University of Virginia Library

9. CHAPTER IX.

The morning of the 8th of September, Anno Domini
1837, was cloudless and cool. The dust had been laid by
a shower of rain a little before daylight, and the day therefore
was auspicious to the wishes of all who proposed to
assemble at the Sycamore Spring. By eight o'clock Ante
Meridiem, Nicodemus Handy's barouche, with two beautiful
bays, stood upon the gravel before Handy House on Copperplate
Ridge. Agamemnon Flag, attired in a new blue
coat with figured gilt buttons, white waistcoat, India rubber
watch guard, snowy pantaloons of very fine drilling and boots
of drab prunelle, tipped at the toes with polished French
leather, a watered silk cravat, and gold spectacles, sat at
the breakfast table with Mrs. Handy and Henrietta, her
daughter—the smallest, the neatest, and the best shaped
female, it is said by those who pretend to be judges, in
Quodlibet.

Nicodemus was in a flurry. He had swallowed his
breakfast with great despatch, and four servants were busily
in attendance upon him. Sam, the waiter, was beating time
in the hall with a corn whisk, alternately upon the person of

his master and his left hand, after a very favorite and ingenious
fashion of dusting a gentleman's coat, only known to
and practised by that musical race of colored dandies, of
which Sam was a first rate specimen. Sarah, a lady of
Sam's complexion, Mrs. Handy's maid, was running up
stairs to sprinkle some verbena perfume on Mr. Handy's
cambric handkerchief; William was smoothing the nap of
his glossy black Brewster, with a brush as soft as silk; and
Mrs. Trotter, the house-keeper, was arranging a basket of
sandwiches and a bottle of Rudesheimer to be stowed away
in the box of the back seat of the barouche. The coachman,
in a sky blue frock, and hat with gold bands secured
by a huge buckle, was in his seat holding the reins, every
moment speaking to the horses to make them restive, and
then whipping them for not standing still. The whole
scene was one eminently calculated to disprove that stale
Whig slander which purports to affirm that “all the decency”
was in their ranks:—nothing could be more striking
than this refutation of it. And as I was myself present—
having called in at that moment to deliver a message from
the New Light Club to Mr. Handy, apprising him of their
intention to move that he should act as chairman of the
meeting to be held at the Sycamore Spring—I witnessed
with lively satisfaction, the very decided impression of
pleasure made upon an assemblage of New Lights, who
stood looking on outside of the front gate, by this triumphant
vindication of our party from the malevolent insinuations
of the Whig press.

Agamemnon Flag seemed to be very much at his ease,
and to be thinking but little about the meeting, whilst he
sat uttering some pleasant things to Miss Handy;—at least I
suppose they must have been pleasant to her, as she and her
mother both laughed a good deal at what he said. By the
by, there is a report in the Borough, that Ag is making up

to this young lady—which will be a grand thing for him if
she favors him, since she is an only child, and Nicodemus
is amazingly rich.

“God bless me, my dear,” said Mr. Handy, breaking
away from Sam's whisk, and speaking after the manner of a
table of contents, (a habit which he has acquired since he has
grown rich,) “it is past eight o'clock—I'm to be the chairman
of that meeting—ought to be early on the ground—
five miles off—no time for nonsense now—you and Henrietta
and Ag—have to drive like the devil—barbacue, my dear
—want to see the arrangements before the voters arrive—
the schoolmaster will take a seat along side of Nace —”

“Thank you kindly,” said I; “I accept your offer with
great pleasure —”

“Shant want William,” he added, referring to the servant
who generally rode with the coachman—“upon second
thoughts—will put our Second Thoughts inside—ha! ha!
Must take William—shall want him—you can sit (speaking
to me) on the front seat—Ag and I behind—offer the other
seat to Barndollar—want to be civil to him, my dear—come,
hurry, hurry, hurry!—William, get on your livery and be
prepared to mount beside Nace.”

As it was very manifest that Mr. Handy was really in a
hurry—as very opulent men are exceedingly apt to be—
there was of course a great bustle to accommodate him, by
getting off. Agamemnon immediately rose from the breakfast
table, and taking up his superfine leghorn hat, which
was very chastely adorned with a light yellow ribbon band,
the ends whereof hung a little over the rim, he put it gently
on his head, and then standing before the ladies, asked them
with very apparent complacency, whether they thought he
was in good trim to appear before the democracy—and
having received answer that “he was exactly the thing,”
he signified his readiness to depart; whereupon we all

bustled out to the barouche and took our seats. William
clambered into his place, and away we went at full trot,
down to The Hero to take up Jacob Barndollar.

When we arrived at the tavern door, we found there Nim
Porter's trotting buggy with his stub-tailed grey. Nim
himself appeared on the steps in a big broad-brimmed low-crowned
Russia blue hat, set very knowingly over his right
eye, with a long taper whip in his hand; and before we
could take up Mr. Barndollar, this most good natured of
bar-keepers, with an agility not to be expected in so fat a
person, sprang up into his tub-shaped seat, which held him
about as compactly as the shell of an acorn holds the nut,
and spreading the skirts of his green coatee with steel buttons
over the periphery of the same, darted off at a speed
of about fifteen miles to the hour, down the Rumblebottom
road. During this time, Mrs. Ferret filled the front door,
and Mrs. Barndollar was looking over her shoulder, whilst
they both opened their batteries upon poor Jesse Ferret, in
a contemporaneous objurgation of his mean-spiritedness,
addressed to Mr. Handy in the barouche, but intended for
the master of the hotel who looked rather sheepishly
through the window of the bar-room; but before he could
say any thing in his own defence, and even before the amiable
ladies of his family were done talking, Jacob Barndollar
came out, and got into the barouche; and as Mr.
Handy was growing more and more impatient, he ordered
Nace to lose no time, and so off we started; and as well as
I could judge, from looking back, until we turned down by
Christy M'Curdy's mill, Mrs. Ferret was still arguing her
case in the front door of The Hero.

All the roads leading to the Sycamore Spring were filled
with persons on horseback, on foot, in gigs, buggies, barouches,
and rattle-traps of every sort. It was obvious we
were going to have a great meeting. Before nine o'clock,

Mr. Handy was on the ground. About a hundred persons
were already there. Booths were scattered along under
the huge elms and sycamores which shaded a low flat upon
the margin of the Rumblebottom. The fine, copious, old
spring—where there has been many a barbacue in my time
—was pouring out its crystal treasures, as some poet says,
with prodigal bounty, and transferring them as Mr. Woodbury
does the deposites, by large draughts, from the living
rock to the running Rumblebottom—in fact taking them out
of one bank, and distributing them between others. Not
far from this spring, adumbrated by overarching boughs—
the reader will excuse this poetical orgasm—for fifteen years
and upwards have I been visiting this fountain, sacred to
Pan, (we used to have fish frys here,) and have ever grown
poetical at the sight thereof—it is my infirmity. Not far
from the Spring stood the tables—boards on trussels, and
on the boards trenchers filled with cubic sections of beef,
lamb, mutton and ham, interspersed with pyramids of bread
—a goodly sight! Upon skids, remote from the tables,
stood a barrel of old Monongahela, and hard by in a cart,
tumblers, pitchers, noggins and bottles. Far off, at the opposite
confine of this field of action, was a stage erected,
with a chair for the President of the day, and benches of
unplaned board for persons of inferior dignity. Every thing
was in order; and now that Mr. Handy had arrived he had
nothing to do but wait for the gathering in of the people.

Presently Mr. Grant, mounted on a large bow-necked
bay, with his four sons, all men grown, of a rustic, farmer-like
complexion, arrived; they were attended by Augustus
Postlethwaite Tompkinson, of The Whole Team, and some
dozen Whigs from Thoroughblue, who had travelled as far
as Mr. Grant's the night before, and now made a very solid
and formidable troop. Andrew Grant the candidate, a
youth of good presence, and reputable, (bating his politics)

was of this party. Andy had been to college, and his father
first intended to make a doctor of him, but the lad some
how took a dislike to physic, and turned in to this new
business of Engineering on canals, and railroads, and was
considered, I believe, a tolerable smart hand in that calling.
But as he happened to catch a bilious fever in the Dismal
Swamp, the old lady his mother, who always had made a
pet of him, would not hear of his going back to that line of
livelihood; and so he staid at home helping to manage at
the Hog Back farm, and doing pretty much as he pleased;
until, about a year before he was brought out, he married
Stephen P. Crabstock's daughter; and ever since that event
does as his wife pleases—spending his time one part of the
year at the Iron Works, and the other at the old man's.

By eleven o'clock the company had pretty nearly got to
its maximum. A large party came down in a wagon from
Quodlibet with Abel Brawn—amongst them Neal Hopper,
Sandy Buttercrop, Davy Post, the wheelwright, and I cant
tell how many more. Quipes, the painter, borrowed a horse
out of Geoffry Wheeler's team, and was there studying human
nature and the picturesque. Flan Sucker, one-eyed Ben
Inky and Jeff Drinker, with a squad of regular loafers,
came on foot. The Tumbledownians were there in great
force under Cale Goodfellow, to help Theodore Fog—and
the Bickerbrayians with Virgil Philpot, the editor of The
Scrutinizer, mustered a heavy phalanx in favor of Ag. Flag.
And to swell the assemblage to its largest compass, there
were about fifty laborers from the newly-begun Bickerbray
and Meltpenny Railroad, a worthy accession to the New
Light Democracy, who had about a month before this meeting
come into the state.

This is a hasty glance over the field of action, and will
serve to show that the country was all alive to the importance
of the occasion and duly estimated the nature of the

crisis. Looking over this congregation I, as one having
knowledge therein, may safely affirm, that the genuine
Quods present fully outnumbered the Whigs three to one.
Eliphalet Fox, who has been more accustomed to measure
crowds, however, after a minute inspection of the
various groups, judging by that tact which he says never
failed him in discriminating between what he calls a Loco
Foco and a Whig, (he does not pretend to say that he is
so expert in pointing out a New Light, but as to a Loco
he asserts he is perfect,) set down the number at nearer
ten to one; and accordingly so reported it in the account
of the meeting which afterwards appeared in The Whole
Hog. Without, however, dwelling upon this topic, let us
proceed to the business of the day.

At twelve o'clock dinner was announced; and this army
of hungry politicians, with an unanimity of sentiment, an
accord of principle, and a concert of action, which we
might in vain seek for in other occupations of a political
nature, combined, like a band of brothers, to devour the
largest possible amount of the stores which lay before
them. With somewhat less agreement they made their
advances to the Monongahela; the more shy of the assemblage
being rather kept at bay by the remarkable perseverance
and adhesiveness of Flan Sucker, one-eyed Ben
Inky, and a chosen body of troops under their command,
who had constituted themselves the forlorn hope in this
assault. Still, as the newspapers say when they are disposed
to puff a popular play, the barrel went off very much
to the satisfaction and, indeed, the delight of the company.

These matters being despatched, Nicodemus Handy
who, during the repast, had acted inimitably the part of a
perfectly ravenous man, but who having an eye to the sandwiches
and Rudesheimer, made his appetite rather a matter
of “seems,” rapped upon the table, and called upon every

man to fill up his glass; which order was faithfully obeyed
by Flan Sucker and Company, a firm that was in possession
of all the tumblers—the remainder of the guests allowing
the filling to be, as we say in grammar, “understood,”—and
then offered the following toast, which, as he said, would
speak for itself:—“The several candidates who are about
to address the people—success to him who shall best deserve
it!” Sucker and Company drained to the bottom, and
then set up a shrill yell, very much in the style of the
Winnebagoes, except that there was a running note of
“Yip! No? You don't!” that was strictly and exclusively
Suckerian.

“Now, gentlemen, to the stand!” cried out Mr. Handy.
But before the crowd obeyed this order, Mr. Snuffers
had a motion to make. It was a matter of some importance,
as the subject was considered in the New Light club, that
our party should have the President of the day—and it was
therefore determined that the moment dinner was over, and
before the Whigs might be aware of it, Mr. Snuffers, the
head of our club, should rise in some conspicuous place,
and move that Nicodemus Handy be requested to preside
over the meeting. Mr. Snuffers is a slow and nervous man,
and was admonished to be on his guard, so as to make sure
of getting ahead of the Whigs who we knew wanted Mr.
Grant in the chair. He was in consequence very fidgetty
all the time of dinner; and now, when the moment for action
arrived, the good old gentleman elbowed his way towards
the centre of the table, and without difficulty succeeded in
clambering upon an inverted and empty flour barrel, which
had been filled with bread. “I move, gentlemen,” said he,
with a tremulous and agitated voice—“I move, gentlemen,
that Mr. Nicodemus Handy—”

Before the next word escaped from his lips, this worthy
and respectable old gentleman broke in, and in an instant

(I am shocked to tell it) was jammed up tight in the barrel
—disappearing as a dip of twenty to the pound is very apt
to do when stuck into a black bottle—“be President of this
meeting,” said Mr. Doubleday, with a hurried utterance,
taking up the word which was lost with Mr. Snuffers, and
which, but for the admirable presence of mind of our Vice,
might have been lost forever.

“Break the barrel to pieces,” cried out forty voices.

“Mr. Snuffers is blue in the face, he will die of apoplexy,”
cried out others.

“An axe!—knock the d—d barrel to pieces,” shouted
more, in great alarm at his precarious situation.

In a few moments our distressed and worthy President of
the New Light was extricated from his unpleasant durance,
and finding no harm done, we proceeded to take the question
on the motion. Mr. Handy was thus called to the
chair. Nine Vice-presidents were appointed and six secretaries
to record the proceedings. These matters being arranged,
the whole assemblage moved towards the rostrum
at the opposite end of the wood.

What followed we shall read in the next chapter.