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A Modern Instance

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Kinney flung the door open, and followed his guest within. The first
two-thirds of the cabin was used as a dormitory, and the sides were
furnished with rough bunks, from the ground to the roof. The round, unhewn
logs showed their form everywhere; the crevices were calked with moss; and
the walls were warm and tight. It was dark between the bunks, but beyond it
was lighter, and Bartley could see at the farther end a vast cooking-stove,
and three long tables with benches at their sides. A huge coffee-pot stood
on the top of the stove, and various pots and kettles surrounded it.

"Come into the dining-room and sit down in the parlor," said Kinney,
drawing off his coat as he walked forward. "Take the sofa," he added,
indicating a movable bench. He hung his coat on a peg and rolled up his
shirt-sleeves, and began to whistle cheerily, like a man who enjoys his
work, as he threw open the stove door and poked in some sticks of fuel. A
brooding warmth filled the place, and the wood made a pleasant crackling as
it took fire.

"Here's my desk," said Kinney, pointing to a barrel that supported a broad,
smooth board-top. "This is where I compose my favorite works." He turned
round, and cut out of a mighty mass of dough in a tin trough a portion,
which he threw down on his table and attacked with a rolling-pin. "That
means pie, Mr. Hubbard," he explained, "and pie means meat-pie,--or
squash-pie, at a pinch. Today's pie-baking day. But you needn't be troubled
on that account. So's to-morrow, and so was yesterday. Pie twenty-one times
a week is the word, and don't you forget it. They say old Agassiz," Kinney
went on, in that easy, familiar fondness with which our people like to
speak of greatness that impresses their imagination,--"they say old Agassiz
recommended fish as the best food for the brain. Well, I don't suppose but
what it is. But I don't know but what pie is more stimulating to the fancy.
I _never_ saw anything like meat-pie to make ye dream."

"Yes," said Bartley, nodding gloomily, "I've tried it."

Kinney laughed. "Well, I guess folks of sedentary pursuits, like you and
me, don't need it; but these fellows that stamp round in the snow all day,
they want something to keep their imagination goin'. And I guess pie does
it. Anyway, they can't seem to get enough of it. Ever try apples when you
was at work? They say old Greeley kep' his desk full of 'em; kep' munchin'
away all the while when he was writin' his editorials. And one of them
German poets--I don't know but what it was old Gutty himself--kept _rotten_
ones in _his_ drawer; liked the smell of 'em. Well, there's a good deal of
apple in meat-pie. May be it's the apple that does it. _I_ don't know.
But I guess if your pursuits are sedentary, you better take the apple
separate."

Bartley did not say anything; but he kept a lazily interested eye on Kinney
as he rolled out his piecrust, fitted it into his tins, filled these from
a jar of mince-meat, covered them with a sheet of dough pierced in
herring-bone pattern, and marshalled them at one side ready for the oven.

"If fish _is_ any better for the brain," Kinney proceeded, "they can't
complain of any want of it, at least in the salted form. They get
fish-balls three times a week for breakfast, as reg'lar as Sunday, Tuesday,
and Thursday comes round. And Fridays I make up a sort of chowder for the
Kanucks; they're Catholics, you know, and I don't believe in interferin'
with _any_ man's religion, it don't matter what it is."

"You ought to be a deacon in the First Church at Equity," said Bartley.

"Is that so? Why?" asked Kinney.

"Oh, they don't believe in interfering with any man's religion, either."

"Well," said Kinney, thoughtfully, pausing with the rolling-pin in his
hand, "there 'a such a thing as being _too_ liberal, I suppose."

"The world's tried the other thing a good while," said Bartley, with
cynical amusement at Kinney's arrest.

It seemed to chill the flow of the good fellow's optimism, so that he
assented with but lukewarm satisfaction.

"Well, that's so, too," and he made up the rest of his pies in silence.

"Well," he exclaimed at last, as if shaking himself out of an unpleasant
reverie, "I guess we shall get along, somehow. Do you like pork and beans?"

"Yes, I do," said Bartley.

"We're goin' to have 'em for dinner. You can hit beans any meal you drop in
on us; beans twenty-one times a week, just like pie. Set 'em in to warm,"
he said, taking up a capacious earthen pot, near the stove, and putting it
into the oven. "I been pretty much everywheres, and I don't know as I
found anything for a stand-by that come up to beans. I'm goin' to give 'em
potatoes and cabbage to-day,--kind of a boiled-dinner day,--but you'll
see there aint one in ten 'll touch 'em to what there will these old
residenters. Potatoes and cabbage'll do for a kind of a delicacy,--sort of
a side-dish,--on-_tree_, you know; but give 'em beans for a steady diet.
Why, off there in Chili, even, the people regularly live on beans,--not
exactly like ours,--broad and flat,--but they're beans. Wa'n't there some
those ancients--old Horace, or Virgil, may be--rung in something about
beans in some their poems?"

"I don't remember anything of the kind," said Bartley, languidly.

"Well, I don't know as _I_ can. I just have a dim recollection of language
thrown out at the object,--as old Matthew Arnold says. But it might have
been something in Emerson."

Bartley laughed "I didn't suppose you were such a reader, Kinney."

"Oh, I nibble round wherever I can get a chance. Mostly in the newspapers,
you know. I don't get any time for books, as a general rule. But there's
pretty much everything in the papers. I should call beans a brain food."

"I guess you call anything a brain food that you happen to like, don't you,
Kinney?"

"No, sir," said Kinney, soberly; "but I like to see the philosophy of
a thing when I get a chance. Now, there's tea, for example," he said,
pointing to the great tin pot on the stove.

"Coffee, you mean," said Bartley.

"No, sir, I mean tea. That's tea; and I give it to 'em three times a day,
good and strong,--molasses in it, and no milk. That's a brain food, if ever
there was one. Sets 'em up, right on end, every time. Clears their heads
and keeps the cold out."

"I should think you were running a seminary for young ladies, instead of a
logging-camp," said Bartley.

"No, but look at it: I'm in earnest about tea. You look at the tea drinkers
and the coffee-drinkers all the world over! Look at 'em in our own country!
All the Northern people and all the go-ahead people drink tea. The
Pennsylvanians and the Southerners drink coffee. Why our New England folks
don't even know how to _make_ coffee so it's fit to drink! And it's just
so all over Europe. The Russians drink tea, and they'd e't up those
coffee-drinkin' Turks long ago, if the tea-drinkin' English hadn't kept 'em
from it. Go anywheres you like in the North, and you find 'em drinkin' tea.
The Swedes and Norwegians in Aroostook County drink it; and they drink it
at home."

"Well, what do you think of the French and Germans? They drink coffee, and
they're pretty smart, active people, too."

"French and Germans drink coffee?"

"Yes."

Kinney stopped short in his heated career of generalization, and scratched
his shaggy head. "Well," he said, finally, "I guess they're a kind of
a missing link, as old Darwin says." He joined Bartley in his laugh
cordially, and looked up at the round clock nailed to a log. "It's about
time I set my tables, anyway. Well," he asked, apparently to keep the
conversation from flagging, while he went about this work, "how is the good
old Free Press getting along?"

"It's going to get along without me from this out," said Bartley. "This is
my last week in Equity."

"No!" retorted Kinney, in tremendous astonishment.

"Yes; I'm off at the end of the week. Squire Gaylord takes the paper back
for the committee, and I suppose Henry Bird will run it for a while; or
perhaps they'll stop it altogether. It's been a losing business for the
committee."

"Why, I thought you'd bought it of 'em."

"Well, that's what I expected to do; but the office hasn't made any money.
All that I've saved is in my colt and cutter."

"That sorrel?"

Bartley nodded. "I'm going away about as poor as I came. I couldn't go much
poorer."

"Well!" said Kinney, in the exhaustion of adequate language. He went
on laying the plates and knives and forks in silence. These were of
undisguised steel; the dishes and the drinking mugs were of that dense and
heavy make which the keepers of cheap restaurants use to protect themselves
against breakage, and which their servants chip to the quick at every edge.
Kinney laid bread and crackers by each plate, and on each he placed a vast
slab of cold corned beef. Then he lifted the lid of the pot in which the
cabbage and potatoes were boiling together, and pricked them with a fork.
He dished up the beans in a succession of deep tins, and set them at
intervals along the tables, and began to talk again. "Well, now, I'm sorry.
I'd just begun to feel real well acquainted with you. Tell you the truth, I
didn't take much of a fancy to you, first off."

"Is that so?" asked Bartley, not much disturbed by the confession.

"Yes, sir. Well, come to boil it down," said Kinney, with the frankness of
the analytical mind that disdains to spare itself in the pursuit of truth,
"I didn't like your good clothes. I don't suppose I ever had a suit of
clothes to fit me. Feel kind of ashamed, you know, when I go into the
store, and take the first thing the Jew wants to put off on to me. Now, I
suppose you go to Macullar and Parker's in Boston, and you get what _you_
want."

"No; I have my measure at a tailor's," said Bartley, with ill-concealed
pride in the fact.

"You don't say so!" exclaimed Kinney. "Well!" he said, as if he might as
well swallow this pill, too, while he was about it. "Well, what's the use?
I never was the figure for clothes, anyway. Long, gangling boy to start
with, and a lean, stoop-shouldered man. I found out some time ago that a
fellow wa'n't necessarily a bad fellow because he had money, or a good
fellow because he hadn't. But I hadn't quite got over hating a man because
he had style. Well, I suppose it was a kind of a _survival_, as old Tylor
calls it. But I tell you, I sniffed round you a good while before I made up
my mind to swallow you. And that turnout of yours, it kind of staggered me,
after I got over the clothes. Why, it wa'n't so much the colt,--any man
likes to ride after a sorrel colt; and it wa'n't so much the cutter: it was
the red linin' with pinked edges that you had to your robe; and it was the
red ribbon that you had tied round the waist of your whip. When I see that
ribbon on that whip, damn you, I wanted to kill you." Bartley broke out
into a laugh, but Kinney went on soberly. "But, thinks I to myself: 'Here!
Now you stop right here! You wait! You give the fellow a chance for his
life. Let him have a chance to show whether that whip-ribbon goes all
through him, first. If it does, kill him cheerfully; but give him a chance
_first_.' Well, sir, I gave you the chance, and you showed that you
deserved it. I guess you taught me a lesson. When I see you at work,
pegging away hard at something or other, every time I went into your
office, up and coming with everybody, and just as ready to pass the time of
day with me as the biggest bug in town, thinks I: 'You'd have made a great
mistake to kill that fellow, Kinney!' And I just made up my mind to like
you."

"Thanks," said Bartley, with ironical gratitude.

Kinney did not speak at once. He whistled thoughtfully through his teeth,
and then he said: "I'll tell you what: if you're going away _very_ poor, I
know a wealthy chap you can raise a loan out of."

Bartley thought seriously for a silent moment. "If your friend offers me
twenty dollars, I'm not too well dressed to take it."

"All right," said Kinney. He now dished up the cabbage and potatoes, and
throwing a fresh handful of tea into the pot, and filling it up with water,
he took down a tin horn, with which he went to the door and sounded a long,
stertorous note.




X.


"Guess it was the clothes again," said Kinney, as he began to wash his tins
and dishes after the dinner was over, and the men had gone back to their
work. "I could see 'em eyin' you over when they first came in, and I could
see that they didn't exactly like the looks of 'em. It would wear off in
time, but it _takes_ time for it to wear off; and it had to go pretty rusty
for a start-off. Well, I don't know as it makes much difference to you,
does it?"

"Oh, I thought we got along very well," said Bartley, with a careless yawn.
"There wasn't much chance to get acquainted." Some of the loggers were as
handsome and well-made as he, and were of as good origin and traditions,
though he had some advantages of training. But his two-button cutaway, his
well-fitting trousers, his scarf with a pin in it, had been too much for
these young fellows in their long 'stoga boots and flannel shirts. They
looked at him askance, and despatched their meal with more than their
wonted swiftness, and were off again into the woods without any
demonstrations of satisfaction in Bartley's presence.

He had perceived their grudge, for he had felt it in his time. But it did
not displease him; he had none of the pain with which Kinney, who had so
long bragged of him to the loggers, saw that his guest was a failure.

"I guess they'll come out all right in the end," he said. In this warm
atmosphere, after the gross and heavy dinner he had eaten, he yawned again
and again. He folded his overcoat into a pillow for his bench and lay down,
and lazily watched Kinney about his work. Presently he saw Kinney seated on
a block of wood beside the stove, with his elbow propped in one hand, and
holding a magazine, out of which he was reading; he wore spectacles, which
gave him a fresh and interesting touch of grotesqueness. Bartley found that
an empty barrel had been placed on each side of him, evidently to keep him
from rolling off his bench.

"Hello!" he said. "Much obliged to you, Kinney. I haven't been taken such
good care of since I can remember. Been asleep, haven't I?"

"About an hour," said Kinney, with a glance at the clock, and ignoring his
agency in Bartley's comfort.

"Food for the brain!" said Bartley, sitting up. "I should think so. I've
dreamt a perfect New American Cyclopaedia, and a pronouncing gazetteer
thrown in."

"Is that so?" said Kinney, as if pleased with the suggestive character of
his cookery, now established by eminent experiment.

Bartley yawned a yawn of satisfied sleepiness, and rubbed his hand over
his face. "I suppose," he said, "if I'm going to write anything about Camp
Kinney, I had better see all there is to see."

"Well, yes, I presume you had," said Kinney. "We'll go over to where
they're cuttin', pretty soon, and you can see all there is in an hour. But
I presume you'll want to see it so as to ring in some description, hey?
Well, that's all right. But what you going to do with it, when you've done
it, now you're out of the Free Press?"

"Oh, I shouldn't have printed it in the Free Press, anyway Coals to
Newcastle, you know. I'll tell you what I think I'll do, Kinney: I'll get
my outlines, and then you post me with a lot of facts,--queer characters,
accidents, romantic incidents, snowings-up, threatened starvation,
adventures with wild animals,--and I can make something worth while; get
out two or three columns, so they can print it in their Sunday edition. And
then I'll take it up to Boston with me, and seek my fortune with it."

"Well, sir, I'll do it," said Kinney, fired with the poetry of the idea.
"I'll post you! Dumn 'f I don't wish _I_ could write! Well, I _did_ use to
scribble once for an agricultural paper; but I don't call that writin'.
I've set down, well, I guess as much as sixty times, to try to write out
what I know about loggin'--"

"Hold on!" cried Bartley, whipping out his notebook. "That's first-rate.
That'll do for the first line in the head,--_What I Know About
Logging_,--large caps. Well!"

Kinney shut his magazine, and took his knee between his hands, closing one
of his eyes in order to sharpen his recollection. He poured forth a stream
of reminiscence, mingled observation, and personal experience. Bartley
followed him with his pencil, jotting down points, striking in sub-head
lines, and now and then interrupting him with cries of "Good!" "Capital!"
"It's a perfect mine,--it's a mint! By Jove!" he exclaimed, "I'll make
_six_ columns of this! I'll offer it to one of the magazines, and it'll
come out illustrated! Go on, Kinney."

"Hark!" said Kinney, craning his neck forward to listen. "I thought I heard
sleigh-bells. But I guess it wa'n't. Well, sir, as I was sayin', they
fetched that fellow into camp with both feet frozen to the knees--Dumn 'f
it _wa'n't_ bells!"

He unlimbered himself, and hurried to the door at the other end of the
cabin, which he opened, letting in a clear block of the afternoon sunshine,
and a gush of sleigh-bell music, shot with men's voices, and the cries and
laughter of women.

"Well, sir," said Kinney, coming back and making haste to roll down his
sleeves and put on his coat. "_Here's_ a nuisance! A whole party of
folks--two sleigh-loads--right _on_ us. I don't know who they _be_, or
where they're from. But I know where I wish they _was_. Well, of course,
it's natural they should want to see a loggin'-camp," added Kinney, taking
himself to task for his inhospitable mind, "and there ain't any harm in it.
But I wish they'd give a fellow a _little_ notice!"

The voices and bells drew nearer, but Kinney seemed resolved to observe the
decorum of not going to the door till some one knocked.

"Kinney! Kinney! Hello, Kinney!" shouted a man's voice, as the bells hushed
before the door, and broke into a musical clash when one of the horses
tossed his head.

"Well, sir," said Kinney, rising, "I guess it's old Willett himself. He's
the owner; lives up to Portland, and been threatening to come down here all
winter, with a party of friends. You just stay still," he added; and he
paid himself the deference which every true American owes himself in his
dealings with his employer: he went to the door very deliberately, and made
no haste on account of the repeated cries of "Kinney! Kinney!" in which
others of the party outside now joined.

When he opened the door again, the first voice saluted him with a roar of
laughter. "Why, Kinney, I began to think you were dead!"

"No, sir," Bartley heard Kinney reply, "it takes more to kill me than you
suppose." But now he stepped outside, and the talk became unintelligible.

Finally Bartley heard what was imaginably Mr. Willett's voice saying,
"Well, let's go in and have a look at it now"; and with much outcry and
laughter the ladies were invisibly helped to dismount, and presently the
whole party came stamping and rustling in.

Bartley's blood tingled. He liked this, and he stood quite self-possessed,
with his thumbs in his waistcoat pockets and his elbows dropped, while Mr.
Willett advanced in a friendly way.

"Ah, Mr. Hubbard! Kinney told us you were in here, and asked me to
introduce myself while he looked after the horses. My name's Willett. These
are my daughters; this is Mrs. Macallister, of Montreal; Mrs. Witherby, of
Boston; Miss Witherby, and Mr. Witherby. _You_ ought to know each other;
Mr. Hubbard is the editor of the Equity Free Press. Mr. Witherby, of The
Boston Events, Mr. Hubbard. Oh, and _Mr._ Macallister."

Bartley bowed to the Willett and Witherby ladies, and shook hands with Mr.
Witherby, a large, solemn man, with a purse-mouth and tight rings of white
hair, who treated him with the pomp inevitable to the owner of a city
newspaper in meeting a country editor.

At the mention of his name, Mr. Macallister, a slight little straight man,
in a long ulster and a sealskin cap, tiddled farcically forward on his
toes, and, giving Bartley his hand, said, "Ah, haow d'e-do, _haow_ d'e-do!"

Mrs. Macallister fixed upon him the eye of the flirt who knows her man. She
was of the dark-eyed English type; her eyes were very large and full, and
her smooth black hair was drawn flatly backward, and fastened in a knot
just under her dashing fur cap. She wore a fur sack, and she was equipped
against the cold as exquisitely as her Southern sisters defend themselves
from the summer. Bits of warm color, in ribbon and scarf, flashed out here
and there; when she flung open her sack, she showed herself much more
lavishly buttoned and bugled and bangled than the Americans. She sat clown
on the movable bench which Bartley had vacated, and crossed her feet, very
small and saucy, even in their arctics, on a stick of fire-wood, and cast
up her neat profile, and rapidly made eyes at every part of the interior.
"Why, it's delicious, you know. I never saw anything so comfortable. I want
to spend the rest of me life here, you know." She spoke very far down in
her throat, and with a rising inflection in each sentence. "I'm going to
have a quarrel with you, Mr. Willett, for not telling me what a delightful
surprise you had for us here. Oh, but I'd no idea of it, I assure you!"

"Well, I'm glad you like it, Mrs. Macallister," said Mr. Willett, with the
clumsiness of American middle-age when summoned to say something gallant.
"If I'd told you what a surprise I had for you, it wouldn't have been one."

"Oh, it's no good your trying to get out of it _that_ way," retorted the
beauty. "There he comes now! I'm really in love with him, you know," she
said, as Kinney opened the door and came hulking forward.

Nobody said anything at once, but Bartley laughed finally, and ventured,
"Well, I'll propose for you to Kinney."

"Oh, I dare say!" cried the beauty, with a lively effort of wit. "Mr.
Kinney, I have fallen in love with your camp, d' ye know?" she added, as
Kinney drew near, "and I'm beggin' Mr. Willett to let me come and live here
among you."

"Well, ma'am," said Kinney, a little abashed at this proposition, "you
couldn't do a better thing for your health, I _guess_."

The proprietor of The Boston Events turned about, and began to look
over the arrangements of the interior; the other ladies went with him,
conversing, in low tones. "These must be the places where the men sleep,"
they said, gazing at the bunks.

"We must get Kinney to explain things to us," said Mr. Willett a little
restlessly.

Mrs. Macallister jumped briskly to her feet. "Oh, yes, do, Mr. Willett,
make him explain everything! I've been tryin' to coax it out of him, but
he's _such_ a tease!"

Kinney looked very sheepish in this character, and Mrs. Macallister hooked
Bartley to her side for the tour of the interior. "I can't let you away
from me, Mr. Hubbard; your friend's so satirical, I'm afraid of him. Only
fancy, Mr. Willett! He's been talkin' to _me_ about brain foods! I know
he's makin' fun of me; and it isn't kind, is it, Mr. Hubbard?"

She did not give the least notice to the things that the others looked at,
or to Kinney's modest lecture upon the manners and customs of the loggers.
She kept a little apart with Bartley, and plied him with bravadoes, with
pouts, with little cries of suspense. In the midst of this he heard Mr.
Willett saying, "You ought to get some one to come and write about this for
your paper, Witherby." But Mrs. Macallister was also saying something,
with a significant turn of her floating eyes, and the thing that concerned
Bartley, if he were to make his way among the newspapers in Boston, slipped
from his grasp like the idea which we try to seize in a dream. She made
sure of him for the drive to the place which they visited to see the men
felling the trees, by inviting him to a seat at her side in the sleigh;
this crowded the others, but she insisted, and they all gave way, as people
must, to the caprices of a pretty woman. Her coquetries united British
wilfulness to American nonchalance, and seemed to have been graduated
to the appreciation of garrison and St. Lawrence River steamboat and
watering-place society. The Willett ladies had already found it necessary
to explain to the Witherby ladies that they had met her the summer before
at the sea-side, and that she had stopped at Portland on her way to
England; they did not know her very well, but some friends of theirs did;
and their father had asked her to come with them to the camp. They added
that the Canadian ladies seemed to expect the gentlemen to be a great deal
more attentive than ours were. They had known as little what to do with Mr.
Macallister's small-talk and compliments as his wife's audacities, but they
did not view Bartley's responsiveness with pleasure. If Mrs. Macallister's
arts were not subtle, as Bartley even in the intoxication of her preference
could not keep from seeing, still, in his mood, it was consoling to
be singled out by her; it meant that even in a logging-camp he was
recognizable by any person of fashion as a good-looking, well-dressed man
of the world. It embittered him the more against Marcia, while, in some
sort, it vindicated him to himself.

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