Part 24

He thanked me, excused his dress; had other clothes, he said, in the house, which he would have put on had he expected me; was rather excited, so I must excuse him, as his “buck” had gone right off, in disgust, he believed, at the smallness of his flock, as he had only eight ewes. “Buck” I found to be _Anglice_ “ram,” and that it was in the hope of luring back the insufficiently married lord of his flock that he had been howling when I came up. On my doubting whether such a call would not be more likely to speed the flight of the truant “buck,” he rushed awray in the other direction and uplifted it again; and in two or three minutes the eight ewes, with several lambs, were all round him, rubbing against his legs, while an Angora goat looked on with dignity from some yards off. From our talk I found that he was a Shrewsbury man, knew three or four languages, and mathematics up to the differential calculus; found England “too noisy,” and, moreover, could get no land there; had come out and gone to the agricultural class at Cornell University; had now bought this bit of land, on which he could live well, as he was a vegetarian (pointing round to some corn, turnips, etc., in his enclosure); had indigestion at first, but now had found out how to make bread which agreed with him. His trouble was the forest hogs, which were always watching to get at his crops, and his fence, having weak places, would not keep them out, so he had to be always on the watch. If he had any one to keep out the hogs, he could go and find his “buck,” he said, wistfully. The better man within me here was moved to offer to keep watch and ward against hogs while he sought his “buck”; but, on the whole, as the sun was already westering, and I had doubts as to when he might think of relieving guard, my better man did not prevail, and I changed the subject to the book I had brought. He glanced at the title-page, was pleased to find that it was of recent date, as his geology was rusty. Then, as he did not invite me into his log-hut, I rode away. Next evening, as I was strolling down our street, my attention was called to the noticeboard outside the chief store, kept by an excellent, kindly New Englander, Tucker by name, who very liberally allows any of his neighbours to use it. Here I found the following notice from “the Hermit,” which had been sent up by the hackman, to be posted. It opens, you will remark, in the true prophetic style. It ran: “Ho! all ye passers by! Strayed--like a fool!--a Ram (a male sheep,) butts like a nipper, and runs after! God will bless the seer if he lets Isaac Williams, of Sedgemoor Road, know. That is all. Please, Mr. Tucker, post this. Oh, I forgot,--Buy of Tucker!” I think you will agree that I have struck a _bona fide_ hermit in my old age.

But to return to my loafing idyll. Perhaps, if I had to select out of several the ideal loafing haunt in these parts, it would be the verandah of our doctor, another bright New Englander, a graduate of Harvard, and M.D., who, after fourteen years’ practice at Boston, was driven South by threatenings of chest troubles, and happily pitched on this tableland amongst the mountains. Not that he is a loaf-brother, except on rare occasions; a man diligent in his business, and prompt to answer any professional call; but as nobody seems ever to be ill, his leisure is abundant. The greater part of this he spends in the study and practice of grape-culture, in which he has, in the five years since he took it up, earned a high reputation. But in these autumn months, all the pruning, thinning, and tending are over in the forenoon, and in the hours which follow, which are delightfully hot and enjoyable to all sun-lovers, he is generally to be found in his verandah, well supplied with rocking-chairs. In front of the verandah is his principal vineyard, sloping south, and at the bottom of the slope, right away to the distant mountain-range (with Pike’s Peak soaring to the clouds, the centre of the military telegraph system in the war, from which messages were flashed to Look-out Mountain, over Chattanooga, in the critical days of battle, before Sherman started on his march to the sea), wave beyond wave, as it were, of many-coloured forest, each taking fresh tints as clouds flit over, and the triumphant old sun slopes to the West. There one may find the doctor in his rocker, his feet higher than his head on one of the verandah supports--and all who have learnt to appreciate the rocking-chair will agree that “heels up” is half the battle--his tobacco and a book on vines on a small table by his side, and over his head, within easy reach, a rope depending from the verandah roof. At first I took it for the common domestic bell-pull, but soon discovered its more subtle bearing on the luxury of loafing. The doctor had been much exercised by the visits of birds of outrageous appetite to his “Norton’s Virginia,” and other precious vines. At first he had resorted to his double-barrelled gun and small shot--indeed, it yet stood in a corner of the balcony, loaded--but had soon abandoned it. Its use was compatible neither with his love for birds nor the enjoyment of his rocking-chair. So, by an ingenious arrangement, he had hung bells at five or six points in the vineyard, connecting each and all with the depending-rope, so that no sooner did a bird settle with a view to lunch or dinner, than it was saluted by a peal from a bell close by, which sent it skirling back to the forest, while the doctor had neither to lower his heels nor take the pipe from his mouth.

Watching the entire discomfiture of the birds adds, I must own, a keener zest even to the delicious view and air, and to the racy stories of Western life poured out by one or another of the loaf-brethren. A specimen or two may amuse your readers. Placard over the piano in a favourite resort of Texan cowboys: “Don’t shoot the musician; he is doing his best.” Cowboy entering the cars at midnight, thermometer below zero, after snorting for a minute, lets down a window, is remonstrated with, and replies, “Wal, I’d as soon sleep with my head in a dead horse as in this car with the windows shut!” Another tale I repeat with hesitation, though it was seriously vouched for by the narrator as going on in his neighbourhood, and within his own cognisance. An eccentric settler, who played the fiddle powerfully, and lived next a man who had thrown a bridge over a creek, in respect of which the knotty question of “right of way” had arisen between them, read, or discovered somehow, that excessive vibration was the cause of the fall of bridges, and that a well-known railway iron bridge had been distinctly felt to vibrate to the notes of a fiddle, all that was necessary being to find the right chord and play up. Thereupon he set himself on the peccant bridge, and fiddled till he had hit on the sympathetic chord to his own satisfaction; since which he has put in all his spare time at the bridge, fiddling on the right chord and looking for the signs of a crash and the discomfiture of his neighbour. A mad world, my masters! And lucky for the world, say I. But for the cracked fellows going up and down, what a dull place it would be!

The whole neighbourhood, or, at any rate, the men of hunting age, have suddenly been roused into unwonted excitement and activity by the presence of a specimen of the larger carnivora close to this town. It is either a large panther or what they call a Mexican lion--at any rate, as big a beast of this kind as are bred over here, as his footprint, seen of many persons, clearly proves. He has been heard to roar by numbers, and Giles, the saw-mill man, who, passing along wholly unarmed, saw him gliding through the bush close by, puts him at five feet from nose to tail (root, not tip) at least. Giles adds that, at the sight, his hair stood up and distinctly lifted his straw hat--so perhaps his evidence must be discounted considerably. Any way, a party, now collecting dogs to bring him to bay, start to-morrow at dawn to give an account of him. It is more than a year since one has ventured down this way. A slaughter-house which has lately been set up in the woods near by would seem to have drawn him. Let us hope that no cunning old sportsman will watch there to-night and bag him single-handed, and I may possibly have to tell you of a memorable hunt next week.

American Opinion on the Union, SS. Umbria, 5th October 1887.

That panther-hunt went off in a “fizzle.” Our contingent of determined sportsmen kept tryst at daylight, fully armed, but some neighbours who were to bring the proper dogs failed. The sun rose, broad and bright, and so, after a short advance in skirmishing order over the ground where the sawmill man had been so scared--just to save their credit as Nimrods--the chase was abandoned; wisely, I should think, for I can scarcely imagine a more hopeless undertaking than the pursuit of a panther in a Tennessee forest in broad daylight without dogs. Whether Sawyer Giles had grounds for his scare, and what was the length of that panther, must now remain for all time in that useful category of insoluble questions--like the identity of “Junius,” and Queen Mary’s guilt--which innocently employ so much of the spare time of the human race.

I have been back for the last fortnight “in amongst the crowd of men,” and if the things they have done are but “earnest of the things that they shall do,” well, our grandchildren will have a high old time of it! At any rate, our cousins hold this faith vigorously. Take, for instance, the case of a leading dry-goods man who has been sitting by me in the smoking-room of this ship, which has been carrying us for the last four days against a head-wind at the average rate of twenty miles an hour. Recollect, sir, that this ship is about 400 feet in length, of 8800 tons register, with engines of 14,000 horse-power, and must at this moment be as heavy as (say) lour big luggage-trains. I ventured to suggest that, whatever may be in store for us in the way of flying, science has about said her last word in the direction of driving steam or any other ships on the Atlantic. I felt almost inclined to resent the pity tinged with scorn with which he said, “Why, _sir!_ this is the hundred and twenty-eighth time I have crossed this ocean. The first time it took me twenty-two days. This vessel does it in six days and a half, and I shall do it in half that time yet,--yes, _sir!_” My friend must be at least sixty!

The New York hotels were crammed as I came through with men who had come from all parts of the States for the yacht-race. I went out on a friend’s steam-yacht on the Thursday, when the second day’s race should have come off. There was fog and no wind off Sandy Hook, so after lying-to in a lopping sea for a couple of hours, we just steamed back, some hundred of us. But the game had been well worth the candle. Anything so beautiful as the movements of those two yachts in and out amongst the expectant fleet of sightseers, I never beheld. There were several old yachtsmen (Americans) on board, who seemed rather to think the _Thistle_ the more perfect of the two, and when the second and deciding race had been sailed, still guessed that if their Commodore, Pain, or Malcolm Forbes had sailed the _Thistle_, she would not have been twelve, or any, minutes behind.

As to more serious matters, you may be sure I lost no chance of talking on our crisis with every intelligent American or Canadian,--and I happened upon a great number of the latter. Amongst the majority of Americans I was much struck, and, I own, surprised, to find a sort of lazy fatalism prevailing, so far as they troubled their heads at all about the Irish question. Not a man of them believed in the tyranny of the British Government or the wrongs of the Irish; but they seemed to think it was somehow destiny. They knew the Irish--were likely to have at least as bad a time with them as we are having--but, unless you made up your minds to shoot, there was no putting them down or bringing them to reason. They had had to shoot--in New York during the war, and at other times--and might probably have to shoot again \ but then, that was over vital matters. We should never make up our minds to shoot over letting them have a Parliament at Dublin, and so they would get it by sheer insolence and intrigue. Such views would have depressed me had I not found, on the other hand, that the few men who had mastered the situation, without a single exception saw that it was a matter, nationally, of life or death, and hoped our Government would shrink from no measure necessary to restore the rule of law, and preserve the national life.

Amongst the Canadians, on the other hand, I did not happen upon a single Home-ruler--in fact, was obliged to own to myself that they seemed to set more store by the unity of the Empire than we do in the as-yet-United Kingdom. Indeed, if my acquaintances are at all representative of the views of our Canadian fellow-subjects, I feel very sure that the slight bond which holds the Dominion to us would part within a few months of the triumph of the Home-rule agitation. This possible fiasco, however, did not seem to them much worth thinking about; but what was really exercising them was the probability of a more intimate union or federation with the Mother-country. For defensive purposes, I was glad to find that they saw no difficulty whatever; believed, indeed, that that question was already solved. But all felt that the really difficult problem was a commercial union, which, nevertheless, must be managed somehow, if the Empire is to hold together. On this there were wide differences of opinion, but, on the whole, a decided inclination to a plan which I will endeavour to put in a few words. It is, that every portion of the Empire shall be free, as at present, to impose whatever tariff of customs it might think best for raising its own revenue; but an agreed discount (say, ten per cent) should be allowed on all goods the manufacture or product of the Mother-country, or any of its possessions. Inasmuch, it was argued, as such à plan would allow the free admission of all food and raw material, it ought not to hurt the Free-trade susceptibilities of England, while leaving the self-governing Colonies and India free to raise their own revenue as might suit their own views or circumstances. On the other hand, it would give an equal and moderate advantage to all subjects of the Empire. A similar advantage might also, under this plan, be given to importations made in ships belonging to any portion of the Empire.

You, sir, may very probably have heard of and considered this plan, as I have been told that it, or one almost identical, has been submitted both to the London Chamber of Commerce, and to the Colonial Office, by Sir Alexander Galt. I do not remember, however, to have ever seen it discussed in your columns, as I think it might be with advantage. One’s brain possibly is not so fit for the examination of political problems on even such a magnificent ship as the _Umbria_ as on shore; but “after the best consideration I can give it,” it does seem to me to be a solution which might go far to satisfy the scruples of all but fanatics of the “buy in the cheapest and sell in the dearest market” gospel.

We have run 435 miles in the teeth of the wind, in the last twenty-four hours.

EUROPE--1876 to 1895

A Winter Morning’s Ride

The proverb that “The early bird gets most worms” has no truer application than in travelling, considered as a fine art. Of course to him who uses locomotion as a mere method of getting from one place to another, it matters nothing whether he starts at 3 A.M. or at noon. But to the man who likes to get the most he can out of his life, and looks upon a journey as an opportunity for getting some new insight into the ways and habits and notions of his fellowmen, there is no comparison between their value. The noonday travelling mood, like noonday light, is commonplace and uniform; while the early morning mood, like the light when it first comes, is full of colour and surprise. Such, at any rate, has been my experience, and I never made an out-of-the-way early start without coming upon one or more companions who gave me a new glimpse into some corner of life, and whose experience I should have been the poorer for having missed. My last experience in this matter is very recent. In the midst of the wild days of last December I received an unexpected summons on business to the north. My appointment was for eleven o’clock on the morrow, 200 miles from London. It was too late to make arrangements for leaving home at once, so I resolved to start by the first morning train, which leaves Euston Square at 5.15 A.M. Accordingly, soon after four next morning I closed the house door gently behind me, and set out on my walk, not without a sense of the self-approval and satisfaction which is apt to creep over early risers, and others who pride themselves on keeping ahead of their neighbours.

It was a fine wild morning, with half a gale of wind blowing from the north-west, and driving the low rain-clouds at headlong speed across the deep clear sky and bright stars. The great town felt as fresh and sweet as a country hillside. Not a soul in the streets but an occasional solitary policeman, and here and there a scavenger or two, plying their much-needed trade, for the wet mud lay inches deep. I was early at the station, where a sleepy clerk was just preparing to open the booking-offices, and a couple of porters were watering and sweeping the floor of the big hall. Soon my fellow-passengers began to arrive, labouring men for the most part, with here and there a clerk, or commercial traveller, muffled to the eyes.

Amongst them, as they gathered round the fire, or took short restless walks up and down the platform, was one who puzzled me not a little. He had arrived on foot just before me, indeed I had followed him for the last quarter of a mile through Euston Square, and had already begun to speculate as to who he could be, and on what errand. But now that I could get a deliberate look at him under the lights in the hall, my curiosity was at once raised and baffled. He was a strongly built, well-set young fellow of five feet ten or eleven, with clear gray eyes, deep set under very straight brows. His hair was dark, and would have curled but that it was cropped too short. He was clean shaved, so that one saw all the lower lines of his face, which a thick nose, slightly turned up, just hindered from being handsome. He wore a high sealskin cap, a striped flannel shirt with turn down collars, and a slipknot tie with a rather handsome pin. His clothes were good enough, but had a somewhat dissipated look, owing perhaps to the fact that only one button of his waistcoat was fastened, and that his boots, good broad double-soled ones, were covered with dry mud. His whole luggage consisted of the travelling-bag he carried in his hand, one of those elaborate affairs which generally involve a portmanteau or two to follow, but swelled out of all gentility and stuffed to bursting point.

An Englishman? I asked myself. Well, yes,--at any rate more like an Englishman than anything else. A gentleman? Well, yes again, on the whole; though not of our conventional type--at any rate a man of some education, and apparently a little less like the common run of us than most one meets.

Here my speculations were cut short by the opening of the ticket-window by the sleepy clerk, and the object of them marched up and took a third-class ticket for Liverpool. I followed his example. My natural aversion to eating money raw in railway travelling inclining me to such economy, apart from the interest which my problem was exciting in my mind. I am bound to add that nothing could be more comfortable than the carriages provided on the occasion for the third-class passengers of the N.W.K. I followed the sealskin cap and got into the same carriage with its owner. As good luck would have it, no one followed us. He put his bag down in a corner, and stretched himself along his side of the carriage with his head on it. I had time to look him well over again, and to set him down in my own mind as a young English engineer, who had been working on some continental railway so long as to have lost his English identity somewhat, when he started up, rubbed his eyes, took a good straight look at me, and asked if any one coming from abroad could cut us off in the steamer that met this train. I found at once that I was mistaken as to nationality.

I answered that no one could cut us off, as there was no straighter or quicker way of getting to Liverpool than this; but that he was mistaken in thinking that any steamer met the train.

Well, he didn’t know about meeting it, but anyway there was a steamer which went right away from Liverpool about noon, for he had got his passage by her, which he had bought at the tobacco-store near the station.

He handed his ticket for the boat to me, as if wishing my opinion upon it, which I gave to the effect that it seemed all right, adding that I did not know that tickets could be bought about the streets as they could be in America.

Well, he had thought it would save him time, perhaps save the packet, as she might have sailed while he was after his ticket in Liverpool, which town he didn’t know his way about. But now, couldn’t any one from the Continent cut her off? He had heard there was a route by Chester and Holyhead, which would bring any one who took it aboard of her at Queenstown.

I answered that this was probably so, beginning to doubt in my mind whether my companion might not, for all his straightforward looks and ways, have come by the bag feloniously. Could it be another great jewel robbery?

I don’t know whether he noticed any doubtful look in my eyes, but he added at once that he was on the straight run from Heidelberg. He had come from there to London in twenty-six hours.

I made some remark as to the beauty of Heidelberg, and asked if he knew it well.

Why, yes, he said he ought to, for he had been a student at the University there for the last nine months.

Why then was he on the straight run home? I ventured to ask. Term wasn’t over?

No; term wasn’t over; but he had been arrested, and didn’t want to go to prison at Strasburg, where one American student was in for about two years already.

But how did he manage to get off? I asked, now thoroughly interested in his story.

Well, he had just run his bail. When he was arrested he had sent for the doctor at whose house he lodged to bail him out. That was what troubled him most. He wouldn’t have the Herr Doctor slipped up anyway. He was going to send the money directly he got home, and there were things enough left of his to cover the money.

What was he arrested for?

For calling out a German student.

But I thought the German students were always fighting duels.

So they were, but only with swords, which they were always practising. They were so padded when they fought that they could not be hurt except just in the face, and the sword arm was so bandaged that there was no play at all except from the wrist. You would see the German students even when out walking, miles away from the town, keeping playing away with their walking-sticks all the time, so as to train their wrists.

What was his quarrel about?