The Hoosier Schoolmaster

Perhaps the memory of the fact that she had refused Mrs. Thomson, the pauper, a bed for two nights, affected her throat. But Miss Nancy and her sister were there, and the preacher. And that was all, besides the family, and Bud and Martha. Of course Bud and Martha came. And driving Martha to a wedding in a “jumper” was the one opportunity Bud needed. His hands were busy, his big boots were out of sight, and it was so easy to slip from Ralph’s love affair to his own, that Bud somehow, in pulling Martha Hawkins’ shawl about her, stammered out half a proposal, which Martha, generous soul, took for the whole ceremony, and accepted. And Bud was so happy that Ralph guessed from his face and voice that the agony was over, and Bud was betrothed at last to the “gal as was a gal.”

And after Ralph and Hannah were married⁠—there was no trip, Ralph only changed his boarding-place and became head of the house at Mrs. Thomson’s thereafter⁠—after it was all over, Bud came to Mr. Hartsook, and, snickering just a little, said as how as him and Martha had fixed it all up, and now they wanted to ax his advice; and Martha proud but blushing, came up and nodded assent. Bud said as how as he hadn’t got no book-larnin’ nor nothin’, and as how as he wanted to be somethin’, and put in his best licks fer Him, you know. And that Marthy, she was of the same way of thinkin’, and that was a blessin’. And the Squire was a-goin’ to marry agin’, and Marthy would ruther vacate. And his mother and Mirandy was sech as he wouldn’t take no wife to. And he thought as how Mr. Hartsook might think of some way or some place where he and Marthy mout make a livin’ fer the present, and put in their best licks fer Him, you know.

Ralph thought a moment. He was about to make an allusion to Hercules and the Augean stables, but he remembered that Bud would not understand it, though it might remind Martha of something she had seen at the East, the time she was to Bosting.

“Bud, my dear friend,” said Ralph, “it looks a little hard to ask you to take a new wife”⁠—here Bud looked admiringly at Martha⁠—“to the poorhouse. But I don’t know anywhere where you can do so much good for Christ as by taking charge of that place, and I can get the appointment for you. The new commissioners want just such a man.”

“What d’ye say, Marthy?” said Bud.

“Why, somebody ought to do for the poor, and I should like to do it.”

And so Hercules cleaned the Augean stables.

And so my humble, homely Hoosier story of twenty years ago28 draws to a close, and not without regret I take leave of Ralph and Hannah; and Shocky, and Bud, and Martha, and Miss Nancy, and of my readers.

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P.S.⁠—A copy of the Lewisburg Jeffersonian came into my hands today, and I see by its columns that Ralph Hartsook is principal of the Lewisburg Academy. It took me some time, however, to make out that the sheriff of the county, Mr. Israel W. Means, was none other than my old friend Bud, of the Church of the Best Licks. I was almost as much puzzled over his name as I was when I saw an article in a city paper, by Prof. W. J. Thomson, on Poorhouses. I should not have recognized the writer as Shocky, had I not known that Shocky has given his spare time to making outcasts feel that God has not forgot.

Endnotes

1. “Aout” is not the common form of “out,” as it is in certain rustic New England regions. The vowel is here drawn in this way for imperative emphasis, and it occurs as a consequence of drawling speech. ↩

2. “ ’Nough said” is more than enough said for the French translator, who takes it apparently for a sort of barbarous negative and renders it, “I don’t like to speak to him.” I need hardly explain to any American reader that “enough said” implies the ending of all discussion by the acceptance of the proposition or challenge. ↩

3. “Durn’t,” “daren’t,” “dasent,” “dursent,” and “don’t dast” are forms of this variable negative heard in the folk-speech of various parts of the country. The tenses of this verb seem to have got hopelessly mixed long ago, even in literary use, and the speech of the people reflects the historic confusion. ↩

4. “To take a dare” is an expression used in senses diametrically opposed. Its common sense is that of the text. The man who refuses to accept a challenge is said to take a dare, and there is some implication of cowardice in the imputation. On the other hand, one who accepts a challenge is said also to take the dare. ↩

5. Most bad English was once good English. “Ketch” was used by writers of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries for “catch.” A New Hampshire magistrate in the seventeenth century spells it “caitch,” and probably pronounced it in that way. “Ketch,” a boat, was sometimes spelled “catch” by the first American colonists, and the far-fetched derivation of the word from the Turkish may be one of the fancies of etymologists. ↩

6. The derivation of “raccoon” from the French raton, to which Mr. Skeat gives currency, still holds its place in some of our standard dictionaries. If American lexicographers would only read the literature of American settlement they would know that Mr. Skeat’s citation of a translation of Buffon is nearly two centuries too late. As early as 1612 Captain John Smith gives aroughcune as the aboriginal Virginia word, and more than one New England writer used “rackoon” a few years later. ↩