyzed some of the methods by which he attained it, though, after all, the best part was an unconscious and magnetic faculty. But he early learned, so he once told me, that the New-England people dearly love two things,--a philosophical arrangement, and a plenty of statistics. To these, therefore, he treated them thoroughly; in some of his "Ten Sermons" the demand made upon the systematizing power of his audience was really formidable; and I have always remembered a certain lecture of his on the Anglo-Saxons as the most wonderful instance that ever came within my knowledge of the adaptation of solid learning to the popular intellect. Nearly two hours of almost unadorned fact,--for there was far less than usual of relief and illustration,--and yet the lyceum-audience listened to it as if an angel sang to them. So perfect was his sense of purpose and of power, so clear and lucid was his delivery, with such wonderful composure did he lay out, section by section, his historical chart, that he grasped his hearers as absolutely as he grasped his subject: one was compelled to believe that he might read the people the Sanscrit Lexicon, and they would listen with ever fresh delight. Without grace or beauty or melody, his mere elocution was sufficient to produce effects which melody and grace and beauty might have sighed for in vain. And I always felt that he well described his own eloquence while describing Luther's, in one of the most admirably moulded sentences he ever achieved,--"The homely force of Luther, who, in the language of the farm, the shop, the boat, the street, or the nursery, told the high truths that reason or religion taught, and took possession of his audience by a storm of speech, then poured upon them all the riches of his brave plebeian soul, baptizing every head anew,--a man who with the people seemed more mob than they, and with kings the most imperial man."

Another key to his strong hold upon the popular mind was to be found in his thorough Americanism of training and sympathy. Surcharged with European learning, he yet remained at heart the Lexington farmer's-boy, and his whole atmosphere was indigenous, not exotic. Not haunted by any of the distrust and over-criticism which are apt to effeminate the American scholar, he plunged deep into the current of hearty national life around him, loved it, trusted it, believed in it; and the combination of this vital faith with such tremendous criticism of public and private sins formed an irresistible power. He could condemn without crushing,--denounce mankind, yet save it from despair. Thus his pulpit became one of the great forces of the nation, like the New York "Tribune." His printed volumes had but a limited circulation, owing to a defective system of publication, which his friends tried in vain to correct; but the circulation of his pamphlet-discourses was very great; he issued them faster and faster, latterly often in pairs, and they instantly spread far and wide. Accordingly he found his listeners everywhere; he could not go so far West but his abundant fame had preceded him; his lecture-room in the remotest places was crowded, and his hotel-chamber also, until late at night. Probably there was no private man in the nation, except, perhaps, Beecher and Greeley, whom personal strangers were so eager to see; while from a transatlantic direction he was sought by visitors to whom the two other names were utterly unknown. Learned men from the continent of Europe always found their way, first or last, to Exeter Place; and it is said that Thackeray, on his voyage to this country, declared that the thing in America which he most desired was to hear Theodore Parker talk.

Indeed, his conversational power was so wonderful that no one could go away from a first interview without astonishment and delight. There are those among us, it may be, more brilliant in anecdote or repartee, more eloquent, more profoundly suggestive; but for the outpouring of vast floods of various and delightful information, I believe that he could have had no Anglo-Saxon rival, except Macaulay. And in Mr. Parker's case, at least, there was no alloy of conversational arrogance or impatience of opposition. He monopolized, not because he was ever unwilling to hear others, but because they did not care to hear themselves when he was by. The subject made no difference; he could talk on anything. I was once with him in the society of an intelligent Quaker farmer, when the conversation fell on agriculture: the farmer held his own ably for a time; but long after he was drained dry, our wonderful companion still flowed on exhaustless, with accounts of Nova Scotia ploughing and Tennessee hoeing, and all things rural, ancient and modern, good and bad, till it seemed as if the one amusing and interesting theme in the universe were the farm. But it soon proved that this was only one among his thousand departments, and his hearers felt, as was said of old Fuller, as if he had served his time at every trade in town.

But it must now be owned that these astonishing results were bought by some intellectual sacrifices which his nearer friends do not all recognize, but which posterity will mourn. Such a rate of speed is incompatible with the finest literary execution. A delicate literary ear he might have had, perhaps, but he very seldom stopped to cultivate or even indulge it. This neglect was not produced by his frequent habit of extemporaneous speech alone; for it is a singular fact, that Wendell Phillips, who rarely writes a line, yet contrives to give to his hastiest efforts the air of elaborate preparation, while Theodore Parker's most scholarly performances were still stump-speeches. Vigorous, rich, brilliant, copious, they yet seldom afford a sentence which falls in perfect cadence upon the ear; under a show of regular method, they are loose and diffuse, and often have the qualities which he himself attributed to the style of John Quincy Adams,--"disorderly, ill-compacted, and homely to a fault." He said of Dr. Channing,--"Diffuseness is the old Adam of the pulpit. There are always two ways of hitting the mark,--one with a single bullet, the other with a shower of small shot: Dr. Channing chose the latter, as most of our pulpit orators have done." Theodore Parker chose it also.

Perhaps Nature and necessity chose it for him. If not his temperament, at least the circumstances of his position, cut him off from all high literary finish. He created the congregation at the Music Hall, and that congregation, in turn, moulded his whole life. For that great stage his eloquence became inevitably a kind of brilliant scene-painting,--large, fresh, profuse, rapid, showy;--masses of light and shade, wonderful effects, but farewell forever to all finer touches and delicate gradations! No man can write for posterity, while hastily snatching a half-day from a week's lecturing, during which to prepare a telling Sunday harangue for three thousand people. In the perpetual rush and hurry of his life, he had no time to select, to discriminate, to omit anything, or to mature anything. He had the opportunities, the provocatives, and the drawbacks which make the work and mar the fame of the professional journalist. His intellectual existence, after he left the quiet of West Roxbury, was from hand to mouth. Needing above all men to concentrate himself, he was compelled by his whole position to lead a profuse and miscellaneous life.

All popular orators must necessarily repeat themselves,--preachers chiefly among orators, and Theodore Parker chiefly among preachers. The mere frequency of production makes this inevitable,--a fact which always makes every finely organized intellect, first or last, grow weary of the pulpit. But in his case there were other compulsions. Every Sunday a quarter part of his vast congregation consisted of persons who had never, or scarcely ever, heard him before, and who might never hear him again. Not one of those visitors must go away, therefore, without hearing the great preacher define his position on every point,--not theology alone, but all current events and permanent principles, the Presidential nomination or message, the laws of trade, the laws of Congress, woman's rights, woman's costume, Boston slave-kidnappers, and Dr. Banbaby,--he must put it all in. His ample discourse must be like an Oriental poem, which begins with the creation of the universe, and includes all subsequent facts incidentally. It is astonishing to look over his published sermons and addresses, and see under how many different names the same stirring speech has been reprinted;--new illustrations, new statistics, and all remoulded with such freshness that the hearer had no suspicions, nor the speaker either,--and yet the same essential thing. Sunday discourse, lyceum lecture, convention speech, it made no difference, he must cover all the points every time. No matter what theme might be announced, the people got the whole latitude and longitude of Theodore Parker, and that was precisely what they wanted. He broke down the traditional non-committalism of the lecture-room, and oxygenated all the lyceums of the land. He thus multiplied his audience very greatly, while perhaps losing to some degree the power of close logic and of addressing a specific statement to a special point. Yet it seemed as if he could easily leave the lancet to others, grant him only the hammer and the forge.

Ah, but the long centuries, where the reading of books is concerned, set aside all considerations of quantity, of popularity, of immediate influence, and sternly test by quality alone,--judge each author by his most golden sentence, and let all else go. The deeds make the man, but it is the style which makes or dooms the writer. History, which always sends great men in groups, gave us Emerson by whom to test the intellectual qualities of Parker. They cooperated in their work from the beginning, in much the same mutual relation as now; in looking back over the rich volumes of the "Dial," the reader now passes by the contributions of Parker to glean every sentence of Emerson's, but we have the latter's authority for the fact that it was the former's articles which originally sold the numbers. Intellectually, the two men form the complement to each other; it is Parker who reaches the mass of the people, but it is probable that all his writings put together have not had so profound an influence on the intellectual leaders of the nation as the single address of Emerson at Divinity Hall.

And it is difficult not to notice, in that essay in which Theodore Parker ventured on higher intellectual ground, perhaps, than anywhere else in his writings,--his critique on Emerson in the "Massachusetts Quarterly,"--the indications of this mental disparity. It is in many respects a noble essay, full of fine moral appreciations, bravely generous, admirable in the loyalty of spirit shown towards a superior mind, and all warm with a personal friendship which could find no superior. But so far as literary execution is concerned, the beautiful sentences of Emerson stand out like fragments of carved marble from the rough plaster in which they are imbedded. Nor this alone; but, on drawing near the vestibule of the author's finest thoughts, the critic almost always stops, unable quite to enter their sphere. Subtile beauties puzzle him; the titles of the poems, for instance, giving by delicate allusion the key-note of each,--as "Astraea," "Mithridates," "Hamatreya," and "Étienne de la Boéce,"--seem to him the work of "mere caprice"; he pronounces the poem of "Monadnoc" "poor and weak"; he condemns and satirizes the "Wood-notes," and thinks that a pine-tree which should talk like Mr. Emerson's ought to be cut down and cast into the sea.

The same want of fine discrimination was usually visible in his delineations of great men in public life. Immense in accumulation of details, terrible in the justice which held the balance, they yet left one with the feeling, that, after all, the delicate main-springs of character had been missed. Broad contrasts, heaps of good and evil, almost exaggerated praises, pungent satire, catalogues of sins that seemed pages from some Recording Angel's book,--these were his mighty methods; but for the subtilest analysis, the deepest insight into the mysteries of character, one must look elsewhere. It was still scene-painting, not portraiture; and the same thing which overwhelmed with wonder, when heard in the Music Hall, produced a slight sense of insufficiency, when read in print. It was certainly very great in its way, but not in quite the highest way; it was preliminary work, not final; it was Parker's Webster, not Emerson's Swedenborg or Napoleon.

The same thing was often manifested in his criticisms on current events. The broad truths were stated without fear or favor, the finer points passed over, and the special trait of the particular phase sometimes missed. His sermons on the last revivals, for instance, had an enormous circulation, and told with great force upon those who had not been swept into the movement, and even upon some who had been. The difficulty was that they were just such discourses as he would have preached in the time of Edwards and the "Great Awakening"; and the point which many thought the one astonishing feature of the new excitement, its almost entire omission of the "terrors of the Lord," the far gentler and more winning type of religion which it displayed, and from which it confessedly drew much of its power, this was entirely ignored in Mr. Parker's sermons. He was too hard at work in combating the evangelical theology to recognize its altered phases. Forging lightning-rods against the tempest, he did not see that the height of the storm had passed by.

These are legitimate criticisms to make on Theodore Parker, for he was large enough to merit them. It is only the loftiest trees of which it occurs to us to remark that they do not touch the sky, and a man must comprise a great deal before we complain of him for not comprising everything. But though the closest scrutiny may sometimes find cases where he failed to see the most subtile and precious truth, it will never discover one where, seeing, he failed to proclaim it, or, proclaiming, failed to give it force and power. He lived his life much as he walked the streets of Boston,--not quite gracefully, nor yet statelily, but with quick, strong, solid step, with sagacious eyes wide open, and thrusting his broad shoulders a little forward, as if butting away the throng of evil deeds around him, and scattering whole atmospheres of unwholesome cloud. Wherever he went, there went a glance of sleepless vigilance, an unforgetting memory, a tongue that never faltered, and an arm that never quailed. Not primarily an administrative nor yet a military mind, he yet exerted a positive control over the whole community around him, by sheer mental and moral strength. He mowed down harvests of evil as in his youth he mowed the grass, and all his hours of study were but whetting the scythe.

And for this great work it was not essential that the blade should have a razor's edge. Grant that Parker was not also Emerson; no matter, he was Parker. If ever a man seemed sent into the world to find a certain position, and found it, he was that man. Occupying a unique sphere of activity, he filled it with such a wealth of success, that there is now no one in the nation whom it would not seem an absurdity to nominate for his place. It takes many instruments to complete the orchestra, but the tones of this organ the Music Hall shall never hear again.

One feels, since he is gone, that he made his great qualities seem so natural and inevitable, we forgot that all did not share them. We forgot the scholar's proverbial reproach of timidity and selfishness, in watching him. While he lived, it seemed a matter of course that the greatest acquirements and the heartiest self-devotion should go together. Can we keep our strength, without the tonic of his example? How petty it now seems to ask for any fine-drawn subtilties of poet or seer in him who gave his life to the cause of the humblest! Life speaks the loudest. We do not ask what Luther said or wrote, but only what he did; and the name of Theodore Parker will not only long outlive his books, but will last far beyond the special occasions out of which he moulded his grand career.

* * * * *

ICARUS.

I.

_Io triumphe!_ Lo, thy certain art, My crafty sire, releases us at length! False Minos now may knit his baffled brows, And in the labyrinth by thee devised His brutish horns in angry search may toss The Minotaur,--but thou and I are free! See where it lies, one dark spot on the breast Of plains far-shining in the long-lost day, Thy glory and our prison! Either hand Crete, with her hoary mountains, olive-clad In twinkling silver, 'twixt the vineyard rows, Divides the glimmering seas. On Ida's top The sun, discovering first an earthly throne, Sits down in splendor: lucent vapors rise From folded glens among the awaking hills, Expand their hovering films, and touch, and spread In airy planes beneath us, hearths of air Whereon the morning burns her hundred fires.

II.

Take thou thy way between the cloud and wave, O Daedalus, my father, steering forth To friendly Samos, or the Carian shore! But me the spaces of the upper heaven Attract, the height, the freedom, and the joy. For now, from that dark treachery escaped, And tasting power which was the lust of youth, Whene'er the white blades of the sea-gull's wings Flashed round the headland, or the barbéd files Of cranes returning clanged across the sky, No half-way flight, no errand incomplete I purpose. Not, as once in dreams, with pain I mount, with fear and huge exertion hold Myself a moment, ere the sickening fall Breaks in the shock of waking. Launched, at last, Uplift on powerful wings, I veer and float Past sunlit isles of cloud, that dot with light The boundless archipelago of sky. I fan the airy silence till it starts In rustling whispers, swallowed up as soon; I warm the chilly ether with my breath; I with the beating of my heart make glad The desert blue. Have I not raised myself Unto this height, and shall I cease to soar? The curious eagles wheel about my path: With sharp and questioning eyes they stare at me, With harsh, impatient screams they menace me, Who, with these vans of cunning workmanship Broad-spread, adventure on their high domain,-- Now mine, as well. Henceforth, ye clamorous birds, I claim the azure empire of the air! Henceforth I breast the current of the morn, Between her crimson shores: a star, henceforth, Upon the crawling dwellers of the earth My forehead shines. The steam of sacred blood, The smoke of burning flesh on altars laid, Fumes of the temple-wine, and sprinkled myrrh, Shall reach my palate ere they reach the Gods.

III.

Nay, am not I a God? What other wing, If not a God's, could in the rounded sky Hang thus in solitary poise? What need, Ye proud Immortals, that my balanced plumes Should grow, like yonder eagle's, from the nest? It may be, ere my crafty father's line Sprang from Erectheus, some artificer, Who found you roaming wingless on the hills, Naked, asserting godship in the dearth Of loftier claimants, fashioned you the same. Thence did you seize Olympus; thence your pride Compelled the race of men, your slaves, to tear The temple from the mountain's marble womb, To carve you shapes more beautiful than they, To sate your idle nostrils with the reek Of gums and spices, heaped on jewelled gold.

IV.

Lo, where Hyperion, through the glowing air Approaching, drives! Fresh from his banquet-meats, Flushed with Olympian nectar, angrily He guides his fourfold span of furious steeds, Convoyed by that bold Hour whose ardent torch Burns up the dew, toward the narrow beach, This long, projecting spit of cloudy gold Whereon I wait to greet him when he comes. Think not I fear thine anger: this day, thou, Lord of the silver bow, shalt bring a guest To sit in presence of the equal Gods In your high hall: wheel but thy chariot near, That I may mount beside thee! ----What is this? I hear the crackling hiss of singéd plumes! The stench of burning feathers stifles me! My loins are stung with drops of molten wax!-- Ai! ai! my ruined vans!--I fall! I die!

* * * * *

Ere the blue noon o'erspanned the bluer strait Which parts Icaria from Samos, fell, Amid the silent wonder of the air, Fell with a shock that startled the still wave, A shrivelled wreck of crisp, entangled plumes, A head whence eagles' beaks had plucked the eyes, And clots of wax, black limbs by eagles torn In falling: and a circling eagle screamed Around that floating horror of the sea Derision, and above Hyperion shone.

* * * * *

WALKER.

I confess to knowledge of a large book bearing the above title,--a title which is no less appropriate for this brief, disrupted biographical memorandum. That I have a right to act as I have done, in adopting it, will presently appear,--as well as that the honored name thus appropriated by me refers neither io the dictionary nor the _filibustero_, both of which articles appear to have been superseded by newer and better things.

At the first flush, Fur would seem to be rather a sultry subject to open either a store or a story with, in these glowing days of a justly incensed thermometer.

And yet there is a fine bracing mountain-air to be drawn from the material, as with a spigot, if you will only favor your mind with a digression from the tangible article to the wild-rose associations in which it is enveloped.

Think of the high, wind-swept ridges, among the clefts of which are the only homesteads of the hardy pioneers by whose agency alone one kind of luxury is kept up to the standard demand for it in the great cities. It might not be so likely a place to get fancy drinks in as Broome Street, certainly, we must admit, as we picture to ourselves some brushy ravine in which the trapper has his irons cunningly set out for the betrayal of the stone-marten and the glossy-backed "fisher-cat,"--but the breeze in it is quite as wholesome as a brandy-smash. The whirr of the sage-hen's wing, as she rises from the fragrant thicket, brings a flavor with it fresher far than that of the mint-julep. It is cheaper than the latter compound, too, and much more conducive to health. Continuing to indulge our fancy in cool images connected with fur and its finders, we shall see what contrasts will arise. The blue shadow of a cottonwood-tree stretching over a mountain-spring. By the edge of the sparkling water sits, embroidering buckskin, a red-legged squaw, keeper of the wigwam to the ragged mountain-man who set the traps that caught the martens which furnished the tails that mark so gracefully the number of skins of which the rich banker's wife's _fichu-russe_ is composed. Here is a striking contrast, in which extremes meet,--not the martens' tails, but the two men's wives, the banker's and the trapper's, brought into antithetical relation by the simple circumstance of a _fichu-russe_, the material of which was worn in some ravine of the wilderness, mayhap not a twelvemonth since, by a creature faster even than a banker's wife. Great is the hereafter of the marten-cat, whose skin may be looked upon as the soul by which the animal is destined to attain a sort of modified immortality in the Elysian abodes of Wealth and Fashion,--the place where good martens go!

The men through whose intervention eventual felicity is thus secured to the fur-creature are as much a race in themselves as the Gypsies. No genuine type of them ever approaches nearer to the confines of civilization than a frontier settlement beckons him. Old Adams, the bear-tutor, might have been of this type once, but he is adulterated with sawdust and gas-light now, with city cookery and spurious groceries. Many men of French Canadian origin are to be found trading and trapping in the Far West; although, taken in the aggregate, there are no people less given to stirring enterprise than these colonial descendants of the Gaul. The only direction, almost, in which they exhibit any expansive tendency is in the border trade and general adventure business, in which figure the names of many of them conspicuously and with honor. The Chouteaus are of that stock; and of that stock came the late Major Aubry, renowned among the guides and trappers of the southwestern wilderness; and if J.C. Fremont is not a French Canadian by birth, the strong efforts made about the time of the last Presidential election to establish him as one had at least the effect of determining his Canadian descent.

Pierre La Marche was a Franco-Canadian of the spread-eagle kind referred to. Departing widely from the conservative prejudices of his race, his wandering propensities took him away, at an early age, from the primitive colonial village in which he first saw the light of day. He was but fourteen years old when he left his peaceful and thoroughly whitewashed home on the banks of the St. François, in company with a knot of Canadian _voyageurs_, whose principles tended towards the Red River of the North. Leaving this convoy at Fond-du-Lac, he pushed his way on to the Mississippi, alone and friendless, and, falling in with a party of trappers at St. Louis, accompanied them when they returned to the mountain "gulches" in which their business lay.

After six years of trapper and trader life, but little trace of the simple young Canadian _habitant_ was left in Pierre La Marche. He spoke mountain English and French _patois_ with equal fluency. There was a decision of character about him that commanded the respect of his comrades. When the other trappers went to St. Louis, they used to drink and gamble away their hard-won dollars, few of these men caring for anything beyond the indulgence of immediate fancies. But Pierre was ambitious, and thought that money might be made subservient to his aspirations in a better way than speculating with it upon "bluff" or squandering it upon deteriorating drinks.

About this time of his life, Pierre began to think that the fact of his being "only a French Canadian" was likely to be a bar to his advancement. He despised himself greatly for one thing, indeed,--that his name was La Marche, and not Walker,--which patronymic he made out to be the nearest Anglo-Saxon equivalent for his French one. He adopted it,--calling himself Peter Walker,--and had an adventure out of it, to begin with.

While trading furs at St. Louis, on one occasion, he offered a remnant of his stock to a dealer with whom he was not acquainted. They had an argument as to prices. The dealer, a man of hasty temper, asked him his name.

"Walker," was the reply.

When La Marche arose from the distant corner into which he was projected in company with the bundle of furs levelled at his head, revenge was his natural sentiment. Drawing his heavy knife from its sheath, he flung it away: the temptation to use it might have been too much for him. Small in stature, but remarkable for muscular strength, and for inventive resource in the "rough-and-tumble" fight, La Marche clenched with the burly store-keeper, who was getting the worst of it, when some of his _employés_ interfered. This led to a general engagement. Several of La Marche's companions now rushed in, and in five minutes their opponents gave out, succumbent to superior wind and sinew.

Next morning, when the trappers took their way out of St. Louis, La Marche was a leader among them for life. But the reason of the store-keeper's rage was for many years a mystery to him. He knew not the enormity of "Walker," as an exponent of disparagement; he simply thought it a nicer name than La Marche, while it fully embodied the sentiment of that name. He adopted it, then, as I said before, and went on towards posterity as Peter Walker.

I heard many strange anecdotes of Peter Walker at the residence of a retired _voyageur_, who used to sing him Homerically to his chosen friends. These _voyageurs_ are professional canoe-men; adventurers extending, sparsely, from the waters of French Canada to those of Oregon,--and sometimes back. Honest old Quatreaux! I mentioned his "residence" just now, and the term is truly grandiloquent in its application. The residence of old Quatreaux was a log _cabane_, about twenty feet square. Planks, laid loosely upon the cross-ties of the rafters, formed the up-stairs of the building: up-ladder would be a term more in accordance with facts; for it was by an appliance of that kind that the younger and more active of the sixteen members composing the old _voyageur's_ family removed themselves from view when they retired for the night. A partition, extending half-way across the ground-floor, screened off the state or principal bed from outside gaze; at least, it was exposed to view only from points rendered rather inaccessible by tubs, with which these Canadian families are generally provided to excess. This apartment was strictly assigned to me, as a visitor; and although I firmly declined the honor,--chiefly with reference to certain large and very hard fleas I knew of in its dormitory arrangements,--it was kept religiously vacant, in case my heart should relent towards it, and the family in general slept huddled together on the outer floor, without manifest classification: the two old people; son and wife; daughter and husband; children; the extraordinary little hunch-backed and one-eyed girl, whom nobody would marry, but everybody liked; dogs. I used to stretch myself on a buffalo-robe before the wood-fire, in company with a faithful spaniel, who was as wakeful on these occasions as if he suspected that the low-bred curs of the establishment might pick his pockets.

Quatreaux's _cabane_ was situated on the edge of an extensive tract of marsh,--lagoon would be a more descriptive word for it, perhaps,--a splashy, ditch-divided district, extending along the borders of a lake for miles. Snipe-shooting was my motive there; and dull work it was in those dark, Novembry, October days, with "the low rain falling" half the time, and the yellow leaves all the time, and no snipe. But whether we poled our log canoe up to some stunted old willow-tree that sat low in the horizontal marsh, and took shelter under it to smoke our pipes, or whether we mollified the privation of snipe in the _cabane_ at night with mellow rum and tobacco brought by me, still was Walker the old _voyageur's_ favorite theme.

Old Quatreaux spoke English perfectly well, although his conservatism as a Canadian induced him to prefer his mother tongue as a vehicle for general conversation. But I remarked that his anecdotes of Walker were always related in English, and on these occasions, therefore, for my benefit alone: for but little of the Anglo-Saxon tongue appeared to be known to, or at least used by, any member of his numerous family. Indeed, I can recall but two words of that language which I could positively aver to have heard in colloquial use among them,--_poodare_ and _schotte_. And why should the old _voyageur_ have thus reserved his experiences from those who were near and dear to him? Simply because most of his adventures with Walker were not of the strictly mild character becoming a family-man. But it was all the same to these good people; and when I laughed, they all took up the idea and laughed their best,--the little hunch-backed girl generally going off into a kind of epilepsy by herself, over in the darkest corner of the room, among the tubs.

When divested of the strange Western expletives and imprecations with which the old man used to spice his reminiscences, some of them are enough. I remember one, telling how Peter Walker "raised the wind" on a particular occasion, when he got short of money on his way to some distant trading-post, in a district strange to him. It is before me, in short-hand, on the pages of an old, old pocket-book, and I will tell it with some slight improvements on the narrator's style, such as suppressing his unnecessary combinations of the curse.

Mounted on a two-hundred-dollar buffalo-horse, for which he would not have taken double that amount, Peter Walker found himself, one afternoon, near the end of a long day's ride. He had but little baggage with him, that little consisting entirely of a bowie-knife and holster-pistols,--for the revolver was a scarce piece of furniture then and there. Of money he was entirely destitute, having expended his last dollar upon the purchase of his noble steed, and of the festive suit of clothes with which he calculated upon astonishing people who resided outside the limits of civilization. The pantaloon division of that suit was particularly superb, consisting principally of a stripe by which the outer seam of each leg was made conducive to harmony of outline. He was about three days' journey from the trading-post to which he was bound. The country was a frontier one, sparsely provided with inns.

The sun was framed in a low notch of the horizon, as he approached a border-hostelry, on the gable of which "Cat's Bluff Hotel" was painted in letters quite disproportioned in size to the city of Cat's Bluff, which consisted of the house in question, neither more nor less. In that house Peter Walker decided upon sojourning luxuriously for that night, at least, if he had to draw a check upon his holsters for it.

Having stabled his horse, then, and seen him supplied with such provender as the place afforded, he looked about the hotel, which he found to be an institution of very considerable pretensions. It seemed to have a good deal of its own way, in fact, being the only house of entertainment for many miles upon a great south-western thoroughfare, from which branched off the trail to be taken by him tomorrow,--a trail which led only to the trading-post or fort already mentioned.

The deportment of the landlord was gracious, as he went about whistling "Wait for the wagon," and jingling with gold chains and heavy jewelry. Still more exhilarating was the prosperous confidence of the bar-keeper, who took in, while Walker was determining a drink, not less than a dozen quarter-dollars, from blue-shirted, bearded, thirsty men with rifles, who came along in a large covered wagon of western tendency, in which they immediately departed with haste, late as it was, as if bound to drive into the sun before he went down behind the far-off edge. Walker used to say, jocularly, that he supposed this must have been the wagon for which the landlord whistled, and which came to his call.

Everything denoted that there was abundance of money in that favored place. Even small boys who came in and called for cigars and drinks made a reckless display of coin as they paid for them, and then drove off in their wagons,--for they all had wagons, and were all intent upon driving rapidly in then toward the west.

But, as night fell, travel went down with the declining day; and Walker felt himself alone in the world,--a man without a dollar. Nevertheless, he called for good cheer, which was placed before him on a liberal scale: for landlords thereabouts were accustomed to provide for appetites acquired on the plains, and their supply was obliged to be both large and ready for the chance comers who were always dropping in, and upon whom their custom depended. So he ate and drank; and having appeased hunger and thirst, he went into the bar, and opened conversation with the landlord by offering him one of his own cigars, a bunch of which he got from the bar-keeper, whom he particularly requested not to forget to include them in his bill, when the time for his departure brought with it the disagreeable necessity of being served with that document.

Western landlords, in general, are not remarkable for the reserve with which they treat their guests. This particular landlord was less so than most others. He was especially inquisitive with regard to Walker's exquisite pantaloons, the like of which had never been seen in that part of the country before. His happiness was evidently incomplete in the privation of a similar pair.

"Them pants all wool, now?" asked he, as he viewed them with various inclinations of head, like a connoisseur examining a picture.

"All except the stripes," replied Walker;--"stripes is wool and cotton mixed; gives 'em a finer grain, you see, and catches the eye."

The landlord respected Walker at once. Perhaps he might be an Eastern dry-goods merchant, come along for the purpose of making arrangements to inundate the border-territory with stuffs for exquisite pantaloons. He proceeded with his interrogatories. He laid himself out to extract from Walker all manner of information as to his origin, occupation, and prospects, which gave the latter an excellent opportunity of glorifying himself inferentially, while he affected mystery and reticence with regard to his mission "out West." At last the landlord set him down for an agent come on to open the sluices for a great tide of foreign emigration into the territory,--an event to which he himself had been looking for a long time, and the prospect of which had guided him to the spot where he had established his hotel, which he now looked upon as the centre from which a great city was destined immediately to radiate. And the landlord retired to his bed to meditate upon immense speculations in town-lots, and, when sleep came upon him, to dream that he had successfully arranged them through the medium of an angel with a speaking-trumpet, whose manifest wardrobe consisted of a pair of fancy pantaloons with stripes on the seams and side-pockets, exactly like Walker's.

Walker, too, retired to rest, but not to sleep, for his mind was occupied in turning over means whereby to obtain some of the real capital with which people here seemed to be superabundantly provided. He had speculations to carry out, and money was the indispensable element. Had he only been able to read the landlord's thoughts, he might have turned quietly over and slept; for so held was that person's mind by the idea that his ultimate success was to be achieved through the medium of his unknown guest, that he would without hesitation have lent him double the sum necessary for his financial arrangements.

There was a disturbance some time about the middle of the night. People came along in wagons, as usual, waking up the bar-keeper, whose dreams perpetually ran upon that kind of trouble. Walker, who was wide awake, gathered from the conversation below that the travellers had only halted for drinks, and would immediately resume their way westward with all speed. He arose and looked out at the open window, which was about fifteen feet from the ground. Something white loomed up through the darkness: it was the awning of one of the wagons, which stood just under the window, to the sill of which it reached within a few feet. Walker, brought up in the rough-and-ready school, had lain down to rest with his trousers on. A sudden inspiration now seized him: he slipped them rapidly off, and dropped them silently on to the roof of the wagon, which soon after moved on with the others, and disappeared into the night. This done, he opened softly the door of the room, and, leaving it ajar, returned to bed and slept.

Morning was well advanced when Walker arose, and began operations by moving the furniture about in an excited manner, to attract the attention of those in the bar below, and convey an idea of search. Presently he went to the door of the room, and, uttering an Indian howl, by way of securing immediate attendance, cried out,--

"Hullo, below! where's my pants?--bar-keeper, fetch along my pants!--landlord, I don't want to be troublesome, but just take off them pants, if you happen to have mistook 'em for your own, and oblige the right owner with a look at 'em, will you?"

Puzzled at this address, which was couched in much stronger language--according to old Quatreaux's version of it--than I should like to commit to paper, the landlord and bar-keeper at once proceeded to Walker's room, where they found him sitting, expectantly, on the side of the bed, with his horse-pistols gathered together beside him. Of course, they denied all knowledge of his pantaloons,--didn't steal nobody's pants in that house, nor nothin'.

Walker looked sternly at them, and, playing with one of his pistols, exclaimed, with the usual redundants,--

"You lie!--you've stole my pants between you; you've found out what they were worth by this time, I guess; but I'll have 'em back, and that in a hurry, or else my name a'n't Walker,--Peter Walker."

He added his Christian name, because a reminiscence of the mystery belonging to his patronymic by itself flashed upon him.

Now the name of Pete Walker was potent along the frontier, because of his influence with the wild mountain-men, who did reckless deeds on his account, unknown to him and otherwise. Another vision than that of last night overcame the landlord,--a vision of Lynch and ashes.

"So you're Pete Walker, be you?" asked he, in a tone of mingled respect and admiration, slightly tremulous with fear. "How do you do, Mr. Walker?--how do you find yourself this morning, Sir?"

"I didn't come here to find myself," retorted Walker, fiercely. "I found my door open, though, when I woke up,--but I couldn't find my pants. You must get 'em, or pay for 'em, and that right away."

"Them cusses that passed through here last night!" exclaimed the landlord. "I guess the pants is gone on the sundown trail, stripes and all."

Walker thought it was quite probable that they had; but they were stolen from that house, and the house must pay for them.

Lynch and ashes again blazed before the landlord's eyes.

"How much might the pants be worth, now, at cost price?" asked he. "All wool, you say, only the stripes; but, as they was nearly all stripes, you needn't holler much about the wool, I reckon. How much, now?"

"Two hundred and ten dollars," replied Walker, with impressive exactness.

"Thunder!" exclaimed the landlord. "I thought they might be fancy-priced, sure-ly, but that's awful!"

"Ten dollars, cash price, for the pants," proceeded Walker, "and two hundred for that exact amount in gold stitched up in the waistband of em."

"The Devil has got 'em, anyhow!" said the landlord,--"for I saw a queer critter, in my sleep, flying about with 'em on. Wings looks kinder awful along o' pants with stripes. There'll be no luck round till they're paid for, I guess. Couldn't you take my best checkers for 'em, now, with fifty dollars quilted into the waistband,--s-a-ay?"

"My name's Walker,--Peter Walker," was the reply.

The landlord was no match for that name, so disagreeably redolent of Lynch and ashes. Thorough search was made upon the premises, and to some distance around, in the wild hope that the missing trousers might have walked off spontaneously, and lain down somewhere to sleep; but, of course, nothing came of the investigation, although Walker assisted at it with his usual energy. All compromise was rejected by him, and it was not yet noon when he rode proudly away from the lone hostelry, in the landlord's best checkers, for which he kindly allowed him five dollars, receiving from him the balance, two hundred and five dollars, in gold.

I forget now what Walker did with that money, although Quatreaux knew exactly, and told me all about it. Suffice it to say that he made a grand _coup_ with it, in the purchase of a mill-privilege, or claim, or something of the kind. Less than a year after the events narrated, he again rode up to the lone hostelry, which was not so lonely now, however; for houses were growing up around it, and it took boarders and rang a dinner-bell, and maintained a landlady as well as a landlord, besides. The landlord was astonished when Walker counted out to him two hundred and five dollars in gold,--surprised when to that was added a round sum for interest,--ecstatic, on being presented with a brand-new pair of pantaloons, of the same pattern as the expensive ones formerly so admired by him. But his features collapsed, and for some time wore an expression of imbecility, when he learned the details of the adventure, and found out that "some things"--landlords, for example--"can be done as well as others."

It was with little reminiscences like the one just narrated that old Quatreaux used to wile away the time, as we threaded the intricate ditches of the marsh in his canoe, so hedged in by the tall reeds that our horizon was within paddle's length of us. With that presumptive _clairvoyance_ which appears to be an essential property of the French _raconteur_, he did not confine himself to external fact in his narratives, but always professed to report minutely the thoughts that flashed through the mind of such and such a person, on the particular occasion referred to. He was a master of dialects,--Yankee, Pennsylvanian Dutch, and Irish.

"Where did you get your English, old man?" I asked him, as we scudded across the lake in our canoe, with a small sail up, one red October evening.

"In Pennsylvania," replied he. "I went there on my own hook, when I was about twelve year old, and worked in an oil-mill for four year."

"In an oil-mill? Perhaps that accounts for the glibness with which language slips off your tongue."

"'Guess it do," said the old _voyageur_, with ready assent.

We nearly got foul of a raft coming down the lake, manned with a rugged set of half-breeds, who had a cask of whiskey on board, and were very drunk and boisterous.

"Ugly customers to deal with, those _brûlés_," remarked I, when we had got clear away from them.

"Some on 'em is," replied the old _voyageur_. "Did you notice the one with the queer eye,--him in the Scotch cap and _shupac_ moccasons?"

I _had_ noticed him, and an ill-looking thief he was. One of his eyes, either from natural deformity or the effect of hostile operation, was dragged down from its proper parallel, and planted in a remote socket near the corner of his mouth, whence it glared and winked with super-natural ferocity.

"That's Rupe Falardeau," continued my companion. "His father, old Rupe, got his eye taken down in a deck-fight with a Mississippi boatman; and this boy was born with the same mark,--only the eye's lower down still. If that's to go on in the family, I guess there'll be a Falardeau with his eye in his knee, some time."

In the deck-fight in which old Rupe got his ugly mark Pete Walker had a hand; and the part he took in it, as related to me by old Quatreaux, who was also present, affords a good example of the tact and coolness which gave him such mastery over the wild spirits among whom he worked out his destiny.

Walker was coming down a lumbering-river--I forget the name of it--on board a small tug-steamboat, in which he had an interest. He had gone into other speculations beside furs, by this time, and had contracts in two or three places for supplying remote stations with salt pork, tea, and other staple provisions of the lumbering-craft.

Stopping to wood at the mouth of a creek, a gang of raftsmen came on board,--half-breed Canadians of fierce and demoralized aspect,--men of great muscular strength, and armed heavily with axes and butcher-knives. The gang was led by Rupe Falardeau, a dangerous man, whether drunk or sober, and one whose antecedents were recorded in blood. These men had been drinking, and were very noisy and intrusive, and presently a row arose between them and some of the boat-hands. Fisticuffs and kicks were first exchanged, but without any great loss of blood. Knives were then drawn and nourished, and matters were beginning to assume a serious aspect, when Walker made his appearance forward of the paddle-box, pointing a heavy pistol right at the head of the ringleader.

"Rupe!" shouted he, in a voice that attracted immediate attention, "drop that knife, or else I shoot!"

The crowd parted for a moment, and Rupe, standing alone near the bows, wheeled round with a yell, and glared fiercely at the speaker.

"Drop that knife!" repeated Walker.--"One, two, _three_!--I'll give you a last chance, and when I say _three_ again, I shoot, by thunder!"

The last word had not rolled away, when the gleaming knife flashed from the hand of Rupe, glanced close by Walker's ear, and sped quivering into the paddle-box, just behind his head.

"Good for you, Rupe!" exclaimed Walker, lowering his pistol, with a pleasant smile,--"good for you!--but, _sacré bapteme_! how dead I'd have shot you, if you hadn't dropped that knife!"