leaves
THE library arrived, and the books were covered, labelled, numbered, and shelved before the probable beneficiaries knew of their existence; then Master Scrapsey Green was employed to walk through the village streets, ringing a bell, and shouting:—
"Free—circulating—library—now—open—at—Somerton's—store!"
Notices to the same effect had already been mailed to all possible readers in the county. The self-appointed librarian had not believed that more than one in four of the inhabitants of the town or county would care to read, but neither had she taken thought of the consuming curiosity of villagers and country-folk. Within an hour the back room of the store was packed to suffocation, although Grace pressed a book on each visitor, with a request to make way for some one else.
After several hours of issuing and recording, Grace found herself alone; so she gladly escaped to the store proper to compare notes with Philip and Caleb, who had taken turns at dropping in to "see the fun," as Philip called it, and to announce, at the librarian's request, that only a single book a week would be loaned to a family, and to request the borrowers to return the books as soon as read.
On entering the store, Grace found herself face to face with Doctor and Mrs. Taggess and Pastor Grateway, all of whom greeted her cordially, and congratulated her on the successful opening of the Somerton Library.
"That's a cruel proof of the saying that one sows and another reaps," she replied; "but please understand in future that this is not the Somerton Library. It is the Caleb Wright Library."
"Je—ru—salem!" exclaimed Caleb, "an' I didn't put a cent into it!"
"You devised it," Grace replied. "'Twas like Columbus making the egg stand on end; any one could do it after being told how."
About this time some responses, in theforms of half-grown boys and girls on foot, began to arrive from the farming district, and Grace had occasionally to leave the store. As she returned from one of these excursions, Mrs. Taggess took her hands and exclaimed:—
"What a good time you must have had!"
"Oh, wife!" protested the Doctor. "Is this the place for sarcasm? The poor girl looks tired to death."
"Nevertheless, Mrs. Taggess is entirely right," said Grace. "It was a good time, indeed. How I wish I could sketch from memory! Still, I shall never forget the expression of some of those faces. What a dear lot of people there are in this town!"
"Hurrah!" shouted the Doctor. "I was afraid that, coming from the city, you mightn't be able to find it out. I apologize with all my heart."
"'Tis high time you did," said his wife. "The idea that a doctor, of all men, shouldn't know that a woman's heart rules her eyes."
"Yes," said the Doctor, affecting a sigh. "It's dreadful to be a man, and know so muchthat sometimes an important bit of knowledge gets hidden behind something else at the very time it's most needed. How many books have you remaining, to satisfy the country demand, Mrs. Somerton?"
"Not enough, I fear. We ought to have bought one or two hundred more volumes."
"Which means," said Philip, with a pretence at being grieved at having been forgotten during the congratulations, "that they will have to be purchased at once, and paid for, by the mere nobody of the concern."
"Nobody, indeed!" exclaimed Grace, with a look which caused the Taggesses to exchange delighted pinches, and the minister to say:—
"I don't think any one need go far to find a proof of the blessed mystery that one and one need make only one, if rightly added."
"No, indeed," said the Doctor, "but at least one-half of the one in question is so tired that it ought to get some rest, which it won't and can't while we visitors stay here to admire and ask questions. Come along, wife; we'll find some better time to talk her and these other good people to death about what they've done. I'veonly to say that if Brother Grateway doesn't give you his benediction in words, he will leave one for you all the same, and there'll be two others to keep it company—eh, wife?"
"Phil," Grace said, as soon as the visitors had departed, "I've a new idea. 'Tis not as good as Caleb's which has made this library, but 'twill give no end of surprise and satisfaction to people, as well as lots of fun to me and bring some business to the store. I want a camera. I don't see how we were so stupid as not to bring one with us from New York."
"A camera?" said Caleb. "What sort of a thing is it?"
"A contrivance for taking photographs. There are small cheap ones that any amateur can use. Two or three girls in our store in New York had them, and took some very fair pictures."
"I want to know! Well, if any gals done it, I reckon you can."
"You shall see. I want one at once, Phil; order it by the first mail, please, and with all the necessary outfit."
"Your will is law, my dear, but I shall firsthave to learn where to send the order and exactly what to get."
"Let me attend to it. I can order direct from the store in which I worked; they sold everything of the kind."
"There'll be no mail eastward till to-morrow. Won't you oblige your husband, at once, by going to the house, and making a picture of yourself, on a lounge, with your eyes shut?"
"Yes—if I must. But oh, what lots of fun I shall have with that camera!"
Caleb's eyes followed Grace to the door; then he said:—
"Been workin' about four hours, harder'n I ever see a Sunday-school librarian work, looked tired almost to death, an' yet full to the eyes with the fun she's goin' to have. Ah, that's what health can do for human nature. I wonder if you two ever know how to thank Heaven that you are as you are—both well-built an' healthy? 'Pears to me that if I was either of you, I'd be wicked enough, about a hundred times a day, to put up the Pharisee's prayer an' thank Heaven that I was not like other men."
"No man can be everything, Caleb," said Philip. "I don't doubt that there are thousands of men who'd gladly exchange their health for your abilities."
"Well, I s'pose it's human nature, an' p'r'aps divine purpose too, that folks should hanker most for what they haven't got; if it wa'n't so, ev'rybody'd be a stick-in-the-mud all his life, an' nobody'd amount to much; but I do tell you that for a man to spend most of his grown-up years in makin' of himself as useful a machine as he can, an' not especially with a view to Number One either, an' all the time bein' reminded that he hain't got enough steam in his b'iler to work the machine except by fits an' starts, an' there don't seem to be any way of gettin' up more steam except by gettin' a new b'iler, which ain't possible in the circumstances, why, it's powerful tough, an' that's a fact."
"We can't all run thousand-horse-power engines, Caleb," said Philip, hoping to console his friend. "If we could, I'm afraid a great lot of the world's necessary work would go undone. Watches, worked with what might be called half-mouse-power, are quite as necessaryand useful in their way as big clocks run by ton weights; and a sewing machine, worked by a woman's foot, can earn quite as much, over running expenses, as a plough with a big horse in front and a big man behind it."
"Like enough. But the trouble with me is that the machine I've been makin' o' myself is the kind that needs an awful lot o' power, an' the power ain't there an' can't be put there."
"There are plenty more machines with exactly the same defect, old chap," said Philip, with a sigh, "so you've no end of company in your trouble. I could tell you of a machine of my own that lacks the proper power—sufficient steam, as you've expressed it."
"I want to know! An' you the pictur' of health!"
"Oh, yes. Health is invaluable, so far as it goes, but 'tisn't everything. Going back to steam for the sake of illustration, you know it comes of several other things—water, a boiler, some fuel, and draught, each in proper proportion to all the others. I don't doubt there's a similar combination necessary to human force, and its application, and that I haven't the secretof it, for I know I've failed at work I've most wanted to do, and succeeded best at what I liked least."
"Reckon you must have hated storekeepin' then, for you've made a powerful go of it."
"Thank you; I'm not ashamed to confess to you that 'tis the last business in the world that I'd have selected."
"Well, as to that, there's no difference of opinion between us, an' yet, here I've been storekeepin'—an' not for myself either—'most twenty year."
"And doing it remarkably well, too. As to not doing it for yourself, you may change your position and have an interest in the business whenever you wish it. I'm astonished that my uncle didn't say the same to you."
"But he did—after his fashion. He meant fair, but I said 'No,' for I hadn't given up hopes of what I'd wanted to do, so I didn't want to give the store all my waking hours, as an owner ought to do most of the time."
"Indeed he ought. If it isn't an impertinent question, what had you selected as your life's work?"
"The last thing you'd suspect me of, I s'pose. Long ago—before the war—I set my heart on bein' a great preacher, an' on beginnin' by gettin' a first-class education. I don't need to tell you that I missed both of 'em about as far as a man could. I wasn't overconceited about 'em at the start, for about that time there was a powerful movement in our denomination for an educated ministry. We had a few giants in the pulpit, but for ev'ry one of 'em there was dozens of dwarfs that made laughin'-stocks of 'emselves an' the church. Well, I was picked out as a young man with enough head-piece to take in an education an' with the proper spirit an' feelin' to use it well after I'd got it. Just then the war broke out, an' I went to it; when I got back I had a crippled leg, an' a dull head, an' a heavy heart—afterwards I found 'twas the liver instead of the heart, but that didn't make me any the less stupid. The upshot was that I was kind o' dropped as a candidate for the ministry, an' that made me sicker yet, an' I vowed that I'd get there in the course o' time, if I could get back my health an' senses. Once in a while,for many years, I had hopes; then again I'd get a knock-down—an extry hard lot o' chills an' fevers, or some other turn of malary that made my mind as blank an' flat as a new slate. I tried to educate myself, bein' rather old to go to school or college, an' I plodded through lots o' books, but I had to earn my livin' besides, an'—well, I reckon you can see about how much time a man workin' in a store has for thinkin' about what he's read."
"Oh, can't I!"
"An' you know, now, what losin' health an' not findin' it again has been to me."
"Indeed I do, and you've my most hearty sympathy. Perhaps good health would have seen you through; perhaps not. Your experience is very like mine, in some respects. I didn't start with the purpose of being a preacher, but I was going to become educated so well that whenever I had a message of any sort to give to the world,—for every man occasionally has one, you know,—I should be able to do it in a manner that would command attention. I was fortunate enough to get into a business position in which my duties werealmost mechanical, so at night my mind was fresh enough for reading and study. My wife's tastes were very like my own, so we read and studied together; but my message has never come, and here I am where the only writing I'll ever do will be in account books and business correspondence. As to my art studies—"
"They help you to arrange goods on the shelves in a way that attracts attention; there can't be any doubt about that," Caleb interrupted.
"Thank you, Caleb. That is absolutely the first and only commendation that my art education has ever earned for me, and I assure you that I shall remember and prize it forever."
"I'm not an art-sharp," said Caleb, "but I shouldn't wonder if I could show you lots more signs of what you've learned an' think haven't come to anythin'. Same way with literature; nobody in this town, but you an' your wife, could an' would have got up that circulatin' library, an' knowed the names o' three hundred good books for it. Other towns'll hear of it, an' men there'll take up the idea—"
"Which was yours—not ours."
"Never mind; ideas don't come to anythin' till they're froze into facts. Other merchants'll hear of the library an' write you for names o' books an' other p'ints, an' the thing'll go on an' on till it'll amount to more than most any book that was ever writ. Bein' set on makin' a hit in literature an' art an' fetchin' up at dressin' store-shelves an' settin' up a circulatin' library reminds me of Jake Brockleband's steam engine. You hain't met Jake, I reckon?"
"I don't recall the name."
"He's in the next county below us, near the mouth of the crick. He goes in these parts by the name of the Great American Traveller, for he's seen more countries than anybody else about here, an' it all came through a steam engine. It 'pears that years ago Jake, who was a Yankee with a knack at anythin' that was mechanical, was picked out by some New Yorkers to go down to Brazil to preserve pineapples on a large scale for the American market: he was to have a big salary and some shares of the company's stock. Part of his outfit was a little steam engine an' b'iler an'two copper kettles as big as the lard kettles in your pork-house. Well, he got to work, with the idee o' makin' his fortune in a year or two, an' pretty soon he started a schooner load o' canned pineapples up North; but most o' the cans got so het up on the way that they busted, an' when the company found how bizness was, why, 'twas the comp'ny's turn to get het up an' bust. Jake couldn't get his salary, so he 'tached the engine an' kettles, an' looked about for somethin' to do with 'em. He shipped 'em up to a city in Venezuela, where there was plenty of cocoanut oil and potash to be had cheap, and started out big at soap-makin', but pretty soon he found that the Venezuelans wouldn't buy soap at any price: they hadn't been educated up to the use of such stuff. But there wa'n't no give-up blood in Jake, so he packed the engine an' soap over to a big town in Colombia—next country to Venezuela,—an' started a swell laundry, I b'lieve he called it,—a place where they wash clothes at wholesale. He 'lowed that as Colombia was a very hot country, an' the people was said to be of old Spanish stockan' quite up to date, there'd be a powerful lot o' stockin's an' underclothes to be washed. Soon after he'd hung out his shingle, though, he heerd that no Colombians wore underclothes, an' mighty few of 'em wore socks.
"Well, 'Never say die' was Jake's family brand, so he built a boat with paddle-wheels an' fitted the steam engine to it, an' started in the passenger steamboat business on a Colombian river; the big copper kettles he fixed, one on each side, with awnin's over 'em, to carry passengers' young ones, so they couldn't crawl about an' tumble overboard. He did a good business for a spell, but all of a sudden the revolution season come on an' a gang of the rebels seized his boat, an' the gov'ment troops fired on 'em an' sunk it.
"But Jake managed to save the engine an' kettles, an' thinkin' 'twas about time to go north for a change, he got his stuff up to New Orleans, where he got another little boat built to fit the engine, an' started up-stream in the tradin'-boat business. He got along an' along, an' then up the Missouri River; but when he got up near the mouth of our crick he ran on asnag, close inshore, that ripped the bottom an' sides off o' the boat an' didn't leave nothin' that could float.
"That might have been a deadener, if Jake had been of the dyin' kind, but he wasn't; an' as he was wrecked alongside of a town an' a saw-mill, he kept his eye peeled for business, an' pretty soon he'd put up a slab shanty, an' got a little circular saw, for his engine to work, an' turned out the first sawed shingles ever seen in these parts, an' when folks saw that they didn't curl up like cut shingles, he got lots o' business an' is keepin' it right along.
"''Tain't makin' me a millionnaire,' he says, 'an' the sight o' pineapples would make me tired, but at last I've struck a job that me an' the engine fits to a T, an' an angel couldn't ask more'n that, if he was in my shoes.'"
"That story, Caleb," said Philip, "is quite appropriate to my case. But see here, old chap, didn't it ever occur to you to apply it to yourself?"
"Can't say that it did," Caleb replied. "What put that notion into your head?"
"Everybody and everything, my own eyesincluded. You started to be a preacher—not merely for the sake of talking, but for the good that your talk would do. I hear from every one that for many years you've been everybody's friend, doing all sorts of kind, unselfish acts for the good of other people. Mr. Grateway says that your work does more good than his preaching, and Doctor Taggess says you cure as many sick people as he. It seems to me that your disappointments, like Jake Brockleband's, have resulted in your finding a place that fits you to a T."
"I want to know! Well, I'm glad to hear it—from you. Kind o' seems, then, as if you an' me was in the same boat, don't it?"
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AS the spring days lengthened there was forced upon Grace a suspicion, which soon ripened into a conviction, that the West was very hot. She had known hot days in the East; for is there in the desert of Sahara any air hotter than that which overlies the treeless, paved streets, walled in by high structures of brick, stone, and iron, of the city of New York? But in New York the wind, on no matter how hot a day, is cool and refreshing; at Claybanks and vicinity the wind was sometimes like the back-draught of a furnace, and almost as wilting. To keep the wind out of the house—not to give it every opportunity to enter, as had been the summer custom in the East—became Grace's earnest endeavor, but with little success. At times it seemed to her that the heat was destroying her vitality; her husband, too,feared for her health and insisted that she should go East to spend the summer; but Grace insisted that she would rather shrivel and melt than go away from her husband, so Philip appealed to Doctor Taggess, who said:—
"Quite womanly, and wifely, and also sensible, physiologically, for no one can become climate-proof out here if he dodges any single season. If your wife will follow my directions for a few months, she will be able to endure next season's heat well enough to laugh at it. Indeed, it might help her through the coming summer to make excuses to laugh at it: she's lucky enough to know how to laugh at slight provocation."
But the dust! Grace could remember days when New York was dusty, and any one who has encountered a cloud of city dust knows that it is of a quality compared with which the dust of country roads is the sublimation of purity. Nevertheless, the dust at Claybanks had some eccentric methods of motion. For it to rise in a heavy, sullen cloud whenever a wagon passed through a street was bad enough, especially if the windwere in the direction of the house. Almost daily, however, and many times a day, it was picked up by little whirlwinds that came from no one knew where, and an inverted cone of dust, less than a foot in diameter at the base, but rapidly increasing in width to the height of fifty or more feet, would dash rapidly along a street, or across one, picking up all sorts of small objects in its way—leaves, bits of paper, sometimes even bark and chips. At first Grace thought these whirlwinds quite picturesque, but when one of them dashed across her garden, and broke against the side of the house, and deposited much of itself through the open windows, the lover of the picturesque suddenly began to extemporize window-nettings.
With the heat and the dust came a plague of insects and one of reptiles. One day the white sugar on the table seemed strangely iridescent with amber, which on investigation resolved itself into myriads of tiny reddish yellow ants. Caleb, who was appealed to, placed a cup of water under each table leg, which abated the plague, but the cups did not "compose" with the table and the rug.Bugs of many kinds visited the house, by way of the windows and doors, until excluded by screens. At times the garden seemed fuller of toads than of plants, and not long afterward Grace was frightened almost daily by snakes. That the reptiles scurried away rapidly, apparently as frightened as she, did not lessen her fear of them. She expressed her feelings to Doctor Taggess, who said:—
"Don't let them worry you. They're really wonderfully retiring by disposition. This country is alive with them, but in my thirty years of experience I've never been called to a case of snake-bite."
"But, Doctor, isn't there any means of avoiding the torment of—snakes, toads, bugs, and ants?"
"Only one, that I know of—'tis philosophy. Try to think of them as illustrations of the marvellous fecundity of the great and glorious West."
"How consoling!"
"I don't wonder you're sarcastic about it. Still, they'll disappear in the course of time, as they have from the older states."
"But when?"
"Oh, when the country becomes thoroughly subdued and tilled."
"Again I must say, 'How consoling!'"
Besides the wind, and dust, and insects, and reptiles, there was the sun, for Jethro Somerton had never planted a tree near his house. Tree-roots had a way of weakening foundations, he said; besides, trees would grow tall in the course of time, and perhaps attract the lightning. Still more, trees shaded roofs, so the spring and autumn rains remained in the shingles to cause dampness and decay, instead of drying out quickly.
But her own house seemed cool by comparison with some which she entered in the village and in the farming districts: houses such as most new settlers in the West have put up with their own hands and as quickly as possible; houses innocent of lath and plaster, and with only inch-thick wooden walls, upon which the sun beat so fiercely that by midday the inner surface of the wall almost blistered the hand that touched it. Not to have been obliged to enter such houses would have spared Gracemuch discomfort, but it was the hospitable custom of the country to hail passers-by, in the season of open doors and windows, and Grace, besides being bound by the penalties peculiar to general favorites everywhere, was alive to the fear of being thought "stuck up" by any one.
Quickly she uprooted many delicate, graceful vines which she had planted to train against the sides of her own house, and replaced them with seeds of more rampant varieties. For days she made a single room of the house fairly endurable by keeping in it a large block of ice, brought from the ice-house by Philip in mid-morning; but the season's stock of the ice-house had not been estimated with a view to such drafts, so for the sake of the "truck" in cold storage she felt obliged to discontinue the practice. Wet linen sheets hung near the windows and open doors afforded some relief; but when other sufferers heard of them and learned their cost, and ejaculated "Goodness me!" or something of similar meaning, Grace was compelled to feel aristocratic and uncomfortable. She expressedto Caleb and to Doctor Taggess her pity for sufferers by the heat, and asked whether nothing could be done in alleviation.
"My dear woman, they don't suffer as much as you imagine," the Doctor replied. "In the first place, they are accustomed to the climate, as you are not; most of them were born in it. Another cooling fact is that neither men nor women wear as much clothing in hot weather as you Eastern people. They, or most of them, are always hard at work, and therefore always perspiring, which is nature's method of keeping people fairly comfortable in hot weather. I don't doubt that I suffer far more as I drive about the county, doing no harder work than holding the reins, than any farmer whom I see ploughing in the fields."
"I'm very glad to hear it, for their sakes, though not for your own. But how about the sick, and the poor little babies?"
"Ah, this is a sad country for sick folks, and for weaklings of any kind. Stifle in winter—roast in summer; that is about the usual way. Imagine, if you can, how an honestphysician feels when he's called to cases of sickness in some houses that you've seen."
"Caleb," Grace said, "was it as hot in the South, during the war, as it is out here?"
"No," said Caleb, promptly, "though the Eastern men complained a great deal."
"What did the soldiers do when they became sick in hot weather?"
"They died, generally, unless they was shipped up North, or to some of the big camps of hospitals, where they could get special attention."
"But until then were there no ways of shielding them from the heat of the sun?"
"Oh, yes. If the camp hospital was a tent, it had a fly—an extra thickness of canvas, stretched across it to shade the roof an' sides. Then, if any woods was near by, and usually there was,—there's more woodland in old Virginia than in this new state,—some forked sticks an' poles an' leafy tree-boughs would be fetched in, an' fixed so that the ground for eight or ten feet around would be shady."
"Do you remember just how it was done?"
"Do I? Well, I reckon I was on detailsat that sort o' work about as often as anybody."
"Won't you do me a great favor? Hire a man and wagon to-morrow—or to-day, if there's time—and go to some of our woodland near town, and get some of the material, and put up such a shade on the south and west sides of our house; that is, if you don't object."
"Object? 'Twould be great fun; make me feel like a boy again, I reckon. But I ought to remind you that the thing won't look a bit pretty, two or three days later, when the leaves begin to fade. Dead leaves an' a white house don't 'compose,' as I heard you say one day to a woman about two calicoes that was contrary to each other. Besides, 'tain't necessary, for double-width sheetin', or two widths of it side by side, an' right out of the store here, would make a better awnin', to say nothin' o' the looks, an' you can afford it easy enough."
"Perhaps, but there are other people who can't, and I want to show off a tree-bough awning to some who need contrivances like it."
"I—see," said Caleb, departing abruptly, while Doctor Taggess exclaimed:—
"And here I've been practising in some of those bake-ovens of houses for thirty years, and never thought of that very simple means of relief! Good day, Mrs. Somerton; I'll go home and tell my wife what I've heard, then I think I'll read some of the penitential Psalms and some choice bits of Proverbs on the mental peculiarities of fools."
The arbor was completed by dark, and on the next day, and for a fortnight afterward, almost every woman who entered the store was invited to step into the garden and see how well, and yet cheaply, the house was shaded from the sun. All were delighted, though some warned the owner that the shade would kill her vines, whereupon Doctor Taggess, who spent parts of several hours in studying the structure, suggested that if the probable copyists were to set their posts and frameworks securely, they might serve as support for quick-growing hardy vines that might be "set" in the spring of the following year, and clamber all over the skeleton roof beforethe hottest days came. Thereupon Grace volunteered to write a lot of nursery men to learn what vines, annual or perennial, grew most rapidly and cost least, and to leave the replies in the store for general inspection.
"Doctor," Grace asked during one of the physician's visits of inspection, "where did the settlers of this country come from, that they never think of certain of their own necessities? Don't scold me, please; I'm not going to abuse your darling West; besides, 'tis my West as well as yours, for every interest I have is here. But Eastern farmers and villagers plant shade trees and vines near their houses, unless they can afford to build piazzas,—and perhaps in addition to piazzas. They shade their village streets, too, and many of their highways. Aren't such things the custom in other parts of the United States?"
"They certainly are in my native state, which is Pennsylvania," the Doctor replied, "and some of the handsomest villages and farm-houses I've seen are in Ohio and Kentucky. But I imagine the work was done bythe second or third or fourth generation; I don't believe the original settlers could find the time and strength for such effort. As to our people, they came from a dozen or more states—East, West, and Middle, with a few from the South. I honestly believe they're quite as good as the average of settlers of any state, but I shouldn't wonder if you've failed to comprehend at short acquaintance the settler or the farmer class in general. In a new country one usually finds only people who've been elbowed out of older ones, either by misfortune or bad management, or through families having become too large to get a living out of their old homesteads, and with no land near by that was within reach of their pockets. There are as many causes in farming as in any other business for men trying to make a start somewhere else, but a starter in the farming line is always very poor. Almost any family you might name in this county brought itself and all its goods and implements in a single two-horse wagon. Your things, Caleb told me, filled the greater part of a railway car. Quite a difference, eh?"
"Yet most of the things were ours, when we thought ourselves very poor."
"Just so. So you can't imagine the poverty of these people. They lived in their wagons until they had some sort of roof over their heads; a man who could spend a hundred dollars for lumber and nails and window-sash passed for one of the well-to-do class. Some of them had no money whatever; their nearest neighbors would help them put up a log house, but afterward they had to work pretty hard to keep the wolf from the door until they could grow something to eat and to sell. They had hard times, of so many varieties, that now when they are sure of three meals a day, some cows, pigs, and chickens, credit at a store, and a crop in the ground, they think themselves well off, no matter how many discomforts they may have to endure."
"But, Doctor, they're human; they have hearts and feelings."
"Yes, but they have more endurance than anything else. It has become second nature to them; so some of them would long endure a pain or discomfort rather than relieve it.Doubt it, if you like, but I am speaking from a great mass of experience. I've heard much of the endurance of the North American Indian, but the Indian is a baby to these farmer-settlers. Endurance is in their every muscle, bone, and nerve, and they pass it down to their children. Eastern babies would scream unceasingly at maladies that some of our youngsters bear without a whimper. Many of the Presidents of the United States were born of just such stock; of course they were examples of the survival of the fittest, for any who are weak in such a country must go to the wall in a hurry, if they chance to escape the grave—and the graveyards are appallingly full."
"And 'tis the women and children that fill them!" Grace said.
"Yes," assented the Doctor. "If I could have my way, no women and children would be allowed in a new section until the men had made decent, comfortable homes, with crops ready for harvest, all of which shows what an impracticable old fool a man of experience may become."
"But a little work, by the men of some ofthese places, would make the women and children so much more comfortable!"
"Yes, but the women and children don't think to ask it, and the men don't notice the deficiency."
"But why shouldn't they? Many men elsewhere are perpetually contriving to make their families more comfortable."
"Yes, but seldom unless the necessity of doing so is forced to their attention in some way. Besides, to do so, they must have the contriving, inventive faculty, which is one of the scarcest in human nature!"
"Oh, Doctor! I've often heard that we Americans are the most inventive people in the world."
"So we are, according to the Patent Office reports, though the patents don't average one to a hundred people, and not more than one in ten of them is worth developing. I am right in saying that invention—except, perhaps, of lies—is among the rarest of human qualities. It requires quick perception and a knack at construction, as well as no end of adaptiveness and energy, all of which are themselves rare qualities. Countless generations ached seven oreight hours of every twenty-four, until a few years ago, when some one invented springy bottoms for beds. Countless generations of men had to cut four times as much wood as now, and innumerable women smoked their eyes out, cooking over open fires, before any one thought of making stoves of stone or of iron plates. Almost every labor-saving contrivance you've seen might have been perfected before it was, if the inventive faculty hadn't been so rare. Why, half of the newest contrivances of the day are so simple and obvious, that smart men, when they see them, want to shoot themselves for not having themselves invented them."
"So, to come back to what we were talking of—the prospect of country women and children being made more comfortable is extremely dismal."
"Not necessarily; country people have their special virtues, though many of them have about as little inventive capacity as so many cows. Still, they're great as copyists. For instance, my wife told me that every girl in the county wanted a dress exactly like one you made of two bits of dead-stock calico. They'realready copying, I'm glad to say, your brushwood shade for the sides of the house. So, if you'll go right on inventing—"
"But I didn't invent the brushwood shade; you yourself heard Caleb tell me of it."
"Oh, yes, after you'd dragged it out of his memory, where it had been doing nothing for almost a quarter of a century."
"I'm sure I didn't design the combination of calicoes; the idea was far older than the calicoes themselves."
"Perhaps, but you adapted it, as you did Caleb's army hospital shade. Don't ever forget that most so-called inventors, including the very greatest, are principally adapters. 'Tis plain to see that you have the faculty, so don't waste any time in pitying those who haven't; just go on, perceiving and inventing—or adapting, if you prefer to call it so. Try it on everything, from clothes and cookery to religion, and you may depend on most of the people hereabouts to copy you to the full measure of their ability. There! I don't think you'll want to hear the sound of my voice again in a month. Caleb isn't the only man who finds it hard to get off of a hobby."
leaves
FOR some days after Grace's camera arrived there were many customers and commercial travellers who had to wait for hours to see the one person with whom they preferred to transact business in the store, for a camera is procrastination's most formidable rival in the character of a thief of time. Grace made "snap-shots" at almost everything, and John Henry Bustpodder, the most enterprising of Philip's competitors, took great satisfaction in disseminating the statement that he reckoned the new store-keeper's wife was running to seed, for she'd been seen chasing a whirlwind and trying to shoot it with a black box.
But the Somerton customers regarded the general subject from a different standpoint, for Grace surprised some of them with pictures taken, without their knowledge, of themselves in their wagons, or in front of their houses, oron the way to church. They were not of high quality; but as the best the natives had previously seen were some dreadful tintypes perpetrated annually by a man who frequented county fairs, they were doubly satisfactory, for she would not accept pay for them. She surprised herself, also, sometimes beyond expression, by some of her failures, which were quite as dreadful as anything she had dreamed after almost stepping on snakes—people without heads, or with hands larger than their bodies, or with other faces superimposed upon their own. She also made the full quantity and variety of other blunders peculiar to amateurs, and she stained her finger-tips so deeply that Philip pretended to suspect her of the cigarette habit; but she persisted until she succeeded in getting some pictures which she was not ashamed to send to her aunt and to some of her acquaintances in the city.
Caleb, who endeavored to master everything mechanical and technical that came within his view, took so great interest in the camera, even begging permission to see the developing process, that Philip one day said to him:—
"Caleb, if your interest in that plaything continues, I shan't be surprised if some day I hear you advance the theory that even photography is a means of grace," and Caleb cheerily replied:—
"Like enough, for anythin's a means o' grace, if you know how to use it right."
"Even snakes?" Grace asked, with a smile that was checked by a shudder.
"Of course. The principal use o' snakes, so far as I can see, is to scare lots o' people almost to death, once in a while, an' a good scare is the only way o' makin' some people see the error o' their ways."
"H'm!" said Philip. "That's rather rough on my wife, eh?"
"Oh, no," said Caleb. "Some folks—mentionin' no names, an' hopin' no offence'll be took, as I once read somewhere—some folks are so all-fired nice, an' good, an' lucky, an' pretty much everythin' else that's right, that I do believe they need to be scared 'most to death once in a while, just to remind 'em how much they've got to be thankful for, an' how sweet it is to live."
Grace blushed, and said:—
"Thank you, Caleb; but if you're right, I'm afraid I'm doomed to see snakes frequently for the remainder of my natural life."
"Speakin' o' snakes as a means o' grace," said Caleb, "p'r'aps 'twould int'rest you to know that some awful drunkards in this county was converted by snakes. Yes'm; snakes in their boots scared them drunkards into the kingdom."
"In—their—boots?" murmured Grace, with a wild stare. "How utterly dreadful! I didn't suppose that the crawling things—"
"Your education in idioms hasn't been completed, my dear," said Philip. "'Snakes in their boots' is Westernese for delirium tremens."
"Oh, Caleb! How could you? But do tell me how photography is to be a means of grace."
"I'll do it—as soon as I can find out. I'm askin' the question myself, just now, an' I reckon I'll find the answer before I stop tryin'. There don't seem to be anythin' about your camera that'll spile, an' I've read that book o' instructions through an' through, till I've got it 'most by heart. Would you mind lettin' me try to make a pictur' or two some day?"
"Not in the least. You're welcome to the camera and outfit at almost any time."
Meanwhile Grace continued to "have lots of fun" with the camera. She resolved to have a portrait collection of all the babies in the town; and as she promised prints to the mothers of the subjects, she had no difficulty in obtaining "sittings." To the great delight of the mothers, the pictures were usually far prettier than the babies, for Grace smiled and gesticulated and chirruped at the infants until she cajoled some expression into little faces usually blank. Incidentally she got some mother pictures that impressed her deeply and made her serious and thoughtful for hours at a time.
Her greatest success, however, according to the verdict of the people, was a print with which she dashed into the store one day, exclaiming to her husband and Caleb:—
"Do look at this! I exposed the plate one Sunday morning, weeks ago, and then mislaid the holder, so that I didn't find it until to-day."
It was a picture of the front of the church, taken a few moments before service began—themoments, dear to country congregations, in which the people, too decorous to whisper in church, yet longing to chat with acquaintances whom they had not met in days or weeks, gathered in little groups outside the building. The light had been exactly right; also the distance and the focus, and the people so well distributed that the picture was almost as effective as if its material had been arranged and "composed" by an artist.
"Je—ru—salem!" exclaimed Caleb. "Why, the people ain't much bigger than tacks, an' yet I can pick out ev'ry one of 'em by name. Well, well!"
He took the print to the door and studied it more closely. When he returned with it, he continued:—
"That's a great pictur'. It ought to have a name."
"H'm!" said Philip, winking at his wife, "how would this do: 'Not exactly a means of grace, but within fifteen minutes of it'—eh?"
"It's a mighty sight nigher than that," said Caleb, solemnly, "besides bein' the best'throw-in' that's come to light yet. Give copies of that away to customers that don't ever go to church, an' they'll begin to go, hopin' they'll stand a chance o' bein' took in the next; an' if they get under the droppin's of the sanctuary, why, Brother Grateway an' the rest of us'll try to do the rest. Grateway needs some encouragement o' that kind, for he's sort o' down in the mouth about nothin' comin' of his efforts with certain folks in this town. He's dropped warnin's and exhortations on 'em, in season an' out o' season, for quite a spell, but he was tellin' me only yesterday that it seemed like the seed in the parable, that was sowed on stony ground. An' say—Je—ru—salem!—when did you say you took that?"
"Two or three weeks ago," Grace replied.
"An' you didn't develop it till to-day?"
"Not until to-day."
"An' the pictur' has been on the plate all that time?"
"In one way, yes. That is, the plate had been exposed at the subjects, and they had been impressed upon it by the light, althoughit still looked plain and blank, until the developing fluid was poured upon it."
"How long would it stay so, an' yet be fit to be developed?"
"Oh, years, I suppose. Travellers in Africa and elsewhere have carried such plates, and exposed them, and not developed them until they returned to civilization, perhaps a year or two later."
"I want to know! Got any other plate as old as the one this pictur' was made from?"
"Yes, one; it was in the other side of the same holder."
"Would you mind developin' it to-night, in your kitchen, before company? Nobody that's fussy—only Brother Grateway."
"You know I'll do anything to oblige you and him, Caleb."
"Hooray! Excuse me, please, while I go off an' make sure o' his comin'."
"What do you suppose is on Caleb's mind now?" Grace asked, as Caleb and the picture disappeared.
"I give it up," Philip replied, "though Ishan't be surprised if 'tis something relative to a camera being a means of grace."
"I can't imagine how."
"Perhaps not, but let's await—literally speaking—developments."
"He'll be here," said Caleb, a few moments later; he looked gleeful as he said it, and shuffled his feet in a manner so suggestive of dancing that Grace pretended to be shocked, at which Caleb reddened. During the remainder of the afternoon he looked as happy as if he had collected a long-deferred bill, or given the dreaded "malary" a new repulse. He hurried Philip and Grace home to supper, so that the kitchen might sooner be free for photographic purposes, and dusk had scarcely lost itself in darkness when he closed the store and appeared at the house with Pastor Grateway, who expressed himself exuberantly concerning the picture of his church and congregation; but Caleb cut him short by saying:—
"Ev'rythin' ready, Mis' Somerton? Good! Come along, Brother Grateway—you, too, Philip."
While the trays and chemicals were being arranged, Caleb explained to the pastor that photographs were first taken on glass plates, chemically treated, and that the picture proper was made by light passing through a plate to the surface of sensitized paper. When the red lamp was lighted, Caleb continued:—
"Now, when Mis' Somerton lays a plate in that tray, you'll see it's as blank as a sheet o' paper, or as the faces o' some o' the ungodly that you've been preachin' at an' laborin' with, year in and year out. You can't see nothin' on it, no matter if you use a hundred-power magnifyin' glass. But the pictur' 's there all the same; it was took weeks ago; might ha' been months or years, but it's there, an' yet the thing goes on lookin' blank till the developer is poured on it—just like Mis' Somerton's doin' now. Now keep your eye on it. It don't seem to mind, at first—goes on lookin' as blank as the faces o' case-hardened sinners at a revival meetin'. But bimeby—pretty soon—"
"See those spots!" exclaimed the minister. "Eh? Why, to be sure. Well, a photographplate is a good deal like measles an' religion—it first breaks out in spots. But keep on lookin'—see it come!"
"Wonderful! Wonderful!" exclaimed the minister.
"Seemed miraculous to me, first time I see it," said Caleb. "I'd have been skeered if Mis' Somerton hadn't said 'twas all right, for no magic stories I ever read held a candle to it. But keep on lookin'. See one thing comin' after another, an' all of 'em comin' plainer an' stronger ev'ry minute? Could you 'a' b'lieved it, if you hadn't seen it with your own eyes? An' even now you've seen it, don't it 'pear 'bout as mysterious as the ways o' Providence? I've read all Mis' Somerton's book tells about it, an' a lot more in the cyclopeedy, but it ain't no less wonderful than it was."
"Absolutely marvellous!" replied the minister.
"That's what it is. Now, Brother Grateway, that plate was just like the people you was tellin' me 'bout yesterday, that you was clean discouraged over. You've been pilin' warnin's an' exhortations on 'em, an' they didn't seemto mind 'em worth a cent—'peared just as blank as they ever were. But the pictur' was there, an' there 'twas boun' to stay, as long as the plate lasted—locked up in them chemicals, to be sure, but there it was all the same, an' out it came when the developer was poured on an' soaked in. An' so, John Grateway, all that you've ever put into them people is there, somewhere—heaven only knows where an' how, for human natur' 's a mighty sight queerer than a photograph plate, an' to bring out what's in it takes about as many kinds o' developer as there are people. Mebbe you haven't got the right developer, but it's somewhere, waitin' for its time—mebbe it'll be a big scare, or a dyin' wife, or a mother's trouble. Religious talk rolled off o' me for years, like water from a duck's back, till one day I fell between two saw-logs in the crick, an' thought 'twas all up with me—that was the developer I needed. So when you say your prayers to-night, don't forget to give thanks for havin' seen a photograph plate developed, an' after this you go right on takin' pictur's, so to speak, with all your might, an' when you find you can't finish them, heartenyourself up by rememberin' that there's Somebody that knows millions of times as much about the developin' business as you do, an' gives His entire time an' attention to it."
"Photography is a means of grace, Caleb," said Philip, and Grace joined in the confession.