tom adams, driver of the brick-yard wagon, and signer of one of the pledges circulated at the great temperance meeting, was certainly a man worth saving. he had a wife and was rich in children. his wife was faithful, good-natured, and industrious, and his children were of that bright, irrepressible nature which is about the most valuable of inheritances in this land where other inheritances do not average largely in money value. for the good of such a group it was very desirable that the head of the family should be in the constant possession of strong arms and all his wits. and even for his own sake tom was worth a great deal more attention than men of his kind ever receive. he was perfectly honest, a hard worker, cheerier in temperament than any pastor in the village, quicker-witted than most of the lawyers within the judicial circuit upon which the town of barton was situated, and more generous in proportion to his means than[35] any of his well-to-do fellow-citizens. during the season for making and delivering bricks he worked from sunrise to sunset, rendered fair count to seller and buyer, and never abused his employer’s horses. his regular pay was seventy-five cents per day, which sum, in a land where flour was sold at two cents per pound and meat was only twice as high as flour, and a comfortable house could be hired at four dollars per month, paid his family expenses. but the season at the brick-yard lasted only during six months of the twelve. during the remaining six months tom gladly did any work he could find: he drove teams where any hauling was to be done, chopped wood, worked in the pork-houses where merchants prepared for the southern market the fatted hogs which were the principal legal-tenders for the indebtedness of farmer customers, formed part of the crew of one of the many flatboats which conveyed the meat to market, and did whatever other work he could find. but in the winter season, when the family appetite was most industrious, tom could not find employment for all his time, while the merchants who trusted him made more frequent requests for money than tom was able to honor. when he was idle, he found himself more welcome[36] at the liquor-shops than anywhere else; when he grew despondent at his inability to pay, he sought solace at these same places; when in the steady work and long hours of the summer season he became gradually “worked out” and “used up”—experiences not infrequent with tom—he went to the liquor-shops for the only relief he had ever been able to find. his experience did not differ greatly from that of men of higher social standing, who, under similar mental and physical conditions, drink high-priced wines. he gradually increased the quantity of his potations, and went through the successive experiences of being unmanned by liquor, striving to rebuild himself by the power which had broken him, becoming by turns gay, silly, boisterous, pugnacious, sullen, apathetic, and finally penitent. each of his sprees cost him several days in time and several dollars in money—a fact which no one realized more clearly than tom himself; yet the feeling which had made him take the first drinks of these frightful series was one which had its seat in his own better nature, and which he had many times found more powerful than every influence he could bring to bear against it. he had listened to many a private lecture on the subject of[37] his weakness, and had honestly admitted the truth of all that was said to him on the subject; he had signed many a pledge in the most agonized earnest, and had broken every one of them.
on the monday which followed the temperance meeting tom adams was nearly frantic with his old longing. the rest of sunday had been a hindrance rather than a help to him, for he had already suffered several days from the effects of abstaining from his usual after-dinner and after-supper potations. the amount usually drank on these occasions had not been great, but the habit had for some years been so regular that his amazed and indignant physique protested against the change. had he been capable of spiritually withdrawing himself from the world on the day of the lord, he might have found help and strength; but he was as incapable of such a thing as were nine-tenths of the church-members in barton. while he remained at home, his children were noisy enough to have hurried a rapt seer back to the realization of earthly things; when he went abroad he could not, as was his usual sunday habit, step quietly into the back door of bayne’s liquor-store. he strolled down to the stable-yard of the barton house, hoping to find[38] some one with whom he could talk horse; but the hostler was not in sight, and the stable-boy, who had been heard to say he “didn’t count much on them fellers what signed the pledge and went back on their friends,” eyed him with evident disgust. in the street he met people going to and from church and sunday-school, and they looked at him as if their eyes were asking, “are you keeping your pledge?” then, to crown all, his wife gave him such a beseeching and yet doubting look every time he left the house and returned to it that he almost hated the good woman for her affectionate anxiety.
tom was up bright and early monday morning, and though he soon mounted his wagon and left his wife’s eyes behind him, he found his longing for liquor as close to him as ever. reaching the brick-yard, he was rather startled to find there deacon jones, his employer, and owner of a store as well as the kilns. the deacon looked at him as all the religious people had done on sunday, and tom inwardly cursed him.
“how are you, tom?” inquired the deacon, and then, without waiting for a reply, remarked:
“there’s somethin’ i’ve been a-wantin’ to talk to you ’bout, tom, an’ i was sure o’ catchin’ you here,[39] so i came over before breakfast. you signed the pledge t’other night.”
this latter clause was delivered with an accompanying glance which caused tom to put a great deal of anger into his reply, although his words were few.
“yes, an’ kep’ it, too.”
“i’m glad of it, tom. there’s been times when you didn’t, you know. well, what i want to say is this: some folks say that some men drink because they have to work too hard, an’ because they have trouble. now, mebbe—i only say mebbe, mind—mebbe that’s what upset you those other times. now, if i was to give you work all the year round at seventy-five cents a day, an’ not work you more’n ten hours a day, would it help you to keep straight?”
“would it?” said tom, scratching his head, wrinkling his brows, and eying the deacon incredulously “why, of course it would.”
“well, then,” said the deacon, “i’ll do it. as long as the brick business is good you can work at haulin’ from seven to twelve, an’ one to six. don’t you s’pose you could put two or three hundred more brick on a load without hurtin’ the hosses? i don’t[40] want to lose any more’n i can help, you know, by cuttin’ down your time. rainy days i’ll keep you busy at the store some way; them’s the days farmers can’t do much on the farm, so they bring their butter and eggs to town, and there’s a sight of measurin’ an’ weighin’ to be done. an’ after the brick season’s over i’ll find you somethin’ to do at the store. you can put the pork-house an’ warehouse to rights before the packin’ season begins, an’ you can weigh the corn an’ wheat an’ oats an’ pork when they come in, and mend bags, and work in the pork-house three months out of the six. you wouldn’t object to takin’ night-spells in the pork-house instead of day-spells, would you, when we have to work day and night? night-wages costs us most, you know, an’ you ought to help us make up what we lose on you when there’s nothin’ doin’.”
“just as you say,” replied tom. he did not clasp the deacon in a grateful embrace, for the deacon had, in his thrifty way, prevented tom from feeling especially grateful. the owner of the brick-yard had intimated that the new arrangement was for tom’s especial benefit, but his later remarks caused this feature of the arrangement to speedily disappear[41] from view. but, although not doubting for an instant that the deacon meant to get his money back with usury, tom felt his heart growing lighter every moment. at the same time he felt angry at the deacon’s occasional suggestions that the arrangements were partly of the nature of charity. so he replied:
“just as you say; but, deacon, i ain’t the feller that wants money for work i don’t do, you know that. the arrangement suits me first-rate, but i’m goin’ to work hard for my money; you can bet all your loose change on that.”
“thomas!” ejaculated the deacon sternly, “i am not in the habit of betting. it’s a careless, foolish, wasteful, sinful way of using money.”
“that’s so,” replied tom reflectively; “unless,” he continued, “you’re one of the winnin’ kind.”
“it is a business i don’t intend to go into, so the less said of it the better. so my offer suits you, does it?”
“i’ll shake hands on it,” replied tom, extending his hand.
“wait a moment,” said the deacon, retiring his own right hand to a conservative position behind[42] his back. “if it suits you,” continued the deacon impressively, “you agree to stick to your pledge; no foolin’ with whisky again, mind.”
“nary drop,” said tom, with great emphasis. “ten minutes ago i wouldn’t have given a pewter dime for my chance of sticking it out through the day, but now i wouldn’t give a cent for a barr’l full of ten-year-old rye.”
“all right, then—shake hands. and we begin to-day—or say to-morrow—there’s lots of bricks wanted to-day—here’s the orders. and may the lord help you, thomas—help you to hold out steadfast unto the end. now i reckon i’ll get home to breakfast.”
as the deacon walked off he soliloquized in this manner:
“there! i wonder if that’ll suit crupp an’ brother wedgewell? what a queer team them two fellows make! queer that crupp should have bothered me two hours saturday night, an’ the preacher should have come out so strong about bein’ our brothers’ keepers the very next day. ’twas a christian act for me to do, too. ‘he that converteth a sinner from the error of his ways’—ah! blessed be the promises. an’ i won’t lose a[43] cent by the operation—i can keep him busy enough. when folks know what i’ve done an’ what i done it for, i guess they’ll think i’ve got my good streaks after all. i declare, i ought to have told him i couldn’t pay for days when he was sick; ’tain’t too late yet, though—he won’t back out on that account. mebbe i can talk him into j’ining the church, too—who knows, an’ some day in ’xperience meetin’ mebbe he’ll tell how it all came about through me. he must bring his dinners with him when he’s workin’ about the store. i ought to have done that with my clerk before he took to lunchin’ off the crackers and cheese busy days—these little things all cost. but it does make a man feel good to do kindnesses to his fellow-men.”
as for tom adams, he mounted the wagon, seized the reins, and exclaimed,
“by thunder! ’fore i haul a durned brick, i’ll just drive home by the back way and tell the old woman. reckon she won’t look at me any more in that way then. like enough he’s right when he says some says mebbe workin’ too hard makes fellows drink. it never got into my head before, though.”
[44]
as tom drove through a back street in which mr. crupp lived, that worthy stared at the empty wagon inquiringly.
“the old man’s engaged me for a year, at six bits a day, and only ten hours a day to work,” shouted tom in explanation.
“the devil!” replied the new reformer, and seizing his hat he hurried off to the rev. jonas wedgewell. the pastor was discovered through an open window at his matutinal repast, and the eager crupp thrust his head in the window and shouted,
“first blood, parson! old jones has hired tom for a year, and he’s only got ten hours a day to work.”
the holy man raised his hands, despite the incumbrances of half a biscuit and a coffee cup, and exclaimed,
“bless the lord for the first fruits of the seed so newly sown. who would have thought so undemonstrative a man would have been the first to heed the word of exhortation?”
“he’s the first to see money in it—that’s why,” explained crupp.
“my dear sir, do you really ascribe deacon jones’s[45] meritorious action to sordid motives?” asked the old pastor, opening his mouth and eyes as if the answer for which he waited was to come through them.
“hum—well, no—i reckon ’twas a little mixed,” replied mr. crupp, meditatively analyzing a blossom of a honeysuckle growing by the pastor’s window. “i dinged at him, you preached at him, he thought it over, and whatever jonathan jones thinks over long is pretty sure to have money in it somewhere in the end. he’ll make mor’n he’ll lose on tom, an’ it’s best he should—he’ll have a better heart to try another experiment of the same sort one of these days. but i didn’t mean to interrupt your breakfast—beg your pardon, mrs. wedgewell and young ladies, for not ringing the bell, but i was too full of the news to behave myself. good by.”
and mr. crupp started for his own breakfast-table, while the reverend jonas’s eyes seemed directed at some object just out of sight, as he abstractedly raised his coffee cup to his lips.
