The Gentleman from Everywhere - James Henry Foss

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barbecue, for this was the time of the famous "hard cider" campaign.

      The Indians had been there too and, filling up with "fire water," their former war-path proclivities had returned to their "empty, swept, and garnished" minds, to the extent that they yearned to decorate their belts with our scalps.

      Our preservers scattered to their homes, and the would-be scalpers were seen no more, leaving the world to darkness and to us in the woods. The woods, where Adam and Eve lived and loved, where Pan piped, and Satyrs danced, the opera house of birds; the woods, green, imparadisaical, mystic, tranquillizing—to the poet perhaps when all is well—but to us, they seemed haunted by spirits of evil, the yells of the demons seemed to echo and reecho; but an indefinable something seemed to sympathize with the infinite pathos of our lives, and at last sleep, "the brother of death," folded us in his arms, and the curtain fell.

      "There is a place called Pillow-land,

       Where gales can never sweep

       Across the pebbles on the strand

       That girds the Sea of Sleep.

      'Tis here where grief lets loose the rein,

       And age forgets to weep,

       For all are children once again,

       Who cross the Sea of Sleep.

      The gates are ope'd at daylight close,

       When weary ones may creep,

       Lulled in the arms of sweet repose,

       Across the Sea of Sleep.

      Oh weary heart, and toil-worn hand,

       At eve comes rest to thee,

       When ply the boats to Pillow-land,

       Across the Sleepy sea.

      Thank God for this sweet Pillow-land,

       Where weary ones may creep,

       And breathe the perfume on the strand

       That girds the Sea of Sleep."

      It is pleasant in this sunset of life, to recall the testimony of my brothers that through all those troublous scenes, father and mother were soothed and consoled by an unfaltering faith in the ultimate triumph of the good and true, that their faces were often illumined as they repeated to each other those priceless words of the sweet singer,

      "Drifting over a sunless sea, cold dreary mists encircling me,

       Toiling over a dusty road with foes within and foes abroad,

       Weary, I cast my soul on Thee, mighty to save even me,

       Jesus Thou Son of God."

      At last the "perils by land and perils by sea, and perils from false brethren," this long, long journey ended and we reached the promised land. We halted in old Byfield, in the state of Massachusetts, with worldly goods consisting of a bushel of barberries, threadbare toilets, and the ancient equipage dilapidated as aforesaid.

      After much tribulation, father took a farm "on shares," which was found to result in endless toil to us, and the lion's share of the crops going to the owners, who toiled not, neither did they spin, but reaped with gusto where we had sown.

      After a few years of this profitless drudgery, my father bought an old run-down farm with dilapidated buildings in the neighboring town of R——, mortgaging all, and our souls and bodies besides, for its payment. We hoped we had rounded the cape of storms which sooner or later looms up before every ship which sails the sea of life, for we had fully realized the truth of the poem—

      We may steer our boats by the compass,

       Or may follow the northern star;

       We may carry a chart on shipboard

       As we sail o'er the seas afar;

       But, whether by star or by compass

       We may guide our boats on our way,

       The grim cape of storms is before us,

       And we'll see it ahead some day.

      How the prow may point is no matter,

       Nor of what the cargo may be,

       If we sail on the northern ocean,

       Or away on the southern sea;

       It matters not who is the pilot,

       To what guidance our course conforms;

       No vessel sails o'er the sea of life

       But must pass the cape of storms.

      Sometimes we can first sight the headland

       On the distant horizon's rim;

       We enter the dangerous waters

       With our vessels taut and trim;

       But often the cape in its grimness

       Will before us suddenly rise,

       Because of the clouds that have hid it

       Or the blinding sun in our eyes.

      Our souls will be caught in the waters

       That are hurled at the storm cape's face;

       Our pleasures and joys, our hopes and fears,

       Will join in the maddening race.

       Our prayers, desires, our penitent griefs,

       Our longings and passionate pain,

       Be dashed to spray on the stormy cape

       And fly in our faces like rain.

      But there's always hope for the sailor,

       There is ever a passage through;

       No life goes down at the cape of storms,

       If the life and the heart lie true.

       If in purpose the soul is steadfast,

       If faithful in mind and in will,

       The boat will glide to the other side,

       Where the ocean of life is still.

      [Illustration: "It was a Fair Scene of Tranquillity."]

       Table of Contents

      NEAR TO NATURE'S HEART.

      It seems but yesterday, although more than a half century ago, that I, a puny boy, stood on the hilltop and looked for the first time upon this, the earliest home of which I have any vivid recollection. It was a fair scene of rustic tranquillity, where a contented mind might delight to spend a lifetime mid hum of bees and low of kine.

      Along the eastern horizon's rim loomed the blue sea beyond the sandy dunes of old Plum Island; the lazy river born in babbling brooks and bubbling springs flowing languidly mid wooded islands, and picturesque stacks of salt hay, representing the arduous toil of farmers and dry-as-dust fodder for reluctant cows. Nearer, the two church spires of the little village, striving to lift the sordid minds of the natives from earthly clods to the clouds, and where beckoning hands strove vainly to inspire them with heavenly hopes; around them, glistening in the sunlight, the marble slabs where sleep the rude forefathers of the hamlet, some mute inglorious Miltons who came from England in the early sixties, whose tombstones are pierced by rifle bullets fired at the maraudering red skins. These are the cities of the dead, far more populous than the town of the living.

      Nearer, the willowy brook that turns the mill; to the south the dense pine woods, peopled in our imaginations, with fairy elves, owls, and hobgoblins—now, alas, owing to the rapacity of the sawmills, naught but a howling wilderness of stumps and underbrush.

      Directly below me, stands our half-century old house with its eaves sloping to the ground, down which generations of boys had ruined their pants in hilarious coasting; near by, the ancient well-swipe,

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