COBUS YERKS.
Little Cobus Yerks—his name was Jacob, but being a Dutchman, if not a double Dutchman, it was rendered in English Cobus—little Cobus, I say, lived on the banks of Sawmill River, where it winds close under the brow of the Raven Rock, an enormous precipice jutting out of the side of the famous Buttermilk Hill, of which the reader has doubtless often heard. It was a rude, romantic spot, distant from the high road, which, however, could be seen winding up the hill about three miles off. His nearest neighbours were at the same distance, and he seldom saw company except at night, when the fox and the weasel sometimes beat up his quarters, and caused a horrible cackling among the poultry.
One Tuesday, in the month of November, 1793, Cobus had gone in his wagon to the little market town on the river, from whence the boats plied weekly to New-York, with the produce of the neighbouring farmers. It was then a pestilent little place for running races, pitching quoits, and wrestling for gin slings; but I must do it the credit to say, that it is now a very orderly town, soberand quiet, save when Parson Mathias, who calls himself a son of thunder, is praying in secret, so as to be heard across the river. It so happened, that of all the days in the year, this was the very day a rumour had got into town, that I myself—the veritable writer of this true story—had been poisoned by a dish of Souchong tea, which was bought a great bargain of a pedler. There was not a stroke of work done in the village that day. The shoemaker abandoned his awl; the tailor his goose; the hatter his bowstring; and the forge of the blacksmith was cool from dawn till nightfall. Silent was the sonorous harmony of the big spinning wheel; silent the village song, and silent the fiddle of Master Timothy Canty, who passed his livelong time in playing tuneful measures, and catching bugs and butterflies. I must say something of Tim before I go on with my tale.
Master Timothy was first seen in the village, one foggy morning, after a drizzling, warm, showery night, when he was detected in a garret, at the extremity of the suburbs; and it was the general supposition that he had rained down in company with a store of little toads that were seen hopping about, as is usual after a shower. Around his garret were disposed a number of unframed pictures, painted on glass, as in the olden time, representing the Four Seasons, the old King of Prussia, and Prince Ferdinand of Brunswick, in their sharp-pointed cocked hats; the fat, bald-pated Marquis of Granby, the beautiful Constantia Phillips, anddivers others, not forgetting the renowned Kitty Fisher, who, I honestly confess, was my favourite among them all. The whole village poured into the garret to gaze at these chef d'œuvres; and it is my confirmed opinion, which I shall carry to the grave, that neither the gallery of Florence, Dresden, nor the Louvre, was ever visited by so many real amateurs. Besides the pictures, there were a great many other curiosities, at least curiosities to the simple villagers, who were always sure of being welcomed by Master Tim with a jest and a tune.
Master Tim, as they came to call him when they got to be a little acquainted, was a rare fellow, such as seldom rains down anywhere, much less on a country village. He was of “merry England,” as they call it—lucus a non lucendo—at least so he said and I believe, although he belied his nativity, by being the merriest rogue in the world, even when the fog was at the thickest. In truth, he was ever in a good humour, unless it might be when a rare bug or gorgeous butterfly, that he had followed through thick and thin, escaped his net at last. Then, to be sure, he was apt to call the recreant all the “vagabonds” he could think of. He was a middle-sized man, whose person decreased regularly, from the crown of his head to the—I was going to say, sole of his foot—but it was only to the commencement of the foot, to speak by the card. The top of his head was broad and flat, and so was his forehead, which took up at least two thirds of his face, that taperedoff suddenly to a chin, as sharp as the point of a triangle. His forehead was indeed a large field, diversified like the country into which he had rained down, with singular varieties of hill and dale, meadow and plough land, hedge and ditch, ravine and watercourse. It had as many points as a periwinkle. The brow projected exuberantly, though not heavily, over a pair of rascally little cross-firing, twinkling eyes, that, as the country people said, looked at least nine ways from Sunday. His teeth were white enough, but no two of them were fellows. But his head would have turned the brains of a phrenologist, in exploring the mysteries of its development; it was shaped somewhat like Stony Point—which everybody knows as the scene of a gallant exploit of Pennsylvanian Wayne—and had quite as many abruptnesses and quizzical protuberances to brag about. At the upper extremity of his forehead, as he assured us, he carried his money, in the shape of a piece of silver, three inches long and two wide, inserted there in consequence of a fracture he got by falling down a precipice in hot chase of a “vagabond of a beetle,” as he was pleased to call him. Descending towards terra firma, to wit, his feet, we find his body gradually diminishing to his legs, which were so thin, everybody wondered how they could carry the great head. But, like Captain Wattle, each had a foot at the end of it, full as large as the Black Dwarf. It is so long ago that I almost forget his costume. All I recollect is,that he never wore boots or pantaloons, but exhibited his spindles in all weathers in worsted stockings, and his feet in shoes, gorgeously caparisoned in a pair of square silver buckles, the only pieces of finery he ever displayed.
In the merry months of spring and summer, and early in autumn, Master Timothy was most of his time chasing bugs and butterflies about the fields, to the utter confusion of the people, who wondered what he could want with such trumpery. Being a genius and an idler by profession, I used to accompany him frequently in these excursions, for he was fond of me, and called me vagabond oftener than he did anybody else. He had a little net of green gauze, so constructed as to open and shut as occasion required, to entrap the small fry, and a box with a cork bottom, upon which he impaled his prisoners with true scientific barbarity, by sticking a pin in them. Thus equipped, this Don Quixote of butterfly catchers, with myself his faithful esquire, would sally out of a morning into the clovered meadows and flower-dotted fields, over brook, through tangled copse and briery dell, in chase of these gentlemen commoners of nature. Ever and anon, as he came upon some little retired nook, where nature, like a modest virgin, shrouded her beauties from the common view—a rocky glen, romantic cottage, rustic bridge, or brawling stream, he would take out his little portfolio, and pointing me to some conspicuous station to animate his little landscape, sketch it and me together, with amingled taste and skill I have never since seen surpassed. I figure in all his landscapes, although he often called me a vagabond, because he could not drill me into picturesque attitudes. But the finest sport for me, was to watch him creeping slily after a humming bird, the object of his most intense desires, half buried in the bliss of the dewy honeysuckle, and just as he was on the point of covering it with his net, to see the little vagrant flit away with a swiftness that made it invisible. It was an invaluable sight to behold Master Timothy stand wiping his continent of a forehead, and blessing the bird for a “little vagabond.” These were happy times, and at this moment I recall them, I hardly know why, with a melancholy yet pleasing delight.
During the winter season, Master Timothy was usually employed in the daytime painting pleasure sleighs, which, at that period, it was the fashion among the farmers to have as fine as fiddles. Timothy was a desperate hand at a true lover's knot, a cipher, or a wreath of flowers; and as for a blazing sun! he painted one for the squire, that was seriously suspected of melting all the snow in ten leagues round. He would go ten or a dozen miles to paint a sleigh, and always carried his materials on a board upon the top of his head—it was before the invention of high-crowned hats. Destiny had decreed he should follow this trade, and nature had provided him a head on purpose. It was as flat as a pancake. In the long winter evenings it was his pleasure to sit by the fireside, and tell enormousstories to groups of horrorstruck listeners. I never knew a man that had been so often robbed on Hounslow Heath, or had seen so many ghosts in his day, as Master Tim Canty. Peace to his ashes! he is dead, and, if report is to be credited, is sometimes seen on moonlight nights in the churchyard, with his little green gauze net, chasing the ghosts of moths and beetles, as he was wont in past times.
But it is high time to return to my story; for I candidly confess I never think of honest Tim that I don't grow as garrulous as an old lady, talking about the revolution and the Yagers. In all country villages I ever saw or heard of, whenever anything strange, new, horrible, or delightful happens, or is supposed to have happened, all the male inhabitants, not to say female, make for the tavern as fast as possible, to hear the news, or tell the news, and get at the bottom of the affair. I don't deny that truth is sometimes to be found at the bottom of a well; but in these cases she is generally found at the bottom of the glass. Be this as it may—when Cobus Yerks looked into the village inn, just to say How d'ye do to the landlady, he beheld a party of some ten or a dozen people, discussing the affair of my being poisoned with Souchong tea, which by this time had been extended to the whole family, not one of whom had been left alive by the bloody-minded damsel, Rumour.
Cobus could not resist the fascination of these horrors. He edged himself in among them, andafter a little while they were joined by Master Timothy, who, on hearing of the catastrophe of his old fellow-labourer in butterfly catching, had strode over a distance of two miles to our house to ascertain the truth of the story. He of course found it was a mistake, and had now returned with a nefarious design of frightening them all out of their wits by a story of more than modern horrors. By this time it was the dusk of the evening, and Cobus had a long way to travel before he could reach home. He had been so fascinated with the story, and the additions every moment furnished by various new comers, that he forgot the time till it began to grow quite dark; and then he was so horrorstruck at what he had heard, that he grew fast to his chair in the chimney corner, where he had intrenched himself. It was at this moment Master Timothy came in with the design aforesaid.
The whole party gathered round him to know if the story of the poisoning was true. Tim shook his head, and the shaking of such a head was awful. “What! all the family?” cried they, with one voice. “Every soul of them,” cried Tim, in a hollow tone—“every soul of them, poor creatures; and not only they, but all the cattle, horses, pigs, ducks, chickens, cats, dogs, and guinea hens, are poisoned.” “What! with Souchong tea?” “No—with coloquintida.” Coloquintida! the very name was enough to poison a whole generation of Christian people. “But the black bulldog!” criedTimothy, in a sepulchral voice, that curdled the very marrow of their innermost bones. “What of the black bulldog?” quoth little Cobus. “Why, they do say that he came to life again after laying six hours stone dead, and ran away howling like a d—l incarnate.” “A d—l incarnate!” quoth Cobus, who knew no more about the meaning of that fell word than if it had been Greek. He only knew it was something very terrible. “Yes,” replied Timothy; “and what's more, I saw where he jumped over the barnyard gate, and there was the print of a cloven foot, as plain as the daylight this blessed minute.” It was as dark as pitch, but the comparison was considered proof positive. “A cloven foot!” quoth Cobus, who squeezed himself almost into the oven, while the thought of going home all alone in the dark, past the churchyard, the old grave at the cross roads, and, above all, the spot where John Ryer was hanged for shooting the sheriff, smote upon his heart, and beat it into a jelly—at least it shook like one. What if he should meet the big black dog, with his cloven foot, who howled like a d—l incarnate! The thought was enough to wither the heart of a stone.
Cobus was a little, knock-kneed, broad-faced, and broad-shouldered Dutchman, who believed all things, past, present, and to come, concerning spooks, goblins, and fiends of all sorts and sizes, from a fairy to a giant. Tim Canty knew him of old, for he had once painted a sleigh for him, and frightened Cobus out of six nights' sleep, by thestory of a man that he once saw murdered by a highwayman on Hounslow Heath. Tim followed up the story of the black dog with several others, each more appalling than the first, till he fairly lifted Cobus's wits off the hinges, aided as he was by certain huge draughts upon a pewter mug, with which the little man reinforced his courage at short intervals. He was a true disciple of the doctrine that spirit and courage, that is to say, whiskey and valour were synonymous.
It now began to wax late in the evening, and the company departed, not one by one, but in pairs, to their respective homes. The landlady, a bitter root of a woman, and more than a match for half the men in the village, began to grow sleepy, as it was now no longer worth her while to keep awake. Gradually all became quiet within and without the house, except now and then the howling of a wandering cur, and the still more doleful moaning of the winds, accompanied by the hollow thumpings of the waves, as they dashed on the rocky shores of the river that ran hard by. Once, and once only, the cat mewed in the garret, and almost caused Cobus to jump out of his skin. The landlady began to complain that it grew late, and she was very sleepy; but Cobus would take no hints, manfully keeping his post in the chimney corner, till at last the good woman threatened to call up her two negroes, and have him turned neck and heels out of doors. For a moment the fear of the big black dog with the cloven foot was masteredby the fear of the two stout black men, and the spirit moved Cobus towards the door, lovingly hugging the stone jug, which he had taken care to have plentifully replenished with the creature. He sallied forth in those graceful curves, which are affirmed to constitute the true lines of beauty; and report says that he made a copious libation of the contents of the stone jug outside the door, ere the landlady, after assisting to untie his patient team, had tumbled him into his wagon. This was the last that was seen of Cobus Yerks.
That night his faithful, though not very obedient little wife, whom he had wedded at Tappan, on the famous sea of that name, and who wore a cap trimmed with pink ribands when she went to church on Sundays, fell asleep in her chair, as she sat anxiously watching his return. About midnight she waked, but she saw not her beloved Cobus, nor heard his voice calling her to open the door. But she heard the raven, or something very like it, screaming from the Raven Rock, the foxes barking about the house, the wind whistling and moaning among the rocks and trees of the mountain side, and a terrible commotion among the poultry, Cobus having taken the great house dog with him that day. Again she fell asleep, and waked not until the day was dawning. She opened the window, and looked forth upon as beautiful an autumnal morning as ever blessed this blessed country. The yellow sun threw a golden lustre over the many-tinted woods, painted by the cunninghand of Nature with a thousand varied dies; the smoke of the neighbouring farmhouses rose straight upward to heaven in the pure atmosphere, and the breath of the cattle mingled its warm vapour with the invisible clearness of the morning air. But what were all these beauties of delicious nature to the eye and the heart of the anxious wife, who saw that Cobus was not there?
She went forth to the neighbours to know if they had seen him, and they good-naturedly sallied out to seek him on the road that led from the village to his home. But no traces of him could be found, and they were returning with bad news for his anxious wife, when they bethought themselves of turning into a byroad that led to a tavern, that used whilome to attract the affections of honest Cobus, and where he was sometimes wont to stop and wet his whistle.
They had not gone far, when they began to perceive traces of the lost traveller. First his broad-brimmed hat, which he had inherited through divers generations, and which he always wore when he went to the village, lay grovelling in the dirt, crushed out of all goodly shape by the wheel of his wagon, which had passed over it. Next, they encountered the backboard of the wagon, ornamented with C. Y. in a true lover's knot, painted by Tim Canty, in his best style—and anon a little farther, a shoe, that was identified as having belonged to our hero, by having upward of three hundred hobnails in the sole, for he was a saving little fellow,though he would wet his whistle sometimes, in spite of all his wife and the minister could say. Proceeding about a hundred rods farther, to a sudden turn of the road, they encountered the wagon, or rather the fragments of it, scattered about and along in the highway, and the horses standing quietly against a fence, into which they had run the pole of the wagon.
But what was become of the unfortunate driver, no one could discover. At length, after searching some time, they found him lying in a tuft of blackberry briars, amid the fragments of the stone jug, lifeless and motionless. His face was turned upward, and streaked with seams of blood; his clothes torn, bloody, and disfigured with dirt; and his pipe, that he carried in the buttonholes of his waistcoat, shivered all to naught. They made their way to the body, full of sad forebodings, and shook it, to see if any life remained. But it was all in vain—there seemed neither sense nor motion there. “Maybe, after all,” said one, “he is only in a swound—here is a little drop of the spirits left in the bottom of the jug—let us hold it to his nose, it may bring him to life.”
The experiment was tried, and wonderful to tell, in a moment or two, Cobus, opening his eyes, and smacking his lips with peculiar satisfaction, exclaimed, “Some o' that, boys!” A little shaking brought him to himself, when being asked to give an account of the disaster of his wagon and his stone jug, he at first shook his head mysteriously, anddemurred. Being, however taken to the neighbouring tavern, and comforted a little with divers refreshments, he was again pressed for his story, when, assuming a face of awful mystification, he began as follows:—
“You must know,” said Cobus, “I started rather late from town, for I had been kept there by—by business; and because, you see, I was waiting for the moon to rise, that I might find my way home in the dark night. But it grew darker and darker, until you could not see your hand before your face, and at last I concluded to set out, considering I was as sober as a deacon, and my horses could see their way blindfold. I had not gone quite round the corner, where John Ryer was hung for shooting Sheriff Smith, when I heard somebody coming, pat, pat, pat, close behind my wagon. I looked back, but I could see nothing, it was so dark. By-and-by, I heard it again, louder and louder, and then I confess I began to be a little afeard. So I whipped up my horses a quarter of a mile or so, and then let them walk on. I listened, and pat, pat, pat, went the noise again. I began to be a good deal frightened, but considering it could be nothing at all, I thought I might as well take a small dram, as the night was rather chilly, and I began to tremble a little with the cold. I took but a drop, as I am a living sinner, and then went on quite gayly; but pat, pat, pat, went the footsteps ten times louder and faster than ever. And then! then I looked back, and saw a pair of saucer eyesjust at the tail of my wagon, as big and as bright as the mouths of a fiery furnace, dancing up and down in the air like two stage lamps in a rough road.
“By gosh, boys, but you may depend I was scared now! I took another little dram, and then made the whip fly about the ears of old Pepper and Billy, who cantered away at a wonderful rate, considering. Presently, bang! something heavy jumped into the wagon, as if heaven and earth were coming together. I looked over my shoulder, and the great burning eyes were within half a yard of my back. The creature was so close that I felt its breath blowing upon me, and it smelled for all one exactly like brimstone. I should have jumped out of the wagon, but, somehow or other, I could not stir, for I was bewitched as sure as you live. All I could do was to bang away upon Pepper and Billy, who rattled along at a great rate up hill and down, over the rough roads, so that if I had not been bewitched, I must have tumbled out to a certainty. When I came to the bridge, at old Mangham's, the black dog, for I could see something black and shaggy under the goggle eyes, all at once jumped up, and seated himself close by me on the bench, snatched the whip and reins out of my hands like lightning. Then looking me in the face, and nodding, he whispered something in my ear, and lashed away upon Pepper and Billy, till they seemed to fly through the air. From that time I began to lose my wits by degrees, till at last the smell of brimstone overpowered me, and I remembernothing till you found me this morning in the briars.”
Here little Cobus concluded his story, which he repeated with several variations and additions to his wife, when he got home. That good woman, who, on most occasions, took the liberty of lecturing her good man, whenever he used to be belated in his excursions to the village, was so struck with this adventure, that she omitted her usual exhortation, and ever afterwards viewed him as one ennobled by supernatural communication, submitting to him as her veritable lord and master. Some people, who pretend to be so wise that they won't believe the evidence of their senses when it contradicts their reason, affected to be incredulous, and hinted that the goggle eyes, and the brimstone breath, appertained to Cobus Yerks's great house-dog, which had certainly followed him that day to the village, and was found quietly reposing by his master, in the tuft of briars. But Cobus was ever exceedingly wroth at this suggestion, and being a sturdy little brusier, had knocked down one or two of these unbelieving sinners, for venturing to assert that the contents of the stone jug were at the bottom of the whole business. After that, everybody believed it, and it is now for ever incorporated with the marvellous legends of the renowned Buttermilk Hill.