Chapter 1

Produced by David Widger

THE MAN WHO STOLE A MEETING-HOUSE

By J. T. Trowbridge

From “Coupon Bonds.”

Copyright 1878, by James R. Osgood & Co

On a recent journey to the Pennsylvania oil regions, I stopped one evening with a fellow-traveler at a village which had just been thrown into a turmoil of excitement by the exploits of a horse-thief. As we sat around the tavern hearth, after supper, we heard the particulars of the rogue's capture and escape fully discussed; then followed many another tale of theft and robbery, told amid curling puffs of tobacco-smoke; until, at the close of an exciting story, one of the natives turned to my traveling acquaintance, and, with a broad laugh, said, “Kin ye beat that, stranger?”

“Well, I don't know--maybe I could if I should try. I never happened to fall in with any such tall horse-stealing as you tell of, but I knew a man who stole a meeting-house once.”

“Stole a meetin'-house! That goes a little beyant anything yit,” remarked another of the honest villagers. “Ye don't mean he stole it and carried it away?”

“Stole it and carried it away,” repeated my traveling companion, seriously, crossing his legs, and resting his arm on the hack of his chair. “And, more than all that, I helped him.”

“How happened that?--for you don't look much like a thief yourself.” All eyes were now turned upon my friend, a plain New England farmer, whose honest homespun appearance and candid speech commanded respect.

“I was his hired man, and I acted under orders. His name was Jedwort--Old Jedwort, the boys called him, although he wasn't above fifty when the crooked little circumstance happened which I'll make as straight a story of as I can, if the company would like to hear it.”

“Sartin, stranger! sartin! about stealin' the meetin'-house!” chimed in two or three voices.

My friend cleared his throat, put his hair behind his ears, and with a grave, smooth face, but with a merry twinkle in his shrewd gray eye, began as follows:

“Jedwort I said his name was; and I shall never forget how he looked one particular morning. He stood leaning on the front gate--or rather on the post, for the gate itself was such a shackling concern a child couldn't have leaned on't without breaking it down. And Jedwort was no child. Think of a stoutish, stooping, duck-legged man, with a mountainous back, strongly suggestive of a bag of grist under his shirt, and you have him. That imaginary grist had been growing heavier and heavier, and he more and more bent under it, for the last fifteen years and more, until his head and neck just came forward out from between his shoulders like a turtle's from its shell. His arms hung, as he walked, almost to the ground. Being curved with the elbows outward, he looked for all the world, in a front view, like a waddling interrogation-point inclosed in a parenthesis. If man was ever a quadruped, as I've heard some folks tell, and rose gradually from four legs to two, there must have been a time, very early in his history, when he went about like Old Jedwort.

“The gate had been a very good gate in its day. It had even been a genteel gate when Jedwort came into possession of the place by marrying his wife, who inherited it from her uncle. That was some twenty years before, and everything had been going to rack and ruin ever since.

“Jedwort himself had been going to rack and ruin, morally speaking. He was a middling decent sort of man when I first knew him; and I judge there must have been something about him more than common, or he never could have got such a wife. But then women do marry, sometimes, unaccountably. I've known downright ugly and disagreeable fellows to work around, till by and by they would get a pretty girl fascinated by something in them which nobody else could see, and then marry her in spite of everything;--just as you may have seen a magnetizer on the stage make his subjects do just what he pleased, or a black snake charm a bird. Talk about women marrying with their eyes open, under such circumstances! They don't marry with their eyes open: they are put to sleep, in one sense, and a'n't more than half responsible for what they do, if they are that. Then rises the question that has puzzled wiser heads than any of ours here, and will puzzle more yet, till society is different from what it is now--how much a refined and sensitive woman is bound to suffer from a coarse and disgusting master, legally called her husband, before she is entitled to break off a bad bargain she scarce had a hand in making. I've sat here to-night and heard about men getting goods under false pretences; you've told some astonishing big stories, gentlemen, about rogues stealing horses and sleighs; and I'm going to tell you about the man who stole a meeting-house; but, when all is said, I guess it will be found that more extraordinary thieving than all that often goes on under our own eyes, and nobody takes any notice of it. There's such a thing, gentlemen, as getting hearts under false pretences. There's such a thing as a man's stealing a wife.

“I speak with feeling on this subject, for I had an opportunity of seeing what Mrs. Jedwort had to put up with from a man no woman of her stamp could do anything but detest. She was the patientest creature you ever saw. She was even too patient. If I had been tied to such a cub, I think I should have cultivated the beautiful and benignant qualities of a wildcat; there would have been one good fight, and one of us would have been living, and the other would have been dead, and that would have been the end of it. But Mrs. Jedwort bore and bore untold miseries and a large number of children. She had had nine of these, and three were under the sod and six above it when Jedwort ran off with the meeting-house in the way I am going on to tell you. There was Maria, the oldest girl, a perfect picture of what her mother had been at nineteen. Then there were the two boys, Dave and Dan, fine young fellows, spite of their father. Then came Lottie, and Susie, and then Willie, a little four-year-old.

“It was amazing to see what the mother would do to keep her family looking decent with the little means she had. For Jedwort was the tightest screw ever you saw. It was avarice that had spoiled him, and came so near turning him into a beast. The boys used to say he grew so bent looking in the dirt for pennies. That was true of his mind, if not of his body. He was a poor man, and a pretty respectable man, when he married his wife; but he had no sooner come into possession of a little property than he grew crazy for more.

“There are a good many men in the world, that nobody looks upon as monomaniacs, who are crazy in just that sort of way. They are all for laying up money, depriving themselves of comforts, and their families of the advantages of society and education, just to add a few dollars to their hoard every year; and so they keep on till they die and leave it to their children, who would be much better off if a little more had been invested in the cultivation of their minds and manners, and less in stocks and bonds.

“Jedwort was just one of that class of men, although perhaps he carried the fault I speak of a little to excess. A dollar looked so big to him, and he held it so close, that at last he couldn't see much of anything else. By degrees he lost all regard for decency and his neighbor's opinions. His children went barefoot, even after they got to be great boys and girls, because he was too mean to buy them shoes. It was pitiful to see a nice, interesting girl, like Maria, go about looking as she did, while her father was piling his money into the bank. She wanted to go to school and learn music, and be somebody; but he wouldn't keep a hired girl, and so she was obliged to stay at home and do housework; and she could no more have got a dollar out of him to pay for clothes and tuition than you could squeeze sap out of a hoe-handle.

“The only way his wife could ever get anything new for the family was by stealing butter from her own dairy, and selling it behind his back. 'You needn't say anything to Mr. Jedwort about this batch of butter,' she would hint to the storekeeper; 'but you may hand the money to me, or I will take my pay in goods.' In this way a new gown, or a piece of cloth for the boys' coats, or something else the family needed, would be smuggled into the house, with fear and trembling lest old Jedwort should make a row and find where the money came from.

“The house inside was kept neat as a pin; but everything around it looked terribly shiftless. It was built originally in an ambitious style, and painted white. It had four tall front pillars, supporting the portion of the roof that came over the porch--lifting up the eyebrows of the house, if I may so express myself, and making it look as if it was going to sneeze. Half the blinds were off their hinges, and the rest flapped in the wind. The front doorstep had rotted away. The porch had once a good floor, but for years Jedwort had been in the habit of going to it whenever he wanted a board for the pig-pen, until not a bit of floor was left.

“But I began to tell about Jedwort leaning on the gate that morning. We had all noticed him; and as Dave and I brought in the milk, his mother asked, 'What is your father planning now? Half the time he stands there, looking up the road; or else he's walking up that way in a brown study.'

“'He's got his eye on the old meeting-house,' says Dave, setting down his pail. 'He has been watching it and walking round it, off and on, for a week.'

“That was the first intimation I had of what the old fellow was up to. But after breakfast he followed me out of the house, as if he had something on his mind to say to me.

“'Stark,' says he, at last, 'you've always insisted on't that I wasn't an enterprisin' man.'

“'I insist on't still,' says I; for I was in the habit of talking mighty plain to him, and joking him pretty hard sometimes. 'If I had this farm, I'd show you enterprise. You wouldn't see the hogs in the garden half the time, just for want of a good fence to keep 'em out. You wouldn't see the very best strip of land lying waste, just for want of a ditch. You wouldn't see that stone wall by the road tumbling down year after year, till by and by you won't be able to see it for the weeds and thistles.'

“'Yes,' says he, sarcastically, 'ye'd lay-out ten times as much money on the place as ye'd ever git back agin, I've no doubt. But I believe in economy.'

“That provoked me a little, and I said, 'Economy! You're one of the kind of men that'll skin a flint for sixpence and spoil a jack-knife worth a shilling. You waste fodder and grain enough every three years to pay for a bigger barn--to say nothing of the inconvenience.'

“'Wal, Stark,' says he, grinning and scratching his head, 'I've made up my mind to have a bigger barn, if I have to steal one.'

“'That won't be the first thing you've stole, neither,' says I.

“He flared up at that. 'Stole?' says he. 'What did I ever steal?'

“'Well, for one thing, the rails the freshet last spring drifted off from Talcott's land onto yours, and you grabbed: what was that but stealing?'

“'That was luck. He couldn't swear to his rails. By the way, they'll jest come in play now.'

“'They've come in play already,' says I. 'They've gone on to the old fences all over the farm, and I could use a thousand more without making much show.'

“'That's 'cause you're so dumbed extravagant with rails, as you are with everything else. A few loads can be spared from the fences here and there, as well as not. Harness up the team, boys, and git together enough to make about ten rods o' zigzag, two rails high.'

“'Two rails?' says Dave, who had a healthy contempt for the old man's narrow, contracted way of doing things. 'What's the good of such a fence as that?'

“'It'll be,' says I, 'like the single bar in music. When our old singing master asked his class once what a single bar was, Bill Wilkins spoke up and said, “It's a bar that horses and cattle jump over, and pigs and sheep run under.”'

“'What do you expect to keep out with two rails?'

“'The _law_, boys, the _law_,' says Jedwort. 'I know what I'm about. I'll make a fence the _law_ can't run under nor jump over; and I don't care a cuss for the cattle and pigs. You git the rails, and I'll rip some boards off'n the pig-pen to make stakes.'

“'Boards a'n't good for nothin' for stakes,' says Dave. 'Besides, none can't be spared from the pig-pen.'

“'I'll have boards enough in a day or two for forty pig-pens,' says Jedwort. 'Bring along the rails and dump 'em out in the road for the present, and say nothin' to nobody.'

“We got the rails, and he made his stakes; and right away after dinner he called us out. 'Come, boys,' says he, 'now we'll astonish the natives.'

“The wagon stood in the road, with the last jag of rails still on it. Jedwort piled on his stakes, and threw on the crowbar and axe, while we were hitching up the team.

“'Now, drive on, Stark,' says he.

“'Yes; but where shall I drive to?'

“'To the old meetin'-house,' says Jedwort, trudging on ahead.

“The old meeting-house stood on an open common, at the northeast corner of his farm. A couple of cross-roads bounded it on two sides; and it was bounded on the other two by Jedwort's overgrown stone wall. It was a square, old-fashioned building, with a low steeple, that had a belfry, but no bell in it, and with a high, square pulpit and high, straight-backed pews inside. It was now some time since meetings had been held there; the old society that used to meet there having separated, one division of it building a fashionable chapel in the North Village, and the other a fine new church at the Centre.

“Now, the peculiarity about the old church property was, that nobody had any legal title to it. A log meeting-house had been built there when the country was first settled and the land was of no account. In the course of time that was torn down, and a good frame house put up in its place. As it belonged to the whole community, no title, either to the house or land, was ever recorded; and it wasn't until after the society dissolved that the question came up as to how the property was to be disposed of. While the old deacons were carefully thinking it over, Jed-wort was on hand, to settle it by putting in his claim.

“'Now, boys,' says he, 'ye see what I'm up to.'

“'Yes,' says I, provoked as I could be at the mean trick, 'and I knew it was some such mischief all along. You never show any enterprise, as you call it, unless it is to get the start of a neighbor. Then you are wide awake; then you are busy as the Devil in a gale of wind.'

“'But what _are_ you up to, pa?' says Dan, who didn't see the trick yet.

“The old man says, 'I'm goin' to fence in the rest part of my farm.'

“'What rest part?'

“'This part that never was fenced; the old meetin'-house common.'

“'But, pa,' says Dave, disgusted as I was, 'you've no claim on that.'

“'Wal, if I ha'n't, I'll make a claim. Give me the crowbar. Now, here's the corner, nigh as I can squint'; and he stuck the bar into the ground. 'Make a fence to here from the wall, both sides.'

“'Sho, pa!' says Dan, looking bewildered; 'ye a'n't goin' to fence in the old meetin'-house, be ye?'

“'That's jest what I'm goin' to do. Go and git some big stuns from the wall--the biggest ye can find, to rest the corners of the fence on. String the rails along by the road, Stark, and go for another load. Don't stand gawpin' there!'

“'_Gawpin'?_' says I; 'it's enough to make anybody _gawp_. You do beat all the critters I ever had to deal with. Haven't ye disgraced your family enough already, without stealing a meeting-house?'

“'How have I disgraced my family?' says he.

“Then I put it to him. 'Look at your children; it's all your wife can do to prevent 'em from growing up in rags and dirt and ignorance, because you are too close-fisted to clothe 'em decently or send 'em to school. Look at your house and yard. To see an Irishman's shanty in such a condition seems appropriate enough, but a genteel place, a house with pillars, run down and gone to seed like that, is an eyesore to the community. Then look at your wife. You never would have had any property to mismanage if it hadn't been for her; and see the way you show your gratitude for it. You won't let her go into company, nor have company at home; you won't allow a hired girl in the house, but she and Maria have to do all the drudgery. You make perfect slaves of 'em. I swear, if it wa'n't for your wife, I wouldn't work for you an hour longer; but she's the best woman in the world, after all you've done to break her spirit, and I hate to leave her.'

“The old fellow squirmed, and wrenched the crowbar in the ground, then snarled back: 'Yes! you're waitin' for me to die; then you mean to step into my shoes.'

“'I hope you'll have a decenter pair than them you've got on, if I'm to step into 'em,' says I.

“'One thing about it,' says he, 'she won't have ye.'

“'I should think,' says I, 'a woman that would marry you would have 'most anybody.'

“So we had it back and forth, till by and by he left me to throw off the rails, and went to show the boys how to build the fence.

“'Look here,' says he; 'jest put a thunderin' big stun to each corner; then lay your rail on; then drive your pair of stakes over it like a letter X.' He drove a pair. 'Now put on your rider. There's your letter X, ridin' one length of rails and carryin' another. That's what I call puttin' yer alphabet to a practical use; and I say there a'n't no sense in havin' any more education than ye _can_ put to a practical use. I've larnin' enough to git along in the world; and if my boys have as much as I've got, they'll git along. Now work spry, for there comes Deacon Talcott.'

“'Wal, wall' says the Deacon, coming up, puffing with excitement; 'what ye doin' to the old meetin'-house?'

“'Wal,' says Jedwort, driving away at his stakes, and never looking up, 'I've been considerin' some time what I should do with't, and I've concluded to make a barn on't.'

“'Make a barn! make a barn!' cries the Deacon. 'Who give ye liberty to make a barn of the house of God?'

“'Nobody; I take the liberty. Why shouldn't I do what I please with my own prop'ty?'

“'Your own property--what do you mean? 'Ta'n't your meetin'-house.'

“'Whose is't, if 'ta'n't mine?' says Jedwort, lifting his turtle's head from between his horizontal shoulders, and grinning in the Deacon's face.

“'It belongs to the society,' says the Deacon.'

“'But the s'ciety's pulled up stakes and gone off.'

“'It belongs to individooals of the society--to individooals.'

“'Wal, I'm an individooal,' says Jedwort.

“'You! you never went to meetin' here a dozen times in your life!'

“'I never did have my share of the old meet-in'-house, that's a fact,' says Jedwort; 'but I'll make it up now.'

“'But what are ye fencin' up the common for?' says the Deacon.

“'It'll make a good calf-pastur'. I've never had my share o' the vally o' that, either. I've let my neighbors' pigs and critters run on't long enough; and now I'm jest goin' to take possession o' my own.'

“'Your own!' says the Deacon, in perfect consternation. 'You've no deed on't.'

“'Wal, have you?'

“'No--but--the society--'

“'The s'ciety, I tell ye,' says Jedwort, holding his head up longer than I ever knew him to hold it up at a time and grinning all the while in Tal-cott's face--'the s'ciety is split to pieces. There a'n't no s'ciety now--any more'n a pig's a pig arter you've butchered and e't it. You've e't the pig amongst ye, and left me the pen. The s'ciety never had a deed o' this 'ere prop'ty; and no man never had a deed o' this e're prop'ty. My wife's gran'daddy, when he took up the land here, was a good-natered sort of man, and he allowed a corner on't for his neighbors to put up a temp'rary meetin'-house. That was finally used up--the kind o' preachin' they had them days was enough to use up in a little time any house that wa'n't fire-proof; and when that was preached to pieces, they put up another shelter in its place. This is it. And now't the land a'n't used no more for the puppose 'twas lent for, it goes back nat'rally to the estate 'twas took from, and the buildin's along with it.'

“'That's all a sheer fabrication,' says the Deacon. 'This land was never a part of what's now your farm, any more than it was a part of mine.'

“'Wal,' says Jedwort, 'I look at it in my way, and you've a perfect right to look at it in your way. But I'm goin' to make sure o' my way, by puttin' a fence round the hull concern.'

“'And you're usin' some of my rails for to do it with!' says the Deacon.

“'Can you swear they're your rails?'

“'Yes, I can; they're the rails the freshet carried off from my farm last spring, and landed on to yourn.'

“'So I've heard ye say. But can you swear to the partic'lar rails? Can you swear, for instance, 't this 'ere is your rail? or this 'ere one?'

“'No; I can't swear to precisely them two--but--'

“'Can you swear to these two? or to any one or two?' says Jedwort. 'No, ye can't. Ye can swear to the lot in general, but you can't swear to any partic'lar rail, and that kind o' swearin' won't stand law, Deacon Talcott. I don't boast of bein' an edicated man, but I know suthin' o' what law is, and when I know it, I dror a line there, and I toe that line, and I make my neighbors toe that line, Deacon Talcott. Nine p'ints o' the law is possession, and I'll have possession o' this 'ere house and land by fencin' on't in; and though every man't comes along should say these 'ere rails belong to them, I'll fence it in with these 'ere very rails.'

“Jedwort said this, wagging his obstinate old head, and grinning with his face turned up pugnaciously at the Deacon; then went to work again as if he had settled the question, and didn't wish to discuss it any further.

“As for Talcott, he was too full of wrath and boiling indignation to answer such a speech. He knew that Jedwort had managed to get the start of him with regard to the rails, by mixing a few of his own with those he had stolen, so that nobody could tell 'em apart; and he saw at once that the meeting-house was in danger of going the same way, just for want of an owner to swear out a clear title to the property. He did just the wisest thing when he swallowed his vexation, and hurried off to alarm the leading men of the two societies, and to consult a lawyer.

“'He'll stir up the old town like a bumblebee's nest,' says Jedwort. 'Hurry up, boys, or there'll be a buzzin' round our ears 'fore we git through!'

“'I wish ye wouldn't, pa!' says Dave, 'Why don't we 'tend to our own business, and be decent, like other folks? I'm sick of this kind of life.'

“'Quit it, then,' says Jedwort.

“'Do you tell me to quit it?' says Dave, dropping the end of a rail he was handling.

“'Yes, I do; and do it dumbed quick, if ye can't show a proper respect to your father!”

“Dave turned white as a sheet, and he trembled as he answered back, 'I should be glad to show you respect, if you was a man I could feel any respect for.'

“At that Jedwort caught hold of the iron bar that was sticking in the ground, where he had been making a hole for a stake, and pulled away at it. 'I'll make a stake-hole in you!' says he. 'It's enough to have a sassy hired man round, without bein' jawed by one's own children!'

“Dave was out of reach by the time the bar came out of the ground.

“'Come here, you villain!' says the old man.

“'I'd rather be excused,' says Dave, backing off. 'I don't want any stake-holes made in me to-day. You told me to quit, and I'm going to, You may steal your own meeting-houses in future; I won't help.'

“There was a short race. Dave's young legs proved altogether too smart for the old waddler's, and he got off. Then Jedwort, coming back, wheezing and sweating, with his iron bar, turned savagely on me.

“I've a good notion to tell you to go too!'