Twice-Told Tales (43 page)

"If ever I meddle with literature," thought I, fixing myself in
adamantine resolution, "it shall be as a travelling bookseller."

Though it was still mid-afternoon, the air had now grown dark about
us, and a few drops of rain came down upon the roof of our vehicle,
pattering like the feet of birds that had flown thither to rest. A
sound of pleasant voices made us listen, and there soon appeared
halfway up the ladder the pretty person of a young damsel whose rosy
face was so cheerful that even amid the gloomy light it seemed as if
the sunbeams were peeping under her bonnet. We next saw the dark and
handsome features of a young man who, with easier gallantry than might
have been expected in the heart of Yankee-land, was assisting her into
the wagon. It became immediately evident to us, when the two strangers
stood within the door, that they were of a profession kindred to those
of my companions, and I was delighted with the more than
hospitable—the even paternal—kindness of the old showman's manner as
he welcomed them, while the man of literature hastened to lead the
merry-eyed girl to a seat on the long bench.

"You are housed but just in time, my young friends," said the master
of the wagon; "the sky would have been down upon you within five
minutes."

The young man's reply marked him as a foreigner—not by any variation
from the idiom and accent of good English, but because he spoke with
more caution and accuracy than if perfectly familiar with the
language.

"We knew that a shower was hanging over us," said he, "and consulted
whether it were best to enter the house on the top of yonder hill,
but, seeing your wagon in the road—"

"We agreed to come hither," interrupted the girl, with a smile,
"because we should be more at home in a wandering house like this."

I, meanwhile, with many a wild and undetermined fantasy was narrowly
inspecting these two doves that had flown into our ark. The young man,
tall, agile and athletic, wore a mass of black shining curls
clustering round a dark and vivacious countenance which, if it had not
greater expression, was at least more active and attracted readier
notice, than the quiet faces of our countrymen. At his first
appearance he had been laden with a neat mahogany box of about two
feet square, but very light in proportion to its size, which he had
immediately unstrapped from his shoulders and deposited on the floor
of the wagon.

The girl had nearly as fair a complexion as our own beauties, and a
brighter one than most of them; the lightness of her figure, which
seemed calculated to traverse the whole world without weariness,
suited well with the glowing cheerfulness of her face, and her gay
attire, combining the rainbow hues of crimson, green and a deep
orange, was as proper to her lightsome aspect as if she had been born
in it. This gay stranger was appropriately burdened with that
mirth-inspiring instrument the fiddle, which her companion took from
her hands, and shortly began the process of tuning. Neither of us the
previous company of the wagon needed to inquire their trade, for this
could be no mystery to frequenters of brigade-musters, ordinations,
cattle-shows, commencements, and other festal meetings in our sober
land; and there is a dear friend of mine who will smile when this page
recalls to his memory a chivalrous deed performed by us in rescuing
the show-box of such a couple from a mob of great double-fisted
countrymen.

"Come," said I to the damsel of gay attire; "shall we visit all the
wonders of the world together?"

She understood the metaphor at once, though, indeed, it would not much
have troubled me if she had assented to the literal meaning of my
words. The mahogany box was placed in a proper position, and I peeped
in through its small round magnifying-window while the girl sat by my
side and gave short descriptive sketches as one after another the
pictures were unfolded to my view. We visited together—at least, our
imaginations did—full many a famous city in the streets of which I
had long yearned to tread. Once, I remember, we were in the harbor of
Barcelona, gazing townward; next, she bore me through the air to
Sicily and bade me look up at blazing Ætna; then we took wing to
Venice and sat in a gondola beneath the arch of the Rialto, and anon
she set me down among the thronged spectators at the coronation of
Napoleon. But there was one scene—its locality she could not
tell—which charmed my attention longer than all those gorgeous
palaces and churches, because the fancy haunted me that I myself the
preceding summer had beheld just such a humble meeting-house, in just
such a pine-surrounded nook, among our own green mountains. All these
pictures were tolerably executed, though far inferior to the girl's
touches of description; nor was it easy to comprehend how in so few
sentences, and these, as I supposed, in a language foreign to her, she
contrived to present an airy copy of each varied scene.

When we had travelled through the vast extent of the mahogany box, I
looked into my guide's face.

"'Where are you going, my pretty maid?'" inquired I, in the words of
an old song.

"Ah!" said the gay damsel; "you might as well ask where the summer
wind is going. We are wanderers here and there and everywhere.
Wherever there is mirth our merry hearts are drawn to it. To-day,
indeed, the people have told us of a great frolic and festival in
these parts; so perhaps we may be needed at what you call the
camp-meeting at Stamford."

Then, in my happy youth, and while her pleasant voice yet sounded in
my ears, I sighed; for none but myself, I thought, should have been
her companion in a life which seemed to realize my own wild fancies
cherished all through visionary boyhood to that hour. To these two
strangers the world was in its Golden Age—not that, indeed, it was
less dark and sad than ever, but because its weariness and sorrow had
no community with their ethereal nature. Wherever they might appear in
their pilgrimage of bliss, Youth would echo back their gladness,
care-stricken Maturity would rest a moment from its toil, and Age,
tottering among the graves, would smile in withered joy for their
sakes. The lonely cot, the narrow and gloomy street, the sombre shade,
would catch a passing gleam like that now shining on ourselves as
these bright spirits wandered by. Blessed pair, whose happy home was
throughout all the earth! I looked at my shoulders, and thought them
broad enough to sustain those pictured towns and mountains; mine, too,
was an elastic foot as tireless as the wing of the bird of Paradise;
mine was then an untroubled heart that would have gone singing on its
delightful way.

"Oh, maiden," said I aloud, "why did you not come hither alone?"

While the merry girl and myself were busy with the show-box the
unceasing rain had driven another wayfarer into the wagon. He seemed
pretty nearly of the old showman's age, but much smaller, leaner and
more withered than he, and less respectably clad in a patched suit of
gray; withal, he had a thin, shrewd countenance and a pair of
diminutive gray eyes, which peeped rather too keenly out of their
puckered sockets. This old fellow had been joking with the showman in
a manner which intimated previous acquaintance, but, perceiving that
the damsel and I had terminated our affairs, he drew forth a folded
document and presented it to me. As I had anticipated, it proved to be
a circular, written in a very fair and legible hand and signed by
several distinguished gentlemen whom I had never heard of, stating
that the bearer had encountered every variety of misfortune and
recommending him to the notice of all charitable people. Previous
disbursements had left me no more than a five-dollar bill, out of
which, however, I offered to make the beggar a donation provided he
would give me change for it. The object of my beneficence looked
keenly in my face, and discerned that I had none of that abominable
spirit, characteristic though it be, of a full-blooded Yankee, which
takes pleasure in detecting every little harmless piece of knavery.

"Why, perhaps," said the ragged old mendicant, "if the bank is in good
standing, I can't say but I may have enough about me to change your
bill."

"It is a bill of the Suffolk Bank," said I, "and better than the
specie."

As the beggar had nothing to object, he now produced a small buff
leather bag tied up carefully with a shoe-string. When this was
opened, there appeared a very comfortable treasure of silver coins of
all sorts and sizes, and I even fancied that I saw gleaming among them
the golden plumage of that rare bird in our currency the American
eagle. In this precious heap was my bank-note deposited, the rate of
exchange being considerably against me.

His wants being thus relieved, the destitute man pulled out of his
pocket an old pack of greasy cards which had probably contributed to
fill the buff leather bag in more ways than one.

"Come!" said he; "I spy a rare fortune in your face, and for
twenty-five cents more I'll tell you what it is."

I never refuse to take a glimpse into futurity; so, after shuffling
the cards and when the fair damsel had cut them, I dealt a portion to
the prophetic beggar. Like others of his profession, before predicting
the shadowy events that were moving on to meet me he gave proof of his
preternatural science by describing scenes through which I had already
passed.

Here let me have credit for a sober fact. When the old man had read a
page in his book of fate, he bent his keen gray eyes on mine and
proceeded to relate in all its minute particulars what was then the
most singular event of my life. It was one which I had no purpose to
disclose till the general unfolding of all secrets, nor would it be a
much stranger instance of inscrutable knowledge or fortunate
conjecture if the beggar were to meet me in the street today and
repeat word for word the page which I have here written.

The fortune-teller, after predicting a destiny which time seems loth
to make good, put up his cards, secreted his treasure-bag and began to
converse with the other occupants of the wagon.

"Well, old friend," said the showman, "you have not yet told us which
way your face is turned this afternoon."

"I am taking a trip northward this warm weather," replied the
conjurer, "across the Connecticut first, and then up through Vermont,
and maybe into Canada before the fall. But I must stop and see the
breaking up of the camp-meeting at Stamford."

I began to think that all the vagrants in New England were converging
to the camp-meeting and had made this wagon, their rendezvous by the
way.

The showman now proposed that when the shower was over they should
pursue the road to Stamford together, it being sometimes the policy of
these people to form a sort of league and confederacy.

"And the young lady too," observed the gallant bibliopolist, bowing to
her profoundly, "and this foreign gentleman, as I understand, are on a
jaunt of pleasure to the same spot. It would add incalculably to my
own enjoyment, and I presume to that of my colleague and his friend,
if they could be prevailed upon to join our party."

This arrangement met with approbation on all hands, nor were any of
those concerned more sensible of its advantages than myself, who had
no title to be included in it.

Having already satisfied myself as to the several modes in which the
four others attained felicity, I next set my mind at work to discover
what enjoyments were peculiar to the old "straggler," as the people of
the country would have termed the wandering mendicant and prophet. As
he pretended to familiarity with the devil, so I fancied that he was
fitted to pursue and take delight in his way of life by possessing
some of the mental and moral characteristics—the lighter and more
comic ones—of the devil in popular stories. Among them might be
reckoned a love of deception for its own sake, a shrewd eye and keen
relish for human weakness and ridiculous infirmity, and the talent of
petty fraud. Thus to this old man there would be pleasure even in the
consciousness—so insupportable to some minds—that his whole life was
a cheat upon the world, and that, so far as he was concerned with the
public, his little cunning had the upper hand of its united wisdom.
Every day would furnish him with a succession of minute and pungent
triumphs—as when, for instance, his importunity wrung a pittance out
of the heart of a miser, or when my silly good-nature transferred a
part of my slender purse to his plump leather bag, or when some
ostentatious gentleman should throw a coin to the ragged beggar who
was richer than himself, or when—though he would not always be so
decidedly diabolical—his pretended wants should make him a sharer in
the scanty living of real indigence. And then what an inexhaustible
field of enjoyment, both as enabling him to discern so much folly and
achieve such quantities of minor mischief, was opened to his sneering
spirit by his pretensions to prophetic knowledge.

All this was a sort of happiness which I could conceive of, though I
had little sympathy with it. Perhaps, had I been then inclined to
admit it, I might have found that the roving life was more proper to
him than to either of his companions; for Satan, to whom I had
compared the poor man, has delighted, ever since the time of Job, in
"wandering up and down upon the earth," and, indeed, a crafty
disposition which operates not in deep-laid plans, but in disconnected
tricks, could not have an adequate scope, unless naturally impelled to
a continual change of scene and society.

My reflections were here interrupted.

"Another visitor!" exclaimed the old showman.

The door of the wagon had been closed against the tempest, which was
roaring and blustering with prodigious fury and commotion and beating
violently against our shelter, as if it claimed all those homeless
people for its lawful prey, while we, caring little for the
displeasure of the elements, sat comfortably talking. There was now an
attempt to open the door, succeeded by a voice uttering some strange,
unintelligible gibberish which my companions mistook for Greek and I
suspected to be thieves' Latin. However, the showman stepped forward
and gave admittance to a figure which made me imagine either that our
wagon had rolled back two hundred years into past ages or that the
forest and its old inhabitants had sprung up around us by enchantment.
It was a red Indian armed with his bow and arrow. His dress was a sort
of cap adorned with a single feather of some wild bird, and a frock of
blue cotton girded tight about him; on his breast, like orders of
knighthood, hung a crescent and a circle and other ornaments of
silver, while a small crucifix betokened that our father the pope had
interposed between the Indian and the Great Spirit whom he had
worshipped in his simplicity. This son of the wilderness and pilgrim
of the storm took his place silently in the midst of us. When the
first surprise was over, I rightly conjectured him to be one of the
Penobscot tribe, parties of which I had often seen in their summer
excursions down our Eastern rivers. There they paddle their birch
canoes among the coasting-schooners, and build their wigwam beside
some roaring mill-dam, and drive a little trade in basket-work where
their fathers hunted deer. Our new visitor was probably wandering
through the country toward Boston, subsisting on the careless charity
of the people while he turned his archery to profitable account by
shooting at cents which were to be the prize of his successful aim.