University of Virginia Library

3. CHAPTER III.

Mr. Israel Meadows was a man thirty-five or forty years of age, five
feet ten inches in height, with a lean figure, dark complexion, very
black and shaggy hair and eyebrows, and a grim and forbidding expression
of countenance. The occupation of training the youthful

mind and leading it to the fountains of wisdom, as delightful and
interesting as it is, was not in fact Mr. Meadows' choice, when, on
arriving at manhood's estate, he looked around him for a career in
which he might the most surely develop and advance his being in this
life. Indeed, those who had been the witnesses of his youth and young
manhood, and of the opportunities which he had been favored withal
for getting instruction for himself, were no little surprised when they
heard that in the county of —, their old acquaintance had undertaken,
and was in the actual prosecution of the profession of a schoolmaster.
About a couple of days' journey from the Goosepond, was the spot which
had the honor of giving him birth. In a cottage on one of the roads
leading to the city of Augusta, there had lived a couple who cultivated
a farm, and traded with the wagoners of those days by bartering, for
money and groceries, corn, fodder, potatoes, and suchlike commodities.
It was a matter never fully accountable, how it was that Mr. Timothy
Meadows, during all seasons, had corn to sell. Drought or drench
affected his crib alike — that is, neither did affect it at all. When a
wagoner wished to buy corn, Timothy Meadows generally, if not always,
had a little to spare. People used to intimate sometimes that it was
mighty curious that some folks could always have corn to sell, while
other folks couldn't. Such observations were made in reference to no
individual in particular; but were generally made by one farmer to
another, when, perchance, they had just ridden by Mr. Meadows' house
while a wagoner's team was feeding at his camp. To this respectable
couple there had been born only one offspring, a daughter. Miss Clary
Meadows had lived to the age of twenty-four, and had never, within the
knowledge of any of the neighbors, had the first beau. If to the fact
that her father's always having corn to sell, without his neighbors
knowing exactly how he came by it, had to a considerable extent discouraged
visiting between their families and his (though it must be
owned that this was not the fault of the Meadowses, who had repeatedly,
in spite of their superior fortune, shown dispositions to cultivate
good neighborhood with all the families around)—if to this fact be added
the further one, that Miss Clary was bony, and in no respect possessed
of charms likely to captivate a young gentleman who had thoughts upon
marriage, it ought not to be very surprising that she had, thus far,
failed to secure a husband. Nevertheless, Miss Meadows was eminently
affable when in the society of such gentlemen of the wagoners
who paid her the compliment to call upon her in the house. So that
no person, however suspicious, would have concluded from her manner
on such occasions that her prolonged state of single blessedness was
owing to any prejudice to the opposite sex.

Time, however, brings roses, as the German proverb has it, and to the
Meadows family he at last brought a rose-bud in the shape of a thriving
grandson. As it does not become us to pry into delicate family matters,
we will not presume to lift the veil which the persons most concerned
chose to throw over the earlier part of this grandson's history; suffice
it to say that the same mystery hung about it as about the inexplicable
inexhaustibility of Timothy Meadows' corn crib, and that the
latter — from motives, doubtless, which did him honor — bestowed
upon the new-comer his own family name, preceded by the patriarchal
appellation of Israel.

There were many interesting occurrences in the early life of Israel
which it would be foreign to the purposes of this history to relate. It
is enough to say that he grew up under the eye and training of his
grandfather, and soon showed that some of the traits of that gentleman's
character were in no danger of being lost to society by a failure of
reproduction.

In process of time, Mr. and Mrs. Meadows were gathered to their
fathers, and Miss Clary had become the proprietress of the cottage
and the farm. Israel had the luck of the Meadowses to be always able
to sell corn to the wagoners. But unluckily, the secret which lay hidden
in such profundity during the lifetime of his grandfather, of how
this wonderful faculty existed, transpired about six months previously
to the period when he was introduced to the reader — a circumstance
which would induce one to suspect, in spite of the declaration of the
law in such case made and provided, that there was something in the
blood of Israel which was not all Meadows.

One Saturday night, a company of the neighbors on patrol found a
negro man issuing from the gate of Miss Meadows' yard with an empty
meal bag. Having apprehended him, they had given him not more
than a dozen stripes with a cowhide before he confessed that he had
just carried the bag full of corn to Israel from his master's corn crib.
The company immediately aroused the latter gentleman, informed him
what the slave had confessed, and although he did most stoutly deny
any and all manner of connection with the matter, they informed him
that they should not leave the premises until they could get a search-warrant
from a neighboring magistrate, by which, as their spokesman, a

shrewd man, said, they could identify the corn. This was a ruse to bring
him to terms. Seeing his uneasiness, they pushed on, and in a careless
manner proposed that if he would leave the neighborhood by the next
Monday morning, they would forbear to prosecute him for this as well
as many similar offences, his guilt of which they intimated they had
abundant proof to establish. Israel was caught; he reflected for a
few moments, and then, still, however, asserting his innocence, but declaring
that he did not wish to reside in a community where he was
suspected of crime, he expressed his resolution to comply with their
demand. He left the next day. Leaving his mother, he set out to
try his fortune elsewhere, intending by the time that the homestead
could be disposed of, he would remove with her to the West. But determining
not to be idle in the meantime, after wandering about for
several days in search of employment, it suddenly occurred to him one
night, after a day's travel, that he would endeavor to get a school for
the remainder of the year.

Now, Israel's education had been somewhat neglected. Indeed, he
had never been to school a day in his whole life. But he had at home,
under the tuition of his mother, been taught reading and writing, and
his grandfather had imparted to him some knowledge of arithmetic.

But Mr. Israel Meadows, although not a man of great learning, was
a great way removed from being a fool. He had a considerable
amount of the wisdom of this world which comes to a man from
other sources besides books. He was like many other men in one
respect. He was not to be restrained from taking office by the consciousness
of parts inadequate to the discharge of its duties. This is
a species of delicacy which, of all others, is attended by fewest practical
results. Generally, the most it does is to make its owner confess
with modesty his unfitness for the office, with a `he had hoped some
worthier and better man had been chosen,' and then — take it. Israel
wisely reflected, that with a majority of mankind the only thing necessary
to establish for oneself a reputation of fitness for office is to run
for it and get into it. A wise reflection indeed; acting on which, many
men have become great in Georgia, and, I doubt not, elsewhere, with
no other capital than the adroitness or the accident which placed them
in office. He reflected further, and as wisely as before, that the office
of a schoolmaster in a country school was as little likely as any he
could think of to furnish an exception to the general rule. Thus, in
less than six weeks from the eventful Saturday night, with a list of

school articles which he had picked up in his travels, he had applied
for, and had obtained, and had opened the Goosepond school, and
was professing to teach the children spelling, reading, and writing, at
the rate of a dollar a month; and arithmetic and geography at the
advanced rate of a dollar and a half.

Such were some of Mr. Meadows' antecedents.