CAL GATHERS THE MANNA

When Cal appeared at the head of his dusky little caravan the others advanced to meet him and bombard him with a rapid fire of questions as to where he had been, and what the negro boys were carrying, and where he had discovered the source of supply, and whatever else their curiosity suggested.

Instead of replying at once he asked.

“Did you find the water, Tom?”

“Yes, easily, and it isn’t brackish at all.”

“That’s excellent, and now let us eat, drink and be merry. I couldn’t give you that injunction till I learned that we had the water for the drinking part.”

Without waiting for him to finish his sentence the others busied themselves in examining what the negroes had brought. As they did so, Cal catalogued the supplies orally with comments:

“That bag contains a half bushel of rice—enough to serve us as a breadstuff for a long time to come, as we require only three teacupfuls—measured by guess—for a meal; the bag by the side of it is badly out at elbows and knees, but it holds a fine supply of new sweet potatoes which will help the endurance of the rice. What’s that? Oh, that’s a little okra, and the red-turbaned old darky woman who sold it to me carefully explained how to cook the mucilaginous vegetable. As she delivered her instructions in the language of the Upper Congo, I cannot say that my conception of the way in which okra should be prepared for the table is especially clear, but we’ll find some way out of that difficulty. Yes, the big bag on the right contains a few dozen ears of green corn, and the one next to it is full of well-ripened tomatoes, smooth of surface, shapely of contour and tempting to the appetite. Finally, we have here half a dozen cantaloupes, or ‘mush millions,’ as the colored youth who supplied them called his merchandise. Now scamper, you little vagabonds. I’ve paid you once for toting the things and it is a matter of principle with me never to pay twice for a single service.”

“Where on earth, Cal, did you find all these things?” asked Larry, the others looking the same question out of their eyes as it were.

“I found them in the garden patches where they were grown,” he replied. “That’s what I went out to do. They are the ‘manna,’ the finding of which somewhere in this neighborhood I foreshadowed in answer to your querulous predictions of an exclusively meat diet for some days to come.”

As he spoke, Cal was throwing sweet potatoes into the fire and covering them with red-hot ashes with glowing coals on top.

“You’re a most unsatisfactory fellow, Cal,” said Dick. “Why don’t you tell us where you got the provender and how you happened to find so rich a source of supply. Anybody else would be eager to talk about such an exploit.”

“I’ll tell you,” Cal answered, “as soon as I get the potato roast properly going. I’m hungry. Suppose you cut some cantaloupes for us to eat while the potatoes are cooking.”

Not until he had half a melon in hand did Cal begin.

“There’s one of the finest rice plantations on all this coast about a mile above here. Or rather, the plantation house is there. As for the plantation itself, we’re sitting on it now. It belongs to Colonel Huguenin, and of course the house is closed in summer.”

“Why?” interrupted Dick, whose thirst for information concerning southern customs was insatiable.

“Do you really want me to interrupt my story of ‘How Cal Went Foraging’ in order to answer your interjected inquiry? If I must talk it’s all one to me what I talk about. So make your choice.”

“Go on and tell us of the foraging. The other thing can wait.”

“Well, then; I happened to know of this plantation. I’ve bivouacked on the shores of this bay before, and when I turned the Hunkydory’s nose in this direction I was impelled by an intelligent purpose. I had alluring visions of the things I could buy from the negroes up there at the quarters.”

“Why didn’t you tell us then instead of getting off all that rigmarole about rowing against the tide and the rest of it?” asked Larry, not with irritation, but with a laugh, for the cantaloupe he was eating and the smell of the sweet potatoes roasting in the ashes had put him and the others into an entirely peaceful and contented frame of mind.

“I never like to raise hopes,” answered Cal, “that I cannot certainly fulfill. Performance is better than promises—as much better as the supper we are about to eat is better than a printed bill of fare. Wonder how the potatoes are coming on?”

With that he dug one of the yams out of the ashes, examined it, and put it back, saying:

“Five or six minutes more will do the business. I picked out the smallest ones on purpose to hurry supper. Let’s set the table. Tom, if your kettle of water is boiling, suppose you shuck some corn and plunge it in it. It must boil from five to six minutes—just long enough to get it thoroughly hot through. If it boils longer the sweetness all goes out of it. Dick, won’t you wash some of the tomatoes while Larry and I arrange the dishes?”

Arranging the dishes consisted in cutting a number of broad palmete leaves, some to hold the supplies of food and others to serve as plates.

“I’m sorry I cannot offer you young gentlemen some fresh butter for your corn and potatoes,” said Cal, as they sat down to supper, “but to be perfectly candid with you, our cows seem to have deserted us and we haven’t churned for several days past. After all, the corn and potatoes will be very palatable with a little salt sprinkled upon them, and we have plenty of salt. Don’t hesitate to help yourselves freely to it.”

“To my mind,” said Dick, “this is as good a supper as I ever ate.”

“That’s because of our sharp appetites,” answered Larry. “We’re hungry enough to relish anything.”

“Appetite helps, of course,” said Dick, thoughtfully; “but so does contrast. An hour ago we had all made up our minds to content ourselves for many meals to come with the exclusive diet of fish and game, which has been our lot for many meals past. To find ourselves eating a supper like this instead is like waking from a bad dream and finding it only a nightmare.”

“It would be better still not to have the nightmare,” answered Cal, speaking more seriously than he usually did. “When you have a nightmare it is usually your own fault, and pessimism is always so. You fellows were pessimistic over the prospect of a supper you could not enjoy. As you have a supper that you can enjoy, the suffering you inflicted upon yourselves was wholly needless.”

“Yes, I know,” interposed Tom; “but we couldn’t know that you were going to get all these good things for us.”

“No, of course not. But if you hadn’t allowed your pessimistic forebodings to make you unhappy, you needn’t have been unhappy at all. If things had turned out as you expected you’d have been unhappy twice—once in lamenting your lot and once in suffering it. As it is, you’ve been needlessly unhappy once and unexpectedly happy once, instead of being happy all the while. I tell you optimism is the only true philosophy.”

“I suppose it is,” Dick admitted, “but it leads to disappointment very often.”

“Of course. But in that case you suffer the ill, whatever it is, only once; while the pessimist suffers it both before it befalls and when it comes. That involves a sheer waste of the power of endurance.”

Larry had forgotten to eat while his brother delivered this little discourse, for he had never heard Cal talk in so serious a fashion. Indeed, he had come to think of his brother as a trifler who could never be persuaded to seriousness.

“Where on earth did you get that thought, Cal?” he asked, when Cal ceased to speak.

“It is perfectly sound, isn’t it?” was the boy’s reply.

“I think it is. But where did you get it?”

“If it is sound, it doesn’t matter where I got it, or how. But to satisfy your curiosity, I’ll tell you that I thought it out down here in the woods when I was a runaway. I was so often in trouble as to what was going to happen, and it so often happened that it didn’t happen after all, that I got to wondering one day what was the use of worrying about things that might never happen. I was alone in the woods, you know, and I had plenty of time to think. So little by little I thought out the optimistic philosophy and adopted it as the rule of my life. Of course I could not formulate it then as I do now. I didn’t know what the words ‘optimism’ and ‘pessimism’ meant, but my mind got a good grasp upon the ideas underlying them. There! My sermon is done. I have only to announce that there will be no more preaching at this camp-meeting. I’m going to take a look at your well, Tom, and if the water is as good as you say, I’m going to empty the rain water out of the kegs and refill them. Rain water, you know, goes bad a good deal sooner than other water—especially sand-filtered water.”

“I reckon Cal is right, Dick,” said Tom, when their companion was out of earshot.

“Yes, of course he is, but did you ever stub your toe? It’s a little bit hard to be optimistic on occasions like that.”

“I reckon that’s hardly what Cal meant—”

“Of course it isn’t. I was jesting.”