The Book of the Bush Part 5

I proceeded to the Lake City to lay the foundation of my fortune by buying town lots. I laid the foundation on a five-acre block in West Joliet, but had to borrow seven dollars from my nearest friend to pay the first deposit. Chicago was then a small but busy wooden town, with slushy streets, plank sidewalks, verandahs full of rats, and bedrooms humming with mosquitoes. I left it penniless but proud, an owner of real estate.

While returning to Joliet on the ca.n.a.l boat my nearest friend, from whom I had borrowed the seven dollars, kindly gave me his views on the subject of "greenhorns." (The Australian equivalent of "greenhorn" is "new chum." I had the advantage of serving my time in both capacities). "No greenhorn," he observed, "ever begins to get along in the States until he has parted with his bottom dollar. That puts a keen edge on his mind, and he grows smart in business. A smart man don't strain his back with hard work for any considerable time. He takes out a patent for something--a mowing machine, or one for sowing corn and pumpkins, a new churn or wash-tub, pills for the shakes, or, best of all, a new religion--anything, in fact, that will catch on and fetch the public."

I had parted with my bottom dollar, was also in debt, and therefore in the best position for getting along; but I could not all at once think of anything to patent, and had to earn my daily bread some way or other. I began to do it by hammering sheets of iron into the proper curves for an undershot water-wheel. After I had worked two days my boss suggested that I should seek other employment--in a school, for instance; a new teacher was wanted in the common school of West Joliet.

I said I should prefer something higher; a teacher was of no more earthly account than a tailor.

The boss said: "That might be so in benighted Britain, but in the Great United States our prominent citizens begin life as teachers in the common schools, and gradually rise to the highest positions in the Republic."

I concluded to rise, but a certificate of competency was required, and I presented myself for examination to the proper official, the editor and proprietor of 'The True Democrat' whose office was across the bridge, nearly opposite Matheson's woollen factory. I found the editor and his compositor labouring over the next edition of the paper.

The editor began the examination with the alphabet. I said in England we used twenty-six letters, and I named all of them correctly except the last. I called it "zed," but the editor said it was "zee," and I did not argue the point.

He then asked me to pick out the vowels, the consonants, the flats, the sharps, the aspirates, the l.a.b.i.als, the palatals, the dentals, and the mutes. I was struck dumb; I could feel the very foundation of all learning sinking beneath me, and had to confess that I did not know my letters.

Then he went on to spelling and writing. My writing was barely pa.s.sable, and my spelling was quite out of date. I used superfluous letters which had been very properly abolished by Webster's dictionary.

At last the editor remarked, with becoming modesty, that he was himself of no account at figures, but Mr. Sims would put me through the arithmetic. Mr. Sims was the compositor, and an Englishman; he put me through tenderly.

When the examination was finished, I felt like a convicted impostor, and was prepared to resume work on the undershot water-wheel, but the two professors took pity on me, and certified in writing that I was qualified to keep school.

Then the editor remarked that the retiring teacher, Mr. Randal, had advertised in the 'True Democrat' his ability to teach the Latin language; but, unfortunately, Father Ingoldsby had offered himself as a first pupil; Mr. Randal never got another, and all his Latin oozed out. On this timely hint I advertised my ability to teach the citizens of Joliet not only Latin, but Greek, French, Spanish, and Portuguese. My advertis.e.m.e.nt will be found among the files of the 'True Democrat' of the year 1849 by anyone taking the trouble to look for it. I had carelessly omitted to mention the English language, but we sometimes get what we don't ask for, and no less than sixteen Germans came to night school to study our tongue. They were all masons and quarrymen engaged in exporting steps and window sills to the rising city of Chicago.

When Goldsmith tried to earn his bread by teaching English in Holland, he overlooked the fact that it was first necessary for him to learn Low Dutch. I overlooked the same fact, but it gave me no trouble whatever. There was no united Germany then, and my pupils disagreed continually about the p.r.o.nunciation of their own language, which seemed, like that of Babel, intelligible to n.o.body. I composed their quarrels by confining their minds to English solely, and harmony was restored each night by song.

The school-house was a one-storey frame building on the second plateau in West Joliet, and was attended by about one hundred scholars. In the rear was a shallow lagoon, fenced on one side by a wall of loose rocks, infested with snakes. The track to the cemetery was near, and it soon began to be in very frequent use. One day during recess the boys had a snake hunt, and they tied their game in one bunch by the heads with string, and suspended them by the wayside. I counted them, and there were twenty-seven snakes in the bunch.

The year '49 was the 'annus mirabilis' of the great rush for gold across the plains, and it was also an 'annus miserabilis' on account of the cholera. In three weeks fourteen hundred waggons bound for California crossed one of the bridges over the ca.n.a.l. I was desirous of joining the rush, but was, as usual, short of cash, and I had to stay at Joliet to earn my salary. I met the editor of the 'True Democrat' nearly every day carrying home a bucket of water from the Aux Plaines river. He did his own ch.o.r.es. He sent two young men who wished to become teachers to my school to graduate. One was named O'Reilly, lately from Ireland; I gave him his degree in a few weeks, and he kept school somewhere out on the prairie. The other did not graduate before the cholera came. He was a native of Vermont, and he played the clarionet in our church choir. The instrumental music came from the clarionet, from a violin, and a flute. The choir came from France and Germany, Old England and New England, Ireland, Alsace, and Belgium. It was divided into two hostile camps, and the party which first took possession of the gallery took precedence in the music for that day only. There was a want of harmony. One morning when the priest was chanting the first words of the Gloria, the head of a little French bugler appeared at the top of the gallery stairs, and at once started a plaint chant, Gloria, we had never rehea.r.s.ed or heard before. He sang his solo to the end. He was thirsting for glory, and he took a full draught.

I don't think there was ever a choir like ours but one, and that was conducted by a butcher from Dolphinholm in the Anglican Church at Garstang. One Sunday he started a hymn with a new tune. Three times his men broke down, and three times they were heard by the whole congregation whispering ferociously at one another. At length the parson tried to proceed with the service, and said: "Let us pray."

But the bold butcher retorted: "Pray be hanged. Let us try again, lads; I know we can do it." He then started the hymn for the fourth time, and they did it. After the service the parson demanded satisfaction of the butcher, and got it in a neighbouring pasture.

The cholera came, and we soon grew very serious. The young man from Vermont walked with me after school hours, and we tried to be cheerful, but it was of no use. Our talk always reverted to the plague, and the best way to cure it or to avoid it. The doctors disagreed. Every theory was soon contradicted by facts; all kinds of people were attacked and died; the young and the old, the weak and the strong, the drunken and the sober. Every man adopted a special diet or a favourite liquor--brandy, whiskey, bitters, cherry-bounce, sarsaparilla. My own particular preventive was hot tea, sweetened with mola.s.ses and seasoned with cayenne pepper. I survived, but that does not prove anything in particular.

The two papers, the 'Joliet Signal' and the 'True Democrat', scarcely ever mentioned the cholera. It would have been bad policy, tending to scare away the citizens and to injure trade.

Many men suddenly found that they had urgent business to look after elsewhere, and sneaked away, leaving their wives and families behind them.

On Sunday Father Ingoldsby advised his people to prepare their souls for the visit of the Angel of Death, who was every night knocking at their doors. There were many, he said, whose faces he had never seen at the rails since he came to Joliet; and what answer would they give to the summons which called them to appear without delay before the judgment seat of G.o.d? What doom could they expect but that of d.a.m.nation and eternal death?

The sermon needed no translation for the men of many nations who were present. Irishmen and Englishmen, Highlanders and Belgians, French and Germans, Mexicans and Canadians, could interpret the meaning of the flashing eye which roamed to every corner of the church, singling out each miserable sinner; the fierce frown, the threatening gesture, the finger first pointing to the heaven above, and then down to the depths of h.e.l.l.

Some stayed to pray and to confess their sins; others hardened their hearts and went home unrepentant. Michael Mangan went to Belz's grocery near the ca.n.a.l. He said he felt pains in his interior, and drank a jigger of whisky. Then he bought half-a-gallon of the same remedy to take home with him. It was a cheap prescription, costing only twelve and a half cents, but it proved very effective. Old Belz put the stuff into an earthenware bottle, which he corked with a corncob. Michael started for home by the zigzag path which led up the steep limestone bluff, but his steps were slow and unsteady; he sat down on a rock, and took another dose out of his bottle. He never went any further of his own motion, and we buried him next day.

We were of different opinions about the cause of his death; some thought it was the cholera, others the pangs of conscience, some the whisky, and others a mixture of all three; at any rate, he died without speaking to the priest.

Next day another neighbour died, Mr. Harrigan. He had lost one arm, but with the other he wrote a good hand, and registered deeds in the County Court. I called to see him. He was in bed lying on his back, his one arm outside the coverlet, his heaving chest was bare, and his face was ghastly pale. There were six men in the room, one of whom said:

"Do you know me, Mr. Harrigan?"

"Sure, divil a dog in Lockport but knows you, Barney," said the dying man.

Barney lived in Lockport, and in an audible whisper said to us: "Ain't he getting on finely? He'll be all right again to-morrow, please G.o.d."

"And didn't the doctor say I'd be dead before twelve this day?"

asked Harrigan.

I looked at the clock on the mantelshelf. It was past ten. He died an hour later.

One day the young man from Vermont rose from his seat and looked at me across the schoolroom. I thought he was going to say something.

He took down his hat, went to the door, turned and looked at me again, but he did not speak or make any sign. Next morning his place was vacant, and I asked one of the boys if he had seen the young man.

The boy said:

"He ain't a-coming to school no more, I calkilate. He was buried this morning before school hours."

That year, '49 was a dismal year in Joliet.

Mr. Rogers, one of the school managers, came and sat on a bench near the door. He was a New Englander, a carpenter, round-shouldered, tall and bony. He said:

"I called in to tell you that I can't vote for appinting you to this school next term. Fact is the ladies are dead against you; don't see you at meeting on the Sabbath; say you go to the Catholic Church with the Irish and Dutch. I a'n't a word to say agen you myself. This is a free country; every man can go, for aught I care, whichever way he darn chooses--to heaven, or h.e.l.l, or any other place. But I want to be peaceable, and I can't get no peace about voting for you next term, so I thought I'd let you know, that you mightn't be disappointed."

In that way Mr. Rogers washed his hands of me. I said I was sorry I did not please the ladies, but I liked to hear a man who spoke his mind freely.

Soon afterwards the Germans brought me word that the Yankees were calling a meeting about me. I was aware by this time that when a special gathering of citizens takes place to discuss the demerits of any individual, it is advisable for that individual to be absent if possible; but curiosity was strong within me; hitherto I had never been honoured with any public notice whatever, and I attended the meeting uninvited.

The Yankees are excellent orators; they are born without bashfulness; they are taught to speak pieces in school from their childhood; they p.r.o.nounce each word distinctly; they use correctly the rising inflection and the falling inflection. Moreover, they are always in deadly earnest; there is another miserable world awaiting their arrival. Their humorists are the most unhappy of men. You may smile when you read their jokes, but when you see the jokers you are more inclined to weep. With pain and sorrow they grind, like Samson, at the jokers' mill all the days of their lives.

The meeting was held in the new two-storey school-house.

Deacon Beaumont took the chair--my chair--and Mr Curtis was appointed secretary. I began to hate Deacon Beaumont, as also Mr.

Curtis, who was the only other teacher present; it was evident they were going to put him in my place.

Each speaker on rising put his left hand in the side pocket of his pants. I was not mentioned by name, but nevertheless I was given clearly to understand that I had been reared in a land whose people are under the dominion of a tyrannical monarch and a bloated aristocracy; that therefore I had never breathed the pure air of freedom, and was unfitted to teach the children of the Great Republic.

Mr. Tucker, an influential citizen, moved finally that the school managers be instructed to engage a Mr. Sellars, of Dresden, as teacher at the West Joliet School. He said Mr. Sellars was a young man from New England who had been teaching for a term at Dresden, and had given great satisfaction. He had the best testimony to the character and ability of the young man from his own daughter, Miss Priscilla Tucker, who had been school marm in the same school, and was now home on a visit. She could give, from her own personal knowledge, any information the managers might require.

Mr. Tucker's motion was seconded. There was no amendment proposed, and all in favour of the motion were requested by Deacon Beaumont to stand up. The Yankees all rose to their feet, the others sat still, all but old Gorges, a Prussian, who, with his two sons, had come to vote for me. But the old man did not understand English. His son John pulled him down, but Deacon Beaumont had counted his vote, and the motion was carried by a majority of one. So I was, in fact, put out of the school by my best friend, old Gorges.

I went away in a dudgeon and marked off a cellar on my real estate, 30 feet by 18 feet, on the top of the bluff, near the edge of the western prairie. The ground was a mixture of stiff clay and limestone rock, and I dug at it all through the month of September.

Curious people came along and made various remarks; some said nothing, but went away whistling. One day Mr. Jackson and Paul Duffendorff were pa.s.sing by, and I wanted them to pa.s.s, but they stopped like the rest. Mr. Jackson was reckoned one of the smartest men in Will county. He had a large farm, well stocked, but he was never known to do any work except with his brains. He was one of those men who increased the income of the State of Illinois by ability. Duffendorf was a huge Dutchman, nearly seven feet in height. He was a great friend of mine, great every way, but very stupid; he had no sense of refinement. He said:

"Ve gates, schoolmeister? Py golly! Here, Mr. Shackson, is our schoolmeister a vurkin mit spade and bick. How vas you like dat kind of vurk, Mr. Shackson?"

"Never could be such a darned fool; sooner steal," answered Jackson.

Duffendorf laughed until he nearly fell into the cellar. Now this talk was very offensive. I knew Mr. Jackson was defendant in a case then pending. He had been charged with conspiring to defraud; with having stolen three horses; with illegally detaining seventy-five dollars; and on other counts which I cannot remember just now. The thing was originally very simple, even Duffendorff could understand it.

Mr. Jackson was in want of some ready money, so he directed his hired man to steal three of his horses in the dead of night, take them to Chicago, sell them to the highest bidder, find out where the highest bidder lived, and then return with the cash to Joliet. The hired man did his part of the business faithfully, returned and reported to his employer. Then Mr. Jackson set out in search of his stolen horses, found them, and brought them home. The man expected to receive half the profits of the enterprise. The boss demurred, and only offered one-third, and said if that was not satisfactory he would bring a charge of horse-stealing. The case went into court, and under the treatment of learned counsel grew very complicated. It was remarkable as being the only one on record in Will county in which a man had made money by stealing his own horses. It is, I fancy, still 'sub judice'.

Both the old school and the new school remained closed even after the cholera ceased to thin out the citizens, but I felt no further interest in the education of youth. When winter came I tramped three miles into the forest, and began to fell trees and split rails in order to fence in my suburban estate. For some time I carried a rifle, and besides various small game I shot two deer, but neither of them would wait for me to come up with them even after I had shot them; they took my two bullets away with them, and left me only a few drops of blood on the snow; then I left the rifle at home. For about four months the ground was covered with snow, and the cold was intense, but I continued splitting until the snakes came out to bask in the sun and warm themselves. I saw near a dead log eight coiled together, and I killed them all. The juice of the sugar maples began to run. I cut notches in the bark in the shape of a broad arrow, bored a hole at the point, inserted a short spout of bark, and on sunny mornings the juice flowed in a regular stream, clear and sparkling; on cloudy days it only dropped.