Yankee Gypsies | Page 4

the
keyhole; they peer through the dripping panes; they insinuate
themselves through the crevices of the casement, or plump down
chimney astride of the raindrops.
I rise and throw open the door. A tall, shambling, loose- jointed figure;
a pinched, shrewd face, sun-brown and wind- dried; small,
quick-winking black eyes,--there he stands, the water dripping from his
pulpy hat and ragged elbows.
I speak to him; but he returns no answer. With a dumb show of misery,
quite touching, he hands me a soiled piece of parchment, whereon I
read what purports to be a melancholy account of shipwreck and
disaster, to the particular detriment, loss, and damnification of one
Pietro Frugoni, who is, in consequence, sorely in want of the alms of all
charitable Christian persons, and who is, in short, the bearer of this
veracious document, duly certified and indorsed by an Italian consul in
one of our Atlantic cities, of a high-sounding, but to Yankee organs
unpronounceable, name.
Here commences a struggle. Every man, the Mahometans tell us, has
two attendant angels,--the good one on his right shoulder, the bad on
his left. "Give," says Benevolence, as with some difficulty I fish up a
small coin from the depths of my pocket. "Not a cent," says selfish
Prudence; and I drop it from my fingers. "Think," says the good angel,
"of the poor stranger in a strange land, just escaped from the terrors of
the sea-storm, in which his little property has perished, thrown
half-naked and helpless on our shores, ignorant of our language, and
unable to find employment suited to his capacity." "A vile impostor!"
replies the left-hand sentinel; "his paper purchased from one of those
ready-writers in New York who manufacture beggar-credentials at the
low price of one dollar per copy, with earthquakes, fires, or shipwrecks,
to suit customers."
Amidst this confusion of tongues I take another survey of my visitant.
Ha! a light dawns upon me. That shrewd, old face, with its sharp,
winking eyes, is no stranger to me. Pietro Frugoni, I have seen thee

before. *Si, signor,* that face of thine has looked at me over a dirty
white neckcloth, with the corners of that cunning mouth drawn
downwards, and those small eyes turned up in sanctimonious gravity,
while thou wast offering to a crowd of half-grown boys an
extemporaneous exhortation in the capacity of a travelling preacher.
Have I not seen it peering out from under a blanket, as that of a poor
Penobscot Indian, who had lost the use of his hands while trapping on
the Madawaska? Is it not the face of the forlorn father of six small
children, whom the "marcury doctors" had "pisened" and crippled? Did
it not belong to that down-east unfortunate who had been out to the
"Genesee country"(1) and got the "fevernnager," and whose hand shook
so pitifully when held out to receive my poor gift? The same, under all
disguises,--Stephen Leathers, of Barrington,--him, and none other! Let
me conjure him into his own likeness:--
(1) The *Genesee country* is the name by which the western part of
New York, bordering on Lakes Ontario and Erie, was known, when, at
the close of the last and beginning of this century, it was to people on
the Atlantic coast the Great West. In 1792 communication was opened
by a road with the Pennsylvania settlements, but the early settlers were
almost all from New England.
"Well, Stephen, what news from old Barrington?"
"Oh, well, I thought I knew ye," he answers, not the least disconcerted.
"How do you do? and how's your folks? All well, I hope. I took this 'ere
paper, you see, to help a poor furriner, who could n't make himself
understood any more than a wild goose. I though I'd just start him
for'ard a little. It seemed a marcy to do it."
Well and shiftily answered, thou ragged Proteus. One cannot be angry
with such a fellow. I will just inquire into the present state of his
Gospel mission and about the condition of his tribe on the Penobscot;
and it may be not amiss to congratulate him on the success of the
steam-doctors in sweating the "pisen" of the regular faculty out of him.
But he evidently has no wish to enter into idle conversation. Intent
upon his benevolent errand he is already clattering down stairs.
Involuntarily I glance out of the window just in season to catch a single
glimpse of him ere he is swallowed up in the mist.
He has gone; and, knave as he is, I can hardly help exclaiming, "Luck
go with him!" He has broken in upon the sombre train of my thoughts

and called up before me pleasant and grateful recollections. The old
farm-house nestling in its valley; hills stretching off to the south and