University of Virginia Library

24. CHAPTER XXIV.

Homeward once more. Skies and bowers of
fairy-land, but most earthly corduroy; and some
few mud-holes that would have suited well with a
still grosser sphere. Endless wheat-fields—Indian
corn glittering in the sunbeams as the morning
wind dashed the dew from its broad leaves; rich
pastures, where a few maples, kindly left alive,
formed shady lounges for the cattle; quiet streams,
in which the cows were very sensibly standing
half-leg deep, browsing occasionally upon the overhanging
boughs;—such were the commonplace
objects that served to give an interest to our journey
homewards. The road by which we were returning
was a closely-settled one, crossed however here
and there by a tract of deep shade, in which the
solitude of creation seemed never to have been disturbed,
and in one part passing through a strip of
unbroken prairie, scarcely tenanted except by wildfowl
and other pensioners of nature.

Jogging along slowly under a blistering sun

across this shelterless tract, we saw far in the prairie
a moving object, which we took at first for some
wild animal, whose outline the dazzling nature of
the light prevented our tracing distinctly. But
presently, when the strange figure moved toward us,
which it did rapidly enough when we came within
its range, it proved to be no prairie wolf, but a
human being, oddly accoutred and exhibiting considerable
perplexity. He would walk a few steps
forward, and then, shading his eyes with his hand,
gaze earnestly around him. Then turning his eyes
to our side, he would seem resolved to reach the
road, yet after a few moments turn and gaze wistfully
as before. At length we came within speaking
distance, and our wild beast turned out an
English gentleman who seemed to have been gunning
on the prairie. The capacious pockets of a
very curious-looking jacket were stuffed with
prairie-hens, and instead of a hat a silk pocket-handkerchief
was tied about the dissolving head
of the sportsman.

We could do no less than stop and inquire the
cause of his evident perplexity.

“Pray—I beg your pardon—but can you observe
any thing on the prairie?” he said, pulling
the kerchief from his head, and wiping his brow
with a half-distracted air.

We tried faithfully, standing on tiptoe in the
wagon, but there was nothing visible but the tall,
waving grass, and the long straight road. Not an

object broke the line of the horizon except some
far distant trees.

“Well now,” said our new acquaintance, “d'ye
know, this is so very awkward! these prairies of
yours—one might as well be on the ocean in a
cock-boat. I have been shooting on this very
ground for four successive days, and bagged so
many birds every day—grouse too—that I couldn't
make up my mind to quit. But this morning I had
determined should be the last, you know; and I
was enticed further and further; and after I was so
loaded that I could scarcely walk, I still saw so
much sport that I made a pile of game on a convenient
spot, and put my cap upon the heap by
way of landmark, so that I should be quite sure,
you know, to find it again. But upon my word,
I had not brought down three birds after this, before
I came to the end of my powder, and then I
set out to find my cap and my game. And here I
am, wandering about these two hours, you know,
and can see nothing but grass every where. It is
really excessively awkward”—and again he wiped
his forehead, as well he might.

He was a gentleman by no means well fitted for
searching the prairies under the fervors of a summer
noon, for he was short and very fat, and his head
was pink and shining as if it had never known the
“excrescence of a moist brain.” But he tried to
laugh off his vexation like a wise man, saying that

he supposed a wolf he had shot at early in the
morning had devoured cap and game too, by way
of revenge for his evil intentions.

We were so fortunate as to have a spare straw
hat—no unusual provision for a summer journey
hereabouts,—and this the stranger gladly adopted,
his crimsoned countenance looming out from beneath
its wide brim like the rising harvest moon
encountering a stray bank of clouds. He accepted
also a seat in our rough vehicle as far as the next
village, and before we had reached the place o
destination, we had set him down as a very pleasant
Englishman indeed. He was full of animation,
interested in every thing connected with this new
world, and much more desirous of gaining information
than of impressing the “Yenkees” with an
overwhelming idea of his own born and bred superiority.
Such an Englishman being almost a
wonder in America, we cultivated Mr. Sibthorpe
accordingly, and an acquaintance of some duration,
since that chance encounter on the prairie, has
given us no reason to regret having yielded to first
impressions.

We reached Mr. Sibthorpe's lodging-place—the
little village of Temperance—a knot of log-houses
clustering about a blacksmith's shop, and a “Variety-Store,”
(I quote the sign,)—just as the world
was going to dinner; and Mr. Sibthorpe had so
many good things to say of his landlady that we

were induced to apply to her for our dinner, instead
of making a pic-nic meal in the woods, as we had
intended.

The good woman was the picture of neatness,
and she was most appropriately framed, for a trimmer
cottage sun never shone upon. Every thing
shone with cleanliness, and the gown and shawl of
the poor soul herself had been washed and starched
until they were of a gauzy thinness. Poverty was
every where, but it was cheerful, industrious, and
most tidy poverty, and the manners of the hostess
and her children were such as would have appeared
well in far better circumstances. Her husband was
at his work, she said, and had taken his noon-meal
with him, but she had prepared dinner for Mr. Sibthorpe,
and could soon add to it for our accommodation.

There were not plates and knives enough to
allow the children to eat at the same time with us,
so that it took a good while to despatch the dinner.
Meanwhile our newly-found acquaintance was getting
his “traps” together, (an expression picked up
on this side the water, I guess,) and by the time
the little folks were repacked and ready, he too
had mounted his shaggy pony, and with well-stuffed
saddle-bags, and blanket and boot-hose,
stood prepared to ride on with us.

The road grew bad enough as we plunged into
the “timbered land,” so bad that fast driving was

out of the question. The late heavy rains, falling
upon land that was never shone upon except at
noonday, had soaked the clayey soil so completely
that in many places we made our way with difficulty;
and in this drawling way we travelled
several miles. And here our prairie-hunter's cheerful
and intelligent conversation served as a most
agreeable relief to the tedious dulness naturally attendant
upon ruts and mud-holes. Mr. Sibthorpe
had travelled a good deal, and always with his eyes
open, and he had beside a fund of enthusiasm, and
a genuine love for fresh, free and unpolished nature,
which was absolutely romantic. His information
was extensive, and his manner of communicating
it natural and easy, excluding every idea of
ostentation or arrogance.

After all, the charm of his conversation (to me
at least) was the tinge of romance which pervaded
his views, and which unconsciously to himself,
probably, gave a poetical cast to every sentiment
and opinion. It is the fashion of the day to laugh
at romance, yet who is not fascinated by it when
it is evidently genuine? People who dare to be
romantic are becoming every day more rare. The
spirit of the age, analytical and disenchanting as it
is, is fast eradicating the few romantic notions that
have survived till this time; and if any country
bids fair to be preëminent in the tearing away of
all illusion from the dull realities of life—in the

systematic exaltation of the material above the
ideal, I fear it is our own.

We sometimes encounter a foreigner who has
brought with him the fruit of the seed sown by the
lore of his infancy, and who will charm us, in spite
of ourselves, into something like sympathy with
his passionate estimate of the light which imagination
can shed on the trials and vexations of the
world; but where is the American who would not
blush to be suspected of such childish, such unfashionable
views?

M. De Tocqueville, who has of all others written
of us in the kindliest as well as most profound and
discriminating spirit, has not failed to perceive and
to warn us of this tendency to materialism. He
should perfect the good work by pointing out some
great practical remedy—some counteracting power
or principle by the aid of which we may apply ourselves
to the cultivation of the poetical rather than
the prosaic estimate of things; learn to crave the
intellectual before the physical,—the beautiful
with the true,—and, above all, the “believing
spirit,”—lately so eloquently commended by a
countryman of our own,—in preference to the
skeptical, into which so many of our thinkers seem
to be relapsing.

But what has all this digression to do with Mr.
Sibthorpe? More than appears, perhaps; for the
reminiscence of that pleasant afternoon in the muddy

“timbered land” brought with it a floating idea
of some of the many themes upon which our discursive
talk touched; lightly enough, but so amusingly,
that we could scarce believe the sun had set,
when the woody way became suddenly embrowned,
and the cold dew began to fall perceptibly, while
we were still at some distance from our purposed
resting-place.