I never heard The. Meek or his wife speak impatiently to any of their children, but they were obedient for all that—much more so than those of us who were beaten on the slightest provocation—and were very fond of one another. While other boys were anxious to get away from home, The. Meek’s children were content, and believed there was not another so pleasant place in the world as the big house, built after the architecture of a packing-box, in which they lived. I often thought of this circumstance to their credit, and thought it was also to the credit of the father and the mother. There were but three rooms in the house, two down stairs, and one above as large as both of those below in which all the boys slept; and here also were the company beds, so that had I ever heard of an asylum at the time of which I write, I should certainly have thought the big room with the nine or ten beds scattered about in it was like one.
I frequently went from school to spend the night with the young Meeks, and, after we had gone to bed in the big room upstairs, I either froze their blood with ghost stories, or convulsed them by telling any foolish event I happened to think of, at which they laughed until I feared for their lives. If the uproar became particularly loud their father and mother came up to see what it was all about, and, on being informed of the cause, laughed themselves, and went down again.
The two sons of the crippled but devout shoemaker, Mr. Winter, were the most remarkable scholars that attended the school, for the reason that they seemed to have mastered all sorts of depravity by sheer force of native genius; for though they possessed all the accomplishments of street Arabs, and we thought they must surely be town boys, the truth was that they were seldom allowed even to go to town, and therefore could not have contracted the vices of civilization from the contagion of evil society. When one of them did go he returned with a knife for nearly every boy in the school, and cloves and cinnamon bark to last for weeks, which were stolen from the stores. If one of us longed for anything in their presence, they said it would be forthcoming immediately if we got them opportunity to go to town. This was only possible by inducing some one to allow them to drive a team, as their father was poor, and did not keep horses.
The older (and I may add the worse) one was probably named Hardy, but he was always known as Hard. Winter, because of his hard character; and his brother’s evil reputation was so woven into his name that we never knew what the latter really was, for he was known as Beef Hide Winter, a rebuke, I believe, for his failure to get away with a hide he had once stolen, but the boys accepted these titles with great cheerfulness, and did not mind them. They were the mildest mannered villains, I have no doubt, that ever lived, for no difference how convincing the proof was against them, they still denied it with tears in their eyes, and were always trying to convince those around them by kindness and civility that they were not so bad as represented (though they were worse), and I fear they were rather popular in spite of their weakness for things not belonging to them. In course of time their petty peculations came to be regarded in about the same light as was their father’s shouting—one of the peculiarities of the neighborhood—and we paid them no other attention than to watch them. At the Fourth of July celebrations in the woods, where all sorts of persons came to set up business, the Winter boys stole a little of everything they saw on exhibition, and generously divided with their friends. If they were sent together to a house near the school after water, one went through the cellar while the other went to the well, and if he secured anything he made a division at the first opportunity.
They always had their pockets full of things to give away, and I am satisfied that they came by none of them honestly, for they were very poor, and at home but seldom had enough even to eat. A habit of theirs was to throw stones with great accuracy, a collection of which they carried around in their pockets, ready for use, making long journeys to the creek bottoms to select them. They always went home with Guinea-hens or geese in their possession, which they said had been “given to them,” but which they had really knocked over in the road near farmers’ houses. They could kill more squirrels and quails by throwing than others of a similar age could by shooting, and it will be imagined that their failings were but seldom mentioned, for they were dangerous adversaries, though usually peaceable enough.
The teacher of this school at the time of which I now write—to be more explicit, when I was eleven years old, for what I have already written is a hurried retrospect covering a period of six years—was a very young and pretty girl named Agnes Deming, certainly not over sixteen and I doubt if that, who came from a neighborhood north of Fairview, where her widowed mother lived with an eccentric brother, and although it was as poor as ours, she spoke of it in such a way—not boastingly, but tenderly and reverently—that we thought of the community of Smoky Hill as a very superior one. Her father, of whom she talked a great deal, had been captain of a sailing vessel, as I learned a little at a time, and before his death they lived in a town by the sea, where his ship loaded. Of the town, however, which was called Bradford, she had but slight recollection, for when a very little girl she was sent away to school, and came home only at long intervals to welcome her father, who was often away a year at a time.
When ten years old, and after the ship had been absent a long time, she was sent for hurriedly one day, and told on her arrival that her father’s ship had gone down at sea; that all on board were lost, and that they were going West to live with her uncle, an eccentric man whom she had never seen. After a few months of preparation, during which time their effects were converted into money, they commenced their journey to the country in which they had since lived. When she was fourteen years old her uncle found her a place to teach a summer school, and, giving satisfaction in spite of her tender years, she had followed the calling since, her second engagement being in our neighborhood. I remember how generally it was said on her arrival that she would not do, as she was very young, but before the summer was over she somehow convinced her patrons that she would do, very well, as she was thoughtful and intelligent, and competent in every way.
This was her brief history, and before she had lived at Fairview a year, nobody was like Agnes Deming, for she was everybody’s friend and adviser, and was kinder to the people than anyone had ever been before. She was a revelation to Fairview—a woman of a kind they had never before seen; one who uttered no complaints, but who listened patiently to the complaints of others, and did what she could to help them. Whoever was in distress received her sympathy and aid, and I think the advent of this friendless little woman, with her unselfish and pretty ways, did more good for Fairview than its religion, for the people tried to become like her, and were better in every way.
From the description she gave I imagined her father to have been a bluff and manly fellow, for I had heard that such followed the sea, and when I found her crying softly to herself, I thought of course she was thinking of him, and often regretted that he was not in Fairview to be proud of his pretty daughter, instead of at the bottom of the restless and angry sea. That they had been very fond of each other I felt sure; and when the winds blew furiously around our house, as they often did, she seemed greatly distressed, as though it was just such a storm as that in which her father’s ship went down. She sang to us at night sometimes, in a sad, sweet voice, but always of storms, and of shipwrecks, as if the frightful manner of her father’s death was much on her mind, and as if she sorrowed always because she could not hope that some day his ship would come in, and the dreadful story of his death prove a mistake.
She said almost nothing of her mother, and in reasoning about it I thought that perhaps Mrs. Deming was so much distressed over the death of her husband as to be poor company, and anxious to be let alone; for Agnes seemed glad when vacation was over, and she was again occupying her old room in our house. Although she was originally expected to divide her time equally with every family sending children to the school, or to “board round,” she was oftener at our house than anywhere else; and once when she apologized in a burst of tears for being there so much, my mother kissed her tenderly, and it was arranged immediately, to the great satisfaction of all, that in future she should be a recognized member