The Gentleman from Everywhere | Page 4

us, and the lion's share of the crops
going to the owners, who toiled not, neither did they spin, but reaped
with gusto where we had sown.
After a few years of this profitless drudgery, my father bought an old
run-down farm with dilapidated buildings in the neighboring town of
R----, mortgaging all, and our souls and bodies besides, for its payment.
We hoped we had rounded the cape of storms which sooner or later
looms up before every ship which sails the sea of life, for we had fully

realized the truth of the poem--
We may steer our boats by the compass, Or may follow the northern
star; We may carry a chart on shipboard As we sail o'er the seas afar;
But, whether by star or by compass We may guide our boats on our
way, The grim cape of storms is before us, And we'll see it ahead some
day.
How the prow may point is no matter, Nor of what the cargo may be, If
we sail on the northern ocean, Or away on the southern sea; It matters
not who is the pilot, To what guidance our course conforms; No vessel
sails o'er the sea of life But must pass the cape of storms.
Sometimes we can first sight the headland On the distant horizon's rim;
We enter the dangerous waters With our vessels taut and trim; But
often the cape in its grimness Will before us suddenly rise, Because of
the clouds that have hid it Or the blinding sun in our eyes.
Our souls will be caught in the waters That are hurled at the storm
cape's face; Our pleasures and joys, our hopes and fears, Will join in
the maddening race. Our prayers, desires, our penitent griefs, Our
longings and passionate pain, Be dashed to spray on the stormy cape
And fly in our faces like rain.
But there's always hope for the sailor, There is ever a passage through;
No life goes down at the cape of storms, If the life and the heart lie true.
If in purpose the soul is steadfast, If faithful in mind and in will, The
boat will glide to the other side, Where the ocean of life is still.
[Illustration: "It was a Fair Scene of Tranquillity."]

CHAPTER III.
NEAR TO NATURE'S HEART.
It seems but yesterday, although more than a half century ago, that I, a
puny boy, stood on the hilltop and looked for the first time upon this,

the earliest home of which I have any vivid recollection. It was a fair
scene of rustic tranquillity, where a contented mind might delight to
spend a lifetime mid hum of bees and low of kine.
Along the eastern horizon's rim loomed the blue sea beyond the sandy
dunes of old Plum Island; the lazy river born in babbling brooks and
bubbling springs flowing languidly mid wooded islands, and
picturesque stacks of salt hay, representing the arduous toil of farmers
and dry-as-dust fodder for reluctant cows. Nearer, the two church spires
of the little village, striving to lift the sordid minds of the natives from
earthly clods to the clouds, and where beckoning hands strove vainly to
inspire them with heavenly hopes; around them, glistening in the
sunlight, the marble slabs where sleep the rude forefathers of the
hamlet, some mute inglorious Miltons who came from England in the
early sixties, whose tombstones are pierced by rifle bullets fired at the
maraudering red skins. These are the cities of the dead, far more
populous than the town of the living.
Nearer, the willowy brook that turns the mill; to the south the dense
pine woods, peopled in our imaginations, with fairy elves, owls, and
hobgoblins--now, alas, owing to the rapacity of the sawmills, naught
but a howling wilderness of stumps and underbrush.
Directly below me, stands our half-century old house with its eaves
sloping to the ground, down which generations of boys had ruined their
pants in hilarious coasting; near by, the ancient well-swipe, and the old
oaken bucket which rose from the well; beyond this, of course, as usual,
the piggery and hennery to contaminate the water and breed typhoid
fever, and in the house cellar, the usual dampness from the hillside to
supply us all with rheumatism and chills.
There existed apparently in the early dawn of the nineteenth century, an
unwritten law which required the farmers to violate all the laws of
sanitation, and then to ascribe all ills the flesh is heir to, to the
mysterious will of an inscrutable Providence whose desire it was to
make the heart better by the sorrows of the countenance, and to save
the soul from hell by the punishment of the body. Vegetables were
allowed to rot in the cellars, and to make