Elijah Kellogg - The Unseen Hand - Or, James Renfew and His Boy Helpers (Elijah Kellogg) - illustrated - (Literary Thoughts Edition)

“I know, Mr. Whitman, that we are called soul-drivers, and a great many hard things are said of us, but just look at the matter for a moment free from prejudice. Here is a young able-bodied man on the other side, willing to work, but there is no work to be had, and he must do one of three things—starve, steal, or beg; there is a farmer in Pennsylvania who wants help but can’t get it. I introduce these men to each other and benefit both. The farmer gets help to handle his wheat, the poor starving man bread to eat, he learns the ways of the country, and when his time is out can find work anywhere and become an owner of land. You know yourself, Mr. Whitman, that within ten, twelve, and twenty miles of here, yes, within five, are living to-day persons, owners of good farms and one of them a selectman, another of them married to his employer’s daughter, who were all brought over by me, and came in rags, and who would not care to have their own children know that they were redemptioners.”

“I’ve no doubt but that like everything else almost in this world, the business has its benefits. And by picking out the best and leaving out the worst parts of it, you may make a plausible showing so far as you are concerned, but you know yourself that it is liable to be abused, and is abused every day, and I don’t care to have anything to do with it.”

“But father,” cried Peter, with the tears in his eyes, “you promised me you would go and see him when the horses had done eating.”

“I forgot that, then I will go; I never break a promise.”

“I will bring the boy here,” said Wilson, “it is but a few steps.”

“Perhaps that is the best way, as, now I think of it, I want to trade with the miller for some flour.”

Wilson soon returned with our old acquaintance Foolish Jim, very little improved in appearance, as his clothes, though whole, did not by any means fit him. His trowsers were too short for his long limbs, and his legs stuck through them a foot, and they were so tight across the hips as to seriously interfere with locomotion. As to the jacket, it was so small over the shoulders and around the waist it could not be buttoned; a large breadth of shirt not over clean was visible between the waistcoat and trowsers, as instead of breeches he wore loose pants or sailor trowsers and no suspenders. The sleeves, too short, exposed several inches of large square-boned black wrists, and on his head was a Highland cap, from under which escaped long tangled locks of very fine hair; and his skin, where not exposed to the weather, was fair. Jim was so lame that he walked with great difficulty by the help of a large fence stake, his right leg being bandaged below the knee, and he was barefoot. He wore the same stolid, hopeless look as of old, and which instantly excited the pity and moved the sympathies of Peter to the utmost.

His father, on the other hand, could not repress a smile as he gazed on the uncouth figure before him.

“Do you call him a boy, Wilson? If he was anything but skin and bones he would be as heavy as I am, near about.”

“Yes I call him a boy, because he’s only nineteen, though there’s considerable of him.”

“There’s warp enough, as my wife would say, but there’s a great lack of filling.”

“He’s a wonderfully strong creature, see what bones and muscles he’s got.”

The miller rolled out three barrels of flour for Whitman, and he and Wilson went into the mill leaving James seated on one of the barrels.

“What do you think of him?” said Wilson when they were inside?

“I think I don’t want anything to do with him. What do you think I want of a cripple?”

“That’s nothing; he cut himself with an axe after we landed, and I had to carry him in a wagon, but it’s only a flesh wound. He’s got a good pair of shoes, but has been so used to going barefoot that they make his feet swell.”

“The boy looks well enough, Mr. Wilson, if he was put into clothes that fitted him; is handsomely built, has good features, good eyes and a noble set of teeth, and that’s always a sign of a good constitution. But there don’t seem to be anything young about him, and if he had the use of both legs seems to have hardly life enough to get about. He is like an old man in a young man’s skin. Then he has such a forlorn look out of his eyes, as though he hadn’t a friend in the world, and never expected to have.”

“Well, he hasn’t, except you and I prove his friends. It is the misery, the downright anguish and poverty that has taken the juice of youth out of that boy. He never knew what it was to have a home, and no one ever cared whether he died or lived, but there is youth and strength; and kind treatment and good living, such as I know he would get with you, will bring him up.”

“Where did you get him that he should have neither parents, relatives, nor friends?”

“From a parish workhouse.”

“I judged as much.”

“They gave him up, and he is bound to me.”

“It was not much of a gift; I wonder so shrewd a man as I know you to be should have taken him with the expectation that anybody would ever take him off your hands.”

“I know, Mr. Whitman, you think we are all a set of brutes, and buy and sell these men just as a drover does cattle, but there’s a little humanity about some of us, after all.”

He then related the circumstances with which our readers are already familiar, saying, as he concluded the narration,—

“When I saw those miserable wretches with whom he was brought up, dressed up in stolen clothes, and he in rags that were dropping off him; heard them call him a fool because he would neither beg, lie, swear nor steal; and when, being determined to know the truth of it, I inquired and heard the story of the old nurse at the workhouse confirmed by the parish authorities,—a change came over me, and I determined to take this boy, but from very different motives from those that influenced me at first.”

“How so?”

“You see I had engaged, and had to pay for, berths to accommodate thirteen men, had been disappointed and had but twelve. The vessel was about ready for sea, I had to pick up some one in a hurry and thought I would take this boy. I knew I could get rid of him somehow so as to make myself whole in the matter of trade. But when I heard about the poor dying mother, and the good minister, I determined to take that boy, bring him over here, put him in some good family and give him a chance; and that family was yours, Mr. Whitman, and I have never offered this boy to any one else, never shall. If you do not take him I shall carry him to my house.”

“Body of me, why then did you come within two miles of your own house and bring him here? And what reason could you have for thinking that I of all persons in the State would take him?”

“I will tell you. You and I have known each other for more than twenty-five years. I have during that time felt the greatest respect for you, though you perhaps have cherished very little for me. I know how you treat your hired help and children, and believed that there was something in this boy after all,—stupid as misery has made him appear,—and that you could bring it out both for your benefit and his, whereas I cannot stay at home. I must be away the greater part of the time about my business, and at my place he would be left with my wife or hired men and small children. If I was to be at home, I would not part with him even to yourself.”

Peter could restrain himself no longer, but climbing upon the curbing of the millstone near which his father stood, flung his arms around his parent’s neck, exclaiming,—

“Oh, father, do take him! I’ll go without my new shoes; Maria says she will go without her new bonnet and shawl, and Bertie will go without his new suit, if you will only take him. Grandpa wants you to take him, and so does mother, though they didn’t like to say so. I can tell by mother’s looks when she wants anything.”