Richard Penn Smith & John Seelye Read online

  As my country no longer requires my services, I have made up my mind to go to Texas. My life has been one of danger, toil, and privation, but these difficulties I had to encounter at a time when I considered it nothing more than right good sport to surmount them; but now I start anew upon my own hook, and God only grant that it may be strong enough to support the weight that may be hung upon it. I have a new row to hoe, a long and a rough one, but come what will I’ll go ahead.

  A few days ago I went to a meeting of my constituents. My appetite for politics was at one time just about as sharp set as a saw mill, but late events has given me something of a surfeit,—more than I could well digest; still habit they say is second natur, and so I went, and gave them a piece of my mind touching “the Government” and the succession, by way of a codicil to what I have often said before.

  I told them to keep a sharp look-out for the deposites, for it requires an eye as insinuating as a dissecting knife to see what safety there is in placing one million of the public funds in some little country shaving shop with no more than one hundred thousand dollars capital. This bank, we will just suppose, without being too particular, is in the neighbourhood of some of the public lands, where speculators, who have every thing to gain and nothing to lose, swarm like crows about carrion. They buy the United States’ land upon a large scale, get discounts from the aforesaid shaving shop, which are made upon a large scale also, upon the United States’ funds; they pay the whole purchase money with these discounts, and get a clear title to the land, so that when the shaving shop comes to make a Flemish account9 of her transactions, “the Government” will discover that he has not only lost the original deposite, but a large body of the public lands to boot. So much for taking the responsibility.

  I told them that they were hurrying along a broad M’Adamized road10 to make the Little Flying Dutchman the successor, but they would no sooner accomplish that end, than they would be obliged to buckle to, and drag the Juggernaut through many narrow and winding and out-of-the-way paths, and hub deep in the mire. That they reminded me of the Hibernian, who bet a glass of grog with a hod carrier, that he could not carry him in his hod up a ladder to the third story of a new building. He seated himself in the hod, and the other mounted the ladder with his load upon his shoulder. He ascended to the second story pretty steadily, but as he approached the third his strength failed him, he began to totter, and Pat was so delighted at the prospect of winning his bet, that he clapped his hands and shouted, “By the powers the grog’s mine,” and he made such a stir in the hod, that I wish I may be shot if he didn’t win it, but he broke his neck in the fall. And so I told my constituents that they might possibly gain the victory, but in doing so, they would ruin their country.

  I told them moreover of my services, pretty straight up and down, for a man may be allowed to speak on such subjects when others are about to forget them; and I also told them of the manner in which I had been knocked down and dragged out, and that I did not consider it a fair fight any how they could fix it. I put the ingredients in the cup pretty strong I tell you, and I concluded my speech by telling them that I was down with politics for the present, and that they might all go to hell, and I would go to Texas.

  When I returned home I felt a sort of cast down at the change that had taken place in my fortunes, and sorrow, it is said, will make even an oyster feel poetical. I never tried my hand at that sort of writing, but on this particular occasion such was my state of feeling, that I began to fancy myself inspired; so I took pen in hand, and as usual I went ahead. When I had got fairly through, my poetry looked as zigzag as a worm fence; the lines wouldn’t tally, no how; so I showed them to Peleg Longfellow, 11 who has a first-rate reputation with us for that sort of writing, having some years ago made a carrier’s address12 for the Nashville Banner, and Peleg lopped off some lines, and stretched out others; but I wish I may be shot if I don’t rather think he has made it worse than it was when I placed it in his hands. It being my first, and no doubt last piece of poetry, I will print it in this place, as it will serve to express my feelings on leaving my home, my neighbours, and friends and country, for a strange land, as fully as I could in plain prose.

  Farewell to the mountains whose mazes to me

  Were more beautiful far than Eden could be;

  No fruit was forbidden, but Nature had spread

  Her bountiful board, and her children were fed.

  The hills were our garners—our herds wildly grew,

  And Nature was shepherd and husbandman too.

  I felt like a monarch, yet thought like a man,

  As I thank’d the Great Giver, and worshipp’d his plan.

  The home I forsake where my offspring arose:

  The graves I forsake where my children repose.

  The home I redeem’d from the savage and wild;

  The home I have loved as a father his child;

  The corn that I planted, the fields that I clear’d,

  The flocks that I raised, and the cabin I rear’d;

  The wife of my bosom—Farewell to ye all!

  In the land of the stranger I rise—or I fall.

  Farewell to my country!—I fought for thee well.

  When the savage rush’d forth like the demons from hell.

  In peace or in war I have stood by thy side—

  My country, for thee I have lived—would have died!

  But I am cast off—my career now is run,

  And I wander abroad like the prodigal son—

  Where the wild savage roves, and the broad prairies spread,

  The fallen—despised—will again go ahead!

  CHAPTER III.

  In my last chapter I made mention of my determination to cut and quit the States until such time as honest and independent men should again work their way to the head of the heap; and as I should probably have some idle time on hand before that state of affairs shall be brought about, I promised to give the Texians a helping hand, on the high road to freedom.1—Well, I was always fond of having my spoon in a mess of that kind, for if there is any thing in this world particularly worth living for, it is freedom; any thing that would render death to a brave man particularly pleasant, it is freedom.

  I am now on my journey, and have already tortled2 along as far as Little Rock on the Arkansas, about one hundred and twenty-five miles from the mouth. I had promised to write another book, expecting, when I made that promise, to write about politics, and use up “the Government,” his successor, the removal of the deposites, and so on, matters and things that come as natural to me as bear hunting; but being rascalled out of my election, I am taken all aback, and I must now strike into a new path altogether. Still I will redeem my promise, and make a book, and it shall be about my adventures in Texas, hoping that my friends, Messrs. Webster and Clay and Biddle,3 will keep a sharp look-out upon “the Government” during my absence.—I am told that every author of distinction writes a book of travels now-a-days.

  My thermometer stood somewhat below the freezing point as I left my wife and children; still there was some thawing about the eyelids, a thing that had not taken place since I first ran away from my father’s house when a thoughtless vagabond boy. I dressed myself in a clean hunting shirt, put on a new fox skin cap with the tail hanging behind, took hold of my rifle Betsey, 4 which all the world knows was presented to me by the patriotic citizens of Philadelphia, as a compliment for my unflinching opposition to the tyrannic measures of “the Government,” and thus equipped I started off, with a heavy heart, for Mill’s Point, to take steamboat down the Mississippi, and go ahead in a new world.

  While walking along, and thinking whether it was altogether the right grit to leave my poor country at a time she most needed my services, I came to a clearing,5 and I was slowly rising a slope, when I was startled by loud, profane, and boisterous voices, (as loud and profane as have been heard in the White House of late years,) which seemed to proceed from a thick covert of undergrowth, about two hundred yards in advance o
f me, and about one hundred to the right of my road.

  “You kin, kin you?”

  “Yes, I kin, and am able to do it! Boo—oo—oo!—O! wake snakes, and walk your chalks! Brimstone and——fire! Don’t hold me, Nick Stoval! The fight’s made up, and let’s go at it. ——my soul if I don’t jump down his throat and gallop every chitterling out of him, before you can say ‘quit!’”

  “Now, Nick, don’t hold him! Jist let the wild cat come, and I’ll tame him. Ned’ll see me a fair fight—won’t you, Ned?”

  “O! yes, I’ll see you a fair fight; blast my old shoes if I don’t.”

  “That’s sufficient, as Tom Haynes said, when he saw the elephant. Now let him come.”

  Thus they went on, with countless oaths interspersed, which I dare not even hint at, and with much that I could not distinctly hear.

  In mercy’s name! thought I, what a band of ruffians is at work here. I quickened my gait, and had come nearly opposite to the thick grove whence the noise proceeded, when my eye caught indistinctly, through the foliage of the dwarf oaks and hickories that intervened, glimpses of a man or men, who seemed to be in a violent struggle; and I could occasionally catch those deep drawn emphatic oaths, which men in conflict utter, when they deal blows. I hurried to the spot, but before I reached it, I saw the combatants come to the ground, and after a short struggle, I saw the uppermost one (for I could not see the other) make a heavy plunge with both his thumbs, and at the same instant I heard a cry in the accent of keenest torture, “Enough! My eye is out!”

  I stood completely horror-struck for a moment. The accomplices in the brutal deed had all fled at my approach, at least I supposed so, for they were not to be seen.

  “Now blast your corn-shucking soul,” said the victor, a lad about eighteen, as he rose from the ground, “come cutt’n your shines ’bout me agin, next time I come to the Court House, will you!—Get your owl-eye in agin if you can.”

  At this moment he saw me for the first time. He looked as though he couldn’t help it, and was for making himself particularly scarce, when I called to him, “Come back, you brute, and assist me in relieving the poor critur you have ruined for ever.”

  Upon this rough salutation, he sort of collected himself, and with a taunting curl of the nose he replied, “You needn’t kick before you’re spurr’d. There an’t nobody there, nor han’t been nother. I was jist seein’ how I could a’ fout.” So saying he bounded to his plough, which stood in the corner of the fence about fifty yards from the battle ground.

  Now would any man in his senses believe that a rational being could make such a darned fool of himself? but I wish I may be shot, if his report was not as true as the last Post office report, every word, and a little more satisfactory. All that I had heard and seen was nothing more nor less than what is called a rehearsal of a knock-down and drag-out fight, in which the young man had played all the parts for his own amusement, and by way of keeping his hand in. I went to the ground from which he had risen, and there was the prints of his two thumbs, plunged up to the balls in the mellow earth, about the distance of a man’s eyes apart, and the ground around was broken up, as if two stags had been engaged upon it.

  As I resumed my journey I laughed outright at this adventure, for it reminded me of Andrew Jackson’s attack upon the United States Bank. He had magnified it into a monster, and then begun to rip and tear and swear and gouge, until he thought he had the monster on its back; and when the fight was over, and he got up to look about for his enemy, he could find none for the soul of him, for his enemy was altogether in his heated imagination. These fighting characters are never at peace, unless they have something to quarrel with, and rather than have no fight at all they will trample on their own shadows.

  The day I arrived at Little Rock, I no sooner quit the steamer than I streaked it straight ahead for the principal tavern, which is nothing to boast of, nohow, unless a man happens to be like the member of Congress from the south, who was converted to Jacksonism, and then made a speech as long as the longitude about his political honesty. Some men it seems, take a pride in saying a great deal about nothing—like windmills, their tongues must be going whether they have any grist to grind or not. This is all very well in Congress, where every member is expected to make a speech to let his constituents know that some things can be done as well as others;6 but I set it down as being rather an imposition upon good nature to be compelled to listen, without receiving the consideration of eight dollars per day, besides mileage, as we do in Congress. Many members will do nothing else for their pay but listen, day in and day out, and I wish I may be shot, if they do not earn every penny of it, provided they don’t sleep, and Benton7 or little Isaac Hill8 will spin their yarns but once in a week. No man who has not tried it can imagine what dreadful hard work it is to listen. Splitting gum logs in the dog days is child’s play to it. I’ve tried both, and give the preference to the gum logs.

  Well, as I said, I made straight for the tavern, and as I drew nigh, I saw a considerable crowd assembled before the door. So, thought I, they have heard that Colonel Crockett intended to pay a visit to their settlement, and they have already got together to receive him in due form. I confess I felt a little elated at the idea, and commenced ransacking the lumber room of my brain, to find some one of my speeches that I might furbish up for the occasion; and then I shouldered my Betsey, straightened myself, and walked up to the door, charged to the muzzle, and ready to let fly.

  But strange as it may seem, no one took any more notice of me, than if I had been Martin Van Buren, or Dick Johnson,9 the celebrated wool grower. This took me somewhat aback, and I inquired what was the meaning of the gathering; and I learnt that a travelling showman had just arrived, and was about to exhibit for the first time the wonderful feats of Harlequin, and Punch and Judy, to the impatient natives. It was drawing towards nightfall, and expectation was on tiptoe; the children were clinging to their mother’s aprons, with their chubby faces dimpled with delight, and asking “What is it like? when will it begin?” and similar questions, while the women, as all good wives are in duty bound to do, appealed to their husbands for information; but the call for information was not responded to in this instance, as is sometimes the case in Congress;—their husbands understood the matter about as well as “the Government” did the Post office accounts.

  The showman at length made his appearance, with a countenance as wo-begone as that of “the Government” when he found his batch of dirty nominations rejected by the Senate, and mentioned the impossibility that any performance should take place that evening, as the lame fiddler had overcharged his head, and having but one leg at best, it did not require much to destroy his equilibrium. And as all the world knows, a puppet show without a fiddle is like roast pork and no apple sauce. This piece of intelligence was received with a general murmur of dissatisfaction; and such was the indignation of his majesty, the sovereign people, at being thwarted in his rational amusements, that, according to the established custom in such cases made and provided, there were some symptoms of a disposition to kick up a row, break the show, and finish the amusements of the day by putting Lynch’s law in practice upon the poor showman. There is nothing like upholding the dignity of the people, and so Lieut. Randolph10 thought, when with his cowardly and sacrilegious hand he dared to profane the anointed nose of “the Government,” and bring the whole nation into contempt. If I had been present, may disgrace follow my career in Texas, if I wouldn’t have become a whole hog Jackson man upon the spot, for the time being, for the nose of “the Government” should be held more sacred than any other member, that it may be kept in good order to smell out all the corruption that is going forward—not a very pleasant office, and by no means a sinecure.

  The indignant people, as I have already said, were about to exercise their reserved rights upon the unlucky showman, and Punch and Judy too, when, as good fortune would have it, an old gentleman drove up to the tavern door in a sulky, with a box of books and pamphlets of his own
composition—(for he was an author like myself)—thus being able to vouch for the moral tendency of every page he disposed of. Very few book-sellers can do the same, I take it. His linen and flannels, which he had washed in the brooks by the wayside, were hanging over the back of the crazy vehicle to dry, while his own snuffy countenance had long bid defiance to sun, wind, and water to bleach it.

  His jaded beast stopped instinctively upon seeing a crowd, while the old man remained seated for some moments before he could recall his thoughts from the world of imagination, where they were gleaning for the benefit of mankind. He looked, it must be confessed, more like a lunatic than a moral lecturer; but being conscious of his own rectitude, he could not conceive how his outward Adam could make him ridiculous in the eyes of another; but a fair outside is every thing to the world. The tulip flower is highly prized, although indebted for its beauty to the corruption engendered at the root: and so it is with man.

  We occasionally meet with one possessing sufficient philosophy to look upon life as a pilgrimage, and not as a mere round of pleasure: who, treating this world as a place of probation, is ready to encounter suffering, and not expecting the sunshine of prosperity, escapes being overclouded by disappointment. Such is the character of the old preacher, whose ridiculous appearance in the eyes of the thoughtless and ignorant is only exceeded by the respect and veneration of those who are capable of estimating his real worth. I learnt that he was educated for the church, but not being able to obtain a living, he looked upon the whole earth as his altar, and all mankind as his flock. He was penniless, and therefore had no predilection for this or that section of the globe, for wherever he might be, his journey of probation still continued, and in every spot he found that human nature was the same. His life was literally that of a pilgrim. He was an isolated being, though his heart overflowed with the milk of human kindness; for being indiscriminate in his affection, very few valued it. He who commences the world with a general love for mankind, and suffers his feelings to dictate in his reason, runs a great hazard of reaping a plentiful harvest of ingratitude, and of closing a tedious existence in misanthropy. But it was not so with the aged preacher.