Pete Sawmill himself deserves a portrait. He was a huge fellow, black as night, standing full six feet five in his stockings. “Good for wadin’,” he used to say. “That’s how I went fishin’ fust. I didn’ know what they gave me such legs for, if it wasn’t to wade brooks with!” He derived his name from his strength, and the fact that he at one time worked in a neighboring sawmill. The boys were telling a story one day of a bear, that had, in earlier times, while the men werе cutting logs in the neighboring woods, wanderеd into the mill, and seeing the men’s dinner on the log, mounted upon it, and with his back to the saw, began pulling open the cloth, and devouring the meat. The saw soon advanced upon his tail, that lay flat behind him, and nipped a hair or two, at which, a growl! then a sharper pull, and an angrier growl! The third slash cut to the bone, and brought the enraged animal around, with a furious hug at the remorseless saw, which soon rolled him off the log, with sad rents in his garments. This story was once told in his presence, and Pete declared that he could hold the saw. And it is said that, getting first a good position, and wrapping the teeth well, when the water was let on he held the saw so powerfully that it could not get into motion. However that may be, the story was always told of him when his name excited curiosity.
Pete was one of those peculiar natures that can never be organized into society, but live, as marmots do, by burrowing, in the neighborhood of men, without living among them.
He had the strength of two ordinary men, but had little regular use for it. Good nature was constitutional—and laughing may be said to have constituted the greater part of his language. He began his sentences with a flourish of te he’s, and they mostly deliquesced into guttural chuckles. When, on public days, trainings, and elections and cattle-shows, Pete’s discretion in drink had shown itself to be small, he was never known to quarrel. He settled down in some corner, and talked and laughed to himself with very much the same sounds which issue from a black pot of hasty pudding, as it boils and sputters.
But these periods were not frequent, and Pete was in demand for such work as required strength. For short spells he would put forth extraordinary strength. “I’d rather have Pete to lay stone-walls with than a yoke of oxen,” said farmer Jones, “and as for thrashing, he’s a perfect machine.”
“I love to see him chop wood,” said a neighbor. “I think Pete prides himself on the way he swings an axe.”
“Well, he’s right to. Just take him on a frosty morning, put a good Collins axe in his hand, and then see him lay off his jacket and mount on a big log, and then he lets it on the wood, and the chips fly so fast that it’s dangerous to stand in front. When he’s down to the heart of the log, the side of his cut is as smooth as if it had been planed. There’s not a man in this town can do up a cord of wood as quick as he can, and as for splittin’, he has a natural eye for a log, and sees just where the crack will run. Some folks, you know, strike and strike, and turn the log over, and try it this way and that, afore they find out the splittin’-vein. But Pete sees it the minute he lays his eye on a stick. I saw him one day, when Bose Hadnley’d been whalin’ away at a big oak log till he was out of breath, take the axe, and turn the log over, and look at both ends, and then square away and let fly, and the axe went through the log so slick, that it fell apart like two boards, and his axe went a rod out of his hands.”
“Pete don’t know much,” said another, “but what he does know comes to him mighty natural.”
“I don’t know about his bein’ so ignorant. His head don’t run on books; I doubt if he knows his letters. But, if I’m butcherin’, I’d rather have him than old Harvey himself. Then he has a natural turn for horses, especially if nobody else can manage ’em. Pete, somehow, gets in with ’em, as if they was related.”
“He’s pretty good in a garden, too. Every thing lives that he puts out. I’d rather have him set a tree for me than do it myself. Pete hain’t growed away from natur’ so far but what he knows what’s goin’ on in beasts and birds. There aint his equal at fishin’ in these parts. The fish just cum, I do believe, and ask him to catch ’em.”
“He don’t take on airs about it, neither. He aint stingy. He’d just as soon take you to the best brooks and the best places as not. But then that’s nothin’. Very like you can’t catch a fish. The trout knows who’s after ’em. They want Pete to catch ’em, not Tom, Dick and Harry.”
“You mind that time he caught that trout out of Holcomb’s mill-pond, don’t you?—No? Well, it had been known that there was an awful big fellow livin’ in there. And I know a hundred folks had tried for him. Gentlemen had come up from New Haven, and from Bridgeport, and from down to New York, a-fishin’, and ever so many of ’em had wound up with tryin’ their luck for that big trout, and they had all sorts of riggin’. One, he tried flies, and another worms; sometimes they took the mornin’, and sometimes the evenin’. They knew the hole where he lay. He’d been seen breakin’ the water for one thing and another, but allus when nobody was fishin’. He was a curious trout. I believe he knew Sunday just as well as Deacon Marble did. At any rate, the deacon thought the trout meant to aggravate him. The deacon, you know, is a little waggish. He often tells about that trout. Sez he, ‘One Sunday morning, just as I got along by the willows, I heard an awful splash, and not ten feet from shore I saw the trout, as long as my arm, just curving over like a bow, and going down with something for breakfast. Gracious! says I, and I almost jumped out of the wagon. But my wife Polly, says she, ‘What on airth are you thinkin’ of, deacon? It’s Sabbath day, and you’re goin’ to meetin’! It’s a pretty business for a deacon!’ That sort o’ cooled me off. But I do say that, for about a minute, I wished I wasn’t a deacon. But twouldn’t made any difference, for I came down next day to mill on purpose, and I came down once or twice more, and nothin’ was to be seen, tho’ I tried him with the most temptin’ things. Wal, next Sunday I came along agin, and, to save my life, I couldn’t keep off worldly and wanderin’ thoughts. I tried to be sayin’ my catechism, but I couldn’t keep my eyes off the pont as we came up to the willows. I’d got along in the catechism, as smooth as the road, to the Fourth Commandment, and was sayin’ it out loud for Polly, and jist as I was sayin’: ‘What is required in the Fourth Commandment? ’ I heard a splash, and there was the trout, and, afore I could think, I said: ‘Gracious, Polly, I must have that trout.’ She almost riz right up, ‘I knew you wan’t sayin’ your catechism hearty. Is this the way you answer the question about keepin’ the Lord’s day? I’m ashamed, deacon Marble,’ says she. ‘You’d better change your road, and go to meetin’ on the road over the hill. If I was a deacon, I wouldn’t let a fish’s tail whisk the whole catechism out of my head;’—and I had to go to meetin’ on the hill road all the rest of the summer.”
“Wal, Pete, he worked down to the mill for a week or two—that’s as long as he stays anywhere except at Dr. Wentworth’s, and he lets him come and go about as he pleases. And so, one day, says he, ‘I’m goin’ to catch that big trout.’ So, after the sun was gone down, and just as the moon riz and lighted up the tops of the bushes, but didn’t touch the water—Pete, he took a little mouse he’d caught, and hooked his hook through his skin, on the back, so that it didn’t hurt him or hinder his bein’ lively, and he threw him in about as far as a mouse could have jumped from the branches that hung over. Of course the mouse he put out lively to swim for his life. Quick as a flash of lightnin’, the water opened with a rush, and the mouse went under; but he came up again, and the trout with him, and he weighed between three and four pound.”
Agate Bissell could not be expected to put a very high value on one who had only, or chiefly, such qualities as gave Pete his reputation. He had no purpose in life. He had no trade or calling. He was an idle fellow; and that term expressed the utmost condemnation which he could pronounce upon one not positively guilty of crime or vice.
“Doctor Wentworth, it seems to me that Rose might find a better companion than that lazy fellow! What can she learn of him that will make her either wiser or better?”
The doctor smiled, and only looked at Agate. This habit of hearing what she said without reply seemed to disturb Agate’s equanimity. She felt it to be but a way of saying that she was not worth answering, though that was far from the truth. His mind wandered off and followed out what she said, till he quite forgot the answer.
“Agate! will you hand me that large folio of engravings?”
She laid it on the table and opened the volume.
“Now,” said the doctor, “do you think it makes any difference with me who opens this book for me? The contents are there, and do not depend for their value on the person who opens and shows them. So it is with Pete. He opens the book of nature to Rose—that’s all. He has no ideas. He can hardly speak intelligibly. He has no place in society. But he is strangely alive to the facts of nature, and he will show Rose more things in natural history than any person in this town.”
“Of course you can do as you please; Rose is your daughter. If she was mine, I don’t think I should send her to Pete to learn about this world, or that to come!”
“Courage, Agate! Between Pete and you, I hope to make a good girl of Rose!”
