Us do, us do, Sam Churchill assented, nodding.
Ah, I do mind the time, Sammy, Geargey said regretfully, wiping his eyes with the corner of his jersey, wen every wipswile Id used to get a gintleman to go out way, whod gi us share an share alike o his grub, and a drap out o his whisky bottle: and wen we pulls ashore, he sez, seze: I dont want the vish, my man, seze; I only wants the sport, raly. But nowadays, Lard bless ee, Sam, we gets a pack o meetingers down from London, and they brings along a hunk o bread and some fat pork, or a piece o blue vinny cheese, as ard as Portland stone. Now I cant abare fat pork without a streak o lean in it, specially when I smells the bait; and I cant tackle the blue vinny, cos I never as my teeth with me: thof my mate, Bill-o-my-Soul, e can putt isself outside most things in the way o grub at a vurry short notice, as you do well know, Sam, and I never seed as bate made no difference to e nohow. But these ere meetingers, as I was a sayin (vor Ive got avore my story, Sammy), they goes out an haves vine sport, well say; and then, wen we comes ome they out and lugs out dree or vower shillins or so, vor me an my mate, an walks off with arf-a-suvrens worth o the biggest vish, quite aisy-like, an layves all the liddle fry an the blin in the boat; the chattering jackanapes.
Ees, ees, lad, times is changed, Sam murmured meditatively, half to himself; times is changed turble bad since old Squires day. Wot a place Ootton ad used to be then, adnt ur, Geargey? Coach from Darchester an bus from Tilbury station, bringin in gurt folks from London vor the sayson every day; dinner party up to vicarage with green paysen an peaches, an nectarines, An a ole turbat, Geargey put in parenthetically. Ay, lad, an a ole turbot every Saturday. Them was times, Geargey; them was times. I dont spose they ther times ull never come again. Ther aint the gentry now as therd used to be in old Squires day. Pack o trumpery London volk, with one servant, comin down ere vor the sayson short sayson six week, or murt be seven an then walkin off agin, without so much as spending ten poun or so in theole parish. I mind the times, Geargey, when volks used to say Ootton were the safety valve o the Bath sayson. Soon as sayson were over up to Bath, gentlevolk and ladies a-comin down ere to enjy thesselves, an spendin their money vree and aisy, same as if it were water. Us dont see un comin now, Geargey: times is changed turble: us dont see un now.
Its the dree terms as as ruined Ootton, Geargey said, philosophically the research of the cause being the true note of philosophy.
Its they dree terms as as done it, vor sartin.
Why, ows that, Gearge?
Well, dont ee see, Sam, its like o thik. Wen they used to ave arf-years at the schools, bless ee, volks with families ad used to bring down the children vrom school so soon as the arf-year were over. Then the gurt people ud take the young gentlemen out vishin, might be in June, or July may-be, and gee a bit o work to honest visher-people in the off-sayson. Then in August, London people ud come an take lodgins and gee us a bit more work nice and tidy. So the sayson ad used to last off an on vrom June to October. Well, bime-by, they meddlesome school people, they goes an makes up these ere new-vangled things o dree terms, as they calls em, cuttin up the year unnatral-like into dree pieces, as adnt used to be wen we was children. Wots the consequence? Everybody comes a-rushin and a-crushin permixuous, in August, the ole boilin o em together, wantin rooms an boats and vishermen, so as the parish baint up to it. Us as to work ard vor six or seven week, and not give satisfaction nayther; and then rest o the year us as to git along the best us can on the shart sayson. I cant abare they new-vangled ways, upsettin all the constitooted order of things altogither, an settin poor vishermen at sixes and sevens for arf their lifetime.
Its the march of intellect, Geargey, Sam Churchill answered, deprecatingly (Sam understood himself to be a Liberal in politics, and used this convenient phrase as a general solvent for an immense number of social difficulties). Its the march of intellect, no doubt, Geargey: theres a sight o progress about; board-schools an sich like: an if it cuts agin us, dont ee see, wy us as got to make the best of it, however.
It murt be, an agin it murtnt; and agin it murt, Geargey murmured dubiously.
But any way, whers Minna to, Sammy? thats wot I comed vor to ax ee.
Down to vield by lake, yander, most like, Sam answered with a nod of his head in the direction indicated.
Ill go an vetch her, said Geargey; dinners most ready.
An Ill come an zee wot Colins up to, added Sam, laying down his hoe, and pulling together his unbuttoned waistcoat.
They walked down to the brook in the meadow, and saw the two children sitting in the corner so intent upon their artistic performances that they hardly noticed the approach of their respective fathers. Old Sam Churchill went close up and looked keenly at the clay figure of Minna that Colin was still moulding with the last finishing touches as the two elders approached them. Thik ther vigger baint a bad un, Colin, he said, taking it carefully in his rough hand.
eeavent done it none so ill, lad; but it dont look so livin like as it ad ought to. Wot do ee think it is, Geargey, eh? tell us?
Why, Im blowed if that baint our Minna, Geargey answered, with a little gasp of open-mouthed astonishment. Its her vurry pictur, Colin: a blind man could see that, of course, so soon as e set eyes on it. Ow do ee do it, Colin, eh? Ow do ee do it? Oh, that baint nothin, Colin said, colouring up. Only a little bit o clay, just made up vor to look like Minna.
Look ee ere, Colin, his father went on, glancing quickly from the clay to little Minna, and altering a touch or two with his big clumsy fingers, not undeftly. Look ee ere; ee must putt the dress thik way, I should say, with a gurt dale more flusterin about it; it do zit too stiff and starchy, somehow, same as if it wur made o new buckram. ee must put in a fold or two, ere, so as to make un sit more natral. Dont ee see Minnas dress do double itself up, I cant rightly say ow, but sununat o tkik there way? And he moulded the moist clay a bit with his hands, till the folds of the drapery began to look a little more real and possible.
Id ought to ave drawed it first, I think, Colin said, looking at the altered dress with a satisfied glance. ave ee got such a thing as a pencil about ee, father?
Old Sam took a piece of pencil from his pocket, and handed it to Colin. The boy held it tightly in his fingers, with a true artistic grasp, like one who knows how to wield it, and with a few strokes on a scrap of paper hit off little Minna far better than he had done in the plastic material. Geargey looked over his shoulder with a delighted grin on his weatherbeaten features. I tell ee, Sam, he said to the old gardener, confidentially, its my belief that thik ther boyull be able one o these vine days to paint rale picturs.
CHAPTER III. PERNICIOUS LITERATURE
CHAPTER III. PERNICIOUS LITERATURE
When winter came, Hiram Winthrop had less to do and more time to follow the bidding of his own fancy. True, there was cordwood to split in abundance; and splitting cordwood is no childs play along the frozen shores of Lake Ontario. You go out among the snow in the wood-shed, and take the big ice-covered logs down from the huge pile with numbed fingers: then you lay them on a sort of double St. Andrews cross, its two halves supported by a thwart-piece, and saw them up into fit lengths for the kitchen fireplace: and after that you split them in four with a solid-headed axe, taking care in the process not to let your deadened hands slip, so as to cut off the ends of your own toes with an ill-directed blow glancing off the log sideways. Yes, splitting cordwood is very serious work, with the thermometer at 40° below freezing; and drawing water from the well when the rope is frozen and your skin clings to the chill iron of the thirsty bucket-handle is hardly better: yet in spite of both these small drawbacks, Hiram Winthrop found much more to enjoy in his winters than in his summers. There was no corn to hoe, no peas to pick, no weeding to do, no daily toil on farm and garden. The snow had covered all with its great white sheet; and even the neighbourhood of Muddy Creek Dépôt looked desolately beautiful in its own dreary, cold, monotonous, Siberian fashion.
The flowers and leaves were gone too, to be sure; but in the low brushwood by the blackberry bottom the hares had turned white to match the snow; and the nut-hatches were answering one another in their varying keys; and the skunks were still busy of nights beneath the spreading walnuts; and the chickadees were tinkling overhead among the snow-laden pine-needles of the far woodland. All the summer visitors had gone south to Georgia and the gulf: but the snow-buntings were ever with Hiram in the wintry fields: and the bald-headed eagles still prowled around at times on the stray chance of catching a frozen-out racoon. Above all there was ease and leisure, respite from the deacons rasping voice calling perpetually for Hiram here, and Hiram there, and Hiram yonder, to catch the horses, or tend the harrow, or mind the birds, or weed the tomatoes, or set shingles against the sun over the drooping transplanted cabbages. A happy time indeed for Hiram, that long, weary, white-sheeted, unbroken northern New York winter.
Sam Churchill was with the deacon still, but had little enough to do, for there isnt much going on upon an American farm from November to April, and the deacon would gladly have got rid of his hired help in the slack time if he could have shuffled him off; but Sam had been well advised on his first hiring, and had wisely covenanted to be kept on all the year round, with board and lodging and decent wages during the winter season. And Hiram initiated Sam into the mysteries of sliding on a bent piece of wood (a homemade toboggan) down the great snowdrifts, and skating on the frozen expansion of Muddy Creek, and building round huts, Esquimaux fashion, with big square blocks of solid dry snow, and tracking the white hare over the white fields by means of the marks he left behind him, whose termination, apparently lengthening itself out miraculously before ones very eyes, marked the spot where the hare himself was hopping invisible to human vision. In return, Sam lent him a few dearly-treasured books: books that he had brought from England with him: the books that had first set the Dorsetshire peasant lad upon his scheme of going forth alone upon the wide world beyond the ocean.
Hiram was equally delighted and astonished with these wonderful charmed volumes. He had seen a few books before, but they were all of two types: Cornells Geography, Quackenbosss Grammar, and the other schoolbooks used at the common school; or else Barness Commentary, Elder Coffins Ezekiel, the Hopkinsite Confession of Faith, and other like works of American exegetical and controversial theology. But Sams books, oh, gracious, what a difference! There was Peter Simple, a story about a real live boy, who want good, pertickler, not to speak of, but had some real good old times on board a ship, somewhere, he did; and there was Tom Jones (Hiram no more understood the doubtful passages in that great romance than he understood the lucubrations of Philosopher Square, but he took it in, in the lump, as very good fun for all that), Tom Jones, the story of another real live boy, with, most delightful of all, a reglar mean sneak of a feller, called Blifil, to act as a foil to Toms straightforward pagan flesh-and-bloodfulness; the Buccaneers of the Caribbean Sea, a glorious work of fire and slaughter, whar some feller or other got killed right off on every page amost, you bet; Jake the Pirate, another splendid book of the same description; and half a dozen more assorted novels, from the best to the worst, all chosen alike for their stirring incidents which went straight home to the minds of the two lads, in spite of all external differences of birth and geographical surroundings. Hiram pored over them surreptitiously, late at nights, in the room that he and Sam occupied in common a mere loft at the top of the house and felt in his heart he had never in his life imagined such delightful reading could possibly have existed. And they were written by growed-up men, too! How strange to think that once upon a time, somewhile and somewhere, there were growed-up men capable of thus sympathising with, and reproducing the ideas and feelings of, the natural mind of boyhood!
One evening, very late eleven nearly the deacon, prowling around after a bottle or something, spied an unwonted light gleaming down from the trap-door that led up to the loft where the lads ought at that moment to have been sleeping soundly. Lights in a well-conducted farmhouse at eleven oclock was indeed incomprehensible: what on earth, the deacon asked himself wonderingly, could them thar lads be up to at this hour? He crept up the step-ladder cautiously, so as not to disturb them by premonitions, and opened the trap-door in sedulous silence. Sam was already fast asleep; but there was Hiram, sot up in bed, as quiet as a possum, pearin as if he was a-readin something. The deacons eyes opened with amazement! Hiram reading! Had his heart been touched, then, quite sudden-like? Could he have took up the Hopkinsite Confession in secret to his upper chamber? Was he meditatin makin a public profession afore the Assembly?
The deacon glowered and marvelled. Creeping, still quite silently, up to the bedhead, he looked with an inquiring glance over poor Hirams unsuspecting shoulder. A sea of words swam vaguely before his bewildered vision; words, not running into long orthodox paragraphs, like the Elders Ezekiel, but cut up, oh horror, into distinct sentences, each indicating a separate part in a conversation. The deacon couldnt clearly make it all out; for it was a dramatic dialogue, a form of composition which had not largely fallen in the good mans way: but he picked up enough to understand that it was a low pothouse scene, where one Falstaff was bandying improper language with a person of the name of Prince (given name, Henry) language that made even the deacons sallow cheek blush feebly with reflected and vicarious modesty. For a moment he endeavoured, like a Christian man, to retain his wrath; and then paternal feeling overcame him, and he caught Hiram such a oner on his ears as he flattered himself that boy wouldnt be likely to forgit in any very partickler hurry.
Hiram looked round, amazed and stunned, his ear tingling and burning, and saw the gaunt apparition of his father, standing silent and black-browed by the bare bed-head. For a moment those two glared at one another mutely and defiantly.