Elijah Kellogg

“ Had he been grown man, such as most any one would have been glad to have, I would have had nothing to do with it, but when I came to look at the poor lad, lame, with scarcely a rag to his back, without friends or money, and in a strange land, when I found that he came out of a workhouse, and naturally thought he could do no farm work, and noticed how kind of pitiful he looked, you don’t know how it made me feel. ”

“ You’re a sharper man than I am, can make two dollars where I make one, and calculate to get labor as cheap as any body.”
“I took him because I thought it my duty to befriend a friendless boy. His being a redemptioner had nothing to do with it; but his youth, his misery, and his liability to be abused had. I don’t believe in cheap labor, which means dear labor in the end. I don’t believe in losing fifty bushels of wheat for the sake of saving two shillings on a man’s wages in harvest. ”

“ In the midst of wheat harvest there came a week of extremely sultry weather which affected him very sensibly, and as Mrs. Whitman was passing through the room where the old gentleman sat asleep in his chair, she was alarmed by the extreme paleness of his features, went to the chair and found him unconscious. She summoned her husband and children, who were near by reaping, but when they reached the house he was no more. A well-spent life had ceased without a struggle. ”

“ While at work on his barn, James hired Litchfield to clear three acres of land, and paid him in pork, wheat to sow, wheat flour to eat, and by letting him have his cattle to plough. That autumn James dug a cellar and stoned it, and in the winter hauled the logs to build the walls, and hewed them on two sides; hauled bricks from the mouth of the creek to build a chimney and put them in the hovel, which now made an excellent storehouse for the materials to build the house. ”

“ I wonder so shrewd a man as I know you to be should have taken him with the expectation that anybody would ever take him off your hands.”
“I know, Mr. Whitman, you think we are all a set of brutes, and buy and sell these men just as a drover does cattle, but there’s a little humanity about some of us, after all.” ”

“ The tears sprang into the eyes of James. He exclaimed,—
“Grandfather, don’t talk so; I can’t bear to hear you talk in that way. You will live a good many years to make us all happy.”
“That’s impossible according to the course of nature. I have lived to see all my children settled 232and making a good living, and what is more, giving evidence of grace, though Jonathan and Alice have not as yet seen their way clear to come forward, and I am ready to go; but I would like to see you and Peter, Bertie and Maria, rejoicing in the Lord.” ”

“ James replied in the affirmative, as he clasped the offered hand of the stranger, and returned his hearty grasp.
“I am William Whitman, and I knew old Frank the instant I set eyes on him. How are you, old playmate?” patting Frank’s neck. “He’s just my age; twenty-five years old last April, the tenth. Frank and I are one year’s children. How smooth he looks; young as a colt. You’ll have a good time here, old fellow, this winter, plenty to eat and nothing to do.”
“Ah! there’s father’s old rifle,” laying his hand on the weapon, that lay across the forward part of the saddle. ”

“ If you’ll buy oxen or horses or wheat I’ll trade with you, but I don’t care to trade in human bodies or souls.”
“I know, Mr. Whitman, that we are called soul-drivers, and a great many hard things are said of us, but just look at the matter for a moment free from prejudice. Here is a young able-bodied man on the other side, willing to work, but there is no work to be had, and he must do one of three things—starve, steal, or beg; there is a farmer in Pennsylvania who wants help but can’t get it. ”

“ I was there again, and came across him chopping in the woods and making the chips fly right smart, and last week I went there after lambs, and saw him ploughing by himself with the horses; and I venture to say there’s not a man of all who run him down can draw so straight a furrow as that fellow drew. I reckon Whitman has just got a treasure in that redemptioner, and I, for one, am glad of it. Jonathan Whitman is a man who is willing that others should live as well as himself, and uses everybody and everything well, from the cattle in his pastures to the hired hands in his field. ”

“ One of those dollars would buy ten pieces of land as big as that pasture out there; but you must recollect it is wild land, all woods, no house, no road: you have to cut the trees down before you can grow anything on it.”
“I know grandfather has told me ‘twas just so once where this house stands. But would it buy any land here?”
“Yes, it will buy an acre, buy two, perhaps three of some land; of most land it would not buy one.”
“It would buy a yoke of little steers, and quite a lot of sheep.”
“But why don’t you buy a gun? You love to shoot,” said Bertie. ”

“ On the other hand James could not throw Bertie, because he was afraid of hurting him, else he might have either twitched him down or have lifted him bodily from the floor and taken his feet from under him at any moment.
“That’s no way to wrestle, you great giant,” cried Bertie.
“I told you I didn’t know how.”
“But you must slack up your arms and give me some chance. How do you think I am ever going to throw you if you won’t let me get near you?”
“I don’t mean you shall; folks don’t wrestle to get thrown, do they? Your grandfather didn’t.” ”

“ Whitman interrogated Bertie, but though generally so communicative, he was all at once very reticent.
“Bertie, your father and myself are the best friends James has in the world, and your father is able to help James if he is so minded. If there is anything in this, you know and ought to tell us, for it will go no farther.”
“Well, mother, if you must know, he’s dying for Emily, and she’s dying for him.”
“Then why don’t he tell her so? There’s not a better girl in the country, nor more capable.” ”

“ I have spent a great many hours teaching you to handle a rifle, for though playing with a gun is just time thrown away in an old settlement where there is nothing to shoot but sparrows and robins, my family would have often gone without a meal had it not been for my rifle; and the money that bought the greater part of this farm came by trapping and hunting. If I could not have handled tools I must have gone without cart or plough or harrow, for I had no money to buy, and must have gone nine miles to borrow. ”

“ By the way, don’t you think you’re beginning rather strong with your redemptioner? You take a boy right out of the workhouse, who, by all accounts, has been hardly used and kept down, bring him into your family, dress him up and treat him just like one of your own children; don’t you think he’ll be like to get above himself and you too, and give you trouble? ”

“ I knew you were becoming acquainted with the Scriptures, that you heard the gospel faithfully preached every Sabbath, and that you would not then have understood my talk, but now you know what I mean, do you not?”
“You mean what you prayed, that Peter and Bertie and Maria and I might have, this morning at family prayers. But how can I get it? If neither the schoolmaster nor you can teach me, and I can’t learn it myself, how am I going to get it?”
“Beg for it. When a man has nothing to buy bread with, and can’t work, he must beg. ”

“ Just after wheat harvest, James received a letter from Bertie, saying that if he would come to Swatara in his birch, himself and Ned Conly would return with him, and bring his sheep.
“I know what they want,” said James; “they want to come in the birch, and see the rough side of life, and that’s the reason they want to come now, while we are in the camp; but I wish we had a good house for them.”
“I don’t. They wouldn’t have half so good a time; they want to see just what beginning in the woods is, and what they must come to if they take it up, and perhaps it will sicken them.” ”

“ James at first only manifested that fondness for a gun common to most young people, but he soon began to feel the hidden motion of that strange passion which throbs in the very marrow of the hunter, and became as enthusiastic as his preceptor, who before the summer was out, had taught him to shoot at flying game. ”

“ At noon, when James was in the schoolhouse, and his enemies outside, one boy would shout to another so as to be heard all over the schoolhouse,—“I say, John Edmands, do you know how to pick oakum?”
“No.”
“Well, then ask Redemptioner. He learned the trade in the work’us, and he’s a superior workman.”
Did James leave the schoolroom at recess, half a dozen snowballs flung by nobody would hit him. When at night he had his books under his arm going home a volley of balls would cover his books with snow. ”

“ I am an outspoken man, Mr. Wilson, and make free to tell you I don’t like this buying and selling of flesh and blood. It seems to me too much like slavery, which I never could endure. I think a capable man like you had better take up with some other calling, and I don’t care to encourage you in this. ”

“ I’m most always here stormy days in the winter, come in and practise with the tools, and I’ll show you. If, as I trust you will, you should have a piece of land, it will be a great thing in a new settlement to be able to handle tools.”
Scarcely had the old gentleman and James left the shop, than Peter, Bertie, and the Edibeans came in, replenished the fire to heat the chimney, and taking some skins from the wagon, ascended to the loft above, and seated themselves for consultation, evidently with something of great weight upon their minds. ”

“ Peter Whitman told the others, that there were only four or five large boys who set the rest on, and they ought to pitch into them, give them a good beating, and protect James.
“I don’t feel like going into a fight,” said Arthur, “to protect a fellow who is better able to protect us than we are him, and could thrash the whole of ‘em with one hand tied behind him; they are a set of cowards, and would be quiet enough if they once saw in him any inclination to resist.” ”

“ Whitman gone back he would have seen this poor ignorant lad rise from his bed, kneel down and repeat the Lord’s prayer, and though repeated with a very feeble sense of its import may we not believe it was accepted by Him who “requireth according to that a man hath and not according to that he hath not,” and whose hand that through the ocean storm guides the sea-bird to its nest amid the breakers, has directed this wayfarer to the spot where there are hearts to pity and hands to aid him. ”

“ Peter now related all he had heard Wilson tell their father, and dwelt with great emphasis upon Mr. Wilson’s statement that the lad had not a friend in the world and no home.
“He’s got one friend,” said Bertie, “Fowler likes him, ‘cause he smelt of him and wagged his tail; if he hadn’t liked him he would have growled. Mother’s a friend to him, and father and grandpa and all of us.”
“We will be good to him because he never had any chestnut-tree to play under and swing on, nor any garden of his own,” said Maria. ”

“ During the forenoon they had been preparing the ground to plant corn, they had been working four horses, putting James’ colt in with Dick, in the absence of his mate.
“Father,” said Peter, “hadn’t we better plough that piece of burnt land, and not wait for James?”
Mr. Whitman was about to reply, but his voice was drowned in a loud neigh that penetrated every cranny of the dwelling, and took precedence of all other sounds, and was instantly followed by a most vigorous response from the four horses in the barn, in which the tones of Dick were the most prominent. ”

“ When the time drew near for James to start for the Monongahela, Bertie said to him,—
“What will you do for a horse now you have sold 300the colt? I mean to ask father to let you have Frank.”
“I don’t want him, Bertie, as I shall go right to my place from trapping, and you will want Frank early in the spring. I have nothing to carry but a rifle; my traps are all there. I shall go afoot or in one of the wagons that haul goods over the mountains, and in the spring I can buy a horse there or a mule for ten dollars, and sell him this side of the mountains for seventy-five, perhaps a hundred.” ”

“ James has so good a memory, and is as willing to apply himself as you have represented, he will very soon begin to excel his mates, because the mind of a boy of that age is more mature than the mind of a child, and he is capable of more application. ”

“ I never knew it to work well with anybody, look ahead; a man isn’t half a man and a woman isn’t half a woman who has never had any load to carry. I take it you’ll work in an even yoke; you are both smart, and no doubt feel that you are equal to anything, and perhaps look down on people who have not your strength and resolution, but it is better to look up, and the first night you get into the camp I want William to take the Bible and read and pray, and I want you to ask him to.’ I didn’t have to ask him. ”

“ Thank God, any man who has his health and is sober and industrious can own land here.”
“Does Bertie’s father own all this land?”
“Yes, it was mine; I gave it to him.”
“You can own a piece of land, James,” said Bertie; “I am saving my money to buy a piece of land. I’ve got twenty dollars now, and a yoke of steers that I am going to sell. I mean to have a farm of my own, and raise lots of wheat, just as 101grandfather did, and then when I’m old I can tell what I did, just as he does; and I hope there will be a war, so that I can fight, and have it to tell of, and be made much of, just as he is.” ”

“ But now when he has a crop in the ground to take up his attention all summer, the proceeds in the fall, to put in his chest, and look at in the winter, and another crop to look forward to in the spring, it will shorten time up wonderfully. He’ll forget all about being a redemptioner; won’t feel that he is working just to pay up old scores, and he’ll be more contented. ”