University of Virginia Library

4. HOW THE TIMES SERVED THE VIRGINIANS.
VIRGINIANS IN A NEW COUNTRY.
THE RISE, DECLINE, AND FALL OF THE
RAG EMPIRE.

The disposition to be proud and vain of one's country, and
to boast of it, is a natural feeling, indulged or not in respect
to the pride, vanity, and boasting, according to the
character of the native: but, with a Virginian, it is a passion.
It inheres in him even as the flavor of a York river
oyster in that bivalve, and no distance of deportation, and
no trimmings of a gracious prosperity, and no pickling in
the sharp acids of adversity, can destroy it. It is a part of
the Virginia character—just as the flavor is a distinctive
part of the oyster—“which cannot, save by annihilating, die.”
It is no use talking about it—the thing may be right, or
wrong:—like Falstaff's victims at Gadshill, it is past praying
for: it is a sort of cocoa grass that has got into the soil,
and has so matted over it, and so fibred through it, as to
have become a part of it; at least, there is no telling which
is the grass and which is the soil; and certainly it is useless

labor to try to root it out. You may destroy the soil, but
you can't root out the grass.

Patriotism with a Virginian is a noun personal. It is
the Virginian himself and something over. He loves Virginia
per se and propter se: he loves her for herself and
for himself—because she is Virginia and—every thing else
beside. He loves to talk about her: out of the abundance
of the heart the mouth speaketh. It makes no odds where
he goes, he carries Virginia with him; not in the entirety
always—but the little spot he came from is Virginia—as
Swedenborg says the smallest part of the brain is an abridgment
of all of it. “Cœlum non animum mutant qui
trans mare current,” was made for a Virginian. He
never gets acclimated elsewhere; he never loses citizenship
to the old Home. The right of expatriation is a pure abstraction
to him. He may breathe in Alabama, but he lives in
Virginia. His treasure is there, and his heart also. If he
looks at the Delta of the Mississippi, it reminds him of
James River “low grounds;” if he sees the vast prairies of
Texas, it is a memorial of the meadows of the Valley.
Richmond is the centre of attraction, the depot of all that
is grand, great, good and glorious. “It is the Kentucky of
a place,” which the preacher described Heaven to be to the
Kentucky congregation.

Those who came many years ago from the borough towns,
especially from the vicinity of Williamsburg, exceed, in attachment
to their birthplace, if possible, the emigrés from
the metropolis. It is refreshing in these costermonger times,

to hear them speak of it:—they remember it when the old
burg was the seat of fashion, taste, refinement, hospitality,
wealth, wit, and all social graces; when genius threw its
spell over the public assemblages and illumined the halls of
justice, and when beauty brightened the social hour with her
unmatched and matchless brilliancy.

Then the spirited and gifted youths of the College of old
William and Mary, some of them just giving out the first
scintillations of the genius that afterwards shone refulgent
in the forum and the senate, added to the attractions of a
society gay, cultivated and refined beyond example—even in
the Old Dominion. A hallowed charm seems to rest upon
the venerable city, clothing its very dilapidation in a drapery
of romance and of serene and classic interest: as if all
the sweet and softened splendor which invests the “Midsummer
Night's Dream” were poured in a flood of mellow and
poetic radiance over the now quiet and half “deserted village.”
There is something in the shadow from the old college
walls, cast by the moon upon the grass and sleeping on
the sward, that throws a like shadow soft, sad and melancholy
upon the heart of the returning pilgrim who saunters out
to view again, by moonlight, his old Alma Mater—the nursing
mother of such a list and such a line of statesmen and
heroes.

There is nothing presumptuously froward in this Virginianism.
The Virginian does not make broad his phylacteries
and crow over the poor Carolinian and Tennesseeian. He
does not reproach him with his misfortune of birthplace.

No, he thinks the affliction is enough without the triumph.
The franchise of having been born in Virginia, and the prerogative
founded thereon, are too patent of honor and distinction
to be arrogantly pretended. The bare mention is
enough. He finds occasion to let the fact be known, and
then the fact is fully able to protect and take care of itself.
Like a ducal title, there is no need of saying more than to
name it: modesty then is a becoming and expected virtue;
forbearance to boast is true dignity.

The Virginian is a magnanimous man. He never throws
up to a Yankee the fact of his birthplace. He feels on the
subject as a man of delicacy feels in alluding to a rope in the
presence of a person, one of whose brothers “stood upon
nothing and kicked at the U. S.,” or to a female indiscretion,
where there had been scandal concerning the family. So far
do they carry this refinement, that I have known one of my
countrymen, on occasion of a Bostonian owning where he was
born, generously protest that he had never heard of it before.
As if honest confession half obliterated the shame of the fact.
Yet he does not lack the grace to acknowledge worth or merit
in another, wherever the native place of that other: for it
is a common thing to hear them say of a neighbor, “he is a
clever fellow, though he did come from New Jersey or even
Connecticut.”

In politics the Virginian is learned much beyond what is
written—for they have heard a great deal of speaking on that
prolific subject, especially by one or two Randolphs and any
number of Barbours. They read the same papers here they

read in Virginia—the Richmond Enquirer and the Richmond
Whig. The democrat stoutly asseverates a fact, and
gives the Enquirer as his authority with an air that means to
say, that settles it: while the whig quoted Hampden Pleasants
with the same confidence. But the faculty of personalizing
every thing which the exceeding social turn of a Virginian
gives him, rarely allowed a reference to the paper, eo
nomine; but made him refer to the editor: as “Ritchie
said” so and so, or “Hampden Pleasants said” this or that.
When two of opposite politics got together, it was amusing,
if you had nothing else to do that day, to hear the discussion.
I never knew a debate that did not start ab urbe condita.
They not only went back to first principles, but also to first
times; nor did I ever hear a discussion in which old John
Adams and Thomas Jefferson did not figure—as if an interminable
dispute had been going on for so many generations
between those disputatious personages; as if the quarrel had
begun before time, but was not to end with it. But the
strangest part of it to me was, that the dispute seemed to be
going on without poor Adams having any defence or champion;
and never waxed hotter than when both parties agreed
in denouncing the man of Braintree as the worst of public
sinners and the vilest of political heretics. They both agreed
on one thing, and that was to refer the matter to the Resolutions
of 1798-99; which said Resolutions, like Goldsmith's
“Good Natured Man,” arbitrating between Mr. and Mrs.
Croaker, seemed so impartial that they agreed with both parties
on every occasion.

Nor do I recollect of hearing any question debated that
did not resolve itself into a question of constitution—strict
construction, &c.,—the constitution being a thing of that curious
virtue that its chief excellency consisted in not allowing
the government to do any thing; or in being a regular
prize fighter that knocked all laws and legislators into a cocked
hat, except those of the objector's party.

Frequent reference was reciprocally made to “gorgons,
hydras, and chimeras dire,” to black cockades, blue lights,
Essex juntos, the Reign of Terror, and some other mystic
entities—but who or what these monsters were, I never could
distinctly learn; and was surprised, on looking into the history
of the country, to find that, by some strange oversight,
no allusion was made to them.

Great is the Virginian's reverence of great men, that is
to say, of great Virginians. This reverence is not Unitarian.
He is a Polytheist. He believes in a multitude of Virginia
Gods. As the Romans of every province and village had
their tutelary or other divinities, besides having divers national
gods, so the Virginian of every county has his great
man, the like of whom cannot be found in the new country
he has exiled himself to. This sentiment of veneration for
talent, especially for speaking talent,—this amiable propensity
to lionize men, is not peculiar to any class of Virginians
among us: it abides in all. I was amused to hear “old Culpepper,”
as we call him (by nickname derived from the county
he came from), declaiming in favor of the Union. “What,
gentlemen,” said the old man, with a sonorous swell—“what,

burst up this glorious Union! and who, if this Union is torn
up, could write another? Nobody except Henry Clay and
J— S. B—, of Culpepper—and may be they wouldn't—and
what then would you do for another?”

The greatest compliment a Virginian can ever pay to a
speaker, is to say that he reminds him of a Col. Broadhorn
or a Captain Smith, who represented some royal-named county
some forty years or less in the Virginia House of Delegates;
and of whom, the auditor, of course, has heard, as he
made several speeches in the capitol at Richmond. But
the force of the compliment is somewhat broken, by a long
narrative, in which the personal reminiscences of the speaker
go back to sundry sketches of the Virginia statesman's efforts,
and recapitulations of his sayings, interspersed par parenthèse,
with many valuable notes illustrative of his pedigree
and performances; the whole of which, given with great historical
fidelity of detail, leaves nothing to be wished for except
the point, or rather, two points, the gist and the period.

It is not to be denied that Virginia is the land of orators,
heroes and statesmen; and that, directly or indirectly, she
has exerted an influence upon the national councils nearly as
great as all the rest of the States combined. It is wonderful
that a State of its size and population should have turned out
such an unprecedented quantum of talent, and of talent as
various in kind as prodigious in amount. She has reason to
be proud; and the other States so largely in her debt (for,
from Cape May to Puget's Sound she has colonized the other
States and the territories with her surplus talent,) ought to

allow her the harmless privilege of a little bragging. In the
showy talent of oratory has she especially shone. To accomplish
her in this art the State has been turned into a
debating society, and while she has been talking for the
benefit of the nation, as she thought, the other, and, by nature,
less favored States, have been doing for their own.
Consequently, what she has gained in reputation, she has
lost in wealth and material aids. Certainly the Virginia
character has been less distinguished for its practical than
its ornamental traits, and for its business qualities than for
its speculative temper. Cui bono and utilitarianism, at least
until latterly, were not favorite or congenial inquiries and
subjects of attention to the Virginia politician. What the
Virginian was upon his native soil, that he was abroad; indeed,
it may be said that the amor patriæ, strengthened by
absence, made him more of a conservative abroad than he
would have been if he had staid at home; for most of them
here would not, had they been consulted, have changed
either of the old constitutions.

It is far, however, from my purpose to treat of such
themes. I only glance at them to show their influence on
the character as it was developed on a new theatre.

Eminently social and hospitable, kind, humane and generous
is a Virginian, at home or abroad. They are so by
nature and habit. These qualities and their exercise develope
and strengthen other virtues. By reason of these social
traits, they necessarily become well mannered, honorable,
spirited, and careful of reputation, desirous of pleasing, and

skilled in the accomplishments which please. Their insular
position and sparse population, mostly rural, and easy
but not affluent fortunes kept them from the artificial refinements
and the strong temptations which corrupt so much of
the society of the old world and some portions of the new.
There was no character more attractive than that of a young
Virginian, fifteen years ago, of intelligence, of good family,
education and breeding.

It was of the instinct of a Virginian to seek society: he
belongs to the gregarious, not to the solitary division of
animals; and society can only be kept up by grub and gab—
something to eat, and, if not something to talk about, talk.
Accordingly they came accomplished already in the knowledge
and the talent for these important duties.

A Virginian could always get up a good dinner. He
could also do his share—a full hand's work—in disposing
of one after it was got up. The qualifications for hostmanship
were signal—the old Udaller himself, assisted by Claud
Halrco, could not do up the thing in better style, or with a
heartier relish, or a more cordial hospitality. In petite
manners—the little attentions of the table, the filling up of
the chinks of the conversation with small fugitive observations,
the supplying the hooks and eyes that kept the discourse
together, the genial good humor, which, like that of the
family of the good Vicar, made up in laughter what was
wanting in wit—in these, and in the science of getting up
and in getting through a picnic or chowder party, or fish fry,
the Virginian, like Eclipse, was first, and there was no second.

Great was he too at mixing an apple toddy, or mint
julep, where ice could be got for love or money; and not deficient,
by any means, when it came to his turn to do honor to
his own fabrics. It was in this department, that he not
only shone but outshone, not merely all others but himself.
Here he was at home indeed. His elocution, his matter,
his learning, his education, were of the first order. He could
discourse of every thing around him with an accuracy and a
fulness which would have put Coleridge's or Mrs. Ellis's table
talk to the blush. Every dish was a text, horticulture,
hunting, poultry, fishing—(Isaac Walton or Daniel Webster
would have been charmed and instructed to hear him discourse
piscatory-wise,)—a slight divergence in favor of fox-chasing
and a detour towards a horse-race now and then, and
continual parentheses of recommendation of particular dishes
or glasses—Oh! I tell you if ever there was an interesting
man it was he. Others might be agreeable, but he was fascinating,
irresistible, not-to-be-done-without.

In the fulness of time the new era had set in—the era
of the second great experiment of independence: the experiment,
namely, of credit without capital, and enterprise without
honesty. The Age of Brass had succeeded the Arcadian
period when men got rich by saving a part of their earnings,
and lived at their own cost and in ignorance of the new
plan of making fortunes on the profits of what they owed.
A new theory, not found in the works on political economy,
was broached. It was found out that the prejudice in favor
of the metals (brass excluded) was an absurd superstition;

and that, in reality, any thing else, which the parties interested
in giving it currency chose, might serve as a representative
of value and medium for exchange of property; and
as gold and silver had served for a great number of years as
representatives, the republican doctrine of rotation in office
required they should give way. Accordingly it was decided
that Rags, a very familiar character, and very popular and
easy of access, should take their place. Rags belonged to
the school of progress. He was representative of the then
Young America. His administration was not tame. It was
very spirited. It was based on the Bonapartist idea of
keeping the imagination of the people excited. The leading
fiscal idea of his system was to democratize capital, and to
make, for all purposes of trade, credit and enjoyment of
wealth, the man that had no money a little richer, if any thing,
than the man that had a million. The principle of success
and basis of operation, though inexplicable in the hurry of the
time, is plain enough now: it was faith. Let the public believe
that a smutted rag is money, it is money: in other
words, it was a sort of financial biology, which made, at
night, the thing conjured for, the thing that was seen, so far
as the patient was concerned, while the fit was on him—except
that now a man does not do his trading when under the
mesmeric influence: in the flush times he did.

This country was just settling up. Marvellous accounts
had gone forth of the fertility of its virgin lands; and the
productions of the soil were commanding a price remunerating
to slave labor as it had never been remunerated before.

Emigrants came flocking in from all quarters of the Union,
especially from the slaveholding States. The new country
seemed to be a reservoir, and every road leading to it a vagrant
stream of enterprise and adventure. Money, or what
passed for money, was the only cheap thing to be had. Every
cross-road and every avocation presented an opening,—
through which a fortune was seen by the adventurer in near
perspective. Credit was a thing of course. To refuse it—
if the thing was ever done—were an insult for which a bowie-knife
were not a too summary or exemplary a means of redress.
The State banks were issuing their bills by the
sheet, like a patent steam printing-press its issues; and no
other showing was asked of the applicant for the loan than
an authentication of his great distress for money. Finance,
even in its most exclusive quarter, had thus already got, in
this wonderful revolution, to work upon the principles of
the charity hospital. If an overseer grew tired of supervising
a plantation and felt a call to the mercantile life, even
if he omitted the compendious method of buying out a merchant
wholesale, stock, house and good will, and laying down,
at once, his bull-whip for the yard-stick—all he had to do
was to go on to New-York, and present himself in Pearl-street
with a letter avouching his citizenship, and a clean
shirt, and he was regularly given a through ticket to speedy
bankruptcy.

Under this stimulating process prices rose like smoke.
Lots in obscure villages were held at city prices; lands,
bought at the minimum cost of government, were sold at

from thirty to forty dollars per acre, and considered dirt
cheap at that. In short, the country had got to be a full
ante-type of California, in all except the gold. Society was
wholly unorganized: there was no restraining public opinion:
the law was well-nigh powerless—and religion scarcely was
heard of except as furnishing the oaths and technics of profanity.
The world saw a fair experiment of what it would
have been, if the fiat had never been pronounced which decreed
subsistence as the price of labor.

Money, got without work, by those unaccustomed to it,
turned the heads of its possessors, and they spent it with a
recklessness like that with which they gained it. The pursuits
of industry neglected, riot and coarse debauchery filled
up the vacant hours. “Where the carcass is, there will the
eagles be gathered together;” and the eagles that flocked to
the Southwest, were of the same sort as the black eagles the
Duke of Saxe-Weimar saw on his celebrated journey to the
Natural Bridge. “The cankers of a long peace and a calm
world”—there were no Mexican wars and filibuster expeditions
in those days—gathered in the villages and cities by
scores.

Even the little boys caught the taint of the general infection
of morals; and I knew one of them—Jim Ellett by
name—to give a man ten dollars to hold him up to bet at
the table of a faro-bank. James was a fast youth; and I
sincerely hope he may not fulfil his early promise, and some
day be assisted up still higher.

The groceries—vulgice—doggeries, were in full blast in

those days, no village having less than a half-dozen all busy
all the time: gaming and horse-racing were polite and well
patronized amusements. I knew of a Judge to adjourn two
courts (or court twice) to attend a horse-race, at which he
officiated judicially and ministerially, and with more appropriateness
than in the judicial chair. Occasionally the scene
was diversified by a murder or two, which though perpetrated
from behind a corner, or behind the back of the deceased,
whenever the accused chose to stand his trial, was always
found to be committed in self-defence, securing the homicide
an honorable acquittal at the hands of his peers.

The old rules of business and the calculations of prudence
were alike disregarded, and profligacy, in all the departments
of the crimen falsi, held riotous carnival. Larceny
grew not only respectable, but genteel, and ruffled it in
all the pomp of purple and fine linen. Swindling was raised
to the dignity of the fine arts. Felony came forth from its
covert, put on more seemly habiliments, and took its seat
with unabashed front in the upper places of the synagogue.
Before the first circles of the patrons of this brilliant and
dashing villainy, Blunt Honesty felt as abashed as poor Halbert
Glendinning by the courtly refinement and supercilious
airs of Sir Piercie Shafton.

Public office represented, by its incumbents, the state of
public morals with some approach to accuracy. Out of sixty-six
receivers of public money in the new States, sixty-two
were discovered to be defaulters; and the agent, sent to
look into the affairs of a peccant office-holder in the

South-West, reported him minus some tens of thousands, but
advised the government to retain him, for a reason one of
æsop's fables illustrates: the agent ingeniously surmising
that the appointee succeeding would do his stealing without
any regard to the proficiency already made by his predecessor;
while the present incumbent would probably consider,
in mercy to the treasury, that he had done something of the
pious duty of providing for his household.

There was no petit larceny: there was all the difference
between stealing by the small and the “operations” manipulated,
that there is between a single assassination and an
hundred thousand men killed in an opium war. The placeman
robbed with the gorgeous magnificence of a Governor-General
of Bengal.

The man of straw, not worth the buttons on his shirt,
with a sublime audacity, bought lands and negroes, and provided
times and terms of payment which a Wall-street capitalist
would have to re-cast his arrangements to meet.

Oh, Paul Clifford and Augustus Tomlinson, philosophers
of the road, practical and theoretical! if ye had lived to
see those times, how great an improvement on your ruder
scheme of distribution would these gentle arts have seemed;
arts whereby, without risk, or loss of character, or the vulgar
barbarism of personal violence, the same beneficial results
flowed with no greater injury to the superstitions of moral
education!

With the change of times and the imagination of wealth
easily acquired came a change in the thoughts and habits of
the people. “Old times were changed—old manners gone.”

Visions of affluence, such as crowded Dr. Samuel Johnson's
mind, when advertising a sale of Thrale's Brewery, and casting
a soft sheep's eye towards Thrale's widow, thronged upon
the popular fancy. Avarice and hope joined partnership.
It was strange how the reptile arts of humanity, as at a faro
table, warmed into life beneath their heat. The cacoethes
accrescendi became epidemic. It seized upon the universal
community. The pulpits even were not safe from its insidious
invasion. What men anxiously desire they willingly
believe; and all believed a good time was coming—nay, had
come.

“Commerce was king”—and Rags, Tag and Bobtail
his cabinet council. Rags was treasurer. Banks, chartered
on a specie basis, did a very flourishing business on the promissory
notes of the individual stockholders ingeniously substituted
in lieu of cash. They issued ten for one, the one being
fictitious. They generously loaned all the directors could
not use themselves, and were not choice whether Bardolph
was the endorser for Falstaff, or Falstaff borrowed on his
own proper credit, or the funds advanced him by Shallow.
The stampede towards the golden temple became general:
the delusion prevailed far and wide that this thing was not
a burlesque on commerce and finance. Even the directors
of the banks began to have their doubts whether the intended
swindle was not a failure. Like Lord Clive, when reproached
for extortion to the extent of some millions in
Bengal, they exclaimed, after the bubble burst, “When they
thought of what they had got, and what they might have got,
they were astounded at their own moderation.”

The old capitalists for a while stood out. With the Tory
conservatism of cash in hand, worked for, they couldn't reconcile
their old notions to the new regime. They looked
for the thing's ending, and then their time. But the stampede
still kept on. Paper fortunes still multiplied—houses
and lands changed hands—real estate see-sawed up as morals
went down on the other end of the plank—men of straw,
corpulent with bank bills, strutted past them on 'Change.
They began, too, to think there might be something in this
new thing. Peeping cautiously, like hedge-hogs out of their
holes, they saw the stream of wealth and adventurers passing
by—then, looking carefully around, they inched themselves
half way out—then, sallying forth and snatching up a morsel,
ran back, until, at last, grown more bold, they ran out
too with their hoarded store, in full chase with the other unclean
beasts of adventure. They never got back again.
Jonah's gourd withered one night, and next morning the
vermin that had nestled under its broad shade were left unprotected,
a prey to the swift retribution that came upon
them. They were left naked, or only clothed themselves
with cursing (the Specie Circular on the United States Bank)
as with a garment. To drop the figure: Shylock himself
couldn't live in those times, so reversed was every thing.
Shaving paper and loaning money at a usury of fifty per cent,
was for the first time since the Jews left Jerusalem, a breaking
business to the operator.

The condition of society may be imagined:—vulgarity—
ignorance—fussy and arrogant pretension—unmitigated rowdyism—bullying

insolence, if they did not rule the hour,
seemed to wield unchecked dominion. The workings of
these choice spirits were patent upon the face of society;
and the modest, unobtrusive, retiring men of worth and character
(for there were many, perhaps a large majority of such)
were almost lost sight of in the hurly-burly of those strange
and shifting scenes.

Even in the professions were the same characteristics
visible. Men dropped down into their places as from the
clouds. Nobody knew who or what they were, except as
they claimed, or as a surface view of their characters indicated.
Instead of taking to the highway and magnanimously
calling upon the wayfarer to stand and deliver, or to the
fashionable larceny of credit without prospect or design of
paying, some unscrupulous horse-doctor would set up his
sign as “Physician and Surgeon,” and draw his lancet on
you, or fire at random a box of his pills into your bowels,
with a vague chance of hitting some disease unknown to him,
but with a better prospect of killing the patient, whom or
whose administrator he charged some ten dollars a trial for
his markmanship.

A superannuated justice or constable in one of the old
States was metamorphosed into a lawyer; and though he
knew not the distinction between a fee tail and a female,
would undertake to construe, off-hand, a will involving all
the subtleties of uses and trusts.

But this state of things could not last for ever: society
cannot always stand on its head with its heels in the air.

The Jupiter Tonans of the White House saw the monster
of a free credit prowling about like a beast of apocalyptic
vision, and marked him for his prey. Gathering all
his bolts in his sinewy grasp, and standing back on his heels,
and waving his wiry arm, he let them all fly, hard and swift
upon all the hydra's heads. Then came a crash, as “if the
ribs of nature broke,” and a scattering, like the bursting of
a thousand magazines, and a smell of brimstone, as if Pandemonium
had opened a window next to earth for ventilation,
—and all was silent. The beast never stirred in his tracks.
To get down from the clouds to level ground, the Specie
Circular was issued without warning, and the splendid lie of
a false credit burst into fragments. It came in the midst of
the dance and the frolic—as Tam O'Shanter came to disturb
the infernal glee of the warlocks, and to disperse the
rioters. Its effect was like that of a general creditor's bill
in the chancery court, and marshalling of all the assets of
the trades-people. Gen. Jackson was no fairy; but he did
some very pretty fairy work, in converting the bank bills back
again into rags and oak-leaves. Men worth a million were
insolvent for two millions: promising young cities marched
back again into the wilderness. The ambitious town plat
was re-annexed to the plantation, like a country girl taken
home from the city. The frolic was ended, and what headaches,
and feverish limbs the next morning! The retreat
from Moscow was performed over again, and “Devil take the
hindmost” was the tune to which the soldiers of fortune
marched. The only question was as to the means of escape,

and the nearest and best route to Texas. The sheriff was as
busy as a militia adjutant on review day; and the lawyers
were mere wreckers, earning salvage. Where are ye now my
ruffling gallants? Where now the braw cloths and watch
chains and rings and fine horses? Alas! for ye—they are
glimmering among the things that were—the wonder of an
hour! They live only in memory, as unsubstantial as the
promissory notes ye gave for them. When it came to be
tested, the whole matter was found to be hollow and fallacious.
Like a sum ciphered out through a long column, the
first figure an error, the whole, and all the parts were wrong,
throughout the entire calculation.

Such is a charcoal sketch of the interesting region—now
inferior to none in resources, and the character of its population—during
the FLUSH TIMES; a period constituting an episode
in the commercial history of the world—the reign of
humbug, and wholesale insanity, just overthrown in time to
save the whole country from ruin. But while it lasted,
many of our countrymen came into the South-West in time
to get “a benefit.” The auri sacra fames is a catching disease.
Many Virginians had lived too fast for their fortunes,
and naturally desired to recuperate: many others, with a
competency, longed for wealth; and others again, with wealth,
yearned—the common frailty—for still more. Perhaps
some friend or relative, who had come out, wrote back flattering
accounts of the El Dorado, and fired with dissatisfaction
those who were doing well enough at home, by the report
of his real or imagined success; for who that ever moved

off, was not “doing well” in the new country, himself or
friends being chroniclers?

Superior to many of the settlers in elegance of manners,
and general intelligence, it was the weakness of the Virginia
to imagine he was superior too in the essential art of being
able to hold his hand and make his way in a new country,
and especially such a country, and at such a time.
What a mistake that was! The times were out of joint.
It was hard to say whether it were more dangerous to stand
still or to move. If the emigrant stood still, he was consumed,
by no slow degrees, by expenses: if he moved, ten
to one he went off in a galloping consumption, by a ruinous
investment. Expenses then—necessary articles about three
times as high, and extra articles still more extra-priced—
were a different thing in the new country from what they
were in the old. In the old country, a jolly Virginian, startting
the business of free living on a capital of a plantation,
and fifty or sixty negroes, might reasonably calculate, if no
ill luck befell him, by the aid of a usurer, and the occasional
sale of a negro or two, to hold out without declared insolvency,
until a green old age. His estate melted like an estate
in chancery, under the gradual thaw of expenses; but
in this fast country, it went by the sheer cost of living—
some poker losses included—like the fortune of the confectioner
in California, who failed for one hundred thousand dollars
in the six months keeping of a candy-shop. But all the
habits of his life, his taste, his associations, his education—
every thing—the trustingness of his disposition—his want

of business qualifications—his sanguine temper—all that was
Virginian in him, made him the prey, if not of imposture,
at least of unfortunate speculations. Where the keenest
jockey often was bit, what chance had he? About the same
that the verdant Moses had with the venerable old gentleman,
his father's friend, at the fair, when he traded the Vicar's
pony for the green spectacles. But how could he believe
it? how could he believe that that stuttering, grammarless
Georgian, who had never heard of the resolutions
of '98, could beat him in a land trade? “Have no money
dealings with my father,” said the friendly Martha to Lord
Nigel, “for, idiot though he seems, he will make an ass of
thee.” What a pity some monitor, equally wise and equally
successful with old Trapbois' daughter, had not been at the
elbow of every Virginian! “Twad frae monie a blunder
free'd him—an' foolish notion.”

If he made a had bargain, how could he expect to get
rid of it? He knew nothing of the elaborate machinery of
ingenious chicane,—such as feigning bankruptcy—fraudulent
conveyances—making over to his wife—running property—
and had never heard of such tricks of trade as sending out
coffins to the graveyard, with negroes inside, carried off by
sudden spells of imaginary disease, to be “resurrected,” in
due time, grinning, on the banks of the Brazos.

The new philosophy, too, had commended itself to his speculative
temper. He readily caught at the idea of a new
spirit of the age having set in, which rejected the saws of Poor
Richard as being as much out of date as his almanacs. He

was already, by the great rise of property, compared to his
condition under the old-time prices, rich; and what were a
few thousands of debt, which two or three crops would pay
off, compared to the value of his estate? (He never thought
that the value of property might come down, while the debt
was a fixed fact.) He lived freely, for it was a liberal time,
and liberal fashions were in vogue, and it was not for a
Virginian to be behind others in hospitality and liberality.
He required credit and security, and, of course, had to
stand security in return. When the crash came, and no
“accommodations” could be had, except in a few instances,
and in those on the most ruinous terms, he fell an easy victim.
They broke by neighborhoods. They usually endorsed
for each other, and when one fell—like the child's play of
putting bricks on end at equal distances, and dropping the
first in the line against the second, which fell against the
third, and so on to the last—all fell; each got broke as security,
and yet few or none were able to pay their own debts!
So powerless of protection were they in those times, that the
witty H. G. used to say they reminded him of an oyster,
both shells torn off, lying on the beach, with the sea-gulls
screaming over them; the only question being, which should
“gobble them up.”

There was one consolation—if the Virginian involved
himself like a fool, he suffered himself to be sold out like a
gentleman. When his card house of visionary projects came
tumbling about his ears, the next question was, the one
Webster plagiarised—“Where am I to go?” Those who

had fathers, uncles, aunts, or other like dernier resorts, in
Virginia, limped back with feathers moulted and crestfallen,
to the old stamping ground, carrying the returned Californian's
fortune of ten thousand dollars—six bits in money, and
the balance in experience. Those who were in the condition
of the prodigal, (barring the father, the calf—the fatted one
I mean—and the fiddle,) had to turn their accomplishments
to account; and many of them, having lost all by eating and
drinking, sought the retributive justice from meat and drink,
which might, at least, support them in poverty. Accordingly,
they kept tavern, and made a barter of hospitality, a business,
the only disagreeable part of which was receiving the
money, and the only one I know of for which a man can eat
and drink himself into qualification. And while I confess I
never knew a Virginian, out of the State, to keep a bad
tavern, I never knew one to draw a solvent breath from the
time he opened house, until death or the sheriff closed it.

Others again got to be, not exactly overseers, but some
nameless thing, the duties of which were nearly analogous,
for some more fortunate Virginian, who had escaped the
wreck, and who had got his former boon companion to live
with him on board, or other wages, in some such relation
that the friend was not often found at table at the dinings
given to the neighbors, and had got to be called Mr. Flournoy
instead of Bob, and slept in an out-house in the yard,
and only read the Enquirer of nights and Sundays.

Some of the younger scions that had been transplanted
carly, and stripped of their foliage at a tender age, had been

turned into birches for the corrective discipline of youth.
Yes; many, who had received academical or collegiate educations,
disregarding the allurements of the highway—turning
from the gala-day exercise of ditching—scorning the
effeminate relaxation of splitting rails—heroically led the
Forlorn Hope of the battle of life, the corps of pedagogues
of country schools—academies, I beg pardon for not saying;
for, under the Virginia economy, every cross-road log-cabin,
where boys were flogged from B-a-k-e-r to Constantinople,
grew into the dignity of a sort of runt college; and the
teacher vainly endeavored to hide the meanness of the calling
beneath the sonorous sobriquet of Professor. “Were
there no wars?” Had all the oysters been opened? Where
was the regular army? Could not interest procure service
as a deck-hand on a steamboat? Did no stage-driver, with a
contract for running at night, through the prairies in mid-winter,
want help, at board wages, and sweet lying in the
loft, when off duty, thrown in? What right had the Dutch
Jews to monopolize all the peddling? “To such vile uses
may we come at last, Horatio.” The subject grows melancholy.
I had a friend on whom this catastrophe descended.
Tom Edmundson was a buck of the first head—gay, witty,
dashing, vain, proud, handsome and volatile, and, withal, a
dandy and lady's man to the last intent in particular. He
had graduated at the University, and had just settled with
his guardian, and received his patrimony of ten thousand
dollars in money. Being a young gentleman of enterprise,
he sought the alluring fields of South-Western adventure,
and found them in this State. Before he well knew the
condition of his exchequer, he had made a permanent investment
of one-half of his fortune in cigars, Champagne,
trinkets, buggies, horses, and current expenses, including
some small losses at poker, which game he patronized merely
for amusement; and found that it diverted him a good deal,
but diverted his cash much more. He invested the balance,
on private information kindly given him, in “Choctaw
Floats;” a most lucrative investment it would have turned
out, but for the facts: 1. That the Indians never had any
title; 2. The white men who kindly interposed to act as
guardians for the Indians did not have the Indian title; and
3dly, the land, left subject to entry, if the “Floats” had
been good, was not worth entering. “These imperfections
off its head,” I know of no fancy stock I would prefer to a
“Choctaw Float.” “Brief, brave and glorious” was “Tom's
young career.” When Thomas found, as he did shortly,
that he had bought five thousand dollars' worth of moonshine,
and had no title to it, he honestly informed his landlord of
the state of his “fiscality,” and that worthy kindly consented
to take a new buggy, at half price, in payment of the old
balance. The horse, a nick-tailed trotter, Tom had raffled
off; but omitting to require cash, the process of collection
resulted in his getting the price of one chance—the winner
of the horse magnanimously paying his subscription. The
rest either had gambling offsets, or else were not prepared
just at any one particular, given moment, to pay up, though
always ready, generally and in a general way.

Unlike his namesake, Tom and his landlady were not—
for a sufficient reason—very gracious; and so, the only
common bond, Tom's money, being gone, Tom received
“notice to quit” in regular form.

In the hurly-burly of the times, I had lost sight of Tom
for a considerable period. One day, as I was travelling
over the hills in Greene, by a cross-road, leading me near a
country mill, I stopped to get water at a spring at the bottom
of a hill. Clambering up the hill, after remounting, on
the other side, the summit of it brought me to a view,
through the bushes, of a log country school-house, the door
being wide open, and who did I see but Tom Edmundson,
dressed as fine as ever, sitting back in an arm-chair, one
thumb in his waistcoat armhole, the other hand brandishing
a long switch, or rather pole. As I approached a little
nearer, I heard him speak out: “Sir—Thomas Jefferson,
of Virginia, was the author of the Declaration of Independence—mind
that. I thought everybody knew that—even the
Georgians.” Just then he saw me coming through the bushes
and entering the path that led by the door. Suddenly he
broke from the chair of state, and the door was slammed to,
and I heard some one of the boys, as I passed the door, say
—“Tell him he can't come in—the master's sick.” This is
the last I ever saw of Tom. I understand he afterwards
moved to Louisiana, where he married a rich French widow,
having first, however, to fight a duel with one of her sons,
whose opposition couldn't be appeased, until some such
expiatory sacrifice to the manes of his worthy father was

[ILLUSTRATION]

The Schoolmaster Abroad, p. 98

[Description: 458EAF. Illustration Page. Image of the Schoolmaster sitting in a chair, holding his switch, while young boys mill around him. Behind the schoolmaster sits a child glancing out, with a sly grin, at the reader.]

attempted; which failing, he made rather a lame apology
for his zealous indiscretion—the poor fellow could make no
other—for Tom had unfortunately fixed him for visiting his
mother on crutches the balance of his life.

One thing I will say for the Virginians—I never knew
one of them, under any pressure, extemporize a profession.
The sentiment of reverence for the mysteries of medicine
and law was too large for a deliberate quackery; as to the
pulpit, a man might as well do his starving without the
hypocrisy.

But others were not so nice. I have known them to rush,
when the wolf was after them, from the counting-house or the
plantation, into a doctor's shop or a law office, as if those
places were the sanctuaries from the avenger; some pretending
to be doctors that did not know a liver from a gizzard,
administering medicine by the guess, without knowing enough
of pharmacy to tell whether the stuff exhibited in the big-bellied
blue, red and green bottles at the show-windows of
the apothecaries' shops, was given by the drop or the half-pint.

Divers others left, but what became of them, I never
knew any more than they know what becomes of the sora
after frost.

Many were the instances of suffering; of pitiable misfortune,
involving and crushing whole families; of pride
abased; of honorable sensibilities wounded; of the provision
for old age destroyed; of the hopes of manhood overcast;
of independence dissipated, and the poor victim without

help, or hope, or sympathy, forced to petty shifts for a
bare subsistence, and a ground-scuffle, for what in happier
days, he threw away. But there were too many examples
of this sort for the expenditure of a useless compassion;
just as the surgeon after a battle, grows case-hardened, from
an excess of objects of pity.

My memory, however, fixes itself on one honored exception,
the noblest of the noble, the best of the good. Old
Major Willis Wormley had come in long before the new era.
He belonged to the old school of Virginians. Nothing could
have torn him from the Virginia he loved, as Jacopi Foscari,
Venice, but the marrying of his eldest daughter, Mary, to a
gentleman of Alabama. The Major was something between,
or made of about equal parts, of Uncle Toby and Mr. Pickwick,
with a slight flavor of Mr. Micawber. He was the
soul of kindness, disinterestedness and hospitality. Love to
every thing that had life in it, burned like a flame in his
large and benignant soul; it flowed over in his countenance,
and glowed through every feature, and moved every muscle
in the frame it animated. The Major lived freely, was
rather corpulent, and had not a lean thing on his plantations;
the negroes; the dogs; the horses; the cattle; the very
chickens, wore an air of corpulent complacency, and bustled
about with a good-humored rotundity. There was more
laughing, singing and whistling at “Hollywood,” than would
have set up a dozen Irish fairs. The Major's wife had, from
a long life of affection, and the practice of the same pursuits,
and the indulgence of the same feelings and tastes, got so

much like him, that she seemed a feminine and modest edition
of himself. Four daughters were all that remained in the
family—two had been married off—and they had no son.
The girls ranged from sixteen to twenty-two, fine, hearty,
whole-souled, wholesome, cheerful lasses, with constitutions
to last, and a flow of spirits like mountain springs—not
beauties, but good housewife girls, whose open countenances,
and neat figures, and rosy cheeks, and laughing eyes,
and frank and cordial manners, made them, at home, abroad,
on horseback or on foot, at the piano or discoursing on the
old English books, or Washington Irving's Sketch Book, a
favorite in the family ever since it was written, as entertaining
and as well calculated to fix solid impressions on the
heart, as any four girls in the country. The only difficulty
was, they were so much alike, that you were put to fault
which to fall in love with. They were all good housewives,
or women, rather. But Mrs. Wormley, or Aunt Wormley,
as we called her, was as far ahead of any other woman in that
way, as could be found this side of the Virginia border. If there
was any thing good in the culinary line that she couldn't make,
I should like to know it. The Major lived on the main stage
road, and if any decently dressed man ever passed the house
after sundown, he escaped by sheer accident. The house
was greatly visited. The Major knew every body, and everybody
near him knew the Major. The stage coach couldn't stop
long, but in the hot summer days, about noon, as the driver tooted
his horn at the top of the red hill, two negro boys stood
opposite the door, with trays of the finest fruit, and a pitcher
of cider for the refreshment of the wayfarers. The Major
himself being on the look-out, with his hands over his eyes,
bowing—as he only could bow—vaguely into the coach, and
looking wistfully, to find among the passengers an acquaintance
whom he could prevail upon to get out and stay a week
with him. There wasn't a poor neighbor to whom the Major
had not been as good as an insurer, without premium, for
his stock, or for his crop; and from the way he rendered
the service, you would think he was the party obliged—as
he was.

This is not, in any country I have ever been in, a moneymaking
business; and the Major, though he always made
good crops, must have broke at it long ago, but for the fortunate
death of a few Aunts, after whom the girls were
named, who, paying their several debts of nature, left the
Major the means to pay his less serious, but still weighty
obligations.

The Major—for a wonder, being a Virginian—had no
partisan politics. He could not have. His heart could not
hold any thing that implied a warfare upon the thoughts or
feelings of others. He voted all the time for his friend, that
is, the candidate living nearest to him, regretting, generally,
that he did not have another vote for the other man.

It would have done a Camanche Indian's heart good to
see all the family together—grand-children and all—of a
winter evening, with a guest or two, to excite sociability a
little—not company enough to embarrass the manifestations
of affection. Such a concordance—as if all hearts were attuned

to the same feeling—the old lady knitting in the
corner—the old man smoking his pipe opposite—both of
their fine faces radiating in the pauses of the laugh, the jest,
or the caress, the infinite satisfaction within.

It was enough to convert an abolitionist, to see the old
Major when he came home from a long journey of two days
to the county town; the negroes running in a string to the
buggy; this one to hold the horse, that one to help the old
man out, and the others to inquire how he was; and to
observe the benignity with which—the kissing of the girls
and the old lady hardly over—he distributed a piece of
calico here, a plug of tobacco there, or a card of town
ginger-bread to the little snow-balls that grinned around
him; what was given being but a small part of the gift,
divested of the kind, cheerful, rollicking way the old fellow
had of giving it.

The Major had given out his autograph (as had almost
every body else) as endorser on three several bills of exchange,
of even tenor and date, and all maturing at or about the
same time. His friend's friend failed to pay as he or his
firm agreed, the friend himself did no better, and the Major,
before he knew any thing at all of his danger, found a writ
served upon him, and was told by his friend that he was
dead broke, and all he could give him was his sympathy;
the which, the Major as gratefully received as if it was a
legal tender and would pay the debt. The Major's friends
advised him he could get clear of it; that notice of
protest not having been sent to the Major's post-office,

released him; but the Major wouldn't hear of such a defence;
he said his understanding was, that he was to pay the debt if
his friend didn't; and to slip out of it by a quibble, was
little better than pleading the gambling act. Besides,
what would the lawyers say? And what would be said by
his old friends in Virginia, when it reached their ears,
that he had plead want of notice, to get clear of a debt,
when every body knew it was the same thing as if he had got
notice. And if this defence were good at law, it would not
be in equity; and if they took it into chancery, it mattered
not what became of the case, the property would all go, and
he never could expect to see the last of it. No, no; he
would pay it, and had as well set about it at once.

The rumor of the Major's condition spread far and wide.
It reached old N. D., “an angel,” whom the Major had
“entertained,” and one of the few that ever travelled that
road. He came, post haste, to see into the affair; saw the
creditor; made him, upon threat of defence, agree to take
half the amount, and discharge the Major; advanced the
money, and took the Major's negroes—except the house-servants—and
put them on his Mississippi plantation to work
out the debt.

The Major's heart pained him at the thought of the
negroes going off; he couldn't witness it; though he consoled
himself with the idea of the discipline and exercise
being good for the health of sundry of them who had contracted
sedentary diseases.

The Major turned his house into a tavern—that is,

changed its name—put up a sign, and three weeks afterwards,
you couldn't have told that any thing had happened.
The family were as happy as ever—the Major never having
put on airs of arrogance in prosperity, felt no humiliation in
adversity; the girls were as cheerful, as bustling, and as
light-hearted as ever, and seemed to think of the duties of
hostesses as mere bagatelles, to enliven the time. The old
Major was as profluent of anecdotes as ever, and never grew
tired of telling the same ones to every new guest; and yet,
the Major's anecdotes were all of Virginia growth, and not
one of them under the legal age of twenty-one. If the Major
had worked his negroes as he had those anccdotes, he would
have been able to pay off the bills of exchange without any
difficulty.

The old lady and the girls laughed at the anecdotes,
though they must have heard them at least a thousand times,
and knew them by heart; for the Major told them without
the variations; and the other friends of the Major laughed
too; indeed, with such an air of thorough benevolence, and
in such a truly social spirit did the old fellow proceed “the
tale to unfold,” that a Cassius like rascal that wouldn't laugh,
whether he saw any thing to laugh at or not, ought to have
been sent to the Penitentiary for life—half of the time to be
spent in solitary confinement.