Home as Found, James Fenimore Cooper [e novels to read .txt] 📗

in my religion, general, for they talked so much to me of the uselessness of works, that I've got to be very unparticular as to what I do. Your people who have been converted four or five times, are like so many pickerel, which strike at every hook."

"This is very much my case. Now, on the river--of course you know where the river is?"

"Certain," said the commodore; "it is at the foot of the lake."

"My dear commodore, when we say 'the river,' we always mean the Connecticut; and I am surprised a man of your sagacity should require to be told this. There are people on the river who contend that a ship should heave-to of a Sunday. They did talk of getting up an Anti-Sunday-Sailing-Society, but the ship-masters were too many for them, since they threatened to start a society to put down the growing of inyens, (the captain would sometimes use this pronunciation) except of week-days. Well, I started in life, on the platform tack, in the way of religion, and I believe I shall stand on the same course till orders come to 'cast anchor,' as you call it. With you, I hold out for faith, as the one thing needful. Pray, my good friend, what are your real sentiments concerning 'Old Hickory.'

"Tough, sir;--Tough as a day in February on this lake. All fins, and gills, and bones."

"That is the justest character I have yet heard of the old gentleman; and then it says so much in a few words; no category about it. I hope the punch is to your liking?"

On this hint the old fisherman raised the bowl a second time to his lips, and renewed the agreeable duty of letting its contents flow down his throat, in a pleasant stream. This time, he took aim at a gull that was sailing over his head, only relinquishing the draught as the bird settled into the water. The 'general' was more particular; for selecting a stationary object, in the top of an oak, that grew on the mountain near him, he studied it with an admirable abstruseness of attention, until the last drop was drained. As soon as this startling fact was mentioned, however, both the convives set about repairing the accident, by squeezing lemons, sweetening water, and mixing liquors, secundem artem. At the same time, each lighted a cigar, and the conversation, for some time, was carried on between their teeth.

"We have been so frank with each other to-day, my excellent commodore," said Captain Truck, "that did I know your true sentiments concerning Temperance Societies, I should look on your inmost soul as a part of myself. By these free communications men get really to know each other."

"If liquor is not made to be drunk, for what is it made? Any one may see that this lake was made for skiffs and fishing; it has a length, breadth, and depth suited to such purposes. Now, here is liquor distilled, bottled, and corked, and I ask if all does not show that it was made to be drunk. I dare say your temperance men are ingenious, but let them answer that if they can."

"I wish, from my heart, my dear sir, we had known each other fifty years since. That would have brought you acquainted with salt-water, and left nothing to be desired in your character. We think alike, I believe, in every thing but on the virtues of fresh-water. If these temperance people had their way, we should all be turned into so many Turks, who never taste wine, and yet marry a dozen wives."

"One of the great merits of fresh-water, general, is what I call its mixable quality."

"There would be an end to Saturday nights, too, which are the seamen's tea-parties."

"I question if many of them fish in the rain, from sunrise to sunset."

"Or, stand their watches in wet pee-jackets, from sunset to sunrise. Splicing the main brace at such times, is the very quintessence of human enjoyments."

"If liquors were not made to be drunk," put in the commodore, logically, "I would again ask for what are they made? Let the temperance men get over that difficulty if they can."

"Commodore, I wish you twenty more good hearty years of fishing in this lake, which grows, each instant, more beautiful in my eyes, as I confess does the whole earth; and to show you that I say no more than I think, I will clench it with a draught."

Captain Truck now brought his right eye to bear on the new moon, which happened to be at a convenient height, closed the left one, and continued in that attitude until the commodore began seriously to think he was to get nothing besides, the lemon-seeds for his share. This apprehension, however, could only arise from ignorance of his companion's character, than whom a juster man, according to the notions of ship-masters, did not live; and had one measured the punch that was left in the bowl when this draught was ended, he would have found that precisely one half of it was still untouched, to a thimblefull. The commodore now had his turn; and before he got through, the bottom of the vessel was as much uppermost as the butt of a club bed firelock. When the honest fisherman took breath after this exploit, and lowered his cup from the vault of heaven to the surface of the earth, he caught a view of a boat crossing the lake, coming from the Silent Pine, to that Point on which they were enjoying so many agreeable hallucinations on the subject of temperance.

"Yonder is the party from the Wigwam," he said, "and they will be just in time to become converts to our opinions, if they have any doubts on the subjects we have discussed. Shall we give up the ground to them, by taking to the skiff, or do you feel disposed to face the women?"

"Under ordinary circumstances, commodore, I should prefer your society to all the petticoats in the State, but there are two ladies in that party, either of whom I would marry, any day, at a minute's warning."

"Sir," said the commodore with a tone of warning, "we, who have lived bachelors so long, and are wedded to the water, ought never to speak lightly on so grave a subject."

"Nor do I. Two women, one of whom is twenty, and the other seventy-- and hang me if I know which I prefer."

"You would soonest be rid of the last, my dear general, and my advice is to take her."

"Old as she is, sir, a king would have to plead hard to get her consent. We will make them some punch, that they may see we were mindful of them in their absence."

To work these worthies now went in earnest, in order to anticipate the arrival of the party, and as the different compounds were in the course of mingling, the conversation did not flag. By this time both the salt-water and the fresh-water sailor were in that condition when men are apt to think aloud, and the commodore had lost all his awe of his companion.

"My dear sir," said the former, "I am a thousand times sorry you came from that river, for, to tell you my mind without any concealment, my only objection to you is that you are not of the middle states. I admit the good qualities of the Yankees, in a general way, and yet they are the very worst neighbours that a man can have."

"This is a new character of them, commodore, as they generally pass for the best, in their own eyes. I should like to hear you explain your meaning."

"I call him a bad neighbour who never remains long enough in a place to love any thing but himself. Now, sir, I have a feeling for every pebble on the shore of this lake, a sympathy with every wave,"--here the commodore began to twirl his hand about, with the fingers standing apart, like so many spikes in a che-vaux-de-frise --"and each hour, as I row across it, I find I like it better; and yet, sir, would you believe me, I often go away of a morning to pass the day on the water, and, on returning home at night, find half the houses filled with new faces."

"What becomes of the old ones?" demanded Captain Truck; for this, it struck him, was getting the better of him with his own weapons. "Do you mean that the people come and go like the tides?"

"Exactly so, sir; just as it used to be with the herrings in the Otsego, before the. Susquehannah was dammed, and is still, with the swallows."

"Well, well, my good friend, take consolation. You'll meet all the faces you ever saw here, one day in heaven."

"Never; not a man of them will stay there, if there be such a thing as moving. Depend on it, sir," added the commodore, in the simplicity of his heart, "heaven is no place for a Yankee, if he can get farther west, by hook or by crook. They are all too uneasy for any steady occupation. You, who are a navigator, must know something concerning the stars; is there such a thing as another world, that lies west of this?"

"That can hardly be, commodore, since the points of the compass only refer to objects on this earth. You know, I suppose, that a man starting from this spot, and travelling due west, would arrive, in time, at this very point, coming in from the east; so that what is west to us, in the heavens, on this side of the world, is east to those on the other."

"This I confess I did not know, general. I have understood that what is good in one man's eyes, will be bad in another's; but never before have I heard that what is west to one man, lies east to another. I am afraid, general, that there is a little of the sogdollager bait in this?"

"Not enough, sir, to catch the merest fresh-water gudgeon that swims. No, no; there is neither east nor west off the earth, nor any up and down; and so we Yankees must try and content ourselves with heaven. Now, commodore, hand me the bowl, and we will get it ready down to the shore, and offer the ladies our homage. And so you have become a laker in your religion, my dear commodore," continued the general, between his teeth, while he smoked and squeezed a lemon at the same time, "and do your worshipping on the water?"

"Altogether of late, and more especially since my dream."

"Dream! My dear sir, I should think you altogether too innocent a man to dream."

"The best of us have our failings, general. I do sometimes dream, I own, as well as the greatest sinner of them all."

"And of what did you dream--the sogdollager?"

"I dreamt of death."

"Of slipping the cable!" cried the general, looking up suddenly. "Well, what was the drift?"

"Why, sir, having no wings, I went down below, and soon found myself in the presence of the old gentleman himself."

"That was pleasant--had he a tail? I have always been curious to know whether he really has a tail or not."

"I saw none, sir, but then we stood face to face, like gentlemen, and I cannot describe what I did not see."

"Was he glad to see you, commodore?"

"Why, sir; he was civilly spoken, but