BABYLON I. SECOND EDITION now ready. Crown 8vo. cloth extra, ds. STRANGK STORIES. By grant ALLEN. WITH A FRONTISPIECE BY GEORGE OU MAURIER. ' Perhaps the best fiction of the year is " Strange Stories." Mr. Grant Allen certainly took his friends by surprise when he burst forth as the author of the stories which had appeared in the Cornhill, Belgravia, and Longman's, under the signature of J. Arbuthnot Wilson. He was known to us all as one of the most able of the rising men of the evolution school, his contributions to modern science being of con- siderable value. Few suspected him of such levity as telling light stories. The tales, which have been bound together, are now circulating in a book form, and the volume is distinctly good. " Strange Stories " will sell well.' — County Gentleman. ' Almost all the stories are good, coming nearer to the weird power of Poe than any that we remember to have seen.' — Pall Mall Gazette. ' Mr. Grant Allen has fully established his claim to be heard henceforth as a story-teller.' -The Academy. ' No one will be able to say that the stories are dull. The lighter stories can be read with pleasure by everybody, and the book can be dipped into anywhere without disappointment. One and all the stories are told with a delightful ease and with an abundance of lively humour.' — Athen>eum. 'The public will like "Strange Stories," because they are not commonplace, because they deal freshly as well as neatly with unusual subjects. They give a decided fillip to the jaded literary appetite.'— Derby Mercury. ' The stories are exceedingly interesting, and several of them have a humorous tendency. Although in the preface Mr. Allen professes that he is a " scientific journeyman " rather than a writer of fiction, he has given us what many successful novelists have failed to do — a very readable volume of short stories.' Literary World. ' Possesses no little cleverness ; bright and entertaining.,' ' Manchester Examiner. ' " Strange Stories " are partly scientific and partly fanciful and humorous. They deal, for the most part, with queer and curious points of psychology, are well written, and are easy reading.' — Saturday Review. ' Altogether the book is clever. To the stories in the light style, and in the ironical, extravaganza, and mock-heroic vein, only praise can be given.' British Quarterly Review. ' Mr. Grant Allen's stories are capital reading.' — Times. ' Truly delightful.'— Warrington Guardian. London : CHATTO & WINDUS, Piccadilly. |;'l:r''"jl!(i' 'i!,ii,H'""" ^-^^ '■■■i"r'!a.j,;,,'.!:;,^7T7 m M 'y\^?v-^rm ^m.i^F:^ ^' »i ' T BABYLON BY GRANT ALLEN (CECIL POWER) AUTHOR OF PHILISTTA "STRANGE STORIES ETC. *'^ IN THREE VOLUMES VOL. I. WITH TWELVE ILLUSTRATIONS BY P. MACNAB CHATTO & WINDUS, PICCADILLY 1885 [The ri^ht of translation is rcser^'ed] /^ PR ^oof CONTENTS OF THE FIRST VOLUME. CHAPTER PAGE I. RURAL AMERICA ...... 1 II. RURAL ENGLAND 28 III. PERNICIOUS LITERATURE 45 IV. PROFESSIONAL SOCIETY 59 V. EMANCIPATION 77 VI. ENTER A NEW ENGLANDER 109 VII. THE DEACON FALTERS 136 VIII. WOOD AND STONE 162 IX. CONSPIRACY 176 X. MINNA IMPROVES HERSELF 2C0 XI EDUCATIONAL ADVANTAGES . . . .225 Xll. AN ARTISTIC ENGAGEMENT 243 XIII. AN EVE IN EDEN 258 XIV. MINNA GIVES NOTICE 280 ILLUSTRATIONS TO THE FIRST VOLUME. ' It was his First Attempt ' . . . Frontispiece 'Hiram LISTENED STILL' .... To face p. 122 'A BEGINNING IN SeLF-ImPROVEMENT ' . „ 224 ' Beneath the Shade op the Plane Trees ' „ 288 BABYLON CHAPTEK I. RURAL AMERICA. 'Whar's Hiram, Het?' Deacon Zephaniah Winthrop asked of his wife, tartly. * Tears to me that boy's alius off somewhar, whenever he's wanted to do anything. Can't git along without him, any way, when we've got to weed the spring peppermint. Whar's he off, I say, Mehitabel ? ' Mrs. Winthrop drew herself together from the peas she was languidly shelling, and answered in the dry withered tone of a middle-aged northern New Yorker, ' Wal, I VOL. I. B K t 2 BABYLON s'pose, Zeph, he's gone down to the blackberry lot, most likely.' 'Blackberry lot,' Mr. Winthrop replied with a fine air of irony. ' Blackberry lot, indeed. What does he want blackberry in', I should like to know ? I'll blackberry him, I kin tell you, whenever I ketch him. Jest you go an' holler for him, Het, an' ef he don't come ruther sooner 'n lightnin', he'll ketch it, an' no mistake, sure as preachin'. I've got an orful itchin', Mis' Winthrop, to give that thar boy a durned good cow-hidin' this very minnit.' Mrs. Winthrop rose from the basket of peas and proceeded across the front yard with as much alacrity as she could summon up, to call for Hiram. She was a tall, weazened, sallow woman, prematurely aged, with a pair of high cheekbones, and a hard, hungry-look- ing, unlovable mouth ; but she was averse to the extreme and unnecessary measure of cow- RURAL AMERICA 3 hiding her firstborn. ' Hiram,' she called out, in her loudest and shrillest voice ; ' Hiram ! Drat the boy, whar is he ? Hiram ! Hi-ram ! ' It was a dreary and a monotonous outlook altogether, that view from the gate of Zepha- niah Winthrop's freehold farm in Geauga County. The homestead itself, an unpainted frame house, consisted of planed planks set carelessly one above the other on upright beams, stood in a weedy yard, surrounded by a raw-looking paling, and unbeautified by a single tree, creeper, shrub, bush, or scented flower. A square house, planted naked in the exact centre of a square yard, desolate and lonely, as though such an idea as that of beauty had never entered into the human heart. In front the long straight township road ran indefinitely as far as the eye could reach in either direction, beginning at the horizon on the north, and ending at the horizon on the south, but leading nowhere in particular, that B 2 4 BABYLON anyone ever heard of, meanwhile, unless it were to Muddy Creek Depot (pronounced deepo) on the Eome, Watertown, and Ogdens- Inirg Eailroad. At considerable intervals along its course, a new but congenitally shabby gate opened here and there into another bare square yard, and gave access to another bare square frame house of unpainted, ])ine planks = In the blanks between these oases of unvarnished ughness the road, instead of being bordered by green trees and smiUng hedgerows, pursued its gaunt way, unrejoic- ing, between open fields or long and hideous snake fences. If you have ever seen a snake fence, you know what that means ; if you haven't seen one, sit down in your own easy chair gratefully and comfortably, and thank an indulgent heaven with all your heart for your happy ignorance. Beyond and behind the snake fences lay fields of wheat and meadows and pasture RURAL AMERICA 5 land ; not, as in England, green and lush with grass or clover, but all alike bare, brown, weedy, and illimitable. There v\^ere no trees to be seen anywhere (though there were plenty of stumps), for this was 'a very fully settled section,' as Mr. Winthrop used to murmur to himself complacently : ' the coun- try thar real beautiful : you might look about you, some parts, for a mile or two right away togither and never see a single tree a-standin' anywhar.' Indeed, it was difficult to imagine where on earth a boy could manage to hide himself in all that long, level, leafless district. But Mrs. Winthrop knew better : she knew Hiram was loafing away somewhere down in the blackberry lot beside the river. ' Lot ' is a cheap and nasty equivalent in the great American language for field, mea- dow, croft, copse, paddock, and all the other beautiful and expressive old-world names which denote in the tongue of the old country 6 BABYLON our own time-honoured English inclosures. And the blackberry lot, at the bottom of the farm, was the one joy and dehght of young Hiram Win thr op's boyish existence. Though you could hardly guess it, as seen from the farm, there was a river running in the hollow down yonder — Muddy Creek, in fact, which gave its own euphonious name to the naked little Depot ; not here muddy, indeed, as in its lower reaches, but clear and limpid from the virgin springs of the Gilboa hillsides. Beside the creek, there stretched a waste lot, too rough and stony to be worth the curse of cultivation ; and on that lot the blackberry bushes grew in wild profusion, and the morn- ing-glories opened their great pink bells blushingly to the early sun,' and the bobolinks chattered in the garish noontide, and the grey squirrels hid by day among the stunted trees, and the chipmunks showed their painted sides for a moment as they darted swiftly in RURAL AMERICA 7 and out from hole to hole amid the tangled brushwood. What a charmed spot it seemed to the boy's mind, that one solitary patch of undesecrated nature, in the midst of so many blackened stumps, and so much first-rate fall wheat, and such endless, hopeless, dreary hillocks of straight rowed, dry leaved, tillering Indian corn ! ' Hiram ! Hiram ! Hi-ram ! ' cried Mrs. Winthrop, growing every moment shriller and shriller. Hiram heard, and leaped from the brink at once, though a kingfisher was at that very moment eyeing him with head on one side from the half-concealing foliage of the bass- wood tree opposite. 'Yes, marm,' he an- swered submissively, showing himself as fast as he was able in the pasture above the blackberry lot. ' Wal ! What is it ? ' * Hiram,' his mother said, as soon as he was within convenient speaking distance, 8 BABYLON ' you come right along in here, sonny. Where was you, say? Here's father swearin' he'll thrash you for goin' loafin'. He wants you jest to come in at once and help weed the peppermint. I guess you've bin down in the blackberry lot, fishin', or suthin'.' 'I ain't bin fishin',' Hiram answered, with a certain dogged, placid resignation. 'I've bin lookin' around, and that's so, mother. On'y lookin' around at the chip- munks an' bobolinks, 'cause I was dreadful tired.' ' Tired of what ? ' asked his mother, not uncompassionately. ' Planin',' Hiram answered, with a nod. 'Planks. Father give me forty planks to plane, an' I've done 'em.' ' Wal, mind he don't thrash you, Hiram,' the sallow-faced woman said, warningly, with as much tenderness in her voice as lay within the compass of her nature. ' He's orful mad RURAL AMERICA 9 with you now, 'cause you didn't answer immejately when he hollered.' ' Then why don't he holler loud enough ? ' asked Hiram, in an injured tone — he was an ill-clad boy of about twelve — ' I can't never hear him down lot yonder.' ' What's that you got in your pocket, sir?' Mr. Winthrop puts in, coming up unex- pectedly to the pair on the long, straight, blinking high-road. ' What's that, naow, eh, sonny ? * Hiram pulls the evidence of guilt slowly out of his rough tunic. ' Injuns,' he answers, shortly, in the true western laconic fashion. Mr. Winthrop examines the object care- lessly. It is a bit of blackish stone, rudely chipped into shape, and ground at one end to an artificial edge with some nicety of exe- cution. ' Injuns ! ' he echoes contemptuously, dash- ing it on the path : ' Injuns ! Oh yes, this is lo BABYLON Injuns ! An' what's Injuns? Heathens, out- landish heathens ; and a drunken, p'isonous crowd at that, too. Tlie noble red man is a fraud ; Injuns must go. It alius licks my poor finite understandin' altogether why the Lord should ever have run tliis great continent so long with nothin' better 'n Injuns. It's one o' them mysteries o' Providence that 'taint given us poor wums to comprehend daown here, noways. Wal, they're all cleared out of this section naow, anyway, and why a lad that's brought up a Chrischun and Hopkinsite should want to go grubbin' up their knives and things in this cent'ry is a caution to me, that's what it is, a reg'lar caution.' ' This ain't a knife,' Hiram answered, still doggedly. 'This is a tommy hawk. Injun knives ain't made like this 'ere. I've had knives, and they're quite a different kinder pattern.' Mr. Winthrop shook his head solemnly. RURAL AMERICA II * Seems to me,' he said with a loud snort, * 'taint right of any believin' boy goin' lookin' up these heathenish things, mother. He's alius bringin* 'em home— arrowheads, he calls 'em, and tommyhawks, and Lord knows what rubbish — when he ought to be weedin' in the pepper- mint lot, an' earnin' his livin'. Why wasn't you here, eh, sonny? Why wasn't you? Why wasn't you? Why wasn't you ? ' As Mr. Winthrop accompanied each of these questions by a cuff, crescendo, on either ear alternately, it is not probable that he himsiJf intended Hiram to reply to them with any particular definiteness. But Hiram, drawing his sleeve across his eyes, and wiping away the tears hastily, proceeded to answer with due deliberation : ' 'Cause I was tired planin' planks. So I went down to the black- berry lot, to rest a bit. But you won't let a feller rest. You want him to be workin' like a nigger all day. 'Taint reasonable.' 12 BABYLON ' Mother,' Mr. Winthrop said again, more solemnly than before, ' it's my opinion that the old Adam is on-common powerful in this here lad, on-common powerful ! Ef he had lived in Bible times, I sliould liev been afeard of a visible judgment on his head, like the babes that mocked at Elijah. (Or was it Elisha? ' asked Mr. Winthrop to himself, dubitatively. • I don't 'zackly recollect the pertickler pro- phet.) The eye that mocketh at its father, you know, sonny ; it's a dangerous thing, I kin tell you, to mock at your father. Go an' weed that thar peppermint, sir ; go an* weed that thar peppermint.' And as he spoke the deacon gave Hiram a parting dig in the side with the handle of the Dutch hoe he was lightly carrying. Hiram dodged the hoe quickly, and set off at a run to the peppermint lot. When he got there he waited a moment, and then felt in his pocket cautiously for some other unseen RURAL AMERICA 13 object. Oh joy, it wasn't broken ! lie took it out and looked at it tenderly. It was a bobolink's egg. He held it up to the light, and saw the sunshine gleaming through it. ' Aint it cunning ? ' he said to himself, with a little hug and chuckle of triumph. ' Ain't it a cunning little egg, either ? I thought he'd most broke it, I did, but he hadn't, seems. It's the first I ever found, that sort. Oh my, ain't it cunning ? ' And he put the ^^^ back lovingly in his pocket, with great cautiousness. For a while the boy went on pulhng up the weeds that grew between the wide rows of peppermint, and then at last he came to a big milk-weed in full flower. The flowers were very pretty, and so curious, too. He looked at them and admired them. But he must pull it up : no room in the field for milk-weed (it isn't a marketable crop, alas !), so he caught the pretty thing in his hands, and uprooted it without a murmur. Thus he went on, row 14 BABYLON after row, in the hot July sun, till nearly half the peppermint was well weeded. Then he sat down to rest a Httle on the pile of boulders in the far corner. There was no tree to sit under, and no shade ; but the boy could at least sit in the eye of the sun on the pile of ice-worn boulders. As he sat, he saw a wonderful and beautiful sight. In the sky above, a great bald-headed eagle came wheel- ing slowly toward the corner of the fall wheat lot. From the opposite quarter of the sky his partner circled on buoyant wings to meet him ; and with wide curves to right and left, crossing and recrossing each other at the central point like well-bred setters, those two magnificent birds swiftly beat the sunht fields for miles around them. At last, one of the pair detected game ; for an instant he checked his flight, to steady his swoop, and then, with wings half- folded, and a rushing noise through the air, he fell plump on the ground at a vague spot in RURAL AMERICA 15 the midst of the meadow. One moment more, and he rose again, with a quivering rabbit suspended from his yellow claws. Presently he made towards the corn lot. It was fenced round, like all the others, with a snake fence, and, to Hiram's intense joy, the eagle finally settled, just opposite him, on one of the two upright rails that stand as a crook or stake for the top rail, called the rider. Its big white head shone in the sunlight, its throat rang out a sharp, short bark, and it craned its neck this way and that, looking defiantly across the field to Hiram. ' I reckon,' the boy said to himself quietly, ' I could draw that thar earaistcoat. They walked down to the brook in the meadow, and saw the two children sitting in the corner so intent upon their artistic per- formances that they hardly noticed the approach of their respective fathers. Old Sam Churchill went close up and looked keenly at the clay figure of Minna that Colin was still moulding with the last finishing touches as the two elders approached them. ' Thik ther vigger baint a bad un, Cohn,' he said, taking it carefully in his rough hand. RURAL ENGLAND 43 ' 'Ee 'aven't done it none so ill, lad ; but it don't look so livin' like as it 'ad ought to. Wot do'ee think it is, Geargey, eh ? tell us ? ' 'Why, I'm blowed if that baint our Minna,' Geargey answered, with a little gasp of open-mouthed astonishment. ' It's her vuriy pictur, Colin : a, blind man could see that, of course, so soon as 'e set eyes on it. 'Ow do 'ee do it, Colin, eh ? 'Ow do 'ee do it ? ' ' Oh, that baint nothin',' Colin said, colouring up. ' Only a little bit o' clay, just made up vor to look like Minna.' ' Look 'ee 'ere,' Colin,' his father went on, glancing quickly from the clay to little Minna, and altering a touch or two with his big clumsy fingers, not undeftly. ' Look 'ee 'ere ; 'ee must putt the dress thik way, I should say, with a gurt dale more flusterin' about it ; it do zit too stiff and starchy, somehow, same as if it wur made o' new buckram. 'Ee must put in a fold or two, 'ere, so as to make un sit 44 BABYLON more nat'ral. Don't 'ee see Minna's dress do double itself up, I can't rightly say 'ow, but summat o' tliik there way? ' And he moulded the moist clay a bit with his hands, till the folds of the drapery began to look a Httle more real and possible. ' I'd ought to 'ave drawed it first, I think,' Colin said, looking at the altered dress with a satisfied glance. ' 'Ave 'ee got such a thing as a pencil about 'ee, father ? ' Old Sam took a piece of pencil from his pocket, and handed it to Colin. The boy held it tightly in his lingers, with a true artistic grasp, like one w^ho knows bow to wield it, and wath a few strokes on a scrap of paper hit off httle Minna far better than he had done in the plastic material. Geargey looked over his shoulder with a delighted grin on his weather- beaten features. ' I tell 'ee, Sam,' he said to the old gardener, confidentially, ' it's my be- lief that thik ther boy 'uU be able one o' these vine days to paint rale picturs.' 45 CHAPTEE III. PERNICIOUS LITERATURE. When winter came, Hiram Winthrop had less to do and more time to follow the bidding of his own fancy. True, there was cordwood to split in abundance ; and splitting cordwood is no child's play along the frozen shores of Lake Ontario. You go out among the snow in the wood-shed, and take the big ice-covered logs down from the huge pile with numbed fingers : then you lay them on a sort of double St. Andrew's cross, its two halves supported by a thwart-piece, and saw them up into fit lengths for the kitchen fireplace : and after that you spht them in four with a solid-headed axe, taking care in the process not to let your 46 BABYLON deadened hands slip, so as to cut off the ends of your own toes with an ill-directed blow glancing off the log sideways. Yes, splitting cordwood is very serious work, with the ther- mometer at 40° below freezing ; and drawing water from the well when the rope is frozen and your skin clings to the chill iron of the tliirsty bucket-handle is hardly better : yet in spite of both these small drawbacks, Hira-m Winthrop found much more to enjoy in his winters than in his summers. There was no corn to hoe, no peas to pick, no weeding to do, no daily toil on farm and garden. The snow had covered all with its great white sheet ; and even the neighbourhood of Muddy Creek Depot looked desolately beautiful in its own dreary, cold, monotonous, Siberian fashion. The flowers and leaves were gone too, to be sure ; but in the low brushwood by the blackberry bottom the hares had turned white to match the snow ; and the nut-hatches were PERNICIOUS LITERATURE 47 answering one another in their varying keys ; and the skunks were still busy of nights beneath the spreading walnuts ; and the chickadees were tinkling overhead among the snow-laden pine-needles of the far woodland. All the summer visitors had gone south to Georgia and the gulf: but the snow-buntings were ever with Hiram in the wintry fields : and the bald-headed eagles still prowled around at times on the stray chance of catch- ing a frozen-out racoon. Above all there was ease and leisure, respite i^from the deacon's rasping voice calling perpetually for Hiram here, and Hiram there, and Hiram yonder, to catch the horses, or tend the harrow, or mind the birds, or weed the tomatoes, or set shingles against the sun over the drooping transplanted cabbages. A happy time indeed for Hiram, that long, weary, white-sheeted, unbroken northern New York winter. Sam Churchill was with tlie deacon still. 48 BABYLON but had little enough to do, for there isn't much going on upon an American farm from November to April, and the deacon would gladly have got rid of his hired help in the slack time if he could have shuffled him ofl* ; but Sam had been well advised on his first hiring, and had wisely covenanted to be kept on all the year round, with board and lodging and decent wages during the winter season. And Hiram initiated Sam into the mysteries of sliding on a bent piece of wood (a home- made toboggan) down the great snowdrifts, and skating on the frozen expansion of Muddy Creek, and building round huts, Esquimaux fashion, with big square blocks of solid dry snow, and tracking the white hare over the white fields by means of the marks he left behind him, whose termination, apparently lengthening itself out miraculously before one's very eyes, marked the spot where the hare himself was hopping invisible to human PERNICIOUS LITERATURE 49 vision. In return, Sam lent hirn a few dearly treasured books : books that he had brought from England with him : the books that had first set the Dorsetshire peasant lad upon his scheme of going forth alone upon the wide world beyond the ocean. Hiram was equally delighted and asto- nished with these wonderful charmed volumes. He had seen a few books before, but they were all of two types : Cornell's Geography, Quackenboss's Grammar, and the other school- books used at the common school ; or else Barnes's Commentary, Elder Coffin's Ezekiel, the Hopkinsite Confession of Faith, and other like works of American exegetical and con- troversial theology. But Sam's books, oh, gracious, what a difference ! There was Peter Simple, a story about a real live boy, who wa'n't good, pertickler, not to speak of, but had some real good old times on board a ship, somewhere, he did ; and there was Tom Jones VOL. I. E 50 BABYLON (Hiram no more understood the doubtful pas- sages in that great romance than he under- stood the lucubrations of Philosopher Square, but he took It in, in the lump, as very good fun for all that), Tom Jones, the story of another real hve boy, with, most dehghtful of all, a reg'lar mean sneak of a feller, called Blifil, to act as a foil to Tom's straightforward pagan flesh-and-bloodfulness ; the Buccaneers of the Caribbean Sea, a glorious work of fire and slaughter, whar some feller or other got killed right off on every page a'most, you bet ; Jake the Pirate, another splendid book of the same description; and half a dozen more assorted novels, from the best to the worst, all chosen alike for their stirring incidents which went straight home to the minds of the two lads, in spite of all external differences of birth an^l geographical surroundings. Hiram pored over them surreptitiously, late at nights, in tlie room that he and Sam occupied in PERNICIOUS LITERATURE 51 common — a mere loft at the top of the house and felt in his heart he had never in his life imagined such delightful reading could pos- sibly have existed. And they were written by growed-up men, too! How strange to think that once upon a time, somewhile and somewhere, there were growed-up men capable of thus sympathising with, and reproducing the ideas and feeUngs of, the natural mind of boyhood ! One evening, very late — eleven nearly — the deacon, prowhng around after a bottle or something, spied an unwonted light gleaming down from the trap-door that led up to the loft where the lads ought at that moment to have been sleeping soundly. Lights in a well-conducted farmhouse at eleven o'clock was indeed incomprehensible : what on earth, the deacon asked himself wonderingly, could them thar lads be up to at this hour? He crept up the step-ladder cautiously, so as not E 2 52 BABYLON to disturb them by premonitions, and opened the trap-door in sedulous silence. Sam was already fast asleep ; but there was Hiram, sot up in bed, as quiet as a 'possum, 'pearin' as if lie was a-readin' something. The deacon's eyes opened with amazement ! Hiram read- ing ! Had his heart been touched, then, quite sudden-like? Could he have took up the Hopkinsite Confession in secret to his upper chamber ? Was he meditatin' makin' a public profession afore the Assembly ? The deacon glowered and marvelled. Creeping, still quite silently, up to the bed- head, he looked with an inquiring glance over poor Hiram's unsuspecting shoulder. A sea of words swam vaguely before his bewildered vision ; words, not running into long orthodox paragraphs, like the Elder's Ezekiel, but cut up, oh horror, into distinct sentences, each indicating a separate part in a conversation. The deacon couldn't clearly make it all out ; PERNICIOUS LITERATURE 53 for it was a dramatic dialogue, a form of composition which had not largely fallen in the good man's way: but he picked up enough to understand that it was a low pot- house scene, where one FalstafF was bandying improper language with a person of the name of Prince (given name, Henry) — language that made even the deacon's sallow cheek blush ieebly with reflected and vicarious modesty. For a moment he endeavoured, like a Christian man, to retain his wrath ; and then paternal feeling overcame him, and he caught Hiram such a oner on his ears as he flattered himself that boy wouldn't be likely to forgit in any very partickler hurry. Hiram looked round, amazed and stunned, his ear tingling and burning, and saw the gaunt apparition of his father, standing silent and black-browed by the bare bed-head. For a moment those two glared at one another mutely and defiantly. 54 BABYLON At last Hiram spoke : ' Wal ! ' he said simply. ' Wal ! ' the deacon answered, with smo- thered wrath. ' Hiram, I am angry and sin not. What do you go an' take them bad books up to read for ? Who give 'em you ? Whar did you get 'em ? Oh, you sinful, bad boy, whar did you get 'em ? ' And he ad- ministered another sound cuff upon Hiram's other ear. Hiram put his hand up to the stinging spot, and cried a minute silently: then he answered as well as he was able : ' This aint a bad book : this is called " The Complete Dram-attic Works of William Shakespeare." Sam lent it to me, an' it's Sam's book, an' ther ain't no harm in it, anyhow.' The deacon was plainly staggered for a moment, for even he had dimly heard the tiame of William Shakespeare ; and though he had never made any personal acquaintance PERNICIOUS LITERATURE 55 with that gentleman's works, he had always understood in a vague, indefinite fashion that this here Shakespeare was a perfectly respect- able and recognised writer, whose books were read and approved of even by Hopkinsite ministers edoocaied at Bethabara Seminary. So he took the volume in his hand incredu- lously and looked it through casually for a few minutes. lie glanced at a scene or two here or there with a critical eye, and then he flung the volume from him quickly, as a man might fling and crush some loathsome reptile. By this time Sam was half-awake, and sat up in bed to inquire sleepily, what all thik ther row could be about at thik time of evenin' ? ' The deacon answered by going savagely to Sam's box, and taking out, one by one, for separate inspection, the volumes he found there. He held up the candle (stuck in an empty blacking-bottle) to each volume in succession, and, as soon as he had finally con- 56 BABYLON demned them each, he flung them down in an untidy pile on the bare floor of the little bed- room. Most of them he stood stoically enough ; but the Vicar of Wakefield was at last quite too much for his stifled indignation. Sitting down blankly on the bed he fired off his volley at poor Hiram's frightened head, with terrible significance. ' Hiram Winthrop,' he said solemnly, ' you air a son of perdition. You air more a'most 'n I kin manage with. Satan's openin' the door for you on-common wide, I kin tell you, sonny. It makes me downright scar't to see you in company along of sech books. Your mother'U be awful took back about it. I don't mind this 'ere about the Pirates of the Caribbean Sea, so much ; that's kinder hist'ry, that is, and mayn't do you much harm: but sech things as this Peter Simple, an' Wake- field, and Pickwick's Papers — why, I wonder the roof don't fall in on 'em an' crush us in PERNICIOUS LITERATURE 57 the lot altogether. I'm durned ef I could have thought you'd bin wicked enough to read 'em, sech on-principled hteratoor. I sha'n't chastise you to-night, sonny ; it's late, now, and we've read chapter : but to-morrer, Hiram, to-morrer, you shall pay for them thar books, take my word for it. You shall be chastened in the manner that's app'inted. Ef I was you, I should spend the rest of the evenin' in wrestlin' for forgiveness for the sin you've committed.' And yet in the chapter the deacon had read at family worship that evening there was one httle clause which said : ' Quench not the Spirit.' Hiram slept but little that night, with the vague terror of to-morrow's whipping over- shadowing him through the night watches. But he had at least one comfort : Sam Church- ill had got out and gathered up his books, and locked them carefully in his box again. 58 BABYLON ' If the boss tries to touch they books again, I tell 'ee, Hiram,' he said bi-lingually (for absorbent America was already beginning to assimilate him), ^ 'e'll vind 'isself a-lyin' long- ways on the vloor, afore he do know it, I promise 'ee.' Hiram heard, and was partly comforted. At least he would still have the books to read, somehow, at some time. For in his own heart, unregenerate or otherwise, he couldn't bring himself to believe that there could be really anything so very wicked in Henry the Fourth or Peter Simple. 59 CHAPTER IV. PROFESSIONAL SOCIETY. The deacons cowhide cut deep; but the thrashing didn't last long : and after it was all over, Hiram wandered out aimlessly by himself, down the snowclad valley of Muddy Creek, and along to the wooded wilds and cranberry marshes near the Ontario de- bouchure, to forget his troubles and the lasting smart of the weals in watching the beasts and birds among the frozen lowlands. He had never been so far from home before, but the weather and the ice were in his favour, enabling him to get over an amount of ground he wouldn't have tried to cover in the dry summer time. He had his skates 6o BABYLON with him, and he skated where possible, taking them off to walk over the intervening land necks or drifted snow- sheets. The ice was glare in many places, so that one could skate on it gloriously ; and before he had got half-way down to Nine-Mile Bottom he had almost forgotten all about the deacon, and the sermon, and the beating, and the threat- ened ten chapters of St. John (the Gospel of Love the deacon called it) to be learned by heart before next Lord's day, in expiation of the heinous crime of having read that per- nicious work the ' Vicar of Wakefield.' It was the loveliest spot he had ever seen in all his poor unlovely little existence. Close under the cranberry trees, by a big pool where the catfish would be sure to live in summer, Hiram heard men's voices, whispering low and quiet to one another. A great joy filled his soul. He could see at once by their dress and big fur caps what PROFESSIONAL SOCIETY 6i they were. They were trappers ! One piece of romance still survived in Geauga County, among the cranberry swamps and rush beds where the flooded creek flowed sluggishly into the bosom of Ontario ; and on that one piece of romance he had luckily lighted by pure accident. Trappers ! Yes, not a doubt of it ! He struck out on his skates swiftly but noise- lessly toward them, and joined the three men witliout a word as they stood taking counsel together below their breath on the ice-bound marshland. ' Hello, sonny ! ' one of the men said in a low undertone. ' Say whar did you drop from ? What air you comin' spyin' out a few peaceable surveyors for, eh ? Tell me.' ' I didn't think you was surveyors,' Hiram answered, a little disappointed. ' I thought you was trappers.' And at the same time he glanced suspiciously at the peculiar little gins that the surveyors held in their great gaunt- 62 BABYLON leted hands, for all the world like Oneida traps for musk-rats. The man noticed the glance and laughed to himself a smothered laugh — the laugh of a person accustomed always to keep very quiet. ' Tlie young un has spotted us, an' no mistake, boys,' he said, laughing, to the others. ' He's a bit too 'cute to be took in with the sur- veyor gammon. What do you call this 'ere, sonny ? ' ' I calc'late that's somewhar near a mink trap,' Hiram answered, breathless with de- Hght. ' Wal, it is a mink trap,' the trapper said slowly, looking deep into the boy's truthful eyes. 'Now, who sent you down here to track us out and peach upon us ; eh. Bob ? ' ' Nobody sent me,' Hiram replied, with his blue eyes looking deep back into the trapper's keen restless grey pair. ' I kem out all o' my own accord, 'cos father gave me a PROFESSIONAL SOCIETY 63 lickin' this mornin', an' I've kem out jest to get away for a bit alone somewhar.' ' Who's your father ? ' asked the man still suspiciously. ' Deacon Winthrop, down to Muddy Creek Deepo.' ' Deacon Winthrop ! Oh, I know him, ruther. A tall, skinny, dried-up kind of fellow, ain't he, who looks as if most of his milk was turned sour, an' the Hopkinsite Con- fession was a settin' orful heavy on his digestion ? ' Hiram nodded several times successively, in acknowledgment of the general accuracy of this brief description. ' That's him, you bet,' he answered with unfilial promptitude. ' I guess you've seed him somwhar, for that's him as like as a portrait. Look here, say, I'll draw him for you.' And the boy, taking his pencil from his pocket, drew as quickly as he was able on a scrap of birch-bark a humorous 64 BABVLOA caricature of his respected parent, as he ap- peared in the very act of offering an unctuous exhortation to the Hopkinsite assembly at Muddy Creek meeting-house. It was very wrong and wicked, of course — a clear breach of the Fifth Commandment — but the deacon hadn't done much on his own account to merit honour or love at the hands of Hiram Winthrop. The man took the rough sketch and laughed at it inwardly, with a suppressed chuckle. There was no denying, he saw, that it was the perfect moral of that thar freezed- up old customer down to the Deepo. He handed it with a smile to his two companions. They both recognised the likeness and the little additions which gave it point, and one of them, a Canadian as Hiram conjectured (for he spoke with a dreadful Enghsh accent — so stuck-up), said in the same soft undertone : ' Do you know^ where any mink live anywhere hereabouts ? ' PROFESSIONAL SOCIETY 65 'A little higher up stream,' Hiram an- swered, overjoyed, ' I know every spot whar ther's any mink stirrin' for five miles round, anyhow.' The Canadian turned to the others. ' Boys,' he said, ' you can trust the youngster. lie won't peach on us. He's game, you may be sure. Now, youngster, we're trappers, as you guessed correctly. But you see, farmers don't love trappers, because they go trespassing, and over- running the fields : and so we don't w^ant you to say a w^ord about us to this father of yours. Do you understand ? ' Hiram rodded. 'You promise not to tell him or any- body ? ' ' Yes, I promise.' 'Well, then, if you like, you can come with us. We're going to set our traps now. You don't seem a bad sort of httle chap, VOL. I. ^ 66 BABYLON and you can see the fun out if you've a mind to.' Hiram's heart bounded with excitement. What a magnificent prospect ! He pro- mised to show the trappers every spot he knew about the place where any fur-bearing animal, from ermine to musk-rat, was likely to be found. In ten minutes, all four were started off upon their skates once more, striking up the river in the direction of the deacon's, and setting traps by Hiram's advice as they went along, at every likely run or corner. 'You drew that picture real well,' the Canadian said, as they skated side by side : ' I could see it was the old man at a glance.' Hiram's face shone with pleasure at this sincere compliment to his artistic merit. 'I could hev done it a long sight better,' he said simply, ' ef my hands hadn't been numbed a bit with the cold, so's I could hardly hold the pencil.' PROFESSIONAL SOCIETY 67 It was a grand clay, that day with the trappers — the gipsies of half-settled America ; the grandest day Hiram had ever spent in his whole lifetime. How many musk-rats' burrows he pointed out to his new acquain- tance along the bank of the creek ; how many spots where the mink, that strange water-haunting weasel, lurks unseen among the frozen sedges ! Here and there, too, he showed them the points where he had noticed the faint track of the ermine on the lightly fallen snow, and where they might place their traps across the path worn by the 'coons on their way to and from the Indian corn patch. It was cruel work, to be sure, setting those murderous snapping iron jaws, and perhaps if Hiram had thought more about the beasts themselves (whom after all he loved in his heart) he wouldn't have been so ready to aid their natural enemies in thus catching? and exterminating? p 2 68 BABYLON them : but what boy is free from the aborijrinal love of hunting sometliing ? Certainly not Iliram Wintlirop, at least, to whom this one glimpse of a delightful wanderinjT life amon