Chapter II: Front Matter (2)

“That will do,” ejaculated Brush, clasping his hands before him, and twirling his thumbs; and he then closed his eyes for the purpose of reflecting upon his condition with a more perfect concentration of thought than can be obtained when outward objects distract the mind. But thinking in this way is always a hazardous experiment, whether it be after dinner, or in the evening; and Peter Brush soon unwittingly fell into a troubled, murmuring sleep, in which his words were mere repetitions of what he had said before, the general scope of the argument being to prove the received axiom of former times, that republics do not distribute their favours in proportion to services rendered, and that, in the speaker’s opinion, they are not, in this respect, much better than the princes against whom his mother cautioned him. Such, at least, was the conviction of Mr. Brush; at which he had arrived, not by theory and distant observation, but by his own personal experience.

It is a long lane which has no turning, and it is a long sleep in the open air, especially in a city, which does not meet with interruption. Brush found it so in this instance, as he had indeed more than once before. Several gentlemen, followed by a dog, arrived at the foot of the steps, and, after a short conversation, dispersed each to his several home. One, however, remained—the owner of the dog—who, whistling for his canine favourite, took out his night-key, and walked up the steps. The dog, bounding before his master, suddenly stopped, and after attentively regarding the recumbent Brush, uttered a sharp rapid bark.

The rapidity of mental operations is such that it frequently happens, if sleep be disturbed by external sounds, that the noise is instantly caught up by the ear, and incorporated with the subject of the dream—or perhaps a dream is instantaneously formed upon the nucleus suggested by the vibration of the tympanum. The bark of the dog had one of these effects upon Mr. Brush.

“Bow! wow! waugh!” said the dog.

“There’s a fellow making a speech against our side,” muttered Peter; “but it’s all talk—where’s your facts?—print your speech in pamphlet form, and I’ll answer it. Hurray for us!—everybody else is rascals—nothing but ruination when that fellow’s principles get the upper hand—our side for ever—we’re the boys!”

“Be still, Ponto!” said the gentleman. “Now, Sir, be pleased to get up, and carry yourself to some other place. I don’t know which side has the honour of claiming you, but you are certainly on the wrong side at present.”

“Don’t be official and trouble yourself about other people’s business,” said Brush, trying to open his eyes; “don’t be official, for it isn’t the genteel thing.”

“Not official! what do you mean by that? I shall be very official, and trundle you down the steps if you are not a little more rapid in your motions.”

“Oh, very well,” responded Brush, as he wheeled round in a sitting posture, and fronted the stranger—“very well; be as sassy as you please; I suppose you’ve got an office, by the way you talk—you’ve got one of the fishes, though perhaps it is but a minny, and I ain’t; but if I had, I’d show you a thing or two. Be sassy, be anything, Mr. Noodle-soup. I don’t know which side you’re on either, but I do know one thing; it isn’t saying much for your boss politicianer that he chose you when I must have been on his list for promotion; that’s all, though yon are so stiff, and think yourself pretty to look at. But them that’s pretty to look at ain’t always good ’uns to go, or you wouldn’t be poking here. Be off; there’s no more business before this meeting, and you may adjourn. It’s moved, seconded, and carried—pay the landlord for the use of the room as you go.”

The stranger, now becoming somewhat amused, felt a disposition to entertain himself a little with Peter.

“How does it happen,” said he, “that such a public-spirited individual as you appear to be should find himself in this condition? You’ve had a little too much of the _stimulantibus_, I fear.”

“I don’t know Greek, but I guess what you mean,” was the answer. “It’s owing to the weather—part to the weather, and part because republics is ungrateful; that’s considerable the biggest part. Either part is excuse enough, and both together makes it a credit. When it’s such weather as this, it takes the electerizing fluid out of you; and if you want to feel something like; do you know what ‘something like’ is? it’s cat-bird, jam up; if you want to feel so, you must pour a little of the electerizing fluid into you. In this kind of weather you must tune yourself up, and get, rosumed, or you ain’t good for much, tuned up to concert pitch. But all that’s a trifle; put not your trust in politicianers.”

“And why not, Mr. Rosum?”

“Why not! Help us up—there—steady she goes—hold on! Why not?—look at me, and you’ll see the why as large as life. I’m the why you mustn’t put your trust in politicianers. I’m a rig’lar patriot—look at my coat. I’m all for the public good—twig the holes in my trousers. I’m steady in my course, and I’m upright in my conduct—don’t let me fall down. I’ve tried all parties, year in and year out, just by way of making myself popular and agreeable; and I’ve tried to be on both sides at once,” roared Brush, with great emphasis, as he slipped and fell, “and this is the end of it!”

His auditor laughed heartily at this striking illustration of the political course of Peter Brush, and seemed quite gratified with so strong a proof of the danger of endeavouring to be on two sides at once. He therefore assisted the fallen to rise.

“Are you hurt?”

“No, I’m used to being knocked about—the steps and the pavement are no worse than other people—they’re like politicianers—you can’t put any trust in ’em. But,” continued Brush, drawing a roll of crumbled paper from the crown of his still more crumpled hat, “see here now, you’re a clever fellow, and I’ll get you to sign my recommendation. Here’s a splendid character for me all ready wrote down, so it won’t give you any trouble, only to put your name to it.”

“But what office does it recommend you for? what kind of recommendation is it?”

“It’s a circular recommend—a slap at anything that’s going.”

“Firing into the flock, I suppose!”

“That’s it exactly, good character, fit for any fat post either under the city government, the state government, or the gineral government. Now jist put your fist to it,” added Peter, in his most persuasive tones, as he smoothed the paper over his knee, spread it upon the step, and produced a bit of lead pencil which he first moistened with his lips, and then offered to his interlocutor.

“Excuse me,” was the laughing response; “it’s too dark, I can’t see either to read or write. But what made you a politicianer? Haven’t you got a trade.”

“Trade! yes,” replied Brush, contemptuously; “but what’s a trade, when a feller’s got a soul! I love my country, and I want an office—I don’t care what, so it’s fat and easy. I’ve a genus for governing—for telling people what to do, and looking at ’em do it. I want to take care of my country, and I want my country to take care of me. Head work is the trade I’m made for—talking—that’s my line—talking in the streets, talking in the bar rooms, talking in the oyster cellars. Talking is the grease for the waggon wheels of the body politic and the body corpulent, and nothing will go on well till I’ve got my say in the matter; for I can talk all day, and most of the night, only stopping to wet my whistle. But parties is all alike—all ungrateful; no respect for genus—no respect for me. I’ve tried both sides, got nothing, and I’ve a great mind to knock off and call it half a day. I would, if my genus didn’t make me talk, and think, and sleep so much I can’t find time to work.”

“Well,” said the stranger, “you must find time to go away. You’re too noisy. How would you like to go before the Mayor?”

“No, I’d rather not. Stop—now I think of it, I’ve asked him before; but perhaps if you’d speak a good word, he’d give me the first vacancy. Introduce me properly, and say that I want something to do shocking—no, not something to do—I want something to get; my genus won’t let me work. I’d like to have a fat salary, and to be general superintendent of things in general and nothing in particular, so I could walk about the streets, and see what is going on. Now, put my best leg foremost—say how I can make speeches, and how I can hurray at elections.”

“Away with you,” said the stranger, as he ran up the steps, and opened the door. “Make no noise in this neighbourhood, or you’ll be taken care of soon enough.”

“Well, now, if that isn’t ungrateful,” soliloquized Brush; “keep me here talking, and then slap the door right in my face. That’s the way politicianers serve me, and it’s about all I’d a right to expect. Oh, pshaw! sich a world—sich a people!”

Peter rolled up his “circular recommend” put it in his hat, and slowly sauntered away. As he is not yet provided for, he should receive the earliest attention of parties, or disappointment may induce him to abandon both, take the field “upon his own hook,” and constitute an independent faction under the name of the “Brush party,” the cardinal principle of which will be that peculiarly novel impulse to action, hostility to all “politicianers” who are not on the same side.

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[7] By Neal.

IV.
COUSIN SALLY DILLIARD.
A LEGAL SKETCH IN THE “OLD NORTH STATE.”

SCENE: _A Court of Justice in North Carolina_.

A _beardless_ disciple of Themis rises, and thus addresses the court:

“May it please your worships, and you, gentlemen of the jury, since it has been my fortune (good or bad, I will not say) to exercise myself in legal disquisitions, it has never befallen me to be obliged to prosecute so direful, marked, and malicious an assault—a more wilful, violent, dangerous battery—and finally, a more diabolical breach of the peace, has seldom happened in a civilized country; and I dare say it has seldom been your duty to pass upon one so shocking to benevolent feelings, as this which took place over at Captain Rice’s, in this county. But you will hear from the witnesses.”

The witnesses being sworn, two or three were examined and deposed. One said that he heard the noise, and did not see the fight; another that he had seen the row, but didn’t know who struck first; and a third, that he was very drunk, and couldn’t say much about the skrimmage.

_Lawyer Chops._ I am sorry, gentlemen, to have occupied your time with the stupidity of the witnesses examined. It arises, gentlemen, altogether from misapprehension on my part. Had I known, as I now do, that I had a witness in attendance who was well acquainted with all the circumstances of the case, and who was able to make himself clearly understood by the court and jury, I should not so long have trespassed upon your time and patience. Come forward, Mr. Harris, and be sworn.

So forward comes the witness, a fat, shuffy old man, a “leetle” corned, and took his oath with an air.

_Chops._ Harris, we wish you to tell all about the riot that happened the other day at Captain Rice’s; and as a good deal of time has already been wasted in circumlocution, we wish you to be compendious, and at the same time as explicit, as possible.

_Harris._ Adzackly (giving the lawyer a knowing wink, and at the same time clearing his throat). Captain Rice, he gin a treat, and cousin Sally Dilliard, she came over to our house, and axed me if my wife she moutn’t go? I told cousin Sally Dilliard that my wife was poorly, being as how she had a touch of the rheumatics in the hip, and the big swamp was in the road, and the big swamp was up, for there had been a heap of rain lately; but howsomever, as it was she, cousin Sally Dilliard, my wife she mout go. Well, cousin Sally Dilliard then axed me if Mose he moutn’t go? I told cousin Sally Dilliard that he was the foreman of the crap, and the crap was smartly in the grass; but howsomever as it was she, cousin Sally Dilliard, Mose he mout go.

_Chops._ In the name of common sense, Mr. Harris, what do you mean by this rigmarole?

_Witness._ Captain Rice he gin a treat, and cousin Sally Dilliard she came over to our house, and axed me if my wife she moutn’t go? I told cousin Sally Dilliard—

_Chops._ Stop, Sir, if you please; we don’t want to hear anything about your cousin Sally Dilliard and your wife. Tell us about the fight at Rice’s.

_Witness._ Well, I will, Sir, if you will let me.

_Chops._ Well, Sir, go on.

_Witness._ Well, Sir, Captain Rice he gin a treat, and Cousin Sally Dilliard she came over to our house, and axed me if my wife she moutn’t go—

_Chops._ There it is again. Witness, please to stop.

_Witness._ Well, Sir, what do you want?

_Chops._ We want to know about the fight; and you must not proceed in this impertinent story. Do you know anything about the matter before the court?

_Witness._ To be sure, I do.

_Chops._ Well, go on and tell it, and nothing else.

_Witness._ Well, Captain Rice he gin a treat—

_Chops._ This is intolerable. May it please the court, I move that this witness be committed for a contempt; he seems to be trifling with this court.

_Court._ Witness, you are now before a court of justice, and unless you behave yourself in a more becoming manner, you will be sent to gaol; so begin and tell what you know about the fight at Captain Rice’s.

_Witness._ (alarmed.) Well, gentlemen, Captain Rice he gin a treat, and Cousin Sally Dilliard—

_Chops._ I hope the witness may be ordered into custody.

_Court._ (after deliberating.) Mr. Attorney, the Court is of opinion that we may save time by telling witness to go on in his own way. Proceed, Mr. Harris, with your story, but stick to the point.

_Witness._ Yes, gentlemen. Well, Captain Rice he gin a treat, and Cousin Sally Dilliard she came over to our house, and axed me if my wife she mout go? I told Cousin Sally Dilliard that my wife she was poorly, being as how she had the rheumatics in the hips, and the big swamp was up; but howsomever, as it was she, Cousin Sally Dillard, my wife she mout go. Well, Cousin Sally Dilliard then axed me if Mose he moutn’t go. I told Cousin Sally Dilliard as how Mose he was foreman of the crap, and the crap was smartly in the grass; but howsomever, as it was she, Cousin Sally Dilliard, Mose he mout go. So they goes on together, Mose, my wife, and Cousin Sally Dilliard, and they came to the big swamp and it was up, as I was telling you; but being as how there was a log across the big swamp, Cousin Sally Dilliard and Mose, like genteel folks, they walked the log; but my wife, like a darned fool, hoisted her coats and waded through. _And that’s all I know about the fight._

V.
THE AGE OF WONDERS.

My neighbour over the way, Colonel Swallowmore, thinks himself born in the age of wonders:—and no wonder he thinks so, for he reads the newspapers and believes them! It is astonishing how gravely the Colonel gulps down every crude lump of monstrous fudge the papers contain. Sea-serpents, crook-necked squashes, consumption cured, talking pigs, and three-legged cats, are nothing to an appetite like his. He believes electioneering speeches and predictions of political quidnuncs. All is fish that comes to his net.

“These are times! Mr. Titterwell, these are times, indeed!” says he to me, with a most rueful visage, as he lays down the newspaper. “What _are_ we coming to! People have got to _such_ a pass! Something is certainly going to happen before long. I’m really, really frightened to think of it. There never were such doings in my day. Positively I’ve got so now that I an’t surprised at anything!”

And so he shakes his head, hitches up his breeches, sticks his spectacles higher up his nose, and reads the wonders of the day over again.

Twenty-eight several times has this country been irretrievably ruined since I knew the Colonel. Seven times has the world come quite to an end. Nineteen times have we had the hardest winter ever known within the memory of the oldest inhabitant. Twenty-one times there never was seen such a backward spring. Forty-seven times the approaching session of Congress has been one of uncommon interest; and thirteen thousand, nine hundred and sixty-six times has death snatched away the best man upon earth, leaving mortals inconsolable, and society with an immense void.

The mental agitations he has undergone in pondering upon the “wonderful wonders” that spring up as plenty as grasshoppers in this wonderful age, are not to be described; for the Colonel takes an immense interest in public affairs, and cannot see the universe go to ruin about his ears without pangs of sympathy. Whatever mole-hill he stumbles upon, he makes a mountain of it.

He thought the Salem mill-dam absolutely necessary to the balance of power, and was certain that the bridge over Peg’s Run was the only means of saving the nation.

He went to bed in a great fright on reading in the paper that Emerson’s Spelling-book would overthrow the liberties of the country; and he was struck with the deepest alarm when he heard of the feud that had broken out between the Houses of Correction and Reformation about a cart-load of chips.

I shall never forget the anxiety that beset him last summer when the City Council could not come to a choice about the Superintendent of Drains. The newspapers were full of the affair, and the Colonel, I verily believe, would have worried himself into a nervous fever, had this alarming schism between the two branches of the city government been carried much farther.

“A strange affair, Mr. Titterwell, a very mysterious affair,” said he. “There are some dark, under-ground manœuvres going on in this matter, depend upon it; and really the Mayor and Aldermen—” here he turned up the whites of his eyes and shook his head. Heaven only knows what he thought of those great dignitaries. However, the affair of the drains got through without any great catastrophe to folk above ground, that ever I could learn, and the Colonel’s consternation subsided for that time.

All the world were going mad the other day about white mustard-seed.

“Pray, Colonel,” said I, “what is white mustard-seed to you or me? Can’t we eat our bread and butter, and sleep till six in the morning, without troubling our heads about white mustard-seed? Didn’t we fight the battles of the revolution without white mustard-seed? Didn’t Samson carry off the gates of Gaza without white mustard-seed? Didn’t your blessed old grandmother knit stockings and live to the age of ninety without white mustard-seed? Then what’s the use of minding the dolts in the newspapers who tell you that white mustard-seed is better than meat, drink and sunshine, and that we shall all die untimely deaths unless we take white mustard-seed?”

The Colonel could not understand it: it was a great mystery indeed, but the newspapers were full of it, and he was convinced white mustard-seed had something in it, that would come out in due time. White mustard-seed, however, has had its day; and the Colonel has probably taken to saw-dust, as I heard him talk of Dr. Graham last week.

But of all mortals the Colonel is the most prone to sympathize with the unfortunate public upon the loss of great men. I popped in upon him the day before yesterday, and found him lamenting a huge public calamity.

Three great men had fallen in Israel—an eminent clergyman, an eminent country representative, and an eminent dealer in salt-fish on Long Wharf. The Colonel was triply dolorous upon the matter; society, business, politics, had suffered an immense loss; a loss incalculable, irreparable, and so forth.

I assured the Colonel there was no great cause for apprehension, for the world was pretty sure to turn round once in twenty-four hours, whether great men died or lived.

“The fact is, Colonel,” said I, “great men may die as fast as they please for aught I care. I have never been frightened by the death of them since an adventure that happened to me in my ninth year, when I lived in the country.”

“What is that?” asked the Colonel.

“I’ll tell you,” said I.

“On a certain day—a day never to be forgotten by me, news arrived in town that the Governor was dead. No sovereign prince, pontiff, or potentate on the face of the earth, ever appeared so gigantic and formidable to my childish eyes, as that harmless gentleman the Governor of Massachusetts. Imagine the shock occasioned by this announcement! Straightway the bells began tolling, people collected in groups, quidnuncs scoured from place to place, gossips chattered, children gaped in dumb astonishment, and old women with dismal faces ran about croaking ‘The Governor is dead!’

“To me these things seemed to betoken the general wreck of nature, for how the order of the universe could subsist after the death of the Governor, was beyond my comprehension. I expected the sun and moon to fall, the stars to shoot from their spheres, and my grandfather’s mill-pond to upset. The horrible forebodings under which I lay down to sleep that night, are not to be described, and it was a long time ere I could close my eyes. In the morning I was awakened by a dreadful rumbling noise. ‘The Governor is dead!’ I exclaimed, starting up in a terrible fright. The noise continued: I listened, and discovered it to be nothing more than my old grandmother, grinding coffee!

“The effect of this prodigious anti-climax can hardly be imagined; never in my life was I so puzzled and confounded as at the first moment of this discovery.

“‘What!’ said I to myself, ‘is the Governor dead, and yet people grind coffee? then it seems we are to eat our breakfast just as if nothing had happened. Is a great man of no more consequence than this?’

“A new ray of light broke in upon me. I fell to pondering upon the occurrence, and five minutes pondering completely demolished the power supreme with which many a pompous owl had stalked through my imagination.

“From that moment, governors, town-clerks, select-men, representatives, justices of the peace, and great people of every degree, lost nine-tenths of their importance in my eyes, for I plainly saw the world could do without them.

“How often, in after life, have I applied the moral of this incident! How much moving eloquence and dire denunciation have I passed by with the remark:

“‘That is a great affair, no doubt, but it won’t stop a coffee-mill.’”

VI.
HOW SIMON SUGGS “RAISED JACK.”

Until Simon entered his seventeenth year, he lived with his father, an old “hard-shell” Baptist preacher; who, though very pious and remarkably austere, was very avaricious. The old man reared his boys—or endeavoured to do so—according to the strictest requisition of the moral law. But he lived, at the time to which we refer, in Middle Georgia, which was then newly settled; and Simon, whose wits from the time he was a “shirt-tail boy,” were always too sharp for his father’s, contrived to contract all the coarse vices incident to such a region.

He stole his mother’s roosters to fight them at Bob Smith’s grocery, and his father’s plough-horses to enter them in “quarter” matches at the same place. He pitched dollars with Bob Smith himself, and could “beat him into doll-rags” whenever it came to a measurement. To crown his accomplishments, Simon was tip-top at the game of “old sledge,” which was the fashionable game of that era, and was early initiated in the mystery of “stocking the papers.”

The vicious habits of Simon were, of course, a sore trouble to his father, Elder Jedediah. He reasoned, he counselled, he remonstrated, he lashed, but Simon was an incorrigible, irreclaimable devil.

One day the simple-minded old man came rather unexpectedly to the field where he had left Simon and Ben, and a negro boy named Bill, at work. Ben was still following his plough, but Simon and Bill were in a fence-corner very earnestly engaged at “seven up.” Of course the game was instantly suspended, as soon as they spied the old man sixty or seventy yards off, striding towards them.

It was evidently a “gone case” with Simon and Bill; but our hero determined to make the best of it. Putting the cards into one pocket, he coolly picked up the small coins which constituted the stake, and fobbed them in the other, remarking:

“Well, Bill, this game’s blocked; we’d as well quit.”

“But, Massa Simon,” remarked the boy, “half dat money’s mine. An’t you gwine to lemme hab ’em?”

“Oh, never mind the money, Bill; the old man’s going to take the bark off of both of us—and besides, with the hand I helt when we quit, I should ’a beat you and won it all any way.”

“Well, but, Massa Simon, we nebber finish de game, and de rule—”

“Go to Old Scratch with your rule!” said the impatient Simon; “don’t you see daddy’s right down upon us, with an armful of hickories? I tell you I hilt nothin’ but trumps, and could ’a beat the horns off of a billy-goat. Don’t that satisfy you? Somehow or nother your d—d hard to please!” About this time a thought struck Simon, and in a low tone—for by this time the Reverend Jedediah was close at hand—he continued: “but maybe daddy don’t know, _right down sure_, what we’ve been doin’. Let’s try him with a lie—twon’t hurt no way; let’s tell him we’ve been playin’ mumble-peg.”

Bill was perforce compelled to submit to this inequitable adjustment of his claim of a share of the stakes; and of course agreed to the game of mumble-peg. All this was settled and a peg driven in the ground, slyly and hurriedly between Simon’s legs as he sat on the ground, just as the old man reached the spot. He carried under his left arm several neatly-trimmed sprouts of formidable length, while in his left hand he held one which he was intently engaged in divesting of its superfluous twigs.

“Soho! youngsters!—_you_ in the fence-corner, and the _crop_ in the grass? what saith the Scriptur’ Simon? ‘Go to the ant, thou sluggard,’ and so forth and so on. What in the round creation of the yearth have you and that nigger been a-doin’?”

Bill shook with fear, but Simon was cool as a cucumber, and answered his father to the effect that they had been wasting a little time in a game of mumble-peg.

“Mumble-peg! mumble-peg!” repeated old Mr. Suggs, “what’s that?”

Simon explained the process of _rooting_ for the peg; how the operator got upon his knees, keeping his arms stiff by his side, leaned forward and extracted the peg with his teeth.

“So you git _upon your knees_, do you, to pull up that nasty little stick! you’d better git upon ’em to ask mercy for your sinful souls, and for a dyin’ world. But let’s see one o’ you git the peg up now.”

The first impulse of our hero was to volunteer to gratify the curiosity of his worthy sire, but a glance at the old man’s countenance changed his “notion,” and he remarked that “Bill was a long ways the best hand.”

Bill, who did not deem Simon’s modesty an omen favourable to himself, was inclined to reciprocate compliments with his young master; but a gesture of impatience from the old man set him instantly upon his knees; and, bending forward, he essayed to lay hold with his teeth, of the peg, which Simon, just at that moment, very wickedly pushed half an inch further down.

Just as the breeches and hide of the boy were stretched to the uttermost, old Mr. Suggs brought down his longest hickory, with both hands, upon the precise spot where the tension was greatest. With a loud yell, Bill plunged forward, upsetting Simon, and rolled in the grass, rubbing the castigated part with fearful energy. Simon, though overthrown, was unhurt; and he was mentally complimenting himself upon the sagacity which had prevented his illustrating the game of mumble-peg, for the paternal amusement, when his attention was arrested by that worthy person’s stooping to pick up something—what is it?—a card upon which Simon had been sitting, and which, therefore, had not gone with the rest of the pack into his pocket.

The simple Mr. Suggs had only a vague idea of the pasteboard abomination called _cards_; and though he decidedly inclined to the opinion that this was one, he was by no means certain of the fact. Had Simon known this, he would certainly have escaped; but he did not. His father, assuming the look of extreme sapiency which is always worn by the interrogator who does not desire or expect to increase his knowledge by his questions, asked:

“What’s this, Simon?”

“The Jack a-dimunts,” promptly responded Simon, who gave up all as lost after this _faux pas_.

“What was it doin’ down thar, Simon, my sonny?” continued Mr. Suggs, in an ironically affectionate tone of voice.

“I had it under my leg thar, to make it on Bill, the first time it come trumps,” was the ready reply.

“What’s trumps?” asked Mr. Suggs, with a view of arriving at the import of the word.

“Nothin’ ain’t trumps _now_,” said Simon, who misapprehended his father’s meaning, “but _clubs_ was, when you come along and busted up the game.”

A part of this answer was Greek to the Reverend Mr. Suggs, but a portion of it was full of meaning. They had, then, most unquestionably been “throwing” cards, the scoundrels! the “oudacious” little hellions!

“To the “Mulberry,” with both on ye! in a hurry,” said the old man, sternly.

But the lads were not disposed to be in a “hurry,” for the “Mulberry” was the scene of all formal punishment administered during work hours in the field. Simon followed his father, however; but made, as he went along, all manner of “faces” at the old man’s back; gesticulated as if he were going to strike him between the shoulders with his fists; and kicking at him so as almost to touch his coat-tail with his shoe. In this style they walked on to the mulberry-tree, in whose shade Simon’s brother Ben was resting.

It must not be supposed that, during the walk to the place of punishment, Simon’s mind was either inactive or engaged in suggesting the grimaces and contortions wherewith he was pantomimically expressing his irreverent sentiments towards his father. Far from it. The movements of his limbs and features were the mere workings of habit—the self-grinding of the corporeal machine—for which his reasoning half was only remotely responsible. For while Simon’s person was thus on its own account, “making game” of old Jedediah, his wits, in view of the anticipated flogging, were dashing, springing, bounding, darting about, in hot chase of some expedient suitable to the necessities of the case—much after the manner in which puss, when Betty, armed with the broom, and hotly seeking vengeance for the pantry robbed or room defiled, has closed upon her the garret doors and windows, attempts all sorts of impossible exits, comes down at last in the corner, with panting side and glaring eye, exhausted and defenceless. Our unfortunate hero could devise nothing by which he could reasonably expect to escape the heavy blows of his father. Having arrived at this conclusion and the “Mulberry” about the same time, he stood with a dogged look, awaiting the issue.

The old man Suggs made no remark to any one while he was seizing up Bill—a process which, though by no means novel to Simon, seemed to excite in him a sort of painful interest. He watched it closely, as if to learn the precise fashion of his father’s knot; and when at last Bill was strung up a-tiptoe to a limb, and the whipping commenced, Simon’s eye followed every movement of his father’s arm; and as each blow descended upon the bare shoulders of his sable friend, his own body writhed and “wriggled” in involuntary sympathy.

“It’s the devil!—it’s tarnation,” said Simon to himself, “to take such a wallopin’ as that. Why the old man looks like he wants to git to the holler, if he could—rot his picter! It’s wuth, at the least, fifty cents—je-e-miny, how _that_ hurt!—yes, it’s wuth three-quarters of a dollar, to take that ’ere lickin’! Wonder if I’m ‘predestinated,’ as old Jed’diah says, to get the feller to it? Lord, how daddy blows! I do wish he’d bust right open, the darn’d old deer-face! If ’twan’t for Ben helpin’ him, I b’lieve I’d give the old dog a tussel when it comes for my turn. It couldn’t make the thing no wuss, if it didn’t make it no better. Drot it! what do boys have daddies for, any how? ’Taint for nuthin’ but jist to beat ’em and work ’em—There’s some use in mammies—I kin poke my finger right in the old ’oman’s eye, and keep it thar, and if I say it aint thar, she’ll say ’taint thar, too. I wish she was here to hold daddy off. If ’twan’t so fur, I’d holler for her any how. How she would cling to the old feller’s coat-tail!”

Mr. Jedediah Suggs let down Bill, and untied him. Approaching Simon, whose coat was off:

“Come, Simon, son,” said he, “cross them hands, I’m gwine to correct you.”

“It aint no use, daddy,” said Simon.

“Why so, Simon?”

“Just bekase it aint, I’m gwine to play cards as long as I live. When I go off to myself, I’m gwine to make my livin’ by it. So what’s the use of beatin’ me about it?”

Old Mr. Suggs groaned, as he was wont to do in the pulpit, at this display of Simon’s viciousness.

“Simon,” said he, “you’re a poor ignunt creetur. You don’t know nothin’ and you’ve never been no whars. If I was to turn you off, you’d starve in a week.”

“I wish you’d try me,” said Simon, “and jist see. I’d win more money in a week than you can make in a year. There aint nobody round here kin make seed corn off o’ me at cards. I’m rale smart,” he added, with great emphasis.

“Simon! Simon! you poor unletered fool. Don’t you know that all card-players and chicken-fighters, and horse-racers go to hell? You crack-brained creatur’ you. And don’t you know that them that play cards always lose their money, and—”

“Who wins it all then, daddy?” asked Simon.

“Shet your mouth, you imperdent, slack-jaw’d dog. Your daddy’s a-tryin’ to give you some good advice, and you a-pickin’ up his words that way. I know’d a young man once, when I lived in Ogletharp, as went down to Augusty and sold a hundred dollars’ worth of cotton for his daddy, and some o’ them gambollers got him to drinkin’, and the _very first_ night he was with ’em they got every cent of his money.

“They couldn’t get my money in a _week_,” said Simon. “Anybody can git these here green fellows’ money; them’s the sort I’m a-gwine to watch for, myself. Here’s what kin fix the papers jist about as nice as anybody.”

“Well, it’s no use to argify about the matter,” said old Jedediah; “What saith the Scriptur’? ‘He that begetteth a fool, doeth it to his sorrow.’ Hence, Simon, you’re a poor, miserable fool! so, cross your hands!”

“You’d jist as well not, daddy. I tell you I’m gwine to follow playin’ cards for a livin’, and what’s the use o’ bangin’ a feller about it? I’m as smart as any of ’em, and Bob Smith says them Augusty fellers can’t make rent off o’ me.”

The Reverend Mr. Suggs had, once in his life, gone to Augusta; an extent of travel which in those days was a little unusual. His consideration among his neighbours was considerably increased by the circumstance, as he had all the benefit of the popular inference that no man could visit the city of Augusta without acquiring a vast superiority over all his untravelled neighbours, in every department of human knowledge. Mr. Suggs, then, very naturally felt ineffably indignant that an individual who had never seen a collection of human habitations larger than a log-house village—an individual, in short, no other or better than Bob Smith—should venture to express an opinion concerning the manners, customs, or anything else appertaining to, or in any wise connected with, the _ultima thule_ of backwoods Georgians. There were two propositions which witnessed their own truth to the mind of Mr. Suggs—the one was, that a man who had never been at Augusta, could not know anything about that city, or any place or thing else; the other that one who _had_ been there must, of necessity, be not only well informed as to all things connected with the city itself, but perfectly _au fait_ upon all subjects whatsoever. It was therefore in a tone of mingled indignation and contempt that he replied to the last remark of Simon.

“_Bob Smith_ says—does he? And who’s _Bob Smith_? Much does _Bob Smith_ know about Augusty! He’s been thar, I reckon! Slipped off yarly some mornin’ when nobody warn’t noticin’, and got back afore night! It’s _only_ a hundred and fifty mile. Oh yes, _Bob Smith_ knows all about it! _I_ don’t know nothin’ about it! _I_ a’n’t never been to Augusty—I couldn’t find the road thar I reckon, ha! ha! _Bob—Smi—th!_ The eternal stink! if he was only to see one o’ them fine gentlemen in Augusty, with his fine broad-cloath and bell-crown hat, and shoe-boots a-shinin’ like silver, he’d take to the woods and kill himself a-runnin’. Bob Smith! that’s whar all your devilment comes from, Simon.”

“Bob Smith’s as good as anybody else, I judge; and a heap smarter than some. He showed me how to cut Jack,” continued Simon, “and that’s more than some people can do if they _have_ been to Augusty.”

“If Bob Smith kin do it,” said the old man, “I kin too. I don’t know it by that name; but if it’s book knowledge or plain sense, and Bob kin do it, it’s reasonable to s’pose that old Jed’diah Suggs won’t be bothered bad. Is it any ways similyar to the rule of three, Simon?”

“Pretty much, daddy, but not adzactly,” said Simon, drawing a pack from his pocket to explain. “Now daddy,” he proceeded, “you see these here four cards is what we call Jacks. Well, now, the idee is, if you’ll take the pack and mix ’em all up together, I’ll take off a passel from top, and the bottom one of them I take off will be one of the Jacks.”

“Me to mix em fust?” said Jedediah.

“Yes.”

“And you not to see but the back of the top one, when you go to ‘cut,’ as you call it?”

“Jist so, daddy.”

“And the backs all jist as like as kin be?” said the senior Suggs, examining the cards.

“More like nor cow-peas,” said Simon.

“It can’t be done, Simon,” observed the old man, with great solemnity.

“Bob Smith kin do it, and so kin I.”

“It’s agin nater, Simon; thar a’n’t a man in Augusty, nor on the top of the yearth, that kin do it!”

“Daddy,” said our hero, “ef you’ll bet me—”

“What!” thundered old Mr. Suggs, “_bet_, did you say?” and he came down with a _scorer_ across Simon’s shoulders—“me, Jed’diah Suggs, that’s been in the Lord’s sarvice these twenty years—_me_ bet, you nasty, sassy, triflin’, ugly—”

“I didn’t go to say that, daddy; that warn’t what I ment, adzactly. I ment to say that ef you’d let me off from this here maulin’ you owe me, and _give me_ ‘Bunch’ ef I cut Jack, I’d _give you_ all this here silver, ef I didn’t—that’s all. To be sure, I allers know’d _you_ wouldn’t _bet_.”

Old Mr. Suggs ascertained the exact amount of the silver which his son handed to him, in an old leathern pouch, for inspection. He also, mentally, compared that sum with an imaginary one, the supposed value of a certain Indian pony, called “Bunch,” which he had bought for his “old woman’s” Sunday riding, and which had sent the old lady into a fence-corner, the first—and only—time she had ever mounted him. As he weighed the pouch of silver in his hand, Mr. Suggs also endeavoured to analyze the character of the transaction proposed by Simon. “It sartinly _can’t_ be nothin’ but _givin’_, no way it kin be twisted,” he murmured to himself. “I _know_ he can’t do it, so there’s no resk. What makes bettin’? The resk. It’s a one-sided business, and I’ll jist let him give me all his money, and that’ll put all his wild sportin’ notions out of his head.”

“Will you stand it, daddy?” asked Simon, by way of waking the old man up. “You mought as well, for the whippin’ won’t do you no good; and as for Bunch, nobody about the plantation won’t ride him, but me.”

“Simon,” replied the old man, “I agree to it. Your old daddy is in a close place about payin’ for his land; and this here money—it’s jist eleven dollars lacking of twenty-five cents—will help out mightily. But mind, Simon, ef anything’s said about this, hereafter, remember, you _give_ me the money.”

“Very well, daddy, and ef the thing works up instid o’ down, I s’pose we’ll say you give _me_ Bunch—eh?”

“You won’t never be troubled to tell how you come by Bunch; the thing’s agin natur, and can’t be done. What old Jed’diah Suggs knows, he knows as good as anybody. Give me them fixaments, Simon.”

Our hero handed the cards to his father, who dropping the plough-line with which he had intended to tie Simon’s hands, turned his back to that individual, in order to prevent his witnessing the operation of _mixing_. He then sat down, and very leisurely commenced shuffling the cards, making, however, an exceedingly awkward job of it. Restive _kings_ and _queens_ jumped from his hands, or obstinately refused to slide into the company of the rest of the pack. Occasionally, a sprightly _knave_ would insist on _facing_ his neighhour; or, pressing his edge against another’s, half double himself up, and then skip away. But Elder Jedediah perseveringly continued his attempts to subdue the refractory, while heavy drops burst from his forehead, and ran down his cheeks. All of a sudden, an idea, quick and penetrating as a rifle-ball, seemed to have entered the cranium of the old man. He chuckled audibly. The devil had suggested to Mr. Suggs an _impromptu_ “stock,” which would place the chances of Simon—already sufficiently slim in the old man’s opinion—without the range of possibility. Mr. Suggs forthwith proceeded to cull out all the _picter cards_—so as to be certain to include the _jacks_—and place them at the bottom; with the evident intention of keeping Simon’s fingers above these when he should cut. Our hero, who was quietly looking over his father’s shoulders all the time, did not seem alarmed by this disposition of the cards; on the contrary, he smiled as if he felt perfectly confident of success, in spite of it.

“Now, daddy,” said Simon, when his father had announced himself ready, “nary one of us ain’t got to look at the cards, while I’m a cuttin’; if we do, it’ll spile the conjuration.”

“Very well.”

“And another thing—you’ve got to look me right dead in the eye, daddy—will you?”

“To be sure—to be sure,” said Mr. Suggs; “fire away.”

Simon walked up close to his father, and placed his hand on the pack. Old Mr. Suggs looked in Simon’s eye, and Simon returned the look for about three seconds, during which a close observer might have detected a suspicious working of the wrist of the hand on the cards, but the elder Suggs did not remark it.

“Wake snakes! day’s a breakin’! Rise Jack!” said Simon, cutting half a dozen cards from the top of the pack, and presenting the face of the bottom one for the inspection of his father.

It was the Jack of Hearts!

Old Mr. Suggs staggered back several steps, with uplifted eyes and hands!

“Marciful Master!” he exclaimed, “ef the boy hain’t! well, how in the round creation of the——! Ben, did you ever! to be sure and sartin, Satan has power on this yearth!” and Mr. Suggs groaned in heavy bitterness.

“You never seed nothin’ like that in _Augusty_, did ye, daddy?” asked Simon, with a malicious wink at Ben.

“Simon, _how_ did you do it?” queried the old man, without noticing his son’s question.

“Do it, daddy? Do it? ’Taint nothin’. I done it jest as easy as—shootin’.”

Whether this explanation was entirely, or in any degree, satisfactory to the perplexed mind of the Elder Jedediah Suggs, cannot, after the lapse of time which has intervened, be sufficiently ascertained. It is certain, however, that he pressed the investigation no farther, but merely requested his son Benjamin to witness the fact that, in consideration of his love and affection for his son Simon, and in order to furnish the donee with the means of leaving that portion of the state of Georgia, he bestowed upon him the impracticable pony, “Bunch.”

“Jist so, daddy, jist so; I’ll witness that. But it ’minds me mightily of the way mammy _give_ old Trailler the side of bacon, last week. She was a-sweepin’ up the hath—the meat on the table; old Trailler jumps up, gethers the bacon and darts; mammy arter him with the broomstick as fur as the door, but seein’ the dog has got the start, she shakes the stick at him, and hollers, ‘You sassy, aig-sukkin’, roguish, gnatty, flopped-eared varmint, take it along, take it along! I only wish ’twas full of a’snic and ox vomit and blue vitrul, so as ’twould cut your intrils into chitlins!’ That’s about the way you give Bunch to Simon.”

It was evident to our hero that his father intended he should remain but one more night beneath the paternal roof. What mattered it to Simon?

He went home at night, curried and fed Bunch; whispered confidentially in his ear, that he was the “fastest piece of hoss-flesh, accordin’ to size, that ever shaded the yearth;” and then busied himself in preparing for an early start on the morrow.

VII.
MY FIRST VISIT TO PORTLAND.[8]

In the fall of the year 1829, I took it into my head I’d go to Portland. I had heard a good deal about Portland, what a fine place it was, and how the folks got rich there proper fast; and that fall there was a couple of new papers come up to our place from there, called the “Portland Courier,” and “Family Reader,” and they told a good many queer kind of things, about Portland and one thing another; and all at once it popped into my head, and I up and told father, and sais:

“I am going to Portland whether or no; and I’ll see what this world is made of yet.”

Father stared a little at first, and said he was afraid I would get lost; but when he see I was bent upon it, he give it up, and he stepped to his chist, and opened the till, and took out a dollar, and gave to me; and says he:

“Jack, this is all I can do for you; but go and lead an honest life, and I believe I shall hear good of you yet.”

He turned and walked across the room, but I could see the tears start into his eyes. And mother sat down, and had a hearty crying spell.

This made me feel rather bad for a minit or two, and I almost had a mind to give it up; and then again father’s dream came into my mind, and I mustered up courage, and declared I’d go. So I tackeled up the old horse, and packed in a load of axe-handles, and a few notions; and mother fried me some doughnuts, and put ’em into a box, along with some cheese and sassages, and ropped me up another shirt, for I told her I didn’t know how long I should be gone. And after I got all rigged out, I went round, and bid all the neighbors good-bye, and jumped in, and drove off for Portland.

Aunt Sally had been married two or three years before, and moved to Portland; and I inquired round till I found out where she lived, and went there, and put the old horse up, and eat some supper, and went to bed.

And the next morning I got up, and straightened right off to see the editor of the “Portland Courier,” for I knew, by what I had seen in his paper, that he was just the man to tell me which way to steer. And when I come to see him, I knew I was right; for soon as I told him my name, and what I wanted, he took me by the hand as kind as if he had been a brother, and says he:

“Mister,” says he, “I’ll do anything I can to assist you. You have come to a good town; Portland is a healthy, thriving place, and any man with a proper degree of enterprise may do well here. But,” says he, “stranger,” and he looked mighty kind of knowing, says he, “if you want to make out to your mind, you must do as the steam-boats do.”

“Well,” says I, “how do they do?” for I didn’t know what a steam-boat was any more than the man in the moon.

“Why,” says he, “they go ahead. And you must drive about among the folks here, just as tho’ you were at home, on the farm among the cattle. Don’t be afraid of any of them, but figure away; and, I dare say, you’ll get into good business in a very little while. But,” says he, “there’s one thing you must be careful of; and that is, not to get into the hands of them are folks that trades up round Hucklers’ Row, for there’s some sharpers up there, if they get hold of you, would twist your eye-teeth out in five minits.”

Well, arter he had gin me all the good advice he could, I went back to Aunt Sally’s agin, and got some breakfast; and then I walked all over the town, to see what chance I could find to sell my axe-handles, and things, and to get into business.

After I had walked about three or four hours, I come along towards the upper end of the town, where I found there were stores and shops of all sorts and sizes. And I met a feller, and says I:

“What place is this?”

“Why this,” says he, “is Hucklers’ Row.”

“What,” says I, “are these the stores where the traders in Hucklers’ Row keep?”

And says he: “Yes.”

Well then, says I to myself, I have a pesky good mind to go in and have a try with one of these chaps, and see if they can twist my eye-teeth out. If they can get the best end of a bargain out of me, they can do what there ain’t a man in our place can do; and I should just like to know what sort of stuff these ere Portland chaps are made of. So in I goes into the best-looking store among ’em. And I see some biscuit lying on the shelf, and says I:

“Mister, how much do you ax a piece for them are biscuits?”

“A cent a piece,” says he.

“Well,” says I, “shan’t give you that, but if you’ve a mind to I’ll give you two cents for three of them, for I begin to feel a little as tho’ I would like to take a bite.”

“Well,” says he, “I wouldn’t sell ’em to anybody else so, but seeing it’s you, I don’t care if you take ’em.”

I knew he lied, for he never seen me before in his life. Well, he handed down the biscuits, and I took ’em, and walked round the store a while, to see what else he had to sell. At last, says I:

“Mister, have you got any good cider?”

Says he “Yes, as good as ever ye see.”

“Well,” says I, “what do you ax a glass for it?”

“Two cents,” says he.