Nature and Human Nature Part 8

"Well, in about an hour or so I heard father come to the foot of the stairs and call out 'Sam.' I didn't answer at first, but went and threw the winder open ready for a jump.

"Thinks I, 'Sam, you are in great luck to-day. 1st. You got nearly drowned, savin' that little brat Zeb Snell. 2nd. You lost a bran new hat, and spoilt your go-to-meetin' clothes. 3rd. Mrs Snell boxed your ears till your eyes shot stars, like rockets. 4th. You got an all-fired licking from old Colonel Jephunny, till he made a mulatto of you, and you was half black and half white. 5th. You got kissed and pysoned by that great big emanc.i.p.ated she-n.i.g.g.e.r wench. 6th. You have killed your mother's canary bird, and she has jawed you till she went into hysterics. 7th. Here's the old man a goin' to give you another walloping and all for nothin. I'll cut and run, and dot drot me if I don't, for it's tarnation all over.'

"'Sam,' sais father again, a raisin' of his voice.

"'Father,' sais I, 'I beg your pardon, I am very sorry for what I have done, and I think I have been punished enough. If you will promise to let me off this time, I will take my oath I will never save another person from drowning again, the longest day I ever live.'

"'Come down,' said he, 'when I tell you, I am goin' to reward you.'

"'Thank you,' sais I, 'I have been rewarded already more than I deserve.'

"Well, to make a long story short, we concluded a treaty of peace, and down I went, and there was Colonel Snell, who said he had drove over to beg my pardon for the wrong he had done to me, and said he, 'Sam, come to me at ten o'clock on Monday, and I will put you in a way to make your fortune, as a recompense for saving my child's life.'

"Well, I kept the appointment, tho' I was awful skared about old Rose kissin of me again; and sais he, 'Sam, I want to show you my establishment for making wooden clocks. One o' them can be manufactured for two dollars, scale of prices then. Come to me for three months, and I will teach you the trade, only you musn't carry it on in Connecticut to undermine me.' I did so, and thus accidentally I became a clockmaker.

"To sell my wares I came to Nova Scotia. By a similar accident I met the Squire in this province, and made his acquaintance. I wrote a journal of our tour, and for want of a t.i.tle he put my name to it, and called it 'Sam Slick, the Clockmaker.' That book introduced me to General Jackson, and he appointed me attache to our emba.s.sy to England, and that again led to Mr Polk making me Commissioner of the Fisheries, which, in its turn, was the means of my having the honour of your acquaintance," and I made him a sc.r.a.pe of my hind leg.

"Now," sais I, "all this came from the accident of my havin' saved a child's life one day. I owe my 'wise saws' to a similar accident. My old master and friend, that you have read of in my books, Mr Hopewell, was chock full of them. He used to call them wisdom boiled down to an essence, concretes, and I don't know what all. He had a book full of English, French, Spanish, Italian, German, and above all, Bible ones.

Well, he used to make me learn them by heart for lessons, till I was fairly sick and tired to death of 'em.

"'Minister,' sais I, one day, 'what under the sun is the use of them old, musty, fusty proverbs. A boy might as well wear his father's boots, and ride in his long stirrups, as talk in maxims, it would only set other boys a laughin' at him.'

"'Sam,' sais he, 'you don't understand them now, and you don't understand your Latin grammar, tho' you can say them both off by heart. But you will see the value of one when you come to know the world, and the other, when you come to know the language. The latter will make you a good scholar, and the former a wise man.'

"Minister was right, Doctor. As I came to read the book of life, I soon began to understand, appreciate, and apply my proverbs. Maxims are deductions ready drawn, and better expressed than I could do them, to save my soul alive. Now I have larned to make them myself. I have acquired the habit, as my brother the lawyer sais, 'of extracting the principle from cases.' Do you take? I am not the accident of an accident; for I believe the bans of marriage were always duly published in our family; but I am the accident of an incident."

"There is a great moral in that too, Mr Slick," he said. "How important is conduct, when the merest trifle may carry in its train the misery or happiness of your future life."

"Stick a pin in that also. Doctor," said I.

Here Cutler and the pilot cut short our conversation by going on board. But Peter wouldn't hear of my leaving his house, and I accordingly spent the night there, not a little amused with my new acquaintances.

CHAPTER V.

A NEW WAY TO LEARN GAELIC.

After the captain and the pilot had retired, sais I, "Miss Jessie, sposin we young folks--(ah me, it is time to get a new word, I guess, for that one has been used so long, it's e'en amost worn out now)--sposin we young folks leave the doctor and your father to finish their huntin' stories, and let us go to the other room, and have a dish of chat about things in general, and sweethearts in particular."

"Oh, we live too much alone here," said she, "to know anything of such matters, but we will go if you will promise to tell us one of your funny stories. They say you have written a whole book full of them; how I should like to see it."

"Would you, Miss?" said I, "well, then, you shall have one, for I have a copy on board I believe, and I shall be only too proud if you will read it to remember me by. But my best stories ain't in my books.

Somehow or another, when I want them they won't come, and at other times when I get a goin talkin, I can string them together like onions, one after the other, till the twine is out. I have a heap of them, but they are all mixed and confused like in my mind, and it seems as if I never could find the one I need. Do you work in worsted, Miss?"

"Well, a little," sais she. "It is only town-bred girls, who have nothing to attend to but their dress and to go to b.a.l.l.s, that have leisure to amuse themselves that way; but I can work a little, though I could never do anything fit to be seen or examined."

"I shouldn't wonder," said I, and I paused, and she looked as if she didn't over half like my taking her at her word that way. "I shouldn't wonder," said I, "for I am sure your eyes would fade the colour out of the worsted."

"Why, Mr Slick," said she, drawing herself up a bit, "what nonsense you do talk, what a quiz you be."

"Fact," sais I, "Miss, I a.s.sure you, never try it again, you will be sure to spoil it. But as I was a sayin, Miss, when you see a thread of a particular colour, you know whether you have any more like it or not, so when a man tells me a story, I know whether I have one of the same kind to match it or not, and if so, I know where to lay my hand on it; but I must have a clue to my yarns."

Squire, there is something very curious about memory, I don't think there is such a thing as total forgetfulness. I used once to think there was, but I don't now. It used to seem to me that things rusted out, but now it appears as if they were only misplaced, or overlaid, or stowed away like where you can't find them; but depend on it, when once there, they remain for ever. How often you are asked, "Don't you recollect this or that?" and you answer, "No, I never heard, or saw it, or read it," as the case may be. And when the time, and place, and circ.u.mstances are told you, you say, "Stop a bit, I do now mind something about it, warn't it so and so, or this way, or that way,"

and finally up it comes, all fresh to your recollection. Well, until you get the clue given you, or the key note is struck, you are ready to take your oath you never heard of it afore. Memory has many cells: Some of them ain't used much, and dust and cobwebs get about them, and you can't tell where the hinge is, or can't easily discarn the secret spring; but open it once, and whatever is stowed away there is as safe and sound as ever. I have a good many capital stories poked away in them cubby-holes, that I can't just lay my hand on when I want to; but now and then, when looking for something else, I stumble upon them by accident. Tell you what, as for forgettin' a thing tee-totally, I don't believe there is sich a thing in natur. But to get back to my story.

"Miss," sais I, "I can't just at this present moment call to mind a story to please you. Some of them are about hosses, or clocks, or rises taken out of folks, or dreams, or courts.h.i.+ps, or ghosts, or what not; but few of them will answer, for they are either too short or too long."

"Oh," says Catherine Fraser, "tell us a courts.h.i.+p; I dare say you will make great fun of it."

"No, no," says Jessie, "tell us a ghost story. Oh! I delight in them."

"Oh," said Janet, "tell us about a dream. I know one myself which came out as correct as provin' a sum."

"That's it, Miss Janet," said I; "do you tell me that story, please, and it's hard if I can't find one that will please you in return for it."

"Yes, do, dear," said Jessie; "tell Mr Slick that story, for it's a true one, and I should like to hear what he thinks of it, or how he can account for it."

"Well," said Janet, "you must excuse me, Mr Slick, for any mistakes I make, for I don't speak very good English, and I can hardly tell a story all through in that language.

"I have a brother that lives up one of the branches of the Buctouche River in New Brunswick. He bought a tract of land there four or five years ago, on which there was a house and barn, and about a hundred acres of cleared land. He made extensive improvements on it, and went to a great expense in clearing up the stumps, and buying stock and farming implements, and what not. One season, between plantin' and harvest, he run short of money for his common daily use, and to pay some little debts he owed, and he was very dull about it. He said he knew he could come here and borrow it from father, but he didn't like to be away from home so long, and hardly knew how the family was to get on or to pay the wages till his return, so it was agreed that I was to go the next Monday in a vessel bound for Halifax and bring him what he wanted.

"At that time, he had a field back in the woods he was cultivating.

Between that and the front on the river, was a poor sand flat covered with spruce, birch, and poplar, and not worth the expense of bringing to for the plough. The road to the back field ran through this wood land. He was very low-spirited about his situation, for he said if he was to borrow the money of a merchant, he would require a mortgage on his place, and perhaps sell it before he knew where he was. Well, that night he woke up his wife, and said to her--

"'Mary,' said he, 'I have had a very curious dream just now. I dreamed that as I was going out to the back lot with the oxcart, I found a large sum of money all in dollars in the road there.'

"'Well,' says Mary, 'I wish it was true, John, but it is too good news for us. The worriment we have had about money lately has set you a dreaming. Janet sails on Monday, she will soon be back, and then it will all be right; so go to sleep again, dear.'

"Well, in the morning, when he and his wife got up, he never spoke or thought any more about the dream, but as soon as breakfast was over, he and his man yoked up the oxen, put them to the cart, and lifted the harrow into it, and started for the field. The servant drove the team, and John walked behind with his head down, a turning over in his mind whether he couldn't sell something off the farm to keep matters a-goin' till I should return, when all at once, as they were pa.s.sing through the wood, he observed that there was a line of silver dollars turned up by one of the wheels of the cart, and continued for the s.p.a.ce of sixty feet and then ceased.

"The moment he saw the money he thought of his dream, and he was so overjoyed that he was on the point of calling out to the man to stop, but he thought it was more prudent as they were alone in the woods to say nothing about it. So he walked on, and joined the driver, and kept him in talk for awhile. And then, as if he had suddenly thought of something, said, 'Jube, do you proceed to the field and go to work till I come. I shall have to go to the house for a short time.'

"Well, as soon as he got out of sight of the cart, off he ran home as hard as he could lay legs to it, only stopping to take up a handful of the coins to make sure they were real.

"'Mary, Mary,' sais he, 'the dream has come true; I have found the money--see here is some of it; there is no mistake;' and he threw a few pieces down on the hearth and rung them. 'They are genuine Spanish crowns. Do you and Janet bring the market-basket, while I go for a couple of hoes, and let us gather it all up.'

"Well, sure enough, when we came to the place he mentioned, there was the wheel-track full of dollars. He and I hoed each side of the rut, which seemed to be in a sort of yellow powder, like the dust of rotten wood, and got out all we could find. We afterwards tried under the opposite wheel, and behind and before the rut, but could find no more, and when we got home we counted it, and found we had eighty-two pounds, five s.h.i.+llings.

"'Well, this is a G.o.d-send, Mary, ain't it?' said brother; and she threw her arms round his neck, and cried for joy as she kissed him."

"Which way," said I, "show me, Miss, how she did it, only you may laugh instead of cry if you like."

"Not being a wife," said she, with great quietness, "I cannot show you myself, but you may imagine it, it will do just as well, or dream it, and that will do better.

"Well, John was a scrupulous man, and he was determined to restore the money, if he could find an owner for it; but he could hear of no one who had lost any, nor any tradition in that place that any one ever had done so since the first settlement of the country. All that he could discover was, that about forty years before, an old Frenchman had lived somewhere thereabouts alone, in the midst of the woods. Who he was, or what became of him, n.o.body knew; all he could hear was, that a party of lumbermen had, some years afterwards, found his house amidst a second growth of young wood that wholly concealed it, and that it contained his furniture, cooking utensils, and trunks, as he had left them. Some supposed he had been devoured by bears or wolves; others, that he had been lost in the woods; and some, that he had died by his own hands.

"On hearing this, John went to examine his habitation, or the remains of it, and he found that about four acres around it were covered with the second growth, as it is called, which was plainly to be distinguished from the forest, as the trees were not only not so large or so old as the neighbouring ones, but, as is always the case, were of a different description of wood altogether. On a careful inspection of the spot where he found the money, it appeared that the wheel had pa.s.sed lengthways along an enormous old decayed pine, in the hollow of which he supposed the money must have been hid; and when the tree fell, the dollars had rolled along its centre fifty feet or more, and remained there until the wood was rotten, and had crumbled into dust.