“Forgive my general and exceptless rashness,
Perpctual sober gods! I do proclaim
One honest man—mistake me not—but one.”
“What find I here?
Fair Portia's counterfeit? what demi-god
Hath come so near creation?”

This chapter is devoted to a man;—Mr. Vulcanus Allheart.
And, although he will rap our knuckles for smiling
at a few smileable things in him, Mr. Allheart will not be
displeased to see that Mr. Carlton, the author, remembers

[figure description] Page 028.[end figure description]

his friend, as Mr. Carlton the storekeeper and tanner, always
said he would, when we blew his bellows for him or
fired rifles together.

During a life some what peculiarly chequered, we have both
by land and sea been more or less intimate with excellent
persons in the learned professions, and in the commercial,
agricultural and mechanical classes; but never out of the
circle of kinsfolk, including the agnati and the cognati,
have I ever so esteemed, ay. so loved any one as Vulcanus
Allheart. And who and what was he?

He was by birth a Virginian, by trade a blacksmith, by
nature a gentleman, and by grace a Christian; if more
need be said, he was a genius. Ay! for his sake to this
hour I love the very sight and smell of a blacksmith's shop;
and, many a time in passing one, do I pause and steal a
glance towards the anvil, vainly striving to make some
sooty hammerer there assume the form and look of my lame
friend!—for he was lame from a wound in his thigh
received in early life. Oh! how more than willing would
I stand once more and blow his bellows to help him gain
time for an evening's hunt, could I but see anew that
honest charcoal face and that noble soul speaking from
those eyes, as he rested a moment to talk till his iron arrived
at the proper heat and colour!

But let none suppose Vuleanus Allheart was a common
blacksmith. He was master both of the science and the
art, from the nailing of a horse-shoe up to the making of
an axe; and to do either right, and specially the latter, is
a rare attainment. Not one in a million could make an
axe as Allheart made it; and hence in a wooden country,
where life, civilization, and Christianity itself, are so dependent
on the axe, my blacksmith was truly a jewel of a
man. His axes, even where silver was hoarded as a
miser's gold, brought, in real cash, one dollar beyond any
patent flashy affairs from New England, done up in pine

[figure description] Page 029.[end figure description]

boxes and painted half black, while their edge-part was
polished and shiney as a new razor—and like that article,
made not to shave but to sell; and all this his axes commanded,
spite of the universal nation, all-powerful and
tricky as it is. No man in the Union could temper steel
as my friend tempered; and workmen from Birmingham
and Sheffield, who sometimes wandered to us from the world
beyond the ocean, were amazed to find a man in the Purchase
that knew and practised their own secrets.

Necessity led him to attempt one thing and another out
of his line, till, to accommodate neighbours, (and any man
was his neighbour) he made sickles, locks and keys,
augurs, adzes, chisels, planes, in short, any thing for making
which are used iron and steel. His fame consequently
extended gradually over the West two hundred miles at
least in any direction; for from that distance came people
to have well done at Woodville, what otherwise must have
been done, or a sort of done, at Pittsburgh. Nay, liberal
offers were made to Allheart to induce him to remove to
Pittsburgh; but he loved us too much to accept them; and
beside, he was daily becoming richer, having made a very
remarkable discovery, which, however, he used to impart to
others for a consideration—viz. he had found out the curious
art of beating iron into gold. My friend was indeed
the great “Lyon” of the West.[5]

Mr. Allheart's skill was great also in rifle-making, and
also naturally enough in rifle-shooting. I have compared
Pittsburgh and Eastern and Down-eastern rifles with his,
(for the one concealed in my chamber is a present from
Allheart,) but none are so true, and none have sights that will
permit the drawing of a bead so smooth and round. Does

[figure description] Page 030.[end figure description]

any maker doubt this? Grant me three months to regain
my former skill, and I stake my rifle against all you have
on hand, that she beats the things, one and all, eighty-five
yards off hand—or (as I shall only give back your articles)
I'll try you for the fun and glory alone! By the way, do
you shoot with both eyes open? If not, let me commend
the practice, both from its superiority and because it may
save you from killing your own wife, as it did Mr. Allheart
once.

He excelled, we have intimated, as a marksman. Perhaps
in horizontal shooting he could not have a superior;
for in his hands the rifle was motionless as if screwed in
one of his vices; and thence would deliver ball after ball
at fifty, sixty, or seventy yards, into one and the same augur
hole. For him missing was even difficult; and all I had
ever heard of splitting bullets on the edge of axe or knife,
hitting tenpenny nails on the head, and so forth, was accomplished
by Allheart. And his sight had become like
that of the lynx; for at the crack of the gun he would
himself call out where the ball had struck. Nor is all this
so wonderful if we recollect that many years in proving
rifles he practised daily; indeed target-shooting was a
branch of his business—and in it his skill became rare,
ay! even bewitching!

His place for making these daily trials was at first a
large stump some seventy yards distant on the far side of
a hollow, against which stump was fixed his target; and
along that ravine his wife, a pretty young woman, used to
pass and repass to get water from a spring at the lower end.
Her almost miraculous escape in that ravine I shall give in
Mr. Allheart's own words, although his idiom was slightly
inaccurate and provincial.

“You say, why can't we shoot across the holler agin that
ole walnut stump yander? I ain't pinted a rifle across thare
for four year—and never intend to no more.”

[figure description] Page 031.[end figure description]

“Why so, Vulcanus? I'm sure 'tis a capital place for
our mark.”

“Well, Mr. Carlton, I'll tell you, and then you wont
wonder. One day, about six months after we was furst
married, I had a powerful big bore[6] to fix for a feller going
out West; and so I sit down just here—(at the shop door)—
to take it with a rest agin a clap-board standing before that
stump, and where I always before tried our guns. I sit
down, as I sort a suspicioned the hind sight mought be a
leetle too fur to the right, and I wanted to shoot furst with
allowance, and then plump at the centre without no allowance—
and then to try two shots afterwards off-hand. Well,
I got all fixed, and was jeest drawing a fine bead, and had
my finger actially forrard of the front triggur—(and she
went powerful easy)—and was a holdin my breath—when
something darkened the sight, and my left eye ketch'd a
glimpse of something atween me and the dimind—and I
sort a raised up my head so—and there was Molly's head
(Mrs. Allheart's)—with the bucket in her hand a goin for
water! She pass'd you know in a instant, almost afore I
could throw up the muzzle; but, Mr. Carlton, if I hadn't
a had both eyes open or no presence of mind, she'd a been
killed to a dead certainty! I unsot the triggurs and went
right in; and for more nor two hours my hand trembled
so powerful I couldn't hold a hammer or use a file. And
that's the reason I never fired across to that ole stump
since, and why I never will agin.”

But another reason for shooting with both eyes open is,
that a curious experiment in optics cannot conveniently be
made with one eye closed—an experiment taught me by
Mr. Allheart. And hence I would now commend both
our book and the experiment to all spectacle-makers and

[figure description] Page 032.[end figure description]

spectacle-wearers—to all ladies and ladies' gentlemen with
quizzing glasses—in fact to all persons with two or more
eyes, and all speculative and practical opticians.

EXPERIMENT.

Place over the muzzle of your loaded rifle a piece of
paste-board about four inches square, and so as entirely to
prevent the right eye while looking steadily on the bead in
the hind sight from seeing the diamond mark in the target
placed twenty yards from you; then keep the left eye fixed
immoveably on the diamond, and stand yourself without motion
thus for a few seconds; and then will the thick paper
over your muzzle disappear, and you will see or seem to
see the diamond mark with your right eye and mixing with
the bead—touch then your “forrard” trigger and your ball
is in the centre of the target. A dead rest is indispensable
for this experiment. N.B.—If this experiment properly
done fails, I will give you a copy of this work; provided, if
I myself can successfully perform it, you will purchase two
copies.

When it is said Mr. Allheart made rifles, be it understood
as certain rules of grammar, in the widest sense; for
his making was not like a watch-maker's a mere putting
parts and pieces together, but our artist made first all the
separate parts and pieces, and then combined them into a
gun. He made, and often with his own hand, the barrel—
the stock—the lock—the bullet moulds, complete; the
brass, gold, or silver mountings; the gravings, the everything!
And each and every part and the whole was so well
executed, that one would think all the workmen required
to make a pin had been separately employed upon the rifle!
He even made the steel gouges for stamping names on his
own work, and also for stamping type-founders' matrices;
he made, moreover, tools for boring musical instruments.

And this last reminds me that Allheart was the most

[figure description] Page 033.[end figure description]

“musical blacksmith” I ever knew—more so probably than
our learned blacksmiths. Not only could he play the ordinary
and extraordinary anvil tunes with hammers of all
sizes, making “sparks” and points, too, of light flash out
much warmer and far more brilliant than ever sprang from
the goat-strings of the Italian Maestro under the flaggellating
horse-hair, but Allheart played the dulcimer, a monotone
instrument shaped like an æolian harp, and done with
a plectrum on wire strings; and could, beyond all doubt,
have easily played a sackbut, psaltery and cymbals!

He soon became enamoured of the flute; and on my proposing
to give him lessons, he purchased an instrument
and attended regularly at my house one or more evenings
of every week for two years, till he became as great a proficient
as his master, and from that to the present time (as
he lately wrote me) he has been the conductor of the Woodville
Band. Perhaps my friend's musical enthusiasm may
be better understood from the following little incident. His
hands and fingers were nearly as hard as cast-iron; but
this, while no small advantage in fingering the iron strings
of a dulcimer, or in playing on the sonorous anvil, was a
serious disadvantage in flute-playing; for the indurated
points of his fingers stopped the holes like keys with badly
formed metallic plugs, and permitted the air to leak out.
On several occasions I had admired secretly the fresh and
polished look of his finger-points when he came to take
lessons; till once he accidentally, and with the most delightful
naivete, unfolded the cause in answer to the following
indirect query:—

“You are quite late to-night, Allheart?”

“Yes—ruther—but some customers from Kaintuck stopped
me, and after that I had to stay till I filed down my
fingers!”

My friend was besides all this a painter. And verily,
as to the lettering of signs, the shading, the bronzing, the

[figure description] Page 034.[end figure description]

peppering and salting, and so forth, I defy any first-rate
glazier any where to beat Allheart; for he yet does signs
for his neighbours, and more from the goodness of his heart
and the love of the arts than for gain. To be sure, formerly
he would mis-punctuate a little, placing commas for
periods and periods where no diacritical mark was needed—
although I do believe he sometimes, like a wag of a
printer, only followed copy. One thing is certain, he never
improperly omitted a capital, though he may have put such
in where it might have been omitted; but then, this only
rendered the name more conspicuous, and the sign itself
altogether more capital.

Lettering was not, however, his sole forte; he aspired
to pictorial devices, such as vignettes; and at last he ventured
boldly upon portraits and even full-length figures.
His own portrait was among the very first he took, and that
by means of a mirror; but, whether from modesty or want
of skill, or want of faithfulness in the glass, the likeness
was not very flattering. And yet one thing done by our
New Purchase artist ought (I speak with becoming deference)
to be imitated by many eminent eastern portraitpainters.

“What is that, sir?”

Well, I am actuated by the best of motives, gentlemen,
as it was a peculiarity in Mr. Allheart's finish, by which,
however bad the mere painting, the likeness intended could
always be seen at a glance if you knew how to look.

“What was it, sir? we are impatient.”

Why, he always painted on the frame of the picture
the name of the person to whom the likeness or portrait
belonged.[7]

[figure description] Page 035.[end figure description]

But the chef-d'œuvre of Allheart was a full-length figure
of the American Goddess, Liberty, done for the sign of the
new hotel—the Woodville House. He was engaged at
this picture, during the intervals stolen from his smithery,
one whole summer: and many were the wondering visitors,
from far and near, that favoured the artist with their
company and remarks. For most matters here done in private
were with us then done in public,—this of course
being conducive to the perfection of the fine arts. And
hence it is not surprising that Allheart, profiting by the
endless remarks and suggestions of our democratical people,
should have embodied all the best sentiment of the purest
republicans in nature, and given to the Purchase the very
beau ideal of American Liberty.

I shall attempt no elaborate critique, but shall say enough
to help intelligent readers to a fair conception of this piece

The Goddess, like a courageous and independent divinity,
stood, Juno fashion, right straight up and down the
canvass, and with immoveable and fearless eyes fronted the
spectator and looked exactly into his face; thus countenancing
persecuted freemen, to the confusion of all tyrannical
oppressors! Her face, in size and feature, was a
model for wholesome Dutch milkmaids to copy after; but
the cheeks, instead of blushing, were, I regret to say, only
painted red, like those of an actress too highly rouged.

In the right hand was a flag-staff, less indeed than a
liberty-pole or Jackson-hickory, but considerably larger
every way than a broom-handle; and on its top was hung,
exactly in the centre, a cap—thus by its perfect balance
and equi-distances of all parts of the rim from the staff,
showing that liberty is justice, and is independent and impartial.
The cap had, however, an ominous resemblance
to one of Jack Ketch's; and no doubt foreign despots,
ecclesiastical and secular, will pull said article over

[figure description] Page 036.[end figure description]

Liberty's eyes, if they succeed in apprehending and hanging
her.

On the left shoulder squatted a magnificent eagle in all
the plenitude of stiff golden feathers, and in the act of beinga-going
to drink from a good sized bowl held up by the left-hand
fingers of the goddess. What was the mixture could
not be seen—the bowl was so high—but most probably it
was a sleeping-potion, as the bird seemed settled for a
night's roost. Nay, this was the sentiment intended—to
mark a time of profound peace, like shutting the gates of
Janus: and hence the eagle held in his claws no arrowy
thunder and lightning, being evidently disposed to let kings
alone to take their naps, if they would let him alone to take
his. The idea was equal in sublimity to Pindar's eagle
snoozing on Jupiter's sceptre at the music of Orpheus;
although my friend's bird was uncommonly big and heavy—
but then his goddess was hale and hearty.

The drapery or dress was a neat white muslin slip then
fashionable in Kentucky, which was the Paris whence we
derived fashions; and this simple attire was tied gently under
the celestial bosom, which was heaved far up towards
the chin, as if the heart was swollen with one endless and
irrepressible emotion, and threatened some day or other to
sunder the tie and burst right out, breast and all, through
the frail barrier of the frock! Yet doubtless the slip was
high in the back, and, a là Kaintuque, well secured between
the shoulders, so that if things gave way in the front, there
was still some support from behind—but then it looked dangerous.
The frock was, however, undeniably starched and
rather too short—(owing maybe to the upward heave of the
bosom, as is the case sometimes with dresses from ill-made
or too much tournure and bustle,)—for the article stood
forth, not from the canvass but from the person, and all smooth
and unwrinkled as if just from under the hot smoothingiron!
And, alas! its great brevity—(and the figure up so

[figure description] Page 037.[end figure description]

high too)—revealed the sturdy ankles away up till they began
to turn into limbs!

The feet, unlike Liberty's martyrs in the Revolution, and
to indicate our advance in comfort and security, and perhaps
in compliment to a ladies' shoe-maker just established next
the Woodville House, were covered with a pair of red
morocco slippers; while on the ankles and upwards were
drawn nice white stockings—so that there was no denudity
of limb, as a lady-reader may have feared, and the fashionable
frock was not so bad after all. Some error, perhaps,
in foreshortening had happened as to the position of the
feet, or rather the red moroccos; for, while the artist designed
to represent the right foot as stepping from the
other, and the left, as pointing the shoe-toe at the spectator
immediately in front, yet the right shoe was fixed horizontally
with its heel at a right angle with the other, and that
other, the left hung perpendicularly down as if broken at
the instep—a marvellous likeness to the two slippers on
the shoe-maker's own sign, one there with its sole slap
against the board, and the other up and down as if hung
upon a peg.

And oh! how I do wish I had not been born before the
era of composition books!—or only now could take a few
lessons with the author of one!—so as write with all the
modern improvements, like the talented family of the Tailmaquers
in the leading magazines and other picture books
for grown up children!—I should so like to describe the
putting up of our new tavern post, and the first hanging of
the Goddess of Liberty! But that's not for the like of me—
I'm no orator as Brutus. How can I paint the openmouthed
wonder of that crowd! How make you see the
hunchings!—the winks!—the nods!—the pointings!—or
hear the exclamations!—the queries!—the allowings!—
the powerfuls!—the uproar? And when lawyer Insidias

p111-373 [figure description] Page 038.[end figure description]

Cutswell, candidate for Congress, mounted the “hoss block”
at the post, and ended his half-hour's speech—oh! I never!

EXTRACT.

“—Beautiful, indeed, fellow-citizens, vibrates
above us in the free air and sunshine of Heaven, that picture!
but more beautiful even is our own dear, blood-bought
liberty! Long! long may her sign dance and rejoice
there—(pointing up)—long, long may her image repose
here—(slapping the chest and rather low)—and long, long,
long live our enterprising townsman and fellow-citizen, who,
untaught, has yet so ably embodied all that is substantial
and solid, and upright and unflinching and stable in abstract,
glorious, lovely liberty—our townsman, Allheart!”

But “Non possumus omnia” must be our moral and
conclusion.

eaf111v2.n5

[5] It is hoped all the “Lyon's” friends of Philadelphia will patronize
this book.