The Youth's Companion Part 3

"It's a spittoon,--a spit-box,--you ninny! If you interrupt me again, I'll shy mine at your head!"

"Whew!" whistled Tom. "Who'd have thought that 'toploftical' young miss, with her airs and graces, used tobacco? I s'pose she rubs, or maybe she smokes. One never knows, Ralston, what girls are up to."

"But I know what I'll be up to if you don't clear out!" cried the angry book-keeper.

Tom rummaged the warehouse, and found a common earthenware spittoon, which he dragged out in triumph.

"I wonder if she thinks she can buy spittoons by a new-fangled name," he muttered, "and n.o.body know what she wants 'em for? I'll let her know she can't put her finger in my eye. That's why she wanted another clerk."

With a flourish and a smirk, Tom deposited the spittoon on the counter under Silvia's astonished eyes.

"Here's a cuspadore, Miss Morden; not the very finest article, but it serves every purpose. Cleans easy, too, and that's the great thing, after all. Shall I send you a pair?"

Utterly astonished and struck dumb, Silvia stood gazing at the hideous thing.

"And look here, Miss Morden," dropping his voice to a confidential whisper, "we've got the finest lot of tobacco and the best snuff you ever used. Oh, I know,--I'll not mention it. Young ladies, of course, have their little secrets,--I understand that, and I'll be upon honor, 'pon my word I will."

"You insulting creature!" Silvia gasped.

Her look and tone caused Tom to back, and b.u.mp his head so violently against a shelf that, for a minute, he was blind. When he recovered his sight, Silvia had left the store, and the people at the counter were gazing with wide-open eyes on the scene.

"What did you say to Miss Morden, that she flew off in such a rage?"

asked a tall, gaunt, spectacled old maid,--Miss James,--who was the terror of the town for her ill-natured gossip and interfering ways.

"Upon my word, ma'am, I said nothing insulting," replied the angered clerk. "Miss Silvia asked for a spittoon, and I showed her one. Of course people do not want spittoons unless they use tobacco, do they? I am sure I meant no harm. I only wanted to accommodate a customer."

"Of course, of course," said his grim listener. "Judge Morden and her ma don't dream of their daughter's goings-on, I'm sure of that. I'm a friend, and they'll know it before I'm an hour older."

She stalked out of the store, and down to Judge Morden's house. Without ringing, she marched into the sitting-room, where Mrs. Morden was at work.

"Clara Morden," she said, in her sharpest tones, for she was an old acquaintance of the lady, "how have you brought up your daughter, that she's disgracing you?"

"Disgracing! Are you talking of Silvia?"

Gentle Mrs. Morden's face was pale as she turned her startled eyes on her visitor.

"Who else? Don't you think it a disgrace for a girl to use tobacco? and that's what Sil does, and goes and buys a spittoon before the whole town! I'd tobacco her! But everybody knows it by this time, and whether she gives it up or not, people will keep on thinking she uses it. You always did give that girl too much head, I've told you so time and again, and now you see you'd better have taken my advice."

Mrs. Morden had regained her calmness by this time.

"There is certainly some mistake," she said, coolly. "I will ask Silvia about it when she comes in."

"You'll find it no mistake," said her visitor. "At least half-a-dozen people were in Morris's this evening when she asked for the spittoon, and then got mad with the clerk about something."

The explanation Silvia was compelled to make that evening, though it acquitted her of the first charge, left a most painful impression upon her mother that the habit of falsehood had grown upon her daughter.

"I will not add to your punishment by re-proof," she said, gravely, "because I foresee the mortification that this is going to bring to you.

No explanation will convince half the gossips in town that you have not the filthy habit of using tobacco, and the story will cling to you for years."

"That's harsh and unjust!" Silvia cried, hotly. "It was a mistake anybody might have made."

"Yes, anybody who pretends to know what you are ignorant of. There is a strong likeness in the family of lies, and it is neither hard nor unjust that we should be punished for them. Your humiliation I hope may prove a salutary lesson."

It did. Silvia is rarely tempted now to her old pretences of superior knowledge. The cuspadore story brought her such pain and mortifition that the scars remain yet.

For the Companion.

IN THE BACKWOODS.

In Five Chapters.--Chap. I.

By C. A. Stephens.

We were boiling down "salts" that winter in Black Ash Swamp,--not epsom salts, but an extract from the lye of wood ashes. The ashes were boiled much as maple sap is boiled in order to obtain sugar.

I do not know whether the reader ever heard of such a thing. It was one of many ventures which Edward Martin, Vet Chase and myself made when we were boys up in the Maine backwoods in order to obtain a little money.

Black Ash Swamp was four or five miles up Mud Stream, a small tributary of the Pen.o.bscot. It was situated on "wild" land, as it was called, and was full of yellow ash, black ash and elm.

We had gone there early in November. Our first work was to fell the great ash-trees and cut them up so that the wood could be burned in ricks. Many of the trees were very old, nearly lifeless, and punky at the heart; but they made an abundance of ashes.

There is no wood in the world from which such quant.i.ties of ashes can be secured; and that is the reason, I suppose, why the tree is called _ash._ Nor is there another tree whose ashes make so strong a lye. It was for this reason that we came here to make "salts."

We brought up on our raft twenty old flour-barrels, to be used as leach-tubs. These were set up in a semi-circle round our boiling-place, which was a long stone "arch." A pole and lumber-shed served us as a camp.

We used to sit there evenings, and by the light of the fire under the boiling kettles of lye, try to read Aesop's fables in Latin, and I never to this day take up my old Latin reader without seeming to hear the steady drip-drop of those twenty leach-tubs.

Making salts was hard work for us, though not much harder than translating some of those fables; but one needs to work to keep warm in Northern Maine in December.

In the forenoons we would all three cut and split the ash into fire-wood, then burn it and boil the ashes. Sometimes we burned eight or ten cords in a single rick, which made from seven to ten barrels of ashes. Then we poured water into the barrels, and set earthen pans or pots underneath to catch the lye as it drained through.

When our four iron kettles,--hung with "hooks" to a long pole over our arch,--were all boiling, there was a strong odor, and the steam made our eyes smart. It took a lively fire, and we made a good many ashes in the arch.

When boiled away, the lye leaves a residuum, which, in color and general appearance, resembles brown sugar. This was the "salts." It is very strong. Compared with lye, it is like the oil of peppermint compared with peppermint tea.

We had been promised six cents a pound for salts delivered at Bangor, to be refined into soda. When we met with no interruptions, we obtained from forty to fifty pounds of salts in a day. Not a very rapid way of getting rich, yet better than nothing for boys who were determined to earn something so that we could prepare for college.

But it was shocking work for the hands, handling the lye and these "salts." Round our finger nails the skin was eaten off, and the nails themselves were warped and yellowed. Often the blood followed a single accidental slop of the "juice" which settled at the bottom of the "salts." I once heard a man who used to make salts say that he spoiled a horse by carrying a bagful of the nearly dry extract thrown across the saddle. Some of the juice trickled out, and going under the saddle, not only took the hair off, but made terrible sores, which it was found well-nigh impossible to heal. The liquid corroded our iron kettles very rapidly.

All through November, December and January we worked industriously, and studied our Latin. In summer the swamp would have been unhealthy and dangerous to life; but in winter, with the mud and water-holes frozen solidly, it was a warm, comfortable location, for it lay in a great valley, inclosed by high mountain ridges, that were covered by dense growths of pine and spruce. It fairly seemed as if the great fires which we built every afternoon warmed up the whole swamp.

Our smoke would often almost hide the sun when the weather was calm.

Very little wind at any time found its way into our sheltered valley.

The winter fortunately was a mild one. The snow was not more than a foot deep, and rains occasionally fell, leaving an icy crust.

One of these rain storms came during the last days of January. It thawed for two days, and then became cold on the following night. Next morning, while we were getting breakfast, boiling potatoes and baking biscuits in our tin baker, we heard out in the woods, to the east of our camp, sounds as if some animal was walking on the snow and breaking through the crust.