“I am never hard upon a fellow who is a fool because he can’t help it!”
But I wondered at his gentleness when the epicure prattled on:
“Yes, sir! a stew like this is fit for Democrats to eat. I wouldn’t
give a Whig so much as a smell of the pot!”
“You ought to have a tighter lid, then,” with the same good-humored
intonation, and we passed on to see the roasts. Shallow pits, six
or seven feet long and four feet wide, were half filled with clear
coals of hard hickory billets. Iron bars were laid across these,
gridiron-like, and half-bullocks and whole sheep were cooking over the
scarlet embers. There were six pits, each with its roast. The spot for
the speakers’ rostrum and the seats of the audience was well-selected.
A deep spring welled up in a grove of maples. The fallen red blossoms
carpeted the ground, and the young leaves supplied grateful shade.
The meadows sloped gradually toward the spring; rude benches of what
we called “puncheon logs”—that is, the trunks of trees hewed in half,
and the flat sides laid uppermost—were ranged in the form of an
amphitheatre.
“You have a fine day for the meeting,” observed my father to the master
of ceremonies, a planter from the Genito neighborhood, who greeted the
visitors cordially.
“Yes, sir! The Lord is on our side, and no mistake!” returned the
other, emphatically. “Don’t you see that yourself, Mr. Hawes!”
“I should not venture to base my faith upon the weather,” his eyes
twinkling while he affected gravity, “for we read that He sends His
rain and sunshine upon the evil and the good. Good-morning! I hope the
affair will be as pleasant as the day.”
Our father took his family into confidence more freely than any other
man I ever knew. We were taught not to prattle to outsiders of what
was said and done at home. At ten years of age I was used to hearing
affairs of personal and business moment canvassed by my parents and
my father’s partner, who had been an inmate of our house from his
eighteenth year—intensely interested to the utmost of my comprehension
and drawing my own conclusions privately, yet understanding all the
while that whatever I heard and thought was not to be spoken of to
schoolmate or visitor.
It was not unusual for my father to confide to me in our early morning
rides—for he was my riding-master—some scheme he was considering
pertaining to church, school, or purchase, talking of it as to an equal
in age and intelligence. I hearkened eagerly, and was flattered and
honored by the distinction thus conferred. He never charged me not to
divulge what was committed to me. Once or twice he had added, “I know
I am safe in telling you this.” After which the thumb-screw could not
have extracted a syllable of the communication from me.
It was during one of these morning rides that he unfolded a
plan suggested, as he told me, by our visit to the Democratic
barbecue-ground some weeks before.
We had to rise betimes to secure a ride of tolerable length before the
warmth of the spring and summer days made the exercise fatiguing and
unpleasant. A glass of milk and a biscuit were brought to me while I
was dressing in the gray dawn, and I would join my escort at the front
gate, where stood the hostler with both horses, while the east was yet
but faintly colored by the unseen sun.
We were pacing quietly along a plantation road five miles from the
Court House, and I was dreamily enjoying the fresh taste of the
dew-laden air upon my lips, and inhaling the scent of the wild thyme
and sheep-mint, bruised by the horses’ hoofs, when my companion, who, I
had seen, had been in a brown study for the last mile, began with:
“I have been thinking—” The sure prelude to something worth hearing, or
so I believed then.
A Whig rally was meditated. He had consulted with three of his friends
as to the scheme born of his brain, and there would be a meeting of
perhaps a dozen leading men of the party in his counting-room that
afternoon. The affair was not to be spoken of until date and details
were settled. My heart swelled with pride in him, and in myself as
his chosen confidante, as he went on. The recollection of the scenes
succeeding the barbecue was fresh in our minds, and the memory
sharpened the contrast between the methods of the rival parties.
I was brimful of excitement when I got home, and the various novelties
of the impending event in the history of county politics and village
life were the staple of neighborhood talk for the weeks dividing that
morning ride from the mid-May day of the “rally.”
That was what they called it, for it was not to be a barbecue, although
a collation would be served in the grounds surrounding the Grove Hotel,
situated in the centre of the hamlet, and separated from the public
square by one street. The meeting and the speaking would be in the
grove at the rear of the Court House. Seats were to be arranged among
the trees. It was at my father’s instance and his expense that the
benches would be covered with white cotton cloth—“muslin,” in Northern
parlance. This was in special compliment to the “ladies who, it was
hoped, would compose a great part of the audience.”
This was the chiefest innovation of all that set tongues to wagging
in three counties. The wives and mothers and daughters of voters were
cordially invited by placards strewed broadcast through the length
and breadth of Powhatan. The like had never been heard of within the
memory of the oldest inhabitant. It was universally felt that the step
practically guaranteed the county for Clay and Frelinghuysen.