Try Again.
by Oliver Optic.
CHAPTER I
IN WHICH HARRY WEST AND SQUIRE WALKER DISAGREE ON AN IMPORTANT POINT
"Boy, come here!"
Squire Walker was a very pompous man; one of the most notable persons in the little town of Redfield, which, the inquiring young reader will need to be informed, as it is not laid down on any map of Ma.s.sachusetts that I am acquainted with, is situated thirty-one miles southwest of Boston.
I am not aware that Redfield was noted for anything in particular, unless it was noted for Squire Walker, as Mount Vernon was noted for Washington, and Monticello for Jefferson. No doubt the squire thought he was as great a man as either of these, and that the world was strangely stupid because it did not find out how great a man he really was. It was his misfortune that he was born in the midst of stirring times, when great energy, great genius, and the most determined patriotism are understood and appreciated.
Squire Walker, then, was a great man--in his own estimation. It is true, the rest of the world, including many of the people of Redfield, had not found it out; but, as the matter concerned himself more nearly than any one else, he seemed to be resigned to the circ.u.mstances of his lot. He had represented the town in the legislature of the state, was a member of the school committee, one of the selectmen, and an overseer of the poor. Some men would have considered all these offices as glory enough for a lifetime; and I dare say the squire would have been satisfied, if he had not been ambitious to become one of the county commissioners.
The squire had a very high and proper regard for his own dignity. It was not only his duty to be a great man, but to impress other people, especially paupers and children, with a just sense of his importance.
Consequently, when he visited the poorhouse, he always spoke in the imperative mood. It was not becoming a man of his magnificent pretensions to speak gently and kindly to the unfortunate, the friendless, and the forsaken; and the men and women hated him, and the children feared him, as much as they would have feared a roaring lion.
"Boy, come here!" said Squire Walker, as he raised his arm majestically towards a youth who was picking up "windfalls" under the apple trees in front of the poorhouse.
The boy was dressed in a suit of blue cotton clothes, extensively, but not very skillfully patched. At last two-thirds of the brim of his old straw hat was gone, leaving nothing but a snarly fringe of straws to protect his face from the heat of the sun. But this was the least of the boy"s trials. Sun or rain, heat or cold, were all the same to him, if he only got enough to eat, and time enough to sleep.
He straightened his back when Squire Walker spoke to him, and stood gazing with evident astonishment that the distinguished gentleman should condescend to speak to him.
"Come here, you sir! Do you hear?" continued Squire Walker, upon whom the boy"s look of wonder and perturbation was not wholly lost.
"This way, Harry," added Mr. Nason, the keeper of the poorhouse, who was doing the honors of the occasion to the representative of the people of Redfield.
Harry West was evidently a modest youth, and appeared to be averse to pushing himself irreverently into the presence of a man whom his vivid imagination cla.s.sed with Alexander the Great and Julius Caesar, whose great deeds he had read about in the spelling book.
Harry slowly sidled along till he came within about a rod of the great man, where he paused, apparently too much overawed to proceed any farther.
"Come here, I say," repeated Squire Walker. "Why don"t you take your hat off, and make your manners?"
Harry took his hat off, and made his manners, not very gracefully, it is true; but considering the boy"s perturbation, the squire was graciously pleased to let his "manners" pa.s.s muster.
"How old are you, boy?" asked the overseer.
"Most twelve," replied Harry, with deference.
"High time you were put to work."
"I do work," answered Harry.
"Not much; you look as fat and lazy as one of my fat hogs."
Mr. Nason ventured to suggest that Harry was a smart, active boy, willing to work, and that he more than paid his keeping by the labor he performed in the field, and the ch.o.r.es he did about the house--an interference which the squire silently rebuked, by turning up his nose at the keeper.
"I do all they want me to do," added the boy, whose tongue seemed to grow wonderfully glib under the gratuitous censure of the notable gentleman.
"Don"t be saucy, Master West."
"Bless you, squire! Harry never spoke a saucy word in his life,"
interposed the friendly keeper.
"He should know his place, and learn how to treat his superiors. You give these boys too much meat, Mr. Nason. They can"t bear it. Mush and mola.s.ses is the best thing in the world for them."
If any one had looked closely at Harry while the functionary was delivering himself of this speech, he might have seen his eye snap and his chest heave with indignation. He had evidently conquered his timidity, and, maugre his youth, was disposed to stand forth and say, "I, too, am a man." His head was erect, and he gazed unflinchingly into the eye of the squire.
"Boy," said the great man, who did not like to have a pauper boy look him in the eye without trembling--"boy, I have got a place for you, and the sooner you are sent to it, the better it will be for you and for the town."
"Where is it, sir?"
"Where is it? What is that to you, you young puppy?" growled the squire, shocked at the boy"s presumption in daring to question him.
"If I am going to a place, I would like to know where it is," replied Harry.
"You will go where you are sent!" roared the squire.
"I suppose I must; but I should like to know where."
"Well, then, you shall know," added the overseer maliciously; for he had good reason to know that the intelligence would give the boy the greatest pain he could possibly inflict. "You are going to Jacob Wire"s."
"Where, sir?" asked the keeper, looking at the squire with astonishment and indignation.
"To Jacob Wire"s," repeated the overseer.
"Jacob Wire"s!" exclaimed Mr. Nason.
"I said so."
"Do you think that will be a good place for the boy?" asked the keeper, trying to smile to cover the indignation that was boiling in his bosom.
"Certainly I do."
"Excuse me, Squire Walker, but I don"t."
The overseer stood aghast. Such a reply was little better than rebellion in one of the town"s servants, and his blood boiled at such unheard-of plainness of speech to him, late representative to the general court, member of the school committee, one of the selectmen, and an overseer of the poor.
Besides, there was another reason why the temerity of the keeper was peculiarly aggravated. Jacob Wire was the squire"s brother-in-law; and though the squire despised him quite as much and as heartily as the rest of the people of Redfield, it was not fitting that any of his connections should be a.s.sailed by another. It was not so much the fact, as the source from which it came, that was objectionable.
"How dare you speak to me in that manner, Mr. Nason?" exclaimed the squire. "Do you know who I am?"
Mr. Nason did know who he was, but at that moment, and under those circ.u.mstances, he so far forgot himself as to inform the important functionary that he didn"t care who he was; Jacob Wire"s was not a fit place for a heathen, much less a Christian.
"What do you mean, sir?" gasped the overseer in his rage.