Moonbeams from the Larger Lunacy Part 9

"This was 1856," said Mr. Apricot. "He came often to my father's cabin, sitting down with us to our humble meal of potatoes and whiskey (we lived with a simplicity which of course you could not possibly understand), and would spend the evening talking with my father over the interpretation of the Const.i.tution of the United States.

We children used to stand beside them listening open-mouthed beside the fire in our plain leather night-gowns. I shall never forget how I was thrilled when I first heard Lincoln lay down his famous theory of the territorial jurisdiction of Congress as affected by the Supreme Court decision of 1857. I was only nine years old at the time, but it thrilled me!"

"Is it possible!" I exclaimed, "how ever could you understand it?"

"Ah! my friend," said Mr. Apricot, almost sadly, "in THOSE days the youth of the United States were EDUCATED in the real sense of the word. We children followed the decisions of the Supreme Court with breathless interest.

Our books were few but they were GOOD. We had nothing to read but the law reports, the agriculture reports, the weather bulletins and the almanacs. But we read them carefully from cover to cover. How few boys have the industry to do so now, and yet how many of our greatest men were educated on practically nothing else except the law reports and the almanacs. Franklin, Jefferson, Jackson, Johnson,"--Mr. Apricot had relapsed into his sing-song voice, and his eye had a sort of misty perplexity in it as he went on,--"Harrison, Thomson, Peterson, Emerson--"

I thought it better to stop him.

"But you were speaking," I said, "of the winter of eighteen fifty-six."

"Of eighteen forty-six," corrected Mr. Apricot. "I shall never forget it. How distinctly I remember,--I was only a boy then, in fact a mere lad,--fighting my way to school. The snow lay in some places as deep as ten feet"-- Mr. Apricot paused--"and in others twenty. But we made our way to school in spite of it. No boys of to-day,--nor, for the matter of that, even men such as you,--would think of attempting it. But we were keen, anxious to learn. Our school was our delight. Our teacher was our friend. Our books were our companions. We gladly trudged five miles to school every morning and seven miles back at night, did ch.o.r.es till midnight, studied algebra by candlelight"--here Mr. Apricot's voice had fallen into its characteristic sing-song, and his eyes were vacant--"rose before daylight, dressed by lamplight, fed the hogs by lantern-light, fetched the cows by twilight--"

I thought it best to stop him.

"But you did eventually get off the farm, did you not?"

I asked.

"Yes," he answered, "my opportunity presently came to me as it came in those days to any boy of industry and intelligence who knocked at the door of fortune till it opened. I shall never forget how my first chance in life came to me. A man, an entire stranger, struck no doubt with the fact that I looked industrious and willing, offered me a dollar to drive a load of tan bark to the nearest market--"

"Where was that?" I asked.

"Minneapolis, seven hundred miles. But I did it. I shall never forget my feelings when I found myself in Minneapolis with one dollar in my pocket and with the world all before me."

"What did you do?" I said.

"First," said Mr. Apricot, "I laid out seventy-five cents for a suit of clothes (things were cheap in those days); for fifty cents I bought an overcoat, for twenty-five I got a hat, for ten cents a pair of boots, and with the rest of my money I took a room for a month with a Swedish family, paid a month's board with a German family, arranged to have my washing done by an Irish family, and--"

"But surely, Mr. Apricot--" I began.

But at this point the young man who is generally in attendance on old Mr. Apricot when he comes to the club, appeared on the scene.

"I am afraid," he said to me aside as Mr. Apricot was gathering up his newspapers and his belongings, "that my uncle has been rather boring you with his reminiscences."

"Not at all," I said, "he's been telling me all about his early life in his father's cabin on the Wabash--"

"I was afraid so," said the young man. "Too bad. You see he wasn't really there at all."

"Not there!" I said.

"No. He only fancies that he was. He was brought up in New York, and has never been west of Philadelphia. In fact he has been very well to do all his life. But he found that it counted against him: it hurt him in politics.

So he got into the way of talking about the Middle West and early days there, and sometimes he forgets that he wasn't there."

"I see," I said.

Meantime Mr. Apricot was ready.

"Good-bye, good-bye," he said very cheerily,--"A delightful chat. We must have another talk over old times soon. I must tell you about my first trip over the Plains at the time when I was surveying the line of the Union Pacific.

You who travel nowadays in your Pullman coaches and observation cars can have no idea--"

"Come along, uncle," said the young man.

6.--The Last Man out of Europe

He came into the club and shook hands with me as if he hadn't seen me for a year. In reality I had seen him only eleven months ago, and hadn't thought of him since.

"How are you, Parkins?" I said in a guarded tone, for I saw at once that there was something special in his manner.

"Have a cig?" he said as he sat down on the edge of an arm-chair, dangling his little boot.

Any young man who calls a cigarette a "cig" I despise.

"No, thanks," I said.

"Try one," he went on, "they're Hungarian. They're some I managed to bring through with me out of the war zone."

As he said "war zone," his face twisted up into a sort of scowl of self-importance.

I looked at Parkins more closely and I noticed that he had on some sort of foolish little coat, short in the back, and the kind of bow-tie that they wear in the Hungarian bands of the Sixth Avenue restaurants.

Then I knew what the trouble was. He was the last man out of Europe, that is to say, the latest last man. There had been about fourteen others in the club that same afternoon. In fact they were sitting all over it in Italian suits and Viennese overcoats, striking German matches on the soles of Dutch boots. These were the "war zone" men and they had just got out "in the clothes they stood up in." Naturally they hated to change.

So I knew all that this young man, Parkins, was going to say, and all about his adventures before he began.

"Yes," he said, "we were caught right in the war zone.

By Jove, I never want to go through again what I went through."

With that, he sank back into the chair in the pose of a man musing in silence over the recollection of days of horror.

I let him muse. In fact I determined to let him muse till he burst before I would ask him what he had been through.

I knew it, anyway.

Presently he decided to go on talking.

"We were at Izzl," he said, "in the Carpathians, Loo Jones and I. We'd just made a walking tour from Izzl to Fryzzl and back again."

"Why did you come back?" I asked.

"Back where?"

"Back to Izzl," I explained, "after you'd once got to Fryzzl. It seems unnecessary, but, never mind, go on."

"That was in July," he continued. "There wasn't a sign of war, not a sign. We heard that Russia was beginning to mobilize," (at this word be blew a puff from his cigarette and then repeated "beginning to mobilize") "but we thought nothing of it."

"Of course not," I said.

"Then we heard that Hungary was calling out the Honveds, but we still thought nothing of it."