Democratic Sentinel, Volume 2, Number 21, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 5 July 1878 — YAKOB. [ARTICLE]

YAKOB.

It was a saying in the family that “ Sue was the poet, Joe the financier, ami Charley—had discovered Yakob.” It needs very little wit to give a saying long life in a lonely farm house, and Yakob was as remarkable a novelty among us as a poem or a good deal of money would have been. Ho was a very short, very stumpy, very white-headed Dutch boy of 17, whom Charley found on the Battery one winter’s day. Charley went to New York every winter to buy groceries for tiie plantation, and clothes for the slaves, and he had found Yakob on his last visit, in 1859, just before the war began. Yakob had landed fiom an Antwerp schooner, and had fallen among thieves, who left him in rags and penniless, when Charley came, like tJie good Samaritan, to his rescue. “ But what can you do with him?” my father demanded, when the queerlooking creature stood before him, his big eyes staring straight at him. “Oh, there will be some place open for him on the plantation, sir,” said Charley. “ He’ll be of use somewhere. ” “ You could make more use of a seahorse,” said Sue pertly, and my mother nodded. Mother said she hail an instinctive dislike to Yakob. But whatever Charley did was right in our good mother’s eyes, and beside, she would have been gentle and polite to Yakob even if be had been a sea-horse.

So Charley, taking me by the hand, led Yakob around to the tobacco-house, and set him to work there. He stared dismayed for a minute at the black faces (for he had seen but two negroes, and had never been brought iu contact with a black man), and then went to work intelligently enough, and never raised his eyes to them again. Charley and I went back to the house. I was a boy of 9 then, and the torment and pet of ,my big brothers. We found my father on the portico, reading the Richmond Examiner.

“ I have brought you a first-rate machine, sir,” Charley said, “as steady, and sure, aud dumb as if it was made of wood and steel.” “It’s your property,” said father, with a shrug. Now nobody hut Charley understood German, and Yakob could not speak a word of English. It followed, therefore, that Charley had to take entire charge of his “property.” He gave him a lit♦le wooden shanty, which had been a tool-house, on the edge of the woods, in which to sleep. The German whitewashed and repairtai his dwelling, and in the spring planted vines aud flowers about it. Instead of being longer an eye-sore it became the most picturesque spot in the plantation. But ‘ ‘ the creature himself,” Sue declared, “was an animal.” Such mountains of pork and rivers of beer disappeared down his throat! He showed no sign of interest in any living thing excepting Charley, whom he followed about like a dog whenever he could, never speaking, however, unless forced to do so.

The war came, of which I wish to say little. Our family, like many others on the border, was divided. Joe went into one army, Charley into the other. My father held to the old flag. My mother and Sue presented banners and arms to Southern companies. The negroes caught the excitement, some of the home servants following their young masters. Yakob alone was unmoved as a stone. Either Joe or Charley would have been glad to take him as a recruit into their companies. “Never, never!” he grunted. “No fight !” “But don’t you want to uphold the republic ?” said one. “Do you care nothing for liberty?” asked another. “ I care for mein kopf,” clapping his hands to his head. “ I keeps mein kopf on mein shoulders.” “Beast!” muttered Joo. Even Charley looked disgusted, which Yakob quickly perceived. “ I come to this country for peace,” he said, rapidly, in German, “ and the men take each other by the throat. I know nothing of your North—your South.”' “ You know nothing but Yakob I” with a laugh. The light eyes flashed a little. “Ya; and—Yakob’s work,” he said, doggedly, and turned to the tobaccohouse.

Even we who were children remember the times that then followed ou the border ; the marching and countermarching of armies; the turning of our fields into battle-grounds, and our houses into hospitals ; the ravages of the bushwhackers and guerrillas, first of one side and then tne other ; and, worse than all, the bitterness of neighbor against neighbor. Two years passed. My brother Joe

had been killed at 801 l Bun. Charley had been a prisoner for almost a year. I think that Charley’s imprisonment was harder for my mother to bear than even Joe’s death; for one was at rest, while the sufferings of the other were continually in her mind. Such tales were told of the prison where he was that I believe she would have been glad to know that he, too, was dead. One July morning she came down to breakfast looking more wan and haggard than usual. “I had a strange dream last night,” she said. “I thought Charley stood beside me, with his rod in his hand, as he used to when he was going out to fish. I was putting up his lunch, and he was joking with his father, as if the war had never been. It was all just as it used to be.” “ And it shall be again,” said father, heartily. “Don’t lose your trust in God, mother.” “I shall never see Charley again,” she said; “if he should come home it would be to certain death.” Our house was at that time encircled by troops; not regular troops, but the rabble and followers of a great army that was encamped a few miles to the north. Until now the officers had protected us from outrage; but a change in the position of the forces left us without their authority. J ust as we were rising from the table, Dutton, the coachman, opened the door. The hollows about bis jaws were grey with terror. “Dey’s come, massa! Dey’s takin’ de last ob de bosses out ob de stables I” My father was an old man and a cripple. He only wheeled in his chair to the door, and waited in silence. A tramping of armed men was heard on the gravel walk. The next moment a dozen sturdy fellows with bloated faces, pistols at their belts and rifles in hand, dashed open the door. A They paused, datfAd by my father’s calmness and silenj “ Hubbaid I Yop ®fudge Hubbard, eh ?” blustered the “ That is my nanl “ Well, you’ve go up your arms and live stock in the use of the army.” “I have no arms. You have taken my horses and cattle; not”—his color rising—“for the use of the army, but for thieves and murderers, who plunder on their own account.” “ Father ! father !” my mother whispered in terror, laying her hand on his arm; “ we are at their mercy !” “ The old cock crows well, laughed the leader ; “but it is the young fowl we want.”

“ What do you mean?” “ Your son Joe has been seen prowling about the neighborhood. We’ve orders to take him and hang him to the nearest tree.” My mother put out her hands before her. “My son is dead,” she said. For a minute even these ruffians were silent. “We’ll soon see that,” cried the foremost. “Come, boys!” They ransacked the house. The family could offer no opposition, being but women and children, with two weak old men to guard us. My father sat trembling with rage and shame, poor old Dutton beside him. The negroes had all gone. Nobody was left but Yakob, dully at work, as usual, in the stable, for he had turned into a man-of-all-work when left alone. He came out from the stable now, glanced at the pillagers, and, going to the door of his shanty, sat down and lighted his pipe.

“Ho would not move if they blew him up with a petard !” cried Sue, whose knowledge of warlike instruments was but hazy. Presently they came up to him. “Hi, Dutchy I we’ve heard of you. What side are you on, Reb or Yank ? ” “ I goes for my own side.” “So do we. Stand out of the way. We want to go into this cabin.”

“ Nein; dish is mine house,” calmly. “Get up, you pig!” prodding him with the point of his sword.” “Oh, yesh ! I gets up,” slowly rising, and putting his hands into nis capacious pocket. He drew out a couple of revolvers, and pointed them full in the faces of his assailants. “ I gets up and—l fires.” He did fire—once, twice, it seemed to me a dozen times, turning sharply from side to side. The men staggered back dismayed. Two fell and were dragged off by 'the others. Like all bullies, they were cowards. For a moment they hesitated, as if uncertain whether to take the German by storm or to take to their heels. A stinging bullet in the leader’s arm decided the battle in favor of Yakob.

They fired back scattering shots as they retreated; but did not face the determined Dutchman again, I saw him totter as the last man fired, and he recovered himself, and stood delivering his deadly shots with the same stolidity and regularity with which he hammered in a beau pole. With oaths and yells the men hurried down the road. We ran Gut. Yakob lay ou the floor white and ghastly. My mother raised his head. “ He is dying,” she said. . “ Why did he throw his life away* for the old shanty ?” cried Sue, impatiently. Yakob shook his head. “Not de house. ” The same thought came to us both. We pushed the door open. On the bed lay a pallid skeleton of a man—our brave, handsome Charley ! For more than a month Yakob had hidden him there, afraid to trust even his mother with the secret. If the faithful German had died for his friend, it would have been but one of many such sacrifices which that testtime brought from men. But Charley lived, and is now a sturdy farmer on the Shenandoah. Yakob is his steward and partner—known to all the country-side as the ugliest, shrewdest, moat honest man in the valley.— Youths' Companion.