Thomas Bailey Aldrich

“ If misery makes a man acquainted with strange bed-fellows, it is equally certain that the profession of surveyor and civil engineer often takes one into undreamed-of localities. I had never heard of Greenton until my duties sent me there, and kept me there two weeks in the dreariest season of the year. I do not think I would, of my own volition, have selected Greenton for a fortnight's sojourn at any time; but now the business is over, I shall never regret the circumstances that made me the guest of Tobias Sewell, and brought me into intimate relations with Miss Mehetabel's Son. ”

“ My own weakness is odd people, and I am constantly encountering them. It was plain that I had unearthed a couple of very queer specimens at Bayley's Four-Corners. I saw that a fortnight afforded me too brief an opportunity to develop the richness of both, and I resolved to devote my spare time to Mr. Jaffrey alone, instinctively recognizing in him an unfamiliar species. My professional work in the vicinity of Greenton left my evenings and occasionally an afternoon unoccupied; these intervals I purposed to employ in studying and classifying my fellow-boarder. ”

“ You will not find Greenton, or Bayley's Four-Corners, as it is more usually designated, on any map of New England that I know of. It is not a town; it is not even a village; it is merely an absurd hotel. The almost indescribable place called Greenton is at the intersection of four roads, in the heart of New Hampshire, twenty miles from the nearest settlement of note, and ten miles from any railway station. A good location for a hotel, you will say. Precisely; but there has always been a hotel there, and for the last dozen years it has been pretty well patronized—by one boarder. ”

“ Jaffrey, folding up the journal reflectively, “abstruse calculations of this kind are not, perhaps, of vital importance, but they indicate the intellectual activity of the age. Seriously, now,” he said, halting in front of the table, “what with books and papers and drives about the country, I do not find the days too long, though I seldom see any one, except when I go over to K——— for my mail. Existence may be very full to a man who stands a little aside from the tumult and watches it with philosophic eye. Possibly he may see more of the battle than those who are in the midst of the action. ”

“ When a boy you have caressed and indulged and lavished pocket-money on lies to you and will climb, then there's nothing more to be said. He's a lost child.” “You take too dark a view of it, Mr. Jaffrey. Training and education are bound to tell in the end, and he has been well brought up.”
“But I did n't bring him up on a lightning-rod, did I? If he is ever going to know how to behave, he ought to know now. To-morrow he will be eleven years old.”
The reflection came to me that if Andy had not been brought up by the rod, he had certainly been brought up by the lightning. ”

“ Between you and I, old Clem Jaffrey, Silas's father, was a hard nut. Yes,” said Mr. Sewell, crooking his elbow in inimitable pantomime, “altogether too often. Found dead in the road hugging a three-gallon demijohn. Habeas corpus in the barn,” added Mr. Sewell, intending, I presume, to intimate that a post-mortem examination had been deemed necessary. “Silas,” he resumed, in that respectful tone which one should always adopt when speaking of capital, “is a man of considerable property; lives on his interest, and keeps a hoss and shay. He 's a great scholar, too, Silas ”

“ The wisest thing I ever did in my life was to sell out my grain business over at K———, thirteen years ago, and settle down at the Corners. When a man has made a competency, what does he want more? Besides, at that time an event occurred which destroyed any ambition I may have had. Mehetabel died.” “The lady you were engaged to?” “N-o, not precisely engaged. I think it was quite understood between us, though nothing had been said on the subject. Typhoid,” added Mr. Jaffrey, in a low voice.
For several minutes he smoked in silence, a vague, troubled look playing over his countenance. ”

“ He should be sent to the High School at Portsmouth, and then to college; he should be educated like a gentleman, Andy.
“When the old man dies,” remarked Mr. Jaffrey one night, rubbing his hands gleefully, as if it were a great joke, “Andy will find that the old man has left him a pretty plum.”
“What do you think of having Andy enter West Point, when he 's old enough?” said Mr. Jaffrey on another occasion. “He need n't necessarily go into the army when he graduates; he can become a civil engineer.” ”

“ I never feel lonely. How can I, being on intimate terms, as it were, with thousands and thousands of people? There's that young woman out West. What an entertaining creature she is!—now in Missouri, now in Indiana, and now in Minnesota, always on the go, and all the time shedding needles from various parts of her body as if she really enjoyed it! Then there 's that versatile patriarch who walks hundreds of miles and saws thousands of feet of wood, before breakfast, and shows no signs of giving out. ”

“ “What is more cheerful, now, in the fall of the year, than an open wood-fire? Do you hear those little chirps and twitters coming out of that piece of apple-wood? Those are the ghosts of the robins and bluebirds that sang upon the bough when it was in blossom last spring. In summer whole flocks of them come fluttering about the fruit-trees under the window: so I have singing birds all the year round. ”

“ I replied to his mute inquiry by taking out my pocket-book and handing him my business-card, which he held up to the candle and perused with great deliberation.
“You 're a civil engineer, are you?” he said, displaying his gums, which gave his countenance an expression of almost infantile innocence. He made no further audible remark, but mumbled between his thin lips something which an imaginative person might have construed into “If you 're at civil engineer, I 'll be blessed if I would n't like to see an uncivil one!” ”

“ Jaffrey, with a woful face. “I can't do anything with him.”
“He'll come out all right, Mr. Jaffrey. Boys will be boys. I would not give a snap for a lad without animal spirits.”
“But animal spirits,” said Mr. Jaffrey sententiously, “should n't saw off the legs of the piano in Tobias's best parlor. I don't know what Tobias will say when he finds it out.”
“What! has Andy sawed off the legs of the old spinet?” I returned, laughing. “Worse than that.” “Played upon it, then!” “No, sir. He has lied to me!” “I can't believe that of Andy.” “Lied to me, sir,” repeated Mr. Jaffrey, severely. ”

“ Not much society. Tobias is not, perhaps, what one would term a great intellectual force, but he means well. He 's a realist—believes in coming down to what he calls 'the hard pan;' but his heart is in the right place, and he 's very kind to me. ”

“ So many interesting things going on all over the world—inventions, discoveries, spirits, railroad disasters, mysterious homicides. Poets, murderers, musicians, statesmen, distinguished travellers, prodigies of all kinds turning up everywhere. ”

“ Sewell for his courtesies to me, and to express my regret at leaving him and Mr. Jaffrey.
“I have become very much attached to Mr. Jaffrey,” I said; “he is a most interesting person; but that hypothetical boy of his, that son of Miss Mehetabel's”—
“Yes, I know!” interrupted Mr. Sewell, testily. “Fell off a step-ladder and broke his dratted neck. Eleven year old, was n't he? Always does, jest at that point. Next week Silas will begin the whole thing over again, if he can get anybody to listen to him.” ”

“ Mr. Sewell then explained how the tavern had lost its custom when the old stage line was broken up by the railroad. The introduction of steam was, in Mr. Sewell's estimation, a fatal error. “Jest killed local business. Carried it off, I 'm darned if I know where. The whole country has been sort o' retrograding ever sence steam was invented.”
“You spoke of having one boarder,” I said.
“Silas? Yes; he come here the summer 'Tilda died—she that was 'Tilda Bayley—and he 's here yet, going on thirteen year. He could n't live any longer with the old man. ”

“ I said to myself, “if Greenton had forty thousand inhabitants, it could n't turn out a more astonishing old party than that!”
II. THE CASE OF SILAS JAFFREY.
A man with a passion for bric-à-brac is always stumbling over antique bronzes, intaglios, mosaics, and daggers of the time of Benvenuto Cellini; the bibliophile finds creamy vellum folios and rare Alduses and Elzevirs waiting for him at unsuspected bookstalls; the numismatist has but to stretch forth his palm to have priceless coins drop into it. ”

“ I wish Andy would be a model infant, and dodge the whole lot.”
This supposititious child, born within the last few minutes, was plainly assuming the proportions of a reality to Mr. Jaffrey. I began to feel a little uncomfortable. I am, as I have said, a civil engineer, and it is not strictly in my line to assist at the births of infants, imaginary or otherwise. I pulled away vigorously at the pipe, and said nothing. ”

“ Really, now, it is quite curious to observe how that venerable female slave—formerly an African princess—is repeatedly dying in her hundred and eleventh year, and coming to life again punctually every six months in the small-type paragraphs. ”

“ Sewell paused in the act of lifting a chop from the fire, and, resting the point of his fork against the woodwork of the mantelpiece, grinned from ear to ear.
“Bless you! there is n't any other boarders. There has n't been anybody put up here sence—let me see—sence father-in-law died, and that was in the fall of '40. To be sure, there 's Silas; he's a regular boarder ”