30 feet by 18 feet, on the top of the bluff, near the edge of the
western prairie. The ground was a mixture of stiff clay and
limestone rock, and I dug at it all through the month of September.
Curious people came along and made various remarks; some said
nothing, but went away whistling. One day Mr. Jackson and Paul
Duffendorff were passing by, and I wanted them to pass, but they
stopped like the rest. Mr. Jackson was reckoned one of the smartest
men in Will county. He had a large farm, well stocked, but he was
never known to do any work except with his brains. He was one of
those men who increased the income of the State of Illinois by
ability. Duffendorf was a huge Dutchman, nearly seven feet in
height. He was a great friend of mine, great every way, but very
stupid; he had no sense of refinement. He said:
"Ve gates, schoolmeister? Py golly! Here, Mr. Shackson, is our
schoolmeister a vurkin mit spade and bick. How vas you like dat
kind of vurk, Mr. Shackson?"
"Never could be such a darned fool; sooner steal," answered Jackson.
Duffendorf laughed until he nearly fell into the cellar. Now this
talk was very offensive. I knew Mr. Jackson was defendant in a case
then pending. He had been charged with conspiring to defraud; with
having stolen three horses; with illegally detaining seventy-five
dollars; and on other counts which I cannot remember just now. The
thing was originally very simple, even Duffendorff could understand
it.
Mr. Jackson was in want of some ready money, so he directed his hired
man to steal three of his horses in the dead of night, take them to
Chicago, sell them to the highest bidder, find out where the highest
bidder lived, and then return with the cash to Joliet. The hired man
did his part of the business faithfully, returned and reported to his
employer. Then Mr. Jackson set out in search of his stolen horses,
found them, and brought them home. The man expected to receive half
the profits of the enterprise. The boss demurred, and only offered
one-third, and said if that was not satisfactory he would bring a
charge of horse-stealing. The case went into court, and under the
treatment of learned counsel grew very complicated. It was
remarkable as being the only one on record in Will county in which a
man had made money by stealing his own horses. It is, I fancy, still
'sub judice'.
Both the old school and the new school remained closed even after the
cholera ceased to thin out the citizens, but I felt no further
interest in the education of youth. When winter came I tramped three
miles into the forest, and began to fell trees and split rails in
order to fence in my suburban estate. For some time I carried a
rifle, and besides various small game I shot two deer, but neither of
them would wait for me to come up with them even after I had shot
them; they took my two bullets away with them, and left me only a few
drops of blood on the snow; then I left the rifle at home. For about
four months the ground was covered with snow, and the cold was
intense, but I continued splitting until the snakes came out to bask
in the sun and warm themselves. I saw near a dead log eight coiled
together, and I killed them all. The juice of the sugar maples began
to run. I cut notches in the bark in the shape of a broad arrow,
bored a hole at the point, inserted a short spout of bark, and on
sunny mornings the juice flowed in a regular stream, clear and
sparkling; on cloudy days it only dropped.
One evening as I was plodding my weary way homeward, I looked up and
saw in the distance a man inspecting my cellar. I said, "Here's
another disgusting fool who ain't seen it before." It certainly was
a peculiar cellar, but not worth looking at so much. I hated the
sight of it. It had no building over it, never was roofed in, and
was sometimes full of snow.
The other fool proved to be Mr. Curtis, the teacher who had written
the resolution of the meeting which voted me out of the school. He
held out his hand, and I took it, but reluctantly, and under secret
protest. I thought to myself, "This mine enemy has an axe to grind,
or he would not be here. I'll be on my guard."
"I have been waiting for you some time," said Mr. Curtis. "I was
told you were splitting rails in the forest, and would be home about
sundown. I wanted to see you about opening school again. Mr. Rogers
won't have anything to say to it, but the other two managers, Mr.
Strong and Mr. Demmond, want to engage you and me, one to teach in
the upper storey of the school, the other down below, and I came up
to ask you to see them about it."
"How does it happen that Mr. Sellars has not come over from Dresden?"
I said.
"Joliet is about the last place on this earth that Mr. Sellars will
come to. Didn't you hear about him and Priscilla?" asked Mr. Curtis.
"No, I heard nothing since that meeting; only saw the school doors
were closed every time I passed that way."
"Well, I am surprised. I thought everybody knew by this time, though
we did not like to say much about it."
I began to feel interested. Mr. Curtis had something pleasant to
tell me about the misfortunes of my enemies, so I listened
attentively.
It was a tale of western love, and its course was no smoother in
Illinois than in any less enlightened country of old Europe. Miss
Priscilla reckoned she could hoe her own row. She and Mr. Sellars
conducted the Common School at Dresden with great success and
harmony. All went merry as a marriage bell, and the marriage was to
come off by-and-by--so hoped Miss Priscilla. During the recess she
took the teacher's arm, and they walked to and fro lovingly. All
Dresden said it was to be a match, but at the end of the term Miss
Priscilla returned to Joliet--the match was not yet made.
It was at this time that the dissatisfaction with the new British
teacher became extreme; Miss Priscilla fanned the flame of
discontent. She did not "let concealment like a worm i' th' bud feed
on her damask cheek," but boldly proposed that Mr. Sellars--a
true-born native of New England, a good young man, always seen at
meetings on the Sabbath--should be requested to take charge of the
West Joliet school. So the meeting was held: I was voted out, Mr.
Sellars was voted in, and the daughters of the Puritans triumphed.
Miss Priscilla wrote to Dresden, announcing to her beloved the
success of her diplomacy, requesting him to come to Joliet without
delay, and assume direction of the new school. This letter fell into
the hands of another lady who had just arrived at Dresden from New
England in search of her husband, who happened to be Mr. Sellars.
The letter which that other lady wrote to Miss Priscilla I did not
see, but it was said to be a masterpiece of composition, and it
emptied two schools. Mr. Tucker went over to Dresden and looked
around for Mr. Sellars, but that gentleman had gone out west, and was
never heard of again. The west was a very wide unfenced space,
without railways.
"The fact is," said Mr. Curtis, "we were all kinder shamed the way
things turned out, and we just let 'em rip. But people are now
stirring about the school being closed so long, so Mr. Strong and Mr.
Demmond have concluded to engage you and me to conduct the school."
We were engaged that night, and I went rail-splitting no more. But I
fenced my estate; and while running the line on the western boundary
I found the grave of Highland Mary. It was in the middle of a grove
of oak and hickory saplings, and was nearly hidden by hazel bushes.
The tombstone was a slab about two feet high, roughly hewn. Her
epitaph was, "Mary Campbell, aged 7. 1827." That was all. Poor
little Mary.
The Common Schools of Illinois were maintained principally from the
revenue derived from grants of land. When the country was first
surveyed, one section of 640 acres in each township of six miles
square was reserved for school purposes. There was a State law on
education, but the management was entirely local, and was in the
hands of a treasurer and three directors, elected biennally by the
citizens of each school district. The revenue derived from the
school section was sometimes not sufficient to defray the salary of
the teacher, and then the deficiency was supplied by the parents of
the children who had attended at the school; those citizens whose
children did not attend were not taxed by the State for the Common
Schools; they did not pay for that which they did not receive. In
some instances only one school was maintained by the revenue of two
school sections. When the attendance in the school was numerous, a
young lady, called the "school-marm," assisted in the teaching.
Sometimes, as in the case of Miss Priscilla, she fell into trouble.
The books were provided by the enterprise of private citizens, and an
occasional change of "Readers" was agreeable both to teachers and
scholars. The best of old stories grow tiresome when repeated too
often. One day a traveller from Cincinnati brought me samples of a
new series of "Readers," offering on my approval, to substitute next
day a new volume for every old one produced. I approved, and he
presented each scholar with copies of the new series for nothing.
The teaching was secular, but certain virtues were inculcated either
directly or indirectly. Truth and patriotism were recommended by the
example of George Washington, who never told a lie, and who won with
his sword the freedom of his country. There were lessons on history,
in which the tyranny of the English Government was denounced; Kings,
Lords and Bishops, especially Bishop Laud, were held up to eternal
abhorrence; as was also England's greed of gain, her intolerance,
bigotry, taxation; her penal and navigation laws. The glorious War
of Independence was related at length. The children of the Puritans,
of the Irish and the Germans, did not in those days imbibe much
prejudice in favour of England or her institutions, and the English
teacher desirous of arriving at the truth, had the advantage of
having heard both sides of many historical questions; of listening,
as it were, to the scream of the American eagle, as well as to the
roar of the British lion.
Mr. Curtis was a good teacher, systematic, patient, persevering, and
ingenious. I ceased to hate him; Miss Priscilla's downfall cemented
our friendship. We kept order in the school by moral suasion, but
the task was sometimes difficult. My private feelings were in favour
of the occasional use of the hickory stick, the American substitute
for the rod of Solomon, and the birch of England.
The geography we taught was principally that of the United States and
her territories, spacious maps of which were suspended round the
school, continually reminding the scholars of their glorious
inheritance. It was then full of vacant lots, over which roamed the
Indian and the buffalo, species of animals now nearly extinct. We
did not pay much attention to the rest of the world.
Elocution was inculcated assiduously, and at regular intervals each
boy and girl had to come forth and "speak a piece" in the presence of
the scholars, teachers, and visitors.
Mental arithmetic and the use of fractions were taught daily. The
use of the decimal in the American coinage is of great advantage; it
is easier and more intelligible to children than the clumsy old
system of pounds, shillings, pence, and farthings. It is a system
which would no doubt have been long ago adopted by England, if it had
not been humiliating to our national pride to take even a good thing
from rebellious Yankees, and inferior Latin races. We cling fondly
to absurdities because they are our own. In Australia wild rabbits
are vermin, in England they are private property; and if one of the
three millions of her miserable paupers is found with a rabbit in
each of his coat pockets, he is fined 10s. or sent to gaol. Pope
Gregory XIII. demonstrated the error of the calendar then in use, and
all Catholic nations adopted his correction. But when the adoption
of the calendar was proposed in Parliament, John Bull put his big
foot down at once; he would receive no truth, not even a mathematical
one, from the Pope of Rome, and it was only after the lapse of nearly
200 years, when the memory of Gregory and his calendar had almost
faded away from the sensitive mind of Protestantism, that an Act was
passed, "equalising the style in Great Britain and Ireland with that
used in other countries of Europe."
A fugitive slave with his wife and daughter came to Joliet. One day
he was seized by three slave-hunters, who took him towards the canal.
A number of abolitionists assembled to rescue the slave, but the
three men drew their revolvers, and no abolitionist had the courage
to fire the first shot. The slave was put in a canal boat and went
south; his wife remained in Joliet and earned her bread by weaving
drugget; the daughter came to my school; she was of pure negro blood,
but was taught with the white girls.
The abolitionists were increasing in number, and during the war with
the South the slaves were freed. They are now like Israel in Egypt,
they increase too rapidly. If father Abraham had sent them back to
Africa when they were only four millions, he would have earned the
gratitude of his country. Now they number more than eight millions;
the Sunny South agrees with their constitution; they work as little
and steal as much as possible. In the days of their bondage they
were addicted to petty larceny; now they have votes, and when they
achieve place and power they are addicted to grand larceny, and they
loot the public treasury as unblushingly as the white politicians.
The nigger question has doubled in magnitude during the last thirty
years, and there will have to be another abolition campaign of some
kind. The blacks are incapable of ruling the whites; no time was
given to educate them for their new duties, if teaching them was
possible; the Declaration of Independence was in their case a mockery
from the beginning. When all the old abolitionists and slave-holders
are dead, another generation of men grown wiser by the failure of the
policy of their forefathers may solve the black problem.
Complaint is made that the American education of to-day is in a
chaotic condition, due to the want of any definite idea of what
education is aiming at. There is evidence that the ancients of New
England used to birch their boys, but after independence had been
fought for and won, higher aims prevailed. The Puritan then believed
that his children were born to a destiny far grander than that of any
other children on the face of the earth; the treatment accorded to
them was therefore to be different. The fundamental idea of American
life was to be "Freedom," and the definition of "Freedom" by a
learned American is, "The power which necessarily belongs to the
self-conscious being of determining his actions in view of the
highest, the universal good, and thereby of gradually realising in
himself the eternal divine perfection." The definition seems a
little hazy, but the workings of great minds are often unintelligible
to common people. "The American citizen must be morally autonomous,
regarding all institutions as servants, not as masters. So far man
has been for the most part a thrall. The true American must worship
the inner God recognised as his own deepest and eternal self, not an
outer God regarded as something different from himself."
Lucifer is said to have entertained a similar idea. He would not be
a thrall, and the result as described by the republican Milton was
truly disastrous:
"Him the Almighty Power
Hurl'd headlong
down
to bottomless perdition
Region of sorrow, doleful shades, where peace
And rest can never dwell."
The manner in which the American citizen is to be made "morally
autonomous, and placed beyond the control of current opinion," will
require much money; his parents must therefore be rich; they must already
have inherited wealth, or have obtained it by ability or labour. The
course of training to be given to youth includes travelling for six
years in foreign countries under private tutors, studying human
history, ethnic, social, political, industrial, æsthetic, religious;
gems of poetry; the elements of geometry; mechanics; art, plastic,
and graphic; reading Confucius, Sakya-muni, Themistocles, Socrates,
Julius Caesar, Paul, Mahommed, Charlemagne, Alfred, Gregory VII., St.
Bernard, St. Francis, Savonarola, Luther, Queen Elizabeth, Columbus,
Washington, Lincoln, Homer, Virgil, Dante, Tennyson, and Lowell.
The boys on the prairies had to earn their bread; they could not
spend six years travelling around and studying all the writers above
mentioned, making themselves morally autonomous, and worshipping
their own deepest and eternal selves. The best men America has
produced were reared at home, and did chores out of school hours.
When I was expelled from school by the Yankees, Mr. McEvoy, the
leading Irish politician, called me aside and said: "Whisper, you
just hang round until next election, and we'll turn out the Yankee
managers, and put you in the school again." The Germans were slow in
acquiring political knowledge as well as in learning the English
language; but language, politics, and law itself are the birthright
of the Irish. By force of circumstances, and through the otherwise
deplorable failure of Miss Priscilla, I resumed work in the school
before the election, but Mr. McEvoy, true to his promise, organised
the opposition--it is always the opposition--and ejected the
Yankee managers, but in the fall of 1850 I resigned, and went a long
way south.
When I returned, Joliet was a city, and Mr. Rendel, one of my German
night scholars, was city marshal. I met him walking the streets, and
carrying his staff of office with great dignity. I took up my abode
in an upper apartment of the gaol, then in charge of Sheriff
Cunningham, who had a farm in West Joliet, near a plank road, leading
on to the prairie. I had known the Sheriff two years before, but did
not see much of him at this time, though I was in daily communication
with his son, Silas, the Deputy Sheriff. It was under these
favourable circumstancesthat I was enabled to witness a General Gaol
Delivery of all the prisoners in Joliet. One, charged with killing
his third man, was out on bail. I saw him in Matheson's
boarding-house making love to one of the hired girls, and she seemed
quite pleased with his polite attentions. Matheson was elected
Governor of the State of Illinois, and became a millionaire by
dealing in railways. He was a native of Missouri, and a man of
ability; In '49 I saw him at work in a machine shop.
The prisoners did not regain their freedom all at once, but in the
space of three weeks they trickled out one by one. The Deputy
Sheriff, Silas, had been one of my pupils; he was now about seventeen
years of age, and a model son of the prairies. His features were
exceedingly thin, his eyes keen, his speech and movements slow, his
mind cool and calculating. He never injured his constitution by any
violent exertion; in fact, he seemed to have taken leave of active
life and all its worries, and to have settled down to an existence of
ease and contemplation. If he had any anxiety about the safe custody
of his prisoners he never showed it. He had finished his education,
so I did not attempt to control him by moral suasion, or by anything
else, but by degrees I succeeded in eliciting from him all the
particulars he could impart about the criminals under his care.
There was no fence around the gaol, and Silas kept two of them always
locked in. He "calkilated they wer kinder unsafe." They belonged to
a society of horse thieves whose members were distributed at regular
intervals along the prairies, and who forwarded their stolen animals
by night to Chicago. The two gentlemen in gaol were of an
untrustworthy character, and would be likely to slip away. About a
week after my arrival I met Silas coming out of the gaol, and he said:
"They're gone, be gosh." Silas never wasted words.
"Who is gone?" I inquired.
"Why, them two horse thieves. Just look here."
We went round to the east side of the gaol, and there was a hole
about two feet deep, and just wide enough to let a man through. The
ground underneath the wall was rocky, but the two prisoners had been
industrious, had picked a hole under the wall and had gone through.
"Where's the Sheriff?" I asked. "Won't Mr. Cunningham go after the men?"
"He's away at Bourbonnais' Grove, about suthin' or other, among the
Bluenoses; can't say when he'll be back; it don't matter anyhow. He
might just as well try to go to hell backwards as catch them two
horse thieves now."
Silas had still two other prisoners under his care, and he let them
go outside as usual to enjoy the fresh air. They had both been
committed for murder, but their crime was reckoned a respectable one
compared to the mean one of horse stealing, so Silas gave them
honourable treatment.
One of the prisoners was a widow lady who had killed another lady
with an axe, at a hut near the canal on the road to Lockport. She
seemed crazy, and when outside the gaol walked here and there in a
helpless kind of way, muttering to herself; but sometimes an idea
seemed to strike her that she had something to do Lockport way, and
she started in that direction, forgetting very likely that she had
done it already; but whenever Silas called her back, she returned
without giving any trouble. One day, however, when Silas was asleep
she went clean out of sight, and I did not see her any more. The
Sheriff was still absent among the Bluenoses.
The fourth prisoner was an Englishman named Wilkins who owned a farm
on the prairie, in the direction of Bourbonnais' Grove. A few weeks
before, returning home from Joliet with his waggon and team of
horses, he halted for a short time at a distillery, situated at the
foot of the low bluff which bounded the bottom, through which ran the
Aux Plaines River. It was a place at which the farmers often called
to discuss politics, the prices of produce, and other matters, and
also, if so disposed, to take in a supply of liquor. The corn whisky
of Illinois was an article of commerce which found its way to many
markets. Although it was sold at a low price at home, it became much
more valuable after it had been exported to England or France, and
had undergone scientific treatment by men of ability. The corn used
in its manufacture was exceedingly cheap, as may be imagined when
corn-fed pork was, in the winter of '49, offered for sale in Joliet
at one cent per pound. After the poison of the prairies had been
exported to Europe, a new flavour was imparted to it, and it became
Cognac, or the best Irish or Scotch whisky.
Wilkins halted his team and went into the whisky-mill, where the
owner, Robinson, was throwing charcoal into the furnace under his
boiler with a long-handled shovel. He was an enterprising Englishman
who was wooing the smiles of fortune with better prospects of success
than the slow, hard-working farmer. I had seen him first
in West Joliet in '49, when he was travelling around buying corn for
his distillery. He was a handsome man, about thirty years of age,
five feet ten inches in height, had been well educated, was quite
able to hold his own among the men of the West, and accommodated
himself to their manners and habits.
There were three other farmers present, and their talk drifted from
one thing to another until it at last settled on the question of the
relative advantages of life in England and the States. Robinson took
the part of England, Wilkins stuck to the States; he said:
"A poor man has no chance at home; he is kept down by landlords, and
can never get a farm of his own. In Illinois I am a free man, and
have no one to lord it over me. If I had lived and slaved in England
for a hundred years I should never have been any better off, and now
I have a farm as good as any in Will County, and am just as good a
man as e'er another in it."
Now Wilkins was only a small man, shorter by four inches than
Robinson, who towered above him, and at once resented the claim to
equality. He said:
"You as good as any other man, are you? Why there ain't a more
miserable little skunk within twenty miles round Joliet."