I thought I ought to make a sort of record of it: the pleasantest way to do that would be to write it to somebody; but that somebody might let it leak into print, & that we wish to avoid . . . . . . . . . . . There is Dr. John—he is safe—so let us tell Dr. John about it.

Day before yesterday was a fine summer day away up here on the summit. Aunt Marsh & Cousin May Marsh1explanatory note were here visiting sister Susie Crane & Livy (my wife, you may remember) at our farm house. By & by mother Langdon (who is Livy’s mother), came up the hill in the barouche with Norah the nurse-maid & little Jervis (Charley Langdon’s little boy)— Timothy the coachman driving. Behind these came Charley’s wife & little girl in the buggy, with the new, young, spry gray horse—a high-stepper.2explanatory note Theodore Crane arrived a little later.

Our two cubs, Susie (“Megalopis”) & Clara, were on hand with their nurse Rosa.3explanatory note I was on hand too. Susie Crane’s trio of colored servants ditto—these being Josie, housemaid; Aunty Cord, cook, aged 62, turbaned, very tall, very broad, very fine every way (see some account of her in “A True Story Just as I Heard It” in my collected Sketches)4explanatory note; and the laundress Chocklate (as Clara calls her—she can’t say Charlotte), still taller, still more majestic of proportions, turbaned, very black, straight as an Indian—age 24—a superb creature to look upon,. Then there was the farmer’s wife (colored) & li her little girl Susan. (it being customary, in this region to name girls after Susie Crane.) Wasn’t it a good audience to get up an excitement before?—good excitable, inflammable material?

Lewis was still down town, 3 miles away, with his two-horse wagon, to get a load of manure. Lewis is our the farmer (colored).5explanatory note He is of mighty frame & muscle, stocky, stooping, ungainly, has a good manly face & a clear eye. Age about 45 or 47, & the most picturesque of men, when he sits in his fluttering work-day rags, humped forward into a bunch, with his aged slouch hat mashed down over his ears and neck. It is a spectacle to make the broken-hearted smileⒶemendation.

Lewis has worked mighty hard & remained mighty poor. At the end of each whole year’s toil he can’t show a gain of fifty dollars (£10.) HeⒶemendation had borrowed money of the Cranes till he owed them $700—& he being conscientious & honest, imagine what it was to him to have to carry this stubborn, hopeless load year in & year out.

Well, sunset came, & Ida the young & comely, (Charley Langdon’s wife) & her little Julia & the nursemaid Norah, drove out at the upper gate behind the new gray horse & started down the long hill—the barouche receiving its load under the porte-cochère, & all the Quarry Farm tribe, white & black, grouped upon the grass in front. Ida was seen to turn her face toward us across the fence & intervening lawn—Theodore waved good-bye to her., for he did not know that her sign was a speechless appeal for help.

The next moment Livy said, “Ida’s driving too fast down hill!” She followed it with a sort of scream, “Her horse is running away!”

We could see 200 yards down that descent. The buggy seemed to fly. It would strike obstructions & apparently spring the height of a man from the ground.

Theodore & I left the shrieking crowd behind & ran down the hill bareheaded & shouting. A neighbor appeared at his gate—a tenth of a second too late!—the buggy shot vanished past him like a thought. My last glimpse showed it for one instant, far down the descent, springing high in the air out of a cloud of dust, & then it disappeared. As I flew down the road, my impulse was to shutⒶemendation my eyes as I turned them to the light right or left, & so delay for a moment the ghastly spectacle of mutilation & death I was expecting.

I ran on & on, still spared this spectacle, but saying to myself “I shall see it at the turn of the road; they never can pass that turn alive.” When I came in sight of that turn I saw two wagons there bunched together—one of them full of people. I said, “Just so—they are staring petrified at the remains.”

But when I got amongst that bunch, there sat Ida in her buggy & nobody hurt, not even the horse or the vehicle! Ida was pale but serene. As I came tearing down, she smiled back over her shoulder at me & said, “Well, you’re alive yet, aren’t you?” A miracle had been performed—nothing less.

You see, Lewis-the-prodigious, humped upon his front seat, had been toiling up, on his load of manure; he saw the frantic horse plunging down the hill toward him, on a full gallop, throwing his fore-feet breast-high at every jump. So Lewis turned his team diagonally across the road just at the “turn,” thus forming a V with the fence—the running horse could not escape that, but must enter it. Then Lewis sprang to the ground & stood in this V. He gathered his vast strength, & with a perfect Creedmoor aim he siezedⒶemendation the gray horse’s bit as he plunged by, & fetched him up standing!

It was down hill, mind you; ten feet further down hill neither Lewis nor any other man could have saved them, for they would have been on the abrupt “turn,” then. But how this miracle was ever accomplished at all, by human strength, generalshipⒶemendation & accuracy, is clear beyond my comprehension—& grows more so the more I go & examine the ground & try to believe it was actually done. I know one thing well; if Lewis had missed his aim he would have been killed on the spot in the trap he had made for himself, & we should have found the rest of the remains away down at the bottom of the steep ravine.

Ten minutes later Theodore & I arrived opposite the house with the servants straggling after us, & shouted to the frantic distracted group on the porch, “Everybody safe!”

Believe it? Why how could they? They knew the road perfectly. We might as well have said it to people who had seen their friends go over Niagara.

However, we convinced them; & then, instead of saying something, or going on crying, they grew very still—words could not express it, I suppose.

Nobody could do anything that night, or sleep, either; but there was a deal of moving talk, with long pauses between—pictures of that flying carriage, these pauses represented—this picture intruded itself all the time & disjointed the talk.

But yesterday evening late, when Lewis arrived from down town, he found his supper spread, & some presents of books there, with very complimentary writings on the fly leaves, & certain very complimentary letters, & divers & sundry bank notes of dignified denomination pinned to these letters and fly-leaves—& one said, among other things, (signed by the Cranes), “We cancel four hundred dollars of your indebtedness to us,” &c, &c.

(The end whereof is not yet, of course, for Charley Langdon is out West & will arrive ignorant of all these things to-day.)

The supper-room had been kept locked & imposingly secret & mysterious until Lewis should arrive; but around that part of the house were gathered Lewis’s wife & child, Chocklate, Josie, Aunty Cord & our s Rosa, canvassing things & consuming with curiosity. waiting impatiently. They were all on hand when the curtain went up.

Now Aunty Cord is a violent Methodist, & Lewis an implacable “Dunker Baptist.” These two are inveterate religious disputants. TheⒶemendation revealments having been made, Aunty Cord said with effusion—

“Now let folks go on saying there ain’t no God! Lewis, the Lord sent you there to stop that horse.”

Says Lewis—

“Then who sent the horse there in sich a shape?”

But I want to call your attention to one thing. When Lewis arrived the other evening, after saving those lives by a feat which I think is the most marvelous of any I can call to mind—when he arrived, hunched up on his manure wagon & as grotesquely picturesque as usual, everybody wanted to go & see how he looked. They came back & said he was beautiful. It was so, too—& yet he would have photographed exactly as he would have done any day these past 7 years that he has occupied this farm.

P. S.—Our little romance inⒶemendation real life is happily & satisfactorily completed. Charley has come, listened, acted—& now John T. Lewis has ceased to consider himself as belonging to that class called “the poor.”

It has been known, during some years, that it was Lewis’s purpose to buy a thirty-dollar silver watch some day, if he ever got where he could afford it. To-day Ida has given him a new, sumptuousⒶemendation gold Swiss stem-winding stopwatchⒶemendation; & if any scoffer shall say “Behold this thing is out of character, ” there is an inscription within, which will silence him; for it will teach him that it is the this wearer that aggrandizes the watch, not the watch the wearer.

I was asked, beforehand, if this would be a wise gift, & I said, “Yes, the very wisest of all; I know the colored race, & I know that in Lewis’s eyes this fine toy will throw the other more valuable testimonials far away into the shade. If he lived in England, the Humane Society would give him a gold medal as costly as this watch, & nobody would say ‘It is out of character.’6explanatory note If Lewis chose to wear a town clock, who would become it better?”

Lewis has sound common sense, & is not going to be spoiled. The instant he found himself possessed of money, he forgot himself in a plan to make his old father comfortable, who is wretchedly poor, & lives down in Maryland, 500 miles away. His next thou act, on the spot, was the proffer to the Cranes of the three hundred dollars of his remaining indebtedness to them. This was put off by them to the indefinite future, for he is not going to be allowed to pay that at all, though he doesn’t know it.

A letter of acknowledgment from Lewis contains a sentence which raises it to the dignity of literature:

“But I beg to say, humblyⒶemendation, that inasmuch as divine providence saw fit to use me as an a a instrument for the saving of those presshious lives, the honner conferd upon me was greater than the feat performed.”

Good-bye, dear Doctor. You must tell the family, & the Judge, & Mr. Barclay7explanatory note about our great black hero, whom we are so proud of.