University of Virginia Library

5. CHAPTER V.

WHEN the Boreas backed away from the land to continue
her voyage up the river, the Hawkinses were
richer by twenty-four hours of experience in the contemplation
of human suffering and in learning through honest hard
work how to relieve it. And they were richer in another
way also. In the early turmoil an hour after the explosion,
a little black-eyed girl of five years, frightened and crying
bitterly, was struggling through the throng in the Boreas'
saloon calling her mother and father, but no one answered.
—Something in the face of Mr. Hawkins attracted her and
she came and looked up at him; was satisfied, and took
refuge with him. He petted her, listened to her troubles,
and said he would find her friends for her. Then he put
her in a state-room with his children and told them to be kind
to her (the adults of his party were all busy with the wounded)
and straightway began his search.

It was fruitless. But all day he and his wife made inquiries,
and hoped against hope. All that they could learn was
that the child and her parents came on board at New Orleans,
where they had just arrived in a vessel from Cuba; that
they looked like people from the Atlantic States; that the
family name was Van Brunt and the child's name Laura.
This was all. The parents had not been seen since the
explosion. The child's manners were those of a little lady,
and her clothes were daintier and finer than any Mrs. Hawkins
had ever seen before.

As the hours dragged on the child lost heart, and cried so

piteously for her mother that it seemed to the Hawkinses
that the moanings and the wailings of the mutilated men and
women in the saloon did not so strain at their heart-strings
as the sufferings of this little desolate creature. They tried
hard to comfort her; and in trying, learned to love her; they
could not help it, seeing how she clung to them and put her
arms about their necks and found no solace but in their kind
eyes and comforting words. There was a question in both
their hearts—a question that rose up and asserted itself with
more and more pertinacity as the hours wore on—but both
hesitated to give it voice—both kept silence and waited.
But a time came at last when the matter would bear delay
no longer. The boat had landed, and the dead and the wounded
were being conveyed to the shore. The tired child was
asleep in the arms of Mrs. Hawkins. Mr. Hawkins came
into their presence and stood without speaking. His eyes met
his wife's; then both looked at the child—and as they looked
it stirred in its sleep and nestled closer; an expression of
contentment and peace settled upon its face that touched the
mother-heart; and when the eyes of husband and wife met
again, the question was asked and answered.

When the Boreas had journeyed some four hundred miles
from the time the Hawkinses joined her, a long rank of
steamboats was sighted, packed side by side at a wharf like
sardines in a box, and above and beyond them rose the domes
and steeples and general architectural confusion of a city—a
city with an imposing umbrella of black smoke spread over
it. This was St. Louis. The children of the Hawkins family
were playing about the hurricane deck, and the father and
mother were sitting in the lee of the pilot house essaying
to keep order and not greatly grieved that they were not
succeeding.

“They're worth all the trouble they are, Nancy.”

“Yes, and more, Si.”

“I believe you! You wouldn't sell one of them at a good
round figure?”

“Not for all the money in the bank, Si.”

“My own sentiments every time. It is true we are not

rich—but still you are not sorry—you haven't any misgivings
about the additions?”

“No. God will provide.”

“Amen. And so you wouldn't even part with Clay? Or
Laura!”

“Not for anything in the world. I love them just the
same as I love my own. They pet me and spoil me even
more than the others do, I think. I reckon we'll get along,
Si.”

“Oh yes, it will all come out right, old mother. I wouldn't
be afraid to adopt a thousand children if I wanted to, for
there's that Tennessee Land, you know—enough to make an
army of them rich. A whole army, Nancy! You and I
will never see the day, but these little chaps will. Indeed
they will. One of these days it will be `the rich Miss Emily
Hawkins—and the wealthy Miss Laura Van Brunt Hawkins
—and the Hon. George Washington Hawkins, millionaire—
and Gov. Henry Clay Hawkins, millionaire!' That is the
way the world will word it! Don't let's ever fret about the
children, Nancy—never in the world. They're all right.
Nancy, there's oceans and oceans of money in that land—
mark my words!”

The children had stopped playing, for the moment, and
drawn near to listen. Hawkins said:

“Washington, my boy, what will you do when you get to
be one of the richest men in the world?”

“I don't know, father. Sometimes I think I'll have a
balloon and go up in the air; and sometimes I think I'll
have ever so many books; and sometimes I think I'll have
ever so many weather-cocks and water-wheels; or have a
machine like that one you and Colonel Sellers bought; and
sometimes I think I'll have—well, somehow I don't know—
somehow I ain't certain; maybe I'll get a steamboat first.”

“The same old chap!—always just a little bit divided
about things.—And what will you do when you get to be
one of the richest men in the world, Clay?”

“I don't know, sir. My mother—my other mother that's

gone away—she always told me to work along and not be
much expecting to get rich, and then I wouldn't be disappointed
if I didn't get rich. And so I reckon it's better for
me to wait till I get rich, and then by that time maybe I'll
know what I'll want—but I don't now, sir.”

“Careful old head!—Governor Henry Clay Hawkins!—
that's what you'll be, Clay, one of these days. Wise old
head! weighty old head! Go on, now, and play—all of you.
It's a prime lot, Nancy, as the Obedstown folk say about
their hogs.”

A smaller steamboat received the Hawkinses and their fortunes,
and bore them a hundred and thirty miles still higher
up the Mississippi, and landed them at a little tumble-down
village on the Missouri shore in the twilight of a mellow
October day.

The next morning they harnessed up their team and for
two days they wended slowly into the interior through almost
roadless and uninhabited forest solitudes. And when for the
last time they pitched their tents, metaphorically speaking,
it was at the goal of their hopes, their new home.

By the muddy roadside stood a new log cabin, one story
high—the store; clustered in the neighborhood were ten or
twelve more cabins, some new, some old.

In the sad light of the departing day the place looked
homeless enough. Two or three coatless young men sat in
front of the store on a dry-goods box, and whittled it with
their knives, kicked it with their vast boots, and shot tobacco-juice
at various marks. Several ragged negroes leaned comfortably
against the posts of the awning and contemplated
the arrival of the wayfarers with lazy curiosity. All these
people presently managed to drag themselves to the vicinity
of the Hawkins' wagon, and there they took up permanent
positions, hands in pockets and resting on one leg; and thus
anchored they proceeded to look and enjoy. Vagrant dogs
came wagging around and making inquiries of Hawkins's
dog, which were not satisfactory and they made war on him
in concert. This would have interested the citizens but it

was too many on one to amount to anything as a fight, and
so they commanded the peace and the foreign dog furled his
tail and took sanctuary under the wagon. Slatternly negro
girls and women slouched along with pails deftly balanced
on their heads, and joined the group and stared. Little half
dressed white boys, and little negro boys with nothing whatever
on but tow-linen shirts with a fine southern exposure,
came from various directions and stood with their hands
locked together behind them and aided in the inspection.
The rest of the population were laying down their employments
and getting ready to come, when a man burst through
the assemblage and seized the new-comers by the hands in a
frenzy of welcome, and exclaimed—indeed almost shouted:

“Well who could have believed it! Now is it you sure
enough—turn around! hold up your heads! I want to look
at you good! Well, well, well, it does seem most too good
to be true, I declare! Lord, I'm so glad to see you! Does
a body's whole soul good to look at you! Shake hands
again! Keep on shaking hands! Goodness gracious alive.
What will my wife say?—Oh yes indeed, it's so!—married
only last week—lovely, perfectly lovely creature, the noblest
woman that ever—you'll like her, Nancy! Like her? Lord
bless me you'll love her—you'll dote on her—you'll be
twins! Well, well, well, let me look at you again! Same
old—why bless my life it was only just this very morning
that my wife says, `Colonel'—she will call me Colonel spite
of everything I can do—she says `Colonel, something tells
me somebody's coming!' and sure enough here you are, the
last people on earth a body could have expected. Why she'll
think she's a prophetess—and hanged if I don't think so
too—and you know there ain't any country but what a
prophet's an honor to, as the proverb says. Lord bless me—
and here's the children, too! Washington, Emily, don't you
know me? Come, give us a kiss. Won't I fix you, though!
—ponies, cows, dogs, everything you can think of that'll
delight a child's heart—and——. Why how's this? Little
strangers? Well you won't be any strangers here, I can tell

[ILLUSTRATION]

THE PROCESSION — FORWARD, MARCH!

[Description: 499EAF. Page 058. In-line image of a procession of people in formal clothes walking past a group of slave children.] you. Bless your souls we'll make you think you never was
at home before—'deed and 'deed we will, I can tell you!
Come, now, bundle right along with me. You can't glorify
any hearth stone but mine in this camp, you know—can't eat
anybody's bread but mine—can't do anything but just make
yourselves perfectly at home and comfortable, and spread
yourselves out and rest! You hear me! Here—Jim, Tom,
Pete, Jake, fly around! Take that team to my place—put
the wagon in my lot—put the horses under the shed, and get
out hay and oats and fill them up! Ain't any hay and oats?
Well get some—have it charged to me—come, spin around,
now! Now, Hawkins, the procession's ready; mark time,
by the left flank, forward—march!”

And the Colonel took the lead, with Laura astride his
neck, and the newly-inspired and very grateful immigrants
picked up their tired limbs with quite a spring in them and
dropped into his wake.

Presently they were ranged about an old-time fire-place
whose blazing logs sent out rather an unnecessary amount of
heat, but that was no matter—supper was needed, and to have
it, it had to be cooked. This apartment was the family bedroom,

[ILLUSTRATION]

COL. SELLERS' LITTLE WIFE.

[Description: 499EAF. Page 059. In-line image of a woman carrying a tea kettle and a steaming hot plate of food.] parlor, library and kitchen, all in one. The matronly
little wife of the Colonel moved hither and thither and in
and out with her pots and pans in her hands, happiness in
her heart and a world of admiration of her husband in her
eyes. And when at last she had spread the cloth and loaded
it with hot corn bread, fried chickens, bacon, buttermilk,
coffee, and all manner of country luxuries, Col. Sellers modified
his harangue and for a moment throttled it down to the
orthodox pitch for a blessing, and then instantly burst forth
again as from a parenthesis and clattered on with might and
main till every stomach in the party was laden with all it
could carry. And when the new-comers ascended the ladder
to their comfortable feather beds on the second floor—to wit,
the garret—Mrs. Hawkins was obliged to say:

“Hang the fellow, I do believe he has gone wilder than
ever, but still a body can't help liking him if they would—
and what is more, they don't ever want to try when they see
his eyes and hear him talk.”

Within a week or two the Hawkinses were comfortably
domiciled in a new log house, and were beginning to feel at
home. The children were put to school; at least it was

what passed for a school in those days: a place where tender
young humanity devoted itself for eight or ten hours a day
to learning incomprehensible rubbish by heart out of books
and reciting it by rote, like parrots; so that a finished education
consisted simply of a permanent headache and the ability
to read without stopping to spell the words or take breath.
Hawkins bought out the village store for a song and proceeded
to reap the profits, which amounted to but little more than
another song.

The wonderful speculation hinted at by Col. Sellers in his
letter turned out to be the raising of mules for the Southern
market; and really it promised very well. The young stock
cost but a trifle, the rearing but another trifle, and so Hawkins
was easily persuaded to embark his slender means in the
enterprise and turn over the keep and care of the animals to
Sellers and Uncle Dan'l.

All went well. Business prospered little by little. Hawkins
even built a new house, made it two full stories high and
put a lightning rod on it. People came two or three miles
to look at it. But they knew that the rod attracted the
lightning, and so they gave the place a wide berth in a storm,
for they were familiar with marksmanship and doubted if
the lightning could hit that small stick at a distance of a mile
and a half oftener than once in a hundred and fifty times.
Hawkins fitted out his house with “store” furniture from
St. Louis, and the fame of its magnificence went abroad in
the land. Even the parlor carpet was from St. Louis—though
the other rooms were clothed in the “rag” carpeting of the
country. Hawkins put up the first “paling” fence that had
ever adorned the village; and he did not stop there, but
whitewashed it. His oil-cloth window-curtains had noble
pictures on them of castles such as had never been seen anywhere
in the world but on window-curtains. Hawkins
enjoyed the admiration these prodigies compelled, but he
always smiled to think how poor and cheap they were, compared
to what the Hawkins mansion would display in a future
day after the Tennessee Land should have borne its minted
fruit. Even Washington observed, once, that when the

Tennessee Land was sold he would have a “store” carpet in
his and Clay's room like the one in the parlor. This pleased
Hawkins, but it troubled his wife. It did not seem wise, to
her, to put one's entire earthly trust in the Tennessee Land
and never think of doing any work.

Hawkins took a weekly Philadelphia newspaper and a
semi-weekly St. Louis journal—almost the only papers that
came to the village, though Godey's Lady's Book found a
good market there and was regarded as the perfection of
polite literature by some of the ablest critics in the place.
Perhaps it is only fair to explain that we are writing of a by
gone age—some twenty or thirty years ago. In the two
newspapers referred to lay the secret of Hawkins's growing
prosperity. They kept him informed of the condition of the
crops south and east, and thus he knew which articles were
likely to be in demand and which articles were likely to be
unsalable, weeks and even months in advance of the simple
folk about him. As the months went by he came to be regarded
as a wonderfully lucky man. It did not occur to the
citizens that brains were at the bottom of his luck.

His title of “Squire” came into vogue again, but only for
a season; for, as his wealth and popularity augmented, that
title, by imperceptible stages, grew up into “Judge;” indeed
it bade fair to swell into “General” bye and bye. All
strangers of consequence who visited the village gravitated
to the Hawkins Mansion and became guests of the “Judge.”

Hawkins had learned to like the people of his section very
much. They were uncouth and not cultivated, and not particularly
industrious; but they were honest and straightforward,
and their virtuous ways commanded respect. Their
patriotism was strong, their pride in the flag was of the old-fashioned
pattern, their love of country amounted to idolatry.
Whoever dragged the national honor in the dirt won their
deathless hatred. They still cursed Benedict Arnold as if he
were a personal friend who had broken faith but a week
gone by.