A Son of the Revolution
AN EXTRACT FROM THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF THE HON. DAVID COBB TRUE, MEMBER OF THE LEGISLATURE FOR BLANKE COUNTY, IOWA, PREPARED FOR HIS SON, THEN AGED ONE YEAR AND THREE MONTHS.
THE year 1894 found me keeping the first anniversary of my marriage on my own farm. The farm was well worth ten thousand dollars, but I had bought it for thirty-eight hundred because of the cloud over the title. I have told you, my dear boy, how, the year after I was graduated from the state university, I bought the farm, selling my share in my father’s estate (which consisted of farm-lands in Scott County, mainly), and putting every penny I owned into this farm, the repairs and the stock. But the farm was a beauty. To be sure, there was the question whether the squatter’s title would hold water; and the Land Improvement Company had been fighting the squatters for ten years, winning in one court, and losing, maybe, in another. But the man who owned this property sold it to me the cheaper for that, and I was young enough to be both daring and sure of my own opinion. Ralph Haines, my best friend in college, and one of the best fellows in the world, was dead set against it. He maintained that the land belonged to the company, and not to the squatters, who, according to him, had no show either in law or in equity. Perhaps if I had heard him talk before I was really committed, and before the craving for the beautiful farm had gotten into my veins,—for I had an inherited love of the earth, come down to me from a long line of farmer’s folk ; I loved the very smell of the ground, and the lovely roll of the black, moist soil under my ploughshare, — perhaps, I say, if I had heard him talk before I saw the farm I might have heeded him. Ralph had plenty of sense. But I had seen the farm, I was committed ; and I was not going to back off in my own tracks, not I ! I am a slow man to decide, but having decided, your mother says I am stiff as a nail in a hickory board. I was resolved to risk it, and Ralph came with me for a year or two to work on shares. Ralph had no money, and had worked himself through the university. It was a good thing having him by me ; and the way we worked that year — well, there is only one man who has described the way men can work on a farm, and his is the only adjective that names its quality rightly. Hamlin Garland calls the toil “ferocious.” It was. that first year, in ‘91, and not much better in '92 ; but when ’93 came, and I married your mother, I had paid every cent I owed on my stock and machinery, and had a pretty little house, as well as a splendid barn, ready for her when she came.
“ And this is all yours ? ” she said, looking at me, and then dropping her eyes in the pretty, shy way she has. “ Oh, Dave, how could you think I should be lonely here ? ”
You see, son, she had been a teacher in the city, as I have told you, and I was afraid she would n’t take kindly to the farm. I can remember how my heart seemed to turn a kind of somersault, and I felt a tingle of happiness all over. I guess my voice was n’t quite steady as I answered, “It’s all ours, dearest, and I ’ll try my best to make you happy.”
It was the second I said it that something made me look up. and there at the window, outside, was Ralph’s face. It was not the mere seeing him looking in on us which sent a chill through my mood ; for if a man has n’t the right to put his arm around his own wife, what rights has he ? Not at all; it was the look on Ralph’s face, — a look of compassion. I can’t, call it anything else now, though it only puzzled and worried me then. Instantly the face was gone; and in a minute Ralph, glowing with welcome and cordiality, was bowing at the door. Yet. try my best, I could n’t get that sorrowful expression of his out of my mind. The next morning I understood it a little. Said Ralph, we being out in the barnyard milking the cows, “ Say, Dave, Joe Mawdlin was here yesterday.”
“ Was he ? What did he want ? ” I asked, not attending much, but watching the stream rattle into the pail, and thinking what a good bargain that red cow was. half Jersey I was sure.
“ He wanted you to join with him and the other fellows in fighting the Land Improvement Company. Case appealed to the Supreme Court, you know.”
“ Did it go against us ? ”
Ralph nodded, not looking up. I felt as if the cow had kicked me in the head.
“ I have spent two hundred dollars already, fighting that case,” I growled, “ and now, I suppose, he wants a hundred more from me.”
“ Hundred and fifty,” says Ralph, still mighty busy with his milking.
I said nothing. I am not much of a fellow to talk when I am muddled in my mind, and that was the way I felt at this minute.
“ The company had a man around, too,” says Ralph, “ offering to compromise.He wanted to see you; told me he’d take forty-five hundred for this place, — thousand down, and rest on long time.”
That made me mad, somehow. I could feel my face getting warm. The image of the agent in his well-fitting clothes, with his shining cuffs and his ready cigars and his jokes, made my gorge rise. I thought of myself in the muck, toiling before the sun rose, and I ground my teeth.
“ He says the farm is worth ten thousand. with the orchard and the fences and the buildings, and the land’s rich.”
“And who made it worth that?” I flung out savagely. “Who set out the trees, and built, and planted, and fertilized, and drained ? Was it he or his d— company ? I guess not ! There was n’t anything but prairie and scruboak trees and willow on the river when they bought it; and they bought it for a song, and paid so little they forgot they had it till better men than they came down, not knowing, and made homes here, and gave the value to the land, and now they jump on us. It is n’t fair ! ”
“ Well, you know they’ve always said they owned it.”
“ They have n’t spent a lick on the land.”
“They could n’t very well,” returned Ralph, with a laugh that somehow set my temper on edge, “when they had n’t the land. They have spent aheap of money lawing.”
“ D— them ! ” said I, which was n’t argument, but relieved my feelings.
“ Razzer ’s compromised,” said Ralph.
Old Simeon Razzer was the richest man in the county, reputed as shrewd as he was hard. That was a blow, but I would n’t show it to Ralph. I only grunted, and I milked the cow more gently, because I felt a currish impulse to vent my rage and fright on her, and bang her if she moved.
“ Say you ‘re right, and they are bloodsuckers or anything else you want to call them.” Ralph spoke earnestly now, and looked at me. But I would n’t look up ; I went on milking, with my jaws set. I hope when you come to read these things, David, boy, your father won’t be the pig-headed idiot that he was then. “ Call them anything, but don’t you see, Dave, you ’re in the trap; and ain’t it better to pay to get out than to stay swearing and be killed ? Oh, I say, bluster a bit to the agent, if you like, — it may get you a better bargain ; but close with him, after all ; two good years will put you back to where you think yourself now, and better. What I say is, don’t risk your farm, you a married man, on a chance ! Razzer would n’t have paid out six thousand dollars in cold cash if he ’d thought there was any real show of winning.”
“ Razzer ’s an old man ; he’s lost his grip.”
“ Don’t you believe it,” said Ralph ; “ he ’s got plenty of sand in him still, but he’s got more sense. Say, Dave, you know yon’ve got, the thousand dollars in bank, or will have when your corn is sold, and I’ve got five hundred ; between us we can fix up a good bargain, and I ‘ll give you my word to stay by you here till you have paid every last cent on your mortgage, — how ’s that ? ”
“ That’s mighty kind of you, Ralph,” I said, softened, “ but I won’t throw away money that way.
Nevertheless I did turn it over in my mind, and if Ralph had had the wit to plant his arguments, and then leave them alone to sprout, he might have had his will with me ; but he was young and hot-headed, and I was young, and as hotheaded as he, really, under my phlegmatic looks: and he began at me again.
I asked him did he really think those sharks were right ? and he admitted that he did think it. And the uptake of the matter was that Ralph grew red under his freckles until his hair and his skin were the same hue. — he was a handsome fellow, but he had the reddest shock of hair I ever did see, — and he brandished his fists, and swore that the farmers out our way were a lot of socialists who wanted to repudiate their debts, and walked off in a huff. He came back and begged my pardon for his bad temper, inside the hour ; but it was for his manner, and not for his words, and the sting of them rankled in me just the same.
I thought I would talk with the neighbors. We were four miles from a little town that depended on the farming country, but was working up some small manufactures, — a woolen mill, some saw mills and canning works ; quite a bustling place. I used to go over and listen to the talk. Naturally enough, as I should have considered, almost every one having a squatter’s title to his land, the sentiment was strongly against the company.
There were some gifted talkers in the “ all sorts stores ” of the town, who used to sit on barrels, and eat dried apples and hard prunes, and rail at the railroads and the Rothschilds, and right all the farmers’ wrongs; and I spent many a half-hour listening to them, and many another half-hour pondering over their speeches. They all regarded the Land Improvement Company as a set of thieves who had no chance of collecting their claims, and they laughed at the agent.
“ If they was to get a judgment, they could n’t collect,” Mawdlin declared furiously ; “ we would n’t let ’em ! ”
I swallowed it all except that. “ If the courts decide against us, for one, I won’t resist them,” said I. “ My great-great-grandfather fought in the Revolution, and my father fought in '61, and there’s been too much fighting in our family for this country for me to fight against her.”
You see I had just joined the Sons of the Revolution (your mother is responsible for that), and I was fresh primed with the family history. You are a lineal descendant, Davy, of the famous General David Cobb, of Taunton, Mass., judge and general in the Revolutionary days ; and your grandfather, Captain David Cobb True, although fortune did n’t favor him with the opportunities of his mother’s great-grandfather, was just as brave and faithful a man. “ But,” I went on, “ I ’m not in favor of compromising any more than the next man, and here ’s my check, Mr. Mawdlin, for my hundred and fifty.” So in a fool moment I cut my bridges behind me, you may say.
The thought in all our minds was that if worst came to worst we might buy ourselves off, then as well as now, forgetting that the terms after a defeat are not likely to be the same as the terms before, and never dreaming that money might be less plentiful in future than it was now. Which shows what fools we were !
The years ’93 and ’94 were hard ones. In ’93 came the panic, and never did Iowa know a crueler year on the crops than ’94. Days of drought lengthened into weeks, and weeks into months ; and then the hot winds rose to blast the poor, long-enduring corn. Did ever a welcome cloud soften the pitiless glare, it scattered while we were blessing it, and the horrible mocking sunshine was there as before. It was sickening to walk between the corn-rows and look at the wilted tassels and the yellow tips. With my windmill I brought water up from the creek, and I saved my corn ; I saved some of my onions, not all. Ordinary years I can get two or three hundred bushels an acre on my onion land ; I only got sixty that year ; and what the bugs and the sun spared sprouted in the late rains, and were so poor I hated to haul them to market. The potatoes dried into marbles, and the cholera got into the hogs. I stamped that out by changing pastures and burning the dead swine; but I lost ten big fellows before the disease had its last word with me. Then, on top of it all came the news that we had lost our case. It came on our anniversary day, too. Ralph knew it, but he would n’t tell it. Ralph and I were at political loggerheads, and not the good friends we had been ; still, he would not have spoiled the day with such tidings. No, it came in the most rasping way, old Simeon Razzer shouting it as he passed.
I would n’t give him the pleasure of chuckling over my bitter discomfiture ; so I pulled myself together and only nodded, as one who is hearing no news. But I rode to town and got the paper, and came home assured of the fact and in as black a mood as a man needs to be.
Your mother was waiting for me. And the minute I saw her I felt the fighting instinct climbing up in me ; I had something to fight for. I was n’t beaten yet by a long way, and I would n’t be beaten.
I held up my head and rode up to the gate, smiling.
“ Oh, Dave, is n’t it true, after all? ” she cried.
“ True as that this is a dirty, mean world, Honor,” said I; “ but what then ? We are not so badly off. I know the year has been bad and we have n’t made much, but I’ve put three hundred more into the bank on top of that thousand. I can make my first payment any time they want, and what’s a thousand-dollar mortgage on such a farm as ours ? We ’ll clear it off in no time. We’ve had two bad years ; next year is bound to be a good one, and we ’ll be all right! ” “ Oh, Dave,” said she, “ what a good farmer you are ! ”
You will have, when you fall in love, my son, a number of pictures of the woman you love, and a few that are unlike any of the others and stand out in your memory. I can shut my eyes and see the light in your mother’s brown eyes, that always made me think of the water of a spring with strange lovely shadows in it; and I can see her in her pink frock, standing poised a little on one hip, her pretty, sleek black head reared back and her chin drawn in, looking up quickly under those beautiful eyebrows of hers, the smile beginning to quiver about her mouth and the flush to creep up her soft cheek. Ah, I was a proud man to have brought that look, and a happy man as Well, in spite of the Supreme Court!
But it was only for a moment; then “ carking care,” as the poet calls It, began to nibble at my heart again. I had a letter. The company had risen a bit in their demands, although it was true enough that they were not rising much. They asked five thousand now, or fortyfive hundred cash. I had n’t exchanged a word with Ralph on the subject. He would n’t mention it, lest he should seem to be twitting me with his better foresight ; and meanwhile I was calling him names because he was hard and unsympathetic. We had somehow gotten out of the old touch, and whatever either one did it was certain to rasp the other. One night, however, Ralph spoke. He came up the walk later than usual ; he had been to town. I heard his steps under the poplar-trees. They were not elastic as usual; he walked like a desperately tired man, and when he entered the room he looked white.
“ I ’ll get your supper, Ralph,” said your mother, who always liked him, and was kind, smoothing over my blunders.
“No, thank you, Mrs. True,” he answered in a subdued voice, not like his own. “ I only wanted a word with Dave on business.”
“ I ’ll be getting your supper ready while you ’re having it, then,” said she as she left us.
“ Dave,” said Ralph, sinking his voice, “ have you got much money in the Templeton bank ? ”
I told him how much, and added, “ Nothing wrong with the bank, is there ? ”
“ I don’t know,” said he gloomily ; “but I heard to-day of a good many people quietly withdrawing their deposits, and I’ve been to town and made inquiries.”
“ Well ? ”
“ The bank ain’t fixed for a run ; and that’s what they ’ll have. They’ve lent a lot of money to farmers; and since the decision the security ain’t worth much.”
“ The bank has other customers. You have n’t any trust in anything, Ralph. It ain’t the part of a good citizen to be drawing money out of his bank and maybe starting a run.”
That set the discussion going. I admit that what I said was not suited to a brisk young fellow with the temper that goes with his hair, for I insinuated that his anxiety about the bank was only an excuse to ask for his money (what I owed him), which I said he might have any time for the asking. I could see that he changed color ; he rubbed his wrists nervously under his sleeves.
“ If you ’re willing to risk your money, then, I ain’t willing to risk mine,” said he sulkily. “ Will you pay me what you owe me ? ”
“ When ? To-night ? ”
“If you please.”
“ Oh, very well,” said I; and I drew him the check. “ I guess you won’t care to work with such a poor business man as you think me,” I could n’t help saying as I handed him the slip of paper.
“I did n’t say I thought that,” said Ralph sharply. "I only said you were so obstinate that if you’d put yourself in a hole you’d stay in it just to show you knew what you were about when you fell in, and that a hole was a nice place after all! ”
“ Oh, you’ve been making fun of me behind my back, have you ? ” I burst in furiously, for it put me beside myself to think of him turning on me when I was in such straits. “ Well, I guess this farm can be run without your talents, unless they sell me out and you hire out to them! ” The minute the words were past my tongue I could have bitten it; I knew better.
Ralph went white. He spoke in a gentle, low voice: “ If you think that, it is time for me to go.” And he was out of the room before I could frame an apology that should not be too humble ; for I was angry still.
Your mother was distressed when she heard the news. I put a careless face on it. but I felt sore myself at such an ending. We had been like brothers, Ralph and I, and I missed him at every turn ; it seems strange, though it really is n’t strange, that the more I missed him, the more my heart smote me, the sorer I was over his criticisms of me, and the less inclined I felt to yield to his judgment. I would n’t show his fears the respect of going to town and looking up the bank : the hen-house needed whitewashing. and I gave it two coats; I made some cribs for my corn.
But the third day, about one o’clock, Ralph raced down the road on a horse shining wet. He hailed me before he reached the gate.
“There’s a run on the bank!” he yelled. He reined up his horse, looking down on me gaping at him. “ Get your saddle on Prince!” he cried. “ It will take you less time to saddle than to ride this horse; I got the best out of him coming here.”
Under his fiery haste I saddled and rode away, only calling to your grandmother Matthews, who was with us that month, that I was going off on business, and would be back soon. As I saddled, Ralph explained : "I was out in the country ; only came back this morning. I read the papers on the cars ; then I went up to the bank. The run was on ; it began yesterday. The bank has been sending right and left for help, but the trouble is, its correspondents have n’t any confidence in its securities— Don’t stand gaping at me, man; hurry, hurry for your wife’s sake ! ”
I did hurry. Prince was as wet as Ralph’s horse when I drew rein on the main street. The street was full of people, not walking or running, but huddled in knots ; and women were mixed among the men, many of them weeping and wringing their hands, with their little hags swaying from their wrists. The men talked in loud voices, so that a strange kind of roar arose, pierced now and then by wails of the women crying aloud ; and one man (Who had lost his hat, and I remember the very look of his black hair matted on his wild white face) was shrieking curses against some one or something, quite unheeded. I did not need to ask a question ; I was too late; the bank had closed its doors.
It was a bad failure, far-reaching in its effects. As it was the only bank in the county, farmers could get no money to market their crops. There seemed no sale for anything in the local markets. I was glad to sell my corn for twenty cents to a firm that had offered me thirty and been refused ; and I worked like an ox to get the corn off to them, although I was to receive no ready money, only a note for ninety days.
When the bank shut down, the factories closed. At the same time the workingmen needed credit the worst, and the stores were afraid the most to give it; and you see it was hard times all over the country in ’94. The year before the tramping armies had swept through our roads and been well entreated; this year there was no organized brigandage, merely miserable stragglers, a desultory and intermittent passage of haggard men and ragged, tramping women. They were none of them violent, and we had not the heart to send away their distress unfed. Often, though, while my wife would be telling me their stories, something would gripe my throat like a tiger’s claw with the thinking how she and I and the baby that we thanked God was coming to us might be at the same pass, come next year, and I would jump up to strangle the groan on my lips. I had no ray of hope except the money coming for my corn. I could get barter for my other crops, but no money, and I had no money to market them elsewhere. My credit, which in normal times would have helped me, was clean gone and useless. I had asked every man in the county accounted able to lend, and every man had refused me. I had no kin to help: my only brother was having all he could do to keep his own head above water; I could n’t fall back on the women. Ah, it was a horrible time ! A horrible month, that November, ’94!
During it all I tried to hide my dreadful misgivings from your mother. I fancied that I had succeeded, she was so bright and cheerful.
There was only one chance — if you could call it a chance — that I had n’t tried. I said that I had asked all the men accounted able to lend me money for my first payment. I said wrong. There was one man whom I had not asked, because to ask him seemed such a useless humiliation. I mean old Razzer. Now everything else had failed, I began to take that idea up. I could perhaps get him to discount my corn notes and lend me money enough to make my first payment, with a second mortgage as additional security if he demanded. The interest charges would be terrible, but the horse cannot talk back to the whip, so the end was I went to old Razzer’s with my teeth set. Our latest interview had been at a store in town, and in it he had denounced the squatters, and given David True the option of being either a swindler or an idiot. He was too old a man for me to answer according to his spleen. I had simply laughed and gone away. I wondered whether there was anything aggravating and impertinent in that laugh. Well, time would tell, I had answered. Time was telling, and quite the wrong way.
Not far from his own gate I met the old man driving to town in a shabby buggy, hunched over his dashboard, and flabbing the fat sides of his horses with his reins, like a woman. He was a withered, undersized man, with gimlet eyes and a handsome Roman nose, and he had a trick of continually chewing gum. The doctor told us once that he had been broken of an inordinate love of tobacco by that device. Now, as usual, his lank jaws were working. He had neither wife nor child, and was reputed a revengeful, hard man. Rut your mother made excuses for him, because, in pioneer times, he had been tarred and feathered, and beaten too (of course before the tarring and feathering), for a crime of which it later appeared he was innocent. She would have it that his sufferings had imbittered him ; and she put a woman in the case, and the woman in the wrong, as tender-hearted women will. I used to tell her that it was a pity uncle Simeon could n’t hear her pleading his cause. I am sure that day I wished heartily that he could have heard her. However, there was no retreat, and I gave a hitch to my courage and blurted out my errand.
“ Humph ! ” he grunted. I did n’t relish the way he blinked his keen little eyes at me. “ Money’s terrible tight nowadays, most terrible tight. I dnnno when I ever seen it so tight. I guess it never was so tight. S’pose you know Clench and Haskins have failed ? ”
Clench and Haskins were the firm that had bought my corn. I felt dizzy, but I managed to say, “ Is that so ? ”
“ Ye-es. Pretty bad break, I hear. And Toomey, gineral marchandise, he ’s gone under, too. Bin carryin’ the workmen at the mills, hopin’ they would resoome, but resoomin’ don’t seem to be the order of things. Woolen factory’s shet down, waitin’ to see which way the cat ’ll jump. Consider’bul destitooshun, I hear.”
“ These are horrible times ! ” burst from me.
“ Ye-es. ’T ain’t so funny cheatin’ your creditors as you fellers expected. Time is fellin’. Ye-es.”
“ No, Mr. Razzer, it is n’t a bit funny. I guess you were right, and I am a fool. But I’m not a swindler, and if you kindly would help me, I’d pay ” —
“ Ye-es, I guess you would be willin’ to prommus to pay ’most anything, but maybe you wouldn’t have it to pay. Sorry, son, but these, as you say, are horrible times, an’ resky, an’ the old man has got to hang on to what little he’s saved.”
I was conscious that he was getting solid, cruel satisfaction out of the sight of me, with my dry mouth, and my hands working on the reins,— for the life of me I could n’t keep them steady,— and the beads of water thickening on my brow. But I kept at it, offering him a second mortgage and his own rate of interest. “ It’s a splendid farm,” I pleaded, “ well worth ten thousand. The mortgage would be safe ” —
“ Maybe, son, maybe,” he interrupted, with a cynical grin ; “ but say, what’s to hinder my buyin’ that farm for myself, ’stid of you ? ”
I turned cold, but I hit back. “ Nothing,” said I, “but a conscience and a heart, two things you haven’t got. I was a fool to come to you ! ”
“No, son,” he chuckled, “you was a fool not to come a year earlier ! ”
“That’s true, too,” said I, “if it’s any comfort to you to hear it. Goodmorning.”
I would n’t let my head drop until I was past the corner, but then it hung until I became aware of my own fences. Good fences they were, woven wire, with poles I cut when I thinned the maple grove, a two by four railing, and a stout six-inch baseboard. I never knew a fence to keep out stock better. The fence was painted green. Ralph, your mother, and I painted it one day ; took our luncheon and made a picnic out of it. I looked at the fence; I looked at the shorn fields where my beautiful corn had waved, and the little house with its flower-garden in front and the white curtains tied with ribbon, my home, that was like heaven to me (you ’ll never know until you marry a good woman, my boy, — which God grant! — how happy she can make you, and how much dearer your wife will be than your sweetheart), — I looked as long as I could see, then I drove into the barnyard. I unharnessed those horses, and I sat down and cried, —I did. And I told your mother that I got a speck of sawdust in my eye ; and she flicked it out, for I put it in on purpose. Whether that may be a lie or not, your greatgrandfather, who was a minister and “ an eminent man of God,” will have to decide when we meet.
After dinner, which I could n’t eat, I went out again; this time to town, having a load of potatoes for pretext, though I knew that there was no sale for them. The weather was warm for the season, and the sunlight lay on yards still green and moist almost as in summer, yet I had a grim fancy that had the town been scourged by pestilence it would have looked no otherwise. Half a dozen of the small brick stores had boards over their windows ; three more flaunted big yellow cards bearing in black letters To Let. The customary cheerful bustle of red and green wagons and unhitched teams and men chaffering above the loaded wagons, — how could it be so utterly gone ? Mine were the only wheels to make a noise. I even could imagine — since I was listening to my raven’s croakings — that the men leaning listlessly over their deserted counters or sitting on their empty doorsteps had their faces drawn awry by a touch of helpless fright akin to that in the faces of a plaguesmitten crowd. The man who sat on his stoop, his head sunk on his breastbone and his arms sagging, it would not be hard to suppose finished by the destroyer. In such wretched distraction of soul I allowed my horses to pick their own way. Therefore I presently found myself on Mill Street, so called because mostly workers in the mills lived there. Here more people were visible, but of no better cheer than on the other street. It struck me that the spirals of smoke from the chimneys were few and thin. And the men looked at my potatoes, scowling.
A woman lifted her hand to halt me. “ Will you sell a nickel’s worth ? ” said she.
I had seen her face before. In a second I remembered where : she was one of the crowd that had been too late at the bank.
“ You lost money in the bank failure, did n’t you ? ” said I. “ How are you getting along ? ”
“ Jest dying by inches,” said she ; “and I guess it’s a good thing, too, if it was n’t so slow. It would be better if there was a pawnshop. Say, you ain’t wanting any furniture, are you ? ”
“ I’m too poor to buy anything. I suppose they are bad off. too ? ” jerking my thumb back at the houses.
“ We could n’t be worse off, short of starving, mister,” cried a man, “ and by G— we ’ll be that soon ! ”
“ That’s so,” wailed a woman.
“ Well, the Lord help you,” said I. “ I ’m almost as hopeless as you are, but you ’re welcome to these potatoes, anyhow.”
It went to my heart to see how orderly the poor things were, and how of their own accord they would name absent women or sick men who ought to have a share. They were not voluble in their thanks, — the American workman is not used to charity, and has no taint of the beggar’s unctuous civility ; but I understood them, and my heart was sore for them. Nevertheless it was lighter than when I left home.
I talked with a good many people. One workingman’s speech struck me. He said : “ Some folks say it’s the farmers’ fault, and some folks say it ’s the Land Company’s ; nobody says it’s the workingman’s fault, but I notice it’s the workingman ’s got the heavy end to carry, jest as he always has. He’s the one always suffers, no matter who’s to blame. Now they talk of stopping the holding of the courts, so the company can’t git out writs; maybe that ’ll help the farmers, but where’s the help for us? It ain’t going to put food in our children’s mouths. Looks to me like the farmers tried to skin the Land Company, and now the Land Company is skinning them, and we ’re somehow getting skinned by mistake, too! ”
Afterwards I thought a good deal of other things in that talk, but then I was all absorbed by what he said about the courts. It was the rumor in the air ; and Mawdlin, whom I met not a block from Mill Street, told me that the next session of court would never meet this year. Half the county was on the delinquent list. What with the bank failure and the farmers going broke and the poor crops, men were desperate, striking at the first thing in sight. Mawdlin and his crew were ranting round the town, stirring up discontent and talking every sort of frantic nonsense. Repudiation was in every man’s mouth. They did not seem to consider that the matter was gone beyond the state courts ; all they thought was that if the evil day could be postponed the legislature might do something. Well, it ’s coming out right for most of the poor fellows now, the Land Company giving them such a long day ; but it looked black then. Many a man saw the work of ten years swept away for nothing; and no wonder he lost his head. The minds of men were frenzied by such a succession of blows ; they ran about aimlessly like horses in a fire, seeing destruction, yet rushing into it because they knew not which way to turn for safety.
“ Come,True,”says Mawdlin, “you’re with us, ain’t you ? ”
“ No, I ain’t,” says I sulkily.
“ Well, don’t be, then: one man less won’t keep the courts a-runnin’, and your farm will be saved to you jest the same ! ”
I kept thinking of that as I drove home. I could n’t help a ghastly sense of comfort, yet I felt ashamed to the bone. Here was I sitting passive while the mob smashed the laws of my country ! My father had fought for her. I kept the sword he waved at Donelson on our parlor wall, hanging below the engraving of the old Revolutionary general whose name I bore. I had a twinge whenever I looked at it. The words of the oath I took in the militia (where I served two years) nagged my ears. I began to be bitterly ashamed of my late vote and of my politics. Maybe a letter that came from Ralph about this time made me the more angry at myself. I had tried to find him to thank him for his warning about the bank ; but not a sign of him was left. Instead, one day (when he must have known that I was away from home) he came, chatted in a friendly way (just like the old Ralph) with the women, and left a package for me. The package was a roll of banknotes. And this was his letter : —
DEAK OLD DAVE, — You did n’t suppose I took that money to keep, did you ? I ate it to save it, as my mother used to say. I inclose it and the rest of the money I have ; it may help you with your first payment. Don’t you try to send it back, for you won’t find me; I ’m off on the tramp. But I ’ll turn up if they monkey with the court. Remember me kindly to the folks.
RALPH.
P. S. I never made fun of you behind your back. What I said, I said before you and old Razzer. You ’re a mule, David, but you ’re the best fellow I know.
I did remember. I remembered the very time. Of course it was then ; why had n’t I thought of it before ? I was a pig - headed idiot to have doubted old Ralph, who toted me off on his back and saved me when I sprained my ankle in that hazing scrape ! Davy, boy, it ’s bitter owning up to you what a cur your father was ; but I want you to know the kind of a friend he had.
Now I began to see all things differently. As I sat with that letter in my hand and the sun glinting the hilt of my father’s sword, I went over Ralph’s arguments ; and they hit me hard.
The land did belong to the company. They bought it when nobody else wanted it. There had been no underhand work with the squatters. They knew the risk, and they had taken it with their eyes open. My own squatter had not deceived me; and indeed I doubt whether he had charged me so much more than his work on the land was worth. The price paid him and the price demanded by the company, put together, were n’t as much as I counted the land to be worth, myself. Bitterly I admitted that Ralph was right. And now he had gone away, stripping himself for me and mine in that stormy time. David, my son, don’t you ever forget! Yet — I cannot understand it — my stubborn temper wouldn’t entirely give way. I knew I was wrong; but I would n’t come out and say so. I would n’t do anything to stop the holding of the court, but I could n’t bring myself to go to the sheriff and say, “ Look here : what one man can do to protect the judiciary of his country I’m your man to try to do ! ”
No, I sat and stared moodily from the letter to the sword, and the old general’s firm brows and powdered hair on the wall, and Rogers’s clay soldier on the mantelpiece, aiming his last shot.
My head ached and my heart was heavy as lead. All at once I felt your mother’s hand rumpling my hair. I lifted my own hand up to capture it and kiss it, — such a soft little hand !
“ Dave,” said your mother, “ it ’s awful about the courts, is n’t it ? Mr. Razzer passed tins morning, and he told me that Mawdlin has raised a regular army of men to prevent the holding of the court or issuing any writs, and they are going to resist the officers if they try to eject the settlers. They are going to meet tomorrow before daybreak, at his house.”
“ Yes, it looks bad,” said I, patting her hand.
“ Do you suppose the old general knows about it ?” said she, glancing up at the picture. He was one of her heroes ; it was she found the engraving in a magazine and had it framed. “ Dave, what did he do at Taunton ? ”
Now, Davy, she knew that old story as well as I ; but I think she knew it would work me up to tell it. And it did.
“ Why, it was after the Revolution. Manufactures, trade, all business was flat on its back. A silver dollar was worth seventy-five; corn was seventy-five dollars a bushel, board five hundred dollars a week. Landed property was worthless, and the taxes were something awful. So the general dissatisfaction turned on the courts and was going to prevent collections, just as they want to do now. Grandfather Cobb was a judge of the probate court; and when he heard that a mob was howling in front of the courthouse, he put on his old Continental regimentals, the old buff and blue, and marched out alone. ‘Away with your whining ! ’ says he. ‘ If I can’t hold this court in peace, I will hold it in blood; if I can’t sit as a judge, I will die as a general! ’ Though he was one man to hundreds, he drew a line in the green, and told the mob that he would shoot with his own hand the first man that crossed. He was too many for the crowd, standing there in his old uniform in which they knew he had fought for them ; and they only muttered, and after a while dispersed. They came again the next term of court; but he had his militia and his cannon all ready for them, then ; and this time when they got their answer they took it, went off, and never came back.”
“ And you are his descendant; are n’t you proud of it? ” said she, sliding her hand out of mine, and stroking my forehead.
I did n’t dare to frown, for all the pain I was in, and I did n’t dare to speak lest I should groan.
“ They ought to hold the courts, ought n’t they, Dave ? ”
I nodded.
“ Dave, can’t you do anything to help them hold them ? ”
“ Honor,” said I, “ if they hold court to-morrow, I shall be a ruined man. I meant not to tell you.”
“ Do you mean about the farm. Dave ? Why, I knew that all along.”
I drew a deep breath ; whatever might happen, the worst was over for me.
“ But you will try just the same ? ” said she.
The tears choked me as I clasped her, and cried out to those dead men : “ Look at her : do you see what a wife I ’ve got ? I’d be a cur if I would n’t go now ! ”
I saddled my horse the next morning, early. I put a pistol in one pocket and a luncheon in the other. We made no long parting; I don’t think people who feel intensely trust themselves with any needless pull on their emotions. She had a breakfast better than common for me ; and we talked about the things to be done, and were cheerful. Only at the very minute of parting she clung to me for a second, and the look on her sweet face almost unmanned me. But instantly she was smiling, and telling me not to lose my mittens, and get something hot to drink.
About a mile from town a horseman caught up with me, Ralph himself. We had not seen each other’s faces since the day of the bank run. But I said nothing of that; I called out, “ Where you going so fast? ”
“To the sheriff, to offer myself as a deputy. Where you going? ”
“ Same place, same errand,” said I. “ Let’s go together ! ”
“ Now you ’re talking ! ” he shouted, his voice breaking with a kind of laugh ; and I laughed too.
So we galloped on together. There was no need of talk between us any more, except on our errand. Ralph said the soldiers had been summoned, but it would be three hours before they could get there.
We found the streets full. Down on Mill Street a fellow on a barrel was abusing the “ plutocrats ” until his voice cracked under his fury. “ Join your brothers ! ” he screamed. “ Fight for your rights! ”
Then — but I really don’t quite know how it happened — we had pushed him off the barrel, and I was on it, calling them to hear me. Perhaps they might not have listened, but a woman called out that I was the man with the potatoes.
“ Talk away ! ” half a dozen voices answered. and the boys cheered shrilly, not as knowing anything, but glad of the chance for their lungs, which are always eager for noise.
I have a voice that reaches far ; and I humbly believe that the Lord put words into my mouth that day. “ Boys,” said I, “ this is none of your funerals ; keep out of it! What will you gain if they do prevent holding the courts, and the troops come into the county, and it gets a bad name ? The farmers think they stand to win something, but all the workingman will get or can get is the chance of being killed or crippled. Now, it is my funeral. If that court meets to-morrow I’m a ruined man ; but I ’m going straight to the sheriff to offer him my services. I bought my farm knowing the claim against it ; and I’m man enough, when I play a game, not to howl when I lose. The law has decided against me : all right ; it’s more important that this country’s laws should be respected than that ! should have a farm. Where are we if we don’t respect the laws ? My father fought for this country and this country’s laws ; and his son is ready to fight for them to-day.” I went on. I don’t know all I said; at such times a man is transported out of himself; I could feel the sparks fly out of my soul into theirs. I begged them to join me and help defend the courts.
“ And get a dollar ’n’ a half a day as deputies, every man ! ” shouted Ralph.
The men laughed, then they cheered ; in short, we had them. We set forth in columns of four, very fairly aligned, considering, and marched through a gathering but peaceful crowd to the courthouse.
The sheriff had hunted up two old cannon and two scared-looking gunners, whose heads kept oscillating the wrong way ; and he had some ten gun-barrels bristling on the court-house steps. He hurried forward to meet us, waving a pocket handkerchief. He was a little man, with spectacles and a forgotten pen behind his ear. He did not look like a warrior.
“ Why, it’s Mr. True ! ” he exclaimed in a tone of relief, recognizing me. “ Say, Mr. True, this is a bad business, opposing the laws of the United States.”
“ It is indeed,” I answered, “ and all these good men and true are of the same opinion.” With that I stated our business.
He was so relieved he almost fell on my neck. He swore us in, just as we stood, we holding up our right hands and taking the oath together, for there was no time for ceremony. Then he distributed what arms he had, a mighty queer assortment. Ralph and I, being used to firearms, and thus able to load a gun without shooting either ourselves or our comrades (which is one of the principal dangers to the patriotic citizen soldiery), were entrusted with the only two Winchesters in the possession of the county. Moreover, to my surprise, as the only military man present, I found myself virtually in command.
The first thing that I did was to change gunners, putting one of my own men (who used to be in the fireworks business, and understood a fuse, if he did n’t a gun) at one of the cannon, and his honor the judge at the other. The judge was a resolute man, and had a toy cannon at home which he used to blaze away with Fourth of July, so he understood the principle of the thing.
I wanted to change position, and haul the cannon out into a place to command the street; but before I could get one gun tackled to our horses the mob filled the place, running down a cross-street. But I had managed to have the big flag out, two lawyers having nailed it to the window. I did n’t believe they would stone the flag, however little they minded stoning us, their old neighbors.
They came, choking the streets up in a twinkling, and heartening themselves with yells. I saw Mawdlin’s tallow face and big black eyebrows. He was the only man with a sword. I could see it glinting in the sunbeams above the heads of the crowd. The same glance showed me, at one of the opposite windows, old Razzer, working his lank jaws as coolly as if at a sale.
The mob was partly armed with shotguns and pitchforks, but most of them had nothing better than brickbats, which made a dull red spatter among their dark ranks. More than half the whole crowd were boys. Nobody knows how many boys there are in the world until there is a fire or a row ! I did n’t suppose we had so many in the county.
On the whole, I was rather cheered by the sight of the foe. The danger was a rush, which I hoped our men might stand (but was n’t sure), and a lot of poor fellows getting hurt before we could beat them off.
“ When are your soldiers coming ? ” I said, low, to the judge.
He muttered back : “ The Grand Army men won’t be here for two hours. Company B may get here by one.”
I fell back on my ancestor’s wits. First I had the gunners stand to their pieces and make ready ; then I gave the word, and all the line of bayonets, in pretty fair concert for beginners, dropped into present arms.
“ They ain’t any of them loaded, you know,” whispered the sheriff, “ nor we ain’t got any cartridges ’cept blank ones, — only those you and your friend there have got.”
This was a cheering bit of news ; but since I was playing a bluff game, I saw my way thereby to play a stronger one. I never in the world should have dared to order those raw soldiers to cock their truly loaded weapons until ready to fire ; but now I fearlessly gave the order, and the crowd (which was very still) could hear the rippling clink of the triggers running down the line. It is an ugly sound.
“ How are they taking it ?" said I to Ralph; and he answered, “ They are looking mighty sober ; two or three of them have quietly got rid of their brickbats.”
I stepped out into the space between us and the mob, walking until I was close enough to touch the nearest with my outstretched bayonet. Ralph and the sheriff marched on either side ; or, to be accurate, Ralph marched, and the sheriff wriggled along under my left arm. “ If there is any mistake, and one of those cartridges is loaded, we ’ll be sure to get it in the back! ” he whispered in an anguished tone. “ Somebody ’ll be nervous and pull the trigger; and it ’s bound to be that one ! ”
I stopped, I drew a line in the dirt, I lifted up my voice to its strongest note : “ If a man of you crosses that line, we fire ! ”
“ In the name of the law, I command you all to disperse ! ” said the sheriff.
I doubt whether six people heard him. Every man in the crowd, however, heard the judge’s ringing shout : “ You know me, and I tell you I shall uphold the laws if it cost the life of every man here, including my own ! ”
Our men cheered that, and I could see a waver in the opposite ranks ; then a boy, in a boy’s foolhardy spirit, flung a brickbat. The next second, quick as the flash to a gun, Ralph, in one tiger spring, had hauled the boy out of the ranks, and before a man could stir to rescue he had administered two resounding kicks on the proper place, and actually flung young master over the nearest heads, bawling, “ Tell your mother to finish! ”
Anybody would have laughed to see the fellow sprawl in the air ; his own party sent up a roar, — a moment of good humor that gave me my chance. I got upon the court-house steps and began to talk. Many of them knew me ; they knew my case, — that I spoke truly when I said the court would bring judgment against me.
“Go home,” I begged, “ go home and talk it over with your wives. There’s many a man here against his wife’s will, who knows how nine times out of ten, when he goes against his wife’s sense, he’s sorry afterward. You ’re giving her another chance to throw it against you how she told you so ! “ (Here some one in the crowd laughed. After all, we were Americans together.) “Go home. You are in a bad fix; don’t make it worse ! The men who are promising you that everything will be all right, are n’t they the same men who would n’t let you compromise when you could have raised the money and done it ? Did anything they ever promised you come true ? Why are you believing them now? Those fellows have fooled me once, but they never shall fool me again. This they are advising you to do, do you know what it is ? It ’s treason, that’s what it is ! It ’s worse to be a traitor than to make a bad bargain.”
“ That’s right ! ” called a voice. “ Mawdlin ’s a liar from Wayback ! ”
Then I appealed to them, picturing the risk they were running, and the sure defeat before them. No matter what I said, I contrived to appeal to their latent misgivings and fears as well as their sense of fair play and patriotism. And it is always to be considered that a mob is never all partisans; a great portion always is composed of curiosity-seekers. I saw Mawdliu could n’t hold his men. They began to slip away from the outskirts ; they were no longer packed tight. It was time for our trump card.
“ How would it do,” I had said to the judge, “to have a little bonfire somewhere to divert them, and have the fire department charge down the street ? ”
Now the moment was come. “ Dave, you ’re a daisy! ” Ralph cried, as we stepped back; and the judge added, “ You are going to pull us out of this scrape without bloodshed, I do believe, Mr. True ! ”
Not to drag my tale, the device succeeded. The firebells rang; the firemen swept down the street, and the boys went to the fire. The boys eliminated from the crowd, there was n’t much of a crowd. As the street cleared, the deputies (that’s we) advanced with fixed bayonets, feeling mighty fine. In five minutes we held the square. In half an hour the judge opened court. The sheriff, on the steps, was just proclaiming (in a grand, loud voice, not a quaver about it), “ Hear ye ! hear ye ! hear ye ! The district court of the county of Blanke, of the State of Iowa, is now open! ” when the drums of the National Guard beat, and we could see Company B marching down the street, in a hollow square, trig, determined-looking young fellows, whom we greeted with our heartiest cheer.
I served through the day. But I got leave, for it was plain all was over, to come home at night. Your grandmother met me at the gate, smiling all over her face. “ Don’t make a noise, Dave,” said she ; “ you ’ll wake the baby ! ”
And that is why you, who were to be called after your maternal grandfather, were christened David Cobb. Your mother would have it so. The first words she said to me, as I knelt beside her, sobbing in spite of myself to think that I should have been away from her in that mortal pain and peril, were, “ We ’ll name him David Cobb, for I know what his father did this day ; and the old general will be proud of him ! ”
And who do you suppose brought the news ? Well, old Razzer. There he was on the porch, too, waiting for me ; and I nearly fell off, so bewildered was I at the sight of him.
“ S’prised, ain’t you ? ” says he. “ Well, True, you are a man, you are ; and I ’m willin’ to lend you that money, myself. Of course at ten per cent. I kinder bin likin’ you ever since you owned up you was wrong and sassed me so ; and now I see you ’re safe ! ”
He was better than his word : he helped me not only then, but afterwards ; and it is owing to him that I ran for the legislature next year, being in the way of making speeches, my wife said, and a good deal owing to him that I was elected. I wanted to call the baby Ralph Razzer, for the two friends who stood so stanchly by his father when he needed friends the worst; but when they both sided with your mother against me, what could I do ? Only write this story out for you, boy, and bring you up to love and honor them both !
Octave Thanet.