“He sings like an owlingale!”

Jonas Harrison was leaning against the well-curb, talking to Cynthy Ann.  He’d been down to the store at Brayville, he said, a listenin’ to ’em discuss Millerism, and seed a new singing-master there.  “Could he sing good?” Cynthy asked, rather to prolong the talk than to get information.

“Sings like an owlingale, I reckon.  He’s got more seals to his ministry a-hanging onto his watch-chain than I ever seed.  Got a mustache onto the top story of his mouth, somethin’ like a tuft of grass on the roof of a olé shed kitchen.  Peart?  He’s the peartest-lookin’ chap I ever seed.  But he a’n’t no singin’-master ­not of I’m any jedge of turnips.  He warn’t born to sarve his day and generation with a tunin’-fork.  I think he’s a-goin’ to reckon-water a little in these parts and that he’s only a-playin’ singin’-master.  He kin play more fiddles’n one, you bet a hoss!  Says he come up here fer his wholesome, and I guess he did.  Think ef he’d a-staid where he was, he moût a-suffered a leetle from confinement to his room, and that room p’raps not more nor five foot by nine, and ruther dim-lighted and poor-provisioned, an’ not much chance fer takin’ exercise in the fresh air!”

“Don’t be oncharitable, Jonas, don’t.  We’re all mis’able sinners, I s’pose; and you know charity don’t think no evil.  The man may be all right, ef he does wear hair on his lip.  Charity kivers lots a sins.”

“Ya-as, but charity don’t kiver no wolves with wool.  An’ ef he a’n’t a woolly wolf they’s no snakes in Jarsey, as little Ridin’ Hood said when her granny tried to bite her head off.  I’m dead sot in favor of charity, and mean to gin her my vote at every election, but I a’n’t a-goin’ to have her put a blind-bridle on to me.  And when a man comes to Clark township a-wearing straps to his breechaloons to keep hisself from leaving terry-firmy altogether, and a weightin’ hisself down with pewter watch-seals, gold-washed, and a cultivating a crap of red-top hay onto his upper lip, and a-lettin’ on to be a singin’-master, I suspicions him.  They’s too much in the git-up fer the come-out.  Well, here’s yer health, Cynthy!”

And having made this oracular speech and quaffed the hard limestone water, Jonas hung the clean white gourd from which he had been drinking, in its place against the well-curb, and started back to the field, while Cynthy Ann carried her bucket of water into the kitchen, blaming herself for standing so long talking to Jonas.  To Cynthy everything pleasant had a flavor of sinfulness.

The pail of water was hardly set down in the sink when there came a knock at the door, and Cynthy found standing by it the strapped pantaloons, the “red-top” mustache, the watch-seals, and all the rest that went to make up the new singing-master.  He smiled when he saw her, one of those smiles which are strictly limited to the lower half of the face, and are wholly mechanical, as though certain strings inside were pulled with malice aforethought and the mouth jerked out into a square grin, such as an ingeniously-made automaton might display.

“Is Mr. Anderson in?”

“No, sir; he’s gone to town.”

“Is Mrs. Anderson in?”

And so he entered, and soon got into conversation with the lady of the house, and despite the prejudice which she entertained for mustaches, she soon came to like him.  He smiled so artistically.  He talked so fluently.  He humored all her whims, pitied all her complaints, and staid to dinner, eating her best preserves with a graciousness that made Mrs. Anderson feel how great was his condescension.  For Mr. Humphreys, the singing-master, had looked at the comely face of Julia, and looked over Julia’s shoulders at the broad acres beyond; and he thought that in Clark township he had not met with so fine a landscape, so nice a figure-piece.  And with the quick eye of a man of the world, he had measured Mrs. Anderson, and calculated on the ease with which he might complete the picture to suit his taste.

He staid to supper.  He smiled that same fascinating square smile on Samuel Anderson, treated him as head of the house, talked glibly of farming, and listened better than he talked.  He gave no account of himself, except by way of allusion.  He would begin a sentence thus, “When I was traveling in France with my poor dear mother,” etc., from which Mrs. Anderson gathered that he had been a devoted son, and then he would relate how he had seen something curious “when he was dining at the house of the American minister at Berlin.”  “This hazy air reminds me of my native mountains in Northern New York.”  And then he would allude to his study of music in the Conservatory in Leipsic.  To plain country people in an out-of-the-way Western neighborhood, in 1843, such a man was better than a lyceum full of lectures.  He brought them the odor of foreign travel, the flavor of city, the “otherness” that everybody craves.

He staid to dinner, as I have said, and to supper.  He staid over night.  He took up his board at the house of Samuel Anderson.  Who could resist his entreaty?  Did he not assure them that he felt the need of a home in a cultivated family?  And was it not the one golden opportunity to have the daughter of the house taught music by a private master, and thus give a special eclat to her education?  How Mrs. Anderson hoped that this superior advantage would provoke jealous remarks on the part of her neighbors!  It was only necessary to the completion of her triumph that they should say she was “stuck up.”  Then, too, to have so brilliant a beau for Julia!  A beau with watch-seals and a mustache, a beau who had been to Paris with his mother, studied music in the Conservatory at Leipsic, dined with the American minister in Berlin, and done ever so many more wonderful things, was a prospect to delight the ambitious heart of Mrs. Anderson, especially as he flattered the mother instead of the daughter.

“He’s a independent citizen of this Federal Union,” said Jonas to Cynthy, “carries his head like he was intimately ’quainted with the ‘merican eagle hisself.  He’s playin’ this game sharp.  He deals all the trumps to hisself, and most everything besides.  He’ll carry off the gal if something don’t arrest him in his headlong career.  Jist let me git a chance at him when he’s soarin’ loftiest into the amber blue above, and I’ll cut his kite-string for him, and let him fall like fork-ed lightnin’ into a mud-puddle.”

Cynthy said she did see one great sin that he had committed for sure.  That was the puttin’ on of gold and costly apparel.  It was sot down in the Bible and in the Methodist Discipline that it was a sin to wear gold, and she should think the poor man hadn’t no sort o’ regard for his soul, weighing it down with them things.

But Jonas only remarked that he guessed his jewelry warn’t no sin.  He didn’t remember nothing agin wearin’ pewter.