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1Author:  Kennedy John Pendleton 1795-1870Add
 Title:  Swallow Barn, or A sojourn in the Old Dominion  
 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 time of the Revolution, and for a good many years afterwards, Old Nick enjoyed that solid popularity which, as Lord Mansfield expressed it, follows a man's actions rather than is sought after by them. But in our time he is manifestly falling into the sere and yellow leaf, especially in the Atlantic states. Like those dilapidated persons who have grown out at elbows by sticking too long to a poor soil, or who have been hustled out of their profitable prerogatives by the competition of upstart numbers, his spritish family has moved off, with bag and baggage, to the back settlements. This is certain, that in Virginia he is not seen half so often now as formerly. A traveller in the Old Dominion may now wander about of nights as dark as pitch, over commons, around old churches, and through graveyards, and all the while the rain may be pouring down with its solemn hissing sound, and the thunder may be rumbling over his head, and the wind moaning through the trees, and the lightning flinging its sulphurous glare across the skeletons of dead horses, and over the grizzly rawheads upon the tombstones; and, even, to make the case stronger, a drunken cobbler may be snoring hideously in the church door, (being overtaken by the storm on his way home,) and every flash may show his livid, dropsical, carbuncled face, like that of a vagabond corpse that had stolen out of his prison to enjoy the night air; and yet it is ten to one if the said traveller be a man to be favoured with a glimpse of that old-fashioned, distinguished personage who was wont to be showing his cloven foot, upon much less provocation, to our ancestors. The old crones can tell you of a hundred pranks that he used play in their day, and what a roaring sort of a blade he was. But, alas! sinners are not so chicken-hearted as in the old time. It is a terribly degenerate age; and the devil and all his works are fast growing to be forgotten.
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