University of Virginia Library

20. CHAPTER XX.
THE STEAM - DOCTOR.

To return to the house of Samuel Anderson.

Scarcely had August passed out the door when
Mrs. Anderson fell into a fit of hysteries, and declared
that she was dying of heart-disease. Her time
had come at last! She was murdered! Murdered
by her own daughter's ingratitude and disobedience! Struck
down in her own house! And what grieved her most was that
she should never live to see the end of the world!

And indeed she seemed to be dying. Nothing is more frightful
than a good solid fit of hysteries. Cynthy Ann, inwardly
condemning herself as she always did, lifted the convulsed patient,
who seemed to be anywhere in her last ten breaths, and
carried her, with Mr. Anderson's aid, down to her room, and
while Jonas saddled the horse, Mr. Anderson put on his hat and
prepared to go for the doctor.

“Samuel! O Sam-u-el! Oh-h-h-h-h!” cried Mrs. Anderson,
with rising and falling inflections that even patient Dr. Rush
could never have analyzed, laughing insanely and weeping piteously
in the same breath, in the same word; running it up and

[ILLUSTRATION]

"CORN-SWEATS AND CALAMUS."

[Description: 555EAF. Page 134. In-line engraving, three-quarter figure of man in hat holding a cane.] down the gamut in an uncontrolled and uncontrollable way; now
whooping like a savage, and now sobbing like the last breath
of a broken-hearted. “Samuel! Sam-u-el! O Samuel! Ha!
ha! ha! h-a-a! Oh-h-h-h-h-h-h! You won't leave me to die
alone! After the wife I've been to you, you won't leave me to
die alone! No-o-o-o-o! Hoo-hoo-oo-OO! You musn't. You
shan't. Send Jonas, and you stay by me! Think—” here
her breath died away, and for a moment she seemed really to
be dying. “Think,” she gasped, and then sank away again.
After a minute she opened her eyes, and, with characteristic
pertinacity, took up the sentence just where she had left off.
She had carefully kept her place throughout the period of unconsciousness.
But now she spoke, not with a gasp, but in that
shrill, unnatural falsetto so characteristic of hysteria; that voice
—half yell—that makes every nerve of the listener jangle with
the discord. “Think, oh-h-h Samuel! why won't you think
what a wife I've been to you? Here I've drudged and scrubbed
and scrubbed and drudged all these years like a faithful and
industrious wife, never neglecting my duty. And now—oh-h-h-h
—now to be left alone in my—” Here she ceased to breathe
again for a while. “In my last hours to die, to die! to die without—without—Oh-h-h!”
What Mrs. Anderson was left to die
without she never stated. Mr. Anderson had beckoned to Jonas
when he came in, and that worthy had gone off in a leisurely
trot to get the “steam-doctor.”

Dr. Ketchup had been a blacksmith, but hard work disagreed
with his constitution. He felt that he was made for something
better than shoeing horses. This ambitious thought was first
suggested to him by the increasing portliness of his person,
which, while it made stooping over a horse's hoof inconvenient,
also impressed him with the fact that his aldermanic figure would
really adorn a learned profession. So he bought one of those
little hand-books which the founder of the Thomsonian system
sold dirt-cheap at twenty dollars apiece, and which told how
to cure or kill in every case. The owners of these important
treasures of invaluable information were under bonds not to
disclose the profound secrets therein contained, the fathomless

wisdom which taught them how to decide in any given case
whether ginseng or a corn-sweat was the required remedy.
And the invested twenty dollars had brought the shrewd
blacksmith a handsome return.

“Hello!” said Jonas in true Western style, as he reined up
in front of Dr. Ketchup's house in the outskirts of Brayville.
“Hello the house!” But Dr. Ketchup was already asleep.
“Takes a mighty long time to wake up a fat man,” soliloquized
Jonas. “He gits so used to hearin' hisself snore that he can't
tell the difference 'twixt snorin' and thunder. Hello! Hello the
house! I say, hello the blacksmith-shop! Dr. Ketchup, why
don't you git up? Hello! Corn-sweats and calamus! Hello!
Whoop! Hurrah for Jackson and Dr. Ketchup! Hello!
Thunderation! Stop thief! Fire! Fire! Fire! Murder! Murder!
Help! Help! Hurrah! Treed the coon at last!”

This last exclamation greeted the appearance of Dr. Ketchup's
head at the window.

“Are you drunk, Jonas Harrison? Go 'way with your
hollering, or I'll have you took up,” said Ketchup.

“You'll find that tougher work than making horseshoes any
day, my respectable friend and feller-citizen. I'll have you took
up fer sleeping so sound and snorin' so loud as to disturb all
creation and the rest of your neighbors. I've heard you ever
sence I left Anderson's, and thought 'twas a steamboat. Come,
my friend, git on your clothes and accouterments, fer Mrs. Anderson
is a-dyin' or a-lettin' on to be a-dyin' fer a drink of ginseng-tea
or a corn-sweat or some other decoction of the healin'
art. Come, I fotch two hosses, so you shouldn't lose no time a
saddlin' your'n, though I don't doubt the ole woman'd git well
ef you never gin her the light of your cheerful count'nance.

[ILLUSTRATION]

"FIRE! MURDER!! HELP!!!"

[Description: 555EAF. Illustration page. Page 137. Engraving of a man seated on a horse holding another horse by the bridle, calling up to another man leaning out the window of a house.]

She'd git well fer spite, and hire a calomel-doctor jist to make
you mad. I'd jest as soon and a little sooner expect a female
wasp to die of heart-disease as her.”

The head of Dr. Ketchup had disappeared from the window
about the middle of this speech, and the remainder of it came by
sheer force of internal pressure, like the flowing of an artesian well.

Dr. Ketchup walked out, with ruffled dignity, carefully
dressed. His immaculate clothes and his solemn face were
the two halves of his stock in trade. Under the clothes lay
buried Ketchup the blacksmith; under the wiseacre face was
Ketchup the ignoramus. Ignoramus he was, but not a fool. As
he rode along back with Jonas, he plied the latter with questions.
If he could get the facts of the case out of Jonas, he
would pretend to have inferred them from the symptoms and
thus add to his credit.

“What caused this attack, Jonas?”

“I 'low she caused it herself. Generally does, my friend,”
said Jonas.

“Had anything occurred to excite her?”

“Well, yes, I 'low they had; consid'able, if not more.”

“What was it?”

“Well, you see she'd been to Hankins's preachin'. Now, I
'low, my medical friend, the day of jedgment a'n't a pleasin'
prospeck to anybody that's jilted one brother to marry another,
and then cheated the jilted one outen his sheer of his lamented
father's estate. Do you think it is, my learned friend?”

But Dr. Ketchup could not be sure whether Jonas was making
game of him or not. So he changed the subject.

“Nice hoss, this bay,” said the “doctor.”

“Well, yes,” said Jonas, “I don't 'low you ever put shoes on

no better hoss than this 'ere in all your days—as a blacksmith.
Did you now, my medical friend?”

“No, I think not,” said Ketchup testily, and was silent.

Mrs. Anderson had grown impatient at the doctor's delay.
“Samuel! Oo! oo! oo! Samuel! My dear, I'm dying. Jonas
don't care. He wouldn't hurry. I wonder you trusted him!
If you had been dying, I should have gone myself for the doctor.
Oo! oo! oo! oh! If I should die, nobody would be sorry.”

Abigail Anderson was not to blame for telling the truth so
exactly in this last sentence. It was an accident. She might
have recalled it but that Dr. Ketchup walked in at that moment.

He felt her pulse; looked at her tongue; said that it was
heart-disease, caused by excitement. He thought it must be
religious excitement. She should have a corn-sweat and some
wafer-ash tea. The corn-sweat would act as a tonic and strengthen
the pericardium. The wafer-ash would cause a tendency of
blood to the head, and thus relieve the pressure on the jugglervein.
Cynthy Ann listened admiringly to Dr. Ketchup's incomprehensible,
oracular utterances, and then speedily put a bushel
of ear-corn in the great wash-boiler, which was already full of
hot water in expectation of such a prescription, and set the
wafer-ash to draw.

Julia had, up to this time, stood outside her mother's door
trembling with fear, and not daring to enter. She longed to do
something, but did not know how it would be received. Now,
while the deep, sonorous voice of Ketchup occupied the attention
of all, she crept in and stood at the foot of Mrs. Anderson's bed.
The mother, recovering from her twentieth dying spell, saw her.

“Take her away! She has killed me! She wants me to
die! I know! Take her away!”

And Julia went to her own room and shut herself up in darkness
and in wretchedness, but in all that miserable night there
came to her not one regret that she had reached her hand to the
departing August.

The neighbor-women came in and pretended to do something
for the invalid, but really they sat by the kitchen-stove
and pumped Cynthy Ann and the doctor, and managed in some
way to connect Julia with her mother's illness, and shook their
heads. So that when Julia crept down-stairs at midnight, in hope
of being useful, she found herself looked at inquisitively, and felt
herself to be such an object of attention that she was glad to
take the advice of Cynthy Ann and find refuge in her own
room. On the stairs she met Jonas, who said as she passed:

“Don't fret yourself, little turtle-dove. Don't pay no 'tention
to ole Ketchup. Your ma won't die, not even with his corn-sweats
to waft her on to glory. You done your duty to-night
like one of Fox's martyrs, and like George Washi'ton with his
little cherry-tree and hatchet. And you'll git your reward, if
not in the next world, you'll have it in this.”

Julia lay down awhile, and then sat up, looking out into the
darkness. Perhaps God was angry with her for loving August;
perhaps she was making an idol of him. When Julia came to
think that her love for August was in antagonism to the love
of God, she did not hesitate which she would choose. All the best
of her nature was loyal to August, whom she “had seen,” as
the Apostle John has it. She could not reason it out, but a
God who seemed to be in opposition to the purest and best emotion
of her heart was a God she could not love. August and
the love of August were known quantities. God and the love of
God were unknown, and the God of whom Cynthy spoke (and

of whom many a mistaken preacher has spoken), that was jealous
of Mrs. Pearson's love for her baby, and that killed it because
it was his rival, was not a God that she could love without
being a traitor to all the good that God had put in her heart.
The God that was keeping August away from her because he
was jealous of the one beautiful thing in her life was a Moloch,
and she deliberately determined that she would not worship
or love him. The True God, who is a Father, and who is
not Supreme Selfishness, doing all for His own glory, as men
falsely declare; the True God—who does all things for the good
of others—loved her, I doubt not, for refusing to worship the
Conventional Deity thus presented to her mind. Even as He has
pitied many a mother that rebelled against the Governor of the
Universe, because she was told the Governor of the Universe, in
a petty seeking for his own glory, had taken away her “idols.”

But Julia looked up at the depths between the stars, and felt
how great God must be, and her rebellion against Him seemed
a war at fearful odds. And then the sense of God's omnipresence,
of His being there alone with her, so startled her and awakened
such a feeling of her fearful loneliness, orphanage, antagonism
to God, that she could bear it no longer, and at two o'clock
she went down again; but Mrs. Brown looked over at Mrs. Orcutt
in a way that said: “Told you so! Guilty conscience!
Can't sleep!” And so Julia thought God, even as she conceived
Him, better company than men, or rather than women,
for—well, I won't make the ungallant remark; each sex has its
besetting faults.

Julia took back with her a candle, thinking that this awful
God would not seem so close if she had a light. There lay on
her bureau a Testament, one of those old editions of the American

Bible Society, printed on indifferent paper, and bound in
a red muslin that was given to fading, the like whereof in book-making
has never been seen since. She felt angry with God,
who, she was sure, was persecuting her, as Cynthy Ann had
said, out of jealousy of her love for August, and she was determined
that she would not look into that red-cloth Testament,
which seemed to her full of condemnation. But there was a
fascination about it she could not resist. The discordant hysterical
laughter of her mother, which reached her ears from
below, harrowed her sorely, and her grief and despair at her
own situation were so great that she was at last fain to read
the only book in the room in order that she might occupy
her mind. There is a strange superstition among certain pietists
which leads them to pray for a text to guide them, and then take
any chance passage as a divine direction. I do not mean to
say that Julia had any supernatural leading in her reading.
The New Testament is so full of comfort that one could hardly
manage to miss it. She read the seventh chapter of Luke:
how the Lord healed the centurion's servant that was “dear
unto him,” and noted that He did not rebuke the man for loving
his slave; how the Lord took pity on that poor widow who
wept at the bier of her only son, and brought him back to life
again, and “restored him to his mother.” This did not seem to
be just the Christ that Cynthy Ann thought of as the foe of
every human affection. She read more that she did not understand
so well, and then at the end of the chapter she read about
the woman that was a sinner, that washed His feet with grateful
tears and wiped them with her hair. And she would have
taken the woman's guilt to have had the woman's opportunity
and her benediction.

At last, turning over the leaves without any definite purpose,
she lighted on a place in Matthew, where three verses at the
end of a chapter happened to stand at the head of a column. I
suppose she read them because the beginning of the page and
the end of the chapter made them seem a short detached piece.
And they melted into her mood so that she seemed to know
Christ and God for the first time. “Come unto me all ye that
labor and are heavy laden,” she read, and stopped. That means
me, she thought with a heart ready to burst. And that saying is
the gateway of life. When the promises and injunctions mean
me, I am saved. Julia read on, “And I will give you rest.”
And so she drank in the passage, clause by clause, until she
came to the end about an easy yoke and a light burden, and
then God seemed to her so different. She prayed for August,
for now the two loves, the love for August and the love for
Christ, seemed not in any way inconsistent. She lay down
saying over and over, with tears in her eyes, “rest for your
souls,” and “weary and heavy laden,” and “come unto me,” and
“meek and lowly of heart,” and then she settled on one word
and repeated it over and over, “rest, rest, rest.” The old feeling
was gone. She was no more a rebel nor an orphan. The
presence of God was not a terror but a benediction. She had
found rest for her soul, and He gave His beloved sleep. For
when she awoke from what seemed a short slumber, the red
light of a glorious dawn came in at the window, and her candle
was flickering its last in the bottom of the socket. The Testament
lay open as she had left it, and for days she kept it open
there, and did not dare read anything but these three verses, lest
she should lose the rest for her soul that she found here.