Chapter III: Part 3

“’Bount dat time I felt a ’tickler kinder mizzry in my own innards, an’ de nex’ thing I disremember I had Sister Ferreby ’round’ de neck an’ we wus singin’ dat hymn tergedder. Lor’! hit wus awful. I’ve seed menny a sight, but I nurver expect erg’in ter see three hundred an’ sixty-five niggers throwin’ up at de same time. When sum’ on ’em got dey secon’ wind dey wanted to lynch me, but by de time dey got erroun’ to me wid a rope dey ’cided I wus too nigh dead to need killin’, and by dis time dey all had to ’zamperfly de truth ob de biblical sayin’ about de dog an’ de thing he would go back to. By dis time eb’ry doctor in de country wus dar, fetchin’ all de querrintine offercers, an’ pest-tents, an’ disenfec-tents, an’ preparin’ fer c’olera an’ fever. An’ den we foun’ out what ailed us.”

“In the name of heaven, what was it?” I asked eagerly.

The tears rolled down the old man’s cheeks as he feebly begged for another drop to enable him to finish his tale. Then he said:

“Ain’t I dun tole you hundreds ob times it am de leetle mistakes we make in life dat turns de tide? Ain’t I? Wal, dat’s whut ruined me dat day, an’ terday I am a man widout offis an’ widout honor in my ole age. Dat mornin’, ’stead ob gwine down to de sto’ myse’f to get de poun’ ob tartar acid ter make up dat lemmernade wid, I saunt dat trifflin’ Jim Crow gran’son ob mine, an’ he got de names twisted, an’ ’stead ob fetchin’ me back tartar acid, he fotcht me back a poun’ ob tartar emetic, an’ I didn’t do a thing but make up dat lemmernade wid it!”

“But, surely, they wouldn’t treasure up such a mistake against you, seeing that you suffered with the rest,” I said.

“Boss,” said the old man, rising, “how long you gwine ter lib wid niggers, an’ den hafter be tole ober an’ ober ergin de same thing? In course, dey didn’t beat me fur offis on ercount ob dat fool mistake, but jes’ lemme ax you, whar is de nigger libin’ dat gwinter vote fur enny man dat’d lay out a hundred watermilions in de spring branch, let ’em look at ’em an hour, an’ den turn dat nigger’s stummick into a green-persimmon fur a week? Whar is he, I ax?” And the old man crept feebly out to find him a cheap coffin.

JOHN TROTWOOD MOORE.

* * * * *

_We never give, but giving, get again;
There is no burden that we may not bear;
Our sweetest love is always sweetest pain,
And yet the recompense--the recompense is there._

* * * * *

_The sweet things of life do not lie so much in sight as in the heart that sees them._

Stories of the Soil

The Little Things of Life, Happening All Over the World and Caught in
Ink for Trotwood’s Monthly.

TIM’S EASTER.

The first streaks of day were breaking. It looked to the fireman of 496 that the old engine was sticking her nose into the red dawn as she plowed ahead hauling her fast freight South on schedule time. Tim Doogan was at the throttle--an old engineer who stood at the head of the road’s list; for Tim had been in service longer than any of them, had never failed in his duty and for twenty years had never taken a day off except one--to bury his wife.

He had never even asked for a promotion, and when it had been offered--the highest post of the engineer--Tim shook his head and declined.

“I guess I’m used to this old route and I’d feel lost if I didn’t pass through the Little Town every few days.”

They were now approaching the Little Town, and Tim had not spoken since he left the city, a hundred miles back. He was naturally quiet, but the fireman had never known him to make the run before and not say something. Something told the fireman that Tim had struck sadness somewhere, and so at intervals he fired up but said nothing to the big, begrimed man in overalls and cap who stood silently at his post, with one hand always on the throttle of his engine.

“I’m goin’ to stop twenty minutes in the Little Town, Jim,” said Tim as they began to pull into the station.

“Any orders?” asked Jim, surprised.

“No, but it’s my orders--ever’ Easter--been doin’ it for twenty years. Company don’t like it, kin lump it,” Tim added dry.

This was Jim’s first year, and he had never heard.

“No. 3 may be late an’ give me the chance. If she don’t, why, we stops anyway, Jim.”

“Why, I’d rather she’d be on time, so we can go on. Don’t you want to go on?” asked Jim.

“Not for twenty minutes, ef I can he’p it. Fact is, we’re goin’ to stop here a little while anyway.”

The fireman said nothing, and Tim slowed up No. 496 in the yard. Then he jumped down and went in to report.

“No. 3 twenty minutes late,” he said, as he came back. “Take keer o’ things till I git back. I’ll not be gone long.”

“You ain’t that there thirsty for a drink this mornin’ are you, Tim? You don’t drink to speak of, and I never knowed you to leave old 496 befo’.”

Tim said nothing, but climbed up and opened his big box. The fireman smelt something sweet, and very tenderly Tim took out a longer pasteboard box.

“Flowers,” said the fireman. “Say, Tim, old man,” he laughed, “I’ve caught on--it’s a gal.”

“She _was_ a gal,” said Tim, quietly, “and the pretties’ and sweetes’ one that ever hit the soil o’ this wurl. An’ the little boy wa’nt no fluke.” He brushed at his eyes as he spoke, and left another grimy smear there.

“I’m a-goin’ over to the little cemetery a bit, Jim--yes, you stay with 496. They’re buried over there. We lived--her an’ the little ’un--we lived here after we was married. She was allers sweet on Easter, and for flowers and sech, an’ I love to do this for her an’ the boy. Been doin’ it twenty year’. We don’t know nothin’, an’ maybe it’s all so--an’ if anybody’ll rise again it’ll be her--with her faith--for I tell you, Jim it was as a little child. Yes, they was both my children.”

He was taking the flowers out, lilies and roses and carnations and cultivated violets, big and blue and beautiful. In his big, grimy, black hands, and amid the soot and dust of 496 they lay beautified and glorified, and the sweet odor went through the rough fireman until he saw pictures of a far-away home.

Silently Tim trudged across the hill to the little cemetery. The village was asleep, the unkept streets empty, the cold, gray mist hung low over everything, and finally Tim disappeared in it. But twenty minutes later, when the sun had risen and 496 was butting through the gray, her throttles open, the smoke belching from her stack, Tim stood at his post, a smile lighting up his grimy face, his eyes fixed on two graves amid pines, far up on the hill upon which shone lilies and roses and violets.

They thundered past, and the old engineer took off his cap and, turning to the fireman, said, above the roar of wheels and steam:

“She used to say it this-a-way, Jim--I’ve heard her so often, an’ fer five years she taught it to the little boy befo’ he left.” He looked toward the sun rising through the mist, and said slowly:

“_In the end of the Sabbath, as it began to dawn, toward the first day of the week came Mary Magdalene and the other Mary to see the sepulchre._

“_And, behold, there was a great earthquake: for the angel of the Lord descended from heaven and came and rolled back the stone from the door and sat upon it.... And the angel answered and said unto the woman, Fear not ye: for I know that ye seek Jesus that was crucified. He is not here for He is risen._”

He shut off steam as he pitched down a steep grade, and then Jim heard him say:

“That’s the way she said it, an’ we don’t know nothin’, Jim, nothin’. But we do know that stranger things is happenin’ ever’ day than jes’ the spirit livin’ agin. What’s light? What’s heat? What’s love? What’s that wireless talkin’ through the air but things to tell us how little we know, how small our minds is an’ how easy it ’ud be to be true, an’ we not know how to explain it with our little standards.”

He threw a kiss at the vanishing hill of pines. “No, I’ll keep on sayin’ it as she sed it, anyway, true or not: ‘I am the resurrection an’ the life.’”

HO! EVERY ONE THAT THIRSTETH!

The corn crop up in the Bigbyville neighborhood is clean, the cotton shows not a spear of grass. The potato field looks as clean and green as a billiard cushion floor and the darkies are still, still hoeing. All this was caused by a sermon old Wash preached there on foot-washing day last month, a literal extract of which I got from the old man himself:

“Brudderin’ an’ Sisterin’--You’ll find my text in de six chapter of Noah’s pistols to de Gentiles. _Ho! every one dat thirsteth! Ho!_

“De commandments we get from de Bible am beyond de scrutiny of man, an’ we natchurly think dat when a man gets hot an’ thirsty de thing fur him to do is to hunt de spring branch an’ quench his burnin’ lips. But not so. Here it is sot down in black an’ white in de book ob books, dat when you git thirsty, _jes’ keep on hoein’. Ho! every one dat thirsteth! Ho!_ And dat is right; de Bible is allers right. Hoein’ is good fur de limbs, good fur de wind, good fur de crap, an’ good fur de soul. De sun am hot now, but de wind’ll be cold agin. De rays pour down now, but de sleet’ll come bye an’ bye. Dese am de rays of drought an’ thirst, but ef you want to set back when de rains come, smoke yo’ pipe an’ sing dat song--

“Bile dat cabbage down
For it ain’t gwine to rain no mo’--

jes’ take off yo’ coat, shed yo’ shirt, an’ foller de corn an’ tater row, an’ ef you git thirsty don’t stop to drink, but jes’ keep on a-hoein’!

“_Ho! everyone dat thirsteth! ho!_

“An’ ain’t dat de law an’ de sense? Whut you wanter stop an’ drink fur? Won’t you jes’ get thirty agin? Keep on a-hoein’!

“What did old Noah do when de windows ob de heabens was opened an’ de flood ob de great deep began to kiver de earth, an’ de fools got round him an’ laughed an’ ax him whut he buildin’ dat ole ark for? He was tired, an’ thirsty, an’ hot, but he kep’ on a-hoein’, for he knowed he’d get water enough bye and bye. _Ho! every one dat thirsteth! ho!_

“What did Abraham do when dey got roun’ him an’ tried to stop him from gwine to de Promis’ Lan’? He kept on a hoein’ for Jordan.

“Don’t let de flesh ob dis wurl’ fool you. Things ain’t whut dey seem. Water looks mighty good, specially to Baptists, but whut we Meferdists want to do is to keep on a hoein’. De wicked of Noah’s day didn’t hoe any. Didn’t dey git water enough? De Egyptians didn’t hoe enny, but follered de Israelites into de Red Sea. Didn’t dey get water enough? Ole Jonah didn’t obey de Lord an’ hoe to de mark, an’ de water swallowed him fust an’ de whale swallered ’im next. Let dat be a warnin’ to you to stick to de tex’ of de Bible an’ de doctrine of de church, an’ when you get thirsty keep on a-hoein’. It’s hard now, but it’ll be sweet bye and bye. It’s hot now, but it’ll be cold bye and bye. You git mighty thirsty an’ you think de taters ain’t never goin’ to come, but when de winter rains come, an’ de winds blow, an’ you sot down round de big fiah wid de sweet brown ’possum an’ dem taters, you work so hard fur to get in de heat, an’ sweat, an’ thirst ob summer, den will de heart ob de faithful be glad, den will you shout an’ sing:

“Ho! every one that thirsteth, ho!”

This last appeal was too much. The congregation arose in a body at the words ’possum and potatoes and went off to hoe, leaving the old man with no one to pass around the hat.

A RACE FOR LIFE.

I saw a race--a race for life, too--that interested me the other day more than any that I have seen this year. It occurred in mid-air, in a kingdom not our own; but the fresh air was sweet where the race for life went on, and the fields were green beneath, and the brooks purled below and the sun shone gloriously over all, and to the poor creature who raced for his life I doubt not but he took it all in and life was as sweet to him as it is to us.

It was a golden-winged butterfly, one of those beautiful creatures that is more of heaven than of earth, more of the blossom than of the brown heath, and it seemed cruel to me that this beautiful thing, thrown off from the film of a rainbow and made with an organism so spiritual that it lives on the nectar of flowers, dwells on the bosom of a nodding lily and floats on the breath of a zephyr, must come under the great selfish law of life and be forced to fight for its brief but beautiful existence. Man must fight, we know--and all history, if it lie not, is but a chronicle of battle, blood and death, in which the survival of the fittest and the achievements of human destiny have been gauged by the brains that were behind gunpowder, and the courage that comes of God. Man, beasts, birds, reptiles, fishes--it is a survival merely--and “nature, red in tooth and claw,” has been demonstrated to be more merciful than nature rotting in the decrepitude of age. But, O, that this ethereal thing--half rainbow and rose, half light and lily blossom, half child and cherubim--might have been spared!

And who were its enemies--two glorious mocking birds, that had sung like spirits from an angel choir around my home all spring and summer--that had reared their young in contentment and happiness and should have had nothing against any of God’s creatures, whose life had been a poem, whose breath a summer song--alas, that these should have been its murderers! It almost makes me despair of the ethics of life. I feel like saying to man: “Go, murder your fellow men--it is nature. Go, rob, steal and plunder--it is law.”

And is it not law? In spite of the ethics of religion and dictates of equity, is it not at last a question of one getting and the other giving--of money, love--ay, even life?

Golden Wings was in my garden and he was content until that which sustained his life gave out--food. He had sucked every flower--he must go to pastures new. The distance to my neighbor’s garden was some two hundred yards, and there was nothing but air between us. He thought of it a long time--he hovered from flower to flower and thought--of his mate, of life, of death. Had he been all spirit he had stayed forever among the flowers. He had run no chance of death. But he was half spirit and half life and that life was rebelling and begging for food. He must go. It was life or death. He rose reluctantly--frightened--straight up--every sense awake--every nerve keyed--every eye on the lookout for an enemy--the spirit which had never harmed even a flower, and which should have had no enemy. Up, straight up, he arose--quivering, scared, frightened--then winged his way across the blue ether in a flight, as it proved, for its life.

The mocking-bird is a fly catcher, but not an expert one. Compared with the swallow, the marten, the crested fly-catcher, the expert king bird, the wood pewee, and Phoebe, he is a poor imitation. But the mocking-bird is a poet, and everything is grist that comes to a poet’s mill--from the grasshopper on the ground to the butterfly in the air.

The male bird saw Golden Wings first and gave him the first heat for his life. Up in the air he darted, circled and swooped. Poor Golden Wings fled, turned, ducked, dived--and escaped. The poet dropped to his twig in disgust, and his mate took up the race. Golden Wings saw her coming and his heart bursted with fear. He fairly quivered in the air. He knew not which way to turn. She darted, and all but caught him. For a moment, in mid-air, I saw them whirling and twisting and tumbling--poor Golden Wings panting and fluttering for a chance once more for home and life, and the poetess for a morsel to eat. It ended in the butterfly getting above the bird--which seemed always its tactics--while the latter dropped down in disgust to her mate. Then they both started after poor Golden Wings, and it looked as if his time had come. But all the time he had been heading straight for the thick trees beyond, where rested, perhaps, his distressed mate, waiting for his return.

It was a terrible chase the two poets gave him--the tumbling, darting, circling of the birds in fiendish delight, in maddened earnestness. Their very wings were often so close that they fanned him about until he looked like a speck of gold tissue paper hurled about by contrary winds. Twice they got above him, dropped on him and--missed. Twice I lost him altogether, and, except that I saw the birds fluttering and darting in the air, I had thought he was lost. When I saw him again he had gotten above his enemies and was safely pursuing his zig-zag, frightened, graceless, paper-fluttering flight for the trees and life.

“Success to you, O, Golden Wings,” I said, “for already have you taught me a lesson in life. Let us keep above our enemies, if we would be safe--not beneath them, for there we are a prey to their dirty talons; not on their level, for then we are no better than they; but above them where they cannot reach us and where we may go on to our destiny with only the sunlight around us and the stars above us.”

The birds dropped down, baffled, to rest in the top of a sugar maple. They had evidently lost their tempers, and, between panting and hard breathing, I could hear them quarreling: “It was you,” said the wife--“you conceited thing--all your fault. I had him once if you had let me alone.”

“O, you had him, you did--‘over the left.’ If your talents equaled your tongue we’d be better off.” They screeched and shuffled about and almost spat at each other. They were beaten, chagrined and mad, and they took it out on each other.

And if you want to see the refinement of ill-temper, stir up two poets!

Golden Wings was safe. He was high in the air, his very flight was now the flight of victory, his poise the poise of one who had won. Twenty yards more he would drop down into the green trees where his mate, perhaps, awaited him, and be safe.

I was about to hurrah with delight, when I saw a lightning bolt of red and white drop from the jagged bark of the dead limb of a towering oak in the midst of the forest and high above poor, weary, fluttering yet happy Golden Wings. I paled at the thought, for I knew no butterfly ever escaped him. Even Golden Wings recognized his doom and, paralyzed with fear, stopped his flight in mid-air and, in a few yards of his goal, and lay floating in the air in hopeless fear. And well he might, for the red and white bolt was the red-headed woodpecker, not generally known to be a fly-catcher, but an expert in it, nevertheless. Often had I seen him poise above a luckless moth, drop like a plummet, and no moth would be there. I despised him as a marauder, besides, for only yesterday I’d seen him pounce on a helpless young humming-bird and rend it as if it had been a worm.

Straight at poor Golden Wings he came. The race was up.

He performed his old tactics, darted above the butterfly, some two yards higher in the air, gauged instinctively a plummet line from the point of his own beak to Golden Wings and then drops with folded wings like a ball of lead.

I forgot to say that I was out that morning with the twelve-gauge, smokeless shells and one and a half ounces of No. 7 chilled, thinking I might see a certain thieving crow that I had a grudge against.

Thoughts are lightning--words thunder, and when I caught the first glimpse of the red-headed marauder of the air all this went through my mind: “Nature is nature--tooth and claw. And yet there is a God who says even when a butterfly shall fall. He makes our lives and marks out our destiny. Sometimes amid injustice He calls Himself Retribution, and then He has been known to raise up a man and a gun, invent smokeless powder and deadly chilled shot, give accuracy of aim and, most wonderful of all, the voice of a purpose to say that harm shall not happen even to a butterfly.”

There was no smoke from the report and so I distinctly saw Golden Wings drop joyfully among the green leaves. But a red-headed marauder lies in the field where he fell.

And if some one who knows, will tell me why I happened to be there, why I carried my gun that morning, why I fired, I will tell him who God is.

HIS CHANCE.

The summer day was nearly gone, and only a few clouds caught the gleam of sunset in the west. A woman of thirty, with a sweet, sincere face, came out of a cottage and walked to the little farm gate that opened on the main road winding across the Iowa prairie. The cottage sat in a small grove of trees, and farther off were neat outhouses, a stable and dairy. Flowers bloomed in a little bed near the front gate, and several hives of bees sat under cherry trees in the front yard. Everything around the neat cottage, from the well-kept vines which climbed over the porch to the orchard and fields of corn, clearly showed that Thrift and Industry were the handmaidens that lived there.

The woman was not pretty, neither was she handsome, but her face was of unusual intelligence and strength. Her hands showed work, and a few gray hairs shone over her temple.

At the little gate she stood while the shadows grew darker around her. There were chirpings of summer insects, and presently down the walk stalked a huge St. Bernard, looking like a great bear in the twilight. He seemed to think the woman had been out alone long enough, and his very way of walking showed that he knew he was her protector. He stalked up and thrust his big cold nose into her hand as it hung listlessly by her side. She started, but closed it over his mouth with a caress, saying:

“Rex, you are silly about me.”

A buggy came out of the gloaming down the road, and stopped at her gate. The woman turned pale in the twilight, as she recognized the middle-aged man who came toward her, holding out his hand: “Jennie--I--well--it’s me!”

He would have opened the gate, but the dog growled savagely, and she hooked the latch hastily, as she said:

“Ralph--why--why--I thought--but don’t try to come in--Rex--I could not control him.”

She was so agitated she could not speak further. Her knees shook, and she clung to the gate, half leaning.

“I have been back a week,” he said slowly. “You haven’t changed much,” he added, eyeing her closely while she flushed under his gaze. “I never expected to see you again.”

“No--no--don’t try to come in--Rex--Rex!”

The great dog had rushed at the gate as the man tried to open it again, and she held her hand on the latch.

“He don’t seem to know your friends from your enemies,” said the man with a cynical laugh.

“I think he does,” she said quietly, “better than I have ever known them.”

He looked at her quickly. Then he tried to laugh.

“Why--Jennie--you know I haven’t seen you in so long.”

“I never expected to see you again. I was not looking for you now,” she said.

“I never thought I’d ever come back, but the Klondike--well, a man pays two dollars for every dollar’s worth of gold he finds there.”

“Tell me about yourself,” she said, still leaning on the gate, one knee resting on the lower plank for support.

“Well, Jennie, after we had our little quarrel and you broke off with me--”

“You are mistaken,” she said quietly. “You left, Hugh, without a word--without telling me good-bye. There was nothing left to do but to send you your ring.”

“We won’t quarrel again, now, Jennie. I have come back to you to tell you--”

She had been looking closely in his face, and her heart beat wildly. She had seen it all--the bravado way, the flushed recklessness, the sign everywhere of dissipation, of modesty gone, of truth, of the old manhood.

“Not that,” she said, quickly interrupting him, “but of yourself. Tell me where you have been and--and what doing.”

He laughed coldly.

“Well, after we split up I went West, then to the Klondike. But it was a nasty life. As I said, I have made nothing, and I hoped all the time to make a fortune and bring it back to you, Jennie.”

“Was it true--that I heard--the trouble?”

“Why, yes, I did get to drinking too much, and got into trouble--but the papers had it overdrawn. I returned him his money. Now I have come back to you--to tell you I still--”

“You need not tell it,” she said quickly. “You could tell nothing I would believe now. You are not the man you were before you left, and never will be. Then you were weak, but honest and sober. Now you are weak, but dishonest and a drinker. And you must not come in--no--no--you are not the Hugh I once knew and loved.”

She sobbed in a quick way as she said it, but went on quietly:

“After you left you know mother died, then father, and I was left alone. Our little farm--well, I’ve paid off the mortgage. It was hard work, but the five years have passed so quickly. They always do when one works for love. I changed the old-fashion farming ways. I planted orchards and raised bees. I diversified my crops. I--well--” she laughed hopefully for the first time--a laugh which brought a pang to his heart, for it was the old laugh. “I am not yet started in that, for I am so enthusiastic a farmer and poultry raiser and stock woman that I’ll talk shop all night if you let me. Anyway, they say I keep posted and up with the times, and I have time, too, for good reading.

“Hugh,” she said quickly, after awhile, “really I have thought of you often, but I will not deceive you. You have gone out of my life. I have heard enough--before you came--heard it, seen enough. In all our lives, our romances I mean, it is imagination that counts more than the reality. Common sense and farm work,” she said, “will cure it, and I--think--I know I am happier than if I were now married to you--to you as you are, Hugh,” she added more tenderly.

“But--but, Jennie, I’ll change; give me a chance.”

“Why, Hugh, that is what you had, and I mine. I have watched nature since I’ve been a farmer, and I notice she never gives but one chance. There are too many of her children that must have a chance.”

He turned with a rough laugh and oath and walked off.

“I’ve come home jus’ to make a fool of myself,” she heard him say with another oath.

But she did not pale even. She turned and walked in, the dog following her.

“I am so glad I saw him anyway,” she said, patting the dog’s head. “Now, I can forget him so easily. Oh, Rex, life--life--how strange it is, but we all have one chance. Oh, I am so glad I had mine, and it has given me this sweet home and you. For it were better to love a dog that is honest and true than a man who it not.”

BLUE JOHN.

A Mississippi planter, and a gentleman of the old school, sends me this one from a little town in the Delta:

“My dear Trotwood, do you know what it is to get out of whisky Christmas morning in a little one-horse Mississippi town where you have to put a darkey on a mule and wait until he rides five miles through the mud before you can get your Christmas toddy? Well, I hope you never may, for that thing happened to me last Christmas.

“The truth is, there was no need why we should have been out of the red ingredient of Christmas jollity, for when we turned in the night before we had a fine, big jug of it. But the Major was there, and the Colonel and the Doctor, and somehow, before we knew it, it was gone.

“I am a bachelor, you know, on a big Mississippi cotton farm, and these were my guests and we went to bed with our boots on. About daylight Christmas morning we all woke up with one impulse and an awful thirst.

“The Doctor got to the jug first, and we heard him growl:

“‘What infernal hog drank all this whisky last night?’

“This stirred up the Colonel, and he sat up in bed and remarked, with his usual emphasis:

“‘That licker gone a’ready? Christmas mornin’, too?’

“By this time we were all investigating it, and some of the talk indulged in concerning the man who did it ought to have made him feel anything but white.

“By this time we would have given a dollar each for a drink. The nearest whisky was five miles away, where Ikey Rosenstein, a little Mississippi Jew, kept a cross-roads grocery. It was raining, and cold, too, but there was nothing to do but to call Blue John and send him on old Kit, the pacing mule, for a new jug of it.

“‘Blue John,’ I said, when he poked his head in the door, ‘you’ll find my bridle and saddle hanging up in the carriage house. Saddle old Kit and take this jug up to old Ikey’s and bring it back full, p. d. q.’

“‘Yassah, Boss.’

“‘Blue John,’ yelled the Doctor, ‘don’t let old Kit throw off on us this heat and we’ll give you first drink.’

“‘Yassah, Boss.’

“‘And, Blue John,’ said the Major, as he started off, ‘remember it’s Christmas, old man, and get about in a hurry. Here’s a quarter to help you along,’ he said, tossing it across the bed.

“‘Yassah, Boss, yassah.’

“We all laid down again to wait for Blue John.

“‘Boys,’ said the Colonel, after ten minutes of thirst, ‘I’ll bet I can trace every step that old darkey takes. Let’s see, now: He’s got to the barn door, hasn’t he? Now he has found the bridle and has caught old Kit. Now the saddle goes on and he is mounting.

“‘No, he ain’t quite up in the saddle yet,’ chimed in the Doctor. ‘He has stopped to take a chew of twist tobacco and spit on his hands.’

“‘That’s a fact, Doc, but he’s up now, isn’t he?’

“‘Yes.’

“‘Now he’s pacing down to the big gate. He’s opening it----’

“‘No,’ put in again the Doctor, ‘he got down off of old Kit and opened it. Hang the old fool, but isn’t he a slow one?’

“‘Well, he’s going up the road now, ain’t he?’ said the Colonel.

“‘Yes, and he’s got to the big swamp. He’s creeping through it. Dad gast, but ain’t it muddy there? Gehew, but I am thirsty,’ broke in the Doctor.

“Ten minutes later he added joyfully: ‘Well, he’s out of the swamp, and he has spurred old Kit into a gallop, thinking of that drink. Oh, old Blue John is a good one!’

“‘He’s at the three-mile post now,’ said the Major, twenty minutes later. ‘Lord, but that old mule can hump when he tries!’

“We all smiled in satisfaction.

“‘Where is he now, Doc?’ said the Colonel, after it had seemed an hour of silence.

“‘At old Ikey’s, boys. See, he’s handing old Ikey the jug. Now old Ikey is fillin’ it.’

“‘From what barrel?’ asked the Major, excitedly.

“‘Lincoln County, Tennessee.’

“We all grunted our assent in chorus.

“‘He’s started home now,’ went on the Colonel, ‘and the way that mule can pace! Blue John is settin’ up in that saddle, holdin’ that jug under one arm and a-larrupin’ old Kit every yard. Scott, but ain’t he comin’!’

“‘He’s got to the swamp again, Doc,’ said the Major, after twenty minutes had passed. ‘He’ll get here directly.’

“‘Boys, he’s reached the big gate already. I hear him coming,’ said the Colonel, excitedly.

“Sure enough, we heard him. There was no mistake--Blue John was now coming down the hall.

“‘Open the door and let him in quick!’ said the Major, ‘By gum! but ain’t he and that old mule a pair of buds?’

“By this time we had all jumped out of bed and were hunting for tumblers and sugar. Blue John poked his head in the door.

“‘Boss,’ said Blue John.

“‘Come in, Blue John!’ cried the Major. ‘Fetch it right in. You’re a good old man. Colonel, lend me your spoon a minute.’

“‘Boss, whar--whar----’ stammered Blue John.

“‘Come in, Blue John!’ cried the Doctor, ‘come right in.’”

“‘_Boss, whar de debbil you say you put dat bridle in de kerridge house? I been huntin’ fur it fur er hour an’ I can’t find it ter sabe my life._’”

A DRUNKEN WOMAN.

I saw in a neighboring city not long ago a drunken woman. She was in a fashionable hotel and stood beside a post in the little gallery that ran around the court. She was not three feet above our heads, was dressed in the height of fashion, wore a hat that looked like a huge poppy and altogether she was not unlike a beautiful tiger lily that seemed about to fall over into our arms. Instantly that wave of romance and reverence as natural to man, when he sees beauty clothed in purity, as the tides that do follow the midnight moon, swept over me. Her form was faultless, her gown perfect, her face beautiful.

At least I thought so until I looked up and happened to catch her eye. She smiled the sensual smile of a wood-nymph and leered as disgustingly as ever Bacchus through a glass of old Falerian. In a moment it all changed. Her face was no longer beautiful, but hard and cruel. Her form was made--her gown the gaudy thing of a demi-monde.

I blushed when she singled me out and leered, and ducked my head, for fear someone had seen me. But I soon saw that she leered at all alike and knew no difference between a man and men.

For a half hour she stood there, scarce able to cling to the post she stood by, the observed of every man in the court, the disgusting moral that pointed the old story of the fallen angel.

It is bad enough to see a drunken man. Nothing so quickly robs goodness of its sweetness, genius of its charm, greatness of its colossal form, than to behold it drunk. There are some great men I know who, if I ever saw them drunk, never again would I believe they were great. They say Poe was a drunkard. I cannot imagine it. And S. S. Prentiss--I cannot believe it. I cannot think of DeQuincy and Coleridge as opium eaters, Byron and Burns as whisky-heads. If I did I could never again read anything they wrote. For of all things that levels man to the beasts and makes knowledge a strumpet and genius a bawdy, it is the maudlin rottenness of a plain old drunk.

Whisky and not death is the greatest leveler with the dirt.

But to see a drunken woman--Good God! Nature is partial to a man. She has made some laws for him she has not made for woman. She has filled him with passion and strength and capacity for work and great things. She overlooks it, perhaps, when he steps aside, under the burning law she has forced on him for reproduction, and she sighs and smiles when he drowns his strenuousness now and then in the forgetfulness of the cup. He may do all that, and if his wife be pure still may he sire sons who will be brave and honest, and daughters who will be pure and noble.

But let the woman be weak and fall, and see how quickly nature revenges herself for the desecration of her unwritten law by throwing back on humanity sons who are thieves and daughters who are impure. This is an unwritten law, but it proves that the mother is the great moral force of the world. Let her violate it and the punishment comes quickly on the race.

As I looked at this woman I could not help thinking: “I hope, as one who, interested in stock, is more interested in the human race, that you carry in your life that penalty of impureness--barrenness. For it were better for mankind that such as you should never be mothers, to fill prison pens with thieves and forgers and bawdy houses with painted Magdalenes. Indeed, it is up to you to pass off the stage of life and cease to encumber an earth on which not one single womanly law is left you to fill. The honest matron of the noble horse brings forth yearly and within the sacred laws of nature an animal that is the pride of man and the glory of his kind. The gentle mother of the dairy is an inspiration and a blessing to the earth. The very brood sow of the pen suckles her hungry brood begot in honorable wedlock. But you, O, being of a higher world, O breeder of immortal beings, made in the image of God and endowed with the reason of the angels, you from whom nature expects so much, you fall below all of these and brand yourself the harlot of humanity!”

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We want a good live agent in every town in the United States for “Trotwood’s Monthly.” Write for terms to agents. Address Trotwood Publishing Company, Nashville, Tenn.

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_Depravity is not so much a creature of inheritance as of environment._

Geers and Walter Direct

The most talked-of pacer in the light harness world to-day is Walter Direct. The greatest living reinsman is Ed F. Geers, his breeder, joint owner, trainer and driver. The object of this sketch is to tell the story of these two--the one a horse, the other a man. For when it is all sifted down at last, it will be found that there are many parallel lines between a great race horse and a great driver. Each to succeed must possess certain qualities in common which make for success.

And first, each must be born for greatness. This may seem strange to the uninitiated, but no man knows the truth of it more than he who has spent his life in breeding great horses and in studying great men. It is pedigree that counts in man and horse, and by pedigree I do not mean blood lines only, though they count more in the life of the lower animal, the horse, than in the life of the higher animal, the man. Blood lines alone will not carry a man through the battle of life and bring him out victor at the end. For there are two pedigrees in every man which count for greatness or weakness in him. One is the pedigree of his body, the other is the pedigree of his soul. With horse, the pedigree of body counts most. With man, the soul. For it is that which counts for honesty, for singleness of purpose, for truthfulness, for silence, for thought, for right living, for that deathless spirit which never says die. In victory, calm; in defeat, silent, but saying proudly:

“Out of the darkness which surrounds me,
Black as the pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods there be
For my unconquerable soul.”

Unfortunately for man--outside of the pygmies which some call kings--he keeps no record of his pedigree. This is wrong, for man should at least take as much interest in his own pedigree as he does in his horses’ or his dogs’. And so, now and then, a master, in his craft, comes out of the great mass of humanity, with no extended pedigree but the product of earnest and honest and strong God-fearing fathers and mothers of many, many centuries. The child may not know them but for one generation, but they are all there--there in his blood and his brain and his brawn.

And so he is born honest and earnest and strong. Such is Ed Geers--a man who has come up from the common people. Common people of a century ago, but O, how uncommon now in these days of trusts and steals and grinding graft! In these days, when a millionaire is a poor man, these days of the Equitable, these days of Rockefeller, these days of the cursed trusts and tariff and the unspeakable graft-days when man is nothing and money all. God of our fathers, give us back again the days of the honest common people!

From such source comes Shakespeare, whose genius was also the product of honesty, of brawn, of rest. Shakespeare, who has written and left nothing else to be said! From such a source came James Knox, and Andrew Jackson, and John Wesley, and Abraham Lincoln--these and every other great man whose silent statues now stand as the mile-posts of human progress, each marking an era in the epoch of the thing God made him for.

And so, as I said, from such a source came Geers, the honest man and the master reinsman of his age. And so, as I said, counting the recorded pedigree, Walter Direct has it over Geers, for man, who foolishly lets his own pedigree slip, has been very careful in preserving that of his horse. Strange, isn’t it? And yet we are all doing it. Ah, well, perhaps it is best for many of us that it is so. For, as we say of the horse, in the fifth generation each one of us would have to count for sixty-two fathers and mothers, landing us back two hundred years ago in Scotland and Ireland, and out of that number, in that age and country, fortunate is he who was not sent up for poaching, for cattle-lifting, for breaking heads and, perhaps--locks!

Walter’s pedigree is blue-blooded. His owners, Chaffin & Gears, saw to that. We can make our horse’s pedigree better than we can make our own--for that is made for us, and often, in the making, when two warm youngsters fall in love and decide to marry, nothing but the grace of God, or the breaking of a midnight ladder, has saved us.

In _The Horse Review_ of 1900, when Walter Direct was then a suckling at his mother’s heels, I wrote a description of him and predicted from his blood lines that one day he would be the greatest of pacers. It sounds prophetic now, but I rise hastily to disclaim it. Any horseman posted in the pedigree and achievement of his sire and dam, and of all his bluelines, would naturally have said the same thing. His sire, Direct Hal, was the greatest horse of his day. His name and career are household words in horsedom and will not be extended in this article. But later on, in “The History of the Hals,” now running as a serial in this Monthly, a chapter will be devoted to him in its proper place. It is enough here to say that he was unbeaten and that his sire, Direct, before him, was the greatest pacing stallion of his day, and that beyond that lies the great Director, Dictator and Hambletonian 10--an unbroken line of greatness--and in a horse greatness means gameness, soundness, honesty, speed.

Isn’t that enough to give us a tip on the breeding of boys and girls?

Walter’s dam is a homely little mare called Ella Brown, with a record of 2:11-1/4, made in 1893, to high-wheel sulky. With the sulky of to-day it would have been 2:05. Never have I known a gamer, sweeter little mare than Ella Brown, and well do I remember when she first came out, and though suffering acutely, all through her racing career with nervicular disease of the foot, often so lame that she could scarcely score down for the word, yet, when she was in the fight, and the clatter and hot breath of her competitors sounded the warning in her ears, she would forget her lameness and her soreness and race like the game little thing she was.

And, like all other great mares, the pedigree of Ella Brown was no accident. She was sired by Prince Pulaski, Jr., and he by old Prince Pulaski, the sire of the old queen, Mattie Hunter, 2:12-3/4. The dam of Ella Brown has only lately been correctly established. She was by Evans’ Joe Bowers, son of Joe Bowers 2:32, son of Traveler. Her second dam was by Tom Hal, sire of Brown Hal, and her third dam was said to be by Brooks, sire of Bonesetter 2:19. Every horseman knows what these mean. Mated with Direct Hal, and hence doubled in strength and greatness, and behold Walter Direct, champion green pacer of the year.

This is the pedigree of Edward Geers--this is the pedigree of Walter. Both honest.

Geers’ honesty is proverbial. His surname is “Honest Ed Geers, the Silent Man of Tennessee.” Did you ever notice how naturally greatness and silence go together? Let that greatest of all great men, Shakespeare, tell it:

Silence oft of pure innocence
Persuades when speaking fails.

There are many stories told of the honesty of Ed Geers. It must be remembered that in the life he has led, the terrible, bruising, fighting battles of the turf, when fame and fortune often hang on the wire for which hundreds of others are driving as well as he, that he is often sorely and terribly tempted. Men are human at most, and in a fight for money, for fame, for the joy of victory, all combined in one race, all the great stakes of life, is it a wonder that millionaire horsemen have tried to buy him, that rich breeders have tried to bribe him, greedy owners corner him and tricksters and knaves foul him? Think of twenty-five years of this and then coming out without a stain on his name, a breath of suspicion and the pseudonum of Honest Ed Geers--won, too, in the light of the fiercest conflict.

Walter is game, so is Geers. In the many years in which the latter has been in the sulky he has met with accidents which, if they failed to break his neck, would have broken the heart of an ordinary man.

All horsemen will recall the bad accident he had with Searchlight and the one that sent him to the hospital at Memphis a few years ago, with a broken ankle. But a few weeks ago he was in a bad mix-up at Buffalo, when King Direct’s foot went into the sulky wheel of the contending horse. The Nestor of the turf was unconscious when picked up, but quickly revived and dryly remarked, “Now, don’t make a hurrah of this thing and scare everybody to death for nothing.” That remark is an index of his character. He hates a hurrah. The plumage of the peacock has never become the pit game trimmed for the fight. He is loyal to his friends, modest, quiet, honest, and with reverence for all that is sacred and good. He is one of the large men of his calling.

The training of Walter Direct has been in keeping with Mr. Geers’ theory that colts should be trained early but not hard. From the May night when he was foaled in a terrific thunderstorm, so fierce that Old Wash, who acted as his midwife, was scarcely able to keep him from drowning, until to-day, he has had the best of attention. His dam was fed grain during the nursing period, and Walter soon learned to eat it with her. He was broken to halter as a weanling, and the next spring, Negley, the colored caretaker, broke him to harness, with occasional jogs. The fall after he was a two-year-old he was sent to Memphis to Geers and given his first real lessons, and so trained each winter, with joggings in the summer by Negley at Columbia. Mr. Geers’ rule is to keep them feeling good with a brush now and then for speed. He has a horror of overworking colts. Indeed, his stable is never asked to go the fast heats that many other owners delight in before being shipped to the races. He saves their speed and vital force for the time when it is needed most. In the spring when Walter was a three-year-old he was asked to go a fast mile in 2:14, and was sent to Columbia to be jogged and turned out. The next spring he paced his mile in 2:08-3/4, when he was sent back home again. On September 15, 1904 he was sent again to Mr. Geers and to fame.

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LORD ULLIN’S DAUGHTER.

(Revised by Trotwood and brought up to date.)

A chieftain to the Highland bound
Would steal Lord Ullin’s daughter;
He bought a new machine in town--
A thing he hadn’t auto.

He sought the castle by the sea
And stopped behind the kitchen;
“This beats a pony bad,” said he,
“Because it don’t need hitchin’.”

He got the girl and started out
By pullin’ of a lever,
And then that auto turned about--
It was a gay deceiver.

It snorted, backed, went round and round,
Broke belly-band and breechin’,
Reared up and kicked--then, with a bound,
It started through the kitchen.

In there was Ullin fast asleep,
His stomach full of mutton;
That auto knocked him in a heap
It broke his only button.

“O, haste, thee--haste!” the Lady cries,
“Tho’ steams around me gather,
I’ll meet the ragings of the skies
But not a naked Father.”

“Aha--farewell--and now we’ll go,”
Said Laddy, smiling grimly;
He tried to head her for the door--
She started for the chimney.

“Come back--come back!” old Ullin cries,
“Not up there--that’s my larder;
You’ll ruin my meat and pies--
Come back an’ take my darter.”

By this the thing grew loud of pace,
Its waterworks were shrieking;
It started for the old staircase,
While Ullin was a-speaking.

It met Mrs. Ullin coming down--
She’d tucked the kids to cover;
She wore her night-cap and her gown--
She never wore another!

It buzzed amid the trundle beds,
Ran over lairds and lasses,
Went through the window, down the sheds,
And waked up all the asses.

It chased the hound-pups round the yard,
Ran over kairn and cattle;
The clans turned out with tunics barr’d,
And pibrocks, armed for battle.

The girl had fainted, sore dismayed,
Twice had it turned her over:
One lovely arm was stretched for aid,
And one was round her lover.

Up spake a hardy Highland wight--
(A rope was round him, ready):
“Just watch me rope her hind leg tight
And stop her, staunch and steady!”

He threw and caught her fast and fair,
It set their blood to fighting--
They saw him sailing through the air,
A tail he was--and kiting!

Now Ullin had a mother-in-law,
A saint she was from Zion;
Her lungs were rubber, cheeks were bra’,
Her body--well, SCRAP iron!

She waked and heard the dreadful din,
Ran down, the thing to worst it;
It struck her, knocked its inwards in,
It wheezed and groaned--and burst it!

They slew poor Laddy where he sat
With blunderbuss and bullit;
“’Tis not,” said Ullin, “’cause the brat
Was monkeyin’ with my pullit,