Cumberland Mountains -- Fiction; Mountain life -- Fiction
"Only," added the old gentleman under his breath, "this one hasn't
even the training of the streets--but with those eyes he'll get
somewhere."
The porter paused and asked to see Samson's ticket. Mentally, he
observed:
"Po' white trash!" Then, he looked again, for the boy's eyes were
discomfortingly on his fat, black face, and the porter straightway
decided to be polite. Yet, for all his specious seeming of unconcern,
Samson was waking to the fact that he was a scarecrow, and his
sensitive pride made him cut his meals short in the dining-car, where
he was kept busy beating down inquisitive eyes with his defiant gaze.
He resolved after some thought upon a definite policy. It was a very
old policy, but to him new--and a discovery. He would change nothing in
himself that involved a surrender of code or conviction. But, wherever
it could be done with honor, he would concede to custom. He had come to
learn, not to give an exhibition of stubbornness. Whatever the outside
world could offer with a recommendation to his good sense, that thing
he would adopt and make his own.
It was late in the second afternoon when he stepped from the train at
Jersey City, to be engulfed in an unimagined roar and congestion. Here,
it was impossible to hold his own against the unconcealed laughter of
the many, and he stood for an instant glaring about like a caged tiger,
while three currents of humanity separated and flowed toward the three
ferry exits. It was a moment of longing for the quiet of his ancient
hills, where nothing more formidable than blood enemies existed to
disquiet and perplex a man's philosophy. Those were things he
understood--and even enemies at home did not laugh at a man's
peculiarities. For the first time in his life, Samson felt a tremor of
something like terror, terror of a great, vague thing, too vast and
intangible to combat, and possessed of the measureless power of many
hurricanes. Then, he saw the smiling face of Lescott, and Lescott's
extended hand. Even Lescott, immaculately garbed and fur-coated, seemed
almost a stranger, and the boy's feeling of intimacy froze to inward
constraint and diffidence. But Lescott knew nothing of that. The stoic
in Samson held true, masking his emotions.
"So you came," said the New Yorker, heartily, grasping the boy's hand.
"Where's your luggage? We'll just pick that up, and make a dash for the
ferry."
"Hyar hit is," replied Samson, who still carried his saddlebags. The
painter's eyes twinkled, but the mirth was so frank and friendly that
the boy, instead of glaring in defiance, grinned responsively.
"Right, oh!" laughed Lescott. "I thought maybe you'd brought a trunk,
but it's the wise man who travels light."
"I reckon I'm pretty green," acknowledged the youth somewhat ruefully.
"But I hain't been studyin' on what I looked like. I reckon thet don't
make much difference."
"Not much," affirmed the other, with conviction. "Let the men with
little souls spend their thought on that."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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