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Irving Bacheller - A Man for the Ages

I >> Irving Bacheller >> A Man for the Ages



A MAN FOR THE AGES

By IRVING BACHELLER

A STORY OF THE BUILDERS OF DEMOCRACY

AUTHOR OF THE LIGHT IN THE CLEARING, KEEPING UP WITH LIZZIE, ETC.

1919




TO MY DEAR FRIEND AND COMRADE
ALEXANDER GROSSET

I DEDICATE THIS BOOK IN
TOKEN OF MY ESTEEM




_Property is the fruit of labor; property is desirable; it is a positive
good in the world. That some should be rich shows that others may become
rich, and hence is just encouragement to industry and enterprise. Let not
him who is houseless pull down the house of another, but let him work
diligently and build one for himself, thus by example assuring that his
own shall be safe from violence when built._

ABRAHAM LINCOLN.
_March 21, 1864._




A Letter

TO THE AGED AND HONORABLE JOSIAH TRAYLOR FROM HIS GRANDSON, A SOLDIER IN
FRANCE, WHEREIN THE MOTIVE AND INSPIRATION OF THIS NARRATIVE ARE BRIEFLY
PRESENTED.


_In France, September 10, 1915._

Dear Grandfather:

At last I have got mine. I had been scampering towards the stars, like a
jack-rabbit chased by barking greyhounds, when a shrapnel shell caught up
with me. It sneezed all over my poor bus, and threw some junk into me as
if it thought me nothing better than a kind of waste basket. Seems as if
it had got tired of carrying its load and wanted to put it on me. It
succeeded famously but I got home with the bus. Since then they have been
taking sinkers and fish hooks out me fit only for deep water. Don't
worry, I'm getting better fast. I shall play no more football and you
will not see me pitching curves and running bases again. No, I shall sit
in the grandstand myself hereafter and there will not be so much of me
but I shall have quite a shuck on my soul for all that. I've done a lot
of thinking since I have been lying on my back with nothing else to do.
When your body gets kind of turned over in the ditch it's wonderful how
your mind begins to hustle around the place. Until this thing happened my
intellect was nothing more than a vague rumor. I had heard of it, now and
then, in college, and I had hoped that it would look me up some time and
ask what it could do for me, but it didn't. These days I would scarcely
believe that I have a body, the poor thing being upon the jacks in this
big machine shop, but my small intellect is hopping all over the earth
and back again and watching every move of these high-toned mechanics with
their shiny tools and white aprons. My mind and I have kind of got
acquainted with each other and I'm getting attached to it. It is quite an
energetic, promising young mind and I don't know but I'll try to make a
permanent place for it in my business.

I've been thinking of our Democracy and of my coming over here to be
chucked into this big jack pot as if my life were a small coin; of all
the dear old days of the past I have thought and chiefly how the
wonderful story of your life has been woven into mine--threads of wisdom
and adventure and humor and romance. I like to unravel it and look at the
colors. Lincoln is the strongest, longest thread in the fabric. Often I
think of your description of the great, tender hands that lifted you to
his shoulder when you were a boy, of the droll and kindly things that he
said to you. I have laughed and cried recalling those hours of yours with
Jack Kelso and Dr. John Allen and the rude young giant Abe, of which I
have heard you tell so often as we sat in the firelight of a winter
evening. Best of all I remember the light of your own wisdom as it glowed
upon the story; how you found in Lincoln's words a prophecy of the great
struggle that has come. Since I have been steering my imagination on its
swift, long flights into the past I have been able to recall the very
words you used: "Lincoln said that a house divided against itself must
fall--that our nation could not endure part slave and part free, and it
was true. Since then the world has grown incredibly small. The peoples of
the earth have been drawn into one house and the affairs of each are the
concern of all. With a vain, boastful and unscrupulous degenerate on the
throne of Germany, it is likely to be a house divided against itself and
I fear a greater struggle than the world has ever seen between the bond
and the free. It will be a bloody contest but of its issue there can be
no doubt because the friends of freedom are the children of light and are
many. They will lay all they have upon its altars. They will be
unprepared and roughly handled for a time but their reserves of material
and moral strength which shall express themselves in ready sacrifice, are
beyond all calculation. Only one whose life spans the wide area from
Andrew Jackson to Woodrow Wilson and who has stood with Lincoln in his
lonely tower and watched the flowing of the tides for three score years
and ten, as I have, can be quite aware of the perils and resources of
Democracy."

All these and many other things which you have said to me, dear
grandfather, have helped me to understand this great thunderous drama in
which I have had a part. They have helped me to endure its perils and
bitter defeats. It was you who saw clearly from the first that this was
the final clash between the bond and the free--an effort of the great
house of God to purge itself, and you urged me to go to Canada and enlist
in the struggle. For this, too, I thank you. My wounds are dear to me,
knowing, as you have made me know, that I have come well by them fighting
not in the interest of Great Britain or France or Russia, but in the
cause of humanity. It is strange that among these men who are fighting
with me I have found only one or two who seem to have a vision of the
whole truth of this business.

Now I come to the point of my letter. I have an enlistment to urge upon
you in the cause of humanity and there are no wounds to go with it. When
I come home, as I shall be doing as soon as I am sufficiently mended, we
must go to work on the story of your life so that all who wish to do so
may know it as I know it. Let us go to it with all the diaries that you
and your father kept, aided by your memory, and give to the world its
first full view of the heart and soul of Lincoln. I have read all the
biographies and anecdotes of him and yet without the story as you tell it
he would have been a stranger to me. After this war, if I mistake not,
Democracy will command the interest of all men. It will be the theme of
themes. You tell me that we shall soon get into the struggle and turn
the scale. Well, if we do, we shall have to demonstrate a swiftness of
preparation and a power in the field which will astonish the world, and
when it is all over the world will want to know how this potent Democracy
of ours came about. The one name--Lincoln--with the background of your
story, especially the background, for the trouble with all the
biographies is a lack of background--will be the best answer we could
give I think. Of course there are other answers, but, as there are few
who dare to doubt, these days, that Lincoln is the greatest democrat
since Jesus Christ, if we can only present your knowledge to the world we
should do well. Again the great crowd, whom you and I desire to enlighten
if we can, do not read biography or history save under the compulsion of
the schools, so let us try only to tell the moving story as you have told
it to me, with Lincoln striding across the scene or taking the center of
the stage just as he was wont to do in your recollection of him. So we
will make them to know the giant of Democracy without trying.

Duty calls. What is your answer? Please let me know by cable. Meanwhile
I shall be thinking more about it. With love to all the family, from your
affectionate grandson, R.L.




CONTENTS

CHAPTER

BOOK ONE

I Which Describes the Journey of Samson Henry Traylor and His Wife
and Their Two Children and Their Dog Sambo through the Adirondack
Wilderness in 1831 on Their Way to the Land of Plenty, and
Especially Their Adventures in Bear Valley and No Santa Claus
Land. Furthermore, It Describes the Soaping of the Brimsteads and
the Capture of the Veiled Bear

II Wherein Is Recorded the Vivid Impression Made upon the Travelers
by Their View of a Steam Engine and of the Famous Erie Canal.
Wherein, Also, Is a Brief Account of Sundry Curious Characters Met
on the Road and at a Celebration of the Fourth of July on the Big
Waterway

III Wherein the Reader Is Introduced to Offut's Store and His Clerk
Abe, and the Scholar Jack Kelso and His Cabin and His Daughter
Bim, and Gets a First Look at Lincoln

IV Which Presents Other Log Cabin Folk and the First Steps in the
Making of a New Home and Certain Incapacities of Abe

V In Which the Character of Bim Kelso Flashes Out in a Strange
Adventure that Begins the Weaving of a Long Thread of Romance

VI Which Describes the Lonely Life in a Prairie Cabin and a Stirring
Adventure on the Underground Railroad about the Time It Began
Operations

VII In Which Mr. Eliphalet Biggs Gets Acquainted with Bim Kelso and
Her Father

VIII Wherein Abe Makes Sundry Wise Remarks to the Boy Harry and
Announces His Purpose to Be a Candidate for the Legislature at
Kelso's Dinner Party

IX In Which Bim Kelso Makes History, While Abe and Harry and Other
Good Citizens of New Salem Are Making an Effort to that End in the
Indian War


BOOK TWO


X In Which Abe and Samson Wrestle and Some Raiders Come to Burn and
Stay to Repent

XI In Which Abe, Elected to the Legislature, Gives What Comfort He
Can to Ann Rutledge in the Beginning of Her Sorrows. Also He Goes
to Springfield for New Clothes and Is Astonished by Its Pomp and
the Change in Eli

XII Which Continues the Romance of Abe and Ann until the Former Leaves
New Salem to Begin His Work in the Legislature. Also It Describes
the Coloneling of Peter Lukins

XIII Wherein the Route of the Underground Railroad Is Surveyed and
Samson and Harry Spend a Night in the Home of Henry Brimstead and
Hear Surprising Revelations, Confidentially Disclosed, and Are
Charmed by the Personality of His Daughter Annabel

XIV In Which Abe Returns from Vandalia and Is Engaged to Ann, and
Three Interesting Slaves Arrive at the Home of Samson Traylor,
Who, with Harry Needles, Has an Adventure of Much Importance on
the Underground Road

XV Wherein Harry and Abe Ride Up to Springdale and Visit Kelso's and
Learn of the Curious Lonesomeness of Eliphalet Biggs

XVI Wherein Young Mr. Lincoln Safely Passes Two Great Danger Points
and Turns into the Highway of His Manhood


BOOK THREE


XVII Wherein Young Mr. Lincoln Betrays Ignorance of Two Highly
Important Subjects, in Consequence of Which He Begins to Suffer
Serious Embarrassment

XVIII In Which Mr. Lincoln, Samson and Harry Take a Long Ride Together
and the Latter Visit the Flourishing Little City of Chicago

XIX Wherein Is One of the Many Private Panics Which Followed the
Bursting of the Bubble of Speculation

XX Which Tells of the Settling of Abe Lincoln and the Traylors in the
Village of Springfield and of Samson's Second Visit to Chicago

XXI Wherein a Remarkable School of Political Science Begins Its
Sessions in the Rear of Joshua Speed's Store. Also at Samson's
Fireside Honest Abe Talks of the Authority of the Law and the
Right of Revolution, and Later Brings a Suit against Lionel Davis

XXII Wherein Abe Lincoln Reveals His Method of Conducting a Lawsuit in
the Case of Henry Brimstead et al. vs. Lionel Davis

XXIII Which Presents the Pleasant Comedy of Individualism in the New
Capital, and the Courtship of Lincoln and Mary Todd

XXIV Which Describes a Pleasant Holiday and a Pretty Stratagem

XXV Being a Brief Memoir by the Honorable and Venerable Man Known in
These Pages as Josiah Traylor, Who Saw the Great Procession of
Events between Andrew Jackson and Woodrow Wilson and Especially
the Making and the End of Lincoln




A MAN FOR THE AGES




BOOK ONE




CHAPTER I

WHICH DESCRIBES THE JOURNEY OF SAMSON HENRY TRAYLOR AND HIS WIFE AND
THEIR TWO CHILDREN AND THEIR DOG SAMBO THROUGH THE ADIRONDACK WILDERNESS
IN 1831 ON THEIR WAY TO THE LAND OF PLENTY, AND ESPECIALLY THEIR
ADVENTURES IN BEAR VALLEY AND NO SANTA CLAUS LAND. FURTHERMORE, IT
DESCRIBES THE SOAPING OF THE BRIMSTEADS AND THE CAPTURE OF THE VEILED
BEAR.


In the early summer of 1831 Samson Traylor and his wife, Sarah, and two
children left their old home near the village of Vergennes, Vermont, and
began their travels toward the setting sun with four chairs, a bread
board and rolling-pin, a feather bed and blankets, a small looking-glass,
a skillet, an axe, a pack basket with a pad of sole leather on the same,
a water pail, a box of dishes, a tub of salt pork, a rifle, a teapot, a
sack of meal, sundry small provisions and a violin, in a double wagon
drawn by oxen. It is a pleasure to note that they had a violin and were
not disposed to part with it. The reader must not overlook its full
historic significance. The stern, uncompromising spirit of the Puritan
had left the house of the Yankee before a violin could enter it. Humor
and the love of play had preceded and cleared a way for it. Where there
was a fiddle there were cheerful hearts. A young black shepherd dog with
tawny points and the name of Sambo followed the wagon or explored the
fields and woods it passed.

If we had been at the Congregational Church on Sunday we might have heard
the minister saying to Samson, after the service, that it was hard to
understand why the happiest family in the parish and the most beloved
should be leaving its ancestral home to go to a far, new country of which
little was known. We might also have heard Samson answer:

"It's awful easy to be happy here. We slide along in the same old groove,
that our fathers traveled, from Vergennes to Paradise. We work and play
and go to meetin' and put a shin plaster in the box and grow old and
narrow and stingy and mean and go up to glory and are turned into saints
and angels. Maybe that's the best thing that could happen to us, but
Sarah and I kind o' thought we'd try a new starting place and another
route to Heaven."

Then we might have seen the countenance of the minister assume a grave
and troubled look. "Samson, you must not pull down the pillars of this
temple," he said.

"No, it has done too much for me. I love its faults even. But we have
been called and must go. A great empire is growing up in the West. We
want to see it; we want to help build it."

The minister had acquired a sense of humor among those Yankees. Years
later in his autobiography he tells how deeply the words of Samson had
impressed him. He had answered:

"Think of us. I don't know what we shall do without your fun and the
music of your laugh at the pleasure parties. In addition to being the
best wrestler in the parish you are also its most able and sonorous
laugher."

"Yes, Sarah and I have got the laughing habit. I guess we need a touch
of misery to hold us down. But you will have other laughers. The seed has
been planted here and the soil is favorable."

Samson knew many funny stories and could tell them well. His heart was as
merry as _The Fisher's Hornpipe_. He used to say that he got the violin
to help him laugh, as he found his voice failing under the strain.

Sarah and Samson had been raised on adjoining farms just out of the
village. He had had little schooling, but his mind was active and well
inclined. Sarah had prosperous relatives in Boston and had had the
advantage of a year's schooling in that city. She was a comely girl of
a taste and refinement unusual in the place and time of her birth. Many
well favored youths had sought her hand, but, better than others, she
liked the big, masterful, good-natured, humorous Samson, crude as he was.
Naturally in her hands his timber had undergone some planing and
smoothing and his thought had been gently led into new and pleasant
ways. Sarah's Uncle Rogers in Boston had kept them supplied with some of
the best books and magazines of the time. These they had read aloud with
keen enjoyment. Moreover, they remembered what they read and cherished
and thought about it.

Let us take a look at them as they slowly leave the village of their
birth. The wagon is covered with tent cloth drawn over hickory arches.
They are sitting on a seat overlooking the oxen in the wagon front. Tears
are streaming down the face of the woman. The man's head is bent. His
elbows are resting on his knees; the hickory handle of his ox whip lies
across his lap, the lash at his feet. He seems to be looking down at his
boots, into the tops of which his trousers have been folded. He is a
rugged, blond, bearded man with kindly blue eyes and a rather prominent
nose. There is a striking expression of power in the head and shoulders
of Samson Traylor. The breadth of his back, the size of his wrists and
hands, the color of his face betoken a man of great strength. This
thoughtful, sorrowful attitude is the only evidence of emotion which he
betrays. In a few minutes he begins to whistle a lively tune.

The boy Josiah--familiarly called Joe--sits beside his mother. He is a
slender, sweet-faced lad. He is looking up wistfully at his mother. The
little girl Betsey sits between him and her father. That evening they
stopped at the house of an old friend some miles up the dusty road to
the north. "Here we are--goin' west," Samson shouted to the man at the
door-step.

He alighted and helped his family out of the wagon. "You go right
in--I'll take care o' the oxen," said the man.

Samson started for the house with the girl under one arm and the boy
under the other. A pleasant-faced woman greeted them with a hearty
welcome at the door.

"You poor man! Come right in," she said.

"Poor! I'm the richest man in the world," said he. "Look at the gold on
that girl's head--curly, fine gold, too--the best there is. She's
Betsey--my little toy woman--half past seven years old--blue eyes--helps
her mother get tired every day. Here's my toy man Josiah--yes, brown hair
and brown eyes like Sarah--heart o' gold--helps his mother, too--six
times one year old."

"What pretty faces!" said the woman as she stooped and kissed them.

"Yes, ma'am. Got 'em from the fairies," Samson went on. "They have all
kinds o' heads for little folks, an' I guess they color 'em up with the
blood o' roses an' the gold o' buttercups an' the blue o' violets. Here's
this wife o' mine. She's richer'n I am. She owns all of us. We're her
slaves."

"Looks as young as she did the day she was married--nine years ago," said
the woman.

"Exactly!" Samson exclaimed. "Straight as an arrow and proud! I don't
blame her. She's got enough to make her proud I say. I fall in love again
every time I look into her big, brown eyes."

The talk and laughter brought the dog into the house.

"There's Sambo, our camp follower," said Samson. "He likes us, one and
all, but he often feels sorry for us because we can not feel the joy that
lies in buried bones and the smell of a liberty pole or a gate post."

They had a joyous evening and a restful night with these old friends and
resumed their journey soon after daylight. They ferried across the lake
at Burlington and fared away over the mountains and through the deep
forest on the Chateaugay trail.

Since the Pilgrims landed between the measureless waters and the pathless
wilderness they and their descendants had been surrounded by the lure of
mysteries. It filled the imagination of the young with gleams of golden
promise. The love of adventure, the desire to explore the dark, infested
and beautiful forest, the dream of fruitful sunny lands cut with water
courses, shored with silver and strewn with gold beyond it--these were
the only heritage of their sons and daughters save the strength and
courage of the pioneer. How true was this dream of theirs gathering
detail and allurement as it passed from sire to son! On distant plains to
the west were lands more lovely and fruitful than any of their vision; in
mountains far beyond was gold enough to gild the dome of the heavens, as
the sun was wont to do at eventide, and silver enough to put a fairly
respectable moon in it. Yet for generations their eyes were not to see,
their hands were not to touch these things. They were only to push their
frontier a little farther to the west and hold the dream and pass it on
to their children.

Those early years of the nineteenth century held the first days of
fulfillment. Samson and Sarah Traylor had the old dream in their hearts
when they first turned their faces to the West. For years Sarah had
resisted it, thinking of the hardships and perils in the way of the
mover. Samson, a man of twenty-nine when he set out from his old home,
was said to be "always chasing the bird in the bush." He was never
content with the thing in hand. There were certain of their friends who
promised to come and join them when, at last, they should have found the
land of plenty. But most of the group that bade them good-by thought it
a foolish enterprise and spoke lightly of Samson when they were gone.
America has undervalued the brave souls who went west in wagons, without
whose sublime courage and endurance the plains would still be an unplowed
wilderness. Often we hear them set down as seedy, shiftless dreamers who
could not make a living at home. They were mostly the best blood of the
world and the noblest of God's missionaries. Who does not honor them
above the thrifty, comfort loving men and women who preferred to stay at
home, where risks were few, the supply of food sure and sufficient and
the consolations of friendship and religion always at hand. Samson and
Sarah preferred to enlist and take their places in the front battle line
of Civilization. They had read a little book called _The Country of the
Sangamon_. The latter was a word of the Pottawatomies meaning land of
plenty. It was the name of a river in Illinois draining "boundless,
flowery meadows of unexampled beauty and fertility, belted with timber,
blessed with shady groves, covered with game and mostly level, without a
stick or a stone to vex the plowman." Thither they were bound to take up
a section of government land.

They stopped for a visit with Elisha Howard and his wife, old friends
of theirs, who lived in the village of Malone, which was in Franklin
County, New York. There they traded their oxen for a team of horses. They
were large gray horses named Pete and Colonel. The latter was fat and
good-natured. His chief interest in life was food. Pete was always
looking for food and perils. Colonel was the near horse. Now and then
Samson threw a sheepskin over his back and put the boy on it and tramped
along within arm's reach of Joe's left leg. This was a great delight to
the little lad.

They proceeded at a better pace to the Black River country, toward which,
in the village of Canton, they tarried again for a visit with Captain
Moody and Silas Wright, both of whom had taught school in the town of
Vergennes.

They proceeded through DeKalb, Richville and Gouverneur and Antwerp and
on to the Sand Plains. They had gone far out of their way for a look at
these old friends of theirs.

Every day the children would ask many questions, as they rode along,
mainly about the beasts and birds in the dark shadows of the forest
through which they passed. These were answered patiently by their father
and mother and every answer led to other queries.

"You're a funny pair," said their father one day. "You have to turn over
every word we say to see what's under it. I used to be just like ye, used
to go out in the lot and tip over every stick and stone I could lift to
see the bugs and crickets run. You're always hopin' to see a bear or a
panther or a fairy run out from under my remarks."

"Wonder why we don't see no bears?" Joe asked. "'Cause they always see us
first or hear us comin'," said his father. "If you're goin' to see ol'
Uncle Bear ye got to pay the price of admission."

"What's that?" Joe asked.

"Got to go still and careful so you'll see him first. If this old wagon
didn't talk so loud and would kind o' go on its tiptoes maybe we'd see
him. He don't like to be seen. Seems so he was kind o' shamed of himself,
an' I wouldn't wonder if be was. He's done a lot o' things to be 'shamed
of."

"What's he done?" Joe asked.

"Ketched sheep and pigs and fawns and run off with 'em."

"What does he do with 'em?"

"Eats 'em up. Now you quit. Here's a lot o' rocks and mud and I got to
'tend to business. You tackle yer mother and chase her up and down the
hills a while and let me get my breath."

Samson's diary tells how, at the top of the long, steep hills he used to
cut a small tree by the roadside and tie its butt to the rear axle and
hang on to its branches while his wife drove the team. This held their
load, making an effective brake.

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