The Crisis | Page 5

for wisdom made. During that period he opened his mouth to speak but
twice. The first was in answer to a pointless question of Mr. Barbo's

(aetat 25), to the effect that he, Eliphalet Hopper, was a Pierce
Democrat, who looked with complacency on the extension of slavery.
This was wholly satisfactory, and saved the owner of these sentiments a
broken head. The other time Eliphalet spoke was to ask Mr. Barbo to
direct him to a boardinghouse.
"I reckon," Mr. Barbo reflected, "that you'll want one of them
Congregational boarding-houses. We've got a heap of Yankees in the
town, and they all flock together and pray together. I reckon you'd
ruther go to Miss Crane's nor anywhere."
Forthwith to Miss Crane's Eliphalet went. And that lady, being a Greek
herself, knew a Greek when she saw one. The kind-hearted Barbo
lingered in the gathering darkness to witness the game which ensued, a
game dear to all New Englanders, comical to Barbo. The two
contestants calculated. Barbo reckoned, and put his money on his
new-found fellow-clerk. Eliphalet, indeed, never showed to better
advantage. The shyness he had used with the Colonel, and the
taciturnity practised on his fellow- clerks, he slipped off like coat and
waistcoat for the battle. The scene was in the front yard of the third
house in Dorcas Row. Everybody knows where Dorcas Row was. Miss
Crane, tall, with all the severity of side curls and bombazine, stood like
a stone lioness at the gate. In the background, by the steps, the boarders
sat, an interested group. Eliphalet girded up his loins, and sharpened his
nasal twang to cope with hers. The preliminary sparring was an
exchange of compliments, and deceived neither party. It seemed rather
to heighten mutual respect.
"You be from Willesden, eh?" said Crane. "I calculate you know the
Salters."
If the truth were known, this evidence of an apparent omniscience
rather staggered Eliphalet. But training stood by him, and he showed no
dismay. Yes, he knew the Salters, and had drawed many a load out of
Hiram Salters' wood-lot to help pay for his schooling.
"Let me see," said Miss Crane, innocently; "who was it one of them
Salters girls married, and lived across the way from the meetin'-house?"

"Spauldin'," was the prompt reply.
"Wal, I want t' know!" cried the spinster: "not Ezra Spauldin'?"
Eliphalet nodded. That nod was one of infinite shrewdness which
commended itself to Miss Crane. These courtesies, far from making
awkward the material discussion which followed; did not affect it in the
least.
"So you want me to board you?" said she, as if in consternation.
Eliphalet calculated, if they could come to terms. And Mr. Barbo keyed
himself to enjoyment.
"Single gentlemen," said she, "pay as high as twelve dollars." And she
added that they had no cause to complain of her table,
Eliphalet said he guessed he'd have to go somewhere else. Upon this
the lady vouchsafed the explanation that those gentlemen had high
positions and rented her large rooms. Since Mr. Hopper was from
Willesden and knew the Salters, she would be willing to take him for
less. Eliphalet said bluntly he would give three and a half. Barbo
gasped. This particular kind of courage was wholly beyond him.
Half an hour later Eliphalet carried his carpet-bag up three flights and
put it down in a tiny bedroom under the eaves, still pulsing with heat
waves. Here he was to live, and eat at Miss Crane's table for the
consideration of four dollars a week.
Such is the story of the humble beginning of one substantial prop of the
American Nation. And what a hackneyed story it is! How many other
young men from the East have travelled across the mountains and
floated down the rivers to enter those strange cities of the West, the
growth of which was like Jonah's gourd.
Two centuries before, when Charles Stuart walked out of a window in
Whitehall Palace to die; when the great English race was in the throes
of a Civil War; when the Stern and the Gay slew each other at Naseby

and Marston Moor, two currents flowed across the Atlantic to the New
World. Then the Stern men found the stern climate, and the Gay found
the smiling climate.
After many years the streams began to move again, westward, ever
westward. Over the ever blue mountains from the wonderland of
Virginia into the greater wonderland of Kentucky. And through the
marvels of the Inland Seas, and by white conestogas threading flat
forests and floating over wide prairies, until the two tides met in a
maelstrom as fierce as any in the great tawny torrent of the strange
Father of Waters. A city founded by Pierre Laclede, a certain
adventurous subject of Louis who dealt in furs,