Читать книгу The Gentleman from Everywhere - James Henry Foss - Страница 7

My father and brothers constructed a "prairie schooner" from our scanty belongings, and one forlorn morning in early autumn, with the skeleton horse and cow harnessed tandem for motive power, we all set sail for far-off Massachusetts.

We slept beneath our canopy of canvas and blankets; those of our number able to do so worked occasionally for any who would hire, but employers were few, as this was one of the crazy seasons in the history of our Republic when the people voted for semi-free trade, and the mill wheels were nearly all silent for the benefit of the mills of foreign nations. They shot squirrels and partridges when ammunition could be obtained, forded rivers, narrowly escaping drowning in the swift currents, and suffered from chills and fever.

One dark night some gypsies stole our antediluvian horse and cow. The barking of the faithful dog awakened father and brothers who rushed to the rescue, leaving mother half dead with fear; but at length the marauders were overtaken, shots were exchanged, heads were broken, and after a fierce struggle and long wandering, lost in the woods, our fiery steeds were once more chained to our chariot wheels.

The next day we came to a wide river which it was impossible to ford, but mercy, which sometimes "tempers the blast to the shorn lamb," sent us relief in the shape of an antiquated gundalow floating on the tide. Like Noah and family of old, we managed to embark on this ancient ark, and paddled to the further shore.

There we miraculously escaped the scalping knife and tomahawk. While painfully making our way through the primeval forest, we were suddenly saluted by the ferocious war-whoop, and a dozen Indians barred our way, flourishing their primitive implements of warfare. A shot from father's double-barreled gun sent them flying to cover, our steeds rushed forward with a speed hitherto unknown, the prairie schooner rocked like a boat in a cyclone, the mother shrieked, the enfant terrible howled like a bull of Bashan, and just as the "Red devils" were closing in from the rear, the mouth of a cave loomed up in the hillside into which dashed "pegasus and mooly cow" pell-mell.

Our red admirers halted almost at the muzzle of the gun and the blades of my brothers' axes. Luckily the Indians had neither firearms nor bows and arrows. They made rushes occasionally, but the shotgun wounded several, the axes intimidated, and they seemed about to settle down to a siege when, with a tremendous shouting and singing of "Tippecanoe and Tyler too," a band of picturesquely arrayed white men came marching along the trail. The enemy took to their heels, and we learned that our rescuers had been to a William Henry Harrison parade and barbecue, for this was the time of the famous "hard cider" campaign.

The Indians had been there too and, filling up with "fire water," their former war-path proclivities had returned to their "empty, swept, and garnished" minds, to the extent that they yearned to decorate their belts with our scalps.

Our preservers scattered to their homes, and the would-be scalpers were seen no more, leaving the world to darkness and to us in the woods. The woods, where Adam and Eve lived and loved, where Pan piped, and Satyrs danced, the opera house of birds; the woods, green, imparadisaical, mystic, tranquillizing—to the poet perhaps when all is well—but to us, they seemed haunted by spirits of evil, the yells of the demons seemed to echo and reecho; but an indefinable something seemed to sympathize with the infinite pathos of our lives, and at last sleep, "the brother of death," folded us in his arms, and the curtain fell.

"There is a place called Pillow-land,

Where gales can never sweep

Across the pebbles on the strand

That girds the Sea of Sleep.

'Tis here where grief lets loose the rein,

And age forgets to weep,

For all are children once again,

Who cross the Sea of Sleep.

The gates are ope'd at daylight close,

When weary ones may creep,

Lulled in the arms of sweet repose,

Across the Sea of Sleep.

Oh weary heart, and toil-worn hand,

At eve comes rest to thee,

When ply the boats to Pillow-land,

Across the Sleepy sea.

Thank God for this sweet Pillow-land,

Where weary ones may creep,

And breathe the perfume on the strand

That girds the Sea of Sleep."

It is pleasant in this sunset of life, to recall the testimony of my brothers that through all those troublous scenes, father and mother were soothed and consoled by an unfaltering faith in the ultimate triumph of the good and true, that their faces were often illumined as they repeated to each other those priceless words of the sweet singer,

"Drifting over a sunless sea, cold dreary mists encircling me,

Toiling over a dusty road with foes within and foes abroad,

Weary, I cast my soul on Thee, mighty to save even me,

Jesus Thou Son of God."

At last the "perils by land and perils by sea, and perils from false brethren," this long, long journey ended and we reached the promised land. We halted in old Byfield, in the state of Massachusetts, with worldly goods consisting of a bushel of barberries, threadbare toilets, and the ancient equipage dilapidated as aforesaid.

After much tribulation, father took a farm "on shares," which was found to result in endless toil to us, and the lion's share of the crops going to the owners, who toiled not, neither did they spin, but reaped with gusto where we had sown.

After a few years of this profitless drudgery, my father bought an old run-down farm with dilapidated buildings in the neighboring town of R——, mortgaging all, and our souls and bodies besides, for its payment. We hoped we had rounded the cape of storms which sooner or later looms up before every ship which sails the sea of life, for we had fully realized the truth of the poem—

We may steer our boats by the compass,

Or may follow the northern star;

We may carry a chart on shipboard

As we sail o'er the seas afar;

But, whether by star or by compass

We may guide our boats on our way,

The grim cape of storms is before us,

And we'll see it ahead some day.

How the prow may point is no matter,

Nor of what the cargo may be,

If we sail on the northern ocean,

Or away on the southern sea;

It matters not who is the pilot,

To what guidance our course conforms;

No vessel sails o'er the sea of life

But must pass the cape of storms.

Sometimes we can first sight the headland

On the distant horizon's rim;

We enter the dangerous waters

With our vessels taut and trim;

But often the cape in its grimness

Will before us suddenly rise,

Because of the clouds that have hid it

Or the blinding sun in our eyes.

Our souls will be caught in the waters

That are hurled at the storm cape's face;

Our pleasures and joys, our hopes and fears,

Will join in the maddening race.

Our prayers, desires, our penitent griefs,

Our longings and passionate pain,

Be dashed to spray on the stormy cape

And fly in our faces like rain.

But there's always hope for the sailor,

There is ever a passage through;

No life goes down at the cape of storms,

If the life and the heart lie true.

If in purpose the soul is steadfast,

If faithful in mind and in will,

The boat will glide to the other side,

Where the ocean of life is still.

[Illustration: "It was a Fair Scene of Tranquillity."]