University of Virginia Library

1. CHAPTER I.

THE incidents which I propose to relate in these sketches, and
those which may follow hereafter, occurred, for the greatest part,
either at or in the neighborhood of Dukesborough, once a small village
in Eastern Georgia. For many years it has ceased even to be mentioned,
except by the very few persons now living who knew it before
the Dukes, from whom it was named, moved away. It has suffered
the most absolute decay that I have known ever to befall any village.
It had not been laid off in its beginning according to any definite plan.
Dukesborough seemed indeed to have become a village quite unexpectedly
to itself and to everybody else, notwithstanding, that instead
of being in a hurry to become so, it took its own time for it, and that
amounted to some years. The Dukes first established a blacksmith
shop. This enterprise succeeded beyond all expectation. A small
store was ventured. It prospered. After some years other persons
moved in, and buying a little ground, built on both sides of the road
(a winding road it was), until there were several families, a school, and
a church. Then the Dukes grew ambitious and had the place called
Dukesborough. It grew on little by little until this family had all
gone, some to the counties farther west, and some to the grave. Somehow,

Dukesborough couldn't stand all this. Decay set in very soon,
and now a small mound or so, the site of an ancient chimney, is the
only sign of a relic of Dukesborough.

It would be useless to speculate upon the causes of its fall. The
places of human habitation are like those who inhabit them. Some
persons die in infancy, some in childhood, some in youth, some at
middle age, some at threescore and ten, and some linger yet longer.
But the last, in their own times, die as surely as many of the former.
Methuselah, comparatively speaking, was what might be called a very
old man; but then he died. The account in Genesis of those first
generations of men is, after all, a melancholy one to me. The three
last words closing the short history of every one are very sad — “And
he died.”

So it is with the places wherein mortals dwell. Some of them become
villages, some towns, and some cities: but all — villages, towns,
and cities — have their times to fall, just as infants, youths, men, and old
men, have their times to die. People may say what they please about
the situation not being well chosen, and about the disagreeableness of
having the names of their residences all absorbed by the Dukes whom
few persons used to like. All this might be very true. But my position
about Dukesborough is, that it had lived out its life. It had run
its race, like all other things, places, and persons, that have lived out
their lives and run their races: and when that was done, Dukesborough
had to fall. It had not lived very long, and it had run but slowly, if
indeed it can be said to have run at all. But it reached its journey's
end. When it did, it had to fall, and it fell. So Babylon, so Nineveh.
These proud cities, it is highly probable, had no more idea of their
own ruin than Dukesborough had immediately after its first store was
built. But we know their history, and it ought to be a warning.

Ah, well! It is not often, of late years, that I pass the place where
it used to stand. But whenever I do, I feel somewhat as I feel when
I go near the neglected grave of an old acquaintance. In the latter
case, I say to myself, sometimes, And here is the last of him. He
was once a stout, hearty, good-humored fellow. It is sad to think of
him as having dropped everything, and being covered up here where
the earth above him is now like the rest all around the spot, and the
grave, but for my recollection of the place where it was dug, would be
indistinguishable even to me who saw him when he was put here.
But so it was. It could not be helped, and here he is for good. So

of Dukesborough. When I pass along the road on the sides of which
it once stood, I can but linger a little and muse upon its destiny.
Here was once a smart village; no great things of course, but still a
right lively little village. It might have stood longer and the rest of the
world have suffered little or no harm. But it is no use to think about
it, because the thing is over and Dukesborough is no more. Besides
myself, there may be two or three persons yet living who can tell with
some approximation to accuracy where it used to stand. When we
are dead, whoever may wish to gather any relic of Dukesborough
must do as they do upon the supposed sites of the cities of more ancient
times: — they must dig for it.

These reflections, somewhat grave I admit, may seem to be unfitly
preliminary to the narratives which are to follow them. But I trust
they will be pardoned in an old man who could not forbear to make
them when calling to mind the forsaken places of his boyhood, albeit
the scenes which he describes have less of the serious in them than of
the sportive. If I can smile, and sometimes I do smile at the recital
of some things that were done and words that were said by some of
my earliest contemporaries, yet I must be allowed a sigh also when I
remember that the doings and the sayings of nearly all of them are
ended for this world.