Eben Holden: A Tale of the North CountryBacheller, Irving
General
Eben Holden: A Tale of the North Country
Bacheller, Irving
Farm life -- Fiction; Historical fiction; New York (State) -- Fiction
to make a new estimate of itself and others. Look out for that time, O
ye good people! that have sons and daughters.
I must say for myself that I had a mighty courage and no small
capital of cheerfulness. I went to try my luck with the newspapers of
Philadelphia, and there one of them kept me in suspense a week to no
purpose. When I came back reduced in cash and courage Hope had sailed.
There was a letter from Uncle Eb telling me when and by what steamer
they were to leave. 'She will reach there a Friday,' he wrote, 'and
would like to see you that evening at Fuller's'.
I had waited in Philadelphia, hoping I might have some word, to give
her a better thought of me, and, that night, after such a climax of ill
luck, well--I had need of prayer for a wayward tongue. I sent home a
good account of my prospects. I could not bring myself to report failure
or send for more money. I would sooner have gone to work in a scullery.
Meanwhile my friends at the chalet were enough to keep me in good cheer.
There were William McClingan, a Scotchman of a great gift of dignity and
a nickname inseparably connected with his fame. He wrote leaders for a
big weekly and was known as Waxy McClingan, to honour a pale ear of wax
that took the place of a member lost nobody could tell how. He
drank deeply at times, but never to the loss of his dignity or self
possession. In his cups the natural dignity of the man grew and
expanded. One could tell the extent of his indulgence by the degree
of his dignity. Then his mood became at once didactic and devotional.
Indeed, I learned in good time of the rumour that he had lost his ear in
an argument about the Scriptures over at Edinburgh.
I remember he came an evening, soon after my arrival at the chalet,
when dinner was late. His dignity was at the full. He sat awhile in grim
silence, while a sense of injury grew in his bosom.
'Mrs Opper,' said he, in a grandiose manner and voice that nicely
trilled the r's, 'in the fourth chapter and ninth verse of Lamentations
you will find these words--here he raised his voice a bit and began
to tap the palm of his left hand with the index finger of his right,
continuing: “They that be slain with the sword are better than they that
be slain with hunger. For these pine away stricken through want of the
fruits of the field.” Upon my honour as a gentleman, Mrs Opper, I was
never so hungry in all my life.'
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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