The Gentleman from Everywhere by James Henry Foss
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James Henry Foss >> The Gentleman from Everywhere
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14 THE GENTLEMAN FROM EVERYWHERE
BY
JAMES HENRY FOSS
ILLUSTRATED
1903
TO
MY BELOVED, ON EARTH AND IN HEAVEN,
THIS BOOK IS
MOST AFFECTIONATELY DEDICATED
IN THE EARNEST HOPE THAT
BY ITS PERUSAL
Many sailing o'er life's solemn main,
Forlorn and shipwrecked brothers, may take heart again.
Contents
CHAPTER
I. Launching of My Life Boat
II. My First Voyage
III. Near to Nature's Heart
IV. Joys and Sorrows of School-Days
V. Career of a Dominie-Pedagogue
VI. Dreams of My Youth
VII. A Disenchanted Collegian-Preacher
VIII. In Shadow Land
IX. Sunlight and Darkness in Palace and Cottage
XI. Adventures in Mosquito Land
XI. In Arcadie
XII. From Philistine to Benedict and a Honeymoon
XIII. The Angels of Life and Death
XIV. Tribulations of a Widower
XV. Faith Sees a Star
XVI. On the Political Stump
XVII. That _Eddyfying_ Christian Science
XVIII. In the Land of Flowers
XIX. Sunbeam, The Seminole
XX. A Founder of Towns and Clubs
XXI. A Million Dollar Business with a One Dollar Capital
XXII. Pendulum 'twixt Smiles and Tears
XXIII. Monarch of all He Surveyed: Then Deposed,
XXIV. Foregleams of Immortality
XXV. A Practical Socialist and Colonizer
XXVI. Hand in Hand with Angels
XXVII. Among the Law-Sharks
XXVIII. Campaigning in Wonderland
XXIX. Among the Clouds
XXX. Disenchanted: Home Again
XXXI. The Florida Crackers
XXXII. Looking Forward
[Illustration: [cursive] Your friend, the Author
James H. Foss]
CHAPTER I.
LAUNCHING OF MY LIFE-BOAT.
Wild was the night, yet a wilder night
Hung around o'er the mother's pillow;
In her bosom there waged a fiercer fight
Than the fight on the wrathful billow.
Already there were more children than potatoes in her hut of logs, and
yet, another unwelcome guest was coming, to whom fate had ordained
that it would have been money in his pocket had he never been born.
A sympathizing neighbor held over the suffering woman an umbrella to
shield her from the rain which poured through the dilapidated roof,
and when the dreary light of that Sunday morning dawned, my frail bark
was launched on the stormy, sullen sea of life.
My father, a good man, but a ne'er-do-well financially, had loaned his
best clothes, watch and pocketbook to a friend to enable him to call
on his best girl in captivating style, and said friend expressed his
gratitude by eloping with the girl and all the borrowed finery.
That same night the boom broke, and allowed all the savings of our
family invested in logs, cut by my father and his lumbermen, to float
down the river and be lost in the sea.
Thus storm, flood, calamity and sorrow, far in advance heralded the
future of myself, the fourth son of a fourth son who, on that Sunday,
in the dog-days of 1841, reluctantly came into this world.
The howling of the wolves in the surrounding wild-woods, the screaming
of the catamounts in the near-by tree-tops, the sterile dog-star
drying up the crops, the marching of my father to fight in the
threatened Aroostook war, all conspired for months before this fateful
night to awaken a restlessness, discontent, and gloomy forebodings in
the lonely mother's heart which prenatal influences impressed upon the
mind of the baby yet unborn.
All through that wretched summer, scorching drought alternating
with cloud-bursts vied with each other in blasting the hopes of the
farmers, and premature frost destroyed the few remaining stalks of
corn, so that when the winter snows came, gaunt famine stared our
family fiercely in the face.
My father and three brothers faced the withering storms bravely,
unpacking their internal stores of sunshine, as the camel in the
desert draws refreshment from his inner tank when outward water fails.
We were isolated from human companionship, except when occasionally
the doctor came on the tops of the fences and branches of the
pine-trees to soothe the pains of my sickly mother. At this time the
snow was so deep that a tunnel was cut to the neighboring hovel where
shivered our ancient horse and cow.
My father and brothers tramped with snare and gun on snow-shoes
through the woods, securing occasionally a partridge or squirrel, and
semi-occasionally a deer, or pickerel from the lake. On one of these
occasions, two of my brothers and the dog met with an adventure which
nearly gave them deliverance from all earthly sorrows. As they faced
the terrible cold of a January morning, the wailing of the winds in
the tree-tops, and the few flying snowflakes foreboded a storm which
burst upon them in great fury while about two miles from home.
Bewildered and benumbed, they dug a hole in the snow down to the
earth, and were soon buried many feet deep, thus affording them some
relief from the cold; but they nearly famished with hunger and gave
themselves up for lost. Suddenly, the dog, who was huddled with them
for warmth, jumped away whining and scratching in great excitement.
He refused to obey their orders to be still and die in peace, but,
digging for some minutes, his claws struck a tree, then, rushing over
the boys and back again to the trees repeatedly, he roused them from
their lethargy to follow him; but nothing was visible but a hole in a
tree through which the dog jumped and barked furiously.
Cutting the hole larger with their axe, they found the interior to be
dry punk, which at once suggested the exhilarating thought of a fire,
and soon a delightful heat from the burning drywood permeated their
snow cave, the smoke being more endurable than the previous cold. All
at once they heard a strange snorting and scratching above in the
tree with whines which drove the dog wild with excitement, then,
with burning embers and suffocating smoke, down came a huge animal,
well-nigh breaking the necks of frantic dog and "rubbering" boys.
After this came the tug of war. Teeth, axe, gun, fire, dog, bear, and
boys all mixed up in a fight to the finish. Finally, as bruin was not
fully recovered from the comatose state of his winter hibernating,
after many scratches and thumps, cuts and shots, came the survival of
the fittest.
Not even imperial Caesar, with the world at his feet, could have been
prouder than were boys and dog when they looked at their prostrate
foe, and reflected that this conquest meant the physical salvation
of our entire family. Soon the chips flew from the tree, and over a
cheerful fire they roasted and devoured bear steaks to repletion.
Digging to the surface, they found that the storm had subsided, and
rigging a temporary sled from the boughs of the tree, they dragged
home this "meat in due season."
All through the hours of the following night the wolves, attracted by
the scent of blood, howled and scratched frantically around the hut,
calling for their share in that "chain of destruction," by which the
laws of the universe have ordained that all creatures shall subsist.
The infant, of course, joined lustily in the chorus until the boys
almost wished themselves back in their shroud of snow.
So, with alternate feasting and fasting we passed the long weeks of
that Arctic winter until the frogs in the neighboring swamp crying:
"Knee deep, knee deep," and "better go round, better go round,"
proclaimed the season of freshets when the vast plain below us was
traversible only in boats. Then the birds returned from the far South,
but brought no seed-time or harvest, for that was the ever to be
remembered "Year without a summer," and but for the wild ducks and
geese shot on the lake, and the wary and uncertain fish caught with
the hook, all human lives in that region would have returned to the
invisible from whence they came.
It seemed as if chaos and dark night had come back to those wild
woods. The migratory fever seized upon us all, and my parents
determined to seek some unknown far away, to sail to the beautiful
land of somewhere, for they felt sure that--
Somewhere the sun is shining,
Elsewhere the song-birds dwell;
And they hushed their sad repining
In the faith that somewhere all is well.
Somewhere the load is lifted
Close by an open gate;
Out there the clouds are rifted,
Somewhere the angels wait.
CHAPTER II.
MY FIRST VOYAGE.
My father and brothers constructed a "prairie schooner" from our
scanty belongings, and one forlorn morning in early autumn, with the
skeleton horse and cow harnessed tandem for motive power, we all set
sail for far-off Massachusetts.
We slept beneath our canopy of canvas and blankets; those of our
number able to do so worked occasionally for any who would hire,
but employers were few, as this was one of the crazy seasons in the
history of our Republic when the people voted for semi-free trade, and
the mill wheels were nearly all silent for the benefit of the mills of
foreign nations. They shot squirrels and partridges when ammunition
could be obtained, forded rivers, narrowly escaping drowning in the
swift currents, and suffered from chills and fever.
One dark night some gypsies stole our antediluvian horse and cow. The
barking of the faithful dog awakened father and brothers who rushed
to the rescue, leaving mother half dead with fear; but at length the
marauders were overtaken, shots were exchanged, heads were broken, and
after a fierce struggle and long wandering, lost in the woods, our
fiery steeds were once more chained to our chariot wheels.
The next day we came to a wide river which it was impossible to ford,
but mercy, which sometimes "tempers the blast to the shorn lamb," sent
us relief in the shape of an antiquated gundalow floating on the tide.
Like Noah and family of old, we managed to embark on this ancient ark,
and paddled to the further shore.
There we miraculously escaped the scalping knife and tomahawk. While
painfully making our way through the primeval forest, we were suddenly
saluted by the ferocious war-whoop, and a dozen Indians barred our
way, flourishing their primitive implements of warfare. A shot from
father's double-barreled gun sent them flying to cover, our steeds
rushed forward with a speed hitherto unknown, the prairie schooner
rocked like a boat in a cyclone, the mother shrieked, the _enfant
terrible_ howled like a bull of Bashan, and just as the "Red devils"
were closing in from the rear, the mouth of a cave loomed up in the
hillside into which dashed "pegasus and mooly cow" pell-mell.
Our red admirers halted almost at the muzzle of the gun and the blades
of my brothers' axes. Luckily the Indians had neither firearms nor
bows and arrows. They made rushes occasionally, but the shotgun
wounded several, the axes intimidated, and they seemed about to settle
down to a siege when, with a tremendous shouting and singing of
"Tippecanoe and Tyler too," a band of picturesquely arrayed white men
came marching along the trail. The enemy took to their heels, and we
learned that our rescuers had been to a William Henry Harrison parade
and barbecue, for this was the time of the famous "hard cider"
campaign.
The Indians had been there too and, filling up with "fire water,"
their former war-path proclivities had returned to their "empty,
swept, and garnished" minds, to the extent that they yearned to
decorate their belts with our scalps.
Our preservers scattered to their homes, and the would-be scalpers
were seen no more, leaving the world to darkness and to us in the
woods. The woods, where Adam and Eve lived and loved, where Pan
piped, and Satyrs danced, the opera house of birds; the woods, green,
imparadisaical, mystic, tranquillizing--to the poet perhaps when all
is well--but to us, they seemed haunted by spirits of evil, the yells
of the demons seemed to echo and reecho; but an indefinable something
seemed to sympathize with the infinite pathos of our lives, and at
last sleep, "the brother of death," folded us in his arms, and the
curtain fell.
"There is a place called Pillow-land,
Where gales can never sweep
Across the pebbles on the strand
That girds the Sea of Sleep.
'Tis here where grief lets loose the rein,
And age forgets to weep,
For all are children once again,
Who cross the Sea of Sleep.
The gates are ope'd at daylight close,
When weary ones may creep,
Lulled in the arms of sweet repose,
Across the Sea of Sleep.
Oh weary heart, and toil-worn hand,
At eve comes rest to thee,
When ply the boats to Pillow-land,
Across the Sleepy sea.
Thank God for this sweet Pillow-land,
Where weary ones may creep,
And breathe the perfume on the strand
That girds the Sea of Sleep."
It is pleasant in this sunset of life, to recall the testimony of my
brothers that through all those troublous scenes, father and mother
were soothed and consoled by an unfaltering faith in the ultimate
triumph of the good and true, that their faces were often illumined as
they repeated to each other those priceless words of the sweet singer,
"Drifting over a sunless sea, cold dreary mists encircling me,
Toiling over a dusty road with foes within and foes abroad,
Weary, I cast my soul on Thee, mighty to save even me,
Jesus Thou Son of God."
At last the "perils by land and perils by sea, and perils from false
brethren," this long, long journey ended and we reached the promised
land. We halted in old Byfield, in the state of Massachusetts, with
worldly goods consisting of a bushel of barberries, threadbare
toilets, and the ancient equipage dilapidated as aforesaid.
After much tribulation, father took a farm "on shares," which was
found to result in endless toil to us, and the lion's share of the
crops going to the owners, who toiled not, neither did they spin, but
reaped with gusto where we had sown.
After a few years of this profitless drudgery, my father bought an old
run-down farm with dilapidated buildings in the neighboring town of
R----, mortgaging all, and our souls and bodies besides, for its
payment. We hoped we had rounded the cape of storms which sooner or
later looms up before every ship which sails the sea of life, for we
had fully realized the truth of the poem--
We may steer our boats by the compass,
Or may follow the northern star;
We may carry a chart on shipboard
As we sail o'er the seas afar;
But, whether by star or by compass
We may guide our boats on our way,
The grim cape of storms is before us,
And we'll see it ahead some day.
How the prow may point is no matter,
Nor of what the cargo may be,
If we sail on the northern ocean,
Or away on the southern sea;
It matters not who is the pilot,
To what guidance our course conforms;
No vessel sails o'er the sea of life
But must pass the cape of storms.
Sometimes we can first sight the headland
On the distant horizon's rim;
We enter the dangerous waters
With our vessels taut and trim;
But often the cape in its grimness
Will before us suddenly rise,
Because of the clouds that have hid it
Or the blinding sun in our eyes.
Our souls will be caught in the waters
That are hurled at the storm cape's face;
Our pleasures and joys, our hopes and fears,
Will join in the maddening race.
Our prayers, desires, our penitent griefs,
Our longings and passionate pain,
Be dashed to spray on the stormy cape
And fly in our faces like rain.
But there's always hope for the sailor,
There is ever a passage through;
No life goes down at the cape of storms,
If the life and the heart lie true.
If in purpose the soul is steadfast,
If faithful in mind and in will,
The boat will glide to the other side,
Where the ocean of life is still.
[Illustration: "It was a Fair Scene of Tranquillity."]
CHAPTER III.
NEAR TO NATURE'S HEART.
It seems but yesterday, although more than a half century ago, that I,
a puny boy, stood on the hilltop and looked for the first time upon
this, the earliest home of which I have any vivid recollection. It
was a fair scene of rustic tranquillity, where a contented mind might
delight to spend a lifetime mid hum of bees and low of kine.
Along the eastern horizon's rim loomed the blue sea beyond the sandy
dunes of old Plum Island; the lazy river born in babbling brooks and
bubbling springs flowing languidly mid wooded islands, and picturesque
stacks of salt hay, representing the arduous toil of farmers and
dry-as-dust fodder for reluctant cows. Nearer, the two church spires
of the little village, striving to lift the sordid minds of the
natives from earthly clods to the clouds, and where beckoning hands
strove vainly to inspire them with heavenly hopes; around them,
glistening in the sunlight, the marble slabs where sleep the rude
forefathers of the hamlet, some mute inglorious Miltons who came from
England in the early sixties, whose tombstones are pierced by rifle
bullets fired at the maraudering red skins. These are the cities of
the dead, far more populous than the town of the living.
Nearer, the willowy brook that turns the mill; to the south the dense
pine woods, peopled in our imaginations, with fairy elves, owls, and
hobgoblins--now, alas, owing to the rapacity of the sawmills, naught
but a howling wilderness of stumps and underbrush.
Directly below me, stands our half-century old house with its eaves
sloping to the ground, down which generations of boys had ruined their
pants in hilarious coasting; near by, the ancient well-swipe, and the
old oaken bucket which rose from the well; beyond this, of course,
as usual, the piggery and hennery to contaminate the water and breed
typhoid fever, and in the house cellar, the usual dampness from the
hillside to supply us all with rheumatism and chills.
There existed apparently in the early dawn of the nineteenth century,
an unwritten law which required the farmers to violate all the laws of
sanitation, and then to ascribe all ills the flesh is heir to, to the
mysterious will of an inscrutable Providence whose desire it was to
make the heart better by the sorrows of the countenance, and to save
the soul from hell by the punishment of the body. Vegetables were
allowed to rot in the cellars, and to make everybody sick with
their noxious odors so that we might not be too much wedded to this
transitory existence. Pork, beans, and cabbage must be devoured in
enormous quantities just before going to bed for the purpose of
inspiring midnight groans and prayers to be delivered from the pangs
of the civil war in the inner man.
This moralizing is inspired by the pessimism of disenchanted age; but
on that beautiful morning of the long ago, naught occurred to me
save the wedlock of earth and heaven: I was near to nature's heart,
listening to the ecstatic songs of the robins, the orioles and
sweetest of all the bobolink.
"Oh, winged rapture, feathered soul of spring:
Blithe voice of woods, fields, waters, all in one,
Pipe blown through by the warm, mild breath of June,
Shepherding her white flocks of woolly clouds,
The bobolink has come, and climbs the wind
With rippling wings that quiver not for flight
But only joy, or yielding to its will
Runs down, a brook of laughter through the air."
After the charm of the novelty of the scene had vanished, I descended
from my perch to explore this sleepy hollow: the barn door hung
suspended on a single hinge, like a bird with but one unbroken wing to
soar upon. The swallows twittered their love-songs under the eaves;
chipmunks scolded my intrusion and threw nuts at my head from the
beams; a lone, lorn hen proclaimed her triumph over a new laid egg,
and then, with fiery eyes, assaulted me with profanity as I filled
my hat with her choicest treasures. A litter of pigs scampered away,
wedging themselves into a hole in the wall, and hung there kicking and
squealing, while their indignant mother chased me up a ladder where
she hurled at me the vilest imprecations; a solitary Phoebe bird
wailed out her plaintive "pee wee, pee wee, pee whi itt," and a
newly-married pair of sandpipers chanted their song of the sea on the
edge of a mud puddle in the yard.
At last the infuriated sow went to liberate her wedged-in offspring,
leaving me to flee to the house where I cooked my eggs and some
ancient potatoes in the ashes of a fire smoldering in the wide old
fireplace. I have since eaten royal dinners in palatial hotels, but
nothing has ever tasted half as good as this extemporized lunch of my
boyhood.
Here the rest of the family found me later when they came bringing
their household goods; here I might have laid, broad and deep, the
foundations of a useful life, had I possessed even a modicum of the
stick-to-itiveness so essential to success.
A limited amount of discontent is a powerful stimulus to more
strenuous endeavor; but when you have intensity without continuity of
mental action, beware of imitating my example of progressing along the
lines of the least resistance; for if you do you will never attain
to that persistency of effort which can come only from overcoming
obstacles.
When my father gave me a moderate task of weeding onions, I soon
became tired of crawling on hands and knees under a scorching sun,
inundating the earth with perspiration and tears, so I substituted a
hoe for fingers, tearing up onions with the weeds that I might the
sooner secure unlimited rheumatism by bathing in the brook. Had
my father given me what he earnestly desired, and what I richly
deserved,--a sound spanking, and more weeding to do,--I might have
developed much needed perseverance, but spanking was never allowed by
my fond mother, and I became a shirk.
I was set to picking berries to replenish the family larder; but
this soon became monotonous, and I appropriated the old grain-sieve,
placing it beside the bushes, and pounding the huckleberries into it
with a stick; the result was a heterogeneous conglomeration of worms,
leaves, bugs, and crushed berries; but I succeeded in eliminating the
refuse by throwing the whole mass into a tub of water, and skimming
off the risings. I would then descant to buyers upon the freshness
of the berries wet with the dews of heaven, but my ruse was soon
discovered, and people refused to purchase such mucilaginous pulp.
Our widowed hired woman was possessed of a baby, and I was assigned
the task of rocking the cradle; but I soon sighed for the apple
blossoms and songs of birds,--we had no English sparrows then--so I
drove a nail into the cradle, tied to it the clothes-line, and went
out of doors and began pulling at the cord. Soon agonizing screams
were heard, and baby was found on the floor with the cradle pounding
on top of him.
I was sent to drive home the cows from pasture, but left the task to
the dog, who chased them over the wall into the corn-field where they
devastated the crop, and ruined the milk by devouring green apples,
while I, skylarking in a neighbor's pasture, was treed by an angry
bull, who kept me in the branches until I caught a violent cold and
became for weeks a family burden.
I was set to milking the cows, but I tied their tails to the beams,
applied a lemon-squeezer to their udders until everybody was aroused
by the bellowings of the infuriated beasts, and the milk and myself
were found carpeting the dirty floor.
At last all patience was exhausted, and as I was born on Sunday, and
was good for nothing else my parents, good, pious church-members,
concluded I must become a minister, consequently they sent me to
school. School! What memories come back to us over the arid wastes of
life at the very mention of this magic word! There is the place where
immortal minds are filled with loathing at the very sight of books,
or where the torch of learning is kindled, which burns on with
ever-increasing brightness forever more, and when I think of some of
the teachers of my youth I am reminded of what the wise pastor said to
a "stupid lunk-head" who had conceived the preposterous idea that he
was called to be a preacher. "What, you be a minister?"
"Yes," said the dunce, "are we not commanded in the holy book to
preach the gospel to every critter?"
"Verily," was the reply; "but every critter is not commanded to preach
the gospel."
So long as percentages obtained after "cramming" for examinations are
the criterions which decide the accepting or rejecting of candidates
for teaching positions, we must expect "critters" for the school
guides of our children, who, like some of my own tutors, will
"Ram it in, cram it in--
Children's heads are hollow;
Rap it in, tap it in--
Bang it in, slam it in
Ancient archaeology,
Aryan philology,
Prosody, zoology,
Physics, climatology,
Calculus and mathematics,
Rhetoric and hydrostatics.
Stuff the school children, fill up the heads of them,
Send them all lesson-full home to the beds of them;
When they are through with the labor and show of it,
What do they care for it, what do they know of it?"
CHAPTER IV.
JOYS AND SORROWS OF SCHOOL-DAYS.
It was the custom in R----, and is now to quite an extent elsewhere,
to elect as school committee those especially noted for their
ignorance and unfitness for the duties, perhaps to keep them out of
the almshouse, or to educate them by the absorption process while
hearing pupils recite. These men were paid two dollars for each call
they made at schools, consequently they "called" early and often,
especially when the school ma'ams were young and pretty.
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