American citizen. [volume] (Canton, Miss.) 1864-1890, 1878-03-02


sky and sea and shadowing forest which
had opened out before him like an I'M
rolling picture. Nor had he failed,
vagabond as he was, to note the pc
culiar and varying traits of the different
peoples among whom his travels had led
him; for he had keen insight, and de-
tected a flaw or foible of character as
if it had been a bourgeois letter in a line
of nonpareil. He was better than a
book to me, since he read himself and
turned his own leaves; and 1 grew to
look forward all the day to his coming
nightly visit with impatient eagerness
No doubt he lied to me many times and
scandalously, for he was mortal and not
wholly without egotism; but he did it,
when he deemed it advisable, in such a
large, overcoming, cliff-like way that it
was almost as good as the truth
Where there is much to interest, says
some generous philosopher, there must
yet be something 20 pardon.
Why the boys in the office called him
g Old Noah," L could never quite make
out. Perhaps it was because he had
Travelled so far and seen so much that
his life seemed to them to have been
projected forward, somehow, faster and
farther than the years counted. Or, it
may have been that his supreme indif-
ference to all the alert and urging ele-
ments of everyday life gave to him, in
their estimation, something of the lean
/
| ing and waiting spirit of one aged be-
fore his time. Certainly he bore no
physical signs of being an old man. He
stood erect, lacking even the depression
| ofchest that is characteristic of his craft
his eyes were full, clear and steady
and the slight touch of silver in his
whiskers made his face stronger rather
| than weaker. He could not have been
more than 40; he might easily have
! passed for 80. The oldest thing about
him was his costume. That was always
and conspicuously in the pathetic Sec
ond childhood of decay, and always,
too, out of harmony with the prevailing
weather, thus appearing to have beer
left over from the preceding season
The summer that saw so much of him
he wore heavy, dingy, beaver-cloth
coat, usually buttoned to the chin with
clerical exactness-too often, 1 appre
bend, only to hide the want of a shirt
and he declared to me with every indi
cation of truth that pair of brown cot
ton overalls had served to temper the
bitter Illinois winds to his shudderine
frame the previous winter.
&C The peacock is a pretty bird, - ht
remarked to me once, casually discours
ing upon this matter of apparel, 60 but il
doesn't count; with all its gaudy feath
ers, it can't sing worth cent. 1t look.
well, but its music is the most abomina
BILE noise 1 ever heard-and 1 have
boarded in house where they kept {
melodeon," he added, with a conclusive
| toss of the head
Like most printers 60 Old Noah" was
a good deal of a cynic, though his Gym,
icism was SO closely woofed with
a subduing sincerity that it was
difficult, frequently quite impossible
to tell where the one left
off and the other began. As I have
said, he looked upon life as a play, and
he was fond of reciting Shakespeare
''Seven Ages " in support of this idea
6 It's all right he would argue, 6 a:
long as you don't care That's the
whole secret. Ignorance as bliss, oftreI
| than we think; it's knowing too much
that bothers people, and if you're both.
cred you can't enjoy the show, DOM
you see? 1t isn't altogether unlikely, lei
me tell you, that a well behaved dog,
asleep in the sun and sure of bone for
his dinner, isn't better off than we are
with all our wisdom, and all our doubts. >
And yet he reverenced wisdom, l an
sure, and respected all honest opinions,
and think that away down in his heart
lurked quiet faith in the saving power
of virtue; but 1 doubt if he believed
very much in the naked moral strength
of human nature. / know he once
sorely tried my patience in that regard
was telling him how George Insley,
known to us both as hardened speci-
men of the printer-toper, had taken the
pledge and was manfully keeping it;
and after L had finished, with the as
surance that Insley had not tasted liquor
for nearly six months Che subsequently,
shot himself, poor fellowD, he dropped
his head moment, and then looking up
with an incredulous smile, said quietly :
There sOGs some truth in those tAra-
bian Nights stories, then, after all ?''
Singularly enough, too, his skep-
ticism was confined to his own sex;
singularly, say, for he was man. you
know, and not woman. sc 1t was Eve
that the snake had to charm and be-
tray he was accustomed to put it /:
&c Adam fell as matter of course. -
This was a little sophistic, to be sure, as
much of his logic was apt to be, but the
sentiment of it was so knightly that it
readily won him credit among his criti-
cal fellow-printers, even at the expense
of some disloyalty to their own personal
sense of masculine superiority.
He had been in love, once in his life,
this tattered prodigal, and the venture
could not be called complete success.
He told me all about it, of his own ac-
cord, one restful night as we sat on the
bridge at the foot of Kansas Avenue,
listening to the culver of the cotton
wood foliage, and watching the river
slowly gather the shadows to its tawny
bosom. He was religiously sober that