University of Virginia Library

15. CHAPTER XV.

IT had struck ingenious persons that the popular
opinion of beasts speaking, and being taught to speak,
might be turned to some account. Hence it was that
two young men with a cart, from New England, coming
through the settlement, and vending tin-wares, or exchanging
them for other articles, in order to sell again at
a profit, projected the idea, of inveigling some rustic
simpleton, and dressing him in the skin of a wild beast,
put him in the vehicle, and pass him for a speaking Panther,
or cat of the mountain; or what else they might
think most likely to take with the multitude. Accordingly
being in quest of some straggling individual, they
got sight of the bog-trotter, and dogging him to a hayloft,
into which he had crept to take a nap, they cast a
noose about his neck, and dragging him to their receptacle,
put him in their cage. A panther's skin which
seemed to accord with the colour of his hair, was thought
a suitable disguise with which to invest him; and this
they had at hand, having in the course of this exchange,
procured it amongst other peltry, which they had in a
bale on the top of their carriage. They found he could
speak, but in a dialect which they did not well comprehend;
nor perhaps could other people, and therefore the
more suitable, as they thought, for their purpose, as having
the appearance of articulation, but of a beast not
yet brought to express himself with a correct idiom of
any language. For these itinerant traders being from
the eastward, and what are called Yankies, did not understand
the vernacular of the west of Ireland, of which
country Teague was.

Having cased him in the panther's hide, they exhibited
him as one of this species, and giving him a touch of
the whip now and then, and causing him to exclaim, in
the language of complaint, they proved to a demonstration,
that a beast might be taught to speak.

The bog-trotter, in the mean time, had been missed,
and something in the nature of a hue and cry had been
raised on his account. Being found in the possession of
the vagrants, they were questioned on the nature of their
property by the officers who had detected them; though

this was not until they had had him in their custody several
days, and had made money by the imposition. The
detection of the fraud was unavoidable, being exhibited
to so many, some of whom had been acquainted with the
bog-trotter, and knew the peculiar idiom of his brogue;
so that suspicion first arising of the kidnapping, it came
to certainty by the investigation. The robbers, as they
might be called, were apprehended by a warrant from
the chief justice, and brought before him. The attorney
general, Harum Scarum, was very warm on the occasion
and disposed to prosecute them, though not being
well skilled in the law, he could not well tell for what;
or in what shape to send up the indictment; whether for
larceny, or burglary, or arson. But he gave the act and
deed, many hard names, which he had heard of in the
law. The chief justice thought it but a trespass, in legal
contemplation, though of a very aggravated nature,
and could not but lay a ground for an action of damages.
Young men, said he, you are from a country of steady
habits; but these are not the habits in which it behooves
to be steady. I have heard much of the religion, or rather
hypocrisy, of your country. They tell me you chuse
a chaplain when you go to steal a pig, for a thanksgiving
day; or plot against the government. Not that I undertake
to censure your stealing a pig, provided it is for a
religious purpose; because it is amongst yourselves,
and these are matters with which those that are without
may not have a right to meddle. But your stealing a
man from himself, and from the community to whom he
may be useful, though, in law, it may not come under the
denomination of stealing, under all circumstances, and
where it is not to take him out of the country, yet is at
least a very aggravated trespass, and in what is called
a civil action, may subject to very high damages. And
this, I say not as anticipating the trial of the cause, if a
suit should be brought, but with a view to a compromise.
You are not aware of the injury to the individual which
must depend somewhat upon the dignity of the person
trespassed on; and the injured in this case, is no less a
person than one who has been a candidate for a seat in
congress, and might have been a successful candidate,
had he submitted to the canvass in his favour for that
delegation. But he has been actually in the capacity of
a judge, and sat upon a bench. It is not long since,
that the people of this country would have made him a
major general, but for his own modesty that declined it,
which I could wish others had done, who had, perhaps,
less brain to be shot away by a cannon ball. It is alleged
that he was wrought upon by his fears in declining
the commission, as it might subject him to greater danger,
with his uniform and his epaulets in an engagement
Riflemen, or what the Europeans denominate
sharp shooters, might take him off when he came to reconnoitre,
or was discovered in the advance of an engagement
But what is it, whether fear or modesty led
him to decline the honour, so it is that he was thought
worthy of the command, if the governor had thought
proper to give him the commission, or he could have reconciled
it to himself to have accepted of it. I mention
these things, not as approving the making bog-trotters
generals, or advancing them merely because a chance
circumstance has given them the eclat of fortune. For
in war fortune avails much. Nor do I undervalue natural
talents; for I can suppose a man drawing a plough,
with his gears on, and to have his traces cut, and turned
loose in a command, and far surpassing in the talents of
a commander, another who has had all the science and all
the experience that military schools and campaigns can
give. But a presumption of abilities cannot but arise
from education, and experience. There is something
like certainty in the one, there is but accident in the
other. But dropping this, I return to your misdemeanor;
not what the law calls a misdemeanor; for that is a
crime, and this at least borders on a crime; but
unquestionably as respects the community, you have
been guilty of a great indecorum. I admit, you would
not think it an offence, or at least a great offence,
in your land of steady habits, where the second table of
the law has been almost struck out of the decalogue,
and the ceremonies of religion, and observances of these,
have taken place of justice to man. It would be of less
consequence, if you cheated a little in the way of your
trumpery that you vend, or exchange through the country.
But to purloin a valuable member of society, even
if you did not mean eventually to detain him, is a transgression
not easily reconcilable to a pure conscience and
a good mind. But it is a maxim of the law, as well as
of the gospel, or rather the law has derived it from the
gospel, “talk with thine adversary whilst thou art in the
way with him.” This is the foundation of our imparlances
in the law, or the time given to speak with; so
that as there is a tavern, or what is called an ordinary
there, not far off, I would recommend it to you, young
men, to take the bog-trotter aside, and, after eating and
drinking together, you might perhaps come to terms.

Agreeable to the hint given, the young men took the
bog-trotter away to the public house, in his panther's
habit as he was, and the presumption is, that a compromise
did take place; for, in the language of law writs,
there was no more clamour heard on that head for defect
of justice.

The like finesse, but in a different way, though with the
same view of making money out of the phrenzy of the
country, was practised; a couple of speculating men, the
one in the dress of a man, the other in the costume of a
beast. For it had been agreed that the one should personate
a publican, or inn-keeper, the other, who was the
smaller man, should pass for the bar-keeper; and, to disguise
the human form, he was invested with the skin of a
wild cat. The tail had remained appended to it, and as
the physiognomy of a cat somewhat approaches to that of
a man, the skin drawn over the features, with the same
orifice for mouth and eyes, unless to a very nice examination,
there was no difference. The multitude of those
that came to see the hotel, would not admit of the possibility
of a metamorphose, but insisted that the barkeeper
was a real cat of the mountain. The faculty of
speech, which it evidently had, made it the more interesting.
For, as to having speech, there was no doubt;
it spoke several languages, German and low Dutch,
French and English. But whether it was a real beast or
not, was the question. If it was a beast, and could speak,
all admitted that the problem was solved, and it no longer
remained an hypothesis, that there were beasts who spoke
naturally, or that they could be brought to speak. There
were amongst the incredulous, doubtless, some men of
understanding and sagacity, and who reasoned from the
laws of nature, and the analogy of the parts, there being
no organs of speech to a brute creature; but abstract
reasoning was borne down, by the testimony of the fact,
the majority affirming, and actually believing, that it was
a cat, and nevertheless was endued with the faculty of
articulate speech. The inn-keeper, who affected to be
a person of veracity, averred that he had known him
when he was first brought from the mountains, an active
skipping cat, without the smallest cultivation, or

capacity of articulating a syllable, save in its own mother
tongue, and a kind of mew that cats have; but that
in the course of three years that he had had him as a
waiter in France, Holland, Germany, and England, he
had acquired sufficient of the languages of those countries
to converse, or at least to understand sounds, and
answer calls in German, French, &c.

There was not a word of truth in all this, I mean in
the bar-keeper having been a cat, any more than a turkey-buzzard,
but the whole a fiction of the man who
passed for land-lord, acquiesced in, and sanctioned by
him who passed for bar-keeper, and this to their mutual
interest, and by their joint contrivance. And, nevertheless,
it was as firmly believed for a considerable length
of time as Redheiffer's perpetual motion, a thing not less
against the laws of nature, than even the speech of beasts.
As in the case of Redheiffer, so also here, the press was,
in some instances, on the side of the credulous, and there
was at least one editor who menaced all the invectives of
his journal against any one who should presume to express
a doubt of the fact. All that existed short of Redheiffer's
case, was the appointment of a committee by the
legislature, to ascertain and make report. Even at this
day, when the bubble has burst there are those who will
excuse their belief, by saying that if the little bar-keeper
was not a cat, he was at least as nimble as a cat. So that
if they cannot get him to be what they had taken him to
be, they will have him something that resembles it.

When the Governor came to interrogate Teague as to
the treatment he had received in the tin cart, and the manner
in which he had been apprehended, and put in it.—
He gave the following account.

By de holy faders, said he, I was tired trotting about
de country, and just tought dat I would turn in, and slape
a wink in a hay loft, when dese spalpeens, de one wid a
shilelah, and de oder wid a whip, told me I was a wild
baste dat could spake. I said, de devil a bit o' me was a
wild baste more dan deir honours, but an honest Irishman
from de county Drogheda. Wid dat one knocked
me down, and de oder gave me a cut wid de whip, and
marched me into dat cart yonder, and kept me dere two
days, and made me spake to de paple, as if I was de panther
dat had been skinned, but not to tell dat I was de
bog-trotter; treatning to shoot me dead if I should own
dat I was de governor's sharvant. I had de devil's own

time, bad luck to dem, wid deir raw mate dey trew into
my cage, save once or twice a dumplin, to shew de paple
dat I would ate like a Christian baste; which I had
learned, at de same time dat I was taught to spake wid
my tongue, as dey said. I could spake wid de tear in
my eye, but de devil a word I dared to say; or to tell fat
I was, more dan dif I had a potatoe in my mouth. De big
fellow o' de two would order me out of de cage, to shew
de paple dat I could stand on my hind feet, and dance
like a human crature, as well as spake something. But
we made all up wid a good treat, as de old gentleman,
de chief justice, his honour recommended; and if dat
had not been in de way, I would have broke deir heads
for dem, widout more compassion dan I would a snake
or a tarrapin.

The governor recommended him to be cautious of
going into barns or hay lofts, or rambling far, as this was
a new country, and the times were troublesome. It
could not be anticipated, what it might be put into the
peoples' heads to do with him, or with any one else,
or what projectors, or itinerant speculators might set on
foot next. It had been by great good fortune that he
had been discovered, and rescued from these Yankies
before they had got him off to their own country, whence
they might have taken him to England, and shewn him
to old John Bull.