Every now and then, in these days, the boys used to tell me I
ought to get one Jim Blaine to tell me the stirring story of his
grandfather’s old ram—but they always added that I must not
mention the matter unless Jim was drunk at the time—just
comfortably and sociably drunk. They kept this up until my
curiosity was on the rack to hear the story. I got to haunting
Blaine; but it was of no use, the boys always found fault with
his condition; he was often moderately but never satisfactorily
drunk. I never watched a man’s condition with such absorbing
interest, such anxious solicitude; I never so pined to see a man
uncompromisingly drunk before. At last, one evening I hurried to
his cabin, for I learned that this time his situation was such
that even the most fastidious could find no fault with it—he was
tranquilly, serenely, symmetrically drunk—not a hiccup to mar
his voice, not a cloud upon his brain thick enough to obscure his
memory. As I entered, he was sitting upon an empty powder-keg,
with a clay pipe in one hand and the other raised to command
silence. His face was round, red, and very serious; his throat
was bare and his hair tumbled; in general appearance and costume
he was a stalwart miner of the period. On the pine table stood a
candle, and its dim light revealed “the boys” sitting here and
there on bunks, candle-boxes, powder-kegs, etc. They said:
“Sh—! Don’t speak—he’s going to commence.”
THE STORY OF THE OLD RAM.
I found a seat at once, and Blaine said:
‘I don’t reckon them times will ever come again. There never
was a more bullier old ram than what he was. Grandfather fetched
him from Illinois—got him of a man by the name of Yates—Bill
Yates—maybe you might have heard of him; his father was a
deacon—Baptist—and he was a rustler, too; a man had to get up
ruther early to get the start of old Thankful Yates; it was him
that put the Greens up to jining teams with my grandfather when
he moved west.
‘Seth Green was prob’ly the pick of the flock; he married a
Wilkerson—Sarah Wilkerson—good cretur, she was—one of the
likeliest heifers that was ever raised in old Stoddard, everybody
said that knowed her. She could heft a bar’l of flour as easy as
I can flirt a flapjack. And spin? Don’t mention it! Independent?
Humph! When Sile Hawkins come a browsing around her, she let him
know that for all his tin he couldn’t trot in harness alongside
of her. You see, Sile Hawkins was—no, it warn’t Sile Hawkins,
after all—it was a galoot by the name of Filkins—I disremember
his first name; but he was a stump—come into pra’r meeting
drunk, one night, hooraying for Nixon, becuz he thought it was a
primary; and old deacon Ferguson up and scooted him through the
window and he lit on old Miss Jefferson’s head, poor old filly.
She was a good soul—had a glass eye and used to lend it to old
Miss Wagner, that hadn’t any, to receive company in; it warn’t
big enough, and when Miss Wagner warn’t noticing, it would get
twisted around in the socket, and look up, maybe, or out to one
side, and every which way, while t’ other one was looking as
straight ahead as a spy-glass.
‘Grown people didn’t mind it, but it most always made the
children cry, it was so sort of scary. She tried packing it in
raw cotton, but it wouldn’t work, somehow—the cotton would get
loose and stick out and look so kind of awful that the children
couldn’t stand it no way.
She was always dropping it out, and
turning up her old dead-light on the company empty, and making
them oncomfortable, becuz she never could tell when it hopped
out, being blind on that side, you see. So somebody would have to
hunch her and say, “Your game eye has fetched loose. Miss Wagner
dear”—and then all of them would have to sit and wait till she
jammed it in again—wrong side before, as a general thing, and
green as a bird’s egg, being a bashful cretur and easy sot back
before company. But being wrong side before warn’t much
difference, anyway; becuz her own eye was sky-blue and the glass
one was yaller on the front side, so whichever way she turned it
it didn’t match nohow.
‘Old Miss Wagner was considerable on the borrow, she was. When
she had a quilting, or Dorcas S’iety at her house she gen’ally
borrowed Miss Higgins’s wooden leg to stump around on; it was
considerable shorter than her other pin, but much she minded
that. She said she couldn’t abide crutches when she had company,
becuz they were so slow; said when she had company and things had
to be done, she wanted to get up and hump herself. She was as
bald as a jug, and so she used to borrow Miss Jacops’s wig—Miss
Jacops was the coffin-peddler’s wife—a ratty old buzzard, he
was, that used to go roosting around where people was sick,
waiting for ‘em; and there that old rip would sit all day, in the
shade, on a coffin that he judged would fit the can’idate; and if
it was a slow customer and kind of uncertain, he’d fetch his
rations and a blanket along and sleep in the coffin nights. He
was anchored out that way, in frosty weather, for about three
weeks, once, before old Robbins’s place, waiting for him; and
after that, for as much as two years, Jacops was not on speaking
terms with the old man, on account of his disapp’inting him. He
got one of his feet froze, and lost money, too, becuz old Robbins
took a favorable turn and got well.
The next time Robbins got
sick, Jacops tried to make up with him, and varnished up the same
old coffin and fetched it along; but old Robbins was too many for
him; he had him in, and ‘peared to be powerful weak; he bought
the coffin for ten dollars and Jacops was to pay it back and
twenty-five more besides if Robbins didn’t like the coffin after
he’d tried it. And then Robbins died, and at the funeral he
bursted off the lid and riz up in his shroud and told the parson
to let up on the performances, becuz he could not stand such a
coffin as that. You see he had been in a trance once before, when
he was young, and he took the chances on another, cal’lating that
if he made the trip it was money in his pocket, and if he missed
fire he couldn’t lose a cent. And by George he sued Jacops for
the rhino and got jedgment; and he set up the coffin in his back
parlor and said he ‘lowed to take his time, now. It was always an
aggravation to Jacops, the way that miserable old thing acted. He
moved back to Indiany pretty soon—went to
Wellsville—Wellsville was the place the Hogadorns was from. Mighty fine
family. Old Maryland stock. Old Squire Hogadorn could carry
around more mixed licker, and cuss better than most any man I
ever see. His second wife was the widder Billings—she that was
Becky Martin; her dam was deacon Dunlap’s first wife. Her oldest
child, Maria, married a missionary and died in grace—et up by
the savages. They et him, too, poor feller—biled him. It warn’t
the custom, so they say, but they explained to friends of his’n
that went down there to bring away his things, that they’d tried
missionaries every other way and never could get any good out of
‘em—and so it annoyed all his relations to find out that that
man’s life was fooled away just out of a dern’d experiment, so to
speak. But mind you, there ain’t anything ever reely lost;
everything that people can’t understand and don’t see the reason
of does good if you only hold on and give it a fair shake;
Prov’dence don’t fire no blank ca’tridges, boys. That there
missionary’s substance, unbeknowns to himself, actu’ly converted
every last one of them heathens that took a chance at the
barbacue. Nothing ever fetched them but that. Don’t tell me it
was an accident that he was biled. There ain’t no such a thing as
an accident.
‘When my uncle Lem was leaning up agin a scaffolding once,
sick, or drunk, or suthin, an Irishman with a hod full of bricks
fell on him out of the third story and broke the old man’s back
in two places. People said it was an accident. Much accident
there was about that. He didn’t know what he was there for, but
he was there for a good object. If he hadn’t been there the
Irishman would have been killed. Nobody can ever make me believe
anything different from that. Uncle Lem’s dog was there. Why
didn’t the Irishman fall on the dog? Becuz the dog would a seen
him a coming and stood from under. That’s the reason the dog
warn’t appinted. A dog can’t be depended on to carry out a
special providence. Mark my words it was a put-up thing.
Accidents don’t happen, boys. Uncle Lem’s dog—I wish you could a
seen that dog. He was a reglar shepherd—or ruther he was part
bull and part shepherd—splendid animal; belonged to parson Hagar
before Uncle Lem got him. Parson Hagar belonged to the Western
Reserve Hagars; prime family; his mother was a Watson; one of his
sisters married a Wheeler; they settled in Morgan county, and he
got nipped by the machinery in a carpet factory and went through
in less than a quarter of a minute; his widder bought the piece
of carpet that had his remains wove in, and people come a hundred
mile to ‘tend the funeral. There was fourteen yards in the
piece.
‘She wouldn’t let them roll him up, but planted him just
so—full length. The church was middling small where they
preached the funeral, and they had to let one end of the coffin
stick out of the window. They didn’t bury him—they planted one
end, and let him stand up, same as a monument. And they nailed a
sign on it and put—put on—put on it—"sacred to—the
m-e-m-o-r-y—of fourteen y-a-r-d-s—of
three-ply—car—-pet—containing all that
was—m-o-r-t-a-l—of—of—W-i-l-l-i-a-m—W-h-e—”'
Jim Blaine had been growing gradually drowsy and drowsier—his
head nodded, once, twice, three times—dropped peacefully upon
his breast, and he fell tranquilly asleep. The tears were running
down the boys’ cheeks—they were suffocating with suppressed
laughter—and had been from the start, though I had never noticed
it. I perceived that I was “sold.” I learned then that Jim
Blaine’s peculiarity was that whenever he reached a certain stage
of intoxication, no human power could keep him from setting out,
with impressive unction, to tell about a wonderful adventure
which he had once had with his grandfather’s old ram—and the
mention of the ram in the first sentence was as far as any man
had ever heard him get, concerning it. He always maundered off,
interminably, from one thing to another, till his whisky got the
best of him and he fell asleep. What the thing was that happened
to him and his grandfather’s old ram is a dark mystery to this
day, for nobody has ever yet found out.
