USA > Indiana > Monroe County > The new purchase : or, seven and a half years in the Far West > Part 45
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"Ready now, Carlton?"
"Yes-yes-yes ! let's keep on."
"Well, stop at my house," said Clarence, "and there we'll fix a bag and some twine, and so lose no time."
All was done quick as a squirrel's jump. Then guided by the sound, we put out, regardless of a course, and unable to discern objects dubious in the dim light of a waning moon, and partly
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obscured by clouds. We were in Indian file,-now trotting, now running, and occasionally walking,-here stumbling over logs- there scrambling up and down gullies-then diving into sink-holes -then ripping through briar swamps! The conversation was monosyllabic and suggestive, performed with no little blowing and palpitation, and broken abruptly by exclamation, thus :-
"Hark!"
"Ye-e-s!"
"Like-ooh !- thun-der !- hey !"
"Ve-ry ! Got-bag?"
"Ooh !- yes! You-ooh !- got-string?"
"Oho! ouch !- no! he's got it-ooh !"
"What now ? oho! ouch !- bad briars here !" &c. &c.
In about two miles, even this laconic dialect was difficult to use, being lost in the roar of pigeon-thunder-mingling with which was heard, however, the artillery, the outcries and shouts of our gallant village troops !
"Yes! hark !- they're pelting away ! Come ! come on! Get that bag ready-pull out those strings-hurraw!"
And yet it was curious-we had come to no outposts !- had caught no drowsy sentinel pigeons on their roosts ! What on earth made the thunder so late at night? How could pigeons, packed on one another, and with heads comfortably stuck under wings, keep up such an awful noise? Was it snoring? Ay! maybe it was the noise of pigeons tumbling down, and trees breaking-
Hark! a storm rushes this way! How sudden the moon is hid ! Is that a cloud? Yes, reader, it was a storm-but of pigeons rushing on countless wings! It was a cloud-but of careering and feathered squadrons! The moon was hid-and by a world of startled birds !2
In vain our search that night for pigeon bearing trees! In vain our bag and three strings! We might have filled a bolster with
2 The editor remembers seeing in his childhood similar flocks of wild pigeons flying in vast masses over the forest trees, near Bloomington, armies of them that darkened the sky, flying north in the morning to, their feeding grounds and back in the evening to their "Grand Roosting Encampment." There was such a roosting place in the Ketchem neigh- borhood, ten miles south of Bloomington.
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SIXTH YEAR
feathers ; but no bird living or dead burdened either our sack or lines! The myriad hosts for miles and miles were on their wings ! and guns were flashing away in hopeless vengeance and idle wrath! Neither shot nor ball could reach that world of wild fowl safe mid the free air of Heaven! Pitiful our bag and string !- pitiful our very selves! and all Woodville gazing from the dark depths of the woods upward on that boundless canopy of sounding, black, and rushing pinions !
To remain was worse than useless-it was hazardous; at every flash of gunpowder, showers of shot foreign and domestic fell like hail on the leaves around us-and we fancied rifles cracked as if speeding balls, and that we heard the peculiar whistling of their death dealing music! And we turned to go home. But the way thither had now become a question. That we were about three miles distant was probable; yet after turnings and windings in the dark, our puzzle was no wonder. Besides the moon, as if unable to penetrate the cloud of wings, had never re-appeared; and clouds of another kind had succeeded, whence heavy and fre- quent rain-drops now pattered on us!
At last we decided our course by instinct; in which we satis- factorily learned that human instinct is inferior to brute: for after a trot of ten minutes, sudden torchlights crossed our way at right angles, and a voice from one carrier thus hailed-
"Hilloo ! whar're you a travellin?"
"To Woodville-whose that?"
"To Woodville !- bust my rifle if you ain't a goin a powerful strate course on it-"
"Why Ned, is that you?"
"That's the very feller ; why Mr. Carltin if you keep that course, you'll reach the licks about sun-up !- why this here's the way- foller our trail."
"Ha! ha! Ned, I thought I was a better woodsman-keep a-head, we'll follow."
"Well, you're puttee smart in the day-light, Mr. Carltin-but it's raythur more hardish to strike the course of a dark night."
"Where's Domore, Ned?"
"Foller'd arter the d- pigins-"
"Don't swear, Ned, the preacher's here. Did you get any?"
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"Git any! Nobody didn't git none. Bust my rifle if this ain't a judjmint on the settlemint for firing shot guns and shot out a rifles !"
"I think myself, Ned, shot guns had something to do in scaring the birds so. But how far yet to Woodville?"
"Well, I can't jist about say sartinly-it taint more nor four miles no how-'spose we a sorter stop talking-it hinders runnin; and here goes for a fresh start."
And start fresh did Ned and his party, and at a rate extremely prejudicial to easy conversation, and giving us genteel folks work enough to keep in sight of the torches. In little more than an hour, however, we stood in the edge of the clearings; when our course being pointed out by Ned, the parties separated, and I went with Harwood and Clarence to take supper at the house of the latter,-a supper ready to greet our arrival with a bag and string of pigeons ! * * X
I acknowledge it-this is a very tame and spiritless end of our pigeon tale-a very bad dove-tailing! Yet is it as natural as our flat and unprofitable feelings, when we sat down about twelve o'clock that night at Clarence's to an overdone, burnt up, taste- less supper-our poetry and romance all flown away with the pigeons, and washed out by the rain! However, we may add, that many followed the pigeons all night ; and once or twice small flocks were found settled on trees where about one hundred in all were killed-but the grand body was never overtaken. It con- tinued, perhaps, on the wing till a favourite roosting place some hundred miles south was reached, that being their direction. Domore got back at eight o'clock next morning, having done twenty-five miles and obtained twenty-two pigeons, with his hand, however, much injured by the recoil or bursting of his horse pistol. Hence shot guns were in worse odour than ever and no light curses heaped on "all sich spiteful bird skerers and them what made and shot em !"
Domore, indeed, soon recovered : when his first rifle-shot after- ward was so melancholy in its consequence, as to make him abstain from his favourite weapon and hunting for many months. With that account we conclude this chapter.
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He went out several hours before day-break and lay in wait at a salt-lick for a deer. Here he waited patiently till the dawn; and then opposite his station his keen eyes discovered in the bushes the cautious approach of an animal, and soon he caught a glimpse of its body. To flash his eye through the sights and to touch the trigger was instinctive-and then came the cry not of a wounded deer or bear, but of human agony! Domore flew to the spot ; and what was his horror there to see bleeding on the ground and apparently dying, poor Jesse Hardy, his intimate friend, and the honest fellow who had been with us in the cave!
He, too, had come to watch the lick; and had Domore been later than Hardy, their fates, perhaps, had been reversed! Gen- erally great precaution is employed by our hunters to prevent such mishaps, yet sometimes with all, they do occur. Happily in the present case the wound, though severe, was not mortal, and Hardy in a few minutes so recovered as to speak; when Domore, after doing what seemed proper, left his friend for fifteen minutes, and then was again on the spot with the assistance of a neighbour- ing family. The wounded man was carefully removed to the cabin; and Domore mounting a horse darted away full speed for Dr. Sylvan. The Doctor came; and being a skilful surgeon, as he had in that capacity served in the war a regiment of mounted riflemen, he used the best means of cure; and in two months, by the divine favour, poor Jess was able to return to his domestic duties. During this confinement Domore did all he could for his friend, and also for the widow-mother, supplying as far as possi- ble the place of a son ; and although after Jess recovered, Domore hunted again with his rifle, he never again, while we were in the Purchase, went out to watch a lick.
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CHAPTER LIX.
"Like other tyrants death delights to smite, What, smitten, most proclaims the pride of power And arbitrary nod. His joy supreme To bid the wretch survive the fortunate; The feeble wrap the athletic in his shroud
And weeping fathers build their children's tomb."
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SCARCELY had the gloom from the late melancholy occurrence been dispelled before our settlements were trembling at reports of a coming, resistless, unpitying, destructive foe-the Asiatic Cholera !
Innumerable were our schemes to turn aside, evade, or coun- teract, this fell disease; and all fear of other sickness and death was absorbed in fear of this! As if God had only one minister of vengeance, or of chastisement! As if He was to be dreaded in the thunder and tempest, and forgotten in the calmness and sun- shine! Indeed, that only dreaded death then came not ;- God sent another messenger of terror and of mercy-The Scarlet Fever!
This disease appeared first and without apparent cause in the family of Dr. Sylvan. Thence, in a few weeks, it spread carrying death and mourning into most of our habitations. It followed no known law, sometimes yielding and then refusing to yield to the same treatment and in the same as well as different families : and often in other places resisting the established, or different, or even opposite treatment, and sweeping all into the grave! The cholera then had no alarms! The King of Terrors was among us in forms as frightful and destructive !
Then was it, dear one! after days and nights of ceaseless and anxious watchings, and after fitful alternations of hope and fear, we saw those eyes, so soft and yet so brilliant, suddenly and strangely quenched-as though life had retreated thither to a last refuge and death, having long before triumphed o'er thy dear, dear form, did there, as a last act, put out that most precious light !
* * *
What didst thou mean by those mysterious words in the dying
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SIXTH YEAR
strife ?- "Father! father ! how tired I am!" Was it so hard to die ?- * * Didst thou hear, in answer, the wailings of bitterest anguish ?- or feel on thy cold cheek the last kisses-while tears wet that face, changing and passing for ever? * * * Sleep, dear babe! in thy bed under the forest leaves, amid those lone graves- we shall meet, and, never to part-no! never!
Clarence had buried two children in the far East: he was now called to lay another in the far West. That Sabbath morning can never be forgot! Among others, who suffered most, was our fellow-citizen Mr. Harlen. His four children were all deaf-mutes. Two of these had died in succession, at an interval of eight days : and, when the second lay in its little coffin, in front of the pulpit in the Methodist Chapel, the third, a fine boy, nine years old, distressed at some supposed error, stole from his weeping parents in the church, and, advancing to the coffin of his dead brother, placed the bier as to him seemed suitable and decorous! Poor darling one! on the next Sabbath, he lay in his own coffin on that same bier, and before that same pulpit! And another coffin, and another bier, were there-and the chief mourner was Clarence! The heartbroken parents of the mutes-(ay ! mute, indeed, now !) -had entreated him to pray for themselves, if possible, that day in public! He did so. And over the coffins of their dead children, ' he spoke to others and himself too, words of consolation; and offered prayer to Him that can and did bind up the broken in heart, and raise up them that were bowed down!
Mournful train! The vision is before me ever-as it emerges from the house of God! It slowly ascends the hill !- the two coffins !- the two stricken households !- the False One between friends at that double burial! The train is entering the Forest Sanctuary! They are separating, some to lay the deaf one with his kin-some to see the stranger lay his babe near my buried one !-
Reader! I now write many things in playfulness-none in malice-yet, years of my life passed, when sadness only was in my heart ; and words and thoughts of pleasantness were impossi-
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SEVENTH YEAR
ble! Ay! the gloom of hell, if not its despair, possessed my soul ! But, I have found religion not inconsistent with great and habitual cheerfulness. Nay, thoughts of death, judgment, and eternity, may be ever present and ever dominant in a mind taught by many sorrows to make light of the things of time and sense!
How do these solemn words and things sort with thy cheerful- ness? For, remember, by the agreement or disagreement, your character is: and that thine most certainly, as mine, are-Death- -Judgment-Eternity !
CHAPTER LX.
SEVENTH YEAR.
"While he from one side to the other turning, Bareheaded, lower than his proud steed's neck, Bespake them thus :- I thank you, countrymen: And thus still doing, thus he pass'd along."
"Smooth runs the water, where the brook is deep, And in his simple show he harbours treason."
CHEER up! reader, only one and a half year more in the Pur- chase! In this time, we lived, also, very fast, and were so occu- pied with great matters as to overlook little things; therefore, we shall not be tedious. Beside, I am tired riding about; and hence, you will be dragged no more through the wooden world, except to the Guzzleton Barbecue.
We now introduce a very uncommon personage, a most power- ful prodigious great man, the first of the sort beheld in the New Purchase-the very Reverend Constant Bloduplex, D. D .- in all the unfathomable depths of those mystic letters! And this character, supposed to be invented for the purpose, will be an important study to the literati, whether branded on the head or the tail, D. D. or d. d .- P. or p .: and who aspire to dictate ex cathedra. All such strong-headed men can here receive important ' hints and directions, and have examples how best to discharge
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their official duties. We can now show "a thing or two:" and some never seen or heard of in the East! Yea! some which the wise Solomon himself never did or imagined in all his experiments, drunk or sober !
"Indeed ! go on then, sir."
Well, the Reverend Gentleman had lately written, to state his acceptance of the Presidency; although it would compel him to resign much more eligible stations, and make very unpleasant in- terruptions in his domestic comforts : and also, that he would be ready to set out for his new home in the early spring. In due season, followed a letter, naming the time his journey would be commenced, and when and where he might be met on the river.
Then should you have been at Woodville, to see our folks hop about ! All, at least, favourable to the conduct of the Board. However, some, opposed to rats, agreed to suspend hostilities ; being persuaded by Dr. Sylvan, Mr. Clarence, and specially Mr. Harwood, that our President was a man of uncommon worth, talents, patriotism, and enterprise. Yet, a few honest, but per- haps mistaken, persons, from a sincere love of their own sectarian- ism, remained our opponents, if not our enemies. At present, we were the decided majority, and therefore the people's people : and so we determined to do things in style. Out of reverence, then,1 to the man, and regard for his station, we resolved to meet him with an escort ; to honour him with a procession, an illumina- tion, and a feast! And all this was by and with the consent and advice, and under the superintendence, and at the expense mainly, of Clarence and Harwood, aided by Sylvan and Carlton. Hence, nemine contradicente, it was ordered :
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I. That Mr. Carlton, Sen'r, and James Sylvan, Jun'r, be the escort from the river :
2. That the students prepare an illumination of the Colleges :
3. That Mrs. Clarence, and a dozen other feminine citizens, fix the President's house, and prepare his first supper : and
4. That Mr. Clarence be as ubiquitous as possible, and see that every thing was as straight as-a shingle.
At the proper day, the escort started. On passing through vil- lages and loggages, we so fired up the citizens, that in many places,
1 Adverb of time. Vide Murray-or some of his pilferers.
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SEVENTH YEAR
it was promised to meet our Great Man with inferior processions, like an ovation-the Grand Triumphal being to be at Woodville. In one town, with a Jewish name,2 we met no encouragement-not from want of good-will in the inhabitants, but simply because there were no inhabitants there. Like Goldsmith's village, it was deserted-the inhabitants having all been shaken out by the ague : although we could not say, as some one of Ireland, "in it snakes are there none."
Finally, after an uncommon abrasion of inexpressible-seats, and green baize leggins-(for, like Gilpin, we rode, if not for a wager, yet for a President)-we dismounted and tied our horses at the Ohio.
* *
(N. B. The MS. here was so blotted, the Editor could not read it.)
* * *
and - - but the steamer was now seen descending on the swollen bosom of the waters, belching fire and smoke as if in labour, and longing to be delivered of the great weight of char- acter and influence she was painfully bearing to our inland wilds- apt likeness, too, of Man of Puffs! Oh! the exciting moment! Now! we shall see a Man !- we shall have the honour of riding before him-of showing him to the natives, as Boswell showed Johnson to the Scotchmen ! and
(Here my friend Mr. C. seems to have been so nervous that his MS. defies my powers to decipher-several pages, there- fore, are necessarily omitted .- Editor.)
when, then, do we set off, Mr. Carlton ?"
"To-morrow morning, Doctor. We will now cross the river, and join your family on the New Purchase side."
"Is this our skiff ?"
"Yes, sir. Well, since we are afloat, Doctor, how do you think you will like our wooden country ?"
"Don't name it, sir. I already repent my precipitancy : if all could be recalled, I should be better pleased."
"You surprise me, Dr. Bloduplex !"
2 Salem.
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SEVENTH YEAR
"Yes, sir, I have been hasty: I would gladly be in my former place."
"But, our College-"
"Mr. Carlton, plague me not about the college-I shall have plenty of that when I get to Woodville."
Conversation, where one is ardent and the other cold, becomes sissee or zizzy :- a dialogue between cold water and hot iron. Our escort had too much at stake in the success of the institution, not to feel now something like a damper on his spirits; and he, therefore, remained in a ruminating way the rest of the passage- nay, during the evening-yea, when he got into bed. In vain chastised he his own zeal, as too zealous-in vain apologised for the President's want of firmness and lack of interest in Wood- ville matters-it did still occur that the good Doctor should have counted the cost, and been absorbed in the "great enterprise for which he had willingly and joyfully sacrificed himself ?" Had he not "left riches, and honours, and glories" of the Wheelabout country deliberately and "conscientiously"-and ought he not to have had a little patience with an escort that "had paid the postage" of a horse, and nearly ruined a pair of green leggins and a pair of blue unmentionables? And then sneaked in remem- brances of conversations with certain "Brethren," intimately ac- quainted with the President's remarkable life and history-con- versations once attributed to envy, and jealousy, and odium the- ologicum-and yet so cognate to the late behaviour-that battle the suspicion as he would, it did seem, as they said, "we should soon find out and be bitterly disappointed with Dr. Bloduplex- that he was no safe confidant-and if we slighted warning, we should in the end find a person that could blow hot and cold with the same breath."
However, we resolved to make the inland journey pleasant, and honourably to do the escortorial duties, and boldly throw away all suspicions, and uncharitable inferences-yet to be guarded. When, therefore, next day the President showed a phase differ- ent from the one in the boat, the author, after listening now to an enthusiastic sermon on Colleges, Woodville, the Far West in general, the Mississippi valley in particular, and the nobleness of doing good for goodness' sake-away packing sent he his base
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SEVENTH YEAR
and injurious suspicions, and began, in the amiable weakness of his nature, to look up to the Doctor with even greater admiration, and no small admixture of filial reverence! And then in his turn -being of course all the time on his guard !- Mr. C. opened his budget, and told about Woodville, and the peoples, and the Trustees, and Harwood, and Clarence, and Allheart, and Domore, and Ned, and all!
"That was indiscreet, Mr. Carlton."
Granted: but we felt then like a son with a father-were anx- ious to make amends for our mental injury-and beside, this leaky state of our mind seemed so to interest the good Doctor- he condescended to ask so many leading questions-and laughed and cried so easy and naturally at various narrations. Indeed, he innocently started fresh leaks in a vessel that never held well at the best-but like Robert Hall's, the noble Baptist, used to pour out at the slightest excitements: or, to change the figure, the Doctor finding water increasing in the hold, managed the pumps so adroitly and incessantly as to empty the whole chest-or some such place in the body corporate, where secrets are contained.
"Still, sir, you were too much of a gossip."
Ah! but consider, dear reader, we had nothing else to talk about. Moreover, I only gave story for story : and whenever I told any thing about Woodville, he matched it with something about Wheelabout. And in these he contrived to anticipate and answer all inquiries that perchance might be some day instituted concerning History, in that region-till I looked on him as a hero, statesman and saint, basely maligned, persecuted and driven- (for driven it seemed he had been)-away by cruel foes and unjust popularity.'
"What did he tell you?"
Excuse me :- I can tell-but that would betray what was told in confidence! And I am not so great a man as Dr. Bloduplex, and must not look so high for an example, although twelve months after this ride the Doctor-did remember all my gossip, things said playfully and idly, and some seriously, and did narrate and comment on them, and draw inferences from them, and that before discontented students, collected at his house-before Dr. Sylvan alone-before the Board of Trustees convened as a court
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SEVENTH YEAR
of trial! Ay! and so full to overflowing was his remarkable memory, that he recollected "what Mr. Carlton should have told him !- but which Mr. Carlton never did tell him!3
However, let us get back to Woodville. On the way, before arriving at a village, James Sylvan, Jun., would hasten forward to announce our approach; when, by previous arrangement, we' were met half a mile south of each clearing, and honoured with' the ovation : immediately after which we usually had another in
3 The editor has neither desire nor intention to enter into the merits of this college quarrel to which Mr. Hall's closing pages are largely de- voted. No doubt in this case, as in most differences among good men, blame may be safely allotted to both sides. It seems to have been almost entirely a personal matter and what appeared large to the participants seems at this distance of time rather a petty matter. The people of "Woodville" were soon laughing at President Wylie's shoving Prof. Harney off the footlog into the branch down by the "tan yard" on South College Avenue, near the site of the present central school building. For many years that episode was one of the amusing stories of early life in Bloomington. A personal feud had arisen and angry passions were aroused. After these had cooled down all the parties to the quarrel re- gretted, each for himself, the things said and done. Within a few years Hall felt ashamed of some of the passages in his book. He was ready to forgive, if not to forget. In the twelve years that elapsed between the two editions of his book, Hall had reasons for softening some of his judgments. The asperities of the old quarrel had disappeared and re- flection had mitigated the author's sentiments toward his college asso- ciates at Bloomington. When he was preparing his second edition in 1855 he wrote to Mr. Nunemacher, his New Albany publisher: "I looked four or five times at the Bloduplex business but could not con- dense to do any good. Professor Bush is in favor of the omission; says it was 'clique-like' etc. Dr. McLean, of Princeton, advised to leave it out." Hall hoped to reduce it, but later he wrote: "All the chapters and passages relative to Dr. Bloduplex (President Wylie) are by all means to be discarded. This gentleman richly deserved all that was done to him some years ago-but he is now in the other life, and I hope in a better one." In another letter he says: "In the work are here and there certain words and expressions that have caused me often much sorrow in re- membering and I would have given many dollars if they could have been blotted out. And more especially there would be so manifest an unkind- ness in retaining a vast amount of what pertains to the late President of a certain college that I would nearly as soon consent to have a finger taken off as to continue that."
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