FullReads

But the calm, chilly Eastman had ground the tobacco under his heel. “You can understand how my hands are tied,” he said to me.

“Readily,” I answered.

“The men give Josey his way in everything. He has a–I may say an unworthy aunt.”

“Yes,” said I. “So I have gathered.”

At this point Josey ducked and slid free, and the united flock vanished with jeers at us. Josey forgot they had insulted him, they forgot he had beaten them; against a common enemy was their friendship cemented.

“You spoke of Sharon’s warm way of espousing causes,” said I to Eastman.

“I did, sir. No one could live here long without noticing it.”

“Sharon is a quiet town, but sudden,” remarked Stuart. “Apt to be sudden. They’re beginning about strawberry night,” he said to Eastman. “Wanted to know about things down in the saloon.”

“How does their taste in elocution chiefly lie?” I inquired.

Eastman smiled. He was young, totally bald, the moral dome of his skull rising white above visionary eyes and a serious auburn beard. He was clothed in a bleak, smooth slate-gray suit, and at any climax of emphasis he lifted slightly upon his toes and relaxed again, shutting his lips tight on the finished sentence. “Your question,” said he, “has often perplexed me. Sometimes they seem to prefer verse; sometimes prose stirs them greatly. We shall have a liberal crop of both this year. I am proud to tell you I have augmented our number of strawberry speakers by nearly fifty per cent.”

“How many will there be?” said I.

“Eleven. You might wish some could be excused. But I let them speak to stimulate their interest in culture. Will you not take dinner with me, gentlemen? I was just sitting down when little Josey Yeatts brought me out.”

We were glad to do this, and he opened another can of corned beef for us. “I cannot offer you wine, sir,” said he to me, “though I am aware it is a general habit in luxurious homes.” And he tightened his lips.

“General habit wherever they don’t prefer whiskey,” said Stuart.

“I fear so,” the school-master replied, smiling. “That poison shall never enter my house, gentlemen, any more than tobacco. And as I cannot reform the adults of Sharon, I am doing what I can for their children. Little Hugh Straight is going to say his ‘Lochinvar’ very pleasingly, Mr. Stuart. I went over it with him last night. I like them to be word per- fect,” he continued to me, “as failures on exhibition night elicit unfavorable comment.”

“And are we to expect failures also?” I inquired.

“Reuben Gadsden is likely to mortify us. He is an earnest boy, but nervous; and one or two others. But I have limited their length. Reuben Gadsden’s father declined to have his boy cut short, and he will give us a speech of Burke’s; but I hope for the best. It narrows down, it narrows down. Guy Jeffries and Leola Mattern are the two.”

“The parents seem to take keen interest,” said I.

Mr. Eastman smiled at Stuart. “We have no reason to suppose they have changed since last year,” said he. “Why, sir,” he suddenly exclaimed, “if I did not feel I was doing something for the young generation here, I should leave Sharon to-morrow! One is not appreciated, not appreciated.”

He spoke fervently of various local enterprises, his failures, his hopes, his achievements; and I left his house honoring him, but amazed –his heart was so wide and his head so narrow; a man who would purify with simultaneous austerity the morals of Lochinvar and of Sharon.

“About once a month,” said Stuart, “I run against a new side he is blind on. Take his puzzlement as to whether they perfer verse or prose. Queer and dumb of him that, you see. Sharon does not know the difference between verse and prose.”

“That’s going too far,” said I.

“They don’t,” he repeated, “when it comes to strawberry night. If the piece is about something they understand, rhymes do not help or hinder. And of course sex is apt to settle the question.”