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Page 43
"What is his history?" I inquired.
"Whiskey," epitomized Judge Hoover. "That explains him."
I was silent, but I did not accept the explanation. And so, when I had
the chance, I asked old man Sellers, who browsed daily on my exchanges.
"Mike O'Bader," said he, "was makin' shoes in Montopolis when I come here
goin' on fifteen year ago. I guess whiskey's his trouble. Once a month
he gets off the track, and stays so a week. He's got a rigmarole
somethin' about his bein' a Jew pedler that he tells ev'rybody. Nobody
won't listen to him any more. When he's sober he ain't sich a fool --
he's got a sight of books in the back room of his shop that he reads. I
guess you can lay all his trouble to whiskey."
But again I would not. Not yet was my Wandering Jew rightly construed for
me. I trust that women may not be allowed a title to all the curiosity in
the world. So when Montopolis's oldest inhabitant (some ninety score
years younger than Michob Ader) dropped in to acquire promulgation in
print, I siphoned his perpetual trickle of reminiscence in the direction
of the uninterpreted maker of shoes.
Uncle Abner was the Complete History of Montopolis, bound in butternut.
"O'Bader," he quavered, "come here in '69. He was the first shoemaker in
the place. Folks generally considers him crazy at times now. But he
don't harm nobody. I s'pose drinkin' upset his mind -- yes, drinkin' very
likely done it. It's a powerful bad thing, drinkin'. I'm an old, old
man, sir, and I never see no good in drinkin'."
I felt disappointment. I was willing to admit drink in the case of my
shoemaker, but I preferred it as a recourse instead of a cause. Why had
he pitched upon his perpetual, strange note of the Wandering Jew? Why his
unutterable grief during his aberration? I could not yet accept whiskey
as an explanation.
"Did Mike O'Bader ever have a great loss or trouble of any kind?" I asked.
"Lemme see! About thirty year ago there was somethin' of the kind, I
recollect. Montopolis, sir, in them days used to be a mighty strict place.
"Well, Mike O'Bader had a daughter then -- a right pretty girl. She was
too gay a sort for Montopolis so one day she slips off to another town and
runs away with a circus. It was two years before she comes back, all
fixed up in fine clothes and rings and jewellery, to see Mike. He
wouldn't have nothin' to do with her, so she stays around town awhile,
anyway. I reckon the men folks wouldn't have raised no objections, but
the women egged 'em on to order her to leave town. But she had plenty of
spunk, and told 'em to mind their own business.
"So one night they decided to run her away. A crowd of men and women
drove her out of her house, and chased her with sticks and stones. She
run to her father's door, callin' for help. Mike opens it, and when he
sees who it is he hits her with his fist and knocks her down and shuts the
door.
"And then the crowd kept on chunkin' her till she run clear out of town.
And the next day they finds her drowned dead in Hunter's mill pond. I
mind it all now. That was thirty year ago."
I leaned back in my non-rotary revolving chair and nodded gently, like a
mandarin, at my paste-pot.
"When old Mike has a spell," went on Uncle Abner, tepidly garrulous, "he
thinks he's the Wanderin' Jew."
"He is," said I, nodding away.
And Uncle Abner cackled insinuatingly at the editor's remark, for he was
expecting at least a "stickful" in the "Personal Notes" of the _Bugle_.
XIII THE DUPLICITY OF HARGRAVES
When Major Pendleton Talbot, of Mobile, sir, and his daughter, Miss Lydia
Talbot, came to Washington to reside, they selected for a boarding place a
house that stood fifty yards back from one of the quietest avenues. It
was an old-fashioned brick building, with a portico upheld by tall white
pillars. The yard was shaded by stately locusts and elms, and a catalpa
tree in season rained its pink and white blossoms upon the grass. Rows of
high box bushes lined the fence and walks. It was the Southern style and
aspect of the place that pleased the eyes of the Talbots.
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