Yankee Gypsies | Page 6

safe distance,
half expecting to see its striped covering stirred by the motions of a
mysterious life, or that some evil monsters would leap out of it, like

robbers from Ali Baba's jars or armed men from the Trojan horse!
There was another class of peripatetic philosophers--half pedler, half
mendicant--who were in the habit of visiting us. One we recollect, a
lame, unshaven, sinister-eyed, unwholesome fellow, with his basket of
old newspapers and pamphlets, and his tattered blue umbrella, serving
rather as a walking-staff than as a protection from the rain. he told us
on one occasion, in answer to our inquiring into the cause of his
lameness, that when a young man he was employed on the farm of the
chief magistrate of a neighboring State; where, as his ill luck would
have it, the governor's handsome daughter fell in love with him. He was
caught one day in the young lady's room by her father; whereupon the
irascible old gentleman pitched him unceremoniously out of the
window, laming him for life, on a brick pavement below, like Vulcan
on the rocks of Lemnos.(1) As for the lady, he assured us "she took on
dreadfully about it." "Did she die?" we inquired, anxiously. There was
a cunning twinkle in the old rogue's eye as he responded, "Well, no she
did n't. She got married."
(1) It was upon the Isle of Lemnos that Vulcan was flung by Jupiter,
according to the myth, for attempting to aid his mother Juno.
Twice a year, usually in the spring and autumn, we were honored with
a call from Jonathan Plummer, maker of verses, pedler and poet,
physician and parson,--a Yankee troubadour,-- first and last minstrel of
the valley of the Merrimac, encircled, to my wondering young eyes,
with the very nimbus of immortality. He brought with him pins,
needles, tape, and cotton-thread for my mother; jack-knives, razors, and
soap for my father; and verses of his own composing, coarsely printed
and illustrated with rude wood-cuts, for the delectation of the younger
branches of the family. No love-sick youth could drown himself, no
deserted maiden bewail the moon, no rogue mount the gallows, without
fitting memorial in Plummer's verses. Earthquakes, fires, fevers, and
shipwrecks he regarded as personal favors from Providence, furnishing
the raw material of song and ballad. Welcome to us in our country
seclusion, as Autolycus to the clown in "Winter's Tale,"(1) we listened
with infinite satisfaction to his reading of his own verses, or to his
ready improvisation upon some domestic incident or topic suggested by
his auditors. When once fairly over the difficulties at the outset of a
new subject his rhymes flowed freely, "as if he had eaten ballads, and

all men's ears grew to his tunes." His productions answered, as nearly
as I can remember, to Shakespeare's description of a proper ballad,--
"doleful matter merrily set down, or a very pleasant theme sung
lamentably." He was scrupulously conscientious, devout, inclined to
theological disquisitions, and withal mighty in Scripture. He was
thoroughly independent; flattered nobody, cared for nobody, trusted
nobody. When invited to sit down at our dinner-table he invariably took
the precaution to place his basket of valuables between his legs for safe
keeping. "Never mind they basket, Jonathan," said my father; "we
shan't steal thy verses." "I 'm not sure of that," returned the suspicious
guest. "It is written, 'Trust ye not in any brother.'"
(1) "He could never come better," says the clown in Shakespeare's
*The Winter's Tale,* when Autolycus, the pedler, is announced; "he
shall come in. I love a ballad but even too well, if it be doleful matter
merrily set down, or a very pleasant thing indeed and sung lamentably."
Act IV. scene 4.
Thou, too, O Parson B.,--with thy pale student's brow and rubicund
nose, with thy rusty and tattered black coat overswept by white,
flowing locks, with thy professional white neckcloth scrupulously
preserved when even a shirt to thy back was problematical,--art by no
means to be overlooked in the muster- roll of vagrant gentlemen
possessing the *entree* of our farmhouse. Well do we remember with
what grave and dignified courtesy he used to step over its threshold,
saluting its inmates with the same air of gracious condescension and
patronage with which in better days he had delighted the hearts of his
parishioners. Poor old man! He had once been the admired and almost
worshipped minister of the largest church in the town where he
afterwards found support in the winter season, as a pauper. He had
early fallen into intemperate habits; and at the age of three-score and
ten, when I remember him, he was only sober when he lacked the
means of being otherwise. Drunk or sober, however, he never
altogether forgot the proprieties of his profession; he was always