the story short, Mr. McSpadden consented to take her into his house.
Before long she yearned for the society of her younger children; so Mary
and Julia were admitted also, and little Jimmy, their brother. Jimmy had
a pocket knife, and he wandered into the drawing-room with it one day,
alone, and reduced ten thousand dollars’ worth of furniture to an
indeterminable value in rather less than three-quarters of an hour.
A day or two later he fell down-stairs and broke his neck, and seventeen
of his family’s relatives came to the house to attend the funeral. This
made them acquainted, and they kept the kitchen occupied after that, and
likewise kept the McSpaddens busy hunting-up situations of various sorts
for them, and hunting up more when they wore these out. The old woman
drank a good deal and swore a good deal; but the grateful McSpaddens knew
it was their duty to reform her, considering what her son had done for
them, so they clave nobly to their generous task. William came often and
got decreasing sums of money, and asked for higher and more lucrative
employments–which the grateful McSpadden more or less promptly procured
for him. McSpadden consented also, after some demur, to fit William for
college; but when the first vacation came and the hero requested to be
sent to Europe for his health, the persecuted McSpadden rose against the
tyrant and revolted. He plainly and squarely refused. William
Ferguson’s mother was so astounded that she let her gin-bottle drop, and
her profane lips refused to do their office. When she recovered she said
in a half-gasp, “Is this your gratitude? Where would your wife and boy
be now, but for my son?”
William said, “Is this your gratitude? Did I save your wife’s life or
not? Tell me that!”
Seven relations swarmed in from the kitchen and each said, “And this is
his gratitude!”
William’s sisters stared, bewildered, and said, “And this is his grat–”
but were interrupted by their mother, who burst into tears and exclaimed,
“To think that my sainted little Jimmy threw away his life in the service
of such a reptile!”
Then the pluck of the revolutionary McSpadden rose to the occasion, and
he replied with fervor, “Out of my house, the whole beggarly tribe of
you! I was beguiled by the books, but shall never be beguiled again
–once is sufficient for me.” And turning to William he shouted, “Yes,
you did save my, wife’s life, and the next man that does it shall die in
his tracks!”
Not being a clergyman, I place my text at the end of my sermon instead of
at the beginning. Here it is, from Mr. Noah Brooks’s Recollections of
President Lincoln in Scribners Monthly:
J. H. Hackett, in his part of Falstaff, was an actor who gave Mr.
Lincoln great delight. With his usual desire to signify to others
his sense of obligation, Mr. Lincoln wrote a genial little note to
the actor expressing his pleasure at witnessing his performance.
Mr. Hackett, in reply, sent a book of some sort; perhaps it was one
of his own authorship. He also wrote several notes to the
President. One night, quite late, when the episode had passed out
of my mind, I went to the white House in answer to a message.
Passing into the President’s office, I noticed, to my surprise,
Hackett sitting in the anteroom as if waiting for an audience. The
President asked me if any one was outside. On being told, he said,
half sadly, “Oh, I can’t see him, I can’t see him; I was in hopes he
had gone away.” Then he added, “Now this just illustrates the
difficulty of having pleasant friends and acquaintances in this
place. You know how I liked Hackett as an actor, and how I wrote to
tell him so. He sent me that book, and there I thought the matter
would end. He is a master of his place in the profession, I
suppose, and well fixed in it; but just because we had a little
friendly correspondence, such as any two men might have, he wants
something. What do you suppose he wants?” I could not guess, and