University of Virginia Library

5. CHAPTER V.

Mrs. Judith Paddock, the mirror of village
gossips, went home with a bee in her bonnet,
which buzzed at such a tremendous rate that
she was nearly deprived of her wits. That
there was some “mystery and grand” she
was convinced; something between her lodger
and Miss Dangerfield, which she could not
fathom with the full-length line of her curiosity;
and this being one of the few secrets that had
ever eluded her sagacity, she was only the more
fervently stimulated to get at it by some means
or other. She went cackling about the village
like unto a venerable old hen which has lost
its last chicken, uttering mysterious innuendoes,
and throwing out random hints, which set the
ears of her sister spirits buzzing almost equal
to her own. The spinning-wheels stood stock
still; the pots and kettles boiled over; the panting
labourer, when he came home to dinner,
found it overdone, or not done at all; and the
pussy-cats skimmed the cream of the milkpans
with perfect impunity. Such are the dire consequences
of a secret in a country village!

Two other important events took place during
this remarkable spring, this annus mirabilis:—Colonel
Dangerfield commencing rebuilding

his house on a great scale; and Master
Zeno Paddock, having appointed a regent to
preside over his classical academy, departed for
the purpose of preparing the wherewithal to
commence his Daily. No marvel every thing
but talking and wondering was at a stand in
Dangerfieldville.

In the mean time, the watchful tenderness
of the mother became every day more and
more excited by the situation of her daughter,
and the conduct of Rainsford, whose mind
gradually resumed its vicissitudes of deep
depression and causeless exaltation. A mere
trifle will change the tone of such a mind as
his, and bring it back again to its wonted course,
with a reaction which gives new vigour to former
impressions. The tolling of a bell, the
whooping of an owl, the song of the whippoor-will,
heard of an evening or at midnight in the
solitude and silence of the country, will, to some
minds, and in particular circumstances, bring
a train of melancholy forebodings that strike
hard upon the chord which is most apt to vibrate
to presentiments and ideal terrors.

The whole course of Rainsford's life had predisposed
him to melancholy and superstition;
for years he had brooded over one single idea,
on which every thing he heard, or saw, or felt
bore with a force more or less painful or prophetic;
and the same shrill, menacing warning,
which time and the belief of a large portion of
mankind have consecrated to evil omen, occurring
twice, under almost the same circumstances,
and on the same spot, at once demolished the
temporary fabric which a new-born hope had

reared to his future happiness. In fact, the relaxed
state of his mind could not support the
tension it had undergone, and the momentary
perception of bliss, like a stimulating medicine
administered to worn-out nature, only contributed
to increase his ultimate depression.
Impelled by that fatality which so generally
attends on minds of his cast, instead of
using every effort to withdraw from the contemplation
of the painful idea which almost
ever occupied his thoughts, he commissioned
Zeno Paddock to procure him certain mischievous
books treating of the causes, symptoms,
and remedies of the malady which had
so long haunted his imagination. When that
worthy returned, as he did after an absence
of a month, Rainsford might be seen poring
with intense and harassing interest over their
pages, where, as might be expected, he found
enough to strengthen his habitual convictions;
for it is only in extremes that the madman differs
from the sage.

Poor Virginia now felt the truth of the universal
maxim, that every thing, even the most
indifferent in itself, brings to the apprehensive
affections more or less cause to believe what we
fear as well as what we hope. Every little
eccentricity, every burst of feeling, every flight
of fancy, which, but for her predisposition to
apprehend the worst would have amused or
delighted her, now carried with it a cold chill
of apprehension, and kept her for ever on the
rack of fear. This painful state, while it worried
her to the very soul, gradually increased
her interest in this intelligent, amiable being,

and she watched him with more than a mother's
anxiety as the period approached which
he looked forward to as the crisis of his
fate.

The election of members of the State assembly
was now approaching, and Leonard Dangerfield,
having received the last fine edge of
the law at the capital, was expected home ere
long to canvass for the honours of a seat. It
therefore behooved Master Zeno to bestir himself,
and get his Daily in order to support the
claims of the young gentleman against the opposite
candidate, who had already taken the
field. The greatest, certainly, and in all probability
the happiest, man in all Kentucky was
Zeno on the morning in which the first number
of the “Western Sun” shone in the village
of Dangerfieldville. His importance, not only in
his own eyes, but the eyes of his fellow-citizens,
was increased at least five hundredfold; that
being about the number of readers to whom his
opinions from that time forward were destined
to be little less than gospel. He began by modestly
regulating the affairs of the general government;
professed his determination to judge
for himself, and decide according to the dictates
of conscience; let fly a tremendous shot at the
editor of the Eastern Star for differing with him
in opinion; and concluded by criticising an almanac,
which, being the only book ever published
previous to that time in the village of
Dangerfieldville, was entitled to special notice.
We should not like to have been in the shoes
of the unlucky philomath who compiled it; for
it was a new court-party almanac, and Zeno belonged

to the opposite side. He accordingly
cut it up terribly, and for ever destroyed its
reputation among the people, by proving that it
had already rained six times when the author
had pronounced the weather would be clear.
Having demolished this caitiff, he strutted about
famously, and began seriously to contemplate
upsetting the “new court party.”

In a little time a dreadful war raged between
the Western Sun and the Eastern Star, insomuch
that, had they only been nearer to each
other, there is little doubt but that they would
have been a great deal more civil. The village
of Dangerfieldville had heretofore been a quiet,
peaceable village, disturbed only by the incessant
cackle of Mrs. Judith; but now, since the
sceptre of public opinion was seized by the great
Zeno, his wife waned into comparative insignificance.
The torch of discord was waved by
a greater than she, and in the course of a few
weeks two duels and six rencounters took place
in various parts of the neighbouring country,
all of which might be traced to the agency of
the “Western Sun.” It was generally thought
that Zeno and he of the Eastern Star would
certainly have measured pistols, if they had not
been providentially separated by a great forest.
It was whispered, however, that the former had
scruples, in so far that though he didn't mind
giving offence, it ran against his conscience to
make atonement or give satisfaction. In truth,
he was a right moral man, whatever the Eastern
Star might aver to the contrary.

He was getting to be cock of the wood when
Leonard Dangerfield returned home, a most

proper man as was ever raised in the regions
of the west, so fruitful in fine specimens of the
human species. He was about six feet high,
and as straight as an arrow; his limbs were of
the finest proportions, such as are not common
elsewhere among men so much beyond the
usual size; and he had the same perfect command
of them as a young spirited blood-horse
has of his. His features, like his carriage, were
bold, manly, and indicative of a perfect self-confidence;
and his eyes, though of blue, had
rather too much of that daring expression which
is one of the characteristics of perfect freedom.
As a physical being, a mere animal man, he did
honour to the rich soil and pure air in which,
though not produced, he had grown up and
flourished; for there was an admirable expression
of strength and activity in his form and
limbs, without the least approach to what is
aptly and expressively called clumsy. Nor did
his mind lack fellowship with his body, for he
possessed courage, energy, decision, enterprise,
and sagacity. Add to this, like almost all the
gentlemen we have ever seen from this portion
of the United States, he possessed a natural eloquence,
a flow of words and ideas which perhaps
originate in the fact that every young man in the
west looks forward to political life and political
distinctions, which can very rarely be obtained
without a command of that great weapon which
in a free country wins its way more certainly
than the sword.

The people of the United States have been
occasionally ridiculed for the warmth and eagerness
with which they participate in elections

and other political contests of less importance.
Yet this perpetual solicitude about public affairs
is one of the great characteristics of liberty;
and provided it does not extend to actual violence,
nor to the disruption of kindred and social
ties, is a wholesome and indeed essential
ingredient in the composition of a free people.
Without this deep interest, which instigates
them to a perpetual watchfulness of their rulers,
and rivets their attention so closely to the acts
of their government, there would be no security
against those quiet, insidious usurpations which
power is perpetually making on the rights of
mankind.

For ourselves, we are pleased that our countrymen
are agitated occasionally by the wave
of politics, and hope never to see the day when
they shall become indifferent to the acts or the
character of their rulers, or neglect the exercise
of their great right of expressing their opinions
freely and fearlessly. And though we do not
admire female politicians, we as little like to
see a woman without patriotism as without religion.
It has often been a subject of regret to
observe that natural love of aristocracy, title,
precedence, and that disgraceful foible of giving
a preference to foreign fashions, manners, and
countries, which are among the characteristics
of the more vulgar and ignorant of those females
who aspire to distinction in the beau monde.
The love of country in the mind of a virtuous,
reflecting, intellectual woman should come next
to her faith, her domestic affections, and her
attachment to home. It ought never to mingle
in party dissensions, or become the common

topic of her thoughts or conversation; but, like
the pure light of religion, it should be a quiet,
deep-rooted, unobtrusive principle, worthy of
every sacrifice except that of the virtues which
constitute the divinity of the sex.

The great day at length arrived big with the
fate of Leonard Dangerfield and Miles Starkweather,
each a candidate for the wayward affections
of that wayward sovereign the king people.
The sturdy freeholders of the west, as they are
pleased to say, with some little degree of reason
on their side, have no idea of buying a rackoon
in his hole. They like to see the candidates
face to face, to shake hands, talk, crack jokes,
and maybe crack a bottle with them, before
they assist in making them their temporary
masters, or, for the word master grates on the
ear of a freeman, their representatives. Above
all, they must hear each one make a speech, if
it be only from a stump, before they say ay or
no to his pretensions. On this occasion, therefore,
the opposing candidates attended the poll,
and gave in their creed of politics. Leonard
advocated the “old court” in a speech of two
good hours, and the sovereigns hurraed, and
pronounced him “transcendent.”

“I'll be goy blamed,” cried one Rowland Harrod,
a broth of a fellow at the polls, “if he don't
speak as if he hadn't another minute to live.”

The opposition man was born out of the
State, and suspected of having a cross of the
Yankee; which was a great disadvantage, for
Kentucky inherits from Old Virginia a decided
preference for orators and statesmen of her own
“raising.” But the worst of all was his propensity

to dressing too well, and always carrying
a white pocket-handkerchief. Yet he had all
the “new court” party in his favour, and was
huzzaed most vociferously. There was no
knowing which of the courts would carry the
day, when a queer, wizened, weather-beaten old
gentleman, called Colonel Trollope, with one
eye, and a face of mortal obliquity, ascended
the forum, videlicet, the steps of the court-house,
and addressed the audience as follows:—

“Friends and fellow-citizens,—That man
who has been just speaking to you, it appears
to me, places great confidence in succeeding in
his election, because he has a white pocket-h-a-a-ndkerchief.
He means to touch in the
exquisite spot, and has been flourishing this
piece of white before your eyes to dazzle you.
Didn't you see how he flourished it when he
had nothing to say? when he was fairly up a
tree, just like the preacher the Sunday before
last? He got against a snag several times, and
then he would roar out, `O, Mesopotamia! Mesopotamia!'
and one old woman cried herself
into a conversion.

“But, gentlemen, I don't mean you; we are
not old women; we are not to be coaxed with
pretty words sweetened with maple sugar, and
no meaning in them, nor dazzled out of our
understandings with a white towel, for what I
know. (hurrah! wheugh! whoop!) I say his
gentility won't serve his turn here, nor his
gar-broth. I'm for Dangerfield, though he
hasn't got a white pocket-h-a-a-ndkerchief, and
though he can't play on the piane. He's a man
of good strong horse sense, and his sister can

make a pair of moccasins out of his old boots,
I know, anyhow. Dangerfield knows what we
want, and will do it. But this genteelman of
the white flag [hurrah!] would be sipping
champaign, and studying fashions. We want
no such members that sail under the white flag;
no such exotics among us, that think they can't
study their A B C at home. We men of the
west are splendid executors of our own will,
and don't want the aid of the white h-a-a-ndkerchief.
Damme if I don't believe he had a
ring on his little finger!”

“O thunder! a ring! Dangerfield for ever.
Hurrah! Dangerfield for me!” cried old
court and new court; and the fortunes of
Miles Starkweather, like those of the Bourbons,
sunk under the white flag. In a few days
there appeared in the Western Sun a paragraph
headed “Glorious Victory! Waterloo Defeat!”
as if some foreign enemy had been driven
from our shores; and Master Zeno Paddock
was observed to deport himself after the manner
of a dunghill cock, that hath just frightened
a greater coward than himself.