The Minute Man of the Frontier Part 18

Now, to the general reader, everything seems in a hopeless muddle, and he is glad he is not living there. But remember this. It is better than some older settlements, where men had to give eighty bushels of wheat for a pair of stogy boots, as they did in Ohio, and fight the Indian as well as the wolf from the door, or in Kansas forty years ago, where corn brought five cents a bushel, and men had to go a hundred miles to the mill. In order to show the hopeful side, I will give an ill.u.s.tration.

I was to speak at a meeting in Illinois. My way was through Missouri, where spiritual and civilized prosperity has not kept pace with her wealth and opportunities. I was entertained in a mansion built sixty years ago. The city, of sixteen thousand inhabitants, could hardly be matched in New England,--many fine streets, shaded with grand old elms; the roads bricked and well graded; the houses beautiful, artistic, and surrounded with lovely lawns; a college, a ladies'

seminary, and many fine schools and churches.

The lady of the house said, "My mother crossed the mountains many times to Washington, to live with her husband, who represented the State there." At last she had to take two carriages and two horses, and it became too hard work, when her husband built the house which is still a beautiful home, with magnificent elms, planted by its original owner, shading it. In that day the rattlesnake glided about the doorway, the Indians roamed everywhere, and the wolves actually licked the frosting off the cakes that were set to cool on the doorstep, while the Indians stole the poor woman's dinner who lived close by.

To-day a park adorns the front, given by the generous owner to the city; and where the wolves and the Indians roamed, lives the daughter of Governor Duncan, with her husband and family, in one of the finest cities of its size in the world. Nowhere in all this wide world can the advance of civilization during the last fifty years be found on so large a scale as here on the American frontiers.

x.x.xII.

THE PIONEER WEDDING.

As one travels over our country to-day, one will see as lowly homes, as acute poverty, and as congested a population, as he can find anywhere in Europe, with this great difference,--our people are filled with hope. There is a buoyancy about American life that is lacking in Europe. It is, as Emerson expressed it, a land of opportunity; and this difference is everything to the immigrant and the native pioneer.

And this means much to us. The great majority of immigrants are from the most thrifty of the poor.

I have in mind now a family, who once lived in a large city. It took all the strength of husband and wife to make both ends meet; but by dint of rigid economy, they saved enough to take them across the water in the steerage of a great ship. This couple, with their little ones, found themselves at the end of their journey on a homestead, but with scarcely a cent left. The people around them were very poor, some of them living the first winter on potatoes and salt, not having either bread or milk. But in some way they managed to live, cheered by the hope that any move must be upward, and in the near future comfort, and farther on affluence. The same economy that saved the pa.s.sage-money kept a little for a rainy day, no matter how hard the times were.

When I became acquainted with them they owned a large farm, a small log house and stable, several cows, horses, pigs, and poultry. Around the house was a neat picket-fence, every picket being cut out and made with axe and jack-knife during the long winter months. The vegetable garden was well-stocked; but what appealed to me most was the richness and the variety of the flower-garden,--roses, pansies, wallflowers, sweet-pease, hollyhocks, and mignonette. It was truly a feast for the eyes. The little house and the milk-room, the latter made of lilliputian logs, were dazzling white by the repeated coats of whitewash. The whole formed a pretty picture; and for so new a country it was more than a picture,--it was an education for every settler near them.

I tried to fancy my host's feelings as he thought of the sharp struggle in the old land, and as he looked over his broad acres now, richer than the farmers he once envied as they drove in on their stout cobs to market.

Near by was another home. Here, too, were fine gardens, and another old couple out of the grip of poverty, which well-nigh killed them in the struggle. This good lady was once the only white woman on a large island, which to-day is laid out in sections, has towns, villages, schoolhouses, and churches, and every farm occupied. The old couple had an unmarried son left; and he, too, was about to quit the parent nest, and start a home for himself. And now I must tell about the wedding.

But first a word about the climate, soil, and conditions, in order to understand what follows. The whole country had once been forest, the home of the Hurons, Chippewas, and other tribes of Indians. The Jesuit had roamed here, suffered, and often become a martyr. Some time in the past, either from Indian fires or carelessness, the forest caught fire, and tens of thousands of acres of choice maples and birch were burnt down to the very roots. The soil is clay, but so charged with lime that you can plough while the water follows the horses in the furrows in rivulets that dash against their fetlocks. This in clay, as a rule, would mean utter ruin until frost came, and the ground thawed again. But not so here. As the ground becomes dry, it pulverizes easily under the harrow.

This section was subject to storms that filled the narrow streams until they became dangerous torrents, sweeping all before them, and sometimes making a jam of logs twenty miles long. One spring I noticed that all the bridges were new, and that they had all been built some four feet higher than before. I was told that the spring freshets had swept everything before them, and had been so unusually high that the change of level became necessary.

It was the night before the wedding, and I was preaching in a little schoolhouse that held about twenty people. It was a very hot night for that lat.i.tude, and every one was depressed with the heat. A great black cloud covered the heavens, except an ugly streak of dirty yellow in the west. It was not long before the yellow glare was swallowed up by the night; and then from out of the dense black canopy shot streaks of vivid lightning, forked, chained, and of every variety, and "long and loud the thunder bellowed."

We were not long in closing that meeting. All that rode in our wagon had more than two miles to go. The horses were terrified, but to those who enjoy a thunder-storm it was sublime. We crossed one bridge in the nick of time; for it went thundering down as the back wheel b.u.mped against the road, only just clear of it.

One man was asleep in his shanty, and did not know of the storm until his little dog, tired of swimming around the room, climbed on the bed, and licked his face. The man awoke, and put his hand out of the clothes and felt the water. He sprang up and lit a lamp, and found two feet of water in his room. In the morning it had run off and taken all the bridges again.

And this was the wedding morn. The bridegroom had been away for the ring, but had not returned. We were getting anxious for him when we saw two horses coming on the jump, and a wagon that was as often off the ground as on it, as it thumped along the macadamized road of a new country, with stones as large as a cocoanut, five and six feet apart; but, as the settlers said, it was good to what it once was, and I believed it too.

He came in splashed with mud; but although he had been without sleep, victorious love shone in those light blue eyes, and with his fair complexion and rich rosy cheeks he was the personification of a Viking after victory. He had covered four times the distance on account of bridges carried away.

A hasty breakfast, and off we started, forgetting, until we were almost there, the bridge which had gone down the night before. We turned back to find another bridge afloat and in pieces; but, luckily, the stream had become shallow, and after the horses had danced a cotillon, we succeeded in getting across.

As we came to the farm where the fair young bride was waiting, we found the fields under water nearly to the house. I hardly knew how we should reach it. But the bridegroom and the horses had been there before; and, as the water was only a few inches deep, we were soon at the house. The youngsters were all in great spirits. This was the first wedding in the family; and I remember how awestruck the children seemed when the bride came out, looking queenly in her white robes, but soon recovered themselves as they recognized their own sister.

The wedding over, then came the dinner. Who would have thought, as they pa.s.sed that farm, of the world of happiness in that little log house? And the dinner,--a huge sirloin, which made us sing, "Oh, the roast beef of old England!" Precious little had these people had in old England; but now, besides the mighty sirloin, there were capons, ducks, lamb and green pease, mint sauce, delicious wild strawberries, damson pie, and raspberry-wine vinegar for drink.

Thank G.o.d for the possibilities of our glorious land to those who are frugal and industrious.

After dinner we sang "The Mistletoe Bough," "To the West, to the West," "Far, far, upon the Sea," "Home, Sweet Home," and "America,"

the youngsters singing "My Country, 'Tis of Thee," and some of the old ones "G.o.d save the Queen," to the same tune.

The young couple had the only spare room in the house, and the rest of us went up-stairs into a room that was the size of the house. There father and mother hung a sheet up, and went to bed. Some grain-sacks made the next part.i.tion; and a young student and myself took the next bed. Golden seed-corn hung over my head from the rafters; oats, pease, and wheat were in bins on either side of the bed.

To-day that one family has become many families. The old people go to church in a covered buggy. The youngest are on the home farm, and live with the parents, and lovingly tend those two brave hearts who now sit content in their golden age, waiting for the call to that better land, where the Elder Brother has prepared a mansion for them and a marriage supper, with everlasting joy.