CHAPTER VIII.

INFLUENCE OF HOPE.

As the old gentleman ended, James heard the crash of a falling tree, and saw that Bertie had just dropped a much larger tree than the senior had given to him, and had also cut it right hand forward; this determined him, and he began to chop into the side of another tree while his instructor, feeling that James would rather not have his eye upon him, went to help Bertie.

James took very good care to cut the tree almost off in his usual way, in order that he might be compelled to chop as little as possible in the new fashion (that is, new to him); he however found that little sufficiently puzzling. Two only out of five blows that struck upon the upper slanting side of his kerf took effect in the same place, but when he came to strike in square across on the lower side, the first blow hit the root of the tree, and the edge of the axe came within a hair’s breadth of a stone; the next struck about half way between the root and the spot aimed at, and the third alone reached the right place. James sweat, grew red in the face, and showered blows at random, very few of which effected anything, and when at length the tree came down the stump looked as if it had been gnawed by rats. In cutting up the tree, James recovered his equanimity, his nervous spasm passed off, and, resolved to conquer, he cut the next only half way off in his usual manner, and when he turned to the other side, succeeded so much better as to feel somewhat encouraged, especially as he was assured by Bertie that it was long before he learned to chop right hand forward, and that in his opinion James was getting along remarkably fast, and would soon be able to chop as easily with his right hand forward as with the left.

They had brought their dinners with them, and besides a jug of hot coffee wrapped in a blanket to keep it warm. Bertie had also brought a gun, and while James was making a great fire against a ledge of rocks he shot a wild turkey, a great gobbler, and they roasted it before the fire, and also roasted potatoes in the ashes, and set the coffee jug in the hot ashes till the contents fairly boiled. They now made a soft seat for grandfather with bushes, on which they spread their jackets, and he sat with his back against the ledge that was warmed from the heat of the fire, while the sun shone bright upon his person, and then they fell to, with appetites sharpened by labor and the breath of the woods, and had a great feast, drinking their coffee out of birch-bark cups that the grandfather made and put together with the spike of a thorn-bush for a pin.

This, which was but an ordinary affair to Bertie and his grandfather, opened a new world to James. It was the first time in his experience that pleasure was ever connected with labor. Hitherto labor with him recalled no pleasant associations; it was hard, grinding toil, performed to obtain bread, and under the eye of a task-master, and dinner was for the most part a little bread and cheese, eaten under a hedge, or rick of grain, with a mug of beer to wash down the bread, made largely of peas,—with the dark background of the past and a hopeless future,—but now every moment and every morsel was full of enjoyment. The good old man, refreshed by rest and a hearty meal, breathing once more the air of the woods where he loved to be, and exhilarated by old and pleasant associations, was in a most jovial mood, that infected his companions; and when Bertie, in response to some humorous remark of his grandfather, broke out in a ringing laugh, James joined heartily in it. The surprise of Bertie at such a development can only be imagined, not described. His features expressed wonder, mingled with surprise, in so ludicrous a manner as to provoke another peal of laughter from James, who from that moment became a different boy. The fetters that had bound him to despondency as with gyves of steel were loosened. A ray of sunlight darted athwart the gloom, hope was born, and a dim consciousness of something higher and nobler began to dawn upon him. He stretched himself on the ground beside the fire, and lay looking up into the sky in a perfect dream of happiness. Rousing himself at length, he asked the old gentleman who planted all the trees on that land.

“The Lord planted them; they’ve always been here; as fast as one dies or is cut down another comes up. We don’t plant trees here, except fruit trees; we cut ‘em down. When I came on to this farm it was all forest, and no neighbor within nine miles.”

“It must be some great duke or earl who owns this land. I shouldn’t think he’d let you cut down so many trees. In England, if you cut a little tree as big as a ramrod you’d be sent to jail, and I don’t know but be hung.”

“Dukes or earls! We don’t have any such vermin here; but my father came from England, and we’ve heard him say that there a few great proprietors own all the land, and the farmers are mostly tenants and pay rent. Thank God, any man who has his health and is sober and industrious can own land here.”

“Does Bertie’s father own all this land?”

“Yes, it was mine; I gave it to him.”

“You can own a piece of land, James,” said Bertie; “I am saving my money to buy a piece of land. I’ve got twenty dollars now, and a yoke of steers that I am going to sell. I mean to have a farm of my own, and raise lots of wheat, just as grandfather did, and then when I’m old I can tell what I did, just as he does; and I hope there will be a war, so that I can fight, and have it to tell of, and be made much of, just as he is.”

“Such as me have a farm!” and James smiled incredulously.

“Sartain you can,” replied the senior; “if you are steady and industrious and learn to work, when you have done here you can obtain all the work you want at good wages. It takes but little money to buy wild land. You can go where land is cheap and begin as I did.”

This was an idea too large for James to grasp, and seemed, though magnificent, altogether fantastic. He again smiled incredulously, and repeated to himself in a low tone, “Such as me have a farm!”

“Why do you say such as me?” replied the senior, who overheard the remark. “If you want to be a man, and to be well thought of and respected, and to have friends, all in the world you have to do in this country is to learn to work and read and write and be honest; and nobody is going to ask or care who your father was, all they will want to be satisfied about is as to what you are. There’s nothing can hinder you, nothing can keep you down.

“But there’s another thing, and it is of more consequence than all the rest. If you want to feel right and prosper, fear the Lord who giveth food to man and beast.

“When I came into these woods, all I had left after paying for my land was the clothes on my back, my rifle, a few charges of powder and shot, a narrow axe and a week’s provisions; all my wife had was her spinning-wheel, cards, a few pounds of wool, two pewter plates, one bottle and the clothes on her back and some blankets. I carried a pack on my back, and my axe, and hauled the other stuff on a sledge—for it was the last of March and there was plenty of snow in the woods—she carried my rifle and a bundle.”

“But, Mr. Whitman,” said James, “if it was all woods and nobody lived near, where were you and your wife going to stop?”

“My intention was to cut out a place to build a log-house, and I had expected to reach the spot at noon, so as to be able to make a bush camp by night to shelter us while building; but the travelling was bad, the sun was down before reaching the spot and we came into the woods by twilight.

“I built a fire after scraping away the snow with a piece of bark, and as we sat by it and listened to the sound of the wind among the trees, you don’t know how solemn it seemed.”

“I should have thought you would have felt afraid,” said Bertie.

“I had been well instructed, and both myself and wife had professed to fear God—and did fear him—but we did not fear much else, though we had but a week’s food, and were nine miles from any human being. We knelt down together and I told my Maker there and then, that my wife and I were a couple of his poor children; that she was an orphan and had been put out since she was twelve years of age and had never had any home of her own. That we had nothing but our hands, and health, and strength, and were about to begin for ourselves in His woods; and wanted to begin with His blessing. That we would try to do right, and if we found any poorer or worse off than ourselves, would help them and be content with and thankful for whatever He gave us, be it little or much.

“I then made a bed of brush for my wife, covered her with blankets, threw some light brush on them, and sat all night by the fire with my rifle in hand.”

“I guess grandmother didn’t sleep much?” said Bertie.

“She slept all night like one of God’s lambs, as she was, though she had the courage of a lion. The next day I made a shelter of brush that kept out rain and snow, and by Saturday morning I had built a house of small-sized logs (such as your grandmother and I could roll up) with a bark roof, a stone fireplace and chimney of sticks and clay. I had also shot a buck, we brought a peck of Indian meal with us, your grandmother baked her first loaf of bread on the hearth, and we kept the Sabbath all alone in the woods with glad hearts. It is more than fifty years since I thus sought God’s blessing, and during all that time I have never lacked. I have raised up a large family of children; they are all well-to-do in the world. I am still able to be of some use, and am ready whenever the Master calls.

“Jeames, my laddie, fear God, you may be tempted to think trying to do right has in the past brought you nothing but unhappiness, that you have only been scorned and flouted because you would not take His name in vain. But those bitter days will never come back. His providence has brought you to us, and should you live as long as I have, you will never regret having put your trust in Him!”

No force of learning, eloquence, or wit, could have produced so genial and abiding an impression upon James, as the words we have recorded. The character and person of the speaker himself—the very situation, beside a forest fire—all tended to heighten both the moral and physical effect of the sentiments uttered.

The elder Whitman possessed indeed a most commanding presence. His great bones and sinews, now that the body was attenuated by age, stood out in such bold relief as to challenge attention; showing the vast strength he once possessed, and that still lingered in those massive limbs, while the burden of years had neither bowed his frame, nor had age dimmed the fire of his eye.

In addition to all this, the accounts James had heard from Bertie of his encounters with the red men, and with bears, and wolves, together with the scars of wounds that he had upon his person, supplemented by the respect and affection with which he was treated by the whole household, caused James to look upon and listen to him with awe and wonder.

He could understand the plain and terse utterances of the old woodsman, and they gave a new and strong impulse to ideas and trains of thought that were now germinating within him.

The next morning, as Mr. Whitman wanted the four horses to haul wheat, he told Bertie they must take the oxen and cart with them, and bring home a load of wood both at noon and night. He also told his father that he had better not go, that two days’ work in succession and the travel back and forth were too much for him. The old gentleman, however, said it was not, he could ride in the cart; and that as they were now to cut larger trees, it was not safe to leave the boys to fell them alone.

James had never seen an ox in the yoke, and he was much surprised to see with what docility the near ox came across the yard to come under the yoke, when Bertie held up the end of it and said,—

“Bright, come under.”

He also observed how readily they obeyed the motion of the goad, and handled the cart just as they were directed.

“I never thought a bullock knew anything, but they seem to know as much as horses,” said James.

“Yes, just as much.”

Having ground their axes—with grandfather in the cart—they started, and when they came to the wood the oxen were unyoked to go where they pleased.

“Won’t they run away?” said James.

“No, they saw the axes in the cart and know what we are going to do; you see they don’t offer to start. The very first tree we fell, if it is hard wood or hemlock, they’ll come to browse the limbs. They love to browse dearly, and all day they won’t go farther than a spring there is near, to drink.”

They now began to cut the trees, and the moment the cattle heard the sound of the axes they came running to the spot.

“What did I tell you?” said Bertie. “They know what the sound of an axe means, just as I know when I come home from school and see mother look into the oven, or reach her hand up on the top shelf, she’s got something good laid away for me.”

A road was first cleared, and then the trees were cut into lengths of sixteen feet, and rolled up in piles on the sides of the road.

“What makes your grandfather have them cut so long, they can never be put into a cart?” said James.

“This wood is for next winter, and won’t be hauled till snow comes, and then it will be hauled on two sleds put one behind the other.”

Mrs. Whitman insisted that grandfather should take a nap after dinner, and as Bertie had to wait to haul him out, James went to the wood-lot alone. He had felled a large hemlock and was cutting off the first log, when he observed a man on horseback attentively watching him. In a few moments the man rode up and inquired where Mr. Whitman was. James replied that he had gone to the mill with a load of wheat. He then inquired if the oxen were there, James told him they would be along in a few minutes, and as they were talking Bertie and the old gentleman came. This person was the drover who had seen James holding plough, and who occasioned so much merriment by saying so at the tavern. He felt of the cattle, took a chain from his pocket, measured them, and then told the old gentleman to inform his son to be at home the next Monday, for he was coming that way then, and wanted to trade with him for the oxen and some lambs.

When, on the next Saturday night, the usual company of idlers and hard drinkers assembled in the bar-room of the tavern, the drover added still more to the muddle of conflicting opinions in regard to James by telling the crowd that he “went through the woods to Malcom’s, after lambs, and, as he returned through Whitman’s woods, came across the redemptioner chopping alone. That he had just cut a big hemlock and was junking it up and handled an axe right smart. That he made some talk with him and called him a real good-looking, rugged, civil-spoken fellow,” and went on to say that he “wouldn’t give him for two, yes, three, of that Blaisdell, Mr. Woods had got. The boy certainly was not lame, for he stood on the tree to chop, and when he got down to speak to him didn’t limp a particle, and he believed all the stories told about him were a pack of lies, got up to hurt a civil young man because he was a foreigner.”

This brought out the tavern-keeper, and the dispute came near ending in a downright brawl, and was only prevented by the drover proposing to “treat all hands and drop it.”

The elder Whitman was so much gratified with the progress made by James that he resolved to make him aware of it. The next day proved stormy, and after breakfast he brought out an axe that had been ground, and said,—

“James, that axe of yours is not fit to chop with. It is not the best of steel, nor is it made right to throw a chip, and the handle is too big and stiff; it’s just the handle to split, not to chop with. But there’s an axe Mr. Paul Rogers made for me that’s made just right to work easy in the wood, and he is the best man to temper an edge-tool I ever knew. My cutting days are about over and I’ll give it to you, and make a proper chopping handle to it, and then we’ll grind it and you’ll have a good axe.

“I’ve not the least doubt you’ll make a first rate chopper, and be real ‘sleighty’ with an axe. This is a heavier tool than I care to use now, but you’ve got the strength, and practice will give you the sleight.”

James, stimulated by finding that he had finally mastered the difficulty, and delighted with the kindly interest manifested by the old gentleman, gave his whole soul to work; and by the time the winter’s wood was cut could chop faster than either of the boys, and could drive the oxen well enough for most purposes.

A variety of circumstances conspired not only thereby to develop the ability of James, but also to prove that he was by no means untouched by the kindness with which he was treated.

Mr. Whitman, having sold his large oxen to the drover, to be delivered in a week, desired, before parting with them, to break up a piece of rough land with them and the steers, and also to plough a piece of old ground that had been planted with corn that year, and that two horses could plough. All this work must be done speedily, as the ground was likely to shut up.

In the evening the family were seated around the fire, Bertie superintending James who was writing, when Mr. Whitman said,—

“Father, I don’t see but I must hire a hand. I want to plough a piece of corn-ground for wheat, and I want very much to break up that rough piece before I give up the old oxen. By hiring some one to drive for James to plough for wheat I could accomplish it. After the land was struck out, Bertie could drive the oxen and Peter tend the plough for me.”

“Peter is not strong enough to tend the plough in that ground. There will be roots to cut, stumps to drag out of the way, great turfs as big as a blanket to turn over; it needs a strong man such as this poor old worn-out creature was when you was a boy. But I can drive the oxen, and then you can have both boys to tend plough.”

“I never will allow that; you cannot travel over that rough ground. I can stop the team once in a while, and help Peter.”

James, who had listened to this conversation, gave Bertie a hint to go into the porch, and when they were alone, said,—

“Bertie, I can take Frank and Dick, and plough that ground alone.”

“You can’t do that, James; nobody here ever ploughs alone with horses. They do sometimes with old steady oxen.”

“Yes, I can. In England most of the ploughmen drive themselves. The corn-butts have been all taken off, and the plough won’t clog much.”

James resumed his writing, and Bertie soon made the matter known to his father, who said,—

“James, can you plough that corn-ground alone?”

“Yes, sir; with old Frank and Dick. I would not try it with the other horses.”

The next morning the two teams started at the same time. Bertie wanted to go and see James begin, but his father told him to keep away, as he had no doubt James would prefer to be alone.

Bertie was on tenter-hooks all the forenoon to know how his _protégé_ got along, and kept chattering incessantly about it.

“Father, I saw him cut four alder sprouts as much as six feet long, with a little bunch of leaves left on the end, and then he stuck ‘em under the hame-straps on Frank’s collar.”

“That was to mark his land out. The sprouts are so limber that the horses will walk right over them without turning aside, and the tuft of leaves on top will enable him to see them between the horses’ heads.”

At eleven o’clock they stopped to rest the oxen, and Bertie improved the opportunity to climb a tree that he might be able to see James over the rising ground between them.

“Can you see him?” said Peter.

“I can’t see him, but he’s ploughing all right. Everything is going along just right.”

“How do you know that, my son, if you can’t see him?”

“Because, father, I can see the heads and part of the necks of the horses, and they are going round and round as regular as can be. They are stepping lively, too, and every now and then old Frank keeps flirting up his head just as he does when he feels about right and everything suits him. You know how he does?”

“No, I don’t know, for I don’t take so much notice of Frank’s ways as you do.”

When they left work at noon, and while his father and Peter were tying up the oxen, Bertie scampered off to the field where James had been at work and came back in most exuberant spirits. After dinner he could not be satisfied unless his father went out to see the ploughed ground, and to his great delight his grandfather accompanied them.

The ground was a hazel loam, free of stones, and James had turned a back furrow through the middle as straight as an arrow. The furrows were of equal width; there were no balks, and it looked like garden mould. Mr. Whitman was very much gratified, as Bertie knew by his looks, though he merely observed,—

“That is good work.”

“It is as good a piece of work as I ever saw done,” said the grandfather.

When night came Bertie importuned James to tell him how he drove the horses so straight the first time going round, when they had no furrow to guide them and held the plough at the same time.

James, in ridicule of Bertie, who was so fond of imputing human intelligence to Frank, and with a sly humor, of which he had never manifested a trace before, said,—

“I told old Frank I had never tried to plough alone before, and wanted to plough a straight furrow, and I asked him if he wouldn’t go just as straight for the marks as he could, and so he did.”

“Oh, now you’re fooling; come tell me.”

“I stuck up my marks, and then I drove the horses twice back and forth over the ground, before I put the plough to ‘em. Don’t you know that when a horse goes over ground the second time he always wants to step in the same tracks?”

“No.”

“Well, he does, and if another horse has been along, to step in his tracks. Did you never notice in the lanes and wood roads, how true the lines of grass are each side of the horse?”

“Yes.”

“They wouldn’t be, if horses didn’t want to go in the same track. The horses could see their tracks in the soft ground, and when I came to put the plough to ‘em, knew what I wanted, and that helped me to guide ‘em. Horses go in the main road because in the first place folks make ‘em go there, and when the ruts get worn, the carriage keeps them there, and it is easier than to cross the ruts. But in the pastures the horses and cattle always have their beaten paths, and nobody makes ‘em go in them, yet they always go in them,—and all go in them,—they wouldn’t be horses if they didn’t.”

“What did you do with the reins?”

“Flung ‘em over my neck.”