University of Virginia Library

2. CHAPTER II.

The misery of the young and the beautiful is
at all times infectious. Few young persons can
withhold sympathy in such a case,—especially if
the person thus afflicted be unmarried—of the other
sex—and near one's own age.

Victor Chevillere could not expel from his imagination
the image of the fair stranger. Again
and again did he essay to join Lamar in his light
and sprightly conversation, as they, on the day
after the one recorded in the last chapter, pursued
their journey along the noble turnpike between
Fredericktown and Baltimore. The same profound
revery would steal upon him, and abide
until broken by the merry peals of Lamar's peculiarly
loud and joyous laughter, at the new mood
which seemed to have visited the former. When
a young person first begins to experience these
abstracted moods, there is nothing, perhaps, that
sounds more harsh and startling to his senses, than
the mirthful voice of his best friend. He looks up
as one would naturally look at any unseemly or
boisterous conduct at a funeral. He seems to
gaze and wonder, for the first time, that all things
and all men are jogging on at their usual gait.
Thus were things moving upon the Fredericktown

turnpike: Lamar riding forty or fifty paces in front,
singing away the blue devils; Chevillere in the
centre, moody and silent; and old Cato, stately as
a statue on horseback, bringing up the rear.

From hearing sundry merry peals of laughter
from Lamar's quarter, Chevillere was induced at
length to forego his own society for a moment, to
see what new subject his Quixotic friend had found
for such unusual merriment; and a subject he had
indeed found in the shape of a tall Kentuckian.
The name of the stranger, it seems, was Montgomery
Damon. He was six feet high, with broad
shoulders, full, projecting chest, light hair and complexion,
and a countenance that was upon the first
blush an index to a mind full of quaint, rude, and
wild humour. His dress was any thing but fashionable;
he wore a large, two-story hat, with a
bandana handkerchief hanging out in front, partly
over his forehead, as if to protect it from the great
weight of his castor. His coat and pantaloons
were of home-made cotton and woollen jeans, and
he carried in his hand a warlike riding-whip, loaded
with lead, and mounted with silver, with which,
now and then, he gave emphasis to his words, by
an unexpected and sonorous crack.

Our Kentuckian was no quiet man; but, like most
of his race, bold, talkative, and exceedingly democratic
in all his notions; feeling as much pride in
his occupation of drover, as if he had been a senator
in Congress from his own “Kentuck,” as he emphatically
called it. He was a politician, too, inasmuch

as he despised tories, as he called the federalists,
approved of the late war, and had a most
venomous hatred against Indians, of whatever
tribe or nation. We shall break into their dialogue
at the point at which Victor became a
listener.

“How did it happen,” said Lamar, “that you
did not join the army either of the north or south,
when your heart seems to have been so entirely
with them?”

“O! as to jineen the army to the north,” said
Damon, “I was afraid the blasted tories would sell
me to the British, me and my messmates, like old
Hull, the infernal old traitor, sold his men for so
much a head, jist as I sell my hogs. As to t'other
business, down yonder, under Old Hickory, I
reckon I did take a hand or so aginst the bloody
Injins.”

“You prefer a fight with Indians, then, to one
with white men.”

“To be sure I do; I think no more of taking
my jack-knife, and unbuttonin the collar of a Creek
Injin, than I would of takin the jacket off a good
fat bell-wether, or mout-be a yerlin calf. Old
Hickory's the boy to sculp the bloody creters; he's
the boy to walk into their bread-baskets; and Dick
Johnston ain't far behind him, I can tell you,
stranger; he's the chap what plumped a bullet
right into old Tecumseh's bagpipes. Let him alone
for stoppin their war-whoops.”

“You were a rifleman, I suppose,” said Lamar.

“Right agin, stranger. Give me a rifle for ever;
they never spiles meat, though, as one may say,
Injin's meat ain't as good as blue-lick buck's; but
for all that, it's a pity to make bunglin work of a
neat job; besides, your smooth bores waste a
deal of powder and lead upon the outlandish
creters.”

“Were you ever wounded?” asked Lamar.

“Yes! don't you see this here hare-lip to my
right eye? Well! that was jist the corner of an
Injin's hatchet. Bob Wiley jist knocked up his arm
in time to save me for another whet at the varmints;
if so mout be that we ever has another
brush with 'em, and Bob goes out agin, maybe I
may do him a good turn yet; he's what I call a
tear down sneezer (crack went the whip). He's
got no more fear among the Injins than a wild cat
in a weasel's nest; O! it would have done your
heart good to see him jist lie down behind an old
log, and watch for one of the varmint's heads bobbin
up and down like a muskovy drake in a barn
yard, and as sure as you saw the fire at the muzzle
of his gun, so sure he knocked the creter's hind
sights out. You see he always took 'em on the
bob, jist as you would shoot a divin bird, and that's
what I always called taking the bread out of the
creter's mouth, for he was watchin for the same
chance.”

“Did you scalp the slain?” said Lamar.

“No!” replied Damon, “we had plenty of
friendly Injins to do that, and it used to make me

laugh to see the yallow raskals sculpin their kin;
that's what I call dog eat dog.”

“Do you think an Indian has a soul?” said
Lamar.

“Ha! ha! ha!” roared the Kentuckian, giving
a crack of unusual emphasis, “that's what I call a
stumper; but as you're no missionary, I 'spose I'll
tell you. I knows some dumb brutes—here's this
Pete Ironsides that I'm ridin on, has more of a
Christian soul in him than any leather-skin between
Missouri and Red River. Why! stranger! what's
an Injin good for, more nor a wild cat? You
can't tame ne'er a one of 'em.”

“But those missionaries you spoke of, don't you
think they will civilize, if not Christianize them?”

“Ha! ha! ha!” shouted Damon, with another
loud crack, and rolling a huge quid of tobacco
to the opposite side of his mouth, “they might as
well mount the trees and preach to the 'coons
and tree-frogs; one of your real psalm-singers
mout tree a coon at it, but hang me if he can ever
put the pluck of a white man under a yellow jacket.
Catch a weasel asleep or a fox at a foot race. I
rather suspicion, stranger, that I've seen more
Injins than your missionaries, and I'll tell you the
way to tame 'em;—slit their windpipes and hamstring
'em.”

“Perhaps you are an enemy to religion, or prejudiced
against the missionaries?”

“No! no! stranger, no! I likes religion well
enough of a Sunday; but hang me if I should not

die of laughin to see 'em layin it down to the red-skins.
I'd as soon think of going into my horse
stable and preachin to the dumb brutes. Old Pete
here knows more now than many an Injin, and he's
got more soul than some Yankees that mout be
named; but come, stranger, here's a public house,
let's go in and cut the phlegm.”

“Agreed,” said Lamar, “but it must be at my
expense.”

“Well,” said Damon, “we'll not quarrel about
that;” and turning to Victor, “Stranger, won't
you join us in a glass of tight?”

“No! I thank you,” said Chevillere, “but I will
look on while you and my friend drink to the better
acquaintance of us all.”

After the parties had refreshed themselves and
their horses, and remounted, the conversation was
resumed. “Well now,” said the Kentuckian, addressing
Victor, “I wish I may be contwisted if
you ain't one of the queerest men, to come from the
Carolinas, I have clapped eyes on this many a
day. You don't chaw tobacco, and you don't
drink nothin; smash my apple-cart if I can see
into it.”

“I am one of those that don't believe in the
happy effects of either brandy or tobacco,” replied
Chevillere.

“Then you are off the trail for once in your life,
stranger, for I take tobacco to be one of God's
mercies to the poor. Whether it came by a rigular
dispensation of providence (as our parson used

to say), or in a natural way, I can't tell; but hang
me, if when I gets a quid of the real Kentuck twist
or Maryland kite-foot into my mouth, if I ain't as
proud a man as the grand Turk himself. It drives
away the solemncholies, and makes a fellow feel
so good-natured, and so comfortable; it turns the
shillings in his pocket into dollars, and his wrath
into fun and deviltry. Let them talk about tobacco
as they choose among the fine gals, and at their
theatres, and balls, and cotillions, and all them sort
of things; but let one of 'em git twenty miles deep
into a Kentuck forest, and then see if a chew of
the stuff ain't good for company and comfort.”

“But you did not tell me,” resumed Lamar,
“whether you had ever shot at a white man?”

“No! no! I never did; and I don't know that
I ever will. I think I should feel a leetle particlar,
at standin up and shooting at a real Christian man,
with flesh and blood like you and me. You see,
when we boys of the long guns shoot, we don't
turn our heads away and pull trigger in a world
of smoke, so that nobody can tell where the lead
goes; we look right into the white of a fellow's
eye, and can most always tell which side of his
nose the ball went, and you see that would be but
a slayin and skinnen business among white people;
but as to shootin and sculpin Injins, that's a thing
there is no bones made about, because out on the
frontiers at the west, if a man should stand addlin
his brains about the right and the wrong of the thing,
the red devils would just knock them out to settle

the matter, and sculp him for his pains into the bargain.
Shooting real Christian men's quite another
thing. It's what I ha'nt tried yet; but when we
Kentuck boys gits at it, it won't all end like a logrollin,
with one or two broken shins and a black
eye. But I'm told the Yankees always sings a
psalm before they go to battle. Now, according
to my notion, a chap would make a blue fist of
takin a dead aim through double sights, with the
butt end of a psalm in his guzzle.”

“Some person must have told you that as a
joke,” said Lamar.

“No, no, I believe it, because we had just such
a fellow once in our neighbourhood—a Yankee
schoolmaster—and we took him out a deer-driving
two or three times, and he was always singing a
psalm at his stand. He spoilt the fun, confound
him! Hang me if I didn't always think the fellow
was afraid to stand in the woods by himself without
it. I went to his singin school of Saturday
nights, too; but I never had a turn that way. All
the master could do, he could'nt keep me on the
trail,—I was for ever slipping into Yankee Doodle;
you see, every once in a while, the tune would take
a quick turn, like one I knowed afore, so I used to
blaze away at it with the best of 'em, but the same
old Yankee Doodle always turned up at the end.
But the worst of it was, the infernal Yankee spoiled
all the music I ever had in me; when I come out
of the school, I thought the gals at home would
have killed themselves laughin' at me. They said

I ground up Yankee Doodle and Old Hundred
together, all in a hodge-podge, so I never sings to
no one now but the dumb brutes in the stable,
when they gits melancholy of a rainy day. Old
Pete here raises his ears, and begins to snort the
minute I raises a tune.”

“Your singing-master was, like his scholar, an
original.”

“An original! When he come to them parts,
he drove what we call a Yankee cart, half wagon
and half carriage, full of all sorts of odds and ends;
when he had sold them out, he sold his horse and
cart too, and then turned in to keepin a little old-field
school; and over and above this, he opened a
Saturday night singin-school,—and I reckon we
had rare times with the gals there. At last, when
the feller had got considerable ahead, the word
came out that he was studyin to be a doctor; and
sure enough, in a few months, he sold out the school
for so much a head, just like we sell our hogs; then
off the Yankee starts to git made a doctor of; and
hang me if ever I could see into that business.
How they can turn a pedlar into a doctor in four
months, is a leetle jist over my head. It's true
enough they works a mighty change in the chaps
in that time. Our Yankee went off, as well-behaved
and as down-faced a chap as you would wish to
see in a hundred, and wore home-made clothes like
mine; but when he had staid his four months out,
and 'most everybody had forgot him, one day as
I was leanen up against one of the poplar trees in

the little town, I saw a sign goin up on the side of
a house, with Doctor Gun in large letters. I'll
take my Bible oath, when I saw the thing, I thought
I should have broke a blood-vessel. Howsomever,
I strained'em down, till an old woman would have
sworn I had the high-strikes, with a knot o' wind
in my guzzle. But I quieted the devil in me, and
then I slipped slyly over the street, behind where
the doctor was standing with his new suit of black;
one hand stuck in his side, and the other holding
an ivory-headed stick up to his mouth in the most
knowing fashion, I tell you. I stole up behind
him, and bawled out in his ear, as loud as I could
yell, `faw—sol—law—me.' Oh! my grandmother!
what a smashin rage he flew into; he shook his
cane—he walked backwards and forwards—and
didn't he make the tobacco juice fly? I rather
reckon, if I hadn't had so many inches, he'd have
been into my meat; but the fun of it all was, the
feller had foreswore his mother tongue; dash me
if he could talk a word of common lingo, much less
sing psalms and hymns by note; he rattled off
words as long as my arm, and as fast as a windmill.
Some of the old knowing ones says they've
got some kind of a mill, like these little hand-organs,
and that chops it out to the chaps eny
night and morning, pretty much as I chop straw to
my horses; but I'm going in to see that doctor-factory,
when I git to Philadelphia, if they don't
charge a feller more nor half a dollar a head.”

“I hope we shall travel together to Philadelphia,”

said Lamar; “and if so, I will introduce you into
the establishment, free of expense.”

“Thank you, sir, thank you,” said the Kentuckian;
“but I'm rather inclined to think that we
will hardly meet again after to-day; 'cause, you
see, I'm 'bliged to do a might of business in Baltimore
afore I can go on. After that, then I can
go on as I please; as I'm only goin to see the
world abit, afore I settle down for life.”

“But,” said Lamar, “if you will call at Barnum's,
and leave word what day you will set out, I will
see that we travel together, for I will suit my time
to yours; and I would advise you to send your
horse a short distance into the country, both for the
sake of convenience and economy.”

“What! part with old Pete here! Bless my
soul, stranger! he would go into a gallopin consumption!
or die of the solemncholies, if a rainy
spell should come on, and he and I couldn't have a
dish of chat together; and then I shouldn't know
no more what to do in one of your coaches nor a
cow with a side-pocket.”

“My word for it,” replied Victor, “you would
soon enjoy yourself inside of a stage-coach. Come,
let us make a bargain. I will engage to have your
horse well taken care of in the country, and provide
him with a groom that will soon learn his
ways, and be able to cheer him up when he gets
low-spirited.”

“Yes, do!” said Lamar, jocosely; “we are
anxious to have your company during our visit to

the cities. We are from Carolina, and you are
from Kentuck; and after you get through with
your business, we shall all be on the same errand
—pleasure and improvement.”

“And a wild-goose chase it's like to be, I'm
afraid; especially if I'm to be of your mess. But
suppose you should meet with some fine lady
acquaintances, what, in the name of old Sam, would
you do with me? I should be like a fifth wheel to
a wagon.”

“Were you never in the company of fine ladies?”
asked Chevillere.

“Yes! and flummuck me if ever I want to be
so fixed again; for there I sat with my feet drawn
straight under my knees, heads up, and hands
laid close along my legs, like a new recruit on
drill, or a horse in the stocks; and, twist me, if I
didn't feel as if I was about to be nicked. The
whole company stared at me as if I had come
without an invite; and I swear I thought my arms
had grown a foot longer, for I couldn't get my
hands in no sort of a comfortable fix—first I tried
them on my lap; there they looked like goin to
prayers, or as if I was tied in that way; then I
slung'em down by my side, and they looked like
two weights to a clock; and then I wanted to cross
my legs, and I tried that, but my leg stuck out like
a pump handle; then my head stuck up through a
glazed shirt-collar, like a pig in a yoke; then I
wanted to spit, but the floor looked so fine, that I
would as soon have thought of spittin on the window;

and then to fix me out and out, they asked us
all to sit down to dinner! Well, things went on
smooth enough for a while, till we had got through
one whet at it. Then a blasted imp of a nigger come
to me first with a waiter of little bowls full of something,
and a parcel of towels slung over his arm;
so I clapped one of the bowls to my head, and
drank it down at a swallow. Now, stranger, what
do you think was in it?”

“Punch, I suppose,” said Lamar, laughing; “or
perhaps apple toddy.”

“So I thought, and so would anybody, as dry as
I was, and that wanted something to wash down
the fainty stuffs I had been layin in; but no! it
was warm water! Yes! you may laugh! but it
was clean warm water. The others dipped their
fingers into the bowls, and wiped them on the
towels as well as they could for gigglin; but it
was all the fault of that pampered nigger, in bringin
it to me first. As soon as I catched his eye, I gin
him a wink, as much as to let him know that if ever
I caught him on my trail, I would wipe him down
with a hickory towel.”

“But I suppose you enjoyed yourself highly before
it was all over?” said Chevillere.

“When it was all over, I was glad enough; I
jumped and capered like a school-boy at the first
of the holydays.”

“Have you never been invited out since?”
asked Lamar.

“O yes, often,” said Damon; “but you don't

catch a weasel asleep again. I like to give a joke,
and take a joke; but then the joke was all on one
side. If I can take a hand in the laugh, I don't care
whether a person laughs at me, or with me.”

“But what say you?” said Chevillere; “shall
we send your horse to the country with ours?”

“Why! as you gentlemen seem to speak me so
fair, and to know the world so well, I don't care if
I do send old Pete out to board awhile. I shouldn't
be surprised though if he should give me up for
lost, and fret himself to death. But I must see the
man that goes to the country with them; 'cause
Pete couldn't bear shabby talk; he's what I call a
leetle particular in his company for a dumb brute.”

“The man rides behind us,” said Chevillere,
“who will perform that duty. Cato! this gentleman
wishes to speak to you.”

“Did you call, your honour?”

“Yes. Cato! Mr. Damon wishes to give you
some charges about his horse, which you are to
take into the country with ours.”

“Cato,” said Damon, “tell the farmer who takes
the horses, that old Pete Ironsides here has been
used to good company, and that he has been treated
more like a Christian nor a horse, and that I wish
him indulged in his old ways.”

During this harangue, Cato cast sundry glances
from his master to the speaker, as if to ascertain
whether he was in earnest, or only playing off one
of those freaks in which the young men had so often
indulged in his presence. Being accustomed, however,

to treat with respect those whom his master
respected, and seeing his eye calm and serious, he
bowed with grave deference, saying, “It shall be
done as you direct, your honour;” and then fell
back.

“Now,” said Damon, “that's what I call a well-bred
nigger. I would venture that old Scip
would'nt have puzzled me with the warm water;
'cause he knows that I'm not one of them there sort
of chaps what knows all their new-fangled kickshaws.
He knows in a case of real needcessity,
or life and death, as I may say, either to man,
woman, or horse, I'm more to be depended on than
a dozen such chaps as went along here in the stage
this morning.”

“You saw the dandies in the stage, then?” asked
Victor.

“Yes, and one of'em popped his head out of the
window, and says to me as they went by, `Country,'
says he, `there's something on your horse's tail.'—
`Yes,' says I, `and there's something in his head that
you hav'nt got, if his ears ain't so long.' ”

Thus were our acquaintances and their new
companion jogging along when the distant rumbling
of wheels upon the pavements and the dense clouds
of black smoke which seemed to be hanging in the
heavens but a short distance ahead, announced
that they were soon to enter the monumental city.

There is not, perhaps, a feeling of more truly
unmixed melancholy, incident to the heart of an
inexperienced and modest student, than that which

steals over him upon his first entrance into a strange
city; a feeling of incomparable loneliness, even
deeper than if the same individual were standing
alone upon the highest blue peak of the far stretching
Alleghany. The vanishing rays of twilight
were extending their lengthening shadows; the
husbandman and his cattle were seen wending their
way to their accustomed abodes for the night; and
the feathered tribes had already sought the resting-places
which nature so plentifully provides for
them in our well-wooded land. The sad, and it
may be pleasing reflections which such sights produced,
were occasionally interrupted by the clattering
of a horse's hoofs upon the turnpike, as some
belated countryman sought to redeem the time he
had spent at the alehouse; or as the solitary marketman,
with more staid and quiet demeanour, sped
upon a like errand. Occasionally the scene was
marred by some besotted and staggering wretch,
seeking his lowly and miserable hut in the suburbs.
At intervals too, the barking of dogs and the lowing
of cattle contributed their share to remind our
friends that they were about to take leave of these
quiet and pastoral scenes, for an indefinite period,
and to mix in the bustle and gay assemblage of city
life. Often, at such junctures, there is a presentiment
of the evil which awaits the unhappy exchange.
Warning clouds of the mind are believed
to exist by many of the clearest heads and soundest
hearts: we do not say that our heroes were thus
sadly affected, nor that the Kentuckian had a foretaste
of evil; but certain it is, that all were silent
until they arrived at the place of separation. All
things having been previously settled, they exchanged
salutations, and departed upon their separate
routes. They passed a variety of streets in
that most gloomy period of the day when lamplighters
are to be seen, with their torches and ladders,
starting their glimmering lights first in one
direction and then in another, as they hurry from
post to post. Draymen were driving home with
reckless and Jehu-like speed; and the brilliant
lights which began to appear at long intervals,
gave evidence that the trading community carried
their operations also into that portion of time
which nature has allotted for rest and repose to
nearly all living things. Our travellers now
alighted at Barnum's; but as their adventures
were of an interesting character, we shall defer
them till a new chapter.