Cupid of Campion

“What! Don’t you know that? I thought from the way you were talking that you knew everything. That’s the Wisconsin River.”

“You don’t say! Why, that’s where Marquette came down. Think of that, Abe. Marquette came down that river and discovered the upper Mississippi. He must have passed right near to where we’re standing.”

“I’ve been round this river all my life, and I never heard of no Marquette. Who was he?”

“He was a priest.”

“A Catlic?”

“Yes, and a Jesuit.”

“I hate those dirty Catlics,” growled Abe, spitting savagely.

Behold, gentle reader, Abe’s religion. He hated Catholics, and in doing so felt consciously pious. He belongs, it must be sadly confessed, to the largest church in the backwoods of America; the Great Unlettered Church. So worldly a thing as a railroad has been known to put their religion to flight.

“I’m not a Catholic myself,” said Clarence, losing for the moment his light manner, “and I believe they’re superstitious and away behind the times; but I don’t hate them. Anybody who reads books knows that there have been splendid men and women who were good Catholics. A Church that has lived and kept fully alive for nineteen hundred years is not to be sneezed at.”

“Sneezed at! What do you want to sneeze at it for? What good would that do? We ought to blow it up.”

“My son,” said Clarence, raising his head, tilting his chin and assuming a paternal air, “I’m beginning to despair of you. A moment ago, you remember, I said you were a literalist. Well, it’s worse than that. You’re a pessimist.”

At this Abe broke into a torrent of profanity. In this particular sort of diction he showed a surprising facility.

“Excuse me, friend,” said Clarence, “for breaking in upon your exquisite soliloquy; but would you mind telling me what that big building over there in the distance is? It seems to be across the river from McGregor.”

“That,” said Abe with some unction in his tones, “is Champeen College.”

“Champeen College?”

“Yes, the Catlics are trying to run it, but them guys doesn’t even know how to spell it. They leave out the H. I saw their boat – a fellow told me about it – and sure enough they didn’t have no H.”

Clarence pondered for a few moments.

“Look here,” he said presently. “Perhaps you mean Champion College.”

“That’s just what I said; Champeen College.”

“You say Champeen; you mean Champion.”

“That’s what I’ve said all along – Champeen College.”

Again Clarence reflected.

“Oh!” he said, breaking into a smile, “I think I’ve got it. Leaving out that H you have Campion College. That’s it, I’ll bet; and Campion was a wonderful Jesuit priest, famous in history and novel. He died a martyr.”

Hereupon the butcher’s boy proceeded to express his sentiments on the Jesuits. He declared them at some length and with no little profanity.

“I think,” observed Clarence calmly, when Abe had stopped more for want of breath than of language, “that it’s about time to start down, if we want to have that swim. Be good enough, gentle youth, to lead the way.”

Their descent was along another roadway, south of the one by which they had come up. In parts, the path was so steep that it was difficult to keep one’s foothold.

Abe led sullenly. He was deep in thought. The problem of beginning life again was facing him, beginning life with one pair of ancient overalls, a shirt, a jack-knife, shoes that had seen better days, and, in prospect, the handsome sum of one dollar. There was no question of his beginning life at McGregor. There confronted him, indeed, a difficulty, apparently insurmountable, in showing his face there at all. Abe figured to himself an irate boat-owner waiting at the landing for the person who had had the boldness to take away his skiff. How, then, he reflected, could he collect his dollar, get Clarence back, and escape unobserved. One plan would be to land below McGregor and let Clarence go the rest of the way alone. But even that plan had its risks. Doubtless, there were boatmen on the river even now in quest of the missing craft. Much thinking was alien to Abe’s manner of life; continuous thinking, impossible. He left the solution in the lap of the gods, therefore, and started conversation with his companion. With Abe, language was not the expression of, but rather an escape from, thought. So he gabbled away, going from one subject to another with an inconsequence which bridged tremendous gulfs of subject.

In an unhappy moment, he became foul in his expression. He did not, by reason of being in the advance, see the blush that mantled his companion’s face.

“Suppose you change the subject,” said Clarence, giving, as he spoke, Master Abe a hearty shove with both arms.

If dropping the subject entirely is equivalent to changing it, Abe was perfectly obedient. At any rate, he certainly changed his base; and before the words were well out of Clarence’s mouth, Abe was sliding down the steep incline at a rate which would have outdistanced the average runner. He went full thirty feet before a friendly stump brought him to a pause.

“Look here,” cried Abe, remaining seated where he had come to a stop, and rubbing himself; “What did you mean?”

“You aren’t hurt, are you?” enquired the sailor-clad youth, drawing near and really looking sympathetic.

“Hurt!” echoed Abe, rising as he spoke “I’m sore; and,” he continued as he craned his neck to see what had happened to his clothes, “my overalls is torn.”

“So they is,” assented Clarence, his love of mischief once more in the ascendant. “How much are those overalls worth?”

“I paid eighty-five cents for them.”

“Very good. I’ll give you two dollars instead of one. Is that all right?”

“Suppose you pay me now,” suggested Abe, holding out his hand.

“No you don’t,” answered Clarence. Our young lover of adventure was not of a suspicious disposition; nevertheless it was plain to him that Abe, once he had the money, would, as like as not, either attempt to take revenge for the indignities shown him, or desert at once and leave his charge to shift, as best he might, for himself. In fact, it would be just like Abe to refuse the further services of the boat. “We’ll take our swim first, and then when we’re on the boat and in sight of McGregor I’ll pay you the two dollars.”

Still rubbing himself, and muttering savagely under his breath, Abe led the way down. The descent was soon accomplished, and presently the two boys were disrobing.

“My ma told me that I might take a swim this morning,” remarked Clarence, “provided I went in with some person who knew the river well, and who could show me a good place. Do you know the river and how to swim well?”

“I guess I do. Why, I know this river by heart.” Here Abe paused, gazed carefully at the boat, and suddenly brightened up as though some happy thought had found lodgment in his primitive brain. “And look here,” he continued impressively, “I want to show you something. You see that place where my boat is?”

“Seems to me I do.”

“Well, going down the river from where that boat lays is the most dangerous spot you can find. It is a risk for the best swimmer – big men swimmers – to go in there.”

“See here, I don’t want to go and get drowned,” protested Clarence. The young gentleman, having doffed his sailor costume, revealed to the admiring eyes of his companion a beautiful brand new bathing suit of heavenly blue, evidently put on for this occasion. Clarence had left home that morning prepared to go swimming.

“Oh, you won’t get drownded; there’s a place up stream just a little ways that I told you about where a hen could swim. We can row up there in no time. Get in the boat, in the stern, and I’ll row you.”

“As you say, so shall it be, fair sir,” and with this Clarence tumbled into the boat.

“That’s it,” said Abe, encouragingly, as he proceeded to shove the boat into the water.

“Hey! You’ve forgotten the oars,” said Clarence.

For answer Abe continued to push the boat.

“The oars! The oars!” cried Clarence.