 | CHAPTER I. Dukesborough tales |  |
1. CHAPTER I.
ONCE upon a time, in this glorious country, a respectable but
uneducated woman, who had taken to her home an orphan
child of poor parents, had brought her up with great care and tenderness,
and, though reluctantly, allowed her to receive, at the hands
of some other benevolent persons, a year's schooling, had the misfortune
to lose her protégée. The girl, who was very pretty, being offered
a home in a family where she thought she could have better society
and more enjoyments than were to be had in the house of her first
benefactress, accepted this offer, and refused to return. The good
lady, in her distress searching eagerly how she might avoid placing too
great blame upon the beloved child of her adoption, attributed her loss
to education.
“It was edyecation,” she said bitterly, when she had given up all
efforts to recover her lost treasure; “it was edyecation that done it all.
I never seed a more biddable child than she was before she went off
to school. You may tell me what you please about your edyecation:
it's my opinion that the more edyecation people git, the meaner they
git.”
Woe to the schools and colleges henceforth if she could have had
her way with them!
There are, and for a long time there have been many persons in this
good State of Georgia who feel like this good woman regarding another
great instrument of its civilisation. We all remember (at least those
who are old enough) how long a time it required to get the establishment
of a Supreme Court for the Correction of Errors. What courts
we did have seemed to be such nuisances that men were generally
opposed to having any more. At length, being partially convinced
that such a tribunal might serve to settle at least some points of law,
and thereby lessen some useless litigation, it was established. Yet,
notwithstanding the great good that has been accomplished through its
instrumentality, there are very many who still regard it as only another
addition to the various means of vexing citizens with law-suits; and we
yet meet with those who are fond of speaking of the good old times
when courts were fewer, and men did not have to carry their cases out
of their counties after they had been once settled at home.
Well, those old times were very good in many respects. Beef was
cheap, and the temptation to steal it was small. Men did not very
often commit malicious mischief, or keep open tippling-houses on forbidden
days. Land was not high; men lived more widely apart, and
almost every one kept his own whiskey at home. Vagabonds were
less numerous than now; mostly because the credit system being not
greatly developed, they were wont to carry upon their persons the
unmistakable badges of their profession. It is pleasing to an old man
like me to recur to those old times. Corn, twenty cents a bushel,
except to wagoners, who, being strangers, and considering that their
silver might prove to be pewter, were made to pay a quarter of a dollar.
Bacon, no price at all, because everybody had a plenty, and because
the woods were full of game and the creeks were full of fish. Blessed
be the memory of those old times! The most of those who were then
my companions and friends are gone, and I am left almost alone. Yet,
for the many recollections which they bring to me, I say again, Blessed
be the memory of those old times!
But, like all other times, those old ones had their evils and their
wants. Men and systems were not perfect, even then. True, they
had not many schools, and they had no Supreme Court. Yet, in what
schools and courts they had, there were some things which, when
men thought of them at all, they thought might have been done differently
or left undone. I think that we have improved somewhat in the
matter of a few of the institutions of the old times. I speak thus with
what seem to be derelictions from the simple habits which
prevailed when I was a boy. The young of this generation, it seems
to me, are not so respectful to the old as they used to be. Discipline
surely has lost some of its ancient control. To take my own case for
instance: I am convinced that when I was young I treated men who
were as old as I am now with more consideration than that which I
receive from the young. I do not like to complain, and a man at my
time of life should beware how he complains. Still, I can but notice
in the present generation a want of that reverence which, when I was
a boy, the young felt for the aged. I know how wont old persons are
to find fault with present times, and therefore I try to endure as I would
like to be endured. And while I may mistake myself in this regard,
nevertheless I do believe that I can fairly compare with one another
the various periods in which I have lived. My opinion upon the whole
is, that while in some respects there have been deteriorations from the
habits of old times, there have been improvements in others. Now,
as for the schools in old times, bad as some of them were, they had
ways of righting themselves. The things done in them, though seriously
inconvenient at the time of their doing, were seldom very serious
in their consequences. Boys knew them to be, as they were, institutions,
and so learned to get used to them. Or, if a schoolmaster grew
to be too bad, or wouldn't give a holiday at Whitsuntide, he got his
ducking, and things went on better for a while. The same thing, however,
could not be said of the courts and the judges, when, as was
sometimes the case, the latter were neither fully educated in all the
learning applicable to all cases arising in Law and Equity, nor wholly
above the prejudices and other infirmities to which the rest of mankind
are subject. The latter generations have surely made advances in the
matter of laws and courts of justice. We always had a great Judiciary
system, if we had carried it to the point designed by its founders.
But we were left with irresponsible judges, and some of them were —
what they were.
Let us look back a little into those old times, while men are thinking
about them and giving especial praise to them, and reminding one
another of how glorious they were. I observe that this habit prevails
less with the truly old than with the middle-aged, who have had not
enough of old age to obtain its true wisdom. I trust, therefore, it will
not be amiss in me, who have lived in both the old times and the new,
scene or two that figured and were enacted in a court in our neighborhood,
long, long ago. And as I have used many introductory words
(and those possibly somewhat involved), and as I have mentioned one
fact (though it has nothing to do with the narrative except to help in
pointing its moral), and as I am a little tired, I will stop for the present
where I am, and call what I have already written, a chapter.
| CHAPTER I. Dukesborough tales | |