Amos Green

“ Amos was a crafty plotter. He had a strong imagination of the crafty and destructive sort, and a genius for detail. No man had ever escaped from a plot of his planning except by chance.
Vane was at a loss to know what to do next. His curiosity concerning the Danglers of Goose Creek was now quite as keen as his distaste for them, and both his distaste and curiosity were keener than his original purpose in visiting Forkville. It was still his intention to obtain a young animal of the Willoughby Girl strain, a bay with white legs, for choice ”

“ That’s your old game, Amos. I don’t give a damn about this rum, but we got to find the stranger.”
“My game!” sneered Amos. “You say so now, do you—an’ scart to open yer mouth for nigh onto twenty years!”
“And what about Joe,” queried one of the McPhees. “I reckon she’s the one we’re worryin’ about.”
“She’s run back to old Dave Hinch, that’s what she’s done,” said Jard. “Nobody’s tryin’ to lose her. But it’s good night to Vane if we don’t find him before dark. We’d best scatter an’ hunt the woods. I know their dirty, sneakin’ tricks.” ”

“ He was dressed like a fop in the height of the fashion of that day, wearing a white tie, with a great gold pin in it, a well-curled moustache and those short side-whiskers which were then the vogue. He had light-blue eyes and fair, curly hair, and had it not been for the side-whiskers, would have looked much younger than he was. Everything about him suggested that he was--or should have been--a gentleman of means and leisure.
"Cave tibi cane muto," he repeated, more slowly than before. And this time I had the sense to understand it: "Beware of the silent dog."
"Just so," said Amos. ”

“ He never went higher than small raft-towing tugs, and he often gave up his work and loafed about, fishing. He was the man who swam five miles down river, and stopped then because he was bored, not because he was tired. Amos, the finest of them, a gallant looking fellow, with very bright blue eyes, was a pilot for a good many years, and then a foreman in the ice business. He was a man of such shining 28 kindness that he was always up to the handle in work in the heart of his town, as selectman, honorary and volunteer overseer of the poor, and helper-out in general. ”

“ He was in a great haste to reach the woods at Slindon, where in springtime the wild flowers are like a garden; and he had a good reason for this. Indeed, in all my experience of Amos, I never knew him fail for want of caution; and when a man is circumspect as well as fearless, he is an enemy who cannot be trifled with.
It was the scoundrel's design, so I discovered, to reach the woods with as little delay as possible, and there to wait until the evening, when he could take the Portsmouth road under cover of darkness. ”

“ When we told him the story of the death of Amos, he seemed little enough impressed; for he was a rough-and-ready seaman, without the gift of imagination, and he had not been there himself to behold with his own eyes the terror of that incident or to hear the wild laughter of the fugitive as he fled before us through the Wood.
"A fit end for such a man," said he. "He himself was as evil as any snake, though he had courage of a sort; for I remember him well, when he faced the mutineers on board the Mary Greenfield. ”

“ At the time, of course, I knew nothing of Forsyth's wound, which had delayed Baverstock so long; and when I afterwards came to work the matter out, I arrived at the conclusion that Amos must have left the wood on the very night when I encountered the anaconda. He then returned to the temple, and, finding both the ruins and the village quite deserted, gave unholy vent to his wrath by burning everything that fire could touch. He then came back upon his own tracks, by way of the suspension bridge, drawn to the Red Fish like steel to a magnet, for the man's soul itself was magnetised by gold. ”

“ He who lives in the desert lives without patriotism—detached and aloof. He may see the throng of men more clearly than those who move among it. He cannot possibly so much feel for them. Unlike Hosea, Isaiah and Jeremiah, Amos was not a citizen of the kingdom against which he prophesied, and indeed no proper citizen of any kingdom, but a nomad herdsman, hovering on the desert borders of Judæa. He saw Israel from the outside. His message to her is achieved with scarcely one sob in his voice. For the sake of the poor and the oppressed among the people he is indignant. ”

“ This made Amos the better witness, but the worse prophet. He did not rise so high as his great successors, because he did not so feel himself one with the people whom he was forced to condemn, because he did not bear their fate as his own nor travail for their new birth. "Ihm fehlt die Liebe." Love is the element lacking in his prophecy; and therefore the words are true of him, which were uttered of his great follower across this same wilderness of Judæa, that mighty as were his voice and his message to prepare the way of the Lord, yet the least in the Kingdom of Heaven is greater than he. ”

“ Ain't it been lookin' arter the labourer, black an' white? Ain't it time for it to keep its word to the farmer?"
"In the meantime I'd finish that piece of ploughing, if I were you," suggested Nicholas. "The more work in the fall the less in the spring—that's a proverb for you."
"I don't want no proverb," returned Amos sullenly. "I want my rights, an' I want the country to give 'em to me."
"I ain't never seen no good come of settin' down an' wishin' for rights," remarked his wife tartly. "It's a sight better to be up an' plantin'." ”

“ Trust to me, you dolt," he cried, turning sharp upon the man with the red beard, who was sitting with a scowl upon his face and his legs crossed like a Hindoo. "Ask yourself, have I ever yet sent you on a wild-goose chase? Am I one to take unnecessary risks?"
"Then, shoot him, take what we want, and have done with it," growled the other.
"Friend Joshua," said Amos, "we are some eight thousand miles from Chimborazo, and probably not two miles from a police-station. We want no questions asked, no hue and cry. That would ruin everything." ”

“ The next year, two more of my father’s brothers, Marcellus and Jotham, ventured around the Horn, and ultimately the rest of the children followed,—Amos, Henry, Solomon, George, Francina and Nancy, [16] (Mrs. William Lovett) , making in all eight brothers and two sisters. Amos who was the last to come, was a lawyer and editor and had been instrumental in the founding of Grinnell College in Iowa and the University of Colorado in Boulder as he made his gradual progress from Maine to California. He founded and edited the first newspaper in Long Beach. ”

“ I told him, "Amos tied me to a tree, and left me in the wilderness to starve. And then I fell into the hands of savage men, to whom I shall be ever grateful. From their dwellings in the forest I journeyed alone to Cahazaxa's Temple, and thence across the plain to the Wood of the Red Fish, where I find an old friend, and still believe that I am dreaming. It is months now since I last set eyes upon a white man, and that was Amos Baverstock himself." ”

“ In early life Amos was a frequent contributor to the ‘Westminster Review,’ and well known as an earnest advocate of the higher education and political emancipation of women, and as a leader in the crusade against the Contagious Diseases Acts. He was a friend and admirer of Frederick Denison Maurice, with whom he was associated as a lecturer at the Working Men’s College in Great Ormond Street, London. ”

“ When the period of prosperity opened up for Israel, with Jeroboam II's conquest of Damascus, Judah also felt the good times. Amos, now an experienced master herdsman, took the advantage afforded by the peace and improved business conditions. He traveled with his stock-in-trade to far northern markets, to Samaria, to Damascus, to Hamath, and, from there his caravans wended their way east, even as far as the City Asshur, the capital of Assyria.
He was not a mere trader, however. He was a close observer and a student of men and things wherever he led his caravans. ”

“ The Philistines and Arameans had their God-guided exodus no less than Israel, and she is no more to Jehovah than the swarthy peoples of Africa, ix. 7. The universal and inexorable claims of the moral law have never had a more relentless exponent than Amos; and, though there is in him a soul of pity, vii. 2, 5, it was his peculiar task, not to proclaim the divine love, but to plead for social justice. God is just and man must be so too. Perhaps Amos's message is all the more daring and refreshing that he was not a professional prophet, vii. ”

“ He said he had ’business in Brewster,’” and the Truro man laughed good-naturedly. “But he’s a smart boy,” he added.
Mr. Cary made no answer, but his stern face softened a little at the praise of Amos. Nevertheless he was firmly resolved that Amos should be sent on a long voyage. “The harder master he has the better,” thought the father. “I’m too easy with him.”
When Amos hoisted his “square foot of sail” and headed for Wellfleet, he saw a canoe some distance ahead of him. ”

“ When Amos returned to Saguache after his spree with Rayder his first act was to purchase a ranch in the San Luis valley and deed it to his wife. He then went to his assay office and drew down the blinds and sat in the shadows like a cunning old 233 spider in hiding waiting for the unwary fly for which he had wove his web. His life had been that of the iconoclast who creates nothing to adorn the world’s great gallery of gods. But he was not philosophical enough to evolve an idea that would disrupt existing beliefs. ”

“ While the girls were busy helping Aunt Hetty, Rose’s father was on his way to the Mashpee village to see Amos Cary and to give him a letter to take to Captain Stoddard. He found the boy just ready to start. Shining Fish had launched his canoe and was to go part of the way with his new friend, greatly to Amos’s delight.
“Anne wasn’t to blame.” Amos repeated this a number of times so earnestly that Mr. Freeman began to realize that the boy knew more than he was willing to tell, and to blame Amos. ”

“ At so great a distance the difference of a few unmarked years is invisible. It is enough that we know the moral dates—the state of national feeling, the personages alive, the great events which are behind the prophet, and the still greater which are imminent. We can see that Amos wrote in the political pride of the latter years of Jeroboam's reign, after the pestilence and eclipse of the sixties, and before the advance of Tiglath-Pileser in the last forties, of the eighth century. ”

“ On the contrary, it is the opinion of others, that he prophesied a long time at Tekoa after the adventure he had with Amaziah: and the prophet taking no notice of the ill treatment which he is said to have received from Uzziah, his silence is no argument that he suffered nothing from him.
St. Jerome observes, that there is nothing great and sublime in the style of Amos. ”

“ I repeat: how do you know I’m contented?” asked Rees, swinging his tennis racquet.
“How do I know?” echoed Amos, diffidently, but with some surprise. “Why, because with natures like yours, full of energy, and fire, and daring, to will is to do. And that you have never done anything—anything great, I mean—is proof enough to me that you have never willed to do anything; that, in fact, the air of Carstow is responsible for the waste of a fine nature. Now you said you would not be offended, Mr. Pennant, and I hold you to your word.” ”

“ Note, Those whom God has endued with abilities for his service ought not to be despised nor laid aside for the meanness either of their origin or of their beginnings. Though Amos himself is not ashamed to own that he was a herdsman, yet others ought not to upbraid him with it nor think the worse of him for it. ”

“ When Amos’s boat drew near the landing at Province Town, he saw that his father, Amanda, and the Stoddards were all waiting for him. He felt himself to be almost like the chiefs of whom Shining Fish had told him, and quite expected to be praised and made much of; but as he sprang ashore he felt his father’s hand on his shoulder.
“March yourself straight to the house, young man. I’ll see that you pay for this fool’s errand,” said Mr. Cary.
Amos wriggled away from his father’s grasp. “I’ve got a letter for Captain Enos. Anne’s in Brewster,” he announced.
“Thank heaven!” exclaimed Mrs. Stoddard. ”

“ Now Amos, with all his practical common-sense, I know to be unusually romantic and imaginative. He loves the mystic and the fabulous. The other day while we were fishing together—thank you, Maggie does love a fresh place for my slippers every night—the other day I discovered, from several things he said, that he was an out-and-out fatalist. But I think we can weaken his faith in all that. He is too young and healthy and has too free a mind to remain a permanent dupe. ”

“ As far as Amos could gather from the little girl’s description, the man who had stolen away her brother was tall, had a long beard, and very black eyes. He was not on horseback, and there was no one else with him. But this was very meagre information at the best on which to build for tracking the fugitives. So Amos called Mrs Williams into the little parlour, and spread the matter out in prayer before God, whose “eyes are in every place, beholding the evil and the good.” ”

“ They must make sacrifices for the child.
He soon reached the Jew’s house, and was shown by a richly clad servant into the room where Amos sat. Amos was an old man, tall and strong, with a long bushy beard, in which his fingers continually played; and his eyes were sharp and brilliant and restless, a strange contrast to his stately bearing and measured movements. He rose from his cushions as Gregorio entered, and saluted him courteously, motioning him to a seat. ”