Yankee Gypsies | Page 6

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 grave, decorous, and gentlemanly; he held fast the form of sound words, and the weakness of the flesh abated nothing of the rigor of his stringent theology. He had been a favorite pupil of the learned and astute Emmons,(1) and was to the last a sturdy defender of the peculiar dogmas of his school. The last time we saw him he was holding a meeting in our district school-house, with a vagabond pedler for deacon and travelling companion. The tie which united the ill-assorted