USA > Pennsylvania > Washington County > Claysville > Our church and our village > Part 8
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The stream which skirted the southern boundary of Our Village Home was a branch of what was known as the Dutch Fork of Buffalo Creek. The village, being near its upper springs, knew it as a mere brook, which, as it went on winding, twisting, leaping, dash- ing, growing, became Porter's Run, Anderson's Run, Coon Island Dam, De France's Dam, Cracraft's Dam, Waugh's Dam, until, in the mouth of the Buffalo, it was
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lost in the Ohio River. The boys knew its swimming- places as the first hole, the second hole, the third hole, whose preëminence was emphasized by calling it the big hole. Its minnows, suckers, chubs, and catfish filled many a villager with the enthusiasm of Izaak Walton. It was not unusual to return from a fishing expedition without a bite, but it was very unusual to return without a fish story. The customary bait was the ground-worm, and in the search for it we felt, if we did not verify, the following observation: "Darwin estimated that there are in gardens 53,767 worms to the acre. This tallies with our count when we were dig- ging the garden and didn't care a nickel about finding worms; but when we wanted bait for fishing, the garden didn't pan out a dozen worms to the acre. They had all emigrated to the garden of some other fellow who never goes fishing." In the case of our village stream the piscatorial results were so meagre as to confirm Dr. Johnson's definition of fishing, which, according to the old cynic, was a process carried on by a line with a hook at one end and a fool at the other.
But while the fish did not make our village stream their haunt, its banks were the home of the lively, play- ful, weather-gauging muskrat. Another clerk of the weather made our brook his feeding-place if we are to accept the English tradition that the kingfisher al- ways turns his breast towards the quarter from which the wind is blowing; the kingfisher so swift of flight that I can even now see the streak of blue which marked his course through the air. Besides, to visit our brook was to see the only real dragon of God's creation, as we could not help but observe the glitter-
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ing colors of that active and voracious creature, the dragonfly.
But the forest-clad hills and the meandering stream were not the only environment of our village. Our brook not only lined its banks with the bending wil- lows, crowned them with the lily and dotted them with the modest violet; not only refreshed the roots of the giant oak and the shading elm, but it feasted our eyes with green fields and waving harvests.
Those fields were alive with the hum of insect move- ment as the ear drank in the tenor of the honeybee, the treble of the wasp, the baritone of the bumblebee, the deep, thundering bass of the hornet. Were the men who bore the deadly brunt of Gettysburg, or who laid down their lives in the Wilderness, braver than when, as our village boys, they were the soldiers in em- bryo who stormed the home of the yellow-jacket, or returned to town from a battle with the terrible hornet, waving his nest as their trophy?
As I write I recall the nights which were filled with the " drummings, bellowings, chatterings, and pip- ings " of the " Minstrels of the Marshes." And who is not familiar with William Black's " chatterer," " tell- tale," " scandal-monger," whom every boy knows as " katydid "?
OUR VILLAGE STREET
The principal, perhaps it would be nearer accuracy to state the only street of Our Village Home was, from the year 1818 to the year 1850, one of the interesting points in the United States of America. For our vil-
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lage avenue was the Great National Road which, in the days of my early boyhood, was the main artery of com- munication between the East and the West. Indeed, the location of the National Road was the occasion of the existence of our village. So Our Village Home became a relay station of the stage-coach. It was a halting-place of that old timer of Western Pennsyl- vania whose imperishable likeness has been drawn by Thomas Buchanan Read in his "Wagoner of the Alleghenies." Its taverns furnished the resting-place of the traveller for the night.
As life budded from infancy into impressible child- hood, I would stand by the window or at the palings of the yard fence, hour after hour, transfixed by the constantly moving panorama afforded by the National Road. So vivid was the impression and so imbedded by constant repetition that it is graven upon my mem- ory with an iron pen and lead in the rock forever, and I gaze upon that panorama as if I were back in child- hood's realm of wonderland.
The National Road in the early " Forties " is to me a reproduction of the Appian Way, over which that dis- tinguished prisoner, the Apostle Paul, travelled to Rome. In the " Life and Epistles of Paul," by Cony- beare and Howson, this ancient thoroughfare is de- scribed as "that road which was at once the oldest and most frequented in Italy, and which was called, in comparison with all others, the 'Queen of Roads.'" To travel over it was to be, we are told, " on the most crowded approach to the metropolis of the world, in the midst of prætors and proconsuls, embassies, legions, and turns of horse; to their provinces hasting or on
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return; which Milton, in his description of the city enriched with the spoils of nations, has called us to behold in various habits on the Appian road."
So the old pike was kept smooth by a steady stream of travel eastward and westward. All hours of the day and night resounded with the blast of the coachman's horn. A Conestoga wagon was nearly always in sight with its team of six and eight horses, in many cases at each step sending forth the melody of sweet-toned bells. It was unusual to travel very far without meet- ing the private conveyance and hundreds of horse- men and footmen, who, in the pursuit of business, sought health and recreation as they threaded their way through the valleys and over the hills of the mag- nificent highway. Drove after drove of horses, cattle, hogs, and, as I remember in one instance, turkeys passed on their way to the Eastern markets. Our vil- lage street's registry of travel enrolls presidents, sena- tors, congressmen, army officers of every grade, mer- chants, tourists, Indians-indeed, we may say, every class and condition of humanity. Our villagers shook hands with Andrew Jackson, William Henry Harrison, James K. Polk, Zachary Taylor, Henry Clay (whose monument was the pike, and whom the village hon- ored by its name), Lewis Cass, Thomas H. Benton, Thomas Corwin, and scores of others, whose names are identified with the progress and greatness of our country. How we boys were wont to gather around the heroes of the Mexican War on their way to the front or returning home! I can yet see the long- haired May, who made the famous charge at Palo Alto; that magnificent specimen of man, the noted
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Captain Walker of the Rangers, who came liome, raised a company, and went back to the seat of war to fall before the aim of a Mexican lancer.
But there was scarcely a mile of the highway that did not have its local habitation and its name. There was Sugar Hill, Weirich's Hill, Coulson's Ridge, Cald- well's Hill, McClelland's Hill, Warrell's Hill, Coon Island Hill, Dug Hill, the Three Ridges' Hill, at the base of which runs the line which separates Pennsyl- vania from West Virginia, and whose top, when reached by climbing up what was known as Hard- scrabble Hill, found the climber satisfied that there was something in a name.
Any account of the old pike would be incomplete without the mention of those bridges which are the admiration of observers even to this day, as they stand as if they were constructed but yesterday. The S Bridge at once recalled the letter of the alphabet to which it owed its name. Wickery's Bridge was the locality of a supposed murder and as the fatal termina- tion of a runaway which threw a coach, with its team, passengers, driver, and all, into the ravine which it spanned.
The " Monument," which stood on the road between Triadelphia and Wheeling, was an object of universal interest as well as a point of departure. It was enough to satisfy inquiry concerning a traveller, to learn that he passed the " Monument " at any given time; or to locate an occurrence, to remark that it took place on this or the other side of the "Monument." This monument was a testimonial on the part of Moses Shepherd, and Lydia, his wife, to that magnificent
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figure whom America will never forget as the latest generation extols the name of Henry Clay. Mr. and Mrs. Shepherd erected the monument as a token of their appreciation of the great Kentuckian's agency in the construction of the National Road.
It was my privilege during (if my memory be not at fault) the year 1860 to pass part of a morning in a visit to Mrs. Shepherd, when, having passed the ninety- fourth milestone, she was looking down through the vista of bygone years from a bright and cheery old age. She was familiar with the foundation builders and con- stitution makers of our nation. It was, indeed, some- thing for a person on the threshold of active life to gather from her treasury of recollections eye and ear impressions of the men who were leaders when forensic power was a potent factor in the legislative hall, and the cunning of the orator a prevailing power in political campaigns.
Of course a boy would be interested in the names of the stage-coaches which once thronged the old pike. Every State of the Union was represented in the Na- tional Road Stage Company. Its rival, the Good Intent Line, took a wider range in its coach nomen- clature. With my pen in hand, I look across fifty years and find the names which a little boy was wont to read as the coach rushed by, standing out plainly and distinctly on the tablet of memory. And I spell out this moment the coach titles: Granite State, Bay State, Buckeye State, Keystone State. I became familiar with the great men of the day as the big letters which made Rough and Ready, at once suggested General Taylor; as the stage register enrolled General Cass,
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From Harper's Magazine,-Copyright, 1979, by Harper & Brothers.
A SCENE ON THE NATIONAL ROAD
Our Village Home
Colonel Benton, and Henry Clay. I was introduced to every phase of fancy in the use of the names Fash- ion, Pathfinder, Ivanhoe, Industry, and Chancellor. I took lessons in geography, as I pronounced Yucatan, Tampico, Buena Vista, Ashland, Raritan, and Panama.
Olı, I am a boy again as, moved by the absorbing ambition to be a stage-driver, it was my habit with the touch of imagination to change billets of wood into horses, and turning the wood-pile into a stage-mount, my ideal box, pick up the ropes and spliced straps which were my ideal reins, and cracking my real whip, shout to the near leader, make a dexterous cut at the off leader, and lean over to strike the right and left wheel, and throwing out my improvised mail at the visionary post-offices along the route, thus ride by the hour, on the wings of fancy, over the road from my home to the county seat.
And it is the boy in me now which makes me wish for the pen with which Charles Dickens, in " Martin Chuzzlewit," describes Tom Pinch's famous ride from Salisbury into London. There was a "Yo-ho!" in every hilltop and valley from Wheeling to Washington.
Kind reader, let us go over the old pike as the olden- time people were wont to do some fine forenoon during the month of May. The Cincinnati boat is at the Wheeling wharf. The Ohio stage has come to the door of the Wheeling tavern. We have chosen our line of coaches, either the Good Intent or National Line (commonly called the Old Line). We have se- cured the privilege of sitting with the driver. He may be venerable Billy Rome, or modest Bobby Mc- Elhenny, gentlemanly Dave Gordon, good-natured
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Paris Eaches, steady Joe Henderson, patriarchal Watty Noble, merry Archie McNeil, daring Jack Bailiss, neighborly Joe Whisson, lofty Tobe Banner, imperious Dave Armour, boisterous John Zinn, grace- ful Jim Burr, fatherly David Bell, genial John Mc- Elree, dignified John Ruth, garrulous Jim Schaverns, or great, big John Hoon.
The passengers are seated, the mails are deposited, and climbing up Wheeling Hill, looking to the left, you think of McCulloch's fearful leap from the summit to the Ohio River, which runs as it did when Adam Poe released himself from the death-hug which he re- ceived in its waters from Big Foot, the Indian. These historic traditions remind you that the region through which you are riding is the scene of the hand-to-hand struggle by which the white man wrested from the savage the region of the Upper Ohio.
Down the eastward slope of Wheeling Hill you fly, and roll on through Fulton and up the north bank of the Wheeling Creek, and passing Steenrods, Stelles, and Hornbrooks, so beautiful for situation, until from the valley of Elm Grove you look up the way by the Shepherd mansion, through the trees to the stone church known as the Forks of Wheeling, where full proof was made of his ministry of the Gospel by that humble country pastor, that consistent Christian, that acute theologian, that firm Presbyterian, known through all the region as Father Hervey.
On, on, up the narrow valley to Triadelphia, and who that has ever seen it will forget the Cottage Inn, spread out like an Eastern caravansary, with its colos- sally proportioned landlord, Frank Lawson?
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" Get up, Bill!" "Hurry on, Tom!" "Keep up, Nellie!" "Behave yourself, Bet!" " Gee up!" and with a crack of whip you whirl on as the cattle slaking their thirst in the run, as the sheep scampering up the hill- side, the farmer looking up from his plough, the boy leaning on his hoe, the housewife rushing to the door to look at the stage, are left behind; and we stop at Brotherton's for a change of team. It was not until I was engaged upon this transcript of reminiscence, that the light of past days flashed upon this spot as a hive of tender memories. The Brotherton stage-stand was my first dwelling-place away from home. I feel this moment the pangs of that homesickness. Neither has the mental vision lost the impression of that quiet old man, that motherly matron, whose old-fashioned Pennsylvania ways made their traveller's rest a real home.
Our fresh horses soon carry us into Pennsylvania to the foot of Scrabble Hill, and, reaching its summit, we are in West Alexander, where we call to mind three citizens at whom it was not possible for an irreverent man to sneer without telling the truth as he designated the triumvirate as King George, Lord Colin, and Christ Mccluskey; because King George's store was the exchange of Donegal Township; Lord Colin, his brother, would have been a man of mark in any com- munity; and if a burning love of souls, a consuming zeal in the advancement of God's Church, an untiring devotion to the benefit, temporal and spiritual, of every man, woman, and child in the community ever made any man worthy to wear the name of Christ, that man was the Rev. John McCluskey, D.D., so long the
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pastor of the Presbyterian Church at West Alexan- der.
Dr. Mccluskey answered the prayer which our Lord directs the church to make, as through his superin- tendence of the West Alexander Academy from eighty to one hundred laborers were introduced into God's harvest.
We linger a moment at the summit of Scrabble Hill to recall the good times of which the old building, once known as Lawson's Tavern, was the centre. Joseph Lawson, wagoner and innkeeper, was a unique char- acter. At one time defiant of both God and man, he became one of the meekest and lowliest disciples of Jesus. He went down to the grave mourning because he never received any tidings of his beloved boy and namesake, Joe, after he entered upon the bloody cam- paign of the Wilderness.
We cannot leave West Alexander without placing on record the town's deserved title as the Gretna Green of America. Whatever may be the truth concerning the matches which are made in Heaven, the record shows that Squire Sutherland and Squire Mayes made several thousand matches at West Alexander on the earth, of which some five thousand are said to have been elopements. Doubtless the parties to these mar- riages shared in many cases the experience which has found expression in the story of the colored gentleman who, during the performance of the ceremony at his second marriage, when the clergyman asked the bride, " Do you promise to love, honor, and obey?" inter- rupted the parson with the request, " Stop right dar, sah; say that over again, sah, in order dat de female
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may ketch the solemnity ob de meanin'. I'se been married before."
But we are all aboard again. How the hoofs clatter, and the limestones as it were shoe the horses with sparks of fire as we whirl around the ridge, and with a glance at the attractive hostelry of John Valentine, with a bow to Billy McCleary, at the quaint polygonal toll-house; with a thought upon the poet of the Done- gal Highlands who looked out upon the valley from the top of Coon Island Hill, we fly like the wind down the steep incline to Coon Island, which may have ex- isted during that geologic period known as the coon age! To pass Coon Island was to remember that a mile or two northward dwelt old John Hupp, the Indian fighter and deer hunter, and that a little further on was the site of the old block-house which protected the wives and children of the brave pioneers of Done- gal Township. On from Coon Island we bowl up the valley which, as I look back upon youth, resurrects a boy friend whose sesquipedalian utterance made the hearer feel that the dictionary had been the mother's milk of his infancy, and which as we near its end makes me think of that stern old matron whom we knew as Aunt Margaret.
Mounting the western rampart of "Our Village," clearing the summit marked by Porter's Spring, we bring up at the home of my playmates, the Kurtzes, or at the home of my playmates, the Dyes and the Walkers. I have known the wheels to scarcely cease revolving before the horses were changed. How the rival lines would race down our village street, and quiet Billy Rome would use the lines as if he were
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seized with the jerks, the lazy whip of Bobby Mc- Elhenny would be charged with electricity, and the stentorian lungs of John Zinn would change his team into the likeness of four scared rabbits! Then how the whips would crack and the wheels would spin as the prancing teams left for the eastward on the gallop!
The last look at Our Village Home was from the residence of one of whom I often think as I look upon a sickle as he thrust it into the standing grain bare- headed and barefooted. The next house brings the tears, as its father and mother were like brother and sister to my father and mother. The bench of the same hill brought us to a signboard on which was in- scribed the announcement, " Entertainment for Man and Beast," accompanied by the picture of a tumbler and a square piece of cake, which every boy in the neighborhood understood to mean Grannie McFar- land's spruce beer and gingerbread. The next house was the home of a man who reached old age drinking more whiskey and staggering less than any drunkard I ever knew. It is not long until Mrs. Caldwell, from her famous inn, surveys us through her spectacles. The next hilltop recalls a pair of black eyes which brought a crowd of devotees to the shrine of their owner. In another moment our minds are occupied with the beautiful home and plethoric purse of Big Billy Brownlee. And but a mile to the southward is the Alrich meeting-house, where Gospel simplicity was demonstrated by the veteran mathematical pro- fessor of Washington College.
But we have not yet reached the Red Barn. " Gee up!" shouts our driver, and on we glide through
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Rankintown until we turn the corner at Chestnut and Main Streets in Washington to stop at the Old Man- sion, or to be nearer the Catfish at the tavern of the famous stage agent, Edward Lane.
Hence we indulged in no fancy when we esteemed our village highway to be a world centre. It kept our little town in touch with the round globe. It appealed to all that was elevating in the beautiful and all that was stirring in the romantic.
To-day the National Road is a mere wagon track, fringed with green. A ride over it will show only here and there a traveller. The various neighbor- hoods through which it runs give it a little stir morning and evening. The innumerable caravan which once moved to and fro over it has, for the most part, joined " the innumerable caravan which moves to the silent halls of death."
The following lines on "The Old Country Road," written by James Newton Matthews for the Ladies' Home Journal, so aptly describe "The Old National Road " that I accommodate them to my purpose.
" Where did it come from, and where did it go ? That was the question that puzzled us so As we waded the dust of the highway that flowed By the town like a river-the old National Road.
" We stood with our hair sticking up thro' the crown Of our hats, as the people went up and went down, And we wished in our hearts, as our eyes fairly glowed, We could find where it came from-the old National Road.
" We remember the peddler who came with his pack Adown the old highway, and never went back ;
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And we wondered what things he had seen as he strode From some fabulous place up the old National Road.
" We remember the stage-driver's look of delight, And the crack of his whip as he whirled into sight, And we thought we could read in each glance he bestowed A tale of strange life up the old National Road.
" The movers came by like a ship in full sail, With a rudder behind, in the shape of a pail- With a rollicking crew, and a cow that was towed With a rope on her horns, down the old National Road.
" Oh, the top of the hill was the rim of the world, And the dust of the summer that over it curled Was the curtain that hid from our sight the abode Of the fairies that lived up the old National Road.
" The old National Road ! I can see it still flow Down the hill of my dreams, as it did long ago, And I wish even now I could lay off my load, And rest by the side of that old National Road."
O glorious old pike! In thy day the route of trans- portation, the path of the emigrant, the delight of the traveller, well hast thou finished the work which the country gave thee to do. For thou art the inspiration of that mighty instinct that doth unite earth's neigh- borhoods with friendly bands.
OUR VILLAGE HEARTHSTONE
Our Village Home might not quicken the fancy of the poet nor excite the attention of the historian. Its dwellings might curl the lip of the architect with a sneer. Its limited extent might prove nothing else
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A CLAYSVILLE HOME.
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than a prison to the man of the world. But the old hearthstone makes it poetry and history and beauty all the world to me, simply because there is no place like HOME. The perennial freshness with which mem- ory clothes the family nest explains the pathos which moved our whole nation when the news flashed over the wires that the remains of John Howard Payne had been brought to the home into which he crystallized every home by those strains to whose music the heart of humanity responds in the world-wide chorus:
" Home, home, sweet, sweet home."
It took five dwelling-places to make my early home. I analyze the composite picture as I stand once more on the long porch, whose outlook was the whole length of the village street; as I walk up the locust-canopied line; as I drink from the old spring which has never within the memory of "the oldest inhabitant " failed to pour forth its cooling stream; as I walk through the front yard, with its evergreens, its quaking aspen, its silver maple, its beds of pinks, verbenas, geraniums, its roses, red and white; its vines, wrapping trellis and wall in their embrace.
" When thoughts recall the past " I find Old Dog Tray in the field of vision as I whistle for Bony and Bull and Watch and Bruiser. I would I were a boy again as I ride and drive old Suke, Bet the mother and Bet the colt; as thus Alexander was on Bucephalus; Tam O'Shanter,
" Mounted on his gray mare Meg, Skelpit on through dub and mire, Despising wind and rain and fire."
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But Don Quixote was never on Rosinantes. A daily walk to and from the pasture field made me know when the cows came home.
In the light which crowned the home hearthstone I contemplated the movements of the world as chron- icled by newspapers of the time. Tom Grayson's lively pen and George Hart's thoughtful summary in the Washington Examiner; John Bausman's graceful style in the Washington Reporter ; Seth T. Hurd's witti- cisms in the Washington Commonwealth; the weekly compendium of events in Alexander's Express Messen- ger; the fund of tale and miscellany in the Saturday Evening Post; the sensible editorials and interesting résumé of the Dollar Newspaper (the weekly edition of the Philadelphia Ledger)-all contributed their part to make the boy a man of affairs in embryo.
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