In The Boyhood of Lincoln Part 18

"The pudding leaped from the table and hung at the end of the old woman's nose.

"'There!' said she, 'now you see what you have done by your foolish wis.h.i.+ng.'

"The old man sighed. 'We have but one wish left. We must now be the wisest people in all the world.'

"They watched the dying embers, and thought. As they did so, the pudding grew heavy at the end of the old woman's nose. At last she could endure it no longer.

"'Oh!' she said, 'how I wish that pudding was off again!'

"The pudding disappeared, and the fairy was gone."

"'Tain't true," said Aunt Indiana.

"Yes," said Jasper, "what is true to life is true. Stories are the alphabet of life."

Johnnie Kongapod had listened to the tale with delight. Aunt Indiana knew that no fairy would ever appear on her hearth, but Johnnie was not so sure.

"I've seen 'em," said he.

"You--what? What have you seen? I'd like to know," said Aunt Indiana.

"Fairies--"

"Where?"

"When I've been asleep."

"There never was any fairies in my dreams," said Aunt Indiana.

No, there were not. The German Tunker and the prairie Indian might see fairies, but the hard-working Yankee pioneer had no faculties for creative fancy. Her fairy was the plow that breaks the ground, or the axe that fells the timber. Yet the German soul-tale seemed to haunt her, and she at last said:

"I wish that we had more such stories as that. It is pleasant talk. Abe Lincoln tells such things out of the Pilgrim's Progress. He's all imagination, just like you and the Indians. People who don't have much to do run to such things. I suppose that he has read that Pilgrim's Progress over a dozen times."

"I have observed that the boy had ideals," said Jasper.

"What's them?" said Aunt Indiana.

"People build life out of ideals," said Jasper. "A cathedral is an ideal before it is a form. So is a house, a gla.s.s--everything. He has the creative imagination."

"Yes--that's what I said: always going around with a book in his hand, as though he was walking on the air."

"His step-mother says that he's one of the best of boys. He does everything that he can for her, and he has never given her an unkind word. He loves his step-mother like an own mother, and he forgets himself for others. These are good signs."

"Signs--signs! Stop your cobblin', elder, and let me prophesy! That boy just takes after his father, and he will never amount to anything in this world or any other. His mother what is dead was a good woman--an awful good woman; but she was sort o' visionary. They say that she used to see things at camp-meetin's, and lose her strength, and have far-away visions. She might have seen fairies. But she was an awful good woman--good to everybody, and everybody loved her; and we were all sorry when she died, and we all love her grave yet. It is queer, but we all seem to love her grave. A sermon goes better when it is preached there under the great trees. Some folks had rather hear a sermon preached there than at the meetin'-house. Some people leave a kind o' influence; _Miss_ Linken did. The boy means well--his heart is all right, like his poor dead mother's was--but he hasn't got any head on 'im, like as I have. He hasn't got any calculation. And now, elder, I'm goin' to say it, though I'm sorry to: he'll never amount to shucks! There, now!

Josiah Crawford says so, too."

"There is one very strong point about Abraham," said Jasper. "He has a keen sense of what is right, and he is always governed by it. He has faith that right is might. Didn't you ever notice it?"

"Yes, I'll do him justice. I never knew him to do a thing that he thought wrong--never. He couldn't. He takes after his mother's folks, and they say that there is Quaker blood in the Linkens."

"But, my good woman, a fool would be wise if he always did right, wouldn't he? There is no higher wisdom than to always do right. And a boy that has a heart to feel for every one, and a conscience that is true to a sense of right, and that loves learning more than anything else, and studies continually, is likely to find a place in the world.

"Now, I am going to prophesy. This country is going to need men to lead them, and Abraham Lincoln will one day become a leader among men. He leads now. His heart leads; his mind leads. I can see it. The world here is going to need men of knowledge, and it will select the man of the most learning who has the most heart, the most sympathy with the people.

It will select him. I have a spiritual eye, and I can see."

"A leader of the people--Abe Lincoln! You have said it now. I would as soon think of Johnnie Kongapod! A leader of the people! Are you daft?

When the prairies leap into corn-fields and the settlements into banks of gold, and men can travel a mile a minute, and clodhoppers become merchants and Congressers, and as rich as Spanish grandees, then Abraham Lincoln may become a leader of the people, but not till then! No, elder, you are no Samuel, that has come down here among the sons of Jesse to find a shepherd-boy for a king. You ain't no Samuel, and he ain't no shepherd-boy. He all runs to books and legs, and I tell you he ain't got no calculation. Now, I've prophesied and you've prophesied."

"Time tells the truth about all things," said Jasper. "We shall meet, if I make my circuits, and we will talk of our prophecies in other years, should Providence permit. My soul has set its mark on that boy: wait, and we will see if the voice within me speaks true. It has always spoken true until now."

At the close of this prophetic dialogue the subject of it appeared at the door. He was a tall boy, with a dark face, homely, ungainly, awkward. He wore a racc.o.o.n-skin cap, a linsey-woolsey s.h.i.+rt, and leather breeches, and was barefooted, although the weather was yet cool. He did not look like one who would ever cause the thrones of the world to lean and listen, or who would find in the Emperor of all the Russias the heart of a brother.

"Abe," said Aunt Indiana, "the Tunker here has been speakin' well of you, though you don't deserve it. He just says as how you are goin' to be somebody, and make somethin' in the world. I hope you will, though you're a shaky tree to hang hopes on. I ain't got nothin' ag'in ye. He says that you'll become a leader among men. What do you think o' that, Abe? Don't stand there gawkin'. Come in and sit down."

"It helps one to have some one believe in him," said the tall boy. "One tries to fulfill the good prophecies made about him. I wish I was good.--Thank ye, elder, for your good opinion. I wonder if I will ever make anything? I sometimes think I will. I look over toward mother's grave there, and think I will; but you can't tell. Crawford the schoolmaster he thinks good of me, but the other Crawford--Josiah--he's ag'in me. But if we do right, we'll all come out right."

"Yes, my boy," said Jasper, "have faith that right is might. This is what the Voice and the Being within tells me to preach and to teach. Let us have faith that right is might, and do our duty, and the Spirit of G.o.d will give us a new nature, and make us new creatures, and the rebirth of the spiritual life into the eternal kingdom."

The prairie winds breathed through the trees. A robin came and sang in the timber.

The four sat thoughtful--the Tunker, the Indian, the pioneer woman, and the merry, sad-faced boy. It was a commonplace scene in the Indiana timber, and that one lonely grave is all that is left to recall such scenes to-day--the grave of the pioneer mother.

CHAPTER X.

THE INDIAN RUNNER.

The young May moon was hanging over the Mississippi on the evening when Jasper came to the village of the Sacs and Foxes. This royal town, the head residence of the two tribes, and the ancient burying-ground of the Indian race, was very beautifully situated at the junction of the Rock River with the Mississippi. The Father of Waters, which is in many places turbid and uninteresting, here becomes a clear and impetuous stream, flowing over beds of rock and gravel, amid high and wooded sh.o.r.es. The rapids--the water-ponies of the Indians--here come leaping down, surging and foaming, and are checked by monumental islands. The land rises from the river in slopes, like terraces, crowned with hills and patriarchal trees. From these hills the sight is glorious. On one hand rolls the mighty river, and on the other stretch vast prairies, flower-carpeted, sun-flooded, a sea of vegetation, the home of the prairie plover and countless nesters of the bright, warm air. It is a park, whose extent is bounded by hundreds of miles.

Water-swept and beautiful lies Rock Island, where on a parapet of rock was built Fort Armstrong in the days of the later Indian troubles.

The royal town and burying-ground was a place of remarkable fertility.

The grape-vine tangled the near woods, the wild honeysuckle perfumed the air, and wild plums blossomed white in May and purpled with fruit in summer. If ever an Indian race loved a town, it was this. The Indian mind is poetic. Nature is the book of poetry to his instinct, and here Nature was poetic in all her moods.

The Indians venerated the graves of their ancestors. Here they kept the graves beautiful, and often carried food to them and left it for the dead.

The chant at these graves was tender, and shows that the human heart everywhere is the same. It was like this:

"Where are you, my father?

Oh, where are you now?

I'm longing to see thee; I'm wailing for thee.

(Wail.)

"Are you happy, my father?

Are you happy now?

I'm longing to see thee; I'm wailing for thee.