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expand2003 (1)
1Author:  Simms William Gilmore 1806-1870Add
 Title:  As good as a comedy, or, The Tennesseean's story  
 Published:  2003 
 Subjects:  University of Virginia Library, Text collection | UVA-LIB-Text | University of Virginia Library, Early American Fiction, 1789-1875 | UVA-LIB-EarlyAmFict1789-1875 
 Description: Let us start fairly, and not on an empty stomach. Reader, we begin with a Georgia breakfast. We are at one of those plain, unpretending, but substantial farm-houses, which, in the interior of Georgia, and other Southern States, distinguished more especially the older inhabitants; those who, from time immemorial, have appeared pretty much as we find them now. These all date back beyond the Revolution; the usual epoch, in our country, at which an ancient family may be permitted to begin. The region is one of those lovely spots among the barrens of middle Georgia, in which, surveyed from the proper point of view, there is nothing barren. You are not to suppose the settlement an old one, by any means, for it is not more than twenty or twenty-five years since all the contiguous territory within a space of sixty miles was rescued from the savages. But our family is an old one; inheriting all the pride, the tastes, and the feelings which belonged to the old Southern “Continentaler.” This will be apparent as we proceed; as it is apparent, in fact, to the eye which contrasts the exterior of its dwelling with that of the neighboring settlements among which it harbors. The spot, though undistinguished by surprising scenery, is a very lovely one, and not unfrequent in the middle country of the Atlantic Southern States. It presents a pleasing prospect under a single glance of the eye, of smooth lawn, and gentle acclivity, and lofty forest growth. A streamlet, or branch, as it is here called, winds along, murmuring as it goes, at the foot of a gentle eminence which is crowned with a luxuriant wealth of pine and cedar. Looking up from this spot while your steed drinks, you behold, perched on another gentle swell of ground, as snug and handsome an edifice as our forest country usually affords; none of your overgrown ambitious establishments, but a trim tidy dwelling, consisting of a single story of wood upon a brick basement, and surrounded on three sides by a most glorious piazza. The lawn slopes away, for several hundred yards, an even and very gradual descent even to the road; a broad tract, well sprinkled with noble trees, oaks, oranges, and cedars, with here and there a clump of towering pines, under which steeds are grazing, in whose slender and symmetrical forms, clean legs, and glossy skins, you may discern instant signs of those superior foreign breeds which the Southern planter so much affects. The house, neatly painted white, with green blinds and shutters, is kept in admirable trim; and, from the agreeable arrangement of trees and shrubbery, it would seem that the place had been laid out and was tenanted by those who brought good taste and a becoming sense of the beautiful to the task. There was no great exercise of art, it is true. That is not pretended. But nature was not suffered to have her own way entirely, was not suffered to overrun the face of the land with her luxuriance; nor was man so savage as to strip her utterly of all her graceful decorations— a crime which we are too frequently called upon to deplore and to denounce, when we contemplate the habitations even of the wealthy among our people, particularly in the South, despoiled, by barbarity, of all their shade-trees, and denuded of all the grace and softness which these necessarily confer upon the landscape. Here, the glance seemed to rest satisfied with what it beheld, and to want for nothing. There might be bigger houses, and loftier structures, of more ambitious design and more commanding proportion; but this was certainly very neat, and very much in its place. Its white outlines caught your eye, glinting through openings of the forest, approaching by the road on either hand, for some distance before you drew nigh, and with such an air of peace and sweetness, that you were insensibly prepared to regard its inmates as very good and well-bred people. Nor are we wrong in these conjectures. But of this hereafter. At this moment, you may see a very splendid iron-gray charger, saddled, and fastened in the shade, some twenty steps from the dwelling. Lift your eye to the piazza, and you behold the owner. A finer-looking fellow lives not in the country. Tall, well made, and muscular, he treads the piazza like a prince. The freedom of carriage which belongs to the gentlemen in our forest country is inimitable, is not to be acquired by art, and is due to the fact that they suffer from no laborious occupation, undergo no drudgery, and are subject to no confinement, which, in childhood, contract the shoulders into a stoop, depress the spirits, enfeeble the energies, and wofully impair the freedom and elegance of the deportment. Constant exercise on foot and horseback, the fox hunt and the chase; these, with other sylvan sports, do wonders for the physique, the grace and the bearing of the country gentleman of the South. The person before us is one of the noblest specimens of his class. A frank and handsome countenance, with a skin clear and inclining to the florid; a bright, martial blue eye; a full chin; thick, massive locks of dark brown hair, and lips that express a rare sweetness, and only do not smile, sufficiently distinguish his peculiarities of face. His dress is simple, after an ordinary fashion of the country, but is surprisingly neat and becoming. A loose blouse, rather more after the Choctaw than the Parisian pattern, does not lessen the symmetry of his shape. His trousers are not so loose as to conceal the fine muscular developments of his lower limbs; nor does his loose negligée neckcloth, simply folded about the neck, prevent the display of a column which admirably sustains the intellectual and massive head which crowns it, and which we now behold uncovered. Booted and spurred, he appears ready for a journey, walks the piazza with something of impatience in his manner, and frequently stops to shade his eyes from the glare, as he strains them in exploring the distant highway. You see that he is young, scarcely twenty-two; eager in his impulses, restive under restraint, and better able to endure and struggle with the conflict than to wait for its slow approaches. Suddenly he starts. He turns to a call from within, and a matron lady appears at the entrance of the dwelling, and joins him in the piazza. He turns to her with respect and fondness. She is his mother; a stately dame, with features like his own; a manner at once easy and dignified; an eye grave, but benevolent; and a voice whose slow, subdued accents possess a rare sweetness not unmingled with command.
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