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+Project Gutenberg's The Man Who Stole A Meeting-House, by J. T. Trowbridge
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Man Who Stole A Meeting-House
+       1878, From “Coupon Bonds”
+
+Author: J. T. Trowbridge
+
+Release Date: October 24, 2007 [EBook #23165]
+Last Updated: March 16, 2018
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE MAN WHO STOLE A MEETING-HOUSE ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by David Widger
+
+
+
+
+
+
+THE MAN WHO STOLE A MEETING-HOUSE
+
+By J. T. Trowbridge
+
+From “Coupon Bonds.”
+
+Copyright 1878, by James R. Osgood & Co
+
+
+On a recent journey to the Pennsylvania oil regions, I stopped one
+evening with a fellow-traveler at a village which had just been thrown
+into a turmoil of excitement by the exploits of a horse-thief. As we sat
+around the tavern hearth, after supper, we heard the particulars of the
+rogue's capture and escape fully discussed; then followed many another
+tale of theft and robbery, told amid curling puffs of tobacco-smoke;
+until, at the close of an exciting story, one of the natives turned to
+my traveling acquaintance, and, with a broad laugh, said, “Kin ye beat
+that, stranger?”
+
+“Well, I don't know--maybe I could if I should try. I never happened to
+fall in with any such tall horse-stealing as you tell of, but I knew a
+man who stole a meeting-house once.”
+
+“Stole a meetin'-house! That goes a little beyant anything yit,”
+ remarked another of the honest villagers. “Ye don't mean he stole it and
+carried it away?”
+
+“Stole it and carried it away,” repeated my traveling companion,
+seriously, crossing his legs, and resting his arm on the hack of his
+chair. “And, more than all that, I helped him.”
+
+“How happened that?--for you don't look much like a thief yourself.” All
+eyes were now turned upon my friend, a plain New England farmer, whose
+honest homespun appearance and candid speech commanded respect.
+
+“I was his hired man, and I acted under orders. His name was
+Jedwort--Old Jedwort, the boys called him, although he wasn't above
+fifty when the crooked little circumstance happened which I'll make as
+straight a story of as I can, if the company would like to hear it.”
+
+“Sartin, stranger! sartin! about stealin' the meetin'-house!” chimed in
+two or three voices.
+
+My friend cleared his throat, put his hair behind his ears, and with
+a grave, smooth face, but with a merry twinkle in his shrewd gray eye,
+began as follows:
+
+“Jedwort I said his name was; and I shall never forget how he looked one
+particular morning. He stood leaning on the front gate--or rather on the
+post, for the gate itself was such a shackling concern a child couldn't
+have leaned on't without breaking it down. And Jedwort was no child.
+Think of a stoutish, stooping, duck-legged man, with a mountainous back,
+strongly suggestive of a bag of grist under his shirt, and you have him.
+That imaginary grist had been growing heavier and heavier, and he more
+and more bent under it, for the last fifteen years and more, until his
+head and neck just came forward out from between his shoulders like
+a turtle's from its shell. His arms hung, as he walked, almost to the
+ground. Being curved with the elbows outward, he looked for all the
+world, in a front view, like a waddling interrogation-point inclosed
+in a parenthesis. If man was ever a quadruped, as I've heard some folks
+tell, and rose gradually from four legs to two, there must have been a
+time, very early in his history, when he went about like Old Jedwort.
+
+“The gate had been a very good gate in its day. It had even been a
+genteel gate when Jedwort came into possession of the place by marrying
+his wife, who inherited it from her uncle. That was some twenty years
+before, and everything had been going to rack and ruin ever since.
+
+“Jedwort himself had been going to rack and ruin, morally speaking. He
+was a middling decent sort of man when I first knew him; and I judge
+there must have been something about him more than common, or he
+never could have got such a wife. But then women do marry, sometimes,
+unaccountably. I've known downright ugly and disagreeable fellows to
+work around, till by and by they would get a pretty girl fascinated by
+something in them which nobody else could see, and then marry her in
+spite of everything;--just as you may have seen a magnetizer on the
+stage make his subjects do just what he pleased, or a black snake charm
+a bird. Talk about women marrying with their eyes open, under such
+circumstances! They don't marry with their eyes open: they are put to
+sleep, in one sense, and a'n't more than half responsible for what they
+do, if they are that. Then rises the question that has puzzled wiser
+heads than any of ours here, and will puzzle more yet, till society is
+different from what it is now--how much a refined and sensitive woman is
+bound to suffer from a coarse and disgusting master, legally called her
+husband, before she is entitled to break off a bad bargain she scarce
+had a hand in making. I've sat here to-night and heard about men getting
+goods under false pretences; you've told some astonishing big stories,
+gentlemen, about rogues stealing horses and sleighs; and I'm going to
+tell you about the man who stole a meeting-house; but, when all is said,
+I guess it will be found that more extraordinary thieving than all that
+often goes on under our own eyes, and nobody takes any notice of
+it. There's such a thing, gentlemen, as getting hearts under false
+pretences. There's such a thing as a man's stealing a wife.
+
+“I speak with feeling on this subject, for I had an opportunity of
+seeing what Mrs. Jedwort had to put up with from a man no woman of her
+stamp could do anything but detest. She was the patientest creature you
+ever saw. She was even too patient. If I had been tied to such a cub, I
+think I should have cultivated the beautiful and benignant qualities
+of a wildcat; there would have been one good fight, and one of us would
+have been living, and the other would have been dead, and that would
+have been the end of it. But Mrs. Jedwort bore and bore untold miseries
+and a large number of children. She had had nine of these, and three
+were under the sod and six above it when Jedwort ran off with the
+meeting-house in the way I am going on to tell you. There was Maria, the
+oldest girl, a perfect picture of what her mother had been at nineteen.
+Then there were the two boys, Dave and Dan, fine young fellows, spite
+of their father. Then came Lottie, and Susie, and then Willie, a little
+four-year-old.
+
+“It was amazing to see what the mother would do to keep her family
+looking decent with the little means she had. For Jedwort was the
+tightest screw ever you saw. It was avarice that had spoiled him, and
+came so near turning him into a beast. The boys used to say he grew so
+bent looking in the dirt for pennies. That was true of his mind, if not
+of his body. He was a poor man, and a pretty respectable man, when he
+married his wife; but he had no sooner come into possession of a little
+property than he grew crazy for more.
+
+“There are a good many men in the world, that nobody looks upon as
+monomaniacs, who are crazy in just that sort of way. They are all for
+laying up money, depriving themselves of comforts, and their families
+of the advantages of society and education, just to add a few dollars to
+their hoard every year; and so they keep on till they die and leave it
+to their children, who would be much better off if a little more had
+been invested in the cultivation of their minds and manners, and less in
+stocks and bonds.
+
+“Jedwort was just one of that class of men, although perhaps he carried
+the fault I speak of a little to excess. A dollar looked so big to him,
+and he held it so close, that at last he couldn't see much of anything
+else. By degrees he lost all regard for decency and his neighbor's
+opinions. His children went barefoot, even after they got to be great
+boys and girls, because he was too mean to buy them shoes. It was
+pitiful to see a nice, interesting girl, like Maria, go about looking as
+she did, while her father was piling his money into the bank. She wanted
+to go to school and learn music, and be somebody; but he wouldn't keep a
+hired girl, and so she was obliged to stay at home and do housework; and
+she could no more have got a dollar out of him to pay for clothes and
+tuition than you could squeeze sap out of a hoe-handle.
+
+“The only way his wife could ever get anything new for the family was by
+stealing butter from her own dairy, and selling it behind his back.
+'You needn't say anything to Mr. Jedwort about this batch of butter,'
+she would hint to the storekeeper; 'but you may hand the money to me,
+or I will take my pay in goods.' In this way a new gown, or a piece of
+cloth for the boys' coats, or something else the family needed, would be
+smuggled into the house, with fear and trembling lest old Jedwort should
+make a row and find where the money came from.
+
+“The house inside was kept neat as a pin; but everything around it
+looked terribly shiftless. It was built originally in an ambitious
+style, and painted white. It had four tall front pillars, supporting the
+portion of the roof that came over the porch--lifting up the eyebrows of
+the house, if I may so express myself, and making it look as if it was
+going to sneeze. Half the blinds were off their hinges, and the rest
+flapped in the wind. The front doorstep had rotted away. The porch had
+once a good floor, but for years Jedwort had been in the habit of going
+to it whenever he wanted a board for the pig-pen, until not a bit of
+floor was left.
+
+“But I began to tell about Jedwort leaning on the gate that morning. We
+had all noticed him; and as Dave and I brought in the milk, his mother
+asked, 'What is your father planning now? Half the time he stands there,
+looking up the road; or else he's walking up that way in a brown study.'
+
+“'He's got his eye on the old meeting-house,' says Dave, setting down
+his pail. 'He has been watching it and walking round it, off and on, for
+a week.'
+
+“That was the first intimation I had of what the old fellow was up
+to. But after breakfast he followed me out of the house, as if he had
+something on his mind to say to me.
+
+“'Stark,' says he, at last, 'you've always insisted on't that I wasn't
+an enterprisin' man.'
+
+“'I insist on't still,' says I; for I was in the habit of talking mighty
+plain to him, and joking him pretty hard sometimes. 'If I had this farm,
+I'd show you enterprise. You wouldn't see the hogs in the garden half
+the time, just for want of a good fence to keep 'em out. You wouldn't
+see the very best strip of land lying waste, just for want of a ditch.
+You wouldn't see that stone wall by the road tumbling down year after
+year, till by and by you won't be able to see it for the weeds and
+thistles.'
+
+“'Yes,' says he, sarcastically, 'ye'd lay-out ten times as much money
+on the place as ye'd ever git back agin, I've no doubt. But I believe in
+economy.'
+
+“That provoked me a little, and I said, 'Economy! You're one of the kind
+of men that'll skin a flint for sixpence and spoil a jack-knife worth a
+shilling. You waste fodder and grain enough every three years to pay for
+a bigger barn--to say nothing of the inconvenience.'
+
+“'Wal, Stark,' says he, grinning and scratching his head, 'I've made up
+my mind to have a bigger barn, if I have to steal one.'
+
+“'That won't be the first thing you've stole, neither,' says I.
+
+“He flared up at that. 'Stole?' says he. 'What did I ever steal?'
+
+“'Well, for one thing, the rails the freshet last spring drifted off
+from Talcott's land onto yours, and you grabbed: what was that but
+stealing?'
+
+“'That was luck. He couldn't swear to his rails. By the way, they'll
+jest come in play now.'
+
+“'They've come in play already,' says I. 'They've gone on to the old
+fences all over the farm, and I could use a thousand more without making
+much show.'
+
+“'That's 'cause you're so dumbed extravagant with rails, as you are
+with everything else. A few loads can be spared from the fences here
+and there, as well as not. Harness up the team, boys, and git together
+enough to make about ten rods o' zigzag, two rails high.'
+
+“'Two rails?' says Dave, who had a healthy contempt for the old man's
+narrow, contracted way of doing things. 'What's the good of such a fence
+as that?'
+
+“'It'll be,' says I, 'like the single bar in music. When our old singing
+master asked his class once what a single bar was, Bill Wilkins spoke
+up and said, “It's a bar that horses and cattle jump over, and pigs and
+sheep run under.”'
+
+“'What do you expect to keep out with two rails?'
+
+“'The _law_, boys, the _law_,' says Jedwort. 'I know what I'm about.
+I'll make a fence the _law_ can't run under nor jump over; and I don't
+care a cuss for the cattle and pigs. You git the rails, and I'll rip
+some boards off'n the pig-pen to make stakes.'
+
+“'Boards a'n't good for nothin' for stakes,' says Dave. 'Besides, none
+can't be spared from the pig-pen.'
+
+“'I'll have boards enough in a day or two for forty pig-pens,' says
+Jedwort. 'Bring along the rails and dump 'em out in the road for the
+present, and say nothin' to nobody.'
+
+“We got the rails, and he made his stakes; and right away after dinner
+he called us out. 'Come, boys,' says he, 'now we'll astonish the
+natives.'
+
+“The wagon stood in the road, with the last jag of rails still on it.
+Jedwort piled on his stakes, and threw on the crowbar and axe, while we
+were hitching up the team.
+
+“'Now, drive on, Stark,' says he.
+
+“'Yes; but where shall I drive to?'
+
+“'To the old meetin'-house,' says Jedwort, trudging on ahead.
+
+“The old meeting-house stood on an open common, at the northeast corner
+of his farm. A couple of cross-roads bounded it on two sides; and it
+was bounded on the other two by Jedwort's overgrown stone wall. It was
+a square, old-fashioned building, with a low steeple, that had a
+belfry, but no bell in it, and with a high, square pulpit and high,
+straight-backed pews inside. It was now some time since meetings
+had been held there; the old society that used to meet there having
+separated, one division of it building a fashionable chapel in the North
+Village, and the other a fine new church at the Centre.
+
+“Now, the peculiarity about the old church property was, that nobody had
+any legal title to it. A log meeting-house had been built there when the
+country was first settled and the land was of no account. In the course
+of time that was torn down, and a good frame house put up in its place.
+As it belonged to the whole community, no title, either to the house or
+land, was ever recorded; and it wasn't until after the society dissolved
+that the question came up as to how the property was to be disposed of.
+While the old deacons were carefully thinking it over, Jed-wort was on
+hand, to settle it by putting in his claim.
+
+“'Now, boys,' says he, 'ye see what I'm up to.'
+
+“'Yes,' says I, provoked as I could be at the mean trick, 'and I knew it
+was some such mischief all along. You never show any enterprise, as you
+call it, unless it is to get the start of a neighbor. Then you are wide
+awake; then you are busy as the Devil in a gale of wind.'
+
+“'But what _are_ you up to, pa?' says Dan, who didn't see the trick yet.
+
+“The old man says, 'I'm goin' to fence in the rest part of my farm.'
+
+“'What rest part?'
+
+“'This part that never was fenced; the old meetin'-house common.'
+
+“'But, pa,' says Dave, disgusted as I was, 'you've no claim on that.'
+
+“'Wal, if I ha'n't, I'll make a claim. Give me the crowbar. Now, here's
+the corner, nigh as I can squint'; and he stuck the bar into the ground.
+'Make a fence to here from the wall, both sides.'
+
+“'Sho, pa!' says Dan, looking bewildered; 'ye a'n't goin' to fence in
+the old meetin'-house, be ye?'
+
+“'That's jest what I'm goin' to do. Go and git some big stuns from the
+wall--the biggest ye can find, to rest the corners of the fence on.
+String the rails along by the road, Stark, and go for another load.
+Don't stand gawpin' there!'
+
+“'_Gawpin'?_' says I; 'it's enough to make anybody _gawp_. You do beat
+all the critters I ever had to deal with. Haven't ye disgraced your
+family enough already, without stealing a meeting-house?'
+
+“'How have I disgraced my family?' says he.
+
+“Then I put it to him. 'Look at your children; it's all your wife can do
+to prevent 'em from growing up in rags and dirt and ignorance, because
+you are too close-fisted to clothe 'em decently or send 'em to school.
+Look at your house and yard. To see an Irishman's shanty in such a
+condition seems appropriate enough, but a genteel place, a house with
+pillars, run down and gone to seed like that, is an eyesore to the
+community. Then look at your wife. You never would have had any property
+to mismanage if it hadn't been for her; and see the way you show your
+gratitude for it. You won't let her go into company, nor have company at
+home; you won't allow a hired girl in the house, but she and Maria have
+to do all the drudgery. You make perfect slaves of 'em. I swear, if it
+wa'n't for your wife, I wouldn't work for you an hour longer; but she's
+the best woman in the world, after all you've done to break her spirit,
+and I hate to leave her.'
+
+“The old fellow squirmed, and wrenched the crowbar in the ground, then
+snarled back: 'Yes! you're waitin' for me to die; then you mean to step
+into my shoes.'
+
+“'I hope you'll have a decenter pair than them you've got on, if I'm to
+step into 'em,' says I.
+
+“'One thing about it,' says he, 'she won't have ye.'
+
+“'I should think,' says I, 'a woman that would marry you would have
+'most anybody.'
+
+“So we had it back and forth, till by and by he left me to throw off the
+rails, and went to show the boys how to build the fence.
+
+“'Look here,' says he; 'jest put a thunderin' big stun to each corner;
+then lay your rail on; then drive your pair of stakes over it like a
+letter X.' He drove a pair. 'Now put on your rider. There's your letter
+X, ridin' one length of rails and carryin' another. That's what I call
+puttin' yer alphabet to a practical use; and I say there a'n't no sense
+in havin' any more education than ye _can_ put to a practical use. I've
+larnin' enough to git along in the world; and if my boys have as much
+as I've got, they'll git along. Now work spry, for there comes Deacon
+Talcott.'
+
+“'Wal, wall' says the Deacon, coming up, puffing with excitement; 'what
+ye doin' to the old meetin'-house?'
+
+“'Wal,' says Jedwort, driving away at his stakes, and never looking
+up, 'I've been considerin' some time what I should do with't, and I've
+concluded to make a barn on't.'
+
+“'Make a barn! make a barn!' cries the Deacon. 'Who give ye liberty to
+make a barn of the house of God?'
+
+“'Nobody; I take the liberty. Why shouldn't I do what I please with my
+own prop'ty?'
+
+“'Your own property--what do you mean? 'Ta'n't your meetin'-house.'
+
+“'Whose is't, if 'ta'n't mine?' says Jedwort, lifting his turtle's head
+from between his horizontal shoulders, and grinning in the Deacon's
+face.
+
+“'It belongs to the society,' says the Deacon.'
+
+“'But the s'ciety's pulled up stakes and gone off.'
+
+“'It belongs to individooals of the society--to individooals.'
+
+“'Wal, I'm an individooal,' says Jedwort.
+
+“'You! you never went to meetin' here a dozen times in your life!'
+
+“'I never did have my share of the old meet-in'-house, that's a fact,'
+says Jedwort; 'but I'll make it up now.'
+
+“'But what are ye fencin' up the common for?' says the Deacon.
+
+“'It'll make a good calf-pastur'. I've never had my share o' the vally
+o' that, either. I've let my neighbors' pigs and critters run on't long
+enough; and now I'm jest goin' to take possession o' my own.'
+
+“'Your own!' says the Deacon, in perfect consternation. 'You've no deed
+on't.'
+
+“'Wal, have you?'
+
+“'No--but--the society--'
+
+“'The s'ciety, I tell ye,' says Jedwort, holding his head up longer than
+I ever knew him to hold it up at a time and grinning all the while in
+Tal-cott's face--'the s'ciety is split to pieces. There a'n't no s'ciety
+now--any more'n a pig's a pig arter you've butchered and e't it. You've
+e't the pig amongst ye, and left me the pen. The s'ciety never had a
+deed o' this 'ere prop'ty; and no man never had a deed o' this e're
+prop'ty. My wife's gran'daddy, when he took up the land here, was a
+good-natered sort of man, and he allowed a corner on't for his neighbors
+to put up a temp'rary meetin'-house. That was finally used up--the kind
+o' preachin' they had them days was enough to use up in a little time
+any house that wa'n't fire-proof; and when that was preached to pieces,
+they put up another shelter in its place. This is it. And now't the
+land a'n't used no more for the puppose 'twas lent for, it goes back
+nat'rally to the estate 'twas took from, and the buildin's along with
+it.'
+
+“'That's all a sheer fabrication,' says the Deacon. 'This land was never
+a part of what's now your farm, any more than it was a part of mine.'
+
+“'Wal,' says Jedwort, 'I look at it in my way, and you've a perfect
+right to look at it in your way. But I'm goin' to make sure o' my way,
+by puttin' a fence round the hull concern.'
+
+“'And you're usin' some of my rails for to do it with!' says the Deacon.
+
+“'Can you swear they're your rails?'
+
+“'Yes, I can; they're the rails the freshet carried off from my farm
+last spring, and landed on to yourn.'
+
+“'So I've heard ye say. But can you swear to the partic'lar rails? Can
+you swear, for instance, 't this 'ere is your rail? or this 'ere one?'
+
+“'No; I can't swear to precisely them two--but--'
+
+“'Can you swear to these two? or to any one or two?' says Jedwort. 'No,
+ye can't. Ye can swear to the lot in general, but you can't swear to
+any partic'lar rail, and that kind o' swearin' won't stand law, Deacon
+Talcott. I don't boast of bein' an edicated man, but I know suthin' o'
+what law is, and when I know it, I dror a line there, and I toe that
+line, and I make my neighbors toe that line, Deacon Talcott. Nine p'ints
+o' the law is possession, and I'll have possession o' this 'ere house
+and land by fencin' on't in; and though every man't comes along should
+say these 'ere rails belong to them, I'll fence it in with these 'ere
+very rails.'
+
+“Jedwort said this, wagging his obstinate old head, and grinning with
+his face turned up pugnaciously at the Deacon; then went to work again
+as if he had settled the question, and didn't wish to discuss it any
+further.
+
+“As for Talcott, he was too full of wrath and boiling indignation to
+answer such a speech. He knew that Jedwort had managed to get the start
+of him with regard to the rails, by mixing a few of his own with those
+he had stolen, so that nobody could tell 'em apart; and he saw at once
+that the meeting-house was in danger of going the same way, just for
+want of an owner to swear out a clear title to the property. He did
+just the wisest thing when he swallowed his vexation, and hurried off to
+alarm the leading men of the two societies, and to consult a lawyer.
+
+“'He'll stir up the old town like a bumblebee's nest,' says Jedwort.
+'Hurry up, boys, or there'll be a buzzin' round our ears 'fore we git
+through!'
+
+“'I wish ye wouldn't, pa!' says Dave, 'Why don't we 'tend to our own
+business, and be decent, like other folks? I'm sick of this kind of
+life.'
+
+“'Quit it, then,' says Jedwort.
+
+“'Do you tell me to quit it?' says Dave, dropping the end of a rail he
+was handling.
+
+“'Yes, I do; and do it dumbed quick, if ye can't show a proper respect
+to your father!”
+
+“Dave turned white as a sheet, and he trembled as he answered back, 'I
+should be glad to show you respect, if you was a man I could feel any
+respect for.'
+
+“At that Jedwort caught hold of the iron bar that was sticking in the
+ground, where he had been making a hole for a stake, and pulled away
+at it. 'I'll make a stake-hole in you!' says he. 'It's enough to have a
+sassy hired man round, without bein' jawed by one's own children!'
+
+“Dave was out of reach by the time the bar came out of the ground.
+
+“'Come here, you villain!' says the old man.
+
+“'I'd rather be excused,' says Dave, backing off. 'I don't want any
+stake-holes made in me to-day. You told me to quit, and I'm going to,
+You may steal your own meeting-houses in future; I won't help.'
+
+“There was a short race. Dave's young legs proved altogether too smart
+for the old waddler's, and he got off. Then Jedwort, coming back,
+wheezing and sweating, with his iron bar, turned savagely on me.
+
+“I've a good notion to tell you to go too!'
+
+“'Very well, why don't ye?' says I. 'Im ready.'
+
+“'There's no livin' with ye, ye're gettin' so dumbed sassy! What I keep
+ye for is a mystery to me.'
+
+“'No, it a'n't; you keep me because you can't get another man to fill my
+place. You put up with my sass for the money I bring ye in.'
+
+“'Hold your yawp,' says he, 'and go and git another load of rails. If ye
+see Dave, tell him to come back to work.'
+
+“I did see Dave, but, instead of telling him to go back, I advised him
+to put out from the old home and get his living somewhere else. His
+mother and Maria agreed with me; and when the old man came home that
+night Dave was gone.
+
+“When I got back with my second load, I found the neighbors assembling
+to witness the stealing of the old meeting-house, and Jedwort was
+answering their remonstrances.
+
+“'A meetin'-house is a respectable kind o' prop'ty to have round,' says
+he. 'The steeple'll make a good show behind my house. When folks ride
+by, they'll stop and look, and say, “There's a man keeps a private
+meetin'-house of his own.” I can have preachin' in't, too, if I want. I'm
+able to hire a preacher of my own, or I can preach myself and save the
+expense.'
+
+“Of course, neither sarcasm nor argument could have any effect on such a
+man. As the neighbors were going away, Jedwort shouted after 'em: 'Call
+agin. Glad to see ye. There'll be more sport in a few days, when I take
+the dumbed thing away.' (The dumbed thing was the meeting-house.) 'I
+invite ye all to see the show. Free gratis. It'll be good as a circus,
+and a 'tarnal sight cheaper. The women can bring their knittin', and the
+gals their everlastin' tattin'. As it'll be a pious kind o' show, bein'
+it's a meetin'-house, guess I'll have notices gi'n out from the pulpits
+the Sunday afore.'
+
+“The common was fenced in by sundown; and the next day Jedwort had over
+a house-mover from the North Village to look and see what could be done
+with the building. 'Can ye snake it over, and drop it back of my house?'
+says he.
+
+“It'll be a hard job,' says old Bob, 'without you tear down the steeple
+fust.'
+
+“But Jedwort said, 'What's a meetin'-house 'thout a steeple? I've got my
+heart kind o' set on that steeple, and I'm bound to go the hull hog on
+this 'ere concern, now I've begun.'
+
+“'I vow,' says Bob, examining the timbers, 'I won't warrant but the old
+thing'll all tumble down.'
+
+“'I'll resk it.'
+
+“'Yes; but who'll resk the lives of me and my men?'
+
+“'O, you'll see if it's re'ly goin' to tumble, and look out. I'll engage
+'t me and my boys'll do the most dangerous part of the work. Dumbed if
+I wouldn't agree to ride in the steeple and ring the bell if there was
+one.'
+
+“I've never heard that the promised notices were read from the pulpits;
+but it wasn't many days before Bob came over again, bringing with him
+this time his screws and ropes and rollers, his men and timbers, horse
+and capstan; and at last the old house might have been seen on its
+travels.
+
+“It was an exciting time all around. The societies found that Jedwort's
+fence gave him the first claim to house and land unless a regular siege
+of the law was gone through to beat him off--and then it might turn out
+that he would beat them. Some said fight him; some said let him be--the
+thing a'n't worth going to law for; and so, as the leading men couldn't
+agree as to what should be done, nothing was done. That was just what
+Jedwort had expected, and he laughed in his sleeve while Bob and his
+boys screwed up the old meeting-house, and got their beams under it, and
+set it on rollers, and slued it around, and slid it on the timbers laid
+for it across into Jedwort's field, steeple foremost, like a locomotive
+on a track.
+
+“It was a trying time for the women folks at home. Maria had declared
+that, if her father did persist in stealing the meeting-house, she would
+not stay a single day after it, but would follow Dave.
+
+“That touched me pretty close, for, to tell the truth, it was rather
+more Maria than her mother that kept me at work for the old man. 'If you
+go,' says I, 'then there is no object for me to stay; I shall go too.'
+
+“'That's what I supposed,' says she; 'for there's no reason in the world
+why you should stay. But then Dan will go; and who'll be left to take
+sides with mother? That's what troubles me. Oh, if she could only
+go too! But she won't; and she couldn't if she would, with the other
+children depending on her. Dear, dear! what shall we do?'
+
+“The poor girl put her head on my shoulder, and cried; and if I should
+own up to the truth, I suppose I cried a little too. For where's the man
+that can hold a sweet woman's head on his shoulder, while she sobs out
+her trouble, and he hasn't any power to help her--who, I say, can do any
+less, under such circumstances, than drop a tear or two for company?
+
+“'Never mind; don't hurry,' says Mrs. Jed-wort. 'Be patient, and wait a
+while, and it'll all turn out right, I'm sure.'
+
+“'Yes, you always say, “Be patient, and wait!”' says Maria, brushing
+back her hair. 'But, for my part, I'm tired of waiting, and my patience
+has given out long ago. We can't always live in this way, and we may as
+well make a change now as ever. But I can't bear the thought of going
+and leaving you.'
+
+“Here the two younger girls came in; and, seeing that crying was the
+order of the day, they began to cry; and when they heard Maria talk
+of going, they declared they would go; and even little Willie, the
+four-year-old, began to howl.
+
+“'There, there! Maria! Lottie! Susie! said Mrs. Jedwort, in her calm
+way; 'Willie, hush up! I don't know what we are to do; but I feel that
+something is going to happen that will show us the right way, and we are
+to wait. Now go and wash the dishes, and set the cheese.'
+
+“That was just after breakfast, the second day of the moving; and sure
+enough, something like what she prophesied did happen before another
+sun.
+
+“The old frame held together pretty well till along toward night, when
+the steeple showed signs of seceding. 'There she goes! She's falling
+now!' sung out the boys, who had been hanging around all day in hopes of
+seeing the thing tumble.
+
+“The house was then within a few rods of where Jedwort wanted it; but
+Bob stopped right there, and said it wasn't safe to haul it another
+inch. 'That steeple's bound to come down, if we do,' says he.
+
+“'Not by a dumbed sight, it a'n't,' says Jedwort, 'Them cracks a'n't
+nothin'; the j'ints is all firm yit.' He wanted Bob to go up and
+examine; but Bob shook his head--the concern looked too shaky. Then he
+told me to go up; but I said I hadn't lived quite long enough, and had
+a little rather be smoking my pipe on _terra firma_. Then the boys began
+to hoot. 'Dumbed if ye a'n't all a set of cowards,' says he. 'I'll go up
+myself.'
+
+“We waited outside while he climbed up inside. The boys jumped on the
+ground to jar the steeple, and make it fall. One of them blew a horn--as
+he said, to bring down the old Jericho--and another thought he'd help
+things along by starting up the horse, and giving the building a little
+wrench. But Bob put a stop to that; and finally out came a head from the
+belfry window; It was Jedwort, who shouted down to us: 'There ain't a
+j'int or brace gi'n out. Start the hoss, and I'll ride. Pass me up that
+'ere horn, and--'
+
+“Just then there came a cracking and loosening of timbers; and we that
+stood nearest had only time to jump out of the way, when down came the
+steeple crashing to the ground, with Jedwort in it.”
+
+“I hope it killed the cuss,” said one of the village story-tellers.
+
+“Worse than that,” replied my friend; “it just cracked his skull--not
+enough to put an end to his miserable life, but only to take away what
+little sense he had. We got the doctors to him, and they patched up his
+broken head; and, by George, it made me mad to see the fuss the women
+folks made over him. It would have been my way to let him die; but
+they were as anxious and attentive to him as if he had been the kindest
+husband and most indulgent father that ever lived; for that's women's
+style: they're unreasoning creatures.
+
+“Along toward morning, we persuaded Mrs. Jedwort, who had been up all
+night, to lie down a spell and catch a little rest, while Maria and I
+sat up and watched with the old man. All was still except our whispers
+and his heavy breathing; there was a lamp burning in the next room; when
+all of a sudden a light shone into the windows, and about the same time
+we heard a roaring and crackling sound. We looked out, and saw the night
+all lighted up, as if by some great fire. As it appeared to be on the
+other side of the house, we ran to the door, and there what did we see
+but the old meeting-house all in flames! Some fellows had set fire to it
+to spite Jedwort. It must have been burning some time inside; for when
+we looked out the flames had burst through the roof.
+
+“As the night was perfectly still, except a light wind blowing away from
+the other buildings on the place, we raised no alarm, but just stood
+in the door and saw it burn. And a glad sight it was to us, you may
+be sure. I just held Maria close to my side, and told her that all was
+well--it was the best thing that could happen. 'O yes,' says she, 'it
+seems to me as though a kind Providence was burning up his sin and home
+out of our sight.
+
+“I had never yet said anything to her about marriage--for the time to
+come at that had never seemed to arrive; but there's nothing like a
+little excitement to bring things to a focus. You've seen water in a
+tumbler just at the freezing-point, but not exactly able to make up its
+mind to freeze, when a little jar will set the crystals forming, and in
+a minute what was liquid is ice. It was the shock of events that night
+that touched my life into crystals--not of ice, gentlemen, by any manner
+of means.
+
+“After the fire had got along so far that the meeting-house was a gone
+case, an alarm was given probably by the very fellows that set it, and a
+hundred people were on the spot before the thing had done burning.
+
+“Of course these circumstances put an end to the breaking up of the
+family. Dave was sent for, and came home. Then, as soon as we saw that
+the old man's brain was injured so that he wasn't likely to recover his
+mind, the boys and I went to work and put that farm through a course of
+improvement it would have done your eyes good to see. The children were
+sent to school, and Mrs. Jedwort had all the money she wanted now to
+clothe them, and to provide the house with comforts, without stealing
+her own butter. Jedwort was a burden; but, in spite of him, that was
+just about the happiest family, for the next four years, that ever lived
+on this planet.
+
+“Jedwort soon got his bodily health, but I don't think he knew one of
+us again after his hurt. As near as I could get at his state of mind, he
+thought he had been changed into some sort of animal. He seemed inclined
+to take me for a master, and for four years he followed me around like a
+dog. During that time he never spoke, but only whined and growled. When
+I said, 'Lie down,' he'd lie down; and when I whistled he'd come.
+
+“I used sometimes to make him work; and certain simple things he would
+do very well, as long as I was by. One day I had a jag of hay to get in;
+and, as the boys were away, I thought I'd have him load it. I pitched it
+on to the wagon about where it ought to lie, and looked to him only to
+pack it down. There turned out to be a bigger load than I had expected,
+and the higher it got, the worse the shape of it, till finally, as I
+was starting it toward the barn, off it rolled, and the old man with it,
+head foremost.
+
+“He struck a stone heap, and for a moment I thought he was killed. But
+he jumped up and spoke for the first time. '_I'll blow it_,' says he,
+finishing the sentence he had begun four years before, when he called
+for the horn to be passed up to him.
+
+“I couldn't have been much more astonished if one of the horses had
+spoken. But I saw at once that there was an expression in Jedwort's face
+that hadn't been there since his tumble in the belfry; and I knew that,
+as his wits had been knocked out of him by one blow on the head, so
+another blow had knocked 'em in again.
+
+“'Where's Bob?' says he, looking all round.
+
+“'Bob?' says I, not thinking at first who he meant. Oh, Bob is dead--he
+has been dead these three years.'
+
+“Without noticing my reply, he exclaimed: 'Where did all that hay come
+from? Where's the old meetin'-house?'
+
+“'Don't you know?' says I. 'Some rogues set fire to it the night after
+you got hurt, and burnt it up.'
+
+“He seemed then just beginning to realize that something extraordinary
+had happened.
+
+“'Stark,' says he, 'what's the matter with ye? You're changed.'
+
+“'Yes,' say I, 'I wear my beard now, and I've grown older!'
+
+“'Dumbed if 'ta'n't odd!' says he. 'Stark, what in thunder's the matter
+with _me?_
+
+“'You've had meeting-house on the brain for the past four years,' says
+I; 'that's what's the matter.'
+
+“It was some time before I could make him understand that he had been
+out of his head, and that so long a time had been a blank to him.
+
+“Then he said, 'Is this my farm?'
+
+“'Don't you know it?' says I.
+
+“'It looks more slicked up than ever it used to,' says he.
+
+“'Yes,' says I; 'and you'll find everything else on the place slicked up
+in about the same way.'
+
+“'Where's Dave?' says he.
+
+“'Dave has gone to town to see about selling the wool.'
+
+“'Where's Dan?'
+
+“'Dan's in college. He takes a great notion to medicine; and we're going
+to make a doctor of him.'
+
+“'Whose house is that?' says he, as I was taking him home.
+
+“'No wonder you don't know it,' says I. 'It has been painted, and
+shingled, and had new blinds put on; the gates and fences are all in
+prime condition; and that's a new barn we put up a couple of years ago.'
+
+“'Where does the money come from, to make all these improvements?'
+
+“'It comes off the place,' says I. 'We haven't run in debt the first
+cent for anything, but we've made the farm more profitable than it ever
+was before.'
+
+“'That _my_ house?' he repeated wonderingly, as we approached it. 'What
+sound is that?'
+
+“'That's Lottie practicing her lesson on the piano.'
+
+“'A pianer in my house?' he muttered. 'I can't stand that!' He listened.
+'It sounds pooty, though!'
+
+“'Yes, it does sound pretty, and I guess you'll like it How does the
+place suit you?'
+
+“'It _looks_ pooty.' He started. 'What young lady is that?'
+
+“It was Lottie, who had left her music and stood by the window.
+
+“'My dahter! ye don't say! Dumbed if she a'n't a mighty nice gal.'
+
+“'Yes,' says I; 'she takes after her mother.'
+
+“Just then Susie, who heard talking, ran to the door.
+
+“'Who's that agin?' says Jedwort.
+
+“I told him.
+
+“'Wal, _she's_ a mighty nice-lookin' gal!'
+
+“'Yes,' says I, she takes after her mother.'
+
+“Little Willie, now eight years old, came out of the woodshed with a
+bow-and-arrow in his hand, and stared like an owl, hearing his father
+talk.
+
+“'What boy is that?' says Jedwort. And when I told him, he muttered,
+'He's an ugly-looking brat!'
+
+“'He's more like his father,' says I.
+
+“The truth is, Willie was such a fine boy the old man was afraid to
+praise him, for fear I'd say of him, as I'd said of the girls, that he
+favored his mother.
+
+“Susie ran back and gave the alarm; and then out came mother, and Maria
+with her baby in her arms, for I forgot to tell you that we had been
+married now nigh on to two years.
+
+“Well, the women folks were as much astonished as I had been when
+Jedwort first spoke, and a good deal more delighted. They drew him into
+the house; and I am bound to say he behaved remarkably well. He kept
+looking at his wife, and his children, and his grandchild, and the new
+paper on the walls, and the new furniture, and now and then asking a
+question or making a remark.
+
+“'It all comes back to me now,' says he at last. 'I thought I was living
+in the moon, with a superior race of human bein's; and this is the
+place, and you are the people.'
+
+“It wasn't more than a couple of days before he began to pry around, and
+find fault, and grumble at the expense; and I saw there was danger of
+things relapsing into something like their former condition. So I took
+him one side, and talked to him.
+
+“'Jedwort,' says I, 'you're like a man raised from the grave. You was
+the same as buried to your neighbors, and now they come and look at you
+as they would at a dead man come to life. To you, it's like coming into
+a new world, and I'll leave it to you now, if you don't rather like the
+change from the old state of things to what you see around you to-day.
+You've seen how the family affairs go on--how pleasant everything is,
+and how we all enjoy ourselves. You hear the piano, and like it; you see
+your children sought after and respected, your wife in finer health and
+spirits than you've ever known her since the day she was married; you
+see industry and neatness everywhere on the premises; and you're a beast
+if you don't like all that. In short, you see that our management is a
+great deal better than yours; and that we beat you even in the matter of
+economy. Now, what I want to know is this: whether you think you'd like
+to fall into our way of living, or return like a hog to your wallow.'
+
+“'I don't say but what I like your way of livin' very well,' he
+grumbled.
+
+“'Then,' says I, 'you must just let us go ahead, as we have been going
+ahead. Now's the time for you to turn about and be a respectable man,
+like your neighbors. Just own up, and say you've not only been out of
+your head the past four years, but that you've been more or less out of
+your head the last four-and-twenty years. But say you're in your right
+mind now, and prove it by acting like a man in his right mind. Do that,
+and I'm with you; we're all with you. But go back to your old dirty
+ways, and you go alone. Now I sha'n't let you off till you tell me what
+you mean to do.'
+
+“He hesitated some time, then said, 'Maybe you're about right, Stark;
+you and Dave and the old woman seem to be doin' pooty well, and I guess
+I'll let you go on.'”
+
+Here my friend paused, as if his story was done; when one of the
+villagers asked, “About the land where the old meetin'-house stood--what
+ever was done with that?”
+
+“That was appropriated for a new school-house; and there my little
+shavers go to school.”
+
+“And old Jedwort, is he alive yet?”
+
+“Both Jedwort and his wife have gone to that country where meanness and
+dishonesty have a mighty poor chance--where the only investments worth
+much are those recorded in the Book of Life. Mrs. Jedwort was rich
+in that kind of stock; and Jedwort's account, I guess, will compare
+favorably with that of some respectable people, such as we all know. I
+tell ye, my friends,” continued my fellow-traveler, “there's many a man,
+both in the higher and lower ranks of life, that 't would do a deal of
+good, say nothing of the mercy 'twould be to their families, just to
+knock 'em on the head, and make Nebu-chadnezzars of 'em--then, after
+they'd been turned out to grass a few years, let 'em come back again,
+and see how happy folks have been, and how well they have got along
+without 'em.
+
+“I carry on the old place now,” he added. “The younger girls are married
+off; Dan's a doctor in the North Village; and as for Dave, he and I have
+struck ile. I'm going out to look at our property now.”
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Man Who Stole A Meeting-House, by
+J. T. Trowbridge
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+
+<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" lang="en">
+  <head>
+    <title>
+      The Man Who Stole a Meeting-house, by J. T. Trowbridge
+    </title>
+    <style type="text/css" xml:space="preserve">
+
+    body { margin:5%; background:#faebd0; text-align:justify}
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+    .foot { margin-left: 20%; margin-right: 20%; text-align: justify; text-indent: -3em; font-size: 90%; }
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+    .mynote    {background-color: #DDE; color: #000; padding: .5em; margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 95%;}
+    .toc       { margin-left: 10%; margin-bottom: .75em;}
+    .toc2      { margin-left: 20%;}
+    div.fig    { display:block; margin:0 auto; text-align:center; }
+    div.middle { margin-left: 20%; margin-right: 20%; text-align: justify; }
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+    .figright  {float: right; margin-right: 0%; margin-left: 1%;}
+    .pagenum   {display:inline; font-size: 70%; font-style:normal;
+               margin: 0; padding: 0; position: absolute; right: 1%;
+               text-align: right;}
+    pre        { font-style: italic; font-size: 90%; margin-left: 10%;}
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+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+
+Project Gutenberg's The Man Who Stole A Meeting-House, by J. T. Trowbridge
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Man Who Stole A Meeting-House
+       1878, From "Coupon Bonds"
+
+Author: J. T. Trowbridge
+
+Release Date: October 24, 2007 [EBook #23165]
+Last Updated: March 16, 2018
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE MAN WHO STOLE A MEETING-HOUSE ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by David Widger
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+    <div style="height: 8em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h1>
+      THE MAN WHO STOLE A MEETING-HOUSE
+    </h1>
+    <h2>
+      By J. T. Trowbridge
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <br />
+    </p>
+    <h4>
+      From &ldquo;Coupon Bonds.&rdquo; <br /> <br /> Copyright 1878, by James R. Osgood &amp;
+      Co
+    </h4>
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On a recent journey to the Pennsylvania oil regions, I stopped one evening
+      with a fellow-traveler at a village which had just been thrown into a
+      turmoil of excitement by the exploits of a horse-thief. As we sat around
+      the tavern hearth, after supper, we heard the particulars of the rogue's
+      capture and escape fully discussed; then followed many another tale of
+      theft and robbery, told amid curling puffs of tobacco-smoke; until, at the
+      close of an exciting story, one of the natives turned to my traveling
+      acquaintance, and, with a broad laugh, said, &ldquo;Kin ye beat that, stranger?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, I don't know&mdash;maybe I could if I should try. I never happened
+      to fall in with any such tall horse-stealing as you tell of, but I knew a
+      man who stole a meeting-house once.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Stole a meetin'-house! That goes a little beyant anything yit,&rdquo; remarked
+      another of the honest villagers. &ldquo;Ye don't mean he stole it and carried it
+      away?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Stole it and carried it away,&rdquo; repeated my traveling companion,
+      seriously, crossing his legs, and resting his arm on the hack of his
+      chair. &ldquo;And, more than all that, I helped him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How happened that?&mdash;for you don't look much like a thief yourself.&rdquo;
+       All eyes were now turned upon my friend, a plain New England farmer, whose
+      honest homespun appearance and candid speech commanded respect.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I was his hired man, and I acted under orders. His name was Jedwort&mdash;Old
+      Jedwort, the boys called him, although he wasn't above fifty when the
+      crooked little circumstance happened which I'll make as straight a story
+      of as I can, if the company would like to hear it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Sartin, stranger! sartin! about stealin' the meetin'-house!&rdquo; chimed in
+      two or three voices.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      My friend cleared his throat, put his hair behind his ears, and with a
+      grave, smooth face, but with a merry twinkle in his shrewd gray eye, began
+      as follows:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Jedwort I said his name was; and I shall never forget how he looked one
+      particular morning. He stood leaning on the front gate&mdash;or rather on
+      the post, for the gate itself was such a shackling concern a child
+      couldn't have leaned on't without breaking it down. And Jedwort was no
+      child. Think of a stoutish, stooping, duck-legged man, with a mountainous
+      back, strongly suggestive of a bag of grist under his shirt, and you have
+      him. That imaginary grist had been growing heavier and heavier, and he
+      more and more bent under it, for the last fifteen years and more, until
+      his head and neck just came forward out from between his shoulders like a
+      turtle's from its shell. His arms hung, as he walked, almost to the
+      ground. Being curved with the elbows outward, he looked for all the world,
+      in a front view, like a waddling interrogation-point inclosed in a
+      parenthesis. If man was ever a quadruped, as I've heard some folks tell,
+      and rose gradually from four legs to two, there must have been a time,
+      very early in his history, when he went about like Old Jedwort.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The gate had been a very good gate in its day. It had even been a genteel
+      gate when Jedwort came into possession of the place by marrying his wife,
+      who inherited it from her uncle. That was some twenty years before, and
+      everything had been going to rack and ruin ever since.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Jedwort himself had been going to rack and ruin, morally speaking. He was
+      a middling decent sort of man when I first knew him; and I judge there
+      must have been something about him more than common, or he never could
+      have got such a wife. But then women do marry, sometimes, unaccountably.
+      I've known downright ugly and disagreeable fellows to work around, till by
+      and by they would get a pretty girl fascinated by something in them which
+      nobody else could see, and then marry her in spite of everything;&mdash;just
+      as you may have seen a magnetizer on the stage make his subjects do just
+      what he pleased, or a black snake charm a bird. Talk about women marrying
+      with their eyes open, under such circumstances! They don't marry with
+      their eyes open: they are put to sleep, in one sense, and a'n't more than
+      half responsible for what they do, if they are that. Then rises the
+      question that has puzzled wiser heads than any of ours here, and will
+      puzzle more yet, till society is different from what it is now&mdash;how
+      much a refined and sensitive woman is bound to suffer from a coarse and
+      disgusting master, legally called her husband, before she is entitled to
+      break off a bad bargain she scarce had a hand in making. I've sat here
+      to-night and heard about men getting goods under false pretences; you've
+      told some astonishing big stories, gentlemen, about rogues stealing horses
+      and sleighs; and I'm going to tell you about the man who stole a
+      meeting-house; but, when all is said, I guess it will be found that more
+      extraordinary thieving than all that often goes on under our own eyes, and
+      nobody takes any notice of it. There's such a thing, gentlemen, as getting
+      hearts under false pretences. There's such a thing as a man's stealing a
+      wife.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I speak with feeling on this subject, for I had an opportunity of seeing
+      what Mrs. Jedwort had to put up with from a man no woman of her stamp
+      could do anything but detest. She was the patientest creature you ever
+      saw. She was even too patient. If I had been tied to such a cub, I think I
+      should have cultivated the beautiful and benignant qualities of a wildcat;
+      there would have been one good fight, and one of us would have been
+      living, and the other would have been dead, and that would have been the
+      end of it. But Mrs. Jedwort bore and bore untold miseries and a large
+      number of children. She had had nine of these, and three were under the
+      sod and six above it when Jedwort ran off with the meeting-house in the
+      way I am going on to tell you. There was Maria, the oldest girl, a perfect
+      picture of what her mother had been at nineteen. Then there were the two
+      boys, Dave and Dan, fine young fellows, spite of their father. Then came
+      Lottie, and Susie, and then Willie, a little four-year-old.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It was amazing to see what the mother would do to keep her family looking
+      decent with the little means she had. For Jedwort was the tightest screw
+      ever you saw. It was avarice that had spoiled him, and came so near
+      turning him into a beast. The boys used to say he grew so bent looking in
+      the dirt for pennies. That was true of his mind, if not of his body. He
+      was a poor man, and a pretty respectable man, when he married his wife;
+      but he had no sooner come into possession of a little property than he
+      grew crazy for more.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There are a good many men in the world, that nobody looks upon as
+      monomaniacs, who are crazy in just that sort of way. They are all for
+      laying up money, depriving themselves of comforts, and their families of
+      the advantages of society and education, just to add a few dollars to
+      their hoard every year; and so they keep on till they die and leave it to
+      their children, who would be much better off if a little more had been
+      invested in the cultivation of their minds and manners, and less in stocks
+      and bonds.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Jedwort was just one of that class of men, although perhaps he carried
+      the fault I speak of a little to excess. A dollar looked so big to him,
+      and he held it so close, that at last he couldn't see much of anything
+      else. By degrees he lost all regard for decency and his neighbor's
+      opinions. His children went barefoot, even after they got to be great boys
+      and girls, because he was too mean to buy them shoes. It was pitiful to
+      see a nice, interesting girl, like Maria, go about looking as she did,
+      while her father was piling his money into the bank. She wanted to go to
+      school and learn music, and be somebody; but he wouldn't keep a hired
+      girl, and so she was obliged to stay at home and do housework; and she
+      could no more have got a dollar out of him to pay for clothes and tuition
+      than you could squeeze sap out of a hoe-handle.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The only way his wife could ever get anything new for the family was by
+      stealing butter from her own dairy, and selling it behind his back. 'You
+      needn't say anything to Mr. Jedwort about this batch of butter,' she would
+      hint to the storekeeper; 'but you may hand the money to me, or I will take
+      my pay in goods.' In this way a new gown, or a piece of cloth for the
+      boys' coats, or something else the family needed, would be smuggled into
+      the house, with fear and trembling lest old Jedwort should make a row and
+      find where the money came from.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The house inside was kept neat as a pin; but everything around it looked
+      terribly shiftless. It was built originally in an ambitious style, and
+      painted white. It had four tall front pillars, supporting the portion of
+      the roof that came over the porch&mdash;lifting up the eyebrows of the
+      house, if I may so express myself, and making it look as if it was going
+      to sneeze. Half the blinds were off their hinges, and the rest flapped in
+      the wind. The front doorstep had rotted away. The porch had once a good
+      floor, but for years Jedwort had been in the habit of going to it whenever
+      he wanted a board for the pig-pen, until not a bit of floor was left.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But I began to tell about Jedwort leaning on the gate that morning. We
+      had all noticed him; and as Dave and I brought in the milk, his mother
+      asked, 'What is your father planning now? Half the time he stands there,
+      looking up the road; or else he's walking up that way in a brown study.'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'He's got his eye on the old meeting-house,' says Dave, setting down his
+      pail. 'He has been watching it and walking round it, off and on, for a
+      week.'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That was the first intimation I had of what the old fellow was up to. But
+      after breakfast he followed me out of the house, as if he had something on
+      his mind to say to me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'Stark,' says he, at last, 'you've always insisted on't that I wasn't an
+      enterprisin' man.'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'I insist on't still,' says I; for I was in the habit of talking mighty
+      plain to him, and joking him pretty hard sometimes. 'If I had this farm,
+      I'd show you enterprise. You wouldn't see the hogs in the garden half the
+      time, just for want of a good fence to keep 'em out. You wouldn't see the
+      very best strip of land lying waste, just for want of a ditch. You
+      wouldn't see that stone wall by the road tumbling down year after year,
+      till by and by you won't be able to see it for the weeds and thistles.'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'Yes,' says he, sarcastically, 'ye'd lay-out ten times as much money on
+      the place as ye'd ever git back agin, I've no doubt. But I believe in
+      economy.'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That provoked me a little, and I said, 'Economy! You're one of the kind
+      of men that'll skin a flint for sixpence and spoil a jack-knife worth a
+      shilling. You waste fodder and grain enough every three years to pay for a
+      bigger barn&mdash;to say nothing of the inconvenience.'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'Wal, Stark,' says he, grinning and scratching his head, 'I've made up my
+      mind to have a bigger barn, if I have to steal one.'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'That won't be the first thing you've stole, neither,' says I.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He flared up at that. 'Stole?' says he. 'What did I ever steal?'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'Well, for one thing, the rails the freshet last spring drifted off from
+      Talcott's land onto yours, and you grabbed: what was that but stealing?'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'That was luck. He couldn't swear to his rails. By the way, they'll jest
+      come in play now.'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'They've come in play already,' says I. 'They've gone on to the old
+      fences all over the farm, and I could use a thousand more without making
+      much show.'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'That's 'cause you're so dumbed extravagant with rails, as you are with
+      everything else. A few loads can be spared from the fences here and there,
+      as well as not. Harness up the team, boys, and git together enough to make
+      about ten rods o' zigzag, two rails high.'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'Two rails?' says Dave, who had a healthy contempt for the old man's
+      narrow, contracted way of doing things. 'What's the good of such a fence
+      as that?'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'It'll be,' says I, 'like the single bar in music. When our old singing
+      master asked his class once what a single bar was, Bill Wilkins spoke up
+      and said, &ldquo;It's a bar that horses and cattle jump over, and pigs and sheep
+      run under.&rdquo;'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'What do you expect to keep out with two rails?'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'The <i>law</i>, boys, the <i>law</i>,' says Jedwort. 'I know what I'm
+      about. I'll make a fence the <i>law</i> can't run under nor jump over; and
+      I don't care a cuss for the cattle and pigs. You git the rails, and I'll
+      rip some boards off'n the pig-pen to make stakes.'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'Boards a'n't good for nothin' for stakes,' says Dave. 'Besides, none
+      can't be spared from the pig-pen.'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'I'll have boards enough in a day or two for forty pig-pens,' says
+      Jedwort. 'Bring along the rails and dump 'em out in the road for the
+      present, and say nothin' to nobody.'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We got the rails, and he made his stakes; and right away after dinner he
+      called us out. 'Come, boys,' says he, 'now we'll astonish the natives.'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The wagon stood in the road, with the last jag of rails still on it.
+      Jedwort piled on his stakes, and threw on the crowbar and axe, while we
+      were hitching up the team.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'Now, drive on, Stark,' says he.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'Yes; but where shall I drive to?'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'To the old meetin'-house,' says Jedwort, trudging on ahead.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The old meeting-house stood on an open common, at the northeast corner of
+      his farm. A couple of cross-roads bounded it on two sides; and it was
+      bounded on the other two by Jedwort's overgrown stone wall. It was a
+      square, old-fashioned building, with a low steeple, that had a belfry, but
+      no bell in it, and with a high, square pulpit and high, straight-backed
+      pews inside. It was now some time since meetings had been held there; the
+      old society that used to meet there having separated, one division of it
+      building a fashionable chapel in the North Village, and the other a fine
+      new church at the Centre.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now, the peculiarity about the old church property was, that nobody had
+      any legal title to it. A log meeting-house had been built there when the
+      country was first settled and the land was of no account. In the course of
+      time that was torn down, and a good frame house put up in its place. As it
+      belonged to the whole community, no title, either to the house or land,
+      was ever recorded; and it wasn't until after the society dissolved that
+      the question came up as to how the property was to be disposed of. While
+      the old deacons were carefully thinking it over, Jed-wort was on hand, to
+      settle it by putting in his claim.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'Now, boys,' says he, 'ye see what I'm up to.'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'Yes,' says I, provoked as I could be at the mean trick, 'and I knew it
+      was some such mischief all along. You never show any enterprise, as you
+      call it, unless it is to get the start of a neighbor. Then you are wide
+      awake; then you are busy as the Devil in a gale of wind.'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'But what <i>are</i> you up to, pa?' says Dan, who didn't see the trick
+      yet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The old man says, 'I'm goin' to fence in the rest part of my farm.'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'What rest part?'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'This part that never was fenced; the old meetin'-house common.'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'But, pa,' says Dave, disgusted as I was, 'you've no claim on that.'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'Wal, if I ha'n't, I'll make a claim. Give me the crowbar. Now, here's
+      the corner, nigh as I can squint'; and he stuck the bar into the ground.
+      'Make a fence to here from the wall, both sides.'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'Sho, pa!' says Dan, looking bewildered; 'ye a'n't goin' to fence in the
+      old meetin'-house, be ye?'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'That's jest what I'm goin' to do. Go and git some big stuns from the
+      wall&mdash;the biggest ye can find, to rest the corners of the fence on.
+      String the rails along by the road, Stark, and go for another load. Don't
+      stand gawpin' there!'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'<i>Gawpin'?</i>' says I; 'it's enough to make anybody <i>gawp</i>. You
+      do beat all the critters I ever had to deal with. Haven't ye disgraced
+      your family enough already, without stealing a meeting-house?'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'How have I disgraced my family?' says he.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then I put it to him. 'Look at your children; it's all your wife can do
+      to prevent 'em from growing up in rags and dirt and ignorance, because you
+      are too close-fisted to clothe 'em decently or send 'em to school. Look at
+      your house and yard. To see an Irishman's shanty in such a condition seems
+      appropriate enough, but a genteel place, a house with pillars, run down
+      and gone to seed like that, is an eyesore to the community. Then look at
+      your wife. You never would have had any property to mismanage if it hadn't
+      been for her; and see the way you show your gratitude for it. You won't
+      let her go into company, nor have company at home; you won't allow a hired
+      girl in the house, but she and Maria have to do all the drudgery. You make
+      perfect slaves of 'em. I swear, if it wa'n't for your wife, I wouldn't
+      work for you an hour longer; but she's the best woman in the world, after
+      all you've done to break her spirit, and I hate to leave her.'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The old fellow squirmed, and wrenched the crowbar in the ground, then
+      snarled back: 'Yes! you're waitin' for me to die; then you mean to step
+      into my shoes.'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'I hope you'll have a decenter pair than them you've got on, if I'm to
+      step into 'em,' says I.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'One thing about it,' says he, 'she won't have ye.'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'I should think,' says I, 'a woman that would marry you would have 'most
+      anybody.'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So we had it back and forth, till by and by he left me to throw off the
+      rails, and went to show the boys how to build the fence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'Look here,' says he; 'jest put a thunderin' big stun to each corner;
+      then lay your rail on; then drive your pair of stakes over it like a
+      letter X.' He drove a pair. 'Now put on your rider. There's your letter X,
+      ridin' one length of rails and carryin' another. That's what I call
+      puttin' yer alphabet to a practical use; and I say there a'n't no sense in
+      havin' any more education than ye <i>can</i> put to a practical use. I've
+      larnin' enough to git along in the world; and if my boys have as much as
+      I've got, they'll git along. Now work spry, for there comes Deacon
+      Talcott.'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'Wal, wall' says the Deacon, coming up, puffing with excitement; 'what ye
+      doin' to the old meetin'-house?'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'Wal,' says Jedwort, driving away at his stakes, and never looking up,
+      'I've been considerin' some time what I should do with't, and I've
+      concluded to make a barn on't.'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'Make a barn! make a barn!' cries the Deacon. 'Who give ye liberty to
+      make a barn of the house of God?'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'Nobody; I take the liberty. Why shouldn't I do what I please with my own
+      prop'ty?'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'Your own property&mdash;what do you mean? 'Ta'n't your meetin'-house.'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'Whose is't, if 'ta'n't mine?' says Jedwort, lifting his turtle's head
+      from between his horizontal shoulders, and grinning in the Deacon's face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'It belongs to the society,' says the Deacon.'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'But the s'ciety's pulled up stakes and gone off.'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'It belongs to individooals of the society&mdash;to individooals.'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'Wal, I'm an individooal,' says Jedwort.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'You! you never went to meetin' here a dozen times in your life!'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'I never did have my share of the old meet-in'-house, that's a fact,'
+      says Jedwort; 'but I'll make it up now.'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'But what are ye fencin' up the common for?' says the Deacon.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'It'll make a good calf-pastur'. I've never had my share o' the vally o'
+      that, either. I've let my neighbors' pigs and critters run on't long
+      enough; and now I'm jest goin' to take possession o' my own.'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'Your own!' says the Deacon, in perfect consternation. 'You've no deed
+      on't.'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'Wal, have you?'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'No&mdash;but&mdash;the society&mdash;'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'The s'ciety, I tell ye,' says Jedwort, holding his head up longer than I
+      ever knew him to hold it up at a time and grinning all the while in
+      Tal-cott's face&mdash;'the s'ciety is split to pieces. There a'n't no
+      s'ciety now&mdash;any more'n a pig's a pig arter you've butchered and e't
+      it. You've e't the pig amongst ye, and left me the pen. The s'ciety never
+      had a deed o' this 'ere prop'ty; and no man never had a deed o' this e're
+      prop'ty. My wife's gran'daddy, when he took up the land here, was a
+      good-natered sort of man, and he allowed a corner on't for his neighbors
+      to put up a temp'rary meetin'-house. That was finally used up&mdash;the
+      kind o' preachin' they had them days was enough to use up in a little time
+      any house that wa'n't fire-proof; and when that was preached to pieces,
+      they put up another shelter in its place. This is it. And now't the land
+      a'n't used no more for the puppose 'twas lent for, it goes back nat'rally
+      to the estate 'twas took from, and the buildin's along with it.'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'That's all a sheer fabrication,' says the Deacon. 'This land was never a
+      part of what's now your farm, any more than it was a part of mine.'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'Wal,' says Jedwort, 'I look at it in my way, and you've a perfect right
+      to look at it in your way. But I'm goin' to make sure o' my way, by
+      puttin' a fence round the hull concern.'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'And you're usin' some of my rails for to do it with!' says the Deacon.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'Can you swear they're your rails?'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'Yes, I can; they're the rails the freshet carried off from my farm last
+      spring, and landed on to yourn.'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'So I've heard ye say. But can you swear to the partic'lar rails? Can you
+      swear, for instance, 't this 'ere is your rail? or this 'ere one?'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'No; I can't swear to precisely them two&mdash;but&mdash;'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'Can you swear to these two? or to any one or two?' says Jedwort. 'No, ye
+      can't. Ye can swear to the lot in general, but you can't swear to any
+      partic'lar rail, and that kind o' swearin' won't stand law, Deacon
+      Talcott. I don't boast of bein' an edicated man, but I know suthin' o'
+      what law is, and when I know it, I dror a line there, and I toe that line,
+      and I make my neighbors toe that line, Deacon Talcott. Nine p'ints o' the
+      law is possession, and I'll have possession o' this 'ere house and land by
+      fencin' on't in; and though every man't comes along should say these 'ere
+      rails belong to them, I'll fence it in with these 'ere very rails.'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Jedwort said this, wagging his obstinate old head, and grinning with his
+      face turned up pugnaciously at the Deacon; then went to work again as if
+      he had settled the question, and didn't wish to discuss it any further.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;As for Talcott, he was too full of wrath and boiling indignation to
+      answer such a speech. He knew that Jedwort had managed to get the start of
+      him with regard to the rails, by mixing a few of his own with those he had
+      stolen, so that nobody could tell 'em apart; and he saw at once that the
+      meeting-house was in danger of going the same way, just for want of an
+      owner to swear out a clear title to the property. He did just the wisest
+      thing when he swallowed his vexation, and hurried off to alarm the leading
+      men of the two societies, and to consult a lawyer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'He'll stir up the old town like a bumblebee's nest,' says Jedwort.
+      'Hurry up, boys, or there'll be a buzzin' round our ears 'fore we git
+      through!'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'I wish ye wouldn't, pa!' says Dave, 'Why don't we 'tend to our own
+      business, and be decent, like other folks? I'm sick of this kind of life.'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'Quit it, then,' says Jedwort.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'Do you tell me to quit it?' says Dave, dropping the end of a rail he was
+      handling.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'Yes, I do; and do it dumbed quick, if ye can't show a proper respect to
+      your father!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Dave turned white as a sheet, and he trembled as he answered back, 'I
+      should be glad to show you respect, if you was a man I could feel any
+      respect for.'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;At that Jedwort caught hold of the iron bar that was sticking in the
+      ground, where he had been making a hole for a stake, and pulled away at
+      it. 'I'll make a stake-hole in you!' says he. 'It's enough to have a sassy
+      hired man round, without bein' jawed by one's own children!'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Dave was out of reach by the time the bar came out of the ground.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'Come here, you villain!' says the old man.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'I'd rather be excused,' says Dave, backing off. 'I don't want any
+      stake-holes made in me to-day. You told me to quit, and I'm going to, You
+      may steal your own meeting-houses in future; I won't help.'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There was a short race. Dave's young legs proved altogether too smart for
+      the old waddler's, and he got off. Then Jedwort, coming back, wheezing and
+      sweating, with his iron bar, turned savagely on me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I've a good notion to tell you to go too!'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'Very well, why don't ye?' says I. 'Im ready.'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'There's no livin' with ye, ye're gettin' so dumbed sassy! What I keep ye
+      for is a mystery to me.'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'No, it a'n't; you keep me because you can't get another man to fill my
+      place. You put up with my sass for the money I bring ye in.'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'Hold your yawp,' says he, 'and go and git another load of rails. If ye
+      see Dave, tell him to come back to work.'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I did see Dave, but, instead of telling him to go back, I advised him to
+      put out from the old home and get his living somewhere else. His mother
+      and Maria agreed with me; and when the old man came home that night Dave
+      was gone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;When I got back with my second load, I found the neighbors assembling to
+      witness the stealing of the old meeting-house, and Jedwort was answering
+      their remonstrances.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'A meetin'-house is a respectable kind o' prop'ty to have round,' says
+      he. 'The steeple'll make a good show behind my house. When folks ride by,
+      they'll stop and look, and say, &ldquo;There's a man keeps a private
+      meetin'-house of his own.&rdquo; I can have preachin' in't, too, if I want. I'm
+      able to hire a preacher of my own, or I can preach myself and save the
+      expense.'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course, neither sarcasm nor argument could have any effect on such a
+      man. As the neighbors were going away, Jedwort shouted after 'em: 'Call
+      agin. Glad to see ye. There'll be more sport in a few days, when I take
+      the dumbed thing away.' (The dumbed thing was the meeting-house.) 'I
+      invite ye all to see the show. Free gratis. It'll be good as a circus, and
+      a 'tarnal sight cheaper. The women can bring their knittin', and the gals
+      their everlastin' tattin'. As it'll be a pious kind o' show, bein' it's a
+      meetin'-house, guess I'll have notices gi'n out from the pulpits the
+      Sunday afore.'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The common was fenced in by sundown; and the next day Jedwort had over a
+      house-mover from the North Village to look and see what could be done with
+      the building. 'Can ye snake it over, and drop it back of my house?' says
+      he.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It'll be a hard job,' says old Bob, 'without you tear down the steeple
+      fust.'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But Jedwort said, 'What's a meetin'-house 'thout a steeple? I've got my
+      heart kind o' set on that steeple, and I'm bound to go the hull hog on
+      this 'ere concern, now I've begun.'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'I vow,' says Bob, examining the timbers, 'I won't warrant but the old
+      thing'll all tumble down.'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'I'll resk it.'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'Yes; but who'll resk the lives of me and my men?'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'O, you'll see if it's re'ly goin' to tumble, and look out. I'll engage
+      't me and my boys'll do the most dangerous part of the work. Dumbed if I
+      wouldn't agree to ride in the steeple and ring the bell if there was one.'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I've never heard that the promised notices were read from the pulpits;
+      but it wasn't many days before Bob came over again, bringing with him this
+      time his screws and ropes and rollers, his men and timbers, horse and
+      capstan; and at last the old house might have been seen on its travels.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It was an exciting time all around. The societies found that Jedwort's
+      fence gave him the first claim to house and land unless a regular siege of
+      the law was gone through to beat him off&mdash;and then it might turn out
+      that he would beat them. Some said fight him; some said let him be&mdash;the
+      thing a'n't worth going to law for; and so, as the leading men couldn't
+      agree as to what should be done, nothing was done. That was just what
+      Jedwort had expected, and he laughed in his sleeve while Bob and his boys
+      screwed up the old meeting-house, and got their beams under it, and set it
+      on rollers, and slued it around, and slid it on the timbers laid for it
+      across into Jedwort's field, steeple foremost, like a locomotive on a
+      track.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It was a trying time for the women folks at home. Maria had declared
+      that, if her father did persist in stealing the meeting-house, she would
+      not stay a single day after it, but would follow Dave.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That touched me pretty close, for, to tell the truth, it was rather more
+      Maria than her mother that kept me at work for the old man. 'If you go,'
+      says I, 'then there is no object for me to stay; I shall go too.'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'That's what I supposed,' says she; 'for there's no reason in the world
+      why you should stay. But then Dan will go; and who'll be left to take
+      sides with mother? That's what troubles me. Oh, if she could only go too!
+      But she won't; and she couldn't if she would, with the other children
+      depending on her. Dear, dear! what shall we do?'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The poor girl put her head on my shoulder, and cried; and if I should own
+      up to the truth, I suppose I cried a little too. For where's the man that
+      can hold a sweet woman's head on his shoulder, while she sobs out her
+      trouble, and he hasn't any power to help her&mdash;who, I say, can do any
+      less, under such circumstances, than drop a tear or two for company?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'Never mind; don't hurry,' says Mrs. Jed-wort. 'Be patient, and wait a
+      while, and it'll all turn out right, I'm sure.'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'Yes, you always say, &ldquo;Be patient, and wait!&rdquo;' says Maria, brushing back
+      her hair. 'But, for my part, I'm tired of waiting, and my patience has
+      given out long ago. We can't always live in this way, and we may as well
+      make a change now as ever. But I can't bear the thought of going and
+      leaving you.'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Here the two younger girls came in; and, seeing that crying was the order
+      of the day, they began to cry; and when they heard Maria talk of going,
+      they declared they would go; and even little Willie, the four-year-old,
+      began to howl.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'There, there! Maria! Lottie! Susie! said Mrs. Jedwort, in her calm way;
+      'Willie, hush up! I don't know what we are to do; but I feel that
+      something is going to happen that will show us the right way, and we are
+      to wait. Now go and wash the dishes, and set the cheese.'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That was just after breakfast, the second day of the moving; and sure
+      enough, something like what she prophesied did happen before another sun.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The old frame held together pretty well till along toward night, when the
+      steeple showed signs of seceding. 'There she goes! She's falling now!'
+      sung out the boys, who had been hanging around all day in hopes of seeing
+      the thing tumble.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The house was then within a few rods of where Jedwort wanted it; but Bob
+      stopped right there, and said it wasn't safe to haul it another inch.
+      'That steeple's bound to come down, if we do,' says he.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'Not by a dumbed sight, it a'n't,' says Jedwort, 'Them cracks a'n't
+      nothin'; the j'ints is all firm yit.' He wanted Bob to go up and examine;
+      but Bob shook his head&mdash;the concern looked too shaky. Then he told me
+      to go up; but I said I hadn't lived quite long enough, and had a little
+      rather be smoking my pipe on <i>terra firma</i>. Then the boys began to
+      hoot. 'Dumbed if ye a'n't all a set of cowards,' says he. 'I'll go up
+      myself.'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We waited outside while he climbed up inside. The boys jumped on the
+      ground to jar the steeple, and make it fall. One of them blew a horn&mdash;as
+      he said, to bring down the old Jericho&mdash;and another thought he'd help
+      things along by starting up the horse, and giving the building a little
+      wrench. But Bob put a stop to that; and finally out came a head from the
+      belfry window; It was Jedwort, who shouted down to us: 'There ain't a
+      j'int or brace gi'n out. Start the hoss, and I'll ride. Pass me up that
+      'ere horn, and&mdash;'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Just then there came a cracking and loosening of timbers; and we that
+      stood nearest had only time to jump out of the way, when down came the
+      steeple crashing to the ground, with Jedwort in it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I hope it killed the cuss,&rdquo; said one of the village story-tellers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Worse than that,&rdquo; replied my friend; &ldquo;it just cracked his skull&mdash;not
+      enough to put an end to his miserable life, but only to take away what
+      little sense he had. We got the doctors to him, and they patched up his
+      broken head; and, by George, it made me mad to see the fuss the women
+      folks made over him. It would have been my way to let him die; but they
+      were as anxious and attentive to him as if he had been the kindest husband
+      and most indulgent father that ever lived; for that's women's style:
+      they're unreasoning creatures.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Along toward morning, we persuaded Mrs. Jedwort, who had been up all
+      night, to lie down a spell and catch a little rest, while Maria and I sat
+      up and watched with the old man. All was still except our whispers and his
+      heavy breathing; there was a lamp burning in the next room; when all of a
+      sudden a light shone into the windows, and about the same time we heard a
+      roaring and crackling sound. We looked out, and saw the night all lighted
+      up, as if by some great fire. As it appeared to be on the other side of
+      the house, we ran to the door, and there what did we see but the old
+      meeting-house all in flames! Some fellows had set fire to it to spite
+      Jedwort. It must have been burning some time inside; for when we looked
+      out the flames had burst through the roof.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;As the night was perfectly still, except a light wind blowing away from
+      the other buildings on the place, we raised no alarm, but just stood in
+      the door and saw it burn. And a glad sight it was to us, you may be sure.
+      I just held Maria close to my side, and told her that all was well&mdash;it
+      was the best thing that could happen. 'O yes,' says she, 'it seems to me
+      as though a kind Providence was burning up his sin and home out of our
+      sight.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I had never yet said anything to her about marriage&mdash;for the time to
+      come at that had never seemed to arrive; but there's nothing like a little
+      excitement to bring things to a focus. You've seen water in a tumbler just
+      at the freezing-point, but not exactly able to make up its mind to freeze,
+      when a little jar will set the crystals forming, and in a minute what was
+      liquid is ice. It was the shock of events that night that touched my life
+      into crystals&mdash;not of ice, gentlemen, by any manner of means.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;After the fire had got along so far that the meeting-house was a gone
+      case, an alarm was given probably by the very fellows that set it, and a
+      hundred people were on the spot before the thing had done burning.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course these circumstances put an end to the breaking up of the
+      family. Dave was sent for, and came home. Then, as soon as we saw that the
+      old man's brain was injured so that he wasn't likely to recover his mind,
+      the boys and I went to work and put that farm through a course of
+      improvement it would have done your eyes good to see. The children were
+      sent to school, and Mrs. Jedwort had all the money she wanted now to
+      clothe them, and to provide the house with comforts, without stealing her
+      own butter. Jedwort was a burden; but, in spite of him, that was just
+      about the happiest family, for the next four years, that ever lived on
+      this planet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Jedwort soon got his bodily health, but I don't think he knew one of us
+      again after his hurt. As near as I could get at his state of mind, he
+      thought he had been changed into some sort of animal. He seemed inclined
+      to take me for a master, and for four years he followed me around like a
+      dog. During that time he never spoke, but only whined and growled. When I
+      said, 'Lie down,' he'd lie down; and when I whistled he'd come.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I used sometimes to make him work; and certain simple things he would do
+      very well, as long as I was by. One day I had a jag of hay to get in; and,
+      as the boys were away, I thought I'd have him load it. I pitched it on to
+      the wagon about where it ought to lie, and looked to him only to pack it
+      down. There turned out to be a bigger load than I had expected, and the
+      higher it got, the worse the shape of it, till finally, as I was starting
+      it toward the barn, off it rolled, and the old man with it, head foremost.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He struck a stone heap, and for a moment I thought he was killed. But he
+      jumped up and spoke for the first time. '<i>I'll blow it</i>,' says he,
+      finishing the sentence he had begun four years before, when he called for
+      the horn to be passed up to him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I couldn't have been much more astonished if one of the horses had
+      spoken. But I saw at once that there was an expression in Jedwort's face
+      that hadn't been there since his tumble in the belfry; and I knew that, as
+      his wits had been knocked out of him by one blow on the head, so another
+      blow had knocked 'em in again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'Where's Bob?' says he, looking all round.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'Bob?' says I, not thinking at first who he meant. Oh, Bob is dead&mdash;he
+      has been dead these three years.'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Without noticing my reply, he exclaimed: 'Where did all that hay come
+      from? Where's the old meetin'-house?'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'Don't you know?' says I. 'Some rogues set fire to it the night after you
+      got hurt, and burnt it up.'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He seemed then just beginning to realize that something extraordinary had
+      happened.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'Stark,' says he, 'what's the matter with ye? You're changed.'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'Yes,' say I, 'I wear my beard now, and I've grown older!'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'Dumbed if 'ta'n't odd!' says he. 'Stark, what in thunder's the matter
+      with <i>me?</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'You've had meeting-house on the brain for the past four years,' says I;
+      'that's what's the matter.'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It was some time before I could make him understand that he had been out
+      of his head, and that so long a time had been a blank to him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then he said, 'Is this my farm?'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'Don't you know it?' says I.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'It looks more slicked up than ever it used to,' says he.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'Yes,' says I; 'and you'll find everything else on the place slicked up
+      in about the same way.'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'Where's Dave?' says he.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'Dave has gone to town to see about selling the wool.'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'Where's Dan?'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'Dan's in college. He takes a great notion to medicine; and we're going
+      to make a doctor of him.'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'Whose house is that?' says he, as I was taking him home.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'No wonder you don't know it,' says I. 'It has been painted, and
+      shingled, and had new blinds put on; the gates and fences are all in prime
+      condition; and that's a new barn we put up a couple of years ago.'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'Where does the money come from, to make all these improvements?'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'It comes off the place,' says I. 'We haven't run in debt the first cent
+      for anything, but we've made the farm more profitable than it ever was
+      before.'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'That <i>my</i> house?' he repeated wonderingly, as we approached it.
+      'What sound is that?'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'That's Lottie practicing her lesson on the piano.'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'A pianer in my house?' he muttered. 'I can't stand that!' He listened.
+      'It sounds pooty, though!'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'Yes, it does sound pretty, and I guess you'll like it How does the place
+      suit you?'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'It <i>looks</i> pooty.' He started. 'What young lady is that?'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It was Lottie, who had left her music and stood by the window.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'My dahter! ye don't say! Dumbed if she a'n't a mighty nice gal.'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'Yes,' says I; 'she takes after her mother.'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Just then Susie, who heard talking, ran to the door.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'Who's that agin?' says Jedwort.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I told him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'Wal, <i>she's</i> a mighty nice-lookin' gal!'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'Yes,' says I, she takes after her mother.'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Little Willie, now eight years old, came out of the woodshed with a
+      bow-and-arrow in his hand, and stared like an owl, hearing his father
+      talk.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'What boy is that?' says Jedwort. And when I told him, he muttered, 'He's
+      an ugly-looking brat!'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'He's more like his father,' says I.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The truth is, Willie was such a fine boy the old man was afraid to praise
+      him, for fear I'd say of him, as I'd said of the girls, that he favored
+      his mother.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Susie ran back and gave the alarm; and then out came mother, and Maria
+      with her baby in her arms, for I forgot to tell you that we had been
+      married now nigh on to two years.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, the women folks were as much astonished as I had been when Jedwort
+      first spoke, and a good deal more delighted. They drew him into the house;
+      and I am bound to say he behaved remarkably well. He kept looking at his
+      wife, and his children, and his grandchild, and the new paper on the
+      walls, and the new furniture, and now and then asking a question or making
+      a remark.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'It all comes back to me now,' says he at last. 'I thought I was living
+      in the moon, with a superior race of human bein's; and this is the place,
+      and you are the people.'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It wasn't more than a couple of days before he began to pry around, and
+      find fault, and grumble at the expense; and I saw there was danger of
+      things relapsing into something like their former condition. So I took him
+      one side, and talked to him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'Jedwort,' says I, 'you're like a man raised from the grave. You was the
+      same as buried to your neighbors, and now they come and look at you as
+      they would at a dead man come to life. To you, it's like coming into a new
+      world, and I'll leave it to you now, if you don't rather like the change
+      from the old state of things to what you see around you to-day. You've
+      seen how the family affairs go on&mdash;how pleasant everything is, and
+      how we all enjoy ourselves. You hear the piano, and like it; you see your
+      children sought after and respected, your wife in finer health and spirits
+      than you've ever known her since the day she was married; you see industry
+      and neatness everywhere on the premises; and you're a beast if you don't
+      like all that. In short, you see that our management is a great deal
+      better than yours; and that we beat you even in the matter of economy.
+      Now, what I want to know is this: whether you think you'd like to fall
+      into our way of living, or return like a hog to your wallow.'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'I don't say but what I like your way of livin' very well,' he grumbled.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'Then,' says I, 'you must just let us go ahead, as we have been going
+      ahead. Now's the time for you to turn about and be a respectable man, like
+      your neighbors. Just own up, and say you've not only been out of your head
+      the past four years, but that you've been more or less out of your head
+      the last four-and-twenty years. But say you're in your right mind now, and
+      prove it by acting like a man in his right mind. Do that, and I'm with
+      you; we're all with you. But go back to your old dirty ways, and you go
+      alone. Now I sha'n't let you off till you tell me what you mean to do.'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He hesitated some time, then said, 'Maybe you're about right, Stark; you
+      and Dave and the old woman seem to be doin' pooty well, and I guess I'll
+      let you go on.'&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Here my friend paused, as if his story was done; when one of the villagers
+      asked, &ldquo;About the land where the old meetin'-house stood&mdash;what ever
+      was done with that?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That was appropriated for a new school-house; and there my little shavers
+      go to school.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And old Jedwort, is he alive yet?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Both Jedwort and his wife have gone to that country where meanness and
+      dishonesty have a mighty poor chance&mdash;where the only investments
+      worth much are those recorded in the Book of Life. Mrs. Jedwort was rich
+      in that kind of stock; and Jedwort's account, I guess, will compare
+      favorably with that of some respectable people, such as we all know. I
+      tell ye, my friends,&rdquo; continued my fellow-traveler, &ldquo;there's many a man,
+      both in the higher and lower ranks of life, that 't would do a deal of
+      good, say nothing of the mercy 'twould be to their families, just to knock
+      'em on the head, and make Nebu-chadnezzars of 'em&mdash;then, after they'd
+      been turned out to grass a few years, let 'em come back again, and see how
+      happy folks have been, and how well they have got along without 'em.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I carry on the old place now,&rdquo; he added. &ldquo;The younger girls are married
+      off; Dan's a doctor in the North Village; and as for Dave, he and I have
+      struck ile. I'm going out to look at our property now.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <div style="height: 6em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+
+
+
+
+
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+</pre>
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+</html>
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+Project Gutenberg's The Man Who Stole A Meeting-House, by J. T. Trowbridge
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Man Who Stole A Meeting-House
+       1878, From "Coupon Bonds"
+
+Author: J. T. Trowbridge
+
+Release Date: October 24, 2007 [EBook #23165]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE MAN WHO STOLE A MEETING-HOUSE ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by David Widger
+
+
+
+
+
+
+THE MAN WHO STOLE A MEETING-HOUSE
+
+By J. T. Trowbridge
+
+From "Coupon Bonds."
+
+Copyright 1878, by James R. Osgood & Co
+
+
+On a recent journey to the Pennsylvania oil regions, I stopped one
+evening with a fellow-traveler at a village which had just been thrown
+into a turmoil of excitement by the exploits of a horse-thief. As we sat
+around the tavern hearth, after supper, we heard the particulars of the
+rogue's capture and escape fully discussed; then followed many another
+tale of theft and robbery, told amid curling puffs of tobacco-smoke;
+until, at the close of an exciting story, one of the natives turned to
+my traveling acquaintance, and, with a broad laugh, said, "Kin ye beat
+that, stranger?"
+
+"Well, I don't know--maybe I could if I should try. I never happened to
+fall in with any such tall horse-stealing as you tell of, but I knew a
+man who stole a meeting-house once."
+
+"Stole a meetin'-house! That goes a little beyant anything yit,"
+remarked another of the honest villagers. "Ye don't mean he stole it and
+carried it away?"
+
+"Stole it and carried it away," repeated my traveling companion,
+seriously, crossing his legs, and resting his arm on the hack of his
+chair. "And, more than all that, I helped him."
+
+"How happened that?--for you don't look much like a thief yourself." All
+eyes were now turned upon my friend, a plain New England farmer, whose
+honest homespun appearance and candid speech commanded respect.
+
+"I was his hired man, and I acted under orders. His name was
+Jedwort--Old Jedwort, the boys called him, although he wasn't above
+fifty when the crooked little circumstance happened which I'll make as
+straight a story of as I can, if the company would like to hear it."
+
+"Sartin, stranger! sartin! about stealin' the meetin'-house!" chimed in
+two or three voices.
+
+My friend cleared his throat, put his hair behind his ears, and with
+a grave, smooth face, but with a merry twinkle in his shrewd gray eye,
+began as follows:
+
+"Jedwort I said his name was; and I shall never forget how he looked one
+particular morning. He stood leaning on the front gate--or rather on the
+post, for the gate itself was such a shackling concern a child couldn't
+have leaned on't without breaking it down. And Jedwort was no child.
+Think of a stoutish, stooping, duck-legged man, with a mountainous back,
+strongly suggestive of a bag of grist under his shirt, and you have him.
+That imaginary grist had been growing heavier and heavier, and he more
+and more bent under it, for the last fifteen years and more, until his
+head and neck just came forward out from between his shoulders like
+a turtle's from its shell. His arms hung, as he walked, almost to the
+ground. Being curved with the elbows outward, he looked for all the
+world, in a front view, like a waddling interrogation-point inclosed
+in a parenthesis. If man was ever a quadruped, as I've heard some folks
+tell, and rose gradually from four legs to two, there must have been a
+time, very early in his history, when he went about like Old Jedwort.
+
+"The gate had been a very good gate in its day. It had even been a
+genteel gate when Jedwort came into possession of the place by marrying
+his wife, who inherited it from her uncle. That was some twenty years
+before, and everything had been going to rack and ruin ever since.
+
+"Jedwort himself had been going to rack and ruin, morally speaking. He
+was a middling decent sort of man when I first knew him; and I judge
+there must have been something about him more than common, or he
+never could have got such a wife. But then women do marry, sometimes,
+unaccountably. I've known downright ugly and disagreeable fellows to
+work around, till by and by they would get a pretty girl fascinated by
+something in them which nobody else could see, and then marry her in
+spite of everything;--just as you may have seen a magnetizer on the
+stage make his subjects do just what he pleased, or a black snake charm
+a bird. Talk about women marrying with their eyes open, under such
+circumstances! They don't marry with their eyes open: they are put to
+sleep, in one sense, and a'n't more than half responsible for what they
+do, if they are that. Then rises the question that has puzzled wiser
+heads than any of ours here, and will puzzle more yet, till society is
+different from what it is now--how much a refined and sensitive woman is
+bound to suffer from a coarse and disgusting master, legally called her
+husband, before she is entitled to break off a bad bargain she scarce
+had a hand in making. I've sat here to-night and heard about men getting
+goods under false pretences; you've told some astonishing big stories,
+gentlemen, about rogues stealing horses and sleighs; and I'm going to
+tell you about the man who stole a meeting-house; but, when all is said,
+I guess it will be found that more extraordinary thieving than all that
+often goes on under our own eyes, and nobody takes any notice of
+it. There's such a thing, gentlemen, as getting hearts under false
+pretences. There's such a thing as a man's stealing a wife.
+
+"I speak with feeling on this subject, for I had an opportunity of
+seeing what Mrs. Jedwort had to put up with from a man no woman of her
+stamp could do anything but detest. She was the patientest creature you
+ever saw. She was even too patient. If I had been tied to such a cub, I
+think I should have cultivated the beautiful and benignant qualities
+of a wildcat; there would have been one good fight, and one of us would
+have been living, and the other would have been dead, and that would
+have been the end of it. But Mrs. Jedwort bore and bore untold miseries
+and a large number of children. She had had nine of these, and three
+were under the sod and six above it when Jedwort ran off with the
+meeting-house in the way I am going on to tell you. There was Maria, the
+oldest girl, a perfect picture of what her mother had been at nineteen.
+Then there were the two boys, Dave and Dan, fine young fellows, spite
+of their father. Then came Lottie, and Susie, and then Willie, a little
+four-year-old.
+
+"It was amazing to see what the mother would do to keep her family
+looking decent with the little means she had. For Jedwort was the
+tightest screw ever you saw. It was avarice that had spoiled him, and
+came so near turning him into a beast. The boys used to say he grew so
+bent looking in the dirt for pennies. That was true of his mind, if not
+of his body. He was a poor man, and a pretty respectable man, when he
+married his wife; but he had no sooner come into possession of a little
+property than he grew crazy for more.
+
+"There are a good many men in the world, that nobody looks upon as
+monomaniacs, who are crazy in just that sort of way. They are all for
+laying up money, depriving themselves of comforts, and their families
+of the advantages of society and education, just to add a few dollars to
+their hoard every year; and so they keep on till they die and leave it
+to their children, who would be much better off if a little more had
+been invested in the cultivation of their minds and manners, and less in
+stocks and bonds.
+
+"Jedwort was just one of that class of men, although perhaps he carried
+the fault I speak of a little to excess. A dollar looked so big to him,
+and he held it so close, that at last he couldn't see much of anything
+else. By degrees he lost all regard for decency and his neighbor's
+opinions. His children went barefoot, even after they got to be great
+boys and girls, because he was too mean to buy them shoes. It was
+pitiful to see a nice, interesting girl, like Maria, go about looking as
+she did, while her father was piling his money into the bank. She wanted
+to go to school and learn music, and be somebody; but he wouldn't keep a
+hired girl, and so she was obliged to stay at home and do housework; and
+she could no more have got a dollar out of him to pay for clothes and
+tuition than you could squeeze sap out of a hoe-handle.
+
+"The only way his wife could ever get anything new for the family was by
+stealing butter from her own dairy, and selling it behind his back.
+'You needn't say anything to Mr. Jedwort about this batch of butter,'
+she would hint to the storekeeper; 'but you may hand the money to me,
+or I will take my pay in goods.' In this way a new gown, or a piece of
+cloth for the boys' coats, or something else the family needed, would be
+smuggled into the house, with fear and trembling lest old Jedwort should
+make a row and find where the money came from.
+
+"The house inside was kept neat as a pin; but everything around it
+looked terribly shiftless. It was built originally in an ambitious
+style, and painted white. It had four tall front pillars, supporting the
+portion of the roof that came over the porch--lifting up the eyebrows of
+the house, if I may so express myself, and making it look as if it was
+going to sneeze. Half the blinds were off their hinges, and the rest
+flapped in the wind. The front doorstep had rotted away. The porch had
+once a good floor, but for years Jedwort had been in the habit of going
+to it whenever he wanted a board for the pig-pen, until not a bit of
+floor was left.
+
+"But I began to tell about Jedwort leaning on the gate that morning. We
+had all noticed him; and as Dave and I brought in the milk, his mother
+asked, 'What is your father planning now? Half the time he stands there,
+looking up the road; or else he's walking up that way in a brown study.'
+
+"'He's got his eye on the old meeting-house,' says Dave, setting down
+his pail. 'He has been watching it and walking round it, off and on, for
+a week.'
+
+"That was the first intimation I had of what the old fellow was up
+to. But after breakfast he followed me out of the house, as if he had
+something on his mind to say to me.
+
+"'Stark,' says he, at last, 'you've always insisted on't that I wasn't
+an enterprisin' man.'
+
+"'I insist on't still,' says I; for I was in the habit of talking mighty
+plain to him, and joking him pretty hard sometimes. 'If I had this farm,
+I'd show you enterprise. You wouldn't see the hogs in the garden half
+the time, just for want of a good fence to keep 'em out. You wouldn't
+see the very best strip of land lying waste, just for want of a ditch.
+You wouldn't see that stone wall by the road tumbling down year after
+year, till by and by you won't be able to see it for the weeds and
+thistles.'
+
+"'Yes,' says he, sarcastically, 'ye'd lay-out ten times as much money
+on the place as ye'd ever git back agin, I've no doubt. But I believe in
+economy.'
+
+"That provoked me a little, and I said, 'Economy! You're one of the kind
+of men that'll skin a flint for sixpence and spoil a jack-knife worth a
+shilling. You waste fodder and grain enough every three years to pay for
+a bigger barn--to say nothing of the inconvenience.'
+
+"'Wal, Stark,' says he, grinning and scratching his head, 'I've made up
+my mind to have a bigger barn, if I have to steal one.'
+
+"'That won't be the first thing you've stole, neither,' says I.
+
+"He flared up at that. 'Stole?' says he. 'What did I ever steal?'
+
+"'Well, for one thing, the rails the freshet last spring drifted off
+from Talcott's land onto yours, and you grabbed: what was that but
+stealing?'
+
+"'That was luck. He couldn't swear to his rails. By the way, they'll
+jest come in play now.'
+
+"'They've come in play already,' says I. 'They've gone on to the old
+fences all over the farm, and I could use a thousand more without making
+much show.'
+
+"'That's 'cause you're so dumbed extravagant with rails, as you are
+with everything else. A few loads can be spared from the fences here
+and there, as well as not. Harness up the team, boys, and git together
+enough to make about ten rods o' zigzag, two rails high.'
+
+"'Two rails?' says Dave, who had a healthy contempt for the old man's
+narrow, contracted way of doing things. 'What's the good of such a fence
+as that?'
+
+"'It'll be,' says I, 'like the single bar in music. When our old singing
+master asked his class once what a single bar was, Bill Wilkins spoke
+up and said, "It's a bar that horses and cattle jump over, and pigs and
+sheep run under."'
+
+"'What do you expect to keep out with two rails?'
+
+"'The _law_, boys, the _law_,' says Jedwort. 'I know what I'm about.
+I'll make a fence the _law_ can't run under nor jump over; and I don't
+care a cuss for the cattle and pigs. You git the rails, and I'll rip
+some boards off'n the pig-pen to make stakes.'
+
+"'Boards a'n't good for nothin' for stakes,' says Dave. 'Besides, none
+can't be spared from the pig-pen.'
+
+"'I'll have boards enough in a day or two for forty pig-pens,' says
+Jedwort. 'Bring along the rails and dump 'em out in the road for the
+present, and say nothin' to nobody.'
+
+"We got the rails, and he made his stakes; and right away after dinner
+he called us out. 'Come, boys,' says he, 'now we'll astonish the
+natives.'
+
+"The wagon stood in the road, with the last jag of rails still on it.
+Jedwort piled on his stakes, and threw on the crowbar and axe, while we
+were hitching up the team.
+
+"'Now, drive on, Stark,' says he.
+
+"'Yes; but where shall I drive to?'
+
+"'To the old meetin'-house,' says Jedwort, trudging on ahead.
+
+"The old meeting-house stood on an open common, at the northeast corner
+of his farm. A couple of cross-roads bounded it on two sides; and it
+was bounded on the other two by Jedwort's overgrown stone wall. It was
+a square, old-fashioned building, with a low steeple, that had a
+belfry, but no bell in it, and with a high, square pulpit and high,
+straight-backed pews inside. It was now some time since meetings
+had been held there; the old society that used to meet there having
+separated, one division of it building a fashionable chapel in the North
+Village, and the other a fine new church at the Centre.
+
+"Now, the peculiarity about the old church property was, that nobody had
+any legal title to it. A log meeting-house had been built there when the
+country was first settled and the land was of no account. In the course
+of time that was torn down, and a good frame house put up in its place.
+As it belonged to the whole community, no title, either to the house or
+land, was ever recorded; and it wasn't until after the society dissolved
+that the question came up as to how the property was to be disposed of.
+While the old deacons were carefully thinking it over, Jed-wort was on
+hand, to settle it by putting in his claim.
+
+"'Now, boys,' says he, 'ye see what I'm up to.'
+
+"'Yes,' says I, provoked as I could be at the mean trick, 'and I knew it
+was some such mischief all along. You never show any enterprise, as you
+call it, unless it is to get the start of a neighbor. Then you are wide
+awake; then you are busy as the Devil in a gale of wind.'
+
+"'But what _are_ you up to, pa?' says Dan, who didn't see the trick yet.
+
+"The old man says, 'I'm goin' to fence in the rest part of my farm.'
+
+"'What rest part?'
+
+"'This part that never was fenced; the old meetin'-house common.'
+
+"'But, pa,' says Dave, disgusted as I was, 'you've no claim on that.'
+
+"'Wal, if I ha'n't, I'll make a claim. Give me the crowbar. Now, here's
+the corner, nigh as I can squint'; and he stuck the bar into the ground.
+'Make a fence to here from the wall, both sides.'
+
+"'Sho, pa!' says Dan, looking bewildered; 'ye a'n't goin' to fence in
+the old meetin'-house, be ye?'
+
+"'That's jest what I'm goin' to do. Go and git some big stuns from the
+wall--the biggest ye can find, to rest the corners of the fence on.
+String the rails along by the road, Stark, and go for another load.
+Don't stand gawpin' there!'
+
+"'_Gawpin'?_' says I; 'it's enough to make anybody _gawp_. You do beat
+all the critters I ever had to deal with. Haven't ye disgraced your
+family enough already, without stealing a meeting-house?'
+
+"'How have I disgraced my family?' says he.
+
+"Then I put it to him. 'Look at your children; it's all your wife can do
+to prevent 'em from growing up in rags and dirt and ignorance, because
+you are too close-fisted to clothe 'em decently or send 'em to school.
+Look at your house and yard. To see an Irishman's shanty in such a
+condition seems appropriate enough, but a genteel place, a house with
+pillars, run down and gone to seed like that, is an eyesore to the
+community. Then look at your wife. You never would have had any property
+to mismanage if it hadn't been for her; and see the way you show your
+gratitude for it. You won't let her go into company, nor have company at
+home; you won't allow a hired girl in the house, but she and Maria have
+to do all the drudgery. You make perfect slaves of 'em. I swear, if it
+wa'n't for your wife, I wouldn't work for you an hour longer; but she's
+the best woman in the world, after all you've done to break her spirit,
+and I hate to leave her.'
+
+"The old fellow squirmed, and wrenched the crowbar in the ground, then
+snarled back: 'Yes! you're waitin' for me to die; then you mean to step
+into my shoes.'
+
+"'I hope you'll have a decenter pair than them you've got on, if I'm to
+step into 'em,' says I.
+
+"'One thing about it,' says he, 'she won't have ye.'
+
+"'I should think,' says I, 'a woman that would marry you would have
+'most anybody.'
+
+"So we had it back and forth, till by and by he left me to throw off the
+rails, and went to show the boys how to build the fence.
+
+"'Look here,' says he; 'jest put a thunderin' big stun to each corner;
+then lay your rail on; then drive your pair of stakes over it like a
+letter X.' He drove a pair. 'Now put on your rider. There's your letter
+X, ridin' one length of rails and carryin' another. That's what I call
+puttin' yer alphabet to a practical use; and I say there a'n't no sense
+in havin' any more education than ye _can_ put to a practical use. I've
+larnin' enough to git along in the world; and if my boys have as much
+as I've got, they'll git along. Now work spry, for there comes Deacon
+Talcott.'
+
+"'Wal, wall' says the Deacon, coming up, puffing with excitement; 'what
+ye doin' to the old meetin'-house?'
+
+"'Wal,' says Jedwort, driving away at his stakes, and never looking
+up, 'I've been considerin' some time what I should do with't, and I've
+concluded to make a barn on't.'
+
+"'Make a barn! make a barn!' cries the Deacon. 'Who give ye liberty to
+make a barn of the house of God?'
+
+"'Nobody; I take the liberty. Why shouldn't I do what I please with my
+own prop'ty?'
+
+"'Your own property--what do you mean? 'Ta'n't your meetin'-house.'
+
+"'Whose is't, if 'ta'n't mine?' says Jedwort, lifting his turtle's head
+from between his horizontal shoulders, and grinning in the Deacon's
+face.
+
+"'It belongs to the society,' says the Deacon.'
+
+"'But the s'ciety's pulled up stakes and gone off.'
+
+"'It belongs to individooals of the society--to individooals.'
+
+"'Wal, I'm an individooal,' says Jedwort.
+
+"'You! you never went to meetin' here a dozen times in your life!'
+
+"'I never did have my share of the old meet-in'-house, that's a fact,'
+says Jedwort; 'but I'll make it up now.'
+
+"'But what are ye fencin' up the common for?' says the Deacon.
+
+"'It'll make a good calf-pastur'. I've never had my share o' the vally
+o' that, either. I've let my neighbors' pigs and critters run on't long
+enough; and now I'm jest goin' to take possession o' my own.'
+
+"'Your own!' says the Deacon, in perfect consternation. 'You've no deed
+on't.'
+
+"'Wal, have you?'
+
+"'No--but--the society--'
+
+"'The s'ciety, I tell ye,' says Jedwort, holding his head up longer than
+I ever knew him to hold it up at a time and grinning all the while in
+Tal-cott's face--'the s'ciety is split to pieces. There a'n't no s'ciety
+now--any more'n a pig's a pig arter you've butchered and e't it. You've
+e't the pig amongst ye, and left me the pen. The s'ciety never had a
+deed o' this 'ere prop'ty; and no man never had a deed o' this e're
+prop'ty. My wife's gran'daddy, when he took up the land here, was a
+good-natered sort of man, and he allowed a corner on't for his neighbors
+to put up a temp'rary meetin'-house. That was finally used up--the kind
+o' preachin' they had them days was enough to use up in a little time
+any house that wa'n't fire-proof; and when that was preached to pieces,
+they put up another shelter in its place. This is it. And now't the
+land a'n't used no more for the puppose 'twas lent for, it goes back
+nat'rally to the estate 'twas took from, and the buildin's along with
+it.'
+
+"'That's all a sheer fabrication,' says the Deacon. 'This land was never
+a part of what's now your farm, any more than it was a part of mine.'
+
+"'Wal,' says Jedwort, 'I look at it in my way, and you've a perfect
+right to look at it in your way. But I'm goin' to make sure o' my way,
+by puttin' a fence round the hull concern.'
+
+"'And you're usin' some of my rails for to do it with!' says the Deacon.
+
+"'Can you swear they're your rails?'
+
+"'Yes, I can; they're the rails the freshet carried off from my farm
+last spring, and landed on to yourn.'
+
+"'So I've heard ye say. But can you swear to the partic'lar rails? Can
+you swear, for instance, 't this 'ere is your rail? or this 'ere one?'
+
+"'No; I can't swear to precisely them two--but--'
+
+"'Can you swear to these two? or to any one or two?' says Jedwort. 'No,
+ye can't. Ye can swear to the lot in general, but you can't swear to
+any partic'lar rail, and that kind o' swearin' won't stand law, Deacon
+Talcott. I don't boast of bein' an edicated man, but I know suthin' o'
+what law is, and when I know it, I dror a line there, and I toe that
+line, and I make my neighbors toe that line, Deacon Talcott. Nine p'ints
+o' the law is possession, and I'll have possession o' this 'ere house
+and land by fencin' on't in; and though every man't comes along should
+say these 'ere rails belong to them, I'll fence it in with these 'ere
+very rails.'
+
+"Jedwort said this, wagging his obstinate old head, and grinning with
+his face turned up pugnaciously at the Deacon; then went to work again
+as if he had settled the question, and didn't wish to discuss it any
+further.
+
+"As for Talcott, he was too full of wrath and boiling indignation to
+answer such a speech. He knew that Jedwort had managed to get the start
+of him with regard to the rails, by mixing a few of his own with those
+he had stolen, so that nobody could tell 'em apart; and he saw at once
+that the meeting-house was in danger of going the same way, just for
+want of an owner to swear out a clear title to the property. He did
+just the wisest thing when he swallowed his vexation, and hurried off to
+alarm the leading men of the two societies, and to consult a lawyer.
+
+"'He'll stir up the old town like a bumblebee's nest,' says Jedwort.
+'Hurry up, boys, or there'll be a buzzin' round our ears 'fore we git
+through!'
+
+"'I wish ye wouldn't, pa!' says Dave, 'Why don't we 'tend to our own
+business, and be decent, like other folks? I'm sick of this kind of
+life.'
+
+"'Quit it, then,' says Jedwort.
+
+"'Do you tell me to quit it?' says Dave, dropping the end of a rail he
+was handling.
+
+"'Yes, I do; and do it dumbed quick, if ye can't show a proper respect
+to your father!"
+
+"Dave turned white as a sheet, and he trembled as he answered back, 'I
+should be glad to show you respect, if you was a man I could feel any
+respect for.'
+
+"At that Jedwort caught hold of the iron bar that was sticking in the
+ground, where he had been making a hole for a stake, and pulled away
+at it. 'I'll make a stake-hole in you!' says he. 'It's enough to have a
+sassy hired man round, without bein' jawed by one's own children!'
+
+"Dave was out of reach by the time the bar came out of the ground.
+
+"'Come here, you villain!' says the old man.
+
+"'I'd rather be excused,' says Dave, backing off. 'I don't want any
+stake-holes made in me to-day. You told me to quit, and I'm going to,
+You may steal your own meeting-houses in future; I won't help.'
+
+"There was a short race. Dave's young legs proved altogether too smart
+for the old waddler's, and he got off. Then Jedwort, coming back,
+wheezing and sweating, with his iron bar, turned savagely on me.
+
+"I've a good notion to tell you to go too!'
+
+"'Very well, why don't ye?' says I. 'Im ready.'
+
+"'There's no livin' with ye, ye're gettin' so dumbed sassy! What I keep
+ye for is a mystery to me.'
+
+"'No, it a'n't; you keep me because you can't get another man to fill my
+place. You put up with my sass for the money I bring ye in.'
+
+"'Hold your yawp,' says he, 'and go and git another load of rails. If ye
+see Dave, tell him to come back to work.'
+
+"I did see Dave, but, instead of telling him to go back, I advised him
+to put out from the old home and get his living somewhere else. His
+mother and Maria agreed with me; and when the old man came home that
+night Dave was gone.
+
+"When I got back with my second load, I found the neighbors assembling
+to witness the stealing of the old meeting-house, and Jedwort was
+answering their remonstrances.
+
+"'A meetin'-house is a respectable kind o' prop'ty to have round,' says
+he. 'The steeple'll make a good show behind my house. When folks ride
+by, they'll stop and look, and say, "There's a man keeps a private
+meetin'-house of his own." I can have preachin' in't, too, if I want. I'm
+able to hire a preacher of my own, or I can preach myself and save the
+expense.'
+
+"Of course, neither sarcasm nor argument could have any effect on such a
+man. As the neighbors were going away, Jedwort shouted after 'em: 'Call
+agin. Glad to see ye. There'll be more sport in a few days, when I take
+the dumbed thing away.' (The dumbed thing was the meeting-house.) 'I
+invite ye all to see the show. Free gratis. It'll be good as a circus,
+and a 'tarnal sight cheaper. The women can bring their knittin', and the
+gals their everlastin' tattin'. As it'll be a pious kind o' show, bein'
+it's a meetin'-house, guess I'll have notices gi'n out from the pulpits
+the Sunday afore.'
+
+"The common was fenced in by sundown; and the next day Jedwort had over
+a house-mover from the North Village to look and see what could be done
+with the building. 'Can ye snake it over, and drop it back of my house?'
+says he.
+
+"It'll be a hard job,' says old Bob, 'without you tear down the steeple
+fust.'
+
+"But Jedwort said, 'What's a meetin'-house 'thout a steeple? I've got my
+heart kind o' set on that steeple, and I'm bound to go the hull hog on
+this 'ere concern, now I've begun.'
+
+"'I vow,' says Bob, examining the timbers, 'I won't warrant but the old
+thing'll all tumble down.'
+
+"'I'll resk it.'
+
+"'Yes; but who'll resk the lives of me and my men?'
+
+"'O, you'll see if it's re'ly goin' to tumble, and look out. I'll engage
+'t me and my boys'll do the most dangerous part of the work. Dumbed if
+I wouldn't agree to ride in the steeple and ring the bell if there was
+one.'
+
+"I've never heard that the promised notices were read from the pulpits;
+but it wasn't many days before Bob came over again, bringing with him
+this time his screws and ropes and rollers, his men and timbers, horse
+and capstan; and at last the old house might have been seen on its
+travels.
+
+"It was an exciting time all around. The societies found that Jedwort's
+fence gave him the first claim to house and land unless a regular siege
+of the law was gone through to beat him off--and then it might turn out
+that he would beat them. Some said fight him; some said let him be--the
+thing a'n't worth going to law for; and so, as the leading men couldn't
+agree as to what should be done, nothing was done. That was just what
+Jedwort had expected, and he laughed in his sleeve while Bob and his
+boys screwed up the old meeting-house, and got their beams under it, and
+set it on rollers, and slued it around, and slid it on the timbers laid
+for it across into Jedwort's field, steeple foremost, like a locomotive
+on a track.
+
+"It was a trying time for the women folks at home. Maria had declared
+that, if her father did persist in stealing the meeting-house, she would
+not stay a single day after it, but would follow Dave.
+
+"That touched me pretty close, for, to tell the truth, it was rather
+more Maria than her mother that kept me at work for the old man. 'If you
+go,' says I, 'then there is no object for me to stay; I shall go too.'
+
+"'That's what I supposed,' says she; 'for there's no reason in the world
+why you should stay. But then Dan will go; and who'll be left to take
+sides with mother? That's what troubles me. Oh, if she could only
+go too! But she won't; and she couldn't if she would, with the other
+children depending on her. Dear, dear! what shall we do?'
+
+"The poor girl put her head on my shoulder, and cried; and if I should
+own up to the truth, I suppose I cried a little too. For where's the man
+that can hold a sweet woman's head on his shoulder, while she sobs out
+her trouble, and he hasn't any power to help her--who, I say, can do any
+less, under such circumstances, than drop a tear or two for company?
+
+"'Never mind; don't hurry,' says Mrs. Jed-wort. 'Be patient, and wait a
+while, and it'll all turn out right, I'm sure.'
+
+"'Yes, you always say, "Be patient, and wait!"' says Maria, brushing
+back her hair. 'But, for my part, I'm tired of waiting, and my patience
+has given out long ago. We can't always live in this way, and we may as
+well make a change now as ever. But I can't bear the thought of going
+and leaving you.'
+
+"Here the two younger girls came in; and, seeing that crying was the
+order of the day, they began to cry; and when they heard Maria talk
+of going, they declared they would go; and even little Willie, the
+four-year-old, began to howl.
+
+"'There, there! Maria! Lottie! Susie! said Mrs. Jedwort, in her calm
+way; 'Willie, hush up! I don't know what we are to do; but I feel that
+something is going to happen that will show us the right way, and we are
+to wait. Now go and wash the dishes, and set the cheese.'
+
+"That was just after breakfast, the second day of the moving; and sure
+enough, something like what she prophesied did happen before another
+sun.
+
+"The old frame held together pretty well till along toward night, when
+the steeple showed signs of seceding. 'There she goes! She's falling
+now!' sung out the boys, who had been hanging around all day in hopes of
+seeing the thing tumble.
+
+"The house was then within a few rods of where Jedwort wanted it; but
+Bob stopped right there, and said it wasn't safe to haul it another
+inch. 'That steeple's bound to come down, if we do,' says he.
+
+"'Not by a dumbed sight, it a'n't,' says Jedwort, 'Them cracks a'n't
+nothin'; the j'ints is all firm yit.' He wanted Bob to go up and
+examine; but Bob shook his head--the concern looked too shaky. Then he
+told me to go up; but I said I hadn't lived quite long enough, and had
+a little rather be smoking my pipe on _terra firma_. Then the boys began
+to hoot. 'Dumbed if ye a'n't all a set of cowards,' says he. 'I'll go up
+myself.'
+
+"We waited outside while he climbed up inside. The boys jumped on the
+ground to jar the steeple, and make it fall. One of them blew a horn--as
+he said, to bring down the old Jericho--and another thought he'd help
+things along by starting up the horse, and giving the building a little
+wrench. But Bob put a stop to that; and finally out came a head from the
+belfry window; It was Jedwort, who shouted down to us: 'There ain't a
+j'int or brace gi'n out. Start the hoss, and I'll ride. Pass me up that
+'ere horn, and--'
+
+"Just then there came a cracking and loosening of timbers; and we that
+stood nearest had only time to jump out of the way, when down came the
+steeple crashing to the ground, with Jedwort in it."
+
+"I hope it killed the cuss," said one of the village story-tellers.
+
+"Worse than that," replied my friend; "it just cracked his skull--not
+enough to put an end to his miserable life, but only to take away what
+little sense he had. We got the doctors to him, and they patched up his
+broken head; and, by George, it made me mad to see the fuss the women
+folks made over him. It would have been my way to let him die; but
+they were as anxious and attentive to him as if he had been the kindest
+husband and most indulgent father that ever lived; for that's women's
+style: they're unreasoning creatures.
+
+"Along toward morning, we persuaded Mrs. Jedwort, who had been up all
+night, to lie down a spell and catch a little rest, while Maria and I
+sat up and watched with the old man. All was still except our whispers
+and his heavy breathing; there was a lamp burning in the next room; when
+all of a sudden a light shone into the windows, and about the same time
+we heard a roaring and crackling sound. We looked out, and saw the night
+all lighted up, as if by some great fire. As it appeared to be on the
+other side of the house, we ran to the door, and there what did we see
+but the old meeting-house all in flames! Some fellows had set fire to it
+to spite Jedwort. It must have been burning some time inside; for when
+we looked out the flames had burst through the roof.
+
+"As the night was perfectly still, except a light wind blowing away from
+the other buildings on the place, we raised no alarm, but just stood
+in the door and saw it burn. And a glad sight it was to us, you may
+be sure. I just held Maria close to my side, and told her that all was
+well--it was the best thing that could happen. 'O yes,' says she, 'it
+seems to me as though a kind Providence was burning up his sin and home
+out of our sight.
+
+"I had never yet said anything to her about marriage--for the time to
+come at that had never seemed to arrive; but there's nothing like a
+little excitement to bring things to a focus. You've seen water in a
+tumbler just at the freezing-point, but not exactly able to make up its
+mind to freeze, when a little jar will set the crystals forming, and in
+a minute what was liquid is ice. It was the shock of events that night
+that touched my life into crystals--not of ice, gentlemen, by any manner
+of means.
+
+"After the fire had got along so far that the meeting-house was a gone
+case, an alarm was given probably by the very fellows that set it, and a
+hundred people were on the spot before the thing had done burning.
+
+"Of course these circumstances put an end to the breaking up of the
+family. Dave was sent for, and came home. Then, as soon as we saw that
+the old man's brain was injured so that he wasn't likely to recover his
+mind, the boys and I went to work and put that farm through a course of
+improvement it would have done your eyes good to see. The children were
+sent to school, and Mrs. Jedwort had all the money she wanted now to
+clothe them, and to provide the house with comforts, without stealing
+her own butter. Jedwort was a burden; but, in spite of him, that was
+just about the happiest family, for the next four years, that ever lived
+on this planet.
+
+"Jedwort soon got his bodily health, but I don't think he knew one of
+us again after his hurt. As near as I could get at his state of mind, he
+thought he had been changed into some sort of animal. He seemed inclined
+to take me for a master, and for four years he followed me around like a
+dog. During that time he never spoke, but only whined and growled. When
+I said, 'Lie down,' he'd lie down; and when I whistled he'd come.
+
+"I used sometimes to make him work; and certain simple things he would
+do very well, as long as I was by. One day I had a jag of hay to get in;
+and, as the boys were away, I thought I'd have him load it. I pitched it
+on to the wagon about where it ought to lie, and looked to him only to
+pack it down. There turned out to be a bigger load than I had expected,
+and the higher it got, the worse the shape of it, till finally, as I
+was starting it toward the barn, off it rolled, and the old man with it,
+head foremost.
+
+"He struck a stone heap, and for a moment I thought he was killed. But
+he jumped up and spoke for the first time. '_I'll blow it_,' says he,
+finishing the sentence he had begun four years before, when he called
+for the horn to be passed up to him.
+
+"I couldn't have been much more astonished if one of the horses had
+spoken. But I saw at once that there was an expression in Jedwort's face
+that hadn't been there since his tumble in the belfry; and I knew that,
+as his wits had been knocked out of him by one blow on the head, so
+another blow had knocked 'em in again.
+
+"'Where's Bob?' says he, looking all round.
+
+"'Bob?' says I, not thinking at first who he meant. Oh, Bob is dead--he
+has been dead these three years.'
+
+"Without noticing my reply, he exclaimed: 'Where did all that hay come
+from? Where's the old meetin'-house?'
+
+"'Don't you know?' says I. 'Some rogues set fire to it the night after
+you got hurt, and burnt it up.'
+
+"He seemed then just beginning to realize that something extraordinary
+had happened.
+
+"'Stark,' says he, 'what's the matter with ye? You're changed.'
+
+"'Yes,' say I, 'I wear my beard now, and I've grown older!'
+
+"'Dumbed if 'ta'n't odd!' says he. 'Stark, what in thunder's the matter
+with _me?_
+
+"'You've had meeting-house on the brain for the past four years,' says
+I; 'that's what's the matter.'
+
+"It was some time before I could make him understand that he had been
+out of his head, and that so long a time had been a blank to him.
+
+"Then he said, 'Is this my farm?'
+
+"'Don't you know it?' says I.
+
+"'It looks more slicked up than ever it used to,' says he.
+
+"'Yes,' says I; 'and you'll find everything else on the place slicked up
+in about the same way.'
+
+"'Where's Dave?' says he.
+
+"'Dave has gone to town to see about selling the wool.'
+
+"'Where's Dan?'
+
+"'Dan's in college. He takes a great notion to medicine; and we're going
+to make a doctor of him.'
+
+"'Whose house is that?' says he, as I was taking him home.
+
+"'No wonder you don't know it,' says I. 'It has been painted, and
+shingled, and had new blinds put on; the gates and fences are all in
+prime condition; and that's a new barn we put up a couple of years ago.'
+
+"'Where does the money come from, to make all these improvements?'
+
+"'It comes off the place,' says I. 'We haven't run in debt the first
+cent for anything, but we've made the farm more profitable than it ever
+was before.'
+
+"'That _my_ house?' he repeated wonderingly, as we approached it. 'What
+sound is that?'
+
+"'That's Lottie practicing her lesson on the piano.'
+
+"'A pianer in my house?' he muttered. 'I can't stand that!' He listened.
+'It sounds pooty, though!'
+
+"'Yes, it does sound pretty, and I guess you'll like it How does the
+place suit you?'
+
+"'It _looks_ pooty.' He started. 'What young lady is that?'
+
+"It was Lottie, who had left her music and stood by the window.
+
+"'My dahter! ye don't say! Dumbed if she a'n't a mighty nice gal.'
+
+"'Yes,' says I; 'she takes after her mother.'
+
+"Just then Susie, who heard talking, ran to the door.
+
+"'Who's that agin?' says Jedwort.
+
+"I told him.
+
+"'Wal, _she's_ a mighty nice-lookin' gal!'
+
+"'Yes,' says I, she takes after her mother.'
+
+"Little Willie, now eight years old, came out of the woodshed with a
+bow-and-arrow in his hand, and stared like an owl, hearing his father
+talk.
+
+"'What boy is that?' says Jedwort. And when I told him, he muttered,
+'He's an ugly-looking brat!'
+
+"'He's more like his father,' says I.
+
+"The truth is, Willie was such a fine boy the old man was afraid to
+praise him, for fear I'd say of him, as I'd said of the girls, that he
+favored his mother.
+
+"Susie ran back and gave the alarm; and then out came mother, and Maria
+with her baby in her arms, for I forgot to tell you that we had been
+married now nigh on to two years.
+
+"Well, the women folks were as much astonished as I had been when
+Jedwort first spoke, and a good deal more delighted. They drew him into
+the house; and I am bound to say he behaved remarkably well. He kept
+looking at his wife, and his children, and his grandchild, and the new
+paper on the walls, and the new furniture, and now and then asking a
+question or making a remark.
+
+"'It all comes back to me now,' says he at last. 'I thought I was living
+in the moon, with a superior race of human bein's; and this is the
+place, and you are the people.'
+
+"It wasn't more than a couple of days before he began to pry around, and
+find fault, and grumble at the expense; and I saw there was danger of
+things relapsing into something like their former condition. So I took
+him one side, and talked to him.
+
+"'Jedwort,' says I, 'you're like a man raised from the grave. You was
+the same as buried to your neighbors, and now they come and look at you
+as they would at a dead man come to life. To you, it's like coming into
+a new world, and I'll leave it to you now, if you don't rather like the
+change from the old state of things to what you see around you to-day.
+You've seen how the family affairs go on--how pleasant everything is,
+and how we all enjoy ourselves. You hear the piano, and like it; you see
+your children sought after and respected, your wife in finer health and
+spirits than you've ever known her since the day she was married; you
+see industry and neatness everywhere on the premises; and you're a beast
+if you don't like all that. In short, you see that our management is a
+great deal better than yours; and that we beat you even in the matter of
+economy. Now, what I want to know is this: whether you think you'd like
+to fall into our way of living, or return like a hog to your wallow.'
+
+"'I don't say but what I like your way of livin' very well,' he
+grumbled.
+
+"'Then,' says I, 'you must just let us go ahead, as we have been going
+ahead. Now's the time for you to turn about and be a respectable man,
+like your neighbors. Just own up, and say you've not only been out of
+your head the past four years, but that you've been more or less out of
+your head the last four-and-twenty years. But say you're in your right
+mind now, and prove it by acting like a man in his right mind. Do that,
+and I'm with you; we're all with you. But go back to your old dirty
+ways, and you go alone. Now I sha'n't let you off till you tell me what
+you mean to do.'
+
+"He hesitated some time, then said, 'Maybe you're about right, Stark;
+you and Dave and the old woman seem to be doin' pooty well, and I guess
+I'll let you go on.'"
+
+Here my friend paused, as if his story was done; when one of the
+villagers asked, "About the land where the old meetin'-house stood--what
+ever was done with that?"
+
+"That was appropriated for a new school-house; and there my little
+shavers go to school."
+
+"And old Jedwort, is he alive yet?"
+
+"Both Jedwort and his wife have gone to that country where meanness and
+dishonesty have a mighty poor chance--where the only investments worth
+much are those recorded in the Book of Life. Mrs. Jedwort was rich
+in that kind of stock; and Jedwort's account, I guess, will compare
+favorably with that of some respectable people, such as we all know. I
+tell ye, my friends," continued my fellow-traveler, "there's many a man,
+both in the higher and lower ranks of life, that 't would do a deal of
+good, say nothing of the mercy 'twould be to their families, just to
+knock 'em on the head, and make Nebu-chadnezzars of 'em--then, after
+they'd been turned out to grass a few years, let 'em come back again,
+and see how happy folks have been, and how well they have got along
+without 'em.
+
+"I carry on the old place now," he added. "The younger girls are married
+off; Dan's a doctor in the North Village; and as for Dave, he and I have
+struck ile. I'm going out to look at our property now."
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Man Who Stole A Meeting-House, by 
+J. T. Trowbridge
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