University of Virginia Library

3. CHAPTER THIRD.
THE FARMER-FOLKS FROM THE WEST.

With the following day, (which was calm, gentle,
and serene as its predecessor,) a little after the dispatch
of dinner, the attention of the household was
summoned to the clatter of a hurrying wagon, which,
unseen, resounded in the distant country. Old Sylvester
was the first to hear it—faintly at first, then it
rose on the wind far off, died away in the woods and
the windings of the roads, then again was entirely
lost for several minutes, and at last growing into a
portentous rattle, brought to at the door of the homestead,
and landed from its ricketty and bespattered
bosom Mr. Oliver Peabody, of Ohio; Jane his wife,
a buxom lady of fair complexion, in a Quaker bonnet;
and Robert, their eldest son, a tall, flat-featured
boy, some thirteen years of age.

The countryman in a working shirt, who had the
control of the wagon, and who had been beguiled by
Oliver some five miles out of his road home, (to which
he was returning from the market town,) under pretence
of a wish to have his opinion of the crops—the

poor fellow being withal a hired laborer and never
having owned, or entertained the remotest speculation
of owning, a rood of ground of his own,—with a commendation
from Oliver, delivered with a cheerful
smile, that “his observations on timothy were very
much to the purpose,” drove clattering away again.
Mr. Oliver Peabody, farmer, who had come all the
way from Ohio to spend thanksgiving with his old
father—of a ruddy, youthful and twinkling countenance—who
wore his hair at length and unshorn,
and the chief peculiarity of whose dress was a grey
cloth coat, with a row of great horn-buttons on either
breast, with enormous woollen mittens, brought his
buxom wife forward under one arm with diligence,
drawing his tall youth of a son after him by the other
hand—threw himself into the bosom of the Peabody
family, and was heartily welcomed all round. He
didn't say a word of half-horses and half-alligators,
nor of greased lightning, although he was from the
West, but he did complain most bitterly of the uncommon
smoothness of the roads in these parts, the
short grass, and the 'bominable want of elbow-room
all over the neighborhood. It was with difficulty he
could be kept on the straitened stage of the balcony
long enough to answer a few plain questions of children
and other matters at home; and immediately
expressed an ardent desire to take a look at the
garden.

“We got somefin' to show thar, Mas'r Oliver,”
said Mopsey, who had stood by listening, with open
mouth and eyes, to the strong statements of the
western farmer, “we haint to be beat right-away no
how!”

Old Sylvester rose with his staff, which he carried
more for pleasure than necessity, and led the way.
As they approached there was visible through all the
plants, shrubs and other growths of the place, whatever
they might be—a great yellow sphere or ball,
so disposed, on a little slope by itself, as to catch the
eye from a distance, shining out in its golden hue
from the garden, a sort of rival to the sun himself,
rolling overhead.

“Dere, what d'ye tink of dat, Oliver,” Mopsey
asked, forgetting in the grandeur of the moment all
distinctions of class or color, “I guess dat's somefin.”

“That's a pumpkin,” said Mr. Oliver Peabody,
calmly.

“Yes, I guess it is—de tanksgivin punkin!”

She looked into the western farmer's face, no doubt
expecting a spasm or convulsion, but it was calm—
calm as night. Mopsey condescended not another
word, but walking or rather shuffling disdainfully
away, muttered to herself, “Dat is de very meanest
man, for a white man, I ever did see; he looked at
dat 'ere punkin which has cost me so many anxious
days and sleepless nights—which I have watched
over as thoughf it had been my own child—which I
planted wid dis here hand of my own, and fought for
agin the June bugs and the white frost, and dat mouse
dat's been tryin to eat it up for dis tree weeks and
better—just as if it had been a small green cowcumber.
I don't believe dat Oliver Peabody knows it is
tanksgivin'. He's a great big fool.”

“I see you still keep some of the old red breed,
father,” said Oliver when they were left alone in the
quiet of the garden, pointing to the red rooster, who
stood on the wall in the sun.

“Yes,” old Sylvester answered, “for old times'
sake. We have had them with us now on the farm
for better than a hundred years. I remember the day
the great grandfather of this bird was brought among

us. It was the day we got news that good David
Brainard, the Indian missionary, died—that was some
while before the revolutionary war. He died in the
arms of the great Jonathan Edwards, at Northampton;
their souls are at peace.”

“I recollect this fellow,” Oliver continued, referring
to the red rooster, “When I was here last he
was called Elbridge's bird, that was the year before
last.”

“There is no Elbridge now,” said the old grandfather.

“I know all,” said Oliver, “I had a letter from
Margaret, telling me the story and begging me to
keep a watch for her boy.”

“A wide watch to keep and little to be got by it,
I fear,” old Sylvester added.

“Not altogether idle, perhaps; we have sharp eyes
in the West and see many strange things. Jane is
confident she saw our Elbridge, making through
Ohio, but two months after he left here; he was riding
swiftly, and in her surprise and suddenness she
could neither call nor send after him.”

“You did not tell us of that,” said the old man.

“No, I waited some further discovery.”

“Be silent now, you may easily waken hopes to be
darkened and dashed to the ground. Which way
made the boy?”

“Southward.”

During this discourse, as though he distinguished
the sound of his young master's name and knew to
what it related, Chanticleer walked slowly, and as if
by accident or at leisure, up and down the garden-wall,
keeping as near to the speakers as was at all
seemly. When they stopped speaking he leaped
gently to the ground and softly clapped his wings.

A moment after there came hurrying into the
garden, in a wild excitement, and all struggling to
speak first, little Sam Peabody in the lead, Robert,
the flat-featured youth of thirteen, and Peabody
Junior, (who, it should be mentioned, having found his
way into a pantry a couple of minutes after his arrival
with the Captain, and appropriated to his own
personal use an entire bottle of cherry brandy, had
been straightway put to bed, from which he had now
been released not more than a couple of hours), and
to announce as clamorously as they respectively
could, that Brundage's Bull had just got into “our
big meadow.”

“Nobody hurt?” asked old Sylvester.

“Nobody hurt, grandfather, but he's ploughing
up the meadow at a dreadful rate,” said little Sam
Peabody.

“Like wild,” Peabody Junior added.

This statement, strongly as it was made, seemed
to have no particular effect on old Sylvester. Oliver
Peabody, on the other hand, was exceedingly indignant,
and was for proceeding to extremities immediately,
the expulsion of the Brundage bull, and the
demanding of damages for allowing his cattle to cross
the boundary line of the two farms.

Old Sylvester listened to his violence with a blank
countenance; nor did he seem to comprehend that
any special outrage had been committed, for it must
be acknowledged that the only indication that the
grandfather had come to his second childhood was,
that, with his advancing years, and as he approached
the shadow of the other world, he seemed to have
lost all idea of the customary distinctions of rank
and property, and that very much like an old apostle,
he was disposed to regard all men as brethren,
and boundary lines as of very little consequence.

He therefore promptly checked his son Oliver in

his heat, and discountenanced any further proceedings
in the matter.

“Brundage,” he said, “would, if he cared about
him, come and take his bull away when he was
ready; we are all brethren, and have a common
country, Oliver,” he added, “I hope you feel that
in the West, as well as we do here.”

“Thank God, we have,” Oliver rejoined with emphasis,
“and we love it!”

“I thank God for that too,” old Sylvester replied,
striking his staff firmly on the ground, “I remember
well, my son, when your great state was a wilderness
of woods and savage men, and now this common
sky—look at it, Oliver—which shines so clearly above
us, is yours as well as ours.”

“I fear me, father, one day, bright, beautiful, and
wide-arched as it is, the glorious Union may fall,”
said Oliver, laying his hand upon an aged tree which
stood near them, “may fall, and the states drop, one
by one away, even as the fruit I shake to the ground.”

As though he had been a tower standing on an
elevation, old Sylvester Peabody rose aloft to his full
height, as if he would clearly contemplate the far past,
the distant, and the broad-coming future.

“The Union fall!” he cried. “Look above, my
son! The Union fall! as long as the constellations
of evening live together in yonder sky; look down,
as long as the great rivers of our land flow eastward
and westward, north and south, the Union shall stand
up, and stand majestical and bright, beheld by ages,
as these shall be, an orb and living stream of glory
unsurpassable.”

The children were gathered about, and watched with
eager eyes and glowing cheeks, the countenance of
the grandfather as he spoke.

“No, no, my son,” he added, “there's many a true
heart in brave Ohio, as in every state of ours, or they
could not be the noble powers they are.”

While old Sylvester spoke, Oliver Peabody wrenched
with some violence, from the tree near which they
stood, a stout limb, on the end of which he employed
himself with a knife in shaping a substantial knob.

“What weapon is that you are busy with, Oliver?”
old Sylvester asked.

“It's for that nasty bull,” Oliver replied. “I would
break every bone in his body rather than let him remain
for a single minute on my land; the furtherance
of law and order demands the instant enforcement
of one's rights.”

“You are a friend of law and order, my son.”

“I think I am,” Oliver answered, standing erect
and planting his club, in the manner of Hercules in
the pictures, head down on the ground.

“I hope you are, Oliver; but I fear you forget the
story I used to tell of my old friend Bulkley, of Danbury,
who, being written to by some neighboring
Christians who were in sore dissension, for advisement,
gave them back word:—Every man to look
after his own fence, that it be built high and strong,
and to have a special care of the old Black Bull;
meaning thereby no doubt, our own wicked passions;
—that is the true Christian way of securing peace
and good order.”

Oliver threw his great trespass-club upon the
ground, and was on the point of asking after an old
sycamore, the largest growth of all that country,
which, standing in a remote field had, in the perilous
times sheltered many of the Peabody family in
its bosom—when he was interrupted by the sudden
appearance of Mopsey in a flutter of cap-strings, shuffling
shoes, and a flying color in her looks of at least
double the usual depth of darkness. It was just discovered
that the poultry-house had been broken into

over night, and four of the fattest hens taken off by
the throat and legs, besides sundry of the inferior
members of the domicile; as wicked a theft, Mopsey
said, as ever was, and she hadn't the slightest hesitation
in charging it on them niggers in the Hills, (a
neighboring settlement of colored people, who lived
from hand to mouth, and seemed to be fed, like the
ravens by some mystery of providence.)

Oliver Peabody watched closely the countenance
of the patriarch, not a little curious to learn what
effect this announcement would have upon his temper.

“This is all our own fault,” said old Sylvester,
promptly. “We should have remembered this was
thanksgiving time, and sent them something to stay
their stomachs. Poor creatures, I always wondered
how they got along! Send 'em some bread, Mopsey,
for they never can do anything with fowls without
bread!”

“Send 'em some bread!” Mopsey rejoined, growing
blacker and more ugly of look as she spoke:
“Send 'em whips, and an osifer of the law!—the four
fattest of the coop.”

“Never mind,” said old Sylvester.

“Six of the ten'drest young'uns!”

“Never mind that,” said old Sylvester.

“I'd have them all in the county jail before sundown,”
urged Mopsey.

“Oliver, we will go in to tea,” continued the patriarch.
“We have enough for tea, Mopsey?”

“Yes, quite enough, Mas'r.”

“Then,” cried the old man, striking his staff on the
ground with great violence, rising to his full height,
and glowing like a furnace, upon Mopsey, “then, I
say, send 'em some bread!”

This speech, delivered in a voice of authority, sent
Mopsey, shuffling and cowering, away, without a
word, and brought the sweat of horror to the brow of
Oliver, which he proceeded to remove with a great
cotton pocket-handkerchief, produced from his coat
behind, on which was displayed in glowing colors, by
some cunning artist, the imposing scene of the signers
of the Declaration of Independence getting ready
to affix their names. Mr. Oliver Peabody was the
politician of the family, and always had the immortal
Declaration of Independence at his tongue's end,
or in hand.