 | CHAPTER XIII. Westward ho! |  |
13. CHAPTER XIII.
A philosopher in rags.
The little village in which our travellers sojourned,
was one of those old establishments
which seem destined never to grow any larger.
It was inhabited by a mild, amiable race—the
descendants of the early French emigrants, of
whose character it is sufficient to say that they
were the only people that ever gained the
affections and confidence of the wild aboriginal
race of North America. It was a
primitive Catholic settlement; and whether it
is owing to the number of saints' days and
holydays in this ancient and venerable code,
or from any other cause, we have heard it
observed, that in the old countries the people
of this persuasion are, in general, not so active
and industrious as those of many others. Perhaps
the vast number of charitable institutions
connected with this church in almost
every country, and the custom of distributing
alms, or food, on particular days, to all comers,
by relieving the poor from the necessity of exertion,
may contribute not a little to the effect
which we have noticed. There was a little
church, the bell of which seemed never quiet,
and the only busy man in the village was the
bell-ringer. Other than this, there was little or
nothing to disturb the repose of the good people,
in contented simplicity, had not the transfer of
the vast region of Louisiana, the only empire
ever acquired without the expense of a drop of
blood, paved the way for the intrusion of those
“cochon Yankees,” as the old French landlord
called them in his sleeve, who straightway
began, as usual, to turn every thing upside
down. By their pestilent activity they rendered
it absolutely necessary that everybody should
be as stirring as themselves, in order to keep
pace with the progress of the new comers; for
though an indolent community may do very
well by itself, the moment it comes in contact
or in rivalry with one that is active and industrious,
it must go the way of all flesh, or accommodate
itself to the circumstances of the
times, and exert all its energies to prevent falling
far in the rear of the rest of the world.
“Ah! monsieur,” said the landlord, an old
remnant of the ancient régime: “Ah! monsieur,
the Yankee are one great people, but
then she always so busy, busy, busy, morning,
noon, and night. Diable! she don't give himselves
time to say their prayers, I think. She
come here among us, and she must ave new
road: very well, the road is make at last.
Eh bien! then she must ave a canal right long
side of him, and everybody must give money
for him. Very good, then we shall ave new
streets, a new court-house, a new market, and
a new church. So she come round for more
money for that. Then she goes on, busy, busy,
busy, never satisfied, more work, more money,
and all for the dem publique good. Diable! I
shall work for him if he was the king himself?
Well, monsieur, we ave got new road, new
canal, new court house, new market, and new
church; and now I say to myself, ha, hah! I
think she must ave satisfaccion at last. Phew!
no such thing; she must ave town meeting to
choose the police; then she must ave town
meeting to choose the legislator; then she
must ave town meeting to send the president and
his bureau all to le diable, for something I don't
know. Eh bien! all this done, I say ha hah!
I shall dance and sing now a leetle. Phew!
Morbleu, no such thing. Next time all this to
do over again. The government machine out
of order, she say, and must set it right again.
So we go, year after year, making the grande
improvement, and mending the government;
and we Frenchmen, bongre, malgre, must do
every thing de haute lutte, when we had much
rather do nothing at all. Peste! that I shall
be condemned to live in one dem country,
always in want of improvement, under a government
that always want mending. What
you call? Ah! the dem self-government more
trouble than she is worth, I think. For my
part, monsieur, I like somebody shall take it off
my hands, and let me dance a leetle some time.
Voilá! yonder comes one great politician, one
grand tariff man, as she call himself.”
Such was the harangue of mine host to Leonard
Dangerfield, as they sat on the little piazza
of the hotel in social chit-chat during the
absence of the rest of the family, who had
taken a walk to see the ancient church, which
most musically melancholy. The interruption
was occasioned by the approach of one of those
wandering vagabonds not unfrequently seen
haunting the precincts of village taverns. He
came up, and planting his stick on the ground,
crossed his arms in rest, and remained looking
at them in silence, as if waiting to be noticed.
At first Leonard took him for one of those pestilent
outlaws who, having wasted their substance
at the tavern, ever afterwards assume
the privilege of hanging about the doors, and
abusing the landlord for not trusting them, now
that their money is all spent. If wars answer
any good purpose, it is doubtless in ridding the
country of these worthless excrescences, who
seldom fail to get swept off by recruiting parties
in their progress through the villages. They
hardly ever return, being excellent food for
powder; and if spared by arms, generally fall
victims to their former vices in the end.
His dress displayed innumerable incongruities,
being composed, or rather decomposed, of
the remnants of many fragments of finery, preposterously
disposed about his person. His
coat had been once military, the rusty buttons
bearing the vestiges of our national symbols,
the soaring eagle and the thirteen stars; his
waistcoat was of embroidered satin, with old-fashioned
flaps, such as might have once appertained
to a player; his trousers of homespun
tow linen, and his shoes, but of these
little remained, for his wanderings had left his
feet almost bare. On his head he wore an old
cocked hat, ornamented by a wreath of evergreens
star of tin was fastened on the breast of his
coat. The landlord accounted for his military
costume by the circumstance of his having exchanged
his former clothes with a worthless
discharged soldier, who had cheated him. The
features of the peripatetic, though haggard,
squalid, dirty, and almost hidden by an enormous
bushy beard, still wore the remains of an aspect
of some interest; and his black eyes,
though sunk deep in his head, sparkled with a
restless animation, indicating an active or a
troubled mind.
The worthy host affected to take no notice
of the intruder, and continued to discuss the
various subjects of war, commerce, agriculture,
manufactures, matters which every man within
the limits of these United States understands,
at least as well as the mother that bore him.
They were, however, interrupted from time to
time by the man of rags, who, without raising
his chin from his crossed arms, or his arms
from his stick, now and then made a strange
random observation, as he seemed to catch and
comprehend a portion of the conversation between
Leonard and mine host. Thus, on hearing
the words domestic manufactures, he
chuckled forth an odd dry laugh, and pointing
to his trousers, exclaimed, in a hoarse hollow
voice, which indicated that he was labouring
under a severe cold,—
“Look! I am a great advocate for domestic
manufactures; a black spider spun and wove
these; they were stitched with the needle of a
compass that pointed nine ways from Sunday.
way?”
Just then a mosquito settled on his hand,
which he caught, and squeezing the blood out
of his body—
“Good! mosquitoes are your true insect soldiers;
they live by blood. Huzza! boys, I
shall conquer the whole nation one of these
odd-come-shorts, and make every gallinipper a
field-marshal.”
Then, approaching nearer, he asked the landlord,
“if he could tell him the reason why cats
washed their hands with their tongues, and ran
after their tails.” On his replying in the negative,
the ragged Theban exclaimed most contemptuously—
“Tut! then go and twist your gray beard
into a rope, and hang yourself on a sugar-cane,
as I mean to do as soon as mine grows long
enough. You see I am nursing it, daddy. I
sleep all night in the fields with my face up to
the moon; they say it turns fish rotten, and
men's brains upside down; but I don't believe a
word of it, or I should have been mad long ago,
instead of being a philosopher. But what was
I saying? O! I sleep with my face turned up
to the moon: they say it's made of green cheese,
but I doubt that, for it would have been about
my ears long ago in a shower of skippers.
You'd be surprised at the queer things I see up
in the stars there, sometimes, when every one
is asleep; some think they govern men, but for
my part I go by the moon when it shines, and
when it goes down I strike fire with two Irish
potatoes, and study philosophy till my eyes turn
me into the mire. He was a blind dancing-master
once.”
“Don't pester the gentleman with your nonsense,
but go about your business; go to sleep,
that is the best thing you can do.”
“Sleep! Landlord, did you ever see a goose
stand sentry on one leg, to keep itself awake?
that is your true reason: a philosopher must
have a reason for every thing. Do you know
why a goose always stands on her left, and a
gander on his right leg?”
“Diable! not I,” answered mine host, petulantly.
“Then how dare you talk to a philosopher,
most ignorant publican, and justly classed with
sinners? I saw your fate in Mercury last
night; you'll be hanged for feloniously robbing
a cask of your own whiskey, and filling it up
with water.”
“I believe you've got too much whiskey in
your head; you are in love with whiskey I'm
afraid,” said the other.
“Love! What do such pieces of old worm-eaten
parchment as you know of love? I was
in love once myself before I turned astronomer,
and was bubbled by the moon out of the
sixpenny worth of wits my father left me for
an inheritance.” He put his hand to his forehead,
as if to recall something.
“I have it. I remember it was the year behind
the flood, before the grass grew, or swallows
built their nests in young men's whiskers,
or cows fed in the churchyards, or sextons
laughed in their sleeves when other people
name, though it used to be music to me. But
it's no great matter now; for if we had married,
I should certainly have killed her with kindness,
and then I should have howled for it.
They said I should marry her when I lost my
wits; but I valued them too highly, and stuck
to them like death to an old negro. But, would
you think it? she fell in love with a wigblock
in a barber's window, and left me, because,
as I afterwards heard, the story went I lost my
wits in searching out a way to be married without
losing my soul for it. But here is the whole
story in black and white. I wrote it one night
in the churchyard. Read it, read it; it will
make you laugh ready to split your sides. You
can give it me again in the churchyard, where
I walk every clear night, and study the lying
epitaphs. It makes me laugh—ha, ha, ha! it
makes me laugh to think how easy it is to be a
good man on a tombstone!” Saying this, he
handed an old soiled paper to Leonard, who had
been musing in painful perplexity at his disjointed
chat, and went away as merry as madness
could make him.
As Leonard Dangerfield listened to the wanderings
of the poor itinerant, and scanned more
attentively his appearance and manner, he felt
a vague, dreamy sort of impression that somewhere,
and at some time or other, he had seen
him before. He fancied he could perceive
something about him indicating that he was
one who had seen better days. It is difficult to
define what it was, but, in the language of romance,
it was that mysterious something of
heart can strip a being whose mind has once
been embellished with the graces of intellectual
refinement. He held the paper in his hand
while he questioned the landlord, who informed
him that the poor creature had first made his
appearance in the village about a fortnight before,
pretty much in the state he was now. He
seemed perfectly harmless, and found little difficulty
in obtaining of the charitable a sufficiency
to supply the necessities of hunger. He
had either forgotten his name, or designedly
kept it a secret; for he would not disclose
either that or the place whence he came. He
never accepted of a bed for the night; but
when the weather was fair slept, as he said, at
the sign of the moon and seven stars; and when
it was foul, he would not tell where. As the
landlord finished these details, Dangerfield accidentally
turned his eye on the paper which
he had continued to hold in his hand. He
started, and uttered an exclamation of painful
surprise; for it was an old letter in his own
handwriting, directed to Dudley Rainsford, and
which he had written him on receiving the information
of his having saved the life of Virginia.
“Good God!” exclaimed he; “can it be possible
that I should not have known him!”
“Known whom?” asked the landlord, inquisitively.
The question brought him to his recollection,
and mine host being called away, he was left a
few moments alone to consider of the course to
be pursued in this delicate emergency. The
a secret from Virginia, while he sought an interview
with the wandering beggar, whom he
contemplated placing in some asylum where he
would be kindly treated, and where his sister
might never have an opportunity of having her
feelings harrowed up by witnessing his miserable
plight. He had scarcely settled this in
his mind when the party returned. Virginia
seemed in better spirits than she had been for a
long time; she described the incidents of their
walk, the church, the altar, the pious pictures
painted by artists more remarkable for their orthodoxy
than their skill, and the various little
peculiarities that so strikingly mark the difference
between the forms of the Catholic and
those of the religion in which she had been
brought up, with a degree of spirit and vivacity
which caused her parents to exchange glances
of encouraging sympathy. But the anxiety of
Leonard prevented his partaking in these newly-awakened
hopes; for he felt a presentiment
that there was in store for the poor girl a trial
more severe than any she had yet endured.
Virginia noticed this, and rallied him, but ineffectually.
He took the earliest opportunity to
walk out in search of the wandering mendicant.
But he was nowhere to be found, and he returned
with a determination to urge their departure
early in the morning. His plan was to
forget his pocket-book, or something of value,
that might furnish a pretext for his returning
immediately and resuming his search for Rainsford,
which he resolved to prosecute until all
hope of discovery was lost.
| CHAPTER XIII. Westward ho! | |