University of Virginia Library

16. CHAPTER XVI.

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

an hexagonal axis, yet free to move at the end inserted;
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

projecting from the circumference about four inches each:
—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

hawing and geeing, and in pulling right dead ahead up one
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

keen twinkling eye watching the return of the girl. And
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

me, in no way is the fear of the East before people's
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.