The Poor Rich Man, and the Rich Poor Man/Chapter I
CHAPTER I.
SCHOOL-DAYS.
Just out of the little village of Essex, in New England, and just at the entrance of a rustic bridge, there is a favourite resting-place for loiterers of all ages. One of a line of logs that have been laid down to enable passengers at high water to reach the bridge dry-shod, affords an inviting seat under the drooping limbs of some tall sycamores. There the old sit down to rest their weary limbs, and read with pensive eye the fond histories that memory has written over the haunts of their secluded lives. There, too, the young pause in their sports, and hardly know why their eyes follow with such delight the silvery little stream that steals away from them, kissing the jutting points of the green meadows, and winding and doubling its course as if, like a pleased child, it would, by any pretext, lengthen its stay;—nor, certainly, why no island that water bounds will ever look so beautiful to them as that little speck of one above the bridge with its burden of willows, elders, and clematis; of a summer evening, their every leaf lit with the firefly's lamp;—nor why their eye glances from the white houses of the village street, glimmering through the trees, and far away over the orchards and waving grain of the uplands, and past the wavy line of hills that bound the horizon on one side, to fix on the bald gray peaks of that mountain wall whose Indian story the poet has consecrated. Time will solve to them this why.
Under those sycamores, on a certain afternoon many years past, sat Charlotte May, a pale, sickly-looking girl, talking with Harry Aikin; and beside them Susan May, whose ruddy cheek, laughing eye, and stocky little person presented an almost painful contrast to her stricken sister. Charlotte was examining with a very pleased countenance a new little Bible, bound in red morocco. "Did Mr. Reed give you your choice of the prizes, Harry?" she asked.
"Oh, no; Mr. Reed is too much afraid of exciting our emulation, or rivalry, as he calls it, for that. He would not even call the books he gave us prizes; but he just told us what virtue, or rather quality, we had been most distinguished for."
"I guess I know what yours was, Harry," said Susan May, looking up from weaving a wreath of nightshade that grew about them.
"What do you guess, Susy?"
"Why, kindness to everybody!"
"No, not that."
"Well, then, loving everybody."
Harry laughed and shook his head. "No, nor that, Susy;" and, opening to the first unprinted page of the Bible, he pointed to the following testimony, in his master's autograph. Charlotte read it aloud: "It gives me great pleasure to record here the diligence and success of my esteemed pupil, Harry Aikin, and still more to testify to his strict practice of the golden rule of this book, Do unto others as ye would they should do unto you."
"There, there! I knew I guessed right. You know you couldn't do so if you didn't love everybody; could he, Lottie?"
"You were not very far from right, Susan," replied her sister; "for I am sure Harry could not do so much to make everybody happy if he did not love almost everybody."
"No, indeed, I do not; at least, I feel a great difference. Do you think, for instance, I love Morris Finley or Paulina Clark as well as I love you and Susan? No, not by a sea-full. But, then, it is very true, as mother used to tell me, if you want to love people, or almost love them, just do them a kindness, think how you can set about to make them happier, and the love, or something that will answer the purpose, will be pretty sure to come."
"It will," said Charlotte, with a faint smile; "otherwise how could we live up to the rule of this book; and certainly God never gave us a law that we could not obey if we would. O, Harry, I am so glad you got the Bible instead of any of the other books, for I know you will love it, and study it, and live after it."
"I will try, Lottie."
"But, then, Harry, it seems to me those that are well, and strong, and at ease, can never value that book as those do who are always sick, and suffering pain."
It was the rarest thing in the world for Charlotte to allude to her peculiar trials. Harry looked sad, and little Susan, who had the most marvellous faculty of seeing a bright side to every thing, said, in a tender voice, and putting her arm round her sister's neck,
"Then, Lottie, there is some comfort in being sick, is not there?"
"There is, Susan; there is comfort when you cannot eat, nor sleep, nor walk abroad in the pure air, nor look out upon this beautiful world; when neither doctors' skill nor friends' love can lessen one pang, it is then comfort—it is life to the dead, Susan, to read in this blessed book of God's goodness and compassions; to sit, as it were, at the feet of Jesus, and learn from him who brought life and immortality to light; that there is a world where there is no more sickness nor pain—where all tears are wiped away."
There was a pause, first broken by Susan asking if those that were well and happy did not love to read the Bible too.
"Oh, yes, indeed," replied Harry; "I remember mother used to say she read the Bible for every thing—to make her wiser, and better, and happier. I believe seeing mother so happy over it has made me like it more."
"I should think so," said Susan; "I am sure I should not love to read any thing that did not make me happy—but here comes Morris; what book did you get, Morris?"
"Oh, full of pictures—how lovely!" exclaimed Susan, running over the leaves; "did Paulina Clark get a book, Morris?"
"Yes, and she has changed it at Hutchinson's store for a pink silk handkerchief."
"How could she? I am sorry!" said Charlotte.
"It's just like her!" said Susan; and then, returning Morris's book, she added, "after all, I had rather have Harry's Bible."
"The more goose you, then—my book cost twice as much as his Bible."
"Did it?" Susan was rather crestfallen.
"To be sure it did, and, what is more, I can sell it for twice as much*"
"Ah, then I've caught you, sir; Harry would not sell his Bible for any sum, so by your own rule Harry's is worth the most!"
Morris was somewhat disconcerted. He resumed, in a lowered tone, "Maybe I should not sell it just for the dollar and a half; but, then, when one knows the value of money, one does not like to have so much lying idle. Money should work, as father says. If you could reckon interest and compound interest as well as I can. Miss Susan, I guess you would not like to have your money lying idle on a book-shelf!"
"I don't know what kind of interest compound interest is, Morris; but I know the interest I take in a pleasant book is better than a handful of money, and if I only had the dollar and a half I would give it to you in a minute for that book."
"Only had! Ah, there's the rub! you people that despise money never get it, and that is what father always says."
"Despise it!" repeated Susan, sighing as she knelt on the log between Harry and her sister, and bound over Charlotte's pale forehead the wreath of ominous nightshade. "'Despise money,' Morris, I would do any thing in the world to get enough to take Lottie down to that wonderful New-York doctor; but there's one comfort, Lottie," she added,brightening, "he might not cure you, and then we should feel worse than ever."
"What doctor is Sue speaking of?" asked Harry, looking up eagerly from his Bible.
Charlotte explained that a cousin living in New-York had written to her of a physician in the city, who had been particularly successful in treating diseases of the spine. Her cousin had urged Charlotte's coming to the city, and had kindly offered to receive the poor invalid at her house. "Father," she said, "talks of our going, but I do not think we can make it out, so I don't allow myself to think of it much; and when murmuring thoughts rise, I remember how many rich people there are who travel the world over, and consult all the doctors, and are nothing bettered; and so I put a little patience-salve on the aching place, and that, as Susy would say, is a great comfort when you can't get any thing else."
"Yes—when you can't," replied Harry, fixing his eyes compassionately on Charlotte's face, where, though the cheek was pale, and the eye sunken, the health of the soul was apparent. "But can't there be some way contrived?"
We are trying our best at contrivance, Harry. Father, you know, never has any thing ahead; but he offered himself to let out old Jock by the day, and save all be earns towards the journey; that will be something. I have three dollars left of the last I ever earned, and dear little Susy has given me five dollars, which aunt Mary sent to buy her a cloak."
"And how much will the journey cost, Charlotte?"
"Father says his last journey down to Barnstable cost him but ten dollars besides the provision and fodder he carried in the wagon. New-York is not as far as Barnstable; but horse-keeping there is terrible, and I dare not think what the doctor's bill may be."
"Oh," thought Harry, "if I were only rich! if I were only worth fifty dollars!" Money he had none, but he ran over in his mind all his convertible property. "There's Bounce (his dog); Squire Allen offered me three dollars for Bounce—I thought I would not sell him for a hundred, but he shall have him—and I have been offered two dollars for Sprite and Jumper (two black squirrels he had tamed with infinite pains); and what else have I?" He ran over his little possessions, his wearing apparel, article by article; he had no superfluity—sundry little keepsakes, but they were out of the class of money-value articles—his Bible, it was new and pretty, and would certainly bring a dollar. He looked at it lovingly, and was obliged again to look at Charlotte before he mentally added it to the list. He resolved on his benevolent traffic, and was just saying, "To-morrow, Charlotte, I think I shall have something to add to your store," when Morris, who had taken a seat at some distance, and seemed much absorbed, started up, exclaiming,
"Yes, in five years, at compound interest, I shall have two dollars and a fraction—won't that be a nest-egg, Harry Aikin?"
A tear in Charlotte's eye had already replied to Harry, but any reply to Morris was cut off by the appearance of Charlotte's father, Philip May,coming down the road. Philip was a most inoffensive, kind-hearted creature; and, though rather an unproductive labourer in worldly matters, he had, by dint of harming no one, and serving every one rather better than himself, kept bright the links of human brotherhood, and made them felt, too, for his general appellation was "Uncle Phil." As "Uncle Phil" approached, it was apparent that the calm current of his feelings had been ruffled. Little Susan, her father's pet, with the unerring eye of a loving child, was the first to perceive this. "What's the matter, father?" she asked.
"Oh, dreadful bad news! I don't know how you'll stand it, Charlotte"—the girls were breathless—"poor Jock is gone!"
"Gone, sir! how gone? what do you mean?"
"Clean gone!—drownded!"
"Drowned! oh, dear, how sorry I am!" and "poor Jock!" was exclaimed and reiterated, while Uncle Phil turned away to hide certain convulsive twitches of his muscles.
"But it's some comfort, any how," said Susan, the first to recover herself, "that he was so old he must have died of his own accord before long."
"And that comfort you would have had if it had been me instead of Jock, Susan."
"Oh, father!"
"I did not mean nothing, child; I'm sure I think it is kind of providential to have a lively disposition, that's always rising over the top of every trouble. But then it's so inconvenient to lose Jock just now, when he's arning money for us; and how in natur am I ever to get Charlotte to New-York without him?"
"Don't think of that now, father; how did the accident happen?"
"Ah, that's the onluckiest of all; it beats all that Sam should be so careless. You know I let Jock out to Sam Glover to plough his meadow—you said, Charlotte, Jock looked too low in flesh for hard work; I wish I had taken your warning! Well, you see, when Sam went to dinner, he tied Jock close by the river, and somehow the poor critter backed down the bank into the river, and fell on his back, and he was tied in such a fashion he could not move one way or the other, and the water running into his nostrils, and ears, and mouth—and when Sam came back from dinner it was all over with him."
"Then," said Morris, "it was wholly owing to Sam Glover's carelessness?"
"To be sure, there was no need on't; if it had been me, I should have calculated to tie the horse so that if he did back into the river he could have helped himself out."
"Better have tied him where there was no danger of such an accident, Uncle Phil." Uncle Phil was right in his calculations. What were accidents to other men, made up the current of events to him. "But," proceeded Morris, "you can certainly make Sam pay for the horse?" Uncle Phil made no reply. "You mean to get it out of him, don't you, Uncle Phil?"
"I kinda hate to—Sam ain't rich."
"No—but he is not poor. I heard him say to father, when he was talking of buying the mountain farm, that he had two hundred dollars clear of the world."
"He did not, did he?"
"He certainly did, and I don't see why you should make him a present of your horse."
"Nor do I see, father, why you should not be just to yourself," said Charlotte.
"Well, well, I calculate to do what's fair, all round—but Sam felt bad, I tell you! and I did not want to bear down on him; but when I've got the mind of the street, I'll do something about speaking to him."
Charlotte mentally determined to keep her father up to this resolution, the most energetic that could be expected from him; and all lamenting the fate of poor Jock, the parties separated and proceeded homeward.