Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, August, 1880

Mrs. Harbison took her earth-loving hands from garden-making and went to show the young people the ferns in the woods. She pulled her sun-bonnet over her eyes and trod out with the solid steps of a woman bred to love the soil under her feet. The photographer sketched along the way, but he finally sat down by Little Wildcat where the water boiled over boulders, and Mrs. Harbison went farther to dig ginseng. There was a joyful hurry of birds all around. That leopard of the Indiana woods, the sycamore, repeated itself in vistas.

"Sycamores always look like dazzling marble shafts blackened with patches of moss," said the young man.

"And their leaves," said the girl sitting on the log not far from him, "smell like poetry. I spread them on my face late in summer after a shower and suck up their breath. But I never can put the sensation into words."

"How's that for a sycamore?" he asked, showing a scrap.

She examined it with great satisfaction: "Why do you go about with a photographic car? Why don't you set out to be an artist?"

He laughed: "Because there is so much of the vagabond in me, I suppose. Then I never had any education in art. Folks as poor as Job's turkey."

"But a man can do so much or so little."

"Well, when I'm going about with the car I see a great many odd people, and can pick up little striking things for studies. I get a living, too, such as it is, which I shouldn't do if I set up as an artist. Look here!" He turned over his book and showed an etching of Mallston stepping across the common carrying his youngest, with the four older children at his heels. One had sprawled, and was evidently lifting a howl to the paternal ear. They both laughed at it.

"He's a good fellow," remarked the photographer, "but there's no end to the ignorance and misery such creatures bring upon the world. He couldn't take decent care of himself, and he has a wife and five children hanging on him."

"It is just so with nearly all these people," exclaimed Miss Gill in high scorn. "They have no idea of what life should be—no ambition, and scarcely a soul to divide around among them all. It smothers me!" She threw her arms out impetuously. "I want such different things—the society of the cultivated, the stimulus of great natures. Maybe I could write something that would get before the public then."

"Have you ever sent anything East?" he inquired with a Hoosier's vast respect for older civilization.

"Yes," she answered with a falling inflection of voice and head. "But it's no use: I never shall amount to anything with my surroundings."

The water gurgled over its boulders and the green landscape sent up an exquisite loamy breath. The young people, both representing the afflatus of the State, met in one tragic look which ended in a smile.

Next morning Mallston took his usual post in the car, shifting from one bare foot to the other, while the photographer lounged on his locker waiting for custom. The native frequently parted his shaggy jaws, but considered how he should offer his information. He watched his employer with real attachment, and his dark red face deepened its hue around the eyes as he broke out, "We've got a little feller t' 'r house."

"What! not another one?"

"He's two month ole," explained Mallston.

"Oh, your youngest. Why, yes, I've seen him." Mallston was evidently surprised that so humble a creature as his youngest had attracted the great photographer's notice. "He's a fine youngster," added the latter.

Mallston was then emboldened to blurt out, "We've named him."

"You have? Well, what do you call him?"

"We called him after you."

"Why, here's an honor! How did you come to name him for me?"

"I done it."

"Let me see: what can I do for him? Suppose you bring him over now while we aren't very busy and I'll take his picture."

Mallston grinned with pleasure: "My woman wanted his picter. My woman 'lowed mebby you wouldn't charge for it if you knowed he was a namesake."

"Certainly I won't. So bring him right along and we'll do our best for him."

It was some time before he reappeared, carrying his youngest in his arms, its cheeks polished and its wet hair turning over in rings, decked in its chief finery, a blue quilted cloak. The mother came along to hold her cherub in her lap. She was a long, raw-boned woman, immature in face under all her crust of care and tan, evidently distressed in her free waist by the tightness of her calico dress and in her unfenced feet by shoes.

"What are you going to do with the baby?" inquired Miss Gill kindly as she encountered this group at right angles on her return from the post-office.

"Garn with him to the man to git his picter. Come in and see him took," invited Mrs. Mallston timidly.

The young woman, ready to seize on any distraction, went in, scarcely understanding that her bruised ambition reached for healing to such homely, lowly natures as these.

The artist was glad to see her, and she sat on the locker while preparations went on. She exchanged amused glances with him when the other Mallstons flocked to the steps, bellowing in various keys for their mother, and on their being swung in by one arm and placed in a row on the opposite locker, she gazed at them in turn, wondering what the future held out to such lumps of dirt and sombre black eyes.

Mallston set his youngest on the mother's lap and looked at it with sneaking fondness. The whole tribe seemed equally dear to him, but this youngest appealed to his strength. Mrs. Mallston was not celebrated as a tender mother. She went after pails of water and left her children playing beside the railroad-track; their tattered and ludicrous appearance bespoke her unskilfulness with the needle; she was said to have scalded the eldest boy with a skilletful of hot water in which she had soaked bacon, pouring it out of the window on his head. But she probably did as well as she knew how, and Mallston did much better. The photographer watched him go back a dozen times to straighten the baby's sturdy legs, tap it under the chin with his colossal fore finger, cluck in the laughing red cavern of his mouth and change the folds of its quilted cloak with quite a professional air. What were poverty, the world's neglect, hard labor and circumscribed life to this man? That muscle which gathered and distributed the streams of his body may have been to him a heaven in which these five youngsters ministered as angels.

The young man felt moved with an emotion he resisted: "My God! can it be that this savage is right in his instincts, and I am wrong? Can some peculiar blessing of Heaven rest on the man who dares Fate for family love? Or is the poor wretch's fondness a recompense for his overburdened lot?"

The baby took a fine picture. Mallston stood by a window and gazed at the large tin-type. His full lips dropped apart and his head leaned sidewise. He turned to his wife and said with a foolish expression, "If the little feller 'ud happen to drop off now we got sumpin' to remember him by."

"My childern's kind o' sickly," remarked his wife, marshalling forth her quartette, "fer all they look so hearty."

The photographic car remained day after day, although sitters seldom came now, for even the loafers were helping to put in crops. The horses which should have dragged it out almost any dewy morning were not exactly eating their heads off, being turned upon pasture, but the landlord was famous for getting his entertainment's worth. As long as weekly board-bills were paid he said it was none of his business if the man stayed all summer.

On Monday the photographer resolved, "I will start on Wednesday;" on Wednesday he decided, "I will wait till Saturday;" and on Saturday, "It's too late in the week now, but I must go next Monday."

Mrs. Harbison, when interviewed about the generous portion of time he spent on her lawn with her summer visitor, answered with downrightness, "Well, what if he does like to come to our place? We know all about his folks. And if them two wants to sit and talk, they're fit company fer each other, and I reckon it won't hurt 'em. So what you going to do about it?"

The village was going to talk about it. The female population gathered at the storekeeper's house, their favorite rallying-place because the storekeeper's wife had no opinions of her own, but made a good echo to whatever was said, and there they judged that Gill girl for taking up with strangers like she done, so stuck up, and hoped it would turn out he was a married man, and wouldn't that bring her down?

Meanwhile, the photographer stretched himself on his oilcloth-cushioned locker and stared at the now fully-unfurled woods, without one mental glance at the vivid moss in its shades, its four varieties of ferns or the ruined cabin with one side thrown down, showing nickers of sunlight through the gaps of its fireplace. He called himself ill names for remaining where he was, and made a crazy picture of a photographic car seesawing along the country roads, with a figure he well knew sitting on the platform beside him as he drove. It was so absurd, but he quoted Mrs. Dalles's song of "Brave Love" while he etched:

We could not want for long,While my man had his violinAnd I my sweet love-song.The world has aye gone well with us,Old man, since we were one:Our homeless wanderings down the lanes,They long ago were done.

Then, across some chasm of indefinite time, he saw a studio and himself happy at an easel, with this devoted dark face resting against his side, reciting her work to him and quivering with joy at some sign of success. But the whole panorama dissolved at a breath.

"Now, aren't you a nice fellow," he addressed himself, "a brilliant rascal, a wise genius, to be thinking of such a thing?"

Miss Gill was returning from the woods with a full basket before the morning heat came on. A few women at the storekeeper's fence looked sidewise at each other as she paused to chat under the photographer's window.

The morning was so clear that every object stood in startling relief. A plume of steam far up the leafy railroad vista heralded the Peru express's lightning passage through the town. Scarcely a lounger was left on the platform. Mallston had a job of cleaning the cellar for the storekeeper, and at intervals appeared from its gaping doors with a basket of decayed potatoes on his shoulders. The landscape rung with bird-songs, and the girl, who had skimmed the cream off such a morning, looked up and laughed at her dejected friend. She had purple violets tucked into her coil of hair, her belt and under her collar.

"What are you doing here? Why aren't you out trying to catch the effect of day-twilight in the thick woods?"

"I've been trying," he replied without smiling, "to catch the effect of a rash action—and a woman's face."

"How solemn! Let me see it. Is it Mrs. Stillman's?"

"No, it isn't: it's my wife's."

Her half-lifted hand dropped. While her eyes met his without blenching she turned ghastly white, her face seeming to wither into sudden age.

The express-train whistled. Only a moment before its steam-plume had been her symbol of rushing success in life, and now, for some scarcely apprehended reason, she felt that the train and Fate were running her down. With intuitive resistance and a defiant sweep of her body she turned toward it and screamed aloud.

The photographer could not credit this rapid change to himself when he saw upon the track a small rough cart drawn by Mallston's oldest girl and containing his youngest stretched upon a dirty pillow. The express was coming down-grade at full speed, but at its whistle the oldest child turned off the track and tried to drag her burden across the rail. The cart upset, and the baby sprawled, crying, between the rails, while his sister fled crying toward home.

This whole occurrence was a flash: it seemed to the spectators they had barely started forward with their blood curdling, the engine had but screamed, and Mallston was merely seen dropping a basket of potatoes and leaping with upright hair and starting eyes, before the whole thing was over. The train stopped with such a recoil that many passengers were thrown from their seats: the engineer dropped from his cab, and there was a crowd.

Mallston was jammed into a heap against a tall board fence which surrounded the store-lot. The baby sprawled near him, where he had thrown it when the engine struck him.

"Are you hurt?" asked the photographer, turning him over.

He sat up, looking dazed and ludicrous: "Wher's the little feller?"

"I got him," panted the breathless mother, shaking the child from side to side as she showed it to him.

"He's all right," cried the engineer, "but I hit you. Where are you hurt?"

"I ain't hurt no place," said Mallston, crawling up on all fours, "'cept wher' my back and head hit the fence." He stood up grinning at the excited crowd, and put his sneaking, protecting fingertips under the baby's chin. The youngest had ceased to yell during the fright, but this touched him off again.

"You skeered the poor little feller," said Mallston severely, but the engineer was already mounting his cab, laughing with relief. The train passed on, people crowding the platforms.

Women felt the baby's limbs: there were no hurts except a bruise on one fat leg and a little more than the usual amount of dirt on its face.

"Are you sure you aren't injured?" urged the photographer, shaking his man.

But Mallston looked into his eyes with a preoccupied mind, and said, as to the only person present who would appreciate the depth of the remark, "I couldn't a-stood that, by jeeminy!" Tears stood in his big bovine eyes.

The group dispersed, many glad to have enjoyed such a genuine sensation, Mrs. Stillman declaring to the neighbor and the landlady she hadn't had such a skeer since the time he was took in the dead o' night with bleedin' at the lungs, and not a doctor in ten mile, and every minute like to be his last, so it was.

The artist followed Miss Gill from the spot. She picked up her basket beside the photographic car, her face so sublimated it seemed never to have known any other look.

"I didn't understand human nature," she confessed to the photographer, who had entered his car and again appeared at the window above her. "That fellow has the poetry in him that I can't write out. I'm afraid I'm going to cry."

The artist held down his sketch-book to her. Dabbing back her tears with one hand, she took it with the other and exclaimed at once, "Why, you've sketched me!"

"When a man like that dares so much for home happiness in this world, I think I can dare a little, poor, struggling dog as I am. I called that a while ago the picture of my wife; and it shall be—my woman," infusing the idiom of his native State with its primitive, tender meaning.

She handed back the book, and he took it, with her hand.

"Do you dare?" trembled the girl with a laugh, mindful that all Fairfield was out.

"I think I do," he replied, smiling also as he followed her eyes toward a group proceeding down the railroad—"even in spite of that."

Mrs. Mallston was walking beside her husband, making a display of ankle-bone under her scant calico wrapper, her sun-bonnet flapping to her nose, the four juveniles able to walk dangling from her fingers or drapery. Mallston, straight as a hickory tree, carried his youngest on his bosom, patting its cheek with his horny, potato-scented palm.

M.H. Catherwood.

THE EARLY DAYS OF MORMONISM

For many years both before and after the Revolution the western part of New York was claimed by Massachusetts. The dispute was finally settled in 1786 by the latter State retaining the title to the soil westward of a meridian line extending from Pennsylvania to Lake Ontario. The line was afterward ascertained to be the meridian of Washington. It passed near Elmira, through the county of Seneca, and pierced the town of Lyons in the county of Wayne. The area of the Massachusetts claim was more than seven million acres, or about fifteen counties as they are now arranged. The entire tract was sold in 1787 to Oliver Phelps and Daniel Gorman for one million dollars. Phelps and Gorman immediately proceeded to Canandaigua and obtained the Indian title to one third of the tract. A land-office was opened in that village, the first of its kind in America. But the sales, although rapid, prevented the ruin neither of the purchasers nor of Robert Morris, the financier of the Revolution, who came forward to help them. The Holland Land Company profited by these misfortunes. The rich valleys of the Genesee and its tributaries more than made good its promises to actual settlers, as is readily proved by the waving fields of grain which greet the traveller through that section to-day.

In the year 1815 there came to the town of Palmyra, in Wayne county, a family by the name of Smith. Their former home was Sharon, Vermont. The father's name was Joseph, the mother's maiden name was Lucy Mack, and they were both of Scotch descent. Their son Joseph, afterward "the Prophet," was born on December 23, 1805. Hyrum, another son, helped his father at the trade of a cooper. Joseph, Jr., grew up with the reputation of being an idle and ignorant youth, given to chicken-thieving, and, like his father, extremely superstitious. Both father and sons believed in witchcraft, and they frequently "divined" the presence of water by a forked stick or hazel rod. Orlando Sanders of Palmyra, a well-preserved gentleman of over eighty, tells us that the Smith family worked for his father and for himself. He gives them the credit of being good workers, but declares that they could save no money. He also states that Joseph, Jr., was "a greeny," both large and strong. By nature he was peaceably disposed, but when he had taken too much liquor he was inclined to fight, with or without provocation.

The profession of a water-witch did not bring enough ducats to the Smith family; so the attempt was made to find hidden treasures. Failing in this, the unfolding flower of Mormonism would have been nipped in the bud had not Joe's father and brother been engaged in digging a well upon the premises of Clark Chase in September, 1819. Joseph, Jr., stood idly by with some of the Chase children when a stone resembling a child's foot was thrown from the well. The Chase children claimed the curiosity, as it was considered, but Joe seized and retained it. Afterward, for a series of years, he claimed that by the use of it he was enabled to discover stolen property and to locate the place where treasure was buried.

After living in Palmyra for about ten years, the Smith family moved southward a few miles and settled in Manchester, the northern town of Ontario county. Their residence was a primitive one, even for those days. William Van Camp, the aged editor of the Democratic Press at Lyons, recalls the fact that it was a log house from the following circumstance. Martin Harris, a farmer near Palmyra, visited the Smiths while he was yet in doubt concerning the doctrines of Mormonism. One night, while he was in his room, curtained off from the single large room of the interior, there appeared to him no less a personage than Jesus Christ. Harris was informed that Mormonism was the true faith, and Van Camp knows that it was a log house, although no vestige now remains, because Harris told him that his celestial visitor was lying on the beam overhead!

One mile from the Smith residence was the farm of Alonzo Sanders, now owned by William T. Sampson, commander in the United States Navy. This farm is four miles south of Palmyra, on the road toward Canandaigua. It includes a barren hill which rises abruptly to the height of one hundred and fifty feet. The ridge runs almost due north and south, and from the summit there are beautiful views of the hills surrounding Canandaigua and Seneca Lakes. It is known to the present generation as "Gold Bible Hill:" to Joe Smith it was known as "the Hill Cumorah," where the angel Moroni announced to him the presence of the "golden plates" giving an account of the fate which attended the early inhabitants of America. With these plates would be found the only means by which they could be read, the wonderful spectacles known as the "Urim and Thummim." Joe was not averse to such a revelation, for his hazel rod and his "peek-stone" had already failed him. There had been various religious awakenings in the neighborhood, and when the various sects began to quarrel over the converts Joe arose and announced that his mission was to restore the true priesthood. He appointed a number of meetings, but no one seemed inclined to follow him as the leader of a new religion. In September, 1823, an angel appeared to him, forgave his many lapses from grace and announced the golden plates.

These plates, however, were not found for several years. In the mean time the scene of Smith's operations shifted along the banks of Seneca Lake and down the tributaries of the Susquehanna to the point where that river sweeps southward into Pennsylvania past a borough of its own name, and then northward into New York, before it finally crosses Pennsylvania on its way to the Chesapeake. The borough of Susquehanna forms an important station on the Erie Railway, one hundred and ninety miles north-west of New York City. All about the locality houses are built in little groups upon the steep hillsides: even the railroad-shops could not be erected before the ground was levelled for them. When the river first cut a channel through the Appalachin Mountains it was very saving of its strength. Should anything besides the river attempt to enter this valley it must either hang against the sides or swim.

Joe Smith had paid several visits to this region when the first settlers were struggling with the wilderness. It was a much wilder country than that about Palmyra, and the inhabitants were much more credulous. Upon these people Smith practised with his peek-stone. A number of aged persons now living in that vicinity give this description of the prophet: He was six feet or a trifle over in height; of stout build, but wiry; his hair and complexion were light; his eyes were blue and mild; and "he did not look as if he knew enough to fool people so," as one old lady expresses it. When "peeking" he kneeled and buried his face in his white stovepipe hat, within which was the peek-stone. He declared it to be so much like looking into the water that the "deflection of flight" sometimes took him out of his course. On a wilderness-hill—now a part of Jacob J. Skinner's farm—his peek-stone discovered a ton of silver bars which had been buried by weary Spaniards as they trudged up the Susquehanna. An expedition for their recovery was undertaken as soon as Smith could muster enough followers to do the work. Unlike St. Paul, Joe did not work with his own hands, and he did not hesitate to be chargeable to any one. Several round excavations were made on the crown of a hill, the largest of which was about thirty-five feet in diameter and of about the same depth. The water was drained toward the south, and a shanty covered the hole from the eyes of the scoffers and the profane. The diggers had proceeded with great labor, and were just ready to grasp the silver, when the charm moved it three hundred feet to the north-east. Joe tracked it with his peek-stone to its hiding-place. It was not so far under the surface this time—only about twenty feet—and the faithful again worked with a will. The dilatory movements of the silver caused anxiety to Mr. Isaac Hale, with whom the diggers had been "boarding round." Hale was a stiff old Methodist whose business judgment told him that he was taking too much stock in this "big bonanza." For all his anxiety, the silver again flitted away, and alighted fifty feet beyond the big hole. They determined to capture it if they ran the hill through a sieve. The third hole had been sunk fifteen out of the necessary twenty feet when the treasure once more jumped to the other side of the big hole. Then the prophet had a vision: the blood of a black sheep must be shed and sprinkled around the diggings. Black sheep were scarce, and while they waited for one the faithful obtained their needed rest. At length, no sheep appearing, Joe said that a black dog might answer. A dog, therefore, was killed, and the blood was sprinkled on the ground. After that the silver never went far away. Still, it waltzed about the big hole in such a lively manner that frequent tunnelling to effect its capture availed nothing. At last the prophet decided that it was of no use to dig unless one of their number was made a sacrifice. None of the faithful responded to his call, and thus the magnificent scheme was abandoned. Oliver Harper, one of the diggers who furnished the money, was soon afterward murdered. The prophet thought this might answer for a sacrifice: he again rallied the diggers, but the charm remained stubborn and would not reveal the silver.2