University of Virginia Library

22. CHAPTER XXII.

Half a day's easy driving transported us from
this scene of primitive simplicity and rudeness to a
beautiful and populous town, whose hotel, spacious
and elegant, and exceedingly well managed, offered
some temptation to an extended stay, after our
homely lodging at the old carpenter's, and sundry
others not much more desirable. These contrasts
are very striking in a new country. The settlement
has been sudden, and very unequal, and you
emerge from the untouched forest, through which
you have been threading your way long enough
almost to forget that there are such things as dwellings
and enclosures, upon highly-cultivated farms
and busy villages. These contrasts we may find
in travelling in any country, but they are more
striking in these newly-settled regions because of
the wild freshness of the aspect of Nature in the
intervening tracts. Immense trees give an air of
solitary grandeur to the landscape, and the absence
of every thing like fence or dividing line of any
sort, inspires ideas of immensity,—of solitude,—

which make the sudden apparition of man and the
traces of his busy hands produce a feeling akin to
surprise.

After we left the woods we came out upon what
had been, a few years since, a small prairie, now
covered with loads of nodding grain, swayed by
every passing breeze into the semblance of golden-brown
billows. There are few more beautiful
sights than a wheat-field full half a mile square,
perfectly level, and unbroken by any thing save
perhaps here and there a fine old tree, promising a
noontide shelter to the reapers. One does not wonder
that such views suggested to the poets of old
the images of laughter and singing.

The prairie-land passed, our road was log-cause-way;
a long straight track through a dead swamp,
—and in this all horrors are expressed, all mud-holes,
all thumps, all impossibility of turning out.
This was a pretty place in which to meet a political
convention! a new kind of locomotive of immeasurable
power, not very easily managed except by
adepts.

It was a formidable apparition certainly; and
we were fain to shrink into infinitesimal nothingness,
and to find a place for our outer wheels on
the sloping ends of the corduroy, even at the risk
of a souse into a sea of black mud; for there was a
deep ditch on either side. The chance that even
our sober steeds would endure the clatter of drums
and fifes, cymbals and triangles,—noisy orators

and still noisier singers,—was a small one; but
there was no retreat, and we remained perched on
our “bad eminence,” until the whole procession
had passed.

There were perhaps thirty vehicles, of which the
smallest were large wagons, with four horses each.
There were gayly painted barges—“canoes,” I
ought to say, in the spirit of the day,—mounted
on wheels, and drawn by unnumbered if not innumerable
steeds, and containing crowds of people;
every man and every horse bearing a banner, inscribed
either with high-sounding patriotism on a
large scale, or with electioneering squibs on a very
small one. There were rectangular countenances,
drawn evidently with the aid of compass and
square, and haloed round with snow-white fleece—
accredited representatives of the much-disfigured
father of our country; then again, faces wherein
a very long drooping nose was surmounted by a
pair of eyes that seemed running into one—awful
travesties of the popular candidate. There were
golden eagles spreading their gorgeous wings amid
the stars, on fields of silk blue as their own heaven,
and raccoons enough (in effigy) to have fed the
whole national eyry, if golden eagles could eat.

A huge ball was rolled along, with great appearance
of effort, by several men, and these actors, by
their shouted watchwords and their various significant
decorations, gave us to understand that the
said ball typified the interests of their favorite. A

miniature log-cabin, the very ditto of those by the
road side, mounted on a platform spacious enough
to carry much of the out-door arrangements of a
settler's primitive establishment, was drawn by a
long string of oxen, the tips of whose horns streamed
with flags and knots of gay ribbon. The emblems
which met the eye every moment embraced all
degrees of ingenuity and absurdity, and the costume
of those who exhibited them was almost equally
various.

There was an Indian, in blue and red paint and
a feather-petticoat, bearing a banner with the inscription,
“Our best brave;” here an impersonation
of Liberty, strait-laced and anxious, in pink ribbons
and black prunello boots. Now a car from which
an orator was setting forth in no inelegant terms
the pretensions of the idol; and anon another bearing
his image, in the act of presenting a horse to a
minister. Under the influence of omnipotent corduroy,
the minister, first tottering like Mr. Stiggins,
abominably knocked down his benefactor, and the
horse sympathetically tumbled on them both and
completed the pyramid.

Such trifling disasters passed unfelt and almost
unnoticed in the enthusiasm of the hour. Beneath
all the little oddities which are almost inseparable
from the getting up of a popular show on so large
a scale with rather incongruous materials, there
was evidently an under current of warm feeling
and genuine interest which makes every thing respectable;

and however one might feel disposed to
laugh at some particulars of the exhibition, there
was an impressiveness about the whole which made
one sensible of “the majesty of the people.” For
my own part I confess that this immense moving
mass of life, with its alternations of warlike music,
animated declamation, and sweet chorus of female
voices, caused the blood to tingle in my veins and
my heart to overflow at my eyes. Sympathy has
wondrous power, and, after waiting till the whole
grotesque train had passed, we drove to the end of
the corduroy, and then turned about, and, with a
host of other gazers, followed the multitude.

The place of destination was a grove whose
sylvan beauty never could be surpassed, even in
Michigan, which is all groves. It was at no great
distance from the road, but it was in all the wildness
of nature, and looked as if the axe had never
yet profaned its hallowed aisles. Here, in the
midst of primeval solitude and silence, a great stage
had been hastily erected, and, facing it, a wide amphitheatre
of rough benches,—the whole roofed
in by noble oaks and maples, with “unpierced
shade.”

Rapidly, and with a silence and regularity which
bespoke thorough drilling, did the immense assemblage
dispose itself appropriately over the broad
area,—the orators and officials taking their places
upon the platform, where the banners were planted
and arranged in very effective drapery,—the ladies

on the front seats next the music, and the
common world on the remaining benches.

The Marseillois was now performed—with
verses by a native poet of course,—and the entire
company joined in the chorus with an enthusiasm
which imparted a stentorian energy to their “most
sweet voices.” A marshal now announced that a
clergyman present would “make a prayer,” and
the multitude stood, with heads uncovered, and in
a throbbing silence, till it was finished. Then the
band played and the ladies sang “Hail, Columbia,”
and again the leafy canopy quivered to the excitement
of the hour. Then came the speeches, blazing
with patriotism, and touching, in their wide
scope, on every disputed and disputable point in
politics. And here I was much amused with the
discreet timing of the cheers, which was performed
by a young gentleman furnished with a flag which
he waved most graciously, bowing at every shout,
as if to thank the “good friends, kind friends,
sweet friends,” who took his hints in such good
part.

The “sentiments” were drank at intervals, in
very innocent liquids; so that if there was truth in
the rapture of the hour, it was not wine that
brought it out. Every body seemed to feel, to
the heart's core, all the privileges, advantages,
rights, grievances, and hopes, on which the chosen
orators harangued so warmly, and I doubt not that

vows were made that day which told afterwards
for good or evil, in opinion and action.

All this time the sun had been trying his best to
look in upon the animated scene, and although
his vertical rays scarce succeeded in checkering
here and there a portion of the well-trodden green
sward, yet the atmosphere confessed his power so
unreservedly, that some of the ladies began to be
very restless, and some even threatened an interlude
of fainting-fits. One who sat near the stage
with a child in her lap, insisted upon having the
glass of water which had been placed on a table for
the speaker handed down for the use of her baby,
returning the remnant very coolly,—a mixed crystal,
to say the least.

So it was judged best to adjourn for refreshment;
and on the announcement, all was renewed animation
in a moment. The band played, the marshals
shouted, the banners waved, the ladies fluttered,—and
the result of all was a very long
procession on foot, in which “woman,” as the
toasts have it, bore a conspicuous part;—each fair
hand carrying a bough, which our imaginations
were bound to convert into palm or laurel, (I spare
thee “Birnam wood,” O reader!) and every swanlike
throat trilling with most patriotic sentiments,
married to popular airs, and stirring every heart as
with the sound of a trumpet.

The long array passed over an open glade where

the sun's rays were of the strongest, but this served
only to enhance the delicious coolness of the shade
which soon enveloped us—a shade, to form which,
even the dense woods had been aided by great
awnings, and bowers within bowers formed of
immense branches and thick-leaved vines.

These varied and far-reaching canopies, adorned
with wreaths of wild flowers and gay flags with
emblematic devices, formed a splendid dining-hall,
within whose circuit all the rural luxuries that the
most laborious search could procure had been displayed
with a taste which, though it might not
shine in more cultivated regions, certainly did honor
to the Western wilderness. Huge venison pasties,
such as (if we may believe veracious chroniclers)
kings have ere now revelled in; wild turkeys prodigious
as any tame ones to be found at the Sublime
Porte; roast pigs delicate and crisp as those which
run about the land of Cokaigne, crying, “Who'll
eat me?” chickens in all attitudes, and pork under
all disguises;—these were among the more solid
and noticeable items of good cheer. But to give
even a passing glance at the feminine contributions
belonging to the department of the dessert, and in
the preparation of which all the female skill of the
county had been, as it were, brought to a focus,—
this were a hopeless task, and especially to one who
could not even guess at the names of half the recondite
compositions that adorned the “lily lawn.”

Here and there might be observed something in

contrast to the general good taste; such as an
unfortunate stag, roasted (or half roasted) whole,
and standing, antlers and all, as if alive; only, alas!
“upon another footing now!” propped in his erect
posture by flower-wreathed sticks, and, in this
position, sliced and eaten, after a fashion which
ought to have sickened any but Abyssinians.

The immortal johnny-cake figured under every
conceivable form,—round and square, rhomboid and
parallelopipedon—stuck with roses, or basted with
gravy,—johnny-cake was every where—“she was
the universe.” Hard cider there was none,—an
inevitable omission; for either it had been all
consumed at previous conventions, or the apple-trees
of the neighborhood belonged to the opposite
party, and there was none to be had. The song of
“Drink to me only with thine eyes” might have
been appropriate as suggesting some consolation in
this emergency, but I believe the devotees pledged
each other in the pure element—indeed I should
judge it must have been so, from the exceeding
order and good-humor of the day.

The zest with which the people, individually
and collectively, attacked the goodly array, would
have silenced the veriest croaker on the subject of
Western agues.

Talk of city feasts! Your true alderman never
earns an all-sanctifying appetite by rising three
hours before day, and walking ten or twenty miles
without tasting food beyond a crust of bread. He

can never know the true gusto of roast pig, far less
of johnny-cake. When he sits down at six to his
turtle he may indeed have eaten “nothing to signify,”
since lunch; but that very lunch and its
unconsidered sequence have stolen away all the
piquancy from his dinner, and he might rationally,
in his character of gourmet, envy the hardy backwoodsman
his simplest cheer, with the accompaniment
of his ordinary and sometimes rather importunate
appetite. On this especial occasion, there
was not only the well-earned relish, but the choicest
opportunity for its gratification, and the result must
be left to the imagination of the reader.

* * * * * *

What changes may be wrought in one little
hour! Where be now the shining roast—the delicate
boiled—the patés—the pyramids—the temples—the
universal johnny-cake?

The “banquet hall deserted,”—the theatre with
its latest lamp expiring - the once trim deck after
a sharply contested action,—these are sad images;
but such a table after all are satisfied save a few
voracious stragglers!

* * * * * *

We waited not to hear the concluding address.
It may have been a good one,—I dare say it was,
—but I fear it fell upon dull ears. We hastened
onward, passed the log-causeway again, and reached

the fine hotel at—, two hours before the procession
reëntered the town. We retired early after
the fatigues of the day, forgetting that there might
be such a thing as a ball-room at—House.
Fatal error! Those who had marched, and shouted,
and sung, and eaten, in honor of their far-distant
favorite, thought not the rites complete until they
had expended the remainder of their energies in
dancing. Violins squeaked without stint or mercy,
and till gray dawn did the house quiver in unison
with the superhuman efforts of patriotic heels and
elbows.