The Puddleford Papers: or, Humors of the West. Riley Henry Hiram

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      The court admitted Charity, and she swore the set-off through, and some fifty dollars more; and she was going on horse-race speed, when Sile stopped her "before," as he told her, "she swore the cause beyond the jurisdiction of a magistrate."

      Here the evidence closed. Midnight had set in, and the cause was yet to be summed up.

      The court informed Ike and Sile that they were limited to half an hour each.

      Ike opened the argument, and such an opening, and such an argument! It will not be expected that I can repeat it. There never lived a man who could. It covered all things mortal and immortal. Genius, and sense, and nonsense; wit, humor, pathos, venom, and vulgarity, were all piled up together, and belched forth upon the jury. He talked about the case, the court, the jury, his client, the history of the world, and Puddleford in particular. "The slander was admitted," he declared, "because the defendant had tried to set off something agin it; and if his client didn't get a judgment, he'd make a rattling among the dry bones of the law, that would rouse the dead of '76!" He was "fifty feet front, and rear to the river;" "had seen great changes en the t'restial globe;" "know'd all the sciences from Neb-u-cud-nezzar down;" "know'd law – 'twas the milk of his existence." As to the court's opinion about the set-off, "his head was chock full of cobwebs or bumble-bees, he didn't know which;" "his judgment warn't hardly safe on a common note er-hand;" "he'd no doubt but that three jist such cases would run him stark mad;" "Natur was sorry she'd ever had anything to do with him; and he'd himself been sorry ever since; and as for ed'cation, he warn't up to the school-marm, for she could read;" "the jury had better give him a verdict if they didn't want the nightmare." And thus he was running on, when his half hour expired, but he could not be stopped – as well stop a tornado. So Sile arose, and commenced his argument for the defendant; and at it both labored, Ike for plaintiff, Sile for defendant, until the court swore a constable, and ordered the jury to retire with him, the argument still going on; and thus the jury left the room, Ike and Sile following them up, laying down the law and the fact; and the last thing I observed just before the door closed, was Ike's arm run through it at us, going through a variety of gestures, his expiring effort in behalf of his client.

      After a long deliberation among the jurors, during which almost everything was discussed but the evidence, it was announced by our foreman, on "coming in," that "we could not agree, four on 'em being for fifty dollars for the defendant 'cording to law, and one on 'em for no cause of action (myself), and he stood out, 'cause he was a-feared, or wanted to be pop'lar with somebody."

      And thus ended the trial between Filkins and Beadle.

      CHAPTER III

      Wanderings in the Wilderness. – A Bee-Hunt. – Sunrise. – The Fox-Squirrel. – The Blue-Jay. – The Gopher. – The Partridges. – Wild Geese, Ducks, and Cranes. – Blackbirds and Meadow-Larks. – Venison's Account of the Bees' Domestic Economy. – How Venison found what he was in Search of. – Honey Secured. – After Reflections.

      Venison Styles and myself, as I have stated, had now become intimate. Together we scoured the woods and streams, in pursuit of fish and game. There was a kind of rustic poetry about the old man that fascinated my soul. His thoughts and feelings had been drawn from nature, and there was a strange freshness and life about everything he said and did. He was as firm and fiery as a flint; and the sparks struck out of him were as beautiful. Winds and storms, morn's early dawn, the hush of evening, the seasons and all their changes, had become a part of him – they had moulded and kept him. They played upon him like a breeze upon a harp. How could I help loving him?

      Before daybreak, one morning in October, Venison, myself, his honey-box, and axes, set out "a bee-hunting," as he called it. It was in the beautiful and inspiring season of Indian summer, a season that lingers long and lovely over the forests of the west. There had been a hard, black frost during the night, and the great red sun rose upon it, shrouded in smoke. We were soon deep in the heart of the wilderness, tramping over the fallen leaves, and pushing forward to where the "bees were thick a-workin'," according to Venison.

      As the sun rose higher and higher, the leaves began, all around, to thaw, and detach themselves from the trees, and silently settle to the ground. There stood the yellow walnut, the blood-red maple, side by side with the green pine and the spruce. Ten thousand rainbows were interlaced through the tops of the trees, and now and then a sharp peak shot up its pile of mosaic into the sky.

      Not a sound was heard around us till morning's dawn. The tranquillity was oppressive. The mighty wilderness was asleep. Everything felt as fixed and awful as eternity. The vast extent of the wooded waste, reaching thousands of miles beyond, on, and on, and on, filled with mountains, lakes, and streams, lying in solitary grandeur, as unchanged as on the day the Pyramids were finished, overwhelmed the imagination. And then the future arose upon the mind, when all this will be busy with life – when the present will be history, referred to, but not remembered – when the present population of the globe will have been swept from the face of it, and another generation in our place, playing with the toys that so long amused, and which we, at last, left behind us.

      But as day dawned, and morning began to throw in her arrows of gold about our feet, the wilderness began to wake up. A fox-squirrel shot out from his bed in a hollow tree, where he had been lodging during the night; and scampering up a tall maple, he sat himself down, threw his tail over his back, and broke forth with his chick-chick-chickaree, chickaree, chickaree! – making the woods ring with his song.

      "Look at him," exclaimed Venison; "he's as sassy as ever. If I had my rifle, I'd knock the spots off that check coat of his'n; I'd larn him to chickaree old Venison."

      This squirrel, very common in some of the north-western states, is one of the largest and most beautiful of its species. He is dressed in a suit of light-brown check, and may be seen, in warm, sunny days, cantering over the ground, or running through the tree-tops. He is a very careful and a very busy body. I have often watched him, as he sat bolt upright in a hickory, eating nuts, and throwing the shucks on the ground, with all the gravity of a judge. During the fall, he hoards up large quantities of stores. He hulls his beech-nuts, selects the fairest walnuts, picks up, here and there, a few chestnuts, and packs everything away in his castle with the utmost care; and, as Venison says, "the choppers in the winter have stolen bushels on 'em!"

      While our squirrel was singing his morning psalm, a crow, just out of his bed, went sailing along above us, with his "caw! caw!" and settled on a tree nearby. "Caw! caw!" he screamed again, looking down curiously at the squirrel, as much as to say, "Who cares for your music!" Then out hurried another squirrel, and another, breaking forth with joy, until the crow, fairly drowned out, spread his wings and soared away. Venison says, "Them crows can smell gunpowder, and that fellow know'd we hadn't any, when he lit so near us."

      A blue-jay then commenced a loud call from a distant part of the forest. He is one of the birds that lingers behind, and braves the blasts of winter. He was flitting about in a tree-top, and had just commenced his day's work. How gaudily Nature has dressed this bird! How he shines, during spring and summer! All the shades, and touches, and tinges of blue flow over his gaudy mantle; and how orderly and lavishly they are strown over him. But the blue-jay is a dissolute kind of a fellow, after all – "neither more nor less than a thief," Venison says. His shadowy dress fades with the leaf, and after strutting about during the warmer months, making a great display of his finery, he "runs down," at last, into a confirmed loafer. Groups of them may be seen in the winter, drudging around among the withered bushes, and scolding like so many shrews.

      Then out popped the little gopher, that finished piece of stripe and check, that miner, who digs deep in the ground. He, too, had left his mansion, and come to greet the morn. A troop of quail marched along, headed by their chief. Who does not love the quail? She is associated with early childhood and household memories. Her voice rings СКАЧАТЬ