Democratic Sentinel, Volume 2, Number 27, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 16 August 1878 — JENISON’S BET. [ARTICLE]

JENISON’S BET.

When the widow Coe married Jason Carter she brought him no money at all; only a small, stony farm in Noppit, that had been her father’s, and two wild boys of 10 and 12 years’ growth. Jack and Dan were hard subjects for a stepfather to rule, and Jason Carter found liis hands full. Naturally he was a quiet, gentle, but persistent man; in his youth he had run away to sea, and for fifteen years had been a common sailor, which had pretty well knocked the quiet out of and the persistence into liim. In this time he had learned to swear, as a matter of course, though he had been strictly brought up, and went to church and Sunday school always. His mother would have cried her eyes out to hear him talk in this fashion, but she never did; his father would have used the rod, but he also was spared the trouble, for both father and mother had died before Jason came back, and when he found they were gone he never went back to Tolland, but after he got tired of sea-going took to peddling notions about the country, and at last married the widow Coe and settled down in Nepoit. Ho had stopped swearing long ago, for under dear old Father Taylor’s preaching he had been converted between his last two voyages, and, though profanity had become a habit with him, he had conquered it at last, after years of patient endeavor, and now was so gentle, and pleasant, and pious, tl at Phoebe Coe thought her last days would be her best dayß. He had come to know the widow Coe from being an old shipmate of her brother, John Wires, who had also left seafaring because he had injured a knee, nod became too lame to climb rigging; so he set up a small shop in Boston, where he sold tobacco, twine, and other odds and ends; but he had been married, aud had one son called Jenison. This boy was about the age of widow Cot’s youngest son, for her brother had married soon after she did, while he was still a sailor; and when Jason Carter began the peddling business John Wires had told him to stop when he went through Scranton and see his sister. The children were small and their father living when Jason first saw them, and they learned to look for “Unde Jase” every spring and fall with delight, for he always brought them marbles, tops, candy, string, and made them bows aud kiteß, sure passports to a boy’s heart.. So when their poor drunken father died, and the widow found herself left without a penny, she moved over to Noppit to live with her father, and when he died too, leaving her all he had, the farm from which he had scratched a scanty living, and she found herself alone and helpless, she listened favorably to Jason Carter’s proposal, for he was tired of his wandering life as she of her loneliness, and married him. The boys were glad, for they loved him, and they never had loved their own father, and Jason was as good to them as if thejr were his own, though a certain thrill of emotion shook him when his baby daughter ’- 1 - 3 • I jj John E. Leete, the New Orleans re- a lorter who recently testified before the Potter L* dihereto-: was attacked mi with his predecessor, was as mila and pleasant about the house as a spring day lifter stormy winter. He became a useful and prominent member in the Noppit church, and never was heaid to utter a profane or impatient word. Jack and Dan loved him as much as healthy boys love anything but mischief and meals, and Phoebe was entirely happy. True, they were poor; Jason had a few hundred dollars laid by, but the Noppit farm was too sterile to produce orops enough to support the family, so he laid out his little capital, or part of it, in a good breed of sheep, which found abundant living among mnllins, hardtack and huckleberry bushes, and proved, in due time, a profitable investment. For in those days dogs, the curse of New England, were by no means common in the country ; there was no reason for keeping them, and farmers had money and mutton instead of hydrophobia and horrors. The wool sold well always and kept the family in socks, for Jason’s wife could spin and knit with wonderful rapidity ; the lambs he had not room to raise were sent to Hartforl aud sold to the butchers, and now and then a fat old wether went to the meatman’s cart in the shape of juicy quarters. But the glory of the flock was a big black-faced ram, who terrified marauding boys and intruding vagabonds, and asked no better fun than to send somebody heels overhead whenever he had a chance. Jack and Dan had brought him up from lambhood, but he was no longer a lamb, aud of his painstaking education only one trait stayed by him, a distinct and angry recollection of the rod that had not been spared on his early and somewhat stupid youth. To the day of Billy’s death a little stick, shaken before anythirg, would send him, “ head-on,” at that luckless object, and the boys often amused themselves by climbing the pine rail-fence and dangling a small switch full in Billy’s sight against a big post; the result was sudden and severe to Billy, and he might have seriously injured himself if daddy, as the boys called Jason, had not found them at this sport one day and strictly forbidden it. Cruelty to animals was one pf the few things that roused his choler and made him imperative. One summer Mrs. Carter received a letter from her brother asking her to take his boy for a few months; his wife

was so feeble that she was going home to her father’s with the baby and a young child, and Jenison could not go with her for want of room. Mr. Wires did not want him in the city with him, at a boarding-house, but was willing to pay his board in Noppit; so he came. Jenison Wires was a sharp city-bred boy, with very little faith in anybody’s goodness. Bus father was a pushing, money-making, profane man and his mother a meek cipher; he himself, at the mature age of 14 could smoke and swear and talk sailor slang glibly, for he had ran about the wharves ever since he could ran anywhere. Mrs. Carter was troubled and disgusted to find such a boy on her hands. Jason considered that Providence had sent the lad there for his good, and resolved to pray for him as for his own boys, to set liim as good an example as he tried to set Jack and Dan, and to “ deal with him,” as he expressed it, “with a view to his eternal salvation.” The boys thought Jenison was wonderful. He knew so much, he had seen so many things ; he had such a pocket-knife, such marbles, such a swagger ! But when his first round oath came out Jack and Dan were startled. “Look a-here 1 ” said Jack; “ don’t let daddy hear no each talk as that; he’ll tone ye, es he does, and no mistake.” “ Whe-e-ew ! ” responded Jenison; “ I ain’t a baby; I guess I’ll swear if I want to, for all him ; he ain’t so pious himself, I bet, but what he rips out sometimes ! ” “He don’t! he don’t never!” the boys exclaimed in unison. “ H’m ! I guess you don’t hear him; the old fellow keeps shady before folks, but lie used to swear like a Botany bay pirate. I’ve heerd pa sav so! ” The boys were shocked into momentary silence; but recovered .themselves soon. “I don’t believe it!” said positive Dan. “ And if he ever did, he don’t now,” added reasonable Jack; “ he’s awful good; he’s a professor; he prays in meetin’ and to home, too, and he don’t never scold, nor swear, nor nothin’. Scarce ever he licks a feller; he did give Dan and me one whalin’, but he’d oughter hev, that’s a fact. Dan he told a thunderin’ lie and I backed him up. I tell ye ! we was sore for one spell, arter he found it out.” “ Well, I know know he used to swear aboard ship. I’ve heard pa tell more stories about him. They called him * Still Jase,’ to be sure, but when he got riled, the fur flew! I’ll bet my jackknife I can make him swear inside of next week !” “ I’ll bet my head you can’t J” retorted Dan. “ I don’t know as I want your head for anything, but I’ll bet my knife against that cake of maple sugar you’ve got in the closet, that I’ll set Uncle Jase a swearin’ before next week’s over. ” The boys were so sure that nothing could make daddy swear, and so pleased with their first bet of any importance, that they accepted the terms at once, and Jenison began to cudgel his brains for means of tripping up Jason Carter’s tongue. One day he slyly let down the bars into a field of clover, getting up before light to do it; the two cows, turned out of the barnyard to nip at the roadside until Dan or Jack could drive them to pasture, acoepted the bait, entered the clover, and rioted in its fragrant crimson spheres, half killing themselves with greedy feeding. Jack found them half an hour after chores were done, in the condition that results to cows from eating green clover, and uncle Jason worked over the poor creatures all day, without a word of impatience, though he said more than once : “I wish I knew who let down them bars; I’d kinder like to say a word in season to him.” The pins were taken out of the oxyoke and never found, egg-shells strewed the mow, while the family never could have any eggs for their own use, the nests being always empty; the great gray cat’s tail was singed to bareness, and her ears snipped, but Uncle Jase never swore or lost his temper; his scythe-snath disappeared, but he borrowed another; the grindstone was soaped, the haycutter broken, hoes and rakes disappeared when wanted, and reappeared when useless; his razor was mislaid and hopelessly dulled when he found it, and a thousand petty annoyances heaped on him in vain; he only said to his wife, “It does beat all, Phoebe, what’B got inter things this week; seems as if I never was so pestered. It ain’t in human natur’ for things to happen so; somebody’s doin’ on’t, I feel to believe; but I declare for’t I can’t see into it a mite.” Jack and Dan began totr.umph; only one day more of the week was available, and Jenison was put on his mettle, and laid plans accordingly. They had prayers always before breakfast, and the weather was so warm aud the kitchen so hot that Jenison set the outer door open wide this morning, and stepping out, just as his uncle laid down the Bible, under pretext of scaring an old hen away, the boy opened a little side gate >e given to he had previously yiy sucb - -* ri .°hl ram, and, laying a train of * \.ic to a big lump on the doorstep, retreated speedily to tiie kitchen and knelt down next to Mr. Carter, where he had left his chair. Buly had seen the tin pan in Jenison’s hand, and knew it meant salt; he followed the train surely to the door, and, having begun to nibble the lamp, heard an earnest and accustomed voice near by and looked up into the kitchen , door. Jason was praying earnestly, and the rest had their eyes closed and heads bent—all but Jenison, who was watching EiUy from under his arm. As he saw the ram look in, he picked up a short switch from under his chair and held it-t hr eaten iDgly over his uncle’s back. Billy gave one great leap across the floor, charged Uncle Jase iu the rear, and sent him sprawling. " D tliat ram !’* tie roared, in a voice of thunder. Jack and Dan sprang up at once, drove Billy out and shut the door, but before tliey oould speak their father was on his knees again, pouring out such earnest, humble confession ofthe sin he had been betrayed into, such tearful petition for pardon, such heartfelt contrition for a lapse to him dreadful, after long years of prayer and struggle, that hard aud bad as Jenison Wires was, he could not bear it; it was the turning point of the boy’s life; he got up from his knees and confessed the whole thing to his uncle, and asked his forgiveness; and the other boys oried heartily. Jason Carter never forgot that day; it was remembered with humility and thankfulness both; for years after Jenison told him, with deep feeling, that he had learned then and there to respect religion, and that is the first step toward desiring and obtaining it. Jenison never claimed his bet, but when he went home gave Dan his knife for a remembrance; and years after Deacon Jason Carter was dead and gone, his step-sou recalled with affection, reverence and amusement miugled, the only oath they ever heard him speak, and how it was brought about by Jenison’s b e k —Rose Terry Cooke, in Sunday Afternoon. *