 | The new purchase, or, Seven and a half years in the far West |  |
FOURTH YEAR.
42. CHAPTER XLII.
“Sit mihi fas audita loqui.”
“It is the witness still of excellency
To put a stranger face on his own perfection.”
Our fourth year introduces an epoch, the Augustan age
of the New Purchase—the opening of the State College!
And now comes on the stage, as one principal actor, my
friend, the Reverend Charles Clarence, A.M., Principal
accepted our appointment, not for the paltry stipend paid as
his salary, but wholly because he longed to be in the romantic
West, and among its earliest literary pioneers; and
hence, early this spring, he was with us, and not merely
ready, but even enthusiastically impatient to commence his
labours.
His wife was with him—the woman of his seven years'
love! They had tasted, however, the wormwood of affliction's
cup, and even now wore the badges of recent bereavements.
Mr. Clarence, leaving his wife and two little
children, went to the South again on business; and after
an absence of four months, on returning to his boardinghouse
in Philadelphia, he was surprised at hearing and
seeing no signs of his babes. His wife, instead of answering
in words his eager questions, suddenly threw her arms
about his neck, and bursting into an agony of tears, exclaimed,—“Both
are dead!—come into our room—I'll tell
you all!”
Here was a sad waking from day-dreaming! and Clarence
was with us, having altered views of life, and seeing
that we have something to do in it, besides to amuse or be
amused. Happy chastisement our friend afterwards deemed
it, when encountering sore disappointments and many,
in his professional career: ay! he was destined to endure
the utter crushing of all his high hopes and purposes. For,
if ever man was influenced by disinterested motives, and
fired with enthusiasm for advancing solid learning,—if ever
one desirous of seeing Western institutions rival if not excel
others,—if ever a person came willing to live and die
with us, and to sacrifice eastern tastes and prejudices, and
become, in every proper way, a Western Man, my friend
Clarence was he.
His labours and actions proved this. Look for instance
at his daily teaching—his five and six hours usually spent
the Sabbath, and commonly several times during the week;
at his visits to the sick and the dying, and his attendance on
funerals! And these things extended beyond his own denomination—when
requested, and that was often; for rarely,
even in his own sicknesses and melancholy hours, did
he refuse what seemed his duty to others. When too feeble
to leave his house, he heard the recitations in his bed;
and when unable to stand, he sat in his congregation and
preached, his person emaciated and his face death-like.
Nor did he confine his teaching to the routine himself had
followed, but he introduced other branches, and also a
course of Greek, unknown then in western colleges, and
not common in eastern ones; and this, although it added
to the severity of his private studies, and for many months
kept his lamp[1] burning even till two o'clock! His only
inquiry was, how can I best promote the interests of the
institution? In short, therefore, all his learning, his talents,
his experience, his accomplishments, were freely
and heartily employed and given, in season and out of season;—and
a knowledge of all the music he possessed, vocal
and instrumental, was imparted, gratuitously, to the
students—and also grammar, moral philosophy, and the
like, gratuitously, and at extra hours, to certain teachers
of ordinary schools, and some of these his former opponents!
Much more could we say, if the modesty of my friend
permitted; but he affirms positively that he will not edit
the book if I do not stop here. And yet this man was no
match for veteran cunning; we must not, however, antici
and go on till we end with the end; refreshing, during the
story, our spirits with the occasional pleasant matters belonging
to our rather tangled road.
Be it remembered, as was intimated in the early part of
volume first, that Uncle Sam is an undoubted friend of
public education, and that, although so sadly deficient in his
own; and hence, in the liberal distribution of other folk's
land, he bestowed on us several entire townships for a college
or university. It was, therefore, democratically believed,
and loudly insisted on, that as the State had freely
received, it should freely give; and that “larnin, even the
most powerfullest highest larnin,” should at once be bestowed
on every body! and without a farthing's expense!
Indeed, some gravely said and argued that teachers and
professors in the “people's college ought to sarve for the
honour!” or at least be content with “a dollar a day,
which was more nor double what a feller got for mauling
rails!” The popular wrath therefore was at once excited
almost to fury when necessity compelled us to fix our tuition
fee at ten dollars a year; and the greatest indignation
was felt and expressed towards Clarence “as the feller
what tuk hire for teaching and preaching, and was gettin
to be a big-bug on the poor people's edicashin money.”
Be it recollected too, that both big and little colleges were
erected by persons who, with reverence be it spoken, in
all matters pertaining to “high larnin,” had not sufficient
discrimination to know the second letter of an alphabet from
a buffalo's foot. Nothing, we incline to believe, can ever
make State schools and colleges very good ones; but nothing
can make them so bad, we repeat, as for Uncle Sam to
leave every point open to debate, especially among ignorant,
prejudiced, and selfish folks in a New Purchase. For
while trustees may be ninnies, nincompoops, or even ninnyhammers
as to proper plans and buildings, yet are such
enough to secure the building contracts for themselves and
their friends, and curiously exorbitant in their demands on
the sub-treasurers for their silly work. The mean-looking
and ridiculous arrangements at Woodville cost as much,
perhaps more, than suitable things would have cost; so
that when a college is to be commenced, it ought to be
done, not only by honest but by wise, learned, classical
men; but as such are not abundant in very new settlements,
let such men at Washington—(and such are at
Uncle Sam's bureau)—let them prescribe when, and how,
and where, our new western institutions are to be; and if
rebellious democrats refuse the gift so encumbered, let it
thus be given to more modest and quiet democrats.
Proceed we, however, to open the college. And my
narration may be depended on, as Clarence has reviewed
the whole and says it is substantially correct,—indeed, in
some respect I was a quorum-pars.
The institution was opened the first day of May, at 9½
o'clock, A.M., anno Domini 1800 and so forth. And, some
floors being unlaid, and the sashes all being without glass,
the opening was as complete as possible—nearly like that
of an Irish hedge school! When the Principal—(so named
in our minutes and papers, but by the vulgar called master,
and by the middle sort, teacher,)—appeared, a clever
sprinkle of boy[2]
was in waiting; most of which firmly believed
that, by some magic art, our hero could, and being
paid by government, should, and without putting any body
to the expense of books and implements, touch and transmute
all, and in less than no time, into great scholars.
“Boys and young gentle men,” said Mr. C. compounding
the styles of a pedagogue and professor, “I am happy to
College, or, as some call it, the Seminary. I hope all feel
what an honour attends being the first students in an institution
so well endowed; and which, therefore, by proper
exertions on our parts, may eventually rise to the level of
eastern colleges, and become a blessing to our State and
country. You have all, I suppose procured the necessary
books, of which notice was given at meeting, and in several
other ways, for the last four weeks.”
“I've got 'em—”
“Me too—”
“I've brung most on 'em—”
“Master—Uncle Billy's to fetch mine out in his wagin
about Monday next—”
“Father says he couldn't mind the names and wants
them on a paper—”
“Books!—I never heern tell of any books—wont these
here ones do, Master?—this here's the Western Spellin
one—and this one's the Western Kalkelatur?”
“Mr. Clarinse—I fotch'd my copy-book and a bottle of
red-ink to sit down siferin in—and daddy wants me to larn
book-keepin and surveyin.”
“Order boys—order!”—(hem!)—“let all take seats in
front. There is a misunderstanding with some, both as to
the books and the whole design and plan of the school, I
perceive. This is a Classical and Mathematical School;
and that fact is stated and fully explained in the trustees,
public advertisements; and no person can be admitted un-less
one intending to enter upon and pursue the prescribed
course; and that includes even at the start Latin, Greek,
and Algebra. Now, first, let us see who are to study the
dead languages—”
“I do—I do—me too—me too,” &c., &c.
“Do you, then, sit there. Well—now let me have your
names for the roll—A. Berry—S. Smith—C. D. &c., &c.
I have dismissed the others. I regret, my young friends,
that you are disappointed--but I am only doing my duty;
indeed, if I wished I have no power to admit you, unless to
the course of studies—nay, even the trustees have
power to do only what they have done. I hope, therefore,
you will now go home, and explain the matter to your
friends—”
By several—
“Daddy says he doesen't see no sort a use in the high
larn'd things—and he wants me to larn Inglish only, and
bookkeepin, and surveyin, so as to tend store and run a
line.”
“I allow, Mister, we've near on about as good a right
to be larn'd what we wants, as them tother fellers on that
bench;—it's a free school for all.”
“I am sorry, boys, for this misunderstanding; but we
cannot argue the subject here. And yet every one must see
one matter plainly; for instance, any man has a right to be
governor, or judge, or congressman; yet none of you can
be elected before the legal age, and before having some
other qualifications. It is so here, you all have a right to
what we have to bestow; but you must be qualified to
enter; and must be content to receive the gift of the State
in the way the law provides and orders. You will please
go home now.”
The disappointed youngsters accordingly withdrew; and
with no greater rudeness than was to be expected from undisciplined
chaps, full of false notions of rights, and possessed
by a wild spirit of independence. Hence, Mr. C.
heard some very flattering sentiments growled at him by
the retiring young democrats; but which, when they had
fairly reached the entry, were bawled and shouted out
frankly and fearlessly. And naturally after this he was
honoured with some high sounding epithets by certain
gentlemen, who aimed to get office and power by endless
slanders on the college, and most pitiful and malicious
slang about “liberty and equality, and rights, and tyranny,
and big-bugs, and poor people, and popular education,”
et id omue genus!
Ay! certain small-petato-patriots publicly on the stump
avowed “it was a right smart chance better to have no collidge
no how, if all folks hadn't equal right to larn what
they most liked best.” And two second-rate pettifoggers
electioneered on this principle; “that it was most consistent
with the republicanism taught by the immortal Jefferson,
and with the genius of our institutions, to use the college
funds to establish common schools for rich and poor
alike, and make the blessings of education like air, sunshine,
and water!”
Clarence, therefore, was now hated and villified, as the
supposed instrument of pride and aristocracy, in drawing a
line between rich and poor;[3]
and for a while his person,
his family, his very house was abominated. On one occasion
he was in Woodville when a half drunken brute thus
halloed against him—“thare goes that darn'd high larn'd
bug what gits nine hundred and ninety-nine dollars and
ninety-nine cents of the people's eddekashin money for
larnin ristekrats sons high flown words—gimme that 'are
stone and I'll do for him.” Whether this was fun or earnest,
Clarence did not care to ascertain; for hearing the
sneers and derision of the bystanders, and fearing it might
become earnest, he took shelter in my store.
At another time walking with Professor Harwood in
the outskirts of the village, they heard a cry in their rear—
“knock 'em down”—when suddenly turning, there stood a
stout chap flourishing a bludgeon over their heads, evidently,
index of the popular ill-will and spite.
When persons rode by his dwelling, remarks like the
following would be shouted forth:—
“Well—thar's whar the grammur man lives that larns
'em Latin and grand-like things—allow we'll oust him yet
—he dosen't own little college any how; he's poor as Job's
turkey, if it want for that powerful sallury the trustees give
him.”
Clarence's salary was four hundred dollars per annum!
“Well,” bawled out one fellow—“dog my hide if that
ain't the furst time I ever seed that big man's door open!—
hem!—powerful fine carpet!—(a beautiful rag carpet made
by Mrs. C.)—allow, people's eddekashin money bought
that!”
Even Mr. C.'s gratuitous preaching could not secure him
from ill-natured remarks. “Well,” said an occasional hearer
to another once—“how do y'like that sort a preachin?”
“Foo!” was the reply. “I don't want no more sich! I
like a man that kin jist read, and then I know it comes from
the sperit! he tuk out his goold watch twice to show it, and
was so d—mnation proud he wouldn't kneel down to
pray!”
But the reader may wish to know how Mr. Clarence got
along with “the Few.” Well, as the warm weather approached,
the “boys and young gentlemen” came to recitation
without coats; and, as the thermometer arose, they
came without shoes —
“What! in the State college? Could your Mr. Clarence
not have things ordered with more decency?”
Softly, Mr. Dignity—in a world where our presiding
judge, a man of worth and great abilities, presided in court
without his coat and cravat, and with his feet modestly
reposed on the upper rostrum, thus showing his boot-soles
to by-standers and lawyers; where lawyers were stripped
in a stump speech, gave blast to his nose pinched between
a thumb and finger, and wiped said pinchers afterwards on
the hinder regions of his inexpressibles; do you, sir,
think our Mr. C., or all eastern dignitaries combined, could
have compelled young bushwhackers to wear coats and
shoes in recitation rooms? He indeed ventured once as
follows:—
“Young gentlemen”—(hem!)—“why do you attend recitations
without coats and shoes?”
“'Tis cooler, sir!”—with surprise.
“Ay! so it is—perhaps it would be still cooler if you
came without your pantaloons.”
Haw! haw!—by the whole ten.
“And did they, Mr. Carlton, come without their indispensables?”
Oh! dear me! no; on the contrary, the young gentlemen
were so tickled at our professor's pleasant hint direct,
that next day they not only come in their breeches, but also
with shoes and coats on! But still, many proper regulations
of our friend were distasteful to scholars and parents equally
—for instance, the requirement of a written excuse for
certain absences. One parent, an upper class Thompsonian
doctor, did, indeed, once send a note—but that was an
insolent[4]
and peremptory order to Clarence to believe in
future his son, without a written excuse! And another
person, a captain in the late war, not only refused to write
a note, but he sent a verbal message by his son to the master,
viz.—“Charley Clarence, you needn't think of introducing
your d—n Yankee tricks out here!”
“Yes! yes!—raise your hands, and elevate your eyebrows,
good folks. Mr. C. did all that sort of thing too, at
first; but he lived long enough with us to get used to mat
horse that unluckily died, just when he had learned
to live without eating,[5] our professor, when he had outlived
his prejudices, and abandoned his Yankee ways, fell a victim
to veteran cunning and artifice; and was forced, like
Aristides, to obey the Ostracism!
A tin lamp, supplied with melted lard, and suspended at the end
of a wooden crane, whose perpendicular shaft moved in sockets fastened
to the wall.
Of the ten boys who entered the college, seven or eight were poor
—many that would not enter were rich.
That curious art has been revived lately in Great Britain, and is
practiced extensively and with great success among the poor.
43. CHAPTER XLIII.
“This is some fellow
Who, having been praised for bluntness, doth affect
A saucy roughness.”
“What would you have, you curs?”
The nature of our favourite doctrine—the sovereignty
of the people—is but imperfectly understood from theory;
and, truly, what importance to the vast majority to be called
kings, unless opportunities are afforded to exercise the royal
prerogatives?
True, in the constitutions of the twenty-six States, are
paper models of republican governments, the purest in nature;
such as the monarchical-republic, the oligarchic, the
aristocratic, the federal, the democratic, ay, the cheatitive
or repudiative, the despotic, the mobocratic, the anarchic,
cum multis al is: but what of all this, if the citizen kings
cannot be indulged in a little visible, tangible, audible, law-making,
law-judging and law-executing?
Now, in the New Purchase, the people universal, the
people general, the people special, of every county, town
and village, of every sect, religious and irreligious, of every
party, political, impolitical, and non-political, were indulged
in bona fide acts of real rity-dity sovereignty. And each
and over one another; and the whole over the parts and
over itself—ay, and every one that did it against the wall,
ruled the State and the nation, and his neighbour, and then
turned round and ruled himself, not in the fear of heaven,
but in the fear of the people! The fact is, we did nothing
else than rule one another; and none ever even obeyed for
fear of disobeying; and hence our public servants (and we
kept them sweating) being distracted by opposite instructions
from different constituents—(for candidates with us
only carried up votes, wishes, &c.)—from Thomas and
Richard and Henry and Squire Rag and Major Tagg and
Mister Bobtail, and being imperiously ordered to rob Peter
to pay Paul, our public servants, poor knaves and honest
rascals, would not obey, simply out of reverence and for
fear of offeuding and hurting our feelings!
Here follows a specimen of the people ruling the college
and the college ruling the people.
We, the people of the Trustees, for the good of the
people general, did resolve this autumn to elect a Professor
of Mathematics and advertised accordingly. This of itself
enraged the people who set no value on learning, and deemed
one small salary a waste of the poor people's education
money; but when rumour declared we intended to elect a
man nominally a Rat,[6]
(Mr. Clarence being also a Rat,)
the wrath was roused of the people, religious, and irreligious,
of all other sects. This, indeed, was confined to
Woodville; for from the very first, we, the people of Woodville
and thereabouts, did kindly adopt the State College
as ours; and we, therefore, claimed the sole right of
superintending the Legislature, the Board of Visitors, the
Board of Trustees, the Faculty, proper and improper, the
Students, foreign and domestic, the Funds, the Buildings
and turned in and out most despotically.
Well, the people having united the peoples in a fixed
purpose, viz.—to keep out a Rat, but not having united
them in any purpose of putting in anybody else, the people,
now sovereign and of many kings, held a meeting up town
in the court-house yard; while we, the trustee-people and
sovereigns of another sort, were holding our meeting to
elect a professor in the prayer-hall of Big College; and
then the People's-people, formed under the command of
Brigadier Major General Jacobus, Esq., Clerk of Court,
Chief Librarian of Woodville Library, and Deputy Post
Master under his late Majesty, General Andrew Jackson,
marched down in a formidable battalion to give us our
orders.
This grand dignitary of so many tails we have just
named, was most fit head to the fit body he conducted.
He was no inconsiderable a people himself, being very fat
and very saucy; nay, as in warm weather he always appeared
without coat, vest, cravat, and usually with slouched
hat, shoes down at heel on stockingless feet, and one
“gallus” hard strained to keep up his greasy and raggy
breeches; and as in this costume he strutted everywhere
full of swagger and brag, he was then the best living and
embodied personification of a mistaken, conceited, meddlesome,
pragmatical people anywhere to be found. He flourished
in that grand era, rotation in office; but by him it
was interpreted a rotation out of one public office into
another—yea! even now he actually sustained at once
seven salaried offices little and big—yea! moreover to these
seven tails he added and very commonly exhibited another
—the tail of his shirt! Now, one may conceive how our
great father of one or more terms looks; one can even imagine
how Uncle Sam looks; but who forms approximating
conceptions of that proteus sovereign—the People! Believe
in many essential respects, as can be obtained—but
this is digression.
Our honourable Trustees were, as usual, sitting with
open doors, and hence were, as heretofore, accommodated
with numerous lobby members; and these kept muttering
discontent at our doings, and often volunteered remarks in a
play-house whisper for our correction and guidance. Dr.
Sylvan, however, who anticipated a storm, had contrived to
put the vote for Mr. Harwood's election, a little prior to the
first faint noise of the coming cataract of turbid waters, and
had succeeded in securing this gentleman's unanimous
choice—when a considerable hurrahing outside announced
the People's people—and in a moment after, in swaggered
his greasy royalty, General Jacobus, followed by as much
of the ultimate sovereignty as could squeeze into the room.
And then King Slouch commenced as follows:—
“Mr. President and gentlemen of the Board!—hem!—
I have the honour to be the orgun of the people—hem!
—and by their orders I've come in here, to forbid the election
of Mr. Harwood of Kaintuckey, as our Professur of
Mathematucs—hem!—in the people's collidge—he-e-m!!
You'r all servunts of the people and hainit the right no how
to give away their edicashion money without thar consent
—I say—hem!—as all is not admitted to these here halls
of science—he-e-m!! And the people in the inbred,
incohesive use of thar indefeesibul native rights, order me
thar orgun to say they don't want two teachers of the same
religion no how—and I say it—and I say, Mr. President,
they say its better to have them of different creeds, and I
say that too—for they say they'll watch one another and
not turn the students to thar religion and—hem! Yes, the
people in their plentitude have met, and they say they don't
want no church and state—and I say it; for thar's a powerful
heap of danger to let one sect have all the power—
—be—recollected—and wasn't thar John Calvin, the moment
he got the power, didn't he burn poor Mikul Servetis
at the stake—and—and—so ain't it plain if two men here git
all the power thar's a beginning of church and state, as that
immortal Jefferson says? And who knows if you and me
and the people here mayn't be tortered and burn'd yet
in a conflagaration of fagguts and fire? Who then with
this probability—”
Here Dr. Sylvan, our worthy President, interrupted the
speaker, the doctor being now only recovered from his surprise;
for, veteran as he was in politics, and often as he
had known the people essay small overt acts of sovereignty,
this affair was so novel and so grandly impudent, that it
took him the first half of the harangue to collect himself,
and the other to concoct the following judicious compound
of decision, sarcasm and blarney:—
“It is with regret, General Jacobus and my respected
fellow citizens, I interrupt the eloquent utterance of sentiments
so patriotic and so well adapted to excite our disgust
and horror at a union of Church and State; but in the present
case, I do really believe the danger is not to be apprehended.
In the first place, we all know the liberal
sentiments of Professor Clarence towards all religious
bodies; and in the second place, the gentleman just elected
by us before the entrance of your honourable body and
organ, is not known to be a member of any communion;
and lastly, we Trustees are of six different denominations
ourselves, and therefore, as we put in we can also put out,
the instant danger is found to threaten the State from our
present course. And, fellow-citizens, we shall, I am confident,
be quite Argus-eyed over our faculty—but at all
events we have gone too far to retrace our steps; for Mr.
Harwood is legally appointed, and for what we deemed
good reasons. And surely no American citizen in this
where the meanest felon has a trial by jury, will contend
that an honourable and unoffending man of another state—
the noble old Kentucky—should be turned out of office—
and no accusation against his competency and moral character?
Backwoodsmen don't ask that!—and they don't
think of it. Had this honourable representation come fifteen
minutes sooner, something might have been done or
prevented;—for we are indeed servants of the people—but
Mr. Harwood ought now to have time to show himself, and
cannot be degraded without an impeachment. And who is
ready to impeach a Kentuckian because John Calvin or
John Anybody else burnt Servetus a hundred years ago?—
and that, when it is not even known whether Mr. Harwood
himself might not have been roasted in the days of persecution
for some heresy mathematical or religious! Fellow
citizens, our meeting is adjourned.”
Our venerable Congress at Washington sometimes gets
into a row, and even breaks up in a riot. And why should
it not be so, when many conscript fathers have practised
bullyism from early life, and have only gone to the great
conservative assembly to do, on a large scale, dirty
things often done before on a small one? Or why, on the
other hand, if the reverend young fathers there set us, the
people, the example, should any person affect to wonder
that we sometimes imitate our law givers? Whether we,
the New Purchase people, set or followed the example,
need not be determined; but we certainly adjourned to-day
in a grand kick-up; which, if described, must be in the
pell-mell style of history.
At the word “adjourned,” ending Doctor Sylvan's
speech, came a violent and simultaneous rush; some pushing
towards the door, to get out—some from without into the
door, to get in—and some towards the clerk's seat, to
seize and destroy the record: but that wary officer, at the
into his breeches' pocket, the minutes being only recorded
with a lead pencil on a quarter sheet of cap paper. Then
commenced a hell-a-below, loud enough at first, but which,
like a Latin Inceptive, still went on and tended to perfection;
being an explosion commingled of growl, curse, hurrah,
hiss, stamp, and clap; and then and there and all
through the “mass meeting,” were Brigadier Major General
Jacobus, and our people and the people's people and
other people, all huddled and crowded and mixed, and all
and every one and each were and was explaining, demanding,
denying, do-telling, and wanting to know, somewhat thus:
“Hurrah for Harwood!—damn him and Clarinse too—
ain't the money our'n, that's what I want to know?—I say
Doctor, remember next 'lection!—that's the pint—you lie,
by the lord Harry!—let me out, blast your eyes!—it ain't—
it tis—let us in, won't you?—do tell—General Jacobus
ought to have his nose pulled—he didn't burn him—don't
tell me—pull it if you dare—he burnt hisself—go to the
devil—no patchin' to him—powerful quick on the trigger—
Calvin—get up petition to legislature—rats—didn't I say
we ought to get down sooner?—faggots—Harwood ain't—
gunpowder—darn'd clever fellow—Servetus—hurrah for
hic haec hoc!—let's out—give 'em more money—let's in—
is the board to be forced?—get out o' my way—fair trial—
don't blast—answer that—I know better—'tain't—'tis—hold
your jaw—whoo!—shoo!—hiss — hinyow—bowwow—
rumble—grumble—Sylvan—Clarinse—Jacobus—Harwood
Servetus”—&c. &c., and away rolled majesty, till the
noise in the distance was like the grum mutter of retiring
thunder!
How awfully grand and solemn a little people in the
swell of arrogated supremacy! But we saw King Mob to
greater advantage next year; which sight shall be duly
set before our readers. Meanwhile we shall take a pleasant
after our toils in behalf of learning.
44. CHAPTER XLIV.
Rose at an instant, learn'd, play'd, eat together.”
More free from peril than the envious court?”
Reader!
“Well, what now?”
Will you go with us? Come, surely Tippecanoe will
arouse you; and although we have miles of dark, tangled,
and, in places, almost untrodden forests to pass; although
we shall ford and swim creeks, swollen from recent rains,
and where a blundering horse would plunge the rider into
rapid and whirling waters; and although some inconveniences
and customs will be found inconsistent with steamboats
and rail road journeys, yet who will not risk all to
stand on the battle field of the brave, amid the sadness of its
solitary and far distant prairie!
“Very eloquent!—but, Mr. Carlton, only think of the
mud.”
Yes, dear reader, but the girls are to go along.
“Girls!”
Yes, and very pretty and intelligent ones too—real lady
Hoosiers.
“Are you in earnest? Who are they?”
The young ladies of Miss Emily Glenville's Woodville
Female Institute.
“Oh!—ay!—I had forgot your school—what then?”
Why, it is our vacation, and myself with one or two
of the pupils belong to wealthy and respectable families
in the north, and one or two live very near to Tippecanoe.
“Heigho!—out of compliment to the ladies we go; but
how long will you be yet?”
Oh, we shall get through after a while. “No lane,”
you know, &c. Of course then you consent.
Well, our party consisted of eleven persons—the seven
girls, the father and brother of one girl, and myself and
young Mr. Frank, of Woodville, who, like myself, wished
to see the world. To carry us were precisely ten horses
and a half, the fractional creature being a dwarf pony, an
article or noun, which young B—k, the brother rode, like
a velocipede, and which, by pressing the toes of boots
against hard and hilly places in the path, could be aided
by pushing. And thus, also, the rider could a sorter stand
and go, like wheels in motion, at once; and all that would
greatly relieve the tedium of monotonous riding. The
special use of the pouy was manifested in fording mud-holes,
quicksands, quagmires, marshes, high waters, and
the like. In vain did the rider pull up his limbs;[7]
in vain
shrink away up towards the centre of his saddle—up followed
the cream-coloured mud in beech swamps, the black
mud and water in bayous, the black mud itself in walnut
and sugar lands, or the muddy water in turbid creeks and
rivers, and the rider became deeply interested in the circulating
medium.
But what a contrast to a stage coach, to say nothing of a
car; ten horses and upwards to carry eleven people! And
how I do wish you could have seen us set out! Dear, oh
dear! the scampering, and tearing, and winnowing, and
kicking up, and cocking of ears, as the quadrupeds were
horse-blankets and saddles, male and female, croopers and
circingles and bridles, double and single! What a drawing
of girths! What a fixing and unfixing and refixing of
saddle-bags! What a hanging of “fixins” themselves,
done up in red handkerchiefs on the horns of the gentler
sex saddles! And then the girls—like the barbarians in
Cæsar's Commentaries in one battle, they seemed to be
every where at once—up stairs, down stairs, on the stairs,
in the closet under the stairs! They were in the house,
out of the house, in the yard, at the door, by the horses!
And oh how they did ask questions and get answers.
“Where's my shawl?” “Is this it?” “Did nobody see
my basket?” “I didn't.” “Who's got my album?” “Mr.
Frank.” “Will some body fasten my fixens?” “He ain't
here.” “Won't nobody carry this?” and so on through all
the bodies.
The animals were now all harnessed, and stood comparatively
quiet, except an occasional impatient stamp, or
an active and venomous switch of a tail: the bustle, too,
had subsided, and all had come to that silent state when no
more questions can be asked, but all are waiting for some
one to begin the—farewell. And then came that sad word,
amid gushing tears—mid sobs and kisses—for with some
“the schooling” was finished, and “who could tell whether
ever more should meet” those sprightly, happy, sweet
companions!
But soon followed the uproar of mounting; and with that
seemed to pass all sorrow; and yet so painful had been the
last few moments, that an excuse was needed for saying
and doing something lively. Of course we all said a great
many smart things, or what passed for such, in the way of
compliment, raillery and repartee; and we guessed and
reckoned and allowed and foretold the most contrary matters
about the weather, and the roads, and the waters, and
In the meanwhile horse after horse was paraded towards
the block, each receiving extra jerks, and some handsome
slaps and kicks on the off flank, to make him wheel into
position, when next moment away he scampered with a
side-way rider, in trot, shuffle, pace, or canter, according
to his fancy, till all the lady riders were on the saddles, and
then Mr. B—k, sen., and myself riding in advance, he
shouted, “Come on, girls—we're off.”
And off it was—amidst the giggling of girls, and the
laughter of neighbours, nodding good-byes with their heads,
or shaking them out of handkerchiefs, from doors and windows;
and also the boisterous farewells of some two
dozen folks that had helped us fix. Off it was, some at a
hard trot, some at a round gallop, and others at a soft pace
or shuffle, the animals snorting, squeeling, and winnowing
—sometimes six abreast, sometimes two, sometimes all
huddled like a militia cavalry training; and then all in
Indian file, one by one, with yards of space between us!
Oh! the squeezing of lower limbs against horse rumps!—
the kicking and splattering of mud!—the streaming forth
of ill-secured kerchiefs and capes! Oh! the screeching!
shouting! laughing! shaking! What flapping of saddle-skirts!
What walloping of saddle-bags! Away with
stages!—steamers!—cars! Give me a horse and the
life, activity and health of Hoosiers and Hoosierinas let
loose all at once in the whirligig storm and fury of that
morning's starting!
We soon degenerated into a slow trot, and finally into a
fast walk, with episodial riding to scare a flock of wild
turkies, or add wings to the flight of a deer; till we all
became at last so shaken down and settled in our saddles
as to seem each a compound of man (homo) and horse.
Yet for hours we kept up talk of all kinds. Yea! we
halloed — we quizzed — we laughed! Ay! we talked
any more than he sails forth on the grand waters, and feels
not solemn! And we even talked religiously—more so than
most readers would care to hear! Lively, indeed, we
were—but God even then was in our thoughts; and some
of that happy company were then, and are yet, ornaments
of the Christian world—some are in heaven! Yes, then
as now, we often passed, as is the case with the joyous,
the frank-hearted, the middle class,[8] and, in an instant,
from laughter to tears.
No halt was made for dinner: it was handed round on
horseback. A piece, or half a piece of ham, boxed neatly
between two boards of corn broad, and held delicately—
as possible—between the finger and thumb of an attendant,
was thus presented for acceptance. Yet not always was
it easy to take the proffered dainties; since often the
horse, out of sheer affectation, or because of a sly kick or
switch from an unseen quarter, would, at the instant of captation,
jump aside, or leap forward, and verify the proverb
—“many a slip between the cup and the lip.”
Towards evening it was heard that Slippery River was
falling, but could not yet be forded; and hence it was determined
to stay all night in a cabin several miles this side,
in expectation of our being able to ford in the morning.
We were, of course, received by our friends with open
hearts, and entertained in the most approved backwoods'
style,—the only awkwardness being that beds could be furnished
but for four of our party. As some, therefore, must
sleep on the floor, it was unanimously voted that all should
share alike in the hardship and frolic of a puncheon's
night's rest; and hence, in due season, all hands were
piped to convert our supper-room into a grand bed-chamber.
spread on it; thirdly, over these horse-cloths was put a good
rag carpet; and, lastly, in a line were ranged saddle-bags
and valises, interspersed with other bolsters and pillows
stuffed with feathers and rags; and then, the fire being secured,
we all began to undress—
“Oh! goodness! Mr. Carlton!—girls! and all?”
Girls and all, my dear.
“I vow then, I will never marry and go to a New Purchase!
But did the ladies really divest—hem!—before—
the—the—”
To be sure.
“What! take off all the usual—”
Oh! that I cannot say. Western gentlemen never peep.
Besides the gentlemen took off only coats and boots; and
intelligent ladies everywhere always know how to act according
to necessity.
Our order of “reclinature,” as Doctor Hexagon would
here doubtless say, was as follows: Mr. B—k, sen., reclined
first, having on his outside next the door, his son,
and on the inside, his daughter; then the other girls, one
after another, till all were finished; then his modesty, Mr.
C., who, having a wife at home, was called, by courtesy to
suit the occasion, an old man; and then, outside him, and
next the other door, young Mr. Frank—
“I never!”[9]
—and then after a little nearly inaudible whispering,
bursting at short intervals into very audible giggles, the
hush of the dark wilderness came upon us—and—an—a—
“What?”
Hey!—oh!—ah!—I beg pardon—I think we must have
been asleep!
After breakfast our friend Mr. B—k, sen., offered an
earnest prayer, in which thanks were returned for past
mercies and favours, and supplication made for protection
during the prospective perils of the day; and in an hour
after we were within sight, and hearing too, of the sullen
and angry flood.
The waters had, indeed, fallen in a good degree, and
they were still decreasing, yet no person, a stranger to the
West, could have looked on that foaming and eddying
river leaping impetuous over the rocky bed, and have heard
the echoes of its many thunders calling from cliff to cliff,
and from one dark cavern to another in the forest arched
over the water,—no inexperienced traveller. all sign of
hoof and wheel leading to the ford obliterated, could have
supposed that our party, and mostly very young girls, were
seriously preparing to cross that stream on our horses!
But either that must be, or our path be retraced; and
sobered, therefore, although not intimidated, we made ready
for the perilous task. The older and more resolute girls
were seated on the sure-footed horses, and all their dresses
were properly arranged, and all loose cloaks and clothes
carefully tied up, that, in case of accident, nothing might
entangle the hands or feet. Several little girls were to
be seated behind the gentlemen, while a loose horse or
two was left to follow. We gentlemen riders were also to
ride between two young ladies, to aid in keeping their
horses right, to seize a rein on emergencies, and to encourage
the ladies, in case they showed any symptoms of
alarm.
Things ready, we all rode boldly to the water's edge;
where a halt was called, till Mr. B—k and Mr. C.
should go foremost and try the ford. And now, dear reader,
it may be easy to ford Slippery River in this book, and
maybe Mr. C. has contrived to seem courageous like—but
that morning, at first sight of that ugly water, he did secretly
all safe over; and possibly had he been favoured with a
few moments' more reflection, he might have been rather
scared—yet just then, souse went Mr. B. up to his saddle-skirts,
seeming a man on a saddle with a tail streaming
out horizontally, and then came his voice thus:—
“Come on, Carlton!—come on!”
“Ay! ay! sir—I'm in—souse—splash! Oho! the
water's in my boots!”
“Hold up your legs!—why don't you?”
“Forgot it, Mr. B.—don't care now—can't get any wetter.”
N. B. None, save born and bred woodsmen, can keep
the limbs properly packed and dry on the horse neck, in
deep fords: naturalized woodmen never do it either gracefully
or successfully. I have myself vainly tried a hundred
times: but at the first desperate plunge and lurch of the
quadruped, I have always had to unpack the articles and
let them drop into the water—otherwise I should have dropped
myself.
Mr. B. and myself rode around and into the deepest places,
satisfying ourselves and the rest, that with due caution
and fortitude the ford was practicable—or nearly so: and then
I returned for the girls, while Mr. B. rode down and stationed
himself in the middle river about twenty-five yards below
the ford proper, to intercept, if possible, any article or person
falling from or thrown by a blundering horse. Having
myself been in the deepest water, although not the most
rapid, and knowing that much depended on my firmness
and care, my sense of personal danger was lost in anxiety
for my precious charge; and I re-entered the perilous flood
with the girls with something like a determination, if necessary,
to save their lives rather than my own.
Several of these, from the first, utterly refused all assistance;
and they now sat like queens chivalric age—
tossing mid the foam, as their horses rose and sunk over
the roughness of the rocky bottom! The other girls, shutting
their eyes to avoid looking at the seeming dangers, and
also to prevent swimming of the head, held the horn of the
saddle with a tenacious grasp, and surrendered the horses
to the guidance of the escorts.
On reaching the middle of the river, here some eighty
yards wide, the depth had, indeed, decreased to about two
feet; but then the rocks being more, and larger and rougher,
the current was raging among them—a miniature of the
Niagara Rapids. Here was I seized with a momentary
perplexity. By way of punishing the incipient cowardice,
however, I checked my own horse and that of the trembling
girl next me, and thus remaining, forced my eyes to survey
the whole really terrific scene, and to contemplate a cataract
of waters thundering in an unbroken sheet over a ledge
of rocks thirty feet high, and a short distance above the ford.
And having thus compelled myself in the very midst of the
boiling sea, to endure its surges, we proceeded cautiously
and leisurely, till with no other harm than a good wetting,
especially to my boots and upwards, and a little palpitation
of the heart, all came safe to land.
And then the chattering! and how we magnified ourselves!
The charges and denials too!—“Mary what makes
you so pale?”—“Pshaw!—I'm not—I was not scared a
bit!”—“Nor me neither—” “Ha! ha! ha!—you had
your eyes shut all the time!”—“Oh! Mr. Carlton had I?”
“Well”—said he—“we must not tell tales out of school:
beside I was half afraid I should get scared myself.”
“You! Mr. Carlton”—said Mr. B.—“well it may be so;
but without flattery, you brought the girls over about as well
as I could have done it myself—why, you were as cool as
a woodsman.”
“Well after that praise, Mr. Blank”—(for that is the
name)—“I mean to set up for a real genuine Hoosier.”
Reader! I did not deserve such praise: but as to being
“cool,” there was no mistake—only think of the cold water
in my boots and elsewhere!
Inquiry was now made about the pony: and that was
answered by a general “Haw! haw! haw! hoo! hoo!
hoo! he! he! he!” and so through the six cases—and
mingled with the exclamations “look! look!”—“down
thare! down thare!”
We of course looked; and about thirty yards below the
landing, was pony, or rather pony's head, his body and tail
being invisible; but whether hippopotamus like he walked
on the bottom, or was actually swimming, was uncertain.
But there he was; and, by the progression of his ears, he
was manifestly making headway pretty fast towards our
side; although ever and anon, by the sudden dousing of
his ears, he had either plunged into water deeper than his
expectation, or been momentarily upset by the current. By
this time our two young gentlemen had got opposite to pony
and were waiting to assist at his toilette on his emerging;—for
his saddle and bridle, &c., had been all brought
over on a vacated steed. The three soon rejoining us, we
all, in health and with grateful hearts and good spirits, were
again dashing on, wild and independent Tartars, through
our own loved forests.
But before we could reach our quarters this night, Nut
Creek was to be passed, too deep to be forded, and having
neither bridge nor scow! it was to be done—by canoe!
and travelling by the canoe line has very little amusement,
although abundance of danger and trouble and excitement.
The canoe, in the present case, was a log ten feet long
and eighteen inches wide and hacked, burned, and scraped,
to the depth of a foot: and it was tolerably well rounded
to a point at each end, being however, destitute of keel or
found in poetry or Scott's Novels, or in the engravings of
annuals bound in cloth and gold and reposing on centre tables.
Nor was it either classical or Indian. It differed
from a bark-canoe as a wooden shoe from a black morocco
slipper! Either nature, or a native, had begun a hog-trough
to hold swill and be snouted: but its capacities
proving better than expectation—a little extra labour had
chopped the thing into a log-boat!
Well—into this metamorphosed log was now to be packed
a most precious load. To one end went first, Mr.
Blank, senr. with a paddle; then were handed along, one
by one, the trembling girls, who sitting instantly on the bottom
of the trough and closing their eyes, held to its sides
with hands clenched as for life; and then followed Mr. C.
filling up the few inches of remaining space, and for the
first time in his days holding a canoe paddle! and then at
the cry “let go!” our two junior gentlemen on the bank relaxed
their hands and our laden craft was at the mercy of
the flood!
Many a boat had I rowed on the Delaware and the
Schuylkill,—often a skiff on the Ohio,—ay! and poled and
set over many a scow: but what avail that civilized practice,
in propelling for the first time in one's life a hollow log,
and with a small paddle like a large mush stick?—and
across a raging torrent in a gloomy wilderness? Was it so
wonderful my end went round?—and more than once!
Could I help it? Was it even a wonder I looked solema?
—grew dizzy?—and at last quit paddling altogether? But
it was a wonder I did not upset that vile swine thing, and
plunge all into the water—perhaps into death! and yet we
all reached, by the skill of Mr. Blank, our port in safety.
The horses in the meanwhile had been stripped, and
three or four trustworthy ones released from their bridles to
swim over by themselves; and so we made ready to ferry
at one, but several trips. The trust-worthy and more sensible
creatures were led by the mane, or the nose, or driven
with switches, and pelted with clods to the edge of the
creek; where they were partly coaxed, and partly pushed into
the flood, whence rising from the plunge, they swam snorting
to the far side, and landing, continued cropping about
till wanted.
The less accommodating creatures were one at a time
managed thus: Mr. Blank, senr. took a station at that end
of the canoe, which when dragged round by the horse
would become the stern, to guide and steer; and Mr. C.
twice, and Mr. Frank and young Blank each once, was
seated in the prow that was to be, and held the rope or bridle
attached at the other end to the horse's head: then, all
ready, the creature pulled by the person in the canoe and
pelted, beat, slapped and pushed by the two on land took
the “shoote;”—in this case a plunge direct over head and
ears into water a little over nine feet deep! If this did not
drag under or upset the log, that was owing to the—(hem!)
dexterity and presence of mind and so forth, of the steersman—and
the man at the bridle end! But when the animal
arose and began to snort and swim ahead!—oh! sirs,
then was realized and enjoyed all ever fabled about Neptune
and his dolphins! or Davy Crockett and his alligators!
What if you have a qualm at first!—that is soon lost in the
excitement of this demi-god sailing! It is even grand! to
cross a perilous flood on a log harnessed to a river horse!
and with the rapidity of a comet, and the whirl and splash
of a steamer! No wonder our Western people do often
feel contempt for the tender nurslings of the east! And is
it not likely that the fables about sea-cars, and water-gods,
originated when men lived in the woods, dieted on acorns,
and recreated themselves with this horse and log navigation?
The hint may be worth something to the editors of
Tooke's Pantheon.
In an hour and a half we reached our second night's
lodging place; and next day, at noon, the girls being committed
to the junior gentlemen to escort to Sugartown,
the residence of Mr. Blank, he and the author took the
episodial journey, described in the following chapter.
45. CHAPTER XLV.
Who with two feet beat from their brawny breasts
The foaming billow; but their hinder parts
Swim, and go smooth against the curling surge.”
We parted from our young folks, at an obscure trace,
leading Mr. B. and Mr. C. away to the left towards Big
Possum Creek; along which, somewhere in the woods,
Mr. Blank expected to meet an ecclesiastical body, of
which he was a member.
The spot was found late that night; but as yet no delegates
had appeared, and when next day at three o'clock, P.M.
a single clergyman appeared, jaded and muddy, and reported
the waters as too high for members in certain directions
to come at all, the whole affair was postponed till
the subsidence of the flood; or, it was adjourned till dry
weather!
Mr. Blank being an officer of the general government,
and having important matters demanding his immediate
attention, now took me aside, and began as follows:—
“Mr. Carlton, do you want to try a little more backwood's
life?”
“Why?”
“Because, if possible, I should like to reach my house
to-night.”
“To-night!!—why 'tis half-past three! and your house
is at least thirty-five miles—”
“Yes, by the trace, up Big Possum—but in a straight
line through the woods 'tis not over twenty-five miles.”
“But there is no road?”
“I don't want any; the sun is bright, and by sun-down,
we shall strike a new road laid out last fall; and that I
can follow in the night.”
“I have never, Mr. B. swum a horse; and I confess I'm
a leetle timid; and we cannot expect even canoes where
there are no settlements—”
“Oh! never fear, I'll go ahead; beside, Big Possum is
all that is very seriously in the way; and I think it will
hardly swim us now—come, what do you say—will you go?”
“Well—let's see; twenty-five miles—no road, no settlement,
won't quite swim, maybe—new road in the dark—
pretty fair for a tyro, Mr. Blank; but I can't learn sooner;
I'll go, sir—let us be off at once then.”
Our friends expressed some surprise, and used some
dehortation; but the bold, energetic, and cautious character
of Mr. B. was well known, and hence no great fears
were either expressed or felt for our safety. Accordingly,
after a hasty kind of dinner-supper, we were mounted,
and started away in the fashion of boys' foot races, prefaced
by the formula—“are you saddled?—are you
bridled??—whip!—start!—and Go-o!!”
Big Possum was soon reached; and as there was no
ford established by law or custom, it was to be forded at a
venture. My friend sought, indeed, not for a place less
deep apparently, but for one less impeded by bushes and
briars, and then in he plunged, “accoutred as he was, and
bade me follow.” And so, indeed, I did boldly, and
promptly; for my courage was really so modest as to need
the stimulus of a blind and reckless conduct. Hence, all I
knew was a “powerful heap” of water in my boots again,
and an uneasy wet sensation in the saddle-seat[10]
—with a
at something and could not hit it—and then a hard scramble
of his fore legs in the treacherous mud of a bank;
and then this outery of Mr. Blank, as he turned an instant
in his saddle to watch my emersion:—
“Well done! Carlton! well done! You'll be a woodsman
yet! Come, keep up—the worst is over.”
Reader! I do think praise is the most magical thing in
nature! In this case it nearly dried my inexpressibles!
And on I followed, consoling myself for the other water in
the boots, by singing—“possum up a gum tree!”
“Hulloo! Mr. B. how are you steering? by the
moss?”
“No—by the shadows.”
“Shadows! how's that?”
“Our course is almost North East—the sun is nearly
West—so cutting the shadows of the trees at the present
angle, we'll strike the road, this rate, about sun-set.”
I had travelled by the moss, a good general guide, the
north and north-west sides of trees, having more and darker
moss than the others; I had gone by a compass in a
watch key-by blazes—by the under side of leaves recently
upturned, a true Indian trace, as visible to the practiced eye
as the warm scent to a hound's nose—and by the sun, moon,
or stars; I had, in dark days, gone with comrades, who by
keeping some fifty yards apart in a line, could correct aberrations;
but never had I thought of our present simple and
infallible guide!
Man maybe, as some think, very low in the intellectual
scale, and yet he has one mark of divine resemblance—he
always is in search of simple agents and means, and when
found, he uses them in producing the greatest effects. Witness
here man's contrivances for navigating through the
air and the waters, and for crossing deserts and solitudes!
Laugh if you will, but I do confess that as we bounded along
gods we availed ourselves of reason, in that wilderness without
squatters, without blazes, without dry leaves, having
no compass, and indifferent to moss; ay, and I smiled at
the grim trees, while we cut athwart their black shadows
at the proper angle, and heard from den and ravine and
cliff the startled echoes crying out in amazement, in
answering clatter and clang of hoofs and clamour of human
voices!
For many miles the land was low and level, and mostly
covered with water in successive pools, seeming, at a short
distance, like parts of one immense lake of the woods!
These pools were rarely more than a few inches deep, unless
in cavities where trees had been torn up by their roots,
and such holes were easily avoided by riding around the
prostrate tops. My friend had not expected quite so much
water; for he now called out at intervals—
“Come on! Carlton! we mustn't be caught here in the
dark—the sun's getting low—can you keep up?”
“Ay—ay!—go on!—go on!”
And then, after every such exhortation and reply, as if all
past trotting had been walking, away, away we splashed,
not kicking up a dust, but a mimic shower of aqueous particles,
and many a smart sprinkle of mud, that rattled like
hail on the leaves above, and the backs and shoulders below!
Never did I believe how a horse can go!—at least
through mud and water! True, I did often think of “the
merciful man, merciful to his beast”—but I thought in
answer, that hay and oats were as scarce in the swamp as
hog and hominy; and hence, that for all our sakes we
had better bestir matters a little extra for an hour or two,
that all might get to “entertainment for man and horse.”
Hence, finally, we gave up all talking, singing, humming,
and whistling, and all conjecturing and wishing; and set
in to plain, unostentatious hard riding, kicking and whipping,
somewhere under their hides, of our earnestness and haste;
and, therefore, about half an hour after sunset, we gained
or struck the expected road, where, although not yet free
from the waters, we had no more apprehension of losing
the course.
This road was, in truth, a new new road; and not like
some new new roads, new theatres and so forth that have
had a patent for immortality and been fresh with youth for
half a century[11]
And, happily, our road had never been
cut up by a wagon, being only an opening twelve yards
wide, full of stumps, and for a few miles a-head, full of
water. Without a fixed purpose, therefore, we could not
wander from the partially illuminated and comparatively
unimpeded way; and hence twilight as it was, on we splattered
and splashed in all the glory and plenitude of mudhail,
and dirt-coloured rain.
At last we re-entered the dry world—a high and rolling
country. As it was, however, then profoundly dark, our
concluding five miles were done in a walk, slow, solemn,
and funereal; till at half past ten o'clock that night we dismounted
or disembarked, wet, weary, and hungry, at Mr.
B.'s door: and there we were more than welcomed by his
family, and all our boys and girls snug and safe from the
late perils of woods and waters.
I hope the Magazines won't be hard on the grammar here—it is so
great a help to our delicacy—a double intender like.
However, new books now-a-days are exempt from the remark—
being no more than literary fungi. Our fathers liked state new things
—the sons prefer new things that have a smell and die.
46. CHAPTER XLVI.
From the field of his fame, fresh and gory;
We carved not a line, we raised not a stone,
But we left him alone with his glory.”
At the end of a week's visit we left Sugartown for Tippecanoe:
but with a very diminished party. It consisted
of one young lady only, the two young gentlemen, myself,
and other four, horses. The lady, Miss Charille, lived
twenty-five miles to the north, and within ten miles of
Tippecanoe. The young fellows accompanied out of gallantry,
and to visit with me the field.
Being in a hurry, I shall not say how, in fording and
swimming Sweet Creek, my head became dizzy, till my
horse seemed to rush side ways up the stream—and how,
spite of all practice and contrary resolutions, I felt sick and
let down my limbs into the water, while Mr. B., who came
to see us safe over, kept crying out, “Stick to your horse—
don't look at the water—look at the bank!” Nor shall I
tell how, in crossing a prairie, we saw, oh! I don't know
how many deer!—nor how we started up prairie fowls,
hens and roosters, and wished we had guns!—yes, and
saw prairie wolves too, a cantering from us over the plain!
And I shall not narrate how, in crossing one wet prairie,
we were decoyed by some pretty, rich, green grass, into a
morass!—and how Miss Charille's horse stuck fast, and
struggling, pitched her into the mire!—and how she was
more scared than hurt, and worse muddied than either! I
should like to tell about the tall grass in places, but I hasten
to say, that early in the evening we arrived at Mr. Charille's;
that we were cordially received; that we got supper in due
room: the beds here nearly touching in places, but ingeniously
separated by extemporary curtains of frocks and
petticoats, and on a side of my bed, by two pairs of modest
and respectable corduroy breeches. Fastidious folks, that
smell at essences and flourish perfumed cambric, I know
would have laid awake, curling their noses at the articles,
but sensible ones in such cases go quietly to sleep; while
men of genius are even captivated with the romance.
`Romance!—what, a curtain of corduroy thinging-bobs?'
Yes, corduroy breeches modestly hung as wall between
ladies and gentlemen, reposing amid the solemn vastness
of a prairie! If that is not romance, pray what is? To
sleep alone in a plastered chamber, with a lock on the
door, blinds to the windows, wash-stand, toilette, and so
on, is very comfortable—very civilized—but surely not very
romantic. And if strangeness is a constituent of romance,
could any fix and fixtures be contrived stranger than ours?
However, like a sensible body, I went soon and quietly
to sleep, and was quickly in spirit lost in the land of shadows
and dreams: and having a fine capacity for dreaming,
I had many visions, till at last came one of my pet dreams
—a winged dream! Then, lifted on pinions fastened some
where about me, I went sailing in the air over the wide
expanse of the meadow world; then, careering in a black
tempest and hurricane, far above the bowing and crashing
trees of the forest—and then suddenly descending near a
mighty swollen river, I was deprived in some mysterious
way of the wings! Here I lay stretched on a bed, while
the form of that venerable quadruped, my dear nameless old
friend, a little larger than life, backed up and became harnessed
to the foot of the couch, and the dwarf pony began
with his hinder parts to push against the head-board, and I
was just a-launching into the waters, when down dropped
both the steeds, and commenced to snort with so tremendous
smiled—but is it possible?—hark!—am I still dreaming?
What is that beyond the corduroys in the adjoining bed?
Dear, oh dear! can that be Dr. Charille snoring?
During the week spent at Mr. Blank's his lady had once
said to me,—
“Mr. Carlton, you will not sleep any at Dr. Charille's.”
“Not sleep any—why?”
“His snoring will keep you awake.”
“Never fear—I can sleep in a thunder storm.”
“So I thought. But when lately he visited here, he
insisting on sleeping alone in the passage, which we not
permitting, when his snoring began, sure enough, as he
himself pleasantly predicted, nobody else could sleep.”
This conversation now recurred, when that amazing
snoring formed and then destroyed my dream! What a
relief, if young Mr. Frank and I, who slept together, could
have laughed! One might have ventured, indeed, with
impunity, during any paroxysm of snoring, if one could
have quit when it subsided; for the most honest cachination
must have been unheard in the uproar of the Doctor's
nasal trumpetings.
How shall we so write as to give any correct idea of the
performance? Pitiful, indeed, it began, like a puppy's
whine; but directly its tone passed into an abrupt, snappish,
mischievous, and wicked snort; and then into a frightful
tornado of windy sleep; after which, in a few minutes, it
subsided, and suddenly ceased, as if the doctor had made a
successful snap and swallowed it! If this description be
not satisfactory, I hope the reader will send for Robert
Dale Owen, who, knowing how to represent morals and
circumstances by diagrams, may succeed in the same way
at setting forth snoring; but such is beyond our power.
The doctor evidently worked by the job, from his earnestness
and haste: and certainly he did do, in any five
combined could have done the whole night. Happily any
sound, regularly repeated, becomes a lullaby; and hence
he that had snored me awake, snored me asleep again; but
never can I forget that amazing, startling, and exhilatory
nasal solo! That nose could have done snoring parts in a
somnambula, and would have roused up the drowsy hearers
better than the clash of brass instruments!
After an ealy breakfast, the two youngsters and myself set
off on horse-back for Tippecanoe; intending, as the field
was only ten miles, to return, if possible, in the evening to
Dr. Charille's.
The day was favorable, and our path led usually through
prairies, where awe is felt at the grandeur of the wild
plains stretching away, sometimes with undulations, but
oftener with unbroken smoothness, to meet the dim horizon.
Yet one is frequently surprised and delighted there, with
views of picturesque meadows, fringed with thickets intervening,
and separating the primitive pasturages as in the
golden age! The green and flowery meads seemed made
for flocks and herds: and imagination easily created, under
the shade of trees, shepherds and shepherdesses, with
crooks and sylvan reeds! It heard the sound of pipes!—
the very tones of thrilling and strange voices!
Then we seemed to approach a country of modern farms,
where the gopher hills resembled hay-cocks awaiting the
wagon! and countless wild plums laden with rich and fragrant
fruit recalled the Eastern orchards! Alas! our inconsistency!
then I, who a while since looked with rapture
to the sun-set and longed for the West, now looked to
the sun-rise and sighed for the East—the far East! And
why not? There was the home of my orphan boyhood!
there had I revelled, and without care, in the generous toils
of the harvest!—the binding of sheaves!—the raking of
rabbits—trapped muskrats—found hens' nests—laid up
walnuts and shell-barks! Ay! there had I fished with pinhooks,
and caught in a little, dark, modest brook, more
roach and gudgeon than the fellow with his store hook with
a barbed point! And then the sliding down hills of ice on
our own home-made sleds!—and upsetting!—and rolling
to the bottom! Yes! yes! after all, those were the halcyon
days! And so for a time how keen that morning the
pangs of a desolate heart as I realized the immense solitudes
around me!
We had been directed to cross the river at a new town,
which, on reaching, was found to contain one log-house
half finished, and one tent belonging to a Canadian Frenchman,
and some Indians. And yet, before we left the New
Purchase, this Sproutsburgh had become a village to be
seen from a distance, and not many years after contained
fourteen retail stores!—a specimen of our wholesale growth
in the West. But to me an object of great interest was a
tall young Indian, dressed in a composite mode, partly barbarian,
partly civilized. His pantaloons were of blue cloth,
and he wore a roundabout of the same; while his small
feet were tastefully clad with sumptuously wrought moccasins,
and his head encircled with a woollen or ram-beaver
hat, banded with a broad tin belt, and garnished with a
cockade! He was seemingly about eighteen years old;
and by way of favour he consented to ferry us over the
water. And now, reader, here hast thou a fair token that
this work is true as—most history; and not more extravagant
than our puerile school histories for beginners:[12]
I
resist the temptation of having ourselves skiffed over in a
it moved by a pole!
Yet was it nothing, as I held my horse, to look on that
half reclaimed son of the forest, while he urged our rude
flat-boat across the tumultuating waters of a river with an
Indian name—Wabash! and we on our way to an Indian
battle field—Tippecanoe!
On the far bank we galloped into one of many narrow
traces along the river, and running through mazy thickets
of undergrowth; and shortly, spite of our many directions
and cautions, quite as bepuzzling as the paths themselves,
we were lost; having followed some deer or turkey trail
till it miraculously disappeared, the animal being there
used to jump off, or the bird to fly up! Then, and on
like occasions, we put in towards the river, and when in
sight or hearing of its waters, sometimes without, and sometimes
with a “blind path,” we kept up stream the best we
could. A blind path has that name because it tries the
eyes and often requires spectacles to find it; or because
one is in constant jeopardy of having the eyes blinded or
struck out by unceremonious limbs, bushes, branches, and
sprays.
Recent high water had formed many extemporary lagoons,
beyous and quagmires, which forced us often away
from the river bank, that we might get round these sullen
and melancholy lakes; although, after all our extra riding,
we commonly appeared to have gone farther and fared
worse; and hence, at last, we crossed wherever the impediment
first offered. Once a muddy ravine presented
itself; and as the difficulty seemed less than usual, we began
our crossing with little or no circumspection,—and
yet it was, truly, a most dangerous morass! Happily, we
entered a few yards below the worst spot, and had creatures
used to floundering through beds of treacherous and
almost bottomless mire.
I had small space to notice my comrades, for my noble
and spirited animal, finding in an instant the want of a solid
spot, by instinct exerted her entire strength in a succession
of leaps so sudden and violent as soon to displace the rider
from the saddle; and when she gained terra firma, that
rider was on her neck instead of back. A leap more would
have freed her neck of the incumbrance, and our author would
have either sunk or have done his own floundering. He
stuck to the neck, not by skill, but for want of sufficient
time to fall off! Having now opportunity to look round,
we saw one young gentleman wiping the mud from his
eyes, nose, ears, and mouth—proof that all his senses had
been open; and the other we saw stand, indeed, but very
much like a man that had dismounted hastily and not altogether
purposely,—he was on all fours! The three horses
were sorely panting and trembling; while the bosom of the
quagmire was regaining its placidity after the late unusual
agitation, and in a few moments had become calm and deceitful
as policy itself when for the people it has sacrificed
its friends!
And yet, where we had crossed, the mire after all was
not so rery deep—it did not, we were told, average more
than five feet! But, two rods above and one below, the
quaggery required a pole to touch its bottom some fifteen
feet long! And this we ascertained by trial, and also from
the squatter, at whose cabin we halted a moment, just one
mile below—the Field.
Our windings, however, brought us to a sight mournful
and solemn—a coffin in which rested an Indian babe!
This rude coffin was supported in the crotch of a large
tree, and secured from being displaced by the wind, being
only a rough trough dug out with a tomahawk, and in which
was deposited the little one, and having another similar
trough bound down over the body with strips of papaw.
Sad seemed the dreamless sleep of the poor innocent so
its people! Mournful the voice of leaves whispering over
the dead in that sacred tree! The rattling of naked
branches there in the hoarse winds of winter!—how desolate!
And yet if one after death could lie amid thick and
spicy ever-green branches near the dear friends left—instead
of being locked in the damp vault! or trodden like
clay in the deep, deep grave!
But would that be rebellion against the sentence “dust
thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return?”—then let our
bodies be laid in the silence and the dark till the morning
and the life! See! what woodland is that yonder? That
advanced like the apex of a triangle; and yet as we now
approach nearer and nearer, is rising up and has become an
elevated plain? That is Tippecanoe!
Yes! this is Tippecanoe, as it stood some twelve years
after the battle!—Tippecanoe in its primitive and sacred wilderness!
unscathed by the axe, unshorn by the scythe, unmarked
by roads, unfenced! We are standing and walking
among the slain warriors! Can it be that I am he, who but
yesterday was roused from sleep to aid in “setting up the
declaration of war against Great Britain,” to appear as an
extra sheet? and who, each subsequent week, thrilled as
I “composed” in the “iron stick” accounts of battles by
land and fights at sea?—in the days of Maxwell rollers and
Ramage presses!—and hardy pressmen in paper aprons
and cloth trousers!—long before the invasion of petticoats
and check aprons!
Oh! ye men and boys of ink and long primer! how our
spirits were stirred to phrensy and swelled with burnings
and longings after fame!—while, like trumpeters calling to
battle, we scattered forth our papers that woke up the souls
of men! Then I heard of Harrison and Tippecanoe; and
dreamed even by day of a majestic soldier seated on his
charger, and his drawn sword flashing its lightnings, and
clarion!—and of painted warriors, like demons, rushing with
the knife and tomahawk upon the white tents away, away off
somewhere in the unknown wilds,—of “shout, and groan,
and sabre-stroke, and death-shots falling thick and fast as
lightning from the mountain cloud!”—And do I stand, and
without a dream look on—Tippecanoe?
Even so!—for see, here mouldering are trunks of trees
that formed the hasty rampart!—here the scars and seams
in the trees torn by balls!—ay! here in this narrow circle
are skeletons of, let me count again, yes, of fourteen war-horses!
But where the riders? Here, under this beech
—see, the record in the bark!—we stand on the earth over
the dead—“rider and horse—friend—foe—in one red burial
blent!”
What is this?—the iron band of a musket! See! I
have found a rusty bayonet! Was it ever wet with blood?
Perhaps it belonged to the brave soul about whom the
squatter gave us the following anecdote:
“A party of United States regulars were stationed there,
and with strict orders for none to leave ranks. An Indian
crawled behind this large log—its pretty rotten now you
see—and here loading and firing he killed four or five of
us; while we daresn't quit ranks and kill him. But one
of our chaps said to the nearest officer—`Leftenint! for
Heaven's sake—gimme leaf to kill that red devil ahind the
log—I'll be in ranks agin in a minute!' `My brave fellow'—said
the officer, `I darn't give you leave—I musn't
see you go.' And with that he walked off akeepin his
back towards us; and, when he turned and got back, our soldier
was in ranks; but, gentlemen, his bagnit was bloody,
and a deep groan from behind this here old log, told the
officer that the bagnit had silenced the rifle and avenged
the fall of our messmates and comrades.”
If the reader imagine a strip of woodland, triangular in
prairie whose long grass undulates like the waving of an inland
sea; if on one side of this woody isle, he imagines a
streamlet about fifteen feet below and stealing along through
the grass; and on the other side, here, a mile, and there,
two miles across the prairie, other woodlands hiding in
their darkness the Wabash; and if he imagines that river,
at intervals gleaming in the meadow, like illuminated parts
merely of the grass-lake, he may picture for himself something
like Tippecanoe in the simplicity of “uncurled”[13]
nature, and before it was marred and desecrated by man's
transformations!
The first intimation of the coming battle, as our squatter
who was in it, said, was from the waving grass. A sentinel
hid that night in the darkness of the wood, was gazing
in a kind of dreamy watchfulness over the prairie, admiring,
as many times before, the beauteous waving of its hazy
bosom. But never had it seemed so strangely agitated;
—a narrow and strong current was setting rapidly towards
his post; and yet no violent wind to give the stream that
direction! He became first, curious— soon, suspicious.
Still nothing like danger appeared—no voice,—no sound
of footsteps,—no whisper! Yet rapidly and steadily onward
sets the current—its first ripples are breaking at his
feet! He awakes all his senses;—but discovers nothing
—he strains his eyes over the top of the bending grass—
and then, happy thought! he kneels on the earth and looks
intently below that grass! Then, indeed, he saw, not a
wind moved current—but Indian warriors in a stooping posture
and stealing noiseless towards his post—a fatal and
treacherous under current in that waving grass!
The sentinel springing to his feet cried out, “Who comes
there?”
“Pottawatamie!”—the answer, as an Indian leaped with
a yell from the grass, and almost in contact with the soldier—and
of the sentinel's piece entered the warrior's heart, and gave
thus the signal for combat!
Our men may have slumbered; for it was a time of
treaty and truce—but it was in armour they lay, and with
ready weapons in their bands; and it was to this precaution
of their general, we owed the speedy defeat of the Indians;
although not before they had killed about seventy
of our little army. No one can properly describe the horrors
of that night attack—at least, I shall not attempt it.
It required the coolness and deliberation, and at the same
time, the almost reckless daring and chivalric behaviour
of the commander and his noble officers and associates, to
foil such a foe, and at such a time; even with the loss of
so many brave men of their small number. That the foe
was defeated and driven off is proof enough to Western
men—(if not to Eastern politicians who do battles on paper
plains)—that all was anticipated and done by Harrison
that was necessary. It would not become a work like this,
which inexperienced folks may not think is quite as true as
other histories, to meddle with the history of an honest
President; but the writer knows, and on the best authority,
that General Harrison did that night all that a wise, brave,
and benevolent soldier ought to do or could do; and among
other things, that his person was exposed in the fiercest
and bloodiest fights where balls repeatedly passed through
his clothes and his cap.
There was, however, one in the battle so generous, so
chivalric, so kind, and yet so eccentric, that his life would
make a volume of truth more exciting than fiction—the
celebrated Joseph Hamilton Davies, familiarly and kindly
called in the West, Joe Daris. A lawyer by profession,
he was eminent in all pertaining to his science and art;
but pre-eminent in the adjustment of land claims. An
anecdote about him on this point appeared in the newspapers
record in a work destined to be read and preserved in so
many families—maybe!
A person, served with an ejectment, and fearing from
the length of his adversary's purse, that he must be unjustly
deprived of his lands, came from a great distance to solicit
the aid of Davies. He succeeded in his application, and
was dismissed with an assurance that, in due season, the
lawyer would appear for his client and prevent his being
dispossessed.
The arena of contest was, as has been intimated, distant;
and hence Davies was in person a stranger to the
members of that court, or so imperfectly known that an uncanonical
dress would be an effectual concealment. His
client's case being duly called, matters by the opposite
party were set in such a light that a verdict from the jury,
and a decision from the bench, in favour of the plaintiff
seemed inevitable; yet, for form's sake, the defendant must
be heard.
The poor client had relied so entirely on Davies, and
had felt so certain of being secured in his possessions, as
to have neglected to obtain any other legal aid—and still,
at this critical moment when he was to be summoned for
his defence—Davies had not arrived! Nay!—while earnestly
straining his eyes, the client was even rudely jostled
by a rough chap in hunting shirt and leather breeches, who
carrying a heavy rifle in his hand and with a racoon-skin
cap slouched over his face, kept squeezing very impudentdently
even among the laughing and good natured lawyers
inside the bar; where, to everybody's diversion, he appropriated
to himself a seat with the most simple and awkward
naivete possible; but what diversion was all this to our
client looking round in despair for his lawyer! And then
when the judge asked who appeared for the defendant,
what amazement must have mingled with the client's despair
when at the call up rose that rude hunter and replied:
“I do, please your honour!”
“You!”—replied his honor—“who are you, sir?”
“Joseph Hamilton Davies, please your honor!”
And now, after that heavy rifle was slowly placed in a
snug corner of the bar, and that skin cap was removed from
the head, plain enough was it that the noble face, no longer
concealed, was his; the talented, the philanthropic, the
eccentric Joe Davis. Never before had so much law been
cased in a hunting shirt and buckskins; and never before
nor since, was, or has been, a difficult cause in such a guise
pleaded so triumphantly: for the entire superstructure of
the opposite argument was completely subverted and a
verdict and decision, in proper time, rendered for the defendant,
when to all appearance it had been virtually made,
if not formally declared, for his antagonist.
Alas! noble heart! and here is thy very grave! Yes,
“J. H. D.” is here in the bark—my finger is in the rude
graving!—and now at the root of the tree I am seated
making my notes! The last the squatter ever saw of Joe
Davies alive, was when his grey horse was plunging in
the furious charge down this hill—when the sentinel, already
named, had fired and called “to arms!” And the
next day our guide helped to lay Davies in this grave; and
saw his name transferred to the living monument here sheltering
and fanning his sepulchre!
We lingered at Tippecanoe till the latest possible moment!—there
was, in the wildness of the battle-field—in
my intimate acquaintance with some of its actors—in the
living trees, scarred and hacked with bullet and hatchet,
and marked with names of the dead—in the wind so sad
and melancholy—something so like embodied trances, that
I wandered the field all over, here standing on a grave,
there resting on a decaying bulwark; now counting the
scars of trees, now the skeleton heads of horses; finding
bones of a slain soldier dragged, perhaps, by wild beasts
from his shallow grave!—till my young comrades insisted
on our return if we expected to reach our friend's house
before the darkness of night.
Having, accordingly, deposited in my valisse a few relics
and mementos, we rode down the hill into the prairie, at
the spot poor Davies was seen descending and leading a
charge; and over the very ground where the grassy current
had betrayed the dangerous under-tide of painted foes.
Hence we crossed over to the town whence the Indians
issued for the attack, and where the wily prophet himself
remained in safety, concocting charms against the white
man's weapons! After this, we turned down the Wabash,
keeping our eyes ever directed towards the mournful island
of wood, till at last we doubled its cape, and lost sight of
Tippecanoe for ever!
That field, however, and its hero of North Bend are immortal.
BATTLE OF TIPPECANOE.
An isle amid the prairie's flow'ry sea,
Upon his midnight watch, our sentry stood,
Guarding the slumbers of the brave and free;
And o'er the swellings of a seeming tide,
Dim sparkling in the moonlight's silv'ry haze,
The soldier oft, distrustful, far and wide,
Sent searching looks, or fixed his steadfast gaze.
Long had he watch'd; and still each grassy wave
Brought nought save perfumes to the tented isle;
Nor sign of foe the fragrant breezes gave;
Till thoughts of cabin-home his sense beguile,
Far from the wilds: for yet, though fix'd intent,
As if his eyes discerned a coming host,
Those moisten'd eyes are on his lov'd ones bent—
He sleeps not; but the dreams upon his post.
Outstrips the flowing of you lagging waves?
Shake off the fetters of thy fatal dream!
Quick! save thy comrades from their bloody graves!
He starts!—he marks the prairie's bosom shake!
He sees that current to the woodland near!
He kneels—upleaps and cries—“Comrades, awake!
To arms! to arms!—the treach'rous foe is here!”
“Like mountain torrent, furious gushing,
The warrior tribe is on us rushing,—
With weapons in their red hands gleaming,
And charmed banners from them streaming!
To arms! to arms! ye slumb'ring brave!
To arms!—your lives and honor save!”
Arm'd, from the earth, our host is springing;
Their sabres forth from sheaths are ringing;
Their chargers mounted, fierce are prancing;
Their serried bay'nets swift advancing:—
“Quick, to your posts!” the general's cry,
Answer'd, “We're there, to do or die!”
Hand to hand, within that solemn wood,
For life, fought warriors true and good!
The hatchet through the brain went crushing!
The bay'net brought the heart blood gushing!
On arrows' feather'd wings death went,
Or swift, at the rifle flash, was sent,
Till victor shouts the air was rending,
And groans the wounded forth were sending!
“Charge! soldiers, charge!” brave Davies shouted;
They charg'd; the yelling foe was routed;—
Yet long before that foe was flying,
That hero, on the plain, was dying!
That prairie lake rolls peaceful waves no more;
Its bosom rages 'neath a tempest pow'r—
See! driven midst it, from the woodland shore,
Fierce bands rush vanquish'd from a deadly show'r!
And gleaming steel, and lead and iron hail
Pour vengeful out of war's dark sky,
And triumph's voice, “Charge home! they fly!”
Solemn the pomp where mourning heroes tread
With arms revers'd, and measur'd step, and slow!
Sadly, yet proud, is borne their comrade dead,
Their warlike ensigns bound with badge of woe!
Sublime, though plaintive, pours the clarion's tone!
The heart, while bow'd, is stirred by muffled drum!
But stand within that far-off wild wood lone,
Where Prairie scented winds, with dirges, come,
Where the rough bark, rude grav'd with hunter's knife,
Points to the spot where Davies rests below,
And relics scatter'd, tell of bloodiest strife—
Heart gushing tears from dimming eyes must flow!
And round thy mournful bier, our warrior sage;
Who rushing reckless to each fiercest fight,
Didst fall a victim to no foeman's rage
Amid the camage of that fearful night,
A nation, yet, in tears, has smitten stood
Grieving o'er thee with loud and bitter cry!
Rest thee, our hero of that island wood!
Worthy in thine own ransom'd West to lie!
When floating down Ohio's grand old wave,
Our eyes shall turn to where his forests stand,
Stretching dark branches o'er our chieftain's grave—
Father and saviour of the Western's land!
The present age is that of beginnings. Hence school-books are
usually all for beginners; and it requires a wheel-barrow for a scholar
now instead of a satchel. Things are also ended and finished but not
continued and done.
47. CHAPTER XLVII.
Environed with a wilderness of sea.”
Late at night we arrived safe at Dr. Charille's. The
next day we set out for Woodville, choosing on the return
other paths, to avoid former difficulties and dangers; by
which prudence, however, we only reversed matters; for
instance, instead of water before a swamp, we got the
swamp before the water. And, also, we thus often set out
before day-light in the dark, instead of travelling in the
dark after day-light—travelling occasionally to reach a
settlement in the dark at both ends of the day. Besides
our new route threw us away up Nut Creek, where, contrary
to all expectation, it was found necessary either to
swim below a mill-dam, or be canoed across above the dam.
The latter was our choice; and as it afforded a pleasant
variety in the horse and log navigation, we shall give the
adventure and then skip all the way to Woodville.
The whole plain[14]
of water to be crossed was about one
hundred and twenty yards wide. But it consisted of three
divisions, the Creek Proper, twenty yards wide and now
eighteen feet deep; and two lagoons, each full, on opposite
sides of the creek, and averaging each fifty yards in width,
although in most places, the banks being low, the lagoons
could not be distinguished from the creek, but the three divisions
seemed one water, lake, or sea. Our transit spot
was a place, where, from the edge of the hither lagoon
could be discerned by a careful observer, a modest little
grassy mound in the water, a kind of frog-island, which the
from this mound another on the opposite bank could be discovered,
or nearly so. And nothing, he said, would be
easier for us than first to ford over the lagoon to the nearest
mound, where he would meet us in a canoe: that here
we could strip our horses, and thence by turns every thing
could be transported to the farther mound, whence, all
matters re-arranged, we could ford the distant lagoon, and
so come finally to the dry land on the opposite hill beyond
the bottom.
This certainly was plausible, if not captivating; especially
should not the horses become entangled in the brush and
vines, forming tolerable fish-nets under water, and should
the lagoons be only four feet deep. They certainly looked,
to judge from the surface water up the trunks of trees,
somewhere about six feet deep; but then both the miller-man
and his son were “right down sartin, it wan't more
nor four feet no place, nor it moughn't be that deep, except
in them 'are blasted holes!”
Receiving ample direction for circumnavigating the holes
aforesaid, we took aim for the first isle-of-bank, and were
soon so well in for it, that the difficulty and peril of going
backward and forward were equal; and therefore, we
worked onward, tacking incessantly every way to avoid
logs, trees, and vines, and in awe all the while of “them
'are holes,” till we began to rise once more in the world,
and stood sublime in the very middle of Frog-land!
Believe me, reader! it was not void of uneasiness, we
thus sundered from the world, looked back on the woods
just left, and standing partly in and partly out of the water!
while, at our feet, and separated by a strip of grass, swept
along in the pride and fury of risen waters, the creek itself,
curling amply over a few inches of the still visible dam, and
shaking and tearing away with its yet rising tide our little
territory! And that canoe! a tiny log shell, to transport
vines and holes must be encountered again! How like
the realms of Pluto! and we, how like terrified ghosts
awaiting a passage across the Styx in the rickety bark of
Charon!
All ready, I attempted, bridle in hand, to step into the
canoe, but by some awkwardness, I stumbled into the far
end, and thus so violently jerked the rein, that my creature
soused in, and descended almost the length of the bridle;
but by the time she gave her first snortings, on regaining
the air, our log was over, and the creature (i. e. equa) was
pawing up the isle-of-bank number 2. Here we remained
till Mr. Frank and his horse arrived, and a third trip had
brought our saddles and baggage; and then, duly prepared,
we forded lagoon the second, and in proper season gained
our wished for hill, and —
“What stuff!”
“What stuff?” gentle reader, what better could you do
with a mud and water subject?”
“Yes—but what's the use of such things?”
La! that's so like what Aunt Kitty said, when I got to
Woodville, all dirty and tired—my new boots thick with
exterior mud—my best coat altogether spoiled—my fur
hat crushed into fancy shapes, and the seat of my corduroy
inexpressibles abraded to the finest degree of tenuosity at
all consistent with comfort and decorum!
48. CHAPTER XLVIII.
“And it came to pass at noon, that Elijah mocked them.”
Vide on Ancient Record.
My tongue hath wrong'd him: if it do him right,
Then he hath wrong'd himself:—if he be free,
Why then, my taxing, like a wild goose flies,
Unclaimed of any man.”
On the last day of the return to Woodville, we met at
intervals during the final half-dozen miles, not less than
one dozen wagons, large and small, and partially loaded,
some with beds and bedding, and some with culinary utensils;
the interstices being filled with a wedging of human
bodies—men, women, and children, some laughing and
talking, others solemn and demure.
They seemed at first view settlers, who, having sold to
advantage old farms, were flitting to where wood and game
were more abundant, and neighbours not crowded offensively
under other's noses, as near as one or two miles. But
soon appeared people riding once, twice, and even thrice on
a horse; and some kind-hearted horses, like the nameless
one, were carrying on their backs whole families; and
then it was plain enough what was meant—a big meeting
was to come off somewhere. And shortly all doubt was at
an end, when familiar soprano and alto voices from under
wagon covers, and out of scoop-shovelled bonnets came
forth thus—“How'd do! Mr. Carlton?—come, won't you
go to camp meetin?” And then sounded, from extra devotional
parties and individuals, snatches of favourite religious
songs, fixed to trumpet melodies, such as “Glory! glory,
glory!”—“He's a coming, coming, coming!”—“Come, let
saintly voices were ever and anon oddly commingled
with some very unsanctimonious laughing, not intended
for irreverence, but not properly suppressed at some ill-timed
joke in another quarter, related perhaps, yet more
probably practiced. For nothing excels the fun and frolic,
where two or three dozen half-tamed young gentlemen and
ladies, mounted on spirited and mischievous horses set out
together to attend a Mormon, a Shaking-quaker, or a Millery
or a Camp-meeting.
At the very edge of Woodville, too, there met us a comfortable
looking middle-aged woman, who was riding a
horse, and was without any bonnet; her other apparel being
in some disorder, and her hair illy done up and barely restrained
by a horn comb. She thus addressed me:—
“I say, Mister, you haint seen nara bonnit?”
“Bonnet!—no, ma'am; have you lost your bonnet?”
“Yes—I've jist had a powerful exercise over thare in
the Court-house; and when I kim to, I couldn't see my
bonnit no whare about —”
“Has there been meeting in the Court-house lately?”
“Oh! Lord bless you, most powerful time—and it's
there I've jist got religion—”
“And lost your bonnet?”
“Yes, sir,—but some said as it maybe mought a-gone on
to camp with somebody's plunder: you didn't see or hear
tell on it, did you?”
“No, I did not; but had you really no power over your
bonnet, ma'am?”
“Well! now!—who ever heern of a body in a exercise
a thinkin on a bonnit! Come, mister, you'd better turn
round and go to camp and git religion yourself, I allow—
thar's whar all the town a'most and all the settlemints round
is agoin—but I'll have to whip up and look after my bonnit—good
bye, mister!”
And so all Woodville and its vicinities were in the ferment
of departure for a camp-meeting! Now as this was
to be a big meeting of the biggest size, and all the crack
preachers within a circle of three hundred miles were to
be present, and also a celebrated African exhorter from
Kentucky; and as much was said about “these heaven-directed,
and heaven-blessed, and heaven-approved campings;”
and as I, by a constant refusal to attend heretofore,
had become a suspected character, it being often said,—
“yes,—Carlton's a honest sort of man, but why don't he
go out to camp and git religion?”—I determined now to go.
Why whole families should once or twice a year break
up for two weeks; desert domestic altars; shut up regular
churches; and take away children from school; why cook
lots of food at extra trouble and with ill-bestowed expense;
why rush to the woods and live in tents, with peril to health
and very often ultimately with loss of life to feeble persons;
why folks should do these and other things under a belief
that the Christian God is a God of the woods and not of the
towns, of the tents and not of the churches, of the same
people in a large and disorderly crowd and not in one hundred
separate and orderly congregations—why? why? I had
in my simplicity repeatedly asked, and received for answer:
“Oh! come and see! Only come to camp and git your
cold heart warmed—come git religion—let it out with a
shout—and you'll not axe them infidel sort of questions no
more.”
This was conclusive. And like the vicar of Wakefield,
I resolved not always to be wise, but for once to float with
a tide neither to be stemmed nor directed. A friend, learned
in these spiritual affairs, advised me not to go till Saturday
night, or so as to be on the ground by daylight on Sunday.
This I did, and was handsomely rewarded by seeing
and hearing some very extraordinary conversions—as far as
they went; and also some wonderful scenes and outcries.
The camp was an old and favourite ground, eight miles
from Woodville. It had been the theatre of many a spirit-stirring
drama; and there, too, many a harvest of glory had
been reaped in battling with “the devil and his legions.”
Yet wonderful! his satanic majesty never became shy of a
spot where he was said always to have the worst of the
fight! and now it was commonly said and believed that a
prodigious great contest was to come off; and “hell-defying”
challenges had been given in some Woodville
pulpits for Satan to come out and do his prettiest. Nay, by
certain prophets that seemed to have the gift of discerning
spirits, it was “allowed the ole boy was now out at camp[15]
in great force—that some powerful fights would be seen,
but that the ole fellow would agin and agin git the worst
of it.”
The camp proper was a parallelogramic clearing, and
was most of the day shaded by the superb forest trees, which
admitted, here and there, a little mellow sunshine to gleam
through the dense foliage upon their own dark forms quivering
in a kind of living shadow over the earth. At night,
the camp was illuminated by lines of fires kindled and duly
sustained on the tops of many altars and columns of stone
and log-masonry—a truly noble and grand idea, peculiar to
the West. Indeed, to the imaginative, there is very much
to bewitch in the poetry and romance of a Western camp-meeting:—the
wildness, the gloom, the grandeur of our
forests—the gleaming sunlight by day, as if good spirits
were smiling on the sons of light in their victories over the
children of darkness—the clear blue sky like a dome over
the tents—that dome, at night, radiant with golden stars, like
glories of heaven streaming through the apertures of the
of ransomed ones! The very tents, too!—formed
like booths at the feast of tabernacles, and seeming to be
full of joyous hearts—a community having all things common,
dead to the world, just ready to enter heaven! And
when the trumpet sounded for singing!—the enthusiastic
performance of child-like tunes, poured from the hearts of
two thousand raptured devotees, till the bosom of the wilderness
trembles and rejoices while it rolls over its wooded
hills and through its dark valleys the echo of the pæan
with the peal of deep thunder and the roar of rushing whirlwinds!
Under the direction of wise and talented men, a camp-meeting
may possibly be a means of a little permanent
good; but, with the best management, it is a doubtful means
of much moral and spiritual good—nay, it cannot long be
used in a cautious and sober way. In religion, as in all
other affairs, where the main dependence is on expedients to
reach the moral man through the fancy and imagination, what
begins in poetry must soon end in prose. Nay, if a religious
meeting be protracted beyond one or two days, novelties must
be introduced; and such are invariably exciting and entertaining,
but never spiritual and instructive; if not introduced,
the meeting becomes, in the opinion of the majority,
stale. Heat, and flame, and smoke, constitute, with most,
“a good meeting.” Nay, again, and yea also, the final
result of man-contrived means and measures is at war with
true courtesy, uncensorious feelings, the cheerful discharge
of daily secular duties, and the culture of the intellect.
The whole is selfish in tendency and promotive of presumptuous
confidence, and a contemptible self-righteousness.
Adequate reasons enough may be assigned for the
popularity of camp-meetings, and none of them essentially
religious or even praise-worthy; although many essentially
worthy and religious persons both advocate and attend such
desire of excitements—romantic feelings—tedium of common
every-day life--love of good fellowship--and even a
willingness to obtain a cheap religious character--and,
also, a secret hope that we please God and merit heaven
for so extraordinary and long-continued devotion. Add,
our innate love of pageantry, inclining us not only to behold
scenes but to make and be a part of scenes; for even in
this sense—“All the world's a stage, and all the men and
and women merely players.”
A camp-meeting might, indeed, be reformed; and so might
the theatre—but the one event is no more probable than
the other: and as a reformed theatre would be little visited,
so we apprehend would be a reformed camp-meeting.
The respective abuses of both are essential to their existence.
But this is digressing.
The tents were in a measure permanent fixtures, the uprights
and cross pieces remaining from season to season;
but now all were garnished with fresh and green branches
and coverings. These tents formed the sides of the parallelogram,
intervals being left in suitable places for alleys
and scaffolds; while in the woods were other more soldierly-looking
tents of linen or canvass, and pitched in true
war style; although not a few tents were mere squares of
sheets, coverlets and table-cloths. Also for tents were up
propped some twenty or thirty carts and wagons, and furnished
with a chair or two, and some sort of sleeping
apparatus. In the rear of the regular tents, and, indeed,
of many others, were places and fixtures for kinding a fire
and boiling water for coffee, tea, chocolate, &c. &c.—a
few culinary operations being yet needed beyond the
mountains of food brought from home ready for demolition.
Indeed, a camp-meeting out there is the most mammoth
pic-nic possible; and it is one's own fault, saint or sinner, if
he gets not enough to eat, and that the best the land affords.
in the open air; the ample sky above and the boundless
woods around; the wings of gay birds flashing in sunshine,
and the squirrels racing up gigantic trunks and barking and
squeaking amid the grand branches; and what then must
be the effect of all on the proverbially open-hearted native
born Westerns? Ay! the native Corn-Cracker, Hoosier,
Buckeye, and all men and women “born in a cane-brake
and rocked in a sugar trough,”—all born to follow a trail
and cock and old fashioned lock-rifle,—all such are openhearted,
fearless, generous, chivalric, even in spite of much
filth and scum and base leaven from foreign places. And
hence, although no decided friend to camp-meetings, spiritually
and morally and theologically considered, we do
say that at a Western camp-meeting as at a barbecue, the
very heart and soul of hospitality and kindness is wide
open and poured freely forth. We can, maybe, equal it in
here; but we never try.[16]
Proceed we now to things spiritual. And first, we give
notice that attention will be paid only to grand matters
and that very many episodial things are omitted, such as
incidental exhortations and prayers from authorized, as well
as unauthorized folks, male and female, whose spirits often
suddenly stirred, and not to be controlled like those of old-fashioned
prophets, forced our friends to speak out, like
quaker ladies and gentlemen in reformed meetings, and even
when they have nothing to say; and also will be omitted
all irregular outcries, groans, shouts, and bodily exercises,
subordinate, indeed, to grand chorusses and contests, but
otherwise beginning without adequate cause and ending
in nothing.
The camp was furnished with several stands for preaching,
exhorting, jumping and jerking; but still one place
secured between two noble sugar trees, and railed in to prevent
from falling over in a swoon, or springing over in
an ecstacy; its cover the dense foliage of the trees whose
trunks formed the graceful and massive columns. Here
was said to be also the altar—but I could not see its horns
or any sacrifice; and the pen, which I did see—a place
full of clean straw, where were put into fold stray sheep
willing to return. It was at this pulpit, with its altar and
pen, the regular preaching was done; around here the
congregation assembled; hence orders were issued; here,
happened the hardest fights and were gained the greatest
victories, being the spot where it was understood Satan
fought in person; and here could be seen gestures the most
frantic, and heard noises the most unimaginable, and often
the most appalling. It was the place, in short, where most
crowded either with praise worthy intentions of getting some
religion, or with unholy purposes of being amused; we of
course designing neither one nor the other, but only to see
philosophically and make up an opinion. At every grand
outcry a simultaneous rush would, however, take place
from all parts of the camp, proper and improper, towards
the pulpit, altar, and pen; till the crowding, by increasing
the suffocation and the fainting, would increase the tumult
and the uproar; but this in the estimation of many devotees
only rendered the meeting more lively and interesting.
By considering what was done at this central station
one may approximate the amount of spiritual labour done
in a day, and then a week in the whole camp:
1. About day-break on Sabbath a horn blasted us up for
public prayer and exhortation—the exercises continuing
nearly two hours.
2. Before breakfast, another blast for family and private
prayer; and then every tent became, in camp language,
“a bethel of struggling Jacobs and prevailing Israels;”
till the air all became religious words and phrases, and
vocal with “Amens.”
3. After a proper interval came a horn for the forenoon
service; then was delivered the sermon, and that followed
by an appendix of some half dozen exhortations let off right
and left, and even behind the pulpit, that all might have a
portion in due season.
4. We had private and secret prayer again before dinner;—some
clambering into thick trees to be hid, but forgetting
in their simplicity, that they were heard and betrayed.
But religious devotion[17]
excuses all errors and mistakes.
5. The afternoon sermon with its bob-tail string of exhortations.
6. Private and family prayer about tea time.
7. But lastly, we had what was termed “a precious
season” in the third regular service at the principia of the
camp. This season began not long after tea and was kept
up long after I left the ground; which was about midnight.
And now sermon after sermon and exhortation after exhortation
followed like shallow, foaming, roaring waters; till
the speakers were exhausted and the assembly became an
uneasy and billowy mass, now hushing to a sobbing quiescence,
and now rousing by the groans of sinners and the
triumphant cries of folks that had “jist got religion;” and
then, again subsiding to a buzzy state occasioned by the
whimpering and whining voices of persons giving spiritual
advice and comfort! How like a volcanic crater after the
evomition of its lava in a fit of burning cholic, and striving
to re-settle its angry and tumultuating stomach!
It is time, however, to speak of the three grand services
and their concomitants, and to introduce several master
spirits of the camp.
Our first character, is the Reverend Elder Sprightly.
This gentleman was of good natural parts; and in a better
school of intellectual discipline and more fortunate circumstances,
he must have become a worthy minister of some
more tasteful, literary, and evangelical sect. As it was,
he had only become, what he never got beyond—“a very
smart man;” and his aim had become one—to enlarge his
own people. And in this work, so great was his success,
that, to use his own modest boastfulness in his sermon today,—“although
folks said when he came to the Purchase
that a single corn-crib would hold his people, yet, bless the
Lord, they had kept spreading and spreading till all the
corn-cribs in Egypt wern't big enough to hold them!”
He was very happy at repartee, as Robert Dale Owen
well knows; and not “slow” (inexpert) in the arts of
“taking off”—and—“giving them their own.” This trait
we shall illustrate by an instance.
Mr. Sprightly was, by accident, once present where a
Campbellite Baptist, that had recently taken out a right for
administering six doses of lobelia, red pepper and steam,
to men's bodies, and a plunge into cold water for the good
of their souls, was holding forth against all Doctors, secular
and sacred, and very fiercely against Sprightly's brotherhood.
Doctor Lobelia's text was found somewhere in
Pope Campbell's New Testament; as it suited the following
discourse introduced with the usual inspired preface:—
Doctor Lobelia's Sermon.
“Well, I never rub'd my back agin a collige, nor git no
sheepskin, and allow the Apostuls didn't nithur. Did anybody
ever hear of Peter and Poll a-goin to them new-fangled
places and gitten skins to preach by? No, sirs, I allow
sheepskin enough for me. And don't Prisbeteruns
and tother baby sprinklurs have reskorse to loguk and skins
to show how them what's emerz'd didn't go down into the
water and come up agin? And as to Sprightly's preachurs,
don't they dress like big-bugs, and go ridin about the Purchis
on hunder-dollur hossis, a-spunginin on poor priest-riden
folks and and a-eaten fried chicken fixins so powerful
fast that chickens has got skerse in these diggins; and
them what ain't fried makes tracks and hides when they
sees them a-comin?
“But, dear bruthrun, we don't want store cloth and yaller
buttins, and fat hosses and chickin fixins, and the like
doins—no, sirs! we only wants your souls—we only wants
beleevur's baptism—we wants prim—prim—yes, Apostul's
Christianity, the christianity of Christ and them times,
when Christians was Christians, and tuk up thare cross
and went down into the water, and was buried in the gineine
sort of baptism by emerzhin. That's all we wants;
and I hope all's convinced that's the true way—and so let
all come right out from among them and git beleevur's baptism;
and so now if any brothur wants to say a word I'm
done, and I'll make way for him to preach.”
Anticipating this common invitation, our friend Sprightly,
indignant at this unprovoked attack of Doctor Lobelia, had,
in order to disguise himself, exchanged his clerical garb
for a friend's blue coatee bedizzened with metal buttons;
and also had erected a very tasteful and sharp coxcomb on
his head, out of hair usually reposing sleek and quiet in the
most saint-like decorum; and then, at the bid from
the pulpit-stump, out stepped Mr. Sprightly from the opposite
spice-wood grove, and advanced with a step so
smirky and dandyish as to create universal amazement and
whispered demands—“Why! who's that?!” And some
of his very people, who were present, as they told me, did
upon the hearing, when they showed, by the sudden lifting
of hands and eyebrows, how near they were to exclaiming—“Well!
I never!!”
Stepping on to the consecrated stump, our friend, without
either preliminary hymn or prayer, commenced thus:—
“My friends, I only intend to say a few words in answer
to the pious brother that's just sat down, and shall not detain
but a few minutes. The pious brother took a good
deal of time to tell what we soon found out ourselves—
that he never went to college, and don't understand logic.
He boasts too of having no sheep skin to preach by; but I
allow any sensible buck-sheep would have died powerful
sorry, if he'd ever thought his hide would come to be handled
by some preachers. The skin of the knowingest old
buck couldn't do some folks any good—some things salt
won't save.
“I rather allow Johnny Calvin's boys and `'tother baby
sprinklers,' ain't likely to have they idees physicked out of
them by steam logic, and doses of No. 6. They can't be
steamed up so high as to want cooling by a cold water
plunge. But I want to say a word about Sprightly's
preachers, because I have some slight acquaintance with
that there gentleman, and don't choose to have them all run
down for nothing.
“The pious brother brings several grave charge s; first
they ride good horses. Now don't every man, woman,
and child in the Purchase know that Sprightly and his
preachers have hardly any home, and that they live on
horseback? The money most folks spend in land, these
men spend for a good horse; and don't they need a good
horse to stand mud and swim floods? And is it any sin
for a horse to be kept fat that does so much work? The
book says `a merciful man is merciful to his beast,' and
that we mustn't `muzzle the ox that treadeth out the corn.'
at a horse hung on the stake; what's he like? A wooden
frame with a dry hide stretch'd over it. What's he live on?
Ay! that's the pint? Well, what's them buzzards after?—
look at them sailing up there. Now who owns that live
carrion?—the pious brother that's preached to us just now.
And I want to know if it wouldn't be better for him to give
that dumb brute something to cover his bones, before he talks
against `hunder dollur hossis' and the like?
“The next charge is, wearing good clothes. Friends,
don't all folks when they come to meeting put on their best
clothes? and wouldn't it be wrong if preachers came in old
torn coats and dirty shirts? It wouldn't do no how. Well,
Sprightly and his preachers preach near about every day;
and oughtn't they always to look decent! Take then a
peep of the pious brother that makes this charge; his coat
is out at elbow, and has only three or four buttons left, and
his arm, where he wipes his nose and mouth, is shiney as
a looking glass—his trousers are crawling up to show he's
got no stockings on; and his face has got a crop of beard
two weeks old and couldn't be cleaned by `baby sprinklin;'
yes, look at them there matters, and say if Sprightly's
preachers ain't more like the apostles in decency than the
pious brother is.
“A word now about chicken-fixins and doins. And I
say it would be a charity to give the pious brother sich a
feed now and then, for he looks half-starved, and savage as
a meat-axe; and I advise that old hen out thare clucking
up her brood not to come this way just now, if she don't
want all to disappear. But I say that Sprightly's preachers
are so much beliked in the Purchase, that folks are always
glad to see them, and make a pint of giving them the best
out of love; and that's more than can be said for some
folks here.
“The pious brother says, he only wants our souls—then
don't he and Campbell make steam and No. 6 as free as
preaching? I read of a quack doctor once, who used to
give his advice free gratis for nothing to any one what
would buy a box of his pills—but as I see the pious brother
is crawling round the fence to his anatomical horse and
physical saddle bags, I have nothing more to say, and so,
dear friends, I bid you all good-bye.”
Such was Rev. Elder Sprightly, who preached to us on
Sabbath morning at the Camp. Hence, it is not remarkable
that in common with many worthy persons, he should
think his talents properly employed in using up “Johnny
Calvin and his boys;” especially as no subject is better
for popularity at a camp-meeting. He gave us, accordingly,
first, that affecting story of Calvin and Servetus, in
which the latter figured to-day like a Christian Confessor
and martyr, and the former as a diabolical persecuter;
many moving incidents being introduced not found in
history, and many ingenious inferences and suppositions
tending to blacken the Reformer's character. Judging
from the frequency of the deep groans, loud amens, and
noisy hallelujahs of the congregation during the narrative,
had Calvin suddenly thrust in among us his hatchet face
and goat's beard, he would have been hissed and pelted,
nay possibly, been lynched and soused in the Branch;
while the excellent Servetus would have been toted on our
shoulders, and feasted in the tents, on fried ham, cold
chicken fixins and horse sorrel pies!
Here is a specimen of Mr. S'.s mode of exciting triumphant
exclamation, amens, groans, &c., against Calvin and
his followers:—
—“Dear sisters, don't you love the tender
little darling babes that hang on your parental bosoms?
(amen!)—Yes! I know you do—(amen! amen!)—Yes I
know, I know it—(Amen, amen! hallelujah!) Now don't
those dear infantile darlings might some day be out burning
brush and fall into the flames and be burned to death!
(deep groans.)—Yes, it does, it does! But oh! sisters, oh!
mothers! how can you think your babes mightn't get religion
and die and be burned for ever and ever? (the Lord
forbid—amen—groans.) But, oho! only think—only think
oh! would you ever a had them darling infantile sucklings
born, if you had a known they were to be burned in a brush
heap! (No, no!—groans—shrieks) What! what! what!
if you had foreknown they must have gone to hell!—(hoho!
hoho!—amen!) And does any body think He[18] is such a
tyrant as to make spotless, innocent babies just to damn
them? (No! in a voice of thunder.)—No! sisters! no!
no! mothers! No! no! no! sinners no!!—he ain't such a
tyrant! let John Calvin burn, torture and roast, but He never
foreordained babies, as Calvin says, to damnation! (damnation
— echoed by hundreds.)—Hallelujah! 'tis a free
salvation! Glory! a free salvation!—(Here Mr S. battered
the rail of the pulpit with his fists, and kicked the bottom
with his feet—many screamed—some cried amen!
—others groaned and hissed—and more than a dozen females
of two opposite colours arose and clapped their
hands as if engaged in starching, &c. &c.) No-h-o! 'tis a
free, a free, a free salvation!—away with Calvin! 'tis for
all all! ALL. Yes! shout it out! clap on! rejoice! rejoice!
oho-oho! sinners, sinners, sinners, oh-ho-oho!”
&c. &c.
Here was maintained for some minutes the most edifying
uproar of shouting, bellowing, crying, clapping and stamping,
mingled with hysterical laughing, termed out there
“holy laughing,” and even dancing! and barking! called
the orator resumed his eloquence.
It is singular Mr. S. overlooked an objection to the
divine Providence arising from his own illustration. That
children do sometimes perish by being burnt and drowned,
is undeniable; yet is not their existence prevented—and
that in the very case where the sisters were induced to say
they would have prevented their existence! But, in justice
to Mr. S., we must say that he seemed to have anticipated
the objection, and to have furnished the reply; for,
said he, in one part of his discourse, “God did not wish to
foreknow some things!”
But our friend's mode of avoiding a predestined death—
if such an absurdity be supposed—deserves all praise for
the facility and simplicity of the contrivance. “Let us,”
said he, “for argnment's sake, grant that I, the Rev. Elder
Sprightly, am foreordained to be drowned, in the River, at
Smith's Ferry, next Thursday morning, at twenty-two minutes
after ten o'clock; and suppose I know it; and suppose
I am a free, moral, voluntary, accountable agent, as
Calvinists say—do you think I'm going to be drowned?
No!—I would stay at home all day; and you'll never ketch
the Rev. Elder Sprightly at Smith's Ferry—nor near the
river neither!”
Reader, is it any wonder Calvinism is on the decline?
Logic it can stand; but human nature thus excited in opposition,
it cannot stand. Hence, throughout our vast assembly
to-day, this unpopular ism, in spite of Calvin and the
Epistle to the Romans, was put down; if not by acclamation,
yet by exclamation,—by shouting,—by roaring,—by
groaning and hissing,—by clapping and stamping,—by
laughing, and crying, and whining; and thus the end of the
sermon was gained and the preacher glorified!
The introductory discourse in the afternoon was by the
Rev. Remarkable Novus. This was a gentleman I had
and he was a Christian in sentiment and feeling: for though
properly and decidedly a warm friend to his own sect, he
was charitably disposed towards myself and others that differed
from him ecclesiastically. His talents were moderate;
but his voice was transcendentally excellent. It
was rich, deep, mellow, liquid and sonorous, and capable
of any inflections. It could preserve its melody in an un-ruffled
flow, at a pitch far beyond the highest point reached
by the best cultivated voices. His fancy, naturally capricious,
was indulged without restraint; yet not being a learned
or well-read man, he mistook words for ideas, and hence
employed without stint all the terms in his vocabulary for
the commonest thoughts. He believed, too, like most of
his brotherhood, that excitement and agitation were necessary
to conversion and of the essence of religion; and this,
with a proneness to delight in the music and witchery of
his own wonderful voice, made Mr. Novus an eccentric
preacher, and induced him often to excel at camp-meetings,
the very extravagances of his clerical brethren, whom
more than once he has ridiculed and condemned at my
fireside.
The camp-meeting was, in fact, too great a temptation
for my friend's temperament, and the very theatre for the
full display of his magnificent voice; and naturally, this
afternoon, off he set at a tangent, interrupting the current
of his sermon by extemporaneous bursts of warning, entreaty,
and exhortation. Here is something like his discourse—yet
done by me in a subdued tone—as, I repeat,
are most extravaganzas of the ecclesiastical and spiritual
sort not only here, but in all other parts of the work.
“My text, dear hearers,” said he, “on this auspicious,
and solemn, and heaven-ordered occasion, is that exhortation
of the inspired apostle, `Walk worthy of your vocation.'
“And what, my dear brethren, what do you imagine and
conjecture our holy penman meant by `walking?' Think
ye he meant a physical walking, and a moving, and a going
backward and forward thus?—(represented by Mr. N.'s
proceeding, or rather marching, a là militaire, several times
from end to end of the staging.)—No! sirs!—it was not a
literal walking and locomotion, a moving and agitating of
the natural legs and limbs. No! sirs!—no!—but it was a
moral, a spiritual, a religious, ay! yes! a philosophical
and metaphorically figurative walking, our holy apostle
meant!
“Philosophic, did I say? Yes: philosophic did I say.
For religion is the most philosophical thing in the universe
—ay! throughout the whole expansive infinitude of the
divine empire. Tell me, deluded infidels and mistaken
unbelievers! tell me, ain't philosophy what's according to
the consistency of nature's regular laws? and what's more
consentaneous and homogeneous to man's sublimated moral
nature than religion? Yes! tell me! Yes! yes! I am
for a philosophical religion, and a philosophical religion is
for me—ay! we are mutually made and formed for this
beautiful reciprocality!
“And yet some say we make too much noise—even
some of our respected Woodville merchants—(meaning the
author.)—But what's worth making a noise about in the
dark mundane of our terrestrial sphere, if religion ain't?
People always, and everywhere in all places, make most
noise about what they opine to be most precious. See!
you banner streaming with golden stars and glorious stripes
over congregated troops on the fourth of July, that ever-memorable—that
never-to-be-forgotten day, which celebrates
the grand annual aniversary of our nation's liberty
and independence! when our forefathers and ancestors
burst asunder and tore forever off the iron chains of political
thraldom! and arose in plenitude, ay! in the magnnificence
yes! and hurled down dark despotism from the lofty pinnacle
of its summit altitude, where she was seated on her
liberty-crushing throne, and hurled her out of her iron
chariot as her wheels thundered over the prostrate slaves
of power! — (Amen! — hallelujah!) — Yes!—hark!—we
make a noise about that! But what's civil liberty to religious
liberty, and emancipated disenthraldom from the dark
despotism of yonder terrific prince of darkness! whose
broad, black, piniony wings spread wide o'er the aërial
concave, like a dense cloud upon a murky sky?—(A-a-men!)—And
ain't it, ye men of yards and measures, philosophical
to make a noise about this?—(Amen!—yes!)
—Yes! yes! and I ain't ashamed to rejoice and shout
aloud. Ay! as long as the prophet was ordered to stamp
with his foot, I will stamp with my foot;—(here he stamped
till the platform trembled for its safety,)—and to smite
with his hand, I will smite with my hand—(slapping alternate
hands on alternate thighs.)—Yes! and I will shout
too!—and cry aloud and spare not—glory! for—ever!—
(and here his voice rang out like the sweet, clear tones of
a bugle.)
“And, therefore, my dear sisters and brethren, let us
walk worthy of our vocation; not with the natural legs of
the physical corporation, but in the apostolical way, with
the metaphysical and figurative legs of the mind,—(here
Mr. N. caught some one smiling.)—Take care, sinner,
take care! curl not the scornful nose—I'm willing to be a
fool for religion's sake—but turn not up the scornful nose
—do its ministers no harm! Sinner! mark me!—in yon
deep and tangled grove, where tall aspiring trees wave
green and lofty heads in the free air of balmy skies—there,
sinner, an hour ago, when the sonorous horn called on our
embattled hosts to go to private prayer! an hour ago, in
yonder grove I knelt and prayed for you!—(hooh!)—yes!
he promised me one!—(Glory! glory!—ah! give him
one!)—Laughing sinner!—take care!—I'll have you!—
(Grant it—amen!—ooohoo!) Look out, I'm going to fire!
—(assuming the attitude of rifle-shooting)—bang!—may
He send that through your heart!—may it pierce clean
home through joints and marrow!—and let all the people
say Amen!—(and here amen was said, and not in the tame
style of the American Archbishop of Canterbury's cathedral,
be assured; but whether the spiritual bullet hit the
chap aimed at, I never learned; if it did, his groans were
inaudible in the alarming thunder of that Amen.)
“Ay! ay! that's way! that's the way! don't be
ashamed of your vocation—that's the way to walk and let
your light shine! Now some wise folks despise light and
call for miracles: but when we can't have one kind of light,
let us be philosophical and take another. For my part,
when I'm bogging about these dark woods, far away in the
silent sombre shadows, I rejoice in sunshine; and would
prefer it of choice rather than all other celestial and translucent
luminaries: but when the gentle fanning zephyrs
of the shadowy night breathe soft among the trembling
leaves and sprays of the darkening forests, then I rejoice in
moonshine: and when the moonshine dims and pales away
with the waning silvery queen of heaven in her azure zone, I
look up to the blue concave of the circular vault and rejoice
in star light. No! no! NO! any light!—give us any light
rather than none!—(Ah, do, good Lord!) Yes! yes! we
are the light of the world, and so let us let our light
shine, whether sunshine, or moonshine, or star light!—
(oohoo!)—and then the poor benighted sinner, bogging
about this terraqueous, but dark and mundane sphere, will
have a light like a pole star of the distant north, to point
and guide him to the sun-lit climes of yonder world of
bright and blazing bliss!”—(A-a-a-amen!)
Such is part of the sermon. His concluding prayer ended
thus:—(Divine names omitted.)
“Oh! come down! come, come down! down! now!—
to-night!—do wonders then! come down in might! come
down in power! let salvation roll! Come down! come!
and let the earthquaking mighty noise of thy thundering
chariot wheels be heard and felt and seen and experienced
in the warring elements of our spiritualized hearts!”
During the prayer, many petitions and expressions were
so rapturously and decidedly encored, that our friend kindly
repeated them; and sometimes, like public singers, with
handsome variations: and many petitions by amateur
zealots were put forth, without any notice of the current
prayer offered by Mr. N, yet evidently having in view
some elegancy of his sermon. And not a few petitions, I
regret to say, seemed to misapprehend the drift and scope
of the preacher. One of this sort was the earnest ejaculations
of an old and worthy brother, who in a hollow, sepulchral,
and rather growly voice, bellowed out in a very
beautiful part of the grand prayer—“Oohhoo! take away
moonshine!”
But our finest performance was to be at night: and at
the first toot of the tin horn, we assembled in expectation of
a “good time.” For 1. All day preparation had been
making for the night; and the actors seemed evidently in
restraint as in mere rehearsal: 2. the night suits better displays
and scenes of any kind: but 3. the African was to
preach; and rumour had said, “he was a most powerful big
preacher that could stir up folks mighty quick, and use up
the ole feller in less than no time.”
After prefatory prayers and hymns, and pithy exhortations
by several brothers of the Circassian breed, our
dusky divine, the Rev. Mizraim Ham, commenced his
sermon, founded on the duel between David and Goliath.
This discourse we shall condense into a few pages; although
and relaxed the muscles)—required for its entire
action a full hour. There was, indeed, a prologue; but
the rest was mainly dialogue, in which Mr. Ham wonderfully
personated all the different speakers, varying his tone,
manner, attitude, &c, as varying characters and circumstances
demanded. We fear much of the spirit has evaporated
in this condensation; but that evil is unavoidable.
REV. MIZRAIM HAM'S DISCOURSE.
“Bruthurn and sisturn, tention, if you pleases, while I
want you for to understand this here battul most purtiklur
'zact, or may be you moughtn't comprend 'um. Furst place,
I'm gwyin to undevur to sarcumscribe fust the 'cashin of this
here battul: second place, the 'comdashins of the armies:
third place, the folkses as was gwyin for to fite and
didn't want to, and some did: and last and fourth place,
I'm gwyin for to show purtiklur 'zact them as fit juul, and git
victry and git kill'd.
“Tention, if you please, while I fustly sarcumscribe
the 'casion of this here battul. Bruthurn and sisturn, you
see them thar hethun Fillystines, what warnt circumcised,
they wants to ketch King Sol and his 'ar folks for to make
um slave: and so they cums down to pick a quorl, and
begins a totin off all their cawn, and wouldn't 'low um to
make no hoes to ho um, nor no homnee. And that 'ar, you
see, stick in King Solsis gizurd; and he ups and says, says
he, `I'm not gwying to be used up that 'ar away by them
uncircumcis'd hethun Fillystines, and let um tote off our
folkses cawn to chuck to thar hogs, and take away our
hoes so we can't hoe um—and so, Jonathun, we'll drum
up and list soljurs and try um a battul.' And then King
Sol and his 'ar folks they goes up, and the hethun and
theirn comes down and makes war. And this is the 'cashin
why they fit.
“Tention 'gin, if you pleases, I'm gwyin in the next
which was so fashin like. The Fillystines they had thar
army up thar on a mounting, and King Sol he had hissin
over thar, like across a branch, amoss like that a one thar—
(pointing)—and it was chuck full of sling rock all along on
the bottom. And so they was both on um camp'd out; this
a one on this 'ar side, and tother a one on tother, and the
lilly branch tween um—and them's the comdashins.
“Tention once more agin, as 'caze next place thirdly I'm
a gwyin to give purtiklur 'zact 'count of sum folkses what
fit and sum didn't want to. And, lubly sinnahs, maybe
you minds um, as how King Sol and his soljurs was pepper
hot for fite when he fust liss um; but now, lubly sinnahs,
when they gits up to the Fillystines, they cool off mighty
quick, I tell you! 'Caze why? I tell you; why, 'caze a
grate, big, ugly ole jiunt, with grate big eyes, so fashin—
(Mr. Ham made giant's eyes here)—he kums a rampin out
afrunt o' them 'ar rigiments, like the ole devul a gwyin
about like a half-starv'd lion a seeking to devour poor lubly
sinnahs! And he cum a jumpin and a tearin out so fashin—
(actions to suit)—to git sum of King Solsis soljurs to fite
um juul: and King Sol, lubly bruthurn and sisturn, he gits
sker'd mighty quick, and he says to Jonathun and tother
big officers, says he—`I ain't a gwyin for to fite that grate
big fellah.' And arter that they ups and says—`We ain't
a gwyin for to fite um nuthur, 'caze he's all kiver'd with
sheetirun, and his head's up so high we muss stand a hoss
back to reach um!'—the jiunt he was so big!!
“And then King Sol he quite down in the jaw, and he
turn and ax if somebody wouldn't hunt up a soljur as would
fite juul with um; and he'd give um his dawtah, the prinsuss,
for wife, and make um king's son-in-law. And then one ole
koretur, they call him Abnah, he comes up and say to Sol so:
`Please your majuste, sir, I kin git a young fellah to fite um,'
says he. And Abnah tells how Davy had jist rid up in his
and how he heern Davy a quorl'n with his bruthurs and a
wantun to fite the jiunt. Then King Sol, he feel mighty
glad, I tell you, sinnahs, and he make um bring um up, and
King Sol he begins a talkin so, and Davy he answers
so:—
“`What's your name, lilly fellah?'
“`I was krissen'd Davy.'
“`Whose your farder?'
“`They call um Jesse.'
“`What you follur for livin?'
“`I tend my farder's sheep.'
“`What you kum arter? Ain't you affeerd of that 'ar
grate ugly ole jiunt up thar, lilly Davy?'
“`I kum to see arter my udder brudurs, and bring um
in our carruge some cheese and muttun, and some clene
shirt and trowsur, and have tother ones wash'd. And when
I kum I hear ole Goliawh a hollerin out for somebody to
cum and fite juul with um: and all the soljurs round thar
they begins for to make traks mighty quick, I tell you, please
your majuste, sir, for thar tents; but, says I, what you run for?
I'm not a gwyin for to run away—if King Sol wants some
body for to fite the jiunt, I'll fit um for um.'
“`I mighty feerd, lilly Davy, you too leetul for um—'
“`No! King Sol, I kin lick um. One day I gits asleep
ahind a rock, and out kums a lion and a bawr, and begins a
totin off a lilly lam; and when I heern um roarin and
and pawin 'bout, I rubs my eyes and sees um gwyin to
the mountings—and I arter and ketch'd up and kill um both
without no gun nor sword—and I bring back poor lilly lam.
I kin lick ole Goliawh, I tell you, please your majuste, sir.'
“Then King Sol he wery glad, and pat um on the head,
and calls um `lilly Davy,' and wants to put on um his own
armur made of brass and sheetirun, and to take his sword,
but Davy didn't like um, but said he'd trust to his sling.
brings me to the fourth and last diwishin of our surmun.
“Tention once more agin' for lass time, as I'm gwyin to
give most purtikurlust 'zactest 'count of the juul atween
lilly Davy and ole Goliawh the jiunt, to show, lubly sinnah!
how the Lord's peepul without no carnul gun nor sword, can
fite ole Bellzybub and knock um over with the sling rock
of prayer, as lilly Davy knock over Goliawh with hissin
out of the Branch.
“And to 'lusterut the juul and make um spikus, I'll show
'zactly how they talk'd, and jawd, and fit it all out: and so
ole Goliawh when he see Davy a kumun, he hollurs out so,
and lilly Davy he say back so:—
“What you kum for, lilly Jew?—”
“What I kum for! you'll find out mighty quick, I tell
you—I kum for fite juul—”
“Huhh! huhh! haw!—'tink I'm gwyin to fite puttee
lilly baby? I want king Sol or Abnah, or a big soljur
man—”
“Hole your jaw—I'll make you laugh tother side, ole
grizzle-gruzzle, 'rectly,—I'm man enough for biggust jiunt
Fillystine.”
“Go way, poor lilly boy! go home, lilly baby, to your
mudder, and git sugar plum—I no want kill puttee lilly
boy—”
“Kum on!—dont be afeerd!—dont go for to run away!
—I'll ketch you and lick you—”
“You d—n leetul raskul—I'll kuss you by all our gods
—I'll cut out your sassy tung[19]
—I'll break your blackguard
jaw,—I'll rip you up and give um to the dogs and crows—”
“Dont kuss so, ole Golly! I 'sposed you wanted to fite
juul—so kum on with your old irun-pot hat on—you'll git
belly full mighty quick—”
“You nasty leetul raskul, I'll kum and kill you dead as
chopped sassudge.”
Here the preacher represented the advance of the parties;
and gave a florid and wonderfully effective description
of the closing act partly by words and partly by
pantomime; exhibiting innumerable marches and counter-marches
to get to windward, and all the postures, and
gestures, and defiances, till at last he personated David
putting his hand into a bag for a stone:—and then making
his cotton handkerchief into a sling, he whirled it with
fury half a dozen times around his head, and then let fly
with much skill at Goliath; and at the same instant halloing
with the phrenzy of a madman—“Hurraw! for lilly
Davy!” At that cry he, with his left hand, struck himself a
violent slap on the forehead, to represent the blow of the
sling stone litting the giant; and then in person of Goliath
he droped quasi dead upon the platform amid the deafening
plaudits of the congregation; all of whom, some spiritually,
some sympathetically, and some carnally, took up the
preacher's triumph shout—
“Hurraw! for lilly Davy.”
How the Rev. Mizraim Ham made his exit from the
boards I could not see—perhaps he rolled or crawled off.
But he did not suffer decapitation, like “ole Golly:”
since, in ten minutes, his woolly pate suddenly popped up
among the other sacred heads that were visible over the
front railing of the rostrum, as all kept moving to and fro
in the wild tossings of religious phrenzy.
Scarcely had Mr. Ham fallen at his post, when a venerable
old warrior, with matchless intrepidity, stepped into
the vacated spot; and without a sign of fear carried on the
contest against the Arch Fiend, whose great ally had been
so recently overthrown—i. e. Goliath, (not Mr. Ham.) Yet
excited, as evidently was this veteran, he still could not
forego his usual introduction stating how old he was;
he had been a preacher; how many miles he had travelled
in a year; and when he buried his wife:—all of which
edifying truths were received with the usual applauses of
a devout and enlightened assembly. But this introduction
over; (which did not occupy more than fifteen or twenty
minutes,) he began his attack in fine style, waxing louder
and louder as he proceeded, till he exceeded all the old
gentlemen to “holler” I ever heard, and indeed old ladies
either.
EXTRACT FROM HIS DISCOURSE.
“— — — Yes, sinners! you'll all have to fall
and be knock'd down some time or nuther, like the great
giant we've heern tell on, when the Lord's sarvints come
and fight agin you! Oho! sinner! sinner—oh!—I hope
you may be knock'd down to night—now!—this moment—
and afore you die and go to judgment! Yes! oho! yes!
oh!—I say judgment—for it's appinted once to die and then
the judgment—oho! oh! And what a time ther'll be then!
You'll see, all these here trees—and them 'are stars, and
yonder silver moon a fire!—and all the alliments a meltin
and runnin down with fervent heat-ah!”—(I have elsewhere
stated that the unlearned preachers out there (?) are by the
vulgar—[not the poor]— but the vulgar, supposed to be
more favoured in preaching than man-made preachers; and
that the sign of an unlearned preacher's inspiration being
in full blast is his inhalations, which puts an ah! to the
end of sentences, members, words, and even exclamations,
till his breath is all gone, and no more can be sucked in)—
“Oho! hoah! fervent heat-ah!—and the triumpit a soundinah!—and
the dead arisin-ah!—and all on us a flyin-ah!—to
be judged-ah!—Oohoah! sinner—sinner—sinner-ah! And
what do I see away tharah!—down the Massissipp-ah!—
thar's a man jist done a killin-ah!—another-ah!—and up he
the East-ah! where proud folks live clothed in purple ah!
and fine linen-ah!—I see 'em round a table a drinkin a
decoction of Indian herb-ah!—and up they go with cups in
thar hands-ah! and see—ohoah!—see! in yonder doggery
some a dancin-ah! and a fiddlin-ah!—and up they
go-ah! with cards ah! and fiddle-ah!” &c. &c.
Here the tempest around drowned the voice of the old
hero: although, from the frantic violence of his gestures,
the frightful distortion of his features, and the Pythonic
foam of his mouth, he was plainly blazing away at the
enemy. The uproar, however, so far subsided as to allow
my hearing his closing exhortation, which was this:
“—Yes I say—fall down—fall down all of you, on
your knees!—shout!—cry aloud!—spare not!—stamp
with the fool!—smite with the hand!—down! down!—
that's it!—down brethren!—down preachers!—down sisters!—pray
away!—take it by storm!—fire away! fire
away! not one at a time! not two together-ah!—a single
shot the devil will dodge-ah!—give it to him all at once—
fire a whole pla'oon!—at him!!”
And then such platoon firing as followed! If Satan
stood that, he can stand much more than the worthy folks
thought he could. And, indeed, the effect was wonderful!
—more than forty thoughtless sinners that came for fun,
and twice as many backsliders were instantly knocked
over!—and there all lay, some with violent jerkings and
writhings of body, and some uttering the most piercing
and dismaying shrieks and groans! The fact is, I was
nearly knocked down myself—
“You?—Mr. Carlton!!”
Yes,—indeed—but not by the hail of spiritual shot falling
so thick around me: it was by a sudden rush towards
my station, where I stood mounted on a stump. And this
rush was occasioned by a wish to see a stout fellow
and praying, and yet kicking and pummelling away as if
scuffling with a sturdy antagonist. Near him were several
men and women at prayer, and one or more whispering
into his ear; while on a small stump above, stood a person
superintending the contest, and so as to ensure victory to the
right party. Now the prostrate man, who like a spirited
tom-cat seemed to fight best on his back, was no other than
our celebrated New Purchase bully—Rowdy Bill! And
this being reported through the congregation, the rush had
taken place by which I was so nearly overturned. I contrived,
however, to regain my stand shared indeed, now,
with several others, we hugging one another and standing
on tip-toes and our necks elongated as possible; and thus
we managed to have a pretty fair view of matters.
About this time the Superintendent in a very loud voice
cried out,—“Let him alone, brothers! let him alone sisters!
—keep on praying!—its a hard fight—the devil's got a
tight grip yet! He don't want to lose poor Bill—but he'll
let go soon—Bill's gittin the better on him fast!—Pray
away!”
Rowdy Bill, be it known, was famous as a gouger, and
so expert was he in his antioptical vocation, that in a few
moments he usually bored out an antagonist's eyes, or made
him cry peccavi. Indeed, could he, on the present occasion,
have laid hold of his unseen foe's head, (spiritually
we mean,) he would (figuratively of course) soon have
caused him to ease off or let go entirely his metaphorical
grip. So, however, thought one friend in the assembly—
Bill's wife. For Bill was a man after her own heart; and
she often said that “with fair play she sentimentally allowed
her Bill could lick are a man in the 'varsal world,
and his weight in wild cats to boot.” Hence, the kind
hearted creature, hearing that Bill was actually fighting
with the devil, had pressed in from the outskirts to see fair
undermost, and above all, the words of the superintendent,
declaring that the fiend had a tight grip of the poor
fellow, her excitement would no longer be controlled; and,
collecting her vocal energies, she screamed out her common
exhortation to Bill, and which, when heeded, had
heretofore secured him immediate victories—“Gouge him,
Billy!—gouge him, Billy!—gouge him!”
This spirited exclamation was instantly shouted by Bill's
cronies and partisans—mischievously, maybe, for we have
no right to judge of men's motives, in meetings:—but a
few, (friends doubtless of the old fellow,) cried out in a
very irreverent tone—“Bite him! devil—bite him! Upon
which, the faithful wife, in a tone of voice that beggars description,
reiterated her—“Gouge him,” &c.—in which
she was again joined by her husband's allies, and that to
the alarm of his invisible foe; for Bill now rose to his
knees, and on uttering some mystic jargon symptomatic of
conversation, he was said to have “got religion;”—and
then all his new friends and spiritual guides united in fresh
prayers and shouts of thanksgiving.
It was now very late at night; and joining a few other
citizens of Woodville, we were soon in our saddles and
buried in the darkness of the forest. For a long time,
however, the uproar of the spiritual elements at the camp
continued at intervals to swell and diminish on the hearing;
and, often came a yell that rose far above the united din of
other screams and outcries. Nay, at the distance of
nearly two miles, could be distinguished a remarkable and
sonorous oh!—like the faintly heard explosion of a mighty
elocutional class practising under a master. And yet
my comrades, who had heard this peculiar cry more than
once, all declared that this wonderful oh-ing was performed
by the separate voice of our townsman, Eolus Letherlung,
Esq.!
At length the din died sullenly away, like the indistinct
mutter of a retiring hurricane! But for that night and the
next day, the scenes and cries of the camp were vivid before
my eyes and ringing in my ears; and more than once,
in night dreams, appeared Rowdy Bill dressed in his wife's
cap and short-gown, and standing on the breast of Goliath;
while near stood a dwarf negro with two heads, flourishing
in his hand a corn-hoe, and crying from both his mouths—
“Gouge him! Billy, gouge him!”
Next day, (as I was told by an eye-witness and in triumph.)
the new converts, amounting to more than two hundred!!
were all paraded and marched around the campgrounds,
under the appellation of “virgins following the
Lamb!”—after which, they were enrolled and acknowledged
as “trophies snatched from Satan!” It being impossible,
therefore, to gainsay facis, I was constrained, spite of
my latent hostility to certain Big Meetings, to acknowledge
to my friend, who insisted on my immediate and honest
answer, to acknowledge that:—
A camp-meeting was, all things considered, the very
best contrivance and means for making the largest number
of converts in the shortest possible time; and also for enlarging
most speedily the bounds of a Church Visible and
Militant.
Candour obliges me to say these “allowings” and predictions
were true—the devil did seem to be out there in pretty great force. I
cannot say so positively about his defeats.
If folks like the “New Purchase,” we shall write “The Old
Purchase”—in which work things in here will receive justice.
A man may make a fool of himself in worship in a Christian land,
and be deemed a saint; when he does so in Pagan worship, we call
him a sinner. Six of one and so forth.
We substitute words in place of the divine names—irreverently
used often in sermons and prayers.
49. CHAPTER XLIX.
“Love laughs at locksmiths!”
Our present chapter treats of love and matrimony.
Doubtless it has occurred to the reader, that John Glenville
is yet a bachelor and ought to be looking out for a
wife. Now, although John was never overhead and ears
in love, he yet was always falling into it—knee deep at
least; but as yet, he had never found anybody for help-meet,
though several were disposed to be help-mates.
My friend had, indeed, often gone “a gallin” among our
log-cabin beauties; and sometimes received answers so
serious to his sportive questions as to make his backing out
very difficult and ungraceful. For instance, he once accompanied
Peggy home from a night meeting; and on
reaching the cabin she paused a moment by the wood pile,
when John playfully said:
“Well, Peggy, I've a notion to go in and court awhile,
what do you say to it?”
“Well—maybe you mought and maybe you moughtn't—”
“Why? has anybody cut me out?”
“Hey?!”
“Perhaps somebody else is gallin down here?”
“Prehaps thar is, and prehaps thar isn't.”
“Awh! come Peggy do tell me.”
Here Peggy looked down in some perplexity, as balancing
uncertainties, and after kicking up a large heap of chips
with the toe of her shoe, she seemed to have arrived at
modestly answered:—
“Well! John—I'm a kinder sorter courted like, and a
kinder sorter not like,—but I'm more a kinder sorter not,
nor a kinder sorter—and I allow you'd better step in and
see daddy; tain't late—although mammy's in bed.”
Of course, John got out as awkwardly as we end his adventure.
But once Glenville was caught more effectually and
much more to his surprise; and yet, he backed out with
some ingenuity. The lady, however, had ultimately her
revenge. He was on a visit of business in an adjoining
state, when he was invited by the celebrated Mr. Brown to
spend a few days at his house. Here he became naturally
interested in Miss Brown, the daughter—a young lady of
some beauty, of much good nature, of good talents, and mistress
of many useful acquirements beside several ornamental
branches.
In an unguarded moment, John sportively popped the
question, or rather popped at the question, by wondering
how Miss B. would like to live in a cabin with such a
Hoosier as himself; to which Paddy's hint, Miss B. too
seriously intimated that Mr. G. had better consult her
father on such points. Now, generous reader, Glenville
was by no means ready to forsake father and mother at that
time; and the cabin alluded to, was so open and unchincked,
that poverty could easily enough have crept in all around,
and love gone flying out through an hundred crevices in addition
to the doors and window. In plain English, the
fellow was too poor to ask any woman to share his poverty;
unless she belonged to the Range, was used “to
chinkin and daubin, and to makin huntin shirts and lether
brichis:” hence after musing on the affair the whole night,
he seized an opportunity the next morning of renewing
with Miss B. the colloquy of the previous afternoon. In
rude cabin and his half hunter's life, and the privations and
sufferings to which such a man's wife would necessarily
be subjected; and then, with some ingenuity, (certainly
with some boldness,) he wished to know if such a man
ought to ask any kind parent, in affluent circumstances, to
send away an amiable and beloved daughter.
To his relief, Miss B., with a slight betrayal of surprise,
—(John said “mortification,”)—agreed with him; but after
this his situation was so awkward, that he left Mr. Brown's
mansion that very day. Here, therefore, is another proof
that some things can be done as well as others; and while
this affair is not quite so odd as that of Deerslayer and
Judith, yet it shows the difference between truth and fiction.
Well, the present winter, Glenville being often on visits
to Woodville, and circumstances existing to alter cases,
we frequently rallied the bachelor on his courtships; and
more than once, in full assembly, voted that he must and
should forthwith go and find a wife. To all this, he opposed
the stale replies, that he was too old now—could
find nobody to suit him—and that such as would suit would
not have him,—till at last he consented, if I could find the
proper person, and persuade her to have him, he would
marry.
Accordingly, one night after such a discussion, Glenville
and myself sat alone by the fire, when the following talk
went on in continuation of the subject:—
“But, Glenville, are you really serious?”
“Yes, Carlton, I am really serious.”
“Still, you would not marry if you did not love?”
“Well—I'm not quite so sure there. At all events, I
shall easily love any girl you will choose—especially if
you choose Miss Brown.”
“Come, John, be candid—did you ever truly love her?”
“More, perhaps, than I ever loved any one before, or
ever shall again.”
“And why did you back out so foolishly?”
“For the very reasons I have a thousand times told you.
I was too poor—my home too utterly dreary to take such
a girl to—and if I had ever dreamed my jesting manner
would have been mistaken, I should have been far enough
from trifling with her —”
“Suppose she had seemed willing next morning?”
“I would have consulted her father, unquestionably—
but for the daughter's sake, I should have regretted his
consent.”
“Well, Glenville, what do you say to Miss Smythe?—
I think she feels tender towards you.”
“She would do:—and with a little practice I should love
her as well as most men love their wives. But Carlton,
the Squire has been cutting round there the last six months,
and —”
“No odds—suppose you try?”
“Willingly, if I thought there was any chance; but, in
the first place, maybe she's engaged—next, maybe she
might not want me—and so I do not like to lose my time
and run risk, and —”
“Tut! tut!—you need not waste any time; for I'll write
a love-letter for you; and as to the other objection, I'll bet
a coon skin you're too modest, and the girl, if disengaged,
will have you.”
“Carlton!—will you write such a letter? If you will,
I'll deliver it.”
“Done!—and I'll write you as many more as you like.”
“Suppose, then, you do another for Miss Brown? and
so I shall have two snaps.”
“Agreed—when shall I do them?”
“Any time between this and next Saturday. I shall be
tired, let's go to bed.”
The two letters were duly concocted, the first one to be
delivered to Miss Smythe,[20]
the other, in case of the first
failing, was to be sent to Miss Brown; but if Miss S. was
disengaged and smiled propitious, John was, to all intents
and purposes, a married man; and Miss Brown was to have
no opportunity of revenge.
The letter for Miss Smythe was as follows:—
“A knowledge of your character, derived from mutual
friends, from the opinion of all your acquaintances, and also
from a somewhat intimate personal acquaintance, induces
me to believe that such a lady would fill the vacancy in my
domestic establishment most perfectly and delightfully:—
although I am not vain enough to suppose Miss Smythe
will necessarily feel herself flattered by such a preference
on the part of the writer. As, however, Miss S. on better
acquaintance, might become interested in him—more so at
least than he fears she is at present—he very respectfully,
yet most carnestly, craves permission to pay his addresses
in person.
“But great admirer,
The letter to Miss Brown, or rather for her, as it was
addressed to the father, was this:—
“In a playful conversation on a subject so common when
unmarried persons meet, your daughter, Miss Brown, in a
to her father—as his choice would always be hers.
What was jest with her, with me would have become very
solemn earnest, had I had then to offer any thing beyond
my hand and my heart, to induce such a girl to leave such
a home. Happily, circumstances are now favourably altered;
and willingly now would I ask that father for his
daughter could I flatter myself the daughter could be induced
to gladden and adorn a hearth, which, however
warm in one sense, must be yet cold and cheerless without
the love of a bosom friend. And such a friend would Miss
Brown prove:—and, dear sir, if you think such a match
suitable for your lovely daughter, I sincerely entreat the
communication of your favourable opinion to her in my behalf—hoping
that the daughter's choice then may be as the
father's.
“Your obedient servant,
On Saturday Glenville came; when after reading, criticising,
correcting, and laughing, he took copies of the letters;
it being arranged, that he put one in each coat pocket,
and on waiting next day on Miss Smythe from church, he
should, at a proper time, hand her the proper letter. And
all this he accordingly did, and with no greater blunder than
putting his hand into the Brown pocket, and pulling out the
wrong letter—which, if he had also delivered it to Miss
Smythe, would have made our book still more interesting
—but he fortunately corrected his error in time, and prevented
a very handsome laugh at our expense.
To save Miss S. the awkwardness of a special messenger,
and to avoid prying eyes at the post-office, Glenville,
on bowing adieu at the lady's door, stated that he would
call in person next morning for an answer. At that time,
of the answer, Glenville, with Miss Brown's letter in his
pocket, and anxious not to be too early for the lady's convenience,
nor too late for the ardent affection he intended
to have, marched off very bravely, looking back once or
twice and shaking his fist as he caught sight of our cachinating
faces.
Well, in due season he returned—but what pen or pencil
can give the odd expression of that face!
“Well, Glenville, what luck?”—(Can I ever forget the
peculiar intonation, emphasis, inflection of that answer?)
“Engaged!”
“Is it possible!—but if she had not been, what then?”
“Bah!—do you think I asked her?”
“Why not?—I should like to know what she thinks of
you.”
“Why not!!—in case she did not fancy me, was I going
to suffer a double refusal, when one is decisive?”
“Haw! ha! he![1]
but what have you done with Miss
Brown's letter?”
“Dropp'd it in the office as I came along; and there's
a chance for Miss Brown to have her revenge. Bet a
dollar she says no!”
The case of my friend was like that of the school boy,
who described his disappointment in a composition, which
we shall here introduce to fill up the time till the return
mail.
“COMPOSITION ON HUNTING.”
“The other morning I went out a hunting with father's
duck-gun what he brung out from Kentucky; but as I
had no luck, I allowed I might as well put off for home;
and so I turn about and goes towards home. As I come to
top of a dead walnut, but a black crow! And so I makes
up my mind to try and hit him. The critter was more nor
three hundred yards from me; but I insinuates myself along
as near as two hundred yards to the feller; when he begins
a showing signs of flittin: and so I trees where I was in a
minute. Well, I determines to try him there, although
'twas near as good as desperut to try a black crow that
distance with a shot-gun; although father's duck-gun's
the most powerful shot-gun in the Purchis. Howsomdever,
I wanted the load out; and I thought I might as
well fire that a way as any other—and so up I draws the
piece very careful, and begins a takin aim, thinking all the
while I shouldn't hit him: still I tuk the most exactest aim,
as if I should; when just then he hops about two foot
nearer my way, as if to get a look round my tree, where he
smelt powder—and then, thinking all the time, as I said, I
shouldn't hit him, as the distance was so most powerful
fur, I blazed away!—and sure enough, as I'm alive—I
didn't hit him!”
Now Glenville, from the distance of his second shot, insisted
he should never hit: yet how near he came may be
conjectured from the following replies to his epistle:—
* * * * * * and the inclosed
from my daughter, to whom was handed your late communication,
contains, I presume, the most satisfactory answer,
* * * * and * * *
Now, this sentence in the envelope containing a sealed
letter from Miss Brown, brought “the crow about two feet
nearer;” and John's eyes began to sparkle, although he
—“No!”
“I honour you for honesty, as I am satisfied you assign
true reasons for not taking one to share your home; although
the reasons themselves can never seem satisfactory where
one was willing to share another's heart. For, like most
girls in their days of romance, that one cared to find only a
heart when she married. As my own home is sufficiently
comfortable, there can be no inducement to wish another,
however comfortable, in the New Purchase; and where its
owner seems to think `altered circumstances' are important
in winning a woman's love. But to show that kindness is
estimated that would spare my delicacy, by leading my dear
father to think all our conversation had been sportive, I do
hereby most cordially—(here John looked! oh! I tell you
what!)—invite you to our Christmas festivities, when the
writer changes her name from Mary Brown to Mary Burleigh.”
“There, Carlton! I told you so—I said it would be—
no! And yet secretly did I wish,—ay! I do wish it now
—that the answer could be—yes! I am glad the girl has
her revenge; but still I have known too many hard-ships
not to feel happy in the reflection, that one I did love
a little, and could now love a great deal, has never been
called to share them.”
And so after all, reader, our chapter ends without a wedding!
proving how hard it is to get an old bachelor married.
Another year we may, perhaps, be more successful.
| The new purchase, or, Seven and a half years in the far West | |