The Seven Vagabonds (From Twice Told Tales)
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Nathaniel Hawthorne >> The Seven Vagabonds (From Twice Told Tales)
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TWICE TOLD TALES
THE SEVEN VAGABONDS
By Nathaniel Hawthorne
Rambling on foot in the spring of my life and the summer of the year,
I came one afternoon to a point which gave me the choice of three
directions. Straight before me, the main road extended its dusty
length to Boston; on the left a branch went towards the sea, and would
have lengthened my journey a trifle of twenty or thirty miles; while
by the right-hand path, I might have gone over hills and lakes to
Canada, visiting in my way the celebrated town of Stamford. On a
level spot of grass, at the foot of the guidepost, appeared an object,
which, though locomotive on a different principle, reminded me of
Gulliver's portable mansion among the Brobdignags. It was a huge
covered wagon, or, more properly, a small house on wheels, with a door
on one side and a window shaded by green blinds on the other. Two
horses, munching provender out of the baskets which muzzled them, were
fastened near the vehicle: a delectable sound of music proceeded from
the interior; and I immediately conjectured that this was some
itinerant show, halting at the confluence of the roads to intercept
such idle travellers as myself. A shower had long been climbing up
the western sky, and now hung so blackly over my onward path that it
was a point of wisdom to seek shelter here.
"Halloo! Who stands guard here? Is the doorkeeper asleep?" cried I,
approaching a ladder of two or three steps which was let down from the
wagon.
The music ceased at my summons, and there appeared at the door, not
the sort of figure that I had mentally assigned to the wandering
showman, but a most respectable old personage, whom I was sorry to
have addressed in so free a style. He wore a snuff colored coat and
small-clothes, with white-top boots, and exhibited the mild dignity of
aspect and manner which may often be noticed in aged schoolmasters,
and sometimes in deacons, selectmen, or other potentates of that kind.
A small piece of silver was my passport within his premises, where I
found only one other person, hereafter to be described.
"This is a dull day for business," said the old gentleman, as he
ushered me in; "but I merely tarry here to refresh the cattle, being
bound for the camp-meeting at Stamford."
Perhaps the movable scene of this narrative is still peregrinating New
England, and may enable the reader to test the accuracy of my
description. The spectacle--for I will not use the unworthy term of
puppet-show--consisted of a multitude of little people assembled on a
miniature stage. Among them were artisans of every kind, in the
attitudes of their toil, and a group of fair ladies and gay gentlemen
standing ready for the dance; a company of foot-soldiers formed a line
across the stage, looking stern, grim, and terrible enough, to make it
a pleasant consideration that they were but three inches high; and
conspicuous above the whole was seen a Merry-Andrew, in the pointed
cap and motley coat of his profession. All the inhabitants of this
mimic world were motionless, like the figures in a picture, or like
that people who one moment were alive in the midst of their business
and delights, and the next were transformed to statues, preserving an
eternal semblance of labor that was ended, and pleasure that could be
felt no more. Anon, however, the old gentleman turned the handle of a
barrel-organ, the first note of which produced a most enlivening
effect upon the figures, and awoke them all to their proper
occupations and amusements. By the self-same impulse the tailor plied
his needle, the blacksmith's hammer descended upon the anvil, and the
dancers whirled away on feathery tiptoes; the company of soldiers
broke into platoons, retreated from the stage, and were succeeded by a
troop of horse, who came prancing onward with such a sound of trumpets
and trampling of hoofs, as might have startled Don Quixote himself;
while an old toper, of inveterate ill habits, uplifted his black
bottle and took off a hearty swig. Meantime the Merry-Andrew began to
caper and turn somersets, shaking his sides, nodding his head, and
winking his eyes in as life-like a manner as if he were ridiculing the
nonsense of all human affairs, and making fun of the whole multitude
beneath him. At length the old magician (for I compared the showman
to Prospero, entertaining his guests with a mask of shadows) paused
that I might give utterance to my wonder.
"What an admirable piece of work is this!" exclaimed I, lifting up my
bands in astonishment.
Indeed, I liked the spectacle, and was tickled with the old man's
gravity as he presided at it, for I had none of that foolish wisdom
which reproves every occupation that is not useful in this world of
vanities. If there be a faculty which I possess more perfectly than
most men, it is that of throwing myself mentally into situations
foreign to my own, and detecting, with a cheerful eye, the desirable
circumstances of each. I could have envied the life of this gray-
headed showman, spent as it had been in a course of safe and
pleasurable adventure, in driving his huge vehicle sometimes through
the sands of Cape Cod, and sometimes over the rough forest roads of
the north and east, and halting now on the green before a village
meeting-house, and now in a paved square of the metropolis. How often
must his heart have been gladdened by the delight of children, as they
viewed these animated figures! or his pride indulged, by haranguing
learnedly to grown men on the mechanical powers which produced such
wonderful effects! or his gallantry brought into play (for this is an
attribute which such grave men do not lack) by the visits of pretty
maidens! And then with how fresh a feeling must he return, at
intervals, to his own peculiar home!
"I would I were assured of as happy a life as his," thought I. Though
the showman's wagon might have accommodated fifteen or twenty
spectators, it now contained only himself and me, and a third person
at whom I threw a glance on entering. He was a neat and trim young
man of two or three and twenty; his drab hat, and green frock-coat
with velvet collar, were smart, though no longer new; while a pair of
green spectacles, that seemed needless to his brisk little eyes, gave
him something of a scholar-like and literary air. After allowing me a
sufficient time to inspect the puppets, he advanced with a bow, and
drew my attention to some books in a corner of the wagon. These he
forthwith began to extol, with an amazing volubility of well-sounding
words, and an ingenuity of praise that won him my heart, as being
myself one of the most merciful of critics. Indeed, his stock
required some considerable powers of commendation in the salesman;
there were several ancient friends of mine, the novels of those happy
days when my affections wavered between the Scottish Chiefs and Thomas
Thumb; besides a few of later date, whose merits had not been
acknowledged by the public. I was glad to find that dear little
venerable volume, the New England Primer, looking as antique as ever,
though in its thousandth new edition; a bundle of superannuated gilt
picture-books made such a child of me, that, partly for the glittering
covers, and partly for the fairy-tales within, I bought the whole; and
an assortment of ballads and popular theatrical songs drew largely on
my purse. To balance these expenditures, I meddled neither with
sermons, nor science, nor morality, though volumes of each were there;
nor with a Life of Franklin in the coarsest of paper, but so showily
bound that it was emblematical of the Doctor himself, in the court
dress which he refused to wear at Paris; nor with Webster's Spelling
Book, nor some of Byron's minor poems, nor half a dozen little
Testaments at twenty-five cents each.
Thus far the collection might have been swept from some great
bookstore, or picked up at an evening auction-room; but there was one
small blue-covered pamphlet, which the peddler handed me with so
peculiar an air, that I purchased it immediately at his own price; and
then, for the first time, the thought struck me, that I had spoken
face to face with the veritable author of a printed book. The
literary man now evinced a great kindness for me, and I ventured to
inquire which way he was travelling.
"O," said he, "I keep company with this old gentleman here, and we are
moving now towards the camp-meeting at Stamford!"
He then explained to me, that for the present season he had rented a
corner of the wagon as a bookstore, which, as he wittily observed, was
a true Circulating Library, since there were few parts of the country
where it had not gone its rounds. I approved of the plan exceedingly,
and began to sum up within my mind the many uncommon felicities in the
life of a book-peddler, especially when his character resembled that of
the individual before me. At a high rate was to be reckoned the daily
and hourly enjoyment of such interviews as the present, in which he
seized upon the admiration of a passing stranger, and made him aware
that a man of literary taste, and even of literary achievement, was
travelling the country in a showman's wagon. A more valuable, yet not
infrequent triumph, might be won in his conversation with some elderly
clergyman, long vegetating in a rocky, woody, watery back settlement of
New England, who, as he recruited his library from the peddler's stock
of sermons, would exhort him to seek a college education and become
the first scholar in his class. Sweeter and prouder yet would be his
sensations, when, talking poetry while he sold spelling-books, he
should charm the mind, and haply touch the heart of a fair country
schoolmistress, herself an unhonored poetess, a wearer of blue
stockings which none but himself took pains to look at. But the scene
of his completest glory would be when the wagon had halted for the
night, and his stock of books was transferred to some crowded bar-room.
Then would he recommend to the multifarious company, whether
traveller from the city, or teamster from the hills, or neighboring
squire, or the landlord himself, or his loutish hostler, works suited
to each particular taste and capacity; proving, all the while, by
acute criticism and profound remark, that the lore in his books was
even exceeded by that in his brain.
Thus happily would he traverse the land; sometimes a herald before the
march of Mind; sometimes walking arm in arm with awful Literature; and
reaping everywhere a harvest of real and sensible popularity, which
the secluded bookworms, by whose toil he lived, could never hope for.
"If ever I meddle with literature," thought I, fixing myself in
adamantine resolution, "it shall be as a travelling bookseller."
Though it was still mid-afternoon, the air had now grown dark about
us, and a few drops of rain came down upon the roof of our vehicle,
pattering like the feet of birds that had flown thither to rest. A
sound of pleasant voices made us listen, and there soon appeared half-
way up the ladder the pretty person of a young damsel, whose rosy face
was so cheerful, that even amid the gloomy light it seemed as if the
sunbeams were peeping under her bonnet. We next saw the dark and
handsome features of a young man, who, with easier gallantry than
might have been expected in the heart of Yankee-land, was assisting
her into the wagon. It became immediately evident to us, when the two
strangers stood within the door, that they were of a profession
kindred to those of my companions; and I was delighted with the more
than hospitable, the even paternal kindness, of the old showman's
manner, as he welcomed them; while the man of literature hastened to
lead the merry-eyed girl to a seat on the long bench.
"You are housed but just in time, my young friends," said the master
of the wagon. "The sky would have been down upon you within five
minutes."
The young man's reply marked him as a foreigner, not by any variation
from the idiom and accent of good English, but because he spoke with
more caution and accuracy, than if perfectly familiar with the
language.
"We knew that a shower was hanging over us," said he, "and consulted
whether it were best to enter the house on the top of yonder hill, but
seeing your wagon in the road--"
"We agreed to come hither," interrupted the girl, with a smile,
"because we should be more at home in a wandering house like this."
I, meanwhile, with many a wild and undetermined fantasy, was narrowly
inspecting these two doves that had flown into our ark. The young man,
tall, agile, and athletic, wore a mass of black shining curls
clustering round a dark and vivacious countenance, which, if it had
not greater expression, was at least more active, and attracted
readier notice, than the quiet faces of our countrymen. At his first
appearance, he had been laden with a neat mahogany box, of about two
feet square, but very light in proportion to its size, which he had
immediately unstrapped from his shoulders and deposited on the floor
of the wagon.
The girl had nearly as fair a complexion as our own beauties, and a
brighter one than most of them; the lightness of her figure, which
seemed calculated to traverse the whole world without weariness,
suited well with the glowing cheerfulness of her face; and her gay
attire, combining the rainbow hues of crimson, green, and a deep
orange, was as proper to her lightsome aspect as if she had been born
in it. This gay stranger was appropriately burdened with that mirth-
inspiring instrument, the fiddle, which her companion took from her
hands, and shortly began the process of tuning. Neither of us--the
previous company of the wagon-needed to inquire their trade; for this
could be no mystery to frequenters of brigade-musters, ordinations,
cattle-shows, commencements, and other festal meetings in our sober
land; and there is a dear friend of mine, who will smile when this
page recalls to his memory a chivalrous deed performed by us, in
rescuing the show-box of such a couple from a mob of great double-
fisted countrymen.
"Come," said I to the damsel of gay attire, "shall we visit all the
wonders of the world together?"
She understood the metaphor at once; though indeed it would not much
have troubled me, if she had assented to the literal meaning of my
words. The mahogany box was placed in a proper position, and I peeped
in through its small round magnifying window, while the girl sat by my
side, and gave short descriptive sketches, as one after another the
pictures were unfolded to my view. We visited together, at least our
imaginations did, full many a famous city, in the streets of which I
had long yearned to tread; once, I remember, we were in the harbor of
Barcelona, gazing townwards; next, she bore me through the air to
Sicily, and bade me look up at blazing AEtna; then we took wing to
Venice, and sat in a gondola beneath the arch of the Rialto; and anon
she sat me down among the thronged spectators at the coronation of
Napoleon. But there was one scene, its locality she could not tell,
which charmed my attention longer than all those gorgeous palaces and
churches, because the fancy hammed me, that I myself, the preceding
summer, had beheld just such a humble meeting-house, in just such a
pine-surrounded nook, among our own green mountains. All these
pictures were tolerably executed, though far inferior to the girl's
touches of description; nor was it easy to comprehend, how in so few
sentences, and these, as I supposed, in a language foreign to her, she
contrived to present an airy copy of each varied scene. When we had
travelled through the vast extent of the mahogany box, I looked into
my guide's face.
"Where are you going, my pretty maid?" inquired I, in the words of an
old song.
"Ah," said the gay damsel, "you might as well ask where the summer
wind is going. We are wanderers here, and there, and everywhere.
Wherever there is mirth, our merry hearts are drawn to it. To-day,
indeed, the people have told us of a great frolic and festival in
these parts; so perhaps we may be needed at what you call the camp-
meeting at Stamford."
Then in my happy youth, and while her pleasant voice yet sounded in my
ears, I sighed; for none but myself, I thought, should have been her
companion in a life which seemed to realize my own wild fancies,
cherished all through visionary boyhood to that hour. To these two
strangers the world was in its golden age, not that indeed it was less
dark and sad than ever, but because its weariness and sorrow had no
community with their ethereal nature. Wherever they might appear in
their pilgrimage of bliss, Youth would echo back their gladness, care-
stricken Maturity would rest a moment from its toil, and Age,
tottering among the graves, would smile in withered joy for their
sakes. The lonely cot, the narrow and gloomy street, the sombre
shade, would catch a passing gleam like that now shining on ourselves,
as these bright spirits wandered by. Blessed pair, whose happy home
was throughout all the earth! I looked at my shoulders, and thought
them broad enough to sustain those pictured towns and mountains; mine,
too, was an elastic foot, as tireless as the wing of the bird of
paradise; mine was then an untroubled heart, that would have gone
singing on its delightful way.
"O maiden!" said I aloud, "why did you not come hither alone?"
While the merry girl and myself were busy with the show-box, the
unceasing rain had driven another wayfarer into the wagon. He seemed
pretty nearly of the old showman's age, but much smaller, leaner, and
more withered than he, and less respectably clad in a patched suit of
gray; withal, he had a thin, shrewd countenance, and a pair of
diminutive gray eyes, which peeped rather too keenly out of their
puckered sockets. This old fellow had been joking with the showman,
in a manner which intimated previous acquaintance; but perceiving that
the damsel and I had terminated our affairs, he drew forth a folded
document, and presented it to me. As I had anticipated, it proved to
be a circular, written in a very fair and legible hand, and signed by
several distinguished gentlemen whom I had never heard of, stating
that the bearer had encountered every variety of misfortune, and
recommending him to the notice of all charitable people. Previous
disbursements had left me no more than a five-dollar bill, out of
which, however, I offered to make the beggar a donation, provided he
would give me change for it. The object of my beneficence looked
keenly in my face, and discerned that, I had none of that abominable
spirit, characteristic though it be, of a full-blooded Yankee, which
takes pleasure in detecting every little harmless piece of knavery.
"Why, perhaps," said the ragged old mendicant, "if the bank is in good
standing, I can't say but I may have enough about me to change your
bill."
"It is a bill of the Suffolk Bank," said I, "and better than the
specie."
As the beggar had nothing to object, he now produced a small buff-
leather bag, tied up carefully with a shoe-string. When this was
opened, there appeared a very comfortable treasure of silver coins of
all sorts and sizes; and I even fancied that I saw, gleaming among
them, the golden plumage of that rare bird in our currency, the
American Eagle. In this precious heap was my bank, note deposited,
the rate of exchange being considerably against me. His wants being
thus relieved, the destitute man pulled out of his pocket an old pack
of greasy cards, which had probably contributed to fill the buff
leather bag, in more ways than one.
"Come," said he, "I spy a rare fortune in your face, and for twenty-
five cents more, I'll tell you what it is."
I never refuse to take a glimpse into futurity; so, after shuffling
the cards, and when the fair damsel had cut them, I dealt a portion to
the prophetic beggar. Like others of his profession, before
predicting the shadowy events that were moving on to meet me, he gave
proof of his preternatural science, by describing scenes through which
I had already passed. Here let me have credit for a sober fact. When
the old man had read a page in his book of fate, he bent his keen gray
eyes on mine, and proceeded to relate, in all its minute particulars,
what was then the most singular event of my life. It was one which I
had no purpose to disclose, till the general unfolding of all secrets;
nor would it be a much stranger instance of inscrutable knowledge, or
fortunate conjecture, if the beggar were to meet me in the street
to-day, and repeat, word for word, the page which I have here written.
The fortune-teller, after predicting a destiny which time seems loath
to make good, put up his cards, secreted his treasure-bag, and began
to converse with the other occupants of the wagon.
"Well, old friend," said the showman, "you have not yet told us which
way your face is turned this afternoon."
"I am taking a trip northward, this warm weather," replied the
conjurer, "across the Connecticut first, and then up through Vermont,
and may be into Canada before the fall. But I must stop and see the
breaking up of the camp-meeting at Stamford."
I began to think that all the vagrants in New England were converging
to the camp-meeting, and had made this wagon their rendezvous by the
way. The showman now proposed that, when the shower was over, they
should pursue the road to Stamford together, it being sometimes the
policy of these people to form a sort of league and confederacy.
"And the young lady too," observed the gallant bibliopolist, bowing to
her profoundly, "and this foreign gentleman, as I understand, are on a
jaunt of pleasure to the same spot. It would add incalculably to my
own enjoyment, and I presume to that of my colleague and his friend,
if they could be prevailed upon to join our party."
This arrangement met with approbation on all hands, nor were any of
those concerned more sensible of its advantages than myself, who had
no title to be included in it. Having already satisfied myself as to
the several modes in which the four others attained felicity, I next
set my mind at work to discover what enjoyments were peculiar to the
old "Straggler," as the people of the country would have termed the
wandering mendicant and prophet. As he pretended to familiarity with
the Devil, so I fancied that he was fitted to pursue and take delight
in his way of life, by possessing some of the mental and moral
characteristics, the lighter and more comic ones, of the Devil in
popular stories. Among them might be reckoned a love of deception for
its own sake, a shrewd eye and keen relish for human weakness and
ridiculous infirmity, and the talent of petty fraud. Thus to this old
man there would be pleasure even in the consciousness, so
insupportable to some minds, that his whole life was a cheat upon the
world, and that, so far as he was concerned with the public, his
little cunning had the upper hand of its united wisdom. Every day
would furnish him with a succession of minute and pungent triumphs: as
when, for instance, his importunity wrung a pittance out of the heart
of a miser, or when my silly good-nature transferred a part of my
slender purse to his plump leather bag; or when some ostentatious
gentleman should throw a coin to the ragged beggar who was richer than
himself; or when, though he would not always be so decidedly
diabolical, his pretended wants should make him a sharer in the scanty
living of real indigence. And then what an inexhaustible field of
enjoyment, both as enabling him to discern so much folly and achieve
such quantities of minor mischief, was opened to his sneering spirit
by his pretensions to prophetic knowledge.
All this was a sort of happiness which I could conceive of, though I
had little sympathy with it. Perhaps, had I been then inclined to
admit it, I might have found that the roving life was more proper to
him than to either of his companions; for Satan, to whom I had
compared the poor man, has delighted, ever since the time of Job, in
"wandering up and down upon the earth"; and indeed a crafty
disposition, which operates not in deep-laid plans, but in
disconnected tricks, could not have an adequate scope, unless
naturally impelled to a continual change of scene and society. My
reflections were here interrupted.
"Another visitor!" exclaimed the old showman.
The door of the wagon had been closed against the tempest, which was
roaring and blustering with prodigious fury and commotion, and beating
violently against our shelter, as if it claimed all those homeless
people for its lawful prey, while we, caring little for the
displeasure of the elements, sat comfortably talking. There was now
an attempt to open the door, succeeded by a voice, uttering some
strange, unintelligible gibberish, which my companions mistook for
Greek, and I suspected to be thieves' Latin. However, the showman
stepped forward, and gave admittance to a figure which made me
imagine; either that our wagon had rolled back two hundred years into
past ages, or that the forest and its old inhabitants had sprung up
around us by enchantment.
