Читать книгу On the Plantation - Joel Chandler Harris - Страница 7

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The printing-office was a greater revelation to Joe Maxwell than it would be to any of the youngsters who may happen to read this. It was a very small affair; the type was old and worn, and the hand-press—a Washington No. 2—had seen considerable service. But it was all new to Joe, and the fact that he was to become a part of the machinery aroused in his mind the most delightful sensation. He quickly mastered the boxes of the printer’s case, and before many days was able to set type swiftly enough to be of considerable help to Mr. Snel-son, who was foreman, compositor, and pressman.

The one queer feature about The Countryman was the fact that it was the only plantation newspaper that has ever been published, the nearest post-office being nine miles away. It might be supposed that such a newspaper would be a failure; but The Countryman was a success from the start, and at one time it reached a circulation of nearly two thousand copies. The editor was a very original writer, and his editorials in The Countryman were quoted in all the papers in the Confederacy, but he was happiest when engaged in a political controversy. Another feature of The Countryman was the fact that there was never any lack of copy for the foreman and the apprentice to set. Instead of clipping from his exchanges, the editor sent to the office three books, from which extracts could be selected. These books were Lacon, Percy’s Anecdotes, and Rochefoucauld’s Maxims. Then there were weekly letters from the army in Virginia and voluntary contributions from many ambitious writers. Some of the war correspondence was very gloomy, for as the months wore on it told of the death of a great many young men whom Joe had known, and the most of them had been very kind to him.

The days in the printing-office would have been very lonely for Joe, but the grove that surrounded it was full of gray squirrels. These had been so long undisturbed that they were comparatively tame. They were in the habit of running about over the roof of the office and playing at hide-and-seek like little children. To the roof, too, the blue-jays would bring their acorns and hammer at the hard shells in the noisiest way, and once a red fox made bold to venture near Joe’s window, where he stood listening and sniffing the air until some noise caused him to vanish like a flash. Most interesting of all, a partridge and her mate built their nest within a few feet of the window, and it often happened that Joe neglected his work in watching the birds. They bent the long grass over from each side carefully until they had formed a little tunnel three or four feet long. When this was done, Mrs. Partridge made her way to the end of it and began to scratch and flutter just as a hen does when taking a dust-bath. She was hollowing out her nest. By the time the nest was completed the archway of grass that had hid it was considerably disarranged. Then Mrs. Partridge sat quietly on the little hollow she had made, while Mr. Partridge rebuilt the archway over her until she was completely concealed. He was very careful about this. Frequently he would walk off a little way and turn and look at the nest. If his sharp eyes could see anything suspicious, he would return and weave the grass more closely together. Finally, he seemed to be satisfied with his work. He shook his wings and began to preen himself, and then Mrs. Partridge came out and joined him. They consulted together with queer little duckings, and finally ran off into the undergrowth as if bent on a frolic.

The work of Mr. and Mrs. Partridge was so well done that Joe found it very difficult to discover the nest when he went out of the office. He knew where it was from his window, but when he came to look for it out of doors it seemed to have disappeared, so deftly was it concealed; and he would have been compelled to hunt for it very carefully but for the fact that when Mrs. Partridge found herself disturbed she rushed from the little grass tunnel and threw herself at Joe’s feet, fluttering around as if desperately wounded, and uttering strange little cries of distress. Once she actually touched his feet with her wings, but when he stooped to pick her up she managed to flutter off just out of reach of his hand. Joe followed along after Mrs. Partridge for some little distance, and he discovered that the farther she led him away from her nest the more her condition improved, until finally she ran off into the sedge and disappeared. Joe has never been able to find any one to tell him how Mrs. Partridge knew what kind of antics a badly wounded bird would cut up. He has been told that it is the result of instinct. The scientists say, however, that instinct is the outgrowth of necessity; but it seems hard to believe that necessity could have given Mrs. Partridge such accurate knowledge of the movements of a wounded bird.

In carrying proofs from the printing-office to the editor, Joe Maxwell made two discoveries that he considered very important. One was that there was a big library of the best books at his command, and the other was that there was a pack of well-trained harriers on the plantation. He loved books and he loved dogs, and if he had been asked to choose between the library and the harriers he would have hesitated a long time. The books were more numerous—there were nearly two thousand of them, while there were only five harriers—but in a good many respects the dogs were the liveliest. Fortunately, Joe was not called on to make any choice. He had the dogs to himself in the late afternoon and the books at night, and he made the most of both. More than this, he had the benefit of the culture of the editor of The Countryman and of the worldly experience of Mr. Snelson, the printer.

To Joe Maxwell, sadly lacking in knowledge of mankind, Mr. Snelson seemed to be the most engaging of men. He was the echo and mouthpiece of a world the youngster had heard of but never seen, and it pleased him to hear the genial printer rehearse his experiences, ranging all the way from Belfast, Ireland, where he was born, to all the nooks and corners of the United States, including the little settlement where the plantation newspaper was published. Mr. Snelson had been a tramp and almost a tragedian, and he was pleased on many occasions to give his little apprentice a taste of his dramatic art. He would stuff a pillow under his coat and give readings from Richard III, or wrap his wife’s mantilla about him and play Hamlet.