University of Virginia Library

18. CHAPTER XVIII.

The task of getting the desired company was
by no means difficult, and our pedler was not long
in reporting progress. Tongs, a confirmed toper,
was easily persuaded to any thing that guaranteed
hard drinking. He luxuriated in the very idea of
a debauch. Brooks, his brother-in-law, was a
somewhat better and less pregnable person; but
he was a widower, had been a good deal with
Tongs, and, what with the accustomed loneliness
of the office which he held, and the gloomy dwelling
in which it required he should live, he found
it not such an easy matter to resist the temptation
of social enjoyment, and all the pleasant associations
of that good-fellowship, which Bunce had taken
care to depict before the minds of both parties.
The attractions of Bunce himself, by-the-way,
tended, not less than the whiskey and segars, to
persuade the jailer, and to neutralize most of the
existing prejudices current among those around
him against his tribe. He had travelled much,
and was no random observer. He had seen a
great deal, as well of human nature as of places—
could tell a good story, in good spirit, and was endowed
with a dry, sneaking humour, that came out
unawares upon his hearers, and made them laugh
frequently in spite of themselves.

Bunce had been now sufficiently long in the village
to enable those about him to come at a knowledge
of his parts; and his accomplishments in
the several respects referred to, were by this
time generally well understood. The inducement
was sufficiently strong for the jailer; and, at
length, having secured the main entrance of the
jail carefully, he strapped the keys securely to a
leathern girdle, which he wore about him, lodging
them in the breast pocket of his coat, in a position
the most safe in his thought and according to his
previous experience, and prepared to go along with
his worthy brother-in-law. Nor was the younger
Brooks forgotten. Being a tall, good-looking lad of
sixteen, Tongs insisted it was high time he should
go among men; and the invitation of the pedler
was chosen, as a happy occasion for his initiation
into some of those practices, by a liberal courtesy
esteemed significant of manliness.

With every thing in proper trim, Bunce stood at
the entrance ready to receive them. The preliminaries
were soon despatched, and we behold them
accordingly, all four, comfortably seated around a
huge oaken table in the centre of the apartment.
There was the jug, and there the glasses—the
sugar, the peppermint, the nutmegs—the pipes and
tobacco—all were convenient, and sufficiently
tempting for the unscrupulous. The pedler did
the honours with no little skill, and Tongs plunged
headforward into the debauch. The whiskey was
never better, and found, for this reason, any thing
but security where it stood. Glass after glass,
drank and replenished, attested the industrious hospitality
of the host, not less than its own excellence.
Tongs, averaging three draughts to one of his companions,
was soon fairly under way in his progress
to that state of mental self-glorification, in

which the world ceases to have vicissitudes, and
the animal realizes the abstractions of an ancient
philosophy, and denies all pain to life. Brooks,
however, though not averse to the overcoming element,
had more of that vulgar quality of prudence
than his brother, and far more than was thought
amiable in the consideration of the pedler. For some
time, therefore, he drank with measured scrupulousness,
and it was with no small degree of anxiety
that Bunce plied him with the bottle—complaining
of his unsociableness, and watching, with the intensity
of any other experimentalist, the progress
of his scheme upon him. As for the lad—the
younger Brooks—it was soon evident, that, once
permitted, and even encouraged as he had been,
by his superiors to drink, he would not, after a
little while, give much, if any inconvenience to
the conspirators. The design of the pedler was
considerably advanced by Tongs, who, once intoxicated
himself, was not slow in the endeavour
to bring all around him under the same influence.

“Drink, Brooks—drink, old fellow—” he exclaimed—“as
you are a true man, drink, and don't
fight shy of the critter. Whiskey, my boy—old
Monongahely like this, I say—whiskey is wife and
children—house and horse—lands and niggers—
liberty, and (hiccup) plenty to live on. Don't
you see how I drive a head, and don't care for the
hind wheels? It's all owing to whiskey. Grog, I
say—Hark ye, Mr. Pedler, grog, I say, is the wheels
of life—it carries a man for'ad. Why don't men
go for'ad in the world? What's the reason now?
—I'll tell you. They're afeared. Well, now, who's
afeared when he's got a broadside of whiskey in
him. Nobody—nobody's afeared but you,—you,
Ben Brooks, you're a d—d crick—crick,—you're
always afeared of something, or nothing—for, after

all, whenever you're afeared of something, it turns
out to be nothing. All 'cause you don't drink like a
man. That's his cha-cha-rack-ter, Mr. Bunce—
and it's all owing 'cause he won't drink.”

“Guess there's no sparing of reason in that bit of
argument, now, I tell you, Mr. Tongs. Bless my
heart—it's no use of talking, no how, but I'd a been
clean done up, dead as a door nail, if it hadn't
been for drink. Strong drink makes strong.—
Many's the time, and the freezing cold, and the
hard travelling in bad roads, and other dreadful
fixins I've seed, would soon ha' settled me up, if it
hadn't been for that same good stuff there, that
Master Brooks does look as if he was afeared on.
Now, don't be afeared, Master Brooks. There's
no teeth in whiskey, and it never bites nobody.”

“No,” said Brooks, with the utmost simplicity—
“only when they take too much.”

“How?” said the pedler, looking as if the sentence
contained some mysterious meaning. Brooks
might have explained, but for Tongs, who dashed
in after this fashion:—

“And who takes too much?—You don't mean to
say I takes too much, Ben Brooks—I'd like to hear
the two legged critter, now, to say I takes more of
the stuff than does me good—I drinks in reason
for the benefit of my health; and jest, you see, as
a sort of medicine, Mr. Pedler; and, Brooks, you
knows I never takes a drop more than is needful.”

“Sometimes—sometimes Tongs, you know you
aint all together right under it—now and then you
take a little too much for your good—” was the
mild response of Brooks to the almost fierce speech
of his less scrupulous brother-in-law. The latter,
thus encountered, changed his ground with singular
rapidity.

“Well, by dogs—and what of that!—and who

is it says I shan't, if it's my notion. I'd like now to
see the boy that'll stand up agin me and make such
a speech. Who says I shan't take what I likes—
and that I takes more than is good for me. Does
you say so, Mr. Bunce—”

“No,—thank ye, no. How should I say what
aint true. You don't take half enough, now, its
my idee, neither on you. It's all talk and no cider,
and that I call monstrous dry work. Come, pass
round the bottle. Here's to you, Master Tongs—
Master Brooks, I drink your very good health.
But fill up, fill up—you aint got nothing in your
tumbler.”

“No, he's a sneak—you're a sneak, Brooks, if
you don't fill up to the hub. Go the whole hog,
boy, and don't twist your mouth as if the stuff was
physic. It's what I call nation good, now; no mistake
in it, I tell you.”

“Hah! that's a true word—there's no mistake
in this stuff. It is jest now what I calls ginywine.”

“True Monongahely, Master Pedler. Who ever
reckoned to find a Yankee pedler with a raal good
taste for Monongahely. Give us your fist, Mr.
Bunce—I see you know's what's what. You
aint been among us for nothing. You've larned
something by travelling, and, by dogs, you'll come
to something yit, if you live long enough, if so be
you can only keep clear of the old range.”

The pedler winced under the equivocal compliments
poured forth in such profusion by his companion,
but did not suffer any thing of this description
to interfere with the vigorous prosecution of
his design. He had the satisfaction to perceive
that Brooks had gradually accommodated himself
not a little to the element in which his brother-in-law

Tongs was already floating happily; and the
boy, his son, already put on the features of one over
whose senses the strong liquor was momentarily
obtaining the mastery. But these signs did not
persuade him into any relaxation of his labours;
on the contrary, encouraged by success, he plied
the draughts more frequently and freely than before,
and with additional evidence of the influence of the
potations upon those who drank, when he found
that he was enabled, unperceived, to deposite the
contents of his own tumbler, in most instances,
under the table around which they had gathered.
In the cloud of smoke encircling them, and sent
up from their several pipes, Bunce could perceive
the face of his colleague in the conspiracy peering
in occasionally upon the assembly, and at length,
on some slight pretence, he approached the aperture
agreeable to the given signal, and received
from the hands of the landlord a phial containing a
strong infusion of opium, which he placed cautiously
in his bosom, and awaited the moment of more
increased stupefaction to employ it. So favourably
had the liquor operated by this time upon the
faculties of all, that the elder Brooks grew garrulous
and full of jest at the expense of his son--
who now, completely overcome, had sunk down
with his head upon the table in a profound slumber.
The pedler joined, as well as Tongs, in the
merriment—this latter personage, by the way,
having now put himself completely under the control
of the ardent spirit, and exhibiting all the appearance
of a happy madness. He howled like the
wolf—imitated sundry animals—broke out into
catches of song which he invariably failed to finish,
and at length, grappling his brother-in-law, Brooks,
around the neck, with both arms, as he sat beside
him, he swore by all that was strong in Monongahely,
he should give them a song.

“That's jest my idee, now, Master Tongs. A
song is a main fine thing, now, to fill up the chinks.
First a glass, then a puff, or mayhap two, and then
a song.”

Brooks, who, in backwood parlance, was “considerably
up a stump,”—that is to say, half drunk—
after a few shows of resistance, and the utterance of
some feeble scruples, which were all rapidly set
aside by his companions, proceeded to pour forth
the rude melody which follows:—

The brother-in-law and son, who seemed to be
familiar with the uncouth dithyrambic, repeated
with the singer the regularly recurring second line,
and this addition gave it surprising effect; the pedler
joining in at the conclusion, and repeating the
negative with prodigious compass of voice. The
song proceeded—

The song gave no little delight to all parties—
Tongs shouted, the pedler roared applause, and
such was the general satisfaction, that it was no
difficult thing to persuade Brooks to the demolition
of a bumper, which Bunce adroitly proposed
to the singer's own health. It was while the hilarity
thus produced was at its loudest, that the pedler
seized the chance to pour a moderate portion of
the narcotic into the several glasses of his companions,
while a second time filling them; but unfortunately
for himself, not less than the design in
view, just at this moment Brooks grew awkwardly
conscious of his own increasing weakness,—having
just reason enough left to feel that he had
already drank too much. With a considerable
show of resolution, therefore, he thrust away the
glass so drugged for his benefit, and declared his
determination to do no more of that business. He
withstood all the suggestions of the pedler on the
subject, and the affair began to look something less
than hopeless when he proceeded to the wakening
up of his son, who, overcome by the liquor, was
busily employed in a profound sleep, with his head
prone to the table. Tongs, who had lost nearly

all the powers of action, though retaining not a few
of his parts of speech, now came in fortunately to
the aid of the rather discomfited pedler. Pouring
forth a volley of oaths, in which his more temperate
brother-in-law was denounced as a mean-spirited
critter, who couldn't drink with his friend or
fight with his enemy, he made an ineffectual effort
to grapple furiously with the offender, while he
more effectually arrested his endeavour to waken
up his son. It is well, perhaps, that his animal man
lacked something of its accustomed efficiency, and
resolutely refused all co-operation with his mood;
or, it is more than probable, such was his wrath,
that his more staid brother-in-law would have been
subjected to some few personal tests of blow and
buffet. The proceedings throughout, suggested to
the mind of the pedler a mode of executing his
design, by proposing a bumper all round, with the
view to healing the breach between the parties,
and as a final draught preparatory to breaking-up.
A suggestion so reasonable could not well be resisted;
and with the best disposition in the world
towards sobriety, Brooks was persuaded to assent
to the measure. Unhappily, however, for the pedler,
the measure was so grateful to Tongs, that before
the former could officiate, the latter, with a
desperate effort, reached forward, and possessing
himself of his own glass, he thrust another, which
happened to be the only undrugged one, and which
Bunce had filled for himself, into the grasp of the
jailer. The glass designed for Brooks was now in
the pedler's own hands, and no time was permitted
him for reflection. With a doubt as to whether
he had not got hold of the posset meant for his
neighbour, Bunce was yet unable to avoid the difficulty,
and, in a moment, in good faith, the contents of
the several glasses were fairly emptied by their holders.
There was a pause of considerable duration;
the several parties, Tongs particularly, sunk back
quietly into their seats; and, supposing from appearances,
that the effect of the drug had been complete,
the pedler, though feeling excessively stupid and
strange, had yet recollection enough to give the signal
to his comrade. A moment only elapsed, when
Munro entered the apartment, seemingly unperceived
by all but the individual who had called him;
and, as an air of considerable vacancy and repose
overspread all the company, he naturally enough concluded
the potion had taken due hold of the senses
of the one whom it was his chief object to overcome.
Without hesitation, therefore, and certainly
asking no leave, he thrust one hand into
the bosom of the worthy jailer, while the other
was employed in taking a sure hold of his collar.
To his great surprise, however, he found that his
man had no lethargy, though severely bitten by the
drink. Brooks made fierce resistance, though nothing
at such a time, or indeed at any time, in the
hands of one so powerfully built as Munro.

“Hello! now—who are you, I say—hands off
—Tongs—Tongs—hands off,—Tongs, I say—”

But Tongs heard not, or heeded not, any of the
rapid exclamations of the jailer, who continued to
struggle. Munro gave a single glance to the pedler,
whose countenance singularly contrasted with
the expression which, in the performance of such
a duty, and at such a time, it might have been supposed
proper for it to have worn. There was a
look from his eyes of most vacant and elevated
beatitude—a simper sat upon his lips, whichparted
ineffectually with the speech that he endeavoured
to make. A still lingering consciousness of something
to be done, prompted him to rise, however,

and stumble towards the landlord, who, while
scuffling with the jailer, thus addressed him:—

“Why, Bunce, it's but half done—you've bungled.
See, he's too sober by half.”

“Sober—no, no—guess he's drunk—drunk as a
gentleman. I say now—what must I do?”

“Do,” muttered the landlord, between his teeth,
and pointing to Tongs, who reeled and raved
in his seat—“do as I do;” and at the word, with
a single blow of his fist, he felled the still refractory
jailer with as much ease as if he had been an infant
in his hands. The pedler, only half conscious,
turned nevertheless to the half-sleeping Tongs, and
resolutely drove his fist into his face. It was at
that moment that the nostrum, having taken its full
effect, deprived him of the proper force which
alone could have made the blow available for the
design which he had manfully enough undertaken.
The only result of the effort was to precipitate him,
with an impetus not his own, though deriving much
of its effect from his own weight, upon the person
of the enfeebled Tongs; the toper clasped him
round with a corresponding spirit, and they both
rolled upon the floor in utter imbecility, carrying
with them the table around which they had been
seated, and tumbling into the general mass of bottles,
pipes, and glasses, the slumbering youth, who,
till that moment, lay altogether ignorant of the
catastrophe. Munro, in the meanwhile, had possessed
himself of the desired keys; and throwing a
sack, with which he had taken care to provide himself,
over the head of the still struggling but yet
rather stupified jailer, he bound the mouth of it with
cords closely around his body, and left him rolling,
with more elasticity and far less comfort than the
rest of the party, around the floor of the apartment.
He now proceeded to look at the pedler,

and seeing his condition, though much wondering
at his falling so readily into his own temptation,—never
dreaming of the mistake which he
had made,—he did not waste time to get him up,
as he plainly saw he could get no further service
out of him. A moment's reflection taught him,
that, as the condition of Bunce himself would most
probably free him from any suspicion of design,
the affair told as well for his purpose as if the
original arrangement had succeeded. Without
more pause, therefore, he left the house, carefully
locking the doors on the outside so as to delay
egress, and hastened immediately to the release of
the prisoner.