University of Virginia Library

1. THE
BOY OF MOUNT RHIGI.

1. CHAPTER I.
BOYS' SPORTS.

There is a certain portion of the Tahconnick range
of mountains, in the western part of Massachusetts,
called Rhigi, said to have been thus named by
Swiss emigrants who settled there, and who probably
came from the neighborhood of Mount Rhigi, in Switzerland,
one of the beautiful resorts of that most beautiful
land.[1]

Rhigi deserves the name which the loving wanderers
from their father-land gave to it. Like its prototype, it
overlooks a land of hills and valleys, rivers and lakes.
Its woodlands echo to the pleasant sound of the brooks
that glide down its declivities, and in its solitudes there
are small lakes — bright mirrors of the stars — known to
few except the sportsmen who frequent them.

Near the summit of the mountain there is a furnace,
and around it a scrambling village inhabited by colliers,
and forgers, and the loafers[2] who are usually attracted
about a place of this description. Behind the village, and
sunken rather below its level, and separated from it by
an intervening morass, is a bit of water, precious to
the sportsman, for it is excellent fishing-ground for
sunfish, perch, and pickerel.

On a certain September day, two boys were fishing
together on the margin of this pond. One was a fairhaired,
fair-skinned boy of fifteen, with rather noble features,
expressive of truth, decision, and good temper. He

was tall of his years, and spare. His dress was frugal
and very neat, though it was Saturday afternoon, when
the accumulation of a whole week makes usually a
frightful amount of dirt on a rustic boy's clothes.

His companion was a year younger than himself, and
shorter by half a head. He looked strong and agile, his
muscles and sinews being well developed and wrought
by those best of all agents in such work, exercise and
pure air. His skin was weather-tanned, nut-brown; his
hair hung in tangled, dark masses of curls. Beneath
them looked out an eye as keen as an eagle's. His nose
and mouth were handsome, and about the mouth there
was a love of fun and good-fellowship, an expression of
humor and kindliness, that were in strange contrast with
a contraction of his brow, and an expression of vigilant
anxiety, that gave him a look of age beyond his years.
The boys stood on a projecting crag that hung over a
deep pool of water. An old oak, scathed by lightning,
and wreathed by a pendent grape-vine, overshadowed
them. The oak was flanked by a thick ascending woodland,
through which wound a foot-path to the spot where
the boys were standing. It was a still, cloudy day, such

as fishermen love, and they had rare luck; the shorter
boy far better than the other, for as fast as he threw his
line in, it dipped, and out he drew it with a sunfish or
perch, and now and then a pickerel.

“Can any body tell me, Clap,” said his companion to
the shorter boy, “why you catch so many more fish than
I? Here I stand as still as a tombstone, and I manage
precisely as you do, and I have not had a real bite
for half an hour, and you have taken ten fish in that
time. It's too bad.”

“There's a fellow!” replied Clapham, without directly
solving his friend's question. “I never before caught
such a strapper as that, fishing off shore. You see,
Hal, I know just how to humor them. Fishing comes
by natur. Dad says so, and I believe it. The fish
know us. They know there's no kind of use in
dodging our lines.”

“I've got you!” exclaimed Hal, and jerked up his
line. The fish was off.

“That's no way, Hal,” said Clapham, coolly throwing
up his line, with a large fish struggling on it. “You
are a prince at reading and writing, and such notions,

Hal; but for fishing, diving, and shooting, you'll never
be a match for me. You come on, though, a bit;
you've a dozen fish there — hey?”

“Yes; but what is that? You've full fifty.”

“Thereabouts — and I am worth fifty times as much
as you — at fishing, Hal. There! — there! — there's a
bite — the fellow will scud off with line, pole, and all.
Ah! ah! See! see! see, Hal.” The boys leaned over
the bank to watch a very large pickerel, that was warily
playing with Clapham's bait. He “nibbled gloriously,”
but did not swallow the bait.

“He knows you, Clap, a little too well!” said Hal.

“I'll have the sarpent, yet,” muttered Clapham.

While the boys were thus intently occupied, a tall,
broad, heavy-framed man came down the shady foot-path
behind them, with a string of game over one
shoulder, and a gun at the other. As much of a brim
as remained to his torn hat, was slouched over his eyes.
His hair, half gray, half still coal-black, was straight
and tangled, and his face was unshaven enough for an
Austrian soldier, or a city coxcomb. He had on a coarse,
red flannel shirt, without waistcoat or over-coat of any

sort, satinet trousers, filthier and more ragged than his
shirt, and a red cotton handkerchief knotted around his
bullock throat. A rare figure, indeed, he presented for
our country parts, where every man can, and most men
do, wear decent clothes.

He trod warily, as he approached the boys. He
needed not, for they were too much absorbed to heed
him. There was a keen glance from his eye, and a
malignant grin on his thin, close-set lips. Having got
close to Clapham, he gave him a kick with his broad,
bare foot, which sent him off into the water, growling
out, as he did so, “There, go to the devil, and learn next
time to do what I bid ye!”

The suddenness and violence of the blow deprived
Clapham of all power of exertion. He was, in fact,
stunned, and was sinking without an effort, when Harry,
shouting to him in a desperate voice, plunged after him,
and brought him to the surface. Clapham, though used
as a fish to the water, had quite lost his self-possession,
and he grasped his friend instinctively. The boys were
in danger of sinking together. “Good enough for 'em,”
said the half-drunk, brutalized wretch. Harry struggled,

and managed to keep both their heads above water till
Clapham had sufficiently recovered his self-command
to remain passive. Harry then dragged him to the
shore. In a few minutes more, Clapham was himself
again, though still ghastly pale. He shook off the
water, and, turning to the man, who looked at him as
he would have looked at a dog in like circumstances,
he said, “Dad, that wasn't fair.”

The father laughed hoarsely, and walked on.

“Now that's a father for a boy to have!” said Clapham,
gazing after him, shaking his fist, and dashing off
a tear, that, in spite of his hardihood, his sense of his
father's brutishness drew from him. “I'll pay him, if
ever I grow up — I will.”

“O, hush, Clap — he's your father,” said Harry.

“There's no hush to it, Harry. I will. You don't
know nothing about him — you don't begin to know
him. He a father! He makes me fetch and carry for
him till I am as tired as any dog. He makes me lie for
him, and — and steal for him; and if I don't, he tries
to drown me; and he would, if you had not jumped in
after me. How could you do it, Hal? I wan't worth

it; and besides, don't you know that man or boy, that's
stunned and drowning, will pull you in?”

“Yes, I know that well; but I could not stand still
and see you sinking. There are no two ways about
that.”

“No, you could not — it would not be you if you did,
Hal. I never shall forget this — you see if I do.” The
rough little fellow's phrases had not much in them, but
his brimming eyes, his flushed cheek, and his quivering
lips, filled out his meaning as he proceeded. “I don't
know so much as you do, by a great sight; but there
may come a time when I can do you a good turn, and
you'll find me as ready as water is to run down hill.”

“You always have been, Clap; so we stand but even
now. Talking of water running down hill, suppose we
fish along down stream going home?”

“Agreed. The trout will bite as sharp as steel this
afternoon. I don't care how late I get to our den: late
or early, I shall only get a shaking.”

The boys gathered up their fishing-tackle, slung their
fish over their shoulders, and pursued their way towards
the brook. After walking on for a few moments in silence,

Clapham suddenly stopped, and, laying his hand on
Harry's shoulder, said, “May be, Hal, you think me a chip
of the old block; but I'm not — altogether; and if I had
any thing fit to be called father and mother, I should not
be very different from folks. When I have heard your
father speak to you friendly, and seen your mother's
doings — your mother is complete — I have had feelings
— I have. I have had more than one crying spell,
thinking of my bad luck in a father and mother.”

“It is bad luck,” replied Harry. “But come along,
let's fish a little now. We must soon be going home.
Mother is always anxious if I stay out after dark.
Mothers always are, you know.”

“Some mothers,” replied Clapham, with an accompanying
sound, half groan and half growl.

Harry took no notice of this, and the boys, after having
stopped to fish at quiet, shady places, pointed out
by Clapham as favorite trout-haunts, and having each
added a string of these favorite fish to their sporting
treasure, hastened homeward. When they well
could, they kept to the margin of the brook; but, where
they met with obstruction, from steep rocks or tangled

shrubbery, they dashed into the channel, leaped from
stone to stone, and shouted in accord with the joyous
mountain-stream.

Clapham, boy-like, forgot the trouble that had made
him so miserable a half hour before. The leaden clouds,
which had hung over them all day, were breaking away,
and rolling off in separate masses, dyed with shades of
yellow, purple, and rose color, by the setting sun; and,
intermingling with the deep blue sky, they were reflected
like pictures in the brook; where, set back by a dam of
rocks, it offered to these lovely and ever-changing
images a glass-like mirror. The boys had planted their
feet on a little bit of an island, around which the water
gurgled; and Clapham, turning his eyes from the brook
to the wooded hills, lit up with a shower of golden light,
said, “Hal, is not this here brook a pretty kind of looking-glass?”

“Yes, indeed, and a first-rate beauty looking in it
now. Trout-fishing in such a brook as this beats the
world. I read an anecdote, the other day, of a man
who went wade-fishing in such a place as this, and got
the gout in his stomach. The doctor told him it would

kill him some day. `The Lord's will be done,' he said;
`but I can't give up wade-fishing.' I think — don't
you, Clap? — that half the pleasure is in the pleasant
places we go to?”

“I don't know. I never thought of it. I somehow
feel better when I am out in sleek places — if father
ain't with me.”

“But had you not much rather come by the brook
than by the road? and don't you stop and look at the
falls?”

“Why, yes, I do. The brook is lively kind o' company;
and the falls are pretty sleek, — but nothing to
Bash Bish Falls. I spent one whole day clambering
up to the `Eagle's Nest.' Looking down from there is
kind o' wonderful. I forgot my fishing, and went to
sleep, and I had a dream there — I tell you, Hal!
When I waked, the stars were shining on me. I got
a rapper when I came home, though.”

“What did you dream, Clap?”

“I dreamed I was lying at the foot of the fall, almost
naked, and awful hungry. I had lost my way, and did
not know how to get back amongst folks. I heard a

voice say, `Look up, and see, way, way up, where the
water first springs over the rock: there you must go.
Sheer up where the stream comes down. There is
no other way. If you look back, you'll come crashing
down; but keep your courage up, and you will
get safe to the Eagle's Nest, and find there every thing
you want in life.' Now, you know, as it was a dream,
its being impossible did not stop me: so straight on I
went, the water spattering me and roaring in my ears.
I saw lions and tigers sticking out their heads between
the trees, and growling, and cat-o'-mounts on the
branches ready to spring on me, and snakes crawling
and hissing along the rocks, and a toad with a face
just like my father's. O, I tell you, Hal, that
scared me. But I did keep on.

“You have not seen Bash Bish, Hal? Well, the
last leap of the water is on each side a rock that
springs up to a sharp point, and on that point I stood
as if I had wings; but wings I had not, and how to
get off I did not know. There was a buzz of voices
all around me. They came out of the water, and out
of the trees, and one word they all spoke — `On! on!'

What to do I did not know. There was no place my
foot could reach, no branch of a tree I could get hold
of. I had a kind of feeling, — I suppose Elder Briggs
would call if faith, — that if I believed the words, and
looked up, I should go safe. So I fixed my eye on
the Eagle's Nest, and gave a spring up, and suddenly
there dangled before me a bright cord, that looked
as much like forked lightning as any thing. I caught
hold of it, and swayed back and forth; I curled up
like a spider, but I did not look down; I held fast,
and felt myself drawn up; and I looked up to the
Eagle's Nest, and there stood a little, fat angel, just
such as they have on the tombstones; she held the
cord, and smiled so friendly! Up, up I went like a
lark; but, as I came nearer, the angel seemed to
melt into solid light, that shone on the trees, and
down the falls, down into the very bed of the stream,
and clear away where it winds and turns like a snake;
and it was not fire-light, nor sun-light, but brighter,
more like lightning of a dark night. But what was
queerest of all, there was a table set out with roast
pig, and turkey, and pumpkin pie, and mince, and
every thing like Squire Allen's thanksgiving day. Just
then, I waked, and there I lay, flat enough, hungry
as a hound, at the foot of the fall. Wasn't it
a drollish dream?”

“Yes; and perhaps it will come to pass.”

“Come to pass!”

“O, I do not mean your dream exactly, but something
that your dream is the sign of; as, when Joseph,
in Scripture, you know, dreamed that his brothers'
sheaf made obeisance to his sheaf, it was a sign he
would rule over them, and so forth.”

“I don't know much about Scripture stories, Hal;
but tell me what my going up those rocks, and the
tigers, and so forth, and the little chubby angel, and
the roast pig, could be a sign of.”

“Not really signs, Clap. The times have gone by,
mother says, when God teaches men by dreams; but
yours set me thinking, and so your scramble up that
mountain seemed to me the difficulties you have to
struggle with in breaking off your present way of living;
and the voices were God's urging us every way to
do right; and the lions and snakes, and so forth, are

the discouragements in your way; and the cord, that
came to your aid, is the help that always comes if
you help yourself; and the roast pig, and so forth,
means your success at the end.”

“Well done, Hal! you beat Elder Briggs all hollow!”
Clapham was silent for a moment, and then
added, “Mam believes in dreams. O that toad, Harry,
with my father's face!” Clapham paused, and then
said, in a lower and tremulous voice, “I felt, when I
looked at it, as if I were growing like it!” and then,
elevating his voice almost to a scream, he added, “Am
I like him? O, I am!” Poor Clapham's face assumed
an expression of distress and shame. Harry
longed to know just what it meant; but he did not
then press him further. Clapham's father was known
to be a desperate man, his hand against every man,
and every man's hand against him, and Harry suspected
that he had led his son into some evil-doing
that the boy was afraid to confess, lest Harry should
withdraw his friendship from him.

Clapham had yet to learn the nature and office of
true goodness; that it upbraideth not, that it suffereth

long and is kind, that it is easy to be entreated, and
full of compassion. Good men have known temptation
and wrestled with it, and have overcome it. No
man is so good that he has not felt the need of
asking pardon of God, his Creator and Judge; no
man so good but he has felt, at times, ready to fall
down at the foot of the cross, and, with tears from
a contrite and overflowing heart, give thanks to that
blessed Savior who came to proclaim forgiveness of
sins — to seek and to save the lost.

The better a man is, the more does he feel for
those who have wandered out of the right way; he
allows for the circumstances of danger in which they
have been placed, and if they have fallen, he is
ready to raise them up.

The good man looks on all men as his brothers.
They may be poor and ignorant; they may have been
guilty of much wrong-doing, but he remembers that
they were created in the image of God, and he knows
that image still exists, though dimmed and hidden by
many a sin. He desires, above all things, to see them
stand reclaimed among their fellow-men; he hopes

and believes they may turn their faces heavenward,
and lift their desires and aims to the infinite love of
God which awaits the penitent.

Harry Davis had not reasoned all this out distinctly;
but he was a true-hearted, kind-hearted boy.
He saw much good in Clapham, and believed him
capable of much more. He might have fallen into
a pit. “If I find it is so,” thought Harry, “I will drag
him out, and help him on to the best of my ability.”

After a little reflection, Harry said, “My mother
always says, when matters go wrong in this world,
we must do our best to right them. Now, if I were
you, Clapham, I would get some good place, and
live out.”

“I should have to run away if I did, for mother
wants me to pick up wood, and father wants me to
do every thing; but I would not mind running away,
for they are no parents to me, and I've no need to
be a son to them. They never did any thing for me
but born me. But what could I do in a regular way,
Hal? I have never done any thing but gather berries,
and pick up nuts, and fish, and hunt, and do oddcome-short

chores for mam. I am afraid, Hal, it
would not agree with me to go round and round in
the same spot, like a grindstone.”

Harry Davis was of a different opinion. He
thought truly that his friend, Clapham Dunn, had
good faculties, which, though they had been hitherto
pretty much wasted and turned aside from any worthy
use, might be so employed as to make him a useful
and respectable man. Harry had talked with his
mother about Clapham. Harry had a great respect
for his mother's judgment, and his mother had said
that a boy, that was a first-rate fisherman, and who
never went hunting without bringing home game,
would have a keen eye, and a dexterous hand at
farming, or at mechanic-work. All this Harry now
repeated to Clapham, and urged upon him many
reasons for decision and exertion; in a boy's way
he urged them, and for that reason they had more
weight with his friend. “Now, let's start together,
Clap,” he said; “I am going away from home next
fall, to begin the world: do you go, too. I begin as
poor as you do — empty-handed, Clap, with better

clothes, may be, because mother makes, and mends,
and manages, and keeps every thing decent; but we
are tolerably poor, Clap, I assure you, and if it were
not for mother, I don't know what would become of
us; but we'll pay her for it one of these days.”

“You say that with rather guess feelings, Hal,
from what I said, the very same words, down at the
pond,” replied Clapham. He spoke in a melancholy
voice, as if fully aware of the difference of their
condition. Harry felt pained for him. “Yes, I do,
Clap,” he said; “and it will never be the credit to
me to do well, that it will be to you, for I have
others to thank for what I am and shall be. Now
rouse up a good resolution — look forward, and not
back, and leave this shambling way of life. Go
clear away; and, by and by, when you get to be a
man, and forehanded in the world, come back, and
return good for evil to your father and mother.”

“Do you think that ever could come to pass,
Harry Davis?” Already Clapham's eye brightened
with hope; and the boys, as they fished down the
stream, talked over their plans for the future. Clapham

could not decide whether he would hire himself to a
farmer, or apprentice himself to a trade. Harry, though
only one year older than Clapham, knew a good deal
more about the world than he did, and he advised him
to get any decent place where he might be allowed to
do chores, and go to school. “Mother says,” he urged,
“that a man, in this country, is not a man without
some learning. Mother says he must know at least
how to read, write, and cipher. Mother says these
are the tools for all trades, and there is no getting on
without them.”

“Nor with them, neither, always, Harry. Now,
there's your father, — I don't mean any thing against
him. He's a master-man for learning, we all know.
The last time we went to Elder Briggs' meeting, I heard
him read, and he sounded and rounded it off, I tell you.
Elder Briggs was no stick to him. Well, he's got the
tools, but he has not gone ahead!”

“No, he has not; but that does not prove any thing.
I have got as good fishing tackle as you have, Clap, but
I catch very few fish; without the tackle I could not
catch one; nor could you, Clap, smart as you are. So,

the tools are necessary, and mother says an ignorant
man is at the mercy of other people. He must go to
them to read and write for him, and cast up his accounts.
And then, where almost every man, woman, and child
knows how to read and write, a grown-up person must
feel somehow below others, that does not know, and this
is a very disagreeable feeling. Besides, Clap, mother
says we are not to live for ourselves alone. We must
all do something for our fellow-creatures, and to do for
them, we must be something ourselves.”

“Gorry!” exclaimed Clap; “I do something for my
fellow-creatures! that's an idee, Hal! That will be when
the sky falls, and we catch larks, I guess.”

Clapham spoke jestingly; but he was conscious of a
new feeling in his bosom. Harry Davis was one of the
best lads in Salisbury, and one of the brightest scholars
in the school, and Harry Davis had shown himself his
friend. He had that day risked his life for him, and he
was now advising and encouraging him, and poor Clapham
felt, for the first time, that there was one person in
the world who took a real interest in him, and who had
some faith in him, and he felt a desire to preserve that

interest, and to make himself worthy of it, and he felt,
too, that it was possible he might; and visions of decent
living, and school-going, and going ahead, dawned upon
him, and he threw himself back on the ground, kicked
up his legs, and cried out, with a ringing laugh, “Hal,
I'll go it!”

“That's it, Clap; as mother says, be sure you're right,
then go ahead.” Harry had hardly uttered the words,
when Clapham turned over on his face, and burst into
tears and sobs; and when Harry said, “What is the
matter now, Clap?” he replied, “I can't tell you; but if
you knew all, you would despise me, you would not have
any kind of a hope of me, you would not even fish with
me again — no, you would not.”

“But try me, Clap, and see if I won't. You can't
make matters worse by telling me.”

“No, don't ask me, Hal. I can't — I can't — I won't
— not now, I mean — I can't.”

“Well, be quiet — consider of it — we won't talk
any more about it now.”

The boys kept their homeward, way, Harry asking
Clapham's attention to the pleasant spots, as he called

them; and Clapham, in reply, said, “It is a master-pretty
brook!” And so it is, with its hill sides of
stately trees, margins of flowering shrubs, herbs of
virtue, and flowers of many kinds.

A love of nature is not enough cultivated among
rich or poor. Without it, one is like a blind man in
a gallery of beautiful and ever-changing pictures, like
a deaf man in a wide-world concert-room — the paintings
and the music of divine creation.