Mr Jack Hamlins Mediation | Page 9

that I should
have known your Aunt Jemima! But, as you say, the world is very
small, after all. I shall tell the deacon how well you are looking,--in
spite of the kitchen smoke in your eyes. Good-by! A thousand thanks
for your hospitality."

And Jack, bowing profoundly to the ground, backed out upon Jane, the
hired man, and the expressman, treading, I grieve to say, with some
deliberation upon the toes of the two latter, in order, possibly, that in
their momentary pain and discomposure they might not scan too
closely the face of this ingenious gentleman, as he melted into the night
and the storm.
Jane entered, with a slight toss of her head.
"Here's your expressman,--ef you're wantin' him NOW."
Mrs. Rylands was too preoccupied to notice her handmaiden's
significant emphasis, as she indicated a fresh-looking, bashful young
fellow, whose confusion was evidently heightened by the unexpected
egress of Mr. Hamlin, and the point-blank presence of the handsome
Mrs. Rylands.
"Oh, certainly," said Mrs. Rylands quickly. "So kind of him to oblige
us. Give him the order, Jane, please."
She turned to escape from the kitchen and these new intruders, when
her eye fell upon the coin left by Mr. Hamlin. "The gentleman wished
you to take that for your trouble, Jane," she said hastily, pointing to it,
and passed out.
Jane cast a withering look after her retreating skirts, and picking the
coin from the table, turned to the hired man. "Run to the stable after
that dandified young feller, Dick, and hand that back to him. Ye kin say
that Jane Mackinnon don't run arrants fur money, nor play gooseberry
to other folks fur fun."

PART II
Mr. Joshua Rylands had, according to the vocabulary of his class,
"found grace" at the age of sixteen, while still in the spiritual state of

"original sin" and the political one of Missouri. He had not indeed
found it by persistent youthful seeking or spiritual insight, but
somewhat violently and turbulently at a camp-meeting. A village boy,
naturally gentle and impressible, with an original character,--limited,
however, in education and experience,--he had, after his first rustic
debauch with some vulgar companions, fallen upon the camp-meeting
in reckless audacity; and instead of being handed over to the district
constable, was taken in and placed upon "the anxious bench," "rastled
with," and exhorted by a strong revivalist preacher, "convicted of sin,"
and--converted! It is doubtful if the shame of a public arrest and legal
punishment would have impressed his youthful spirit as much as did
this spiritual examination and trial, in which he himself became accuser.
Howbeit, its effect, though punitive, was also exemplary. He at once
cast off his evil companions; remaining faithful to his conversion, in
spite of their later "backslidings." When, after the Western fashion, the
time came for him to forsake his father's farm and seek a new "quarter
section" on some more remote frontier, he carried into that secluded,
lonely, half-monkish celibacy of pioneer life--which has been the
foundation of so much strong Western character--more than the usual
religious feeling. At once industrious and adventurous, he lived by "the
Word," as he called it, and Nature as he knew it,--tempted by none of
the vices or sentiments of civilization. When he finally joined the
Californian emigration, it was not as a gold-seeker, but as a discoverer
of new agricultural fields; if the hardship was as great and the rewards
fewer, he nevertheless knew that he retained his safer isolation and
independence of spirit. Vice and civilization were to him synonymous
terms; it was the natural condition of the worldly and unregenerate.
Such was the man who chanced to meet "Nell Montgomery, the Pearl
of the Variety Stage," on the Sacramento boat, in one of his forced
visits to civilization. Without knowing her in her profession, her frank
exposition of herself did not startle him; he recognized it, accepted it,
and strove to convert it. And as long as this daughter of Folly forsook
her evil ways for him, it was a triumph in which there was no shame,
and might be proclaimed from the housetop. When his neighbors
thought differently, and avoided them, he saw no inconsistency in
bringing his wife's old friends to divert her: she might in time convert
THEM. He had no more fear of her returning to their ways than he had

of himself "backsliding." Narrow as was his creed, he had none of the
harshness nor pessimism of the bigot. With the keenest self-scrutiny,
his credulity regarding others was touching.
The storm was still raging when he alighted that evening from the up
coach at the trail nearest his house. Although incumbered with a heavy
carpet-bag, he started resignedly on his two-mile tramp without
begrudging the neighborly act of his wife which had