Read Ebook: Bart Ridgeley: A Story of Northern Ohio by Riddle A G Albert Gallatin

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Ebook has 2002 lines and 98531 words, and 41 pages

"There is a real, true wolverine; several have seen him, and he screeches, and yells, and climbs trees, and everything!"

"Likely enough," replied Bart; "but wolverines don't climb. There may be a panther. Now, Ed, what has been going on on the farm? Is the haying done?"

"Yes; and the wheat is all in, and most all the oats. The corn is splendid in the old elm lot, and then the Major has been chopping down your old sugar camp, where we worked when you came home from old Hewitt's."

"Oh, dear, that was the loveliest bit of woodland, in the bend of the creek, in all the magnificent woods; well?"

"He has nearly finished the Jenks house," resumed Edward, "and is now at Snow's, in Auburn. He said you would be home before now."

"What about his colts?"

"Oh, Arab runs about wild as ever, and he has Dolf with him."

"How many hands has he with him?"

"Four or five."

"Dr. Lyman asked about you," said George, "and wondered where you were. He said you would be back in three weeks, and that something must have happened."

"It would be lucky for the Doctor's patients," replied Bart, "if something should keep him away three days."

"I guess he wants you to go a-fishing with him. They had a great time down there the other day--he, and Mr. Young, and Sol Johnson. They undertook to put up a sail as Henry and you do, and it didn't work, and they came near upsetting; and' Sol and old man Young were scart, and old Young thought he would get drownded. Oh, it must have been fun!"

And so the boys chippered, chirped, and laughed on to a late bed-time, and then went to bed perfectly happy.

Then came inquiries about Henry, who had written not long before, and had wondered why he had not heard from Barton; and, at last, wearied and worn with his three hundred miles' walk, Bart bade his mother good-night, and went to his old room, to rest and sleep as the young, and healthful, and hopeful, without deep sorrows or the stings of conscience, may do. In the strange freaks of a half-sleeping fancy, in his dreams, he remembered to have heard the screech of a wild animal, and to have seen the face of Julia Markham, pale with the mingled expression of courage and fear.

THE BLUE CHAMBER.

In the morning he found the front yard had a wild and tangled, and the garden a neglected look, and busied himself, with the boys, in improving their appearance.

In the afternoon he overhauled a small desk, the contents of which soon lay about on the floor. There were papers of all colors and sizes--scraps, single sheets, and collections of several pages--all covered with verses in many hands, from that of the young boy to elegant clerkly manuscript. They seemed to represent every style of poetic composition. It would have been amusing to watch the manner and expression with which the youth dealt with these children of his fancy, and to listen to his exclamations of condensed criticism. He evidently found little to commend. As he opened or unrolled one after another, and caught the heading, or a line of the text, he dashed it to the floor, with a single word of contempt, disgust, or derision. "Faugh!" "Oh!" "Pshaw!" "Blank verse? Blank enough!" Some he lingered over for a moment, but his brow never cleared or relented, and each and all were condemned with equal justice and impartiality. When the last was thrown down, and he was certain that none remained, he rose and contemplated their crumpled and creased forms with calm disdain.

"Oh, dear! you thought, some of you, that you might possibly be poetry, you miserable weaklings and beguilers! You are not even verses--are hardly rhymes. You are, one and all, without sense or sound." His brow grew severe in its condemnation. "There! take that! and that! and that!"--stamping them with his foot; "poor broken-backed, halting, limping, club-footed, no-going, unbodied, unsouled, nameless things. How do you like it? What business had you to be? You had no right to be born--never were born; had no capacity for birth; you don't even amount to failures! Words are wasted on you: let me see if you'll burn." Lighting one, he threw it upon the hearth. "It does! I am surprised at that. I rather like it. How blue and faint the flame is--it hardly produces smoke, and"--watching until it was consumed--"no ashes. Too ethereal for smoke and ashes. Let me try the rest;" and he did.

He then opened a small drawer and took out a portfolio, in which were various bits of bristol-board and paper, covered with crayon and pen sketches, and some things in water-colors--all giving evidence of a ready hand which showed some untaught practice. Whether his sense of justice was somewhat appeased, or because he regarded them with more favor, or reserved them for another occasion, was, perhaps, uncertain. Singularly enough, on each of them, no matter what was the subject, appeared one or more young girl's heads--some full-faced, some three-fourths, and more in profile--all spirited, all looking alike, and each having a strong resemblance to Julia Markham. Two or three were studied and deliberate attempts. He contemplated these long and earnestly, and laid them away with a sigh. They undoubtedly saved the collection.

That night he wrote to Henry:

"DEAR BROTHER,--I am back, of course. It is an unpleasant way of mine--this coming back. It was visionary for me to try a fall with the sciences at Hudson. You would have been too many for them; I ran away. I found Colton sick at Cincinnati. The Texan Rangers had left. I looked into the waters of the Ohio, running and hurrying away returnlessly to the south-west. Lord, how they called to me in their liquid offers to carry me away! They seemed to draw me to linger, and gurgle, and murmur in little staying, coaxing eddies at my feet, to persuade me to go.

"How near one seems to that far-off region of fever and swamp, of sun and sea, of adventure and blood, and old buccaneering, standing by those swift waters, already on their way thither! Should I go? Was I not too good to go, and be lost? Think of the high moral considerations involved? No matter, I didn't go--I came! Well!

"On reflection--and I thus assume that I do reflect--I think men don't find opportunities, or, if they do, they don't know them. One must make an opportunity for himself, and then he will know what to do with it. The other day I stood on the other side of the Chagrin waiting for an opportunity, and it didn't come, and I made one. I waded through, and liked it, and that was not the only lesson I learned at the same time. But that other was for my personal improvement. A man can as well find the material for his opportunity in one place as another. See how I excuse myself!

"Just now, I am a reformed young Blue Beard. Fatima and her sister may go--have gone. I have just overhauled my 'Blue Chamber,' taken down all my suspended wives, and burned them. They ended in smoke. Lord! there wasn't flesh and blood enough in them all to decompose, and they gave out no odor even while burning. I burned them all, cleaned off all the blood-spots, ventilated the room, opened the windows, and will turn it to a workshop. No more sighing for the unattainable, no more grasping at the intangible, no more clutching at the impalpable. I am no poet, and we don't want poetry. Our civilization isn't old enough. Poets, like other maggots, will be produced when fermentation comes. I am going about the humdrum and the useful. I am about as low in the public estimation as I can well go; at any rate I am down on hard land, which will be a good starting-point. Now don't go off and become sanguine over me, nor trouble yourself much about me.

"'The world will find me after many a day,' as Southey says of one of his books. I doubt if it ever did. The Doctor contends that Southey was a poet; but then he thinks I am, also!

"There! I got home only last night, and haven't heard any news to write you. Some time I will tell of two or three things I saw and heard, and about some of our cousins, who regard us as belonging to the outer and lower skirts of the race. If I am to be one end of a family, let it be the beginning.

"Mother sends love. Edward and George speak of you constantly. I've not seen our Major since my return.

"Write me a good, sharp, cutting, criticising, deuced brotherly letter soon. As ever,

"BART.

"P.S. Have you read Pickwick?

"B."

It was full of badinage, with only a dip or two into an absorbing purpose that he had fully formed, and which he evidenced to himself by the summary expulsion of the muses.

In the world of nature and humanity, is there such an embodiment of contradictions and absurdities as a youth in his transit from the dreamland of boyhood to the battle-field of manhood, through a region partaking of both, and abounding with strange products of its own? I am not speaking of the average boy, such boys as make up the male mass of the world--the undreaming, unthinking, plodding, drudging, sweating herd, whose few old commonplace, well-worn ideas don't possess the power of reproduction, and whose thoughts are thirteenth or thirteen hundredth-handed, and transmitted unimpregnated to other dullards, and whose life and spirit is that of the young animal merely--but a real young man, one of possibilities, intended for a man, and not merely for a male, one in whom the primitive forces of nature are planted, and who may develop into a new driving or forming power. What a mad, impulsive, freaky thing it is! You may see him bruising his still soft head a score of times against the impossible, and he will still contend that he can do it. He will spring frantically up the face of an unclimbable precipice, as the young salmon leaps up a cataract, and die in the faith that he can go up it.

Oh, sublime faith! Oh, sublime folly! What strides he is constantly taking to the ridiculous, and not always from the sublime! How strong! how weak! How wise! how foolish! Consistent only in folly, and steady in the purpose of being foolish. How beautiful, and how ugly! What a lovable, detestable, desirable, proud, wilful, arrogant, supercilious, laughing, passionate, tender, cruel, loving, hating, good sort of a good-for-nothing he is! He believes everything--he believes nothing; and, like Mary's Son, questions and mocks the doctors to their beards in the very temple. Patience! he must have his time, and room to grow in, develop, and shape out. Let him have coral for his teeth, and climbing, and running, and jumping for his muscle. No man may love him, and no woman but his mother, and she is to be tried to the extent of endurance. Wait for him; he will, with or without your help, turn out good or bad, and in either event people will say: "I always told you so," "I always knew it was in him"; and cite a score of unhappened things in proof of their sagacity.

Barton was one of these; neither better nor worse, full of possibilities and capabilities, impulsive, rash, and unreasoning. He has just made a resolve, and will act upon it; proud and sensitive to a degree, he had heard a word of fault once at the store, which another word would have explained. He would not say it, and went. It was discovered that the fault was not his, in time for him to remain; but he left without that word. He is willing to take his chances, and must speak and act for himself.

He sealed and directed his letter, walked about with the plaintive airs of old melodies running and running through his head, and sang snatches and verses of sad old ballads, going over and over with some touching line, or complaining strain, till he was saturated with its tender melancholy, and so he came back to ordinary life.

NEWBURY.

Newbury was one of the twenty-odd townships, five miles square, that then made up the county of Geauga, and a part of the Western Reserve, the Yankee-doodledom of Ohio, settled exclusively by emigrants from New England. It was so much of Massachusetts, Connecticut, Vermont, etc., translated into the broader and freer West. It has been said that the Yankee, like a certain vegetable, heads best when transplanted. It was the old thing over, under new and trying circumstances. The same old ideas and notions, habits of thought and life; poor, economical and thrifty folk, with the same reverence for religion and law, love of education, and restless desire for improvement, and to better the present condition. In the West the Yankee developed his best qualities in the second generation. He became a little straighter and less angular, and wider between the eyes. In the first generation he lived out his life scarcely refracted by the new atmosphere. This crop still stood firm and hardy on the Reserve, and they often turned homesick eyes, talked lovingly and lingeringly of "down country," as they all called loved and cherished New England. Most of the first settlers were poor, but hardy and enterprising. The two last qualities were absolutely necessary to take them through the long, wearisome journey to Ohio, the then far West. They took up lands, built cabins, and forced a subsistence from the newly-cleared, stumpy virgin soil. This homogeneous people constituted a practical and thorough democracy. Their social relations were based on personal equality, varied only by the accident of superior talents, address or enterprise, and as yet but little modified by wealth or its adventitious circumstances.

Among the emigrants scattered here and there was occasionally found a branch of a "down country" family of some pretensions, dating back to services in the Revolution, to old wealth, or official position. Among these were one or two families at Painesville, near the lake, at Parkman, several at Warren, and more at Cleveland, who had made each other's acquaintance, and who, as the country improved and the means of communication were perfected, formed and kept up a sort of association over the heads, and hardly within the observation, of the people generally. Of these, as we may say, by right of his wife, was Judge Markham. He was a hardy, intelligent, and, for his day, a cultivated man, who came early into the woods as an agent for many large stockholders of the old Connecticut Land Company, and a liberal percentage of the sales placed in his hands the nucleus of a large fortune. Sagacity in investments and improvements, with thorough business capacity, had already made him one of the wealthiest men on the Reserve; while a handsome person, and frank, pleasant address, rendered him very popular. He had been for several years an associate judge of the court of common pleas for Geauga county, and had an extensive acquaintance and influence. Mrs. Markham, a genuine daughter of the old Puritan ancestry, dating back to the first landing, a true specimen of the best Yankee woman under favorable circumstances, was a most thoroughly accomplished lady, who had gone into the woods with her young husband, and who shed and exercised a wide and beneficent influence through her sphere. So simple, sweet, natural and judicious was she ever, that her neighbors felt her to be quite one of themselves, as she was. Everybody was drawn to her; and so approachable was she, that the lower and more common declared that she was no lady at all.

Their only child, Julia, just maturing into womanhood, was one of the best and highest specimens of the American girl, to whom refinement, grace, and a strong, rich, sweet nature, came by right of birth, while she inherited beauty from both parents; she seemed, however, unconscious of this last possession, as she was of the admiration which filled the atmosphere that surrounded her. She, too, must speak and act for herself.

At the time of the incidents to be narrated, the northern and eastern part of Newbury had a considerable population. It was traversed by a highway leading west through its centre to Cleveland, and by a stage-road leading from Painesville to the Ohio river, through its eastern part. This was called the "State road," and on it stood Parker's Hotel, a stage-house much frequented, and constituting the centre of a little village, while further south was the extensive trading establishment of Markham & Co., using the name and some of the capital of the Judge, and managed mainly by Roberts and another junior. Judge Markham's spacious and elegant dwelling stood about half a mile south of the store.

The south-western part of the township, with much of two adjoining townships, remained an unbroken forest, belonging to an eccentric landholder who refused to sell it. This was spoken of as "the woods," and furnished cover and haunts for wild game and animals, hunting-ground for the pioneers, and also gave shelter to a few shiftless squatters, in various parts of its wide expanse. In the eastern border of the township was Punderson's pond, a beautiful, irregular-shaped body of limpid water, embosomed by deep wooded hills, and of considerable extent, well stocked with fish, and much frequented on that account.

In the afternoon of the second day after his return, Bart went down a highway leading east to the State road, to the post-office, kept at Markham's store, and this road took him down by the southern end of the pond, and thence southerly on the State road. He passed along by Dr. Lyman's, Jonah Johnson's, and so on, past houses, and clearings, and woodlands, looking almost wistfully, as if he expected pleasant greetings; but the few he saw merely nodded to him, or called out: "Are you back again?" He paused on the hill by the saw-mill, which overlooked the pond, and gazed long over its beautiful surface, sleeping in utter solitude amid the green hills, under the slanting summer sun, and seemed to recognize in it what he had observed, on the evening of his return, about the old homestead--the change that had taken place in himself--a change which often accounts for the strange appearance of the most familiar and cherished places. We find it reflected in the face of inanimate nature, and wonder at her altered guise, unconscious of the cause. He sauntered musingly on to the State road, and over by the old grist-mill, past several houses, up to Parker's. Here, by a beautiful spring under the shade of old apple and cherry-trees, near the carriage-way, was an indolent group of afternoon idlers. Conspicuous among them was the dark and striking face of Dr. Lyman, the rich mahogany of Uncle Josh, and the homely, shrewd, and fresh-colored countenance of Jonah Johnson. Bart could not avoid them if he would; and regretted that he had not gone across the woods to the post-office, and so escaped them.

"Well, young Scholasticus," said the Doctor, after the slight greetings had been given to the new-comer, "you seem to have graduated with great rapidity. You went through college like--"

"One of your emetics, Doctor. I came out at the same door I went in at. Now, doctus, doctior, doctissimus, I am fair game on this point, so blaze away with everything but your saddle-bags, and I will laugh with the rest of you."

A good-natured laugh welcomed this coming down.

"Well," replied the doctor, "there can't be much more said."

"I should like to know, young man," remarked Uncle Josh, "whether you raly got into the college, I should."

"What did you do, badinage apart?"

"I took a good outside look at the buildings, which was improving; called on your friends Dr. Nutting and Rev. Beriah Green, who asked me what church I belonged to, and who was my instructor in Latin."

"What reply did you make?"

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