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 5-C-^^-O-a-D-C-
 
 THE DELECTABLE 
 MOUNTAINS 
 
 WHY. OF CALIF. LIBRARY, LOS ANGELES
 
 THE 
 
 DELECTABLE 
 MOUNTAINS 
 
 By 
 
 Colton 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 Charles Scribner's Sons 
 
 1901
 
 Copyright, 1901, by Charles Scribners Sons 
 
 D. B. Updike, The Merrymount Press, Boston
 
 Dedicated to the Memory 
 
 of 
 
 My Sister , Mabel Cotton 
 
 2128521
 
 feo they went up to the Mountains, to behold the 
 Gardens, and Orchards, the Vineyards, and Foun- 
 tains of water. . . . Now there was on the tops of 
 these Mountains, Shepherds feeding their flocks, and 
 they stood by the high-way side. The Pilgrims there- 
 fore went to them, and leaning upon their staves, 
 (as is common with weary Pilgrims, when they stand 
 to talk with any by the way,) they asked, Whose 
 delectable Mountains are these? . . . When the Shep- 
 herds perceived that they were way-faring men, they 
 also put questions to them, as, Whence came you? 
 and, How got you into the way? and, By what 
 means have you so persevered therein? . . . Then 
 said the Shepherds one to another, Let us here 
 shew to the Pilgrims the Gates of the Ccelestial 
 City, if they have skill to look through our Per- 
 spective Glass. . . . Then they essayed to look, but 
 . . . they could not look steadily through the Glass; 
 yet they thought they saw something like the Gate. 
 
 The Pilgrim's Progress.
 
 TABLE OF CONTENTS 
 
 1. The Place of Abandoned Gods 1 
 
 2. The Leather Hermit 27 
 
 3. Black Pond Clearing 45 
 
 4. Joppa 65 
 
 5. The Elders' Seat 81 
 
 6. The Romance of the Institute 93 
 
 7. Nausicaa 117 
 
 8. Sanderson of Back Meadows 145 
 
 9. Two Roads that meet in Salem 173 
 
 10. A Visible Judgment 189 
 
 11. The Emigrant East 203 
 
 12. Tobin's Monument 227
 
 THE PLACE OF ABANDONED GODS
 
 THE 
 PLACE OF ABANDONED GODS 
 
 JL HE hut was built two sides and the roof of sodded 
 poles; the roof had new clapboards of birch bark, 
 but the rest had once belonged to a charcoal burner; 
 the front side was partly poled and partly open, the 
 back was the under-slope of a rock. For it stood by 
 a cliff, one of the many that show their lonely faces 
 all over the Cattle Ridge, except that this was more 
 tumultuous than most, and full of caves made by 
 the clumsy leaning bowlders; and all about were 
 slim young birch trees in white and green, like the 
 demoiselles at Camelot. Old pines stood above the 
 cliff, making a soft, sad noise in the wind. In one of 
 the caves above the leafage of the birches we kept 
 the idols, especially Baal, whom we thought the 
 most energetic; and in front of the cave was the 
 altar-stone that served them all, a great flat rock 
 and thick with moss, where ears of corn were sacri- 
 ficed, or peas or turnips, the first-fruits of the field; 
 or of course, if you shot a chipmunk or a rabbit, you 
 could have a burnt offering of that kind. Also the 
 altar-stone was a council chamber and an outlook. 
 
 1
 
 THE DELECTABLE MOUNTAINS 
 
 It was all a secret place on the north side of the 
 Cattle Ridge, with cliffs above and cliffs below. East- 
 ward half a mile lay the Cattle Ridge Road, and 
 beyond that the Ridge ran on indefinitely; south- 
 ward, three miles down, the road took you into 
 Hagar; westward the Ridge, after all its leagues 
 of length and rigor of form, broke down hurriedly 
 to the Wyantenaug River, at a place called the 
 Haunted Water, where stood the Leather Hermit's 
 hut and beyond which were Bazilloa Armitage's 
 bottom-lands and the Preston Plains railroad sta- 
 tion. The road from the station across the bridge 
 came through Sanderson Hollow, where the fields 
 were all over cattle and lively horses, and met the 
 Cattle Ridge Road to Hagar. And last, if you 
 looked north from the altar-stone, you saw a long, 
 downward sweep of woodland, and on and on miles 
 and miles to the meadows and ploughed lands to- 
 ward Wimberton, with a glimpse of the Wyante- 
 naug far away to the left. Such were the surround- 
 ings of the place of abandoned gods. No one but 
 ourselves came there, unless possibly the Hermit. If 
 any one had come it was thought that Baal would 
 pitch him over the cliffs in some manner, mystically. 
 We got down on our hands and knees, and said, 
 "O Baal!" He was painted green, on a shingle; but 
 
 2
 
 THE PLACE OF ABANDONED GODS 
 
 his eyes were red. The place was reached from the 
 Cattle Ridge Road by trail, for the old wood-road 
 below was grown up to blackberry brambles, which 
 made one scratched and bloody and out of patience, 
 unless it were blackberry time. 
 
 And on the bank, where the trail drops into the 
 climbing highway, there Aaron and Silvia were sit- 
 ting in the June afternoon, hand in hand, with the 
 filtered green light of the woods about them. We 
 came up from Hagar, the three of us, and found 
 them. They were strangers, so far as we knew. 
 Strangers or townsmen, we never took the trail with 
 any one in sight; it was an item in the Vows. But 
 we ranged up before them and stared candidly. 
 There was nothing against that. Her eyes were nice 
 and blue, and at the time they contained tears. 
 Her cheeks were dimpled and pink, her brown dress 
 dusty, and her round straw hat cocked a bit over 
 one tearful blue eye. He seemed like one who had 
 been growing fast of late. His arms swung loosely as 
 if fastened to his shoulders with strings. The hand 
 that held her small hand was too large for its wrist, 
 the wrist too large for the arm, the arm too long 
 for the shoulder. He had the first growth of a 
 downy mustache, a feeble chin, a humorous eye, 
 and wore a broad-brimmed straw hat and a faded 
 
 3
 
 THE DELECTABLE MOUNTAINS 
 
 black root, loose and Biding to hi? knees. A carpet 
 bag lay at his tat, only half fofl and fallen over 
 with an air of depress**!. He seemed depressed in 
 the same war. 
 
 ^What *s die erring fbrr~ asked Moses Dorfey. 
 stofiffly. 
 
 Aaron peered anxmd at her shyly. 
 
 She'k scared to go home. I ain't, bat I mote be 
 ::~ I r'~~ :r.r:r. 
 
 "What's our name?" 
 
 He heiiiatoL Then, with food defiance: 
 
 "It's Mr. and Mrs. Bees. 1 " 
 
 A red aqiiiimJ dambered down a low-hanging 
 branch overhead, and chattered sharply, scattering 
 flakes of bark. Aaron, still hoMing Sibria*s hand, 
 leaned back on the hank and looked op. All lines 
 of trouble faded quickly from his face. He stalled, 
 so that his two front teeth stood out startlinglv, 
 and held up a long forefinger. 
 
 "Cherky little emn, ain't her" 
 
 The squirrel became more excited. Aaron's finger 
 jumiiul to draw him Kke a loadstone. He slid down 
 neater and nearer, as far as the branch allowed, to a 
 foot or two away, chattering his teeth fearfully. We 
 knew that any one who could magnetize so flighty
 
 THE PLACE OF ABAVDOSTED GODS 
 
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 THE DELECTABLE MOUNTAINS 
 
 "Snakes! We might just as well sit here."" 
 
 Silvia wept again. Moses's face admitted a certain 
 surprise. 
 
 "What '11 he do that for?" 
 
 While Aaron told their story, Silvia sometimes 
 commented tearfully on his left, Moses stolidly on 
 his right, and the red squirrel with excitement over- 
 head; Chub and I were silent; the woods for the 
 most part kept still and listened too, with only a 
 little sympathetic murmur of leaves and tremble of 
 sunbeam and shadow. 
 
 The Kincard place, it seemed, lay five miles away, 
 down the north side till you cleared the woods, and 
 then eastward among the foothills. Old Kincard's 
 first name was James. And directly across the road 
 stood the four-roomed house where the Bees family 
 once lived. It was "rickety now and rented to rats." 
 The Bees family had always been absent-minded, 
 given to dying off and leaving things lying around. 
 In that way Aaron had begun early to be an orphan 
 and to live with the Kincards. He was supposed to 
 own the old house and the dooryard in front of it, 
 but the rats never paid their rent, unless they paid 
 it to the old man or the cat; and Mr. Kincard had 
 a low opinion of Aaron, as being a Bees, and be- 
 cause he was built lengthwise instead of sidewise 
 
 6
 
 THE PLACE OF ABANDONED GODS 
 
 and knew more about foxes than cows. It seemed 
 to Aaron that a fox was in himself a more interest- 
 ing person; that this raising more potatoes than 
 you could eat, more tobacco than you could smoke, 
 this making butter and cheese and taking them to 
 Wimberton weekly, and buying little except mort- 
 gages and bank accounts, somewhere involved a mis- 
 take. A mortgage was an arrangement by which 
 you established strained relations with a neighbor, 
 a bank account something that made you suspicious 
 of the bank. Now in the woods one dealt for direct 
 usefulness, comfort, and freedom of mind. If a man 
 liked to collect mortgages rather than fox-skins, it 
 was the virtue of the woods to teach tolerance; but 
 Mr. Kincard's opinion of Aaron was low and active. 
 There was that difference between a Kincard and a 
 Bees point of view. 
 
 Aaron and Silvia grew up a few years apart on 
 the old spread-out farm, with the wooded mountain- 
 side heaving on the south and stretching east and 
 west. It was a neighborhood of few neighbors, and no 
 village within many miles, and the old man was not 
 talkative commonly, though he'd open up sometimes. 
 Aaron and Silvia had always classed themselves to- 
 gether in subdued opposition to their grim ruler of 
 destiny. To each other they called him "the old man," 
 
 7
 
 THE DELECTABLE MOUNTAINS 
 
 and expressed by it a reverential but opposed state 
 of mind. To Aaron the undoubted parts of life were 
 the mountain-side of his pleasures and the level fields 
 of his toil. Wimberton was but a troubled glimpse 
 now and then, an improbable memory of more people 
 and houses than seemed natural. Silvia tended to see 
 things first through Aaron's eyes, though she kept a 
 basal judgment of her own in reserve. 
 
 "He always licked us together since we was little," 
 said Aaron, looking at Silvia with softly reminiscent 
 eye. " It was two licks to me for Silvy's one. That was 
 square enough, and the old man thought so. When 
 he got set in a habit he 'd never change. It was two 
 to me for Silvy's one."" 
 
 Aaron told him, but a week now gone, that him- 
 self and Silvia would wish to be married, and he 
 seemed surprised. In fact he came at Aaron with the 
 hoe-handle, but could not catch him, any more than 
 a lonesome rabbit. Then he opened up astonishingly, 
 and told Aaron of his low opinion of him, which was 
 more spread-out and full of details than you'd ex- 
 pect. He wasn't going to give Aaron any such "holt 
 on him as that," with a guaranty deed, whatever that 
 was, on eternity to loaf in, and he set him the end 
 of the week to clear out, to go elsewhere forever. To 
 Aaron's mind that was an absurd proposal. He wasn't 
 
 8
 
 THE PLACE OF ABANDONED GODS 
 
 going to do any such foolishness. The rather he sold 
 his collection of skins to a farmer named Shore, and 
 one morning borrowed a carpet bag and came over 
 the Cattle Ridge hand in hand with Silvia. 
 
 From Preston Plains they hired a team, drove 
 over the line into York State, and were married. 
 The farmer named Shore laid that out for them. 
 He had a back score of trouble with the old man. 
 
 "And Silvy's got a cat," added Aaron, "and she 
 catches rats to please herself. Silvy thinks she ought 
 to catch rats to be obligin'. Folks that live up these 
 trees don't act that way. No more did Shore." 
 
 Here Aaron looked shrewd and wise. 
 
 "I wish Sammy was here," murmured Silvia, lov- 
 ingly. 
 
 "First-rate cat," Aaron admitted. "Now, we did n't 
 marry to oblige each other. Each of us obliged him- 
 self. Hey?" 
 
 Silvia opened her eyes wide. The idea seemed a 
 little complicated. They clasped hands the tighter. 
 
 "Now," said Aaron, "Silvy's scared. I ain't, but 
 I mote be when I got there." 
 
 A blue-jay flew shrieking down the road. Aaron 
 looked after it with a quick change of interest. 
 
 "See him! Yes, sir. You can tell his meanness the 
 way he hollers. Musses folks' eggs." 
 
 9
 
 THE DELECTABLE MOUNTAINS 
 
 Aaron no longer surprised us now, nor did Silvia. 
 We accepted them. We had standards of character 
 and conduct, of wisdom and of things possible, but 
 they were not set for us by the pulpit, the statute 
 book, or the market-place. We had often gone forth 
 on expeditions into the mystical beyond, always with 
 a certain purpose to achieve there, and at some point 
 it had been necessary to come home and face the 
 punishment, if there were any, to have supper, and 
 go to bed. Home could not be left permanently and 
 another existence arranged, any more than the feet 
 could be taken from the earth permanently. It had 
 been found impractical. Aaron and Silvia were like 
 ourselves. They might conceive of living away from 
 the farmhouse under the mountain-side a few days. 
 They shrank from facing old Kincard with his hoe- 
 handle or horse-whip, but one must go back eventu- 
 ally. We recognized that their adventure was bold 
 and peculiar; we judged the price likely to be ap- 
 palling; we gave them frank admiration for both. 
 None of us had ever run away to be definitely mar- 
 ried, or suffered from a hoe-handle or a horse-whip, 
 and yet all these were things to be conceived of and 
 sympathized with. 
 
 "I knew a blue-jay,"" went on Aaron, thought- 
 fully, "that lived near the end of Shored land, and 
 
 10
 
 THE PLACE OF ABANDONED GODS 
 
 he never appeared to like anything agreeable. He 
 used to hang around other folks 1 nests and holler 
 till they were distracted." 
 
 Silvia's snuffling caught his ear, and once more the 
 rapid change passed over his face. 
 
 "We-ell," he said, "the old man '11 be lively, 
 that's sure. I'd stay in the woods, if it was me, 
 but women" with a large air of observation 
 "have to have houses." 
 
 "We've got a house," broke in Chub, suddenly. 
 
 We exchanged looks furtively. 
 
 "They'll have to take the Vows," I objected. 
 
 "We've took 'em," said Aaron. "Parson " 
 
 "You'll have to solemn swear," said Moses. "Will 
 you solemn swear?" 
 
 "I guess so." 
 
 "And if you tell, you hope you drop dead." 
 
 The blue-jay flew up the road again, shrieking 
 scornfully. The red squirrel trembled and chattered 
 his teeth on the branch overhead. All else in the 
 woods was silent while Aaron and Silvia took the 
 Vows. 
 
 And so we brought them, in excitement and con- 
 tent, to the place of the abandoned gods. Baal 
 lurked far back in his cave, the cliff looked down 
 with lonely forehead, the distant prospect was 
 
 11
 
 THE DELECTABLE MOUNTAINS 
 
 smooth and smoky. Neither the gods nor the face of 
 the world offered any promise or threat. But Aaron 
 and Silvia seemed to believe in the kindness of not 
 human things. Silvia fell to chattering, laughing, in 
 unforeboding relief from sudden and near-by evil. 
 
 Aaron had a surprising number of silver dollars, 
 due to Shore and the fox-skins, by means of which 
 we should bring them supplies from Hagar; and so 
 we left them to the whispering gossip of leaves, the 
 lonely cliff, the lurking Baal, and the smooth, smoky 
 prospect. 
 
 No doubt there were times to Aaron and Silvia of 
 trembling awe, dumb delight, conversations not to 
 the point, so that it seemed more successful merely 
 to sit hand in hand and let the moon speak for 
 them, pouring light down silvery gulfs out of the 
 abundant glory within her. There could be seen, too, 
 the dawn, as pink as Silvia's cheeks, but, after all, 
 not so interesting. A hermit -thrush sang of things 
 holy at dawn, far down the woodland, while the birch 
 leaves trembled delicately and the breeze was the sigh 
 of a world in love; and of things quietly infinite at 
 sunset in the growth of rosy gloom. 
 
 "It 's nice," Silvia might whisper, leaning to Aaron. 
 
 "That's a hermit-thrush down there, Silvy. He 
 opens his mouth, and oh! Kingdom's cominV 
 
 12
 
 THE PLACE OF ABANDONED GODS 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 "Little brown chap with a scared eye. You don't 
 ever see him hardly. 1 ' 
 
 "You don't want to, do you, Aaron?" after a long 
 silence. 
 
 "Don't know as you do." 
 
 There would be a tendency, at least, to look at 
 things that way, and talk duskily as the dusk came 
 on, and we would leave them on the altar-stone to 
 take the trail below. 
 
 But early in the afternoon it would be lively 
 enough, except that Silvia had a prejudice against 
 Baal, which might have been dangerous if Baal had 
 minded it; but he did her no harm. She referred to 
 Elijah and those prophets of Baal, and we admitted 
 he had been downed that time, for it took him when 
 he was not ready, and generally he was low in his 
 luck ever since. But we had chosen him first for 
 an exiled dignity, who must needs have a deadly dis- 
 like for the other dignity who had once conquered 
 him vaingloriously, and so must be in opposition to 
 much that we opposed, such as Sunday-school les- 
 sons, sermons, and limitations of liberty. It might 
 be that our reasonings were not so concrete and 
 determined, but the sense of opposition was strong. 
 We put it to Silvia that she ought to respect 
 
 13
 
 THE DELECTABLE MOUNTAINS 
 
 people's feelings, and she was reasonable enough. 
 
 Old Kincard, it seemed, was an interesting and 
 opinionated heathen, and Silvia had not experienced 
 sermons and Sunday-schools. That explained much. 
 But she had read the Bible, which her mother had 
 owned, before she died; and we could follow her 
 there, knowing it to be a book of naturally strong 
 points, as respects David for instance, Joseph, and 
 parts of Revelation. 
 
 Aaron did not care for books, and had no preju- 
 dice toward any being or supposition that might find 
 place in the woods. The altar-stone was common to 
 many gods and councils, and we offered it to Silvia, 
 to use as she liked. I judge she used it mostly to 
 sit there with Aaron, and hear the hermit-thrush, 
 or watch the thick moonlight pour down the scoop 
 of the mountain. 
 
 That stretch of the Wyantenaug which is called 
 the Haunted Water is quiet and of slow current, 
 by reason of its depth, and dark in color, by rea- 
 son of the steep fall of the Cattle Ridge and the 
 pines which crowd from it to the water's edge. The 
 Leather Hermit's hut stood up from the water in 
 the dusk of the pines. 
 
 He came to the valley in times within the memo- 
 ries of many who would speak if they were asked, 
 
 14
 
 THE PLACE OF ABANDONED GODS 
 
 but long enough ago to have become a settled 
 fact; and if any did not like him, neither did they 
 like the Wyantenaug to flood the bottom-lands in 
 spring. The pines and the cliffs belonged to the 
 Sandersons, who cared little enough for either phe- 
 nomenon. 
 
 We often met him on the Cattle Ridge, saw him 
 pass glowering through the thicket with shaggy 
 gray beard and streaming hair. Sometimes he wore a 
 horse-blanket over his leathern vestment. He was apt 
 to be there Sundays, wandering about, and maybe 
 trying to make out in what respect he differed from 
 Elijah the Tishbite; and although we knew this, 
 and knew it was in him to cut up roughly if he 
 found out about Baal, being a prophet himself both 
 in his looks and his way of acting, still he went to 
 and fro for the most part on the other side of the 
 crest, where he had a trail of his own; and you 
 could not see the altar-stone from the top 'of the 
 cliff, but had to climb down till you came to a jam 
 of bowlders directly over it. 
 
 We did not know how long he may have stood 
 there, glowering down on us. The smoke of the 
 sacrifice was beginning to curl up. Baal was backed 
 against a stone, looking off into anywhere and 
 taking things indifferently. Silvia sat aside, twirled 
 
 15
 
 THE DELECTABLE MOUNTAINS 
 
 her hat scornfully, and said we were "silly. 11 Aaron 
 chewed a birch twig, and was very calm. 
 
 We got down on our hands and knees, and said, 
 O Baal! 11 
 
 And the Hermifs voice broke over us in thunder 
 and a sound as of falling mountains. It was Sunday, 
 June 26, 1875. 
 
 He denounced us under the heads of "idolaters, 
 gone after the abomination of the Assyrians; babes 
 and sucklings, old in sin, setting up strange gods 
 in secret places; idle mockers of holy things, like 
 the little children of Bethel, whereby they were 
 cursed of the prophet and swallowed of she-bears 11 ; 
 three headings with subdivisions. 
 
 Then he came down thumping on the left. Silvia 
 shrieked and clung to Aaron, and we fled to the 
 right and hid in the rocks. He fell upon Baal, cast 
 him on the altar-fire, stamping both to extinction, 
 and shouted: 
 
 "I know you, Aaron Bees and Silvia Kincard!" 
 
 "N-no, you doi^t, 11 stammered Aaron. "It's Mrs. 
 Bees. 11 
 
 The Hermit stood still and glared on them. 
 
 "Why are you here, Aaron and Silvia Bees? 11 
 
 Aaron recovered himself, and fell to chewing his 
 birch twig. 
 
 16
 
 THE PLACE OF ABANDONED GODS 
 
 "We-ell, you see, it's the old man." 
 
 "What of him?" 
 
 "He'd lick us with a hoe-handle, wouldn't he? 
 And maybe he 'd throw us out, after all. What 'd be 
 the use? Might as well stay away," Aaron finished, 
 grumbling. "Save the hoe." 
 
 The Hermit's glare relaxed. Some recollection of 
 former times may have passed through his rifted 
 mind, or the scent of a new denunciation drawn it 
 away from the abomination of Assyria, who lay split 
 and smoking in the ashes. He leaped from the altar- 
 stone, and vanished under the leafage of the birches. 
 We listened to him crashing and plunging, chant- 
 ing something incoherent and tuneless, down the 
 mountain, till the sound died away. 
 
 Alas, Baal-Peor! Even to this day there are 
 twinges of shame, misgivings of conscience, that we 
 had fled in fear and given him over to his enemy, 
 to be trampled on, destroyed and split through his 
 green jacket and red eye. He never again stood 
 gazing off into anywhere, snuffing the fumes of sac- 
 rifice and remembering Babylon. The look of things 
 has changed since then. We have doubted Baal, and 
 found some restraints of liberty more grateful than 
 tyrannous. But it is plain that in his last defeat 
 Baal-Peor did not have a fair chance. 
 
 17
 
 THE DELECTABLE MOUNTAINS 
 
 Concerning the Hermit's progress from this point, 
 I can only draw upon guesses and after report. He 
 struck slantingwise down the mountain, left the 
 woods about at the Kincard place, and crossed 
 the fields. 
 
 Old Kincard sat in his doorway smoking his pipe, 
 thick-set, deep-chested, long-armed, with square, 
 rough-shaven jaws, and steel-blue eyes looking out 
 of a face like a carved cliff for length and edge. The 
 Hermit stood suddenly before and denounced him 
 under two heads as a heathen unsoftened in heart, 
 and for setting up the altar of lucre and pride against 
 the will of the Lord that the children of men should 
 marry and multiply. Old Kincard took his pipe from 
 his mouth. 
 
 "Where might them marriers and multipliers be 
 just now?"" 
 
 The Hermit pointed to the most westward cliff 
 in sight from the doorway. 
 
 "If you have not in mind to repent, James Kin- 
 card, I shall know it." 
 
 "Maybe you'd put them ideas of yours again?" 
 
 The Hermit restated his position accurately on the 
 subject of heathen hearts and the altar of lucre. 
 
 "Ain't no mistake about that, Hermit? We-ell, 
 now " 
 
 18
 
 THE PLACE OF ABANDONED GODS 
 
 The Hermit shook his head sternly, and strode 
 away. Old Kincard gave a subterranean chuckle, 
 such as a volcano might give purposing eruptions, 
 and fixed his eyes on the western cliff, five miles 
 away, a grayish spot in the darker woods. 
 
 Alas, Baal-Peor! 
 
 Yet he was never indeed a wood-god. He was 
 always remembering how fine it had been in Baby- 
 lon. He had not cared for these later devotions. 
 He had been bored and weary. Since he was gone, 
 split and dead, perhaps it was better so. He should 
 have a funeral pyre. 
 
 "And," said Chub Leroy, "we'll keep his ashes 
 in an urn. That's the way they always did with 
 people's ashes." 
 
 We came up the Cattle Ridge Road Monday 
 afternoon, talking of these things. Chub carried the 
 urn, which had once been a pickle-jar. Life still was 
 full of hope and ideas. The Hermit must be laid low 
 in his arrogance. Apollo, now, had strong points. 
 Consider the pythoness and the oracle. The Hermit 
 couldn't prophesy in the same class with a pytho- 
 ness. The oracle might run, 
 
 "He who dwells by the Haunted Water alone, 
 He shall not remain, but shall perish." 
 19
 
 THE DELECTABLE MOUNTAINS 
 
 We came then to the hut, but Silvia would have 
 nothing to do with Baal's funeral, so that she and 
 Aaron wandered away among the birches, that were 
 no older than they, young birches, slim and white, col- 
 oring the sunlight pale green with their leaves. And 
 we went up to the altar-stone, and made ready the 
 funeral, and set the urn to receive the ashes, decently, 
 in order. The pyre was built four-square, of chosen 
 sticks. We did not try to fit Baal together much; we 
 laid him on as he came. And when the birch bark 
 was curling up and the pitchy black smoke of it was 
 pouring upward, we fell on our faces and cried: 
 
 "Alas, Baal! Woe's me, Baal!" 
 
 It was a good ceremony. For when you are doing 
 a ceremony, it depends on how much your feelings 
 are worked up, of course, and very few, if any, of 
 those we had done and they were many had ever 
 reached such a point of efficiency as the funeral of 
 Baal-Peor. Moses howled mournfully, as if it were 
 in some tooth that his sorrow lay. The thought of 
 that impressiveness and luxury of feeling lay mellow 
 in our minds long after. "Alas, Baal !" 
 
 Somebody snorted near by. We looked up. Over 
 our heads, thrust out beyond the edge of the bowl- 
 ders, was a strange old face, with heavy brows and 
 jaws and grizzled hair. 
 
 20
 
 THE PLACE OF ABANDONED GODS 
 
 The face was distorted, the jaws working. It dis- 
 appeared, and we sat up, gasping at one another 
 across the funeral pyre, where the black smoke was 
 rolling up faster and faster. 
 
 In a moment the face came out on the altar- 
 stone, and looked at us with level brows. 
 
 "What ye doin'?" 
 
 "My goodness!" gasped Moses. "You aren't 
 another hermit ?" 
 
 "What ye doin'?" 
 
 Chub recovered himself. 
 
 "It's Baal's funeral." 
 
 "Just so." 
 
 He sat down on a stone and wiped his face, which 
 was heated. He carried a notable stick in his hand. 
 
 "Baal! We-ell, what ailed him?" 
 
 "Are you Silvia's old man?" asked Chub. 
 
 "Just so er what ailed Baal?" 
 
 Then we told him seeing Baal was dead and the 
 Vows would have to be taken over again we told 
 him about Baal, and about the Leather Hermit, be- 
 cause he seemed touched by it, and worked his face 
 and blinked his sharp hard eyes uncannily. Some 
 hidden vein of grim ideas was coming to a white 
 heat within him, like a suppressed molten stratum 
 beneath the earth, unsuspected on its surface, that 
 
 21
 
 THE DELECTABLE MOUNTAINS 
 
 suddenly heaves and cracks the faces of stone cliffs. 
 He gave way at last, and his laughter was the rend- 
 ing tumult of an earthquake. 
 
 Aaron and Silvia came up through the woods 
 hastily to the altar-stone. 
 
 "I say," cried Chub. "Are you going to lick them? 
 It's two to Aaron for one to Silvia." 
 
 "Been marryin' and multiply in', have ye?" 
 
 He suppressed the earthquake, but still seemed 
 mainly interested in Baal's funeral. 
 
 Aaron said, "She's Mrs. Bees, anyhow." 
 
 "Just so. Baal's dead. That hermit's some lively." 
 
 "We'll get an oracle on him," said Moses. "What 
 you going to do to Aaron and Silvia?" 
 
 Here Silvia cast herself on the old man suddenly 
 and wept on his shoulder. One often noticed how 
 girls would start up and cry on a person. 
 
 Maybe the earthquake had brought up subsoils 
 and mellowed things; at least Kincard made no 
 motion to lick some one, though he looked bored, 
 as any fellow might. 
 
 "Oh, we-ell, I don't know er what's that 
 oracle?" 
 
 "He who dwells by the Haunted Water alone, 
 He shall not remain, but shall perish,"
 
 THE PLACE OF ABANDONED GODS 
 
 "It's going to be like that, 1 ' said Chub. "Won't 
 it fetch him, don't you think ?" 
 
 "It ought to," said the old man, working his jaw. 
 "It ought to." 
 
 The black smoke had ceased, and flames were 
 crackling and dancing all over the funeral pyre. The 
 clearer smoke floated up against the face of the 
 lonesome cliff. Aaron and Silvia clasped hands un- 
 frightened. The old man now and then rumbled sub- 
 terraneously in his throat. Peace was everywhere, 
 and presently Baal-Peor was ashes. 
 
 23
 
 THE LEATHER HERMIT
 
 THE LEATHER HERMIT 
 
 JL o know the Wyantenaug thoroughly is to be wise 
 in rivers; which if any one doubts, let him follow it 
 from its springs to the sea a possible fortnight 
 and consider then how he is a changed man with 
 respect to rivers. Not that by any means it is the 
 epitome of rivers. It is no spendthrift flood-stream 
 to be whirling over the bottom-lands in April and 
 scarcely able to wet its middle stones in August, 
 but a shrewd and honest river, a canny river flowing 
 among a canny folk, a companionable river, loving 
 both laughter and sentiment, with a taste for the 
 varieties of life and a fine vein of humor. Observe 
 how it dances and sputters down the rapids not 
 really losing its temper, but pretending to be nervous 
 dives into that sloping pass where the rocks hang 
 high and drip forever, runs through it like a sleuth- 
 hound, darkly and savagely, and saunters out into 
 the sunlight, as who should say in a guileless man- 
 ner, "You don't happen to know where I'm going ?" 
 Then it wanders about the valley, spreads out com- 
 fortably and lies quiet a space, "But it really makes 
 no difference, you know 11 ; and after that gives a 
 
 27
 
 THE DELECTABLE MOUNTAINS 
 
 chuckle, rounds a bunch of hills and goes scamper- 
 ing off, quite taken up with a new idea. And so in 
 many ways it is an entertaining and friendly river, 
 with a liking for a joke and a pretty notion of dra- 
 matic effect. 
 
 But, of all times and places, I think it most beau- 
 tiful in the twilight and along that stretch, called 
 of late the Haunted Water, opposite the village of 
 Preston Plains. The Cattle Ridge with its long heav- 
 ing spine comes down on the valley from the east, 
 seeming to have it very much in mind to walk over 
 and do something to Preston Plains three miles be- 
 yond; but it thought better of that long ago. The 
 Wyantenaug goes close beneath it in sheer bravado: 
 "You try to cross me and you get jolly wet"; for 
 the Wyantenaug is very deep and broad just here. 
 The Cattle Ridge, therefore, merely wrinkles its 
 craggy brows with a puzzled air, and Preston Plains 
 is untroubled save of its own inhabitants. As to that 
 matter the people of the village of Hagar have 
 opinions. The valley road goes on the other side of 
 the river naturally, for there are the pastures, the 
 feeding cattle, the corn-fields, and farmhouses and 
 the Cattle Ridge side is steep, and threaded by a foot- 
 path only, for a mile or more, up to Hants Corby's 
 place. Hants Corby^s is not much of a place either. 
 
 28
 
 THE LEATHER HERMIT 
 
 In old times the footpath was seldom used, except 
 by the Leather Hermit. No boy in Hagar would go 
 that way for his life, though we often went up and 
 down on the river, and saw the Leather Hermit fish- 
 ing. The minister in Hagar visited him once or twice, 
 and probably went by the footpath. I remember dis- 
 tinctly how he shook his head and said that the Her- 
 mit sought salvation at any rate by a narrow way, 
 and how the miller's wife remonstrated with him for 
 seeming to take the Hermit seriously. 
 
 '"You don't mean to say he ain't crazy," she said, 
 in anxious defence of standard reason. 
 
 "Oh, I suppose so, yes." 
 
 The minister sighed and rubbed his chin uneasily, 
 and Mrs. Mather recovered her ordinary state of 
 mind, which was a state of suppressed complaint. 
 
 I was saying that the footpath was seldom used. 
 Hants Corby would have used it for he was too 
 shiftless to be afraid if the river had run the other 
 way. As it was, he preferred to drift down in his 
 boat and row back when he had to. He found that 
 easier, being very shiftless. The Hermit himself went 
 on the river, except in the spring when the current 
 below was too strong. 
 
 The opinions of the Leather Hermit may be 
 shown in this way. If you came on him, no matter 
 
 29
 
 THE DELECTABLE MOUNTAINS 
 
 how suddenly, and asked whose land that was across 
 the river, he would answer promptly, "The devilV; 
 whereas it belonged to Bazilloa Armitage, a pillar of 
 the church in Preston Plains, who quarrelled zeal- 
 ously with the other pillars; so that, as one sees, 
 the Leather Hermit was not in sympathy with the 
 church in Preston Plains. 
 
 The people of the valley differed about him 
 according to humor, and he used strong language 
 regarding the people of the valley according to op- 
 portunity, especially regarding Bazilloa Armitage. 
 He denounced Bazilloa Armitage publicly in Preston 
 Plains as a hypocrite, a backbiter, and a man with 
 a muck rake with other language stronger still. 
 Bazilloa Armitage felt hurt, for he was, in fact, 
 rather close, and exceedingly respectable. Besides it 
 is painful to be damned by a man who means ex- 
 actly what he says. 
 
 To speak particularly, this was in the year 1875; 
 for the next year we camped near the spot, and 
 Hants Corby tried to frighten us into seeing the 
 Hermit's ghost. Bazilloa Armitage was denounced 
 in June, and Hants Corby on the second Friday in 
 August, as Hants and the Hermit fished near each 
 other on the river. The Hermit denounced him un- 
 der three heads sluggard, scoffer, and beast wallow- 
 
 30
 
 THE LEATHER HERMIT 
 
 ing in the sty of his own lustful contentment. On 
 Saturday the Hermit rowed up to Hants derby's 
 place in the rain and denounced him again. 
 
 Sunday morning the Hermit rose early, turned 
 his back on the Wyantenaug, and climbed the cliff, 
 onward and up through the pines. The prophets of 
 old went into high places when they prayed; and 
 it was an idea of his that those who would walk 
 in the rugged path after them could do no bet- 
 ter. Possibly the day was an anniversary, for it was 
 of an August day many years gone before ever a 
 charcoal pit was built on the Cattle Ridge that 
 the Hermit first appeared on the Wyantenaug, with 
 his leather clothes in a bundle on his back, and per- 
 haps another and invisible burden beneath it. A 
 third burden he took up immediately, that of de- 
 nouncing the sins of Wyantenaug Valley, as I have 
 said. 
 
 All that Sabbath day the river went its way, and 
 late in the afternoon the sunlight stretched a thin 
 finger beneath the hemlocks almost to the Hermit's 
 door. Across the river the two children of Bazilloa 
 Armitage, boy and girl, came down to the water's 
 edge. The boy pulled a pole and line out of some 
 mysterious place in the bank. The little girl sat 
 primly on the grass, mindful of her white pinafore. 
 
 31
 
 THE DELECTABLE MOUNTAINS 
 
 "You better look out, Cis," he said. "Any fish you 
 catch on Sunday is devils. You don't touch him. 
 You cut the line and let him dry till Monday. 1 ' 
 
 "Oh, Tad!" gasped the little girl, "won't the 
 Leather Hermit tell?" 
 
 "Well," said Tad, sturdily, "father said he'd get 
 even, if it took a month of Sundays, and that 's six 
 Sundays by this time. There ain't anything bothers 
 the Hermit like catching the fish on Sundays, spe- 
 cially if you catch a lot of 'em. Blamed old fool!" 
 grumbled Tad. 
 
 "Oh, Tad," gasped the little girl again, in awed 
 admiration, " that 's swearing." 
 
 But Tad did not mind. "There's Hants Corby," 
 he exclaimed; "he's going to fish, too." 
 
 Hants Corby floated down in his old boat, 
 dropped anchor opposite the children, and grinned 
 sociably. 
 
 " He dare n't touch his boat to-day," he said in a 
 husky whisper. "He'll raise jinks in a minute. You 
 wait." 
 
 "Fishes is devils on Sunday, aren't they, Hants?" 
 
 "Trout," returned Hants, decisively, "is devils 
 any time." 
 
 Both Tad Armitage and Hants Corby ought to 
 have known that the Leather Hermit sometimes 
 
 32
 
 THE LEATHER HERMIT 
 
 went up the Cattle Ridge on Sundays to wrestle with 
 an angel, like Jacob, who had his thigh broken. 
 We knew that much in Hagar and it shows what 
 comes of living in Preston Plains instead of Hagar. 
 
 Hants Corby motioned with his thumb toward 
 the Hermit's hut. 
 
 "Him," he remarked, "he don't let folks alone. 
 He wants folks to let him alone particular. That 
 ain't reasonable." 
 
 "Father says he's a fernatic," ventured Tad. 
 "What's a fernatic, Hants?" 
 
 "Ah," said Hants, thoughtfully, "that's a rattlin' 
 good word." 
 
 Time dragged on, and yet no denouncing voice 
 came from the further shore. The door of the hut 
 was a darker hole in the shade of the hemlocks. 
 Hants Corby proposed going over to investigate. 
 
 "If he ain't there, we'll carry off his boat." 
 
 Tad fell into Hants's boat quite absorbed in the 
 greatness of the thought. It was not a good thing 
 generally to follow Hants Corby, who was an irre- 
 sponsible person, apt to take much trouble to 
 arrange a bad joke and shiftlessly slip out from 
 under the consequences. If he left you in a trap, he 
 thought that a part of the joke, as I remember very 
 well. 
 
 33
 
 THE DELECTABLE MOUNTAINS 
 
 "A-a-a-ow!" wailed Cissy Armitage from the 
 bank; for it dawned on her that something tremen- 
 dous was going forward, in which Tad was likely to 
 be suddenly obliterated. She sat on the bank with 
 her stubby shoes hanging over, staring with great 
 frightened blue eyes, till she saw them at last draw 
 silently away from the further shore and behold, 
 the Hermit's boat was in tow. Then she knew that 
 there was no one in the world so brave or so grandly 
 wicked as Tad. 
 
 Cissy Armitage used to have fluffy yellow hair and 
 scratches on her shins. She was a sunny little soul 
 generally, but she had a way of imagining how 
 badly other people felt, which interfered with her 
 happiness, and was not always accurate. Tad seldom 
 felt so badly as she thought he did. Tad thought he 
 could imagine most things better on the whole, but 
 when it came to imagining how badly other people 
 felt, he admitted that she did it very well. Therefore 
 when she set about imagining how the Hermit felt, 
 on the other side of the river, with no boat to come 
 across in, to where people were cosy and comfortable, 
 where they sang the Doxology and put the kittens 
 to bed, she quite forgot that the Hermit had always 
 before had a boat, that he never yet had taken 
 advantage of it to make the acquaintance of the 
 
 34
 
 THE LEATHER HERMIT 
 
 Doxology or the kittens, and imagined him feeling 
 very badly indeed. 
 
 Bazilloa Armitage held family prayers at six 
 o'clock on Sunday afternoons; and all through them 
 Cissy considered the Hermit. 
 
 "I sink in deep waters,' 1 read Bazilloa Armitage 
 with a rising inflection. "The billows go over my 
 head, all his waves go over me, Selah," and Cissy in 
 her mind saw the Hermit sitting on the further 
 shore, feeling very badly, calling Tad an "evil gen- 
 eration," and saying: "The billows go over my head, 
 Selah," because he had no boat. She thought that 
 one must feel desperately in order to say: "Selah, 
 the billows go over me." And while Bazilloa Armi- 
 tage prayed for the President, Congress, the Gov- 
 ernor, and other people who were in trouble, she 
 plotted diligently how it might be avoided that the 
 Hermit should feel so badly as to say "Selah," or 
 call Tad an "evil generation"; how she might get 
 the boat back, in order that the Hermit should feel 
 better and let bygones be; and how it might be 
 done secretly, in order that Tad should not make 
 a bear of himself. Afterwards she walked out of the 
 back door in her sturdy fashion, and no one paid her 
 any attention. 
 
 The Hermit muttered in the dusk of his doorway. 
 35
 
 THE DELECTABLE MOUNTAINS 
 
 Leather clothes are stiff after a rain and bad for 
 the temper; moreover, other things than disordered 
 visions of the heavens rolling away as a scroll and 
 the imperative duty of denouncing some one were 
 present in his clouded brain, half memories, break- 
 ing through clouds, of a time when he had not as 
 yet begun to companion daily with judgment to 
 come, nor had those black spots begun to dance 
 before his eyes, which black spots were evidently 
 the sins of the world. He muttered and shifted his 
 position uneasily. 
 
 There was once a little white house somewhere 
 in the suburbs of a city. It stood near the end of 
 a half-built street, with a sandy road in front. 
 There was a child, too, that rolled its doll down 
 the steps, rolled after it, wept aloud and laughed 
 through its tears. 
 
 The stiff leather rasped the Hermit's skin. The 
 clouds closed in again; he shook himself, and raised 
 his voice threateningly in words familiar enough to 
 the denounced people of the Wyantenaug: "It is 
 written, 'Thou shalt have no other gods before me 1 ; 
 and your gods are multitudes." He stared with 
 dazed eyes across the dusky river. The little ripples 
 chuckled, sobbed and gurgled in a soft, human way. 
 Something seemed to steal in upon him, like a gentle 
 
 36
 
 THE LEATHER HERMIT 
 
 hand, pleading and caressing. He made an angry 
 motion to thrust it away, and muttered: "Judg- 
 ment to come judgment to come. 11 He seemed to 
 hear a sobbing and whispering, and then two infi- 
 nite things came together in his shattered brain 
 with a crash, leaving him stunned and still. 
 
 There was a syringa bush before the little white 
 house, a picket fence, too, white and neat. Who 
 was it that when he would cry, "Judgment to 
 come! 11 would whisper and sob? That was not a 
 child. That was no well, there was a child. Evi- 
 dently it rolled its doll down the steps and rolled 
 after it. There was a tan-yard, too, and the dressing 
 of hides. He dressed hides across a bench. The other 
 men did not take much interest in judgment to 
 come. They swore at him and burned sulphur under 
 his bench. After that the child rolled its doll down 
 the steps again, and bumped after it pitifully. 
 
 The Hermit groaned and hid his face. He could 
 almost remember it all, if it were not for the black 
 spots, the sins of the world. Something surely was 
 true whether judgment to come or the child bump- 
 ing down the steps he could not tell, but he thought, 
 "Presently I shall forget one of the two. 11 
 
 The sun had set, and the dusk was creeping from 
 the irregular hills beyond, over the village of Pres- 
 
 37
 
 THE DELECTABLE MOUNTAINS 
 
 ton Plains, over the house of Bazilloa Armitage. 
 Dark storm-clouds were bearing down from the 
 north. A glitter sprang once more into the Hermit's 
 eyes, and he welcomed the clouds, stretching out his 
 hands toward them. Suddenly he dropped his hands, 
 and the glitter died out in a dull stare. Across the 
 last red reflection of the water glided a boat, his 
 own boat, or one like it. A little child in white rose 
 up and stood in the prow, and, as though she were 
 a spirit, the light in the west passed into her hair. 
 It was not the right way for judgment to come. The 
 dark clouds bearing down from the north that was 
 judgment to come; but the spirit in the boat, that 
 could not be anything it was false unless 
 unless it rolled down the steps. And then once more 
 the two infinite things came together with a crash. 
 He leaped to his feet; for a moment his hands went 
 to and fro over his head; he babbled mere sounds, 
 and fell forward on his face, groaning. 
 
 Cissy Armitage achieved the top of the bank with 
 difficulty, and adjusted her pinafore. The Hermit lay 
 on his face very still. It was embarrassing. 
 
 "I I brought back your boat, so you needn't 
 feel bad. I I feel bad." 
 
 She stopped, hearing the Hermit moan once softly, 
 and then for a time the only sound was the lapping 
 
 38
 
 THE LEATHER HERMIT 
 
 of the water. It was growing quite dark. She thought 
 that he must feel even worse than she had imagined. 
 
 "I'm sorry. It's awful lonesome. I want to go 
 home." 
 
 The Hermit made no motion. Cissy felt that it 
 was a bad case. She twisted her pinafore and blinked 
 hard. The lumps were rising in her throat, and she 
 did not know what to say that would show the Her- 
 mit how badly she felt unless she said "Selah." It 
 was strong language, but she ventured it at last. 
 
 "I feel awful bad. The the billows go over my 
 head, Selah!" Then she wished that she had let 
 "Selah" quite alone. 
 
 The Hermit lifted his face. It was very white; his 
 eyes were fixed and dead-looking, and he got his 
 feet under him, as if he intended to creep forward. 
 Cissy backed against a tree, swallowed lumps very 
 fast, and decided to kick if he came near. But he 
 only looked at her steadily. 
 
 "What is your name?" he said in a slow, plain- 
 tive tone, as a man speaks who cannot hear his own 
 voice. Cissy thought it silly that he should not know 
 her name, having seen her often enough, and this 
 gave her courage. "Cecilia Armitage. I want to go 
 home." 
 
 "No!" shouted the Hermit. He sat up suddenly 
 39
 
 THE DELECTABLE MOUNTAINS 
 
 and glared at her, so that the lumps began climbing 
 her throat again faster than ever. "That isn't the 
 name." Then he dropped his head between his knees 
 and began sobbing. Cissy did not know that men 
 ever cried. It seemed to tear him up, and was much 
 worse than "The billows go over me, Selah." On 
 the whole there seemed to be no point in staying 
 longer. She walked to the bank and there hesitated 
 diffidently. 
 
 "I want to go home. I I want you to row me." 
 There was a long silence; the Hermit's head was 
 still hidden between his knees. Then he came over 
 and got into the boat, not walking upright, but 
 almost creeping, making no noise, nor lifting his 
 head. He took the oars and rowed, still keeping his 
 head down, until the boat came under the old 
 willow, where the bank runs low on the edge of 
 Bazilloa Armitage's ten-acre lot. It struck the bank, 
 but he sat still, with his head down. Cissy Armitage 
 scrambled up the roots of the willow, looked back, 
 and saw him sitting with his head down. 
 
 Cissy Armitage was the last to see the Leather 
 Hermit alive, for Hants Corby found him Monday 
 afternoon in shallow water, about a rod from shore. 
 The anchor stone was clasped in his arms, and the 
 anchor rope wound around his waist, which would 
 
 40
 
 THE LEATHER HERMIT 
 
 seem to imply that he was there with a purpose. 
 If that purpose was to discover which of two things 
 were true judgment to come, or the child that 
 rolled its doll down the steps every one is surely 
 entitled to an opinion on its success or failure. There 
 was a copy-book, such as children use, found in his 
 hut. On the cover was written, "The Book of Judg- 
 ment."" It contained the record of his denunciations, 
 with other odd things. The people of Wyantenaug 
 Valley still differ, according to humor; but any one 
 of them will give his or her opinion, if you ask it. 
 
 41
 
 BLACK POND CLEARING
 
 BLACK POND CLEARING 
 
 AN those days I knew Hamilton only by the light 
 in the south; for in Hagar men said, "That light in 
 the south is Hamilton,"" as they would say, "The 
 sunrise in the east, the sunset in the west, the au- 
 rora in the north, 11 illuminations that were native 
 in their places. Hamilton was a yellow glimmer on 
 clear nights, and on cloudy nights a larger glow. It 
 crouched low in the sky, pale, secret, enticing. 
 
 Also I knew that Hamilton was twenty miles 
 away, like Sheridan^ ride. How great and full of 
 palaces and splendors that must be which shone so 
 far! How golden its streets, and jewelled its gates, 
 like the Celestial City, which is described in Reve- 
 lations and "The Progress 11 in an unmistakable 
 manner, if not as one would wish in the matter of 
 some details. Yet to speak justly, "The Progress 11 
 was considered a passable good story, though not 
 up to the "Arabian Nights 11 ; and Revelations had 
 its points, though any one could see the writer was 
 mixed in his mind, and upset probably by the odd- 
 ness of his adventures, and rather stumped how to 
 relate them plainly. 
 
 45
 
 THE DELECTABLE MOUNTAINS 
 
 But this story does not include the city of Ham- 
 ilton, although touching on the lights in the south. 
 It left its mark upon me and cast a shadow over 
 many things that did not seem connected with it, 
 being a kind of introduction for me to what might 
 be called the Greater Melancholies. 
 
 There are four roads that meet in Hagar: the 
 Cattle Ridge, the Salem, the Windless Mountain, 
 and the Red Rock. The Salem is broad, level, and 
 straight; the Windless sweeps around the mountain, 
 deep through the pines, the jungle of other woods, 
 and the gorge of the falling Mill Stream; the Red 
 Rock is a high, clean hill road, open and bare; the 
 Cattle Ridge Road comes down from highest of all, 
 from far up on the windy brows of the Ridge, and 
 dips and courtesies all the way into Hagar. Some 
 time I would like to make more plain the nature and 
 influence of the Four Roads. But the adventure be- 
 gan on the Cattle Ridge Road with a wide-armed 
 chestnut tree, where certain red squirrels lived who 
 were lively and had thin tails. I went out over the 
 road on a long limb with Moses Durfey and Chub 
 Leroy, seeing Mr. Cummings driving a load of hay 
 down from the Cattle Ridge: it seemed desirable 
 to drop on the hay when it passed beneath. Mr. 
 Cummings was sleepy. He sat nodding far down 
 
 46
 
 BLACK POND CLEARING 
 
 in front, while we lit softly on the crest and slid 
 over behind. 
 
 And next you are to know that Chub Leroy's 
 feet came down thump on the head of a monstrous 
 man, half buried in the hay, who sat up and looked 
 around, vast, shaggy, black-bearded, smoking a corn- 
 cob pipe, composed, and quite ragged in his clothes. 
 
 "Humph!" he said mildly, and rubbed his head. 
 
 After a few moments looking us over, he pointed 
 with his thumb through the hay at Mr. Cummings, 
 and leaned toward us and winked. 
 
 "Same as me, 11 he whispered, and shook all over 
 his fatness, silently, with the laughter and pleasure 
 he was having inside. 
 
 It is a good thing in this world to have adven- 
 tures, and it is only a matter of looking around a bit 
 in country or city. For each fellow his quest is wait- 
 ing at the street corner, or hides in the edge of the 
 woods, peering out of green shadows. On all high- 
 ways it is to be met with and is seldom far to seek 
 though no harm if it were because the world is 
 populous with men and animals, and no moment like 
 another. It may be, if you drop on a hay-load, you 
 will have a row with the driver, or you will thump on 
 the head such a free traveller as ours, vast, shaggy, 
 primeval, pipe-smoking, of wonderful fatness. 
 
 47
 
 THE DELECTABLE MOUNTAINS 
 
 He seemed a sleepy, contented man, not in point 
 of fact minding thumps on the head. The hay-cart 
 rolled on gently in the dust. Mr. Cummings drowsed 
 in front, unaware, and the Free Traveller drowsed 
 behind, smoking listlessly. The rest of us grew 
 sleepy too and liked everything. For it was odd but 
 pleasant in a way to look down from the secrecy of 
 the hay on familiar things, on the village dooryards 
 and the tops of hats. We seemed to fall into silent 
 league with the Free Traveller, to be interested in 
 things, but not anxious, observing the hats of labor 
 and ambition, careless of appearance, primitive, easy, 
 seeing little importance in where the cart might go, 
 because anywhere was good enough. 
 
 Instead of turning east at the cross-roads, Mr. 
 Cummings drove drowsily ahead on the Windless 
 Road, although the Cummings place is east on the 
 Salem; so that the hay was plainly going to the 
 little pasture barn, three miles off, all one to us, and 
 better for the Free Traveller, as it appeared after. 
 But he was not interested then, being in a fair way 
 to sleep. We lay deep in the hay and looked up at 
 the blue of the sky and the white of the creeping 
 clouds, till the pine trees closed suddenly over the 
 road, the cliffs of Windless Mountain on one side 
 and the Mill Stream on the other, deep under its 
 
 48
 
 BLACK POND CLEARING 
 
 bank. A strong south wind came under the pines, 
 skirting the corner of the mountain, hissed through 
 the pine needles, and rumpled the hay. 
 
 And there was a great smoke and blaze about us. 
 
 "Humph!"" said the Free Traveller. 
 
 He went off the back of the hay-cart into the 
 middle of the road, and we too fell off immediately, 
 each in his own way, on the pine needles. Mr. Cum- 
 mings came up over the top of the load with a 
 tumult of mixed language, and the horses ran away. 
 
 The great load sped down the green avenue 
 smoking, crackling, blazing, taking with it Mr. 
 Cummings to unknown results, and leaving the Free 
 Traveller sitting up in the middle of the road and 
 looking after it mildly. He heaved himself up puffing. 
 
 "There!" he said. "There goes my pipe." 
 
 "It's all your fault," shouted Moses Durfey. 
 "You shouldn't smoke on hay -loads." 
 
 "Maybe Mr. Cummings is a deader," said Chub 
 Leroy, thoughtfully. 
 
 The Free Traveller rubbed his leg. 
 
 "You're same as me. If he ain't dead he'll come 
 back with a strap and lam some of us. That ain't 
 me. I'm going to light out." 
 
 He slid under the rail and down the bank to the 
 stream, handling himself wonderfully for so weighty 
 
 49
 
 THE DELECTABLE MOUNTAINS 
 
 a man; for he seemed to accommodate himself to 
 obstacles like a jellyfish, and somehow to get around 
 them. So he was over the bowlders and across the 
 stream, which there divides Windless Mountain 
 from the Great South Woods. 
 
 We were indignant that he should leave us to be 
 "lammed" for his carelessness. We shouted after, 
 and Moses Durfey said he was a "chump." 
 
 "You might come along," retorted the Free Trav- 
 eller with an injured manner. "What's hindering? I 
 lugs nobody. I lets folks alone." 
 
 He was at the wood's edge by this time, where a 
 dim green path went in, looked over his shoulder a 
 moment, and then disappeared. We scrambled down 
 the bank and over the bowlders, for it was not de- 
 sirable to wait for Mr. Cummings, and Hagar itself 
 would be no refuge. Hagar was a place where criti- 
 cisms were made, while the green woods have never 
 a comment on any folly, but are good comrades to 
 all who have the temper to like them. We caught 
 up with him by dint of running and followed si- 
 lently. It grew dusky with the lateness of the after- 
 noon, the pale green light turning dark, and we 
 were solemn and rather low in our minds. The Free 
 Traveller seemed to grow more vast in outline. 
 Being short of wind he wheezed and moaned and 
 
 50
 
 BLACK POND CLEARING 
 
 what with his swaying as he walked, and his great 
 humpy shoulders and all, he looked less and less like 
 a man, and more and more like a Thing. Sometimes 
 a tree would creak suddenly near at hand, and I 
 fancied there were other people in the woods, whis- 
 pering and all going the way we went, to see what 
 would come to us in the end. 
 
 So it went on till we came on a little clearing, be- 
 tween the forest and a swamp. A black pond, tinted 
 a bit with the sunset, lay below along the edge of 
 the swamp; and we knew mainly where we were, for 
 there was a highway somewhere beyond the swamp, 
 connecting the valleys of the Wyantenaug and the 
 Pilgrim. But none the less for the highway it seemed 
 a lonely place, fit for congregations of ghosts. The 
 pond was unknown to me, and it looked very still 
 and oily. The forest seemed to crowd about and over- 
 hang the clearing. On the western side was a heap of 
 caverned bowlders, and a fire burned in front with 
 three persons sitting beside it. 
 
 The Free Traveller slid along the wood's edge 
 noiselessly but without hesitation, and coming to 
 the fire was greeted. One of those who sat there was 
 a tall old man with very light blue eyes and promi- 
 nent, his beard white and long. As we came to 
 know, he was called the "Prophet." He said: 
 
 51
 
 THE DELECTABLE MOUNTAINS 
 
 "How do, Humpy?" so that we knew the Free 
 Traveller was called Humpy, either for the shape of 
 his shoulders or for the word he used to express 
 himself. There was a younger man, with a retreating 
 chin, and a necktie, but no collar, and there was a 
 silent woman with a shawl over her head. 
 
 "These are friends o' mine," said the Free Trav- 
 eller to the older man. "Make you acquainted. 
 That's Showman Bobby, and that's the Prophet." 
 
 A vast chuckle of mirth started then from deep 
 within him and surged through his throat, such a 
 laugh as would naturally come from a whale or some 
 creature of a past age, whose midriff was boundless. 
 
 "Ho!"" he said. "Bloke with a hay-load lit under 
 him. Ho, Ho!" 
 
 "Gen'leman," said the Prophet with a fluent wave 
 of his hand. "Friends of Humpy's. That's enough. 
 Any grub, Humpy?" 
 
 The Free Traveller brought out a round loaf and 
 some meat done up in a newspaper. He might have 
 carried a number of such things about him without 
 making any great difference in his contour. The 
 Prophet did not ask about the hay-load, or where 
 the bread and meat came from. 
 
 The daylight was fading now in the clearing, and 
 presently a few thin stars were out. It might have 
 
 52
 
 BLACK POND CLEARING 
 
 occurred to persons of better regulated fancies than 
 ours that they were due at supper long since with 
 other friends of staider qualities, and that now the 
 wood-paths were too dark to follow. Perhaps it did; 
 but it could not have seemed a fair reason to be 
 troubled, that we were last seen in company with 
 the Free Traveller, so fat and friendly a man. I re- 
 member better that the Black Pond reflected no 
 stars, that the gleams from the fire played fearful 
 games along the wood's edge and the bowlders, and 
 how, beyond the Black Pond, the swamp and the 
 close-cuddled hills, the lights of Hamilton crouched 
 low under the sky. Opposite us across the fire sat 
 that woman who said nothing, and her face was 
 shadowed by her shawL 
 
 Showman Bobby and the Free Traveller went 
 to sleep, Bobby on his face and the Free Traveller 
 accommodating himself. The Prophet sat up and 
 kept us company; for we asked him questions natu- 
 rally, and he seemed interested to answer, and was 
 fluent and striking in his speech. They were a run- 
 out Company and very low in their luck; and it 
 seemed that Bobby was the manager, a tumbler 
 himself by profession and in that way of life since 
 childhood; and the Free Traveller was apt to be 
 an Australian giant now, but in earlier years had 
 
 53
 
 THE DELECTABLE MOUNTAINS 
 
 been given to footing from place to place and liv- 
 ing as he might. The Prophet called him a skilful 
 man at getting things out of women, partly by 
 experience, and partly by reason of his size and the 
 mildness of his manners. As for the Black Pond 
 Clearing, it was well known to people of the road, 
 even to orange-men and pack-peddlers, being a hid- 
 den place with wood and water and shelter in the 
 caves from rain. 
 
 "That light in the south is Hamilton, 11 said 
 Chub Leroy. 
 
 The Prophet started and looked anxiously across 
 the fire, but the woman did not move. Then he 
 drew nearer us and spoke lower. 
 
 "You look out," he said. "She ain't right in her 
 head. Bobby painted the kid for a pappoose. It took 
 the shakes and died queer. You'ti better lie down, 
 Cass, 11 speaking across the fire to the woman, who 
 turned her head and stared at him directly. "You 'd 
 better lie down. 11 
 
 She drew back from the fire noiselessly and lay 
 down, wrapping her shawl about her head. 
 
 "I ain^ been a circus heeler all my time," began 
 the Prophet. "I been a gentleman. Neither has 
 Humpy, I reckon. When I met Bobby it was West 
 and he ran a dime museum. He took me in for 
 
 54
 
 BLACK POND CLEARING 
 
 being a gifted talker, and I was that low in my 
 luck. She and Bobby was married sometime, and 
 she did acts like the Circassian Beauty, and the 
 Headless Woman, and the Child of the Aztecs. 
 Humpy's gifts lies in his size, and he's a powerful 
 strong man, too, more than you'd think, and he 
 can get himself up for a savage to look like a loose 
 tornado. Look at him now. Ain't he a heap? There 
 was a three-eyed dog in the show that you could n't 
 tell that the extra eye was n't so hardly, and a snake 
 that was any kind of a snake according as you fixed 
 him, his natural color being black. We came East 
 with Forepaugh's. Bobby bought a tent in Chicago, 
 and we came to Hamilton a fortnight ago. Now 
 there's Hamilton that's a-shining off there with 
 its lights. And we run away from it in the night a 
 week come to-morrow, or next day, I forget. We 
 left the tent and outfit which was come down on 
 by a Dutch grocer for debt, and Cassie's baby was 
 dead in the tent. Bobby painted him too thick. 
 And there was a lot of folks looking for us with 
 sticks. Now, that was n't right. Think Bobby 'd have 
 poisoned his own kid if he'd known better about 
 painting him, a kid that was a credit to the show! 
 That's what they said. Think folks coming round 
 with sticks and a-howling blasphemous is going to 
 
 55
 
 THE DELECTABLE MOUNTAINS 
 
 help out any family mourning! That ain't my idea. 
 
 "Then a fellow says, 'I don't know anything 
 about it,' he says, 'and I don't want to, but I know 
 you get out of here quick.' 
 
 "And they drove us out of Hamilton that night 
 ten miles in a covered cart, and left us in the road. 
 And the Dutch grocer got the outfit. I reckon the 
 circus and the city has buried the kid between 'em. 
 Hey? Sh! She's got a quirk. All I know is Fore- 
 paugh's shook us as if we was fleas." 
 
 The Prophet looked over to where Cassie lay, 
 but she did not stir. Anyway, if she heard, it was 
 the Prophet's fault. "They're awful poor company," 
 he said plaintively, "Bobby and Cass. She takes 
 on terrible. She's took a notion that baby ain't 
 buried right. She thinks well, I don't know. Now 
 that ain't my way of looking at things, but I did n't 
 own the outfit. It was Bobby's outfit, and the Dutch 
 grocer got it." 
 
 He was silent for a moment. We could hear the 
 Free Traveller asleep and rumbling in his throat. 
 
 "Where might you chaps come from?" asked 
 the Prophet, suddenly. "Not that it's my business. 
 Maybe there might be a town over there? Hey? 
 Yes." 
 
 He grumbled in his beard a few moments more, 
 56
 
 BLACK POND CLEARING 
 
 and then lay down to sleep. We drew together and 
 whispered. The three men slept, and the woman 
 said nothing. 
 
 It is seen that sometimes your most battered 
 and world-worn of men is the simplest in his way 
 of looking at things. Or else it was because the 
 Prophet was a talker by nature, and Bobby and 
 Cass such poor company, that he fell into speech 
 with us on such equal terms. I have set down but 
 little of what he said, only enough for the story 
 of the Company, and as I happen to recollect it. 
 
 It should have been something earlier than nine 
 o'clock when the Prophet lay down to sleep, and 
 half an hour later when we first noticed that the 
 woman, Cass, was sitting up. She had her back to 
 us and was looking toward the lights of Hamilton. 
 There was no moon and the stars only shone here 
 and there between clouds that hurried across the 
 sky, making preparations for the storm that came 
 in the morning. The fire burned low, but there was 
 no need of it for warmth. The outlines of the hills 
 could be seen. The swamp, the pond, and most of 
 the clearing were dark together. 
 
 Presently she looked cautiously around, first at 
 the three sleepers, and then at us. She crept nearer 
 slowly and crouched beside the dull fire, throwing 
 
 57
 
 THE DELECTABLE MOUNTAINS 
 
 back her shawl. Her hair was black and straggled 
 about her face, and her eyes were black too, and 
 glittering. The glow of the embers, striking upward, 
 made their sockets cavernous, but the eyes stood 
 out in the midst of the caverns. One knows well 
 enough that tragedies walk about and exchange 
 agreeable phrases with each other. Your tragedy 
 is yours, and mine is mine, and in the meanwhile 
 see to it that we look sedate, and discuss anything, 
 provided it is of no importance to either. One does 
 not choose to be an inscribed monument to the 
 fame of one's private affair. But Cassie had lost 
 that instinct of reserve, and her desolation looked 
 out of her eyes with dreadful candor. The lines of 
 her face, the droop of her figure and even little 
 motions of the hand, signified but one thought. I 
 suppose all ideas possible to the world had become 
 as one to her, so that three boys cowering away 
 from her seemed only a natural enough part of the 
 same subject. It was all one; namely, a baby painted 
 brown, who died queerly in a side tent in Hamilton 
 Fair Grounds. 
 
 We stared at her breathlessly. 
 
 "You tell 'em I'm going," she whispered. 
 
 "Where?" asked Chub. 
 
 "They ain't no right to to Who are you?" 
 58
 
 BLACK POND CLEARING 
 
 But this was only in passing. She did not wait to 
 be answered. 
 
 "You tell 'em I'm going." 
 
 "What for?" persisted Chub. 
 
 "It's six days. Maybe they thro wed him where 
 the tin cans are. You tell 'em I'm going." 
 
 And she was gone. She must have slipped along 
 the edge of the woods where the shadows were 
 densest. 
 
 We listened a moment or two stupidly. Then we 
 sprang up. It seems as if the three men were on 
 their feet at the same instant, wakened by some 
 common instinct or pressure of fear. It was a single 
 sound of splashing we heard off in the darkness. 
 Bobby was gone, then the Free Traveller, then the 
 Prophet. We fell into hollows, over rocks and 
 stumps, and came to the pond. The reflection of 
 a star or two glimmered there. The water looked 
 heavy, like melted lead, and any ripple that had 
 been was gone, or too slight to see. The Free Trav- 
 eller and Bobby went in and waded about. 
 
 "Don't you step on her," said Bobby, hoarsely. 
 
 The bottom seemed to shelve steeply from the 
 shore. They moved along chest-deep, feeling with 
 their feet, and we heard them whispering. The Pro- 
 phet sat down and whimpered softly. They waded 
 
 59
 
 THE DELECTABLE MOUNTAINS 
 
 a distance along the shore, and back. They came 
 close in, whispered together, and went out again. 
 
 "Here! I got it," said the Free Traveller. They 
 came out, carrying something large and black, and 
 laid it on the ground. 
 
 "It ain't Cassie!" whimpered the Prophet. "It 
 ain't Cassie, is it?" 
 
 They all stood about it. The face was like a dim 
 white patch on the ground. 
 
 "Hold your jaw," said Bobby. "Hark!" 
 
 There were voices in the woods above, and a 
 crashing of the branches. They were coming nearer 
 and lights were twinkling far back in the wood- 
 path, where we had entered the clearing. I do not 
 know what thought it was some instinct to flee 
 and hide that seized the outcasts. They slid away 
 into the darkness together, swiftly and without 
 speaking. The Free Traveller had Cassie's body on 
 his shoulder, carrying it as a child carries a rag 
 doll. The darkness swallowed them at a gulp, and 
 we stood alone by the Black Pond. Several men 
 came into the clearing with lanterns, villagers from 
 Hagar, Harvey Cummings, the minister, and others, 
 who swung their lanterns and shouted. 
 
 Now, I suppose that Cassie lies buried to-day 
 60
 
 BLACK POND CLEARING 
 
 somewhere in the South Woods, and it may be 
 that no man alive knows where. For none of the 
 Company were ever seen again in that part of the 
 country, nor have been heard of anywhere now 
 these many years. We can see the lights of Ham- 
 ilton from Hagar as of old, but we seldom think 
 of the Celestial City, or any palaces and splendors, 
 but of the multitude of various people who go to 
 and fro, each carrying a story. 
 
 The coming and going of aliens made little dif- 
 ference with Hagar. I suppose it was more important 
 there, that Harvey Cummings''s hay-load went up 
 lawlessly in smoke and flame, and never came to the 
 little pasture barn on the Windless Mountain Road. 
 
 61
 
 JOPPA
 
 JOPPA 
 
 ON Friday afternoon, the twenty-eighth of June, 
 Deacon Crockett's horse ran away. It was not a suit- 
 able thing, not at all what a settled community had 
 a right to expect of a horse with stubby legs and no 
 mane to speak of, who had grown old in the order 
 of decent conduct. He ran into Mrs. Cullom Sander- 
 son's basket phaeton and spilled Mrs. Cullom on the 
 ground, which was taking a grave responsibility. It 
 was done in the midst of Hagar. Harvey Cummings 
 jumped out of the way and said, "Deb it!" There 
 was no concealment about it. Everybody heard of it 
 and said it was astonishing. 
 
 The name of the deacon's horse was Joppa. The 
 deacon's father-in-law, Captain David Brett, had an 
 iron-gray named Borneo. Borneo and Joppa did not 
 agree, on account of Borneo's kicking Joppa in the 
 ribs to show his contempt. It was natural that he 
 should have this contempt, being sleek and spirited 
 himself, with a nautical gait that every one admitted 
 to be taking; and Joppa did not think it unnatural 
 in him to show it. Without questioning the justice of 
 Borneo's position, he disliked being kicked in the ribs. 
 
 65
 
 THE DELECTABLE MOUNTAINS 
 
 Borneo had been eating grass by the roadside; 
 Joppa stood harnessed in front of the horse-block; 
 Mrs. Crockett stood on the horse-block; Borneo 
 came around and kicked Joppa in the ribs; Joppa 
 ran away; Mrs. Crockett shrieked; Harvey Cum- 
 mings said "Deb it!" and Mrs. Cullom Sanderson 
 was spilled. She weighed two hundred pounds and 
 covered a deal of ground when she was spilled. 
 
 He crossed the bridge and tore along the Salem 
 Road, his stubby legs pattering under him, arid a 
 great fear in his soul of the shouting village behind. 
 Angelica and Willy Flint saw him coming. 
 
 "It's a runaway!" shouted Angelica. 
 
 Willy Flint continued swinging on the gate. He 
 thought it his place to be self-contained and accu- 
 rate. 
 
 "It's Joppa," he said calmly. 
 
 But Angelica did not care for appearances. She 
 shied a clam-shell at Joppa, said "Hi there!" and 
 jumped around. 
 
 Joppa swerved sharply, the deacon's buggy turned 
 several sides up, if that is possible, bobbed along 
 behind, and then broke loose at the thills. Joppa 
 fled madly up the side road that leads to Scrabble 
 Up and Down, and disappeared over the crest of 
 the hill, leaving Angelica and Willy Flint to gloat 
 
 66
 
 JOPPA 
 
 over the wreck of the buggy. It gratified a number 
 of their instincts. 
 
 The region called Scrabble Up and Down, as well 
 as the road which leads to it, is distinguished by 
 innumerable small steep hills and hollows. For the 
 rest, it is a sandy and ill-populated district, and a 
 lonely road. Westward of it lies a wilderness of 
 underbrush and stunted trees, rising at last into ex- 
 ultant woods and billowing over the hills mile upon 
 mile to the valley of the Wyantenaug. The South 
 Woods do not belong to Scrabble Up and Down. 
 They are put there to show Scrabble Up and Down 
 what it cannot do. 
 
 The road winds around hillocks and down hollows 
 in an aimless fashion; and for that reason it is not 
 possible to see much of it at a time. When the vil- 
 lagers of Hagar reached the top of the first hill, 
 Joppa was nearly a mile away, his stubby legs rather 
 tired, his spirit more tranquil, and himself out of 
 sight of the villagers of Hagar. He saw no point in 
 turning back. Hagar gave him but a dull and unideal 
 life, plodding between shafts before the austere and 
 silent deacon, unaccountably smacked with a whip, 
 and in constant contrast with Borneo's good looks. 
 Joppa had not many ideas and little imagination. 
 He did not feel drawn to go back. Moreover he 
 
 67
 
 THE DELECTABLE MOUNTAINS 
 
 smelt something damp and fresh in the direction of 
 the woods which absorbed him. He stopped, sniffed, 
 and looked around. The fence was broken here and 
 there, as fences generally were in Scrabble Up and 
 Down. The leaves were budding; there was a shim- 
 mer of green on the distant woods; and presently 
 Joppa was wandering through the brush and scrub 
 trees westward. The broken shafts dragged quietly 
 beside him. He lifted his head a little higher than 
 usual and had an odd feeling, as if he were enjoying 
 himself. 
 
 A tumult, row, or excitement of any kind was 
 considered by the children of Hagar a thing to be 
 desired, assisted, and remembered gratefully. Some 
 of the elders were much of the same mind. Joppa's 
 action was therefore popular in Hagar, the more 
 so that it was felt to be incongruous; and, when by 
 no search that Friday afternoon nor the following 
 Saturday could he be found, his reputation rose in 
 leaps. He had gone over the hill and vanished like 
 a ghost, commonplace, homely, plodding, downcast 
 Joppa, known to Hagar in that fashion these dozen 
 or more years and suddenly become the loud talk of 
 the day. The road to Scrabble Up and Down and 
 the roads far beyond were searched. Inquiry spread 
 to Salem and to Gilead. On Saturday night notices 
 
 68
 
 JOPPA 
 
 were posted here and there by happy jokers relating 
 to Joppa, one on the church door of Hagar request- 
 ing the prayers of the congregation. Mr. Atherton 
 Bell thought the deacon's horse like "the deacon's 
 one-hoss shay," in that he had lasted an extraordi- 
 nary time intact, and then disintegrated. Joppa had 
 become a mystery, an excitement, a cause of wit. A 
 definite addition had been made to the hoarded 
 stock of tradition and jest; the lives of all seemed 
 the richer. An atmosphere of deep and tranquil 
 mirth pervaded the village, a kind of mellow light of 
 humor, in the focus of which stood Deacon Crockett, 
 and writhed. 
 
 It was hoped that the minister would preach on 
 Joppa. He preached on "human insignificance," and 
 read of the war-horse, "Hast thou clothed his neck 
 with thunder?" but it was thought not to refer to 
 Joppa. 
 
 As for the children of Hagar, did they not dream 
 of him, and hear him thumping and blundering by 
 in the winds of the dim night? They saw no humor 
 in him, nor in the deacon. Rather it was a serious 
 mystery, and they went about with the impression 
 of it on their faces, having faith that the outcome 
 would be worthy of the promise. 
 
 Harvey Cummings thought that the war-horse did 
 69
 
 THE DELECTABLE MOUNTAINS 
 
 not refer to Joppa, and said so on the steps of the 
 church. "There wan'd no thudder aboud him. He 
 was the meekest hoss in Hamilton County. He run 
 away on accound of his shyness."" 
 
 Mr. Cummings had no palate to speak of, and his 
 consonants were uncertain. Mr. Atherton Bell threw 
 out his chest, as an orator should, put his thumbs in 
 the armholes of his vest, and gazed at Mr. Cummings 
 with a kindling eye. 
 
 "For a meek horse," he said impressively, "he 
 showed a great resolution when he spilled Mrs. 
 Cullom Sanderson. I declare to you, Harvey, I give 
 you my word, sir, I would not have missed seeing 
 Mrs. Cullom spilled for a government contract. 11 
 
 Oh, indeed, Mr. Bell!" said Mrs. Cullom Sander- 
 son, rustling past, "clothed with thunder" and black 
 silk. Mr. Atherton Bell recovered himself slowly and 
 moved to a greater distance from the church door. 
 He was a politician and a legislator, but he found 
 diplomacy difficult. Several others gathered around, 
 desiring to hear the statesman. "Now suppose, Har- 
 vey, suppose the deacon too should take a notion to 
 run away, knock over Mrs. Cullom, you know, and 
 -disappear. Imagine it, Harvey." 
 
 Mr. Cummings shook his head. 
 
 "Can'd do it." 
 
 70
 
 JOPPA 
 
 Mr. Bell took off his hat and smiled expansively. 
 
 "It's a pleasing thought, ha! He might be trans- 
 lated a Elijah, you know. He might leave his 
 mantle to to me. Hitherto the deacon has lacked 
 dramatic interest. Contact between Mrs. Cullom 
 and Deacon Crockett would " (here his hearers 
 stirred appreciatively) "would have dramatic inter- 
 est Ah, good morning, deacon, good morning, sir. 
 We were speaking of your loss. We a trust it 
 will not be permanent." 
 
 The deacon moved on without answering. Mr. 
 Atherton Bell's spirit fell again, and he wiped his 
 forehead nervously. 
 
 It would be a painful thing if a man were sud- 
 denly to enter into full sight of himself as others 
 see him; it is a measure of distress even to have 
 a passing glimpse not so much because he sees a 
 worse man, but because he sees a stranger. 
 
 Deacon Crockett had never asked himself how 
 others saw him. He was not a flexible man. The 
 grooves in which his life ran had been worn slowly 
 in a hard substance. Its purports and ends had 
 always seemed to him accurately measured and 
 bounded. He exacted his rights, paid his dues, and 
 had no doubts about either; held his conscience 
 before him as a sword, dividing truth from false- 
 
 71
 
 THE DELECTABLE MOUNTAINS 
 
 hood. He stood by the faith of his forefathers, gave 
 up no jot or tittle of it; there were no hazy outlying 
 regions in that faith. 
 
 When a man observes himself to be a well-defined 
 thing in certain relations with other well-defined 
 things, has no more doubt of the meaning of his 
 presence on the earth than of the function of a cog- 
 wheel in his watch, his footing seems singularly se- 
 cure; the figure he makes in his own eyes not only 
 grows rigid with habit, but seems logically exact to 
 begin with. To doubt the function of the cog-wheel 
 is to put in question the watch, which is impossible 
 and a sufficient demonstration. Other men's opinions, 
 if worth anything or considered at all, are assumed 
 to be respectful; and the assumption seems just. 
 
 Why should he not feel impregnable in his per- 
 sonal dignity, who sees himself sufficiently fulfilling 
 his function in an ordered scheme, a just man, elected 
 to become perfect? Personal dignity is at least not 
 a vulgar ambition. It was the deacon's ambition, the 
 thing which he wished to characterize his life. 
 
 The deacon walked down the path from the 
 church. He walked quietly and stiffly as usual, but 
 the spirit within him was worse than angry; it was 
 confused. The whole neighborhood seemed to be 
 laughing at him; his fingers tingled at the thought. 
 
 72
 
 JOPPA 
 
 But that was not the source of his confusion. It 
 was, strangely, that there seemed to be no malice 
 in the laughter, only a kind of amused friendliness. 
 An insult and a resentment can be understood by a 
 man of function, within his function; his resentment 
 maintains his equilibrium. But, quite the contrary, 
 his neighbors seemed timidly to invite him into the 
 joke. Of all the hidden ways of laughter one comes 
 last to that in which he may walk and be amused 
 with himself; although it is only there that he is for 
 the first time entirely comfortable in the world. 
 
 Tim Rae, the town drunkard, met him where the 
 path across the Green joins the road. It was Tim's 
 habit to flee from the deacon's approach with feeble 
 subterfuges, not because the deacon ever lectured 
 him, but because the deacon's presence seemed to 
 foreshorten his stature, and gave him a chill in the 
 stomach, where he preferred "something warm." Yet 
 he ambled amiably across the road, and his air of 
 good-fellowship could not have been greater if they 
 had met in a ditch on equal terms of intoxication. 
 
 "What think, deacon," he gurgled. "I was dream- 
 in' las' night, 'bout Joppa comin' down my chimney, 
 damned if he did n't." 
 
 The deacon stopped and faced him. 
 
 "You may be drunk, sir," he said slowly, "on 
 73
 
 THE DELECTABLE MOUNTAINS 
 
 Saturday night, and you may curse on the Sabbath; 
 but you may not expect me to sympathize with you 
 in either." 
 
 Then Tim Rae slunk away foreshortened of sta- 
 ture and cold in the stomach. 
 
 Monday morning was the first of May; and on 
 May-day, unless the season were backward and 
 without early flowers, the children of Hagar would 
 go after ground-pine for the May-baskets, and trail- 
 ing arbutus to fill them with. They would hang the 
 baskets on the door-handles of those who were 
 thought worthy, popular persons such as the min- 
 ister and Sandy Campbell; on Mr. Atherton Bell's 
 door-handle on account of Bobby Bell, who was a 
 gentleman but not allowed to be out nights because 
 of his inferior age. 
 
 Ground- pine grows in many places, but early ar- 
 butus is a whimsical flower, as shy as first love. It 
 is nearly always to be found somewhere in the South 
 Woods. And the South Woods are to be reached, 
 not by Scrabble Up and Down, but along the Wind- 
 less Mountain Road, across the Mill Stream, and by 
 cart-paths which know not their own minds. 
 
 The deacon drove home from Gilead Monday 
 afternoon, and saw the children noisily jumping 
 
 74
 
 JOPPA 
 
 the Mill Stream where the line of bowlders dams up 
 the stream and makes deep quiet water above. Their 
 voices, quarrelling and laughing, fell on his ear with 
 an unfamiliar sound. Somehow they seemed signifi- 
 cant, at least suggesting odd trains of thought. He 
 found himself imagining how it would seem to go 
 Maying; and the incongruity of it brought a sudden 
 frown of mental pain and confusion to his forehead. 
 And so he drove into Hagar. 
 
 But if he had followed the May-day revellers, as 
 he had oddly imagined himself doing, he would have 
 gone by those winding cart-paths, fragrant with 
 early growth, and might have seen the children 
 break from the woods with shouts into a small open- 
 ing above a sunken pond; he might even have heard 
 the voice of Angelica Flint rise in shrill excitement : 
 
 " Why, there V Joppa!" 
 
 Some minutes after six, the first shading of the 
 twilight being in the air, the villagers of Hagar, 
 whose houses lay along the north and south road, 
 rose on one impulse and came forth into the street. 
 And standing by their gates and porches, they saw 
 the children go by with lost Joppa in their midst. 
 Around his neck was a huge flopping wreath of 
 ground-pine and arbutus. The arbutus did not stay 
 
 75
 
 THE DELECTABLE MOUNTAINS 
 
 in very well, and there was little of it only bits 
 stuck in here and there. Joppa hung his head low, 
 so that the wreath had to be held on. He did not 
 seem cheerful; in fact, the whole cortege had a sub- 
 dued though important air, as if oppressed by a 
 great thought and conscious of ceremony. 
 
 The minister and the other neighbors along the 
 street came out and followed. Some dozen or more 
 at last stood on the brow of the slight hill looking 
 down to the deacon's house; and they too felt con- 
 scious of something, of a ceremony, a suspense. 
 
 Mr. Atherton Bell met the children and drove 
 his buggy into the ditch, stood up and gazed over 
 the back of it with an absorbed look. 
 
 "I feel curious how the deacon will take it," said 
 the minister. "I I feel anxious. 1 ' 
 
 Mr. Atherton Bell said, it got him. He said 
 something too about "dramatic interest" and "a 
 good betting chance he'll cut up rough"; but no 
 one answered him. 
 
 The procession halted outside the deacon's gate. 
 A tendency to giggle on the part of certain girls 
 was sternly suppressed by Angelica Flint. Willy 
 Flint led Joppa cautiously up the board walk and 
 tied him to a pillar of the porch; the company be- 
 gan to retreat irregularly. 
 
 76
 
 JOPPA 
 
 Suddenly the deacon, tall and black -coated, stood 
 in the doorway, Mrs. Crockett at his elbow pouring 
 forth exclamations; and the retreat became a flight. 
 Little Nettie Paulus fell behind; she stood in the 
 middle of the road and wailed piteously. 
 
 The deacon glared at Joppa and Joppa's gro- 
 tesque necklace, looked after the fleeing children and 
 saw on the brow of the hill the group of his fellow- 
 townsmen. His forehead flushed and he hesitated. At 
 last he took the wreath awkwardly from Joppa^s 
 neck, went into the house and shut the door. The 
 wreath hung in his front window seven months, and 
 fell to pieces about the end of November. Joppa 
 died long after of old age and rheumatism. 
 
 77
 
 THE ELDERS' SEAT
 
 THE ELDERS' SEAT 
 
 JJETWEEN the mill and the miller's house in Hagar 
 the Mill Stream made a broad pool with a yellow 
 bottom of pebbles and sand. It was sometimes called 
 the Mediterranean. If you wished to cross the Mill 
 Stream, there was a plank below, which was good to 
 jounce on also, though apt to tip you into the water. 
 The pool was shallow, about twenty feet across and 
 as long as you might care to go upstream, as far as 
 the clay bank, anyway, where Chub Leroy built the 
 city of Alexandria. Jeannette Paulus walked all over 
 Alexandria to catch a frog, and made a mess of it, 
 and did not catch the frog. That is the way of things 
 in this world. Alexandria fell in a moment, with all 
 her palaces and towers. But there were other cities, 
 and commerce was lively on the Mediterranean. 
 
 On the nearer side, against the gray, weather- 
 beaten flank of the miller's house was a painted 
 bench, for convenience of the morning sun and after- 
 noon shade; and I call it now the Elders' Seat, be- 
 cause Captain David Brett and others were often to 
 be seen sitting there in the sun or shade. I remember 
 the minister was there, and Job Mather, the miller, 
 
 81
 
 THE DELECTABLE MOUNTAINS 
 
 whenever his grist ran low, so that he let his stern 
 millstones cease to grind. These were the three to 
 whom the Elders' Seat seemed to us to belong by 
 right of continuance, because our short memories ran 
 not to the contrary. Captain David was well in his 
 seventies, the miller not far behind, and Mr. Royce 
 already gray-haired. They sat and watched the rise 
 and fall of cities, the growth and decay of commerce, 
 the tumult of conquests, and the wreck of high am- 
 bition. They noticed that one thing did not change 
 nor cease, namely, the ripple of the stream; just as 
 if, in history, there really were a voice distinguish- 
 able that went murmuring forever. 
 
 After the fall of Alexandria Damascus was built, 
 but inland, so that it had to be reached by cara- 
 van; and Moses Durfey laid the foundations of By- 
 zantium where the pool narrowed into rushing water, 
 and Venice was planted low in a marshy place hard 
 by the seven hills of Rome. But you must know that 
 Bobby Bell built the city of Rome absurdly, and 
 filled it with pot-holes to keep frogs in and float- 
 ing black bugs, so that it was impossible to hold it 
 against the Carthaginians. There were wars in those 
 days. These were the main marts of trade, but there 
 were quays and fortresses elsewhere; and it should 
 be told sometime how the Barbary pirates came 
 
 82
 
 THE ELDERS' SEAT 
 
 down. Rome was in a bad way, for Bobby had one 
 aquarium in the Campus Martius, and another where 
 the Forum should have been. There was nothing 
 flourishing but the aqueducts. 
 
 The three Elders would sit leaning forward, 
 watching the changes of fortune and event that 
 went on from hour to hour by the Mediterranean. 
 The captain smoked his pipe; the minister rested his 
 chin on his cane; -the miller's hands were on his 
 knees, his large white face stolid, his heavy lips sel- 
 dom moving. He was a thinking man, the miller, 
 a slow-moving, slow-speaking, persistent man, and a 
 fatalist in his way of thinking, though he used no 
 such term; it was his notion of things. 
 
 They talked of old history out of Gibbon and 
 Grote and the Seven Monarchies, and they talked 
 of things that had happened to them as men in the 
 world; but the things which they thought of most 
 often, in watching the children and the Mill Stream, 
 they said little about, for these had not happened a 
 thousand or two thousand years before, nor twenty 
 or thirty, but just sixty or seventy. And this was 
 why they came so often to the Elders' Seat, because 
 something dim and happy seemed to come up to 
 them, like a mist, from the Mill Stream, where the 
 children quarrelled and contrived. 
 
 83
 
 THE DELECTABLE MOUNTAINS 
 
 "1 11 tell ye what ailed Rome,"" said Captain 
 David. "She needed to be keeled and scraped. She 
 fouled her bottom !" 
 
 The minister answered slowly: "No, she was rotten 
 within. She lost the faith in God and in man that 
 keeps a people sound."" 
 
 "Ho! Well, then she wa'n't handled right." 
 
 The miller rubbed his thumb slowly on the palm 
 of his hand. "She was grinded out," he said. "She 
 couldn't help it. Corn can't keep itself from meal 
 when the stones gets at it. No more a man can't keep 
 his bones from dust, nor a people, either, I 'm think- 
 ing, when its time comes." 
 
 The minister shook his head. "I don't like that." 
 
 "I don't know as I do, either. And I don't know 
 as that makes any difference." 
 
 "Ho!" said the captain. "Bobby's got a new 
 frog!" 
 
 And Chub Leroy cried out in despair: "Look 
 out, Bobby! You're stepping on the Colosseum!" 
 
 I would not pretend to say how long the Elders' 
 Seat had stood there, or how many years the Elders 
 had come to it now and again ; but I remember that 
 it seemed to us very permanent, in a world of shift- 
 ing empires, where Alexandria was suddenly walked 
 upon and deserted, and Venice went down the cur- 
 
 84
 
 THE ELDERS' SEAT 
 
 rent in a rainy night, and was spoken of no more. 
 We could not remember when it had not stood in 
 its place. It was a kind of Olympus to us, or Delphi, 
 where we went for oracles on shipping and other 
 matters. 
 
 Afterward we grew up, and became too old to 
 dabble and make beautiful things of gray clay, 
 except Chub Leroy, who is still doing something 
 of that kind, cutting and building with clay and 
 stone. But the Elders' 1 Seat remained, and the El- 
 ders watched other children, as if nothing had hap- 
 pened. Only, Captain David had trouble to keep his 
 pipe in his mouth. So that when the Elders 1 Seat 
 took its first journey, it seemed very difficult for us 
 to understand, even for those who were too old to 
 dabble in gray clay. 
 
 It was not more than a quarter of a mile from 
 the mill, past the drug store, the Crocketts 1 house, 
 where Captain David lived, and so on by the cross- 
 roads, to the minister's, with the graveyard just 
 beyond. I remember how very yellow and dusty 
 the road was in the summer of '86, so that the 
 clay bottom cracked off in flat pieces, which could 
 be gathered up; and then, if you climbed the wall 
 with care enough, you could scale them at wood- 
 
 85
 
 THE DELECTABLE MOUNTAINS 
 
 chucks. August was sultry and still. The morning- 
 glories drooped on Captain David's porch, and the 
 pigeons on the roof went to sleep more than was 
 natural. 
 
 The minister and Job Mather sat, one afternoon, 
 in the Elders 1 Seat; for Captain David, he had not 
 gone out through his gate those many days. There 
 was history enough in process on the Mediterranean. 
 The Americans and Carthaginians were preparing 
 to have a battle, on account of docks that ran too 
 near together. The Elders discovered that they did 
 not care about it. 
 
 The miller got to his feet, and lifted one end of 
 the bench. "Come,"" he said gruffly. "Let's move it."" 
 
 "Hey!" said the minister, looking troubled and a 
 bit lost. Then his lips trembled. " Yes, Job. That 's 
 so, Job. We'd better move it." 
 
 The children came up from the Mediterranean 
 in a body, and stared. It was much to them as if, 
 in Greece, the gods had risen up and gone away, 
 for unknown reasons, taking Olympus with them. 
 The old men went along the yellow, dusty road 
 with very shuffling steps, carrying the Elders' Seat, 
 one at each end, till they turned into Captain Da- 
 vid's garden and put it down against the porch. 
 Mrs. Crockett came to the door, and held up her 
 
 86
 
 THE ELDERS' SEAT 
 
 hands in astonishment. Captain David was helped 
 out. He was faded and worn with pain. He settled 
 himself in the Elders' Seat. It did not seem possible 
 to say anything. The captain smoked his pipe; the 
 minister rested his chin on his cane; the miller's 
 hands were on his knees, his large white face stolid 
 and set. 
 
 "I'm goin' to shell those peas to-morrow," began 
 the captain at last. Then his voice broke, and a 
 mist came into his eyes. 
 
 "I bet ye the Americans are licking the Cartha- 
 ginians."" 
 
 On the contrary, the Americans and Carthagin- 
 ians, with other nations, were hanging over the picket 
 fence, staring and bewildered. What was the use of 
 mere human wars, if primeval things could be sud- 
 denly changed? The grass might take a notion to 
 come up pink or the seas to run out at the bottom, 
 and that sort of thing would make a difference. 
 
 The sun dropped low in the west, and presently 
 Chub Leroy, who built the city of Alexandria ten 
 years before, came slowly along in the shadow of 
 the maples, and St. Agnes Macree was with him. 
 She was old Caspar Macree's granddaughter, and 
 he was a charcoal-burner on the Cattle Ridge long 
 ago. They were surprised to see the Elders' Seat, 
 
 87
 
 THE DELECTABLE MOUNTAINS 
 
 and stopped a moment. St. Agnes looked up at 
 him and smiled softly, and Chub's eyes kept say- 
 ing, "Sweetheart, sweetheart,"" all the time. Then 
 they went on. 
 
 "I remember "said Captain David, and stopped 
 short. 
 
 "Eh! So do I,"" said the minister. 
 
 "You do! Well, Job, do you remember? Ain't 
 it the remarkablest thing!" 
 
 The miller's heavy face was changed with a slow, 
 embarrassed smile. And all these three sat a long 
 time very still, while the sunlight slanted among the 
 morning-glories and the pigeons slept on the roof. 
 
 There came a day in September when the min- 
 ister and the miller were alone again on the Elders' 
 Seat, but Captain David lay in his bed near the 
 window. He slept a great deal, and babbled in his 
 half dreams: sometimes about ships and cordage, 
 anchorage in harbors and whaling in the south 
 seas; and at times about some one named "Kitty." 
 I never heard who Kitty was. He said something 
 or other "wasn't right." He took the trouble and 
 the end of things all in good part, and bore no 
 grudge to any one for it; it seemed only natural, 
 like coming to anchor at last. 
 
 88
 
 THE ELDERS' SEAT 
 
 "When a man gets legs like mine, 11 he said, "it's 
 time he took another way of getting round. Some- 
 thing like a fish 'd be my notion. Parson, a man gets 
 the other side of somewhere, he can jump round 
 lively -like, same as he was a boy, eh?" 
 
 The minister murmured something about "our 
 Heavenly Father," and Captain David said softly: 
 
 "I guess he don't call us nothing but boys. He 
 says, 'Shucks! it ain't natural for 'em to behave.' 
 Don't ye think, parson? Him, he might see an old 
 man like me and tell him, 'Glad to see ye, sonny'; 
 same as Harrier in Doty's Slip. The boys come in 
 after a year out, or maybe three years, and old man 
 Harrier, he says, 'Glad to see ye, sonny'; and the 
 boys gets terrible drunk. He kept a junk-shop, 
 Harrier." 
 
 The minister tried to answer, but could not 
 make it out. 
 
 "I saw a ship go down sudden -like. It was in '44. 
 It was inside Cape Cod. Something blowed her up 
 inside. Me, I've took my time, I have. What ye 
 grumbling about, parson?" 
 
 In the morning the shutters were closed, and all 
 about the house was still. The pigeons were cooing 
 on the roof of the porch; and Captain David was 
 dead, without seeing any reason to grumble. Down 
 
 89
 
 THE DELECTABLE MOUNTAINS 
 
 at the mill the miller watched his monotonous mill- 
 stones grinding slowly. 
 
 The Elders' Seat was moved once more after 
 Captain David died, not back to the Mediterranean, 
 but further up the yellow road and into the minis- 
 ter's yard, facing westward. From there the captain's 
 white slab could be seen through the cemetery gate. 
 The two Elders occupied the seat some years, and 
 then went in through the gate. 
 
 But the Elders' Seat and its journeys from place 
 to place seemed to have some curious meaning, 
 hardly to be spelled. I imagine this far, at least: 
 that at a certain point it became to the two more 
 natural, more quiet and happy, to turn their eyes 
 in the direction the captain had gone than in the 
 direction they had all come. It pleased them then 
 to move the Elders' Seat a little nearer to the gate. 
 And when the late hour came, it was rather a fa- 
 miliar matter. The minister went in to look for 
 his Master, and the miller according to his notion 
 of things. 
 
 90
 
 THE ROMANCE OF THE INSTITUTE
 
 THE 
 ROMANCE OF THE INSTITUTE 
 
 J3l ox quite two centuries of human life have gone 
 quietly in Wiraberton, and for the most part it has 
 been on Main and Chester Streets. Main Street is a 
 quarter of a mile long and three hundred feet wide, 
 with double roads, and between them a clean lawn 
 shaded by old elms. Chester Street is narrow and 
 crowded with shops, and runs from the middle of 
 Main down-hill to the railway and the river. It is 
 the business street for Wimberton and the country- 
 side of fifteen miles about. Main Street is surrounded 
 by old houses of honorable frontage, two churches, 
 and the Solley Institute, which used to be called 
 "Solley's Folly 1 ' by frivolous aliens. 
 
 Mr. Solley, who owned the mines up the river and 
 the foundries that have been empty and silent these 
 many years, founded it in 1840. At the time I re- 
 member best the Institute had twenty-one trustees, 
 lady patronesses, matrons, and nurses; and three 
 beneficiaries, or representatives of the "aged, but 
 not destitute, of Hamilton County. 1 ' That seemed 
 odd to the alien. 
 
 Mr. Solley need not have been so rigid about the 
 93
 
 THE DELECTABLE MOUNTAINS 
 
 equipment and requirements of admission, except 
 that he had in mind an institution of dignity. It 
 stood at the head of Main Street, with wide piazzas 
 like a hotel. The aristocracy of old Wimberton used 
 to meet there and pass the summer afternoons. The 
 young people gave balls in the great parlors, and 
 the three beneficiaries looked on, and found nothing 
 to complain of in the management. What matter if 
 it were odd? True Wimberton folk never called the 
 Institute a folly, but only newcomers, before years 
 of residence made them endurable and able to un- 
 derstand Wimberton. Failure is a lady of better 
 manners than Success, who is forward, complacent, 
 taking herself with unpleasant seriousness. Imagine 
 the Institute swarming with people from all parts of 
 the county, a staring success in beneficence! 
 
 Mr. Solley's idea was touched with delicacy. It 
 was not a home for Hamilton County poor, but for 
 those who, merely lingering somewhat on the slow 
 descent, found it a lonely road. For there is a pe- 
 riod in life, of varying length, when, one's purposes 
 having failed or been unfulfilled, the world seems 
 quite occupied by other people who are busy with 
 themselves. Life belongs at any one time to the 
 generation which is making the most of it. A 
 beneficiary was in a certain position of respectable 
 
 94
 
 THE ROMANCE OF THE INSTITUTE 
 
 humility. But I suppose it was not so much Mr. 
 Solley's discrimination as that in 1840 his own 
 house was empty of all but a few servants; and 
 so out of his sense of loneliness grew his idea of a 
 society of the superannuated. That was the Solley 
 Institute. 
 
 It is not so difficult to recreate old Wimberton of 
 seventy years back, for the same houses stood on 
 Main Street, and the familiar names were then heard 
 Solley, Gore, Cutting, Gilbert, Cass, Savage. The 
 elms were smaller, with fewer lights under them at 
 night, and gravel paths instead of asphalt. 
 
 One may even call up those who peopled the 
 street, whom time has disguised or hidden away 
 completely. Lucia Gore has dimples, instead of 
 those faded cheeks one remembers at the Institute, 
 and quick movements, and a bewildering pretti- 
 ness, in spite of the skirts that made women look 
 like decanters or tea-bells in 1830. She is coming 
 down the gravel sidewalk with a swift step, a sin- 
 gular fire and eagerness of manner, more than one 
 would suppose Miss Lucia to have once possessed. 
 
 And there is the elder Solley, already with that 
 worn, wintry old face we know from his portrait at 
 the Institute, and John Solley, the son, both with 
 high-rolled collars, tall hats, and stiff cravats. Wo- 
 
 95
 
 THE DELECTABLE MOUNTAINS 
 
 men said that John Solley was reckless, but one only 
 notices that he is very tall. 
 
 "I'm glad to see you are in a hurry, too, my 
 dear. We might hurry up the wedding among us 
 all," says the elder Solley, with a grim smile and 
 a bow. "Ha! Glad to see you in a hurry;" and he 
 passes on, leaving the two together. Lucia flushes 
 and seems to object. 
 
 Is not that Mrs. Andrew Cutting in the front 
 window of the gabled house directly behind them? 
 Then she is thinking how considerate it is, how 
 respectful to Main Street, that John and Lucia are 
 to marry. 
 
 The past springs up quickly, even to little details. 
 Mrs. Cutting wears a morning cap, has one finger 
 on her cheek, and is wondering why John looks 
 amused and Lucia in a temper. "He will have to 
 behave himself," thinks Mrs. Cutting. "Lucia is 
 dear me, Lucia is very decided. I don't really know 
 that John likes to behave himself." And all these 
 people of 1830 are clearly interested in their own 
 affairs, and care little for those who will look back 
 at them, seventy years away. 
 
 Love climbs trees in the Hesperides, day in and 
 out, very busy with their remarkable fruit, the 
 
 96
 
 THE ROMANCE OF THE INSTITUTE 
 
 dragon lying beneath with indifferent jaws. Do we 
 observe how recklessly the young man reaches out, 
 and how slightly he knows the nature of his foot- 
 ing? The branches of such apple trees as bear 
 golden fruit are notoriously brittle. He might drop 
 into the lazy throat of Fate by as easy an accident 
 as the observer into figures of speech, and the dragon 
 care little about the matter. That indifference of 
 Fate is hard, for it seems an expense for no value 
 received by any one. We are advised to be as little 
 melancholy as possible, and charge it to profit and 
 loss. 
 
 It is well known that John Solley left Wimberton 
 late one night in October, 1830. In the morning the 
 two big stuccoed houses of Gore and Solley looked 
 at each other across the street under the yellow arch 
 of leaves with that mysterious expression which they 
 ever after seemed to possess to the dwellers on Main 
 Street. And the Gores' housemaid picked up a glit- 
 tering something from the fell of the bearskin rug 
 on the parlor floor. 
 
 "Land! It's Miss Lucia's engagement ring. She's 
 a careless girl !" Hannah was a single woman of fifty, 
 and spoke with strong moral indignation. 
 
 Some mornings later Mr. Solley came stiffly down 
 liis front steps, crossed the street under the yel- 
 
 97
 
 THE DELECTABLE MOUNTAINS 
 
 low elms, and went in between the white pillars of 
 the Gore house. Mr. Gore was a middle-aged man, 
 chubby, benevolent, gray -haired, deliberate. He sank 
 back in his easy-chair in fat astonishment. 
 
 "Oh, dear me! I don't know. 11 
 
 Lucia was called. 
 
 "Mr. Solley wishes to ask you a something." 
 
 "I wish to ask if my son has treated you badly," 
 said Mr. Solley, most absurdly. 
 
 "Not at all, Mr. Solley." 
 
 Lucia's eyes were suddenly hot and shining. 
 
 "I beg your pardon, but if John is a scoundrel, 
 you will do me a favor by telling me so." 
 
 "Where is he? I shall do nothing of the kind." 
 
 "I am about to write to my son." 
 
 "And that's nothing to me," she cried, and went 
 swiftly out of the room. 
 
 "Oh, I suppose he's only a fool," said Mr. Solley, 
 grimly. "I knew that. Spirited girl, Gore, very. 
 Good morning." 
 
 "Dear me!" said Mr. Gore, mildly, rubbing his 
 glasses. "How quickly they do things!" 
 
 Elderly gentlemen whose wives are dead and chil- 
 dren adventuring in the Hesperides should take ad- 
 vice. Mrs. Cutting might have advised against this 
 paragraph in Mr. Solley's letter: 
 
 98
 
 THE ROMANCE OF THE INSTITUTE 
 
 "I have taken the trouble to inquire whether you 
 have been acting as a gentleman should. Inasmuch 
 as Miss Lucia seemed to imply that the matter no 
 longer interests her, I presume she has followed her 
 own will, which is certainly a woman's right. With 
 respect to the Michigan lands, I inclose surveys. 
 You will do well," etc. 
 
 But Mr. Solley had not for many years thought 
 of the Hesperides as a more difficult piece of prop- 
 erty to survey than another. Men and women fol- 
 lowed their own wills there as elsewhere, and were 
 quite right, so long as they did business honorably. 
 And Mr. Gore had been a managed and advised 
 man all his wedded life, and had not found that it 
 increased his happiness. That advice had always 
 tended to embark him on some enterprise that was 
 fatiguing. 
 
 "A good woman, Letitia, 11 often ran Mr. Gore's 
 reflections; and then, with a sense of furtiveness, 
 as if Letitia somewhere in the spiritual universe 
 might overhear his thought, "a little masterful a 
 spirited, very." 
 
 But it was hard for Wimberton people to have a 
 secret shut up among them. It was not respectful to 
 Main Street, with John Solley fleeing mysteriously 
 in the night and coming no more to Wimberton, 
 
 99
 
 THE DELECTABLE MOUNTAINS 
 
 and Lucia going about with her nose in the air, 
 impossible to sympathize with. Some months passed, 
 and Lucia seemed more subdued, then very quiet 
 indeed, with a liking to sit by her father's side, to 
 Mr. Gore's slight uneasiness. She might wish him 
 to do something. 
 
 He knew no more than Wimberton what had hap- 
 pened to send John westward and Lucia to sitting 
 beside him in unused silence; but he differed from 
 Wimberton in thinking it perhaps not desirable to 
 know. He would pat her hand furtively, and polish 
 his glasses, without seeming to alter the situation. 
 Once he asked timidly if it were not dull for her. 
 
 "No, father." 
 
 "I Ve thought sometimes sometimes a I don't 
 remember what I was going to say." 
 
 Lucia's head went down till it almost rested on 
 his knee. 
 
 "Father do you know where John is?" 
 
 "Why a of course, Mr. Solley " 
 
 "No, no, father! No!" 
 
 "Well, I might inquire around a somewhere." 
 
 "No! Oh, promise me you won't ask any one! 
 Promise!" 
 
 "Certainly, my dear," said Mr. Gore, very much 
 confused. 
 
 100
 
 THE ROMANCE OF THE INSTITUTE 
 
 "It is no matter," said Lucia, eagerly. 
 
 Mr. Gore thought for several minutes, but no 
 idea seemed to occur to him, and it relieved him 
 to give it up. 
 
 Months have a way of making years by a rapid 
 arithmetic, and years that greet us with such little 
 variety of expression are the more apt to step be- 
 hind with faint reproach and very swiftly. Mr. Solley 
 founded the Institute in 1840, and died. The Solley 
 house stood empty, and Miss Lucia Gore by that 
 time was living alone, except for the elderly maiden, 
 Hannah. Looking at the old elms of Wimberton, 
 grave and orderly, there is much to be said for a 
 vegetable life. There is no right dignity but in the 
 slow growths of time. 
 
 The elms increased their girth; the railway crept 
 up the river; the young men went to Southern bat- 
 tle-fields, and some of them returned; children of a 
 second generation walked in the Hesperides; the 
 Institute was reduced to three beneficiaries; Main 
 Street smelled of tar from the asphalt sidewalks; 
 Chester Street was prosperous. Banks failed in "73, 
 and "Miss Lucia has lost everything,"" said Wim- 
 berton gossip. 
 
 The Solley house was alternately rented and 
 empty, the Gore house was sold, Miss Lucia went 
 101
 
 THE DELECTABLE MOUNTAINS 
 
 up to the Institute, and gossip in Wimberton Avoke 
 again. 
 
 "Of course the Institute is not like other places, 
 but then " 
 
 "Miss Lucia was such a lady."" 
 
 "But it's a charity, after all." 
 
 "Very sensible of Miss Lucia, I'm sure." 
 
 "She was engaged to old Institute Solley's son 
 once, but it ended with a bump." 
 
 "Then Miss Lucia goes to the Institute who 
 might have gone to the Solley house." 
 
 "Oh, that is what one doesn't know." 
 
 "Miss Lucia a beneficiary! But isn't that rather 
 embarrassing ?" 
 
 "I wonder if she " 
 
 "My dear, it was centuries ago. One does n't think 
 of love-affairs fifty years old. They dry up." 
 
 "Respectable, and you pay a little." 
 
 "But a charity really." 
 
 That year the public library was built on Main 
 and Gilbert Streets, the great elm fell down in the 
 Institute yard, Mrs. Andrew Cutting died at ninety- 
 eight, with good sense and composure, and here is 
 a letter written by Miss Lucia to Babbie Cutting. 
 Babbie Cutting, I remember, had eyes like a last- 
 century romance, never fancy-free, and her dolls 
 102
 
 THE ROMANCE OF THE INSTITUTE 
 
 loved and were melancholy, when we were children 
 together under the elms in Wimberton. The let- 
 ter is written in thin, flowing lines on lavender 
 paper. 
 
 MY DEAR CHILD: I am afraid you thought that 
 your question offended me, but it did not, indeed. 
 I was engaged to Mr. John Solley many years ago. I 
 think I had a very hasty temper then, which I think 
 has quite wasted away now, for I have been so much 
 alone. But then I sometimes fell into dreadful rages. 
 Mr. Solley was a very bold man, not easily influenced 
 or troubled, who laughed at my little faults and 
 whims more than I thought he should. 
 
 You seemed to ask what sudden and mysterious 
 thing happened to us, but, my dear, one's life is 
 chiefly moved by trifles and little accidents and 
 whims. Mr. Solley came one night, and I fancied 
 he had been neglecting me, for I was very proud, 
 more so than ordinary life permits women to be. 
 I remember that he stood with his hands behind 
 him, smiling. He looked so easy and strong, so im- 
 possible to disturb, and said, "You're such a little 
 spitfire, Lucia,"" and I was so angry, it was like hot 
 flames all through my head. 
 
 I cried, "How dare you speak to me so!" 
 103
 
 THE DELECTABLE MOUNTAINS 
 
 "I don't know," he said, and laughed. "It seems 
 perilous." 
 
 I tore his ring from my finger and threw it in 
 his face. It struck his forehead and fell to the floor 
 without any sound. There was a tiny red cut on his 
 forehead. 
 
 "That is your engagement ring," he said. 
 
 "Take it away. I want nothing more to do with 
 you," I cried very foolishly, for I did, and my 
 anger was going off in fright. He turned around and 
 went from the house. The maid found the ring in 
 the morning. Mr. Solley had left Wimberton that 
 night. Well, my dear, that is all. I thought he would 
 have come back. It seemed as if he might. I am so 
 old now that I do not mind talking, but I was 
 proud then, and women are not permitted to be 
 very proud. Do your romances tell you that women 
 are foolish and men are sometimes hard on them? 
 
 That is not good romance at all, but if you will 
 come to see me again I will tell you much better 
 romances than mine that I have heard, for other 
 people's lives are interesting, even if mine has been 
 quite dull. 
 
 Will you put this letter away to remember me 
 by? But do not think of me as a complaining old 
 woman, for I have had a long life of leisure and 
 104
 
 THE ROMANCE OF THE INSTITUTE 
 
 many friends. I do not think any one who really 
 cares for me will do so the less for my living at the 
 Institute, and only those we love are of real impor- 
 tance to us. It is kind of you to visit me. 
 
 YOUR AFFECTIONATE FRIEND. 
 
 So half a century is put lightly aside; Miss Lucia 
 has found it quite dull; and here is the year 1885, 
 when, as every one knows, John Solley came back 
 to Wimberton, a tall old man with a white mus- 
 tache, heavy brows, and deep eyes. Men thought it 
 an honor to the town that the great and rich Mr. 
 Solley, so dignified a man, should return to spend 
 his last days in Wimberton. He would be its orna- 
 mental citizen, the proper leader of its aristocracy. 
 But Babbie Cutting thought of another function. 
 What matter for the melancholy waste of years, 
 fifty leagues across? Love should walk over it tri- 
 umphant, unwearied, and find a fairer romance at 
 the end. Were there not written in the books words 
 to that effect? Babbie moved in a world of dreams, 
 where knights were ever coming home from distant 
 places, or, at least, where every one found happiness 
 after great trouble. She looked up into Mr. Solley's 
 eyes and thought them romantic to a degree. When 
 she heard he had never married the thing seemed 
 105
 
 THE DELECTABLE MOUNTAINS 
 
 as good as proved. And the little old lady at the 
 Institute with the old-fashioned rolled curls above 
 her ears what a sequel! 
 
 It was a white winter day. The elms looked so 
 cold against the sky that it was difficult to remem- 
 ber they had ever been green, or believe it was in 
 them to put forth leaves once more. The wind drove 
 the sharp-edged particles of snow directly in Babbie's 
 face, and she put her head down, covering her mouth 
 with her furs. She turned in at the Solley house, and 
 found herself in the drawing-room, facing that tall, 
 thin, military-looking old man, and feeling out of 
 breath and troubled what to do first. But Mr. Solley 
 was not a man to let any girl whatever be ill at ease, 
 and surely not one with cheeks and eyes and soft 
 hair like Babbie Cutting. Presently they were ex- 
 perienced friends. Babbie sat in Mr. Solley's great 
 chair and stretched her hands toward the fire. Mr. 
 Solley was persuaded to take up his cigar again. 
 
 "I had not dared to hope," he said, "that my 
 native place would welcome me so charmingly. I 
 have made so many new friends, or rather they 
 seemed to be friends already, though unknown to 
 me, that I seem to begin life again. I seem to start 
 it all over. I should have returned sooner. " 
 
 "Oh, I'm sure you should have," said Babbie, 
 106
 
 THE ROMANCE OF THE INSTITUTE 
 
 eagerly. "And do you know who is living at the In- 
 stitute now?" 
 
 "The Institute? I had almost forgotten the Insti- 
 tute, and I am a trustee, which is very neglectful of 
 duty. Who is living at the Institute now?" 
 
 "Miss Lucia Gore." 
 
 Mr. Solley was silent, and looked at Babbie oddly 
 under his white eyebrows, so that her cheeks began 
 to bum, and she was not a little frightened, though 
 quite determined and eager. 
 
 "Miss Lucia lost all her money when the banks 
 failed, and she sold the Gore house, and got enough 
 interest to pay her dues and a little more; but it 
 seems so sad for Miss Lucia, because people will pat- 
 ronize her, not meaning to. But they 're so stupid 
 or, at least, it doesn't seem like Miss Lucia." 
 
 "I did not know she was living," said Mr. Solley, 
 quietly. 
 
 "Oh, how could you be that way!" 
 
 Mr. Solley looked steadily at Babbie, and it 
 seemed to him as if her face gave him a clue to 
 something that he had groped for in the darkness of 
 late, as if some white mist were lifted from the river 
 and he could see up its vistas and smoky cataracts. 
 How could he be that way? It is every man's most 
 personal and most unsolved enigma how he came 
 107
 
 THE DELECTABLE MOUNTAINS 
 
 to be that way, to be possible as he is. Up the river 
 he saw a face somewhat like Babbie's, somewhat 
 more imperious, but with the same pathetic eager- 
 ness and desire for abundance of life. How could 
 young John Solley become old John Solley? Look- 
 ing into Babbie^s eyes, he seemed able to put the 
 two men side by side. 
 
 "At one time, Miss Barbara," he said, " you 
 will forgive my saying so, I should have resented 
 your reference. Now I am only thinking how kind 
 it is of you to forget that I am old."" 
 
 Babbie did not quite understand, and felt troubled, 
 and not sure of her position. 
 
 "Mr. Solley," she said, "I I have a letter from 
 Miss Lucia. Do you think I might show it to you?" 
 
 "It concerns me?" 
 
 "Y-yes." 
 
 He walked down the room and back again. 
 
 "I don't know that you ought, but you have 
 tempted me to wish that you would. Thank you." 
 
 He put on his glasses and read it slowly. Babbie 
 thought he read it like a business letter. 
 
 "He ought to turn pale or red," she thought. 
 "Oh, he oughtn't to wear his spectacles on the 
 end of his nose!" 
 
 Mr. Solley handed back the letter. 
 108
 
 THE ROMANCE OF THE INSTITUTE 
 
 " Thank you, Miss Barbara," he said, and began 
 to talk of her great-grandmother Cutting. 
 
 Babbie blinked back her sudden tears. It was 
 very different from a romance, where the pages 
 will always turn and tell you the story willingly, 
 where the hero always shows you exactly how he 
 feels. She thought she would like to cry somewhere 
 else. She stood up to go. 
 
 "I'm sorry I'm so silly," she said, with a little 
 gulp and trying to be dignified. 
 
 Mr. Solley looked amused, so far as that the 
 wrinkles deepened about his eyes. 
 
 "Will you be a friend of mine? 1 ' he asked. 
 
 "Yes," said Babbie, plaintively, but she did not 
 think she would. How could she, and he so cold, 
 so prosaic! She went out into the snow, which was 
 driving down Main Street from the Institute. It 
 was four by the town clock. 
 
 They said in Wimberton that Mr. Solley left his 
 house at seven o'clock in the evening, and that 
 Stephen, the gardener, held an umbrella in front of 
 him to keep off the storm all the way up the hill 
 to the Institute. And they said, too, that the lights 
 were left burning in the Solley house, and the fire 
 on the hearth, and that the book he was reading 
 when Babbie went in lay open on the table. The 
 109
 
 THE DELECTABLE MOUNTAINS 
 
 fire burned itself out. Stephen came in late, closed 
 the book, and put out the lights, and in the morn- 
 ing went about town saying that Mr. Solley was to 
 enter the Institute as a beneficiary. 
 
 But it is a secret that on that snowy evening 
 Mr. Solley and Miss Lucia sat in the great east 
 parlor of the Institute, with a lamp near by, but 
 darkness in all the distances about them. His hands 
 were on his gold-headed cane; Miss Lucia's rolls of 
 white curls were very tidy over her ears, and her 
 fingers were knitting something placidly. She was 
 saying it was "quite impossible. One doesn't want 
 to be absurd at seventy-five." 
 
 "I suppose not," said Mr. Solley. "I shouldn't 
 mind it. What do you think of the other plan?" 
 
 "If you want my permission to be a beneficiary," 
 said Miss Lucia, with her eyes twinkling, "I think 
 it would be a proper humiliation for you. I think 
 you deserve it." 
 
 "It would be no humiliation." 
 
 "It was for me some." 
 
 "It shall be so no more. I'll make them wish 
 they were all old enough to do the same hem 
 confound them!" 
 
 "Did you think of it that way, John?" 
 
 Mr. Solley was silent for some moments. 
 110
 
 THE ROMANCE OF THE INSTITUTE 
 
 "Do you know, I have been a busy man," he 
 said at last, "but there was nothing in it all that 
 I care to think over now. And to-day, for the first 
 time, that seemed to me strange. It was shown to 
 me that is, I saw it was strange. We have only a 
 few years left, and you will let me be somewhat 
 near you while they pass. Isn't that enough? It 
 seems a little vague. Well, then, yes. I thought of 
 it that way, as you say. Do you mind my thinking 
 of it that way?" 
 
 Miss Lucia's eyes grew a little tearful, but she 
 managed to hide it by settling her glasses. Seventy- 
 five years in a small town make the opinions of 
 one's neighbors part of the structure of existence. 
 It was bitter, the thought that Main Street tacitly 
 patronized her. 
 
 "Why, no, I don't mind." 
 
 She dropped her knitting and laughed suddenly. 
 
 "I think, John," she said, "that I missed marry- 
 ing a very nice man." 
 
 Mr. Solley's glasses fell off with surprise. He put 
 them on again and chuckled to himself. 
 
 "My father used to call me a hem a fool. He 
 used to state things more accurately than you did." 
 
 After all, there was no other institute like Wim- 
 111
 
 THE DELECTABLE MOUNTAINS 
 
 berton's. The standards of other places were no 
 measure for our conduct, and the fact that such 
 things were not seen elsewhere was a flattering rea- 
 son why they should be seen in Wimberton ; namely, 
 only five beneficiaries, and one of them a rich man 
 and a trustee. It was singular, but it suited Wim- 
 berton to be singular. One thing was plain to all, 
 that if Mr. Solley was a beneficiary, then to be a 
 beneficiary was a dignified, well-bred, and suitable 
 thing. But one thing was not plain to all, why he 
 chose to be a beneficiary. Babbie Cutting went up 
 to the Institute, and coming back, wept for pure 
 sentiment in her white-curtained room, with the 
 picture on the wall of Sir Lancelot riding down by 
 the whirling river, the island, and the gray-walled 
 castle of Shalott. 
 
 I remember well the great ball and reception 
 that Mr. Solley gave at the Institute to celebrate 
 his entry, and how we all paid our respects to the 
 five beneficiaries, four old men, who were gracious, 
 but patronizing, one with gold eye-glasses and 
 gold-headed cane, and Miss Lucia, with the rolled 
 curls over her ears. The Institute, from that time 
 on, looked down on Main Street with a different 
 air, and never lost its advantage. It seemed to many 
 that the second Solley had refounded it for one of 
 112
 
 THE ROMANCE OF THE INSTITUTE 
 
 those whims that are ornamental in the rich. Bab- 
 bie Cutting said to her heart, "He refounded it for 
 Miss Lucia.' 1 
 
 There was nowhere in Wimberton such dignified 
 society as at the Institute. Even so that the last 
 visitor of all seemed only to come by invitation, 
 and to pay his respects with proper ceremony: 
 
 "Sir, or madam, I hope it is not an inconvenient 
 time,' 1 or similar phrase. 
 
 "Oh, not at all. It seems very dark around. 11 
 
 "Will you take my arm? The path is steep and 
 worn, and here is a small matter of a river, as you 
 see. I regret that the water is perhaps a trifle cold. 
 Yes, one hears so much talk about the other side 
 that one hardly knows what to think. There is no 
 hurry. But at this point I say good night and leave 
 you. When you were young you often heard good 
 night said when the morning was at hand. May it 
 be so. Good night. 11 
 
 113
 
 NAUSICAA
 
 NAUSICAA 
 
 A HE Fourteenth Infantry, volunteers, were mus- 
 tered out on the last day of April. Sandy Cass and 
 Kid Sadler came that night into the great city of 
 the river and the straits with their heads full of 
 lurid visions which they set about immediately to 
 realize. Little Irish was with them, and Bill Smith, 
 who had had other names at other times. And 
 Sandy woke the next morning in a room that had 
 no furniture but a bed, a washstand, a cracked mir- 
 ror, and a chair. He did not remember coming there. 
 Some one must have put him to bed. It was not Kid 
 Sadler or Little Irish; they were drunk early, with 
 bad judgment. It must have been Bill Smith. A 
 hat with a frayed cord lay on the floor. "That's 
 Bill's hat," he said. "He's got mine." 
 
 The gray morning filled the window, and carts 
 rattled by in the street. He rose and drank from 
 the pitcher to clear the bitterness from his mouth, 
 and saw himself in the glass, haggard and hollow- 
 eyed. It was a clean-cut face, with straight, thin lips, 
 straight eyebrows, and brown hair. The lips were 
 white and lines ran back from the eyes. Sandy did 
 117
 
 THE DELECTABLE MOUNTAINS 
 
 not think he looked a credit to himself. 
 
 "Some of it's yellow fever," he reflected, "and 
 some of it's jag. About half and half. The squire 
 can charge it to the yellow." 
 
 He wondered what new thing Squire Cass would 
 find to say to his "rascally nephew, that reprobate 
 Ulysses." Squire Cass was a red-faced gentleman and 
 substantial citizen of that calm New England town 
 of Wimberton, which Sandy knew very well and 
 did not care for. It was too calm. But it would be 
 good for his constitution to go there now. He won- 
 dered if his constitution would hold out for another 
 night equally joyful; "Maybe it might;" then how 
 much of his eighty dollars' back pay was blown in. 
 He put on his clothes slowly, feeling through the 
 pockets, collected two half-dollars on the way, came 
 to the last and stopped. 
 
 "Must have missed one;" and began again. But 
 that crumpled wad of bills was gone altogether. 
 
 "Well, if I ain't an orphan!" 
 
 He remembered last a place with bright glass 
 chandeliers, a gilt cupid over the bar, a girl in a 
 frowzy hat, laughing with large teeth, and Kid 
 Sadler singing that song he had made up and was 
 so "doggone stuck on": 
 
 118
 
 NAUSICAA 
 
 "Sandy Cass! A -alas! 
 We'll be shut up 
 In the lockup 
 If this here keeps on." 
 It got monotonous, that song. 
 
 "Sandy Cass! A-alas! 
 A comin home, 
 A bummin home " 
 
 He liked to make poetry, Kid Sadler. You would 
 not have expected it, to look at his sloppy mustache, 
 long dry throat, and big hands. The poetry was 
 generally accurate. Sandy did not see any good in it, 
 unless it was accurate. 
 
 "Little Irish is a Catholic, he come from I-er-land; 
 He ain't a whole cathedral, nor a new brass band; 
 He got religion in 'is joints from the hoonin of a shell, 
 An 'is auburn hair's burned bricky red from leanin over 
 
 hell" 
 
 That was accurate enough, though put in figures 
 of speech, but the Kid was still more accurate re- 
 garding Bill Smith: 
 
 "Nobody knows who Bill Smith is, 
 His kin nor yet his kith, 
 An nobody cares who Bill Smith is, 
 An neither does Bill Smith;" 
 
 which was perfectly true. Anyhow the Kid could not 
 119
 
 THE DELECTABLE MOUNTAINS 
 
 have taken the wad, nor Little Irish. It must have 
 been Bill Smith. 
 
 "It was Bill," he decided. 
 
 He did not make any special comments. Some 
 thing or other happens to a man every day. He 
 went down-stairs, through a dim narrow hallway. 
 
 "Hope there don't any one want something of me. 
 I don't believe they 11 get it." 
 
 There were sounds in the basement, but no one 
 met him. In the street the Ninth Avenue car rolled 
 by, a block away. He saw a restaurant sign which 
 said fearlessly that a stew cost ten cents, went in and 
 breakfasted for fifteen, waited on by a thin, weary 
 , woman, who looked at his blue coat and braided hat 
 with half-roused interest. 
 
 The cobble-stones on Sixth Avenue were shining 
 and wet. Here and there some one in the crowd turned 
 to look after him. It might have been the uniform, 
 the loafer's slouch of the hat, taken with the face 
 being young and too white. 
 
 The hands of the station clock stood at ten. He 
 took a ticket to the limit of eighty-five cents, heard 
 dimly the name of a familiar junction; and then the 
 rumble of the train was under him for an hour. Bill 
 Smith had left him his pipe and tobacco. Bill had 
 good points. Sandy was inclined to think kindly of 
 120
 
 NAUSICAA 
 
 Bill's thoughtfulness, and envy him his enterprise. 
 The roar of the car- wheels sounded like Kid Sadler's 
 voice, hoarse and choky, "A-alas, a-alas!" 
 
 It was eleven o'clock at the junction. The mist of 
 the earlier morning had become a slow drizzle. 
 Trains jangled to and fro in the freight yards. He 
 took a road which led away from the brick ware- 
 houses, streets of shady trees and lawns, and curved 
 to the north, along the bank of a cold, sleepy river. 
 
 There was an unpainted, three-room house some- 
 where, where a fat woman said "Good land!" and 
 gave him a plate full of different things, on a table 
 covered with oil-cloth. He could not remember after- 
 ward what he ate, or what the woman said further. 
 He remembered the oil-cloth, which had a yellow- 
 feverish design of curved lines, that twisted snakily, 
 and came out of the cloth and ran across the plate. 
 Then out in the gray drizzle again. 
 
 All the morning his brain had seemed to grow 
 duller and duller, heavy and sodden; but in the 
 afternoon red lights began dancing in the mist. It 
 might have been five miles or twenty he had gone 
 by dusk; the distinction between miles and rods was 
 not clear they both consisted of brown mud and 
 gray mist. Sometimes it was a mile across the road. 
 The dusk, and then the dark, heaved, and pulsed 
 121
 
 THE DELECTABLE MOUNTAINS 
 
 through blood-red veins, and peeled, and broke apart 
 in brilliant cracks, as they used to do nights in the 
 field hospital. There seemed to be no hope or desire 
 in him, except in his feet, which moved on. The 
 lights that travelled with him got mixed with lights 
 on each side of a village street, and his feet walked 
 in through a gate. They had no reason for it, except 
 that the gate stood open and was painted white. He 
 pushed back the door of a little garden tool-house 
 beside the path, and lay down on the floor. He could 
 not make out which of a number of things were 
 happening. The Fourteenth Infantry appeared to be 
 bucking a steep hill, with the smoke rolling down 
 over it; but on the other hand Kid Sadler was sing- 
 ing hoarsely, but distinctly, "A-alas, a-alas!" and 
 moreover, a dim light shone through a white- 
 curtained window somewhere between a rod and a 
 mile away, and glimmered down the wet path by the 
 tool -house. Some one said, "Some of ifs jag and 
 some of it's the yellow. About half and half." He 
 might have been making the remark himself, except 
 that he appeared to be elsewhere. The rain kept up 
 a thin whisper on the roof of the tool -house. Gasps, 
 shouts, thumping of feet, clash of rifle and canteen. 
 The hill was as steep as a wall. Little Irish said, 
 "His legs was too short to shtep on the back av his 
 122
 
 NAUSICAA 
 
 neck wid the shteepness av the hill." "A-alas! A 
 comin 1 home." "Oh, shut up, Kid!" "A-alas, a-alas!" 
 The dark was split with red gashes, as it used to be 
 in the field hospital. The rain whispered on the roof 
 and the wet path glimmered like silk. 
 
 It was the village of Zoar, which lies far back to 
 the west of Wyantenaug Valley, among low waves of 
 hills, the house the old Hare Place, and Miss Eliza- 
 beth Hare and Gracia lived there behind the white 
 gateway. 
 
 That gateway had once been an ancient arch over- 
 head, with a green wooden ball topping it. Some one 
 cut a face on the ball, that leered into the street. It 
 did not in the least resemble Miss Elizabeth, whose 
 smile was gentle and cool; but it was taken down 
 from its station of half a century; and Gracia cried 
 secretly, because everything would needs be discon- 
 solate without an arch and a proper wooden ball 
 on top of it, under which knights and witch ladies 
 might come and go, riding and floating. It seemed 
 to break down the old garden life. Odd flowers 
 would not hold conversations any more, tiger-lilies 
 and peonies bother each other, the tigers being snap- 
 pish and the peonies fat, slow, and irritating. Before 
 Gracia's hair had abandoned yellow braids and be- 
 123
 
 THE DELECTABLE MOUNTAINS 
 
 come mysterious, when she learned neat sewing and 
 cross-stitch, she used to set the tigers and peonies 
 quarrelling to express her own feelings about neat 
 sewing and cross-stitch. Afterward she found the 
 memory of that wickedness too heavy, and confessed 
 it to Miss Elizabeth, and added the knights and 
 witch ladies. Miss Elizabeth had said nothing, had 
 seemed disinclined to blame, and, going out into the 
 garden, had walked to and fro restlessly, stopping 
 beside the tigers and peonies, and seeming to look 
 at the arched gateway with a certain wistfulness. 
 
 Miss Elizabeth had now a dimly faded look, the 
 charm of a still November, where now and then an 
 Indian summer steals over the chill. She wore tiny 
 white caps, and her hair was singularly smooth; 
 while Gracia's appeared rather to be blown back, 
 pushed by the delicate fingers of a breeze, that pri- 
 vately admired it, away from her eager face, with its 
 gray-blue eyes that looked at you as if they saw 
 something else as well. It kept you guessing about 
 that other thing, and you got no further than to 
 wonder if it were not something, or some one, that 
 you might be, or might have been, if you had begun 
 at it before life had become so labelled and defined, 
 so plastered over with maxims. 
 
 The new gateway was still a doubtful quantity in 
 124
 
 NAUSICAA 
 
 Gracia's mind. It was not justified. It had no connec- 
 tions, no consecrations; merely a white gate against 
 the greenery. 
 
 It was the whiteness which caught Sandy Cassis 
 dulled eyes, so that he turned through, and lay 
 down in the tool-house, and wondered which of a 
 number of incongruous things was really happen- 
 ing: Little Irish crying plaintively that his legs 
 were too short "A-alas, a-alas!" or the whisper 
 of the rain on the roof. 
 
 Gracia lifted the white curtains, looked out, and 
 saw the wet path shining. 
 
 "Is it raining, Gracia?' 1 
 
 "It drizzles like anything, and the tool-house door 
 is open, and, oh, aunty ! the path shines quite down 
 to the gate." 
 
 "It generally shines in the rain, dear." 
 
 "Oh!" said Gracia, thoughtfully. She seemed to 
 be examining a sudden idea, and began the pretence 
 of a whistle which afterward became a true fact. 
 
 "I wish it wouldn't be generally, don't you? I 
 wish things would all be specially." 
 
 "I wouldn't wi I wouldn't whistle, if I were 
 you," said Miss Elizabeth, gently. 
 
 "Oh!" Gracia came suddenly with a ripple and 
 coo of laughter, and dropped on her knees by Miss 
 125
 
 THE DELECTABLE MOUNTAINS 
 
 Elizabeth. "You couldn't, you poor aunty, if you 
 tried. You never learned, did you?" 
 
 Miss Elizabeth hesitated. 
 
 "I once tried to learn of your father. I used to 
 think it sounded cheerful. But my mother would n't 
 allow it. What I really started to say was, that I 
 wouldn't, if I were you, I wouldn't wish so many 
 things to be other than they are. I used to wish for 
 things to be different, and then, you know, when 
 they stay quite the same, it's such a number of 
 troubles." 
 
 Gracia clasped her fingers about one knee, studied 
 the neatly built fire and the blue and white tiles 
 over it, and thought hard on the subject of wishes. 
 She thought that she had not wished things to be 
 different, so much as to remain the same as of old, 
 when one wore yellow braids, and could whistle with 
 approval, and everything happened specially. Because 
 it is sad when you begin to suspect that the sun and 
 moon and the growths of spring do not care about 
 you, but only act according to habits they have 
 fallen into, and that the shining paths, which seem 
 to lead from beyond the night, are common or 
 accidental and not meant specially. The elder ro- 
 mancers and the latest seers do insist together that 
 they are, that such highways indeed as the moon 
 126
 
 NAUSICAA 
 
 lays on the water are translunary and come with 
 purposes from a celestial city. The romancers have a 
 simple faith, and the seers an ingenious theory about 
 it. But the days and weeks argue differently. They 
 had begun to trouble the fealty that Gracia held 
 of romance, and she had not met with the theory of 
 the seers. 
 
 Sandy Cass went through experiences that night 
 which cannot be written, for there was no sequence 
 in them, and they were translunary and sub-earthly; 
 some of them broken fragments of his life thrown 
 up at him out of a kind of smoky red pit, very much 
 as it used to be in the field hospital. His life seemed 
 to fall easily into fragments. There had not been 
 much sequence in it, since he began running away 
 from the house of the squire at fifteen. It had 
 ranged between the back and front doors of the 
 social structure these ten years. The squire used to 
 storm, because it came natural to him to speak vio- 
 lently; but privately he thought Sandy no more 
 than his own younger self, let loose instead of tied 
 down. He even envied Sandy. He wished he would 
 come oftener to entertain him. Sandy was a period- 
 ical novel continued in the next issue, an irregular 
 and barbarous Odyssey, in which the squire, compar- 
 ing with his Pope^s translation, recognized Scylla 
 127
 
 THE DELECTABLE MOUNTAINS 
 
 and Charybdis, Cyclops and Circe, and the interfer- 
 ence of the quarrelling gods. But that night the 
 story went through the Land of Shadows and Red 
 Dreams. Sandy came at last to the further edge of 
 the Land; beyond was the Desert of Dreamless 
 Sleep; and then something white and waving was 
 before his eyes, and beyond was a pale green shim- 
 mer. He heard a gruff voice : 
 
 "Hm Constitution, Miss Hare. That chap had 
 a solid ancestry. He ought to have had a relapse and 
 died, and he 11 be out in a week. 11 
 
 Another voice said in an awed whisper: 
 
 "He'k like my Saint George! 11 
 
 "Hm Legendary? This St. G. looks as if he^l 
 made up with his devil. Looks as if they'd been 
 tolerably good friends. 11 
 
 A third voice remonstrated: 
 
 "Doctor! 11 
 
 "Hm, hm My nonsense, Miss Gracia, my non- 
 sense. 11 
 
 The two ladies and the doctor went out. 
 
 It was a long, low room, white, fragrant, and 
 fresh. Soft white curtains waved in open windows, 
 and outside the late sunlight drifted shyly through 
 the pale green leaves of young maples. There were 
 dainty things about, touches of silk and lace, blue 
 128
 
 NAUSICAA 
 
 and white china on bureau and dressing-table, a 
 mirror framed with gilded pillars at the sides and 
 a painted Arcadia above. 
 
 "Well, if I ain't an orphan!"" grumbled Sandy, 
 feebly. 
 
 An elderly woman with a checked apron brought 
 him soup in a bowl. She was quite silent and soon 
 went out. 
 
 "It's pretty slick," he thought, - looking around. 
 "I could n't have done better if I 'd been a widow." 
 
 The drifting quiet of the days that Sandy lay 
 there pleased him for the time. It felt like a cool 
 poultice on a wound. The purity and fragility of 
 objects was interesting to look at, so long as he lay 
 still and did not move about among them. But he 
 wondered how people could live there right along. 
 They must keep everything at a distance, with a 
 feather-duster between. He had an impression that 
 china things always broke, and white things became 
 dirty. Then it occurred to him that there might be 
 some whose nature, without any worry to them- 
 selves, was to keep things clean and not to knock 
 them over, to touch things in a feathery manner, so 
 that they did not have to stay behind a duster. This 
 subject of speculation lasted him a day or two, and 
 129
 
 THE DELECTABLE MOUNTAINS 
 
 Miss Elizabeth and Gracia began to interest him as 
 beings with that special gift. He admired any kind 
 of capability. Miss Elizabeth he saw often, the wo- 
 man in the checked apron till he was tired of her. 
 But Gracia was only now and then a desirable and 
 fleeting appearance in the doorway, saying: 
 
 "Good morning, Saint George." 
 
 She never stayed to tell him why "Saint George." 
 It came to the point that the notion of her yellow 
 hair would stay by him an hour or more afterward. 
 He began to wake from his dozes, fancying he heard 
 " Good morning, Saint George," and finally to watch 
 the doorway and fidget. 
 
 "This lying abed," he concluded, "is played out." 
 
 He got up and hunted about for his clothes. His 
 knees and fingers trembled. The clothes hung in 
 the closet, cleaned and pressed, in the extraordinary 
 neighborhood of a white muslin dress. Sandy sat 
 down heavily on the bed. Things seemed to be whiz- 
 zing and whimpering all about him. He waited for 
 them to settle, and pulled on his clothes gradually. 
 At the end of an hour he thought he might pass on 
 parade, and crept out into the hall and down the 
 stairs. The sunlight was warm in the garden and 
 on the porch, and pale green among the leaves. 
 Gracia sat against a pillar, clasping one knee. Miss 
 130
 
 NAUSICAA 
 
 Elizabeth sewed; her work-basket was fitted up in- 
 side on an intricate system. Gracia hailed him with 
 enthusiasm, and Miss Elizabeth remonstrated. He 
 looked past Miss Elizabeth to find the yellow hair. 
 "This lying abed," he said feebly, "is played out." 
 Sitting in the sunlight, Sandy told his story grad- 
 ually from day to day. It was all his story, being 
 made up of selections. He was skilful from practice 
 on the squire, but he saw the need of a new principle 
 of selection and combination. His style of narrative 
 was his own. It possessed gravity, candor, simplicity, 
 an assumption that nothing could be unreasonable 
 or surprising which came in the course of events, 
 that all things and all men were acceptable. Gracia 
 thought that simplicity beautiful, that his speech 
 was like the speech of Tanneguy du Bois, and that 
 he looked like Saint George in the picture which 
 hung in her room a pale young warrior, such as 
 painters once loved to draw, putting in those keen 
 faces a peculiar manhood, tempered and edged like a 
 sword. Sandy looked oddly like him, in the straight 
 lines of brow and mouth. Saint George is taking a 
 swift easy stride over the dead dragon, a kind of 
 level-eyed daring and grave inquiry in his face, as 
 if it were Sandy himself, about to say, "You don't 
 happen to have another dragon? This one wasn't 
 131
 
 THE DELECTABLE MOUNTAINS 
 
 real gamy. I'd rather have an average alligator." 
 She laughed with ripples and coos, and struggled 
 with lumps in her throat, when Sandy through sim- 
 plicity fell into pathos. It bewildered her that the 
 funny things and pathetic things were so mixed up 
 and run together, and that he seemed to take no 
 notice of either of them. But she grew stern and 
 indignant when Bill Smith, it was but probable, 
 robbed the unsuspecting sleep of his comrade. 
 
 "You see," said Sandy, apologetically, "Bill was 
 restless, that was the reason. It was his enterprise 
 kept bothering him. Likely he wanted it for some- 
 thing, and he could n't tell how much I might need 
 without waking me up to ask. And he couldn't do 
 that, because that 'd have been ridiculous, would n't 
 it? Of course, if he'd waked me up to ask how much 
 I wanted, because he was going to take the rest with 
 him, why, of course, I 'd been obliged to get up and 
 hit him, to show how ridiculous it was. Of course 
 Bill saw that, and what could he do? Because there 
 wasn't any way he could tell, don't you see? So he 
 left the pipe and tobacco, and a dollar for luck, and 
 lit out, being a restless." 
 
 And Gracia wondered at and gloried in the width 
 of that charity, that impersonal and untamed tol- 
 erance. 
 
 132
 
 NAUSICAA 
 
 Then Sandy took up the subject of Kid Sadler. 
 He felt there was need of more virtue and valor. 
 He took Kid Sadler and decorated him. He fitted 
 him with picturesque detail. The Kid bothered him 
 with his raucous voice, froth-dripped mustache, lean 
 throat, black mighty hands, and smell of unclean- 
 ness. But Sandy chose him as a poet. It seemed a 
 good start. Gracia surprised him by looking startled 
 and quite tearful, where the poet says: 
 
 "Nobody cares who Bill Smith is, 
 An neither does Bill Smith;" 
 
 which had seemed to Sandy only an accurate state- 
 ment. 
 
 But the Kid's poetry needed expurgation and 
 amendment. Sandy did it conscientiously, and spent 
 hours searching for lines of similar rhyme, which 
 would not glance so directly into byways and alleys 
 that were surprising. 
 
 "A comin home, 
 A roamin home " 
 
 "I told the Kid," he added critically, "roamm"* 
 wasn't a good rhyme, but he thought it was a 
 pathetic word." 
 
 "Oh, when I was a little boy 't was things I did n't know, 
 An when I growed I knowed a lot of things that was n't so; 
 133
 
 THE DELECTABLE MOUNTAINS 
 
 An now 1 know a few things that 's useful an selected: 
 As how to put hard liquor where hard liquor is expected " 
 
 and so on, different verses, which the Kid called his 
 "Sing Song.' 1 Sandy's judgment hung in doubt over 
 this whether the lines were objectionable. He tem- 
 pered the taste of the working literary artist for 
 distinct flavor, and his own for that which is accu- 
 rate, with the cautions of a village library commit- 
 tee, and decided on, 
 
 "An puts them things in moral verse to uses onexpected." 
 
 "I don't know what he meant by 'onexpected,'" 
 Sandy commented with a sense of helplessness, "but 
 maybe he meant that he didn't know what he did 
 mean. Because poets," getting more and more entan- 
 gled, "poets are that kind they can take a word and 
 mean anything in the neighborhood, or something 
 that'll occur to 'em next week." 
 
 Gracia admired the Kid, though Miss Elizabeth 
 thought she ought to refer to him as Mr. Sadler, 
 which seemed a pity. And she declared a violent 
 love for Little Irish, because "his auburn hair 
 turned bricky red with falling down a well," and 
 because he wished to climb hills by stepping on the 
 back of his neck. It was like Alice's Adventures, and 
 especially like the White Knight's scheme to be 
 134
 
 NAUSICAA 
 
 over a wall by putting his head on top and standing 
 on his head. 
 
 After all humors and modifications, Sandy's story 
 was a wild and strange thing. It took new details 
 from day to day, filling in the picture. To Gracia's 
 imagination it spread out beyond romance, full of 
 glooms, flashes, fascinations, dangers of cities, war 
 and wilderness, and in spite of Sandy's self-indiffer- 
 ence, it was he who dominated the pilgrimage, color- 
 ing it with his comment. The pilgrim appeared to 
 be a person to whom the Valley of the Shadow of 
 Death was equally interesting with Vanity Fair, 
 and who entering the front gate of the Celestial 
 City with rejoicing would presently want to know 
 whither the back gate would take him. It seemed 
 a pilgrimage to anywhere in search of everything, 
 but Gracia began to fancy it was meant to lead 
 specially to the new garden gate that opened so 
 broadly on the street, and so dreamed the fancy 
 into belief. She saw Sandy in imagination coming 
 out of the pit-black night and lying down in the 
 tool-house by the wet shining path. The white gate 
 was justified. 
 
 Sandy's convalescence was not a finished thing, 
 but he was beginning to feel energy starting within 
 135
 
 THE DELECTABLE MOUNTAINS 
 
 him. Energy ! He knew the feeling well. It was some- 
 thing that snarled and clawed by fits. 
 
 "I'm a wildcat, 11 he said to himself reflectively, 
 "sitting on eggs. Why don't he get off? Now," as 
 if addressing a speculative question for instance to 
 Kid Sadler, "he could n't expect to hatch anything, 
 could he?" 
 
 It was such a question as the Kid would have 
 been pleased with, and have considered justly. 
 
 "Has he got the eggs?" 
 
 "I don't know. It's a mixed figure, Kid." 
 
 "Does he feel like he wanted to hatch 'em?" 
 
 "What'd he do with 'em hatched? That's so, 
 Kid." 
 
 "/* he a wildcat?" 
 
 "Yep." 
 
 "He is. Can a wildcat hatch eggs? No, he can't." 
 
 "A wildcat" the Kid would have enjoyed fol- 
 lowing this figure "ain't an incubator. There ain't 
 enough peacefulness in him. He'd make a yaller 
 mess of 'em an' take to the woods with the mess 
 on his whiskers. It stands to reason, don't it? He 
 ain't in his own hole on a chickadee's nest." 
 
 Sandy stood looking over the gate into the vil- 
 lage street, which was shaded to dimness by its 
 maples, a still, warm, brooding street. 
 136
 
 NAUSICAA 
 
 "Like an incubator, 1 ' he thought, and heard 
 Gracia calling from up the path: 
 
 "Saint George!" 
 
 Sandy turned. She came down the path to the 
 gate. 
 
 "Aren't you going to fix the peony bed?" 
 
 "Not," said Sandy, "if you stay here by the 
 gate." 
 
 Gracia looked away from him quickly into the 
 street. 
 
 "It's warm and quiet, isn't it? It's like " 
 
 Zoar was not to her like anything else. 
 
 "Like an incubator," said Sandy, gloomily, and 
 Gracia looked up and laughed. 
 
 "Oh, I shouldn't have thought of that." 
 
 "Kid Sadler would have said it, if he'd been 
 here." 
 
 "Would he?" 
 
 "Just his kind of figure. And he'd be saying 
 further it was time Sandy Cass took to the woods." 
 
 He had an irritating spasm of desire to touch 
 the slim white fingers on the gate. Gracia moved 
 her hands nervously. Sandy saw the fingers tremble, 
 and swore at himself under his breath. 
 
 "Why, Saint George?" 
 
 "Thinking he was a wildcat and he'd make a 
 137
 
 THE DELECTABLE MOUNTAINS 
 
 yel a Maybe thinking he didn't look nat I 
 mean," Sandy ended very lamely, "the Kid'd prob- 
 ably use figures of speech and mean something 
 that'd occur to him by and by." 
 
 "You're not well yet. You're not going so soon," 
 she said, speaking quite low. 
 
 Sandy meditated a number of lies, and concluded 
 that he did not care for any of them. He seemed 
 to dislike them as a class. 
 
 This kind of internal struggle was new and irri- 
 tating. He had never known two desires that would 
 not compromise equably, or one of them recognize 
 its place and get out of the road. The savage rest- 
 lessness in his blood, old, well-known, expected, 
 something in brain and bone, had always carried 
 its point and always would. He accounted for all 
 things in all men by reference to it, supposing them 
 to feel restless, the inner reason why a man did 
 anything. But here now was another thing, hope- 
 lessly fighting it, clinging, exasperating; somewhere 
 within him it was a kind of solemn-eyed sorrow that 
 looked outward and backward over his life, and be- 
 hold, the same was a windy alkali desert that bore 
 nothing and was bitter in the mouth; and at the 
 ends of his fingers it came to a keen point, a desire to 
 touch Gracia's hair and the slim fingers on the gate. 
 138
 
 NAUSICAA 
 
 Gracia looked up and then away. 
 
 "You're not well yet." 
 
 "You 've been uncommonly good to me, and all " 
 
 "You mustn't speak of it that way. It spoils it." 
 
 It seemed to both as if they were swaying nearer 
 together, a languid, mystical atmosphere thicken- 
 ing about them. Only there was the drawback with 
 Sandy of an inward monitor, with a hoarse voice 
 like Kid Sadler's, who would be talking to him in 
 figures and proverbs. 
 
 "Keep away from china an' lace; they break an' 
 stain; this thing has been observed. Likewise is love 
 a bit o' moonlight, sonny, that's all, an' a tempest, 
 an' a sucked orange. Come out o' that, Sandy, break 
 away; for, in the words o' the prophet, 'It's no 
 square game,' an' this here girl, God bless her! but 
 she plays too high, an' you can't call her, Sandy, you 
 ain't got the chips. Come away, come away." 
 
 "And that," Sandy concluded the council, "is 
 pretty accurate. I'm broke this deal." 
 
 He stood up straight and looked at Gracia with 
 eyes drawn and narrowed. 
 
 She felt afraid and did not understand. 
 
 "You don't know me. If you knew me, you'd 
 know I have to go." 
 
 The wind rose in the afternoon, and blew gustily 
 139
 
 THE DELECTABLE MOUNTAINS 
 
 through street and garden. The windows of Miss 
 Elizabeth's sitting-room were closed. The curtains 
 hung in white, lifeless folds. But in Gracia's room 
 above the windows were open, and the white cur- 
 tains shook with the wind. Delicate and tremulous, 
 they clung and moulded themselves one moment to 
 the casement, and then broke out, straining in the 
 wind that tossed the maple leaves and went up and 
 away into the wild sky after the driving clouds. 
 
 Sandy turned north up the village street, walking 
 irresolutely. It might be thirty miles to Wimberton. 
 The squire had sent him money. He could reach the 
 railroad and make Wimberton that night, but he 
 did not seem to care about it. 
 
 Out of the village, he fell into the long marching 
 stride, and the motion set his blood tingling. Pres- 
 ently he felt better; some burden was shaken off; he 
 was foot-loose and free of the open road, looking to 
 the friction of event. At the end of five miles he 
 remembered a saying of Kid Sadler's, chuckled over 
 it, and began humming other verses of the "Sing 
 Song," so called by the outcast poet. 
 
 " Oh, when I was a little boy, I laughed an then I cried, 
 An ever since I done the same, more privately, inside. 
 There's a joke between this world an me 'n it's tolerable grim, 
 An God has got his end of it, an some of it 's on him. 
 140
 
 NAUSICAA 
 
 For he made a man with his left hari , an the rest o things 
 
 with his right; 
 An the right knew not what the left han did, for he kep' 
 
 it out o' sight. 
 
 It 's maybe a Wagner opery, it ain't no bedtime croon, 
 When the highest note in the universe is a half note out 
 
 o' tune." 
 
 "That appears to be pretty accurate," he thought. 
 "Wonder how the Kid comes to know things." 
 
 He swung on enjoying the growth of vigor, the 
 endless, open, travelled road, and the wind blowing 
 across his face. 
 
 141
 
 SANDERSON OF BACK MEADOWS
 
 SANDERSON OF BACK MEADOWS 
 
 Jt>ACK MEADOWS lies three miles to the northwest of 
 Hagar, rich bottom-lands in Sanderson Hollow, and 
 the Cattle Ridge shelters it on the north. Five gen- 
 erations of Sandersons have added to the Sanderson 
 accumulation of this world's goods, without sensible 
 interference on the part of moths or rust or thieves 
 that break through and steal. Cool, quiet men, slow 
 of speech and persistent of mood, they prospered and 
 lived well where other families, desiring too many 
 things or not desiring anything enough, found noth- 
 ing at all desirable and drifted away. The specula- 
 tive traveller, hunting "abandoned farms," or study- 
 ing the problem of the future of New England's 
 outlying districts, who should stand on the crest of 
 the Cattle Ridge overlooking the sheltered valley, 
 would note it as an instance of the problem satis- 
 factorily solved and of a farm which, so far from 
 abandonment, smiled over all its comfortable ex- 
 panse in the consciousness of past and certainty of 
 future occupancy. These were ready illustrations for 
 his thesis, if he had one : the smooth meadows, square 
 stone walls and herds of fawn -colored cattle, large 
 145
 
 THE DELECTABLE MOUNTAINS 
 
 barns and long stables of the famous Sanderson 
 stud; also the white gabled house among the maples 
 with spreading ells on either side, suggesting a posi- 
 tion taken with foresight and carefully guarded and 
 secured a house that, recognizing the uncertainties 
 and drifting currents of the world, had acted accord- 
 ingly, and now could afford to consider itself com- 
 placently. The soul of any individual Sanderson 
 might be required of him, and his wisdom relative 
 to eternity be demonstrated folly, but the policy of 
 the Sanderson family had not so far been considered 
 altogether an individual matter. Even individually, 
 if the question of such inversion of terms ever oc- 
 curred to a Sanderson, it only led to the conclusion 
 that it was strictly a Pickwickian usage, and, in the 
 ordinary course of language, the policy of building 
 barns, stowing away goods and reflecting compla- 
 cently thereon, still came under the head of wisdom. 
 Mrs. Cullom Sanderson, sister of Israel Sanderson 
 of the last generation and married into a distant 
 branch of the Sanderson family, carried her mate- 
 rialism with an unconscious and eccentric frankness 
 that prevented the family from recognizing in her 
 a peculiar development of its own quality. When 
 Israel's gentle wife passed from a world which she 
 had found too full of unanswered questions, it was 
 146
 
 SANDERSON OF BACK MEADOWS 
 
 Mrs. Cullom who plunged bulkily into the chamber 
 of the great mystery and stopped, gulping with as- 
 tonishment. 
 
 "I just made her some blanc-mange," she gasped. 
 "Isn't that too bad! Why, Israel! 11 
 
 Israel turned from the window and contemplated 
 her gravely with his hands clasped behind him. 
 
 "I think you had better move down to the Mead- 
 ows, Ellen, 1 ' he said. "If you will contrive to say as 
 little as possible to me about Marian, and one or 
 two other matters I will specify, we shall get along 
 very well. 11 
 
 He went out with slow step and bent head, fol- 
 lowed by Mrs. Cullom trying vainly to find an idea 
 on the subject suggested, which she was quite posi- 
 tive she had somewhere about her. What Israel may 
 have thought of the thing that had whispered within 
 his doors in an unknown tongue, and had taken away 
 what was his without receipt or equivalent exchange, 
 it were hard to say; equally hard even to say what 
 he had thought of Marian these twenty years. If her 
 cloistral devotions and visionary moods had seemed 
 to him, in unin verted terms, folly, he had never said 
 so. Certainly he had liked her quiet, ladylike ways, 
 and possibly respected a difference of temperament 
 inwardly as well as outwardly. At any rate, tolerance 
 147
 
 THE DELECTABLE MOUNTAINS 
 
 was a consistent Sanderson policy and philosophy of 
 life. 
 
 There was a slight movement in the chamber, 
 after the silence which followed the departing foot- 
 steps of Israel and Mrs. Cullom. A small person in 
 pinafores crept stealthily from under the bed and 
 peered over the edge. It was a hard climb but he 
 persisted, and at last seated himself on it panting, 
 with his elbows on his knees, gravely considering. 
 A few hours since, the silent lips had whispered, 
 among many things that came back to his memory 
 in after years like a distant chime of bells, only this 
 that seemed of any immediate importance: "I shall 
 be far away to-night, Joe, but when you say your 
 prayers I shall hear."" The problem that puckered 
 the small brow was whether prayers out of regular 
 hours were real prayers. Joe decided to risk it and, 
 getting on his knees, said over all the prayers he 
 knew. Then he leaned over and patted the thin, cold 
 cheek (Joe and his mother always tacitly understood 
 each other), slid off the bed with a satisfied air, and 
 solemnly trotted out of the room. 
 
 Mrs. Cullom Sanderson was a widow; "Which," 
 Israel remarked, "is a pity. Cullom would have 
 taken comfort in outliving you, Ellen."" 
 
 "Well," remonstrated Mrs. Cullom, "I'm sure I 
 148
 
 SANDERSON OF BACK MEADOWS 
 
 don't know what you mean, Israel. I've always re- 
 spected his memory." 
 
 Israel, gravely regarding her, observed, "You'd 
 better not try to train Joe," and departed, leaving 
 her to struggle with the idea that between Joe and 
 Cullom's comfort Israel was getting very discon- 
 nected. Disconnection of remark did not imply any 
 changeableness in Israel's temperament. He observed 
 a silent sequence of character, and possibly a se- 
 quence of thought of which he did not care to give 
 evidence, on matters which he found no profit in 
 discussing. Twelve years later the mystery again 
 whispered within his doors, and he rose and fol- 
 lowed it in his usual deliberate and taciturn way, 
 without disclosing any opinion on the question of 
 the inversion of terms. The story of each genera- 
 tion is put away when its time comes with a more 
 or less irrelevant epitaph, whether or not its threads 
 be gathered into a satisfactory finale. The Spirit-of- 
 things-moving-on is singularly indifferent to such 
 matters. Its only literary principle seems to be, to 
 move on. The new Sanderson of Back Meadows grew 
 up a slight, thin-faced young fellow. The Sanderson 
 men were always slight of build, saving a certain 
 breadth of shoulders. A drooping mustache in course 
 of time hid the only un-Sanderson feature, a sen- 
 149
 
 THE DELECTABLE MOUNTAINS 
 
 sitive mouth. The cool gray eyes, slightly drawling 
 speech, and deliberate manner were all Sanderson, 
 indicating "a chip of the old block," as Mr. Durfey 
 remarked to the old Scotchman who kept the drug 
 store in Hagar. If the latter had doubts, he kept 
 them to himself. 
 
 The Sanderson stud sprang from a certain red 
 mare, Martha, belonging to Blake Sanderson of 
 Revolutionary times. They were a thin-necked, gen- 
 erally bad-tempered breed, with red veins across the 
 eyes, of high repute among "horsey" men. Blake 
 Sanderson was said to have ridden the red mare 
 from Boston in some astonishingly quick time on 
 some mysterious errand connected with the evacua- 
 tion of New York, whereby her descendants were at 
 one time known as the Courier breed; but as no one 
 seemed to know what the errand was, it was possi- 
 bly not a patriotic one. Three of these red, thin- 
 necked mares and a stallion were on exhibition at 
 the Hamilton County Fair of "76. Notable men of 
 the county were there, mingled with turfmen of all 
 shades of notoriety; several immaculately groomed 
 gentlemen, tall-hatted, long-coated, and saying little, 
 but pointed out with provincial awe as coming from 
 New York and worth watching; a few lean Kentuck- 
 150
 
 SANDERSON OF BACK MEADOWS 
 
 ians, the redness of whose noses was in direct ratio 
 with their knowledge of the business, and whose ar- 
 tistic profanity had a mercantile value in express- 
 ing contempt for Yankee horse-flesh. There was the 
 Honorable Gerald and the some-say Dishonorable 
 Morgan Map, originally natives of Hagar, with 
 young Jacob Lorn between them undergoing astute 
 initiation into the ways of the world and its manner 
 of furnishing amusement to young men of wealth; 
 both conversing affably with Gypsy John of not even 
 doubtful reputation, at present booming Canadian 
 stock in favor of certain animals that may or may 
 not have seen Canada. Thither came the manager of 
 the opera troupe resident in Hamilton during the 
 Fair, and the Diva, popularly known as Mignon, a 
 brown-haired woman with a quick Gallic smile and 
 a voice, "By gad, sir, that she can soak every note 
 of it in tears, the little scamp,'" quoth Cassidy, ob- 
 serving from a distance. Cassidy was a large fleshy 
 man with a nickel shield under his coat. 
 "A face to launch a thousand ships, 
 
 And burn the topless towers of Ilium" 
 misquoted a tall, thin personage with an elongated 
 face and sepulchral voice. "The gods made you 
 poetical, Mr. Cassidy. Do you find your gift of 
 sentiment of use on the force?" 
 151
 
 THE DELECTABLE MOUNTAINS 
 
 "Yes, sir," shouted Cassidy, inadvertently touched 
 on one of innumerable hobbies and beginning to 
 pound one hand excitedly with the fist of the other. 
 "In fine cases, sir, the ordinary detective slips up on 
 just that point. Now let me tell you, Mr. Haver- 
 ing" 
 
 "Tell me whether that is not Mignon's 'mari. 1 
 What sort of a man is he?" 
 
 "Mignon's what? Oh Manager Scott. He isn't 
 married, further than that he's liable to rows on 
 account of Mignon, who has a face to upset things 
 as you justly observe, not to speak of a disposition 
 according. At least, I don't know but what they 
 may be married. If they are, they're liable to per- 
 petuate more rows than anything else." 
 
 "'Does something smack, something grow to, has 
 a kind of taste? 1 " 
 
 "Eh?" said Cassidy, inquiringly. 
 
 Sanderson, standing silently by, as silently turned 
 and walked toward the crowd drifting back and 
 forth in front of the stables. Portly Judge Carter 
 of Gilead, beaming through gold-rimmed glasses, 
 side-whiskered and rubicund, stopped him to remark 
 tremendously that he had issued an injunction 
 against the stallion going out of the state. "A mat- 
 ter of local patriotism, Joe, eh?" 
 
 152
 
 SANDERSON OF BACK MEADOWS 
 
 "Hear, hear," commented the Honorable Gerald 
 Map. A crowd began to gather anticipating a con- 
 ference of notables. Sanderson extricated himself and 
 walked on, and two small boys eventually smacked 
 each other over the question whether Judge Carter 
 was as great a man as Mr. Sanderson. 
 
 Mavering's eyes followed him speculatively. 
 
 "What's the particular combination that troubles 
 the manager's rest?" 
 
 "Eh?" said Cassidy. "Oh, I don't know. Bob 
 Sutton mostly. He's here somewhere. Swell young 
 fellow in a plush vest, fashionable proprietor of 
 thread mills." 
 
 The yellow, dusty road ran between the stables 
 and a battle line of sycamores and maples. Over the 
 stables loomed the brick wall of the theatre, and at 
 the end of them a small green door for the private 
 use of exhibitors gave exit from the Fair Grounds. 
 Sanderson stopped near a group opposite it, where 
 Mignon stood slapping her riding-boot with her whip. 
 
 "Mr. Sanderson," said Mignon, liquidly, "how can 
 I get out through that door?" 
 
 Sanderson considered and suggested opening it. 
 
 "But it's locked! Ciel! It's locked!" 
 
 Sanderson considered again. "Here's a key," he 
 said hopefully. 
 
 153
 
 THE DELECTABLE MOUNTAINS 
 
 "There!" shouted the plush vest. "I knew there 'd 
 be some solution. You see, mademoiselle, what we 
 admire in Sanderson is his readiness of resource. 
 Mademoiselle refused to melt down the fence with 
 a smile or climb over it on a high C, and we were 
 quite in despair."" 
 
 Outside the gate, in the paved courtyard between 
 the theatre and the hotel, Mignon lifted her big 
 brown eyes which said so many things, according to 
 Cassidy, that were not so, and observed demurely, 
 "If you were to leave me that key, Mr. Sanderson, 
 well, I should steal in here after the performance to- 
 night and ride away on the little red mare, certainly." 
 
 Sanderson gravely held out the key, but Mignon 
 drew back in sudden alarm and clasped her hands 
 tragically. 
 
 "Oh, no! You would be on guard and, what! cut 
 up? Yes. Ah, dreadfully! You are so wise, Mr. San- 
 derson, and secret." 
 
 And Jack Mavering, following slowly after, chuc- 
 kled sepulchrally to himself. "Pretty cool trysting. 
 Peace to the shades of Manager Scott. I could n't 
 have done it better myself." 
 
 The Fair Grounds were as dark and lonely at 
 eleven o'clock as if the lighted street were not three 
 154
 
 SANDERSON OF BACK MEADOWS 
 
 hundred feet away with its gossipy multitude going 
 up and down seeking some new thing. The stands 
 yawned indifferently from a thousand vacant seats 
 and the race-track had forgotten its excitement. 
 Horses stamped and rustled spectrally in their 
 stalls. The shadow under the maples was abysmal 
 and the abyss gave forth a murmur of dialogue, 
 the sound of a silken voice. 
 
 "Oh," it sighed in mock despair, "but Americans, 
 they are so very impassive. Look! They make love 
 in monosyllables. They have no passion, no action. 
 They pull their mustachios, say 'Damn! 1 so, and it 
 is tragedy. They stroke their chins, so, very grave. 
 They say 'It is not bad,' and it is comedy. Ah, 
 please, Joe, be romantique!" 
 
 "Why," drawled the other voice, "I'll do what- 
 ever you like, except have spasms." 
 
 "Indifferent! Bah! That's not romantique. How 
 would I look in the house of your fathers?" 
 
 "You'd look like thunder." 
 
 "Would I?" The silken voice sank low and was 
 quiet for a moment. "Well then, listen. This shall 
 you do. You shall give me that key and an order to 
 your man that I ride the little mare of a Sunday 
 morning, which is to-morrow, because she is the wind 
 and because you are disagreeable. Is it not so?" 
 155
 
 THE DELECTABLE MOUNTAINS 
 
 A ripple of low laughter by the green door, and 
 "There then. You drive a hard bargain in love, 
 monsieur."" The door opened and she stepped with a 
 rustle of skirts into and through the paved court- 
 yard, now unlit by lamps at the theatre entrance, 
 dark enough for the purposes of Manager Scott, in 
 an angle of the entrance pulling his mustache and 
 speaking after the manner described by Mignon as 
 tragedy. 
 
 In the valley of the Wyantenaug many stopped 
 and listened breathlessly by barn-yard and entry 
 door to a voice that floated along the still air of 
 the Sabbath morning, now carolling like a bobolink, 
 now fluting like a wood-thrush, now hushed in the 
 covert of arching trees, and now pealing over the 
 meadows by the river bank; others only heard a 
 rush of hoofs and saw a little red horse and its 
 rider go by with the electric stride of a trained 
 racer. Each put his or her interpretation thereon, 
 elaborately detailed after the manner of the region, 
 and approximated the fact of Mignon and her pur- 
 poses as nearly as might be expected. Delight in 
 the creation of jewelled sounds as an end in itself; 
 delight in the clear morning air of autumn val- 
 leys, the sight of burnished leaves and hills in mad 
 156
 
 SANDERSON OF BACK MEADOWS 
 
 revelry of color; delight in following vagrant fan- 
 cies with loose rein, happy, wine-lipped elves that 
 rise without reason and know no law; delight in 
 the thrill and speed of a sinewy horse compact of 
 nerves; however all these may have entered in the 
 purposes of Mignon, they are not likely to have en- 
 tered the conjectures of the inhabitants of Wyante- 
 naug Valley, such pleasures of the flesh. Mignon let 
 the mare choose her road, confining her own choice 
 to odd matters of going slow or fast or not at all, 
 pausing by the river bank to determine the key and 
 imitate the quality of its low chuckle, and such do- 
 ings; all as incomprehensible to the little red mare 
 as to the inhabitants of Wyantenaug Valley. 
 
 The valley is broad with cup-shaped sides, save 
 where the crowding of the hills has thrust one 
 forward to stand in embarrassed projection. Some 
 twenty miles above Hamilton rises Windless Moun- 
 tain on the right, guarding from the world the vil- 
 lage of Hagar behind it. Northward from Windless 
 lie irregular hills, and between them and the long 
 westward-inclining tumulus of the Cattle Ridge a 
 narrow gorge with a tumbling brook comes down. 
 Up this gorge goes a broad, well-kept road, now 
 bridging the brook, now slipping under shelving 
 ledges, everywhere carpeted with the needles of pines, 
 157
 
 THE DELECTABLE MOUNTAINS 
 
 secret with the shadows of pines, spicy and strong 
 with the scent of pines, till at the end of half a mile 
 it emerges from beneath the pines into Sanderson 
 Hollow. The little red mare shot from the gloom 
 into the sunlight with a snort and shake of the head 
 that seemed to say: "Oh, my hoofs and fetlocks! De- 
 liver me from a woman who makes believe to herself 
 she is n't going where she is, or if she is that it 's 
 only accidental." 
 
 Mrs. Cullom Sanderson ponderously made ready 
 for church, not with a mental preparation of which 
 the minister would have approved unless he had seen 
 as clearly as Mrs. Cullom the necessity of denouncing 
 in unmeasured terms the iniquity of Susan. Susan 
 was a maid who tried to do anything that she was 
 told, and bumped her head a great deal. Her pres- 
 ent iniquity lay in her fingers and consisted in 
 tying and buttoning Mrs. Cullom and putting her 
 together generally so that she felt as if she had 
 fallen into her clothes from different directions. A 
 ring at the door-bell brought Mrs. Cullom down 
 from heights of sputtering invective like an ex- 
 hausted sky-rocket, and she plumped into a chair 
 whispering feebly, "Goodness, Susan, who's that?" 
 Susan vaguely disclaimed all knowledge of "that." 
 "You might find out," remonstrated Mrs. Cullom, 
 158
 
 SANDERSON OF BACK MEADOWS 
 
 the reaction precluding anything but a general feel- 
 ing of injury. Susan went down-stairs and bumped 
 her head on the chandelier, opened the door and 
 bumped it on the door. 
 
 "Ouch," she remarked in a matter-of-fact tone. 
 "Please, ma'am, Miss Sanderson wants to know, 
 who's that?" 
 
 "Ah," said the trim little lady in riding-habit, 
 "will you so kindly ask Miss Sanderson that I may 
 speak to her?" 
 
 But Mrs. Cullom was already descending the 
 stairs, each step appearing to Mignon to have the 
 nature of a plunge. "My goodness, yes. Come in." 
 Mignon carried her long skirt over the lintel. 
 
 "I am quite grieved to intrude, mademoi " Mrs. 
 Cullom's matronly proportions seemed to discounte- 
 nance the diminutive, "a madame. Mr. Sanderson 
 permitted me to ride one of his horses. He is so 
 generous. And the horse brought me here, oh, quite 
 decisively," and Mignon laughed such a soft, magical 
 laugh that Susan grinned in broad delight. "It is 
 such a famous place, this, is it not, Back Mead- 
 ows? I thought I might be allowed to to pay 
 tribute to its fame." 
 
 Mrs. CullonVs cordiality was such that if, strictly 
 speaking, two hundred pounds can flutter, she may 
 159
 
 THE DELECTABLE MOUNTAINS 
 
 be said to have fluttered. She plunged through two 
 sombre-curtained parlors, Mignon drifting serenely 
 in the wake of her tumult. Something in the black, 
 old colonial furniture sent a feeling of cold gruesome- 
 ness into her sunny veins, and she was glad when 
 Mrs. Cullom declared it chilly and towed her into 
 the dining-room, where a warm light sifted through 
 yellow windows of modern setting high over a long, 
 irregular sideboard, and mellowed the portraits of 
 departed Sandersons on the walls: honorables numer- 
 ous of colonial times (Blake, first of the horse-breed- 
 ing Sandersons, booted and spurred but with too 
 much thinness of face and length of jaw for a Squire 
 Western type), all flanked by dames, with a child 
 here and there, above or below all but the late 
 Israel, whose loneliness in his gilt frame seemed to 
 have a certain harmony with his expression. 
 
 "That was Joseph^ father, my brother Israel," 
 said Mrs. Cullom, as Mignon's eyes travelled curi- 
 ously along and rested on the last. "Joseph keeps 
 his mother hung up in his den." 
 
 "Hung up? Den?" cried Mignon, with a recur- 
 rence of the gruesome feeling of the parlors. "Oh, 
 ciel! What does he keep there? Bones?" 
 
 "Bones! Goodness no. Books." 
 
 Mrs. Cullom pushed open a door to the right 
 160
 
 SANDERSON OF BACK MEADOWS 
 
 and entered a long, low room piled to the ceiling 
 and littered with books, which, together with the 
 leathern chair and red-shaded lamp before the fire- 
 place, gave a decided air of studious repose, noth- 
 ing suggesting a breeder of fancy stock. An oil 
 painting of a lady hung over the mantel, and near 
 it some mediaeval Madonna, not unresembling the 
 portrait in its pale cheeks, unworldly eyes, and that 
 faint monastic air of vigil and vision and strenuous 
 yearning of the soul to throw its dust aside. Never- 
 theless the face of the lady was a sweet face, quiet 
 and pure, such as from many a Madonna of the 
 Old World in tawdry regalia looks pityingly down 
 over altar and winking tapers, seeming to say with 
 her tender eyes, "Is it very hard, my dear, the liv- 
 ing? Come apart then and rest awhile."" Mignon 
 turned to Mrs. Cullom. "You are dressed for going 
 out, madame," she said, looking at that lady's well- 
 to-do black silk. "Am I not detaining you?" 
 
 "Oh, I was going to church. Goodness, aren't you 
 going to church ?" A sudden thought struck her 
 and she added severely: "And youVe been riding 
 that wicked little mare on Sunday. And she might 
 have thrown you, and how 'd you look pitched head- 
 first into heaven dressed so everybody 'd know you 
 weren't going to church!" 
 161
 
 THE DELECTABLE MOUNTAINS 
 
 "Oh," cried Mignon, "but I was good when I 
 was a child. Yes! I went to mass every day, and 
 had a little prie-dieu, oh, so tiny!' 1 
 
 "Mass!" gasped Mrs. Cullom. "Well, I declare. 
 What's a pray -do?" 
 
 Mignon Purveyed her riding -skirt regretfully. 
 "Would it not be appropriate, madame? I should 
 so like to go with you," she said plaintively. 
 
 "Goodness! I'll risk it if you will. I'd like to see 
 the woman who'd tell me what to wear to church." 
 She plunged suddenly out of the room, leaving 
 Mignon thinking that she would not like to be 
 the woman referred to. She listened to the ponder- 
 ous footsteps of Mrs. Cullom climbing the stairs, 
 and then sank into the leathern chair facing the 
 picture. Possibly the living and the dead faced each 
 other on a point at issue; they seemed to debate 
 some matter gravely and gently, as is seldom done 
 where both are living. Possibly it was Mignon's 
 dramatic instinct which caused her to rise at last, 
 gathering up her riding-skirt, at the approaching 
 footsteps of Mrs. Cullom, and bow with Gallic 
 grace and diminutive statelincss to the pure-faced 
 lady with the spiritual eyes. "C'est vrai, madame," 
 she said, and passed out with her small head in 
 the air. 
 
 162
 
 SANDERSON OF BACK MEADOWS 
 
 The congregation that day in the little church of 
 the bended weather-vane, where Hagar's cross-roads 
 meet, heard certain ancient hymns sung as never 
 before in the church of the bended weather-vane. 
 "Rock of Ages, cleft for me,"" pleaded the silken 
 voice, like a visitant invisible, floating from fluted 
 pillar to fluted pillar, calling at some unseen door, 
 "Let me in! Ah, let me in!" Somewhat too much of 
 rose leaves and purple garments in the voice for that 
 simple, steadfast music. The spirit seemed pleading 
 rather for gratification than rest. The congregation 
 stopped singing, save Mrs. Cullom, who flatted com- 
 fortably on unnoticed. Deacon Crockett frowned 
 ominously over his glasses at a scandalous scene and 
 a woman too conspicuous; Captain David Brett 
 showed all the places where he had no teeth; Mr. 
 Royce looked down from the pulpit troubled with 
 strange thoughts, and Miss Hettie Royce dropped 
 her veil over her face, remembering her youth. 
 
 How should Mignon know she was not expected 
 to be on exhibition in that curious place? Of course 
 people should be silent and listen when an artist 
 sings. Mignon hardly remembered a time when she 
 was not more or less on exhibition. That volatile 
 young lady cantered along the Windless Mountain 
 Road somewhat after twelve o'clock not in a very 
 163
 
 THE DELECTABLE MOUNTAINS 
 
 good humor. She recognized the ill humor, con- 
 sidered ill humor a thing both unpleasant and un- 
 necessary and attributed it to an empty stomach; 
 dismounted before an orchard and swung herself over 
 the wall reckless of where her skirts went or where 
 they did not. 
 
 "Them apples is mine, 1 ' growled a gray -bearded 
 person behind a barn -yard fence. 
 
 "Then why didn't you get them for me, pig?" re- 
 turned Mignon sharply, and departed with more 
 than her small hands could conveniently carry, leav- 
 ing the gray-bearded person turning the question 
 over dubiously in his mind. 
 
 It happened to have occurred to Sanderson that 
 certain business of his own pointed to Back Mead- 
 ows that Sunday morning. The up-train on Sunday 
 does not leave till after eleven, and he took the 
 valley road on the red stallion of uncertain temper. 
 The inhabitants of Wyantenaug Valley heard no 
 more carolling voices, or fitful rush and clatter of 
 hoofs. The red stallion covered his miles with a 
 steady stride and the rider kept his emotions, 
 aesthetic or otherwise, to himself. The twain swung 
 into the Hollow about eleven o'clock, and Sander- 
 son presently found himself in his leathern chair 
 
 164
 
 SANDERSON OF BACK MEADOWS 
 
 debating a question at issue with the lady of the 
 spiritual eyes. What passed between them is their 
 own secret, quite hopeless of discovery, with one 
 end of it on the other side of the "valley of the 
 shadow,"" and the other buried in close coverts of 
 Sanderson reserve. When the door-bell rang and 
 Susan appearing bumped her head against the casing 
 and announced, "Mr. Joe, it's a red-haired gentle- 
 man," having no dramatic instinct, he passed into 
 the dining-room without salutation to the lady of 
 the spiritual eyes. 
 
 "How are you, Scott? Sit down," he drawled 
 placidly. 
 
 " I suppose you know what I 'm here for," said the 
 other, with evident self-restraint. 
 
 "Can't say I do," returned Sanderson, cheerfully. 
 "It needn't be anything in particular, need it?" He 
 sat down, stretched his legs under the dining-room 
 table and his arms on top of it. Manager Scott 
 paced the floor nervously. Suddenly he stooped, 
 picked up something and flung it on the table a 
 strip of thin gray veil. "You can save yourself a lie, 
 Mr. Sanderson." 
 
 Sanderson gravely regarded the delicate article 
 which seemed to be put forth both as an accusation 
 and a proof of something. Then he leaned forward 
 165
 
 THE DELECTABLE MOUNTAINS 
 
 and rang the bell. "I will overlook that implication 
 for the present, Mr. Scott,"" he remarked. "If it's a 
 bluff, it 's a good one. I take it it is n't. Susan, has 
 any one been here this morning?" as that maiden 
 tumbled into the room in a general tangle of feet. 
 
 "Yes, sir, and she's gone. My! She ain't comin' 
 back to dinner! Lady rode the little mare and she 
 went to church with Miss Sanderson." 
 
 " Mademoiselle Mignon," drawled Sanderson, turn- 
 ing to Manager Scott, "asked permission to ride the 
 mare this morning. I was not aware she intended 
 making an excursion to Back Meadows or I should 
 have asked permission to attend her. It seems she 
 went to Hagar with my aunt and proposes to ride 
 back to Hamilton from there. It 's my turn now, old 
 man, and I 'd like to know what was the necessity of 
 making your visit so very tragic." 
 
 "Oh, I presume I'm an ass," returned the other, 
 with a noticeable nervous twitching of the mouth 
 and fingers, "and I presume I owe you an apology. I 
 shall probably shoot the man that comes between 
 Mignon and me, if he doesn't shoot first, which is 
 all very asinine." 
 
 "Quite irrespective of what mademoiselle may 
 think about it?" 
 
 "Oh, quite." 
 
 166
 
 SANDERSON OF BACK MEADOWS 
 
 "Well," said Sanderson, after a pause, "I rather 
 sympathize with your way of looking at it. I 
 shouldn't wonder if I had some of that primeval 
 brutality myself."" 
 
 "Look here, Sanderson, 11 said the manager. 
 "Without going into humiliating details as to how 
 I came by the fact, which I don't know why you 
 take so much pains to conceal, I know as well as 
 you do that the issue is between you and me. 11 
 
 "You don't mean to threaten, do you, Scott? 11 
 
 "Oh, no. I'm going back to Hamilton. I was 
 looking for a row, and you don't give me enough to 
 go on. 11 
 
 "Can't do it just now, old man," said Sanderson, 
 gently, shaking hands with him at the door. "I'll 
 let you know when I can. In that case we '11 have it 
 out between us. 11 
 
 The manager strode off across the Hollow and 
 down the Gorge to the valley station, and Sanderson 
 mounted and took the road to Hagar. He passed 
 the village about one. The red stallion thundered 
 through the pine avenues at the foot of Windless 
 and swept around the curve into Wyantenaug Val- 
 ley, but it was not till within a few miles of Hamil- 
 ton that the speedy little mare, even bothered as she 
 was by her rider's infirmity of purpose, allowed her- 
 167
 
 THE DELECTABLE MOUNTAINS 
 
 self to be overtaken. The road there turned away 
 from the river and went covered with crisp autumn 
 leaves through chestnut woods. Mignon looked up 
 and laughed, and the two horses fell sympathetically 
 into a walk. 
 
 "Don't you think you owe me an explanation?" 
 asked Sanderson, in a low tone. 
 
 "Indeed, sir, I owe you nothing, not even for this 
 ride. It was paid for,"" rippled the silken voice, and 
 stopped suddenly in a little sob. Sanderson turned 
 quickly and bent over her. 
 
 "By the living God," he said solemnly, "I swear I 
 love you. What barrier is strong enough to face 
 that?" 
 
 "It is because you do not know me, that. Listen, 
 Joe. I have not been what you call good nor pure in 
 the past and shall not in the future. No, hush. I 
 know what I am and what I shall be always. If I 
 swore by your living God that I loved you now, it 
 would not mean that I should to-morrow, and the 
 next day, oh, not at all. There are no deeps in me, 
 nor what you call a faith or principle in life. Listen, 
 Joe. That lady whose portrait I saw is your guar- 
 dian angel. Look, I reverence now. To-morrow I shall 
 mock both her and you. This that I speak now is 
 only a mood. The wind is now one thing and then 
 168
 
 SANDERSON OF BACK MEADOWS 
 
 quite another, Joe. It has no centre and no soul. I 
 am an artist, sir. I have moods but no character. 
 Morals ! I have none. They go like the whiff of the 
 breeze. Nothing that I do lowers or lifts me. It 
 passes through me and that is all. Do you not under- 
 stand? 1 ' which indeed was hard to do, for the brown 
 eyes were very soft and deep. 
 
 "If any one else had told me this," said Sander- 
 son, between his teeth, "man or woman, it would 
 never have been said but once. 11 
 
 "It is harder for you than for me, for to-morrow I 
 shall not care and you, you will care perhaps a long 
 time. You are fast like these hills. Listen. Now, sir, 
 this is our last ride together. We are a cavalier and 
 his lady. They are gallant and gay. They wear life 
 and love and death in their hair like flowers. They 
 smile and will not let their hearts be sad, for they 
 say, 'It is cowardly to be sad: it is brave only to 
 smile. 1 Is it not so? 11 
 
 Sanderson's New England reserve fled far away, 
 and he bent over her hand. 
 
 "It shall be as you say. 11 
 
 And to-morrow seemed far enough away, and an 
 hour had its eternal value. But the steady old hills 
 could not understand that kind of chronology. 
 
 169
 
 TWO ROADS THAT MEET IN SALEM
 
 TWO ROADS 
 THAT MEET IN SALEM 
 
 J.HE Salem Road is a dusty road. Perhaps it is 
 not really any dustier than other roads, but it is 
 straighter than most roads about Hagar. You can 
 see more of it at a time, and in that way you can see 
 more dust. Along this road one day many years ago 
 came Dr. Wye of Salem in his buggy, which leaned 
 over on one side; and the dust was all over the 
 buggy-top, all over the big, gray, plodding horse, 
 and all over the doctor's hat and coat. He was tired 
 and drowsy, but you would not have suspected it; 
 for he was a red-faced, sturdy man, with a beard 
 cut square, as if he never compromised with any- 
 thing. He sat up straight and solid, so as not to 
 compromise with the tipping of the buggy. 
 
 "Come, Billy," said the doctor, "no nonsense, 
 now." 
 
 He prided himself on being a strict man, who 
 would put up with no nonsense, but every one knew 
 better. Billy, the gray horse, knew as well as any one. 
 
 "Come now, Billy, get along." 
 
 A tall, dusty, black-bearded man rose up beside 
 the road, and Billy stopped immediately. 
 173
 
 THE DELECTABLE MOUNTAINS 
 
 A large pack lay against the bank. 
 
 "You ain't seen a yeller dog?" 
 
 "No," said the doctor, gruffly. He was provoked 
 with Billy. "There aren't any yellow dogs around 
 here." 
 
 "He hadn't no tail," persisted the stranger, wist- 
 fully. "And there were a boy a-holdin' him. He 
 chopped it off when he were little." 
 
 "Who chopped it off?" 
 
 "Hey? He's a little cuss, but the dog's a good 
 dog." 
 
 "Get up, Billy," growled the doctor. "All boys 
 are little cusses. I have n't seen any yellow dog. Non- 
 sense ! I wonder he did n't ask if I 'd seen the tail." 
 
 But somehow the doctor could not get rid of the 
 man's face, and he found himself looking along 
 the roadside for beys that were distinctly "little 
 cusses" and yellow dogs without tails, all the rest 
 of the day. 
 
 In the evening twilight he drove into Salem vil- 
 lage. Very cool and pleasant looked the little white 
 house among the trees. Mother Wye stood on the 
 porch in her white apron and cap, watching for 
 him. She was flying signals of distress if the word 
 were not too strong she was even agitated. He 
 tramped up the steps reassuringly. 
 174
 
 TWO ROADS THAT MEET IN SALEM 
 
 "Oh," whispered Mother Wye, "you've no idea, 
 Ned! There's a boy and a dog, a very large dog, 
 my dear, on the back steps. 11 
 
 "Well, 11 said the doctor, gallantly, "they've no 
 business to be anywhere frightening my little mo- 
 ther. We 11 tell them to do something else." The 
 doctor tramped sturdily around to the back steps, 
 Mother Wye following much comforted. 
 
 The dog was actually a yellow dog without any 
 tail to speak of a large, genial-looking dog, never- 
 theless; the boy, a black -eyed boy, very grave and 
 indifferent, with a face somewhat thin and long. 
 "Without doubt, 11 thought the doctor, "a little 
 cuss. Hullo, 11 he said aloud, "I met a man looking 
 for you. 11 
 
 The boy scrutinized him with settled gravity. 
 "He's not much account, 11 he said calmly. "I'd 
 rather stay here." 
 
 "Oh, you would!" grumbled the doctor. "Must 
 think I want somebody around all the time to 
 frighten this lady. Nice folks you are, you and your 
 dog." 
 
 The boy turned quickly and took off his cap. "I 
 beg your pardon, madam," he said with a smile 
 that was singularly sudden and winning. The ac- 
 tion was so elderly and sedate, so very courtly, sur- 
 175
 
 THE DELECTABLE MOUNTAINS 
 
 prising, and incongruous, that the doctor slapped 
 his knee and laughed uproariously; and Mother 
 Wye went through an immediate revulsion, to feel 
 herself permeated with motherly desires. The boy 
 went on unmoved. 
 
 "He's an easy dog, ma'am. His name's Poison, 
 but he never does anything;" which started the 
 doctor off again. 
 
 "They said you wanted a boy. 1 ' 
 
 "Ah," said the doctor, growing grave, "that's 
 true; but you're not the boy." 
 
 The boy seemed to think him plainly mistaken. 
 
 "Stuff!" growled the doctor, "I want a boy I 
 can send all around the country. I know a dozen 
 boys that know the country, and that I know all 
 about. I don't want you. Besides," he added, "he 
 said you were a little cuss." 
 
 The boy paid no attention to the last remark. 
 "I'll find it out. Other boys are thick-headed." 
 
 "That's true," the doctor admitted; "they are 
 thick-headed." Indeed this young person's serenity 
 and confidence quite staggered him. A new diplo- 
 matic idea seemed to occur to the young person. 
 He turned to Mother Wye and said gravely: 
 
 "Will you pull Poison's ear, ma'am, so he'll 
 know it's all right?" 
 
 176
 
 TWO ROADS THAT MEET IN SALEM 
 
 Mother Wye, with some trepidation, pulled Poi- 
 son's ear, and Poison wagged the whole back end 
 of himself to make up for a tail, signifying things 
 that were amicable, while the doctor tugged at his 
 beard and objected to nonsense. 
 
 "Well, young man, we'll see what you have to 
 say for yourself. Tut! tut! mother," to Mrs. Wye's 
 murmur of remonstrance, "we'll have no non- 
 sense. This is a practical matter;" and he tramped 
 sturdily into the house, followed by the serious boy, 
 the amicable dog, and the appeased, in fact the 
 quite melted, Mother Wye. 
 
 "Now, boy," said the doctor, "what's your 
 name?" 
 
 "Jack." 
 
 "Jack what? Is that other fellow your father?" 
 
 "I reckon maybe he is," returned Jack, with a 
 gloomy frown. "His name's Baker. He peddles." 
 
 The doctor tugged at his beard and muttered 
 that "at any rate there appeared to be no nonsense 
 about it. But he's looking for you," he said. "He'll 
 take you away." 
 
 "He's looking for the dog," said Jack, calmly. 
 "He can't have him." 
 
 The East End Road, which circles the eastern end 
 
 177
 
 THE DELECTABLE MOUNTAINS 
 
 of the Cattle Ridge, is not at all like the Salem 
 Road. It is wilder and crookeder, to begin with, but 
 that is a superficial matter. It passes through thick 
 woods, dips into gullies, and changes continually, 
 while along the Salem Road there is just the smoky 
 haze on the meadows and dust in the chalices of 
 the flowers; there too the distance blinks stupidly 
 and speculation comes to nothing. But the real 
 point is this: the Salem Road leads straight to 
 Hagar and stops there; the East End Road goes 
 over somewhere among the northern hills and splits 
 up into innumerable side roads, roads that lead to 
 doorways, roads that run into footpaths and dwin- 
 dle away in despair, roads of which it must be said 
 with sorrow that there was doubt in Salem whether 
 they ever ended or led anywhere. Hence arose the 
 tale that all things which were strange and new, 
 at least all things which were to be feared, came 
 into Salem over the East End Road; just as in 
 Hagar they came down from the Cattle Ridge and 
 went away to the south beyond Windless Moun- 
 tain. 
 
 Along this road, a month later than the last 
 
 incident, came the black-bearded peddler with his 
 
 pack, whistling; and indeed his pack, though large, 
 
 seemed to weigh singularly little; also the peddler 
 
 178
 
 TWO ROADS THAT MEET IN SALEM 
 
 seemed to be in a very peaceful frame of mind. 
 And along this road too came the plodding gray 
 horse, with the serious boy driving, and the yellow 
 dog in the rear; all at a pace which slowly but 
 surely overtook the peddler. The peddler, reaching 
 a quiet place where a bank of ferns bordered the 
 brushwood, sat down and waited, whistling. The 
 dog, catching sight of him, came forward with a 
 rush, wagging the back end of himself; and Billy, 
 the gray horse, came gently to a standstill. 
 
 "How goes it?"" said the peddler, pausing a mo- 
 ment in his whistling. "Pretty good?" 
 
 "Mostly." 
 
 The peddler took a cigar-case from his pocket, 
 a cigar wrapped in tin-foil from the case, and lay 
 back lazily among the ferns, putting his long thin 
 hands behind his head. "My notion was," he mur- 
 mured, "that it would take a month, a month would 
 be enough." 
 
 The serious boy said nothing, but sat with his chin 
 on his fists looking down the road meditatively. 
 
 "My notion was," went on the peddler, "that a 
 doctor's boy, particularly that doctor's boy, would 
 get into all the best houses around learn the lay 
 of things tolerably neat. That was my notion. Good 
 notion, wasn't it, Jack?" Jack muttered a subdued 
 179
 
 THE DELECTABLE MOUNTAINS 
 
 assent. The peddler glanced at him critically. "For 
 instance now, that big square house on the hill 
 north of Hagar." 
 
 Jack shook his head. "Nothing in it. Old man, 
 name Map, rich enough, furniture done up in cloth, 
 valuables stored in Hamilton; clock or two maybe; 
 nothing in it." 
 
 "Ah," said the other, "just so;" and again he 
 glanced critically through his half-closed eyes. "But 
 there are others." Again Jack muttered a subdued 
 assent. 
 
 "Good?" 
 
 "Good enough." 
 
 The apparent peddler smoked, quite at his ease 
 among the ferns, and seemed resolved that the boy 
 should break the silence next. 
 
 "Are you banking on this business, dad?" said 
 the latter, finally. 
 
 "Ah why, no, Jack, not really. It's a sort of 
 notion, I admit." He lifted one knee lazily over the 
 other. "I'm not shoving you, Jack. State the case." 
 A long silence followed, to which the conversation 
 of the two seemed well accustomed. 
 
 "I never knew anything like that down there," 
 nodding in the direction of Salem. "Those people. 
 It's different." 
 
 180
 
 TWO ROADS THAT MEET IN SALEM 
 
 "That's so," assented the apparent peddler, criti- 
 cally. "I reckon it is. We make a point not to be 
 low. Polish is our strong point, Jack. But we're 
 not in society. We are not, in a way, on speaking 
 terms with society. 11 
 
 "It ain't that. 11 
 
 "Isn't, 11 corrected the other, gently. "Isn't, Jack. 
 But I rather think it is. 11 
 
 "Well, 11 said Jack, "it's different, and" with 
 gloomy decision "it's better." 
 
 The apparent peddler whistled no more, but lay 
 back among the ferns and gazed up at the droop- 
 ing leaves overhead. The gray horse whisked at the 
 wood-gnats and looked around now and again in- 
 quiringly. The yellow dog cocked his head on one 
 side as if he had an opinion worth listening to if 
 it were only called for. 
 
 "I suppose now," said the apparent peddler, softly, 
 "I suppose now theyVe pretty cosy. I suppose they 
 say prayers." 
 
 "You bet." 
 
 "You mean that they do, Jack. I suppose," he 
 went on dreamily, "I suppose the old lady has white 
 hair and knits stockings." 
 
 "She does that," said Jack, enthusiastically, "and 
 pincushions and mats." 
 
 181
 
 THE DELECTABLE MOUNTAINS 
 
 "And pincushions and mats. That's so. 11 
 
 The lowing of cattle came up to them from 
 hidden meadows below; for the afternoon was draw- 
 ing near its close and the cattle were uneasy. The 
 chimney and roof of a farmhouse were just visible 
 through a break in the sloping woods. The smoke 
 that mounted from the chimney seemed to linger 
 lovingly over the roof, like a symbol of peace, bless- 
 ing the hearth from which it came. The sentimental 
 outcast puffed his excellent cigar meditatively, now 
 and again taking it out to remark, "Pincushions and 
 mats!"" indicating the constancy of his thoughts. 
 
 The serious boy motioned in the direction of 
 Salem. "I think I'll stay there," he said. "It's 
 better." 
 
 "Reckon I know how you feel, Jack, know how 
 you feel. Give me my lowly thatched cottage, and 
 that sort of thing." After a longer silence still, he 
 sat up and threw away his cigar. "Well, Jack, if you 
 see your way a if I were you, Jack," he said 
 slowly, "I wouldn't go half and half; I'd go the 
 whole bill. I 'd turn on the hose and inquire for the 
 ten commandments, that's what I'd do." He came 
 and leaned lazily on the carriage wheel. "That isn't 
 very plain. It's like this. You don't exactly abolish 
 the old man; you just imagine him comfortably 
 
 182
 
 TWO ROADS THAT MEET IN SALEM 
 
 buried; that's it, comfortably buried, with an epi- 
 taph, flourishy, Jack, flourishy, stating" here his 
 eyes roamed meditatively along Billy's well-padded 
 spine "stating, in a general way, that he made a 
 point of polish. 1 ' 
 
 The serious boy's lip trembled slightly. He seemed 
 to be seeking some method of expression. Finally 
 he said: "I'll trade knives with you, dad. It's six 
 blades"; and the two silently exchanged knives. 
 
 Then Billy, the gray horse, plodded down the 
 hill through the woods, and the apparent peddler 
 plodded up. At one turn in the road can be seen 
 the white houses of Salem across the valley ; and here 
 he paused, leaning on the single pole that guarded 
 the edge. After a time he roused himself again, 
 swung his pack to his shoulder, and disappeared 
 over the crest of the hill whistling. 
 
 The shadows deepened swiftly in the woods; they 
 lengthened in the open valley, filling the hollows, 
 climbed the hill to Salem, and made dusky Dr. 
 Wye's little porch and his tiny office duskier still. 
 The office was so tiny that portly Judge Carter of 
 Gilead seemed nearly to fill it, leaving small space 
 for the doctor. For this or some other reason the 
 doctor seemed uncomfortable, quite oppressed and 
 
 183
 
 THE DELECTABLE MOUNTAINS 
 
 borne down, and remonstrating with the oppression. 
 The judge was a man of some splendor, with gold 
 eye-glasses and cane. 
 
 "There really is no doubt about it,"" he was say- 
 ing, with a magnificent finger on the doctor's knee, 
 "no doubt at all." 
 
 The conversation seemed to be most absorbing. 
 The doctor pulled his beard abstractedly and 
 frowned. 
 
 The serious boy drove by outside in the dusk, and 
 after a while came up from the barn. He sat down 
 on the edge of the porch to think things over, and 
 the judge's voice rolled on oracularly. Jack hardly 
 knew yet what his thoughts were; and this was a 
 state of mind that he was not accustomed to put up 
 with, because muddle-headedness was a thing that 
 he especially despised. "You don't exactly abolish 
 the old man," he kept hearing the peddler say; "you 
 just imagine him comfortably buried with an epi- 
 taph flourishy stating " 
 
 "Clever, very," said the judge. "Merri wether was 
 telling me won't catch him, too clever Merri- 
 wether says remarkable interesting scamp, very." 
 The doctor growled some inaudible objection. 
 
 "Why did he show himself!" exclaimed the judge. 
 "Why, see here. Observe the refined cleverness of it! 
 184
 
 TWO ROADS THAT MEET IN SALEM 
 
 It roused your interest, didn't it? It was unique, 
 amusing. Chances are ten to one you would n't have 
 taken the boy without it. Why, look here " 
 
 "Stuff!" Here the doctor raised his voice an- 
 grily. "The boy ran away from him, of course. 11 
 
 "Maybe, doctor, maybe, 1 ' said the judge, sooth- 
 ingly. "But there are other things looks shady 
 consider the man is known. Dangerous, doctor, dan- 
 gerous, very. You ought to be careful. 11 Then the 
 words were a mere murmur. 
 
 Jack sat still on the porch, with his chin on his 
 hands. Overhead the night-hawks called, and now 
 and then one came down with a whiz of swooping 
 wings. Presently he heard the chairs scrape; he rose, 
 slipped around to the back porch and into the 
 kitchen. 
 
 The little bronze clock in the dining-room had 
 just told its largest stint of hours, and very hard 
 work it made of it. It was a great trial to the clock 
 to have to rouse itself and bluster so. It did not 
 mind telling time in a quiet way. But then, every 
 profession has its trials. It settled itself again to 
 stare with round, astonished face at the table in the 
 centre of the room. 
 
 Jack sat at the table by a dim lamp, the house 
 185
 
 THE DELECTABLE MOUNTAINS 
 
 dark and silent all around him, writing a letter. He 
 leaned his head down almost on a level with the 
 paper. 
 
 " I herd him and you," he wrote in a round hand 
 with many blots. "I lied and so did he I mean 
 dad. I can lie good. Dad sed I must learn the ten 
 comandments. The ten comandments says diferent 
 things. You neednt be afrad. There dont anithing 
 happen cep to me. I do love Mother Wye tru." The 
 clock went on telling the time in the way that it 
 liked to do, tick -tick-tick. Overhead the doctor slept 
 a troubled sleep, and in Gilead Judge Carter slept a 
 sound sleep of good digestion. 
 
 Far off the Salem Road led westward straight to 
 Hagar, and stopped, and the moonlight lay over it 
 all the way; but the East End Road led through the 
 shadows and deep night over among the northern 
 hills, and split up into many roads, some of which 
 did not seem ever to end, or lead anywhere. 
 
 Jack dropped from the window skilfully, noise- 
 lessly, and slid away in the moonlight. At the 
 Corners he did not hesitate, but took the East End 
 Road. 
 
 186
 
 A VISIBLE JUDGMENT
 
 A VISIBLE JUDGMENT 
 
 HF. bore the name of Adam Wick. There seemed 
 to be something primitive in his temperament to 
 fit it. By primitive we mean of such times as may 
 have furnished single-eyed passions that did not 
 argue. He was a small, thin, stooping man, with a 
 sharp nose and red-lidded eyes. Sarah Wick, his 
 daughter, was a dry-faced woman of thirty, and 
 lived with him. 
 
 His house stood on a hill looking over the village 
 of Preston Plains, which lay in a flat valley. In the 
 middle of the village the church-steeple shot up 
 tapering and tall. 
 
 It was a bickering community. The church was 
 a centre of interest. The outlines of the building 
 were clean and shapely, but in detail it stood for a 
 variety of opinions. A raised tracery ran along the 
 pseudo-classic frieze of its front, representing a rope 
 of flowers with little cupids holding up the loops. 
 They may have been cherubs. The community had 
 quarrelled about them long ago when the church 
 was building, but that subject had given way to 
 other subjects. 
 
 189
 
 THE DELECTABLE MOUNTAINS 
 
 The choir gallery bulged over the rear seats, as if 
 to dispute the relative importance of the pulpit. That 
 was nothing. But it needed bracing. The committee 
 decided against a single pillar, and erected two, one 
 of them in the middle of Adam Wick's pew. 
 
 Adam looked at things simply. It seemed to his 
 simplicity that the community had conspired to do 
 him injustice. The spirit of nonconformity stirred 
 within him. He went to the minister. 
 
 "Andrew Hill, nor any other man, nor commit- 
 teeman's got no rights in my pew." 
 
 The minister was dignified. 
 
 "The pew, Mr. Wick, belongs to the church." 
 
 "No such thing! I sat twenty -four years in that 
 pew." 
 
 "But that, though very creditable " 
 
 "No such thing! I'll have no post in my pew, 
 for Andrew Hill nor no minister neither." 
 
 "Mr. Wick" 
 
 "You take that post out o' my pew." 
 
 He stumped out of the minister's green-latticed 
 doorway and down the gravel path. His eyes on 
 either side of his sharp nose were like those of an 
 angry hawk, and his stooping shoulders, seen from 
 behind, resembled the huddled back of the hawk, 
 caged and sullen. 
 
 190
 
 A VISIBLE JUDGMENT 
 
 The minister watched him. Properly speaking, a 
 primitive nature is an unlimited monarchy where 
 ego is king, but the minister's reflections did not 
 run in these terms. He did not even go so far as 
 to wonder whether such primitive natures did not 
 render the current theory of a church inaccurate. 
 He went so far as to wonder what Adam Wick 
 would do. 
 
 One dark, windy night, near midnight, Adam 
 Wick climbed in at the vestibule window of the 
 church, and chopped the pillar in two with an axe. 
 The wind wailed in the belfry over his head. The 
 blinds strained, as if hands were plucking at them 
 from without. The sound of his blows echoed in 
 the cold, empty building, as if some personal devil 
 were enjoying the sacrilege. Adam was a simple- 
 minded man; he realized that he was having a good 
 time himself. 
 
 It was three days before the church was opened. 
 What may have been Adam's primitive thoughts, 
 moving secretively among his townsmen? Then a 
 sudden rumor ran, a cry went up, of horror, of ac- 
 cusation, of the lust of strife. Before the accusation 
 Adam did not hesitate to make his defiance perfect. 
 The primitive mind was not in doubt. With a blink 
 of his red eyelids, he answered: 
 191
 
 THE DELECTABLE MOUNTAINS 
 
 "You tell Andrew Hill, don't you put another 
 post in my pew. 11 
 
 A meeting was held; a majority voted enthusi- 
 astically to strike his name from the rolls for un- 
 christian behavior and to replace the pillar. A 
 minority declared him a wronged man. That was 
 natural enough in Preston Plains. But Adam Wick's 
 actions at this point were thought original and 
 effective by every one. 
 
 He sat silently through the proceedings in the 
 pew with the hacked pillar, his shoulders hunched, 
 his sharp eyes restless. 
 
 "Mr. Wick," said the minister, sternly, "have 
 you anything to say? 11 
 
 Adam rose. 
 
 "I put fifty-six dollars into this meetinghouse. 
 Any man deny that? 11 
 
 No man denied it. 
 
 "Humph! 11 said Adam. 
 
 He took the hymn-book from the rack, lifted 
 the green cushion from the seat, threw it over his 
 shoulder, and walked out. 
 
 No man spoke against it. 
 
 "There's no further business before this meet- 
 ing, 11 said Chairman Hill. 
 
 192
 
 A VISIBLE JUDGMENT 
 
 It was a Sunday in August and nearly noon. 
 From the side porch of Adam Wick's house on the 
 hill the clustered foliage of the village below was 
 the centre of the landscape. The steeple and ridge- 
 pole of the church rose out of the centre of the 
 foliage. 
 
 The landscape could not be fancied without the 
 steeple. The dumb materials of the earth, as well as 
 the men who walk upon it, acquire habits. You 
 could read on the flat face of the valley that it had 
 grown accustomed to Preston Plains steeple. 
 
 On the side porch stood a long, high-backed 
 bench. It was a close imitation of the pews in the 
 church below among the foliage, with the long 
 green cushion on the seat and a chair facing it with 
 a hymn-book on it. Adam sat motionless on the 
 bench. His red-lidded eyes were fixed intently on 
 the steeple. 
 
 A hen with a brood of downy yellow chickens 
 pecked about the path. A turkey strutted up and 
 down. The air was sultry, oppressive. A low murmur 
 of thunder mingled with the sleepy noises of creak- 
 ing crickets and clucking hen. 
 
 Adam Wick's bench and rule of Sabbath observ- 
 ance had been common talk in Preston Plains. But 
 it had grown too familiar, for subjects of dispute 
 193
 
 THE DELECTABLE MOUNTAINS 
 
 ever gave way there to other subjects. Some one said 
 it was pathetic. The minority thought it a happy 
 instance to throw in the face of the bigoted major- 
 ity, that they had driven from the church a man of 
 religious feeling. The minister had consulted An- 
 drew Hill, that thick-set man with the dry mouth 
 and gray chin-beard. 
 
 "Not take out that pillar!" said Andrew Hill. 
 
 "Ah,"" said the minister, "I'm afraid that 
 wouldn't do. It would seem like " 
 
 "I wouldn't move that pillar if the whole town 
 was sidin' with him." 
 
 "Oh, now" 
 
 "Not while I 'm alive. Adam Wick, he 's obstinate." 
 
 Mr. Hill shut his mouth grimly. 
 
 "Religious! Humph! Maybe he is." 
 
 The minister moved away. They were a stiff- 
 necked people, but after all he felt himself to be 
 one of them. It was his own race. He knew how 
 Andrew Hill felt, as if something somewhere within 
 him were suddenly clamped down and riveted. He 
 understood Adam too, in his private pew on the side 
 porch, the hymn-book on the chair, his eyes on Pres- 
 ton Plains steeple, fixed and glittering. He thought, 
 " We don't claim to be altogether lovely." 
 
 Adam was in his own eyes without question a just 
 194
 
 A VISIBLE JUDGMENT 
 
 man suffering injustice. His fathers in their Genesis 
 and Exodus had so suffered, faced stocks, pillory, the 
 frowning edge of the wilderness, and possessed their 
 souls with the same grim congratulation. No genera- 
 tion ever saw visions and sweat blood, and left a 
 moderate-minded posterity. Such martyrs were not 
 surer that the God of Justice stood beside them 
 than Adam was sure of the injustice of that pillar 
 in that pew, nor more resolved that neither death 
 nor hell should prevail against the faithfulness of 
 their protest. 
 
 And the turkey strutted in the yard, the chickens 
 hurried and peeped, the thunder muttered at intervals 
 as if the earth were breathing heavily in its hot sleep. 
 
 The church-bell rang for the end of the morning 
 service. It floated up from the distance, sweet and 
 plaintive. 
 
 Adam rose and carried the cushion, chair, and 
 hymn-book into the house. 
 
 The storm was rising, darkening. It crouched on 
 the hills. It seemed to gather its garments and gird 
 its loins, to breathe heavily with crowded hate, to 
 strike with daggers of lightning right and left. 
 
 Adam came out again and sat on the bench. The 
 service being over, it was no longer a pew. 
 
 Carriages, one after another, drove out of the foli- 
 195
 
 THE DELECTABLE MOUNTAINS 
 
 age below, and along the five roads that ran out of 
 Preston Plains between zigzag fences and low stone 
 walls. They were hurrying, but from that distance 
 they seemed to crawl. 
 
 The Wick carriage came up the hill and through 
 the gate creaking wheels, a shambling white horse, 
 Sarah jerking the reins with monotonous persistence. 
 She stepped down and dusted off her cotton gloves. 
 Adam walked out to take the horse. 
 
 "Wherefore do ye harden your hearts as the Egyp- 
 tians and Pharaoh hardened their hearts?" 
 
 Adam seemed puzzled, blinked his eyes, seemed to 
 study carefully the contents of his own mind. 
 
 "I do' know," he said at last. 
 
 "First Samuel, seven, six,"" said Sarah. 
 
 Adam led the horse away despondently. Halfway 
 to the barn he stopped and called out: 
 
 "Did he preach at me?" 
 
 "No." 
 
 The minister had chosen a text that Adam did 
 not know, and made no reference to him, although 
 the text was a likely one. Adam felt both slights in 
 a dim way, and resented them. He came back to the 
 house and sat in the front room before the window. 
 
 The valley was covered with a thick veil of gray 
 rain. The black cloud above it cracked every mo- 
 196
 
 A VISIBLE JUDGMENT 
 
 ment with sudden explosions, the echoes of them 
 tumbling clumsily among the hills. Preston Plains 
 steeple faded away and the foliage below it became 
 a dim blot. A few drops struck the window-pane at 
 Adam's face, then a rush and tumult of rain. Dim- 
 mer still the valley, but the lightning jabbed down 
 into it incessantly, unseen batteries playing attack 
 and defence over Preston Plains steeple. 
 
 It was a swift, sudden storm, come and gone like 
 a burst of passion. The imminent crack and crash of 
 the thunder ceased, and only rumblings were heard, 
 mere memories, echoes, or as if the broken fragments 
 of the sky were rolling to and fro in some vast sea- 
 wash. The valley and the village trees came slowly 
 into view. 
 
 "Dinner's ready," said Sarah, in the next room. 
 
 She had a strident voice, and said dinner was 
 ready as if she expected Adam to dispute it. There 
 was no answer from the window. 
 
 "Pa! Aren't you comin'?" 
 
 No answer. Sarah came to the door. 
 
 "Pa!" 
 
 His face was close to the rain -washed window- 
 pane. Something rattled in his throat. It seemed 
 like a suppressed chuckle. He rested his chin on his 
 hand and clawed it with bony fingers. 
 197
 
 THE DELECTABLE MOUNTAINS 
 
 Pa!" 
 
 He turned on her sternly. 
 
 "You needn't be shoutin' on the Lord's day. 
 Meetin'-house steeple's a-fire." 
 
 From Adam Wick's nothing could be seen but the 
 slow column of smoke rising and curling around the 
 slender steeple. But under the foliage Preston Plains 
 was in tumult. 
 
 By night the church was saved, but the belfry was 
 a blackened ruin within. The bell had fallen, through 
 floor, cross-beams, and ceiling, and smashed the front 
 of the choir gallery, a mass of fallen pillar, railing, 
 and broken plaster on the floor. 
 
 Andrew Hill called a meeting. Adam Wick came, 
 entered his cluttered pew and sat on the pillar that 
 lay prostrate across it. He perched on it like a hawk, 
 with huddled back and red-lidded eyes blinking. It 
 was the sense of the meeting that modern ideas de- 
 manded the choir should sit behind the minister. The 
 ruined gallery must be removed. Adam Wick rose. 
 
 "You've got no place in this meetin'," said An- 
 drew Hill. "Set down." 
 
 Adam kept his place scornfully. 
 
 "Can't I subscribe twenty dollars to this church?" 
 
 The chairman stroked his beard and a gleam of 
 acrid humor lit his face for a moment. 
 
 198
 
 A VISIBLE JUDGMENT 
 
 "Well," he said slowly, "I suppose you can." 
 
 And the eyes of all present looked on Adam Wick 
 favorably. 
 
 The minister rose to speak the last word of peace. 
 
 "My friends, the Lord did it. He is righteous " 
 
 "That's my idea!" said Adam Wick, like a hawk 
 on his fallen pillar, red-lidded, complacent. "He did 
 what was right." 
 
 The minister coughed, hesitated, and sat down. 
 Andrew Hill glowered from his chair. 
 
 "There 's no further business before this meetin'." 
 
 199
 
 THE EMIGRANT EAST
 
 THE EMIGRANT EAST 
 
 JL HE old book -shop on Cripple Street in the city of 
 Hamilton was walled to its dusky ceiling with books. 
 Books were stacked on the floor like split wood, with 
 alleys between. The long table down the centre was 
 piled with old magazines and the wrecks of paper- 
 covered novels. School arithmetics and dead theolo- 
 gies; Annuals in faded gilt, called "Keepsake,' 1 or 
 "Friendship's Offering"; little leathern nubbins of 
 books from the last century, that yet seemed less an- 
 tique than the Annuals which counted no more than 
 forty years so southern and early -passing was the 
 youth of the Annual; Bohn's translations, the useful 
 and despised; gaudy, glittering prints of the poets 
 and novelists; all were crowded together without 
 recognition of caste, in a common Bohemia. Finding 
 a book in that mystical chaos seemed to establish a 
 right to it of first discovery. The pretty girl, who sat 
 in one of the dim windows and kept the accounts, 
 looked Oriental but not Jewish, and wore crimson 
 ribbons in her black hair and at her throat. She read 
 one of the Annuals, or gazed through the window 
 at Cripple Street. A show-case in the other window 
 203
 
 THE DELECTABLE MOUNTAINS 
 
 contained stamp collections, Hindoo, Chinese, and 
 Levantine coinage. 
 
 Far back in the shop a daring explorer might 
 come upon a third window, gray, grimy, beyond 
 which lay the unnamable backyards between Crip- 
 ple and Academy Streets. It could not be said to 
 "open on" them, for it was never opened, or "give 
 a view" of them, being thick with gray dust. But 
 if one went up to it and looked carefully, there in 
 the dim corner might be seen an old man with 
 a long faded black coat, rabbinical beard, dusky, 
 transparent skin, and Buddha eyes, blue, faint, far 
 away, self-abnegating, such as under the Bo-tree 
 might have looked forth in meek abstraction on 
 the infinities and perceived the Eightfold Princi- 
 ple. It was always possible to find Mr. Barria by 
 steering for the window. So appeared the old book- 
 shop on Cripple Street, Mr. Barria, the dealer, and 
 his granddaughter, Janey. 
 
 Nature made Cripple Street to be calm and dull; 
 for the hand of man, working through generations, 
 is the hand of nature, as surely as in nature the ori- 
 ole builds its nest or the rootlets seek their proper 
 soil. Cripple Street ran from Coronet to Main Street 
 and its paving was bad. There were a few tailors and 
 bookbinders, a few silent, clapboarded houses. 
 204
 
 THE EMIGRANT EAST 
 
 But two doors from the corner on Coronet Street 
 stood Station No. 4, of the Fire Brigade, and Crip- 
 ple Street was the nearest way to Main Street, 
 whither No. 4 was more likely to be called than 
 elsewhere. So that, though nature made Cripple 
 Street to be calm and dull, No. 4, Fire Brigade, 
 sometimes passed it, engine, ladder, and hose, in the 
 splendor of the supernatural, the stormy pageantry 
 of the gods; and one Tommy Durdo drove the en- 
 gine. 
 
 Durdo first came into Mr. Barria's shop in search 
 of a paper-covered novel with a title promising 
 something wild and belligerent. It was a rainy, dis- 
 mal day, and Janey sat among the dust and refuse 
 of forgotten centuries. 
 
 "My eyes!" he thought. "She's a peach." 
 
 He lost interest in any possible belligerent novel, 
 gazed at her with the candor of his youthfulness, 
 and remarked, guilefully: 
 
 "I bet you've seen me before now." 
 
 "You drive the engine," said Janey, with shining 
 eyes. 
 
 "Why, this is my pie," thought Durdo, and sat 
 
 down by her on a pile of old magazines. He was 
 
 lank, muscular, with a wide mouth, lean jaws, 
 
 turn-up nose, and joyful eyes. The magazines con- 
 
 205
 
 THE DELECTABLE MOUNTAINS 
 
 tained variations on the loves of Edwards, Eleanors, 
 and other people, well-bred, unfortunate, and pos- 
 sessed of sentiments. Durdo was not well-bred, and 
 had not a presentable sentiment in his recollection. 
 He had faith in his average luck, and went away 
 from Mr. Barria's shop at last with a spot in the 
 tough texture of his soul that felt mellow. 
 
 "J. Barria, bookdealer," he read from the sign. 
 "J! That's Janey, ain't it? Hold on. She ain't the 
 bookdealer. She ain't any ten-cent novel either. 
 She 's a Rushy bound, two dollar and a half a copy, 
 with a dedication on the fly-leaf, which" Tommy 
 stopped suddenly and reflected "which it might 
 be dedicated to Tommy." 
 
 It came near to being a sentiment. The possibility 
 of such a thing rising from within him seemed im- 
 pressive. He walked back to No. 4 thoughtfully, and 
 thrust himself into a fight with Hamp Sharkey, in 
 which it was proved that Hamp was the better man. 
 Tommy regained his ordinary reckless cheerfulness. 
 But when a man is in a state of mind that it needs 
 a stand-up and knock-down fight to introduce cheer- 
 fulness, he cannot hope to conceal his state of mind. 
 
 Cripple Street drowsed in the sunshine one August 
 afternoon. A small boy dug bricks out of the side- 
 walk with a stick. It seemed to emphasize the indif- 
 206
 
 THE EMIGRANT EAST 
 
 ferent calm that no one took that interest in Cripple 
 Street to come and stop him. The clangor of the 
 fire-bells broke across the city. For a moment the 
 silence in Cripple Street seemed more deathly than 
 before. Then the doors of the tailors and book- 
 binders flew open. The Fire Company came with 
 leap and roar, ladder, engine, and hose, rattle of 
 wheels and thud of steam. Passing Mr. Barria's 
 Durdo turned his head, saw Janey in the door, and 
 beamed on her. 
 
 "Hooray," he shouted. 
 
 "Ifs Tommy's girl," thundered Hamp Sharkey, 
 from the top of his jingling ladders. Fire Brigade 
 No. 4 cheered, waved its helmet, wherever it had a 
 hand free, and in a moment was gone, leaving the 
 drift of its smoke in the air, the tremble of its pass- 
 ing, and Janey flushed and thrilled. Hook and lad- 
 der and all had hailed her with honor as Tommy's 
 girl. A battalion of cavalry, with her lover at the 
 head, dashing up to salute, say, her battlemented 
 or rose-embowered window both terms occur in the 
 Annuals and galloping away to the wars, might 
 have been better theoretically, but Janey was satis- 
 fied. She had no defence against such battery. Power, 
 daring, and danger were personified in Tommy. He 
 had brought them all to her feet. This it was to 
 207
 
 THE DELECTABLE MOUNTAINS 
 
 live and be a woman. She turned back into the dim 
 shop, her eyes shining. The backs of the dusty books 
 seemed to quiver and glow, even those containing 
 arithmetic, dead philosophies, and other cool abstrac- 
 tions, as if they forgot their figures and rounded 
 periods, and thought of the men who wrote them, 
 how these once were young. 
 
 Durdo found it possible, by spending his off hours 
 in Mr. Banna's shop, to keep cheerful without fight- 
 ing Hamp Sharkey. A row now and then with a 
 smaller man than Hamp was enough to satisfy the 
 growing mellowness of his soul. His off hours began 
 at four. He passed them among the Annuals and 
 old magazines in a state of puzzled and flattered 
 bliss. He fell so far from nature as to read the An- 
 nuals where Janey directed, to conclude that what 
 was popularly called "fun"" was vanity and dust in 
 the mouth; that from now on he would be decent, 
 and that any corner or hole in the ground which 
 contained Janey and Tommy would suit him forever. 
 No doubt he was wrong there. 
 
 Mr. Barria's memories of all that had befallen 
 
 him within or without, hi the journey of this life, 
 
 before his entry on the Path of Quietness, and his 
 
 consciousness of all external objects and occurrences 
 
 208
 
 THE EMIGRANT EAST 
 
 since, were clear enough, but only as little white 
 clouds in the open sky are clear, whose business it 
 is to be far away and trouble us with no insistent 
 tempest. They never entered the inner circle of his 
 meditation. They appeared to be distant things. He 
 had no sense of contact with them. His abstractions 
 had formed a series of concentric spheres about him. 
 In some outer sphere lay a knowledge of the value of 
 books as bought and sold, which enabled him to boy 
 and sell them with indifferent profit, but it entered 
 his central absorption no more than the putting on 
 and off of his coat. 
 
 He was not absorbed in books. He did not seem 
 to care for them, beyond the fourscore or more worn 
 volumes that were piled about his table by the gray 
 window, many of them in tattered paper covers 
 bearing German imprints, some lately rebound by a 
 Cripple Street bookbinder. He did not care for his- 
 tory or geography, not even his own. He did not 
 care where he was born or when, where he was now, 
 or how old. 
 
 Once whether forty years gone or four hundred, 
 would have seemed to him a question of the vaguest 
 
 * O 
 
 import he had taught Arabic and Greek in a uni- 
 versity town, which looks off to mountains that in 
 their turn look off to the Adriatic Sea. There was 
 09
 
 THE DELECTABLE MOUNTAINS 
 
 a child, a smaller Julian Barria. Somewhere about 
 this time and place he began explorations in more 
 distant Eastern languages. The date was unnoted, 
 obscure, traditional. The interest in language soon 
 disappeared. It was a period of wonder and search- 
 ing. After the moral fierceness of the Arab and 
 Mohammedan, the Hindoo's and Buddhist's calm 
 negations and wide mental spaces first interested 
 him by contrast, then absorbed him. He began to 
 practise the discipline, the intense and quiet cen- 
 tring on one point, till the sense of personality 
 should slip away and he and that point be one. 
 There was no conviction or conversion, for the ques- 
 tion never seemed put to him, or to be of any value, 
 whether one thing was true and another not true. 
 But the interest gradually changed to a personal 
 issue. All that he now heard and saw and spoke 
 to, objects in rest or in motion, duties that called 
 for his performance, became not so much vaguer in 
 outline as more remote in position. In comparison 
 with his other experiences they were touched with a 
 faint sense of unreality. The faces of other men were 
 changed in his eyes. He sometimes noticed and won- 
 dered, passingly, that they seemed to see no change 
 in him, or if any change, it was one that drew them 
 more than formerly to seek his sympathy. He ob- 
 210
 
 THE EMIGRANT EAST 
 
 served himself listening to intimate confessions with 
 a feeling of patient benevolence that cost him no 
 effort, and seemed to him something not quite be- 
 longing to him as a personal virtue, but which 
 apparently satisfied and quieted the troubled souls 
 that sought him. 
 
 About this later time a reference to the histo- 
 ries would fix the date at 1848 a civil war swept 
 the land, and the University was closed. The younger 
 Julian Barria was involved in the fall of the revo- 
 lutionists and fled from the country. The late teacher 
 of Greek and Arabic crossed the ocean with him. It 
 was a matter of mild indifference. He gave his sym- 
 pathy to all, gently and naturally, but felt no men- 
 tal disturbance. Neither did the change of scene 
 affect him. Everywhere were earth beneath and sky 
 above, and if not it were no matter. Everywhere 
 were men and women and children, busy with a mul- 
 titude of little things, trembling, hurrying, crying 
 out among anxieties. It was all one, clear enough, 
 but remote, touched with the same sense of unreal- 
 ity, and like some sad old song familiar in childhood 
 and still lingering in the memory. 
 
 The book-shop on Cripple Street at one time dealt 
 also in newspapers and cigars. They were more to 
 the younger Rama's talent, more to his taste the 
 211
 
 THE DELECTABLE MOUNTAINS 
 
 stirring talk of men who live in their own era and 
 congregate wherever there are newspapers and to- 
 bacco. Afterward he went away into the West, seek- 
 ing a larger field for his enterprise than Cripple 
 Street, and the newspaper and cigar business de- 
 clined and passed away. The show-case fell to other 
 uses. The elder Barria sat by the square rear window, 
 and the gray dust gathered and dimmed it. Ten 
 years flowed like an unruffled stream; of their con- 
 ventional divisions and succeeding events he seemed 
 but superficially conscious. Letters came now and 
 then from the West, announcing young Barria's 
 journeys and schemes, his marriage in the course of 
 enterprise, finally his death. The last was in a sprawl- 
 ing hand, and said: 
 
 "Jules missus is ded to an thars a kid. Jules sez 
 take her to the ol man Jake when ye go est in the 
 spring. I am Jake. He is wooly in his hed sez he but 
 he is a good man sez he. He got a soul like Mondays 
 washin on Tewsday mornin sez he spekin in figgers 
 an menin you. Them was Jules last word."" 
 
 The large, bony person called Jake, slouch-hatted 
 and rough-bearded, brought the child in time, 
 and departed, muttering embarrassment. She stood 
 among the Annuals and old magazines with a silver 
 dollar from Jake clasped in each hand, and a roll of 
 212
 
 THE EMIGRANT EAST 
 
 fifty-dollar bills in her tiny pocket, probably repre- 
 senting young Barria's estate and the end of Jake's 
 duties as executor. She might have been two or three 
 years old. That was not a matter of interest to Mr. 
 Barria, in whose conception the soul of every crea- 
 ture was, in a way, more ancient than the hills. 
 
 She seemed to believe in his good intentions and 
 came to him gravely. She did not remember any 
 mother, and for her own name it had apparently 
 been "chicken 11 when her father had wanted her, 
 and "scat" when he did not. Mr. Barria envied a 
 mind so untrammelled with memories, and named 
 her Jhana, which means a state of mystical medi- 
 tation, of fruitful tranquillity, out of which are said 
 to come six kinds of supernatural wisdom and ten 
 powers. The name sometimes appeared to him writ- 
 ten Dhyana, when his meditations ran in Sanskrit 
 instead of Pali. Cripple Street called her Janey, 
 and avoided the question with a wisdom of its 
 own. It had grown used to Mr. Barria. Scholars 
 came from near-by universities to consult him, and 
 letters from distant countries to Herr, Monsieur, or 
 Signer Doctor Julian Barria, but Cripple Street, 
 if it knew of the matter, had no stated theory to 
 explain it and was little curious. His hair and 
 beard grew white and prophetic, his skin more 
 213
 
 THE DELECTABLE MOUNTAINS 
 
 transparent. A second decade and half a third 
 glided by, and Janey and Tommy Durdo sat hand 
 in hand among the Annuals. 
 
 "You must ask him, Tommy,"" Janey insisted, 
 "because lovers always ask parents. 11 
 
 "An 1 the parents is horty and they runs away 
 hossback. Say, Janey, if his whiskers gets horty, 1 11 
 faint. Say, Janey, you got to go "n ask my ma if 
 you can have me. 11 
 
 "Would she be haughty? 11 
 
 Janey always bubbled with pleasure, like a meadow 
 spring, when Tommy "got on a string, 11 as he called 
 it, fell to jesting circumstantially. "You bet. She'd 
 trun you down. An 1 yet she's married second time, 
 she has, 11 he went on, thoughtfully, "an 1 she didn't 
 ask my consent, not either time. I would n't a given 
 it the first, if she had, "cause dad was no good. I 'd 
 a been horty. I'd a told her he waVt worthy to 
 come into any family where I was comin 1 , which he 
 waVt." 
 
 "Oh, Tommy! 11 
 
 "Yep. Dad was more nuisance "ft mosquitoes. 11 
 
 Mr. Barria came out of the distant retreat of his 
 meditation slowly, and looked up. It did not need 
 all the subtle instinct of a pundit to read the mean- 
 ing of the two standing hand in hand before him. 
 214
 
 THE EMIGRANT EAST 
 
 Tommy looked and felt as one asking favors of a 
 spectre, and Mr. Barria had fallen into a silent 
 habit of understanding people. 
 
 "Little Jhana iss a woman so soon?" he said 
 softly. "She asks of her birthright." 
 
 He rose and looked quietly, steadily at Tommy, 
 who felt himself growing smaller inside, till his shoes 
 seemed enormous, even his scalp loose and his skull 
 empty. 
 
 Mr. " 
 
 "It's Tommy Durdo," said Janey. 
 
 "You will always remember to be a little kinder 
 than seems necessary, Mr. Durdo ? It iss a good rule 
 and very old." 
 
 "He didn't ask whether I was a burglar or a 
 lunatic by profesh," grumbled Tommy, later. "Ain't 
 a reasonable interest. He might a asked which." 
 
 "Never mind," said Janey. "I'll tell that." 
 
 There were four rooms over the shop, where the 
 three lived in great peace. Tommy never made out 
 whether Mr. Barria thought him a burglar or a 
 lunatic. As regards Janey he felt more like a bur- 
 glar, as regards Mr. Barria more like a lunatic. He 
 dodged him reverentially. Only at the station, where 
 his duties kept him for the most part, did he feel 
 like a natural person and a fireman. He confided 
 215
 
 THE DELECTABLE MOUNTAINS 
 
 in Hamp Sharkey, and brought him to the shop 
 .and the little up-stairs sitting-room for the purpose 
 of illustration. Hamp^s feelings resembled Tommy's. 
 They fell into naive sympathy. Hamp admired 
 Tommy for his cleverness, his limber tongue, the 
 reckless daring of his daily contact with Mr. Barria 
 and Janey, two mysteries, differing but both re- 
 mote. She was not like the shop-girls on Main 
 Street. Hamp would carry away the memory of her 
 shining eyes lifted to Tommy's irregular, somewhat 
 impish face, and growl secretly over his mental be- 
 wilderment. Tommy admired Hamp for his height 
 and breadth and dull good-nature. 
 
 On an afternoon in the early summer the fire- 
 bells rang call after call. Engine No. 4 went second. 
 The freight houses by the harbor were burning, and 
 the tall furniture factory that backed them. About 
 dusk the north wall of the factory fell into the 
 street with a roar and rattle of flying bricks. 
 
 The book-shop was dark in the centre. The two 
 lamps in the front windows were lit, and Mr. Bar- 
 ria's lamp in his hidden corner. 
 
 It came upon Mr. Barria in his absorption that 
 there had been a moment before the sound of the 
 trampling of heavy feet in the front of the shop, 
 216
 
 THE EMIGRANT EAST 
 
 and a sudden cry. The trampling continued and 
 increased. He came forward with his lamp. Men 
 were crowding up the narrow stairs that began in 
 the opposite corner. One of them swung a lantern 
 overhead. 
 
 "'Twere a brick," said some one in the dark cen- 
 tre of the shop. "Took him over the ear. Dented 
 him in like a plug hat." 
 
 "Where's some water?" 
 
 "Knocked her over quicker 'n the brick." 
 
 "Sh! What's that?" 
 
 "It's the old man." 
 
 The light of the lamp, lifted in Mr. Barria's hand, 
 fell over his head with its flowing white hair, rab- 
 binical beard, and spectral face. Three men, one of 
 them a policeman, drew back to one side of the 
 shop, looking startled and feebly embarrassed. On 
 the other side the window lamp shone on Janey, 
 where she lay fallen among the old Annuals. 
 
 He lifted her head and muttered: 
 
 "Jhana, Jhana." 
 
 The three men slipped through the door; those 
 above came down; a doctor bustled in, satchel in 
 hand, and after him several women; Janey was car- 
 ried up; the shop was empty, except for Mr. Barria 
 sitting by his lamp and muttering softly. 
 217
 
 THE DELECTABLE MOUNTAINS 
 
 "She could not find it, the peace that is about, 
 and her little happiness it would not stay beside 
 her." 
 
 Presently the doctor spoke over him. 
 
 "I think Mrs. Durdo should be taken to the hos- 
 pital. St. James, you know. Ifs not far." 
 
 "You think" 
 
 "She is approaching confinement, and the shock, 
 you know." 
 
 "Whatever iss desirable, Herr Doctor. There iss 
 no need, sir, of the economy in respect to to what- 
 ever iss desirable." 
 
 "Quite right, Mr. Barria. Quite right." 
 
 This was in June. Late in the fall Janey came 
 back from St. James's Hospital, pale, drooping, and 
 alone. 
 
 She sat in a black dress by the front window and 
 kept the accounts as before, gazed through the dim 
 panes at Cripple Street, which was made by nature 
 to be dull, but read the Annuals no more, which 
 was perhaps a pity. 
 
 Mr. Barria from the rear of the shop watched 
 
 Janey, sitting among the Annuals and looking out 
 
 on Cripple Street. He had not entered on the Path 
 
 himself as a cure for sorrow and suffering; he had 
 
 218
 
 THE EMIGRANT EAST 
 
 come to it from another direction. Yet the first pur- 
 pose of its system had been the solution of these. 
 It was written: 
 
 "Sorrow and suffering will be overcome when this 
 thirst for life is quenched, which makes for continu- 
 ance, and that desire of separateness and hunger 
 after selfhood are put aside. They will fall away as 
 drops from a lotus leaf." 
 
 And Janey was a type of them as they walk 
 abroad. The measure of her trouble was the meas- 
 ure of the yearning and attainment that had been 
 hers. 
 
 "Desire not more then of yearning or attainment, 
 of sight or touch, of life in variety or abundance, 
 but desire none at all, and turning within, the dwell- 
 ing you build there dwell in it, until both desire and 
 separateness shall in turn disappear." 
 
 He went forward and drew a chair beside her. 
 
 "Little Jhana," he said, "there wass once a woman 
 and young who brought her dead child to the wisest 
 of men, and asked so of him, 'Do you know one 
 medicine that will be good for this child? 1 It wass 
 the custom then for the patients or their friends to 
 provide the herbs which the doctors require, so that 
 when she asked what herbs he would wish, and he 
 answered, 'Mustard-seed, 1 she promised with haste 
 219
 
 THE DELECTABLE MOUNTAINS 
 
 to bring it, for it wass a common herb. 'And it 
 must come,' he said, 'only from some house where 
 no child, no hussband, no wife, no parent, no friend 
 hass died.' Then she went in great hope, carrying 
 the dead child; but everywhere they said, 'I have 
 lost,' and again, 'We have lost,' and one said, 'What 
 iss this you say; the living are few but the dead are 
 many.' She found so no house in that place from 
 which she might take the mustard-seed. Therefore 
 she buried the child, and came, and she said, 'I have 
 not found it; they tell me the living are few and 
 the dead many.' And he showed her how that noth- 
 ing endured at all, but changed and passed into 
 something else, and each wass but a changing part 
 of a changing whole, and how, if one thought more 
 of the whole, one so ceased to be troubled much of 
 the parts, and sorrow would fade away quietly." 
 
 Janey stared at him with wide, uncomprehending 
 eyes. There was a certain comfort always in Mr. 
 Barria himself, however oddly he might talk. She 
 dropped her head on his knee and whispered: 
 
 "I don't know about all that. I want Tommy 
 and the baby." 
 
 He touched her hair with thin fingers gently. 
 
 "Then I wonder, little Jhana," he said, looking 
 to the magazines and Annuals, "if you have found 
 220
 
 THE EMIGRANT EAST 
 
 among these one, a poet of the English, who calls it 
 to be better to love and lose than not to love." 
 
 "I don't know. I don't remember."" 
 
 He smoothed her hair again and went away. 
 
 The winter passed and the spring came with a 
 scatter of sunshine and little showers. Janey still 
 sat by the window. If she had been able to general- 
 ize, to see that Tommy and the baby represented 
 hunger after life, and that this was the root of sor- 
 row, it would perhaps have still seemed to her that 
 love and loss were the better choice. Perhaps not. 
 But she could not generalize. Her thoughts were 
 instincts, fancies, and little shining points of belief. 
 She could not see herself in any figure of speech; 
 that she was one of a multitude of discordant notes 
 in the universe, whose business it was to tune them- 
 selves to the key of a certain large music and dis- 
 appear in its harmony, where alone was constant 
 happiness. It did not seem to mention Tommy or 
 the baby, and if not there was no point in it. 
 
 Spring slipped away. Cripple Street was filled to 
 the brim with bland summer. Janey went every 
 day to the cemetery with flowers. In September she 
 began to come back with flowers in her belt. 
 
 It was a rainy, dismal day in October. Mr. Barria 
 had a remote sense of hearing Janey's laugh. It 
 221
 
 THE DELECTABLE MOUNTAINS 
 
 seemed to him there was a strange presence in the 
 shop. He peered out, and saw Hamp Sharkey out- 
 lined against the window, large, slow-moving, and 
 calm, a man who seemed to avoid all troubles of 
 the flesh by virtue of having enough flesh, and solid 
 bone beneath. Janey looked up at him and laughed. 
 Around her were the old Annuals, containing the 
 loves of Edwards and Eleanors. 
 
 Mr. Barria leaned back in his chair. Some un- 
 traced suggestion led him to counting his years 
 idly. He made them out to be nearly eighty. They 
 seemed suddenly to rest on his shoulders like a 
 weight. If one considered them at all, they were 
 heavy, the years. And for this human life, it was 
 only intelligible in the abstract. Of its details there 
 were too many. 
 
 The shop grew duskier, and the rain beat on the 
 windows with an incessant pattering, a multitude of 
 tiny details, sounding accordingly as one might lis- 
 ten. For either it would seem a cheerful, busy sound 
 of the kindly water, humble and precious and clean, 
 needful in households, pleasant in the fulness of 
 rivers, comfortable, common, familiar; or it was the 
 low sigh of the driven rain, the melancholy iteration 
 and murmur of water circling like everything else 
 its wheel of change, earth and ocean and sky, earth 
 222
 
 THE EMIGRANT EAST 
 
 and ocean and sky, and weary to go back to its 
 vague, elemental vapor, as before the worlds were 
 shaped. 
 
 Mr. Barria turned back to his volume, bound in 
 gray paper with a German imprint. To his ears the 
 sound of the two voices talking became as abstract 
 as the rain. Hamp Sharkey's laugh was like the low- 
 ing of a contented ox, and Janey's, as of old, like 
 the ripple of a brook in a meadow. 
 
 223
 
 TOBIN'S MONUMENT
 
 TOBIN'S MONUMENT 
 
 JL WAS a student then and lived on the second floor 
 of a brick dormitory with foot-worn stones and sag- 
 ging casements. The windows looked across one end 
 of the campus on ivy-covered walls of other buildings, 
 on a bronze statue whose head was bent to indicate 
 that the person represented had taken life seriously 
 in his day. Near at hand was a street of unacademic 
 noises, horse-cars, shops, German bands, newsboys, 
 people who bought and sold without higher mathe- 
 matics and seldom mentioned Horatius Flaccus. 
 
 But there were drifts and eddies of the street that 
 would turn aside and enter the dormitories commer- 
 cially. Tobin was one of these. He came to my door 
 by preference, because of the large crack in the 
 panel. For, if one entered the dormitory commer- 
 cially and knocked at the doors, one never knew 
 it might be Horatius Flaccus, a volume of size and 
 weight. But with a crack in the panel one could 
 stand outside at ease and dignity, looking through 
 it, and crying, "JWlas ca-andyl Peanuts! 11 Then, if 
 anything arrived, without doubt it arrived. A man 
 might throw what he chose at his own door. 
 227
 
 THE DELECTABLE MOUNTAINS 
 
 He was thin in the legs and shoulders, but round 
 of face and marked there with strange designs that 
 were partly a native complexion; but, if one is a 
 candy boy, in constant company with newsboys, 
 shiners, persons who carry no such merchandise 
 but are apt to wish for it violently, one's complex- 
 ion of course varies from day to day. 
 
 "Say, but I hit him! He bled on his do's." 
 
 Tobin sometimes made this comment, "him" mean- 
 ing different persons. There was a vein of fresh ro- 
 mance in him. Did not Sir Balin, or his like, smite 
 Sir Lanceor, so that the blood flowed over his hau- 
 berk, and afterward speak of it with enthusiasm? 
 
 It was a cold December day in the year 188-, 
 when the snow whirled without rest from morning 
 chapel till the end of the day was signified by the 
 first splutter of gas-jets. Among the hills where I 
 was born that office was left to the sunsets and twi- 
 lights, who had a manner of doing it, a certain 
 broad nobility, a courtesy and grace. "One of God's 
 days is over. This is our sister, the night." The gas- 
 jets were fretful, coquettish, affected. "It is an out- 
 rage! One is simply turned on and turned off!" 
 
 Horatius Flaccus was social and intimate with 
 me that day. "Exegi monumentum" he remarked. 
 "You will find it not easy to forget me." 
 228
 
 TOBIN'S MONUMENT 
 
 Monuments! At the University we lived among 
 commemorative buildings; many a silent dusty room 
 was dim with accumulation of thought; and there 
 men labored for what but to make a name? 
 
 The statue outside represented one who took life 
 seriously in his day, now with the whirling snow 
 about it, the gas-jet in front snapping petulantly. 
 "One is simply turned on and turned off!" 
 
 "Exegi monumentum" continued Horatius Flac- 
 cus. "This is my work, and it is good. I shall not 
 all die, non omnis mormr." It seemed natural to 
 feel so. But how honorably the sunsets and twilights 
 used to go their ways among the hills, contented 
 and leaving not a wrack behind. 
 
 It was a better attitude and conduct, that serene 
 security of clouds in their absolute death. "Non 
 omnis moriar" was not only a boast, but a com- 
 plaint and a protest. 
 
 Still, as to monuments, one would rather be me- 
 morialized by one's own work than by the words of 
 other men, or the indifferent labor of their chisels. 
 
 "Jlflas cd-andy!"" 
 
 "Come in, Tobin!" 
 
 He opened the door and said, tentatively, "Pea- 
 nuts." 
 
 He always spoke in a more confident tone of the 
 229
 
 THE DELECTABLE MOUNTAINS 
 
 candy than of the peanuts. There was no good rea- 
 son for his confidence in either. 
 
 "Tobin," I said, "you don't want a monument?" 
 
 He kicked his feet together and murmured again, 
 "Peanuts." 
 
 His shoes were cracked at the sides. The cracks 
 were full of snow. 
 
 The remark seemed to imply that he did not ex- 
 pect a monument, having no confidence in his pea- 
 nuts. As a rule they were soggy and half-baked. 
 
 Tobin's life, I thought, was too full of the flux of 
 things; candy melted, peanuts decayed, complexion 
 changed from day to day, his private wars were but 
 momentary matters. I understood him to have no 
 artificial desires. Death would be too simple an 
 affair for comment. He would think of no comment 
 to make. Sunsets and twilights went out in silence; 
 Tobiri's half of humanity nearly as dumb. It was 
 the other half that was fussy on the subject. 
 
 "Your feet are wet, Tobin. Warm them. Your 
 shoes are no good." 
 
 Tobin picked the easiest chair with good judg- 
 ment, and balanced his feet over the coals of the 
 open stove, making no comment. 
 
 "I won't buy your peanuts. They're sloppy. I 
 might buy you another pair of shoes. What do you 
 think?" 230
 
 TOBIN'S MONUMENT 
 
 He looked at me, at the shoes, at the wet basket 
 on his knees, but nothing elaborate seemed to occur 
 to him. He said: 
 
 "Alright." He had great mental directness. I had 
 reached that point in the progress of young phi- 
 losophy where the avoidance of fussiness takes the 
 character of a broad doctrine: a certain Doric atti- 
 tude was desired. Tobin seemed to me to have that 
 attitude. 
 
 "If I give you the money, will you buy shoes or 
 cigarettes?" 
 
 "Shoes. 11 
 
 "Here, then. Got anything to say? 11 
 
 He put the bill into his pocket, and said: 
 
 "Yep, Til buy 'em. 11 
 
 His attitude was better than mine. The common 
 wish to be thanked was pure fussiness. 
 
 "Well, look here. You bring me back the old 
 ones. 11 
 
 Even that did not disturb him. The Doric atti- 
 tude never questions other men^ indifferent whims. 
 
 "A'right." 
 
 I heard him presently on the lower floor, crying, 
 "Mulcts ca-andy! Peanuts. 11 
 
 "I shall be spoken of, 11 continued Horatius Flac- 
 cus, calmly, "by that wild southern river, the Au- 
 231
 
 THE DELECTABLE MOUNTAINS 
 
 fidus, and in many other places. I shall be called a 
 pioneer in my own line, princeps JEolium carmen 
 deduxisse? 
 
 The night was closing down. The gas-light flick- 
 ered on the half-hidden face of the statue, so that 
 its grave dignity seemed changed to a shifty, mock- 
 ing smile. 
 
 I heard no more of Tobin for a month, and prob- 
 ably did not think of him. There were Christmas 
 holidays about, and that week which is called of 
 the Promenade, when one opens Horatius Flaccus 
 only to wonder what might have been the color of 
 Lydia's hair, and to introduce comparisons that are 
 unfair to Lydia. 
 
 It was late in January. Some one came and 
 thumped on the cracked panel. It was not Tobin, 
 but a stout woman carrying Tobin's basket, who 
 said in an expressionless voice: 
 
 "Oi! Them shoes. 1 ' 
 
 "What?" 
 
 "You give 'im some shoes." 
 
 "Tobin. That's so." 
 
 "I'm Missus Tobin." 
 
 She was dull-looking, round-eyed, gray-haired. 
 She fumbled in the basket, dropped something in 
 232
 
 TOBIN'S MONUMENT 
 
 wet paper on a chair, and seemed placidly prepar- 
 ing to say more. It seemed to me that she had much 
 of Tobin's mental directness, the Doric attitude, the 
 neglect of comment. I asked: "How's Tobin?" 
 
 "Oi! He's dead." 
 
 "I am very sorry, Mrs. Tobin. May I " 
 
 "Oi! Funeral's this afternoon. He could V be 
 round. He was sick. Five weeks three days." 
 
 She went out and down the stair, bumping back 
 and forth between the wall and the banister. 
 
 On the misty afternoon of that day I stood on 
 that corner where more than elsewhere the city and 
 the University meet; where hackmen and newsboys 
 congregate; where a gray brick hotel looks askance 
 at the pillared and vaulted entry of a recitation 
 hall. The front of that hall is a vainglorious thing. 
 Those who understand, looking dimly with half- 
 shut eyes, may see it change to a mist, and in the 
 mist appear a worn fence, a grassless, trodden space, 
 and four tall trees. 
 
 The steps of the hall were deserted, except for 
 newsboys playing tag among the pillars. I asked 
 one if he knew where Tobin lived. 
 
 "He's havin' a funeral," he said. 
 
 "Where?" 
 
 "10 Clark Street." 
 
 233
 
 THE DELECTABLE MOUNTAINS 
 
 "Did you know him?" 
 
 The others had gathered around. One of them 
 said: 
 
 "Tobin licked him." 
 
 The first seemed to think more than ordinary 
 justice should be done a person with a funeral, and 
 admitted that Tobin had licked him. 
 
 No. 10 Clark Street was a door between a cloth- 
 ing shop and a livery stable. The stairway led up 
 into darkness. On the third landing a door stood 
 open, showing a low room. A painted coffin rested 
 on two chairs. Three or four women sat about with 
 their hands on their knees. One of them was Mrs. 
 Tobin. 
 
 "Funeral's over,"" she said, placidly. 
 
 The clergyman from the mission had come and 
 gone. They were waiting for the city undertaker. 
 But they seemed glad of an interruption and looked 
 at me with silent interest. 
 
 "I want to ask you to tell me something about 
 him, Mrs. Tobin." 
 
 Mrs. Tobin reflected. "There ain't nothin 1 ." 
 
 "He never ate no candy," said one of the women, 
 after a pause. 
 
 Mrs. Tobin sat stolidly. Two large tears appeared 
 at length and rolled slowly down. 
 234
 
 TOBIN'S MONUMENT 
 
 "It made him dreadful sick when he was little. 
 That's why." 
 
 The third woman nodded thoughtfully. 
 
 "He said folks was fools to eat candy. It was his 
 stomach."" 
 
 "Oi!"said Mrs. Tobin. 
 
 I went no nearer the coffin than to see the com- 
 mon grayish pallor of the face, and went home in 
 the misty dusk. 
 
 The forgotten wet bundle had fallen to the floor 
 and become undone. 
 
 By the cracks in the sides, the down-trodden heels, 
 the marks of keen experience, they were Tobin's old 
 shoes, round-toed, leather-thonged, stoical, severe. 
 
 Mrs. Tobin had not commented. She had brought 
 them merely, Tobin having stated that they were 
 mine. 
 
 They remained with me six months, and were 
 known to most men, who came to idle or labor, as 
 "Tobin's Monument."" They stood on a book-shelf, 
 with other monuments thought to be cere perennius, 
 more enduring than brass, and disappeared at the 
 end of the year, when the janitor reigned supreme. 
 There seemed to be some far-off and final idea in 
 the title, some thesis which never got itself rightly 
 stated. Horatius Flaccus was kept on the shelf be- 
 235
 
 THE DELECTABLE MOUNTAINS 
 
 side them in the notion that the statement should 
 somehow be worked out between them. And there 
 was no definite result; but I thought he grew more 
 diffident with that companionship. 
 
 "Exegi monumentum. I suppose there is no doubt 
 about that," he would remark. "JEre perennius. It 
 seems a trifle pushing, so to trespass on the atten- 
 tion of posterity. I would rather talk of my Sabine 
 farm.' 1 
 
 236
 
 The Conclusion by the 
 Wayfarers 
 
 ALL honest things in the world we greet 
 
 With welcome fair and free; 
 A little love by the way is sweet, 
 
 A friend, or two, or three; 
 
 Of the sun and moon and stars are glad, 
 
 Of the waters of river and sea; 
 We thank thee, Lord, for the years we *ve had, 
 
 For the years that yet shall be. 
 
 These are our brothers, the winds of the airs; 
 
 These are our sisters, thejlowers. 
 Be near us at evening and hear our prayers, 
 
 O God, in the late gray hours.
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY 
 
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