A Son of the Middle Border Part 21

Another incident will ill.u.s.trate his painfully shy character. One of our summer vacations was made notable by the visit of an exceedingly pretty girl to the home of one of Burton's aunts who lived on the road to the Grove, and my chum's excitement over the presence of this alien bird of paradise was very amusing to me as well as to his brother Charles who was inclined, as an older brother, to "take it out" of Burt.

I listened to my chum's account of his cousin's beauty with something more than fraternal interest. She came, it appeared, from Dubuque and had the true cosmopolitan's air of tolerance. Our small community amused her. Her hats and gowns (for it soon developed that she had at least two), were the envy of all the girls, and the admiration of the boys. No disengaged or slightly obligated beau of the district neglected to hitch his horse at Mrs. Knapp's gate.

Burton's opportunity seemed better than that of any other youth, for he could visit his aunt as often as he wished without arousing comment, whereas for me, a call would have been equivalent to an offer of marriage. My only chance of seeing the radiant stranger was at church.

Needless to say we all made it a point to attend every service during her stay.

One Sunday afternoon as I was riding over to the Grove, I met Burton plodding homeward along the gra.s.sy lane, walking with hanging head and sagging shoulders. He looked like a man in deep and discouraged thought, and when he glanced up at me, with a familiar defensive smile twisting his long lips, I knew something had gone wrong.

"h.e.l.lo," I said. "Where have you been?"

"Over to Aunt Sallie's," he said.

His long, linen duster was sagging at the sides, and peering down at his pockets I perceived a couple of quarts of lovely Siberian crab-apples.

"Where did you get all that fruit?" I demanded.

"At home."

"What are you going to do with it?"

"Take it back again."

"What do you mean by such a performance?"

With the swift flush and silent laugh which always marked his confessions of weakness, or failure, he replied, "I went over to see Nettie. I intended to give her these apples," he indicated the fruit by a touch on each pocket, "but when I got there I found old Bill Watson, dressed to kill and large as life, sitting in the parlor. I was so afraid of his finding out what I had in my pockets that I didn't go in.

I came away leaving him in possession."

Of course I laughed--but there was an element of pathos in it after all.

Poor Burt! He always failed to get his share of the good things in this world.

We continued to board ourselves,--now here, now there, and always to the effect of being starved out by Friday night, but we kept well and active even on doughnuts and pie, and were grateful of any camping place in town.

Once Burton left a soup-bone to simmer on the stove while we went away to morning recitations, and when we reached home, smoke was leaking from every keyhole. The room was solid with the remains of our bone. It took six months to get the horrid smell of charred beef out of our wardrobe.

The girls all sniffed and wondered as we came near.

On Fridays we went home and during the winter months very generally attended the Lyceum which met in the Burr Oak school-house. We often debated, and on one occasion I attained to the honor of being called upon to preside over the session. Another memorable evening is that in which I read with what seemed to me distinguished success Joaquin Miller's magnificent new poem, _Kit Carson's Ride_ and in the splendid roar and trample of its lines discovered a new and powerful American poet. His spirit appealed to me. He was at once American and western. I read every line of his verse which the newspapers or magazines brought to me, and was profoundly influenced by its epic quality.

And so, term by term, in growing joy and strength, in expanding knowledge of life, we hurried toward the end of our four years' course at this modest little school, finding in it all the essential elements of an education, for we caught at every chance quotation from the scientists, every fleeting literary allusion in the magazines, attaining, at last, a dim knowledge of what was going on in the great outside world of letters and discovery. Of course there were elections and tariff reforms and other comparatively unimportant matters taking place in the state but they made only the most transient impression on our minds.

During the last winter of our stay at the Seminary, my a.s.sociate in housekeeping was one Adelbert Jones, the son of a well-to-do farmer who lived directly east of town. "Del," as we called him, always alluded to himself as "Ferguson." He was tall, with a very large blond face inclined to freckle and his first care of a morning was to scrutinize himself most anxiously to see whether the troublesome brown flecks were increasing or diminishing in number. Often upon reaching the open air he would sniff the east wind and say lugubriously, "This is the kind of day that brings out the freckles on your Uncle Ferg."

He was one of the best dressed men in the school, and especially finicky about his collars and ties,--was, indeed, one of the earliest to purchase linen. He also parted his yellow hair in the middle (which was a very noticeable thing in those days) and was always talking of taking a girl to a social or to prayer meeting. But, like Burton, he never did. So far as I knew he never "went double," and most of the girls looked upon him as more or less of a rustic, notwithstanding his fine figure and careful dress.

As for me I did once hire a horse and carriage of a friend and took Alice for a drive! More than thirty-five years have pa.s.sed since that adventure and yet I can see every turn in that road! I can hear the crackle of my starched shirt and the creak of my suspender buckles as I write.

Alice, being quite as bashful as myself, kept our conversation to the high plane of Hawthorne and Poe and Schiller with an occasional tired droop to the weather, hence I infer that she was as much relieved as I when we reached her boarding house some two hours later. It was my first and only attempt at this, the most common of all ways of entertaining one's best girl.

The youth who furnished the carriage betrayed me, and the outcry of my friends so intimidated me that I dared not look Alice in the face. My only comfort was that no one but ourselves could possibly know what an erratic conversationalist I had been. However, she did not seem to lay it up against me. I think she was as much astonished as I and I am persuaded that she valued the compliment of my extravagant gallantry.

It is only fair to say that I had risen by this time to the dignity of "boughten shirts," linen collars and "Congress gaiters," and my suit purchased for graduating purposes was of black diagonal with a long tail, a garment which fitted me reasonably well. It was hot, of course, and nearly parboiled me of a summer evening, but I bore my suffering like the hero that I was, in order that I might make a presentable figure in the eyes of my cla.s.smates. I longed for a white vest but did not attain to that splendor.

Life remained very simple and very democratic in our little town.

Although the county seat, it was slow in taking on city ways. I don't believe a real bath-tub distinguished the place (I never heard of one) but its sidewalks kept our feet out of the mud (even in March or April), and this was a marvellous fact to us. One or two fine lawns and flower gardens had come in, and year by year the maples had grown until they now made a pleasant shade in June, and in October glorified the plank walks. To us it was beautiful.

As county town, Osage published two papers and was, in addition, the home of two Judges, a state Senator and a Congressman. A new opera house was built in '79 and an occasional "actor troupe" presented military plays like _Our Boys_ or farces like _Solon Shingle_. The bra.s.s band and the baseball team were the best in the district, and were loyally upheld by us all.

With all these attractions do you wonder that whenever Ed and Bill and Joe had a day of leisure they got out their buggies, washed them till they glistened like new, and called for their best girls on the way to town?

Circuses, Fourth of Julys, County Fairs, all took place in Osage, and to own a "covered rig" and to take your sweetheart to the show were the highest forms of affluence and joy--unless you were actually able to live in town, as Burton and I now did for five days in each week, in which case you saw everything that was free and denied yourself everything but the circus. n.o.body went so far in economy as that.

As a conscientious historian I have gone carefully into the records of this last year, in the hope of finding something that would indicate a feeling on the part of the citizens that d.i.c.k Garland's boy was in some ways a remarkable youth, but (I regret to say) I cannot lay hands on a single item. It appears that I was just one of a hundred healthy, hearty, noisy students--but no, wait! There is one incident which has slight significance. One day during my final term of school, as I stood in the postoffice waiting for the mail to be distributed, I picked up from the counter a book called _The Undiscovered Country_.

"What is this about?" I asked.

The clerk looked up at me with an expression of disgust. "I bought it for a book of travel," said he, "but it is only a novel. Want it? I'll sell it cheap."

Having no money to waste in that way, I declined, but as I had the volume in my hands, with a few minutes to spare, I began to read. It did not take me long to discover in this author a grace and precision of style which aroused both my admiration and my resentment. My resentment was vague, I could not have given a reason for it, but as a matter of fact, the English of this new author made some of my literary heroes seem either crude or stilted. I was just young enough and conservative enough to be irritated and repelled by the modernity of William Dean Howells.

I put the book down and turned away, apparently uninfluenced by it.

Indeed, I remained, if anything, more loyal to the grand manner of Hawthorne, but my love of realism was growing. I recall a rebuke from my teacher in rhetoric, condemning, in my essay on Mark Twain, an over praise of _Roughing It_. It is evident, therefore that I was even then a lover of the modern when taken off my guard.

Meanwhile I had definitely decided not to be a lawyer, and it happened in this way. One Sunday morning as I was walking toward school, I met a young man named Lohr, a law student several years older than myself, who turned and walked with me for a few blocks.

"Well, Garland," said he, "what are you going to do after you graduate this June?"

"I don't know," I frankly replied. "I have a chance to go into a law office."

"Don't do it," protested he with sudden and inexplicable bitterness.

"Whatever you do, don't become a lawyer's hack."

His tone and the words, "lawyer's hack" had a powerful effect upon my mind. The warning entered my ears and stayed there. I decided against the law, as I had already decided against the farm.

Yes, these were the sweetest days of my life for I was carefree and glowing with the happiness which streams from perfect health and unquestioning faith. If any shadow drifted across this sunny year it fell from a haunting sense of the impermanency of my leisure. Neither Burton nor I had an ache or a pain. We had no fear and cherished no sorrow, and we were both comparatively free from the lover's almost intolerable longing. Our loves were hardly more than admirations.

As I project myself back into those days I re-experience the keen joy I took in the downpour of vivid sunlight, in the colorful clouds of evening, and in the song of the west wind harping amid the maple leaves.

The earth was new, the moonlight magical, the dawns miraculous. I shiver with the boy's solemn awe in the presence of beauty. The little recitation rooms, dusty with floating chalk, are wide halls of romance and the voices of my girl cla.s.smates (even though their words are algebraic formulas), ring sweet as bells across the years.

During the years '79 and '80, while Burton and I had been living our carefree jocund life at the Seminary, a series of crop failures had profoundly affected the county, producing a feeling of unrest and bitterness in the farmers which was to have a far-reaching effect on my fortunes as well as upon those of my fellows. For two years the crop had been almost wholly destroyed by chinch bugs.

The harvest of '80 had been a season of disgust and disappointment to us for not only had the pestiferous mites devoured the grain, they had filled our stables, granaries, and even our kitchens with their ill-smelling crawling bodies--and now they were coming again in added billions. By the middle of June they swarmed at the roots of the wheat--innumerable as the sands of the sea. They sapped the growing stalks till the leaves turned yellow. It was as if the field had been scorched, even the edges of the corn showed signs of blight. It was evident that the crop was lost unless some great change took place in the weather, and many men began to offer their land for sale.

Naturally the business of grain-buying had suffered with the decline of grain-growing, and my father, profoundly discouraged by the outlook, sold his share in the elevator and turned his face toward the free lands of the farther west. He became again the pioneer.

DAKOTA was the magic word. The "Jim River Valley" was now the "land of delight," where "herds of deer and buffalo" still "furnished the cheer."