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CHAPTER INTRODUCTORY.
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“Travellers,” quoth Rosalind, the wise
and the witty, “have great reason to be
sad;” an assurance to which I know not
whether I feel inclined to subscribe assent or
not; the opinion of the world, (and to the
opinions of the world I always endeavour, as
a modest man, to square my own,) judging
from the world's practice, being directly the
reverse. To travel is to gain experience, (so
runs the argument;) and to have experience
is to have that which makes us sad.
To travel is undoubtedly to put ourselves
in the way of experience, since every highway
of the world may be said to be paved
with it; but the task of picking it up, while
thundering along at the locomotive speed of
modern travel, is no easy matter, even to a
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philosopher; and as for travellers in general,
the multitudes of busy idlers, who “sell their
own lands to see other men's,” rambling up
and down with no better or wiser motives
than a mere rage after novelty, and the ambition
to do what their betters have done
before them—to talk bad French in the Palais
Royal, and swim in a gondola at Venice—it
is, this same experience, a kind of lumber with
which they would be little likely to burthen
themselves, were it even to blow up in their
faces like dust, at every turn of their chariot
wheels.
It is only the man of Jaques's temper whom
travel makes sad. He who is of an humour
to see things on the dark side, to moralize
instead of admiring, will find occasion enough
for melancholy. To such a man, every inch
of the earth's surface is pregnant with thought,
every scene has its record, every countenance
its lesson; thought, record, and lesson being,
for the most part, of a very sombre and lugubrious
character. To travel is, in such a
case, only to become better acquainted with
human folly, to ponder more deeply on the
extraordinary perversity of a race, which,
with the means of making a paradise of the
globe, its glorious dwelling-place, has
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laboured for sixty centuries to convert it into a
house of mourning, and having succeeded, is
still toiling with might and main to keep it
so. It is to force upon the mind those dreary
recollections of the past, those dark fore-bodings
of the future—revealments and portents
of human destiny—which are so painful
to the heart, so humiliating to the pride, I
may even add, so terrific to the imagination,
of him who loves, or would love, his species.
But to be a Jaques is to be one man picked
out of ten thousand. The multitude know
nothing of moralizing; and sadness and grieving—
unless when one sighs over a long reckoning,
or groans at a bad dinner—form no
part of the catalogue of a traveller's grievances.
It may be, as Rosalind says, that
travellers have reason to be sad; but it is
very certain that they are not, and will not
be sad.
But whatever may be the philosophy of
the matter, men were born to travel. The
erratic propensity is a part of human nature;
and were it not for a dearth of means, (and
here one may see the excellent uses of even
so cursed a thing as poverty,) we should
have the whole world shooting madly out of
its sphere, all mankind gadding together to
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Rome and Paris, and not a soul left minding
its business at home. Every one longs to
see the world; there is pleasure, there is distinction,
nay, there is power in it. What importance
may not a man assume who can say,
“Thus they do in Rome,” “It is so and so in
Athens;” who can tell the architect of brick
houses of the dome of St. Peters and the
columns of the Parthenon; inform builders of
wooden bridges how the Romans constructed
triumphal arches; and instruct projectors of
water-works for supplying a city with potable
liquid, how heathen Copts bale out the Nile
with buckets. Who so irresistible in the
drawing-room as the happy youth who can
expatiate on Alp and Appenine, the Isles
of Greece and the Mother of Nations, the
Memnon and the Pyramids, the Dead Sea
and the City of the Cross? Black Othello
had never eclipsed his Venetian rivals in the
love of the fair Desdemona, had it not been
for his “travel's history,” his ravishing accounts
of the Anthropophagi, and men whose
heads did grow beneath their shoulders.
To the dignity which belongs to the travelled
man, I, Peter Pilgrim, (otherwise Palmer,
which means pretty much the same thing,)
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of Pilgrimdale, may lay claim in an eminent
degree; having, as I may say, visited nearly
every place of note in the whole world, ancient
or modern—Rome and Jerusalem, Carthage,
Troy, Alexandria, Memphis, Palmyra,
Canton, Lima, Mexico, Paris, London, and
heaven knows how many more besides; all
which, to make the wonder more wonderful,
I have visited without so much as stirring
beyond the bounds of these goodly United
States: a fact which proves the convenience
of the practice prevailing among us, (though
decried by some injudicious people on account
of its servility,) of helping ourselves,
when we have new towns to name, to the
best names we can lay our hands on; for
hereby may a man perform the grand tour
without putting himself to any great trouble
or cost, or losing much time in the expedition.
In truth, my travelling propensities have
never been of a truly cosmopolitan character;
and my ambition to see the world has been
destitute of some of the features that mark
the ambition of the many. Crowds delight
not me, nor the places where crowds most
do congregate; and when the impulse of
peregrination drives me into the world, it is
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commonly into some part of the world deserted
by other travellers; where, among sequestered
roads and shrines unknown, I feel
as much delight as others experience in
crowded highways and among places of renown.
In youth, my inclinations always led
me to solitary and out-of-the-way places, instead
of to those most universally seductive
to schoolboy brains: while my schoolmates
were performing their pilgrimages to the most
celebrated orchard or hen-roost, I, led by some
irresistible influence, preferred to go dabbling
in the marshes for plover's eggs and flagroots;
and visited the flying-squirrel in his
woody den, whilst they were rushing pell-mell
into a farmer's melon-patch.
The propensity of youth becomes the
passion of manhood; and hence behold me
still a gatherer of plover's eggs and flagroots,
though on a larger scale. My ancient
mates desert the orchard and hen-roost, to
wander over blue Lemans, rolling Rhines,
soaring Alps; whilst I, wandering still further
from the highway, go seeking the lovelier
waters, the nobler streams, the almost equally
magnificent mountains, concealed in our own
green forests at home.
Among the varied scenes of our own wide
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spread and buxom sovereignties, I have begun
my pilgrimage; being somewhat of Goldsmith's
opinion, that—for travellers as well
as patriots—
“Our first, best country, ever is at home;—”
and that a man who is bent on seeing the
world, can do nothing better or wiser than
begin the enterprise by making the acquaintance
of his own native land. In our own
deep forests, on our own bright savannas,
our mighty rivers and lakes, among the wild
men and wild scenes the traveller must here
so often encounter, I have found, and still
find, a charm, an endless fund of interest;
which, if it be of a different character from
that yielded by old world travel, is none the
less agreeable. I find not, indeed, the memorials
and things of fame that “renown”
the roads of Europe; no monkish ruins in the
vale, no toppling castle on the crag, to tell
the tale of man's early baseness, his rapine
and superstition; no array of pomp and splendour
to stir the soul to servile admiration or
cut-throat envy. None of these attractions—
mementoes of a past of folly and depravity—
await us at home. Antiquity has little to do
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with America: we find her, an obscure, shapeless,
vanishing phantom, only in the forest,
under the shade of magnolias and cypresses,
that have overgrown and buried, fathoms
deep, all vestiges of the past. And it is in
the forest, where man struggles with nature
for empire, and where, as if magic ruled the
day, as soon as an oak falls to the ground, a
city sprouts up from its roots; and in man,
the worker of the marvel, that we must look
for the objects of interest to replace those
the foreign traveller finds, and ponders over,
full of thoughts that every body else has
thought before him, in climes beyond the sea.
In these, my peregrinations, I have had
with me my pilgrim's scrip, being a sufficient
satchel of buckram and leather, into which I
did not fail to cast whatsoever little treasures
it was my fortune to pick up on the way—
flowers from the forest, shells from the river,
pebbles from the lake; or, in plainer language,
sketches of scenery and character, life and
manners; anecdotes, legends, observations;
every thing, in short, that was interesting in
itself, or illustrative of points of interest in
the regions through which it was my lot to
pass.
From this collection, which several years
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of travel have seen swell into magnitude, I
have selected the materials of the present
volumes; which, if they do not instruct—as,
indeed, they do not aim to do—may yet
amuse an hour of idleness.
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THE LEGEND OF MERRY THE MINER.
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CHAPTER I.
The central region of the United States,
embracing the district of East Tennessee
and the adjacent mountain counties of
Georgia, Virginia, and North Carolina, is
less known to Americans generally than the
remotest nooks of Florida, or the North
West Territory. At a distance from the
great routes of travel, without navigable
rivers, presenting on every side a frowning
barrier of wild and savage mountains, heaped
in continuous and inextricable confusion
over its whole surface, a portion of it, too,
still in the hands of its aboriginal possessors,[1]
it has repelled, rather than invited, visitation,
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and retains an air of solitude and seclusion,
which will vanish only when the engineer has
tracked its glens and gorges with paths of
iron, and flying locomotives thunder along its
ridges. When that period shall have arrived,
it will perhaps be discovered, that no part
of the United States offers greater attractions
to the lovers of the picturesque and the
wonderful, that none opens a grander display
of scenery, or richer exchequer of curiosities.
Then, too, perhaps—if the bursting of the
world into his sequestered valley should
arouse some sleepy Tennessean from inglorious
inactivity, infuse into his breast a little
pride of country, a little shame that a clime
so fair and beneficent should want a historian,
that a state so powerful and distinguished
should have produced no son able or
willing to write the records of her days of
trial and adventure—it will be found that
no part of the country possesses a greater
or more interesting fund even of legendary
and historic incident. The sparklings of the
lost Pleiad of American states—the little republic
of Frankland, that scintillated a moment
on that ridgy horizon, and then was
extinguished for ever—and the campaigns of
the gallant Sevier, are worthy to be chroni
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cled with the strangest vicissitudes, and the
bravest achievements, of that eventful era.
The `rarities'—as the old geographers
would have termed them—of this mountain
land, comprise waterfalls—the Tuccoa and
the Falling Water, for example—with others,
perhaps, as grand and as lovely—whirlpools
and sinking rivers, cliffs, and caverns; and
the still more interesting memorials of antiquity—
the mounds and fortifications; the
painted cliffs; the rocks on which the eye, or
the imagination, traces the foot-prints of
shodden horses, and even the tracks of wheeled
carriages; the graveyards of pygmies and
giants, whence have been dug so many thousand
bones of manikins of two feet in stature,
and Patagonians of eight;[2] the axes and
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other implements of copper, brass, iron,
silver; the coins; the walled wells; the old
gold mines, with furnaces and crucibles; the
yellow-haired mummies; and other vestiges
of the unknown and perished races of men
that once possessed, it would seem, the whole
Mississippi Valley.
Of these relics many are found in the
caves, which, besides the above-mentioned
yellow-haired mummies and Cyclopean skeletons,
(for the big bones are usually, though
not exclusively, found in caverns,) are, in
some cases, reported to possess still more
astonishing monuments of the primeval
world—petrified men—stony warriors and
hunters of the days of Nimrod, who, with dog
and spear, chased the megalonix into his hole,
and there perished with him; or antediluvian
gold-miners that plied their trade in these
darksome retreats, and, in unholy passion,
“forgot themselves to marble,” or were transformed
by the demons of the mine into their
own effigies.
Such wild stories, frequently revived, and
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passing from mouth to mouth with various
additions or diminutions, though regarded as
novelties, I suspect, must, in some way or
other, owe their origin to one common source,
to some fragmentary hint or distorted reminiscence
of the ancient, veritable, but now
almost forgotten legend of Merry the Miner—
a wight of whose adventures I have been
at the pains to inquire and record every particular
that is now remembered.
Of the birthplace and early adventures of
this remarkable personage nothing is known;
even his “given” name has been lost, his surname
only surviving, with the suffix that supplies
the place of the lost portion. He first
appeared, at a very early day, in one of the
extreme eastern counties of Tennessee, a settler
like others, as it seemed; for he had a wife
and family, with whom he seated himself, or
perhaps squatted, upon a farm that might,
though none of the richest, have yielded him
a comfortable subsistence, had he taken the
pains to cultivate it.
But Merry, it soon appeared, had other
thoughts and objects; for, having completed a
rude cabin sufficient to shelter his children,
cleared for them a few acres of ground, and helped
them to set it in corn, for the winter's
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subsistence, he straightway seemed to discharge
from his mind all farther care of them, and
began to ramble up and down the mountains,
a bag slung upon one shoulder, a rifle on the
other, remaining absent from home generally
all day long, and sometimes a week together.
At first, he was supposed by his few neighbors
who noted his proceedings, to be absent
on hunting expeditions, until it was observed
that he seldom returned so well provided with
game as with fragments of stone and minerals,
with which useless commodities his sack
was usually well filled.
This produced questions, and questions
brought replies; and Merry, who, though absorbed
by his pursuits, was not of a selfish
or incommunicative disposition, gave them to
understand he had better game in view than
bear, elk, or deer; in short, that he was hunting
for gold; with which precious metal, he
averred, these very mountains abounded; a
fact which, he declared, with a great deal of
wild enthusiasm, he was very sure of; for,
first, an old Cherokee Indian had told him so
when he was a boy; secondly, a great scholar
had assured him of the same thing, declaring
that the Spaniards had once, in the days of
De Soto, been at the mountain mines and
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worked them, till the Indians drove them
away, or killed them; thirdly, his father, who
had, in his time, been an Indian trader, and
made a fortune thereby, was of the same
opinion, because of the jealousy of the Indians,
who would never suffer a white man
to examine too closely into their soil for
minerals;[3] and finally, because every one
knew there were bits of gold sometimes
found in Virginia and the Carolinas, along
the rivers that flowed from the mountains,
from which it was plain the gold must have
been washed down from the mountains. To
this he added, that he had himself been, for
ten years or more, hunting for the precious
place of deposit, and it was, therefore, but
reasonable to suppose he must soon succeed
in finding it. He had often discovered places
where there was a little gold to be gathered,
but it was a very little; and he should not
stop short till he had lighted on the true
mines that had been worked of old by the
Spaniards, the discovery of which would certainly
be a fortune to him.
This representation had its effects upon
Merry's friends; who, being shown a store of
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minerals, gathered by himself in different
places, and abounding, as he said, in lead,
copper, and other ignoble metals, together
with sundry touchstones, a blowpipe, a bottle
of acid, and other simple implements of the
art metallurgic, of which he had in some way
learned the use, were very ready to assist
him in a pursuit that promised to lead to
fortune; and for a few months, the whole
neighbourhood was rambling with him over
the hills, in search of hidden treasures. As
no gold was, however, found, nor, indeed, the
least sign of any, the enthusiasm for gold-hunting
soon abated in all but Merry himself,
who, at first deserted by his friends, was at
last derided by them as a crack-brained
schemer, whose efforts were more likely to
ruin a fortune than to make one.
And, indeed, it appeared from some expressions
of Merry's wife, who by no means
relished her husband's neglect of his family
and affairs, that he had already, or his family
for him, paid dear for his gold mine, having
been originally the possessor of a sufficient
and comfortable estate, a good patrimonial
farm, and slaves to till it; all which had slipped
through his fingers in the course of his
ten years' wanderings.
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Desertion and derision, however, produced
no change in honest Merry; who having remained
long enough in his first seat to explore
every nook and cranny among the
adjacent hills, and satisfy himself that the
object of his search was not there, drew up
his stakes one fine morning, removed his
habitation some fifty or sixty miles further
west, and there, having constructed another
cabin, and cleared another field, recommenced
his explorations precisely as he had
done before, and with exactly the same results;
except that on this, as well as on all
future occasions, his character having travelled
before him, he found no neighbours willing
to unite with him in his enterprise. But this
was an affair of no consequence to Merry the
Miner; who, equable and contented on all
subjects except that of his gold mine, was
equally satisfied to share his hopes and
labours with others, or to enjoy them alone.
Nor did the ridicule and general contempt
under which he fell, much affect him: “By
and by,” said he, “I shall find a gold mine,
and then they will treat me well enough.”
The reproaches of his dear spouse were
not always received with the same equanimity;
but the practice which caused them
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was the surest means to avoid them; and accordingly
some of the uncharitable have hinted,
that if his golden monomania had not
been enough to drive him from his habitation,
the lectures of his helpmate would have been
cause sufficient.
Again unsuccessful, again the untiring
Merry changed his quarters; and this he continued
to do year after year, until he had consumed
ten more years in the unavailing
search. By this time his spirit was fainting
a little within him, and doubts began to oppress
him sore. Gray hairs were thickening
on his temples, and his fortune was not yet
made; on the contrary, poverty, after many
premonitory knocks, had passed his door, and
taken the best seat on his hearth. His
children had grown up, and grown up unaccustomed
to rule, at least for the five last
years; for, five years before, Merry had followed
his wife to the grave; after which her
children took matters into their own hands,
and grew up the way they liked best. One
after another, they dropped away from their
father to seek their own fortunes, until at last,
one—one only of all remained, his youngest
daughter, who was handsome and, as Merry
thought, good, for she was faithful when the
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rest were found wanting. “Very well,” said
Merry, as he again trudged to the mountains,
one bright morning; “when I find a gold
mine, she shall know what it is to be a good
daughter, for she shall have it all to herself.
No, not all,” he muttered; “for the rest
will come back, and they must have something,
to know their father was hunting gold,
not for himself, but for them. But Susie, my
darling Susie, shall have the most of it, because
she was faithful to her father.”
When Merry returned again from the
mountains, his darling Susie was gone—gone
with a villain, for whom she had forsaken her
parent. Merry sat down in his deserted
cabin, and there remained for a week, content,
for the first time in twenty years, to remain
at home, when home had nothing further
to attract him.
On the seventh day, Merry again seized his
sack and rifle, and whistling to his dog Snapper—
for so he called him—an ugly, starveling cur
that had long been his companion, and now
was the only living thing upon whose fidelity
he knew he could rely—made his way up the
wild little valley in which his cabin stood,
following the course of a brawling river that
watered it. This river—fed by a hundred
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brooks that came chattering down the sides
of the mountain, in whose cloven and contorted
flank the little vale was but one of
many embayed recesses—Merry had often before
thridded, examining its different forks up
to their springs; where—upon his principle of
belief, that when gold is found in a river, it
must have been washed down from its sources—
he always seemed to think there was the
best prospect of discovering his long sought
mine. He had thus followed them all, or
thought he had done so; and having found
them all equally destitute of treasure, he
would himself, perhaps, have been puzzled to
say why he now set out again in the same
direction. Another person, however, might
have found a sufficient explanation in the agitation
of mind of the poor wanderer, whose
every look and step bore witness to the disorder
of his spirits.
Up this rivulet, then, he wandered, without
well knowing or noting whither; clambering
up the ledgy banks of one of its chief springs,
now nearly dried up, which he began, after a
time, to have a vague suspicion he had never
before explored. It had a new, fresh look
about it that gradually wrought upon his attention,
and was fast wakening him from
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abstraction; when his revery was further put to
flight by Snapper, the dog, who set up a
yelp or howl, Merry knew not which, but it
sounded very wild and mournful in that desolate
place, and fell to scratching in the
shingly bed of the torrent, as if disinterring a
rat or some other object of equal interest, ever
and anon looking around to his master, as if
to invite him to his assistance.
Merry approached and took from under
the paw of the dog a bit of stone, or sparry
concretion, of a very odd appearance, having
a kind of rude resemblance to a thumb and
fingers grasping something between them,
and that something exhibiting, at a broken
corner, a certain yellow gleam that made
Merry the Miner's heart leap within him.
With a little hammer drawn from his bag,
he broke off the ragged superfluities incrusting
what seemed a metallic core; an edge of
which he straightway rubbed on his flinty
touchstone. It left a yellow trace, as clear
and brilliant as heart could desire. Merry
drew out a vial of acid, and his hand trembled
as he applied it to the yellow trace. The
yellow trace vanished—No! it was the dimness
that came over the miner's eyes; the
yellow trace remained as bright and as
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beautiful as before. He dipped the corner of the
mineral into the acid; it hissed and fumed and
bubbled; but the yellow speck became the
broader and brighter. It was gold then—
`gold, yellow, glittering, precious gold!' and
Merry—But hark! Snapper howls again, and
again tears up the pebbles of the brook!
Merry clapped his prize into his sack, and
clambered up higher after the dog, admiring
at this own happiness in possessing an animal
of such marvellous sagacity, perhaps wondering,
too, how such an ugly brute should know
pebbles of gold from any others, and more especially,
how he should know his master was
seeking after them.
But Merry the Miner's mind was too full
of more important matters to question or
wonder long over the mystery. Snapper had
scratched from the shingle another specimen,
and one far more satisfactory and valuable
than the former—a lump of virgin gold as
big as a pigeon's egg, and looking not unlike
one, except that it was marked all over with
strange figures and fantastic shapes, so that
Merry almost doubted whether it was not a
work of art, instead of a freak of nature.
But while he was doubting, Snapper scratched
agian, and Merry picked up another piece;
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and then another, and another, in all five or
six pieces, though none of them at all comparable
in size and value with the two pieces
first stumbled on.
But had they been less numerous or less
precious than they were, Merry would have
rejoiced none the less. He had struck the
path of fortune at last, and knew the goal
could not now be far off. Too eager to waste
time in hunting what he doubted not was a
mere subordinate and chance deposit of fragments
washed down from above, he gave
over the search, to continue his explorations
up towards the source of the brook.
As he rose, eager and exulting, his eye fell
by chance upon the little valley in which he
lived, now far below, and upon his distant
and deserted cabin. He sat down and wept.
What did gold avail him now? He had
found the long desired treasure; but his children
were lost to him for ever. For this,
then, he had bartered them away—squandered
the rich treasures of their love, and, worse
than all, the rich treasures of honour and virtue,
of reputation and happiness, that should
have formed their inheritance.
Many a man has felt, and many will feel,
like Merry the Miner, when, after a life of
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gold-hunting, whether in the field or the
counting-room, in the land-office or the stock-market,
the prize is won, and they lost who
might have been good and happy without it.
Bitter were the thoughts of Merry, and he
looked upon his prizes with the feelings of a
Timon. He cursed them; nay, he snatched
them up with a desperate intent to hurl them
away; when Snapper fetched another howl,
and—and Merry the Miner forgot his anger
and his grief. He clapped the golden fragments
into his sack, added another piece of
gold to his store; and, having now lost sight
of his cottage, followed, with Snapper, up the
mountain brook, exploring with eager care,
and impatient to arrive at its golden springs.
The way was long, the path was wild, and
the sun was in the meridian when Merry
reached the apparent source of the streamlet;
and he was then in the heart of a mountain
wilderness as wild, as desolate, as solitary as
imagination ever painted. High in air, shut
up among ridges that sloped up to heaven all
around him, bristled over with black firs or
speckled with gray rocks and precipices, no
companions but his dog, and the eagles that
sometimes swooped down from adjacent
peaks to view the invader of their realm,
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Merry might have felt the elation inspired by
a scene so august and lonely, had not the
feeling of the mine-hunter swallowed up
every other. His good luck had departed
from him; he had trudged miles without finding
any further traces of gold, or indeed any
thing at all remarkable, save fragments of
spar and stalagmitic concretions, in which
fancy traced a thousand resemblances to objects
he had left in the world behind him, as
well as to others that existed only in the
world of dreams. These, interesting as they
might have proved on another occasion,
Merry would now have joyfully exchanged
for a single bit of gold, the smallest that miner
ever picked out of earth. But the gold
had vanished, and Merry arrived at the head
of his rivulet only to be persuaded he had
arrived in vain.
A deep and narrow ravine, up which he
scrambled with infinite labour and pain, and
down which the feeble and dwindling waters
seemed to find it as difficult to flow—for
lazily, and with complaining murmurs, they
dropped from rock to rock, creeping and
moaning among obstructions, over which, it
was plain, at other seasons, a torrent came
bounding and roaring like a lion after his
-- 039 --
[figure description] Page 039.[end figure description]
prey—its lofty walls growing loftier as the
miner advanced, and flinging a gray and
smoky midnight over all below, was suddenly
terminated by a precipice, from whose inaccessible
heights the stream fell in a dreary,
ever pattering, but meagre shower, while a
still feebler runnel oozed from a chasm in
the precipice, as if flowing from a spring in
the heart of the mountain.
Upon examining this chasm a little—there
came from it a faint, icy breath of air—Merry
was surprised to find it the entrance of a
cavern—a huge, yawning antre as black as
death, and gloomy, and ruinous, and mouldering
as a sepulchre of a thousand years.
Merry cared not a whit for caverns, great
or small; and as the feeble ray of light
admitted from the ravine did not penetrate
beyond a few feet, and disclosed a formidable
labyrinth of rocks and stalagmites covering
the watery floor, he felt no great desire to
disturb its solemn privacy. But Merry was
heated and wearied by his toilsome ascent of
the mountain, and the cool air of the cavern
tempted him to enjoy a moment of repose.
He sat down upon a rock and endeavored
with his eyes to fathom its hidden recesses,
but in vain. Nothing was to be seen but the
-- 040 --
[figure description] Page 040.[end figure description]
formidable rocks and stalactites, and they all
vague, shadowy, and undistinguishable. But
the ray of light, imperfectly disclosing the
darksome labyrinth, revealed, almost under
his feet, another object neither formidable
nor repulsive—a little topaz-hued star glistening
on the floor, from which Merry eagerly
snatched it up, and carried it to the light of
day. It was gold—a rounded mass inferior in
size only to the pigeon's egg, and bright and
pure as gold could be.
eaf018v1.n1[1] In the hands of its original possessors no longer:
“The stranger came with iron hand,”
&c.
eaf018v1.n2[2] The belief in the former existence of races of pygmies
and giants in the Mississippi Valley, is extremely prevalent
in many Western communities; though the visits of scientific
men to the cemeteries of the former have been productive
of results that have shaken the faith of many in regard to the
pygmies. The celebrated graveyard on the Merameg river, in
Missouri, was examined by some of the scientific gentlemen
attached to Long's Expedition, who found bones of men and
infants of the ordinary Indian races in great abundance, but no
others. Bones from the Lilliputian graves in White County,
Tennessee, have also been proved to belong to mortals of
ordinary stature. The facts have not been so satisfactorily
settled in relation to the giants. There are thousands of respectable
men in Kentucky and Tennessee, who aver that
they have disinterred, and measured, human bones that must
have belonged to individuals eight feet in height; but none
of these bones have ever come in the way of savans.
eaf018v1.n3[3] This jealousy was remarked, many years since, by Bartram,
in his rambles among the Cherokee mountains.
-- 041 --
CHAPTER II.
[figure description] Page 041.[end figure description]
In a moment the cavern had lost its funereal
gloom, and shone upon Merry's imagination
a palace of light and loveliness, fit for the residence
of the gnome-king. The trunk of a mountain
pine, shivered by a tempest, had fallen into
the ravine, where it still lay, a magazine of
ready-made torches provided for any one willing
to enter the mystic abyss.
With the hatchet, which always formed a
part of his equipments, Merry easily succeeded
in riving off a bundle of resinous
splinters. A flint and steel afforded the
means of striking a light; and, flambeau in
hand, his gun left, as an encumbrance, in the
ravine, Merry immediately crept through the
tall, narrow fissure, into the cave; though his
dog Snapper, daunted by its repulsive
-- 042 --
[figure description] Page 042.[end figure description]
appearance, refused to follow him. He remained at
its entrance, filling the air with doleful howlings,
as his master vanished in the gloom;
and with these ominous sounds in his ears,
multiplied, and variously uttered, as they were,
by the echoes of the cave, Merry bade farewell
to his companion and the world of light.
Even with the torch flaming in his hand,
Merry's eyes failed to reach the boundaries of
the cave, its walls being no where visible except
immediately behind him, where they parted
away, right and left, from the entrance—itself
a blind, twisted gap, perceptible only at the
distance of a few feet—to be almost immediately
lost in darkness. Nothing, indeed,
could be well said to be visible except a few
rugged pillars rising here and there among
rocks and spars of all imaginable sizes, piled
and tumbled together in inconceivable confusion,
and presenting such fantastic shapes as
both kindled the imagination and struck the
spirit with awe. To Merry, who paused for
a moment aghast, it seemed as if each rock
was composed of animals, or parts of animals,
each a congeries of limbs, heads, trunks,
skeletons, cemented or incrusted together in
one hideous organic mass. Here glared
the head of a panther from among the ribs
-- 043 --
[figure description] Page 043.[end figure description]
of an elephant; there an alligator peeped from
the back of a horse; here a boa-constrictor
writhed under the shattered body of an ox;
and there a great sea-fish opened her yawning
jaws, in which bears and monkeys made
their den. Nay, Merry even fancied that, imbedded
in these frightful concretions, he could
behold the limbs and heads of human beings,
the former crushed and sprawling, the latter
staring ghastfully out with eyes of stone.
While Merry paused a moment, confounded
by these strange appearances, and doubtful
whither to proceed in search of the golden
stream, which was now lost among the rocky
apparitions, he heard it faintly murmuring in
the distance, at a point to which he did not
hesitate to direct his steps, and where he had
soon the satisfaction to discover it flowing
down a broad stair-case of rock, as regular
almost as if cut by the hands of man.
Here Merry again paused, nay, recoiled a
moment in consternation; for upon that staircase
stood the gigantic figure of a man,
grim, shadowy, terrible, his countenance, as
far as a countenance could be seen that was,
like his whole body, incrusted over with stone,
convulsed with some nameless agony, and his
attitude, which was that of flight, of flight
-- 044 --
[figure description] Page 044.[end figure description]
arrested by a sudden spell, that had bound
his limbs as with fetters of iron, expressive
of a deep but majestic despair. A tunic, sustained
by a broad baldrick; sandals, or what
seemed sandals, upon his feet; and in his
hand the massive hilts of a sword, whose
blade had long since rotted away, were the
only accoutrements on a shape, in whose very
nakedness there was something august and
commanding.
Merry's hair bristled as he surveyed the
stony phantom; but by and by, convinced it
was no living creature, and moved by curiosity,
he approached, and even mustered
courage to touch the unconscious frame. It
was, as it seemed, a figure of stone, but how
formed Merry the Miner was not learned
enough to tell; but as he felt the vast limbs,
foully sheeted over with spar, a rough and
rigid coat formed by the drippings and deposits
of centuries, he could not but fancy a
human body was sepulchred within.
Merry the Miner forgot his gold, and his
hopes of gold. Wonder and curiosity absorbed
his spirit. He thought now only of
investigating a mystery so strange and so
new, of prosecuting still further a discovery
whose first fruits were so astonishing. He
-- 045 --
[figure description] Page 045.[end figure description]
ascended the wet and mouldering stair-case.
Twenty steps brought him to its summit,
where stood another colossal figure struggling
in the grasp of a third that lay upon
its face, half buried under a mound of stalagmite
that had grown around it, its arms
twined round his legs, its hair, long and flowing
like the locks of a woman, trodden under
his feet, with which he seemed endeavouring
to spurn the prostrate shape away. It was
a ghastly picture of terror overpowering the
feeble and unmanning the strong, of selfishness
converting woman's love and man's
devotion into frenzied contention and brutal
hate.
But a new spectacle drew Merry's eyes
from this unnatural group. The last step
of the staircase was ascended, and there
yawned upon him a new cave, vaster than
that he had left below, and filled with spectres
more wonderful and appalling; rank upon
rank, crowd upon crowd, multitude upon multitude,
they burst upon his view, the stony
effigies and relics of pre-Adamitic ages, the
remains and representatives of all races that
had lived and perished. It was a world of
stone—a petrified world; and Merry felt, as
the clang of his footsteps awoke the funeral
-- 046 --
[figure description] Page 046.[end figure description]
echoes of the place, and one after one the
fearful shapes started into view, that he trod
upon accursed ground, among the doomed
inhabitants of a demolished sphere.
Were these, then, things of flesh? things
that had lived, and breathed, and walked the
earth? these things of bulk so enormous, of
shapes so strange and fearful? Ay, here they
were—creatures that had lived, and breathed,
and walked the earth—all in their general
sepulchre, not clad alone in the ordinary
vestures of decay, in bones and ashes, but in
form as when they lived, in body and, it seemed,
almost in substance, but grown over each
with a mantle of stone, a rime of rock, that
converted all into monumental statuary.
Here they were, all in wild confusion, all
flying in terror from a destiny which had,
nevertheless, overtaken them, and all expressing,
in their positions, the agony of annihilation.
It was a fearful picture of fate, a
grand and terrible, yet mournful, revealment
of the last moment of a world's perdition.
Merry's flesh again crept on his bones;
but he remembered all was stone around him,
and advanced, looking with mingled fear and
admiration upon the varied figures occupying
this subterraneous world, where all was left
-- 047 --
[figure description] Page 047.[end figure description]
as in the moment of destruction, save that
the rocks which had fallen and covered all
with a new firmament, had here and there
dropped to the floor, forming piles and mounds
that crushed hundreds of animals beneath
them, and in other places had poured floods
of petrifying moisture that converted groups
of bodies into mountains of spar. Here,
among strange plants and trees of the primeval
forests, whose trunks formed stalactitic
pillars supporting the roof, Merry beheld the
magnificent monsters first revealed to human
eye by the labours of the geologist, though revealed
only in fragments—the Mastodon,
with his mighty tusks, huge and strong
enough to toss a mountain into the air; the
Megatherium, with claws to tear up trees,
and armour upon his back to sustain them in
the fall; the tremendous Dinotherium, with
teeth that dredged the bottoms of lakes and
rivers, and, hooked to some overhanging
rock or tree, supported the watery sluggard
in his sleep; the great Saurians,—huge and
hideously formed reptiles, to which the crocodiles
and anacondas of our own day were as
earthworms and lizards; with the primordial
horse, ox, rhinoceros, and other animals without
number and without name; all huddled
-- 048 --
[figure description] Page 048.[end figure description]
together, and man, their enemy and master,
with them, in a confusion of terror that reduced
all to equality and fellowship in
misery.
Through this vast hall, following the course
of the brook, on which he relied to guide him
back to the realms of day, Merry pursued
his discovery, examining with interest the
various shapes on either side. But by and
by they ceased to appear: he had reached
the end of the Hall of Flight.
A few steps conducted him into another
chamber, where his eyes fell upon a sweeter
scene. It was a shepherd watching his
flocks, all, shepherd and flocks alike, of stone,
and all seeming to have passed to death in a
dreamy unconsciousness of their fate. Here
terror and anguish were no longer seen; and
Merry fancied he was about to behold the inhabitants
of the ancient world in a better aspect,
in their natural state and appearance
as when they lived. “Yes,” quoth he, well
pleased at the prospect—for the universal
agony he had passed through chilled him to
the heart—“I have seen how they died; I shall
now see, perhaps, how they lived.”
And so he did; for having proceeded a few
yards further, he found himself upon a huge
-- 049 --
[figure description] Page 049.[end figure description]
subterraneous plain, whereon were countless
hosts of men, with sword and spear, arrow,
javelin, and war-club, with horses and chariots,
waging a furious battle; in the very midst
of which their destiny, it seemed, had come
upon them. As they were engaged, so they
had perished, each his sword at his fellow's
throat, trampling under foot and hoof, crushing
with chariot wheels, thrusting with lances,
piercing with darts and arrows, raging and
destroying. Thus it was with them, even
with eternity at their elbow, their world falling
to pieces under their feet. Upon the borders
of death, they were anticipating his
coming; with one foot in the balance of judgment,
they were dragging with them the
blood of rapine and murder, to weigh them
down in condemnation forever.
“Ay!” quoth Merry the Miner, “and so
they do in the world above! all busily engaged
in cutting short for one another the little
moment of life assigned them by nature—all
madly eager adding gall and wormwood to
the little cup of happiness their destiny allows
them—all hot to prove their supremacy
over the beasts of the field, by exceeding them
in violence and enmity.”
Through this midnight battle-field Merry
-- 050 --
[figure description] Page 050.[end figure description]
made his way among mangled and disfigured
corses, retaining even in stone, with the looks
of the dying and of death, vestiges of the
passions which impelled them to strife and
attended them in slaughter. Here was the
fiery youth urged by the love of glory—that
love called noble and generous, though it
aims at blood, and fills the world with orphans;
there the veteran, to whom use had
made slaughter an exciting pastime. Here
was the soldier fighting for his sixpence; there
the great captain leading up a thousand men
to die in a ditch, that he might go down to
future ages renowned in story. Here was
seen the throttle of hate, the grasp of rage
and desperation; there the wounded besought
quarter which the victor denied, and here the
victor, himself at last perishing, seemed to
entreat of Heaven the mercy he had denied
his fellows; while the contortions of agony
and despair spoke the late but unavailing remorses
of the dying. In short, it was a battle
field, in which Merry the Miner, as he himself
hinted in his half muttered apostrophe,
saw nothing that he might not have seen in
a `foughten field' in the world above.
By and by he had passed it through, glad
to escape its shocking spectacles. He then
-- 051 --
[figure description] Page 051.[end figure description]
entered a passage looking like the broad
street of a half ruined city, with houses on
either side, some overthrown, some sheeted
over with spar, but all wild, and antique, and
strange-looking, like the buried structures of
Herculaneum, or still more the ancient subterranean
cities of the East.
Here the first sight that struck Merry's
eyes was a knot of ferocious looking men,
sitting round a slab of stone, gambling; at
least, so they appeared to Merry, to whom
the avaricious exultation of one, who held
aloft what seemed a bag of coin just won;
the despairing looks of a second, who clasped
his hands in the frenzy of conscious ruin;
the scowl of a third, who seemed also a loser;
with the villany of a fourth, who, while appearing
to sympathize on one side of his face
with the winner, on the other with the losers,
was slyly abstracting a second bag of money
from the table; were proofs of the nature of
their employment not to be mistaken.
Merry saw and felt the moral of the scene.
He was struck with the brutal triumph of the
winner, whose happiness was the misery of
at least one other; with the humiliating grief
of that other; with the frowning ferocity of
the third man, who looked as if thirsting for
-- 052 --
[figure description] Page 052.[end figure description]
the blood of the victor; above all, with the
base roguery of the fourth, who made no
difficulty of stealing the treasure he could
not otherwise hope to master.
Merry the Miner saw and felt all this; and
could, had any one been by, have moralized
very prettily on the debasing effects of avarice.
But while he saw and felt, and was
able to moralize, the very passion he saw
thus variously personified, stole into his
bosom; and he longed to possess the bags of
coin, so temptingly displayed. He forgot he
was among the dead of a doomed world, and
was again a gold-hunter. He snatched at the
bag in the winner's hand; but bag and hand
were alike marble. He drew his hammer,
and with a blow shattered the arm of the
gambler; and down it dropped, with dismal
clanging, on the stone floor. Another blow
crushed the hand and bag to pieces, and
Merry's hopes were gratified. Out rolled
upon the floor a nest of antique golden coins,
which Merry, after admiring a moment, clapped
into his sack, among his other treasures.
He then attacked the second bag, and after
a deal of hammering, for it was fast cemented
to the stone table, succeeded in breaking
it also, and seizing its precious contents.
-- 053 --
[figure description] Page 053.[end figure description]
Merry proceeded onward, swelling with
hope and joy. He had forgotten his wonder
and curiosity about the ancient world, and
its strange discovery; his thoughts were now;
not of the sins and destruction of its people,
but of their wealth, of which he deemed himself
the heir apparent.
His next step brought him to a booth or
shop, where stood—was it a money-changer,
or an old clothesman and pawnbroker?
Merry could not tell, for the booth, was half
filled up with petrifaction, which encased the
old man up to the middle, and held also a
customer, a poor old tattered woman, glued
to his shopboard; but it was quite evident the
hoary sinner was cheating her—selling her
the ragged mantle he held in his hand for
twenty times its value, or buying it—if a
buyer—at as great a profit.
“How strange and pitiable,” quoth Merry
the Miner, “that men should cheat for money—
grind, fleece, cozen, rob—nay, rob even the
poor!” With these words, he knocked from
the shopman's girdle, where it hung suspended,
a purse of gold, the only valuable in the
booth which, as far as Merry could discover,
the petrified flood had not swallowed up.
The next sight struck him with horror. It
-- 054 --
[figure description] Page 054.[end figure description]
was a footpad rifling the body of a man
whom he had just murdered by beating out
his brains with a club.
“How vile,” quoth Merry the Miner, “must
be that love of gold which drives men to robbery
and murder!” Thus venting his indignation,
he smote from the robber's fist the
fruits of his double crime, and transferred
them to his own pocket.
A few more steps, and Merry found himself
in a market, or other public place, where,
among a multitude of people chaffering after
pennies with as much eagerness as if salvation
were in them, sat judges upon tribunals,
dealing out justice, and some of them, as
Merry thought, dealing it out at a very good
price. Certainly, he saw one very patriarchal
looking old gentleman fulminating the terrors
of the law, with one hand outstretched
against an unhappy complainant, whilst the
other, extended behind him, was receiving a
douceur dropped into it by the richer defendant.
At another tribunal stood a man, evidently
a bankrupt, dragged by clamorous creditors
before the tribunal, yet escaping their
demands by an oath of destitution, which he
confirmed by raising his hands to heaven,
thereby disclosing a well crammed purse concealed
under his mantle.
-- 055 --
[figure description] Page 055.[end figure description]
“And men will even commit perjury for
money!” thought Merry, who, as he helped
himself to the wages of corruption and perjury,
began to feel somewhat uneasy at these
exemplifications of the effects of the love of
gold upon human nature. He turned to the
market house, and there beheld a father selling
his children into slavery, a mother bartering
away her daughter for a price.—In short,
he saw enough to convince him that man's
god was gold; and that of all gods it demanded
the richest sacrifices of its votary—the
sacrifice of his head and heart, of his honour,
virtue, happiness—nay, of his soul itself.
Merry's uneasiness increased. “Truly,”
quoth he, “if men will do these things for
gold, it must be a cursed thing. How know
I that it will not enchant me also into villany?”
He began to ask himself whether he
had never defrauded, robbed, murdered, borne
false witness, or done other evil for lucre's
sake. It was a great satisfaction to him to
be assured he had not, and to believe he
never could. Nevertheless, he could not divest
himself of a degree of consternation that
fastened upon his spirit, while yielding himself
to a passion whose debasing effects upon
others he saw pictured around him in acts of
meanness and iniquity of every grade and dye.
-- 056 --
[figure description] Page 056.[end figure description]
He could not divest himself of his fear; but
neither could he divest himself of his covetousness;
and he accordingly went on his way, exploring
the buried city, and ravishing the treasures
of the dead, of which, having prodigious
success, he soon collected more than he
could carry, or his sack contain; so that he
was obliged to empty it twice or thrice on
the path, leaving shining heaps, which he
designed removing afterwards at his leisure.
His success was the greater for his having,
after a time, hit upon a new branch of exploration.
He had often looked with a curious
eye upon the buildings that bounded the
street on either side, huge, strange structures,
here lying in ruins, there still standing, but almost
lost under thick shrouds of spar. It struck
him that if he could by any means make his
way into the interior of these houses, he
might light upon treasures of much more
value than all the purses he could hope to
filch from the corses in the street. Nor was
he disappointed; for having at last found
houses with penetrable doors, he entered
them, looking with awe upon their stony inhabitants,
some feasting, or seeming to feast,
at rich tables, some sleeping the sleep of
death in couches of marble; and with a
-- 057 --
[figure description] Page 057.[end figure description]
delight that soon banished his awe, upon the
rich golden vessels and ornaments, the treasures
of the banqueting room, for which there
was no longer an owner.
Such visits into different houses enabled
him rapidly to increase the number of piles,
by which he marked his way along the street;
though, in his progress, he sometimes stepped
into mansions where nothing was gained but
wisdom. Once he entered a huge building,
in which he anticipated an unusual store of
treasure; but found himself in a prison filled
with felons expiating in chains crimes, which,
for aught he knew, the lust of pelf had driven
them to commit. Another time, he got into
a madhouse, where, among other bedlamites
raving in stone, was doubtless the usual proportion
of cases where the loss of gold, or
the fear of losing it, had converted the children
of God into gibbering monkeys.
Again, he found himself in a madhouse of
another kind, or rather madhouse and prison
in one; a hall of legislation, where fools were
destroying a nation, and knaves pilfering it,
and both parties quarreling upon the question
which best deserved the name of patriots.
-- 058 --
CHAPTER IV.
[figure description] Page 058.[end figure description]
Merry's next visit was into a mansion of
greater importance than any yet entered. It
was a royal palace, the court of a pre-Adamitic
sovereign; where, among the ruins of
his world, his kingdom, his house, sat the
piece of hardened clay that had held itself
superior to other clay, which it had worried
and agonized, trampled, racked, decapitated,
according to its sublime will and pleasure,
and been allowed to do so by the other clay,
the millions of pieces that owned its rule, because,
of all, there was not one shrewd enough
to conceive the superior convenience of
freedom, or having conceived it, who was
not willing to sell his thought, and his
liberty, for a piece of money. Here sat the
monarch surrounded by his court; his generals
-- 059 --
[figure description] Page 059.[end figure description]
who ravaged foreign countries to increase
his grandeur, his ministers who plied the besom
at home for a similar purpose. Here
were his buffoons and parasites, the soft
slaves of his pleasure and the instruments of
his wrath; his sellers and buyers of office; his
corruption-mongers and their customers; his
keepers of conscience without conscience, his
sages without wisdom, his saints without religion,
his friends without love, his servants
without faith, prostituted geniuses, bought patriots,
rogues, slaves—a mighty herd of servility
and corruption. Ay, here they all sat
or stood, glorious in the pomp of their golden
trappings, which the incrusting waters had
not yet hidden entirely from the eye.
Merry the Miner was too good a democrat
to be greatly daunted at the sight of a king
and court. In truth, he saw nothing so impressive
and interesting in king or courtier,
as the golden ornaments on their persons.—
Thus it must be with the glorious, when the
unsophisticated make their acquaintance in
the grave. The tomb-rat loves your great
man only for his tenderer flesh; and the Arab
of the Egyptian catacombs sees nothing in a
mummied Pharaoh, but an inflammable backlog
for his kitchen fire.
-- 060 --
[figure description] Page 060.[end figure description]
Merry lighted a new pine-knot, and then
with eyes that gloated in joy over the sepulchral
yet gorgeous assemblage, fell to work
in his vocation of plunder. He yielded
royalty so much respectful observance as to
commence operations on the monarch's person,
knocking from his anointed head the
golden crown that none remained to honour or
envy, and from his jewelled hand the sceptre
that was no longer the talisman of authority.
To these the insatiate Merry added the
chains of gold and diamonds around his majestic
neck; when, having despoiled the flinty
monarch of every valuable, he turned to his
royal consort and progeny, and to his ministers
and flatterers, all of whom he in like
manner disencumbered of their jewelled trappings.
And now, after an hour or two of labour
hard and unremitting—for it was no easy
task to detach the precious relics from their
crusts of stone—Merry the Miner paused to
congratulate himself upon his success. He
looked at his piles with joy: there were
enough of them to occupy him a day—nay,
many days—in removing them from the cave.
He clapped his hands, he laughed, he almost
danced; he was a happy man, he was a rich
-- 061 --
[figure description] Page 061.[end figure description]
one; “Ay,” quoth he, with exultation, “I am
the richest man in the world!”
With that, he sat down to rest his weary
bones—for, truly, his labour had well nigh
exhausted his strength—and to enjoy in prospect
the happiness which such store of wealth
seemed to assure him. The delight of revery
was added to the languor of fatigue; and
while his imagination took the airiest flights,
a pleasant lassitude stole over every limb.
It was a strange spectacle he presented, as
he sat in that damp charnel-house, where objects,
dimly revealed by his torch, put on a
double ghastliness—the living man rejoicing
over the treasures and hopes, of which the
dead around him spoke the hollow vanity.
But Merry thought not of the dead; how
could he, whose dreams were of lands and
houses—glorious domains spreading around
him, with palaces on them, and flocks and
herds, and hamlets and villages—nay, towns
and cities; for Merry the Miner was already
laying his lands out in town-lots, and calculating
the profits of the speculation: how could
he think of the dead, or of death?
No—Merry the Miner troubled himself not
at all with the monumental statues around
him; but by and by, having at length rested
-- 062 --
[figure description] Page 062.[end figure description]
his bones, and settled his plan for doubling
his money at the expense of his neighbours,
he bethought him of rising, and removing his
treasures forthwith from the cave.
He bethought him of rising, and attempted
to do so—but in vain. A sudden palsy had
seized upon his body; there was a numbness
or stiffness in every joint, and it was increasing
every moment. A terrible idea entered
his mind; his heart leaped with perturbation—
it seemed almost the only muscle capable
of motion. He looked down upon his limbs:
they were already thickly crusted over with
spar, which the humid atmosphere of the
cave was depositing around them with fearful
rapidity. He felt the cold stone stiffening
on his fingers and freezing on his cheeks—
He, also, was becoming a petrifaction—a man
of stone, like all around him! His treasures,
his darling treasures, attacked by the subtle
vapour, had already vanished from his eyes.
But what cared Merry for treasure now?
Terror and anguish seized upon his spirit; he
gathered all his energies into an effort, and
struggled furiously to burst his bonds of
stone. As well might the wild-goat struggle
in the embrace of an anaconda, a fly in the
meshes of a spider. The incrustation crackled
-- 063 --
[figure description] Page 063.[end figure description]
around him, and then was firmer than ever:
he could neither move hand nor foot: he was
a rock, and part and parcel of the rock on
which he sat.
Thus a prisoner, a breathing corse, a living
fossil, Merry gave himself up to despair, and
raved and shrieked, until affrighted at the
echoes of his own voice. It seemed, indeed,
as they reverberated among the ruined walls
of the palace, and through the distant streets,
as if all the inhabitants of this petrified world
had found their voices, and replied to him
with yells as wild as his own. But shrieks
and struggles were alike vain; and by and by
he found himself deprived of the power even
of uttering a cry. The stony concretion was
gathering round his throat and jaws, and
mounting to his lips; where, though his warm
breath had as yet repelled the insidious vapour,
it threatened soon to attack him with
suffocation. In a few moments, and what
would remain of Merry the Miner?
In those few moments, how deep was the
agony, how wild the terror, how distracting
the thoughts of the unhappy Merry, who now
cursed his fate, and now the fatal avarice that
provoked it, now thought bitterly of his approaching
death, and now still more bitterly
-- 064 --
[figure description] Page 064.[end figure description]
of the long life miserably wasted—wasted in
a pursuit which had brought him nothing but
wo and ruin. Nothing that was agonizing,
nothing that was maddening, but Merry the
Miner had it passing through his mind in
those moments of imprisonment so strange
and fearful.
But the stone still grew around him; and
by and by, as the incrusting matter thickened
at his mouth and nostrils, he felt that he had
but another breath to draw, and then perish.
At that moment, the sound of a trumpet, a
single, tremendous note, burst through the
cave, and Merry's blood froze with fear.
That dreadful note seemed to thrill the dead
as well as the living. To Merry's eyes, dim
and filming, but not yet darkened, it seemed
as if each statue started with fear; he heard,
or fancied he heard, the rattling of their
sparry garments, and a dull sad moan issuing
from their marble lips.
Then there flashed into the cave the appearance
of a moving fire, in which approached
a figure as of a fallen angel,
majestic in mien, terrible yet mournful in aspect,
and on his brow the name of the Inexorable,
holding in his hand a flaming sword,
with which he touched the stony corses one
-- 065 --
[figure description] Page 065.[end figure description]
by one, pronouncing the words of condemnation;
and wheresoever he touched, a flame
seemed to spring up within the statue, a
lurid, tormenting fire, that shone through it
as a lamp hidden within an alabaster vase.
“Thou,”—he cried, with a voice as dreadful
and mournful as his visage, touching at
the same time the monarch, in whose body
the fires immediately appeared—“Thou, because
thou didst hold thyself as the Lord of
them thou was sent to serve:—Ye”—touching
the ministers—“because ye were the
tools of his passions, who should have been
counsellors of wisdom and goodness; Ye”—
to the courtiers—“because ye were idolaters
and man-worshippers;” and so on, until he
had reached, in his course, the unhappy
Merry, who, beholding the sword of the Inexorable
thus stretched above his head, at
last betook himself for aid to a means which,
in his distraction, he had not yet thought of—
he muttered a prayer, not audibly, for his
lips were now sealed, but in the deep recesses
of his spirit.
The sword was turned aside; and with the
sad and solemn utterance—“He that hath
time left to pray, hath yet time to escape the
judgment”—the apparition glided away to
-- 066 --
[figure description] Page 066.[end figure description]
resume his judgment of others. The rocky
covering at the same moment melted from
Merry's body; and he, forgetting his gold, his
implements, his torches—forgetting every
thing but the terror that infused strength into
his liberated limbs, fled from the scene
amain. He fled, lighted at a distance by the
fires kindled by the Inexorable; whose voice
Merry could long hear pronouncing in the
street, the prison, and the city, and upon the
battle field, the words of doom; “Thou, for
thy blood guiltiness! Thou, for thy perjury!
Thou, for thy covetousness! Thou, for thy
ambition!” at every word setting some enclosed
spirit in flames, until the whole cavern
gleamed with the lights of hell.
These lights pursued the flying Merry
until he had almost reached the outlet of the
cavern; when the howlings of his faithful dog
directed him to the passage. Dashing
through the orifice, and scarcely pausing
even to catch up his gun, he fled down the
ravine and the course of the brook, running
like a madman until he reached at length his
own deserted home. He entered it a poorer
man than he had left it in the morning; his
sack and all the implements of his pursuit
having been abandoned in the cave, along
-- 067 --
[figure description] Page 067.[end figure description]
with the fragments of gold he had picked up
in the brook, not to speak of the more magnificent
treasures gathered in the cave itself.
But if Merry the Miner was now a poorer
man, he was also, or at least he thought himself,
a much wiser and better one than he
had ever been before. Gold-hunting he immediately
forswore, as a soul-endangering
occupation; he became, moreover, exceedingly
devout, and somewhat industrious, having
resolved, as he said, to be content with honest
poverty for the remainder of his days.
His story, as might be expected, produced
no common sensation among his neighbours,
some of whom, to Merry's astonishment and
grief, (for he told his story for the purpose,
and with the expectation, of deterring them
from all covetousness,) proposed to him to
conduct them to his wondrous cave; where,
for such a prize as he had abandoned, many
of them swore they were willing to face not
only his devil, for so they contemptuously
called the condemning spirit, but all the
devils that were ever heard of. This Merry
very resolutely refused to do: he had taken a
vow never to go nigh the place again, putting
himself in the way of temptation; it was as
much as his soul was worth. They then
-- 068 --
[figure description] Page 068.[end figure description]
bade him instruct them where to find it.
This, also, Merry positively declined. Strong
in his newborn virtue, he was determined no
unlucky sinner should, through his means,
be put in the way of perdition; he would save
the souls of his friends, he declared, as well
as his own.
Upon this, his neighbours instituted a
search through the mountains, in hopes of
discovering the cave; but after several weeks
of fruitless exploration, gave up the attempt
in despair, some of them revenging their
failure on Merry by pronouncing him a lunatic
and dreamer, and declaring that his
whole story, his account of the cave, the
treasures, the petrified bodies, the adjudging
angel, was a mere fiction of a distempered
brain.
As for Merry himself, he little regarded the
imputation, but remained at home, practising
those virtues of industry and devotion that
seemed to prove him an altered man, until—
sorry I am to say it, but so the legend reports
of him—he grew tired of them. Whether
it was that he found honest poverty by no
means so agreeable or profitable as he hoped
to prove it—that the devotion begot by fear
is not in reality of the most perdurable
-- 069 --
[figure description] Page 069.[end figure description]
species, or that the impression of his terrible
adventure was naturally lessened by time, it
seemed that he, by and by, began to neglect
his cornfield, to be an irregular and unfrequent
visiter at the religious meetings, which
he had for a while faithfully attended, and
was again, after a time, seen on his solitary
rambles among the mountains.
Yes, Merry the Miner was once more seen
with dog and gun bending his way towards
the hills; Merry the Miner had forgotten his
religion and his vow, and returned to his
original love and ancient passion. He had
thought upon the matter, and he thought a
happy thought. The cave was accursed and
forbidden ground, to be sure, with all its mysterious
treasures; but the brook that rolled
from it, bearing coins and jewels, to be scattered
unregarded on its bed—there was
nothing unholy, nothing perilous in the brook:
why should not Merry the Miner lay claim
to its unforbidden riches?
At this thought, Merry the Miner was conquered;
he snatched his gun, he called his
dog, and set out in quest of the brook. That
brook, however, to his surprise and consternation,
was no where to be found. There
were a thousand brooks rolling down the
-- 070 --
[figure description] Page 070.[end figure description]
mountain, but in none could Merry discover
the singular runnel of the cave. In the agitation
of his mind both while going and returning
from the cavern, he had forgotten to
take any note of the path by which he had
reached it; and now the place of the brook,
and the features that distinguished it from
others, were alike forgotten. Had he lost it
then? was he to be denied even the possession
of its little treasures?
Merry the Miner waxed wroth with his
hard fortune, and took another vow; he swore
he would find that brook again, if he sought it
to his dying day.
And this vow, it is believed, he religiously
kept. Year after year, he was seen wending
his solitary way up the mountains, exploring
every little stream, every foamy torrent, every
dried up channel, with an eager, hopeful eye.
Year after year, the search was continued,
with the same eagerness, the same hope, the
same ill fortune. His dog died with old age;
Merry himself grew palsied with years; but
still, day by day, his thin gray hairs were
seen fluttering in the breeze, as he tottered
along the mountain paths with zeal, as in his
better years, in quest of the golden brook and
perilous cavern.
-- 071 --
[figure description] Page 071.[end figure description]
How long the quest continued, and when
or how it ended, no one ever knew. Merry
at last vanished from men's eyes, and was
seen no more stealing like a ghost among
the woods and hills: but what had been his
fate could be only conjectured. Some few
years after he disappeared, a skeleton was
found by a party of hunters in a desolate
place among the mountains. It was generally
believed to be that of the poor gold-hunter,
who had perished in some unknown
way in his unfriended rambles.
Others there were who rejected the common
belief. According to them, Merry the
Miner had again lighted on his long sought
rivulet, had again entered his mystic cave;
and would there, perhaps, be discovered by
some future adventurer, a man of stone like
the shapes around him.
-- 072 -- p018-073
A TALE OF A SNAG.
[figure description] Page 072.[end figure description]
CHAPTER I.
Every body remembers the complimentary
admission of the Englishman in relation to
the Mississippi—that it was a very fine river
for a new country; a declaration which is,
however, only remembered to be laughed at
as an excellent joke, illustrative of the illiberal,
all-decrying spirit of so many British
travellers in America. The jest would not
have been so obvious, had the traveller added
that “the Mississippi would have been a much
finer river if in an old country;” for he would
have then spoken a truth not to be denied by
any informed and reflecting mind. It is only
in a mountainous country—the only old portion
of a continent, as every one with the
least tincture of geological science knows—
that rivers appear in their true grandeur and
-- 073 --
[figure description] Page 073.[end figure description]
beauty. Immensity of expanse and endless
leagues of length, are as nothing, without the
accompaniments of noble scenery along the
banks. The Amazon and the Nile, ploughing
their way through flat deserts of mud and sand,
are but overgrown, unromantic ditches, from
which the traveller longs to escape, to exchange
their gigantic tameness for the smallest
brooks chattering among cliffs and foaming
over precipices. It is more to his magnificent
banks than to the historic associations
connected with them, that father Rhine
owes his supremacy over all the rivers of
Europe; and the same cause—the glorious
assemblage of hills that follow him almost to
the ocean—has elevated the Hudson into a
similar pre-eminence among the navigable
rivers of the United States, nearly all of
which flow, for two-thirds of their length,
through a level alluvion of their own forming.
Of such a character is the Mississippi, a dull
monster, winding his sluggish way through
a wilderness of bog and forest, and often
swelling above it. When Nature, in some
new act of creation, has heaved up the reeking
valley a few thousand feet higher, and
studded it with peaks and promontories, with
chains of Alps and Andes, the Father Water
-- 074 --
[figure description] Page 074.[end figure description]
will be worthy of the admiration it can now
claim only as being the finest canal for commercial
purposes in the whole world.
But, destitute of beauty, of every element
of the romantic and picturesque, as the Mississippi
really is, it must be confessed that it
possesses many remarkable features of interest,
and that the impression it leaves on
the traveller's mind is deep, strong, and abiding.
Its very deformity becomes, after a
time, impressive; and the imagination is stirred
by the desolation that haunts its borders—
those banks of mouldering clay, bristling
with dead trees, or tumbling under the weight
of the green forests they bear with them pellmell
into the flood—those never-ending
groves of cottonwoods springing from the
flats—those walls of willows sagging to and
fro in the current, in imitation of the more
formidable snags and sawyers that vibrate in
deeper water, hard by—those verdant pillars,
the ruins of branchless trees matted over
with ivies and peavines, jutting from protruding
banks—those long festoons of Spanish
moss swinging from the boughs, like cobwebs
spun by Brodignagian spiders—those rafts of
drift-timber lodged upon the low islands; in
short, the thousand other features that mingle
-- 075 --
[figure description] Page 075.[end figure description]
into monotony along the whole course of the
river from the Ohio to the sea.
The first effect of the Mississippi on the
mind of the traveller ascending it—the Coast,
or region of plantations, once left behind—
is undoubtedly weariness, if not even disgust.
Its scenery, varied only by alternations of
river and chute—the one wide, proud, majestic,
the other narrow, with a fierce and turbulent
flood—by windings and contortions that
exclude all distant prospects, and make one
feel as if in a kind of moving prison—oppresses
and almost stupifies the spirit. A
feeling of exile, of exclusion from the world,
preys upon it; and melancholy creeps over
every thought. The solitudes become more
solitary; the cottonwoods rise in double
gloom; the boughs and the tree-tops, as you
brush by them round some projecting point,
rustle in sadness; and the gush of the river
has in it something sullen and sorrowful.
It is then, amid these solitudes, that the
voyager begins to feel an interest in the river.
A species of superstition steals into his mind,
and gradually endows the flood with vitality.
He is no longer floating along a mere watercourse;
he feels as if resting on the bosom
of some sublime monster, which heaves under
-- 076 --
[figure description] Page 076.[end figure description]
his weight, but with no sympathy for his feeble
human yearnings. In all common rivers,
a little poetic feeling enables one to find something
like sentience and congeniality in their
waters. One can fancy that a bubbling brook
rejoices with him; that a river, dashing gaily
along over bright pebbles and sands, ripples
up to his feet as if with the sportful inclinations
of a living creature; or, if his mood be
darker, he can discover in the sounds the
echoes of his own plaintive murmurs. At
least, if we do not not think so, we act as if
we felt it, and rejoice or murmur with ordinary
waters as with a friend. But there is no
feeling of companionship in the Mississippi.
A few days upon his bosom, and we feel ourselves
unworthy his regards; we laugh or
mourn, and the monarch of rivers passes on
with majestic unconcern. He is too great
for friendship; he was made for reverence, for
fear, for awe; feelings which creep, one after
the other, into the mind, and subdue it.
And then comes the thought of his prodigious
length, of the vast volumes of element
collected from the four quarters of the wind,
and borne, with the wreck and ruins of
mountain, prairie, and forest, and of all living
things that peopled them, to the Mexican sea,
-- 077 --
[figure description] Page 077.[end figure description]
which, half filled up by him already, he is
destined, sooner or later, to convert into dry
land. That withered branch floating by may
have been torn from a fir on the ridge of the
Chippewyan; that quivering log flourished
once, perhaps, a noble pine, on the top of the
Pennsylvania Alleghanies or the Unikas of
North Carolina; that bundle of grassy weeds
was a sheaf of wild rice from the neighbourhood
of the Lake of the Woods; and that
stalk of prickly pear has wounded the foot
of the hunter on the plains of Mexico.
One thinks of his boundless extent, and
looks upon his surface for the evidences of
his boundless power. There is a treacherous
calmness over it all; the noisy billows, the
merry ripples, that animate common rivers,
are here seldom seen. The Mississippi flows
along like a river of oil or lava, `still-vexed,'
not agitated, a succession of secret whirlpools,
of sucks and eddies that boil below,
with scarce a mark of their fury visible on the
surface. It is a flood that seems to be constantly
convulsed—but convulsed like a
strong-hearted sufferer, who conceals his
throes in his own bosom, bearing a placid
countenance even when the turmoil within is
greatest. One cannot look long at the
-- 078 --
[figure description] Page 078.[end figure description]
Mississippi, and wonder why so many powerful
swimmers who have fallen into it, have sunk,
never again to rise.
In a word, the Mississippi is the most august
of rivers, and few men can ascend it
without paying, in some mode and at some
time or other, the homage of awe. I have
often, in the gloom of evening—for at that
hour a double solemnity rests upon the scene—
watched its effects on the minds of my fellow-voyagers—
men of all characters, grave
and gay, the boisterous and the thoughtful—
thronging the boiler-deck of our goodly
steamer, all engaged in their several amusements.
The cards (wo's the word!) rattle
on the table, (if a table be there,) the jest
goes round, prankish tricks are played, songs
sung, and merry stories told; all is jollity and
laughter. But by and by, as the evening
darkens on, some one more contemplative
than the rest casts his eyes upon the tide,
forgets the mirth around him, and is subdued
to reverential awe. He calls the attention
of those near him to some customary object—
a great tree gliding along, a sawyer rising
to the surface, a raft collected at the head of
an island, a bank falling in, a torrent whirling
from a chute, a distant steamboat flashing
-- 079 --
[figure description] Page 079.[end figure description]
down like the wind, an eddy boiling up from
below, or a whirlpool sucking down a floating
bough—all common-place and every-day
objects, but all equally significant of the
power of the great river: they look on, and
also forget the song and jolly story. Others
imitate them, one by one; and presently all
eyes are fixed upon the river, all lips are for
awhile silent, all breasts filled with vague
reverence. Such is the tribute that human
nature—often unconsciously—pays to the
Mississippi.
It is in those serious evening moments that
men, who have voyaged often and long on the
Mississippi, and stored their memories with
the thousand dismal legends of disaster with
which its history is fraught, feel most inclined
to unlock their stores for the benefit of their
neighbours. They are then sure of listeners,
and of listeners in the right frame of mind.
The solemn feeling awakened by the river itself,
is doubly increased when we listen to
the tales of tragedy, now associated with
almost every point of its navigation.
Of these stories I have heard, and could
record enough to fill a volume; and, indeed,
I once had some thoughts of venturing before
the world with such a publication, not
-- 080 --
[figure description] Page 080.[end figure description]
doubting but that the nature of the subject and the
name—“Steamboat Chronicle, or a History of
Disasters by Steam on the Mississippi,”—
would ensure great success to the undertaking;
but upon informing a bookseller of my
design, he assured me the work would not
do. “There is no occasion for it,” said he;
“men that are curious about steamboat accidents
on the Mississippi, have but to refer to
the daily papers, each of which is a history—
or each of which, at least, contains a history,
a never-ending history, of steamboat
disasters, published one chapter a-day!” My
bookseller was right, and I was convinced.
I leave the subject to be handled, as usual, by
its daily historians.
It was my fate, however, to hear, on one
of the occasions spoken of, a story of a remarkable
catastrophe, a tale of a Snag,
which, I believe, has never made its way into
any newspaper; for which reason, and because
it is in some respects very different
from the common run of “Deplorable Accidents,”
I think it worthy of being laid before
the reader.
-- 081 --
CHAPTER II.
[figure description] Page 081.[end figure description]
The narrator was a very odd looking and
oddly behaved personage—an Englishman,
as he took occasion to assure his fellow-travellers,
and a commercial traveller or agent,
as I suspected, though of that he himself said
nothing. When and where he got into the
boat I never knew. I did not observe him
until the day he thought fit to leave us; and
then it was at the dinner table, where he was
suddenly made conspicuous by the act of a
Red River Kentuckian—that is to say, a
Kentuckian who had migrated a few years
before to the Red River country—who, being
seated opposite to him at table, drew all eyes
upon the gentleman, on whom, during the previous
five minutes, his own had been fastened,
by exclaiming with much earnestness and
-- 082 --
[figure description] Page 082.[end figure description]
energy—“Stranger! I don't want to hurt
your feelings—but you are the ugliest man
that was ever turned out of the workshop of
creation!”—a salutation which he concluded
by a thump on the table that set dishes aud
cutlery in commotion.
“Sir-r-r!” sputtered the gentleman, in wrath
and confusion, “if you mean to insult me —”
“By no means,” quoth the son of Red
River, with a gracious nod; “but the thing
was on my mind, and I couldn't help telling
you so.” With which explanation, which
was doubtless meant to be, and was by the
speaker himself considered, a sufficient apology
for the liberty he had taken, he fell
to work on his dinner; leaving the unlucky
Englishman to digest the observation, and the
merriment it excited among all at the table,
as he could. The poor fellow was wofully
put out, looking daggers and ratsbane, now
at the man who had insulted him, now at
those who laughed loudest or stared hardest;
and, at last, his rage or confusion becoming
insupportable, started up to leave the table;
when the Kentuckian, who was at the bottom
a very amiable personage, perceiving his distress,
rose up in like manner, and stretching
his hand across the table in the most friendly
-- 083 --
[figure description] Page 083.[end figure description]
way in the world, exclaimed, “I tell you what,
partner, I did not mean to hurt your feelings
no how; but if you think I've insulted you, I
ask your pardon, and there's my hand on it.
I didn't know you were a foreigner, or I should
have bewar'd the British lion.”
“Hall right!” ejaculated the stranger, looking
vastly relieved, and grinning under the
friendly gripe of the apologist; “hit's all right
sir, and there's no offence. But I must say,
sir, you Americans, sir, are the greatest quizzes
in the world, sir; yes sir, hods bobs, or my
name ha'nt Sniggins, sir.”
Upon which, with a he-he-he, Mr. Sniggins
sat down again to his rations, which he appeared
to discuss with infinite relish.
This little incident has nothing to do with
the Tale of the Snag which I am about to
chronicle; but it was important, inasmuch as
it introduced Mr. Sniggins to the notice of
all on board, and, through him, made us acquainted
with the aforesaid story; which he
would perhaps never have told, being obviously
an uneasy, timorous, jealous-pated
man, who would have kept aloof from all on
board the steamer, had he been left to himself.
However offended, as he seemed to be at first,
by the Kentuckian's extraordinary greeting,
-- 084 --
[figure description] Page 084.[end figure description]
it was plain the apology had set all right, and
won his heart into the bargain. From that
moment until the hour of his leaving the boat,
which happened the ensuing evening, he became
quite a bustling facetious personage,
making himself very merry on the subject of
the national traits of the Americans, among
which he was pleased to reckon as the chief,
a villanous propensity to quiz and bamboozle
foreigners, particularly Englishmen. It was
to this propensity he attributed the Kentuckian's
attack: “The gentleman,” he said, “knew
he was an Englishman—any one might know
that—he thanked God he bore the mark of
the freeborn Briton on his brow; and the gentleman
thought he might get up a little bit of
fun at his expense. But he was no Johnny
Raw—he had been in the land before, (this
was not even his first appearance on a Mississippi
steamer;) he knew the Americans,
and he was not to be humbugged, no, not he;
gentlemen who tried that thing with him,
would find it was—all around his hat.”
Now, as Mr. Sniggins was no beauty, his
person being small, and the several parts
somewhat awkwardly put together; his visage,
too, uncommonly beefy and rubicund,
with a wide mouth, a preposterous nose,
-- 085 --
[figure description] Page 085.[end figure description]
protruding eyes of oyster-shell hue, that had a
suffering, suffocating look, a very oddly wrinkled
brow, surrounded by short lint-white
hair of bristling quality, that looked on his ruddy
poll like the pale glory round the head of a
painted martyr; I am not altogether certain
that the Kentuckian was not speaking his true
mind and honest opinion, when he pronounced
him the ugliest person he had ever looked
upon. But Mr. Sniggins satisfied himself that
the whole was a quiz; he knew the Americans,
and they would quiz English travellers:
the present attempt of the Kentuckian was
but a small one; he could tell instances of a
much more extraordinary character, and one
in particular—a most astounding case—where
a whole steamboat's crew, passengers, hands,
and all, had entered into a conspiracy to bamboozle
him, under circumstances, and at a
time, which would seem to have made a jest
the last thing that rational beings would
have thought on. It was an amazing proof
of the incorrigible propensity of Americans
to bamboozle Englishmen; and, as such, he
would relate it.
It was the dusk of evening, and the
steamer was struggling against the fierce
current in the bend of the river below
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Memphis, at which place Mr. Sniggins was resolved
to end his voyage. He had followed his
friend, the Kentuckian, to the boiler-deck,
where, as usual, remarkable cases of boiler-burstings,
burnings, snaggings, &c. were told;
some of them, as it appeared, too remarkable
for Mr. Sniggins, who—if the teller happened
to fix his eyes upon him during the course of
the story—commonly expressed his incredulity
(for he really seemed to believe half the
stories were invented merely to quiz him)
by an expressive grin, and a still more expressive
sweep of his finger round his beaver.
“Hall humbug, gentlemen; can't humbug
me!” he exclaimed with great dignity, after
listening to a dozen or more very credible
anecdotes. “Tell you a better case of bamboozling,
attempted at my expense on this
here hidentical river, but no go: shall remember
it to my dying day; would have sent an
account of it to Blackwood or the Monthly
Magazine, but was principled against writing
about Americans;—cause why?—Americans
too techy—tell truth of 'em, fall in a passion;
telling lying compliments, nobody cares!”
Mr. Sniggins looked around him with a
Pyrrhonical smile, drew forth a red and yellow
handkerchief, blew his nose, restored the
-- 087 --
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handkerchief to his coat pocket and then began
his story.
“Gentlemen have heard of the steamer
Samson Hagonistes? Nice boat, first class
steamer—”
“Ay,” cried one of the gentlemen present,
“I remember her; she blew up somewhere
down the river, and went to Jericho, with all
hands, four years ago.”
Mr. Sniggins took off his hat, swept his
hand round it once or twice, with a look
half smiling, half impatient; and then exclaimed—
“There it is! Americans will make believe
black's white, and white black; no
mercy on a poor Englishman! No sir,” he
added, with much importance, “the Samson
Hagonistes did not blow up, down the river,
four years ago; but was snagged, up the
river, seven years ago! Know all about it,
sir; was in her when she was snagged and
lost; will remember her to my dying day.”
“Well,” said the passenger who had interrupted
him, looking very well satisfied with
the correction; “if you were in her, you must
know. But I have some kind of notion she
blew up.”
“Snagged, sir, hawfully snagged,” said
-- 088 --
[figure description] Page 088.[end figure description]
Mr. Sniggins; “was in her, as I said, and
know all about it, and intend to tell you all
about it; though it isn't the snagging I care
so much about; it was the humbug that followed
after—the attempt at humbug, (for it
was no go,)—the attempt made to cheat me
into a disbelief of the evidence of my own
senses—a most stupendous hattempt, sir! It
was on the 23d day of May, just seven years
ago, when I took passage in the Samson
Hagonistes, at New Horleans bound for
Louisville. First time I was ever on the Mississippi,
but had been in the country before,
and knew the people. Fine set of passengers,
but sad wags, had no mercy on me—told me
lies all day long, and wanted me to put them
in my journal. (Kept a journal then, but
took care what I put in it; never meant to
print—kept my observations to gratify Mrs.
Sniggins.) One gentleman told me it was
these here hidentical cottonwood trees along
the river that produced the famous shortstaple
Mississippi cotton—no conscience in
the gentleman! Another would have had me
believe a great troop of turkeys I saw on a
sand-bank, were nothing more than turkey-buzzards.
Told him he was a buzzard himself,
and then hasked his pardon, as he fell
-- 089 --
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into a passion. Was a little humbugged
about one matter: There was a gentleman
on board, Mr. Jones, of some place up the
river, at the mouth of the Yellow Stone or
Columbia, don't remember which, but said it
was a fine country for raising cattle and
horses. Well, Jones became my friend, and
was a very good fellow, and I liked him; only
he swore too hard, and would gamble all day
long and sometimes all night. He persuaded
me that a young bear, which somebody had
tied to the stove-pipe on the hurricane deck,
was of the domesticated species, and would
play like a kitten; and I went to play with it,
and it clawed me, and tore a new pair of drab
breeches I had on all to pieces, and scared
me, you've no idea! Well, Jones acknowledged
that was a humbug, as there was no
domesticated species of bears whatever; but
he was sorry for it, and hasked my pardon,
and we became very good friends; and he
helped me to discover and counteract the
tricks the other passengers were trying to put
upon me.”
“Well, gentlemen,” continued Mr. Sniggins,
“we proceeded on our voyage; nothing
of consequence occurring until the night of
the 4th of June, when we got to a dangerous
-- 090 --
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place in the navigation, as Jones told me, in
the `Earthquake Country;' which is somewhere
above, where the river is so full of
snags and halligators.”
Here a young traveller interrupted Mr.
Sniggins, to assure him there were no alligators
so high up the river. Mr. Sniggins
touched his hat with a deprecating look; and
the other passengers interfered, bidding the
youth hold his tongue, as he knew very well
that alligators were found in the Earthquake
Country; while the Kentuckian desired him
to remember how common they were in the
Salt River of Kentucky.
“Yes,” said Mr. Sniggins, triumphantly;
“I remember, Jones told me all about them
Salt River halligators, and that they were so
tame you could see a dozen of 'em at a time
snoozing at any tavern door on the river.
Well, gentlemen,” he continued, resuming his
narrative, “it was the night of the 4th June,
and we were in the Earthquake Country. I
went to the captain, and inquired if all was
safe; and being assured all was well enough,
and no fear of bursting or snagging, I crept
to my berth to sleep, being very drowsy; for
I had been up all the preceding night in consequence
of Jones telling me he thought there
-- 091 --
[figure description] Page 091.[end figure description]
was something wrong in the boilers; though,
as he acknowledged next morning, he was
entirely mistaken, and had himself slept quite
soundly all night.
“When I got into my berth, the passengers,
and my friend Jones among them, were
at the tables in the cabin, playing Brag and
Old Sledge, and all that sort of thing—that is,
gambling; and, what with scolding, swearing,
whistling, laughing, and quarrelling, they kept
up such a din that I found it impossible to sleep.
Bore it awhile very patiently, waiting till 10
o'clock, when the rules of the boat, which
were hung up in frames about the cabin, required
all playing to be put an end to. But
10 o'clock came, and the gentlemen played
on. Was obliged to remind them that the
hour had passed; no go, no effect, except to
make them laugh, and bid me mind my own
business. I threatened, at last, to call the
captain to enforce the rules of the boat.
Upon this, they all got up, saying that if I
wished them to cease playing, why, certainly,
as I was a foreigner, they would do so to
please me; but they advised me, if I valued
my safety, to get out of my berth and dress
myself; or, if I would not do that, by all means,
not to fall asleep. `The truth is,' said my
-- 092 --
[figure description] Page 092.[end figure description]
friend Jones, `we are now in a very dangerous
place, in the thick of the snags—the earthquake
of 1812 having tumbled all the woods
into the river; and besides, it is a dark, cloudy
night, and the pilot is a hard-drinking character.
' Other gentlemen all joined in, said
Jones spoke nothing but the truth, and swore
it was their unheasiness, their fear of going
to bed while in so dangerous a place, that
kept them up gambling so late; for why, they
would not go to bed, and they must kill time
somehow. Jones asked me if I had a life-preserver,
advised me to tie my trunks to ash
logs for buoys, if I had any thing valuable in
them, and then told me doleful stories of haccidents
by snagging that had happened in this
very part of the river; and the others all did
the same thing: never heard so many dreadful
stories in my life. Didn't believe 'em,
though; thought they wanted to quiz me,
and told 'em so, and they went away, hoping
I would be none the worse for my hunbelief.
They left the cabin, declaring they would be
near the boats in case of haccident.
“I thought they were fibbing, but was a
little uneasy for awhile, and then fell sound
asleep—great fool for doing so; got to dreaming
of the last story they had told me—a most
-- 093 --
[figure description] Page 093.[end figure description]
hawful one; and, as I heard afterwards, quite
true: 'twas of a steamer that was snagged up
in the Earthquake Country, somewhere near
where we then were; 'twas night, the mate had
just gone into the forecastle to turn in, when
the snag—a tremendous big one—struck the
boat, pierced the forecastle, took the mate,
just as he was fetching a wide yawn, in the
mouth, and, 'orrible to relate, came out at
the nape of his neck; in which condition he
was borne by the snag clear through the deck,
twelve feet, and left struggling in the air like
a fish strung by the gills to a pole. That
was the story. Hawfulaccident! never hear
of such things in Hengland.
“Well, gentlemen,” continued Mr. Sniggins,
warming with the story, “I dreamed of
seeing the mate sticking on the snag, and
was waked up with fright. Woke up in good
time; heard an 'orrid noise on the decks—
squealing, yelling, swearing; and then, slambang—
can't describe it; thought we was running
over another steamboat, there was
such a grinding, and crashing, and cracking,
and tossing topsy-turvy, and I don't
know what: heard people scream, `A snag!
a snag!' and knew all about it. Jumped out
of berth; didn't know what I was about;
-- 094 --
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picked up clothes and trunks, ran out on the gallery;
found steamer sinking by the stern,
going down like a stone; another steamer
alongside, people jumping into her; gave a
jump, too—fell short—caught by the rail—
knocked a tooth out; man drowning caught
me by the leg—kicked him loose—clambered
up—tumbled over a wood-pile—don't know
what happened—great crowd about me—
somebody bled me—lost senses—put to bed;
sound sleep all night—woke in the morning,
and found Jones standing by, looking at me,
and asking how I did. Jumped up quite lively,
but all over sore; thanked God to find him
alive; asked how many had been saved?—saw
a whole heap of 'em: all laughed, and Jones
said, I was out of my head. `No,' said I, `I
am well enough; glad to find so many saved—
what an 'orrid accident!' `What accident
do you mean?' said Jones, looking at
me, I never was looked at so in my life. `The
snag!' said I, `that 'ideous snag, that sunk
us! 'ow lucky there was another boat to pick
us up! quite a nice snug boat—what's her
name?'
“Gentlemen!” cried the narrator, here looking
round upon his deeply interested auditors,
with a martyr-like shrug and twist of the
-- 095 --
[figure description] Page 095.[end figure description]
mouth—“would you believe it? My friend
Jones wanted to quiz me heven then! He—
he—you won't believe it!—he assured me,
upon his soul—yes gentlemen, he tried to
make me believe, we had not been snagged at
all! Yes, gentlemen; and the others all
joined him, swearing point-blank, (I never did
see gentlemen commit perjury so coolly,) that
nothing had happened to our boat at all, except
running into a bank once in the night,
from which we soon backed into deep water.
They swore there had been no snagging, no
drowning, no sinking, no jumping of crew and
passengers into another boat; they swore I
was still in the Samson Hagonistes, steaming
up the Mississippi, fourteen miles an hour!
They swore this, gentlemen! they all swore
it: heven then, hafter that dreadful haccident,
they—was there ever such a people?—they
thought of nothing but bamboozling me! I
showed 'em my bruises, (my head was all
broke and tied up,) my shatterd tooth, my
bandaged arm; and they—what do you think
they said? Why, that—(you'll scarce believe
me!) that I had jumped out of my berth
in my sleep, broke my head and tooth over
the table, and knocked my senses out; and
that they had bled me to bring me to life; in
-- 096 --
[figure description] Page 096.[end figure description]
short, they swore that the whole affair of the
snagging was a chimera—that I had dreamed
it!
“In short, gentlemen,” added Mr. Sniggins,
who could not sufficiently convey his
wonder at the extraordinary perversity of his
former fellow-voyagers,—“they conspired
against me, all of them, the crew and passengers
of the Samson Hagonistes; and even
those of the boat that had picked us up,
united in the same story. The captain of the
latter (I don't know his name,) had, to
humour the joke, given place to the master
of the Samson, who swore to me, with brazen
effrontery, that the boat was his boat,
the aforesaid Samson Hagonistes,—that the
strange passengers (that is, the passengers of
the second boat,) were persons he had taken
up at a village in the night; and these gentlemen
swore the same thing,—they were all
leagued against me.
“The quiz—that is, the attempt, for it
never succeeded—became hintolerable. My
friend Jones was the honly man who admitted
(and that in secret) that it was a quiz:
and but for him, I believe I should have gone
distracted among them. Never was man so
argued out of his senses! Argument failing,
-- 097 --
[figure description] Page 097.[end figure description]
they even tried to ridicule me into belief of
the preposterous humbug; never was man so
furiously laughed at! In short, the thing was
hinsupportable, I could stand it no longer;
and feeling myself growing stronger and
stronger every hour, and finding that my
friend Jones was about to go ashore at a village
which we reached about mid-day, I resolved
to land with him, to escape what I
now considered the grossest himposition and
persecution. Ashore, accordingly, I went:
and there,” continued the narrator with emphasis,
“my friend Jones pointed out to me,
on the wheel-house of the retreating steamer,
the last and most astonishing proof of the
pains my tormentors had taken to make
their humbug as perfect as possible. I saw,
gentlemen,—what do you think,—what can
you think, I saw upon that wheel-house?”—
cried Mr. Sniggins, panting for breath.
“Why,” cried the youth who had once
before interrupted him, “you saw the name
of the steamboat, I suppose—What was it?”
“No, sir,” cried the traveller, opening his
eyes to express the intensity of his astonishment,
“they had daubed her name out, and
painted over it, in large letters, the name of
the Samson Hagonistes!!”—
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“Passengers for Memphis!” roared the
clerk of the steamer, as, at that moment, our
hissing vessel struck the shore. Mr. Sniggins
vanished from our eyes, leaving all in a
stupor of admiration. The next instant he
was seen on the bank, with a porter shouldering
his luggage, and leading the way up the
bluff. The boat had pushed off; Mr. Sniggins
turned round to wave a courteous farewell.
His countenance, radiant with self-approving
sagacity, said, as plainly as countenance
could, “You see, gentlemen, I am
not the person to be humbugged!”
There was no standing that look: it broke
the charm that had kept his hearers dumb
with astonishment; and a roar of laughter,
such as added a year to the life of every soul
on board, it was so loud, so mirthful, so care-killing,
bore the farewell of his late companions
to the retreating Mr. Sniggins.
-- 099 -- p018-100
MY FRIENDS IN THE MADHOUSE.
[figure description] Page 099.[end figure description]
CHAPTER I. A VISIT TO THE ASYLUM.
I HAVE always been of opinion that madmen
are by no means so mad as the world
usually supposes them—an idea which, if not
originally impressed, was strongly confirmed
on my mind by the conduct of a lunatic in a
certain Asylum, in which it was my chance
to be a rambler and a looker-on, at a period
when the visiting physician, was going his
rounds, with some five or six score of medical
students at his heels. Following this long
train of philanthropists through the wards, I
enjoyed (if so it could be called) an opportunity
of looking into many cells, thrown
open only to the medical attendants and their
pupils, upon the miserable tenants—victims
-- 100 --
[figure description] Page 100.[end figure description]
of mania in every form—whose appearance
sometimes shocked, and always saddened, the
beholder.—Truly, we know nothing of the
extraordinary structure and tremendous energies
of the human mind, that grandest and
most amazing of created things, until we see
it in ruins.
A more agreeable—or to speak correctly,
less repulsive—spectacle, at least to me, was
twice or thrice presented in the persons of
lunatics whose malady was of such a harmless
character that they, instead of being confined
in cells, were allowed to ramble up and
down the wards as they pleased, talking with
the officers of the Asylum, sometimes even
assisting them in ministering to their fellow
maniacs, and, above all, enjoying themselves,
in conversation with such visiters as chance
threw in their way.
One of these unfortunates, seen on the present
occasion for the first time, was a young
man of spirited and humorous deportment,
who betrayed much satisfaction at the appearance
of the physician, shook him heartily by
the hand, gave him, without waiting to be asked,
his wrist to feel and his tongue to inspect,
and then demanded, with a very business-like
nod of the head, “Well now, Doctor, what
-- 101 --
[figure description] Page 101.[end figure description]
do you think of me? Capital, eh? quite right
in the upper story?”
“Oh, certainly, John,” replied the physician—
“doing extremely well.” With which
he seemed disposed to pass on. But John
was not so easily satisfied.
“None of your quaker answers, if you
please, Doctor,” qouth he, with a knowing
grin; “answer to the point, like a gentleman,
and don't fob me off like one of your regular
madmen. I say, Doctor, what's your ideas
concerning the state of my cerebellum? Just
say the word—am I mad or not?”
“Mad? Oh, no, certainly,” said the physician,
smiling; “nobody could think such a
fine funny fellow as John mad.”
“I'll be hanged if you don't, though!” said
John, with the utmost coolness, “and I wonder
why you can't say so, like an honest fellow.
But I say, Doctor,” he continued, observing
the physician about to pass on a second
time, “just answer me another question
or two, before you go. All these young gentlemen
here are young doctors, a'n't they?”
To this the doctor replied in the affirmative;
whereupon John jumped upon a
chair, and looking round him with an air of
comical solicitude, exclaimed—“Well now,
-- 102 --
[figure description] Page 102.[end figure description]
while there's so many of you present, all
doctors, just let's settle the question by vote.
I say, gentlemen,” he cried, “the Doctor
thinks I am mad, and I think I am not: Put
it to vote among you; for, being doctors, and
such a heap of you, you'll know all about it.—
Here I am, gentlemen, John Jones by name;—
mad, or not mad?”
To this demand several of the young men
answered smilingly, in the words of their preceptor,
by assuring John he was not mad.
“Gammon!” said John, “or why don't
you let me out? But I tell you what, my
gentlemen, you may think me as mad as you
please: all that I can say is, I think you just
as mad as myself, and—hang it—a great deal
madder; and, what's more, I can prove it.”
“Very well, John,” said the physician, who
seemed amused by the oddity of his patient,
and willing to humour him a little; “if you
can prove that, I shall clap them into the cells
forthwith, and make you their keeper.”
“It's a bargain,” said John, turning to the
students; whom he addressed in the following
terms, grinning all the time as if with the
triumph of anticipated victory.
“Here you are, a hundred or more ablebodied
young fellows, inhabitants of a
-- 103 --
[figure description] Page 103.[end figure description]
country where labour and industry, always in
greater demand than professional science and
dignity, always secure the rewards which
science does not—the independence and
wealth, which are the great aims of every
American. I hold you mad, first, because
you have deserted the fields you would
have passed useful and happy lives in tilling,
to enter upon a professional career in which
you will, if you don't starve outright, remain
poor unlucky drones for life: secondly, because,
if you must have a profession, you have
chosen the worst of all professions in the
world—the poorest in emolument, the lowest
in influence, the least in dignity. Had you
chosen the law, you might have gabbled and
cheated your way to fortune, and to Congress
into the bargain; with divinity, you might
have married rich wives and preached bad
sermons, in religious contentment to your dying
days. Whereas, as doctors, supposing
you don't prove, from sheer incompetency,
public murderers, you will waste your days
in works of humanity, for which you are only
half paid, and not thanked at all; besides being
deprived of all those side means of making a
fortune, which belong to the other professions.
Thirdly and finally, you are mad, because, if
-- 104 --
[figure description] Page 104.[end figure description]
you will be doctors, you yet go to the trouble
and expense of studying the art; when the
world, and the American world in particular,
would have liked you just as well, and, indeed,
a great deal better, if you had begun to slash
and physic, without any study or preparation
whatever. Men must be mad, indeed, who will
study physic, when they can make a fortune
three times as fast by quackery!”
With these words, delivered I knew not
whether most to the edification or diversion
of the young doctors, who straightway took
their departure in search of new patients,
honest John descended from his chair, and,
clapping his hands into his pockets, began to
saunter up and down the passage, whistling
Yankee Doodle with great vigour and execution.
I felt desirous of making the acquaintance
of a lunatic so very methodical in his madness,
and accordingly stepped up to honest
John, and assuring him that his oration had
quite convinced me of his sanity, and the
utter distraction of his scientific hearers,
begged to be informed to what cause he
owed his incarceration in that abode of the
crack-brained.
“Oh,” said John, grinning with delight,
-- 105 --
[figure description] Page 105.[end figure description]
(for he was vastly flattered by my complimentary
address,) and looking volumes of
sagacity—“we have a mode of accounting
for it here among us. The world is composed
of wise men and madmen, the latter
being in the majority—ay, sir, hang it! a
hundred to one, undoubtedly. Well, sir, what
can a few wise people do among a myriad of
mad ones? In short, sir, the mad fellows
have got the upper hand of us, the wise ones,
and—here we are in Bedlam!”
“The explanation,” said I, “is both simple
and striking. But the mad fellows could not
have imprisoned you, unless under some
pretext.”
“True,” said John, touching his nose;
“leave madmen alone for that: every body
knows they are cunning. The pretext is, of
course, that I am mad. But the truth is,
they clapped me in here on account of my
philanthropy, as shown in my extraordinary
invention.”
I took the liberty to ask what that invention
was; a question that seemed greatly to
surprise worthy John, as indicating a very
extraordinary degree of ignorance upon my
part. But this ignorance he hastened to remove
by informing me, that, both as a
-- 106 --
[figure description] Page 106.[end figure description]
philanthropist and patriot, he had been grieved by
the quarrel betwixt the abolitionists and
slave-owners, which appeared to him to
threaten the very existence of the republic.
“Besides,” said he, “I was somewhat of an
abolitionist myself, quite desirous to see the
poor blackies as free as blackbirds; but then,
I saw clear enough, they never could be liberated,
without ruining their masters, as well
as all the agricultural interests of the South,
unless some means could be devised for supplying
their loss, by finding substitutes for
them. The substitutes once found, I had no
doubt every body would come round to abolition
in a moment, the Southerners in particular,
who, the Lord knows, are sick of the
bother of their labourers. Well, sir,” quoth
John, “to find these substitutes became the
problem to be solved; and I solved it, sir, by
the invention of my patent niggers to be
worked by horse-power—yes, sir, by the invention
(and a grand one it was,) of patent
niggers—men, sir, not of perishing and suffering
flesh and blood, but of wood, iron,
leather and canvass, so constructed as (by
means of horse-power to put them in motion)
to be a great deal better than the real niggers;
because, sir, they were to do all kinds
-- 107 --
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of work, except blacking shoes and feeding
the cattle, (upon my soul, sir, I could never
make them do that,) and never get tired, or
sick, or sulky—never die, or run away, or
rise in insurrection—never require feeding,
nor clothing, nor physicking—in short, sir,
the best and cheapest niggers that human
wit ever imagined! With these, sir, my glorious
invention, I expected to free the blackies,
and make my own fortune; and accordingly
carried my models to the Abolition
Society, to get their recommendation; when,
sir, instead of the rapture and triumph which
I looked for among the members, rage and
jealousy took possession of their souls.
They could not bear that they should lose the
honour, and glory, and profit of completing
the great work of emancipation—that I, who
was not actually a professed member of their
society—or that any body, save themselves,
should reap the splendid reward; and, accordingly,
they knocked my models to pieces,
maltreated myself, and ended by charging
me with madness, and bringing me to this
place in a strait-jacket. These, sir, are the
true causes of their strange behaviour—jealousy
and envy: but it must be remembered,
they belong to the majority—that is, to the
-- 108 --
[figure description] Page 108.[end figure description]
madmen; and were hence incapable of seeing
that, in persecuting me, they were destroying
the negro's best friend.”
I expressed, as in civility and duty bound,
a great deal of surprise and indignation at
the hard and undeserved fate of honest John,
whose philanthropy was so poorly rewarded;
at which appearance of sympathy he was
vastly pleased, declared I was the clearestheaded
and sanest man he had ever known,
begged to swear eternal friendship with me,
and then, giving me to understand there were
many other wise and virtuous persons, the
victims of the world's malice or insanity,
confined like himself in the Asylum, proposed
to introduce me to their acquaintance; a proposal
to which—after having taken the advice
and secured the permission of the keepers—
I was glad to accede.
I was, accordingly, ushered into an enclosure
in the garden of the Asylum, where, it
appeared, such harmless persons as worthy
John were permitted to breathe the air, and
converse on such subjects as suited the tender
state of their intellects.
As I entered this place, of which the gate
was immediately locked behind me by a
keeper, who attended for the purpose, I
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perceived there were within it a dozen or more
men, some of whom sat on benches under the
trees, while others strolled to and fro along
the gravelled walks. The noise of our entrance,
and the appearance of honest John,
with whom all seemed to be perfectly well
acquainted, drew them about us; and they
were soon introduced to me by name—one
being the Honourable Timoleon Smash, an
ex-congressman, from Virginia; another, a
gentleman of the press, of which, he himself
informed me, he had been once a bright and
shining light; and others of other respectable
ranks and professions.
My friend, John Jones, having introduced
me, the ex-editor, Mr. Ticklum, for that was
his name, removing a pair of spectacles from
his nose, and crumpling into his pocket an old
newspaper which he had been reading,
begged to know if I was `a fellow in misfortune;
' a question I felt some little embarrassment
in replying to; when my friend John
removed the difficulty by declaring, “I was,
as he could bear witness, unfortunate like
themselves, in being in my senses among a
world of madmen; but had not yet been found
out by the world, and so had escaped being
made a prisoner; that I was a
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philanthropic personage and philosopher, who sympathized
with them in their sorrows, and
came to learn of them those proofs of the
folly and injustice of the world which all
were so well able to speak.”
“I can require,” said I, “no better proof of
this than has been furnished in the history of
my friend Mr. Jones; whose sufferings, considered
as a punishment inflicted upon him
on account of his philanthropy, I esteem as
extraordinary as they are unjust. Truly, it
seems to me not merely surprising, but incredible,
that men should punish a fellow
creature for practising a virtue they so universally
commend.”
“Surprising!” said Mr. Ticklum, with a
stare of melancholy astonishment, while all
the rest looked at me with pity and a groan;
“why, sir, that's their way; and you must be
younger than you seem, and less experienced
than we should have supposed, sir, from your
sensible appearance, if you are surprised at
the inconsistency. Virtue, sir, is a thing man
loves best in the abstract; the practice of it
interferes with too many of his interests to
allow him to be friendly to its professor.
Really, sir, we are afraid you do not understand
the world; you have not yet been
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wronged into knowledge. The virtues best
rewarded in the world are its vices: avarice
and ambition, impudence and deceit, truckling
and time-serving, will win favour, fortune,
and distinction, when generosity and modesty,
integrity and independence, are repaid
with neglect, contempt, imposition—nay,
with vindictive hate. It is a truth, sir, that
can't be denied, that—as the world now
wags—a man can practise no virtue safely:
he may write about it, he may talk about it,
and gain credit thereby; but the acting of it
will assuredly bring him into trouble. There
is not a person here present who cannot
furnish you good proof of this. Know, sir,
that all of us around you are examples of the
world's injustice—the martyrs of principle,
the victims of our several virtues. We were
too good for the world, sir, and therefore the
world has clapped us into a madhouse. Sir,
you would scarce suppose it of an editor, but
we—even WE, Daniel Ticklum, as we stand
here—are a living monument of the world's
injustice. In US you behold a victim of our
virtue!”
With that, Mr. Ticklum wiped his eyes;
and all the rest groaned, except the Hon.
Mr. Smash—a very stately young personage,
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with a sad and oratorical voice—who, stepping
forward, said,—“What my friend Ticklum
says is perfectly true. Man, a hypocrite
even to himself, and inconsistent alike in good
and evil, sets a bounty of praise on virtue,
which he fancies he desires, only to break the
bones of those who bring it to him! The
world has prated a long time of the excellency
of patriotism—a virtue which not lying
historians only, but the universal voice of society,
would seem to place among the highest,
purest, most honour-deserving of all virtues.
How much the world really likes patriotism
may be seen in my history; which, while my
friend Ticklum recovers his composure, I
shall be happy to relate for your edification.”
I expressed myself extremely desirous to
hear this curious relation, and Mr. Smash immediately
began his history in the following
terms.
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CHAPTER II. THE PATRIOT'S STORY.
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“As I design relating only my political history,”
said Mr. Smash, “I shall say nothing
of my parentage, birth, or youth, except
that the first was highly respectable, as you
may perceive by the name, (I am of the
Smashes, sir, of Virginia,) that my birth happened
in one of the most patriotic counties of
the Ancient Dominion, and that my youth was,
as I may say, one long dream of public virtue.
I longed to serve my country, and approve
myself the worthiest of her sons—a
passion that grew with my growth, until, in
early manhood, it had banished every other
from my bosom. The love of pelf and of
pleasure, nay, even the love of woman, I
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threw aside and forgot, feeding my appetites
upon aspirations after renown, and wedding
my heart to the glories of my native
land. Happy, thought I, is he who can serve
his country, enjoying, in life, the digito monstrari
of a nation's approbation, in death, the
dulce et decorum of a nation's gratitude, carved
in immortal letters on his tomb.
“The great object of my wishes was, at
last, effected—I stumped through my district
and my fellow citizens sent me to Congress!
“Judge the delight with which I first trod
that glorious hall, thronged with the representatives
of a free people, each looking a
Cato or Aristides, and munching his tobacco
with the air of a ruler of the world. I threw
myself upon my chair, mounted my legs upon
my desk, took my quid of best James-River,
and enjoyed for a while the rapture and dignity
of my new situation. But this indulgence
did not last long: I remembered I was
there to serve my country—to perform the
great duties of a representative—which service
and duties I resolved to enter upon without
further loss of time. I began my patriotic
labours forthwith.
“The first thing I did was to make a
speech; and, as the quantity and quality
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of public spirit in the breast of a legislator
can only be shown by the length of his harangue,
I made my maiden effort as long as
the state of my health (which was weak from
hard work on the stump and at barbecues
during the canvass,) permitted. Having once
got the floor—which was no easy matter,
there being two or three hundred members
who were as ripe for proving their patriotism
as I,—I launched into a discourse, in which I
handled things both in general and particular,
and gave the whole history of Greece and
Rome. As to the subject then before the
house, I do not remember what it was—or
rather I never knew it; nor, indeed, was that
a matter of any consequence, the last week
of the session being the proper time to speak
to the point. I spoke for seven days, and
then concluded, my strength giving way sooner
than I expected. My speech was, nevertheless,
of very good length, and, I believe,
my constituents were satisfied. Indeed, upon
consideration, I think they had reason to
be; for my oration furnished matter (excluding
all other, saving a few editorial scraps
now and then) to The Watch-Tower of Freedom,
the weekly paper of my district, week
after week, during the whole winter; in fact,
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the printing of it occupied the Watch-Tower
of Freedom longer than I the hall of Liberty;
and, for aught I can tell, they may not have
finished it yet.
“This speech made a great sensation. The
thrilling eloquence, by which it was said to
be characterized, the fiery fervour, the scorching
sarcasm, the annihilating invective, the
bursts of sublimity and pathos, the keen wit,
the elegant humour, the classic style, the poetic
adornment, added to the graceful gesture,
the magnificent voice, the eye of fire, and
other congressional qualities which it enabled
me to develop, took the house by storm;
and I was at once pronounced a legislator of
the first grade—a master and ruling spirit—
a sun-born son of genius—a giant of intellect—
a Titan of oratory—in short, sir, a great man.
Compliments and congratulations fell upon
me like the leaves of November; the Speaker
shook me by the hand, the President invited me
to supper, and members of all parties sought
my acquaintance. In a word, I was raised to
the pinnacle of favour, and admitted to be
one of the first men in Congress.
“Having made my speech, I felt that I
had accomplished one of the great objects
for which I had been sent to the legislature.
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And thus, a chief duty being performed,
and my mind released from the load of responsibility
that oppresses the unspoken
member, I was able to direct my energies to
other objects yet to be accomplished, and to
reflect what course it became me to take, as
a man of principle and true American patriotism,
in relation to my future career.
“And now I felt, even more strongly than
before, how deep and fervid was the flame
with which I burned to do my country
service; and during the two weeks which I
lay on my back, recovering from the toil of
my oration, I devoted every moment to the
consideration of the evils under which the
country was labouring, and the means of removing
them. In a word, I devised and digested
a plan of reform, which I resolved to
bring before Congress as soon as possible;
and, that my constituents might perceive I
was entering upon the work in earnest, and
without any partial views or inclinings, I determined
to begin at home—that is, in Congress
itself—and so attack abuses at the
fountain-head.
“Observing that two or three different
members, while I lay sick, had occupied the
house with uncommonly long speeches, I
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began to reflect what would be the consequence,
were all to claim the privilege of speaking
seven days on a stretch, as I had done myself.
I was shocked to discover, that, if only
two hundred should insist upon speaking that
length of time, and only once each, it would
require a session of three years and ten
months to enable them to get through, without
counting the time required for business.
“Struck with this discovery, I immediately
brought a proposition before the house to
amend its regulations so far as to secure attention
to the proper business of the nation.
The bill which I desired to introduce, provided
that no member should be allowed,
under any circumstances, (except while making
his maiden speech,) to speak longer upon
any business before the house, than half an
hour at a time.
“The reader who does not trouble himself
about journals of Congress, and who skips the
reports of debates in his newspaper, will be
surprised to hear that this motion, which I
considered the most patriotic I could make,
since it deprived me of the right of delivering
ten other speeches, which I at first meditated,
was met by angry remonstrance and the
fiercest opposition. Two hundred
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[figure description] Page 119.[end figure description]
honourable members started upon their feet, and
charged me with an attack upon their privileges,
a design to subvert the liberty of
speech. `What did they come there for?'
they asked: `to maintain the rights of their
constituents, and defend their own.' `Was
that,' they cried, `the temple of Liberty, the
hall of Freedom, and were members to be
gagged at the very altar? If the honourable
member brought padlocks for their lips, why
not fetters for their limbs, whips for their
backs, daggers for their throats? They
could tell me, and they could tell Mr. Speaker—
they could tell the world, which surveyed
their proceedings—that the representatives
of American freemen were themselves freemen,
who would resist the approaches of the
enemy of liberty to the last, and die in the
breach, or, as some of them said, `in the
ditch,' (which is no proper place for a gentleman's
death-bed,) under the ruins of the
constitution.
“In short, there was a deal of eloquent
speeches made, and a torrent of indignation
poured upon my proposition, and on me. It
was in vain that I called the attention of
members to the discovery I had made, the
surprising fact, that, if we should all speak as
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long as we could, and attend to business besides,
the session must be necessarily prolonged
through a term of four years; which
was just twice as long as we had a right to
sit, and in direct contravention of the obligation
imposed on Congress to hold four different
sessions within that period. I was answered,
`the right of speech was sacred, and
should not be invaded.' I appealed to their
good-sense, and the Speaker called me to
order; I addressed myself to their reason,
and a member asked me, `if I meant to insult
the house?' while another—a man whom
I before was disposed to regard as of quite a
patriotic turn, though born so far north as
Pennsylvania—told me, `if I had come to
that house with reason in my pocket, I had
brought my wares to the wrong market.'
“In truth, my proposition was a bomb-shell,
(I use the Congressional figure, as
striking for its expressiveness as it is venerable
for its age,) cast upon the floor at the feet
of members. It produced a commotion even
in the galleries; the reporters, its only friends,
received it with frenzies of approbation, so
that the Sergeant-at-Arms was ordered to
expel them: and this is the reason why there
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has never been a full and satisfactory report
of that debate in the newspapers.
“The motion was lost by a tremendous
majority, no one voting in its favour except
myself and a member from Down East, who
was tongue-tied, and therefore hated long
speeches. It caused the members pretty
generally to regard me with coolness and ill-will;
and, what afflicted me greatly, the
Southern members seemed to be the most
displeased of all. Nevertheless, I had taken
my stand, and opposition only determined
me the more strongly to devote myself to
the cause of my country. I said to myself,
`if I fail in my efforts, if I sacrifice myself on
the altar of the republic, I shall be remembered
as the friend of freedom, and placed
among the brightest of its martyrs.' I determined
to persevere in the path pointed out
by reason and patriotism together; and I resolved,
in order to be virtuous on the largest
scale, to tear all sectional feelings from my
bosom, to forget that Virginia lay on one
side of Mason and Dixon's line and Massachusetts
on the other, and remember only,
as Washington had done before me, that I
was an American.
“My second proposition, being rather of
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a theoretic than practical complexion, prospective
and contingent, at least, as to its effects
on the national purse, but immediate,
certain, and highly advantageous as to its
effects on the national character, I was of
opinion would be received with favour and
applause by all. It was a measure designed
to remove from our government a stain
charged to attach to all republics, and which,
there was good reason to suppose, had a
very palpable existence on the fair face of
our own. I desired to introduce a bill in
which it was resolved, preambulatorily,
(though there is no such word in Walker,)
`that the nation was, of right ought to be, and
through time would be, grateful to all its
citizens who contributed to its glory and
weal,' and provided, sectionally, (which is as
new a word as the other,) `that its gratitude
should be extended not only to those who
lost legs and arms in its service, but to all
who, by valuable discoveries and improvements
in art and science, by the foundation
of philanthropic institutions, the dissemination
of moral principles, and the production
of works of genius, might be pronounced the
benefactors of their country.' On such
worthies of the republic I proposed we
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should bestow pensions, or grants of land,
together with such honours as it consisted
with the character of our institutions to
allow; and I advised, moreover, that we
should begin the work of gratitude by erecting,
without a moment's delay, the divers
tombs and monuments which Congress had
long since voted to deceased heroes of the
Revolution, without voting appropriations to
build them.
“This proposition, I am grieved to say,
produced a hubbub full as great as the other,
and caused a still more violent outcry against
myself. `What!' cried an honourable member
from the neighbourhood of the Rocky
Mountains, `waste the people's money! my
constituents' money? Mr. Speaker, if that
ar'nt flat treason, I don't know what ar'. I
say, if there ar' to be any pensions for improvements,
rat all the arts and sciences, and
call 'em improvements on land, and I stick in
a claim for my constituents. But I go ag'in
the whole measure. I reckon the honourable
feller—that is, the honourable gentleman
from Virginnee—thinks money grows among
us, out in the West, like deer skins and dirt;
but it don't.' `Extravagance! wilful, criminal,
shocking, extravagance!' cried others by
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[figure description] Page 124.[end figure description]
hundreds. The idea of wasting the people's
money seemed to strike all with horror; some
were petrified, many aghast; and one member,
rising up, was so overcome with dismay
that he could not speak a word, but looking
at the speaker, and then at me, and then at
the speaker again, he tapped his finger
against his forehead three times, and then
sat down. What he meant, if he meant any
thing, I did not then know; but I have since
had an idea, he thought I had lost my senses.
I endeavoured to satisfy the honourable members
that a few thousand dollars taken annually
from an exchequer rolling over with
a surplus of twenty or thirty millions a year,
would not affect the credit of the government,
nor reduce a single citizen to bankruptcy;
that the American people were not, as they
seemed to think them, a nation of heartless
niggards and misers; that we, the representatives
of the only truly popular government
in the world, owed it to mankind and ourselves,
to the interests of our country and
the institutions we affected to prize, to show
our fellow creatures we knew how to appreciate
and reward the merit of our citizens,
and to reward them at least as wisely and
generously as kings and princes were wont
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to reward their deserving subjects. I say, I
endeavoured to satisfy honourable members
on these points, and others that occurred to
me; but I endeavoured in vain. Honourable
members insisted that the people's money
was sacred—that their constituents were
misers and niggards—and that it was our
duty, as far as the world and mankind were
concerned, to let them take care of themselves,
we, the representatives of the United
States, taking care of their money. Nay,
and one fellow (as I am not now in Congress,
I am not obliged to call him `gentleman,')
got up and insinuated, `that, as every body
could see I was a patriot, I was getting up
the measure with a view to my own future
benefit.'
“As a Virginian and a gentleman, I could
not stand so gross an insult; I therefore pronounced
the man a scoundrel, and called the
Speaker to bear witness I should blow his
brains out, the moment the house adjourned.
As it began to be a serious matter, the Speaker
called us to order; the insulter thereupon
assured the house he meant nothing personal
in the remark; and I, in consequence, acknowledging
the same in relation to my threat, the
matter blew over without a fight; which was
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agreeable to me, having my hands so full of
the nation's business. The quarrel was settled;
and so was my patriotic proposition.
There were but ten men sufficiently alive to
the honour and interests of their country to
vote for it. No one, indeed, objected to the
preamble, namely, that the nation was, ought
to be, and would be, grateful to all its good
citizens that deserved gratitude; and that part
of the bill passed nem. con.; but the paying
sections, which were the gist of the affair,
went by the board. And so it was resolved
that the republic of America should be as ungrateful
as those of Greece and Rome of
yore, and ten times more so.
“My next attempt to arouse my colleagues
to a sense of their duty was equally unfortunate.
Perceiving that our vast frontiers, both
inland and maritime, east, west, north, and
south, lay as open and unprotected as the
common-lands of a village, so that it would
be easy, at any moment, for a curious person,
or persons, of covetous propensities, to steal
into the land, and help themselves to a few
towns and cities, together with as many of
the militia as they could catch, I thought it
my duty to bring the matter before Congress;
and I introduced it accordingly, accompanied
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by a bill which I asked to have referred to a
special committee. By this bill it was provided
that the standing army of the United
States should be increased so far as to allow
to each fortress on the frontier a garrison to
consist of one private and one non-commissioned
officer, both well armed.
“The reading of this bill was like throwing
two bomb-shells among the members. Convulsions
of horror and wrath seized instantly
upon all. `Increase the standing army!'
they cried; `put our liberties in the keeping of
an armed soldiery! A conspiracy, rank conspiracy!
a conspiracy against our freedom!'
“In short, there never was such an uproar
in the House before or since; and I was myself
almost frighted at the terror I had created.
Nothing was seen in my proposal but
a design, as audacious in conception as it
must prove diabolical in effect, to reduce the
nation to bondage, to batter down the Capitol
with artillery, and bring the bayonets of
the myrmidons of power against the throats
of honourable members where they stood.
But the terror of honourable members was
equalled by their heroism; and again, as in
a previous instance, they declared, that, come
the usurper and despot when he would, as
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for them, let others do as they might, they
would oppose him face to face, foot to foot,
hand to hand, perish in their chains, like the
Roman senators under the swords of the
savage Brennus, fall with decent dignity like
Julius Cæsar, or, snatching up arms, strike a
last blow for freedom, and die—as before—
`in a ditch.'
“There never was such an uproar, as I
said before; and every word I pronounced, in
the effort to allay it, only made matters worse.
An honourable member boasting that our
frontiers required no guards beyond `our gallant
and glorious militia,' I had the effrontery
(as it was called,) to tell him that, with all
my respect for the militia, I thought they
were a very uncertain set of personages; at
which insult to the yeomanry of America, he—
the aforesaid honourable member—fell into
a fit, and was carried off in a dangerous condition
to his lodgings. Nay, this expression
of mine leading to a debate, in which, as is
usual on such occasions, remarks were made
on all such subjects connected and unconnected
with the question before the House, I had
the misfortune to give offence by two other
declarations, which a sense of honesty called
on me to make—namely, first, that the
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Hartford-Conventionists were not all traitors,
and, secondly, (but this I offered rather as an
opinion than a positive declaration,) that foreigners
of six-months residence in the country
were not citizens. The first assertion,
though it caused faint murmurs of approbation
from some Yankee members, was met
by others with scornful cries of `Eccentricity!
' and the Speaker decided that it was
out of order. The second produced a furious
and universal explosion, and a hundred voices,
at least, charged me with a design to revive
those accursed inventions of tyranny and the
devil, the Alien and Sedition laws.—In fine,
my bill went to the tomb of the Capulets;
and it was the general opinion, I would soon
follow it.
“That evening, I was waited upon by the
delegation of the state I represented, who,
after reproaching me, in a formal manner, for
deserting (so they called it,) the principles of
the South, assumed a more friendly tone, and
remonstrated affectionately against the novel
and dangerous course I was taking, assuring
me `there was no use in being so honest.'
They declared I had entered Congress with
the finest prospects in the world, but that I
was defeating them.
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“Gentlemen,” said I, with dignity, “I came
here, not to exalt myself, but to serve my
country.”
“You did!” said they, and all looked astonished.—
“Your constituents, you mean, my
dear Mr. Smash,” said the eldest of the party,
giving me a serious look.
“Sir,” said I, “my constituents are my
country, my state, and the good people of my
district; to all of whom I owe allegiance, but
to the first in the highest degree. When I
can serve the people of my district, without
striking at the interests of the state, I will do
so; when I can serve the commonwealth,
without infringing the interests of the nation,
the commonwealth shall be served; when I
can serve my country, I must do so, and without
asking whether the interests of my state
or district suffer or not.”
“Heavens and earth!” cried the delegation,
“this is flat federalism!”
“No, gentlemen,” said I “it is patriotism.”
“Federalism! consolidation! aristocratical!
monarchical! anti-republican!”
“My gentlemen fell into a rage, but were
called to order by the Nestor of the delegation,
who took them aside, and having counselled
with them awhile returned, and
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grasping my hand, said, with a friendly and sympathetic
countenance, while the others sat
nodding their heads ominously at one another,
and looking on with a doleful stare,—
“You are a young man, Mr. Smash, quite
a young man—a very promising talented
man, Mr. Smash; but young—young and inexperienced,
Mr. Smash. May rise to the
first honours in the land, Mr. Smash, if only
a little cautious, and prudent—a little prudent
Mr. Smash. Take my advice, Mr. Smash:
your health is infirm, you have a nervous
temperment, a great deal of enthusiasm,
Mr. Smash; you allow yourself to be excited,
and then, you know, a man says strange
things, and does strange things, Mr. Smash.
Now take my advice: keep your mind tranquil,
Mr. Smash; stay at home a few days,
and live low—very low, Mr. Smash; avoid
all speaking, don't engage in debate for a
whole month—not for a whole month, Mr.
Smash: do take care of yourself, or you don't
know what may happen, Mr. Smash. The
brain, Mr. Smash, the brain is a very tender
and delicate organ—a very, very tender organ,
Mr. Smash.”
“I smiled at the old gentleman's fears, assured
him I found myself in uncommon
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health, and the delegation left me. I saw
they were displeased at the freedom and boldness
of my course; but, as my conscience and
common-sense told me I was right, I resolved
to persevere, and serve my country, whether
Congress would or not. I perceived in them
a strong example of the effect of sectional
and party feeling in warping the minds of
honourable men from the path of duty; and I
resolved the more firmly that my spirit should
hold fast to its integrity.
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CHAPTER III. THE PATRIOT'S STORY CONTINUED.
[figure description] Page 133.[end figure description]
“The next day, a measure was brought before
Congress, the success of which was universally
allowed to be of vital importance to
the nation; but, as it was proposed and supported
by administration members, the party
in opposition felt themselves called upon to
oppose it with all their strength. I should
have told the reader, that the freemen of my
district were anti-administration almost to a
man, and that I was therefore of the opposition
party. I resolved to prove my independence
and patriotism, by voting for this measure,
which reason and common-sense told me
should be supported; and I did so.
“Horrible was the effect. My old
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associates, ridiculing what they called my unparalleled
apostacy, reviled me, as far as the Speaker
would permit, as a renegade from the party;
while the newspapers, (that is, on our side,)
which had hitherto treated me with uncommon
courtesy, now burst out into a frenzy of
rage and vituperation, some calling me Judas
Iscariot, others Benedict Arnold, and all agreeing
I was a monster of perfidy and baseness,
a traitor to my principles, the murderer
of my country. Some spoke of tar and
feathers, while others hinted there were daggers
in the hands of freemen to reward the
betrayer of their rights. Vials—or rather
demijohns—of wrath were poured on my
head, and tempests of scorn and vilification
were let loose about my ears. In a word, had
I descended into Pandemonium itself, which
many wise persons think lies no lower than a
few feet below the foundations of the Capitol,
I could not have found myself beset by a
more fire-fingered, venom-tongued, unrelenting
set of persecutors than a single act of
patriotism now brought against me. I was
not merely an apostate and assassin—I was a
fool and madman. The very papers which, a
month before, had lauded to the skies my extraordinary
genius, my incomparable
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eloquence, now discovered that I possessed not a
single talent—that I was a tiresome, bombastic,
contemptible speaker, with no merit beyond
the long wind and loquacity of an old
woman—in short, that I was a booby, and
the greatest one in Congress.
“It is true, what I lost on one side I
gained on the other. The administration
prints, which had been, at first, rather blind
to my merits, now burst into fervid panegyrics,
eulogizing my genius, my intrepidity,
my integrity, my patriotic union with the
friends of the nation; and the President's
chief cook, coming to me by night in his
best coat, offered me my choice betwixt a
land office in the West, an Indian agency, or
a ministry to Jerusalem.
“Who would think that my proud and patriotic
rejection of a share in the spoils of
office, offered by a grateful executive, should
have only exposed me, when known, as it
speedily was, to fresh attacks of indignation?
Honourable members were incensed that I
should presume to greater disinterestedness
than themselves—that I should profess a
code of morals superior to that which experience
and custom had shown to be most
convenient for a Congressman. They abused
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my `affected honesty,' for so they called it;
they laughed at my `romantic honour,' my
`political sentimentality;' while some, still
more uncharitable, heaped sarcasm on the
wisdom that had prevented my accepting `a
reward which, I knew, the superior branch of
Congress would not have sanctioned.'—Alas
for the man, who, in this enlightened age, in
this unsophisticated country, has the audacity
to play the patriot!
“My next effort had the good effect to
restore me to the favour of the party; but it
lost me the friendship of the chief cook. In
the honesty of my heart, and under the persuasion
that the measure I then proposed
would meet the approbation of all, I introduced
a bill providing for the dismission
from the public service of all office-holders
who meddled in elections, or played the
demagogue at political meetings or in newspapers.
For this the opposition pretty generally
voted; but it was treated with the greatest
contumely by the friends of power, and
strangled without ceremony. They charged
me indignantly with my desertion of their
party, though, heaven knows, I had never
joined it—with my fickleness of mind, my
natural perfidy of spirit, &c. &c.; and
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concluded by execrating the audacity of my attack
on the rights of citizens; whereas, on
the contrary, my sole intention, as I declare
on my conscience, was to defend the rights
of citizens. The papers on that side of the
question took up the cudgels, and, as it was
generally admitted they knew how to use
them, I received such a basting for my tergiversation,
wrong-headedness, black heartedness,
&c., as broke all the bones of my
spirit—though, happily, not my spirit itself.
The wrath on that side of the question extended
even to my friend, the chief cook,
who clapped into the governmental journal
an article written by his own hand, in which
it was insinuated I had taken a bribe from
the Emperor of the Turks, who was at that
time suspected to be in the country, buying
patriots at the highest prices; though what
his sublime highness wanted with them was
never discovered.
“My next act destroyed all the good
effect, as far as I was personally concerned,
wrought by the preceding; and, indeed, I was
from this moment a falling man, a sinking
patriot, a martyr to my principles and my
love of country. As Aristides fell, so fell I,
detested for my justness. Timoleon and the
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elder Brutus sacrificed the blood of their
own families to the interests of their countries;
and their countries voted them a brace
of unnatural murderers and numskulls, as, it
is probable, they were. My own fate was
somewhat similar; I sinned with the same
disinterestedness, and was rewarded with
equal gratitude.
“My sins—for so they were accounted,
though posterity I hope will judge otherwise—
I intend recording in as few words as
possible, that I may get the sooner to their
reward. I voted for a northern measure, and
thought it was patriotic to do so. But from
that moment my friends of the south considered
me a madman, and my constituents
began to take the alarm. This was committing
the seven deadly sins all at once, and
forgiveness was impossible. I then, in a harangue
which I made on the subject of patriotism,
to enlighten the honourable members,
who, I perceived, did not know what patriotism
was, succeeded in inflaming the rage of
both parties, by assuring them (which was
a thing I thought they all firmly believed,)
that America had never produced more than
one Washington, and that he was not born
in Virginia, but in America. I say, I
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offended both parties; for the friends of power, it
seems, insisted that their chief was a second
Washington; and my fellow Virginians considered,
and, indeed, pronounced it `impiety'
itself, to admit that George Washington was
any thing less than a Virginian.
“My next sin of patriotism was a declaration,
which I made only after deep reflection,
viz. that the right of nullifying the laws
enacted in that Congress existed in no individual
or body of individuals in the United
States, saving only in the Supreme Court
thereof; which opinion was immediately pronounced
`Blasphemy,' amid groans and shricks
of indignation.
“I then, being somewhat tired of the eternal
croaking honourable members made
against the aristocracy—that is, the foolish
ladies and gentlemen of the land—as being
the foes of democracy and liberty, ventured
to express a belief, founded on the house-burnings,
riots, lynchings, &c., at that time
somewhat prevalent in the democratic circle,
that liberty was in less danger from the aristocracy,
or foolish ladies and gentlemen as
aforesaid, than from the democracy itself;
which declaration was unanimously pronounced
`the most astonishing sample of
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Atheism to which that house had ever been
compelled to listen;' and indeed it produced
such a thrill of horror in the assembly that
one gentlemen fell into fits, and was carried
to his lodgings in an extremely dangerous
condition.
“My next—my last and greatest, sin grew
directly out of that declaration; for honourable
members starting up in fury, and bidding
me `know, that the democracy of my district,
the honest and confiding constituents whom
I had betrayed, would exact of me a severe
penalty for my misdeeds; that they had already
called a public meeting in the district
to express their indignation at the course I
had pursued, and would in a short time send
me instructions to change it, or resign my
seat in that house:—I say, these innuendoes
and menaces being sternly flung in my teeth,
I rose and called the house to witness, `that
I held myself to be a rational being, the servant
and factor of my constituents, sent to
that house to legislate for their benefit and
that of the nation; and not the tool of their
caprices, to pander away honesty, honour,
and common sense to their whims and passions—
and, in a word, that I utterly denied
their right to instruct me to any act opposed
to the dictates of my own reason.
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“`Treason and madness!' cried every soul
in the house, save one, whom the awfulness
of my heresy had shocked into an apoplexy,
and who was afterwards, when the house adjourned,
found sitting at his desk stone-dead;
`treason and madness! madness and treason!
treason and madness!' And so they went
on exclaiming against me, until the house adjourned.
“There was more meaning in these expressions
than I had at any time suspected. A
storm was brooding over me, of which I did
not dream, until that last patriotic confession
(for surely the resolution that gave it utterance
came not more from personal independence
than a love of country,) caused it suddenly
to burst in thunder over my head. As
I passed from the house, I was suddenly
seized upon by six strong men, (the members
of the house, with at least twenty Senators,
who were present, looking coolly on, and refusing
me help,) clapped into a carriage,
driven rapidly away, and in due course of
time, deposited—ay, by the faith of an honest
man and Congressman!—in the madhouse
in which you find me.
“Such was the reward of public virtue! I
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was, I believe, the first martyr to liberty ever
served in that way in America; but it has been,
I believe, ever since, a standing rule in Congress
to vote any member a madman who
betrays the slightest symptoms of patriotism.
“In this Asylum, and particularly in the
solitude of the dungeon to which I was first
consigned, I have had leisure to review my
Congressional career, and ponder on the truths
with which it has made me acquainted. I
perceive that the days for Timoleons and
Washingtons have gone by, and that the
world, however much it may stand in need of
their services, is determined to do without
them. The cruel reception my patriotism
had met from my brother legislators, I had
good reason to know, was sanctioned by the
people at large, who, in these days, actually
seem to entertain the most cordial hatred of
all public men who will not condescend to
cheat them. That my fellow labourers in the
legislature should array themselves against
me was not, perhaps, very surprising or inexplicable;
but it was a grievous wound to
my spirit to find the people for whom I laboured,
siding, as (if I am to judge from the
public prints) they all did against me. Before
I left my dungeon, I discovered, in a
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fragment of newspaper which was accidentally
left in the room, an account of my constituents
having burned me in effigy in various
places throughout the district; with some
remarks of the editor highly approbatory of
that just expression of popular indignation.
The people (I mean all the 'ocracies together,)
were therefore as unwilling to be served by,
as their delegates were to serve with patriots.
They required, not men of integrity and
talent—upright and experienced sages—to
watch over the interests of the nation; but
truckling parasites, the slaves of their sovereign
passions, the tools of their imperial
whims, to `play their hand,' (as the blacklegs
have it,) in the gambling contest of interest
against interest, section against section, party
against party, which they have chosen to
dignify with the title of legislation.
“I have now learned to understand the
meaning of the saying often droned into the
minds of youth, without being always appreciated—
that virtue is its own reward. Well,
indeed, should it be its own reward, since,
commonly, it has no other.”
With these words, and a heavy sigh, the
patriot finished his story.
“A very hard case,” said the editor,
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scratching his head. “It was a very foolish
thing of you to be so patriotic; but we can't
blame you: men do say very fine things of
patriotism—indeed we believe we have said
them ourself; so that it is not surprising a
young man should be sometimes misled.
However, we have been just as foolish, and,
like you, a martyr to principle. Patriotism—
as a sentiment, or poetic fiction, or historical
remembrance—is dear to the imaginations
of all men, and its praises are ever
on their lips; but if we consult the records of
nations, we shall find that patriots, in general,
have had but a scurvy time of it. It is the
same with other virtues, as I said before:
they are the apples of Sodom, that men admire
as long as they merely look at them,
but loathe and cast from them, the moment
they have tasted. Yes,” continued Mr.
Ticklum, turning again to me—“we also are
the victim of our virtue!”
With that, he wiped his eyes a second
time, and I, sympathizing in his grief, and
being curious to know what that virtue was,
which a journalist could practise consistently
with his editorial duties, and how it had
reduced him to his present condition, begged
he would do me the favour to relate his
history.
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CHAPTER IV. THE EDITOR'S STORY.
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“Sir,” said Mr. Ticklum, “we were editor
and proprietor of the Light of the People—
more commonly and familiarly called the
People's Light—a paper, sir, extremely well
known, and, when it came into our hands,
and indeed, as we may justly say, for some
years after, of the highest repute in the world
of letters. Sir, it was a vigorous paper, and
it had seven thousand subscribers; more than
one half of whom were good pay. It was a
rich paper, therefore, as well as a good one,
and we were making our fortune by it.
“Sir—when we became the editor of the
People's Light, we were acknowledged to be
the ablest hand that had ever conducted it;
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and we were, sir—we scorn all affected
modesty; as an editor, sir, we have a right
to praise ourself. Besides our natural abilities,
sir, we enjoyed the advantage of an extensive
acquaintance with the public tastes.
Our predecessor was an experienced man,
and our friend; and when we bought him out,
he gave us a deal of instruction on the true
principles of nasiduction.”
“Nasiduction?” said I, interrupting the
gentleman; “what is that?”
“Sir,” said Mr. Ticklum, “it is a word
used among editors, to express their art, that
being otherwise without a name. It means,
sir, to lead by the nose—or nose-leading; and
is thus expressive of the object of the art
editorial, which is to manage the public.
“Our predecessor gave us the results of
his experience on the subject of nasiduction;
and, thus accomplished, we entered upon the
duties of the People's Light with the skill, the
power, and the success of a veteran. We
became a shining light in the party—that is,
the party we belonged to—and were soon esteemed
its chief organ. As a politician, we
flatter ourself, our abilities were undeniable;
and in the other spheres of editorial avocation
we were not found wanting. Our talent
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for invective was universally acknowledged;
we abused our opponents with a zeal that
gained us the love and respect of every
member of our faction. If a reputation was
to be blasted, a spirit wounded to the quick,
a doubtful friend to be held up to contempt,
or an incautious enemy to execration, who
was so ready, who so able, to wield the lash
of punishment? Nay, if the party itself was
to be humbugged, if the interests of the
leaders, our great patrons, required a little
dust to be thrown in the eyes of our readers,
who could effect the purpose with equal address?
Sir, we knew how to inflame the
rage, and disturb the fears, of our subscribers;
we knew how to awaken their self-love,
their vanity, their pride, and thus lead them
to deeds of glory. In short, sir, we were a
first-rate editor, a man of reputation, sir, a
man of power, a man of money—we were
making our fortune, and—no thanks to virtue—
with none of her assistance. We were a
happy man, sir: we sat under our own vine
and fig-tree, we warmed ourself at our own
fire, we rode our own horse, we fattened on
our own chickens, and we endured the scolding
of our wife, and the squalling of our
children, with equanimity, for we endured
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them in our own house. As we said before,
we were making our fortune: we had a
thousand friends to help us spend it.
“Behold how virtue—sir, we say virtue, for
virtue it was—crept betwixt us and the sunshine
of prosperity; hacked to pieces our
vine and fig-tree, put out our fire, spavined
our horse, killed our chickens, and brought the
sheriff's surliest deputy into our best parlour.
“We had the misfortune, one night, to
dream that the devil came to our bed-side,
bidding us get up and follow him. This we
did, (that is, we dreamed we did,) for we saw
he was a person not to be trifled with; but
we must confess, sir, it was with fear and
trembling. We ventured, however, as he led
us into the street, to ask whither he was carrying
us. `To your appointed place,' said
he, looking as black as midnight, but wagging
his tail, as if pleased with our company.
Then taking us by the hand, he made a spring
into the air at least ten feet high, and flinging
up his legs, and ours too, as we reached that
height, he made a dive headlong into the
pavement, which, instead of dashing out our
brains, as we expected, yielded to the shock,
and away we went through flag-stones and
gravel, gas-pipes and culverts, the solid earth
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and still more solid rock, until we gained his
infernal dominions about two miles below.
Here, sir, we saw sights that made our hair
stand on end; and it is our purpose, on some
future occasion, to commit an account of them
to the press: but at present we shall speak of
them briefly, and of such only as are illustrative
of our own story.
“Pray, sir,” said the Honourable Mr.
Smash, here interrupting the story, “allow
me to ask if you can't speak of them in the
first person singular? I don't wish to be
critical or impertinent; but, really, after what
I have suffered from the press, I assure you
I never hear that grand editorial WE, without
feeling as if again undergoing the pangs of
castigation; and, upon my honour, sir, the
fancy is quite uncomfortable.”
“Any thing to gratify our patrons—that
is, I mean, to oblige a friend,” said Mr. Ticklum,
descending from the style professional
to the humbler phrase of individuality. With
which proof of his condescension and good
nature, he resumed his relation, as follows.
“A very strange and dismal-looking place
into which I was led by the devil, my conductor,
attracted my curiosity; and asking him
what place it was, he told me, The Place of
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Public Spirits. And being pleased with the
interest I displayed in his concerns, he proceeded
to show me the rarities of his realm,
with which I was wonderfully struck. `This
province of my dominions, containing my
good Public Spirits,' said he, `is divided into
several departments, or hells, very methodieally
arranged, each containing a peculiar
genus of the damned. For example—you
are now passing through the Hell of Politicians;
consisting of two rooms, the one containing
the politic by ambition—or those who
went into public life for the noble purpose
of rising to distinction and power; the other
appropriated to the politic by covetousness—
your base dogs who served nations with the
view of picking their pockets.'
“With that, I looked about me in the first
room, a great grotto lighted by fires that were
stirred up by imps, and saw the ambitious
gentry hung up by the heels against the ceiling,
like so many bats in a cave, smoking and
broiling, and seeming ever on the point of
dropping into the fires below; of which there
was the more danger, as each had his bundle
of peccadilloes tied to his neck, weighing him
down, and the little imps of the fire every
now and then saluted them with a volley of
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red hot chunks, as if trying to knock them
from their holds. In the next chamber, a
cavern similar to the first, were the politic by
covetousness—fat placemen boiling in caldrons
of molten gold and silver, bubbling up
and down like so many tormented bullfrogs,
with little scullion imps that sat stirring the
pots, and occasionally tapping each seething
sinner over the head, with red-hot pokers.
“`Truly,' said I, surprised at the sight, `I
thought politicians were more virtuous people.
Have you any of our American patriots
here?'
“`Oh,' said the devil, `a plenty of them.'
“With that, we passed into a third grot,
where were a number of souls, some in great
sieves, in which they were searced along with
pitchforks and cannon-balls at a white heat;
others roasting in heaps, for all the world like
heaps of ore roasting at a furnace; and some
again being mashed under fulling-hammers,
that ground them to atoms at every blow; while
others were flaming in refining-pots with
white and black flux, that kept them sputtering
and flashing in a manner marvellous to behold.
“I asked, what kind of public spirits these
were that were handled so roughly.
“`Oh,' said the devil, `they are Reformers
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and Agitators—honest personages now undergoing
a process to reform their own qualities—
a matter which, in their eagerness to amend
their neighbours, they entirely forgot to attend
to in the world above.'
“The next thing that struck me was a
multitude of souls, some grovelling along the
floors of a dark passage which we walked
through, others cowering away in corners as
if to hide them from sight, but all, as I could
perceive, having their heads strown over with
live coals, and vipers fastened on their
breasts. I asked my satanic guide, `who
these unlucky wretches might be.'
“`What,' said he, `don't you know them?
and some of your own work, too? These are
all small game—the tools and victims of the
good fellows you have been looking at.'
“Upon which, rapping some dozen or two
of them over the shoulders with a stout bamboo
he carried, they started up and displayed
the countenances of individuals I very well
remembered, some of them poor devils that,
being in want of public places, had been employed
to do the dirty work of the party, by
way of deserving them, as well as their own
damnation; some, not place-hunters, but
sovereign citizens, who, by a little drumming
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at their fancies and passions, had been induced
to do the same thing, under the impression
they were playing the parts of good
and honest citizens; besides sundry persons
of better note, some of them men of promise,
ambitious to serve the public, whom, having
become obnoxious to, or put themselves in
the way of the party, I had helped to bring
under the lash of correction, or drive into the
shades of obscurity, where there was little
fear of our ever being troubled by them
again.
“The sight of these latter personages
caused me some concern. Until that moment,
it had never occurred to me, that calling
a man in the public papers `traitor,'
`hireling,' `villain,' and so on, and teaching
society to think him so, was doing him any
mischief, except a political one; but the embers
upon the head, and the worm at the
heart, struck me with both dismay and compunction.
Nor were these feelings much
diminished, when my conductor whipped up
sundry other sufferers, who fell foul of me
with their tongues, upbraiding me with numerous
other sins of which I had never made
much account before. Some charged me
with having made them the victims of
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sharpers, by lauding speculations that were
designed for no purpose but to gull numskulls.
Here was a soul who accused me of
cheating him out of his dollars, by recommending
to purchasers some swindler's ware,
of which I knew nothing, except that it was
good-natured to commend; while a hundred
and fifty opened upon me full mouth as their
murderer, for having lauded the excellency of
a steamboat, by which they were all blown
into eternity.
“But the most grievous part of the spectacle
was the multitudes, the very herds of
people who laid their deaths at my door, because
of the quack medicines they had
taken on my recommendation; for though, in
an argument with the devil on the subject, I
insisted that the notices of nostrums in my
paper were puffs written by the proprietors,
and printed and paid for as advertisements,
and that, therefore, I had no share in commending
them; he declared I was entirely
mistaken, that the giving publicity to such
things was in itself a recommendation, and I
was as much chargeable with their effects as
if I had accepted an agency from the compounder,
and, myself, supplied the public with
death, at a dollar a bottle.
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“Having settled this matter, much more
to his own liking than mine, Diabolus bade
me `never mind such small ware, (meaning
the tools and victims,) but come along and see
something of greater importance.' And giving
me a jerk, he dragged me onwards, until
the passage we trod terminated in a great
chamber, the floor of which, sinking down like
the sweeping sides of an amphitheatre, ended
at last in a great bog or quagmire; while at the
top, where we paused, were long ranges of
galleries running all around. In these galleries
lounged a great variety of devils, looking
down with interest upon what passed below;
while in the quagmire, floundering in it up to
the knees, were multitudes of men, great and
small, engaged with marvellous earnestness
pelting one another with mud. `Upon my
word,' said I, `I don't understand this at all.
What kind of public spirits are these? and
what place is it?'
“The devil looked amazed. `Is it possible,
' said he, `you don't know? that you don't
recognise your friends from their amusement?
Zounds, sir, this is the hell of editors!' Upon
my word, I could not help laughing, it all
looked so natural. There they were, indeed,
my learned and able contemporaries,
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bedaubing one another with mudballs, with
such zeal and energy as if the weal of a universe
depended upon their pastime. Thinks
I to myself, `if a certain place that I know of
is no worse than this, it is not so bad, after
all.' `Don't be too sure of that,' said Old
Nick, reading my thoughts; `it is all fine fun
for a while, but no such pleasant life to lead
for ever.' And, indeed, as I looked, and
observed one gentleman get a ball in the eye,
another a pellet on the cheek, a third a whole
mountain of mud on his back, I began to
grow melancholy at the thought that the
Lights of the World should be so unworthily
engaged thus wasting their energies on one
another. Nor was this feeling but a little increased,
when Diabolus took occasion to observe,
`he was fond of editors: with other
sinners,' said he, `I have a deal of trouble,
and am obliged, on the average, to appropriate
the services of at least one imp among
a thousand, for the purpose of tormenting
them. Editors, fortunately, know how to
torment themselves.—And now, Mr. Daniel
Ticklum, of the People's Light,' said he, `you
know your place—descend.'
“With that he seized me by the nape of
the neck, and tossed me into the thick of my
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contemporaries, who received me with a shower
of mud-balls, which, for all of their softness,
had such an effect upon my feelings
that I considered myself murdered outright,
and opened my mouth to cry for quarter,
which I received in the shape of a second
volley from the whole company. At that
moment, I awoke, and found it was all a
dream.
“It was a dream, sir; but the more I revolved
it in my mind, the more it troubled
and perplexed me. At last, however, I became
persuaded it was a vision of warning,
sent me by some good angel, (for one would
not think the devil so benevolent,) which it
became me to improve. I became a new
man. Sir, would you believe it? I began to
think, that, in accommodating my principles to
those of my patrons, in toiling to please the
party and my neighbours, at the sacrifice of
some truth and more independence, I was
doing wrong. I resolved to change my course,
and act the part that became a high-minded,
conscientious man—I had no idea of going to
the devil for my subscribers. I resolved to turn
over a new leaf, and pursue that fearless,
honest, independent course, for which so many
of my worthy fellow-citizens were calling:
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for, indeed, it was a common subject of lamentation,
throughout the land, in my day,
that we had so few editors of high, fearless,
independent spirit.
“Sir, when I made that resolution I had
seven thousand subscribers: a week after I
had put it into execution, I had but two thousand!
My first independent remark was the
signal of my ruin. And what was that remark?
Why, sir, a compliment to an enemy,
an opposition candidate—an admission
that he was an honest and able man, in many
respects superior even to our own candidate,
and worthy of confidence and honour. A
few more truths ended the matter. `Stop
my paper!' was echoed in my ears by two
thousand voices, and thrown before my eyes
in as many epistolary missives. Nay, sir, one
half even of the three thousand subscribers
who never paid their dues, fell into the like
anger, and bade me `stop their papers.'—In
short, sir, it was a lost case with me, my subscribers
left me, my creditors put their accounts
into the hands of lawyers, and my
friends, not knowing how else to dispose of
me, clapped me into this Asylum.
“Draw your own moral from my story: it
is a true one. As long as I was willing to
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enslave my spirit, to crush my sense of right
and wrong, to forget my principles, to devote
the energies of my mind to flatter the whims
and passions of my patrons, I enjoyed their
favour, and prospered; the moment I became
a man of principle, I lost it.—I say again,
that men love virtue best in the abstract.
The dignity of independence, the beauty of
honour, the excellence of principle, are ever
in the mouths of men, nine-tenths of whom
will conspire together to ruin the editor who
reduces them to practice.
“But here is my young friend and contemporary,
Slasher, a brother of the press,
and, like me, a victim of his virtue: he can
substantiate every thing I say.
-- 160 --
CHAPTER V. THE STORIES OF THE HONEST CRITIC, THE DUELLIST, AND THE MAN OF TRUTH.
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“My friend Ticklum mistakes,” said Mr.
Slasher, a smart young gentleman, who, instead
of listening with respect to gather wisdom
as it fell from the lips of his senior, whistled
fol-de-rol-dol all the time, but now made me
a bow and began: “I owe my downfall less
to my virtues than to a display of them highly
imprudent in my situation. My idea of virtue
is, that a man likes it well enough, even
in practice, so long as it is exercised only at
the expense of his neighbours; and this
opinion I consider susceptible of proof. Thus,
being a critic, (for, you must know, I was
junior editor and sole censor of a literary
-- 161 --
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print,) I had a notion, my readers would be delighted
with the honesty that served them up
an author, handsomely roasted and well done,
every week: for I have long observed that the
world has as natural a hankering after author-baitings
as after the baitings of bulls and bears.
This idea I was confirmed in by finding, that
although I, in pursuance of the system I had
begun, puffed all and every thing brought
before me with all my might, our paper, indifferently
countenanced at the first, grew poorer
in patronage every day; so that the principal
conductor at last deserted it entirely, and I
was advanced to his vacant chair. I resolved
as my friend Ticklum says, to turn over a new
leaf, and strike a sensation, by impaling every
scribbler I could lay hands on;—and, that I
might at once get a reputation for impartiality,
which I thought would be useful, I began the
campaign by demolishing a book written
by one of my own friends who had often lamented
that books were praised too indiscriminately.
The book was an uncommonly bad
one, and, as I may say, I did no more than
tell the truth of it. But that truth killed me.
It was thought so extraordinary, first that a
critic should, in these days, treat a book according
to its merits, and, secondly, that he
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should speak the truth of his own friend, that
there was no way of accounting for the phenomenon,
except by supposing I had had a
quarrel with the gentleman; or, in failure of
that, that I had suddenly lost my senses. It
was proved that the author had never offended
me. The inference was therefore inevitable;
and here I am.
“If you can suppose the impartiality that
arose from selfish considerations a virtue,
why then, it must be admitted, the world
treated me ungenerously. But my own
opinion,” added the graceless critic, “is that
it was a proper punishment for my folly.
Critics and authors have a common interest,
and should hunt in couples, bamboozling mankind
together. If you will have a proper
confirmation of Ticklum's doctrine on the
subject of virtue, apply to my friend Lawless
there, who can discourse feelingly on the
subject.”
“He says the truth,” said Mr. Lawless, a
lugubrious looking person, who now took up
the thread of his discourse. “Society flattered
me into a virtue, and drove me into a
vice, for daring to practise which I was, in
both cases, equally punished.
“My story is short and simple. My father
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was a man of just temper and morals, wise,
upright, and religious, and instilled into my
mind, from the earliest days, his own lofty
principles. He taught me to be patient under
wrong, to forgive offence, to forbear revenge;
and the world itself told me, that to do so
was magnanimity and religion. What my
father had inculcated, what society insisted
on, I found sanctioned and supported by own
feelings. I, therefore, when my principles
were brought to a trial, did what I had no
doubt the world expected of me—I held fast
to them. I was a man of peace, and sought
to pass blameless through the world. But I
could not avoid the contests and bickerings
incident to all who mingle with their fellows:
I had no protection against the wrath of the
bully and the injuries of the ill-tempered.
“It was my misfortune to quarrel with a
man, who was emboldened by a knowledge
of my peaceful principles, (for I had acted on
them, though not under such urgent circumstances,
before,) to treat me with the greatest
insult, and even violence; and, not content
with having thus disgraced me, he even proceeded
to the length of challenging me to a
duel. My feelings, sir, were as keen, my
sense of the outrage as bitter, my sufferings
-- 164 --
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under the shame as great, as any man's could
have been; but I could not shed the blood of
the wronger. I thought of the instructions
of my father, I thought of the precepts of my
religion, I thought of the testimony society
had so long and so loudly borne against the
duellist, and I refused to take vengeance.
This, I had been told before, was magnanimity
and true courage: society now, to my
surprise, told me it was cowardice.
“I do not believe I am, or ever was, a
coward—but that is no matter. But grant
that it was cowardice—what was there in it
to require, or authorize, punishment? Does
cowardice commit murder? does it steal? does
it burn? does it defraud? It is, certainly,
not a crime; yet what crime is punished with
greater severity? Contempt is to man's spirit
what the scourge is to his body; and contempt
is the lash with which the world arms
itself against the man convicted of the felony
of fear. We are brave or timid as God
makes us. If courage be a virtue, why not
fear? It is an agent, and a powerful one, in
repressing evil, and, therefore, given to man
for his good. How absurd to punish that to
which both religion and law address themselves,
to win the human race from crime!
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At all events, it is only negatively evil, as implying
the absence of a quality that man
boasts in common with beasts of prey.
“But it is not my object to refine on this
subject. I leave it to philosophers to determine
in what degree, and in what way, turpitude
is involved in timidity. Granting that
I was a craven, (for it is now indifferent to
me what imputation may rest on my name,)
what right had society to punish me for
doing a thing it had so long inculcated as a
duty and virtue? I was called a coward, and
was deemed so; my friends looked upon me
with disdain, my late associates repelled me
with scorn. Men sneered openly in my face,
and even woman—the very maid who had at
first swooned with terror at the thought of
my danger in combat—now turned from me
as a creature too dishonourable for notice.
I was posted, blazoned upon the corners, as
a dastard; I was assaulted, too, in the street;
and, my adversary being a man of strength
greater than my own, I was — But why
should I speak it? As far as a man could be
disgraced by the villany of another, I was
disgraced; and the world, which should have
sympathized and pitied, accepted the last
outrage only as a signal for harsher
-- 166 --
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persecution. I could not defend myself; I sought
protection of the law. The very counsellor
received me with contempt, told me that, in
a case like mine, `no gentleman need be advised
what to do,' and recommended me, `if
I designed carrying my complaint before a
legal tribunal, to seek the assistance of some
pettifogger, whose ideas of honour and duty
corresponded with my own.'—I perceived
that I could obtain no redress, that I could
not even protect myself from future violence,
without incurring additional disgrace.
“Conceive my feelings, conceive what was
my situation. The respect of my fellows
was to me as the breath of life; and I had
lost it. I was a ruined man—rejected, despised,
derided, trampled on—and all because
I had not imbrued my hands in blood—because
I had not committed a crime which the
finger of Heaven and the hearts of man had
pronounced the greatest a mortal could commit.
If my forbearance was a virtue, let
society take the blame of blasting it. Deficient
in spirit or not, I certainly had not
courage to endure universal scorn, to be
pointed at as a branded felon. I sought my
adversary;—I fought him—I killed him.
“I was no longer a coward; but I was a
-- 167 --
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murderer! The dastard was forgotten, but
the sin of the homicide was inexpiable. The
moment my enemy fell, society became wise
and moral, and I was exiled from its presence
for ever. The latter verdict was just, yet
what produced the crime? Ask yourselves
what encouragement the world gives to the
virtues it so constantly eulogizes? I am the
victim of worldly inconsistency. Society
drove me from my principles, and then punished
me for the dereliction.”
With these words, the unfortunate narrator
made an end of his story, and immediately
after walked away to conceal his agitation,
which appeared to be getting the
mastery of him. His story touched the
tender feelings of Mr. Ticklum, who again
applied to his handkerchief, and declared
with a sob, “the world was mad, and he was
sorry he had ever taken the trouble to edit a
paper for it.” With that, he called upon a
fifth gentleman, a very agreeable, honest-looking
personage, whom he called Frankman,
to relate his experience of the real encouragement
given by mankind to the practice
of virtue.
“In me,” said Mr. Frankman, making me
a polite bow, and laying his hand pathetically
-- 168 --
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on his heart—“in me you behold a lover of
truth. Truth being a virtue which men universally
pretend to love, as the foundation of
all that is excellent in morals and useful in
science, you may suppose that I, who made
it the rule and pole-star of my existence, was
a special favourite of the world. I assure
you, however, on the contrary, that nobody
who ever lived in the world endured more
constant ill-treatment than I.
“My misfortunes commenced in the earliest
childhood, and were all attributable to a
love of truth instilled into me by my father;
who, while drumming it into my head with
one hand, laboured hard to beat it out with
the other. Thus, I remember, that for every
infantile fib I told, I got a liberal correction,
which served to make fibbing hateful to me;
and for every truth, the same being commonly
a confession of a cat killed, a hen-roost
robbed, or some of the neighbours' children
hit with a pebble in the eye, I had an abundant
birching, which would have made truth-telling
just as abhorrent, had not my father
been at the pains to assure me he castigated,
not my confessions, but my faults, which
would have met with punishment twice as
-- 169 --
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emphatic, had I made any attempt to conceal
them.
“In this way, my mind got a bias in favour
of truth, which will last me through life.
I carried it to school with me, where, had it
not already become a part and parcel of my
nature, it must have been whipped out of me,
the whole school conspiring against me for
that purpose. Besides confessing all my own
peccadilloes, when called upon to do so by
the master, who invariably flogged me for
them, I felt a similar impulse to confess those
of my schoolmates, who rewarded me in the
same way; and, what with the masters and
boys together, I think there was scarce a
day, for five years together, Sundays and
holydays excepted, that I could not boast at
least one sound buffeting; and that, too, not
for my sins, but the sins of other people.
Sir, it is inexpressible how much my schoolmates
thumped me! They all declared they
hated liars; but, it was evident, their affection
for truth, if that followed as a corollary, was
extremely theoretical. I know, they heartily
hated me in practice.
“The love of truth cost me a fortune, as
it did the fair Cordelia before me. I had an
old aunt, who was somewhat of Lear's
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complexion; and being about to make her will,
she assembled her two dozen nephews, to select
a Benjamin, and note him down for the
lion's portion. I was the old lady's favourite;
she loved my love of truth, as she continually
assured me; and a lie would have sealed me
in her heart for ever. `Johnny, my dear,' said
she, giving me a kiss, `if I should leave you
all I am worth in the world, you would be
glad when I died, would'nt you?' `I would,
aunt Sally,' said I: and I told her the truth;
for she was rich as a Jew, and I knew the
value of money. But the truth did not please
the admirer of truth. She turned me out of
the house, and left her money to my cousin
Tommy Whapper, who was the greatest
bouncer I ever knew.'
“The love of truth cost me also a mistress,
and, as my fate would have it, a rich
one; for, having asked me one day, `if I did
not think her nose was crooked,' (that having
been hinted to her by an ill natured friend;)
I told her it was; which was nothing more
than truth; but the consequence was, that she
utterly discarded, and would never more speak
to me.
“In short, sir, the love of truth has caused
me more misfortunes than you can well
-- 171 --
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imagine; and were I to relate one tithe of the
varied grief it has entailed upon me, I should
occupy your attention for a week. It interfered
with all my plans of life; for my father
being too honest a man to have any thing to
leave me, I was early driven into the world
to shift for myself. I made sundry attempts
while yet a lad, to procure employment in a
counting-house, considering myself well fitted
for the life of a merchant, but was uniformly
rejected for giving too honest an account
of my qualifications. I was kicked out of
the house of a worthy mechanic who had received
me as an apprentice, for telling him a
disagreeable fact in relation to my mistress;
and another, who was a member of a church
and an enemy of my wronger, having received
me into his employ, turned me out neck
and heels, of a winter's day, for confessing
that he cheated his customers.
“How I got along in life, carrying such a
dead weight as veracity on my shoulders, you
may well wonder; as I now do myself. Yet
I have contrived, being of an ingenious turn,
and full of speculations, to mount from my
original humble station on a tailor's board to
avocations of a much more dignified character;
and, as I may say, I have tried my hand
-- 172 --
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at all the trades and professions, though with
no great success in any. I once set up a
shop, but ruined myself by telling my customers
my goods were not of the best quality;
and I lost an opportunity of making a great
fortune, by admitting to a gentleman, who, in
a great speculation I proposed, was to provide
the means, that his money might, perhaps,
go to Jerusalem.
“I picked up a knowledge of engineering,
and lost my first rail-road by estimating the
cost at the full amount; which caused my
President and Directors to turn me off as an
extravagant dog; while a rival, who reduced
the estimate one half, got the appointment
and ruined the company.
“I began business as a lawyer, and destroyed
all my prospects, by admitting, in my
first cause, that my client was a knave, and
his claim good for nothing; all of which was
exceedingly true; but I never had an opportunity
to admit the same thing of a second.
“I clapped an M. D. to my name, but offended
the few patients who at first encouraged
me, by assuring them their complaints
were trifling, and could be cured without
physic.
“Nay, sir, I even tried my hand at
-- 173 --
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divinity, and might have been comfortably settled
for life, had I not shocked my congregation
by declaring that creeds, dogmas, and doctrines
had nothing to do with religion, that
good works were better than strong faith, and
that the only duty of the just man was to revere
Heaven and love his neighbours. For this
frank admission, I was discarded by my flock,
and excommunicated by the society.
“Sir, there is no end to the persecutions I
have endured for truth's sake. I have been
slandered and vilified, ridiculed and beaten—
twice caned, four times horse-whipped, and
my nose pulled times without number—and
all because I practised a virtue commended
by every living soul, instilled into children at
the fire-side and in the school-house, inculcated
from the pulpit, and recommended by the
reprobation so universally adjudged to its antagonist
vice. You may ask what cause
brought me to this place, since it must be a
very extraordinary truth that can deserve the
imputation of madness. I know not how that
may be. It is possible, my truths were all
moderate in their character, but it was their
number my friends pleaded against me. They
did not call me a madman, but they were
certain I was—a fool. That, I suppose, was
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the reason they sent me hither, to reflect on
my past life, to marvel at the folly, injustice,
and inconsistency of man, and to wonder why
he should dignify with the name of virtues
the qualities to which he awards the penalties
of vices.—But this inconsistency is exemplified
more or less strongly in the story
of every unlucky person here present—perhaps
of every inmate of this Asylum. I
would venture a wager in any sum you please—
provided I had it—that we might single
out any person we pleased from among the
multitude, with the certain assurance that his
story, truly told, would be one more illustration
added to the many you have heard, of
the inconsistency of mankind on this particular
subject.”
“No doubt of it,” said Mr. Ticklum; “and
here, as it chances, comes a new companion
in misery, upon whom we may try the experiment.—
There, you see, Simpkins, the raseally
keeper, is turning the poor gentleman into
the yard among us.”
It was as Mr. Ticklum said. At that moment,
the gate was opened by one
of the
keepers, who thrust into the enclosure a very
sad and solemn-looking stranger, who, approaching,
dropt us a profound congee, and
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then made as if he would have passed on to
bury his woes in the remotest nook of the
garden.
“Sir,” said Mr. Ticklum, arresting him,
“you are welcome to this place of captivity,
where all are martyrs together. Sir,” he
added, putting on again the state of an editor,
“we are an enemy of ceremony—Pray, sir,
allow us to ask who you are?”
“I am,” said the stranger, laying his hand
on his heart very mournfully, “the most
miserable man in the world.”
“Sir,” said Mr. Ticklum, making the new
comer a bow, and looking as pathetic as he,
“we are not in the habit of contradicting a
gentleman by word of mouth: but allow us to
say, you are mistaken. We, sir, are the most
miserable man in the world!”
And as he spoke, he laid his hand on his
breast.
“Upon my word, Mr. Ticklum,” said the
ex-member of Congress, interfering, with dignity,
“you entirely forget yourself—It is I
who am the most miserable man in the
world.”
“Except me,” cried Mr. Frankman, looking
very much offended: “I beg leave to
say—”
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“I beg your pardon, gentlemen,” exclaimed
the duellist, whom the controversy roused
from his silent bench, and brought again
among us; “I thought I had long since satisfied
you on that score. It is I, and I alone,
who am the most miserable of men.”
“It is I, sir,” cried another; and the exclamation
was echoed by half a dozen others,
who came crowding up in confusion, preferring
their claims to the distinction of misery.
It seemed, indeed, as if the stranger's confession
of sorrows, with which, I fancy, he
hoped to propitiate favour, possessed a virtue
of another kind, and, like the pebble cast
by Jason among the sons of the dragon's
teeth, was only destined to set my new
friends by the ears.
It is not an uncommon thing for a man
to boast, and even pride himself on, his
woes; but I had no idea that absolute rivalry
in affliction, the competition for its honours
and advantages, ever extended beyond mendicants
and poetasters, to whom sorrow and
anguish are as the breath of their nostrils.
My friends of the madhouse taught
me the contrary, by insisting, each with increasing
vehemence, that the glory of being
the most miserable man in the world
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belonged to him: the consequence of which was,
first, a controversy extremely hot and vociferous,
and then, notwithstanding my friendly
endeavours to keep the peace, a furious
contest, in which the editor knocked the
congressman down, the critic pulled the duellist's
nose, and honest John, my introducer,
who had taken advantage of the story-telling
to snatch a comfortable nap, started up, and
called Mr. Frankman by a name highly insulting
to a lover of the truth. In fact, I believe,
they would soon have torn one another
to pieces, and perhaps me too, had not the
uproar brought the keepers into the yard to
compose the quarrel:—a turn of affairs of
which I took advantage by making my escape,
the moment the gate was opened, from
the enclosure and my friends.
-- 178 -- p018-179
THE EXTRA LODGER.
[figure description] Page 178.[end figure description]
CHAPTER I.
Among the numberless tyrants, in and out
of office, who rule the sovereign American
people with rods of iron, none can compare—
whether it respects the despotic rigour of
their rule, or the patient submissiveness of their
subjects—with their High Mightinesses, the
innkeepers. Steamboat captains, and stage-proprietors
may, in their vanity, contest with
them the claim to superiority in power; and,
indeed, the undoubted privileges both these
classes possess to maim and kill their customers
at will, would seem to put them at the
head of the powerful; but no honest, disinterested
man who will consider all the circumstances,
the power of the lordly Boniface
over the comfort of his lodgers, and the uniform
despotism of his rule, can hesitate to
award the palm to their rivals. In other
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lands, circumstances have degraded the lords
of the spigot into a condition of subservience
and vassalage to society; and they are insultingly
regarded, and, incredible as it may appear,
they even regard themselves as the servants
of the public. Here, in this happy republic,
where all are free but the people, they
have assumed their proper attitude, as masters
of their patrons, whom they rule with
autocratic severity grievous to behold and
lamentable to suffer. High and low, the
princes of metropolitan hotels and the kings
of the log-cabin tavern on the wayside, they
know their power, and exercise it. The metropolitan
potentates, indeed, sometimes affect
a certain citizen-kinglike humility, and govern
with decency and suavity; while it may
be observed of the others, their compeers,
that the lower you descend in rank among
them, the more savage and irrespective becomes
their tyranny. Thus, with the lord of
your town inn, you may sometimes venture
upon a little complaint of the cook and chamber-maid,
without fear of being knocked
down for impertinence; and, sometimes, in a
village hotel, you may prefer a little expostulation
on the subject of horse-meat and clean
sheets, without the absolute certainty of being
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turned into the streets. But even here we
must not expect always to find our dignitaries
in a good humour. The possession of
power is a constant provocative to the exercise
of it; and we know not when the monarch
may put on his robes of state, and shake
his sceptre of authority. It is but a little
while, as every body knows, since a royal
prince, with his whole cortége at his heels,
was turned out of doors, or at least refused
admission, by two different inkeepers, sceptre
in hand. It is true, that, in both these instances,
the royal personage was entirely unknown,
being mistaken, in the one case, for
an opera fiddler, in the other for something
equally insignificant; otherwise mine hosts
had been happy to kiss the dust from his
royal shoes, out of a mere republican respect
for greatness.
The king of the cabin—your true country
tavern-keeper—is quite another sort of person,
with whom to complain, to exhibit any
symptoms of rebellious discontent, is to awake
the sleeping lion. What cares he for your
fine coat, your long dangling watch-chain,
your gentlemanly swagger, your titles of distinction—
your Colonel or General, your Doctor,
your Reverend, your Honourable? You
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[figure description] Page 181.[end figure description]
are, sir, his customer—a suitor for meat and
drink, which he graciously vouchsafes you,
taking no consideration therefor, except a
certain number of ninepences, or half-dollars,
together with a due addition of reverence
naturally belonging to the master of the house
that shelters you. His house, though every
chamber be reeking with mud and rain, is his
house, and if you don't like it, you may leave
it; his beds, though forty human souls, with
boots on, may have nestled betwixt the unchanged
sheets, doing battle all night with
Incubus and Succuba, in the shape of those
strange bedfellows with which misery makes
us acquainted, have harboured your betters,
and why therefore should you presume to
grumble? His table, plentifully or sparely covered
as the case may be, with uncatable eatables—
coffee made, or seeming to be made,
of burnt blankets, sodden bread, stale bacon
and palpitating chickens, greasy potatoes and
withered turnip-tops—is the table that contents
him, and if you don't like it you may
go—to a place entirely unmentionable!
Truly, your republican innkeeper is the most
mighty of tyrants. You may find him, sometimes,
a very amiable personage, as great
men sometimes will be; but take heed you
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trifle not with his amiableness; for, verily, he
is not a person to be trifled with by any rabblement
traveller, for whom he does not care
the snap of his independent fingers—no,
not he.
In truth, the common country tavern-keepers—
those especially in new regions, or at
a distance from the great towns—are, for the
most part, mere farmers, who have been
driven by sheer necessity (not poverty) to
open their houses to the public. In very few
parts of the land is the country densely
enough settled, and the travelling sufficiently
great, to support lines of taverns along the
roads at convenient distances. The farmer
must hang out the bush and play the landlord,
or be eaten up by his hospitality. He
knows nothing of cooking or housekeeping
beyond what he has been accustomed to in
his own family, and he cares nothing about
learning; in half the instances, he would prefer
the traveller's room to his company: it is
not therefore surprising his hotel should not
be the best in the world, nor himself the most
obliging of landlords.
With this condition of things prevailing, it
is evident one must not look for any exemplifications
of the charming rural hostelries,
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the little hawthorn-crowned alehouse, so long
embalmed in the pages of English poets and
novelists, with its proper familiars, the facetious
host, his buxom wife, and trim daughter,
all obsequious, bustling, eager to make
themselves, and their house, and every thing
in it, agreeable to your honour. You cannot
here say, with any propriety, you will take
your ease in your inn, that being the privilege
solely of its master; nor can you have
any greater expectation of comfort, which is
an article seldom put down in the bill of fare.
In brief, one should expect nothing; and to
the inexperienced traveller I recommend the
maxim which observation has shown me to
be productive of the best effects in mollifying
evils, as well as preventing a hundred inconveniences
that might otherwise occur:—Be
submissive; graciously receive, thankfully
suffer, pay your money, and depart in peace.
It was once my fate to pass a night in a
certain wayside caravansary, among the
mountains of Virginia, a lowly and logly
habitation, from whose mean appearance no
one would have inferred the majestic spirit
of the ruler within; up—or rather down to
which—for it stood at the bottom of a hill—
one fine evening in September, rolled a
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mailcoach, well crammed with passengers, of
whom I, for my sins, was one. We numbered
twelve souls in all, nine inside, and three
out; of which latter group, I, being somewhat
a valetudinarian, was honoured with a seat
beside his highness of the whip; while my two
companions, the one a Mississippian, the
other a varmint, as he called himself, of Tennessee,
sat gallantly upon the top, where
they rolled and pitched about, as we thundered
down the rocky road, in a manner admirable
to behold—or, as the Mississippian
expressed it, “like two short tailed dogs in
a boiling pot”—a resemblance that was
somewhat the stronger for the tremendous
bow-woughs and yelpings, with which he—
sometimes assisted by the Tennessean—beguiled
the weariness of the way.
Certainly, there never was a jollier set of
rantipole personages got together in a mailstage
before. Besides the Mississippian yelping
on the top, there was another of the same
tribe on the inside, who could imitate the
braying of an ass to perfection—a melody
which he kept up in rivalry with his friend
and partner aloft. Add to these an Alabamian
who sang negro songs; a Rock River
Illinois, who whooped like an Indian; a
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Texian that played the mestang, or wild horse of
the prairies, and, besides kicking the bottom
nearly from the stage, neighed and whinneyed
till the very team-horses on the road responded
to the note; and five others who did
nothing but scream and laugh to fill up the
concert; and you have before you a set of the
happiest madbrained roisterers that ever astonished
the monarch of a stage house.
At this place we were destined to sup and
lodge; and accordingly, in due course of time,
we were all seated at the board, where we
had the satisfaction of being tyrannized over
both by mine host and mine hostess, the one
glum yet facetious, the other ugly as ill-temper,
and haughty as a princess. There was
nothing at all remarkable in the supper, which
was no better nor worse than usual, except
the total absence of that sine qua non of a
Virginia table, fried chickens—and, indeed,
of chickens in every shape, there not being
so much as a wing or claw on the table.
This omission producing a gentle interrogatory,
somewhat in the tone of expostulation,
from one of the Mississippians, (who, as well
as all the other travellers, it is proper to say,
was now playing the part of a very modest
well behaved young gentleman,) mine host
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very wittily gave us to understand, “it was
all our own fault, seeing that the diabolical
noise we had made, while approaching the
house, had scared all his fowls into the mountains.”
This, the Mississipppian declared,
“reminded him of Captain Dobbs's chickens in
Kentucky, which, he had the Captain's own
words for it, no sooner caught sight of a
traveller approaching, than they immediately
took to their heels; being well aware, from
long experience, as Captain Dobbs said, that
the visit of a stranger was certain death to
them.”
Before we had finished supper, a thirteenth
guest made his appearance—a tall rawboned
Yankee pedler, it seemed, who drove up in
his little wagon through a shower that had
begun to fall, and presently entered the supper-room,
bearing a pair of saddle-bags which
he laid beside him with great care, as if afraid
its contents should be injured, if placed out
of his protection. He had a very meek, solemn,
unpresuming, solitary look, and rather
sneaked into than took a chair at the foot of
the table; where he waited very submisively
for the cup of coffee, which my landlady
deigned, after sundry contemptuous looks,
and five minutes of delay, to send him. On
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the whole, he did not seem to produce any
more favourable impression upon my fellow
travellers, who left him to consume his chickenless
supper by himself, while they proceeded
to the bar-room to resolve a doubt which
had entered the head of the Mississippian,
Captain's Dobbs's friend—to wit, whether the
thunder of their approach had not killed all
the mint-plants, and so deprived them of their
juleps. This was fortunately proved not to
be the case: the young gentlemen concocted
their sleeping draughts, smoked their segars,
settled the affairs of the nation, and then,
having received a hint that such was the will
and pleasure of the landlord, ascended to the
traveller's room to seek their beds.
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CHAPTER II.
[figure description] Page 188.[end figure description]
This traveller's room was the garret, or
the half thereof, the other moiety being partitioned
off, and applied to some other purpose;
and as it was neither ceiled nor plastered,
it presented no very striking look of
luxury or comfort. But it exhibited the rare
and captivating spectacle of a dozen different
beds, in which each man was to possess, for
one night at least, the happiness of sleeping
without a bedfellow. The beds were, moreover,
all single ones, one only excepted, which
was neither single nor double, and, indeed,
was a mere plank stretched between two
stools, with a feather-bed hung over it, pannier-wise;
and so far, it appeared to us, that
our landlord, even in his out-of-the-world
nook, must have been visited with some inklings
of civilization; but upon further
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consideration, it was agreed, we owed the size, as
well as the number of the couches, to the necessity
of the case, the garret being of such
a figure as to stow a dozen truckle-beds
much more commodiously than half that
number of double ones.
Nevertheless, we were all well pleased
with the arrangement; nor did any difficulty
present itself, until the braying gentleman,
regaling us first with a moderate burst of his
music, by way of calling attention, demanded
“Who the nation was to sleep with the
Yankee?” a question that no one answered,
until he had first popped into, and so secured
possession of, his cot; after which,
each swore, with an oath as terrible as was
ever sworn in Flanders, the Yankee should
not sleep with him. Upon this point the determination
was quite unanimous. I might,
indeed, except myself, having made no rash
vow on the occasion; which was the more
unnecessary as I had, partly by accident, and
partly from choice, fallen heir to the narrow
bed of plank, spoken of before, in which there
was no fear of my being troubled with a bedfellow.
We had scarce arranged this important
matter, when the supernumerary guest and
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extra lodger, who had perhaps been detained
securing his property for the night, came up
stairs, bearing his saddle-bags and a candle,
and with hesitating step and modest countenance,
stole through the room, looking for
an empty bed, but of course without finding
any.
“Perhaps, gentlemen,” said he, with an extremely
solemn, wo-begone voice, of inquiry,
“some of you can tell me where I am to
sleep to-night?”
“In paradise, I suppose,” said the braying
gentleman; “for I'll be hanged if there's any
room for you here. You see, the beds are
all full.”
“I do,” quoth the stranger, looking disconsolately
round, “and they are shocking
narrow ones, too. But I rather calculate, the
landlord meant me to have half a one, some
where or other among you?”
“Well, that seems but reasonable,” said
the Mississippian; “and I should be very willing
to let you have half of mine; only—”
here he turned over the bed clothes and displayed
a huge bowie-knife lying on one side
of him, and a pistol on the other—“only that
I never sleep without my arms, and they are
somewhat dangerous when I dream at night,
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as I always do after a bad supper.—'Pon my
soul, sir, I always dream the niggers are murdering
me, and so fall to at 'em in a way that's
quite a caution! 'Pon my soul, sir, if you
had seen me, how I slashed the bed to pieces
last night, and shot off the bed-post! Had
to pay ten dollars damages to old Skinflint,
the landlord!”
The Yankee recoiled with trepidation from
this perilous bedfellow, and preferred his request
to the Tennessean, representing very
piteously, that he had an “affection of the
head”—though of what kind he did not inform
us—which was always aggravated by want
of, or even by uncomfortable, sleep. The Tennessean,
however, swore he was just as
bad as his neighbour, the Mississippian,
though in another way; he never could sleep
with any body, without beginning to fight, the
moment he fell asleep; and it was but a fortnight
ago, he said, that he had gouged an unlucky
bedfellow's eyes out.
The Alabamian declared he chewed tobacco
in his sleep, and that his quids were to the
full as dangerous to a bedmate's eyes as the
Tennessean's fingers. The second Mississippian
had taken a position directly across the
bed, his head sticking out on one side, his
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legs on the other, in which position only, he
swore, he could sleep with any comfort; and
therefore desired the Yankee to apply to some
one else; which he did, though with no better
fortune, some excusing themselves on pretences
as ridiculous as those I have mentioned,
while one or two others, whose wit was
not so ready, met his supplicating glances
and hesitating applications with downright
refusals. As for myself, the narrowness of
my couch was so manifest, as to secure me
from application.
The poor Yankee, thus rejected on all
sides, and with the prospect of remaining
bedless for the night, took the desperate resolution
of preferring a complaint to his majesty
the innkeeper. For this purpose, he
opened the door, and called twice or thrice,
but with timid tones, to mine host; who,
having already retired to his bed, and not
choosing to be troubled, took no notice of
the first calls, and only replied to the last by
threatening to turn his unfortunate customer
out of the house, if he did not keep quiet.
To be turned out of a house in which he
was so inhospitably treated, might have seemed
no very disagreeable alternative; but, unluckily,
a dismal rain had now commenced,
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falling, and there was no other place of refuge
within eight or ten miles.
Nothing remained for the extra lodger but
to stretch himself upon the floor; which he at
last did, but with sundry groans and complaints,
pillowing his head upon his saddle
bags; in which position he lay until his fellow-travellers,
myself with the rest, had all
dropt sound asleep.
We had not slept, I imagine, more than a
quarter of an hour, when we were all, at the
same moment, roused up by a terrible voice
crying, in the midst of the room, “If there's
no other way with them, cut their aristocratical
throats!”
The words and voice were alike alarming;
but judge our astonishment when, starting
from our beds, we beheld the Yankee, rising
half naked from the floor, as grim and gaunt
as Don Quixotte himself, holding a bowie-knife,
to which the Mississippian's was as a
penknife to a razor, and brandishing it with
looks of blood and fury. “By snakes and
niggers!” cried the braying gentleman, with
something like alarm, “he dreams harder than
I do!”
“Wake him up, he'll do a mischief,” exclaimed
others; for we all thought the poor
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[figure description] Page 194.[end figure description]
fellow was suffering under some frightful
dream.
The Tennessean, bolder than the rest,
seized him by the arm; upon which he dropped
his knife, and, his countenance changing
from rage to trepidation, immediately exclaimed,—
“I give myself up; I am your prisoner.
But take notice, gentlemen, and bear
witness for me, I yield to superior force—Give
me five minutes to say my prayers!”
“Death and thunder!” cried the Varmint
of Tennessee, starting back, “the man is
mad!”
And so, indeed, it seemed to us all.
“Give me five minutes to say my prayers,”
quoth the Yankee; who, however, instead of
dropping upon his knees to pray, burst into
tears, and harangued us in somewhat the following
words: “I am an honest man and
patriot, a democrat and man of the people: I
have fought the battle of my country, and I
die a Roman hero. You are too many for
me, gentlemen—twelve hundred men against
one, and a regiment of scalping savages behind
you! I surrender, and I am ready to die.
I am a democrat. But what is one democrat
among twelve hundred hired myrmidons of
power? I know you'll kill me, but I don't
-- 195 --
[figure description] Page 195.[end figure description]
care: all I ask of you is to do justice to my
memory, to bear witness before the world”—
(here his voice was almost drowned in sobs,)—
“to bear witness that I die like a brave man—
die like a hero—die like a patriot—the
victim of despots and martyr of freedom!”
Great were the consternation and confusion
that now prevailed. The man was mad—
mad north-north-west, and all round the compass,
politically mad—a mad patriot; nobody
doubted that. Some asked, what was to be
done: others would have argued the madman
out of his frenzy; others again slipped out of
the door, and stood ready for a run.
In the meanwhile, the maniac, reinspired
by his own eloquence, or the pusillanimity of
his enemies, which even a madman might
perceive, lifted up his voice again, but lifted
it in a tone of defiance.
“You are the hired myrmidons of power!”
he cried, “purse-proud rich men—tyrants
that grind the face of the poor—that live on
the sweat of the poor man's labour, and rob
his hungry children of their food! I am a
poor man, and the poor man's friend: I hate
you, I defy you, I call you to the reckoning.
Yes!” he roared, snatching up his knife from
the floor, and then waving it aloft, as if to
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[figure description] Page 196.[end figure description]
unseen backers; “your triumph is now over,
your hour has come: I call you to the reckoning—
to the reckoning of blood!—Advance,
men of the people, and cut their tyrannical
throats!”
And with that, he advanced himself, flourishing
his ferocious weapon against our
aristocratic breasts. There was no withstanding
that terrific charge: pellmell we
went, one over the other, out the door, which
we esteemed ourselves fortunate in being able
to close, and thus secure upon the distracted
assailant.
We then made our way down to the barroom,
where we found the glum host and his
haughty spouse in as great alarm and as
elegant deshabille as ourselves, they, and,
indeed, every soul in the house, having been
aroused by the madman's vociferations.
What was now, to be done? The unfortunate
man was still raging; we could hear
him thumping against the door, as if endeavouring
to break through, and roaring all
the while a frenzied cry of “victory!” With
that savage knife in his hand—nay, with a
dozen knives perhaps—for arms and clothes
were all, in the hurry of our flight, left together
in the room—who should dare attack
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[figure description] Page 197.[end figure description]
and disarm him? Nobody showed an appetite
for the enterprise; and although the ugly
landlady proposed, in her ecstacy of terror,
a plan that might have ended the difficulty—
namely, that some of us should take her husband's
gun, and shoot the bedlamite through
the key hole, (and, really, she did not seem
to consider the shooting a mad Yankee any
very atrocious crime,)—the business was ended
by our sitting up all night in the bar-room,
in extremely simple costume, debating the
difficulty.
The terrible din with which we had been
ousted from the garret, did not continue long;
but was succeeded, first, by a dead, portentous
calm, then by a strange half groaning,
half snorting kind of noise, that was represented
by some who had the courage once
or twice to creep slyly to the garret door to
listen, to be peculiarly terrific, and which, indeed,
lasted all night long.
When the morning broke, we held another
consultation, and finally, growing more courageous
as the day grew broader, wrought
ourselves to the resolution of proceeding in
a body to the traveller's room, the landlord
magnanimously leading the van, armed with
a broad-axe; ourselves intrepidly following at
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his heels, some carrying such means of defence
as could be gathered up, and others
cart-ropes and bed-cords to tie the madman,
and mine hostess behind with a bulldog.
We paused a moment at the door, listening
to the groaning sound, which was still kept
up, and then soft y entered the room; where
we had the satisfaction of finding the poor
fellow lying very soundly and comfortably
asleep in the best bed, sending from his upturned
nostrils those anomalous and horrid
sounds, which now appeared to us the natural
music of sleep. He opened his eyes,
stared upon us somewhat inquiringly, yet
with a look so extremely natural and lucid
that we refrained from laying hands upon
him, as we supposed would have been necessary.
“Good morning, gentlemen,” said he, quite
like a sensible person; “a fine morning we
have after the rain. And a very fine sleep
I've had too,” he added: “I hope you can
say the same?”
“It's his lucid moment, poor devil,” said
the Varmint; and gathering up our indispensables,
we all went down to breakfast.
The Yankee was now the observed of all
observers—as solemn, as sad, as modest as
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ever, and to all appearances, quite unconscious
of his late paroxysm. We were all
too prudent, or generous, to remind him of it,
even by a distant hint; and, for the same
reasons, we all took care not to cross him in
any thing at table. Whatever dish he looked
at was immediately surrendered to him; even
the ugly landlady requested his acceptance of
a tumbler of cream she had poured out for
her own use, but on which he chanced to
cast his eye. And thus it happened that
our gentleman, whose appetite had by no
means suffered from his affliction, ate the
best, as well as the hugest breakfast of all;
after which, he ordered his horse, called for
and paid his bill, with every air of sanity;
and then, with every air of sanity, departed.
A few moments after, we were ourselves
upon the road thundering along in our mailcoach;
and by and by caught sight of our
extra lodger on the top of a hill, at a cross
road, where, indeed, he seemed waiting for
us, as he looked back upon us frequently,
while we slowly mounted the hill.
“Mad again!” quoth the braying gentleman,
with an air of commiseration—“Poor
devil!”
“Gentlemen,” said the madman, touching
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his hat with an air of great suavity, and giving
the sweetest intonation to his sepulchral
voice, “I believe I forgot to bid you farewell:
at all events, I omitted to express my thanks
for the uncommon kindness you all displayed
in giving me, a poor afflicted Yankee pedler,
so much more bed-room than I had any occasion
for.”
“Oh,” said the Tennessean, having some
doubt about the poor fellow's meaning, but
willing to humour him to the best of his
power—“it is our southern way; hospitality,
sir, mere hospitality.”
“Sir,” said the pedler, with a grateful look,
“I shall always remember it. But I do assure
you, one bed would have served my purpose
just as well as a dozen.”
“No doubt, sir,” said the Varmint; “but
the truth is, as you were a sick man —”
“Only a little affliction in my head,” said
the stranger, touching his cracked os frontis.
“Yes, sir—a little affliction”—rejoined the
Tennessean; “for which reason, each man
desired to give you his bed; and that,” added
the gentleman, pleased at his ingenuity, “is
the reason you had all the beds!”
The pedler gave us a satanic grin, and
touching his forehead again, exclaimed, after
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sneezing and blowing his nose in a highly
natural manner, “Remember me, gentlemen!
I have an affliction here, to be sure, but—I
never lost a bed by it!”
With that, he whipped up his horse, and
cheering him on the way with a laugh that
sounded like the chuckle of a kettle-drum, it
was so deep and tremendous, left us to our
meditations.
“Bitten!” said the Varmint, giving a sneaking
look around him.
“Choused out of bed—humbugged, every
man of us!” growled the Alabamian.
The Mississippian jumped on his feet, and
roaring—“Bray, gentlemen, bray—we are all
jackasses together!” set us the example, by
pouring his most exquisitely donkeyish note
upon the ears of morning.
-- 202 -- p018-203
THE ARKANSAS EMIGRANTS.
[figure description] Page 202.[end figure description]
CHAPTER I.
Fifty years ago, a philosopher sitting in
his closet constructing the political horoscope
of our new-born nation, proved most decidedly,
among other undeniable propositions,
that the Kentucky and Niagara lands, then
all the rage among emigrants, must continue
to be frontier lands for a century to
come, and deplored the infatuation of men
who—neglecting the unoccupied lands east
of the mountains, of which there were enough
and more than enough for the wants of many
generations—exiled themselves to such distant
places, where they must “never more hope to
see their parents, their brothers and sisters,
and other relations and friends whom they
left behind,” where, during all that coming
century, themselves, and their children after
them, must fight with desperate savages for
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the privilege of sowing and reaping their cornfields;
and where, worst of all, after the trouble
of fighting and reaping, they must, for lack
of a market, sell their wheat for tenpence a
bushel, to buy dollar-blankets at half a guinea
apiece.
To us, who in half a century have seen it
so signally falsified, the prediction appears
sufficiently ridiculous. The “wilderness contries”
now form the heart and centre of the
republic, and are, in the language of speculation,
an old country, whence new emigrants
daily depart for a new border; which, in its
turn, becomes, in a few years, a cordon of
sovereign states, sending out, in like manner,
their hosts of voluntary exiles.
And thus the work goes on—the building
up of a nation such as the world has never
yet seen, such as it has never yet imagined.
Croakers sit at home and prate of dangers
from abroad, of political corruption and social
disorganization, as heralds of coming
convulsion; but, all the while, the emigrant
is on the road, with his plough and ox, his
axe and rifle, his sons and daughters, to add
a new state to the confederacy, a new arm
to the Briareus of nations whom no Jupiter
can hurl from the seat of power, no ætna
-- 204 --
[figure description] Page 204.[end figure description]
overwhelm. The roads are full of teams, the
rivers alive with steamboats: turn where you
will, you see no gap in the human billow,
which, rolling from the east like the bore of
a mighty river, the rushing mascaret of the
Amazon or the Ganges, sweeps over forest
and prairie, in its march to the Pacific Ocean.
When that has been gained, when the Oregon
boasts as many steamers as the Mississippi,
and the Chippewyans are as well pierced with
railroads as the Alleghanies, we may look
into the magician's glass for the fate of the
enormous empire—or rather for the fate of
other empires, its outstripped and overshadowed
rivals.
The rage of emigration, of which we need
not leave our homes to witness the effects,
one is almost tempted to consider a feature
peculiar to the American race. Pressed by no
actual necessity—no pinching poverty, such
as drives the poor Irishman from his moorland
cot, no galling oppression of tyrant and
bigot, only to be escaped by expatriation; yet
ever changing, ever on the march, seeking a
new home; it would really seem as if there
was something nomadic in our natures, a
principle of levity and restlessness, from which
the philosopher may, according to his mood,
-- 205 --
[figure description] Page 205.[end figure description]
augur a superabundance of good or evil for
the republic. I have sometimes, while rambling
among the long trains of emigrant
wagons filling a southern or western road,
asked myself whether the love of home—that
tender, and lovely, and soul-enriching sentiment,
so distinctive of the race from which
we boast to descend—was not a poetic fiction
in America. Those men of substance—
that Virginia planter with his hundred slaves,
journeying to the cotton-grounds of Alabama;
that comfortable farmer of Pennsylvania, with
his half a dozen wagons, and furniture in them
enough to furnish out a garrison, wending his
way to the distant Wisconsin;—do these
men remember with no regretful longings the
antique manor-house on the Rappahannock,
the old home-stead among the blue hills of
Susquehanna? The Virginian will tell you,
his lands are worn out, and that he left them
to save his “hands” from starvation, or the
market; the Pennsylvanian assures you, he
has seven sons to be made landholders at
his death. Ask that gallant New-Yorker
what carries him so far from home—he is
going to buy up the site of a county-town,
and convert five thousand dollars into a million:
that young lawyer from Maryland—he
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[figure description] Page 206.[end figure description]
wants to get into the legislature, and thence
to Congress: that bustling Yankee—he will be
a merchant, and make his fortune. In short,
you will learn any thing, except that the
adventurers regret the homes they have left
behind them. The love of novelty; the love of
freedom—that freedom which men feel upon
the boundless prairie, or in the measureless forest,
where the soul hath elbow-room, and is
not conscious of too many superiors—and the
love of wealth, have swallowed up the gentler
love of the place of birth.
Yet all are not thus insensible. Poverty,
defeated hopes, humbled pride, send also
their representatives to the border, among
whom one may sometimes see an eye turned
in tears to the blue horizon behind, and visages
full of the thoughts of home—of home
remembered as a lost paradise, dearer
than any thing to be gained in the land of
promise.
One evening, rambling upon a bluff on the
Mississippi, it was my chance to witness the
embarkation of a family of emigrants, whom
I had previously noticed descending to the
boat, which was to carry them across the
river to the dark frowning forests of Arkansas.
It was a spring evening, and the season and
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the hour united to give beauty to the scene.
Upon the bluff, groves of locust-trees shed a
delicious perfume; and the glories of sunset
lay upon the woods beyond the river. It
was at this pleasant hour, that the family,
consisting of five persons—the father, a man
declining into the vale of years; three sons,
one a mere urchin of six or seven years old,
the others youths of eighteen and twenty;
and a daughter of perhaps seventeen—descended
to the river. The daughter, with the
little boy, was packed away in a carriole—or
in western parlance, carry-all—of no very
distinguished appearance, driven by a gray-headed
old negro servant. The father and
second son rode on horseback; while the first-born,
with a second negro, trudged manfully
along on foot.
There was nothing, at first sight, very peculiar
in the appearance of the family; but, by
and by, the daughter getting out, to walk down
the hill with her eldest brother, I observed
her look wistfully backwards, until a jerk
from the brother—a fiery and impatient youth
compelled her to proceed. I fancied I could
perceive a quivering of her lip, as she turned
from the eastern sky; but, at all events, there
was something in her countenance, its beauty
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and melancholy air, perhaps—which, notwithstanding
her plain attire—indeed, the clothes
of all were of the plainest materials—
and the general look of poverty about the
little train, almost convinced me they had once
known their better days.
They reached the river; the carriole was
driven into the boat, which was pushed from
the shore. At that moment, an idle youth
who had strolled from the village near, and
taken his seat under a locust-tree on the edge
of the bluff, began to play upon a flute which
he had brought with him; and, as it happened,
his first tune was the tender and well
known melody, of “Home, sweet Home.”
The notes reached the departing family, and
what a world of memories seemed suddenly
to be conjured among them! The daughter
started up, and with a wild cry sprang towards
the shore; and, would, indeed, have fallen
into the river, but for the father who caught
her in his arms. For a moment, all was agitation
on board the little bark; the brothers
pressed to their sister's side, one, it seemed,
to reprove, the other to console and soothe,
but all expressing in their countenances a
world of longing regret for the home they
had left, never perhaps again to see.
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How rapidly fancy, awakened by that thrilling
cry, read in the visages of the emigrants—
that gray old man, so stern yet sorrowing;
the daughter clinging to his neck, yet still
gazing wildly back to the receding shore; the
second son lifting his little brother into his
arms, and covering him with kisses; the first-born
looking so cold and haughty, yet unhappy—
how rapidly fancy traced the whole history
of the little family. You could not mistake
that old man, bearing himself, in his sorrow, so
loftily. He is a Virginian—an “old Virginian”—
one of the fine old race of past days—
a gentleman, but an unfortunate one. You
see him in his brave old house at home. It
is on the Potomac, perched upon a hill, over-shadowed
by oaks and pines, planted by a
grandsire some five or six generations removed:
his negro-quarters make a village; and
so do his stables; for truly he delights in his
horse-flesh, and looks with contempt on Congressmen.
He hath his friends about him, a
multitude of goodly people old and young,
cavaliers that know the points of a horse or
bottle of champagne; and dames and beaux
that devote the days to picnicking and the
nights to dancing. If a stranger passeth him
by, he sendeth, or goeth, out to entreat the
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honour of his company. His eldest son reads
law and runs races, in preparation for the
legislature; his second has some thoughts of
doing the same, but is in no hurry, and, in the
meanwhile, squires his sister to and fro, and
writes verses for the young ladies; his sister
laughs her life away in the dance and on
horseback, and jeers at a despairing lover, for
whom she would at any serious moment jump
into the river; and the little boy spins his top
and twirls his marbles, or plays cockhorse with
Sambo or Jimbo, whom he trounces whenever
he tires of their assistance. All is joy and
jollity in the old gentleman's house; and when
he hears his neighbours complain of hard
times, or reads the melancholy croakings in
his county newspaper, he says, “men are
blockheads,” swears “the world turns round
to-day as it did the day before,” and orders
old Cæsar to bring him some fresh mint and
a bottle of brandy.
In the meanwhile, a storm is brewing:
crops fail, the races are run wrong; there are
some rascally mortgages that plague him,
and bonds and notes of hand have fallen due
at the most unexpected moment. He receives
letters from persons whom he calls
“pitiful fellows,” and others again throw him
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into a passion. He is visited by lawyers,
who are agreeable at dinner, but throw him
into such a ferment before departing, that he
flings his son's law-books out the window,
swearing, “no son of his shall become a rascally
attorney.” Finally, the sheriff visits him,
and then he is—ruined. His horses gone—
his negroes, his lands, his father's house—all
departed from him, the proud old man turns
his face to the wilderness—to the furthest
wilderness—where he may, with less shame,
descend to the labour that is to repair his
broken fortunes.
And here he is, at last, upon the Mississippi,
his wilderness in sight, his eye turned
back like his childrens', his brain busy with
the old days, his heart—ay, all their hearts,
full of home and Virginia. You may read
his thoughts: he thinks of his proud domains,
the inheritance of his children, now in the
possession of a stranger; of the log-cabin, in
which he must bury the daughter of his pride
and affections; and his heart sickens at the
vision.
His sons remember their horses and
hounds, their balls and their barbecues, their
wealth and influence, their brilliant hopes and
towering prospects, and contrast them with
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the life of toil and obscurity to which they
are hastening, never, perhaps, to emerge from
it. Their sister thinks—of what? Ah, yes,
of her lover! She hears his footstep on the
gravel-walk at home, the tramp of his horse
in the old avenue, his vows of affection are
still ringing in her ears—ringing, while the
rush of the Mississippi against his farther
bank, and the crash of falling trees, awake
her to a consciousness of separation.
The boat touches the strand: they are in
Arkansas; where fancy as readily pictures
the final history of the whole family. The
father will prosper; he will be again a wealthy
planter, with a hundred negroes around him;
and in ten years he will go to Congress; not
that he loves Congress any more than ever,
but that he may take a peep at Virginia, on
the way, and show “the knaves who ruined
him” how they have made his fortune; they
shall see him richer, and higher, and prouder,
than ever. His sons—alas, the second one
will die in a year, of fever; the first-born, so
fierce of aspect and temper, will, still earlier,
perhaps, perish in a brawl, the victim of a
bowie-knife. The boy, under the gentle influence
of his sister, will grow up less wild
and wayward, and in him the father will be
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content, and cease to grieve for his first-born.
As for the daughter, so melancholy, yet so
beautiful, she will—marry and forget her
sorrows.
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THE FASCINATING POWER OF REPTILES.
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CHAPTER I.
It was once my fortune to be arrested by
floods, in a certain village of the southwest;
where, there being few other means of amusement
in my power, I was glad to take refuge
in the woods, rambling repeatedly among the
grand old trees, and penetrating into shadowy
solitudes, where the strange and mournful
hum of locusts, perched in myriads among
the boughs, was mingled with the chirp of
nesting birds and the rustle of snakes and
rabbits, driven by the waters from their favourite
swamps.
In the course of one of these rambles, my
ears were saluted by a sudden squeaking and
wailing, of a very direful character, which I
by and by found proceeded from a catbird,
whose motions attracted my attention. She
was fluttering about a bush, occasionally
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darting to the ground, from which she rose
with a shriek, to flutter and dart again; and,
in short, betraying so much, and such unusual,
agitation, that my curiosity was aroused,
and I stepped forward to unravel the mystery.
The mystery was soon explained. Beneath
the bush, was a huge black snake,
swaying his head to and fro among the
branches, as if looking for the easiest means
of climbing it; or, perhaps, engaged in wheedling,
serpent-like, the poor catbird to descend—
at all events so much engrossed in his
occupation, whatever it may have been, as to
take no notice of my approach—a slight
which I immediately avenged by catching
up a stick and despatching him at a blow.
“Bravo!” cried the catbird, or seemed to
cry it: certainly, she uttered a squeak strongly
expressive of delight, and fluttered and tumbled
about my head in a very antic and familiar
way, chirping and chattering what I
could not doubt were meant to be grateful
thanks for the service I had rendered her; and
then darted into the bush, where I found her
nest, containing three or four callow young,
which she suffered me to look at, and even
to handle, without seeming to be greatly
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alarmed, or even moving more than a yard
or two from the bush.—It is a pity, poor catbird,
thou hast so greymalkin a voice! Were
it not for that, no bird would be a greater favourite
with man. None shows such a predilection
of his society, none so much confidence
in his honour and generosity; and
none, while admitting his familiarities with
her young, will more jealously and courageously
defend them from the attack of
enemies.
I sat down upon a fallen tree hard by, to
ponder upon these things—upon the good act
I had performed, and upon a question which
obtruded itself into my mind, namely, whether
this might not have been a case of charming,
of which I had previously heard, and read,
so much. It might be, for aught I could tell,
that the black-snake had been throwing his
spells around the poor bird; but, it was quite
as probable, the sable sinner was simply
climbing towards the nest, to make a dinner
of her young—an attempt sufficient of itself
to account for all her maternal agitation.
This little incident threw my mind into a
train of thought on the subject of reptile
fascination, which—the dead snake lying
at my side, the happy mother chirping in
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her bush hard by—I indulged in, until I arrived
at the results to which I have endeavoured
to give expression in the following
chapters.
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CHAPTER II.
[figure description] Page 218.[end figure description]
For six thousand years—that is to say,
ever since the old serpent beguiled mother
Eve in the garden—the existence of the fascinating
faculty has been a subject of controversy
betwixt the profanum vulgus and the
sages of science, the one affirming the fact
as a thing observed, the other denying it, upon
the strength of arguments drawn from its apparent
impossibility. At the present day, the
question stands precisely where it did in the
beginning; the vulgar observing and affirming
as before, the wise man arguing and denying:
and in this vexed condition it may perhaps
remain for six thousand years longer,
unless it should be my good fortune in these
present pages, to settle the difficulty and lay
the question at rest forever.
And, first, I profess to be a profound and
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devout believer in the whole doctrine of fascination;
having quite satisfied my mind, after
a long course of observation and inquiry, that
the faculty in question does exist, and has existed
from the remotest ages, in the reptile
family, to which I am inclined to limit it. I
am not, indeed, ignorant of the claims of animals
of another class to the possession of the
faculty—for example, the Syrens and Lamiæ
of ancient days, and the Mermaids of a later
period: but as the Syrens and Mermaids enchanted
merely with fine music, the “dulcet
and harmonious breath,” with which even a
mortal may draw souls of out men's bodies; and
as the Lamiæ were half-snake at the best; I
think, they cannot be ranked in the same category
with animals that charm—like Greek
Sorcerers and Yankee Magnetizers—by the
mere force of a look, the magic of an evil
eye. Such are your true fascinators; and
such belong only to the reptile race.
All reptiles seem, in former times, to have
been considered charmers; but the faculty is
now claimed to exist only among a few species—
the cobra of Africa and India, (the supposed
basilisk of the ancients,) the European viper,
and the rattlesnake and blacksnake of America;
of which the two last are, by general
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consent, placed at the head of the tribe, as
possessing much higher, and more frequently
employed, powers of fascination than the
others. Their supremacy over the others
named, I do not doubt; but, as I am of opinion
the list of fascinating reptiles is much more
extensive than is generally supposed, so also
I believe that there are other reptiles, not
hitherto suspected as charmers, that possess
the faculty in a still higher degree of perfection.
The facts upon which observers have founded
their belief, will naturally form the first
subject of attention; many of these being,
apart from their extraordinariness, of a character
so well attested, that a very great philosopher,
no less a man than Sir Hans Sloane,
the founder of the British Museum, declared
“there was no reason to question them.” Indeed,
the facts themselves seem to be pretty
generally admitted among the philosophers;
who confine their opposition chiefly to the
inferences, and seek, by explanations of their
own, to rob the reptile of his virtue, and his
exploits of their marvel and mystery. But
let us examine the facts first, and the explanations
afterwards.
The chief victims of the magical power
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are supposed to be the smaller birds and animals—
sparrows, catbirds, dormice, squirrels,
“and such like; which though sitting upon
the branch of a tree of considerable height,”
says the philosopher above mentioned, “shall,
by such steadfast or earnest looking of the
snake, fall dead into his mouth.”
According to the more modern belief,
the charmed animal makes many, though
unavailing, efforts to break through the
bonds of fascination, the birds, in particular,
fluttering for a long time around the destroyer,
before they finally drop into his remorseless
jaws. Instances of the fascination
of such small creatures are extremely numerous,
and authenticated by persons of the
greatest respectability. Thus we have an
instance of the charming of a bluejay by a
black snake, endorsed by the Rev. President
Dwight; another of a squirrel, authenticated
by Mr. Chief Justice Dudley of Massachusetts,
a Fellow of the Royal Society; and
twenty similar ones by Professor Kalm; not
to speak of other persons of equal weight of
character. A very circumstantial account is
given by Dr. Todd, of Vermont, of a case—
it might almost be called a double case of fascination—
witnessed by himself, and chroni
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[figure description] Page 222.[end figure description]
cled by the philosophic Samuel Williams,
LL. D., in his Natural and Civil History of
that state—a gentleman who laid the scientific
world under obligation by actually
counting the leaves on a maple tree! a feat
of arithmetical dexterity only rivalled by the
exploit of old Tom Fuller, the (in his day)
celebrated negro calculator of Virginia, who
began his mathematical studies by counting
the hairs on a cow's tail![4]
“Walking,” says Dr. Todd, “in a field in
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Connecticut, near a small grove of walnut
trees, I saw a sparrow circling in the air, just
in the margin of the wood, and making dreadful
moans of distress. Immediately the former
circumstances occurred,” (he had seen an
instance of charming in his boyhood, but had
been frightened away by the charmer,) “and
I approached with caution within twenty feet
of a black snake, about seven feet long, having
a white throat, and of the kind which the
people there call runners or choking-snakes.
The snake lay stretched out in a still posture:
I viewed him and the bird near half an hour.
The bird, in every turn in its flight, descended
nearer the object of its terror, until it approached
the mouth of the serpent. The
snake, by a quick motion of its head, seized
the bird by the feathers, and plucked out
several. The bird flew off a few feet, but
quickly returned. The snake continued to
pluck the feathers at every flight of the bird,
until it could no longer fly. The bird would
then hop up to the snake and from him, until
it had not a feather left, except on its wings
and head. The snake now killed it by breaking
its neck, by an amazing sudden motion:
he did not devour it, but cast it a little off,
and continued his station. Now the tragedy
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was to be again repeated; for another bird of
the same kind, which had shown signs of distress
during the first tragedy, was fascinated
to the jaws of the monster in the same circling
manner as the former, and suffered the
loss of some feathers. I could no longer
stand neuter. With indignation I attacked
the hated reptile; but he escaped me. The
living bird was liberated from his fangs.
The dead one I picked up and showed to my
friends, destitute of feathers as before mentioned.”
One may judge of the wondrous strength
of the charm exercised in this instance, when
we find the poor sparrows holding still to be
plucked, as well as eaten.
Equally circumstantial is the account given
by Colonel Beverly, in his history of Virginia,
of the charming of a hare (Americé, rabbit,)
by a rattlesnake, a spectacle witnessed by
himself and two other gentlemen, his companions.
“It happened thus,” quoth the historian:
“One of the company, in his search
for the best cherries,” (they had ridden into
an orchard by the roadside,) “espied the hare
sitting: and although he went close by her,
she did not move, till he (not suspecting the
occasion of her gentleness,) gave her a lash
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with his whip; this made her run about ten
feet, and then sit down again. The gentleman
not finding the cherries ripe, immediately
returned the same way, and near the place
where he struck the hare, he espied a rattlesnake.
Still, not suspecting the charm, he
goes back about twenty yards to a hedge to
get a stick to kill the snake, and, at his return,
found the snake removed and coiled in
the same place whence he had moved the hare.
This put him into immediate thoughts of
looking for the hare again, and, soon he espied
her about ten feet off the snake, in the same
place to which she had been started when he
whipped her. She was now lying down, but
would sometimes raise herself on her forefeet,
struggling as it were for life, or to get
away; but could never raise her hinder parts
from the ground, and then would fall flat on
her side again, panting vehemently. In this
condition the hare and snake were when he
called me; and though we were all three come
up within fifteen feet of the snake, to have a
full view of the whole, he took no notice at
all of us, nor so much as gave a glance towards
us. There we stood at least half an
hour, the snake not altering a jot, but the
hare often struggling and falling on its side
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again, till at last the hare lay still, as dead,
for some time: then the snake moved out of
his coil, and slid gently and smoothly towards
the hare, his colours at that instant being
ten times more glorious and shining than at
other times. As the snake moved along, the
hare happened to fetch another struggle;
upon which the snake made a stop, lying at
his length till the hare lay quiet again for a
short space; and then he advanced again till
he came to the hare,”—and, to shorten the
worthy historian's story, he swallowed it.
It would seem, that, in this case, the hare
actually gave up the ghost before the serpent
seized him, so mortally efficacious was the
charm. But at this we ought not to be surprised.
Levaillant, the celebrated naturalist
and traveller, relates two instances that occurred
under his own observation, of deaths
thus produced, the one of a shrike, which was
killed by a snake three and a half feet off, the
other a mouse destroyed by a reptile at double
the distance—the distances having been
carefully measured by the accurate philosopher.
“I stripped,” says he, “the bird before
the whole company, and made them observe
that it was untouched, and had not received
the slightest wound.” “Upon taking up the
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mouse,” he adds, “it expired in my hand,
without its being possible for me to discover,
by the most attentive examination, what had
occasioned its death.”
Nor are we to consider the charming faculty
capable of being exercised only at the expense
of the smaller and meaner races of animals.
It will be easy to show, that, when a snake
has a mind for higher game, he has but to
turn his eyes upon it, and thus overcome any
animal he has a fancy for. It is but a month
or two since we had an account in the newspapers
of the killing of a huge rattlesnake in
Alabama, a monster thirteen and a half feet
long, in whose maw was discovered a full
grown fox. This, I take it, was manifestly
a case of fascination; for it is quite impossible
to suppose any fox in the world would
have suffered himself to be eaten by a snake,
unless the latter had charmed the cunning out
of him.
But let us skip all intermediate animals,
and prove that the fascinating faculty is sometimes
powerful enough even to enthrall human
beings—that men, women, and children
have been brought as thoroughly under its
sway as the meanest mouse or sparrow that
ever squeaked in vain to a serpent for mercy.
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I might, I think with the utmost propriety,
include in this category the instance of a
little child of eighteen months or two years
old, who, a few years since, having had his
dinner crammed into his hand, stole out of
his father's cabin to munch it at liberty, and
was soon after, to the horror of his parents,
discovered under a bush, stuffing his apple
pie down the throat of a blacksnake. To
think that any thing short of fascination could
have choused a hungry urchin of two years
old out of his dinner, I hold to be midsummer
madness; and accordingly, I put this
down in my tablets as an instance of the fascination
of a human being by a serpent;
though sufficiently provided with other cases,
which the reader will perhaps hold to be still
more striking and satisfactory.
Dr. Williams, of whom I have already
made honourable mention, has added, in his
history, to the case mentioned several instances
of the fascination of human beings
by reptiles, all of them so well authenticated,
and so curious in themselves, that it would
be a sin of the greatest magnitude to pass
them by.
The first is a story, authenticated by
Samuel Beach, a naturalist, of two boys in
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New Jersey, who, being in the woods looking
for cattle, lighted by chance upon a large
blacksnake; upon which, one of them, an inquisitive
imp, immediately resolved to ascertain
by experiment whether the snake, so celebrated
for its powers, could charm or fascinate
him; he requested his companion to take
up a stick, and keep a good eye upon the
snake, to prevent evil consequences, while he
made trial of its powers. “This,” says Mr.
Beach, “the other agreed to do; when the
first advanced a few steps nearer the snake,
and made a stand, looking steadily on him.
When the snake observed him in that situation,
he raised his head with a quick motion,
and the lad says, that at that instant there
appeared something to flash in his eyes, which
he could compare to nothing more similar
than the rays of light thrown from a glass or
mirror when turned in the sunshine: he said,
it dazzled his eyes; at the same time, the
colours appeared very beautiful, and were in
large rings, circles, or rolls, and it seemed to
be dark to him every where else, and his head
began to be dizzy, much like being over swift
running water. He then says, he thought he
would go from the snake; and, as it was dark
every where but in the circles, he was fearful
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of treading any where else; and as they still
grew in less circumference, he could not see
where to step: but as the dizziness in his
head still increased, and he tried to call his
comrade for help, but could not speak, it then
appeared to him as though he was in a vortex
or whirlpool, and that every turn brought
him nearer the centre. His comrade, who
had impatiently waited, observing him move
forward to the right and left, and at every
turn approach nearer the snake, making a
strange groaning noise, not unlike a person
in a fit of the nightmare, he said he could
stand still no longer, but immediately ran and
killed the snake, which was of the largest
size. The lad that had been charmed was
much terrified, and in a tremor; his shirt was,
in a few moments, wet with sweat, he complained
much of a dizziness in his head, attended
with pain, and appeared to be in a
melancholy, stupid situation for some days.”
Another case is given on the authority of
Col. Claghorn, of Rutland, Vt., and relates to
two men of Salisbury in Connecticut, named
Baker and Nichols. “Going towards the
meeting-house in that place, they discovered
a large rattlesnake in a plain open piece of
land. The snake lay coiled up in a posture
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of defence. To attack him with safety, they
procured a long slender pole or switch, with
which they could reach him without being in
any danger from his motions. As the snake
could not escape, they diverted themselves
with irritating him with their pole, without
giving him any considerable wound. They
had carried on this business some time, during
which the snake had repeatedly attempted
to spring upon them from his coils, and to
escape by running, and discovered uncommon
appearances of rage and disappointment.
Being prevented in all his attempts to escape
from, or to bite, his opposers, he suddenly
stretched himself at his full length, and fixed
his eyes on the man who was tickling him
with the end of the pole. The snake lay perfectly
still, and Mr. Nichols kept on the same
motions with his switch. When this scene
had continued for a short time, Mr. Nichols
seemed to incline his body more and more towards
the snake, and began to move towards
him in a very slow and irregular manner.
Baker, who stood looking on, noticed these
appearances, and called to Nichols to desist
from the business, and despatch the snake.
He took no notice of these admonitions, but
appeared to have his whole attention fixed on
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the snake, was observed to be gradually
moving towards him, to have a pale aspect,
and to be in a profuse sweat. Alarmed with
the prospect, Baker took him by the shoulders,
gave him a violent shake, pulled him
away by force, and inquired what was the
matter. Nichols, thus forced from the scene,
made an uncommon mournful noise of distress,
appeared to be uncommonly and universally
affected, and in a few minutes replied
to the inquiries, that he did not know what
ailed him, that he could not tell how he felt,
that he had never felt so before, that he did
not know what was the matter with him, but
was very unwell.”
A third case is the fascination of a lady of
Lansingburg, on the North River, vouched
for by Mr. Watkins, a minister of the gospel,
whom she informed of the adventure. The
spell was in this case relieved by a passer-by;
when the disenchanted lady immediately felt
“as though she had been among poisonous
herbs, itching, &c. which issued in a long fit
of sickness, which her physician ascribed to
the fascination of the snake; and she had
not recovered,” says the reverend narrator,
“when I saw her.”
The fourth case recorded by Dr. Williams
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is still more interesting, being the direct personal
account of the sufferer himself, a Mr.
Elias Willard, of Tinmouth, Vermont, whom
Dr. Williams characterizes as “a man of
much information, virtue, and veracity.”
“When I was a boy about thirteen years
old,” says Mr. Willard, “my father sent me
into a field to mow some briers. I had not
been long employed when I discovered a large
rattlesnake, and looked round for something
to kill him; but not readily discovering a
weapon, my curiosity led me to view him.
He lay coiled up, with his tail erect, and making
the usual singing noise with his rattles.
I had viewed him but a short time, when the
most vivid and lively colours that imagination
can paint, and far beyond the powers of the
pencil to imitate, among which yellow was
the most predominant, and the whole drawn
into a bewitching variety of gay and pleasing
forms, were presented to my eyes; at the
same time, my ears were enchanted with the
most rapturous strains of music, wild, lively,
complicated and harmonious, in the highest
degree melodious, captivating, and enchanting,
far beyond any thing I ever heard
before or since, and indeed far exceeding
what my imagination, in any other situation,
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could have conceived. I felt myself irresistibly
drawn toward the hated reptile; and as
I had been often used to seeing and killing
rattlesnakes, and my senses were so absorbed
by the gay vision and rapturous music, I
was not for some time apprehensive of much
danger: but suddenly recollecting what I had
heard the Indians relate (but what I had
never before believed,) of the fascinating
power of these serpents, I turned with horror
from the dangerous scene; but it was not
without the most violent efforts that I was
able to extricate myself. All the exertions I
could make with my whole strength were
hardly sufficient to carry me from the scene
of horrid, yet pleasing enchantment; and
while I forcibly dragged off my body, my
head seemed to be irresistibly drawn to the
enchanter by an invisible power. And I
fully believe, that in a few moments longer,
it would have been wholly out of my power
to make an exertion sufficient to get away.
The latter part of the scene, I was extremely
frightened, and ran as fast as possible towards
home, my fright increasing with my speed.
The first person I saw was my uncle, who,
discovering my fright, ran to meet me, and
asked the occasion of it: I told him I had
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been frightened by a rattlesnake, but was in
too great a perturbation to relate the whole.
He rallied me for my pusillanimity, and took
me by the hand; and we went to the place
where the snake was still lying, which was
soon despatched by my uncle. I then related
the story to him and have since told it to
many other persons. The night following, I
never closed my eyes. The same scene continually
haunted my imagination. Whether
the agitation was occasioned merely by the
recollection of what had passed, or whether
the operation of the charm still had some real
effect upon the nervous system, I cannot determine.”
To these instances must be added another—
also in the words of the victim—related by
Levaillant. The subject of the adventure
was a captain in the British army. “While
in garrison in Ceylon,” said the soldier,
“amusing myself one day hunting in a marsh,
I was, in the course of my sport, suddenly
seized with a convulsive and involuntary
trembling, different from any thing I had ever
experienced, and at the same time was
strongly attracted, and in spite of myself, to
a particular spot of the marsh. Directing my
eyes to the spot, I discovered with feelings
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of horror, a serpent of enormous size, whose
look instantly pierced me. Having, however,
not yet lost all power of motion, I embraced
the opportunity, before it was too late, and
saluted the reptile with the contents of my
fusee. The report was a talisman that broke
the charm. All at once, as if by miracle, my
convulsion ceased; I felt myself able to fly;
and the only inconvenience of this extraordinary
adventure was a cold sweat, which was
doubtless the effect of my fear, and of the
violent agitation my senses had undergone.”
The above case is the more remarkable,
as the gallant captain was charmed even before
he had seen the snake that charmed him;
so that, it seems, the eyes of a reptile are not
his only tools of trade.
A very marvellous case, a year or two
since, ran through the newspapers, of a gentleman
in Georgia, who, being out fishing on
the banks of a wooded river, and having little
of the luck, and none of the philosophy, of
honest old Isaac Walton, stuck his rod in the
mud, and fell asleep; during which, he was, in
a very dastardly manner, set upon by a rattlesnake,
who charmed him, and would perhaps
have devoured him, had it not been for
a rival blacksnake (or king-snake, as it is
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called in that part of the world,) who, luckily,
at that moment appeared, and ended the spell
by darting upon the enchanter, and squeezing
him to death.
To these cases I cannot avoid adding
another, perhaps more singular than any yet
recorded, and related to me by the subject,
an honest old negro of Delaware, for whose
veracity, in this particular case, at least, I
am quite willing to stand sponsor. Old Bob,
for such was his name, was ditching in his
master's meadow, a place famous for all kinds
of snakes, venomous ones excepted; a circumstance
no wise agreeable to Old Bob, who
held all reptiles in equal horror and detestation,
and had, in especial, a great dread of
their powers of fascination. While toiling
thus, in constant alarm, bare-footed in the
shallow trench he was excavating among
sedges and splatterdocks, he was suddenly
terrified at the sight of a snake's head peering
out of the mud and water within six inches
of his shins. “Lorra my! massa,”—
he was used to exclaim, while telling his
story, and endeavouring to explain his terrible
sensations—“saw his eyes a peepin' out
of his black head—saw de fiah a flashin' out
of 'em, guy! like fiah a flashin' out of a gun:
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golly my! nebber war so scared. Peeped
me right in the face—Oh, pshaw! nebber
felt so in my life. Wanted to run, massa,
but no more run than a barn-door; stuck fast
in the mud—could'nt move—all over with
niggah!”—In short, old Bob, after a terrible
paroxysm of fright and fascination together,
that bound him for a moment, hand and limb,
bethought him suddenly of the ditching spade
still in his grasp; with which, urged by desperation,
he aimed a terrible blow at the head,
and succeeded in slicing off—not the head of
a snake, but the best part of his own great
toe!—which, tilted up by a clod, was the serpent
that had fascinated him, there being no
other, at that moment, in sight.
These remarkable facts, which philosophers
are loath to attribute to a magical faculty of
fascination in the reptiles that play so important
a part in them, they have endeavoured
to explain away by sundry ingenious theories,
which may now be briefly noticed.
The first which I shall notice, because the
most recent, and because it has most acceptance
among unbelievers, is that of an American
philosopher, the late distinguished Dr. Barton,
who, in a paper printed in an early volume of
the Transactions of the American
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Philosophical Society, had the credit of demolishing all
previous theories, as well as of annihilating the
fascinating power itself—a credit which he enjoyed
until a very recent period, when the great
Cuvier petrified the philosophic world by declaring
that the subject of reptile fascination
was by no means cleared up, but on the contrary,
as liable to controversy as ever. Dr. Barton
explained every thing by referring to the
well known thievish propensities and hungry
appetites of reptiles, and the devoted attachment,
equally notorious, of the lesser animals,
especially birds, to their young; in the defence
of which from the attacks of the rapacious
enemy, the latter would naturally display
much maternal anxiety, and as naturally
sometimes, by mere accident, fall into the
power of the assailant. It is highly probable,
or indeed quite certain, that small birds have
often thus heroically sacrificed themselves,
and that observers have wrongfully attributed
their death to fascination; but as it does not
appear, that any of the human beings, whose
cases have been mentioned, had any callow
broods to take care of, it is quite evident the
theory of Dr. Barton will not meet all cases,
and is, therefore, not the true one.
Professor Kalm and Sir Hans Sloane were
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of opinion, that the animals supposed to be
fascinated, had been first bitten by the charmers,
and that their agitation, cries, and fruitless
struggles to escape, were the natural effects
of an envenomed wound and approaching
death. This solution cannot be admitted;
because animals, as experience shows, when
bitten by reptiles, are always wise enough to
take to their wings, or heels;—because, bitten
or not, the moment the charm is interrupted,
the animal flees, or flies, away;—and because
it will not apply to animals charmed by blacksnakes,
whose bite is not at all venomous:
not to speak of the fact that the shrike and
the mouse so carefully examined by Levaillant,
and our human sufferers as above mentioned,
had in no case received so much as a
scratch.
Other persons have thought, that, as all
animals are subject to disease, and hundreds
of the smaller ones, especially birds, squirrels,
and rabbits, are daily left by gunners wounded
and half dead in the fields, the difficulty
might be settled by supposing these poor disabled
creatures the subjects of apparent fascination.
This is, however, met by some of
the preceding objections: sick or not, the animal
displays sufficient activity, the moment
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his fascinating oppressor receives a good
thwack on the back.
Others, again, have supposed, with Blumenbach,
that the curiosity excited by the
jingling music of the rattlesnake, and terror,
operating to such an extent as to deprive the
animal of all power of escape, will explain
the whole mystery of fascination. But curiosity,
as an operating cause, must be thrown
aside; since all charmers are not rattlesnakes;
and as for the fear of a peril which can be
easily escaped, and is not imminent at first,
it is difficult to suppose that it should so completely
overpower the physical faculties of
any animal whatever. Where the occasion
is very sudden, or unusually frightful, it is
easy to conceive of such a paroxysm and
ecstasy of terror as shall deprive an animal
of all corporeal power. Such is the frenzy of
horses and cattle in a stable on fire. Pigeons
and storks have been known to dart down
into the flames of a burning city; and in the
same way, birds have been brought down
from the air by the shouts of a great army.
But there can be nothing similar in the terror
inspired by a serpent—a spectacle customary
enough to all the little dwellers of the woods
and fields. Besides, who can suppose that a
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British Captain in India, who had doubtless
hunted his tiger, and shot his wild elephant,
should grow chicken-hearted at sight of a
cobra da capello? or that a full blooded Yankee,
who had slaughtered his cord or two of
snakes, should ever show the white feather to
a single rattler?
The last theory I shall mention is the earliest
in date, being recorded by Pliny, and revived
by the philosophic Count de Lacépède;
both of whom refer the phenomenon of fascination
to an intoxicating emanation, which
reptiles are supposed to throw out at will, inebriating
all animals within its influence. The
adventure of the bold Briton, who was charmed
before he saw the cobra, is somewhat in
favour of this doctrine; which is by no means
so absurd in itself as many may be inclined to
think. The effluvium of the vanilla intoxicates
the labourer who gathers it; the manchineel,
the elder, and other narcotic, shrubs produce a
baleful effect on persons sleeping under their
shade. That an animal should have the
power to exhale a noxious emanation does
not seem a whit more extraordinary than the
faculty which others possess of dispensing
light and electric shocks. Plausible, however,
as this ancient theory may seem, it receives
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a death blow from some of the cases I have
narrated. In the instances of the two boys
and the two men, it appears that the snakes
were able to charm only one individual at a
time; whereas, had an intoxicating effluvium
been the means used, both the adventurers
must, in each instance, have been fascinated
together.
The bright and beautiful lights that seemed
to have attended each case of man-charming,
and the ravishing music heard by Willard,
are phenomena, which may perhaps assist
some happier theorist in building up a more
poetical hypothesis. As for myself, I do not
pretend to speculate upon the subject, being
content to believe, without attempting to play
the philosopher.
The facts of serpent-charming, as I have
mentioned, are generally credited by the
sages. Some, however, affect not merely to
doubt, but even to discard them, as being the
coinages, or idle imaginings, of ignorant
country-people, whose representations are,
of course, to be considered of no account
whatever. This is carrying scepticism too
far. The country people, from whom indeed
most of the accounts come, are, as no less a
man than Burke tells us, “better observers,
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in such matters, than more civilized and reasoning
people, for they rely more upon experience
than theories.” And, moreover,
many of these relations come from men of
admitted intelligence and integrity.
Other persons attack the accounts, more
slyly and adroitly, with objections; two of
which, being somewhat striking, and apparently
conclusive, it is proper to notice.
The first objection is, that no snake ever
exercises a fascinating faculty in a cage.
This objection, unluckily for the makers, asserts
what is not the fact. An early number
of the London Philosophical Transactions
contains a perfectly well authenticated account
by Dr. Sprengell, of several experiments performed
upon female vipers in cages, with
mice; which being thrown into the cage, were
charmed, danced about, squeaked, and ended
by running down the vipers' throats.
The other objection is, that, however frequent
were the cases formerly told and recorded
of reptile fascination, none ever occur,
none are ever heard of now.
To this I beg leave to say, that it is a
great mistake—that cases are still of frequent
occurrence—that they happen, indeed,
every day, and under every body's nose—
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and that any one curious on the subject,
needs but to open his eyes and look about
him, to see them—cases of fascination by
reptiles a hundred fold more strongly endowed
with the charming faculty than common
serpents, though belonging, as I believe,
to the blacksnake and rattlesnake families—
and producing effects proportionably greater
and more destructive.
Look—as any one may—at that crawling
thing, with forked tongue—the blackest of
blacksnakes—that has crept into the bower
of the innocent maid, upon whom he has set
his serpent glance—into whose ears he has
hissed the music of perdition!—Fascinated
by a look that seems of love, lulled by a
voice that has stolen the tones of tenderness,
the innocent maid dreams of joy and happiness,
of faith and affection; while, all the
while, the reptile is writhing his folds around
her neck, and burying his fangs in her
bosom.
And there crawls another of the blacksnake
family!—his basilisk look is upon the widow
holding her orphan upon her knee, and smiling
upon the reptile, in whom her deluded
eyes—for he has cast his spell upon her—see
only the form of a friend and protector—a
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friend and protector that will grind her bones
and the bones of her little one to powder.
And here is one of the rattlesnake family—
a subtile beast, that bears upon his tail a
dice-box, with which he jangles such a melody
of fascination, that, presently, you shall
see that bright-eyed youth—a sparrow, or
pigeon, from whom he has already plucked
every feather—bitten to death, and laid, a
gory corse, in a grave of dishonour.
And here rolls another—a fat and swelling
monster, golden of hue, and on his tail, for a
rattle, a cask of dollars, labelled over with
price-currents and maps of town-lots, all glorious
to behold and bewitching to hear; and
around him a knot of hopeful fools, dazzled
by the glittering speculation of his eyes, all
pressing forward to be—devoured.
Another yet!—and behold how comely of
aspect and amiable of hue, with the crest of
a cobra on his head, whereon is written Philanthropy,
and at his tail a bundle of lucifer-matches
and tomahawks, wherewith, as he
charms the virtuous multitude, he supplies
them the means (for he himself harms not)
of knocking one another's brains out, and
setting a community in flames.
See yet another—a lank, homely,
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insignificant-looking creature, yet a reptile more
powerful to charm, more strong to destroy,
than all who have preceded him. He crawls
through the multitude, hissing a song of liberty,
a collar round his throat with the name
of Patriot engraved thereon, and at his tail
a cluster of penny-trumpets and popguns,
with which he makes a music that sets all to
dancing with joy, and to knocking one another
upon the head; the while he crawls
upon their necks, wreathing them together in
hideous chains, and, as he wreathes, sucking
away their blood and substance.
Thousands of reptiles such as these, and
thousands of others of different hues and species,
creep round about us, plying their basilisk
arts every hour and every moment, making
victims alike of high and low, of old and
young, wise and weak, rich and poor; and he
who, from some safe covert, will look awhile
upon them and their operations, will never
afterwards doubt the existence of—the Fascinating
Power of Reptiles.
END OF VOL. I.
Footnotes
eaf018v1.n4[4] The powers of mental calculation possessed by this poor
negro, who could neither read nor write, and who—to show
that his own laborious exertions, and no miracle of nature,
had made him what he was—could remember the time when
he thought himself “a very clever fellow,” upon having
learned to count a hundred, were very extraordinary indeed;
and in the rapidity with which he arrived at his results, he
has, perhaps, never been surpassed by any other calculating
machine, human or mechanical. To the question, “how
many seconds a man had lived, who was 70 years, 17 days,
and 12 hours old,” he returned a correct answer in the short
space of a minute and a half. This calculation was, at the
same time, made in the usual way, with pen and paper, by
one of the gentlemen present, who told old Tom, “he was
wrong, and that the sum was not so great as he had said;”
upon which the old man hastily replied, “'Top, massa, you
forget de leap year.” On adding the seconds of the leap
years to the others, the amount of the whole in both their
sums agreed exactly.
To this note I will merely add, for the satisfaction of the
inquisitive, that Dr. Williams found 21,192 leaves on the
maple, and old Tom Fuller 2,872 hairs on the cow's tail.
