Читать книгу Brother Jonathan - Hezekiah Butterworth - Страница 7

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There was an old manor in sunny England to which Lord Cornwallis used to resort, and a certain Captain Blackwell purchased a territory in Windham, Conn., among the green hills and called it Mortlake Manor, after the English demesne. Here Israel Putnam purchased a farm of some 500 acres, at what is now Pomfret, Conn., and began to raise great herds of cattle and flocks of sheep, and to plant apple-trees.

He was made a major in the northern campaign, afterward a colonel, then in the Indian War he became a general. They called him “Major Putnam,” for the title befitted his character, and he wished to be sparing of titles among the farmers of Windham.

Israel Putnam was born a hero. He had in him the spirit of a Hannibal. He had character as well as daring; his soul rose above everything, and he never feared a face of day.

He had the soul of Cincinnatus, and not of a Cæsar. He could leave the plow, and return to it again.

His conduct in the northern campaign had shown the unselfish character of his heroism. A jolly farmer was he, and as thrifty as he was jolly. He could strike hard blows for justice and liberty, and like a truly brave man he could forgive his enemies and help them to rise in a right spirit again.

Why had he come here at this time?

Let us go into the store, or, as it was beginning to be called, the “war office,” with these two men of destiny.

“Governor Trumbull,” he said, “I am about to go to Boston, and I want your approval. Boston is being ruined by British oppression. She is almost famine-stricken, and why? Because her people are true to their rights.

“Governor, I can not sleep. Think of the situation. Here I am on my farm, with hundreds of sheep around me, and the men of liberty of Boston town are sitting down to half-empty tables. Some of my sheep must be driven away.

“They must be started on their way to Worcester, and to Newtowne, and to Boston, and, Governor, the flock must grow by the way.

“I am going to ask the farmers to swell the number of the flock as I start with my own. Boston Common is a British military post now—but I am going to Boston Common with my sheep, and my flock will grow as I go, and I will appear there at the head of a company of sheep, and if the British Government does not lift its hand from Boston town, I will go there with a company of soldiers. Have I your contentment in the matter?”

“Yes, go, hero of Lake George and of Ticonderoga, go with your sheep and your flock, increase it as it goes; but as for that other matter you suggest, let us talk of that, the matter of what is to be done if British oppression is to increase.”

They talked all night, and Putnam said that the liberties of the colonies were more than life to him, and that he stood ready for any duty. He rode away in the light of the morning.

As he passed the tavern, Dennis O’Hay went to the war office, where the Connecticut militia used to appear, to meet the Governor.

“The top of the morning to you, Governor,” said Dennis, holding his cap in his hand above his head.

“My good friend, I do not know you,” said the Governor, “but that you are here for some good purpose, I can not doubt. What is your business with me?”

“I was a sailor, sir, and our ship went down, sir, but I came up, sir, and am still on the top of the earth. I am an Irishman, sir, from Ireland of the North, that breeds the loikliest men on the other side of the world, sir, among which, please your Honor, I am one.

“I have heard about the stamp act, sir. England has taxed Ireland into the earth, sir. We live in hovels, sir, that the English may dwell in castles, sir. I wouldn’t be taxed, sir, were I an American without any voice in the government, sir. That would be nothing but slavery.

“I would like to enlist, sir. I have heard of the minutemen, sir, and it is a half-a-minute man that I would like to become.”

“I see, I see, my good fellow; I read the truth of what you say in your looks. Let me go to my breakfast, and I will talk over your case with my wife, Faith, and my daughters, and my son John. In the meantime, go and get your breakfast in the tavern.”

“The top of this earth and all the planets to you, sir.”

After breakfast the Governor summoned Dennis to the store, which came to be called the “war office.” The back room in the store was the council room.

“Did you notice that man who rode away in the morning?” he asked.

“Sure, I did, sir. I heard him tell a story last night in the tavern. The flesh was gone from one of his hands.”

“It was torn from his hand while pouring water on a fire which was burning the barracks near a magazine which contained 300 barrels of powder. That was in the north.”

“Did he save the magazine?”

“Yes, my good friend. He is a brave man, and he is soon going with a drove of sheep to Boston.

“You ask for work,” continued the Governor. “I want you to go with that man, Major, Colonel, General Putnam, and his drove of sheep to Boston, and to keep your eye out on the way, so, if needed, you might go over it again. I wish to train a few men to learn a swift way to Boston town. You may be one of them. I will have a horse saddled for you at once; follow that man to Pomfret, to the manor farm at Windham. I will write you a note to him, a secret note, which you must not open by the way.”

“Never you fear, Governor; I couldn’t read it if I did, but I can read life if I can not read messages.”

In a few minutes he was in the saddle, with his face turned toward the Windham hills.

He found General Putnam, the “Major,” on his farm.

“It is the top of the morning that I said to the Governor this morning, and it is the top of the evening that I say to you now. I am Dennis O’Hay, from the north of Ireland, and it is this message—which may ask that I be relieved of my head for aught I know—that the Governor he asked me to put into your hand. He wants me to learn all the way to Boston town, so that I may be able to drive cattle there, it may be. I am ready to do anything to make this country the land of liberty. After all that ould Ireland has suffered, I want to see America free and glorious—and hurrah, free! That word comes out of my heart; I don’t know why I say it. It rises up from my very soul.”

“You shall learn all the way to Boston town,” said the Major, “and I hope I shall not find you faithless, or give you over to the British to be dealt with according to the law.”

Putnam was preparing to leave for his long journey on the new Boston road. His neighbors gathered around him, and young farmers brought to him fine sheep, to add to those he had gathered for the suffering patriots of Boston town.

The driver of this flock knew the way, the post-houses, the inns, the ordinaries, and the Major assigned Dennis to him as an assistant.

Putnam was a lusty man at this time, in middle life. He wore homespun made from his own flocks. His great farm among the hills had been developed until it was made sufficient to support a large family and many work-people. He raised his own beef, pork, corn, grain, apples and fruit, and poultry. His family made their own butter and cheese; his wife wove the clothing for all; spun her own yarn. The manor farm might have been isolated for a hundred years, and yet thrift would have gone on.

No one was ever more self-supporting than the old-time thrifty New England farmer. His farm was more independent than a baron’s castle in feudal days.

He “put off” his butter, cheese and eggs, or bartered them for “West India goods”; but even in these things he might have been independent, for his maple-trees might have yielded him sugar, and roasted crusts and nuts a nutritious substitute for coffee and tea.

Putnam drove away his sheep, stopping at post-houses by the way, and telling some merry and some thrilling stories there of the wild campaign of the north, and of his escapes from the Indians under Pontiac.

He arrived at Boston and was welcomed by the patriot Warren.

A British officer faced him.

“And you have come down here,” said the British officer, “to contend against England’s arm with a lot of sheep. If you rebels do not cease your opposition, do you want to know what will happen?”

“Yes.”

“Twenty ships of the line and twenty regiments will be landed at the port of Boston.”

“If that day comes, I shall return to Boston, and I shall bring with me men as well as sheep.”

“Ho, ho!” laughed the British officer. “That is your thought, is it, hey? It is treason, sir; treason to the British Crown.”

“Sir,” said Putnam, “an enemy to justice is my enemy; is every man’s enemy. It is a man’s duty to stand by human rights.”

Dennis studied every farmhouse and nook and corner by the way. He had a quick mind and a responsive heart, and he was learning America readily.

He could read lettered words, so he looked well at the sign-boards at four corners and on taverns and milestones. He “stumbled” in book reading, but could define signs.

“Could you find your way back again?” asked the Major of him, as they rested beneath the great trees on Boston Common.

“And sure it is, Major. I would find my way back there if I had been landed at the back door of the world.”

“Well,” said the Major, “then you may go back in advance of us alone.”

Dennis parted from the Major, and dismounted in a couple of days or more before the Governor’s war office with

“And it is the top of the morning, it is, Governor.”

“Did you bring a recommendation from the Major?” asked the Governor.

“No, no, he sent me on ahead, but I can give a good report of him.”

“That is the same as though he brought a good report of you. A man who speaks well of his master is generally to be trusted.

“Well, you know the way to Boston town. I think that I can now make you useful to me, and to the cause. We will see.”

Dennis found work at the tavern. He would sit on the tavern steps to watch for the Governor in the evenings when the latter appeared on the green. He soon joined the good people in calling the Governor “Brother Jonathan.”

Dennis was superstitious—most Irishmen are—but he was hardly more given to ghostly fears than the Connecticut farmers were. Nearly every farmstead at that period had its ghost story. Good Governor Trumbull would hardly have given an hour to the fairy tale, but he probably would have listened intently to a graveyard or “witch” story.

People did not see angels then as in old Hebrew days, but thought that there were sheeted ghosts that came out of graveyards, or made night journeys through lonely woods, and stood at the head of garret stairs, “avenging” spirits that haunted those who had done them wrong.

So we only picture real life when we bring Dennis into this weird atmosphere, that made legs nimble, and cats run home when the clouds scudded over the moon.

Dennis had heard ghost story after ghost story on his journey and at the store. Almost everybody had at least one such story to tell; how that Moodus hills would shake and quake at times, and tip over milk-pans, and cause the maid to hide and the dog to howl; how the timbers brought together to build a church, one night set to capering and dancing; how a woman who had a disease that “unjinted her jints” (unjointed her joints) came all together again during a great “revival”; how witches took the form of birds, and were shot with silver bullets; and like fantastic things which might have filled volumes.

“I never fear the face of day,” said Dennis, “but apparitions! Oh, for my soul’s sake, deliver me from them! I am no ghost-hunter—I never want to face anything that I can’t shoot, and on this side of the water the woods are full of people that won’t sleep in their graves when you lay them there. I shut my eyes. Yes, when I see anything that I can’t account for, I shut my eyes.”

That was the cause of the spread of superstition. People like Dennis “shut their eyes.” Did they meet a white rabbit in the bush, they did not investigate—they ran.

Dennis would have faced a band of spies like a giant, but would have run from the shaking of a bush by a mouse or ground squirrel in a graveyard.

He once saw a sight that, to use the old term, “broke him up.” He was passing by a family graveyard when he thought that an awful apparition that reached from the earth to the heavens rose before him.

“Oh, and it was orful!” said he. “It riz right up out of the graves into the air, with its paws in the moon. It was a white horse, and he whickered. My soul went out of me; I hardly had strength enough in my legs to get back to the green; and when I did, I fell flat down on my face, and all America would never tempt me to go that way again.”

The white horse whose “paws” were in the moon was only an animal turned out into the highway to pasture, that lifted himself up on the stout bough of a graveyard wild apple-tree to eat apples from the higher limbs. Horses were fond of apples, and would sometimes lift themselves up to gather them in this way.

The ghost story was the favorite theme at the store on long winter evenings.

“If one could be sure that they met an evil ghost, one would know that there must be good spirits that had gone farther on,” reasoned the men.

“They may as well all go farther on,” said Dennis. “Such things do not haunt good people.”