The Puddleford Papers Part 36

April shone out at last. Away down in the wild meadows the cowslip pushed up its green head into the sunshine, and along the warm hill-sides the wind-flowers were strewn. How they came there, I cannot tell. The day before it was all bleak, and chilly, and flowerless there. They must have been scattered by the morning rays of light. A melting bank of snow frowned down upon them, close by. Soon the shade-tree sent out its blossoms of lilac, and the dog-wood burst into a pile of snow. The hard, gray, leafless trees stood up sternly around these first daughters of spring, arrayed in their garments of pomp, and looked, as well as inanimate things can look, jealous and uneasy. All over the aisles of the forest lay enormous trunks of trees, like columns about an unfinished temple, thickly coated with a heavy green moss; and there was a smell of bark, and swelling twigs, and struggling roots--such a smell as only the early spring days give out--as though the earth and the forest were just gaping and stretching with a decayed last year's breath, before rousing up to the duties of this.

Then the rivulets began to get into tune. The one that ran tumbling through the woods seemed to be in a very great hurry, and shot around its islands of moss and promontories of tree-roots with great zeal. It had unwound from its reel of light and moisture a green ribbon, that lay along its sh.o.r.es miles and miles away in the wilderness; and the birds slyly bathed themselves in its waters; and now and then a small fish came rushing down with the speed of an arrow, just returning from his winter quarters to the river, probably to enter his name upon the great piscatorial roll preparatory to summer service.

In a basin, just below a little fall of this brook, two or three wood-ducks were ploughing round and round. These wood-ducks are hermits, and secrete themselves in ponds and watery thickets, where silence and shadows prevail.

On one of these mornings, ruminating on its banks, sat Venison Styles, his gun resting on the ground, apparently in a profound study. I looked at the old hunter a long time, and his figure was as fixed and immovable as if he were a part of the landscape, and had grown there like the trees about him.

What can the old man be dreaming about? thought I. Perhaps he already hears the approaching footsteps of dancing May, her head crowned with flowers, and the music of the thousand birds that supported her train. It was already spring--summer--in his soul. He was thinking of the sports of the coming year, and the light and pomp of the seasons pa.s.sed before his imagination like the gorgeous pictures of a panorama.

These April days were inspiring. Occasionally a bleak squall of rain or snow obscured the sky, and silenced the music of Nature; but the heavens looked bluer, and the birds sang more l.u.s.tily, after it pa.s.sed away. In the latter part of the month the ground became settled, and the frogs, towards evening, and sometimes during the moist, smoky afternoons, sent up their melancholy wailing from the wide wastes of marsh that stretched themselves through the woods and along the river banks. Some of these marshes were ten miles long, and two or three broad; and such a concert of voices as congregated there was never equalled by anything else. I had, and still have, notions of my own about these vocalists. I am sure that they sang under discipline and system--that they performed on different kinds of instruments. Some of them seemed to be blowing a flageolet; others drew their bows across their violins; some played the fife; while here and there might be heard grum tw.a.n.gs, like the tw.a.n.ging of ba.s.s-viol strings. He who listened long and closely might detect delicate vibrations of almost every tone in art or nature. Sometimes their voices sounded like the dying echoes of ten thousand bells, all of a different key, yet the tangled melody was an entanglement of chords and discords, and it rolled away, and expired in waves of pure harmony; again, it was like a choir of human voices performing an anthem. I thought I could hear syllables, too--the articulation of words--something like a psalm. Then the words and sounds appeared to change, and, by the aid of the imagination, one would have supposed that the whole community were shouting--delivering political harangues--or that its members had got on a "bust," and were rattling off all kinds of nonsense in a drunken frolic.

April brought with it, too, flying showers and warm sunshine. The gra.s.s began to wake up, and scent the air with its sweetness. Along the watercourses the willows unfolded their leaves; the buds swelled in the forests; and the tree-tops were touched with a light shade of brown, and then a shade of green, which grew deeper and deeper each day. Large flocks of pigeons darkened the air, all moving from south to north,--from whence, or to where, I could not tell. A company would sometimes "hold up" for an hour or two, to "feed and rest," like a caravan at an oasis; but they soon took their wings again, and pursued their journey.

The tenants of the ground burst their tombs, and came up for duty. The gopher, and squirrel, and the ant went to work. I noticed a large community of ants who had commenced building a city. Their last year's metropolis was destroyed, and they were compelled to begin from the foundation; and such a stir and bustle was never exceeded. Hundreds of laborers were in the work up to their eyes. Here was one fellow with a grain of sand in his mouth--a rock to him, I suppose--climbing over twigs and dead gra.s.s, standing sometimes perpendicular with his load, and not unfrequently falling over backwards, yet struggling away, surmounting all obstacles, until he finally reached the place of deposit. Then there was a cla.s.s of miners who shot up from their holes, dropped their speck of dirt, wheeled, and shot back again. Trains of them were continually ascending and descending. There was still another cla.s.s--"blooded characters," most likely--possibly overseers--who did not do any work, but ran around from point to point, as if inspecting the rest, and giving to them directions. Once in a while a couple of workmen would run a-foul of each other, and get into a quarrel--a clinch--a fight--and the "tussle" lasted until they were parted. This colony, I will say, erected a large mound of earth in a very few weeks--gigantic to them as an Egyptian pyramid is to us--in which they lived and labored during the season.

Finally, the swallows, and brown-threshers, and blackbirds, and martins came--not all in a body, but straggling along. The blackbirds appeared first, and might be seen flying about from tree to tree, and fence to fence, near by the upturned furrows that the ploughman had left behind him.

Such a saucy troop of pirates as they were! Flocks of them sat about in the oaks, showering a host of epithets upon the said ploughman; then a dozen or more darted down, staggered over the ground, picked up a worm, and dashed away into the oaks again. They scolded, and fretted, and coaxed, and threatened, and nettled about like a belle of sixteen. Some of them were dressed in a suit of glossy black, with a neckcloth of shifting green; others wore red epaulets on their wings; and a flock of them, darting through the air, had the appearance of braided streams of fire, or interlaced rainbows. Towards evening they all went down among the alders and willows by the river, and had a long chat among themselves. They bowed, and twitched, and stretched down one wing, and then the other; lit upon the little twigs, and see-sawed as they sung, and did many other things. They were evidently erecting themselves into some kind of a government for the year--holding a caucus--perhaps an election--deposing an old monarch, or elevating a new; for it was easy to hear them say what they would do, and what they wouldn't--that is, easy for one who has studied the blackbird language--and sometimes an awful threat might be detected, mixed with a great many wheedling words and gracious postures.

The brown-threshers came next, and they were just as full of chatter and life as they were the year before. Birds never grow old, it seems to me, nor have I ever been able to determine when or where they die. The hunter kills but a very few, and those few of a certain kind. What becomes of the rest? They breed every spring in great numbers; but how, when, and where do they die? We do not find dead birds in the woods; at any rate, very few.

Yes, the brown threshers were as young as ever. They looked very shabby and mussed when I last saw them in the fall; but now their brown clothes shone as cleanly as a Quaker-girl's shawl. They took up Nature's music-book, and rattled off all the songs, and glees, and anthems in it--very often making a medley of it, mixing the notes of the birds that were chanting around all together--and they often closed the performance with an original strain of their own, composed on the spot.

When the swallows and the martins came, I knew that spring was fully established. They appeared suddenly during the night; for when the May sun arose, they were twittering and wheeling through the air, shooting up and plunging down in a kind of delicious rapture. Their music was set on the staff of blue skies, south-west winds, and flowers. There was not a note of winter in it. The woods, and streams, and fields seemed to have been waiting for their melody, for all Nature went to work, and was soon clad in beauty, and light, and song.

CHAPTER XXVII.

A Railroad through Puddleford.--Effect on Squire Longbow.--Bright Prospects of Puddleford.--Change.--"The Styleses."--The New Justice.--Aunt Sonora's Opinions.--Ike Turtle grows too.--Venison disappears from among Men.--His Grave, and his Epitaph.

Reader, I have written for you the history of a year's residence at Puddleford. But the place is changed now--very much changed. It is not what it used to be--its people, its habits, are very different. This change was the result of a variety of causes. The first thing that happened to it--a startling event it was--a railroad was built plump through its heart. It was a road running a great distance, and it took Puddleford in its way merely because it happened to fall in its line. I shall never forget Squire Longbow's frenzied excitement the first time the locomotive came puffing and whistling in. He actually lost his dignity for the moment. He ran and wheezed after the steam-horse like a madman, lost his green eye-shade, and committed a very serious breach in the rear part of his pantaloons. He did not venture very near the machine at first, but sheltered himself behind a tree, where he could watch its panting and spitting without danger.

I recollect how pompously the Squire talked on this occasion. He said "all nater couldn't stop Puddleford having ten thousand inhabitants 'fore 'nother census--she'd be one of the _ex_-poriums (emporiums) of the West--it was nothing on airth that made Greece and Rome but these great etarnal improvements"--and as he was a kind of oracle among a large cla.s.s, he infused a spirit of consequence and importance into those around him that was quite ludicrous. Ike Turtle, Sile Bates, the Beagles, and Swipes, and many others, actually mounted their Sunday clothes, and wore them every day--but whether Ike himself was in fun or earnest, no person could tell.

The building of this road was the cause of a great change certainly; yet it changed not the population itself, but subst.i.tuted another in its stead. It brought in a cla.s.s of persons who had money, and money is omnipotent everywhere. It brought different habits, thoughts, and feelings. The "Styles family" first purchased a large farm near the village. There was an air about them that fairly awed the Puddlefordians. They were petted, run after, imitated. One could hear nothing but "Young Mr. Styles," "Old Mr.

Styles," "The elderly Mrs. Styles," "Miss Arabella Styles," "Miss Florinda Styles." Miss Florinda and Arabella wore flaring under-clothes in those days, and this fashion fairly upset the heads of the Puddleford ladies; and in less than a month I could not identify half the women of the place.

Their shrunken forms, stuffed with skirts, were about the shape of little pyramids.

Purchases of farms and village property went on, year after year, until nearly every true Puddlefordian was ousted. The place has now, like the snake, cast its skin; and the old pioneers, they who hewed down the forest, and "bore the heat and burden of the day," are living around the outskirts of the village, with hardly a competence, or have emigrated to wilds still farther west.

Squire Longbow, however, still holds his own. He still lives on the old spot--is just as wise and happy as ever. Time has not affected his intellect, or impaired his self-consequence. He is no longer justice of the peace, but in his place we have a pert, dapper, little fellow, who wears a large ring on his little finger, and gives very scholastic opinions. The Squire professes to hold him in contempt, and says he "runs agin the staterts and common law mor'n half the time"--that "he don't know a _fiery factus_ from a common execution"--that "he never looks inter the undying Story for 'thority, but goes on _squashing_ papers, right straight agin the const.i.tution and the _etar_nal rights of man."

Aunt Sonora was dissatisfied, too, with the revolution in society. She told me, the last time I saw her, that Puddleford was "made up of a hull pa.s.sel of flip-er-ter-_gib_-its, and she couldn't see what in created natur' the place was a-comin' to--she never see'd such works in all her born days,"

that "the men wore broadcloth, and the women silks, and flar'd and spread about like pea-c.o.c.ks. n.o.body does nuthin'," said she. "The dear ma.s.sy! They are getting so hoity-toity! I _do_ wonder who pays!"

Ike Turtle is about the only person who has grown with the place. There was no such thing as keeping _him_ under. He is just as humorous as ever, but a little more polished. Ike says "it won't do to let his natur' out as he used to, when the bushes were thick, and Squire Longbow was gov'ner"--that "he feels himself almost a-bustin' with one of his speeches, sometimes; but the folks wouldn't understand him if he made it--and as for law, he'd gin it all up--it had got to be so nice and genteel an article, there warn't a grain of justis' in it--everything was 'peal'd up, and 'peal'd up, until both parties themselves were 'peal'd to death." Ike has turned his attention to land and saw-mills, and is getting rich.

Poor Venison Styles! Dear old hunter! Venison is dead, and his children are scattered in the wilderness. He was found, one May morning, stretched out under a large maple, his dog and gun by his side, stiff and cold. The brown-threshers and bluebirds were singing merrily above him, and the squirrels were chattering their nonsense in the distance. His dog lay with his nose near his master's face, his fore paw upon his shoulder. How he died, no one could tell. He is buried on a bluff that overlooks the river; and I have fenced his grave, and erected a stone over his remains, with this inscription--"Nature loved him, if man did not."

CHAPTER XXVIII.

CONCLUSION.

The Philosophy of Puddleford.--Diverse Elements in Pioneer Life.--Longbow and his Administration.--Not Expensive.--Two Hundred a Year, all told.--What would Chief Justice Marshall have done as Justice of Puddleford?--Longbow a great Man.--Fame and Politics.--Ike, a Wheel.--Puddleford Theology.--Camp-Meetings.--Who will do Bigelow's Work better than Bigelow?--Great Happiness, and few Nerves.--No "Society."--No Fashion in Clothes, or anything else.--Bull's-Eye and Pinchbeck.--The Great Trade didn't "Come Off."--Abounding Charity and Hospitality.--Pilgrim Blood.--Longbow's.--Planting the _Mud-Sills_.--Old a.s.sociations, how Controlling!--Good by, Reader.

Reader, I cannot dismiss Puddleford without adding a chapter in conclusion.

The pictures I have drawn suggest to me something more. There is a _philosophy_ that underlies the dignity of Longbow, the humor of Turtle, the rough sincerity of Aunt Sonora, the stormy and eccentric eloquence of Bigelow. Do you not think so?

Puddleford was like a thousand other new settlements--it had its green state to pa.s.s through; and Puddleford's pioneers were like other pioneers--rough, honest, hardy, strong in common sense, but weak in the books. It was not a perfect organization, packed beforehand with men fitted to all the stations of life, like Hooker and his band. But one pioneer came after another--and notions, creeds, and prejudices, were all tumbled in together. Puddleford prospered, nevertheless. Every man was right upon the question of civil and religious liberty. Each person brought this law with him, written on his soul; and, however clumsily he might give it expression, the law was there, and he could not rid himself of it any more than he could throw off his nature. If Longbow administered the details of jurisprudence awkwardly, Longbow was, after all, right in leading principles. If Longbow at times trampled down technicalities, the community, on the average, did not suffer. If Longbow even made a little law now and then, to fill a gap, it was well made, and the gap well filled.

Longbow might as well have attempted to shave an elephant with a razor as to manage the raw recruits of early Puddleford with subtle distinctions; and, besides, Longbow, as the reader has discovered, had no knowledge of that kind of instrument, nor was it necessary that he should have.

Longbow's legal rules necessarily ran on a sliding-scale, and he fitted them to the case in hand, not to cases in general.

The reader sees, then, a necessity for such men as Longbow in such a community. If it is impossible to find a man capable of preparing a technical set of legal papers, it is important to find a man who is incapable or unwilling to break them down. No man ever slipped through Longbow's fingers upon a mere technicality.

Again, Longbow's judicial duties were not expensive. An expensive judicial tribunal would have ruined Puddleford outright. Puddleford was not only obliged to use such timber as it had for public men, but the timber must also be cheap. Longbow was no mahogany judge, polished and wrought into scrolls, though there were a great many lines and angles about him. He was a plain piece of green-ash, strong, yet elastic enough to bend when justice demanded. He was not an expensive article, and therefore the interest the public paid upon him was small. He would sit all day, amid the war and tumult of contending litigants, and breast the storm of insult that was heaped upon him from the right and the left, for four shillings and sixpence. I do not mean to say that he lacked self-respect--no man respected himself more--but he had, somehow or somewhere, imbibed the idea that pettifoggers were ent.i.tled to great lat.i.tude of speech, and that he was _paid_ for listening to them. I have seen the Squire many a time pa.s.sing through one of these conflicts, when _his_ name was used very irreverently, holding as solemn a face as that worn by a marble statue of Solon.

Longbow's annual income amounted to about two hundred dollars a year, and this Puddleford could "stand." But he had many duties to perform outside of his office of magistrate to insure him this amount. As I have said elsewhere, he was the grand Puddleford umpire, and, I am very certain, settled more difficulties as a man than a magistrate. School and highway districts and officers often got twisted in a snarl, and Longbow unravelled the knot--right or wrong it matters not, he put a finish to the matter; and, _whether_ right or wrong, reader, what difference did it make so long as no one else knew it, and everybody had confidence? If confidence will sustain a bank, ought not confidence to sustain Squire Longbow?

And then A.'s pigs broke into B.'s garden--A.'s line-fence stood three feet on B.'s land. A. swore there was a legal, lawful highway across B.'s land; B. swore it was no such thing, and he would shoot the first man who crossed it. A. called B. a thief, and B. called A. another. A. agreed to break up for B., but never did, because B. refused to clear his land. A.

and B. exchanged horses; A.'s horse had the heaves, and B.'s was spavined; and so on, trouble after trouble, how often and many in kind I cannot say, Squire Longbow has brought to a compromise. These were extrajudicial services, and the two hundred dollars a year covered all.

If it had been possible to place Chief Justice Marshall, or even a finished city lawyer, in the seat of Squire Longbow, how signally he must have failed! He would have been utterly incompetent to the task, and would have burned his books, and fled from the settlement under cover of night.

Confusion is often the best manager of confusion. A clean, clear, a.n.a.lytical mind might have flashed now and then, but it could never have governed the storm. While our finished lawyer was playing about a refined distinction, Longbow would bury all distinctions "ten fathoms deep," and end all controversy by repeating some old saying, and dismiss the whole matter as summarily as the adjournment of a cause.

Longbow was not only a good man, a cheap man, but he was a great man.

Greatness is relative, not absolute. I hope my friends do not intend to dispute the truth of this proposition; because I have the doc.u.ments to prove it, when officially called upon to do so. Great men are like figures on a thermometer--some thermometers, it is true, are much longer, and contain a great many more figures than others. The only question any ambitious man cares to ask is, how many figures there are on the scale above his. The Puddleford thermometer was very short, dear reader, and Longbow's figure was the highest. Is not this fame? Puddleford fame, say you? Puddleford fame, indeed! It will outlast, I will wager my old hat, the fame of nine tenths of the members of Congress, who have for the last ten years blown themselves hoa.r.s.e making speeches to their outraged and indignant const.i.tuency. Why, Longbow's name will be remembered in Puddleford years after his death; and how many names can you repeat of those who strutted through the last Congress, or how many of the members for your own district for the last thirty years? Fame, indeed! But I do not wish to quarrel about so fleeting a thing as fame, and I will, therefore, dismiss that subject.

The politics of Puddleford were a little ridiculous; but Turtle's political fun was used by him as a means to carry out an end. Turtle's patriotism and Turtle's principles were beyond suspicion. Reader, there is no spot of American soil more truly patriotic than Puddleford. There are no great depositories--no central heart--in this country, from which American principles flow; every _man_ is a centre, a law unto himself. Ike Turtle was a centre; he was a kind of political wheel; ran on his own axis; borrowed no propelling power from abroad, but kept himself whirling with the spirit of '76, of which he had always a large supply on hand. He reminded me of a fire-wheel, used on celebration days, he cast off so many colored lights: now he whizzed; then he banged; now he shot forth stars; then spears of flame; but he was still a wheel, and always set himself in motion to some purpose.

What shall I say of the theology of Puddleford? I have already alluded to it in the pages of this work. Permit me to say more. Creeds travel with men wherever they go. Creeds often colonize the wilderness; they have nerved more hearts, stirred and sustained more souls, scattered more civilization, than any or all other agents. But Puddleford was not settled by any particular idea, civil or religious; yet the Puddlefordians brought with them a great many ideas, both civil and religious. They were, however, incidental, not primary. The religious exercises of the country were like its people, ardent, strong, fiery, and often tempestuous. Bigelow Van Slyck was an embodiment of Puddleford theology. He did not argue doctrine, for two reasons: he did not know how, and he would not if he could; but, to use his own language, "he took sin by the horns, and held it by main force."

A quiet religion with a Puddlefordian was synonymous with no religion.

Religion with him was something to be seen, to touch, to handle. Puddleford religion was often very noisy, and it manifested itself in many ways. We used to have an outburst at camp-meeting, which was held once in each year by the prevailing sect in the country. A camp-meeting! The reader has attended a camp-meeting, I know; but _we_ had the genuine kind. Puddleford was depopulated on such occasions; and its inhabitants, supplied with the necessaries of life and a tent, went forth into the wilderness to give a high tone to their piety. They wanted air, and s.p.a.ce, and time. All this was characteristic, and was like the people. What would _they_ have done inside a temple of springing arches and fretted dome--of statues looking coldly down from their niches--of pictured saints--where organ anthems rolled and trembled?

What to the Puddlefordians were the refinements of religious exercises? The wild wood was their "temple not made with hands," columned, and curtained, and festooned, and lit up by the sun at day, and the stars at night; and here, in this temple, day after day, the people camped; in the more immediate presence of the Most High built their watch-fires, that sent up long streams of smoke over the green canopy that sheltered them, and knelt down to pray.

The theology of Puddleford was brought out in strong relief at these meetings. They were business gatherings. The trials and crosses of every member were freely canva.s.sed, and consolation administered. The "inner life" of each individual was thoroughly dissected--the spiritual condition of the vineyard in general carefully examined; sermons preached strong enough, both in voice and expression, to raise the dead; money was collected for benevolent purposes, and many more duties performed, which I cannot stop to mention.

The reader sees that these men and women were laying the foundation timbers of many sects that must follow them--follow them with their houses of worship, their intelligence, their refinement, and, I may say, their theological abstractions, their shadows, and shades, and points of distinction. Who is there that could do Bigelow's work better than he? Who is there that will ever toil and sweat more hours in his Master's vineyard?

And to whom will the posterity of Puddleford be more indebted?

But, to drop the leading characters of Puddleford, let us go down a while among the rank and file; let us examine _their_ condition. And here I may get into trouble. Comparisons are said to be odious. I do not know who said it, nor do I care; the motive which one has in view must determine the truth of the remark. There was a vast deal of happiness in Puddleford. I do not now remember one nervous woman in the place. Think of that. If refinement brings its joys, it often covers a delicate, sensitive nature; but there was n.o.body delicate or sensitive at Puddleford; n.o.body went into fits because a rat crossed the floor, or a spider swung itself down in their way. The evening air was never too damp, nor the morning sun too oppressive. Labor made the people hardy, and an over-taxed brain hatched no bugbears. I verily believe the nightmare was never known. There were no persons tired of time--not that they had so much to do--but they were all contented with time and things as they were.

You have discovered that there was no society in Puddleford; and when I say SOCIETY, I do not mean that there was no social intercourse, but society organized and governed by rules and regulations. Here was another blessing.

Aunt Sonora never got into hysterics because Mrs. Beagles had not called on her for three weeks. Aunt Sonora would say, that "Mrs. Beagles might stay to hum as long as she was a min-ter." Aunt Sonora never worked herself up into a frustration because her gingerbread didn't rise when Squire Longbow took tea with her; but she just told the Squire, "he'd got-ter go it heavy, or go without." And then Aunt Sonora was under no obligation to make fashionable calls; she was not a fashionable lady; there was no fashion to call on. She did not go around and throw in a little very cold respect into her neighbor's parlor, because there were no parlors in Puddleford, and Aunt Sonora couldn't for the life of her do a formal thing if there had been. If she wanted to "blow out agin' any one," to use her language, why, she blew out, and in their faces, too, because the rules of her society had not taught her hypocrisy.