University of Virginia Library

5. CHAPTER V.
NED HAZARD.

Ned Hazard has of late become my inseparable
companion. He has a fine, flowing stream of good
spirits, which is sometimes interrupted by a slight under-current
of sadness; it is even a ludicrous pensiveness,
that derives its comic quality from Ned's constitutional
merriment.

He is now about thirty-three, with a tolerably good
person, a little under six feet, and may be seen generally
after breakfast, whilst old Carey is getting
our horses for a morning ride, in an olive frock, black
stock and yellow waistcoat, with a German forage-cap
of light cloth, having a frontlet of polished leather,
rather conceitedly drawn over his dark, laughing
eye. This head-gear gives a picturesque effect to
his person, and suits well with his weather-beaten
cheek, as it communicates a certain reckless expression
that agrees with his character. The same trait
is heightened by the half swagger with which he
strikes his boot with his riding-whip, or keeps at bay
a beautiful spaniel, called Wilful, that haunts his
person like a familiar. Indeed, I have grown to
possess something of this canine attachment to him
myself, and already constitute a very important member

of his suite. It is a picture worth contemplating,
to see us during one of these listless intervals. For,
first, there is Ned lounging along the court-yard with
both hands in his side pockets, and either telling me
some story, or vexing a great turkey-cock, by imitating
both his gobble and his strut;—before him
walks Wilful, strictly regulating his pace by his master's,
and turning his eye, every now and then, most
affectionately towards him; then Meriwether's two
pointers may be seen bounding in circles round him;
—a little terrier, that assumes the consequence of a
watch dog, is sure to solicit Ned's notice by jumping
at his hand; and, last in the train, is myself, who
have learned to saunter in Ned's track with the fidelity
of a shadow. It may be conjectured from this
picture that Ned possesses fascinations for man and
beast.

He is known universally by the name of Ned
Hazard, which, of itself, I take to be a good sign.
This nicknaming has a flavour of favouritism, and
betokens an amiable notoriety. There is something
jocular in Ned's face, that I believe is the source of
his popularity with all classes; but this general good
acceptation is preserved by the variety of his acquirements.
He can accommodate himself to all
kinds of society. He has slang for the stable boys,
musty proverbs for the old folks, and a most oratorical
overflow of patriotism for the politicians. To
the children of Swallow Barn he is especially captivating.
He tells them stories with the embellishment
of a deep tone of voice that makes them quake

in their shoes; and with the assistance of a cane and
cloak, surmounted by a hat, he will stalk amongst
them, like a grizzly giant, so hideously erect, that the
door is a mere pigeon-hole to him;—at which the
young cowards laugh so fearfully, that I have often
thought they were crying. On such occasions I have
seen them nestle up together in one corner, looking
like a group of white and black cherubim, and evidently
regarding Ned as the most astonishing personage
in the whole country side.

A few years ago he was seized with a romantic
fever that principally manifested itself in a conceit to
visit South America, and play knight errant in the
quarrel of the Patriots. It was the most sudden and
unaccountable thing in the world; for no one could
trace the infection to any probable cause;—still, it
grew upon Ned's fancy, and appeared in so many
brilliant phases, that there was no getting it out of
his brain. As may be imagined, this matter produced
a serious disquiet in the family, so that Frank
Meriwether was obliged to take the subject in hand;
and, finding all his premonitions and expostulations
unavailing, was forced to give way to the current of
Ned's humour, hoping that experience would purge
the sight that had been dimmed by the light of a too
vivid imagination. It was therefore arranged that
Ned should visit this theatre of glory, and stand by
the award of his own judgment upon the view. He
accordingly sailed from New York in the Paragon,
bound for Lima, with liberty to touch and trade along
the coast, and, in due time, doubled Cape Horn.

So, after looking at the Patriots in all their positions,
attitudes and relations,—with an eye military and
civil,—and being well bitten with fleas, and apprehended
as a spy, and nearly assassinated as a heretic,
he carefully looked back upon the whole train of
this fancy, even from its first engendering, with all
the motives, false conclusions, misrepresentations,
and so forth, which had a hand in the adopting and
pursuing of it, and then came to a sober conclusion
that he was the most egregious fool that ever set out
in quest of a wild goose. “What the devil could
have put such a thing into my head, and kept me at
it for a whole year, it puzzles me to tell!” was his
own comment upon this freak, when I questioned him
about it. However, he came home the most disquixotted
cavalier that ever hung up his shield at the
end of a scurvy crusade; and to make amends for the
inconvenience and alarm he had occasioned,—for my
cousin Lucretia expected to hear of his being strangled,
like Laocoon, in the folds of a serpent,—he
brought with him an amusing journal, which is now
bound in calf, and holds a conspicuous place in the
library at Swallow Barn. This trip into the other
hemisphere has furnished him with an assortment
of wonders, both of the sea and the land, that are the
theme of divers long stories, which ned tells like a
traveller. He is accused of repeating them to the
same auditors, and Frank Meriwether has a provoking
way of raising his hands, and turning his eyes
towards the ceiling, and saying in an under-tone,
just as Ned is setting out:

This invariably flushes Ned's face; and with a
modest expostulation, in a voice of great kindness, he
will say, “My dear sir, I assure you I never told you
this before—you are thinking of a different thing.”
“Then, Uncle Ned”—as Rip said, on one of these
occasions, while he was lying on the floor and kicking
up his heels—“you are going to make as you go.”—
These things are apt to disconcert him, and occasion
a little out-break of a momentary peevish, but
irresistibly comic thoughtfulness, that I have said before
formed a constituent of his temper. It is, however,
but for a moment, and he takes the joke like
a hero. It is now customary in the family, when
any thing of a marvellous nature is mentioned, to say
that it happened round the Horn. Ned is evidently
shy of these assaults, and is rather cautious how he
names the Horn if Meriwether be in company.

I have gleaned some particulars of Hazard's education,
which, as they serve to illustrate his character,
I think worth relating.

When he was ten or eleven years old, he was put
under the government of a respectable teacher, who
kept an academy on the border of the mountain
country, where he spent several years of his life. In
this rustic gymnasium, under the supervision of Mr.
Crab, who was the principal of the establishment,
Ned soon became conspicuous for his hardiness and
address in the wayward adventures and miniature
wars that diversified the history of this little community.

He was always an apt scholar, though not the
most assiduous; but his frank and upright qualities
rendered him equally a favourite with the master
and the pupils. He speaks of the attachments of this
period of his life with the unction of unabated fondness.
In one of our late rambles, Ned gave me the
following sketch of the circumstances under which
he quitted these scenes of his youth. His father was
about removing him to college, and the separation
was to be final. I have endeavoured to preserve his
own narrative, because I think it more graphic than
mine would be; and at the same time it will show
the gentle strain of affection that belongs to his
nature.

“The condition of a schoolboy,” said Ned, “forces
upon the mind the import of a state of probation,
more soberly than any other position in life. All
that the scripture tells us about the transitoriness
of human affairs,—of man being a traveller, and life
a shadow,—is constitutionally part and parcel of the
meditations of the schoolboy. He lives amidst discomforts;
his room is small and ill-furnished; his
clothes are hung upon a peg, or stowed away in a
chest, where every thing that should be at the top,
is sure to lodge at the bottom; his coat carries its
rent from term to term, and his stockings are returned
to him undarned from the washer-woman; his
food is rough and unsavoury; he shivers in a winter
morning over a scant and smoky fire; he sleeps in
summer in the hottest room of the house:—All this
he submits to with patience, because he feels that he

is but for a season, and that a reversion of better
things awaits him.

“My preceptor Mr. Crab was, outwardly, an austere
man; but his was the austerity which the best
natures are apt to contract from long association with
pupils. His intercourse with the boys was one of
command, and he had but few opportunities of mingling
in the society of his equals. This gave a rather
severe reserve to his manners; but, at bottom, he had
kindly feelings, which awkwardly manifested themselves
in frequent favours, conferred without any visible
signs of courtesy. His wife was a fat, short-winded
old lady, with a large round face, embellished
above with a huge ruffled cap, and below, with
a huge double chin. This good lady was rather
too fat to move about, so she maintained a sovereign
station in an ample arm-chair, placed near the door
that led to the kitchen, where she was usually occupied
in paring apples to be baked up into tough jacks
for our provender, and issuing commands for the regulation
of her domestic police, in shrill, stirring and
authoritative tones. They had a reasonable number
of young scions growing around them, who, however,
were so mingled in the mass of the school as
nearly to have lost all the discriminating instincts that
might indicate their origin.

“We were too troublesome a company to enlist
much of the domestic charities from our tutor;
still, however, in the few gleams of family endearment
which fell to our lot, I had contracted a kind
of household attachment to the objects that surrounded

me. Our old master had the grave and solemn
bearing of a philosopher; but sometimes, of winter
nights, when our tasks were done, he joined in our
sports,—even got down on the carpet to play marbles
with us, and took quite an eager interest in hearing
our humming tops when we stealthily set them to
bellowing in the room. These condescensions had
a wonderful effect upon us all, for, being rare, they
took us somewhat by surprise, and gave us something
of the same kind of pleasure which a child experiences
in patting a gentle and manageable lion.

“I had always looked forward, with a boyish love
of change, to the period when I was to be called to
other scenes. And this expectation, whilst it rendered
me indifferent to personal comforts, seemed also
to warm my feelings towards my associates. I could
pardon many trespasses in those from whom I was
soon to be separated. My time, therefore, passed
along in a careless merriment, in which all trivial
ills were overborne and indemnified in the anticipations
of the future.

“The summons to quit this little sylvan theatre
was contained in a letter that was brought from my
father by Daniel the coachman. It directed me to
return without delay, and intimated, amidst a world
of parental advice, that I was to be removed almost
immediately to college. Notwithstanding the many
secret yearnings I had felt for the approach of this
period, I confess it overmastered me when it came.
Daniel had brought me my pony,—a little, short-necked,
piggish animal, that in the holidays I used to

ride almost to bed—and he himself was ready to attend
me on one of the coach horses. I had no time
to revolve the matter,—so with a spirit part gay and
part melancholy, and with an alacrity of step that I
assumed to conceal my emotions and to avoid the
interchange with my school-fellows of words that I
was too much choked to utter, I went about my preparations.
I collected my straggling wardrobe from
the detached service of my comrades, to whom, scant
as it was, I had lent it piece-meal; carefully paid off
sundry small debts of honour, contracted at the forbidden
game of all fours; and distributed largesses,
with a prodigal hand, amongst the negroes, with
whom I had, for a long time, carried on an active
commerce in partridge-traps, fishing tackle, and other
commodities. I can remember now with what feelings
I performed this last office, as I stood at the barn
door, where the farm servants were threshing grain,
and protracted, as long as I was able, that mournful
shaking of hands with which the rogues gave me their
parting benedictions;—for I always had a vagabond
fondness for the blacks about the establishment.
After this I went into the parlour, where our tender
and plethoric mistress was employed in one of her
customary morning duties of cleaning up the breakfast
apparatus, and received a kiss from her, as she
held a napkin in one hand, and a tea-cup in the other.
I bestowed the same token of grace upon all the little
Crabs that were crawling about the room, and, in
the same place, took my leave of the old monarch
himself, who, relaxing into a grim manifestation of
unfeigned sorrow, took me with both hands, and conducting
me to the window, placed himself in a seat,
where he gave me a grave and friendly admonition,—
saying many kind things to me, in a kinder tone than
I had ever heard from him before. Amongst the
rest, he bade me reflect, that the world was wide, and
had many fountains of bitter waters, whereof—as I
was an easy, good-natured fellow—it was likely to
be my lot to drink more largely than others;—he
begged me to remember the many wholesome lessons
he had given me, and to forget whatever might
seem to me harsh in his own conduct. Then, in the
old-fashioned way, he put his hands upon my head,
and bestowed upon me an earnest and devout blessing,
whilst the tears started in both of our eyes. This
last act he concluded by taking from his pocket a
small copy of the Bible, which he put into my hands
with a solemn exhortation that I should consult it in
all my troubles, for every one of which, he told me, I
should find appropriate consolation. I promised, as
well as my smothered articulation permitted, to obey
his instructions to the letter; and, from the feelings
of that moment, deemed it impossible I ever could
have forgotten or neglected them. I fear that I have
not thought of them as much since, as they deserve.
The little Bible I still keep as an affectionate remembrance
of a very good, though somewhat unpolished,
old man.

“My cronies, all this time, had been following me
from place to place,—watching me as I packed up
every article of my baggage, and asking me hundreds

of unmeaning questions, out of the very fulness of
their hearts. Their time came next. We had a
general embrace; and after shaking hands with every
urchin of the school-room and every imp of the kitchen,
I mounted my plump nag, and on one of those
rich mornings of the Indian summer, when the sun
struggles through a soft mist, and sparkles on the hoar
frost, I broke ground on my homeward voyage.
Daniel, with my black leather trunk resting on his
pommel—to be carried to the tavern where the mail
stage was to receive it—led the way through the lane
that conducted us beyond the precincts of this abode
of learning and frolick, and I followed, looking back
faint-heartedly upon the affectionate and envious rank
and file of the school-room, who were collected in
one silent and wistful group at the door, with their
hard-visaged commander towering above their heads,
and shading his brow from the sun with his hand, as
he watched our slow progress. Every other face,
white or black, upon the premises, was peering
above the paling that enclosed the yard, or gleaming
through the windows of the kitchen. Not a dry eye
was there amongst us; and I could hear my old
master say to the boys, “there goes an honest chap,
full of gallantry and good will.” In truth, this parting
touched me to the heart, and I could not help
giving way to my feelings, and sobbing aloud; until
at last, reaching a turn in the road that concealed
us from the house, the sound of a distant cheering
from the crowd we had left, arose upon the air, and
wafted to me the good wishes of some of the best
friends I have ever parted from.”

After the period referred to in this narrative, Ned
was sent to Princeton. That college was then in
the height of its popularity, and was the great resort
of the southern students. Here he ran the usual
wild and unprofitable career of college life. His father
was lavish, and Ned was companionable,—two
relative virtues that, in such circumstances, are apt to
produce a luxuriant fruit. He was famous in the
classical coteries at Mother Priestly's, where they
ate buckwheat cakes, and discussed the state of parties,
and where, having more blood than argument,
they made furious bets on controverted questions, and
drank juleps to keep up the opposition.

Amidst the distractions of that period there was one
concern in which Ned became distinguished. They
were never without a supply of goddesses in the village,
to whom the students devoted themselves in the
spirit of chivalry. They fell into despair by classes;
and as it was impracticable to allot the divinities
singly, these were allowed each some six or seven
worshippers from the college ranks, who revolved
around them, like a system of roystering planets, bullying
each other out of their orbits, and cutting all
manner of capers in their pale light. But love, in those
days, was not that tame, docile, obedient minion that
it is now. It was a matter of bluster and bravado,
to swear round oaths for, and to be pledged in cups
at Gifford's. They danced with the beauties at all

the merry-makings, and, in fact, metamorphosed Cupid
into a bluff Hector, and dragged him by the heels
around every tavern of the village.

As the mistresses were appurtenant to the class,
they were changed at the terms, and given over to
the successors; whereby it generally fell out, that
what advantage the damsels gained in the number of
their admirers, was more than balanced by the disadvantage
of age. But a collegian's arithmetic makes
no difference between seventeen and thirty. Nay,
indeed, some of the most desperate love affairs happened
between the sophomores and one or two perdurable
belles, who had been besonneted through the
college for ten years before.

It was Ned's fortune to drop into one of these pitfalls,
and he was only saved from an actual elopement
by a rare accident which seemed to have been
sent on purpose by his good genius; for, on the very
evening when this catastrophe was to have been
brought about, he fell into a revel, and then into a
row, and then into a deep sleep, from which he awoke
the next morning, shockingly mortified to find that
he had not only forgotten his appointment, but also
his character as a man of sober deportment. The
lady's pride took alarm at the occurrence, and Ned
very solemnly took to mathematics.

Now and then, the affairs of this bustling little
community were embellished with a single combat,
which was always regarded as a highly interesting
incident; and the abstruse questions of the duello
were canvassed in councils held at midnight, in

which, I learn, the chivalrous lore displayed by Ned
Hazard was a matter of college renown.

Engrossed thus, like the states of the dark ages, in
the cares of love, war and politics, it is not to be
wondered at, that the arts and sciences should have
fallen into some disesteem. This period of Ned's
life, indeed, resembled those feudal times, when barons
fought for lady love,—swaggered, and swore by
their saints,—and frightened learning into the nests
of the monks. Still, however, there was a generous
love of fame lurking in his constitution, which, notwithstanding
all the enticements that waylaid his
success, showed itself in occasional fits of close and
useful study.

It pains me to say, that Hazard's days of academic
glory were untimely cropped; but my veracity as a
chronicler compels me to avow, even to the disparagement
of my friend, that before his course had run
to its destined end, he made shipwreck of his fortunes,
and received from the faculty a passport that warranted
an unquestioned egress from Nassau Hall;—
the same being conferred in consideration of counsel
afforded, as a friend true and trusty, to a worthy
cavalier, who had answered the defiance of a gentleman
of honour, to “a joust at utterance.”

Thus shorn of his college laurels, Ned crept quietly
back to Swallow Barn, where his inglorious return
astounded the soothsayers of the neighbourhood.
For awhile he took to study like a Pundit,—though
I have heard that it did not last long,—and in the
lonely pursuits of this period he engendered that secret

love of adventure and picturesque incident, that
took him upon his celebrated expedition round the
Horn. But it in no degree conquered his mirthful
temper. His mind is still a fairy land, inhabited by
pleasant and conceited images, winged charmers,
laughing phantoms, and mellow spectres of frolick.

He is regarded in the family as the next heir to
Swallow Barn; but the marriage of his sister, and,
soon afterwards, the demise of his father, disclosed
the encumbered condition of the freehold, to which
he had before been a stranger. He has still, however,
a comfortable patrimony; and Frank Meriwether
having by arrangement taken possession of
the inheritance, together with the family, Ned has
ample liberty to pursue his own whims in regard to
his future occupation in life. Frank holds the estate,
for the present, under an honourable pledge to relieve
it of its burdens by a gradual course of thrifty husbandry,
which he seems to be in a fair way of accomplishing;
so that Ned may be said still to have
a profitable reversion in the domain. But he has
grown, in some degree, necessary to Meriwether,
and has therefore, of late, fixed his residence almost
entirely at Swallow Barn.