The Man Without a Country, and Other Tales

"Felix," said my wife to me, as I came home to-night, "you will have to go to the pork-barrel."

"Are you quite sure," said I,-"quite sure? 'Woe to him,' says the oracle, 'who goes to the pork-barrel before the moment of his need.'"

"And woe to him, say I," replied my brave wife,-"woe and disaster to him; but the moment of our need has come. The figures are here, and you shall see. I have it all in black and in white."

And so it proved, indeed, that when Miss Sampson, the nurse, was paid for her month's service, and when the boys had their winter boots, and when my life-insurance assessment was provided for, and the new payment for the insurance on the house,-when the [pg 202] taxes were settled with the collector (and my wife had to lay aside double for the war),-when the pew-rent was paid for the year, and the water-rate-we must have to start with, on the 1st of January, one hundred dollars. This, as we live, would pay, in cash, the butcher, and the grocer, and the baker, and all the dealers in things that perish, and would buy the omnibus tickets, and recompense Bridget till the 1st of April. And at my house, if we can see forward three months we are satisfied. But, at my house, we are never satisfied if there is a credit at any store for us. We are sworn to pay as we go. We owe no man anything.

So it was that my wife said: "Felix, you will have to go to the pork-barrel."

This is the story of the pork-barrel.

It happened once, in a little parish in the Green Mountains, that the deacon reported to Parson Plunkett, that, as he rode to meeting by Chung-a-baug Pond, he saw Michael Stowers fishing for pickerel through a hole in the ice on the Sabbath day. The parson made note of the complaint, and that afternoon drove over to the pond in his "one-horse shay." He made his visit, not unacceptable, on the poor Stowers household, and then crossed lots to the place where he saw poor Michael hoeing. He told Michael that he was charged with Sabbath breaking, and bade him plead to the charge. And poor Mike, like a man, plead guilty; but, in extenuation, he said that there [pg 203] was nothing to eat in the house, and rather than see wife and children faint, he had cut a hole in the ice, had put in his hook again and again, and yet again, and coming home had delighted the waiting family with an unexpected breakfast. The good parson made no rebuke, nodded pensive, and drove straightway to the deacon's door.

"Deacon," said he, "what meat did you eat for breakfast yesterday?"

The deacon's family had eaten salt pork, fried.

"And where did you get the pork, Deacon?"

The Deacon stared, but said he had taken it from his pork-barrel.

"Yes, Deacon," said the old man; "I supposed so. I have been to see Brother Stowers, to talk to him about his Sabbath-breaking; and, Deacon, I find the pond is his pork-barrel."

The story is a favorite with me and with Fausta. But "woe," says the oracle, "to him who goes to the pork-barrel before the moment of his need." And to that "woe" both Fausta and I say "amen." For we know that there is no fish in our pond for spend-thrifts or for lazy-bones; none for people who wear gold chains or Attleborough jewelry; none for people who are ashamed of cheap carpets or wooden mantelpieces. Not for those who run in debt will the fish bite; nor for those who pretend to be richer or better or wiser than they are. No! But we have found, in our lives, that in a great democracy there reigns a [pg 204] great and gracious sovereign. We have found that this sovereign, in a reckless and unconscious way, is, all the time, making the most profuse provision for all the citizens. We have found that those who are not too grand to trust him fare as well as they deserve. We have found, on the other hand, that those who lick his feet or flatter his follies fare worst of living men. We find that those who work honestly, and only seek a man's fair average of life, or a woman's, get that average, though sometimes by the most singular experiences in the long run. And thus we find that, when an extraordinary contingency arises in life, as just now in ours, we have only to go to our pork-barrel, and the fish rises to our hook or spear.

The sovereign brings this about in all sorts of ways, but he does not fail, if, without flattering him, you trust him. Of this sovereign the name is-"the Public." Fausta and I are apt to call ourselves his children, and so I name this story of our lives,

"THE CHILDREN OF THE PUBLIC."

"Where is the barrel this time, Fausta?" said I, after I had added and subtracted her figures three times, to be sure she had carried her tens and hundreds [pg 205] rightly. For the units, in such accounts, in face of Dr. Franklin, I confess I do not care.

"The barrel," said she, "is in FRANK LESLIE'S OFFICE. Here is the mark!" and she handed me FRANK LESLIE'S NEWSPAPER, with a mark at this announcement:-

$100

for the best Short Tale of from one to two pages of FRANK LESLIE'S ILLUSTRATED NEWSPAPER, to be sent in on or before the 1st of November, 1862.

"There is another barrel," she said, "with $5,000 in it, and another with $1,000. But we do not want $5,000 or $1,000. There is a little barrel with $50 in it. But see here, with all this figuring, I cannot make it do. I have stopped the gas now, and I have turned the children's coats,-I wish you would see how well Robert's looks,-and I have had a new tile put in the cook-stove, instead of buying that lovely new 'Banner.' But all will not do. We must go to this barrel."

"And what is to be the hook, darling, this time?" said I.

"I have been thinking of it all day. I hope you will not hate it,-I know you will not like it exactly; but why not write down just the whole story of what it is to be 'Children of the Public'; how we came to live here, you know; how we built the house, and-all about it?"

"How Felix knew Fausta," said I; "and how Fausta first met Felix, perhaps; and when they first [pg 206] kissed each other; and what she said to him when they did so."

"Tell that, if you dare," said Fausta; "but perhaps-the oracle says we must not be proud-perhaps you might tell just a little. You know-really almost everybody is named Carter now; and I do not believe the neighbors will notice,-perhaps they won't read the paper. And if they do notice it, I don't care! There!"

"It will not be so bad as-"

But I never finished the sentence. An imperative gesture closed my lips physically as well as metaphorically, and I was glad to turn the subject enough to sit down to tea with the children. After the bread and butter we agreed what we might and what we might not tell, and then I wrote what the reader is now to see.

New-Yorkers of to-day see so many processions, and live through so many sensations, and hurrah for so many heroes in every year, that it is only the oldest of fogies who tells you of the triumphant procession of steamboats which, in the year 1824, welcomed General Lafayette on his arrival from his tour through the country he had so nobly served. [pg 207]

But, if the reader wishes to lengthen out this story he may button the next silver-gray friend he meets, and ask him to tell of the broken English and broken French of the Marquis, of Levasseur, and the rest of them; of the enthusiasm of the people and the readiness of the visitors, and he will please bear in mind that of all that am I.

For it so happened that on the morning when, for want of better lions to show, the mayor and governor and the rest of them took the Marquis and his secretary, and the rest of them, to see the orphan asylum in Deering Street,-as they passed into the first ward, after having had "a little refreshment" in the managers' room, Sally Eaton, the head nurse, dropped the first courtesy to them, and Sally Eaton, as it happened, held me screaming in her arms. I had been sent to the asylum that morning with a paper pinned to my bib, which said my name was Felix Carter.

"Eet ees verra fine," said the Marquis, smiling blandly.

"Ràvissant!" said Levasseur, and he dropped a five-franc piece into Sally Eaton's hand. And so the procession of exhibiting managers talking bad French, and of exhibited Frenchmen talking bad English, passed on; all but good old Elkanah Ogden-God bless him!-who happened to have come there with the governor's party, and who loitered a minute to talk with Sally Eaton about me.

Years afterwards she told me how the old man [pg 208] kissed me, how his eyes watered when he asked my story, how she told again of the moment when I was heard screaming on the doorstep, and how she offered to go and bring the paper which had been pinned to my bib. But the old man said it was no matter,-"only we would have called him Marquis," said he, "if his name was not provided for him. We must not leave him here," he said; "he shall grow up a farmer's lad, and not a little cockney." And so, instead of going the grand round of infirmaries, kitchens, bakeries, and dormitories with the rest, the good old soul went back into the managers' room, and wrote at the moment a letter to John Myers, who took care of his wild land in St. Lawrence County for him, to ask him if Mrs. Myers would not bring up an orphan baby by hand for him; and if, both together, they would not train this baby till he said "stop"; if, on the other hand, he allowed them, in the yearly account, a hundred dollars each year for the charge.

Anybody who knows how far a hundred dollars goes in the backwoods, in St. Lawrence County, will know that any settler would be glad to take a ward so recommended. Anybody who knew Betsy Myers as well as old Elkanah Ogden did, would know she would have taken any orphan brought to her door, even if he were not recommended at all.

So it happened, thanks to Lafayette and the city council! that I had not been a "Child of the Public" [pg 209] a day, before, in its great, clumsy, liberal way, it had provided for me. I owed my healthy, happy home of the next fourteen years in the wilderness to those marvellous habits, which I should else call absurd, with which we lionize strangers. Because our hospitals and poorhouses are the largest buildings we have, we entertain the Prince of Wales and Jenny Lind alike, by showing them crazy people and paupers. Easy enough to laugh at is the display; but if, dear Public, it happen, that by such a habit you ventilate your Bridewell or your Bedlam, is not the ventilation, perhaps, a compensation for the absurdity? I do not know if Lafayette was any the better for his seeing the Deering Street Asylum; but I do know I was.

This is no history of my life. It is only an illustration of one of its principles. I have no anecdotes of wilderness life to tell, and no sketch of the lovely rugged traits of John and Betsy Myers,-my real father and mother. I have no quest for the pretended parents, who threw me away in my babyhood, to record. They closed accounts with me when they left me on the asylum steps, and I with them. I grew up with such schooling as the public gave,-ten weeks in winter always, and ten in summer, till I was big enough to work on the farm,-better periods of schools, I hold, than on the modern systems. Mr. Ogden I never saw. Regularly he allowed for me the hundred a year till I was nine years old, and then suddenly he died, as the reader perhaps knows. But John Myers [pg 210] kept me as his son, none the less. I knew no change until, when I was fourteen, he thought it time for me to see the world, and sent me to what, in those days, was called a "Manual-Labor School."

There was a theory coming up in those days, wholly unfounded in physiology, that if a man worked five hours with his hands, he could study better in the next five. It is all nonsense. Exhaustion is exhaustion; and if you exhaust a vessel by one stopcock, nothing is gained or saved by closing that and opening another. The old up-country theory is the true one. Study ten weeks and chop wood fifteen; study ten more and harvest fifteen. But the "Manual-Labor School" offered itself for really no pay, only John Myers and I carried over, I remember, a dozen barrels of potatoes when I went there with my books. The school was kept at Roscius, and if I would work in the carpenter's shop and on the school farm five hours, why they would feed me and teach me all they knew in what I had of the day beside.

"Felix," said John, as he left me, "I do not suppose this is the best school in the world, unless you make it so. But I do suppose you can make it so. If you and I went whining about, looking for the best school in the world, and for somebody to pay your way through it, I should die, and you would lose your voice with whining, and we should not find one after all. This is what the public happens to provide for you and me. We won't look a gift-horse in the [pg 211] mouth. Get on his back, Felix; groom him well as you can when you stop, feed him when you can, and at all events water him well and take care of him well. My last advice to you, Felix, is to take what is offered you, and never complain because nobody offers more."

Those words are to be cut on my seal-ring, if I ever have one, and if Dr. Anthon or Professor Webster will put them into short enough Latin for me. That is the motto of the "Children of the Public."

John Myers died before that term was out. And my more than mother, Betsy, went back to her friends in Maine. After the funeral I never saw them more. How I lived from that moment to what Fausta and I call the Crisis is nobody's concern. I worked in the shop at the school, or on the farm. Afterwards I taught school in neighboring districts. I never bought a ticket in a lottery or a raffle. But whenever there was a chance to do an honest stroke of work, I did it. I have walked fifteen miles at night to carry an election return to the Tribune's agent at Gouverneur. I have turned out in the snow to break open the road when the supervisor could not find another man in the township.

When Sartain started his magazine, I wrote an essay in competition for his premiums, and the essay earned its hundred dollars. When the managers of the "Orphan Home," in Baltimore, offered their prizes for papers on bad boys, I wrote for one of them, [pg 212] and that helped me on four hard months. There was no luck in those things. I needed the money, and I put my hook into the pork-barrel,-that is, I trusted the Public. I never had but one stroke of luck in my life. I wanted a new pair of boots badly. I was going to walk to Albany, to work in the State library on the history of the Six Nations, which had an interest for me. I did not have a dollar. Just then there passed Congress the bill dividing the surplus revenue. The State of New York received two or three millions, and divided it among the counties. The county of St. Lawrence divided it among the townships, and the township of Roscius divided it among the voters. Two dollars and sixty cents of Uncle Sam's money came to me, and with that money on my feet I walked to Albany. That I call luck! How many fools had to assent in an absurdity before I could study the history of the Six Nations!

But one instance told in detail is better than a thousand told in general, for the illustration of a principle. So I will detain you no longer from the history of what Fausta and I call

THE CRISIS.

[pg 213]