Mitch Miller Part 24

Then pa turned to me and says: "I'll put this in the safe. But mind you, you're not to say a thing to Mitch or any one about it. It will be a Christmas gift, which ain't far off. And if you tell, I'll keep your half for my fee. I'll find it out, sure, if you tell. Promise me now not to tell." And I promised.

Then pa locked the money up in the safe. And he said: "Go home, now; and tell your ma I'll be home for supper. She's back from her visit and will be glad to see you."

So I went home.

CHAPTER XXVI

There was days in here that I kind of forget. I remember Mr. Miller gave Mitch a watch which he had always promised him, and it looked good, but didn't run very well. So he was goin' to old Abe Zemple, which was a mechanic, to fix it. But it seemed to run worse, if anything. One thing that happened there was this: Old Zemple had a clock all apart, the wheels and springs scattered all over the bench. Mitch saw this and for fun he put a extra wheel on the bench with the rest. So when Old Zemple was puttin' the clock together again he couldn't find no place for this wheel; and finally he just left it out, and of course the clock run, havin' all the wheels back in it that really belonged to it. He went around town braggin' about puttin' a clock together with one wheel left out, and it was just as good as if it had all the wheels, and that showed that the factory didn't know about clocks.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Abe Zemple]

But it happened that in fixin' Mitch's watch, old Zemple had left out a little pin, just a little pin that you could hardly see, and Old Zemple found it out and put the pin in, and then the watch run. Old Zemple told Mr. Miller about leavin' the wheel out of the clock, and Mr. Miller said, "How do you explain it, Abe? You leave a big wheel out of a clock and it runs; and you leave a little pin out of a watch and it won't run?

Somethin's wrong. Look into it, Abe. For I've noticed about people that when they try to get somethin' extra into their lives, and fuss around like you did with this wheel, tryin' to find a place for it, that they don't need it, and do all right without it; and on the other hand, other people lose somethin' so little it don't seem to count, and yet they can't get along without it. But also sometimes a man thinks he's improved on creation by leavin' somethin' out of his life, or gettin'

rid of somethin' in society, and it turns out that it didn't belong there, just like this wheel. We get fooled a good deal; for you know, my boy put that extra wheel on your bench." And then Old Zemple said, gettin' mad--"Some boys have lost pins, or never had any. Their fathers don't raise 'em up right." And Mr. Miller said: "This town is just full of wheels that have nothin' to do with the clock. They either belong somewhere else, or they are left-overs of other times--like Henry Bannerman," referring to the man that spent all day every day walkin' up and down on the stone floor back of the pillars of the court house.

I want to come back to Mitch's watch. But first I remember it was about now that a troupe came to town playin' Rip Van Winkle, and Mr. Miller and my pa took Mitch and me to see it. And as we came back home, pa said to Mr. Miller: "Henry Bannerman is a kind of Rip Van Winkle--a extra wheel--he's been asleep ten years, anyway." So Mitch and me began to beg for the story about Henry Bannerman, which was that he drank until he had a fever and when he came out of the fever, he was blurred like and not keen like when he could recite Shakespeare and practice law fine. So pa said that once when Henry first began to practice law again after comin' out of the fever, he had a little office in the court house and Alcibiades Watkins came in to see him about a boundary fence, and sat down and told Henry about it, takin' about an hour. When Alcibiades finished, Henry says, "Tell it to me over; it's a long story and important and I want to get it right." So Alcibiades told it over. And then Henry says, "You came to consult me, did you?" Alcibiades said "yes." "Well," says Henry, "I'll have to charge you--I'll have to charge you two dollars for the advice." And so Alcibiades took out two dollars and handed it to Henry and waited for the advice. And Henry said: "Well, Alcibiades, I have listened to you for two hours about this boundary, and the boundary fence, and I don't know a thing about it, and my advice to you is to go and see Mr. Kirby who can understand it and is a good lawyer." So Alcibiades said, "Well, I know, but I came to you for advice." "Yes," said Henry, "I know you did, and I have give it to you--go and see Mr. Kirby--he's a good lawyer and will tell you what more to do and how to do it. You see I'm not a barrister--I'm just a solicitor."

So Mr. Miller and my pa talked, which was as much fun almost as the show. They seemed to know everything and to kind of stand back of Mitch and me, next to G.o.d, or somethin' strong that could keep any harm away.

But to come back to Mitch's watch. George Heigold had a piece of lead with printing letters on one side, in copper. They called it a stereotype, and it would print. And he wanted to trade Mitch for the watch, so he offered his stereotype; and as Mitch was crazy about printin' and books, Mitch traded and was glad of the chance. But when Mr. Miller found it out, he said: "What did you do that for? That lead stereotype ain't worth nothin'--and here you have traded off your watch which I gave you. You know, I think you are goin' to be a author--for authors give their time and everything they have to print things--and this looks like the key to your life, and a sign of what your life is goin' to be. So I think I'll begin with you and put you in the office of the _Observer_ to learn the printer's trade, like Franklin."

Of course this stereotype would print; and Mitch printed with it a good deal, but as it always printed the same thing, the fun soon died down, and Mitch really wished he had his watch back.

So that's how Mitch began to set type and help run a newspaper. The editor was Ca.s.sius Wilkinson, and a good deal of the time he was in Springfield, and the rest he was talkin' politics or gettin' drunk. So that the paper just run itself. The foreman was Dutchie Bale, who used to go to the farm papers or the Chicago papers and just cut great pieces out of 'em and set 'em in type for the paper; and as the editor didn't care, and Dutchie didn't care what went into the paper, Mitch had a chance to write for the paper himself; and also Mr. Miller slipped in some wonderful things; and people began to say that the paper was lookin' up. While Mr. Wilkinson, the editor, smiled and took the compliments give him just like he deserved 'em. And onct Mitch printed one of his poems about Salem, where one of the verses was:

Down by the mill where Linkern lived, Where the waters whirl and swish, I love to sit when school is out, Catchin' a nice cat fish.

I don't believe Mitch worked on the newspaper more'n a week or ten days, but lots happened; and I went down to see him a good deal to hear Dutchie Bale talk and swear. He swore awful, especially on press day; for the press nearly always broke down just as they started to print.

Then Dutchie would turn loose:

"Look at the old corn-sh.e.l.ler, look at the old cider mill, look at the junk (all the time puttin' in the awfulest profanity). Here he's over at Springfield, and me runnin' the paper and tryin' to print a paper on a grindstone like this. I'm goin' to quit--I've had enough of this (more terrible profanity)."

Mitch would be standin' there half scared and half laughin', and another printer named Sandy Bill would be sayin': "Why don't you tighten that bolt, Dutchie?" Then Dutchie would crawl under the press and start to do what Sandy said, but findin' that the bolt was all right, he'd crawl out again and maybe see Sandy kind of laughin'. So thinkin' Sandy was foolin' him, they'd begin to quarrel; and maybe, it would end with Dutchie throwin' a monkey wrench at Sandy and rushin' out of the room.

He'd come back later, for you couldn't really drive him off the place; and maybe after a hour or two the paper would be printed.

Well, Mr. Miller had wrote a long poem about the Indians, and he began to print it, and then somethin' happened. A man named Pemberton, which they called the Jack of Clubs, and a man named Hockey, which they called "Whistlin' d.i.c.k," had an awful fight by the corner store; and Mitch wrote up the fight for the paper, the editor bein' in Springfield, and Dutchie not carin' what was printed. Mitch called 'em human wind-mills; and when the paper came out, everybody in town began to laugh and the papers sold like hot cakes. Mr. Wilkinson was in Springfield and had nothin' to do with it; but Whistlin' d.i.c.k thought Mr. Wilkinson had wrote the piece and put it in. So he kept goin' to the depot waitin' for Mr. Wilkinson to get off the train from Springfield. When he did, which was in a day or two, he went right up to Mr. Wilkinson and hit him, and then proceeded to lick him until he had enough, and got up and ran; though he was sayin' all the time that he didn't write the piece and didn't know nothin' about it. Then Mr. Wilkinson came to the office and read the piece and Dutchie told him that Mitch wrote it. And that ended Mitch as an editor. He was afraid to go back to the office anyway, in addition to bein' fired.

CHAPTER XXVII

Mitch was now a changed boy and every one could see it. He didn't come around as much as he used to. At first Mr. Miller set him to work to learn the printer's trade as I have told. That kept him away from me; but after he lost the job, still I didn't see him like I used to. I looked him up a good deal, but he was mostly quiet. He didn't want to fish, or to swim, or to go out to the farm--he just read, Shakespeare and other books; lying in the gra.s.s by his house. And he wouldn't come down to see me much, because he said it made him think of Little Billie.

And Zueline had gone away with her mother, they said to Springfield; and if she'd been home, Mitch couldn't have seen her anyway. I was terrible lonesome without Mitch and the days dragged, and I kept hearin' of him bein' off with Charley King and George Heigold and it worried me.

Harold Carman had been put in jail, and then let out on bond, which held him to testify in the Rainey case. And one day Mitch came to me and says: "I'm really caught in this law. I've been to see your pa. I thought I'd told my story once and that would do; but he says there'll be a new jury that never has heard about the case or what I know; and I'll have to tell it all over again. And with Harold Carman to tell about their tryin' to get him to say he found a pistol, and my story, they can convict Temple Scott. So I'm caught; and if we had ever so much to do, and ever so much treasure to find, or trips to take, I'd have to put it aside for this here law and testifyin'. And if they knew how I hated it, they'd never ask me if I didn't like it, and like makin' a sensation and actin' the part of Tom Sawyer."

"Pinafore" was played at last, and we all went, but when my pa sang the "Merry, Merry Maiden and the Tar," Mitch got up and left the hall, because, as he said to me afterward, it brought back that awful night when Joe Rainey was killed. It must have affected others that way too; that and the death of Mrs. Rainey, who had a part in the show. For they only played two nights, instead of three, which they intended. Not enough came to make it worth while.

Then one night I went up to see Mitch and the house seemed quieter. The girls was playin' as before, but not so wild. Mr. Miller was readin' to Mrs. Miller, English history or somethin'; but Mrs. Miller looked kind of like she was tryin' to pay attention. She didn't act interested and happy like she used to. Mitch told me then that his pa had been let out of the church; that while we was gone to St. Louis the trustees met and decided that they wanted a minister who would put a lot of go into the church and get converts and make things hum; that the mortgage on the church had to be met and they couldn't meet it without gettin' more people interested in the church and church work. That may have been all true; but just the same everybody said that Mr. Miller was let go because he preached that sermon about G.o.d bein' in everything, which he didn't mean except just as a person talks to hisself. He was dreamin', like Mitch, when he said it.

So Mr. Miller was goin' to Springfield to see what he could do about gettin' to sell books or maps or atlases, and quit preachin' till a church turned up, or preach a little now and then, and marry folks when he could, and preach at funerals. I heard Mr. Miller say to my pa that he was worried about Mitch; that Mitch talked in his sleep and ground his teeth, and talked about engines and horses and findin' pistols and treasure, and ridin' on steamboats, and about Zueline and Tom Sawyer.

And he said he'd tried to get him to go out to the farm with me and ride horses and get a change, but he wouldn't. He just read Shakespeare until they hid the book; and then they found him readin' Burns; and once Ingersoll's Lectures, which they also took away, because Mr. Miller thought Mitch was too young.

About this time I was about a third through readin' the Bible to earn that five dollars that grandma had promised me. And Mitch asked me what I thought, and I said I didn't understand it much; but in parts it was as wonderful as any book. And Mitch says, "Do you know what the Bible is?" "No," I says; "what is it?" "Why," he says, "the Bible is the 'Tom Sawyer' of grown folks. I know that now; so I don't have to go through the trouble of findin' it out after I'm grown up and depended upon it for a long while. There's the sky and the earth, and there are folks, and we're more or less real to each other, and there's something back of it. But I believe when you die, you're asleep--sound asleep--I almost know it. And why we should wake up a bit and then go to sleep forever is more than my pa knows or any person in the world knows."

Mitch scared me with his talk. He was so earnest and solemn and seemed so sure.

One night when I was up to Mr. Miller's, it came up somehow what we was goin' to do when we was grown up--Mitch and me--and Mrs. Miller thought we should be taught somethin' to earn a livin' by; and that the schools instead of teachin' so much, and teachin' Latin and Greek, which n.o.body used, should teach practical things.

And Mr. Miller said, "Look out! That's comin' fast enough; it's on us already. For back of the schools are the factories and places that always want workers, and they're already usin' the schools to turn out workers, boys who don't know much, or boys who know one thing. And it makes no difference what happens to me--it's just as much or more to know how to enjoy life and to enjoy it, as it is to be able to earn a livin'. If you earn a livin' and don't know how to enjoy life, you're as bad off as if you know how to enjoy life, but can't make a livin', or not much of one. Look here, you boys: Anything that gives you pleasure, like Greek and Latin, stories, history, doin' things, whatever they are, for the sake of livin', are worth while. And you let yourselves go. And don't be molded into a tool for somebody's use, and lose your own individuality."

And that's the way he talked. And then he said it was all right to dig for treasure if we wanted to, and to want to see the Mississippi River and see Tom Sawyer, and he didn't blame us a bit for anything we had done. "Yes," he says, "I'll take you to Springfield to-morrow; ask your pa, Skeet, and come along."

I did; and the next morning we took the train for Springfield; and here was a big town, not as big as St. Louis, but awful big. The capitol was bigger'n any building in St. Louis, with a great dome and a flag. And Mr. Miller took us out to see Lincoln's monument. Just when we got there, two men in overalls came runnin' from the back of the tomb and said a man--an old soldier--had just killed himself with a knife. So we ran around and found him lyin' in a lot of blood. The men came back and took a bottle of whisky out of his pocket, and a writing which said that the prohibition party had been defeated, and if it had won he couldn't have got whisky; and so he killed himself because the prohibition party had been defeated. And Mitch says, "What a fool idea! If he wanted the prohibition party defeated, why did he drink and buy whisky; and if he drank and carried whisky in his pocket, why did he want the prohibition party to win, and kill himself because it lost? He was crazy, wasn't he, pa?"

And Mr. Miller said, "Not necessarily--that's sense as things go in the world. Some people want whisky done away with so they can't get it their own selves, and when they can't get a law for that, it disappoints 'em, and they keep on drinkin' because they're disappointed, or kill themselves because their disappointment is too much. For you can depend upon it that any man that gets his mind too much fixed on any idea is like a cross-eyed man killin' a steer with a sledgehammer; he hits whar he's lookin', and hits wrong. Lincoln had a way of holdin' to an idea without the idea draggin' him down and away from everything else."

They had carried the dead man off, so we went into the tomb to see the curiosities. And there was more things than you could see: All kinds of flags and framed things, pictures and writing and showcases with pistols, and all sorts of trinkets, bullets, and knives; and a pair of spectacles which Linkern had wore, and a piece of a rail he had split, and books he'd read, and a piece of ribbon with his blood on it the night he died, and a theater program and lots of other things.

Then we went out-doors and looked up at the monument, and it made me dizzy to see the clouds sail over the top of it. And there was a figure of Linkern in iron, and of soldiers in iron charging, and horses in iron; besides mottoes cut in the stone and in iron. Then we went around to the back again where the old soldier had killed himself. They had the blood wiped up now. So we looked through the iron bars where a stone coffin was, but Linkern wasn't in there, Mr. Miller said. For once they had tried to steal him, and got the lead coffin out, and clear down the hill that we could see; but they caught 'em. And after that they dug way down and put Linkern there, and then poured mortar or concrete all over him, clear up to the top; then laid the floor again and put this marble coffin there, which was a dummy and had nothin' in it. So now n.o.body could get Linkern forever and ever.

And then we came around in front again, and Mr. Miller looked up at the statue of Linkern and began to study it, and he says: "I brought you boys to Springfield and out here to learn and to get things into your mind. You'll remember this trip as long as you live. It's the first time you've ever been here, and you'll be here lots of times again, maybe; but you'll always remember this time. Now, just look at Lincoln's face and his body and tell me how anybody could see him and not see that he was different from other men. Look how his face comes out in the bronze and becomes wonderful, and then think if you can how a handsome face would look in bronze--just the difference between a wonderful cliff or mountain side, and a great, smooth, perfect bowlder. And yet, boys, that man went right around here for twenty years, yes and more, all around this town, all around Petersburg, up at Old Salem, all over the country, practicing law, walking along the streets with people, talkin' with 'em on the corners, sittin' by 'em by the cannon stove in the offices of the hotels, sleepin' in the same rooms with 'em, as he did up at Petersburg at the Menard House, when the grand jury had the loft and they put Lincoln up there too, because there was no other place to put him."

"The Menard House," says Mitch; "do you mean that hotel there now?"

"The very same," said Mr. Miller; "didn't you know that?"

"No," says Mitch.

[Ill.u.s.tration: At Lincoln's Monument]

"Well, that shows you; you're like the people who lived when Lincoln did, they didn't know him, some of them; and now you don't know the places he went to and the country he lived in; and you'd never have gone to Old Salem, if you hadn't gone there for treasure--would you, Mitch?"

Mitch said he didn't know, maybe not.

"Well," said Mr. Miller, "if you find Lincoln while tryin' to dig up a few rotten dollars, it's all right anyway. Now, boys, look here, it seems an awful time to you since Washington lived, since the Government was founded--but it isn't. We're all here together, and when you get to be old men, you'll see that you were born and lived in the beginning of the republic. How will it look hereafter? Do you want to know--take a history and look at it now. Let's see! Washington had just been dead ten years when Lincoln was born; Lincoln had been dead eleven years when you were born. When Lincoln was born, the Government had been founded just twenty-three years, was just a little more than of age. It wasn't but just eighty years old when Lincoln became president. Why, these figures are nothing. Think about it. When did Juvenal live? About 42 A.D. When did Virgil and Horace live, and Caesar and Augustus and Domitian? What does forty years here or there mean when you're lookin' back over hundreds of years or a thousand? And so I say, you boys were born in the beginning of the republic, not a hundred years after it was started, and if either of you ever get your names into the history, there it will be beside Lincoln, and not far from Washington--for you were born ten years after Lincoln died and not a hundred after Washington. Well, there you are. You're young and the republic is young; and the chance is before you to do for the country and help out, for we're havin' bad times now, and they'll be worse. After every war, times is bad, and we're goin' to have other wars and worse'n ever."

Then Mr. Miller said: "There's two kinds of men--at least two. One that thinks and one that acts; or one that tells people what to do, and others that listen and do it, or else have thought it out first themselves, and do it. Well, look at Lincoln up there. Here he was over at Old Salem running a store, surveyin'; then in politics a little, then a lawyer; but mostly for twenty years he was thinkin' about the state of the country, slavery and things; and he thought it all out. Then they elected him president, and he acted out what he thought."

"Well, don't you suppose he could have got rich practicing law or tradin' in land? He was a good lawyer--none better! Why didn't he get fees and save and buy land during the twenty years he practiced law?

Because his mind was set on the country, on how to make the country better, on being a shepherd of the people. The man who thinks of money all the time, thinks of himself; and the man who thinks of the country and wants to help it is thinking of what can be done for people and how the country can find treasure in having better people, and better laws, and better life and more of it. Yes, sir, boys, you'll find somewhere that Lincoln said his ambition was to be well thought of by his fellow citizens, and to deserve to be. And it never occurred to him that he could do that by getting money."