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Lippincott's Magazine, August, 1885 by Various

V >> Various >> Lippincott\'s Magazine, August, 1885




"And with that she laughed jest as natural as life, and I heard no more
till Gracie knocked on my door in the morning."

"And did you go to the fair and find him and get your money back?" asked
Birchard, who was interested in spite of his scepticism.

"I did, jest that," replied Uncle Jabez. "I got off bright and early,
and, as luck would have it, I'd jest tied and blanketed my horse when
that wonderful smart red wagon come drivin' in at the gate. I waited
till he'd begun to pull his wares out and make a fine speech about 'em,
and then I jest walked up to him, cool and composed, and give him his
choice between payin' me good money for his bogus gold or hearin'
_me_ make a speech; and you may jest bet your best hat he paid up
quicker'n winkin'. Perhaps I'd ought to have warned folks ag'in' him as
it was, but I had a notion he'd save his tricks till he got to another
neighborhood; and it turned out I was right. He didn't give none of his
gold change out that day. But you can see for yourself that if it hadn't
been for Lavina he'd have come off winnin' horse in that race. That was
always the way when mother was about: she had more sense in her little
finger than I had in my whole body, and head too, for that matter."

"And you found that you really had not known the man's name until it was
conveyed to you in the manner in which you have described?" asked the
schoolmaster deferentially.

"Well, no," said Uncle Jabez. "When I saw his wagon the next day, I
remembered of readin' his name in gilt letters on the side, tacked to
some patent medicine he claimed to have invented; but I don't suppose
I'd ever thought of it again if mother hadn't told it to me so plain."

The schoolmaster said nothing. He had his own neat little theories
concerning all the manifestations which had been mentioned, but somehow
the old man's guileless belief had touched him, and he had no longer any
desire to shake it, even had it been possible to do so. But he could not
help probing the subject a little further: so presently he asked, "And
you've never spoken to her, never asked her if it were not possible for
you to see as well as hear her?"

"Young man," said Uncle Jabez kindly, but solemnly, "there's such a sin
as presumption, and there's some old sayin' or other about fools rushin'
in where angels fear to tread. If you try to grab too much at once,
you're apt to lose all. If it was meant for me to see mother as well as
hear her, I _should_ see her; and if I was to go to pryin' round
and tryin' to find out what's purposely hid from me, I make no doubt but
I should lose the little that's been vouchsafed to me. But I'd far
rather hear you ask questions like that than to have you throwin' doubt
on the whole business, as you seemed inclined to do at fust."

"Look here," said Mr. Dickey briskly, "do you know it's well on to
half-past ten? and we were to have the key at Pegram's by ten. I think
we'd better do what there is to do, and clear out of this as quick as we
know how, and mebbe some of us will wish before an hour's gone that we
had Uncle Jabez's knack at makin' out a good story."

"You speak for yourself, Dickey," said Mr. Crumlish good-naturedly.
"There's some of us that goes in and comes out, with nobody to care
which it is, nor how long we stay; but freedom has its drawbacks, as
well as other things."

The schoolmaster laughed at himself for striking a match as he turned
the last light out, but he felt moving through his brain a vague wish
that Uncle Jabez would break himself of that trick he had of gazing
fixedly at nothing, and that other trick of stopping suddenly in the
middle of a sentence to cock his head, as if he were hearing some
far-away, uncertain sound.

MARGARET VANDEGRIFT.




FISHING IN ELK RIVER.


When a man has once absorbed into his system a love for fishing or
hunting, he is under the influence of an invisible power greater than
that of vaccine matter or the virus of rabies. The sporting-fever is the
veritable malady of St. Vitus, holding its victim forever on the go, as
game-seasons come, and so long as back and legs, eye and ear, can
wrestle with Time's infirmities. It breeds ambition, boasting, and
"yarns" to a proverbial extent, with a general disbelief in the possible
veracity of a brother sportsman, and an irresistible; desire to talk of
new and privately discovered sporting-heavens. The gold-seeker stakes
his claim, the "wild-catting" oil-borer boards up his lot, the inventor
patents his invention, and the author copyrights his brain-fruit; but
the sportsman crazily tells all he knows. So the secret gets out, and
the discoverer is robbed of his treasure and forced to seek new fields
for his rod and gun.

Colonel Bangem had enjoyed a year's sport among the unvisited preserves
of Elk River. Mrs. Bangem and Bess, their daughter, had shared his
pleasures and acquired his fondness for such of them as were within
feminine reach. Any ordinary man would have been perfectly satisfied
with such company and delights; but no, when the bass began to leap and
the salmon to flash their tails, the pressure was too great. His friends
the Doctor and the Professor were written to, and summoned to his find.
They came, the secret was too good to keep, and that is the way this
chronicle of their doings happens to be written.

No sooner was the invitation received than the Doctor eased his
conscience and delighted his patients by the regular professional
subterfuge of sending such of them as had money to the sea-shore, and
telling those who had not that they needed no medicine at present; the
Professor turned his classes over to an assistant on pretext of a sudden
bronchial attack, for which a dose of mountain-air was the prescribed
remedy. And so the two were whirled away on the Chesapeake and Ohio
Railroad across the renowned valley of Virginia and the eastern valley
steps of the Alleghany summits, past the gigantic basins where boil and
bubble springs curative of all human ills, down the wild boulder-tossed
waters and magnificent canons of New River, around mountain-bases,
through tunnels, and out into the broad, beautiful fertility of the
Kanawha Valley, until the spires of Charleston revealed the last stage
of their railroad journey. When their train stopped, stalwart porters
relieved them of their baggage and deafened them with self-introductions
in stentorian tones: "Yere's your Hale House porter!" "I's de man fer
St. Albert's!"

"It's no wonder," said the Doctor, as he followed the sable guide from
the station to the river ferry, and looked across the Kanawha's busy
flow, covered with coal-barges, steamboats, and lumber-crafts, to
Charleston's long stretch of high-bank river front, "that Western rivers
get mad and rise against the deliberate insult of all the towns and
cities turning their backs to them. There is a mile of open front,
showing the cheerful faces of fine residences through handsome
shade-trees and over well-kept lawns; but here, where our ferry lands,
and where we see the city proper, stoops and kitchens, stove-pipes and
stairways, ash-piles and garbage-shoots, are stuck out in contempt of
the river's charms and the city's comeliness."

"Stove-pipes and stairways have to be put somewhere," said the
matter-of-fact Professor. "And the best way to turn dirty things is
toward the water."

The ferry-boat wheezed and coughed and sidled across the river to a
floating wharf, covered, as usual, with that portion of the population,
white and black, which has no interest in the arrival of trains, or
anything else, excepting meals at the time for them, but which manages
to live somehow by looking at other people working.

"Give me," said the Professor, "the value of the time which men spend in
gazing at what does not concern them, and, according to my estimate, I
could build a submarine railroad from New York to Liverpool in two years
and three months. What are those fellows doing with their huge barrels
on wheels backed into the river?"

"Dat is de Charleston water-works, boss," answered the grinning porter.
"Widout dem mules an' niggahs an' bar'ls dah wouldn't be 'nough water in
dis town to wet a chaw tobacky."

A winding macadamized road leads up the river bank to the main street
running parallel with it. There is a short cut by a rickety stairway,
but, as some steep climbing has to be done before reaching the lower
step, it is seldom used. These formerly led directly to the Hale House,
a fine brick building, which faced the river, with a commodious portico,
and offered the further attractions of a pleasant interior and an
excellent table; but now a blackened space marked its site, as though a
huge tooth had been drawn from the city's edge, for one morning a
neighboring boiler blew up, carrying the Hale House and much valuable
property with it, but leaving the owners of the boiler.

"Dat's where de Hale House was, boss, but it's done burned down. I's de
porter yit. When it's done builded ag'in I's gwine back dar. Dis time I
take you down to de St. Albert. I's used to yellin' Hale House porter so
many years dat St. Albert kind chokes me."

So to the St. Albert went the Doctor and Professor, where they met with
a home-like greeting from its popular host.

Wheeling was formerly the capital of West Virginia, but for good reasons
it was decided to move the seat of government from "that knot on the
Panhandle" to Charleston. A commodious building of brick and sandstone,
unchristened as to style of architecture, has been erected for the home
of the law-makers; and henceforth the city which started around the
little log fort built in 1786 by George Glendermon to afford protection
against Indians will be the seat of government for the great unfenced
State of West Virginia. Its business enterprise and thrift, its
excellent geographical and commercial position, its healthiness
notwithstanding its bad drainage, or rather no drainage, have induced a
growth almost phenomenal. Churches, factories, and commodious
storehouses have spread the town rapidly over the beautiful valley in
which it lies. The United States government has been lavish in its
expenditure upon a handsome building for court, custom, and post-office
purposes; and to it flock, especially when court is in session, as
motley an assortment of our race as ever assembled at legal mandate.
Moonshiners, and those who regard whiskey-making, selling, and drinking
as things that ought to be as free as the air of the mountain and
licenses as unheard-of impositions of a highly oppressive government,
that would "tax a feller for usin' up his own growin' uv corn," and
courts as "havin' a powerful sight uv curiosity, peekin' into other
fellers' business," afford ample opportunities for the exercise of
judicial authority.

A long mountaineer was before a dignified judge of the United States
Court for selling liquor without a license. He had bought a gallon at a
still,--as to the locality of which he professed profound
ignorance,--carried it thirty miles, and peddled it out to his
long-suffering and thirsty neighbors. Every native being a natural
informer, the story was soon told: arrest followed, a march of fifty
miles over the mountains, and a lengthy imprisonment before trial.
Following the advice of his assigned counsel, he pleaded guilty. Being
too poor to pay a fine, and having an unlimited family dependent upon
their own exertions,--which comprises the sum of parental responsibility
among the natives,--the judge released him on his own bail-bond, and
told him to go home. He deliberately put on his hat, walked up to his
honor, and said, "I say, jedge, I reckon you fellers 'ill give me 'nough
money to ride hum an' pay fer my grub, 'cause 'tain't fair, noway. You
fetched me clar down yere, footin' it the hull way, an' now you're
lettin' me off an' tellin' me to foot it back. 'Tain't fair, noway.
You-uns oughter pay me fer it." And he went off highly indignant at
having his modest request refused.

There is much of the primitive not outgrown as yet by Charleston: it has
put on a long-tailed coat over its round-about. The gossipy telephone
is ahead of the street-cars; gas-works supply private consumers, while
the citizens wade the unlighted streets by the glimmer of their own
lanterns; innumerable cows contest the right of pedestrians to the board
footways and what of pavement separates the mud-holes; an
ice-manufactory supplies coolness to water peddled about in barrels; the
officials outnumber the capacity of the jail; the ferry-facilities vary
from an unstable leaky bateau to a dirty, open-decked dynamite
steamboat, whose night-service is subject to the lung-capacity of the
traveller hallooing for it, and the fares to necessities and
circumstances; the fine brick improvements are flanked by frame
tinder-boxes; the offal of the city has not a single relieving sewer:
yet it is a beautiful, healthy place, and the chief city of the greatest
mineral-district in the world.

Our travellers breakfasted on delicious mountain mutton and vegetables
fresh from surrounding farms. Their host secured three men and a canoe
to carry them up Elk River to Colonel Bangem's camp, at the cost of one
dollar a day and "grub," or one dollar and a quarter a day if they found
themselves, with the moderate charge of fifty cents a day for the canoe.

When the time arrived for starting, the Professor was missing. Bells
were rung, servants were despatched to search the hotel for him, but he
was not to be found. The Doctor grew impatient, but restrained himself
until an uncoated countryman, who had just walked into town and was
ready for a talk, told him that he "seed a feller, thet wuz a stranger
in these parts, with a three-legged picter-gallery, chasin' a water-cart
a right smart ways back in the town, ez I come in."

"That's he," said the Doctor. "He is crazy after pictures. I'll give you
a dollar if you bring him to the hotel alive."

"Is he wicked?" asked the man.

"Generally," answered the Doctor, whose eyes began to twinkle; "but you
get hold of his picture-gallery and run for the hotel: he will follow
you. I often have to manage him that way."

"I'm minded to try coaxin' him in thet a-way fer a dollar. You jist take
keer uv my shoes, an' I'll hev him yer ez quick ez Tim Price kin foot
it, if he follers well an' hain't contrairy-like, holdin' back."

Tim Price relieved his feet of their encumbrances, and started. When his
tall, gaunt figure had disappeared around the corner, the Doctor grew
red in the face from an internal convulsion, and then exploded past all
concealment of his joke.

"If you gentlemen," he said to the by-standers, "want to see some fun,
just follow that man. I will stay here as judge whether the man brings
in the Professor or the Professor brings in the man."

A good joke would stop a funeral in Charleston. The hotel was cleared of
men in an instant to follow Tim and enjoy the hunt. Tim sighted the
Professor about a quarter of a mile back in the town, A darky driving a
water-cart was standing up on the shafts, thrashing his mule with the
ends of his driving-lines, and urging it, by voice and gesture, to the
highest mule-speed: "Git up! git up! you lazy old no-go! Git up! Don't
you see dat picter-feller tryin' to took you an' me an' de bar'l? Git
up! Wag yer ears an' switch yer tail. You're not gwine ter stan' still
an' keep yer eyes on de instrement fer no gallery-man to took, 'less
you's fix' up fer Sunday. Git up, you ole long-eared corn-eater!"

The Professor was keeping well up with the flying water-works. His hat
was stuck on the back of his head, he carried his camera with its tripod
spread ready for sudden action, and every step of his run was guided by
thoughts of proper distance, fixed focus, and determination to have the
water-works in his collection of instantaneous photographs. A turn in
the street gave the Professor his opportunity: he darted ahead, set his
camera, and took the whole show as it went galloping by, when he
reclined against a fence while making the street ring with his laugh.

Tim Price, who was watching his chance, saw that it had come. He grabbed
the camera, gave a yell of triumph, and faced for the home-run. He had
not an instant to lose. The Professor sprang for his precious
instrument. Tim's long legs carried him across the street, over a fence
into a cross-cut lot, and away for the hotel at a mountaineer's speed.
The Professor was small, but active as a cat. Where Tim jumped fences,
the Professor squirmed through them; where Tim took one long stride, the
Professor scored three short ones. Tim lost his hat, and the Professor
threw off his coat as he ran. The main street was reached without
perceptible decrease of distance between them; but there the pavements
were something Tim's bare feet were not used to catching on, and the
people something he was not used to dodging: he upset several, but
dashed on, with his pursuer gaining on his heels. Men, women, dogs, and
darkies turned out to witness the race or follow it. "Stop thief!" "Go
it, Tim!" "You're catching him, stranger!" "Foot it, little one!" were
cries that speeded the running. The Doctor stood waiting at the hotel
door, laughing, shaking, and red as a veritable Bacchus. Tim Price
banged the camera into him, whirled round suddenly, caught the Professor
as he dashed at him, and held him in his powerful arms, squirming like
an eel.

"Yere's your crazy man, stranger," said Tim, in slow, drawling tone. "I
tell you he kin jest p'intedly foot it. Thar hain't been such a run in
Kanoy County sence they stopped 'lectin' country fellers fer sheriff. I
reckon I've arned thet dollar. What shall I do with the leetle feller?"

The Professor was powerless, but lay in Tim's arms biting, kicking, and
curled up like a yellow-jacket interested with an enemy.

"Let him go," said the laughing Doctor. "He will stay with me now. He is
not dangerous when I am about. Set him on his feet."

No sooner was the Professor deposited on the pavement than he dealt Tim
a stinging blow which staggered him, and stood ready with trained
muscles set for defence.

"Look yere, leetle un," said Tim, coolly and with great self-restraint,
"'tain't fer the likes uv me to hit you, bein's you're a bit out in your
top, but I'll gin you another hug ef you do that ag'in; I will,
p'intedly."

In the good humor of the crowd, the mirth of the Doctor, and the
latter's possession of the camera the Professor scented a joke, and at
once saw his friend's hand in it. He joined in the laugh at his expense,
and lengthened his friend's face by saying, "The Doctor having had his
fun, he will now pay the bill at the bar for all of you: he pays all my
expenses: so walk in, gentlemen."

The laws of hospitality west of the Alleghanies do not permit any one to
decline an invitation, so the Doctor settled for the whole procession
and paid Tim Price his well-earned dollar.

"Captain," said Tim to the hotel-proprietor, who had joined the crowd,
"ef two fellers comes here from the East, one uv 'em ez round ez a
punkin an' red ez a flannel shirt an' bald ez a land-tortle, an' t'other
ez brown ez a mud-catty an' poor ez a razor-back hog, tell 'em I'm yere
to pilot 'em up Elk to Colonel Bangem's caliker tents. He said they were
ez green ez frogs, an' didn't know nothin' noway, an' fer me to take
keer uv 'em. He don't reckon they'll come tell to-morrow. One uv 'em's a
hoss-doctor, an' t'other's a perfessor uv religion, Colonel Bangem
telled me. I dunno whether the feller's a circuit-rider er a rale
preacher."

"That's the highly-illuminated pumpkin, my good man," said the
Professor, pointing to the Doctor, "and I am Colonel Bangem's spiritual
adviser. We got here a day sooner than we expected to."

"You don't say? May I never! An' the colonel never telled me nothin'
nohow 'bout any one uv you bein' crazy. Howdee? How do you like these
parts? Right smart town we've got yere, hain't it? I'll take keer uv
you. There hain't no man on Elk River kin take keer uv you better nor
Tim Price, ary time. I hain't much up to moon men, though. Thar's one
feller up my way thet gits kinder skeery at the full uv the moon; but I
hain't never tended him. I reckon I kin l'arn the job,--ez the ole boy
said when his marm set him to mindin' fleas off the cat."

Tim Price was the hunter, boatman, fisherman, yarn-spinner, and
character of his region, and Colonel Bangem's faithful ally in all his
sports: the latter had therefore sent him to meet his friends on their
arrival at Charleston, and he at once proceeded to take command of the
whole party as a matter of course.

"I footed it over the mountains, and sent my boat the river way. Hit
oughter be yere now: so we'll pack you men's tricks to the boats an'
p'int 'em up-stream. It 'ill be sundown afore we git thar."

The party started from the hotel, the procession followed to see them
off, and they were soon down the Kanawha and into the mouth of Elk at
the point of the town. Log rafts, huge barges, miles of railroad-ties,
laid-up steamers, peddling-boats, with their highly-colored storehouses,
fishermen's scows, floating homely cabins alive with bare-legged
children and idlers of the water-side, push-boats loaded to the edge of
the narrow gunwales with merchandise for delivery to stores and dwellers
far up the river, boats loaded with hoop-poles, grist, chickens, and the
"home-plunder" of some mover to civilization, coming down the river from
the mountain-clearing, and samples of every conceivable kind of the
river's outpour, were tied to the banks or lazily floating on the
currentless back-water from the Kanawha.

An old steamboat-captain once said of Elk that "it was the all-firedest
river God ever made,--fer it rises at both ends and runs both ways to
wunst." This is true, and is caused by the Kanawha, when rising, pouring
its water into the mouth of Elk and reversing its current for many
miles, while at the same time rain falls in the mountains, increasing
the latter river's depth and velocity. Flour-mills, iron-foundries,
saw-mills, woollen-mills, and barrel-factories extend their long wooden
slides down to the river's edge, to gather material for their
consumption. A railroad spans it with an iron trussed bridge, and the
demands of wagon and foot-travel are met by an airy one suspended by
cables from tower-like abutments on either side, both bridges swung high
in the air, out of reach of flood and of the smoke-stacks of passing
steam-craft.

A mile from the river's mouth, and just beyond the limits of Charleston,
is one of the finest sandstone-quarries in the world. The United States
government monopolizes most of its product in the construction of the
magnificent lock and shifting dams in course of erection on the Kanawha
to facilitate the transportation of coal from the immense deposits now
being mined to the great markets of the Ohio River. A little farther on,
the brown front of a timber dam and cribbed lock looks down upon a wild
swirl and rush of water; for through a cut gap in its centre Elk flows
unobstructed,--a penniless mob having made the opening one night that
their canoes might pass free and capitalists be encouraged to remove
such worthless stuff as money from the growing industries of the river.
Prior to this act of vandalism the water was backed by the dam for a
distance of fourteen miles, to Jarrett's Ford, making a halting-place
for rafts and logs, barges and floats, coming down from the vast forests
above when rains and snow-thaws raised the river and its tributaries;
but now a long stretch of boom catches what it can of Elk's commerce and
is a chartered parasite upon it.

Here at the old dam the mountains close in tightly upon the narrow
valley. Log cabins and a few simple frame houses nestle upon diminutive
farms; the wild beauty of shoal and eddy, bouldered channel and
lake-like stretches of pool, rocky walls and timber-clad peaks, begins
to charm the stranger and draw him on and on through scenery as
attractive as grand toss of mountains and delve of river can make it.

By dint of poling, pushing, rowing, and pulling, the boats were worked
over rapids and pools for almost a score of miles, to where the last
rays of the sun slid over a mountain-point and hit Colonel Bangem's hat
as it spun in the air by way of welcome, while the prows clove the water
of a lovely eddy lying in front of his camp. The meeting was that of old
friends, with the addition of a blush from Bess Bangem and its bright
reflection from the Professor's face.

Tim Price took the colonel to one side mysteriously, and whispered, "I
took keer uv the Perfessor my own self: he guv me a power uv trouble,
though. Shell I hitch him now, er let him run loose?"

"We'll turn him loose now, Tim; but if he takes to turning somersets,
catch him, loosen his collar, take off his boots, and throw him into the
river," was the colonel's sober reply.

Scientists nowadays set up Energy as the ancestor of everything, measure
the value of its descendants by the quantity they possess of the family
trait, and spend their time in showing how to utilize it for the good of
mankind in general. Professor Yarren was an apostle of Energy: it
absorbed him, filled him. From the weight of the sun to boiled potatoes,
from the spring of a tiger to the jump of a flea, from the might of
chemical disembodiment to opening an oyster, he calculated, advised, and
dilated upon it. He himself, was the epitome of Energy: in his size he
economized space, in his diet he ate for power, not quantity. To him
eating and sleeping were Energy's warehousemen; idleness was dry-rot,
moth, and mildew; laughing, talking, whistling, singing, somersets, and
fishing, never-to-be-neglected and in-constant-use safety-valves. He
regarded himself as an assimilator of everything that went into him, be
it food, sight, sound, or scent, and his perfection as such in exact
ratio to the product he derived from them. So when next morning he said
"Come on" to the Doctor, and Colonel Bangem, Mrs. Colonel Bangem, Bess
Bangem, and Martha, the mountain-maid, who were all standing in front of
the camp rigged for a day's fishing, he meant that one of Energy's
safety-valves was ready to blow off, and that further delay might be
dangerous to him.

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