- end_line
- 3872
- extracted_at
- 2026-01-30T20:47:57.722Z
- extracted_by
- structure-extraction-lambda
- start_line
- 3801
- text
- he sat satisfactorily healthy and happy; that the Samaritan Pain
Dissuader is the one only balm for that to which each living
creature--who knows?--may be a draughted victim, present or prospective.
In short:--Oh, Happiness on my right hand, and oh, Security on my left,
can ye wisely adore a Providence, and not think it wisdom to
provide?--Provide!" (Uplifting the bottle.)
What immediate effect, if any, this appeal might have had, is uncertain.
For just then the boat touched at a houseless landing, scooped, as by a
land-slide, out of sombre forests; back through which led a road, the
sole one, which, from its narrowness, and its being walled up with story
on story of dusk, matted foliage, presented the vista of some cavernous
old gorge in a city, like haunted Cock Lane in London. Issuing from that
road, and crossing that landing, there stooped his shaggy form in the
door-way, and entered the ante-cabin, with a step so burdensome that
shot seemed in his pockets, a kind of invalid Titan in homespun; his
beard blackly pendant, like the Carolina-moss, and dank with cypress
dew; his countenance tawny and shadowy as an iron-ore country in a
clouded day. In one hand he carried a heavy walking-stick of swamp-oak;
with the other, led a puny girl, walking in moccasins, not improbably
his child, but evidently of alien maternity, perhaps Creole, or even
Camanche. Her eye would have been large for a woman, and was inky as the
pools of falls among mountain-pines. An Indian blanket, orange-hued, and
fringed with lead tassel-work, appeared that morning to have shielded
the child from heavy showers. Her limbs were tremulous; she seemed a
little Cassandra, in nervousness.
No sooner was the pair spied by the herb-doctor, than with a cheerful
air, both arms extended like a host's, he advanced, and taking the
child's reluctant hand, said, trippingly: "On your travels, ah, my
little May Queen? Glad to see you. What pretty moccasins. Nice to dance
in." Then with a half caper sang--
"'Hey diddle, diddle, the cat and the fiddle;
The cow jumped over the moon.'
Come, chirrup, chirrup, my little robin!"
Which playful welcome drew no responsive playfulness from the child, nor
appeared to gladden or conciliate the father; but rather, if anything,
to dash the dead weight of his heavy-hearted expression with a smile
hypochondriacally scornful.
Sobering down now, the herb-doctor addressed the stranger in a manly,
business-like way--a transition which, though it might seem a little
abrupt, did not appear constrained, and, indeed, served to show that his
recent levity was less the habit of a frivolous nature, than the frolic
condescension of a kindly heart.
"Excuse me," said he, "but, if I err not, I was speaking to you the
other day;--on a Kentucky boat, wasn't it?"
"Never to me," was the reply; the voice deep and lonesome enough to have
come from the bottom of an abandoned coal-shaft.
"Ah!--But am I again mistaken, (his eye falling on the swamp-oak stick,)
or don't you go a little lame, sir?"
"Never was lame in my life."
"Indeed? I fancied I had perceived not a limp, but a hitch, a slight
hitch;--some experience in these things--divined some hidden cause of
the hitch--buried bullet, may be--some dragoons in the Mexican war
discharged with such, you know.--Hard fate!" he sighed, "little pity for
it, for who sees it?--have you dropped anything?"
Why, there is no telling, but the stranger was bowed over, and might
have seemed bowing for the purpose of picking up something, were it not
that, as arrested in the imperfect posture, he for the moment so
remained; slanting his tall stature like a mainmast yielding to the
gale, or Adam to the thunder.
- title
- Chunk 2