The Seven Vagabonds (From Twice Told Tales) Read online

carefully with a shoe-string. When this wasopened, there appeared a very comfortable treasure of silver coins ofall sorts and sizes; and I even fancied that I saw, gleaming amongthem, the golden plumage of that rare bird in our currency, theAmerican Eagle. In this precious heap was my bank, note deposited,the rate of exchange being considerably against me. His wants beingthus relieved, the destitute man pulled out of his pocket an old packof greasy cards, which had probably contributed to fill the buffleather bag, in more ways than one.

  "Come," said he, "I spy a rare fortune in your face, and fortwenty-five cents more, I'll tell you what it is."

  I never refuse to take a glimpse into futurity; so, after shufflingthe cards, and when the fair damsel had cut them, I dealt a portion tothe prophetic beggar. Like others of his profession, beforepredicting the shadowy events that were moving on to meet me, he gaveproof of his preternatural science, by describing scenes through whichI had already passed. Here let me have credit for a sober fact. Whenthe old man had read a page in his book of fate, he bent his keen grayeyes on mine, and proceeded to relate, in all its minute particulars,what was then the most singular event of my life. It was one which Ihad no purpose to disclose, till the general unfolding of all secrets;nor would it be a much stranger instance of inscrutable knowledge, orfortunate conjecture, if the beggar were to meet me in the streetto-day, and repeat, word for word, the page which I have here written.The fortune-teller, after predicting a destiny which time seems loathto make good, put up his cards, secreted his treasure-bag, and beganto converse with the other occupants of the wagon.

  "Well, old friend," said the showman, "you have not yet told us whichway your face is turned this afternoon."

  "I am taking a trip northward, this warm weather," replied theconjurer, "across the Connecticut first, and then up through Vermont,and may be into Canada before the fall. But I must stop and see thebreaking up of the camp-meeting at Stamford."

  I began to think that all the vagrants in New England were convergingto the camp-meeting, and had made this wagon their rendezvous by theway. The showman now proposed that, when the shower was over, theyshould pursue the road to Stamford together, it being sometimes thepolicy of these people to form a sort of league and confederacy.

  "And the young lady too," observed the gallant bibliopolist, bowing toher profoundly, "and this foreign gentleman, as I understand, are on ajaunt of pleasure to the same spot. It would add incalculably to myown enjoyment, and I presume to that of my colleague and his friend,if they could be prevailed upon to join our party."

  This arrangement met with approbation on all hands, nor were any ofthose concerned more sensible of its advantages than myself, who hadno title to be included in it. Having already satisfied myself as tothe several modes in which the four others attained felicity, I nextset my mind at work to discover what enjoyments were peculiar to theold "Straggler," as the people of the country would have termed thewandering mendicant and prophet. As he pretended to familiarity withthe Devil, so I fancied that he was fitted to pursue and take delightin his way of life, by possessing some of the mental and moralcharacteristics, the lighter and more comic ones, of the Devil inpopular stories. Among them might be reckoned a love of deception forits own sake, a shrewd eye and keen relish for human weakness andridiculous infirmity, and the talent of petty fraud. Thus to this oldman there would be pleasure even in the consciousness, soinsupportable to some minds, that his whole life was a cheat upon theworld, and that, so far as he was concerned with the public, hislittle cunning had the upper hand of its united wisdom. Every daywould furnish him with a succession of minute and pungent triumphs: aswhen, for instance, his importunity wrung a pittance out of the heartof a miser, or when my silly good-nature transferred a part of myslender purse to his plump leather bag; or when some ostentatiousgentleman should throw a coin to the ragged beggar who was richer thanhimself; or when, though he would not always be so decidedlydiabolical, his pretended wants should make him a sharer in the scantyliving of real indigence. And then what an inexhaustible field ofenjoyment, both as enabling him to discern so much folly and achievesuch quantities of minor mischief, was opened to his sneering spiritby his pretensions to prophetic knowledge.

  All this was a sort of happiness which I could conceive of, though Ihad little sympathy with it. Perhaps, had I been then inclined toadmit it, I might have found that the roving life was more proper tohim than to either of his companions; for Satan, to whom I hadcompared the poor man, has delighted, ever since the time of Job, in"wandering up and down upon the earth"; and indeed a craftydisposition, which operates not in deep-laid plans, but indisconnected tricks, could not have an adequate scope, unlessnaturally impelled to a continual change of scene and society. Myreflections were here interrupted.

  "Another visitor!" exclaimed the old showman.

  The door of the wagon had been closed against the tempest, which wasroaring and blustering with prodigious fury and commotion, and beatingviolently against our shelter, as if it claimed all those homelesspeople for its lawful prey, while we, caring little for thedispleasure of the elements, sat comfortably talking. There was nowan attempt to open the door, succeeded by a voice, uttering somestrange, unintelligible gibberish, which my companions mistook forGreek, and I suspected to be thieves' Latin. However, the showmanstepped forward, and gave admittance to a figure which made meimagine; either that our wagon had rolled back two hundred years intopast ages, or that the forest and its old inhabitants had sprung uparound us by enchantment.

  It was a red Indian, armed with his bow and arrow. His dress was asort of cap, adorned with a single feather of some wild bird, and afrock of blue cotton, girded tight about him; on his breast, likeorders of knighthood, hung a crescent and a circle, and otherornaments of silver; while a small crucifix betokened that our Fatherthe Pope had interposed between the Indian and the Great Spirit, whomhe had worshipped in his simplicity. This son of the wilderness, andpilgrim of the storm, took his place silently in the midst of us.When the first surprise was over, I rightly conjectured him to be oneof the Penobscot tribe, parties of which I had often seen, in theirsummer excursions down our Eastern rivers. There they paddle theirbirch canoes among the coasting schooners, and build their wigwambeside some roaring milldam, and drive a little trade in basket-workwhere their fathers hunted deer. Our new visitor was probablywandering through the country towards Boston, subsisting on thecareless charity of the people, while he turned his archery toprofitable account by shooting at cents, which were to be the prize ofhis successful aim.

  The Indian had not long been seated, ere our merry damsel sought todraw him into conversation. She, indeed, seemed all made up ofsunshine in the mouth of May; for there was nothing so dark and dismalthat her pleasant mind could not cast a glow over it; and the wildIndian, like a fir-tree in his native forest, soon began to brighteninto a sort of sombre cheerfulness. At length, she inquired whetherhis journey had any particular end or purpose.

  "I go shoot at the camp-meeting at Stamford," replied the Indian.

  "And here are five more," said the girl, "all aiming at the camp-meetingtoo. You shall be one of us, for we travel with light hearts;and as for me, I sing merry songs, and tell merry tales, and am fullof merry thoughts, and I dance merrily along the road, so that thereis never any sadness among them that keep me company. But, O, youwould find it very dull indeed, to go all the way to Stamford alone!"

  My ideas of the aboriginal character led me to fear that the Indianwould prefer his own solitary musings to the gay society thus offeredhim; on the contrary, the girl's proposal met with immediateacceptance, and seemed to animate him with a misty expectation ofenjoyment. I now gave myself up to a course of thought which, whetherit flowed naturally from this combination of events, or was drawnforth by a wayward fancy, caused my mind to thrill as if I werelistening to deep music. I saw mankind, in this weary old age of theworld, either enduring a sluggish existence amid the smoke and dust ofcities, or, if they breathed a purer air, st
ill lying down at nightwith no hope but to wear out to-morrow, and all the to-morrows whichmake up life, among the same dull scenes and in the same wretched toilthat had darkened the sunshine of to-day. But there were some, fullof the primeval instinct, who preserved the freshness of youth totheir latest years by the continual excitement of new objects, newpursuits, and new associates; and cared little, though theirbirthplace might have been here in New England, if the grave shouldclose over them in Central Asia. Fate was summoning a parliament ofthese free spirits; unconscious of the impulse which directed them toa common centre, they had come hither from far and near; and last ofall appeared the representative of those mighty vagrants, who hadchased the deer during thousands of years, and were chasing it now inthe Spirit Land. Wandering down through the waste of ages, the woodshad vanished around his path; his arm