 | Dukesborough tales |  |
MR. WILLIAMSON SLIPPEY AND HIS
SALT.
“Sale omnes superare.”
Cicero.
THE Slippeys had never been any great things. The Dukesborough
people as a general thing used to look down upon
the Slippeys. Somehow all of them did poorly. Poorly in their
raising; and when they grew up, they all, boys and girls, married
poorly. Anything like improvement seemed to be impracticable to
any of the name. This was the way with the first set. Old Jimmy
Slippey, the father of the family, all of whom were extremely like
him, persuaded himself in his old age that he had been a model of a
parent; and he became disgusted with his children for having fallen
so far short of his great example. Quite late in life, however, Mrs.
Slippey, the last Mrs. Slippey (for she was the second who had enjoyed
the honor of that name), who was much younger than her husband,
gave birth unexpectedly to another son. He was named Williamson.
Even while yet a baby, Williamson seemed to give such uncommon
promise that his father, although he said that he should never live to
see it, used to foretell that this son of his old age would make such a
career as would lift up the Slippeys in good time out of their obscurity,
and be an honor to his family when he himself should be in his grave.
Among other evidences of precocity was that afforded by the surprising
speed and facility with which he cut his teeth. On one occasion
in particular, when he was only a few months old, while his father
was fondly caressing the three which had appeared in front, he slyly,
as it were, sucked his finger off, and with another quite away to one
pain and delight. And not only so, but as the latter ever afterwards
declared, he smiled and even winked when he did it. Now, the
question was if he did these things in infancy and with his own folks,
what would he do at manhood and with the world at large? The old
gentleman pondered on these things, and in the fulness of assurance
he was often heard to say that people need not be surprised if Williamson
should some day become a public man.
The fond parent was right in saying that he should not live to see
these things. Indeed, Dukesborough itself was destined to fall before
the time of Williamson Slippey's highest greatness. Yet the old
gentleman, even in dying, adhered to his hopes and opinions; and bequeathed
to his favorite child, who was yet in his shirt, the bulk of his
estate. This consisted mainly of a small, brown, aged, short-tailed
pony named Bull.
Interesting as his boyhood and youth and young manhood may
have been, yet I cannot linger among them. If it would not have
done to begin with the history of Diomede from the death of Meleager,
nor with the Trojan war from the double egg of Leda (vide Epistola
ad Pisones), neither will it now do to narrate all the events in the life
of Mr. Williamson Slippey that were preliminary to that high career
which, at a later period and in an unusually excited state of society,
he was destined at least for a short time to lead. The facts are,
however, that he had had some few ups and many downs in the
interim between childhood and the period which I propose to select
for the purpose of holding him and his business up to the public
view.
This was in the winter of 1863-4. At this time Mr. Slippey was in
the city of Atlanta. Indeed, it seemed to me that there were very
few persons (at least among those who were old enough and not too
old to travel) who were not in the city of Atlanta at some time or
other during the late war. In those days, if you wanted to see
specially and soon any particular person whose whereabouts you did
not certainly know, your best plan was to go to Atlanta and walk
about the railroad depôt. If you did not see him at once, the chances
were that he would arrive by the next train. We had never expected,
it is true, to see Sherman. And, indeed, many persons did not see
him, for they had to leave before he reached there, and did not return
until after he was gone.
As for Mr. Williamson Slippey, he had been residing there for five
or six years before the war, and had kept a little store, of which he
was very proud. If old Jimmy Slippey, when he was prophesying
such great things of this son, foresaw thus far into the future, he must
have been right in feeling that this last paternity had already made
amends for the disappointments of all the preceding ones.
In politics, Mr. Slippey had been an original secessionist. The fact
was, Yankees were settling in Atlanta too fast. Then Mr. Slippey
had no idea that there would be any war; and even if there should be
one, he reflected that, according to the best of his recollection (although
he looked younger), he was over or very nearly over forty-five years of age.
Besides, furthermore, there was no doubt that in times of war people
came to town oftener than in times of peace, they bought and consumed
more merchandise, and, upon the whole, such times were better for the
mercantile business. So Mr. Slippey became a secessionist out and
out, saying boldly, often and often, that consequences might be consequences.
Although his business was avowedly and mainly grocery, yet he
watched the general market, and was in the habit of keeping a few
other things besides: a small lot of cutlery, mostly pocket-knives; a
few saddles and grindstones; some tubs and wagon whips; and even
a trifling supply of assorted candy and nails. For having caught a
customer in the general line, Mr. Slippey seemed to feel it to be his
duty to accommodate him in these special articles instead of sending
him all over town for them. By such and like means he was making
a little more and more every year; and when the war broke out, Mr.
Slippey might have been said to be a growing man.
“Williamson Slippey is a growin' man, certing shore,” used, in point
of fact, to say Elias Humphrey, a small farmer in the neighborhood.
He had backed up Mr. Slippey as well as he could ever since he had
been at Atlanta, and carried him many a customer in a small way.
Mr. Humphrey had predicted that Mr. Slippey would grow after a
while, and sure enough here he was growing.
“Jest as I said he would,” Mr. Humphrey often remarked triumphantly.
At a very early period in our late struggle, which I am sure every
Southern man and woman, boy and girl, of this generation is likely to
remember as long as they live, the attention of the Southern public
began to be directed to the subject of salt. And I must remark in
one subject received greater attention than during our late struggle.
Old as I was at the time, and having been a considerable reader of
books for one of my age, yet I found that I had had no idea of how much
general attention would or could be bestowed upon the single article
of salt as was the case in our late struggle. Of course that is all
over now. I know that very well; and it is not my intention now to
bring up the heart-rending scenes which I often witnessed, and which
were caused mainly by the want of salt; and I will end what I had to
say upon the general principles appertaining to that subject, by expressing
the sincere hope that never again in what time is left for me to
live, may I, and my friends and neighbors and countrymen of the
South generally, be so pinched for salt for ourselves and our cattle, our
sheep and hogs, and even our goats (what few we had), as was the case
in our late unfortunate struggle. We may have war again. I am well
aware of that. The universal Yankee nation have grown lately to be
a mighty nation for fighting; and therefore I think it is highly
probable that we shall have other wars. But I do think that an old
man like me, who has seen more than one war (although all former
ones were as nothing when compared with the last), and who may be
said to be disgusted with wars in general, may be allowed, even in this
connection, to express the hope that if other wars are to come, some
arrangements will somehow be made by somebody by which the
people everywhere can be supplied with salt at living prices, and man
and beast will not be so put to it in order to obtain it as was the case
in our late unfortunate struggle. There was probably not a single old
smoke-house in the whole Confederate States whose floor was not dug
up for at least three feet, thereby rendering it yet more accessible to
thieves and rats. I remember well in the case of my own — however,
I forgot that I was to stop. I will stop, and merely remark in conclusion
that the disposition to talk overmuch, which I sometimes suspect
to be coming upon me, as I have often noticed in men of my age and
even younger, and which I have thus far been careful to avoid — this
disposition, I say, I never feel more sensibly than when I am thinking
of how we of the South were cramped about salt during the time of
our late most unfortunate struggle.
Mr. Slippey had always managed, even before the war, to make a
little something upon salt. He had usually cleared from eighteen
and three-quarters to thirty-seven and a half cents a sack. Bagging,
once, as he expressed it, by bagging. But salt, he used to boast that
he understood through and through. Now it so happened that when
we were into the war for good, he had about a hundred sacks on hand.
Salt went up with such rapidity that it soon reached ten dollars a sack.
It would seem that now was a good time for Mr. Slippey to sell out.
But did he do it? Not he. Not the first sack. Instead of this Mr.
Slippey went about buying more salt. Indeed, he sold out everything
he had but salt. He seemed determined to stake everything, even to
his reputation as a merchant, upon salt. For he had predicted that if
this war should continue, salt would go a great deal higher yet.
Indeed there was no telling where salt would go. Thus things went
on until the summer of 1863, when Mr. Slippey, yet holding on to his
stock, prophesied publicly and above board that salt would go up to
one hundred and fifty dollars. True, he was laughed at, and by some
persons abused. But having said it, Williamson Slippey stuck to it.
Like all other prophets (mere uninspired prophets, I mean) he
wished his predictions verified. When the summer had passed, and
while the fall was passing, Mr. Slippey was excited to a degree
probably beyond anything that had ever been noticed in the town in
similar circumstances. It seemed as if we were going to have a
late fall. Mr. Slippey had rather hoped that winter, his business
season, was going to set in sooner than usual. Instead of this, he
thought there had never been such a late fall!
Meanwhile, our public troubles seemed rather to promise an early
adjustment, and most persons were highly gratified by the prospect.
As it interfered with his predictions and his business, Mr. Slippey was
not. He was not the man to be willing to be made a fool of. Conscription
had taken all the men below thirty-five. Like other men
over that age, he thought that was a very fine thing, and though this
business might be carried yet further, still, according to the best of his
recollection as to his own age, it was not likely to reach him. Yet the
fall lingered, and while it lingered he came near selling off his stock.
But the idea of eating his own words in that way was so revolting to his
feelings, and he thought he knew the universal Yankee nation so well,
that he concluded to hold on.
Didn't he say so? A winter campaign is decided on. Didn't he
say so? The salt-works will not be competent to supply the necessary
demand. Didn't he say so? The railroads will not be able to afford
figures if you like. Salt, sixty dollars a sack! Seventy! Eighty-five!
One hundred! That will do. Everybody gets hopeless, and nobody
cares a red where it goes now. So, without anybody's remonstrance,
it went on up to one hundred and fifty dollars, and Williamson Slippey
was numbered among the prophets.
Now Mr. Slippey thought he might afford to sell. During the year
he had done but a small business in that way, and that mostly by way
of barter for his family expenses. These were extremely moderate in
spite of the high price of everything. He had economised while
accumulating his stock to a degree that showed genius. He carried
matters to such extremes that his wife, who was by no means an
extravagant woman, and some grown-up daughters tried to hold him
back by representing that unless they could do so, he and they must
all perish together. These ladies did not suppose, nor did the public,
that he ever treated himself to any luxury. They did not dream that
every night of his life he was in the habit of making, at his store
where he slept, a whiskey-stew, and then drinking it up alone.
It was about the middle of December. A cold spell had set in.
Salt was in high demand. Mr. Slippey had been selling briskly
for some days. Late one afternoon, Mr. Elias Humphrey, his old
friend, came into the store. Lately, Mr. Humphrey had not been much
about there. The fact is, Mr. Slippey had grown so far above him
that his society was not as welcome as formerly. Mr. Humphrey had
noticed this, and governed himself accordingly. But he wanted a sack
of salt, and, like the rest of his neighbors, had put off buying until his
little pen of hogs was ready to be killed. He had not made any
cotton, and the summer drought had cut short his crop of corn. He
had therefore but little money. You think that man did not have the
effrontery, trusting to old friendship, to try to borrow a sack from Mr.
Slippey? He stated his case. He spoke with the earnestness of a
man who felt that it was needed to ensure success. He looked around
at the great heaps of salt-bags (and he knew that there were many
others in the cellar or elsewhere), and wound up with an effort to
convince Mr. Slippey that one single sack would hardly be missed
from such a vast pile.
“Jest one leetle bit of a sack, Slippey.”
Mr. Slippey at first believed that Mr. Humphrey was joking. But
he looked closely at him and saw that he was in earnest.
“Have you any peach brandy, 'Lias?”
“No.”
“But you know who has some?”
“Yes; some of the neighbors has some, but they ask a mighty big
price for it.”
“What?”
“Twelve dollars a gallon.”
“Gracious! that is high. But you can get it cheaper. You can get
it for ten.”
Mr. Humphrey did not think he could; but supposing he could?
“Well then, if you can, you can make thirty dollars.”
“How?” inquired Mr. Humphrey doubtingly.
“If you will bring me twelve gallons of good peach brandy (I want
it in case of sickness, you know) I will let you have a sack of salt.
That is thirty dollars less than the price of salt to-day, and the price
will be twenty dollars higher next week.”
“But I can't raise the money. You won't lend me a sack then?”
Mr. Slippey could not quite do that. It would not — ah — be
treating his brother merchants right. If it wasn't for treating his
brother merchants wrong, he would do it. Positively he would, but
for that.
Mr. Humphrey looked hard at his old friend, and it was on his
mind to say some bitter things. His lip trembled in the effort to
repress his feelings. But he did repress them, and walked quietly
away. Mr. Slippey was troubled somewhat. To turn off in that way a
man that had befriended him looked hard. He watched him as he
went in and came out of several stores. Once or twice he thought of
calling him back and putting a sack down to him at half price. He
did try to do it. But he could not; and when he found that he could
not, he quit trying.
Oh what a glorious stew Mr. Slippey had that night! It was about
nine o'clock when he began it. He was not in the habit of beginning
until about half-past nine; mostly because he would not have liked
to be interrupted in a matter that was not one of business, and in
which he needed and desired no companion. But all the time during
the afternoon and in the evening he had been troubled by thoughts of
Elias Humphrey, and he wanted to think of a more agreeable subject.
Salt was such a subject; but somehow Mr. Humphrey had become
mixed up with that. So he turned away from it and set his mind upon
whiskey-stew.
The night was cold and he had a splendid fire. Still he mended it
a little, and after carefully closing, as he believed, the door of his
store, he presently brought out from a corner where they stayed, and
where nobody suspected that such things were, a demijohn, a pewter
mug and spoon, a tea-kettle, and a little round sugar box. Mr. Slippey
had taken to stew only since the war began. Yet no man of the
largest experience knew better how to mix things than he did. He
took pains, I tell you. He stirred and tasted even the sugar and
water before he poured in the whiskey. For he had ever been a dear
lover of sugar, owing partly, as he used to confess, to the fact of how
little of that article he was accustomed to get when he was a boy.
“Nobody,” he would often say blandly, after he had become great,
“nobody loved it better than I did, and got it sildomer.”
When he had gotten the sugar and water right, then he poured in
the whiskey. He stirred and tasted, and stirred and tasted, until it
was exactly right. By the time it was finished it was capital! He
would stir and taste even while it was simmering over the coals. Just
at the instant when it would have boiled, he took it off the fire. Hot
as it was he took a little sip immediately, gave a slight cough, smiled,
and ejaculated “Hah!” He then filled the mug, put it on the table,
drew up his arm-chair, and stroking gently the leg which was next the
fire, and throwing the other across the table, he began to sip with the
deliberation of a man who feels that he has something good which he
wishes to last a long time.
Mr. Slippey sipped and thought how good it was. He sipped and
surveyed the vast piles before him, as they lay in the rear part of his
store. He sipped and wondered why he had not taken to stew before.
He had once been a great temperance man, even a Knight of Jericho.
Nay, that man used to make speeches in a small but violent way,
especially against moderate drinkers, whom he used to style, every
single one of them, first-lieutenants of the devil. But he now believed
that of all the things that he had ever done this was the most foolish.
The fact was, Mr. Slippey had had no idea how good whiskey-stew was
until he had tried it.
“My opinion is,” said Mr. Slippey then and there to himself, yet in
audible tones, “my opinion is that there ain't nary man, nor nary
woman in the world that wouldn't love a sweetened dram.”
Whereupon he took a whole mouthful, and his very eyes seemed to
cry with delight.
Again Mr. Slippey surveyed the heaps of salt, and by this time all
unpleasant thoughts of Mr. Humphrey having departed, he began to
make all sorts of inward speculations upon the salt question and upon
the war. For he had studied both these subjects closely; the former
for its own sake, and the latter for the sake of the bearing it might
have upon the former. He had read everything he could find upon
the subject, even to allusions to it in the Bible, and had come to the
conclusion that salt was a much more important article than he had
once supposed. He began away back at the salt-mines of Lymington.
Wasn't that a slim business? And wasn't the same thing here a slim
business? He laughed scornfully at the pitiful turn-out the salt companies
were making. Pshaw! they never can do anything. Fossil-beds
and brine-springs are the things for salt. Cheshire and Worcestershire
are the places for salt. If you want salt, go to Cheshire
and Worcestershire. But the question is, how will you get there?
And then the question will be, how will you ever get back again with
your salt? Only to think now of how much Mr. Slippey would be
worth if he had a monopoly of those fossil-beds and brine-springs for
one year, and then could run the blockade! Five hundred thousand
tons of salt! Not sacks! Tons! How many sacks make a ton?
What would it all amount to at present prices? Why, it went far up
into the billions! He wouldn't take time to work it up just now; but
he shouldn't be surprised if it went up somewhere among the trillions.
Goodness alive! Mr. Slippey could buy out the Rothschilds and own
them every one. Blame them old Jews! They shouldn't hold up
their heads in the presence of Mr. Slippey.
But then if that amount of salt were here, the price might fall. No,
upon reflection it should not. He would keep it in different places
and make it look scarce, and by Gracious! he wouldn't sell a sack
without getting his price. Everything and everybody, people and
cattle, might die of the murrain before he would fall in his price after
going to the expense and risk of working the fossil-beds and brine-springs
of Cheshire and Worcestershire for one whole blessed year, and
then running the blockade. Mr. Slippey was indignant at the bare
idea of lowering the price. Fool with him much about it and he
would raise it higher yet!
But the Governor might seize it.
“There now!” exclaimed Mr. Slippey aloud. “Old Brown is a
mighty seizer, that's a fact; and he is sot on gettin' salt wharsomever
he can for them miserable old poor people up in Cherokee.”
He took another sip and reflected.
Let him see now. How would it do to take the Governor into —
ah — a sort of partnership? Oh the mischief! That won't do. Old
Brown was born with a prejudice against merchants. By Gracious! he
would seize the salt and Mr. Slippey too, and lock them both up in
the Penitentiary.
But let him see again. How would it do to put salt to the Georgia
people at half price, and compel the rest of the Confederacy to make
up the loss?
But wouldn't the Confederate Government seize? The Confederate
Government! Thunder! No. It had more money now than six yoke
of oxen could pull down a mountain, and was still grinding out more
every day and every night. Pshaw! if he could keep old Brown down
he could manage the Confederate Government easy enough.
But a speedy peace would cut these profits down? A speedy peace,
indeed! Mr. Slippey had no fears on that subject. He would take all
them chances.
Mr. Slippey was a happy man as he rubbed his leg and sipped his
stew. While going again over his calculations as to the value of one
year's product of the fossil-beds and brine-springs, his mind became
a little fatigued, and he thought he would rest a moment and take
another sip. It was near the bottom, and the undissolved sugar had
made a sort of mush that seemed the very perfection of earthly sweets.
As he sat there leaning back in his chair, resting, and sipping and
sucking, he was fast getting to the conclusion that he was the happiest
of mankind.
But how fickle is fortune, especially in the times of great revolutions!
How suddenly she sometimes changes her garments! Just as Mr.
Slippey was about to extend his hand and take hold upon this felicity,
there suddenly but noiselessly appeared before him, leaning against
a pile of salt, the tall form of Mr. Elias Humphrey. This unexpected
occurrence so surprised Mr. Slippey that he could not find words with
which to make a single remark by way either of remonstrance or of interrogation.
Mr. Humphrey seemed for a moment to expect some
such remark. But Mr. Slippey was so slow in beginning that he
began himself. In the same sad tone in which he had spoken in the
afternoon, possibly even more sad, he reminded Mr. Slippey of some
of the favors which he had conferred upon him, and mildly reproached
him with ingratitude in refusing the loan of a single sack of salt at a
needed it.
Mr. Slippey began to feel a little, a very little better, for at first it
occurred to him that this must surely be Mr. Humphrey's ghost.
As soon as he heard his well-known voice, although his language was
certainly much improved, he became partially reassured. He was on
the point of asking him to take a seat, and of telling him that he had
been thinking about the matter in order to see if some arrangement
could not be made. But while he was getting ready to say all this,
his visitor with even an increased sadness of tone and exaltation of
manner and expression, informed him that he knew what he was going
to say, but that it was now too late.
“Williamson Slippey, don't you see where you are and where you
are going?”
Mr. Slippey looked around and concluded that he was in his own
store-room, before a warm fire, in his own arm-chair, by the side of his
own table, on which was a mug with the remains of what was a most
excellent whiskey-stew, and that he was not going anywhere just then.
He would probably have denied about the stew, but there was the
demijohn, which he had forgotten to hide; and then somehow Mr.
Humphrey looked as if he would be hard to fool. So Mr. Slippey
was making up his mind to answer this double question by putting
another to Mr. Humphrey; and that was, how he came where he was?
It was right here that Mr. Slippey thought he clearly had Mr. Humphrey.
But he was so slow in making up this answer that Mr.
Humphrey began upon him again.
“Williamson Slippey, you are the most altered man I ever saw.
Five years ago you came to this place, a poor, little, insignificant
fellow, and put up a little store. It was such a little thing that none
but poor men like me traded with you. I helped you along in various
ways. You have forgotten them now, and I have not come here
especially to remind you of them. What I did for you I did because,
poor as I was, I wanted to see you do well. I knew that there was
not much in you any way; yet I knew you were poor, and I did think
you were honest, and even somewhat kind-hearted.”
In spite of Mr. Slippey's growing discomfort, he was touched by
these remarks; for he had never before heard Mr. Humphrey (whom
he considered an unlearned man) employ such expressive language.
Mr. Slippey, at the allusion to his former virtues, felt his eyes to be
growing a little moist. Mr. Humphrey continued:
“You used to seem to be satisfied with reasonable profits upon your
merchandise, and to be willing to allow to other people fair prices for
what they might have to exchange. Indeed, I have sometimes known
you to give little things in the way of charity. And then, Slippey, you
certainly were a sober man. You can't deny that, for you know that
I have often heard you when you would be trying to make little bits
of temperance-speeches.”
Mr. Slippey looked at the demijohn and then at the mug. As he
could not deny, he thought, as the lawyers do sometimes in hard cases,
that he would confess and avoid.
“Ca — case — case o' sickness, 'Lias. Ca — case —”
But Mr. Humphrey paid no attention to his plea.
“But now, since this unhappy war has come, you have gradually
grown to be an entirely different man. You have speculated, and
speculated, and speculated. The more money you have made the
stingier you have become, even to your own family, and the more hard-hearted
to the world. You have prophesied about the blockade not
being raised, and about the continuance of the war, and the prospective
rise in the price of salt, until you have not only become bereft of
every sentiment of charity for a poor man, even one who has befriended
you as I have, but this night, yes this very night, you are a traitor
and an enemy to your country.”
Mr. Slippey seemed not to have the remotest idea of what to say in
answer to such talk as this. He felt that somehow he had lost his
opportunity in the beginning, and that Mr. Humphrey had gotten the
advantage of him so completely that now it seemed useless to try to
recover it. He could only throw back his head, and with eyes and
mouth gaze at, and, as it were, take in Mr. Humphrey. The latter,
conscious of his advantage, pushed on.
“Yes, sir, I repeat it, you are a traitor to your country. You have
been afraid, actually afraid, that the blockade would be raised, and that
poor men like me would be able to get those things which if they do
not get they must die. The cries of the sick and the dying, not only
of those who are dying from pestilence and wounds, but from that
more unhappy malady the longing for home; the anguish of old men
and women and children for the absence and death of sons and
husbands and fathers, and the miseries of all the poor for the want of
corn and meat and clothes and shoes, — all these are nothing to you.
You have speculated in many ways. But lately you have been confining
the hardest for poor people to get. You have bought up salt until
you actually lie to your own wife both as to the quantity which you
have and the places where you keep it. Not satisfied with what you
have and the ruinous prices at which you sell it, you sometimes try to
imagine that you are the sole proprietor of all the fossil-beds and
brine-springs of Cheshire and Worcestershire.”
Now Mr. Slippey thought that if there was anything that he would
have been willing to swear to, it was that Elias Humphrey had
never heard of Cheshire and Worcestershire, or of fossil-beds and
brine-springs; and he was getting confirmed in a suspicion which he
had that the latter had been in the store long before he had exhibited
himself. Mr. Slippey therefore had some vague notion of saying to
Mr. Humphrey that he did not consider such conduct exactly fair.
But still he could not but feel that the advantage was yet on the side
of Mr. Humphrey, and that the latter was using it with a skilfulness
that was becoming very oppressive.
“Ah, yes,” resumed Mr. Humphrey, now lifting his right arm, “you
have dealt in salt until every thought of your mind and every impulse
of your whole nature are of nothing but salt. Everything you look
at and everything you think about are connected in your mind with
salt. If you could you would turn your own wife and children into
salt, believing that thus they would be of more value to you than as
they are now. You are in a worse condition than the poor wife of the
exiled Lot. She was changed into salt only for disobedience in turning
to look back once more upon the graves of her fathers and the
home of her youth. You have become a living, moving pillar of salt,
because a disastrous war has made this necessary article of life precious
as gold; and aside from the riches you make out of it, you love
to be pointed at by the lean hands of the poor, and hear of them
saying, `There goes a man of Salt.”'
Mr. Slippey began to perspire.
“Quotin' Scripter on me to boot!” he feebly muttered. Mr. Humphrey
had now gotten so far above him, and he saw he had heretofore
so far underrated him both as to the amount of his information and
his powers of speech, that he became completely hacked. Mr. Humphrey
continued his pursuit.
“Hard-hearted man, and proud! Hard-hearted as Abimelech, son
of Jerubbaal, who murdered his seventy brethren, and having taken
streets with salt! And proud! Yea, this poor little salt merchant
expects to be famous, even as David gat him a name when he
returned from smiting of the Syrians in the Valley of Salt, being
eighteen thousand men.”
Mr. Slippey began to feel as if the roots of his hair would not be
sufficient to keep it from rising from his head and leaving it perfectly
bald.
“And then to think,” Mr. Humphrey went on —“only to think how
utterly mean and contemptible you have become! What an arrant
coward! What an egregious liar! Before the war and before conscription
you used to like to be considered a smart young fellow. But
you have lately been growing older and older with a rapidity unprecedented
in human life. You have gotten into the habit lately of speaking
of yourself as an aged man, weary with cares and the weight of years.
Ahead of conscription in the beginning, you intend to keep ahead of
it to the end. As soon as it was hinted that if the war should continue
another year the Governor would call out the militia up to fifty-five
years of age, you went right to work talking about things that happened
before you were born, and saying that younger men than you must
fight the battles of the country. You mean to keep ahead of conscription
and yet keep up the activity of a man of business. If it were
necessary for your purposes, you would be as old as the Wandering
Jew. And you have this advantage of the enrolling officers: you
come of such a low family, and your father was so mean and poor
and ignorant that there was no family Bible in which to record the
date of your birth, and there is not a respectable man living, at least
in this neighborhood, who has ever concerned himself enough about
you to know anything of your age. All this you know, and you glory
in it. And yet you don't see where you are and where you are going.”
Here Mr. Humphrey paused, and looked as if he intended to move
himself in some direction. Mr. Slippey, hacked as he was, now
thought surely he must say something.
“Ta — take — take a — take a seat, 'Lias, which — I should say —
Mister, Mister Humphrey. Ta — take a — seat — and let me — ex — explain.”
Mr. Humphrey, instead of complying with this request, moved off a
little to one side and stopped. Mr. Slippey, without moving his
body, merely turned his head and looked at his visitor with a sort of
perspire more and more.
“Tha — thake a — theat — pleathe — won't you thake a —”
Mr. Humphrey, without heeding these words, came at him again in
this wise:
“But you could not do all this without some compunctions. To
repress these you have taken to intemperance — to whiskey-stew,
forsooth! Day after day have you been tossed to and fro in the maddening
vortex of speculation, never resting, never seeking rest. Only
when the night has come, forsaking the couch of the wife of your
bosom, forsaking the society of the children who have been born to
you, and who, if properly nurtured and admonished, might have
become swift and unerring arrows in the full quiver of a stout and virtuous
old age, you have been coming to this miserable hole in order
to steep your reason and your conscience in the fumes of a fiery fluid
that is consuming the last substance of your vitality. The amount
and the quality of the whiskey that you have consumed within the last
six months are perfectly shocking to humanity. When the old-time
whiskey gave out or got too high for your mean, stingy soul, you began
on blackberry. That got too high, and you went to potato. Mean as
that was, you went lower yet: to tomatoes and persimmon. Oh, how
you have cheated the poor people in this neighborhood out of persimmon
whiskey! A little pocketful of salt for a big bottleful of persimmon
whiskey! And then, lower yet, China-berry! China-berry!
Who but the men of this generation would ever have thought of making
whiskey from China-berries?—China-berries which only cows and robins
eat; thus taking away the principal article of food from the innocent
Robin-Redbreast, the sweet songster of the grove.”
These words about the robin affected Mr. Slippey to tears. He saw
himself to be so much worse than he had believed that he began to
despise himself. Yet he could but feel that some little injustice was
done him in this last charge, having acted from, as he thought, no
wanton disregard of the wants of that favorite bird.
“Tha — thake a — theat — Mith — Mith — Humph — and let me
exth — exthpl —”
But Mr. Humphrey was deaf to his entreaties.
“And now, within the last week, you have descended to the very
bottom of this last infamy, and taken to Sorghum: to Sorghum! I
repeat it,” almost roared Mr. Humphrey, “of all vile potations, the
spirit have concocted together for the ruin of this unhappy country.
There you sit even now with an exhausted mug of stew made of sorghum
four days old; and to say nothing of your looks, which are
wretched in the extreme, the very odors you and your mug and demijohn
dispense are such that were the very vulture here, the vulture
that loves to riot in corruption, and had he the opportunity of preying
upon your dying carcass, he would consult the dignity of his bill, turn
his head, plume his dusky wings, and fly away to distant shores.”
Great drops of sweat now formed upon Mr. Slippey's face, and were
coursing one another down his nose.
“And now,” asked Mr. Humphrey with earnest compassion, “don't
you see where you are and where you are going? No he don't. The
miserable creature don't! Oh Williamson Slippey, don't you see that
you are dying and going to perdition?”
The poor man had had no idea of being so near his earthly end.
Notwithstanding his advance of all conscriptions, both past and prospective,
he yet had felt within himself the supplies of a life of many
years to come, and in his blindness had believed that sorghum-stews
were furnishing strength far behind his age. But now these words fell
upon his ears with the import of doom. His heart ceased to beat.
His tongue could no longer articulate. Earthly objects were fading
from his vision, and with unutterable horror he beheld the approach
of the eternal burnings. Oh for a little more of life! Oh for the
opportunity of repenting and of distributing his salt among the poor!
Too late! On the fires came rolling and roaring. Feet foremost Mr.
Slippey glided to meet them.
“Oh! Oh!! Oh!! Oh!!! Oh!!!!” screamed the unhappy man,
and gave it up.
At least so he believed.
But Mr. Slippey fortunately was mistaken. He was not quite dead,
although the fire and the sorghum-stew had come near finishing him.
He had fallen to sleep and to dreaming, and had subsided in his
chair until his head was hanging over the arm next the fire. Its
weight and that of his other upper parts had pushed one leg so far in
that direction that his trowsers caught the blaze and his calf began to
burn. The fire and the shriek awoke the sleeper, and it was half a
minute before he could convince himself that he was not where Mr.
Humphrey had said he was going. With many a slap and some kicks,
went with speed to the door, opened it, and thought that the cool
night-air never had felt so fresh and so nice.
The next morning Mr. Slippey was observed to have on a new pair
of trowsers and to limp slightly. On that day he sold out his whole
stock except two sacks, which before night were in Elias Humphrey's
smoke-house. In a very short time Mr. Slippey with his family
started off in a southwesterly direction from Atlanta, and it was supposed
succeeded in getting to Texas, whither he seemed to be bound.
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