The knights of the horse-shoe :: :: University of Virginia Library

During the lengthened encampment of the horsemen, a courier arrived
from the Capitol, bringing letters for the Governor, and for many of the young
gentry who were with him. Numerous were the epistles of the anxious
mothers and not less solicitous fathers, beseeching their sons to caution and
prudence in the hazardous enterprise in which they were embarked; but
with these we have no immediate business. We hope, however, that the following
epistle may possess some interest for our readers:

Williamsburg, 1714.
To Francis Lee, Esq.

Dear Frank.—But a few days have elapsed since your departure, yet it
seems an age. Short as the time is, however, I must write now in compliance
with my promise, or lose all opportunity of writing, until the expedition is on
its return. The courier who takes this, it is hoped, will overtake you near the
foot of the mountains. First and foremost, then, I must be selfish enough to
begin at home. Out of the fullness of the heart the mouth speaketh, and I
suppose the pen writeth. You will, I am sure, be surprised to learn that my
father seems to miss your society even more than I. After your departure,
he would sit up for hours, wrapped up in his own thoughts. At first I did not
heed this particularly, because he often does so, when any of his patients are
sick unto death; but I soon found that my caresses—a successful remedy
generally—were entirely unheeded; and once I saw a tear stealing down

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his dear and venerable face. I could submit tacitly no longer, but begged him
to tell me what disturbed him. He said he was beginning to find out my
value just as he was about to lose me. “Dear father,” said I “I will never,
never leave you. We have been too long all in all to each other!” Was I
not right, Frank, in giving him this assurance, and will you not doubly assure
him, when you come back? I know you will. “How can you make any such
promise, my child,” he asked, “when you have given your whole heart and
soul to another?” Now, was not this a strange speech for the good old man
to make? Do you not discover a little—just a little—jealousy in it? I
thought I did, and I laughed at the idea, though the tears were coursing each
other down his cheeks faster than ever; and I taxed him with the strange
manifestation. “Well,” said he, “have you not been wife, and daughter,
and companion, and comforter, and nurse, and every thing to me—and how
can I live, when all that gives life and cheerfulness to my house is gone?
It will be putting out the light of mine eyes—for my Ellen, all is dark
and dreary, when your shadow does not fall within the range of these
fast failing orbs.”

I again and again renewed the assurance that we would live with
him. “Pooh, pooh,” said he, “I have thought of all that. Frank has a
large landed estate and negroes to look after, and when you are married,
you will have corresponding duties as a wealthy planter's wife. How,
then, can either of you remain here?” “Then,” said I, “you can go and
live with us in the country.” “No, no,” said he, “never, never will I leave
this spot. There is a silent history in these walls, my Ellen, which you
know not, for you were too young to know her whose sweet presence still
lingers around every chair, and table, and wainscot, and wall, which you
see.” Little did he remember, Frank, that those very inanimate objects
had so long been telling me a sweet tale of my own, but I disturbed not his
hallowed memories. Oh, Frank, are there many such husbands in the
world? Your sex is sadly belied, if there are. My poor father is a lover
yet, though his head is silvered o'er with age and sorrow. Dear Frank,
will you thus cherish the homely household remembrances which I may
leave behind me? Yes, I have as full faith in you as I have in my own
father, and I declare to you that I would not entrust my happiness with one
in whom I had less. But we have not the hazards and uncertainties of
other people, for we know each other's every thought and sentiment. My
father went on in the same strain for a long time, until finally I succeeded
in imbuing him with some of my own trust and confidence, that you would
make any pecuniary sacrifice rather than separate us. An old man's life,
or rather the enjoyments of that life, are made up, in a great measure, of
the past—of these recollections of by-gone years—and one of the first duties
of his children is to see that they are not rudely shocked. You know that
I studied to have the arrangements even of the furniture, so that my excellent
father should see no change from “old times,” as he loves to call
them. I have shocked him with no innovations or modern improvements
in any thing that pertains to his own personal comfort. His cocked hat
hangs upon the very peg in the hall on which he was accustomed to hang
it in my mother's time, and I make it my business to take it down and brush
it regularly every morning before he goes out. I knit his woollen stockings
and gloves as exactly like the last made by my mother's hands as possible,
and I have endeavored, in all things, to let him feel his loss as little
as may be. Strange that he should, since your return, first begin to notice
all these little things. It is the prospect of losing me, that has now brought
them conspicuously before him, for I have studied to make them minister
almost unconsciously to his comforts. There is another thing which I have
observed since you went away. You know, that since his eye-sight began
to fail, I have read the family prayers—at which, all the servants are present.

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The other night he rose from his knees, with his face suffused in
tears, and told the servants to remain; it was Sunday night. I had before
observed the same evidence of recent emotion. He said to the servants—
“you had better lay these religious exercises to heart, for the time will soon
come when you will hear no more from your young mistress. That old
organ will soon be removed to a new home. True,” said he, seeming to recollect
himself, “many of you will go along; of course, you will prefer to
accompany your young mistress.” Is'nt he getting almost childish—I fear
this bodes no good.”

After he had said a good deal more of the same sort, I suffered them to depart,
and then begged him to be assured that I would never permit the instrument
to be removed, even if I should go away myself, and that I would not
suffer one of the servants to leave him, except my own maid.

You see, dear Frank, that I make no apology for telling you of these
things—gossip it may be—nevertheless, it is very near the heart. I think I
know you too well to suppose that you will be indifferent to them before marriage,
and far, far less afterwards. You will see, also, that I suffer no mawkish
delicacy to prevent me from talking to you as unreservedly as I would to
my father. Are you not shortly to be my husband? and ought that confidence
to begin in an instant of time? Can it be?—does it ever so begin?
Nay, does not life often end without establishing it, when the parties have
begun by a false move in the first instance? I rejoice that I can repose this
unreserved confidence in you, even thus early. To you I know my little
domestic records will have the same interest as if you had thought and acted
them yourself. Kate has just been here. You see I am making for you a
sort of diary of my letter, and to tell the truth it has been written at several
sittings. Well, as I just told you, Kate has been here, and has made confidents
of you and me. The saucy baggage said she knew it was just the same
thing as telling it to you. You must know that she has promised her hand,
where her heart has long been given, to your friend Moore. Your friend
will find Kate a more charming girl than even he imagines. I know him to
be amiable and accomplished, as the polite world view these things, but I fear
he lacks the highest finish to be the true gentleman. What can make us
such gentle-men or gentle-women as that spirit within us which ever prompts
us to love our neigbors as ourselves? This germ of the christian doctrine, if
properly cultivated, will expand into an universal philanthropy. How different
is this from your code of honor, which has one conscience for its followers,
and another for the world! The conscience of a gentleman of honor
substitutes what others think of us for that unerring monitor within our own
bosoms. Indeed, the conventional conscience often silences the still small
voice of the inward man, and this, too, often in supposed deference to the
opinions of our sex.

Now, I wish to set you and Mr. Moore both right on this point. No lady
whose opinion is worth having, ever sides with these laws of honor. True,
there are fashionable females, who pretend to applaud all the vaunting
and vain glorious chivalry of the world, but even they, in their secret
hearts, love to see men who dare to erect higher standards of excellence
and morality. Kate and I, at least, have the unfashionable ambition to
see our lovers repudiate the false standard which the world has established.
All this prating has been brought upon your head, by some servants'
news which has come to Kate's ears. Do not throw down my letter—she
could not help it. Some of Mr. Carter's servants have told her
maid, that their master would never suffer Mr. Moore to triumph over
him in his love. Now, do not laugh at our woman's fears, but attend to
what we say. For myself, I think it would be a very good test for Kate
to submit her beau to—this ordeal of the true monitor against the false
one. So many of the cavaliers emigrated to Virginia, during the old

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troubles at home, that they established here, in undisputed sway, this
false and corrupt standard. I am very sure you would not follow it—would
you, dear Frank? No one could be more gratified at any honorable distinction
of another, than I would be at yours, but I could never accept that
hand in marriage, which had been previously stained by the blood of a fellowbeing—shed
in single combat, and in cold blood. Heigh ho. I find I have
commenced a lecture to your friend, or rather about your friend, and
brought it all down at last upon your own head. Forgive me, dear Frank.
You were brought up in the same school that I was—taught to pray, kneeling
at the same family altar. Oh, may we long kneel at the same holy
shrine! To return to our mutual friends—as I said before, there has been
no unreserved confidence between them. He will write to Kate I know—
indeed, I suppose his letters (with your own) are already on the way—but you
can very well imagine what a lover's first epistle will be, or what they generally
are, always excepting yours, dear Frank. Now, could you not open his
eyes?—above all, could you not guard him against falling an easy prey to
Mr. Carter's designs, if any such he has? Do watch over him, Frank, as you
would over a younger brother.

And now, dear Frank, I have little more to say, than how much I want to
see you, and how I do hope that you will return, before there is any greater
change in my dear father—(shall I say our father, Frank?) Farewell.
Take care of Mr. Moore, Kate says, and of old June—and I say, above all,
take care of yourself.

Your own Ellen.

It would have been quite amusing to a disinterested spectator to have sat
at the same camp-table, and watched Frank Lee and Bernard Moore reading
their several epistles. There was a spectator in the tent, and disinterested
enough in all conscience—Jarvis the scout. He was sitting upon a portmanteau
in one corner, availing himself of the light, to fix an old gun lock, which
had lost some of its proper functions. From time to time he ceased his filling
and screwing, and turned his blackened and greasy face towards the young
men, at first with an inquiring glance, as much as to say, “why do you read
those letters over again, when you have already read every line?” But when
they both, as if moved by one impulse, and wholly regardless of each other,
turned them over and over again, and read and re-read them, he could hold
in no longer, and burst out into a laugh. Both of them started as if roused
from one of the sweetest dreams imaginable, and laying their hands upon the
table, still holding the epistles, stared at Joe in turn. Their movements and
the expression of their countenances were so exactly alike, that Joe went off
again “half cocked,” as he called it, in the rude apology which he attempted
in his own justification.

“Well well,” said Lee, “now that we are all attention, will you be so good
as to enlighten us as to the cause of your merriment?”

“Why, Squire, you and Mr. Moore put me so plagidly in mind of the time
when I used to go to school a gittin' my lessons over and over agin, that for
the life of me I could'nt a help'd larfin. Then Mr. Moore, he worked his
mouth and waved his hand so grand like, that he looked exactly like the
player men down to Williamsburg. I guess you're a goin to have some play
actin' here in camp some of these nights, aint you?—or is them real ginuine
letters, sure enough?

“As true letters, Joe,” replied Lee, after the young men had indulged in their
laugh, both at their own ludicrous behavior and the impressions it made upon
their rude friend; “as true letters, Joe, as ever were written—at least I can
vouch for mine, and I think for Moore's, with safety. But how comes it, Joe,
that every one received letters by the courier but you? It strikes me you
have a correspondent. Were you not writing to some one but recently?”

“O aye, and the Governor gin me a letter too, out of the letter bag, from

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the same feller I was a writing to—one William Bivins—we calls him Billy,
for short.” And Joe drew out of his shot pouch lying on the ground beside
him, a blackened and disfigured letter, which already looked worn enough to
take the heart of an antiquarian. But we will not detain the reader with
Joe's correspondence, as it in no way related to the interests of the expedition,
nor to the development of our story. In its stead, we will transcribe the
other letter alluded to. It was from Kate, of course.

Williamsburg, 1714.

Dear Bernard:—

According to promise, you see I have begun to write you a letter—and
one dozen have I commenced before, but tore them up, because I did not
know exactly what word to prefix to your name. First I tried plain Bernard—that
looked too cold and abrupt; and then Mr. Moore—and that appeared
too business like and formal; and then I began without any prefix at
all. At last, I went to Ellen in my distress, and she rated me roundly for
being ashamed to salute with an endearing epithet a man to whom I had promised
my hand, and given my heart. Nor was that all—she took me to task
for still wrapping myself up in that reserve which the world compels us to
wear, instead of endeavoring, as is my duty, (you know I call her Mrs. Duty,)
to establish an unreserved confidence between us, and to learn and betray at
the same time all those peculiarities of thought and feeling which go to make
up our identity. As I told her, that is the very thing which I dread.

I am not so pure and holy in my thoughts, that I may, like her, lay them
open to the gaze even of a conditionally accepted lover. Nevertheless, she
has frightened me so, with the dread of future matrimonial unhappiness, that
I have resolved to make a clean breast of it, or at least to make the effort.
And so to begin fairly, I asked my demure friend to tell me honestly and candidly,
what she thought was my besetting sin? And what do you think she
said? Why, “love of admiration!” Just think of that. Now, is it so, Bernard?
Can you, in your heart, accuse me of that heartless thing, coquetry,
except just a little harmless flirting, with which the sages of our
country allow us to arm ourselves. Is it any thing more, Bernard? But
stop—I must answer that myself, on my conscience; and though I almost
quarrelled with Ellen at her own house about it, I had scarcely seated myself in
the carriage, on my return home, before the silent monitor likewise began to
accuse me. I cried bitterly about it, and then sat myself down to make a
true and honest confession. You must be aware though, Bernard, that the
position of the Governor's eldest daughter is a little different from that
of other young ladies, even among the gentry. Alas! poor me! what
am I saying? Attempting a defence of the very thing which I promised
to amend! No, no, the daughter of His Majesty's representative is
more bound, than any other young lady, to present a model even more
blameless than common, inasmuch as her example is looked up to and
followed by those, who are beneath her in rank and position. Ellen
says, that even the tradesmen's daughters are already imitating my dress
and manners, carricatured though they may be. Then I do confess, (as I
suppose I must,) that I have rather been pleased with the insidious flattery,
but I do assure you that it was unconsciously—that I never knew it,
until I was induced to make a rigid self-examination. To know it, is to
amend it, for, since I have analyzed the passion, I am heartily disgusted
at its grossness. I am disgusted at myself, that I ever sought promiscuous
admiration. The player-women on the stage seek the same thing, and
have a better excuse for it, for it is to them a means of subsistence. Oh!
Bernard, the bare contemplation of what it leads to, if once it obtains
the mastery, fills me with the most profound self-abasement. I am sure,
at least I hope, you will find me a very different girl on your return.

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There, now, if that is not as pretty a confession of a coquet, as could
be desired by “Mrs. Duty” herself? But tell me, dear Bernard, are you
willing to marry a coquette. Do answer your anxious and too repentant

Kate.

It is not consistent with our allotted limits to ransack the mail bag any
further at this time, though we may again present such of the correspondence
of the parties on the other side as relates to their adventures,
or the progress of the great enterprise. Preparations were now busily
making to break up the celebrated encampment of the “horse-shoe.”
Nearly the whole cavalry had recovered their feet, and an abundance of
jerked venison, and dried buffalo and tongues, &c., had been also provided,
so that they were prepared to set out with renewed strength and spirits.
The murmnrs of the discontented had now nearly ceased, and the young
soldiers began to relish the rude, but exciting life of the camp. The old
chief at their head was in his glory. He had gained in health, and strength,
and spirits, with every day's journey, though he had performed as great a
share of it on foot as the meanest soldier in his ranks.

The scout, too, was in his true element, and besides, was now in high
favor with His Excellency, to the success of whose grand enterprise he was
found so indispensable an auxiliary. Many times a day the Governor would
exclaim, what a god-send it was that he had exchanged his promised guide
for the one he had picked up at the eleventh hour. He now saw that the wary
Indian had purposely deceived bim from the beginning, and especially with
regard to the face of the country. He was now, too, fully persuaded that the
young chiefs recently in College, had been preparing to dispute his passage
across the mountains, exactly as he advanced in his preparations to effect
that object. Already more than one had bnen seen and encountered, who had
never been at the College, a positive proof that far more were concerned
than the pupils. Then the desertion of the village, and the retreat of its
inhabitants before him towards the mountains, all showed that they either
intended to abandon the country wholly before the march of his troops, or
else to dispute the mountain passes with him, hand to hand. He knew too
well to suppose the former for a moment, and their constant annoyance of
his outskirts was proof enough, if any additional had been wanting, that
they entertained no such design.

Little information as to the movements of his people was gained from
the captive, though each night he had been brought to the Governor's marquee
to be interrogated, and though Jarvis repeated more than once the
hempen admonition before administered. It is very questionable whether
Joe's feelings of philanthropy and benevolence were not such, that he would
willingly have extended that admonition, had the Governor permitted it. He
assured the old chief that the young rascal would tell every thing, if he
would only permit him (Jarvis) to hang him a little—just a little; but the
Governor had seen too much of the scout's tender mercies towards the race,
to trust the captive in his hands.