Part 7

The antediluvians plowed with a forked stick, with one prong for the beam and the other for the scratcher; and the plow boy and his sleepy ox had no choice of prongs to hitch to. It was all the same to Adam whether "Buck" was yoked to the beam or the scratcher. But some noble Cincinnatus dreamed of the burnished plowshare; genius wrought his dream into steel and now the polished Oliver Chill slices the earth like a hot knife plowing a field of Jersey butter, and the modern gang plow, bearing upon its wheels the gloved and umbrella'd leader of the Populist Party, plows up the whole face of the earth in a single day.

What a wonderful workshop is the brain of man! Its noiseless machinery cuts, and carves, and moulds, in the imponderable material of ideas. It works its endless miracles through the brawny arm of labor, and the deft fingers of skill, and the world moves forward by its magic. Aladdin rubbed his lamp and the shadowy genii of fable performed impossible wonders. The dreamer of to-day rubs his fingers through his hair and the genii of his intellect work miracles which eclipse the most extravagant fantasies of the "Arabian Nights."

A dreamer saw the imprisoned vapor throw open the lid of a teakettle, and lo! a steam engine came puffing from his brain. And now many a huge monster of Corliss, beautiful as a vision of Archimedes and smooth in movement as a wheeling planet, sends its thrill of life and power through mammoth plants of humming machinery. The fiery courser of the steel-bound track shoots over hill and plain, like a mid-night meteor through the fields of heaven, outstripping the wind.

A dreamer carried about in his brain a great Leviathan. It was launched upon the billows, and like some collossal swan the palatial steamship now sweeps in majesty through the blue wastes of old ocean.

Six hundred years before Christ, some old Greek discovered electricity by rubbing a piece of amber, and unable to grasp the mystery, he called it soul. His discovery slept for more than two thousand years until it awoke in the dreams of Galvani, and Volta, and Benjamin Franklin. In the morning of the nineteenth century the sculptor and scientist, Morse, saw in his dreams, phantom lightnings leap across continents, and oceans, and felt the pulse of thunder beat as it came bounding over threads of iron that girdled the earth. In each throb he read a human thought. The electric telegraph emerged from his brain, like Minerva from the brow of Jove, and the world received a fresh baptism of light and glory.

In a few more years we will step over the threshold of the twentieth century. What greater wonders will the dreamers yet unfold? It may be that another magician, greater even than Edison, the "Wizzard of Menloe Park," will rise up and coax the very laws of nature into easy compliance with his unheard-of dreams. I think he will construct an electric railway in the form of a huge tube, and call it the "electro-scoot," and passengers will enter it in New York and touch a button and arrive in San Francisco two hours before they started! I think a new discovery will be made by which the young man of the future may stand at his "kiss-o-phone" in New York, and kiss his sweetheart in Chicago with all the delightful sensations of the "aforesaid and the same." I think some Liebig will reduce foods to their last analyses, and by an ultimate concentration of their elements, will enable the man of the future to carry a year's provisions in his vest pocket. The sucking dude will store his rations in the head of his cane, and the commissary department of a whole army will consist of a mule and a pair of saddlebags. A train load of cabbage will be transported in a sardine box, and a thousand fat Texas cattle in an oyster can. Power will be condensed from a forty horse engine to a quart cup. Wagons will roll by the power in their axles, and the cushions of our buggies will cover the force that propels them. The armies of the future will fight with chain lightning, and the battlefield will become so hot and unhealthy that,

"He who fights and runs away Will never fight another day."

Some dreaming Icarus will perfect the flying machine, and upon the aluminium wings of the swift Pegassus of the air the light-hearted society girl will sail among the stars, and

"Behind some dark cloud, where no one's allowed, Make love to the man in the moon."

The rainbow will be converted into a Ferris wheel; all men will be bald headed; the women will run the Government--_and then I think the end of time will be near at hand_.

DREAMS.

I heard a song of love, and tenderness, and sadness, and beauty, sweeter than the song of a nightingale. It was breathed from the soul of Robert Burns. I heard a song of deepest passion surging like the tempest-tossed waves of the sea. It was the restless spirit of Lord Byron.

I heard a mournful melody of despairing love, full of that wild, mad, hopeless longing of a bereaved soul which the mid-night raven mocked at with that bitterest of all words--"Nevermore!" It was the weird threnody of the brilliant, but ill-starred Poe, who, like a meteor, blazed but for a moment, dazzling a hemisphere, and then went out forever in the darkness of death.

Then I was exalted, and lifted into the serene sunlight of peace, as I listened to the spirit of faith, pouring out in the songs of our own immortal Longfellow.

With Milton I walked the scented isles of long lost Paradise, and caught the odor of its bloom, and the swell of its music. He led me through its rose brakes, and under the vermilion and flame of its orchids and honeysuckles, down to the margin of the limpid river, where the water lilies slept in fadeless beauty, and the lotus nodded to the rippling waves; and there, under a bridal arch of orange blossoms, cordoned by palms and many-colored flowers, I saw a vision of bliss and beauty from which Satan turned away with an envy that stabbed him with pangs unfelt before in hell! It was earth's first vision of wedded love.

But the horizon of Shakespeare was broader than them all. There is no depth which he has not sounded, no height which he has not measured. He walked in the gardens of the intellectual gods and gathered sweets for the soul from a thousand unwithering flowers. He caught music from the spheres, and beauty from ten thousand fields of light. His brain was a mighty loom. His genius gathered and classified, his imagination spun and wove; the flying shuttle of his fancy delivered to the warp of wisdom and philosophy the shining threads spun from the fibres of human hearts and human experience; and with his wondrous woof of pictured tapestries, he clothed all thought in the bridal robes of immortality. His mind was a resistless flood that deluged the world of literature with its glory. The succeeding poets are but survivors as by the ark, and, like the ancient dove, they gather and weave into garlands only the "flotsam" of beauty which floats on the bosom of the Shakespearean flood.

Oh, Shakespeare, archangel of poetry! The light from thy wings drowns the stars and flashes thy glory on the civilizations of the whole world!

"Unwearied, unfettered, unwatched, unconfined, Be my spirit like thee, in the world of the mind; No leaning for earth e'er to weary its flight; But fresh as thy pinions in regions of light."

All honor to the poets and philosophers and painters and sculptors and musicians of the world! They are its honeybees; its songbirds; its carrier doves, its ministering angels.

VISIONS OF DEPARTED GLORY.

[Illustration]

I walked with Gibbon and Hume, through the sombre halls of the past, and caught visions of the glory of the classic Republics and Empires that flourished long ago, and whose very dust is still eloquent with the story of departed greatness. The spirit of genius lingers there still like the fragrance of roses faded and gone.

I thought I heard the harp of Pindar, and the impassioned song of the dark-eyed Sappho. I thought I heard the lofty epic of the blind Homer, rushing on in the red tide of battle, and the divine Plato discoursing like an oracle in his academic shades.

The canvas spoke and the marble breathed when Apelles painted and Phidias carved.

I stood with Michael Angelo and saw him chisel his dreams from the marble.

I saw Raphael spread his visions of beauty in immortal colors.

I sat under the spirit of Paganini's power. The flow of his melody turned the very air into music. I thought I was in the presence of Divinity as I listened to the warbles, and murmurs, and the ebb and flow of the silver tides, from his violin. And I said: Music is the dearest gift of God to man. The sea, the forest, the field, and the meadow, are the very fountain heads of music.

I believe that Mozart, and Mendelssohn, and Schubert, and Verdi, and all the great masters, caught their sweetest dreams from nature's musicians. I think their richest airs of mirth, and gladness, and joy, were stolen from the purling rivulet and the rippling river. I believe their grandest inspirations were born of the tempest, and the thunder, and the rolling billows of the angry ocean.

NATURE'S MUSICIANS.

[Illustration]

I sat on the grassy brink of a mountain stream in the gathering twilight of evening. The shadowy woodlands around me became a great theatre. The greensward before me was its stage.

The tinkling bell of a passing herd rang up the curtain, and I sat there all alone in the hush of the dying day and listened to a concert of nature's musicians who sing as God hath taught them to sing. The first singer that entered my stage was Signor Grasshopper. He mounted a mullein leaf and sang, and sang, and sang, until Professor Turkey Gobbler slipped up behind him with open mouth, and Signor Grasshopper vanished from the footlights forevermore. And as Professor Turkey Gobbler strutted off my stage with a merry gobble, the orchestra opened before me with a flourish of trumpets. The katydid led off with a trombone solo; the cricket chimed in with his E. flat cornet; the bumblebee played on his violoncello, and the jay-bird, laughed with his piccolo. The music rose to grandeur with the deep bass horn of the big black beetle; the mocking bird's flute brought me to tears of rapture, and the screech-owl's fife made me want to fight. The tree-frog blew his alto horn; the jar-fly clashed his tinkling cymbals; the woodpecker rattled his kettledrum, and the locust jingled his tambourine. The music rolled along like a sparkling river in sweet accompaniment with the oriole's leading violin. But it suddenly hushed when I heard a ripple of laughter among the hollyhocks before the door of a happy country home. I saw a youth standing there in the shadows with his arm around "something" and holding his sweetheart's hand in his. He bent forward; lip met lip, and there was an explosion like the squeak of a new boot. The lassie vanished into the cottage; the lad vanished over the hill, and as he vanished he swung his hat in the shadows, and sang back to her his happy love song.

[Illustration: LOVE AMONG THE HOLLYHOCKS.]

Did you never hear a mountain love song? This is the song he sang:

"Oh, when she saw me coming she rung her hands and cried, She said I was the prettiest thing that ever lived or died. Oh, run along home Miss Nancy, get along home Miss Nancy, Run along home Miss Nancy, down in Rockinham."

The birds inclined their heads to listen to his song as it died away on the drowsy summer air.

That night I slept in a mansion; but I "closed my eyes on garnished rooms to dream of meadows and clover blooms," and love among the hollyhocks. And while I dreamed I was serenaded by a band of mosquitoes. This is the song they sang:

[Illustration]

"Hush my dear, lie still and slumber; Holy angels guard thy bed; Heavenly 'skeeters without number Buzzing 'round your old bald head!!!"

PREACHER'S PARADISE.

There is no land on earth which has produced such quaint and curious characters as the great mountainous regions of the South, and yet no country has produced nobler or brainier men.

When I was a barefooted boy my grandfather's old grist mill was the Mecca of the mountaineers. They gathered there on the rainy days to talk politics and religion, and to drink "mountain" dew and fight. Adam Wheezer was a tall, spindle-shanked old settler as dark as an Indian, and he wore a broad, hungry grin that always grew broader at the sight of a fat sheep. The most prominent trait of Adam's character, next to his love of mutton, was his bravery. He stood in the mill one day with his empty sack under his arm, as usual, when Bert Lynch, the bully of the mountains, with an eye like a game rooster's, walked up to him and said: "Adam, you've bin a-slanderin' of me, an' I'm a-gwine to give you a thrashin'." He seized Adam by the throat and backed him under the meal spout. Adam opened his mouth to squall and it spouted meal like a whale. He made a surge for breath and liberty and tossed Bert away like a feather. Then he shot out of the mill door like a rocket, leaving his old battered plug hat and one prong of his coat tail in the hands of the enemy. He ran through the creek and knocked it dry as he went. He made a bee line for my grandfather's house, a quarter of a mile away, on the hill. He burst into the sitting-room, covered with meal and panting like a bellowsed horse, frightening my grandmother almost into hysterics. The old lady screamed and shouted: "What in the world is the matter, Adam?" Adam replied: "That there durned Bert Lynch is down yander a-tryin' to raise a fuss with me."

But every dog has his day. Brother Billy Patterson preached from the door of the mill on the following Sunday. It was his first sermon in that "neck of the woods," and he began his ministrations with a powerful discourse, hurling his anathemas against Satan and sin and every kind of wickedness. He denounced whiskey. He branded the bully as a brute and a moral coward, and personated Bert, having witnessed his battle with Adam. This was too much for the champion. He resolved to "thrash" Brother Patterson, and in a few days they met at the mill. Bert squared himself and said: "Parson, you had your turn last Sunday; it's mine to-day. Pull off that broadcloth an' take your medicine. I'm a-gwine to suck the marrow out'n them ole bones o' yourn." The pious preacher plead for peace, but without avail. At last he said: "Then, if nothing but a fight will satisfy you, will you allow me to kneel down and say my prayer before we fight?" "O yes, that's all right parson," said Bert. "But cut yer prayer short, for I'm a-gwine to give you a good sound thrashin'."

The preacher knelt and thus began to pray: "Oh Lord, Thou knowest that when I killed Bill Cummings, and John Brown, and Jerry Smith, and Levi Bottles, that I did it in self defense. Thou knowest, Oh Lord, that when I cut the heart out of young Sliger, and strewed the ground with the brains of Paddy Miles, that it was forced upon me, and that I did it in great agony of soul. And now, Oh Lord, I am about to be forced to put in his coffin, this poor miserable wretch, who has attacked me here to-day. Oh Lord, have mercy upon his soul and take care of his helpless widow and orphans when he is gone!"

And he arose whetting his knife on his shoe-sole, singing:

"Hark, from the tomb a doleful sound, Mine ears attend the cry."

But when he looked around, Bert was gone. There was nothing in sight but a little cloud of dust far up the road, following in the wake of the vanishing champion.

[Illustration]

BROTHER ESTEP AND THE TRUMPET.

During the great revival which followed Brother Patterson's first sermon and effective prayer, the hour for the old-fashioned Methodist love feast arrived. Old Brother Estep, in his enthusiasm on such occasions sometimes "stretched his blanket." It was his glory to get up a sensation among the brethren. He rose and said: "Bretheren, while I was a-walkin' in my gyardin late yisterday evenin', a-meditatin' on the final eend of the world, I looked up, an' I seed Gabrael raise his silver trumpet, which was about fifty foot long, to his blazin' lips, an' I hearn him give it a toot that knocked me into the fence corner an' shuck the very taters out'n the ground."

"Tut, tut," said the old parson, "don't talk that way in this meeting; we all know you didn't hear Gabrael blow his trumpet." The old man's wife jumped to her feet to help her husband out, and said: "Now parson, you set down there. Don't you dispute John's word that-away--He mout a-hearn a toot or two."

"WAMPER-JAW" AT THE JOLLIFICATION.

The sideboard of those good old times would have thrown the prohibition candidate of to-day into spasms. It sparkled with cut glass decanters full of the juices of corn, and rye, and apple. The old Squire of the mill "Deestrict" had as many sweet, buzzing friends as any flower garden or cider press in Christendom. The most industrious bee that sucked at the Squire's sideboard was old "Wamper-jaw." His mouth reached from ear to ear, and was inlaid with huge gums as red as vermilion; and when he laughed it had the appearance of lightning. On the triumphant day of the Squire's re-election to his great office, when everything was lovely and "the goose hung high," he was surrounded by a large crowd of his fellow citizens, and Thomas Jefferson, in his palmiest days, never looked grander than did the Squire on this occasion. He was attired in his best suit of homespun, the choicest product of his wife's dye pot. His immense vest with its broad luminous stripes, checked the rotundity of his ample stomach like the lines of latitude and longitude, and resembled a half finished map of the United States. His blue jeans coat covered his body as the waters cover the face of the great deep, and its huge collar encircled the back of his head like the belts of light around a planet.

The Squire was regaling his friends with his latest side-splitting jokes. Old "Wamper-jaw" threw himself back in his chair and exploded with peal after peal of laughter. But suddenly he looked around and said: "Gen-tul-men, my jaw's flew out'n jint!"

His comrades seized him and pulled him all over the yard trying to get it back. Finally old "Wamper-jaw" mounted his mule, and with pounding heels, rode, like Tam O'Shanter, to the nearest doctor who lived two miles away. The doctor gave his jaw a mysterious yank and it popped back into socket. "Wamper-jaw" rushed back to join in the festivities at the Squire's. The glasses were filled again; another side-splitting joke was told, another peal of laughter went 'round, when "Wamper-jaw" threw his hand to his face and said: "Gen-tul-men, she's out agin!!!" There was another hasty ride for the doctor. But in the years that followed; "Wamper-jaw" was never known to laugh aloud. On the most hilarious occasions he merely showed his gums.

[Illustration: "WAMPER-JAW."]

THE TINTINNABULATION OF THE DINNER BELLS.

How many millions dream on the lowest planes of life! How few ever reach the highest and like stars of the first magnitude, shed their light upon the pathway of the marching centuries! What multitudes there are whose horizons are lighted with visions and dreams of the flesh pots and soup bowls,--whose Fallstaffian aspirations never rise above the fat things of this earth, and whose ear flaps are forever inclined forward, listening for the dinner bells!

"The bells, bells, bells! What a world of pleasure their harmony foretells! The bells, bells, bells, bells, bells, bells! The tintinnabulation of the dinner bells!"

In my native mountains there once lived one of these old gluttonous dreamers. I think he was the champion eater of the world. Many a time I have seen him at my grandfather's table, and the viands and battercakes vanished "like the baseless fabric of a vision,"--he left not "a wreck behind." But one day, in the voracity of his shark-like appetite, he unfortunately undertook too large a contract for the retirement of an immense slice of ham. It scraped its way down his rebellious esophagus for about two inches, and lodged as tightly as a bullet in a rusty gun. His prodigious Adam's apple suddenly shot up to his chin; his eyes protruded, and his purple neck craned and shortened by turns, like a trombone in full blast. He scrambled from the table and pranced about the room like a horse with blind staggers. My grandfather sprang at him and dealt him blow after blow in the back, which sounded like the blows of a mallet on a dry hide; but the ham wouldn't budge. The old man ran out into the yard and seized a plank about three feet long, and rushed into the room with it drawn.

"Now William," said he, "get down on your all-fours." William got down. "Now William, when I hit, you swallow." He hit, and it popped like a Winchester rifle.

William shot into the corner of the room like a shell from a mortar, but in a moment he was seated at his place at the table again, with a broad grin on his face. "Is it down William?" shouted the old man. "Yes, Mr. Haynes, the durned thing's gone,--please pass the ham."

[Illustration: "WHEN I HIT, YOU SWALLOW."]

I thought how vividly that old glutton illustrated the fools who, in their effort to gulp down the sensual pleasures of this world, choke the soul, and nothing but the clap-board of hard experience, well laid on, can dislodge the ham, and restore the equilibrium.

PHANTOMS OF THE WINE CUP.

[Illustration]

A little below the glutton lies the plane of the drunkard whose visions and dreams are bounded by the horizon of a still tub. "A little wine for the stomach's sake is good," but in the trembling hand of a drunkard, every crimson drop that glows in the cup is crushed from the roses that once bloomed on the cheeks of some helpless woman. Every phantom of beauty that dances in it is a devil; and yet, millions quaff, and with a hideous laugh, go staggering to the grave.

[Illustration]

THE MISSING LINK.

A little below the plane of the drunkard is the dude, that missing link between monkey and man, whose dream of happiness is a single eye-glass, a kangaroo strut, and three hours of conversation without a sensible sentence; whose only conception of life is to splurge, and flirt, and spend his father's fortune.

"Out of the fullness of his heart his mouth singeth:"

"I'm a dandy; I'm a swell. Just from college, can't you tell? I'm the beau of every belle; I'm the swellest of the swell.