Rensselaer Union, Volume 7, Number 19, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 28 January 1875 — MY NIGHT IN A STAGE COACH. [ARTICLE]

MY NIGHT IN A STAGE COACH.

A TRUE STOfiY. The year was 1856 —the month Decern ber —the place Tamaqua. I was a young man then, and a strong one. I did a good deal of traveling through the State of Pennsylvania, going from county town to co.unty town from the beginning of the year to the close. It was pleasant business enough, for there was less railroading to be done then than now, and more staging, and not infrequently long rides bn canal-boats in the summer time. I was not often hurried on my trips and took my own timb. My exact business at the county seats consisted of hunting up titles to obscure, wild lands, paying taxes upon them and getting them in good condition for immediate sale. In consequence of the nature of this business I knew a good deal about the topography of Pennsylvania and a good deal that, at the time, was worth knowing about its roads and its inns. All of the latter were bad, but some were better than others. One of the worst of them was at Tamaqua, and possibly it is there yet, though when I last slept under its roof it was in altogether such a lamentable condition of decay, and its roof was such a very leaky root indeed, that I doubt not it long ago disappeared out of the sight of men, and possibly out of their memories also —Tamaqua having achieved a railroad since, and, of course, grown as only railroad towns do grow. I arrived there in that December of 1856, on a Monday afternoon, which was quite as cold and disagreeable a Monday afternoon as I remember to have known, though, when compared with the Tuesday that followed, it might be considered rather warm than otherwise. ,1 was halffrozen when ! got there, and' I was not quite thawed out when I left, for I had yielded to a burning curiosity to visit a coal-mine, and I fancy that Tamaqua is nothing but a coal- mine, with a thousand mouths that every morning swallow as many thousand miners and disgorge them every night. It was then, and I think it is now, a very black and sooty place, with a canal-in front of it, a hill behind it, and the huge mine I have spoken of under it. It was not only black and sooty itself, but its people were similarly black and sooty; and so were its horses, or rather its mules, for it seemed to have few of the former and a great many of the latter. Even its dogs and cats partook of the general sootiness, and were evidently greatly depressed by it. I was very cold when I went down into the mine—which had its shaft just behind the hotel—and I was colder still when I came out of it. I went to bed cold, and got up cold, so cold indeed that I thought I would never be warm any more. "When I went down into the frozen breakfastroom, I looked out of the window and saw that the ground was covered deep with snow, and that it was still snowing as if it meant to exhaust the whole winter’s supply in five minutes or so, being very greatly pressed to do it immediate ly. I drank my cold, black coffee and ate my cold, tough beefsteak in gloomy silence, thinking more than I had done for a long time before, of home, of its Eleasant cheer and warmth, and of the >ving boys and girls in it who were even then, no doubt, expecting my speedy coming, for this was already the morning of Tuesday, and Thursday would be Christmas Day. In that home I was St. Nicholas himself, for it was I that brought home in the night the brave tree, with its spreading green branches; it was I that planted it firmly in the middle of the wide parlor; it was I that found the infinite variety of toys, cakes, bon-bons and glittering baubles which covered it; it was I that placed the ever--beautiful image of the Christ-Child on the topmost bough; I that lighted the many-colored tapers, and I that, at tfie auspicious moment, suddenly threw open the folding-doors and let in the children to behold the glory of that wondrous Christmas miracle. In my irequent journeyings through the State, I had seen many places which I wanted to get away from quickly, but I never saw another that I wanted to

turn my back upon so much as Tamaqua. It was not m any manner a pleasant place, and beside, if these nephews and nieces of .mine were to have a Christmas tree at all in this year, 1856, I thought I must go home as fast as I could travel. I had come to Tamaqua in a stage, and I must go away from it in a stage—not to Philadelphia, exactly, but to the next railroad town, and that was distant, I knew not how far. I arose, shivering, from the dreary breakfast, and hunted up the landlord of the inn. He was easily found, and was no better or warmer-looking a man than his accommodations promised him to be. I paid his extravagant charges, and then tnfoTTrreiTMm thavl wished to reach as quickly as possible the nearest railroad station, and to take the first train for the east. * “ The nearest station is at Ilium; Ilium is twenty two miles distant; you cannot g6t there before night, if at ail. _I think you won’t get there at all.” All this was spoken reflectively, and with deliberation. “If I can get there by ten o’clock to>night can I make Ithe eastern express?” “ You can, but 1 doubt if you can get there at all.” “ Why?” I asked. He was not a man to waste words. He only saidi—“The stage won’t go—on account of the storm." “Are you sure of that?” I ventured to ask. “ Quite sure,” and he closed his lips with a snap, as if he knew all about it. “Whoowns the stage?” “ I do,” he replied. “ And I won’t let it go, because the road lies over that mountain yonder; it runs close to the edges of precipices several hundred feet high, it is rough and slippery, the snow is deep now, and getting deeper every minute, and I don’t believe any horse could pull through it.” I thought of the little children waiting for me yonder; of their bitter disappoint ment if I did not come. Then I said: “I am very anxious to go, and I am willing to pay.well for being taken.” The landlord leaning over the bar asked: “How much?” I told him what I was willing to ,pay. “ I’ll go get the stage ready,” he said. After all, it was only the higher price he had been waiting for. In five minutes the stage was at the door. It was an ordinary box wagon on good strong springs, having a cotton cover open in front. The horse was a half-starved, jaded-looking beast. I took all this in as I stood on the porch waiting for the driver. Getting impatient at last ! asked: “ Where is the driver?” The landlord, without speaking, pointed to an ill-clad boy standing at the horse’s head. I looked closely at him. He might be, I thought, fifteen years old, or he might not be more than ten. His eyes were clear blue, and he, hearing my question, turned them full upon mine, a frank, boyish smile rebuking the distrust my words implied, and lighting up every feature of his delicate face. His complexion was like that of a girl, his mouth small and tender, his hair yellow, his figure slight and sinuous. I looked at him. standing there shivering with the cold, out through the driving storm, along the snow-covered mountain road we were to travel together, and asked: “ Are you not afraid to go?” ...... The landlord interrupted: “It don’t matter if he is afraid. He belongs to me. He shall go.” “No,” I said, “he shall not go if he if not quite willing.” “ 1 am not at all afraid,” the boy replied, “ and lam quite willing to go. I have gone, often and often,.-through worse storms than this.” There was an earnest, manly grace even in the way he shook the gathered flakes from his tattered cap, and in his voice there was such a hearty, cheery ring that from that moment I trusted and loved the boy. I jumped into the stage, took the back seat, drew my great frieze coat close to my legs, and we drove off from among the gaping, sooty crowd of miners into the lonely mountain road; into the cruelest storm of wind and snow that I ever saw. The boy sat on the front seat, waiting to be spoken to, looking straight aheod. When we were quite clear of the straggling huts of the miners on the outermost limits of the town I asked him his name. “They call me Lewis Shively,” he said. “How old are you, Lewis?” was my next question. “ Fourteen next April, sir.” “ Do you live at home with your father and mother?” “ That man yonder is all the father or mother I have, and his stable loft is the only home I have had since he took me from the poor-house. That was better than the stable, though, for they taugnt me something there.” There were no complaining chords in the tones in which these bitter words were said, and while he was speaking he was drawing the whip gently across the horse’s back, brushing off the snow that had fallen on it. “ Have yon been driving on this road long?” I inquired. “Going on three years. It will .be three years in March.” “Is it cold out there? Colder than in here, I mean?” “ I think it is,” he replied; “ the wind and snow cut so, but I don’t mind, sir! We get used to rough weather up in these hills.” i “ I wish you would come in here; my coat will cover us both.”— “ No, I can’t,”Jhe said. “ I must watch the road now. We have to go pretty close to the precipices sometimes.” “ How close?" I asked. “ Within a few inches. I can’t see now five yards ahead, the snow falls so heavily.” “ Do you think it safe, then, to go oh?” “Quite safe,'sir! and I don’t mind the cold.” But his teeth chattered as he said it and the ruddy glow was all gone from his cheeks. •' I did not talk more then. There were, I discovered, wide cracks in the bottom

of the stage, through which the wind poured mercilessly. I was chilled through to the heart in less than an hour after starting. I do not know how far we had gone, or how long we had been upon the road, when I heard the boy’s voice, cheery and bright, asking: “How are you now, sir? Feeling pretty comfortable, sir?” I nodded my head, and crept closer into the corner. Bpt he was wiser than I, and would not let me have the sleep I coveted. - ! “ You are in a hurry to get home,” he said, for want of something better to say with which to rouse me. _. “ Yes,”__l ippliefl- AIL want to. be at.. home on Cbrisimas-Xve.’! “The best days I ever knew were Christmases—a good while ago.” He said it as if he were ever and ever so old, and, what was saddest of all, as if he ■tfere done with Christmas forever. I told him of the tree 1 was to get, and how Christmas Day was kept in the great cities. He was most interested in the tree, making mte tell him again and again about it. But after awhile, as if he were tired of it, he said: “ I never saw a tree like that. I know about Christmas, though. About the star and the shepherds and the Christchild you spoke of—that they laid in a manger.” “ Then you know all that anyone in the world need ever care to know,” I said. It may have been an hour, or two hours, but it seemed but a minute, after this that the boy shook me roughly by the shoulder. “ We are to get out here,” he said. I was very stiff in my joints, but I could get up and climb out of the stage, and no more. If I was cold I did not know it; my limbs were numb,yet otherwise I was comfortable enough. I crawled out and followed the boy into a miserable-looking shanty by the roadside, in front of which we had stopped. There was a rough bar running across the room, there was a thick, black-haired, brawny-looking man behind it, and there were two or three kegs of liquor behind him. There was an iron stove in the middle of the room, a bench along the wall, and that was all. The boy asked for some brandy, drank a glass of it after handing one to me, which I drank, and felt so much better for drinking that I called for another and got it; but the boy refused to take the glass I offered him. “ I have had enough,” he said. We were going out when the landlord opened the door before us. Looking out into the stcrm, he asked incredulously: “ Are you going on?” “ Yes!” said the boy, “I was told to drive this gentleman to Ilium to-night, and I’m going to do it.” “ If you get there at all it will be night sure enough,” the landlord said. “ I will get there all the same,” was the boy’s reply. “ Let us stop here to-night,” I said; “ we can go on in the morning.” “I would rather take you on, sir!, There’s no danger. I can't put my horse up here, and my master would kill me if anything happened to him.” That "decided me to go on. Besides, I did not care to talk. I was beginning to feel cold again, standing in the wind, so we got into the stage. It was not snowing any faster than before, simply because it could not. But the roads were heavier, and when we tried to start the jaded horse balked and struggled through the drift, for the stage had frozen fast where it stopped. It was three o’clock now, the light in the west growing dimmer and dimmer — the gloom of the mountains and the bare woods coming nearer to us, making their meaning felt in our souls, filling mine with an awful dread of the snow-covered road beyond. Ten miles to go yet, the night coming quickly on, the cold growing more intense, the road rougher, more precipitous, the horse evidently giving out! But the boy took up the lines, the bright, frank smile upon his face, the cheery word upon his tongue. “ Goodby,” he said, to the man in the doorway. The man Stood for an instant in the dopr-waylooking aftei us. “Good-by,” he said. We went on along the road that from the beginning of time it was ordained we were to go. I crept back into my corner. “Do not go to sleep,” the pleasant voice warned me from the front. “ Thank yo.u,” I replied, cheered and warmed by its hearty glow. “ I will not go to sleep.” Then followed a long silence, in which I had views of the falling snow, the white hills above us, the white hills still below us, in which I heard sounds from creaking, crooning branches, from the wind sweeping savagely past us. Then unconquerable drowsiness, fast-coming darkness—then night. I felt a hand on my face, then on my shoulder shaking me roughly: a sweet, cheering voice in my ears calling me back to life. . «• “If you go to sleep now you won’t wake up again,” it said. ' - I woke with a sudden start, for an instant, to a full consciousness of time and place. I was not cold, only sleepy. “I am quite awake,” I replied. “ Have we far to go?” “ Five miles,” and the voice was still the same cheery voice that I had heard from the first. He Spoke to me often after that; then I saw him, as in a dream, fixing a blanket that he had taken from the horse’s back to the hickory bows overhead to keep the snow from driving in upon me, for I was covered with it to my knees. As God is my judge I did not then know what he was doing, or I would have stopped him. I did not then feel cold, though I knew afterward that I was then freezing, and I did not think he was cold. I did not think at all. I was far past that. I bad begun a longer journey than I had started upon In that longer journey I dreamed of home, of the wondrous Christmas miracle, the lighted tree: of the glad faces of children, whose voices I heard. I heard one of them repeat two or three times, with startling distinctness, “We are lost.” I was conscious that the child who said it had thrown herself into my arms

and was lying there • dull, heavy weight. But aside from the cry it was all bright And pleasant—this real, terrible journey through the snow, over the rough, dangerous mountain road in that far-off December. The dream lasted a long while, through all that night and the day following, and the night following that.* When I awoke from it 1 was in a large room, which I had never seen before. There were piles of the softest blankets upon me, there was a great wood fire blazing on the hearth, and I had never felt so warm and comfortable in all my life. There were two strangers in the room, a man and a woman, whose faces were kipdly ones, but sorely troubled- JWhen I stirred,” and' they saw I recognized them, they came ana stood by my bed.— “ Where am I?” 1 asked of them. “ At Hium, in the house of the Methodist minister.” “ How long have I been here?” “ Since night before last. You came in the stage, and the horse stopped before our door,” the man said. “ What day is this?" “It is Christmas Day,” the woman replied, taking my hand in hers. “ I have been ill, then?” “Yes!” “ There was a boy brought me here. Where is he?” “He is here, too.” The voice that said it was husky with tears, and the hand that held mine shook. “ Has he been ill, too?” “Yes.” __ “ Is he better now?” “He was never so well. He will never be ill again.” I looked into the f% e of the woman who said this, and I saw that her eyes were red with weeping. I disengaged the hand she held and turned my face to the wall. The woman laid her hand upon my arm. “You must not feel like that. It is better so. He had only one friend, and he is with Him this beautiful Christmas morning. He had no home here. It is Christmas Day, and he is at home there.” I took in mine that comforting hand that lay upon my arm. “ I would like to see him,” I said. “He gave his life for me." They took me down afterward to what had been the family siting-room. There were warm, red curtains at the windows; a bright, glowing carpet on the floer; there Were bunches of holly and lauref scattered here and there, and over all was the atmosphere of home. They left me at the door. I went in and stood by the side of the couch on which they had laid him. The eyes of tender blue were closed forever, the yellow hair was parted over the boyish brows, and still about the brave, sweet mouth the bright smile played as it did at the first mopaent of our meeting, when my implied doubt of him called it there. He lay before me dead, in all the glow and promise of his youth. But the smile, which triumphed above death’s ruin, rebuked me, and as I stooped to kiss the lips of the beautiful boy I knew, as well as man could know, that he was not dead; that He who had given more life to the dead girl and the widow’s son had given it also to him; and that he had only gone farther upon his journey than I —into a sweeter, fuller, more gracious life than he had ever known. And I also knew that I should see him again if I but made my own life as brave, unselfish, and true as his had been.— L. Clarke Davis, in Scribner's Monthly.