Part 17 (1/2)

The next man I met was Squire Longbow. The Squire was moving slower, if possible, than Bates. His face looked as if it had been just turned out of yellow oak, and his eyes were as yellow as his face. As the Squire never surrendered to anything, I found him not disposed to surrender to ague and fever. He said ”he'd only had a little brush, but he'd knock it out on-him in a day or two. He was jist goin' out to sc.r.a.pe some elder bark _up_, to act as an emetic, as Aunt Sonora said if he sc.r.a.ped it _down_, it would have t'other effect--and that would kill it as dead as a door-nail.”

I soon overhauled Jim Buzzard, lying half asleep in the bottom of his canoe, brus.h.i.+ng off flies with an oak branch. Jim, too, was a case, but it required something more than sickness to disturb his equilibrium. Jim said ”he warn't sick, but he felt the awfulest tired any dog ever did--he was the all-thunderest cold, t'other day, _he_ ever was in hot weather--somethin' 'nother came on ter him all of a suddint, and set his knees all goin', and his jaws a quiv'rin', and so he li'd down inter the sun, but the more he li'd, the more he kept on a shakin', and then that are all went off agin, and he'd be darned to gracious if he didn't think he'd burn up--and so he just jumped inter the river, and cool'd off--and, now he feel'd jist so agin--and so he'd got where the sun could strike him a little harder this time. What shall a feller do?” at last inquired Jim.

”Take medicine,” said I.

”Not by a jug-full,” said Jim. ”Them are doctors don't get any of their stuff down my throat. If I can't stand it as long as the ager, then I'll give in. Let-er-shake if it warnts to--it works harder than I do, and will get tir'd byme-by. Have you a little plug by-yer jest now, as I haven't had a chew sin' morning, as it may help a feller some?” Jim took the tobacco, rolled over in his canoe, gave a grunt, and composed himself for sleep.

This portrait of Buzzard would not be ludicrous, if it was not true.

Whether Socrates or Plato, or any other heathen philosopher, has ever attempted to define this kind of happiness, is more than I can say. In fact, reader, I do not believe that there was one real Jim Buzzard in the whole Grecian republic.

But why speak of individual cases? Nearly all Puddleford was prostrate--man, woman, and child. There were a few exceptions, and the aid of those few was nothing compared to the great demand of the sick. It was providential that the nature of the disease admitted of one well day, because there was an opportunity to ”exchange works,” and the sick of to-day could a.s.sist the sick of to-morrow, and so _vice versa_.

I looked through the sick families, and found the patients in all conditions. One lady had ”just broke the ager on-ter her by sax-fax tea, mix'd with Colombo.” Another ”had been a-tryin' eli-c.u.m-paine and pop'lar bark, but it didn't lie good on her stomach, and made her enymost crazy.”

Another woman was ”so as to be crawlin'”--another was ”getting quite peert”--another ”couldn't keep anything down, she felt so qualmly”--another said, ”the disease was runnin' her right inter the black janders, and then she _was_ gone”--another had ”run clear of yesterday's chill, and was now goin' to weather it;” and so on, through scores of cases.

It is worthy of note, the popular opinion of the character of this disease.

Although Puddleford had been afflicted with it for years, yet it was no better understood by the ma.s.s of community than it was at first. I have already given the opinion of Dobbs and Teazle of the _causes_ of the ague; but as Dobbs and Teazle held entirely different theories, Puddleford was not much enlightened by their wisdom. (If some friend will inform me when and where any community was ever enlightened by the _united_ opinion of its physicians, I will publish it in my next work.) Aunt Sonora had a theory which was a little old, but it was hers, and she had a right to it. She said ”n.o.body on airth could live with a stomach full of bile, and when the shakin' ager come on, you'd jest got-ter go to work and get off all the bile--bile _was_ the ager, and physicians might talk to her till she was gray 'bout well folks having bile--she know'd better--twarn't no such thing.”

Now Aunt Sonora practised upon this theory, and the excellent old lady administered a cart-load of boneset every season--blows to elevate the bile, and the leaf as a tonic. However erroneous her theory might have been, I am bound to say that her practice was about as successful as that of the regular physician.

Mr. Beagle declared ”that the ager was in the blood, and the patient must first get rid of all his bad blood, and then the ager would go along with it.” Swipes said ”it was all in the stomach.” Dobbs said ”the billerous duck chok'd up with the mash fogs, and the secretions went every which way, and the liver got as hard as sole-leather, and the patient becom' sick, and the ager set in, and then the fever, and the hull system got-er goin'

wrong, and if it warn't stopped, natur'd give out, and the man would die.”

Teazle said ”it com'd from the plough'd earth, and got inter the air, and jist so long as folks breath'd agery air, jist so long they'd have the ager.” Turtle said ”the whole tribe on 'em, men-doctors and women-doctors, were blockheads, and the surest way to get rid of the ager, was to let it run, and when it had run itself out, it would stop, and not 'afore.”

Here, then, was Puddleford at the mercy of a dozen theories, and yet men and women recovered, when the season had run its course, and were tolerably sure of health, until another year brought around another instalment of miasma.

How many crops of men have been swept off by the malaria of every new western country, I will not attempt to calculate! How many, few persons have ever attempted! This item very seldom goes into the cost of colonization. Pioneers are martyrs in a sublime sense, and it is over their bones that school-houses, churches, colleges, learning, and refinement are finally planted. But the death of a pioneer is a matter of no moment in our country--it is almost as trifling a thing as the death of a soldier in an Indian fight. There is no glory to be won on any such field. One generation rides over another, like waves over waves, and ”no such miserable interrogatory,” as Where has it gone? or How did it go? is put; but What did it do?--What has it left behind?

Any one who has long been a resident in the West, must have noticed the operation of climate upon the const.i.tution. The man from the New England mountains, with sinews of steel, soon finds himself flagging amid western miasma, and a kind of stupidity creeps over him, that it is impossible to shake off. The system grows torpid, the energies die, indifference takes possession, and thus he vegetates--he does not live.

And, dear reader, it does not lighten the gloom of the picture to find Dobbs, and Teazle, and Short, quarrelling over the remains of some departed one, endeavoring to delude the public into something themselves have no conception of, about the manner in which he or she went out of the world.

Not that all the physicians are Dobbses or Teazles, but these sketches are written away out on the rim of society, the rim of western society, where the towns.h.i.+ps are not yet all organized, and a sacred regard to truth compels me to record facts as they exist.

CHAPTER XIV.

Uncommonly Common Schools.--Annual School District Meeting.--Accounts for Contingent Expenses.--Turtle and Old Gulick's Boy.--”That are Gla.s.s.”--The Colonel starts the Wheels again.--Bulliphant's Tactics.--Have we hired ”Deacon Fluett's Darter,” or not?--Isabel Strickett.--Bunker Hill and Turkey.--Sah-Jane Beagles.--The Question settled.

Common schools are said to be the engine of popular liberty. I think we had some of the most _un_-commonly common schools, at Puddleford, that could be found anywhere under the wings of the American eagle. Our system was, of course, the same as that of all other towns.h.i.+ps in the state, but its administration was not in all respects what it should be. Our schools were managed by Puddlefordians, and they were responsible only for the talent which had been given them. Every citizen knows that our government is a piece of mechanism, made up of wheels within wheels, and while these wheels are in one sense totally independent, and stand still or turn as they are moved or let alone, yet they may indirectly affect the whole. In other words, our government is like a cl.u.s.ter of Chinese b.a.l.l.s, curiously wrought within, and detached from each other, and yet it is, after all, but one ball. There is something beautiful in the construction and operation of this piece of machinery. A school district is one machine, a towns.h.i.+p another, a county another, and a state another--all independent organizations, yet every community must work its own organization. They are not operated afar off by some great central power, over the heads of the people; but they are worked _by_ the people themselves, for themselves.

However clumsily the work may be performed at first, practice makes perfect, and men become the masters, as well as the administrators of their own laws.

We had an annual school district meeting in the village of Puddleford--and there were many others in the country at the same time--for the towns.h.i.+p was cut up into several districts, and I never attended one that did not end in a ”row,” to use a western cla.s.sical expression. The business of these meetings was all prescribed by statute, and it amounted to settling and allowing the accounts of the board for the last school year, voting contingent fund for the next, determining whether a school should be taught by a male or a female teacher, and for how many months, and the election of new officers.

The last meeting I attended, Longbow was in the chair by virtue of his office as president of the school district board. Being organized, the clerk of the board presented his account for contingent expenses, and Longbow wished to know ”if the meetin' would pa.s.s 'em.”

Turtle ”wanted to hear 'em read.”