The Light in the Clearing.

by Irving Bach.e.l.ler.

PREFACE

The Light in the Clearing shone upon many things and mostly upon those which, above all others, have impa.s.sioned and perpetuated the Spirit of America and which, just now, seem to me to be worthy of attention. I believe that spirit to be the very candle of the Lord which, in this dark and windy night of time, has flickered so that the souls of the faithful have been afraid. But let us be of good cheer. It is shining brighter as I write and, under G.o.d, I believe it shall, by and by, be seen and loved of all men.

One self-contained, Homeric figure, of the remote countryside in which I was born, had the true Spirit of Democracy and shed its light abroad in the Senate of the United States and the Capitol at Albany. He carried the candle of the Lord. It led him to a height of self-forgetfulness achieved by only two others--Washington and Lincoln. Yet I have been surprised by the profound and general ignorance of this generation regarding the career of Silas Wright, of whom Whittier wrote these lines:

"Man of the millions thou art lost too soon!

Portents at which the bravest stand aghast The birth throes of a future strange and vast Alarm the land. Yet thou so wise and strong Suddenly summoned to the burial bed, Lapped in its slumbers deep and ever long, Hear'st not the tumult surging over head.

Who now shall rally Freedom's scattering host?

Who wear the mantle of the leader lost?"

The distinguished Senator who served at his side for many years, Thomas H. Benton of Missouri, has this to say of Silas Wright in his _Thirty Years' View_:

"He refused cabinet appointments under his fast friend Van Buren and under Polk, whom he may be said to have elected. He refused a seat on the bench of the Supreme Court of the United States; he rejected instantly the nomination of 1844 for Vice-President; he refused to be put in nomination for the Presidency. He spent that time in declining office which others did in winning it. The offices he did accept, it might well be said, were thrust upon him. He was born great and above office and unwillingly descended to it."

So much by way of preparing the reader to meet the great commoner in these pages. One thing more is necessary to a proper understanding of the final scenes in the book--a part of his letter written to Judge Fine just before the Baltimore convention of 1844, to wit:

"I do not feel at liberty to omit any act which may protect me from being made the instrument, however honestly and innocently, of further distractions.

"Within a few days several too partial friends have suggested to me the idea that by possibility, in case the opposition to the nomination of Mr. Van Buren should be found irreconcilable, a compromise might be made by dropping him and using my name. I need not say to you that a consent on my part to any such proceeding would justly forfeit my standing with the democracy of our state and cause my faith and fidelity to my party to be suspected everywhere.... To consent to the use of my name as a candidate under any circ.u.mstances, would be in my view to invite you to compromise the expressed wishes and instructions of your const.i.tuents for my personal advancement. I can never consent to place myself in a position where the suspicion of acting from such a motive can justly attach to me....

"If it were proper I could tell you with the most perfect truth that I have never been vain enough to dream of the office of President in connection with my own name, and were not Mr. Van Buren the candidate of our State, I should find just as little difficulty as I now do, in telling you that I am not and can not under any circ.u.mstances be a candidate before your convention for that office."

According to his best biographer, Jabez Hammond, Mr. Wright still adhered to this high ground in spite of the fact that Mr. Van Buren withdrew and requested his faithful hand to vote for the Senator.

There were those who accused Mr. Wright of being a spoilsman, the only warrant for which claim would seem to be his remark in a letter: "When our enemies accuse us of feeding our friends instead of them never let them lie in telling the story."

He was, in fact, a human being, through and through, but so upright that they used to say of him that he was "as honest as any man under heaven or in it"

For my knowledge of the color and spirit of the time I am indebted to a long course of reading in its books, newspapers and periodicals, notably _The North American Review, The United States Magazine and Democratic Review, The New York Mirror, The Knickerbocker, The St. Lawrence Republican_, Benton's _Thirty Years' View_, Bancroft's _Life of Martin Van Buren_, histories of Wright and his time by Hammond and Jenkins, and to many ma.n.u.script letters of the distinguished commoner in the New York Public Library and in the possession of Mr. Samuel Wright of Weybridge, Vermont.

To any who may think that they discover portraits in these pages I desire to say that all the characters--save only Silas Wright and President Van Buren and Barton Baynes--are purely imaginary. However, there were Grimshaws and Purvises and Binkses and Aunt Deels and Uncle Peabodys in almost every rustic neighborhood those days, and I regret to add that Roving Kate was on many roads. The case of Amos Grimshaw bears a striking resemblance to that of young Bickford, executed long ago in Malone, for the particulars of which case I am indebted to my friend, Mr. H.L. Ives of Potsdam.

THE AUTHOR.

BOOK ONE

Which is the Story of the Candle and the Compa.s.s

CHAPTER I

THE MELON HARVEST

Once upon a time I owned a watermelon. I say once because I never did it again. When I got through owning that melon I never wanted another. The time was 1831; I was a boy of seven and the melon was the first of all my harvests. Every night and morning I watered and felt and surveyed my watermelon. My pride grew with the melon and, by and by, my uncle tried to express the extent and nature of my riches by calling me a mellionaire.

I didn't know much about myself those days except the fact that my name was Bart Baynes and, further, that I was an orphan who owned a watermelon and a little spotted hen and lived on Rattle road in a neighborhood called Lickitysplit. I lived with my Aunt Deel and my Uncle Peabody Baynes on a farm. They were brother and sister--he about thirty-eight and she a little beyond the far-distant goal of forty.

My father and mother died in a scourge of diphtheria that swept the neighborhood when I was a boy of five. For a time my Aunt Deel seemed to blame me for my loss.

"No wonder they're dead," she used to say, when out of patience with me and--well I suppose that I must have had an unusual talent for all the noisy arts of childhood when I broke the silence of that little home.

The word "dead" set the first mile-stone in the long stretch of my memory. That was because I tried so hard to comprehend it and further because it kept repeating its challenge to my imagination. I often wondered just what had become of my father and mother and I remember that the day after I went to my aunt's home a great idea came to me. It came out of the old dinner-horn hanging in the shed. I knew the power of its summons and I slyly captured the horn and marched around the house blowing it and hoping that it would bring my father up from the fields.

I blew and blew and listened for that familiar halloo of his. When I paused for a drink of water at the well my aunt came and seized the horn and said it was no wonder they were dead. She knew nothing of the sublime bit of necromancy she had interrupted--poor soul!

I knew that she had spoken of my parents for I supposed that they were the only people in the world who were dead, but I did not know what it meant to be dead. I often called to them, as I had been wont to do, especially in the night, and shed many tears because they came no more to answer me. Aunt Deel did not often refer directly to my talents, but I saw, many times, that no-wonder-they-died look in her face.

Children are great rememberers. They are the recording angels--the keepers of the book of life. Man forgets--how easily!--and easiest of all, the solemn truth that children do _not_ forget.

A few days after I arrived in the home of my aunt and uncle I slyly entered the parlor and climbed the what-not to examine some white flowers on its top shelf and tipped the whole thing over, scattering its burden of alb.u.ms, wax flowers and sea sh.e.l.ls on the floor. My aunt came running on her tiptoes and exclaimed: "Mercy! Come right out o' here this minute--you pest!"

I took some rather long steps going out which were due to the fact that Aunt Deel had hold of my hand. While I sat weeping she went back into the parlor and began to pick up things.

"My wreath! my wreath!" I heard her moaning.

How well I remember that little a.s.semblage of flower ghosts in wax! They had no more right to a.s.sociate with human beings than the ghosts of fable. Uncle Peabody used to call them the "Minervy flowers" because they were a present from his Aunt Minerva. When Aunt Deel returned to the kitchen where I sat--a sorrowing little refugee hunched up in a corner--she said: "I'll have to tell your Uncle Peabody--ayes!"

"Oh please don't tell my Uncle Peabody," I wailed.

"Ayes! I'll have to tell him," she answered firmly.

For the first time I looked for him with dread at the window and when he came I hid in a closet and heard that solemn and penetrating note in her voice as she said:

"I guess you'll have to take that boy away--ayes!"

"What now?" he asked.

"My stars! he sneaked into the parlor and tipped over the what-not and smashed that beautiful wax wreath!"

Her voice trembled.

"Not them Minervy flowers?" he asked in a tone of doleful incredulity.

"Ayes he did!"

"And tipped over the hull what-not?"

"Ayes!"