A Perfect Plague

Before the boy had mistaken some faded cayenne pepper for ginger, and had made a cake with it.  Last evening I put half of it into the cupboard and left the door open.  During the night we heard a commotion in the kitchen and much choking, coughing, and groaning, and at breakfast the boy was unable to swallow food with his usual ravenousness.  After breakfast he came to me whimpering, and asking for something soothing for his throat, admitting that he had seen the “gingerbread,” and “felt so starved” in the night that he got up to eat it I tried to make him feel that it was “real mean” to eat so much and be so useless, and he said he would do anything to help me, but the men were so “down on him.”  I never saw men so patient with a lad before.  He is a most vexing addition to our party, yet one cannot help laughing at him.  He is not honorable, though.  I dare not leave this letter lying on the table, as he would read it.  He writes for two Western periodicals (at least he says so), and he shows us long pieces of his published poetry.  In one there are twenty lines copied (as Mr. Kavan has shown me) without alteration from Paradise Lost; in another there are two stanzas from Resignation, with only the alteration of “stray” for “dead;” and he has passed the whole of Bonar’s Meeting-place off as his own.  Again, he lent me an essay by himself, called The Function of the Novelist, which is nothing but a mosaic of unacknowledged quotations.  The men tell me that he has “bragged” to them that on his way here he took shelter in Mr. Nugent’s cabin, found out where he hides his key, opened his box, and read his letters and MSS.  He is a perfect plague with his ignorance and self-sufficiency.  The first day after he came while I was washing up the breakfast-things he told me that he intended to do all the dirty work, so I left the knives and forks in the tub and asked him to wipe and lay them aside.  Two hours afterwards I found them untouched.  Again the men went out hunting, and he said he would chop the wood for several days’ use, and after a few strokes, which were only successful in chipping off some shavings, he came in and strummed on the harmonium, leaving me without any wood with which to make the fire for supper.  He talked about his skill with the lasso, but could not even catch one of our quietest horses.  Worse than all, he does not know one cow from another.  Two days ago he lost our milch cow in driving her in to be milked, and Mr. Kavan lost hours of valuable time in hunting for her without success.  Today he told us triumphantly that he had found her, and he was sent out to milk her.  After two hours he returned with a rueful face and a few drops of whitish fluid in the milk-pail, saying that that was all he could get.  On Mr. K. going out, he found, instead of our “calico” cow, a brindled one that had been dry since the spring!  Our cow has gone off to the wild cattle, and we are looking very grim at Lyman, who says that he expected he should live on milk.  I told him to fill up the four-gallon kettle, and an hour afterwards found it red-hot on the stove.  Nothing can be kept from him unless it is hidden in my room.  He has eaten two pounds of dried cherries from the shelf, half of my second four-pound spiced loaf before it was cold, licked up my custard sauce in the night, and privately devoured the pudding which was to be for supper.  He confesses to it all, and says, “I suppose you think me a cure.”  Mr. K. says that the first thing he said to him this morning was “Will Miss B. make us a nice pudding today?”  This is all harmless, but the plagiarism and want of honor are disgusting, and quite out of keeping with his profession of being a theological student.

This life is in some respects like being on board ship — there are no mails, and one knows nothing beyond one s little world, a very little one in this case.  we find each other true, and have learnt to esteem and trust each other.  I should, for instance, go out of this room leaving this book open on the table, knowing that the men would not read my letter.  They are discreet, reticent, observant, and on many subjects well-informed, but they are of a type which has no antitype at home.  All women work in this region, so there is no fuss about my working, or saying, “Oh, you mustn’t do that,” or “Oh, let me do that.”

I.L.B.