The Project Gutenberg eBook, Children of the Market Place, by Edgar Lee Masters This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org Title: Children of the Market Place Author: Edgar Lee Masters Release Date: April 4, 2005 [eBook #15534] Language: English Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 ***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CHILDREN OF THE MARKET PLACE*** E-text prepared by Audrey Longhurst, Mary Meehan, and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team CHILDREN OF THE MARKET PLACE by EDGAR LEE MASTERS 1922 TO GEORGE P. BRETT CHAPTER I CHAPTER II CHAPTER III CHAPTER IV CHAPTER V CHAPTER VI CHAPTER VII CHAPTER VIII CHAPTER IX CHAPTER X CHAPTER XI CHAPTER XII CHAPTER XIII CHAPTER XIV CHAPTER XV CHAPTER XVI CHAPTER XVII CHAPTER XVIII CHAPTER XIX CHAPTER XX CHAPTER XXI CHAPTER XXII CHAPTER XXIII CHAPTER XXIV CHAPTER XXV CHAPTER XXVI CHAPTER XXVII CHAPTER XXVIII CHAPTER XXIX CHAPTER XXX CHAPTER XXXI CHAPTER XXXII CHAPTER XXXIII CHAPTER XXXIV CHAPTER XXXV CHAPTER XXXVI CHAPTER XXXVII CHAPTER XXXVIII CHAPTER XXXIX CHAPTER XL CHAPTER XLI CHAPTER XLII CHAPTER XLIII CHAPTER XLIV CHAPTER XLV CHAPTER XLVI CHAPTER XLVII CHAPTER XLVIII CHAPTER XLIX CHAPTER L CHAPTER LI CHAPTER LII CHAPTER LIII CHAPTER LIV CHAPTER LV CHAPTER LVI CHAPTER LVII CHAPTER LVIII CHAPTER LIX CHAPTER LX CHAPTER LXI CHAPTER LXII CONCLUSION CHAPTER I I was born in London on the eighteenth of June, 1815. The battle of Waterloo was being fought as I entered this world. Thousands were giving up their lives at the moment that life was being bestowed upon me. My father was in that great battle. Would he ever return? My mother was but eighteen years of age. Anxiety for his safety, the exhaustion of giving me life prostrated her delicate constitution. She died as I was being born. I have always kept her picture beside me. I have always been bound to her by a tender and mystical love. During all the years of my life my feeling for her could not have been more intense and personal if I had had the experience of daily association with her through boyhood and youth. What girlish wistfulness and sadness there are in her eyes! What a gentle smile is upon her lips, as if she would deny the deep foreboding of a spirit that peered into a perilous future! Her dark hair falls in rich strands over her forehead in an elfin and elegant disorder. Her slender throat rises gracefully from an unloosened collar. This picture was made from a drawing done by a friend of my father's four months before I was born. My old nurse told me that he was invalided from the war; that my father had asked him to make the drawing upon his return to London. Perhaps my father had ominous dreams of her ordeal soon to be. They pronounced me a fine boy. I was round faced, round bodied, well nourished. The nurse read my horoscope in coffee grounds. I was to become a notable figure in the world. My mother's people took me in charge, glad to give me a place in their household. Here I was when my father returned from the war, six months later. He had been wounded in the battle of Waterloo. He was still weak and ill. I was told these things by my grandmother in the succeeding years. When I was four years old my father emigrated to America. I seem to remember him. I have asked my grandmother if he did not sing "Annie Laurie"; if he did not dance and fling me toward the ceiling in a riot of playfulness; if he did not snuggle me under my tender chin and tickle me with his mustaches. She confirmed these seemingly recollected episodes. But of his face I have no memory. There is no picture of him. They told me that he was tall and strong, and ruddy of face; that my beak nose is like his, my square forehead, my firm chin. After he reached America he wrote to me. I have the letters yet, written in a large open hand, characteristic of an adventurous nature. Though he was my father, he was only a person in the world after all. I was surrounded by my mother's people. They spoke of him infrequently. What had he done? Did they disapprove his leaving England? Had he been kind to my mother? But all the while I had my mother's picture beside me. And my grandmother spoke to me almost daily of her gentleness, her high-mindedness, her beauty, and her charm. I was raised in the English church. I was taught to adore Wellington, to hate Napoleon as an enemy of liberty, a usurper, a false emperor, a monster, a murderer. I was sent to Eton and to Oxford. I was indoctrinated with the idea that there is a moral governance in the world, that God rules over the affairs of men. I was taught these things, but I resisted them. I did not rebel so much as my mind naturally proved impervious to these ideas. I read the Iliad and the Odyssey with passionate interest. They gave me a panoramic idea of life, men, races, civilizations. They gave me understanding of Napoleon. What if he had sold the Louisiana territory to rebel America, and in order to furnish that faithless nation with power to overcome England in some future crisis? Perhaps this very moral governance that I was taught to believe in wished this to happen. But if the World Spirit be nothing but the concurrent thinking of many peoples, as I grew to think, the World Spirit might irresistibly wish this American supremacy to be. And now at eighteen I am absorbed in dreams and studies at Oxford. I have many friends. My life is a delight. I arise from sleep with a song, and a bound. We play, we talk, we study, we discuss questions of all sorts infinitely. I take nothing for granted. I question everything, of course in the privacy of my room or the room of my friends. I do not care to be expelled. And in the midst of this charming life bad news comes to me. My father is dead. He has left a large estate in Illinois. I must go there. At least my grandmother thinks it is best. And so my school days end. Yet I am only eighteen! CHAPTER II I am eighteen and the year is 1833. All of Europe is in a ferment, is bubbling over in places. Napoleon has been hearsed for twelve years in St. Helena. But the principles of the French Revolution are working. Charles is king of France, but by the will of the nation first and by the grace of God afterward. There is no republic there; but the sovereignty of the people, the prime principle of the French Revolution, has founded the right of Charles to rule.... And what of England? Fox had rejoiced at the fall of the Bastille. Coleridge, Wordsworth, and Southey had sung of liberty, exulting in the emancipation of peoples from tyranny. Then they had changed. Liberalism had come under the heel again. Revolution was feared and denounced. Liberal principles were crushed.... But not for long. We students read Shelley and Byron. They were now gone from earth, eleven and nine years respectively. They had not altered their faith, dying in the heyday of youthful power. Would they have changed at any age to which they might have lived? We believed they would not have done so. But what of England? It is 1833 and the reform bill is a year old. The rotten boroughs are abolished. There is a semblance of democratic representation in Parliament. The Duke of Wellington has suffered a decline in popularity. Italy is rising, for Mazzini has come upon the scene. Germany is fighting the influence of Metternich. We students are flapping our young wings. A great day is dawning for the world. And I am off to America! What is stirring there? I am bound for the Middle West of that great land. What is it like? Shall I ever return? What will my life be? These are my reflections as I prepare to sail. I take passage on the Columbia and Caledonia. She is built of wood and is 200 feet long from taffrail to fore edge of stem. Her beam is 34-1/2 feet. She has a gross tonnage of 520 tons. She can sail in favorable weather at a speed of 12 knots an hour. I laughed at all this when, something more than twenty years after, I crossed on the Persia, 376 feet long, of 3500 tonnage, and making a speed of nearly 14 knots an hour, with her 4000-horse-power engines. It is April. The sea is rough. We are no sooner under way than the heavy swell of the waves tosses the boat like a chip. The prow dips down into great valleys of glassy water. The stern tips high in the air against an angry sky. The shoulders of the sea bump under the poop of the boat, and she trembles like a frightened horse under its rider. I have books to read. My grandmother has provided me with many things for my comfort and delight. But I cannot eat, not until during the end of the voyage. I lie in a little stateroom, which I share with an American. He persists in talking to me, even at night when I am trying to sleep. He tells me of America. His home is New York City. He has been as far west as Buffalo. He gives me long descriptions of the Hudson River, and the boats on it that run to Albany. He talks of America in terms of extravagant eulogy. The country is free. It has no king. The people rule. I have read a little and heard something of America. At Oxford we students had wondered at the anomaly of a republic maintaining the institution of slavery. I asked him about this. He said that it did not involve any contradiction; that the United States was founded by white men for white men; that negroes were a lower order of beings; that their servitude was justified by the Bible; that a majority of the clergy and the churches of the country approved of the institution; that the slaves were well treated, much better housed and fed than the workers of Europe; better than the free laborers even in America. His thesis was that the business of life was the obtaining of the means of life; that all the uprisings in Europe, the French Revolution included, were inspired by hunger; that the struggle for existence was bound to produce oppression; that the strong would use and control the weak, make them work, keep them in a state where they could be worked. All this for trade. He topped off this analysis with the remark that negro slavery was a benign institution, exactly in line with the processes of the business of life; that it had been lied about by a growing fanaticism in the States; New York had always been in sympathy, for the most part with the Southern States, where slavery was a necessary institution to the climate and the cotton industry. He went on to tell me that about a year before a maniacal cobbler named William Lloyd Garrison had started a little paper called The Liberator in which he advocated slave insurrections and the overthrow of the laws sustaining slavery; and that a movement was now on foot in New England to found the American Anti-Slavery Society. And that John Quincy Adams, once President, but now a senile intermeddler, had been presenting petitions in Congress from various constituencies for the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia. This would be finally squelched, he thought. New England had always demanded a tariff in order to foster her industries, and that policy trenched on the rights of the states not needing and not wanting a tariff. While slavery did not in any way harm New England, she intermeddled in a mood of moral fanaticism. I was much interested in these revelations by Mr. Yarnell, for such was his name.... One morning we began to sense land. We had been about three weeks on the water. We were nearing the harbor of New York. CHAPTER III Yarnell was a man of about thirty. He seemed very mature to me. In fact he was quite a man of the world. I had told him my destination, and asked him how best to reach it. He had given me some information, but it was not wholly clear. He advised me to ask for direction at the Franklin House, which he recommended to me as a comfortable hotel. As we came into the harbor we stood on the deck together while he pointed out the places of interest. I was thrilled with its beauty and its extent. The day was mild. A fresh breeze was blowing. May clouds floated swiftly in the clear sky. I felt my blood course electrically in expectation of the wonders of New York. It was now lying before me in all its color and mystery. Boats of all kinds passed us. There was a tangled thicket of masts at the piers. I discerned gay awnings over a walk around a building near the water. Yarnell said this was Castle Garden, where many diners came for the excellence of the food and the view of the harbor. I could begin to see up the streets of the city beyond the Battery. But there was a riot of stir and activity, in expectation of our boat. I disembarked and hired a hack. I was traveling with a huge valise. This the hackman took for me. Yarnell came up to bid me adieu, promising to call upon me at the Franklin House. The fare was twenty-five cents a mile. The hotel was at 197 Broadway. Was it more than a mile? I did not know. I was charged fifty cents for the trip. I was not stinted for money, and it did not matter. I paid the amount demanded, and walked into the hotel. How simple things are at the end of a journey and a daily restlessness to arrive! My valise was taken to my room. I went with the negro porter. I looked from my window out upon Broadway. The porter departed. The door was closed. My journey to New York was over. I was alone. I began to wish for Yarnell, wish to be back upon the boat. Above all I began to sense the distance that separated me from England and those I loved. Here was the afternoon on my hands. Should I not see something of the city? When should I start west? I took from my pocket the letter written from Illinois by the lawyer, who had advised this journey and my presence at Jacksonville, for that was the town where my father's estate was to be settled. For the first time I was conscious of the fact that difficulties probably stood in my way. The letter read: "Claims are likely to be made against the estate that require your personal attention." What could it mean? Why had my grandmother said nothing to me of this? She had seen the letter. I began to wonder. But to fight down my growing loneliness I started out to see the city. As I passed up the street I bought Valentine's Manual and glanced at it as I walked. How far up did the city extend? The manual said more than thirteen miles. I could not make that distance before dark. A passerby said that there was a horse railway running as far as Murray Hill. But I strode on, arriving in a little while at Washington Square. Beyond this I could see that the city did not present the appearance of being greatly built. On my way I passed the gas works, the City Hall, many banks, several circulating libraries, saw the signs of almost innumerable insurance companies. But the people! They were all strange to me. So many negroes. My manual said there were over 14,000 negroes in the city, which, added to the white population, made an aggregate of more than 200,000 souls. I sat for a while in the Park and then retraced my steps. On my way back I stopped at Niblo's Garden at Broadway and Prince Street. It was a gay place. People were feasting upon oysters, drinking, laughing, talking over the affairs of the day. Here I partook of oysters for the first time in my life. I walked through the grounds, looking at the flowers. I stared about at the splendor of the paintings and the mirrors in the rooms. Then like a ghost I resumed my way to my hotel. Why? There was nothing there to call me back. Yet it was the only home I had, and the evening was coming on. Instead of stopping at the hotel, I went on to Castle Garden. I decided to dine there. I could look over the harbor and the ships. It was a way to put myself in touch with England, to travel back over the way I had come. I found a table and ordered a meal. I became conscious of the fact that the captain of the Columbia and Caledonia was at a near table with a gay party. They had wine, and there was much merriment. This abandonment was in contrast to the serious, almost dark spirit of a party at another table. This was composed of men entirely. I had never seen such faces before. Their hair was long. They wore goatees. They were strangely dressed. They talked with a broad accent. Excitement and anger rose in their voices. They were denouncing President Jackson. The matter seemed to be a force bill, the tariff imposed by New England's enterprise, the duty of the Southern States to resist it. They were insisting that there was no warrant to pass a tariff law, that it was clearly a breach of the Constitution, and that it should be resisted to the death. There was bitter cursing of Yankees, of the greed of New England, of its disregard of the rights of the South.... But out upon the harbor the sea gulls were drifting. I could hear the slapping of the waves against the rocks. And in the midst of this the orchestra began to play "Annie Laurie." The tears came to my eyes. I arose and left the place. My mind turned to a theater as a means of relief to these pressing thoughts. I consulted my manual, and started for the American theater. It was described as an example of Doric architecture, modeled after the temple of Minerva at Athens. I found it on the Bowery and Elizabeth Street, bought a ticket for seventy-five cents and entered. The play was Othello, and I had never seen it before. I could not help but overhear and follow the conversation of the people who sat next to me. They were wondering what moved Shakespeare to depict the story of a black man married to a white woman. Could such a theme be dramatized now? How could a woman, fair and high-bred, become the wife of a sooty creature like Othello? Was it real? If not real, what was Shakespeare trying to do? And much more to the same effect, together with remarks about negroes and that slavery should be let alone by New England, and by everyone else. The play was dreary to me, played listlessly where it was not ranted and torn to tatters. I sat it through and then went back to my hotel.... The loneliness of that room as I entered it has never left my memory. For long hours I did not sleep. The city had 600 night watch, so the manual said, and I could hear some of them going their rounds. At last ... I awoke and it was morning. I awoke with a sense of delight in the strength and vitality which sleep had restored to me.... I went below to breakfast and to find the way to travel to Illinois. CHAPTER IV The clerk of the hotel told me that the best route was by way of Albany, the canal, the Great Lakes to Chicago; that when I got there I would likely find a boat or stage service to Jacksonville. I could leave at noon for Albany if I wished. Accordingly, I made ready to do so. I was entranced with the river boat. It was longer than the Columbia and Caledonia. And it was propelled by steam. It had the most enormous wheels. And no sooner were we under way than I found that we were gliding along at the rate of twenty miles an hour. The swiftly passing hills and palisades of the Hudson served to mark our speed. There were great saloons, lovely awnings under which to read or lounge, promenade decks. And there was a gay and well- behaved crowd of passengers.... At dinner we were seated at long tables, and served with every luxury. And the whole journey cost me less than seven shillings. On arriving at Albany that night at about nine o'clock I found myself in the best of luck. I could get passage on a canal boat the next morning for Buffalo; rather I was permitted to sleep on board.... I got on and retired. I awoke just as the boat was beginning to start. I had never seen anything like this before. The boat was narrow, sharp, gayly painted. It was drawn by three horses, each ridden by a boy who urged the horses forward. We traveled at the great speed of five miles an hour. But it was delightful. We were more than three days going from Albany to Buffalo. The time was well spent. The scenery was varied and beautiful. All the while we were climbing, for Lake Erie, to which we had to be lifted, was much above us. We went through lovely valleys; we ran beside glistening streams and rivers; we wound around hills. The farms were large and prosperous. The villages were new, fresh with white paint and green blinds, hidden among flowers and shrubbery. You see, I am eighteen and these external objects realize my dreams and stimulate them. I do not know these people. They are frank, talkative, often vulgar and presuming. But they are friendly. There is much merriment on board, for we have to dodge down frequently to save our heads from the bridges which the farmers build right across the canal. The ladies have to be warned and assisted. There are narrow escapes and shouts of laughter. And when the dinner bell is rung by a comical negro every one rushes for the dining room. I am introduced again to the American oyster, raw, fried, and stewed. It is the most delicious of discoveries among the new viands. Then we have wonderful roast turkey, chicken, and the greatest variety of vegetables and sweets. I am keeping a daily record of events and impressions to mail to my dear grandmother when I shall arrive at Buffalo.... Sometimes I get tired of the boat. Then I go on land and run along the path behind the horses. A young woman on her way to Michigan to teach school joins me in these reliefs from the tedium of the boat. We exchange a few words. But I see that I am not old enough for her. I have already observed her in confiding conversation with a man about the age of Yarnell. And soon they go together to trot along the path, to stray off a little into the meadows, or at the base of the picturesque hills.... I am interested in the talk of the passengers, and cannot choose but follow it at times.... One man has been reading the New Yorker, printed by H. Greeley and Company. I learn that Horace Greeley is his full name, and he comes in for a berating at the hands of a man with one of the characteristic goatees that I first observed at Castle Garden. The Whigs! I had always associated this party with latitudinarian principles. Now I hear it called a centralist party, a monarchist party. A voluble man, who chews tobacco, curses it as a mask for the old Federalist party, which tried to corrupt America with the British system, after it had failed as a combination of Loyalists to keep America under the dominion of Great Britain.... This is all a maze to me, at least so far as the American application is concerned. Then the man with the goatee assails New England, and calls her the devotee of the soured gospel of envy which covers its wolf face of hate with the lamb's decapitated head of universal brotherhood and slavery abolition. Surely there is much strife in America.... Also again President Jackson, the tariff, and the force bill! And will South Carolina secede from the Union on account of the unjust and lawless tariff? New England tried to secede once when the run of affairs did not suit her. Why not South Carolina, then, if she chooses? Another man is reading a book of poems and talking at intervals to a companion. I hear him say that a Mr. Willis is one of the world's greatest poets. I glance at the book and see the name Nathaniel Parker Willis. Also it seems Willis is the editor of one of the world's greatest literary journals. It is published in New York and is called the New York Mirror.... It is all so strange. Is it true that in this country, so far from England, there are men who are the equals of Shelley and Byron, or of Tennyson, whose first book has given me such delight recently?... We near the journey's end. At Lockport we are lifted up the precipice over which the Falls of Niagara pour some miles distant. We are now on a level with Lake Erie, to which we have climbed by many locks and lifts over the hills since we left Albany. Soon we travel along the side of the Niagara River; quickly we drift into Buffalo. CHAPTER V Buffalo, they told me, had about 15,000 people. I wished to see something of it before departing for the farther west. For should I ever come this way again? I started from the dock, but immediately found myself surrounded by runners and touters lauding the excellences of the boats to which they were attached. The harbor was full of steamboats competing for trade.... They rang bells, let off steam, whistled. Bands played. Negroes ran here and there, carrying freight and baggage. The air was vibrating with yells and profanity.... But I made my escape and walked through the town. It had broad streets, lovely squares, substantial and attractive buildings and residences. And there was Lake Erie, blue and fresh, rippling under the brilliant May sun. I had never seen anything remotely approximating Lake Erie.... "How large is it?" I inquired of a passerby. I was told that it was 60 miles wide and 250 miles long. Could it be true? Was there anything in all of Europe to equal it? I could not for the moment remember the extent of the Caspian Sea. And I stood in wonder and delight. As I left the dock for my walk I had observed the name Illinois on a boat that had all the appearances of being brand new. I walked leisurely toward the dock so as to avoid the touters as much as possible while I was overlooking the boat. I liked it, but would it take me to Chicago? The gangplank was lying on the dock and near it stood what seemed to me to be the captain and the pilot, around them touters and others. I edged around to the captain and asked him if the Illinois would take me to Chicago. "In about an hour," he said with a laugh. Immediately I was besieged by the runners to help me on, to get my baggage, to serve me in all possible ways. I couldn't hire all of them. I chose one, who got my valise for me, and I went aboard. It was a new boat, and this was its maiden trip. All the stewards, negroes, waiters were brisk and obliging, and bent on making the trip an event. The captain gave parties. He was a bluff, kindly man, who mingled much with favorite passengers. Wine flowed freely. The food was abundant and delicious. We had dances by moonlight on the deck. A band played at dinner and at night. The boat was distinguished for many quaint and interesting characters. I enjoyed it all, but made no friends. I did not understand this free and easy manner of life. The captain noted me, and asked if I was well placed and comfortable. Various people opened conversations with me. But I was shy, and I was English. I could not unbend. I did not desire to do so. We docked at Erie and at Cleveland, both small places. We came to Detroit, the capital of Michigan. On the way some one pointed out the scene of Perry's victory over the hated British. We passed into Lake Huron. Then later I was privileged to see Mackinac, an Indian trading post. I viewed the smoking wigwams from the deck of the Illinois. Here were the savages buying powder, blankets, and whisky. The squaws were selling beaded shoes. The shore was wooded and high.... I looked below into the crystalline depths of the water. I could see great fish swimming in the transparent calms, which mirrored the clouds, the forests, and the boats and canoes of the Indians.... We ran down to Green Bay, Wisconsin. Here too there were Indian traders.... We went on to Milwaukee. As there was no harbor here a small steamer came out to take us off. I went ashore with some others. A creek flowed from the land to the lake. But the town was nothing. Only a storehouse and a few wooden buildings. Soon we proceeded to Chicago. I was told that the northern boundary of Illinois had been pushed north, in order to give the state the southern shores of the great lake, with the idea of capturing a part of the emigration and trade of the East. This fact eventually influenced my life, and the history of the nation, as will be seen. Chicago had been a trading post, and to an extent was yet. The population was less than 1000 people. There was a fort here, too, built in place of one which had been destroyed in a massacre by the Indians. There was much activity here, particularly in land speculation. Not a half mile from the place where we landed there was a forest where some Indians were camping. I heard that an Indian war was just over. The Black Hawks had been defeated and driven off. But some friendly remnants of other breeds were loitering about the town. Carrying my valise, I began to look for a hotel for the night. Also, how and when was I to get to Jacksonville? A man came by. I hailed him and asked to be driven to a hotel. He walked with me north toward the river, past the fort and landed me at a hostelry built partly of logs and partly of frames. Surely this was not New York or Buffalo! As I came to the hotel I saw a man standing at the door, holding the bridle bits of an Indian pony. He came into the hotel soon, evidently after disposing of his charge. At that moment I was asking Mr. Wentworth, the hotel manager, how to get to Jacksonville. The man came forward and in the kindest of voices interrupted to tell me what the manager evidently could not. "I am going there myself to-morrow," he said. "You can ride behind. The pony can carry both of us." I looked at my new-found friend. He had deep blue eyes, a noble face, a musical and kindly voice. He looked like the people I had known in England. I was drawn to him at once in confidence and friendship. He went on to tell me later that he had been in the Black Hawk War; that he had been spending some time in Chicago trying to decide whether he would locate there or return to Jacksonville. He had been offered forty acres of land about a mile south of the river for the pony. But what good was the land? It was nothing but sand and scrub oaks. Unless the town grew and made the land valuable as building property, it would never be of value. For farming it was worthless. But around Jacksonville the soil was incomparably fertile and beautiful. He had decided, therefore, to return to Jacksonville. His eyes deepened. "You see that I am attached to that country." He smiled. "Yes, I must go back. Some one is waiting for me. You are heartily welcome to ride behind." How long would it take? A matter of five days. Meanwhile he had told me how to reach there independently: by stage to a place 90 miles south on the Illinois River, then by boat to a town on the river called Bath, then cross country to Jacksonville. I began to balance the respective disadvantages. "My name is Reverdy Clayton," he said, extending his hand in the most cordial way. I could not resist him. "My name is James Miles," I returned with some diffidence. "James Miles," he echoed. "James Miles ... there was a man of that name in Jacksonville, poor fellow ... now gone." "Perhaps he was my father ... did you know my father?" I felt a thrill go through me. Was this new-found acquaintance before me a friend of my father's? It turned out to be so. But why "poor fellow"? Clayton was not over thirty-two, therefore my father's junior by some years. How well had they known each other? We went to dinner together. We were served with bacon and greens, strong coffee, apple pie. It was all very rough and strange. But Clayton told me many things. He knew the lawyer Brooks who had written me. Brooks was a reliable man. But when I pressed Clayton for details about my father he grew strangely reticent. I began to feel depressed, overcome by a foreboding of wonder. After dinner we separated. Clayton had errands to do preparatory to leaving and I went forth to see the town. What a spectacle of undulating board sidewalks built over swales of sand, running from hillock to hillock! What shacks used for stores, trading offices, marts for real estate! Truly it was a place as if built in a night, relieved but little by buildings of a more substantial sort.... Drinking saloons were everywhere. I heard music and entered one of these resorts. There was a barroom in front and a dancing room in the rear. The place was filled with sailors, steamboat captains and pilots, traders, roisterers, clerks, hackmen, and undescribed characters. Women mingled with the men and drank with them. They dressed with conspicuous abandon, in loud colors. Their faces were rouged. They ran in and out of the dance room with escorts or without, stood at the bar for drinks, entwined their arms with those of the men. In the dance room a band was playing. A man with a tambourine added to the hilarity of the music. It was a wild spectacle, unlike anything I had ever seen. No one accosted me. I could feel a different spirit in the crowd from that I had seen on the boats or in New York. There was no talk of politics, negroes, force bills. They did not seem to know or to care about these things. It was a wild assemblage, but without meanness or malice. They were occupied solely with a spirit of carnival, of dancing, drinking, of talk about the arrival of the Illinois; about the price of land and the great future of Chicago. "It's as plain as day," said a man at the bar. "Here we are at the foot of the lake. The trade comes our way. The steamboats come here from the East. Look at the country! No such farm country in the world! Why, in twenty years this town will have a population of 20,000 people. It's bound to." How could it be? How could such a locality ever be the seat of a city? So far from the East. And nothing here but wastes of sand! I left the place unnoticed and returned to the hotel. I sat down drearily enough. The feeling that I was far from home, far even from the civilization and the charm of New York came over me with depressing effect. I began to wish that Clayton would appear. I had not decided to accept his kindly offer. I must be off to-morrow. The air seemed oppressive. Was it so warm? I put my hand to my brow. It was hot. Perhaps I was not well. The trip I had just ended was after all wearisome. I had not slept well some nights. I sensed that I was fatigued. What would a ride of more than 200 miles on a pony do to me? But on the other hand I had the alternative of 90 miles by stage. For the first time I began to feel apprehension about the days ahead. While I was thinking these matters over Clayton came in. He supplemented my doubts by telling me that if I was not used to riding, a journey of such length would make me lame; at least a little. I then decided that I would take the stage, and the boat. The next morning, promising to see me in Jacksonville and offering to befriend me in any way he could, Clayton bestrode his pony and was off. In an hour I was rolling in the stage toward the Illinois River.... CHAPTER VI We were some hours getting through the sand. Then we came to hilly country overgrown with oaks and some pines. Later the soil was rocky. We skirted along a little river; and here and there I had my first view of the prairie. The air above me was thrilling with the song of spring birds. I did not know what they were. Some of them resembled the English skylark in the habit of singing and soaring. But the note was different. My head felt heavy. I seemed to be growing more listless. But I could not help but note the prairie: the limitless expanse of heavy grass, here and there brightened by brilliant blossoms. All the houses along the way were built of logs. The inhabitants were a large breed for the most part, tall and angular, dressed sometimes in buckskin, coonskin caps. Now and then I saw a hunter carrying a long rifle. The wild geese were flying.... Some of the passengers were dressed in jeans; others in linsey-woolsey dyed blue. As we stopped along the way I had an opportunity to study the faces of the Illinoisians. Their jaws were thin, their eyes, deeply sunk, had a far-away melancholy in them. They were swarthy. Their voices were keyed to a drawl. They sprawled, were free and easy in their movements. They told racy stories, laughed immoderately, chewed tobacco. Some of the passengers were drinking whisky, which was procured anywhere along the way, at taverns or stores. The stage rolled from side to side. The driver kept cracking his whip, but without often touching the horses, which kept an even pace hour after hour. We had to stop for meals. But the heavy food turned my stomach. I could not relish the cornbread, the bacon or ham, the heavy pie. When we reached La Salle, where I was to get the boat, I found myself very fatigued, aching all through my flesh and bones, and with a dreamy, heavy sensation about my eyes. The country had become more hilly. And now the bluffs along the Illinois River rose with something of the majesty of the Palisades of the Hudson. The river itself was not nearly so broad or noble, but it was not without beauty.... More oblivious of my surroundings than I had been before, I boarded The Post Boy, a stern wheeler, and in a few minutes she blew the most musical of whistles and we were off.... The vision of hills and prairies around me harmonized with the dreamy sensations that filled my heavy head and tired body. I sat on deck and viewed it all. I did not go to the table. The very smell of the food nauseated me. I do not remember how I got to bed, nor how long I was there. I remember being brought to by a negro porter who told me that we were approaching Bath where I was to get off. I heard him say to another porter: "That boy is sure sick." And then a tall spare man came to me, told me that he was taking the stage as I was, and was going almost to Jacksonville, and that he would see me through. He helped me in the stage and we started. I remember nothing further.... I became conscious of parti-colored ribbons fluttering from my body as if blown by a rapid breeze from a central point of fixture in my breast. Was it the life going out of me, or the life clinging to me in spite of the airs of eternity? My eyes opened. I saw standing at the foot of the bed, an octoroon about fourteen years of age. She was staring at me with anxious and sympathetic eyes, in which there was also a light of terror. I tried to lift my hands. I could not. I was unable to turn my body. I was completely helpless. I looked about the room. It was small, papered in a figure of blue. Two windows stared me in the face. "Where am I?" I asked. "Yo's in Miss Spurgeon's house ... yo's in good hands." At that moment Miss Spurgeon entered. She was slender, graceful. Her hair was very black. Her eyes gray and hazel. Her nose delicate and exquisitely shaped. She put her hand on my brow and in a voice which had a musical quaver, she said: "I believe the fever has left you. Yes, it has. Would you like something to eat?" I was famished and said: "Yes, something, if you please." She went out, returning with some gruel. Turning to the octoroon she said: "Will you feed him, Zoe?" And Zoe came to the chair by the bed and fed me, for I could not lift a hand. Then I fell into a refreshing sleep. I had been ill of typhoid. Had I contracted it from the oysters, or from food on the steamer? But I had been saved. Miss Spurgeon had refused to let the doctor bleed me. She believed that careful nursing would suffice, and she had brought me through. But I had a relapse. I was allowed to eat what I craved. I indulged my inordinate hunger, and came nearer to death than with the fever itself. But from this I rallied by the strength of my youth and a great vitality. All the while Zoe and Miss Spurgeon watched over me with the most tender care. And one day I came out of a sleep to find Reverdy Clayton by the bed. A father could not have looked at me with more solicitude. His voice was grave and tender. His eyes bright with sympathy. "You will soon be well again," he said. He took my hand, sat down by me, cautioned me not to worry about my business affairs, told me that nothing would happen adverse to my interests while I was incapacitated, that Mr. Brooks was guarding my affairs and that they were not in peril.... And it turned out that Miss Spurgeon was his fiancée, that it was to her that he had returned from Chicago. They were soon now to be married. I asked him if Zoe was a slave. He laughed at this. "No one born in Illinois is a slave," he said. "This is a free country. Zoe was born here." Miss Spurgeon came in and I could now see them side by side. They seemed so kind and noble hearted, so suited to each other. I loved both of them. I was stronger now, was sitting up part of each day. I reached out my hands and took their hands, bringing them together in a significant contact. Miss Spurgeon bent over me, placing a kiss upon my brow. "You are a dear boy," she said. And Reverdy said: "The Lord keep you always, son." Their eyes showed the tears, and as for me my cheeks were suddenly wet. Then from what they said I learned that Reverdy had been gone many months, that Sarah, for that was her name, had been in great anxiety, that Reverdy had just got out of the service the morning I had seen him in Chicago; and that he had speculated on staying there a while for the purpose of improving his fortune with a view to his marriage. But now having returned, they were to be married soon. What had been the delay thus far? They were waiting for me to get well. I had interfered, no doubt, with the wedding plans, with the arranging and ordering of the house for the wedding. But they said they wished me to be present. Sarah thought there was something well omened in my meeting with Reverdy in Chicago, and in the fate that had brought me to her house, and she wished to fulfill the happy auspices to the end by having me for the chief guest at the wedding. But how had I come to this household? The stranger who had helped me on the boat at Bath had turned me over to a young man named Douglas who had brought me here, because of the poor comforts at the inn of Jacksonville. Douglas had been here but a few months himself, having come from the state of Vermont. He, too, had been ill of the same disease; had been confined under wretched circumstances at Cleveland on his way west; had nearly died. When he saw me he was moved to do the very best for me. He had brought me to Miss Spurgeon's and pleaded with her to take me in. And she had consented to the ordeal of my care, because Zoe insisted upon it, offering to take the burden of waiting upon me and watching over me. The Spurgeon house was quite the best in this town of 1000 people. Sarah's father and mother were both dead, and she was living here with a grandmother, a woman now of more than eighty, whom I did not see until I began to go about the house.... Meantime Zoe's face and manner became clearer to me day by day. She was not very darkly hued, rather lighter than the Hindus I had seen in England. Her hair was abundant and straight. Her lips were full but shapely. Her nose rather of a Caucasian type. Her voice was the most musical one could imagine. And she sang—she sang "Annie Laurie" at times in a voice which thrilled me. There was grace in her carriage, charm in her gestures and movements. And she waited upon me with the affection of a sister. As I grew better Mr. Brooks came to call upon me. And at last I went to his office to talk over the matter of my father's estate. It was now July and the heat was more terrible than I had ever conceived could prevail outside of a tropical country. CHAPTER VII Sarah and Zoe followed me to the door the morning I went to see Mr. Brooks. Cholera had descended upon the community and they begged me to go to Mr. Brooks' office and return at once, and not to be in the sun any more than was necessary. I had no fear. Having come from so serious an illness I did not feel that another malady would attack me soon. As I walked along I could see that the boundless prairie was around me. I inhaled the spaciousness of the scene. I could see the deep woods which stood beyond the rich prairies of tall and heavy grass. The town was built roughly of hewn logs. It was like a camp of hastily constructed shacks. But a college had already been founded. It had two buildings, one of logs and one of brick. I looked back to see that the Spurgeon house was substantially built, with care and taste.... Mr. Brooks' office was in one of the log structures about the square. One entered it from the street. I counted the signs of eleven lawyers on my way. The tavern where I had stayed, except for Douglas and Miss Spurgeon, was a most uninviting place. Mr. Brooks sat behind a rude table. Back of him on a wall were a portrait of Washington and a map of Illinois. On the table there was a law book of some sort. Altogether there were three chairs in the room. The floor was made of puncheon boards, and was bare. Flies buzzed in the air and at the rude windows. I felt strong when I left the house. Now I was not sure how long I should feel so. Mr. Brooks invited me to have a seat; and after a few words about the heat and the cholera he began to tell me stories of the people and the country. "Some years ago," he said, "a man came to this country, I mean over around the river country which you saw when you took the steamboat at Bath. He didn't have anything, but he was ambitious to be rich. How could he do it? Well, you can work and buy land with your savings, and land here under the Homestead Act has been $1.25 an acre since 1820; still that may not put you ahead very fast. And if you're ambitious you want to get rich quick. That's the way every one here feels who is bent on getting rich. Money is not as plentiful as land; and if land is only $1.25 an acre it takes $800 to get a section. That's a lot of money to a man who has nothing. This land around here is rich as the valley of the Nile. It is six feet or more of black fertility. I'll bet that some say it will be worth $50 an acre." I began to wonder why these Americans talk so much. I had observed it everywhere. Here I was come on a matter of business, of my father's estate; and the lawyer with whom I was forced to deal was talking to me interminably of things that had nothing to do with it. But I was young and strange, and not very strong; and it did not occur to me to show impatience with him. And so he went on. "This man was fine to look at, prepossessing and engaging. He looked like a driver, a man of his word too. And one day when he was standing on the street here he was approached by a stranger who began to get him into conversation. You see, we don't have slavery here as a regular thing. The negroes are sort o' apprenticed—free but apprenticed. But under pretty severe laws, have to be registered, can't testify, and so forth. This state is part of the Northwest Territory which was made free by the old Confederate States in 1787; but we actually had an election here eleven years ago to make it slave. And the people voted it free. Anyhow we have negroes here; and the people are from Tennessee, Kentucky, Virginia, and the Carolinas where they do have slavery, and we're all beginnin' to be scared over the agitation. Now this stranger was a Southerner and any one could see he was; but of course didn't look different from some of our own people. So this stranger began to talk to this man and ask him if he was married, and he wasn't; and asked him if he would like to make some money, which of course he did. "And finally the stranger said that he had a daughter that he would like to introduce, and asked this man to come with him a mile or so, and if he liked the girl he would pay him to marry her. They started off and found the girl. She was a mulatto or octoroon as they say, and as pretty as a red wagon. You see the stranger was pure white and from New Orleans; but the mother of the girl was a slave and they say kind of coffee colored. And the upshot of it was that the stranger offered this man $2500 to marry the octoroon. What he wanted to do was to place her well. He didn't want her to run the chance of ever being a slave, as she might be in the South. He was her father and he naturally had a father's feeling for her, even if she was an octoroon. And this stranger said that he had been around town and the country for some days looking at prospective husbands and making some inquiry, and that he had found no one to equal this man. The man liked the octoroon, the octoroon liked the man. And they struck a bargain. The man got his $2500; he married the girl on the spot. The stranger disappeared, and was never seen or heard of again. It all happened right there. The man bought land, he got rich. He was one of the best men I ever knew, and one of my best friends. The octoroon died in childbirth, leaving a daughter still living and in this town. The man died recently. His name was James Miles. He was your father. And Zoe is your half-sister, and wants to share in the estate, and that's why I sent for you." The flies began a louder buzzing at the window. The heat had increased. I looked through the open door and saw a man fall over, whether from heat or cholera I could not tell. I was by now weary and faint. I said: "I do not know what to say now. If we can agree, I mean if we are allowed to agree, Zoe and I will have no trouble. I am getting faint. And I shall come again." With that I arose and walked weakly from the room. CHAPTER VIII What were my thoughts after all? Was I ashamed of my kinship with Zoe? With this human being who had nursed me so tenderly through my illness? Did I begrudge her the interest which she had, of right, with me in our father's estate? She was as closely connected to him by ties of blood as I was. These things I reflected upon as I felt course through me a deep undercurrent of regret. Was it my mother? Her face came before me as I had learned to know it from her picture. Yes, that seemed to be it. My mother had not been honored. How could my father for any ambition, for any exigen...