Part 36 (2/2)
The Philosophy of Puddleford.--Diverse Elements in Pioneer Life.--Longbow and his Administration.--Not Expensive.--Two Hundred a Year, all told.--What would Chief Justice Marshall have done as Justice of Puddleford?--Longbow a great Man.--Fame and Politics.--Ike, a Wheel.--Puddleford Theology.--Camp-Meetings.--Who will do Bigelow's Work better than Bigelow?--Great Happiness, and few Nerves.--No ”Society.”--No Fas.h.i.+on in Clothes, or anything else.--Bull's-Eye and Pinchbeck.--The Great Trade didn't ”Come Off.”--Abounding Charity and Hospitality.--Pilgrim Blood.--Longbow's.--Planting the _Mud-Sills_.--Old a.s.sociations, how Controlling!--Good by, Reader.
Reader, I cannot dismiss Puddleford without adding a chapter in conclusion.
The pictures I have drawn suggest to me something more. There is a _philosophy_ that underlies the dignity of Longbow, the humor of Turtle, the rough sincerity of Aunt Sonora, the stormy and eccentric eloquence of Bigelow. Do you not think so?
Puddleford was like a thousand other new settlements--it had its green state to pa.s.s through; and Puddleford's pioneers were like other pioneers--rough, honest, hardy, strong in common sense, but weak in the books. It was not a perfect organization, packed beforehand with men fitted to all the stations of life, like Hooker and his band. But one pioneer came after another--and notions, creeds, and prejudices, were all tumbled in together. Puddleford prospered, nevertheless. Every man was right upon the question of civil and religious liberty. Each person brought this law with him, written on his soul; and, however clumsily he might give it expression, the law was there, and he could not rid himself of it any more than he could throw off his nature. If Longbow administered the details of jurisprudence awkwardly, Longbow was, after all, right in leading principles. If Longbow at times trampled down technicalities, the community, on the average, did not suffer. If Longbow even made a little law now and then, to fill a gap, it was well made, and the gap well filled.
Longbow might as well have attempted to shave an elephant with a razor as to manage the raw recruits of early Puddleford with subtle distinctions; and, besides, Longbow, as the reader has discovered, had no knowledge of that kind of instrument, nor was it necessary that he should have.
Longbow's legal rules necessarily ran on a sliding-scale, and he fitted them to the case in hand, not to cases in general.
The reader sees, then, a necessity for such men as Longbow in such a community. If it is impossible to find a man capable of preparing a technical set of legal papers, it is important to find a man who is incapable or unwilling to break them down. No man ever slipped through Longbow's fingers upon a mere technicality.
Again, Longbow's judicial duties were not expensive. An expensive judicial tribunal would have ruined Puddleford outright. Puddleford was not only obliged to use such timber as it had for public men, but the timber must also be cheap. Longbow was no mahogany judge, polished and wrought into scrolls, though there were a great many lines and angles about him. He was a plain piece of green-ash, strong, yet elastic enough to bend when justice demanded. He was not an expensive article, and therefore the interest the public paid upon him was small. He would sit all day, amid the war and tumult of contending litigants, and breast the storm of insult that was heaped upon him from the right and the left, for four s.h.i.+llings and sixpence. I do not mean to say that he lacked self-respect--no man respected himself more--but he had, somehow or somewhere, imbibed the idea that pettifoggers were ent.i.tled to great lat.i.tude of speech, and that he was _paid_ for listening to them. I have seen the Squire many a time pa.s.sing through one of these conflicts, when _his_ name was used very irreverently, holding as solemn a face as that worn by a marble statue of Solon.
Longbow's annual income amounted to about two hundred dollars a year, and this Puddleford could ”stand.” But he had many duties to perform outside of his office of magistrate to insure him this amount. As I have said elsewhere, he was the grand Puddleford umpire, and, I am very certain, settled more difficulties as a man than a magistrate. School and highway districts and officers often got twisted in a snarl, and Longbow unravelled the knot--right or wrong it matters not, he put a finish to the matter; and, _whether_ right or wrong, reader, what difference did it make so long as no one else knew it, and everybody had confidence? If confidence will sustain a bank, ought not confidence to sustain Squire Longbow?
And then A.'s pigs broke into B.'s garden--A.'s line-fence stood three feet on B.'s land. A. swore there was a legal, lawful highway across B.'s land; B. swore it was no such thing, and he would shoot the first man who crossed it. A. called B. a thief, and B. called A. another. A. agreed to break up for B., but never did, because B. refused to clear his land. A.
and B. exchanged horses; A.'s horse had the heaves, and B.'s was spavined; and so on, trouble after trouble, how often and many in kind I cannot say, Squire Longbow has brought to a compromise. These were extrajudicial services, and the two hundred dollars a year covered all.
If it had been possible to place Chief Justice Marshall, or even a finished city lawyer, in the seat of Squire Longbow, how signally he must have failed! He would have been utterly incompetent to the task, and would have burned his books, and fled from the settlement under cover of night.
Confusion is often the best manager of confusion. A clean, clear, a.n.a.lytical mind might have flashed now and then, but it could never have governed the storm. While our finished lawyer was playing about a refined distinction, Longbow would bury all distinctions ”ten fathoms deep,” and end all controversy by repeating some old saying, and dismiss the whole matter as summarily as the adjournment of a cause.
Longbow was not only a good man, a cheap man, but he was a great man.
Greatness is relative, not absolute. I hope my friends do not intend to dispute the truth of this proposition; because I have the doc.u.ments to prove it, when officially called upon to do so. Great men are like figures on a thermometer--some thermometers, it is true, are much longer, and contain a great many more figures than others. The only question any ambitious man cares to ask is, how many figures there are on the scale above his. The Puddleford thermometer was very short, dear reader, and Longbow's figure was the highest. Is not this fame? Puddleford fame, say you? Puddleford fame, indeed! It will outlast, I will wager my old hat, the fame of nine tenths of the members of Congress, who have for the last ten years blown themselves hoa.r.s.e making speeches to their outraged and indignant const.i.tuency. Why, Longbow's name will be remembered in Puddleford years after his death; and how many names can you repeat of those who strutted through the last Congress, or how many of the members for your own district for the last thirty years? Fame, indeed! But I do not wish to quarrel about so fleeting a thing as fame, and I will, therefore, dismiss that subject.
The politics of Puddleford were a little ridiculous; but Turtle's political fun was used by him as a means to carry out an end. Turtle's patriotism and Turtle's principles were beyond suspicion. Reader, there is no spot of American soil more truly patriotic than Puddleford. There are no great depositories--no central heart--in this country, from which American principles flow; every _man_ is a centre, a law unto himself. Ike Turtle was a centre; he was a kind of political wheel; ran on his own axis; borrowed no propelling power from abroad, but kept himself whirling with the spirit of '76, of which he had always a large supply on hand. He reminded me of a fire-wheel, used on celebration days, he cast off so many colored lights: now he whizzed; then he banged; now he shot forth stars; then spears of flame; but he was still a wheel, and always set himself in motion to some purpose.
What shall I say of the theology of Puddleford? I have already alluded to it in the pages of this work. Permit me to say more. Creeds travel with men wherever they go. Creeds often colonize the wilderness; they have nerved more hearts, stirred and sustained more souls, scattered more civilization, than any or all other agents. But Puddleford was not settled by any particular idea, civil or religious; yet the Puddlefordians brought with them a great many ideas, both civil and religious. They were, however, incidental, not primary. The religious exercises of the country were like its people, ardent, strong, fiery, and often tempestuous. Bigelow Van Slyck was an embodiment of Puddleford theology. He did not argue doctrine, for two reasons: he did not know how, and he would not if he could; but, to use his own language, ”he took sin by the horns, and held it by main force.”
A quiet religion with a Puddlefordian was synonymous with no religion.
Religion with him was something to be seen, to touch, to handle. Puddleford religion was often very noisy, and it manifested itself in many ways. We used to have an outburst at camp-meeting, which was held once in each year by the prevailing sect in the country. A camp-meeting! The reader has attended a camp-meeting, I know; but _we_ had the genuine kind. Puddleford was depopulated on such occasions; and its inhabitants, supplied with the necessaries of life and a tent, went forth into the wilderness to give a high tone to their piety. They wanted air, and s.p.a.ce, and time. All this was characteristic, and was like the people. What would _they_ have done inside a temple of springing arches and fretted dome--of statues looking coldly down from their niches--of pictured saints--where organ anthems rolled and trembled?
What to the Puddlefordians were the refinements of religious exercises? The wild wood was their ”temple not made with hands,” columned, and curtained, and festooned, and lit up by the sun at day, and the stars at night; and here, in this temple, day after day, the people camped; in the more immediate presence of the Most High built their watch-fires, that sent up long streams of smoke over the green canopy that sheltered them, and knelt down to pray.
The theology of Puddleford was brought out in strong relief at these meetings. They were business gatherings. The trials and crosses of every member were freely canva.s.sed, and consolation administered. The ”inner life” of each individual was thoroughly dissected--the spiritual condition of the vineyard in general carefully examined; sermons preached strong enough, both in voice and expression, to raise the dead; money was collected for benevolent purposes, and many more duties performed, which I cannot stop to mention.
The reader sees that these men and women were laying the foundation timbers of many sects that must follow them--follow them with their houses of wors.h.i.+p, their intelligence, their refinement, and, I may say, their theological abstractions, their shadows, and shades, and points of distinction. Who is there that could do Bigelow's work better than he? Who is there that will ever toil and sweat more hours in his Master's vineyard?
And to whom will the posterity of Puddleford be more indebted?
But, to drop the leading characters of Puddleford, let us go down a while among the rank and file; let us examine _their_ condition. And here I may get into trouble. Comparisons are said to be odious. I do not know who said it, nor do I care; the motive which one has in view must determine the truth of the remark. There was a vast deal of happiness in Puddleford. I do not now remember one nervous woman in the place. Think of that. If refinement brings its joys, it often covers a delicate, sensitive nature; but there was n.o.body delicate or sensitive at Puddleford; n.o.body went into fits because a rat crossed the floor, or a spider swung itself down in their way. The evening air was never too damp, nor the morning sun too oppressive. Labor made the people hardy, and an over-taxed brain hatched no bugbears. I verily believe the nightmare was never known. There were no persons tired of time--not that they had so much to do--but they were all contented with time and things as they were.
You have discovered that there was no society in Puddleford; and when I say SOCIETY, I do not mean that there was no social intercourse, but society organized and governed by rules and regulations. Here was another blessing.
Aunt Sonora never got into hysterics because Mrs. Beagles had not called on her for three weeks. Aunt Sonora would say, that ”Mrs. Beagles might stay to hum as long as she was a min-ter.” Aunt Sonora never worked herself up into a frustration because her gingerbread didn't rise when Squire Longbow took tea with her; but she just told the Squire, ”he'd got-ter go it heavy, or go without.” And then Aunt Sonora was under no obligation to make fas.h.i.+onable calls; she was not a fas.h.i.+onable lady; there was no fas.h.i.+on to call on. She did not go around and throw in a little very cold respect into her neighbor's parlor, because there were no parlors in Puddleford, and Aunt Sonora couldn't for the life of her do a formal thing if there had been. If she wanted to ”blow out agin' any one,” to use her language, why, she blew out, and in their faces, too, because the rules of her society had not taught her hypocrisy.
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