University of Virginia Library

1. CHAPTER I.
THE CORN-SHUCKING.

SUBTRACTION is the hardest “ciphering” in the
book. Fifty or sixty years off the date at the
head of your letter is easy enough to the “organ of
number,” but a severe strain on the imagination. It
is hard to go back to the good old days your grandmother
talks about—that golden age when people were
not roasted alive in a sleeping coach, but gently tipped
over a toppling cliff by a drunken stage-driver.

Grand old times were those in which boys politely
took off their hats to preacher or schoolmaster, solacing
their fresh young hearts afterward by making
mouths at the back of his great-coat. Blessed days!
in which parsons wore stiff, white stocks, and walked
with starched dignity, and yet were not too good to
drink peach-brandy and cherry-bounce with folks;
when Congressmen were so honorable that they scorned
bribes, and were only kept from killing one another
by the exertions of the sergeant-at-arms. It was in

those old times of the beginning of the reign of Madison,
that the people of the Hissawachee settlement, in
Southern Ohio, prepared to attend “the corn-shuckin'
down at Cap'n Lumsden's.”

There is a peculiar freshness about the entertainment
that opens the gayeties of the season. The
shucking at Lumsden's had the advantage of being
set off by a dim back-ground of other shuckings, and
quiltings, and wood-choppings, and apple-peelings that
were to follow, to say nothing of the frolics pure and
simple—parties alloyed with no utilitarian purposes.

Lumsden's corn lay ready for husking, in a whitey-brown
ridge five or six feet high. The Captain was
not insensible to considerations of economy. He
knew quite well that it would be cheaper in the long
run to have it husked by his own farm hands; the
expense of an entertainment in whiskey and other
needful provisions, and the wasteful handling of the
corn, not to mention the obligation to send a hand
to other huskings, more than counter-balanced the
gratuitous labor. But who can resist the public sentiment
that requires a man to be a gentleman according
to the standard of his neighbors? Captain Lumsden
had the reputation of doing many things which
were oppressive, and unjust, but to have “shucked” his
own corn would have been to forfeit his respectability
entirely. It would have placed him on the Pariah
level of the contemptible Connecticut Yankee who
had bought a place farther up the creek, and who
dared to husk his own corn, practise certain forbidden
economies, and even take pay for such trifles as butter,

and eggs, and the surplus veal of a calf which he
had killed. The propriety of “ducking” this Yankee
had been a matter of serious debate. A man “as
tight as the bark on a beech tree,” and a Yankee besides,
was next door to a horse-thief.

So there was a corn-shucking at Cap'n Lumsden's.
The “women-folks” turned the festive occasion into
farther use by stretching a quilt on the frames, and
having the ladies of the party spend the afternoon in
quilting and gossiping—the younger women blushing
inwardly, and sometimes outwardly, with hope and
fear, as the names of certain young men were mentioned.
Who could tell what disclosures the evening frolic
might produce? For, though “circumstances alter
cases,” they have no power to change human nature;
and the natural history of the delightful creature
which we call a young woman was essentially the same
in the Hissawachee Bottom, sixty odd years ago, that
it is on Murray or Beacon Street Hill in these modern
times. Difference enough of manner and costume
—linsey-woolsey, with a rare calico now and then for
Sundays; the dropping of “kercheys” by polite young
girls—but these things are only outward. The dainty
girl that turns away from my story with disgust, because
“the people are so rough,” little suspects how entirely
of the cuticle is her refinement—how, after all, there
is a touch of nature that makes Polly Ann and Sary
Jane cousins-german to Jennie, and Hattie, and Blanche,
and Mabel.

It was just dark—the rising full moon was blazing
like a bonfire among the trees on Campbell's Hill,

[ILLUSTRATION]

CAPTAIN LUMSDEN.

[Description: 554EAF. Page 012. In-line engraving, three-quarter view of man in top hat and cutaway coat holding a cane.] across the creek—when the shucking party gathered
rapidly around the
Captain's ridge of
corn. The first comers
waited for the
others, and spent the
time looking at the
heap, and speculating
as to how many
bushels it would
“shuck out.” Captain
Lumsden, an
active, eager man,
under the medium
size, welcomed his
neighbors cordially,
but with certain reserves.
That is to say, he spoke with hospitable warmth
to each new comer, but brought his voice up at the last
like a whip-cracker; there was a something in what
Dr. Rush would call the “vanish” of his enunciation,
which reminded the person addressed that Captain
Lumsden, though he knew how to treat a man with
politeness, as became an old Virginia gentleman, was
not a man whose supremacy was to be questioned for
a moment. He reached out his hand, with a “Howdy,
Bill?” “Howdy, Jeems? how 's your mother gittin',
eh?” and “Hello, Bob, I thought you had the shakes
—got out at last, did you?” Under this superficial familiarity
a certain reserve of conscious superiority and
flinty self-will never failed to make itself appreciated.

Let us understand ourselves. When we speak of
Captain Lumsden as an old Virginia gentleman, we
speak from his own standpoint. In his native state
his hereditary rank was low—his father was an “upstart,”
who, besides lacking any claims to “good
blood,” had made money by doubtful means. But
such is the advantage of emigration that among outside
barbarians the fact of having been born in “Ole
Virginny” was credential enough. Was not the Old
Dominion the mother of presidents, and of gentlemen?
And so Captain Lumsden was accustomed to
tap his pantaloons with his raw-hide riding-whip,
while he alluded to his relationships to “the old
families,” the Carys, the Archers, the Lees, the Peytons,
and the far-famed William and Evelyn Bird; and he
was especially fond of mentioning his relationship to
that family whose aristocratic surname is spelled
“Enroughty,” while it is mysteriously and inexplicably
pronounced “Darby,” and to the “Tolivars,” whose
name is spelled “Taliaferro.” Nothing smacks more
of hereditary nobility than a divorce betwixt spelling
and pronouncing. In all the Captain's strutting talk
there was this shade of truth, that he was related to
the old families through his wife. For Captain Lumsden
would have scorned a prima facie lie. But, in his
fertile mind, the truth was ever germinal—little acorns
of fact grew to great oaks of fable.

How quickly a crowd gathers! While I have been
introducing you to Lumsden, the Captain has been
shaking hands in his way, giving a cordial grip, and
then suddenly relaxing, and withdrawing his hand as

if afraid of compromising dignity, and all the while
calling out, “Ho, Tom! Howdy, Stevens? Hello,
Johnson! is that you? Did come after all, eh?”

When once the company was about complete, the
next step was to divide the heap. To do this, judges
were selected, to wit: Mr. Butterfield, a slow-speaking
man, who was believed to know a great deal because
he said little, and looked at things carefully; and
Jake Sniger, who also had a reputation for knowing
a great deal, because he talked glibly, and was good
at off-hand guessing. Butterfield looked at the corn,
first on one side, and then on the end of the heap.
Then he shook his head in uncertainty, and walked
round to the other end of the pile, squinted one eye,
took sight along the top of the ridge, measured its
base, walked from one end to the other with long strides
as if pacing the distance, and again took bearings
with one eye shut, while the young lads stared at
him with awe. Jake Sniger strode away from the
corn and took a panoramic view of it, as one who
scorned to examine anything minutely. He pointed to
the left, and remarked to his admirers that he “'low'd
they was a heap sight more corn in the left hand
eend of the pile, but it was the long, yaller gourd-seed,
and powerful easy to shuck, while t' other eend wuz
the leetle, flint, hominy corn, and had a right smart
sprinklin' of nubbins.” He “'low'd whoever got aholt
of them air nubbins would git sucked in. It was neck-and-neck
twixt this ere and that air, and fer his own
part, he thought the thing mout be nigh about even,
and had orter be divided in the middle of the pile.”

Strange to say, Butterfield, after all his sighting, and
pacing, and measuring, arrived at the same difficult
and complex conclusion, which remarkable coincidence
served to confirm the popular confidence in the infallibility
of the two judges.

So the ridge of corn was measured, and divided
exactly in the middle. A fence rail, leaning against
either side, marked the boundary between the territories
of the two parties. The next thing to be done
was to select the captains. Lumsden, as a prudent
man, desiring an election to the legislature, declined
to appoint them, laughing his chuckling kind of laugh,
and saying, “Choose for yourselves, boys, choose for
yourselves.”

Bill McConkey was on the ground, and there was
no better husker. He wanted to be captain on one
side, but somebody in the crowd objected that there
was no one present who could “hold a taller dip to
Bill's shuckin.”

“Whar's Mort Goodwin?” demanded Bill; “he 's
the one they say kin lick me. I 'd like to lay him out
wunst.”

“He ain't yer.”

“That air 's him a comin' through the cornstalks,
I 'low,” said Jake Sniger, as a tall, well-built young
man came striding hurriedly through the stripped corn
stalks, put two hands on the eight-rail fence, and
cleared it at a bound.

“That's him! that's his jump,” said “little Kike,” a
nephew of Captain Lumsden. “Could n't many fellers
do that eight-rail fence so clean.”

[ILLUSTRATION]

MORT GOODWIN.

[Description: 554EAF. Page 016. In-line engraving of boy wearing a straw hat leaping over a rail fence. ]

“Hello, Mort!” they all cried at once as he came
up taking off his wide-rimmed straw hat and wiping
his forehead. “We thought you wuz n't a comin'.
Here, you and Conkey choose up.”

“Let somebody else,” said Morton, who was shy,
and ready to give up such a distinction to others.

“Backs out!” said Conkey, sneering.

“Not a bit of it,” said Mort. “You don't appreciate
kindness; where 's your stick?”

By tossing a stick from one to the other, and then
passing the hand of one above that of the other, it
was soon decided that Bill McConkey should have the
first choice of men, and Morton Goodwin the first
choice of corn. The shuckers were thus all divided
into two parts. Captain Lumsden, as host, declining

to be upon either side. Goodwin chose the end of
the corn which had, as the boys declared, “a desp'rate
sight of nubbins.” Then, at a signal, all hands
went to work.

The corn had to be husked and thrown into a
crib, a mere pen of fence-rails.

“Now, boys, crib your corn,” said Captain Lumsnen,
as he started the whiskey bottle on its encouraging
travels along the line of shuckers.

“Hurrah, boys!” shouted McConkey. “Pull away,
my sweats! work like dogs in a meat-pot; beat 'em
all to thunder, er bust a biler, by jimminy! Peel 'em
off! Thunder and blazes! Hurrah!”

This loud hallooing may have cheered his own
men, but it certainly stimulated those on the other
side. Morton was more prudent; he husked with all
his might, and called down the lines in an undertone,
“Let them holler, boys, never mind Bill; all the
breath he spends in noise we 'll spend in gittin' the
corn peeled. Here, you! don't you shove that corn
back in the shucks! No cheats allowed on this side!”

Goodwin had taken his place in the middle of his
own men, where he could overlook them and husk,
without intermission, himself; knowing that his own
dexterity was worth almost as much as the work of
two men. When one or two boys on his side began
to run over to see how the others were getting along,
he ordered them back with great firmness. “Let them
alone,” he said, “you are only losing time; work hard
at first, everybody will work hard at the last.”

For nearly an hour the huskers had been stripping

husks with unremitting eagerness; the heap of unshucked
corn had grown smaller, the crib was nearly
full of the white and yellow ears, and a great billow
of light husks had arisen behind the eager workers.

“Why don't you drink?” asked Jake Sniger, who
sat next to Morton.

“Want 's to keep his breath sweet for Patty Lumsden,”
said Ben North, with a chuckle.

Morton did not knock Ben over, and Ben never
knew how near he came to getting a whipping.

It was now the last heavy pull of the shuckers.
McConkey had drunk rather freely, and his “Pull
away, sweats!” became louder than ever. Morton found
it necessary to run up and down his line once or
twice, and hearten his men by telling them that they
were “sure to beat if they only stuck to it well.”

The two parties were pretty evenly matched; the
side led by Goodwin would have given it up once if
it had not been for his cheers; the others were so
near to victory that they began to shout in advance,
and that cheer, before they were through, lost them the
battle,—for Goodwin, calling to his men, fell to work
in a way that set them wild by contagion, and for
the last minute they made almost superhuman exertions,
sending a perfect hail of white corn into the
crib, and licking up the last ear in time to rush with
a shout into the territory of the other party, and seize
on one or two dozen ears, all that were left, to show
that Morton had clearly gained the victory. Then
there was a general wiping of foreheads, and a general
expression of good feeling. But Bill McConkey

vowed that he “knowed what the other side done with
their corn,” pointing to the husk pile.

“I 'll bet you six bits,” said Morton, “that I can
find more corn in your shucks than you kin in mine.”
But Bill did not accept the wager.

After husking the corn that remained under the
rails, the whole party adjourned to the house, washing
their hands and faces in the woodshed as they passed
into the old hybrid building, half log-cabin, the other
half block-house fortification.

The quilting frames were gone; and a substantial
supper was set in the apartment which was commonly
used for parlor and sitting room, and which was now
pressed into service for a dining room. The ladies
stood around against the wall with a self-conscious
air of modesty, debating, no doubt, the effect of their
linsey-woolsey dresses. For what is the use of carding
and spinning, winding and weaving, cutting and sewing
to get a new linsey dress, if you cannot have it admired?