The Project Gutenberg eBook of Trotwood's Monthly, Vol. I, No. 3,
December 1905, by Various
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Title: Trotwood's Monthly, Vol. I, No. 3, December 1905
Author: Various
Editor: John Trotwood Moore
Release Date: April 14, 2023 [eBook #70553]
Language: English
Produced by: hekula03 and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at
https://www.pgdp.net (This book was produced from images
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK TROTWOOD'S MONTHLY, VOL. I,
NO. 3, DECEMBER 1905 ***
[Illustration: ST. JOHN’S CHURCH, ASHWOOD, TENN.
(See “Historic Highways of the South,” in this issue.)]
TROTWOOD’S MONTHLY
VOL. I. NASHVILLE, TENN., DECEMBER, 1905. NO. 3
Christmas Eve Decorations.
Garlands of starlight o’er the heavens toss’d,
And mistletoe of moonmist hung afar,—
Wreaths of star-leaves, berry bright, emboss’d
In cluster’d panicles of full red-ripe star.
And trellises of soft white—coronals flung—
In winding wreaths and festoons of star-spray,
And lighted planets in dim alcoves hung
Unto the coming of His natal day.
And potted star-plants massed in splendor bright
About a lake whose mirror is the moon,
While sprays of milky-ways float soft and light
Or sink into the placid lake too soon.
And blossoming chorals burst from star-bud pod:
“The Heavens declare the glory of our God!”
JOHN TROTWOOD MOORE.
A Caprice of Santa Claus
By VALERIE FARRINGTON.
“How long is it before Christmas, Miss Edith?” inquired Mammy Rose,
bending forward to peer into the oven where two mammoth fruit cakes in
the process of baking were sending out a delicious, savory odor.
“Just five days more, I am sorry to say. The yellow opera bag is still
unfinished, so are the monogram handkerchiefs; these nuts must be picked
for the praulines, and Agnes and I have undertaken to set the children’s
doll house in order before the holidays. Rob and Jerry say we girls ought
to begin to make our Christmas gifts on the 26th of December to be ready
by next year.”
“Hit ’pears to me, honey, you an’ Miss Agnes with yo’ needles and
paintin’ has turned out nigh ’nough contraptions fur a county fair. Sakes
alive! Miss Edith!” exclaimed Mammy Rose, glancing through the window
into the garden, “Look at dat big barr’l w’at Jeff’s a-bringin’ in!”
The kitchen door opened suddenly and the good-natured face and woolly
head of the yard man appeared inside for a moment.
“Here’s a heap o’ apples or oranges w’at somebody’s done sont,” he
announced. “De ’spress man dumped ’em at de side do’. I ’spect dey’s a
present; he said thar wan’t nothin’ ter pay.”
“O! They must be oranges or grapefruit for Mother from Florida. Uncle
Alex always remembers us at Christmas time,” said Edith. “Roll them into
the store room and remove the head of the barrel!”
“We sho’ air gwine ter hev’ some nice little puddin’s did Christmas
ef folks does say de orange crap’s a failure,” declared Mammy Rose,
standing with arms akimbo, her face brightening over the prospect of good
cheer, then, in a stentorian voice she hailed the young negro who was
disappearing in the direction of the barn.
“You Jeff! Stop dar! Wa’n’t dar a box or a package or somethin’ else lef’
here? Dar ought ’er been,” she said, assuming an air of mingled mystery
and importance. “I was kind o’ ’spectin’ a ’spress package myse’f.”
“You? An express package, Mammy Rose? From whom?” asked Edith, pausing in
her work to scrutinize the picturesque and somewhat bent figure in the
plaid gingham apron and bandanna head-handkerchief.
“From dem lazy niggers up dar in Virginia, Lizzie and Callie. I’m gittin’
mighty tired o’ deir onreliableness, always promisin’ an’ promisin’ ter
do things an’ neber doin’ ’em. ’Pears ter me like a little book learnin’s
done turned ’em plumb fools, but ef dey does flop dey se’ves ’round wid
dey high edycation, de’s one word in the booktinary dey ain’t neber foun’
de meanin’ ob; dey don’t know nothin’ ’tall ’bout gratichude. Ain’t
I done had dat Lizzie and Callie down here, livin’ off o’ me a whole
winter, neber feelin’ sure fur cartain dat dey was my nieces, dey being
yaller-brown like m’lasses candy an’ me as black as der pot hit’s made
in? Ain’t I axed ’em ter come all unbeknownst ’case dey wrote dey was my
sister Car’line’s orphan chil’un, an’ case dey come from Petersburg whar
I come from when I was a little gal? Ain’ I sont ’em things an’ sont ’em
things Christmas after Christmas till I’se clean wo’ out? I b’lieves in
’ciprocation, I does fur er fac’!”
For more than thirty years Mammy Rose had been a faithful employee in the
Radcliffe family, and naturally everything that affected her happiness
was a matter of household concern. She had taken up her abode in the old
Colonial residence before any of the children were born, and, in point of
fact, she was as much a fixture there as were the drawing-room mirrors or
the mahogany stairway. As an accomplished cook, Mammy Rose’s reputation
had spread far and wide till she had become the envy of every troubled
housekeeper in the vicinity. Strange to say, though she could prepare a
hundred dainty dishes fit “to set before a king,” she couldn’t for the
life of her have given the exact recipe for a single one. When asked how
she made her famous Sally-lunn, corn-pudding, waffles or jelly cake, she
would look very wise and say, “You see, I cooks by ’sperience; I takes
a little ob dis, an’ a little of dat, an’ ef tain’t ’nough I takes some
mo’.” But, perhaps, in the care of young children Mammy Rose was most
truly in her element. She loved them and “spoiled” them as if they were
her own, and often, when tired of wrestling with the pots and kettles,
she would resort to the nursery for a fresh assignment of duty. Nothing
delighted her more than to play the role of fairy godmother to the little
folks.
Provoked beyond her habitual good humor on this December afternoon by the
neglect of her young kinswomen, Mammy Rose’s tirade was at its height
when Mrs. Radcliffe stepped into the room to give an order. Upon hearing
the names Lizzie and Callie pronounced in strident, contemptuous tones,
she glanced significantly at Edith, suspicioning that the derelict nieces
were again at the bottom of the trouble.
“I wouldn’t set my heart upon getting that box if I were you, Rosa,”
said the mistress, when the matter had been explained. Judging from past
delinquencies that the girls’ promises were of the pie crust kind, she
wished to soften the servant’s disappointment.
“Now, see here, Mammy, Lizzie and Callie may not be totally ungrateful,
but perhaps they just won’t remember to send you a gift,” suggested
Edith, offering the only consolation that came to mind.
“Humph! won’t remember!” sniffed the old darky, with a fine show
of scorn. “What is it de Scripture says about rememberin’—Thee, O,
Jerusalem, if my right hand be cut off? They can’t fergit dis time! I
done made Jeff write ter Lizzie and Callie mo’n a month ago tellin’ ’em
’xactly w’at I’se ’spectin’!”
“Oh, you surely didn’t do that!” cried Edith, amused as well as shocked
at the old woman’s candor.
“Yes’um, I swar I did!” came the unwavering reply. “Thar’ ain’t no
beatin’ ’round de bush ’bout me; ef dey’s got a spark ob decency or
se’f-respec’ dey’ll do w’at I tole ’em.”
“What did you say you wanted?” asked Mrs. Radcliffe, whose curiosity had
become thoroughly aroused.
“I tole ’em ter sen’ me a bedquilt an’ I sent ’em a bushel o’ calico
scraps ter he’p it ’long. Then I wanted a big jar of watermillon-rind
pickle, a gallon of peach preserves, an’ er sack full ob fresh goose
feathers. Last of all I axed fur er warm gray shawl. Ef dey had ter leabe
off anything, I said let it be dat shawl, ca’se my ole one’s mighty nigh
good ’nough to w’ar to pra’r meetin’s an’ funerals.”
During the days that intervened the conversation in the kitchen and
the Christmas festivities, Mammy Rose was constantly on the alert,
each morning awakening with new hope and at night evincing great
disappointment as package after package arrived for old and young
and nothing came for her. By the morning of the 24th, she had become
extremely morose and ceased to take further interest in the holiday
preparations. However, even in that state of mind she continued to hail
every express man, delivery man, and “A. D. T. boy” who came in sight,
demanding to know whether they had a package at the ’spress office for
Rose Wilkerson that they were “too triflin’ ter deliver.”
But, poor old soul, miserable as she was, she was by no means the only
individual who was dejected over the non-appearance of the presents from
Lizzie and Callie. Edith and Agnes were inclined to regard the matter
very seriously. In fact, after luncheon on Christmas Eve, they called a
family council in the library, desiring that some action be taken in the
case. In spite of pressing engagements elsewhere, Mr. and Mrs. Radcliffe,
Grandfather and Grandmother, Rob and Jerry, and Uncle Joe Echols were
present to lend a sympathetic ear to this vexed domestic problem.
Edith as voluntary counsel for the faithful stewardess plead her cause
feelingly, eloquently, and with eminent success. Every member of that
august body agreed that Mammy Rose must receive her box before bedtime
on Christmas Eve, preferably by fair means, otherwise, by foul. If, upon
investigation at the Southern office, there proved to be no package for
her from those Virginia ingrates, why Old Santy himself must provide one.
A very simple plan was put into operation. The men formed themselves into
a “ways and means” committee, authorizing the girls to draw upon them for
the necessary finances. Mrs. Radcliffe believed that she could purchase a
pretty calico quilt from the “Ladies’ Aid Society” of her church, and the
pickle and preserves could be procured from the Woman’s Exchange. Grandma
thought she knew where a soft, warm shawl might be found and she put
on her bonnet and cloak to go and select it herself. In the bustle and
stir of the fleeting afternoon, however, the sack of fresh goosefeathers
loomed up as a staggering proposition.
“Suppose we give her an eiderdown sofa pillow; she can rip it and take
the feathers out after Christmas if she wishes to make some other use of
them,” proposed Agnes.
“Yes, that’s all right. We haven’t time to go poking around in poultry
yards or to rip Grandma’s feather bed,” chimed in Rob.
“Buy her a pair of flannel foot-warmers as a contribution from me,” said
Grandpa Radcliffe. “I am aware how uncomfortable cold feet are in the
winter.”
“Well, if you’ll have all of that—I was about to say plunder—up at my
office at five sharp, I’ll undertake to send it out in a transfer wagon
by half-past six,” said Uncle Joe, thus solving the last difficulty.
By the time the family had assembled for the sumptuous Yule feast that
evening, the depression of Mammy Rose’s mental status manifested itself
in grumpy monosyllables. She was secretly lamenting the fact that she
had told anybody about her expectations. The other servants had been
whispering and snickering over her chagrin, or, she thought they had,
while the white people from the children up seemed fairly bubbling over
with Christmas mirth. Apparently, every one had some particular reason
for rejoicing except herself. Thus far, this Christmas had been the most
“disappintin’” one that she could remember.
Half an hour later when the salad course was being served the cuckoo
clock and the front door bell sounded in unison. Everyone seated around
the table gave an expectant start. Presently the man servant staggered
in under the weight of a great wooden box that was directed to “Rose
Wilkerson, Care of Mr. Theodore Radcliffe, 456 Spruce Street, Memphis,
Tenn.” Mammy Rose bounded in through the back hall door the moment her
name was pronounced. The thunder clouds had disappeared from her brow and
her face was wreathed with smiles. “I know’d it, I know’d it all along!”
she declared. “My, but ain’t it heavy, an’ don’t h’it rattle. It’d be
jes like dem scatter-brained gals ter pack things so as ter get peach
preserves all ober my bran’-new shawl.”
A friendly audience followed the radiant old woman to the kitchen amid
stifled laughter and concealed nudging and many pairs of eyes rested with
affectionate interest upon her while she nervously assisted Jeff to draw
out the nails. The first thing that met her gaze was the peach preserves;
three whole jars of it were lifted out in succession. “Land o’ Goshen!”
she exclaimed. “Ain’t I gwine ter hab a feast? They must o’ thought I was
gwine ter set up a eatin-house—an’ a whole gallon o’ watermillon-rind
pickles. Ef dat don’t beat——”
Rob had extracted the gray shawl from the odd conglomeration in the box,
and he laid it lightly over her shoulders. “Lor! Dis here gyarment sho’
is warm an’ must er cost a heap o’ money. All dis comin’ on top o’ my
grumbling, too. ’Pears like wonders don’t neber stop ceasin’!” Next she
drew out the satin sofa cushion and for a half a minute she stared at it
in blank amazement. For the first time vague misgivings as to where the
gifts came from began to arise within her. “My—ee! Dis sho’ is pretty,
an’ somebody had mighty good taste,” she ventured to say. She handled
it very gingerly, however; according to her way of thinking it hardly
seemed intended for her personal use and was far too perishable to adorn
a negro cabin.
“Well, I guess Lizzie and Callie must hev struck the Louisiana Lott’ry,”
she declared, sighting the pink and white satin quilt. “Dis here spread
cartin’ly is made after a handsome pattern, but I’ll be blest ef I knows
how dey done it out o’ dem mixed calico scraps. Jes ter think o’ dem
young niggers puttin’ dey se’ves to all dis trouble fur de sake ob Mammy
Rose!”
In the midst of her jubilation the electric bell rang again; rang
furiously this time. A man at the door handed in a wooden box about two
and a half feet square. It was for Mistress Rose Wilkerson and came from
Petersburg, Virginia. Every confederate in the room gasped audibly.
Mammy Rose grasped the end of the table to steady herself. Mr. and Mrs.
Radcliffe exchanged uneasy glances, Grandma Radcliffe turned very white
and sat down suddenly, and a sepulchral silence reigned broken only by
the sound of the hatchet in Jerry’s deft hand. To the darkies assembled
in the background there was something “spookey” about the square parcel;
they wouldn’t have touched it for worlds. Edith was the first person
to whom the humorous side of the situation presented itself. Stepping
forward with commendable presence of mind, she tore away the brown
butcher’s paper that concealed the contents of the second box. A small
gray plaid shoulder shawl fell out upon the floor; a card was attached to
it bearing these words: “To Aunt Rose from her deserving nieces Lizzie
and Callie Goode.”
Simultaneously both women dived into the melange of queer treasures and
brought forth a little China vase that was decidedly “niggery” (no other
word could adequately describe it), a small jar of peach marmalade, and a
sack of loose goose feathers. That last article broke the spell. Further
effort at maintaining the deception was useless—the plot was out. Mammy
Rose, no longer mystified, but on the verge of hysterics over the honors
done her, essayed to express her gratitude: “Well, if you all ain’t de
beatin’est white folks an’ ef I ain’t de discomboberatedest critter
dat ever——!” Choking with emotion, she raised her brimming eyes to her
benefactors to find herself—alone.
The Air and the Water
By WM. DENISON, FARGO, N. D.
“The air and the water contain all the invisible essences of things, that
from which all plants and minerals arise, and of which they are, so to
speak, only condensations or precipitations, so that they become manifest
to our crude senses.” Assuming that the above idea is the truth, and we
fully believe it is, then the air and the water of this earth certainly
must play a most important role in the weal or woe of all things
terrestrial, whether animate or inanimate.
Corroborating the above idea, at least the air part of it, which is true,
being of such paramount importance was advanced four or five years ago
at a meeting of the National Convention of Chemists, at Washington, D.
C. But they failed to recognize that the water was equally as important.
However, some wonderful things were said at that meeting of chemists,
among others, that for a long time past suggestions had been thrown out
to the effect that the exhaustion of the soil would inevitably wipe out
the human race; or at least reduce it greatly in numbers before many
hundred years. But these scientists announced a new discovery, which put
another face on the problem. They declared that this country alone was
able to support In comfort 500 million people—a number equal to nearly
one-third the world’s population at that time. Thanks for this discovery.
The land, while producing greater amounts of foods, is to become steadily
richer and more fertile. This great discovery of these chemists at
the national convention, is that it is atmosphere, and not the soil,
mainly, that produces the crops. Take all the hay or wheat or corn that
is yielded on an acre of land and burn it, stalks and all. It will all
disappear save about two per cent of the total weight. This two per cent
of ash represents what the soil has furnished in the shape of mineral
matter. The farmer of the future must look above for his nitrogen. Aye,
and also look below for his moisture. With the aid of this new knowledge
the present wheat growing regions can be multiplied by three. Today ten
average acres planted to wheat produce 150 bushels of cereal. With very
little trouble and slight cost those average ten acres can be made to
yield 400 bushels. This is simply a question of increasing the average
yield from thirteen to about forty bushels.
A good many acres of new land in the Northwest produce forty bushels
of wheat at a crop. They do it because the land contains the requisite
quantities of nitrogen, phosphoric acid and potash. Supply those
materials to other acres in proper amounts and with climatic conditions
not unfavorable their yield will be as great.
According to these chemists this is the keynote of the whole business.
They say it is no longer accepted as a fact that a non-fertile field is
useless. On the contrary, it is known that such a field merely needs
to be supplied with the proper elements, cheaply obtained, in order
to produce richly. Suppose a farmer has such a field, and that he has
intelligence enough to take advantage of the new knowledge. He goes to
a chemist and has a sample of the soil analyzed. One, perhaps more, of
three things is certainly the matter with it. It lacks potash, it does
not contain sufficient phosphoric acid or there is an undue absence of
nitrogen. Just for argument’s sake, suppose that there is enough potash
and phosphoric acid—the two mineral earth elements essential to the
make-up of plant life, but that nitrogen is lacking. The chemist, in
that case, tells the farmer that he must put his field into condition
to absorb the nitrogen from the air. This is extremely simple, and this
is all there is about it. All the farmer has to do if his soil is
deficient in nitrogen is to plant a legume (of which there are 6,500
species scattered over this earth of ours) suitable to his section of
country. The cowpea is best adapted for the South, and beans and red
clover for the North, or any other leguminous plants suited to his
locality. These plants have an affinity for nitrogen, and they drink it
from the atmosphere as a baby takes milk from a bottle. The most costly
and indispensable of all plant foods is nitrogen. Yet there is plenty of
it at hand, inasmuch as that substance composes eighty per cent of the
atmosphere. The only trouble is to get it out of the air and into the
soil, but there is no real difficulty about that.
Strange, is it not, readers, that the costliest, most expensive plant
food—nitrogen—heretofore, to every farmer, is so abundantly supplied by
an all-wise Creator.
We have been advocating through the press this knowledge for the past
twelve years, which these scientists call new. But we regret that in
their deliberation they did not give due consideration, in fact, not any
at all, of the equal importance to the water end of this article.
If the reader will refer to the account of the creation in the first
chapter of Genesis, seventh verse, he will see that the Creator’s second
day’s work was dividing the waters of the atmosphere and the waters of
the earth.
This preceded the third day of creation, when vegetation began, which
shows conclusively that the waters were equally as important as the air.
It is obvious, then, that this covering of the earth’s surface with
vegetation was for a wise purpose, that of conserving the moistures
of the earth without which there can be no successful crops raised.
It is evident that our climate is changing in this country. Ten years
ago a writer of Chicago, now deceased, gave a theory for the cause of
our changing climate, which I indorse. “The cutting down of our virgin
forests, which has been going on at a fearful rate for the past sixty
years, and also the breaking up and putting under cultivation so large
an area of prairie land in so short a time, is the direct cause. The
equilibrium between the moisture of the atmosphere and the moisture of
the earth is maintained by the virgin forests of a country, and when the
virgin forests are slaughtered, as they have been in this country by
the lumber kings, that equilibrium is lost. Then comes drouth, fires,
famines, pestilence and death.”
This theory is borne out in the fact that there always is so much
humidity in the atmosphere during a protracted drouth. The histories of
the ancient and modern civilizations also bear out this theory. There is
no doubt but that the ancient civilizations had immense virgin forests to
begin with, and that as soon as these virgin forests were consumed, then
the equilibrium between the moisture of the atmosphere and the moisture
of the earth were destroyed and one after the other of these great
nations have perished by drouth, famines, fires and pestilences. I cannot
recall to mind ever having seen a natural spring of water on a treeless
prairie. It is in the timber we find them, showing conclusively that the
forests of a country make the great reservoir of its water supply.
To come down to modern civilizations, a pertinent comment is that made by
Mr. Charles F. Adams on one of the causes that have led to the downfall
of Spain. It is a fact that this peninsula once supported a population
of about 45,000,000, but now holds a meager 17,000,000. The main reason
for this is stated by Mr. Adams. “During the last three years I have
spent much time in Europe, visiting among other countries Spain, Italy,
Germany, France and England, and whoever wishes to study the effects
of deforesting on a country and on its people should by all means visit
Spain. Not only has the country been ruined, but the character of the
people has been changed by the wholesale destruction of trees, and the
neglect of their renewal. The rivers have become mountain torrents and a
large portion of the country is a rugged upland desert. The same process
is to-day going on in Italy. The results in that country as noticed by me
in visits ten years apart is lamentable. The ancient forests are being
wholly stripped from the mountains, and while the rivers are converted
into torrents, the water is not held in the soil. In Germany, on the
other hand, the forestry laws are admirable. The result upon the country,
climate and rainfall is apparent to the most careless observer.
“It is certainly timely to urge the United States that it shall not
permit itself to copy the Spanish example of decay in this or any other
respect.”
The facts stated by Mr. Adams have been corroborated again and again,
to the effect that the denudation of the mountain slopes of Spain and
the erosion of its soil have reduced it to a condition of semi-aridity
and lessening its power to support population, one-third of which are
to-day indulging in bread riots. Of all the civilized nations, we most
nearly copy the Spanish stupidity in the waste of our forests. We should
certainly set about showing ourselves to be wiser than the nation whose
decay is now so evident.
[Illustration]
Historic Highways of the South
Part I. St. John’s Church, Ashwood, Tennessee.
BY JOHN TROTWOOD MOORE
In “The Banner of the Cross,” a Philadelphia paper, a writer, whose name
is unknown, wrote, in 1842, the first description of the now famous
chapel, St. John’s Church, on the pike leading from Columbia, Tenn., to
Mt. Pleasant.
“It was my privilege,” says the writer, “in the month of January, 1834,
to listen to the details of the progress of the Church in Tennessee
from the lips of Bishop Otey, who had just been consecrated. I did not
think then that in God’s providence I should ever witness in person the
results of the Bishop’s labors in the then far-off country. But yesterday
(September 4, 1842), which was a bright, beautiful Sabbath, I witnessed
a scene gladdening to a church-man’s heart, and knowing your interest in
all that concerns the Church in the Southwest, I have thought a sketch of
it might be interesting.
“In this country, upon the road leading from Columbia to Mt. Pleasant,
and about six miles from the former place, in a grove of majestic
and towering oaks, may be seen a neat brick church of simple Gothic
architecture; its interior plain and appropriate and capable of seating
five hundred persons.
“It has been just completed and is the result of the joint liberality
of Bishop Polk and three of his brothers, who, with a spirit worthy of
commendation and imitation, have devoted a portion of the wealth with
which God has blessed them to his service.
“Without aid from abroad, these gentlemen have erected and paid for
this edifice and presented it, together with a plot of about six acres
of land, to the diocese. The lot has been selected from an eligible
portion of the bishop’s plantation, within a few hundred yards of whose
mansion the church stands. It has been erected for the convenience of
the few families in the neighborhood who, with a large number of negroes
on their plantations, will make quite a congregation. For the latter
class the bishop has been in the habit, for a long time, of holding
regular services in his own house. They will now have an opportunity of
worshiping in a temple which they may almost call their own.”
After referring to the services in the church on the day of its
consecration, the writer continues:
“There is yet one thing which I must not forget to notice. I have said
that on the adjoining plantations there are negroes for whose spiritual
good this church was in part erected. By the time the white congregation
was seated in the body of the church, the door, the vestibule, the
gallery and staircase were crowded with blacks. Even the vestry room was
filled with them, an old man sitting within the doorway, almost at the
very feet of the clergy. A happier group I have seldom seen. Some of
them had prayer books in their hands, but, for their general benefit in
singing, the psalms were given out in the old-fashioned way—two lines at
a time—and, I am sure, during the singing the loudest psalms of praise
came from the sable groups.
“When the whites had commenced, a cordial invitation from the bishop
was given to the blacks to come forward. At the same time he explained
in a few words what was required of them in worthily partaking of that
sacrament.
“Then quite a great number came, with much reverence and devotion, to
that feast precious alike to bond and free. Ah! could some of our friends
have witnessed that scene, how it would have silenced a suspicion that
a slaveholder values not the soul of his slave. Thus does the enlarged
benevolence of these men embrace a class hitherto too much neglected, a
class which, in our good city of brotherly love, are suffered to grovel
in ignorance, degradation and sin:
“Here will they learn to worship God in spirit and in truth; here be
taught to pray with the heart and with the understanding also; and here,
when death has arrested their course upon earth, will they find a
resting place under the tall old oaks in their own churchyard; for the
lot upon which the church is built has, for some time, been set apart for
the purpose.”
As intimated above, the church was built by the then bishop, after
Gen. Leonidas Polk and his brothers, upon their own estate, for the
accommodation of the communicants around them and their slaves. The
description above presents a feature of slavery which was common
throughout the South, and shows how zealously the master looked after the
spiritual welfare of his slaves.
[Illustration: View of St. John’s from the Pike.]
The Polk family—not the President, James K. Polk—who lived in Columbia,
six miles away, and was a relative of the Ashwood Polks, but the Polks
at Ashwood—lived in true baronial style. The most distinguished of that
family was Bishop Leonidas Polk, who, while bishop, was the moving
spirit in the erection of the chapel, copying after the rural chapels
of England. Leonidas Polk was educated at West Point for a soldier, and
graduated in 1827, but so strong was the other side of his character that
he resigned his commission in the army and entered the ministry. This was
a sore disappointment to his father, the old Revolutionary soldier, Col.
Wm. Polk, causing him to write to his son that the step was the spoiling
of a good soldier for a poor preacher.
But the old gentleman, who himself had joined Washington’s army at the
age of eighteen years and had fought all through the Revolutionary War,
being thrice wounded and gaining the title of Colonel and the reputation
of being one of the ablest soldiers of his day, was greatly mistaken
in this choice of his soldier-preacher son. Not only did Leonidas Polk
become one of the great pioneer preachers of his day, but, as Dr. Wm. M.
Polk says in his biography of him: “It might have touched the feelings
of the veteran if he could have known that Leonidas would one day buckle
on the sword—that he would lead more men in the field than his father had
ever seen arrayed in battle, and that he would die at last a soldier’s
death in the field of honor, fighting for what he deemed to be the cause
of right and liberty.”
Speaking of Col. Wm. Polk, the same historian tells this amusing incident
of the old soldier:
“When Lafayette returned to America in 1824 and made his memorable tour
through the States, Colonel Polk was one of the commissioners appointed
to do the honors of the State of North Carolina to his old comrades in
arms.
“An eye-witness has left an amusing account of some incidents of the
reception of Lafayette on his passage through North Carolina. Col.
William Polk has been requested by Governor Burton to provide a cavalry
escort for the illustrious visitor, and a troop of excellently drilled
and handsomely uniformed volunteers was formed from the Militia of
Mecklenburg and Cabarrus escort, under command of General Daniel, and
met Lafayette near the Virginia line. There was much hand-shaking and
speech-making.”
“But,” as the narrator writes, “Lafayette spoke but little English and
understood less. He had retained a few phrases, which he would utter,
generally in an effective manner, but sometimes ludicrously mal a propos.”
“Thanks, my dear friend! Great country! Happy man! Ah, I remember!” were
nearly his whole vocabulary. He was received at the borders of each State
by appointed commissioners, and when he had been escorted through it
he was safely delivered to the commissioners of the next commonwealth.
At Halifax the cortege was met by General Daniel, who had stationed a
company of soldiers by the roadside, flanked by the ladies, who were
assembled to do honor to the guest of the State. It had been arranged
that the ladies were to wave their handkerchiefs as soon as Lafayette
came into sight, and when General Daniel exclaimed “Welcome, Lafayette!”
the whole company was to repeat the welcome after him. Unluckily, the
ladies, misunderstanding the programme, waited too long, and were
reminded of their duty by a stentorian command of, “Flirt, ladies, flirt!
flirt, I say!” from the general, who walked down the line to meet the
Marquis. Equally misunderstanding their part, the soldiers, instead of
shouting, “Welcome, Lafayette,” in unison at the close of the general’s
address, repeated the sentence, one by one, and in varying tones.
“Now a deep voice would exclaim: ‘Welcome, Lafayette!’ then perhaps the
next man in a shrill tenor would squeak: ‘Welcome, Lafayette!’ and so
on down the line. Daniel, frantic at the burlesque of his order, vainly
attempted to correct it, but as he unfortunately stammered when he was
excited, his ‘Say it all to-to-together!’ could not overtake the running
fire of ‘Welcome, Lafayette!’ which continued all along the line. ‘Great
country! Great country!’ replied Lafayette, turning to Colonel Polk,
who was vainly trying not to smile. Observing and recognizing an old
acquaintance, Lafayette greeted him with great effusion: ‘Ah, my friend;
so glad to see you once more! Have you prospered and had good fortune
these years?”
“‘Yes, General, yes; but I have had the great misfortune to lose my wife
since I saw you.’
“Catching only the ‘Yes, General,’ and the word ‘wife,’ Lafayette
supposed he was informing him of his marriage, and patting him
affectionately upon the shoulder, he exclaimed: ‘Happy man! Happy man!’
nor could be made to understand that his observation was not a happy one.
“After replying to the address of welcome, which had been delivered by
Colonel Polk from the steps of the Capitol, Lafayette, with all the
dramatic action of a Frenchman, turned to Polk and before the old soldier
knew what he was about, threw his arms about his neck and attempted to
kiss him on the cheek. Colonel Polk straightened himself up to his full
height of six feet four, and instinctively threw his head back to escape
the caress; but Lafayette, who was a dapper little fellow, tiptoed and
hung on to the grim giant, while a shout of laughter burst from the
spectators and was with some difficulty turned into a cheer.
“Of Col. William Polk’s influence in the State of Tennessee, Governor
Swain, of North Carolina, has said: ‘He was the contemporary and personal
friend and associate of Andrew Jackson, not less heroic in war and quite
as sagacious and more successful in private life.”
“It is known that Colonel Polk greatly advanced the interests and
enhanced the wealth of the hero of New Orleans by information furnished
him from his field notes as a surveyor, and in directing Jackson in his
selections of valuable tracts of land in the State of Tennessee; that to
Samuel Polk, the father of the President, he gave the agency of renting
the most fertile section of that State; and selling his (William Polk’s)
immense and valuable estate in lands in that, as first President of the
Bank of North Carolina, he made Jacob Johnson, the father of President
Andrew Johnson, its first porter, so that of the three native North
Carolinians who entered the White House through the gates of Tennessee
all are alike indebted for benefactions and for promotions to a more
favorable position in life to the same individual, William Polk—a man
whose insight into character rarely admitted of the selection and never
of the retention of an unworthy agent.”
At the outbreak of the war, Leonidas Polk was appointed Major General by
Jefferson Davis and became one of the great generals of the Confederacy.
He was killed by a cannon ball, on Pine Mountain, near Marietta, Ga.,
June 14, 1864.
Continuing the subject of the slave-owners’ interest in the spiritual
welfare of his slaves, Miss Beauchamp, who was governess in Bishop Polk’s
family, tells this amusing story:
“The Bishop, who would at times be away for weeks on visitations through
his diocese, always brought on his return joy and pleasure to the
household. He would amuse us for days with a recital of his adventures in
the border regions of Louisiana and with the people he would meet there.
On one occasion, having been up Red River, where an Episcopal clergyman
was seldom seen, he was called in to baptize a sturdy, four-year-old
youngster, who defiantly resisted sacrament unless his black Fidus
Achates, Jim, would receive it at the same time. ‘Well,’ said the Bishop,
‘bring in Jim and I will make a Christian of him, too.’ Accordingly,
Jim, being instructed by his mistress, was brought into the parlor; the
pair went through the ceremony with perfect propriety and were dismissed
to their play. Meanwhile, the friends and neighbors who had called to
assist at the baptism and pay their respects to the Bishop, sat in solemn
state, awaiting the announcement of dinner. Smallpox had been lurking
in the country. Every one was excited on the subject of vaccination,
and discussions as to whether it had taken on this or that subject had
been the order of the day for more than a week. Suddenly the circle was
astounded by the reappearance of Jim, who exclaimed, almost breathless
with excitement: ‘Mistes! mistes! you must have Marse Tom baptized over
ag’in; it never tuck that ar time. He’s out yonder cussin’ the steers
wusser’n ever, and says he ain’t gwinter stop for nobody.’ The ice melted
at once, and the stiffness of the circle vanished as the Bishop turned
to his hostess and said: ‘A commentary on the doctrine of baptismal
regeneration, my dear madam.’
“Every Sunday afternoon all the negroes on the plantation came up to
the house and were taught by Mrs. Polk, her daughters and myself in
different classes. Singing entered largely into the exercises, many of
the negroes having a taste for music, and some of them excellent voices.
The ceremonies of marriage and baptism were always performed by the
Bishop himself and the names chosen by the negroes were sometimes very
amusing. Many of them could not read, and they showed their appreciation
of Greek mythology and Shakespeare by the number of Minervas and Ophelias
among them. One Sunday twenty-five little negro infants were taken into
the Bishop’s arms and christened. Though the scene was a very impressive
and interesting one, yet some of the names were so droll to my ears that
I could scarcely preserve a becoming gravity. One was named ‘Crystal
Palace,’ another, ‘Vanity Fair,’ etc. But when a little creature, black
as Erebus and squalling with its mouth extending to enormous size,
was taken into the Bishop’s arms to be named ‘Prince Albert’ it was
impossible for me to resist longer, and a heavy fit of coughing, gotten
up for the occasion, saved me from a reproving look from the Bishop.’”
[Illustration: The Cemetery at St. John’s, Where Generals Cleburne,
Strahl and Granbury Were Buried.]
One of the most beautiful and touching scenes is quoted further from the
same book, and related by the Bishop’s wife, on page 176.
After describing the visitation of cholera in the winter of 1849-50, and
the Bishop’s almost fatal illness from it, together with almost all his
family and the death of nearly a hundred of the servants of himself and
friends, Mrs. Polk relates this touching incident:
“As soon as the Bishop was able—indeed, at the risk of a relapse—he
was at the bedside of the sick and the dying. The last case of cholera
occurred on the 7th of June, when a very fine servant, named Wright, by
trade a blacksmith, was attacked. His master had been reading and praying
with him. Wright raised his head and said: ‘Master, lift me up.’ ‘I am
afraid to, Wright,’ the Bishop said—‘the doctors say it might be fatal.’
‘I am dying now, master; lift me up.’ The Bishop raised him, when Wright
suddenly threw his arms around his master’s neck and exclaimed: ‘Now,
master, I can die in peace; I do love you so I have often wanted to hug
you, and now let me die resting here on your heart and you praying for
me!’ His wish was complied with and soon he was at rest.”
St. John’s Church received its most sacred and consecrated fame during
the war. When Hood’s army invaded Tennessee after the fight around
Atlanta, in November, 1864, the route of the army lay along this pike in
the march to Nashville. The army had been marching over the poor lands of
the barrens, the hills of Georgia and the barrens of the Highland Run,
and when it entered Middle Tennessee, in the garden spot of which sat
this little church, Gen. Patrick R. Cleburne, who had won great fame as
a dashing fighter, raised his hat to the restful beauty and quietness of
St. John’s and remarked: “If I am killed in the coming battle, I would
like to be buried yonder.” In a few days occurred the bloody battle
of Franklin, in which not only Cleburne, but Generals Gist, Strahl,
Granbury and Adams—five of the greatest field officers of Hood’s army,
were killed, and all except Generals Adams and Gist, were buried in the
beautiful cemetery at St. John’s. Years afterward, one by one, their
remains were exhumed and carried, with fitting honors, to their former
homes, where monuments had been erected to their memories. General Adams
was killed on the breastworks, his horse falling half over, and he
himself over in the enemy’s lines supported and soothed by one of the
officers who mourned the mortal wound, saying that he was too brave a man
to die. Cleburne fell leading his men up to the breastworks.
The communion silver for St. John’s was given by Mrs. Sarah H. Polk, the
widow of the old Revolutionary soldier, and the mother of Gen. Leonidas
Polk. It was beautiful and massive. The war left St. John’s desolate, the
Federal army burned the beautiful and imposing mansion of the fighting
bishop, the communicants were scattered and for nearly half a century
the picturesque chapel has, with occasional services in it, alone stood
silent sentinel over its great dead a monument of an heroic age.
The account of how the communion silver was saved during the war is a
story told by one of the ladies of the Polk family, and so generally
interesting that it is related here, as it illustrates so perfectly the
peculiar superstitious nature of the negro:
One of the most faithful negroes belonging to Col. Geo. W. Polk was a
negro named Wiley, who had been in the family as a trusty and faithful
servant for so many years that Colonel Polk thought he could trust his
life in Wiley’s hands. Another negro was old John, a very old negro,
who was gardener, and too old to do much more than keep up the flower
garden and the walks of the estate. Word was brought to Colonel Polk
that some Federals stationed in Columbia, six miles away, intended to
make a midnight raid on St. John’s and secure the silver service at the
church. Perhaps it was Wiley himself who brought the information, and
that the raid, or rather the theft, would occur that night. It did not
take Colonel Polk long to act. Soon after dark, taking Wiley and a small
express, he went to the old church and secured the silver. Silently he
and the negro went out in the dark carrying the silver in a large cedar
box and taking off the top of one of the old square box-tombs, he hid it
there and placed the top slab back in its place.
Trusting Wiley implicitly, he did not believe the silver would ever be
found.
Several days passed, and Colonel Polk felt that all was secure. But one
morning as he walked early in the garden he saw old John, the gardener,
looking at him furtively and in a peculiar way. Wiley was also around,
and the old negro showed plainly that he wished to say something to his
master that he did not wish Wiley to hear. Knowing the negro nature as he
did—that they never came out openly and said what they thought—and that
the furtive glances which old John gave him now and then meant more than
words, the Colonel waited until Wiley had left, and purposely entered
into conversation with the old negro. He did not want to flush his game,
as he would have done by a direct question, so he patiently waited until
the old negro should speak in his own way, for he knew that the old negro
has something important to tell him in his own negro way.
“Marster,” said the old man at last, “I had sich a quare dream las’
night, I thort I’d tell you, and maybe you could ’terprit it for de ole
man. It’s hung onto me all day an’ pestered me so I can’t wuck, an’ I
can’t do nothin’ till I tells you. I feels sho’ it means old John is
gwineter go soon, fur I seed two angels as plain as I ever seed anybody,
but I can’t jes zackly understan’ it all, an’ I thort maybe ef I’d tell
you, you mout he’p me.”
“Go on, John,” said the Colonel; “I shall be glad to help you interpret
the dream.”
“Wall, Marse George, I dreamed I wuz down at the ole church a wanderin’
among the tombs, out in the ole part, among the trees. An’ den I kinder
fell into a trance, an’ den I heard a voice say: ‘John, git up an’ come
wid me.’ I riz an’ looked, an’ I see a pale light shinin’ from de church
winder, an’ bimeby I seed, two angels come out uv de church. One wuz er
white angel an’ one wuz er black angel, an’ dey carried de corpse of er
leetle chile in dey arms. Dey come out de church an’ put de coffin in er
waggin an’ den dey move off solem. I foller de sperits, an’ dey carried
de corpse of dat leetle chile to er ole tomb an’ tuck offen de top an
dey put de leetle dead chile in de ole tomb an’ den dey vanished. It
seem lak a long time went by—mebbe two nights—an’ den I seed, way in de
night, ’twix’ midnight an’ day, other sperits ride inter de ole church
yard—soldier sperits, mounted on steeds—an’ dey rid up to de tomb an’
broke it open an’ tuck de corpse of de leetle chile an’ went away. Now,
Marse George, dat’s pesterin’ me mighty. Whut dem soldier sperits wanter
pester de body uv dat leetle chile fur?”
The Colonel saw at once the application of the dream, and that it was
the negro way of warning him without letting Wiley know that the warning
had ever been given. He reassured the old darky, who walked off to his
work satisfied. That night Colonel Polk went alone to the old tomb and
took out the silver, burying it in his garden. About midnight, Wiley led
the Federals to the tomb, only to find the silver gone. But Wiley never
came home again. Knowing that his secret was out, he ran off with the
soldiers.
For many years, as remarked above, St. John’s held the remains of
Generals Cleburne, Strahl and Granbury, three of the five generals who
fell around the breastworks of Franklin. But one by one, as the years
went by, the remains of these brave men were removed and carried to
their native States—Cleburne to Arkansas, Granbury to Texas—and finally,
after nearly forty years of rest among the trees and under the beautiful
bluegrass of St. John’s the gallant young soldier, Strahl, was taken
to his old home in West Tennessee. Above them all, the people of their
native soil have erected suitable monuments.
Only a few years ago were the ashes of Strahl removed. A brave, handsome
young fellow he had been, daring as a soldier and true and self-poised,
one of the recognized great soldiers of Hood’s ill-fated army. He led
his men up to the side of the Federal entrenchments and down in the
trenches. With those who had not been killed or wounded, he stood, and
“keep firing” was the word he passed up and down the thin line, hugging
one side of the breastwork while their enemies held the other, not six
feet away. Mr. Cunningham, editor of The Confederate Veteran, who stood
near the general, tells it: “The trench was filled with the dead and the
dying. Standing with one foot on the bodies of my comrades and the other
on the bank, I rested my rifle upon the top of the breastwork and kept
firing at the enemy on the other side. The line had been so thinned that
only a solitary fellow soldier stood near me, and now he was shot and
fell heavily against me and tumbled over in the mass of dead men. This
left me alone, and I asked General Strahl, who had stood for a long while
in the trenches and passed up loaded guns to men above: ‘What shall I do,
General?’ ‘Keep firing,’ came back, and almost with the word the general
himself was shot, and while being carried to the rear was struck again
and instantly killed.”
This was the brave young soldier who had lain for nearly forty years in
his grave, and whom we were going to disinter and send back his ashes
to his old home. It was a raw March day, some three years ago, when the
committee from his State came for his remains, and as I stood by the
grave and saw the muddy soil upturned beneath which, many years ago, had
been laid the form of a handsome, brave and gallant man, cut down in the
hey-day of his life and hope, I could but wonder at the changes the forty
years had made. These men, who gave their lives for the cause, believing
as truly as did their sires of old, that they were fighting for the right
of self-government, could they awake to-day would wonder at the turn in
the tide of affairs. A nation, the greatest in the world—the leader of
thought and action, the champion of the defenseless and the power that
stands for the real advancement of humanity; a people so thoroughly
reunited that many of the very men who fought by the side of this one,
who died, had fought since in the old uniform, under the old flag against
the foes of their country. And, strangest of all, not one of the two
things that this brave life died for would be accepted by his sons if
given them to-day—the institution of slavery and the right of a State to
secede.
These, if offered to the South to-day, would be unanimously rejected.
Alas, what is our boasted wisdom but the wisdom of babes? And our
bravery, what more than that of the unthinking school-boy who fights for
a ring of marbles which he afterward throws at the birds?
Here once was a man—free, blessed, brave and handsome.—“Seeking the
bubble reputation, even at the cannon’s mouth.”
Now, behold, we have gone down to where his body had been laid away, and,
instead of a form, there is a dark line of mold where the coffin had
been, part of the sole of a cavalry boot, a few bones and a skull.
“Behold this ruin! ’Twas a skull
Once of ethereal spirit full.
This narrow cell was life’s retreat,
This space was Thought’s mysterious seat.
What beauteous visions filled this spot!
What dreams of pleasures long forgot!
Nor hope, nor joy, nor love, nor fear,
Have left me trace of record here.
Beneath this mouldering canopy
Once shone the bright and busy eye—
But start not at its dismal void—
If social love that eye employed,
If with no lawless fire it gleamed,
But through the dews of kindness beamed.
That eye shall be forever bright
When sun and stars are sunk in night.
Within this hollow cavern hung
The ready, swift and tuneful tongue;
If Falsehood’s honey it disdained,
And, when it could not praise, was chained;
If bold in Virtue’s cause it spoke,
Yet gentle concord never broke,
This silent tongue shall plead for thee
When time unveils Eternity.”
Stooping, one of his old soldiers bent reverently to lift the skull of
his general, and place it in the handsome casket intended for its final
resting place. But it clung to the earth, and on looking we see that a
beautiful rose bush that had been growing all the years at his head had
sent its roots down, completely filling the skull and drawing nourishment
from the mind that had once led conquering lines into battle.
’Tis sentiment only that counts at last. What more beautiful thought than
that from the brain of the brave should come the perfume of the rose? Or,
as Tennyson, In Memoriam:
“’Tis well—’tis something we may stand
Where he in English soil was laid,
And from his ashes may be made
The violets of his native land.”
The American nation, being young and foolish—a fighter, a doer, a seeker
of dollars in the strenuous race called living—does not, in this century
cherish as it will centuries hence, such a historical pile as the
beautiful old chapel. For a sum, right now there are those who pass it
dally who would tear it down to build a stolid stable for their asses.
There are others who pass it without a thought, save, perhaps, that
’twere a pity so much good brick should go to waste. There are others
who would like to remodel it, turn it into a dwelling, with Queen Anne
shingles and a portico in front. In England, such piles as these are
their inspiration and their pride—sermons in stones, history in walls,
battles in bricks and mortar. It is these that cement the Englishman’s
love for his country, its institutions, its laws. It is these which make
him love to call it home. We are in the reckless, wild oat stage of money
daring, of wealth producing, of gaudiness and strutting display. There
is no place among us now for the poet and the scholar, the musician, the
dreamer, the preacher. But the time is fast coming when all this will be
changed—when to be unread is to be unbred—to be rich is to be rotten. In
that day this quaint, epoch-making, history-shingled chapel, this pile
of soul-nobleness, this monument to right on the battlefield of might,
will outshine all the gilded domes which vulgar wealth has erected as a
monument to vanity in the plains of plenty.
* * * * *
Back of the loaf is the snowy flour,
And back of the flour, the mill,
And back of the mill is the wheat and the shower,
And the sun—and the Father’s will.
M. D. BABCOCK.
[Illustration]
[Illustration: The Drought.]
It fringes the furze of the parching tongue
In the cheek of the fevered sky,
And deepens the glare of the sun’s red stare
In his dust-hung canopy.
The wrinkled rivers crawl and creep
O’er the sands of the sun-scorched bars,
And their fetid breath like the breath of Death
Floats up to the burning stars.
O it’s heat—heat—heat—
Till the heart throbs hot,
And dust, till the eyes grow dim,
And the fire-brands burn in the eyeball’s clot
And whirl while the sockets swim.
The white shafts shoot from the furnaced West
As bolts from a blazing gun,
And again from the East like a blood-red beast
Bursts out the burnished sun.
The crinkled air crawls o’er the earth,
A snake with a withered tongue—
And over the heath of his blight beneath
A spume-flaked banner is flung.
O it is dust—dust—dust—
Till the eyeballs ache,
And heat till the heart-drops run,
For the brown earth burns in the butchering bake
That leaps from the soul of the sun.
JOHN TROTWOOD MOORE.
A History of the Hals
By JOHN TROTWOOD MOORE
CHAPTER III.
THE ORIGIN OF THE PACER.
Dar cum er tur’bul freshet up on Bigby Creek one year
An’ old Marse Noah ’lowed de moon was hangin’ mighty queer,
An’ if it didn’t change its chune an’ get up on its horn
Dar was gwineter be a freshet jes’ es sho’ es you was born!
Sho’ ’nuff it tuck to rainin’ an’ it kivered all de groun’,
An’ de crick it got to risin’ an’ er spreadin’ all erroun’
Till it crip up in the stable whar de ole gray mule wus stayin’
An’ skeered ’im so he jined de church an’ got right down to prayin’.
But dat didn’t stop de freshet, Nachur’ bleeves in er variety—
An’ de good Lord He don’t bank much on dis ober-sudden piety—
So He made it rain de harder—O He was mad es pizen’—
For de rain it kep’ er fallin’ an’ de crick it kep’ er risin’!
Sed de mule onto de yudder stock: “Dear frien’s, you all am sinners,
Better think mo ’bout yore mortal souls an’ less erbout yo’ dinners!
’Tis cla’r to my min’ sum ob you dun clean furgot yo’ raisin’
Er follerin’ arter idul gods—or mebbe chicken chasin’!
Dar’s Tom Hal and de Donk’y jes es wurldly es kin be, sah!
Dar’s jes’ one virchus man heah and its plain dat man am me, sah!
You kno’ yo’selves I’ve nurver had no meannes’ to attone fur,
I goes by whut de good book sez an’ nurver throws a stone, sah!”
He skeered ’em so he got ’em all to start up a camp meetin’,
An’ sech er crowd you nurver seed a wailin’ an’ a weepin’,
But dat didn’t stop de freshet—O de Lord was mad es pizen—
An’ de rain it kep’ er fallin’ an’ de crick it kep’ er risin’!
Den de ’possum cum frum out de woods, de coon from out de holler,
De ba’r frum out de canebrake an’ de horg frum out de waller,
De Speckled Bull, de Billy Goat—dey all cum in a hurry—
An’ got religion den an’ dar, for all ob ’em wus skurry!
So de mule he babtize ebry one—ebry son an darter—
“Salvation it am free,” he sed—“an’ dars no eend to water!”
Den Brudder Hal pass ’roun de hat to bild de Lord a fence, suh!
De Donk’y jine de church choir an’ bin in it eber sense, suh!
De bull dey make de Eunuck of—de Billy Goat de elder—
To hold de sister when she shout—an’ Billy he has held ’er!
But dat didn’t stop de freshet—O, de Lord wus mad as pizen—
An’ de rain it kep’ er fallin’ an’ de crick it kep’ er risin’!
Den sed de mule, es up he riz from prayer, an’ Satan tussle:
“Dar’s sech a thing es savin’ grace, an’ sech a thing as hustle!
It’s plain we’ve missed de track ob good Ole Marster’s secret wishes,
An’ if we all don’t bild er ark we’ll soon be food for fishes!”
So dey bilt er ark ob gopher-wood—de mule dey ’lected Noah—
Becase he tell ’em years ago he was in de ark befoah.
An’ dey bilt it strong an’ snug an’ tight—de crick it kep’ er risin’—
To hold ’em all dat creep or crawl—from de snake onto de bisin!
An’ den dey all chip in dey grub—de mule a bar’l ob brandy—
An’ wink his eye an’ laf an’ say: “Dese snakes cum mighty handy!”
But dat didn’t stop de freshet—O, de Lord wus mad as pizen—
An’ de rain it kep’ er fallin’, an’ de crick it kep’ er risin’!
Den de mule he float de ark out near de hill dey all wus founded,
An’ tell ’em all to swim for it or stay dar an’ git drownded!
“An’ lem me tell you now, my friends, I want no half-way racin’—
Dar’s jes’ one way for you to swim, an’ dat’s to swim a-pacin’.”
An’ den dey all struck Nachur’s gait—de snake led de processhun!
De coon, de b’ar, de eliphunt—dey swum like all possesshun!
All but Tom Hal, he stood an’ snort so sassy like an’ plucky,
An’ swore he wouldn’t pace at all—dat he cum frum Kentucky.
But when de water riz up an’ he see dat bar’l ob brandy
He bust de record gittin’ dar—an’ dun it mighty handy!
An’ when Ole Marster seed de gait, an’ dat dey all hed dun it,
He let ’em all go back to earth an’ live and breed upon it.
So dey all went back er pacin’, frum de bug unto de bisin,
An’ de rain it quit a-fallin’, and de crick it quit er risin’!
—OLE WASH.
It will be news to many of my readers when I tell them that the pacing
gait is the oldest and most natural gait of the horse, and that the old
pacer was the thoroughbred of antiquity, the companion of kings, the
warhorse of mighty warriors, the animal that carried on his back the
daughters of Pharaoh and the princesses of Babylon. And yet, when this
gait began to outcrop among the trotters, making that grand type of the
racehorse known as “trotting-bred pacers,” hundreds of people have been
wondering “Where did it come from?” Let us see from whence it came:
There is no real difference in form between the trotter and the pacer.
The theory of “structural incongruity” will do to talk about, but as a
matter of fact there is no such thing, and a pacer paces and a trotter
trots, not from his shape, but his head—his instinct.
When the curtain went up on antiquity, horses were pacing. They paced
because it was the natural gait of the animal, the trot of later years
being the artificial gait. We know that the horses of the ancients
were small—pacing ponies—and the running horse was not developed until
centuries after.
The oldest civilizations of which we have any record of the horse are the
Egyptian and the Babylonian. On the tombs the horse was always carved
pacing. The frieze of the Parthenon was the work of the great artist
Phidias. His horses were pacers. Five hundred years before the Christian
era the great sculptors of Greece and Rome put some of their greatest
work into statues of horses—all pacers. Relics of some of the very
earliest Greek friezes are still preserved in the British Museum and show
the horses to be pacing. At the beginning of the Christian era the Romans
had conquered the Britons and the horses they found there, or carried
there, they called “ambulatores”—amblers—and during the five hundred
years that Rome ruled the island these horses were the favorites for the
saddle and light driving. In 1215 A.D. the barons wrenched from King John
the famous Magna Charta, the great seal of which is a knight in armor,
mounted on a pacing horse. In a previous chapter we have told how Sir
Walter Scott describes them and how for centuries the pacing horse—the
ambler—the jennet, was the favorite, if not the only saddle horse of the
knights and ladies and the nobility.
Could such a horse have been a scrub? For many years there has lived
in England a wealthy American who is an artist and a fond lover of
horses—Mr. Walter Winans. I am indebted to Mr. Winans for many valuable
discoveries about the pacer, the first of them being his letter and
illustrations showing the original drawings from the Egyptian tombs,
these carvings being copied by Mr. Winans while studying ancient Egyptian
sculpture.
Some years ago, Mr. Walter Winans, of Brighton, England, sent me
sketches of bas-reliefs taken from Egyptian tombs. While never having
had before the pleasure of seeing a cut of the bas-reliefs sent to
the writer by Mr. Winans, I have known of their existence and have
repeatedly called attention to the fact that the past history of the
pacer demonstrated beyond a doubt that he was a horse of the noblest
blood, the war-horse of ancient battles, the companion of ancient kings
and princes. The fact that he has been able to do what he has done
is convincing proof of a past greatness somewhere in his breeding—a
scrub would have died at the wire long ago. If “society” is looking
for something that is blue-blooded, with a hoariness that no other
blue-blooded can boast of; that is eminently respectable to a degree
bordering on classical mythiness; that is more ancient than the pyramids
and more respectable in lineage than the longest pedigree of Norman
knight, I respectfully refer it to the pacer. My only regret in the
matter is that the recognition, by “society,” of distinguished lineage,
illustrious achievements and present worth cannot be a subject of mutual
acknowledgment and congratulation.
Brighton, Eng., Jan. 23.
Dear Trotwood: I have brought the pacer to more than four
thousand years ago. Prof. J. E. Marey, Professor of the College
of France, has just published a book called “Le Movement,”
dealing with the correct drawings of men and animals in motion.
He gives two engravings, of which I enclose pen copies, one
of them from an Assyrian bas relief, the original of which
is in London, England, British Museum; the other is a copy
of an ancient Egyptian Bas-relief at Medynet-Abou, in Egypt.
They both represent horses pacing. Prof. Marey says (freely
translated from the French). “Examples of a pacing gait are
here accurately represented. It is of all gaits the easiest to
observe, and therefore to draw, on account of the symmetry of
movement.... Trotting, which is so often represented in modern
works, seems rarely to figure in that of the ancients.”
I noticed lately in one of your contemporaries, which goes in
for “society,” a suggestion that pacing races should not be
held on days that trotting is indulged in, so as not to offend
road riders (a long list of which it gives), who dislike to see
a pacer. It is a good thing that these road riders did not live
four thousand years ago, or they would have been shocked to
see all the rulers and great men of Assyria and Egypt driving
pacers. The ancient Romans called trotters “tormentores,” on
account of the way they shook them up, riding without stirrups.
Referring to the pictures again, the reason the figures
holding the symbols of authority (the half-circles) and the
groom at the horses’ heads being so small, is because that in
ancient Egyptian conventional art figures were not drawn in
their proper proportions, but large or small, according to the
importance of the person represented.
The Assyrian pacer looks as if he must be the champion stallion
of the period.
Yours truly,
WALTER WINANS.
I agree fully with Mr. Winans concerning the form of the Assyrian pacer
above. Fewer can show up today with a finer turned muzzle, face and neck,
or show more strength, beauty and symmetry in form than the one in the
outline above. Concerning the cobwebbed suggestion of the “society” paper
about pacers being barred the track on trotting days, I beg to assure the
author of the above letter that the brilliant idea died a-borning. There
is plenty of brains and progressive spirit yet left among the managers
of American trotting associations, and these gentlemen prefer rather
to increase than to diminish the interest in the light harness horse.
The pacer and the trotter are indissolubly linked together—in interest,
destiny and blood. They have, too, much of the same breeding, too many
kindred ties. Joined, as they are, by so many common ancestors, united as
they are by so many great horses, no number of society asses can now pull
them asunder.
In discussing this subject later, Mr. Winans wrote:
“There is one difference between a trotter and a pacer which
I can show in sculpture, which has never been shown before by
any artists, as painters cannot show it. I mean the upright,
locomotive-like progression of a trotter and the side stride
of the pacer. In a picture the difference of the gaits can
only be shown by the position of the legs. In sculpture we
can show how a trotter puts down his feet on each side of
the imaginary line drawn on the ground straight under him,
in the direction he is going, as the following illustration
will show.
[Illustration]
“But this is not true with the pacer. On the contrary, he
puts his feet right on the line, as the following diagram
will show:
[Illustration]
“I can better explain myself by the following: If I model a
horse standing still, and then cut off the two left side legs
and model fresh ones in the act of being lifted up, so as to
represent one position of the pace, I would have to push or
bend the body of the horse over to the left till a plumb line
from the center of his body would hang down to touch a line
drawn on the ground from his two feet touching the ground,
but if I wanted to make a trotter from the same model of a
standing horse, I could make the fresh legs without having
to bend over the body to either side.
“It is curious that the bronze statuettes of the pacer would
not stand firm unless I bent the body over, which shows that
nature knows just how to place animals so that the center
of gravity should be right. Horses in the instantaneous
photograph positions balance on their legs, but if I
model in the conventional position of the run, I have
to put a prop under the bronze horse’s belly, like most
artists do.”
The subject of the proper balancing of harness horses is generally
recognized as one of the most important in the business, and it is highly
probable that more otherwise good drivers fail there, in the proper
management of their horses, than in any other thing. Properly balanced,
the battle is half over in the training of a naturally speedy horse.
The idea suggested in the letter above, if true, as it undoubtedly
appears to be, naturally suggests that a very different system should be
adopted in the proper balancing of pacers and trotters. It is impossible,
of course, to tell how much the individuality of each horse would assert
itself in attaining the ends sought in this direction, but so far as the
mere matter of avoirdupois is concerned, it will be seen that on general
principles the pacer, on account of moving a rear and fore foot at the
same time, can come nearer having both shoes on those feet equal, than
the trotter, where the aim should be to equalize the alternate feet.
It is very plain the balancing required for one will not do for the
other, and horsemen who think they know all about a pacer from successful
handling of trotters will find out their error. For my own part, I
believe it requires less skill to balance a pacer than a trotter, for
the reason that, because of his simple action he can come nearer wearing
the same weight on all feet than any other horse. As proof of this I
have only to refer my readers to the fact that nearly all the very fast
pacers carry but little weight, equally distributed, and require little
protection.
This correspondent has placed us under additional obligations by
enclosing us a pen drawing, executed by himself, on a trip into Northern
Russia, which we reproduce below, and which he calls “a typical pacer
from Finland, Russia, used by the peasants for farm work, fourteen hands
high.” As Finland is in the northern part of Russia, beyond the latitude
where the native horses of any country grow much higher than fourteen
hands, the height is not to be wondered at; and as the peasants of
Finland are of the poorer classes the natural inference is that the pacer
is a natural product of northern Europe, and, no doubt, may be found
in their native state in many, if not all, of these countries, such as
Siberia, Sweden, Denmark, Norway, The Netherlands, and even North Germany.
[Illustration: A Typical Pacer from Finland, Russia. Used by the Peasants
for Farm Work—14 Hands High.]
“There is no native trotter in England,” writes Mr. Winans. “That is to
say, there is no breed of horse that can beat the very low standard of
3:30. The so-called Norfolk trotter is too slow and is never used for
racing purposes in England. To supply this dearth of trotters, they had
to import from Russia and the United States. Now, a fast trotter from the
States costs more than the class of men who go in for trotting in England
cared to pay, so pacers, which could go in three minutes or a little
better, were got over instead, and as the difference between trotting and
pacing is not understood in England, they got to be called trotters, and
raced as trotters. As a proof of their not understanding pacers, a big
dealer in horses saw a friend of the writer’s driving an American pacer
and said, ‘There, that is what I call trotting in good form!’ The other
country the English import trotters from is Russia. Now, in Russia there
are two sorts of trotters, the ordinary Orloff carriage horse, which can
go close to three minutes, if a good one, and the racing Orloff trotter,
which can go up to about 2:20. Now, the latter are too expensive, so
the ordinary Orloff carriage horses were imported. It was soon found
that they were not fast enough to have any chance even against very poor
American pacers, so the American pacer became the trotter of England.
This refers to the high class, or what corresponds to the free-for-all
trots. There is another lower-down class of trotting which is by far the
most common in England. The races, or generally matches, take place on
the road, and the police (it is forbidden to race on the roads) often put
a stop to the races, and they have to be arranged discreetly. The matches
are announced on some such lines: ‘Mr. So-and-So’s pony, Tommy, matched
for $25 to trot two miles on the So-and-So road against Mr. So-and-So’s
pony, Billy.’
“By the way, till quite lately a trotter in England was always a pony;
they did not talk of trotting horses, but trotting ponies. For this class
of racing the ponies are some 12½ to 14½ hands high and driven to very
heavy, old-fashioned sulkies. The ponies used are not English-bred, but
what are called in England ‘Russian’ ponies. They are not really Russian,
but come from Finland. These ‘Finnish’ ponies are a distinct breed.
They are on an average 14½ hands high or under, strongly built, with
thick, short necks, very good feet and legs, bushy tails, and very hard
mouths. They are generally all shades of sorrel, dun or chestnut, many
with donkey marks down the back, and light-colored manes and tails, and
they are for the most part natural pacers. These are the horses that are
used in St. Petersburg for the public droshkies which ply for hire and
are very cheap. Some can go close to three minutes, with an occasional
one close to 2:40, and are imported wholesale into England for light
tradesmen’s use. In Russia they are also used by the peasants for farm
work.
“The Orloff trotter is quite free from pacing. The many I have driven
have never showed the least sign of pacing, with one single exception;
this horse was not one of the racing Orloffs, but one of an ordinary
carriage pair. I think he had a cross of the ‘Fin’ pony, by his shape. He
used to pace when jogging, but I never tried to get any speed at the pace
out of him.
“The little ‘Fin’ ponies are very fast occasionally for their size.
As an instance, we had a black pair of Orloffs when I was last in St.
Petersburg, which used to pass everything on the road. It is the custom
there, when you have fast horses, to brush with anything you meet. One
day a victoria, drawn by two little dun-colored ‘Fin’ ponies, with some
ladies in it, came along. We turned out to pass them and they ran right
away from us, which no big pair had been able to do all the summer. This
particular pair trotted, but as I said before, most of them are pacers,
and these are what race in the minor races in England as ‘trotting
ponies.’”
The conclusion is evident—the pace is the natural and probably the first
fast gait of the horse.
(To Be Continued.)
Educating the Horse
By DR. J. C. HENNESSEY, RENO, NEVADA.
The horse is conceded to be the most intelligent of animals, the best
friend to man, and until recently the most universally used and most
necessary; yet the same animal is also the most universally abused. Men
hitch the poor animals in harness that is sometimes too small, or too
large, as the case may be, and in consequence he rebels and refuses to
pull a load when by doing so he suffers torments by chafing, or from
choking, if the collar be too small. This is all that is necessary to
stigmatize the poor brute as being balky, and unless some humane person
happens to run across the animal it will be spoiled, and no one will
take it as a gift. Now, as a matter of fact, the horse that absolutely
refuses to be treated thus is the horse that has the right material in
him and the one that will give you most service, providing you treat him
right. The horse I own was such an animal and was given up as a “runaway”
and “kicker.” Yet he is now so gentle that he will absolutely refuse
to run away on any pretense whatever. Upon hearing that a fine looking
but “mean” horse was for sale, I took occasion to visit the owner and
learn something of the “outlaw.” After seeing the animal, even after I
had learned that he had been in runaways and had broken up at least four
buggies, I bought him for $150, but not until I had made a phrenological
examination and found that the horse was particularly well supplied, as
I thought, with good horse sense. I could see that his disposition was
“keyed” up pretty high and that trait combined with a broad forehead and
a good eye, suited me, and was what I always select in an animal. The
price was as nothing, when we consider that he was a Woodnut by Nutwood,
and that his sire sold for $22,000, and his grandsire for, I think,
considerably more.
I only drove the animal a few times before he was as gentle as a lamb and
has never committed one unkind act while I was with him. He now performs
twenty tricks and is trained to hunt, and enjoys it. I shoot over his
head and he waits for me to get the game. He will stop when he sees a
rabbit and expects me to shoot it. If you want your animals to be kind to
you you must first treat them kindly. After driving this “runaway horse”
for a few months my wife and I drove across the mountains on a hunting
trip. On going down a steep grade the buggy upset and we were both thrown
out, but the wild horse absolutely refused to run away. He would have
been as kind to his former owner if he had been treated properly. You can
tyrannize over some people, while others will fight back, and it is just
so with animals.
A horse never forgets anything, and if he is badly scared in a certain
place, he will show the same fear if brought back to that place a
year afterwards. A horse will develop the same disposition as the man
who drives him, and if the man is nervous and fretful, by continually
jerking the lines and striking the horse with a whip, he instills this
irritability into the poor horse, and sooner or later the animal starts
up too soon, and, expecting to be whipped, runs off at the top of his
speed, perhaps killing somebody. Of course, the poor horse is to blame
for this (?). Sometimes he is hitched so close to the wagon that he
cannot trot without striking his hocks against the vehicle and, thinking
he is being abused, he will run away. If the traces are too tight he will
suffer from sore shoulder or sore neck.
Never allow a blacksmith to spring a shoe in a place by pressing down
and nailing. Have him take the shoe off and straighten it on the anvil.
Do not allow him to cut the frog away as it furnishes nourishment and
moisture to the hoof. Don’t check your horse too high unless you wish him
to be knee sprung. In shoeing horses some people are of the same opinion
as is John Chinaman when buying boots. They want to get all the material
they can for their money and in shoeing a horse too heavy you not only
ruin his gait, but cause him to get tired sooner than he otherwise
would. In driving, control your animal by speaking to him. By following
this method and being kind, not allowing yourself to lose your temper,
you will be surprised at the control you will have over your horse in
a short time. If the animal wishes to run away there is no man strong
enough to hold him. You cannot stop a runaway by sawing on the bit, but
if you will not lose presence of mind and not get excited, you can stop
any horse and cure him of trying to run by the following method: Grasp
the lines tightly and pull as tight as you can. Let one line slip through
your fingers (not losing it entirely), and pull hard with the other,
which will bring the horse’s head around to the side. If you hold his
head in that position you will throw him down as the legs will become
mixed by thus drawing the head to the side. If you leave his head free
once more he will stagger but not fall and will have great respect for
the driver who can thus mix him up. This is something that every one
should know, as no horse can run unless he can have his head in front of
him. To control him it is necessary to jerk the head quickly, and the
driver must keep the horse from turning around, thus upsetting the rig.
Should your horse get frightened at any object, do not whip him; scold
him and drive him carefully up to the object and he will eventually
become so gentle and observing that he will recognize objects and not get
frightened at them.
Should he get away from you do not get into a passion and beat the animal
as soon as you get him again, for he will always remember it and you
might be miles away from home and should he get loose, you will have to
walk, as he will not care for another beating and will leave you “alone
in your glory.” On the other hand, if you are kind to him you can go
among a band of wild horses, and yours will leave them for you.
Horses know more than they are given credit for and have been known to
carry their master home when the owner was intoxicated and unable to
walk after getting there. A great many horses are spoiled by the driver
forcing them to do something when the horse does not know what is wanted
of him. Show him what you wish him to do and he will do it. Never fool
your horse and always praise and reward him for doing good. Horsemen
will tell you that it spoils a horse to teach him tricks. Does it spoil
a child to educate him? My buggy horse that performed twenty tricks was
thought to be a spoiled horse but at the State fair I could not get a
race for him with trotters and had to enter him with pacers that were
going in :17, :19 and :20. He was never driven better than :26, but did
not make a break, and won handily in straight heats, and the last was
:24. In trying to beat him they ran him into a fence, and on the back
stretch locked wheels, making him drag the other under the wire in :24.
That did not excite him, because I had educated him and he came back
the next heat (fourth) in :24 in a jog. By educating your horse, you
give him courage, make him brave, and he becomes almost human, just
like Lou Dillon when, in a mighty drive she becomes part and parcel
of the greatest educator of animals who ever existed—Millard Sanders.
The old familiar quotation, “Full many a flower is born to blush unseen,
and waste its sweetness on the desert air,” is exemplified time and
again, when we see trainers driving animals with a world of speed, not
knowing how to shoe, handle or drive them. Would education spoil these
men? Training, gaiting and educating a horse is a mathematical problem,
and the man who can teach a little each day and who understands that by
increasing the action in front means something to the hind hoofs, and by
slowing up the action behind means something to the front hoofs just as
it does to multiply and subtract, is the man who takes the purse at the
race meeting even if he does not make a hit in his workouts. When you
wish to train to perform tricks, start in with the easiest one first
and begin in the following way:
The first and easiest trick to teach a horse is to say “no.” Stand on the
left side and with a tack prick him gently on the withers. He will shake
his head. Ask him a question, at the same instant you prick him, and
after awhile he will get so used to the inflection of your voice that he
will shake his head every time you ask, without the use of the tack. To
teach him to say “yes” prick him on the breast. Be gentle, so he will not
get in the habit of snapping at you. For instance, ask him if he likes
politics and he will shake his head “No.” Ask him if he reads Trotwood’s
Monthly, and he will nod his head “Yes.” Next, teach him to lie down.
Some teach this trick by the aid of ropes. The easiest way is to take the
horse out of the stall, or, better, after a drive, just after unhitching,
while he is sweating, lead him to the corral and say “Lie down, sir.” He
will obey, because he wants to roll. After he gets up give him some sugar
and pet him. After doing this several times he learns what is wanted of
him and finds that by obeying he gets his sugar. Next, you wish him to
kneel. This is easy, as he must always kneel to lie down. By holding the
rope, you can allow him only to kneel after which you give him sugar and
pet him.
To teach him to sit up it is first necessary to make him lie down. Then
say, “Get up, sir.” By holding the rope, allow him to get up on the front
feet only. Next you wish him to open a box. Get one with hinges and have
the lid extend a little over the box. Allow him to eat out of it several
times, being sure to close the lid frequently while he is eating. He will
see you throw the lid back and in a short time will do so himself, that
he may eat the grain. After this be sure to pet him. In a short time
you can send him from a distance to the box and he will open the lid.
To teach him to kiss you is the easiest of all. If he likes candy, as
all pets do, place a piece in your mouth, and he will reach for it. Say,
“Kiss me, sir,” and he will attempt to get it. He will become accustomed
to the command, after a few times and will obey the order without the
candy. Next you wish him to stand on a barrel. Lead him to a box, about
five or six inches high, being sure to have it solid so it will not turn.
After getting him as close to it as possible, raise one hoof and place it
on the box, then raise the other and place it by the first, after which
give him the usual reward. As he gets used to this trick increase the
height of the box until you have it as high as you wish and he will climb
up to get the sugar. Teach him to shake hands by picking up his hoof and,
at the same time, giving the command, “Shake hands, sir.” To teach a
horse to tell his age or the time of day, or to multiply, subtract or add
numbers is the hardest of all and requires a great amount of maneuvering
on the part of the trainer. Get him impatient and he will paw the ground
with his hoofs. Pat him every time and he soon learns what you want. The
hard part is to make him stop at the right number. Of course there is a
key to this and an easy method may be used. I stand close to my horse and
nudge him with my elbow when I want him to stop. For instance, I ask him
to multiply 7 × 2, and he paws 14 times. To have him stop I nudge him
just after he paws the thirteenth time, and he stops on the fourteenth.
Train him to stop, to turn corners, and to turn around in this way: When
driving go the same way a number of times, always turning to go home in
the same place and being careful to turn slowly. Say, “Whoa,” and then,
“Turn around, sir.” After a little coaxing with the rein he will do this.
In a little while he will know what is required of him every time you ask
him to turn. Get him used to your gun by driving him with an open bridle
and, for the first few times, shooting back from the buggy. By proper
handling he will, after a time, stop when you level your gun to shoot or,
as my horse does, when he sees anything to shoot at. Teach your horse to
play tag, by giving some person his sugar and having him run from the
horse. The animal will learn to put his ears back, show his teeth and
run for the sugar. This should only be taught horses that are perfectly
gentle, as it makes them cross. When they find people are afraid of them
they always enjoy frightening them. Many horses are considered of no
value because their owner does not know how they should be shod. I shall
be pleased to answer any communications from people who wish to know
how to shoe horses, how to avoid interfering, forging, or any of the bad
habits horses may have. All can be rectified if people only know how.
Remember you can only teach a horse through kindness. As soon as you lose
patience he will be spoiled.
In driving an animal, if you treat it kindly and do not lash it with the
whip when there is no occasion for doing so, it will become attached to
you and will cool down in a moment of danger or excitement, as it feels
that you are its friend and going to protect it; whereas, if you were in
the habit of abusing it you may get into a “tight place” and the horse
will get excited and perhaps kill you. This is something that people
should understand, and how much more satisfactory it is to have your
animals watch for your home-coming and have them run to greet you than
to have them afraid and shrink and expect the lash every time you move.
Teach your animals to be courageous, and then whatever they do they will
go through on their courage and not by the whip. My animal was very fast
and I hired a trainer to train him for the track. I gave him instruction
not to whip the horse, and being headstrong thought he knew it all, so
one day he struck him with the whip and was immediately kicked out of the
cart. The horse ran for about fifty yards and stopped. I informed the
trainer that he received his just deserts and he never drove him again.
In this instance the horse knew more than the man, and I have seen many
such instances. It is not right that we abuse animals, and we should not
be permitted to do so. They are willing to obey us and will always do so
if we give them a chance and I am delighted when I see a horse that will
have the courage to resist ill treatment. Some people check their horses
up to the skies and never put the check down when they tie them, but
leave the poor animals tied to a post for hours with their neck stretched
so that they are in constant pain. It would be a good law that would
cause such men to suffer the same punishment.
It is a very wrong thing to feed a horse too much hay. It only distends
the stomach, and gives the animal an ungainly appearance. Feed him
regularly, and four quarts of oats is a good feed for a buggy horse.
When purchasing a horse, stand directly in front of the animal and look
at front hoofs. If they toe-in, buy; but if they toe-out, do not accept
as a gift, as every time he picks his hoofs up, if he is going fast,
he will strike his shin or knee, whereas, if he toes in, he will pick
them up from his knees and never interfere and you will not be under the
necessity of placing boots on every time you wish to speed him. They
should toe out behind and in that case they spread and pass their front
hoofs when going fast and will not “forge” or strike their quarters.
It is a very common thing for a horse to trot along and by forging you
can hear them a block away. The click, click is caused by the hind feet
striking the front ones, and is very annoying, and at the same time is
very bad for the horse. You can remedy this by shoeing in front with all
the weight in the toe, causing him to pick up the hoof quicker and thus
getting it out of the way of the hind shoe when it comes along. If he
interferes behind, shoe with weight on the outside to spread the hoofs. A
horse should be shod every four or five weeks, as the hoof grows and the
shoe interferes with its expansion.
* * * * *
No man can be great who does not believe in himself.
[Illustration]
EMANCIPATION
[Illustration]
[The author of this poem passed away a few years ago—“Gone in
the morning and there was no night there.” This immortal poem
deserves to rank with that other—“There is no death.”—Ed.]
Why be afraid of Death, as though your life were breath?
Death but anoints your eyes with clay. O glad surprise!
Why should you be forlorn? Death only husks the corn.
Why should you fear to meet the thresher of the wheat?
Is sleep a thing to dread? Yet, sleeping you are dead
Till you awake and rise, here—or beyond the skies.
Why should it be a wrench to leave your wooden bench,
Why not with happy shout run home when school is out?
The dear ones left behind! O foolish one and blind—
A day, and you will meet—a night and you will greet!
This is the death of Death, to breathe away a breath
And know the end of strife and taste the deathless life,
And joy without a fear, and smile without a tear,
And work, nor care, nor rest, and find the last the best.
M. D. BABCOCK.
With Old Wash.
OLD WASH’S LITTLE PREACHER.
The other day I was whistling that coon song:
“All coons look alike to me.”
The old man was poisoning potato bugs on our second crop of Irish
potatoes. It was getting along “t’wards de shank of de ebenin’,” as I had
heard him so often express it, and I have noticed about that time that
the old man is always hunting for some excuse to stop working. “Dar am
jes’ two sho’ nuff fools in dis wurl,” I have heard him say—“one am de
man dat wucks all de time an de yudder am de ’oman dat don’t wuck at all.”
I was not surprised, then, to see the old man set down his can of Paris
green and water and give vent to a prolonged laugh. I have learned that
the way to catch the old man is to get him when he is “fit and ready”—the
same as a horse when he is expected to break the record—and I might carry
it further and say you can’t always tell when he is ready. But there are
certain signs you can go by.
And so the old man has signs, too—that he is ready to go a heat in an
old time yarn—and one is when the sun gets low and the bugs high—when
a watermelon is waiting in the spring trough and the sheep on the hill
begin to come out from the shaded woods for their evening meal in the
meadow—now cooling with the condensing shadows of a setting sun.
The sign he gives is a furtive glance around and a big, chuckling laugh.
I had cut around the melon with my pocket-knife, and broken it open on a
big rock, which left the jagged, juicy heart bulging out in a tempting
lump. But I divided as equally as I could, under the circumstances, and
as we sat in the shade of the elm by the big spring I shoved him his half
and said:
“Now that’s for what you were laughing at just now—out with it.”
“I doan’ blame white folks fur sayin’ all coons look alike, fur I tried
it onct and I thou’t I knowed my own kid—thou’t ef it cum to de scratch
I cu’d do lak a hoss an’ tell ’im by hees smell, ennyway. But when I wus
put to de test I foun’ dey not only all look alike, but smell alike,
too—an’ dar’s whar I cum mighty nigh gittin’ into de wuss scrape I eber
got into.”
“Way back in slabery time, when a young p’ar ob niggers ’ud marry, de
rule wus dey was to lib wid de gal’s muther ontwel de fust chile was
bohn. Ole marster useter la’f an’ wink an’ tell me it wus a trick ob
de white folks to mek ’em hurry up wid de fus’ chile! Jinerally we
didn’t need no hurryin’ for ole Daddy Stork is mighty kind to young
folks, ’spesh’ly niggers, which wus p’uffectly nat’ul, you know—rangin’
all de way in his visertachuns frum a few weeks arter de suremony to
es menny months—fur no nigger dat had enny manhood an’ independence
wanted to be pendin’ on his wife’s mammy enny longer den he cu’d h’ope
it! Den arter de chile wus bohn de marster ’ud gib a log-rollin’ an’ a
house-buildin’—jinerally on a Sad’dy arter de crop wus laid by—an’ all de
niggers frum de joinin’ farms ’ud cum ober, fetch dey wives an’ babies,
an’ whilst de men cut logs an’ put up de cabin, de wimmen and gals ’ud
quilt de young p’ar a quilt or two an’ cook a big dinner ob gumbo soup
and green cohn an’ bakin an’ greens. An’ if de baby dat de young fo’ks
had was a boy de rule was dat Marster had to fling in a good big lam’, es
er kind ob a free gratis prize fur ’em gittin’ a boy, an’ den Lord, boss,
de barbycue an’ de stew we did hab! In dem days enny man in Tennessee
cu’d ’still de fruit ob his own orchard and not pay no rivernew, an’
Marster had a nigger named Pete Gallerway dat cu’d beat de wurl’ makin’
apple-brandy. Ebery fawl he’d ’still Marster twenty gallons an’ it ’ud
stay in de cellar twell de naixt fawl, an’ Lord, boss, by dat time it wus
dat kind o’ stuff dat es you drunk it in dis wurl’ it seem ter kinder
tel’fone to de angels in de naixt! It was so ra’ar an’ ripe you cu’d jes’
put de stopper outen de bottle in yo’ boot-legs an’ cudn’t keep from
cuttin’ de pigeon-wing to save yo’ life an’ er singin’ dat song we sung
den—
“‘Cum down ter Tennessee—
(Ride er ole gray hoss)—
Yaller gal’s de gal fur me—
(Ride er ole gray hoss)—
Kiss her under de Mulberry tree—
(Ride er ole gray hoss)—
O my, nigger, don’t you see
Better cum ter Tennessee!’
“I tell you, boss, dey kin preach all dey please agin good licker an’ de
famblys it busts up, but I’ve knowed menny a man to git a drink jes in
time ter keep outen a divorcement. I don’t see how sum men cu’d lib wid
de wives dey got ef dey cud’nt tak a drink an’ furgit dey mizz’ry now an’
den! Wal, in erbout three moons it was my time to hab a house-buildin’
an’ I was mighty proud ob de job. Dinah was kinder dissociated kase she’d
sat her h’art on de fus’ baby bein’ yaller. Er ’oman, ob course, ain’t
got no reason fur enny thing—dey jes’ goes by instinct, I reckin—an’ de
onlies’ reason she had for spectin’ an’ wantin’ a yaller baby was dat she
was allers mighty fond ob sorrel hosses an’ she natur’ly hoped her fust
child ’ud be a sorrel. It cum black, of course—jes’ lak me, an’ arter
I opened his mouth an’ seed he hed one tooth already cum an’ ernudder
comin’ an’ wus reddy fur eatin’ de fus’ day, I knowed he wus Bre’r
Washingtun up ter the thu’d an’ fo’th jinerashun. But Dinah she tuck it
mighty hard an’ lowed she’d nurver git over he’s not bein’ a sorrel wid
black p’ints!
“I say he was black, but did yo urver see a right young nigger? A
buzzard, you kno’, is hatched white an’ turns black, an’ so er nigger is
bohn red an’ turns black. It’s funny but it’s so. A simon-p’wore nigger
when bohn is red with a leetle bunch of woolly h’ar on his head, an’ five
holes in his face, de two leetle ones in de center bein’ whar his nose
gwineter be. Dey ain’t no mistakin’ his mouth, fur dat’s de bigges’ part
of his vizerbles, an’ in jineral lang’widge you mout say it curls up on
de north an’ is bounded by hes h’ar, an’ curls down on de south an’ is
bounded by his belly-ban’. He’s red, ’ceptin’ de skin of his head, which
is sorter yaller, but on the thu’d day he gin ter turn black jes’ above
de eyes, and in a few weeks he’s all black ’ceptin’ de bottom of his
hands an’ feet, his wottles an’ hock fethers, de tip ob his stomach an’
de spot whar he sets on all day.
“Wal, arter de cabin was put up an’ de sun had set, de big stew wus
sarved wid apple brandy an’ den, Lord, de fun sho’ started! Course I
c’u’dn’t be in it much—de dancin’ an’ juberlashun under de trees—case
I was de keeper ob de lams, it bein’ my house-raisin’ an’ my fus-bohn.
Now de keeper ob de lams is dis: de wimmin folks allers bring dey babies
along ter de dance an’ de house-raisin’ an’ when de house is up an’ de
floor laid an’ night cums an’ de games begins, de babies is all suckled
an’ laid out, ebry one on his own sheepskin, on de flo’ of de new house
fur ter go to sleep, an’ de daddy ob de new-bohn kid is called de keeper
ob de lams an’ must set dar an’ watch ’em an’ nuss ’em whilst de yudders
eat an’ play. It’s hard, but it’s de onwritten law, an’ de objec’ am
to give de new daddy a lesson in pashents an’ nussin’ an’ keerin’ fur
chilluns.
“Wal, dey was forty on ’em, mighty nigh de same age, wid a fair
sprinklin’ of sorrels an’ browns, whilst sum look lak dey mouten be
made outen new saddles an’ jinger cakes. It went agin me mightily to be
pestered wid all er dem new colts wid dey projeckin’ ways, but I had a
big bottle of apple brandy an’ tuck a little consolashun frum it now an’
den myse’f, an’ eb’ry time a kid ’ud wake up, I’d jes gin ’im a stiff
drink ob apple brandy an’ stick de big toe ob de kid jes’ above him in
hes mouth ter suck on twell he dosed off. Dey was three long rows on
’em. I’ll sw’ar, boss, ef onct I didn’t hab ’em all konnected dat away
lak links in a sausage. Dat an’ de brandy focht ’em eb’ry time an’ I was
jes’ chucklin’ ter myse’f at whut a fine nuss I was, an’ dat I c’u’d soon
be able to go out an’ hug de gals, too, when dey all commence to hab de
jim-jams in dey sleep—seein’ snakes an’ things an’ howlin’ an’ wigglin’,
an’ frum de way some on ’em’s eyes bulged out dey must er had ellerfants
an’ rinocerasses arter ’em, too. Wal, suh, I broke fur de stable an’
got a quart bottle ob stuff we gin de mules fur de colic—asserfedity an’
h’artshorn, ladernum an’ tu’pentine, all mixed—an’ den I got de vinerger
funnel to git it down, an’ I drenched eb’ry one on ’em wild dat mule
medercine, stuck eb’ry one’s toe in de naixt one’s month an’ put ’em ter
sleep ergin.
“Sum on ’em didn’t wake up fur a week, but dat ain’t de tale I’m tellin’
now.
“I tuck ernuver drink outen de bottle an’ den I happen ter see one ob
de lam’s dat struck my eye. He was de preacher’s kid, whose daddy, a
yaller feller, ole mistis had l’arned ’im to read an’ write an’ he tuck
to preachin’, and his lam’ wus a bright sorrel wid flax mane an’ tail,
an’ as he was erbout de size ob my little coon I thou’t I’d play a joke
on de wimmin folks, bein’ es how Dinah was sot on habin’ a yaller kid. So
I ups an’ changes de clothes an’ puts de yaller preacher’s lam’ on our
sheepskin an’ ourn on de yuther’s pallet. Wal, suh, de mo’ I thort of it
de funnier it seemed, an’ den I laffed twell I nearly wake ’em up again
an’ tuck ernuver drink an’ went in ter swap ’em all off. I’d pick out two
erbout de same size an’ sex an’ changed dey clothes an’ bed, an’ when I
got through dere wa’nt nary one on’ em dat u’d know hisse’f from de naixt
one, an’ es dey all smelt erlike I didn’t see how dey mammies was eber
gwine ter git ’em straight ergin. Course I ’spected a lot ob fun when de
games broke up an’ I tuck ernuver drink an’ fix fur ter see it. But hit
seems de niggers played on twell one o’clock an’ forgot all erbout time
ontwell one ob de patteroles—de mounted poleece dot kept niggers from
prowlin’ at night in dem days—rid up wid a hickory whip an’ tole ’em it
wus time fur to go to bed. Dis skeered ’em so dey all lit out an’ eb’ry
’oman jes’ bundled up her baby an’ left, an’ not one ob ’em knowed de
difference. Es dey all libbed from one ter ten miles aroun’ on de farms,
thinks I, dar’ll be lots ob fun in de mawnin’! Dinah tuck ernuver look
at hern befo’ she went to sleep, an’ den I heurd her whoop: ‘Glory,’ she
said, ‘my chile is done turned yaller—glory—glory!’ She heard of it
bein’ done onct befo’ an’ b’leeved it. Wal, I seed she had her h’art sot
on it so bad I ’lowed I’d let it go at dat, ’specially es dey nurver had
been a preacher in de family, but all er mine hed tuck to hoss racin’ an’
Dinah was so happy over it she c’u’dn’t sleep.
“I sed dar ’u’d be a time in de mawnin’, but bless you’ soul, honey, it
started befo’ day. Lights was seen flashin’ eb’rywhere an’ niggers was
runnin roun’ wailin’ an’ weepin’ an’ wonderin’. De black uns had yaller
babies an’ yaller ’uns had black ’uns, de upper crust had scrub babies
an’ de leetle black cohn fiel’ scrubs wus in de highes’ nigger socshul
swim—wid de house gals an’ maids an’ qualerty niggers. Wuss en all, de
chilluns jes’ slept rat on an’ didn’t seem to keer whar dey wus an’ who
dey b’longed to. I tell you, boss, ef you eber gits bothered ’bout yo’
chap not goin’ to sleep, jes’ gin ’im a good dose ob hoss medercine!
“It ’u’d been all right, an’ jes’ a joke, ef dey hadn’t stirred up ole
Voodoo Jake, de witch doctor. He ’lowed de babies was all right but dey
had been voodooed an’ de culler changed, an’ he’d hafter rub ’em all wid
de ile ob a black cat killed in de full moon on de grabe ob a man dat hab
been hung fur murder, an’ dey’d be all right. A nigger jes’ nachu’lly
b’leeves all dis, ’specially all dem dat had de yaller babies an’ not one
on ’em ’ud gin ’em up.
“An’ dat’s hu’cum I got a yaller offspring in my family ter-day, I am
sorry ter say. But arter awhile it got sorter mernoternous, an’ I thort
I’d lak ter git my own black baby back, an’ I tole ole Marster whut I
done, an’ sum of de niggers raised sech a stir dat de white folks hilt
a meetin’ an’ did git sum on ’em back ag’in, but dey’s jes’ about ha’f
of ’em now in dat community dat don’t kno’ who dey daddies is. But dat’s
nachul, you kno’. But Dinah hed got stuck on de yaller baby, an’ de
preacher’s wife on de black one, an’ tho’ I kicked about it I c’u’dn’t do
nuffin’. I tole eb’rybody how I dun it fur a joke, but dey all sed I wus
sech a liar dey wouldn’t b’leeve me. Ole Marster laff, an’ say he hated
to swap off a good black colt for a yaller one, but ef it suited de
wimmin folks it suited him, an’ so dar I was.
“Wal, dey soon found I was right, for when de boys growed up a leetle,
an’ big ’nuff fur dey pedergree to sho’ up, whut you’ reckin my black un
dun ’fore he ten yeahs ole? De preacher tuck ’im ter campmeetin’ an’ he
got up a mule race on de outside an’ broke up his daddy’s campmeetin’
one day by ridin’ ole Marster’s gray mule cl’ar over a bunch of mourners
an’ spite of punishment an’ pra’ars arter dat, he tuck to ole Marster’s
stable an’ dey ain’t nurver got him out of it yit.
“An’ dat yaller dog I got, he warn’t long showin’ de mettle er his
pasture an’ de proof er his pedergree,” and the old man sighed and looked
troubled.
“How?” I asked.
“Boss,” he said sadly, “befo’ he was ten yeahs ole he stole eb’ry yaller
legged chicken in de na’borhood.”
In the Open
A CHRISTMAS GOOSE HUNT.
The graceful and beautiful wild goose that nests in the Canadian and
Northern lakes and marshes, makes his winter home in Tennessee. I think
it is the winter wheat that attracts him, as he passes over us, en route
to Florida, for wheat is sown in October in Tennessee and by Christmas
it is as green as the marsh grasses he left behind in Canada. I do not
blame the wild goose for stopping. He has flown for many weary days and
nights, over cold and lifeless lands; over mountains brown and sere; over
woodlands stripped of leaves and bare and uninviting. All day long the
“konk,” “konk” of the leader sounds from the point of the triangle that
cuts its ceaseless way through the thin, cold air. Night after night they
rest on frozen pond or reedy lake. But one day the air grows sweet and
balmy; they look below them at a landscape, which, at their altitude,
looks like a mighty lake whose waves are fields of green wheat, broken by
islands of dark green hills. It is the Basin of Tennessee. No wonder they
come down to earth again. If I were an angel with wings and on my way to
heaven by the same route, methinks I’d do the same thing.
“But the wild goose did not always winter here,” said Mr. Adcock, the
oldest goose hunter in my town. “I can remember when they first began
to come in. I think they began to come in after the country got to be
more open and the wheat fields so large that they could alight in the
midst of one and the sentinel on guard could see the approach of any
hunter. They live to an extreme old age. I know of one flock which
winters annually in the Bear Creek neighborhood and has wintered there
for forty-two years. The leader of the flock is known to be at least that
old. He has a peculiar white mark on his back and is readily recognized
each year by the hunters in that section. They propagate very fast in
their summer homes, for when this flock left last year it had been
reduced to eighteen in number. This year, when it came back, led again by
the old gander, it had increased to two hundred and eighty. But I do not
think there is a man in that country who would shoot at that old leader
with the white mark on him.”
There has always been something peculiarly fascinating to me in the
flight of a wild goose or wild duck. I have run up on wild turkeys and
seen them in their wild and awkward flight, and while it is beautiful
sport to kill a strutting old gobbler who comes to you, allured by your
call, and while it is finer sport the next day to sample him when he is
baked and browned to a queen’s taste, yet after all he is bred and raised
with us, he comes from our woods, not from far distant shores, walks over
the earth, does not cleave, like the wild goose, the
—“Pale, purpling evening—”
which in the language of the poet
—“Melts around thy flight.”
And so there is a mystery about him that, to me, is the mystery of other
lands and worlds. There is about him the manner as of one who comes from
distant climes; there is the everlasting wonder which to me always hangs
around the whistle of wings, the admiration for the creature to whom God
has given the power to soar above the sordid things of earth and bathe
their plumage in that air which is born of the sunset and the silent
stars. And in this connection where, in all language, is there a more
beautiful poem of its kind than Bryant’s “To a Waterfowl?” I shall copy
it in its entirety here, because it so beautifully expresses what we
commoner mortals can only feel.
[Illustration: The High Limestone Bluffs of Duck River.]
Whither, midst falling dew,
While glow the heavens with the last steps of day
Far, through their rosy depths dost thou pursue
Thy solitary way?
Vainly the fowler’s eye
Might mark thy distant flight to do thee wrong,
As, darkly painted on the crimson sky,
Thy figure floats along.
Seekest thou the plashy brink
Of weedy lake, or marge of river wide,
Or where the rocking billows rise and sink
On the chafed ocean side?
There is a Power whose care
Teaches thy way along that pathless coast—
The desert and illimitable air—
Lone wanderer, but not lost.
All day thy wings have fanned
At that far height, the cold, thin atmosphere.
Ye stoop not, weary, to the welcome land
Though the dark night is near.
And soon that toil shall end,
Soon shalt thou find a summer home and rest,
And scream among thy fellows; reeds shall bend
Soon o’er thy sheltered breast.
Thou’rt gone—the abyss of heaven
Hath swallowed up thy form; yet on my heart
Deeply hath sunk the lesson thou hast given
And shall not soon depart.
He who, from zone to zone
Guides through the boundless sky thy certain flight
In the long way that I must tread alone
Will lead my steps aright.
For several weeks I had seen the wild geese flying over us. I knew where
they were going—to the wheat fields—and I knew where they roosted at
night—under the shadow of the bluff of the river, sitting like swans on
the dark waters. I hold it of guns as I do of sulkies and road carts—any
good make is good enough. It all depends on whom you happen to start in
with. If built by honest men, out of honest stuff, there is but little
difference in the rest of it. I happen to fancy the Ithaca and had just
got me a new one, and for hard, clean, honest shooting, wear and tear,
I’ll put it against any of them.
There is only one way to hunt wild geese successfully, and I had prepared
all of that; or rather my friend Jno. W. Jackson, assistant postmaster,
and the best all-round hunter and fisherman in Tennessee, had—in fact
it is part of our stable and belongs in our barn on the rafters, along
with the saddle and harness: a strong, light canoe that will hold three
people, two big reflecting headlight lanterns that will light up the
river from bank to bank, and for very cold weather a good Clark or
Lehman heater to drop in the bottom of the canoe and put your feet on
if they get cold. Then, with a laprobe over your knees, good gloves and
overcoat, and Jimmy Caldwell, who knows every crook and turn of the river
for a hundred miles, to paddle it, you are ready for the finest sport
on this side the globe. It was just noon when my man, Frank, hooked up
the blue roan Chestnut Hal mare to the buckboard. In the rear were my
blankets and gun, and oil-cloth to sleep on; also a saddle and bridle.
There is something about a blue roan that I always have liked. It reminds
me of steel. I have never seen a quitter that was that color. It is
remarkable how often the roan horse figures in the living romance of
our literature. Who that has ever read it has forgotten the strawberry
roan mare of the big-hearted robber in “Lorna Doone”—to my mind as fine
a novel as was ever written—a kind of Shakespeare in prose in the wild
woods. Do you remember Browning’s “How They Brought the Good News from
Ghent to Aix,” and the roan that dropped dead but never gave up the race?
By the way, there are, in that poem, two of as fine descriptive verses of
horses in motion as I ever read:
“At Aerschot, up leaped of a sudden the sun
And against him the cattle stood black every one,
To stare through the mist at us galloping past
And I saw my stout galloper, Roland, at last,
With resolute shoulders, each butting away
The haze, as some bluff river headland the spray.
And his low head and crest, just one sharp ear bent back
For my voice, and the other pricked out on his track;
And one eye’s black intelligence—ever that glance
O’er its white edge at me, his own master, askance!
And the thick, heavy spume-flakes, which aye and anon,
His fierce lips shook upward in galloping on”
I claim that the Hals are the best all-round horses in the world—they are
tireless roadsters and jog, at a trot, a good road gait. By half past
one I was in Williamsport—twelve miles—and the roan mare had not struck
a pace—her fastest gait. After crossing the river and getting into the
rough roads over the hills of Hickman County, she climbed them like a
mountain goat, for if there is anything a pacer likes it is to chop up
his gait for hill work. Not once did she make a misstep. The chief beauty
of these hunts, to me, had always been in the fact that I had only to
throw a saddle on this mare, after getting to camp, and I had an easy
seat all day in our rides over the hills and fields in pursuit of that
most delightful of all Southern game—quail. It knocks the sport out of
things when you have to take one horse to drive and another to ride, and
another to do this, and another that. Reared for generations as one of
the family, the Hal horse can come very nearly doing everything that his
master can, and if this mare had asked me for a toddy before breakfast
the next morning I should not have been at all surprised.
[Illustration: Duck River, Where the Wild Geese Roost.
As an illustration of the fertility of Middle Tennessee, the field on the
right has been in cultivation ninety years, has had no fertilizers except
rotation and clover, and produced this year two crops of Irish potatoes
of fifty and ninety barrels per acre, respectively.]
My destination was the little village of Shady Grove, way up in the
foothills, and yet down in a little valley thirty miles from nowhere. We
reached it just before sunset, when the smoke began to curl up out of the
chimneys for the evening meal, and I stopped on the high hill and looked
down on the quiet scene. I have always held that it does a man good to
get away from the sound of trade and traffic now and then, and for my
part there is nothing that appeals to me so much as to look down on one
of these little villages in the hills and speculate on the simple life
that exists there. So free from the knockout battles of the modern life,
so simple and quiet and wanting so little. There is the school house,
yonder the quaint little church which means so much to them and, whether
narrow, quaint or clannish, we must admit are the real bulwarks of all
the great moral structures that are the strength and pride and glory of
twentieth century progress. The little homes cluster around these two.
Once a day the mail boy rides over the hills on his pacing horse, with
the thoughts of the rest of the world in his leathern pouch. In the
twilight I could see that the village blacksmith, a sturdy, handsome
young fellow, was forging a horse-shoe. A pretty girl came out of the
little postoffice and locked the door. She stopped at the blacksmith’s
as she passed and they laughed and made love. I smiled as I drove on,
and said: “This is the glorious twentieth century with all its knowledge
and science and progress, and yet when we come to think of it we are
right where we were two hundred years ago, for in spite of engines and
automobiles the two things that progress must have first of all, before
she can move a foot—is a horse-shoe and—love.”
* * * * *
My destination was three miles farther—at Hen Island—but, when I reached
it night had set in and, to my astonishment, I saw neither camp nor
canoe. It is one hundred miles by river to Hen Island, a fine all-day and
all-night float, with plenty of geese and ducks. The canoe had started
down with the Old Hunter and Mr. Jackson, the setter dog and the camping
outfit, and I expected them to meet me with a full game bag, and to have
the camp pitched and supper ready. Instead, I sat alone on the banks of
a river, in the chill of a winter’s evening, out in the woods, and with
no prospect of anything but the ground to sleep on. I had begun to feel
uneasy and dreadfully lonesome, when I noticed a native come down to
water the mule he was riding. In answer to my inquiry he said that the
Old Hunter had landed there that morning and had tacked a card on the
sycamore tree near where I stood. I struck a match and soon deciphered
the old man’s peculiar spelling, which told me he had gone on two miles
further to camp at a better place.
A camp-fire at night will draw two months’ work and worry out of a man.
How grand the trees look in the big, weird flashes of the firelight in
front of the tent! The setter dog is at home and welcomes you with his
honest bark and playful gambols. You can smell the fine flavor of the
boiling coffee (does any other ever taste so good?) a quarter of a mile
before you get to it, while the odor that comes up from the “skillet” is
enough to bring every wolf out of the woods. In addition to all this the
Old Hunter had two barbecued squirrels and, best of all, a mallard which
he had cooked in his own inimitable way. That is to say, he had dressed
it, all except taking off the feathers. Then he had pasted a wet clay all
over it, wrapped it in wet paper and buried it just under the sod of the
camp fire. In two hours it was pronounced done, and then he had taken
it out, soon after I came up, and with a few hefty touches had peeled
the clay and feathers off, with the skin. You may not think this is good
until you eat it at camp; then you will not want to eat duck any other
way.
The night had grown intensely dark, it seemed to me. The setter was
asleep by the camp-fire, the river sang a surly song as it swept by in
the blackness and ever and anon the “konk” of a flock of wild geese
sounded from out the heavens as if they still flew about, disdaining
to go to roost. In my vanity I supposed that they had heard that I had
arrived and so concluded it was best to spend the night in the air.
We did not wish to start until nearly midnight and as we sat around the
fire the Old Hunter grew mellow and reminiscent and this was one of the
funny stories he told me.
“Talk about horses breakin’ the record, an’ all that, but do you kno’
that in my young days I broke all the records that ever was an’ ever will
be, s’fur as a pacin’ hoss is concerned? Whut’s Star Pointer’s time?” he
asked.
I told him.
He grunted doubtfully. “Wal, I think I was sixteen an’ about as hefty
a lad as ever plowed a furrer. Lemme see; I was either sixteen or it
was the year my daddy was the proud father of his sixteenth child, I’ve
forgotten which; but I had to work like an ox all week plowin’ in the
new ground an’ gettin’ out stumps an’ all that, an’ if there was a boy
or man in that settlement that could beat me breakin’ in a colt or hold
a hand with me in a wrestlin’ match, I don’t remember it jis’ now. We
had one holiday an’ that was Sunday afternoons, which we spent mostly in
breakin’ in of colts. Wal, one Sunday we struck the meanest-tempered colt
that ever come down the pike. He flung Bill, an’ he flung Jim, an’ then
he flung the old man hisse’f. They was all older than me, of course, an’
when he flung the old man it made him bilin’ hot an’ he sez: ‘Dam sech a
colt es that! I’ll give ennybody a dollar that will stay on his back a
minnit!’
“Then I up an’ sez to the old man: ‘Pap, do you mean that?’
“‘I do,’ sez he, most emphatically.
“‘Then,’ sez I, ‘that dollar is mine.’
“Now, in them days colts wan’t broke till they was fo’ years old, an’
this particular colt had been raised with the mules in the cane bottoms.
I got Bill to hold him with a twister till I got on, an’ they turned him
loose. He give three buckjumps, one right after the other, but I had
locked my long legs around him, and he might as well have tried to throw
off the saddle. When he saw he couldn’t fling me he bolted an’ took up
the pike like wild. He run under trees an’ through bushes, he jumped rock
fences, he scraped trees and jumped ditches, an’ I let him go. He run up
the road five miles to Blivens’ mill, then he got skeered at a goat in
the road, bolted ag’in and run back home. I calk’lated he run jes’ ten
miles back to the barn lot he started frum, an’ when he cleared the last
fence I turned loose my grip an’ turned a summerset over his head in ten
yards of whar we started. I was sorter dazed at first, but when I came to
the old man was standin’ over me sorter smilin’ an’ he sed: ‘Hiram, my
son, here’s yo’ dollar; you’ve been on just a minnit!’”
* * * * *
It was nearly midnight when the big lamps were lighted. They were placed
on the prow of the canoe, so that their rays crossed in the river, each
lamp lighting its opposite side. I knew that the old hunter knew every
shoal and log in the river and that no man could guide a boat or shoot
quicker or more accurately than John Jackson. So I had no fears of
capsizing, and when I took my Ithaca and sat down behind the lights, I
was in such a glow of excitement that I did not need my overcoat. And
that excitement never left me. The boat glided out and a weird and yet
fascinating scene presented itself. We sat in midnight darkness, but for
fifty yards ahead of us the river was bright with the glare of the big
reflectors. It penetrated the woods on either side and I felt something
awesome in the feeling that we were uncovering the hidden secrets of
nature, peering into the midnight heart, laying bare her shrouded woods
and dark waters and stabbing her silence and her solitude with a knife of
light.
Not a word was to be spoken. Everything went by a code of signals. If
Jackson put out his right hand, the boat moved to the right—his left
hand, to the left. One’s heart beats fast and the blood runs hot, for as
he peers into the midnight darkness and sees the white light creeping
over the woods and the waters, he expects every minute to see the
graceful necks and white outspread banners of a flock of geese fall into
its penetrating circle.
There was a splash in the water to the left. It was a beaver. A swift
object moved across the prow of the canoe, cutting the water into ripples
as it hurried to the shore. It was a muskrat. A half mile farther I
almost laughed out at the queer antics of Br’er Coon when the big lights
caught him square in the eyes as he sat fishing for earth worms on the
bank. He blinked, and winked, and turned his head in a quizzical way as
if wondering what that animal with the sun-eyes was floating down the
stream. We left him standing on the bank winking, and blinking, and too
worthless for us to startle our game with an unnecessary report.
It is the unexpected, of course, that happens, and it came a half-mile
farther down and out the top of a dead tree lying in the river. They
arose with a whirr and whistle of wings and clatter, almost under our
prow, that I scarcely had time to prepare. Besides, in the light they
appeared pure white and of great size. Instead of flying away they flew
straight at our lights, for they were blinded, and the Old Hunter said
I dodged to keep from being hit. Anyway, I managed to fire once as they
passed over me. Then I heard the old man’s gun roar in my ears and two
big mallards fell almost in our boat.
“Did I hit anything?” I asked him.
He laughed.
“You shot all the tail feathers out of the duck I killed!” he said.
“Phe—w—! listen! Throw the oil cloth over the lights,” he whispered.
I did, and we sat in the middle of the river in pitch darkness. Our shots
had flushed a big flock of geese. They made a tremendous clatter as they
arose from the waters, not two hundred yards ahead of us. They were
flying wildly about down the river.
“That’s unlucky,” said the old hunter. “In a few minutes we would have
had them.”
It was an hour before we had them again—at least twenty beautiful fellows
that flashed into our circle of light. The sight of a flock of geese on
the water at night is the most beautiful and thrilling sight I ever saw.
In the air they are long-necked, awkward things, but in the water they
are the personification of grace and beauty. They ride the waves like a
swan, their necks grandly arched and the big band of white under their
tails is raised and spread like a white banner in the light. At sight of
these not a word was said, as the old hunter moved silently up to them
and began the process called huddling them. It took us five minutes to do
this, and all the time I sat with my gun on them and my heart thumping
like a racer’s in the back stretch. At last three heads crossed in a
line. I saw Jackson’s gun in front of me leap to his shoulder, and I
fired. They arose with konks and screams and for half a minute every gun
turned on them in the air. Then silence and darkness, for the suction of
the discharges had put out our lights... And then!—well, we merely fell
out of the canoe! for just in the shadow of our lights a flock arose with
a noise and splash that set the boat rocking on the waves.
“Bad luck again,” said the old hunter, as he rowed up to and picked up
the eight beauties. “We run into the sentry. We’d killed a dozen if we’d
only waited.”
“Yes,” I said, while a thrill of genuine sportsman joy tingled me to the
fingers; “but one doesn’t want to be a hog! This is enough for one night.
Let’s go back to camp.”
TROTWOOD.
A CHRISTMAS FOX HUNT IN ALABAMA.
BY JOHN HENRY WALLACE, JR.
’Twas the Christmas season and the air was soft and balmy, sweet with the
fragrance of the soft southerly winds.
The next day, much to our delight, promised to dawn bright and clear.
Colonel Malcolm Gilchrist, of Courtland, and Major Otis Hennigan, of
Leighton, had done me the honor to be my guests at “Kittikaskia,” my
home, and to bring along their superb packs of hounds, it being our
intention to go in quest of “Old Blaze,” a big red fox that lived in the
Jarman fields four miles to the west. This crafty red had for several
years eluded hunters and hounds by seeking refuge in the caves of the
Tennessee River hills, but we had planned for the morrow a scheme to
change his course, and to put him on his mettle to outstrip the hounds,
or else succumb in the brave attempt.
“Old Blaze” always ran through the same stand on his unerring way to
the river hills, and so, in anticipation of this, we had secured half a
hundred dusky denizens of the cotton fields to go to his crossing, form a
line, and yell after the lusty manner of their kind, when they heard the
hounds coming. We believed that the bedlam they would raise would divert
the fox from his beaten track, and turn him toward a level, open country,
where the chase could be followed with ease, seen and enjoyed.
It was an eager anticipation of sport most glorious that infused our
hearts with happiness as we donned our hunting regalia that eventful morn.
The South is the natural home of the true fox hunter. The lords and
ladies of the British Isles who came to this country settled along the
Atlantic Coast. And as westward the star of empire wended its unrelenting
way, their posterity cut through the forest and founded here a happy,
a peaceful and a prosperous land—where oftentimes one man’s estate
rivals in area and grandeur a modern principality. Descended from these
grandees who brought to America the best strains of race horses, hounds
and gamecocks, the sport-loving fraternity of Dixieland still retain in
their pristine purity the same strains their noble ancestors Imported and
loved.
The Southern fox-hunter loves his hounds. He enjoys seeing the
individuals of his pack race together. And we were to see tested the
speed and endurance of the prides of our respective packs—Colonel
Gilchrist’s “Fashion,” Major Hennigan’s “Prompter,” and the writer’s
“Alice.” Three faster and gamer hounds were never before matched in
Alabama (and the fastest and gamest hounds on earth are here), and the
coming struggle for victory was intensified most thrillingly by our
natural love for the hunt.
As we rode toward the foxes’ rendezvous, o’er the distant hills frolicked
the resonant tones of the hunter’s horn, its plaintive notes awakening
the sleeping echoes that set the woodland dells ringing with the sweetest
of mellow music.
The shafts of the new-born day quivered high in the heavens, as the
stars one by one paled of silvery lustre as the sun kindled the eastern
forests with flames that swept and glowed away the dawn. The hunters were
splendidly mounted, and their horses bounded away with a spirit that
thrilled the hearts of the riders, for oft before had they been ridden
in the chase, and each horse seemed instinctively to know that excellent
sport was ahead. The frost sparkled on the Bermuda, bespangling it with
tiny icy prisms, while not a cloud in the heavens marred the perfect
glory of an ideal hunting morn.
The hounds were held in check until the vicinity of the foxes’ lair had
been reached, when the hunting signals were given to forty fearless
hounds that eagerly bounded away to search field and fell for traces
of Sir Reynard. The course was directed up the ivy-bedecked banks of
Kittikaskia, whose clear waters flow into those of the murkier Tennessee.
Soon the course was changed toward the Jarman fields and “Morgan,” the
Nestor of the packs, sounded the first tocsin of game. Singly, and in
pairs, the hounds chimed in, for they knew that Morgan never cried a
false track, and all confidently and diligently worked to solve the
problem of a very cold and indifferent scent. Now all the hounds join in,
the scent grows warmer, and Prompter has given tongue. When he cries the
trail, the fox is sure to be rousted.
Then, like the notes of a single instrument swelling into the magnificent
crescendo of a grand orchestra, the hounds jumped the fox from his mossy
lair and sped away in swift pursuit, filling the hills and hollows with
music, wild yet thrillingly in tune. Fond of detouring the level fields
before his jaunt to the river hills, and proud of his fleetness of foot,
the spirited red began an elaborate journey by leaving the woods and
swinging out into the plantations, now vocal with the anthems of the
happy darkies, whose sweet songs of contentment are cadences to the time
to which they gather the snowy cotton.
We rode to the yelping pack, each steed seeming eager to outstrip the
field. With nostrils red, steaming and distended, eyes dilated and
flashing wicked fire, they bear their riders to the density of the
thickening cry. The world seems vibrant with the music of the cascades
of glorious enthusiasm, and hunters are oblivious to all save the
inspiration of the matchless moment. We are now within easy view of the
running pack, that dashed high into the air the melting frost which
descended like a shower of diamond sparks, while Alice—game little hound,
her wild-goose notes pealing out far above the unbroken cry—led the pack
at a killing pace. Fashion was at her flank, with Prompter not a length
behind, and across the valley’s fertile expanse the race for victory
began.
“Go on, Fashion!” yelled Colonel Gilchrist, tiptoeing in his stirrups,
his hat off. She heard and heeded his shout of encouragement and
gradually lessened the lead of Alice. But Alice, long an invincible
leader, was not to be vanquished without a desperate struggle. The main
pack was spread out like an open fan. A blanket could have covered the
thirty-seven demons that raced together to be the first to cry the
burning scent that crazes the brains of the hounds, and converts them
into yelping, frenzied fiends.
The fox and hounds entered a strip of woods and for the moment are lost
to view. A meadow was being crossed and Fashion, like a dart from an
Indian’s ashen bow, flashed up to Alice, and Colonel Gilchrist set up
a yell that seemed to split the azure dome of the sky. Prompter had
fallen back and was running with the pack. The course of the fox was now
directed towards the river. The chase was one hour old, and hard pressed
in open country, he would seek refuge in the crags and cliffs that
overhang the beautiful, the picturesque, the turbulent Mussel Shoals.
“Follow me and see the fox!” I shouted, and dashed away, followed by the
other hunters to a stand where the fox was sure to cross. We reached the
place not a moment too soon, for Sir Reynard, with long, poetic leaps,
came splitting down the vale. His head was held defiantly in the air,
his handsome amber brush was carried proudly high. Like a red streak he
flashed into the woods and was lost to view in its density. The hunters
remained silent until the hounds had passed. They were heard coming fast
behind, like a maddened musical avalanche, with Alice leading Fashion by
several lengths. While Fashion continued the valiant fight for supremacy,
her slender black neck, ringed with white, elevated, her shapely head
was thrown back like the antlers of a frightened deer, dashing from the
hunter’s snare to sweet security. All the hounds but Scott’s were well
packed.
Away speed the hunters! Faster fly the hounds.
At once there arose so wild a yell,
“As if all the fiends from heaven that fell
Had pealed the banner cry of hell.”
The fox was approaching the crossing to the river. The negroes on guard
had heard the hounds coming and were endeavoring to turn him back.
Old Blaze was terrified at the outcry, and swerved to the right and
sought safety by endeavoring to show to the pack a burst of speed that
would soon place him so far ahead as to leave behind only a very cold
trail. But the hounds were equal to the emergency, and turned with the
fox without a momentary bobble, and back to the Jarman fields proceeded
the electrifying march, “full cry” being rendered by the grandest of
musicians, whose music has inspired kings and peasants alike, infused
them with nobler ambitions and attuned their hearts and primed their
souls to the songs caroled by angel voices. Prompter has left the pack
and now challenges Alice and Fashion. It becomes indeed a killing race
for victory.
The chase is now two hours old. The fox found that he could not outstrip
the pack. His revengeful pursuers could not be evaded by swift running
tactics, for the air was damp and still, and he left behind him a
scorching trail. One hope only now remained for him—he must make for
the river hills, or else succumb. The fox on his circle back toward the
river ran two miles west of where he had formerly tried to cross, and
ere long the chase was on the bluff overlooking the river, whose broad
expanse was dotted here and there with islets that seemed to float like
graceful gondolas of green, and each echoed the notes of the hounds and,
altogether, sounded like a hundred packs running in the river. Alice
still maintained the lead. As the hounds dashed down a steep declivity,
in sight of all, she is seen to strike her shoulder against a cruel
projecting rock that causes her to tumble. She quickly got up and made an
effort to follow the track, but her shoulder refuses to respond to her
will and her foot hangs limp—her shoulder was broken. On three legs she
follows far behind, crying the scent.
I hastily dismounted and caught her in my arms, giving rein to my
mount. I was determined that she should see the finish, she who was so
unfortunately deterred from brilliantly winning.
It is two miles to where the fox intends to go to earth. Fashion is
crying the lead not sixty yards behind the quarry. The pack, with flaming
tongues, is just behind, giving vent to short, defiant yelps. My horse is
intensely excited and determined to outstrip the hunting field.
Ho! hear that defiant, agonized cry!
It is a sight race!
The hounds see the fox. His requiem is being sounded at every note. The
fox is within a few hundred yards of his place of safety. The hounds seem
to know it, and are running with an inspiration that means death to the
fox. Little Alice in my arms cried pitifully and struggled tenaciously
to be released, that she might endeavor to go to the vortex of the
revengeful cry.
The hounds are closing in on the fox, and the splendid red turns toward
his frantic pursuers, and rushes into the steel-hinged jaws of Fashion,
meeting death as only the courageous die—facing it without a murmur.
Prompter is the next hound to catch the fox, and soon his destruction is
complete. In the midst of great delight, there is passing regret, for we
deplore the fact that a creature so graceful, so noble, so courageous
should forfeit his life after the splendid sport he had afforded us on
that grand December morning.
Huntsville, Ala.
[Illustration]
Arbitration.
Let us have peace.—_Gen. U. S. Grant._
“Let us have peace!” Sublimer words are these
Than hurtling echoes of a clarion cry.
“Let us have peace!” Across Love’s ebbing seas
They come white-winged with immortality.
Build—build his mausoleum to the sky,—
Battles for base, each stone a victory;
But when Time frowns all these will crumbling lie,—
“Let us have peace”—his monument will be.
JOHN TROTWOOD MOORE.
Stories of the Soil
The Little Things of Life, Happening All Over the World and
Caught in Ink for Trotwood’s Monthly.
Floods.
About every year or two the question is sprung whether or not a horse is
a natural swimmer. It appears that some horses are and some are not, if
the statements of various persons interested be true. An old soldier, who
was a colonel in the big fight, once told me that in a close place he
rode his horse in the Tennessee River, hoping to swim across. The animal
never struck a lick at swimming, but simply waded in until it committed
suicide, and but for the timely arrival of a friend in a canoe, the rider
would have drowned also. On the other hand, it is an historical fact
that Weatherford, the Indian chief whom Jackson defeated and captured in
the Creek War, and who always rode a gray horse which was at least half
thoroughbred, when surrounded by soldiers and crowded to a big bluff on
the Alabama River, took a running start, drove the spurs into his horse,
who jumped off a bluff fully twenty feet high, into the river. Horse and
rider went out of sight, but rose again and struck out, the chief still
on his back, to the distant bank. So daring and brave was the act that
Jackson’s soldiers would not shoot at them, but let them escape into the
forest.
There is one horse in Tennessee that I will make affidavit to the fact
that he is a swimmer, as well as a lightning pacer. It is Brown Hal Jr.
2:10¼.
On Good Friday, 1902, the heavens simply opened on the South. Never has
such a flood been heard of—at least since Noah’s day. Creeks became
surging rivers, rivers vast lakes of water rushing seaward. Mr. Robt.
Hutton, one of the owners of Brown Hal Jr. 2:10¼, writes that that game
son of the old horse was in a large stable, in which a half dozen mules
were also confined on the creek near the town. Mr. Hutton is a banker and
was busy in his bank. The cloudburst came so suddenly that people indoors
did not appreciate the extent of the downfall of rain.
“Is there anything in your barn, Bob,” asked a friend as he stuck his
head in the door. “I see it is about to float away.”
“I should say there is,” he said, as he started on a run for the barn. A
boat was procured and the door finally reached, when the gallant horse
was found swimming around for his life and doubtless wondering why he had
been shut up to drown. Once out he left no doubt of his ability to breast
a flood.
But talking of the flood, I suspect I will have to make affidavit to
this, but unless several friends in whose word I have the greatest
confidence have prevaricated, I am willing to do so. Down in Giles, where
it seems everything happens now and then, Col. Martin Houston, of near
Pulaski, had two lovely asses of the Mockingbird breed. These wandered
by day in a delightful paddock in Richland Creek, and at night sang in
basso profundo to the listening lady loves. The floods came and Richland
Creek became a Mississippi, and before the festal asses could consult the
weather bureau at Nashville (which, by the way, I will solemnly swear
published it the day before that it would be “cold and fair,” the next
day), these two Romeos went floating away on the deep, with nowhere to
lay their heads. Colonel Martin grieved sorely, for they were worth many
shekels while the South African war was on. After the floods subsided
Colonel Martin went out to examine things, and down the creek, a mile or
so, high up in the top of a tall sycamore tree, hung one of his Romeos,
alive and kicking. Ropes were got and neighbors came. The tree was tied
on four sides, then cut in two, at the base, and gradually lowered until
the animal was released sound and all right. Now, the above is vouched
for by many citizens, but what became of the other ass I am unwilling
to publish over my own signature, as I have some respect even for the
reputation of a maker of rhymes. I clip this from the Nashville Banner of
April 23:
Columbia, April 23.—An unusual story comes from Glendale of the
endurance of a jack. Two of these animals were in pasture on the banks of
Fountain Creek, at the time of the big flood three weeks since, and were
swept away. The body of one of them was found, but nothing was heard of
the other one till last Friday, when, it is said, some workmen found him
buried in a sandbar with only his head out, still alive.
Spades were secured and the animal exhumed, when, so the story goes, he
ate food offered him and lived till Saturday, when he died as the result
of over-indulgence after the long fast.
Pat Connolly and the Snakes.
Here is Conductor Pat Connolly’s experience as he related himself.
Conductor Connolly is an Irishman and hates snakes now worse than ever.
“When my train reached the creek at Wales Station, faith I never seen
sich a flood. The track was gone—washed away for twenty yards or more,
and the water over everything else. I walked out on the track ahead of
the engine to see her sweep by—me an’ Jim Tally, the fireman, when I
felt the cross-ties I was on turn over and I went with ’em. The water
had washed the track and embankment up that we stood on, so sudden we
never knowed it, an’ me an’ Jim was jus’ washed along in the flood. It
was aisy swimmin’ for we just scooted along like a mill-race, an’ by an’
by when I passed a big sycamore with its top just out, I hung on an’
clambered up. Jim followed an’ we set there on a limb, way up in the top,
with our legs in the water. We was feelin’ pretty good an’ comfort’ble
till our company came. I felt something wrop round my leg—faith, it was
a snake. They simply hung to every limb of that tree. They was there by
the hundreds, all kinds an’ conditions of ’em. I went up to the top notch
an’ Jim after me. I never stopped to dispute the pint with ’em, as to who
was entitled to the lower limbs. They seemed to have got there fust an’ I
gave ’em the benefit of the doubt, anyway. They hissed and wiggled around
an’ looked meaner than original sin. I never seen as many snakes in my
life. Night came on, but the moon rose up an’ we could see everything
plain. The water was rising a foot an hour, an’ Jim an’ me put up some
silent prayer that it wouldn’t get over that treetop. Well, sah, about
ten o’clock we seen something that made our hair rise. It was a dead
nigger floatin’ round that tree dressed in a long, white robe. He floated
under my limb and gazed up at me, an’ I’ll swear I nearly fell off my
perch. Then here come another, an’ another—nigger babies, old niggers,
mammies, young niggers—dozens of ’em; some in coffins and some out. None
of ’em didn’t wanter go by that tree, but just floated around an’ around
an’ grinned at me an’ Jim. We didn’t kno’ then, of course, what it was,
but we learned afterwards the high water had washed up a nigger graveyard
about three miles above. It was midnight before they got a boat from
Pulaski and took us down. I had lost forty pounds, an’ Jim’s hair was as
white as snow.”
Indian Graves.
The above sounds fishy, but it was the actual experience of Conductor Pat
Connolly. But a stranger thing happened than the washing up of the negro
graveyard, and one which is greatly interesting the Tennessee Historical
Society. At a little station a few miles below Pulaski, in Giles County,
there is a very rich field which old men know has been cultivated for
seventy-five years. Nor was the water ever known to rise over it before.
Before it was known to the ploughshare, it was a great forest, covered
with trees of great age, many of them there when De Soto’s Spaniards
marched through in the sixteenth century. Last month I went down into
that county to hunt squirrels, and as we rested in the woods, turned into
bouquets by blooming dogwood and red-buds, to eat our noon lunch by a
big, cool spring, Mr. Bob Brannon, of Lynnville, who was in our party of
hunters, told me this incident.
“When the waters subsided over this field,” said Mr. Brannon, “the
current at one place had taken off two feet or more of soil, and there
fully exposed as if laid bare by hand, was a burial ground of some
ancient people. The tombs had been nicely built of slabs of rocks,
enclosing the body, of which a number were found, some of them as
perfect skeletons as I ever saw. Infants lay side by side with father and
mother and how long they had slept there only the Great Father knows,
for not a descendant of this ancient race now lives on the earth, every
vestige of its cultivation has passed away and forest trees, centuries
old, have grown over their graves, which might have slumbered on till
eternity but for the flood. I handled the skulls and bones, but I felt as
if I was touching sacred things, relics of civilization older than any we
know of.”
The Week After that Flood.
This started John W. Alexander, the Lynnville druggist and horseman, and
the present owner of Brown Hal, Jr., He had been eating a currant pie
and stopped long enough to say: “My flood yarn is the greatest thing
that I ever heard of. An old man—a good, honest, but poor farmer—has
been tilling a hillside field three miles above Lynnville for years. The
week after that flood, while plowing in the hillside, suddenly, without
any warning, his team and plow disappeared in the furrow ahead of him.
The man stopped and found that he stood on the brink of a hole that had
suddenly opened in the earth and taken his team in. Peering down he saw
his poor horses, piled on one another fully twenty feet below. They were
groaning and calling pitifully for him to help them, but in a half hour
their groans ceased and they were dead. The explanation is simple: The
heavy rains had cut out a sink hole in a few feet of the surface, which
broke under the weight of the team. We raised, by public subscription,
enough money to buy him another team.”
By this time, Geo. Campbell Brown, of Ewell Farm, had eaten the other
pie. “Do you all know old man Simpson, of Richland Creek?” he asked
innocently. We all knew him.
“Well, you know, he was drowned in that flood while trying to drive some
colts out of the bottom lands before the water was too high. His wife
told him not to go into that swamp, but you never heard of a man taking
his wife’s advice when it comes to horses, so he was drowned, and went on
to a better land. He hadn’t more than arrived before he was telling it to
listening crowds what a terrible flood they had in Tennessee and how old
Richland Creek spread all over the state of Giles. Finally he went on and
told about Pat Connolly and the snake, the jackass tale, and the Indian
graveyard and all that, and closed by telling that Richland Creek was
twenty feet higher than the high-water mark of 1834, registered on the
old elm at Possum Bend School House. When he said this he noticed an old,
gray-headed man turn up his nose disdainfully and walk off without saying
a word.
“‘Why, that old man seems offended,’ said Simpson—‘who is he?’
“‘Why, don’t you know him?’ said a listener—‘that’s Noah!’”
“I think it is time for the squirrels to begin to come out again,” I
said, as I picked up my gun and started into the woods.
TROTWOOD.
A Postponed Christmas Dinner.
December, 1863, the night before Christmas (the time above all others
when our thoughts were of home), found the Seventh Ohio Cavalry on
outpost duty closely observing the veteran army of General Longstreet,
then in upper East Tennessee.
The Christmas dinner was by no means ready for either the Confederate or
the Union troops in East Tennessee, as both armies were then living off
the country, which had long before been denuded of almost every edible
thing suitable for man or beast. The veteran cavalrymen of our regiment
were sharing their exceedingly light rations with their horses, five
nubbins of corn per day for each man and his horse being the scanty
allowance from our limited supplies.
Under this circumstance, it was necessary to postpone our Christmas
dinner until February following. By this time Longstreet had retired from
East Tennessee to rejoin General Lee’s Army preparatory to the campaign
in Virginia against General Grant.
In February we found ourselves relieved from duty in close proximity to
the enemy, and in order to recuperate our men and horses took station in
Tuckaleechee Cove, at the base of the Great Smoky Mountains, south of
Knoxville, near the North Carolina line.
Here there was fairly good grazing for our horses and moderately good
foraging opportunities for the men. It was here, and in the month of
February, that we had our Christmas dinner. Somewhere and somehow (it was
not for me to know or to ask) our mess had secured a turkey, maybe a wild
one which had been killed in trying to bite some of our boys, and under
the skillful hands of Private Sam Wood, of Company I, the most expert
cook in the regiment, this turkey was roasted over a fire of live coals,
which Sam, with the utmost care, had prepared and arranged. The turkey
was suspended from a rigging of poles at the proper distance from the
fire and by the dexterous hand of Sam was kept gently turning around and
around, that the roasting process might properly proceed. Out of the sky
had dropped a mess of sweet potatoes, along with some pickled cabbage,
much like sauerkraut, which went to complete our Christmas dinner. Our
mess, composed of the colonel, the surgeon and the adjutant, sat close
by to watch proceedings, and to “shoo away” self-invited guests who had
been attracted to our camp fire by the aroma of the roasting turkey, and
incidentally to frequently wipe our watering mouths and ask Sam if he
could not hurry matters along a little faster, as we had our appetites
with us. It seemed to us hungry souls that never before did it take so
long to roast a turkey.
As we were nearing the completion of the repast a little rain storm
passed over, but soon the sun shone brightly, showing the tops of the
mountains tipped with snow. We were all in a frame of mind to enjoy
this beautiful but fleeting scene, when Sam, the cook, pointing to the
snow-capped mountains, said, “Gentlemen, there is ice cream for dessert,
help yourselves.”
As I look back now through the vista of more than forty years, never
before or since did a Christmas dinner taste so good as that one of
turkey, sweet potatoes and sauerkraut, all topped off with ice cream on
the mountains!
THEODORE F. ALLEN.
The Devil’s Wagon.
It was plain from the old man’s demeanor that he was “up against”
something unusual.
“What’s the matter now,” I asked; “did you lose out in the crap game, or
has Taylor sent for you?”
Taylor is Judge of the Criminal Court, and, according to Uncle Jake, when
any colored citizen is guilty of an offence against the peace and dignity
of the State, Taylor very promptly sends for him.
Uncle Jake, however, is a leading member of Bethel church, and prides
himself on his ability to keep out of scraps which are likely to involve
him in trouble with Taylor.
Ordinarily the old man would have answered my banter good-humoredly; as
it was he only shook his head and sighed. It was evident that he had had
a very extraordinary experience. I continued, however, in my same tone:
“Oh, you’d as well tell me; I haven’t ever refused to go on your bond,
have I?”
“Has I ever axed yer ter go on my bon’? Naw, sah, an de nex’ time yer
hear frum me I ain’t axin yer nuther, case I ain’t aimin’ ter git inter
nothin’ to need no bon’.”
The old man was plainly in no joking humor. So I said, “Well, tell me
about it anyway; you surely haven’t got into anything you’re ashamed of,
have you?”
“Naw, sah, I ain’t,” he answered, very positively. “Naw, sah, I ain’t,
case I’m plum dead shore ef I’der had my sayso erbout hit, hit never der
happened. Yer see hit ’us dis er way: De yuther night atter I’d et my
supper I saddled up my little ole mule, Jack, and started to de sto’.
When I’d got up on de yuther side er de creek, all ’twonst I seed er
light flare up ergin de telephone wires, en fore I had time ter think
erbout enything tall, dar come ober de rise de awfullest lookin’ thing I
eber seed in my life.”
“What did it look like?”
“Well, sah, de best I can tell yer, hit looked like er great, monstros
inseck, wid eyes er flah as big as the head uv er sugar bar’l, an’ jest
er comin’ er gittin’. I say, ‘Jack, I specks we’d better be goin’ back.’
Well, we started back, Jack er doin’ his levelin bes’, but shucks!
t’wawnt narry biter use; that thing jes crope right up on us like we’d
er bin stanin’ still. And all de time I could hear it sayin’ right fas’
like hit meant it, ‘Gittin’, gittin’, gittin’, gittin’. Purty quick Jack,
he seed ’twant no use ter try ter git erway, en jest stopped an’ turned
’round facin’ the thing. I looked at hit de bes’ I could an’ I’s jes plum
shore hit’s de debil’s own wagin. When hit gunter git up purty clost,
all ’twonst Jack he ’menced buck-jumpin’ right todes the thing, an’ fore
I knowed whut wus er happenin’ he throwed me er plum somerset and sot
me down in de thing right side er de man whut wus drivin’. I looked er
’roun’ sorter kurful like, en bless Gracious! hit wan’t no man.”
“Wan’t no man!” I exclaimed in feigned surprise, “what was it?”
“Ay Lawd, don’t ax me, case I don’t know. He had des one big glass eye
right in de middle er ’is for’ed, an’ dat thing whut ’es on des er fryin’
an’ er stewin’, en er goin’ right on down de road. I tell yer, I’s sheer
fer sho’ nuff; en I say, ‘O please, Mars Debil, hab mussey on me!’ En he
sorter ris up, he did, and say, plum savage like, ‘Here, you ole black
rascal, you git outen my ’cheen, fore I knocks all de flah outen yer!’
En, sah, I didn’t take time ter say er nother word; I des fell outen de
hine een er dat thing right flat er my back in de middle er de big road,
en hit like ter busted me wide open. Time I got up an’ sorter scratch
de grabel outen my years, I could hear dat thing er spit-spitten, en
er git-gitten way on down dar erbout de creek, des clar gone. I gunter
sorter look er roun’ fer Jack, en ’ud you bleeve it? dat ole mule wus
down dar er grazin’ side de road, des es innercent as er lam’ in de
spring er de year. I went on down dar, I did, en tuck hol’ ’im an’ I say,
‘You ole hippercrit, I’ll larn you how ter ’have de nex time we meet de
debil an’ hees wagin.’ An’ I gib dat mule de awfulest beaten!”
STERLING C. BREWER.
Jim and the Old Pacer.
It’s a cold day, indeed, when a drummer has not got a good yarn up his
coat-sleeve, and the narrator of this swears to its truth in every
particular.
We were sitting around a good fire the other evening when the subject of
last winter’s cold spell came up and how much fun the boys over the line
were having on the path; and, incidentally, how greatly the interest in
snow races among gentlemen drivers was increasing each winter.
“But, say,” said the drummer, who was selling cigars and had just passed
around some to sample, “talking about the fun the boys had up North on
the snow last winter reminds me how a farmer and an old pacer, up in a
fashionable little town in the State of York, where I happened to be last
month, hit the snow enthusiasm of that class of fellows who thought they
owned the best snow horse in the world with a blizzard that will cool
them off till the spring time comes, gentle Annie. At least, they hadn’t
got over it when I left two weeks ago,” he laughed. “We didn’t have any
snow until after Christmas, and when the cold wave, with snow, did come,
you bet they were all waiting for it. Fellows with fine sleighs bought in
October and put in the carriage house began to think they would have to
wait another year, while the trotters and pacers were eating their heads
off, and hundreds of friendly wagers lay in pigeon holes, waiting for
the snow. Well, when it came, it was a dandy, and the snow path soon saw
dozens of races a day, with fine rigs and fun galore.
“I’ve got a driver friend who lives near the big town mentioned—runs a
training stable in the suburbs. You’d know him in a minute if I’d call
his name, for he has driven many a good one to victory, and he’s got a
pacer you’d know, too, for he has a mark below 2:12. But this pacer is an
onery-looking thing, if I ever saw one. He wouldn’t sell on his looks
for fifteen dollars, yet he won thirty-five hundred dollars last year
clear of expenses. My friend bought him out of a log-wagon—a curby-legged
thing, with log spavins and splints in swarms, but gee whiz, how he could
pace! Jim—that’s my friend’s name—loves a little fun about as well as
anybody. He didn’t go out on the snow path the first week until he found
out just who could go and how fast, and then he just laid for the whole
gang with that old pacer. The boys drove out to his stable time and again
and bantered him, guyed him, made fun of him and all that, but he laid
low and said nothing. One evening he sent for me and whispered:
“‘Want to make your winter oats tomorrow?’
“‘I don’t care,’ I laughed, ‘if it’s a dead sure thing. Haven’t got any
money to burn up in an experiment.’
“Jim laughed and handed me a hundred in ten-dollar bills. ‘This shows my
faith; play it for me on the farmer and the old pacer to-morrow, any way
or odds you want to, and if you don’t make some yourself while you’re at
it, why, it’s your own fault.’ And then he took me in the harness room
and told me a little tale that made me laugh all over.
“Well, to-morrow meant there was going to be several races on the snow,
and all the fashionable end of town was to be out. One or two fellows
with pretty good horses had beat everything and were looking for more
worlds to conquer. Just after dinner Jim put on snow goggles, a hayseed
hat, the rustiest coat he could borrow, clapped that curby-legged pacer
in an old sleigh that looked like it had stood up in a mouldy carriage
house for fifty years, with harness to match, put a few bundles of oats,
farmer like, in behind to save feed, of course, in town, and jogged on in
with a sort of an ain’t-been-to-town-for-ten-years look written all over
the whole turnout.
“He wasn’t looking for the first suckers he did up, though. He heard
a jingling of bells behind him some two miles out, and came very near
being run over by a happy lot of young fellows with their girls on a
bob-sleigh, drawn by four spanking horses. The fun they had over Jim
and his queer turnout was immense—for about five minutes. They dashed
up beside him, asked him the price of oats, and all that and finally
hollered out:
“‘Get out of the road, old man, or we’ll run over you!’
“‘But I be goin’ to town, too,’ Jim drawled out in the nasalest twang
that ever came out of a down-easter’s nose. Then he shook up the old
pacer just enough to stay tantalisingly in front in spite of everything
they could do. The bob-sleigh crowd couldn’t go in six minutes at a trot
to save their necks, so they put the teams out in full run, but that was
just fun for the old pacer. They never came in twenty yards of his oats
in the rear of the sleigh. After teasing the babies enough, Jim turned at
the first good stretch, looked back, winked his off eye, and said: ‘Yes,
chillun, I be goin’ to town, too, so good-bye to you babies, an’ heaven
bless you,’ and he shot away and left them.
“You have heard of blackbirds chattering in a tree, and then all of them
suddenly stop, haven’t you? The silence is painful. Well, that’s the way
it was in that bob-sleigh.
“But Jim was after bigger game than that, though he couldn’t resist the
temptation to have a little fun with every nobby turnout he met.
“‘Cawn’t you pass that old fellah, James,’ the male occupant of a swell
rig would call out to his coachman, after Jim would wiggle along, half
asleep, beside the fancy turnout.
“‘Oh, yes, your ’oner,’ James would say, and swell up in the true English
style and pull at his ’ackneys and spread around blustering, and cast
withering glances on the innocent looking hayseed rig. Then Jim would
wake up, shake the old pacer, and leave them like Mark Twain’s coyote on
the desert left the ambitious dog—a gray crack in the air and he was gone
while the English coachman cussed those “low-down Hamerican ’osses” with
the best mixture of Billingsgate and flunky at his command.
“But he got off the best one on two young fellows who thought they had
a fast trotter. They came tearing down on Jim, intending to go by him
like a flash. But just as they came up Jim shook up the old pacer, and
he threw up his tail for all the world like he was frightened nearly to
death, and with that wild look that made Jim afterwards declare he really
believed the old rascal was onto the game himself, he would dart away,
threatening to break and go all to pieces every minute. This would make
the trotting fellows come faster, and Jim would make it worse by looking
like he was ‘skeered’ nearly to death, and shouting out:
“‘Gentlemen, hold up, please; you’ll skeer the old hoss to death. He
allers runs away at a pace when he’s skeered. Hold up. Hold up, for
heaven’s sake!’
“Jim would let them chase him that way for a mile, till their horse was
blown and would go to a break before they’d catch on, and try to sneak
away down some side street. Then Jim would holler out:
“‘Gentlemen, don’t never do that no more—don’t never do it ergin, on your
life! This old hoss might ’er run erway an’ ruined me! He always would
run away in a pace when he got skeered. Learned it when he was a colt—got
skeered at a trottin’ hoss haulin’ a load of manure through the medder
lot, where he was grazin’, an’ he can’t stan’ it to this day!’ Then he
would chuckle out loud and throw this parting shot at them: ‘But, say,
young fellers, don’t you wish sumpin’ would skeer that thar trotter of
yours, good, once?’
“But the meanest thing Jim and that old pacer did was to break up a love
match. It was a young fellow and his girl, and Jim says when he came up
behind them their horse was in a slow walk, like they wanted that ride to
last forever—and they were so interested in looking in each other’s eyes,
and holding hands under the robe, and they never knew that it was daytime
and that it was the sun, and not a low-turned gas jet, that was burning
overhead. Jim knew the young fellow, and the horse he was driving, too.
The horse was quite a fancy looking trotter, just pretty enough to catch
anybody’s eye that wanted a Sunday-go-to-meetin’ kind of a horse. He
had once taken a tincup record of 2:26¼ by some hook and crook, and on
the road for a quarter of a mile, he could trot a buzz-saw clip, as long
as he thought he was beating all creation, and didn’t get another crotch
in his head—for he had clock works, with a chimes attachment there, and
no mistake. There was plenty of room for Jim to go around and let those
young people alone, but he saw too good a chance for fun, and that’s what
he was out for. He wiggled up right behind the hand-holding pair, and,
pulling out a red silk handkerchief, he blew his nose with a terrible
blast. He did it to attract their attention and let them know that the
rest of the world ‘do move, too,’ but it was more effectual than he
had hoped. That chimes-headed horse must have thought it was Gabriel’s
trumpet, for he jumped ten feet when Jim gave that blast, shook the
lovers like an earthquake and banged the girl’s best hat up against the
back of the sleigh. The young fellow pulled his horse down and looked
back daggers at Jim, then touched him up and lit out to leave him. This
was just what Jim wanted, and he sailed after them in great shape. It
was an awful pretty race for about two hundred yards, and then Jim let
the old pacer glide up nose and nose with the trotter, who was walling
his eye around and already showing signs of quitting with a little more
collaring. When Jim did that he heard the girl say excitedly, ‘Oh, Harry,
is that horrid old horse going to beat Sir Charles Grandeville?’
“‘I’m just feeling him, now,’ Harry replied. ‘Wait a minute, darling, and
I will make him sick. There’s nothing on this road can beat Sir Charles!’
“Jim chuckled and let out a link or two, and the old pacer forged ahead.
“‘Oh, Harry, but he is beating us—hurry up, dear, let him show that 2:20
clip, or lock, or whatever you told me about Just now. O-o-o-o Harry!!’
“This last remark was caused by Sir Charles going into as many different
breaks as there are pieces in a jointed snake, while Harry laid the whip
on him with something that sounded, under his breath, like ‘Whoa! Dash
blank your jumping-jack, white-livered hide! I’ll teach you how to quit
every time an ox cart tries to pass you!’
“And as Jim sailed away he heard the girl haughtily and freezingly saying:
“‘Mr. Harry Smith, I’ll thank you, sir, to put me out at the first house
you pass! I’m glad I found you out in time. Any man who will beat and
swear at his horse as you have done will beat and swear at his wife, and
I’ll never marry you, sir, never!’
“As I said above, that was the meanest thing Jim did that day.
“Well, we harvested our winter oats two hours afterwards, when Jim
entered his pacer in the free-for-all down the boulevard. Some few had
caught on, but I found enough that hadn’t to cover Jim’s hundred I held
and another for myself, and when the old farmer and the pacer beat the
gang further than any of them cared to tell about afterwards, as I said
before, it brought on a blizzard that cooled all the racing enthusiasm in
that town up to the time I left, and many of them hadn’t discovered then
that they had been racing green horses and two-thirty roadsters against
one of the best known drivers in the East, up behind a pacer who started
ten times last year, won eight first moneys and two seconds, and took a
mark close down to 2:10.”
“I see from the paper,” he said, as he pulled out a local paper, “that
they are racing there on the snow path this week, but I’ll bet my
winter overcoat they have taken the precaution to bar all hayseeds and
curby-legged pacers in the country.”
[Illustration]
OUR PAGE OF POETS
THE LYNCHERS.
A thousand yelling savages proclaim
Their swift advance. What voice or hand can tame
The maddened multitude? With curses loud,
With guns and halters armed, the frenzied crowd
Has rushed the guard. A lurid bonfire shows
The prison walls they storm, while passion glows
In many an eye, alike, of grizzled Age,
And ruddy Youth, aroused to brutal rage.
Their sentries overcome, a quick retreat,
The soldiers make to cover. Sledges beat
And crash through iron doors before the eyes
Of city officers. And flames that rise
From heaps of furniture and fagots, blended,
Upon the stair the soldiers have ascended,
A roaring furnace make the prison hall;
While wild alarms the fire department call.
The screams of prisoners, in terror, swell
The clamorous noise to sounds as harsh as hell,
As firemen, driven by shots and brandished knives
And dynamite—to save their precious lives—
Desert their posts; and Manhood weakened falls
In darker ruin than wrecks of battered walls;
For men, once held courageous, quail and cower,
While Anarchy, unchallenged, seizes power.
At last the desperate prisoner released,
But chased and caught again, like savage beast,
Is dragged before the self-appointed court
Whose blear-eyed judge enjoys the awful sport.
In reckless impudence, like beggars ride,
He sits—with oaths where Justice should preside
Condemns. About the wretch his followers close,
With threats of death, if aught their will oppose.
In protest Wisdom lifts her voice in vain;
With jeers and ribald shouts and high disdain,
The Mob uprears his front; but Justice stands,
And, arm uplifted, solemnly demands:
Think you, because I’m slow as God is slow,
That any can escape me? Nay, the low
And high alike I reach. Though lame, I smite
At last all who defy my sovereign might.
With hunger wild, ferocious beasts obey
Their lust for blood—pursue and rend the prey;
But baser far than beast or fiend or ghoul,
Unfit to dwell in caves where tigers prowl,
Or live where lions lick their bloody paws,
And rule the jungle-world with ravenous jaws;
Incarnate Savagery, athirst for gore,
Begone! and show your hideous face no more.
Lest brooding Terror bring the she-wolf days
Again, and men afraid, for safety raise
Above their lawless heads a sceptered hand
To rule with iron Freedom’s bleeding land.
The rule of ruffians, who would bear, instead
Of low-bred Tyranny, with hydra head,
The nations choose them kings to give the measure
That men will use, of Freedom’s priceless treasure.
The seed of crime from every halter flies,
When multitudes of murderers arise
To execute the laws; by every stake
Where lawless lynchers direful vengeance take,
Abundant harvests grow. Beware! The strains
Of high Arabian blood, upon the plains,
By Spanish conquerors left, to mustangs fell—
Surprises of the future, who can tell?
O, men! with Southern hearts, unselfish, brave,
Go hunt this monster down—the negro save:
And save your land, your homes: it is your place
To save from hurt the fair Caucasian race;
As men of Anglo-Saxon blood you claim
A primacy. But hear: Except you aim
To hold such leadership by lofty deed
And high ideal, you will not always lead.
If Justice, grieved, shall tear her temples down
And cast aside from country, city, town,
Her pillars, church and school—as courts and jails.
Dismantled, fall, our great Republic fails.
With insults, Wrong exults o’er Right exiled;
The smiling field reverts to tangled wild;
To violence and blood, unhappy men,
Abandoned, turn the home to beastly den.
—J. THOMAS COOPER.
AT SUNSET ON TENNESSEE RIVER.
Majestically, from the pearl-faced gate
Of eastern skies, the mighty stream doth pour
A crimpling current through the golden door
Of western bounds; nor doth our boat abate
Aught of its strife with tides, and night doth wait
Ambushed in shadows yonder crag throws o’er.
And foam-capped waves, which lap the willowed shore,
Are chasing us like hungry hounds of Fate.
What name hast thou, O, Spirit brooding here?
Elusive thou, as creatures of a dream,
Or phantoms of the mist, gone with a breath.
We know not if we must adore or fear
This mystery that holds the land and stream—
And yonder shades; bescreen they Life or death?
WILL MITT SHIELDS.
[Illustration]
TROTWOOD’S MONTHLY
Devoted to Farm, Horse and Home.
TROTWOOD PUBLISHING CO., Nashville, Tenn. Office 161 Fourth Ave. North.
JOHN TROTWOOD MOORE, Editor-in-Chief.
E. E. SWEETLAND Business Manager.
GEO. E. McKENNON President.
JOHN W. FRY Vice-President.
EUGENE ANDERSON Treas.
WOOTEN MOORE Sec’y.
TERMS OF SUBSCRIPTION: One Year, $1 00; Single Copy, 10 cents.
Advertising Rates on application.
NASHVILLE, TENN., DECEMBER, 1905.
With Trotwood
It is the unexpected in life, as has often been said, that happens. The
rejected stone throughout the centuries has always been the keystone in
the arch of fame, and genius and greatness always have and always will
come from the bosom of Mother Earth. The best legacy a boy can have is an
honest ancestry and a condition that forces him to work. And, therefore,
I am always sorry for the young man who “has a fine start in life.” He
has as many chances for failure as the “brilliant young lawyer” has for
mediocrity and a bar-room clientage. Success despises assistance and
fame hates caste and titles as the gods do salt water. Mediocrity, like
a faint hearted hound, may always be found running up and down the river
of his purpose, fearing to plunge and doubting the ford, while success
plunges in and crosses, or dies trying. Two generations of idleness will
breed crime, while two generations of shirt sleeves mean wealth. If the
world would stop working a year God would have to destroy it with fire
and brimstone.
* * * * *
Poetry should be brought back to the uses for which it was intended. The
metaphysical school that is trying now to control it, and whose object
seems to be to make it a science instead of a pleasure and beautiful way
of expressing our thoughts, should be driven from our standard as they
have always been from our hearts. We must go back to first and natural
principles again, and by demanding imagination, simplicity, beauty and
naturalness, make poetry a vehicle of the pure and the beautiful, and
so simple that ordinary minds can read it with pleasure and understand
what they read. The story age of Spencer, Shakespeare and Burns should
be received and much of Browning’s stuff flung to the dogs, where it
belongs. God has given us poetry to be enjoyed, to be understood, to
make us wiser and better, to take to our hearts and firesides. Its
principle is all but universal and there are few who do not, in some
shape, enjoy it. It was not intended to be an intellectual puzzle, a
metaphysical science to be gobbled up by a few abnormally developed
protoplasms and denied to the world of yearning hearts. Imagine Homer
reciting his glorious stories of Agamemnon and Ulysses, of “Ox-eyed Juno”
and Penelaus, “tamer of horses,” to the Greek philosophers; imagine
Shakespeare giving “Romeo and Juliet” in a barn to the learned of Europe.
Of Burns lying in the dew of the haystack watching the morning star
quiver like the soul of Highland Mary and then writing his deathless song
for the ears of those people who live in palaces and never saw a morning
star, nor felt the kiss of an honest love in their lives.
* * * * *
The world is wild for prose stories. The reason is obvious. The stories
have been shut out of poetry by the metaphysical school, and, being
unable to get them in the language of the heart, of the imagination,
the world which must have them is taking them in the language of the
commonplace. And thus is the true and the beautiful being destroyed to
give way to the double meaning and the sensational. The so-called poetry
of to-day is not new. The only reason a lot of metaphysical poetry has
not been handed down to us is because it did not live to get to us. Five
hundred years hence the people who will know Burns will have to hunt
around in a sheepskin encyclopoedia of biography to find out who Howells
and Henry James were. We must not forget that contemporary criticism
placed Ben Jonson ahead of Shakespeare, Pope above Milton, Scott above
Keats. And yet Pope and Scott did a world of harm to poetry. They helped
to drive it out by disgusting people with the sameness of its flow and
the smoothness of its rhythm. As if the wind roars ’round the house by
a foot and a meter measure as Whitmore expressed it, as if the mountain
looms up by a law of rising and falling, or the waves thunder like a
church organ.
But the grave of truth is never the theme of fraud but for one
generation—the next one finds truth on the monument and wrong in the
grave. Let us get back to truth; though dead, she is a sweeter mistress
than a living and bedecked and bespangled lie. As Romeo said over
Juliet’s body, so with poetry:
“Death that hath sucked the honey of thy breath,
Hath had no power yet upon thy beauty.
Thou art not conquered: beauty’s ensign yet
Is crimson on thy lips and on thy cheeks,
And death’s pale flag is not advanced there.”
* * * * *
Trotwood loves to throw a bouquet—he believes they are more easily
gathered in the sunshine around us and leave a more pleasant memory
than some other things which might be cast, such, for instance, as
bricks and stones. Especially does he love to throw them when they are
intended for a lovely woman. And we have known her long—Miss Minnie
McIntyre, editor of the new horse show paper, The Bit and Spur, of
Chicago, and so we know whereof we speak when we say that in her class
she is simply an “only,” and her monthly, The Bit and Spur, is a gem
of its kind, and an inspiration. It is beautifully illustrated, its
workmanship is the finest, and is the best edited magazine of its class
in the whole country. If you love the horse shows you cannot afford to
miss its monthly visits. This is written deliberately and with charity
aforethought, and while it may have the flavors of the village sanctum
sanctorum, yet when a woman gets into the strenuous fight around her
and with her bright mind and pen rises to the very top, there is always
growing in Trotwood’s garden a bouquet of sunflowers for her.
* * * * *
Concerning Southern magazines, it is the fact that none has ever been
able to live in the South. We appreciated that fact with all its force
when we launched Trotwood’s Monthly. But we think we have studied the
situations thoroughly enough to know the reason of this: First, they have
all been feeble imitations of Northern magazines—a field so well and ably
filled already. Every section of our country has its own character, its
own atmosphere, its own earmarks. People North and West, when they buy a
Southern magazine, want the South to be in it—its stories, traditions,
its sunshine, its fields, its very air. They want to hear of the land
which is harvesting and sowing, while they are in the far-off snow,
waiting to see the good, glad earth again; the land where the average
farmer does not spend all he makes in the summer keeping himself and
his stock warm in the winter; the land that is Southern—the great,
undeveloped country of the future. Trotwood’s Monthly is trying to do
this. In the second place, Southern people are not great readers. There
are too many chances to get out of doors—any time and all the time.
Like the petted children of indulgent parents, kind Nature does so much
for them—they do little for themselves. And a child will never leave
the joyous out-doors for the study, the schoolroom or the work shop.
In literature the great South is but a child. But last and chiefest,
no magazine has ever been launched in the South to supply a practical
demand, instead of creating a supply. Sentiment is a great thing, but
like blue litmus paper, it changes quickly if it meets an acid. And
sentiment meets an acid every little while. Trotwood’s Monthly is
supplying practical demand, not trying to create a supply, dependent on
local sentiment. It is weaving the Southern atmosphere around a practical
subject—a subject in demand all over the world, as our subscription
list, which now has reached a goodly number in every State in the Union,
in Canada, even to faraway Nova Scotia, in South Africa, Honolulu and
Australia. Around this practical subject for which there is a positive
demand, we will weave the Southern literature and life, and in that way
do we hope to live. Sentiment alone will carry no magazine beyond the
first year, and the story of the literature of every people—aye, of every
literary workman among the people—is that the practical staff must go
with the first efforts long before he who runs, learns how to read.
* * * * *
Trotwood’s Monthly is going slow, but with the staff of the practical for
support.
Trotwood’s Monthly wants good stories and poems. Write them, but let them
be life, for literature, if real, is but the true interpretation of life.
Write of the life around you, not of that in some other State or country.
* * * * *
If you fail to get your Monthly promptly, be sure to write and let us
know. The Monthly comes out on the 15th of each month. We always have
extra numbers for those which miscarry in the mails. Drop us a postal if
you fail to get yours promptly.
* * * * *
Mr. A. D. Shamel, physiologist in charge of Tobacco Breeding In the
Bureau of Plant Industry, United States Department of Agriculture,
Washington, D. C., sends the following appreciative letter: “I appreciate
the high character of your Monthly, and know that it will be of great
service in promoting the best interests of the agricultural interests
which it represents. In the great agricultural awakening taking place in
the South and the development of her great resources, there is certainly
a great field of valuable work.” Prof. Schumel will favor us soon with a
valuable paper.
* * * * *
Men seem to be animals which would not only betray other men, but their
own children, if there was no higher power to prevent. One of the curses
of the South is child labor—another form of slavery and race suicide.
In the new era dawning in the South, this curse has come in with the
spindle and the money behind it has been so great that in some Southern
States, like South Carolina and Georgia, the friends of the child and of
humanity have been unable to pass child labor laws. The legislators are
bought by the money of the corporations. The South is making a strenuous
effort to correct this evil, but it is met by graft and bribery, evasion
and contempt of the law, and the shame goes on. Take from anyone’s life
its untrammeled childhood, and what is left? Not even the memory of a
sweetness. White child slavery in the cotton mills of the country to-day
is worse than negro slavery ever was. After many fruitless efforts,
Alabama, which has rapidly taken first rank among all the Southern
States, succeeded two years ago in passing a child labor law, the age
limit being twelve years. On the day this law went into effect, one
hundred and twenty-five children, all white, walked out of one mill
at Lannett, Ala. The most of the children, perhaps, had never been to
school in their lives and never would have had the opportunity. Not only
that, but half of them would never have lived to maturity, and these, at
twenty, would look like middle-aged, decrepit, ambitionless folks from
whom the life had been crushed. The use of child labor not only promotes
race suicide and all manner of narrow injustice, but encourages laziness
in the parents, as in nearly all cases the children support the parents
in idleness. The law is now rendered almost null by the fact that the
parents do not hesitate to swear falsely to the age of their children in
order to put them to work in the mills.
* * * * *
What is a thought—an idea? The most valuable asset in the brain of man.
Not common, ordinary thinking, but a new thought—a thought which no one
else ever originated. There is such a thought in the letter below, and I
am publishing it, taken from many other letters to Trotwood, because of
that particular thought and not on account of the nice things the author
is kind enough to say. I have underscored the thought I have selected.
Read it and tell me, are you doing your work because you must do
something, or are you doing it because it is the something you must do.
Think and find out, for on it depends whether your life will be a success
or failure:
Medicine Lodge, Kan., Oct. 30, 1905.
Dear Trotwood:
The first and second number of the Monthly have come and, to
tell you how much we have enjoyed them, I must use a big word
and say immensely. The farmer who will follow their counsel
will soon have to pull down his barns and build greater, while
he will have treasures laid up where neither moth nor rust doth
corrupt; it is the only magazine I know of giving advice about
this world and the next.
So old Solomon could not resist the Influence of beauty, his
namesake of old fell at the same place.
I think you have established the origin of the pacing horse.
Poor fellow, he has fought his way to fame, but like nature’s
gentleman,
“He may not have ancestral fame
His pathway to illume;
The sun that flings the brightest ray
May rise from mist and gloom.”
After all, it is the irrepressive in either man or horse that
makes him great.
When you see a man go to work because he must do something,
very likely you will never hear about him or the work; while
another goes at a work because it is something he must do, then
look for something great.
This will hold good in regard to the newspaper jingle you spoke
of, written by someone anxious to see his name in print. Burns
could not help writing about Mary, and so immortalized the name
a second time. I venture the assertion, Trotwood’s Monthly is
not written because he must do something, but rather because it
is something he must do.
And now, about the Dakota hunt. Well, for beauty of sentiment
and sublimity of style, it surpasses anything that has been
written on the like subject hitherto.
I have read it over and over again until I became spellbound by
the magic of the scene. It brought before my mind the memory
of other days when I, too, saw something similar, only in a
smaller way, on the fields of Kansas. I feel I have wearied you
with much talking and will ask the same forgiveness that Mr.
Stone granted you when you shot first.
Sincerely yours,
ROBT. HAMILTON.
* * * * *
The publisher of a disreputable sheet in New York, which makes its living
by holding up society and dishing out scandal about men and women, has
sued that splendid and fearless paper, Collier’s Weekly, for libel,
the occasion of the exposure by Collier’s was a venomous attack by the
sheet aforesaid upon the President’s daughter. Collier’s, with its
characteristic ability, laid the sheet open to its knife, showing how it
held up people for hush money and lived in the gutters of things bad. For
all of which it was sued for $100,000 by the aforesaid sheet. In a recent
editorial on the subject, Norman Hapgood, the able editor of Collier’s,
says: “Men submit to blackmail to protect their wives and sisters from
such sheets as this, for in the North the pocketbook has replaced the
pistol.”
The South, to people who do not know her, has many faults. One of these
is the quickness and certainty with which her men have always meted out
tragic justice to the brute, black or white, who tears down the barrier
between his own vile passions, whether of malice or murder, and a woman’s
purity. Nor has any court or any jury ever convicted the man who used his
pistol to protect the name of his women. In such cases, the law considers
the man to be temporarily insane, at the sudden destruction of his home
and happiness, and though it also recognizes what is called “cooling
time” for such frenzy, an old Georgia judge years ago expressed the
sentiment of the entire South on this subject when he declared in such a
case that “cooling time with this court means ninety-nine years.”
Many sheets of the kind mentioned have tried to build their foul nest
in the South, forgetting that here the pocketbook is not the god it is
where people live only for money. Its end is invariably the same and
the curtain drops to the rapid fire of pistol shots, “and the rest is
silence.”
This has come from the old South which taught that money was not all of
life, that a man’s word was his bond and a woman’s good character her
crown. And words being bonds, men were careful of them, for the man who
has to redeem his words with his pistol instead of his pocketbook is more
careful how he uses them. We wish Collier’s a speedy vindication. Indeed,
we predict the trial will prove something of the same kind of a farce as
that of the windy Prof. Trigg, of the Chicago University, who taught the
classes that Rockefeller was greater than Shakespeare, that our hymns
were all doggerel and much else that was false. He was unwise enough
to bring suit for libel against a New York daily which held him up to
ridicule. On trial he proved by his own testimony that he was even more
ignorant and ridiculous than the defendant had supposed.
* * * * *
And we appreciate greatly the letter below from so distinguished a source
as Mr. Spillman, in the Bureau of Plant Industry, Washington, D. C.:
Mr. John Trotwood Moore, care Trotwood Publishing Co.,
Nashville, Tenn.
My Dear Sir: Your favor of October 19 has remained unanswered
thus long on account of my absence from the office.
I have read the copy of Trotwood’s Monthly with a great deal of
interest, and wish to congratulate you on its high character.
You are certainly striking out in a new line compared with our
present agricultural literature. None of our farm papers have
heretofore attempted the literary excellence of Trotwood’s
Monthly, confining themselves more particularly to the
instructional side of farming. I am much interested in your
venture and hope that it may meet with the highest success. Our
farmers have been a little too much inclined to look at the
financial side of their business and they need something that
will help in other directions. This you seem to be able to give.
While reading your magazine I was struck by the fact that my
own work has nearly all been directed toward the financial side
of farming, but you have given me a new idea and one which I
hope will have its effect upon my future work. I shall take
pleasure in sending you once in a while anything I may be able
to write which I think will be of interest to your readers.
Wishing you the highest success, I am
Yours very truly,
W. J. SPILLMAN, Agriculturist.
* * * * *
A man named Fessler, who ran an apiary in the North, conceived the idea
of making honey the year round. In the fall he loaded his hives upon a
flatboat and floated to the land of perpetual sun. But the bees, finding
it always summer, ceased to lay up honey at all and Fessler had his
expense for his experience.
Lessons are easily drawn from a thing like this. Since the world was
made, the experience of life is the nearer the sun the less the work. But
the real lesson is deeper. Cannot the farmer who works the soil year in
and year out, with no chance for a rest and no returns to the soil see it?
* * * * *
We want a good live agent in every town in the United States for
“Trotwood’s Monthly.” Write for terms to agents. Address Trotwood
Publishing Company, Nashville, Tenn.
* * * * *
CHEAPER RATES SOUTHWEST.
Less than one-way fare for the round trip on Oct. 3 and 17, Nov. 7 and
21, Dec. 5 and 19. To points in the Southwest, via Memphis or Cairo, and
Cotton Belt Route.
You can afford to go now, nearly as cheap traveling as staying at home.
Write for maps and literature on Southeast Missouri, Arkansas, Northwest
Louisiana, Texas. Also cost of tickets, time of trains, etc.
W. G. ADAMS, T. P. A., Nashville, Tenn.
E. W. LaBEAUME, G.P. & T.A., St Louis.
COTTON BELT ROUTE.
*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK TROTWOOD'S MONTHLY, VOL. I, NO.
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