THE SEVEN VAGABONDS.
Rambling on foot in the spring of my life and the summer of the year,I came one afternoon to a point which gave me the choice of threedirections. Straight before me the main road extended its dusty lengthto Boston; on the left a branch went toward the sea, and would havelengthened my journey a trifle of twenty or thirty miles, while by theright-hand path I might have gone over hills and lakes to Canada,visiting in my way the celebrated town of Stamford. On a level spot ofgrass at the foot of the guide-post appeared an object which, thoughlocomotive on a different principle, reminded me of Gulliver'sportable mansion among the Brobdignags. It was a huge coveredwagon--or, more properly, a small house on wheels--with a door on oneside and a window shaded by green blinds on the other. Two horsesmunching provender out of the baskets which muzzled them were fastenednear the vehicle. A delectable sound of music proceeded from theinterior, and I immediately conjectured that this was some itinerantshow halting at the confluence of the roads to intercept such idletravellers as myself. A shower had long been climbing up the westernsky, and now hung so blackly over my onward path that it was a pointof wisdom to seek shelter here.
"Halloo! Who stands guard here? Is the doorkeeper asleep?" cried I,approaching a ladder of two or three steps which was let down from thewagon.
The music ceased at my summons, and there appeared at the door, notthe sort of figure that I had mentally assigned to the wanderingshowman, but a most respectable old personage whom I was sorry to haveaddressed in so free a style. He wore a snuff-colored coat andsmall-clothes, with white top-boots, and exhibited the mild dignity ofaspect and manner which may often be noticed in aged schoolmasters,and sometimes in deacons, selectmen or other potentates of that kind.A small piece of silver was my passport within his premises, where Ifound only one other person, hereafter to be described.
"This is a dull day for business," said the old gentleman as heushered me in; "but I merely tarry here to refresh the cattle, beingbound for the camp-meeting at Stamford."
Perhaps the movable scene of this narrative is still peregrinating NewEngland, and may enable the reader to test the accuracy of mydescription. The spectacle--for I will not use the unworthy term of"puppet-show"--consisted of a multitude of little people assembled ona miniature stage. Among them were artisans of every kind in theattitudes of their toil, and a group of fair ladies and gay gentlemenstanding ready for the dance; a company of foot-soldiers formed a lineacross the stage, looking stern, grim and terrible enough to make it apleasant consideration that they were but three inches high; andconspicuous above the whole was seen a Merry Andrew in the pointed capand motley coat of his profession. All the inhabitants of this mimicworld were motionless, like the figures in a picture, or like thatpeople who one moment were alive in the midst of their business anddelights and the next were transformed to statues, preserving aneternal semblance of labor that was ended and pleasure that could befelt no more. Anon, however, the old gentleman turned the handle of abarrel-organ, the first note of which produced a most enliveningeffect upon the figures and awoke them all to their proper occupationsand amusements. By the selfsame impulse the tailor plied his needle,the blacksmith's hammer descended upon the anvil and the dancerswhirled away on feathery tiptoes; the company of soldiers broke intoplatoons, retreated from the stage, and were succeeded by a troop ofhorse, who came prancing onward with such a sound of trumpets andtrampling of hoofs as might have startled Don Quixote himself; whilean old toper of inveterate ill-habits uplifted his black bottle andtook off a hearty swig. Meantime, the Merry Andrew began to caper andturn somersets, shaking his sides, nodding his head and winking hiseyes in as lifelike a manner as if he were ridiculing the nonsense ofall human affairs and making fun of the whole multitude beneath him.At length the old magician (for I compared the showman to Prosperoentertaining his guests with a masque of shadows) paused that I mightgive utterance to my wonder.
"What an admirable piece of work is this!" exclaimed I, lifting up myhands in astonishment.
Indeed, I liked the spectacle and was tickled with the old man'sgravity as he presided at it, for I had none of that foolish wisdomwhich reproves every occupation that is not useful in this world ofvanities. If there be a faculty which I possess more perfectly thanmost men, it is that of throwing myself mentally into situationsforeign to my own and detecting with a cheerful eye the desirablecircumstances of each. I could have envied the life of thisgray-headed showman, spent as it had been in a course of safe andpleasurable adventure in driving his huge vehicle sometimes throughthe sands of Cape Cod and sometimes over the rough forest-roads of thenorth and east, and halting now on the green before a villagemeeting-house and now in a paved square of the metropolis. How oftenmust his heart have been gladdened by the delight of children as theyviewed these animated figures, or his pride indulged by haranguinglearnedly to grown men on the mechanical powers which produced suchwonderful effects, or his gallantry brought into play--for this is anattribute which such grave men do not lack--by the visits of prettymaidens! And then with how fresh a feeling must he return at intervalsto his own peculiar home! "I would I were assured of as happy a lifeas his," thought I.
Though the showman's wagon might have accommodated fifteen or twentyspectators, it now contained only himself and me and a third person,at whom I threw a glance on entering. He was a neat and trim young manof two or three and twenty; his drab hat and green frock-coat withvelvet collar were smart, though no longer new, while a pair of greenspectacles that seemed needless to his brisk little eyes gave himsomething of a scholar-like and literary air. After allowing me asufficient time to inspect the puppets, he advanced with a bow anddrew my attention to some books in a corner of the wagon. These heforthwith began to extol with an amazing volubility of well-soundingwords and an ingenuity of praise that won him my heart as being myselfone of the most merciful of critics. Indeed, his stock required someconsiderable powers of commendation in the salesman. There wereseveral ancient friends of mine--the novels of those happy days whenmy affections wavered between the _Scottish Chiefs_ and _ThomasThumb_--besides a few of later date whose merits had not beenacknowledged by the public. I was glad to find that dear littlevenerable volume the _New England Primer_, looking as antique asever, though in its thousandth new edition; a bundle of superannuatedgilt picture-books made such a child of me that, partly for theglittering covers and partly for the fairy-tales within, I bought thewhole, and an assortment of ballads and popular theatrical songs drewlargely on my purse. To balance these expenditures, I meddled neitherwith sermons nor science nor morality, though volumes of each werethere, nor with a _Life of Franklin_ in the coarsest of paper,but so showily bound that it was emblematical of the doctor himself inthe court-dress which he refused to wear at Paris, nor with Webster'sspelling-book, nor some of Byron's minor poems, nor half a dozenlittle Testaments at twenty-five cents each. Thus far the collectionmight have been swept from some great bookstore or picked up at anevening auction-room, but there was one small blue-covered pamphletwhich the pedler handed me with so peculiar an air that I purchased itimmediately at his own price; and then for the first time the thoughtstruck me that I had spoken face to face with the veritable author ofa printed book.
The literary-man now evinced a great kindness for me, and I venturedto inquire which way he was travelling.
"Oh," said he, "I keep company with this old gentlemen here, and weare moving now toward the camp-meeting at Stamford."
He then explained to me that for the present season he had rented acorner of the wagon as a book-store, which, as he wittily observed,was a true circulating library, since there were few parts of thecountry where it had not gone its rounds. I approved of the planexceedingly, and began to sum up within my mind the many uncommonfelicities in the life of a book-pedler, especially when his characterresembled that of the individual before me. At a high rate was to bereckoned the daily and hourly enjoyment of such interviews as thepresent, in which he seized upon the admiration of a passing strangerand
made him aware that a man of literary taste, and even of literaryachievement, was travelling the country in a showman's wagon. A morevaluable yet not infrequent triumph might be won in his conversationswith some elderly clergyman long vegetating in a rocky, woody, wateryback-settlement of New England, who as he recruited his library fromthe pedler's stock of sermons would exhort him to seek a collegeeducation and become the first scholar in his class. Sweeter andprouder yet would be his sensations when, talking poetry while he soldspelling-books, he should charm the mind, and haply touch the heart,of a fair country schoolmistress, herself an unhonored poetess, awearer of blue stockings which none but himself took pains to look at.But the scene of his completest glory would be when the wagon hadhalted for the night and his stock of books was transferred to somecrowded bar-room. Then would he recommend to the multifarious company,whether traveller from the city, or teamster from the hills, orneighboring squire, or the landlord himself, or his loutish hostler,works suited to each particular taste and capacity, proving, all thewhile, by acute criticism and profound remark, that the lore in hisbooks was even exceeded by that in his brain. Thus happily would hetraverse the land, sometimes a herald before the march of Mind,sometimes walking arm in arm with awful Literature, and reapingeverywhere a harvest of real and sensible popularity which thesecluded bookworms by whose toil he lived could never hope for.
"If ever I meddle with literature," thought I, fixing myself inadamantine resolution, "it shall be as a travelling bookseller."
Though it was still mid-afternoon, the air had now grown dark aboutus, and a few drops of rain came down upon the roof of our vehicle,pattering like the feet of birds that had flown thither to rest. Asound of pleasant voices made us listen, and there soon appearedhalfway up the ladder the pretty person of a young damsel whose rosyface was so cheerful that even amid the gloomy light it seemed as ifthe sunbeams were peeping under her bonnet. We next saw the dark andhandsome features of a young man who, with easier gallantry than mighthave been expected in the heart of Yankee-land, was assisting her intothe wagon. It became immediately evident to us, when the two strangersstood within the door, that they were of a profession kindred to thoseof my companions, and I was delighted with the more thanhospitable--the even paternal--kindness of the old showman's manner ashe welcomed them, while the man of literature hastened to lead themerry-eyed girl to a seat on the long bench.
"You are housed but just in time, my young friends," said the masterof the wagon; "the sky would have been down upon you within fiveminutes."
The young man's reply marked him as a foreigner--not by any variationfrom the idiom and accent of good English, but because he spoke withmore caution and accuracy than if perfectly familiar with thelanguage.
"We knew that a shower was hanging over us," said he, "and consultedwhether it were best to enter the house on the top of yonder hill,but, seeing your wagon in the road--"
"We agreed to come hither," interrupted the girl, with a smile,"because we should be more at home in a wandering house like this."
I, meanwhile, with many a wild and undetermined fantasy was narrowlyinspecting these two doves that had flown into our ark. The young man,tall, agile and athletic, wore a mass of black shining curlsclustering round a dark and vivacious countenance which, if it had notgreater expression, was at least more active and attracted readiernotice, than the quiet faces of our countrymen. At his firstappearance he had been laden with a neat mahogany box of about twofeet square, but very light in proportion to its size, which he hadimmediately unstrapped from his shoulders and deposited on the floorof the wagon.
The girl had nearly as fair a complexion as our own beauties, and abrighter one than most of them; the lightness of her figure, whichseemed calculated to traverse the whole world without weariness,suited well with the glowing cheerfulness of her face, and her gayattire, combining the rainbow hues of crimson, green and a deeporange, was as proper to her lightsome aspect as if she had been bornin it. This gay stranger was appropriately burdened with thatmirth-inspiring instrument the fiddle, which her companion took fromher hands, and shortly began the process of tuning. Neither of us theprevious company of the wagon needed to inquire their trade, for thiscould be no mystery to frequenters of brigade-musters, ordinations,cattle-shows, commencements, and other festal meetings in our soberland; and there is a dear friend of mine who will smile when this pagerecalls to his memory a chivalrous deed performed by us in rescuingthe show-box of such a couple from a mob of great double-fistedcountrymen.
"Come," said I to the damsel of gay attire; "shall we visit all thewonders of the world together?"
She understood the metaphor at once, though, indeed, it would not muchhave troubled me if she had assented to the literal meaning of mywords. The mahogany box was placed in a proper position, and I peepedin through its small round magnifying-window while the girl sat by myside and gave short descriptive sketches as one after another thepictures were unfolded to my view. We visited together--at least, ourimaginations did--full many a famous city in the streets of which Ihad long yearned to tread. Once, I remember, we were in the harbor ofBarcelona, gazing townward; next, she bore me through the air toSicily and bade me look up at blazing AEtna; then we took wing toVenice and sat in a gondola beneath the arch of the Rialto, and anonshe set me down among the thronged spectators at the coronation ofNapoleon. But there was one scene--its locality she could nottell--which charmed my attention longer than all those gorgeouspalaces and churches, because the fancy haunted me that I myself thepreceding summer had beheld just such a humble meeting-house, in justsuch a pine-surrounded nook, among our own green mountains. All thesepictures were tolerably executed, though far inferior to the girl'stouches of description; nor was it easy to comprehend how in so fewsentences, and these, as I supposed, in a language foreign to her, shecontrived to present an airy copy of each varied scene.
When we had travelled through the vast extent of the mahogany box, Ilooked into my guide's face.
"'Where are you going, my pretty maid?'" inquired I, in the words ofan old song.
"Ah!" said the gay damsel; "you might as well ask where the summerwind is going. We are wanderers here and there and everywhere.Wherever there is mirth our merry hearts are drawn to it. To-day,indeed, the people have told us of a great frolic and festival inthese parts; so perhaps we may be needed at what you call thecamp-meeting at Stamford."
Then, in my happy youth, and while her pleasant voice yet sounded inmy ears, I sighed; for none but myself, I thought, should have beenher companion in a life which seemed to realize my own wild fanciescherished all through visionary boyhood to that hour. To these twostrangers the world was in its Golden Age--not that, indeed, it wasless dark and sad than ever, but because its weariness and sorrow hadno community with their ethereal nature. Wherever they might appear intheir pilgrimage of bliss, Youth would echo back their gladness,care-stricken Maturity would rest a moment from its toil, and Age,tottering among the graves, would smile in withered joy for theirsakes. The lonely cot, the narrow and gloomy street, the sombre shade,would catch a passing gleam like that now shining on ourselves asthese bright spirits wandered by. Blessed pair, whose happy home wasthroughout all the earth! I looked at my shoulders, and thought thembroad enough to sustain those pictured towns and mountains; mine, too,was an elastic foot as tireless as the wing of the bird of Paradise;mine was then an untroubled heart that would have gone singing on itsdelightful way.
"Oh, maiden," said I aloud, "why did you not come hither alone?"
While the merry girl and myself were busy with the show-box theunceasing rain had driven another wayfarer into the wagon. He seemedpretty nearly of the old showman's age, but much smaller, leaner andmore withered than he, and less respectably clad in a patched suit ofgray; withal, he had a thin, shrewd countenance and a pair ofdiminutive gray eyes, which peeped rather too keenly out of theirpuckered sockets. This old fellow had been joking with the showman ina manner which intimated previous acquaintance, but, perceiving thatthe dam
sel and I had terminated our affairs, he drew forth a foldeddocument and presented it to me. As I had anticipated, it proved to bea circular, written in a very fair and legible hand and signed byseveral distinguished gentlemen whom I had never heard of, statingthat the bearer had encountered every variety of misfortune andrecommending him to the notice of all charitable people. Previousdisbursements had left me no more than a five-dollar bill, out ofwhich, however, I offered to make the beggar a donation provided hewould give me change for it. The object of my beneficence lookedkeenly in my face, and discerned that I had none of that abominablespirit, characteristic though it be, of a full-blooded Yankee, whichtakes pleasure in detecting every little harmless piece of knavery.
"Why, perhaps," said the ragged old mendicant, "if the bank is in goodstanding, I can't say but I may have enough about me to change yourbill."
"It is a bill of the Suffolk Bank," said I, "and better than thespecie."
As the beggar had nothing to object, he now produced a small buffleather bag tied up carefully with a shoe-string. When this wasopened, there appeared a very comfortable treasure of silver coins ofall sorts and sizes, and I even fancied that I saw gleaming among themthe golden plumage of that rare bird in our currency the Americaneagle. In this precious heap was my bank-note deposited, the rate ofexchange being considerably against me.
His wants being thus relieved, the destitute man pulled out of hispocket an old pack of greasy cards which had probably contributed tofill the buff leather bag in more ways than one.
"Come!" said he; "I spy a rare fortune in your face, and fortwenty-five cents more I'll tell you what it is."
I never refuse to take a glimpse into futurity; so, after shufflingthe cards and when the fair damsel had cut them, I dealt a portion tothe prophetic beggar. Like others of his profession, before predictingthe shadowy events that were moving on to meet me he gave proof of hispreternatural science by describing scenes through which I had alreadypassed.
Here let me have credit for a sober fact. When the old man had read apage in his book of fate, he bent his keen gray eyes on mine andproceeded to relate in all its minute particulars what was then themost singular event of my life. It was one which I had no purpose todisclose till the general unfolding of all secrets, nor would it be amuch stranger instance of inscrutable knowledge or fortunateconjecture if the beggar were to meet me in the street today andrepeat word for word the page which I have here written.
The fortune-teller, after predicting a destiny which time seems lothto make good, put up his cards, secreted his treasure-bag and began toconverse with the other occupants of the wagon.
"Well, old friend," said the showman, "you have not yet told us whichway your face is turned this afternoon."
"I am taking a trip northward this warm weather," replied theconjurer, "across the Connecticut first, and then up through Vermont,and maybe into Canada before the fall. But I must stop and see thebreaking up of the camp-meeting at Stamford."
I began to think that all the vagrants in New England were convergingto the camp-meeting and had made this wagon, their rendezvous by theway.
The showman now proposed that when the shower was over they shouldpursue the road to Stamford together, it being sometimes the policy ofthese people to form a sort of league and confederacy.
"And the young lady too," observed the gallant bibliopolist, bowing toher profoundly, "and this foreign gentleman, as I understand, are on ajaunt of pleasure to the same spot. It would add incalculably to myown enjoyment, and I presume to that of my colleague and his friend,if they could be prevailed upon to join our party."
This arrangement met with approbation on all hands, nor were any ofthose concerned more sensible of its advantages than myself, who hadno title to be included in it.
Having already satisfied myself as to the several modes in which thefour others attained felicity, I next set my mind at work to discoverwhat enjoyments were peculiar to the old "straggler," as the people ofthe country would have termed the wandering mendicant and prophet. Ashe pretended to familiarity with the devil, so I fancied that he wasfitted to pursue and take delight in his way of life by possessingsome of the mental and moral characteristics--the lighter and morecomic ones--of the devil in popular stories. Among them might bereckoned a love of deception for its own sake, a shrewd eye and keenrelish for human weakness and ridiculous infirmity, and the talent ofpetty fraud. Thus to this old man there would be pleasure even in theconsciousness--so insupportable to some minds--that his whole life wasa cheat upon the world, and that, so far as he was concerned with thepublic, his little cunning had the upper hand of its united wisdom.Every day would furnish him with a succession of minute and pungenttriumphs--as when, for instance, his importunity wrung a pittance outof the heart of a miser, or when my silly good-nature transferred apart of my slender purse to his plump leather bag, or when someostentatious gentleman should throw a coin to the ragged beggar whowas richer than himself, or when--though he would not always be sodecidedly diabolical--his pretended wants should make him a sharer inthe scanty living of real indigence. And then what an inexhaustiblefield of enjoyment, both as enabling him to discern so much folly andachieve such quantities of minor mischief, was opened to his sneeringspirit by his pretensions to prophetic knowledge.
All this was a sort of happiness which I could conceive of, though Ihad little sympathy with it. Perhaps, had I been then inclined toadmit it, I might have found that the roving life was more proper tohim than to either of his companions; for Satan, to whom I hadcompared the poor man, has delighted, ever since the time of Job, in"wandering up and down upon the earth," and, indeed, a craftydisposition which operates not in deep-laid plans, but in disconnectedtricks, could not have an adequate scope, unless naturally impelled toa continual change of scene and society.
My reflections were here interrupted.
"Another visitor!" exclaimed the old showman.
The door of the wagon had been closed against the tempest, which wasroaring and blustering with prodigious fury and commotion and beatingviolently against our shelter, as if it claimed all those homelesspeople for its lawful prey, while we, caring little for thedispleasure of the elements, sat comfortably talking. There was now anattempt to open the door, succeeded by a voice uttering some strange,unintelligible gibberish which my companions mistook for Greek and Isuspected to be thieves' Latin. However, the showman stepped forwardand gave admittance to a figure which made me imagine either that ourwagon had rolled back two hundred years into past ages or that theforest and its old inhabitants had sprung up around us by enchantment.It was a red Indian armed with his bow and arrow. His dress was a sortof cap adorned with a single feather of some wild bird, and a frock ofblue cotton girded tight about him; on his breast, like orders ofknighthood, hung a crescent and a circle and other ornaments ofsilver, while a small crucifix betokened that our father the pope hadinterposed between the Indian and the Great Spirit whom he hadworshipped in his simplicity. This son of the wilderness and pilgrimof the storm took his place silently in the midst of us. When thefirst surprise was over, I rightly conjectured him to be one of thePenobscot tribe, parties of which I had often seen in their summerexcursions down our Eastern rivers. There they paddle their birchcanoes among the coasting-schooners, and build their wigwam besidesome roaring mill-dam, and drive a little trade in basket-work wheretheir fathers hunted deer. Our new visitor was probably wanderingthrough the country toward Boston, subsisting on the careless charityof the people while he turned his archery to profitable account byshooting at cents which were to be the prize of his successful aim.
The Indian had not long been seated ere our merry damsel sought todraw him into conversation. She, indeed, seemed all made up ofsunshine in the month of May, for there was nothing so dark and dismalthat her pleasant mind could not cast a glow over it; and the wildman, like a fir tree in his native forest, soon began to brighten intoa sort of sombre cheerfulness. At length she inquired whether hisjourney had any particular end or purpose
.
"I go shoot at the camp-meeting at Stamford," replied the Indian.
"And here are five more," said the girl, "all aiming at thecamp-meeting too. You shall be one of us, for we travel with lighthearts; and, as for me, I sing merry songs and tell merry tales and amfull of merry thoughts, and I dance merrily along the road, so thatthere is never any sadness among them that keep me company. But oh,you would find it very dull indeed to go all the way to Stamfordalone."
My ideas of the aboriginal character led me to fear that the Indianwould prefer his own solitary musings to the gay society thus offeredhim; on the contrary, the girl's proposal met with immediateacceptance and seemed to animate him with a misty expectation ofenjoyment.
I now gave myself up to a course of thought which, whether it flowednaturally from this combination of events or was drawn forth by awayward fancy, caused my mind to thrill as if I were listening to deepmusic. I saw mankind in this weary old age of the world eitherenduring a sluggish existence amid the smoke and dust of cities, or,if they breathed a purer air, still lying down at night with no hopebut to wear out to-morrow, and all the to-morrows which make up life,among the same dull scenes and in the same wretched toil that haddarkened the sunshine of today. But there were some full of theprimeval instinct who preserved the freshness of youth to their latestyears by the continual excitement of new objects, new pursuits and newassociates, and cared little, though their birthplace might have beenhere in New England, if the grave should close over them in CentralAsia. Fate was summoning a parliament of these free spirits;unconscious of the impulse which directed them to a common centre,they had come hither from far and near, and last of all appeared therepresentatives of those mighty vagrants who had chased the deerduring thousands of years, and were chasing it now in the spirit-land.Wandering down through the waste of ages, the woods had vanishedaround his path; his arm had lost somewhat of its strength, his footof its fleetness, his mien of its wild regality, his heart and mind oftheir savage virtue and uncultured force, but here, untamable to theroutine of artificial life, roving now along the dusty road as of oldover the forest-leaves,--here was the Indian still.
"Well," said the old showman, in the midst of my meditations, "here isan honest company of us--one, two, three, four, five, six--all goingto the camp-meeting at Stamford. Now, hoping no offence, I should liketo know where this young gentleman may be going?"
I started. How came I among these wanderers? The free mind thatpreferred its own folly to another's wisdom, the open spirit thatfound companions everywhere--above all, the restless impulse that hadso often made me wretched in the midst of enjoyments,--these were myclaims to be of their society.
"My friends," cried I, stepping into the centre of the wagon, "I amgoing with you to the camp-meeting at Stamford."
"But in what capacity?" asked the old showman, after a moment'ssilence. "All of us here can get our bread in some creditable way.Every honest man should have his livelihood. You, sir, as I take it,are a mere strolling gentleman."
I proceeded to inform the company that when Nature gave me apropensity to their way of life she had not left me altogetherdestitute of qualifications for it, though I could not deny that mytalent was less respectable, and might be less profitable, than themeanest of theirs. My design, in short, was to imitate thestory-tellers of whom Oriental travellers have told us, and become anitinerant novelist, reciting my own extemporaneous fictions to suchaudiences as I could collect.
"Either this," said I, "is my vocation, or I have been born in vain."
The fortune-teller, with a sly wink to the company, proposed to takeme as an apprentice to one or other of his professions, either ofwhich undoubtedly would have given full scope to whatever inventivetalent I might possess. The bibliopolist spoke a few words inopposition to my plan--influenced partly, I suspect, by the jealousyof authorship, and partly by an apprehension that the _viva-voce_practice would become general among novelists, to the infinitedetriment of the book trade.
Dreading a rejection, I solicited the interest of the merry damsel.
"'Mirth,'" cried I, most aptly appropriating the words of L'Allegro,"'to thee I sue! Mirth, admit me of thy crew!'"
"Let us indulge the poor youth," said Mirth, with a kindness whichmade me love her dearly, though I was no such coxcomb as tomisinterpret her motives. "I have espied much promise in him. True, ashadow sometimes flits across his brow, but the sunshine is sure tofollow in a moment. He is never guilty of a sad thought but a merryone is twin-born with it. We will take him with us, and you shall seethat he will set us all a-laughing before we reach the camp-meeting atStamford." Her voice silenced the scruples of the rest and gained meadmittance into the league; according to the terms of which, without acommunity of goods or profits, we were to lend each other all the aidand avert all the harm that might be in our power.
This affair settled, a marvellous jollity entered into the whole tribeof us, manifesting itself characteristically in each individual. Theold showman, sitting down to his barrel-organ, stirred up the souls ofthe pigmy people with one of the quickest tunes in the music-book;tailors, blacksmiths, gentlemen and ladies all seemed to share in thespirit of the occasion, and the Merry Andrew played his part morefacetiously than ever, nodding and winking particularly at me. Theyoung foreigner flourished his fiddle-bow with a master's hand, andgave an inspiring echo to the showman's melody. The bookish man andthe merry damsel started up simultaneously to dance, the formerenacting the double shuffle in a style which everybody must havewitnessed ere election week was blotted out of time, while the girl,setting her arms akimbo with both hands at her slim waist, displayedsuch light rapidity of foot and harmony of varying attitude and motionthat I could not conceive how she ever was to stop, imagining at themoment that Nature had made her, as the old showman had made hispuppets, for no earthly purpose but to dance jigs. The Indian bellowedforth a succession of most hideous outcries, somewhat affrighting ustill we interpreted them as the war-song with which, in imitation ofhis ancestors, he was prefacing the assault on Stamford. The conjurer,meanwhile, sat demurely in a corner extracting a sly enjoyment fromthe whole scene, and, like the facetious Merry Andrew, directing hisqueer glance particularly at me. As for myself, with greatexhilaration of fancy, I began to arrange and color the incidents of atale wherewith I proposed to amuse an audience that very evening; forI saw that my associates were a little ashamed of me, and that no timewas to be lost in obtaining a public acknowledgment of my abilities.
"Come, fellow-laborers," at last said the old showman, whom we hadelected president; "the shower is over, and we must be doing our dutyby these poor souls at Stamford."
"We'll come among them in procession, with music and dancing," criedthe merry damsel.
Accordingly--for it must be understood that our pilgrimage was to beperformed on foot--we sallied joyously out of the wagon, each of us,even the old gentleman in his white top-boots, giving a great skip aswe came down the ladder. Above our heads there was such a glory ofsunshine and splendor of clouds, and such brightness of verdure below,that, as I modestly remarked at the time, Nature seemed to have washedher face and put on the best of her jewelry and a fresh green gown inhonor of our confederation. Casting our eyes northward, we beheld ahorseman approaching leisurely and splashing through the little puddleon the Stamford road. Onward he came, sticking up in his saddle withrigid perpendicularity, a tall, thin figure in rusty black, whom theshowman and the conjurer shortly recognized to be what his aspectsufficiently indicated--a travelling preacher of great fame among theMethodists. What puzzled us was the fact that his face appeared turnedfrom, instead of to, the camp-meeting at Stamford. However, as thisnew votary of the wandering life drew near the little green spacewhere the guide-post and our wagon were situated, my sixfellow-vagabonds and myself rushed forward and surrounded him, cryingout with united voices, "What news? What news from the camp-meeting atStamford?"
The missionary looked down in surprise at as singular a knot of peopleas could have been sel
ected from all his heterogeneous auditors.Indeed, considering that we might all be classified under the generalhead of Vagabond, there was great diversity of character among thegrave old showman, the sly, prophetic beggar, the fiddling foreignerand his merry damsel, the smart bibliopolist, the sombre Indian andmyself, the itinerant novelist, a slender youth of eighteen. I evenfancied that a smile was endeavoring to disturb the iron gravity ofthe preacher's mouth.
"Good people," answered he, "the camp-meeting is broke up."
So saying, the Methodist minister switched his steed and rodewestward. Our union being thus nullified by the removal of its object,we were sundered at once to the four winds of heaven. Thefortune-teller, giving a nod to all and a peculiar wink to me,departed on his Northern tour, chuckling within himself as he took theStamford road. The old showman and his literary coadjutor were alreadytackling their horses to the wagon with a design to peregrinatesouth-west along the sea-coast. The foreigner and the merry damseltook their laughing leave and pursued the eastern road, which I hadthat day trodden; as they passed away the young man played a livelystrain and the girl's happy spirit broke into a dance, and, thusdissolving, as it were, into sunbeams and gay music, that pleasantpair departed from my view. Finally, with a pensive shadow thrownacross my mind, yet emulous of the light philosophy of my latecompanions, I joined myself to the Penobscot Indian and set forthtoward the distant city.