 | CHAPTER XVI. Westward ho! |  |
16. CHAPTER XVI.
Touching the march of improvement, and the distinction
between law and conscience.
When Rainsford was sufficiently recovered,
they began to make arrangements for returning
to Dangerfieldville. Some anxiety was felt
lest the sight of accustomed objects might
revive old associations, and renew old feelings
in his mind; but it was finally determined that,
as in all probability, his fate and that of Virginia
were now inseparably united, it was best
at once to put his newly acquired state of mind
to this test, preparatory to their marriage. Accordingly
they took leave of the good Father
Jacques, with every expression of gratitude;
and Rainsford, especially, regretted that he had
no mode of testifying his sense of the obligations
he had conferred upon him.
“I shall be satisfied,” said the other, “if you
will only bear in mind, for the future, that religion
is not hatred, but love; and that it was
intended to make mankind friends, not enemies.”
Having taken leave of the old man, the landlord
was summoned to receive his money, and
their thanks, for in reality he had conducted
himself with uniform courtesy and attention.
He came in a most formidable passion, scolding
The colonel inquired the cause.
“Diable! monsieur, another improvement;
last year they assess me for one grand public
improvement! one road to go somewhere, I
don't know. Eh bien! I pay the money.
Well, this year they assess me for one other
grand public improvement—very grand—voilá,
monsieur, one other road, right longside the
other, both going to the same place. Diable!
I no want to travel on two turnpike roads. Ah!
monsieur le colonel, I shall be very rich, O! very
rich indeed, by these grand improvements.
They take away all my land to make room for
the grand improvement; they take away all
my money to pay for him, and then they tell
me my land worth four, six time so much as
before. Peste! what that to me when my land
all gone to the dem public improvement, hey?
I shall be very rich then. Diable! I wish myself
gone to some country where every thing
was go backwards—what you call tail foremost,
instead of forwards, for the dem march of improvement
shall ruin me at last.”
When Colonel Dangerfield paid his bill he
looked at the money with a rueful countenance,
and exclaimed, with a shrug of pious resignation,—
“Eh bien! never mind, make very good road
and canal. Morbleu! I shall wonder what
they want of these road and canal. Voilà,
monsieur! yonder one dem big river, she come
two, three thousand mile that way. Eh bien!
Voila, monsieur! yonder one t'other dem big
river, she come two three thousand mile that
travel, without the dem public improvement.
Ah! we shall be in ruins soon.”
The colonel condoled with the little old man
of the old regime, and expressed a hope that
times would mend when all the public improvements
were finished.
“Eh bien!” replied he; “yes, times will
mend when there is nothing else to mend, I
think. Monsieur, there is my neighbour, Jan
Petit, live right over the way, yonder. Twenty
year ago he very rich; he ave every thing
comfortable; he fiddle, he dance, he laugh, sing,
gallant the demoiselles; no care, no trouble, no
dem work at all. He ave one leetle house, one
leetle garden, and raise plenty radishes and sallad;
he live like leetle king. Eh bien! by-and-by
Yankee come; public improvement
march this way. Phew! off goes Jan Petit;
they cut a street right through his garden; dig
up his radishes; pull down his house, and then
make him pay for taking away his house, his
garden, and his radishes! Voila, monsieur,
she ave sometime one, yes, two dozen cambric—
what you call? chemise—two dozen, very fine.
Well, he now but one left in the world, and that
ruin him.”
“How so?” asked Colonel Dangerfield, highly
amused at the droll complaints of mine host.
“Voilà, monsieur! he pay one laundress by
the piece, and begar! he chemise ave so many
pieces now, he pay for two dozen every time
he is washed. This is one grand consequence
of the grand system of the grand internal improvement,
as they call him. Morbleu! under
of the inside, the head, the comprehension,
the understanding; now she mean to
dig the grand ditch, to make the grand road,
and the grand canal right alongside the grand
river. Begar! the river no use now, I think.
Ah! monsieur, suppose you had only lived under
the old regime; den I shall smoke my pipe,
sing, dance, go to church twice every day; no
trouble, no improvement, no dem paper money.
But the Yankee come, and now a man must do
zomezing, or he shall soon ave but one chemise,
and be ruined by his laundress like Jan Petit.
Ah! monsieur, suppose I one young man. I
shall come ome to the old countries, where
every thing stand still or go backwards, and
be so happy. Ah! 'tis so easy, so charming
to go down the ill 'stead of up!”
All things being ready, the colonel left mine
host in the midst of his perplexities, and the
party turned their faces towards home. Nothing
occurred during the journey worthy of
record, save that on his arrival at St. Louis
Rainsford ordered a suit of rich damask pulpit
furniture to be sent to the church over which
Father Jacques presided. The good man was
delighted with the present, and such was the
exultation of his heart as he contemplated the
splendours of his little pulpit, that he often
prayed to be preserved from the assaults of pride
and the seductions of worldly vanity.
As they proceeded on their journey, the heart
of Virginia expanded with delighted gratitude
at marking the healthful vigour which the
mind of Rainsford was every day acquiring.
in it in a new and animated point of view.
Every object of nature appeared to administer
to his happiness; and if in contemplating the
majesty or beauty of the scenery along the
great river he sometimes soared into the regions
of imagination, it was with a steady flight, like
that of the eagle. A perfect connexion and
continuity of ideas marked every thing he said,
and it was evident that reason had resumed the
reins, in all probability never again to resign
them.
It was one of the strongest proofs that fate
had at length relented in her persecutions of
Rainsford, that on the very morning of the day
in which the family of Colonel Dangerfield arrived
at home, Master Zeno Paddock and his
wife Mrs. Judith departed from the village never
to return. Such was the reputation of the proprietor
of the Western Sun, and such the extraordinary
capacity he had exhibited in the matter
of criticism, and, most especially of all, in
setting the village together by the ears, that a
distinguished speculator, who was going to
found a great city at the junction of Big Dry
and Little Dry Rivers, made him the most advantageous
offers to come and establish himself
there, and puff the embryo bantling into existence
as fast as possible. he offered him a whole
square next to that where the college, the court-house,
the church, the library, the athenæum.
and all the public buildings were situated.
Master Zeno swallowed the square at one
mouthful, and Mrs. Judith was utterly delighted
to remove to such a fine place, where there
obliges us to say, that on his arrival at the city
of New Pekin, as it was called, he found it covered
with a forest of trees, each of which would
take a man half a day to walk round; and that
on discovering the square in which all the public
buildings were situated, he found, to his no
small astonishment, on the very spot where the
court-house stood on the map, a flock of wild
turkeys gobbling like so many lawyers, and
two or three white-headed owls sitting on the
high trees listening with most commendable
gravity. Zeno was marvellously disappointed,
but the founder of New Pekin swore that it
was destined to be the great mart of the West,
to cut out St. Louis, Cincinnati, and New Orleans,
and to realize the most glorious speculation
that was ever conceived by the sagacity or
believed by the faith of man. Whereupon Zeno
set himself down, began to print his paper in a
great hollow sycamore, and to live on anticipation,
as many great speculators had done before
him. Poor Mrs. Judith was bitterly disappointed
in the splendours and magnitude of the city.
She never got possession of but one secret, and,
as fate would have it, there was not a single
gossip within forty miles to tell it to. Whereupon,
in a fit of despair she went and whispered
it to the air on a certain spot on the bank of
Big Dry River, whence in good time there
sprung up a grove of little poplars that did nothing
but whisper and wag their leaves if but
a zephyr blew. At length, this worthy woman
died of an intermitting fever, in consequence of
words were, “I shall get at the secret now!”
The absence of these two incendiaries from
Dangerfieldville was a great blessing to Rainsford
and Virginia, since it relieved them from
the plague of two pestilent busybodies always
prying into the affairs of others, and always betraying
them the first opportunity. Great was
the joy of Mr. Littlejohn at the return of the
family, and great the exultation with which he
detailed the vast improvements he had made
during their absence; how he had grafted six
apple-trees, planted a whole row of parsnips,
weeded nearly one-half of a bed of salad in a
single morning, pulled up a great thistle that
grew in the lawn with his own hand, and caught
a catfish that weighed thirty-six pounds and a
half. This, it seems, crowned the series of his
glorious exploits, for we cannot find that he did
any thing worthy of record from that time until
the arrival of the colonel. Truth obliges us to
confess that many of the chairs bore shrewd
testimony that the old habit of reclining on
three at a time had not been neglected by Mr.
Littlejohn.
The Black Warrior and Bushfield were not
wanting in their duty, but came to see the
colonel as soon as they heard of his arrival.
“Little squaw no look so white now as when
she go away,” said the warrior.
Virginia blushed a little, and looked at somebody.
“Well, colonel,” said Bushfield, “I've let go
the willows at last. I can't go it any longer
here.”
“Why, what's the matter?” asked the other.
“O, every thing is getting so dense here, that
a man can't turn round, or say his soul is his
own. There's that interloper that has located
himself just under my nose, about five miles
off, I caught him in the very fact of shooting a
deer on my side of the river, I'll be goy blamed
if I didn't, colonel. Well, what would you have
a man do? I challenged him to take a shot at
from a hundred yards to meeting muzzles. But
he's as mean as gar-broth. He said he'd bought
the land of Uncle Sam, and had as good a right
to shoot there as the old man himself. This
was more than a dead 'possum could stand. I
wish I may be shot if I didn't lick him as slick
as a whistle in less than no time. Well, by
George!—would you believe it?—he took the
law of me! Only think of the feller's impudence,
colonel, to take the law of a gentleman!
I paid him fifty dollars for licking him; but if
I don't give him a hundred dollars' worth the
next time we meet, I'm a coward, anyhow.”
The colonel condoled with him, but at the
same time advised him to submit to the laws.
“Laws! none of your laws for me, colonel.
I can't live where there's law or lawyers, and
a feller don't know whether he's right or wrong
without looking into a law-book. They don't
seem to know any more about conscience than
I do about law. Now, for my part, I do just
what I think right, and that's what I call going
according to my conscience. But colonel,” continued
he, with a queer chuckle, “I've got into
a worse scrape than that business with the
squatter.”
“No! I'm sorry for that; what is it?”
“Why, you must know, not long after you
went away there came a man riding along here
that I calculate had just thrown off his moccasins,
with another feller behind him in a laced
hat, and for all the world dressed like a militia
officer. Well, I hailed him in here, for you
know I like to do as you would in your own
house; and he came-to like a good feller. But
the captain, as I took him to be, hung fire, and
staid out with the horses. So I went and took
hold of him like a snapping-turtle, and says I,
`Captain, one would think you had never been
inside of a gentleman's house before.' But he
held back like all wrath, and wouldn't take any
thing. So says I, `Stranger, I'm a peaceable
man anyhow, but maybe you don't know what
it is to insult a feller by sneaking away from
his hospitality here in Old Kentuck.' I held on
to him all the while, or he'd have gone off like
one of these plaguy precussion-locks that have
just come into fashion. `Captain,' says I,
`here's your health, and may you live to be a
general.' `Captain!' says the other, `he's no
captain; he's my servant.' `What!' says I,
`one white man be a servant to another! make
a nigger of himself! come, that's too bad!' and
I began to feel a little savage. I asked one if
he wasn't ashamed to make a slave of a feller-cretur,
and the other if he wasn't ashamed to
make a nigger of himself; and they got rather
obstropolous. I don't know exactly how it came
about, but we got into a fight, and I lick'd them
both, but not till they got outside the door, for
I wouldn't be uncivil anyhow. Well, what do
gentleman, the feller that had a white man for
his nigger, instead of coming out fine, I'll be
eternally dern'd if he didn't send a constable
after me. Well, I made short work of it, and
lick'd him too, anyhow. But I can't stand it
here any longer. Poor old Snowball slipped
her bridle the other day, and went out like a
flash in the pan; so I'm my own master again,
with nobody to stand in my way at all. I must
look out for some place where a man can live
independent, where there's no law but gentlemen's
law, and no niggers but black ones. I
sha'n't see you again, colonel, it's most likely,
so good-by all. I expect you'll be after me
soon, for I look upon it to be impossible for a
man in his senses to live here much longer, to
be hoppled like a horse, and not go where he
pleases.” And away he marched, with a heart
as light as a feather, in search of a place where
he might live according to his conscience.
| CHAPTER XVI. Westward ho! | |