Asaph
by
About a hundred feet back from the main street of a village in New Jersey there stood a very good white house. Half-way between it and the sidewalk was a large chestnut-tree, which had been the pride of Mr. Himes, who built the house, and was now the pride of Mrs. Himes, his widow, who lived there.
Under the tree was a bench, and on the bench were two elderly men, both smoking pipes, and each one of them leaning forward with his elbows on his knees. One of these, Thomas Rooper by name, was a small man with gray side-whiskers, a rather thin face, and very good clothes. His pipe was a meerschaum, handsomely colored, with a long amber tip. He had bought that pipe while on a visit to Philadelphia during the great Centennial Exposition; and if any one noticed it and happened to remark what a fine pipe it was, that person would be likely to receive a detailed account of the circumstances of its purchase, with an appendix relating to the Main Building, the Art Building, the Agricultural Building, and many other salient points of the great Exposition which commemorated the centennial of our national independence.
The other man, Asaph Scantle, was of a different type. He was a little older than his companion, but if his hair were gray, it did not show very much, as his rather long locks were of a sandy hue and his full face was clean shaven, at least on Wednesdays and Sundays. He was tall, round-shouldered, and his clothes were not good, possessing very evident claims to a position on the retired list. His pipe consisted of a common clay bowl with a long reed stem.
For some minutes the two men continued to puff together as if they were playing a duet upon tobacco-pipes, and then Asaph, removing his reed from his lips, remarked, “What you ought to do, Thomas, is to marry money.”
“There’s sense in that,” replied the other; “but you wasn’t the first to think of it.”
Asaph, who knew very well that Mr. Rooper never allowed any one to suppose that he received suggestions from without, took no notice of the last remark, but went on: “Lookin’ at the matter in a friendly way, it seems to me it stands to reason that when the shingles on a man’s house is so rotten that the rain comes through into every room on the top floor, and when the plaster on the ceilin’ is tumblin’ down more or less all the time, and the window-sashes is all loose, and things generally in a condition that he can’t let that house without spendin’ at least a year’s rent on it to git it into decent order, and when a man’s got to the time of life–“
“There’s nothin’ the matter with the time of life,” said Thomas; “that’s all right.”
“What I was goin’ to say was,” continued Asaph, “that when a man gits to the time of life when he knows what it is to be comfortable in his mind as well as his body–and that time comes to sensible people as soon as they git fairly growed up–he don’t want to give up his good room in the tavern and all the privileges of the house, and go to live on his own property and have the plaster come down on his own head and the rain come down on the coverlet of his own bed.”
“No, he don’t,” said Thomas; “and what is more, he isn’t goin’ to do it. But what I git from the rent of that house is what I have to live on; there’s no gittin’ around that pint.”
“Well, then,” said Asaph, “if you don’t marry money, what are you goin’ to do? You can’t go back to your old business.”
“I never had but one business,” said Thomas. “I lived with my folks until I was a good deal more than growed up; and when the war broke out I went as sutler to the rigiment from this place; and all the money I made I put into my property in the village here. That’s what I’ve lived on ever since. There’s no more war, so there’s no more sutlers, except away out West where I wouldn’t go; and there are no more folks, for they are all dead; and if what Mrs. McJimsey says is true, there’ll be no more tenants in my house after the 1st of next November. For when the McJimseys go on account of want of general repairs, it is not to be expected that anybody else will come there. There’s nobody in this place that can stand as much as the McJimseys can.”