The boy turned to a flaxen-haired, rosy-cheeked, little toddling thing of three or four years old, at his feet, and took her up, to the perfect satisfaction of both parties. Her head nestled in his neck and her little hand patted his cheek with great approval and contentment.

"Mamma," said Asahel, "what makes you call Winthrop Governor? - he isn't a governor."

"Ask your father. And run and tell him tea's just ready."

The father came in; and the tea was made, and the whole party sat down to table. A homely, but a very cheerful and happy board. The supper was had in the kitchen; the little remains of the fire that had boiled the kettle were not amiss after the damps of evening fell; and the room itself, with its big fireplace, high dark-painted wainscoting, and even the clean board floor, was not the least agreeable in the house. And the faces and figures that surrounded the table were manly, comely, and intelligent, in a high degree.

"Well, - I've got through with that wheat field," said Mr.

Landholm, as he disposed of a chicken bone.

"Have you got through sowing?" said his wife.

"Sowing! - no! - Winthrop, I guess you must go into the garden to-morrow - I can't attend to anything else till I get my grain in."

"Won't you plant some sweet corn this year, Mr. Landholm? - it's a great deal better for cooking."

"Well, I don't know - I guess the field corn's sweet enough. I haven't much time to attend to sugar things. What I look for is substantials."

"Aren't sweet things substantial, sir?" said Winthrop.

"Well - yes, - in a sort they are," said his father laughing, and looking at the little fat creature who was still in her brother's arms and giving him the charge of her supper as well as his own. "I know some sweet things I shouldn't like to do without."

"Talking of substantials," said Mrs. Landholm, "there's wood wanting to be got. I am almost out. I had hardly enough to cook supper."

"Don't want much fire in this weather," said the father, "However - we can't get along very well without supper. - Rufus, I guess you'll have to go up into the woods to-morrow with the ox-sled - you and Sam Doolittle - back of the pine wood - you'll find enough dead trees there, I guess."

"I think," said Rufus, "that if you think of it, what are called substantial things are the least substantial of any - they are only the scaffolding of the other."

"Of what other?" said his father.

"Of the things which really last, sir, - the things which belong to the mind - things which have to do with something besides the labour of to-day and the labour of to-morrow."

"The labour of to-day and the labour of to-morrow are pretty necessary though," said his father dryly; "we must eat, in the first place. You must keep the body alive before the mind can do much - at least I have found it so in my own experience."

"But you don't think the less of the other kind of work, sir, do you?" said Winthrop looking up; - "when one can get at it?"

"No, my boy," said the father, - "no, Governor; no man thinks more highly of it than I do. It has always been my desire that you and Will should be better off in this respect than I have ever been; - my great desire; and I haven't given it up, neither."

A little silence of all parties.

"What are the things which 'really last,' Rufus?" said his mother.

Rufus made some slight and not very direct answer, but the question set Winthrop to thinking.

He thought all the evening; or rather thought and fancy took a kind of whirligig dance, where it was hard to tell which was which. Visions of better opportunities than his father ever had; - of reaching a nobler scale of being than his own early life had promised him; - of higher walks than his young feet had trod: they made his heart big. There came the indistinct possibility of raising up with him the little sister he held in his arms, not to the life of toil which their mother had led, but to some airy unknown region of cultivation and refinement and elegant leisure; - hugely unknown, and yet surely laid hold of by the mind's want. But though fancy saw her for a moment in some strange travestie of years and education and circumstances, that was only a flash of fancy - not dwelt upon. Other thoughts were more near and pressing, though almost as vague. In vain he endeavoured to calculate expenses that he did not know, wants that he could not estimate, difficulties that loomed up with no certain outline, means that were far beyond ken. It was but confusion; except his purpose, clear and steady as the sun, though as yet it lighted not the way but only the distant goal; that was always in sight. And under all these thoughts, little looked at yet fully recognized, his mother's question; and a certain security that she had that which would 'really last.' He knew it. And oddly enough, when he took his candle from her hand that night, Winthrop, though himself no believer unless with head belief, thanked God in his heart that his mother was a Christian.

Gradually the boys disclosed their plan; or rather the elder of the boys; for Winthrop being so much the younger, for the present was content to be silent. But their caution was little needed. Rufus was hardly more ready to go than his parents were to send him, - if they could; and in their case, as in his, the lack of power was made up by will. Rufus should have an education. He should go to College. Not more cheerfully on his part than on theirs the necessary privations were met, the necessary penalty submitted to. The son should stand on better ground than the father, though the father were himself the stepping-stone that he might reach it.

It had nothing to do with Winthrop, all this. Nothing was said of him. To send one son to College was already a great stretch of effort, and of possibility; to send two was far beyond both. Nobody thought of it. Except the one left out of their thoughts.

The summer passed in the diligent companionship of the oxen and Sam Doolittle. But when the harvests were gathered, and the fall work was pretty well done; the winter grain in the ground, and the November winds rustling the dry leaves from the trees, - the strongest branch was parted from the family tree, in the hope that it might take root and thrive better on its own stock elsewhere. It was cheerfully done, all round. The father took bravely the added burden with the lessened means; the mother gave her strength and her eyesight to make the needed preparations; and to supply the means for them, all pinched themselves; and Winthrop had laid upon him the threefold charge of his own, his brother's, and his father's duty. For Mr. Landholm had been chosen a member of the State Legislature; and he too would be away from home all winter. What sort of a winter it would be, no one stopped to think, but all were willing to bear.

The morning came of the day before the dreaded Saturday, and no one cared to look at another. It was a relief, though a hated one, to see a neighbour come in. Even that, Winthrop shunned; he was cleaning the harness of the wagon, and he took it out into the broad stoop outside of the kitchen door. His mother and brother and the children soon scattered to other parts of the house.

"So neighbour," said Mr. Underhill, - "I hear tell one of your sons is goin' off, away from you?"

"Yes," - said Mr. Landholm, pride and sorrow struggling together in his manner, - "I believe he is."

"Where's he goin'?"

"To Asphodel - in the first place."

"Asphodel, eh? - What's at Asphodel?"

"What do you mean?"

"What's he goin' there for?"

"To pursue his studies - there's an Academy at Asphodel."

"An Academy. - Hum. - And so he's goin' after larnin' is he?

And what'll the farmer do without him to hum?"

"Do the best I can - send for you, neighbour Underhill."

"Ha, ha! - well, I reckon I've got enough to do to attend to my own."

"I guess you don't do much but fish, do you? - there under the mountain?"

"Well, you see, I hain't a great deal of ground. You can't run corn straight up a hill, can you? - without somethin' to stand on?"

"Not very well."

"There be folks that like that kind o' way o' farming - but I never did myself."

"No, I'll warrant you," said Mr. Landholm, with a little attempt at a laugh.

"Well - you say there's an Academy at Asphodel; then he aint going to - a - what do you call it? - Collegiate Institution?"

"No, not just yet; by and by he'll go to College, I expect. -

That's what he wants to do."

"And you want it too, I suppose?"

"Yes - I'll do the best I can by my children. I can't do as I would by them all," said the father, with a mixture of pride expressed and pride not expressed, - "but I'll try to make a man of Will!"

"And t'other'll make a man of himself," said Mr. Underhill, as he saw Winthrop quit the stoop. "He'll never run a plough up the side of a house. But what kind of a man are you going to make of Will? - a great man?"

"Ah, I don't know!" said Mr. Landholm with a sigh. "That must be as Providence directs."

"Hum - I should say that Providence directs you to keep 'em both to hum," said Mr. Underhill; - "but that's not my affair. Well, I'm going. - I hear you are goin' to be in Vantassel this winter?"

"Yes - I'm going to make laws for you," Mr. Landholm answered laughing.

"Well -" said Mr. Underhill taking his hat, - "I wish they'd put you up for President - I'd vote for you!"

"Thank you. Why?"

"'Cause I should expect you'd give me somethin' nother and make a great man of me!"

With a laugh at his own wit, Mr. Underhill departed.

Chapter 2 No.2

You might like