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BY SHORE AND SEDGE
BY SHORE AND SEDGE BRET HARTE AN APOSTLE OF THE TULES
I
On October 10 1856 about four hundred people were camped in
Tasajara Valley California. It could not have been for the
prospect since a more barren dreary monotonous and uninviting
landscape never stretched before human eye; it could not have been
for convenience or contiguity as the nearest settlement was thirty
miles away; it could not have been for health or salubrity as the
breath of the ague-haunted tules in the outlying Stockton marshes
swept through the valley; it could not have been for space or
comfort for encamped on an unlimited plain men and women were
huddled together as closely as in an urban tenement-house without
the freedom or decency of rural isolation; it could not have been
for pleasant companionship as dejection mental anxiety tears
and lamentation were the dominant expression; it was not a hurried
flight from present or impending calamity for the camp had been
deliberately planned and for a week pioneer wagons had been slowly
arriving; it was not an irrevocable exodus for some had already
returned to their homes that others might take their places. It
was simply a religious revival of one or two denominational sects
known as a "camp-meeting."
A large central tent served for the assembling of the principal
congregation; smaller tents served for prayer-meetings and class-
rooms known to the few unbelievers as "side-shows"; while the
actual dwellings of the worshipers were rudely extemporized
shanties of boards and canvas sometimes mere corrals or inclosures
open to the cloudless sky or more often the unhitched covered
wagon which had brought them there. The singular resemblance to a
circus already profanely suggested was carried out by a
straggling fringe of boys and half-grown men on the outskirts of
the encampment acrimonious with disappointed curiosity lazy
without the careless ease of vagrancy and vicious without the
excitement of dissipation. For the coarse poverty and brutal
economy of the larger arrangements the dreary panorama of unlovely
and unwholesome domestic details always before the eyes were
hardly exciting to the senses. The circus might have been more
dangerous but scarcely more brutalizing. The actors themselves
hard and aggressive through practical struggles often warped and
twisted with chronic forms of smaller diseases or malformed and
crippled through carelessness and neglect and restless and uneasy
through some vague mental distress and inquietude that they had
added to their burdens were scarcely amusing performers. The
rheumatic Parkinsons from Green Springs; the ophthalmic Filgees
from Alder Creek; the ague-stricken Harneys from Martinez Bend;
and the feeble-limbed Steptons from Sugar Mill might in their
combined families have suggested a hospital rather than any other
social assemblage. Even their companionship which had little of
cheerful fellowship in it would have been grotesque but for the
pathetic instinct of some mutual vague appeal from the hardness of
their lives and the helplessness of their conditions that had
brought them together. Nor was this appeal to a Higher Power any
the less pathetic that it bore no reference whatever to their
respective needs or deficiencies but was always an invocation for
a light which when they believed they had found it to
unregenerate eyes scarcely seemed to illumine the rugged path in
which their feet were continually stumbling. One might have smiled
at the idea of the vendetta-following Ferguses praying for
"justification by Faith" but the actual spectacle of old Simon
Fergus whose shot-gun was still in his wagon offering up that
appeal with streaming eyes and agonized features was painful beyond
a doubt. To seek and obtain an exaltation of feeling vaguely known
as "It" or less vaguely veiling a sacred name was the burden of
the general appeal.
The large tent had been filled and between the exhortations a
certain gloomy enthusiasm had been kept up by singing which had
the effect of continuing in an easy rhythmical impersonal and
irresponsible way the sympathies of the meeting. This was
interrupted by a young man who rose suddenly with that spontaneity
of impulse which characterized the speakers but unlike his
predecessors he remained for a moment mute trembling and
irresolute. The fatal hesitation seemed to check the unreasoning
monotonous flow of emotion and to recall to some extent the reason
and even the criticism of the worshipers. He stammered a prayer
whose earnestness was undoubted whose humility was but too
apparent but his words fell on faculties already benumbed by
repetition and rhythm. A slight movement of curiosity in the rear
benches and a whisper that it was the maiden effort of a new
preacher helped to prolong the interruption. A heavy man of
strong physical expression sprang to the rescue with a hysterical
cry of "Glory!" and a tumultuous fluency of epithet and sacred
adjuration. Still the meeting wavered. With one final paroxysmal
cry the powerful man threw his arms around his nearest neighbor
and burst into silent tears. An anxious hush followed; the speaker
still continued to sob on his neighbor's shoulder. Almost before
the fact could be commented upon it was noticed that the entire
rank of worshipers on the bench beside him were crying also; the
second and third rows were speedily dissolved in tears until even
the very youthful scoffers in the last benches suddenly found their
half-hysterical laughter turned to sobs. The danger was averted
the reaction was complete; the singing commenced and in a few
moments the hapless cause of the interruption and the man who had
retrieved the disaster stood together outside the tent. A horse
was picketed near them.
The victor was still panting from his late exertions and was more
or less diluvial in eye and nostril but neither eye nor nostril
bore the slightest tremor of other expression. His face was stolid
and perfectly in keeping with his physique--heavy animal and
unintelligent.
"Ye oughter trusted in the Lord" he said to the young preacher.
"But I did" responded the young man earnestly.
"That's it. Justifyin' yourself by works instead o' leanin' onto
Him! Find Him sez you! Git Him sez you! Works is vain. Glory!
glory!" he continued with fluent vacuity and wandering dull
observant eyes.
"But if I had a little more practice in class Brother Silas more
education?"
"The letter killeth" interrupted Brother Silas. Here his
wandering eyes took dull cognizance of two female faces peering
through the opening of the tent. "No yer mishun Brother Gideon
is to seek Him in the by-ways in the wilderness--where the foxes
hev holes and the ravens hev their young--but not in the Temples
of the people. Wot sez Sister Parsons?"
One of the female faces detached itself from the tent flaps which
it nearly resembled in color and brought forward an angular figure
clothed in faded fustian that had taken the various shades and
odors of household service.
"Brother Silas speaks well" said Sister Parsons with stridulous
fluency. "It's fore-ordained. Fore-ordinashun is better nor
ordinashun saith the Lord. He shall go forth turnin' neither to
the right hand nor the left hand and seek Him among the lost
tribes and the ungodly. He shall put aside the temptashun of
Mammon and the flesh." Her eyes and those of Brother Silas here
both sought the other female face which was that of a young girl
of seventeen.
"Wot sez little Sister Meely--wot sez Meely Parsons?" continued
Brother Silas as if repeating an unctuous formula.
The young girl came hesitatingly forward and with a nervous cry of
"Oh Gideon!" threw herself on the breast of the young man.
For a moment they remained locked in each other's arms. In the
promiscuous and fraternal embracings which were a part of the
devotional exercises of the hour the act passed without
significance. The young man gently raised her face. She was young
and comely albeit marked with a half-frightened half-vacant
sorrow. "Amen" said Brother Gideon gravely.
He mounted his horse and turned to go. Brother Silas had clasped
his powerful arms around both women and was holding them in a
ponderous embrace.
"Go forth young man into the wilderness."
The young man bowed his head and urged his horse forward in the
bleak and barren plain. In half an hour every vestige of the camp
and its unwholesome surroundings was lost in the distance. It was
as if the strong desiccating wind which seemed to spring up at his
horse's feet had cleanly erased the flimsy structures from the
face of the plain swept away the lighter breath of praise and
plaint and dried up the easy-flowing tears. The air was harsh but
pure; the grim economy of form and shade and color in the level
plain was coarse but not vulgar; the sky above him was cold and
distant but not repellent; the moisture that had been denied his
eyes at the prayer-meeting overflowed them here; the words that had
choked his utterance an hour ago now rose to his lips. He threw
himself from his horse and kneeling in the withered grass--a mere
atom in the boundless plain--lifted his pale face against the
irresponsive blue and prayed.
He prayed that the unselfish dream of his bitter boyhood his
disappointed youth might come to pass. He prayed that he might in
higher hands become the humble instrument of good to his fellow-
man. He prayed that the deficiencies of his scant education his
self-taught learning his helpless isolation and his inexperience
might be overlooked or reinforced by grace. He prayed that the
Infinite Compassion might enlighten his ignorance and solitude with
a manifestation of the Spirit; in his very weakness he prayed for
some special revelation some sign or token some visitation or
gracious unbending from that coldly lifting sky. The low sun
burned the black edge of the distant tules with dull eating fires
as he prayed lit the dwarfed hills with a brief but ineffectual
radiance and then died out. The lingering trade winds fired a few
volleys over its grave and then lapsed into a chilly silence. The
young man staggered to his feet; it was quite dark now but the
coming night had advanced a few starry vedettes so near the plain
they looked like human watch-fires. For an instant he could not
remember where he was. Then a light trembled far down at the
entrance of the valley. Brother Gideon recognized it. It was in
the lonely farmhouse of the widow of the last Circuit preacher.
II
The abode of the late Reverend Marvin Hiler remained in the
disorganized condition he had left it when removed from his sphere
of earthly uselessness and continuous accident. The straggling
fence that only half inclosed the house and barn had stopped at
that point where the two deacons who had each volunteered to do a
day's work on it had completed their allotted time. The building
of the barn had been arrested when the half load of timber
contributed by Sugar Mill brethren was exhausted and three windows
given by "Christian Seekers" at Martinez painfully accented the
boarded spaces for the other three that "Unknown Friends" in
Tasajara had promised but not yet supplied. In the clearing some
trees that had been felled but not taken away added to the general
incompleteness.
Something of this unfinished character clung to the Widow Hiler and
asserted itself in her three children one of whom was consistently
posthumous. Prematurely old and prematurely disappointed she had
all the inexperience of girlhood with the cares of maternity and
kept in her family circle the freshness of an old maid's
misogynistic antipathies with a certain guilty and remorseful
consciousness of widowhood. She supported the meagre household to
which her husband had contributed only the extra mouths to feed
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