By Irving Bacheller

Author of “Eben Holden”, “Silas Strong” etc., etc. </5>

New York and London

Harper & Brothers Publishers

Copyright, 1909

TO MY DEAR FRIEND E. PRENTISS BAILEY

CONTENTS

FOREWORD

BOOK ONE—IN WHICH THE ADVENTURES OF CRICKET PRESENTED, WITH SOME ACCOUNT OF HIM

ADVENTURE I—BEING THAT OF CRICKET AND THE CHILD GHOST

ADVENTURE II—BEING THAT OF CRICKET AND THE PEARL OF GREAT PRICE

ADVENTURE III.—BEING THAT OF THE BUNGWOOD COW

ADVENTURE IV—BEING THAT OF CRICKET AND THE PURPLE GHOST

ADVENTURE V—BEING THAT OF CRICKET AND THE HAND-MADE GENTLEMAN

ADVENTURE VI.—IN WHICH CRICKET HAS SUNDRY EXPERIENCES

ADVENTURE VII.—WHICH IS THAT OF CRICKET AND THE LOVER AND THE POTATO-SACK

ADVENTURE VIII.—IN WHICH CRICKET MEETS THE COLONEL AND THE YOUNG MISS

ADVENTURE IX.—WHICH DESCRIBES THE COERCION OF SAM AND HIS WEDDING

ADVENTURE X.—WHICH IS THE ADVENTURE OF CRICKET ON THE HEMPEN BRIDGE

ADVENTURE XI.—IN WHICH CRICKET MEETS THE HAND-MADE GENTLEMAN AND THE PEARL OF GREAT PRICE

BOOK TWO—IN WHICH CRICKET TAKES THE ROAD TO MANHOOD AND MEETS WITH SUNDRY MISHAPS

STAGE I.—IN WHICH CRICKET COMES TO A QUEER STOPPING-PLACE ON THE ROAD

STAGE II.—WHICH BRINGS CRICKET TO THE STATION OF REMORSE

STAGE III.—IN WHICH CRICKET PROCEEDS WITH HEAVIER BAGGAGE

STAGE IV.—IN WHICH CRICKET COMES TO A TURN IN THE ROAD

STAGE V.—IN WHICH CRICKET MOUNTS ONE OF GOD'S HORSES

STAGE VI.—MY LAST WEEK ON THE FLYING HORSE

STAGE VII.—IN WHICH MR. HERON ARRIVES AT THE SHOP OF THE HAND-MADE GENTLEMAN

STAGE VIII.—IN WHICH YOUNG MR. HERON COMES TO A TURN IN THE ROAD

STAGE IX.—IN WHICH WE MEET THE CAPTAIN OF THE NEW ARMY

STAGE X.—WHICH BRINGS MR. HERON TO A HIGH POINT IN THE ROAD

BOOK THREE

CHAPTER I.—THE SINGULAR BEGINNING OF A NEW CAREER

CHAPTER II.—IN WHICH PEARL'S OLD MARE BEGINS TO HURRY US ALONG

CHAPTER III.—THE GENTLEMAN DISCOVERS A NEW KIND OF POWER

CHAPTER IV.—IN WHICH WE MEET TWO GREAT MEN

CHAPTER V.—THE FIRST THROUGH CARS, AND THEIR BURDEN AND BAPTISM

CHAPTER VI.—THE FIRST BATTLE OF PEACE

CHAPTER VII,—MCCARTHY S FIRST BATTLE WITH SATAN

CHAPTER VIII.—IN WHICH WE TAKE SUPPER WITH THE FIRST CÆSAR OF THE CORPORATIONS

CHAPTER IX.—THE SECOND BATTLE OF PEACE

CHAPTER X.—THE CONTINUATION OF THE BATTLE

CHAPTER XI.—AN UNEXPECTED MEETING OF OLD FRIENDS

CHAPTER XII.—THE STORY OF AN UNSUSPECTED HERO

CHAPTER XIII.—PEACE

FOREWORD

THIS is a tale of youth—of its loves and dreams and hazards, and of the incredible riches of purity which often belong to it.

Many of the adventures which led to the Hand-Made Gentleman and the shop at Rushwater are from the author's own experience. Pearl is a composite of Davenport (the country blacksmith who invented an electric motor in 1833) and of a certain modest veteran of northern New York.

It tells how steam-power chose its first long pathway and began its swift errands from the Atlantic to the middle continent; how the roar and rush of the water-floods betrayed their secret and suggested the coming of great things; how “the horses of the river” began to tread the turbine and yield their power to man; how the spirit of new enterprise contended with conservatism, ignorance, and greed in the capitals, and how, thereby, evils developed which we are now striving to correct.

For its background of railroad and political history the author is indebted to many forgotten records, and to his friends A. Barton Hepburn, William C. Hudson, Arthur D. Chandler, and Mark D. Wilber, an honored Assemblyman in the sessions of 1865, 1866, and 1867, and later United States District Attorney. For the color of the day in Pittsburg, at the close of the war, he is under obligation to Mr. Andrew Carnegie; for that of Black Friday, to Mr. Thomas A. Edison.

The author has held to no strict observance of the unity of place, the work of his characters being that of turning the State into one neighborhood.

BOOK ONE—IN WHICH THE ADVENTURES OF CRICKET PRESENTED, WITH SOME ACCOUNT OF HIM

THE HAND-MADE GENTLEMAN

A TALE OF THE BATTLES OF PEACE

ADVENTURE I—BEING THAT OF CRICKET AND THE CHILD GHOST

WAS born in 1843. Since then I have endured many perils, of which I shall try to tell you. First of all, there was the peril of being named Solomon; and it would appear that, fora day or two, I was threatened also with the name of Zephaniah, but escaped at last with the lighter penalty of Jacob.

When I found myself I had just printed my full name in big letters on a slate—Jacob Ezra Heron. I have had some success, but—bless you!—it is poverty when I think of the sense of riches that I had that day. I will try to give only the merest outline of my chief assets, and they were: this name, which was all my own; a mother, who was the joint possession of myself and my sister, four years older than I; one friend of the name of Lizzie McCormick, and one little green book which was a legacy from my grandmother. I had practically no liabilities save a number of unpunished sins.

Now, a little as to my schedule of assets. First of all, there is the boy indicated by the name on my slate—a small boy five years old. I was in the little red school-house! My eyes were not much above the level of my reading-book that rested on the teacher's knee. The watch at her belt seemed to prattle in my ear as if to put me out, and, when she opened the hateful thing, I felt sure it complained of me, for immediately she grew impatient. I was afraid, and spoke scarcely any louder than the watch itself. I feared that somebody would do something to me, and I had three occupations—looking out for danger, drawing cats, and printing my name on a slate.

Every evening I used to sit by the fireside in my little chair and rock and sing. My mother called me Cricket, because I was small and spry and cheerful. Others called me Cricket because she did.

Now, an important item in the schedule is my friend and confidant, Lizzie McCormick. She was one of the most remarkable things that ever was, being much and yet nothing. She was a myth—a creation of my fancy—but almost as real as any of you sitting here. There was a drunken old bachelor of the name of McCormick who lived not far away, and Lizzie claimed that she was his girl. I made her acquaintance one day when I had been very bad and was shut in my room alone. She sprang out of the air suddenly, and sat down beside me on the rag carpet, and made a gulping sound—like that of “a hen with the pip,” as our washerwoman said when I tried to make the sound for her. Lizzie was a freckled girl with red hair and a very long neck, and gold teeth and a wooden leg, because she had been shot in the war.

We played marbles together, and talked freely in a tongue so “foreign” that no human being could understand it, as my mother informed me later. She showed me her trinkets, and among them was a thing she called “a silver horruck,” which Santa Claus had brought to her—a shiny thing that looked like a goose's leg. She was with me a good deal after that, and always slept with me in my trundle-bed. In due time she began to do and say things for which I was held responsible, and eventually became a ghost, when I would have no more to do with her.

You will remember I spoke of the little green book. It was kept in a high drawer. Often I begged for a look at it, and when my mother opened the drawer I was on my tiptoes and reaching for the sacred thing. When I had looked at the pictures she put it away again very tenderly.

Well, that is about as things stood with me in my childhood. I have given you a core out of the bed-rock, and let it go at that—saving one circumstance. It will all help you to understand me.

I come now to the true tales, which are better for the fireside, on a white Christmas, than all that kind of thing. First, I shall tell you the very brief adventure of

CRICKET AND THE CHILD GHOST

Go back with me to the winter of 1850, when hard times travelled over the land like a pestilence, and even entered the houses of the great. I was in my seventh year, and my assets had been largely increased by the steady friendship of Santa Claus. But he was going to pass me that year, the times being harder for him than for other people. I felt sorry for him, and sorry for my sister and mother, and sorry, too, for myself.

Well, it was the day before Christmas, and I had been to school and was on my way home alone, my sister being ill, and night was near. Suddenly I became aware that Lizzie McCormick was limping along beside me.

“It don't pay to be good,” said she, impatiently.

“I've been very good for a long, long time,” I answered. “I've filled the wood-box every night an' morning, an' I gave half my candy to Sarah. I guess God was surprised.”

“So was Sarah,” she answered, as I recalled the delight of my sister.

I thought a moment and then said, “God loves me.”

“Why don't he give you a pair of new boots, then?”

“It's hard times.”

“He gives 'em to some children.”

I felt of the treasure, which I had concealed in my pocket, and wondered whether, under the circumstances, I had better let it go. I tried to take a look at it, but the air was dusky and I could not see.

“Come on!” Lizzie called, swinging her wooden leg very fast and keeping ahead of me. “I ain't going home. I'm going to see if I can find Santa Claus.”

“So 'm I,” was my answer. “Maybe he'll give us a ride.”

We hurried along without speaking until I saw how dark it was, and knew that we were a long way from home.

“My mother will be looking for me!” I called, with a little sob.

Lizzie stopped and again made a sound like that of a hen with the pip, and I knew it to be a token of her contempt for me.

“I don't believe there is any Santa Claus,” she remarked, presently.

I had been thinking of that. The faith of my childhood was failing a little, but I clung to the dear old saint and could not let him go. However, I was on the brink of change.

In a moment Lizzie put her hand in my coat-pocket.

“There,” said she, “see what you've got now.”

I felt, and upon my word there was something hard in my pocket wrapped in tissue-paper, and it felt very promising.

“It's a real horruck,” said she; “I am going to give it to you.”

Then I saw her hand moving before my face. I put up my own hand, but hers began to fly around in the air, and I could not touch it. Now I suddenly remembered that ghosts had a trick of that kind, for so the washerwoman had informed me. For the first time I began to think of the word, and felt its mystery. Lizzie stood shivering, and a sound came out of her mouth like wind whistling in a chimney.

“You go 'way!” I cried, in a fright.

Lizzie turned and looked at me and uttered a cry of fear, and began to run. Her clothes had a strange rustle, and I could scarcely see her in the darkness. She seemed to run up a stairway into the snowy air, and was out of sight in a jiffy. Then I could hear her screaming to me in a dark tree-top, as if she saw something terrible.

“Look out, Cricket! Look out! Look out!”

I was in a panic of fear, knowing not the peril that threatened me. I struggled through the drifts and ran till I 'could see the lights of the village. The sight allayed my fear a little.

I had heard that hymn-singing was good in time of peril, and I began to walk and sing, with a trembling voice, the Christmas hymn which my mother had lately taught me.

Soon I knelt for a moment in the snow and said my prayers. Then I rose and ran on, singing as I went, and thought less of my peril. Soon teams began to pass me, coming and going, and my fear was gone.

I felt for my horruck. It was in my pocket, all right, and the feel of it began to fill me with wonder. I forgot it when I came to one of the stores, and entered behind the legs of a tall man, and stopped before a basket of oranges, and stood looking down at them. There were a number of people in the store.

“Would you like one?” a man asked me.

“I—I haven't any money,” was my answer.

“Put one in your pocket,” he whispered; “they wouldn't know.”

I shook my head, and answered in a voice so low that he held his ear down to catch the words:

“It doesn't belong to me.”

He lifted me in his arms and asked my name, and I gave it, and told him that I was out looking for Santa Claus.

“Isn't he coming to your house?” the man asked.

I shook my head.

“Why not?”

“'Cause it's hard times,” I whispered,

Well, it was the storekeeper himself, and he kissed me and sat me on the counter and gave me fruits and candies.

“Would you like to speak to Santa Claus?” he asked.

I nodded, and my heart began to beat all the faster.

He went to the rear end of the store and returned quickly with a stout, gray-headed man in a big fur overcoat. I recognized the figure, and was almost overcome with emotion. The thought of my mission bore me up. With a trembling hand I took from my pocket the little green book which my grandmother had given to me, and which was, indeed, my greatest treasure. I had removed it slyly from the bureau drawer that morning. I held it toward him. No human being ever offered more to charity.

“That's a Christmas present for you,” I said, fearfully.

He took my little book, and read the title on its green paper cover aloud.

I spoke up faintly as soon as he had finished, saying, “My grandmother gave it to me—you can have it.”

“Thanks,” said he, and laughed, which so took me down that I could not keep back my tears.

“Are you a good boy?” he asked.

“He's one of the best boys in the county, and I'm going to keep track of him,” said the storekeeper, and I was glad, for I was not able to answer.

“Now,” said he to Santa Claus, “I want you to take him home and give them all a merry Christmas.”

Well, they put a little fur coat upon me and a piece of goat-skin for a beard, and a baby pack-basket, and filled it with grand things for my mother and sister, and put a stub of a pipe in my mouth.

The man took me home, and I was forgiven, I fancy, on account of my looks, for who could punish a fairy Santa Claus? And, all in all, what a merry Christmas we had! I had exchanged the little green book for something better, of which I shall try to tell you.

As to Lizzie McCormick, she remained a ghost, and probably found better company, for I never saw her again, although sometimes I have heard her whisper in the darkness. She taught me that ghosts are easily conquered if a boy will be stern with them.

But there remains with me a strange souvenir of our parting, and that is the horruck. It was a real thing; I have it now, a big silver dollar. Here it is. Look at the odd device stamped on the face of the coin:

I assure you, for many a long year it was the great mystery of our house. And I got a certain fear of it by-and-by, knowing, as I did, that a ghost gave it to me.

ADVENTURE II—BEING THAT OF CRICKET AND THE PEARL OF GREAT PRICE

Y home had been a grist-mill in old times, and stood on the river-shore near a small village. One side of it was in the stream, but firmly founded on a ledge, and the year round water roared through a part of the basement. A hanging stairway climbed the face of the mill to a narrow landing under its eaves. There a broad door with a clanking iron latch opened upon our home. Those days it was called the Mill House, and a pretty thing it was—weathered gray, with broad windows that had small panes in them, and vines and flowers on the ledges in summer-time, and honeysuckle on the stair side.

When I look back at the old house the sun is ever shining on it and the flowers are in full bloom, and I can see the lights and shadows of the river. It was a full flowing stream, smooth and silent above the mill, and stained and sprinkled with willow gloom; white and noisy-just below, where the waters hurtled over a natural dam of rocks. It put me in mind of the sea, toward which it was ever flowing, and which I had studied with a curious eye in my geography. The river always seemed to invite me to go along with it.

Well, one day, when near the end of my fifteenth year, I accepted its invitation—launched my new canoe and went away with the swift water. It was a clear, warm day, and the river gave me rare entertainment, with its reeds and wild roses and quiet little bays and green, sloping terraces, and birds and beasts. Where it bent to the edge of the highway I saw a man sitting on the bank—a lank, tall man, with white hair and a full, gray beard. A black setter dog with tan points sat beside him.

“Happy new year!” said the man.

I made no answer, but swung into the bay near him and stopped.

“Didn't you know that a new year begins every day?” he asked. He showed the wear of hard times. He had a shoe on one foot and a slipper on the other, and wore a soiled linen duster and a pair of goggles. I saw now that his face had been badly scarred. He had a nose large at the end, with white and red seams in it, which cut across the cheek to his temple on one side.

“I can tell you something almighty singular,” he went on.

“What's that?” was my query.

He took off a shabby felt hat, spat into the river, and drew his hand across his mouth.

“My name is Pearl,” said he; “I am the Pearl o' great price.”

I smiled, but he looked very serious.

“I am weary o' life,” he continued. “I came down to this river to drown myself, but I am unable to do it on account o' my meanness. It's a pity.”

I waited, full of curiosity, while he sat and whittled.

“My life is insured—that's what's the matter,” he went on. “You see, I took out a policy years ago an' paid for it, an' an' ol' buzzard got it for a few dollars that I owed him. If I die the meanest man in the world 'll git a thousand dollars, an' it won't do; come to think it over, I 've got to outlive him if it takes a hundred years.”

He threw his slippered foot over his knee, laughed silently, and shook his head.

“That's one on me,” he remarked. “It ain't decent for me to laugh, but I can't help it.”

“Are you sick?” I asked.

“Not exac'ly sick,” he answered. “When I behave myself I wouldn't know that I had a body if it wasn't for my big toe that keeps peekin' through my shoe leather. Sometimes it makes a bow, very p'lite, an' says, 'Hello, there!'”

He rose and took off his hat. “Look at me—ain't I a gem?” he added.

“I'm sorry for you,” I suggested.

“That's good! I'm tired o' bein' sorry for myself, an' glad to have some one 'tend to that part o' my business.”

He called the dog to his feet, put a hand on his head, and introduced him in this manner:

“This is my friend and fellow-citizen, Mr. Barker—Adam Barker bein' his full name. You see before you the firm of Pearl & Company.”

I smiled, and thought him an odd man.

“Mr. Barker, please take the floor,” he commanded.

The dog stood on his hind feet with a look of eager expectancy.

“Mr. Barker, I swear to you that hereafter I will be worthy of your love,” said the stranger. “Shall the firm continue? Those in favor will please say aye.”

The dog gave a bark, and his master said: “It seems to be carried; it is carried. Is there any further business to come before this meetin'?”

Mr. Barker answered.

“Then we stand adjourned,” said the man, whereupon the dog began to jump playfully. “Pearl & Company are now ready to resume business.”

Man and dog sat looking at me.

“We can do anything,” he went on. “Bring us a pig's tail an' we'll make a whistle of it; bring us a ton of iron an' we'll build a steam-engine. I put in the skill an' labor, an' Mr. Barker furnishes the company. Got to have that in every kind o' business.”

I made no answer, but sat looking at this wonderful man.

“Where ye goin'?” he asked.

“Down the river.”

“So'm I,” said he. “Give me the stern seat an' I'll furnish the power. If you're goin' to be sorry for me, you'll have enough to do.”

I swung her stem to the shore and let them in. He took the paddle, and the dog a place between us.