 | THE DEVIL
AND
TOM WALKER. The devil and Tom Walker |  |
THE DEVIL
AND
TOM WALKER.
A few miles from Boston, in Massachusetts,
there is a deep inlet winding several miles into
the interior of the country from Charles Bay,
and terminating in a thickly wooded swamp, or
morass. On one side of this inlet is a beautiful
dark grove; on the opposite side the land
rises abruptly from the water's edge, into a high
ridge, on which grow a few scattered oaks of
great age and immense size. It was under one
of these gigantic trees, according to old stories,
that Kidd the pirate buried his treasure. The
inlet allowed a facility to bring the money in a
boat secretly, and at night, to the very foot of
the hill. The elevation of the place permitted
a good look-out to be kept, that no one was
at hand—while the remarkable trees formed
good landmarks by which the place might easily
be found again. The old stories add, moreover,
that the devil presided at the hiding of the
money, and took it under his guardianship; but
this, it is well known, he always does with buried
treasure, particularly when it has been ill
to recover his wealth—being shortly after
seized at Boston, sent out to England, and there
hanged for a pirate.
About the year 1727, just at the time when
earthquakes were prevalent in New-England,
and shook many tall sinners down upon their
knees, there lived near this place a meagre, miserly
fellow of the name of Tom Walker.—
He had a wife as miserly as himself; they were
so miserly that they even conspired to cheat
each other. Whatever the woman could lay
hands on she hid away; a hen could not cackle
but she was on the alert to secure the new-laid
egg. Her husband was continually prying about
to detect her secret hoards, and many and fierce
were the conflicts that took place about what
ought to have been common property. They
lived in a forlorn-looking house, that stood alone,
and had an air of starvation. A few straggling
savine trees, emblems of sterility, grew near it;
no smoke ever curled from its chimney; no
traveller stopped at its door. A miserable horse,
whose ribs were as articulate as the bars of a
gridiron, stalked about a field where a thin carpet
of moss, scarcely covering the ragged beds
of pudding-stone, tantalized and balked his hunger;
and sometimes he would lean his head over
the fence, look piteously at the passer-by,
and seem to petition deliverance from this land
of famine. The house and its inmates had altogether
a bad name. Tom's wife was a tall
termagant, fierce of temper, loud of tongue, and
strong of arm. Her voice was often heard in
sometimes showed signs that their conflicts were
not confined to words. No one ventured, however,
to interfere between them: the lonely
wayfarer shrunk within himself at the horrid
clamor and clapper-clawing—eyed the den of
discord askance, and hurried on his way, rejoicing,
if a bachelor, in his celibacy.
One day that Tom Walker had been to a distant
part of the neighborhood, he took what he
considered a short cut homewards through the
swamp. Like most short cuts, it was an ill-chosen
route. The swamp was thickly grown with
great gloomy pines and hemlocks—some of them
ninety feet high; which made it dark at noon
day, and a retreat for all the owls of the neighborhood.
It was full of pits and quagmires,
partly covered with weeds and mosses; where
the green surface often betrayed the traveller
into a gulf of black smuthering mud: there were
also dark and stagnant pools, the abodes of the
tadpole, the bull-frog, and the water-snake, and
where trunks of pines and hemlocks lay half
drowned, half rotting, looking like alligators
sleeping in the mire.
Tom had long been picking his way cautiously
through this treacherous forest—stepping from
tuft to tuft of rushes and roots which afforded
precarious footholds among deep sloughs; or
pacing carefully, like a cat, along the prostrate
trunks of trees—startled now and then by the
sudden screaming of the bittern, or the quacking
of a wild duck, rising on the wing from some
of firm ground, which ran out like a peninsula
into the deep bosom of the swamp. It had been
one of the strong holds of the Indians during
their wars with the first colonists. Here they
had thrown up a kind of fort which they had
looked upon as almost impregnable, and had
used as a place of refuge for their squaws and
children. Nothing remained of the Indian fort
but a few embankments gradually sinking to the
level of the surrounding earth, and already over-grown
in part by oaks and other forest trees, the
foliage of which formed a contrast to the dark
pines and hemlocks of the swamp.
It was late in the dusk of evening that Tom
Walker reached the old fort; and he paused
there for a while to rest himself. Any one but
he would have felt unwilling to linger in this
lonely melancholy place—for the common people
had a bad opinion of it from the stories handed
down from the time of the Indian wars;
when it was asserted that the savages held incantations
here, and made sacrifices to the evil
spirit. Tom Walker, however, was not a man
to be troubled with any fears of the kind.
He reposed himself for some time on the trunk
of a fallen hemlock, listening to the boding cry
of the tree-toad, and delving with his walking
staff into a mound of black mould at his feet.
As he turned up the soil unconsciously, his staff
struck against something hard. He raked it
out of the vegetable mould, and lo! a cloven
skull with an Indian tomahawk buried deep in
it, lay before him! The rust on the weapon
death-blow had been given. It was a dreary
memento of the fierce struggle that had taken
place in this last foothold of the Indian warriors.
“Humph!” said Tom Walker, as he gave
the skull a kick to shake the dirt from it.
“Leave that skull alone!” said a gruff voice.
Tom lifted up his eyes, and beheld a great
black man, seated directly opposite him on the
stump of a tree. He was exceedingly surprised,
having neither seen nor heard any one approach,
and he was still more perplexed on observing,
as well as the gathering gloom would permit,
that the stranger was neither negro nor Indian.
It is true, he was dressed in a rude, half Indian
garb, and had a red belt or sash swathed round
his body; but his face was neither black nor
copper color, but swarthy and dingy and begrimed
with soot, as if he had been accustomed
to toil among fires and forges. He had a shock
of coarse black hair, that stood out from his head
in all directions; and bore an axe on his shoulder.
He scowled for a moment at Tom with a pair
of great red eyes.
“What are you doing in my grounds?” said
the black man, with a hoarse growling voice.
“Your grounds?” said Tom with a sneer;
“no more your grounds than mine—they belong
to Deacon Peabody.”
“Deacon Peabody be damn'd,” said the stranger,
“as I flatter myself he will be, if he does
not look more to his own sins and less to his
neighbors'. Look yonder, and see how Deacon
that the stranger pointed, and beheld one of the
great trees, fair and flourishing without, but rotten
at the core, and saw that it had been nearly
hewn through, so that the first high wind was
likely to blow it down. On the bark of the tree
was scored the name of Deacon Peabody. He
now looked round and found most of the tall
trees marked with the name of some great men
of the colony, and all more or less scored by the
axe. The one on which he had been seated, and
which had evidently just been hewn down, bore
the name of Crowninshield; and he recollected a
mighty rich man of that name, who made a vulgar
display of wealth, which it was whispered
he had acquired by bucaniering.
“He's just ready for burning!” said the black
man, with a growl of triumph. “You see I am
likely to have a good stock of fire wood for winter.”
“But what right have you,” said Tom, “to
cut down Deacon Peabody's timber?”
“The right of prior claim,” said the other.
“This woodland belonged to me long before
one of you white-faced Yankee race of rascals
put foot upon the soil.”
“And pray, who are you, if I may be so
bold?” said Tom.
“Oh, I go by various names. I am the Wild
Huntsman in some countries; the Black Miner
in others. In this neighborhood I am known
by the name of the Black Woodsman. I am he
to whom the red men devoted this spot, and now
and then roasted a white man by way of sweet
exterminated by you white savages, I amuse
myself by presiding at the persecutions of Quakers
and Anabaptists;—I am the great patron
and prompter of slave-dealers, and the grand
master of the Salem witches.”
“The upshot of all which is, that, if I mistake
not,” said Tom, sturdily, “you are he commonly
called Old Scratch.”
“The same at your service!” replied the
black man, with a half civil nod.
Such was the opening of this interview, according
to the old story, though it has almost
too familiar an air to be credited. One would
think that to meet with such a singular personage
in this wild lonely place, would have shaken
any man's nerves: but Tom was a hard
minded fellow, not easily daunted, and he had
lived so long with a termagant wife, that he did
not even fear the devil.
It is said that after this commencement, they
had a long and earnest conversation together, as
Tom returned homewards. The black man
told him of great sums of money which had
been buried by Kidd the pirate, under the oak
trees on the high ridge not far from the morass.
All these were under his command and protected
by his power, so that none could find them
but such as propitiated his favor. These he offered
to place within Tom Walker's reach, having
conceived an especial kindness for him: but
they were to be had only on certain conditions.
What these conditions were, may easily be surmised,
though Tom never disclosed them publicly.
required time to think of them, and he was not
a man to stick at trifles where money was in
view. When they had reached the edge of the
swamp, the stranger paused.
“What proof have I that all you have been
telling me is true?” said Tom.
“There is my signature,” said the black man,
pressing his finger on Tom's forehead. So saying,
he turned off among the thickets of the
swamp, and seemed, as Tom said, to go down,
down, down, into the earth, until nothing but
his head and shoulders could be seen, and so
on, until he totally disappeared.
When Tom reached home he found the black
print of a finger burnt, as it were, into his forehead,
which nothing could obliterate.
The first news his wife had to tell him was
the sudden death of Absalom Crowninshield,
the rich buccanier. It was announced in the
papers with the usual flourish, that “a great
man had fallen in Israel.”
Tom rocollected the tree which his black
friend had just hewn down, and which was ready
for burning. “Let the freebooter roast,” said
Tom, “who cares!” He now felt convinced
that all he had heard and seen was no illusion.
He was not prone to let his wife into his confidence;
but as this was an uneasy secret, he
willingly shared it with her. All her avarice
was awakened at the mention of hidden gold,
and she urged her husband to comply with the
black man's terms, and secure what would make
them wealthy for life. However Tom might
he was determined not to do so to oblige his
wife; so he flatly refused out of the mere spirit
of contradiction. Many and bitter were the
quarrels they had on the subject; but the more
she talked, the more resolute was Tom not to
be damned to please her. At length she determined
to drive the bargain on her own account,
and if she succeeded, to keep all the gain to
herself. Being of the same fearless temper as
her husband, she sat off for the old Indian fort
towards the close of a summer's day. She was
many hours absent. When she came back she
was reserved and sullen in her replies. She
spoke something of a black man whom she had
met about twilight, hewing at the root of a tall
tree. He was sulky, however, and would not
come to terms; she was to go again with a propitiatory
offering, but what it was she forebore
to say. The next evening she sat off again for
the swamp, with her apron heavily laden. Tom
waited and waited for her, but in vain: mid-night
came, but she did not make her appearance:
morning, noon, night returned, but still
she did not come. Tom now grew uneasy for
her safety; especially as he found she had carried
off in her apron the silver tea-pot and
spoons, and every portable article of value. Another
night elapsed, another morning came; but
no wife. In a word, she was never heard of more.
What was her real fate nobody knows, in consequence
of so many pretending to know. It is
one of those facts that have become confounded
by a variety of historians. Some assert that she
swamp, and sunk into some pit or slough; others,
more uncharitable, hinted that she had eloped
with the household booty, and made off to
some other province; while others assert that
the tempter had decoyed her into a dismal quagmire,
on top of which her hat was found lying.
In confirmation of this, it was said a great black
man, with an axe on his shoulder, was seen late
that very evening coming out of the swamp,
carrying a bundle tied in a check apron, with an
air of surly triumph.
The most current and probable story, however,
observes that Tom Walker grew so anxious
about the fate of his wife and his property, that
he sat out at length to seek them both at the Indian
fort. During a long summer's afternoon,
he searched about the gloomy place, but no wife
was to be seen. He called her name repeatedly,
but she was no where to be heard. The
bittern alone responded to his voice, as he flew
screaming by; or the bull-frog croaked dolefully
from a neighboring pool. At length, it is
said, just in the brown hour of twilight, when
the owls began to hoot and the bats to flit about,
his attention was attracted by the clamor of carrion
crows that were hovering about a cypress
tree. He looked and beheld a bundle tied in a
check apron and hanging in the branches of the
tree, with a great vulture perched hard by, as if
keeping watch upon it. He leaped with joy,
for he recognized his wife's apron, and supposed
it to contain the household valuables.
“Let us get hold of the property,” said he,
to do without the woman.”
As he scrambled up the tree the vulture spread
its wide wings, and sailed off screaming into the
deep shadows of the forest. Tom seized the
check apron, but, woful sight! found nothing
but a heart and liver tied up in it.
Such, according to the most authentic old story,
was all that was to be found of Tom's wife.
She had probably attempted to deal with the
black man as she had been accustomed to deal
with her husband; but though a female scold is
generally considered a match for the devil, yet
in this instance she appears to have had the
worst of it. She must have died game however,
from the part that remained unconquered.
Indeed, it is said Tom noticed many prints of
cloven feet deeply stamped about the tree, and
several handsful of hair, that looked as if they
had been plucked from the coarse black shock
of the woodsman. Tom knew his wife's prowess
by experience. He shrugged his shoulders
as he looked at the signs of a fierce clapper-clawing.
“Egad,” said he to himself, “Old
Scratch must have had a tough time of it!”
Tom consoled himself for the loss of his property
by the loss of his wife; for he was a little
of a philosopher. He even felt something like
gratitude towards the black woodsman, who he
considered had done him a kindness. He
sought, therefore, to cultivate a farther acquaintance
with him, but for some time without success:
the old black legs played shy, for whatever
people may think, he is not always to be
cards when pretty sure of his game.
At length, it is said, when delay had whetted
Tom's eagerness to the quick, and prepared
him to agree to any thing rather than not gain
the promised treasure, he met the black man
one evening in his usual woodman dress, with
his axe on his shoulder, sauntering along the
edge of the swamp, and humming a tune. He
affected to receive Tom's advance with great
indifference, made brief replies, and went on
humming his tune.
By degrees, however, Tom brought him to
business, and they began to haggle about the
terms on which the former was to have the pirate's
treasure. There was one condition which
need not be mentioned, being generally understood
in all cases where the devil grants favors;
but there were others about which, though of less
importance, he was inflexibly obstinate. He insisted
that the money found through his means
should be employed in his service. He proposed,
therefore, that Tom should employ it in the
black traffic; that is to say, that he should fit
out a slave ship. This, however, Tom resolutely
refused: he was bad enough in all conscience;
but the devil himself could not tempt
him to turn slave-dealer.
Finding Tom so squeamish on this point, he
did not insist upon it; but proposed instead, that
he should turn usurer—the devil being extremely
anxious for the increase of usurers, looking upon
them as his peculiar people. To this no objections
were made, for it was just to Tom's taste.
“You shall open a broker's shop in Boston
next month,” said the black man.
`I'll do it to-morrow, if you wish,' said Tom.
“You shall lend money at 2 per ct. a month.”
`Egad, I'll charge four!' replied Tom Walker.
“You shall extort bonds, foreclose mortgages,
drive the merchant to bankruptcy—”
`I'll drive him to the devil,' cried Tom, eagerly.
“You are the usurer for my money!” said the
black legs, with delight. “When will you
want the rhine?”
`This very night.'
“Done!” said the devil.
`Done!' said Tom Walker.—So they shook
hands, and struck a bargain.
A few days' time saw Tom Walker seated
behind his desk in a counting-house in Boston.
His reputation for a ready moneyed man, who
would lend money out for a good consideration,
soon spread abroad. Every body remembers the
days of Governor Belcher, when money was
particularly scarce. It was a time of paper credit.
The country had been deluged with government
bills—the famous Land Bank had been established—there
had been a rage for speculating—the
people had run mad with schemes for
new settlements, and for building cities in the
wilderness—land-jobbers went about with maps
of grants, and townships, and eldorados, lying
nobody knew where, but which every body was
ready to purchase. In a word, the great speculating
fever which breaks out every now and
then in the country, had raged to an alarming
degree, and every body was dreaming of making
had subsided—the dream had gone off, and
the imaginary fortunes with it—the patients were
left in doleful plight, and the whole country resounded
with the consequent cry of `hard times.'
At this propitious time of public distress did
Tom Walker set up as a usurer in Boston. His
door was soon thronged by customers. The
needy and the adventurous—the gambling speculator—the
dreaming land-jobber—the thriftless
tradesman—the merchant with cracked credit....in
short, every one driven to raise money
by desperate means and desperate sacrifices,
hurried to Tom Walker.—Thus Tom was the
universal friend of the needy, and he acted like
“a friend in need,”—that is to say, he always
exacted good pay and good security. In proportion
to the distress of the applicant was the hardness
of his terms. He accumulated bonds and
mortgages—gradually squeezed his customers
closer and closer, and sent them at length dry
as a sponge from his door.
In this way he made money hand over hand—
became a rich and mighty man, and exalted his
cocked hat upon change. He built himself a
vast house out of ostentation, but left the greater
part of it unfinished and unfurnished out of
parsimony. He even set up a carriage in the
fulness of his vain-glory, though he nearly starved
the horses which drew it; and as the ungreased
wheels groaned and screeched on the
exle-trees, you would have thought you heard
the souls of the poor debtors he was squeezing.
As Tom waxed old howover, he grew thoughtful.
world, he began to feel anxious about those of
the next. He thought with regret on the bargain
he had made with his black friend, and set
his wits to work to cheat him out of the conditions.
He became, therefore, all of a sudden,
a violent church-goer. He prayed loudly and
strenuously, as if heaven were to be taken by
force of lungs. Indeed, one might always tell
when he had sinned most during the week, by
the clamor of his Sunday devotion. The quiet
christians who had been modestly and steadfastly
travelling Zionward, were struck with self-reproach
at seeing themselves so suddenly out-stripped
in their career by this new-made convert.
Tom was as rigid in religious, as in money
matters; he was a stern supervisor and censurer
of his neighbors, and seemed to think every
sin entered up to their account became a
credit on his own side of the page. He even
talked of the expediency of reviving the persecution
of Quakers and Anabaptists. In a word,
Tom's zeal became as notorious as his riches.
Still, in spite of all this strenuous attention to
forms, Tom had a lurking dread that the devile
after all, would have his due. That he might
not be taken unawares, therefore, it is said he
always carried a small Bible in his coat pocket.
He had also a great folio Bible on his counting-house
desk, and would frequently be found reading
it when people called on business: on such
occasions he would lay his green spectacles on
round to drive some usurious bargain.
Some say that Tom grew a little crack-brained
in his old days, and that fancying his end
approaching, he had his horse new-shod, saddled
and bridled, and buried with his feet uppermost;
because he supposed that at the last day the
world would be turned upside down—in which
case he should find his horse standing ready for
mounting, and he was determined at the worst
to give his old friend a run for it. This, however,
is probably a mere old-wives' fable. If he
really did take such a precaution, it was totally
superfluous: at least so says the authentic old legend,
which closes his story in the following
manner:
On one hot afternoon in the dog-days, just as
a terrible black thundergust was coming up,
Tom sat in his counting-house in his white linen
cap and India silk morning-gown. He was
on the point of foreclosing a mortgage, by which
he would complete the ruin of an unlucky land
speculator, for whom he had professed the greatest
friendship. The poor land-jobber begged
him to grant a few months indulgence. Tom
had grown testy and irritated, and refused another
day.
“My family will be ruined and brought upon
the parish,” said the land-jobber. `Charity begins
at home,' replied Tom; `I must take care
of myself in these hard times.'
“You have made so much money out of me,”
said the speculator.
Tom lost his patience and his piety—`The
Just then there were three loud knocks at
the street door. He stepped out to see who
was there. A black man was holding a black
horse which neighed and stamped with impatience.
“Tom, you're come for!” said the black fellow,
gruffly. Tom shrunk back, but too late.
He had left his little Bible at the bottom of his
coat pocket, and his big Bible on the desk buried
under the mortgage he was about to foreclose.—Never
was sinner taken more unawares.
The black man whisked him like a child astride
the horse, and away he galloped in the midst
of a thunder-storm. The clerks stuck their pens
behind their ears, and stared after him from the
windows. Away went Tom Walker, dashing
down the streets; his white cap bobbing up and
down; his morning-gown fluttering in the wind,
and his steed striking fire out of the pavement
at every bound. When the clerks turned to
look for the black man, he had disappeared.
Tom Walker never returned to foreclose the
mortgage. A countryman who lived on the
borders of the swamp, reported that in the height
of the thunder-gust he had heard a great clattering
of hoofs and a howling along the road, and
that when he ran to the window he just caught
sight of a figure, such as I have described, on a
horse that galloped like mad across the fields,
over the hills and down into the black hemlock
swamp towards the old Indian fort; and that
which seemed to set the whole forest in a
blaze.
The good people of Boston shook their heads
and shrugged their shoulders, but had been so
much accustomed to witches and goblins and
tricks of the devil in all kinds of shapes from
the first settlement of the colony, that they were
not so much horror-struck as might have been
expected. Trustees were appointed to take
charge of Tom's effects. There was nothing,
however, to administer upon. On searching
his coffers, all his bonds and mortgages were
found reduced to cinders. In place of gold and
silver, his iron chest was filled with chips and
shavings: two skeletons lay in his stable instead
of his half-starved horses; and the very
next day his great house took fire and was burnt
to the ground.
Such was the end of Tom Walker and his
ill-gotten wealth. Let all griping money-brokers
lay this story to heart. The truth of it is
not to be doubted. The very hole under the
oak trees, from whence he dug Kidd's money,
is to be seen to this day; and the neighboring
swamp and old Indian fort is often haunted in
stormy nights by a figure on horseback, in a
morning-gown and white cap, which is doubtless
the troubled spirit of the usurer. In fact,
the story has resolved itself into a proverb, and
is the origin of that popular saying, prevalent
throughout New-England, of “THE DEVIL
AND TOM WALKER.”
| THE DEVIL
AND
TOM WALKER. The devil and Tom Walker | |