The misery of the young and the beautiful is at all times infectious.
Few young persons can withhold sympathy in such a case,--especially if
the person thus afflicted be unmarried--of the other sex--and near one's
own age.
Victor Chevillere could not expel from his imagination the image of the
fair stranger. Again and again did he essay to join Lamar in his light
and sprightly conversation, as they, on the day after the one recorded
in the last chapter, pursued their journey along the noble turnpike
between Fredericktown and Baltimore. The same profound revery would
steal upon him, and abide until broken by the merry peals of Lamar's
peculiarly loud and joyous laughter, at the new mood which seemed to
have visited the former. When a young person first begins to experience
these abstracted moods, there is nothing, perhaps, that sounds more
harsh and startling to his senses, than the mirthful voice of his best
friend. He looks up as one would naturally look at any unseemly or
boisterous conduct at a funeral. He seems to gaze and wonder, for the
first time, that all things and all men are jogging on at their usual
gait. Thus were things moving upon the Fredericktown turnpike: Lamar
riding forty or fifty paces in front, singing away the blue devils;
Chevillere in the centre, moody and silent; and old Cato, stately as a
statue on horseback, bringing up the rear.
From hearing sundry merry peals of laughter from Lamar's quarter,
Chevillere was induced at length to forego his own society for a moment,
to see what new subject his Quixotic friend had found for such unusual
merriment; and a subject he had indeed found in the shape of a tall
Kentuckian. The name of the stranger, it seems, was Montgomery Damon. He
was six feet high, with broad shoulders, full, projecting chest, light
hair and complexion, and a countenance that was upon the first blush an
index to a mind full of quaint, rude, and wild humour. His dress was any
thing but fashionable; he wore a large, two-story hat, with a bandana
handkerchief hanging out in front, partly over his forehead, as if to
protect it from the great weight of his castor. His coat and pantaloons
were of home-made cotton and woollen jeans, and he carried in his hand a
warlike riding-whip, loaded with lead, and mounted with silver, with
which, now and then, he gave emphasis to his words, by an unexpected and
sonorous crack.
Our Kentuckian was no quiet man; but, like most of his race, bold,
talkative, and exceedingly democratic in all his notions; feeling as
much pride in his occupation of drover, as if he had been a senator in
Congress from his own "Kentuck," as he emphatically called it. He was a
politician, too, inasmuch as he despised _tories_, as he called the
federalists, approved of the late war, and had a most venomous hatred
against Indians, of whatever tribe or nation. We shall break into their
dialogue at the point at which Victor became a listener.
"How did it happen," said Lamar, "that you did not join the army either
of the north or south, when your heart seems to have been so entirely
with them?"
"O! as to _jine_en the army to the north," said Damon, "I was afraid the
blasted tories would sell me to the British, me and my messmates, like
old Hull, the infernal old traitor, sold his men for so much a head,
_jist_ as I sell my hogs. As to t'other business, down yonder, under Old
Hickory, I reckon I _did_ take a hand or so aginst the bloody Injins."
"You prefer a fight with Indians, then, to one with white men."
"To be sure I do; I think no more of taking my jack-knife, and
unbuttonin the collar of a Creek Injin, than I would of takin the jacket
off a good fat bell-wether, or mout-be a yerlin calf. Old Hickory's the
boy to _sculp_ the bloody creters; he's the boy to walk into their
bread-baskets; and Dick Johnston ain't far behind him, I can tell you,
stranger; he's the chap what plumped a bullet right into old Tecumseh's
bagpipes. Let him alone for stoppin their war-whoops."
"You were a rifleman, I suppose," said Lamar.
"Right agin, stranger. Give me a rifle for ever; they never spiles meat,
though, as one may say, Injin's meat ain't as good as blue-lick buck's;
but for all that, it's a pity to make bunglin work of a neat job;
besides, your smooth bores waste a deal of powder and lead upon the
outlandish creters."
"Were you ever wounded?" asked Lamar.
"Yes! don't you see this here hare-lip to my right eye? Well! that was
jist the corner of an Injin's hatchet. Bob Wiley jist knocked up his arm
in time to save me for another whet at the varmints; if so mout be that
we ever has another brush with 'em, and Bob goes out agin, maybe I may
do him a good turn yet; he's what I call a tear down sneezer (crack went
the whip). He's got no more fear among the Injins than a wild cat in a
weasel's nest; O! it would have done your heart good to see him jist lie
down behind an old log, and watch for one of the varmint's heads bobbin
up and down like a muskovy drake in a barn yard, and as sure as you saw
the fire at the muzzle of his gun, so sure he knocked the creter's hind
sights out. You see he always took 'em on the bob, jist as you would
shoot a divin bird, and that's what I always called taking the bread out
of the creter's mouth, for he was watchin for the same chance."
"Did you scalp the slain?" said Lamar.
"No!" replied Damon, "we had plenty of friendly Injins to do that, and
it used to make me laugh to see the yallow raskals sculpin their kin;
that's what I call dog eat dog."
"Do you think an Indian has a soul?" said Lamar.
"Ha! ha! ha!" roared the Kentuckian, giving a crack of unusual emphasis,
"that's what I call a stumper; but as you're no missionary, I 'spose
I'll tell you. I knows some dumb brutes--here's this Pete Ironsides that
I'm ridin on, has more of a Christian soul in him than any leather-skin
between Missouri and Red River. Why! stranger! what's an Injin good for,
more nor a wild cat? You can't tame ne'er a one of 'em."
"But those missionaries you spoke of, don't you think they will
civilize, if not Christianize them?"
"Ha! ha! ha!" shouted Damon, with another loud crack, and rolling a huge
quid of tobacco to the opposite side of his mouth, "they might as well
mount the trees and preach to the 'coons and tree-frogs; one of your
real psalm-singers mout tree a coon at it, but hang me if he can ever
put the pluck of a white man under a yellow jacket. Catch a weasel
asleep or a fox at a foot race. I rather suspicion, stranger, that I've
seen more Injins than your missionaries, and I'll tell you the way to
tame 'em;--slit their windpipes and hamstring 'em."
"Perhaps you are an enemy to religion, or prejudiced against the
missionaries?"
"No! no! stranger, no! I likes religion well enough of a Sunday; but
hang me if I should not die of laughin to see 'em layin it down to the
redskins. I'd as soon think of going into my horse stable and preachin
to the dumb brutes. Old Pete here knows more now than many an Injin, and
he's got more soul than some Yankees that mout be named; but come,
stranger, here's a public house, let's go in and cut the phlegm."
"Agreed," said Lamar, "but it must be at my expense."
"Well," said Damon, "we'll not quarrel about that;" and turning to
Victor, "Stranger, won't you join us in a glass of tight?"
"No! I thank you," said Chevillere, "but I will look on while you and my
friend drink to the better acquaintance of us all."
After the parties had refreshed themselves and their horses, and
remounted, the conversation was resumed. "Well now," said the
Kentuckian, addressing Victor, "I wish I may be contwisted if you ain't
one of the queerest men, to come from the Carolinas, I have clapped eyes
on this many a day. You don't chaw tobacco, and you don't drink nothin;
smash my apple-cart if I can see into it."
"I am one of those that don't believe in the happy effects of either
brandy or tobacco," replied Chevillere.
"Then you are off the trail for once in your life, stranger, for I take
tobacco to be one of God's mercies to the poor. Whether it came by a
rigular dispensation of providence (as our parson used to say), or in a
natural way, I can't tell; but hang me, if when I gets a quid of the
real Kentuck twist or Maryland kite-foot into my mouth, if I ain't as
proud a man as the grand Turk himself. It drives away the solemncholies,
and makes a fellow feel so good-natured, and so comfortable; it turns
the shillings in his pocket into dollars, and his wrath into fun and
deviltry. Let them talk about tobacco as they choose among the fine
gals, and at their theatres, and balls, and cotillions, and all them
sort of things; but let one of 'em git twenty miles deep into a Kentuck
forest, and then see if a chew of the stuff ain't good for company and
comfort."
"But you did not tell me," resumed Lamar, "whether you had ever shot at
a white man?"
"No! no! I never did; and I don't know that I ever will. I think I
should feel a leetle particlar, at standin up and shooting at a real
Christian man, with flesh and blood like you and me. You see, when we
boys of the long guns shoot, we don't turn our heads away and pull
trigger in a world of smoke, so that nobody can tell where the lead
goes; we look right into the white of a fellow's eye, and can most
always tell which side of his nose the ball went, and you see that would
be but a slayin and skinnen business among white people; but as to
shootin and sculpin Injins, that's a thing there is no bones made about,
because out on the frontiers at the west, if a man should stand addlin
his brains about the right and the wrong of the thing, the red devils
would just knock them out to settle the matter, and sculp him for his
pains into the bargain. Shooting real Christian men's quite another
thing. It's what I ha'nt tried yet; but when we Kentuck boys gits at it,
it won't all end like a log-rollin, with one or two broken shins and a
black eye. But I'm told the Yankees always sings a psalm before they go
to battle. Now, according to my notion, a chap would make a blue fist of
takin a dead aim through double sights, with the butt end of a psalm in
his guzzle."
"Some person must have told you that as a joke," said Lamar.
"No, no, I believe it, because we had just such a fellow once in our
neighbourhood--a Yankee schoolmaster--and we took him out a deer-driving
two or three times, and he was always singing a psalm at his stand. He
spoilt the fun, confound him! Hang me if I didn't always think the
fellow was afraid to stand in the woods by himself without it. I went to
his singin school of Saturday nights, too; but I never had a turn that
way. All the master could do, he could'nt keep me on the trail,--I was
for ever slipping into Yankee Doodle; you see, every once in a while,
the tune would take a quick turn, like one I knowed afore, so I used to
blaze away at it with the best of 'em, but the same old Yankee Doodle
always turned up at the end. But the worst of it was, the infernal
Yankee spoiled all the music I ever had in me; when I come out of the
school, I thought the gals at home would have killed themselves laughin'
at me. They said I ground up Yankee Doodle and Old Hundred together,
all in a hodge-podge, so I never sings to no one now but the dumb brutes
in the stable, when they gits melancholy of a rainy day. Old Pete here
raises his ears, and begins to snort the minute I raises a tune."
"Your singing-master was, like his scholar, an original."
"An original! When he come to them parts, he drove what we call a Yankee
cart, half wagon and half carriage, full of all sorts of odds and ends;
when he had sold them out, he sold his horse and cart too, and then
turned in to keepin a little old-field school; and over and above this,
he opened a Saturday night singin-school,--and I reckon we had rare
times with the gals there. At last, when the feller had got considerable
ahead, the word came out that he was studyin to be a doctor; and sure
enough, in a few months, he sold out the school for so much a head, just
like we sell our hogs; then off the Yankee starts to git made a doctor
of; and hang me if ever I could see into that business. How they can
turn a pedlar into a doctor in four months, is a leetle jist over my
head. It's true enough they works a mighty change in the chaps in that
time. Our Yankee went off, as well-behaved and as down-faced a chap as
you would wish to see in a hundred, and wore home-made clothes like
mine; but when he had staid his four months out, and 'most everybody had
forgot him, one day as I was leanen up against one of the poplar trees
in the little town, I saw a sign goin up on the side of a house, with
DOCTOR GUN in large letters. I'll take my Bible oath, when I saw the
thing, I thought I should have broke a blood-vessel. Howsomever, I
strained 'em down, till an old woman would have sworn I had the
high-strikes, with a knot o' wind in my guzzle. But I quieted the devil
in me, and then I slipped slyly over the street, behind where the doctor
was standing with his new suit of black; one hand stuck in his side, and
the other holding an ivory-headed stick up to his mouth in the most
knowing fashion, I tell you. I stole up behind him, and bawled out in
his ear, as loud as I could yell, '_faw--sol--law--me_.' Oh! my
grandmother! what a smashin rage he flew into; he shook his cane--he
walked backwards and forwards--and didn't he make the tobacco juice fly?
I rather reckon, if I hadn't had so many inches, he'd have been into my
meat; but the fun of it all was, the feller had foreswore his mother
tongue; dash me if he could talk a word of common lingo, much less sing
psalms and hymns by note; he rattled off words as long as my arm, and as
fast as a windmill. Some of the old knowing ones says they've got some
kind of a mill, like these little hand-organs, and that chops it out to
the chaps eny night and morning, pretty much as I chop straw to my
horses; but I'm going in to see that doctor-factory, when I git to
Philadelphia, if they don't charge a feller more nor half a dollar a
head."
"I hope we shall travel together to Philadelphia," said Lamar; "and if
so, I will introduce you into the establishment, free of expense."
"Thank you, sir, thank you," said the Kentuckian; "but I'm rather
inclined to think that we will hardly meet again after to-day; 'cause,
you see, I'm 'bliged to do a might of business in Baltimore afore I can
go on. After that, then I can go on as I please; as I'm only goin to see
the world abit, afore I settle down for life."
"But," said Lamar, "if you will call at Barnum's, and leave word what
day you will set out, I will see that we travel together, for I will
suit my time to yours; and I would advise you to send your horse a short
distance into the country, both for the sake of convenience and
economy."
"What! part with old Pete here! Bless my soul, stranger! he would go
into a gallopin consumption! or die of the solemncholies, if a rainy
spell should come on, and he and I couldn't have a dish of chat
together; and then I shouldn't know no more what to do in one of your
coaches nor a cow with a side-pocket."
"My word for it," replied Victor, "you would soon enjoy yourself inside
of a stage-coach. Come, let us make a bargain. I will engage to have
your horse well taken care of in the country, and provide him with a
groom that will soon learn his ways, and be able to cheer him up when he
gets low-spirited."
"Yes, do!" said Lamar, jocosely; "we are anxious to have your company
during our visit to the cities. We are from Carolina, and you are from
Kentuck; and after you get through with your business, we shall all be
on the same errand--pleasure and improvement."
"And a wild-goose chase it's like to be, I'm afraid; especially if I'm
to be of your mess. But suppose you should meet with some fine lady
acquaintances, what, in the name of old Sam, would you do with me? I
should be like a fifth wheel to a wagon."
"Were you never in the company of fine ladies?" asked Chevillere.
"Yes! and flummuck me if ever I want to be so fixed again; for there I
sat with my feet drawn straight under my knees, heads up, and hands laid
close along my legs, like a new recruit on drill, or a horse in the
stocks; and, twist me, if I didn't feel as if I was about to be nicked.
The whole company stared at me as if I had come without an invite; and I
swear I thought my arms had grown a foot longer, for I couldn't get my
hands in no sort of a comfortable fix--first I tried them on my lap;
there they looked like goin to prayers, or as if I was tied in that way;
then I slung 'em down by my side, and they looked like two weights to a
clock; and then I wanted to cross my legs, and I tried that, but my leg
stuck out like a pump handle; then my head stuck up through a glazed
shirt-collar, like a pig in a yoke; then I wanted to spit, but the floor
looked so fine, that I would as soon have thought of spittin on the
window; and then to fix me out and out, they asked us all to sit down
to dinner! Well, things went on smooth enough for a while, till we had
got through one whet at it. Then a blasted imp of a nigger come to me
first with a waiter of little bowls full of something, and a parcel of
towels slung over his arm; so I clapped one of the bowls to my head, and
drank it down at a swallow. Now, stranger, what do you think was in it?"
"Punch, I suppose," said Lamar, laughing; "or perhaps apple toddy."
"So I thought, and so would anybody, as dry as I was, and that wanted
something to wash down the fainty stuffs I had been layin in; but no! it
was warm water! Yes! you may laugh! but it was clean warm water. The
others dipped their fingers into the bowls, and wiped them on the towels
as well as they could for gigglin; but it was all the fault of that
pampered nigger, in bringin it to me first. As soon as I catched his
eye, I gin him a wink, as much as to let him know that if ever I caught
him on my trail, I would wipe him down with a hickory towel."
"But I suppose you enjoyed yourself highly before it was all over?" said
Chevillere.
"When it was all over, I was glad enough; I jumped and capered like a
school-boy at the first of the holydays."
"Have you never been invited out since?" asked Lamar.
"O yes, often," said Damon; "but you don't catch a weasel asleep again.
I like to give a joke, and take a joke; but then the joke was all on one
side. If I can take a hand in the laugh, I don't care whether a person
laughs _at_ me, or _with_ me."
"But what say you?" said Chevillere; "shall we send your horse to the
country with ours?"
"Why! as you gentlemen seem to speak me so fair, and to know the world
so well, I don't care if I do send old Pete out to board awhile. I
shouldn't be surprised though if he should give me up for lost, and fret
himself to death. But I must see the man that goes to the country with
them; 'cause Pete couldn't bear shabby talk; he's what I call a leetle
particular in his company for a dumb brute."
"The man rides behind us," said Chevillere, "who will perform that duty.
Cato! this gentleman wishes to speak to you."
"Did you call, your honour?"
"Yes. Cato! Mr. Damon wishes to give you some charges about his horse,
which you are to take into the country with ours."
"Cato," said Damon, "tell the farmer who takes the horses, that old Pete
Ironsides here has been used to good company, and that he has been
treated more like a Christian nor a horse, and that I wish him indulged
in his old ways."
During this harangue, Cato cast sundry glances from his master to the
speaker, as if to ascertain whether he was in earnest, or only playing
off one of those freaks in which the young men had so often indulged in
his presence. Being accustomed, however, to treat with respect those
whom his master respected, and seeing his eye calm and serious, he bowed
with grave deference, saying, "It shall be done as you direct, your
honour;" and then fell back.
"Now," said Damon, "that's what I call a well-bred nigger. I would
venture that old Scip would'nt have puzzled me with the warm water;
'cause he knows that I'm not one of them there sort of chaps what knows
all their new-fangled kick-shaws. He knows in a case of real
needcessity, or life and death, as I may say, either to man, woman, or
horse, I'm more to be depended on than a dozen such chaps as went along
here in the stage this morning."
"You saw the dandies in the stage, then?" asked Victor.
"Yes, and one of 'em popped his head out of the window, and says to me
as they went by, 'Country,' says he, 'there's something on your horse's
tail.'--'Yes,' says I, 'and there's something in his head that you
hav'nt got, if his ears ain't so long.'"
Thus were our acquaintances and their new companion jogging along when
the distant rumbling of wheels upon the pavements and the dense clouds
of black smoke which seemed to be hanging in the heavens but a short
distance ahead, announced that they were soon to enter the monumental
city.
There is not, perhaps, a feeling of more truly unmixed melancholy,
incident to the heart of an inexperienced and modest student, than that
which steals over him upon his first entrance into a strange city; a
feeling of incomparable loneliness, even deeper than if the same
individual were standing alone upon the highest blue peak of the far
stretching Alleghany. The vanishing rays of twilight were extending
their lengthening shadows; the husbandman and his cattle were seen
wending their way to their accustomed abodes for the night; and the
feathered tribes had already sought the resting-places which nature so
plentifully provides for them in our well-wooded land. The sad, and it
may be pleasing reflections which such sights produced, were
occasionally interrupted by the clattering of a horse's hoofs upon the
turnpike, as some belated countryman sought to redeem the time he had
spent at the alehouse; or as the solitary marketman, with more staid and
quiet demeanour, sped upon a like errand. Occasionally the scene was
marred by some besotted and staggering wretch, seeking his lowly and
miserable hut in the suburbs. At intervals too, the barking of dogs and
the lowing of cattle contributed their share to remind our friends that
they were about to take leave of these quiet and pastoral scenes, for an
indefinite period, and to mix in the bustle and gay assemblage of city
life. Often, at such junctures, there is a presentiment of the evil
which awaits the unhappy exchange. Warning clouds of the mind are
believed to exist by many of the clearest heads and soundest hearts: we
do not say that our heroes were thus sadly affected, nor that the
Kentuckian had a fore-taste of evil; but certain it is, that all were
silent until they arrived at the place of separation. All things having
been previously settled, they exchanged salutations, and departed upon
their separate routes. They passed a variety of streets in that most
gloomy period of the day when lamp-lighters are to be seen, with their
torches and ladders, starting their glimmering lights first in one
direction and then in another, as they hurry from post to post. Draymen
were driving home with reckless and Jehu-like speed; and the brilliant
lights which began to appear at long intervals, gave evidence that the
trading community carried their operations also into that portion of
time which nature has allotted for rest and repose to nearly all living
things. Our travellers now alighted at Barnum's; but as their adventures
were of an interesting character, we shall defer them till a new
chapter.