University of Virginia Library

14. CHAPTER XIV.
THE INHABITANT.

WHEN Albert awoke next morning from a
sound sleep on the buffalo-robe in the loft
of the cabin of the Inhabitant, the strange being
who had slept at his side had gone. He found
him leaning against the foot of the ladder outside.
“Waitin', you know,” he said when he saw Albert, “tell she
gits up. I was tryin' to think what I could do to make this
house fit fer her to stay in; fer, you see, stranger, they's no
movin' on tell to-morry, fer though the rain's stopped, I 'low
you can't git that buggy over afore to-morry mornin'. But
blam'd ef 'ta'n't too bad fer sech as her to stay in sech a
cabin! I never wanted no better place tell las' night, but ever
sence that creetur crossed the door-sill I've wished it was a
palace of di'monds. She hadn't orter live in nothin' poarer.”

“Where did you come from?” asked Charlton.

“From the Wawbosh. You see I couldn't stay. They
treated me bad. I had a idee. I wanted to write somethin'
or nother in country talk. I used to try to write potry in good
big dictionary words, but I hadn't but 'mazin little schoolin',
and lived along of a set of folks that talked jes' like I do.
But a Scotchman what I worked along of one winter, he read.

me some potry, writ out by a Mr. Burns, in the sort of bad
grammar that a Scotchman talks, you know. And I says, Ef
a Scotchman could write poetry in his sort of bad grammar,
why couldn't a Hoosier jest as well write poetry in the sort of
lingo we talk down on the Wawbosh? I don't see why. Do
you, now?”

Albert was captivated to find a “child of nature” with such
an idea, and he gave it his entire approval.

“Wal, you see, when I got to makin' varses I found the
folks down in Posey Kyounty didn' take to varses wrote out in
their own talk. They liked the real dictionary po'try, like `The
boy stood on the burnin' deck' and `A life on the ocean wave,'
but they made fun of me, and when the boys got a hold of
my poortiest varses, and said 'em over and over as they was
comin' from school, and larfed at me, and the gals kinder
fooled me, gittin' me to do some varses fer ther birthdays, and
then makin' fun of 'em, I couldn' bar it no ways, and so I jist
cleaned out and left to git shed of their talk. But I stuck to
my idee all the same. I made varses in the country talk all
the same, and sent 'em to editors, but they couldn' see nothin'
in 'em. Writ back that I'd better larn to spell. When I could
a-spelt down any one of 'em the best day they ever seed!”

“I'd like to see some of your verses,” said Albert.

“I thought maybe you mout,” and with that he took out a
soiled blue paper on which was written in blue ink some verses.

“Now, you see, I could spell right ef I wanted to, but I
noticed that Mr. Burns had writ his Scotch like it was spoke,
and so I thought I'd write my country talk by the same rule.”

And the picturesque Inhabitant, standing there in the morning
light in his trapper's wolf-skin cap, from the apex of which

[ILLUSTRATION]

THE INHABITANT.

[Description: 557EAF. Illustration page. Page 117. Engraving of a standing man in profile wearing a coonskin cap and holding a handwritten piece of paper.]

the tail of the wolf hung down his back, read aloud the verses
which he had written in the Hoosier dialect, or, as he called it,
the country talk of the Wawbosh. In transcribing them, I have
inserted one or two apostrophes, for the poet always complained
that though he could spell like sixty, he never could mind
his stops.

Albert could not resist a temptation to smile at this last line.

“I know, stranger. You think a owl can't sing to God.
But I'd like to know why! Ef a mockin'-bird kin sing God's
praises a-singin' trible, and so on through all the paris—you
see I larnt the squar notes oncet at a singin'—why, I don't see
to save me why the bass of the owl a'n't jest as good praisin'
ef 'ta'n't quite sech fine singin'. Do you, now? An' I kinder

had a feller-feelin' fer the owl. I says to him, `Well, ole feller,
you and me is jist alike in one thing. Our notes a'n't appreciated
by the public.' But maybe God thinks about as
much of the real ginowine hootin' of a owl as he does of the
highfalugeon whistlin' of a mockin'-bird all stole from somebody
else. An' ef my varses is kinder humbly to hear, anyway
they a'n't made like other folkses; they're all of 'em outen
my head—sech as it is.”

“You certainly have struck an original vein,” said Albert,
who had a passion for nature in the rough. “I wish you
would read some of your verses to my sister.”

“Couldn' do it,” said the poet; “at least, I don't believe I
could. My voice wouldn' hold up. Laid awake all las' night
tryin' to make some varses about her. But sakes, stranger, I
couldn' git two lines strung together. You mout as well try
to put sunshine inter a gallon-jug, you know, as to write about
that lovely creetur. An' I can't make poetry in nothin' 'ceppin'
in our country talk; but laws! it seems sech a rough thing to
use to say anything about a heavenly angel in. Seemed like as
ef I was makin' a nosegay fer her, and hadn't no poseys but
jimson-weeds, hollyhocks, and big yaller sunflowers. I wished
I could 'a' made real dictionary poetry like Casabianca and Hail
Columby. But I didn' know enough about the words. I never
got nary wink of sleep a-thinkin' about her, and a-wishin' my
house was finer and my clo'es purtier and my hair shorter, and
I was a eddicated gentleman. Never wished that air afore.”

Katy woke up a little dull and quite hungry, but not sick,
and she good-naturedly set herself to work to show her gratitude
to the Inhabitant by helping him to get breakfast, at which he declared
that he was never so flustrated in all his born days. Never.

They waited all that day for the waters to subside, and Katy
taught the Poet several new culinary arts, while he showed her
his traps and hunting gear, and initiated the two strangers into
all the mysteries of mink and muskrat catching, telling them
more about the habits of fur-bearing animals than they could
have learned from books. And Charlton recited many pieces
of “real dictionary poetry” to the poor fellow, who was at last
prevailed on to read some of his dialect pieces in the presence
of Katy. He read her one on “What the Sunflower said to the
Hollyhock,” and a love-poem, called “Polly in the Spring-house.”
The first strophe of this inartistic idyl will doubtless be all the
reader will care to see.

“You see,” he said, blushing and stammering, “you see, miss,
I had a sort of a prejudice agin town gals in them air days, I
thought they was all stuck up and proud like; I didn' think
the—the—well—you know I don't mean no harm nur nothin'—
but I didn' expect the very purtiest on 'em all was ever agoin'
to come into my shanty and make herself at home like as ef I
was a eddicated gentleman. All I said agin town gals I take
back. I—I—you see—” but finding it impossible to get through,
the Poet remembered something to be attended to out of doors.

The ever active Charlton could not pass a day in idleness.

By ten o'clock he had selected a claim and staked it out. It
was just the place for his great school. When the country
should have settled up, he would found a farm-school here
and make a great institution out of it. The Inhabitant was
delighted with the prospect of having the brother of an angel
for a neighbor, and readily made a bargain to erect for Charlton
a cabin like his own for purposes of pre-emption. Albert's
lively imagination had already planned the building and grounds
of his institution.

During the whole of that sunshiny day that Charlton waited
for the waters of Pleasant Brook to subside, George Gray, the
Inhabitant of the lone cabin, exhausted his ingenuity in endeavoring
to make his hospitality as complete as possible.
When Albert saw him standing by the ladder in the morning,
he had already shot some prairie-chickens, which he carefully
broiled. And after they had supped on wild strawberries and
another night had passed, they breakfasted on some squirrels
killed in a neighboring grove, and made into a delicious stew
by the use of such vegetables as the garden of the Inhabitant
afforded. Charlton and the Poet got the horse and buggy
through the stream. When everything was ready for a start,
the Inhabitant insisted that he would go “a piece” with them
to show the way, and, mounted on his Indian pony, he kept
them company to their destination. Then the trapper bade
Albert an affectionate adieu, and gave a blushing, stammering,
adoring farewell to Katy, and turned his little sorrel pony back
toward his home, where he spent the next few days in trying
to make some worthy verses in commemoration of the coming
to the cabin of a trapper lonely, a purty angel bright as day,
and how the trapper only wep' and cried when she went away.

But his feelings were too deep for his rhymes, and his rhymes
were poorer than his average, because his feeling was deeper.
He must have burned up hundreds of couplets, triplets, and
sextuplets in the next fortnight. For, besides his chivalrous
and poetic gallantry toward womankind, he found himself hopelessly
in love with a girl whom he would no more have thought
of marrying than he would of wedding a real angel. Sometimes
he dreamed of going to school and getting an education,
“puttin' some school-master's hair-ile onter his talk,” as he
called it, but then the hopelessness of any attempt to change
himself deterred him. But thenceforth Katy became more to
him than Laura was to Petrarch. Habits of intemperance had
crept upon him in his isolation and pining for excitement, but
now he set out to seek an ideal purity, he abolished even his
pipe, he scrupulously pruned his conversation of profanity, so
that he wouldn' be onfit to love her any way, ef he didn' never
marry her.