University of Virginia Library


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1. CHAPTER I.

[ILLUSTRATION] [Description: 499EAF. Page 017. In-line image of a man sitting on a step smoking a pipe outside in front of a house.]

Nibiwa win o-dibendan aki.

Eng. A gallant tract
Of land it is!
Meercraft. 'Twill yield a pound an acre:
We must let cheap ever at first. But, sir,
This looks too large for you, I see.


JUNE, 18—. Squire Hawkins
sat upon the pyramid of large
blocks, called the “stile,” in
front of his house, contemplating
the morning.

The locality was Obedstown,
East Tennessee. You would
not know that Obedstown
stood on the top of a mountain,
for there was nothing
about the landscape to indicate
it—but it did: a mountain that
stretched abroad over whole counties, and rose very gradually.
The district was called the “Knobs of East Tennessee,” and
had a reputation like Nazareth, as far as turning out any good
thing was concerned.

The Squire's house was a double log cabin, in a state of
decay; two or three gaunt hounds lay asleep about the threshold,
and lifted their heads sadly whenever Mrs. Hawkins or
the children stepped in and out over their bodies. Rubbish
was scattered about the grassless yard; a bench stood near


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[ILLUSTRATION]

THE SQUIRE'S HOUSE.

[Description: 499EAF. Page 018. In-line image of a log cabin in the woods with two children in the front yard looking at a cooking fire.]
the door with a tin wash basin on it and a pail of water and
a gourd; a cat had begun to drink from the pail, but the
exertion was overtaxing her energies, and she had stopped to
rest. There was an ash-hopper by the fence, and an iron pot,
for soft-soap-boiling, near it.

This dwelling constituted one-fifteenth of Obedstown; the
other fourteen houses were scattered about among the tall
pine trees and among the corn-fields in such a way that a man
might stand in the midst of the city and not know but that
he was in the country if he only depended on his eyes for
information.

“Squire” Hawkins got his title from being postmaster of
Obedstown—not that the title properly belonged to the office,
but because in those regions the chief citizens always must
have titles of some sort, and so the usual courtesy had been
extended to Hawkins. The mail was monthly, and sometimes
amounted to as much as three or four letters at a single
delivery. Even a rush like this did not fill up the postmaster's


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[ILLUSTRATION]

THE U.S. MAIL.

[Description: 499EAF. Page 019. In-line image of man riding on an old horse that looks very tired.]
whole month, though, and therefore he “kept store” in the
intervals.

The Squire was contemplating the morning. It was balmy
and tranquil, the vagrant breezes were laden with the odor
of flowers, the murmur of bees was in the air, there was
everywhere that suggestion of repose that summer woodlands
bring to the senses, and the vague, pleasurable melancholy
that such a time and such surroundings inspire.

Presently the United States mail arrived, on horseback.
There was but one letter, and it was for the postmaster. The
long-legged youth who carried the mail tarried an hour to
talk, for there was no hurry; and in a little while the male
population of the village had assembled to help. As a general
thing, they were dressed in homespun “jeans,” blue or yellow—
there were no other varieties of it; all wore one suspender and
sometimes two—yarn ones knitted at home,—some wore vests,
but few wore coats. Such coats and vests as did appear, however,
were rather picturesque than otherwise, for they were
made of tolerably fanciful patterns of calico—a fashion which
prevails there to this day among those of the community who
have tastes above the common level and are able to afford
style. Every individual arrived with his hands in his
pockets; a hand came out occasionally for a purpose, but it
always went back again after service; and if it was the


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[ILLUSTRATION]

OBEDSTOWN MALES.

[Description: 499EAF. Page 020. In-line image of a group of man sitting around outside of a post office. There is a short man with a fishing pole who looks bewildered.]
head that was served, just the cant that the dilapidated
straw hat got by being uplifted and rooted under, was
retained until the next call altered the inclination; many hats
were present, but none were erect and no two were canted
just alike. We are speaking impartially of men, youths and
boys. And we are also speaking of these three estates when
we say that every individual was either chewing natural leaf
tobacco prepared on his own premises, or smoking the same
in a corn-cob pipe. Few of the men wore whiskers; none
wore moustaches; some had a thick jungle of hair under the
chin and hiding the throat—the only pattern recognized there
as being the correct thing in whiskers; but no part of any
individual's face had seen a razor for a week.

These neighbors stood a few moments looking at the mail
carrier reflectively while he talked; but fatigue soon began
to show itself, and one after another they climbed up and
occupied the top rail of the fence, hump-shouldered and grave,


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like a company of buzzards assembled for supper and listening
for the death-rattle. Old Damrell said:

“Tha hain't no news 'bout the jedge, hit ain't likely?”

“Cain't tell for sartin; some thinks he's gwyne to be 'long
toreckly, and some thinks 'e hain't. Russ Mosely he tole ole
Hanks he mought git to Obeds tomorrer or nex' day he
reckoned.”

“Well, I wisht I knowed. I got a prime sow and pigs in
the cote-house, and I hain't got no place for to put 'em. If
the jedge is a gwyne to hold cote, I got to roust 'em out, I
reckon. But tomorrer'll do, I 'spect.”

The speaker bunched his thick lips together like the stemend
of a tomato and shot a bumble-bee dead that had lit on a
weed seven feet away. One after another the several chew-ers
expressed a charge of tobacco juice and delivered it at
the deceased with steady aim and faultless accuracy.

“What's a stirrin', down 'bout the Forks?” continued Old
Damrell.

“Well, I dunno, skasely. Ole Drake Higgins he's ben
down to Shelby las' week. Tuck his crap down; couldn't git
shet o' the most uv it; hit warn't no time for to sell, he say,
so he fotch it back agin, 'lowin' to wait tell fall. Talks 'bout
goin' to Mozouri—lots uv 'ems talkin' that-away down thar,
Ole Higgins say. Cain't make a livin' here no mo', sich
times as these. Si Higgins he's ben over to Kaintuck n'
married a high-toned gal thar, outen the fust families, an' he's
come back to the Forks with jist a hell's-mint o' whoop-jamboree
notions, folks says. He's tuck an' fixed up the ole
house like they does in Kaintuck, he say, an' tha's ben folks
come cler from Turpentine for to see it. He's tuck an'
gawmed it all over on the inside with plarsterin'.”

“What's plarsterin'?”

I dono. Hit's what he calls it. Ole Mam Higgins, she
tole me. She say she warn't gwyne to hang out in no sich a
dern hole like a hog. Says it's mud, or some sich kind o'
nastness that sticks on n' kivers up everything. Plarsterin',
Si calls it.”

This marvel was discussed at considerable length; and


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[ILLUSTRATION]

HURRYING.

[Description: 499EAF. Page 022. In-line image of a line of men walking together in front of a log cabin. There are a number of prarie dogs running around.]
almost with animation. But presently there was a dog-fight
over in the neighborhood of the blacksmith shop, and the
visitors slid off their perch like so many turtles and strode to
the battle-field with an interest bordering on eagerness. The
Squire remained, and read his letter. Then he sighed, and
sat long in meditation. At intervals he said:

“Missouri. Missouri. Well, well, well, everything is so
uncertain.”

At last he said:

“I believe I'll do it.—A man will just rot, here. My house,
my yard, everything around me, in fact, shows that I am
becoming one of these cattle—and I used to be thrifty in
other times.”

He was not more than thirty-five, but he had a worn look
that made him seem older. He left the stile, entered that
part of his house which was the store, traded a quart of thick
molasses for a coonskin and a cake of beeswax to an old dame
in linsey-woolsey, put his letter away, and went into the
kitchen. His wife was there, constructing some dried apple
pies; a slovenly urchin of ten was dreaming over a rude
weather-vane of his own contriving; his small sister, close
upon four years of age, was sopping corn-bread in some gravy
left in the bottom of a frying-pan and trying hard not to sop


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[ILLUSTRATION]

THE SQUIRE'S KITCHEN.

[Description: 499EAF. Page 023. In-line image of a 2 women, one is presumably a servant in the kitchen, next to a hearth. Two small children are playing in the foreground.]
over a finger-mark that divided the pan through the middle
—for the other side belonged to the brother, whose musings
made him forget his stomach for the moment; a negro
woman was busy cooking, at a vast fire-place. Shiftlessness
and poverty reigned in the place.

“Nancy, I've made up my mind. The world is done with
me, and perhaps I ought to be done with it. But no matter
—I can wait. I am going to Missouri. I won't stay in this
dead country and decay with it. I've had it on my mind
some time. I'm going to sell out here for whatever I can get,
and buy a wagon and team and put you and the children in
it and start.”

“Anywhere that suits you, suits me, Si. And the children
can't be any worse off in Missouri than they are here, I
reckon.”

Motioning his wife to a private conference in their own
room, Hawkins said: “No, they'll be better off. I've looked
out for them, Nancy,” and his face lighted. “Do you see
these papers? Well, they are evidence that I have taken up
Seventy-five Thousand Acres of Land in this county—think
what an enormous fortune it will be some day! Why, Nancy,
enormous don't express it—the word's too tame! I tell you,
Nancy——”

“For goodness sake, Si——”


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[ILLUSTRATION]

"FOR GOODNESS SAKES, SI."

[Description: 499EAF. Page 024. In-line image of a man and a woman sitting together by a window talking together.]

“Wait, Nancy, wait—let me finish—I've been secretly
boiling and fuming with this grand inspiration for weeks, and
I must talk or I'll burst! I haven't whispered to a soul—not
a word—have had my countenance under lock and key, for
fear it might drop something that would tell even these animals
here how to discern the gold mine that's glaring under
their noses. Now all that is necessary to hold this land and
keep it in the family is to pay the trifling taxes on it yearly
—five or ten dollars—the whole tract would not sell for over
a third of a cent an acre now, but some day people will be
glad to get it for twenty dollars, fifty dollars, a hundred dollars
an acre! What should you say to” [here he dropped
his voice to a whisper and looked anxiously around to see
that there were no eavesdroppers,] “a thousand dollars an
acre!

“Well you may open your eyes and stare! But it's so.
You and I may not see the day, but they'll see it. Mind I


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tell you, they'll see it. Nancy, you've heard of steamboats,
and may be you believed in them—of course you did. You've
heard these cattle here scoff at them and call them lies and
humbugs,—but they're not lies and humbugs, they're a reality
and they're going to be a more wonderful thing some
day than they are now. They're going to make a revolution
in this world's affairs that will make men dizzy to contemplate.
I've been watching—I've been watching while some
people slept, and I know what's coming.

“Even you and I will see the day that steamboats will come
up that little Turkey river to within twenty miles of this
land of ours—and in high water they'll come right to it!
And this is not all, Nancy—it isn't even half! There's a
bigger wonder—the railroad! These worms here have never
even heard of it—and when they do they'll not believe in it.
But it's another fact. Coaches that fly over the ground
twenty miles an hour—heavens and earth, think of that,
Nancy! Twenty miles an hour. It makes a man's brain
whirl. Some day, when you and I are in our graves, there'll
be a railroad stretching hundreds of miles—all the way down
from the cities of the Northern States to New Orleans—and
its got to run within thirty miles of this land—may be even
touch a corner of it. Well, do you know, they've quit burning
wood in some places in the Eastern States? And what
do you suppose they burn? Coal!” [He bent over and
whispered again:] “There's whole worlds of it on this land!
You know that black stuff that crops out of the bank of the
branch?—well, that's it. You've taken it for rocks; so has
every body here; and they've built little dams and such
things with it. One man was going to build a chimney out of it.
Nancy I expect I turned as white as a sheet! Why, it might have
caught fire and told everything. I showed him it was too
crumbly. Then he was going to build it of copper ore—
splendid yellow forty-per-cent. ore! There's fortunes upon
fortunes of copper ore on our land! It scared me to death,
the idea of this fool starting a smelting furnace in his house


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without knowing it, and getting his dull eyes opened. And
then he was going to build it of iron ore! There's mountains
of iron ore here, Nancy—whole mountains of it. I wouldn't
take any chances. I just stuck by him—I haunted him—I
never let him alone till he built it of mud and sticks like all
the rest of the chimneys in this dismal country. Pine forests,
wheat land, corn land, iron, copper, coal—wait till the rail-roads
come, and the steamboats! We'll never see the day,
Nancy—never in the world—never, never, never, child.
We've got to drag along, drag along, and eat crusts in toil
and poverty, all hopeless and forlorn—but they'll ride in
coaches, Nancy! They'll live like the princes of the earth;
they'll be courted and worshiped; their names will be
known from ocean to ocean! Ah, well-a-day! Will they
ever come back here, on the railroad and the steamboat, and
say `This one little spot shall not be touched—this hovel
shall be sacred—for here our father and our mother suffered
for us, thought for us, laid the foundations of our future as
solid as the hills!' ”

“You are a great, good, noble soul, Si Hawkins, and I am
an honored woman to be the wife of such a man”—and the
tears stood in her eyes when she said it. “We will go to
Missouri. You are out of your place, here, among these
groping dumb creatures. We will find a higher place, where
you can walk with your own kind, and be understood when
you speak—not stared at as if you were talking some foreign
tongue. I would go anywhere, anywhere in the wide world
with you. I would rather my body should starve and die
than your mind should hunger and wither away in this lonely
land.”

“Spoken like yourself, my child! But we'll not starve,
Nancy. Far from it. I have a letter from Eschol Sellers
—just came this day. A letter that—I'll read you a line
from it!”

He flew out of the room. A shadow blurred the sunlight
in Nancy's face—there was uneasiness in it, and disappointment.


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A procession of disturbing thoughts began to troop
through her mind. Saying nothing aloud, she sat with her
hands in her lap; now and then she clasped them, then unclasped
them, then tapped the ends of the fingers together;
sighed, nodded, smiled—occasionally paused, shook her head.
This pantomime was the elocutionary expression of an unspoken
soliloquy which had something of this shape:

“I was afraid of it—was afraid of it. Trying to make
our fortune in Virginia, Eschol Sellers nearly ruined us—
and we had to settle in Kentucky and start over again.
Trying to make our fortune in Kentucky he crippled us
again and we had to move here. Trying to make our fortune
here, he brought us clear down to the ground, nearly. He's
an honest soul, and means the very best in the world, but
I'm afraid, I'm afraid he's too flighty. He has splendid
ideas, and he'll divide his chances with his friends with a free
hand, the good generous soul, but something does seem to
always interfere and spoil everything. I never did think he
was right well balanced. But I don't blame my husband,
for I do think that when that man gets his head full of a new
notion, he can out-talk a machine. He'll make anybody believe
in that notion that'll listen to him ten minutes—why I
do believe he would make a deaf and dumb man believe in
it and get beside himself, if you only set him where he could
see his eyes talk and watch his hands explain. What a head
he has got! When he got up that idea there in Virginia of
buying up whole loads of negroes in Delaware and Virginia
and Tennessee, very quiet, having papers drawn to have them
delivered at a place in Alabama and take them and pay for
them, away yonder at a certain time, and then in the meantime
get a law made stopping everybody from selling negroes
to the south after a certain day—it was somehow that way—
mercy how the man would have made money! Negroes
would have gone up to four prices. But after he'd spent
money and worked hard, and traveled hard, and had heaps
of negroes all contracted for, and everything going along


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[ILLUSTRATION]

THE LAST COG WHEEL.

[Description: 499EAF. Page 028. In-line image of three men crowded around a barrell with a candle lighting the room.]
just right, he couldn't get the laws passed and down the
whole thing tumbled. And there in Kentucky, when he
raked up that old numskull that had been inventing away at
a perpetual motion machine for twenty-two years, and Eschol
Sellers saw at a glance where just one more little cog-wheel
would settle the business, why I could see it as plain as day
when he came in wild at midnight and hammered us out of
bed and told the whole thing in a whisper with the doors
bolted and the candle in an empty barrel. Oceans of money
in it—anybody could see that. But it did cost a deal to buy
the old numskull out—and then when they put the new cog-wheel
in they'd overlooked something somewhere and it
wasn't any use—the troublesome thing wouldn't go. That
notion he got up here did look as handy as anything in the
world; and how him and Si did sit up nights working at it
with the curtains down and me watching to see if any neighbors
were about. The man did honestly believe there was
a fortune in that black gummy oil that stews out of the bank
Si says is coal; and he refined it himself till it was like
water, nearly, and it did burn, there's no two ways about
that; and I reckon he'd have been all right in Cincinnati
with his lamp that he got made, that time he got a house full
of rich speculators to see him exhibit only in the middle of

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[ILLUSTRATION]

GONE UP.

[Description: 499EAF. Page 029. In-line image of a group of people around a table looking very surprised by the explosion on the table.]
his speech it let go and almost blew the heads off the whole
crowd. I haven't got over grieving for the money that cost,
yet. I am sorry enough Eschol Sellers is in Missouri, now,
but I was glad when he went. I wonder what his letter
says. But of course it's cheerful; he's never down-hearted
—never had any trouble in his life—didn't know it if he had.
It's always sunrise with that man, and fine and blazing, at
that—never gets noon, though—leaves off and rises again.
Nobody can help liking the creature, he means so well—but
I do dread to come across him again; he's bound to set us
all crazy, of course. Well, there goes old widow Hopkins—
it always takes her a week to buy a spool of thread and trade
a hank of yarn. May be Si can come with the letter, now.”

And he did:

“Widow Hopkins kept me—I haven't any patience with
such tedious people. Now listen, Nancy—just listen at
this:

“ `Come right along to Missouri! Don't wait and worry about a good price
but sell out for whatever you can get, and come along, or you might be too late.
Throw away your traps, if necessary, and come empty-handed. You'll never
regret it. It's the grandest country—the loveliest land—the purest atmosphere
—I can't describe it; no pen can do it justice. And it's filling up, every day—
people coming from everywhere. I've got the biggest scheme on earth—and I'll
take you in; I'll take in every friend I've got that's ever stood by me, for there's


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[ILLUSTRATION] [Description: 499EAF. Page 030. Tail-piece image of a sunset with a man standing on a path in front of the sun.] enough for all, and to spare. Mum's the word—don't whisper—keep yourself
to yourself. You'll see! Come!—rush!—hurry!—don't wait for anything!'

“It's the same old boy, Nancy, just the same old boy—
ain't he?”

“Yes, I think there's a little of the old sound about his
voice yet. I suppose you—you'll still go, Si?”

“Go! Well, I should think so, Nancy. It's all a chance,
of course, and chances haven't been kind to us, I'll admit—
but whatever comes, old wife, they're provided for. Thank
God for that!”

“Amen,” came low and earnestly.

And with an activity and a suddenness that bewildered
Obedstown and almost took its breath away, the Hawkinses
hurried through with their arrangements in four short months
and flitted out into the great mysterious blank that lay
beyond the Knobs of Tennessee.