University of Virginia Library

15. FIFTEENTH INSTALLMENT.

WHEN I came to myself I was in Gordonsville. How I
got there nobody would ever tell me. I had done a great
deal for that place. By paring down Smith's mountain I
managed to elevate the general level of the town, so that
a man could go down into his cellar to get his little frosted
turnip and his little withered carrot without wading up to
his neck in water. Whereupon the place grew wonderfully.
I had the satisfaction of seeing the streets stretch
out almost to Mr. Haxall's, and a succession of palatial
stores with large pane windows and occupied by a relay
of solid firms of Brotherton, Bros. & Bro., Cousinton,
Cousins & Co., Nephewson, Nephews & No. (abb. for
nobody else), all disposing of full lines of goods, bads,
and indifferents to the people of Madison and Greene.
Also, there was a tobacco factory and a patent plowhelve-handle
studio. I fitted up the railroad junction or
Y, and erected thereupon a mighty triangular hotel, covering
the whole space of the Y and twelve stories high, with
four mansard roofs, and surmounted by a tower higher
than that of the Tribune building, on the top of which
stood a prodigious figure of Mercury, like that on the
custom-house at Venice, resting on tip-toe, holding a
big hard-boiled egg in one hand and a huge fried chicken-leg
in the other. It was an interesting tower, and was
noticed a good deal. People came up from the Pizenfeels
in ox-carts and on water barrels, in sledges drawn by
fiercely tail-twisted and pepper-podded yearlings, and
camped over against it to admire it.

From Green Springs, from far Cobham, from distant
Pittsylvania, and remote Fluvanna came wanderers, who
stayed till the indolentest flies built webs in their gaping

mouths. In junks, dug-outs, and double canoes many
Chinese and Cannibals arrived to enjoy the grandeur and
repose of the Bob Sully hotel, as it was called. South
Americans sailed up from the tops of the Andes on the
backs of condors, fifteen feet from tip to tip. Pardigon
came up on a fresh bicycle or velocipede without drawing
rein or halting for water. It was so large a house that
the three sides had to be kept by three different people.
Tip Jennings kept one side, Snowden Yates kept the other,
and Colonel C. T. Crittenden kept the third. The
rivalry was so great that they had to be kept well, and
they were kept well, yea, splendidly. Lovers of good
eating and good drinking (Jimmy Keagy had three bar-rooms
on each side, or nine in all, and all large) rushed
from every car to get a meal there. The roar of trains
and the shriek of locomotives never ceased day or night.
Each landlord kept a gong twelve feet in diameter and
run by steam going all the time. This excited the atmosphere
and refreshed the arriving passengers. Many of
the largest negroes amiably solicited your patronage and
praised his side of the triangle. Digges had forty odd
wheat fans which blew out his land circulars by the one
hundred thousand. Gordonsville was a lively place. A
great many people came there to get something good to
eat. The Sphynx got up out of the sand, flirted farewell
with her tail to the Pyramid of Cheops, crossed the seas,
landed at Only near Onancock, inquired for Henry A.
Wise, waded Chesapeake bay, cut her feet with oyster
shells, came up to Gordonsville by way of Centre-Cross
and Milford on four stilts, called for two dozen griddled
riddles, couldn't get them, died of inanition, died on the
platform near the ticket office, was quarried on the spot
and her remains turned into a poor-house.

I was absolutely penniless,[1] but a descendant of Fatty

Dunn generously took care of me. From side to side of
the triangular hotel I pottered with my cane from early
dawn till dark, worrying everybody by telling what I had
done for Virginia, and especially for the County of Orange.
Being a small and very pretty county, I had, at not very
great cost, made throughout its length and breadth a perfect
system of macadamized roads, so admirably built that
for very many years, indeed up to the time of my death,
they did not need one dollar's worth of repairs. Population
flowed in immediately, the major part of the newcomers
being men of wealth from England and the North,
who filled the whole county with most beautiful residences.
Every farm was a picture, every turn of the landscape a
delight. All of my friends joined Tom Wallace in land
speculation, and prospered immensely. Their families
increased. There were Burgesses on every hill-top, A. F.
Stofers in every valley, a profusion of Phil Frys and Phil
Barbours, a world of William Henry Chapmans, cords of
W. W. and Wick Scotts, Abe Houseworths in abundance,
Kincheloes in quantity, and Eckloffs without end; say
nothing of all the other families, especially Dr. Grymes's
and Mrs. Bull's. And yet none of these people would
believe that I had ever lifted a finger for Virginia or
Orange County. They did not so much as know my
name—had never heard of me. At last I became such a
nuisance on the platform, button-holed people so and
spluttered in their faces so that they sent me to the poor-house,
and put me in the care of a bad-tempered old
pauper woman, who abused me, and scratched me until
my face resembled the old American flag at half-mast in a
calm. And there one day I died of a surfeit of cornfield
peas.

The only notice made of me in the Gordonsville Gazette,
edited by Drinkard,[2] was this:

“Moses Adams, a pauper, died at the poor-house yesterday
soon after dinner. He was very old—said to be
upwards of one hundred—and labored under the delusion

that he had been enormously rich. His knowledge of
grammar was defective.”

At my request they buried me in the middle of the road.
It was a good road, and I had the satisfaction of knowing
that every day some jolly party would pass over my head
on the way to a good eating-place—the place they call
Phil Jones's.