6. CHAPTER VI.
THE BACKWOODS PHILOSOPHER.
ONE reason for Andrew's love of August Wehle
was that he was a German. Far from sharing
in the prejudices of his neighbors against foreigners,
Andrew had so thorough a contempt for his
neighbors, that he liked anybody who did not
belong to his own people. If a Turk had emigrated to Clark
township, Andrew would have fallen in love with him, and
built a divan for his special accommodation. But he loved
August also for the sake of his gentle temper and his genuine
love for books. And only August or August's mother, upon
whom Andrew sometimes called, could exorcise his demon of
misanthropy, which he had nursed so long that it was now hard
to dismiss it.
Andrew Anderson belonged to a class noticed, I doubt not,
by every acute observer of provincial life in this country. In
backwoods and out-of-the-way communities literary culture produces
marked eccentricities in the life. Your bookish man at
the West has never learned to mark the distinction between
the world of ideas and the world of practical life. Instead of
writing poems or romances, he falls to living them, or at
least trying to. Add a disappointment in love, and you will
surely throw him into the class of which Anderson was the
representative. For the education one gets from books is sadly
one-sided, unless it be balanced by a knowledge of the world.
Andrew Anderson had always been regarded as an oddity.
A man with a good share of ideality and literary taste, placed
against the dull background of the society of a Western neighborhood
in the former half of the century, would necessarily
appear odd. Had he drifted into communities of more culture,
his eccentricity, begotten of a sense of superiority to his
surroundings, would have worn away. Had he been happily
married, his oddities would have been softened; but neither of
these things happened. He told August a very different history.
For the confidence of his “Teutonic friend” had awakened
in the solitary man a desire to uncover that story which
he had kept under lock and key for so many years.
“Ah! my friend,” said he with excitement, “don't trust the
faith of a woman.” And then rising from his seat he said,
“The Backwoods Philosopher warns you. I pray you give good
heed. I do not know Julia. She is my niece. It ill becomes
me to doubt her sincerity. But I know whose daughter she is.
I pray you give good heed, my Teutonic friend. I know whose
daughter she is!
“I do not talk much. But you have arrived at a critical
point—a point of turning. Out of his own life, out of his own
sorrow, the Backwoods Philosopher warns you. I am at peace
now. But look at me. Do you not see the marks of the
ravages of a great storm? A sort of a qualified happiness I
[ILLUSTRATION]
"LOOK AT ME."
[Description: 555EAF. Illustration page. Page 049. Engraving of two men in front of a
stone fireplace; one is heavily bearded, and stands in front of another, who is seated.]
have in philosophy. But what I might have been if the storm
had not torn me to pieces in my youth—what I might have
been, that I am not. I pray you never trust in a woman's keeping
the happiness of your life!”
Here Andrew slipped his arm through Wehle's, and began
to promenade with him in the large apartment up and down an
alley, dimly lighted by a candle, between solid phalanxes of
books.
“I pray you give good heed,” he said, resuming. “I was
always eccentric. People thought I was either a genius or fool.
Perhaps I was much of both. But this is a digression. I did
not pay any attention to women. I shunned them. I said that
to be a great author and a philosophical thinker, one must not
be a man of society. I never went to a wood-chopping, to an
apple-peeling, to a corn-shucking, to a barn-raising, nor indeed to
any of our rustic feasts. I suppose this piqued the vanity of the
girls, and they set themselves to catch me. I suppose they
thought that I would be a trophy worth boasting. I have
noticed that hunters estimate game according to the difficulty of
getting it. But this is a digression. Let us return.
“There came among us, at that time, Abigail Norman. She
was pretty. I swear by all the sacred cats of Egypt, that she
was beautiful. She was industrious. The best housekeeper in
the state! She was high-strung. I liked her all the more for
that. You see a man of imagination is apt to fall in love with
a tragedy queen. But this is a digression. Let us return.
“She spread her toils in my path. While I was wandering
through the woods writing poetry to birds and squirrels, Abby
Norman was ambitious enough to hope to make me her slave,
and she did. She read books that she thought I liked. She
plauned in various ways to seem to like what I liked, and yet
she had sense enough to differ a little from me, and so make
herself the more interesting. I think a man of real intellect
never likes to have a man or woman agree with him entirely.
But let us return.
“I loved Abigail desperately. No, I did not love Abigail
Norman at all. I did not love her as she was, but I loved her
as she seemed to my imagination to be. I think most lovers
love an ideal that hovers in the air a little above the real recipient
of their love. And I think we men of genius and imagination
are apt to love something very different from the real
person, which is unfortunate.
“But I am digressing again. To return: I wrote poetry to
Abby. I courted her. I cut off my long hair for a woman, like
Samson. I tried to dress more decently, and made myself
ridiculous no doubt, for a man can not dress well unless he
has a talent for it. And I never had a genius for beau-knots.
“But pardon the digression. Let us return. I was to have
married her. The day was set. Then I found accidentally that
she was engaged to my brother Samuel, a young man with better
manners than mind. She made him believe that she was only
making a butt of me. But I think she really loved me more
than she knew. When I had discovered her treachery, I shipped
on the first flat-boat. I came near committing suicide, and should
have jumped into the river one night, only that I thought it
might flatter her vanity. I came back here and ignored her.
She broke with Samuel and tried to regain my affections. I
scorned her. I trod on her heart! I stamped her pride into
the dust! I was cruel. I was contemptuous. I was well-nigh
insane. Then she went back to Samuel, and made him marry
her. Then she forced my imbecile old father, on his death-bed,
to will all the property to Samuel, except this piece of rough
hill-land and one thousand dollars. But here I built this
castle. My thousand dollars I put in books. I learned how
to weave the coverlets of which our country people are so fond,
and by this means, and by selling wood to the steamboats, I have
made a living and bought my library without having to work
half of my time. I was determined never to leave. I swore
by all the arms of Vishnu she should never say that she had
driven me away. I don't know anything about Julia. But I
know whose daughter she is. My young friend, beware! I
pray you take good heed! The Backwoods Philosopher warns
you!”
