The Settlers (62 page)

The settlers in Minnesota were sure that Old Abe was capable of thinking for all of them. At last a great leader had been born to the men of ax and plow.

The stories about him changed and grew ever more amazing with the years. One day he had short-weighed tea for a customer by three ounces, and he rode twenty miles to the customer’s house with the missing amount. Another time Honest Abe walked five miles to give ten cents back to a customer he had overcharged. Soon it was ten miles Abe had walked and five cents; as the story spread the distance grew greater and the sum smaller.

When Honest Abe himself opened a shop he soon lost out; he was unable to lie or cheat and consequently showed no head for business. Now this remarkable man had become a lawyer in Springfield. It was a great distance to that town in Illinois, and to the settlers in Minnesota Old Abe seemed like a saga giant—good and strong beyond the measure of ordinary mortals.

In the
Minnesota-Posten,
Karl Oskar and Kristina saw a picture of their new leader, “taken,” the paper wrote, “in the most complete likeness in which a human being can be taken.” They studied Honest Abe’s picture closely, and Karl Oskar expressed his satisfaction with the long, forceful nose.

“His nose is almost as big and clumsy as mine!”

“Not quite that bad!” insisted Kristina.

“Well, it’s more shapely, perhaps. Wonder if Abe’s nose will give him luck!”

“Why do they call him Honest Abe?” wondered Kristina. “It sounds as if honest men were rare in America.”

The man in the picture—with a nose almost as big as the Nilsa-nose—wanted to liberate the three million slaves in the southern states, those people who, like cattle, were listed among their owners’ possessions and valued at three billion dollars. From
Hemlandet’s
serial, “Fifty Years in Chains,” Kristina knew of the cruel lot of the Negroes in the South. Must people be treated like that only because God had made their skin black instead of white? It would only be fair if owners and slaves were to exchange skin for the rest of their lives, she thought.

Sheriffs from the South had been all the way up to Taylors Falls looking for runaway slaves, but people there had hid them from the pursuers and helped them on their flight. Kristina had hoped runaway Negroes would come to their house so she could give them lodging. Their own white skin, which protected them from being hunted like animals, had been given them as an unearned gift; they ought to pay something for it.

Karl Oskar cut out the picture of the man who wanted to abolish both masters and slaves. Old Abe had said: In this country one man is as good as another, and sometimes better. This wonderful expression the settlers heard often, laughing heartily and proudly each time. It was a good slogan for free men in America, especially for those who handled ax and plow.

—5—

In the following year’s general election, the Republicans won and Alexander Ramsey was elected governor of Minnesota by a majority of more than 5,000 votes. The people’s self-governing ability had developed since last year: only a few hundred nonexistent voters participated this time, and only a few votes were bought for whiskey—and a much better whiskey at that than the year before.

The settlers’ own party was at the helm in Minnesota and would hold it for many years to come.

The Republicans had won with a great majority in all the counties with Swedish settlers, especially Chisago, Marine, and Goodhue. “Minnesota has shed the Democratic yoke!” was the jubilant expression of the
Minnesota-Posten.
But shortly after this the Swedish-language paper died an early death. Unlike people dying of old age, the paper died of youth. The number of Republicans had increased, but the number of subscribers had decreased. The paper was often late, which the editor excused by saying he had been on long journeys and delayed by bad weather, which had prevented him from getting the paper out on time. But people grew tired of a paper whose editor never traveled in good weather.

Hemlandet
was again the only paper in the Duvemåla settlement. They need no longer fetch their paper in Taylors Falls, and it now came to Klas Albert’s store in Center City. Klas Albert was usually referred to as Mr. Persson, but the old Ljuder people continued to call their storekeeper the churchwarden’s Klas Albert. His first months had been rather hard, but gradually his business flourished. He served his countrymen well, buying a horse and wagon to deliver groceries to his customers, summer and winter. And the young man understood how to treat his women customers so that they always came back; many of them, it was rumored, not to make purchases, but to propose marriage to the young businessman. The number of women in the St. Croix Valley had during the last years increased so much that there now was one woman to seven men—but seven for Klas Albert, according to the rumor.

One humid summer day, during the hay harvesting, the young storekeeper drove up to Duvemåla with his load of groceries. He was waving their copy of
Hemlandet,
and called out before he stepped down from the wagon:

“The king is dead!”

Karl Oskar was busy stacking hay, aided by Johan and Marta. He thrust the hayfork into the ground and leaned against the handle.

“What king, Klas Albert?”

“Oskar, of course! Our Swedish king!”

He handed the
Hemlandet
to Karl Oskar, who read: “An electric telegraphic dispatch from Stockholm July 8 announced that His Majesty King Oskar I’s valuable life had flickered out this date at 8 A.M.”

Karl Oskar said he would take a few minutes’ rest and they walked into the kitchen, where Kristina lit a fire in the Prairie Queen and put on the coffeepot. She was greatly moved by the news that Sweden’s king had died; her eyes grew moist and she dried them intermittently with the corner of her apron.

“But he was no longer our king,” said Karl Oskar.

“It is sad anyway. He too was a human being.”

“Even a king can’t escape death—that might be some comfort for us.”

She reminded Karl Oskar that he had been named after Oskar’s father, Charles XIV John, who had reigned at the time of his birth, and that his second name had been given him after Oskar, who was then Crown Prince. He could thank the dead man for one of his royal names.

“A name doesn’t honor a man,” said Karl Oskar. “The man must honor the name.”

Later, at the table, Klas Albert read from
Hemlandet:
“Oskar I was a gracious father to his subjects and wielded a prosperous scepter. During his reign he fostered liberalism among his people to the comfort and advantage of every inhabitant. Therefore all his subjects now mourn the loss of a king who won the affection and love of his people through his mild and just rule . . .”

“King Oskar I’s High Remains will lie in state in the Serafimer Hall for three days where the mourning subjects can view it.”

Karl Oskar Nilsson, the Swedish-born settler with two royal names, listened skeptically as he sipped his coffee. “Well, well, so is there really such an awful weeping in Sweden!”

“It sounds like a great funeral wailing throughout the country,” said Klas Albert.

“It says all his subjects mourn him—that’s a lie that we won’t fall for out here in America!”

“Perhaps they put that in to fill out the space in the paper,” suggested Kristina.

But Karl Oskar said further that if everyone in Sweden had been so happy and satisfied during Oskar’s mild and just reign, why, then, had so many thousands of his subjects emigrated to North America?

“Do you understand it, Klas Albert?”

“No. I know as well as you, Karl Oskar, how miserable things were at home.”

“The king was probably a kind man,” said Kristina. “But perhaps he didn’t rule alone.”

“He became king the same year I took over Korpamoen. He has reigned ever since I became a farmer, fifteen years.”

“The new king is Charles XV,” said Klas Albert, and turning again to the paper, he read: “In the fullness of his manhood Charles XV has inherited the glorious scepter which his father’s weakened hand relinquished even before his death. Charles XV has assured his subjects that he wants to be their most gracious king, that he will discharge well the duties of his high office which Providence has entrusted to him, and that he will pursue a mild and just reign.”

At the last words Karl Oskar nodded in recognition. “Yes, the government in Sweden has always been mild and just! The new king has already learned that by heart!”

Yes, of course. All the people in Sweden had donned their black mourning clothes and were weeping for their king from morning to night. Except the peasants, of course—they must get in their hay while the sunshine lasted.

Karl Oskar added that he expected a still greater immigration after this. All the Swedes unable to endure the loss of their king would probably show up in Minnesota, sooner or later.

XXXIII

IF GOD DOESN’T EXIST . . .

—1—

The fire burned and crackled on the hearth in the big room where the Nilsson family sat within the circle of light this November evening. Kristina was carding wool for stocking yarn while Marta, who had just learned to spin, picked up the wool wads as they came from her mother’s carding combs. Johan sat like a man reading the latest issue of
Hemlandet,
while Harald spelled his way through a chapter in his
First Reader.
Dan was working on the runners for a sled he was building; with some help from his father he hoped to have it ready for the first snow. Ulrika was dressing a doll, given to her by Ulrika Jackson; when the doll was dressed she removed all the garments and began to dress it again. Of the children, only Frank was not with them; he had been in bed for a few days with a sore throat, although he was improving. Karl Oskar, too, was missing from the fire-lit circle this evening. He had gone to St. Paul to look at horses; a drove had just arrived from Iowa. He would be away for the night and was not expected home until tomorrow evening. The children were in a state of great anticipation at the prospect of their father returning with a new horse.

Undisturbed by the din of loud child voices, Harald went on reading his lesson, the same piece over and over:

“All things are made by God. He has made me. I am only a child but I know I am more than a dog or a horse. What has a child above a dog or a horse? A horse or a dog can stand and walk as well as a child. Horses and dogs have sight, smell, and taste like me. But I have a soul. I can see my body. But my soul I can’t see. My body will die. But my soul will never die. It ascends to God when my body dies.

“God is with you in good and evil days. He is your comfort in sorrow, he is your support in need, if you only pray to him. He wants to be your help . . .”

Now and then a burned-out log broke and the pile of firewood caved in a little. The crackling of the fire, the screeching from Kristina’s wool combs, and the buzz of the spinning wheel mingled with the boy’s singsong reading.

But not one word of the lesson escaped Kristina’s ears. It was truly astonishing how much those short simple words contained.

Harald resumed: “He is your comfort in sorrow, he is your support in need, if you only pray . . .”

The words rang in her ears, piercing like a sword in her heart: “He wants to be your help.” No—she didn’t understand it, it didn’t agree, it had not turned out as she felt it must. It was not as these words promised; she had known this for some time now.

On the evening last summer when she had prayed under the huge oaks up on the hill, she had felt confident her prayer had been heard. This confidence had grown in strength for four months. Now it was completely shattered; for two weeks she had known she was again with child.

The Kristina who sat here this evening combing wool for her children’s stockings was for the eighth time a blessed woman. And the lesson in the
First Reader
with its short words seemed to her a raw and inhuman parody on the prayer she had prayed last summer.

“Listen, Mother!” It was Johan, who had discovered something in the paper.

“A report from New York says that engineer Elias Howe’s sewing machine with shuttle sold to the number of twenty-five thousand last year within the United States. Wouldn’t you like to have a sewing machine, Mother?”

She continued her carding without a reply. The boy repeated his question: Didn’t she want a sewing machine?

“Why . . . Yes . . . Yes, of course!”

A machine with hands that could sew, thereby saving one’s own hands. Well, that was really something.

Johan looked askance at her and wondered what was the matter with Mother lately. Often she was so slow in answering that he must repeat his questions. Mother seemed to be losing her hearing. And she was so silent these days—she hardly spoke to anyone unless she had to. Was she sad about something?

Johan went back to read to himself about the comet with the growing tail which the Italian stargazer Giambattista Donati had discovered last summer and which had caused great consternation throughout the world. In June the comet had no tail at all, but by August it was a million miles long, by September four million, and now in November six million miles long. Soon the tail of that comet, it was said, would stretch across the whole firmament. Johan had been out looking for it on several evenings but it had been cloudy and he hadn’t discovered the smallest tail spark of the terrifying heavenly body.

Kristina could not stop listening to Harald: “. . . if you only pray . . .”

Who could have prayed more fervently than she? But God had not heard her. He had remained deaf to her prayer. He had given her neither reply nor sign—unless her new pregnancy was the reply? During the very moment of prayer she had felt the Almighty’s mild hand upon her forehead, but she had made a miserable mistake. He was unmoved, unresponsive. It was not the fatherly hand she had felt stroking her brow during the prayer last summer—it must have been nothing but the wind.

“He wants to be your help.”

But now she knew the truth: God did not wish to help her.