The Man Who Stole A Meeting-House 1878, From "Coupon Bonds"
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The Man Who Stole A Meeting-House 1878, From "Coupon Bonds" - J. T. (John Townsend) Trowbridge
Project Gutenberg's The Man Who Stole A Meeting-House, by J. T. Trowbridge
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Title: The Man Who Stole A Meeting-House
1878, From Coupon Bonds
Author: J. T. Trowbridge
Release Date: October 24, 2007 [EBook #23165]
Last Updated: February 7, 2013
Language: English
*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE MAN WHO STOLE A MEETING-HOUSE ***
Produced by David Widger
THE MAN WHO STOLE A MEETING-HOUSE
By J. T. Trowbridge
From Coupon Bonds.
Copyright 1878, by James R. Osgood & Co
On a recent journey to the Pennsylvania oil regions, I stopped one evening with a fellow-traveler at a village which had just been thrown into a turmoil of excitement by the exploits of a horse-thief. As we sat around the tavern hearth, after supper, we heard the particulars of the rogue's capture and escape fully discussed; then followed many another tale of theft and robbery, told amid curling puffs of tobacco-smoke; until, at the close of an exciting story, one of the natives turned to my traveling acquaintance, and, with a broad laugh, said, Kin ye beat that, stranger?
Well, I don't know—maybe I could if I should try. I never happened to fall in with any such tall horse-stealing as you tell of, but I knew a man who stole a meeting-house once.
Stole a meetin'-house! That goes a little beyant anything yit,
remarked another of the honest villagers. Ye don't mean he stole it and carried it away?
Stole it and carried it away,
repeated my traveling companion, seriously, crossing his legs, and resting his arm on the hack of his chair. And, more than all that, I helped him.
How happened that?—for you don't look much like a thief yourself.
All eyes were now turned upon my friend, a plain New England farmer, whose honest homespun appearance and candid speech commanded respect.
I was his hired man, and I acted under orders. His name was Jedwort—Old Jedwort, the boys called him, although he wasn't above fifty when the crooked little circumstance happened which I'll make as straight a story of as I can, if the company would like to hear it.
Sartin, stranger! sartin! about stealin' the meetin'-house!
chimed in two or three voices.
My friend cleared his throat, put his hair behind his ears, and with a grave, smooth face, but with a merry twinkle in his shrewd gray eye, began as follows:
"Jedwort I said his name was; and I shall never forget how he looked one particular morning. He stood leaning on the front gate—or rather on the post, for the gate itself was such a shackling concern a child couldn't have leaned on't without breaking it down. And Jedwort was no child. Think of a stoutish, stooping, duck-legged man, with a mountainous back, strongly suggestive of a bag of grist under his shirt, and you have him. That imaginary grist had been growing heavier and heavier, and he more and more bent under it, for the last fifteen years and more, until his head and neck just came forward out from between his shoulders like a turtle's from its