 | CHAPTER XXII. CONCLUSION. The Kentuckian in New-York, or, The adventures of three Southerns |  |
22. CHAPTER XXII. CONCLUSION.
On a certain evening, about — months after
the events related in the last chapter, and during
those most jovial days in “old Virginia” between
Christmas and New-Year's-day, the sun was just
sinking in the western horizon, behind a long veil
of fleecy and dappled winter clouds, tinged with the
richest hues of crimson and pink; a gentle breeze
was just rippling the red and dried-up leaves along
the lawn, and monotonously sounded through the
naked boughs of the grove of ancient oaks, which
stood around and in front of the venerable domicil
of the Randolphs; the hounds had sought the
protection of the kennel from the chills of the evening,
and the solitary bell of the ancient wether, as
he led the little flock into the primitive-looking
fold, could just be heard above the lowing of the
few household cattle which still remained unsheltered;
all external objects around the venerable
establishment bore that delightful aspect of rural
repose which is so soothing to those who yet retain,
after the fierce struggles of the world, a heart
susceptible of these simple emotions, and a conscience
untainted by crime.
Not so profound, however, was the repose within
the extensive walls of the old mansion. Lights
were seen passing and repassing through the most
uninhabited portions of the house, while all the
lower and usually occupied apartments gave evidence
of some rare occasion.
In the western wing and largest parlour of the
establishment, a roaring hickory fire gave out its
genial heat in no niggardly rays. The large
branching silver candlesticks, which stood at each
side of a full-length picture of General Washington,
on the mantel-piece, were richly fringed with white
bridal ornaments, after the good old fashion; and
as lively a set of lads and lasses as ever moved
through the figures of a cotillion, were keeping time
to the impetuous thumping of their own hearts,
and the long-sweeping bow-hands of two hereditary
fiddlers stationed behind the door. In a little
recess, formed by the old-fashioned projecting
chimney, sat three youthful ladies; their chairs
forming the figure of a rude triangle; the hands of
the one in the centre locked in those of her companions,
and their heads forming a lovely little constellation.
Three happier brides never united their
hands, hearts, and heads, than Virginia Bell Randolph,
Frances Chevillere, and Isabel Lamar. It
was heart-cheering to behold with what rapidity
and gasping eagerness Virginia poured out the
rich treasures of a long and, as she thought, an
eventful journey, to her new friends on each side
of her. A stranger, who should have entered at
sisters, just met after a long and painful separation.
Along the sides of the antique and lofty parlour
sat several old gentlemen, dressed in the fashion of
seventy-six. Their small-clothes fastened at the
knee with the buckles which their fathers wore in
the days of “tobacco-money,” and their hair powdered
and tied behind the collars of their long-tailed
coats. A few of these venerable remnants
of a former and, at least, a more chivalrous age,
are still left in eastern Virginia, to smoke their
pipes, fight over their battles, and bewail the impoverishment
of the land and the degeneracy of
their descendants. The cocked hats and black
cockades, it is true, have disappeared; but many
of their contemporaries still linger upon the scene,
as melancholy memorials of the too evident mortality
of the venerated worthies who wear them.
At the farthest extremity of the room from the fire,
and on the opposite side of the door from the musicians,
stood the three “Southerns.” Randolph
was holding his hands hard pressed against his
sides, as Lamar related to him some of the adventures
of the Kentuckian in New-York, which he
thought Chevillere had not sufficiently descanted
upon by letter. Chevillere stood in the middle
with his arms folded, apparently listening, but with
his eyes fixed upon a certain corner of the room,
to which we have already directed the reader's
attention.
Old Cato stood, with a small salver under his
near the door; his eye intently fixed upon those of
his master's bride, and unconsciously moving a step
forwards, if she happened to turn her head in that
direction. If any one advanced towards or passed
by him, his person as naturally bowed forward as
the willow to the wind. Notwithstanding the
hilarity of the scene, the time, and the occasion, his
countenance was still serene and dignified; the
only evidence of a contrary feeling being the almost
imperceptible patting of his advanced foot to the
cadences of the music.
“Cato,” said Randolph, “tell the musicians, as
soon as the present set have gone through the
figures, to strike up one of Jessy Scott's[1]
best Virginia
reels.” Turning to Randolph and Lamar,
“We must initiate those three ladies in the corner
into the mysteries of the Virginia reel.” The set
having gone through the figure, the three Southerns,
who, it must be recollected, were well versed
in the art, presented themselves before the three
ladies already mentioned. They begged to be excused,
pleaded ignorance of the figures, and declared
that they would certainly be laughed at by
all the young girls in the room. But no excuse
Lamar, Mrs. Randolph; and Chevillere,
Mrs. Lamar. The additional couples were soon
arranged down the room; the ladies on one side
and the gentlemen on the other, as is customary in
the usual country-dance.
The order of the country-dance is in these
simple figures reversed; the usual romping motion
of hands round commencing, instead of ending,
the set. The general effect of this rural figure is
hilarious and exhilirating in the extreme, and, on
the present occasion, did not lose credit by our
novices. Few persons would have recognised in
the bright and laughing countenance of Mrs. Chevillere,
the sad and demure little recluse of the
Hudson. But a few rounds were necessary to
initiate the strangers completely into the apparently
abstruse figure. We have seen these figures frequently
attempted in Pennsylvania and New-York,
but always to the music of some jig or Scotch
strathspey. This is not correct; the time is about
the same as that usually employed in cotillions, and
the step slow and graceful. In this way each lady
dances, at one stage of the reel, a kind of solo
minuet, at the conclusion of which she carries on
a mock flirtation with each gentleman of the set in
succession. It must be apparent at once, to every
dancing lady, how ridiculous this must appear when
done to the tune of a sailor's hornpipe.
The reel being brought to a close, and soon after
the more substantial entertainments of the evening
draw up to the door, and such guests took their
leave as did not form part of the family party for
the holydays. After the bustle of departure, calling
for shawls, cloaks, and mantles had somewhat
subsided,—the three remaining happy pairs drew
up their chairs around the large blazing chunk fire,
and evidently prepared themselves for some remaining
entertainment. The fiddlers, having stood
up in the centre of the room, their instruments tied
in green bags under their arms, and each having
drank a long and wordy toast in strong waters to
each of the brides, took their departure, with many
bows, and scrapes, and motions of the hat; with
each of which old Cato, unknowingly to himself,
made a slight inclination of the head. Having
closed the door, Cato advanced to a corner of the
room, and placed a stand with lights at his master's
right-hand, and then produced a large, coarse-looking
letter. It was written upon rough-edged foolscap
paper; was folded square as a chess-board,
and evidently contained many sheets, written upon
ruled black-lead pencil lines,—looking very much,
upon the whole, like an old copy-book. This formidable
package was addressed to “Victor Chevillere,
Esquire, and Augustus Lamar, Esquire.
Present.”
It was no sooner opened, than (at the very sight
of it) Lamar burst out into one of his long, irrepressible
fits of laughter. “For mercy's sake,
Chevillere,” said he, “only wait till I compose my
you begin that letter. But, tell me, do you
really say you can make it all out?”
“I have spent two hours, I tell you, in deciphering
it, on purpose that you might all enjoy it without
interruption,” replied he. “Here it is.”
year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and
—.
`They tell me hereabouts you're married. Well,
hurrah for old Kentuck, I say, and her sister Carolina.
I'm married, too! yes, and I believe everybody's
married, nearabouts, as far as I can learn.
It's twisted strange, ain't it, when a feller gets half
corned,[1]
everybody reels round; and when a feller
gets married, everybody else should get married
just at that particular time.
`Yes, it's a fact; it seems to be goin about now
like the influenza and the cholera, and the parsons
are dragged about like country doctors in a panic.
`But keep up your heart, my hearty,' says I to the
old gentleman that coupled us up, `it will soon be
over; for most of 'em won't have it but once, and
it'll soon run through a neighbourhood; and I've
been told it kills very few.'
`But I'm tetotally bamboozled if I ain't tellin
you of the killed and wounded, before I've told
you who fout, and whereabouts—but let it go, the
—a man must let off a little of the extra steam,
you know, or he would burst his biler. I was
always one of them sort of fellers that went upon
the high pressure system.
`But ain't it a little particular now, that I should
be settin here of a rainy day in Mr. Randolph's
house—he that you gentlemen talked so much
about—and be writing you this long letter; my
nose close down on the paper, and strainin my
eyes till every thing in the world looks like pot-hooks
and hangers when I look up. But I rub my
eyes, and at it again, for fear I might git off the
trail; and my little wife, Betsy, she sits there,
'fraid to wink her eye lest she mout put me out,
and I'll be hanged if she hasn't dropped a dozen
stitches already in that stockin she's knittin, she
says, jist because she can't keep her eyes off my
face—with my eyes and mouth all workin up and
down, like I was makin mouths at the paper, and
could see my face in it. And so I jumped up and
turned the table round, with my back to Betsy,—
and now she's giglin at me, because, she says, she
can see the hair on the crown of my head workin
yit, and drops of sweat rollin down my temples
this winter day. `The fact is, Betsy,' says I,
`this pen you made me is like an old field-colt, a
little skittish in the breakin; it goes along as stately
and as stiff as a charger for a little while, until it
comes to some of these hills and gullies in the
paper, and then it begins to prance, and caper, and
dab of ink, like a rider in the mud. There now,'
says I, `Betsy, I'm hanged if I wouldn't rather
ride a three-year-old filly bare-backed through a
cane-brake, than git a fair start on that pen. You
kin hold on to the mane even if the filly does kick
up behind; but this pen blots it down as bald as a
pancake, no notice and no warnin nor nothin, nor
no mane to hold on to.'
`Well, here I go again, on a new trail, with a
fresh pen. A new broom sweeps clean, they say.
`I have read over now what I've writ, an I'm
dadshamed if it ain't all up in snarls. I don't see
how you'll ever git into it; and what's more, I don't
see how you'll ever git out of it, when once you
are in. I thought I had begun at the beginnin of
my story, when I left you, and had got more than
half-way through by this time. But I find that
I've been poppen my bill into it, and out of it again,
like a kingfisher in a mill-dam; or, maybe, I'm
more like a feller lost in a rye-field, the rye
higher than his head, dodging and poking about;
thinking all the time he's goin straight through,
when, in fact, he ain't gone a hundred yards from
where he started. I can't see, no how, how you
used to git on so slick through them long letters. It
used to look mighty easy; but when a feller comes
to the trial of it, it's a real job, I tell you. The great
drops of sweat come pouring down every now and
then on to the paper, and I jump back, thinkin its
the pen lettin off the steam again; and sure enough,
a bullet hole; and that's the way I make so many
big stops. You see, I mind my stops, as the school-master
used to say. Oh! if he had only seen this
letter, if he wouldn't have ruled a page on my
back. You see, I hav'n't got started yet; it's like
a tangled skeene of thread; there's no way of gittin
into it unless you break right in, like an ox into a
corn crib.
`Oh! my stars and turnips! if I did'n't forgit to
tell you how I found old Pete Ironsides; that's
just what was the matter with me. I thought
something was wrong; but hang me if ever I
thought once that that something was old Pete.
He spoke to me the minute I sot my foot inside the
stable-door. `Hello! Pete,' says I, `stand up there;'
and I'm a papist if he didn't laugh as natural as
Mr. Lamar with his white teeth. Yes, he showed
every tooth in his head: he didn't laugh loud, as
one may say, but he laughed long though. Oh! it
would have done you good to have seen that
laugh; there was the red and white of his teeth and
gums; I'm a steamboat if it didn't look like a ripe
water-million.
`But whose house do you think Pete had been
boarding at? At Betsy's father's. And who's
Betsy? Why Betsy was the little girl I saw in
the Circus. And seeing how well they had treated
Pete, I thought, maybe, they mout treat his betters
as well. And so I struck up to em; and a cleverer
set of people you never saw south of the Potomack,
quite in the notion of movin to the West; and sure
enough, he's comin out there next spring, bag and
baggage. And well he may, as I've carried off
the flower of his flock. But I didn't run away with
her; no, no. I asked the old man and old woman,
and all the girls and boys; but I asked her first
though.
`Well now, Betsy,' says I, after I had been
sparkin some weeks, `how would you like to go
to old Kentuck?'
`Do you think father will go sure enough?' said
she.
`Come now, Betsy, none of your playing sly;
you know what I mean.'
`Law, now, Mr. Damon,' says she, `you're such
a funny man, a body never knows how to take you.'
`That's the very thing,' says I; `take me for a
husband.'
`Law, Mr. Damon;' and she put her arm round
her eyes, but I pulled it down again.
`Now,' says I, `Betsy, you must come up to the
scratch now; no flinchin now.'
`So in about ten minutes, when I begun to think
the jig was up with me, for she began to look
serious,
`Well,' says she to me, `you may ask father.'
`I looked over my shoulder just now at her.
`Oh!' says she, `you're writing something about
me now.'
`And with that she jumped up, and snatched
here like a fishingpole and a turtle at the end of it.
`There now,' says I, `Betsy, you have made a
pretty spot of work of it.'
`Let me see where I have got to now. Ah! I
see—we had a tare down sneezer of a wedding:
the old folks were quite pleased, and I rather
suspicion the young ones were not far behind
them. After it was all over, and we had all got
settled down agin to the regular old ways, I spoke
up one day at dinner about starting next day to
old Kentuck. The old lady and Betsy took the
hint, and straightways tuned up their pipes.
`But the old gentleman, he was bothered to think
how I was to get Betsy home with me; and to
come right plump down with the plain truth like a
centre shot, I was feelin my way a little when I
began to talk about goin. So the old man he
took the hint, and come up to the trumps like a
white head, I assure you.
`Well,' says he, `to be sure I have been thinking
about that; and I have been studyin some time
whether your horse will work in a one-horse
carriage.'
`What, Pete Ironsides?' said I.
`Yes; Peter, to be sure,' said he.
`Why Pete would no more go inside of harness
than a snappin-turtle would work in a horse-boat.'
`Well, then,' says he, `you must swap him off,
and get one that will; for I've got a clever little
buy, and give to Betsy.'
`I wish I may run my head right into a steamboat
biler, if I would any more part with Pete
than I would part with Betsy.'
`But Betsy struck in here, and told the old man
that she was goin to ride on horseback.
`That's the girl for me,' said I, and there it ended.
`At last the whining and pouting was over (and
that's a kind of work that always makes my throat
raw inside), and we were on the road; and, after
two days' ride, as happy a pair as ever jogged over
a turnpike.
`On the fourth day, at night, we got benighted
near this house; and the rain came pouring down
as if all the steamboats in Christendom had burst
their bilers; and Pete began to get a little melancholy,
and I had to sing to him; and Betsy laughed
at me, rain and all. Ah! I like these laughin girls.
But I'm gittin off the trail again.
`Well, I saw a light in these windows, away far
off from the big road yonder. Betsey and I rode
up to the door, and I hallooed and hallooed, but
nobody came. At last I raised a whoop, and if I
didn't wake the snakes and Junebugs in November,
then say I'm a dandy, and eat molasses and pork,
and never went to a Yankee singin-school. I'm
rather of the opinion that I raised the bats out of
a month's nap in these old oaks. Pete raised his
ears, and if his thoughts could be found out, I'll bet
he was on the look-out for the dogs and some varmint
whoop.
`But I raised the old housekeeper, too, out of a
deep sleep; she came stickin her head, with the
lamp held up above it, through the window, and
her gray hair hanging from under her nightcap,
till she looked for all the world like a little hail-storm.
“Can a benighted traveller git a night's lodging?'
said I.
“There is nobody at home,' said she; `Mr.
Beverley Randolph has gone to the Carolinas to
git married.'
“Mr. Beverley Randolph?' said I.
“Ay, Mr. Beverley Randolph,' said she, `as
tidy a gentleman as ever walked in shoe-leather.'
`And then I made the woods ring again for
gladness, to think what good luck always follows
me. But the old woman looked as bewildered as
a hound off the trail. But I soon put things to
rights. `Halloo, mother,' said I, `Mr. Randolph's
a particular friend of my particular friends Mr.
Chevillere and Mr. Lamar.'
“Mr. Lamar and Mr. Chevillere!' said she,
with her great big blue eyes as wide open and as
big as a Liverpool chaney saucer; `why, we expect
them and their wives on here soon, to meet Mr.
Randolph and his wife.'
`And then the old lady told us to get down, and
go into the front porch out of the rain, until she
came. After a while she came down all dressed,
of Betsy's pretty laughing face, she was quite polite.
`But she stared at me most confoundedly at first,
and asked me if I had been to college with the
young gentlemen. `No,' I told her, `we hadn't
been to college together, but we had been on a
northern campaign together against the Yankees;'
but for the life of her she couldn't keep her eyes
off me.
`She soon got us some supper, late as it was, and
had the negroes called up to take care of our
horses. In the morning, and that's to-day, the rain
is still pourin down; so we have concluded to
accept the old lady's invitation to stay till the
weather clears up. She has been asking my wife
something about my acquaintance with you, and
since that she has been wonderful polite; nothing
seems good enough for us now in the eyes of the
old lady. But she still stares at me.
`Me at college with you! well, now, that's a
good one; but I'll be run through a spinnin jinny,
if I havn't seen as big fools as I am come through
a college. I know a feller that's been clean through,
and he writes little, if any, better than I do. He
picks his words maybe a little more; but what's
the difference between one that picks his steps
through a mud-hole, and one that jumps clean
over? I can tell the truth as well as he can, and
I'm sure in a case of needcessity, as one may say,
I could tell a lie that would make him ashamed to
look a college in the face again. I git more off my
can beat him at a foot-race, and throw
him four falls out of five. But, above all, his book
larning has made his head so weak he can't stand
nothin at all. He gits corned on all occasions just
at the very first blush of the thing, as one may say,
and he never gits through a regular frolic unless
he falls through a trap-door, or down two or three
pair of stairs. His face looks like it was boiled
in poke-berry juice and indigo, and hang me if I
don't think he's a little flumucky altogether about
the head. Most of this I rather suspicion mought
be larned in York without a regular sheepskin. I
suppose there's a sheep's head for every skin, according
to nature.
`College spiles a great many people; not you
and Mr. Lamar,—for, as I tell Betsy, I never see
two gentlemen come out with so little blast and
airs about them.
`But, as I was saying, it ruins a power of people;
some gits halfway through like an ear of corn in a
shelling machine,—and then it will go neither backwards
nor forwards, and is jist good for nothin.
`Some kick up like wild colts at the first trainin
to harness, and if they're cleverly broke of them
tricks at the start, they work in harness all their
days pretty well. But if they git the upper hand
the first time, they'll be like runaway horses; they'll
smash things, you may depend upon it, first chance.
Some old regular-built harness nags go well right
off at the start; they may be good at a regular
tug, but they'll never make spirited tackies. Give
blast at the start, and then behave themselves
well all their lives afterward.
`Take an old field scrub out three or four times
to a military parade, and he gits to prancing and
snorting, and is worth nothing no more neither for
work nor show. Now old Pete's what I call a
well brought up horse; he won't have nothin to
do with parading on one side nor harness on the
other. When he's goin to do a thing, he says so
at once, and there's an end of it. If a nigger comes
behind him, he just backs his ears and kicks him,
and then goes strait ahead again.
`Old Kentuck raises the finest horses in the universal—well,
now, I wish I may be tetotally ballgusted,
if here ain't another pretty piece of business.
I started as fair as a poney-race to tell you all
about colleges and such likes, and here I've got
a-straddle of old Pete, and ridin away through a
Kentuck colt-pen, like a gust of wind over a chaff
bank.
`But I'll tell you what it is, strangers,—it's not
sich an easy job to start right off and put down in
black and white every thing that a feller's been
doin for a month of Sundays back. Then there's
all the lines to keep straight; for though Betsy
ruled all the paper, I've a confounded hankering
after the furrows between. Now talkin of furrows,
I would rather plough an acre of new ground
any day, than write down one side of a letter. But
it must be done, and so here goes at it agin,—but
Pete, confound him, in a Kentuck colt-pen; but I
had to run and jump through the walls of a college
to get there. But I must turn back, now, and see
what I have writ and what I havn't.
“I have hardly writ a single thing I wanted to
write, I'm jist now like I've been at times when I've
been out catting.[2]
I could catch every thing but
cat—snakes, and turtles, and all other sort of
water varmints except the things I wanted. And
so it is now—I've been trying to fish up several
things that's still at the bottom; but all I can do
nothing will come up but the varmints. Now I
could tell it to you in no time at all. So now as
I have fished you up a mess of all sorts of odd
creters, I may as well gather up all these papers
and put marks on them, so that you will know
which to begin with.
“And now it makes me so sorry I don't know
what to do—to think I'm goin to tell you both
farewell for ever and ever and ever. But let what
will come, never forget that I am yours, till death.
And now, gentle reader, we will take a gentle
leave of you, hoping that you have not been altogether
displeased with the adventures of the Kentuckian
and the Southerns.
Jessy Scott is a coloured gentleman, who lives at Charlotte-ville,
Virginia; has three sons distinguished musicians; one of
whom was educated in France. Few strangers visited Mr. Jef-ferson,
during his life-time, who did not likewise visit Mr. Scott.
He is an accomplished gentleman. We trust that he is yet alive,
and able to play the Cameronian Rant.
| CHAPTER XXII. CONCLUSION. The Kentuckian in New-York, or, The adventures of three Southerns | |