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101Author:  Paulding James Kirke 1778-1860Requires cookie*
 Title:  Westward ho!  
 Published:  1997 
 Subjects:  University of Virginia Library, Text collection | UVA-LIB-Text | University of Virginia Library, Early American Fiction, 1789-1875 | UVA-LIB-EarlyAmFict1789-1875 
 Description: “O rare Ben Jonson!” said some one, and O rare Beaumont and Fletcher say we; for in honest sincerity we prefer this gentle pair to all the old English dramatic writers except Shakspeare. For playful wit, richness of fancy, exuberance of invention, and, above all, for the sweet magic of their language, where shall we find their superiors among the British bards? It is not for us obscure wights to put on the critical nightcap, and, being notorious criminals ourselves, set up as judges of others; but we should hold ourselves base and ungrateful if we did not seize this chance opportunity to raise our voices in these remote regions of the West, where, peradventure, they never dreamed of one day possessing millions of readers, in humble acknowledgment of the many hours they have whiled away by the creations of their sprightly fancy, arrayed in the matchless melody of their tuneful verse. But mankind must have an idol, one who monopolizes their admiration and devotion. The name of Shakspeare has swallowed up that of his predecessors, contemporaries, and successors; thousands, tens of thousands echo his name that never heard of Marlow,—Marlow, to whom Shakspeare himself condescended to be indebted, and whose conception of the character of Faust is precisely that of Goëthe;—of Webster, Marston, Randolph, Cartwright, May, and all that singular knot of dramatists, who unite the greatest beauties with the greatest deformities, and whose genius has sunk under the licentiousness of the age in which it was their misfortune to live. The names of Massinger, Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher are, it is true, more familiar; but it is only their names and one or two of their pieces that are generally known. These last have been preserved, not on the score of their superior beauties, but because they afforded an opportunity for Garrick and other great performers to reap laurels which belonged to the poet, by the exhibition of some striking character. Far be it from us to attempt to detract from the fame of Shakspeare. Superior he is, beyond doubt, to all his countrymen who went before or came after him, in the peculiar walk of his genius; but he is not so immeasurably superior as to cast all others into oblivion; and to us it seems almost a disgrace to England that a large portion of her own readers, and a still larger of foreigners, seem ignorant that she ever produced more than one dramatist.
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102Author:  Paulding James Kirke 1778-1860Requires cookie*
 Title:  The book of Saint Nicholas  
 Published:  1997 
 Subjects:  University of Virginia Library, Text collection | UVA-LIB-Text | University of Virginia Library, Early American Fiction, 1789-1875 | UVA-LIB-EarlyAmFict1789-1875 
 Description: Everybody has heard of St. Nicholas, that honest Dutch saint, whom I look upon as having been one of the most liberal, good-natured little fat fellows in the world. But, strange as it may seem, though everybody has heard, nobody seems to know anything about him. The place of his birth, the history of his life, and the manner in which he came to be the dispenser of Newyear cakes, and the patron of good boys, are matters that have hitherto not been investigated, as they ought to have been long and long ago. I am about to supply this deficiency, and pay a debt of honour which is due to this illustrious and obscure tutelary genius of the jolly Newyear.
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103Author:  Paulding James Kirke 1778-1860Requires cookie*
 Title:  The old Continental, or, The price of liberty  
 Published:  1997 
 Subjects:  University of Virginia Library, Text collection | UVA-LIB-Text | University of Virginia Library, Early American Fiction, 1789-1875 | UVA-LIB-EarlyAmFict1789-1875 
 Description: During the most gloomy and disastrous period of our revolutionary war, there resided in the county of Westchester a family of plain country people, who had, in time long past, seen better days; but who now had nothing to boast of, but a small farm, a good name, and a good conscience. Though bred in the city, they had lived so long in a retired part of the country, that their habits, tastes, and manners, had become altogether rural, and they had almost outlived every vestige of former refinements, except in certain modes of thinking, and acting, which had survived in all changes of time and circumstances. Their residence was an old stone-house, bearing the date of 1688, the figures of which were formed by Holland bricks, incorporated with the walls. The roof was green with mossy honours, and the entire edifice bore testimony, not only to the lapse of time, but to the downhill progress of its inmates. Though not in ruins, it was much decayed; and, though with a good rousing fire in the broad capacious chimney, it was comfortable enough in winter, it afforded nothing without to indicate anything but the possession of those simple necessaries of life, which fall to the lot of those who derive their means of happiness from the labours of their hands, the bounties of the earth, and the blessing of a quiet soul.
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104Author:  Paulding James Kirke 1778-1860Requires cookie*
 Title:  The old Continental, or, The price of liberty  
 Published:  1997 
 Subjects:  University of Virginia Library, Text collection | UVA-LIB-Text | University of Virginia Library, Early American Fiction, 1789-1875 | UVA-LIB-EarlyAmFict1789-1875 
 Description: The old sugar-house to which our hero and his companion in misfortune were consigned, is still standing[1] [1]It has since been pulled down. to remind us of the sufferings of our fathers, and the price they paid for liberty. To those who have never seen the building, it may not be amiss to state that it is a large, massive, gloomy pile of red-stone, with narrow grated windows, which gives it the air of a prison; standing at the northeast corner of the yard of the Dutch church fronting on Liberty street, which, during the occupation of the city by the British, was used as a riding-school. The aspect of the structure is forbidding, corresponding with the recollections which will long accompany its contemplation, by the descendants and countrymen of many nameless and humble patriots that here became the martyrs to the oppression of a haughty parent, and a petty tyrant whose infamous name is forever associated with the recollection of their fate.
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105Author:  Paulding James Kirke 1778-1860Requires cookie*
 Title:  The Puritan and his daughter  
 Published:  1997 
 Subjects:  University of Virginia Library, Text collection | UVA-LIB-Text | University of Virginia Library, Early American Fiction, 1789-1875 | UVA-LIB-EarlyAmFict1789-1875 
 Description: In the reign of King Charles—courteously styled the Martyr—there resided in an obscure corner of the renowned kingdom of England, a certain obscure country gentleman, claiming descent from a family that flourished in great splendor under a Saxon monarch whose name is forgotten. This ancient family, like most others of great pretensions to antiquity, had gone by as many names as certain persons who live in the fear of the law, but finally settled down on that of Habingdon, or Habingden, by which they were now known. They were somewhat poor, but very proud, and looked down with contempt on the posterity of the upstart Normans who usurped the domains of their ancestors. They had resided on the same spot for more than eight hundred years, during which time, not one of them had ever performed an act worthy of being transmitted to posterity, with the single exception of one Thurkill Habingdonne who flourished in the reign of King John—of unblessed memory—and who is recorded to have given one-third of a caracut of land, and a wind-mill, to the priory of Monks Kirby, “to the end,” as he expresses it, “that his obit should be perpetually there observed, and his name written in the Martyrologe.” It hath been a mooted point with that class of philosophical inquirers, which so usefully occupies itself with discussions that can never be brought to a conclusion, whether the age gives the tone to literature, or literature to the age. It is a knotty question, and not being of the least consequence to any practical purpose, it will be passed over with the single remark, that it is quite useless for an author to write in good taste if the public won't read, and equally idle for the public to cherish a keen relish for polite literature, if there are no authors to administer food to its appetite.
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106Author:  Pike Albert 1809-1891Requires cookie*
 Title:  Prose sketches and poems  
 Published:  1997 
 Subjects:  University of Virginia Library, Text collection | UVA-LIB-Text | University of Virginia Library, Early American Fiction, 1789-1875 | UVA-LIB-EarlyAmFict1789-1875 
 Description: The world of prairie which lies at a distance of more than three hundred miles west of the inhabited portions of the United States, and south of the river Arkansas and its branches, has been rarely, and parts of it never, trodden by the foot or beheld by the eye of an Anglo-American. Rivers rise there in the broad level waste, of which, mighty though they become in their course, the source is unexplored. Deserts are there, too barren of grass to support even the hardy buffalo; and in which water, except in here and there a hole, is never found. Ranged over by the Comanches, the Pawnees, the Caiwas, and other equally wandering, savage and hostile tribes, its very name is a mystery and a terror. The Pawnees have their villages entirely north of this part of the country; and their war parties—always on foot—are seldom to be met with to the south of the Canadian, except close in upon the edges of the white and civilized Indian settlements. Extending on the south to the Rio del Norte, on the north to a distance unknown, eastwardly to within three or four hundred miles of the edge of Arkansas Territory, and westwardly to the Rocky Mountains, is the range of the Comanches. Abundantly supplied with good horses from the immense herds of the prairie, they range, at different times of the year, over the whole of this vast country. Their war and hunting parties follow the buffalo continually. In the winter they may be found in the south, encamped along the Rio del Norte, and under the mountains; and in the summer on the Canadian, and to the north of it, and on the Pecos. Sometimes they haunt the Canadian in the winter, but not so commonly as in the summer.
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107Author:  Poe Edgar Allan 1809-1849Requires cookie*
 Title:  The narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym. Of Nantucket  
 Published:  1997 
 Subjects:  University of Virginia Library, Text collection | UVA-LIB-Text | University of Virginia Library, Early American Fiction, 1789-1875 | UVA-LIB-EarlyAmFict1789-1875 
 Description: My name is Arthur Gordon Pym. My father was a respectable trader in sea-stores at Nantucket, where I was born. My maternal grandfather was an attorney in good practice. He was fortunate in everything, and had speculated very successfully in stocks of the Edgarton New-Bank, as it was formerly called. By these and other means he had managed to lay by a tolerable sum of money. He was more attached to myself, I believe, than to any other person in the world, and I expected to inherit the most of his property at his death. He sent me, at six years of age, to the school of old Mr. Ricketts, a gentleman with only one arm, and of eccentric manners —he is well known to almost every person who has visited New Bedford. I stayed at his school until I was sixteen, when I left him for Mr. E. Ronald's academy on the hill. Here I became intimate with the son of Mr. Barnard, a sea captain, who generally sailed in the employ of Lloyd and Vredenburgh—Mr. Barnard is also very well known in New Bedford, and has many relations, I am certain, in Edgarton. His son was named Augustus, and he was nearly two years older than myself. He had been on a whaling voyage with his father in the John Donaldson, and was always talking to me of his adventures in the South Pacific Ocean. I used frequently to go home with him, and remain all day, and sometimes all night. We occupied the same bed, and he would be sure to keep me awake until almost light, telling me stories of the natives of the Island of Tinian, and other places he had visited in his travels. At last I could not help being interested in what he said, and by degrees I felt the greatest desire to go to sea. I owned a sail-boat called the Ariel, and worth about seventy-five dollars. She had a half-deck or cuddy, and was rigged sloop-fashion—I forget her tonnage, but she would hold ten persons without much crowding. In this boat we were in the habit of going on some of the maddest freaks in the world; and, when I now think of them, it appears to me a thousand wonders that I am alive to-day.
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108Author:  Read Thomas Buchanan 1822-1872Requires cookie*
 Title:  Paul Redding  
 Published:  1997 
 Subjects:  University of Virginia Library, Text collection | UVA-LIB-Text | University of Virginia Library, Early American Fiction, 1789-1875 | UVA-LIB-EarlyAmFict1789-1875 
 Description: The Brandywine river may be observed, at one time, winding slowly, in its silvery silence, through richly-pastured farms; or running broad and rippling over its beautiful bed of pearly shells and golden pebbles, (with which it toys and sings as merrily as an innocent-hearted child,) until its waters contract and roll heavily and darkly beneath the grove of giant oaks, elms and sycamores; but soon, like the sullen flow of a dark heart, it breaks angrily over the first obstruction. Thus you may see the Brandywine, at one point, boiling savagely over a broken bed of rocks, until its thick sheets of foam slide, like an avalanche of snow, into a deep pool, where it sends up a whispering voice, like that which pervades a rustling audience when the drop-curtain has shed its folds upon a scene that, like the “Ancient Mariner,” has held each ear and eye as with a magic spell. “You have been a wanderer in the world; so have I. Wherever you have been, there have I been, also. I have been near you a thousand times when you little guessed it. But all that is passed. The time has arrived. Enclosed among these papers you will find that which will make you independent of the world. The property is mostly yours; but you are not alone; there are those who will be dependent upon you; fail not to do your duty by them — love them as you should love those nearest and dearest to you. This letter is only to prepare you for the perusal of others of deeper importance; you will find them all at your command, and as you read them, O, curse me not! but weep that humanity should fall so far; then pray that God may cleanse the blood-stained soul, and forgive, (yes, Paul, it is true!) your dying father!
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109Author:  Rowson Mrs. 1762-1824Requires cookie*
 Title:  The inquisitor, or, Invisible rambler  
 Published:  1997 
 Subjects:  University of Virginia Library, Text collection | UVA-LIB-Text | University of Virginia Library, Early American Fiction, 1789-1875 | UVA-LIB-EarlyAmFict1789-1875 
 Description: I Should like to know the certainty of it, said I, putting the petition into my pocket.—It contained an account of an unfortunate tradesman reduced to want, with a wife and three small children.—He asked not charity for himself, but them.—I should like to know the certainty of it, said I—there are so many feigned tales of distress, and the world is so full of duplicity, that in following the dictates of humanity we often encourage idleness.—Could I but be satisfied of the authenticity of this man's story, I would do something for him. Poor fellow! said I, looking at him with an eye of compassion as he went out of the apartment —Poor fellow! thou hast been hardly used by one man who called himself a Christian, and it makes thee suspect the whole race—But, surely, said I, it is not a man's barely prosessing Christianity that makes him worthy that character; a man must behave with humanity, not only to his fellow-creatures, but to the animal creation, before he can be ranked with propriety among that exalted class of mortals. It was on a fine evening, the latter end of May, when tired with the fatigues of the day, for she was a milliner's apprentice, Annie obtained leave of her mistress to walk out for a little air.—Her mistress had a shop which she occupied, and frequently visited during the summer season, situated on the banks of the Thames.
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110Author:  Rowson Mrs. 1762-1824Requires cookie*
 Title:  The fille de chambre  
 Published:  1997 
 Subjects:  University of Virginia Library, Text collection | UVA-LIB-Text | University of Virginia Library, Early American Fiction, 1789-1875 | UVA-LIB-EarlyAmFict1789-1875 
 Description: “But who knows, my dear father,” cried Rebecca Littleton, laying her hand on that of her father, “who knows but something yet may be done to reward a veteran grown grey in his country's service?”
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111Author:  Sigourney L. H. (Lydia Howard) 1791-1865Requires cookie*
 Title:  Myrtis  
 Published:  1997 
 Subjects:  University of Virginia Library, Text collection | UVA-LIB-Text | University of Virginia Library, Early American Fiction, 1789-1875 | UVA-LIB-EarlyAmFict1789-1875 
 Description: Twilight gathered heavily over the city of the Cæsars. Lights began here and there to glimmer from the patrician palaces, and along the banks of the Tiber. Rome, which Augustus boasted to have left built of marble, had lost none of its magnificence under Adrian and the Antonines. Effeminacy and corruption were sapping the foundations of the empire, though the virtue of the last of the Antonines still arrested or disguised the presages of its doom.
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112Author:  Simms William Gilmore 1806-1870Requires cookie*
 Title:  Carl Werner  
 Published:  1997 
 Subjects:  University of Virginia Library, Text collection | UVA-LIB-Text | University of Virginia Library, Early American Fiction, 1789-1875 | UVA-LIB-EarlyAmFict1789-1875 
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113Author:  Simms William Gilmore 1806-1870Requires cookie*
 Title:  Carl Werner  
 Published:  1997 
 Subjects:  University of Virginia Library, Text collection | UVA-LIB-Text | University of Virginia Library, Early American Fiction, 1789-1875 | UVA-LIB-EarlyAmFict1789-1875 
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114Author:  Simms William Gilmore 1806-1870Requires cookie*
 Title:  Pelayo  
 Published:  1997 
 Subjects:  University of Virginia Library, Text collection | UVA-LIB-Text | University of Virginia Library, Early American Fiction, 1789-1875 | UVA-LIB-EarlyAmFict1789-1875 
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115Author:  Simms William Gilmore 1806-1870Requires cookie*
 Title:  Pelayo  
 Published:  1997 
 Subjects:  University of Virginia Library, Text collection | UVA-LIB-Text | University of Virginia Library, Early American Fiction, 1789-1875 | UVA-LIB-EarlyAmFict1789-1875 
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116Author:  Simms William Gilmore 1806-1870Requires cookie*
 Title:  The damsel of Darien  
 Published:  1997 
 Subjects:  University of Virginia Library, Text collection | UVA-LIB-Text | University of Virginia Library, Early American Fiction, 1789-1875 | UVA-LIB-EarlyAmFict1789-1875 
 Description: “Nothing,” remarks a distinguished modern writer of our own country, “could be more chivalrous, urbane and charitable; nothing more pregnant with noble sacrifices of passion and interest, with magnanimous instances of forgiveness of injuries, and noble contests of generosity, than the transactions of the Spanish discoverers of America with each other:—” he adds—“it was with the Indians alone that they were vindictive, blood-thirsty, and implacable.” In other words, when dealing with their equals—with those who could strike hard and avenge,—they forbore offence and injury; to the feeble and unoffending, alone, they were cruel and unforgiving. Such being the case, according to the writer's own showing, the eulogium upon their chivalry, charity, and urbanity, is in very doubtful propriety, coming from the lips of a Christian historian; and our charity would be as singularly misplaced as his, were we to suffer its utterance unquestioned. But the alleged characteristics of these Spanish adventurers in regard to their dealings with each other, are any thing but true, according to our readings of history; and with all deference to the urbane and usually excellent authority referred to, we must be permitted, in this place, to record our dissent from his conclusions. It will not diminish, perhaps, but rather elevate the character of these discoverers, to show that their transactions with each other were, with a few generous exceptions, distinguished by a baseness and vindictiveness quite as shameless and unequivocal as marked their treatment of the Indians:—that nearly every departure from their usual faithlessness of conduct, was induced by fear, by favour, or the hope of ultimate reward;—that, devouring the Indians for their treasure, they scrupled not to exhibit a like rapacity towards their own comrades, in its attainment, or upon its division; and that, in short, a more inhuman, faithless, blood-thirsty and unmitigated gang of savages never yet dishonoured the name of man or debased his nature. The very volume which contains the eulogy upon which we comment—Irving's “Companions of Columbus,”—a misnomer, by the way, since none of them were, or could be, properly speaking, his companions— abounds in testimonies which refute and falsify it. The history of these “companions” is a history of crime and perfidy from the beginning; of professions made without sincerity, and pledges violated without scruple; of crimes committed without hesitation, and, seemingly, without remorse; of frauds perpetrated upon the confiding, and injuries inflicted without number upon the defenceless; and these, too, not in their dealings merely with the natives, for these they only destroyed, but in their intercourse with their own comrades; with those countrymen to whom nature and a common interest should have bound them, to the fullest extent of their best abilities and strongest sympathies; but whom they did not scruple to plunder and abuse, at the instance of motives the most mercenary and dishonourable. With but a few, and those not very remarkable exceptions, all the doings of this “ocean chivalry” are obnoxious to these reproaches. It is enough, in proof, to instance the fortunes of Cortes, Ojeda, Ponce de Leon, Balboa, Nienesa, Pizarro, Almagro, and the “great admiral” himself; most of them hostile to each other, and all of them victims to the slavish, selfish hates and festering jealousies, the base avarice, and scarcely less base ambition of the followers whom they led to wealth, and victory, and fame. Like most fanatics, who are generally the creatures of vexing and variable moods, rather than of principle and a just desire for renown, none of them, with the single exception of Columbus, seem to have been above the force of circumstances, which moved them hourly, as easily to a disregard of right, as to a fearlessness of danger. At such periods they invariably proved themselves indifferent to all the ties of country, to all the sentiments of affection, to all the laws of God: a mere blood-thirsty soldiery, drunk with the frequent indulgence of a morbid appetite, and as utterly indifferent, in their frenzy, to their sworn fellowships as to the common cause. Of the whole chivalry of this period and nation, but little that is favourable can be said. That they were brave and fearless, daring and elastic, cannot be denied. But here eulogium must cease. From the bigot monarch upon the throne, to the lowest soldier serving under his banner, they seem all to have been without faith. The sovereign had no scruple, when interest moved him and occasion served, to break the pledges which he might not so easily evade; and the morals of his people furnished no reproachful commentary upon the laxity of his own. Let us but once close our eyes upon the bold deeds and uncalculating courage of these warriors, and the picture of their performances becomes one loaded with infamy and shame. The mind revolts from the loathsome spectacle of perfidy and brute-baseness which every where remains; and it is even a relief, though but a momentary one, once more to look upon the scene of strife, and forget, as we are but too apt to do, in the gallant passage of arms, the meanness and the malice of him who delights us with his froward valour, and astounds us with admiration of his skill and strength. The relief is but transient, however, and the next moment reveals to us a reenactment of the sin and the shame, from which the bravest and the boldest among them could not long maintain the “whiteness of their souls.”
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117Author:  Simms William Gilmore 1806-1870Requires cookie*
 Title:  The damsel of Darien  
 Published:  1997 
 Subjects:  University of Virginia Library, Text collection | UVA-LIB-Text | University of Virginia Library, Early American Fiction, 1789-1875 | UVA-LIB-EarlyAmFict1789-1875 
 Description: With the first beams of the morning sun, the Indian warriors of Zemaco, a wild and motly armament, prepared to descend from the mountains into the plain, or rather valley, in which lay the Spanish settlement of Darien. More than five thousand men, detachments from a hundred tribes, which acknowledged the sovereignty of Zemaco, were assembled under the lead of this vindictive chief. They gathered at his summons from the province of Zobayda, where the golden temple of their worship stood, and which they esteemed to be the visible dwelling of their God; Abibeyba, Zenu, and many other provinces, the several cassiques of which, though not present with the quotas which they provided, were yet required by Zemaco to hold themselves in readiness to defend their territories from the incursions of the Spaniards. The hills that rose on three sides of the Spanish settlement were darkened with savage warriors. Exulting in the certainty of victory, they brandished their macanas of palm wood, and shot their arrows upward in defiance, while they sounded their war conchs for the general gathering. Never, in his whole career of sway and conquest, had the proud mountain chief at one time, assembled so vast a host. Their numbers, their known valour, the great strength of their bodies, and the admirable skill with which they swung aloft the club or sent the arrow to its mark, filled his bosom with a vain confidence in his own superiority, which the better taught Caonabo earnestly endeavoured to qualify and caution. But his counsels fell upon unwilling ears, and it was soon apparent to the latter that the prudence which he commended had the effect of diminishing his own courage in the estimation of his hearers. Once assured of this, the mortified Caonabo sank back to his little command, patiently resolved to await events, and remove any doubts on this head, of the Cassique of Darien, by the actual proofs of his prowess, which he was determined to display upon the field.
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118Author:  Simms William Gilmore 1806-1870Requires cookie*
 Title:  Border beagles  
 Published:  1997 
 Subjects:  University of Virginia Library, Text collection | UVA-LIB-Text | University of Virginia Library, Early American Fiction, 1789-1875 | UVA-LIB-EarlyAmFict1789-1875 
 Description: The little town of Raymond, in the state of Mississippi, was in the utmost commotion. Court-day was at hand, and nothing was to be heard but the hum of preparation for that most important of all days in the history of a country village—that of general muster alone excepted. Strange faces and strange dresses began to show themselves in the main street; lawyers were entering from all quarters—“saddlebag” and “sulky” lawyers—men who cumber themselves with no weight of law, unless it can be contained in moderately-sized heads, or valise, or saddle-bag, of equally moderate dimensions. Prowling sheriff's officers began to show their hands again, after a ten or twenty days' absence in the surrounding country, where they had gone to the great annoyance of simple farmers, who contract large debts to the shop-keeper on the strength of crops yet to be planted, which are thus wasted on changeable silks for the spouse, and whistle-handled whips for “Young Hopeful” the only son and heir to possession, which, in no long time will be heard best of under the auctioneer's hammer. The population of the village was increasing rapidly; and what with the sharp militia colonel, in his new box coat, squab white hat, trim collar and high-heeled boots, seeking to find favour in the regiment against the next election for supplying the brigadier's vacancy; the swaggering planter to whom certain disquieting hints of foreclosure have been given, which he can evade no longer, and which he must settle as he may; the slashing overseer, prime for cockfight or quarterrace, and not unwilling to try his own prowess upon his neighbour, should occasion serve and all other sports fail; the pleading and impleaded, prosecutor and prosecuted, witnesses and victims,—Raymond never promised more than at present to swell beyond all seasonable boundaries, and make a noise in the little world round it. Court-day is a day to remember in the West, either for the parts witnessed or the parts taken in the various performances; and whether the party be the loser of an eye or ear, or has merely helped another to the loss of both, the case is still pretty much the same; the event is not usually forgotten. The inference was fair that there would be a great deal of this sort of prime brutality performed at the present time. Among the crowd might be seen certain men who had already distinguished themselves after this manner, and who strutted and swaggered from pillar to post, as if conscious that the eyes of many were upon them, either in scorn or admiration. Notoriety is a sort of fame which the vulgar mind essentially enjoys beyond any other; and we are continually reminded, while in the crowd, of the fellow in the play, who says he “loves to be contemptible.” Some of these creatures had lost an eye, some an ear, others had their faces scarred with the strokes of knives; and a close inspection of others might have shown certain tokens about their necks, which testified to bloody ground fights, in which their gullets formed an acquaintance with the enemy's teeth, not over-well calculated to make them desire new terms of familiarity. Perhaps, in most cases, these wretches had only been saved from just punishment by the humane intervention of the spectators—a humanity that is too often warmed into volition, only when the proprietor grows sated with the sport. At one moment the main street in Raymond was absolutely choked by the press of conflicting vehicles. Judge Bunkell's sulky hitched wheels with the carriage of Col. Fishhawk, and squire Dickens' bran new barouche, brought up from Orleans only a week before, was “staved all to flinders”—so said our landlady—“agin the corner of Joe Richards' stable.” The 'squire himself narrowly escaped the very last injury in the power of a fourfooted beast to inflict, that is disposed to use his hoofs heartily—and, bating an abrasion of the left nostril, which diminished the size, if it did not, as was the opinion of many, impair the beauty of the member, Dickens had good reason to congratulate himself at getting off with so little personal damage. These, however, were not the only mishaps on this occasion. There were other stories of broken heads, maims and injuries, but whether they grew out of the unavoidable concussion of a large crowd in a small place, or from a great natural tendency to broken heads on the part of the owners, it scarcely falls within our present purpose to inquire. A jostle in a roomy region like the west, is any thing but a jostle in the streets of New York. There you may tilt the wayfarer into the gutter, and the laugh is against the loser, it being a sufficient apology for taking such a liberty with your neighbour's person, that “business is business, and must be attended to.” Every man must take care of himself and learn to push with the rest, where all are in a hurry. But he brooks the stab who jostles his neighbour where there is no such excuse; and the stab is certain where he presumes so far with his neighbour's wife, or his wife's daughter, or his sister. There's no pleading that the city rule is to “take the right hand” —he will let you know that the proper rule is to give way to the weak and feeble—to women, to age, to infancy. This is the manly rule among the strong, and a violation of it brings due punishment in the west. Jostling there is a dangerous experiment, and for this very reason, it is frequently practised by those who love a row and fear no danger. It is one of the thousand modes resorted to for compelling the fight of fun—the conflict which the rowdy seeks from the mere love of tumult, and in the excess of overheated blood.
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119Author:  Simms William Gilmore 1806-1870Requires cookie*
 Title:  Border beagles  
 Published:  1997 
 Subjects:  University of Virginia Library, Text collection | UVA-LIB-Text | University of Virginia Library, Early American Fiction, 1789-1875 | UVA-LIB-EarlyAmFict1789-1875 
 Description: The hour was late when the strong-minded maiden, Rachel Morrison, reached her apartments. The family, guests and all, had retired to their several chambers for the night; and in the silent review which she made of the scene she had just witnessed, a most annoying conviction rose in her mind of the probable danger awaiting the young traveller, Vernon, who, she knew, had appointed to resume his journey on the morrow. She recollected the promise of one of the robbers (Saxon) to join him on the road; and this promise she naturally construed into a resolution to assail him. To warn him of his danger was her first impulse, but how was this to be done? It was impossible that she should seek him then; it was scarcely proper, indeed, that she should seek him at any time, and to communicate her warning to Walter Rawlins—the most easy and natural mode—was to prompt his inquiries into other particulars of her knowledge, which she was not yet prepared to unfold. She dreaded the prying mind of her lover, and doubted her own strength to refuse him that knowledge which was effectually to blast and destroy the son of her protector. The conflict in her mind kept her wakeful, and at the dawn of day she was dressed, and anxiously on the watch for that stir in the household which might denote the preparations of the traveller. To her great joy she heard footsteps in the adjoining passage, which she knew to be those of Rawlins. She went forth and joined him.
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120Author:  Simms William Gilmore 1806-1870Requires cookie*
 Title:  The kinsmen, or, The black riders of Congaree  
 Published:  1997 
 Subjects:  University of Virginia Library, Text collection | UVA-LIB-Text | University of Virginia Library, Early American Fiction, 1789-1875 | UVA-LIB-EarlyAmFict1789-1875 
 Description: The colonies of North America, united in resistance to the mother country, had now closed the fifth year of their war of independence. The scene of conflict was now almost wholly transferred from the northern to the southern colonies. The former were permitted a partial repose, while the latter, as if to compensate for a three years' respite, were subjected to the worst aspects and usages of war. Georgia and South Carolina were supposed by the British commanders to be entirely recovered to the sway of their master. They suffered, in consequence, the usual fortune of the vanquished. But the very suffering proved that they lived, and the struggle for freedom was continued. Her battles, “Once begun, Bequeathed from bleeding sire to son, Though often lost,” were never considered by her friends in Carolina to be utterly hopeless. Still, they had frequent occasion to despair. Gates, the successful commander at Saratoga, upon whose great renown and feeble army the hopes of the south, for a season, appeared wholly to depend, had suffered a terrible defeat at Camden—his militia scattered to the four winds of Heaven—his regulars almost annihilated in a conflict with thrice their number, which, for fierce encounter and determined resolution, has never been surpassed;—while he, himself, a fugitive, covered with shame and disappointment, vainly hung out his tattered banner in the wilds of North Carolina—a colony sunk into an apathy which as effectually paralysed her exertions, as did the presence of superior power paralyse those of her more suffering sisters. Conscious of indiscretion and a most fatal presumption—the punishment of which had been as sudden as it was severe—the defeated general suffered far less from apprehension of his foes, than of his country. He had madly risked her strength, at a perilous moment, in a pitched battle, for which he had made no preparation —in which he had shown neither resolution nor ability. The laurels of his old renown withered in an instant—his reputation was stained with doubt, if not with dishonour. He stood, anxious and desponding, awaiting, with whatever moral strength he could command, the summons to that tribunal of his peers, upon which depended all the remaining honours of his venerable head.
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