GREAT MEETING AT THE SYCAMORE SPRING--SOME DESCRIPTION OF THE
ARRANGEMENTS--NICODEMUS HANDY CHOSEN TO PRESIDE ON THIS
OCCASION--MOTION TO THAT EFFECT BY MR. SNUFFERS--THIS WORTHY
GENTLEMAN'S MISFORTUNE--HIS ESCAPE--SUCCESSFUL ORGANIZATION
OF THE MEETING.
The morning of the 8th of September, Anno Domini 1837, was cloudless and
cool. The dust had been laid by a shower of rain a little before
daylight, and the day therefore was auspicious to the wishes of all who
proposed to assemble at the Sycamore Spring. By eight o'clock Ante
Meridiem, Nicodemus Handy's barouche, with two beautiful bays, stood
upon the gravel before Handy House on Copperplate Ridge. Agamemnon Flag,
attired in a new blue coat with figured gilt buttons, white waistcoat,
india-rubber watch-guard, snowy pantaloons of very fine drilling, and
boots of drab prunelle, tipped at the toes with polished French leather,
a watered-silk cravat, and gold spectacles, sat at the breakfast-table
with Mrs. Handy and Henrietta, her daughter--the smallest, the neatest,
and the best-shaped female, it is said by those who pretend to be
judges, in Quodlibet.
Nicodemus was in a flurry. He had swallowed his breakfast with great
dispatch, and four servants were busily in attendance upon him. Sam, the
waiter, was beating time in the hall with a corn whisk alternately upon
the person of his master and his left hand, after a very favorite and
ingenious fashion of dusting a gentleman's coat, only known to and
practiced by that musical race of colored dandies, of which Sam was a
first-rate specimen. Sarah, a lady of Sam's complexion, Mrs. Handy's
maid, was running up stairs to sprinkle some verbena perfume on Mr.
Handy's cambric handkerchief; William was smoothing the nap of his
glossy-black Brewster with a brush as soft as silk; and Mrs. Trotter,
the housekeeper, was arranging a basket of sandwiches and a bottle of
Rudesheimer to be stowed away in the box of the back seat of the
barouche. The coachman, in a sky-blue frock, and hat with gold band
secured by a huge buckle, was in his seat holding the reins, every
moment speaking to the horses to make them restive, and then whipping
them for not standing still. The whole scene was one eminently
calculated to disprove that stale Whig slander which purports to affirm
that "all the decency" was in their ranks:--nothing could be more
striking than this refutation of it. And as I was myself present--having
called in at that moment to deliver a message from the New-Light Club to
Mr. Handy, apprising him of their intention to move that he should act
as chairman of the meeting to be held at the Sycamore Spring--I
witnessed with lively satisfaction the very decided impression of
pleasure made upon an assemblage of New Lights, who stood looking on
outside of the front gate, by this triumphant vindication of our party
from the malevolent insinuations of the Whig press.
Agamemnon Flag seemed to be very much at his ease, and to be thinking
but little about the meeting, while he sat uttering some pleasant things
to Miss Handy;--at least I suppose they must have been pleasant to her,
as she and her mother both laughed a good deal at what he said.
By-the-by, there is a report in the Borough, that Ag is making up to
this young lady, which will be a grand thing for him if she favors him,
since she is an only child, and Nicodemus is amazingly rich.
"God bless me, my dear!" said Mr. Handy, breaking away from Sam's whisk,
and speaking after the manner of a table of contents, (a habit which he
has acquired since he has grown rich,) "past eight o'clock--I'm to be
the chairman of that meeting--ought to be early on the ground--five
miles off--no time for nonsense now--you and Henrietta and Ag--have to
drive like lightning--barbacue, my dear--want to see the arrangements
before the voters arrive--the schoolmaster will take a seat along side
of Nace."
"Thank you kindly," said I; "I accept your offer with great pleasure."
"Shan't want William," he added, referring to the servant who generally
rode with the coachman--"upon second thoughts, will put _our_
Secondthoughts inside--ha! ha!--_must_ have William--_shall_ want him;
you can sit (speaking to me) on the front seat--Ag and I behind--offer
the other seat to Barndollar--want to be civil to _him_, my dear--come,
hurry, hurry, hurry!--William, get on your livery and be prepared to
mount beside Nace."
As it was very manifest that Mr. Handy was really in a hurry--as very
opulent men are exceedingly apt to be--there was of course a great
bustle to accommodate him, by getting off. Agamemnon immediately rose
from the breakfast-table, and, taking up his superfine Leghorn hat,
which was very chastely adorned with a light yellow ribbon band, the
ends whereof hung a little over the rim, he put it gently on his head,
and then standing before the ladies, asked them with very apparent
complacency, whether they thought he was in good trim to appear before
the Democracy--and having received answer that "he was exactly the
thing," he signified his readiness to depart; whereupon we all bustled
out to the barouche and took our seats. William clambered into his
place, and away we went at full trot, down to The Hero to take up Jacob
Barndollar.
When we arrived at the tavern door, we found there Nim Porter's
trotting buggy with his stub-tailed gray. Nim himself appeared on the
steps in a big broad-brimmed low-crowned Russia blue hat, set very
knowingly over his right eye, with a long taper whip in his hand; and
before we could take up Mr. Barndollar, this most good natured of
bar-keepers, with an agility not to be expected in so fat a person,
sprang up into his tub-shaped seat, which held him about as compactly as
the shell of an acorn holds the nut, and spreading the skirts of his
green coatee with steel buttons over the periphery of the same, darted
off at a speed of about fifteen miles to the hour, down the Rumblebottom
road. During this time Mrs. Ferret filled the front door, and Mrs.
Barndollar was looking over her shoulder, while they both opened their
batteries upon poor Jesse Ferret, in a contemporaneous objurgation of
his mean-spiritedness, addressed to Mr. Handy in the barouche, but
intended for the master of the hotel, who looked rather sheepishly
through the window of the bar-room. Before he could say anything in his
own defense, and even before the amiable ladies of his family were done
talking, Jacob Barndollar came out, and got into the barouche; and as
Mr. Handy was growing more and more impatient, he ordered Nace to lose
no time, and so off we started. As well as I could judge, from looking
back, until we turned down by Christy M'Curdy's mill, Mrs. Ferret was
still arguing her case in the front door of The Hero.
All the roads leading to the Sycamore Spring were filled with persons
on horseback, on foot, in gigs, buggies, barouches, and rattle-traps of
every sort. It was obvious we were going to have a great meeting. Before
nine o'clock, Mr. Handy was on the ground. About a hundred persons were
already there. Booths were scattered along under the huge elms and
sycamores which shaded a low flat upon the margin of the Rumblebottom.
The fine, copious, old spring--where there has been many a barbacue in
my time--was pouring out its crystal treasures, as some poet says, with
prodigal bounty, and transferring them, as the Secretary does the
deposits, by large draughts, from the living rock to the running
Rumblebottom--in fact, taking them out of one bank, and distributing
them between others. Not far from this spring, adumbrated by
over-arching boughs--the reader will excuse this poetical orgasm--for
fifteen years and upwards have I been visiting this fountain, sacred to
Pan, (we used to have fish frys here,) and have ever grown poetical at
the sight thereof--it is my infirmity: not far from the spring stood the
tables--boards on trestles, and on the boards trenchers filled with
cubic sections of beef, lamb, mutton, and ham, interspersed with
pyramids of bread--a goodly sight! Upon skids, remote from the tables,
stood a barrel of old Monongahela, and hard by in a cart, tumblers,
pitchers, noggins, and bottles. Far off, at the opposite confine of this
field of action, was a stage erected, with a chair for the President of
the day, and benches of unplaned board for persons of inferior dignity.
Everything was in order; and now that Mr. Handy had arrived he had
nothing to do but wait for the gathering in of the people.
Presently Mr. Grant, mounted on a large bow-necked bay, arrived, with
his four sons, all men grown, of a rustic, farmer-like complexion; they
were attended by Augustus Postlethwaite Tompkinson, of The Whole Team,
and some dozen Whigs from Thorough Blue, who had traveled as far as Mr.
Grant's the night before, and now made a very solid and formidable
troop. Andrew Grant, the candidate, a youth of good presence, and
reputable, (bating his politics,) was of this party. Andy had been to
college, and his father first intended to make a doctor of him, but the
lad somehow took a dislike to physic, and turned in to this new business
of engineering on canals and railroads, and was considered, I believe, a
tolerably smart hand in that calling. But as he happened to catch a
bilious fever in the Dismal Swamp, the old lady his mother, who always
had made a pet of him, would not hear of his going back to that line of
livelihood; and so he stayed at home helping to manage at the Hogback
farm, and doing pretty much as _he_ pleased; until, about a year before
he was brought out, he married Stephen P. Crabstock's daughter; and ever
since that event does as his _wife_ pleases--spending his time one part
of the year at the Iron Works, and the other at the old man's.
By eleven o'clock the company had pretty nearly got to its maximum. A
large party came down in a wagon from Quodlibet with Abel Brawn--among
them Neal Hopper, Sandy Buttercrop, Davy Post the wheelwright, and I
can't tell how many more. Quipes, the painter, borrowed a horse out of
Geoffry Wheeler's team, and was there studying human nature and the
picturesque. Flan Sucker, one-eyed Ben Inky, and Jeff Drinker, with a
squad of regular loafers, came on foot. The Tumbledownians were there in
great force under Cale Goodfellow, to help Theodore Fog; and the
Bickerbrayians with Virgil Philpot, the editor of The Scrutinizer,
mustered a heavy phalanx in favor of Ag Flag. To swell the assemblage to
its largest compass, there were about fifty laborers from the
newly-begun Bickerbray and Meltpenny Railroad, a worthy accession to the
New-Light Democracy, who had about a month before this meeting come into
the State.
This is a hasty glance over the field of action, and will serve to show
that the country was all alive to the importance of the occasion and
duly estimated the nature of the crisis. Looking over this congregation
I, as one having knowledge therein, may safely affirm, that the genuine
Quods present fully outnumbered the Whigs three to one. Eliphalet Fox,
who has been more accustomed to measure crowds, however, after a minute
inspection of the various groups, judging by that tact which he says
never failed him in discriminating between what he calls a Loco Foco and
a Whig, (he does not pretend to say that he is so expert in pointing out
a New Light, but as to a Loco he asserts he is perfect,) set down the
number at nearer ten to one; and accordingly so reported it in the
account of the meeting which afterwards appeared in The Whole Hog.
Without, however, dwelling upon this topic, let us proceed to the
business of the day.
At twelve o'clock dinner was announced; and this army of hungry
politicians, with a unanimity of sentiment, an accord of principle, and
a concert of action, which we might in vain seek for in other
occupations of a political nature, combined, like a band of brothers, to
devour the largest possible amount of the stores which lay before them.
With somewhat less agreement they made their advances to the
Monongahela; the more shy of the assemblage being rather kept at bay by
the remarkable perseverance and adhesiveness of Flan Sucker, one-eyed
Ben Inky, and a chosen body of troops under their command, who had
constituted themselves the forlorn hope in this assault. Still, as the
newspapers say when they are disposed to puff a popular play, the barrel
went off very much to the satisfaction, and, indeed, the delight of the
company.
These matters being dispatched, Nicodemus Handy, who during the repast
had acted inimitably the part of a perfectly ravenous man, but who
having an eye to the sandwiches and Rudesheimer, made his appetite
rather a matter of "seems," rapped upon the table, and called upon every
man to fill up his glass; which order was faithfully obeyed by Flan
Sucker & Company, a firm that was in possession of all the tumblers--the
remainder of the guests allowing the filling to be, as we say in
grammar, "understood,"--and then offered the following toast, which, as
he said, would speak for itself:--"The several candidates who are about
to address the people--success to him who shall best deserve it!" Sucker
& Company drained to the bottom, and then set up a shrill yell, very
much in the style of the Winnebagoes, except that there was a running
note of "Yip!" that was distinctively Suckerian.
"Now, gentlemen, to the stand!" cried out Mr. Handy.
But before the crowd obeyed this order, Mr. Snuffers had a motion to
make. It was a matter of some importance, as the subject was considered
in the New-Light Club, that our party should have the President of the
day--and it was therefore determined that the moment dinner was over,
and before the Whigs might be aware of it, Mr. Snuffers, the head of our
club, should rise in some conspicuous place, and move that Nicodemus
Handy be requested to preside over the meeting. Mr. Snuffers is a slow
and nervous man, and was admonished to be on his guard, so as to make
sure of getting ahead of the Whigs who we knew wanted Mr. Grant in the
chair. He was in consequence very fidgety all the time of dinner; and
now, when the moment for action arrived, the good old gentleman elbowed
his way toward the center of the table, and without difficulty succeeded
in clambering upon an inverted and empty flour-barrel, which had once
been filled with bread. "I move, gentlemen," said he, with a tremulous
and agitated voice--"I move, gentlemen, that Mr. Nicodemus Handy----"
Before the next word escaped from his lips, this worthy and respectable
old gentleman broke in, and in an instant (I am shocked to tell it) was
jammed up tight in the barrel--disappearing as a dip of twenty to the
pound is apt to do when stuck into a black bottle--"be President of this
meeting," said Mr. Doubleday, with a hurried utterance, taking up the
word which was lost with Mr. Snuffers, and which, but for the admirable
presence of mind of our Vice, might have been lost forever.
"Break the barrel to pieces!" cried out forty voices.
"Mr. Snuffers is blue in the face--he will die of apoplexy," cried out
others.
"An ax!--knock the barrel to pieces!" shouted more, in great alarm at
his precarious situation.
In a few moments our distressed and worthy President of the New Light
was extricated from his unpleasant durance, and finding no harm done, we
proceeded to take the question on the motion. Mr. Handy was thus called
to the chair. Nine Vice-Presidents were appointed, and six Secretaries
to record the proceedings. These matters being arranged, the whole
assemblage moved toward the rostrum at the opposite end of the wood.
What followed we shall read in the next chapter.