 | Twice-told tales |  |
THE SEVEN VAGABONDS.
Rambling on foot in the spring of my life and the
summer of the year, I came one afternoon to a point
which gave me the choice of three directions. Straight
before me, the main road extended its dusty length to
Boston; on the left a branch went towards the sea,
and would have lengthened my journey a trifle, of
twenty or thirty miles; while, by the right hand path,
I might have gone over hills and lakes to Canada,
visiting in my way, the celebrated town of Stamford.
On a level spot of grass, at the foot of the guide post,
appeared an object, which though locomotive on a different
principle, reminded me of Gulliver's portable
mansion among the Brobdignags. It was a huge covered
wagon, or, more properly, a small house on
wheels, with a door on one side and a window shaded
by green blinds on the other. Two horses, munching
provender out of the baskets which muzzled them,
were fastened near the vehicle: a delectable sound
conjectured that this was some itinerant show,
halting at the confluence of the roads to intercept
such idle travellers as myself. A shower had long
been climbing up the western sky, and now hung so
blackly over my onward path that it was a point of
wisdom to seek shelter here.
`Halloo! Who stands guard here? Is the doorkeeper
asleep?' cried I, approaching a ladder of two
or three steps which was let down from the wagon.
The music ceased at my summons, and there appeared
at the door, not the sort of figure that I had
mentally assigned to the wandering show-man, but a
most respectable old personage, whom I was sorry to
have addressed in so free a style. He wore a snuff-colored
coat and small clothes, with white top boots,
and exhibited the mild dignity of aspect and manner
which may often be noticed in aged schoolmasters,
and sometimes in deacons, selectmen, or other potentates
of that kind. A small piece of silver was my
passport within his premises, where I found only one
other person, hereafter to be described.
`This is a dull day for business,' said the old gentleman,
as he ushered me in; `but I merely tarry
here to refresh the cattle, being bound for the campmeeting
at Stamford.'
Perhaps the movable scene of this narrative is still
peregrinating New England, and may enable the
reader to test the accuracy of my description. The
spectacle, for I will not use the unworthy term of
puppet-show, consisted of a multitude of little people
artisans of every kind, in the attitudes of their toil,
and a group of fair ladies and gay gentlemen standing
ready for the dance; a company of foot soldiers
formed a line across the stage, looking stern, grim,
and terrible enough, to make it a pleasant consideration
that they were but three inches high; and conspicuous
above the whole was seen a Merry Andrew,
in the pointed cap and motley coat of his profession.
All the inhabitants of this mimic world were motionless,
like the figures in a picture, or like that people
who one moment were alive in the midst of their
business and delights, and the next were transformed
to statues, preserving an eternal semblance of labor
that was ended, and pleasure that could be felt no
more. Anon, however, the old gentleman turned
the handle of a barrel organ, the first note of which
produced a most enlivening effect upon the figures,
and awoke them all to their proper occupations and
amusements. By the self-same impulse the tailor
plied his needle, the blacksmith's hammer descended
upon the anvil, and the dancers whirled away on
feathery tiptoes; the company of soldiers broke into
platoons, retreated from the stage, and were succeeded
by a troop of horse, who came prancing onward
with such a sound of trumpets and trampling of hoofs,
as might have startled Don Quixote himself; while
an old toper, of inveterate ill-habits, uplifted his black
bottle and took off a hearty swig. Meantime the
Merry Andrew began to caper and turn somersets,
shaking his sides, nodding his head, and winking his
the nonsense of all human affairs, and making fun of
the whole multitude beneath him. At length the old
magician (for I compared the show-man to Prospero,
entertaining his guests with a masque of shadows,)
paused that I might give utterance to my wonder.
`What an admirable piece of work is this!' exclaimed
I, lifting up my hands in astonishment.
Indeed, I liked the spectacle, and was tickled with
the old man's gravity as he presided at it, for I had
none of that foolish wisdom which reproves every
occupation that is not useful in this world of vanities.
If there be a faculty which I possess more perfectly
than most men, it is that of throwing myself mentally
into situations foreign to my own, and detecting, with
a cheerful eye, the desirable circumstances of each.
I could have envied the life of this grey headed showman,
spent as it had been in a course of safe and
pleasurable adventure, in driving his huge vehicle
sometimes through the sands of Cape Cod, and sometimes
over the rough forest roads of the north and
east, and halting now on the green before a village
meeting-house, and now in a paved square of the
metropolis. How often must his heart have been
gladdened by the delight of children, as they viewed
these animated figures! or his pride indulged, by
haranguing learnedly to grown men on the mechanical
powers which produced such wonderful effects!
or his gallantry brought into play (for this is an attribute
which such grave men do not lack,) by the visits
of pretty maidens! And then with how fresh a feeling
home!
`I would I were assured of as happy a life as his,'
thought I.
Though the show-man's wagon might have accommodated
fifteen or twenty spectators, it now contained
only himself and me, and a third person at whom I
threw a glance on entering. He was a neat and trim
young man of two or three and twenty; his drab hat,
and green frock coat with velvet collar, were smart,
though no longer new; while a pair of green spectacles,
that seemed needless to his brisk little eyes, gave
him something of a scholar-like and literary air.
After allowing me a sufficient time to inspect the
puppets, he advanced with a bow, and drew my attention
to some books in a corner of the wagon. These
he forthwith began to extol, with an amazing volubility
of well-sounding words, and an ingenuity of
praise that won him my heart, as being myself one
of the most merciful of critics. Indeed his stock required
some considerable powers of commendation
in the salesman; there were several ancient friends
of mine, the novels of those happy days when my
affections wavered between the Scottish Chiefs and
Thomas Thumb; besides a few of later date, whose
merits had not been acknowledged by the public. I
was glad to find that dear little venerable volume, the
New England Primer, looking as antique as ever,
though in its thousandth new edition; a bundle of
superannuated gilt picture books made such a child
of me, that, partly for the glittering covers, and
and an assortment of ballads and popular theatrical
songs drew largely on my purse. To balance these
expenditures, I meddled neither with sermons, nor
science, nor morality, though volumes of each were
there; nor with a Life of Franklin in the coarsest of
paper, but so showily bound that it was emblematical
of the Doctor himself, in the court dress which he refused
to wear at Paris; nor with Webster's spelling
book, nor some of Byron's minor poems, nor half a
dozen little testaments at twenty-five cents each.
Thus far the collection might have been swept from
some great book store, or picked up at an evening
auction room; but there was one small blue covered
pamphlet, which the pedler handed me with so peculiar
an air, that I purchased it immediately at his own
price; and then, for the first time, the thought struck
me, that I had spoken face to face with the veritable
author of a printed book. The literary man now
evinced a great kindness for me, and I ventured to
inquire which way he was travelling.
`Oh,' said he, `I keep company with this old gentleman
here, and we are moving now towards the
camp-meeting at Stamford.'
He then explained to me, that for the present season
he had rented a corner of the wagon as a book
store, which, as he wittily observed, was a true Circulating
Library, since there were few parts of the
country where it had not gone its rounds. I approved
of the plan exceedingly, and began to sum up within
my mind the many uncommon felicities in the life of
that of the individual before me. At a high
rate was to be reckoned the daily and hourly enjoyment
of such interviews as the present, in which he
seized upon the admiration of a passing stranger, and
made him aware that a man of literary taste, and
even of literary achievement, was travelling the country
in a show-man's wagon. A more valuable, yet
not infrequent triumph, might be won in his conversations
with some elderly clergyman, long vegetating in
a rocky, woody, watery back settlement of New England,
who as he recruited his library from the pedler's
stock of sermons, would exhort him to seek a college
education and become the first scholar in his class.
Sweeter and prouder yet would be his sensations,
when, talking poetry while he sold spelling books, he
should charm the mind, and haply touch the heart of
a fair country school mistress, herself an unhonored
poetess, a wearer of blue stockings which none but
himself took pains to look at. But the scene of his
completest glory would be when the wagon had halted
for the night, and his stock of books was transferred
to some crowded bar room. Then would he recommend
to the multifarious company, whether traveller
from the city, or teamster from the hills, or neighboring
squire, or the landlord himself, or his loutish
hostler, works suited to each particular taste and capacity;
proving, all the while, by acute criticism and
profound remark, that the lore in his books was even
exceeded by that in his brain.
Thus happily would he traverse the land; sometimes
walking arm in arm with awful Literature; and
reaping everywhere a harvest of real and sensible
popularity, which the secluded book worms, by whose
toil he lived, could never hope for.
`If ever I meddle with literature,' thought I, fixing
myself in adamantine resolution, `it shall be as a
travelling bookseller.'
Though it was still mid-afternoon, the air had now
grown dark about us, and a few drops of rain came
down upon the roof of our vehicle, pattering like the
feet of birds that had flown thither to rest. A sound
of pleasant voices made us listen, and there soon appeared
halfway up the ladder the pretty person of a
young damsel, whose rosy face was so cheerful, that
even amid the gloomy light it seemed as if the sunbeams
were peeping under her bonnet. We next
saw the dark and handsome features of a young man,
who with easier gallantry than might have been expected
in the heart of Yankee-land, was assisting her
into the wagon. It became immediately evident to
us, when the two strangers stood within the door, that
they were of a profession kindred to those of my
companions; and I was delighted with the more than
hospitable, the even paternal kindness, of the old
show-man's manner, as he welcomed them; while
the man of literature hastened to lead the merry-eyed
girl to a seat on the long bench.
`You are housed but just in time, my young
friends,' said the master of the wagon. `The sky
would have been down upon you within five minutes.'
The young man's reply marked him as a foreigner,
not by any variation from the idiom and accent of
good English, but because he spoke with more caution
and accuracy, than if perfectly familiar with the
language.
`We knew that a shower was hanging over us,'
said he, `and consulted whether it were best to enter
the house on the top of yonder hill, but seeing your
wagon in the road —'
`We agreed to come hither,' interrupted the girl,
with a smile, `because we should be more at home in
a wandering house like this.'
I, meanwhile, with many a wild and undetermined
fantasy, was narrowly inspecting these two doves that
had flown into our ark. The young man tall, agile,
and athletic, wore a mass of black shining curls clustering
round a dark and vivacious countenance, which,
if it had not greater expression, was at least more active,
and attracted readier notice, than the quiet faces
of our countrymen. At his first appearance, he had
been laden with a neat mahogany box, of about two
feet square, but very light in proportion to its size,
which he had immediately unstrapped from his shoulders
and deposited on the floor of the wagon.
The girl had nearly as fair a complexion as our
own beauties, and a brighter one than most of them;
the lightness of her figure, which seemed calculated
to traverse the whole world without weariness,
suited well with the glowing cheerfulness of her face;
and her gay attire combining the rainbow hues of
crimson, green, and a deep orange, was as proper to
This gay stranger was appropriately burdened with
that mirth-inspiring instrument, the fiddle, which her
companion took from her hands, and shortly began
the process of tuning. Neither of us — the previous
company of the wagon — needed to inquire their
trade; for this could be no mystery to frequenters of
brigade musters, ordinations, cattle shows, commencements,
and other festal meetings in our sober land;
and there is a dear friend of mine, who will smile
when this page recalls to his memory a chivalrous
deed performed by us, in rescuing the show box of
such a couple from a mob of great double-fisted countrymen.
`Come,' said I to the damsel of gay attire, `shall
we visit all the wonders of the world together?'
She understood the metaphor at once; though indeed
it would not much have troubled me, if she had
assented to the literal meaning of my words. The
mahogany box was placed in a proper position, and I
peeped in through its small round magnifying window,
while the girl sat by my side, and gave short
descriptive sketches, as one after another the pictures
were unfolded to my view. We visited together, at
least our imaginations did, full many a famous city, in
the streets of which I had long yearned to tread;
once, I remember, we were in the harbor of Barcelona,
gazing townwards; next, she bore me through
the air to Sicily, and bade me look up at blazing
Ætna; then we took wing to Venice, and sat in a
gondola beneath the arch of the Rialto; and anon she
coronation of Napoleon. But there was one scene,
its locality she could not tell, which charmed my attention
longer than all those gorgeous palaces and
churches, because the fancy haunted me, that I myself,
the preceding summer, had beheld just such an
humble meeting-house, in just such a pine-surrounded
nook, among our own green mountains. All these
pictures were tolerably executed, though far inferior
to the girl's touches of description; nor was it easy
to comprehend, how in so few sentences, and these,
as I supposed, in a language foreign to her, she contrived
to present an airy copy of each varied scene.
When we had travelled through the vast extent of the
mahogany box, I looked into my guide's face.
`Where are you going, my pretty maid?' inquired
I, in the words of an old song.
`Ah,' said the gay damsel, `you might as well ask
where the summer wind is going. We are wanderers
here, and there, and every where. Wherever
there is mirth, our merry hearts are drawn to it. Today,
indeed, the people have told us of a great frolic
and festival in these parts; so perhaps we may be
needed at what you call the camp meeting at Stamford.'
Then in my happy youth, and while her pleasant
voice yet sounded in my ears, I sighed; for none but
myself, I thought, should have been her companion in
a life which seemed to realize my own wild fancies,
cherished all through visionary boyhood to that hour.
To these two strangers, the world was in its golden
but because its weariness and sorrow had no community
with their ethereal nature. Wherever they
might appear in their pilgrimage of bliss, Youth
would echo back their gladness, care-stricken Maturity
would rest a moment from its toil, and Age, tottering
among the graves, would smile in withered joy
for their sakes. The lonely cot, the narrow and
gloomy street, the sombre shade, would catch a passing
gleam like that now shining on ourselves, as these
bright spirits wandered by. Blessed pair, whose
happy home was throughout all the earth! I looked
at my shoulders, and thought them broad enough to
sustain those pictured towns and mountains; mine,
too, was an elastic foot, as tireless as the wing of the
bird of Paradise; mine was then an untroubled
heart, that would have gone singing on its delightful
way.
`Oh, maiden!' said I aloud, `why did you not
come hither alone?'
While the merry girl and myself were busy with
the show-box, the unceasing rain had driven another
wayfarer into the wagon. He seemed pretty nearly
of the old show-man's age, but much smaller, leaner,
and more withered than he, and less respectably clad
in a patched suit of gray; withal, he had a thin,
shrewd countenance, and a pair of diminutive gray
eyes, which peeped rather too keenly out of their
puckered sockets. This old fellow had been joking
with the show-man, in a manner which intimated previous
acquaintance; but perceiving that the damsel
document and presented it to me. As I had anticipated,
it proved to be a circular, written in a very
fair and legible hand, and signed by several distinguished
gentlemen whom I had never heard of, stating
that the bearer had encountered every variety of
misfortune, and recommending him to the notice of
all charitable people. Previous disbursements had
left me no more than a five dollar bill, out of which,
however, I offered to make the beggar a donation,
provided he would give me change for it. The object
of my beneficence looked keenly in my face, and
discerned that I had none of that abominable spirit,
characteristic though it be, of a full-blooded Yankee,
which takes pleasure in detecting every little harmless
piece of knavery.
`Why, perhaps,' said the ragged old mendicant, `if
the bank is in good standing, I can't say but I may
have enough about me to change your bill.'
`It is a bill of the Suffolk Bank,' said I, `and better
than the specie.'
As the beggar had nothing to object, he now produced
a small buff leather bag, tied up carefully with
a shoe-string. When this was opened, there appeared
a very comfortable treasure of silver coins, of all sorts
and sizes, and I even fancied that I saw, gleaming
among them, the golden plumage of that rare bird in
our currency, the American Eagle. In this precious
heap was my bank note deposited, the rate of exchange
being considerably against me. His wants
being thus relieved, the destitute man pulled out of
probably contributed to fill the buff leather bag, in
more ways than one.
`Come,' said he, `I spy a rare fortune in your face,
and for twenty-five cents more, I 'll tell you what
it is.'
I never refuse to take a glimpse into futurity; so
after shuffling the cards, and when the fair damsel
had cut them, I dealt a portion to the prophetic beggar.
Like others of his profession, before predicting
the shadowy events that were moving on to meet me,
he gave proof of his preternatural science, by describing
scenes through which I had already passed. Here
let me have credit for a sober fact. When the old
man had read a page in his book of fate, he bent his
keen gray eyes on mine, and proceeded to relate, in
all its minute particulars, what was then the most singular
event of my life. It was one which I had no
purpose to disclose, till the general unfolding of all
secrets; nor would it be a much stranger instance of
inscrutable knowledge, or fortunate conjecture, if the
beggar were to meet me in the street to-day, and repeat,
word for word, the page which I have here written.
The fortune-teller, after predicting a destiny
which time seems loth to make good, put up his cards,
secreted his treasure bag, and began to converse with
the other occupants of the wagon.
`Well, old friend,' said the show-man, `you have
not yet told us which way your face is turned this afternoon.'
`I am taking a trip northward, this warm weather,'
then up through Vermont, and may be into Canada
before the fall. But I must stop and see the breaking
up of the camp-meeting at Stamford.'
I began to think that all the vagrants in New England
were converging to the camp-meeting, and had
made this wagon their rendezvous by the way. The
show-man now proposed, that, when the shower was
over, they should pursue the road to Stamford together,
it being sometimes the policy of these people
to form a sort of league and confederacy.
`And the young lady too,' observed the gallant bibliopolist,
bowing to her profoundly, `and this foreign
gentleman, as I understand, are on a jaunt of pleasure
to the same spot. It would add incalculably to
my own enjoyment, and I presume to that of my colleague
and his friend, if they could be prevailed upon
to join our party.'
This arrangement met with approbation on all
hands, nor were any of those concerned more sensible
of its advantages than myself, who had no title to
be included in it. Having already satisfied myself
as to the several modes in which the four others attained
felicity, I next set my mind at work to discover
what enjoyments were peculiar to the old `Straggler,'
as the people of the country would have termed
the wandering mendicant and prophet. As he pretended
to familiarity with the Devil, so I fancied that
he was fitted to pursue and take delight in his way of
life, by possessing some of the mental and moral
characteristics, the lighter and more comic ones, of
reckoned a love of deception for its own sake, a
shrewd eye and keen relish for human weakness and
ridiculous infirmity, and the talent of petty fraud.
Thus to this old man there would be pleasure even in
the consciousness so insupportable to some minds,
that his whole life was a cheat upon the world, and
that so far as he was concerned with the public, his
little cunning had the upper hand of its united wisdom.
Every day would furnish him with a succession
of minute and pungent triumphs; as when, for
instance, his importunity wrung a pittance out of the
heart of a miser, or when my silly good nature transferred
a part of my slender purse to his plump leather
bag; or when some ostentatious gentleman should
throw a coin to the ragged beggar who was richer
than himself; or when, though he would not always
be so decidedly diabolical, his pretended wants should
make him a sharer in the scanty living of real indigence.
And then what an inexhaustible field of
enjoyment, both as enabling him to discern so much
folly and achieve such quantities of minor mischief,
was opened to his sneering spirit by his pretensions to
prophetic knowledge.
All this was a sort of happiness which I could
conceive of, though I had little sympathy with it.
Perhaps had I been then inclined to admit it, I might
have found that the roving life was more proper to
him than to either of his companions; for Satan, to
whom I had compared the poor man, has delighted,
ever since the time of Job, in `wandering up and
which operates not in deep laid plans, but in disconnected
tricks, could not have an adequate scope, unless
naturally impelled to a continual change of scene
and society. My reflections were here interrupted.
`Another visiter!' exclaimed the old show-man.
The door of the wagon had been closed against
the tempest, which was roaring and blustering with
prodigious fury and commotion, and beating violently
against our shelter, as if it claimed all those homeless
people for its lawful prey, while we, caring little for
the displeasure of the elements, sat comfortably talking.
There was now an attempt to open the door,
succeeded by a voice, uttering some strange, unintelligible
gibberish, which my companions mistook for
Greek, and I suspected to be thieves' Latin. However,
the show-man stept forward, and gave admittance
to a figure which made me imagine, either that
our wagon had rolled back two hundred years into
past ages, or that the forest and its old inhabitants had
sprung up around us by enchantment.
It was a red Indian, armed with his bow and arrow.
His dress was a sort of cap, adorned with a single
feather of some wild bird, and a frock of blue cotton,
girded tight about him; on his breast, like orders of
knighthood, hung a crescent and a circle, and other
ornaments of silver; while a small crucifix betokened
that our Father the Pope had interposed between the
Indian and the Great Spirit, whom he had worshiped
in his simplicity. This son of the wilderness, and
pilgrim of the storm, took his place silently in the
rightly conjectured him to be one of the Penobscot
tribe, parties of which I had often seen, in their summer
excursions down our Eastern rivers. There
they paddle their birch canoes among the coasting
schooners, and build their wigwam beside some roaring
mill-dam, and drive a little trade in basket work
where their fathers hunted deer. Our new visiter
was probably wandering through the country towards
Boston, subsisting on the careless charity of the people,
while he turned his archery to profitable account
by shooting at cents, which were to be the prize of
his successful aim.
The Indian had not long been seated, ere our merry
damsel sought to draw him into conversation. She,
indeed, seemed all made up of sunshine in the month
of May; for there was nothing so dark and dismal
that her pleasant mind could not cast a glow over it;
and the wild man, like a fir tree in his native forest,
soon began to brighten into a sort of sombre cheerfulness.
At length, she inquired whether his journey
had any particular end or purpose.
`I go shoot at the camp-meeting at Stamford,' replied
the Indian.
`And here are five more,' said the girl, `all aiming
at the camp-meeting too. You shall be one of us,
for we travel with light hearts; and as for me, I sing
merry songs, and tell merry tales, and am full of
merry thoughts, and I dance merrily along the road,
so that there is never any sadness among them that
keep me company. But, oh, you would find it
alone!'
My ideas of the aboriginal character led me to fear
that the Indian would prefer his own solitary musings,
to the gay society thus offered him; on the contrary,
the girl's proposal met with immediate acceptance,
and seemed to animate him with a misty expectation
of enjoyment. I now gave myself up to a course of
thought which, whether it flowed naturally from this
combination of events, or was drawn forth by a wayward
fancy, caused my mind to thrill as if I were listening
to deep music. I saw mankind, in this weary old
age of the world, either enduring a sluggish existence
amid the smoke and dust of cities, or, if they breathed
a purer air, still lying down at night with no hope but
to wear out to-morrow, and all the to-morrows which
make up life, among the same dull scenes and in the
same wretched toil, that had darkened the sunshine
of to-day. But there were some, full of the primeval
instinct, who preserved the freshness of youth to
their latest years by the continual excitement of new
objects, new pursuits, and new associates; and cared
little, though their birth-place might have been here
in New England, if the grave should close over them
in Central Asia. Fate was summoning a parliament
of these free spirits; unconscious of the impulse
which directed them to a common centre, they had
come hither from far and near; and last of all, appeared
the representative of those mighty vagrants,
who had chased the deer during thousands of years,
and were chasing it now in the Spirit Land. Wandering
had vanished around his path; his arm had lost somewhat
of its strength, his foot of its fleetness, his mien
of its wild regality, his heart and mind of their savage
virtue and uncultured force; but here, untamable
to the routine of artificial life, roving now along
the dusty road, as of old over the forest leaves, here
was the Indian still.
`Well,' said the old show-man, in the midst of my
meditations, `here is an honest company of us — one,
two, three, four, five, six — all going to the campmeeting
at Stamford. Now, hoping no offence, I
should like to know where this young gentleman may
be going?'
I started. How came I among these wanderers?
The free mind, that preferred its own folly to another's
wisdom; the open spirit, that found companions
every where; above all, the restless impulse,
that had so often made me wretched in the midst of
enjoyments; these were my claims to be of their
society.
`My friends!' cried I, stepping into the centre of
the wagon, `I am going with you to the camp-meeting
at Stamford.'
`But in what capacity?' asked the old show-man,
after a moment's silence. `All of us here can get
our bread in some creditable way. Every honest
man should have his livelihood. You, sir, as I take
it, are a mere strolling gentleman.'
I proceeded to inform the company, that, when
Nature gave me a propensity to their way of life,
for it; though I could not deny that my talent
was less respectable, and might be less profitable,
than the meanest of theirs. My design, in short, was
to imitate the story-tellers of whom Oriental travellers
have told us, and become an itinerant novelist,
reciting my own extemporaneous fictions to such audiences
as I could collect.
`Either this,' said I, `is my vocation, or I have
been born in vain.'
The fortune-teller, with a sly wink to the company,
proposed to take me as an apprentice to one or other
of his professions, either of which, undoubtedly would
have given full scope to whatever inventive talent I
might possess. The bibliopolist spoke a few words
in opposition to my plan, influenced partly, I suspect,
by the jealousy of authorship, and partly by an apprehension
that the vivâ voce practice would become
general among novelists, to the infinite detriment of
the book trade. Dreading a rejection, I solicited the
interest of the merry damsel.
`Mirth,' cried I, most aptly appropriating the words
of L'Allegro, `to thee I sue! Mirth, admit me of
thy crew!'
`Let us indulge the poor youth,' said Mirth, with a
kindness which made me love her dearly, though I
was no such coxcomb as to misinterpret her motives.
`I have espied much promise in him. True, a
shadow sometimes flits across his brow, but the sunshine
is sure to follow in a moment. He is never
guilty of a sad thought, but a merry one is twin born
see that he will set us all a laughing before we reach
the camp-meeting at Stamford.'
Her voice silenced the scruples of the rest, and
gained me admittance into the league; according to
the terms of which, without a community of goods or
profits, we were to lend each other all the aid, and
avert all the harm, that might be in our power. This
affair settled, a marvelous jollity entered into the
whole tribe of us, manifesting itself characteristically
in each individual. The old show-man, sitting down
to his barrel organ, stirred up the souls of the pigmy
people with one of the quickest tunes in the music
book; tailors, blacksmiths, gentlemen, and ladies,
all seemed to share in the spirit of the occasion; and
the Merry Andrew played his part more facetiously
than ever, nodding and winking particularly at me.
The young foreigner flourished his fiddle bow with a
master's hand, and gave an inspiring echo to the
show-man's melody. The bookish man and the
merry damsel started up simultaneously to dance;
the former enacting the double shuffle in a style
which every body must have witnessed, ere Election
week was blotted out of time; while the girl, setting
her arms akimbo with both hands at her slim
waist, displayed such light rapidity of foot, and harmony
of varying attitude and motion, that I could not
conceive how she ever was to stop; imagining, at the
moment, that Nature had made her, as the old showman
had made his puppets, for no earthly purpose but
to dance jigs. The Indian bellowed forth a succession
us, till we interpreted them as the war song, with
which, in imitation of his ancestors, he was prefacing
the assault on Stamford. The conjurer, meanwhile,
sat demurely in a corner, extracting a sly enjoyment
from the whole scene, and, like the facetious Merry
Andrew, directing his queer glance particularly at
me.
As for myself, with great exhilaration of fancy, I
began to arrange and color the incidents of a tale,
wherewith I proposed to amuse an audience that very
evening; for I saw that my associates were a little
ashamed of me, and that no time was to be lost in
obtaining a public acknowledgment of my abilities.
`Come, fellow-laborers,' at last said the old showman,
whom we had elected President; `the shower
is over, and we must be doing our duty by these poor
souls at Stamford.'
`We 'll come among them in procession, with music
and dancing,' cried the merry damsel.
Accordingly, for it must be understood that our
pilgrimage was to be performed on foot, we sallied
joyously out of the wagon, each of us, even the old
gentleman in his white top boots, giving a great skip
as we came down the ladder. Above our heads there
was such a glory of sunshine and splendor of clouds,
and such brightness of verdure below, that, as I modestly
remarked at the time, Nature seemed to have
washed her face, and put on the best of her jewelry
and a fresh green gown, in honor of our confederation.
Casting our eyes northward, we beheld a horseman
little puddles on the Stamford road. Onward he
came, sticking up in his saddle with rigid perpendicularity,
a tall, thin figure in rusty black, whom the
show-man and the conjurer shortly recognised to be,
what his aspect sufficiently indicated, a travelling
preacher of great fame among the Methodists. What
puzzled us was the fact, that his face appeared turned
from, instead of to, the camp-meeting at Stamford.
However, as this new votary of the wandering life
drew near the little green space, where the guide post
and our wagon were situated, my six fellow vagabonds
and myself rushed forward and surrounded him, crying
out with united voices —
`What news, what news, from the camp-meeting
at Stamford?'
The missionary looked down, in surprise, at as singular
a knot of people as could have been selected
from all his heterogeneous auditors. Indeed, considering
that we might all be classified under the general
head of Vagabond, there was great diversity of
character among the grave old show-man, the sly, prophetic
beggar, the fiddling foreigner and his merry
damsel, the smart bibliopolist, the sombre Indian, and
myself, the itinerant novelist, a slender youth of
eighteen. I even fancied, that a smile was endeavoring
to disturb the iron gravity of the preacher's mouth.
`Good people,' answered he, `the camp-meeting is
broke up.'
So saying, the Methodist minister switched his steed,
and rode westward. Our union being thus nullified,
once to the four winds of Heaven. The fortune-teller,
giving a nod to all, and a peculiar wink to me,
departed on his northern tour, chuckling within himself
as he took the Stamford road. The old showman
and his literary coadjutor were already tackling
their horses to the wagon, with a design to peregrinate
southwest along the sea coast. The foreigner
and the merry damsel took their laughing leave, and
pursued the eastern road, which I had that day trodden;
as they passed away, the young man played a
lively strain, and the girl's happy spirit broke into
a dance; and thus, dissolving, as it were, into sunbeams
and gay music, that pleasant pair departed from
my view. Finally, with a pensive shadow thrown
across my mind, yet emulous of the light philosophy
of my late companions, I joined myself to the Penobscot
Indian, and set forth towards the distant city.
| Twice-told tales | |