the election had been on tuesday, november 4th. our paper, containing the news of the result, was to be expected at the corners on friday morning. but long before that date we had learned—i think it was hurley who found it out—that the abolitionists had actually been beaten in our congressional district. it was so amazing a thing that abner could scarcely credit it, but it was apparently beyond dispute. for that matter, one hardly needed further evidence than the dejected way in which philo andrews and myron pierce and other followers of “jee” hagadorn hung their heads as they drove past our place.
of course it had all been done by the vote in the big town of tecumseh, way at the other end of the district, and by those towns surrounding it where the mohawk dutch were still very numerous. but this did not at all lessen the exhilaration with which the discovery that the radicals of our own dearborn county had been snowed under, filled our breasts. was it not wonderful to think of, that these heroes of remote adams and jay counties should have been at work redeeming the district on the very day when the two votes of our farm marked the almost despairing low-water mark of the cause in agrippa?
abner could hardly keep his feet down on the ground or floor when he walked, so powerfully did the tidings of this achievement thrill his veins. he said the springs of his knees kept jerking upward, so that he wanted to kick and dance all the while. janey wilcox, who, though a meek and silent girl, was a wildly bitter partisan, was all eagerness to light a bonfire out on the knoll in front of the house thursday night, so that every mother’s son of them down at the corners might see it, but abner thought it would be better to wait until we had the printed facts before us.
i could hardly wait to finish breakfast friday morning, so great was my zeal to be off to the postoffice. it was indeed not altogether daylight when i started at quick step down the hill. yet, early as i was, there were some twenty people inside lee watkins’s store when i arrived, all standing clustered about the high square row of glass-faced pigeonholes reared on the farther end of the counter, behind which could be seen lee and his sour-faced wife sorting over the mail by lamp-light. “jee” hagadorn was in this group and squire avery, and most of the other prominent citizens of the neighborhood. all were deeply restless.
every minute or two some one of them would shout: “come, lee, give us out one of the papers, anyway!” but for some reason mrs. watkins was inexorable. her pursed-up lips and resolute expression told us plainly that none would be served till all were sorted. so the impatient waiters bided their time under protest, exchanging splenetic remarks under their breath. we must have stood there three-quarters of an hour.
at last mrs. watkins wiped her hands on the apron over her bloomers. everybody knew the signal, and on the instant a dozen arms were stretched vehemently toward lee, struggling for precedence. in another moment wrappers had been ripped off and sheets flung open. then the store was alive with excited voices. “yes, sir! it’s true! the copperheads have won!”
“tribune concedes seymour’s election!”
“we’re beaten in the district by less’n a hundred!”
“good-by, human liberty!” “now we know how lazarus felt when he was licked by the dogs!” and so on—a stormy warfare of wrathful ejaculations.
in my turn i crowded up, and held out my hand for the paper i saw in the box. lee watkins recognized me, and took the paper out to deliver to me. but at the same moment his wife, who had been hastily scanning the columns of some other journal, looked up and also saw who i was. with a lightning gesture she threw out her hand, snatched our world from her husband’s grasp, and threw it spitefully under the counter.
“there ain’t nothing for you!” she snapped at me. “pesky copperhead rag!” she muttered to herself.
although i had plainly seen the familiar wrapper, and understood her action well enough, it never occurred to me to argue the question with mrs.
watkins. her bustling, determined demeanor, perhaps also her bloomers, had always filled me with awe. i hung about for a time, avoiding her range of vision, until she went out into her kitchen. then i spoke with resolution to lee:
“if you don’t give me that paper,” i said, “i’ll tell abner, an’ he’ll make you sweat for it!”
the postmaster stole a cautious glance kitchen-ward. then he made a swift, diving movement under the counter, and furtively thrust the paper out at me.
“scoot!” he said, briefly, and i obeyed him.
abner was simply wild with bewildered delight over what this paper had to tell him. even my narrative about mrs. watkins, which ordinarily would have thrown him into transports of rage, provoked only a passing sniff. “they’ve only got two more years to hold that post-office,” was his only remark upon it.
hurley and janey wilcox and even the underwood girl came in, and listened to abner reading out the news. he shirked nothing, but waded manfully through long tables of figures and meaningless catalogues of counties in other states, the names of which he scarcely knew how to pronounce: “‘five hundred and thirty-one townships in wisconsin give brown 21,409, smith 16,329, ferguson 802, a republican loss of 26.’ do you see that, hurley? it’s everywhere the same.”
“‘kalapoosas county elects republican sheriff for first time in history of party.’ that isn’t so good, but it’s only one out of ten thousand.”
“‘four hundred and six townships in new hampshire show a net democratic loss of—’ pshaw! there ain’t nothing in that! wait till the other towns are heard from!”
so abner read on and on, slapping his thigh with his free hand whenever anything specially good turned up. and there was a great deal that we felt to be good. the state had been carried. besides our congressman, many others had been elected in unlooked-for places—so much so that the paper held out the hope that congress itself might be ours. of course abner at once talked as if it were already ours. resting between paragraphs, he told hurley and the others that this settled it. the war must now surely be abandoned, and the seceding states invited to return to the union on terms honorable to both sides.
hurley had assented with acquiescent nods to everything else. he seemed to have a reservation on this last point. “an’ what if they won’t come?” he asked.
“let ’em stay out, then,” replied abner, dogmatically. “this war—this wicked war between brothers—must stop. that’s the meaning of tuesday’s votes. what did you and i go down to the corners and cast our ballots for?—why, for peace!”
“well, somebody else got my share of it, then,” remarked hurley, with a rueful chuckle.
abner was too intent upon his theme to notice. “yes, peace!” he repeated, in the deep vibrating tones of his class-meeting manner. “why, just think what’s been a-goin’ on! great armies raised, hundreds of thousands of honest men taken from their-work an’ set to murderin’ each other, whole deestricks of country torn up by the roots, homes desolated, the land filled with widows an’ orphans, an’ every house a house of mournin’.”
mrs. beech had been sitting, with her mending-basket on her knee, listening to her husband like the rest of us. she shot to her feet now as these last words of his quivered in the air, paying no heed to the basket or its scattered contents on the floor, but putting her apron to her eyes, and making her way thus past us, half-blindly, into her bedroom. i thought i heard the sound of a sob as she closed the door.
that the stately, proud, self-contained mistress of our household should act like this before us all was even more surprising than seymour’s election. we stared at one another in silent astonishment.
“m’rye ain’t feelin’ over’n’ above well,” abner said at last, apologetically. “you girls ought to spare her all you kin.”
one could see, however, that he was as puzzled as the rest of us. he rose to his feet, walked over to the stove, rubbed his boot meditatively against the hearth for a minute or two, then came back again to the table. it was with a visible effort that he finally shook off this mood, and forced a smile to his lips.
“well, janey,” he said, with an effort at briskness, “ye kin go ahead with your bonfire, now. i guess i’ve got some old bar’ls for ye over’n the cow-barn.”
but having said this, he turned abruptly and followed his wife into the little chamber off the living-room.
