 | Clovernook, or, Recollections of our
neighborhood in the West |  |
A RELIC OF THE ANCIENT DAYS.
In the graveyard of Clovernook—for it is a simple rural
burial place without any poetic name, such as Shade Land, or
Vale of Rest—there is a high grass-grown mound, and on its
plain marble slab is inscribed the date of the birth and death
of one of our revolutionary sires. The epitaph was dictated by
himself, and though concise and unpretending, for the deceased
was a decided and punctilious democrat, fails not to mention
that he enlisted in the regular service at the age of seventeen,
and remained in it till the conclusion of the war. Not a little
proud of this distinction was uncle Dale, and he could not bear
that his friends and relations should have no memorial of it
when his voice should be for ever silent. I fancy too, that he
was fain to think the wearied traveller would sometimes stop
beneath the shadow of the great tree that is above him, and,
reading the inscription, feel that he gazed on the repository of
no common dust. Close beside the broad high swell of turf
beneath which he sleeps, there is a shorter and lower one, covered
with wild roses, but without any headstone at all.
The leaves of ten autumns have fallen bright about these
graves, lodging in the brier vines, and filling the hollow that is
between them, and then fading, and withering to dryness, and
blowing away on the wind, so that neither children, nor children's
children come any longer with tears, but occasionally the
long grass is trodden down about them by the one or the other,
as all his benevolent and generous qualities are talked over
very calmly, and his self-sacrifices, and heroic actions, proudly
remembered. Sometimes the roses are gathered from the
larger.
Uncle Dale and three brothers were among the pioneer
settlers of Clovernook; so that many families in that now
flourishing hamlet, amongst which our own is one, are either
intimately or remotely connected with him. That I call him
“uncle Dale,” does not precisely indicate our relationship, as
many young persons who knew and loved him, were suffered
by his genial and sunny disposition to approach him thus
familiarly.
As I first remember him, he seemed to me a very old man,
but to childhood, the full prime of life seems a boundary that
we may scarcely ever reach, and between us and white hairs
there is a longer time than we can imagine.
Let me call up his picture: but I fear I shall not be able to
make you see him as I see him, for it is one of the most palpable
of my memories, and my pencil, which is not at all graphic,
can never delineate him as I see him through the years.
On the ivy-shaded porch to the west of our cottage, I have got
on his knees on many a summer afternoon, listening to stories
of sudden attacks and defences, defeats and victories, strange
encounters with wild beasts, huge lights made by prairie fires,
when the buffalo herds, as they cantered before it, shook the
earth, making a rumbling sound like that of an earthquake.
Often I have heard him tell of the first-night passed in the
wilderness, where afterward was reared his cabin. A fire was
kindled against the trunk of a giant tree, the shelving bark of
which was soon a-blaze to its top, and the red flames creeping
along the numerous boughs, which together with the live
sparkles dropping below or sweeping in bright trains across the
winds, illumined all the forest round about. There he and his
brothers proposed to cast their lines; it could not have seemed
a very pleasant place to them then, for they had no bed but a
heap of leaves, and their covering against the cold was very
scant. They did not dare to sleep without a sentinel, for the
fear of wild beasts, and of still wilder savages. Once or twice
indeed they saw the glitter of hungry eyes through the underbrush,
but whether of man or beast, they could not precisely
close at hand, they lay awake, or sat, it may be, the watches
through, telling stories to the long-drawn howl of the wolf and
the churlish growl of the panther.
The two pairs of young oxen, thin and jaded, which brought
over the mountains and across the long reach of woods all their
earthly effects, were turned loose to graze on reaching their
destination. The spot had been previously selected, but darkness
was over all the world when they arrived, and the owls
hooting discordantly to the faint moonlight.
A little clump of walnut trees, crowning the eminence near
which the proposed cabin was to be erected, had been girdled by
way of setting a mark on the premises, and the road leading to
the neighboring fort wound around them in a way not to be
mistaken. By this means alone the spot was recognised—the
general aspects of a vast waste of wilderness being very similar,
and such lines of division as existed, apparent only to the practised
eye of the hunter.
The oxen were very tired, and it was not supposed that they
would stray far from the camp, but, after browsing a little while
from the nearest young trees, lie down in the leaves and sleep.
For a time they were heard treading the underbrush, and
breaking with their teeth the green limbs of the beech, or the
tenderer sprays of the elm, but by and by they sank down, and
nothing was heard but their heavy breathing.
In the morning, however, one of them was gone, leaving his
mate useless, and though vigilant search was made in all directions,
no traces of him were ever discovered.
I could never imagine uncle Dale a vigorous young man,
felling trees, building houses, and killing wild beasts. But
building houses, in those days, was a trifling matter, requiring
only the bringing together of a few straight saplings, the mixing
of a little clay mortar, (which in their case the old ox did
for them), and the hewing of a few strong men for eight and
twenty hours or so. I could think of him only an old man with
thin white hairs, and hands crossed and checked with full blue
veins, and a complexion of that pallid even hue which seems to
indicate decay of the physical energies, but which, in his case,
life, and young at heart when three score years admonished
him of the limits of human life: young at heart, and a lover of
youth, as will be presently shown in the fact of his taking to
himself at that ripe age a youthful wife.
He was not for the fashion of these days, but in dress and
manner belonged to his own generation. Half his character
was in his dress; his predilection for the buff and blue remained
always, and his last request was, that no paler hue
might be substituted when the battle of life should be over,
and peace concluded with the last enemy. The antique style
of his apparel, never ceased to interest and amuse me: the
knot of ribbon which ornamented his cocked hat, and the silver
knee and shoe buckles, to say nothing of the bright buttons
adorning the blue coat, (the same set were used during half his
life) and the buff breeches, and the great white silk pockethandkerchief
with its border of eagles, served to fill all little
vacuities of thought, when, resting his check on the gold head of
his curiously carved cane, he forgot that he had broken off in
the middle of a story.
Sometimes on such occasions I would timidly put my hand
in his pocket, as if to steal his purse, and so recall him from
his reverie. This purse was of the museum character, having
been wrought long before by an Indian girl, named Willow-Flower,
beautiful, as uncle Dale said, and so named for her exceeding
grace. She had first come to his cabin as a spy, and
under pretence of offering roots for sale, adroitly possessed herself
of articles, not easily replaced in those times, and contrived
also to leave poison in the way of Warwick, the faithful watch-dog.
The poor brute refused food, drooped, and whined sorrowful
and monotonous for a day or two, and then, after licking
the hand of his master, went from the cabin and his kennel
altogether, and digging away the heavy masses of leaves and
bits of sticks in an obscure part of the woods, made his own
grave.
But Willow-Flower became afterwards penitent, and Warwick
had layers of bright moss above him in a circle of crimson
phlox. However, the penitence came not without softening
wool for the linings of moccasins—for uncle Dale, having perceived
the wicked disposition of the maiden, forthwith journeyed
to Fort Washington, ten full miles, for the purchase of
trinkets, to offer her by way of antidote. The wool was of his
own flock, and in all the west, certainly he believed there was
none so white or fine. The presents were opportune. Willow-Flower
had visited the cabin during the absence of uncle Dale
and, as appeared by her subsequent confession, not thinking herself
equal to a wholesale robbery, conveyed to the lodge of her
kindred such intelligence that depredation was resolved on for
the ensuing night. It was near midnight when uncle Dale, who
had returned at twilight, tired and cold, for it was winter, was
awakened from sleep by a slight noise at the door. Rising
partly up, he threw the smouldering embers together, for he
slept on a bed of skins before the hearth—and the low room
was soon aglow with light. His apprehensions were presently
confirmed, not only by the jarring sound caused by footsteps
close by, but by the sudden darkening of the small uncurtained
window, as with the quick opening of some great black wing.
The nature, if not the extent, of the danger, was at once comprehended.
Willow-Flower had brought some of her tribe for
evil purposes; and it was her black tresses which the gust swept
across the window, as she listened for some sound from within.
Any attempt at defence was useless; there might be chances
of escape or secretion, but of these uncle Dale would not avail
himself; and, withdrawing from the reach of their arrows, if
aimed through the pane, he dressed hurriedly, and boldly opened
the door. This unexpected movement caused some confusion
among the invaders, six or seven in number, in a close group
near by, and one or two clubs were suddenly raised. “Willow-Flower—pretty
Willow-Flower!” called uncle Dale, for
she had learned of the settlers to understand English, and to
speak it brokenly. He then told her he had dreamed she was
come, and was glad to find it was not only true, but that she
had also brought her brothers: he had that day bought a present
for her, which he begged she would come in and accept. A
glimpse of the red handkerchiefs completed the conquest; and
which cracked and blazed cheerily in the wide, stone fire-place,
partaking of the bread and meat which uncle Dale set before
them; and, it may be, of a flagon of whiskey also, though as
to that I am not perfectly informed. At daybreak, they harm
lessly returned, in real or apparent merriment, bearing the
fleece of wool and the red kerchiefs, uncle Dale having suffered
in nothing, but instead, having gained six or seven friends.
When Willow-Flower came again, her hair was bound with
hemlock, in token of sorrow, and she led by the birchen collar
a huge black dog of a wolfish aspect, which, alive and strong,
she said was better than the dead Warwick, who would never
growl though a thousand enemies were about the place. She
came often, thereafter, and the purse, knitted in part of her
own black tresses, in part of the golden fibres of some bark
from the forest, was one of her many tokens of friendliness.
How the pieces of gold, with convenient varieties of silver coin,
chanced always to be in this purse, I never questioned, and now
I am certainly unable to divine, for uncle Dale was not a-worker,
nor a prudent economist or wise manager. True, the hundreds
of acres of the wild land at the time I refer to, was become a
beautiful and richly cultivated farm, within six miles of which,
Fort Washington had extended itself, until the country called
her, for her beauty, the Queen of the West; and the rude cabin,
with the door broken off, and the window fallen away, was
standing still, thick woods all about it, for the county road had
not been made on the original track over which the oxen brought
uncle Dale, and consequently the old house was left on the
farthest verge of the lands; and, with something of the feeling
one might cherish for a first love, its projector and builder would
never hear of its removal. It was as much neglected also as
one's first love becomes sometimes: between the planks of the
floor the grass grew up; and neither Willow-Flower nor any
of her tribe came there any longer.
Many the stories, like this, told to children by the old men of
the west. Where else and when, in all the various history of
the world, have its forest-invading founders been suffered to see
the meridian glories of a great empire, and in the midst of ancient-states,
were there first planted by their own hands! It is as if the
curious patrician had been suffered to drive along the Tiber
from mightiest Rome's long streets of collonaded palaces, to
question the still living Silvia of the traditions of kindness by
Faustulus to her wolf-nursed children.
| Clovernook, or, Recollections of our
neighborhood in the West | |