ZERUB Throop's Experiment; AN AMERICAN YARN.

Mount Ida Chronicle, Volume II, Issue 128, 11 August 1871, Page 6

ZERUB Throop's Experiment; AN AMERICAN YARN.

Zeeub Thboop sat in his spring-lock sanctum. . It was a contrivance of his, whereby it might nevjr be precisely known whether he was out or- in ; also no other person, curious or dishonest, could invciJ.e the place to occupy it even for a moment, except with door carefully set wide. He carried the key in his pocket. Once swung to, the heavy leaf fastened itself instantly ; then' he and his cigar and his black cat were walled up together. Zerub always kept a black eat. He had had six generations of them, ail precisely alike. Where the type varied the kitten was drowned.

A .staircase led down from the passage without to the side entrance of his house. People on errands, or with bills, or to pay money,-Mr receive orders, came here. Zerub could see from his window whom it might be. He had an office directly below, where he made payments, and signed receipts, and gave such other audiences as he chose, holding thus pretty much all his limited intercourse with his kind. Unless, he owed a man, or a man owed him, or one or the other wanted for money, money's worth of use, property, or service, what should there be"between them? Zerub Throoj) always wanted to know that. He hid a little dining-room beyond his office. His sleeping room was within his sanctum. "What if he should die there some night with his oak sported ? -The whole front of his large old house, a place he had taken a whim to buy furnished as 'it stood, was unused. He had his head out at his window at this moment at which we take him up. He was. watching a woman who had come to the door below with something to sell She had cbmefrom a good way off, peddling her wares, or she would never have climbed Throop Hill. "Tell the mistress it will be sure to make the hair grow, if it's gone ever so." " It isn't a mistress, it's a master," said the servant Sarah, from within. " And he • " A \ * don't buy hair-grease,. and he won't have peddlers." " It isn't grease : its Phoenix Regenerator. It'll" " It's no use, I tell you. Not if it would, save souls. I tell you he don't buy things." And Sarah, bethinking of her half-ironed shirt-bosom, and her cooling flats, the door summarily. Zerub, Throop laughed. The woman looked up. " My- hair never comes out, madam, I assure you;" said he, with a mocking blandness, atod a half bow of his thicklycovered,' close-trimmed, grizzled head. " I'm! not'in the habit of losing things." " Yqu might, though," she answered, as ready as he. " You might begin; and it's things that never went before that goes worst if they once sets out. "When it once begins to dtfop, you'll—— " Hammer it in, ma'am ! and rivet it on the other Zerub shut kis Window. "Hamme? it in! I guess you're used to hammerin' in : feelin's and Christiaii charities and, such. Done the undertakin* • -V .» * • business pretty much all along, I should say. Well, f wait till you re hammered in, and riveted on th&.other side !" As she walked out of. the- upper gate upon the hill, another woman rang the bell at the front door. The sound pealed through the house startlingly. Hardly once in a year did anyone ring at Zerub.Throop's front door. One had to turn aside from the gravelled drive to reach ft,' across'a ~grass 'pint Old vines, trained or cared for* • tangled up the

porchway; but Mrs. Whapshare came to the front-djor. She bad been ten years making up her mind to come at all, ever since her husband died, and left her poor. Now her little children were growing up, she had a hundred needs for them to-day that pressed her sorer than the needs of ten years ago. They might go out into the world to make their way ; but she Wanted lite-tools to give them to go out with. Training, knowledge, opportunity —these things, in the outset, must always cost somebody something. She could not give them bread and butter now, and sti.d them to bed. There was other feeding that they were hungry for. Zerub Throop knew Mrs. Whapshare by sight, as he knew nearly every man and woman in the town; but he had never spoken to her. Why should he r She was no tenant of his. He wanted nothing of her: she could buy nothing of him. The human relation, as Zerub understood it, failed. The wires wen do vn. Yet Mrs. Whapshare came, and rung at his front-door. " There is a lady, sir, in the north-east toorn, askin' to speak to you'" called Sarah, from outside the oak, not knocking, for she knew now that he was there. " Why didn't you get rid of her, as you did of the Regenerator?"—half pleased, half surly, at her management; first good, then bad. " She isn't the regeneratin' sort. She ain't got bottles, nor yet books, nor yet forty-graphs of President Grant and Mr. Bismarck Brown. There ain't nothin' to send her off on. She jest wants to see you. I can tell you who 'tis. It's Mis' Whapshare, down Ford street way. She stepped in as if she'd made up her mind; and it's one of the little ones that makes up. with a twist." Sarah Hand wis almost the only person who ever made many words with Zerub Throop ; but her words suited and amused him, and she knew it. It was with a sort of crusty good humor that he went down into the dim and. musty north-east parlor, where Sarah had folded back a single shutter, to see Mrs. Whapshare. The lady rose as he entered, stirring the gloom and must of the corner in which she had seated herself, and gathering up, as i* were, the darkness into shape with the shadowy movement of her dress. Zerub bowed. " Mrs. Whapshare," said the lady. " Mrs. Miles Whapshare." Zerub sat down, and waited for more. " I have come to ask you something, Mr. Throop." "Of course, madam. They all do," answered Mr. Throop, politely, drawing down his waistcoat, and leaning back in his chair, laying his right foot across his left knee, and folding his arms, as a human being in a state of siege instinctively barricading himself. Mrs. Whapshare looked at him quickly. She changed her tone and approach. She was not a timid woman, though she had been ten years making up her mind. " I beg your, pardon, sir, I began wrong. I mean, I came to tell you something." Mr.' Throop bowed. " You owed my husband, Miles Whapshare, fifteen thousand dollars." " Once I did," answered Mr. Throop. " Don't you think—l mean, Ido think —you owe his children something now." In this country, m«£tlam, no one is persecuted for opinion's sake. You have a perfect right to think so—and— to continue thinking so." Mrs. Whapshare was forced baek to her questions. "Don't you think so, Mr. .Throop ?" . . .

iN o, madam. lam quite willing to answer any inquiry you would like to mak\ Ido not tliu.k so."

Mrs. Whapshare had to put it interrogatively again. Otherwise, it was plain the conversation was to drop, and would perpetually drop. "Why, sir?" In tlie lirst place, madam, three and twenty years ago Miles Whapshare hadn't a.iy children, Whatever responsibilities he undertook afterward, he undertook in th<i (ace of his business loss. He began the world again, as I did. I couldn't ail'urd children, ma'am. In the second place, I paid him, as I did evei*ybody else, ..wenty-five cents on the dollar, and was discharged. I began again, and worked up. It Miles Whapshare didn't work up, chat is simply the difference between us. [n the third place, if I were to call it a debt now, how much do you think the djbt would be ?" " I don t know. I don't know as that alters it." " I'll tell you then. Upon 15,000 dollars I paid Miles Whapshare 3750, leaves 11,250. That, at simple interest, would by this time just about have increased by one and a half. Do you think I owe Miles Whapshare's children to-day .23,125 dollars? It is either that or nothing." " I think it is likely it is that, then," replied Mrs. Whapshare, with a calm indifference to the figures. " But they would be glad of a very small proportion." . " Possibly. Miles Whapshare- was. But you leave the argument. The grandchildren might come back with their claim, by and by. world doesn't go trailing on after that fashion. When things are squared up, they are squared. There had to be a deluge once, ma'am, and the race began again. Pope Gregory had to strike ten days out of the year 1582, to bring the world's account down to what the sun could pay ; and I believe you think your sins are settled for on much the same principal, don't you? Bankruptcy and discharge seem to be taken into the original plan of things. At any rate, that is what occurs, and there is an accepted order for it. Is this all, madam ? and is your mind satisfied?"

And Zerub Throop arose. The woman's figure in black moved again also, making that shape of shadow in the gloomy sofa comer. A voice that trembled now came out of the shade. " It seemed to me as if it ought to have been, somehow ; a few thousand dollars would have been so much to us all this time! and I knew you owed it once. You are rich, Mr. Throop; and you have nobody to keep your money for." " I can leave it to cats and dogs if I like. I can do as I please with my own." "You may think you can," said the widow, speaking firmly again; " but will be as Providence pleases, after all. Even the king's heart is in the hand of the Lord." "Very well! Try Providence; but if Providence is anything like Zerub Throop, it won't do to begin by telling him he owes you an old debt on somebody else's account." "You know about that Mrs. Whapshare ?" Mr. Throop said, interrogatively, to Sarah Hand, when she was bringing in his dinner—a roast d duck, with port wine sauce. " a pretty comfortable sort of person, I should think." "Well," answered Sarah, "folks is almost alwers pretty comfortable, ain't they, xcepfc the regular give-up starvation ones ? You see 'em goin' round ; and they has shoes an' stockin's on, an' gowns, an' bunnits, or coats an' hats; an' they goes in somewheres when it rains, or it comes night; an* they git breakfast, an' dinner, an' supper, I 'spose, or else they wouldn't be goin' 'round. You don't see 'em drop-

pin' nowheres. Of course, they're comfortable. Everybody gets shook down into some sort of a place. The world's like a hoss-car ; they git in, an' they git out; an' they've been took along between. Some sets down, an' some stands up, an' some hangs on to the straps. Some gits into a place at the beginning, an' some slips into one when sombody else gits out. There don't seem to be no rule about it; it regilates itself." " But Mrs. Whapshare ?—she lives in a good house." (To be concluded in our next,.)