University of Virginia Library

12. CHAPTER XII.

At the very time when Doctor Waddel was penning his letter to
Captain Thompson, teeming with compliments to William Mitten,
the same William Mitten was writing another to his mother teeming
with phillippies against Doctor Waddel; but as good luck would
have it William's letter was about a month in reaching his mother.
This may seem strange to the reader of the present day, when communications
pass between New York and New Orleans in a few minutes
and letters pass between them by the due course of mail in five
or six days. But the matter is easily explained. In the good old
days of President Jefferson, people were not as much like the Athenians
as they are now—that is, so greedy of news that they could
think of nothing else; and had they been, they would have deemed
it utterly impracticable to send a letter by public conveyance over
sixty miles, in less than two days, excluding stoppages. And if
Dogfight post office lay on the way, and rain fell between times, the
post-boy was commended if he came up to schedule time. But if
Dogfight and Possum-town post offices both lay on the way, and a
storm intervened, three days to sixty miles was considered but a
scant allowance. No mails were carried in Georgia by vehicles, but
the mails between Augusta and Savannah; none in South Carolina,
we believe, but between Charleston and Columbia. All others were
horse mails, commonly in charge of boys under nineteen years of age.
These took their rest at night, and took shelter from rain in the day,
as their health required. The vehicles called stages carried passengers
as well as mails. They, too, stopt for the night, and well for
the passengers that they did; for Waddel's shaking of Brace was a
comfort compared to the shaking and bouncing of passengers in
these vehicles, when going over rooty, rutty, and stony ground.

The facetious Oliver H. Prince, who was toothless in front, upon
being asked how he lost his teeth, replied, “that they were jolted
out by traveling over Georgia roads in a stick sulky.” If this were
true, teeth must have been scarce among the stage passengers between
Augusta and Savannah, sandy as the road was for the most part.[1]

Besides the tardiness of the mails, there was another more serious

obstacle to ready communication between the students and their parents
at a distance. The nearest post office to Willington was, as we
have intimated, at Vienna, six miles from the Academy; and in all
Willington proper or common there was but one horse that could always
be had for hire, and that was Southerland's old Botherem.
Now, for a student to wait the revolution of fifty or sixty Saturdays
before his turn to hire old Botherem rolled round, would have been
distressingly dilatory. Withal, to hire him just to mail a letter, was
“rather fatiguing to the finances” of the youth of this Institution,
which were exceedingly reduced in those days. To walk six miles to
mail a letter, was out of the question. The only alternative left,
and that which was universally adopted, was to take the chance of a
visitor to the village on business, or pleasure, and the chance of hearing
of his intended departure before it occurred, and the chance of
seeing the visitor ad interim, and the chance of his being willing to
bear the letter, and the chance of his not forgetting to mail it after he
took charge of it. It might be, therefore, especially with a new
comer to the school, several weeks before all these contingencies
would result favorably to the writer, and so it was with William.
His letter to his mother made his fare even worse than it was, by a
total omission of wheat biscuit at least once in three weeks, and
sometimes oftener, and butter “semi-occasionally,” and fresh pork
for middling, every now and then; chicken pie twice or thrice a
year; and turkey as often as old Maner[2] --> could kill a wild one, which
happened about once in two years; and venison as often as old Maner
could kill a deer, which happened once in three years. Of course,
master Mitten was not to blame for omitting all these things, for
even biscuit-time had not rolled round when he wrote; but it is due
to the kind-hearted landlord and landlady, that Mitten's report
should receive the just qualifications. After descanting upon his
board and lodging, he proceeded as follows: “All I ever heard about
old Waddel, is true. He whips ten times as much as Mr. Markham
does, and twice as hard, and laughs and chuckles all the time he is
doing it, like it made his heart glad to cut boys' legs all to pieces.

“Last Monday morning, one boy named Ned Brace made him
mad, and he caught him by the throat with both hands, and lifted
him up, and slammed him down, and jerked him all about among
the boys, till I thought he would have killed him; and I wish he
had, for he does nothing but torment me every chance he gets.
Uncle had hardly left here, before he came up to me, and asked me

how long I thought it would be before I would blossom? I told him
I did not know what he meant. `I mean,' says he, `how long will
it be before your shirt begins to peep out of your breeches and
jacket?' Then he tells me I am the prettiest boy he ever laid his
eyes on, and have got the prettiest little hands and feet that he ever
did see, and that it almost makes him cry his eyes out to think that
my pretty hands will have to touch lightwood knots; and that I never
shall do it, for he will get a nice little pair of tongs for me to pick
up the knots with, and a pretty little band-box for me to carry them
in. The other day he squalled out to me, right before all the boys,
`Oh, Bill Mitten, I have found you out, have I? I suspected it as
soon as I saw you, but I thought nobody would do such a thing.'

“`What do you mean?' said I. `What have I done?'

“`Why,' says he, `you have come here in boy's clothes, and you
know very well that you are a girl; and I believe you are the very
girl that looked so hard at me in church last vacation. I knew you
loved me, but I never thought you would follow me here in that
plight. What do you expect me to do? Do you think I would
marry any girl in the world that acts that way?'

“Here, I ordered the monitor to set him down for making game
of me, and telling lies; and I do hope old Waddel will give him
twice the choking and jerking he gave him last Monday. He is
everlastingly tormenting me, and setting all the boys to laughing at
me. * * * * * The boys here are the smartest boys I ever
saw; and they study the hardest of any boys I ever saw; but they
do not seem to like me, and, therefore, I keep away from them, except
a few good boys, who are very kind to me. All their amusements
are running, jumping, wrestling, playing town ball, and bull-pen.
The big boys hunt squirrels, turkeys, &c., of Saturdays, and
'possums and coons of nights. Mr. Waddel does not require them
to study at their boarding-houses, though they almost all do it.”

This was true from 1805 to 1808, but about the latter period, a
shoal of city youths entered the school, who abused their privileges
so much that they were curtailed one by one, until at length the
students were forbidden the use of fire-arms, were required to retire
to rest at 9 o'clock P. M., if not engaged in study beyond that hour,
to consume but fifteen minutes at their meals, and to rise with the
sun every morning. It is a remarkable fact, that, with two or three
exceptions, no student who entered this school between the years
1806 and 1810, from the largest cities of Georgia and South Carolina,
ever became greatly distinguished; while the period including

those dates was the most fruitful of great men of any of the same
length, during the whole time of Doctor Waddel's instructorship.[3]

Master Mitten closed his letter with a most earnest appeal to his
mother “to do all that she could to get his uncle to remove him from
this school.” She forthwith dispatched a messenger to the Captain,
who was soon at her side. He found her weeping, of course. The letter
was handed to him, and he commenced reading it gravely; but
when he reached the complaints against Ned Brace, he began to
laugh, and laughed more and more immoderately as he progressed.

“Brother David,” said his sister, “what do you find in the letter
to amuse you so much?”

“Why, this odd fish, Ned Brace!”

“It seems to me very strange that you can find anything laughable
in such vulgar, unprovoked rudeness as he shows to your
nephew.”

“Oh, Anna, I wouldn't mind these little boyish frolics. There
are always some Braces in a school, whom the boys soon get used to,
and become amused with rather than angry with. As soon as Bill
blossoms, no doubt Ned will let him alone—”

“Brother David, I shall take it as a great favor, if you will not
obtrude the refined Mr. Brace's wit on my ear, how much soever you
may relish it.”

“Well, now, Anna, you have a great deal of the blame of all this
to take to yourself. You have raised your child in a band-box—
Oh, come back Anna! I give you my word and honor I had no allusion
to Brace's fun. I told you not to rig William out in finery for
that school; but you would; and now, he is verifying my prediction.
But do not take such trifles so much to heart. William tells you the
boys there are the smartest and the most studious boys he ever saw;
and Waddel tells you that he is among the most promising of them
all. Now, think of these things, and do not let the fun or folly of
his schoolmates distress you. He seems to have a fine protector from
Brace, at least, in Mr. Waddel. If William does his duty he will
soon command the respect of all his school-fellows, even of Brace

himself. As to his leaving that school, it is out of the question.
There are but two contingencies upon which it can be done. His
sickness is one, and the other, I shall keep to myself, for the present,
at least.”

“Did you not say that you left it optional with him to board at
Mr. Newby's or elsewhere?”

“I did, and so he may. By going to another boarding house, he
will get rid of Brace of nights and mornings, but not of noons. I
have no idea that the fare is any better at the other houses than it is
at Newby's. He is now convenient to the `Academy,' with pleasant
room-mates, acquainted with the boarders, his landlord and landlady,
and, doubtless, better satisfied upon the whole than he will be any
where else. Now, would you put him among strangers, with what
kind of a room-mate you know not, and have him walk from one to
three miles every night and morning, through winter storm, and
summer heat, just to have him a little better fed than he is, and to
remove him from the taunts of one waggish boy?”

Mrs. Mitten pondered over these sayings sadly for a time, and
then rejoined: “Now, brother, you're always ascribing William's
misfortunes to my folly or weakness; tell me candidly, isn't it bad
luck, and nothing but bad luck, that Mr. Waddel's school happens
to fall in the woods? That William should be compelled to endure
such rough fare? And that he should have fallen into the same
boarding house with that tantalizing Ned Brace?”

“Well, as Bill is—that is, as you have made him—I don't know
but that his falling in with Brace may be considered rather unlucky;
but if he had been raised as he should have been, he would probably
have been able to stop Brace's mouth without appealing to Mr.
Waddel. But as he is, why doesn't he give Brace as good as he sends?
If Brace ridicules his fine clothes, why doesn't he ridicule Brace's
coarse and dirty ones! If he admires Bill's pretty face, why does
not Bill laugh at his ugly one! If he calls Bill a pretty girl, why
does not Bill call him an ugly wench! That's the way to meet such
larks as Brace; not to play the girl before him, sure enough.

“As to the fare, I consider that sheer good luck. It's high time
that Bill had the cakes, and the sugar-plums with which you have
been stuffing him all his life purged out of him—”

“Why, brother! where did you learn your coarse language? Not
from your father or mother, I know.”

“I learned it from William's bringing up; the like of which you
never saw in your mother's family, I know. She taught me, God

bless her! to work, to move quick at her bidding, to eat just what
was set before me—and she generally set before me for breakfast, as
you know, a pewter-basin of clabber, and a pone of corn-bread, a pewter-tumbler
of milk or butter-milk, and a pewter plate of fried apples,
'most floating in sop, with three little pieces of clear, curled middling
perched up on top of them, like dried bean-pods. My dinner was
just the same, with an occasional change of meat to squirrel, 'possum,
venison, and very rarely beef. For super, I had wind and water,
and nothing else. When I was thirteen or fourteen years old, I have
no doubt I should have considered Newby's fare perfectly luxurious—
certainly, it is quite as good as I was raised on.”

“You surely don't think of what you are saying, brother. Mother
had both china and crockery ware, and some silver ware; and she
was one of the nicest house-keepers and best pastry-cooks in the
world.”

“Oh, yes, she had a set of china; I remember it well; though I
never got but three fair looks at it in all my life; and I remember
quite as well having got twice three fair licks, when about seven years
old, for trying to climb up to the upper story of the old buffet [4] , to
ascertain what those shining things were that peeped out of the dark
garret every time that mother opened the door of the buffet. How
many pieces there were at this period I do not know; but I know that
just seven (counting a cup and saucer as one) survived the Revolution.
They came in full view before me, when three officers of the
army stopt at our house for a night. The supper: I had not the pleasure
of secing, as mother invited me over to Uncle, John's to spend
the evening; but the breakfast was prodigious! First, there was a
table cloth spread on the table. This was amazing; and I ventured
to foel it, at the expense of a back-handed lick right here! (pointing
to the back of his ear.) Then came forth six crockery plates, laid
bottom upwards, with knives and forks by their sides, which I had
never seen before. Then was placed at the head of the table a large
waiter with something on it covered over with a shining white napkin.

(Here I got lick No. 2, for peeping under the napkin.) There was
set in the centre of the table a papper-box, and a salt-cellar, the last
after the fashion of a morning-glory on the footof a wine-glass. On
either side of said salt-cellar, and equi-distant from it—say nine inches—two
table-spoons of solid silver crossed each other, bowls downward,
and two more lay, the one at father's piate, and the other where
the fried chicken was to be; on mother's side of the first brace, was
placed a little glass bucket, like a doctor's mortar, full of rich yellow
butter, frizzled all over, pine-burr fashion. Now came in a plate of
beautiful biscuit; then an equally beautiful Ioaf of light-bread; then
a plate of new-fashioned corn bread, parceled out by the spoonful,
and baked in the shape that the spoon gave it. Then came in a dish
of nice fried ham—then another of fried chicken, dressed off with
cream, and flour doings, and parsley; then another of broiled chicken,
put up as now, with wings akimbo, and legs booted in its own
skin; then came two bowls of boiled eggs, the one hard and the other
soft—not the bowls, but the eggs. All this accomplished, the napkin
was removed, and oh! what a sight was there! A china tea-pot, six
cups and six saucers, all real china, and all with red pictures on them,
of things I had never seen, and have never since seen! A proud,
dandyish, pot-bellied, narrow-neeked, big-mouthed, thin-skinned silver
cream-pot, strutted out among the china, and turned down its only
lip, at everything it faced, most insultingly. A silver sugar-dish,
shaped like the half of a small muskmelon, stood modestly by the
dapper cream-pot. Mother picks up the little dandy, and turns him
bottom upwards, to make him disgorge six silver tea-spoons that he
had swallowed. The handles appear, but the bowls stick in his
throat. She rights him, gives his seat a pat on the table, and turns
him up again; but he can't deliver. She therefore picks out of him
one spoon at a time, and lays it in a saucer by the side of a cup. She
now orders Silvy to bring in “the little pitcher of cream.” The little
pitcher appears (pure crockery) with half its lip bit off, and the handle
gone, and an ugly crack meandering from the upper foot of the
handle towards the disfigured lip. The little gentleman is carefully
filled from the pitcher, his mouth is wiped clean, and he is set up to
make mouths at me till the company comes. The pitcher goes back
to the dairy privately. Dick is ordered to bring in the coffee, and it
appears in a large in coffee-pot. The tea-pot is filled out of it, and
it is ordered back to the fire in the kitchen. All things are now in
order, and I am directed to inform the company that breakfast is
ready. And now, Mrs. Anna Mitten, you have had a full display of
all the crockery, china, and silver, that your mother possessed from
the year 1773 to the year 1787, when the whole disappeared with
sister Jane, upon her marriage.”

“You surely mistake some things, brother,” said Mrs. Mitten,
smiling, “and, therefore, it is quite likely you mistake the amount and
kind of mother's table-ware. Mother never let us saunter about the
table when she was fixing for company. She never sent you in your
coarse clothing to call American officers to breakfast—”

“Just stop there a moment, sister, and I'll explain matters to your
entire satisfaction. When mother invited me over to uncle's for the
evening, she invited me home again at day break the next morning. I
accepted the invitation, and was prompt to the time, knowing that
ladies always get in a pucker when fixing for company, especially for
`the Quality,' and that it would have been very undutiful in me to
add a scruple's weight to mother's disturbance of mind upon such
occasions. I know I should have reflected upon it with pain, as soon
as the company retired. `Go,' said mother, on meeting me, `to the
spring, and fetch a keeler of water, and take it up in the loft, and
wash and dress yourself, and come down to my room; you will find
your clean clothes on the bag of dried apples.' I did as I was bidden,
and came down in my Sunday suit, and walked into mother's
room. She ran her eyes over me, pulled up my breeches, pulled
down my jacket, spread out my shirt collar, looked for dirt on my
neck and behind my ears, didn't find any, clasped my shoes a little
tighter, combed my head, powdered it, and bade me take my seat
in the dining room. All this was done, doubtless, that I might have
it to say, in after times, that I had seen General Greene, Colonel
Washington, and Colonel Williams; that they had supped and slept,
and breakfasted, at my father's house; and (perchance,) that I had
actually spoken to them, and been spoken to by them. It may be, too,
that the good lady, finding me getting a little boorish, was disposed to
give me some knowledge of nice entertainments and genteel society. If
my improvement was her object—if she designed to inspire me with
military order, she missed it. When the officers first took their seats
at the table, I was deeply interested in their looks and conversation;
but when I saw all the luxuries of the table going under their voracious
appetites with a perfect rush, alarm entirely suffocated admiration.
The vanishing ham, I didn't care so much about; but as piece
after piece of chicken disappeared, and egg after egg, and biscuit after
biscuit, till all were gone but two chicken-necks, one hard egg,
two slices of ham and three-quarters of the loaf of bread, I became

perfectly furious, and a Tory outright; and I said to myself, `if these
are the sort of fellows who are fighting for our liberties, I wish that
Cornwallis and Tarleton (they talked mostly of them) would catch
and hang every rascal of them.'

“The same breakfast set was paraded again, near the same time;
when Colonel Lee supped with us, and never again until Jane's marriage.

“And now, sister, raised as we have been, where did you get your
refinement in love and maternal indulgence from?”

“In your zeal to display all mother's crockery, you put one plate
too many on the table, brother.”

“No, I didn't; Uncle John was expected to breakfast, and prevented
from coming by a shaking ague that very morning.”

Mrs. Mitten had her tears turned to smiles, at least by the Captain's
account of “the old folks at home,” and this was more than he
hoped for, after reading William's letter. He begged his sister to
give William no encouragement to hope for a removal from Waddel's,
promised to write to him himself, and left her.