THE CITY ON THE HILL

IN THE Cumberlands, at the Forks of the Kentucky life went on as it had from time immemorial. There were few more houses than there had been a hundred years ago, no more roads, little more of civilization. But one morning, while yet the dawn was young, a man standing contemplatively on the stoop of his house, hands in pockets, looked idly up to the summit of the tall hill, which dominated the little town, and the gaze of this man lingered. There seemed to be someone up there, so far away that he could not be identified.

A certain mild interest arose in the observer’s mind. The figure yonder moved about slowly, rising and stooping curiously. Now and again it disappeared behind the crown of the hill. Then it would return, slowly, stooped as though carrying some heavy burden, would drop that burden and start back again.

It was Old Granny Williams who took down the first authentic word regarding the strange work of the man on the hilltop—she had gone up to take him something to eat.

“Hit’s Davy!” said she. “He’s done come back home! He’s a-startin’ of his collidge. He war a-layin’ the stones in rows, this way and that. He done dug a long sort of trench, like, whar the ground was level, up on top of the hill. He shore air a-goin’ to build something.”

Some scoffed at all this. Others looked up still more curiously all that day. Word passed that David Joslin had come back home to stay. The next day, at about ten in the morning, as David Joslin dropped in its place a heavy slab of sandstone, which he had carried in his hands from his quarry on the hillside, he looked up to see the cause of a shadow on the ground.

“Good morning, Absalom,” said he quietly.

Absalom Gannt said nothing at first, but laid off his coat.

“Damn me, Davy!” said he. “Hit hain’t nuvver goin’ to be said that no Joslin could do more’n a Gannt. Ye a-workin’ up here all alone!”

The grizzled old man stood for a time, hands on hips, and looked about him.

“What’s that blood on that rock yander?” he asked, pointing to a stain on the slabs at the corner.

“I mashed my hand between a couple of rocks,” said David. He held up his hand. The edge of the palm, livid and dark blue, had been bruised off in a large half-open wound, from which the blood still oozed slowly. “It’s nothing,” said he. “I swore—before I thought. It’ll be all right.”

“I haven’t any tool except this old piece of crowbar,” he went on. “Dan Bagsley, down at the shop, put a edge on this iron. I managed to quarry some rock with it on the face of the hill yonder.”

“Well, I’ll be damned!” remarked Absalom quietly, and, having so expressed himself, he did not fall to work, but set off down the hill without further comment.

Joslin sat down to rest on the corner stone, which, with his own hands, he had laid. The blood oozing from his hand still further stained the rock, the color spreading slowly as he sat. Under the corner stone lay something else of the life of David Joslin.

He had buried here the old book of John Calvin, outlived of late, since he had found that religion and democracy, and, indeed, hope itself, are naught but human sympathy and human understanding. Between the leaves of the fierce old pragmatist’s volume there lay the photograph of a woman—a little picture Joslin himself had bought one day in a shop; the picture of a woman with large eyes, dark, curling hair, a smile upon her lips, as she leaned her face upon her folded hands. Joslin was putting away the past, not regretfully, not longingly, but reverently. The cornerstone was a milestone for him—one of the greatest of his life.

After a time men came, old Absalom Gannt at their head. They spoke little, nor expressed any surprise; nor did Joslin’s mountain reticence much relax at first He only said, quietly, that now he had come home to build his school.

There were teams—two mule teams, a wagon, a plough. Some bore hammers, others spades or axes. More than a dozen strong they were, and as he looked at them Joslin saw among them men of his own kin, and men who but now had been his enemies.

Some now extended the excavation along the line where Joslin already had pegged out the course of his foundation. Others opened more fully the vein of sandstone at the other side of the hill. The wagons carried loads of rock now around the crest. This rock they laid with no great skill, but steadily and soundly, into the rude continuance of the foundation, which presently began to outline itself definitely and surely.

It was to be a building far larger than any of these men had ever seen; but, as one said to the other, Davy had been Outside, so he would know. And David himself, sitting now and again, somewhat wearily, on his bloody cornerstone, looked at this advancement of his labors and was content.

Toward evening of the day when they had finished the foundation, Joslin called his band of workmen together.

“Friends,” said he, “we have begun. There will be no more feuds in these mountains. This is your school as much as mine—I don’t deserve the credit for it any more than you-all do.”

The steady warmth and trust of their friendship came all about his heart now. After all, they were his people. All they ever had needed was a leader and a chance.

He now dropped naturally and unconsciously more or less into the vernacular that had been his, swiftly as his own diction had changed in his two years of miraculously hard work.

“We hain’t been a part of our own state so far,” said he, “but we’re a-goin’ to be. Now we’ve got to have papers from our state—a charter—afore we kin run our school. We’ll call it the Cumberland Institute, I reckon. Here’s our application fer it. I want each of you men to sign this paper. We’ll be the trustees. Hit’s right we should be, because we started this work all by ourselves, with the help of the Lord.

“Absalom,” said he, turning to the old leader of the clan of Gannts, “I want ye to sign yore name right here. I’ve signed it first—I took that liberty. Sign here, Absalom.”

The old man stood, his jaws working hard under his dense gray beard. “Davy,” said he gently, “ye know I kain’t read or write.”

“I know it,” said Joslin. “I’ve put yore name down fer ye, Absalom. Make yore mark. That’ll stand just the same. There’s fifteen of us here, and we’ll all put our names down. We’ve been plumb forgot, here in the Cumberlands. This will show that we asked our state to accept us and our work.”

“You, Chan,” said he, nodding to the next man, “come and sign.” And Chan came and signed as Absalom had signed—making his mark. And the others followed, each taking in his hand the bit of pencil. Of the fifteen of them only three could write their names. And those names, thus written, stand to-day, in reproach to one of the proudest states in the Union.

As one of the workmen expressed it, “things sort of begun to drift in, like.” Material arrived, and men to handle it. Women now brought up meals. So strangely animated did the men become that they grudged the time spent even in their eating, nor did the hours of daylight seem long enough for them. Some found that shavings made an excellent bed for the night. They slept sometimes in the shavings for mattress, with their coats for covering.

Thus in time there arose, gaunt against the skyline, the frame of the first college building in the Cumberlands. A sober, steady, quiet plebiscite went on. The entire population of the village was engaged. Many folk from the country around about came in. None asked questions. The common thing was for a man to arrive, and to lay off his coat. The least was said, and all was mended among these. The work of one strong, faith-keeping man had been done. There was not a weapon on the hill.

Slowly, with incredible toil, the unskilled hands of these unpaid laborers advanced the task which they had set for themselves. Still the building extended itself against the skyline. About the bottom of the walls now slowly arose the covering of rough-hewn boards, so that it was more apparent what the finished structure would be, if ever it might be finished. The hill folk marveled at the vast size of this building, wondering at Davy Joslin when he told them there were yet larger in the world outside.

Joslin worked steadily with the others, growing gaunter and gaunter as the weeks passed. A faint line of gray had come at his temples, though he yet was young. He had driven body and mind alike without mercy these last years.

None the less, in these surroundings so familiar, among these friends so simple and sincere in their confidence, the soul of the man, so long sad and dour, began to thaw, to show itself beneath the wintry aspect of a nature wholly absorbed in a compelling purpose. To his lips came now more often the light jest, the grim quip, the merry retort, which once had marked him as a younger man. Day by day, not unsettling himself in the new respect in which they held him for his wider experience, he grew into, or fell back into, the old ways of the earlier days.

At times when the work was done for the day and dusk had fallen, they would light a lamp in one of the more sheltered rooms of the unfinished building, and Joslin would read to them for an hour or so, explaining to them what he had read, telling them of the greater world of thought and activity in affairs, which lay beyond their knowledge, and thus proving to them all the better the need of this work in which they were engaged. No Homer of old was ever more a god to his listeners than David Joslin here in the rude structure of his unfinished building.

Again, a yet lighter side of the nature of the mountain man would manifest itself—few, indeed, were more human than himself at heart. With a wide smile, upon occasion, he might call a halt in the labors for a time, and, taking from under a board the new violin, which represented his sole acquisition in the outer world from which he now had exiled himself in turn, he would motion to them to clear a space upon the floor, and fall to dancing for his playing. For the time, the natural fervor of the mountain soul would forget itself in the ancient relaxation of their kind, and men and women, or even children, would follow the measure of his bow. He played with a certain native skill, if with unfinished art, but knowing well the power of music as incentive and as stimulus. These matters now strengthened him in the regard of his fellows, so that he became a leader indeed, not of one clan, but of many, of all. His word was law to them now. Had he cared to preach, he could, indeed, have stood before them now, and swayed them with his words. But David Joslin did not preach.

It was thus that the city grew, and thus that the feuds passed, no man might say when. There had come from among the people, as always there does come in time of need, a man who had learned and lived, had joyed and sorrowed with them, and who, therefore, was fit to lead them, and to speak with the tongue of law and of prophecy. Alone, Joslin was wide-eyed and sorrowing, as any man must be who carries burdens other than his own. Unconsciously, he was learning the great truth that human sympathy is the only foundation for human leadership.

“Fer a man who kin read the way he kin, four syllerbles and all, Davy hain’t stuck up none at all,” said old Absalom Gannt. “No, I reckon he’s all right. He hain’t changed a bit inside.”

“He kin play the fiddle yit, too,” assented Chan Bullock. “I dunno as old Levi Gaines kin play ‘Turkey in the Straw’ any better than what Davy does, an’ Levi’s been allowed to be e’en about the best fiddler in these parts fer nigh on to forty year.”

“That’s a heap older than Davy is, no matter how he looks,” said Absalom. “I re-colleck when he was borned all right, an’ he hain’t thirty yit. I’ll say he’s a right servigerous man, young as he is.”

“Well,” explained Chan Bullock, resting his hands for the time on the top of his mattock handle. “While he may have been a heap like the rest of us one way of speakin’, Davy hain’t never been profligate. If he had been, I don’t reckon he’d of been called.”