FUN, FACT, AND FANCY.
EUGENIUS NESBITT--WASHINGTON POE--YELVERTON P. KING--PREPARING TO
RECEIVE THE COURT--WALTON TAVERN, IN LEXINGTON--BILLY SPRINGER, OF
SPARTA--FREEMAN WALKER--AN AUGUSTA LAWYER--A GEORGIA MAJOR--MAJOR
WALKER'S BED--UNCLE NED--DISCHARGING A HOG ON HIS OWN RECOGNIZANCE
--MORNING ADMONITION AND EVENING COUNSEL--A MOTHER'S REQUEST--
INVOCATION--CONCLUSION.
To-day I parted from Eugenius Nesbitt and Washington Poe, two of only
four or five of those who commenced life and the practice of law with
me in the State of Georgia. We had just learned of the death of Y.P.
King, of Greensboro, Georgia, who was only a few years our senior. The
four of us were young together, and were friends, but I had been
separated from them for more than forty years. Yet the ties of
youthful attachment remained, and together we mourned the loss of our
compeer and companion in youth.
I was a member of the Legislature when Judge Nesbitt, by act of the
Legislature, was admitted to the Bar, he having not attained his
majority, and by a rule could not be admitted in the ordinary manner.
Nesbitt, though so young, was known through the up-country of Georgia
as a young man of more than ordinary promise. The same was the case
with Poe. They had so deported themselves as to win the confidence and
affection of the wise and the good. There were some in the Legislature
who were lawyers, and who conscientiously believed that no one so
young as Nesbitt was could be sufficiently matured mentally to
properly discharge the duties of the profession. These men themselves
were naturally dull, and ignorantly supposed all minds, like their
own, were weak in youth, and could only be strengthened and
enlightened by time and cultivation. They honestly opposed the bill
admitting the applicant. There was one though, who held no such
ridiculous notions--himself an example to the contrary--but from some
cause he strenuously opposed the bill. It was the celebrated Seaborne
Jones, one of the very ablest lawyers the State ever produced. It
seemed ever a delight to him to bear heavily upon young lawyers. It
would be difficult to divine his motives. He was at the head of the
Bar, unapproached by competition, especially by any young man.
I was young and ardent, and felt offended at this opposition, and gave
all the aid I could to the passage of the bill. Fortunately for our
cause, there were many young lawyers in the Legislature, and these
were a unit, and we succeeded in carrying the measure. From that day
Nesbitt seemed nearer to me than any other of the Bar in our circuit.
We have been separated over forty years, he remaining in his native
State, while I have wandered away to the West. Still that warmth of
heart toward him has never died out. And now, when both are on the
grave's brink, we meet, not to renew, but to find the old flame
burning still. King, Nesbitt, and myself were born in the same county,
and our ancestors worshipped at the same church--Old Bethany--and
to-day we recalled the fact as we mourned the death of our early
friend and compeer at the Bar.
Time has swept on. Our children are gray with years. One by one, all
who were at the Bar with us are gone, save two or three, and to-morrow
we shall be gone. But the oblivious past has not curtained from memory
yet the incidents and the men of that past, and while I may I will
bear testimony to these, and to the men who were their chief actors.
Nesbitt justified in his subsequent life all that his friends and the
public hoped from him. In every relation of life he has done his duty
ably, honestly, and purely. As a member of the Legislature, of
Congress, as a judge of the Supreme Court, as a worthy member of the
Presbyterian Church, and, above all, as a father, husband, and
citizen, he has been good, wise, and faithful. Is not his measure
full? Who deserves it more? We were sad to-day. One said, "King is
dead." "Yes," answered the other, and we were silent. Memory was busy.
We could not talk. In his office, where yet he wears the harness of
the law, surrounded by musty, well-thumbed books, and piles of papers
with hard judicial faces, we sat and mused. Perhaps we thought of the
past, when those to whom eternity is a reality were with us and
joyous. At such times the mind turns quickly back to youth's joys, nor
lingers along the vista of intervening time. All of that day will
revive, but these memories sadden the heart, and we are fain to think,
but not to talk. Perhaps we wondered what were the realizations of the
dead. What are they? Who knows, except the dead? Do the dead know?
Unprofitable thought! Faith and hope only buoy the heart, and time
brings the end. Well, time has whitened our heads, but not indurated
our hearts, and time is now as busy as when in the joyousness of youth
we heeded not his flight, and to-morrow may bring us to the grave. Ah!
then we shall know the secret, and we will keep it, as all who have
gone before. Oh, what a blessed hope is that which promises that we
shall, forgetful of the cares and sorrows of time, meet those whom
death has refined, and be happy as they in eternity! But the doubt,
and then the fear! But why the fear? We come into time without our
knowledge or consent, fulfil a destiny, and without our knowledge or
consent die out of time. This is the economy of man's life, and was
given him by his Creator. Then why should he fear? If it is wise for
him to be born, to live, it is surely wise that he should die, since
that is equally a part of his economy. Then why fear? Reason is
satisfied, but instinct fears.
Yelverton P. King never removed from the county of his birth, nor
abandoned his profession, remaining upon the soil of his nativity and
among those with whom he had been reared, maintaining through life the
character of an upright man. Many memories are connected with his
name. When we were young at the Bar, there were as our associates very
many who attained eminence as lawyers, and fame as politicians; but
these distinctions are not connected with the endearing attributes
which make them so cherished in memory--the incidents of social
intercourse, the favors, the kindnesses of good neighborhood, the
sympathies of young life, the unity of sentiment, the sameness of
hopes, little regarded at the moment; but oh! how they were rooting in
the heart, to bear, away in the coming time, these fruits of memory,
in which is the most of happiness when age whitens the head, and the
heart is mellowed with the sorrows of time.
Though all were affectionate and social in their intercourse with each
other, yet each had his favorites, because of greater congeniality in
nature, more intense sympathies, and more continual intercourse.
Little incidents were of frequent occurrence which drew these
continually closer, until friendships ripened into confidences--some
more special favorites of some, and some more general favorites of
all. This latter was Y.P. King; and yet this favoritism was never very
demonstrative, but perhaps the stronger and more permanent for this.
Such, too, was Nesbitt; the older members of the profession loved him,
and those of his own age were unenvious and esteemed him.
Our circuit consisted of seven counties, and the ridings were spring
and fall, occupying about two months each term. In each courthouse
town was a tavern or two. These houses of entertainment were not then
dignified with the sonorous title of hotel. The proprietors were
usually jolly good fellows, or some staid matronly lady, in black gown
and blue cap, and they all looked forward with anxious delight to the
coming of court week. Every preparation was made for the judge and
lawyers. Beds were aired and the bugs hunted out. Saturday previous to
the coming Monday was a busy day in setting all things to rights, and
the scrubbing-broom was heard in consonance with calls to the servants
to be busy and careful, as Sally and Nancy sprang to their work with a
will. With garments tucked up to their knees, they splashed the water
and suds over the floors, strangers to the cleansing element until
then for months ago. A new supply of corn and fodder was arriving from
the country; stables and stable lots were undergoing a scraping
eminently required for the comfort of decent beasts, who gave their
lives in labor to exacting man. The room usually appropriated to the
Bench and Bar was a great vagabond-hall, denominated the ball-room,
and for this purpose appropriated once or twice a year. Along the bare
walls of this mighty dormitory were arranged beds, each usually
occupied by a couple of the limbs of the law, and sometimes
appropriated to three. If there was not a spare apartment, a bed was
provided here for the judge. And if there were no lawyers from
Augusta, this one was distinguished by the greatest mountain of
feathers in the house. Here assembled at night the rollicking boys of
the Georgia Bar, who here indulged, without restraint, the
convivialities for which they were so celebrated. Humor and wit, in
anecdotes and repartee, beguiled the hours; and the few old taverns
time has spared, could they speak, might narrate more good things
their walls have heard, than have ever found record in the _Noctes
Ambrosianæ_ of the wits of Scrogie.
There are but few now left who have enjoyed a night in one of these
old tumble-down rooms, with A.S. Clayton, O.H. Prince, A.B.
Longstreet, and John M. Dooly. Here and there one, old, tottering, and
gray, lives to laugh at his memories of those chosen spirits of fun.
Yes, that is the word--fun--for these _ancients_ possessed a fund of
mirth-exciting humor, combined with a biting wit, which, in the
peregrinations of a long life, I have met nowhere else. Were I to
select one of these inns, it would be the old Walton Tavern, in the
mean little hamlet of Livingston in Oglethorpe County, or the old
house, kept long and indifferently, by that mountain of mortal
obesity, Billy Springer, in Sparta, Hancock County. It was here, and
when Springer presided over the fried meat and eggs of this venerable
home for the weary and hungry, after a night of it, that all were
huddled to bed like pigs in a sty.
This bulky Boniface was polite to all, but especially to an Augusta
lawyer. Freeman Walker, of that ilk, usually attended this court, and
was the great man of the week. A man of splendid abilities and
polished manners, dressed and deporting himself like a gentleman, as
he was, he shone among the lesser lights which orbed about him, a star
of the first magnitude. The choice seat, the choice bed, and choice
bits at the table, were ever for Major Walker. Big Billy, with his
four hundred and ten pounds of adipose flesh, was always behind Major
Walker's chair. He was first served; the choicest pieces of the pig
were pointed out, cuts from the back and side bones and breast were
hunted from the dish of fried chicken, a famous Georgia dish, for
Major Walker. It was a great thing in those days in Georgia, to live
in a little town of three thousand inhabitants, and wear _store
clothes_. It was this and these which made a Georgia major.
Judge Dooly, upon one occasion, when attempting to usurp the seat of
honor, was unceremoniously informed by Big Billy that it was Major
Walker's seat.
Custom since has familiarized the retention of special seats for
special persons, and now such a remark from a host astonishes no one.
But in those days of unadulterated democracy, to assume a right to an
unoccupied seat, startled every one. Dooly, amid the astonished gaze
of the assembled guests, unmurmuringly retired to an unoccupied seat
of more humble pretensions near the foot of the extended table. The
occurrence was canvassed at night with full house in the democratic
dormitory. When the jests incidental were hushed, and one after
another had retired to bed, Judge Dooly, then on the Bench, went
slowly to the only unappropriated bed, and undressing, folded down the
bed-clothes. Suddenly, as if he had forgotten something, he slipped to
the landing of the stairway and called anxiously for the landlord.
"Come up, if you please," he said to the answering host. Springer
commenced the ascent with slow and heavy tread; at length, after a
most exhausting effort, and breathing like a wounded bellows, he
lifted his mighty burden of flesh into the room.
"What is your will, Judge Dooly?" he asked, with a painful effort at
speech.
Dooly, standing in his shirt by the bedside and pointing to it, asked,
with much apparent solicitude, if that "was Major Walker's bed."
Springer felt the sarcasm keenly, and, amid the boisterous outburst of
laughter from every bed, turned and went down.
A thousand anecdotes might be related of the peculiar wit, sarcasm,
and drollery of this remarkable man. One more must suffice. When
Newton County was first organized, it was made the duty of Dooly to
hold the first court. There then lived and kept the only tavern in the
new town of Covington, a man of huge proportions, named Ned Williams,
usually called Uncle Ned--he, as well as Dooly, have long slept with
their fathers. The location of the village and court-house had been of
recent selection, and Uncle Ned's tavern was one of those peculiar
buildings improvised for temporary purposes--a log cabin, designated,
in some parts of Georgia at that time, as a two-storied house, with
both stories on the ground; in other words, a double-penned cabin with
passage between. Uncle Ned had made ample provision for the Bench and
Bar. One pen of his house was appropriated to their use. There was a
bed in each corner, and there were nine lawyers, including the judge.
The interstices between the cabin poles were open, but there was no
window, and but one door, which had to be closed to avoid too close
companionship with the dogs of the household. It was June, and Georgia
June weather, sultry, warm, and still, especially at night. In the
centre there stood a deal table of respectable dimensions, and this
served the double purpose of dining-table and bed-place for one. Uncle
Ned was polite and exceedingly solicitous to please. He had scoured
the county for supplies; it was too new for poultry or eggs, but
acorns abounded, and pigs were plenty. They had never experienced
want, and consequently were well-grown and fat. Uncle Ned had found
and secured one which weighed some two hundred pounds. This he divided
into halves longitudinally, and had barbecued the half intended for
the use of the Bar and Bench. At dinner, on Monday, it was introduced
upon a large wooden tray as the centre substantial dish for the dinner
of the day. It was swimming in lard. There were side-dishes of
potatoes and cold meats, appellated in Georgia collards, with
quantities of corn-bread, with two bowls of hash from the lungs and
liver of the pig, all reeking with the fire and summer heat. A scanty
meal was soon made, but the tray and contents remained untouched.
The court continued three days, and was adjourned at noon of the
fourth day, until the next term. Each day the tray and contents were
punctual in their attendance. The depressed centre of the tray was a
lake of molten lard, beneath which hid a majority of the pig. After
dinner of the last day, all were ready to leave. When the meal was
concluded, Dooly asked if all were done. "Landlord," said the Judge,
"will you give us your attention?" Uncle Ned entered. "Your will,
Judge," he asked. "I wish you, sir, to discharge this hog on his own
recognizance. We do not want any bail for his appearance at the next
term." The dinner concluded in a roar of laughter, in which Uncle Ned
heartily joined.
Only one of the nine who assisted to organize that county, now remains
in life. There were four men there whose names are inscribed on the
scroll of fame--whose names their fellow-citizens have honored and
perpetuated by giving them to counties: Cobb, Dawson, Colquitt, and
Dougherty. Warner and Pierman died young. I alone remain. The children
of most of them are now gray with years, and have seen their
grandchildren. The name of Dooly remains only a memory.
The affections arising from youthful associations are more enduring
than those which come of the same cause in riper years. They are more
disinterested and sincere. They come with the spring of life, root
deep into the heart, and cling with irradicable tenacity through life.
We find in mature life dear friends, friends who will share the all
they have with you, who will for you hazard even life, and you love
them--but not as you love the boys who were at school with you, who
ran with you wild through the woods, when you hunted the squirrel and
trapped the quail. When fortuitous time forces your separation, and
long intervening years blot the features, in their change, from your
recognition, and chance throws you again with a loved companion of
life's young morn--the thrill which stirs the heart, when his name is
announced, comes not for the friend found only when time has grown
gray.
Go and stand by the grave of one loved when a boy, the little laughing
girl you played with at hide-and-seek, through the garden shrubbery
and the intricacies of the house and yard, one who was always gentle
and kind, she for whom you carried the satchel and books when going to
school, who came at noon and divided her blackberry-pie with you, and
always gave you the best piece--and see how all these memories will
come back; and if the green grass upon the roof-top of her home for
eternity does not bear, when you have gone away, a tear-drop to
sparkle and exhale, a tribute to endearing memory, your heart is not
worth the name. It is not given to us to love all with whom we may be
familiar in early life. But every one will sincerely love some few of
the companions of his school-days and early manhood. This is really
the sugar of life, and the garrulity of age loves to recount these,
for in his narrative he lives over and revives the attachments of
boyhood. Woman may confess only to her own heart these memories--she
must love only in secret. When the heart is fresh and brimming with
affection, she may love with all the devotion of woman's heart; but if
her love meets no return its birthplace must be its grave. She may
only tell, when she is old, of her successful and more fortunate love.
Ah! how many recount to their grandchildren their love, in budding
youth, for their grandfather, who hide in the secret alcoves of the
heart a more sacred memory of one who found his way there before dear
old grandfather came. What sorrows these memories have sown along the
way of life! but they have winced not when the thorn has pricked; and
how she has folded to her bosom dear John, while imagination made him
the more dear Willie, her first and foremost love! These endure in
secret, and are the more sacred for this; they die only with the dead
heart. Oh! the grave, the secrets of the grave, are they hidden there
for ages, or shall they survive as treasures for eternity?
I have been wandering among the graves of those loved best when the
heart could love most, and dead memories sprouted anew, and with them
a flash of the feelings which made them treasures of the heart. Yonder
is the grave of Thomas W. Cobb; near me is that of him most
loved--William C. Dawson; and here, in this green grave, is Yelverton
P. King; and near him is the last resting-place of Adeline Harrison.
Dear, sweet Adeline, you went, in truth, to heaven, ere yet the bud of
life had opened into flower! This is the county of my birth, and all
of these, save Cobb, were natives, too, of the dear old land.
To me, how near and dear were these! Turn back, O Time, thy volume for
fifty years, and let me read over anew the records of dead days, and
make memories once more realities, as they were real then--else hurry
on to the end, that I may know with these, or with these forget
forever! I would not linger in the twilight of life, with all of time
dimming out, and nothing of eternity dawning upon my vision. Let me
sleep in the forgetfulness of the one, to awake to the fruition of the
other!
I have been to the graves of my father and my mother. For more than a
third of a century they have been sleeping here. I sat down in the
moonlight, and placed my hand upon the cold, heavy stone which rests
above them: they do not feel its pressure, but sleep well. They are
but earth now--and why am I here? The moon and the stars are the same,
and as sweetly bright, looking down upon this sacred spot, as they
were when, a little child, I sat upon the knee of her who is nothing
here, and listened to her telling me the names of these, as she would
point to them, and ask me if I did not see them winking at me. Yet
they are there, and the same now as then. But where is that gentle,
sweet, affectionate mother? Is she up among these gems of heaven? Is
she yonder in the mighty Jupiter, looking down, and smiling at me? Is
she permitted, in her new being, to come at will, and breathe to my
mind holy thoughts and holy feelings? Disembodied, is she, as God,
pervading all, and knowing all? Does she, with that devotion of heart
which was so much hers in time, still love and protect me? Shall I,
when purified by death, go to her? and shall this hope become a
reality, and endure forever? Surely, this must be true; or, why are
these thoughts and hopes in the mind--why this affection sublimated
still in the heart--why this link between the living, and the dead, if
its fruition shall be denied in eternity? Why this question, which
implies a doubt of the goodness of God? Sweet is the belief, sweeter
the hope, that I shall see that smile of benignity, feel that gentle,
loving caress, and forever, in unalloyed bliss, participate heaven
with her. My mother--my mother! see you into my heart, here by your
gravestone, to-night? Hast thou gone with me through my long
pilgrimage of time? If I have kept thy counsels, and walked by their
wisdom, hast thou approved, my mother? My mother, all that is good and
pure in me has come of thee! If the allurements of vice have tempted,
and frail nature has threatened to yield, the morning's admonition,
the evening's counsel in our long walks, would strengthen me to
forbearance. These bright memories have lived and remained with me a
guide and salvation; and now they are the morning's memory, the
evening's thought. As I have remembered and loved thee, I have been
guided and governed by these. Surely there can be no loss to the child
like the loss of the mother! How those are to be pitied! They go
through life without the holy influences for good coming from a
mother; they stumble on, and learn here and there, as time progresses,
the moral lessons only taught to childhood from a mother's lips: they
stumble and fall for the want of these; and, by experience, too often
bitter experience, learn in youth what in childhood should be taught,
which should grow up with them as a part of their being, to be the
guides and comforts of life. And oh, how many never learn this!
Go, and converse with the wise and good, and they will tell you of
their mothers' teachings; go to the condemned criminal, whose crimes
have cast him from society, and ask him why he is thus--and he will
tell you he disregarded the teachings of his mother; or, 'I had a
wicked and vicious mother, who taught me evil instead of good;' or, 'I
had no mother, to plant in my childhood's heart the fear of God and
the love of virtue.'
Here, to me, to-night, in grateful memory, comes the Sabbath morning
in the garden at the home of my childhood, more than sixty years ago,
when this dead mother here sleeping pointed to the drunken man passing
on the highway, and, kindly looking up into my face, asked me to look
at him, and, when he had passed out of sight, said: "My child, will
you here, this beautiful morning of God's day, promise your mother
that you will not drink one drop of ardent spirits until you are
twenty-one years of age? You are so full of animal spirits, I fear,
should you touch it at all, that you will come to drink to excess, and
fill a drunkard's grave before you shall have passed half the days
allotted to man's life." I see that pleading face, those soft brown
eyes to-night, as they looked from where she was seated into my face;
I see the soft smile of satisfaction, as it came up from her heart and
illumined her features, when I lifted up my hand and made the promise!
And, oh, shall I ever forget the thrill which gladdened my heart when
she rose up and kissed me, and murmured so gently, so tenderly, so
full of hope and confidence: "I know you will keep it, my child." That
promise is a holy memory! It was kept with sacred fidelity.
Angel of love and light--my mother--look down upon thy child here
to-night, and for the last time by thy grave, with whitened head and
tottering step, and see if I have ever departed from the way you
taught me to go! Soon I shall be with you.
MY WORK IS OVER, MY TASK IS DONE!