UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA 
 LOS ANGELES
 
 u
 
 FOUR AND FIVE
 
 TEN TIMES ONE SERIES 
 
 FOUR AND FIVE 
 
 Storg of a 3Unfca=1toii Clufr 
 
 BY 
 
 EDWARD E. HALE 
 
 AUTHOR OF "TEN TIMES ONE is TEN," "MRS. MERRIAM'S SCHOLARS," 
 
 " HOW TO DO IT," " IM o HI^ ^lAME^' n AND OTHEIl JVCK^S ' ^ 
 
 BOSTON 
 
 ROBERTS BROTHERS 
 1891
 
 Copyright, 1892, 
 BY ROBERTS BROTHERS. 
 
 Knfijttst 
 K BY JOHN WILSON AND SON, 
 CAMBRIDGE, U.S.A.
 
 fs, 
 
 rn 
 
 FOUR AND FIVE. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 'T r ^HE FOUR were all boys well grown 
 up, but still boys who had a camp to- 
 gether one summer in one of the Cloves of 
 the Kaatskills. September was coming on, 
 and they knew they should have to break 
 camp soon. But, all the more, they made the 
 best of each hour, and were more apt than 
 ever to talk of improved plans for the next 
 year. 
 
 It was after supper; Harrison, who was 
 cook for the week, had cleared away his egg- 
 shells and washed his platters ; John, who 
 was axeman, had piled some new logs upon 
 the fire, and the four lay, or sat, watching the 
 pillar of smoke above and the embers below, 
 
 (5) 
 
 484070 
 
 LIBRARY
 
 FOUR AND FIVE. 
 
 Nothing is so fascinating, and in such condi- 
 tions is the best sleep in the world secured, 
 and the best work done. 
 
 "Yes; we want four other fellows, but 
 they must be of the right kind. Then we 
 could have one more canoe. We would buy 
 that birch I saw at Portland. I would write 
 my cousin about it. Then if everybody did 
 not want to go out together, we could leave 
 somebody at home to be ready for supper. 
 It would be cheaper and better." 
 
 "We must have just the right fellows. A 
 mean hog or a lazy dog would just spoil the 
 whole. One bad egg in a cake is as bad as 
 five." This was the professional simile of 
 Harrison. 
 
 "Right you are there," said Guthrie. 
 " The trouble is, you must be secret as death 
 about it. You must not say that anybody is 
 to be counted in, for fear the wrong man 
 should volunteer, and that you will not dare 
 say ' no ' to him. I know one first-rate f el- 
 low, if he will come."
 
 FOUR AND FIVE. 
 
 "Who is he?" 
 
 "Well, perhaps none of you know him. 
 We used to call him Beechnut, because he 
 was so like that fellow that knew everything 
 in the book. But that is nothing. We know 
 enough to keep out of the fire if we do not 
 always keep out of the water. But Ike is 
 such a good fellow ! If you are on a tramp 
 he does not squawk, nor want to get a stone 
 out of his boot. He never says his pack 
 swings wrong unless it does. He is always 
 willing to take the worst end of the stick if 
 there is any. Well, he does know more than 
 I do about weirs and traps and water-sheds 
 and pitch and rosin and wax and birch and 
 hemlock and yew and lots of things. But, 
 you know, it is not what a fellow knows that 
 makes you like him." 
 
 "I guess not," groaned Harrison, with 
 some memory which was evidently very bit- 
 ter. " There is a fellow in our school who 
 lived in France and can talk French ; he went 
 to an English school and knows all about
 
 8 FOUR AND FIVE. 
 
 commas and semi-colons. He is down on 
 you if you spell compel with two 1's ; and, do 
 you know, fellows, he knows so much that I 
 go back and pretend I have left something, 
 so that I may be sure that if he walks home 
 by the north road, I go by the meadow. I 
 wouldn't know so much as that fellow knows 
 for all the world." 
 
 There was no great danger that Harrison 
 would be overburdened by his stock of book- 
 learning, so that all the others laughed good- 
 naturedly at his groans. But they all under- 
 stood what he meant, and agreed that they 
 would not mind if the fellows in the new club 
 spelled or wrote a poor hand, if only they 
 were good fellows and knew how to lend a 
 hand in emergency. 
 
 " Well, we have talked enough," said 
 Guthrie, " and now we must turn in. But all 
 I say is that these four new fellows must look 
 up and not down, forward and not backward, 
 out and not in, and must lend a hand." 
 
 And this was the only solemn conclave
 
 FOUR AND FIVE. 
 
 which was ever held on the subject of admit- 
 ting the new fellows into the club. Before a 
 great while everything had to be packed up, 
 the tents had to be corded, the canoe to be 
 carried across to Arnold's, where a team 
 should take it to the railroad, the old tomato 
 cans which had done duty in forty ways had 
 to be buried in the ground, and what little 
 there was of the stores had to be carried 
 down to Tom Slocum's and presented, with 
 the courtesies of the young camp-followers, 
 to the people there who had been good to 
 them. All there was settled was, that when 
 they came next year, they should come eight 
 strong. They went to three different schools, 
 and it was possible that they might pick up 
 new recruits there. John was to go to South 
 America with his father, and there was no 
 saying how many cousins of Friday or of the 
 Spaniard he might find in that expedition. 
 Nobody cared whether the new members 
 were white, black, green, or gray, if only 
 they were reliable. And so there were good
 
 10 FOUR AND FIVE. 
 
 hopes of two canoes instead of one, of a new 
 tent, and, indeed, of many other accessories 
 which were necessary to the comfort of the 
 concern.
 
 FOUR AND FIVE. II 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 A CCORDINGLY, when the middle of 
 June came around, Guthrie, who was 
 the head-centre of this combination, living 
 not far from Poughkeepsie, and able to man- 
 age things better than the others, found that 
 there were, indeed, four fellows who were 
 confidently approved as willing to stand by 
 the four mottoes, who were going to come 
 into camp with them. Oddly enough, one of 
 these fellows was from South America, and 
 from the very first the boys nicknamed him 
 Friday, in memory of Robinson Crusoe's 
 companion. He spoke Spanish quite as well 
 as he did English, and had excellent stories 
 to tell of life out on the plains with the cattle- 
 drivers there. His father was a Scotchman 
 who had been a banker in Montevideo, and 
 had there married an American lady, so that
 
 12 FOUR AND FIVE. 
 
 "Friday" had been sent north on the same 
 steamer with John, when he returned from 
 his wonderful winter's outing. 
 
 One of the other boys was the son of a 
 Colorado ranchman, and he and Friday used 
 to compare notes on the handling of a lasso 
 and the riding of a horse, but as there was 
 neither lasso nor horse nor buffalo nor ox 
 within ten miles of the camp there was not 
 so much chance to make practical compari- 
 son. For the other two boys, Will Wickham 
 and Nelson French, as the story goes on, the 
 reader will see and know more of them. All 
 except Harrison met in the train at Brom- 
 wich ; they took each other's measure in a 
 minute, and after that minute needed no 
 further introduction. 
 
 Harrison arrived the next day. On the 
 whole, he approved of the changes which had 
 been made in the camp. He had got some 
 light on the lines of camp-life, he said, by a 
 visit he had made in the Adirondacks, and
 
 FOUR AND FIVE. 13 
 
 he was sure he knew a great deal more about 
 canoeing. 
 
 Their first night was a cold one, which was 
 a good test of Friday's staying abilities, see- 
 ing that he had never known what a northern 
 winter was. But there was plenty of wood, 
 and the fire was well built by the old campers, 
 who readily yielded the best places to the 
 new-comers, and taught them the laws of 
 screening themselves from smoke and wind. 
 
 " What do you fellows mean," said Friday, 
 "when you talk about the four rules? I 
 know what they are John told me but 
 where did they come from anyway ? " 
 
 Harrison explained that the four mottoes 
 were simply a way of showing how a fellow 
 is glad to live, that he looks up because he 
 does not believe that he can get along with- 
 out some law from somebody who knows 
 more about it than he does ; that he looks 
 forward because he expects to be something 
 better than he is ; that he looks out because 
 he would not be so mean as to eat the whole
 
 14 FOUR AND FIVE. 
 
 of his apple and not give half to the other 
 fellow; and that he lends a hand well, 
 because he must. " You ought to know all 
 about that, Friday; you ought to recollect 
 how badly Robinson Crusoe got along before 
 you stumbled in on him." And then all the 
 boys laughed, and Friday said that they must 
 give him a copy of Robinson Crusoe to read, 
 the first time he was alone ; he was really 
 the only boy of the set who did not know ex- 
 actly what they were talking about. Then 
 Guthrie went on and explained farther that, 
 in the book in which the four mottoes were 
 put down, it was supposed that ten people 
 believed in them so thoroughly that each of 
 them made a club of ten, so that, at the end 
 of three years, there were a hundred such 
 people ; at the end of three years more there 
 were a thousand such people, and before 
 thirty years were over it turned out that all 
 the world was living in faith and hope and 
 love ; that is, that all the world was looking
 
 FOUR AND FIVE. IS 
 
 up, was looking forward, and was looking 
 outside themselves. 
 
 " I am not so sure of all the world," said 
 Nelson ; "but I am glad that there are eight 
 of us, and not one. I should not like to have 
 to get up in the middle of the night and 
 build up this fire, while I am quite willing to 
 get up at five o'clock to-morrow morning and 
 take my share for an hour." 
 
 Guthrie said that the standard story in 
 the clubs is a story of the war. He said the 
 soldiers used to have India rubber shelter 
 blankets that were six feet square. Now if a 
 man was a selfish dog he lay down on the 
 ground and made himself a tent, say two 
 feet and a half high, with each side of the 
 roof three feet wide and six feet long. That 
 was all he could do ; that is, he doubled his 
 India rubber cloth in the middle and stretched 
 it over a rail above him. But if two fellows 
 were good natured enough to live together, 
 they buttoned their blankets together, they 
 put their rail twice as high as the other man
 
 i6 
 
 FOUR AND FIVE. 
 
 did, and each side of their roof was six feet 
 from the ridgepole to the ground. If three 
 men came together they could have one India 
 rubber cloth on the ground under them to lie 
 upon, and if four came together they could 
 button an India rubber cloth across one end 
 to keep the wind out. Every one of the four 
 was four times as comfortable as he would 
 have been if he had been sulky and had 
 been alone. And on this story all went to 
 sleep but Harrison, who had the first turn at 
 the fire. 
 
 The next morning they left everything 
 behind them, trusting to the honesty of the 
 region, to take a long tramp, part of it by a 
 spotted trail, which would bring them out on 
 the highest summit of Kaatskill. The rule 
 in the woods is that each one of the party 
 shall lead for an hour. It is so much pleas- 
 anter to be in the lead, it is so much more 
 animating, that it is not thought fair that one 
 person shall have all the fun or the inspira- 
 tion. So, if there is a party of ten lumber-
 
 FOUR AND FIVE 
 
 men, each one of the party takes his lead for 
 an hour, if they tramp ten hours a day. In 
 this case the " old boys " took the lead for 
 the first hours, and the others followed, will- 
 ingly enough, learning something at every 
 minute about woodcraft, and surprised at 
 seeing things which they had never thought 
 of before. It would have been better, per- 
 haps, if they had all remembered how puz- 
 zling the woods are to a new-comer. But the 
 new-comers did not know this, and the others 
 had forgotten it. And so it was that their 
 first adventure came about. It did not occur 
 to anybody that Friday was last on the trail. 
 It had occurred to them that he would not 
 be so much used to it, and he had, therefore, 
 nothing heavy to carry. He had a light 
 blanket in which there had been a loaf of 
 bread rolled up, which was swung across his 
 shoulder. You lay the loaf of bread on the 
 corner of the blanket and roll and roll and 
 roll ; you take the opposite corner and roll 
 and roll and roll, till you have a straight 
 2
 
 1 8 FOUR AND FIVE. 
 
 blanket like an immense cigar, biggest in the 
 middle. Then you twist the two ends against 
 each other till you make it a rope as much as 
 you can, and you tie this rope over one shoul- 
 der, with the knot in front. This is an easy 
 way to carry both the blanket and anything 
 else you have to carry, while your arms are 
 free. Friday had begged that he might be 
 permitted to carry one of the hatchets, or a 
 great hammer which they had to crack off 
 stones with, or one of the plant boxes ; but 
 the other boys had said that he had quite 
 enough for his first tramp, so that this was 
 all that was assigned to him. 
 
 The boy was wide awake, everything was 
 new to him. Hardly a bush or flower or in- 
 sect or toad or snake or bird was like any- 
 thing which he had ever seen before. It was 
 almost of course that he should stop, once 
 and again, to look at something which looked 
 curious and new, and then run up behind to 
 overtake Guthrie, who was next in advance. 
 To tell the truth, it was almost as much of
 
 FOUR AND FIVE. 
 
 course that he loitered once a little too long, 
 and running on after Guthrie did not find 
 him, calling out for him received no answer, 
 and of a sudden was sure that he was lost.
 
 2O FOUR AND FIVE. 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 l^RIDAY had not been born in the woods 
 to be scared by an owl. Or, to interpret 
 this proverb, he had not been used to ranch 
 life on the plains in the Argentine, that he 
 should now be scared because he found him- 
 self alone in a forest. But ranch life on the 
 plains gave him as little experience for trac- 
 ing a trail in the woods, as if it had been the 
 life of a seamstress in the twelfth story of a 
 clothing manufactory. 
 
 The boy found he was alone, and, once or 
 twice, hailed his companions loudly, but he 
 got no answer. A person not used to woods 
 hardly understands how short is the distance 
 over which, in certain winds and weathers, the 
 human voice will " carry." This is the artist 
 phrase. In fact Guthrie did hear Friday's 
 first call, and replied. But Friday did not
 
 FOUR AND FIVE. 21 
 
 hear the answer. After a little Friday made 
 an Indian warwhoop, slapping his mouth with 
 his hand as the others had taught him. But 
 this signal Guthrie never heard. 
 
 Sure that he was not heard, Friday ran 
 back as fast as one can run in a forest path 
 to be sure that he had not taken the wrong 
 track at a point where a cord or two of wood 
 had been cut and piled. Thus he lost time, 
 and he knew he lost time. When he came 
 there he was quite sure that he had been on 
 the right path all the time, and he retraced 
 his steps, thus going over the same route three 
 times for perhaps three hundred yards. The 
 boy's wind was good, and where he could run 
 he ran. He was sure that he made much 
 better time than they made all together, but 
 it was quite clear to him at the end of an hour 
 that he and the rest were parted. He had 
 read Cooper's novels, and other such books of 
 instruction, enough to know that he ought to 
 be able to track Guthrie by the traces he had 
 left in the leaves, mosses, or occasionally the
 
 22 FOUR AND FIVE. 
 
 sand at brooksides. But no such traces were 
 to be seen, and poor Friday wondered whether 
 he were stupid, or were quite lost ; willing, 
 indeed, to be convicted of stupidity if he could 
 only make sure that the others were not far 
 away. 
 
 He was more troubled, in truth, by remem- 
 bering that he carried with him the bread for 
 the rest of the party than he was by any fear 
 for himself. Indeed, no such fear crossed 
 him. He knew enough of midday camping, 
 and of the hunger of all concerned, to know 
 that their dinner of salt pork, even if they 
 patched it out with a few trout, would lack 
 the civilized comfort of bread or toast. But 
 after he knew he had lost an hour in tramping 
 backward and forward, it was clear that his 
 best effort would be to get back again to the 
 camp from which they had started. Certainly 
 he could not overtake the others now, even 
 had he known, as he did not, where they were 
 going. 
 
 It would be idle to say by what turns, some
 
 FOUR AND FIVE. 
 
 right and some wrong, he confused himself. 
 He had the general sense of the direction in 
 which they were marching, for he was too 
 good a ranchero not to have noticed the 
 shadows which the sun gave in the morning, 
 and he had known that they were going north- 
 northwest a little west on their average track. 
 But by eleven o'clock a haze had come over 
 the whole sky, and, do the best he could, he 
 could not make out where the sun was hidden 
 behind the clouds. Indeed, when a little 
 drizzling rain began, all indications of north, 
 south, east, or west were blotted out from him. 
 And he came to his worst dilemma when, af- 
 ter he had pushed along on a bit of wood-road 
 which seemed quite well-defined, he found, to 
 his dismay, his own foot-print, facing in the 
 opposite direction, in a little spot of mud 
 which he remembered, and knew that he was 
 actually returning on the course which he had 
 followed before. This was indeed to be com- 
 pletely lost. 
 
 The boy, however, lost courage in no way.
 
 24 FOUR AND FIVE. 
 
 He knew the general flow of the mountain 
 brooks well enough to know that they would 
 bring him down to some stream where there 
 would be a wood-road and some inhabitants. 
 And now that he had given up all hope of 
 joining the rest of the party, he simply took 
 a general down-hill direction, meaning to fol- 
 low the first brook he found, even if it went 
 to the Atlantic Ocean. He did reflect, with 
 some dissatisfaction, that he had no matches, 
 for he knew that if he had to spend the night 
 in the woods the question of a watch-fire was 
 important. 
 
 All such doubts, however, dispelled them- 
 selves before two o'clock in the afternoon. 
 He had unrolled the blanket, cut himself off 
 a good junk of bread, rolled up what was left 
 lest he should need it more, and was munch- 
 ing upon the ration which he had secured, 
 when he came out on a wood-road much more 
 worn than these little trails he had been fol- 
 lowing. Where it came from, and where it 
 went to, he had no idea, nor could he tell at
 
 FOUR AND FIVE. 2$ 
 
 first which was the ascending and which was 
 the descending grade. But he ran along, 
 perhaps half a mile in eac'h direction, till he 
 came to a theory on this subject, which, by 
 the way, proved afterwards to be wrong. He 
 then returned to his original plan of descend- 
 ing, and marched at quickstep on what he 
 supposed to be the "route to the sea," as he 
 determined he would say in his journal. There 
 was now no difficulty in following any trail. 
 Friday had had quite enough of that, and had 
 followed trails, from his Cooper-bred informa- 
 tion, to his ruin, as he knew. But there was 
 a strange curiosity in marching on one hour, 
 two hours, without any more sign of the hand 
 of man than an occasional pile of logs in some 
 place where the wood had been thinned out, 
 and the wood-cutters had not returned to carry 
 off their cargo. In two full hours of such walk- 
 ing Friday thought he had made five miles. 
 This was his mistake ; distances stretch them- 
 selves to such ignorant explorers as he, and 
 in fact he had gone hardly three miles on this
 
 26 FOUR AND FIVE. 
 
 road-way when, to his relief, he heard the noise 
 of dogs, the crowing of cocks, the cackling of 
 hens, the gabble of ducks, all at one moment, 
 as if he had stumbled in upon a large farm. 
 He even ran when he heard these sounds, and 
 came out on the roughest clearing which he 
 had ever seen. There were great stumps, 
 black with charcoal ; there were immense 
 bunches of newly started Canada thistles ; 
 there were logs helter skelter, which had been 
 burned as soon as they had been felled ; there 
 was every mark of the insult which man in- 
 flicts upon nature when he first touches na- 
 ture. There were two or three dogs gathering 
 round him and howling ; there were hens and 
 chickens rushing madly in different directions ; 
 but what was most to Friday's purpose, there 
 was a log cabin, by far the simplest he had 
 yet seen, with smoke curling from the chim- 
 ney. At least he knew now that he should 
 find out where he was and where he had to go. 
 Nor was he sorry for this, for he was tired 
 with walking, and though he had persuaded
 
 FOUR AND FIVE. 
 
 himself that his noon-day ration was enough, 
 the boy was really hungry without knowing it. 
 As he approached the door a witch came 
 out, or so he thought, in his book-bred 
 fancies. She was black by nature, and her 
 clothes were black with dirt. Her face was 
 black, her hands were black, and her feet were 
 black, though she had no shoes on. Her hair, 
 however, was white, for this was an old negro 
 woman, who, as Friday found in a minute, was 
 quite alone. It did not take him long to ex- 
 plain what had befallen him, but it did take 
 her a long time to understand his explanation ; 
 and to this day she tells the story, wondering 
 how the boy managed to cross the well-marked 
 watershed which separated his valley from 
 hers. But she met him with that exuberant 
 hospitality with which a lonely settler receives 
 any adventurer, of any race, any color ; indeed, 
 one might say, any number of legs or wings. 
 In truth, it was a month since Friday's old 
 witch had spoken to a human being. She had 
 spoken aloud in ejaculatory prayers to the good
 
 28 FOUR AND FIVE. 
 
 God, she had said fond things to her cats and 
 kittens, she had said cross things to her hens 
 and ducks, she had addressed philosophical 
 remarks to her pigs ; but there had been no 
 man, woman, or child to whom she had ad- 
 dressed articulate language since that time. 
 Now man is a social animal, and he hungers 
 for society ; "what is it all for," as Mr. Em- 
 erson says, "but a little conversation ? " so 
 that, when poor Friday appeared, footsore and 
 worried, he met with a most cordial reception 
 from the fellow-being who, in his imagination, 
 was but a Voodoo witch. While he was half 
 afraid of her, her heart went forth to him. 
 
 She was eager to show that all was not des- 
 olation, but that there were some emblems of 
 civilization even in her cabin. She had the 
 wit to know, however, that the world out-doors 
 was more attractive than that within. She 
 did not so much as ask him to come in, but 
 brought out a chair and set it in front of her 
 cabin door that she might offer him some 
 hospitality. It was in truth the only chair
 
 FOUR AND FIVE. 29 
 
 which possessed four legs in the whole of her 
 possessions. She spoke to him from the be- 
 ginning, as Friday saw with dissatisfaction, as 
 if he had been a little baby. Without the 
 slightest apology she understood that he was 
 a "tender-foot," and that he was entirely away 
 from his belongings. Any fancy which he 
 had had that the manners of rancho life had 
 fitted him for the wilderness of New York 
 was now entirely removed. He was treated 
 as an exotic, who needed the care of an exotic, 
 and really, he said aftenvards, in writing to 
 his mother, that, if he had been a night- 
 blooming Cereus, he could not have been 
 thought to be more unfit for his surround- 
 ings. 
 
 Perhaps, to be frank, this was quite as well. 
 For the boy had been worked very hard in 
 his lonely adventure, and it was quite as well 
 that he had somebody to care for him now, 
 with a better care than his own woodcraft had 
 suggested. 
 
 In a few minutes, his weird hostess had
 
 30 FOUR AND FIVE. 
 
 brought him a mug of molasses and water. 
 The boy had never seen such a mixture be- 
 fore ; but the water had been drawn cool from 
 the well, she had shaken a little ginger upon 
 the top of it, with it she brought a doughnut 
 hot from the spider, and he found he was more 
 hungry than he knew. Despite her weird face 
 and the Voodoo look which he had imagined 
 at the beginning, he partook of her bounty. 
 And then, while she was off on some inspec- 
 tion of her chickens or ducks, before he knew 
 it, the boy fell asleep on the ground. Witch 
 or no witch, she had sympathy enough, when 
 she came back to the cabin, to throw over him 
 a gray blanket which had survived the war, 
 and to let him finish his nap. 
 
 When he woke, it took him a minute or 
 two to get himself together, and to find out 
 where he was. Then he entered into an ex- 
 planation with his hostess, and she brought 
 ,to the talk all the geographical knowledge 
 which a life^of thirty years in this region had 
 given her. She soon explained to him that
 
 FOUR AND FIVE. 3 1 
 
 he had come over this " shed line," as she al- 
 ways chose to call it, which divided her val- 
 ley from his valley. And when the boy 
 urged quite eagerly that he must go home 
 that night, she explained to him that this 
 was wholly out of the question. She would 
 not let him go if he wanted to, and if he 
 tried to, he would never find his friends. 
 No, he must spend the night in her cabin. 
 " An' ye'll see we'll make ye comf 'ble here, 
 'ft aint wot ye're use ter. I know wot boys 
 like an' wot city folks like zwell zany of 'em." 
 
 Friday hated to give up reporting at camp 
 that night, but he accepted the inevitable, 
 and staid with her. 
 
 Of the two hours which followed, it would 
 be hard to give an account. The " old witch" 
 was eager to justify her promises with regard 
 to herself and her hospitality. The only sug- 
 gestion of civilization was the cooking-stove. 
 She could live in the wilderness and carry on 
 her primitive farming, very much, to tell the 
 truth, as her ancestors would have done it by
 
 32 FOUR AND FIVE. 
 
 the River Congo. But no woman who ever 
 lived within ten miles of a cooking-stove is 
 willing to be without one ; and this stove 
 stood, an incongruous element in the sav- 
 agery around it, looking somewhat as a statue 
 of Diana might look which had been dug out 
 in Asia Minor in the midst of a cattle-pen 
 with its surroundings. 
 
 Not at all to Friday's dislike, the supper 
 which was furnished had all the elements of 
 the negro success in cooking. The centre 
 and special glory of it was in the hot griddle- 
 cakes, which descended from above, as she 
 switched them over his head from the pan. 
 The boy had the best sauce in the appetite 
 which he had brought with him, and when 
 he praised her provision as cordially as he 
 did, he had not to exaggerate in a word. 
 Then he found that she had made a little fire 
 out of doors, of which the smoke drew near 
 enough to them to drive away all the mos- 
 quitoes, and before he went to bed he sat 
 there, talking with her as if he had known
 
 FOUR AND FIVE. 33 
 
 her for a hundred years. He found, when he 
 thought it over, that he had told her every- 
 thing about his South American home, had 
 talked to her, as if she were his mother, 
 about old experiences of the plains and of 
 his rancho life, and he wondered that she 
 had so bewitched him that to an ignorant, 
 dirty hag like her he should have made more 
 confidences than he had done even to these 
 boys whom he had known so well. 
 
 But the truth was that a certain motherly 
 yearning had taken possession of the old 
 woman, and the gentleness with which she 
 approached him was really something like 
 that which his own mother would have shown 
 to a stray boy who might have come into her 
 elegant home in Montevideo. Friday would 
 never have confessed to it himself, but he 
 had been to her a lost lamb, and she had 
 pleased herself with the care she could lavish 
 upon him. When bed-time came, he found 
 indeed a comfortable bed made up for him, 
 with clean sheets and clean pillow. He did 
 3
 
 34 FOUR AND FIVE. 
 
 not know, but the reader may as well know, 
 that these had been discovered in the bottom 
 of a chest which had not yielded up such 
 secrets for a dozen years. 
 
 The next morning she wakened him early. 
 He was on his feet before the sun rose. She 
 told him that if he wanted to wash, he would 
 have to go down to the spring ; it was clear 
 enough that she had no facilities for the 
 toilet, but the boy soon made himself com- 
 fortable, and when he returned found all the 
 preparations going forward for a breakfast 
 even more elaborate than was the supper of 
 the night before. So soon as she saw that 
 he would eat no more she said : 
 
 "Now den, we'll put up some o' dem 
 doughnuts, we'll put up a little bit o' po'k, 
 an' some hard biled eggs, an' we'll go down 
 ter the brook, an' we'll cross by Hasbrouck's, 
 an' I'll show ye the short cut over by the 
 quarries, an' then ye'll know what's yer way 
 home." 
 
 Friday was a little disgusted that he could
 
 FOUR AND FIVE. 35 
 
 not get back to his camp without a patroness. 
 But he had had experience enough of follow- 
 ing roads without direction on the day before, 
 and as it was clear that she would not let him 
 go alone, he again accepted the inevitable 
 and started with her. She humored him so 
 far as to let him roll up the doughnuts in his 
 blankets. For herself she made up another 
 pack, which she swung over her shoulder as 
 if she had been a man upon his march, and 
 led the boy off with her, triumphant.
 
 36 FOUR AND FIVE. 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 OO was it that when Guthrie, on the even- 
 ing of that day, brought his party on 
 their return out on the clearing at Sham- 
 rock's, they saw, half a mile away, the flag 
 flying on their own staff, and a promising 
 cloud of smoke blue against the hemlocks. 
 
 The half-mile was soon crossed, though 
 their feet were sore and their legs tired. 
 For they all wanted to know Friday's story, 
 and they were all relieved to know that he 
 was well at home. What was the amazement 
 of Guthrie, not to say his terror, to be re- 
 ceived, not by Friday, but by a negro prin- 
 cess. 
 
 She was a princess, who for the moment 
 had no crown of diamonds, nor wreath of 
 myrtle. But she did have a queer red ban- 
 danna handkerchief wound round her head,
 
 FOUR AND FIVE. 37 
 
 rather picturesquely, and at the moment she 
 was brandishing a long willow stick, forked 
 at the end, from which she had just dropped 
 a slice of fried pork. 
 
 " Seed ye was comin '," she said, cheerfully, 
 to Guthrie, " and we knowed ye'd be hungry, 
 so him and me's all ready." And at this 
 moment "him" appeared from behind the 
 hemlocks with the trout, three or four dozen, 
 which he had been catching for the supper of 
 the travellers. General glee and mutual grat- 
 ulation followed the interwoven tale was 
 told, of who shouted last and who heard 
 what, as the boys cast off their packs, pulled 
 off their boots and found the stones in them 
 and so all fell to glad and ready work on 
 the sumptuous supper which Friday and the 
 Princess had prepared for them. This story 
 would never be done were we to give the re- 
 cipes for the hoe-cakes and griddle-cakes 
 which the Princess had insisted on preparing, 
 and which, to Friday's amazement, proved 
 possible even with their tools for cooking.
 
 38 FOUR AND FIVE. 
 
 And, while the boys had fancied all the last 
 year that they knew how to fry trout and 
 pork, they learned now that they were only 
 children, and that they must sit at the Prin- 
 cess's feet before they boasted of their skill 
 again. 
 
 Guthrie was distressed because he did not 
 know into which of the palaces at his com- 
 mand he should stow the Princess for the 
 night. But she solved all his questions by 
 withdrawing as soon as she saw that " hun- 
 ger now and thirst were fully satisfied." 
 
 " Woll, boys, here's good-bye to all of you, 
 'n we'll meet again to-morrow. I'm goin' 
 down the stream to old Coram's hain't seen 
 'em nor heerd on 'em for these four years." 
 And so she was gone. 
 
 " I move she be chosen into the club." 
 This was Harrison's first speech as he joined 
 the party by the fire, having accompanied 
 the Princess to the town-road. " She's first- 
 rate, I tell you."
 
 FOUR AND FIVE. 39 
 
 "Has she ever heard of the mottoes?" 
 said Beechnut. 
 
 " I don't know, and I don't care. There 
 are plenty of people who cannot say the mot- 
 toes who can do the things. And it's clear 
 enough that she knows how to Lend a Hand, 
 which is, I suppose, the test of the whole. 
 Mr. Mitchell says it's all rot talking about 
 the three first mottoes unless you are square 
 on the fourth." 
 
 " Did he say that ? Where did he say it ? " 
 
 " He said it in a sermon, the last Sunday 
 before I left Hartford. That is, he did not 
 say those words of course, he made it longer, 
 they all do. But that is what it came to, 
 'in conclusion, my brethren.'" 
 
 " Well," said Guthrie, more doubtfully, af- 
 fected, unconsciously indeed, by the color of 
 the candidate, " we will see when she appears. 
 We will examine her. For the present I am 
 satisfied with a club of eight, and I propose 
 that we turn in." Accordingly the club 
 turned in. Harrison's duty was to rebuild
 
 4O FOUR AND FIVE. 
 
 the fire at midnight, and John's to do the 
 same thing between three and four in the 
 morning. They were used to waking at or- 
 der in this fashion, and the embers were still 
 glowing when, at half-past five, the Princess 
 appeared, looked with approval on the sleep- 
 ing crowd, built up the fire to please herself, 
 hung her kettle of water upon it. When the 
 boys awoke she laughed at them all. 
 
 " S'pose it was an enemy that come in on 
 ye ; s'pose the enemy carried off all ye pork 
 'n' molasses 'n' things, ware would ye all be 
 then ? " But, all the same, she was well 
 pleased that she had stolen a march on them, 
 and had succeeded in starting a much better 
 breakfast than the boys would have managed 
 for themselves. 
 
 She kept herself so busy, as she fed them, 
 that it was not till they had finished their 
 breakfast that she began on hers. But the 
 boys would not hear of her washing up the 
 plates. They said they could do that as well 
 as she could, and perhaps they were right
 
 FOUR AND FIVE. 4 1 
 
 there. Then it was that Guthrie skilfully 
 began the examination he had promised. 
 
 "Auntie" he said, "what did you find 
 down at Coram's ? I cannot make much of 
 him. He's so still, and don't like to talk to 
 boys." 
 
 "Still is he still?" And the Princess 
 laughed. " Can holler loud enough when he 
 wants to. If ye see him at 'n encouragement 
 meetin' ye would not say he was still. But 
 he's all tuckered out, poor critter, 'n' discour- 
 aged like. 'N' w'en he sees you young gem- 
 plem, et sort o' makes him 'member like w'en 
 he had two coats, ye know, 'n was as good as 
 any one all through the valley here. That's 
 w'y he's still." 
 
 Two or three of the boys inquired sympa- 
 theticall^ what had happened to Coram, and 
 the Princess expressed her surprise that they 
 did not know. 
 
 "That shows how still he is," she said, 
 half meditatively, " for he's never told no- 
 body what happened to him."
 
 42 FOUR AND FIVE. 
 
 It proved that, in the great freshet of 
 which the boys well knew the story, two or 
 three years before, when the stream rose be- 
 yond all previous knowledge, the wrecks of 
 the county bridge, six or eight miles above 
 them, had been swept down on the flood, 
 quite unbroken, and had struck the bridge 
 which crossed the river at Coram's, so as to 
 destroy it. Instantly, as the boys knew, the 
 county bridge itself, on a meadow below, had 
 come to grief or broken into its component 
 parts, and poor Coram's bridge had perhaps 
 gone farther down. At all events, it was 
 never put together, so that it had disappeared. 
 The county had rebuilt their bridge with iron, 
 and the general trade of the world went on 
 as if there had been no freshet. But poor 
 Coram's bridge was no county affair, and he 
 found himself, therefore, in the little cabin 
 in which he lived prosperously enough, 
 without any means of crossing the river. 
 This was of little consequence to him per- 
 sonally, because he did not cross it twenty
 
 FOUR AND FIVE. 43 
 
 times in a year. But as a member of soci- 
 ety he felt the change. Hundreds of people 
 used to go down to Schuyler for their mar- 
 keting, and perhaps for their mails, across 
 his bridge as the short cut. And now all 
 these people kept on the highway a mile 
 above him, and no one of them ever saw his 
 house pr darkened his door. Coram was a 
 bit of a blacksmith in his way, had a wretched 
 forge by the house, and, while he pretended 
 to live upon his farm, which was no farm, 
 he really eked out his living by setting a shoe, 
 or even re-arranging a tire, as these travellers 
 passed. More than the poor sixpences and 
 shillings which came to him from his busi- 
 ness was the cheerful talk with wayfarers as 
 they came and went ; and if he had been 
 philosopher enough to analyze his morose- 
 ness, it would have been because he was so 
 much alone that he was so silent. All this 
 story the Princess told, as she ate the griddle- 
 cakes and the trout which she had herself 
 prepared for her owr. breakfast.
 
 44 FOUR AND FIVE. 
 
 " You think, then," said Guthrie, " that 
 old Corara is what we call blue ? You think 
 that he is out of spirits because he sees no- 
 body?" 
 
 "Yes, honey, yes," said the old woman, 
 " That's exackly it. None on us can live so. 
 His old woman, well, she died not long after 
 the war. His boys he's got three boys is 
 all gone off to strange countries, and I guess 
 they's forgot, or maybe they're dead. An' 
 old Coram sets there, eat'n' out his own heart, 
 he does, unless somebody comes along 'n' 
 holds a meetin' ; and then old Coram sings 
 and shouts with the rest on 'em. But 'tisn't 
 good to live all alone. Et's no good lookin' 
 back to old times, whether they wus better 
 or wus wuss, onless ye's lookin' forward to 
 what the good God has ready to-morrow. 
 There's no sayin' what to-morrow'll bring, 
 boys. Sure it'll bring sunrise, sure it'll 
 bring light ; and there's no sayin' what more 
 it'll bring, ef ye'll trust it. Now, old Coram, 
 he looks back ; he's all the time sayin' what
 
 FOUR AND FIVE. 45 
 
 good times he had when his wife was here, 
 an' his boys was little, an' the bridge was up ; 
 and he's all the time, same's I said to ye, eat'n 
 his own heart, 'n' sayin' he's a sinner o' sin- 
 ners. Old Coram isn't a sinner o' sinners ; 
 he's no more a sinner than I be. But any- 
 body would think he was a sinner o' sinners 
 that lived all alone." 
 
 Friday caught Guthrie's eye, and intimated 
 to him in a glance that he thought one or 
 two of his questions were answered. He 
 pressed the cross-examination a little farther, 
 however : 
 
 " Auntie," said he, " I don't see that. You 
 are not down-hearted, but you are more alone 
 than Coram. I came to your house, but no- 
 body ever passes by, and I am the only per- 
 son that has been near you this year." 
 
 " Honey dear, honey dear," said the old 
 woman, " You's quite wrong there. You 
 mustn't say such things as that to me. No, 
 honey, when you come to live ez I live ye'll 
 know there's one friend that's near ye all the
 
 46 FOUR AND FIVE. 
 
 time. Ye seek the good God, 'n' ye find the 
 good God ; ye seek your Saviour, 'n' ye find 
 your Saviour. Ef ye ain't lookin' for worms 
 ye'll see angels, boys, an' that's one thing 
 Coram ought to do. He oughter be thinkin' 
 o' the Heaven of Heavens and the God of 
 Heaven some time when there isn't an en- 
 couragement meetin'. An' then he would 
 know what you mean an' I mean when we 
 tell him that he doesn't live for himself. 
 Elder Shoemaker told him that at the last 
 encouragement meetin', an' I thought et 
 would do him some good. But it hain't done 
 him no good at all." 
 
 Friday assumed from the beginning the 
 airs of a proprietor who had discovered the 
 Princess, and introduced her into the society. 
 After this declaration of her faith and prin- 
 ciples he initiated her, without taking any 
 vote of the rest. 
 
 "Auntie," he said, "you belong with us. 
 This is a club till now of eight members. 
 But you will be nine."
 
 FOUR AND FIVE. 47 
 
 " Club, honey ? and wot you club for ? " 
 
 "We club to have a good time, first, and 
 in general to Lend a Hand where there's a 
 chance. But we could not Lend a Hand if 
 we did not look up, and look forward, and, as 
 you say, think of somebody bigger than we 
 are, and better." 
 
 The others were amazed to hear Friday 
 make so long a speech. " Who would have 
 thought that he was an orator, as Brutus is ? " 
 said Nelson afterwards. But they signified 
 their assent by saying " That's so " and 
 "Yes " and by nods, or, at least, winks, and 
 the Princess saw that they were all quite in 
 earnest. 
 
 " You'ze good fellows all," said she ; " ye 
 know how glad I be to know you all, and how 
 sorry I be that you uns is not here all the 
 time. Ef you really want to lend a hand w'y 
 don't we all go down to poor old Coram's 
 and cheer him up a little ? " 
 
 " Because he don't want to see us," said 
 Will Wickham, decidedly. And Wickham
 
 48 FOUR AND FIVE. 
 
 explained how one day when he went into 
 Coram's for a match, Coram was as cross as 
 a bear. 
 
 "That's just wot I tell ye, honey. He 
 bees as cross as a bear. He was w'en I 
 come down there last night 'n' we old fren's, 
 at that. He was as cross as two bears w'en 
 I come up this morning, 'cos I come away, 
 jest as he was cross w'en I come in, 'cos I 
 had come. But wot I say, boys all, es this : 
 Ef we is a club w'ich is, I b'lieve, a little 
 church without any meetin'-house ef we is, 
 w'y, we has to convert the heathen. 'N' if 
 people is crooked, we is to make 'em turn 
 round and be straight. Ef he was good- 
 natered and hed all right, we could not help 
 him, and no use in our coming." 
 
 " Right you are, Princess, every time," 
 said Colorado Hanger, " and I'll go with you. 
 There's two. If the old man's lonely, he 
 shan't be lonely for the next hour. Only I 
 will not promise to stay till after ten o'clock, 
 for then I am going to look at my snares."
 
 FOUR AND FIVE. 49 
 
 " Right she is, I believe," said Will Wick- 
 ham himself. " And if you say so, Colorado, 
 I will go though what old Coram wants of 
 a lot of tender-foot boys, I do not know." 
 
 " Who's a tender-foot ? " said the other, 
 who had picked up the name of Hanger, no 
 one knew how, and whose exact pride was 
 that he was not a tender-foot. He found 
 his hatchet, Wickham took his fishing tackle, 
 and, one by one, the others all joined the 
 party. 
 
 Nor did they return, as it proved, even to 
 look at the snares, all day. And for many 
 days after, so soon as breakfast was over, the 
 whole force went down to Coram's and spent 
 the day. The Princess had to go home, to 
 see to her live stock and the general interests 
 of her farm. But she made nothing of the 
 "divide," or the miles which parted her from 
 Coram's, and hardly a day passed when she 
 did not appear, with a pie or two, or a bag of 
 doughnuts, or a basket of popped corn, or 
 4
 
 FOUR AND FIVE. 
 
 something else which she thought would cheer 
 the working-party. 
 
 For it was a working-party, indeed. The 
 boys had been careful about forcing them- 
 selves on Coram's attention, and had gone first 
 to see the ruins of the bridge. They had 
 never fairly understood, before, how Coram's 
 bitterness or general sourness came from the 
 fatal freshet which had swept his bridge away. 
 They saw but few ruins, it must be confessed 
 at first, for there were but few to see. All 
 that could be seen were the two piers if they 
 deserve the name which had supported the 
 roadway on the north and south sides of the 
 stream. The stream itself had risen so that 
 it was flowing above the roadway when the 
 crisis came. " An' then," said Coram, when 
 he came down to give his account of the ca- 
 lamity, " I b'lieve she would have stood, 'cos 
 you see here was a good water-way over the 
 road this side un that side, only the busted 
 old four-post from Campbell's came sailin' 
 down on the flood, 'n' struck her square, 'n'
 
 FOUR AND FIVE. 5 1 
 
 then it was all kingdom come with her. No 
 more bridge, 'n' no more road, nor ever will 
 be." 
 
 The boys respected his grief, but they filed 
 off, one by one, down through the raspberry 
 bushes and willow-herb in the meadow to look 
 at the wrecks of the " busted old four-post," 
 as he had irreverently named the battering- 
 ram which had wrought such ruin. The leader 
 now was Henry Eveleth, who was a born en- 
 gineer, and was now in his second year in the 
 Polytechnic at Troy. He was talking eagerly 
 with Guthrie, and, in a minute more, was 
 joined by the group. He made short surveys 
 of the old bed-posts, and then pushed through 
 the rank meadow growth to the stream itself. 
 Then he called all the boys together and 
 said : 
 
 " Fellows, I tell you what it is. We can 
 build up the old man's bridge again if we want 
 to, and I move we do. It would be a mighty 
 good job. There is plank enough here on the 
 floor of his old four-post to make the roadway.
 
 52 FOUR AND FIVE. 
 
 This log here and that one which is lodged in 
 the rocks yonder are long enough to span the 
 stream. We ought to haul some short logs 
 two, four, or, maybe, eight to make the 
 bridge sixteen inches higher than it was, so 
 as not to have it swept off again. Don't you 
 suppose we could get a fall and tackle some- 
 where ? L we had them we could haul our 
 long roadway timbers into place, and after 
 that it would be all child's play. Old ' four- 
 post' here would furnish all the material." 
 
 Eveleth had never made so long a speech 
 before, within the memory of man. When 
 some one told him so, he said, no, he had 
 never had so much to say. The boys were 
 delighted, and signified the most cordial as- 
 sent. Friday and Guthrie went up to their 
 camp to bring everything they had in the way 
 of axe, hatchet, saw, and hammer. Eveleth 
 himself, however, knew the insufficiency of 
 these, and, leaving full instructions for the 
 others what they were to do in his absence in 
 knocking off planks from the floor of "old
 
 FOUR AND FIVE. S3 
 
 four-post," he walked down with Will and 
 Nelson to the corners and hired a wagon to 
 take him across to Pratt's. By the time the 
 others had worked themselves hungry, had 
 some potatoes in the ashes, some pork cut to 
 fry, and some trout ready to fill out the feast, 
 the three were back in triumph. They had 
 borrowed a spare set of blocks at the mill ; 
 they had bought a cross-cut saw, with the 
 promise that the man would take it back again 
 at three-quarters what they gave if it were not 
 sprung, and sundry other tools which Eveleth 
 knew they had need of. Old Coram produced 
 his appliances, such as they were, an intimat- 
 ed that the forge could be put in order again, 
 after its two years' rest. Eveleth humored 
 him so far as to go and look at the forge, and 
 gave Guthrie and Friday his directions as to 
 how it should be set in order. 
 
 His working-party had shown discretion, 
 and had obeyed orders. The old joke says 
 that two boys can do the work of one man, 
 three boys half the work of a man, and four
 
 54 FOUR AND FIVE. 
 
 boys no work at all. But this old saw was 
 belied in this case, for the working-party had 
 ready for him three timbers, not too heavy 
 for them to handle, and before night Eveleth 
 had rigged these as a derrick on the south 
 side of the stream. They stood like three 
 gigantic supports to a gigantic gipsy-kettle, 
 had there been one. 
 
 The stream itself, as the boys measured it, 
 was eighteen feet wide between one abut- 
 ment and another. It was, at this time, run- 
 ning quite full, and, although there were ways 
 by which an active boy could go to the other 
 side, by a circuit of a quarter of a mile, Eve- 
 leth's first care was to borrow planks enough 
 from old "four-post" to make a footway, sup- 
 ported by trestles, so that his "work-boys" 
 might cross readily from one side to the other. 
 
 It was a pretty sight, one which an angel 
 might have smiled to see, and which an arch- 
 angel also might have loitered to enjoy, the 
 sight of old Coram, when he began to under- 
 stand that something would be done about it.
 
 FOUR AND FIVE. 55 
 
 When the bridge had been swept away, and 
 he ruined in the sweeping, poor Coram had 
 caught every straggler who came there in ig- 
 norance, and turned back again, to explain 
 that "something must be done about it." 
 But alas ! the stragglers were only eager to 
 get back to the county road, and hardly 
 listened while they were turning their horses' 
 heads. Then came one and another road- 
 master and supervisor, always in a hurry, and 
 poor Coram, not eloquent by nature, found 
 that they saw, in a glance, that the travel on 
 his by-way did not justify much expense. 
 " It would be a poor job anyway," unless 
 you changed the whole road, and made it 
 cross somewhere where it did not cross. 
 And so poor Coram found, as many a man 
 and boy finds, alas ! that a possible better 
 prevents a present good. He got neither 
 good nor better. He had gradually come to 
 believe that nothing would be done about it. 
 And now there had descended upon him a 
 gang of boys, whom only last week he
 
 $6 FOUR AND FIVE. 
 
 thought as useless as any flock of butterflies ; 
 like butterflies they were swarming here and 
 there over scenes of ruin or the world's clear 
 places, quite indifferent, but determined that 
 something should be done about it. It 
 proved, indeed, that so soon as the latent 
 hope started in Coram's life he was a ninth 
 workman of great efficiency in the crowd. 
 He obeyed, too. For Eveletji was a born 
 leader, and he never had to speak twice to 
 Coram. And when it came to borrowing 
 crow-bars, and afterwards to remembering 
 who had augurs, and where there was a 
 wrench within five miles, Coram's knowl- 
 edge of the neighborhood came into good 
 activity. 
 
 So, as I said, angels would have smiled 
 and archangels approved what they saw on 
 old Coram's face. 
 
 The stream itself, at this moment, was full 
 enough to make a water-way by which Henry 
 Eveleth transported his heavier timbers 
 from below, where they had been left on Hie
 
 FOUR AND FIVE. 57 
 
 meadow. He was wholly indifferent to the 
 looks of his bridge, so it was done. It was 
 nothing to him, he said, if a log were too 
 long. So he could only carry it from place 
 to place, and lift it, the extra length might 
 be left for woodchucks to sit upon. First of 
 all, as has been said, he raised the two abut- 
 ments a foot and a half higher then they 
 were. He knew, and the boys knew, that 
 this made necessary the lifting up of the 
 roadways to that level, but he postponed this 
 work till his bridge proper was done. The 
 lifting on the logs, which he laid in cob-work 
 for these abutments, made the first test of 
 his derrick and of his blocks and rope. They 
 proved quite strong enough for the test, and 
 his boys learned a lesson in the transfer of 
 power which served them well afterward, in 
 examinations in physics in school. So soon 
 as these two abutments were done, he was 
 ready for his heavier work. Coram had 
 promised him the assistance of this and that 
 loafer, charcoal-man, and other "vagrom"
 
 58 FOUR AND FIVE. 
 
 from ten miles around, as if it had been the 
 raising of a barn which was necessary. But 
 Eveleth knew the use of trained power, even 
 if he had not much of it. He never refused 
 these accessories, he never said anything 
 slight regarding them ; but he relied on his 
 legion of eight, with the moral force which 
 the Princess added, and the knowledge of 
 the neighborhood which he derived from 
 Coram. And when, after four days of hard 
 work upon the buttresses, he had them as 
 solid as he needed, he brought all his eight 
 to work upon the long log which had been 
 predestined to span the stream first. Lift- 
 ing with crow-bars, and hauling with an old 
 horse which had been hired at Pratt's for the 
 occasion, he dragged this heaviest of his 
 timbers into the stream. There was another 
 sawed timber in the old " four-post " which, 
 every one had seen, would answer for one of 
 the crossing rafters. As they had the horse 
 there, he was made to assist in the hauling 
 of this over the meadow, and, before dinner-
 
 FOUR AND FIVE. 59 
 
 time, both of these essentials were floating 
 in the cove below the bridge. 
 
 "It is all just like Jackal's River," said 
 Friday. "Do not you remember, in the 
 Swiss Family Robinson ? And I move that 
 this river be called the Jackal's River to the 
 end of time." The boys assented to this 
 proposal, as they sat at their lunch ; and, by 
 Guthrie's addition to it, the bridge was 
 called The Mother's Bridge. And if you 
 will look at the county map of that region, 
 you will find it is named the Mother's Bridge 
 to this day. 
 
 Eveleth announced a holiday for the after- 
 noon. He complimented his working-force, 
 said they had all done a great deal more than 
 he had thought they would, and added that 
 anybody might go where he wanted to, 
 snare any rabbits he chose, climb any moun- 
 tains, or swim in any ponds ; he would not 
 have a stroke of work done until the next 
 morning. "But to-morrow" he said, "rain 
 or shine, we will have the bridge put to-
 
 6O FOUR AND FIVE. 
 
 gather. There is nothing that need hinder 
 now." 
 
 And accordingly, on the next day, the 
 Princess came down, having brought with 
 her a sort of vassal, who was either a Mingo, 
 a mulatto, or a Mohawk, or a mixture of all 
 such races ; and together they had lugged an 
 enormous basket, which contained every 
 variety of entertainment which savage and 
 half-savage wits could provide for feasting, 
 as if the building of a bridge were a high 
 festival. By unknown couriers it had been 
 reported that the bridge was to be raised, 
 and, though nobody had been invited, vari- 
 ous loafers appeared. Even the old hermit 
 condescended to come down, who had not 
 been known to speak to men since the tax- 
 gatherer last passed that way. A deputy- 
 sheriff stopped in his career to witness the 
 proceedings and to wonder. But, as Eveleth 
 had done all along, while he accepted volun- 
 teers, he did not press them into the service. 
 The horse was not sent for ; the boys them-
 
 FOUR AND FIVE. 6 1 
 
 selves towed the logs up the channel to the 
 space between the abutments, a good hold 
 was got on the end of Old Faithful, as they 
 called the unhewn log, and, amid the cheers 
 of all present, it was lifted into its place. 
 Then that elegant creature of society which 
 had been sawed out for old four-post, rose, 
 willingly or unwillingly, to the corresponding 
 place at the other end of the south abut- 
 ment. Now Eveleth had to transfer his der- 
 rick from that side of the stream to the other, 
 where he had not needed to use it before. 
 But, with as much help as he had now, this 
 transfer only took him till dinner-time, and, 
 after they had all lunched on the Princess's 
 abundant provisions, the other end of each 
 timber was safely lifted into place. The as- 
 sembly cheered with enthusiasm when he 
 pronounced that both timbers were solidly 
 laid ; and after this, the planking of the 
 bridge, beginning at both ends, went on 
 almost spontaneously. He was not satis- 
 fied with the rough planking of a common
 
 62 . FOUR AND FIVE. 
 
 country-way ; he provided spikes enough and 
 heavy hammers, and he knew his force well 
 enough now to know to whom he might en- 
 trust them. With four boys at work on the 
 hammers, and four in carrying planks and 
 laying them, the eighteen feet of bridge were 
 soon laid, and then Eveleth, turning to Guth- 
 rie, said : 
 
 "Mr. President, I deliver 'the bridge into 
 your hands. It is for you to make a speech 
 on the occasion." 
 
 Guthrie said, " Give attention to a speech 
 from the president." He mounted skilfully 
 to the top of the derrick, waved his hat, and 
 cried, 
 
 " The bridge is done ! "
 
 FOUR AND FIVE. 63 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 'T^HE achievement of the bridge closed 
 the work of the club, and its play, for 
 that summer. September came, and with 
 it came cold nights. The boys would have 
 borne the cold nights, cutting and piling a few 
 more logs for their fires ; but they were re- 
 minded by their letters that the different 
 schools and colleges were ready for them, 
 and that they must be gone. 
 
 Before they parted they had a high festi- 
 val, in which the Princess was initiated as the 
 " Mah-mah " of the club. She could repeat 
 the short ritual as well as any of them, and 
 in her modified English told perfect stories 
 to illustrate looking up, looking out, looking 
 forward, and lending a hand. The boys 
 packed up a great box of cans which had not 
 been opened, ham which had not been cut,
 
 64 FOUR AND FIVE. 
 
 hooks which had not been baited, and made 
 Coram, who was a new man since he saw the 
 bridge completed, carry it over the divide to 
 her house. Nelson insisted on presenting to 
 her his double-barrel, an old-fashioned gun 
 which had descended to him from other days. 
 This meant a great joke between Mah-mah 
 and her boys. For there was a certain hawk 
 who stole her pigeons and chickens. She no 
 more dared fire a gun than she dared kiss a 
 copperhead. Once and again Nelson or Fri- 
 day or Guthrie had gone over to her " ranch " 
 to shoot the hawk for her. But when there 
 was a gun within a mile, she said, the hawk 
 disappeared. Whether this were an individ- 
 ual hawk, as old Mah-mah said, or whether 
 those vultures collected together wherever 
 there were chickens or pigeons unaccompa- 
 nied by men, is more doubtful. 
 
 So they all parted, late in the evening. 
 And thus was it that Four and Five made 
 nine. 
 
 One boy went one way and one another,
 
 FOUR AND FIVE. 65 
 
 north, south, east, and west ; some to file, 
 and ply the lathe in technical schools, some 
 to study at desks and ply the file, as Horace 
 bids us, in schools of Latin ; but all were 
 pledged not to forget the four mottoes, and 
 to initiate one each into the club before the 
 next May. The story will grow like a round 
 cobweb on nine different lines, if I try to tell 
 the method or the success of all the nine. 
 So I will not try that. But I will ask you to 
 hear of Friday's tea-party at Bromwich, as 
 he crossed the country to the Van Ness Poly- 
 technic, where he was due on the 29th of 
 September. 
 
 It was a nice house at Bromwich, with 
 plenty of cousins, and an abundant and over- 
 flowing hospitality. Friday had never seen 
 one of them before, but with Jane and Susy, 
 and with his aunt and his uncle, and with 
 Tom, Dick, and Harry, and even with little 
 Fred, he was on the best of terms before an 
 hour was over. And they all liked him. 
 
 " Mamma" said Jane to her mother, as 
 5
 
 66 FOUR AND FIVE. 
 
 they met after dinner the first day, " the boy 
 does not think of himself more highly than 
 he ought to think. In fact, he does not 
 think of himself at all. So he is not a shy 
 cub, imagining that everybody is looking at 
 him ; and, on the other hand, he is not a con- 
 ceited fool, thinking that everybody is ad- 
 miring him." 
 
 This is the story of the member whom 
 Friday enlisted for the Four and Five Club, 
 and he bound him to it with hooks of steel. 
 
 It happened that the day Friday arrived 
 the Pennimans were to have a high tea. It 
 was to be very high, some of the academy 
 people were to be there, and Dr. Milnes, and 
 the Southern ladies from Macon, as much 
 as twenty people in all. The dining-room 
 was large, and there were five oval tables big 
 enough for all. The principal guests had 
 their seats assigned to them, but after they 
 were seated, the younger people found their 
 seats as they might, and so Friday found 
 himself with his little cousin Fred on one
 
 FOUR AND FIVE. 6/ 
 
 side and Mr. Aven Geddes on the other. 
 Mr. Geddes looked very pale, very sad, and 
 was very silent. Fred was very hungry, and 
 occupied himself with dipped toast and mar- 
 malade. 
 
 " I was not going to play deaf-and-dumb," 
 said Friday afterward to Jane, "and so I 
 sailed in. I asked him if Bromwich were his 
 home. 
 
 " ' No, my poor lad, I have no home, no 
 home. I am here to-day, and I know not 
 where to-morrow. There is no home for me.' 
 
 " Cousin Jane, I thought the man was 
 crazy. But I was not going to be snubbed. 
 I said, ' If I were you, then, I would make a 
 home here. I should like to have the choice 
 of a home, and if Bromwich is as pleasant as 
 it seems, I would try it till I found a better.' 
 
 " But, Jane, he had no idea of being cheer- 
 ful. He groaned as if I had given him a 
 square hit from the shoulder, between the 
 eyes, and floored him." 
 
 " ' Oh, my poor boy,' he said, ' you know
 
 68 FOUR AND FIVE. 
 
 life but little. I have too much to think of, 
 in the memory of my failure in the past, to 
 consider what may come to me to-morrow or 
 the next day.' And then in a minute he 
 said, ' My poor child, are you never oppressed 
 by the weight of your omissions and delin- 
 quencies ? ' " 
 
 By this time Jane was beside herself, it 
 is a pity to have to say it, with laughing. 
 " What horrid luck threw you with that poor 
 man ? " said she. " He was to have been 
 placed beside Mr. Milnes, in the hope that 
 Dr. Milnes would cheer him up. Why, he 
 is the nephew of the famous Dr. Witherspoon, 
 and he has studied himself into this awful 
 nervous prostration, which is almost or quite 
 insanity. Indeed, he is to go to Bethlehem, 
 to a private retreat, to-morrow. The Ged- 
 deses asked mamma to let them bring him 
 because they do not dare leave him alone." 
 
 " He is not going to Bethlehem to-morrow 
 morning," said Friday, laughing, " he is 
 going to ride horseback with me. Tom has
 
 FOUR AND FIVE. 69 
 
 lent me Caspar for a mount, and I am to 
 take Caspar to the Geddeses to start with 
 him at six in the morning." 
 
 " You are joking," said she. 
 
 " Not a bit of it," said Friday, laughing 
 again. " I saw there was a screw loose, and 
 I was glad of a chance to tighten it. When 
 he asked me about looking back on my delin- 
 quencies, I told him I guessed somebody 
 else was willing to bear my delinquencies, 
 and that he had better join the Wadsworth 
 Club. He did not know what that was, and 
 I told him he must ' look up and not down, 
 look forward and not back, look out and not 
 in, and lend a hand.' 
 
 " Jane, he looked as if the marble woman 
 under the mantel-piece had spoken to him, 
 he was so amazed." 
 
 And this was exactly true. If Dr. Milnes 
 had said anything encouraging to this poor 
 crazy man, he would have taken it as a sort 
 of professional counsel. But when this boy, 
 with stout hands and loud voice and a raging
 
 7 FOUR AND FIVE. 
 
 appetite, spoke the great words of faith and 
 hope and love, which are the three central 
 words of life, poor Mr. Geddes looked around 
 on him, as much surprised indeed as if the 
 marble woman had opened her mouth. Be- 
 fore he knew it, Friday was telling him of 
 the club, and the day he was lost, and their 
 old negro Mah-mah, and the success of the 
 bridge. " That is how my hand has such a 
 black look," said he. Three fingers were in 
 cots cut from a glove. " I mashed those fin- 
 gers when we were handling a stone which 
 was too big for us. But one must risk some- 
 thing." 
 
 For the first time for a month, as Dr. 
 Milnes saw, to his amazement, from the other 
 side of the table, poor Mr. Geddes was in 
 animated conversation. Without the least 
 design, merely from the contagion of eager, 
 unselfish life, and the energy of life which is 
 alive, the boy had dragged him outside of his 
 shell. He was telling one of his early expe- 
 riences in India, how they charged a mad
 
 FOUR AND FIVE. 7 l 
 
 elephant, when of a - sudden his stirrup broke 
 and he found himself deep in the mud, when 
 the talk was broken off because Mrs. Penni- 
 man rose and took the others out on the shel- 
 tered veranda. 
 
 But the next morning early, Friday, on 
 Don, led Caspar, ready saddled and bridled, 
 through the village street, and found Mr. 
 Geddes waiting for him. 
 
 Friday gave Mr. Geddes no time to think 
 how long it was since he had crossed a saddle. 
 He sprang upon Don again after his new 
 friend had mounted Caspar, told him simply 
 what his uncle had said as to the road they 
 were to take, and as soon as they were breath- 
 ing the horses after their first brisk trot, he 
 brought up again the story of the mad ele- 
 phant, and almost compelled Mr. Geddes to 
 finish it. But it seemed as if there were a 
 fate in that story ; of a sudden a frightened 
 girl sprang from the doorway of a house which 
 they were passing, screaming "Fire! Fire! 
 Fire!" as loud as she could scream. The
 
 72 FOUR AND FIVE. 
 
 two riders, of course, checked their horses. 
 In a moment Friday was on his feet, gave his 
 rein to his companion, and ran into the house. 
 
 A minute more, and he was back again. 
 " There is fire," said he, " and you and I can- 
 not put it out. She will start the people in 
 that house before we can ; you must cross the 
 meadow there, see, the fence is down, and 
 on that yellow church is a fire alarm, I saw 
 the box as we came by. Do you ring in the 
 fire-engines from the village, and come back 
 here as soon as you have done it." 
 
 The boy gave the command as his father 
 would have commanded a battery in battle. 
 And Mr. Geddes, without a thought of ques- 
 tioning him, obeyed. He rode well, and at a 
 light canter crossed the meadow as he was 
 bidden. The boy's eye, watching right and 
 left, had not deceived him. In three minutes 
 from the time the child cried " Fire ! " every 
 engine company in Bromwich had the alarm. 
 
 In three minutes more Mr. Geddes was at 
 Friday's side. "How quick you are," said
 
 FOUR AND FIVE. 
 
 the boy. "Your horse will be safe in the 
 cattle-shed, leave him there and come and 
 help us with these carpets. I have shut up 
 the kitchen, and I think we shall stifle it, if 
 only those Bromwich fellows know their 
 business." And when Mr. Geddes came back 
 from the shed he found Friday and a black 
 man on the veranda, dragging a large carpet 
 out from an upper window. Before he knew 
 it he was himself spreading it over the closed 
 windows of the room below. The glass had 
 not yet given way, and Friday did not mean 
 that it should. Whether his plans were wise 
 or not, we can never tell. His carpet had been 
 scarcely spread on blinds and shutters, and he 
 was just jumping from the veranda to answer 
 a cry from the basement, when they heard 
 the glad cry of "Put her through, Swan," 
 and could see the panting horses which had 
 brought " Swan " over the turnpike, as they 
 swept by the barn. Friday explained his 
 combinations to the admiring chief engineer, 
 showed him where his water was to be drawn,
 
 74 FOUR AND FIVE. 
 
 and he and Mr. Geddes, from their position 
 of high command, sank into the position of 
 obedient subordinates. Water was had in a 
 few minutes, a pipe was cautiously introduced 
 into the kitchen, and in five minutes more the 
 whole was over. 
 
 But, as the chief stepped over the rafters 
 from which the boards were nearly burned, 
 he said to Friday, " A minute more, my boy, 
 and neither you nor I nor nobody would have 
 had much to do here but to pick up the 
 pieces." 
 
 It was clear enough that what he said was 
 true. Mr. Geddes was even effusive in thank- 
 ing him for the promptness of his rescue. 
 Friday and he assured the frightened women 
 that they might safely put things to rights, 
 then they mounted their horses, and resumed 
 their ride.
 
 FOUR AND FIVE. ?$ 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 "/COUSIN JANE," said Friday, after 
 
 ^ x they returned home, " I talked to him 
 like a father, and I think he will mind me. 
 Indeed, I told him just what my father has 
 said to me a thousand times." 
 
 Jane was but two years older than her 
 cousin, by the almanac, but, of course, this 
 was enough to make him think she was his 
 grandmother. She did not think so herself. 
 
 " What did you tell him ? " said she, laugh- 
 ing. 
 
 "I told him that, for a stout fellow like 
 him, who could cross country as he did when 
 well mounted, it was a sin and a shame to 
 shut himself up and mope. Jane, I told him 
 it was ungrateful to the good God, who had 
 given him such legs and arms, and had put 
 into the world horses as good as Don and
 
 76 FOUR AND FIVE 
 
 Caspar. He groaned a little about that, but 
 I told him, what my father says, that young 
 men cannot begin too soon to be of some use 
 in the world. I did not say so, but perhaps 
 he thought I thought he was of no use at all ! " 
 
 " Well," said Jane, still laughing, " for a 
 first interview you did go a good way ! " 
 
 " First interview ? It was not a first in- 
 terview. It was the second. It might be the 
 last, however, and I was not going to have as 
 fine a fellow as that on my conscience." 
 
 But of this there was now no danger. Fri- 
 day had given poor Mr. Geddes just the push 
 or fillip which all the doctors had failed to 
 give him ; and the fortunate incident of the 
 fire, with the success of their efforts, had come 
 just at the right time. The next morning 
 Friday left his uncle and cousins for the Poly- 
 technic, unwillingly enough. But he took 
 Mr. Geddes with him to New Altoona, where 
 the Polytechnic is situated. 
 
 " Just you come with me," said this auda- 
 cious ranchero. " Let me show you our
 
 FOUR^AND FIVE. 77 
 
 whole shebang, and particularly Macullar. 
 There is a man ! Why, perhaps Macullar 
 would take you to Chihuahua for the winter. 
 Don't I wish he would ask me to go ! I should 
 say ' yes ' in a minute, and then telegraph for 
 permission after I had packed my saddle-bags 
 and started. Would it not be great to go to 
 Chihuahua with Mac ! " 
 
 Poor Mr. Geddes had hardly ever heard of 
 Chihuahua, had never heard of this magnifi- 
 cent Mac. But, as it proved, here was his 
 destiny. On the long ride in the train to 
 New Altoona, the boy Friday fairly took 
 possession of his friend. Partly by his story 
 of the active summer, partly by the brave 
 forecast of the future, not a little by the en- 
 thusiasm with which he spoke of his country, 
 and what he owed to his country, he started 
 and waked this poor recluse, who, with every 
 opportunity for life, had shut himself up 
 with books, alone, and looked out timidly, as 
 if God had no duty for him, and he were in 
 no place in God's world.
 
 78 FOUR AND FIVE. 
 
 The lesson which he would not have taken 
 from any one older than he was, seemed like 
 a revelation when it came unconsciously, 
 almost, from a boy. 
 
 THE great "Mac," to whom everything 
 was to be referred, proved to be a very little 
 man. He seemed, at first glance, insignifi- 
 cant. 
 
 But Mr. Geddes found that he was the 
 hero of the school, and he did not wonder, 
 when he saw Mr. Macullar come and go 
 among these boys and young men. 
 
 He was one of the professors of mines and 
 metals. 
 
 All the world knows that the Van Ness 
 Institute had great fame for its skill in mines 
 and metals, and the boys and young men 
 were quite sure that to "Mac," as they all 
 called him, this fame was due. Without 
 much ceremony, but with a good deal of feel- 
 ing, Friday introduced his new friend to his 
 old friend.
 
 FOUR AND FIVE. 79 
 
 " He does not mean to stay here," said 
 the boy, eagerly. "He has only come be- 
 cause I asked him. And he means to go 
 back to his old books and muddling. But I 
 tell him there is no place like the Van Ness, 
 and no man like Mac, and so he has just 
 come over to see us, before his vacation 
 is quite over." Poor, timid Mr. Geddes 
 looked on rather wistfully as the active 
 " Mac " received twenty salutations not very 
 unlike this, from other pupils who had come 
 in the same train. And Mr. Macullar was 
 not too eager with him. He respected his 
 morbid shyness. But, all the same, when it 
 was time for luncheon these two were sitting 
 together, and Mr. Geddes was doing fully 
 his share of the talking. And it ended, to 
 Friday's delight, ten days after, when Mr. 
 Macullar' s field-party went off to Mexico for 
 the winter. Friday was not asked to go, 
 and had not hoped to be asked. No one 
 from his class could go. But Mr. Geddes 
 was in no class, and was asked, and did go.
 
 8O FOUR AND FIVE. 
 
 " I 'do not see what I can do," said he, 
 meekly, after he had accepted the invitation. 
 
 " Do ? " said Mr. Macullar. " Any one 
 can find enough to do, if only he wants to 
 'Lend a Hand.'" 
 
 IN after years the boys always called Mr. 
 Geddes " Ged," and he sometimes forgot 
 that he had any other name. But his real 
 name, as he entered it the next summer on 
 the calendar of the "Four and Five," to 
 Which he was admitted on Friday's nomina- 
 tion, was Nathaniel Torrey Geddes. And 
 one letter from him of that winter must be 
 enough to show how far he had been rescued 
 from eating up his own heart, which is the 
 sorriest of diseases. 
 
 N. T. GEDDES TO " FRIDAY." 
 
 SAN JUAN DES DOLORES \ 
 ii ENERO. MIDNIGHT, j" 
 
 "Dear Friday: You need not look for 
 this capital on any map. It never was on 
 any till we put it on, and the only copy of 
 ours is in my bag now. I write at midnight,
 
 FOUR AND FIVE. 8 1 
 
 instead of going to bed, as I ought to do, be- 
 cause you have been so good in writing, and 
 I so bad. But I tell you, Friday, if you 
 mean to feed as hungry a crowd as this, it is 
 ' boots and saddle ' early every morning, and 
 it is polenta and tomato-can late at night. 
 You know I know nothing about lodes, and 
 veins, and eyes, and sumps, and other under- 
 ground palabras. But I do know about 
 breakfast, and dinner, and supper, and my 
 business is to see that two or three hundred 
 meji, of all colors and shapes, do not starve. 
 I tell you, Friday, when we hear of two or 
 three steers, or some old woman who has 
 some hens, we go for them ! I wish you 
 could see my party. I have one raw-boned 
 Navajo, whom we picked up when we went 
 up to the mines ; I have three melancholy- 
 looking peon boys, who cannot understand 
 why these Welshmen of ours want anything 
 but their eternal tortillas ; I have one genuine 
 Yankee from Coos County, New Hampshire, 
 as he told a Mexican colonel yesterday. 
 6
 
 82 FOUR AND FIVE. 
 
 Sometimes we go together, and sometimes 
 we go alone. But our business is to see that 
 the command does not subsist on canned 
 meat or polenta alone. 
 
 "Sometimes we go out on the plains to 
 take our chances for a shot. The antelopes 
 are not all gone, and there are a few birds, if 
 the wind is the right way. 
 
 "But I must go to bed. See, I spelled 
 way with an 'eigh' the first time. This 
 means I am sleepy. I laughed at your last 
 letter, in which you warned me of the danger 
 of reading too much. All my books, except 
 my New Testament, are at the bottom of the 
 Colorado River, or were when I heard from 
 them last. And, if they were not, I have not 
 seen the minute since last Monday when 
 I could have looked at one of them. I do 
 know the difference between a buzzard and 
 an antelope, but do not ask me the difference 
 between A and izzard." 
 
 Friday sent this letter to his cousin Jane, 
 and told her to show it to Dr. Milnes. " I
 
 FOUR AND FIVE. 83 
 
 think my pupil is finding out how to look out 
 and not in, and what it is to lend a hand," he 
 said. "I do not think the Doctor need 
 bother the Retreat people this winter." 
 
 THIS is only one story of nine which might 
 be told as to that winter, as the Four and 
 Five spent it. How dear old Mah-mah had 
 spent it shall be shown in our next chapter. 
 This must be enough, for the present, to in- 
 troduce Ged in the company of the FOUR 
 AND FIVE, when, at the end of June, they all 
 gathered again at the camp-ground. Friday 
 pretended that he was a distinguished Span- 
 ish Hidalgo ; " the hero of three wars," he 
 said, " and crowned with laurel by a grateful 
 country." Bronzed or browned indeed, with 
 a black beard and a long moustache, " Ged " 
 looked little enough like the morbid, timid, 
 wretched youth whom Friday had startled by 
 proclaiming the Four Mottoes at the high tea 
 at his uncle's.
 
 84 FOUR AND FIVE. 
 
 THEY two were early on the ground of the 
 now historic camp, because much was to be 
 done in the way of preparation. The Van 
 Ness vacation began a week earlier than the 
 other vacations. It was already sure that 
 each boy of last year's eight would bring 
 another with him, as Friday had done, and 
 arrangements had to be made for so large a 
 party. " If there is any foraging to do," said 
 Mr. Geddes, "you can trust me for that." 
 But at first there was more than foraging. 
 The whole camp was to be moved higher up 
 from the stream. This meant that quite a 
 little clearing was to be made in the edge of 
 the wood, and some old . stumps and logs to 
 be taken away. Friday had brought up from 
 New York three tents with him, and some 
 canvas, which he meant to stretch, on -a plan 
 of his own, for the dining-room. He did not 
 know when any of the other fellows would 
 come, he said ; when they did come he knew 
 that half of them would be green-horns or
 
 FOUR AND FIVE. 85 
 
 tender-feet, and it would be better to have 
 all these preparations out of the way. 
 
 And now, oddly enough, it was another 
 case of "Teacher Taught." For, with all 
 his confidence and assumption, the boy found 
 out soon enough that "Ged" knew much 
 more of camp-life, its necessities and its re- 
 sources, than he did. Old Mah-mah had not 
 lived in the mountains for forty years with- 
 out more practical knowledge, ten-fold, than 
 they both had together. The affair of the 
 bridge had won for the camp the ready and 
 intelligent help of poor old Coram, whom 
 they had pulled through his trouble. In all 
 their new arrangements they had his "un- 
 covenanted and unpaid alliance." And when, 
 therefore, on Saturday night, four of the club 
 tramped across from the station at Lovelace, 
 with three " tender-feet " whom they had en- 
 listed, they were encouraged by the sight of 
 a good fire of chestnut and oak, by the smell 
 of "fry" time would reveal what was 
 fried by the hospitable look of four tents,
 
 86 FOUR AND FIVE. 
 
 each lighted by its own lantern ; and the 
 hemlock was fresh-cut and spread on which 
 each way-farer was to lie after he had thrown 
 down his knapsack. 
 
 With such welcome the third summer 
 camp of FOUR AND FIVE began.
 
 FOUR AND FIVE. 8/ 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 A ND it seemed worth while to tell the 
 story of the meeting in such detail, 
 lest the eager reader, skipping from one point 
 to another, might not believe that four boys, 
 meeting for a summer holiday, did count up 
 as eighteen when they came together. The 
 reader must be made to understand that the 
 little tent under which they slept grew, in so 
 short a time, to be an encampment, and that 
 the enterprises in which they engaged took 
 on more dignity and more. 
 
 As for Coram, he was a new man. Indeed, 
 the place was a new place. The tide of 
 travel had returned, as the bridge proved 
 itself worthy of use; and as the railroad 
 brought more and more people up to the 
 mountains, more and more stragglers found 
 the convenience of this short cut. Corara,
 
 FOUR AND FIVE. 
 
 to his surprise, found that his forge-fire was 
 lighted every day. If there were no shoes 
 to be set, there was an accumulation of back- 
 work, which had been waiting while he was 
 at work on the unshod horses of the neigh- 
 borhood. Just in the glad pressure of his 
 own work, one of his sons had returned from 
 Montana, with the accumulations resulting 
 from his prospecting there. He was glad 
 enough to take hold " for a spell " at the 
 forge, and the two gave it a reputation in all 
 the neighborhood. 
 
 Blondin Coram had been named for the 
 celebrated rope-walker. He had left the 
 forge when he was sixteen years old, now 
 five years ago. He was a little older, there- 
 fore, than Guthrie, who was the oldest of 
 our boys, as we fondly call the founders of 
 FOUR AND FIVE. And the experience of 
 mankind which he had gained, as he knocked 
 about the Western world, was far beyond 
 that of any of them. Friday himself, who 
 was the farthest from his home, could not
 
 FOUR AND FIVE. 
 
 compare with Blondin in the range of his sto- 
 ries. If life had seemed a little dull to Blon- 
 din, as he passed the winter and spring with 
 his father in the old home, it opened with 
 only the more zest now that he found himself 
 in a crowd of young fellows, some with the 
 airs of old mountaineers, some betraying at 
 every step that they were tender-feet indeed. 
 
 He was a clean, simple-minded fellow, who 
 had picked up no harm in his prospecting. 
 It was queer to see how many Spanish and 
 Californian and other Western phrases had 
 stuck to his original Dutch-English-Yankee 
 dialect in that time. It was clear enough 
 that he had seen vice in its dirtiest forms 
 enough to have been well disgusted by it. 
 
 When he found that our boys of the origi- 
 nal FOUR AND FIVE, and of their nine associ- 
 ates, liked to hear his yarns, he fell quite into 
 the habit of coming up to their camp-fire in 
 the evenings, and, of the group, he was the 
 chief story-teller.
 
 9 FOUR AND FIVE. 
 
 " What do you mean by prospecting, any 
 way ? " said Hanger, one evening. 
 
 "Why, he means looking for silver," said 
 Wallace. 
 
 "Of course he does. But how does he 
 look ? He does not expect to find it on the 
 trees. And he knows that he will not find 
 ten-cent pieces in the gravel. How do you 
 prospect, Blondin ? 
 
 " Well, in a country such as that is, you 
 know you have to travel on a trail or in the 
 streams same as we do here. Now in the 
 trails there's no good chance, so many of the 
 other fellows hes been there before. Some 
 men, they goes alone, because they're afraid 
 their pards will get all the good. But I'm 
 never afraid of my pard, and I hain't had no 
 reason to be. 'N' if you have a pard you've 
 better chances every way ; hunting, camping 
 well, all prospecting is a great deal easier 
 for having a pard." 
 
 " Right you are there," said Friday, and 
 the rest grunted approval.
 
 FOUR AND FIVE. 9 1 
 
 " Well, then, you start in the bed of the 
 stream generally you work up 'n' all the 
 time you're looking for silver. No, not for 
 ten-cent pieces, nor nickels, nor yet Mexican 
 dollars, but you look at all the stones you see, 
 to see if they looks dark brown, or black, or 
 with some red, maybe ; if they looks heavy. 
 That's what you want, 'n' you don't care what 
 color it is, if it's heavy. So you heft one, 
 and you throw it away, and you heft another, 
 'n' you throw it away. That's why you don't 
 want to have your hands full of other things, 
 you know, because you want to pick up the 
 stones to heft 'em. 
 
 "Well, if you have luck, you know, you 
 find a bit of stone no matter if it's small, no 
 matter if it's big 'n' it's heavy. You know 
 that right away it's heavy. Then where 
 did it come from ? That's the next question. 
 It wasn't made there in that river-bed. It 
 had come there. Maybe it had come down 
 stream ten, twenty, forty miles. Maybe it 
 had come so from some mine that everybody
 
 9 2 FOUR AND FIVE. 
 
 knows, above you. But maybe it had rolled 
 down the side of the hill there this side ; 
 that side. In course, if it's very big, the 
 chances is more that it did roll down just 
 where you be, where you found it. But you 
 can't tell till you've tried. So you spot the 
 place, 'n' first you look to be sure there's any 
 more stuff like it, 'n' if there is why, of course, 
 there's more chance of an out-crop on the 
 hill above where you found it. Well, maybe 
 it's this side, maybe it's that side. You try 
 one, 'n' your pard tries the other. You have 
 to crawl, most likely, on your hands and feet. 
 I mean the hill-side's as steep as it is here up 
 the run where your coon-trap is, Michael, 
 where you caught the skunk." 
 
 And here there was a general laugh. 
 
 " Maybe you have to cut away the brush. 
 That's what you have your short-handled axe 
 for. You see you want to find where that 
 bit of stone come down from. Maybe it's 
 twenty yards from the bottom. Maybe it's 
 half a mile. Maybe most like it come
 
 FOUR AND FIVE. 93 
 
 from nowhere, 'n' you have to give it up, 
 because you can't find it. 'N' then you go 
 on, and prospect more." 
 
 And Blondin laughed, rather sadly, at his 
 own joke, as if this had happened to him 
 often.
 
 94 FOUR AND FIVE. 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 ""DUT that feller, my pard he was the 
 only pard I ever had he stuck like a 
 burr to me 'n' I stuck like a burr to him : 
 that feller, Inez, he never gin up any chance 
 till we knew, cock-sure, whether there was 
 out-crop or not. He would go on, and on, 
 nosing up, like a Washita setter. If there 
 was a bluff like, hundred feet high, that feller, 
 Inez, would find some way to scrabble up, 
 and would try every ledge in it, with his 
 hammer, till he was cock-sure." 
 
 " A man named Inez ? " said Hanger. 
 
 " What's a Washita setter ? " said Friday 
 
 " How was he sure ? " said Eveleth. 
 
 "One to once," replied Blondin, laughing. 
 " Better let me have my own way. We've all 
 summer before us, and if there's any silver in 
 these hills we'll know it before cold. I tell
 
 FOUR AND FIVE. 95 
 
 you there was mighty good stuff in my pard, 
 else we wouldn't have held together as we 
 did. 'N' as for his keeping on as he did, he 
 was of that kind that does keep on he could 
 not help it." 
 
 Harrison could not help saying, in an aside 
 to Guthrie, "He looked forward, and not 
 back." 
 
 "Just so," said Blondin, catching the words. 
 " He did, V he does now. Wish he was 
 here. That feller's always sure things'll 
 come out well. And, faith, where he's about, 
 they generally do. It's a way he had. 'N' 
 when you're in camp with him, as you lie by 
 the fire, same as we do now, talkin' half- 
 Spanish and half -Yankee, he doesn't know it, 
 'n' you don't know it, but you talk about 
 next Christmas, or you tell how you'll arrange 
 for the tailings in the mine you're going to 
 find, or you make the plan for the breast and 
 the over-head. You never get on the old 
 story of this feller was killed, 'n' that feller 
 broke his leg.
 
 96 FOUR AND FIVE. 
 
 "I asked Inez one day how he was so 
 cheerful-like, and I says to him that was why 
 all the fellers liked him, 'n' wanted him to go 
 shares with them. 'N' he kind o' laughed, 
 'n' he says, says he, 'Amigo mio, if it was 
 my trail, nada-nada, nothing much at toder 
 end of him ; nada, nothing at all. But no, 
 no ; not my trail. Dios bueno, good God, 
 he make trail, he make me.' 
 
 "Now, fellers," said Blondin, half -frightened 
 at his own confession of faith, " I don't know 
 how you like that talk, but it seemed to me 
 he stated it mighty well." 
 
 "Why yes," said Harrison, "that greaser, 
 as you call him, seems to ' Look up, and not 
 down.' " But Blondin did not, at the moment, 
 " catch on " to this declaration. He paused 
 a moment evidently far away, in his thought, 
 from the camp-fire and the Kaatskills then 
 started suddenly, and said : 
 
 "The longest time we was ever parted 
 when we was out prospectin', my pard and 
 me, was from Sabbath day round to Sab-
 
 FOUR AND FIVE. 97 
 
 bath day. We was in the Bloody Gulch, you 
 know well, two days above Gallows Creek 
 three days ; 'n' we was mendin' up, 'n' 
 making a cache of stones, 'n' such like, we 
 didn't want to lug no furder. 'N' I had 
 strained that toe rock fell on it, or sunthin' 
 'n' I limped bad, I tell you. 'N' Inez 
 that's my pard he says, says he, ' You keep 
 camp here, two days, three days. I find this 
 lead, good lead, best lead yet. I take pork, 
 you keep rizo.' Rizo, that's how they say 
 hedge-hog, 'n' we had a hedge-hog I had 
 brained that mornin'. So he went off, 'n' I 
 just hobbled 'round. Went down in the 
 gulch again, 'n' got more of them samples, 
 good samples they was, too. If I had 'em in 
 New York ! ' And he smiled broadly. " All 
 that day I made my pile, only it was of sam- 
 ples." 
 
 And here Blondin made another of his 
 long pauses ; but now the others did not in- 
 terrupt him. 
 
 "And the next day, 'n' the next 'n' the 
 7
 
 FOUR AND FIVE. 
 
 next. 'N' then I knew suthin' had befallen 
 him. I knew he was all right or all wrong. 
 The hedge-hog was ate, I tell you ; 'n' I 
 marched up that gulch, 'n' down that gulch ; 
 and I crawled up hill, 'n' I slid down hill 'n' 
 I saw no more hedge-hogs. 'N' I took to red- 
 skin onions, 'n' to pignut tea, 'n' I tell you, fel- 
 lows, they's neither on 'em fillin', though the 
 price is small. But I had said I would stay 
 till he come back, 'n' I should ev staid if the 
 bottles of heaven had busted, 'n' the old gulch 
 ev filled up wid water. I should ev staid 
 only kind o' crawlin' up the side, you know, 
 as it rose." And Blondin gravely pointed 
 out an imaginary trail on the hillside opposite 
 them, which appeared, distinctly enough, in 
 the moonlight. He paused again, but the 
 boys said nothing now. The man was too 
 earnest to be laughed at, or interrupted. 
 
 "Sabba'-day mornin' that was six days 
 'n' half, you see, sense he was gone Sabba'- 
 day mornin', as I was haulin' a bit o' drift for 
 the fire, I heard a crushin' 'n' a smashin' 'n' I
 
 FOUR AND FIVE. 
 
 knew somebody bed come. But I was down 
 in the hollow, 'n' I thought it was a stray 
 burro, what had been down twice before. I 
 tell you, I was so hungry that ef I had had 
 any tool, I would ha' shot that 'ere burro 
 afore then, and ate mule meat or burro meat 
 for supper. So I did not mind first time ask- 
 in', but a minute more I hears Inez. ' Ami 
 go,' sez he, and wasn't I glad ! I limped up 
 to meet him, where I had cut the brush away, 
 'n' he did not know, to a place I had to sit in 
 when the wind was in the nord ; 'n' sure 
 enough, he come in, dirty as a pictur', 'n' bent 
 down, 'most a same ez ef he was that burro I 
 thought he was." And Blondin laughed at 
 his own conceit. 
 
 " What did he have ? What did he not 
 have ? You might say he had this hat, and 
 them boots, and this suit of clothes I am wear- 
 in' on, 'n' that jack-knife, and a lot more, see- 
 in' they all come out of that bag later or sooner. 
 He had this bag of samples stones, you 
 know not so big, but I tell you heavy, forty,
 
 100 FOUR AND FIVE. 
 
 fifty-five, sixty-seven, one on 'em panned out 
 when we took her to Argo ; hundr' 'n' ten 
 pound he had in that bag, ef he had an ounce. 
 'N' on his back, beside the bag, he had a 
 quarter of an antelope, 'cause he knew his 
 old pard was a starvin', while he was revelin' 
 in antelope venzn. 'N' he had his gun,'n' his 
 flask ; but not his hammer nor his axe, I tell 
 you. No, nor his tooth-brush," this with a 
 laugh like Natty Bumpo's "he'd made a 
 cache on 'em. 
 
 " I tell you, fellows, that Inez, that good 
 pard o' mine, hed lost the trail the first day. 
 He was all outside the divide. By all minin' 
 law, 'n' by our agreement, he was all free from 
 any bond to me. We was only to prospect 
 in Bloody Gulch. He got an orful fall, rollin' 
 down some gulch sides over by Bethel-Run. 
 He lay a day, with a lame foot under him. 
 When he got up he see a big grey rock. 
 There's a little bit of it." And Blondin took 
 it out from his pocket-book. " 'N' he sees it 
 was the right stuff, 'N' he seemed to forget
 
 FOUR AND FIVE. 
 
 his smashed toes, 'n' he went for the side o 
 the hill 'n', long story short, he placed, 's 
 well, 's well 's I can place my father's front 
 door-step yonder, 'n' where he placed it, fellers, 
 that's where they have the Colchis mine now. 
 An' that mine was his that day, 's much as 
 your jack-knife's yours, Mr. Guthrie. 'N' 
 when he'd drove his pegs in for his claim, 'n' 
 when he'd taken all his bearin's, so's to be 
 cocksure, 's you said, then that feller he 
 comes back to me, to tell his story. Lost 
 his way, you see, couldn't help losin' it- 
 twice he lost it ; but then he comes out by 
 the blazed trail above Trennum's, an' so over 
 the divide agin, an' found me. He was afraid 
 I should be half -starved, so he'd killed an 
 antelope, 'n' he come down to me. He had 
 with him, you see, what meant, well, it 
 meant five thousand dollars, 'n' he might 'a' 
 kep' the whole of it, 'n' he brought it down 
 to share 'n' share, just because he loved his 
 neighbor better'n he did hisself." And Blon- 
 din smiled with his pleasant smile again.
 
 IO2 FOUR AND FIVE. 
 
 The boys waited a moment, to see if more 
 were to come from the story-teller, and then 
 Guthrie said : 
 
 " Fellows, this Mr. Inez, whose name is yet 
 to be explained to us, seems to know how to 
 'look out and not in,' and certainly knows 
 how to ' lend a hand.' Blondin says he ' looks 
 up and not down,' and 'looks forward and 
 not back.' I move he be chosen into the 
 Four and Five." And this was done, with 
 great uplifting of hands and hurrahing. And 
 then, for the first time, it was explained to 
 Blondin what a Lend a Hand Club was, and 
 Blondin also was admitted into the great com-
 
 FOUR AND FIVE. 1 03 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 '"T^HE news is," said Friday, "that there 
 has not been a drop of rain on the 
 Princess's potatoes since Michaelmas, or since 
 St. Swithin's day, or any other peg that she 
 hangs the weather on. I am going over again 
 to-morrow to haul some water for them, and as 
 many more fellows as want to Lend a Hand 
 had better turn out and help. I am going to 
 hire old Coram's mare, and Mah-mah will 
 show me how to rig a barrel, or I shall show 
 her. I've seen it done on the pampas, but 
 she thinks she knows a better way." 
 
 " What is all this ? " asked Eveleth, rolling 
 over in his hammock, and dropping his vol- 
 ume of the "Three Guardsmen." "What is 
 all this ? Operations of irrigation, and the 
 consulting civil engineer from the Polytech- 
 nic not consulted."
 
 IO4 FOUR AND FIVE. 
 
 "Not consulted, by a long chalk, captain, 
 the matters in hand relating to modern life, 
 and not having been studied by mediaeval 
 masters." 
 
 Eveleth took the chaff good-naturedly, said 
 that it was highly necessary that he should 
 take a lesson, and that he would volunteer 
 under Friday's instructions. " But I think 
 it will be no harm to take along a mediaeval 
 bar, and Coram's classical pick-axe. If any- 
 body will carry the pick I will take the bar." 
 But Friday said the picks could ride on the 
 mare. 
 
 And so a large party of volunteers assem- 
 bled at early cock-crowing. For there was 
 no alarm clock, and, excepting such signals 
 as one or two old roosters of Coram's chose 
 to give, these boys might have slept the sleep 
 of the just every day till the sun stole into 
 the south openings of their tents. But, on 
 this occasion, there was scarcely any pale 
 gray on the eastern sky when Norman put 
 his coffee-pot on the embers of the bivouac
 
 FOUR AND FIVE IO5 
 
 fire, and cut the slices of pork for his frying- 
 pan. 
 
 And to-day there was no missing the trail 
 between the camp and old Mah-mah's clear- 
 ing. All the boys were better woodsmen 
 that was one thing. But, more than that, 
 the old woman had become such an amusing, 
 not to say essential, member of their corpo- 
 ration, that no week passed without one or 
 more excursions to and fro. There had been 
 a great business in basket-making, in which 
 she gave all the available teaching. There 
 were experiments in cooking, where she could 
 give the needed instructions nowhere but on 
 her own stove. And it was such fun to hear 
 her tell stories that if she did not come to 
 them, some of the boys went over to see her, 
 with some bit of tribute perhaps, or an offer- 
 ing of real love to one who was always "so 
 clever." But, as it happened, whoever had 
 been there last had seen and heard nothing 
 of the potatoes. And, without Friday's care- 
 ful habit of keeping his eyes open, quickened
 
 I Ob FOUR AND FIVE. 
 
 by his loyalty to her, the club would not have 
 known that she was in trouble. 
 
 There were hopes, as they marched, that 
 they might come in on her in time to start 
 her fire. But this was absurd. The blue 
 smoke rose high above the cabin, across the 
 hemlocks of the background, as the boys ran 
 down the slope by which they came to the 
 open clearing. 
 
 All the same she expressed her surprise, 
 and scolded them that they had not told her 
 that they were coming, so that she might 
 have been ready for them. 
 
 " Now ye'z all so clem that ye'll eat the 
 nails out o' the door, 'n' the house will tum- 
 ber down," she said, as the boys flung them- 
 selves on the grass before the door-step. 
 
 But Friday and Norman told her that this 
 was a party for work, and not for fooling or 
 eating, and, first of all, that she was not to 
 go to cooking for the fifteen of them. And 
 Harrison, who had the commissariat in hand, 
 produced his stores on the grass. The ut-
 
 FOUR AND FIVE. 
 
 most they would let her do was to make some 
 more coffee for them. 
 
 " Short exhortations heed," said Friday. 
 " If I am captain of this party we are to go 
 to work in the cool of the day, Spanish fash- 
 ion." 
 
 And then Mah-mah's barrels were pro- 
 duced. One, an old water barrel, from the 
 corner of the cabin, which, on the whole, 
 proved best for the purpose. Two, well- 
 made flour barrels, " bad, but not so bad," 
 as the careful Eveleth admitted. He had 
 ' grave thoughts of digging out from the 
 ground an old cask, which he declared had 
 once held West India molasses, but which 
 had been the well-curb of some sixty years 
 bygone. 
 
 On the back of the mare pretty much 
 everything was brought which was needed 
 by the various constructors. More than one 
 of these boys had - been trained, under our 
 good modern system, to a decent use of car- 
 penters' tools. The heads of three barrels
 
 108 FOUR AND FIVE. 
 
 were well hooped and strengthened, and a 
 long square axle was passed through each 
 barrel, as if it had been a very thick mill- 
 stone. Then the ends of this axle were care- 
 fully rounded, and so the boys had three 
 barrels which could be drawn up hill by the 
 mare, as she might draw the front wheels of 
 a carryall, if they had slipped out from the 
 carriage and left it on the turnpike. So soon 
 as Eveleth had got this well under way, he 
 took a working party down to the road itself, 
 to see how the water was to be brought, and 
 here he had the principal work of the fore- 
 noon. But by one and another change of 
 this mountain path, for it was hardly better, 
 by a good deal of digging and trying, and 
 in one instance by laying a little bit of cor- 
 duroy, he had made, before three o'clock, a 
 practicable ascent, and at three o'clock, with 
 great triumph, they filled their first cask at 
 the brook, and made old Betty drag it up 
 their new-made plane. When they asked 
 Eveleth why he had three barrels, he said
 
 FOUR AND FIVE. 1 09 
 
 they would find out soon enough, for he 
 really supposed that each one was too weak 
 for long work in the business entrusted to it. 
 But he had been careful to carry over a lot 
 of extra hoops, or the material for making 
 them, and, as it proved, his first cask did its 
 work thoroughly well. There was hardly any 
 leakage, and when it was at the level of the 
 potato-field it seemed in as good condition as 
 when it started. 
 
 Readers who have never seen water drawn 
 in this way must understand that at the brook 
 half a dozen boys with pails filled the barrel 
 full, that it was then very tightly corked, at 
 a hole made in the middle, the cork being se- 
 cured so that it should certainly not start. 
 The mare then drew the whole up the hill, 
 the barrel was turned on its side and left to 
 empty itself slowly through the same bung- 
 hole, while the mare returned for another 
 load to the foot of the hill. 
 
 Eveleth watched, well satisfied with the 
 success of this experiment, which was wholly
 
 IIO FOUR AND FIVE. 
 
 new to him. He could only trust Blondin 
 and Friday, who had seen the same thing 
 done in the mountains and in South America, 
 but when he was sure that it worked well he 
 took two or three of the boys with him up 
 the stream, for he said he would never leave 
 old Mah-mah again in such a scrape, and that 
 he was sure her plantation could be irrigated. 
 It was the first time that this potato-patch 
 and the corn-rows at its side had been dig- 
 nified by the name of a plantation.
 
 FOUR AND FIVE. Ill 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 more we recollect that "one boy 
 will do half as much work as a man, 
 that two boys together will do a quarter as 
 much, and that three boys will do no work 
 at all." 
 
 Never was an old saw less true than this, 
 in the work of the Irrigation Party. 
 
 The old saw, indeed, may be modified so 
 as to say that when boys work for those they 
 love, they do much more work than the aver- 
 age men with the average motive do. 
 
 These boys were well led. Eveleth showed 
 them, before half an hour was over, what was 
 wanted. And he showed them how the en- 
 terprise could be divided into three depart- 
 ments. He told off half his force for the 
 dam, and perhaps a quarter to the trench, 
 with another quarter for the distribution. 
 He left the smaller sections to arrange their
 
 112 FOUR AND FIVE. 
 
 own work, knowing very well that it would 
 regulate itself, after a little experiment, with 
 a good leader in each enterprise. And so it 
 proved. 
 
 The brook which was to furnish water was 
 a tearing trout-brook, which made plunges 
 without number in its determination to come 
 down to the level of the Hudson River. 
 Eveleth showed to his party that the first ob- 
 ject was to make a pond, which was what the 
 engineers would call a reservoir, to save 
 water enough to keep Mah-mah's potatoes 
 through the longest of droughts ; say for at 
 least two months. This reservoir must be 
 as near the field as possible, so that the irri- 
 gating trench might be as short as possible. 
 But it must be where the banks would slope 
 at a good grade, so that it would be easy to 
 arrange a gate or sluice, with but little pres- 
 sure. Other things being equal, a large and 
 shallow reservoir would be better than a small 
 and deep one. It must be on Mah-mah's 
 land, also.
 
 FOUR AND FIVE. 1 13 
 
 They did not find exactly what they wanted. 
 They made some measurements in different 
 places, and trudged up and down for an hour 
 or two, before Eveleth was satisfied. At last 
 he chose a hollow, where at one time cattle, 
 or perhaps deer, had come to water, and where 
 there had probably been a crossing-place for 
 wagons before the highway was built, a mile 
 or two below. 
 
 "Here shall be the reservoir," said Eve- 
 leth. And here he set his working party at 
 the business of loosening rocks, rolling logs, 
 trimming them from their branches, and other 
 bits of preparation for the dam, which they 
 were to build together. But, before he could 
 work with them he had to lay out the line of 
 the trench. The reservoir was fully half a 
 mile from the field to be watered. The brook 
 swept far away from the field, and only came 
 back to it at the point, quite below it in level, 
 where they had filled the barrels. Eveleth 
 had to make as short a track as he could, 
 keeping out of the way of rocks, trees, and 
 8
 
 I 14 FOUR AND FIVE. 
 
 ridges of the mountain, where the water 
 might flow. The boys thought this would 
 be the hardest part of their work. But they 
 had faith in their leader, and he soon showed 
 them that it would be the easiest. 
 
 His surveying instrument was of the sim- 
 plest. He nailed a strip of board, two feet 
 long, across the top of a stout staff, so that 
 it made a tall T. To the cross-bar he lashed 
 a bit of cane-pole, which was a part of a dis- 
 carded trout-rod, which the boys had among 
 their possessions. Then to the middle of the 
 cross he tied a bit of twine, at the lower end 
 of which swung a large pebble, weighing per- 
 haps half a pound. He bade Fred carry this 
 "theodolite," and when he wanted to take a 
 level Fred held it erect for him, taking care 
 that the string with the bob should be, as 
 nearly as possible, parallel with the staff. 
 
 " It is not as grand as a spirit-level," said 
 he, "but while a stone falls straight to the 
 ground it will answer." 
 
 The surveying party followed with him,
 
 FOUR AND FIVE. 
 
 with such tools as they had, and heard his 
 instructions as to the nature of the ground. 
 
 " You see," said Eveleth, " we do not have 
 to buy the right of way. We just take it. 
 If the canal is ten feet wide, no matter ; or if 
 the water all runs in a chink like that, no 
 matter. All we want is that it shall run. It 
 will not run too fast. Our gate, up above, 
 will stop that. It must not run so slow as to 
 stop. That is all we need care for. And 
 you need not bother about much digging. I 
 shall make it go over the top of the ground, 
 and we shall save time and muscle so." 
 
 There were one or two places where he 
 proposed, and they made, quite bold cuts. 
 But, in general, their work was to make 
 strong dams which would head off the water 
 when it wanted to go the wrong way. Al- 
 most all the boys had done similar work with 
 ice and snow in the spring, when they had 
 their mill-wheels to turn, so that, as soon as 
 they caught his idea, they addressed them-
 
 Il6 FOUR AND FIVE. 
 
 selves to the work, making their own plans 
 as to detail. 
 
 In an hour of this levelling and planning, 
 the line was staked out, two or three of the 
 more difficult points being left to after advise- 
 ment. 
 
 At the field itself there was an enterprise 
 of more delicacy. Eveleth entrusted this to 
 Blondin, who had often done such work in 
 Montana, and who, indeed, could have "taken 
 the whole contract," as Eveleth knew, better 
 than he would himself. But Blondin was far 
 too modest to assume the direction of affairs, 
 and said, what was true, that he did not know 
 the boys well enough to set them to work. 
 Eveleth had, also, the great advantage of the 
 success with the bridge the year before, and, 
 as he said himself, he knew the resources of 
 the country. 
 
 So to Blondin fell the job of arranging on 
 the upper slope, where Mah-mah's potato- 
 patch emerged from ferns and raspberry 
 bushes, a guard, as he called it, of logs and
 
 FOUR AND FIVE. 1 1/ 
 
 slabs, which was to be so arranged with 
 boards fixed for water-gates that neither too 
 much water nor too little should flow between 
 the rills, and, indeed, that the whole water- 
 supply might be absolutely at Mah-mah's di- 
 rection. Guthrie, Harrison, and Hanger at- 
 tached themselves to Blondin's party with 
 great delight. He would have been glad, 
 also, had they a spirit-level to use. But in 
 place of it he taught the boys how to bring 
 gourds of water, and, by rightly spilling it, to 
 make sure which way the surface ran. 
 
 And Eveleth returned to his work. 
 
 If this story ever sends a reader to explore 
 the right valley in the Kaatskills he will find 
 the reservoir, the trench which Eveleth al- 
 ways called the canal and the guard in full 
 operation. And the reader must be left to 
 make that journey. For we cannot stop to 
 give, in detail, the history of the happy days, 
 four in all, which passed before the assembly 
 of the club was summoned up, one Saturday 
 afternoon, to see the water let on to flow
 
 II 8 FOUR AND FIVE. 
 
 through the works as they were complete;!. 
 If the mothers of the Reservoir party had 
 dreamed, in their boldest imaginings, of the 
 way their boys took off their trousers, pinned 
 up their shirts, and proceeded directly into 
 the bed of the stream, when it became neces- 
 sary, at last, to adjust the bed-rocks, and 
 make firm the heavy log which was the foun- 
 dation of the dam, those mothers would have 
 grown gray with terror. But, fortunately, no 
 boy had time or ink to write home to his 
 mother any nice detail about his working cos- 
 tume, and so the dam was finished, and fin- 
 ished well, and no boy caught cold, and no 
 mother turned gray. 
 
 It was on the morning of the last day that 
 the discovery took place which crowned the 
 whole work with "a sort of dramatic conclu- 
 sion. Eveleth saw, with satisfaction, that 
 his water was rising slowly, as it should do. 
 He had arranged, with good workmanship, a 
 sluice-gate, where Mah-mah could slide in, or 
 take out, one or another bit of slab, as she
 
 FOUR AND FIVE, 
 
 wanted more water or less, or as she needed 
 to take it from a higher or lower level. Now 
 came the heaviest " cut," as he called it, in 
 the job. He had not chosen to throw it on 
 the " canal party," but preferred to take it as 
 a share of his own larger division. And, as 
 always, he chose to take the lion's share of 
 the work. He had collected every spade, 
 shovel, and crow which the neighborhood 
 could afford. He took the first pick himself, 
 and plied it vigorously. Thus he loosened 
 some of the bowlders, which were all inter- 
 laced with roots, and then, with two crows, 
 and stout boys working them, he lifted the 
 heaviest stone from its bed. 
 
 As it rolled away it opened the roots of a 
 large birch tree to view, and there, all covered 
 with rotten leaves and dirt, was a roll of black 
 leather. Eveleth dragged it out with his 
 crow. The rotten leather parted, and there 
 rolled out thirty or more pieces of gold coin 
 into the hollow left by the stone which had 
 been rolled away.
 
 I2O FOUR AND FIVE. 
 
 " Kidd's treasure ! " cried Eveleth. " What 
 luck! Pick them up, Friday, save the 
 pieces of the bag, and let us see what more 
 there is." 
 
 But there was nothing more. The boys 
 all crowded round. They searched right and 
 left. They cut the roots of the birch all to 
 pieces. But there was nothing more. 
 
 The coins were old, but were bright. Fri- 
 day, as a Spanish boy, was set to work to 
 read the inscriptions. But Friday said they 
 were not doubloons, nor were they of any 
 coinage he had ever seen. They afterwards 
 proved to be Portuguese moidores, all of the 
 same age. They were, indeed, two hundred 
 years older than any of the boys were, and 
 had been waiting for them, in their hiding- 
 place, for more than two centuries. It was 
 not difficult to patch together the bits of rot- 
 ten leather, and it was then easy to see that 
 this was the money-belt of some old-time ad- 
 venturer. 
 
 " Hunting for gold, most likely," said Eve-
 
 FOUR AND FIVE. 121 
 
 leth, " and he left here much more than he 
 found." 
 
 The excitement of the discovery, and the 
 search for more gold, took an hour or two out 
 from the time for the cutting of the final 
 trench. But Eveleth never lost his head dur- 
 ing the whole proceeding. He said, and the 
 others loyally agreed, that it was treasure 
 trove on what was, by good fortune, Mah- 
 mah's land. Her deed, as the boys knew, in- 
 cluded a bit of woodland bounded by the 
 brook. And Eveleth had taken care that his 
 most important " improvement " should be 
 upon her land, so that no land-shark might 
 ever interfere with it. 
 
 " It is treasure trove of Mah-mah's " he 
 said, " and it will be a good nest-egg for her. 
 These pieces are bigger than half-eagles, and 
 they are thicker, I believe. Thirty-two of 
 them, did you say, Friday ? That ought to 
 make nearly two hundred dollars for the old 
 saint." 
 
 And then there was great consultation as
 
 122 FOUR AND FIVE. 
 
 to how the announcement should be made to 
 Mah-mah. The boys agreed, with the passion 
 for secrecy and a surprise, that they would 
 not even tell the canal party. 
 
 And now light hearts, and willing hands, 
 and good sense, and stout tools made short 
 work of what was left of the trench. And 
 Eveleth sent down for Fred, who was, by 
 this time, commanding the canal party, and 
 they revised for the last time their calcula- 
 tions and decisions as to the possible and 
 probable flow of water. Once more Eveleth 
 sounded the reservoir, to be sure that the 
 water rose as fast as it should, and he was 
 well satisfied. Then they shouldered their 
 tools, which had always been stacked at night 
 before, and marched down together to old 
 Mah-mah' s cabin. 
 
 They found her, as they had expected, 
 quite equal to the occasion. She had enlisted 
 a fourth working party from the boys left at 
 the camp, and they had made two long tables 
 on what Norman grandly called the lawn in
 
 FOUR AND FIVE. 123 
 
 front, where they looked out beyond the Wes- 
 tern hills to see the sun as it began to go 
 down. These tables were made of the boards 
 from the fence, nailed for the occasion upon 
 turtles. They had been well washed by 
 Mah-mah and her crew, and were now cov- 
 ered by sheets of Frank Leslie, Harper's 
 Weekly, and the Youth's Companion. Before 
 the working party reached the house the glad 
 tin-tara-tin-tara of a horn was heard, as Nor- 
 man summoned all skirmishers and out-lyers 
 in to the feast. 
 
 And Mah-mah and her henchmen were 
 carrying bowls of smoking succotash, hominy, 
 and what the boys called fermity, in memory 
 of Jack the Giant Killer, and dishes without 
 a name. The industrious camp party had 
 brought up trout by the hundred, which some- 
 body had fried. Mah-mah had been baking 
 pies since Tuesday, in preparation for the 
 feast. And it was clear that if any one were 
 hungry when he began, he would not be hun- 
 gry long.
 
 124 FOUR AND FIVE. 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 OUCH a dinner party was it as the Prm- 
 cess's farm never saw before, and as the 
 Clove never saw, nor any of the country 
 round about. The boys said that there 
 should be an extra plate ready, lest Rip Van 
 Winkle might wake from his sleep at the 
 singing and laughing, and come down to join 
 in the revelry. All of the nineteen were 
 present, so that the club saw itself for the 
 first time. The original Four were here, the 
 Five who first joined the original Four and 
 gave the club its name, and all the Nine Ten- 
 derfeet of this year. With Blondin Coram, 
 who had been chosen in since the summer 
 began, here were nineteen members, and, as 
 Eveleth explained in his speech, the addition 
 of Inez brought their number up to a round 
 twenty. Amid loud hand-clapping and other
 
 FOUR AND FIVE. 125 
 
 tokens of approval, he explained that, if each 
 of their members used his privilege of invit- 
 ing one other to the club before the end of 
 the year, the club would be forty members 
 strong when it was three years old. " And 
 this, I suppose, is the exact principle which 
 gives our order the name of Ten Times One 
 is Ten." 
 
 "And now, gentlemen and lady," he con- 
 tinued, " I have a very important subject to 
 bring forward. It relates to our friend and 
 hostess, the Princess here, who does me the 
 honor to sit at my right hand to-day, and to 
 ask me to preside at this elegant and sumpt- 
 uous board. I am commissioned by the club." 
 
 Here all the boys wondered what was to 
 come, but, with general confidence inEveleth, 
 all knew it would be something amusing, 
 though no one knew just what it might be. 
 
 " I am commissioned by the club, for I am 
 sure I speak the wishes of all, to thank Mah- 
 mah for her unvarying kindness to each and 
 all of us three times three cheers for Mah-
 
 126 FOUR AND FIVE. 
 
 rnah," who rose and courtesied, really with a 
 good deal of dignity and grace " and to ex- 
 press the hope that her stock has not been 
 too much watered to-day. After these cere- 
 monies are over, when my younger friends 
 have eaten the last doughnut from her unri- 
 valled frying-pans, I shall have the pleasure 
 of asking her to let in the fertilizing waves 
 which are, even now, accumulating in the 
 store-house which you have provided for her 
 convenience. 
 
 " I have now the pleasure of presenting to 
 her, in your name, a little store which has 
 been waiting for her for two or three centu- 
 ries, by the side of that reservoir, under the 
 roots of a white birch tree. The casket is 
 not the most elegant." 
 
 Here Eveleth produced what was evidently 
 a New York Ledger, tightly folded. He 
 opened it with great ceremony, and, holding 
 the sheet with both hands, was able to show 
 the pile of gold coins to the company, most 
 of whom now knew of them for the first time.
 
 FOUR AND FIVE. 
 
 To the Princess Mah-mah all this was a com- 
 plete surprise. 
 
 " I suppose this property to have been left 
 by the Master of Ballantrae, if you have ever 
 read his fascinating adventures. I know that 
 it belongs to our hostess, on whose domain 
 we have had the good fortune to find it. The 
 club begs her to use it for such purposes as 
 will make her winter cheerful and her sum- 
 mer glad." 
 
 The dear old saint looked at the gold with 
 unaffected curiosity, and handled the pieces 
 with a childish interest. Then, after another 
 three-times-three in her honor, she made a 
 very pleasant response, with her thanks to 
 the boys for their enterprise. She did not 
 commit herself to any serious expectation of 
 good from the canal, in which she had, at 
 heart, not the slightest confidence. But the 
 earlier achievements with the water-barrel 
 had certainly succeeded, and she was able to 
 point to the potato-vines, which were full in 
 sight, as visible witnesses to the boys' skill
 
 128 FOUR AND FIVE. 
 
 and industry. For all this she thanked them 
 in a very cordial address. 
 
 " 'N' as for these yeller-boys dat's wot 
 dey called 'em w'en I wos a gal as for them, 
 my dear boys, I can use 'em, as he says, soze 
 to be a use to you all. Wot is it the song 
 says et will be all right ef we ' Look out 
 and not in ? ' " 
 
 She seemed a little doubtful where she 
 would bestow her treasure. The Hanger 
 presented his mug, from which he had rinsed 
 the last stain of coffee, and, for the moment, 
 the coins rested there. But, in a minute, 
 Blondin sent up from his end of the table a 
 tobacco-pouch, made of an otter's tail, which 
 he generally carried by a thong round his 
 neck. "That's for the shiners, Mah-mah," 
 said he. And the old woman, well pleased 
 with the attention for she had held Blondin 
 in her arms when his first blanket was wrap- 
 ped about him trusted the treasure to this 
 well-blessed receptacle.
 
 FOUR AND FIVE. 129 
 
 " When hunger now and thirst were fully satisfied." 
 
 AT a joint signal from Harrison and Eve* 
 leth, the company rose. They joined hands 
 around the table and sang T. T. T., which was 
 the sacred song on all occasions of high cer- 
 emony. Then, at Eveleth's direction, eight 
 boys, with spades and shovels on their shoul- 
 ders, marched as an escort of honor, two 
 and two. Mr. Geddes followed with the Prin- 
 cess on his arm, and the rest in a train, not 
 very carefully marshalled, behind, all singing 
 "We're Marching through Georgia," as the 
 best "processional" which they could organ- 
 ize for the ceremony. In this order they fol- 
 lowed the course of the proposed canal to the 
 little reservoir where Eveleth and his party 
 had been working. 
 
 He had hoped to find it quite full by the 
 accumulation of water since they left it. The 
 water had not risen as high as he meant it 
 should, as he explained hastily to his chief of 
 staff ; " but it is high enough," he said. 
 
 And then, arranging all the boys that they 
 9
 
 130 FOUR AND FIVE. 
 I 
 
 could see, he led the Princess Mah-mah, with 
 great ceremony, to the sluice-way, and gave 
 her the instructions which she was hereafter 
 to follow. The lever answered her hand just 
 as it should do. The sluice rose easily, and 
 a smooth sheet of water poured into the new 
 canal fast, regular, and sure, ploughed up 
 the dirt at the bottom, and ran merrily along 
 its newly-appointed way. So successful and 
 so pretty was the beginning that the boys 
 cheered it, as they would have cheered a suc- 
 cessful catch on the ball-ground. And then, 
 for twenty minutes, more or less, came the 
 interest and excitement of following the flow 
 of water along. It would stop sometimes till 
 it had filled up hollows, and twice the parties 
 detailed for that purpose had to check it 
 where it wanted to flow over into places where 
 it was not meant to go. But, on the whole, 
 the experiment showed the care and skill to- 
 gether of the young engineers. And in less 
 than an hour from the time they had left the 
 table, Eveleth and the rest had the pleasure
 
 FOUR AND FIVE. 13 1 
 
 of seeing the long trough above the potato- 
 patch well filled, so that he could safely send 
 a messenger up to the sluice-way to shut off 
 the flow, that they need not have more than 
 they wanted. 
 
 For the first time dear old Mah-mah had a 
 full appreciation of what the work of irriga- 
 tion was to be, and the eagerness with which 
 she thanked the boys for all that they had 
 done betrayed a certain suspicion, existing up 
 to this moment, that their good intentions 
 would not " pan out " as well as they had 
 hoped. She had all the enthusiasm of a new 
 convert, and, without meaning to, showed that 
 she was surprised. 
 
 The day had been thoroughly successful ; 
 the little incident of the discovery of the gold 
 had given an element of romance to it, and 
 the thorough success of the water-flow had 
 brought about even a dramatic conclusion. 
 The boys did not know that they were tired ; 
 they had all been interested, and, had neces- 
 sity required more of them, would have done
 
 I3 2 FOUR AND FIVE. 
 
 more. As it was, they gathered the tools to- 
 gether, packed them up on Blondin's horse 
 and upon another beast of burden which had 
 been borrowed for the occasion, and, bidding 
 the Princess each a separate good-bye with 
 much shaking of hands, having "cleared up" 
 the relics of the feast as well as they could, 
 and pretended to put things in decent order, 
 they left her to her loneliness, and marched 
 over the divide to their own camp. 
 
 Eveleth, Harrison, Geddes, and Friday 
 brought up the rear, and fell into rather se- 
 rious talk as to what the occasion had devel- 
 oped. Friday said that he had never made 
 the computation which Eveleth had made so 
 cleverly, which showed how four multiplied 
 itself into forty, if only they chose, in four 
 years of an organization like theirs. All the 
 boys had read the book called "Ten Times 
 One is Ten," which is based on the idea of 
 the multiplication of the interest in faith and 
 hope and love. It supposes that each ardent 
 believer in the four mottoes will enlist ten
 
 FOUR AND FIVE. 133 
 
 other people as ardent as himself, as three 
 years go by. And what Friday said was that 
 he had never believed this, in practice, before. 
 
 "The weak spot in the theory," said Eve 
 leth, "is here. I did not think it necessary 
 to explain it in my speech, but I knew it just 
 as well. I doubt whether we have made any 
 converts to the four mottoes. We have sim- 
 ply picked up some good fellows who believed 
 in them already. Eustace there, the fellow I 
 brought over with me, was just as upright 
 and disinterested and cheerful a fellow as 
 there is. He did not need any quickening. 
 On my part, I liked him, and he liked me ; 
 he did not know where he should spend his 
 vacation. I told him what a good time we 
 had here, and he came. But I should be a 
 fool if I said or believed that anything I had 
 done had made him more faithful, more hope- 
 ful, or more loving than he was before." 
 
 Young Geddes, perhaps, was quite con- 
 scious that he should not have been there 
 had not somebody stimulated him to looking
 
 134 ' FOUR AND FIVE. 
 
 out rather than in, as has been explained in 
 another part of this story. But he knew too 
 much to look backward ; he wanted to look 
 forward, and he rather followed Eveleth's 
 lead, therefore, by saying, 
 
 " Why should we not bear that in mind ? 
 Why should we not, in bringing fellows here 
 another summer, try to look out for those 
 who had better not spend their summers 
 alone, and for whom it will be a good thing 
 to be with thirty or forty other fellows who 
 are awake and alive ? " 
 
 " I am not so sure of that," said Friday. 
 " I think, as soon as we set out to do other 
 fellows good, we may be getting a little into 
 the Pharisee's box. If it does them any 
 good to come here with us, let it ; but I am 
 not going to be bringing any fellow here on 
 the pretence that I am any holier than he is." 
 And at this they all laughed, Friday having 
 expressed, as he was rather apt to express, 
 an underlying feeling.
 
 FOUR AND FIVE. 135 
 
 After a dozen paces without a word Eve- 
 leth said, 
 
 " That is all right, Friday, and I agree 
 with you through and through. But what I 
 mean, and what I think the professor means, 
 is this : that it is a great deal better for a 
 lot of us to be together than it is to be going 
 about alpne. I am willing to say that I have 
 had no end of nonsense knocked out of me 
 by being at school ; and I know fellows who 
 grew up well; with private tutors and in very 
 grand homes, ordering their own grooms and 
 giving directions generally, as if they were 
 the Prince Plumcake, who come to grief be- 
 cause they do not have the nonsense taken 
 out of them. Now, if a lot of us come to- 
 gether here, and live in a civilized way, as 
 we are living, which is, to my judgment, far 
 more civilized than the way men live in col- 
 leges which I know of ; I think if it does 
 them any good we won't growl about it ; we 
 will take that as it may come by the way." 
 
 The conversation did none of the four any
 
 136 FOUR AND FIVE. 
 
 harm. It is sometimes a good thing to put in- 
 to form an underlying notion, which becomes 
 more definite because it is stated in words. 
 It was, in fact, this conversation which led to 
 a good deal of talk among the boys before 
 they broke up for the winter, as to whether, 
 in the winter, the club might not continue 
 its existence to some purpose ; at least, in 
 two or three of the centres where most of 
 the boys were studying. And on the fourth 
 of September, when three or four of the num- 
 ber were to leave on the next morning, they 
 had what they called a final powwow for a 
 good-bye. Tom Smith and Oscar, two of 
 " this year's boys," had brought in two coons 
 from the woods, and old Mah-mah had come 
 over to give them instructions about the 
 proper roasting or rather baking of these 
 delectable animals. Blondin had contributed 
 two young turkeys, and old Coram a little 
 pig for the feast, and therefore the year broke 
 up with another high festival. It was then 
 and there that Eveleth announced, to the
 
 FOUR AND FIVE, 137 
 
 great interest of the others, that he had 
 found that nine of their number would be to- 
 gether at the Polytechnic in the next winter. 
 The boy did not say, what was true, that it 
 was his own success in the bridge-building 
 of the year before, which had been reported 
 to the fathers of three of these boys, which 
 had turned their attention to the institution 
 where Eveleth had been trained to such pur- 
 pose ; perhaps he did not know this. All 
 that he said was that nine of them had bound 
 themselves to live together that winter, in a 
 co-operative club, "and if we cannot take 
 old Mah-mah over to keep house for us," he 
 said, " we will make her give us a letter of 
 introduction to somebody of her color who 
 will. We are going to see if we cannot make 
 a decent Christian family of our own. As 
 the winter goes by we shall look up one fel- 
 low and another whom you will like to meet 
 here next year, and we will come prepared to 
 tell you how the great principles of the Four 
 Mottoes work in a university town. I tell
 
 138 FOUR AND FIVE. 
 
 you, we shall have our badges and our grips 
 and our pass-words and everything to make 
 us comfortable before we see you again." 
 
 At this again, as happened so often, there 
 was hand-clapping and applause ; and then 
 it was that was revealed the secret of two or 
 three mysterious visits which Blondin had 
 made to Newburgh, and which had never 
 been accounted for. Old Mah-mah rose with 
 great solemnity ; she produced a much-worn 
 carpet grip-sack, which the boys had never 
 seen before, and made a little address. She 
 said that they might remember that she had 
 told them she would make use of the yellow- 
 boys that they had given her. And now she 
 had them ready, that each might take one 
 and wear it when he wanted to as the medal 
 of the club. Then from the bag she took 
 out one of the moidores, in which some New- 
 burgh jeweller had bored a hole and inserted 
 a gold ring, and in the ring was a broad rib- 
 bon of blue and white, such as Blondin and 
 Mah-mah had seen worn by veterans of the
 
 FOUR AND FIVE. 139 
 
 war. With a good deal of grace the old saint 
 turned to Eveleth and pinned the badge upon 
 his breast, and said, " This is the medal of 
 the club." Amid great applause from them 
 all she turned to Harrison, who was on her 
 right, and did the same. And as soon as the 
 boys caught the notion each one ran up to 
 her, and insisted that she should attach to 
 his breast his own decoration. Then she 
 gave to Blondin one, and said, " This is to go 
 to the Spanish boy you told us about ; " and 
 to Eveleth she said, "There's some left here, 
 and those are for the ones who come another 
 year." The boys split the air with their 
 cheering as Mah-mah gave to them this ele- 
 gant badge, and Eveleth, quickly catching 
 her notion, attached one of the badges to 
 her own dress. So the club had not only 
 its name but its decoration.
 
 I4O FOUR AND FIVE. 
 
 CHAPTER XL 
 
 O O it happened that on the 6th of Septem- 
 ber Eveleth's mother came over to exam- 
 ine his last arrangements for the T. T. T. 
 club-house. She could not be quite sure 
 about the sheets, and the drawers and the 
 rest, until she had seen them with her own 
 eyes. 
 
 The boys took her all over an old-fashioned 
 house, a little off the rush of modern fashion, 
 which they had hired at quite a low rate, be- 
 cause it was too big for most families, and 
 the owner did not want to put in many mod- 
 ern improvements. " There are modern im- 
 provements enough for us," said Eveleth ; 
 " and where we want them we can put them 
 in ourselves." 
 
 He had narrow, iron bedsteads two or 
 three in a room, a". wording to its size. "We
 
 FOUR AND FIVE 14! 
 
 are going to sleep as the cadets do," he said. 
 This gave him room in the house for fifteen 
 regular inmates. The kitchen was the old 
 kitchen, as they had found it, with a new 
 range. Some recent resident had run a large 
 dining-room out into what had been the back 
 garden. For this Eveleth had provided a 
 service of crockery, of cheapness inconceiva- 
 ble to his mother ; and after she had surveyed 
 all this, generally with approval, but some- 
 times with the suggestions for economy of an 
 old housekeeper, Eveleth brought her to the 
 large parlor, which he had reserved till now. 
 
 " Every fellow may study as much as he 
 chooses in his own room," said Eveleth, 
 proudly, " but here he is to study, or read, or 
 sing, or do nothing. He is to have just as 
 good a time as he can anywhere except at 
 home," and the big boy kissed his mother 
 affectionately. 
 
 There was a pretty, low book case, which 
 he had picked up at an auction ; there was a 
 piano which belonged to Harrison's sister,
 
 142 FOUR AND FIVE. 
 
 who had gone to Europe ; there were two or 
 three large, comfortable chairs ; there was a 
 sofa, and a nice writing-desk. The furniture 
 had not been made in one shop, and was 
 not absolutly " aesthetic " in design. But it 
 certainly had an air of thorough comfort. 
 Some well chosen bits of carpet had been cut 
 and fringed, so as to make what Miss Brooks 
 calls " an archipelago of rugs," and Mrs. Eve- 
 leth was able, with good faith, to praise her 
 son for the skill with which he had arranged 
 his scanty materials. 
 
 " Friday deserves the real credit," said he. 
 " His eye is so good, and there is so much 
 bottom good sense to him. I hope he will 
 come in time for you to see him." 
 
 " Now this, you see, is our room, and no 
 one is to terrify us or make us afraid here." 
 Then he pushed open the folding-doors and 
 led her into the back parlor, as, in old times, 
 it had been called. " And this is the public's 
 room," he said. "Friday wanted to call it 
 the loafers' room, but I did not like that.
 
 FOUR AND FIVE. 143 
 
 But the rule of this room is to be well, that 
 the neighbors who like, may look in if they 
 like. See, I have got the other boys to bring 
 the books we had when we were boys. Here 
 is Boys' Own Book, and Swiss Family, and 
 the Mayne Reids. Should you have thought 
 we could get such a lot ? There are a hun- 
 dred and thirty-four in all some duplicates, 
 but that is no matter. I mean to let any de- 
 cent boy in the neighborhood come in and 
 read, as long as he does not make a row. 
 Then the fellows will leave their newspapers 
 here. I mean to have the picture-papers here 
 when I can get them. We have dominoes 
 and checkers and chess you don't know how 
 well Friday's class play checkers. There is 
 a little German fellow, named Mathey, who 
 beats Friday three games out of four. 
 
 " I do not think the boys had better come 
 into the parlor at all. I think the men have 
 a right to their ease there. But two fellows 
 volunteer to sit here Monday, and two more 
 Tuesday, and two more Wednesday, and so
 
 144 FOUR AND FIVE. 
 
 on, just to see there is no row. Well, a man 
 can bring in his banjo and play that is 
 Guthrie's banjo now. And Mrs. Barstow has 
 lent us that parlor organ, if anybody likes to 
 sing. I hate parlor organs ; I call them ' yang- 
 yangs.' But there is no accounting for tastes. 
 And the little pirates hear them in the Sun- 
 day Schools. So, if they like them, I do." 
 
 When his mother went home she made the 
 heads of all the Tens of King's Daughters 
 talk to their companions in that order, and 
 the result was a large box of books for young 
 people, which was sent to the "Public's 
 Room."
 
 FOUR AND FIVE. 145 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 'T^HE boys on whom Eveleth had most re- 
 lied in forming the club which was thus 
 made at home were those who had been with 
 him in the Catskills. There were two or 
 three others, who came to the school, green 
 and doubtful as to their homes, who were 
 glad to enlist in the new society. Perhaps 
 their mothers had some doubt how it would 
 turn out, but the boys made such golden rep- 
 resentations as to Eveleth's skill and Harri- 
 son's, that the mothers' doubts gave way, or 
 they pretended that they did. Eveleth hardly 
 knew himself to what extent his plan of the 
 " public's room," or the " neighborhood 
 room," would prove of any use. He had 
 read of Toynbee Hall, which some Oxford 
 graduates established in London, in the hope 
 that they might see more of "all sorts and 
 10
 
 146 FOUR AND FIVE. 
 
 conditions of men " than they had done. It 
 was with some such notion that he had ae- 
 voted one room of the fourteen at his dispo- 
 sal to a more open hospitality than would 
 have been possible in a common boarding- 
 house. But whether anything would come 
 of it Eveleth did not know. 
 
 What happened was, as usual, the unex- 
 pected. In bringing together the boys' books 
 he had a certain notion that the little black- 
 guards of the neighborhood might, in some 
 cases, be tempted to come and read. He had 
 a mission class of boys whom he had organ- 
 ized into a Ten Times One Club. He had 
 done this because these boys " felt their oats " 
 felt that they were quite too big for a cate- 
 chism, and doubted whether they were not 
 too big for Bible lessons. He had given 
 them an idea, therefore, that if they had a 
 club, with a president, and secretary, and 
 treasurer, they also might be of some use to 
 the world. If there was to be a club there 
 must be a place of meeting ; if there was to
 
 FOUR AND FIVE. 
 
 be a place of meeting it must have something 
 to do when it met ; and besides having some- 
 thing to do, if they could have books to car- 
 ry to their homes, which they would not have 
 had otherwise, there was at least one tie to 
 bind them together. So he had brought to- 
 gether, as he had showed to his mother, more 
 than a hundred books, and had made the boys 
 paste on the inside of the cover a card, which 
 stated that the books were the property of 
 the Ten Times One Club, and were to be 
 lent, to be kept a week, and then punctually 
 returned. 
 
 He had arranged with the boys of his own 
 class to meet him every Monday evening, 
 and these were the boys who first brought in 
 anybody else into this people's club-room. 
 It proved that the library was a much more 
 popular institution than Eveleth had thought. 
 In order to keep the rent of the house down 
 he had gone a little out of the streets in 
 which the elect of New Altoona lived, and 
 had, almost without knowing it, stumbled upor
 
 148 FOUR AND FIVE. 
 
 quite a large German colony. This German 
 colony was originally recruited, mostly in 
 New York, for the needs of a certain large 
 factory of paper-hangings, into which some 
 Germans had made their way at the begin- 
 ning, and from which they had written to one 
 and another place in the Fatherland, to call 
 over their cousins, and second cousins, and 
 kindred generally. The wave of Teutonic 
 emigration having thus once begun, it had 
 been generally whispered that New Altoona 
 was a good place to live in, so that probably 
 a fifth part of the population of that universi- 
 ty city spoke German better than they spoke 
 English. But the original settlers of New 
 Altoona did not speak German, and had not, 
 to tell the truth, a great deal to do with the 
 new-comers. They knew that they were very 
 decent people that they did not get into 
 rows, or otherwise disturb the social life of 
 the place ; but it must be confessed that the 
 German residents lived their life, and the old 
 New Altoonians lived their life, and until Eve-
 
 FOUR AND FIVE. 149 
 
 leth made his settlement in their section there 
 had been but little intercourse between the 
 two nationalities. 
 
 Two or three of the boys in Eveleth's class 
 were from this German district. It is with 
 the young people in the public schools that 
 the intimacies of separated classes in Amer- 
 ica begin. These were intelligent fellows, 
 with the quick ear for music and the well- 
 trained voices which one almost says, belong 
 to their nationality. And Eveleth was quick 
 to see that, in the arrangements for his club, 
 he had better have a good deal of singing, in 
 which Carl, or Max, or Rudolph were very 
 naturally the leaders. The leaders lead in 
 such things, as they do in most other rela- 
 tions of human life. 
 
 It happened thus that the Monday evening 
 club, instead of being a sort of extraneous 
 bore, as the young men on the foundation 
 supposed it would be, had its pleasant side, 
 which attracted to its meetings more than 
 Eveleth and Friday, the two who had volun-
 
 FOUR AND FIVE. 
 
 teered to take charge of the room for that 
 evening, had supposed. The machinery of 
 the club was always kept up : the roll was 
 called, the fines were paid for non-attendance, 
 the business of the month was seen to, the 
 members were called upon to report whether 
 there was any enterprise of public spirit in 
 which the club could engage, and some one 
 gave an account of what was considered the 
 most important subject in the politics of the 
 day. But more and more were these matters, 
 which were on the regular calendar, hurried 
 up and shortened, in order that the boys 
 might come round the " yang-yang," as Eve- 
 leth had irreverently called it, and sing to- 
 gether. And it would always happen that, 
 when this period came, some of the young 
 men of the Polytechnic, who were really the 
 hosts of the club, would come in from the 
 front parlor, and would join in the singing, 
 or listen. The banjos made their appearance, 
 and the last half of Monday evening was 
 much more a concert than it was a club 
 meeting.
 
 FOUR AND FIVE. 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 'TTHERE can be no doubt that this success 
 of Monday evening led to similar suc- 
 cesses, under different forms, on other nights 
 of the week. At the beginning of the winter 
 the Monday night club was the only regular 
 organization. But, before the winter was 
 over, Friday's club came in. It met, how- 
 ever, on Thursdays. It was the wreck of a 
 base ball club which had been coached and 
 advised by Friday till the weather grew too 
 cold to play. And there was a Saturday 
 evening club, which the young men always 
 called the "Terrors," from a tradition that it 
 was recruited by Guthrie from among a lot of 
 street rowdies, who had taken the name of 
 the "Altoona Terrors." In point of fact, 
 there were one or two of the Terrors who 
 had been lured from the error of their ways
 
 152 FOUR AND FIVE. 
 
 by the temptations of a comfortable room, 
 good checker-boards and dominoes, and by 
 the certainty that they should be in decent 
 company. Indeed, it would not be fair not 
 to give Guthrie credit for pretty vigorous 
 oversight of these fellows, and a determina- 
 tion to save at least one of them from the 
 temptations which clearly had been too much 
 for him in his Arab life. With these three 
 regular organizations, covering three even- 
 ings of the week, the parlor came to be known 
 by the neighbors as a place which was in 
 some sort the property of the ward. The 
 neighbors hardly knew how this was, or why ; 
 but as there was always a store of weekly 
 newspapers to read, as generally they found 
 there the morning New York newspaper, and 
 the evening paper of the town, one and an- 
 other father of the boys came in, at first un- 
 der a pretence of an errand, but afterwards 
 more familiarly. And Eveleth found, to his 
 satisfaction, that he was giving hospitality to 
 the neighborhood a good deal in the way that
 
 FOUR AND FIVE. 153 
 
 he had hoped to do, while he had hardly 
 known how to go about this business. 
 
 Meanwhile the young men found that, 
 without knowing it, they were forming com 
 panionships, and in some cases friendships, 
 among the more intelligent of the workers in 
 the factory. Here were young gentlemen of 
 good artistic taste and training, who had no 
 desire to push themselves upon the society 
 of the Americans of the town, but who proved 
 to be so well-informed in more of the fine 
 arts than one, that the students at the Poly- 
 technic were glad enough to come into close 
 relations with them. Especially did they find 
 sympathy in the matter of music. There 
 was hardly one of the Polytechnic students 
 but thrummed the banjo, or could play a few 
 airs on the piano, or sang, for better or for 
 worse, in the glee club of the school. Some 
 of them had a real musical temperament, and 
 went farther than such initial experiments. 
 As their acquaintanceship went on with their 
 new friends, it would often happen that the
 
 FOUR 'AND FIVE. 
 
 "yang-yang" was not sufficient for their 
 needs, and that the folding-doors were rolled 
 back, so that they might avail themselves of 
 the piano. And at the hours when this was 
 possible, late in the evening, the German 
 gentlemen were able to entertain them with 
 some of the best music of the time, rendered 
 jwith real appreciation. 
 
 Out of these intimacies grew up a habit 
 which gave to the neighborhood room its 
 largest constituency. For every Sunday af- 
 ternoon, after the different chapels and Bible 
 classes were over, one and another of the 
 leaders of the music fell into the habit of 
 dropping in to see whom he might meet at 
 the club-room. And, naturally, such a clus- 
 ter of visitors would gather round one or an- 
 other instrument, and sing together. It did 
 not happen long, that there was such singing 
 by four or five of the best voices in New Al- 
 toona, before one or another of their friends, 
 ladies or gentlemen, liked to come in to hear 
 them.
 
 FOUR AND FIVE. 155 
 
 These did not come in to hear them for 
 many Sunday afternoons before a chorus was 
 formed from them, of voices not unused to 
 singing with others ; so that, before Christ- 
 mas time, here was an unorganized musical 
 society, which could rely quite confidently 
 upon meeting together on Sunday afternoons, 
 and which gradually arranged itself, under 
 the natural lead of those who could lead best, 
 for the performance of more than the simple 
 psalm-tunes, or other music, with which they 
 had begun. The young gentlemen who had 
 unwittingly founded a musical society in this 
 way were glad enough to welcome such visit- 
 ors. 
 
 They made it the occasion for their reg- 
 ular receptions of the friends in the town 
 who had been kind to them. They compelled 
 Cornelia, who was the matron, housekeeper, 
 stewardess, and woman-of-all-work of their 
 establishment, and who was by no means un- 
 willing to extend its hospitalities they com- 
 pelled her to furnish a cup of tea and a biscuit
 
 156 FOUR AND FIVE. 
 
 for anybody who came, and for themselves, 
 found themselves gladly in the position of 
 hosts of a large and pleasant company as 
 every Sunday evening came. In such mat- 
 ters it seems almost impossible to begin, but 
 after a beginning has made itself, by one or 
 another accident, such institutions grow with 
 their own success. If they do not succeed, 
 by a very natural law they die. But so it 
 happened, in this case, that there grew up, as 
 the winter went on, a very pleasant gather- 
 ing, once a week, of all sorts and conditions 
 of men, as in the week-day evenings the 
 young men had brought together quite a large 
 colony of all sorts and conditions of boys.
 
 FOUR AND FIVE. 1 57 
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 TT happened, in the early part of the winter, 
 that the Polytechnic boys had challenged 
 the boys of the Military Seminary, at Auster- 
 litz, ten miles above them on the river, to a 
 contest of ice-boats, five on a side. The 
 greatest interest was felt, not only among 
 the boys of the school, but by the people of 
 the two towns, in the contest. Harrison 
 was the commander of the Halcyon, a boat 
 which carried three, and was rated for the 
 purposes of the race as in class No. 2. The 
 rule was strict that she must carry three pas- 
 sengers, but the weight of these three was 
 not prescribed. Harrison's party had been 
 made up long ago. Beside himself he had 
 Guthrie, who was as good a fellow on the ice 
 as he was himself, and little Flower, rather a 
 pet of all of them, a fifth-class boy. It was.
 
 FOUR AND FIVE. 
 
 said of Flower that when he was cold Harri- 
 son put him in his ulster pocket and carried 
 him home. This was not true. And Flower 
 was in no sort a milk-sop or baby. But he 
 was small, it must be confessed. And when 
 his weight was asked by the reporters for the 
 press, and Flower told them to guess, they 
 put him down as " low in the forty ounces." 
 The truth was that he hardly weighed one 
 hundred and ten pounds. Now as Harrison 
 and Guthrie between them weighed, with 
 their winter rig, fully three hundred and 
 thirty, it was generally believed, in the deli- 
 cacy to which such calculations are carried, 
 that little Flower's light weight made him 
 one of the most essential members of the 
 Halcyon's crew. 
 
 Harrison himself did not share in this her- 
 esy, nor did Guthrie. They said that the 
 Halcyon would carry old Porpoise himself, 
 and beat any boat the Lobster Heads could 
 bring round the point. " Lobster Head " was 
 a familiar name attached to the military stu-
 
 FOUR AND FIVE. 159 
 
 dents, from the color of the caps they wore. 
 But, for all this, Harrison knew perfectly well 
 that his friends in the school, who were per- 
 fectly determined that the Halcyon should 
 take the cup in the number two races, at- 
 tached great importance to the determination 
 he had early announced to take Flower as 
 his able-bodied seaman. He was the captain, 
 Guthrie was the lieutenant, and Flower was 
 rated as able-bodied seaman, or crew. 
 
 It was, therefore, with a dismay only second 
 to what he would have felt had some one 
 told him that the mast of the Halcyon had 
 been cut up for fuel, that Harrison heard an 
 announcement from Flower, as on the morn- 
 ing of the fatal Saturday he ran in to the one 
 recitation of the day, an exercise with old 
 Porpoise, who was the modern language pro- 
 fessor, and with whom they were reading 
 Hermann and Dorothea. 
 
 Flower was standing on the steps. " Oh, 
 Harrison, I can't tell you how sorry I am. 
 But here is the telegram. My grandmother
 
 I6O FOUR AND FIVE. 
 
 is dead, and I am to take the 11.30 train 
 home. I've got to go, Harrison ! " 
 
 It was a supreme moment for Harrison, 
 and he came through it magnificently. If an 
 instant of what might have been rage swept 
 over him, he never even told of it afterwards, 
 and it did not show itself on his face. His 
 face simply showed sympathy with the boy. 
 
 " My poor, dear boy," he said. " I am so 
 sorry, and only yesterday you showed me 
 that funny letter from her. Let me come 
 and help you pack your traps." 
 
 The boy was wholly melted by Harrison's 
 sympathy, and only at this moment did he 
 shed a tear. 
 
 " Oh, no, Harrison," said he, " the other 
 fellows will get them to the train. I said I 
 would run round here so that you might be 
 thinking what you could do." 
 
 " Never mind me, dear boy, never mind 
 me," said Harrison. " You shall see in the 
 paper that we have beaten them out of sight." 
 And he squeezed little Flower's hand so that
 
 FOUR AND FIVE. 
 
 the bones almost broke into little pieces, but 
 so that Flower was delighted all that day. 
 Harrison did not kiss the child, as he was 
 tempted to do, because he was afraid he 
 might not like it. But Flower went off on 
 his sad ride, sure that he had the sympathy 
 of the head of the school, and with such pride 
 as fourteen medals and fifteen diplomas would 
 not have given him. 
 
 And Harrison was left to vary the dialogue 
 in Herman and Dorothea with speculations 
 as to who there was whom, at a moment's no- 
 tice, he could get to take the place of little 
 Flower. 
 
 The good genius of the Halcyon guided 
 him after all. When at last old Porpoise's 
 sixtieth minute had crawled by, and when he 
 had said, " I will now excuse you, shentlemen ; 
 but I wish we had a few minutes more, dat I 
 might read to you a short letter which on dis 
 occasion Goethe wrote to his friends in Stutt- 
 gar," when he had looked round expecting 
 the class to stop and ask him to do so, and 
 ii
 
 1 62 FOUR AND FIVE, 
 
 when, instead of this, they had rushed madly 
 down stairs, then, and not till then, could 
 Harrison run to the bursar's to ask where a 
 certain lad named Little] ohn boarded, whom 
 he had seen at the ball ground. Littlejohn, 
 also, was one of the new boys. The bursar, 
 it need hardly be said, was out, and his as- 
 sistant, Miss Bothers, knew nothing on that 
 subject. 
 
 " Nor on any other," said Harrison, bitter- 
 ly, to himself, as he stood on the steps of the 
 office, and looked south and looked north, 
 wondering what bursars did on Saturday 
 mornings, and where they regaled them- 
 selves. It was at that moment that the good 
 genius of the Halcyon sent a baker's boy in- 
 to the street with some rolls for an afternoon 
 tea which the bursar's wife gave to the Soro- 
 sis of the city. In an instant all sorrows 
 were ended. For Harrison knew the boy. 
 He was one of the music club. He had been 
 retained because of the exquisite soprano 
 which some one had noticed at a school exhi-
 
 FOUR AND FIVE. 163 
 
 bition. The boy admired Harrison with that 
 sort of unspoken enthusiasm with which a 
 drummer-boy might have regarded the great 
 Napoleon. His delight may be conceived 
 when this more than emperor spoke to him. 
 
 " Why, Sullivan, is that you ? Sullivan, 
 where shall you be this afternoon ? " 
 
 " Down on Front Street, Mr. Harrison, 
 where Seventh Street comes down to the 
 wharf. Mr. Woodman has a pile of boards 
 there, and his boy, that's ' Chip Woodman' 's 
 going to save places for all of us. We shall 
 seethe Halcyon when she doubles Cat-Head." 
 
 " Then you can get off from Mr. Whitbred." 
 
 " Oh yes, sir ; he is going, too, with Mrs. 
 Whitbred. Jem, he's to drive. They's go- 
 ing down to Cat-Head, but I'd rather be at 
 Woodman's on the boards." 
 
 " Sullivan, how should you like to take lit- 
 tle Flower's place on the Halcyon ? " 
 
 Oh ! the bliss of Sullivan as he was made 
 to understand that the question was not chaff, 
 but that the great man of the day had offered
 
 164 FOUR AND FIVE. 
 
 to him, seriously, in the street, while he had 
 the rolls in his basket, the opportunity which 
 could not fall to any other boy in town ! 
 
 And the light heart with which Harrison 
 went up to Flower's lodgings to tell him that 
 all was right, and to borrow an ulster from 
 him, so that little Sullivan might not be cold ! 
 " He might have had mine, of course, but if 
 you can let him have yours, there's no need 
 of carrying an extra pound of wool." 
 
 So little Sullivan was entered as " able- 
 bodied seaman vice Flower, disabled." So 
 little Sullivan was permitted to sit forward, 
 with the most emphatic injunction that he 
 was to do nothing. He was not to wink, 
 Guthrie told him, except when the wind was 
 W. S. W., or quarter west, and then only 
 when he was sure that the Hard-Scrabble was 
 a mile astern. He must not say a word, and 
 must not blow his nose under any circum- 
 stances. If Guthrie had told him that he 
 must stand on his head through the match, 
 little Sullivan would have gone.
 
 FOUR AND FIVE. 165 
 
 Well girt in Flowers's extra ulster, he re- 
 ported at the moment, and, as if he had sailed 
 on ice-boats since he was born, took his place. 
 In this little space we must not tell the story 
 of that famous match. Only that as they 
 were on the home-stretch, after they had 
 safely passed that nasty hole by the Willows, 
 Guthrie undertook not to brush his hair, 
 indeed, or to wink more than he shoud have 
 done, but actually to cross the boat he 
 never could tell why. He caught both his 
 heavy boots in the sheet and fell heavily, 
 dragging the sheet so hard that the Halcyon 
 at once felt the strain and keeled over as 
 never boat did keel. Harrison dragged him- 
 self to the weather side and lay on it at 
 length, and Guthrie, of course, tried to free 
 himself. But there were ten seconds of 
 awful suspense before the sail fluttered free, 
 and in an instant more fell on the deck. 
 
 Little Sullivan had drawn a vicious-looking 
 knife, a miniature bowie Guthrie called it, 
 and cut the sheet, while at the same moment 
 he let the halyard go.
 
 1 66 FOUR AND FIVE. 
 
 Of course, the boat lost way. She would 
 not have stopped, in a mile, at that speed. 
 Of course, the sheet was free from Guthrie's 
 legs in an instant, and was knotted again in 
 half a minute more. Up went the sail, and 
 the Halcyon flew as before. They had lost 
 half a mile, but they had it to lose. 
 
 " I am afraid little Flower would not have 
 done it," said Guthrie, as he told the story 
 of his mishap. I am afraid he does not carry 
 a sheath-knife in his pistol-pocket." 
 
 And when the Halcyon came past Cat- 
 Head, with nothing else in sight for thirty- 
 seven seconds, when she flew to the signal- 
 flag, who so proud as little Sullivan ? And 
 when the Polytechnic, in a mass, met the 
 three victors, there were three chairs in which 
 they were to be carried above the heads of 
 the rest, and little Sullivan, able-bodied sea- 
 man, was in one of the three. 
 
 " He says ' I done it,' and he says ' them 
 is,' and he says 'we be,'" said Harrison, 
 " but he knows how to do the right thing at 
 the right time."
 
 FOUR AND FIVE. 
 
 And as able-bodied seaman he was one of 
 the heroes of the supper which the school 
 gave that evening. It did not in the least 
 demean him, in his own eyes or theirs, that 
 in his other capacity as baker's boy he had, 
 in successive trips, brought the rolls and 
 other bread which made a part of the enter- 
 tainment.
 
 1 68 FOUR AND FIVE, 
 
 CHAPTER XV. 
 
 /^VF course, after this adventure, Guthrie 
 and Harrison both took an interest in 
 little Sullivan, which hardly anything else 
 could have inspired. They had already 
 known his name as a member of the Thurs- 
 day Club, who had been received at the in- 
 tercession of some of the larger boys of that 
 company. But now Harrison made it his 
 business to see to the interests of the " little 
 pirate," moral, mental, and physical. And, as 
 the other boys said, little Sullivan froze to him. 
 Boys who are passing into manhood, any- 
 where between the ages of fifteen and twenty, 
 are quite too apt to forget that they are the 
 idols of smaller boys, and may do, for better, 
 for worse, what they will with them. The 
 loyalty which Man Friday showed to Robin- 
 son Crusoe, as father, chief, benefactor, and
 
 FOUR AND FIVE. 169 
 
 companion, all in one, is only a type of the 
 loyalty which a boy of twelve or thirteen 
 bears to an older boy who is steadily and 
 really kind to him. In this case Harrison 
 soon found that little Sullivan hated school. 
 He found that Mr. Whitbred, his master, 
 only sent him to school because the law of 
 the state compelled him to do so. There 
 was little inducement in the baker's shop to 
 make the boy persevere. It followed that 
 he could not spell, could hardly write, hated 
 to read, and looked at the multiplication table 
 as being the sum of abominations. But Har- 
 rison put a different face on all this. He 
 made little Sullivan understand that if he 
 was to be his boy he must not leave a mes- 
 sage with the washerwoman to say, " mistur 
 harrison wornts his things toosdy." He 
 made him understand that the whole con- 
 cern was disgraced, Polytechnic school, club- 
 house, Halcyon, and able-bodied seaman, if 
 they did not all do all their work as a gen- 
 tleman does it. He then made him under-
 
 FOUR AND FIVE. 
 
 stand that schools were a necessary evil, for 
 the enabling of certain persons to do well 
 such things. 
 
 If Harrison went any further into the ex- 
 planation of the need of study, his words 
 passed vainly over little Sullivan's ears. But 
 when he intimated that he could have noth- 
 ing to do with little Sullivan if he did not 
 know that eleven times eleven is a hundred 
 and twenty-one, little Sullivan said, with the 
 tears in his eyes, that he would do anything at 
 school that the mistress told him, if Mr. Har- 
 rison would show him how. And it ended 
 in Harrison's giving the little cub twenty 
 minutes or half an hour every evening after 
 Sullivan had carried round the evening rolls, 
 and in Outline's taking the same time with 
 him if Harrison was away. 
 
 They taught the boy how to study, an ac- 
 complishment omitted in most schools. They 
 taught him what he was to learn, a duty 
 omitted by most "teachers." The general 
 process of what is called education consists
 
 FOUR AND FIVE. 
 
 in giving a boy a book and telling him to 
 learn what it contains. A teacher, on the 
 other hand, sits down with the boy and 
 teaches him. Little Sullivan had the blessing, 
 for three hours of his life every week, of the 
 personal presence and inspiration of two 
 young men who wanted to teach him. He 
 learned more every day from them than he 
 learned in his six hours at school. Best of 
 all, he began to have some self-respect, he 
 learned that a baker's boy is just as impor- 
 tant a person in the make-up of human society 
 as the captain of the eleven, if he choose to do 
 perfectly well the business which is entrusted 
 to bakers' boys. 
 
 What followed next, as has been intimated, 
 was his loyal surrender of such faculties as 
 he had, in any moment of time which he had, 
 to Harrison. Before breakfast little Sullivan 
 was in the reading room, hoping for a word 
 or nod from Harrison, and only too glad if he 
 might take a parcel to the express, or a de- 
 layed letter to the post office. When the
 
 FOUR AND FIVE. 
 
 Thursday Club met, here was little Sullivan 
 arrayed on the side of order, and by the same 
 inspiration by which Lamartine worked a like 
 miracle in creating the Garde Mobile. It was 
 no harm to Harrison, Guthrie, Friday, and 
 the rest of the Polytechnic young men, to see 
 that the members of that school were not the 
 only persons in the world, and to learn that 
 while the trustees of the school, the gentle- 
 men who endowed it, the teachers, and the 
 rest of mankind were doing what they could 
 to provide a first-rate education for the 
 scholars, those young gentlemen themselves 
 had some duties toward the rest of the world. 
 Before the winter was over several such al- 
 liances had been formed between the first-class 
 men and the "little fellows." You would see 
 a first-class man down on the sand-lots in the 
 spring, coaching the little fellows as they 
 played rounders, and making the game de- 
 velop into scientific base-ball. And this was 
 not from a general notion of philanthropy, 
 or from a sense of duty worked out in any fit
 
 FOUR AND FIVE. 
 
 of resolution-making. Each young man who 
 took up such an enterprise did it because he 
 had formed a personal friendship with some 
 lad, who had, perhaps, never had a kind word 
 spoken to him before by a boy who was his 
 superior in age, in opportunities, and in social 
 standing. And it was thus that it happened 
 that, when the school-term was at last finished, 
 and they gathered on the landing for the 
 steamboat which was to take them on the 
 first stage on their journey to the Four-and- 
 Five camp, not only all the Polytechnic fel- 
 lows of that club met, with their guns, rods, 
 camp-stools, and other equipage, but that 
 each one of them had a smaller satellite 
 among whom little Sullivan was recognized 
 as a sort of chief, to be distinguished, indeed, 
 by the neatness of his dress, and the almost 
 military precision of his bearing. And these 
 five boys, by one device or another, were to 
 have a long summer holiday with the you^g 
 men from the Polytechnic, in their camp in 
 the Kaatskills
 
 174 FOUR AND FIVE. 
 
 " Sullivan, have you a bowie knife in your 
 trousers pocket ? " 
 
 " Oh ! Mr. Eveleth, you know I would not 
 carry such a thing ! "
 
 FOUR AND FIVE. 17 S 
 
 CHAPTER XVI. 
 
 '"T^HE camp was just in the edge of the 
 forest. Since the boys first went up 
 there, there had been a good deal of wood 
 cut and hauled away. But, fortunately for 
 them, their own special foraging-ground had 
 not been much molested. And Friday, Har- 
 rison and Guthrie, who were on the ground a 
 day before the others, cleared out the brush 
 and rubbish a little east of the ground they 
 had held the year before, so that they had al- 
 ready four tents standing when the advance 
 of the great party arrived from Rickett's. 
 Their numbers were so large now that there 
 were to be eleven tents in all, besides the 
 great foresail doubled, which had been bought 
 from a canal man, and served as an awning 
 or a shelter, as the case might require, when 
 they were at breakfast, dinner, or supper.
 
 FOUR AND FIVE. 
 
 "There will be these two streets," said 
 Guthrie, "running back from the clearing, 
 and on each side of each street three tents. 
 Here and here will be two tents more, and 
 all the tents have come. And there are two 
 tubs full of tent-pins, and here are four or 
 five mallets that Friday and I made yester- 
 day. Try to keep the tents as near the lines 
 as you can, because it makes the whole more 
 ship-shape, but if there is a rock in the way, 
 why there is a rock in the way, that's all." 
 
 Such were_the commands, and almost all 
 the commands, which were given, Guthrie's 
 authority being simply that of the person who 
 knew most about the business, had taken the 
 most pains, and one of those who were first 
 upon the ground. The first group fell in and 
 went to work, the old boys showing the ten- 
 derfeet what must be done, and as a second 
 set arrived they found their work and their 
 places. The tents had all been hauled up 
 from the station when the first boys came. 
 
 The next morning Guthrie and Harrison
 
 FOUR AND FIVE. 
 
 and Friday issued these general orders, which 
 Guthrie read from the head of his table under 
 the doubled fore-sail. 
 
 GENERAL ORDERS. 
 
 CAMP FOUR AND FIVE. 
 
 1. As there is no general no one can give 
 commands. 
 
 2. As there are thirty-nine good fellows 
 here, the common sense of most will show 
 the need of some system. 
 
 3. There are four horses, and only four, 
 within three miles of us. All the owners are 
 glad to let them, but it is desirable that we 
 shall, among ourselves, understand who shall 
 hire them, so that no fellow may, without 
 meaning to, break up another fellow's plans. 
 
 4. The fishing-tackle, the axes, the fixed 
 ammunition, and other things which belong 
 to the club, must be under somebody's care. 
 
 5. Lots will therefore now be drawn for an 
 "officer of the day." The officer of the day, 
 will have an office in the public tent, Choctaw, 
 and he must be there, or have some other 
 fellow in his place, to know what has become 
 of the tools, and to tell about the horses. 
 
 12
 
 FOUR AND FIVE. 
 
 To-morrow another lot will be drawn, and so 
 on, till every fellow has been officer of the 
 day. But, for the first week, none of the 
 new fellows will have to be officer of the day, 
 because they do not yet know how. 
 
 This "general order" Guthrie read, with a 
 good deal of fun. The boys were not taken 
 by surprise. Since their numbers had en- 
 larged so much, they knew that they must 
 have some method in their affairs, and this 
 was their simple government. It worked 
 perfectly well through the whole summer, 
 and they found they needed no other rules 
 of administration. 
 
 The new members, younger or older, soon 
 fell into the simple habits of camp-life. It 
 could hardly be said that any one was detailed 
 to cook or any one to set the table, though in 
 fact some watchful care was given that these 
 pleasures should change hands, and every- 
 body have his chance at them. Some of the 
 new-comers had been in other camps where 
 they faced nature as our boys did not, and
 
 FOUR AND FIVE. 1/9 
 
 had more to teach than to learn. But nobody 
 was "set up," everybody stuck to the mot- 
 toes, and therefore bore his brother's burden 
 as well as his own, and they found that every 
 one shared his brother's pleasure, and doubled 
 his own.
 
 FOUR AND FIVE* 
 
 CHAPTER XVIL 
 
 TF Ned, who is now the secretary of the 
 dub, ever publishes its records and I 
 wish he would we shall know what they did 
 in the next fifty days. The record fell to the 
 officer of the day. He made it up by the 
 camp-fire, after supper, calling across, from 
 one to another, for information, and, as may 
 be imagined, picking up a good deal of chaff 
 in reply. There were present, "ready for 
 duty," when the tents were all pitched, the 
 nineteen who had parted last year, and, to 
 the great joy of all, " Inez," Blondin Coram's 
 pard. But Inez, who had the right to invite 
 a new member, had not brought any one with 
 him. The boys made a great favorite of 
 Inez. Such a queer name it was for a man ! 
 But that he did not understand. There was 
 nothing he did not know about roughing it
 
 FOUR AND FIVE. 
 
 And, on the other hand, naturally enough, 
 there were things in which he was simple as 
 a child, and hi which the most common meth- 
 ods of life amazed him. 
 
 Some of the fellows wasted a day or two 
 in digging and chopping and pulling and 
 hauling, up by the reservoir, to see if there 
 were any more gold moidores. It was quite 
 in vain that Eveleth and his party, who had 
 discovered the prize, assured them that those 
 which were found were in a rotten belt, were 
 hardly under ground at all, and that every- 
 thing indicated that this was all the store of 
 some one, traveller or hunter, who had left it 
 here, and never returned to take it After a 
 good deal of useless hard work the new ad- 
 venturers came to the same conclusion. Inez, 
 on his part, could not believe that the Kaats- 
 kills did not contain something worth pros- 
 pecting for. And for some days, for the first 
 week, he led off parties to try this stream or 
 that. They brought hi a few stones, rather 
 heavier than the average, but nothing that
 
 1 82 FOUR AND FIVE. 
 
 satisfied Blondin or his pard. Eveleth re- 
 cruited a working-party which blasted two 
 ledges which ran across what people had 
 come to know as " Coram's road." Harrison 
 and Friday started a fish-preserve in behind 
 Hans Clove, and there were many minor en- 
 terprises. But, as Ned said one night, when 
 he and his party brought in six hundred and 
 seventeen handsome trout, nothing, in the 
 long run, " panned out so well " as their old- 
 fashioned prospecting with hook and line. 
 Among a thousand such enterprises, which 
 must not be recorded here, seven happy weeks 
 went by. Some of the fellows tried to cram 
 up for some college examinations which were 
 pending. But, to speak in general, they left 
 the cares of common life well behind them ; 
 they found what the world was and what it 
 was good for, they did not think God far off, 
 and their lives grew larger every day. They 
 looked up and looked forward, and this com- 
 pelled them to look outside themselves, and 
 to, " Lend a Hand."
 
 FOUR AND FIVE. 183 
 
 Eveleth and Guthrie had to leave before 
 the end of the encampment. And this depart- 
 ure was made the occasion of a great farewell 
 dinner. Mah-mah outdid herself." Old Coram 
 provided two giant turkeys, which, as he de- 
 clared, had known their proud destiny from 
 their birth. Friday and Tom Persefant had 
 led parties to preserves of trout known to 
 none but them, and it may be safely said that 
 the provision of the finest of fish was inex- 
 haustible, even by boyish appetites. The ir- 
 rigated farm, which was in its perfection, pro- 
 duced sweet corn at command for the roasting 
 by the Princess and her satellites. Among 
 these satellites stood prominent a niece, taller 
 even than the Princess, and wonderful to 
 look upon. She was said to descend on 
 her father's side from Red Jacket himself. 
 Whatever her attributes of command, she 
 knew how to ingratiate herself into the sym- 
 pathies of such a crew of fishermen and hun- 
 ters as were these merry men, and, all through 
 the summer, they insisted that she must ac-
 
 184 FOUR AND FIVE. 
 
 cept the mottoes and be chosen a member ot 
 the dab. As "for lending a hand," Cornelia 
 Sisson was always giving the use of two ; as 
 for looking out and not in, she was keeping 
 the run of the buttons of thirty and more 
 boys, and gave little time indeed to her own 
 " record," as the boys said. And they knew 
 very well that her faith in God's goodness 
 was unshakable, and her vision of the shining 
 shore unclouded. While all this is said of 
 the leaders in the cooking of the dinner, it 
 ought to be added that three years of picnic 
 life in the woodland had not been useless for 
 any of the older boys. There was not one 
 but could fry a trout or roast an ear of corn 
 or a tomato to perfection, or whose hot bis- 
 cuits were to be despised. 
 
 Mr. Geddes had come up from Philadelphia 
 with a store of twenty-five Portuguese moi- 
 dores, so like the treasure-trove of last year 
 that Eveleth and Guthrie declared that he 
 must have dug them from another birch tree, 
 and cut them from another belt. In fact
 
 FOUR AND FIVE. 185 
 
 they had cost him, through a hanking house, 
 a correspondence with Lisbon, covering two 
 or three months. The Newburg jeweler, who 
 made the badges before, had skilfully done 
 the same service again, the ribbons were cut 
 and rightly folded, and twenty-five were ready 
 for new members. Before the company 
 marched into the dining tent Inez and the 
 new boys were told that they were to be initi- 
 ated in form into the club. The older boys 
 sat on stumps, or lay on the ground. The 
 new fellows stood in a semi-circle, half sur 
 rounding them and Eveleth, who sat on the 
 largest stump quite in the middle. 
 
 " I am going away first, fellows," he said, 
 " so they say I may give you your medals 
 and receive you into the club. Gentlemen, 
 all, we will repeat the mottoes." So the 
 whole thirty-nine lustily joined in shouting : 
 " Look up and not down, look forward and 
 not back, look out and not in, and lend a 
 hand." " You have heard them before, fel- 
 lows. No one would have asked one of you
 
 1 86 FOUR AND FIVE. 
 
 to come here if he had not known you could 
 be trusted to remember them; yes, and to 
 remember them when it was not easy. Now, 
 I say, fellows, I am glad to give you the 
 badges, but it is no good taking them unless 
 a fellow in his own heart promises before 
 God that he will get some other fellow to do 
 the same, and that fellow must get another, 
 and so on. Don't you all agree to that ? 
 
 And he stood up, and all the big boys on 
 the stumps and on the ground stood up, and 
 they cried out, " All of us." 
 
 And the new boys "caught on," and, led 
 by Inez, they cried out, "All of us, all of us." 
 So Eveleth called them to him, one by one, 
 pinned the ribbon to each boy's shirt, re- 
 peated the first motto, and the boy repeated 
 the second, Eveleth the third, and the boy 
 the fourth, until all were decorated, Inez 
 first of alL 
 
 Then, with great ceremony, the thirty-nine 
 proceeded to their feast Knives and forks 
 clattered, the Princess and Cornelia and a
 
 FOUR AND FIVE. I?7 
 
 lot of the little fellows served the dinner, and 
 when the hunger of the first set was partly 
 satisfied they took their own places and 
 joined with the others. 
 
 When at last great bowls of early apples, 
 with pears and peaches and some grapes that 
 Tom Tyler's father had sent down from 
 Brockport, showed that the feast was coming 
 to an end, Eveleth stood up and said : 
 
 " Fellows, I have to catch the down train, 
 you know, so I shall say 'good-bye' now, 
 though I hate to. tft makes it worse because 
 I shall not be here next year, and you know 
 Harrison will not, and Friday is wanted to 
 talk Spanish to them off there, and Geddes, 
 oe will be in Japan. But, I say, fellows, 
 some of you will be here, and you will re- 
 member us. I am instructed by the ' original 
 Four' to make over all then- traps to the 
 club, to be administered by what will be left 
 of the 'First Five.' And, I say, fellows, 
 whether we come or whether we go, just let 
 us take the club with us." And here the
 
 1 88 FOUR AND FIVE. 
 
 others clapped. " For it is not this place 
 merely, though we have such good times 
 here; it is that we never quarrel here, we 
 never sulk here, and no fellow is mean here. 
 Now that is not merely a Kaatskill dodge, 
 it is a good deal bigger than that, and it is a 
 dodge a man may carry with him to school 
 or to business. He may carry it to Japan, 
 as Geddes will, or he may carry it to Monte- 
 video, as Friday will. I say good-bye, then, 
 but I say it to promise that I will stand by 
 the club and the mottoes, wherever I go, and 
 before three years are passed I will try to 
 make some other good fellows stand by 
 them." 
 
 The others, well led by Guthrie, sprang to 
 their feet, and gave him three cheers. Then 
 Guthrie kept his feet and made the longest 
 speech which had ever been heard from him. 
 He said that he also should not be there an- 
 other summer. He expected to be in the Cor- 
 dilleras of Mexico, where he was engaged by a 
 mining company. " But what Eveleth says,
 
 FOUR AND FIVE. 189 
 
 I will stand to," said Guthrie. "I do not 
 mean that I am sure that I can make a club 
 in Mexico, with a parlor like what we had 
 at school, or that we can meet once a week 
 and call the roll and go through a ritual. But 
 I do mean that I and my new friends shall 
 stand by each other. No fellow shall get off 
 in a corner and sulk or be lonely. Whether 
 we have a ritual or not, we will 'look out and 
 not in,' and we will 'lend a hand.' And I 
 for one will not live a little, twopence half- 
 penny life, just for what I eat or I drink, or 
 the money in my pocket. God will help me 
 if I let Him help me, and I mean to live in 
 the biggest sort of life there is. I mean to 
 be looking forward to whatever is possible, 
 instead of worrying myself about what I did 
 not do yesterday. There is my interpretation 
 of the four mottoes," said Guthrie, seriously. 
 " I've tried that interpretation for three years 
 now, and it has never failed me. With God, 
 for man, in Heaven. I think that is about 
 the whole of it."
 
 19 FOUR AND FIVE. 
 
 "There is one thing I'm sorry for," he 
 said, after a rather serious pause. " Because 
 we have not kept up to what I thought we 
 should do, and to what at the beginning of 
 the winter I said we would do. We do not 
 count forty, as I hoped we might. We are 
 only thirty-nine. Now they say thirty-nine 
 is a witches' number, and a lucky number, 
 and perhaps it is, but I think forty is a bet- 
 ter number. At least, I am sure that four 
 times ten is forty, and not thirty-nine. Now 
 our book says, 'Ten Times One is Ten.' So 
 that ten times four ought to be forty, in three 
 years. 
 
 "We would have been all right if our 
 friend, Inez, had brought another pard with 
 him. I suppose he thought he could not 
 match Blondin Coram. And I don't think 
 he could." Here all the boys clapped and 
 cheered. "But I think, perhaps, Inez will 
 carry a badge out to Montana with him and 
 start a Ten there, as he says he cannot be 
 here next summer."
 
 FOUR AND FIVE. 
 
 The assembly approved again, and Blondin 
 led Inez forward to receive from Guthrie's 
 hand another badge beside his own. As the 
 hand-clapping died away it was observed that 
 the little boys were trying to persuade Brian 
 Bachmann to speak for them. "Pitch in, 
 Brian." "Stand on that bench, Brian." 
 " Don't be afraid, Brian." Eveleth did not 
 know what was coming, but he cried " Order, 
 order, listen all to Brian Bachmann," and, 
 after he was started, the little fellow went 
 forward very well. " If you please, Mr. Eve- 
 leth and Mr. Guthrie, the new boys want to 
 name the fortieth member. We want to 
 have little lame Dodder for a member, and 
 we want him for our member. Stand up, 
 Jerry," he said to little Dodder. " Don't be 
 afraid." 
 
 And Harrison, who was six feet high, took 
 the timid little fellow in his arms and held 
 him up so that all could see him. Poor little 
 Jerry Dodder was a lame boy, who belonged 
 in the poorest shanty at the crossing. With-
 
 I9 2 FOUR AND FIVE. 
 
 in a week he had found his way to our camp, 
 and the new boys had petted him, and let him 
 go to fish with them. They had lent him 
 lines and hooks, and be it observed, Jerry 
 generally caught more trout than any two of 
 them. 
 
 " You know " said Brian, proceeding confi- 
 dently, now that he had got his wind, " you 
 know there is that about ' the highways and 
 byways.' I always liked that. And Jerry 
 here thought he never saw a highway, but for 
 byways, he can hop with the best of them. 
 And Mr. Geddes says that he thinks some- 
 thing can be done for his foot, and I'm going 
 to take him to Elmira when I go home. And 
 my uncle's a doctor in the hospital, and will 
 help me, and Mr. Beecher will help, and we'll 
 see if he can't be made better. And all the 
 boys will chip in so there will be money 
 enough to bring him home when the time 
 comes." 
 
 Poor little Jerry was crying, and Harrison 
 was crying, and I believe Eveleth himself
 
 FOUR AND FIVE. 1 93 
 
 was crying, when Brian Bachmann had fin- 
 ished his speech. Everybody sprang to his 
 feet and cheered. Harrison brought the 
 little fellow up to Eveleth's table and stood 
 him on it, and Eveleth kissed him, and pinned 
 the ribbon and the badge upon his ragged 
 jacket. 
 
 " We have our fortieth member, fellows," 
 cried Eveleth; "four times ten is forty." 
 And somebody started the T. T. T. song, 
 which they sang with a will, holding hands 
 in a circle. And then they sang one verse 
 of "Auld Lang Syne." And then Fred 
 slipped off, brought up old Coram's wagon, 
 and took Eveleth and Guthrie to the train. 
 
 Some of the club meet every summer in 
 the Clove, and they bring new fellows with 
 them. But the original forty have never met 
 again. Geddes is in Japan, Friday is in 
 Montevideo, Fred is setting up sugar ma- 
 chinery in Algeria, Harrison is doing the 
 same thing in the Sandwich Islands, and 
 12
 
 194 FOUR AND FIVE. 
 
 Brian Bachmann is living with his uncle in 
 Hamburg, and goes to a gymnasium. So 
 every continent has a representative of the 
 First Forty. 
 
 THE END.
 
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 FRANKLIN IN FRANCE. 
 
 Part I. The Alliance. 
 Part II. The Treaty of Peace, and Franklin's Life till his Return. 
 
 BY EDWARD E. HALE AND E. E. HALE, JR. 
 
 From Original Documents, most of which are now published for the 
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 with which they have selected and arranged their material, and for the literary ability 
 displayed in the descriptive and connecting matter. Christian Union. 
 
 Enough of history and explanation has been interwoven to make a clear and connected 
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 ihreefold character of statesman, of man in private life, and philosopher, is this repre- 
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 and clearer relief the rare qualifications which Franklin possessed for his task and the debt 
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 A BOOK O' NINE TALES. 
 
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 of the Brier" etc. 
 
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 Mr. Bates writes smoothly and pleasantly. His stories and sketches make 
 very entertaining reading. 
 
 " A Book o' Nine Tales," by Arlo Bates, whose writing has been familiar in 
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 calculated to move the emotions more than will be comfortable in holiday hours. 
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 every-day, pretty, tasteful fashion. A weird tale is " The Tuberose," which 
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 a popular seaside and country volume. San Francisco Chronicle. 
 
 " A Book o' Nine Tales," by Arlo Bates, who has become very popular as a 
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 A VIOLIN OBLIGATO 
 
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 from grave to gay, these, with an underlying sense of humor that now and then 
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 A QUESTION OF LOVE. 
 
 of 
 
 Translated by ANNIE R. RAMSEY, from the French of 
 
 T. COMBE. 
 
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 The scene is laid in Switzerland, and the narrative has to do with a delight- 
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 The Beacon. 
 
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