Silas Strong 1

Silas Strong 1

Silas Strong, Emperor of the Woods

 

Author: Irving Bacheller

 

TO MY FRIEND THE LATE ARCHER BROWN

 

in memory of summer days when we wandered far and sat down to rest by

springs and brooks in the doomed empire of Strong and talked of saving

it and of better times and knew not they were impossible.

 

Some of the people of these pages, when the author endeavored to

regulate their conduct according to well-known rules of literary

construction, declared themselves free and independent. When, urged by

him, they tried to speak and act in the fashion of most novels, they

laughed, and seemed to be ashamed of themselves, and with good reason.

 

They are slow, stubborn, modest, shy, and used to the open. Not for them

are the narrow stage, the swift action, the fine-wrought chain of artful

incident that characterize a modern romance.

 

Of late authors have succeeded rather well in turning people into

animals and animals into people. Why not, if one's art can perform

miracles? This book aims not to emulate or amend the work of the

Creator. Its people are just folks of a very old pattern, its animals

rather common and of small attainments. It is in no sense a literary

performance. It pretends to be nothing more than a simple account of

one summer's life, pretty much as it was lived, in a part of the

Adirondacks. It goes on about as things happen there, with a leisurely

pace, like that of the woods lover on a trail who may be halted by

nothing more than a flower or a bird-song. One day follows another in

the old fashion of those places where men go for rest and avarice quits

them with bloody spurs and they forget the calendar and measure time on

the dial of the heavens.

 

The book has one high ambition. It has tried to tell the sad story of

the wilderness itself--to show, from the woodsman's view-point, the play

of great forces which have been tearing down his home and turning it

into the flesh and bone of cities.

 

Were it to cause any reader to value what remains of the forest above

its market-price and to do his part in checking the greed of the saws,

it would be worth while--bad as it is.

 

 

 

 

SILAS STRONG

 

 

 

 

I

 

THE song of the saws began long ago at the mouths of the rivers. Slowly

the axes gnawed their way southward, and the ominous, prophetic chant

followed them. Men seemed to goad the rivers to increase their speed.

They caught and held and harnessed them as if they had been horses and

drove them into flumes and leaped them over dams and pulled and hauled

and baffled them until they broke away with the power of madness in

their rush. But, even then, the current of the rivers would not do; the

current of thunderbolts could not have whirled the wheels with speed

enough.

 

Now steam bursts upon the piston-head with the power of a hundred

horses. The hungry steel races through columns of pine as if they were

soft as butter and its' bass note booms night and day to the heavens.

Hear it now. The burden of that old song is m-o-r-e, m-o-r-e, m-o-r-e!

 

It is doleful music, God knows, but, mind you, it voices the need of

the growing land. It sings of the doom of the woods. It may be heard all

along the crumbling edge of the wilderness from Maine to Minnesota. Day

by day hammers beat time while the saws continue their epic chorus.

 

There are towers and spires and domes and high walls where, in our

boyhood, there were only trees far older than the century, and these

rivers that flow north go naked in open fields for half their journey.

Every spring miles of timber come plunging over cataracts and rushing

through rapids and crowding into slow water on its way to the saws.

There a shaft of pine which has been a hundred years getting its girth

is ripped into slices and scattered upon the stack in a minute. A new

river, the rushing, steam-driven river of steel, bears it away to the

growing cities. Silas Strong once wrote in his old memorandum-book these

words: "Strong says to himself seems so the world was goin' to be peeled

an' hollered out an' weighed an' measured an' sold till it's all et up

like an apple."

 

On the smooth shore of the river below Raquette Falls, and within twenty

rods of his great mill, lived a man of the name of Gordon with two

motherless children. Pity about him! Married a daughter of "Bill" Strong

up in the woods--an excellent woman--made money and wasted it and went

far to the bad. Good fellow, drink, poker, and so on down the hill!

His wife died leaving two children--blue-eyed little people with curly,

flaxen hair--a boy of four a girl of nearly three years. The boy's full

name was John Socksmith Gordon--reduced in familiar parlance to Socky.

The girl was baptized Susan Bradbury Gordon, but was called Sue.

 

Their Uncle Silas Strong came to the funeral of their mother. He had

travelled more than eighty miles in twenty-four-hours, his boat now

above and now beneath him. He brought his dog and rifle, and wore a

great steel watch-chain and a pair of moccasins w with fringe on the

sides, and a wolf-skin jacket. He carried the children on his shoulders

and tossed them in the air, while his great size and odd attire seemed

to lay hold of their spirits.

 

As time passed, a halo of romantic splendor gathered about this uncle's

memory. One day Socky heard him referred to as the "Emperor of the

Woods." He was not long finding out that an emperor was a very grand

person who wore gold on his head and shoulders and rode a fine horse

and was always ready for a fight. So their ideal gathered power and

richness, one might say, the longer he lived in their fancy. They loved

their father, but as a hero he had not been a great success. There was

a time when both had entertained some hope for him, but as they saw how

frequently he grew "tired" they gave their devotion more and more to

this beloved memory. Their uncle's home was remote from theirs, and so

his power over them had never been broken by familiarity.

 

Socky and Sue told their young friends all they had been able to

learn of their Uncle Silas, and, being pressed for more knowledge, had

recourse to invention. Stories which their father had told grew into

wonder-tales of the riches, the strength, the splendor, and the general

destructive power of this great man. Sue, the first day she went

to Sunday-school, when the minister inquired who slew a lion by the

strength of his hands, confidently answered, "Uncle Silas."

 

There was one girl in the village who had an Uncle Phil with a fine air

of authority and a wonderful watch and chain; there was yet another with

an Uncle Henry, who enjoyed the distinction of having had the small-pox;

there was a boy, also, who had an Uncle Reuben with a wooden leg and a

remarkable history, and a wen beside his nose with a wart on the same.

But these were familiar figures, and while each had merits of no low

degree, their advocates were soon put to shame by the charms of that

mysterious and remote Uncle Silas.

 

There was a little nook in the lumber-yard where children used to meet

every Saturday for play and free discussion. There, now and then,

some new-comer entered an uncle in the competition. There, always, a

primitive pride of blood asserted itself in the remote descendants,

shall we say, of many an ancient lord and chieftain. One day--Sue was

then five and Socky six years of age--Lizzie Cornell put a cousin on

exhibit in this little theatre of childhood. He was a boy with red hair

and superior invention from out of town. He stood near Lizzie--a deep

and designing miss--and said not a word, until Sue began about her Uncle

Silas.

 

It was a new tale of that remarkable hunter which her father had related

the night before while she lay waiting for the sandman. She told how her

uncle had seen a panther one day when he was travelling without a gun.

His dog chased the panther and soon drove him up a tree. Now, it seemed,

the only thing in the nature of a weapon the hunter had with him was a

piece of new rope for his canoe. After a moment's reflection the great

man climbed the tree and threw a noose over the panther's neck while his

faithful dog was barking below. Then the cute Uncle Silas made his rope

fast to a limb and shook the tree so that when the panther jumped for

the ground he hung himself.

 

To most of those who heard the narrative it seemed to be a rather

creditable exploit, showing, as it did, a shrewdness and ready courage

of no mean order on the part of Uncle Silas. Murmurs of glad approval

were hushed, however, by the voice of the red-headed boy.

 

"Pooh! that's nothing," said he, with contempt. "My Uncle Mose chased

a panther once an' overtook him and ketched him by the tail an' fetched

his head agin a tree, quick as a flash, an' knocked his brains out."

 

His words ran glibly and showed an off-hand mastery of panthers quite

unequalled. Here was an uncle of marked superiority and promise.

 

There was a moment of silence in the crowd.

 

"If ye don't believe it," said the red-headed boy, "I can show ye a vest

my mother made out o' the skin."

 

That was conclusive. Sue blushed for shame and looked into the face

of Socky. Her mouth drooped a little and her under lip trembled with

anxiety. Doubt, thoughtfulness, and confusion were on the face of

her brother. He scraped the sand with his foot. He felt that he had

sometimes stretched the truth a little, but this--this went beyond his

capacity for invention.

 

"Don't believe it," he whispered, with half a sneer as he glanced down

at Sue.

 

Lizzie Cornell began to titter. All eyes were fixed upon the unhappy

pair as if to say, "How about your Uncle Silas now?" The populace,

deserting the standard of the old king, gathered in front of the

red-headed boy and began to inquire into the merits of Uncle Mose.

 

Socky and Sue hesitated. Curiosity struggled with resentment. Slowly and thoughtfully they walked away. For a moment neither spoke. Soon a cheering thought came into the mind of Sue.