 | The new purchase, or, Seven and a half years in the far West |  |
FIRST YEAR.
14. CHAPTER XIV.
“—a shady place for several friends.”
Well! this is Glenville. Has any body accompanied
our fortunes thus far?—that body may as well see us also
“out of the woods.” A sojourn for a few years amid the
privations and hardships of the New Purchase will fit you
better for a home in the East—in case, we mean, you stay
not so long as to be forgotten by the time you go back. And
even then—after the first bitter feelings of natural sorrow,
of surprise, and perhaps of chagrin—believe me, such a
force and independence will have been added to the character,
so much self-reliance gendered, as to furnish an almost
perpetual and complete substitute in your own resources.
One perhaps, after a sojourn of the proper kind in the New
Purchase, is rather in danger of too great a contempt for
the things of the old: at all events, one, whose spirit is
not naturally bad, is very much inclined to feel and say,
with the good humour of Bernadotte, when he finds on his
return that the world “does not care a fig” for him, “well,
tell the world, I do not care a fig for it.”
The man that has practised doing with little, and is fully
satisfied with it, and for years has been very happy with it,
is really superior to the man even of large fortune, and of
houses, fine furniture, sumptuous food, gay equipage, costly
apparel and the like, who, if he despise not such matters, is
soberly and philosophically indifferent to them? He has
really so schooled himself amid rough huts, rude furniture,
coarse food, and homespun clothes, as, in his very heart, to
prefer them with their freedom and independence, to the
wearisome and silly, and endless anxiety and toil of living
for mere show.
On your return, if you have your health, in what can any
one, who fancies himself superior, excel you? He knows
not as much—he can eat no more—see no more—drink no
more—sleep no better—live no longer. Can he drive a gig?
you can drive it where he dares not venture. Suppose he
outrides you—you can outwalk him. Does the chap shoot a
double-barrelled gun?—so can you, if you would—but you
transcend him, oh! far enough with that man's weapon,
that in your hands deals, at your will, certain death to one
selected victim, without scattering useless wounds at a venture
in a little innocent feathered flock.
Stay with us, then, reader; and when you do return, you
will certainly enjoy some plain every-day conveniences at
home, once undervalued, perhaps despised, but which belong
to the tenor of life; you will bear, with good humour,
a thousand petty disquietudes of civilized life, that once
kept you, and still keep the self-indulged, undisciplined,
fashionable vulgar in—“a stew.” Yes! you will be cured
of a very common and dreadful malady, rendering one
miserable in himself and hateful to others—“the fidgets.”
Nay you will be purged of the “struts and swaggers”—
the emptiness of a puffy, self-important inflation, generated
by too long an acquaintance among brick and mortar houses,
and medicated wooden pavements. In a word, if you become
not quite as great a man as you formerly designed to
be—(and as city and town folks all at one time intend)—you
residence in a bran New Purchase, become a better and a
happier man.
Come, then, I will introduce our settlement. And first,
this term is applied to a place where one or more families
having bought lands at the government price from Uncle
Samuel, have actually located on it; and, not to a place
bought merely for speculation, or merely trespassed upon
by any of that nondescript and original race—the squatters.
Indeed, to these a settlement is so odious, that they
either pay for land and turn into settlers, or, as is the more
frequent, they become indignant at the legal invasion of
their domain, and hastily—absquatulate; that is, translated
—they go and squat in another place. And such is the
effect of settlements often in here, up north, down east, and
so on, where well looking and fine dressed gentlemen become
so offended at the impertinence of neighbours, that
they too absquatulate: and perhaps better so, as a civilized
squatter would rarely make a good neighbour, either in or
upon a settlement.
Out there, a settlement usually takes its name from the
person that first “enters the land,” i. e. buys a tract at the
land office. Often it takes the name from the family first
actually settling, or owning the largest number of acres;
and very frequently from the person that establishes a ferry,
a smithery, a mill, a tannery, and, above all, a Store.
Hence, whilst our brother-in-law was no patriarch in looks
or age, owned no boundless territory, and was, in stature,
“the least in his father's house,” yet because he tanned
hides—(for shoes we mean)—and intended soon to sell
tape by the yard, and buy pork by the cwt.—we were The
Glenville Settlement. And this colony had, within its territories,
as many as three human habitations; two occupied
by actual settlers, and one by a very special sort of a
squatter—the Leatherstocking of our tribe.
On an eminence between the others—and, provided you
knew how “to holler,” within hearing of both, but owing to
intervening trees, not within sight—stood the primitive and
patriarchal cabin—the capitol. South-west, distant a quarter
of a mile was the cabin of the Reverend Mr. Hilsbury,
lately married to one of Mrs. Carlton's sisters; and directly
south of the episcopal residence, was the tannery,
to which John Glenville, of Glenville, owed the honour of
giving his name to the colony. Due east from the capitol
about a furlong, was the squateree ofuncle Tommy Seymour,
our Leatherstocking. So much of his long life had
passed in the wild woods, and among the Indians, that he
had thoroughly imbibed their feelings and their sentiments,
and had adopted some of their habits; and therefore he
had not only acquired an utter distaste, but even a sovereign
contempt for most usages and trammels of civilization.
And Uncle Tommy was also a preacher—hence Glenville
was two-thirds sacred and only one secular!
Around, were a few other settlements, Sturgis'—Hackberry's—Undergrowth's—Brushwood's,
and some more;
all distant from us and one another—some one mile, some
ten. The unentered and unsettled tracts between, were
our commons, called the Range—used for hunting, swine-feeding,
and the like. The range had, however, inhabitants
innumerable:—viz. deer, wolves, foxes—blue, gray,
and black—squirrels ditto, ground-swine, vulgarly called
ground-hogs, and wild turkeys, wild ducks, wild cats, and
all the wild what-y'-callums:—opossums up down in
and under gum trees:—snakes, with and without rattles, of
all colours, from copper to green and black, and of all
sizes, from ever so little to ever so big. Add—“the
neighbours' hogs,”—so wild and fierce, that when porktime
arrives, they must be hunted and shot, like other independent
beasts. Especially is this the case if mast—
—(nuts and acorns)—is abundant; when swiney becomes
swill-tubs. Ay, gentle reader, our semi-wild boar is a
fellow something different in look, and rather worse to
encounter, when saucy or angry, than the vile mud-hole
wallower of the Atlantic! If one would understand the
wild-boar hunts of Cyrus, or the feudal barons—go, get
acquainted with the semi-wild fellow of the Purchase.
The range is perambulated by cattle horned and unhorned;
by cows, belled and un-belled; and by horses, some with
yokes and some without:—but notice, yokes are not to prevent
jumping out of inclosures, but, into them. In the
range are also wonderful colts with cunning saucy faces,
shaggy manes done up with burrs, and with great long tails,
so tangled that Penelope herself could never disentangle
—creatures almost uncatchable, and if caught nearly untameable.
Nearly south of Glenville was the grand town—our
Woodville. And nearly west, some eight or nine miles and
a piece, was Spiceburgh—at least in dry times; for the
town being on the bottom of Shining River was, in hard
rains, commonly under water, so that a conscientious man
dared not then to affirm without a proviso, where Spiceburgh
was, precisely. North-east from us, some fifty long
lonesome miles, was the capital of the State—Timberopolis;
the seat of the legislature and of mortality. But death
in later times there domineered less. Whether the legislature
reformed and refrained from uncommon mischief is
not so easy to say. Parties are to this hour. I am informed,
themselves, divided on that subject—the opposite partizans,
however, exactly agreeing in this:—viz. that the Ins
are a set of ignorant, selfish, truckling, snivelling humbuggers,
while the Outs are the men to save the state—mutatis
mutandis.
In different directions, from Glenville were also Mapville,
Mapbourgh and Maptown; in all which the difficulty in
trees. A skilful woodsman could, indeed, sometimes
find a single house—the whole village: but as the
citizens were all absent hoeing corn or the like, except one
or more dirty bare-legged babies fastened inside, the lucky
hunter, except for the name of being in town, might nearly
as well be in the country. Unexpectedly, too, would a
traveller sometimes come into a town of thirty or forty
habitations but without a solitary inhabitant—the cabins all
standing cold and empty like snail-abandoned shells! For,
know, reader, that genuine agues out there are often so
powerful and vindictive as to shake, not only individuals
out of their skins, but whole communities out of their towns
and villages! In this latter case the folks swarm like bees
and re-settle where the legislature appoints a new seat,
passing at the time a law that the ague shall shake them out
no more.
This, then, is Glenville, its suburbs, its environs, its neighbourhoods,
its ranges—all on that grand scale belonging to
Nature in the Far West, where we have grand woods,
grand prairies, grand caves, grand rivers, grand bears, grand
swine—grand every thing! except, maybe, grand rascals, in
which we doubtless excel here in the East.
Let us next enter the patriarchal cabin. Here we become
acquainted with Uncle John Seymour and his two
sisters, widows, Mrs. Glenville and Aunt Kitty Littleton.
Here are also encabined John Glenville and Miss Emily
Glenville, the youngest of the family. Here too is a young
woman for help—in fact “the gal;” and here are to abide
Mr. and Mrs. Carlton—
“All in one cabin?”
All in one cabin. But a family you know is the most
compressible and yet the most expansive of bodies. Yes!
here we two and a half families endured the compression
and lost no breath, and even seemed to have a few spare
part of the world, did Mr. Carlton's own single family expand
and spread, and without any violent effort whatever,
their importance through a mansion containing fourteen
apartments, with cellars, and garrets, and kitchens and all—
and still fret for the want of room!
“But what led to the formation of your colony, Mr. Carlton?—what
induced gentlemen and ladies of your education
and endowments to settle in so remote an obscurity?”
Thank you, Sir—the reasons alluded to in the commencement
of this history operated in our case as in the cases of
a thousand others; but it was mere accident that turned our
folks to their location in the New Purchase.
The Seymours at the close of the last war with Great
Britain resided in Philadelphia. Like others they risked
their capital during the war in the manufactories of that
era; and like others, when peace was proclaimed, the Seymours
were ruined. John Seymour—familiarly known
among us as Uncle John—on his arrival from the South,
where, during a residence of many years he had acquired
a handsome fortune, found his sisters Mrs. Glenville and
Mrs. Littleton, in great distress, their husbands being recently
dead; and having not long before his return buried
his wife, (who however had borne him no children,) he immediately
took under his protection the two widowed ladies,
his sisters, together with the four children of Mrs. Glenville.
Fearing his means were not sufficient to sustain the
burden providentially cast upon him, at least in the way
that was desirable, he resolved to remove to Kentucky.
Accordingly, the new organized family all removed to the
West; with the exception of Miss Eliza Glenville, who
was left to complete her education with the excellent and
justly celebrated Mr. Jaudon. With this amiable and interesting
creature,[1]
Mr. Carlton, who somehow or other
acquainted—
“Oh! Mr. Carlton!—do tell all about this—”
Not now, young ladies, something must be reserved for
future works. But after the usual courtships, lovers' quarrels,
scenes and walks in the garden—(Pratt's,) versifications,
notes on gilt-edged, flame-coloured paper, ornamented
with cooing doves and little fat dumpling cupids—in short,
after the most approved meltings, misgivings, misapprehensions
and so forth, came the customary Miss-taking—and
with the consent of friends east and west we were married.
It had been part of the arrangement that Mr. and Mrs.
Carlton should join the family in Kentucky, and that we
should establish there a Boarding School for Young Ladies;
but now came a letter from John Glenville that Uncle John
unfortunate, not in selling a very valuable property at a fair
price, but in receiving that price in worthless notes of Kentucky
banks, (which, like most banks every twenty or thirty
years, had failed,) had with his remaining funds, as his only
resort, bought a tract of government lands in the New Purchase;
and, that, if I could join him with a few hundred
dollars in a little tanning, store-keeping, and honest speculation,
we might gain, if not riches, at least independence.
He added that may be something could be done in the school
line.
Sorry so good a man as Uncle John—and the world boasts
none nobler—should be the victim of fraud, yet strange!
I found mingled with the feeling of distress a secret joy
that so plausible an inducement existed for a life in the genuine,
far away, almost unfindable backwoods! Less poetic
indeed than her husband, yet Mrs. C. earnestly wished to
see her relatives; and so off we started, as the reader knows,
in Chapter Second, and here we are waking up a little from
a curious dream, in Chapter Fourteenth. Some folks dream
all the way through to the very last chapter!
Here we found our new relative the Rev. James Hilsbury,
who had married Sarah Glenville in Kentucky, and
was now a missionary in the Purchase, in order to look up
“a few sheep scattered in the wilderness.” And to our
great amazement here we found too, Uncle Leatherstocking;
for about him Glenville in his letter had been silent, willing
us to be, as all had been, taken by surprise; because the
family on removing to their new world had found the old
gentleman comfortably squatted in a little nook of their territories,
when he was supposed all the time to be yet among
the Indians on Lake Michigan!
At the time of our arrival Uncle John was barely recovered
from a very serious hurt received in the early settlement
of the colony. In order to prepare a cabin he left the
family in Kentucky and went to the Purchase alone; it
being arranged that the family under the care of John Glenville
should join him as soon as information came that things
were ready. But one day Mr. Seymour, being with his
guide in the woods, and in the act of mounting a restive
horse, the animal scared at the near and sudden leap of a
deer, plunged and knocked down Mr. Seymour, causing the
fracture of one arm and several ribs. For six dreadful weeks
he there lay in consequence, under a shantee of poles and
bark actually built over him as he lay unable to be moved, by
some neighbours called by the guide. And these set the
bones and dressed the wounds, according to Mr. Seymour's
directions, as well as they could; and then leaving the sufferer
alone most of the day, as was unavoidable, they brought
his victuals at irregular intervals, and slept near him by turns
at night. On one occasion, however, our wounded friend
would have received a very disagreeable visitor, but for the
fortunate arrival at the moment of a neighbour woman with
his dinner—who exclaimed,
“Grammins! neighbour Seymour, if there ain't a powerful
nasty varmint coming to see you!”
The nature of the visitor was soon revealed to Uncle John;
for alarmed at the approach of the woman, the “nasty varmint”
close to the patient's head but behind his camp, raising
his terrific head, made at the same time the whole woods
tremulously vocal with that rattle so peculiar and so startling
even to the accustomed ear. But scarcely had Uncle
John time for alarm before the fearless woman had stopped
the music; and then dragging his dying snakeship in front
of the camp, she first measured his length, more than five
and a half feet, and secondly pulled off what she called “a
right smart chance of rattles” and gave them to Mr. Seymour.
And this memento of his escape, Uncle John one
day as he narrated the affair, handed over to me to hang to
the sounding post of my fiddle—such being the western
secret of converting common violins into cremonas. I tried
the experiment of course; but not being willing to take out
a patent, I now offer the said rattles to any ingenious Yankee,
(who wishes to try the thing,) for a box of clarified rosin!—the
rattles count sixteen and a button; just sixteen
semi, and part of a demisemiquaver to every shake!
As soon as Mr. Seymour could be carried, he was conveyed
to Mr. Sturgis' house, and then he wrote for his family;
who hastening on through many inconveniences and
perils, all arrived in safety and found Uncle John just able
to walk without assistance. But as to the cabin it was as
yet unchinked, undaubed, and without its stack chimney;
yet into that deplorable hovel all were forced to remove and
complete it at their leisure! Ay! folks that knew all about
three story brick houses in Philadelphia! and who had
ridden in thier own carriages, in the settlements of the Old
Purchase! and promenaded Chesnut-street, some of them
haughtily, and proudly, and delicately!
Ye that have paid $20,000 for a dwelling, what do you
think of a dwelling that cost 20,000 cents?—for that our
cabin cost—and experienced woodmen said that was too
cabin could have all been finished off for $10! from the
laying of the first stick to the topping of the chimney!!
Our cabin was in truth a cabin of the Rough Order; for
reader, the orders of cabin architecture are various like those
of the Greek; for instance—the Scotched Order. In this,
logs are hacked longitudinally and a slice taken from one
side, the primitive bark being left on the other sides. The
scotching, however, is usually done for pastime by the boys
and young women, while the men are cutting or hauling other
timbers. The Hewed Order—in which logs, like the stones
for Solomon's Temple, are dressed on purpose. The Stick-out-Corner
Order—the logs left to project at the corners;
and the reverse of this, the Cut-off-Corner Order. I might
name too, the Doubtful or Double Order. In this, two cahins
are built together, but until the addition of chimneys, it
is doubtful whether the structure is for men or brutes; and
also the Composite Order—i. e. loggeries with stone or
brick chimneys.
But our abode was, from necessity, of the Rough Order
—its logs being wholly unhewed and unscotched—its corners
projecting and hung with horse collars, gears, rough
towels, dish cleaners and calabashes! it had moreover a
very rude puncheon floor, a clapboard roof, and a clapboard
door; while for window a log in the erection had been
skipped, and through this longitudinal aperture came light
and—also wind, it being occasionally shut at first with a
blanket, afterwards with a clapboard shutter. Neither nail
nor spike held any part of the cabin together; and even
the door was hung not with iron, but with broad hinges of
tough bacon skin. These, however, our two dogs, (of whom
more hereafter,) soon smelled and finally gnawed clean off;
when we pinned on thick half tanned leather, which swagging
till the door dragged on the earth, we at last manufactured
wooden hinges; and these remained till the dissolution
twenty feet square, as measured by an axe-handle having
set off on itself two feet from the store keeper's yardstick,
where the cabin builder bought his handle at Woodville.
But I ever believed the yardstick itself must have shrunk
in seasoning, because our carpets stretched inside, as will
be described in the next Chapter, made the gross length only
nineteen feet two inches, and the neat length inside, an average
about seventeen feet one inch. As our arrival caused
a new arrangement of the interior cabin, we shall start on
this subject afresh in
15. CHAPTER XV.
“—Which mixes soap and sugar.”
Thrifty housewives in cutting little boys' roundabouts
and trowsers always contrive out of a scant pattern of pepper
and salt stuff, to leave enough for patches; but for the
Glenvillians it remained to subdivide two hundred and eighty
nine square feet of internal cabin into all the apartments of
a commodious mansion. Hence ours became the model
cabin in the Purchase.
And first, the puncheoned area was separated into two
grand parts, by an honest Scotch carpet hung over a stout
pole that ran across with ends rested on the opposite wall
plates; the woollen portion having two-thirds of the space
on one side and the remaining third on the other.
Secondly, the larger space was then itself subdivided by
other carpets and buffalo robes into chambers, each containing
one bed and twelve nominal inches to fix and unfix in;
while trunks, boxes and the like plunder were stationed under
the bed. Articles intended by nature to be hung, frocks,
wood inserted into the wall. To move or turn round in such
a chamber without mischief done or got was difficult; and
yet we came at last to the skill of a conjuror that can dance
blindfolded among eggs—we could in the day without
light and at night in double darkness, get along and
without displacing, knocking down, kicking over, or tearing!
The chambers were, one for Uncle John and his nephew;
one for the widow ladies and Miss Emily, who,
being the pet, nestled at night in a trundle bed, partly under
the large one; and one very small room for the help,
which was separated from the Mistress' chamber by pendulous
petticoats. Our apprentices slept in an out-house.
These chambers were all south of the grand hall of eighteen
inches wide between the suites; on the north, being
first our room and next it the stranger's—a room into which
at a pinch were several times packed three bodies of divinity
or clerical dignitaries. Beyond the hospitality chamber
was the toilette room, fitted with glasses, combs, hair-brushes,
&c., and after our arrival, furnished with the first glass
window in all that part of the Purchase. The window was
of domestic manufacture, being one fixed sash containing
four panes, each eight by ten's, by whose light in warm
weather we could not only fix but also read in retirement.
Thirdly, the smaller space, east of the Scotch wall, was
subdivided, but like zones and tropics, with mere imaginary
lines. Front of the fire-place was the parlour. Into it were
ushered visitors, mainly, however, to prevent curiosity or
awkwardness from meddling with the corners and their
uses; but against which we were forced finally to place a
table or two as preventives.
The right hand corner was the ladies' private sitting
room. It was fitted with clap-board shelves, and on these
for sewing, knitting, &c. The left side and whole
corner was the library, or as usually styled—Carlton's
study.
Our artificial rooms were indeed connected with some
anomalies: for instance, under the parlour, was the Potato
Hole! And that held about twenty bushels. The descent
into this spacious vault, was accomplished by raising a puncheon
and vaulting down on the vegetables; the ascent, by
resting the hands on the edges of the parlour floor and
weighing the body up. Again, Carlton's study had in it a
species of dresser-closet, invented and constructed by the
author himself. It was constructed of clap-boards dressed
with a hatchet, and held on some shelves, books in several
languages, writings, plates, knives, fiddle, pepper-box, flute,
mustard-box, and box of rosin, and so on; while some modest
and light cooking utensils were lodged in the basement
story shelves. To conceal the structure was hung
over as much of its front as could be covered, an invalid
table cloth, very white and very patched.
The kitchen proper had, about ten yards from the mansion
house, a whole cabin to itself. Here were all the vulgar
pots, kettles, frying-pans, homminy-block, and the like;
here the common cooking, the washing and ironing, and
weaving, and—oh! ever so many—common and uncommon—common
things besides. Pickling, preserving, cake-baking,
clear-starching, sugar-refining, ruffle-ironing, candy-making,
and all such polite affairs were commonly honoured
with attention in the parlour.
Like most grandee people brought low and “flitting” to
the West, our plunder was, like the Vicar's Family Picture,
too large for the house. We had also no small quantum of
envy and jealousy exciting articles, “the like of which
had never been seen growing among corn,” at least in the
Purchase—and such, policy required should be hid. Many
and outhouses. Still some impolitic articles were unpacked,
being, however, kept concealed behind the curtain—like
sacred mysteries from the eyes and hands of the profane.
But an accident soon after our arrival delivered the colony
from part of these.
A large, antique, and elegantly japanned waiter had been
nicely balanced on a shelf in the toilette chamber; and on
this grand affair were tastefully set numerous anti-tee-total
glasses, jelly glasses, remains of a gilded French china tea
set, and ever so many Reliquiæ Danaum—all regarded, I
fear, with half repressed elation, as shining remembrancers
of departed glory and greatness. Anyhow, more than once
on my sudden appearance behind the woolly rampart,
there was Mrs. C., ay, and even Aunt Kitty herself, a
handling, and a dusting, and a refixing the relies, as devout
as if all had been saints' bones—often with smiles of complacency—but
sometimes with tears! And, after all, perhaps,
that was not so very unreasonable:—friends far away
now—yes some no more on earth—dear friends had once
surrounded that very waiter—sipped tea from those very
cups—and in the fashion of bygone days, had drunk healths
from those glasses. Reader! may be you have shed secret
tears yourself over such things? We think of friends then,
do we not? Mournful shadows of the past are in the vision!
But the Genius of the Woods was incensed: and
mark the consequences.
One day Mrs. Seymour entered the parlour with a cake of
sugar-tree sugar in her hands, and nearly as large and heavy
as she could conveniently carry. After our unanimous
admiration of its size, and breaking off lumps to taste, the
dear old lady disappeared to deposit the saccharine treasure
on the great store shelf constructed immediately over the
waiter of idols. Now oak pins are very strong, tough and
tenacious, and of most Job-like endurance—but the creatures
pins under the store shelf had repeatedly sighed forth remonstrances,
as extra pound after pound of hard soap, sugar,
tallow, and jugs of vinegar and molasses, and what
nots, were cruelly and inconsiderately added to the already
almost insupportable weight. But to-day, when that hugeous
lump of sugar was suddenly added to the grievance,
the indignant pins would stick to it no longer: in a moment—without
one further premonitory creak, off they both
snapped simultaneously—and down came the soap and sugar
and tallow—down came the store tea and the true coffee-coffee,
and the rye-coffee, and the ocra, and the spices
in brown paper bags, and the pepper, red and black in exiled
tea cups! Ah! yes! alas! alas! and down came that
japanned waiter and its gilded cups, and conical glasses
for wine, and bell-mouthed ones for ices and jellies! and,
moreover, down went the dear old lady of the crimped cap,
all rolling, heaped, mixed higgledee-piggledee, into one
bushel and a peck of yellow corn meal reposing in a wash
tub, and thirty-one and a half pounds of wheat flour in a
half-bushel measure, below! So much can a big lump of
unclarified backwoods sugar do! Ah! had it been double
rectified loaf, in blue paper, of a conical form and neatly
bound with hard twisted twines, dividing off circles and parabolas!
But a lump of uncivilized sweetness just turned
out of a pot!
Mrs. Seymour, however, was soon extricated amid the almost
endless oh's—ah's—who-could-have-thought-it's—and
similar exclamations, queries, reproaches and extenuations,
pertaining to accidents created by ourselves; and happily
she had sustained no injury whatever, although the outer
woman was considerably well sugared, well mealed, well
vinegared, and not a little soaped! But the glory of the
brittle ware shone only in pieces—multiplied but not increased!
Not an idol escaped, save a little punch goblet
more than a century old! and whether the sagacity
of age was the cause or not, this ancient relic contrived
to roll by itself into an untouched part of the meal
tub, where after the pell-mell ended, it was discovered,
whole and sound. If any one is incredulous we will show
him when he calls, the venerable article yet preserved in
cotton!
About the time of the accident just told, the venerable old
pier glass, suspended opposite the only door of the cabin
was threatened with a very great danger. A neighbour
having ended a morning call, that, according to the etiquette
of the Purchase, had lasted from a short time after
breakfast till past noon, rose to depart with the farewell
formula, “Well, I allow I must be a sort a-goin,” and then
off he started with great activity in the direction of the door
visible but not real. In other words mistaking the open
door reflected in the glass for the true door, he began kicking
his heavy shod feet towards the mirror; but as he
ducked his head to clear the lintel of the scant door,
he naturally encountered a rough looking personage
seemingly butting against himself from the apparent door—
when round he wheeled, confused indeed, but just in time,
(and before we could have arrested him) to avoid stepping
into the very bosom of the old reflector.
Such risk was too great for the glass to encounter
again, and so it was carefully re-packed and put away 'till
we removed some years after to Woodville; where, as it
could be placed so as to imitate neither door nor window,
it was brought again into the light and permitted to renew
its reflections. Alas! then, however, a dear face that had
been familiar to the old mirror for nearly three-fourths of a
century, was seen pictured there no more! Young and joyous,
and pleasant faces, have often since peeped from its bosom;
but never one so mild, so resigned, so radiant even
and venerated countenance gazing now and with
out a medium upon the resplendent and ravishing scenes!
Pulvis et umbra sumus!
16. CHAPTER XVI.
“Quadrupedante putrem quatit ungula campum.”
“A horse! a horse! my kingdom for a horse!”
J. Glenville and myself, not being able to complete certain
arrangements immediately, my first summer and autumn
were spent in learning two arts, the one tending to the preservation
of hides, the other, to the destruction of hides:—
grinding bark, and rifle-shooting. The present chapter
is devoted to the former, the subsequent one, to the latter art.
Our bark-house was of the Grecian architecture in its
infancy, being almost wholly upright poles as columns, on
which reposed, (when the grinding ceased,) the calm moonlight
horizontals, kept from falling off by the crotches of the
perpendiculars. On the horizontals were laid other poles,
and on these the roof, the latter being with due regard itself
made of bark. Under this shelter was our store of bark,
mostly oak and chestnut, with here and there a pile of
beech; and here, at one end, was our—ay! what shall it
be called? Ye tanners and curriers, and all ye other hide
dressers! Shall we say our bark-masher—or breaker—or
mill—or pounderer — or tritterer? However, I will describe,
and you name.
First, was a hexagonal beam. This stood up nearly perpendicular,
its iron pivots at each end inserted into iron
sockets fastened above and below; and by means of these
pivots the beam could, when required, circulate with entire
freedom. Next, into this hexagonal, was fixed at right angles
while its other end, passing first the nominal centre of a
wheel, (the axis there being wedged in theory immoveable,)
it continued beyond the lateral surface of said wheel far
enough to admit fixtures for Old Dick—a quadruped presently
to be introduced, not fashionably and formally by the
tip of a hat and the tip of a finger, but in detail, i. e. from
head to tail.
But the wheel!—ah! had we that wheel and dear Old
Dick in here to grind bark as a show! It came nearer perpetual
motion, that is, when Dick was harnessed, and I had
the rake in my hand, nearer than any thing I have ever
known since Redheifer's. The article was composed of
eight large white-oak blocks; the four interior ones being
parallelogramic, the four circumferential, plano-convex;
and all bound by long wooden pins driven from the circumference,
and by enormous clamps on the lateral surfaces.
In this state of e pluribus unum, the affair was as near a circle
as is the earth to a sphere; and when art so closely resembles
nature wheelwrights should be satisfied. But when
motion began, the sections and segments not moving unanimously,
circles were evolved whose circumferences did not
obey the definition, in preserving equal distances from the
centre—nor did the centre stick exactly to its own point.
Especially were these irregularities visible, if old Dick became
fidgetty, or “suspicioned” I was going to rake him—
when he would jerk the whole concern with so sudden a
vengeance, as not only to displace the central wedges intended
to confine the axis in the wheel, but to threaten the
dissolution of the whole bark house.
The wheel, (by courtesy,) was fourteen inches thick;
and its circumference was pierced with many holes by an
inch-and-quarter augur to the depth of eight inches in towards
the centre; and these holes were armed with strong
pegs or wooden teeth, driven to the entire depth, and left
—the whole thus forming as tremendous and effective an
engine of torture as the best inquisitors could desire for
the extension of the Church. Inded, if any saint, after his
Holiness shall have converted our pagan countries, shall
wish with young Doctor Oxford to break ungodly heretics,
either on or under the wheel, for offences against the State,
ours would be the very dandy. But let no Mr. Dominick
think Old Dick could have been either persuaded or goaded
to pull the wheel over human beings: hardly could he be
frightened or coaxed to pull it over lifeless bark! No! no!
godly people must work the wheel themselves, unless they
prefer to turn it into a treadmill, or employ steam.
Lastly, the floor. This had the perpendicular, hexagonal
rotary shaft first described, as its centre, or thereabouts;
whence extended imaginary radii, some five, others nearly
six feet, rendering it doubtful if three times the diameter
was precisely equal to the circumference. Still the circumference
being bounded by a border rising above the floor an
average of ten inches, the contents of the area could easily
be known by the wheelbarrow loads of ground bark carried
thence to the vats—near enough at least for a popular lecture
before some institute of practical science.
Another last word, however, seems necessary here, about
our floor. It was of puncheons. Not, my friend, the puncheons
of brandy stores, distilleries, or other alcoholic
abodes, but back-wood puncheons. And these are a species
of Robinson Crusoe board, being planks from three to ten
feet long, and from two to five inches thick; and wide as
the size of the trees whence they are severally hewed by
the means of axe and adze. On such gigantic flooring do
primitive Buckeyes, Hoosiers and the like tread and sleep,
after the departure of the red aboriginals.
But come, Dick, my nonpareil of “hoss beasts,” trot up,
for thy history and portrait.
When this remarkable quadruped was foaled is uncertain.
No satisfaction on this point could be gained even from his
own mouth: not that Dick would utter a deliberate falsehood—that
was impossible—but still the answers he gave
by his mouth, to different experienced jockeys, made some
say he was sixteen, and others twenty-six years old!—
I have known some even insist he must be at least thirty!
and some even forty! I incline to the opinion, however,
that, like certain human bachelors, Dick was of no particular
age.
It is agreed by all that he was foaled, however, and in
Pennsylvania, among the mountains about the Bear Gap.
Here he was brought up to the wagoning business, having
served his apprenticeship with the famous teamster, Mr.
Conestoga Dutchy. Acting in his tender years as wheel-horse,
he was so constantly squeezed between the wagon
pushing him forward from his tail, and his master pulling
him backward from his head, that his longitudinal growth was
very greatly impeded, and it could be said, not that Dick was
longer than any other brief horse, but only not quite so short.
Happily, what was wanting to the fellow's longitude was
added to his latitude; and after all, he had as much weight
of character as longer horses, and, like a French bullet,
more too in a lump. On emergencies, although Dick was
educated as a wheel-horse, he could act in the lead, and well
understood the difference between the line jerked and the
line pulled—indeed, better, I must confess, than Mr. Carlton
himself, who often managed the line wrong, to the great
jeopardy of his load; only Dick, out of generosity, would
usually go the way the driver meant, but for which in ignorance,
he had given the improper signal.
At the earnest recommendation of their mutual friends,
Dick was bought as a family horse by Uncle John, when in
Northumberland. Accordingly the fellow, after performing
wonders on the journey from Philadelphia to the West, in
side a mountain and holding back down the other; and after
having ploughed, and harrowed, and thrashed, &c. in Kentucky,
came at last with the family to the Purchase, where
at our arrival, he was cherished as no unimportant member
of the Glenville community.
Here he hauled logs for cabins and fires, bark for the tannery,
went to mill both with and without the cart, and sometimes
to meeting and sometimes to Woodville. In going to
mill without the cart he usually carried one man and two
bags, bag No. 1, full of wheat, bag No. 2, full of corn, and
this was always the case in freshets, for Dick forded creeks
like a sea-horse; although the things on his back might
keep dry if they could, his own being under water: as to
being floated away—phoo!—preposterous!—Dick could
stay a creek like a dam! He could grind bark too; carry
raw hides and hides tanned, having no fears either about his
own! It was almost like that of a rhinoceros, and would
have resisted every process to transmute it into leather, patent
or unpatent—and we used both.
But nothing so endeared Dick to his friends as his mental
and moral qualities. He was for these worthy of the fairy
age; and had he lived in the days of Beauty and the
Beast, I do think he would have talked right out as well as
the best of the brutes belonging to the era. He was,
among other matters, the only horse that had a relish for
practical jokes. Let any one leave a nice flitch of fat
bacon in the sun till the pot was ready, under the notion
too, that greasing a horse's teeth will stop his eating oats,
the rascal was sure to smell out and devour it! Let the girl
set out a swill for Sukey, and turn away a few moments—
you might catch sight of the tip of Dick's ear as he peeped
from behind the smoke house till the coast was clear, and
the next instant he would be gobbling the mess, lifting his
black-brown head to grin at the stupid cow, and with a
when the help came in a whirlwind of wrath not indeed
on but with a broomstick—bah! how he would heel it
snorting and showing his teeth equivalent with him to saying—“catch
a duck asleep!” Or when Dick was regaling
on his own allowance of corn on the ear, in the front of the
inclined cart, and swiney ran grunting up for a chance
grain or so dropped on the ground, our wag would on a
sudden with his teeth seize the unschooled creature just
back of the shoulders, and then lifting him up, shake him
so as to fill all Glenville with the squealings of terror or pain;
making it evident to all untutored beasts that Dick himself
had lived when the schoolmaster was abroad.
He was kind to men; but to women he was specially
kind. For fun he would carry males double and even
treble; but females might be packed from stem to stern
and the kind soul would trot away with an evident care.
True, he would now and then turn his quizzical head with
a make-believe snap at the dangling feet, but it was manifest
all was sham from his peculiar grin—(his way of laughing)—when
any not acquainted with the trick would scream
or jump down. When thus used for sport, no saddle or
bridle was needed, the passengers on the forecastle holding
by the mane, those on the poop, by the helm, and those
amidships sitting, à la squaw, with ancles on both sides.
The steering was, however, done at the prow by boxing his
ears; when he turned at right angles with the slap, and if
fun was to be made, which was always indicated to him by
a peculiarity in the slapping, he turned so suddenly as to
occasion the rise, the fall, and the flourish of petticoats.
And indeed this was the grand recreation and sport in the
whole affair! and a ride on old Dick was one of the inducements
to the young ladies from the neighbourhoods to
visit Glenville!
Ay! you may suspend all this on your nose: but, believe
eyes out there; secondly, folks will play; and thirdly, remember
“de gustibus non”—i. e. literally translated “some
love hog and homminy.”
But I must not make too large a picture; so with the mention
of Dick's idyosyncracy—(for since the birth of Phrenology
that disease is quite fashionable)—we shall for the
present suffer him to trot away. Like other celebrated
persons he had then his antipathies: he never could bear
the sight of a dead owl! and, unless blindfolded, would
never carry on his back the carcass of a dead deer! And
this, after carrying barn-hill fowls a dozen at a time tied
by the legs and dangling against his sides! and tanned and
raw hides innumerable! Hence his enemies may suppose
it was all affectation—but it was no such thing—it was real
and uncontrollable idyosyncracy—as real as Dr. Reverence's
towards a live cat, or Col. Butcher's towards a
drawn sword!
Such then was our barkery, our bark, and our bark
grinder—and, such was old Dick. But all in motion!
Can one without a black board and diagrams exhibit the
cycloids of that uncircular roundity—the wheel? Can we
without brass bands and bad players make audible the
skreaking of the ungreased pivots?—the curious moaning
and growling of the axis?—and the dreadful cracking and
crashing of the bark under the miniature Juggernaut? And
who has skill to catch and fix on paper, or canvas, the look
and manner of that more than half reasoning horse?—after
resting the full hour I had been in chase of a playful
squirrel, starting off at the crack of the rifle, and trying to
prove by his manner that he had been going all the time!
If any one is Hogarth enough when he undertakes this
work with “picters to match,” let him not fail to illustrate
old Dick and the Bark Mill.
17. CHAPTER XVII.
“Omne tulit punctum,”
“Centre every time.”
Reader, were you ever fired with the love of rifle shooting?
If so, the confidence now reposed in your honour
will not be abused, when told my love for that noble art is
unabated: nay, let me whisper in your ear—
“What yet?”
Yes—in the corner of my bed chamber a genuine New
Purchase rifle! And all the forest equipments,—otter skin
bullet pouch with a tail gracefully pendent—a scalping knife
in a sheath adorned with procupine quills—a savage little
hatchet—a powder horn, and its loader of deer-horn, tied on
with a deer sinew and holding enough to prime a shot gun
—a mould running three hundred and twenty-five to the
pound—wipers—an iron hook to tote squirrels—and some
hundred and fifty patches all strung and fastened to the
leather strap of the pouch—ay! and a pair of moccasins and
pair of green leggins, and—
“Do you ever yet go a gunning?'
Gunning!—alas! is that degrading appellation to be applied
to hunting!—but how should they know? Yes, I do
steal off sometimes and try to fancy myself in the woods.
But what are these scrawney little trees fenced in to
prevent cattle from eating them down? Where is a
squirrel, or a racoon, or a fox, or a turkey to hide?
And where can one lose himself and camp out? No
grand and centurial trees here reaching up to heaven
and sending roots to the centre of the earth! No hollow
caverns in enormous trunks, where wolves and bears may
lurk! No vast sheltering expanse of tops where panthers
and wild cats may find security! How vain to think of
crawling through a thicket of undergrowth to the leeside of
cracking no twig—shaking no bushes—till one can get
within the magical distance, a hundred yards. Nothing,
nothing here, to excite dread, call forth skill, reward toil,
and show the independence of the hunter.
True, I make-believe, like little girls, playing baby
house; I say to myself, “Now Carlton, 'spose that old log
away off there was a bear?—or that tame turkey a wild
one?—or that cream-coloured calf a deer—or that sharp
eared dog a wolf?” And instinctively I catch myself with
my side that way, drawing a bead with one eye into the
hind sight and fixing the other on the may-be game, and
then, click goes the trigger. Fortunate, the rifle is not
cocked. Indeed, these rehearsals are always without a
load; if not, farewell to the integrity of the little knot in
the old log—and to the gambols of calf and dog—good
night to the eyes of farm turkies and dunghill roosters!
In vain do flocks of black-birds and robbins, and tom-tits
rise!—they might perch on my shoulders: for who but a
wretched dandy and shot-gun driveller, with a double-barrelled
gun, a whole pound of powder! and four pounds! of
shot! will fire at a flock, killing two and wounding twenty?
To be sure a curious stranger will sometimes meet us and
politely request to see “a rifle discharged!” and with an
incredulous smile wonder if a man can really hit a solitary
single bird with so “minute” a ball! And then we cannot
but show off, and so we begin with amazing condescension:
“Sir! do you see that little blue bird?”
“Oh! yes! that tiny creature on the next tree.”
“'Tut, no!—that to your right, on the post.”
“What! that away there? too far, Sir, too far.”
“Too far!—forty-five yards in a straight line!!”
Reader, we hit at any height or in any direction; but
a horizontal or a little below is our preference. The rifle
is better balanced, and the light, especially in opposition to
Hence I select, if possible, on occasions like the present a
bird so placed as to render the affair more like our target
firing.
“Now, Sir,”—we continue—“I shall hit that bird.”
“If you do, I will eat it.”
“Then you will have your supper in a second or two.”
And with that I set triggers—toss down my hat—feel for
a level with my feet—cock rifle—turn left side to the mark
—raise the piece with my thumb on the cock—incline
shoulders back with knees bending outward—till the mass
of man and gun rest on the base—let fall the rifle a little
below object—and then, ceasing to breathe and stopping
my pulse, and bringing into the hind sight a silver bead
like a pin's head, I rapidly raise that bead till darkened by
the feathers under the throat—and the nextyou see is a
gentle flutter of spread wings as if the poor little creature
was flying down for a worm or a crumb.
“Ah! Sir, you've only inflicted a severe wound; but
really this is wonderful! I could hardly believe in this skill
unless I saw it.”
“Well, sir, please pick it up; the poor tit is dead enough,
and never knew what hurt him.” And of course, reader, it
must be so, for the bird's head is off.
Such skill was of course not the work of a day. Ounces
of powder and pounds of lead were spent in vain first, and
many a squirrel, at the crack of the rifle, would remain chattering
or eating a nut, imagining somebody was shooting
somewhere; until conjecturing by the third or fourth ball
pealing bark some two or three feet from him, that the firing
was rather in his direction, away he would scud for fear a
chance bullet should maybe hit him! But my heart was
in the matter in those days. Hence it is no great marvel if
in due time my rifle dealt out certain death second to none
in the Purchase. What avail then concealment in the top-most
amid the green leaves. What! a retreat behind crotches
or into holes; there was yet the tip of an ear or point of a
nose, or twinkle of an eye. Or did a squirrel expand on a
small limb till his body above was a mere line of fur on the
bark like feathery hair on a caterpillar? in vain, “the meat”
was mine.
A squirrel once so stretched himself as to create a doubt
whether a squirrel was above the branch or not; but firing
secundum artem down he came, and, as was necessary, dead.
Yet wound external had he none; he had been killed, as
is often the case, although it occurred but once with me, by
concussion; the ball having struck the limb of the tree exactly
under his heart.
Let none think we western people follow rifle shooting,
however, for mere sport; that would be nearly as ignoble
as shot gun idleness! The rifle procures, at certain seasons,
the only meat we ever taste; it defends our homes
from wild animals and saves our corn fields from squirrels and
our hen-roosts from foxes, owls, opossums and other “var
ments.” With it we kill our beeves and our hogs, and cut
off our fowls' heads: do all things in fact, of the sort with
it, where others use an axe, or a knife, or that far east savagism,
the thumb and finger. The rifle is a woodman's
lasso. He carries it everywhere as (a very degrading comparison
for the gun, but none other occurs,) a dandy a cane.
All, then, who came to our tannery or store came thus
armed; and rarely did a customer go, till his rifle had been
tried at a mark, living or dead, and we had listened to achievements
it had done and could do again. No wonder, in
these circumstances, if I should practice; especially when
it needed but the flash of a rifle pan to set off our in-bred
magazine of love and tendencies towards bullet moulds and
horn loaders! No wonder, that, after many failures, even
in hitting a tree, Mr. Carlton could be seen in his glory at
at forty-five yards off-hand planting bullet after bullet into
the same augur hole! Reader! may you live a thousand
years; but if you must die, unless somebody will save your
life by splitting an apple on your head—(William Tell size)
—at fifty yards off-hand with a rifle ball, send for me—shut
your eyes for fear of flinching—and at the crack—go, your
life is your own.
Old Dick is one hobby often mounted literally and maybe
now too often, metaphorically, the rifle is my other. But
with this by no means must we bore you; and, therefore,
after narrating my famous shots in behalf of the Temperance
Society, we shall for the present put the gun on the rack
over the fireplace.
Glenville and myself were once, on some mercantile affairs,
travelling in an adjoining county, when we came suddenly
on a party preparing to shoot at a mark; and from
the energy of words and gestures it was plain enough a
prize of unusual importance was proposed. We halted a
moment, and found the stake to be a half-barrel of whiskey.
If ever, then and there was to be sharp-shooting; and
without question, then and there was present every chap in
the settlements that could split a bullet on his knife blade or
take the rag off the bush.
“Glenville,” said I, seized with a sudden whim, “lend
me fifty cents; I mean to shoot.”
“Nonsense! Carlton; you can't win here; and if you
could, what does the president of a temperance society want
with a barrel of whiskey?”
“John, if I can find a gun here anything like my own, I
can win. And although I have never before won or lost a
penny, I shall risk half a dollar now for the fun of the thing,
and to have the satisfaction of knocking yonder barrel in
the head and letting out the stuff into the branch here.”
After some further discussion Glenville acquiesced, and
following speech and proposal:
“Well, gentlemen, I think I can outshook any man on the
ground, if you will let us come in and any neighbour here
will allow me to shoot his gun, in case I can find one
to my notion; and here's my fifty cents for the chance.
But, gentlemen and fellow citizens, I intend to be right out
and out like a backwoodsman; and so you must all know
we are could water men, and don't believe in whiskey;
and so, in case we win, the barrel is, you know, ours,
and then I shall knock the article in the head. But then
we are willing to pay either in money or temperance tracts
the amount of treat every gentleman will get if anybody else
wins.”
To this a fine, hardy looking farmer apparently some
sixty years old and evidently the patriarch of the settlement,
replied:
“Well, stranger, come on; you're a powerful honest man
any how; and here's my hand to it; if you win, which will
a sort a tough you though, you may knock the stingo in the
head. And stranger, you kin have this here gun of mine,
or Long Jake's thare; or any one you have a notion on.
How do you shoot?”
“Off-hand, neighbour; any allowance?”
“Yes; one hundred yards with a rest; eighty-five yards
off-hand.”
“Agreed.”
“Agreed.”
Arrangements and conditions, usual in grand contests like
that before us, were these:
1st. A place level as possible was selected and cleared
of all intervening bushes, twigs, &c. 2d. A large tree
was chosen. Against this the target shingles were to be
set, and from its roots or rather trunk, were measured off
towards the upper end of the cleared level, the two distances,
natural dividers were used on this occasion; viz. a tall
young chap's legs, who stepped with an elastic jerk, counting
every step a yard; a profitable measure if one was buying
broadcloth; but here the little surpluses on the yards
were equally to the advantage of all. 3d. Cross lines at
each distance, eighty-five and one hundred yards, were
drawn on the measured line; and on the first the marksman
stood who fired off-hand, while on the second the rests were
placed or constructed. Rests depended on taste and fancy;
some made their own—some used their comrades'—and
some rested the rifle against the side of a tree on the line:
and of all the rests this is the best, if one is careful to place
the barrel near its muzzle against the tree and not to press
hard upon the barrel. Some drive in two forked stakes and
place on them a horizontal piece; and some take a chair,
and then seated on the ground, they have the front of the
chair towards them and its legs between their feet, resting
the whole gun thus upon the seat of the chair. Again, many
set a small log or stone before them, and then lying down
flat on their bellies, they place the muzzle on the rest and
the butt of the gun on the ground near their face; and then
the rifle seems as moveless as if screwed in a vice. In
this way Indians and woodsmen often lie in ambuscade
for deer at the licks, or enemies in war.
4th. Every man prepared a separate target. This was
a popular shingle, having near its middle a spot blackened
with powder or charcoal as a ground; and on this ground
was nailed at its four corners a piece of white paper about
an inch square and its centre formed by a diamond hole;
two corners being perpendicularly up and down. From
the interior angles of the diamond were scratched with a
knife point two diagonals, and at their intersection was the
true centre. With a radius of four inches from this centre
was then circumscribed a circle: if beyond this circum
hair's breadth, all other shots, even if in the very centre,
were nugatory—the unlucky marksman lost.
5th. Each man had three shots. And provided the
three were within the circle, each was to be measured by
a line from the centre of the diamond to the near edge of the
bullet hole—except a ball grazed the centre, and then the
line went to the centre of the hole—and then, the three
separate lengths added were estimated as one string or
line, the shortest securing the prize. This is called line
shooting.
6th. Each one fixed, or had fixed, his target against the
tree as he pleased; and then, each man was to fire his three
shots in succession, without being hurried or retarded. We
occupied on an average to-day every man about fifteen minutes.
More than thirty persons were assembled, out of whom
had been selected seven as the best marksmen; but these,
induced by the novelty, having good-naturedly admitted me,
we were now eight. Of the eight, five preferred to shoot
with a rest; but the old Achates, the sapling[2]
woodman that
had stepped off the distances, and myself, were to fire off
hand. All the rifles were spontaneously offered for the
stranger's use. I chose, however, Tall Jake's; for although
about a pound too heavy, it sighted like my own, and went
as easy on the triggers, and carried one hundred and eighty
to the pound—only five more than mine which carried one
hundred and seventy-five.
Auditors and spectators now formed the double lines,
standing, stooping, and lying in very picturesque attitudes,
some fifteen feet each side the range of the firing, and
that away down towards the target tree even, behind
which several chaps as usual, planted themselves to announce
perilous; and yet accidents rarely happen. In all my sojourn
in the Purchase we had but two. The first happened
to a fine young fellow, who impatient at some delay,
peeped out it is supposed, to ascertain the cause, when at
the instant the rifle was fired, and its ball glancing entered
his head and he fell dead in his tracks. The next happened
to an elderly man, who was tationed behind a large
tree awaiting the report, and who at the flash of the gun, fell
from behind with one piercing cry of agony, bleeding and
dying:—the trunk was hollow and in and opposite the place
where our neighbour stood in apparent safety, was a mere
shell, through which the ball had gone and entered his
heart!
Well, the firing at length began. I have no distinct recollection
of every shot. Now and then, a central ball
was announced, and that followed by two others a full inch
or may be an inch and an eighth even from the centre; and
once, where two successive balls were within the diamond,
the third, by some mischance of the rest depended on,
struck on the very edge of the grand circle. Balls, too,
were sometimes planted in three different corners of the
paper—very good separate shots—yet proving want of
steady and artistical sighting, or even a little experimenting
with the edges of the hind sight; which was owing
doubtless to drawing the bead to the edge and not the bottom.
A smart young fellow having made two very fair shots,
boasted so grandly about his new rifle, that a grave, middle-aged
hunter offered to bet a pound of lead, that if the young
chap would allow him after the gun was rested for the shot,
to rub his hand from the lock to the muzzle, he would so bewitch
the rifle that she should miss the big tree. This was
all agreed to; and then, such as knew how to bewitch rifles
rapidly retreated to our rear, and such as did not, were
man on the ground, and his rifle on its rest, our conjuror ran
his hand slowly along the barrel, pausing an instant at the
muzzle, and uttering an incantation, and then going behind
the marksman, he bade him fire when he liked. This he
did; and marvellous enough it was—the ball not only
missed the shingle, but struck no where in the tree! Great
was the astonishment and mortification of the youth; but
as we magnanimously allowed him a shot extra and without
witchcraft, his countenance brightened and especially
when his ball now spoiled the inner edge of his diamond.
Perhaps you are curious, and wish to learn how to bewitch
a rifle? I will tell on one condition:—all the spectators
when a rifle is bewitched must be made to come to
the rear of the firing party. Here is the recipe: let the
rifle-doctor conceal in his hand a bullet small enough for
the purpose, and on rubbing as far as the muzzle, let him
as adroitly as possible deposit said bullet just within the
said muzzle—safely betting any number of pounds of lead,
that whatever else the marksman may hit, he cannot hit his
shingle. N. B. See that the rifle to be bewitched has no
triggers set, and is not on cock, otherwise two tartars of a
very unpleasant character may be caught by the rifle-doctor
instead of one.
One man only took to his belly, (the technical term was
to fire on his belly,) but as his log-rest turned a little at the
third shot, the unerring bullet, following the guidance of the
barrel, stuck itself plump outside the circumference named,
and thus nullifying one true central ball, and one in the
lower interior point or angle of his diamond. Another man
was still more unfortunate. After two most excellent shots,
his gun hanging fire at the third, he bawled out, “No
shot!” which being a notification before the shot could be
examined and reported, entitled him to another trial; but
alas! the ball thus tabooed had grazed the centre! Again
was found sticking in the tree an honest foot above the top
even of his shingle!
And now we, who fired off-hand, and thereby professed
to be “crack” shots—(yet most marksmen make a noise
there)—we began to make ready. We higgled a little as
to who should lead off; not to show politeness as well
bred folks in entering rooms and carriages, but because all
were, the least bit however, cowed, and each wished to see
what his neighbour could do first. When that kind of spirit
comes crawling over a body in rifle-shooting, it must be banished
in an instant. The effect in oratory may be a very good
speech—(unless you stump)—but in our art, it is always
a very bad shot. Our noble art demands calmness and the
most imperturbable self-possession; and that, at the beginning,
the middle, the ending of the exercises. And so I
said:—
“Well, gentlemen, if you want to see where to plant
your balls, I'm the one, I think, to show you”—
“Why no, stranger”—replied the old Achates—“I allow
that aint fair nither, to let you lead off. We're all
neighbour-like here, and 'tis only right you should see what
we kin do fust. I sort a suppose maybe it will save you
the trouble of shootin anyhow. So come, Long Jake,
crack away and I'll foller—and arter, you, stranger, may
shoot or not jist as you like best.”
“Agreed, grandaddie,” responded Long Jake, “so here
goes.” And then Jake, after returning from the old beech,
where he had put up his target, took his rifle, left a moment
leaning against a tree, and with firmness and grace
stepped on the line. Two things and only two gave me
hopes, viz: he shut his left eye and held on the diamond
without rising or falling perpendicularly to it: but then he
held that rifle as if it were the true horizon—and then—
it must have been a central ball; but still better for me—
Jake was embarrassed a little. Shaking out the damp powder
he primed afresh, and again began his aim. Now, however,
a very slight vibration seemed to glimmer on his barrel,
and when he did fire, I was not disappointed nor greatly
displeased at the cry from the fellows that leaped from
behind the target tree—“rite hand corner, grazin the
dimind!” Again Jake loaded, raised his piece, and fired
at first sight, and the cry now came—“centre!” This increased
my neighbour's confidence, and happily lessened
his carefulness; for sighting, as he himself afterwards
confessed, “a leetle bit coarseish like,” the cry now was—
“line shot, scant quarter 'bove centre!”
“Come, grandaddie,” said Jake to the old gentleman as
he walked up to the line from adjusting his shingle, “you
must do a little better nor that, or maybe we'll lose our
stingo, for I know by the way this stranger here handles
my rifle, he's naturally a hard chap to beat.”
This speech was occasioned by my handling the gun,
taking aim, setting triggers, &c., in order to get better acquainted
with the piece; and which experiments resulted
in a secret and hearty wish for my own gun.
“Well Jake, I allow yours kin be beat a bit,” replied
our veteran taking his position on the line. At a glance
towards his “toot en sembell,” Mr. Carlton too, allowed he
had met his match—and, perhaps even with his own
gun. How grand the calmness—as if in no battle! How
alive muscle and feature—as if in the midst of enemies!
There he is dropping his bead—ay, his eyes both wide
lower point of his diamond—a flash—and from the tree—
“centre!” He was soon again ready, and at his second
flash, came the cry—“upper edge, fust hole!”—and that
cry was answered along the gradually narrowing and
crowded lines, by the whole company—“hurraw for
grandaddie—hurraw-aw!” His third shot, brought from
the tree—“lee-e-tle tor'ds rite corner of dimind—jeest
grazed centre!”—and was answered by—“grandadde forever,
hurraw-aw-aw!”
“Carlton,” maliciously whispered Glenville, “the stingo
is safe—anti-temperance beats!”
I felt honour demanded, however, a trial; and so requesting
Glenville to fix as I should direct my target, I stood on
the line of firing, sighting several times with open pan and
no priming; until the mark exactly suited, when I cried out
“stand clear!” And now, supposing Jake's rifle sighted
like my own, and threw its ball a little above its bead, (as
indeed is best,) I drew up as usual, with rapidity, and let
fly just as the bead caught the lower tip of my diamond,
the report instantly returned being—“inside lower pint of
dimind, scant quarter, b'low centre!”
“Blame close, stranger,” said the old hero, “but I allow
you'll have to mend it to beat me.”
“Praise from you, my old friend, is worth something—
I'll try my best to satisfy you.”
Jake's rifle was now understood: she sent balls exactly
where she aimed, and not as mine, and most good rifles,
an eighth of an inch above. Making, therefore, my front
sight a hair thicker and fuller in the hind sight, and coming
full on the lower angle of my diamond—“Centre!”—was
echoed from the tree and along the lines—“hurraw-aw!
for the stranger!”
“You're most powerful good at it,” said the old gentleman,
“but my line's a leetle the shortest yet.”
“Well, my good old friend, here goes to make yours a
little the longest”—and away, along between the unflinching
lines of excited spectators, whistled my third and last
ball, bringing back the cry—“lee-e-tle b'low the centre—
broke in first hole!” But, while all rushed to the examination
and measurements, confined to our two shingles, no exultation
burst forth, it being doubtful, or, as the hunters said,
“a sort of dubus whether the stingo was grandadde's, or the
stranger's.” In a few moments, however, and by the most
honourable and exact measurements, it was decided that the
old Achates had “the shortest string by near about half the
brenth of his bullit!” And then such uproar rose of mingled
hurraws,—screams,—shrieks,—yells,—and outcries!
an uproar none but true honest-hearted far westers, unadulterated
by foreign or domestic scum, ever did or can make.
The hurricane over, the victor mounting a log made the
following speech:—
“Well, naburs, it's my sentimental opinyin this stranger's
acted up, clean up, to the notch, and is most powerful clever.
And I think if he'd a fired his own gun as how he
mought a come out even, and made up the leetle matter of
diff'runce atween us—and that would be near about shootin
a little bit the closest of any other chap, young or old, in
these 'are diggins—and so, says I, let's have three cheers
for the stranger, and three more for his friend.”
Oh! dear reader! could you have heard the old, dark
woods ring then!—I struggled hard, you may be sure; but
what was the use, the tears would come!
We both made replies to the compliment; and in concluding,
for I mounted the log last, I touched on the wish
we really had to do good, and that nothing was better for
hardy, brave, and noble woodsmen than temperance.
“Well, strangers, both on you,” replied that very grand
old man, “you shan't be disapinted. You depended on our
honour—and so, says I, if these 'are naburs here aint no
for a treat, and then, says I, lets all load up and crack away
at the cask, and I'll have fust shot.”
“Agreed! agreed! hurraw for grandadde Tomsin!—
hurraw for the strangers!—hurraw for the temperince society!—load
up, boys, load up!—nobody wants a suck—
crack away, grandadde—crack away, we're all ready!”
And crack went old Brave's rifle—crack, long Jake's—
crack the brave Gyas, and the brave Cloanthus—and crack
every rifle in the company: and there rolled the wounded
half-barrel, pouring its own death-dealing contents through
its perforated heads and sides, till soon the stingo was all
absorbed in the moist earth of the forest.
Glenville and I now “gathered hossis and put out,”
highly pleased with the events: and a few weeks after we
were still more pleased, at hearing that all the company at
the prize shooting that day had become members of the
temperance society. If, therefore, any old fashioned temperance
society. (such as it was before fanaticism ruled it,)
wishes champions to shoot, provided “grandadde Tomsin”
will be one, I know where can be found another.
I am sorry to say it, but nobody in rifle-shooting is an Emmonite,
or even a Hopkinsian; he wishes his neighbour to make good shots—
but not too good. And where perfect first-rate marksmen contend, an
accident only can give any of them the victory.
18. CHAPTER XVIII.
“Thou shalt not muzzle the ox when he treadeth out the corn.”—
(Obsolete—since the use of patent threshing machines.)
From the time or our arrival in and at Glenville, (it being
both a big and a little place,) we commenced forming acquaintance
with our neighbours. And this business was
promoted by the many “little and big meetings” held by
Mr. Hilsbury in all directions, over and above the regular
monthly ones in Glenville, and on three successive Sabbaths
in old man Welden's settlement—for every body, man,
with attendance, if it be rainy or shiney, or mighty
cloudy, or powerful skyey; but in all weathers and seasons,
and from all quarters of the woods, along roads, traces,
paths, or short cuts, come horses to the preaching; some
with single riders of any sex, bursting, at a gallop, into
view, through underwood thickets of spicewood and papaw,
or clearing log after log, in a kind of hop, skip and jump
gait. Many horses indeed have two riders, a mode of
horsmanship called in the Purchase “riding twice.” And
some horses come with folks riding even twice and a half,
or may be thrice: for instance, with a man and his wife,
the latter holding in her lap a two year old child, although
the child is very often carried by the father; or with three
girls; or with one beau, having two sun-bonnetted damsels
behind. Dick always figured on such occasions with a
cargo on his back that doubtless made a lively impression on
his feelings of past times, and of the loads he had in his earlier
days seen crammed into a Conestogo wagon: and never,
in fact, did he look so like a family horse as on Sundays,
when he usually carried so much of our family on his back.
In fording swollen waters, if the water came up no higher
than the saddle skirts, and if depending articles (legs and
so on) could be crooked up or neatly packed on the mane,
in plunged all, whether riding once, twice, or morefold:
nay, it was contended that the more riders the better; the
heavier weight preventing the horse from being floated or
losing his foothold in a strong current. But if it was certain
that the creek was “swimming high,” then the riders
crossed on a log, the horse swimming by its side and the
bridle being held by the rider. Afterwards the furniture
(saddle and so on) was transported over the natural bridge.
Arrived at meeting “the critters” (alias the horses, or
“hoss beasts”) are hung to a swinging branch of some tree;
for such, yielding to the inquietude of the horses, prevents
curvilinear play of the hind quarters. Nor are the horses
at all backward in using their ecclesiastical privileges; especially
if we are favoured with “a powerful smart preacher,”
that is, a fellow with a very glib tongue, who preaches
by inspiration, and has the wonderful power of saying nothing,
or something worse, over and over again, for hours.
Then the hung animals, impatient maybe, begin and carry
on extra dancings, rump-rangings, branch-shakings, and
other exercises. They champ bits!—snap their teeth at
neighbouring horses!—kick, as quadrupeds should, in
quadruple time!—and stamp, squeak, and squeal! In fact,
they make as much noise and behave as foolishly as if they
held a fanatical meeting themselves!
Often too, among the horses, are a few knowing old
codgers, (and Dick, I am sorry to say, cultivated their acquaintance,)
who have slipped their own bridles, and are
now misspending the time in eating off the bridle reins of
quiet animals, or in kicking and biting, with most provoking
sang-froid, fastened horses, already furious and indignant.
Most horses when liberated usually start home at full speed,
inconsiderately leaving folks that rode once or twice to
meeting, to walk away in single or double file, or to get a
lift from a neighbour. Dick, however, never ran home:
he preferred, like luke-warm Christians, Sunday visiting;
and so went to see his neighbours in settlements directly
opposite the way to Glenville. Yet I must say he never
made the least objection to be caught and bridled again—
provided you could find him.
Let none understand me to say that religious meetings in
the wooden world are not by very many attended from serious
and devout motives: yet there, as elsewhere, many
attend such meetings from secular motives, and some from
very improper ones. Numbers go to see their neighbours
frequent cause is to “advertise strays.”
Dignity is given to our pulpit gazetteering by confining
the business to the clergy; but in the Purchase, lay members,
and even “a worldling” give out notices: and that,
not by reading the advertisement in the reverential manner
of the civilized churches, but extemporaneously and orally.
Sometimes the affair assumes the form of the question implied,
as thus:—
“Neighbour Bushwhack, livin down the lower end of
Sugar Holler, would like to hear if any body in this here
settlement has heern or seed a stray critter of hissin, as his
hoss-beast, a three year old black geldin, come next spring,
with a switch tail, but a kind a eat off by his other colt,
slipt his bridle on Hick'ry Ridge last big meetin, and he aint
heern or seen nothin of him sense.”
To which indirect query one or more neighbours rising
up will answer in this style;—
“Well, I allow the critter didn't come over here, as he'd
been heern on or seed by some of us—but if any body hears
or sees sich a stray, we'll put him up, and let neighbour
Bushwhack know of it.”
Perhaps a notice thus given and answered in a city church
would do as much to discountenance Sabbath advertising,
as the rebukes of the religious press. Try it.
A big meeting is often held in the woods in our delicious
autumns. And nothing is more welcome to our young people
hard at work till then, and needing a holiday, than such
a gathering. Then is the grand sparking time, and young
men go expressly as they say, to find “a most powerful
heap of gals!” Nor is this curious heap of sun-bonnets
and calico frocks adverse to a little extra attention; and
hence, compound parties steal away at intervals to the
springs, where they contrive accidentally to have a little
as strange echoes to the voice of psalmody and prayer.
A small meeting extra, is often held at night in a friend's
cabin. Then it sometimes happens, by reason of a storm
or very long sermon, or both, that the folks conclude to stay
all night; and then if the author's memory is faithful, we
used to see what was called “a leetle fun.” Nothing immoral
or gross ever takes place; but certainly we had something
more lively than praying and singing.
It was, therefore, with some surprise we used to read
reports from new missionaries, in which “the large numbers
that came in all weathers and from great distances to attend
protracted meetings, and who seemed unable to tear themselves
away from the exercises, &c. &c,” was considered
as conclusive evidence that we New Purchase people had
uncommon anxieties to hear the truth. Now, the result of
all our experience, and we had a pretty rich one, is and
was—that unregenerate hearts are pretty much out there
as in here—that men born of log cabins and stick chimneys,
and men born of silks and broadcloths, are all equally “born
of the flesh” and “are flesh.” Maybe the German population
about central Pennsylvania are exceptions, as a certain
learned young Doctor of Divinity seems to think; but
then, they are the sole exceptions.
The occasion offers to say a few words about the missionaries
themselves. But while we profess to be very good-natured
and social, we are not, reader, so charitable as to
extend our term beyond pretty well educated, talented and
evangelical missionaries. We made Glenville head-quarters
for missionaries and we ever found uneducated preachers
and even small talented gentlemen, an inconvenience
and an evil more than a blessing; and as to the unevangelical
sort, learned or unlearned, they were a nuisance and
a pest.
As a body, then, the true missionaries in the New Purchase
ardent zeal, in endless labours, in disinterestedness. They
were considered Domestic Missionaries; but they endured
as much as their brethren in the foreign field, and that
without the incidental excitement and support derived from
the eclat of a mission: especially when the wood's preacher
comes to depend for his entire sustenance on two or more
weak settlements, the aid of the missionary society being
declined or withdrawn. For a year or two an approximate
salary may be paid, a few shillings in cash and the balance
in “trade.” Still, educated men need a few other articles
beyond pork, corn, tow-linen, leather, &c.—a few books for
instance. And they are forced to go a few journeys; wish
to educate their children; pay doctor's fees, and the like.
Nor is it, maybe, an unpardonable sin to aspire after furniture
one degree above rough cabin apparatus. Hence the
missionary must have a little hard cash; and hard enough for
them, poor fellows, it is by the time they handle it.
The outposts, therefore, must be either wholly abandoned
to profoundly ignorant, vain, empty, conceited, self-confident,
and snarling fanatical preachers; or proper preachers must
do some things that are secular. And if the New Purchases
are abandoned, then must they be cursed out there with
inspired clergy, such we have heard thus reciting their apostolic
creed:—
“Yes, bless the Lord, I are a poor, humble man—and I
doesn't know a single letter in the A B C's, and couldn't
read a chapter in the Bible no how you could fix it, bless
the Lord!—I jist preach like old Peter and Poll, by the
Sperit. Yes, we don't ax pay in cash nor trade nither for
the Gospel, and arn't no hirelins like them high-flow'd college-larned
sheepskins—but as the Lord freely give us, we
freely give our fellow critturs.”
Hence a few of the true preachers betake themselves to
teaching as the least uncanonical avocation. And all would
all the extra labour in teaching, pay came not also in the
shape of fat-flitch, cord-wood, eggs, and butter. Most true
preachers and pastors are, therefore, compelled to enter some
land; and then after long and arduous toils they contrive
to barter some produce at the settlement store for sugar, tea,
coffee and paper. But to jingle a few silver dollars, the
parson must sell a cow, or calf, or even a horse!
The proverb, “half a loaf better than no bread,” applies
here; for if proper ministers out West do not, in very many
places, in a great measure maintain themselves, settlements
now half-served by those noble men would not and could
not be served at all. True, the folks out there might have
husks from fanatical fellows; but Christ's sheep ought to
have pastors and proper food—they are not hogs to be fed
by the Devil's swine-herds.
Very nice and classic essays used to find their way sometimes
to Glenville, which were full of very proper rhetorical
words against secular clergy, and commanding them to reform
and give themselves wholly to the work of God and the
ministry; essays no doubt well intended, but written, we
apprehend, by inexperienced young gentlemen, just married,
and seated in the parsonage in the midst of a well furnished
library. Sometimes, too, such essays were penned
by learned gentlemen, with sons and daughters at good boarding
schools; and the writers, maybe, received so much
hard silver per page, especially if a prize essay; and our
far east censors not only had the pleasure of pelting our
poor frogs, but found it profitable too. In such essays the
Proton Pseudos was, “all pastors and preachers must give
up secular employments—their schools—their farms—their
merchandise—their trades—and imitate the Apostles, &c.”
In extraordinary times men are sustained by the providence
of God in extraordinary ways, and purse, scrip, and books
in the Apostles' time were not needed; and few then had
he, unlike some Unholinesses, was wicked enough to prefer
a Wife to a Harlot!
And even in those days Paul, whilst aiding to erect a
spiritual tabernacle, supported himself at secular tent-making!
It is not improbable that Luke, the beloved and
benevolent physician, prescribed and took fees in emergencies.
May, then, modern ministers in no cases do secular
things, without being subjected to unkind suspicions, and
not rarely denounced as merchants, farmers, speculators,
and even jockies? Nay, many thus stigmatized are among
the best of men; and that, however warned by hasty young
clerks and clergy to look out for the doom of unfaithful
stewards! and bid to expect, after a life of toil for the gospel
and after bestowing the spiritual without reaping the
carnal, bid to look out for banishment into the outer darkness!!
Ah! ye hasty censors! God will never forget labours
of love in that far West or elsewhere; even if a
preacher, to put bread into the mouths, and garments on the
bodies of his family, do work secularly with his own hands!
It is even granted by hasty writers, too, that the penuriousness
and dishonesty of congregations may drive the
minister to secular labour; and that surely is ample and
sufficient apology, one would think, for the minister's irreverent
conduct. Why then this perpetual cannonade against
the Clergy? Does it never occur, that the niggardly Mr.
Miser, the close-fisted Mr. Grip, the narrow-minded Miss
Snarl, and the dishonest Mr. and Mrs. Finepromise, may,
at the grand assize, have to appear as defendants and show
cause why the preacher was driven to be secular? Strange!
passing strange, if a hunted, defrauded, broken-spirited
man, who, because he wishes yet to preach, maintains himself,
should, in addition to all his sufferings, be decried and
rebuked as faithless and money-loving!—as needing reform!—as
passing to a severe doom and vengeance in the
ease in Zion,” and have, therefore, so much time to buffet,
go, visit a New Purchase!—and then write—
“Mr. Carlton!!—keep cool.”
Well then, I will go on to say that meetings in the Purchase
were not always dry affairs. Once, this very autumn,
a two days' meeting was to come off on Saturday and Sunday
in the Welden settlement. At the close of the first
day, while Glenville and Carlton were “settin the toone for
them,” a heavy shower began suddenly to fall; and as we
clerks could not get out to secure our saddles they became
well soaked. Many, indeed, hurried out to secure their
own accoutrements and those of the “wimmin folks's,” but
they forgot the clerks' and the rector's: hence after service
we found seats cool and refreshing as a wet sponge. We
had been invited to spend the night at a chieftain's[4]
in the
settlement: and as we were without umbrellas or cloaks,
and the rain kept mizzling away, we had a very agreeable
ride of it, receiving too, from overhanging branches and
thick bushes frequent “baby-sprinklings” until the whole
amounted to “believer's baptism”—a thorough immersion.
However, we were neither salt nor sugar. On we splattered
and splashed, laughing and talking, while our saddle-seats
added to the noise very hearty and peculiar notes or
sounds, which may be called—soggings; and we comforted
one another with mutual promises of a dry house and a
drying fire. But—ah! me!—our dear good landlady, and
expressly to honour her guests, had determined to have
“things fixed!”—and a wet fix it was. First and foremost,
the puncheon-floor had undergone a deluge of scrubbing,
effected by pouring over it forty great calabashes of water,
or one great calabash forty times emptied! Then the floor
its dirt was raked and floated away to form an alluvion in
the cellar below; but much of the flood having eluded the
swabbing process that followed, there remained many Lilliputian
lakes of muddy water in the cavities and gulleys of
the puncheons. Secondarily, chairs, tables, benches, and
even bedsteads had undergone Pharisaical ablutions: and
although things did dry in process of time, yet, as the good
woman remarked, “Things were a leetle dampish, to be
sure!” Indeed, chairs and benches on which persons of
a sanguine temperament sat, exhibited, on their rising, a
decided Mosaic of dark and light shades. Thirdly, when
we washed before supper and dinner in one, we were offered
a wet towel to dry on! the lady apologizing for the anomaly
by saying, “Thar'd been sich a rite down smart chance of
rain that their wash wouldn't dry.” Of course this apology
accounted for the undried table-cloth at the meal; where,
by the way, we recognized, in the midst of other good things,
and full of milk, the republican bowl that a few moments
before had enacted the part of wash-basin. In anticipation
of its complex and yet desultory character, we of Glenville,
instead of dipping at the time our hands into the bowl
had poured from it the water over the hands. All the guests,
we must say, were not so considerate.
But a most sumptuous fire was roaring away for our comfort;
and, be satisfied, in no sense was it cold comfort.
And soon all, and at a very respectable distance, were
steaming away, and, in the midst of haze and vapour, snuffing
the savoury odours of ham fried in lard—of venison
and wild-turkey in ditto—and of chickens in cream and
butter! Generally, meats of every sort in the Purchase
were fried, and that so perfectly as to be not only done, but
actually done up; till the pieces curled at the edges, and
the taste of one kind of flesh could not be distinguished
from another, like—like—oh! like the carcasses of one
Mr. Forgethisname's[5] livery stables in the Northern Liberties.
And yet a cookery of squirrels or chickens, a la
Kaintuc, in cream, butter, and dusted flour, excels any fry
in the world.
By bed-time affairs had become dryish. Still, much
vapour hung in our atmosphere; and towards the arctic regions
of the cabin, matters were puddly. However, ten of
the company were accommodated in the beds, and as many
others,—indeed, I do not know where: yet we all retired;
when a spirited and general confabulation was maintained
till most of the trebles, tenors, and basses grew, some flat and
others muttering, and there was a subsidence into a colloquy
between two. At last, one of these returning a mumbling
kind of response, Mr. Holdon, despairing to extract any
more talk, cried out, “Well! good night:” which signal
was followed by a farewell crackling of bedsteads, and an
audible rustling of “kivers;” and then all lately so active
and chatty, was turned into sleeping and snoring. Bah!—
tell me not about the sleep of innocence! nothing comes up
to the sleep of a backwoodsman; and as to his snoring, beat
it if you can!
Well, I dreamed a dream. Methought old Dick was
harnessed to our bedstead, and was pulling us through
showery bushes and nettles, and that I had the tooth-ache,
and so uncomfortable all seemed that I determined, as is the
case in some dreams, to wake myself. Happy resolution!
for whilst Dick had vanished, and we were safe enough in
the cabin, yet the interpretation of the dream was present:
—a gentle stream was trickling from above through a hole
in the clapboard roof, the jeau d' esprit having already saturated
my rag-pillow, and more than a foot of the adjoining
covers!—and, what was very remarkable!—I had the toothache!!
“Indeed!”
Yes! indeed. I whipped out of bed; quietly worked the
bedstead from under the unelectric water spout; doubled
my end of the bolster in place of the pillow removed; got
once more into bed, and began to lull the grumbling tooth
by holding my mouth shut and breathing through the nose,
and occasionally counting slowly and deliberately as high
as a hundred. And in this laudable work I had at last
succeeded, and was sinking away into dryer dreams, when
I was suddenly aroused to my last and severest “trial by
water” by a rude shake from Glenville, who also thus addressed
me:—
“Carlton!—are you going to sleep all day?—get up if
you don't want your boots full of water—”
“My boots!—my boots!!—man alive! don't let them
get any wetter—I shall never get them on—never!”
“Up then—or Tom Hilton will clean yours as he has
mine—he'll dip them in the rain-trough.”
Fortunately all were up and out but myself—and yet it
would have been the same if Queen Victoria had been
there—my boots were not to be trifled with, even when
dry;—what! if provoked by such a ducking! I thought,
therefore, of neither man, woman, nor child—I thought only
of my boots—and I leaped out of bed without regard to the
ordinary precautions—and slipping on the limbs of the indispensables—(anglicè,
jerking on my breeches)—and
holding up and buttoning as I moved, I rushed to the door!
and in the very nick of time to witness the catastrophe!
Yes! there on the muddy earth stood, sad and sullen, boot
the first, clean and soaked as a scrubbed puncheon! and
there descended into the rain-trough boot the second, up to
the strap-stiches!!
“Tom! Tom!—why did'nt you let my boots alone?—
you've fixed me now—I shan't get them on to-day!”
“Well, sir, I was only a sort a cleanin them—they was
Carltin?”
“Well, Tom, thank you—but I am afraid we have tight
work now—please let's have the articles, any how.”
And our fear, reader, was not unfounded. Never, since
the origin of boots, and the abolition of sandals, was there
such a tugging at straps! It did seem as if, at last, the
grand philosophical achievement would be effected, and with
a leetle harder pull we should, boots and all, be raised clean
up from the puncheons!—nearly equal to lifting one's self
over a fence! And oh! what soaping of heels!—what
numerous and contradictory suggestions and advices from
commiserating and laughing friends!—tears in all eyes!
Oh! the rubbing of insteps!—the contortions of the os
sublime! And then, withal, when a boot had reached a
certain point, the creature could be neither pulled on nor
pulled off! But there limped Mr. Carlton, his two limbs
glued, somewhere about the junction of ancle and foot, in
two remorseless leathers; a very “odd fellow,” indeed,
hobbling with four feet, two of his own treading downward,
and two of the boots treading sideways—and all with vain
hopes of stretching, and thus coaxing further on or off the
half-tanned conveniences!
At last it seemed necessary to cut the articles, as all ordinary
and extraordinary attempts to move them up or down
had failed, when, at the crisis, in came a Goliah-like woodsman,
who, understanding the fix, declared; “if them 'are
straps thare would a sort a hold, he allow'd he'd pull on
Mr. Carltin's boots.” We agreed to a new trial. Accordingly,
Mr. Goliah placed himself behind the patient, with
his own back to the wall, and then working two fingers
apiece into each strap—(all he could get in)—he did pull
the boots on, sure enough!! Ay! and that he would have
done if both of Mr. Carlton's legs had been in the same
boot, instead of one leg per boot!
King William was of opinion that thumbkins was logic
enough to make him confess to a lie—what, if he had tried
the logic of my boots! If the iron boot is any more forcible
—I cannot stand it at all—I should scream out my belief in
the Pope or the Devil, or any other dogma of the particular
catholic church! The holy church will of course canonize
a man who has already discovered two efficacious ways to
make Christians—our bark-wheel—and now our boots!
Apropos! de botte, this reminds me of the Kentuckian
saved from the massacre, at the Blue Licks, by a pair of
wet buckskin breeches. He was pursued by two Indians,
and on reaching the river, was forced to plunge in and swim
over. Emerging, he soon discovered that to run with his
former speed, his buckskins must be left for booty: hence,
he halted an instant to unskin himself, whilst his nimble
foes had now reached the opposite bank of the stream. But
now the wet unmentionables, half-way off, became obstinately
adhesive, and could be drawn neither up nor down—
and the enemy coming nearer and nearer.
“Poor fellow!—what a dreadful situation!”
Very; and so he made up his mind, like a gallant man,
to die—in his breeches. And yet, being a Presbyterian,
his predestined time had not come: for, to his amazement,
his red friends, on arriving, burst into loud laughter, and,
instead of knocking him on the head, they only spanked
him on the antipodes and took him prisoner; and the Kentuckian,
being ransomed, got home to tell his adventure—
and was one of the very few brave gentlemen that survived
the battle of the Blue Licks.
“Yes—but, Mr. Carlton, what has this deliverance to do
with the Pope or the Devil?”
“Oh! nothing—it was owing to the Indians:—other torturers
do not let off folks so easily. But talking of one
thing, you know, makes us think of another.”
However, after the second edition of wet towels, wet
by courtesy, the dissenters' conventicle—where seats and
floor were also dampish: yet none of these little affairs
killed us then, and even now, most of the Glenvillians live
and talk, occasionally, of “Carlton's Wet Time.”
During the present summer and fall, others of our colony
had little adventures. For instance, John Glenville, in
moving a piece of bark to throw under the wheel, was bitten
in the wrist by a copper-head coiled under the bark; but,
by a timely application of proper remedies, he escaped very
serious injury. Uncle Leatherstocking also came something
nearer being killed than Sir Roger's ancestor, that had a
narrow escape from being slain in a battle by arriving on
the field the very day after the fight: for our uncle, stooping
to examine a fine cabbage in his patch, discovered a rattlesnake
ready to salute him, and yet time enough to leap back
and avoid the favour. And then a young woman coming
from Welden, by herself, to return a call due to Glenville
Settlement, just as she had reached the outskirts of our territory,
was gratified by the sight, a little way from her, of a
lady panther, affectionately sporting with two rampant pantherines—each
as big as a pair of domestic tom-cats.
“La!—and did she not scream?”
Scream!—Miss Peggy Whatmore scream! Fortunate
for the quadrupeds, Peggy was within reach of no rifle!
No, no! to use her own language, she only “a sort a skued
round towards ole-man Ashmoresis—and did'nt say nuthin
to them, as they didn't seem like wantin to say nuthin to
her—yet it was a leetle skary as they was powerful nasty
lookin varmints.”
A missionary, also, coming to fulfil an appointment among
us, saw in the edge of our clearing “three barr”—i. e.,”
three bears; there being, in western phrase, “a powerful
sprinkle” of such shaggy coats in our borough. At this
information, all our domestic and neighbourhood forces being
growling trio: and in due time, the largest skin, properly
prepared at our tannery, was presented to the missionary;
who ever after, till the day of his death, used it as a bruin-saddle
cover.
Perhaps we may here say, that at night, on many occasions,
were around invisible serrenaders, that gave exact
imitations of wolves howling, foxes barking, and owls
screaming, hooting and screeching, with interruptions now
and then from sudden cries and growls so strange that we
could not say what bird or beast precisely was designed or
represented. The whole, however, riveted the conviction
that we were no longer dreaming about the woods, but were
actually living there; and, to be candid, I had never in
visions seen a single serpent, and could not have guessed
the wild beasts would turn out so very wild. But to all
things I got used, except snakes. To the very last of my
sojourn in the Purchase, I was slow to crawl through dark
thickets; and never did step over or off a log, till satisfied
no serpent was there to be tramped upon: and, that it was
necessary so to ponder our ways, may be believed by the
incident with which we now end the chapter.
One night Mr. and Mrs. C. were on a visit at Mr. Hilsbury's;
and, though pressed to remain till morning, and
warned of the danger in walking in the dark at that season
of the year, we decided on returning to uncle John's. The
path between the cabins was only a few inches wide, and
running through high grass and tall weeds, was nearly invisible
in the day: yet having travelled it some half dozen
times daily, I was familiar with every stone, stick and root,
lying in or across the path; and any thing new there would
be sure to arrest my attention. Furnished with a light in
a small glass lantern, we proceeded homeward, myself in
front and my wife following, till at the end of about two
hundred yards, an unexpected root presented itself, running
not to be there, before taking the next step I stooped to
examine, holding the light down towards the root—which
turned not into, but was in reality nothing more nor less
than the head and neck of an enormous rattlesnake!
Perhaps a novice, as I then was in backwood life, may
be pardoned for feeling a momentary sickness when the
glare of the serpent's eye fell on mine, as the rays of the
lamp disclosed and struck on his! The distance between
us was only eighteen inches; another step, therefore, would
have carried me over or upon the reptile: in the former
case I should have been safe, in the latter, one, or both
Mrs. C. and myself would have been wounded, perhaps
killed! And no sooner had I said—It is a snake! than
Mrs. C. too alarmed to reflect, instantly from behind
clasped me, holding down both my arms; and thus allowing
me neither to advance, nor retreat, nor stir, she at the
same time began a series of most piercing shrieks, to which
as nothing better could be done, Mr. C. added loud cries
of “Hullow-ow! down there!—hullow-ow!!”
Of course, this uproar brought them all up from down
there, and a clerical visitor among the rest—Bishop Shrub
of Timberopolis. In the meantime the snake had retreated
or passed on; and as there was too great risk in poking
after him amid the weeds and grass at night, and the central
cabin was the farther away, our whole party returned,
and all spent the night at the parsonage.
19. CHAPTER XIX.
—“Ab ovo
Usque ad mala—”
“From the cackle to the cluckle.”
I was sitting one day, towards the end of September,
with Bishop Hilsbury, when, through his modest little
sash were seen two young men riding up; who tying their
horses, after a short consultation, advanced to the door.
On this the Bishop whispering—“a wedding without
doubt,” hastened to receive his visitors, who yet administered
the usual rap to the door, and entered with the universal
salam—“Well! who keeps house?”
Evidently the parson had been supposed alone; and my
presence seemed to disperse the courage mustered by the
youngsters, and they stumbled into seats in manifest distress.
But we soon engaged them in conversation on
land, timber, corn, swine, muddy roads, dry ridges, high
waters, and all sylvan topics: and on all and each, our
friends rung the changes of all the powerfuls, big and little;
and all the chances and sprinkles, the smarts and right
smarts and right down smarts, till they were talked, not out
of countenance, but into it; nay, till they had more than a
dozen times (while the clatter lasted) seemingly collected
brass sufficient for their special affair to be introduced at
the next pause. Yet alas! with the calm, returned the
sheepishness; and there sat our rustics red as boiled lobsters,
not at any thing said, but at what was to be said, and
grinning a smileless kind of contortion at each other, equal
to asking—“Won't you begin?” Then they gnawed their
spice wood riding whips—wriggled on their seats—crossing
leg after leg, as if the legs were all equally opposed to
was coming this gap, off all set afresh on the circle of the
old topics thus:—
“Immense forests here, sir!”
“Yes—most powerful 'mense heap of woods. Allow
woods is most considerable cut off in them 'are settlements
you come from, Mr. Carltin? They say you've no barr
nor turkey out thare, in Filledelfy?”
“No: no bears on four legs. But still we've a smart
sprinkle of dandy out our way”—
“Huh! haw!—them's the fellers with hair on their
faces and what goes gallin all the time—powerful heap a
fun in that, Mr. Hilsbury, though.”
Here the speaker stopt short; for what he had said
about our hairy creatures was out of no disrespect for the
animals, but only to lighten his own load; but then he had
found it still too heavy, and broke down at the lift. Retreat,
however, now did not offer, and so suddenly rising and
winking to the parson, they both went together into the
yard, leaving myself and the other young man in the cabin.
When outside, the groom—for he it was, thus commenced:
“Well—hem—Mr. Hilsbury—hem!”
“Yes—Joseph—I think I understand—don't I?”
“Well—allow, maybe you do.”
“I was down in the Welden settlement, and I heard
something about our losing neighbour Ashford's Susan.”
“He! he!—yes!—well I am a sort a goin to git married—and
Susan's the very gal. Well now, Mr. Hilsbury,
Billy Welden's come along for groomsman and he's got
the invite—I'll just call him out and git it.”
Billy accordingly was now summoned, and taking off his
new fur hat, he extracted the “invite” from the lining and
handed it over to the preacher. As the Bishop allowed
me to see the document as a specimen of New Purchase
literature, I took the following exact and literal copy:
“Rev. Mr. Hilsbury asqr.,—you are pertiklurly invited
to atend the house of mr. Abrim Ashford asq. to injine upon
i the yoke of konjegal mattrimunny with his dater miss
Susan Ashford as was—thersday mornin next 10 aklok before
dinner a. m.
your humbell sarv't,
be—as its to be sekrit—and to morrer Billy Welden's goin
to ride round and give the invites—and all your settlemint's
to be axed.”
The reader will err if he thinks this the worst specimen
of our New Purchase authorship. It was, in fact, the best
our literati, near Glenville at least, could furnish, (and like
Andrew's and Stoddard's Grammar,) it was a joint production;
it was done by Joseph Redden and William Welden,
both aided by the schoolmaster of the Welden settlement.
And it was got up with great care and done in the
very best round hand. Few persons around us at this time,
could even read, much less write; and the ladies of Glenville
were regarded with wonder as soon as it was known that
they could not only read and write, but even “sifer, and cast
'counts!” We men of Glenville had from the first been
deemed “powerful smart,” and the above note had been
got up and performed expressly to show us that other folks
had learning too, and could do a thing up to Gunter.
Next day Mr. Welden appeared in the edge of the woods,
being too much in a hurry to dismount and let down the
bars, and according to etiquette in such cases, he exclaimed,
“Hullow! the house!” Upon this, Mr. Seymour proceeded
to the fence, and on his return to the house announced
that we all had the anticipated invite.
And now as it is sometimes before we go to the wedding,
we may properly in the interval introduce the bride elect
and her family. Abraham Ashford, the father, was the
patriarch of the Ashford settlement, which joined Glenville
on the north-west. After a life of some years in a cabin
of the roughest order, the family had, within the past year,
removed into a good two story log-house of the hewed order;
and hence, he himself being a very tall man and having
sons tending rapidly upward to his summit level, and
having a two story house, neighbour Ashford is to be regarded
as an eminent man. He had, too, scraped a spelling
acquaintance with easy reading, and that made him
affect the company of the Glenvillians—not so much I
fear to increase his knowledge as to display it. For instance,
once on bringing his stock of ginseng to our tannery,
where we bought the article on speculation, Mr. Ashford
on laying it on a dry hide thus began:
“Well, Johnny, my buck, what do you allow sang's (ginseng)
done with out thare in Chi-ne?”
“Oh! probably the Chinese smoke it, or chew it!”
“Well, that's your idee; but I knows better nor that
comes to, according to my idee.”
“What is your opinion?”
“Well, I'll tell you. A sailor-man was once out here in
sang time a buying up—long afore you come out—and he'd
been in all them parts about Chi-ne in a ship or the like—
and he told me all about what them fellers done with it.”
“Indeed!”
“Yes—and he told me as how they biled the sang
up, and put it in to clarify their chany tea cups and sassers.”
Neighbour Ashford was, moreover, a philosopher; but as
his views may perhaps expose him to a visit from the Inquisition,
I shall give no greater insight into his physical
earth.
“Mr. Ashford,” said Glenville, one day I was present,
“I wish you would let Carlton here understand your idea
about the shape of the earth; he's just from college and
don't think as you do.”
“Well, Johnny, my buck, I'm willing to talk with
Mr. Carlton, or any larn'd man; and I've no idee this
here world of ourn is round. Them's my sentiments, Mr.
Carlton.”
“I do not quite agree with you there, Mr. Ashford; I
have been taught that our earth is an oblate spheroid!”
“Oh! I don't know nuther consarnin high-flow'd
diksionary shapes; all my idee is the world's not ublate,
nor no sort of round, and I kin prove it straight as a rifle.”
“I only meant to say I was taught to think the world was
a sort of roundish; but I'm ready to give up if you can prove
as you say.”
“Well, I'm powerful glad to see, Mr. Carlton, you aint
proud for all your high larnin—and so I'll jist tell you how
I kim to find it out.[1]
You see, sir, I was one day a
ploughing with them two brown mares, to put in corn, and
as we ploughed along, I gets into a solelo'que on this diffikilt
pint, and so sez I to myself, sez I, what's the use in
filloserfers a sayin our world's round. Don't my ole-womin's
dry apples git off the plank and then role rite down,
smack down the pitch of the ruf? 'Cos why? Why 'cos
it aint flat. And so I argefied the pint agin this way; sez
I, kin a feller go spang up the round of a big punkun?
And then I stops the mares; and sez, wouldn't this here
plough and them 'are hoss-beasts role down like the dry
apples if this here world was round like a big punkun—
big round thing nor a little one? And then I jist minded—
and I slapped agin my head so, (action to word,) and I hollows
out aloud, so that the mares started to go—but I cries
“woh! won't you?”—and they stops agin—and I kept on
a hollowin—“I've got it!—I've got it!”—and slaps rite off
to make tracks home—and when I gets in, sez I to the ole
womun, “Molly,” sez I, “hand us the ole book—I've got
it!” “Got what, Abrum?”—sez she. “Why hand us the
ole book, I tell you,” sez I. (During the progress of his
lecture,[2] Mr. Ashford had taken up our family bible; and
now with his finger resting on the third verse of Genesis,
he did, on a sudden for me, what he had previously done
for his wife.) And so she hands me the ole book, and I
lays it out afore her jist so, (opening and spreading the
book before me,) “thare sir, thare, read that thare varse—
its proved from the Bible, sir—thare read that are!” viz:—
“And the earth was without FORM! sir.”
Here we held down our head as close to the page as possible,
as if absorbed in thought and inspecting the words
most closely, till with an unsteady voice we could reply:—
“I confess, Mr. Ashford, I never did see the passage in
that light before; and it only proves that plain men, if left
to themselves, will often discover what learned folks never
can: but what shape is the earth do you say?”
“Do I say!—why does'nt the ole book itself say the
earth aint no shape at all?—its got no form—its nuthin but
a grate stretched along place like a powerful big prararee
without any ind—yes, sir, and as flat as a pancake.”
“True, Mr. Ashford, and the Bible says also the earth
is VOID!—empty, sir, and hollow as a nut shell!”
For a moment Mr. Ashford was staggered at so unexpected
utter emptiness of a shapeless earth! Yet at the very
next log-rolling, he proclaimed both Glenville and Carlton
to be converts to his “idee,” adding in the latter gentleman's
praise, “he wan't nere so stuck up a feller as folks
said.” And so, reader, we are Amorphorites; with more
belief, however, in the emptiness of the world, than in its
want of shapes.
As to the sun, Mr. Ashford had a very peculiar and original
theory; “I am,” said he, “sentimentally of opinion
that the sun, after all, is nothing but a great shine!” Like
many other forest patriarchs, our neighbour often did his
own preaching; being in advance of this age, when we all
do our own doctoring, write our own poetry, tales, essays,
and every man is his own lawyer; and of course in theology,
like people in an enlightened era, he had his own notions.
Hence, in one discourse about the good Samaritan,
he took occasion to illuminate us as to its “Speretil meaning;”
and among other things said, “some folks think that
the two pennies left the Jerickoo man, was nuthin but
cash pennies—but my friends, there's a speretil and bettersome
idee:—one penny is the law, and tother's the gospel.”
The Ashford's were, however, remarkable for nice house-keeping,
and for cleanliness of person. They all were, too,
thrifty and ingenious. Unable in the early times of their
settlement to obtain hemp or flax, they gathered a peculiar
species of nettle, (called there nettleweed,) which they
succeeded in dressing like flax, and in weaving it into cloth.
By some accident, they had been then destitute of food for
several days, and during that time they had lived on squirrels
and elm-bark. But the rose of our wilderness was Susan
Ashford, the intended bride. Ignorant, indeed, she was
of all things out of the woods; but she was of good natural
capacity, merry disposition, lofty notions, and withal a
a strong liking for the Glenville people; and was evidently
glad to find friends able and willing to teach her many important
matters of which she frankly and voluntarily would
confess her ignorance. And as far as her mother would
permit, Susan by degrees conformed their own domestic
economy and fixtures to ours, defending us whenever her
mother would object and intimate that the “Glenville
folks were, maybe, a leetle prouder nor they should be.”
Susan had, of course, many offers; yet as she told
Emily Glenville, her confidante—“she'd no idee of marrying
any rough body without no more manners than a
barr; and for her part she'd have somebody that know'd
how to dress up on Sundays in store cloth and yaller buttins,
a sort a gentleman like.”
Now Susan did not really think that dress made the man;
she did only think, and properly think, that no decent young
fellow would on proper occasions boorishly neglect his
dress, and especially when he came a courting.
One answering externally became a suitor. He was
morally, however, unworthy Susan; and her escape was
owing to his personal dirtiness—with which a curious accident
made her acquainted. She caught sight of his naked
feet, as he in a moment of forgetfulness took off his
shoes and stockings in her presence; upon which she declared
next day to Emily Glenville, “that she never would
have sich a dirty feller, if he did wear store cloth and yaller
buttins.” This fellow, a pretty well educated Scotchman,
had courted some by letters, which the Ashfords not
fully comprehending had now and then brought to Emily
to be deciphered, especially the letter in which the suitor
said, “he had a predilection for his mistress!” On this
occasion, Susan remarked, “there was sich a powerful
heap of diksenery words, she could'nt quite see the drift on
from a disastrous union with an atheist and a distiller.
But now Joseph Redden was accepted; a very honest,
industrious, and upright young man; and who not only
dressed up to Susan's rule, but more than that, he kept,
about twenty-five miles distant, a small store himself, and
sold store cloth and yellow buttons to others. And thus Susan,
and all her old friends, and we her new ones, were
well satisfied. Having no occasion to mention our young
folks after the wedding, we think the reader will be glad
to know, that when we re-emigrated from the west, Mr. and
Mrs. Redden were living in comfortable circumstances,
respected and beloved.
In due time the wedding-day came. Mr. Hilsbury, however,
had not yet got home from a distant missionary tour,
and we of Glenville were forced to set out without the
bishop; in hopes indeed, he would be yet in time at Mr.
Ashford's. Between our settlement and his, the distance
was little more than two miles; and for want of conveyances
enough for all, it was concluded in a general assembly
of our colony the day before, that the ladies and helps
of the borough, should ride to the wedding, and the gentlemen
walk. And so we took up the line of procession
thus:—
1. Uncles John and Tommy in the van. Their business
was to keep the true course through the woods, clear away
brush and let down fences.
2. Mrs. Glenville and Aunt Kitty riding twice on Kate,
the celebrated grey mare—queen of horses (genus.)
3. The Rev. Mistress Hilsbury on a borrowed nag; the
lady with an infant in her arms, and a little girl for nurse
behind.
4. Mrs. Carlton, Miss Emily and Aunt Nancy on our
spotted mare, called Freckled Ginney.
5. Last of the cavalry, Old Dick, with all the help of
the colony—i. e. three gals riding thrice.
6. Glenville and Carlton closed the rear. Our business
was to put up fences, see the ladies get along in safety, and,
above all, to keep Dick from lagging. For like grave personages
familiar with Chesterfield, Dick was rarely in a
hurry; on the contrary he usually stepped with a very solemn
swing, as conscious men's eyes were upon him and of
his weight in society. And yet after a very long sermon
he would sometimes hasten home with an irreverent impatience;
and always on rounding a certain sink hole, whence
could be caught a glimpse of the stable, our hero, and without
consulting the friends who were kindly backing him,
would suddenly pitch into a gait compounded of every pace
and shuffle ever learned in his youth or since taken up extemporaneously.
Once Dick had been loaned to the Bishop's wife; and
on our return from church—all persuasives from the lady's
heel and Mr. Carlton's toe—all stripes from beech rods and
leather whip—all cherrups and get-ups and even old-rascal's-you—all
snapping of bridle reins to bring to his recollection
Conestogo whip-crackings—all, all were in vain!—
Dick only grinned or gave a double flourish with his tail,
crawling along and dragging leg after leg, till they seemed
always in motion and yet always stock-still! But unexpectedly
to us he reached the favourite sink hole; when,
giving a sudden sneeze and slapping my beast in the face
with his tail, away he darted into the nondescript gait
named—but very much as if the caco-demons dislodged from
the swine had somehow got possession of his carcase.
The dry leaves of autumn were then plenty, and the fellow
got them into such a lively, excited and noisy state, that
we riders, only ten feet apart, could hear nothing said by
one another: hence, after useless efforts to be heard in answer
to the lady's voice coming to me in a high screech-key,
mouth very wide and supporting the jaw with one hand, so
that with a distorted face I seemed in the agony and effort
of loud and earnest delivery—but yet uttered not a word.
And in this interesting attitude we sustained an instructive
conversation, till the lady guessing at the pantomime, we
both added a chorus of cachination to the rattling harmony
of shuffling horse-heels, and came in a tempestuous whirlwind
of careering leaves to the last—bars; where Dick
stopped and the hurricane subsided.
“Nonsense! Mr. Carlton—”
Granted, my dear Mr. Graves: but are we back-woods'
people to have no fun? And if we are to have any, how
shall we have it unless we create it? You have concerts,
and balls, and popular lectures till they become unpopular
—and jest books—Lady's Book—Gentleman's Book—
Boy's Book—and organs in churches, and candy shops and
oysters and what not? And we are to mope to death in
the woods—hey? Believe me, we learn out there to make
our own sports and contrive to extract something pleasant
from the empty roar of autumnal leaves shuffled and kicked
into harmless tempest by old Dick's horse-heels. And further,
dear Mr. Strutell, all this requires more ingenuity, and
even a calmer conscience, than every body has: an ill-natured,
an ignorant, a conceited, a wicked person will be
very miserable in the solitudes of a New Purchase.
“But you started for the wedding.”
We did; but we had two miles and more to go—and
here is the place—and we shall resume the narrative.
The wedding party were all assembled and expecting
our arrival. And now Mr. Ashford came to meet us, expressing
his regret at the failure of Mr. Hilsbury to be
present; but as several other preachers were present, he
suggested that it would now be best to proceed with the
made for it, the Rev. Diptin Menniwater being selected in
place of Bishop Hilsbury.
And soon then we were all paraded in the large room,
in which the company was compactly rowed along upon
benches, as noiseless and solemn as in “meetin:” and hence
we men of Glenville went squeezing around, and among, and
into, shaking hands with all that could be got at, and nodding
and smiling and winking at such as could not be felt and
handled, till places were found if not to sit in, yet to stand
in, and where we waited in laudable patience for the descent
of the bridal party to destroy the oppressive and dead calm
that succeeded. The solemn stillness was indeed, now
and then broken by some lagger who administered the
usual slap to the door and uttered the visiting formula already
named—but that was only an interruption like pitching
a pebble into a smooth deep lake. At very long last
Mrs. Ashford going to foot of the steps—a compound of
ladder and stairs—called to those in the upper room:—
“Well! if any body up thare's got a sort of notion to get
married to-day, I allow thare's no time to lose, no how.”
This was answered with a species of giggle-sniggering by
parties in both stories; and in the midst commenced above
a shuffle movement, as if something might be expected below
pretty quick. And soon was placed in descending
order, first, a pair of shiney new calf-skin boots with thin
soles; then, secondly, only a step higher, a pair of bran
new morocco slippers, with ancles in white stockings; and
then, thirdly, at suitable intervals, second pairs of shiney
dittos and moroccos and ancles. These omens were instantly
succeeded by coat tails hooked on men's arms, and
white frocks held aloof from soiled stairs—(all which matters
were plain enough to us behind the stair way, it having no
flooring or back for the convenience of sweeping and scrubbing)—till
the principal actors had all descended bodily,
Whether from ignorance or etiquette, the groom and his
attendant, instead of being leaned upon, rested their own
arms on those of the two ladies, the bride and her maid—
as if each man had hooked a woman and was determined
to hold her fast for a wife after the trouble of catching.
The Rev. Mr. Menniwater, a piteous looking personage,
humble as a drowned rat, was now seen to emerge from
behind one of the back benches, whither he had slunk away,
to nurse his courage for the grand duty; but unable to come
near the parties at the foot of the stair-ladder, he remained
where he was and began to cry out his part as if engaged
in out-door preaching, only with unusual rapidity, lest his
speech should be forgotten before it could all be delivered
—thus:—
“Well—are you goin for to take—Sir—that womin—Sir
—a holdin by the hand—Sir—for a lawful—covenint wife,
Sir?”
To this question direct the groom and groomsman both
returned nods; although the real man added an audible—
“Yes I am,” giving, too, a visible pinch to Susan's arm;
equivalent to an exhortation and admonition that it was next
her turn.
“Well—are you goin for to have—hem!—Ma'am!—that
thare man—Ma'am!—a holdin on your arm—for to be your
lawful covenint—man—hem!—husband, Ma'am?”
Here both ladies made a courtesy, (kurtshee,) but Susan
added the affirmative; upon which the parson repeated the
following closing form:—
“Well, I say then by authority of this here license from
the clark of our court, as how you're both now—man and
woman—that is—hem!—as how both of you are married,
young folks, and no body's no right to keep you asunder.”
Upon which, greatly terrified, our preacher instantly demanded
something to drink; not that he needed any thing
And this request was, at the very word, answered
by a potation or grog, of whiskey, water and maple sugar.
Indeed, in those days out there, we have been in church,
when, at the amen to the benediction, forth came Deacon
Giles, with a wash-basin-bowl full of whiskey and some
water, sweetened as above and flavoured with nutmeg; and
of this sipped first the man of God—for form's sake:—and
after that it was all swallowed by the congregation, in
mouthfuls sufficient to elevate the mind, if dejected by the
sermon.
But the Rev. D. Menniwater's call for drink, was the
signal that the matrimonial meeting was out; and the kissing
of the bride was set going by the ladies of Glenville,
who, (for mere example's sake, however,) were followed by
the gentlemen of Glenville. And two of these gentlemen,
I think, extended their salutation to the bride'smaid, which
was so encouraging to the groomsman, and other shy chaps,
that they with one consent began to salute the brides that
were to be: so that affairs were soon as completely uproarious
and screechery as in a fashionable, highbred evening
party, with one good piano and some three dozen vocalists,
professors and amateurs of singing and talking. At last
the girls put out; followed by the beaux, and none were left
in the room but we old folks, (married people,) and the
young couple. And then came on all the old, racy and
original jokes and sayings on such occasions, with some
new ones in regard to the “man and woman,” made by
Mr. M.; whose inveterate habit of “old manning,” &c.
had forced him to substitute man and woman for husband
and wife, in concluding the ceremony. One very smart
neighbour body so persisted in calling the whole no ceremony
at all, that poor Susan was half persuaded she was
hardly married; and had we of Glenville fomented the affair,
would have had the marriage ceremony over again.
It was now noon, and dinner—the grand affair—was not
to be till near 3 o'clock, P. M.—although every body, man,
woman, boy, girl, help, domestic, hired and volunteer,
hands and legs, were all ferment in hastening this catastrophe
of our drama: and truly drama it was, if action and
motion pertain to its essence. Here a boy was ferociously
cutting wood—there one toting wood: here a man and two
women getting a fire in full blast out of doors—there two
men and one girl blowing up one within: and then rushed
by a whirlwind of petticoats, with one featherless turkey,
or two featherless hens, affectionately hugged along to dutch
ovens and skillets! Some carried and fixed tables, pushing
and kicking and jamming at them till they consented to
stay fixed, and not to coggle! Some fixed rattling plates,
clattering knives, and ringing bowls on stout table covers;
which were at the same moment jerked by others, till they
“came a sorter strate!” And there was Mr. Ashford, Jun.
with his rifle, decapitating extra fowls, the company proving
much larger than had been expected! For on these
hearty and solemn occasions every body is welcome, who
comes as an umbra to a neighbour, or acts as his own
shadow and shade; and every body is stuffed with as much
as he will hold; so that all sorts of feathered creatures suffer
for the wedding dinner, and in great numbers, it being
long before a wholesome backwoodsman ever cries, “Ohe!
jam satis!” about the same as the classic reader knows
as crying out, “Well! I've a belly full!”
The whole clearing evidently enjoyed a saturnalia. Wagons
and carts and sleds rested from rolling and screeching;
gears of leather and gears of elm-bark hung crooked and
unstretched on fences and projections of cabin outhouses;
and ploughs lay peaceful, with polished shares gleaming in
sunshine. The animals manifestly enjoyed the affair; hens
wallowed in dust; geese hissed; ducks quacked; and dogs,
in all quarters, ran, barked, and wagged their very tails for
gladness; while shaggy horses peeped in wonder over bars,
or hung tenderly about the barn and corn cribs.
Adjacent the house was a yard; and this being swept
daily with wooden brooms and tramped, had become denuded
of grass, and hard and clean as a puncheon floor.
Here[3]
we now walked, ran, jumped, joked, told tales, made
brags and bets—tickled folk's ears with timothy heads—
quizzed chaps about marrying—chased girls going to the
spring for water, or to the milk house, and ever so many
funny things beside. And, what was wonderful! the girls
went every five minutes to the spring or milk house; and
came too through the front yard, when, if they had thought,
the way out of the back door was much shorter and more
direct! And then such a sprinking of water from little
calabashes and tin cups and ox horns! And such a hanging
of dish-cloths and milk-strainers on the “yaller buttins”
of the hinder man! And the laughing!—and the rifle-shooting!—in
a word, we, (author now included,) were
most decidedly, and most vulgarly happy, joyous, and chock
full of fun and frolic.
Of course all this was too much for Old Dick to stand
and look at all day: hence, contriving to ease off his bridle
and then to work over the fence, or may be under it, there,
sure enough, in the midst of our sacred enclosure, suddenly
stood his impudence, and as if we were his “feller critturs!”
He was no stranger, however, to the company, and his self-introduction
was hailed with more than three cheers; it
being well known he would contribute his share to the entertainment.
Accordingly, like a favourite dog, he was fed
fat pork and pieces of fresh beef; which latter he would
only chew awhile, like tobacco, and then eject. He was
then smoothed and slapped and called names—then pulled
by the tail—pinched on the ears—made to grin—and then
jumped on and jumped over; till at last girls were packed
and stowed upon him, and nothing was visible of the favourite
but four horse-legs, moving under frocks, and a tail
wagging and flourishing happily among chintz and morocco—the
whole a most grotesque feminine centaur! But
when we packed the fellow with men and boys, he would
either shake or bite them off; and if these failed he would
suddenly lie down, and then the compound rollings were
uncommonly entertaining.
Three chaps now mounted Dick, and fully resolved to
make him ford the creek, here about ten yards wide and
some two feet deep. By dint of coaxing and kicking, and
pulling and pushing, by the riders and the company, Dick
was got into the water, when he splashed on voluntarily to
the middle—but farther than that, not an inch. No—there
he halted, and stood fixed as a river-horse that had grown
up on the spot! And vain all entreaties, cuffings, kickings!
vain all combined hallooings! vain all pelting with clods
and stones—all latherings with long bean poles!—he was
wholly unbudgable! At last, however, he did move; and
so did his riders, who hastily slipped off into water more
than knee deep, preferring that to a roll in the creek—Dick
having exhibited the premonitory symptom of performing
that ceremony; and then they, amid no small uproar of
laughter from the whole assembled “weddeners,” waded
to the bank. “But Dick, what did he?” Ay, sure enough
—why he speedily betook himself to the farther side, where
he wandered about and eat twigs and bushes, till he was
caught for our return. Reader, was all this instinct or
reason?
After this we told adventures. Among others, one hard
featured old worthy gave the following account about his
“ole womin's tarrifying a barr,” anglicé, terrifying a
bear.
“When we was fust settled”—said he—“down on Higginsis
bottim, thare was no mills in these parts and so we
pack'd all our bread stuffs from over thare at Wood'll about
once a month or thare-abouts, me going one day and coming
back agin next day and my ole womin a stayin in the cabin
till I gits back. The Injins was mostly gone, but straglin
ones kept comin on and off, but tho' they was harmless like,
folks was a little dubus and didn't want thare company; and
my ole womin she always shot the door at night, and a sort
a draw'd the bedstid agin it. Well, so one night I was
away for meal and she bethought as how she'd render off
her fat; and so she ons with the grate pot—that one you're
old womin neighbour Ashford borrerd last year to bile sugar
in—and she puts in her fat and begins a heatin it; when
what does she hear all at once on a sudden but a powerful
trampin round the cabin! “Maybe,” says she to herself,
“its some poor Injin wants in”—when all at once the trampin
stopt and somethin begins a scratchin up outside the
chimbly, and she spies through a crack, and if it want a
powerful barr that was arter the fat! And she know'd the
varmint wasn't going to rest till he klim down the inside of
the chimbly; and then she'd have to put out and maybe
lose all her fat! Well, my ole womin was to be sure, a
leetle skur'd—but she did'nt lose her presentiment of
mind—she only let the fellow back down as near as was
convenient—and then she jerks a handful of dry grass out
of our tick, and set fire to the whole on the fat! “And she
says, 'twas most powerful laffy to hear the barr go up chimbly
again—and how he was still heern a growlin and makin
tracts for the timbers! And that's the way she tarrifyed
the barr and a sort a scorched his brichis.”
“That makes me, grandaddy,”—said a young Hecules—
“think how near I was to bein skur'd last week, with a
wild cat over on Acorn Ridge. I was out huntin turkey,
but had no luck, and didn't see the fust one till I comes toward's
Inglissis—and thare I heerd a feller goblin. So I
crawls into the brush near a beech and begins a goblin, and
he begins a anserrin and a comin up—but jist then I hears
somethin a nuther in the beech above—but I was afeard to
move my head lest the turkey ketch sight of me—and so I
gives another gobble, and then hears him a coming up rite
smart, and I was only waitin to git sight of him—when
what should I hear but a sudden shakin rite over my head
—and so I looks out of the tail of my eye so—(turning his
eye for illustration)—and I'll be dogg'd if thare warnt a
wild cat jist goin to spring, as I'd gobled him up like a
gineine cock myself. So, you see I give up the turkey
and killed the varmint—and that's his skin, grandaddy, you
see tother day at our house.”
This reminded Uncle John of an adventure of his own
somewhat similar, and he went on thus:
“One day when hunting in Georgia I got into a pine
thicket, where I sat down on a log to rest. Happening to
look in a certain direction—for nothing of the sort was expected—I
saw a fine buck coming slowly towards the thicket,
either not seeing me or to reconnoitre. I had put off
my shoes to cool my feet, but now without thinking about
it, I rose to my feet ready to fire as soon as the deer should
be near enough: but as I stood about this way—(way exhibited,
the legs apart)—I felt something very cold glide
upon one of my bare feet, and on glancing my eye that
way, what was it but a rattlesnake crawling from under the
log across my foot! I had providentially presence of mind
to remain immovable as a rock--till the snake had actually
crawled his whole length over my foot; and when fairly
but of course I lost my buck.”
“Brother John”—said uncle Tommy—“that makes me
think of my being lost twenty years ago—but dinner, I
reckon, is most ready—”
“Oh! no, uncle Tommy”—said Mr. Ashford—“we've
time for that 'venture of yours.”
This was enough for our Uncle Leatherstocking; for no
man so delighted in telling adventures. Indeed, few men
ever encountered more; and still fewer could orally relate
them so well. He was not an educated man, or even a
good English scholar; still he had read much and conversed
much with intelligent persons: and so he was fluent in
natural English, and could aptly coin words and pronunciations
to suit new ideas and circumstances. I shall try and
preserve his manner and spirit: but to enjoy his stories,
one should sit in his lonely cabin of a winter's night away
in the howling wilderness, and see his countenance and
action, and hear his tones.
“Prehaps”—said uncle Tommy—“you know my wife's
father had considerable land on the Blue Fox River in
Ohio; so as we two wanted a leetle more elbow room, I
says one day to Nancy, “Nancy,” says I, “I dad 'spose
we put out and live there. Game's mighty plenty there,
and there's fine water and plenty a fish, and plenty a
wood; and we kin lay in stores enough at Squattertown
to last more nor six months on a streech.” And sure
enough, as I'm a livin man, off we sets and puts up a cabin
in the centre of the track, and that give us room for the
present: for the nearest white settlement warnt nearer nor
four mile, and Squattertown, the county seat, was nigh on
to twelve mile off. The Ingins, poor critturs, kim a huntin
over our track,. albeit, there was no reglar town of theirn
nearer nor twenty miles: but they never did us harm—no,
not a hait—(little bit)—and Nancy got so used to their red
that will steal and maybe massurkree: but most when they
find a rale sinserity-hearted white, would a blame sight
sooner sculp themselves than him. And I do believe me
and Nancy was beliked by them: and many's the ven'sin and
turkey they fotch'd as a sort of present, and maybe a kind of
pay for breadstuffs and salt Nancy used to give them. Sartin,
indeed, a white would now and then be killed: but when
all the sarcumstansis was illusterated, it was ginerally found
the white was agressur, and was kotch'd doing something
agin their laws—and me and Nancy had a secret conscience
that the white desarved his fate:—and sometimes
I felt like takin sides with the red skins myself, and
shootin down the whiskey devils that made them drunk—
but I'll not enter on that now.
“Well, I hunted and fish'd about whole days, the livelong
blessed day, while Nancy she'd stay alone a readin Scott's
Family Bible: so that she got three times right spang
through it, from kiver to kiver—the whole three volumes,
notes, practical observations, marginal references, and all!
And, I dad, if she did'nt read clean through all our church
histories, Milnursis, and Mush-heemisis, and history of the
Baptisis and Methodisis, and never so many more books
beside, for we always toted our books wherever we went.
And when I fished I used to larn sarmins by heart out of
Chrismas Evans, and president Davy's and Mr. Walker's
and that was a kind of help in preachin.”
Uncle Tommy usually made the dead speak when he
preached, and sometimes he would echo Bishop Shrub
and Bishop Hilsbury, and other living apostles. And in
this he acted wisely, not being competent to the concoction
of his own sermons; and besides, when fully excited he
could do Christmas Evans' celebrated almanac sermon
nearly as well as Christmas himself: thence among the
“Baptisis,” as he always called them, Uncle Tommy was
English Bishop, being styled: “a mighty smart and most
powerful big preacher!” Let not uncle Tommy's pulpit
preparation be despised; even “high larned sheepskins,”
it is said, do sometimes lay both the living and the dead
under heavy contribution, and that, too, when not endowed
with our buck-eye-preacher's pathos and unction. We,
indeed, of Glenville, always preferred that uncle Tommy
should represent Davies and Walker—and even Evans—
and not to give his own. But to the story;
“Well”—continued he—“one morning early in December,
I says to Nancy, “Nancy, I dad, says I, I do believe
I'll jist take old Bet—(a rifle)—as we are out of meat, and
go where I seen the turkies roosting last night: you mind
the morning, Nancy, my dear, don't you?”
“Bless you, Tommy Seymour, I'll never forget it—I was
near losing you then, Tommy.”
“Well, Nancy, I'll go on with the story.”
This was one of the interlocutories that always varied
and interrupted uncle Tommy's narratives, and nothing
could excel the intense interest that most affectionate and
devoted wife—(wife and child to him)—took in the stories,
though heard the hundreth time. But uncle Tommy went
on: —
“And so I slips out of bed—it wasn't day quite—and
slips on my clothes, and fixes my old gun by the fire and
then opens the door to set out, when I dissarned a leetle
sprinkle of snow and a likelihood for a snow storm. Howsomever,
this did'nt faze me, only I steps back for my old
camlit cloak—little thinking, as I fixed it on, how I'd need
the thing afore I'd git back agin.
“Well, I starts for where I'd seen the turkeys, and gitting
near, sneaked round a bit, but soon found the critturs had
been too quick, and like Paddy's flea, wasn't there. I
heerd them, howsomever, fly, and so on I kept creeping
miles; but the snow was so thick in the air that I never
could dissarn the birds, and away they kept going flurry-wurry
about seventy yards a head—till I give up the hunt
and turn'd to go home for fear Nancy might be waiting
breakfast—”
“Yes, Tommy Seymour, I did wait breakfast for you—”
“Never mind, Nancy, my dear child, I got back at last
you know”—replied uncle Tommy, and continued—“Well,
I turn'd to go back, but I dad if I could jist exactly tell
where I was precisely, the snow had so teetolly kivered my
tracks, and it was now snowing so bodaciously fast as to
kiver as fast as I made them. But I took a sharp look at
the timber, and fixing on a course, I kept my line for near
two mile—yet, I dad, if I could strike the cabin and could
n't tell whether it was too high or too low; and so up I
went a short quarter, and down a short quarter, as near as
could be guessed circumlocating for three hours, but no cabin
was to be seen. Well, says I, I dad, if I aint about as
good as lost; and so sits down in a tree top to reconsiderate,
and take a fresh start—but soon starts up and hollows like
the ole Harry—but nothing gives no answer and all was
snow!—snow!—snow! not a smite of noise, only my
breathing and a sort of pittinpattin sound of my heart! I
found it wouldn't do to stand still as the scarces begin to
crawl in a leetle, and so off I sets at a venture; for the
cabin must be, says I, somewhere near; and sometimes I
conceited it to be ahead of me, but all at once it vanished,
and I seed it was only a case of fantis-mágery—and that I,
Tommy Seymour, was actially lost!—”
“Yes! Tommy, and I couldn't give you any help!”
“Nancy! child, I wouldn't a had you there for the universal
world.”
“Well,”—resumed he,—“there I was teetolly lost! I
couldn't stay still—yet what use to walk on? And if I fired
she'd think the Injins had killed me, and then she'd
come out and git lost too!—and with that idee, thinks
I may be she's out now!—and then I gits bodaciously
sker'd and hollows agin like the very ole Harry! and
walks and runs this way and that way—the snow blinding
my eyes—but all was of no use—I was lost! lost! lost!
But it was only about Nancy here, I thought at this time;
—and I dad, if I din't ketch myself a crying like a child,—
and, wished to be lost by myself without her coming out in
such a storm!—(We here stole a look at aunt Nancy—I
could not catch her eye as she had her work-bag over her
face: but “I dad,” as uncle Tommy used to say, if we
didn't feel a leetle tender ourselves. And so, generous
reader, would you have felt, hearing the tremulous thrill of
the venerable old man's voice and seeing his eye affectionately
turned towards that dear old lady that for so many
years had shared his wanderings and sorrows.)—“Well,
I must 'a become crazy, running round and hollowing and
crying—and all of no use—when all at once it quit snowing,
and I was sperited up, hoping the sun would shine out
next, and I could take a course for Squattertown or the Injin
settlement. But it kept dark and cloudy and I begins
t ` feel weak from fatigue and hunger—(albeit I war'nt
sker'd on that pint, as I had old Bet along)—and so allowing
it was about one o'clock, I determined to strike the
Blue Fox, and keep down stream to the settlement on its
bank thirty miles down. Well, off I sets to strike the river,
and in about four mile comes to a little pond with a
couple of duck swimming about. I stopp'd in my tracks—
knock'd out damp primin—puts in fresh—and slams away
and kills one duck; and the other flies away. And I gits
the duck to land by pitching sticks in, but not wanting to
lose time, I kept on going; and so picked off the feathers
and sucked a little of it raw, till it 'most made me sick, and
I thought it would be better to keep and cook it at night—
was time to look out for a camp; and just about dark I
come across a tree what had been twisted off by a harrikin,
and was lodged the butt ind on the stump; and the top on
the ground was puttee much of a dry brush heap. For all
the world! there never was sich a place!—Providence
seemed to have blow'd it down jist for me! I could have
camp'd there a week! And so we brushes away the snow
and makes a fire in the top! and near the stump under the
trunk, makes a comfortable bed out of chunks and brush
wood: and then I goes to the fire and sits down to cook
my duck.
“But, I dad, if I could help thinking about our cabin and
every time I think of Nancy!—I—; but I know'd there
was a divine Providence and a heavenly Father—and so I
prayed, and then eat one half of my duck, keeping the
other; as game was mighty skerse and no human beings
was in that direction till I struck the Blue Fox. And then,
making a little fire near my bed for my feet, and kivering
my powder-horn with a hankerchief to put under my head
for fear of damp and sparks, I raps up in the ole-camlit,
and laid down, and was soon fast asleep.
“Well, after a while I gits to dreaming I was lost in a
prararee, and that the grass had tuck fire, and that I was a
kind of suffocated and scorch'd;—and I dreamed I heerd the
awful roaring of flames, and seen a burning whirlwind coming
towards me, and that so sker'd me that I woke right up—
and, I dad! as I'm a livin man! if the woods all around me
wasn't as light as day! And my tree was all a living
blaze and burning splinters was tumblin on my ole camlit!
—ay! and my cotton hankerchief round my powder-horn
was jist beginning to smoke and scorch!—I dad! my
friends and bruthrin”—(Here, uncle T. insensibly glided
into his preaching tone and manner)—“but this was a most
murrakulous dream!! and show'd the nature of Providence
up! And I didn't sleep no more—but kneeled down and
thank'd God for the deliverance; and then kept sitting
near the fire till day, and then I once more started for the
river.
“Howsomever, to make a long story short, I walked on
and on the live-long blessed day, and never heerd or seen
a living crittur; and I never came to any river—but at
night I comes to a log that had been chopp'd off and this
give me courage. And so I makes a fire, and eats now the
other half of my duck—for I was somehow sartain I'd find
a settlemint in the morning. Well, I slept the second
night along side this log, and by daybreak I jumps up and
feels something a kind of moving in my old camlit—and, I
dad! if it wasn't a snake what the fire had smoked out of
the log and what had crept into me to be warm! But I only
shook out the reptile and never killed him, thinking only of
some settlemint—(although it was the snake, brother John
told about, that made me think of my adventure)—for the
sarcumstance of the chopp'd log satisfied me, some was
near, as it was no tommyhawk cut, but was done with a
white man's axe. Well, I starts off puttee considerable
peert and brisk, considerin I was weak, and, all at once, as
I'm a livin man, if I didn't hear a bark! And so I stops
and listens—and there was another—and another—and I
was sartain it wasn't no fox or wolf but a dog—and then, I
dad! if I didn't streak off that way like greased lightnin!
—and begun and holler'd and fired!—and the dog bark'd
louder and louder, and kept on coming nearer and nearer!
and I a running and a hollerin till all at once right in
sight of me was—a human cabin!! If I live a thousand
years,—(and none of us, my bruthren will live half that
long,)—I'll never forget that moment—and if ever I thank'd
God with a rale sinserity-heart, 'twas then. But while I
was reconsiderating whose settlemint it was, for things
now bust out of the bushes, a yelpin and a prancin around
me!—and why do you think?—because the poor feller had
found his lost master—and it was Nancy's little dog Ruff!
And would you believe it?—my eyes was suddenly opened
like a prophit's, and I found I was on my own trampin
ground, and the cabin was ours!—and there stood my dear
child Nancy, a lookin our way out of the cabin door! I
dad! if I didn't snatch up Ruff and kiss him!—and the poor
little crittur—(he's dead now!)—lick'd my face with his
tongue!—and in that way I run over to Nancy.”—(Here
the emotion of the old man and the agitation of his wife
made a momentary pause—it was, indeed, as solemn as
church.)—“Well, after all was explained and illusterated,
we kneel'd down and thank'd God: and then Nancy, she
told how she thought I was killed and then maybe only lost,
till she was jist goin to start for the next settlemint; and if
I'd a come ten minits later, she'd been off after help!
“So that's one of my scrapes; and it illusterates the
fiillosofee that makes a man keep going round and round
when he's lost; for albeit I must a walked more nor fifty
mile in the two days, I wasn't never over seven mile from
the cabin; and that's the pond where the duck was;—and
when I come back agin, I didn't know at fust my own cabin
—nor the chopp'd log, though I'd cut down the tree myself.
And—”
Here dinner was fortunately announced; for nothing else
then could have stopped Uncle Tommy—and we weddeners
had a lucky escape from a long sermon on Providence;
Uncle Tommy greatly delighting in improvements, and
“speretilizing” his adventures, and, indeed, all other matters,
and usually winding up his land-yarns with notes and
practical observations, in the manner of Henry and Scott.
The truth is we were half starved, and had very natural
drinks, and such like observances.”
The dinner table was set in the diagonal of the room, and
could accommodate about thirty persons; but as our company
was twice that number, we were “to eat twice.” As
usual the new married persons were seated at one end, and
the groomsman and bridesmaid at the other: and then were
seated all the married men, and after that as many as possible
of the married women; preference on such occasions
being shown to the worthier gender.[4]
This inversion of
the matrimonial chord arises mainly from the fact, that out
there women reserve themselves to attend to the table; and,
therefore, when the “set up” is ordered, the gentlemen
instantly seat themselves alongside, and partly under the
table. Sheepish young chaps usually hang back, however
hungry, and say, “Oh! there's no 'casion:” after which
they give an acquiescing cough or two, or more commonly
go to the door, and give a twang with the nose and finger
instrument, (in place of fashionable phrases,) and then drop,
as if shot down, into a seat, jerking the seat under the table,
till the mouth comes to its level, and is thus fixed for convenient
feeding.
All Glenville had a seat at the first table, except John
Glenville, who, partly out of policy, but much more out of
true and gentlemanly feeling, preferred coming with the
young people to the second table. And when the company
were fixed—and fixed it was till one could barely stir a hand
or foot—Uncle Tommy “asked a blessing;” when he made
amends for a long story by a very short prayer. But even
in that prayer, which certainly lasted no longer than two
minutes, he contrived, among other things, to ask a blessing
on the young folks, praying especially, “for them as had
gardin of Edin, that they might both of them live to a good
old age, and be fruitful and multiply and replenish the earth,
and see their children's children to the third and fourth
gineration, and that other young folks present might soon
settle and have families, and become an honour and a
blessin in their day and gineration.”
Many young gentlemen of “the second table” waited on
us of “the first table,” and among them John Glenville:—
and this was taken so kindly, that before we went home
declarations were heard about “taking him up for the legislature,
fall come a year”—a hint not lost on us, and of which
more hereafter. I am sorry the reader can only taste our
goodies in imagination; and yet are we cruel enough to let
him see what he lost.
And first, notice, all eatables, from “the egg to the apple,”
were on our table at once. Thus a single glance disclosed
what amount of labour was expected:—our whole work was
there, and no other jobs of eating by way of appendix. Nor
were we plagued with changing knives, whipping on and
away of plates, and brushing or removing cloths; no, no, we
kept right dead ahead with the work from the start to the
finish; the sole labour of the attendants being to keep the
plates “chuckfull” of something, and ours, to eat! eat! eat!
The dishes next. First, then, and middlemost, an enormous
pot-pie, and piping hot, graced our centre, overpowering,
with its fragrance and steam, the odours and vapours of
all other meats: and pot-pie was the wedding dish of our
Purchase, par excellence! The pie to-day was the doughy
sepulchre of at least six hens, two chanticleers, and four
pullets, if it be logical to reason upward from legs and
wings to bodies! What pot could have contained the pie
is inconceivable, unless the one used for “tarrifying the
barr.” Why, among other unknown contributions, it must
have received one half peck of onions! And yet it is
to be feared that they who came after us were potpieless;
awful eaters.
Around the pie were wild turkeys, (tame enough now,)
with wonderful necks stretched out in search of their heads,
and stupendous limbs and wings ready for flight, the instant
the head should be discovered, or heard from! The poor
birds, however, were so done, over and under too, that all
native juices were evaporated, and the flesh was as dry as
cork: but by way of amends quarts of gravy were judiciously
emptied on our plates from the wash-basin-bowls.
That also moistened the “stuff'nin,” composed of Indian
meal and sausages.
These two were the grand dishes: but sprinkled and
scattered about were plates of fried venison, fried turkey,
fried chicken, fried duck, fried pork, and, for any thing I
could know, even fried leather; for so complete and impartial
the frying, that distinctive tastes were obliterated,
and it could only be guessed, by the shape, size, legs, &c.,
which was what, and the contrary.
But who can tell of the “sasses?” for we had “biled petaturs!”—and
“smashed petaturs!”—and “petatursis!”
i. e. potatoes rolled into balls as big as marbles, and baked
brown. And there were “bil'd ingins!”—“fried ingins!”
—and “ingins out of this here pie!” Yes, and beets of
all known colours and unknown tastes!—all pickled in
salt and vinegar and something else! And there were
pickled cucumbers, as far as salt and water could go; and
“punkun-butter!”—and “punkun-jelle!”—and corn bread
in all its glory!
Scientifically inserted and insinuated among the first
course, was the second; every crevice and space being
wedged up: and had the plates and saucers been like puzzle-maps,
no table cloth would have been visible through the
interstices. And fortunate! the table itself was strong and
masculine; otherwise it must have been crushed under the
course was chiefly custard; and that stood in bowls and
teacups of cadaverous white, encircled by unknown flowers.
A pitcher of milk was gracefully adorned by the artist with
the pattern of an entrail, taken doubtless out of some school
book on physiology. But we had also custard-pies! and
made with both upper and under crusts! And also maple
molasses, (usually called “them 'ere molassisis,”) and preserved
apples, preserved water mellon-rinds, and preserved
red peppers and tomatoes—all termed, for brevity's sake,
(like words in Webster's dictionary,) “'sarves.”
A few under crusts, or shells, were filled with stewed
peaches and apples; an idea borrowed by Susan from Glenville:
but so much was this like conformity to the pomps
and vanities of life, that the careful mother had that very
morning rebuked her daughter, and earnestly advised her
not “to take to quality ways, but naturally bake pies
with uppermost crust's.” And yet Mrs. Ashford soon got
over her miff, and, won by the marked and uncondescending
attention paid to her daughter and her daughter's husband
by us, she was heard not long after the rebuke to say—
“Well, arter all, they're a right down clever sort of folks,
and that 'are Mr. Carltin is naterally addicted to fun.”
Among the curiosities were the pound cakes, as numerous
as apple dumplings, and about as large. These were
compounded of some things found in pound cakes every
where, and of some not found, maple sugar being, evidently
from the taste, the master ingredient; but their shape—
that was the beauty! All were baked in coffee-cups! and
after being disencupped, each was iced all over, till it looked,
for all the world, exactly like an ill-made snow ball! The
icing, or snowing, was a composition of egg, starch, and a
species of double-rectified maple sugar, as fine and white
as table salt.
In addition to all these matters tea and coffee were severally
guest—“Do you take sweet'nin?” If the reply was affirmative
the same sized spoonful was put into every sized cup;
and then, to save you the trouble, the young lady stirred the
beverage with her own fair hand, and with as much energy
and good will as if she was mixing molasses and water.
Now, we do hope no reader will think we of Glenville
turned up our noses at all this. No, no, verily; but we eat
as much and as long, laughing, talking, joking all the time
too, as if native born. As for Mr. Carlton, he stuck mainly
to pot-pie, the marbled-potatoes, the custard and the maple
molasses; which last, by the way, is indeed as superior to
all far east and down east molasses and syrups as cheese is
to chalk.
The eventful day was, however, now closing, and some
had already taken French leave, while many were rigging
their horses for departure: hence we also began assembling
our party to go homeward. But at the request of
some young fellows, who offered to catch Dick and see the
“gals” home, we left our helps, to have some fun after
the graver people should be gone away. About a dozen
volunteer groomsmen and bridesmaids remained to “see it
out;” viz. to torment Susan and Joseph: but Mrs. Ashford,
a very watchful and discreet woman, told us afterwards,
she “took care to stop all goins on, and made ev'ry
livin soul and body of 'em go to bed an hour before herself
and her old man went.”
A different but no less effectual preventive was used by
another new-married couple in the Purchase, where we had
the honour of an invitation. The loft had been assigned
as the bridal chamber, the sole access to which was a light
ladder; and up this some of the “weddeners” intended to
steal and upset the bed of the sleepers—but alas! for the
fun!—the groom, in anticipation of the favour, it was found,
had drawn up the ladder!
20. CHAPTER XX.
“Parva leves capitant animos.”
“Various, that the mind of desultory man.”
The ladies of Glenville, in addition to various other matters,
paid special attention in the winter to needle-work:
and that was bestowed on gowns, coats, overalls, inexpressibles,
and in short, on the whole tribe of unmentionables;
and also on various tasteful and fancy articles. In the
kitchen was a loom, not for laces, but for measuring out,
yard after yard of tow-linen and Kentucky jeans; and on
this piano forte our ladies played many a merry tune, the
burden of which was “our days are swifter than a weaver's
shuttle;” which yet proved that a short span is rendered
pleasant by a swift shuttle. Indeed, in our circumstances,
the use of the treadles was more important than the use of
the pedals.
Our ladies this winter spent much time in reading: and,
not a little in longing after the flesh-pots of Egypt! And
yet there was much in the wild and rough wilderness;—
much in the men and women of the woods, so in contrast
with the culture of the city, that when the novelty passed,
and we had time to reflect that in our day the neighbours
could never be like us, nor we like them—that we were
tolerated, rather than cherished—and were far away from
sympathy—it was then that we seemed to awake to a sad
and bitter remembrance of the past—yes, and that past in
no way, to some of us, ever to be restored, to be revisited!
In the far east were the graves of their fathers!—(the
and in their day men of substance and renown.
And Indians are not the only ones that love to linger among
the graves of their fathers: not the only wanderers that
see in vision the swelling mounds over their dead, and see,
with melting hearts and dimming eyes! Mournful world!
before we left the woods, graves of ours had consecrated
two lonely spots in the wilds, and our dust was comming-ling
with the dust of the red men: so that lonely now
amid the graves in the east, we here sigh and weep for
the graves in those western solitudes!
As for myself, this winter, I made the closet for Carlton's
study, and the one in Bishop Hilsbury's cabin; also two
skuttles for the loom, one too light however, the other, too
heavy: and I aided in putting in and taking out “a
piece,” becoming thus adept in the mysteries of woof
and warp, of hanks, reels and cuts. I mended likewise,
water sleds, hunted turkeys, missed killing two deer for
want of a rifle, played the flute, practised the fiddle, and ever
so many other things and what-nots. But my grand employment
was a review of all my college studies; and hence,
I was the very first man since the creation of the world
that read Greek in the New Purchase! And it was I that
first made the apostles talk out there in their own language!
that first made the primal woods resonant with
trees in the majestic words of Plato—words that Jupiter
himself would have used for the same purpose! aye, that
first taught those listening trees the names of the Hebrew
and Chaldaic alphabets, or made them roar like the sea with
the poluphlosboio thalasses! And, hence from the renown
of all this, I was finally made a trustee of the State College
at Woodville; which appointment afterwards brought
their proper place. The appointment, however, was not
given till Mr. J. Glenville took his seat in our legislature
in 182—.
Our evenings were devoted to cracking nuts and jokes,
visiting uncle Tommy, and Bishop H., to planning, to
hearing adventures or reading aloud; but, as it was not possible
to have a centre-table, the grand family lamp was suspended
in the centre of the parlour; and then around this
we either all sat as an Iceland family, or raising the carpetbarriers,
we lolled on the nearest beds in couch and sofa,
and ottoman style.
The lamp in its primitive times was a patty-pan; but
having spent its youth in different sorts of hot ovens, its
tin had entirely shone out, and nothing remained save the
oxydated iron; yet, to this it owed its present elevated
station in Glenville—humility before exaltation! In the
edges were three holes punched with a tenpenny nail, and
into these were put and fastened three several wires, which
united eighteen inches above the patty-pan, were joined by
a strong twine, tied to a hook in a pole: and then the whole
affair, when released from the hand, could, and did swing
with a very regular irregularity over the middle parlour.
The illuminator filled with lard or bear's oil,[5]
and supplied
with a piece of cloth for wick, was touched with flame
from a burning brand; and then away it blazed in glory,
filling all things, even eyes and noses, with light and soot!
But we soon got used to suffocation; and many were our
pleasant nights around the pendulum lamp, spite of inconveniences
within, and the cries of prowling beasts without,
or the demon-like shrieks and howls of wintry tempests!
Calm consciences in rude and lone huts bid defiance to
most evils and dangers! Besides, who has not known the
lulled to slumber by the music of a pattering rain! So our
delight arose often from a sense of entire security: and yet
the dangers and evils of the dark and howling wilderness
so near!—separated by a slight barrier!
During the day, this winter, I took lessons in axecraft;
for, in addition to the “niggering-off,”[6]
it became necessary
as the cold increased, to chop off logs, especially as
our fire-place devoured wood at the rate of half-a-cord per
diem. Niggering belongs mainly to very large timber, and
pertains rather to the science of log-rolling than of preparing
fuel; but chopping is essential to nearly every branch
of a woodsman's life, and must be learned by all who aspire
to respectability and independence.
Awkward indeed, were my first essays, and my strength
inartificially bestowed on every blow, was soon exhausted;
but when we had “larned the sling o' the axe,” then could
we as easily execute a cord a day, as at first the fourth of
the measure. Nay, we could at last mount a prostrate
beech and take the butt end two feet in diameter: and
then, with feet apart, the exact width of the intended chip,
could we cut away, within one inch of the cowhide boots,
and that neatly and regularly all the way to the centre:
and then, turning round, accomplish the same on the other
side, till cuttings matched and almost met, when we would
make the final and flourishing cut, and then in a moment
lay two logs out of one!
But oh! the way Tom Robison could flourish the axe!
And proud am I to call Tom my master; indeed, all Glenville
were indebted to his lessons. Tom was a fellow of
gigantic proportions, longer than six feet three inches, and
with enormous width of breast,—about “the girth” like a
columnar beech. He had also legs and arms to match.
and in temper he was as good-natured and harmless as a
chubby baby! Tom rarely bragged; although he could
shoot well, drive wagon well, ride horses wild and tame,
and walk as fast and nearly as far as an elephant: still he
would boast a little about his chopping, being indeed as an
axeman, the envy and admiration of all that part of the
Purchase. Oh! I do wish we could paint Tom's smile of
benevolent scorn as he took the axe from my awkward
hands, to “larn me the sling!” when he saw me puffing at
every ineffectual blow, striking every time in a new place,
till a little weak amorphous chip was at long last haggled
out with hashed edges—it was really sublime.
“Jeest[7]
do it so like, Mr. Carltin—a sort a hold your
left hand here, allowin you're goin to strike right hand
licks; and your tother hand so fashin, a toward the helf—
but a sort a loose: then swing the axe out so, lettin the
loose hand run up agin tother this away”—and here Tom's
axe finished the sentence or speech by gleaming down and
burying itself nearly to its back in the log: but next instant it
was again quivering in the air, and changing its direction was
gleaming and burying itself as at first, till out leaped elastic
chips light as a feather, although these chips were twelve
inch eslong, and two thick! And then the log would show
two inclined planes as if wrought with a chisel!—and all
the time Tom talking and laughing away, like a fellow
whittling poplar with a dirk-knife. Oh! it was really delicious
to see such cutting; and it was surprising anybody
should call wood-chopping hard work—it was nothing but
cutting butter with a hot knife.
Reader, Tom had actually done in axery, what Horace
pronounces in writing, the prefection of the art, viz. ravishing
and yet beguiling the reader into an opinion that
the axe in his hand, was like the bow in Paganini's—and
in the Purchase vastly more serviceable. In short, Tom
could cut wood like lightning; and whilst some things can
be done before a fluent tongue (female of course) can say
Jack Robison, we defy any body to do the same things before
Tom Robison could chop a stick off!
We shall now describe our firemaking, not indeed to be
imitated in here to the utter ruin of all moderate fortunes,
but to show the grand scale on which we do even small
matters out there. To build a New Purchase fire, a cabin
must first be builded or built for the fire, with a fireplace,
constituting nearly one whole end of the cabin; then we
must have wood, not by the cord, but by the acre; and
thirdly, we must have active, robust, honest-hearted fellows
to cut and carry in, unless one niggers-off, as some do, and
drags logs into the cabin by horse-power.
The foundation of our fire was laid every day very early
and required all hands. We men—hem! we men rose
before sun-up; and then uncle John hauled out the relics of
yesterday's fire—coals plenty and lively—the unconsumed
centre of the back-log and chunks of foresticks; while
Glenville and Carlton issued forth to select a new back-log.
This was usually of beech, the greener the better, and about
seven feet long and two in diameter. It was rolled to the
door wth handspikes, where, with the aid of uncle Johnit
was next rolled, lifted, pushed and coaxed into the centre
of the parlour: and here we rested and blowed, uttering
between the puffs—“plaguey heavy!” “a'most too long!'
and the like. But directly, with a few united efforts the
back-log was rolling and crushing over the coals and soon
lodged with a thundering noise in its bed of hot ashes, and
against the stone back of the inner chimney; we, during
this process, alternately lifting our scorched shins, and then
at the noise of the thunder, nimbly leaping back and rub
try the ordeal of the burning plowshares. The log was
now covered with ashes to prevent too rapid a consumption;
and then two delicate andirons in the shape of pig
iron, were pushed by a stick into proper position, being
always, any time in the winter, too hot to be touched with
the hand or even kicked with the foot. In case a cabin has
opposite doors, much labour and many sprains may be
saved and avoided, by tackling a horse to an end of the backlog
and hauling it into the cabin; it is, however, rather a slovenly
practice, and used mostly by women in the absence
of the men.
Next in order were the second-story back-log, and the
fore stick—equal in length, but different in diameter and
material: the former being of beech and one foot thick, the
latter of sugar tree and about eight inches thick. Each is
often carried by two persons; but still oftener each is
hipped. And hipping is done by one man who has some
strength and more dexterity; who adroitly whips up the
log on his hip, and trots off with it like the youngest quilldriver
of a shop will do with Miss Troublesome's small
bundle of silk under his arm. These timbers are also frequently
shouldered—but I regret to say that a certain friend
of ours when his turn came, used to roll his stick as far
as the door, and then hitch it. Hitching is performed by
getting the article on an end (no odds which) and then
working it along by alternate corners: an operation that
impressed on our puncheons numerous indented mementos
of our friend's lazy ingenuity. The plane beauty of poplar
or pine floors it would have marred forever! The puncheons,
however, thought little of the matter, although they
wriggled and “screeched” like—like—let's see. Oh! like
all the world!
Meanwhile uncle John carried in brush enough to make
a Jersey load of oven faggots; and the girl, baskets full
the Carlton sort; and so when the upper back-log and forestick
had been arranged, there were present all the kindling
and burning materials. An infant sapling, some three
inches thick, lay between the back log proper and the forestick,
forming thus a chasm for a bushel of burning coals;
while other coals remained under and above the pile; and
then across the upper coals were placed bits of small trees
intermingled with hot chunks and cold chips, the whole being
capped and climactirized with a brush heap.
Now issued, first, volumes of smoke, then a spiteful
snap or two, becoming soon, however, a loud and decided
crackling; and then appeared several fierce curly blazes,
white, red, and blue, verifying the vulgar saying about
smoke and fire; till the temperature of things getting to the
scientific point—out burst simultaneously from all parts of
the structure a wide, pure, living, roaring flame chasing
soot-clouds up the stick-chimney, dispersing fire-builders
as far as the carpet barrier, and lighting the interior cabin
with the blaze of a volcano!
Combustion—(hem!) was supported during the day on
the most philosophic principles; by supplying fuel: not a
small bladder of gas; not even an old fashioned Philadelphia
iron fore stick and stone black log; but real backwood's
fuel, chips, brush, bits of saplings and miniature timber.
The fire was constructed regularly once only in
twenty-four hours; although some back logs will last
nearly twice that period.
Each firemaker had a tong of green timber an inch
thick and six feet long; hence two persons lifting or poking
in concert were equivalent to a pair of tongs. Usually
we operated with only one tong; but by dexterity all can
be accomplished with that one, that in here is commonly
done with “tongses” and shovel to boot. True, our practice
was incessant; since no man, woman, nor child in the
at it! Hence my determined and ineradicable hostility to
a fire of coal, bituminous or anthracite—the thing won't be
poked! And what's a fire for, if it aint to be poked?
Our young woman now, in here, keeps every thing
in the shape of poker, and scraper, and tong, single
or double, out of my way; and, when the grate or stove
needs a little tussling, in comes she with some iron article
or other: but always on going out takes the article with
her—“for fear Mr. Carlton will spile her fire!!”
Bah!—don't lecture me about furnaces and flues, and
patent grates and ranges, and no-burns and all-saves, of
this pitiful age! Give me my all-burn and no-save fire of
beech and sugar and chip and brush—hand back my tong
—let me poke once more! Oh! let me hear and see
once more before I die a glorious flame roaring up a stick-chimney!
There let me, on this celebrated cold Thursday,
thermometer two and a half inches below zero, there let
me stand by my cabin fire and be heated once more
through and through! Oh! the luxury of lying in bed
and looking from behind our Scotch wall on that fire!
Oh! ye poor frozen, starving wretches of our blind and
horrible alleys, and dark and loathsome cellars; ye, I now
see buying twopenneth of huckstered sticks to heat your
water gruel for one more mouthful before ye die; ye, that
are shivering in rags, begging of that red-faced carter in the
pea jacket a small, knotty, four-foot-stick of sour, sappy
scrub oak just fallen from his cart, to hear it sob, sob, on the
foodless hearth of your dungeon like holes--away! for
heaven's sake, if you starve not before, away! next summer
to the woods!
Go; squat on Congress land! Go; find corn and pork and
turkeys and squirrels and opossums and deer to eat! Go;
and in the cold, cold, cruel winter like to day, you shall sit
and lie and warm you by such a fire!—Go; squalid slaves!
beg an axe—put out—make tracks for the tall timber—Go;
shout—“Hurraw—aw! the ranges for—ever!!”
Jist becomes jeest, and little, leetle out there, when tenderness and
affection or dimunition, &c., is to be designated.
21. CHAPTER XXI.
“Thy hounds shall make the welkin answer them,
And fetch shrill echoos from the hollow earth.”
We had this year a very merry Christmas. For first and
foremost we devoted the holidays to—hog killing and all
its accompaniments, lard rendering, spare-rib cooking, sausage
making, and the like. And secondly, our cow Sukey
performed a very wonderful thing in the eating and drinking
line:—she devoured a whole sugar trough full of mast fed
rendered lard! The blame, at first, attached to Dick; but
he could clearly prove an alibi, and besides Sukey had very
greasy chops, and got horrid sick, as much so as she had
swallowed a box of Quackenborg's pills: and when she
did again let us have milk it was actually oily! And then,
thirdly, there was aunt Kitty's mishap about the sausages.
Aunt Kitty was intended by nature for a dear delightful
old maid; and she greatly mistook her vocation by marrying,
although nothing but her being a great favourite with
the beaux of the last century hindered the fulfilment of her
destiny. She was the most amiable and kind hearted
woman—but a lee le too modest; so that, in her circumlocutions
and paraphrases to get round the tough places of
plain English, she often made us uneasy lest she stump, or,
perhaps light on some unlucky word or phrase worse than
the one she shyed at. She denominated the chanticleer—
chickbidde--or, he-bidde—or, old-rooster; and the braying
gentleman she styled--donkey; although she would
venture as far as—Jack. Ancle, with her, was any part
what-y' callums. She milked the cow's dugs, and greased,
not her bag, but her—udder. From all which it maybe
conjectured what ingenious contrivances in strange cabins
were necessary before Aunt Kitty could get into bed or out
of it: indeed, setting all backwood scorn and ridicule at
defiance, she would take the very coverlet and fork it up for
a curtain!
Well, Aunt Kitty called things prepared for the reception
of sausages, skins; and so this Christmas having prepared
the skins by the scraping process, she laid them away in
salt and water till the stuffing was to take place; but when
the hour for that curious metamorphose of putting swine into
their own skins came, behold! the skins could not be
found--
“What! had Dick devoured them?”
Oh! no,—the girl had accidentally thrown them all
away. And this, indeed, was too bad; and no housekeeper
can blame Aunt Kitty for being greatly provoked: but alas!
for delicacies, anger permitted no choice of words:—
(and by that it may be seen how angry Aunt Kitty was;) for
on learning the cause and manner of the irreparable loss
she exclaimed:--
“Why, you careless—you! Have you really gone and
thrown out all my g—ts! that I was keeping for skins!!”
Fourthly, we had a deer hunt, not only somewhat remarkable
in itself, but memorable for the change it caused
in the relations of Brutus and Cæsar—the dogs of Glenville.
Of these, Brutus was the elder, and hence, though smaller
and weaker, he managed to govern Cæsar: proof that
among brutes opinion has much to do with mastership and
reverence. An intimate acquaintance with old Dick and
the two canine gentlemen has unsettled my early theories
about instinct and reason: and as to the first-named worthy,
the theory that the power of laughing is distinctive of
if he never indulged in a rude boisterous horse-laugh,
could and did most decidedly and repeatedly grin—and that
is all some very sober and sensible persons ever attain to.
As to the others, Brutus had possession of the premises
before Cæsar was even a whelp; and though only Cæsar's
foster-sire, he had trained him in his puppyhood in all the
arts of doggery; showing him how to worry infant pigs,
then saucy shoats, and finally true hogs, and without
regard of size or sex. He taught him how to chase
poultry, and suck eggs; how to hang at a cow's tail and
yet avoid both horn and heel; how to hunt squirrels, opossums
and racoons; and how even to shake a venomous
snake to death and not be bit. And to his indefatigable
care and example was owing the loss of our original bacon-skin
hinges, and the ruin of sundry raw hides.
But when the cold meat, or potatoes, or buttermilk, &c.,
was set out in the dogs' sugar-trough, how instructive the
dignity of Brutus as he walked up solus, and with no ravenous
and indelicate haste to eat his fill! And how revereful
the mammoth and lubberly Cæsar, standing at a
distance till his step-father had finished and retired! Cæ
sar, when very hungry or smelling something extra, would
indeed crawl up with an imploring eye and piteous whine:
but then the awful look and cautionary growl he received
from the wiser dog, sent him away in a moment with
a trailed tail and even to a greater distance than ever!
And yet Cæsar was equal in strength and size to one Brutus
and a half! Carlyle's theory of opinion, must be extended
to dogs: and our deer hunt will confirm it.
One day during Christmas week Uncle John went a hunting.
About two o'clock, however, he returned, having
wounded a deer a mile beyond our clearing, and wishing
after dinner—(now on the table)—to take the two dogs
to put on its trail; when we should soon find the deer
spot, and blood being here and there visible, the dogs were
placed on the trail, and we soon came in sight of the poor
deer. It was not dead, as had been conjectured, but was
lying down sorely wounded, on a little island in the creek,
hoping there, after baffling pursuit by the intervening
water, to sob away its life unseen and undisturbed by its
relentless enemies! Poor creature! mere accident led us
to look towards its retreat; where, alarmed, it had incautiously
moved, and no moving thing ever is unseen by the
wary and stationary hunter—and then, at our shouts, up
sprang the terrified animal, wounded, but bounding away as
though unharmed! And away in pursuit leaped the yelping
dogs; but in the excitement Cæsar, forgetful of all reverence,
in the lead.
Following the uproar, I ran up on this side the creek
about two hundred yards; and then the deer was seen recrossing
the water a few rods higher, Cæsar close on the
flank, the most noble Brutus panting far enough in the rear!
The poor hunted victim, blind and expiring, staggered in
its last agony towards my station; and then, as Cæsar leaped
to seize its throat, it fell stone dead at my feet; for the
rifle ball had passed nearly through its body, and the
chase had happily but accelerated death. The two
brothers, for Uncle Tommy had joined us, now came up;
and then, the feet of the dead deer tied in pairs, and a sapling,
cut and prepared with a tomahawk, inserted longitudinally
under the thongs, we shouldered our prey and
marched homeward triumphant:—i. e. we three rationals
and the now opinionated and consequential Cæsar, who (or
which?) strutted near, every few paces leaping up
and smelling at the carcass. But Brutus, the hitherto
lord of the woods and clearing, alas! dejected,
lagged away behind, both crest fallen and tail fallen! yes,
both, for he hung his head and kept his tail dangling without
one thriumphant flourish! He evidently felt his importance
and utter natural—not to say moral—inability, to be in at
the death. Yes, opinion was changed! And he saw plain
enough that Cæsar entertained notions of dog authority now
very inconsistent with peaceable subjection—ay! as different
as when slaves first wake to the full perception of their
powers and rights and opportunities; their masters having
injudiciously allowed them to discover themselves to be
really men and to have souls! Yes, yes, opinion had
changed;—and these dogs read it in one another's eyes,—
for that very day the instant the entrails of the slain-deer
were thrown out as the dogs' reward, up-rushed the unceremonious
Cæsar; and when Brutus tried the experiment
of the old cautionary growl, Cæsar instead of modestly retiring
as usual, leaped ferociously upon his venerated step-father,
and so bit and gored and pitched and rolled and
tossed him, that away, away ran the elder dog at the first
fair interval howling with rage, vexation and pain! And
ever after that memorable deer hunt Cæsar continued to
eat at the first trough and Brutus at the second.
Part of the venison fell to Uncle Tommy's share, which
I aided him to take home; and, in return, he insisted on
my spending the evening at his cabin—and then the reader
may be sure we had many a long story on hunting; but he
would rather have described the squatteree itself than hear
all our stories and adventures. The squatteree was a cabin
just fourteen feet by ten, and most accurately built of small
round saplings, very much alike in diameter and looks, and
nicely dressed at the corners. It was, indeed, a darling
little miniaturo cabin, and would have done to a tittle for
rabblerousing in the late presidential campaign. Old Dick
could easily have drawn it, and Uncle Tommy, whose heart
was the old General's, would have driven!
A large space inside was occupied by a bed-apparatus
constructed as follows:—uprights, at their lower ends, were
a side and foot piece;—the logs of the cabin making
unnecessary a second rail and head piece. Next was a
sacking of clapboards pinned down; and then a very thick
straw bed, and over that a sumptuous feather bed; the
whole very comfortable for the good old folks, especially as
Uncle Tommy used to say of themselves, that they were
“old and tough.”
Opposite the bed stood the bureau; the door opening into
the cabin between the two, and a narrow aisle or passage
being left to the cooking and eating end of the nest. Adjoining
the bureau was the puncheon table with its white
oak legs; and which served for eating, sewing, reading,
and indeed, all domestic uses; whilst opposite the table,
and at the foot of the bed, were shelves for crockery and
every article of squatter house keeping Over the fire-place
was an extraordinarily wide mantel, sustaining canister behind
canister and bowl upon bowl and bags, some of linen
and some of paper; and having above itself two racks one
supporting an enormously long duck gun, and the other,
“Old Bet”—a black surly looking rifle, with the appurte-nances
of horns pouches, loaders tomahawks and knives
pendant from the hooks. There hung, also, several pairs
of moccasins, and two sets of leggins: an old pair of green
baize, and a new pair of blue cloth.
Over the table and bureau were shelves, but mainly for
the library. The books were principally books of divinity
and church history, and also of prayer and devotion; but
yet were on the shelves Don Quixotte, Robinson Crusoe,
Paradise Lost Border Tales Cooper's Works, Thomson's
Seasons, and Young's Night Thoughts The bureau top
was consecrated to Bibles and Hymn Books; and here was
piled the famous Scott's Commentary, in five volumes quarto,
and so often read, from “kiver to kiver!” Indeed, from
have been read clean through “the kivers!”
The neatness, the quiet, the cleanliness, the comfort, the
wild independence of this nest of a cabin;—the hunt of the
day;—the stories;—all, all were so like the dreams of my
boyhood! How happy Uncle Tommy, now more than
seventy years old! and Aunt Nancy, now more than sixty!
Happy in themselves, in one another, in their home, and in
their scriptural hopes of the future life!
But the arrangement for getting water, when the old
lady should be alone, and in wet weather, without leaving
the cabin!—that was the nicety. The nest was a few yards
below a beautiful fountain, and over its running stream;
then in the floor a light puncheon was fixed as a trap, so
that with a calabash at the end of a proper pole Aunt Nancy
could dip as from an artificial reservoir!—and all without
a water tax!
Our supper to-night was of coffee, corn bread, butter,
eggs, short-cakes, and venison steaks! Yes, venison
steaks!—Away with your Astor House, and Merchants'
Hotel, and Dandies' Taverns; if you do want to know how
venison steaks do taste—go to Aunt Nancy! We feel
tempted to give Uncle Tommy's “murakalus” escape in
fire-hunting! how he levelled his rifle at a “beast's eyes,”
and found in time it was light streaming through a negro
hut, where, on Christmas eve, the merry rascals were dancing
away to a cornstalk fiddle and a calabash banjo. But
we must hasten to our
Fifth and last amusement during the holidays. Usually
on the Sabbath we attended our own meeting in the Welden
Settlement; but bad roads and some other accidents often
kept us at home; when our three families assembled at
Uncle John's, where he read the Scriptures, and made or
read a prayer, with occasional help from Uncle Tommy,
sermons and tracts.
Sometimes, however, we attended meeting at Mr. Sturgis',
out of compliment to our neighbour and Uncle Tommy;
never, indeed, for fun, although we usually were more
amused than profited; and always came back more and
more convinced that a learned, talented and pious ministry
was, after all, not quite so great a curse as many deem it.
But of this the reader may, after reading the ecclesiastical
parts and chapters of this History, judge for himself. And
here we beg leave to affirm that our accounts of certain sacred
matters is reduced and very much below the truth;
for while truthfulness is important in some writings, if on
these matters ours were truth-full, we should hardly be credited.
We dare not do our pictures up to life: and hence,
while they are by no means truthless, they are yet less than
the truth.
Neighbour Sturgis, it will be remembered, lived opposite
the tannery, and on the top of a bluff rising from our creek.
Compared with most cabins his was good and spacious;
and to accommodate some pet swine and a flock of tame
geese, openings under his house were left, whither the favourites
could retire for sleep, or as a retreat from unusual
sun, rain, or wind. Here, whilst swine and geese were
content with their several limits, gruntings and cacklings
were modest and expressive of enjoyment: although joy
itself would often squeal and scream too boisterously for
some congregations. But if wantonness induced either
piggy or goosey to pass the border; or if the dogs playfully
ran in nosing up the pigs, slapping a tail against a strutty
gander or a silly goose, then would the commingled din of
bark, howl, grunt, squawk, squeal and cackle, furnish a better
answer than the jest book itself to the question, “What
makes more moise than a she-swine caught in a gate?”—
Answer, “Old man Sturgis' pet-pen in a riot.”
Now, in the room exactly over the pet-pen, “meetins was
held!” The seats were long benches with very ricketty
limbs, expanded two a piece at each end, and double planks
resting on rude chunks—all wishing to obey at once the
great law of gravity, but prevented by their own inequalities,
and those of the floor. Hence during “sarvice,” as
folks were constantly shifting centres of motion and gravity,
no despicable noise of chunks and bench-legs was
maintained, in addition to all other noises rational and instinctive.
The pulpit was neither marble nor mahogany, being a
tough chair with two upright back pieces like plough handles,
and cross bars to suit: and its seat was (or were)
laced hickory withes, and wonderfully smooth and glistening
from the attrition of linsey garments, tow inexpressibles,
and oily buckskin unmentionables. And not in, but
behind this pulpit stood the preacher, placing his hymn
book on its polished seat, and holding on to the two handles
to squeeze by, in his energy or embarrassments. Hence
he never thumped his pulpit in the manner of the Rev.
Doctor Slapfist; but when necessary he raised the pulpit
itself, and with it thumped the floor—making of course just
four times the impression with its four legs that the Doctor
does with his single hand.
The Rev. Diptin Menniwaters usually preached here;
but on New-Year's Sabbath all Glenville went by invitation
to hear a new preacher: although in the Purchase, where
preachers of a sort are plenty as acorns or beach nuts, a
new one frequently held forth, and held on too, greatly to
the wonder of the hearers, and the disturbance of the pet-pen,
at our neighbour's of the bluff. The new preacher today,
doubtless apprised of the strangers' coming, in order
to create confidence, and ward off any false shame and unworthy
fear of man, struck off, after prayer and singing,
preachers, thus:—
“Brethurn and sisturn, it's a powerful great work, this
here preaching of the gospul, as the great apostul hisself
allows in them words of hissin what's jist come into my
mind; for I never know'd what to preach about till I riz up
—them words of hissin, `who is sufficient for all these
here things,' as near about as I recollect them.
“Thare's some folks--(glancing towards us)—howsomever,
what thinks preachers must be high larn'd, afore they
kin tell sinners as how they must be saved or be 'tarnally
lost; but it ain't so I allow—(chair thumped here and answered
by a squawk below)—no, no! this apostul of ourn
what spoke the text, never rubbed his back agin a collige,
nor toted about no sheepskins—no, never!—(thump!
thump! squawk and two grunts.) No, no, dear brethurn
and sisturn—(squeak)—larnin's not sufficient for them
things; as the apostul says, `who is sufficient for them.'
Oh worldlins! how you'd a perished in your sins if the
fust preachers had a stay'd till they got sheepskins. No!
no! no! I say, gim me the sperit. (Squeals and extra
gruntings in the swine's territory, and more animated
squawks and cackles, as the preacher waxed warmer.)
No! I don't pretend to no larnin whatsomever, but depends
on the sperit like Poll; (squee-e-el:) and what's to hinder
me a sayin, oh! undun worldlins! that you must be saved
or 'tarnally lost—yes, lost for ever an dever!—(things below
evidently getting on to their legs and flapping.) No!
no! no! oh! poor lost worldlins. I can say as well as the
best on them sheepskins, if you don't git relijin and be
saved, you'll be lost, teetolly and 'tarnally forever an dever-ah!
I know's I'm nuthen but poor Philip, and that I only
has to go by the sperit-ah! but as long as I live, I kin holler
out: (voice to the word)—and cry aloud and spare not,
(squ-aw-awk) O! no, brethurn and sisturn-ah! and al
thank me for it no how-ah! O! ho! o-ah! I poor Philipah,
what's moved to cry out and spare not-ah!—(sque-e-el;)
what was takin from tendin critturs like David-ah, and
ain't no prophet, nor no son of a prophet-ah. O! ho-o-ah,
how happy I am to raise my poor feeble-ah, dying-ah,
voice-ah, and spendin my last breath, in this here blessed
work; a warnin, and crying aloud; o-ho!-o-ah! repent
repent, poor worldlins and be saved, or you'll all be lost,
and perish for-ever-an-dever-ah.”
Here the storm above was getting to its height, although
poor Philip kept on some ten minutes more, waxing louder
and hoarser, with endless repetitions and strong aspirations
in a hundred places occasioned by his catching breath,
and which we have several times marked with an -ah![8]
He also began spanking one thigh with a hand, and
ever and anon battering the floor with his pulpit, until he
was compelled at last to place one hand under his jaw, and
and partly up his cheek to support his “jawing tackle.”
And, in the meanwhile, the fraternity below, after much irregular
outcrying, had at length joined all their instruments
and voices, and to so good a purpose as at times nearly to
overwhelm the preacher. Two dogs also, half wolf and
half cur, now presented themselves at the door, and with
elevated brows and cocked ears, stood wistfully looking at
the parson, to know what he wished them to attack or hunt:
but on finding he was not halloing for them, and being now
too excited to be still, away they sprang towards the forest
yelping and howling and determined to hunt for themselves.
And shortly after the first hurricane ending, Poor Philip
hitting a favorite vein, went on with a train of reasoning
logic) about cause and effect: but while he was again
cheered from below in the manner of an English audience
clapping an abolitionist, we shall not, by recording the applause,
interrupt the narrative.
“No—no: nobody can make nuthin. Thare's only one
what makes, and he made these here woods; he made
these here trees; and them bushes; he made yonders sun
—and yonders moon—and all them 'are stars what shines
at night in the firmamint above our heads like fires;—and
—and—he made—yes—he made them powerful big rivers
a runnin down thare to Orleans—and the sea, and all the
fishes, and the one what a sorter swallerd the prophit what
was chuck'd out and swallerd—and—and—yes—and all
them 'are deer, and them 'are barr, and them hossis what's
tied out thare. (Had Dick been there he would now unquestionably
have slipped his bridle.) And so you understand,
worldlins, how no man could a ever made anything.
And haven't we proof from nater that they was made, and
didn't come as high larn'd folks' sez, and grow of theirselves
out of forty atims by chance.
“No—no, worldlins, you couldn't, the most high larn'd
ither, could'nt make any of them thare things—you couldn't
make woods—you couldn't make trees—you couldn't make
fishes—no, you couldn't make airth—you couldn't make air
—you couldn't make fire—you couldn't make—hem!—no
you couldn't—make water.” (Sorry are we to record, but
Mr. Carlton here was guilty of sniggering; and even Uncle
John, in spite of his official dignity, did look as if he would
laugh when meeting was out. Poor Philip, however,
quickly emerged and went on.) “No—not one of you could
make a spring branch nor the like.”
Ah! poor Philip had you only had a little of the learning
you despised! Had you, at least, only seen Miss Carbon's
did not Philip make us sweat for our sins, for he went on:
“Yes! yes! some folks laff in meetin, but wait till they
gits to h—l, and maybe they'll laff tother side of their
mouth. The fire down thare's hot, I allow, and will scorch
off folks's ruffles and melt their goold buttins, and the devel
and his angils will pelt them with red hot balls of brimrock
and fire!”
But the two dogs had just now returned from an unsuccessful
hunt, and forthwith they plunged headlong into the pit below;
and then, the barking and yelping of the dogs; the
scampering and squealing of the pigs; the flapping of
screaming geese's wings, and the squawking of insulted
ganders, together with the hoarse and continued roaring of
the preacher, produced a tempest rarely equalled in the best
organized fanatical assemblies here, and never surely excelled.
And the instant meeting was over, we of Glenville hurried
away glad to escape from the noise of bedlam and the almost
papistical curses of poor Philip.
| The new purchase, or, Seven and a half years in the far West | |