Thomas Jefferson Brown

Jefferson Brown, by By James
Oliver Curwood

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Title: Thomas Jefferson Brown
Author: By James Oliver Curwood
Release Date: October 24, 2007 [EBook #23181]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ASCII
*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THOMAS
JEFFERSON BROWN ***

Produced by David Widger

THOMAS JEFFERSON BROWN
By James Oliver Curwood
Copyright, The Frank A. Munsey Co

I
There are not many who will remember him as Thomas Jefferson
Brown. For ten years he had been mildly ashamed of himself, and out
of respect for people who were dead, and for a dozen or so who were
living, he had the good taste to drop his last name. The fact that it was
only Brown didn't matter.
"Tack Thomas Jefferson to Brown," he said, "and you've got a name
that sticks!"
It had an aristocratic sound; and Thomas Jefferson, with the Brown cut
off, was still aristocratic, when you came to count the red corpuscles in
him. In some sort of way he was related to two dead Presidents, three
dead army officers, a living college professor, and a few common
people. He was legitimately born to the purple, but fate had sent him
off on a curious ricochet in a game all of its own, and changed him
from Thomas Jefferson Brown into just plain Thomas Jefferson without
the Brown.
He was one of those specimens who, when you meet them, somehow
make you feel there are a few lost kings of the earth, as well as lost
lambs. He was what we called a "first-sighter"--that is, you liked him
the instant you looked at him. You knew without further acquaintance
that he was a man whom you could trust with your money, your
friendship--anything you had. He was big, with a wholesome brown
face, blond hair, and gray eyes that seemed always to be laughing and
twinkling, even when he was hungry. He carried about with him a load
of cheerfulness so big that it was constantly spilling over on other
people.
There was a time when Thomas Jefferson Brown had little white cards
with his name on them. That was when he went to college, and his
lungs weren't so good. It was then that some big doctor told him that if
he wanted to live to have grandchildren, the best thing for him to do
was to "tramp it" for a time--live out of doors, sleep out of doors, do

nothing but breathe fresh air and walk. That doctor was Fate, playing
his game behind a pair of spectacles and a bumpy forehead. He saved
Thomas Jefferson Brown, all right; but he turned him into plain
Thomas Jefferson.
For Thomas Jefferson Brown never got over taking his medicine. He
kept on tramping. He got big and broad and happy. Somewhere,
perhaps in a barn, he caught a microbe that made him dislike ordinary
work. He would set to and help a farmer saw wood all day, just for
company and grub; but you couldn't hire him to go into an office, or
settle down to anything steady, for twenty-five dollars a day. He had a
scientific name for the thing that was in him--the wanderlust bug, I
think he called it; and he said it was better than the Chinese lady-bugs
that the government imports to save California fruit.
The nearest Thomas Jefferson ever came to going back to Thomas
Jefferson Brown was when he took a job at braking on the Southern
Pacific. That held him for three, days less than two weeks.
"The wanderlust bug wouldn't stand for it," he explained.
Right after that he struck a farmer's house where the farmer was sick,
almost dying, with three little kids and a frail little woman trying to
keep things up. He worked like ten men for more than a month on that
farm, and when he went away he wouldn't take a cent. That's the sort of
ne'er-do-well Thomas Jefferson was.
He wouldn't beg. He'd go three days without grub, and laugh all the
time. It was mostly in the country and in small villages that he made his
living. He could play seven different kinds of instruments without any
instruments at all. Did it all with his mouth. And the kids--they went
wild over him. In return for his entertainment, Thomas Jefferson wasn't
ashamed to take whatever came to him in the way of odd nickels and
dimes.
Once the manager of a vaudeville house heard him on