Home as Found - James Fenimore Cooper (moboreader TXT) 📗

suitable spot for their sports. They are mistaking liberties for liberty I fear."

"Why, sir, I believe they have always played ball in that precise locality."

" Always !--I can assure you this is a great mistake. What private family, placed as we are in the centre of a village, would allow of an invasion of its privacy in this rude manner? Well may the house be termed a Wigwam, if this whooping is to be tolerated before its door."

"You forget, Ned," said John Effingham, with a sneer, "that an American always means just eighteen months. Antiquity is reached in five lustres, and the dark ages at the end of a human life. I dare say these amiable young gentlemen, who enliven their sports with so many agreeable oaths, would think you very unreasonable and encroaching to presume to tell them they are unwelcome."

"To own the truth, Mr. John, it would be downright unpopular."

"As I cannot permit the ears of the ladies to be offended with these rude brawls, and shall never consent to have grounds that are so limited, and which so properly belong to the very privacy of my dwelling, invaded in this coarse manner, I beg, Mr. Bragg, that you will, at once, desire these young men to pursue their sports somewhere else."

Aristabulus received this commission with a very ill grace; for, while his native sagacity told him that Mr. Effingham was right, he too well knew the loose habits that had been rapidly increasing in the country during the last ten years, not to foresee that the order would do violence to all the apprentices' preconceived notions of their immunities; for, as he had truly stated, things move at so quick a pace in America, and popular feeling is so arbitrary, that a custom of a twelve months' existence is deemed sacred, until the public, itself, sees fit to alter it. He was reluctantly quitting the party, on his unpleasant duty, when Mr. Effingham turned to a servant, who belonged to the place, and bade him go to the village barber, and desire him to come to the Wigwam to cut his hair; Pierre, who usually performed that office for him, being busied in unpacking trunks.

"Never mind, Tom," said Aristabulus obligingly, as he took up his hat; "I am going into the street, and will give the message to Mr. Lather."

"I cannot think, sir, of employing you on such a duty," hastily interposed Mr. Effingham, who felt a gentleman's reluctance to impose an unsuitable office on any of his dependants--"Tom, I am sure, will do me the favour."

"Do not name it, my dear sir; nothing makes me happier than to do these little errands, and, another time, you can do as much for me."

Aristabulus now went his way more cheerfully, for he determined to go first to the barber, hoping that some expedient might suggest itself, by means of which he could coax the apprentices from the lawn, and thus escape the injury to his popularity, that he so much dreaded. It is true, these apprentices were not voters, but then some of them speedily would be, and all of them, moreover, had tongues , an instrument Mr. Bragg held in quite as much awe as some men dread salt-petre. In passing the ball-players, he called out in a wheedling tone to their ringleader, a notorious street brawler--

"A fine time for sport, Dickey; don't you think there would be more room in the broad street than on this crowded lawn, where you lose your ball so often in the shrubbery?"

"This place will do, on a pinch," bawled Dickey--"though it might be better. If it warn't for that plagued house, we couldn't ask for a better ball-ground."

"I don't see," put in another, "what folks built a house just in that spot for; it has spoilt the very best play-ground in the village."

"Some people have their notions as well as others," returned Aristabulus; "but, gentlemen, if I were in your place, I would try the street; I feel satisfied you would find it much the most agreeable and convenient."

The apprentices thought differently, however, or they were indisposed to the change; and so they recommenced their yells, their oaths, and their game. In the mean while, the party in the house continued their examination of John Effingham's improvements; and when this was completed, they separated, each to his or her own room.

Aristabulus soon reappeared on the lawn; and, approaching the ball- players, he began to execute his commission, as he conceived, in good earnest. Instead of simply saying, however, that it was disagreeable to the owner of the property to have such an invasion on his privacy, and thus putting a stop to the intrusion for the future as well as at the present moment, he believed some address necessary to attain the desired end.

"Well, Dickey," he said, "there is no accounting for tastes; but, in my opinion, the street would be a much better place to play ball in than this lawn. I wonder gentlemen of your observation should be satisfied with so cramped a play-ground!"

"I tell you, Squire Bragg, this will do," roared Dickey; "we are in a hurry, and no way particular; the bosses will be after us in half an hour. Heave away, Sam."

"There are so many fences hereabouts," continued Aristabulus, with an air of indifference; "it's true the village trustees say there shall be no ball-playing in the street , but I conclude you don't much mind what they think or threaten."

"Let them sue for that, if they like," bawled a particularly amiable blackguard, called Peter, who struck his ball as he spoke, quite into the principal street of the village. "Who's a trustee, that he should tell gentlemen where they are to play ball!"

"Sure enough," said Aristabulus, "and, now, by following up that blow, you can bring matters to an issue. I think the law very oppressive, and you can never have so good an opportunity to bring things to a crisis. Besides, it is very aristocratic to play ball among roses and dahlias."

The bait took; for what apprentice--American apprentice, in particular--can resist an opportunity of showing how much he considers himself superior to the law? Then it had never struck any of the party before, that it was vulgar and aristocratic to pursue the sport among roses, and one or two of them actually complained that they had pricked their fingers, in searching for the ball.

"I know Mr. Effingham will be very sorry to have you go," continued Aristabulus, following up his advantage; "but gentlemen cannot always forego their pleasures for other folks."

"Who's Mr. Effingham, I would like to know?" cried Joe Wart. "If he wants people to play ball on his premises, let him cut down his roses. Come, gentlemen, I conform to Squire Bragg, and invite you all to follow me into the street."

As the lawn was now evacuated, en masse , Aristabulus proceeded with alacrity to the house, and went into the library, where Mr. Effingham was patiently waiting his return.

"I am happy to inform you, sir," commenced the ambassador, "that the ball-players have adjourned; and as for Mr. Lather, he declines your proposition."

"Declines my proposition!"

"Yes, sir; he dislikes to come; for he thinks it will be altogether a poor operation. His notion is, that if it be worth his while to come up to the Wigwam to cut your hair, it may be worth your while to go down to the shop, to have it cut. Considering the matter in all its bearings, therefore, he concludes he would rather not engage in the transaction at all."

"I regret, sir, to have consented to your taking so disagreeable a commission, and regret it the more, now I find that the barber is disposed to be troublesome."

"Not at all, sir. Mr. Lather is a good man, in his way, and particularly neighbourly. By the way, Mr. Effingham, he asked me to propose to let him take down your garden fence, in order that he may haul some manure on his potato patch, which wants it dreadfully, he says."

"Certainly, sir. I cannot possibly object to his hauling his manure, even through this house, should he wish it. He is so very valuable a citizen, and one who knows his own business so well, that I am only surprised at the moderation of his request."

Here Mr. Effingham rose, rang the bell for Pierre, and went to his own room, doubting, in his own mind, from all that he had seen, whether this was really the Templeton he had known in his youth, and whether he was in his own house or not.

As for Aristabulus, who saw nothing out of rule, or contrary to his own notions of propriety, in what had passed, he hurried off to tell the barber, who was so ignorant of the first duty of his trade, that he was at liberty to pull down Mr. Effingham's fence, in order to manure his own potato patch.

Lest the reader should suppose we are drawing caricatures, instead of representing an actual condition of society, it may be necessary to explain that Mr. Bragg was a standing candidate for popular favour; that, like Mr. Dodge, he considered every thing that presented itself in the name of the public, as sacred and paramount, and that so general and positive was his deference for majorities, that it was the bias of his mind to think half-a-dozen always in the right, as opposed to one, although that one, agreeably to the great decision of the real majority of the entire community, had not only the law on his side, but all the abstract merits of the disputed question. In short, to such a pass of freedom had Mr. Bragg, in common with a large class of his countrymen, carried his notions, that he had really begun to imagine liberty was all means and no end.

Chapter XII.

"In sooth, thou wast in very gracious fooling last night, when thou
spokest of Pigrogromotus, of the Vapians passing the equinoctial of
Queubus; 't was very good i' faith."--SIR ANDREW AGUE-CHEEK.

The progress of society, it has just been said, in what is termed a "new country," is a little anomalous. At the commencement of a settlement, there is much of that sort of kind feeling and mutual interest, which men are apt to manifest towards each other, when they are embarked in an enterprise of common hazards. The distance that is unavoidably inseparable from education, habits and manners, is lessened by mutual wants and mutual efforts; and the gentleman, even while he may maintain his character and station, maintains them with that species of good-fellowship and familiarity, that marks the intercourse between the officer and the soldier, in an arduous campaign. Men, and even women, break bread together, and otherwise commingle, that, in different circumstances, would be strangers; the hardy adventures and rough living of the forest, apparently lowering the pretensions of the man of cultivation and mere mental resources, to something very near the level of those of the man of physical energy, and manual skill. In this rude intercourse, the parties meet, as it might be, on a sort of neutral ground, one yielding some of his superiority, and the other laying claims to an outward show of equality, that he secretly knows, however, is the result of the peculiar circumstances in which he is placed. In short, the state of society is favourable to the