NEWBURY.
Newbury was one of the twenty-odd townships, five miles square, that
then made up the county of Geauga, and a part of the Western Reserve,
the Yankee-doodledom of Ohio, settled exclusively by emigrants from
New England. It was so much of Massachusetts, Connecticut, Vermont,
etc., translated into the broader and freer West. It has been
said that the Yankee, like a certain vegetable, heads best when
transplanted. It was the old thing over, under new and trying
circumstances. The same old ideas and notions, habits of thought and
life; poor, economical and thrifty folk, with the same reverence
for religion and law, love of education, and restless desire for
improvement, and to better the present condition. In the West the
Yankee developed his best qualities in the second generation. He
became a little straighter and less angular, and wider between the
eyes. In the first generation he lived out his life scarcely refracted
by the new atmosphere. This crop still stood firm and hardy on the
Reserve, and they often turned homesick eyes, talked lovingly and
lingeringly of "down country," as they all called loved and cherished
New England. Most of the first settlers were poor, but hardy and
enterprising. The two last qualities were absolutely necessary to take
them through the long, wearisome journey to Ohio, the then far West.
They took up lands, built cabins, and forced a subsistence from the
newly-cleared, stumpy virgin soil. This homogeneous people constituted
a practical and thorough democracy. Their social relations were based
on personal equality, varied only by the accident of superior talents,
address or enterprise, and as yet but little modified by wealth or its
adventitious circumstances.
Among the emigrants scattered here and there was occasionally found a
branch of a "down country" family of some pretensions, dating back to
services in the Revolution, to old wealth, or official position.
Among these were one or two families at Painesville, near the lake, at
Parkman, several at Warren, and more at Cleveland, who had made each
other's acquaintance, and who, as the country improved and the
means of communication were perfected, formed and kept up a sort of
association over the heads, and hardly within the observation, of the
people generally. Of these, as we may say, by right of his wife,
was Judge Markham. He was a hardy, intelligent, and, for his day, a
cultivated man, who came early into the woods as an agent for many
large stockholders of the old Connecticut Land Company, and a liberal
percentage of the sales placed in his hands the nucleus of a large
fortune. Sagacity in investments and improvements, with thorough
business capacity, had already made him one of the wealthiest men on
the Reserve; while a handsome person, and frank, pleasant address,
rendered him very popular. He had been for several years an associate
judge of the court of common pleas for Geauga county, and had an
extensive acquaintance and influence. Mrs. Markham, a genuine daughter
of the old Puritan ancestry, dating back to the first landing, a true
specimen of the best Yankee woman under favorable circumstances, was
a most thoroughly accomplished lady, who had gone into the woods with
her young husband, and who shed and exercised a wide and beneficent
influence through her sphere. So simple, sweet, natural and judicious
was she ever, that her neighbors felt her to be quite one of
themselves, as she was. Everybody was drawn to her; and so
approachable was she, that the lower and more common declared that she
was no lady at all.
Their only child, Julia, just maturing into womanhood, was one of the
best and highest specimens of the American girl, to whom refinement,
grace, and a strong, rich, sweet nature, came by right of birth,
while she inherited beauty from both parents; she seemed, however,
unconscious of this last possession, as she was of the admiration
which filled the atmosphere that surrounded her. She, too, must speak
and act for herself.
At the time of the incidents to be narrated, the northern and eastern
part of Newbury had a considerable population. It was traversed by
a highway leading west through its centre to Cleveland, and by a
stage-road leading from Painesville to the Ohio river, through its
eastern part. This was called the "State road," and on it stood
Parker's Hotel, a stage-house much frequented, and constituting the
centre of a little village, while further south was the extensive
trading establishment of Markham & Co., using the name and some of
the capital of the Judge, and managed mainly by Roberts and another
junior. Judge Markham's spacious and elegant dwelling stood about half
a mile south of the store.
The south-western part of the township, with much of two adjoining
townships, remained an unbroken forest, belonging to an eccentric
landholder who refused to sell it. This was spoken of as "the
woods," and furnished cover and haunts for wild game and animals,
hunting-ground for the pioneers, and also gave shelter to a few
shiftless squatters, in various parts of its wide expanse. In the
eastern border of the township was Punderson's pond, a beautiful,
irregular-shaped body of limpid water, embosomed by deep wooded
hills, and of considerable extent, well stocked with fish, and much
frequented on that account.
In the afternoon of the second day after his return, Bart went down
a highway leading east to the State road, to the post-office, kept at
Markham's store, and this road took him down by the southern end of
the pond, and thence southerly on the State road. He passed along by
Dr. Lyman's, Jonah Johnson's, and so on, past houses, and clearings,
and woodlands, looking almost wistfully, as if he expected pleasant
greetings; but the few he saw merely nodded to him, or called out:
"Are you back again?" He paused on the hill by the saw-mill, which
overlooked the pond, and gazed long over its beautiful surface,
sleeping in utter solitude amid the green hills, under the slanting
summer sun, and seemed to recognize in it what he had observed, on the
evening of his return, about the old homestead--the change that had
taken place in himself--a change which often accounts for the strange
appearance of the most familiar and cherished places. We find it
reflected in the face of inanimate nature, and wonder at her altered
guise, unconscious of the cause. He sauntered musingly on to the
State road, and over by the old grist-mill, past several houses, up to
Parker's. Here, by a beautiful spring under the shade of old apple
and cherry-trees, near the carriage-way, was an indolent group of
afternoon idlers. Conspicuous among them was the dark and striking
face of Dr. Lyman, the rich mahogany of Uncle Josh, and the homely,
shrewd, and fresh-colored countenance of Jonah Johnson. Bart could not
avoid them if he would; and regretted that he had not gone across the
woods to the post-office, and so escaped them.
"Well, young Scholasticus," said the Doctor, after the slight
greetings had been given to the new-comer, "you seem to have graduated
with great rapidity. You went through college like--"
"One of your emetics, Doctor. I came out at the same door I went in
at. Now, doctus, doctior, doctissimus, I am fair game on this point,
so blaze away with everything but your saddle-bags, and I will laugh
with the rest of you."
A good-natured laugh welcomed this coming down.
"Well," replied the doctor, "there can't be much more said."
"I should like to know, young man," remarked Uncle Josh, "whether you
raly got into the college, I should."
"Well, Mr. Burnett, I _raly_ did not, I didn't," mimicking Uncle Josh.
"What did you do, badinage apart?"
"I took a good outside look at the buildings, which was improving;
called on your friends Dr. Nutting and Rev. Beriah Green, who asked me
what church I belonged to, and who was my instructor in Latin."
"What reply did you make?"
"What could I say? I didn't hear the first; and as to the second, I
couldn't bring reproach upon you, and so I said I had never had
one. You must own, Doctor, that I showed great tenderness for your
reputation."
"You certainly did me a kindness."
"Thank you, Doctor."
"I should raly like to know," said Uncle Josh, "what you are thanking
the Doctor for, I should."
"Well, go on."
"I went off," continued Bart. "The fact is, I thought that that
retreat of the sciences might hold that little learning, which is a
dangerous thing--as you used to not quote exactly--and I thought it
prudent to avoid that 'Pierian spring.'"
"What is the young man talking about now?" inquired Uncle Josh. "I
would raly like to know, I would."
"I must ask the Doctor to explain," answered Bart. "I was referring to
one of his old drinking-places, where, according to him, the more
one drank the soberer he grew. You would not fancy that tipple, would
you?"
"You see, Uncle Josh," said the Doctor, laughing, "what comes of a
young man's going a week to college."
"The young man didn't know anything at all, before," declared Uncle
Josh, "and he seems to know less now, amazingly."
This was Uncle Josh's sincere opinion, and was received with a shout
of laughter, in which Bart heartily joined. Indeed, it was his first
sincere laugh for many a day.
Johnson asked him "whether he went to the Ohio river," and being
answered in the affirmative, asked him "by what route he went, and
what he saw."
Uncle Jonah, as Bart usually called him, was one of his very few
recognized friends, and asked in a way that induced him to make a
serious answer.
"I walked the most of the way there, and all the way back. I went by
way of Canton, Columbus, Dayton, and so to Cincinnati, and returned
the same way."
"What do you think of that part of the State which you saw?"
"Unquestionably we have the poorest part of it. As our ancestors
landed on the most desolate part of the continent, so we took the
worst part of Ohio. If you were to see the wheat-fields of Stark, or
the corn on the Scioto, and the whole of the region about Xenia and
Dayton, and on the Miami, you would want to emigrate."
"What about the people?"
"Oh, dear! I didn't see much of them, and that little did not make
me wish to see more. The moment you step across the south line of the
Reserve you step into a foreign country, and among a foreign people,
who speak a foreign language, and who know one of us as quick as they
see us; and they seem to have a very prudent distrust of us. After
passing this black, Dutch region, you enter a population of emigrants
from Virginia, Kentucky, Maryland, and some from North Carolina, and
all unite in detesting and distrusting the Reserve Yankee.
"It is singular, the difference between the lake and river side of the
State. At Cincinnati you seem to be within a step of New Orleans, and
hear of no other place--not a word of New York, and less of Boston.
There everything looks and goes south-west, while we all tend
eastward." In reply to questions, Bart told them of Columbus and
Cincinnati, giving fresh and graphic descriptions, for he observed
closely, and described with a racy, piquant exaggeration what he saw.
Breaking off rather abruptly, he seemed vexed at the length of his
monologue, and went on towards the post-office.
"That young man will not come to a single darn," said Uncle Josh; "not
one darn. He is not good for anything, and never will be. His father
was a very likely man, and so is his mother, and his older brothers
are very likely men, but he is not worth a cuss."
"Uncle Josh is thinking about Bart's sketch of him, clawing old Nore
Morton's face," said Uncle Jonah.
"I did not like that; I did not like it at all. It made me look like
hell amazingly," said the old man, much moved.
"You had good reason for not liking it," rejoined Uncle Jonah, "for it
was exactly like you."
"Dr. Lyman, what do you think of this young man? He was with you,
wa'n't he, studyin' something or other?" asked Uncle Josh; "don't you
agree with me?"
"I don't know," answered the Doctor, "I am out of all patience with
him. He is quick and ready, and wants to try his hand at every new
thing; and the moment he finds he can do it, he quits it. There is
no stability to him. He studied botany a week, and Latin a month, and
Euclid ten days."
"He hunts well, and fishes well--don't he?" asked another.
"They say he shoots well," said Uncle Josh, "but he will wander in the
woods all day, and let game run off from under his eyes, amazingly!
They said at the big hunt, in the woods, he opened the lines and let
all the deer out. He isn't good for a thing--not a cussed thing."
"Isn't he as smart as his brother Henry?" asked Uncle Jonah.
"It is not a question of smartness," replied the Doctor. "He is too
smart; but Henry has steadiness, and bottom, and purpose, and power,
and will, and industry. But Bart, if you start him on a thing, runs
away out of sight of you in an hour. The next you see of him he is off
loafing about, quizzing somebody; and if you call his attention
back to what you set him at, he laughs at you. I have given him
up, utterly; though I mean to ask him to go a-fishing one of these
nights."
"Exactly," said Uncle Jonah, "make him useful. But, Dr. Lyman and
Joshua Burnett, the boy has got the stuff in him--the stuff in him.
Why, he told you here, in fifteen minutes, more about the State of
Ohio than you both ever knew. You will see--"
"You will see, too, that he will not come to a darn," said Uncle Josh,
regarding that as a sad doom indeed.