Rensselaer Standard, Volume 1, Number 22, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 15 November 1879 — JENISON’S BET. [ARTICLE]

JENISON’S BET.

By Rme Terry tUx>ke, When the widowCoe marriedJanson Carter she brought him no money at all; only a smail.stony farm in Noppit, that had been her father’s, and two wild bovs of 10 and 12 years growth. Jacß and Dan were hard subjects for a stepfather to rule and Jason Carter found his hands full. Naturally he was a quiet, gentle, persistent man; In his youth lie ran away to sea, and for fifteen yearti he bad been a common sailor, which had pretty w’ell . knocked the quiet out of and the preeisteJace in to him. In this time he hadfearned to swear, as a matter of /rourse, though he had .been strictly brought up, and went to church and Hun day school always. , •His father would have used the rod, hilt he also was spared the trouble, for both father and mother had died before Jason came back, and when he found they had goue' he never went back to Tolland, but, after he got tired of seagoing, took to peddling notions about the country, and at last married the widow Coe, aud settled down in Noppit. He had stopped swearing long ago, for under dear old Father Taylor’s teachings he had been converted between his last two voyages, and thouhg profanity had become a habit with him, •he had couquered it at last after years of patient endeavor, and now so gentle and pleasant and pious that Phelte Coe thought her last days would be her best days. He had come to . know the widow Coe from being an 9111 shipmate with her brother, John \Vires, who had also left sea faring, because he had iujured a knee, and became to lame to climb rigging; so he set up a small shot’ in Boston. where he sold tobacco, twine and other odds and ends, but he had been married aud had one son, called Jeuison. The boy was about the age of widow Coe’s youngest sou, for her brother had married soon after she did, and when . Jason Carter began the peddling business John Wires had told hint to stop when he went through to Bcrautou and see his sister. The children were small aud their father living when Jason first saw them, and they learned to look for “Uncle Jase ! ’ every spring and fall with delight, for he alwaj’3 brought them marbles, tops, candy, strings, and made them bows and kites, sure passports to a boy’s heart. So, when their poor, drunken father died, and the widow found herself 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 scratched a scanty living —and she found herself alone and helpless, she listened favorably to Jason Carter’s proposal, for he was as tired of his wandering life as she was of her loneliness, aud married him.

The boys were glad, for they loved him as they never loved their own father, and Jason was as good te them as if they were his owu, though a cer tain thrill of emotion shook him when his baby daughter came that had never troubled that worn old heart in any . emergence of Jack and Dau. But then Celia was* a girl; of course that made it different. Jason, when compared with his predecessor, was as mild and pleasant round the house as a spring day after a stormy winter. He became a useful and prominent member in the Noppit church, and never was heard to utter a C'ine or impatient word. Jack and loved him as healthy boys love .anything but mischief aud meats, and Phebe was entirely happy. True, they were poor; Jason had a few hundred dollars laid by, but the Noppit farm was too sterile to produce crop enough to support the family, so -ho laid out -his little capital, or part of it,- in a good breed of sheep, which fonnd abundant living among m ullelns, hardback, and JnickeTberry bushes, and proved in due time a profitable investment. For in those days dogs, the curse of New England, were by no means commqn 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 kdpt 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 Hartford and sold t» the butchers, and now and then a fat old wether went to the meat-man’s cart in the shape of juicy qfuarters. But the glory of the flockWaSa bigfaced ram, who terrified maurauding boys and intruding vagabonds, and asked no better fun than to send some-

body heels over head whenever he had chance Jack and Ban had brought him up from lanabhood, but he was no longer a lamb, and of Ha painstaking education only one trait ataki by him, a distinct and angry recollection of the rod that had not been spared in his early and somewhat stupid youth. To the day of Billy’s death, a little atipk shaken before anything, would sehd him “head on” ait that luckless object, and the boys often amused themselves by climbing the pine rail fence aud dancing 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 of the few thingy that roused his choler and made him imperative. One summer Mrs. Carter received a letter from her brother askiDg her to take his boys 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 gn with her for want of room. Mr. Wires did not want him in tne city with him, at a boarding-house, but was willing to pay his board in Noppit; so he came. .

Jeuison Wires was a sharp, citybred boy, with very little faith in anybody's goodness. His father was a pushing, money-making, proftine man, and his mother a meek cipher; he himself, at tiie age of fourteen, could smoke and swear and talk sailor slang | glibly, for he had run anywhere. Mrs, Carter was troubled and disgusted to find such a boy on her hands. Jason considered that God in His wisdom had sent the boy there for his good, and resolved to pray for him as for his own boys, and set nim as good ; an example as he tried to set Jack and Dan, ana to “deal With him,” as he expressed it, “with a view to his eternal safvation.” The boys thought Jenison was wonderful. He knew so much, he had seen so much, he had *o many things; he had such a pocket knife and such a swagger! But when his first oath came out Jack and Dan were startled. “Look-a-here,” said Jack, “don’t you let daddy bear no such talk as that! He’ll tune you if he does, aud no mistake!” “Whe-e-ew!” responded Jenison; “I ain’t a boy; I guess I’ll swear if I want to, for all of him: he ain’t so pious himself, 1 bet, but what he rips out sometimes.” f i r “He don’t! he dpn’t never?” the bovs exclaimed in unison. ‘’’H’m! .1 guess .you don’t know him!” the old fellow keeps shady before folks, but he used to swear like a Botany bay pirate; I’ve heard pa say so!”

| The boys were shocked into momentary silence, but recovered themselves soon. “And if he ever did he dou’t now,” added reasonable Jack. “He’s awful good; he’s a professor; he prays in meetin’ ’ and ne don’t ever scold nor swear, nor nothin’. Scarce ever he licks a fellow; he did give Dan and me one whalin’, but he oughter have, that's a fact. Dan he told a thunderin’ lie and I backed him up. I tell ye! we was sore for one spell, after he found it out.” , f “W’ell, I know he used to swear on board ship. I’ve heard pa tell stories about him. They called him ‘Still Jase,’ to be sure, but when he got riled the fur flew. I’ll bet my jack knife I can make him swear inside of next week.” “I’ll bet my head you can’t!” retorted Dan. “I don’t know as I wan’t your head for anything, but I’ll bet my knife against that cake of maple sugar you have got in the closet that I’ll set Uncle Jase a swearing 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 dav he slyly let down Ihe 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 and Jack oouid drive them te pasture, the bait, entered the clover and rioted in its fragrant spheres half killing themselves with greedy feeding. Jack found them half an hour after his chores were done in the condition that results to cows from eating green clover, and Uncle Jason w orfced over the poor creatures all day, without a word of impatience, though he said more than once: “I wish I knew who let them bars down, I’d kinder like to say a word in season to him.”

The pins were taken out of the oxyoke and never found, eggshells strewed the mow, while the family never could have any eggs for their owu use, the nests being always empty. The great gray cat’s tail was singed to bareness, and her ears snipped, but Uncle Jason never swore or lost his temper. His scythe 9nath disappeared, but he borrowed another; h's grindstone was soaped, the hay cutter broken, hoes ami rakes disappeared when wanted, and reappeared when useless: his razor was lost and hopelessly dulled wUen he found it, aud a thousand petty annoyances heaped on him in vain. He only said to his wife: “It does beat all, Phebe, what’s 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 sartiuly feel to believe, but I declare for it I can’t see into it a mite.” Jack and Dan began to triumph; only one day more of the week was available, and Jenison was put on his mettle, and plans laid accordingly. They had prayers always before breakfast, aud the weather was warm and the outer door open wide this morning, and setting out just as his uncle laid down the Bible, under pretext of scaring an old hen away, the boy oDened a little side gate Into the 1 lot where he had previously driven the old ram, and laying a train of salt to a big lump on the doorstep, retreated speedily to the kitchen and knelt down next to Mr. Carter, where h€ had left his chair. Billy had seen the tin pail in Jenison’s hand, and knew it meant salt; he followed the train surely to the door, and having begun to nibble the lump, heard an earnest and accustomed voice near by, and loosed up into the kitchen door. •

Jason was praying earnestly, and the rest had their eyes closed and beads bent—ail hut Jenison. who was watching Billy from under his arm. As he saw the ram looked in he picked op a short switch from under his chair, and held' it threateningly over his uncle’s back. Billy gave one great leap across the door, charged (Jncle Jason in the rear, and sent him sprawling. “D—n that rain!” he roared in a voice of thunder. . Jack and Dan sprang up at once, drove Billy out and shut the door, but before they could speak their father was on his knees again, pouring out such earnest, humble confession of the sin he had been betrayed into, such tearful petition for pardon, such heartfelt contrition for a lapse that seemed to him dreadful, after long years of prayer and struggle, that hard and bad as Jenison Wires was he could not bear it: it was the turning point in the boy’s life: he got up from his knees and confessed the whole tiling to his uncle and asked his forgiveness; aud the other boys cried heartily. Jason Carter never forgot that day: it was remembered with humility and thankfulness both; for years after Jenison told him with deep feelingtnat 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 bis knife for a remembrance; and years after Deacon Jason Carter was dead and gone his step-son’s recalled with affection, reverence and amusement mingled, the only oath they ever heard him speak, and how it was brought about by Jenison’s bet.