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Homespun Tales

by Kate Douglas Wiggin


Introduction

These three stories are now brought together under one cover because they have
not quite outworn their welcome; but in their first estate two of them
appeared as gift-books, with decorative borders and wide margins, a style not
compatible with the stringent economies of the present moment. Luckily they
belong together by reason of their background, which is an imaginary village,
any village you choose, within the confines, or on the borders of York County,
in the State of Maine.

In the first tale the river, not "Rose," is the principal character; no one
realizes this better than I. If an author spends her summers on the banks of
Saco Water it fills the landscape. It flows from the White Mountains to the
Atlantic in a tempestuous torrent, breaking here and there into glorious falls
of amber glimpsed through snowy foam; its rapids dash through rocky cliffs
crowned with pine trees, under which blue harebells and rosy columbines
blossom in gay profusion. There is the glint of the mirror-like lake above the
falls, and the sound of the surging floods below; the witchery of feathery
elms reflected in its clear surfaces, and the enchantment of the full moon on
its golden torrents, never twice alike and always beautiful! How is one to
forget, evade, scorn, belittle it, by leaving its charms untold; and who could
keep such a river out of a book? It has flowed through many of mine and the
last sound I expect to hear in life will be the faint, far-away murmur of Saco
Water!

The old Tory Hill Meeting House bulks its way into the foreground of the next
story, and the old Peabody Pew (which never existed) has somehow assumed a
quasi-historical aspect never intended by its author. There is a Dorcas
Society, and there is a meeting house; my dedication assures the reader of
these indubitable facts; and the Dorcas Society, in a season of temporary
bankruptcy, succeeding a too ample generosity, did scrub the pews when there
was no money for paint. Rumors of our strenuous, and somewhat unique,
activities spread through our parish to many others, traveling so far (even
over seas) that we became embarrassed at our easily won fame. The book was
read and people occasionally came to church to see the old Peabody Pew, rather
resenting the information that there had never been any Peabodys in the parish
and, therefore, there could be no Peabody Pew. Matters became worse when I
made, very reverently, what I suppose must be called a dramatic version of the
book, which we have played for several summers in the old meeting house to
audiences far exceeding our seating capacity. Inasmuch as the imaginary
love-tale of my so-called Nancy Wentworth and Justin Peabody had begun under
the shadow of the church steeple, and after the ten years of parting the happy
reunion had come to them in the selfsame place, it was possible to present
their story simply and directly, without offense, in a church building. There
was no curtain, no stage, no scenery, no theatricalism. The pulpit was moved
back, and four young pine trees were placed in front of it for supposed
Christmas decoration. The pulpit platform, and the "wing pews" left vacant for
the village players, took the place of a stage; the two aisles served for
exits and entrances; and the sexton with three rings of the church bell,
announced the scenes. The Carpet Committee of the Dorcas Society furnished the
exposition of the first act, while sewing the last breadths of the new,
hardly-bought ingrain carpet. The scrubbing of the pews ends the act, with
dialogue concerning men, women, ministers, church-members and their ways,
including the utter failure of Justin Peabody, Nancy's hero, to make a living
anywhere, even in the West. The Dorcas members leave the church for their
Saturday night suppers of beans and brown bread, but Nancy returns with her
lantern at nightfall to tack down the carpet in the old Peabody pew and iron
out the tattered, dog's eared leaves of the hymn-book from which she has so
often sung "By cool Siloam's shady rill" with her lover in days gone by. He,
still a failure, having waited for years for his luck to turn, has come back
to spend Christmas in the home of his boyhood; and seeing a dim light in the
church, he enters quietly and surprises Nancy at her task of carpeting the
Peabody Pew, so that it shall look as well as the others at next day's
services. The rest is easy to imagine. One can deny the reality of a book, but
when two or three thousand people have beheld Justin Peabody and Nancy
Wentworth in the flesh, and have seen the paint of the old Peabody Pew wiped
with a damp cloth, its cushion darned and its carpet tacked in place, it is
useless to argue; any more than it would be to deny the validity of the egg of
Columbus or the apple of William Tell.

As for "Susanna and Sue" the story would never have been written had I not as
a child and girl been driven once a year to the Shaker meeting at the little
village of Alfred, sixteen miles distant. The services were then open to the
public, but eventually permission to attend them was withdrawn, because of the
careless and sometimes irreverent behavior of young people who regarded the
Shaker costumes, the solemn dances or marches, the rhythmic movements of the
hands, the almost hypnotic crescendo of the singing, as a sort of humorous
spectacle. I learned to know the brethren and sisters, and the Elder, as years
went by, and often went to the main house to spend a day or two as the guest
of Eldress Harriet, a saint, if ever there was one, or, later, with dear
Sister Lucinda.

The shining cleanliness and order, the frugality and industry, the serenity
and peace of these people, who had resigned the world and "life on the plane
of Adam," vowing themselves to celibacy, to public confession of sins, and the
holding of goods in common, - all this has always had a certain exquisite and
helpful influence upon my thought, and Mr. W. D. Howells paid a far more
beautiful tribute to them in "The Undiscovered Country."

It is needless to say that I read every word of the book to my Shaker friends
before it was published. They took a deep interest in it, evincing keen
delight in my rather facetious but wholly imaginary portrait of "Brother
Ansel," a "born Shaker," and sadly confessing that my two young lovers,
"Hetty" and "Nathan," who could not endure the rigors of the Shaker faith and
fled together in the night to marry and join the world's people, - that this
tragedy had often occurred in their community.

Here, then, are the three simple homespun tales. I believe they are true to
life as I see it. I only wish my readers might hear the ripple of the Maine
river running through them; breathe the fragrance of New England for-ests, and
though never for a moment getting, through my poor pen, the atmosphere of
Maine's rugged cliffs and the tang of her salt sea air, they might at least
believe for an instant that they had found a modest Mayflower in her pine
woods.

KATE DOUGLAS WIGGIN. July, 1920.




CONTENTS


ROSE O' THE RIVER

I. The Pine and the Rose
II. The "Old Kennebec"
III. The Edgewood "Drive"
IV. "Blasphemious Swearin'"
V. The Game of Jackstraws
VI. Hearts and Other Hearts
VII. The Little House
VIII. The Garden of Eden
IX. The Serpent
X. The Turquoise Ring
XI. Rose Sees the World
XII. Gold and Pinchbeck
XIII. A Country Chevalier
XIV. Housebreaking
XV. The Dream Room


THE OLD PEABODY PEW


SUSANNA AND SUE

I. Mother Ann's Children
II. A Son of Adam
III. Divers Doctrines
IV. Louisa's Mind
V. the Little Quail Bird
VI. Susanna Speaks in Meeting
VII. "The Lower Plane"
VIII. Concerning Backsliders
IX. Love Manifold
X. Brother and Sister
XI. "The Open Door"
XII. The Hills of Home


ROSE O' THE RIVER


I

The Pine And the Rose


It was not long after sunrise, and Stephen Waterman, fresh from his dip in the
river, had scrambled up the hillside from the hut in the alder-bushes where he
had made his morning toilet.

An early ablution of this sort was not the custom of the farmers along the
banks of the Saco, but the Waterman house was hardly a stone's throw from the
water, and there was a clear, deep swimming-hole in the Willow Cove that would
have tempted the busiest man, or the least cleanly, in York County. Then, too,
Stephen was a child of the river, born, reared, schooled on its very brink,
never happy unless he were on it, or in it, or beside it, or at least within
sight or sound of it.

The immensity of the sea had always silenced and overawed him, left him cold
in feeling. The river wooed him, caressed him, won his heart. It was just big
enough to love. It was full of charms and changes, of varying moods and sudden
surprises. Its voice stole in upon his ear with a melody far sweeter and more
subtle than the boom of the ocean. Yet it was not without strength, and when
it was swollen with the freshets of the spring and brimming with the bounty of
its sister streams, it could dash and roar, boom and crash, with the best of
them.

Stephen stood on the side porch, drinking in the glory of the sunrise, with
the Saco winding like a silver ribbon through the sweet loveliness of the
summer landscape.

And the river rolled on toward the sea, singing its morning song, creating and
nourishing beauty at every step of its onward path. Cradled in the heart of a
great mountain-range, it pursued its gleaming way, here lying silent in glassy
lakes, there rushing into tinkling little falls, foaming great falls, and
thundering cataracts. Scores of bridges spanned its width, but no steamers
flurried its crystal depths. Here and there a rough little rowboat, tethered
to a willow, rocked to and fro in some quiet bend of the shore. Here the
silver gleam of a rising perch, chub, or trout caught the eye; there a
pickerel lay rigid in the clear water, a fish carved in stone: here eels
coiled in the muddy bottom of some pool; and there, under the deep shadows of
the rocks, lay fat, sleepy bass, old, and incredibly wise, quite untempted by,
and wholly superior to, the rural fisherman's worm.

The river lapped the shores of peaceful meadows; it flowed along banks green
with maple, beech, sycamore, and birch; it fell tempestuously over dams and
fought its way between rocky cliffs crowned with stately firs. It rolled past
forests of pine and hemlock and spruce, now gentle, now terrible; for there is
said to be an Indian curse upon the Saco, whereby, with every great sun, the
child of a paleface shall be drawn into its cruel depths. Lashed into fury by
the stony reefs that impeded its progress, the river looked now sapphire, now
gold, now white, now leaden gray; but always it was hurrying, hurrying on its
appointed way to the sea.

After feasting his eyes and filling his heart with a morning draught of
beauty, Stephen went in from the porch and, pausing at the stairway, called in
stentorian tones: "Get up and eat your breakfast, Rufus! The boys will be
picking the side jams today, and I'm going down to work on the logs. If you
come along, bring your own pick-pole and peavey." Then, going to the kitchen
pantry, he collected, from the various shelves, a pitcher of milk, a loaf of
bread, half an apple pie, and a bowl of blueberries, and, with the easy
methods of a household unswayed by feminine rule, moved toward a seat under an
apple tree and took his morning meal in great apparent content. Having
finished, and washed his dishes with much more thoroughness than is common to
unsuperintended man, and having given Rufus the second call to breakfast with
the vigor and acrimony that usually mark that unpleasant performance, he
strode to a high point on the riverbank and, shading his eyes with his hand,
gazed steadily downstream.

Patches of green fodder and blossoming potatoes melted into soft fields that
had been lately mown, and there were glimpses of tasseling corn rising high to
catch the sun. Far, far down on the opposite bank of the river was the hint of
a brown roof, and the tip of a chimney that sent a slender wisp of smoke into
the clear air. Beyond this, and farther back from the water, the trees
apparently hid a cluster of other chimneys, for thin spirals of smoke ascended
here and there. The little brown roof could never have revealed itself to any
but a lover's eye; and that discerned something even smaller, something like a
pinkish speck, that moved hither and thither on a piece of greensward that
sloped to the waterside.

"She's up!" Stephen exclaimed under his breath, his eyes shining, his lips
smiling. His voice had a note of hushed exaltation about it, as if "she,"
whoever she might be, had, in condescending to rise, conferred a priceless
boon upon a waiting universe. If she were indeed "up" (so his tone implied),
then the day, somewhat falsely heralded by the sunrise, had really begun, and
the human race might pursue its appointed tasks, inspired and uplifted by the
consciousness of her existence. It might properly be grateful for the fact of
her birth; that she had grown to woman's estate; and, above all, that, in
common with the sun, the lark, the morning-glory, and other beautiful things
of the early day, she was up and about her lovely, cheery, heart-warming
business.

The handful of chimneys and the smoke-spirals rising here and there among the
trees on the river-bank belonged to what was known as the Brier Neighborhood.
There were only a few houses in all, scattered along a side road leading from
the river up to Liberty Center. There were no great signs of thrift or
prosperity, but the Wiley cottage, the only one near the water, was neat and
well cared for, and Nature had done her best to conceal man's indolence,
poverty, or neglect.

Bushes of sweetbrier grew in fragrant little forests as tall as the fences.
Clumps of wild roses sprang up at every turn, and over all the stone walls, as
well as on every heap of rocks by the wayside, prickly blackberry vines ran
and clambered and clung, yielding fruit and thorns impartially to the
neighborhood children.

The pinkish speck that Stephen Waterman had spied from his side of the river
was Rose Wiley of the Brier Neighborhood on the Edgewood side. As there was
another of her name on Brigadier Hill, the Edgewood minister called one of
them the climbing Rose and the other the brier Rose, or sometimes Rose of the
river. She was well named, the pinkish speck. She had not only some of the
sweetest attributes of the wild rose, but the parallel might have been
extended as far as the thorns, for she had wounded her scores, - hearts, be it
understood, not hands. The wounding was, on the whole, very innocently done;
and if fault could be imputed anywhere, it might rightly have been laid at the
door of the kind powers who had made her what she was, since the smile that
blesses a single heart is always destined to break many more.

She had not a single silk gown, but she had what is far better, a figure to
show off a cotton one. Not a brooch nor a pair of earrings was numbered among
her possessions, but any ordinary gems would have looked rather dull and
trivial when compelled to undergo comparison with her bright eyes. As to her
hair, the local milliner declared it impossible for Rose Wiley to get an
unbecoming hat; that on one occasion, being in a frolicsome mood, Rose had
tried on all the headgear in the village emporium, - children's gingham
"Shakers," mourning bonnets for aged dames, men's haying hats and visored
caps, - and she proved superior to every test, looking as pretty as a pink in
the best ones and simply ravishing in the worst. In fact, she had been so
fashioned and finished by Nature that, had she been set on a revolving
pedestal in a show-window, the bystanders would have exclaimed, as each new
charm came into view: "Look at her waist! See her shoulders! And her neck and
chin! And her hair!" While the children, gazing with raptured admiration,
would have shrieked, in unison, "I choose her for mine."

All this is as much as to say that Rose of the river was a beauty, yet it
quite fails to explain, nevertheless, the secret of her power. When she looked
her worst the spell was as potent as when she looked her best. Hidden away
somewhere was a vital spark which warmed every one who came in contact with
it. Her lovely little person was a trifle below medium height, and it might as
well be confessed that her soul, on the morning when Stephen Waterman saw her
hanging out the clothes on the river-bank, was not large enough to be at all
out of proportion; but when eyes and dimples, lips and cheeks, enslave the
onlooker, the soul is seldom subjected to a close or critical scrutiny.
Besides, Rose Wiley was a nice girl, neat as wax, energetic, merry, amiable,
economical. She was a dutiful granddaughter to two of the most irritating old
people in the county; she never patronized her pug-nosed, pasty-faced girl
friends; she made wonderful pies and doughnuts; and besides, small souls, if
they are of the right sort, sometimes have a way of growing, to the
discomfiture of cynics and the gratification of the angels.

So, on one bank of the river grew the brier rose, a fragile thing, swaying on
a slender stalk and looking at its pretty reflection in the water; and on the
other a sturdy pine tree, well rooted against wind and storm. And the sturdy
pine yearned for the wild rose; and the rose, so far as it knew, yearned for
nothing at all, certainly not for rugged pine trees standing tall and grim in
rocky soil. If, in its present stage of development, it gravitated toward
anything in particular, it would have been a well-dressed white birch growing
on an irreproachable lawn.

And the river, now deep, now shallow, now smooth, now tumultuous, now
sparkling in sunshine, now gloomy under clouds, rolled on to the engulfing
sea. It could not stop to concern itself with the petty comedies and tragedies
that were being enacted along its shores, else it would never have reached its
destination. Only last night, under a full moon, there had been pairs of
lovers leaning over the rails of all the bridges along its course; but that
was a common sight, like that of the ardent couples sitting on its shady banks
these summer days, looking only into each other's eyes, but exclaiming about
the beauty of the water. Lovers would come and go, sometimes reappearing with
successive installments of loves in a way wholly mysterious to the river.
Meantime it had its own work to do and must be about it, for the side jams
were to be broken and the boom "let out" at the Edgewood bridge.


II

"Old Kennebec"


It was just seven o'clock that same morning when Rose Wiley smoothed the last
wrinkle from her dimity counterpane, picked up a shred of corn-husk from the
spotless floor under the bed, slapped a mosquito on the window-sill, removed
all signs of murder with a moist towel, and before running down to breakfast
cast a frowning look at her pincushion. Almira, otherwise "Mite," Shapley had
been in her room the afternoon before and disturbed with her careless hand the
pattern of Rose's pins. They were kept religiously in the form of a Maltese
cross; and if, while she was extricating one from her clothing, there had been
an alarm of fire, Rose would have stuck the pin in its appointed place in the
design, at the risk of losing her life.

Entering the kitchen with her light step, she brought the morning sunshine
with her. The old people had already engaged in differences of opinion, but
they commonly suspended open warfare in her presence. There were the usual
last things to be done for breakfast, offices that belonged to her as her
grandmother's assistant. She took yesterday's soda biscuits out of the steamer
where they were warming and softening; brought an apple pie and a plate of
seed cakes from the pantry; settled the coffee with a piece of dried fish skin
and an egg shell; and transferred some fried potatoes from the spider to a
covered dish.

"Did you remember the meat, grandpa? We're all out," she said, as she began
buttoning a stiff collar around his reluctant neck.

"Remember? Land, yes! I wish't I ever could forgit anything! The butcher says
he's 'bout tired o' travelin' over the country lookin' for critters to kill,
but if he finds anything he'll be up along in the course of a week. He ain't a
real smart butcher, Cyse Higgins ain't. - Land, Rose, don't button that dickey
clean through my epperdummis! I have to sport starched collars in this life on
account o' you and your gran'mother bein' so chock full o' style; but I hope
to the Lord I shan't have to wear 'em in another world!"

"You won't," his wife responded with the snap of a dish towel, "or if you do,
they'll wilt with the heat."

Rose smiled, but the soft hand with which she tied the neckcloth about the old
man's withered neck pacified his spirit, and he smiled knowingly back at her
as she took her seat at the breakfast table spread near the open kitchen door.
She was a dazzling Rose, and, it is to be feared, a wasted one, for there was
no one present to observe her clean pink calico and the still more subtle note
struck in the green ribbon which was tied round her throat, - the ribbon that
formed a sort of calyx, out of which sprang the flower of her face, as fresh
and radiant as if it had bloomed that morning.

"Give me my coffee turrible quick," said Mr. Wiley; "I must be down to the
bridge 'fore they start dog-warpin' the side jam."

"I notice you're always due at the bridge on churnin' days," remarked his
spouse, testily.

"'T ain't me as app'ints drivin' dates at Edgewood," replied the old man. "The
boys'll hev a turrible job this year. The logs air ricked up jest like Rose's
jack-straws; I never see 'em so turrible ricked up in all my exper'ence; an'
Lije Dennett don' know no more 'bout pickin' a jam than Cooper's cow. Turrible
sot in his ways, too; can't take a mite of advice. I was tellin' him how to go
to work on that bung that's formed between the gre't gray rock an' the shore,
- the awfullest place to bung that there is between this an' Biddeford,- and
says he: 'Look here, I've be'n boss on this river for twelve year, an' I'll be
doggoned if I'm goin' to be taught my business by any man!' 'This ain't no
river,' says I, 'as you'd know,' says I, 'if you'd ever lived on the
Kennebec.' 'Pity you hed n't stayed on it,' says he. 'I wish to the land I
hed,' says I. An' then I come away, for my tongue's so turrible spry an'
sarcustic that I knew if I stopped any longer I should stir up strife. There's
some folks that'll set on addled aigs year in an' year out, as if there wa'n't
good fresh ones bein' laid every day; an' Lije Dennett's one of 'em, when it
comes to river-drivin'."

"There's lots o' folks as have made a good livin' by mindin' their own
business," observed the still sententious Mrs. Wiley, as she speared a soda
biscuit with her fork.

"Mindin' your own business is a turrible selfish trade," responded her husband
loftily. "If your neighbor is more ignorant than what you are, - partic'larly
if he's as ignorant as Cooper's cow, - you'd ought, as a Kennebec man an' a
Christian, to set him on the right track, though it's always a turrible risky
thing to do." Rose's grandfather was called, by the irreverent younger
generation, sometimes "Turrible Wiley" and sometimes "Old Kennebec," because
of the frequency with which these words appeared in his conversation. There
were not wanting those of late who dubbed him Uncle Ananias, for reasons too
obvious to mention. After a long, indolent, tolerably truthful, and useless
life, he had, at seventy-five, lost sight of the dividing line between fact
and fancy, and drew on his imagination to such an extent that he almost
staggered himself when he began to indulge in reminiscence. He was a feature
of the Edgewood "drive," being always present during the five or six days that
it was in progress, sometimes sitting on the river-bank, sometimes leaning
over the bridge, sometimes reclining against the butt-end of a huge log, but
always chewing tobacco and expectorating to incredible distances as he
criticized and damned impartially all the expedients in use at the particular
moment.

"I want to stay down by the river this afternoon," said Rose. "Ever so many of
the girls will be there, and all my sewing is done up. If grandpa will leave
the horse for me, I'll take the drivers' lunch to them at noon, and bring the
dishes back in time to wash them before supper."

"I suppose you can go, if the rest do," said her grandmother, "though it's an
awful lazy way of spendin' an afternoon. When I was a girl there was no such
dawdlin' goin' on, I can tell you. Nobody thought o' lookin' at the river in
them days; there was n't time."

"But it's such fun to watch the logs!" Rose exclaimed. "Next to dancing, the
greatest fun in the world."

"'Specially as all the young men in town will be there, watchin', too," was
the grandmother's reply. "Eben Brooks an' Richard Bean got home yesterday with
their doctors' diplomas in their pockets. Mrs. Brooks says Eben stood
forty-nine in a class o' fifty-five, an' seemed consid'able proud of him; an'
I guess it is the first time he ever stood anywheres but at the foot. I tell
you when these fifty-five new doctors git scattered over the country there'll
be consid'able many folks keepin' house under ground. Dick Bean's goin' to
stop a spell with Rufe an' Steve Waterman. That'll make one more to play in
the river."

"Rufus ain't hardly got his workin' legs on yit," allowed Mr. Wiley, "but
Steve's all right. He's a turrible smart driver, an' turrible reckless, too.
He'll take all the chances there is, though to a man that's lived on the
Kennebec there ain't what can rightly be called any turrible chances on the
Saco."

"He'd better be 'tendin' to his farm," objected Mrs. Wiley.

"His hay is all in," Rose spoke up quickly, "and he only helps on the river
when the farm work is n't pressing. Besides, though it's all play to him, he
earns his two dollars and a half a day."

"He don't keer about the two and a half," said her grandfather. "He jest can't
keep away from the logs. There's some that can't. When I first moved here from
Gard'ner, where the climate never suited me - "


"The climate of any place where you hev regular work never did an' never will
suit you," remarked the old man's wife; but the interruption received no
comment: such mistaken views of his character were too frequent to make any
impression.

"As I was sayin', Rose," he continued, "when we first moved here from
Gard'ner, we lived neighbor to the Watermans. Steve an' Rufus was little boys
then, always playin' with a couple o' wild cousins o' theirn, consid'able
older. Steve would scare his mother pretty nigh to death stealin' away to the
mill to ride on the 'carriage,' 'side o' the log that was bein' sawed,
hitchin' clean out over the river an' then jerkin' back 'most into the jaws o'
the machinery."

"He never hed any common sense to spare, even when he was a young one,"
remarked Mrs. Wiley; "and I don't see as all the 'cademy education his father
throwed away on him has changed him much." And with this observation she rose
from the table and went to the sink.

"Steve ain't nobody's fool," dissented the old man; "but he's kind o' daft
about the river. When he was little he was allers buildin' dams in the brook,
an' sailin' chips, an' runnin' on the logs; allers choppin' up stickins an'
raftin' 'em together in the pond. I cai'late Mis' Waterman died consid'able
afore her time, jest from fright, lookin' out the winders and seein' her boys
slippin' between the logs an' gittin' their daily dousin'. She could n't
understand it, an' there's a heap o' things women-folks never do an' never can
understand, - jest because they _air_ women-folks."

"One o' the things is men, I s'pose," interrupted Mrs. Wiley.

"Men in general, but more partic'larly husbands," assented Old Kennebec;
"howsomever, there's another thing they don't an' can't never take in, an'
that's sport. Steve does river-drivin' as he would horse-racin' or tiger-
shootin' or tight-rope dancin'; an' he always did from a boy. When he was
about twelve to fifteen, he used to help the river-drivers spring and fall,
reg'lar. He could n't do nothin' but shin up an' down the rocks after hammers
an' hatchets an' ropes, but he was turrible pleased with his job.
'Stepanfetchit,' they used to call him them days, - Stepanfetchit Waterman."

"Good name for him yet," came in acid tones from the sink. "He's still
steppin' an' fetchin', only it's Rose that's doin' the drivin' now."

"I'm not driving anybody, that I know of," answered Rose, with heightened
color, but with no loss of her habitual self-command.

"Then, when he graduated from errants," went on the crafty old man, who knew
that when breakfast ceased, churning must begin, "Steve used to get
seventy-five cents a day helpin' clear up the river - if you can call this here
silv'ry streamlet a river. He'd pick off a log here an' there an' send it
afloat, an' dig out them that hed got ketched in the rocks, and tidy up the
banks jest like spring house-cleanin'. If he'd hed any kind of a boss, an' hed
be'n trained on the Kennebec, he'd 'a' made a turrible smart driver, Steve
would."

"He'll be drownded, that's what'll become o' him, prophesied Mrs. Wiley;
"specially if Rose encourages him in such silly foolishness as ridin' logs
from his house down to ourn, dark nights."

"Seein' as how Steve built ye a nice pigpen last month, 'pears to me you might
have a good word for him now an' then, mother," remarked Old Kennebec,
reaching for his second piece of pie.

"I wa'n't a mite deceived by that pigpen, no more'n I was by Jed Towle's
hencoop, nor Ivory Dunn's well-curb, nor Pitt Packard's shed-steps. If you hed
ever kep' up your buildin's yourself, Rose's beaux would n't hev to do their
courtin' with carpenters' tools."

"It's the pigpen an' the hencoop you want to keep your eye on, mother, not the
motives of them as made 'em. It's turrible onsettlin' to inspeck folks'
motives too turrible close."

"Riding a log is no more to Steve than riding a horse, so he says," interposed
Rose, to change the subject; "but I tell him that a horse does n't revolve
under you, and go sideways at the same time that it is going forwards."

"Log-ridin' ain't no trick at all to a man of sperit," said Mr. Wiley.
"There's a few places in the Kennebec where the water's too shaller to let the
logs float, so we used to build a flume, an' the logs would whiz down like
arrers shot from a bow. The boys used to collect by the side o' that there
flume to see me ride a log down, an' I've watched 'em drop in a dead faint
when I spun by the crowd; but land! you can't drownd some folks, not without
you tie nail-kags to their head an' feet an' drop 'em in the falls; I've rid
logs down the b'ilin'est rapids o' the Kennebec an' never lost my head. I
remember well the year o' the gre't freshet, I rid a log from - "

"There, there, father, that'll do," said Mrs. Wiley, decisively. "I'll put the
cream in the churn, an' you jest work off' some o' your steam by bringin' the
butter for us afore you start for the bridge. It don't do no good to brag
afore your own women-folks; work goes consid'able better'n stories at every
place 'cept the loafers' bench at the tavern."

And the baffled raconteur, who had never done a piece of work cheerfully in
his life, dragged himself reluctantly to the shed, where, before long, one
could hear him moving the dasher up and down sedately to his favorite
"churning tune" of

Broad is the road that leads to death,
And thousands walk together there;
But Wisdom shows a narrow path,
With here and there a traveler.


III

The Edgewood "Drive"


Just where the bridge knits together the two little villages of Pleasant River
and Edgewood, the glassy mirror of the Saco broadens suddenly, sweeping over
the dam in a luminous torrent. Gushes of pure amber mark the middle of the
dam, with crystal and silver at the sides, and from the seething vortex
beneath the golden cascade the white spray dashes up in fountains. In the
crevices and hollows of the rocks the mad water churns itself into snowy
froth, while the foam-flecked torrent, deep, strong, and troubled to its
heart, sweeps majestically under the bridge, then dashes between wooded shores
piled high with steep masses of rock, or torn and riven by great gorges.

There had been much rain during the summer, and the Saco was very high, so on
the third day of the Edgewood drive there was considerable excitement at the
bridge, and a goodly audience of villagers from both sides of the river. There
were some who never came, some who had no fancy for the sight, some to whom it
was an old story, some who were too busy, but there were many to whom it was
the event of events, a never-ending source of interest.

Above the fall, covering the placid surface of the river, thousands of logs
lay quietly "in boom" until the "turning out" process, on the last day of the
drive, should release them and give them their chance of display, their brief
moment of notoriety, their opportunity of interesting, amusing, exciting, and
exasperating the onlookers by their antics.

Heaps of logs had been cast up on the rocks below the dam, where they lay in
hopeless confusion, adding nothing, however, to the problem of the moment, for
they too bided their time. If they had possessed wisdom, discretion, and
caution, they might have slipped gracefully over the falls and, steering clear
of the hidden ledges (about which it would seem they must have heard whispers
from the old pine trees along the river), have kept a straight course and
reached their destination without costing the Edgewood Lumber Company a small
fortune. Or, if they had inclined toward a jolly and adventurous career, they
could have joined one of the various jams or "bungs," stimulated by the
thought that any one of them might be a key-log, holding for a time the entire
mass in its despotic power. But they had been stranded early in the game, and,
after lying high and dry for weeks, would be picked off one by one and sent
downstream.

In the tumultuous boil, the foaming hubbub and flurry at the foot of the
falls, one enormous peeled log wallowed up and clown like a huge rhinoceros,
greatly pleasing the children by its clumsy cavortings. Some conflict of
opposing forces kept it ever in motion, yet never set it free. Below the
bridge were always the real battle-grounds, the scenes of the first and the
fiercest conflicts. A ragged ledge of rock, standing well above the yeasty
torrent, marked the middle of the river. Stephen had been stranded there once,
just at dusk, on a stormy afternoon in spring. A jam had broken under the men,
and Stephen, having taken too great risks, had been caught on the moving mass,
and, leaping from log to log, his only chance for life had been to find a
footing on Gray Rock, which was nearer than the shore.

Rufus was ill at the time, and Mrs. Waterman so anxious and nervous that
processions of boys had to be sent up to the River Farm, giving the frightened
mother the latest bulletins of her son's welfare. Luckily, the river was
narrow just at the Gray Rock, and it was a quite possible task, though no easy
one, to lash two ladders together and make a narrow bridge on which the
drenched and shivering man could reach the shore. There were loud cheers when
Stephen ran lightly across the slender pathway that led to safety - ran so fast
that the ladders had scarce time to bend beneath his weight. He had certainly
"taken chances," but when did he not do that? The logger's life is one of
"moving accidents by flood and field," and Stephen welcomed with wild
exhilaration every hazard that came in his path. To him there was never a dull
hour from the moment that the first notch was cut in the tree (for he
sometimes joined the boys in the lumber camp just for a frolic) till the later
one when the hewn log reached its final destination. He knew nothing of
"tooling" a four-in-hand through narrow lanes or crowded thoroughfares,
- nothing of guiding a horse over the hedges and through the pitfalls of a
stiff bit of hunting country; his steed was the rearing, plunging, kicking
log, and he rode it like a river god.

The crowd loves daring, and so it welcomed Stephen with bravos, but it knew,
as he knew, that he was only doing his duty by the Company, only showing the
Saco that man was master, only keeping the old Waterman name in good repute.
"Ye can't drownd some folks," Old Kennebec had said, as he stood in a group on
the shore; "not without you tie sand-bags to 'em an' drop 'em in the Great
Eddy. I'm the same kind; I remember when I was stranded on jest sech a rock in
the Kennebec, only they left me there all night for dead, an' I had to swim
the rapids when it come daylight."

"We're well acquainted with that rock and them rapids," exclaimed one of the
river-drivers, to the delight of the company.

Rose had reason to remember Stephen's adventure, for he had clambered up the
bank, smiling and blushing under the hurrahs of the boys, and, coming to the
wagon where she sat waiting for her grandfather, had seized a moment to
whisper: "Did you care whether I came across safe, Rose? Say you did!"

Stephen recalled that question, too, on this August morning; perhaps because
this was to be a red-letter day, and some time, when he had a free moment, -
some time before supper, when he and Rose were sitting apart from the others,
watching the logs, - he intended again to ask her to marry him. This thought
trembled in him, stirring the deeps of his heart like a great wave, almost
sweeping him off his feet when he held it too close and let it have full sway.
It would be the fourth time that he had asked Rose this question of all
questions, but there was no