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The events of my father's life may be chronicled in a few lines, but it would take many pages to tell of the mental and spiritual gifts that made that life notable, and of its influence over a wide circle of known and unknown friends. Still more potent was the impress of his character upon those nearest to him, whose privilege it was to see him day by day and partake of the wit, wisdom, kindliness and humor that made him the most fascinating of companions to his children. He has himself told in this book the main incidents of his career; how his father, Asahel Reid Smith, a sturdy young son of Massachusetts, came South to teach school and married his fourteen-year-old pupil, pretty little Caroline Maguire, whose story as her son has written it, is most interesting and romantic. They were married near Savannah but later moved to Lawrenceville, Gwinnett County, where my father was born on June 15th, 1826, the eldest of ten children. My grandfather became a thriving merchant of Lawrenceville, postmaster as well, and my father has told us many entertaining stories of the days when he used to "ride the mail" and sell ribbons and things to the girls.
After some time spent in a manual labor school, he went to college at Athens, where he was the classmate and friend of many of the notable men of later days. He held his friends in the greatest esteem and affection, and it was one of the sorrows of his long life to see them pass away one by one.
After his graduation at Franklin College, now the University of Georgia, my father studied law in the office of Judge Nathan Lewis Hutchins of Lawrenceville, and was admitted to the bar. Here also he had the privilege of association with the noted politicians, lawyers and judges that made of Georgia history of that day a series of brilliant chapters.
In 1849 he married Mary Octavia Hutchins, the daughter of his preceptor, then only seventeen years old. The following poem was written in her album while they were sweethearts:
I've not the Bard's rich gift or Poet's soul
To pen my feelings in a tuneful rhyme;
I have no power that can at will control
The thoughts and breathings of my humble mind.
heart to feel, and knowledge to
The ties of friendship, and of love, are mine;
May these, Octavia gain the kind return
Of real friendship from that heart of thine.
album's pages tell of many a
Pleasant to sight and to the memory dear;
Each loves to wish thee well, and to blend
Thy destiny with joys and hope sincere.
be the lot that gives to others
For thus you'll reap a harvest of your own;
May no misfortune, pain, or cares annoy
And garlands in thy path of life be strewn.
incense on the sacred altar
Its odours seemed in prayerful clouds to rise;
so may our wishes all to Heaven turned
Procure rich blessings for thee from the skies.
Fifty-four years they lived together, and all the days of those years were a continuation of that youthful devotion.
Shortly after their marriage my father and mother moved to Rome, where he began the practice of law, associated with Judge J. W. H. Underwood. When the war began he became a staff officer with General Francis Bartow, later was assigned by President Davis to special judiciary duty in Macon. It was on his return to Rome in 1865 that he began to write regularly over the nom de plume of Bill Arp, but his first letter appeared in 1861, and is as follows:
"Rome, Ga., April, 1861.--Mr. Linkhorn: Sur: These are to inform you that we are all well, and hope these lines may find you in statue ko. We received your proklamation, and as you have put us on very short notis, a few of us have conkluded to write you, and ax for a little more time. The fact is, we are most obleeged to have a few more days, for the way things are happening, it is utterly onpossible for us to disperse in twenty days. Old Virginny, Tennessee, and North Callina, are continually aggravatin us into tumults and carousements, and a body can't disperse until you put a stop to sich onruly condukt on their part. I tried my darndest yisterday to disperse and retire, but it was no go; and besides, your marshal here ain't doing a darned thing - he don't read the riot act, nor remonstrate, nor nothing, and ought to be turned out. If you conklude to do so, I am orthorized to rekummend to you Colonel Gibbons or Mr. McLung, who would attend to the bizness as well as most anybody.
"The fact is, the boys round here want watchin, or they'll take sumthin. A few days ago I heard they surrounded two of our best citizens, because
they was named Fort and Sumter. Most of em are so hot that they fairly siz when you pour water on em, and that's the way they amke up their military companies here now-- when a man applies to jine the volunteers, they sprinkle him, and if he sizzes they take him, and if he don't they don't.
"Mr. Linkhorn, sur, privately speakin, I'm afeerd I'll git in a tite place here among these bloods, and .have to slope out of it, and I would like to have your Skotch cap and kloak that you traveled in to Washington. I suppose you wouldn't be likely to use the same disgize agin, when you left, and therefore I would propose to swap. I am five feet five, and could git my plow breeches and coat to you in eight or ten days if you can wait that long. I want you to write me immegitly about things generally, and let us know wherebouts you intend to do your fitin. Your proklamation says something about takin possession of all the private property at 'All Harzards.' We can't find no such place on the map. I thot it must be about Charleston, or Savannah, or Harper's Ferry, but they say it aint anywhere down south. One man said it was a little Faktory on an iland in Lake Champlain, where they make sandbags. My opinion is that sandbag bisness won't pay, and it is a great waste of money. Our boys here carry there sand in there gizzards, where it keeps better, and is always handy. I'm afeered your government is givin you and your kangaroo a great deal of onnecessary trubbul, and my humble advice is, if things don't work better soon, you'd better grease it, or trade the darned old thing off. If you don't trade or do sumthin else with it soon, it will spile or die on your hands, sertain.
"Give my respekts to Bill Seward and the other
members of the kangaroo. What's Hannibal doin? I don't hear anything from him nowadays. Yours, with care,
My father has already told how he came to use the name which he has made famous throughout the South. The original Bill Arp, an illiterate countryman, moved to Texas, and for some years after newspaper paragraphs confusing his identity and my father's were both annoying and amusing. We have long since lost trace of him.
In October, 1877, we moved to Bartow County, my father having purchased a farm which he subsequently sold to Sam Jones, the evangelist. The new home was called Fontainebleau, from Mr. Francis Fontaine, the previous owner. As the boys grew up and left the farm for more congenial occupations and my father's duties as writer and lecturer took him much from home, it was decided to leave the country and settle in Cartersville, where we have since lived at "The Shadows," and where my father died on August the 24th, aged seventy-seven years.
The family tree is one which has now many branches. There were ten children in the original family; there were thirteen of us, ten are now living. The children and grandchildren may be thus de- scribed:
Besides these there were two nieces of my mother, brought up as members of the family.
My father's weekly letters to the Atlanta "Constitution" and the Louisville "Home and Farm" were widely read and copied and brought him in close touch with people North, South, East and West. In addition to this work he published the following books:
Always an early riser, it was his habit to walk up and down the halls of the home playing the flute to waken us in the morning, or playing the piano in his own unique fashion, all on the black keys, but peculiarly sweet and effective as he did it. One of my earliest recollections is of being aroused by the strains of the flute, when climbing out of bed, nightgowned,
barefooted, I toddled to his side and with the other children marched up and down the hall clinging to his dressing gown while he played "Way Down in Shinbone Alley," "Run, Nigger, Run," and other old-time tunes, until nurse came to get us ready for breakfast.
His loving care of us as little ones continued in after years, when he unselfishly shared our larger griefs, or rejoiced with us in our pleasures and pastimes. How often as I have told him of some sorrow or disappointment would he gently stroke my hand and say earnestly: "Even this shall pass away." His example led us to love the church; by his side we managed to live through many a long and tiresome discourse, comforted by smuggled candies or peppermint drops.
The following story illustrates his interest even in children not his own:
During one of his lecture trips he was travelling in the car with a tired mother and several restless little children. One little one begged, "Mama, may I suck my thumb?" The mother refused, evidently feeling that discipline must be maintained. My father's child-loving heart could stand it no longer, so he said in his courteous way, "Madam, I think, under the circumstances, I would let her suck her thumb."
We never realized what a rare privilege was ours in having such a companion until we moved to the country. Here a certain degree of privation followed closely on our footsteps. We had to practice hitherto unknown economies and to shoulder household cares that were new to us, but he was the lever that made things easy. His very cheerfulness was a
godsend, and his philosophy lightened many difficult and uncongenial tasks.
After work hours or on Sundays he would call us all for a walk, "go to Nature's Church," as he said. Such lessons in natural history and botany! We were taught to respect the very worm that crawls; to know when and where to find the first wild flowers and fruits--taught in his broad-minded, reverent way the wonders of mother earth. He never ceased to study these great mysteries himself, and it was this nearness to nature that made him the noble, clean-hearted man he was to the day he died.
On long winter evenings he would gather us around a huge wood fire and tell us wonderful tales of his boyhood, of his mother's life, of the war, and stories of the great and good people he had known in both real life and books.
He did not care for the ephemeral literature of the time, but was rarely versed in standard works of both poetry and prose. The Bible and Josephus were his daily companions, and his library contained reference books of every kind, through which he constantly added to his store of knowledge, giving it out in conversation and letters with generous heart to those less wise or learned.
I have heard him chuckle over a good joke in his own whole-hearted fashion, or have seen the tears in his eyes as he read some touching story of human interest. He encouraged every member of the family to love music and good books; he would allow nothing but good-natured gossip of our friends and neighbors. His last years at the "Shadows" were devoted to his garden; flowers and fruits grew for him to perfection. Roses and old-fashioned pinks were his favorites. Every morning the rarest blossom
was culled and laid, a morning greeting, at my mother's breakfast plate. Later in the day we were all expected to gather in the garden and enjoy its delights with him. He shared his flowers with all the friends who came to see us, presenting a short-stemmed, old-fashioned bouquet to each one, with a courtly, old-time grace peculiar to himself.
The Confederacy was a passion with my father. He loved to honor the old South and her veterans. It was something worth living for to hear him tell an appreciative audience of the old days, and defend the rights of his people. He was peculiarly gifted as a story-teller, he never forgot an incident or a name. During his last illness the question arose concerning the name of a New York physician who figured in an incident some twenty years ago. No one could recall it. The question was put to my father, who was tossing and muttering, semi-delirious. A moment of quiet, a look of intelligence, and the name was uttered clearly--then an immediate lapse into unconsciousness. As a college girl I always declared I "never needed a dictionary or an encyclopedia - papa knew everything."
The day came when he grew too feeble to walk in his garden, or to read or write as he had always done. Then he would totter out to his chair on the porch and with his "far-glasses" on wait patiently for the coming of his little grandchildren. His mind, grown childlike, craved their companionship. The love of children for him was only equalled by his love for them. Half the little ones in the town called him "grandpa." Hardly a day passed that he did not get letters from boys and girls of all ages, and never did he fail to answer them.
His daily mail was one of his greatest pleasures.
Letters came from all over the United States, with questions and requests of all kinds. Hundreds wrote just to tell of the sunshine he had brought into their lives. Since he has gone from us the letters continue to come from known and unknown friends, written as if with one pen: "The loss is not yours alone; our loss is great; the whole South mourns with you." All this sympathy and appreciation is a priceless treasure to us who mourn our truest friend and dearest companion.
We laid him away under a pall of beautiful flowers sent by those who loved him, in the little cemetery at Cartersville, for he said he wanted to be near us still in both body and spirit. In the same grave with him is the body of his youngest grandchild, little Sara, eight months old, the daughter of my brother Ralph, who died within a week after he passed away.
If one might write my father's epitaph in the language of a great poet, it would be this:
"He was a man take him for all in all,
I shall not look upon his like again."
Marian Smith.
My dear young friends: Let me tell you a pretty story. Just a hundred years ago there was a young man hanged in Dublin, Ireland, for committing treason against the English government. His name was Robert Emmet, and his crime was that of organizing a rebellion which was intended to set Ireland free from the dominion of England and to place his native land among the nations as free and independent. The rebellion failed, and its leaders had to escape for their lives. Emmet was one of the most eloquent and gifted men in all the land. He graduated with high honors at Trinity College, and at this time was engaged to be married to Miss Curran, the beautiful daughter of the great Irish lawyer, John Philpot Curran. After the rebellion was crushed he fled to France, where he remained for two years, and then, in disguise, went back to Ireland to marry the lady he loved and bring her to the United States. But English detectives were on his track and arrested him. He was tried, convicted and hanged, and his affianced died of a broken heart. His speech made in his own defense was the most eloquent, pathetic and patriotic ever delivered in any court room. I used to speak part of it when I was a schoolboy, and still recall the last sentence, "When I am dead let no man write my epitaph--until Ireland is free let not my epitaph be written."
This is enough of Robert Emmet, but it is only a
pointer to my story. Among Emmet's college companions and his comrades in the rebellion were two brothers whose names were James and Patrick Maguire. They were the younger sons of Sir Francis Maguire, a member of Parliament and a very wealthy gentleman. He did not favor the rebellion, but could not control his younger boys. They, too, had to flee the country, and did so in a vessel that their father bought and equipped for that purpose. They came to Charleston, S. C., in 1803 and began business as linen merchants. In the course of a year or two Patrick sold his interest and changed his abode, but James continued the business and married Emily Barret. Two children were born to them, James and Caroline. When these children were nine and seven years of age the yellow fever visited Charleston, and in a brief time swept half of the population into their graves. Maguire and his wife died almost simultaneously, and were buried by night in the same grave--for all night long the hearses and dead carts were rumbling over the cobble stones, their tires bound in bagging to smother the noise.
Now, my children, this brings me to the saddest and sweetest part of my story. The pestilence was awful. All who could fly from it did so, but there were thousands who had nowhere to go or who could not leave the dead and dying in their own households. A good man came and took James, the boy, to his home, and a good woman took Caroline. Next morning an order was issued that all children who had no homes should be put on board the vessels that were anchored near the city and sent to some other port. In the confusion there was no effort made to keep brothers and sisters together, and James was placed on board a brig bound for Boston, and Caroline on a
schooner under sail for Savannah, but neither knew what had become of the other. Just imagine their grief and desolation. Alone in the wide world - no father or mother, no kindred, no loving friends! After a stormy voyage the brig reached Boston, where the boy was placed in an orphan asylum. Caroline was landed in Savannah and found a home in an asylum there. The matrons in charge of each were good and kind, but the children's eyes were red and their pillows wet with weeping. They were just old enough to realize what they had lost.
Now, let us skip over two or three years. When James was ten years old, a wealthy gentleman, a manufacturer of boots and shoes who lived at Randolph, fifteen miles east of Boston, came to the asylum to choose a boy, to wait on him in his counting room. James was a bright and handsome lad, and the gentleman, whose name was Burwell, chose him and took him home with him. He proved to be the very boy he wanted, and grew into favor. Part of the time he was sent to school and learned rapidly, and in a few years was taken into partnership, and the old gentleman gave him his only daughter for a wife. Young Maguire was a good man, loved and respected by all who knew him, but at times he was sad, very sad, because of his lost sister. Twice he had visited Charleston and made diligent search, but found no clue. He found the very house he was born in and where his parents died, but new people lived in it and the neighbors were all new. An old negro woman remembered the Maguires, and said she washed for them, but that was all. She thought that the fever "got 'em all," she said.
I said that young Maguire was popular with the
people. So much so that when he was only twenty-six years old he was elected State Senator, and became well acquainted with Daniel Webster and Rufus Choate and Judge Story.
Now you know, my young friends, in a small village like Randolph everybody knew all about everybody, and could tell where they came from. And so it was very generally known that Maguire had lost his sister and had not a relative in the wide world that he knew of, and how he had sought for her, but in vain, and why it was that at times he seemed so sad and distressed. Well, he lived in a beautiful home in Randolph, and right across the street lived his most intimate friend and neighbor, whose name was Wales. Wales knew all his sorrows and could weep over them too.
But what of little Caroline, "The Flower of Dumblane," as they used to call her in her childhood--for she was as lovely in disposition as she was beautiful. She had to tell her sad story in tears to the good matron--and the good woman cried too, and the orphans cried, for it was a sadder case, if possible, than any of theirs.
But Time is a good doctor, and after a few days Caroline became interested in her new home, and her broken heart began to heal and went out in love to the matrons and the many children who were her companions. She had been there about two years when one day a fine lady came there in a fine carriage, and after introducing herself to the matron, she said she came to see if she could get a nice, pretty orphan girl to go and live with her and keep her company. That she lived on a rice plantation in Liberty county--that her children had grown up and married and moved too far away, and that her
name was Goulding, the mother of Dr. Goulding, the Presbyterian preacher, and the grandmother of Frank, who wrote "The Young Marooners." It was not an unusual thing for good people to come and choose a child and take her away and adopt her, but it was always a sad time and made solemn and serious impression upon them. They knew that one of their number had to go, and that they would see her no more, perhaps forever--which one--which one, they wondered, and each one said, "maybe it will be me," and the thought alarmed them. They were happy where they were, and a change to some one they did not know, filled their hearts with fear. Well, the fine lady was shown to the large reception room where the children had to gather on such occasions. The children had of course to put on their best garments, which were all uniform, and wash their faces and brush their hair, and they marched in and were seated on the benches that were next to the walls of the large room. Then the grand lady walked around slowly and talked to every one she fancied, and said kind, pleasant words and asked them many questions. It was soon noticed that every time she went around she stopped longer with little Caroline than any other, and after the third round she turned to the matron and said, "I will take this one." The little girl trembled like an aspen leaf. Her heart beat rapidly, and tears filled her eyes. With the other girls the agony was over, but they grieved that Caroline was chosen, for they loved her very dearly. The matron, too, was sad as she kissed her a last goodbye--her heart was too full to speak it. It was a tearful scene as the orphans, every one of whom had her own sad experience, marched to Caroline and kissed her farewell.
But she was soon in the fine carriage with the fine lady, and a fine team of horses were gaily trotting down the avenue. They reached the lady's home that evening, and Caroline found everything so strange and singular that for a time she forgot the change in her condition. There was a grand old mansion in a grove of evergreens. All along the way she had seen the beautiful magnolias and caught the fragrance of the yellow jessamine, and now she inhaled the sweet odor of the cape jessamine that came from a long row that bordered the carriage way and adorned the walks near the house. Not far away were the barns and rice mills, and another for the sugar cane, and still further off were long lines of negro houses - all just alike and whitewashed, and each with a garden attached.
But alas! not a white child was to be seen nor a white person, save Mrs. Goulding and herself. Scores of little negroes were playing around the cabin yards, and they came near and looked curiously at the little white girl that "Ole Mistis" had brought home with her. After supper Caroline soon grew tired from her journey and was put to bed, where she again wet the pillows with her tears, but soon dropped to sleep. The morning was bright and the country air was balmy, and she brightened with the day. About a mile away there lived a family of Allstons, who had recently moved from South Carolina. They were good people, and closely related to the family of William Allston, the great painter, who married Theodosia, the daughter of Aaron Burr, and who was drowned at sea or murdered by pirates. Her sad fate is still unknown. With the children of this Allston family Caroline soon got intimate, and Mr. Allston, when on a visit to Charleston,
made diligent effort to find some clew to her lost brother, but found none.
Mrs. Goulding was very desirous of sending Caroline to school, but there was none near enough. And so Mr. Allston went to Savannah to look around and if possible to secure a teacher.
Now, children, listen, for we have come to another branch of this story. About the year 1817 a young man whose name was Reid, a native of Vermont, was teaching school in a little town in Massachusetts. He was smart and energetic and saved his money. One of his young friends told him one day that they could charter a sloop and make a big lot of money shipping brick to Savannah. Brick were cheap in Newberryport and brought a high price in Savannah. They put their money together, bought the cargo, hired four sailors, and set sail. The voyage was prosperous until they neared the port. Then a terrific storm came up, and for fear of losing their vessels and their lives, they had to throw a good part of the cargo into the sea. They had barely enough brick left to sell for sufficient money to pay off the sailors and send the sloop back to its owners. Young Reid's companion got discouraged and homesick and went back with it; but Reid was too game a young man to go back without a dollar in his pocket. So he hired to a grocery merchant as a porter, and did his work so well and faithfully that he soon grew into favor and was promoted to the counting room. It was about this time that Mr. Allston visited the city in search of a teacher, and it so happened that this merchant was his friend and factor. He gave Reid a very high character, and told him he was a good scholar and had taught school up North. He hated to give him up, but Reid desired
to go, and he was soon on his way to Liberty county. A good school was made up for him at once, and Caroline became one of his scholars. In that day the teachers boarded around among their patrons, staying a week or more with each family; and so Reid soon learned all about Caroline's sad history, and his tender heart went out in sympathy for her. She was then thirteen years old, well grown for her age, and was lovely in form and feature. She was modest in behavior and at times seemed sad almost to tears. Reid took great interest in her, and she soon became one of his brightest scholars.
But change is written on everything in this world, and so it happened that when Caroline became fourteen years old and had a right under the law to choose her own guardian, she went into court and choose Mr. Allston and became an inmate of his family. She was so lonely with the old lady, and besides the old lady had married again--a Mr. Williamson,--and they did not live harmoniously together, and each contended for the guardianship of Caroline. It was young Reid, however, who took Caroline into his confidence and advised her to choose Mr. Allston. About this time the State of Georgia bought from the Creek Indians all their land in the up country and had them surveyed and opened up to settlers. Then there began a great exodus of low country people up to the new purchase, where mountains and valleys and fast flowing streams abounded. Mr. Allston took the up-country fever and prepared his household to move. He did move, and of course Caroline had to go with the family. She bade her teacher goodbye and wept upon his bosom. He never knew till then how much he loved her. At the end of his school term he too took the up-country
fever, but finding a good opening at Mt. Vernon, in Montgomery county, he stopped there and taught for a year and laid up a little more money. Mr. Allston had settled on a creek, a few miles east from Decatur, and was engaged in building log houses and clearing land. He had built a large double log cabin, with shed rooms attached, and had moved into it. He concluded to christen the new home with a frolic, so one bright moonshiny night he had all of the neighbors invited to come over and have music and perhaps a country dance. But Caroline did not seem to enjoy it. Most of the time she sat in the piazza and seemed anxious and melancholy. A spirit whispered to her that Reid was coming, she always declared, and she could not get rid of the expectation. And sure enough, about nine o'clock, she saw a man riding slowly up the road-way, and when quite near he dismounted and hitched his horse. She did not wait for him, but with a cry of joy, rushed out to meet him and threw herself gladly into his arms. Once again she had found her best friend.
Now, children, we must skip some, for this story is getting too long. A young man by the name of Featherstone had married Mr. Allston's eldest daughter. He was a merchant, and was living in Lawrenceville, about twenty miles away. Reid was expecting to make up a school in that little town, but Featherstone persuaded him to join him in his mercantile business, for it had outgrown his capital and Reid's money was just what was wanted. Sometimes Mr. Allston or some of his family came to Lawrenceville, and Caroline came with them. Sometimes Reid rode out there Saturday evening and spent the Sabbath. And so the love affair progressed smoothly, and when Caroline was sweet sixteen
they were married at Mr. Featherstone's house in the good old town of Lawrenceville. When Caroline was asked why she married so young, she always said, "Why, I didn't dare to refuse. He was my teacher, and I was taught to obey him."
Well, now, we will skip over some more. In course of time two children were born to them, two fine, handsome boys, and Caroline was happy, always happy, except at times when the image of her lost brother came before her. Reid had already advertised for him in all of the Southern papers and in New York and Philadelphia. One day when he came home he found that she had been weeping, and he resolved to make one more effort. So he sent an advertisement to a Boston paper and one to St. Louis and New Orleans.
Now, let us go back to the little town of Randolph and see what Mr. Wales is doing. It was Sunday morning, and he was not feeling well and did not go to church. He had on his gown and slippers and cap and had laid down on the sofa to read his Boston paper. That advertisement was almost the first thing that caught his eye.
"James F. Maguire, whose parents died of yellow fever in Charleston in the summer of 1815, and who was separated from his only sister, Caroline, during the panic, can hear from her by addressing the undersigned at Lawrenceville, Georgia. She is well and happy."
Wales read it and re-read it, and suddenly realizing what it meant rose up, and, with the paper in his hand, rushed wildly across the street to Maguire's house. Nobody was there. They had all gone to church, which was only two blocks away. Wales did not stop, but hurried up the street and into the side
door of the church, which was near the Maguire pew. The minister had begun to read the hymn but Wales never stopped nor considered his apparel, but cried out in a delirium of joy, "Maguire, I've found your sister. Thank God I have. Here she is sure, and is alive and well. Thank the good Lord for his mercies," and being overcome with his own emotions he sat down and wept. The minister stopped, of course, and came down to hear the paper read. Half the congregation gathered near while Maguire read the advertisement, and had others read it aloud. He trembled like an aspen leaf and said, "That is Caroline and no mistake. Bless the Lord for his goodness unto me," and he knelt down in silent prayer and sobbed in tears of joy, for tears are signs of joy as well as grief.
Enough of that. You young people, whose hearts are tender and full of emotions, must imagine the rest, and you will be more ready to believe that when the Lord said over and over again in the scriptures, "I am the God of the fatherless and the widow," He meant it.
Now, this is about all of my story except that I have failed to mention that Reid's name was Asahel Reid Smith. He was my father, and Caroline was my own dear mother. I was seven years old then, and cannot forget the delirious joy of that meeting after a separation of eighteen years. My brother James was nine years old, and our uncle had two boys of a like age with us. For years the brother and sister and their children visited and re-visited each other. Their eldest son, in course of time, established a branch of his father's shoe business at Melbourne, Australia. The last letter from him said that he had married a sweet English lady and
thirty thousand sheep. He was our American consul over there under Pierce and Buchanan. He is dead. Almost everybody is dead but me.
And now a brief mention of my wife and myself--my birth and youth and manhood. On the 15th day of June, 1826, half a million children were born into the world and I was one of them. In the pleasant village of Lawrenceville, Gwinnett county, Georgia, I first saw the light. My infancy was not unlike that of other children, except that sometimes I had little fits of passion and threw myself upon the floor or bumped my head against the wall, at which my mother smiled and sometimes said I couldn't help it, for it was South Carolina fighting Massachusetts. My childhood was happy, and so were my school days. I still have fond recollections of my teachers. Miss Cooley, an aunt of Mrs. George Hillyer's, was the first one. She was good and kind to us all. Then came Dr. Wilson and Mr. Sayre, John Norton and Dr. Patterson and Mr. McAlpin in succession. I was a mischievous lad, and Mr. Norton whipped me occasionally--not hard but lightly--once he whipped me on my boil and bursted it, and nearly broke my mother's heart, but it was good for the boil. My teachers are all dead. A few years ago old Father Sayre called to see me in Chester, S. C., and as he grasped my hand said, "Yes, you went to school to me, and I never whipped you but once. Perhaps if I had whipped you more you would have made a better man--but I am proud of you, my boy. Yes, I am proud of you."
In course of time I was sent to the manual labor institute, two miles away, where I mingled with the boys of the best families of the State. The Gouldings, Holts, Hoyles, Allans, Alexanders, Lintons and Crawfords and others. They are all dead but two that I know of. My father was a merchant, and when I was nearly grown he gave me a clerk's place in his store, and I sold goods for two or three years. About this time of course I fell in love, and dressed better and brushed my hair with a cowlick touch and wore boots and smiled sweetly on my sweethearts as they passed. When I was nineteen I was sent to college at Athens, and found a new sweetheart there. She played and toyed with me while she was secretly engaged to another fellow. When I was senior my father was taken seriously ill, and called me home to take charge of his business. So I went to selling goods again. In the meantime a pretty, hazel-eyed lassie I had only known as a child had grown out of her pantalets and into long dresses, and was casting sly glances at the boys about town. I imagined she cast some at me, for she liked to trade at my store and was in no hurry to go, and was pleased to buy what I advised her and never asked the price. She was a bashful brunette, with hair as black as that of Pocahontas, and it is yet, and her name was Mary Octavia, the eldest daughter of Judge Hutchins. Of course it didn't take me long to fall desperately in love, - nor did it take a long siege for me to take that fort, for I was a right handsome youth myself, and was smart and doing well. What better does a pretty girl want? Yes, I found that pearl, and did not throw it away like Othello. I've got it yet. From the beginning I knew that she loved me, and I never had to plead or get on my knees--
nor did I ever ask her to have me, but one moonlight night as we were walking I said, "Octavia, when shall we get married?" and, as she pressed my hand, she whispered, "Whenever you think best." It was like the murmur of a dream, but I heard it. Now she will deny all this, but nevertheless it is the truth, and so within three months we were wedded. I knew very well that with her parents I was an acceptable lover, for my mother had found it out from her mother, and everything was calm and serene. She was sweet sixteen and I was twenty-one. I took her young, thinking I could train her to suit my notion, but she soon trained me to suit her's.
Now, my young friends, that was nearly fifty-four years ago. I was one of ten children; my wife was one of ten. We have ten all living, and they have just twenty, and just keep on multiplying and replenishing according to scripture. My brothers are dead. I have three sisters living, who are very dear to me. Well, I built a little cottage in a pretty grove and we moved there. Judge Hutchins had a large plantation on the river, and over a hundred slaves. He did not offer us any money, for he knew we did not need it, but sent up two of the favorite family servants, and Tip, the same faithful Tip of whom I have written, was one of them. They begged old master to give them to "Miss Tavy," and he did so. A few months after our marriage Judge Hutchins insisted that I should study law, for he needed a young man's help in his office. So I placed my mercantile interests in other hands and began to peruse Blackstone. In two or three months I was admitted to the bar on promise of continuing my studies, which promise I kept, and in due time began to ride the circuit at the tail of the procession. And what
a procession it was! Judge Junius Hillyer, Judge Jackson, the Doughertys, Hope Hull, Howell Cobb and his brother, Tom Cobb, Cincinnatus Peeples, Basil Overby, and meeting occasionally Robert Tombs and Alex Stephens. All great lawyers and eloquent, both in the forum and on the platform. They are all dead, and I, only I, am left. Then there were the Judges of the Supreme Court, Lumpkin, Warner and Nisbet, whom I well knew, for somehow all of these noble men made a pet of me, and from them I drew inspiration and knowledge.
In 1851 I took the Western fever, and moved to Rome to grow up with the town and the country. I was soon associated with Judge Underwood in the practice of law, and for thirteen years we were as intimate as brothers. The war came and we parted. After the, war I became associated with Judge Joel Branham, another most delightful partnership, which was only severed by his elevation to the bench.
And now in my old age I cannot say as Jacob said to Pharaoh, "Few and evil have been the days of the years of my pilgrimage." We have had more than our share of blessings. We have been blessed with health and the comforts of life. Of course the war made an inroad upon our peace and happiness for a time, but the good Lord preserved us and we suffered no dire calamity or affliction. My motto is that of the Latin poet, "Carpe diem," enjoy the day, enjoy every day as far as possible.
We have been blessed in our children, for they have been good to us. Our boys are all in good form and feature - not a single deformity to mar their manhood. Our girls are modest and well favored. Not a Leah among them - all are Rachels--all are
frugal and industrious, and love their paternal home. It is their Mecca, and will be until we die.
For twenty-seven years we lived in Rome and prospered. Then we retired to a beautiful little farm near Cartersville, where there were springs and branches, a meadow and a creek near by, with a cane-brake border. Not far away was a mill and a pond, and there was a mountain in the background where small game abounded. There we raised Jersey cows and colts and sheep and chickens and peafowls, and lived well by day and feasted on music by night, for every member of the family is a musician, which art they inherited from their mother. It was a lovely home, and all the younger children grew up there to manhood and womanhood, and were happy. Their schooling was not neglected, though I could not send but one boy and one girl to college. It was on the farm that the boys learned what a dollar was worth when they earned it.
But by and by and one by one the boys left us for other avocations, and five of the six now live in five different States from New York to Mexico. As I had to be away a good portion of my time, my wife and daughters were left without a protector, so I moved to this town of Cartersville and bought this pleasant home, which we call "The Shadows," because it is embowered by the shade of many beautiful trees. This is all. We are still in the land of the living, where mercy may be sought and pardon found.
Enough of this. It savors of self-conceit and vanity to write so much about myself, and I feel that what I am or what I have done should be told by another. But what is writ is writ.
NOTE.--Some of "Bill Arp's" friends wish that he had been less modest, diffident and unassuming, it being a favorite contention that with the assurance, self-laudation and pretentious aggressiveness of the times, supported by his profound knowledge and philosophic temperament, he could have attained high political honors or achieved the loftiest eminence in our judiciary. Others who love him better prefer him as he was and is. He could not be as he is if he had not been as he was. The "Cherokee Philosopher" is dearer to us than would be the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, or "governor," or "senator," or "Mr. President." We love him for the offices he has avoided, the political entanglements he has escaped. While there are millions struggling for political office, from a doorkeepership in a police court to the Presidency "Bill Arp" stands alone in the dignity of a personal office to which he has been elected by a universal suffrage of hearts touched and mellowed by a physical sympathy wholly unknown in the field of political stress and strain. He is the elect of a people who could see no other possible candidate for the place he fills. He is neither soiled nor spoiled, except by the little tenderness of legions who seek opportunity to show a sort of filial reverence for the patriarch. Mrs. Arp knows his faults, chief of which is that he likes to be petted. The introduction he received at Tupelo, Miss., most tenderly expresses his relation to the Southern people. The speaker said in conclusion, "I cannot say that Bill Arp is the greatest man nor the best man, nor the most eloquent man, but I can truthfully say that he is the best loved man in all the Southland."
The civil war was a play, a thrilling tragedy, in which great armies were the players and the world the witnesses. But in every play there are performances behind the scenes that the footlights do not shine upon nor the audience have any knowledge of. There are prompters and properties, dressing and undressing, false hair and false faces, weapons and banners, and machinery for thunder and lightning. There is hurrying to and fro, and sometimes subdued altercations, jealousies and envyings. Sometimes there is real rivalry and real love transpiring behind the scenes while it is mimicked and played in front. The acts and deeds of mankind are behind the scenes. The greater part of life--the better part and the worse - is invisible to the world. Our domestic relations, fireside pleasures, family dissensions, our joys and sorrows, desires and ambitions, yes, our secret thoughts that harbor hate or cherish love are all behind the scenes, known only to a few or to ourselves alone.
I propose now to touch briefly upon some things that were behind the scenes before and during the civil war-- some things that have not been published and which present a vivid contrast to the glory of a
soldier's life. These are war times and it is well enough to exhibit the picture to the young men of the South and let them ponder upon it and draw the line between a war of patriotic duty and one of conquest and glory. This part of my address will be brief and is intended chiefly for the entertainment of the veterans who still live, for you know that while the capital stock of youth is hope, that of age is memory.
Early in the year 1861, when secession was the great and vital question that agitated our people, a convention was called to decide whether Georgia would follow South Carolina's lead, or not. All of the young men, nearly all of the women, and many of the old men, were outspoken for secession, even though it provoked war. There was a party, however, with Alexander Stephens as a leader, who preferred co-operation and did not wish Georgia to secede alone, but favored a convention of delegates from all the Southern States and let them all go out together or remain in the Union. This party, however, was too feeble to stem the tide of resistance to Northern aggression, and so the delegates from every county gathered at the capital.
There was a Union element among the delegates. It was composed of old men who had property and did not wish it imperiled by war, and there were some non-slaveholders, who were not in sympathy with the slaveholders' policy or alarmed by their fears.
There were a few strong men who were for the old flag and the Union above all other considerations. Of this class Herschel Johnson was the leader. He was one of the great men of Georgia. He was on the ticket for Vice-President when Stephen A. Douglass ran for President. He was a man of sluggish, ponderous
mind, not easily excited by ordinary events, but when aroused from his lethargy by some vital issue he had no equal in Georgia. He was called the sleeping Sampson, and his political foes used all their arts to keep him asleep. He was opposed to secession, and went as a delegate to the convention. Toombs and his party dreaded him and feared the power of his eloquence. "Old Sampson is aroused," said Toombs, "and the boys must look out." Johnson began to speak just before twelve and was fairly getting under way, and knocking out the props upon which secession leaned, when he was interrupted by Albert Lamar, the secretary and a suggestion made to adjourn for dinner. At the dining wine was served, and Johnson, being pressed by Lamar and his friends, drank too freely. He lost his mental balance and the remainder of his speech fell flat and tame and unfinished. After his death, Lamar, who was editor of the Macon Telegraph, wrote up the unwritten fraud and published it, boasting how he drugged the wine at the dinner table, and that if it had not been done the old lion would have carried the majority of the delegates with him as easily as a tornado carries the trees in its track. "But for those two drinks," said Lamar, "Georgia would not have seceded and there would have been no war."
Whether this be true or not true is of no great concern, for if no war then it would have come later. There was no averting it as long as the negro was here in slavery.
And so Georgia seceded and prepared for war, and her sister States followed in quick succession. While the new regiments were forming the State was one vast recruiting camp. The call of the drum resounded from mountain to seaboard. Men, women
and children participated in the general enthusiasm. Beautiful banners were being made by womanly fingers and presented to the companions with womanly benedictions. Why is it, my friend, why is it, that loving, pitying, tender-hearted women, who will not willingly tread upon a worm, are always first and foremost in urging their husbands, brothers, sons, to battle for their country or their section? It is a fact that but for the smiles of mothers, wives, sisters and sweethearts, Georgia would never have sent 100,000 soldiers to the front. I did not visit Virginia, in June, 1861, with any intention of joining the army, but I did join while there and knew full well that my wife would weep but still be proud of it. Her five brothers were already there, and the wonder of it is that she was not there herself, playing the role of Joan of Arc. But she had a lively time of it at home three years later and saw enough of war, for she had to flee from the foul invader with five little children tagging after her. She paused in Atlanta, but only for a day--just long enough to catch breath and start again. Then she made a good, long run down to Tuskegee, in the secluded shades of Alabama, the State whose beautiful name means "here we rest." But it was no resting place for her, for Wilson's raiders were on the wild hunt for rebels and refugees, and so she departed those coasts with alacrity and sought retreat and safety at her father's plantation on the upper Chattahoochee. She left almost everything behind her when she fled from Rome that dark and dismal night. The house was full of furniture, the pantry full of good things, the smoke-house full of meat and lard and a barrel of home-made soap. I believe she made more ado about losing that soap than anything, for she had made it
in the dark of the moon and stirred it from left to right with a sassafras paddle while it was boiling, But in her wild haste she forgot some things that were very precious. She forgot the package of love letters that I wrote her during my courtship, in which I promised many things that she declares I have ceased to perform since she lost them. She forgot the letters that I wrote home from the army, many of them containing graphic descriptions of the battles and who of our boys were killed and who were wounded, and they were read aloud to the people from her front door as soon as she received them. I would give money for those letters now. She forgot her album - her maiden's treasure, in which her friends and lovers, including myself, had written tender verses. These were all given up as lost, but in December, 1884, she received the album, with these lines inscribed on the last page:
"FRANKLIN, PA., Dec. 22d, 1884.
"With pleasure I return this book to its rightful owner. I came in possession of it while marching through Georgia with Sherman's army. I became attached to it for the sentiment contained in the verses, and I sent it to a lady friend, Miss Downs, in Sparta, Ohio. She married and moved away and has just returned the book to me after twenty years' possession. My wish is that the rightful owner may preserve its pages and hand it down to posterity.
"E. A. Wilson."
That man is a gentleman, if he did belong to Sherman's army, but it took him a long time to reform.
Shortly after I joined the army, I was appointed brigade commissary on the staff of General Bartow. I had no military forms or papers, no money where
with to purchase supplies, and I had not yet drawn or issued a single ration, for I had just been appointed. I was green, and was waiting for money and advices to come from Richmond. After we had crossed the Shenandoah river, General Bartow told me to ride on ahead until I reached Marshall, a small village, and there procure some fresh meat and some bacon for the boys to cook and eat when they arrived. "General," said I, timidly, "how will I get these things? I have no money to buy them with." "My dear sir," said he, "you must remember that this is war and everything in this country owes tribute to the army. Look around Marshall for three or four fat cattle--everything is fat up here--buy them at a fair price, and give the owner a receipt and a certificate and tell him to bring it to me when I get there and I will approve it so that he can draw his money at Richmond. Buy some good bacon, also, say a thousand pounds. The boys will want it to cook with their beef. This is war, I tell you."
About that time I began to realize what war was, and that the civil law was silent, dead or sleeping, and that nobody had any rights save the generals and their officers.
When I arrived at Marshall I found a farmer unloading corn, and he had the finest, fattest yoke of oxen attached to his wagon that I ever saw. I stopped and saluted him. "Those are fine steers," said I, "what would buy them?" "Well, about one hundred dollars, I reckon," he replied. Then I made known my business, and soon found that he would not sell, nor would he take any scrap of paper on this here Southern Confederacy, as he called it. The argument was soon exhausted and time was precious. By this time some butchers from the First
Kentucky Regiment had arrived and were ready for work. I pointed out the steers to them, and before the farmer could say Jack Robinson they had them unyoked and were leading them to the branch. Amazement, indignation, anger, took it by turns over his features; then he began to use language--cuss words and expletives in abundance. Suddenly he swore he'd ruther die than be run over in any such way, army or no army. Then he cried and wiped the tears away with his coat sleeve. His last exclamation was, "How in the hell am I to get my wagon home?" I was awfully sorry for that man. My hope is that he got his pay from the Federal government after the war. Well, I got the bacon without any trouble, for the merchant was a red-hot rebel and made me eat dinner with him. Those great oxen were killed and butchered and cut up into small mess pieces in less time than I can tell about it. Wood was hauled up and camp fires built, and by dark our brigade of four thousand men were full and had tumbled down to sleep.
Well, I soon learned that war was war, and in course of time I could impress provisions with but little scruples of conscience. One time I impressed four hundred barrels of flour from a Union sympathizer in Orange county who had a merchant mill and was waiting to sell it to the Yankees for greenbacks. His wife was a genuine rebel woman and treated me so kindly on the sly that I gave back two hundred barrels of it. It was a case of Nabel and Abigail.
Impressment of provisions was nothing compared with the conscription of men and forcing them to fight and face the enemy, willing or unwilling, whether they were brave men or cowards. There
was the case of Jacob Wise, a rich Jew who lived in Rome and had neither wife nor children. When the conscription officers came to Rome he secreted himself, and one night came to my house about midnight in tears. Trembling, he said, "Major, I vas porn a coward; I could not fight a lettle poy nor a von arm seek man. My legs vill turn around and run avay mid me efery time. I vas porn shust dot vay, and I will pay big money if you vill keep me out of his old war. Oh, mine Gott; oh, Abraham; oh, Isaac and Yacup." He excited my sympathies so much that I undertook to befriend him. There was an examining board then sitting in the town, of whom Dr. Starr of Rome was the chairman. He was my friend and knew Wise well, and so I brought Wise over to be examined. Wise was ready to swear that he had consumption and rheumatism and epilepsy and apoplexy and Bright's disease and heart disease and any other disease; but I juggled with Starr and we agreed that Wise should pay $5,000 to the county fund for the support of poor soldier's wives and children, and be discharged. Wise never hesitated a moment. Dr. Starr filled up a printed blank and named the disease for which he was discharged in these Latin words: "Non controlus shankus in combatibus"--can't control his legs in battle. When we returned home, Wise paid the money over to the county treasurer and I gave him the certificate of discharge, but never explained the meaning of his remarkable disease.
But neither victories nor defeats are to be compared to the horrors of battle, the things that are behind the scenes and are never published. During the seven days' fight across the Chickahominy, hundreds of the dead were hastily buried in trenches,
buried head to foot a foot or so under the surface, and the earth heaped over them; for you must know, my friends, that on a battlefield there are neither shrouds nor graves, nor coffins nor mourners.
Heavy rains came on and softened that earth to mud and when a few, days later, our wagons had to cross that field, the wheels sank to the hubs when crossing the trenches and sometimes a leg, sometimes an arm, and sometimes a ghastly skull was thrown up, as if beseeching for mercy. Another graphic scene I witnessed the night after the battle of Manassas. The hospital chosen was a large brick building near the battle-ground. It was property that had been vacated under military orders. But the surgeons' operating room was not there. It was in a willow glade, not far away, where there was a clear spring branch flowing peacefully along. Dr. Miller ordered all the wounded brought there, for the night was beautiful and the water convenient. All night long he and his assistants amputated arms and legs, and probed for balls, and used bandages and splints and other appliances, and as fast as one man was fixed up he was taken away and the doctor said "Next!" like in a barber shop. But there was no groaning. The boys were heroes under the surgeon's knife as well as on the battle-field. I remember when Jett Howard, of Kingston, limped up without assistance and the doctor said, "What's the matter with you, Jett?" Jett pointed to where a minie ball had penetrated his hip and said he could feel it on the other side. Quickly the doctor thrust a probe into the wound, and as quickly drew it out, and turning Jett around, and sound for the ball under the skin, he found it. With his knife he cut an opening and thrusting in his finger pulled out the ball and
gave it to him. "Here's your diploma, Jett," he said. "Next!" Jet limped away with a smile and had his wound dressed. When my brother-in-law, Captain Cooper, was brought up with a shattered leg, his knee pan crushed and his bones mangled, the doctor said, "Fred, this leg must come off immediately," and he reached for his knife and saw."Stop, doctor," exclaimed Fred, "can't you save my leg?" "No; it is impossible," said he, "it must come off, I tell you." "Doctor, is there a possible chance for me to save this leg?" "Perhaps," said the doctor, "one chance in a hundred, but I warn you now that if it is not speedily cut off you will be a dead man in two weeks." Captain Cooper was full of nerve and faith. "Doctor, I will take that chance," he said; and the doctor said "Next!" Fred was taken to the hospital that night and died in two weeks.
Poor Tom King's leg was broken, and while it was being splinted he was laughing and joking like a school boy. He lost only sixty days from the service and lived only to die at Chickamauga.
On the sixth day of the Chickahominy fight, when McClellan was in full retreat, our brigade commander, Tige Anderson, sent me down the river to General Lee's headquarters for some instructions about moving the brigade. I found him in a large wall tent with many officers around him. This tent opened into another where the camp tables were set for dinner and the servant bringing it in. There were four or five large camp tables joined together, and as I sat upon my horse awaiting a reply, I saw a man, an officer, whose head and body were underneath the right hand table and his feet out upon the straw. His slouched hat was over his head and eyes, his sword was unbuckled, and his boots were on and
spurred. His Confederate gray clothes seemed faded and worn. My curiosity was greatly excited, and when the adjutant handed me the instructions, I ventured to point to the sleeping man and to ask, "Who is he?" "That is Stonewall," he said; "he has had no sleep for forty-eight hours and fell down there exhausted. General Lee would not suffer him to be disturbed, and so our dinner will be eaten over him and in silence." Reverently I gazed upon him for a minute, for I felt almost like I was in the presence of some divinity. What a scene for a painter was that--the two greatest generals of the army, yes, of the age, together; one asleep upon the straw, worn out with fatigue and excitement, the camp tables set above him; while the other, with his staff, dined in silence over him and watched his needed rest. Both of them were patriots and Christians, and both of them were men of prayer.
With them there were no selfish motives behind the scenes, but every act and deed and thought was for God and their country. I have long been grateful that I witnessed that scene, the bivouac of a sleeping hero, and I love to recall Palmer's beautiful lines:
"We see him now--he old slouched hat
Cocked over his eye askew,
The shrewd, dry smile, the speech so pat,
So calm, so blunt, so true.
The blue light elder knows 'em well;
Says he, "That's Banks. He's fond of shell
Lord save his soul. Now give him--," well,
That's Stonewall Jackson's way.
ground arms, kneel all, caps off;
Old Blue Light's going to pray.
Strangle the fool who dares to scoff
At Stonewall Jackson's way.
He's in the saddle; now fall in,
Steady, the whole brigade;
Hill's at the ford, cut off. Let's win
Him out with ball and blade.
Ah, maiden, wait, and watch and yearn
For news of Stonewall's band;
Ah, widow, read with eyes that burn
That ring upon thy hand.
Ah, wife, sew on, pray on, hope on,
Thy life shall not be all forlorn;
The foe had better ne'er been born,
That gets in Stonewall's way.
With many people on the border line, their loyalty rested on very delicate pivots. Which shall I work for, pray for, or fight for, was a serious and perplexing question. Fathers were separated from sons, and brothers from brothers. Mrs. Lincoln was a Miss Todd, of Kentucky, and all her brothers were in the Confederate service. I knew one of them well, for he was for months on the staff of our corps commander. He was of no force, just an ornament, and made himself disagreeable by his abuse of Old Abe, his brother-in-law. Mrs. Grant was interviewed last year in Saint Augustine and said her sympathies were with the South, but her interest was with her husband's choice. With many West Pointers there was no patriotic emotion. Fighting was their profession, and position, pay and promotion their coveted reward. General Geo. C. Thomas, one of the ablest Federal generals, was a class-mate of General Joe Johnston, and like him was a Virginian of the Virginians. When Johnston was made a major-general by Mr. Davis, Thomas sought a similar position, but was told the places were all filled and he would have to wait. He did not wait, but was soon after offered that position by Mr. Lincoln and accepted it. General
Johnston told me of this at my house in '67 and was greatly mortified. General Grant had no sympathy with the anti-slavery feature of the war, for he was a slave-holder himself and hired them out in St. Louis until sometime after Mr. Lincoln's proclamation of freedom to the slaves. You will find more about this in Appleton's Cyclopedia of American Biography, wherein is published a letter from General Grant's father, in which he says, "My son, Ulysses, was very improvident before the war and frequently applied to me for money. In the fall of 1860 he begged me to lend him $500, as he was in pecuniary distress. I wrote to him that I could not do it, and I thought the income from the rent of his house and the hire of his negroes ought to support him, but if he was suffering he had better go to Galena and work for his brother in the tan-yard. This he did, and got along fairly well till the war began and he got a good position in the army."
What a blessed thing is peace and law and order, for, as Ben Franklin said, "There never was a good war, nor a bad peace." The contest was too unequal to last longer. Seven hundred thousand could not cope longer with two million, seven hundred thousand. There were many blunders on both sides, and much good blood was wasted, and there were some pivotal points on which turned tremendous results on the side of the South. Prominent among them was the death of Albert Sidney Johnston at Shiloh, the failure of Huger to come in time and cut off McClellan's retreat at Malvern Hill, the death of Stonewall Jackson, the invasion of Pennsylvania, and the removal of General Johnston at Atlanta. But, no doubt, the will of God was done. Time is a good doctor. We are learning to know each other better, both
North and South, and to tolerate each other's opinions and prejudices. All that is now necessary to make the reconciliation complete is for the North to put our heroes and Confederate widows on the pension rolls, just as they have theirs. Most all of ours are dead; only seventy thousand are left of all our army; but there are a million pensioners on the rolls up North, and as time rolls on they grow more thicker, more denser-as Cobe would say.
"Time cuts down all,
Both great and small,
Except a pensioned soldier;
They do not die,
But multiply
As fast as they grow older." Now, if the North will do that, and apologize, we will be calm and serene.
Before the civil war our Southern civilization was divided into two classes--the aristocracy and the common people. The aristocrats were generally slave-holders, and though they were only one-seventh of the voting population, they dominated the other six-sevenths politically, socially, and financially. And yet there was no friction. The common people were loyal to their wealthy and educated leaders. They voted for them and fought for them. They elected them to our highest offices. These aristocrats were our governors, judges, and members of Congress, our civil and military office-holders. And they were shining lights in the councils of the nation. The common people were allowed to be magistrates, constables and non-commissioned officers in the militia. They served on the petit juries and worked the public roads. Their loyalty to the aristocracy was beautiful. They shouted for Toombs and Stephens, and Colquitt and Cobb, with a wild hurrah, and when the war came they fought for their principles just like our forefathers fought who resisted a tax on tea when not one in a thousand drank it. Out of a company of eighty-four men who went from Murray county, not one was a slave-holder. The aristocracy was mainly an aristocracy of dominion. This kind of aristocracy brings with it culture and pride and dignity of bearing. The scriptures always mention the number of servants when speaking of the old patriarchs'
consequence in the land. "I am a man having authority," said the Centurion. "I say unto this man, go, and he goeth, and to another, come, and he cometh." Dominion is the pride of man--dominion over something. A negro is proud if he owns a "possum" dog. A poor man is proud if he owns a horse and a cow and some razor-back hogs. His neighbor is proud if he owns a good horse and a top buggy and some bottom land and can take the lead in his country church or his county politics. The big boy loves dominion over his little brother, and the father takes it over all--well, not always, for there are some wives who have a sweet and silent control over their husbands; I speak from experience. Bob Toombs once remarked, "That the dominion of a good wife over her husband was his surest safeguard" against the temptations of life. Toombs was a very great and noble man, and the most beautiful trait of his character was his loyalty and devotion to his wife.
But the Anglo-Saxon race glories in owning men, and it makes but little difference whether the men are their dependents or their slaves; the glory is all the same if they have got them in their power. Wealthy corporations, railroad kings, princely planters, have dominion over their employees and they control them at their pleasure. It is not a dominion in law, but it is almost absolute in fact, and there is nothing wrong about it when it is humanely exercised; indeed, it is a very agreeable relation between the poor laborer and the rich employer. An humble, poor man loves to lean upon a generous landlord, and the landlord is proud of the poor man's homage. I asked Bill A. once how he was going to vote, and he said he couldn't tell me until he saw Colonel Johnson.
But the dominion of the old aristocracy of the South was not over their own race. It was over another, and it gradually grew into an oligarchy of slave-owners, and the poorer whites were kept under the ban. There was a line of social caste between them, and it was widening into a gulf, for the poor white man could not compete with slave labor any more than the farmer or the mechanic can now compete with convict labor. But, at the same time, this kind of slave aristocracy gave dignity and leisure to the rich, and Solomon says: "In leisure there is wisdom;" and so these men became our law-makers and jurists, and they were shining lights in the councils of the nation. But, my friends, it was an aristocracy that was exclusive, and it overshadowed the masses of the people like a broad spreading oak overshadows and withers the undergrowth beneath it. The results of the war wiped out this distinction between the aristocrat and the common people. But there are still left two classes--those who have seen better days, and those who haven't. The first class used to ride or drive, but most of them now take it afoot or stay at home. Seventy-five per cent. of them are descendants of old Henry Clay Whigs. Forty and fifty years ago they were the patrons of high schools and colleges, and stocked the professions with an annual crop of high-strung graduates who swore by Henry Clay and Fillmore and Stephens and Toombs and John Bell and the Code of Honor. They were proud of their birth and lineage, their wealth and culture; and when party spirit ran high and fierce they banded together against the pretensions of the struggling democracy. When I was a young man, a Whig girl deemed it an act of condescension to go to a party with a Democrat boy. But
the wear and tear of the war, the loss of their slaves, and a mortgage or two to lift, broke most of these old families up, though it didn't break down their family pride. They couldn't stand it like the Democrats who lived in log cabins and wore wool hats and copperas breeches. I speak with freedom of the old Georgia democracy, for I was one of them. The wealth and refinement of the State was, in the main, centered in the party known as the Old Line Whigs. Out of one hundred and sixty student in our State University at Athens, fifty-five years ago, one hundred and thirty of them were the sons of Whigs. I felt politically lonesome in their society, and was just going to change my base when I fell in love with a little Whig angel who was flying around. This hurried me up, and I was just about to go over to the Whig party, when suddenly that party came over to me. I don't know yet whether that political somersault lifted me up or pulled the little angel down--but I do know she wouldn't have me, and at last I mated with a Democratic darling who had either more pity or less discrimination. She took me, and she's got me yet; she surrendered, but I am the prisoner.
So I did not marry my first love, but Mrs. Arp married her's--bless her heart--and she now declares I took advantage of her innocent youth and gave her no chance to make a choice among lovers. That is so, I reckon, for I was in a powerful hurry to secure the prize, and pressed my suit with all diligence for fear of accidents. Once before I had loved and lost, and I thought it would have killed me; but it didn't, for I never sprung from suicide stock. I had loved that little maid of Athens amazingly. I would have climbed the Chimborazo mountains and
fought a tizer for her--a small tiger. And she loved me, I know, for the evening before I left for my distant home I told her of my love and devotion, my adoration and aspiration and admiration and all other "ations," and the palpitating lace on her bosom told me how fast her heart was beating, and I gently took her soft hand in mine and drew her head upon my manly shoulder and kissed her. Delicious feast--delightful memory. It lasted me a year, I know, and hasn't entirely faded yet. I never mention it at home - no never; but I think of it sometimes on the sly--yes, on the sly. Before I left her for my distant home she promised to consider my love and write to me--but she never wrote. She is considering it yet, I reckon. In a year or so she married another college boy and was happy, and not long after I married Mrs. Arp, and was happy, too. So it is all right and no loss on our side.
I still love to ruminate about those delightful days--the memories of love's young dream. And why not? Four thousand years ago Jacob kissed Rachel, and Moses made a record of it in the sacred volume, and it has come down to us through the corridors of time, and is still the sweetest part of the story. To be mated as well as married is the happiest condition of human life. What a beautiful sight it is to see a venerable couple with loving children and grandchildren around them, and going down the vale like John Anderson my Jo John and his loving spouse. It seems to me that marriage in those days, half a century ago, were more serious than now. I will not say there was more love, but I know there were less clothes and fewer divorces and grass widows. The boys married the girls and the girls married the boys. But now it is not uncommon to see our old widowers
following General Longstreet's example, and taking the girls for wives. It is not according to nature and is dangerous to both, especially if the old man refuses to die in a reasonable time and fails to leave the blooming widow a goodly sum. I recall now a beautiful Gwinnett girl, the daughter of a friend of ours. The civil war wrecked her father's fortune and he died soon after, leaving her almost penniless. When she was twenty years old she wedded a rich old man of fifty - an invald, whose lease on life seemed short - and he settled on her an ample fortune to be hers at his death. Now she is fifty years old and he is eighty, and keeps living on and on and on. They are childless, and live on a farm in the country, and she looks almost as old and haggard as he does. Hers is the wreck of a once happy and hopeful life.
Now, before the civil war, our young men almost invariably mated with our young girls, and our widowers married widows as a general rule, unless there was a Yankee school mistress in sight. They always married Southern widowers, and were glad to get them. Four New England girls went off that way in my town, and they made good wives and good mothers. They were raised to habits of industry and economy, and that is what a widower wants in a second wife. They take good care of his first crop of children and get them educated and out of the way by the time the second crop is coming on. There was no economy in ante-bellum days among the aristocracy of the South. It wasn't necessary. The little negroes were always standing around waiting for the scraps, either of food or clothing. Whereas, in New England, where I went to school one winter, they didn't even keep a dog or a cat at my uncle's house, and the rule was to take no more on your plate
than you were going to eat, and the dishes and the plates were left so clean after meals that it was hardly necessary to wash them--and maybe they didn't.
Most of these families are poor, but they are proud. They are highly respected for their manners and their culture. They are looked upon as good stock and thoroughbred, but withdrawn from the turf. Their daughters carry a high head and a flashing eye, stand up square on their pastern joints, and chafe under the bits. They come just as nigh living as they used to as possible. They dress neatly in plain clothes, wear starched collars and corsets, and a perfumed handkerchief. They do up their hair in the fashion, take Godey's Lady's Book or somebody's Bazaar. If they are able to hire a domestic, the darkey finds out in two minutes that free niggers don't rank any higher in that family than slaves used to. The negroes who know their antecedents have the highest respect for them, and will say Mas' William or Miss Julia with the same deference as in former years. One would hardly learn from their general deportment that they cleaned up the house, made up the beds, washed the dishes, did their own sewing and gave music lessons--in fact, did most everything but wash the family clothes. They won't do that. I have known them to milk and churn, and sweep the back yard, and scour the brass; but I've never seen one of them bent over the washtub yet. In the good old times their rich and patriarchal father lived like Abraham, and Jacob, and Job. They felt like they were running an unlimited monarchy on a limited scale. When a white child was born in the family it was ten dollars out of pocket; but a little nigger was a hundred dollars in and got fifty dollars a year better for twenty years to come.
The economy of the old plantation was the economy of waste. Two servants to one white person was considered moderate and reasonable. In a family of eight or ten--with numerous visitors and some poor kin--there was generally a head cook and her assistant, a chamberhaid, a seamstress, a maid or nurse for every daughter, and a little nig for every son, whose business it was to trot around after him and hunt up mischief. Then there was the stableman and carriage driver, and the gardener and the dairy woman, and two little darkies to drive up the cows and keep the calves off while the milking was going on. Besides these, there were generally half a dozen little chaps crawling around or picking up chips, and you could hear them bawling and squalling all the day long, as their mothers mauled them and spanked them for something or nothing with equal ferocity.
But the good old plantation times are gone--the times when these old family servants felt an affectionate abiding interest in the family; when our good mothers nursed their sick and old, helpless ones, and their good mothers waited so kindly upon their "mistis," as they called her, and took care of the little children by day and by night. Our old black mammy was mighty dear to us children, and we loved her, for she was always doing something to please us as she screened us from many a whipping. It would seem an unusual wonder, but nevertheless it is true, that these faithful old domestics loved their master's children better than their own, and they showed it in numberless ways without any hypocrisy. We frolicked with their children, and all played together by day and hunted together by night, and it beat the Arabian Nights to go to the old darkey's cabin of a winter night and hear him tell of ghosts and witches
and jack-o' lanterns, and wildcats and grave yards, and raw head and bloody bones, and we would listen with faith and admiration until we didn't dare to look around, and wouldn't have gone back to the big house alone for a world of gold. Bonaparte said that all men were cowards at night, but I reckon it was these old darkies that made us so, and we have hardly recovered from it yet. When I used to go a-courting I had to pass a grave-yard in the suburbs of the little village, and it was a test of my devotion that I braved its terrors on the darkest night and set at defiance the wandering spirits that haunted my path. Mrs. Arp appreciated it, I know, for she would follow me to the door when I left and anxiously listen to my retiring footsteps; and she declares to this day she could hear me running up that hill by the graveyard like a fast trotting horse on a shell road. The slaves of that day were loyal to their masters, and in the main were happy and contented. Of course there were some bad negroes, and there were some bad masters. Alas for the negro! Before the war there was not an outrage committed by them from the Potomac to the Rio Grande. There was not a chaingang nor a convict camp in all the South. Now, there are five thousand in the chain-gangs of Georgia and fifteen thousand more in the Southern States. here would be fifty thousand if the laws were enforced for minor offences, but we overlook them out of pity.
What a blessed privilege it was for the boys of our day to go with the cotton wagons to market, and camp out at night, and hear the trusty old wagoners tell their wonderful adventures. What a glorious time when we got home again, and brought sugar, and coffee and molasses, and had shoes all around
for white and black, with the little wooden measures in them and the names written on every one. And we had Christmas, too, for white folks and black folks; little red shawls, and head handkerchiefs, jack knives and jews-harps, tobacco and pipes, were always laid up for the family servants.
The times have wonderfully changed since then-- some things for better, some for worse. The old aristocracy is passing away. Some of them escaped the general wreck that followed the war and have illustrated by their energy and liberality the doctrine of the survival of the fittest-but their name is not legion. A new and hardier stock has come to the front--that class which prior to the war was under a cloud, and are now seeing their better days. The pendulum has swung to the other side. The results of the war made an opening for them and developed their energies. With no high degree of culture they have nevertheless proved equal to the struggle up the rough hill of life, and now play an important part in running the financial machine. Their practical energy has been followed by thrift. They have proved to be our best farmers and most prosperous merchants and mechanics. They now constitute the solid men of the State, and have contributed largely to the building up of our schools and churches, our factories and railroads, and the development of our mineral resources. They are shrewd and practical and not afraid of work. The two little ragged brothers who sold peanuts in Rome in 1860 are now her leading merchants. Two young men who then clerked for a meagre salary are now among the merchant prices of Atlanta. These are but types of the modern, self-made Southerner--a class who form a most
striking contrast to the stately dignity and aristocratic repose of the grand old patriarchs and statesmen whose beautiful homes adorned the hills and groves of the South some forty years ago.
But the children of the old patricians have come down some, and the children of the common people have come up some, and they have met upon a common plane and are now working happily together, both in social and business life. Spirit and blood have united with energy and muscle, and it makes a splendid team--the best all-round team the South has ever had.
Some time in the spring of 1861, when our Southern boys were hunting for a fight, and felt like they could whip all creation, Mr. Lincoln issued a proclamation ordering us all to disperse and retire within thirty days, and to quit cavorting around in a hostile and belligerent manner.
I remember writing an answer to it as though I was a good Union man and law-abiding citizen, and was willing to disperse, if I could; but it was almost impossible, for the boys were mighty hot, and the way we made up our military companies was to send a man down the lines with a bucket of water and sprinkle the boys, as he came to 'em, and if a feller sizzed like hot iron in a slack trough, we took him, and if he didn't sizz, we didn't take him; but still, nevertheless, notwithstanding, and so forth, if we could possibly disperse in thirty days we would do so, but I thought he had better give us a little more time, for I had been out in an old field by myself and tried to disperse myself and couldn't do it.
I thought the letter was right smart, and decently sarcastic, and so I read it to Dr. Miller and Judge Underwood, and they seemed to think it was right smart, too. About that time I looked around and saw Bill Arp standing at the door with his mouth open and a merry glisten in his eye. As he came forward, says he to me: "Squire, are you gwine to print that?"
"I reckon I will Bill," said I. "What name are ye gwine to put to it?" said he. "I don't know yet," said I; "haven't thought about a name." Then he brightened up and said: "Well, 'Squire, I wish you would put mine, for them's my sentiments;" and I promised him that I would.
So I did not rob Bill Arp of his good name, but took it on request, and now, at this late day, when the moss has covered his grave, I will record some pleasant memories of a man whose notoriety was not extensive, but who filled up a gap that was open, and who brightened up the flight of many an hour in the good old times, say from forty to fifty years ago.
He was a small, sinewy man, weighing about one hundred and thirty pounds, as active as a cat, and always presenting a bright and cheerful face. He had an amiable disposition, a generous heart, and was as brave a man as nature ever makes.
He was an humble man and unlettered in books; never went to school but a month or two in his life, and could neither read nor write; but still he had more than his share of common sense; more than his share of good mother wit, and was always welcome when he came about.
Lawyers and doctors and editors, and such gentlemen of leisure who used to, in the olden time, sit around and chat and have a good time, always said, "Come in, Bill, and take a seat;" and Bill seemed grateful for the compliment, and with a conscious humility squatted on about half the chair and waited for questions. The bearing of the man was one of reverence for his superiors and thankfulness for their notice.
Bill Arp was a contented man--contented with his humble lot. He never grumbled or complained at
anything; he had desires and ambition, but it did not trouble him. He kept a ferry for a wealthy gentleman who lived a few miles above town on the Etowah river, and he cultivated a small portion of his land; but the ferry was not of much consequence, and when Bill could slip off to town and hear the lawyers talk he would turn over the boat and the poles to his wife or his children and go. I have known him to take a back seat in the courthouse for a day at a time, and with face all greedy for entertainment listen to the learned speeches of the lawyers and charge of the court, and go home happy and be able to tell to his admiring family what had transpired. He had the greatest reverence for Colonel Johnson, his landlord, and always said that he would about as leave belong to him as to be free; "for," said he, "Mrs. Johnson throws away enough old clothes and second-hand vittels to support my children, and they are always nigh enough to pick 'em up."
Bill Arp lived in Chulio district; we had eleven districts in the county, and they had all such names as Pop-skull, and Blue-gizzard, and Wolf-skin, and Shake-rag, and Wild-cat, and Possum-trot, but Bill lived and reigned in Chulio. Every district had its best man in those days, and Bill was the best man in Chulio. He could out-run, out-jump, out-swim, out-rastle, out-ride, out-shoot anybody, and was so far ahead that everybody else had given it up, and Bill reigned supreme. He put on no airs about this, and his nabors were all his friends.
But there was another district adjoining, and it had its best man, too. One Ben McGinnis ruled the boys of that beat, and after awhile it began to be whispered around that Ben wasn't satisfied with his limited territory, but would like to have a small
tackle with Bill Arp. Ben was a pretentious man. He weighed about 165 pounds, and was considered a regular bruiser. When Ben hit a man he meant business, and his adversary was hurt--badly hurt, and Ben was glad of it. But when Bill Arp hit a man he was sorry for him, and if he knocked him down he would rather help him up and brush the dirt off his clothes than swell around in triumph. The quicker a man whips a fight the less of it he has to do, and both Ben and Bill had settled their standing most effectually. Bill was satisfied with his honors, but Ben was not, for there was many a Ransy Sniffle who lived along the line between the districts, and carried news from the one to the other, and made up the coloring, and soon it was narrated around that Ben and Bill had to meet and settle it.
The court-grounds of that day consisted of a little log shanty and a shelf. The shanty had a dirt floor and a puncheon seat, and a slab for the 'Squire's docket, and the shelf was outside for the whiskey.
The whiskey was kept in a gallon jug, and that held just about enough for the day's business. Most every body took a dram in those days, but very few took too much, unless, indeed, a dram was too much. Pistols were unknown, and bowie-knives and brass-knuckles and sling-shots and all other devices that gave one man an artful advantage over another.
When Colonel Johnson, who was Bill Arp's landlord, and Major Ayer and myself got to Chulio, Bill Arp was there, and was pleasantly howdying with his nabors, when suddenly we discovered Ben McGinnis arriving upon the ground. He hitched his horse to a swinging limb and dismounted and began trampoosing around, and every little crowd he got to, he would lean forward in an insolent manner and say, "Any
body here got anything agin Ben McGinnis? If they have, I goll, I'll give 'em five dollars to hit that; I golly, I dare anybody to hit that," and he would point to his forehead with an air of insolent defiance.
Bill Arp was standing by us and I thought he looked a little more serious than I ever had seen him. Frank Ayer says to him, "Bill, I see that Ben is coming around here to pick a fight with you, and I want to say that you have got no cause of quarrel with him, and if he comes, do you just let him come and go, that' all." Colonel Johnson says, "Bill, he is too big for you, and your own beat knows you, and you haven't done anything against Ben, and so I advise you to let him pass; do you hear me?"
By this time Bill's nervous system was all in a quiver. His face had an air of rigid determination, and he replied humbly, but firmly, "Colonel Johnson I love you, and I respect you, too; but if Ben McGinnis comes up here outen his beat, and into my beat, and me not having done nothing agin him, and he dares me to hit him, I'm going to hit him, if it is the last lick I ever strike. I'm no phist puppy dog, sir, that he should come out of his deestrict to bully me."
I've seen Bill Arp in battle, and he was a hero. I've seen him when shot and shell rained around him, and he was cool and calm, and the same old smile was upon his features, but I never saw him as intensely excited as he was that moment when Ben McGinnis approached us, and, addressing himself to Bill Arp, said, "I golly, I dare anybody to hit that."
As Ben straightened up, Bill let fly with his hard, bony fist right in his left eye, and followed it up with another so quick that the two blows seemed as one. I don't know how it was, and never will know; but in
less than a second, Bill had him down and was on him, and his fists and his elbows and his knees seemed all at work. He afterwards said that his knees worked on Ben's bread basket, which he knew was his weakest part. Ben hollered "enough" in due time, which was considered honorable to do when a feller had enough, and Bill helped him up and brushed the dirt off his clothes, and said, "Now, Ben, is it all over betwixt us, is you and me all right?" And Ben, said, "It's all right 'twixt you and me, Bill; and you are much of a gentleman." Bill invited all hands up to the shelf, and they took a drink, and he and Ben were friends.
This is enough of Bill Arp--the original, the simon-pure. He was a good soldier in war. He was the wit and the wag of the camp-fires, and made a homesick youth laugh away his melancholy. He was a good citizen in peace. When told that his son was killed he looked no surprise, but simply said: "Major, did he die all right?" When assured that he did, Bill wiped away a falling tear and said, "I only wanted to tell his mother."
You may talk about heroes and heroines; I have seen all sorts, and so has most everybody who was in the war, but I never saw a more devoted heroine than Bill Arp's wfe. She was a very humble woman, very, and she loved her husband with a love that was passing strange. I have seen that woman in town, three miles from her home, hunting around by night for her husband, going from one saloon to another, and in her kind, loving voice inquiring, "is William here?" Blessings on that poor woman; I have almost cried for her many a time. Poor William, how she loved hm. How tenderly would she take him, when she found him, and lead him home, and bathe
his head and put him to bed. She always looked pleased and thankful when asked about him, and would say, "he is a good little man, but you know he has his failings." She loved Bill and he loved her; he was weak and she was strong. There are some such women now, I reckon. I know there are some such men.
"Big John" was one of the earliest settlers of Rome, and one of her most notable men. For several years he was known by his proper name of John Underwood; but when another John Underwood moved there, the old settler had to be identified by his superior size, and gradually lost his surname, and was known far and near as "Big John." The new comer was a man of large frame, weighing about 225 pounds, but Big John pulled down the scales at a hundred pounds more. He had shorter arms and shorter legs, but his circumference was correspondingly immense. He was notable for his humor and his good humor. The best town jokes came from his jolly, fertile fancy, and his comments on men and things were always original, and as terse and vigorous as ever came from the brain of Dr. Johnson. He was a diamond in the rough. He had lived a pioneer among the Indians of Cherokee, and it was said fell in love with an Indian maid, the daughter of old Tustenuggee, a limited chief, and never married because he could not marry her. But if his disappointment preyed upon his heart, it did not prey long upon the region that enclosed it, for he continued to expand his proportions. He was a good talker and an earnest laugher--whether he laughed and grew fat, or grew fat and laughed, the doctors could not tell which was the cause and which was effect, and it is still in
doubt, but I have heard wise men affirm that laughing was the fat man's safety-valve, that if he did not laugh and shake and vibrate frequently, he would grow fatter and fatter, until his epidermic cuticle could not contain his oleaginous corporosity.
Big John had no patience with the war, and when he looked upon the boys strutting around in uniforms, and fixing up their canteens and haversacks, he seemed as much astonished as disgusted. He sat in his big chair on the sidewalk, and would remark, "I don't see any fun in the like of that. Somebody is going to be hurt, and fighting don't prove anything. Some of our best people in this town are kin to them fellers up North, and I don't see any sense in tearing up families by a fight." He rarely looked serious or solemn, but the impending strife seemed to settle him. "Boys," said he, "I hope to God this thing will be fixed up without a fight, for fighting is a mighty bad business, and I never knowed it to do any good."
Big John had had a little war experience--that is, he had volunteered in a company to assist in the forcible removal of the Cherokees to the far west in 1835. It was said that he was no belligerent then, but wanted to see that the maiden he loved had a safe transit, and so he escorted the old chief and his clan as far as Tuscumbia, and then broke down and returned to Ross Landing on the Tennessee river. He was too heavy to march, and when he arrived at the Landing, a prisoner was put in his charge for safe keeping. Ross Landing is Chattanooga now, and John Ross lived there, and was one of the chiefs of the Cherokees. The prisoner was his guest, and his name was John Howard Payne. He was suspected of trying to instigate the Cherokees to revolt and fight, and not
leave their beautiful forest homes on the Tennessee and Coosa and Oostanaula and the Etowah, or New Town, as it was called, an Indian settlement on the Coosawattee, a few miles east of Calhoun, as now known. There he kept the author of "Home, Sweet Home" under guard, or on his parol of honor, for three weeks, and listened to his music upon the violin, and heard him sing his own songs until orders came for his discharge, and Payne was sent under escort to Washington.
Many a time have I heard Big John recite his sad adventures. "It was a most distressive business," said he. "Them Injuns was heart-broken; I always knowed an Injun loved his hunting-ground and his rivers, but I never knowed how much they loved 'em before. You know they killed Ridge for consentin' to the treaty. They killed him on the march and they wouldn't bury him. The soldiers had to stop and dig a grave and put him away. John Ross and John Ridge were the sons of two Scotchmen, who came over here when they were young men and mixed up with these tribes and got their good will. These two boys were splendid looking men, tall and handsome, with long auburn hair, and they were active and strong, and could shoot a bow equal to the best bowman of the tribe, and they beat 'em all to pieces on the cross-bow. They married the daughters of the old chiefs, and when the old chiefs died they just fell into line and succeeded to the old chiefs' places, and the tribes liked 'em mighty well for they were good men and made good chiefs. Well, you see Ross dident like the treaty. He said it wasent fair, and that the price of the territory was too low, and the fact is he dident want to go at all. There are the ruins of his old home now over there in DeSoto,
close to Rome, and I tell you he was a king. His word was the law of the Injun nations, and he had their love and their respect. His half-breed children were the purtiest things I ever saw in my life. Well, Ridge lived up the Oostanaula river about a mile and he was a good man, too. Ross and Ridge always consulted about everything for the good of the tribes, but Ridge was a more milder man than Ross, and was more easily persuaded to sign the treaty that gave the lands to the State and take other lands away across the Mississippi.
"Well, it took us a month to get 'em all together and begin the march to the Mississippi, and they wouldn't march then. The women would go out of line and set down in the Woods and go to grieving, and you may believe it or not, but I'll tell you what is a fact, we started with 14,000, and 4,000 of 'em died before we got to Tuscumbia. They died on the side of the road; they died of broken hearts; they died of starvation, for they wouldn't eat a thing; they just died all along the way. We didn't make more than five miles a day on the march, and my company didn't do much but dig graves and bury Injuns all the way to Tuscumbia. They died of grief and broken hearts, and no mistake. An Indian's heart is tender and his love is strong; it's his nature. I'd rather risk an Injun for a true friend than a white man. He is the best friend in the world, and the worst enemy. He has got more gratitude and more revenge in him than anybody."
Big John's special comfort was a circus. He never missed one, and it was a good part of the show to see him laugh and shake and spread his magnificent face.
He took no pleasure in the quarrels of mankind, and never backed a man in a fight; but when two dogs locked teeth, or two bulls locked horns, or two game chickens locked spurs, he always liked to be about. "It is their nature to fight," said he, "and let 'em fight." He took delight in watching dogs and commenting on their sense and dispositions. He compared them to the men about town, and drew some humorous analogies. "There is Jimmy Jones," said he, "who ripped and splurged around because Georgia wouldn't secede in a minute and a half, and he swore he was going over to South Carolina to fight; and when Georgia did secede shore enough, he didn't join the army at all, and always had some cussed excuse, and when conscription came along, he got on a detail to make potash, con-ding him, and when that played out he got him a couple of track dogs and got detailed to catch runaway prisoners. Just so I've seen dogs run up and down the palings like they was dying to get to one another, and so one day I picked up my dog by the nape of the neck and dropped him over on the outside. I never knowed he could jump that fence before, but he bounced back like an Indian rubber ball, and the other dog streaked it down the sidewalk like the dickens was after him. Dogs are like folks, and folks are like dogs, and a heap of 'em want the palings between. Jack Bogin used to strut round and whip the boys in his beat, and kick 'em around, because he knew he could do it, for he had the most muscle; but he couldn't look a brave man in the eye, muscle or no muscle, and I've seen him shut up quick when he met one. A man has got to be right to be brave, and I had rather see a bully get a licking than to eat sugar."
ATLANTA, GA., May 22, 1864.
MR. EDITOR: "Remote, unfriended, melancholy, slow," as somebody said, I am seeking a log in some vast wilderness, a lonely roost in some Okeefinokee swamp, where the foul invaders cannot travel nor their pontoon bridges float. If Mr. Shakespeare were correct when he wrote that "sweet are the juices of adversity," then it is reasonable to suppose that me and my folks, and many others, must have some sweetening to spare. When a man is aroused in the dead of night, and smells the approach of the foul invader; when he feels constrained to change his base and become a runagee from his home, leaving behind him all those ususary things, which hold body and soul together; when he looks, perhaps the last time upon his lovely home where he has been for many delightful years raising children and chickens, strawberries and peas, lye soap and onions, and all such luxuries of this sublunary life; when he imagines every unusual sound to be the crack of his earthly doom; when from such influences he begins a dignified retreat, but soon is constrained to leave the dignity behind, and get away, without regard to the order of his going--if there is any sweet juice in the like of that, I haven't been able to see it. No, Mr. Editor, such scenes never happened in Bill Shakespeare's day, or he wouldn't have written that line.
I don't know that the lovely inhabitants of your
beautiful city need any forewarnings, to make 'em avoid the breakers upon which our vessel was wrecked, but for fear they should some day shake their gory locks at me, I will make public a brief allusion to some of the painful circumstances which lately occurred in the eternal city.
Not many days ago the everlasting Yankees (may they live always when the devil gets 'em) made a valiant assault upon the city of the hills--the eternal city, where for a hundred years the Indian rivers have been blending their waters peacefully together--where the Cherokee children built their flutter mills, and toyed with frogs and tadpoles whilst these majestic streams were but little spring branches babbling along their sandy beds. For three days and nights our valiant troops had beat back the foul invader, and saved our pullets from their devouring jaws. For three days and nights we bade farewell to every fear, luxuriating upon the triumph of our arms, and the sweet juices of our strawberries and cream. For three days and nights fresh troops from the South poured into our streets with shouts that made the welkin ring, and the turkey bumps rise all over the flesh of our people. We felt that Rome was safe-- secure against the assault of the world, the flesh and the devil, which last individual is supposed to be that horde of foul invaders who are seeking to flank us out of both bread and existence.
But alas for human hopes! Man that is born of woman (and there is no other sort that I know of) has but a few days that is not full of trouble. Although the troops did shout; although their brass band music swelled upon the gale; although the turkey bumps rose as the welkin rung) although the commanding general assured us that Rome was to
be held at every hazard, and that on to-morrow the big battle was to be fought, and the foul invaders hurled all howling and bleeding to the shores of the Ohio, yet it transpired somehow that on Tuesday night the military evacuation of our city was peremptorily ordered. No note of warning - no whisper of alarm - no hint of the morrow came from the muzzled lips of him who had lifted our hopes so high. Calmly and coolly we smoked our killikinick, and surveyed the embarkation of troops, construing it to be some grand manoeuvre of military strategy. About ten o'clock we retired to rest, to dream of tomorrow's victory. Sleep soon overpowered us like the fog that covered the earth, but nary bright dream had come, nary vision of freedom and glory. On the contrary, our rest was uneasy - strawberries and cream seemed to be holding secession meetings within our corporate limits, when suddeny, in the twinkling of an eye, a friend aroused us from our slumber and put a new phase upon the "situation." General Johnston was retreating, and the foul invaders were to pollute our sacred soil the next morning. Then came the tug of war. With hot and feverish haste we started out in search of transportation, but nary transport could be had. Time-honored friendship, past favors shown, everlasting gratitude, numerous small and lovely children, Confederate currency, new issues, bank bills, black bottles, and all influences were urged and used to secure a corner in a car; but nary corner--too late--too late--the pressure for time was fearful and tremendous--the steady clock moved on--no Joshua about to lengthen out the night, no rolling stock, no steer, no mule. With reluctant and hasty steps, we prepared to make good our exit by that overland line
which railroads do not control, nor A. Q. M.s impress.
With our families and a little clothing, we crossed the Etowah bridge about the break of day on Wednesday, the 17th of May, 1864, exactly a year and two weeks before the time when General Forrest marched in triumph through our streets. By and by the bright rays of the morning sun dispersed the heavy fog, which like a pall of death had overspread all nature. Then were exhibited to our afflicted gaze a highway crowded with wagons and teams, cattle and hogs, niggers and dogs, women and children, all moving in disheveled haste to parts unknown. Mules were braying, cattle were lowing, hogs were squealing, sheep were bleating, children were crying, wagoners were cursing, whips were popping, and horses stalling, but still the grand caravan moved on. Everybody was continually looking behind, and driving before--everybody wanted to know everything, and nobody knew anything. Ten thousand wild rumors filled the circumambient air. The everlasting cavalry was there, and as they dashed to and fro gave false alarms of the enemy being in hot pursuit.
About this most critical juncture of affairs, some philanthropic friends passed by with the welcome news that the bridge was burnt, and the danger all over. Then ceased the panic; then came the peaceful calm of heroes after the strife of war is over--then exclaimed Frank Ralls, my demoralized friend, "Thank the good Lord for that. Bill, let's return thanks and stop and rest--boys, let me get out and lie down. I'm as humble as a dead nigger--I tell you the truth--I sung the long metre doxology as I crossed the Etowah bridge, and I expected to be a
dead man in fifteen minutes. Be thankful, fellows, let's all be thankful--the bridge is burnt, and the river is three miles deep. God sakes, do you reckon those Yankees can swim? Get up, boys--let's drive ahead and keep moving--I tell you there's no accounting for anything with blue clothes on these days--ding'd if I ain't afraid of a blue-tailed fly."
With a most distressing flow of language, he continued his rhapsody of random remarks.
Then there was that trump of good fellows, Big John - as clever as he is fat, and as fat as old Falstaff--with indefatigable diligence he had secured, as a last resort, a one-horse steer spring wagon, with a low, flat body setting on two rickety springs. Being mounted thereon, he was urging a more speedy locomotion by laying on to the carcass of the poor old steer with a thrash-pole ten feet long. Having stopped at a house, he procured a two-inch auger, and boring a hole through the dashboard, pulled the steer's tail through and tied up the end in a knot. "My running gear is weak," said he, "but I don't intend to be stuck in the mud. If the body holds good, and the steer don't pull out his tail, why, Bill, I am safe." "My friend," said I, "will you please inform me what port you are bound for, and when you expect to reach it?" "No port at all, Bill," said he, "I am going dead straight to the big Stone Mountain. I am going to get on the top and roll rocks down upon all mankind. I now forewarn every living thing not to come there until this everlasting foolishness is over." He was then but three miles from town, and had been traveling the live-long night. Ah, my big friend, thought I, when wilt thou arrive at thy journey's end? In the language of Patrick Henry, will it be the next week or the
next year? Oh, that I could write a poem, I would embalm thy honest face in epic verse. But I was in a right smart hurry myself, and only had time to drop his memory a passing rhyme.
Farewell, Big John, farewell!
'Twas painful to my heart
To see thy chances of escape,
Was that old steer and cart.
Methinks I see thee now,
With axletrees all broke,
And wheels with nary hub at all,
and hubs with nary spoke.
But though the mud is deep,
Thy wits will never fail;
That faithful steer will pull thee out,
If he don't pull out his tail.
Mr. Editor, under such variegated scenes we reported progress, and in course of time arrived under the shadow of thy city's wings, abounding in gratitude and joy.
With sweet and patient sadness, the tender hearts of our wives and daughters beat mournfully as we moved along. Often, alas, how often was the tear seen swimming in the eye, and the lips quivering with emotion, as memory lingered around deserted homes, and thoughts dwelt upon past enjoyments and future desolation. We plucked the wildflowers as we passed, sang songs of merriment, exchanged our wit with children--smothering by every means, the sorrow of our fate. These things, together with the comic events that occurred by the way, were the safety-valves that saved the poor heart from bursting. But for these our heads would have been fountains and our hearts a river of tears. Oh, if some
kind friend would set our retreat to music, it would be greatly appreciated indeed. It should be a plaintive tune, interspersed with occasional comic notes, and frequent fugues scattered promiscuously along.
Our retreat was conducted in excellent order, after the bridge was burnt. If there was any straggling at all, they straggled ahead. It would have delighted General Johnston to have seen the alacrity of our movements.
But I must close this melancholy narrative, and hasten to subscribe myself, Your runagee,
P. S.--Tip is still faithful unto the end. He says the old turkey we left behind has been setting for fourteen weeks, and the fowl invaders are welcome to her. Furthermore, that he threw a dead cat into the well, and they are welcome to that. B. A.
Some frog-eating Frenchman has written a book and called it "Lee's Miserables," or some other such name, which I suppose contains the misfortunes of poor refugees in the wake of the Virginny army. General Hood has also got a few miserables in the suburbs of his fighting-ground, and if any man given to romance would like a fit subject for a weeping narrative, we are now ready to furnish the mournful material.
As the Yankees remarked at Bull Run, "those are the times that try men's soles," and I suppose my interesting family is now prepared to show stone bruises and blisters with anybody. It is a long story, Mr. Editor, and cannot possibly be embraced in a single column of your wandering newspaper; but I will condense it as briefly as possible, smoothing over the most affecting parts, so as not to occasion too great a diffusion of sympathetic tears.
After our hasty flight from the eternal city, we became converted over to the doctrine of squatter sovereignty, and pitched our tents in the piney woods. Afar off in those fields of illimitable space, we roamed through the abstruse regions of the philosophic world. There no unfriendly soldier was perusing around and asking for papers. There the melancholy mind was soothed. There the lonely runagee could contemplate the sandy roads, the wire-grass woods, and the millions of majestic pines that stood
like ten-pins in an alley, awaiting some huge cannonball to come along and knock 'em down. The mountain scenery in this romantic country was grand, gloomy and peculiar, consisting in numberless gopher-hills, spewed up in promiscuous beauty as far as the eye could reach. All around us the swamp frogs were warbling their musical notes. All above us the pines were sighing and singing their mournful tunes. Dame Nature has spread herself there in showing her lavish hand, and wasting timber along those endless glades. Truly, we were treading on classic ground, for we pitched our tents in a blackberry patch, and morning, noon and night, luxuriated in peace upon the delicious fruit which everywhere adorned the sandy earth.
But those piney woods to which we fled did not by any means agree with our ideas of future comfort. After it had rained some forty days and forty nights without a recess, the corn crop had pretty well died out, and General Starvation seemed about to assume command of the region around about.
We felt constrained to depart from those coasts, and seek an Egypt somewhere in a rounder and more rolling country. So we took the train for Atlanta and designed to take roundance from there and find a retreat away up the Chattahoochee river where Mrs. Arp's father lived.
All along the line, at every station, pretty women got on and got off. When they leave us, an affectionate man like myself unconsciously whispers, "Depart in peace, ye treasures of delight." Casting a longing, lingering look behind, I exclaimed in the beautiful language of Mr. Shakespeare, 'I have thee not, but yet I see thee still.' Farewell, sweet darlings, until I come again. But woman is sometimes very variegated
and peculiar in the way she does. I am just reminded how, on a late occasion, I found but one vacant seat in the car after I located my numerous and interesting family. A luxurious lady, with some aggravating curls, had occupied nearly all of a seat, spreading herself like a setting-hen, all over the velvet cushion. "Madam, can I share this seat with you?" said I. "Certainly sir," and she closed in her skirts some several inches. In a short space of time she became affected with drowsiness. Her neck became as limber as a greasy rag. Leaning on my shoulder, she seemed wonderfully affectionate, as her head kept bobbing around, and I felt very peculiar at such times as she would subside into my palpitating bosom. About this critical juncture, I ventured to turn my astonished gaze towards Mrs. Arp, and seeing that she was waiting for some remark, I observed, "Hadn't I better remove my seat? Do you think I can endure the like of this?"
"I do not, William," said she. "You had better stand up awhile, and when you get tired some of the children will relieve you." The glance of her eye and the manner in which she spoke brought me up standing, and gave me a correct view of the situation. Immediately I assumed a perpendicular attitude, and the curly head was left without a prop. I assure you, Mr. Editor, a man's wife is the best judge of such peculiar things; and as for me, I am always governed by it.
We arrived in Atlanta about the time the first big shells commenced scattering their unfeeling contents among the suburbs of that devoted city. Then came the big panics; then shrieked the man-eater; then howled the wild hyena among the hills of Babylon.
All sorts of people seemed moving in all sorts of ways, with an accelerated motion. They gained ground on their shadows as they leaned forward on the run, and their legs grew longer at every step. With me it was the second ringing of the first bell. I had sorter got used to the thing, and set myself down to take observations. "How many miles of Milybright?" said I. But no response came, for their legs were as long as light, and every bursting shell was an old witch on the road. Cars was the all in all. Depots were the center of space, converging lines from every point of the compass made tracks to the offices of railroad superintendents. These functionaries very prudently vamoosed the ranch to avoid their too numerous friends, leaving positive orders to their subordinates. The passenger depot was thronged with anxious seekers of transportation. I "Won't you let these boxes go as baggage?" "No, madam, it is impossible." Just then somebody's family trunk as big as a nitre bureau was shoved in, and the poor woman got desperate. "All I've got ain't as heavy as that," said she; "I am a poor widow, and my husband was killed in the army. I've got five children, and three of them cutting teeth, and my things have got to go." We took up, her boxes and shoved them in. Another good woman asked very anxiously for the Macon train. "There it is, madam," said I. She shook her head mournfully and remarked, "You are mistaken, sir, don't you see the engine is headed right up the State road, towards the Yankees? I shan't take any train with the engine at that end of it. No, sir, that ain't the Macon train." Everybody was hurrying to and fro at a lively tune. "What's today, nigger?" said a female darkey with a hoopskirt on her arm. "Taint
no day, honey, dat ever I seed. Yesterday was Sunday, and I reckon today is Runday from de way de white folks are movin' about. Yah, yah; ain't afeered of Yankees myself, but dem sizzin' bumshells kills a nigger quicker dan you can lick your tongue out. Gwine to getaway from here - I is."
I went into a doctor's shop, and found my friend packing up his vials and poisons and copiva and such like. Various excited individuals dame in, looked at a big map on the wall, and pointed out the roads to McDonough and Eatonton and Jasper, and soon their proposed lines of travel were easily and greasily visible from the impression of their perspiring fingers. An old skeleton, with but one leg, was swinging from the ceiling looking like a mournful emblem of the fate of the troubled city. "You are going to leave him to stand guard, doctor?" said I. "I suppose I will," said he; "got no transportation for him." "Take the screw out of his skull," said I "and give him a crutch, maybe he will travel; all flesh is moving and I think the bones will catch the contagion soon."
A few doors further, and a venerable auctioneer was surveying the rushing, running crowd, and every now and then he would raise his arm with a seesaw motion and exclaim, "Going--going--gone! Who's the bidder?" "Old Daddy Time," said I, "he'll get them all before long." The door of an old friend's residence swung open to my gaze, and I walked in. Various gentlemen of my acquaintance were discussing their evidences of propriety over a jug of departing spirits. "I believe I'll unpack," said one. "Dinged if I'm afraid of a blue-tailed fly; I'm going to sit down and be easy." "In a horn,"
said I. Just then a sizzing, singing, crazy shell sung a short- metre hymn right over the house. "Jake, has the dray come?" he said, bouncing to his feet: "confound that dray-- blame my skin if I'll ever get a dray to move these things-- boys, lets all stay; durned if it don't look cowardly to run! Boys, here's to-who shall we drink to?" "Here's to Cassabianca," said I. "Good, good," they all shouted. "Here's to Cabysianka. Let me speak it for you, boys," said out host; "I've spoken it a thousand times." He mounted the seat of a broken sofa, and spreading himself, declaimed:
"The boy stood on the burning deck,
When all had fled but him."
"That's me," said one. "It's me exactly," said another. "I'm Babysianka myself--dog my cat if I don't be the last one to leave this ship." Another shell sizzed, and bursted a few yards off. "Boys, let's take another drink and leave the town-- dod rot the Yankees." "Here's to--the--the 'Last of the Mohicans,' " said I. "Exactly--that's so. I'm him myself. I'm the mast of the Lohikens; durned if I'll leave these diggins as long as--as long as--" "As the State road," said I, "which is now about four inches and a half." "That's it; that's so," said my friends. "Here's to the State road and Dr. Brown and Joe Phillips, as long as four inches and a half."
By and by the shells fell as thick as Governor Brown's proclamations, causing a more speedy locomotion in the excited throng who hurried by the door, but my friends inside had passed the Rubicon, and one by one retired to dream of Bozarris and, his Suliote band. Vacant rooms and long corridors
echoed with their snores, and they appeared like sleeping heroes in the halls of the Montezumas.
Contagious diseases are said to be catching, and the Atlanta big panics brought the Atlanta folk to an active perpendicular quicker than all the physics ever seen in a city drug store. It certainly has a tendency to arouse the dormant energies of feeble invalids. Weak backs and lame legs, old chronics and rheumatics, in fact, all the internal diseases which honest fear of powder and ball had developed since the war begun, were now forgotten in the general flight; and the examination boards could have seen many a discharge invalidated, and a living, moving lie given to their certificates.
All day and all night the iron horses were snorting to the echoing breeze. Train after train of goods and chattels moved down the road, leaving hundreds of anxious faces waiting their return. There was no method in this madness. All kinds of plunder was tumbled in promiscuously. A huge parlor mirror, some six feet by eight, all bound in elegant gold, with a brass buzzard spreading his wings on top, was set up at the end of the car and reflected a beautiful assortment of parlor furniture to match, such as pots, kettles, baskets, bags, barrels, kegs, bacon and bedsteads piled up together. Government officials had the preference and government officials all have friends. Any clever man with a charming wife or a pretty sister could secure a corner in more cars than one, and I will privately mention to you, Mr. Editor, that I have found a heap of civility on this account myself. Indeed, I have always thought that no man is excusable who has not either one or the other.
ROME, GA., September 1, 1865. MR. ARTEMUS WARD, Showman -
SIR: The reason I write to you in particler, is because you are about the only man I know in all "God's country," so-called. For some several weeks I have been wantin' to say sumthin'. For some several years we rebs, so-called, but now late of said country deceased, have been tryin' mighty hard to do somethin'. We didn't quite do it, and now it's very painful, I assure you, to dry up all of a sudden, and make out like we wasn't there.
My friends, I want to say somethin'. I suppose there is no law agin thinkin', but thinkin' don't help me. It don't let down my themometer. I must explode myself generally so as to feel better. You see I'm tryin' to harmonize. I'm tryin' to soften down my feelin's. I'm endeavoring to subjugate myself to the level of surroundin' circumstances, so-called. But I can't do it until I am allowed to say somethin'. I want to quarrel with somebody and then make friends. I ain't no giant-killer. I ain't no Norwegian bar. I ain't no boa-constrickter, but I'll be horn-swaggled if the talkin' and writin' and slanderin' has got to be all done on one side any longer. Sum of your folks have got to dry up or turn our folks loose. It's a blamed outrage, so-called. Ain't you editors got nothin' else to do but peck at us, and squib at us, and crow over us? Is every man
what can write a paragraph to consider us bars in a cage, and be always a-jobbin' at us to hear us growl? Now, you see, my friend, that's what's disharmonious, and do you jest tell 'em one and all, e pluribus unum, so-called, that if they don't stop it at once or turn us loose to say what we please, why, why, we rebs, so-called, have unanimously and jointly and severally resolved to--to--to--think very hard of it--if not harder.
That's the way to talk it. I ain't agoin' to commit myself. I know when to put on the brakes. I ain't goin' to say all I think. Nary time. No, sir. But I'll jest tell you, Artemus, and you may tell it to your show. If we ain't allowed to express our sentiments, we can take it out in hatin'; and hatin' runs heavy in my family, sure. I hated a man once so bad that all the hair cum off my head, and the man drowned himself in a hog-waller that night. I could do it agin, but you see I'm tryin' to harmonize, to acquiess, to becum calm and sereen.
Now, I suppose that, poetically speakin',
"In Dixie's fall,
We sinned all."
But talkin' the way I see it, a big feller and a little feller so-called, got into a fite, and they fout and fout a long time, and everybody all 'round kept hollerin', "hands off," but helpin' the big feller, until finally the little feller caved in and hollered enuf. He made a bully fite, I tell you. Well, what did the big feller do? Take him by the hand and help him up, and brush the dirt off his clothes? Nary time! No, sur! But he kicked him arter he was down, and throwed mud on him, and drugged him about and rubbed sand in his eyes, and now he's gwine about huntin' up his
poor little property. Wants to confiscate it, so-called. Blame my jacket if it ain't enuf to make your head swim.
But I'm a good Union man, so-called. I ain't agwine to fight no more. I shan't vote for the next war. I ain't no gurilla. I've done tuk the oath, and I'm gwine to keep it, but as for my being subjugated, and humilyated and amalgamated, and enervated, as Mr. Chase says, it ain't so-- nary time. I ain't ashamed of nuthin' neither--ain't repentin' - ain't axin' for no one-horse, short-winded pardon. Nobody needn's be playin' priest around me. I ain't got no twenty thousand dollars. Wish I had; I'd give it to these poor widders and orfins. I'd fatten my own numerous and interestin' offspring in about two minutes and a half. They shouldn't eat roots and drink branch-water no longer. Poor unfortunate things! to cum into this subloonary world at such a time. There's Bull Run Arp, and Harper's Ferry Arp, and Chicahominy Arp, that never saw the pikters in a spellin' book. I tell you, my friends, we are the poorest people on the face of the earth--but we are poor and proud. We made a bully fite, and the whole American nation ought to feel proud of it. It shows what Americans can do when they think they are imposed upon. Didn't our four fathers fight, bleed and die about a little tax on tea, when not one in a thousand drunk it? Bekaus they succeeded, wasn't it glory? But if they hadn't, I suppose it would have been treason, and they would have been bowin' and scrapin' round King George for pardon. So it goes, Artemus, and to my mind, if the whole thing was stewed down it would make about half a pint of humbug. We had good men, great men, Christian men, who thought we was
right, and many of them have gone to the undiscovered country, and have got a pardon as is a pardon. When I die I am mighty willing to risk myself under the shadow of their wings, whether the climate be hot or cold. So mote it be.
Well, maybe I've said enough. But I don't feel easy yet. I'm a good Union man, certain and sure. I've had my breeches died blue, and I've bot a blue bucket, and I very often feel blue, and about twice in a while I go to the doggery and git blue, and then I look up at the blue cerulean heavens and sing the melanchonly chorus of the Blue-tailed Fly. I'm doin' my durndest to harmonize, and think I could succeed if it wasn't for sum things.
I don't want much. I ain't ambitious, as I used to was. You all have got your shows and monkeys and sircusses and brass bands and organs, and can play on the patrolyum and the harp of a thousand strings, and so on, but I've only got one favor to ax you. I want enough powder to kill a big yaller stump-tail dog that prowls around my premises at night. Pon my honor, I won't shoot at anything blue or black or mulatter. Will you send it? Are you and your folks so skeered of me and my folks that you won't let us have any ammunition? Are the squirrels and crows and black raccons, to eat up our little corn-patches? Are the wild turkeys to gobble all around with impunity? If a mad dog takes the hiderphoby, is the whole community to run itself to death to get out of the way? I golly! it looks like your people had all took the rebelfoby for good, and was never gwine to get over it. See here, my friend, you must send me a little powder and a ticket to your show, and me and you will harmonize sertin.
With these few remarks I think I feel better, and I hope I hain't made nobody fightin' mad, for I'm not on that line at this time.
I am truly your friend, all present or accounted for.
I love to meet a nabor and hear him say; "how's craps?" I continue to like farmin'. I like it better and better, except that the wheat is sumwhat doubtful about making a crop. A little long bug with a tail at both ends has got in the joints and sucked the sap out, and it's fallin' down in patches. Looks like there is always somethin' preyin on somethin', and nothin' is safe from disaster in this subloonary world. Flies and bugs and rust prey on the green wheat. Weevils eat it up when it's cut and put away. Rats eat the corn-- moles eat the gubbers--hawks eat the chickens--the minks killed three of our ducks in one night--cholera kills the hogs and the other night one of my nabor's mules cum along with the blind staggers and fell up a pair of seven steps right into my front gate and died without kickin'. Then there is briars and nettles and tread safts, and smartweed and poison that's always in the way on a farm, and must be looked after keerfully, especially snakes, which are my eternal horror, and I shall always believe are sum kin to the devil himself. I can't tolerate such long insects. But we farmers have to take the bad with the good, and there is more good than bad with me up to the present time.
I wonder if Harris ever saw a pack saddle. Well, it's as pretty as a rainbow, just like the most all of the devil's contrivances, and when you crowd one of 'em on a fodderblade you'd think that forty yaller
jackets had stung you all in a bunch and with malice aforethought. And there's the devil's race horse which plies around about this time and, Uncle Isam says, chaws tobakker like a gentleman, and if he spit in your eyes you'd go blind in a half a second. And one day he showed me the devil's darning needle which mends up the old fellow's stockins, and the devil's snuff box which explodes when you mash it, and one ounce of the stuff inside will kill a sound mule before he can lay down. Then there's some flowers that he wears in his button-hole called the devil Is shoestring and the devil in the bush.
I like farmin'. Its an honest, quiet life, and it does me so much good to work and get all over in a sweat of prespiration. I enjoy my umble food and my repose, and get up every mornin' renewed and rejuvenated like an eagle in his flight, or words to that effect. I know I shall like it more and more, for we have already passed over the Rubycon, and are beginnin' to reap the rewards of industry. Spring chickens have got ripe, and the hens keep bloomin' on. Over 200 now respond to my wife's call every morning, as she totes around the bread tray a-singin' tcheeky, tcheeky, tcheeky. I tell you, she watches those birds close for she knows the value of 'em. She was raised a Methodist, she was, and many a time has watched through the crack of the door sadly, and seen the preachers helped to the last gizzard in the dish. There was 54 chickens, 7 ducks, 5 goslins, 12 turkeys and seven pigs, hatched out last week, and Daisy had a calf and Mollie a colt, besides. This looks like bisness, don't it? This is what I call successful farmin'-- multiplying and replenishing according to Scripter. Then we have a plenty of peas and potatoes and other garden yerbs, which helps a
poor man out, and by the 4th of July will have wheat bread and buiskit and blackberry pies, and pass a regular declaration of independence.
I like farmin'. I like latitude and longitude. When we were penned up in town my children couldn't have a slingshot, or a bow and arrow, nor a chicken fight in the back yard, nor sick a dog on another dog, nor let off a big Injun whoop, without some neighbor making a fuss about it. And then, again, there was a show, or a dance, or a bazar, or a missionary meeting most every night, and it did look like the children were just obleeged to go, or the world would come to an end. It was money, money, money all the time, but now there isn't a store or a milliner shop within five miles of us, and we do our own work, and have learned what it costs to make a bushel of corn and a barrel of flour, and by the time Mrs. Arp has nursed and raised a lot of chickens and turkeys, she thinks so much of 'em she don't want us to kill 'em, and they are a heap better and fatter than any we used to buy. We've got a great big fireplace in the family room, and can boil the coffee, or heat a kettle of water on the hearth if we want to, for we are not on the lookout for company all the time like we used to be. We don't cook half as much as we used to, nor waste a whole parsel every day on the darkey, and we eat what is set before us, and are thankful.
It's a wonder to me that everybody don't go to farmin'. Lawyers and doctors have to set about town and play checkers, and talk politics and wait for somebody to quarrel or fight, or get sick; clerks and book-keepers figure and multiply and count until they get to counting the stars and the flies on the ceiling, and the peas in the dish, and the flowers
on the papering; the jeweler sits by his window all the year round, working on little wheels, and the mechanic strikes the same kind of a lick every day. These people do not belong to themselves; they are all penned up like convicts in a chain-gang; they can't take a day nor an hour for recreation, for they are the servants of their employers. There is no profession that gives a man such freedom, such latitude, and such a variety of employment as farmin'.
While I was ruminating this morning, a boy come along and said the dogs had treed something down in the bottom. So me and my boys shouldered the guns and an ax, and took Mrs. Arp and the children along to see the sport. We cut down a hollow gum tree, and caught a 'possum and two squirrels, and killed a rabbit on the run, and had a good time generally, with no loss on our side. We can stop work most any time to give welcome to a passing friend and have a little chat, and our nabors do the same by us; but if you go into one of these factories or workshops, or even a printing office, the first signboard that greets you says, "Don't talk to the workmen." Sociable crowd, ain't it?
There's no monotony upon the farm. There's something new every day, and the changing work brings into action every muscle in the human frame. We plow and hoe, and harrow and sow, and gather it in at harvest time. We look after the horses and cows, the pigs and sows, and the rams and the lambs, and the chickens, and the turkeys, and geese. We cut our own wood, and raise our own bread and meat, and don't have to be stingy of it like city folks. A friend, who visited us not long ago, wrote back from the town, that his grate don't seem bigger
than the crown of his hat since he sat by our great big friendly fireplace.
But they do git the joak 'on me sometimes, for you see, I'm farmin' according to schedule, and it don't always make things exactly luminous. Fur instance, it is said that cotton seed is an excellent fertilizer. Well, I had 'em, and as they was a clean, nice thing to handle, I put 'em under most everything in my garding. I was a-runnin' ingun sets heavy, and one mornin' went out to peruse 'em. and I saw the straight track of a big mole under every row. He jest histed 'em all up about three inches. He hadn't eat nary one, and thinks to myself, he's goin' around a-smellin' of 'em. Next mornin' all my sets was a settin' about six inches up in the air and on top of the thickest stand of cotton you ever did see. Now, if I had known about spilin' of 'em, as my nabors call it, before used 'em it would have been more luminous. Howsoever, I knifed 'em down and set the inguns back again, and nobody ain't got a finer crop.
It's a great comfort to me to set in my piazzer these pleasant evenings and look over the farm, and smoke the pipe of peace, and ruminate. Ruminate upon the rise and fall of empires and parties and presidents and preachers. I think when a man has passed the Rubicon of life, and seen his share of trouble smokin' is allowable, for it kinder reconciles him to live on a while longer and promotes philosophic reflections. I never knowed a high-tempered man to be fond of it.
I may be mistaken, but it seems to me a little higher grade of happiness to look out upon the green fields of wheat and the leafing trees and the blue mountains in the distance and hear the dove
cooing to her mate, and the whipporwill sing a welcome to the night, and hunt flowers and bubbly blossoms with the children, and make whistles for 'em and hear 'em blow, and see 'em get after a jumpin' frog or a garter snake, and hunt hen's nests, and paddle in the branch and get dirty and wet all over, and watch their penitent and subduded expression when they go home, as Mrs. Arp looks at 'em with amazement and exclaims, "Mercy on me; did ever a poor mother have such a set? Will I ever get done making clothes? Put these on right clean this morning, and not another clean rag in the house! Get me a switch, right straight; go! I will not stand it!" But she will stand it, and they know it - especially if I remark, "Yes, they ought to be whipped." That saves 'em and by the time the switch comes the tempest is over and some dry clothes are found, and if there is any cake in the house they get it. Blessed mother! Fortunate children! What would they do without her? Why her very scolding is music in their tender ears. I'm thankful that there are some things in that corner in the domestic circle that Wall street cannot buy nor money kings depress.
"All the world's a stage," as Mr. Shakespeare says, and all the men and women merely travelers. It is a mighty big stage, of course--in fact, an omnibus, for it carries us all, and we are traveling along and getting in and getting out all along the line, and ever and anon stopping by the wayside to nurse our sick and bury our dead. There is nothing else that puts on the brakes as we move down the big road on the journey of life. Sickness and death are a veto upon all progress, and upon plans, and schemes, and hopes, and ambition, and fame, and fashion and folly. We suffer awile and stop awile, but if we don't die we get in the stage again and move on with the crowd. Sickness knocks up a man and humbles him quicker than anything. Just let the pitiless angel of pain come along suddenly and seize him by some vital part and twist him around a time or two and shake him up, and he will know better what the word torture means when he reads it in a book. I thought I was a strong man and tough, and so the angel has had no terrors for me. I've had the toothache and mashed my big toe with a crow-bar and got around lively with a green-corn dance, but after it was over I forgot the sting of it and only remembered the joke. But there are some things without any joke, and that won't let you forget 'em, and when they come and go they leave you humbled and hacked and as meek as a lamb with his legs tied. They take away your
pride, and your brag and your starch and stiffening. They strip you of flowers and frills and thread lace and jewelry, and leave a poor mortal like a dependent beggar for the charity of health, good health. "If I was only well again," the poor victim sighs: "Oh, if I was only well again."
When a man gets along to my age he forgets that he is on the down grade; that he is like a second-hand wagon patched up and painted and sold at auction to the highest bidder. It will run mighty well on a smooth road and a light load and a careful driver, but it won't do to lock wheels with another, or run into a gully, or over stumps, or up to the hubs in the low grounds. A man is very much like a wagon, anyhow, for his shoulders and hips are the axle-trees and his arms and legs are the wheels and the wagon-body is his body and the coupling-pole is his spine and the hounds are his kidneys--his reins, as the Scriptures call 'em--and they brace up everything and hold up the tongue and the coupling-pole, and if the hounds are weak and rickety the hind wheels don't track with the fore wheels, and the whole concern moves along with a hitch and a jerk and a double wabble. "He tryeth the reins of the children of men," for that was the test of a man. If the kidneys were sound and well ordered the man was right before the Lord, for in them was supposed to be centered the affections and passions and emotions of a man. Those old-time philosophers attached a good deal of importance to the kidneys, but I thought it was a superstition of their ignorance, and I never cared much about my kidneys. In fact, I didn't care whether I had any kidneys or not, for I was thinking what Judge Underwood told me a long time ago about the spleen, which he said was only put there to make