University of Virginia Library

7. DAY THE SEVENTH.

Once more we were compelled to change our purpose.

When we left Tom Draw's, it had been, as we thought, finally
decided that we were for this bout to visit that fair village no more,
but when that worthy announced his own determination to accompany
us on our homeward route, and when we had taken into consideration
the fact, that, independent of Tom's two hundred and fifty
weight of solid flesh, we had two noble bucks, beside quail, partridge,
woodcock, and rabbit, almost innumerable to transport, in
addition to our two selves and Timothy, with the four dogs, and
lots of luggage—when we, I say, considered all this, it became apparent
that another vehicle must be provided for our return. So
during the last jorum, it had been put to the vote and unanimously
carried that we should start for Tom's, by a retrograde movement,
at four o'clock in the morning, breakfast with him, and rig up some
drag or other wherein Timothy might get the two deer and the
dogs, as best he might, into the city.

“As for us,” said Harry, “we will go down the other road,
Tom, over the back-bone of the mountain, dine with old Colonel
Beams, stop at Paterson, and take a taste at the Holy Father's potheen—you
may look at the Falls if you like it, Frank, while we're
looking at the Innishowen—and so get home to supper. I'll give
you both beds for one night—but not an hour longer—my little cellar
would be broken, past all doubt, if old Tom were to get two
nights out of it!”

“Ay'se sure it would,” responded Timothy, who had been listening,
all attention, mixing meanwhile some strange compound of
eggs and rum and sugar. “Whoy, measter Draa did pratty nigh
drink 't out yance—that noight 'at eight chaps, measter Frank,
drank oop two baskets o' champagne, and fifteen bottles o' 't breawn
sherry—Ay carried six on 'em to bed, Ay'se warrant it—and yan
o' them, young measter Clark, he spoilt me a new suit o' liveries,
wi' vomiting a top on me.”

“That'll do, Timothy,” interposed Archer, unwilling, as I
thought, that the secret mysteries of his establishment should be
revealed any further to the profane ears which were gaping round
about us—“that'll do for the present—give Mr. Draw that flip—
he's looking at it very angrily, I see! and then turn in, or you'll
be late in the morning; and, by George, we must be away by
four o'clock at latest, for we have all of sixty miles to makes to-morrow,
and Tom's fat carcase will try the springs most consumedly,
down hill.”

Matters thus settled, in we turned, and—as it seemed to me,
within five minutes, I was awakened by Harry Archer, who stood
beside my bed full dressed, with a candle in his hand.

“Get up,” he whispered, “get up, Frank, very quietly; slip on

your great-coat and your slippers—we have a chance to serve Tom
out—he's not awake for once! and Timothy will have the horses
ready in five minutes!”

Up I jumped on the instant, hauled on a rough-frieze pea-jacket,
thrust my unstockinged feet into their contrary slippers, and followed
Harry, on the tips of my toes, along a creaking passage,
guided by the portentous ruckling snorts, which varied the profundity
of the fat man's slumbers. When I reached his door, there
stood Harry, laughing to himself, with a small quiet chuckle, perfectly
inaudible at three feet distance, the intensity of which could,
however, be judged by the manner in which it shook his whole person.
Two huge horse-buckets, filled to the brim, were set beside
him; and he had cut a piece of an old broomstick so as to fit exactly
to the width of the passage, across which he had fastened it, at
about two feet from the ground, so that it must most indubitably
trip up any person, who should attempt to run along that dark and
narrow thoroughfare.

“Now, Frank,” said he, “see here! I'll set this bucket here
behind the door—we'll heave the other slap into his face—there he
lies, full on the broad of his fat back, with his mouth wide open—
and when he jumps up full of fight, which he is sure to do, run you
with the candle, which blow out the moment he appears, straight
down the passage. I'll stand back here, and as he trips over that
broomstick, which he is certain to do, I'll pitch the other bucket on
his back—and if he does not think he's bewitched, I'll promise not
to laugh. I owe him two or three practical jokes, and now I've
got a chance, so I'll pay him all at once.”

Well! we peeped in, aided by the glare of the streaming tallow-candle,
and there, sure enough, with all the clothes kicked off him,
and his immense rotundity protected only from the cold by an exceeding
scanty shirt of most ancient cotton, lay Tom, flat on his
back, like a stranded porpoise, with his mouth wide open, through
which he was puffing and breathing like a broken-winded cab-horse,
while through his expanded nostrils he was snoring loudly
enough to have awaked the seven sleepers. Neither of us could
well stand up for laughing. One bucket was deposited behind the
door, and back stood Harry ready to slip behind it also at half a
moment's warning—the candlestick was placed upon the floor,
which I was to kick over in my flight.

“Stand by to heave!” whispered my trusty comrade—“heave!”
and with the word—flash!—slush!—out went the whole contents
of the full pail, two gallons at the least of ice-cold water, slap in
the chaps, neck, breast, and stomach of the sound sleeper. With
the most wondrous noise that ears of mine have ever witnessed—a
mixture of sob, snort, and groan, concluding in the longest and
most portentous howl that mouth of man ever uttered—Tom started
out of bed; but, at the very instant I discharged my bucket, I put
my foot upon the light, flung down the empty pail, and bolted.
Poor devil!—as he got upon his feet the bucket rolled up with its
iron handles full against his shins, the oath he swore at which encounter,

while he dashed headlong after me, directed by the noise I
made on purpose, is most unmentionable. Well knowing where it
was, I easily jumped over the stick which barred the passage. Not
so Tom—for going at the very top of his pace, swearing like forty
troopers all the time, he caught it with both legs just below the
knees, and went down with a squelch that shook the whole hut to
the rooftree, while at the self-same instant Harry once again soused
him with the contents of the second pail, and made his escape unobserved
by the window of Tom's own chamber. Meanwhile I had
reached my room, and flinging off my jacket, came running out
with nothing but my shirt and a lighted candle, to Tom's assistance,
in which the next moment I was joined by Harry, who rushed
in from out of doors with the stable lanthorn.

“What's the row now?” he said, with his face admirably cool
and quiet. “What the devil's in the wind?”

“Oh! Archer!” grunted poor Tom, in most piteous accents—
“them d—d etarnal Teachmans—they've murdered me right out!
I'll never get over this—ugh! ugh! ugh! Half drownded and
smashed up the darndest! Now aint it an etarnal shame! Curse
them, if I doos n't sarve them out for it, my name's not Thomas
Draw!”

“Well, it is not,” rejoined Harry, “who in the name of wonder
ever called you Thomas? Christened you never were at all, that's
evident enough, you barbarous old heathen—but you were certainly
named Tom.”

Swearing, and vowing vengeance on Jem Lyn, and Garry, and
the Teachmans—each one of whom, by the way, was sound asleep
during this pleasant interlude—and shaking with the cold, and
sputtering with uncontrollable fury, the fat man did at length get
dressed, and after two or three libations of milk punch, recovered
his temper somewhat, and his spirits altogether.

Although, however, Harry and I told him very frankly that we
were not merely the sole planners, but the sole executors, of the
trick—it was in vain we spoke. Tom would not have it.

“No—he knew—he knew well enough; did we go for to think he
was such an old etarnal fool as not to know Jem's voice—a bloody
Decker—he would be the death of him.”

And direful, in good truth, I do believe, were the jokes practical,
and to him no jokes at all, which poor Jem had to undergo, in expiation
of his fancied share in this our misdemeanor.

Scarce had the row subsided, before the horses were announced.
Harry and I, and Tom and Timothy, mounted the old green drag;
and, with our cheroots lighted—the only lights, by the way, that
were visible at all—off we went at a rattling trot, the horses in
prime condition, full of fire, biting and snapping at each other, and
making their bits clash and jingle every moment. Up the long
hill, and through the shadowy wood, they strained, at full ten miles
an hour, without a touch of the whip, or even a word of Harry's
well-known voice.

We reached the brow of the mountain, where there are four

cleared fields—whereon I once saw snow lie five feet deep on the
tenth day of April—and an old barn; and thence we looked back
through the cold gray gloom of an autumnal morning, three hours
at least before the rising of the sun, while the stars were waning in
the dull sky, and the moon had long since set, toward the Greenwood
lake.

Never was there a stronger contrast, than between that lovely
sheet of limpid water, as it lay now—cold, dun, and dismal, like a
huge plate of pewter, without one glittering ripple, without one
clear reflection, surrounded by the wooded hills which, swathed in
a dim mist, hung grim and gloomy over its silent bosom—and its
bright sunny aspect on the previous day.

Adieu! fair Greenwood Lake! adieu! Many and blithe have
been the hours which I have spent around, and in, and on you—and
it may well be I shall never see you more—whether reflecting the
full fresh greenery of summer; or the rich tints of cisatlantic
autumn; or sheeted with the treacherous ice; but never, thou
sweet lake, never will thy remembrance fade from my bosom, while
one drop of life-blood warms it; so art thou intertwined with memories
of happy careless days, that never can return—of friends,
truer, perhaps, though rude and humble, than all of prouder seeming.
Farewell to thee, fair lake! Long may it be before thy rugged
hills be stripped of their green garniture, or thy bright waters[5]
marred by the unpicturesque improvements of man's avarice!—for
truly thou, in this utilitarian age, and at brief distance from America's
metropolis, art young, and innocent, and unpolluted, as when
the red man drank of thy pure waters, long centuries ere he dreamed
of the pale-faced oppressors, who have already rooted out his race
from half its native continent.

Another half hour brought us down at a rattling pace to the village,
and once again we pulled up at Tom's well-known dwelling,
just as the day was breaking. A crowd of loiterers, as usual, was
gathered even at that untimely season in the large bar-room; and
when the clatter of our hoofs and wheels announced us, we found
no lack of ready-handed and quick-tongued assistants.

“Take out the horses, Timothy,” cried Harry, “unharness them,
and rub them down as quickly and as thoroughly as may be—let

them have four quarts each, and mind that all is ready for a start
before an hour. Meantime, Frank, we will overhaul the game, get
breakfast, and hunt up a wagon for the deer and setters.”

“Do n't bother yourself about no wagon,” interposed Tom, “but
come you in and liquor; else we shall have you gruntin half the
day; and if old roan and my long pig-box wont carry down the
deer, why I'll stand treat.”

A jorum was prepared, and discussed accordingly; fresh ice produced,
the quail and woodcock carefully unpacked, and instantly
re-stowed with clean dry straw, a measure which, however, seemed
almost supererogatory, since so completely had the external air
been excluded from the game-box, that we found not only the lumps
of ice in the bottom unthawed, but the flannel which lay over it stiff
frozen; the birds were of course perfectly fresh, cool, and in good
condition. Our last day's batch, which it was found impossible to
get into the box, with all the ruffed grouse, fifty at least in number,
were tied up by the feet, two brace and two brace, and hung in
festoons round the inside rails of the front seat and body, while
about thirty rabbits dangled by their hind legs, with their long ears
flapping to and fro, from the back seat, and baggage rack. The
wagon looked, I scarce know how, something between an English
stage-coach when the merry days of Christmas are at hand, and a
game-huxter's taxed cart.

The business of re-packing had been scarce accomplished, and
Harry and myself had just retired to change our shooting-jackets
and coarse fustians for habiliments more suitable for the day and
our destination—New York, to-wit, and Sunday—when forth came
Tom, bedizened from top to toe in his most new and knowing rig,
and looking now, to do him justice, a most respectable and portly
yeoman.

A broad-brimmed, low-crowned and long-napped white hat, set
forth assuredly to the best advantage his rotund, rubicund, good-humored
phiz; a clean white handkerchief circled his sturdy neck,
on the volumnious folds of which reposed in placid dignity the
mighty collops of his double chin. A bright canary waistcoat of
imported kerseymere, with vast mother-of-pearl buttons, and a
broad-skirted coat of bright blue cloth, with glittering brass buttons
half the size of dollars, covered his upper man, while loose drab
trousers of stout double-milled, and a pair of well-blacked boots,
completed his attire; so that he looked as different an animal as
possible from the unwashed, uncombed, half-naked creature he presented,
when lounging in his bar-room in his every-day apparel.

“Why, halloa Guts!” cried Archer, as he entered, “you've
broken out here in a new place altogether.”

“Now quit, you, callin of me Guts,” responded Tom, more testily
than I had ever heard him speak to Harry, whose every whim and
frolic he seemed religiously to venerate and humor; “a fellow
doos n't want to have it `Guts' here, and `Guts' there, over half a
county. Why now it was but a week since, while 'lections was a

goin' on, I got a letter from some d—d chaps to Newburg—`Rouse
about now, old Guts, you'll need it this election!”'

“Ha! ha! ha!” shouted Harry and I almost simultaneously, delighted
at Tom's evident annoyance.

“Who wrote it Tom?”

“That's what I'd jist give fifty dollars to know now,” replied
mine host, clinching his mighty paw.

“Why, what would you do,” said I, “if you did know?”

“Lick him, by George! Lick him, in the first place, till he was
as nigh dead as I daared lick him—and then I'd make him eat up
every darned line of it! But come, come—breakfast's ready; and
while we're getting through with it, Timothy and Jem Lyn will
fix the pig-box, and make the deer all right and tight for travelling!”

No sooner said than done—an ample meal was speedily despatched—and
when that worthy came in to announce all ready,
for the saving of time, master Timothy was accommodated with a
seat at a side-table, which he occupied with becoming dignity, abstaining,
as it were in consciousness of his honorable promotion,
from any of the quaint and curious witticisms, in which he was wont
to indulge; but manducating with vast energy the various good
things which were set before him.

It was a clear, bright Sabbath morning, as ever shone down on a
sinful world, on which we started homeward—and, though I fear
there was not quite so much solemnity in our demeanor as might
have best accorded with the notions of over strict professors, I can
still answer that with much mirth, much merriment, and much good
feeling in our hearts, there was no touch of irreverence, or any taint
of what could be called sinful thought. The sun had risen fairly,
but the hour was still too early for the sweet peaceful music of the
church-going bells to have made their echoes tunable through the
rich valley. A merry cavalcade, indeed, we started—Harry leading
the way at his usual slap-dash pace, so that one, less a workman
than himself, would have said he went up hill and down at the
same break-neck pace, and would take all the grit out of his team
before he had gone ten miles—while a more accurate observer
would have seen almost at a glance, that he varied his rate at
almost every inequality of road, that he quartered every rut, avoided
every jog or mud hole, husbanded for the very best his horses'
strength, never making them either pull or hold a moment longer
than was absolutely necessary from the abruptness of the ground.

At his left hand sat I, while Tom, in honor of his superior bulk
and weight, occupied with his magnificent and portly person the
whole of the back seat, keeping his countenance as sanctified as
possible, and nodding, with some quaint and characteristic observation,
to each one of the scattered groups of country-people, which
we encountered every quarter of a mile for the first hour of our
route, wending their way toward the village church—but, when we
reached the forest-mantled road which clombe the mountain, making

the arched woods resound to many a jovial catch, or merry
hunting chorus.

Mounted sublime on an arm-chair lashed to the fore-part of the
pig-box, sat Timothy in state—his legs well muffled in a noble
scarlet-fringed buffalo skin, and his body encased in his livery top-coat—the
setters and the spaniels crouching most meekly at his
feet, and the two noble bucks—the fellow on whose steaks we had
already made an inroad, having been left as fat Tom's portion—
securely corded down upon a pile of straw, with their sublime and
antlered crests drooping all spiritless and humble over the back-board,
toward the frozen soil which crashed and rattled under the
ponderous hoofs of the magnificent roan horse—Tom's special
favorite—which, though full seventeen hands high, and heavy in
proportion, yet showing a good strain of blood, trotted away with
his huge load at full ten miles an hour.

Plunging into the deep recesses of the Greenwoods, hill after hill
we scaled, a toilsome length of stony steep ascents, almost precipitous;
until we reached the back-bone of the mountain ridge—a
rugged, bare, sharp edge of granite rock, without a particle of soil
upon it, diving down at an angle not much less than forty-five degress
into a deep ravine, through which thundered and roared a
flashing torrent. This fearful descent overpast, and that in perfect
safety, we rolled merrily away down hill, till we reached Colonel
Beam's tavern, a neat, low-browed, Dutch, stone farm-house, situate
in an angle scooped out of a green hill-side, with half a dozen
tall and shadowy elms before it—a bright crystal stream purling
along into the horse-trough through a miniature acqueduct of hollowed
logs, and a clear cold spring in front of it, with half a score
of fat and lazy trout floating in its transparent waters.

A hearty welcome, and a no less hearty meal having been here
encountered and despatched, we rattled off again, through laden
orchards and rich meadows; passed the confluence of the three
bright rivers which issue from their three mountain gorges, to form
by their junction the fairest of New Jersey's rivers, the broad Passaic;
reached the small village noted for rum-drinking and quarter
racing—hight Pompton—thence by the Preakness mountain, and
Mose Canouze's tavern—whereat, in honor of Tom's friend, a
worthy of the self-same kidney with himself, we paused awhile—
to Paterson, the filthiest town, situate on one of the loveliest rivers
in the world, and famous only for the possession, in the person of
its Catholic priest, of the finest scholar and best fellow in America,
whom we unluckily found not at home, and therefore tasted not, according
to friend Harry's promise, the splendid Innishowen which
graces at all times his hospitable board.

Eight o'clock brought us to Hoboken, where, by good luck, the
ferry boat lay ready—and nine o'clock had not struck when we
three sat down once again about a neat small supper-table, before a
bright coal fire, in Archer's snuggery—Tom glorying in the prospect
of the races on the morrow, and I regretting that I had brought
to its conclusion

MY FIRST WEEK IN THE WOODLANDS.