40. CHAPTER XL.
SELLING OUT.
THE flight of the Hawk did not long dampen the
ardor of those who were looking for signs in the
heaven above and the earth beneath. I have known
a school-master to stand, switch in hand, and give a
stubborn boy a definite number of minutes to yield.
The boy who would not have submitted on account of any
amount of punishment, was subdued by the awful waiting. We
have all read the old school-book story of the prison-warden who
brought a mob of criminals to subjection by the same process.
Millerism produced some such effect as this. The assured belief
of the believers had a great effect on others; the dreadful drawing
on of the set time day by day produced an effect in some
regions absolutely awful. An eminent divine, at that time a pastor
in Boston, has told me that the leaven of Adventism permeated
all religious bodies, and that he himself could not avoid
the fearful sense of waiting for some catastrophe—the impression
that all this expectation of people must have some significance.
If this was the effect in Boston, imagine the effect
in a country neighborhood like Clark township. Andrew, skeptical
as he was visionary, was almost the only man that escaped
the infection. Jonas would have been as frankly irreverent if
the day of doom had come as he was at all times; but even
Jonas had come to the conclusion that “somethin' would happen,
or else somethin' else.” August, with a young man's
impressibility, was awe-stricken with thoughts of the nearing
end of the world, and Julia accepted it as settled.
It is a good thing that the invisible world is so thoroughly
shut out from this. The effect of too vivid a conception of it
is never wholesome. It was pernicious in the middle age, and
clairvoyance and spirit-rapping would be great evils to the world,
if it were not that the spirits, even of the ablest men, in losing
their bodies seem to lose their wits. It is well that it is so, for
if Washington Irving dictated to a medium accounts of the other
world in a style such as that of his “Little Britain,” for instance,
we should lose all interest in the affairs of this sphere, and nobody
would buy our novels.
This fever of excitement kept alive Samuel Anderson's determination
to sell his farms for a trifle as a testimony to unbelievers.
He found that fifty dollars would meet his expenses
until the eleventh of August, and so the price was set at that.
As soon as Andrew heard of this, he privately arranged with
Jonas to buy it; but Mrs. Anderson utterly refused. She said
she could see through it all. Jonas was one of Andrew's fingers.
Andrew had got to be a sort of a king in Clark township, and
Jonas was—was the king's fool. She did not mean that any of
her property should go into the hands of the clique that were trying
to rob her of her property and her daughter. Even for two
weeks they should not own her house!
Before this speech was ended, Bob Walker entered the door.
Bob was tall, stooped, good-natured, and desperately poor. With
ten children under twelve years of age, with an incorrigible fondness
for loafing and telling funny stories, Bob saw no chance to
improve his condition. A man may be either honest or lazy and
get rich; but a man who is both honest and indolent is doomed.
Bob lived in a cabin on the Anderson farm, and when not
hired by Samuel Anderson he did days' work here and there,
riding to and from his labor on a raw-boned mare, that was the
laughing-stock of the county. Bob pathetically called her Splinter-shin,
and he always rode bareback, for the very good reason
that he had neither saddle nor sheepskin.
“Mr. Anderson,” said Bob, standing in the door and trying to
straighten the chronic stoop out of his shoulders, “I want to
buy your place.”
If Bob had said that he wanted to be elected president
Samuel Anderson could not have been more surprised.
“You look astonished; but folks don't know everything. I
'low I know how to lay by a little. But I never could git enough
to buy a decent kind of a tater-patch. So I says to my ole
woman this mornin', `Jane,' says I, `let's git some ground. Let's
buy out Mr. Anderson, and see how it'll feel to be rich fer a few
days. If she all burns up, let her burn, I say. We've had a plaguey
hard time of it, let's see how it goes to own two farms fer
awhile.' And so we thought we'd ruther hev the farms fer two
weeks than a little money in a ole stocking. What d'ye say?”
Jonas here put in that he didn't see why they mightn't sell
to him as well as to Bob Walker. Cynthy Ann had worked fer
Mrs. Anderson fer years, and him and Cynthy was a-goin' to
be one man soon. Why not sell to them?
“Because selling to you is selling to Andrew,” said Mrs.
Abigail, in a conclusive way.
And so Bob got the farms, possession to be given after the
fourteenth of August, thus giving the day of doom three days
of grace. And Bob rode round the county boasting that he was
as rich a man as there was in Clark Township. And Jonas declared
that ef the eend did come in the month of August,
Abigail would find some onsettled bills agin her fer cheatin'
the brother outen the inheritance. And Clark Township agreed
with him.
August was secretly pleased that one obstacle to his marriage
was gone. If Andrew should prove right, and the world
should outlast the middle of August, there would be nothing
dishonorable in his marrying a girl that would have nothing to
sacrifice.
Andrew, for his part, gave vent to his feelings, as usual, by
two or three bitter remarks leveled at the whole human race,
though nowadays he was inclined to make exceptions in favor
of several people, of whom Julia stood first. She was a
woman of the old-fashioned kind, he said, fit to go alongside
Héloise or Chaucer's Grisilde.
