Twice-told tales
sensations when, talking poetry while he sold spelling-books, he should
charm the mind, and haply touch the heart, of a fair country
schoolmistress, herself an unhonored poetess, a wearer of blue
stockings which none but himself took pains to look at. But the scene
of his completest glory would be when the wagon had halted for the
night and his stock of books was transferred to some crowded bar-room.
Then would he recommend to the multifarious company, whether traveller
from the city, or teamster from the hills, or neighboring squire, or
the landlord himself, or his loutish hostler, works suited to each
particular taste and capacity, proving, all the while, by acute
criticism and profound remark, that the lore in his books was even
exceeded by that in his brain. Thus happily would he traverse the land,
sometimes a herald before the march of Mind, sometimes walking arm in
arm with awful Literature, and reaping everywhere a harvest of real and
sensible popularity which the secluded bookworms by whose toil he lived
could never hope for.
“If ever I meddle with literature,” thought I, fixing myself in
adamantine resolution, “it shall be as a travelling bookseller.”
Though it was still mid-afternoon, the air had now grown dark about us,
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. A
sound of pleasant voices made us listen, and there soon appeared
halfway up the ladder the pretty person of a young damsel whose rosy
face was so cheerful that even amid the gloomy light it seemed as if
the sunbeams were peeping under her bonnet. We next saw the dark and
handsome features of a young man who, with easier gallantry than might
have been expected in the heart of Yankee-land, was assisting her into
the wagon. It became immediately evident to us, when the two strangers
stood within the door, that they were of a profession kindred to those
of my companions, and I was delighted with the more than hospitable—the
even paternal—kindness of the old showman’s manner as he welcomed them,
while the man of literature hastened to lead the merry-eyed girl to a
seat on the long bench.
“You are housed but just in time, my young friends,” said the master of
the wagon; “the sky would have been down upon you within five minutes.”
The young man’s reply marked him as a foreigner—not by any variation
from the idiom and accent of good English, but because he spoke with
more caution and accuracy than if perfectly familiar with the language.
“We knew that a shower was hanging over us,” said he, “and consulted
whether 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 narrowly
inspecting these two doves that had flown into our ark. The young man,
tall, agile and athletic, wore a mass of black shining curls clustering
round a dark and vivacious countenance which, if it had not greater
expression, was at least more active and attracted readier notice, than
the quiet faces of our countrymen. At his first appearance he had been
laden with a neat mahogany box of about two feet square, but very light
in proportion to its size, which he had immediately unstrapped from his
shoulders and deposited on the floor of the wagon.
The girl had nearly as fair a complexion as our own beauties, and a
brighter one than most of them; the lightness of her figure, which
seemed calculated to traverse the whole world without weariness, suited
well with the glowing cheerfulness of her face, and her gay attire,
combining the rainbow hues of crimson, green and a deep orange, was as
proper to her lightsome aspect as if she had been born in it. This gay
stranger was appropriately burdened with that mirth-inspiring
instrument the fiddle, which her companion took from her hands, and
shortly began the process of tuning. Neither of us the previous company
of the wagon needed to inquire their trade, for this could be no
mystery to frequenters of brigade-musters, ordinations, cattle-shows,
commencements, and other festal meetings in our sober land; and there
is a dear friend of mine who will smile when this page recalls to his
memory a chivalrous deed performed by us in rescuing the show-box of
such a couple from a mob of great double-fisted countrymen.
“Come,” said I to the damsel of gay attire; “shall we visit all the
wonders of the world together?”
She understood the metaphor at once, though, indeed, it would not much
have troubled me if she had assented to the literal meaning of my
words. The mahogany box was placed in a proper position, and I peeped
in through its small round magnifying-window while the girl sat by my
side and gave short descriptive sketches as one after another the
pictures were unfolded to my view. We visited together—at least, our
imaginations did—full many a famous city in the streets of which I had
long yearned to tread. Once, I remember, we were in the harbor of
Barcelona, gazing townward; next, she bore me through the air to Sicily
and bade me look up at blazing Ætna; then we took wing to Venice and
sat in a gondola beneath the arch of the Rialto, and anon she set me
down among the thronged spectators at the coronation of Napoleon. But
there was one scene—its locality she could not tell—which charmed my
attention longer than all those gorgeous palaces and churches, because
the fancy haunted me that I myself the preceding summer had beheld just
such a humble meeting-house, in just such a pine-surrounded nook, among
our own green mountains. All these pictures were tolerably executed,
though far inferior to the girl’s touches of description; nor was it
easy to comprehend how in so few sentences, and these, as I supposed,
in a language foreign to her, she contrived to present an airy copy of
each varied scene.
When we had travelled through the vast extent of the mahogany box, I
looked into my guide’s face.
“‘Where are you going, my pretty maid?’” inquired I, in the words of an
old song.
“Ah!” said the gay damsel; “you might as well ask where the summer wind
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 in these parts; so
perhaps we may be needed at what you call the camp-meeting at
Stamford.”
Then, in my happy youth, and while her pleasant voice yet sounded in my
ears, I sighed; for none but myself, I thought, should have been her
companion in a life which seemed to realize my own wild fancies
cherished all through visionary boyhood to that hour. To these two
strangers the world was in its Golden Age—not that, indeed, it was less
dark and sad than ever, but because its weariness and sorrow had no
community with their ethereal nature. Wherever they might appear in
their 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 their
sakes. The lonely cot, the narrow and gloomy street, the sombre shade,
would catch a passing gleam like that now shining on ourselves as these
bright spirits wandered by. Blessed pair, whose happy home was
throughout all the earth! I looked at my shoulders, and thought them
broad 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 its
delightful 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 the
unceasing rain had driven another wayfarer into the wagon. He seemed
pretty nearly of the old showman’s age, but much smaller, leaner and
more withered than he, and less respectably clad in a patched suit of
gray; withal, he had a thin, shrewd countenance and a pair of
diminutive gray eyes, which peeped rather too keenly out of their
puckered sockets. This old fellow had been joking with the showman in a
manner which intimated previous acquaintance, but, perceiving that the
damsel and I had terminated our affairs, he drew forth a folded
document and presented it to me. As I had anticipated, it proved to be
a circular, written in a very fair and legible hand and signed by
several distinguished gentlemen whom I had never heard of, stating that
the bearer had encountered every variety of misfortune and recommending
him to the notice of all charitable people. Previous disbursements had
left me no more than a five-dollar bill, out of which, however, I
offered to make the beggar a donation provided he would give me change
for it. The object of my beneficence looked keenly in my face, and
discerned that I had none of that abominable spirit, characteristic
though it be, of a full-blooded Yankee, which takes pleasure in
detecting every little harmless piece of knavery.
“Why, perhaps,” said the ragged old mendicant, “if the bank is in good
standing, I can’t say but I may have enough about me to change your
bill.”
“It is a bill of the Suffolk Bank,” said I, “and better than the
specie.”
As the beggar had nothing to object, he now produced a small buff
leather bag tied up carefully with a shoe-string. When this was opened,
there appeared a very comfortable treasure of silver coins of all sorts
and sizes, and I even fancied that I saw gleaming among them the golden
plumage of that rare bird in our currency the American eagle. In this
precious heap was my bank-note deposited, the rate of exchange being
considerably against me.
His wants being thus relieved, the destitute man pulled out of his
pocket an old pack of greasy cards which had probably contributed to
fill the buff leather bag in more ways than one.
“Come!” said he; “I spy a rare fortune in your face, and for
twenty-five cents more I’ll tell you what it is.”
I never refuse to take a glimpse into futurity; so, after shuffling the
cards and when the fair damsel had cut them, I dealt a portion to the
prophetic beggar. Like others of his profession, before predicting the
shadowy events that were moving on to meet me he gave proof of his
preternatural science by describing scenes through which I had already
passed.
Here let me have credit for a sober fact. When the old man had read a
page in his book of fate, he bent his keen gray eyes on mine and
proceeded to relate in all its minute particulars what was then the
most singular event of my life. It was one which I had no purpose to
disclose till the general unfolding of all secrets, nor would it be a
much stranger instance of inscrutable knowledge or fortunate conjecture
if the beggar were to meet me in the street today and repeat word for
word the page which I have here written.
The fortune-teller, after predicting a destiny which time seems loth to
make good, put up his cards, secreted his treasure-bag and began to
converse with the other occupants of the wagon.
“Well, old friend,” said the showman, “you have not yet told us which
way your face is turned this afternoon.”
“I am taking a trip northward this warm weather,” replied the conjurer,
“across the Connecticut first, and then up through Vermont, and maybe
into Canada before the fall. But I must stop and see the breaking up of
the camp-meeting at Stamford.”
I began to think that all the vagrants in New England were converging
to the camp-meeting and had made this wagon, their rendezvous by the
way.
The showman now proposed that when the shower was over they should