A Man's World. Edwards Albert

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СКАЧАТЬ people lived there, and the place boasted of six stores and a railroad station.

      That was its greatest charm to my schoolmates. From any of the fields, on the hill-side beyond the village, we could look down and watch the two daily trains as they made a wide sweep up into this forgotten country. There was one lad whom I remember with envy. His father was carter for our community and sometimes he took his son down with him. They slept in the great covered wagon in the square before the county court house, and came back the next day. The boy's name was Stonewall Jackson Clarke. He lorded it over the rest of us because he had seen a locomotive at close quarters. And he used to tell us that the court house was bigger than our two churches "with Blake's store on top."

      I think that as a boy I knew the names of one or two stations on each side of the county seat. But it never occurred to me that the trains down there could take you to the cities and countries I studied about in my geography. Beyond the valley were Missionary Ridge and Lookout Mountain. But none of the boys I played with realized that the world beyond the mountains was anything like the country we could see. It would have surprised us if the teacher had pointed out to us on the school map the spot where our village stood. The land over which Cinderella's Prince ruled was just as real to us as New York State or the countries of Europe, the names of whose capitals we learned by rote.

      My cousin Oliver I disliked. As a youngster I did not know why. But now I can see that he had a craven streak in him, a taint of sneakiness, an inability to be bravely sincere. It was through him that I got my lesson in justice.

      He was then about sixteen and I eight. His hobby at the time was carpentry and, as I was supposed to dull his tools if I touched them, I was forbidden to play in the part of the barn where he had his bench. He was going to make an overnight visit to some friends in a neighboring township and at breakfast—he was to start about noon—he asked the Father to reiterate the prohibition. A few hours later I found Oliver smoking a corn-silk cigarette behind the barn. He begged me not "to tell on him." Nothing had been further from my mind. As a bribe for my silence he said I might play with his tools. The spirit of his offer angered me—but I accepted it.

      After he had left the Father found me at his bench.

      "Ollie said I could," I explained.

      "At breakfast," the Father replied, "he distinctly said you could not."

      But I stuck to it. The Father had every reason to believe I was lying. It was not in Oliver's nature to be kind to me without reason. And I could not, in honor, explain the reason. The Father was not the kind to spoil his children by sparing the rod, and there was no crime in his code more heinous than falsehood. He tried to flog me into a confession.

      There was nothing very tragic to me in being whipped. All the boys I knew were punished so. I had never given the matter any thought. As I would not admit that I had lied, this was the worst beating I ever received. He stopped at last from lack of breath and sent me to bed.

      "Oliver will be back to-morrow," he said. "It is no use persisting in your lie. You will be found out. And if you have not confessed. … " The threat was left open.

      I remember tossing about in bed and wishing that I had lied and taken a whipping for disobedience. It would not have been so bad and would have been over at once. The next morning I sat sullenly in my room waiting for Oliver's return, wondering if he would tell the truth. I was not at all confident. Towards noon, the blackboard turned in at the gate, one of the negroes took the horse and I heard the Father call Oliver into his study.

      Then suddenly a door slammed and I heard the Father's step on the stair. He was running. He burst into my room and before I knew what was happening, he had picked me up in his arms. And, wonder of wonders, he was crying. I had never before seen a grown man cry. He was asking me, I could not understand what he meant, but he was asking me to forgive him. Then I heard the Mother's voice at the door.

      "What is the matter, Josiah?"

      "Oh, Martha. It's horrible! I caned the lad for a lie and he was telling the Truth! Oh, my son, my son, forgive me."

      At first all I realized was that I was not to be whipped any more. But all day long the Father kept me close to him and gradually from his talk I began vaguely to understand that there was such a thing as justice. I had always supposed that punishments were a matter of the parents' good pleasure. That it had any relation to cause and effect, that sometimes a father might be right and sometimes wrong in beating a child, had never occurred to me.

      It is interesting how such things take form in a child's mind. The Father bought me a set of tools like Oliver's as a peace offering, and of course I was much more interested in them than in any abstract conception of justice. Yet in some gradual, subconscious way, the idea arranged itself in my mind. I began to judge everything by it. I suppose it marked the end of babyhood, the first faint beginning of manhood.

      III

      It Is not surprising that, in that austere home, my first fundamental idea should have been of justice rather than of love.

      There may have been a time when the affection between the Father and Mother had an outward showing. I would like to think that they had tasted gayer, honey-mooning days. I doubt it. They were helpmates rather than lovers. The Mother was well named Martha, busy with much serving. Her work had dovetailed into his. It would be juster to say her work was his. Their all-absorbing business was the winning of souls to Christ, and anything of only human interest seemed to them of the earth, earthy. I never saw anything like a quarrel between them, nor any passage of affection—except that the Father kissed her when going on a journey or returning.

      It is hard for me to understand such people. Everything which has given me solace in life, all the pleasures of literature and art, all the real as well as the written poems, they had rigorously cut off.

      Oliver and I kissed the Mother when we went to bed. I never remember kissing the Father. Yet he loved me. Sometimes I think he loved me more than his own son. I doubt if I was often separated from his thoughts, ever from his prayers.

      But all I knew as a boy about the affections, which expresses itself openly, was from Mary Button, my Sunday school teacher. She was brimming over with the joy of living and in every way the opposite of the austerity I knew at home. She was altogether wonderful to me. When the Mother was away at Synodical meetings, Mary used often to come for a whole day to keep the house in order. It was strange and typical to hear her sing rollicking college songs at our parlor organ—a wheezy contraption which seemed entirely dedicated to Moody and Sankey.

      All through my childhood Mary passed as a celestial dream, a princess from some beautiful land of laughter and kisses.

      When I was about nine, and she I suppose near nineteen, Prof. Everett, who had been with her brother in college, began to visit the village. I disliked him at once with an instinctive jealousy. He has since won a large renown as a geologist, and was no doubt an estimable man, but if I should meet him now, after all these years, I am sure the old grudge would come to life and make me hate him. After a few months he married her and took her away to a nearby college town.

      About a year later, when the ache of her absence was beginning to heal, and, boy-like, I was in danger of forgetting her, a photograph came of her and the baby. It was such a loving picture! She looked so radiantly happy! It was set up on the mantel-piece in the parlor, and seemed to illuminate that sombre room. I remember exactly how it leaned up against the bronze clock, between the plaster busts of Milton and Homer. In those days I supposed one had to be blind to be a poet. The picture kept her memory alive for me.

      Some months later Mary wrote that her husband was going away to attend a convention СКАЧАТЬ