Pickle and Pepper

NY PUBLIC LIBRARY THE BRANCH LIBRARIES 3 3333 08102 0816 D172558 CH Pi'cAde. ou/\dL \ < bo 03 PH en M-H O o C O ns 4- cn 03 O .a en (U O03 <u o o 4 en 1- CJ CJ r^ 2 C 03 <u )_. CD u O PICKLE AND PEPPER. BY ELLA LORAINE DORSEY, Author of "The Taming of Polly," Etc. " - l t , , | , l , " NEW CHICAGO. ZIGKRYORK, CINCINNATI,BROTHKRS, PRINTERS TO THE HOLY APOSTOLIC SEE THE JNEV, PUBLIC LI1 RARY TILB6N FOUNOATJCNI. C L. .'*' C < t ! c e ce . ,,'. c * . c .' ., * * ' * * . e c < el c *' C I c * o * ' ; c* **.. e < c t f c t * c Ji-'YKIGUT, 1898, BY B8NZIGER BROTHERS Printed in the United States of America. PREFACE. WHEN I found that the footsteps of my Nancy and her little Pepper turned, by the logic of loss, to the Mountain, I tried to describe some of the actual sur- roundings into which they went; but I learn to my sur- prise that this part of the book is treated as imaginary, and is called both unnatural and improbable. Indeed, one of my dearest critics asks me why I manufactured a witch and spoiled my story. Now, I did not manufacture her. The original witch was a real person, and the wild, strange tales of the spectres, the flashing flames, and the clashing of the swords and bayonets in the trenches of the dead are faithful shadows and echoes of what the people believed they saw and heard on South Mountain for long years after the battle in which ex-President Hayes made his fame, on that day wh$ii, tb,e, d^ad- lay in, .windrows, while the cannon ploughed the fields, 'and death reaped the red harvest. ^ LJ The real witch firmly believed- In her magic, but knew nothing else. I educated nine inio a wise gentlewoman who knew the secrets 01 plant-medicines, and whose fur- " nace, etc., would explain away the ghosts and haunts." The treatment for weak lungs is but a transfer from hut to of cave one still in vogue, and which a distinguished scientist has said is based on common sense. Many, if not all, the supernatural beliefs of the moun- 11 PREFACE. tain side are embodied in Mrs. Madeleine Vinton Dahl- ' ; but the conversion gren's "South Mountain Magic; of the witch and the destruction of the magic book her hu- form a chapter of charity and courage which a ointment in an mility kept concealed like precious alabaster vase. When Mrs. Dahlgren first went to the Mountain, mourning the death of her first-born son, Lieutenant Vinton Goddard, U.S.A., her thought had been to have designs submitted by artists and sculptors, and to clothe her grief in marble and place the memorial in Mt. Olivet, the Catholic cemetery near Washington. " But there on the Mountain she found the strange, lonely people," and among them much povert}^ sickness, and sorrow. That was natural; but imagine her in- credulous dismay when she also found a wild, gaunt woman who practised alleged magic, having received the book and the power from the family of Michael Zittle, the Wizard, who died in 1877. Here was work. Here was a living monument she could rear to that dear memory. " " I will build a chapel," she said, where Our Lord can dwell amon^ them in His Holy Sacrament. In its shadow my sMi-shiU tefet.l /IfcTj-ria^ not win the older * *** * **%. * *" souls, the little 'oneS at* least shaft- be* gathered about his and from : grave, Kis"; deaiH^aii ^fe eternal." Then she began fh^t'apo^tolate of the body St. James has taught, whwir.so^Gftefc^fljeiis up the way to the apostolate of the souT sTiVfe'd'thfe hungry, she clothed the naked, she sheltered the homeless, she visited the sick, had "the Gospel preached to the poor," and she followed the witch with a kindness so persistent that the untamed nature was gradually won and the book trusted to her for examination. PREFACE. Ill It was in foreign type and tongues, but Mrs. Dahlgren was a fine linguist; and long hours after her household was settled for the night she would pore over its old black-letter pages. It proved to be a fantastic and dreadful book, filled with baleful knowledge and abounding in blasphemies. It had done great harm in its two hundred years; it was doing great harm, and would continue to do great harm as it went on its way, possession passing from a man to a woman, from a woman to a man alternately, and each new heir bound by the dreadful inheritance to continue its practices. By the counter-magic of charity, by the miracle of God's mercy, she brought about the witch's conversion, secured the book and burnt it, in this last act becoming the forerunner of the heroic Lady Anne Wardour, who destroyed the work of her husband's lifetime rather than risk the loss of souls by its terrible knowledge. Mrs. Dahlgren has gone to her long reward, and she, too, sleeps in the shadow of the mountain chapel. But, as long as its Sanctuary lamp burns and its Sanctuary bell calls the people to adore, her memory will be kept green and her good deed bear fruit. Upon her grave with love and tears I lay this little tribute; and I tell her charity caught lightly in the thread of my story to the children, that it may be re- membered the longer, for the memory of one who is taken into the heart of a little child is kept forever green. Pray for the soul of the mother who took her crown of thorns and offered it up for other suffering hearts Pray for the Witch of the Mountain, whose soul saw darkly for so long, but who now has the knowledge of the other world, and whose joy cannot be taken from her. ELLA LORAINE DORSET. CONTENTS. CHAPTER I. MM WHO THEY WERE ........ 7 CHAPTER II. ALLERLEIRAUH 12 CHAPTER III. ALAS ! * io CHAPTER IV. THE FINDING OF GINGER-POP . 31 CHAPTER V. THE NORRIS BROTHERS .... f 41 CHAPTER VI. THE SHOW 53 CHAPTER VII. THE Zoo .......63 CHAPTER VIII. THE THUNDERBOLT 82 5 O CONTENTS. CHAPTER IX. PAOk REAL TROUBLE 95 CHAPTER X. THE REVOLT 109 CHAPTER XI. MT. VERNON lift CHAPTER XII. THE FOREFRONT 13$ CHAPTER XIII. THE WITCH I4r CHAPTER XIV. THE WITCH'S CAVE 165 CHAPTER XV. THE BIRTHDAY PARTY 178 CHAPTER XVI. THE TINY-WINY BEAR 190 CHAPTER XVII. THE WITCH'S GRATITUDE 307 CHAPTER XVIII. THE RETURN 82* PICKLE AND PEPPER. CHAPTER I. WHO THEY WERE. OF course those were not their real names. Imagine the feelings of their godfathers and god- mothers in baptism if they had been ! But Hugh ap Catesby Thomas and Susan Wyatt Thomas his sister (as they were recorded in the family Bible), spent their days in such pranks, and were a pair of such quick-tempered, warm-hearted, ingeniously mischievous children that all the great-uncles and grand-aunts of the family agreed on the above sug- gestive nicknames. And as it was the only point on which they had agreed since the Civil War, it made an impression, and Pickle and Pepper they remained to the end of the chapter. At the time this story begins, the member of Congress from their county had died suddenly and their papa had just been elected to fill the unexpired term. He felt very sad at leaving his beautiful country home (where his people had lived ever since the young Welsh Cavalier Griffith ap Thomas had fled for his life when King Charles's head fell), but he did it because politics 7 S WHO THEY WERE. had reached such a pass that every honest man was in duty bound to step to the front and do his best for the good of the country so dear to us all. An extra session had been called almost immediately after his election, and he had ruefully gone about his library, sighing over each beloved shelf and bidding good-by to his favorite books; he had bidden an equally sad farewell to his hunters and hounds; he had walked over every acre of the plantation, and bade adieu to every tree and cover; and then he and Mrs. Thomas had taken " ' a day off for house-hunting in Washington. It stretched to two days, and this to three days, because the average city house looked like a strait-jacket after the big rooms and wide halls of Llangollen, and the bricks and mortar got into his eyes and down his throat to such an extent that he told his wife he felt like an ash-bin. They rode in cable cars and electric cars, they took cabs and hansoms, and phaetons and landaus, and they drove through lists of houses for rent, until they both concluded that gypsies and snails are the only sen- sible creatures in the world the former because they live in portable tents, and the latter because they carry their houses on their backs. At last one day they found in the northwestern end of town, near Massachusetts Avenue, a house that had been surrounded by the growing city, but still gallantly held its half-square of ground, its trees, its grass, and its big walls, halls, and windows. They gave the driver an extra half-dollar to hurry back to the agent's as fast as possible, and could scarcely believe their luck when he named a fair rental, agreed to make repairs, and handed them the key.

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