University of Virginia Library

25. CHAPTER XXV.

Miss Green's letter filled Mitten's bosom with horror. “What a
thoughtless fool I was,” said he, “to write that useless lie to her! I
ought to have known that she would soon learn the true cause of my
sudden departure from Princeton! Why did I not forestall public
report by a frank confession of the truth, and offer such justifications
of myself as I could? True it is, that when a man turns rogue, he
turns fool, and no less true is it, that when a man turns liar he turns
fool. It will almost take my life to lose Louisa; but I deserve to
lose her, that I may learn what it is to have one's holiest feelings and
brightest hopes trifled with. I will write to Louisa, make a frank
confession of my errors, vow an eternal divorce from them, and promise
to be anything and everything that she would have me to be, if
she will remain steadfast to her engagement.” He did so, and indeed,
made the most of his case that could be made of it. The answer
came:

“All is lost!” exclaimed he, flinging down the letter. “How did
she find out the engagement? Amanda herself must have informed
her of it.” This was not true. The engagement came to Miss
Green's ears on this wise: Mitten's attentions to Miss Ward were
notorious; and her disrelish for any society but his was equally notorious.
From these facts, the inference was drawn by many that
they were engaged. What was stated at first, as a matter of inference
soon began to be stated as a matter of fact. As it was contradicted
by no one, it came to be regarded as a thing universally admitted.
So Rumor bore it to Miss Green's ears. The mischievous
jade was no less cruel to Miss Ward than she was to Miss Green;
for she reported to her that Mr. Mitten was in regular correspondence
with Miss Green from his return to Princeton, to his departure for
Georgia. Amanda drooped under the tidings—became sedate and
pensive, gave her heart to One who better deserved it than her lover,
fixed her adoration on the proper Object, moved among the poor and
afflicted like an angel of mercy, lived to be universally beloved, kindly
rejected many a wooer, and died smiling, where Mary sat weeping.

The report went abroad that William had broken his mother's
heart. This was nearly, but not quite true. Mrs. Mitten's health
had begun to decline before William's troubles began, and it is probable
that she would not have survived a month longer than she did,
had William remained at Princeton. But she had become uneasy
at the silence of his College companions, concerning him, for some
months past. The tone of his letters had changed alarmingly. Then
his heavy draft on her for money, increased her alarms. Then the
Sanders draft added poignant mortification to her distressing fears
and anxieties. All these things were wasting her away rapidly,
when his abrupt appearance to her filled her with emotions which
her feeble frame could not endure. His conduct certainly shortened
her days; but it could not with propriety be said that he broke her
heart. Still so went the report, and it gained strength from his remarks
to the Doctor, which were overheard by a visitor, and went
forth with exaggerations. The consequence was, that when he began
to mingle with the villagers, there was something so cold and
distant in their greetings, so formal and cautious in their conversation,
that he recoiled from their society, shut himself up in his room,

brooded over his misfortunes for a time, became enraged at the treatment
of his old friends, and with a heroism worthy of a better cause,
he resolved to retaliate upon them. He went forth boldly among
them, treated all coldly, and some rudely; made advances to no one;
stepped loftily and independently, and resolved to hold every man
personally responsible to him, who had taken the liberty of using
his name, otherwise than with the profoundest respect. The young
gentleman had undertaken an Herculean task, but he deemed himself
adequate to it, and acted accordingly. He called the Doctor to
account for circulating remarks made by him “under great excitement
and distress, which any man of common humanity would never
have thought of repeating.” The Doctor declared that he never had
repeated them. Mr. Mitten told him that “is was not worth while
to add the sin of falsehood to the sin of brutality, for no one else
could have mentioned them.”

Anderson's remarks also became town talk, as soon as it was known
that Mitten had “backed down” in the “third heat.” He went to
Anderson in a great rage.

“I understand, sir,” said he, “that you have been making very
free with my name in my absence.”

“No, Billy, I only said—”

“Don't call me Billy sir—”

“Well, General Washington—”

“Stop sir! But for your age, I'd give you a caning. And, now
listen to me sir: If ever I hear of your mentioning my name in any
way, I shall forget the respect due to age, and give you a chastising,
let it cost what it may. If you must expend your race-course wit,
expend it upon some one else, not on me.”

“When you undertake to chastise me,” said Stewy, “you'd better
appoint your executors: for they'll have to wind up the business.”

Thus Mr. Mitten went on rectifying public opinion, and purifying
private conversation, until there were but five persons in the village
or its vicinity who could venture to be upon terms of intimacy with
him. These five, two old men and three young ones, conceived a
marvelous attachment to him. They forced themselves into his affections
by a thousand kind sayings of him, and as many harsh ones
of all who kept aloof from him.

“Never mind, Mitten,” said one of the ancients: “as soon as you
get possession of your property, these very men who are shying off
from you now, and whispering all sorts of things about you, will be
truckling to you like hound-puppies. They hate me worse than

they do you, just because I always take up for you. I see how they
look at me, every time they see me with you. I despise those old
men who forget that they were once young, and make no allowance
for a little wildness in young men.”

“Well,” said a young one, “I'm glad to see Mitten's independence.
He is not beholden to them for anything, and I like to see
him going his own way, and taking care of himself.”

“Mitten,” said a third, “we are going into Thew's back room to
amuse ourselves with a game of cards for an hour or so; where shall
we find you when we come out?”

“Why,” said William, “I'll go in with you.”

“You'd better not,” said two or three voices at once. “You
might be tempted to play,” said Old Fogy, “and when once a young
man begins to play cards, he never knows where to stop. Could you
do as we do, just set down and amuse yourself for an hour or two,
and then get up and quit, why that would be all well enough; but
young people are not like old folks.”

“Well,” continued William, “I'll go in and see you play, but I
will not play myself, for I have suffered enough from card-playing
for one lifetime I know.”

“Oh well, if you'll do that, no harm done.”

William went in, and kept his word.

The same scene was repeated for a number of days. At length
William began to spend his opinion upon the play of one and
another, demonstrating by the doctrine of chances that they were
injudicious.

“Its lucky for us, Mitten, that you don't play, or you'd soon leave
us without a stake. We know nothing about book-learning, and
just thump away after our old plantation way. Old as I am, I'd give
the world if I only had your education.”

Day after day rolled away in like manner.

At length, said William, “let me take a hand, and see if my theory
holds good in practice.”

“Oh, no!” exclaimed half of them. “He'll beat us all to death.
What do we know about the doctrine of chances!”

“Mitten,” said Old Fogy, “don't play. I'm an old man, and
though I don't know anything about chances, I know that the cards
run so sometimes that there is no counting on them. Now, you are a
high-minded, honorable young man, and if you should happen to
lose largely, you would be strongly tempted to refuse to pay, plead
infancy, the gaming act, and all that sort of thing, even when you

got able to pay, and I wouldn't lose my good opinion of you for all
the money in the county.”

“I hope, Mr. Fogy, you don't think I'd do that.”

“No, I know you'd die now before you'd do it, but temptations are
hard things to get over. I talked just so to young Tickler, as honorable
a young fellow as ever was born, and what did he do? Why
he won of me day after day, and week after week; but when the
cards took a turn in my favor, he refused to pay the little, nasty sum
of one thousand dollars, when he was worth forty thousand. I never
asked him for it till he got his property in hand, and then he said I
tempted him to play and cheated him, and I don't know what all.
I wouldn't have lost my good opinion of that young man for double
the money.”

“Well,” said Mitten, “I am not anxious to play.” And he did
not.

Mitten's company and back-room sittings coming to the ears of
Mr. Markham, he warned William against his associates. He told
him that they were a set of sharpers who would certainly ruin him
if he did not abandon them.

“Mr. Markham,” said William, “these are the only men of the
village, (yourself excepted,) who have treated me with any respect
and kindness since my return home. You mistake their character.
They play cards, it is true, but so far from tempting me to do the
same, they advise me not to do it; and consequently I have not
thrown a card since my association with them. I should be an ingrate
and a fool to abandon the only friends who stood by me when
all the rest of the world abandoned me.”

Mr. Markham told him their friendships were pretended, their
professions unreal, and their counsels hypocritical. In short, he
used every argument and entreaty that he could to withdraw him
from these men, but all was unavailing.

About this time his college companions returned, having completed
their course. Brown had taken the first honor in his class,
and Markham the third. Thompson graduated creditably, but took
no honor.

The day after their arrival, Thompson presented Mitten a beautiful
box.

“And who sends this?” said Mitten.

“Open and see,” said his cousin.

He opened it, and saw all the jewelry that he had given to

Amanda. On the top of it lay a small note of velvet paper prettily
folded. He opened and read:

“How did she seem, David, when she handed it to you?”

“Heart-broken.”

“Yes, poor girl! Had I remained true to her, she would not have
forsaken me, as all my colder friends have done. In a little time,
now, I could have made her comfortable and happy, and for all time
she would have made me happy.”

Tears rolled rapidly down his cheeks as he spoke.

Mr. Markham turned over his school and the profits of it to his
son and Brown—he only retaining such a supervision over it as to
pass it as his school. The first studied medicine, and the second
law, while teaching. In a little time Brown fixed up a comfortable
little residence for his mother, and furnished it neatly. He gave his
sisters the benefit of a good Female Academy, and extended their
education by his own private instruction. David Thompson became
the head of his father's family, and trod in the footsteps of his father
through life. William continued his unlucky associations.

One day, while he was looking on at the game of his friends:

“Here, Mitten,” said one of the seniors, “play my hand for me,”
rising and going out. On his return another addressed him, saying:

“Look here, old man, take your seat there and play your own
hand we can't play with Mitten.”

Mitten had won ten dollars while representing his old friend.

“Lord,” said another, “what a benefit an education is in everything!”

William now proposed to take a hand for himself.

“Well,” one said, “we needn't object on his account, if we don't
object on our own, for there is no danger of his losing.”

William played, and won a little. So did he for five or six sittings.
Then his winnings and losings began to balance each other pretty
equally. Then he began to lose regularly, but in small amounts—
then in larger amounts.

About this time Mr. Mitten made divers remarkable discoveries,
to-wit: That whenever he lost, one of the old ones and one of the
young ones lost, but that they won in regular succession, so that, at
the end of a week's play, he owed (for they “played on tick,”) each of
them almost exactly the same amount. That though they often played
against all the doctrines of chances, they were very sure to win. That

the young one would frequently relieve himself from the fatigues of
the game by playing the fiddle and walking round the table, and
that so long as he played the fiddle, he (Mitten) was certain to lose.
That the other two young ones lost and won occasionally, but in the
long run were like himself, losers; and that their losses, like his own
were the equal gain of the other three.

Now prudence dictated that he should quit this elique, but he
was largely over a thousand dollars in debt to the trio, and he could
not gain his consent to do so, until he recovered his losses. At a
convenient season he took his fellow-sufferers aside, informed them
of his discoveries, and proposed to them that they should play in copartnership
against the other three “only till they got back their
money.” They readily assented to his proposition, and William indoctrinated
them in a set of signs, offensive and defensive, that in a
better cause would have immortalized him. He cautioned them to
wait the signal from him before they put any of their plans of attach
in operation, and in the mean-time, to act wholly on the defensive.

The parties met, and old Fogy entertained the company with an
account of his early adventures at the card-table, in which was this
passage: “I lost, and lost, and lost. Dollar after dollar went, and
negro after negro. I bore it all like a man until I had to sell my
favorite servant, Simon. This was tough, but I had to sacrifice
him or my honor, so I let him go.”

The club took their seats. Two hours rolled away, and the seniors
gained nothing from the juniors. The fiddler got fatigued and took
his fiddle. The Juniors, as if by accident, hid their hands every
time he walked behind them. He soon got rested, and resumed his
seat. At twelve o'clock at night, the Juniors being a little winners,
Mitten got too sleepy to set any longer, and the game closed. Five
sittings ended nearly in the same way to the utter amazement of the
seniors.

“The young rascals have found out our signs,” said Old Fogy,
“we must make new ones.”

They did so. Mitten discovered it in three deals.

“This is a piddling sort o' business,” said Fogy; “let's play
higher.”

William had not only concerted his signs in a masterly manner,
but he had a way of communicating to his partners the most important
signs of their adversaries as soon as he discovered them. While
he was making his discoveries his party lost a little.

“I don't like to raise the stakes when I'm losing,” said William,

“but luck must turn soon, and that will be the quickest way of getting
back my losings, and I believe I'm willing to play a little
higher.”

Old Fogy put up the stakes very high, and William gave the signal
for attack with all his armory. In less than an hour, the corn
(representing money) was streaming from the Fogy party in a perfect
sluice. Mitten lost to his partners two hundred dollars, and the
Fogies lost to them from five hundred to a thousand each. At one
o'clock, A. M., Mitten rose from the table saying: “That his brain
was so addled he couldn't play; and that if he could, such a run
of luck would ruin the best player in the world.”

It would be both interesting and instructive to the young, to trace
Mitten's progress step by step in gaming, until he became a most accomplished
blackleg; but our limits will not allow us to do so. He
was in rapid progress to this distinction, when Miss Flora Summers,
daughter of Col. Mark Summers, who resided five miles from the
village, returned home from Salem, N. C. She was an only child,
handsome, agreeable in manners, of good sense and well improved
mind. William visited her, and so did John Brown, now admitted
to the bar and practising with brilliant promise. The Colonel received
Brown with great cordiality, and William with distant civility.
Flora reversed things exactly. The Colonel was not surprised
at her preference, but before it had time to ripen into love, he thus
addressed her: “My daughter, it may be that Mitten and Brown
will become suitors of yours. I do not say to you, in that event
marry Brown, but I do say to you do not marry Mitten, if you would
save yourself and me from misery intolerable. You know his history
in part. If he did not break his mother's heart, he hastened
her death. He has rendered himself odious to all good men, and
become the associate of gamblers. And yet he is a young man of
handsome person, fine address and fine talents. These endowments
are apt to win upon a girl's heart; but surely my daughter can fortify
her heart against dangerous impressions from such a man as
Mitten.”

“Yes, Pa,” said Flora, “I can and will. I assure you that I
will never give my hand to William.”

“Then, without feigning an attachment that you do not feel, give
him the earliest opportunity of declaring himself, and let your refusal
be respectful but decisive.”

“I will. It will cost me no difficulty to refuse Mitten; but I
don't think I ever can love John Brown. Dear me, Pa, he is so
ugly!”

“Well, my child, be that as you would have it. I certainly shall
not urge you to have Brown or any body else. Your choice will be
mine, provided your choice does not light upon one of despicable
character.”

Mitten repeated his visits, and was received more warmly by the
Colonel than at first. In process of time he declared himself and
was positively rejected. Brown continued his visits too, but at much
longer intervals. His fame in the mean time was constantly growing.
His manners were not wanting in polish, and in intellectual endowments
he now far outstripped Mitten. His visits for five or six
months seemed only of a friendly character. He read well and talked
well, and was both a wit and humorist; but he never wounded by
his sallies. Flora soon became satisfied that John had no idea of
courting her, and she threw off all shyness and came upon terms of
easy and agreeable familiarity with him. John spoke freely and
playfully of his own homeliness; told amusing anecdotes about it,
and spoke of it in such ways as made Flora laugh heartily. A single
example: After they had become as intimate as brother and sister,
there was a pause in the conversation one day, and John after a deep
sigh said, “Well, I'd give a thousand dollars just to know for one
hour how an ugly man feels.” Flora laughed immoderately. “Well,
John,” said she, “I think you might for a dollar know how such an
one feels for a life time.” Then John roared. Thus matters went
on until Flora began to feel that John's society was a very important
item in her life of single blessedness. She met him with smiles
and parted with him—not exactly in sadness, but with an expression
of countenance and “good-bye,” which seemed to say, “John, it's
hard to part with you, you pleasant, ugly dog.”

Still John never whispered love, while everybody spoke his praises.
About this time Col. Summers got into a lawsuit, that alarmed him
greatly. He employed Brown, who disposed of it, on demurrer, at
the first term of the court. At his next visit to Flora, she expressed
her gratitude to him very tenderly, and added, “John, I hope some
day or other we will be able to repay the obligation that we are under
to you.”

“Why, Miss Flora, said John, “it's the easiest thing in the world
for you to cancel the obligation and make me the willing servant of
you both—”

“How, John?”

“Why just let your father give his daughter to me, and you ratify
the gift.”

Flora looked at him and blushed, and smiled, looked serious and
said:

“Are you in earnest, John?”

“In just as sober earnest as if I were preaching.”

“John, I don't believe you love me.”

“Yes, I do, Miss Flora, as ardently as ever man loved woman, but
until recently I believed my love was hopeless, and therefore I concealed
it, or tried to conceal it, for I know you often saw it.”

“Why, John, you astonish me!—Go, ask Pa, and if he gives me
to you, I'll ratify the gift. I might get a handsomer man, but I
never could get a more worthy one.”

“As to my beauty,” said John, “why that's neither here nor
there. One thing is certain about it, and that is, that it will never
fade.”

“Well, John, if we live ten years longer, I am sure I shall think
you handsome; for your features have been growing more and more
agreeable to me, ever since you began to visit me.”

“Well, Miss Flora, if they are agreable to you—tolerable to you,
it is a matter of perfect indifference to me what any one else thinks
of them. Another great advantage you will have in marrying a
homely man, and that is, you will not be exposed to the common torments
of the wives of handsome men.”

“I'm not so sure of that, John. Splendid talents, renown and
fascinating manners are much more apt to win the admiration of our
sex than a pretty face.”

“If you see all these things in me, Flora, you see more than I have
ever seen. As you are getting in a complimentary strain, I'll thank
you to ask your father in; for though I bear compliments with great
fortitude, they always embarrass men, and when coming from you,
they give me a peculiar drawing to the lips that utter them.”

“Well, how do you know but they would bear the drawing with
great fortitude, too?” So saying, she bounced to her room and left
him alone, saying as she flitted away, “I'll send my father to you
and listen how you draw to each other.”

The Colonel soon made his appearance.

John looked at the Colonel, put his right leg over his left, took it
down again and patted his foot. The Colonel took a chew of tobacco,
cleared his throat and looked at John. John cleared his throat
too, coughed twice, blew his nose and looked at the carpet. “John,”
said the Colonel, “Flora said you wished to see me.”

“Yes, sir,” said John, “I have long had a warm attachment to

your daughter— and I thought if I could gain your assent to address
her—”

“To address her! Why, she says you are engaged, and only
want my consent to get married. If that is the case, you have my
consent freely. There is not a man in the world that I would prefer
to you for my daughter.” So saying, he retired.

Flora immediately re-entered, laughing immoderately. “Well
John,” said she, “I don't think you had much of a `drawing' to
Pa.”

“Confound this asking for daughters!” said John, “I'd rather
ask forty girls to marry me, than one father for his daughter. I
never acted like such a fool in all my life!” Three wecks from this
date, John Brown and Flora Summers became one, and remained
one in the best sense of the term, through life.

Mitten surrendered himself to cards; distinguished himself among
gamblers for his shrewdness, and actually made money by his calling,
until he was arrested in his career by that disease so common to
gamblers, and so fatal to all, consumption. When he found the disease
fastened incurably upon him, he took his room, his mother's
bed room. The old family Bible was there. She had often said,
that at her death she wished it to go to William, and there it was left
for him. He opened it, found in it many traces of his mother's pen,
scraps of paper with texts of scripture, holy resolutions, prayers,
Christian consolations, and the like, written on them. He closed the
book, pressed it to his bosom, and wept bitterly. “Dearest, best
of women!” soliloquized he. “What a curse have I been to
thee! what a curse have I been to myself! One fault thou
hadst, and only one — No, I must not call it a fault—one
weakness shall I call it? No, that is too harsh a term for it. One
heavenly virtue in excess, thou hadst too much tenderness for thy
son. But why do I advert to this! When I reached the age of
reflection and self-government, this very thing should have endeared
thee the more to me—should have made me more resolute
in reforming the errors, which thy excessive kindness produced.
But oh, how impotent are human resolutions against vices
which have become constitutional! Tom, go for Mr. Markham.”

Mr. Markham came, and found William with his head on his
mother's Bible, bedewing it with tears. He raised his head, reached
his hot hand to his friend, and after some struggles for utterance,
said:

“Mr. Markham, you have known me from my childhood to the

present moment, you have marked my every step in the pathway of
ruin—you have seen me abuse and torture the best of mothers, reject
the counsels of the best of uncles, and the best of friends, multiplying
sins to cover sins, insulting men for disapproving of what
my own conscience disapproved, avoiding the good, and consorting
with the depraved, prostituting heaven's best gifts to earth's worst
purposes—in short, assimilating myself to a devil, as far as it was
possible for me to do so; now tell me, my dear friend, do you think
it possible for such an abandoned wretch as I am to find mercy in
heaven? In making up your answer, remember that I never thought
of asking mercy, and probably never should have thought of it,
had I not seen Death approaching me with sure, unerring step.”

“Oh yes,” said Mr. Markham, “you are not beyond the reach of
mercy; provided you seek it in the way of God's appointment.”

“Be pleased to instruct me in that way; for I am lamentably deficient
in knowledge of the Bible.”

“Well, in the first place, you cannot expect mercy unless you ask
for it. If you ask for it you cannot expect to have your request
granted, unless you perform the conditions upon which such request
is to be granted. Now these conditions are (the essential ones,)
that you show mercy to every human being that has offended
you—”

“That is but reasonable.”

You must freely, and from your heart forgive every one who
has trespassed against you. You remember your infantile prayer.”

“Yes, but I never understood it until this moment.”

“You must seek to be reconciled to every one who has aught against
you.”

“The hardest condition of all. I can forgive those who have injured
me; but how shall I ask peace of those whom I never
wronged?”

“God never wronged you, did He? And yet He asks you to be
reconciled to him.”

“Wonderful!” ejaculated William, thoughtfully.

“You would not come to me, William, and ask a favor of me, and
at the same time say, `I ask it, but I do not believe you will grant
it,' would you?”

“No, that would be to insult you to your face.”

“Neither must you ask favors of God, believing that He will not
grant them. You must ask, believing in His goodness, His word,
and His promises, i. e., you must ask in faith.

“Perfectly just!”

“If you were to ask a favor of me, and I should say come again,
I cannot grant it just now; would you turn away from me in despair,
and never ask me again?”

“Surely not.”

“Then do not show less confidence in God than you have in me.
If he does not answer your prayers as soon as you expect, pray on
and bide His time.”

“Well, God helping me, I will follow your counsels this time,
to the day of my death. Pray once more for me, thou heaven-born
and heaven-directed man.”

Mr. Markham prayed with him, as if his “lips were touched
with a live coal from off the altar.”

William, now gave himself to prayer and reading the scriptures.
He sent for all within his reach whom he had offended, or who had
offended him. Freely forgave, and was freely forgiven. Two, three,
and four months the disease spared him; but he found little comfort.
At the beginning of the fifth he found peace; rejoiced for a
month more, preached powerfully to all who came to his bedside, and
with his last breath cried, “Mother, receive thy son!” and died.