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. EDWARD E. HALE'S WRITINGS. TEN TIMES ONE IS TEN. i6mo. #1.00. CHRISTMAS EVE AND CHRISTMAS DAY: Ten Christ- mas Stories. With Frontispiece by Darley. i6mo. $1.25. UPS AND DOWNS. An Every-day Novel. i6mo. $1.501 A SUMMER VACATION. Paper covers. 50 cents. IN HIS NAME. Square i8mo. $1.00. OUR NEW CRUSADE. Square i8mo. $1.00 THE MAN WITHOUT A COUNTRY, and other Tales. i6mo. $1.25. THE INGHAM PAPERS. i6mo. $1.25. WORKINGMEN'S HOMES. Illustrated. i6mo. $1.00. HOW TO DO IT. i6mo. $1.00. HIS LEVEL BEST. i6mo. $1.25. THE GOOD TIME COMING; or, Our New Crusade. A Temperance Story. Square i8mo. Paper covers. 50 cents. GONE TO TEXAS ; or, The Wonderful Adventures of a Pull- man. i6mo. $1.00. CRUSOE IN NEW YORK, and other Stories. i6mo. $1.00. WHAT CAREER ? or, The Choice of a Vocation and the Use of Time. i6mo. $1.25. MRS. MERRIAM'S SCHOLARS. A Story of the " Original Ten." i6mo. $1.00. SEVEN SPANISH CITIES, and the Way to Them. i6mo. $1-25. MR. TANGIER'S VACATIONS. i6mo. $1.25. For sale by all Booksellers. Mailed, postpaid, by the Publishers, ROBERTS BROTHERS, BOSTON. 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 first time. With three newly engraved portraits of Franklin from copies which are now quite rare, and numerous portrait-illustration throughout the text. 2 vols. 8vo. Cloth, gilt top, price $6.00. Half calf extra, $10.00. It has always been recognized that the work of Franklin in France during the nine years of his mission there was of supreme importance to the cause of the American Rev- olution. It has not been so generally recognized, perhaps, to how great an extent his success in his mission was due to his own personal qualities, to his wisdom, discretion, patience, forebearance, equanimity, and such like qualities, which made this simple Quaker from America the peer of the diplomats from all nations of Europe who met him in the French capital. One can realize this better after a careful perusal of the volumes under consideration, and appreciate better the debt we owe to Franklin. . . . The book is indeed a most valuable addition to an historical library, containing a great amount of material which cannot be found elsewhere, admirably arranged and published in most attractive form. The Churchman. A threefold purpose is served by the work before us. It gives in detail, and with shrewd and sensible comment, the history of the diplomatic relations between France and America in our War of Independence; it presents, incidentally, an interesting picture of French social and political life ; and, finally, it throws new light on the sturdy individuality of Franklin himself. Altogether, the authors are to be warmly commended for the skill 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 account of his official residence in that country. The work forms a fine treatise on diplo- matic service, giving as it does Franklin's thoughts and methods of procedure regarding the stipulations effected by him in France, which proved so favorable to America. In the ihreefold character of statesman, of man in private life, and philosopher, is this repre- sentative American presented to the reader. The Chautauquan. There is little, perhaps, which is absolutely new, but this work brings out in stronger and clearer relief the rare qualifications which Franklin possessed for his task and the debt of gratitude we must always owe to his memory. Dr. Hale and his son have brought to- gether, in addition to well-known lefters and documents, many important papers now first published, and have presented a picture of great force and vividness of the difficulties which Franklin had to encounter in Paris, and which he met with so much tact and so serene a temper. The story must be read as a whole, and any attempt to select character- istic extracts from these new letters would only give a very inadequate impression of their intrinsic interest and of the services which they help to illustrate. Boston Post. ROBERTS BROTHERS, PUBLISHERS, BOSTON. MR, MALE'S BOY BOOKS. STORIES OF WAR, Told by Soldiers. STORIES OF THE SEA, Told by Sailors. STORIES OF ADVENTURE, Told by Adventurers. STORIES OF DISCOVERY, Told by Discoverers. STORIES OF INVENTION, Told by Inventors. Collected and edited by EDWARD E. HALE. i6mo, cloth, black and gold. Price, $1.00 per volume. For sale by all booksellers, or mailed, post-paid, on receipt of price by the Publishers, ROBERTS BROTHERS, BOSTON. Messrs. Roberts Brothers' Publications. A BOOK O' NINE TALES. BY ARLO BATES, Author of " A Lad's Love," " Albrecht" " Berries of the Brier" etc. i6mo. Cloth, price, $1.00; paper, 50 cents. Certainly had he done nothing else the present volume should go far toward making him a permanent reputation. " His stories are bright and clever, but they have higher qualities than wit and cleverness. They have the enchantments of the magician, the pathos and passion of the poet. The plan of the volume is ingenious. There are the ' Nine Tales,' and they are separated by eight ' Interludes.' These ' Interludes ' are, practi- cally, bright little social comedies," says Mrs. Moulton in the Boston Herald. 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 magazines and newspapers for several years, is a readable volume of short stories suited to the light leisure of summer days in the country. There are really seven- teen stories, although to make the title appropriate Mr. Bates makes every second one an interlude. They are simple, gracefully written, unambitious tales, not calculated to move the emotions more than will be comfortable in holiday hours. They are short and interesting, with all kinds of motives, dealing with love in every-day, pretty, tasteful fashion. A weird tale is " The Tuberose," which startles one a little and leaves a great deal to the imagination. The book will be a popular seaside and country volume. San Francisco Chronicle. " A Book o' Nine Tales," by Arlo Bates, who has become very popular as a writer of love stories, will attract much attention this season from the great army of readers who wish for "vacation books." These nine stories are capitally told, and are arranged in a novel manner with interludes between. These interludes take the shape of short scenes, arranged as if in a play, the dialogue sustained by two persons, a lady and gentleman, which give an opportunity to portray and satirize in a very effective manner many queer society customs, superstitions, and characters familiar to every one who mingles with the world. They make a most amusing array of characters, that seem to live, so true they are to human nature. " Mere Marchette " is a gem in this unusually good collection of literary jewels. If art/ord Times. Sold by all booksellers, mailed, postpaid, on receipt of price by the publishers, ROBERTS BROTHERS, BOSTON. Messrs. Roberts Brothers' Publications. A VIOLIN OBLIGATO BY MARGARET CROSBY. i6mo. Cloth, price, $1.00; paper, 50 cents. A noteworthy dramatic purpose, acute insight into the recesses of individual character, ready command of the motives that govern the relations of allied or contradictory natures, a persistent recognition of the essential pathos of life to those who look beneath its surface, and a versatility of style that easily ranges from grave to gay, these, with an underlying sense of humor that now and then blossoms out into ample radiance, are the traits and qualifications displayed by Margaret Crosby in "A Violin Obligate and Other Stories." The strength and scope of the tales brought together in this volume are indeed remarkable ; they touch on many phases of human existence, and they appeal to something more than a mere desire for mental distraction. Most of the productions included in this book have a clear ethical purport ; one cannot read them without getting new light upon personal duty and realizing the force of the decree that renders every man and every woman responsible for the influence he or she brings to bear on others. The first story, " A Violin Obligate," deals with the fate of a poor musician in whom the artistic impulse overbalanced artistic capability. " On the South Shore " and "An Islander" have their scenes laid in Nantucket, a region where Miss Crosby is apparently very much at home. The woman whose face is her fortune is the central figure in "A Complete Misunderstanding," and the way in which she wrecks the happiness of two men is related with no attempt at melodramatic exaggeration, but with a straightforward vigor that is always effec- tive. "The Copeland Collection" has a delightful savor of romance; "Last Chance Gulch " unfolds exciting episodes in the life of a Western mining camp : a liaison between a high-born youth and a beautiful sypsv 'S the theme of " A Mad Englishman " ; it is a humble fisherman in a New England village who turns out to be " A Child of Light ; " and in the " Passages from the Journal of a Social Wreck" there is a comedy of the first order. It is seldom that one encounters a collection of short stories from the pen of a single writer where the interest is so diversified and yet so well sustained as in this volume by Miss Crosby. The talent displayed in every one of these essays in fiction is incontest- able. They will take rank at once with the representative work of the foremost American authors in this important field of contemporary literature. The Beacon. Sold everywhere, mailed, postpaid, on receipt of the price by the ROBERTS BROTHERS, BOSTON. Messrs. Roberts Brothers' Publications. A QUESTION OF LOVE. of Translated by ANNIE R. RAMSEY, from the French of T. COMBE. i6mo. Cloth, price, $1.00 ; paper, 50 cents. The scene is laid in Switzerland, and the narrative has to do with a delight- fully original family, consisting of two old men ( one of them almost a centenarian ) ; a spinster housekeeper of quaint, undemonstrative manners ; an elderly servant, always ready to speak her mind on the slightest provocation ; and last, but by no means least, a beautiful girl of eighteen, whose loneliness amid these surroundings, cut off from all companionship with persons of her own age, is forcibly depicted. Pretty little Zoe, with her shy ways and her tender heart, is a most attractive character, and the reader will not wonder that Samuel, the honest son of the neighboring farmer, falls head over heels in love with her. But Samuel's hopes are doomed to disappointment. All the characters are well drawn, and among them old Brutus Romanel is not the least delightful. His one ambition is that he may live to be a hundred, and he comments on the obituary list in the newspaper with a glee that would be disgusting if it were not so artless. Miss Ramsey's transla- tion deserves the highest praise for its freedom from Gallic idioms. Here, evi- dently, is one translator who believes that a translation into English ought to be written in the English language, and not in that droll Anglo-French patois which so often does duty for English at the hands of the ignorant and incompetent The Beacon. It is a clean, sweet-smelling story, a great relief after the quantities of realistic stuff produced by the modern French school. The characterization is excellent, and the style and treatment deserve special commendation. It -is a pretty and wholesome love story that recommends itself specially to the attention of the maidens. Sold by all booksellers, mailed on receipt of price by the publishers, ROBERTS BROTHERS, BOSTON. UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, LOS ANGELES THE UNIVERSITY LIBRARY This book is DUE on the last date stamped below DATE S MAY 06 ILL IC DUE3.M0NTHS 1ECEIVED SEP ENT 993 FROM ANGELES PS 1772 Kale - Four and- five. nut PS 1772 F82