 | The American lounger, or, Tales, sketches, and legends, gathered in sundry journeyings |  |
THE LAST OF THE WHIPS;
OR,
FOUR-IN-HAND versus LOCOMOTIVE.
IN TWO PARTS.
1. PART I.
“All in!” cried the stage agent, as he turned the handle
of the door. The coachman or “driver,” as he
is denominated in the parlance of New-England, till
this announcement had been listlessly seated upon his
box, with a half-smoked long-nine projecting from his
lips. He now gathered up the ribands in the palm of
his left hand, shook them slightly, and with an air professional,
settling himself the while with a forward inclination
of his body more firmly upon his seat. Drawing
them through his fingers, till he ascertained to his
satisfaction that they “pulled” upon the bits of his
four-in-hand equally and uniformly, he took his long
whip, constructed of an oaken staff, some five feet in
length, to which appertained a lash nearly twice as
long, flourished this “baton,” of his station scientifically,
and with the grace of a professeur three or
four times around his head, winding up with a loud
report of the snapper close to the ears of the leaders.
“T—t—t! cam! accompanied this startling salutation
to his favorite barbs, and away they sprung, tossing
their slender heads into the air, and flinging out
their fore legs wide, their hoofs clattering upon the
rattling of the wheels, the loud crack of the lash,
which, with reiterated reports, still played skilfully
about their heads and flanks, and the encouraging interjections
of the coachman, momently infusing additional
fire into the spirited animals. In a few moments
we had left the town, (for Providence, in 1832,
dear reader, was under the good old-fashioned patriarchal
government of select men, modest and unassuming
the honors of mayor and corporation,) and
were flying over the smooth turnpike, which was the
only line of communication either for the mail or travellers
between that place and Boston. This route in
the day of improvement is superseded by the railroad,
on which travellers are transported in two hours over
a section of country, which, three years ago, consumed
from six to seven. The day was delightful. The sun
was warm, but not oppressive. It was late in the
month of July, and nature was arrayed in her loveliest
apparel. I had taken my seat by the side of the
“driver,” to obtain a prospect of the finely cultivated
country through which our route lay, and draw upon
him for information respecting objects we passed. No
man should ever ride inside when he can ride outside!
This should be an axiom for all travellers. Preserve
me from immolation in a stage-coach on a dusty road
of a summer's day, nine passengers inside, with children
and bandboxes to fill up the interstices. If sins
are ever expiated in this life, such a mode of travelling
must speedily produce the complete absolution of
the most hardened transgressors.
My companion, the coachman, was a finely-formed,
athletic man, about five-and-twenty, with a handsome,
good-humored and benevolent countenance, a
merry twinkle in his clear blue eye and florid complexion,
with light-brown hair, curling about his forehead
and neck. He was dressed in light-green pantaloons
of corduroy velvet, and a short drab coat, adorned
and wore, a little depressed over his eyes, a white hat,
with a broad brim, encircled by a straw-colored riband.
On the seat lay his blue dreadnaught, or box-coat,
which served him as a cushion when fair, but in
which in cold or wet weather he comfortably enveloped
himself. We were rolling along through a finely-tilled
country, with farm-houses, black and moss-covered
with age, lining the road, the rich farms appertaining
to them spreading around in all the opulence
of waving grain, green pastures, with flocks and herds
—complete pictures of comfort and independence.
Rural happiness seemed to have made this her abiding-place,
with peace, plenty and repose dwelling
around her.
Invited by the good-natured physiognomy of the
coachman, I entered into conversation with him. He
was intelligent and communicative, and, like all New-Englanders,
in his station in society, with a good common
education. His information relating to the objects
on the way, was valuable. He was au fait respecting
any historical, or otherwise interesting event
associated with the surrounding scenery, through
which we were passing. In alluding to the subject
of the projected railroad, then in agitation, between
Boston and Providence, he remarked that it might be
beneficial to many, but it would inevitably ruin all
engaged in “staging.”
“For my part,” said he, “I don't know what I
should do if this line should be broken up. I have
been, some eight years next September, driving on this
route, and this is my only means of supporting my
family.”
“You are then married!”
“Yes, sir; I have been married five years and little
better, and have a little curly-headed rogue that knows
now almost as much as his father; and one of the prettiest
sir.”
I smiled at the naiveté with which he said this. He
detected the expression of my eye; and, coloring, he
shook the lines and cracked his whip—although his
team were doing their best over a level road—with a
report like a pistol in the ears of his bay leaders, and,
after a momentary pause, continued apologetically—
“Why, I didn't mean to flatter myself when I said
it was pretty, sir; although the neighbors do say it favors
its father.”
“I have no doubt that it is as lovely as you represent,”
I replied, “and that, nevertheless, it resembles
yourself.” I said this sincerely as I watched the
changes of his handsome, but sun-browned face, as
the pride of the father and husband, called up there-upon,
the finest expression of which the human face
divine is susceptible.
The shades of evening were falling around us, and
we had just commenced the ascent of a long hill
clothed with forest trees, which often overhung the
road, enveloping it in gloom.
The “driver” dropped his reins upon the back of
his team, permitting it to toil slowly and laboriously
to the summit. He was silent and musing, and his
thoughts were evidently with his wife and little ones;
for his features wore that mingled expression of sadness
and joy, which at twilight, will steal over the
face of the absent wanderer when the heart is present
with loved ones. The spell of twilight had fallen upon
my companion, and, in imagination, he was beside
his young wife, with his “little rogue” and lovely
babe upon his knee! Suddenly he turned, and looking
me full in the face, said respectfully and with interest—
“Are you married, sir, if I may be so bold?”
Poor fellow! he sought for sympathy! Alas, forlorn
biped that I was then, I had none to bestow!
“I am not,” I answered; “but I can picture the
bliss of nuptial life.”
“Allow me to say, sir, that you can never judge
rightly unless you do so from experience,” he interrupted
with some energy. “I have been married
about five years. I never knew what it was to be
happy and enjoy life till then. I have had more real
comfort in these five years, than in all my life before.
Oh, sir, if you could see how nicely I live; there's my
little cottage, just back from the road, almost hid in
the trees, its little flower-yard in front, which Mary—
that's my wife's name, sir—tends herself: and the garden
behind, which I cultivate myself when I am not
on the road. Oh, sir, if you could but see the sweet
smile with which Mary meets me when I get to the
house, the nice supper she sets for me, and hear her
tell how much she has missed me, and how often the
little prattlers have talked about `Pa.”'
The coachman became eloquent as he proceeded to
detail the individual features which conduced to the
perfection of his matrimonial felicity. The picture he
presented to my imagination, was glowing. The
goodness of heart and native nobility of character he
displayed in the recital, filled me with admiration,
while my heart warmed toward him. He spoke of
his early courtship—how Mary had refused wealtheir
suitors for him, her “dear Henry.” He discoursed of
her maternal and conjugal love: how she would weep
at a tale of sadness: mourn with the sorrowful and
rejoice with the mirthful. How she loved her children—nightly
kneeled by their bedside, and commended
them to the protection of her Heavenly Parent.
Of her piety he spoke long and ardently.
“Mary!” I mentally exclaimed, “thou art well
called MARY!”
The night had set in dark, and we were near the
end of the stage or route where we were to change
horses and driver. A little village was before us,
on the roadside. The horses flew forward with increased
speed; the wheels whirled rapidly along the
smooth pike, and loud and frequent were the reports
of the long lash in the air over the heads of the leaders.
We were entering the native village of my sentimental
and happy companion upon the coach box!
“Do you see that light, sir?” he inquired, with a
tone of pleasure. I looked in the direction indicated
with his whip. One light burned higher, brighter, and
more cheerfully than all the rest.
“That bright light is in Mary's window,” he said;
“she always sits there waiting for my return. Now,
sir, I will gladden her heart.”
As he spoke he drew his stage-horn from a “becket”
in which it hung, and placing it to his lips, blew
a long and cheerful blast. The horses, as if catching
inspiration from the sound, darted ahead with renewed
swiftness, and the next moment the coach
wheels were rattling merrily over the paved street of
the quiet village.
The stage rolled along through the avenue-like
street, and stopped before the principal hotel. The
driver dismounted, and surrendered his box to another,
a hard-featured stranger, with a harsh voice and
vulgar manners. I disliked him at once, and determined
to go no farther that night, for my curiosity was
roused to see more of my new friend.
“Coachman,” I said to him, “you have created an
interest in me; I wish to go with you to your house;
I should be gratified in witnessing your domestic
bliss.”
“Nothing would make me happier,” he replied; “I
was wishing to ask the honor of you, but was afraid
it would be too bold in me.”
“All ready, gentlemen!” cried the new coachman,
ascending to his box. “We are waiting for you, sir.”
“Pitch me my valise, driver; I shall go no farther
to-night!”
The valise, with a heavy sound, accompanied by
an oath from the driver, struck the gallery, and with a
flourish and crack of the whip, the stage rolled away
from the inn, leaving me standing beside my Benedict.
After having engaged a room for the night at the
inn, I was, in a few minutes, on my way to the cottage
of the happy husband; a quarter of a mile from
the inn we turned into a narrow and crooked lane, at the
termination of which a light gleamed steadily; a beacon
of love, guiding the married lover to his young
bride!
We had walked half way to the house when the
gate of the flower-garden was thrown open, and a
graceful female figure hastily advanced towards us.
Her white dress glanced in the moon, which was just
rising above the trees; our figures, at that moment,
were partly concealed, mine wholly so, in the shadow
of a venerable tree which overspread the path.
“Henry, is it you? Oh, I have been waiting for
you so long,” and she darted forward and threw herself
into his arms. “Two long days you have been
away, and I have been so lonely!” As she spoke she
drew back from his arms, which had encircled her; to
gaze into his face, her eyes full of love, when the form
of a stranger caught her eye. I was gazing upon her
fair face in undisguised admiration. Her beauty, softened
by the moonlight seemed angelic!
“Sir, I beg your pardon,” she said, while her blushing
brow was visible even in the moonlight. “Henry,
why didn't you tell me some one was with you?” she
added with playful reproof, half ashamed that a stranger's
eye should mark the fervor of her devotion to her
husband and lover.
We passed through the neat white gate along a
cottage, a simple, snow-white dwelling, adorned with
a humble portico, half hidden in honey-suckle and
woodbine. With courtesy, I was ushered into their
happy abode. A room on the right of the little hall
served the young and frugal housewife as sitting-room
and kitchen. The floors were snowy-white, the furniture
plain and neat. Simplicity and taste reigned
over every domestic arrangement. Under a small
mirror placed against the wall, stood a side-table spread
with a white cloth, on which was laid the evening
meal. There were two plates—for the wife had delayed
her meal. She would not partake without her
husband! The little ones had long before taken their
bread and milk, and were sweetly and soundly sleeping—“the
rogue” in a crib by the side of a bed visible
in an adjoining room—the infant in a cradle by the
table.
I partook with the happy pair of their evening
meal, which remained religiously untouched, after we
were seated, until the lovely wife sweetly and devotionally
sought the divine blessing upon it. After
supper the sleeping infant was placed in my arms by
the fond father. It was, indeed, a lovely child—a
sleeping cherub! The eldest, a chubby, rosy-cheeked
urchin of some four years' growth in mischief, was
also taken from the inner room and shown to me. It
was a beautiful curly-locked fellow, the miniature of
its father. I told him so, and he smiled delightedly;
while his charming wife's face beamed more happily
than if the compliment had been paid to herself. That
night, after kneeling with them around the family altar,
and listening to a petition from the lips of the
young husband, which, for its spirit of devotion and
humble faith, I have seldom known equalled, I returned
to my hotel, and laid my head upon my pillow a
happier and better man!
Alas! that my story must end as it will! If the
reader will be content with but one side of the shield,
let him glance only at the first part of this tale of real
life. The second is for him who will weigh human
life in a balance—who seeks for the knowledge both
of good and evil.
2. PART II.
On one of the loveliest afternoons of June last, I
stepped from the dusty pier upon the deck of the
steamer Benjamin Franklin, bound for Providence.
Of this fine boat I need not speak. Every one who
knows the patriarch of the “line” Captain Bunker,
knows the Benjamin Franklin, and all who have
“travelled” know him, and how very comfortable he
makes his large family of passengers. His kind consideration
for their comfort is characterised by quite a
paternal sort of feeling.
“Go ahead!” shouted the first officer, as the clocks
of the city were striking near and afar off, the hour of
five; and amid the ringing of bells from surrounding
and rival steamboats, the loud and repeated adieus interchanged
between friends on deck and those they
were leaving behind on the pier—this noble packet,
shot swiftly out from the dock, and in a few minutes
under the highest pressure of her immense power,
was gliding past an hundred craft anchored and on
the wing, passing the fleetest among them as if it
were stationary, so imperceptible was its really swift
motion compared with the bird-like velocity of the
Battery, with its green carpet, broad avenues, noble
trees, and gay crowds, appeared in sight; but the
next moment, like a scene of a brilliant and a fleeting
panorama, it disappeared, as making a majestic
sweep the boat doubled the Castle Garden—the lively
evening rendezvous of tired and cooped-up cits.
Rounding Whitehall, once more we were involved in
an anchored fleet of merchantmen, through which
our boat skilfully threaded its intricate way, passing
on one side crowded piers and long lines of stores; on
the other the bluffs, trees, green slopes, colonnaded
mansions, and Navy Yard of Brooklyn. Onward we
sped at the rate of seventeen miles to the hour, yet
the long line of brick buildings seemed interminable.
The city appeared to stretch away to the north to infinity,
while on the eastern side the shores of Long
Island, studded with villages and dotted with villas,
surrounded with highly-cultivated grounds, relieved
the eye when turned thither, fatigued with surveying
the brick and mortar scenery of Manhattan.
Six miles from the Battery we passed a charming
recess of the sound, or “East River,” as it is strangely
denominated, called “Hallet's Cove.” It is an amphitheatre
of country seats, embowered in the greenest
and densest foliage. On an elevated esplanade or
bluff, overhanging the water, the site of a delightful
village—that is to be—called Ravenswood, was pointed
out to me. It is to be laid out with the most accurate
adherence to symmetry in the arrangement and
architecture of the houses and the disposition of the
grounds and foliage. Grant Thorburn, celebrated for
his flowers and eccentricities, and withal his hospitality
(?) has a plain economical-looking mansion in the
vicinity, behind which appeared the glazed roof of an
extensive hot-house. His dwelling is utterly destitute
of foliage. Singular it is, that one who has passed
his life amid flowers and verdure, should choose a
unadorned or unblessed by sheltering tree or shrub.
But, dear reader, all this is digressive. It is the
story of “The Stage Coachman,” to which I would
invite your sympathy. Farther, to your imagination
I leave our eventful passage of the “Hurl Gate,”
honored by traditionary veracity as the boiling cauldron
of Sathanas—and how, as the sun went down,
we entered the gradually-widening sound—how, far
in the noon of night we accomplished the perilous
passage of the “Race.” How, the deep sea rolled
landward its majestic waves, unbroken and unimpeded,
till they burst with a noise like thunder upon the
shores of Connecticut. How the “inner man” of the
major portion of my follow-passengers rebelled at this
unwelcome demonstration of Neptune's power over
mortals. How “Point Judith”—that region of horror
to all who adventure between Manhattan and Providence—“tried
men's souls;” and how the smooth
waters of the quiet basin of Newport, like the pool of
Siloam, cured most miraculously all the wilom sea-sick.
(Newport—your indulgence, dear reader, for a brief
digression) Newport is a lovely spot! The air is elastic;
its scenery rural; its daughters fairer than you see
in dreams! It abounds in rural beauties, and is rich
in historical associations. What a charm of romance
has the pen of Cooper thrown around it! The society,
in the summer season, is refined and southern—
for Newport is the Nahant of the southerners—I mean
the Carolinians and Georgians! Cooper's tower alone
invites a pilgrimage. An ex-governor, by-the-by, is
its keeper. The Tower of London has a “keeper,”
and why, forsooth, should not the romantic pile of
Newport? The curious tourist should be careful to
be provided with the “needful,” to obtain a sight of
it; for it is carefully fenced round about, and, in the
opinion of his excellency, who forbids all to approach
it who come not with proper credentials in their pockets,
Such spots are the property of the civilised
world—shrines to do pilgrimage to! In two hours
after leaving Newport, we arrived at Providence. The
steamer came slowly and majestically to the wharf,
and the cars could be discerned from the deck, standing
in a long line upon the track awaiting their occupants.
Who may faithfully describe the hurry and
confusion attendant on the debarkation of passengers
from a steamer to take their seats in the cars! The
ugly deity, Self, rules over the multitude then without
a rival. Trunks, bandboxes, and carpet-bags—how
they take to themselves wings and fly then! The
wrangling—the jostling—the crowding and squeezing
—the smashing of hats, and utter annihilation of corns
—who but Madame Trollope can find pen or language
to paint the scene?
My portmanteau was among the missing! On inquiring,
I learned, little to the benefit of my philosophy,
that, placed accidentally on the right or starboard
guard, under an ominous sign lettered “Newport
Baggage,” which, alas, met my eye too late, it had
suffered the fate of Newport baggage—videlicet—tumbled
ashore at Newport, some two hours before Somnus
released me, reluctantly, from his lethean embrace.
In silence I watched the rapidly loading cars, and saw
the well-filled train, each man (the more blest he who
owned none) in confident possession of his baggage.
After finding there was no remedy, I resolved to bear
my detention with suitable patience, until I could return
in the evening boat, for the truant valise; and
turning to enter my state-room, the only occupant of
the deserted steamer, I was accosted by one who inquired,
if “I had baggage to take to town.” I turned
quickly to annihilate the untimely joker upon my
misfortunes with a look, when my ocular anathema
was converted into an ejaculation of pity. A more
pitiful object has seldom met my gaze. His pantaloons,
a strange medley of shreds of cloth, more strangely
put together; jacket or vest, he had neither; his feet
were thrust into shoes almost abridged, by long and
hard service, to sandals. He wore upon his neglected
locks an old straw hat, much shorn of its original
honors. His face was rubicund and bloated—his eyes
red, wild and sunken; and, together, his whole appearance
indicated the drunkard in the last stages of
his fatal and unnatural insanity. His face had, certainly,
once been handsome, and still bore traces of
manly beauty. With a quivering lip, hollow voice,
and palsied hand, he stood beside me, and solicited the
means of earning a pittance, evidently to be applied
to the fatal object for which he had already sold his
constitution, if not also his life and soul.
“I have no baggage,” I replied, and turned away
from a sight so degrading to humanity. He followed
me to the door of my state-room; his unequal gait,
even at that early hour, telling of that morning's immolation
of his human nature upon the altar of the
drunkard's god.
“Stop, sir! I'll brush your boots or coat for you.”
Unfortunately for the applicant, both were unexceptionable.
Half an hour afterward I stepped from my cabin,
where the delightful pages of my gifted countrywoman,
Mrs. Sigourney, had served to soothe me into
forgetfulness of my travelling mischance, and the
bloated features and ragged person of the drunkard
confronted me.
“If I give you money, will you not use it to madden
your brain?” I inquired, balancing a shilliug on
my finger.
“I shall do that, you may depend upon it!” he answered
gruffly.
“Then I ought not to give this piece of money to
it.”
“Who does deserve it, then?” he inquired.
“The man it will render happier.”
“Then I am your man,” he said, quickly, while his
eye lighted with a strange expression of drunken ferocity.
“Give it me!” and, as he spoke, he caught
my hand and clasped the coin in his fingers with a
frenzied clutch upon it. “Now, sir, I am happy for
to-day!” and he laughed in his throat as he staggered
away, his voice and manner subdued to their former
mere animal apathy, muttering, “Happy! happy! yes!
this will make me happy, indeed!”
There was something, aside from the strange language
and deportment of the man, which singularly
interested me in him. His features seemed familiar; and
disguised as his voice evidently was by the corrosive
poison with which he was daily lacerating his lungs, I
was confident I had heard it before, and under peculiarly
interesting circumstances. I searched the records
of memory, but they gave no clue, and finally, I determined
to follow and question him. But when I cast my
eyes over the pier for him, he had disappeared. I stepped
on shore, turned my steps toward a small “grogery”
situated near the water, and found him there! The
already emptied glass was in his hand, and he was replacing
it upon the counter when I caught his eye.
With a light step and sparkling eyes, he approached me.
“I feel happy now!” he said, striking his hand emphatically
upon his breast, and coming close to me.
“Click! if I was on my box now how I would make
my four little four-in handers walk!” and he placed
himself upon a barrel which stood behind him, extending
his left hand, advancing his body, and elevating
his right hand, in which he held a switch, precisely in
the attitude of the most practised “whip.”
“Good heaven! my friend,” I exclaimed, as this
accidental position became, at once, the key to unlock
him, “can you be Henry, the stage-coachman?”
He started and looked me, for a moment, fixedly in
the face, and then grasped my hand with much emotion—
“Ha, sir, you are the stranger I took home to see
Mary and the little ones!” and his eyes filled with
tears.
Poor fellow! my presence, as he recognised me, unlocked
the buried and happier past. The last time,
four years before, I knew him a happy and enviable
man; blessed with a lovely and virtuous wife, and the
delighted parent of two beautiful babes. My heart
swelled and my heart sympathised with his own, as I
contrasted his situation then, with his present wretched
condition.
“Where is your wife, Henry!” I inquired with
commiseration. He released my hand, and clenching
his fist, struck his temples with sudden violence, and
then hid his face in his hands.
“Dead! dead!” he answered after a moment's
pause. “I killed her, sir!” he said this in the extremity
of abandonment.
“How? what mean you?”
“I broke her heart, sir!”
“And your children?”
“In the work-house.”
I sat by him upon the rude seat he had chosen, and
he told me (for he was now sober, the mental excitement
having mastered the artificial,) the sad tale of
the last four years of his life.
The morning on which the rail-road cars were to
proceed on their first trip, the line of stages, painted in
their gayest colors and drawn by fleet horses, assembled
as usual, at the head of the pier, to receive their
passengers, as the long expected steamer came ploughing
her way up the bay. Crowds collected to witness
mode of transporting travellers, surveying, alternately,
the singular-looking cars, with their small iron wheels,
standing in a long train, upon the yet untrodden path,
the empty stages, more numerous than the cars, with
their anxious drivers mounted, each upon his elevated
box, and the approaching boat, whose arrival was
about to decide which of the two mediums of conveyance—the
good old standard line of stages, or the new-fangled,
whizzing, fly-away and wicked-looking cars
—was to hold the ascendency.
The steamer came gallantly up to the pier, amid a
shout from the assembled multitude on the shore. In
a few minutes all had disembarked. The “drivers,”
in their white hats and coats, and with their long
whips, were flying about among the passengers with
additional activity and perseverance, none of them
exerting more than my friend Henry. But, to every
hasty, anxious inquiry, “Coach, gentlemen?—Boston
and Providence line?” The reply immediately was,
“I take the rail-road,” or “I take the cars.”
After some little delay, attendant on the first trial
of a new means of locomotion, the bells rung, the cannon
roared, and amid the shouts of the multitude the
long train of cars moved off, propelled by an unseen
power, from the pier. At first slowly, as if to try her
powers, the train rolled over the first section of the
track; but gradually, as if confident in itself, its speed
increased, and darting rapidly forward, in a few moments
it was lost to the sight of the wondering crowd.
Alas! the poor coachmen! they had assembled at
their usual post, near the head of the pier, confident of
their usual “fare,” and never dreaming that men, who
had a suitable regard for the weal of their own souls
and bodies, would intrust them to the tender mercies
of such a fiery-winged monster as the black, puffing
engine, which all the country round had journeyed to
gaze at as an eighth wonder in the world. Their laugh
the boat, her decks crowded with passengers, hove in
sight. But when they saw, one after another, their
legitimate fare preferring the new mode of locomotion,
the joke died unuttered on their lips, their faces
grew long, and their hearts sunk, and, some with
curses upon “all new-fangled inventions, to steal honest
people's bread out of their mouths,” and others
with depressed bosoms, gathering up their now useless
ribands, they moved slowly and silently back to
town.
About two months from that day three individuals,
thus thrown out of employment, bound themselves by
a solemn oath, to give all possible hindrance to rail-road
travelling. The next day after this conspiracy
was formed, by some means unaccountable to the public,
the train was thrown from the track, but fortunately
without injury. The next day a similar “accident,”
as it was heralded, occurred, and one person
nearly lost his life by the violence with which he was
thrown from the cars. The next day the cars were
only saved from total demolition by the presence of
mind of the engineer. It was now sufficiently clear
that some enemy was abroad who was busy at this
mischief. A watch was set, and one of the perpetrators
was detected. I grieve to say it—but the guilty
man was Henry! In his defence he pleaded that he
had stuck to the line till it was broken up and his
“vocation” gone; then he had sought fruitlessly, and
in vain, for employment on other lines, but that “no
man would hire him,” and that his money was all
expended, and his family calling upon him for the
reward of a husband and a father's toil. “What could
I do?” he said; “I could not see them suffer. The
short and long of it is, sir, that I took to drink and
treated Mary cruelly. One night several of my old
mates met me at the tavern close by my house, and,
in an unlucky moment when the liquor was in, I
arrested.” His punishment was light, but he never
recovered from the degradation consequent on the
public exposure of his crime; nor did his wife, the gentle
Mary, long survive the shock thus given to her refined
and virtuous sensibility. In a few months afterward
she died of a broken heart—thus ever, it appears
to me, die the fairest of earth's flowers—and was laid
by her friends in a lonely and tearless grave in the
village churchyard. Her husband knew not of her
death till the earth had closed over her form. For
many days previous he knew no other home than the
grog-shop, no other nutriment than the contents of his
bottle.
When, during a lucid (sober) interval, he returned
and found his hearth deserted, and his child taken
away by the charitable, (for there are a few such even
in this world,) a new possessor of his once happy cottage
told him the sad tale. From that hour he had
been descending till I met him, the low and abject
thing I have described him in another page, outcast
from his fellows, an alien from society, striving, in
vain, to bury the recollection of the past.
“Sir, will you give me another shilling?” he asked,
as he concluded his sad recital. “I cannot bear to
think of these things. I must drink and forget!”
On my return from Boston, a few weeks afterwards,
I was informed that Henry Salford, “the last of the
stage-coachmen,” had ended his miserable existence
by a suicidal death.
| The American lounger, or, Tales, sketches, and legends, gathered in sundry journeyings | |