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diff --git a/39598.txt b/39598.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..2fcdd53 --- /dev/null +++ b/39598.txt @@ -0,0 +1,3935 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of Asa Holmes, by Annie Fellows Johnston + +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: Asa Holmes + or At the Cross-Roads + +Author: Annie Fellows Johnston + +Illustrator: Ernest Fosbery + +Release Date: May 2, 2012 [EBook #39598] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ASA HOLMES *** + + + + +Produced by David Edwards, Emmy and the Online Distributed +Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was +produced from images generously made available by The +Internet Archive) + + + + + + + + + + + + +ASA HOLMES + +ANNIE.FELLOWS.JOHNSTON + + +[Illustration] + + + + +Asa Holmes + +or + +At the Cross-roads + + + + +Works of + +Annie Fellows Johnston + + +The Little Colonel Series + +(_Trade Mark, Reg. U. S. Pat. Of._) + +Each one vol., large 12mo, cloth, illustrated + + The Little Colonel Stories $1.50 + + (Containing in one volume the three stories, "The + Little Colonel," "The Giant Scissors," and "Two Little + Knights of Kentucky.") + + The Little Colonel's House Party 1.50 + The Little Colonel's Holidays 1.50 + The Little Colonel's Hero 1.50 + The Little Colonel at Boarding-School 1.50 + The Little Colonel in Arizona 1.50 + The Little Colonel's Christmas Vacation 1.50 + The Little Colonel: Maid of Honor 1.50 + + The above 8 vols., _boxed_ 12.00 + + +Illustrated Holiday Editions + +Each one vol., small quarto, cloth, illustrated, and printed in color + + The Little Colonel $1.25 + The Giant Scissors 1.25 + Two Little Knights of Kentucky 1.25 + + The above 3 vols., _boxed_ 3.75 + + +Cosy Corner Series + +Each one vol., thin 12mo, cloth, illustrated + + The Little Colonel $.50 + The Giant Scissors .50 + Two Little Knights of Kentucky .50 + Big Brother .50 + Ole Mammy's Torment .50 + The Story of Dago .50 + Cicely .50 + Aunt 'Liza's Hero .50 + The Quilt that Jack Built .50 + Flip's "Islands of Providence" .50 + Mildred's Inheritance .50 + + +Other Books + + Joel; A Boy of Galilee $1.50 + In the Desert of Waiting .50 + The Three Weavers .50 + Keeping Tryst .50 + Asa Holmes 1.00 + Songs Ysame (Poems, with Albion Fellows Bacon) 1.00 + + L. C. PAGE & COMPANY + 200 Summer Street Boston, Mass. + +[Illustration] + + + + +Asa Holmes + +or + +At the Cross=Roads + +By + +Annie Fellows Johnston + +Author of + + "The Little Colonel," "Two Little Knights + of Kentucky," etc. + + With a Frontispiece by + Ernest Fosbery + +[Illustration] + + Boston + L.C. Page & Company + Publishers + + + + + _Copyright, 1900, 1901_ + BY E. S. BARNETT + + _Copyright, 1902_ + BY L. C. PAGE AND COMPANY + + (INCORPORATED) + + _All rights reserved_ + + _Seventh Impression_ + + Colonial Press + + Electrotyped and Printed by C. H. Simonds & Co. + Boston, Mass., U. S. A. + + + + + TO + + A Dear Old Philosopher + + WHOSE CHEERFUL OPTIMISM AND SUNNY FAITH HAVE + SWEETENED LIFE FOR ALL WHO KNOW HIM + + + + +Asa Holmes + +or + +At the Cross-roads + + + + +Chapter I + + +THERE is no place where men learn each other's little peculiarities more +thoroughly than in the group usually to be found around the stove in a +country store. Such acquaintance may be of slow growth, like the oak's, +but it is just as sure. Each year is bound to add another ring to one's +knowledge of his neighbours if he lounges with them, as man and boy, +through the Saturday afternoons of a score of winters. + +A boy learns more there than he can be taught in schools. It may be he +is only a tow-headed, freckle-faced little fellow of eight when he rides +over to the cross-roads store for the first time by himself. Too timid +to push into the circle around the fire, he stands shivering on the +outskirts, looking about him with the alertness of a scared rabbit, +until the storekeeper fills his kerosene can and thrusts the weekly mail +into his red mittens. Then some man covers him with confusion by +informing the crowd that "that little chap is Perkins's oldest," and he +scurries away out of the embarrassing focus of the public eye. + +But the next time he is sent on the family errands he stays longer and +carries away more. Perched on the counter, with his heels dangling over +a nail keg, while he waits for the belated mail train, he hears for the +first time how the government ought to be run, why it is that the +country is going to the dogs, and what will make hens lay in cold +weather. Added to this general information, he slowly gathers the belief +that these men know everything in the world worth knowing, and that +their decisions on any subject settle the matter for all time. + +He may have cause to change his opinion later on, when his sapling +acquaintance has gained larger girth; when he has loafed with them, +smoked with them, swapped lies and spun yarns, argued through a decade +of stormy election times, and talked threadbare every subject under the +sun. But now, in his callow judgment, he is listening to the wit and +wisdom of the nation. Now, as he looks around the overflowing room, +where butter firkins crowd the calicoes and crockery, and where hams and +saddles swing sociably from the same rafter, as far as his knowledge +goes, this is the only store in the universe. + +Some wonder rises in his childish brain as he counts the boxes of +axle-grease and the rows of shining new pitchforks, as to where all the +people live who are to use so many things. He has yet to learn that this +one little store that is such a marvel to him is only a drop in the +bucket, and that he may travel the width of the continent, meeting at +nearly every mile-post that familiar mixture of odours--coal oil, +mackerel, roasted coffee, and pickle brine. And a familiar group of men, +discussing the same old subjects in the same old way, will greet him at +every such booth he passes on his pilgrimage through Vanity Fair. + +Probably in after years Perkins's oldest will never realise how much of +his early education has been acquired at that Saturday afternoon +loafing-place, but he will often find himself looking at things with the +same squint with which he learned to view them through 'Squire Dobbs's +short-sighted spectacles. Many a time he will find that he has been +unconsciously warped by the prejudices he heard expressed there, and +that his opinions of life in general and men in particular are the +outgrowth of those early conversations which gave him the creed of his +boyhood. + +"Them blamed Yankees!" exclaims one of these neighbourhood orators, +tilting his chair back against the counter, and taking a vicious bite at +his plug of tobacco. "They don't know no better than to eat cold bread +the year 'round!" And the boy, accepting the statement unquestioningly, +stores away in his memory not only the remark, but all the weighty +emphasis of disgust which accompanied the remark in the spitting of a +mouthful of tobacco juice. Henceforth his idea of the menu north of the +Mason and Dixon line is that it resembles the bill of fare of a +penitentiary, and he feels that there is something coldblooded and +peculiar about a people not brought up on a piping hot diet of hoe-cake +and beaten biscuit. + +In the same way the lad whose opinions are being moulded in some little +corner grocery of a New England village, or out where the roads cross on +the Western prairie, receives his prejudices. It may be years before he +finds out for himself that the land of Boone is not fenced with whiskey +jugs and feuds, and that the cap-sheaf on every shock of wheat in its +domain is not a Winchester rifle. + +But these prejudices, popular at local cross-roads, are only the side +lines of which every section carries its own specialty. When it comes to +staple articles, dear to the American heart and essential to its liberty +and progress, their standard of value is the same the country over. + +One useful lesson the youthful lounger may learn here, if he can learn +it anywhere, and that is to be a shrewd reader of men and motives. Since +staple characteristics in human nature are repeated everywhere, like +staple dry goods and groceries, a thorough knowledge of the group around +the stove will be a useful guide to Perkins's oldest in forming +acquaintances later in life. + +Long after he has left the little hamlet and grown gray with the +experiences of the metropolis, he will run across some queer Dick whose +familiar personality puzzles him. As he muses over his evening pipe, +suddenly out of the smoke wreaths will spring the face of some old +codger who aired his wisdom in the village store, and he will recognise +the likeness between the two as quickly as he would between two cans of +leaf lard bearing the same brand. + +But Perkins's oldest is only in the primer of his cross-roads +curriculum now, and these are some of the lessons he is learning as he +edges up to the group around the fire. On the day before Thanksgiving, +for instance, he was curled up on a box of soap behind the chair of old +Asa Holmes--Miller Holmes everybody calls him, because for nearly half a +century his water-mill ground out the grist of all that section of +country. He is retired now; gave up his business to his grandsons. They +carry it on in another place with steam and modern machinery, and he is +laid on the shelf. But he isn't a back number, even if his old deserted +mill is. It is his boast that now he has nothing else to do, he not only +keeps up with the times, but ahead of them. + +Everybody goes to him for advice; everybody looks up to him as they do +to a hardy old forest tree that's lived through all sorts of hurricanes, +but has stood to the last, sturdy of limb, and sound to the core. He is +as sweet and mellow as a winter apple, ripened in the sun, and that's +why everybody likes to have him around. You don't see many old men like +that. Their troubles sour them. + +Well, this day before Thanksgiving the old miller was in his usual +place at the store, and as usual it was he who was giving the cheerful +turn to the conversation. Some of the men were feeling sore over the +recent election; some had not prospered as they had hoped with their +crops, and were experiencing the pinch of hard times and sickness in +their homes. Still there was a holiday feeling in the atmosphere. +Frequent calls for nutmeg, and sage, and cinnamon, left the air spicy +with prophecies of the morrow's dinner. + +The farmers had settled down for a friendly talk, with the comfortable +sense that the crops were harvested, the wood piled away for the winter, +and a snug, warm shelter provided for the cattle. It was good to see the +hard lines relax in the weather-beaten faces, in the warmth of that +genial comradeship. Even the gruffest were beginning to thaw a little, +when the door opened, and Bud Hines slouched in. The spirits of the +crowd went down ten degrees. + +Not that he said anything; only gave a gloomy nod by way of greeting as +he dropped into a chair. But his whole appearance said it for him; spoke +in the droop of his shoulders, and the droop of his hat brim, and the +droop of his mouth at the corners. He looked as if he might have sat for +the picture of the man in the "Biglow Papers," when he said: + + "Sometimes my innard vane pints east for weeks together, + My natur' gits all goose-flesh, an' my sins + Come drizzlin' on my conscience sharp ez pins." + +The miller greeted him with the twinkle in his eye that eighty years +and more have never been able to dim; and Perkins's oldest had his first +meeting with the man who always finds a screw loose in everything. +Nothing was right with Bud Hines. One of his horses had gone lame, and +his best heifer had foundered, and there was rust in his wheat. He +didn't have any heart to keep Thanksgiving, and he didn't see how +anybody else could, with the bottom dropped clean out of the markets and +the new road tax so high. For his part he thought that everything was on +its last legs, and it wouldn't be long till all the Powers were at war, +and prices would go up till a poor man simply couldn't live. + +It was impossible not to be affected more or less by his gloomy +forebodings, and the old miller, looking around on the listening faces, +saw them settling back in their old discouraged lines. Clasping his +hands more firmly over the top of his cane, he exclaimed: "Now look +here, Bud Hines, I'm going to give you a proverb that was made on +purpose for such a poor, weak-kneed Mr. Ready-to-halt as you are: 'Never +be discouraged, and never be a discourager!' If you can't live up to the +first part, you certainly can to the second. No matter how hard things +go with you, you've no right to run around throwing cold water on other +people. What if your horse has gone lame? You've got a span of mules +that can outpull my yoke of oxen any day. One heifer oughtn't to send a +man into mourning the rest of his days, and it would be more fitting to +be thankful over your good tobacco crop than to groan over the failure +of your wheat. More fitting to the season. As for the rest of the things +you're worrying over, why, man, they haven't happened yet, and maybe +never will. My old grandad used to say to me when I was a lad, 'Never +cross your bridge till you come to it, Asa,' and I've proved the wisdom +of that saying many a time. Suppose'n you put that in your pipe and +smoke it." + +If Perkins's oldest learns no other lesson this year than to put those +two proverbs into practice, he will have had a valuable education. How +many Thanksgivings they will help to make for him! How many problems and +perplexities they will solve! + +"Never be discouraged; never be a discourager! Don't cross your bridge +until you come to it!" It is a philosophy that will do away with half +the ills which flesh imagines it is heir to. + +Thanksgiving Day! How much more it means to the old miller than to the +little fellow beside him on the soap box! To the child it is only a +feast day; to the old man it is a festival that links him to a lifetime +of sacred memories. + +"Five and eighty years," he says, musingly, resting his chin on the +wrinkled hands that clasp the head of his cane. A silence falls on the +group around the stove, and through the cracked door the red firelight +shines out on thoughtful faces. + +"It's a long time; five and eighty years," he repeats, "and every one of +them crowned with a Thanksgiving. Boys," lifting his head and looking +around him, "you've got a good bit of pike to travel over yet before you +get as far as I've gone, and some of you are already half fagged out and +beginning to wonder if it's all worth while--Bud, here, for instance. +I'd like to give you all a word of encouragement. + +"Looking back, I can see that I've had as many ups and downs as any of +you, and more than your share of work and trouble, for I've lived +longer, and nearly all the years are marked with graves. Seems to me +that lately I've had to leave a new grave behind me at every mile-stone, +till now I'm jogging on all alone. Family gone, old neighbours gone, old +friends--I'm the last of the old set. But, still, when all is said and +done, I haven't lost heart, for 'I've lived, seen God's hand through a +lifetime, and all was for best.' + +"When I was milling down there on Bear Creek you'd 'a' thought I was a +fool if I hadn't taken my rightful toll out of every bushel of grist +that ran through my hopper, and sometimes I think that the Almighty must +feel that way about us when we go on grinding and grinding, and never +stopping to count up our share of the profit and pleasure and be +thankful over it. I believe that no matter what life pours into our +hopper, we are to grind some toll of good out of it for ourselves, and +as long as a man does his part toward producing something for the +world's good, some kind of bread for its various needs, he will never go +hungry himself. + +"And I believe more than that. You've heard people compare old age to a +harvest field, and talk about the autumn of life with its ripened corn +waiting for the reaper Death, and all that, and speak about the 'harvest +home,' as if it were the glorious end of everything. But it never did +strike me that way, boys. The best comes after the harvesting, when the +wheat is turned into flour and the flour into bread, and the full, +wholesome loaves go to make up blood and muscle and brain. That's giving +it a sort of immortality, you might say, raising it into a higher order +of life. And it's the same with a man. His old age is just a ripening +for something better a little further on. All that we go through with +here isn't for nothing, and at eighty-five, when it looks as if a man +had come to the stepping-off place, I've come to believe that 'the best +is yet to be.'" + +There is a stir around the door, and the old miller looks around +inquiringly. The mail has come in, and he rises slowly to get his weekly +paper. Perkins's oldest, waiting his turn in front of the little case of +pigeonholes, eyes the old man with wondering side glances. He has not +understood more than half of what he has heard, but he is vaguely +conscious that something is speaking to him now, as he looks into the +tranquil old face. It is the miller's past that is calling to him; all +those honest, hard-working years that show themselves in the bent form +and wrinkled hands; the serene peacefulness that bespeaks a clear +conscience; the big, sunny nature that looks out of those aged eyes; and +above all the great hopefulness that makes his days a perpetual +Thanksgiving. + +The mute eloquence of an unspoken invitation thrills the child's heart, +he knows not why: + + "Grow old along with me; + The best is yet to be!" + +It is the greatest lesson that Perkins's oldest can ever learn. + + + + +Chapter II + + +ONE would have known that it was the day before Christmas at the +Cross-Roads store, even if the big life insurance calendar over the desk +had not proclaimed the fact in bold red figures. An unwonted bustle +pervaded the place. Rows of plump, dressed turkeys hung outside the +door, and on the end of the counter where the pyramid of canned tomatoes +was usually stacked, a little evergreen tree stood in a brave array of +tinsel and tiny Christmas tapers. + +It was only an advertisement. No one might hope to be the proud +possessor of the Noah's ark lodged in its branches, or of the cheap toys +and candy rings dangling from every limb, unless he had the necessary +pennies. Still, every child who passed it eyed it with such wistful +glances that the little rubber Santa Claus at the base must have felt +his elastic heart stretch almost to bursting. + +Above the familiar odour of coal-oil and mackerel, new leather, roasted +coffee and pickle brine, rose the holiday fragrance of cedar and +oranges. + +"Makes me think of when I was a kid," said a drummer who had been +joking with the men around the stove, trying to kill time while he +waited for the train that was to take him home for Christmas. "There's +nothing like that smell of cedar and oranges to resurrect the boy in a +man. It puts me straight back into knickerbockers again, among a whole +grove of early Christmas trees. I'll never forget the way I felt when I +picked my first pair of skates off one of them. A house and lot wouldn't +give me such a thrill now." + +"Aw, I don't believe Christmas is at all what it's cracked up to be," +said a voice from behind the stove, in such a gloomy tone that a knowing +smile passed around the circle. + +"Bet on you, Bud Hines, for findin' trouble, every time," laughed the +storekeeper. "Why, Bud, there ain't no screw loose in Christmas, is +there?" + +"Well, there just is!" snapped the man, resenting the laugh. "It comes +too often for one thing. I just wish it had happened on leap-year, the +twenty-ninth of February. It would be a heap less expensive having it +just once in four years. Seems to me we're always treading on its heels. +My old woman hardly gets done knitting tidies for one Christmas till +she's hard at it for another. + +"Anyhow, Christmas never measures up to what you think it's a-going +to--not by a jug-full. Sure as you get your heart set on a patent +nail-puller or a pair of fur gloves--something that'll do _you_ some +good--your wife gives you a carpet sweeper, or an alarm-clock that +rattles you out an hour too early every morning." + +The drummer led the uproarious laughter that followed. They were ready +to laugh at anything in this season of good cheer, and the drummer's +vociferous merriment was irresistible. He slapped the speaker on the +back, adding jokingly, "That's one thing Job never had to put up, did +he, partner! He nearly lost his reputation for politeness over the +misfit advice he didn't want. But there's no telling what he'd have done +with misfit Christmas gifts. It would take a star actor to play the +grateful for some of the things people find in their stockings. For +instance, to have a fond female relative give you a shaving outfit, when +you wear a full beard." + +"You bet your life," answered the storekeeper feelingly. "Now, if Santa +Claus wasn't a fake--" + +"Hist!" said the drummer, with a significant glance toward a small boy, +perched on a soap-box in their midst, listening open-mouthed to every +word. "I've children myself, and I'd punch anybody's head who would +shake their faith in Santy. It's one of the rosy backgrounds of +childhood, in my opinion, and I've got a heap of happiness out of it +since I was a kid, too, looking back and recollecting." + +It was very little happiness that the boy on the soap-box was getting +out of anything, that gray December afternoon. He was weighed down with +a feeling of age and responsibility that bore heavily on his +eight-year-old shoulders. He had long felt the strain of his position, +as pattern to the house of Perkins, being the oldest of five. Now there +was another one, and to be counted as the oldest of six pushed him +almost to the verge of gray hairs. + +There was another reason for his tear-stained face. He had been +disillusioned. Only that noon, his own mother had done that for which +the drummer would have punched any one's head, had it been done to his +children. "We're too poor, Sammy. There can't be any Christmas at our +house this year," she had said, fretfully, as she stopped the noisy +driving of nails into the chimney, on which he contemplated hanging the +fraternal stockings. To his astonished "Why?" she had replied with a few +blunt truths that sent him out from her presence, shorn of all his +childish hopefulness as completely as Samson was shorn of his strength. + +There had been a sorry half-hour in the hay-mow, where he snuffled over +his shattered faith alone, and from whence he went out, a hardened +little skeptic, to readjust himself to a cold and Santa Clausless world. +The only glimmer of comfort he had had since was when the drummer, with +a friendly wink, slipped a nickel into his hand. But even that added to +his weight of responsibility. He dropped it back and forth from one +little red mitten to another, with two impulses strong upon him. The +first was to spend it for six striped sticks of peppermint candy, one +for each stocking, and thus compel Christmas to come to the house of +Perkins. The other was to buy one orange and go off in a corner and suck +it all by himself. He felt that fate owed him that much of a reparation +for his disappointment. He was in the midst of this inward debate when a +new voice joined the discussion around the stove. It came from Cy Akers. + +"Well, _I_ think it's downright sinful to stuff a child with such +notions. You may call 'em fairy-tales all you like, but it's nothing +more or less than a pack of lies. The idea of a Christian payrent +sitting up and telling his immortal child that a big fat man in furs +will drive through the air to-night in a reindeer sleigh right over the +roofs and squeeze himself down a lot of sooty chimneys, with a bag of +gimcracks on his back--it's all fol-de-rol! I never could see how any +intelligent young one could believe it. I never did. But that's one +thing about me, as the poet says, 'If I've one pecooliar feature it's a +nose that won't be led.' I never could be made to take stock in any such +nonsense, even as a boy. I'll leave it to Mr. Asa Holmes, here, if it +isn't wrong to be putting such ideas into the youth of our land." + +The old miller ran his fingers through his short white hair and looked +around. His smile was wholesome as it was genial. He was used to being +called in judgment on these neighbourhood discussions, and he spoke with +the air of one who felt that his words carried weight: + +"You're putting it pretty strong, Cy," he said, with a laugh, and then a +tender, reminiscent light gleamed in his old eyes. + +"You see it's this way with me, boys. We never heard any of these +things when I was a lad. It's plain facts in a pioneer cabin, you know. +Father taught us about Christmas in the plain words that he found set +down in the Gospels, and I told it the same way to my boys. When my +first little grandson came back to the old house to spend Christmas, I +thought it was almost heathenish for his mother to have him send letters +up the chimney and talk as if Santa Claus was some real person. I told +her so one day, and asked what was going to happen when the little +fellow outgrew such beliefs. + +"'Why, Father Holmes,' said she,--I can hear her now, words and tones, +for it set me to thinking,--'don't you see that he is all the time +growing into a broader belief? It's this way.' She picked up a big apple +from the table. 'Once this apple was only a tiny seed-pod in the heart +of a pink blossom. The beauty of the blossom was all that the world saw, +at first, but gradually, as the fruit swelled and developed, the pink +petals fell off, naturally and easily, and the growing fruit was left. +My little son's idea of Christmas is in the blossom time now. This rosy +glamour of old customs and traditions that makes it so beautiful to him +is taking the part of the pink petals. They will fall away by and by, of +their own accord, for underneath a beautiful truth is beginning to swell +to fruitage. Santa Claus is the Spirit of Christmas love and giving, +personified. It is because I want to make it real and vital, something +that my baby's mind can grasp and enjoy, that I incarnate it in the form +of the good old Saint Nicholas, but I never let him lose sight of the +Star. It was the Spirit of Christmas that started the wise men on their +search, and they followed the Star and they found the Child, and laid +gifts at his feet. And when the Child was grown, he, too, went out in +the world and followed the Star and scattered his gifts of love and +healing for all the children of men. And so it has gone on ever since, +that Spirit of Christmas, impelling us to follow and to find and to +give, wherever there is a need for our gold and frankincense and myrrh. +That is the larger belief my boy is growing into, from the smaller.' + +"And she is right," said the old man, after an impressive pause. "She +raised that boy to be an own brother to Santa Claus, as far as good-will +to men goes. It's Christmas all the year round wherever _he_ is. And now +when he brings his boys back to the old home and hangs their stockings +up by the fire, I never say a word. Sometimes when the little chaps are +hunting for the marks of the reindeer hoofs in the ashes, I kneel down +on the old hearthstone and hunt, too. + + * * * * * + +"A brother to Santa Claus!" The phrase still echoed in the heart of +Perkins's oldest when the group around the stove dispersed. It was that +which decided the fate of the nickel, and filled the little red mittens +with sticks of striped delight for six, instead of the lone orange for +one. Out of a conversation but dimly understood he had gathered a vague +comfort. It made less difference that his patron saint was a myth, since +he had learned there might be brothers in the Claus family for him to +fall back upon. Then his fingers closed over the paper bag of +peppermints, and, suddenly, with a little thrill, he felt that in some +queer way he belonged to that same brotherhood. + +As he fumbled at the latch, the old miller, who always saw his own +boyhood rise before him in that small tow-headed figure, and who somehow +had divined the cause of the tear-streaks on the dirty little face, +called him. "Here, sonny!" It was a pair of shining new skates that +dangled from the miller's hands into his. + +One look of rapturous delight, and two little feet were flying homeward +down the frozen pike, beating time to a joy that only the overflowing +heart of a child can know, when its troubles are all healed, and faith +in mankind restored. And the old man, going home in the frosty twilight +of the Christmas eve, saw before him all the way the light of a shining +star. + + + + +Chapter III + + +IT was an hour past the usual time for closing the Cross-Roads store, +but no one made a move to go. Listening in the comfortable glow of the +red-hot stove, to the wind whistling down the long pipe, was far +pleasanter than facing its icy blasts on the way home. Besides, it was +the last night of the old year, and hints of forthcoming cider had been +dropped by Jim Bowser, the storekeeper. Also an odour of frying +doughnuts came in from the kitchen, whenever Mrs. Bowser opened the door +into the entry. + +Added to the usual group of loungers was the drummer who had spent +Christmas eve with them. He had come in on an accommodation train, and +was waiting for the midnight express. He had had the floor for some time +with his stories, when suddenly in the midst of the laughter which +followed one of his jokes, Bud Hines made himself heard. + +"I say, Jim," he exclaimed, turning to the storekeeper, "why don't you +tear off the last leaf of that calendar? We've come to the end of +everything now; end of the day, end of the year, end of the century! +Something none of _us_ will ever experience again. It's always a mighty +solemn thought to me that I'm doing a thing for the la-ast time!" + +Jim laughed cheerfully, tilting his chair back against the counter, and +thrusting his thumbs into the armholes of his vest. + +"I don't know as I feel any call to mourn over takin' down an old +calendar when I have a prettier one to put in its place, and it's the +same way with the century. There'll be a better one to begin on in the +morning." + +"That's so," asserted Cy Akers. "But some people come bang up against a +New Year as if it was a stone wall, and down they set and count up their +sins, and turn over new leaves, and load 'emselves down with so many +good resolutions that they stick in the mud by the end of the first +week. Now I hold that if it wasn't for the almanacs, steppin' from one +year to another, or from one century to another, wouldn't jar you no +more than steppin' over the equator. They're only imaginary lines, and +nobody would ever know where he was at, either in months or meridians, +if he didn't have almanacs and the like to keep him posted. Fourth of +July is just as good a time to take stock and turn over a new leaf as +the first of January." + +"Maybe you take stock like a man I used to sell to down in Henderson +County," said the drummer. "He never kept any books, so he never knew +exactly where he was 'at,' as you say. Once a year he'd walk around the +store with his hands in his pockets, and size up things in a general +sort of way. 'Bill,' he'd say to his clerk, cocking his eyes up at the +shelves, 'we've got a right smart chance of canned goods left over. I +reckon there's a half shelf full more than we had left last year. I know +there's more bottles of ketchup.' Then he'd take another turn around the +room. 'Bill, I disremember how many pitchforks we had in this rack. +There's only two left now. Nearly all the calico is sold, and (thumping +the molasses barrel), this here bar'l sounds like it's purty nigh empty. +Take it all around, Bill, we've done first-rate this year, so I don't +know as it's worth while botherin' about weighin' and measurin' what's +left over, so long as we're satisfied.' And maybe that's why Cy makes so +little of New Year," added the drummer, with a sly wink at the others. +"He thinks it's not worth while to weigh and measure his shortcomings +when he can take stock of himself in a general sort of a way, and always +be perfectly satisfied with himself." + +There was a laugh at Cy's expense, and Bud Hines began again. + +"What worries me is, what's been prophesied about the new century. One +would think we've had enough famines and plagues and wars and rumours of +wars in this here old one to do for awhile, but from what folks say, it +ain't goin' to hold a candle to the trouble we'll see in the next one." + +"Troubles is seasonin'. ''Simmons ain't good till they are frostbit,'" +quoted Cy. + +"Then accordin' to Bud's tell, he ought to be the best seasoned +persimmon on the bough," chuckled the storekeeper. + +"No, that fellow that was here this afternoon goes ahead of Bud," +insisted Cy, turning to the drummer. "I wish you could have heard him, +pardner. He came in to get a postal order for some money he wanted to +send in a letter, and he nearly wiped up the earth with poor old Bowser, +because there was a two-cent war tax to pay on it. + +"'Whose war?' says he. ''Tain't none of _my_ makin',' says he, 'and +I'll be switched if I'll pay taxes on a thing I've been dead set against +from the start. It's highway robbery,' says he, 'to load the country +down with a war debt in times like these. It's kill yourself to keep +yourself these days, and as my Uncle Josh used to say after the Mexican +war, "it's tough luck when people are savin' and scrimpin' at the spigot +for the government to be drawin' off at the bung."' + +"Bowser here just looked him over as if he'd been a freak at a +side-show, and said Bowser, in a dry sort of way, he guessed, 'when it +came to the pinch, the spigot wouldn't feel that a two-cent stamp was a +killin' big leakage.' + +"The fellow at that threw the coppers down on the counter, mad as a +hornet. 'It's the principle of the thing,' says he. 'Uncle Sam had no +business to bite off more'n he could chew and then call on me to help. +What's the war done for this country, anyhow?' + +"He was swinging his arms like a stump speaker at a barbecue, by this +time. 'What's it done?' says he. 'Why it's sent the soldiers back from +Cuba with an itch as bad as the smallpox, and as ketchin' to them +citizens that wanted peace, as to them that clamoured for war. I know +what I'm talkin' about, for my hired man like to 'uv died with it, and +he hadn't favoured the war any more than a spring lamb. And what's it +doin' for us, now?' says he. 'Sendin' the poor fellows back from the +Philippines by the ship-load, crazy as June-bugs. I know what I'm +talkin' about. That happened to one of my wife's cousins. What was it +ever begun for,' says he, 'tell me that!' + +"Peck here, behind the stove, sung out like a fog-horn, '_Remember the +Maine!_' Peck knew what a blow the fellow had made at an indignation +meeting when the news first came. No tellin' what would have happened +then if a little darky hadn't put his head in at the door and yelled, +'Say, mistah, yo' mules is done backed yo' wagon in de ditch!' He tore +out to tend to them, or we might have had another Spanish war right here +among Bowser's goods and chattels." + +"No danger," said Peck, dryly, "he isn't the kind of a fellow to fight +for principle. It's only when his pocketbook is touched he wants to lick +somebody. He's the stingiest man I ever knew, and I've known some mighty +mean men in my time." + +"What's the matter with you all to-night?" said the drummer. "You're +the most pessimistic crowd I've struck in an age. This is the tune +you've been giving me from the minute I lifted the latch." And beating +time with foot and hands in old plantation style, the drummer began +forthwith to sing in a deep bass voice that wakened the little Bowsers +above: + + "Ole Satan is loose an' a-bummin'! + De wheels er distruckshin is a-hummin.' + Oh, come 'long, sinner, ef you comin'!" + +The door into the entry opened a crack and Mrs. Bowser's forefinger +beckoned. + +"Here's good-bye to the old and good luck to the new," cried Jim, +jumping up to take the big pitcher of cider that she passed through the +opening. + +"And here's to Mrs. Bowser," cried the drummer, taking the new tin cup +filled for him with the sparkling cider, and helping himself to a hot +doughnut from the huge panful which she brought in. "It's a pretty good +sort of world, after all, that gives you cakes as crisp and sugary as +these. 'Speak well of the bridge that carries you over' is my motto, so +don't let another fellow cheep to-night, unless he can say something +good of the poor old century or the men who've lived in it!" + +"Mr. Holmes! Mr. Asa Holmes!" cried several voices. + +The old miller, who had been silent all evening, straightened himself up +in his chair and drew his hand over his eyes. + +"I feel as if I were parting with an old comrade, to-night," he said. +"The century had only fifteen years the start of me, and it's a long way +we've travelled together. I've been sitting here, thinking how much +we've lived through. Listen, boys." + +It was a brief series of pictures he drew for them, against the +background of his early pioneer days. They saw him, a little lad, +trudging more than a mile on a winter morning to borrow a kettle of hot +coals, because the fire had gone out on his own hearthstone, and it was +before the days of matches. They saw him huddled with the other little +ones around his mother's knee when the wolves howled in the night +outside the door, and only the light of a tallow-dip flickered through +the darkness of the little cabin. They saw the struggle of a strong life +against the limitations of the wilderness, and realised what the battle +must have been oftentimes, against sudden disease and accident and +death, with the nearest doctor a three days' journey distant, and no +smoke from any neighbour's chimney rising anywhere on all the wide +horizon. + +While he talked, a heavy freight train rumbled by outside; the wind +whistled through the telegraph wires. The jingle of a telephone bell +interrupted his reminiscences. The old man looked up with a smile. "See +what we have come to," he said, "from such a past to a time when I can +say 'hello,' across a continent. Cables and cross-ties and telegraph +poles have annihilated distance. The century and I came in on an +ox-cart; we are going out on a streak of lightning. + +"But that's not the greatest thing," he said, pausing, while the +listening faces grew still more thoughtful. "Think of the hospitals! The +homes! The universities! The social settlements! The free libraries! The +humane efforts everywhere to give humanity an uplift! When I think of +all this century has accomplished, of the heroic lives it has produced, +I haven't a word to say about its mistakes and failures. After all, how +do we know that the things we cry out against _are_ mistakes? + +"This war may be a Samson's riddle that we are not wise enough to read. +Those who shall come after us may be able to say '_Out of the eater came +forth meat, and out of the strong came forth sweetness!_'" + +Somewhere in an upper room a clock struck twelve, and deep silence +fell on the little company as they waited for the solemn passing of the +century. It was no going out as of some decrepit Lear tottering from his +throne. Perhaps no man there could have put it in words, but each one +felt that its majestic leave-taking was like the hoary old apostle's: "I +have fought a good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the +faith." + + + + +Chapter IV + + +FOR some occult reason, the successful merchant in small towns and +villages is the confidant, if not father-confessor, of a large number of +his patronesses. It may be that his flattering air of personal interest, +assumed for purely business purposes, loosens not only the purse-strings +but the spring that works the panorama of private affairs. Or it may be +an idiosyncrasy of some classes of the mind feminine, to make no +distinction between a bargain counter and a confessional. Whatever the +cause, many an honest merchant can testify that it is no uncommon thing +for a woman to air her domestic troubles while she buys a skirt braid, +or to drag out her family skeleton with the sample of sewing silk she +wishes to match. + +The Cross-Roads had had its share of confidences, although as a rule the +women who disposed of their butter and eggs in trade to Bowser were of +the patient sort, grown silent under the repressing influence of +secluded farm life. Still, Bowser, quick to see and keen to judge, had +gained a remarkable insight into neighbourhood affairs in fifteen years' +dealings with his public. "All things come to him who waits" if he wears +an air of habitual interest and has a sympathetic way of saying "Ah! +indeed!" + +It was with almost the certainty of foreknowledge that Bowser counted +his probable patrons as he spread out his valentines on the morning of +the fourteenth of February. He had selected his comic ones with a view +to the feud that existed between the Hillock and Bond families, well +knowing that a heavy cross-fire of ugly caricatures and insulting rhymes +would be kept up all day by the younger members of those warring +households. It was with professional satisfaction he smiled over the +picture of a fat man with a donkey's head, which he was as sure would be +sent by Pete Hillock to old man Bond, as if he had heard Pete's penny +dropping into the cash-drawer. + +"Nothing like supplying the demand," he chuckled. + +It was with more than professional interest that he arranged the +lace-paper valentines in the show-case, for the little embossed Cupids +had a strong ally in this rustic haberdasher, whose match-making +propensities had helped many a little romance to a happy issue. Drawing +on his fund of private information, acquired in his role of confidant to +the neighbourhood gossips, he set out his stock of plump red hearts, +forget-me-nots, and doves; and with each addition to the festal array he +nodded his head knowingly over the particular courtship it was designed +to speed, or the lovers' quarrel that he hoped might be ended thereby. + + * * * * * + +There had been two weeks of "February thaw." Melting snow had made the +mud hub-deep in places. There was a velvety balminess in the touch of +the warm wind, and faint, elusive odours, prophetic of spring, rose from +the moist earth and sap-quickened trees. + +The door of the Cross-Road store stood open, and behind it, at the +post-office desk, sat Marion Holmes, the old miller's granddaughter. +Just out of college and just into society, she had come to spend Lent in +the old place that had welcomed her every summer during her childhood. +The group around the stove stared covertly at the pretty girl in the +tailor-made gown, failing to recognise in the tall, stylish figure any +trace of the miller's "little Polly," who used to dangle her feet from +the counter and munch peppermint drops, while she lisped nursery rhymes +for their edification. + +She had come for the letters herself, she told Bowser, because she was +expecting a whole bag full, and her grandfather's rheumatism kept him at +home. Installed in the post-office chair, behind the railing that +enclosed the sanctum of pigeon-holes, she amused herself by watching the +customers while she waited for the mail-train. + +"It's like looking into a kaleidoscope," she told Bowser in one of the +pauses of trade. "Every one who comes in gives me a different point of +view and combination of opinions. Now, those valentines! I was thinking +what old-fashioned things those little lace-paper affairs are, and +wondering how anybody could possibly get up any thrills over them, when +in walked Miss Anastasia Dill. Prim and gentle as ever, isn't she? Still +getting her styles from _Godey's Lady's Books_ of the early sixties; she +must draw on their antiquated love stories for her sentiment, too, for +she seemed lost in admiration of those hearts and darts. What _do_ you +suppose is Miss Anastasia's idea of a lover?" + +Marion rattled on with all of a debutante's reckless enthusiasm for any +subject under discussion. "Wouldn't he be as odd and old-fashioned as +the lace valentines themselves? She'd call him a _suitor_, wouldn't she? +I wonder if she ever had one." + +Then Bowser, piecing together the fragmentary gossip of fifteen years, +told Marion all he knew of Miss Anastasia's gentle romance; and Marion, +idly clasping and unclasping the little Yale pin on her jacket, gained +another peep into the kaleidoscope of human experiences. + +"I have read of such devotion to a memory," she said when the story was +done, "but I never met it in the flesh. What a pity he died while he was +on such a high pedestal in her imagination. If he had lived she would +have discovered that there are no such paragons, and all the other sons +of Adam needn't have suffered by comparison. So she's an old maid simply +because she put her ideal of a lover so high in the clouds nobody could +live up to it! Dear old Miss Anastasia!" + +Bowser pulled his beard. "Such couples make me think of these here lamps +with double wicks," he said. "They hardly ever burn along together +evenly. One wick is sure to flare up higher than the other; you either +have to keep turning it down and get along with a half light or let it +smoke the chimney--maybe crack it--and make things generally +uncomfortable. But here comes somebody, Miss Marion, who's burned along +pretty steady, and that through three administrations. It's her brag +that she's had three husbands and treated them just alike, even to the +matter of tombstones. 'Not a pound difference in the weight nor a dollar +in the price,' she always says." + +The newcomer was a fat, wheezy woman, spattered with mud from the hem +of her skirt to the crown of her big crape bonnet, which had tipped on +one side with the jolting of the wagon. + +"Well, Jim Bowser!" she exclaimed, catching sight of the valentines. "Ef +you ain't got out them silly, sentimental fol-de-rols again! My nephew, +Jason Potter,--that's my second husband's sister's son, you know,--spent +seventy-five cents last year to buy one of them silly things to send to +his girl; and I says to him, 'Jason,' says I, 'ef _I'd_ been Lib +Meadows, that would 'uv cooked your goose with _me_! Any man simple +enough to waste his substance so, wouldn't make a good provider.' I +ought to know--I've been a wife three times." + +This, like all other of Mrs. Power's conversational roads, led back to +the three tombstones, and started a flow of good-natured badinage on the +subject of matrimony, which continued long after she had taken her noisy +departure. "Well!" exclaimed Bud Hines, as the big crape bonnet went +jolting down the road, "I guess there's three good men gone that could +tell why heaven is heaven." + +"Why?" asked Cy Akers. + +"Because there's no marryin' or givin' in marriage there." + +"Bud speaks feelingly!" said Cy, winking at the others. "He'd better get +a job on a newspaper to write Side Talks with Henpecked Husbands." + +"Shouldn't think _you'd_ want to hear any extrys or supplements," +retorted Bud. "You get enough in your own daily editions." + + * * * * * + +"St. Valentine has been generous with my little Polly," said the old +miller, looking up fondly at the tall, graceful girl, coming into his +room, her face aglow and her arms full of packages. + +"But what's the good of it all, grandfather?" answered Marion. "I've +been looking into Cupid's kaleidoscope through other people's eyes this +afternoon, and nothing is rose-coloured as I thought. Everything is +horrid. 'Marriage is a failure,' and sentiment is a silly thing that +people make flippant jokes about, or else break their hearts with, like +Mr. Bowser's double-wick lamps, that flare up and crack their chimneys. +I've come to the conclusion that St. Valentine has outlived his +generation." + +She broke the string which bound one of the boxes that she had dropped +on the table, and took out a great dewy bunch of sweet violets. As their +fragrance filled the room, the old man looked around as if half +expecting to see some familiar presence; then dropped his white head +with a sigh, and gazed into the embers on the hearth, lost in a tender +reverie. + +Presently he said, "I wish you would hand me that box on my wardrobe +shelf, little girl." As Marion opened the wardrobe door, something +hanging there made her give a little start of surprise. It was an old +familiar gray dress, with the creases still in the bent sleeves just as +they had been left when the tired arms last slipped out of them. That +was ten years ago; and Marion, standing there with a mist gathering in +her eyes, recalled the day her grandfather had refused to let any one +fold it away. It had hung there all those years, the tangible reminder +of the strong, sweet presence that had left its imprint on every part of +the household. + +"It is like my life since she slipped out of it," the old man had +whispered, smoothing the empty sleeve with his stiff old fingers. "Like +my heart--set to her ways at every turn, and left just as she rounded it +out--but now--so empty!" + +He lifted an old dog-eared school-book from the box that Marion brought +him, a queer little "Geography and Atlas of the Heavens," in use over +fifty years ago. Inside was a tiny slip of paper, time-yellowed and +worn. The ink was faded, until the words written in an unformed girlish +hand were barely legible: + + "True as grapes grow on a vine, + I will be your Valentine." + +"I had put a letter into her Murray's grammar," he explained, holding +up another little book. "Here is the page, just at the conjugation of +the verb 'to love.' You see I was a big, shy, overgrown boy that lost my +tongue whenever I looked at her, although she wasn't fifteen then, and +only reached my shoulder. This valentine was the answer that she slipped +into my atlas of the heavens. I thought the sky itself had never held +such a star. We walked home across the woodland together that day, never +saying a word. It was the last of the February thaw, and the birds were +twittering as if it were really spring. Just such a day as this. All of +a sudden, right at my feet, I saw something smiling up at me, blue as +the blue of my Polly's eyes. I stooped and brushed away the leaves, and +there were two little violets. + +"As I gave them to her I wanted to say, 'There will always be violets +in my heart for you, my Polly,' but I couldn't speak a word. I know she +understood, for long years after--when she was dead--I found them here. +She had pinned them on the page where my letter had lain, here on the +conjugation that says, 'we love,' and she had added the word '_for +ever_.'" + +A tear dropped on the dead violets as the old man reverently closed the +book, and sat gazing again into the dying embers. There was a tremulous +smile on his face. Was it backward over the hills of their youth he was +wandering, or ahead to those heights of Hope, where love shall "put on +immortality?" + +Marion laid her warm cheek against her violets, still fragrant with the +sweetness of their fresh, unfaded youth. Then taking a cluster from the +great dewy bunch, she fastened it at her throat with the little Yale +pin. + + + + +Chapter V + + +TRADE was dull at the Cross-Roads. Jim Bowser, his hands thrust into his +pockets and his lips puckered to a whistle, stood looking through the +dingy glass of his front door. March was coming in with a snow-storm, +and all he could see in any direction was a blinding fall of white +flakes. There were only three men behind the stove that afternoon, and +one of them was absorbed in a newspaper. Conversation flagged, and from +time to time Bud Hines yawned audibly. + +"This is getting to be mighty monotonous," remarked the storekeeper, +glancing from the falling snow to the silent group by the stove. + +"March always is," answered Bud Hines. "The other months have some +holiday in 'em; something to brighten 'em up, if it's no more than a +family birthday. But to me, March is as dull and uninteresting as a mud +road." + +"There's the inauguration this year," suggested Cy Akers, looking up +from his newspaper. "That's a big event. This paper is full of it." + +"Well, now you've hit it!" exclaimed Bud, with withering scorn, as he +bit off another chew of tobacco. "That is exciting! Just about as +interesting as watching a man take his second helping of pie. I wouldn't +go across the road to see it. Now in a monarchy, where death makes the +changes, it can't get to be a cut and dried affair that takes place +every four years. They make a grand occasion of it, too, with their pomp +and ceremony. Look at what England's just seen. It's the sight of a +lifetime to bury a queen and crown a king. But what do we see when we +change Presidents? One man sliding into a chair and another sliding out, +same as when the barber calls 'Next!' Humph!" + +Cy Akers rubbed his chin. "Fuss and feathers! That's all it amounts +to," he exclaimed. "I'm down on monopolies, and in my opinion it's the +worst kind of monopoly to let one family crowd out everybody else in the +king business. I like a country where every man in it has a show. Not +that I'd _be_ President, if they offered me double the salary, but it is +worth a whole lot to me to feel that in case I did want the office, I've +as good a right to it as any man living. And talk about sights--I say +it's the sight of a lifetime to see a man step out from his place among +the people, anywhere he happens to be when they call his name, take his +turn at ruling as if he'd been born to it, and then step back as if +nothing had happened." + +Bud smiled derisively. "You only see that on paper, my boy. Men don't +step quietly into offices in this country. They run for 'em till they +are red in the face, and it's the best runner that gets there, not the +best man. Monopoly in the king business keeps out the rabble, any how, +and it gives a country a good deal more dignity to be ruled by a dynasty +than by Tom, Dick, and Harry." + +"Well, there's no strings tied to you," said Cy, testily, taking up his +newspaper again. "When people don't like the way things are run on this +side of the water, there's nothing to hinder emigration." + +There was a stamping of snowy feet outside the door, and a big, burly +fellow blustered in, whom they hailed as Henry Bicking. He was not +popular at the Cross-Roads, having the unenviable reputation of being a +"born tease," but any diversion was welcome on such a dull day. + +In the catalogue of queer characters which every neighbourhood +possesses, the Autocrat, Bore, and Crank may take precedence of all +others alphabetically, but the one that heads the list in +disagreeableness is that infliction on society known as the "born +tease." One can forgive the teasing propensity universally found in +boys, as he would condone the playful destructiveness of puppyhood; +something requiring only temporary forbearance. But when that trait +refuses to be put away with childish things it makes of the man it +dominates a sort of human mosquito. He regards every one in reach his +lawful prey, from babies to octogenarians, and while he does not always +sting, the persistency of his annoying attacks becomes exasperating +beyond endurance. + +The same motive that made Henry Bicking pull cats' whiskers out by the +roots when he was a boy, led him to keep his children in a turmoil, and +his sensitive little wife in tears half the time. He had scarcely seated +himself by the stove when he was afforded opportunity for his usual +pastime by the entrance of half a dozen children, who came tumbling in +on their way home from school to warm. + +He began with a series of those inane questions by which grown people +have made themselves largely responsible for the pertness of the younger +generation. If children of this day have departed from that delectable +state wherein they were seen and not heard, the fault is due far more to +their elders than to them. Often they have been made self-conscious, and +forced into saucy self-assertion by the teasing questions that are asked +merely to provoke amusing replies. + +Henry Bicking's quizzing had an element of cruelty in it. His was the +kind that pinches his victims' ears, that tickles to the verge of agony, +that threatens all sorts of disagreeable things, for the sake of seeing +little faces blanch with fright, or eyes fill with tears of pain. + +"Come here, Woodpecker," he began, reaching for a child whose red hair +was the grief of his existence. But the boy deftly eluded him, and the +little fellow standing next in line, drying his snowball-soaked mittens, +became the victim. He was dragged unwillingly to his tormentor's knee. + +"What are you going to be when you're a man?" was demanded, when the +first questions had elicited the fact that the child's name was Sammy +Perkins, and that he was eight years old. But Perkins's oldest, having +no knowledge of the grammar of life beyond its present tense indicative, +hung his head and held his tongue at mention of its future potential. + +"If you don't tell me you sha'n't have your mittens!" Bicking dangled +them tantalisingly out of reach, until, after an agonising and +unsuccessful scramble, the child was forced into a tearful reply. + +Then he began again: "Which are you for, Democrats or Republicans?" + +"Ain't for neither." + +"Well, you're the littlest mugwump I ever did see. Mugwumps ain't got +any right to wear mittens. I've a notion to pitch 'em in the stove." + +"Oh, _don't_!" begged the child. "_Please_, mister! I'm not a mugwump!" + +The tragic earnestness of the child as he disclaimed all right to the +term of reproach which he could not understand, yet repudiated because +of its obnoxious sound, amused the man hugely. He threw back his head +and laughed. + +"Tell me who you holler for!" he continued, catching him up and holding +him head downward a moment. Then goaded by more teasing questions and a +threatening swing of his red mittens toward the stove door, Perkins's +oldest was at last led to take a bold stand on his party platform, and +publicly declare his political preference. But it was in a shaking voice +and between frightened sobs. + +"M-ma, she's for McKinley, an' p-pap, he's for B-Bryan, so I jus' holler +for Uncle Sam!" + +"Good enough for you, sonny," laughed the storekeeper. "That's true blue +Americanism. Stick to Uncle Sam and never mind the parties. They've had +new blades put on their old handles, and new handles put on those old +blades again, till none of 'em are what we started out with. We keep on +calling them 'genuine Barlows,' but it's precious little of the original +Barlows we're hanging on to nowadays." + + * * * * * + +It was a woman's voice that interrupted the conversation. Mrs. Teddy +Mahone had come in for some tea. + +"Arrah, Misther Bicking! Give the bye his mitts! You're worrse than a +cat with a mouse." + +The loud voice with its rich Irish brogue drew Cy Akers's attention from +his newspaper. "By the way, Bud," he exclaimed, raising his voice so +that Mrs. Mahone could not fail to hear, "you were complaining about +March being so dull and commonplace without any holidays. You've +forgotten St. Patrick's Day." + +"No, I haven't. St. Patrick is nothing to me. There's no reason I should +take any interest in him." + +"And did you hear that, Mrs. Mahone," asked Henry Bicking, anxious to +start a war of words. + +"Oh, Oi heard it, indade Oi did!" she answered with a solemn shake of +the head. "It grieves the hearrt of me to hear such ingratichude. +There's niver a sowl in all Ameriky but has cause to be grateful for +what he's done for this counthry." + +"What's he ever done?" asked Bud, skeptically. There was a twinkle in +Mrs. Mahone's eyes as she answered: + +"It was this way. A gude while back whin it was at the beginnin' iv +things, Ameriky said to herself wan day, 'It's a graand pudding Oi'll be +afther makin' meself, by a new resait Oi've just thought iv.' So she +dips into this counthry for wan set iv immygrants, an' into another +counthry for another batch, and after a bit a foine mess she had iv 'em. +Dutch an' Frinch an' Eyetalian, Rooshian, Spaniards an' haythen Chinee, +all stirred up in wan an' the same pudding-bag. + +"'Somethin's lackin',' siz she, afther awhile, makin' a wry face. + +"'It's the spice,' siz St. Pathrick, 'ye lift out iv it, an' the +leaven. Ye'll have to make parsinal application to meself for it, for +Oi'm the only wan knowin' the saicret of where it's to be found.' + +"'Then give me some,' siz she, an' St. Pathrick, not loikin' to lave a +leddy in trouble, reached out from the auld sod and handed her a fair +shprinklin' of them as would act as both spice an' leaven. + +"'They'll saison the whole lot,' siz he, 'an' there's light-heartedness +enough among them to raise the entoire heavy mass in your whole united +pudding-bag.' + +"'Thanks,' siz she, stirrin' us in. 'It's the makin' of the dish, sorr, +and Oi'm etarnally obliged to ye, sorr. Oi'll be afther puttin' the name +of St. Pathrick in me own family calendar, and ivery year on that day, +it's the pick iv the land that'll take pride in addin' to me own shtars +an' shtripes the wearin' o' the green.' + +"Ye see, Misther Hines, ye may think ye're under no parsinal obligation +to him, but down-hearted as ye are by nature, what wud ye have been had +ye niver coom in conthact with the leaven of St. Pathrick at all, sorr? +Oi ask ye that." + + * * * * * + +Late that night Bowser pushed his ledger aside with a yawn, and got +down from his high stool to close the store. As he counted the meagre +contents of the cash drawer, he reviewed the day, whose minutes had been +as monotonous in passing as the falling of the snowflakes outside. It +had left nothing behind it to distinguish it from a hundred other days. +The same old faces! The same kind of jokes! The same round of +commonplace duties! A spirit of unrest seized him, that made him chafe +against such dreary monotony. + +When he went to the door to put up the shutters, the beauty of the night +held him a moment, and he stood looking across the wide fields, lying +white in moonlight and snow. Far down the road a lamp gleamed from the +window of an upper room in the old miller's house, where anxious vigil +had been kept beside him for hours. The crisis was passed now. Only a +little while before, the doctor had stopped by to say that their old +friend would live. Down the track a gleaming switch-light marked the +place where a wreck had been narrowly averted that morning. + +"And no telling how many other misfortunes we've escaped to-day," +mused Bowser. "Maybe if a light could be swung out for each one, folks +would see that the dull gray days when nothing happens are the ones to +be most thankful for, after all." + + + + +Chapter VI + + +APRIL sunshine of mid-afternoon poured in through the open door of the +Cross-Roads. The usual group of loungers had gathered around the rusty +stove. There was no fire in it; the day was too warm for that, but force +of habit made them draw their chairs about it in a circle, as if this +common centre were the hub, from which radiated the spokes of all +neighbourly intercourse. + +The little schoolmistress was under discussion. Her short reign in +District No. 3 had furnished a topic of conversation as inexhaustible as +the weather, for her regime was attended by startling changes. Luckily +for her, the young ideas enjoyed being taught to shoot at wide variance +from the targets set up by parental practice and tradition, else the +tales told out of school might have aroused more adverse criticism than +they did. + +"You can't take much stock in her new-fangled notions," was the +unanimous opinion at the Cross-Roads. She had "put the cart before the +horse" when she laid the time-honoured alphabet on the shelf, and gave +the primer class a whole word at a mouthful, before it had cut a single +orthographic tooth on such primeval syllables as a-b ab. + +"Look at my Willie," exclaimed one of the district fathers. "Beating +around the bush with talk about a picture cow, and a real cow, and a +word cow, and not knowing whether B comes after W or X. At his age I +could say the alphabet forwards or backwards as fast as tongue could go +without a slip." + +"She's done _one_ sensible thing," admitted Cy Akers. "They tell me +she's put her foot down on the scholars playing April fool tricks this +year." + +"I don't see why," said Henry Bicking. "It has been one of the customs +in this district since the schoolhouse was built. What's the harm if the +children do take one day in the year for a little foolishness? Let them +have their fun, I say." + +"But they've carried it too far," was the answer. "It's scandalous they +should be allowed to abuse people's rights and feelings and property as +they have done the last few years. First of April doesn't justify such +cutting up any more than the first of August." + +"She's got Scripture on her side," said Squire Dobbs. "You know Solomon +says, 'As a mad man who casteth firebrands, arrows, and death, so is the +man that deceiveth his neighbour and saith, am I not in sport?'" + +"She can't stamp out such a deep-rooted custom in one day," protested +Bicking. + +"You can bet on the little school-ma'am every time," laughed Bowser. "My +daughter Milly says they didn't have regular lessons yesterday +afternoon. She had them put their books in their desks. + +"Said they'd been studying about wise men all their lives, now they'd +study about fools awhile; the fools of Proverbs and the fools of +history. + +"She read some stories, too, about a cruel disappointment and the +troubles brought about by some thoughtless jokes on the first of April. +Mighty interesting stories, Milly said. You could have heard a pin drop, +and some of the girls cried. Then she drew a picture on the blackboard +of a court jester, in cap and bells, and asked if they wouldn't like a +change this year. Instead of everybody acting the fool and doing silly +things they'd all be ashamed of if they'd only stop to think, wouldn't +they rather she'd appoint just one scholar to play the fool for all of +them, as the old kings used to do. + +"They agreed to that, quick enough, thinking what fun they'd have +teasing the one chosen to be it. Then she said she'd appoint the first +one this morning who showed himself most deserving of the office. Milly +says from the way she smiled when she said it, they're all sure she +means to choose the first one who plays an April Fool joke. She'd put it +so strong to 'em how silly it was, that there ain't a child in school +you could hire to run the risk of being appointed fool for the day. So I +think she's coming out ahead as usual." + +"After all," said Bud Hines, "there's some lessons to be got out of +those old tricks we used to play. For instance, the pocketbook tied to a +string. Seems to me that everything in life worth having has a string +tied to it, and just as I am about to pick it up, Fate snatches it out +of my hands." + +"Don't you believe it, Buddy," said Bowser, cheerfully; "you take notice +those pocketbooks on strings are always empty ones, and they don't +belong to us, so we have no business grabbing for them or feeling +disappointed because we can't get something for nothing." + +But Bud waved aside the interruption mechanically. + +"Then there's the _gifts_ with strings tied to 'em," he continued. "My +wife has a rich aunt who is always sending her presents, and writing, +'Understand this is for _you_, Louisy. You're too generous, and I don't +want anybody but your own deserving self to wear this.' Now out in the +country here, my wife doesn't have occasion to wear handsome clothes +like them once a year, while they'd be the very thing for Clara May, off +at Normal School. But not a feather or a ribbon can the child touch +because her great-aunt bought them expressly for her ma. Goodness knows +she'd have a thousand times more pleasure in seeing Clara May enjoy +them, than knowing they were lying away in bureau drawers doing nobody +any good. When she takes 'em out at house-cleaning times I say, 'Ma,' +says I, 'deliver me from gifts with strings tied to 'em. I'd rather have +a ten-cent bandanna, all mine, to have and to hold or to give away as +pleased me most, than the finest things your Aunt Honigford's money +could buy, if I had to account to her every time I turned around in +them.' + +"When I give anything I _give_ it, and don't expect to come back, spying +around ten years afterward to see if it's worn out, or cracked, or +faded, or broken. That's my doctrine." + + * * * * * + +Marion Holmes, driving along the country road in the old miller's +antiquated chaise, drew rein in front of a low picket gate, overhung by +mammoth snowball bushes. Down the path, between the rows of budding +lilacs and japonicas, came an old gentleman in a quaintly cut, +long-tailed coat. He was stepping along nimbly, although he leaned hard +on his gold-headed cane. + +"'A man he was to all the country dear,'" quoted Marion softly to +herself as the minister's benign face smiled a greeting through his big +square-bowed spectacles. "I know he must have been Goldsmith's friend, +and I wish I dared ask him how long he lived in the Deserted Village." +But all she called out to him as he stopped with a courtly bow, under +the snowball bushes, was a cheery good morning and an invitation to take +a seat beside her if he wanted to drive to the Cross-Roads store. + +"Thank you, Miss Polly," he answered, "that is my destination. I am on +my way there for a text." + +"For a what?" exclaimed Marion in surprise, turning the wheel for him to +step in beside her. + +"For a text for my Easter sermon," he explained as they drove on in the +warm April sunshine. "Ah, I see, Miss Polly, you have not discovered the +school of philosophers that centres around the Cross-Roads store. Well, +it's not to be wondered at; few people do. I spent a winter in Rome, +when I was younger, and one of my favourite walks was up on the Pincian +Hill. The band plays in the afternoons, you know, and tourists flock to +see the queen drive by. There is a charming view from the summit--the +dome of St. Peters against the blue Italian sky, the old yellow Tiber +crawling along under its bridges from ruin to ruin, and the immortal +city itself, climbing up its historic hills. And on the Pincio one meets +everybody,--soldiers and courtiers, flower girls and friars, monks in +robes of every order, and pilgrims from all parts of the world. + +"The first time I was on the hill, as I wandered among the shrubbery +and flowers, I noticed a row of moss-grown pedestals set along each side +of the drive for quite a distance. Each pedestal bore the weather-beaten +bust of some old sage or philosopher or hero. + +"They made no more impression on my mind then, than so many +fence-posts, but later I found a workman repairing the statuary one day. +He had put a new nose on the mutilated face of an old philosopher, and +that fresh white nasal appendage, standing out jauntily in the middle of +the ancient gray visage, was so ludicrous I could not help smiling +whenever I passed it. I began to feel acquainted with the old fellow, as +day after day that nose forced my attention. Sometimes, coming upon him +suddenly, the only familiar face in a city full of strangers, I felt +that he was an old friend to whom I should take off my hat. Then it +became so that I rarely passed him without recalling some of his wise +sayings that I had read at college. Many a time he and his row of +stony-eyed companions were an inspiration to me in that way. + +"It was so that I met these men at the Cross-Roads. They scarcely +claimed my attention at first. Then one day I heard one of them give +utterance to a time-worn truth in such an original way that I stopped to +talk to him. + +"Trite as it was, he had hewn it himself out of the actual experiences +of his own life. It was the result of his own keen observation of human +nature. Set as it was in his homely, uncouth dialect, it impressed me +with startling force. Then I listened to his companions, and found that +they, too, were sometimes worthy of pedestals. Unconsciously to +themselves they have often given me suggestions for my sermons. Ah, it's +a pity that the backwoods has no Pincio on which to give its +philosophers to posterity!" + + * * * * * + +Half an hour later as they drove homeward, Marion glanced at her +companion. "No text this time," she laughed, breaking the reverie into +which the old minister had fallen. "Your sages said nothing but 'good +morning, sir,' and there wasn't a single suggestion of Easter in the +whole store, except the packages of egg dyes, and some impossible little +chocolate rabbits. Oh, yes,--those two little boys playing on the +doorstep. Tommy Bowser had evidently taken time by the forelock and +sampled his father's dyes, for he had a whole hatful of coloured eggs, +and was teaching that little Perkins boy how to play 'bust.' He was an +apt scholar, for while I watched he won five of Tommy's eggs and never +cracked his own. You should have seen them." + +"Oh, I saw them," said the minister, with a smile. "It was those same +little lads who suggested the text for my Easter sermon." + +Marion gave a gasp of astonishment. "Would you mind telling me _how_?" +she exclaimed. + +"It came about very naturally. There they stood with their hands full +of the Easter eggs, with never a thought of what they symbolised--the +breaking shell--the rising of this little embryo earth-existence to the +free full-winged life of the Resurrection. They were too intent on their +little game, on their small winnings and losings, to have a thought for +higher things. As I watched them it occurred to me how typical it was of +all the children of men, and instantly that text from Luke flashed into +my mind: '_Their eyes were holden._' Do you remember? It was when the +two disciples went down to Emmaus. I often picture it," mused the old +man after a little pause. "The green of the olive groves, the red and +white of the blossoming almond-trees, the late afternoon sunshine, and +those two discouraged fishermen trudging along the dusty road. They were +turning away from a lost cause and a buried hope, too absorbed in their +overwhelming grief to see that it was the risen Lord Himself who walked +beside them. Not till the end of their journey did they know why it was +that their hearts had burned within them as He talked with them by the +way. Their eyes were holden. + +"How typical that is, too, Miss Polly. Sometimes we go on to the end of +life, missing the comfort and help that we might have had at every step, +because we look up at our Lord only through eyes of clay, and hold +communion with him as with a stranger. Yes, I shall certainly make that +the subject of my Easter sermon, Miss Polly. Thank you for helping me +discover it." + +That next Sunday as Marion sat in church beside the old miller, her +gaze wandered from the lilies in the chancel to the faces of the waiting +congregation. Bud Hines was there and Bowser, Cy Akers, and even +Perkins's oldest, whose game of "bust" had suggested the helpful sermon +of the morning. Marion studied the serious, weather-beaten faces with +new interest. "It is not in spiritual things alone that our eyes are +holden," she said to herself. "I have been looking at only the +commonplace exterior of these people. It takes a man like the old +minister to recognise unpedestalled virtues and to set them on the +Pincio they deserve." + + + + +Chapter VII + + +THE old saying that "there are always two sides to a story" has worn a +deep rut into the popular mind. It has been handed down to us so often +with an air of virtuous rebuke, that we have come to regard the +individual who insists on his two-sided theory as the acme of all that +is broad-minded and tolerant. But in point of fact, if two sides is all +he sees, he is only one remove from the bigot whose mental myopia limits +him to a single narrow facet. + +Even such a thing as a May-day picnic is polyhedral. The little +schoolmistress, who was the chief promoter of the one at the +Cross-Roads, would have called it a parallelopiped, if she had been +there that morning, to have seen the different expressions portrayed on +the faces of six people who were interested in it. + +The business side of the picnic appealed to Bowser. As he bustled +around, dusting off cases of tinned goods that he had long doubted his +ability to dispose of, and climbed to the top shelves for last summer's +shop-worn cans of sardines and salmon, as he sliced cheese, and counted +out the little leathery lemons that time had shrivelled, his smile was +as bland as the May morning itself. One could plainly see that he +regarded this picnic as a special dispensation of Providence, to help +him work off his old stock. + +There were no loungers in the store. Field and garden claimed even the +idlest, and only the old miller, who had long ago earned his holiday, +sat in the sun on the porch outside, with his chair tipped back against +the wall. At intervals a warm breath from the apple orchard, in bloom +across the road, touched his white hair in passing, and stirred his +memory until he sat oblivious of his surroundings. He was wholly +unmindful of the gala stir about him, save when Polly recalled his +wandering thoughts. She, keenly alive to every sensation of the present, +stood beside him with her hand on his shoulder, while she waited for her +picnic basket to be filled. + +"Isn't it an ideal May-day, grandfather?" she exclaimed. "It gives me a +real Englishy feeling of skylarks and cuckoos and cowslips, of primroses +and village greens. I think it is dear of the little school-ma'am to +resurrect the old May-pole dance, and give the children some idea of +'Merrie old England' other than the dates and dust of its ancient +history." Unconsciously beating time with light fingertips on the old +man's shoulder, she began to hum half under her breath: + + "'And then my heart with rapture thrills, + And dances with the daffodills-o-dills-- + And dances with the daffodils!'" + +Suddenly she broke off with a girlish giggle of enjoyment. "Listen, +grandfather. There's little Cora Bowser up-stairs, rehearsing her speech +while she dresses. Isn't it delicious to be behind the scenes!" + +Through an open bedroom window, a high-pitched, affected little voice +came shrilly down to them: "'If you're _wa_-king, call me _early_! Call +me _early_, mother dear!'" + +"Now, Cora," interrupted the maternal critic, "you went and forgot to +make your bow; and how many times have I told you about turning your +toes out? You'll have to begin all over again." Then followed several +beginnings, each brought to a stop by other impatient criticisms. There +were so many pauses in the rehearsal and reminders to pay attention to +manners, commas, and refractory ribbons, that when Cora was finally +allowed to proceed, it was in a tearful voice punctuated with sobs, that +she declared, "'To-morrow will be the ha-happiest day of all the g-glad +new year.'" + +"'Uneasy lies the head that wears the crown,'" quoted the old miller +with a smile, as Mrs. Bowser's parting injunction reached their ears. + +"Now, Cora, for goodness' sake, don't you forget for one minute this +whole enduring day, that them daisies on your crown came off your +teacher's best hat, and have to be put back on. If you move around much +to the picnic you might lose some of 'em. Best keep pretty quiet anyway, +or your sash will come unpinned, and the crimp will all get out of your +hair. Wish I'd thought to iron them plaits before I unbraided 'em. +They'd have been lots frizzier." + +It was a very stiffly starched, precise little Queen o' the May who +came down the steep back stairs into the store. She stepped like a +careful peacock, fearing to ruffle a feather of her unrivalled +splendour. Her straight flaxen hair, usually as limp as a string, stood +out in much crimped profusion from under her gilt paper crown. Polly +could not decide whether the pucker on the little forehead came from +anxiety concerning the borrowed daisies which starred her crown, or the +fact that it was too tightly skewered to the royal head by a relentless +hat-pin. + +One of the picnic wagons was waiting at the door, and as Bowser lifted +her in among her envious and admiring schoolmates, Polly saw with +sympathetic insight which of its many sides the picnic parallelopiped +was presenting to the child in that proud moment. The feeling of supreme +importance that it bestowed is a joy not permitted to all, and rarely +does it come to any mortal more than once in a lifetime. + +But for every Haman, no matter how resplendent, sits an unmoved +Mordecai in the king's gate. So to this little Sheba of the Cross-Roads +there was one who bowed not down. Perkins's oldest, on the front seat +beside the driver, had no eyes for her. He scarcely looked in her +direction. His glances were all centred on the baskets which Bowser was +packing in around his feet. He smelled pickles and pies and ham +sandwiches. He knew of sundry tarts and dressed eggs in his own basket, +and wild rumours had reached his ears that Miss Polly intended to stand +treat to the extent of Bowser's entire stock of bananas and candy. Aside +from hopes of a surreptitious swim in the creek and a wild day in the +woods, his ideas of a picnic were purely prandial. + +Across the road, Miss Anastasia Dill, peeping through the blinds, +watched the wagon rattle off with its merry load. Long after the +laughing voices had passed beyond her hearing, she still stood there, +one slender hand holding back the curtain, and the other shading her +faded blue eyes, as she gazed absently after them. It was the sunshine +of another May-day she was looking into. Presently with a little start +she realised that she was not out in the cool green woods with a +May-basket in her hands, brimming over with anemones. She was all alone +in her stuffy little parlour, with its hair-cloth furniture and +depressing crayon portraits. And the canary was chirping loudly for +water, and the breakfast cups were still unwashed. But for once, +heedless of her duties, even unmindful of the fact that she had left the +shutters open, and the hot sun was streaming across her cherished store +carpet, she drew a chair up to the marble-topped centre table, and +deliberately sat down. There was a pile of old-fashioned daguerreotypes +in front of her. She opened them one by one, and then took up another +that lay by itself on a blue beaded mat. So the face it dimly pictured +held a sacred place, apart, in her memory. When her eyes had grown misty +with long gazing, she lifted a book from its place beside the family +Bible. It was bound in red leather, and it had a quaint wreath of +embossed roses around the gilt letters of its title, "The Album of the +Heart." It was an autograph album, and as she slowly turned the pages +she remembered that every hand that had traced a sentiment or a +signature therein had once upon a time gathered anemones with her in +some one of those other May-days. + +Then she turned through the pages again. Of all that circle of early +friends not one was left to give her a hand-clasp. She had friends in +plenty, but the old ones--the early ones--the roots of whose growth had +twined with hers in the intimacy known only to childhood, were all gone. +The May-day picnic brought only a throb of pain to gentle Miss +Anastasia, for to her it was but the lonely echo of a "voice that was +still." + +Bud Hines watched the wagon drive away with far different emotions. He +had happened to come into the store for a new hoe, as the gay party +started. "It's all foolishness," he grumbled to the miller, "to lose a +whole day's schooling while they go gallivanting around the country for +nothing. They'll ride ten miles to find a place to eat their dinner in, +and pass by twenty on the way nicer than the one they finally pick out. +They'd better be doing sums in school, or grubbing weeds out of the +garden, instead of playing 'frog in the meadow' around a fool British +May-pole." + +He looked around inquiringly as if he expected his practical listener +to agree with him. But all the sympathy he got from the old miller was +one of the innumerable proverbs he seemed to keep continually on tap. +"'All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy,' Bud. Life is apt to be +little but sums and grubbing for the youngsters by and by, so let them +make the most of their May-days now." + + * * * * * + +The sequels of picnics are also polyhedral. Miss Anastasia, lingering +at her front gate in the early twilight, that she might enjoy to the +last moment the orchard odours that filled all the balcony outdoors, +heard the rattle of returning wheels. She had had a pleasant day, +despite the tearful retrospection of the morning, for she had attended +the great social function of the neighbourhood, the monthly missionary +tea. It had brought immeasurable cheer, and now she was returning with a +comfortable conviction that she was to be envied far above any of her +neighbours. The consciousness of having on her best gown, of being the +mistress of the trim little home to which she was going, of freedom from +a hundred harassing cares that she had heard discussed that afternoon, +all combined to make her supremely contented with her lot. + +"Poor children," she sighed, as the tired, dirty little picnickers were +lifted from the wagon across the road. "They look as if the game hadn't +been worth the candle. I'm glad that I've outgrown such things." + +Perkins's oldest, having soaked long in the cold creek, and sampled +every dinner-basket with reckless abandon till he could sample no more, +sat doubled up in the straw of the wagon-bed. He was white about the +mouth, and had he been called upon to debate the time-worn question, +"Resolved, that there is more pleasure in pursuit than in possession," +the tarts and sandwiches of that day's picnic would have furnished +several dozen indisputable arguments for the affirmative. + +The dishevelled little queen sat beside him, tired out by her day's wild +frolic, with starch and frizzes all gone. + +As she was lifted over the wheel, and put down on the doorstep, a limp +little bunch of woe, Miss Anastasia heard her bewailing her fate. She +had lost the stars from her crown, the borrowed daisies that must be +reckoned for on the morrow. The amused listener smiled to herself under +cover of the twilight, as she heard Bowser's awkward attempts at +consolation, for all the comfort that he could muster was an old saw +learned from the miller: "Never mind, Cora, pa's mighty sorry for his +little girl. But you know: + + "'When a man buys meat he buys bone, + And when he buys land he buys stone. + You must take the bad with the good.'" + + + + +Chapter VIII + + +THERE is something in the air of June that stirs even insentient things +with a longing to blossom. Staid old universities blaze out with the +gala colours of commencement week, when the month of roses is ushered +in, and on every college campus the social life of the student year +comes to flower in the crowning exercises of class-day. + +One wonders sometimes if the roots, burrowing underground in order to +fill the bush overhead with myriads of roses, have any share in the +thrill of success at having produced such a wealth of sweetness and +beauty. But there need be no surmise about college florescence. +Faculties may beam with complacency on their yearly cluster of +full-blown graduates, the very walls of the gray old universities may +thrill as they echo the applause of admiring audiences, but the greatest +pride is not felt within the college town itself where the student life +centres. It is back in the roots that have made college life possible. +Back in some parental existence that daily sinks itself farther into the +commonplace in order that some son or daughter may blossom into the +culture of arts and belles-lettres. The Jacqueminot that flaunts its +glory over the garden wall may not sweeten life for the fibres that lift +it, but the valedictorian who flaunts his diploma and degree in the +classic halls of some sea-board college may be glorifying the air of +some little backwoods village a thousand miles inland. Even the +Cross-Roads are bound with a network of such far-reaching roots to the +commencements of Harvard and Yale. + +It was Cy Akers's boy who came home this June, a little lifted up, +perhaps, by the honours he had won; thoroughly impressed with the +magnitude of his own knowledge and the meagreness of other peoples', but +honestly glad at first to get back to the old home and neighbours. + +The family pride in him was colossal. Old Cy encouraged his visits to +the Cross-Roads store, inventing excuses for going which he considered +the acme of subtle diplomacy. But his motives were as transparent as a +child's. Illiterate himself, he wanted his neighbours to see what +college had done for his boy in the way of raising him head and +shoulders above them all. And the boy was good-naturedly compliant. He +was as willing to show off mentally as he had been to lend a hand in the +wheat harvest, and demonstrate what football training had done for him +in the way of developing muscle. + +Like Perkins's oldest, his education had begun with the primer of the +Cross-Roads. He could remember the time when he, too, had ignorantly +believed this to be the only store in the universe, and wondered if +there were enough people living to consume all its contents. Now he +smiled to himself when he looked around the stuffy little room and saw +the same old butter firkins crowding the--apparently--same old calico +and crockery, and looked up at the half-dozen hams still swinging +sociably from the low rafters. + +Time had been, too, when he thought the men who gossiped around its +rusty stove on Saturday afternoons knew everything. Like Perkins's +oldest, he had unquestioningly formulated the creed of his boyhood from +their conversations, and he smiled again when he recalled how he had +been warped in those early days by their prejudices and short-sighted +opinions. + +The smile extended outwardly when he walked into their midst to find +them repeating the same old saws about the weather, and the way the +country was going to the dogs. Yet in his salad days these time-honoured +prognostications had seemed to him the wisdom of seers and sages. + +Probably it was the thought that he had travelled far beyond the +narrow confines of the Cross-Roads that gave his conversation a +patronising tone. But the Cross-Roads refused to be patronised. He +learned that on the day of his arrival. It was the first lesson of a +valuable post-graduate course. That a man away from home may be Mister +Robert Harrison Hamilton Akers, with all the A. B.'s and LL. D.'s after +his name that an educational institution can bestow; but as soon as he +sets foot again on his native heath, where he has gone through the +vicissitudes of boyhood, he is shorn of titles and degrees as completely +as Samson was shorn of his locks, and his strength straightway falls +from him. He is nobody but Bobby Akers, and everybody remembers when he +robbed birds' nests, and stole grapes, and played hooky, and was a +little freckle-faced, snub-nosed neighbourhood terror. A man cannot +maintain his importance long in the face of such reminiscences. No +amount of university culture is going to lay the ghost of youthful +indiscretions, and he might as well put his patronising proclivities in +his pocket. They will not be tolerated by those who have patted him on +the head when he wore roundabouts. + + * * * * * + +It was Saturday afternoon, but it was also the and of the wheat-harvest, +and the men were afield who usually gathered on the Cross-Roads porch to +round up the week over their pipes and plugs of chewing tobacco. Only +three chairs were tilted back against the wall, and on these, with their +heels caught over the front rungs, sat Bowser, the old miller, and +Robert Akers. + +The whirr of reaping machines came faintly up from the fields and near +by, where several acres of waving yellow grain still stood uncut, a +bob-white whistled cheerily. No one was talking. "Knee-deep in June" +would have voiced the thoughts of the trio, for they were "Jes' a sort +o' lazein' there," with their hats pulled over their eyes, enjoying to +the utmost the perfect afternoon. Every breeze was redolent with red +clover and wild honeysuckle, and vibrant with soothing country sounds. + +"Who is that coming up the road?" asked the miller, as a team and wagon +appeared over the brow of the hill. + +"They wabble along like Duncan Smith's horses," answered the +storekeeper, squinting his eyes for a better view. "Yes, that's who it +is. That's Dunk on the top of the load. Moving again, bless Pete!" + +As the wagon creaked slowly nearer, a feather bed came into view, +surmounting a motley collection of household goods, and perched upon it, +high above the jangle of her jolting tins and crockery, sat Mrs. Duncan +Smith. A clock and a looking-glass lay in her lap, and, like a wise +virgin, in her hands she carefully bore the family lamp. From frequent +and anxious turnings of her black sunbonnet, it was evident that she was +keeping her weather eye upon the chicken-coop, which was bound to the +tail-board of the wagon by an ancient clothes-line. + +A flop-eared dog trotted along under the wagon. Squeezed in between a +bureau and the feather bed, two shock-headed children sat on a flour +barrel, clutching each other at every lurch of the crowded van to keep +from losing their balance. + +"Howdy, Dunk!" called the storekeeper, as the dusty pilgrims halted in +front of the porch. "Where are you bound now?" + +"Over to the old Neal place," answered the man, handing the reins to +his wife, and climbing stiffly down over the wheel. Going around to the +back of the wagon, he unstrapped a kerosene can which swung from the +pole underneath. + +"Gimme a gallon of coal-ile, Jim," he said. "I don't want to be left in +the dark the first night, anyway. It takes awhile to git your bearings +in a strange place, and it's mighty confusing to butt agin a half-open +door where you've always been used to a plain wall, and it hurts like +fire to bark your shins on a rocking-chair when you're steering straight +for bed, and hain't no idee it's in the road. This time it'll be a +little more so than usual," he added, handing over the can. "The house +backs up agin a graveyard, you know. Sort o' spooky till you git used to +it." + +"What on earth did you move there for?" asked Bowser. "They say the +place is ha'nted." + +"To my mind the dead make better neighbours than the living," came the +tart reply from the depths of the black sunbonnet. "At any rate, they +mind their own business." + +"Oh, come now, Mrs. Smith," began Bowser, good-naturedly. "Maybe you've +been unfortunate in your choice of neighbours." + +"I've had a dozen different kinds," came the emphatic answer. "This'll +make the twelfth move in eight years, so you can't say that I'm speaking +from hearsay." + +"Twelve moves in eight years!" exclaimed Bowser, as the wagon went +lurching and creaking on through the dust. "There's gipsy blood in that +Dunk Smith, sure as you live. Seems like that family can't be satisfied +anywhere; always thinking they can better themselves by changing, and +always getting out of the frying-pan into the fire. There wa'n't no well +in the place where they settled when they was first married, and they +had to carry water from a spring. The muscle put into packing that water +up-hill those six months would have dug a cistern, but they were too +short-sighted to see that. They jest played Jack and Jill as long as +they could stand it, and then moved to a place where there was a cistern +already dug. But there wa'n't any fruit on that place. If they'd have +set out trees right away they'd have been eating from orchards of their +own planting by this time. But they thought it was easier to move to +where one was already set out. + +"Then when they got to a place where they had both fruit and water, it +was low, and needed draining. The water settled around the house, and +they all had typhoid that summer. Oh, they've spent enough energy +packing up and moving on and settling down again in new places to have +fixed the first one up to a queen's taste. They seem to be running a +perpetual Home-seeker's Excursion. Well, such a life might suit some +people, but it would never do for me." + +"But such a life has some things in its favour," put in Rob Akers, +always ready to debate any question that offered, for the mere pleasure +of arguing. "It keeps a man from getting into a rut, and develops his +ability to adapt himself to any circumstance. A man who hangs his hat on +the same peg for fifty or sixty years gets to be so dependent on that +peg that he would be uncomfortable if it were suddenly denied him. Now +Dunk Smith can never become such a slave to habit. Then, too, moving +tends to leave a man more unhampered. He gradually gets rid of +everything in his possessions but the essentials. He hasn't a garret +full of old claptraps, as most people have who never move from under +their ancestral roof-trees. You saw for yourself, one wagon holds all +his household goods and gods. + +"It is the same way with a man mentally. If he stays in the spot where +his forefathers lived, in the same social conditions, he is apt to let +his upper story accumulate a lot of worn-out theories that he has no +earthly use for; all their old dusty dogmas and cob-webbed beliefs. He +will hang on to them as on to the old furniture, because he happened to +inherit them. If he would move once in awhile, keep up with the times, +you know, he'd get rid of a lot of rubbish. It is especially true in +regard to his religion. All those old superstitions, for instance, about +Jonah and the whale, and Noah's ark and the like. + +"He hangs on to them, not because he cares for them himself, but +because they were his father's beliefs, and he doesn't like to throw out +anything the old man had a sentiment for. Now, as I say, if he'd move +once in awhile--do some scientific thinking and investigating on his own +account--he'd throw out over half of what he holds on to now. He'd cut +the most of Genesis out of his Bible, and let Job slide as a myth. One +of the finest bits of literature, to be sure, that can be found +anywhere, but undoubtedly fiction. The sooner a man moves on +untrammelled, I say, by those old heirlooms of opinion, the better +progress he will make." + +"Toward what?" asked the old miller, laconically. "Dunk's moving next +door to the graveyard." There was a twinkle in his eye, and the young +collegian, who flattered himself that his speech was making a profound +impression, paused with the embarrassing consciousness that he was +affording amusement instead. + +"The last time I went East to visit my grandson," said the old man, +meditatively, "his wife showed me a mahogany table in her dining-room +which she said was making all her friends break the tenth commandment. +It was a handsome piece of furniture, worth a small fortune. It was +polished till you could see your face in it, and I thought it was the +newest thing out in tables till she told me she'd rummaged it out of her +great-grandmother's attic, and had it 'done over' as she called it. It +had been hidden away in the dust and cobwebs for a lifetime because it +had been pronounced too time-worn and battered and scratched for longer +use; yet there it stood, just as beautiful and useful for this +generation to spread its feasts on as it was the day it was made. Every +whit as substantial, and aside from any question of sentiment, a +thousand times more valuable than the one that Dunk Smith drove past +with just now. His table is modern, to be sure, but it's of cheap pine, +too rickety to serve even Dunk through his one short lifetime of +movings. + +"I heard several lectures while I was there, too. One was by a man who +has made a name for himself on both sides of the water as a scientist +and a liberal thinker. He took up Genesis, all scratched and battered as +it is by critics, and showed us how it had been misunderstood and +misconstrued. And by the time he'd polished up the meaning here and +there, so that we could see the original grain of the wood, what it was +first intended to be, it seemed like a new book, and fitted in with all +the modern scientific ideas as if it had been made only yesterday. + +"There it stood, like the mahogany table that had been restored after +people thought they had stowed it away in the attic to stay. Just as +firm on its legs, and as substantial for this generation to put its +faith on, as it was in the days of the Judges. + +"Take an old man's word for it, Robert, who has lived a long time and +seen many a restless Dunk Smith fling out his father's old heirlooms, in +his fever to move on to something new. Solid mahogany, with all its dust +and scratches, is better than the modern flimsy stuff, either in faith +or furniture, that he is apt to pick up in its stead." + + + + +Chapter IX + + +THE booming of distant cannon had been sounding at intervals since +midnight, ushering in the Fourth, but Bowser, although disturbed in his +slumbers by each reverberation, did not rouse himself to any personal +demonstration until dawn. Then his patriotism manifested itself in a +noisy tattoo with a hammer, as he made the front of his store gay with +bunting, and nailed the word _Welcome_ over the door, in gigantic +letters of red, white, and blue. + +When he was done, each window wore a bristling eyebrow of stiff little +flags, that gave the store an air of mild surprise. The effect was +wholly unintentional on Bowser's part, and, unconscious of the likeness +to human eyes he had given his windows, he gazed at his work with deep +satisfaction. + +But the expression was an appropriate one, considering all the +astonishing sights the old store was to look upon that day. In the +woodland across the railroad track, just beyond Miss Anastasia Dill's +little cottage, preparations were already begun for a grand barbecue. +Even before Bowser had finished tacking up his flags, the digging of the +trench had begun across the way, and the erection of a platform for the +speakers. In one corner of the woodland a primitive merry-go-round had +already been set in place, and the first passenger train from the city +deposited an enterprising hoky-poky man, a peanut and pop-corn vender, +and a lank black-bearded man with an outfit for taking tin-types. + +By ten o'clock the wood-lot fence was a hitching-place for all varieties +of vehicles, from narrow sulkies to cavernous old carryalls. A haze of +thick yellow dust, extending along the pike as far as one could see, was +a constant accompaniment of fresh arrivals. Each newcomer emerged from +it, his Sunday hat and coat powdered as thickly as the wayside weeds. +Smart side-bar buggies dashed up, their shining new tops completely +covered with it. There was a great shaking of skirts as the girls +alighted, and a great flapping of highly perfumed handkerchiefs, as the +young country beaux made themselves presentable, before joining the +other picnickers. + +Slow-going farm wagons rattled along, the occupants of their jolting +chairs often representing several generations, for the drawing power of +a Fourth of July barbecue reaches from the cradle to the grave. + +The unusual sight of such a crowd, scattered through the grove in gala +attire, was enough of itself to produce a holiday thrill, and added to +this was the smell of gunpowder from occasional outbursts of +firecrackers, the chant of the hoky-poky man, and the hysterical +laughter of the couples patronising the merry-go-round, as they clung +giddily to the necks of the wooden ostriches and camels in the first +delights of its dizzy whirl. + +"Good as a circus, isn't it?" exclaimed Robert Akers, pausing beside +the bench where the old miller and the minister sat watching the gay +scene. "I'm having my fun walking around and taking notes. It is amusing +to see how differently the affair impresses people, and what seems to +make each fellow happiest. Little Tommy Bowser, for instance, is in the +seventh heaven following the hoky-poky man. He gets all that people +leave in their dishes for helping to drum up a crowd of patrons. +Perkins's boy sticks by the merry-go-round. He has spent every cent of +his own money, and had so many treats that he's spun around till he's so +dizzy he's cross-eyed. One old fellow I saw back there is simply sitting +on the fence grinning at everything that goes by. He's getting his +enjoyment in job lots." + +"Sit down," said the minister, sociably moving along the bench to make +room beside him for the young man. "Mr. Holmes and I are finding our +amusement in the same way, only we are not going around in search of it. +We are catching at it as it drifts by." + +"What has happened to Mrs. Teddy Mahone?" exclaimed Rob, as a red-faced +woman with an important self-conscious air hurried by. "She seems +ubiquitous this morning, and as proud as a peacock over something. One +would think she were the mistress of ceremonies from her manner." + +"Or hostess, rather," said the miller. "She met me down by the fence on +my arrival, and held out her hand as graciously as if she were a duchess +in her own drawing-room, and I an invited guest. + +"'Gude marnin' to yez, Mr. Holmes,' she said. 'I hope ye'll be afther +enjyin' yerself the day. If anything intherferes wid yer comfort ye've +but to shpake to Mahone about it. He's been appinted _constable_ for the +occasion, ye understhand. If I do say it as oughtn't, he can carry the +title wid the best av 'im; him six fut two in his stockin's, an' the +shtar shinin' on his wes'cut loike he'd been barn to the job.' + +"Then she turned to greet some strangers from Morristown, and I heard +her introducing herself as Mrs. _Constable_ Mahone, and repeating the +same instructions she had given me, to report to her husband, in case +everything was not to their liking." + +Both listeners laughed at the miller's imitation of her brogue, and the +minister quoted, with an amused smile: + + "'For never title yet so mean could prove, + But there was eke a mind, which did that title love.' + +It is a pity we cannot dress more of them in 'a little brief +authority.' It seems to be a means of grace to a certain class of +Hibernians. It has Americanised the Mahones, for instance. You'll find +no patriots on the ground to-day more enthusiastic than Mr. and Mrs. +Constable Mahone. Fourth of July will be an honoured feast-day +henceforth in their calendar. It is often surprising how quickly a +policeman's buttons and billy will make a good citizen out of the +wildest bog-trotter that ever brandished a shillalah." + + * * * * * + +Later, in subsequent wanderings around the grounds, the young collegian +spied the little schoolmistress helping to keep guard over the +cake-table. He immediately crossed over and joined her. She was looking +unusually pretty, and there was an amused gleam in her eyes as she +watched the crowds, which made him feel that she was viewing the scene +from his standpoint; that he had found a kindred spirit. + +"What incentive to patriotism do you see in all this, Miss Helen?" he +asked, when he had induced her to turn over her guardianship of the +cake-table to some one else, and join him in his tour among the +boisterous picnickers. + +"None at all--yet," she answered. "I suppose that will come by and by +with the songs and speeches. But all this foolishness seems a legitimate +part of the celebration to me. You remember Lowell says, 'If I put on +the cap and bells, and made myself one of the court fools of King Demos, +it was less to make his Majesty laugh than to win a passage to his royal +ears for certain serious things which I had deeply at heart.' It takes a +barbecue and its attendant attractions to draw a crowd like this. See +what a hotch-potch it is of all nationalities. Now that Schneidmacher +family never would have driven ten miles in this heat and dust simply to +hear the band play 'Hail, Columbia,' and Judge Jackson make one of his +spread-eagle speeches on the Duty of the American Citizen. Neither would +the O'Gradys or any of the others who represent the foreign element in +the neighbourhood. Even Young America himself, the type we see here, is +more willing to come and bring his best girl on account of the +diversions offered." + +"Well, that may be so," was the reluctant assent, "but if this is a +sample of the Fourth of July observances all over the country I can't +help feeling sorry for Uncle Sam. Patriotism has sadly degenerated from +the pace that Patrick Henry set for it." + +"The old miller says not," answered the little schoolmistress. "I made +that same complaint last Washington's Birthday, when I was trying to +work my school up to proper enthusiasm for the occasion. He recalled the +drouth of the summer before when nearly every well and creek and pond in +the township went dry. Cattle died of thirst, gardens dried up like +brick-kilns, and people around here were almost justified in thinking +that the universe would soon be entirely devoid of water. The skies were +like brass, and there was no indication of rain for weeks. But one day +there was a terrific earthquake shock. It started all the old springs, +and opened new ones all over this part of the country, and the water +gushed out of the earth where it had been pent up all the time, only +waiting for some such touch to call it forth. 'And you're afraid that +patriotism is going dry in this generation,' he said to me. 'But it only +takes some shock like the sinking of the _Maine_, or some sudden menace +to the public safety, to start a spring that will gush from Plymouth +Rock to the Golden Gate. There is a deep underground vein in the +American heart that no drouth can ever dry. Maybe it does not come to +the surface often, but it can always be depended on in time of need.'" + +The speakers for the day began to arrive, and Rob, seeing the crowds +gravitating toward the grand stand, took the little schoolmistress to +the bench where the miller had stationed himself. + +"Watch that old Scotchman just in front of us," whispered the girl, +"Mr. Sandy McPherson. Last Thanksgiving there was a union service in the +schoolhouse. After the sermon 'America' was sung, and that old heathen +stood up and roared out through it all, at the top of his voice, every +word of 'God Save the Queen!' Wasn't that flaunting the thistle in our +faces with a vengeance? I am sure that he will repeat the performance +to-day. Think of the dogged persistence that refuses to succumb to the +fact that we have thrown off the British yoke! The very day we are +celebrating that event, he'll dare to mix up our national hymn with 'God +Save the King.'" + +It was as she had predicted. As the band started with a great clash of +brazen instruments, and the whole company rose to the notes of +"America," Sandy McPherson's big voice, with its broad Scotch burr, +rolled out like a bass drum: + + "'Thy choicest gifts in store, + On _him_ be pleased to pour. + Long may _he_ reign.'" + +It drowned out every voice around him. "He ought to be choked," +exclaimed Rob, in righteous indignation, as they resumed their seats. +"To-day of all days! The old Tory has been living in this country for +forty-five years, and a good living he's gotten out of it, too, for +himself and family. Nobody cares what he sings on his own premises, but +he might have the decency to keep his mouth shut on occasions of this +kind, if he can't join with us." + +There was a gleam of laughter in the little schoolmistress's eyes as +she replied: "If the truth were known I have no doubt but that this +Fourth of July celebration is very like the pie in Mother Goose's song +of sixpence, when her four and twenty blackbirds were baked in a pie. If +this pie could be opened, and the birds begin to sing according to their +sentiments, there would be a wonderful diversity of tunes. One would be +twittering the 'Marseillaise,' and another 'Die Wacht am Rhein,' and +another echoing old Sandy's tune. America was in too big a hurry to +serve her national pie, I am afraid. Consequently she put it in half +prepared, and turned it out half baked. The blackbirds should have had +their voices tuned to the same key before they were allowed to become +vital ingredients of such an important dish." + +"In other words," laughed Rob, "you'd reconstruct the enfranchisement +laws. Make the term of probationary citizenship so long that the +blackbird would have time to change his vocal chords, or even the +leopard his anarchistic spots, before he would be considered fit to be +incorporated in the national dish. By the way, Miss Helen, have you +heard Mrs. Mahone's allegory of the United Pudding bag? You and she +ought to collaborate. Get the storekeeper to repeat it to you sometime." + +"You needn't laugh," responded the little schoolmistress, a trifle +tartly. "You know yourself that scores of emigrants are given the ballot +before they can distinguish 'Yankee Doodle' from 'Dixie,' and that is +only typical of their ignorance in all matters regarding governmental +affairs. Too many people's idea of good citizenship is like the man's +'who kept his private pan just where 'twould catch most public +drippings.' There is another mistaken idea loose in the land," she +continued, after a moment. "That is, that a great hero must be a man who +has a reputation as a great soldier. I wish I had the rewriting of all +the school histories. They are better now than when I studied them, but +there is still vast room for improvement. I had to learn page after page +of wars. Really, war and history were synonyms then as it was taught in +the schools. Every chapter was gory, and we were required to memorise +the numbers killed, wounded, and captured in every battle, from the +French and Indian massacres, down to the last cannon-shot of the +sixties. That is all right for government records and reference +libraries, but when we give a text-book to the rising generation, the +accounts of battles and the glorifying thereof would be better relegated +to the foot-notes. It is loyal statesmanship that ought to be exalted in +our school histories. We ought to make our heroes out of the legislators +who cannot be bribed and public men who cannot be bought, and the honest +private citizen who _lives_ for his country instead of dying for it." + +The old miller beside her applauded softly, leaning over to say, as the +overture by the band came to a close with a grand clash, "If ever the +blackbirds are tuned to one key, Miss Helen, America will know whom to +thank. Not the legislators, but the patriotic little schoolma'ams all +over their land who are serving their country in a way her greatest +generals cannot do." + + * * * * * + +All day the Cross-Roads store raised its bristling eyebrows of little +flags, till the celebration came to a close. Savoury whiffs of the +barbecued meats floated across to it, vigorous hand-clapping and hearty +cheers rang out to it between the impassioned words of excited orators. +Later there were the fireworks, and more rag-time music by the band, and +renewed callings of the hoky-poky man. But before the moon came up there +was a great backing of teams and scraping of turning wheels, and a +gathering together of picnic-baskets and stray children. + +"Well, it's over for another year," said Bowser, welcoming the old +miller, who had crossed the road and taken a chair on the porch to wait +until the crowds were out of the way. + +"Those were fine speeches we had this afternoon, but seemed to me as if +they were plumb wasted on the majority of that crowd. They applauded +them while they were going off, same as they did the rockets, but they +forget in the next breath." As Bowser spoke, a rocket whizzed up through +the tree tops, and the old miller, looking up to watch the shining trail +fade out, saw that the sky was full of stars. + +"That's the good of those speeches, Bowser," he said. "'_To leave a +wake, men's hearts and faces skyward turning._' I hadn't noticed that +the stars were out till that rocket made me look up. The speeches may be +forgotten, but they will leave a memory in their wake that give men an +uplook anyhow." + + + + +Chapter X + + +"GUESS who's come to board at the Widder Powers's for the month of +August?" It was Bowser who asked the question, and who immediately +answered it himself, as every man on the porch looked up expectantly. + +"Nobody more nor less than a _multimillionaire_! The big boot and shoe +man, William A. Maxwell. Mrs. Powers bought a bill of goods this morning +as long as your arm. It's a windfall for _her_. He offered to pay +regular summer-resort-hotel prices, because she's living on the old farm +where he was born and raised, and he fancied getting back to it for a +spell." + +"Family coming with him?" queried Cy Akers, after a moment's meditation +over the surprising fact that a millionaire with the world before him +should elect such a place as the Cross-Roads in which to spend his +vacation. + +"No, you can bet your bottom dollar they're not. And they're all abroad +this summer or _he'd_ never got here. They'd had him dragged off to some +fashionable watering-place with them. But when the cat's away the +mice'll play, you know. Mrs. Powers says it is his first visit here +since his mother's funeral twenty years ago, and he seems as tickled as +a boy to get back. + +"Yesterday evening he followed the man all around the place while she +was getting supper. She left him setting up in the parlour, but when she +went in to ask him out to the table, he was nowhere to be seen. Pretty +soon he came walking around the corner of the house with a pail of milk +in each hand, sloshing it all over his store clothes. He'd done the +milking himself, and seemed mightily set up over it." + +"Lawzee! Billy Maxwell! Don't I remember him?" exclaimed Bud Hines. +"Seems like 'twas only yesterday we used to sit on the same bench at +school doin' our sums out of the same old book. The year old man Prosser +taught, we got into so much devilment that it got to be a regular thing +for him to say, regular as clock-work, almost, 'I'll whip Bud Hines and +Billy Maxwell after the first arithmetic class this morning.' I don't +s'pose he ever thinks of those old times since he's got to be one of the +Four Hundred. Somehow I can hardly sense it, his bein' so rich. He never +seemed any smarter than the rest of us. That's the way of the world, +though, seesaw, one up and the other down. Of course it's my luck to be +the one that's down. Luck always was against me." + +"There he is now," exclaimed the storekeeper, and every head turned to +see the stranger stepping briskly along the platform in front of the +depot, on his way to the telegraph office. + +He had the alertness of glance and motion that comes from daily contact +with city corners. If there was a slight stoop in his broad shoulders, +and if his closely cut hair and beard were iron gray, that seemed more +the result of bearing heavy responsibilities than the token of advancing +years. His immaculate linen, polished low-cut shoes, and light gray +business suit would have passed unnoticed in the metropolis, but in this +place, where coats and collars were in evidence only on Sunday, they +gave him the appearance of being on dress parade. + +Perkins's oldest eyed him as he would a zebra or a giraffe, or some +equally interesting curiosity escaped from a Zoo. He had heard that his +pockets were lined with gold, and that he had been known to pay as much +as five dollars for a single lunch. Five dollars would board a man two +weeks at the Cross-Roads. + +With his mouth agape, the boy stood watching the stranger, who +presently came over to the group on the porch with smiling face and +cordial outstretched hand. Despite his gray hair there was something +almost boyish in the eagerness with which he recognised old faces and +claimed old friendships. Bowser's store had been built since his +departure from the neighbourhood, so few of the congenial spirits +accustomed to gather there were familiar to him. But Bud Hines and Cy +Akers were old schoolfellows. When he would have gone up to them with +old-time familiarity, he found a certain restraint in their greeting +which checked his advances. + +If he thought he was coming back to them the same freckle-faced, +unconventional country lad they had known as Billy Maxwell, he was +mistaken. He might feel that he was the same at heart; but they looked +on the outward appearance. They saw the successful man of the world who +had outstripped them in the race and passed out of their lives long ago. +They could not conceive of such a change as had metamorphosed the boy +they remembered into the man who stood before them, without feeling that +a corresponding change must have taken place in his attitude toward +them. + +They were not conscious that this feeling was expressed in their +reception of him. They laughed at his jokes, and indulged in some +reminiscences, but he felt, in a dim subconscious way, that there was a +barrier between them, and he could never get back to the old familiar +footing. + +He turned away, vaguely disappointed. Had he dared to dream that he +would find his lost youth just as he had left it? The fields and hills +were unchanged. The very trees were the same, except that they had added +a few more rings to their girth, and threw a larger circling shade. But +the old chums he had counted on finding had not followed the same law of +growth as the trees. The shade of their sympathies had narrowed, not +expanded, with the passing years, and left him outside their contracted +circle. + +Perkins's oldest, awed by reports of his fabulous wealth, could hardly +find his tongue when the distinguished visitor laid a friendly hand on +his embarrassed tow head, and inquired about the old swimming-hole, and +the mill-dam where he used to fish. But the boy's interest grew stronger +every minute as he watched him turning over the limited assortment of +fishing tackle. The men he knew had outlived such frivolous sports. It +was a sight to justify one's gazing open-mouthed,--a grown man +deliberately preparing for a month's idleness. + +If the boy could have seen the jointed rods, the reels, the flies, all +the expensive angler's outfit left behind in the Maxwell mansion; if he +could have known of the tarpon this man had caught in Florida bays, and +the fishing he had enjoyed in northern waters, he would have wondered +still more; wondered how a man could be considered in his right mind who +deliberately renounced such privileges to come and drop a common hook, +on a pole of his own cutting, into the shallow pools of the Cross-Roads +creek. + +After his purchases no one saw him at the store for several days, but +the boy, dodging across lots, encountered him often,--a solitary figure +wandering by the mill stream, or crashing through the woods with long +eager strides; lying on the orchard grass sometimes with his hat pulled +over his eyes; leaning over the pasture bars in the twilight, and +following with wistful glance the little foot-path stretching white +across the meadows. A pathetic sight to eyes wise enough to see the +pathos,--a world-weary, middle-aged man in vain quest of his lost +boyhood. + +On Sunday, Polly, looking across the church from her place in the +miller's pew, recognised the stranger in their midst, and straightway +lost the thread of the sermon in wondering at his presence. She had gone +to school with his daughter, Maud Maxwell. She had danced many a german +with his son Claude. They lived on the same avenue, and passed each +other daily; but this was the first time she had seen him away from the +shadow of the family presence, that seemed to blot out his +individuality. + +She had thought of him only as Maud's father, a simple, good-natured +nonentity in his own household. A good business man, but one who could +talk nothing but leather, and whose only part in the family affairs was +to furnish the funds for his wife and children to shine socially. + +"Oh, your father's opinion doesn't count," she had heard Mrs. Maxwell +say on more than one occasion, and the children had grown up, +unconsciously copying her patronising attitude toward him. As Polly +studied his face now in the light of other surroundings, she saw that it +was a strong, kindly one; that it was not weakness which made him yield +habitually, until he had become a mere figurehead in his own +establishment. It was only that his peace-loving nature hated domestic +scenes, and his generosity amounted to complete self-effacement when the +happiness of his family was concerned. + +His eyes were fixed on the chancel with a wistful reminiscent gaze, and +Polly read something in the careworn face that touched her sympathy. +"Grandfather," she said, at the close of the service, "let's be +neighbourly and ask Mr. Maxwell home to dinner with us. He looks +lonesome." + +She was glad afterward that she had suggested it, when she recalled his +evident pleasure in the old man's company. There were chairs out under +the great oak-trees in the yard, and the two sat talking all afternoon +of old times, until the evening shadows began to grow long across the +grass. Then Polly joined them again, and sat with them till the tinkle +of home-going cowbells broke on the restful stillness of the country +Sabbath. + +"All the orchestras in all the operas in the world can't make music +that sounds as sweet to me as that does," said Mr. Maxwell, raising his +head from the big armchair to listen. Then he dropped it again with a +sigh. + +"It rests me so after the racket of the city. If Julia would only +consent, I'd sell out and come back to-morrow. But she's lost all +interest in the old place. I'm country to the core, but she never was. +She took to city ways like a duck to water, just as soon as she got away +from the farm, and she laughs at me for preferring katydids to the whirr +of electric cars." + +A vision rose before the old miller of a little country girl in a pink +cotton gown, who long ago used to wait, bright-eyed and blushing, at the +pasture bars, for Billy to drive home the cows. Many a time he had +passed them at their trysting-place. Then he recalled the superficial, +ambitious woman he had met years afterward when he visited his son. He +shook his head when he thought of her renouncing her social position for +the simple pastoral life her husband longed to find the way back to. +Presently he broke the silence of their several reveries by turning to +Polly. + +"What's that piece you recited to me the other night, little girl, about +old times? Say it for Mr. Maxwell." And Polly, clasping her hands in her +lap, and looking away across the August meadows, purple with the royal +pennons of the ironweed, began the musical old poem: + + "'Ko-ling, ko-lang, ko-linglelingle, + Way down the darkening dingle + The cows come slowly home. + (And old-time friends and twilight plays + And starry nights and sunny days + Come trooping up the misty ways, + When the cows come home.) + + "'And over there on Merlin Hill + Hear the plaintive cry of the whippoorwill. + And the dewdrops lie on the tangled vines, + And over the poplars Venus shines, + And over the silent mill. + + "'Ko-ling, ko-lang, ko-linglelingle, + With ting-aling and jingle + The cows come slowly home. + (Let down the bars, let in the train + Of long-gone songs and flowers and rain, + For dear old times come back again, + When the cows come home.)'" + +Once as Polly went on, she saw the tears spring to his eyes at the line +"and mother-songs of long-gone years," and she knew that the + + "same sweet sound of wordless psalm, + The same sweet smell of buds and balm," + +that had been his delight in the past, were his again as he listened. +But, much to her surprise, as she finished, he rose abruptly, and began +a hurried leave-taking. She understood his manner, however, when his +mood was revealed to her a little later. + +At her grandfather's suggestion she walked down to the gate with him, to +point out a short cut across the fields to Mrs. Powers's. Outside the +gate he paused, hat in hand. + +"Miss Polly," he began, as if unconsciously taking her into his +confidence, "old times never come back again. Seems as if the bottom had +dropped out of everything. I've done my best to resurrect them, but I +can't do it. I thought if I could once get back to the old place I could +rest as I've not been able to rest for twenty years--that I'd have a +month of perfect enjoyment. But something's the matter. + +"Many a time when I've been off at some fashionable resort I've thought +I'd give a fortune to be able to drop my hook in your grandfather's +mill-stream, and feel the old thrill that I used to feel when I was a +boy. I tried it the day I came--caught a little speckled trout, the kind +that used to make me tingle to my finger ends, but somehow it didn't +bring back the old sensation. I just looked at it a minute and put it +back in the water, and threw my pole away. + +"Even the swimming-hole down by the mill didn't measure up to the way I +had remembered it. I've fairly ached for a dip into it sometimes, in the +years I've been gone. Seemed as if I could just get into it once, I +could wash myself clear of all the cares and worries of business that +pester a man so. That was a disappointment, too. The change is in me, I +guess, but nothing seems the same." + +Polly knew the reason. He had tried so long to mould his habits to fit +his wife's exacting tastes, that he had succeeded better than he +realised. He could not analyse his feelings enough to know that it was +the absence of long accustomed comforts that made him vaguely +dissatisfied with his surroundings; his luxuriously appointed bathroom, +for instance; the perfect service of his carefully trained footmen. Mrs. +Powers's noisy table, where with great clatter she urged every one "to +fall to and help himself," jarred on him, although he was unconscious of +what caused the irritation. As for the rank tobacco Bowser furnished him +when he had exhausted his own special brand of cigars with which he had +stocked his satchel, it was more than flesh and blood could endure. That +is, flesh and blood that had acquired the pampered taste of a +millionaire whose wife is fastidious, and only allows first-class aromas +in the way of the weed. + +But Polly knew another reason that his vacation had been a failure. She +divined it as the little Yale pin, stuck jauntily into the front of her +white dress, met the touch of her caressing fingers. The girl in the +pink cotton gown was long dead, and the woman who had grown up in her +stead had no part in the old scenes that he still fondly clung to, with +a sentiment she ridiculed because she could not understand. _There must +always be two when you turn back searching for your lost Eldorado, and +even the two cannot find it, unless they go hand in hand._ + + * * * * * + +Next day Bowser had another piece of news to impart. "Mr. Maxwell went +home this morning. He told Mrs. Powers it was like taking a vacation in +a graveyard, and he'd had enough. He'd have to get back to work again. +So he paid her for the full month, and took the first train back to the +city." + +"Well, I'll be switched!" was Bud Hines's comment. "If I had as much +money as he's got, I'd never bother my head about work. I'd sit down and +take it easy all the rest of my born days." + +"I don't know," answered Bowser, meditatively. "I reckon a man who's +worked the way Mr. Maxwell has, gets such a big momentum on to himself +that he can't stop, no matter how bad he wants a vacation." + +"He's a fool for coming back here for it," said Bud Hines, looking out +across the fields that stretched away on every side in unbroken +monotony. + +But miles away, in his city office, the busy millionaire was still +haunted by an unsatisfied longing for those same level meadows. Glimpses +of the old mill-stream and the willows still rose before him in +tantalising freshness, and whenever he closed his tired eyes, down +twilight paths, where tinkling cowbells called, there came again the +glimmer of a little pink gown, to wait for him as it had waited through +all the years, beside the pasture bars. + + + + +Chapter XII + + +THE seat was an empty starch-box on the Cross-Roads porch, its occupant +a barefoot boy with a torn straw hat pulled far down over his eyes. To +the casual observer one of the most ordinary of sights, but to one +possessed of sympathetic powers of penetration into a boy's inner +consciousness there was a suggestion of the tragic. Perkins's oldest had +that afternoon in school been told to write a composition on September. +It was to be handed in next morning. It was the hopelessness of +accomplishing the fact even in aeons, not to mention the limited time of +a dozen short hours, that had bound him, a little Prometheus, to the +starch-box, with the vulture of absolute despair tearing at his vitals. + +Two other boys had been assigned the same subject, and the three had +kicked the dust up wrathfully all the way from the schoolhouse, echoing +an old cry that had gone up ages before from the sons of Jacob, under +the lash of the Egyptian, "How can we make bricks without straw?" + +"Ain't nothin' to say 'bout September," declared Riley Hines, gloomily, +"and I'll be dogged if I say it. I'm goin' to get my sister to write +mine fer me. She'll do it ef I tease long enough, and give her something +to boot." + +"I'll ask paw what to say," declared Tommy Bowser. "He won't write it +for me, but he'll sort o' boost me along. Then if it ain't what she +wants, _I_ won't be to blame. I'll tell her paw said 'twas all right." + +This shifting of responsibility to paternal shoulders restored the +habitual expression of cheerfulness to Tommy's smudgy face, but there +was no corresponding smile on Sammy's. There was no help to be had in +the household of Perkins. + +That was why he was waiting on the starch-box while Tommy was sent on an +errand. It was in the vain hope that Tommy would return and apply for +his "boost" and share it with him before darkness fell. He was a +practical child, not given to whimsical reflections, but as he sat there +in desperate silence, he began wondering what the different customers +would have to say if they were suddenly called upon, as he had been that +afternoon, to write about September. + +Mrs. Powers, for instance, in her big crape bonnet, with its long wispy +veil trailing down her back. He was almost startled, when, as if in +answer to his thought, she uttered the word that was at the bottom of +his present trouble, the subject assigned him for composition. + +"Yes, Mr. Bowser, September is a month that I'm never sorry to say +good-bye to. What with the onion pickle and peach preserves and the +house-cleaning to tend to, I'm nearly broke down when it's over. There's +so many odds and ends to see to on a farm this time of year, first in +doors and then out. I tell Jane it's like piecing a crazy quilt. You +can't never count on what a day's going to bring forth in September. You +may get a carpet up and beat, and have your stove settin' out waiting to +be put up, and your furniture in a heap in the yard, and the hired man +will have to go off and leave it all while he takes the cider-mill to be +mended. And you in a stew all day long for fear it'll rain before he +gets things under shelter. + +"Then it's a sad time to me, too," she exclaimed with a mournful shake +of the head in the black bonnet. "It was in September I lost my first +and third husbands, two of the best that ever had tombstones raised to +their memory, if I do say it as oughtn't. One died on the sixteenth, and +his funeral was preached on the eighteenth, and the other died fifteen +years later on the twenty-third, and we kept him three days, on account +of waiting till his brother could get here from Missouri. So you see +that makes nearly a week altogether of mournful anniversaries for me +every September." + +Another breath and she had reached the three tombstones, and talking +volubly on her favourite subject, she completed her purchases and went +out. But her conversation had not lightened the woes of the little +Prometheus on the starch-box. Despair still gnawed on. House-cleaning +worries and onion pickle, and reminiscences of two out of three departed +husbands, might furnish material for Mrs. Powers's composition, should +the fates compel her to write one, but there was no straw of a +suggestion for Sammy Perkins, and again he cried out inwardly as +bitterly as the oppressed of old had cried out against Pharaoh. + +A man in a long, sagging linen duster was the next comer. He squeaked +back and forth in front of the counter in new high-heeled boots, and +talked incessantly while he made his purchases, with a clumsy attempt at +facetiousness. + +"Put in a cake of shaving-soap, too, Jim," he called, passing his hand +over the black stubble on his chin. "County court begins to-morrer. +Reckon the lawyers will shave everything in sight when it comes to their +bills, but I want to be as slick as them. I'll be settin' on the jury +all week. Did you ever think of it, Jim, that's a mighty interesting way +to earn your salt? Jest set back and be entertained with the history of +all the old feuds and fusses in the county, and collect your two bucks a +day without ever turning your hand over. Good as a show, and dead easy. + +"Only one thing, it sort o' spiles your faith in human nature. The +court stenographer said last year that in the shorthand he writes, the +same mark that stands for lawyer stands for liar, too. He! he! he! isn't +that a good one? You can only tell which one is meant by what comes +before it, and this fellow said he'd come to believe that one always fit +in the sentence as good as the other. Either word was generally +appropriate. You miss a lot of fun, Jim, by not getting on the jury. I +always look forrard to fall on that account." + +No help for Perkins's oldest in _that_ conversation. He waited awhile +longer. Presently an old gentleman in a long-tailed, quaintly cut black +coat, stepped up on the porch. He had a gold-headed cane under his arm, +and the eyes behind the square-bowed spectacles beamed kindly on the +little fellow. He stopped beside the starch-box a moment with a friendly +question about school and the health of the Perkins household. The boy's +heart gave a jump up into his throat. The old minister knew everything. +The minister could even tell him what to write in his composition if he +dared but ask him. He opened his mouth to form the question, but his +tongue seemed glued in its place, and the head under the torn hat +drooped lower in embarrassed silence. His troubled face flushed to the +roots of his tow hair, and he let the Angel of Opportunity pass him by +unchallenged. + +"Will you kindly give me one of those advertising almanacs, Mr. Bowser?" +inquired the parson, when his packages of tea and sugar had been +secured. "I've misplaced mine, and I want to ascertain at what hour +to-morrow the moon changes." + +"Certainly, certainly!" responded the storekeeper with obliging +alacrity, rubbing his hands together, and stepping up on a chair to +reach the pile on a shelf overhead. "Help yourself, sir. I must answer +the telephone." + +The parson, slowly studying the moon's phases as he stepped out of the +store, did not notice that he had taken two almanacs until one fell at +his feet. The boy sprang up to return it, but he waved it aside with a +courtly sweep of his hand. + +"No, my son, I intended to take but one. Keep it. They are for general +distribution. You will find it full of useful information. Have you ever +learned anything about the signs of the Zodiac? Here is Leo. I always +take an especial interest in this sign, because I happened to be born +under it. I'm the seventh son of a seventh son, born in the seventh +month, and I always take it as a good omen, seven being the perfect +number. You know the ancients believed a man's star largely affected his +destiny. You will find some interesting historical events enumerated +under each month. A good almanac is almost as interesting to study as a +good dictionary, my boy. I would advise you to form a habit of referring +to both of them frequently." + +With one of his rare, childlike smiles the good man passed on, and +Perkins's oldest was left with the almanac in his hands. For awhile he +studied the signs of the Zodiac, in puzzled awe, trying to establish a +relationship between them and the man they surrounded, whose vital +organs were obligingly laid open to public inspection, regardless of any +personal inconvenience the display might cause him. + +Then he turned to the historical events. There was one for each day in +the month. On Sunday, the first, eighteen hundred and ninety-nine, had +occurred the Japanese typhoon. Friday, the sixth, sixteen hundred and +twenty, the _Mayflower_ had sailed. Mahomet's birth had set apart the +eleventh in five hundred and seventy. The founding of Mormonism, +Washington's Farewell, and the battle of Marathon were further down the +list, but it was all Greek to Perkins's oldest. Any one of these items +would have been straw for the parson. Out of the _Mayflower_, Mahomet, +Mormonism, or Marathon, each one of them the outgrowth of some +September, he could have pressed enough literary brick to build a fair +sky-scraping structure that would have been the wonder of all who gazed +upon it. This time the boy looked his Angel of Opportunity in the face +and did not recognise it as such. + +The gate clicked across the road and he turned his head. Miss Anastasia +Dill was going up the path, her arms full of goldenrod and white and +purple asters. September was a poem to Miss Anastasia, but the boy +looked upon goldenrod and the starry asters simply as meadow weeds. The +armful of bloom brought no suggestion to him. On the morrow Riley Hines +would hand in two pages of allusions to them, beginning with a quotation +from Whittier's "Autumn Thoughts," and ending with a couplet from Pope, +carefully copied by Maria Hines from the "Exercises for Parsing" in the +back of her grammar. + +Somebody's supper-horn blew in the distance, and, grown desperate by +Tommy's long absence and the lateness of the hour, he took his little +cracked slate from the strap of books on the floor beside him, and laid +it across his knees. Then with a stubby pencil that squeaked dismally in +its passage across the slate, he began copying bodily from the almanac +the list of historical events enumerated therein, just as they stood, +beginning with the Japanese typhoon on the first, and ending +"_Volunteer_ beat _Thistle_" on the thirtieth, eighteen hundred and +eighty-seven. + +Then he began to copy a few agricultural notes, inserted as side remarks +for those who relied on their almanacs as guide-posts to gardening. +"Gather winter squashes now. They keep better when stored in a warm dry +place. Harvest sugar beets when the leaves turn yellowish green, etc." + +He was bending painfully over this task when a shadow fell across his +slate, and, looking up, he saw the old miller looking over his shoulder. + +"Doing your sums?" he asked, with a friendly smile. "Let's see if you +do them the way I was taught when I was a lad." He held out his hand for +the slate. There had been a bond of sympathy between the two ever since +Christmas eve, when a certain pair of skates had changed owners, and +now, although the boy's voice trembled almost out of his control, he +managed to stammer out the reply that he was trying to write a +composition. + +The old man looked from the straggling lines on the slate, then at the +open almanac, then down at the boy's troubled face, and understood. +Drawing a chair across the porch he sat down beside him, and, catching +the furtive, scared side-glance cast in his direction, he plunged at +once into a story. + +It was about a shepherd boy who went out to fight a giant, and the king +insisted on lending him his armour. But he couldn't fight in the heavy +helmet and the coat of mail. The shield was in his way, and the spear +more than he could lift. So he threw it aside, and going down to a +little brook, chose five small pebbles, worn smooth by the running +water. And with these in his hand, and only the simple sling he was +accustomed to use every day, he went out against the Philistine giant, +and slew him in the first round. + +Perkins's oldest wondered what the story had to do with his +composition. He wasn't looking for a personal application. He had not +been brought up at Sunday schools and kindergartens. But all of a sudden +he realised that the miller meant him; that his depending on Tommy, or +the customers, or the almanac, to furnish him ideas, was like going out +in Saul's armour, and that he could only come to failure in that, +because it wouldn't fit him; that he could hit the mark the little +schoolmistress had in mind for him, only with the familiar sling-shot of +his own common every-day personal experiences. + +Maybe the old miller recognised that it was a crisis in the little +fellow's life, for he stayed beside him with helpful hints and +questions, until the slate was full. When he carried it home in the +gloaming it no longer bore the items from the almanac. There were other +remarks straggling across it, not so well expressed, perhaps, but +plainly original. They were to the effect that September is the month +you've got to go back to school when you don't want to, 'cos it's the +nicest time of all to stay out-doors, neither too hot nor too cold. +There's lots of apples then, and it's the minister's birthday. He's the +seventh son of a seventh son, and Dick Wiggins says if you're that you +can pick Wahoo berries in the dark of the moon and make med'cine out of +them, that will cure the bone-break fever every time, when nothing else +in the world will. Then followed several items of information that he +had discovered for himself, in his prowls through the September woods, +about snakes and tree-toads, as to their habits at that season of the +year. It closed with a suggestive allusion to the delights of sucking +cider from the bung of a barrel through a straw. + +Next day the little schoolmistress shook her head over the composition +that Riley Hines handed in, and laid it aside with a hopeless sigh. She +recognised too plainly the hand of Maria in its construction. The +sentiments expressed therein were as foreign to Riley's nature as they +would have been to a woodchuck's. She took up Tommy Bowser's. Alas, +four-syllabled words were not in Tommy's daily vocabulary, nor were the +elegant sentences under his name within the power of his composition. +Plainly it was the work of a plagiarist. + +She went through the pile slowly, and then wrote on the blackboard as +she had promised, the names of the ten whose work was the best and most +original. It was then that Perkins's oldest had the surprise of his +life, for lo! his name, like Abou-ben-Adhem's, "led all the rest." + +Again the Cross-Roads had taught him more than the school,--to depend +on the resources to which nature had adapted him, and never again to +attempt to sally forth in borrowed armour, even though it be a king's. + + + + +Chapter XII + + +IT was Cy Akers who carried the news to the schoolhouse, galloping his +old sorrel up to the open door just before the bell tapped for afternoon +dismissal. He did not dismount, but drawing rein, leaned forward in his +saddle, waiting for the little schoolmistress to step down from the desk +to the doorstep. The rows of waiting children craned their necks +anxiously, but only those nearest the door heard his message. + +"Mr. Asa Holmes died this morning," he said. "The funeral is set for +to-morrow afternoon at four, and you can announce to the children that +there won't be any school. The trustees thought it would be only proper +to close out of respect for him, as he was on the school board over +thirty years, and has done so much for the community. He's one of the +old landmarks, you might say, about the last of the old pioneers, and +everybody will want to go." + +Before she could recover from the suddenness of the announcement the +rider was gone, and she was left looking out across the October fields +with a lonely sense of personal loss, although her acquaintance with the +old miller had extended over only two short school terms. + +A few minutes later the measured tramp of feet over the worn door-sill +began, and forty children passed out into the mellow sunshine of the +late autumn afternoon. They went quietly at first, awed by the tender, +reverent words in which the little schoolmistress had given them the +message to carry home. But once outside, the pent-up enthusiasm over +their unexpected holiday, and the mere joy of being alive and free on +such a day sent them rushing down the road pell-mell, shouting and +swinging their dinner-pails as they ran. + +A shade of annoyance crossed the teacher's face as she stood watching +from the doorstep. She wished she had cautioned them not to be so noisy, +for she knew that their shouts could be plainly heard in the old house +whose gables she could see through a clump of cedars, farther down the +road. It was standing with closed blinds now, and she had a feeling that +the laughing voices floating across to it must strike harshly across its +profound silence. + +But presently her face brightened as she watched the children running +on in the sunshine, in the joy of their emancipation. Part of a poem she +had read that morning came to her. She had thought when she read it that +it was a beautiful way to look upon death, and now it bore a new +significance, and she whispered it to herself: + + "'Why should it be a wrench to leave this wooden bench? + Why not with happy shout, run home when school is out?' + +"That's the way the old miller has gone," she said, softly. "His lessons +all learned and his tasks all done--so well done, too, that he has +nothing to regret. I'm glad that I didn't stop the children. I am sure +that's the way he would want them to go. Dear old man! He was always a +boy at heart." + +She turned the key in the door behind her presently, and started down +the road to Mrs. Powers's, where she boarded. In every fence corner the +sumachs flamed blood-red, and across the fields, where purple shadows +trailed their royal lengths behind every shock of corn, the autumn +woodlands massed their gold and crimson against the sunset sky. She +walked slowly, loath to reach the place where she must go indoors. + +The Perkins home lay in her way, and as she passed, Mrs. Perkins with a +baby on her hip, and a child clinging to her skirts, leaned over the +gate to speak to her. + +"Isn't it sad," the woman exclaimed, grasping eagerly at this chance to +discuss every incident of the death and illness, with that love for +detail always to be found in country districts where happenings are few +and interests are strong. + +"They sent for the family Tuesday when he had the stroke, but he +couldn't speak to them when they got here. They said he seemed to +recognise Miss Polly, and smiled when she took his hand. She seemed to +be his favourite, and they say she's taking it mighty hard--harder than +any of the rest. It's a pity he couldn't have left 'em all some last +message. I think it's always a comfort to remember one's dying words +when as good a person as Mr. Holmes goes. And it's always so nice when +they happen to be appropriate, so's they can be put on the tombstone +afterward. I remember my Aunt Maria worked my grandfather's last words +into a sampler, with an urn and weeping-willow-tree. She had it framed +in black and hung in the parlour, and everybody who came to the house +admired it. It's a pity that the miller couldn't have left some last +word to each of 'em." + +"I don't think it was necessary," said the girl, turning away with a +choke in her voice, as the eloquent face of the old man seemed to rise +up before her. "His whole life speaks for him." + +Mrs. Perkins looked after the retreating figure regretfully, as the +jaunty sailor hat disappeared behind a tall hedge. "I wish she hadn't +been in such a hurry," she sighed, shifting the baby to the other hip. +"I would have liked to ask her if she's heard who the pall-bearers are +to be." + +At the turn in the road the little schoolmistress looked up to see Miss +Anastasia Dill leaning over her gate. She had just heard the news, and +there were tears in her pale blue eyes. + +"And Polly's wedding cards were to have been sent out this next week!" +she exclaimed after their first words of greeting. "The poor child told +me so herself when she was here in August on a visit. 'Miss Anastasia,' +she said to me, 'I'm not going abroad for my honeymoon, as all my family +want me to do. I'm going to bring Jack back here to the old homestead +where grandfather's married life began. Somehow it was so ideal, so +nearly perfect, that I have a feeling that maybe the mantle of that old +romance will fall on our shoulders. Besides, Jack has never seen +grandfather, and I tell him it's as much of an education to know such a +grand old man as it is to go through Yale. So we're coming in October. +The woods will have on all their gala colours then, and I'll be the +happiest bride the sun ever shone on, unless it was my grandmother +Polly.' And now to think," added Miss Anastasia, tearfully, "none of +those plans can come to pass. It's bad luck to put off a wedding. Oh, I +feel so sorry for her!" + + * * * * * + +There is an undefined note of pathos in a country funeral that is never +reached in any other. The little schoolmistress felt it as she walked up +the path to the old house behind the cedars. The front porch was full of +men, who, dressed in their unaccustomed best, had the uneasy appearance +of having come upon a Sunday in the middle of the week. Their heavy +boots tiptoed clumsily through the hall, with a painful effort to go +silently, as one by one the neighbours passed into the old sitting-room +and out again. The room across the hall had been filled with rows of +chairs, and the women who came first were sitting there in a deep +silence, broken only by a cough now and then, a hoarse whisper or a +rustle, as some one moved to make room for a newcomer. + +It was a sombre assembly, for every one wore whatever black her wardrobe +afforded, and many funeral occasions had left an accumulation of +mourning millinery in every house in the neighbourhood. But the limp +crape veils and black gloves and pall-like cashmere shawls were all +congregated in the dimly lighted parlour. In the old sitting-room it was +as cheerful and homelike as ever, save for the still form in the centre. + +Through an open window the western sun streamed into the big, +hospitable room, across the bright home-made rag carpet. The old clock +in the corner ticked with the placid, steady stroke that had never +failed or faltered, in any vicissitude of the generations for which it +had marked the changes. No fire blazed on the old hearthstone that had +warmed the hearts as well as the hands of the whole countryside on many +a cheerful occasion. But a great bough of dogwood, laid across the +shining andirons, filled the space with coral berries that glowed like +live embers as the sun stole athwart them. + +"Oh, if the old room could only speak!" thought Miss Anastasia, when her +turn came to pass reverently in for a last look at the peaceful face. +"There would be no need of man's eulogy." + +But man's eulogy was added presently, when the old minister came in and +took his place beside the coffin of his lifelong friend and neighbour. +The men outside the porch closed in around the windows to listen. The +women in the back rows of chairs in the adjoining room leaned forward +eagerly. Those farthest away caught only a faltering sentence now and +then. + +"A hospitality as warm as his own hearthstone, as wide as his broad +acres.... No man can point to him and say he ever knowingly hurt or +hindered a fellow creature.... He never measured out to any man a scant +bushel. Be it grain or good-will, it was ever an overflowing +measure...." But those who could not hear all that was said could make +the silent places eloquent with their own recollections, for he had +taken a father's interest in them all, and manifested it by a score of +kindly deeds, too kindly to ever be forgotten. + +It was a perfect autumn day, sunny and golden and still, save for the +patter of dropping nuts and the dry rustle of fallen leaves. A purple +haze rested on the distant horizon like the bloom on a ripened grape. +Down through the orchard, when the simple service was over, they carried +their old friend to the family burying-ground, and, although voices had +choked, and eyes overflowed before, there was neither sob nor tear, when +the light of the sunset struck across the low mound, heaped with its +covering of glowing autumn leaves. For if grief has no part in the +sunset glory that ends the day, or in the perfect fulness of the autumn +time, then it must indeed stand hushed, when a life comes both to its +sunset and its harvest, in such royal fashion. + + * * * * * + +That evening at the Cross-Roads, Bowser lighted the first fire of the +season in the rusty old stove, for the night was chilly. One by one the +men accustomed to gather around it dropped in and took their usual +places. The event of the day was all that was spoken of. + +"Do you remember what he said last Thanksgiving, nearly a year ago?" +asked Bowser. "It came back to me as I stood and looked at him to-day, +and if I'd never believed in immortality before, I'd 'a' had to have +believed in it then. The words seemed to fairly shine out of his face. +He said '_The best comes after the harvest, when the wheat goes to make +up blood and muscle and brain; when it's raised to a higher order of +life in man. And it's the same with me. At eighty-five, when it looks as +if I'd about reached the end, I've come to believe that "the best is yet +to be._"'" + +There was a long pause, and Cy Akers said, slowly, "Somehow I can't +feel that he is dead. Seems as if he'd just gone away a while. But Lord! +how we're going to miss him here at the store." + +"No, don't say that!" exclaimed Bud Hines, with more emotion than he had +ever been known to show before. "Say, how we're going to feel him! I +can't get him out of my mind. Every time I turn around, most, seems to +me I can hear him laugh, and say, 'Don't cross your bridge till you come +to it, Bud.' That saying of his rings in my ears every time I get in the +dumps. Seems like he could set the calendar straight for us, all the +year around. The winters wasn't so cold or the summers so hard to pull +through, looking at life through his eyes." + +Perkins's oldest crept up unnoticed. He added no word, but deep in his +heart lay an impression that all the years to come could never erase; +the remembrance of a kindly old man who had given him a new gospel, in +that one phrase, "A brother to Santa Claus;" who had taught him to go +out against his Philistines with simple directness of aim and whatever +lay at hand; who had left behind him the philosophy of a cheerful +optimist, and the example of a sweet simple life, unswerving in its +loyalty to duty and to truth. + + * * * * * + +Over in the old homestead, Polly, standing in the firelight, fair and +slender in her black gown, looked up at the tall young fellow beside +her, and placed two little books in his hands. The old house was not her +only heritage. The little atlas of the heavens was hers also. Standing +there in the room where the beloved presence seemed to have left its +benediction, Polly told the story of the love that had outlived Death. +Then across the yellowed page of the old grammar where the faded violets +lay, two hands met in the same sure clasp that had joined the souls of +those older lovers, who somewhere beyond the stars were still repeating +the old conjugation--"we love--_for ever_!" + + +THE END. + + + + + L. C. Page & Company's + Announcement List + of New Fiction + + + =Haunters of the Silences.= BY CHARLES G. D. ROBERTS, + author of "Red Fox," "The Watchers of the Trails," + etc. + + Cloth, one volume, with many drawings by Charles Livingston + Bull, four of which are in full color $2.00 + +The stories in Mr. Roberts's new collection are the strongest and best +he has ever written. + +He has largely taken for his subjects those animals rarely met with in +books, whose lives are spent "In the Silences," where they are the +supreme rulers. Mr. Roberts has written of them sympathetically, as +always, but with fine regard for the scientific truth. + + "As a writer about animals, Mr. Roberts occupies an + enviable place. He is the most literary, as well as + the most imaginative and vivid of all the nature + writers."--_Brooklyn Eagle._ + + "His animal stories are marvels of sympathetic + science and literary exactness."--_New York World._ + + + =The Lady of the Blue Motor.= BY G. SIDNEY + PATERNOSTER, author of "The Cruise of the Motor-Boat + Conqueror," "The Motor Pirate," etc. + + Cloth decorative, with a colored frontispiece by John C. Frohn $1.50 + +The Lady of the Blue Motor is an audacious heroine who drove her +mysterious car at breakneck speed. Her plea for assistance in an +adventure promising more than a spice of danger could not of course be +disregarded by any gallant fellow motorist. Mr. Paternoster's hero rose +promptly to the occasion. Across France they tore and across the English +Channel. There, the escapade past, he lost her. + +Mr. Paternoster, however, is generous, and allows the reader to follow +their separate adventures until the Lady of the Blue Motor is found +again and properly vindicated of all save womanly courage and affection. +A unique romance, one continuous exciting series of adventure. + + + =Clementina's Highwayman.= BY ROBERT NEILSON STEPHENS, + author of "The Flight of Georgiana," "An Enemy to the + King," etc. + + Cloth decorative, illustrated $1.50 + +Mr. Stephens has put into his new book, "Clementina's Highwayman," the +finest qualities of plot, construction, and literary finish. + +The story is laid in the mid-Georgian period. It is a dashing, +sparkling, vivacious comedy, with a heroine as lovely and changeable as +an April day, and a hero all ardor and daring. + +The exquisite quality of Mr. Stephens's literary style clothes the +story in a rich but delicate word-fabric; and never before have his +setting and atmosphere been so perfect. + + + =The Sorceress of Rome.= BY NATHAN GALLIZIER, author + of "Castel del Monte," etc. + + Cloth decorative, illustrated $1.50 + +The love-story of Otto III., the boy emperor, and Stephania, wife of the +Senator Crescentius of Rome, has already been made the basis of various +German poems and plays. + +Mr. Gallizier has used it for the main theme of "The Sorceress of Rome," +the second book of his trilogy of romances on the mediaeval life of +Italy. In detail and finish the book is a brilliant piece of work, +describing clearly an exciting and strenuous period. It possesses the +same qualities as "Castel del Monte," of which the _Chicago Record +Herald_ said: "There is color, there is sumptuous word-painting in these +pages; the action is terrific at times; vividness and life are in every +part; brilliant descriptions entertain the reader; mystic scenes and +prophecies give a singular fascination to the tale, which is strong and +forceful in its portrayal." + + + =Hester of the Hills.= BY GILDER CLAY. + + Cloth decorative, illustrated $1.50 + +"Hester of the Hills" has a motif unusual in life, and new in fiction. +Its hero, who has only acquired his own strength and resourcefulness by +a lifelong struggle against constitutional frailty, has come to make the +question of bodily soundness his dominant thought. He resolves to ensure +strong constitutions to his children by marrying a physically perfect +woman. After long search, he finds this ideal in Hester, the daughter of +a "cracker squatter," of the Ozark Mountains of Missouri. But,--he +forgot to take into consideration that very vital emotion, love, which +played havoc with his well-laid plans. + +It is an ingenious combination of practical realism and imaginative +fiction worked out to a thoroughly delightful and satisfying climax. + + + =Prisoners of Fortune.= A TALE OF THE MASSACHUSETTS + BAY COLONY. BY RUEL PERLEY SMITH, author of "The Rival + Campers," etc. + + Cloth decorative, with a colored frontispiece by Frank T. Merrill $1.50 + +The period of Mr. Smith's story is the beginning of the eighteenth +century, when the shores of the American colonies were harassed and the +seas patrolled by pirates and buccaneers. These robbed and spoiled, and +often seized and put to death, the sailors and fishers and other humbler +folk, while their leaders claimed friendship alike with Southern +planters and New England merchants,--with whom it is said they +frequently divided their spoils. + +The times were stern and the colonists were hardy, but they loved as +truly and tenderly as in more peaceful days. Thus, while the hero's +adventures with pirates and his search for their hidden treasure is a +record of desperate encounters and daring deeds, his love-story and his +winning of sweet Mary Vane is in delightful contrast. + + + =The Rome Express.= BY MAJOR ARTHUR GRIFFITHS, author + of "The Passenger from Calais," etc. + + Cloth decorative, with a colored frontispiece by A. O. Scott $1.25 + +A mysterious murder on a flying express train, a wily Italian, a +charming woman caught in the meshes of circumstantial evidence, a +chivalrous Englishman, and a police force with a keen nose for the wrong +clue, are the ingredients from which Major Griffiths has concocted a +clever, up-to-date detective story. The book is bright and spirited, +with rapid action, and consistent development which brings the story to +a logical and dramatic ending. + + + =The Morning Glory Club.= BY GEORGE A. KYLE. + + Cloth decorative, with a colored frontispiece by A. O. Scott. $1.25 + +The doings of the Morning Glory Club will furnish genuine amusement to +the reader. Originally formed to "elevate" the village, it quickly +develops into an exchange for town gossip. It has a saving grace, +however, in the person of motherly Mrs. Stout, the uncultured but +sweet-natured and pure-minded village philosopher, who pours the oil of +her saneness and charity on the troubled waters of discussion and +condemnation. + +It is a series of clear and interesting pictures of the humor of village +life. + + + =The Chronicles of Martin Hewitt, Detective.= NEW + ILLUSTRATED EDITION. BY ARTHUR MORRISON, author of + "The Green Diamond," "The Red Triangle," etc. + + Cloth decorative, with six full-page drawings by W. Kirkpatrick $1.50 + +The success of Mr. Morrison's recent books, "The Green Diamond" and "The +Red Triangle," has led to an imperative demand for the reissue of "The +Chronicles of Martin Hewitt," which has been out of print for a number +of years. + +It will be remembered that Martin Hewitt is the detective in "The Red +Triangle," of whom the _New York Tribune_ said: "Better than Sherlock +Holmes." His adventures in the London slums were of such a nature that +the _Philadelphia North American_ said: "The reader who has a grain of +fancy or imagination may be defied to lay this book down once he has +begun it until the last word is reached." + + + =Mystery Island.= BY EDWARD H. HURST. + + Cloth decorative, with a colored frontispiece $1.50 + +A hunting camp on a swampy island in the Florida Everglades furnishes +the background for this present-day tale. + +By the murder of one of their number, the secret of egress from the +island is lost, and the campers find themselves marooned. + +Cut off from civilization, conventional veneer soon wears away. Love, +hate, and revenge spring up, and after the sterner passions have had +their sway the man and the woman are left alone to fulfil their own +destiny. + +While there is much that is unusual in the plot and its development, Mr. +Hurst has handled his subject with fine delicacy, and the tale of their +love on the beautiful little island is told with deep sympathy and +feeling. + + + =The Flying Cloud.= BY MORLEY ROBERTS, author of "The + Promotion of the Admiral," "Rachel Marr," "The + Idlers," etc. + + Cloth decorative, with a colored frontispiece $1.50 + +Mr. Roberts's new book is much more than a ripping good sea story such +as might be expected from the author of "The Promotion of the Admiral." +In "The Flying Cloud" the waters and the winds are gods personified. +Their every mood and phase are described in words of telling force. +There is no world but the waste of waters. + +Mr. Roberts glories and exults in the mystery, the passion, the +strength of the elements, as did the Viking chroniclers of old. He +understands them and loves them and interprets them as no other writer +has heretofore done. The book is too big for conventional phrases. It +needs Mr. Roberts's own richness of imagery and masterly expression to +describe adequately the word-pictures in this epic of wind and waves. + + + + +Selections from L. C. Page and Company's List of Fiction + + +WORKS OF ROBERT NEILSON STEPHENS + + _Each one vol., library 12mo, cloth decorative_ $1.50 + + +=The Flight of Georgiana= + +A ROMANCE OF THE DAYS OF THE YOUNG PRETENDER. Illustrated by H. C. +Edwards. + +"A love-story in the highest degree, a dashing story, and a remarkably +well finished piece of work."--_Chicago Record-Herald._ + + +=The Bright Face of Danger= + +Being an account of some adventures of Henri de Launay, son of the Sieur +de la Tournoire. Illustrated by H. C. Edwards. + +"Mr. Stephens has fairly outdone himself. We thank him heartily. The +story is nothing if not spirited and entertaining, rational and +convincing."--_Boston Transcript._ + + +=The Mystery of Murray Davenport= + +(40th thousand.) + +"This is easily the best thing that Mr. Stephens has yet done. Those +familiar with his other novels can best judge the measure of this +praise, which is generous."--_Buffalo News._ + + +=Captain Ravenshaw= + +OR, THE MAID OF CHEAPSIDE. (52d thousand.) A romance of Elizabethan +London. Illustrations by Howard Pyle and other artists. + +Not since the absorbing adventures of D'Artagnan have we had anything so +good in the blended vein of romance and comedy. + + +=The Continental Dragoon= + +A ROMANCE OF PHILIPSE MANOR HOUSE IN 1778. (53d thousand.) Illustrated +by H. C. Edwards. + +A stirring romance of the Revolution, with its scene laid on neutral +territory. + + +=Philip Winwood= + +(70th thousand.) A Sketch of the Domestic History of an American Captain +in the War of Independence, embracing events that occurred between and +during the years 1763 and 1785 in New York and London. Illustrated by E. +W. D. Hamilton. + + +=An Enemy to the King= + +(70th thousand.) From the "Recently Discovered Memoirs of the Sieur de +la Tournoire." Illustrated by H. De M. Young. + +An historical romance of the sixteenth century, describing the +adventures of a young French nobleman at the court of Henry III., and on +the field with Henry IV. + + +=The Road to Paris= + +A STORY OF ADVENTURE. (35th thousand.) Illustrated by H. C. Edwards. + +An historical romance of the eighteenth century, being an account of the +life of an American gentleman adventurer of Jacobite ancestry. + + +=A Gentleman Player= + +HIS ADVENTURES ON A SECRET MISSION FOR QUEEN ELIZABETH. (48th thousand.) +Illustrated by Frank T. Merrill. + +The story of a young gentleman who joins Shakespeare's company of +players, and becomes a friend and protege of the great poet. + + + + +WORKS OF CHARLES G. D. ROBERTS + + +=Red Fox= + +THE STORY OF HIS ADVENTUROUS CAREER IN THE RINGWAAK WILDS, AND OF HIS +FINAL TRIUMPH OVER THE ENEMIES OF HIS KIND. With fifty illustrations, +including frontispiece in color and cover design by Charles Livingston +Bull. + + Square quarto, cloth decorative $2.00 + + "Infinitely more wholesome reading than the average + tale of sport, since it gives a glimpse of the hunt + from the point of view of the hunted."--_Boston + Transcript._ + + "True in substance but fascinating as fiction. It will + interest old and young, city-bound and free-footed, + those who know animals and those who do + not."--_Chicago Record-Herald._ + + "A brilliant chapter in natural + history."--_Philadelphia North American._ + + +=The Kindred of the Wild= + +A BOOK OF ANIMAL LIFE. With fifty-one full-page plates and many +decorations from drawings by Charles Livingston Bull. + + Square quarto, decorative cover $2.00 + + "Is in many ways the most brilliant collection of + animal stories that has appeared; well named and well + done."--_John Burroughs._ + + +=The Watchers of the Trails= + +A companion volume to "The Kindred of the Wild." With forty-eight +full-page plates and many decorations from drawings by Charles +Livingston Bull. + + Square quarto, decorative cover $2.00 + + "Mr. Roberts has written a most interesting series of + tales free from the vices of the stories regarding + animals of many other writers, accurate in their facts + and admirably and dramatically told."--_Chicago News._ + + "These stories are exquisite in their refinement, and + yet robust in their appreciation of some of the + rougher phases of woodcraft. Among the many writers + about animals, Mr. Roberts occupies an enviable + place."--_The Outlook._ + + "This is a book full of delight. An additional charm + lies in Mr. Bull's faithful and graphic illustrations, + which in fashion all their own tell the story of the + wild life, illuminating and supplementing the pen + pictures of the author."--_Literary Digest._ + + +=Earth's Enigmas= + +A new edition of Mr. Roberts's first volume of fiction, published in +1892, and out of print for several years, with the addition of three new +stories, and ten illustrations by Charles Livingston Bull. + + Library 12mo, cloth, decorative cover $1.50 + + "It will rank high among collections of short stories. + In 'Earth's Enigmas' is a wider range of subject than + in the 'Kindred of the Wild.'"--_Review from advance + sheets of the illustrated edition by Tiffany Blake in + the Chicago Evening Post._ + + +=Barbara Ladd= + +With four illustrations by Frank Verbeck. + + Library 12mo, gilt top $1.50 + + "From the opening chapter to the final page Mr. + Roberts lures us on by his rapt devotion to the + changing aspects of Nature and by his keen and + sympathetic analysis of human character"--_Boston + Transcript._ + + +=Cameron of Lochiel= + +Translated from the French of Philippe Aubert de Gaspe, with +frontispiece in color by H. C. Edwards. + + Library 12mo, cloth decorative $1.50 + + "Professor Roberts deserves the thanks of his reader + for giving a wider audience an opportunity to enjoy + this striking bit of French Canadian + literature."--_Brooklyn Eagle._ + + "It is not often in these days of sensational and + philosophical novels that one picks up a book that so + touches the heart."--_Boston Transcript._ + + +=The Prisoner of Mademoiselle= + +With frontispiece by Frank T. Merrill. + + Library 12mo, cloth decorative, gilt top $1.50 + +A tale of Acadia,--a land which is the author's heart's delight,--of a +valiant young lieutenant and a winsome maiden, who first captures and +then captivates. + + "This is the kind of a story that makes one grow + younger, more innocent, more light-hearted. Its + literary quality is impeccable. It is not every day + that such a heroine blossoms into even temporary + existence, and the very name of the story bears a + breath of charm."--_Chicago Record-Herald._ + + +=The Heart of the Ancient Wood= + +With six illustrations by James L. Weston. + + Library 12mo, decorative cover $1.50 + + "One of the most fascinating novels of recent + days."--_Boston Journal._ + + "A classic twentieth-century romance."--_New York + Commercial Advertiser._ + + +=The Forge In the Forest= + +Being the Narrative of the Acadian Ranger, Jean de Mer, Seigneur de +Briart, and how he crossed the Black Abbe, and of his adventures in a +strange fellowship. Illustrated by Henry Sandham, R. C. A. + + Library 12mo, cloth, gilt top $1.50 + +A story of pure love and heroic adventure. + + + +=By the Marshes of Minas= + + Library 12mo, cloth, gilt top, illustrated $1.50 + +Most of these romances are in the author's lighter and more playful +vein; each is a unit of absorbing interest and exquisite workmanship. + + * * * * * + +Transcriber's Notes: + + +Obvious punctuation errors repaired. + + +Page 80, "threatenin" changed to "threatening" (and a threatening swing) + + +Page 177, "fastidous" changed to "fastidious" (is fastidious, and only) + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Asa Holmes, by Annie Fellows Johnston + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ASA HOLMES *** + +***** This file should be named 39598.txt or 39598.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + http://www.gutenberg.org/3/9/5/9/39598/ + +Produced by David Edwards, Emmy and the Online Distributed +Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was +produced from images generously made available by The +Internet Archive) + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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