Chapter II

The misery of the young and the beautiful is at all times infectious. Few young persons can withhold sympathy in such a case,--especially if the person thus afflicted be unmarried--of the other sex--and near one's own age.

Victor Chevillere could not expel from his imagination the image of the fair stranger. Again and again did he essay to join Lamar in his light and sprightly conversation, as they, on the day after the one recorded in the last chapter, pursued their journey along the noble turnpike between Fredericktown and Baltimore. The same profound revery would steal upon him, and abide until broken by the merry peals of Lamar's peculiarly loud and joyous laughter, at the new mood which seemed to have visited the former. When a young person first begins to experience these abstracted moods, there is nothing, perhaps, that sounds more harsh and startling to his senses, than the mirthful voice of his best friend. He looks up as one would naturally look at any unseemly or boisterous conduct at a funeral. He seems to gaze and wonder, for the first time, that all things and all men are jogging on at their usual gait. Thus were things moving upon the Fredericktown turnpike: Lamar riding forty or fifty paces in front, singing away the blue devils; Chevillere in the centre, moody and silent; and old Cato, stately as a statue on horseback, bringing up the rear.

From hearing sundry merry peals of laughter from Lamar's quarter, Chevillere was induced at length to forego his own society for a moment, to see what new subject his Quixotic friend had found for such unusual merriment; and a subject he had indeed found in the shape of a tall Kentuckian. The name of the stranger, it seems, was Montgomery Damon. He was six feet high, with broad shoulders, full, projecting chest, light hair and complexion, and a countenance that was upon the first blush an index to a mind full of quaint, rude, and wild humour. His dress was any thing but fashionable; he wore a large, two-story hat, with a bandana handkerchief hanging out in front, partly over his forehead, as if to protect it from the great weight of his castor. His coat and pantaloons were of home-made cotton and woollen jeans, and he carried in his hand a warlike riding-whip, loaded with lead, and mounted with silver, with which, now and then, he gave emphasis to his words, by an unexpected and sonorous crack.

Our Kentuckian was no quiet man; but, like most of his race, bold, talkative, and exceedingly democratic in all his notions; feeling as much pride in his occupation of drover, as if he had been a senator in Congress from his own "Kentuck," as he emphatically called it. He was a politician, too, inasmuch as he despised _tories_, as he called the federalists, approved of the late war, and had a most venomous hatred against Indians, of whatever tribe or nation. We shall break into their dialogue at the point at which Victor became a listener.

"How did it happen," said Lamar, "that you did not join the army either of the north or south, when your heart seems to have been so entirely with them?"

"O! as to _jine_en the army to the north," said Damon, "I was afraid the blasted tories would sell me to the British, me and my messmates, like old Hull, the infernal old traitor, sold his men for so much a head, _jist_ as I sell my hogs. As to t'other business, down yonder, under Old Hickory, I reckon I _did_ take a hand or so aginst the bloody Injins."

"You prefer a fight with Indians, then, to one with white men."

"To be sure I do; I think no more of taking my jack-knife, and unbuttonin the collar of a Creek Injin, than I would of takin the jacket off a good fat bell-wether, or mout-be a yerlin calf. Old Hickory's the boy to _sculp_ the bloody creters; he's the boy to walk into their bread-baskets; and Dick Johnston ain't far behind him, I can tell you, stranger; he's the chap what plumped a bullet right into old Tecumseh's bagpipes. Let him alone for stoppin their war-whoops."

"You were a rifleman, I suppose," said Lamar.

"Right agin, stranger. Give me a rifle for ever; they never spiles meat, though, as one may say, Injin's meat ain't as good as blue-lick buck's; but for all that, it's a pity to make bunglin work of a neat job; besides, your smooth bores waste a deal of powder and lead upon the outlandish creters."

"Were you ever wounded?" asked Lamar.

"Yes! don't you see this here hare-lip to my right eye? Well! that was jist the corner of an Injin's hatchet. Bob Wiley jist knocked up his arm in time to save me for another whet at the varmints; if so mout be that we ever has another brush with 'em, and Bob goes out agin, maybe I may do him a good turn yet; he's what I call a tear down sneezer (crack went the whip). He's got no more fear among the Injins than a wild cat in a weasel's nest; O! it would have done your heart good to see him jist lie down behind an old log, and watch for one of the varmint's heads bobbin up and down like a muskovy drake in a barn yard, and as sure as you saw the fire at the muzzle of his gun, so sure he knocked the creter's hind sights out. You see he always took 'em on the bob, jist as you would shoot a divin bird, and that's what I always called taking the bread out of the creter's mouth, for he was watchin for the same chance."

"Did you scalp the slain?" said Lamar.

"No!" replied Damon, "we had plenty of friendly Injins to do that, and it used to make me laugh to see the yallow raskals sculpin their kin; that's what I call dog eat dog."

"Do you think an Indian has a soul?" said Lamar.

"Ha! ha! ha!" roared the Kentuckian, giving a crack of unusual emphasis, "that's what I call a stumper; but as you're no missionary, I 'spose I'll tell you. I knows some dumb brutes--here's this Pete Ironsides that I'm ridin on, has more of a Christian soul in him than any leather-skin between Missouri and Red River. Why! stranger! what's an Injin good for, more nor a wild cat? You can't tame ne'er a one of 'em."

"But those missionaries you spoke of, don't you think they will civilize, if not Christianize them?"

"Ha! ha! ha!" shouted Damon, with another loud crack, and rolling a huge quid of tobacco to the opposite side of his mouth, "they might as well mount the trees and preach to the 'coons and tree-frogs; one of your real psalm-singers mout tree a coon at it, but hang me if he can ever put the pluck of a white man under a yellow jacket. Catch a weasel asleep or a fox at a foot race. I rather suspicion, stranger, that I've seen more Injins than your missionaries, and I'll tell you the way to tame 'em;--slit their windpipes and hamstring 'em."

"Perhaps you are an enemy to religion, or prejudiced against the missionaries?"

"No! no! stranger, no! I likes religion well enough of a Sunday; but hang me if I should not die of laughin to see 'em layin it down to the redskins. I'd as soon think of going into my horse stable and preachin to the dumb brutes. Old Pete here knows more now than many an Injin, and he's got more soul than some Yankees that mout be named; but come, stranger, here's a public house, let's go in and cut the phlegm."

"Agreed," said Lamar, "but it must be at my expense."

"Well," said Damon, "we'll not quarrel about that;" and turning to Victor, "Stranger, won't you join us in a glass of tight?"

"No! I thank you," said Chevillere, "but I will look on while you and my friend drink to the better acquaintance of us all."

After the parties had refreshed themselves and their horses, and remounted, the conversation was resumed. "Well now," said the Kentuckian, addressing Victor, "I wish I may be contwisted if you ain't one of the queerest men, to come from the Carolinas, I have clapped eyes on this many a day. You don't chaw tobacco, and you don't drink nothin; smash my apple-cart if I can see into it."

"I am one of those that don't believe in the happy effects of either brandy or tobacco," replied Chevillere.

"Then you are off the trail for once in your life, stranger, for I take tobacco to be one of God's mercies to the poor. Whether it came by a rigular dispensation of providence (as our parson used to say), or in a natural way, I can't tell; but hang me, if when I gets a quid of the real Kentuck twist or Maryland kite-foot into my mouth, if I ain't as proud a man as the grand Turk himself. It drives away the solemncholies, and makes a fellow feel so good-natured, and so comfortable; it turns the shillings in his pocket into dollars, and his wrath into fun and deviltry. Let them talk about tobacco as they choose among the fine gals, and at their theatres, and balls, and cotillions, and all them sort of things; but let one of 'em git twenty miles deep into a Kentuck forest, and then see if a chew of the stuff ain't good for company and comfort."

"But you did not tell me," resumed Lamar, "whether you had ever shot at a white man?"

"No! no! I never did; and I don't know that I ever will. I think I should feel a leetle particlar, at standin up and shooting at a real Christian man, with flesh and blood like you and me. You see, when we boys of the long guns shoot, we don't turn our heads away and pull trigger in a world of smoke, so that nobody can tell where the lead goes; we look right into the white of a fellow's eye, and can most always tell which side of his nose the ball went, and you see that would be but a slayin and skinnen business among white people; but as to shootin and sculpin Injins, that's a thing there is no bones made about, because out on the frontiers at the west, if a man should stand addlin his brains about the right and the wrong of the thing, the red devils would just knock them out to settle the matter, and sculp him for his pains into the bargain. Shooting real Christian men's quite another thing. It's what I ha'nt tried yet; but when we Kentuck boys gits at it, it won't all end like a log-rollin, with one or two broken shins and a black eye. But I'm told the Yankees always sings a psalm before they go to battle. Now, according to my notion, a chap would make a blue fist of takin a dead aim through double sights, with the butt end of a psalm in his guzzle."

"Some person must have told you that as a joke," said Lamar.

"No, no, I believe it, because we had just such a fellow once in our neighbourhood--a Yankee schoolmaster--and we took him out a deer-driving two or three times, and he was always singing a psalm at his stand. He spoilt the fun, confound him! Hang me if I didn't always think the fellow was afraid to stand in the woods by himself without it. I went to his singin school of Saturday nights, too; but I never had a turn that way. All the master could do, he could'nt keep me on the trail,--I was for ever slipping into Yankee Doodle; you see, every once in a while, the tune would take a quick turn, like one I knowed afore, so I used to blaze away at it with the best of 'em, but the same old Yankee Doodle always turned up at the end. But the worst of it was, the infernal Yankee spoiled all the music I ever had in me; when I come out of the school, I thought the gals at home would have killed themselves laughin' at me. They said I ground up Yankee Doodle and Old Hundred together, all in a hodge-podge, so I never sings to no one now but the dumb brutes in the stable, when they gits melancholy of a rainy day. Old Pete here raises his ears, and begins to snort the minute I raises a tune."

"Your singing-master was, like his scholar, an original."

"An original! When he come to them parts, he drove what we call a Yankee cart, half wagon and half carriage, full of all sorts of odds and ends; when he had sold them out, he sold his horse and cart too, and then turned in to keepin a little old-field school; and over and above this, he opened a Saturday night singin-school,--and I reckon we had rare times with the gals there. At last, when the feller had got considerable ahead, the word came out that he was studyin to be a doctor; and sure enough, in a few months, he sold out the school for so much a head, just like we sell our hogs; then off the Yankee starts to git made a doctor of; and hang me if ever I could see into that business. How they can turn a pedlar into a doctor in four months, is a leetle jist over my head. It's true enough they works a mighty change in the chaps in that time. Our Yankee went off, as well-behaved and as down-faced a chap as you would wish to see in a hundred, and wore home-made clothes like mine; but when he had staid his four months out, and 'most everybody had forgot him, one day as I was leanen up against one of the poplar trees in the little town, I saw a sign goin up on the side of a house, with DOCTOR GUN in large letters. I'll take my Bible oath, when I saw the thing, I thought I should have broke a blood-vessel. Howsomever, I strained 'em down, till an old woman would have sworn I had the high-strikes, with a knot o' wind in my guzzle. But I quieted the devil in me, and then I slipped slyly over the street, behind where the doctor was standing with his new suit of black; one hand stuck in his side, and the other holding an ivory-headed stick up to his mouth in the most knowing fashion, I tell you. I stole up behind him, and bawled out in his ear, as loud as I could yell, '_faw--sol--law--me_.' Oh! my grandmother! what a smashin rage he flew into; he shook his cane--he walked backwards and forwards--and didn't he make the tobacco juice fly? I rather reckon, if I hadn't had so many inches, he'd have been into my meat; but the fun of it all was, the feller had foreswore his mother tongue; dash me if he could talk a word of common lingo, much less sing psalms and hymns by note; he rattled off words as long as my arm, and as fast as a windmill. Some of the old knowing ones says they've got some kind of a mill, like these little hand-organs, and that chops it out to the chaps eny night and morning, pretty much as I chop straw to my horses; but I'm going in to see that doctor-factory, when I git to Philadelphia, if they don't charge a feller more nor half a dollar a head."

"I hope we shall travel together to Philadelphia," said Lamar; "and if so, I will introduce you into the establishment, free of expense."

"Thank you, sir, thank you," said the Kentuckian; "but I'm rather inclined to think that we will hardly meet again after to-day; 'cause, you see, I'm 'bliged to do a might of business in Baltimore afore I can go on. After that, then I can go on as I please; as I'm only goin to see the world abit, afore I settle down for life."

"But," said Lamar, "if you will call at Barnum's, and leave word what day you will set out, I will see that we travel together, for I will suit my time to yours; and I would advise you to send your horse a short distance into the country, both for the sake of convenience and economy."

"What! part with old Pete here! Bless my soul, stranger! he would go into a gallopin consumption! or die of the solemncholies, if a rainy spell should come on, and he and I couldn't have a dish of chat together; and then I shouldn't know no more what to do in one of your coaches nor a cow with a side-pocket."

"My word for it," replied Victor, "you would soon enjoy yourself inside of a stage-coach. Come, let us make a bargain. I will engage to have your horse well taken care of in the country, and provide him with a groom that will soon learn his ways, and be able to cheer him up when he gets low-spirited."

"Yes, do!" said Lamar, jocosely; "we are anxious to have your company during our visit to the cities. We are from Carolina, and you are from Kentuck; and after you get through with your business, we shall all be on the same errand--pleasure and improvement."

"And a wild-goose chase it's like to be, I'm afraid; especially if I'm to be of your mess. But suppose you should meet with some fine lady acquaintances, what, in the name of old Sam, would you do with me? I should be like a fifth wheel to a wagon."

"Were you never in the company of fine ladies?" asked Chevillere.

"Yes! and flummuck me if ever I want to be so fixed again; for there I sat with my feet drawn straight under my knees, heads up, and hands laid close along my legs, like a new recruit on drill, or a horse in the stocks; and, twist me, if I didn't feel as if I was about to be nicked. The whole company stared at me as if I had come without an invite; and I swear I thought my arms had grown a foot longer, for I couldn't get my hands in no sort of a comfortable fix--first I tried them on my lap; there they looked like goin to prayers, or as if I was tied in that way; then I slung 'em down by my side, and they looked like two weights to a clock; and then I wanted to cross my legs, and I tried that, but my leg stuck out like a pump handle; then my head stuck up through a glazed shirt-collar, like a pig in a yoke; then I wanted to spit, but the floor looked so fine, that I would as soon have thought of spittin on the window; and then to fix me out and out, they asked us all to sit down to dinner! Well, things went on smooth enough for a while, till we had got through one whet at it. Then a blasted imp of a nigger come to me first with a waiter of little bowls full of something, and a parcel of towels slung over his arm; so I clapped one of the bowls to my head, and drank it down at a swallow. Now, stranger, what do you think was in it?"

"Punch, I suppose," said Lamar, laughing; "or perhaps apple toddy."

"So I thought, and so would anybody, as dry as I was, and that wanted something to wash down the fainty stuffs I had been layin in; but no! it was warm water! Yes! you may laugh! but it was clean warm water. The others dipped their fingers into the bowls, and wiped them on the towels as well as they could for gigglin; but it was all the fault of that pampered nigger, in bringin it to me first. As soon as I catched his eye, I gin him a wink, as much as to let him know that if ever I caught him on my trail, I would wipe him down with a hickory towel."

"But I suppose you enjoyed yourself highly before it was all over?" said Chevillere.

"When it was all over, I was glad enough; I jumped and capered like a school-boy at the first of the holydays."

"Have you never been invited out since?" asked Lamar.

"O yes, often," said Damon; "but you don't catch a weasel asleep again. I like to give a joke, and take a joke; but then the joke was all on one side. If I can take a hand in the laugh, I don't care whether a person laughs _at_ me, or _with_ me."

"But what say you?" said Chevillere; "shall we send your horse to the country with ours?"

"Why! as you gentlemen seem to speak me so fair, and to know the world so well, I don't care if I do send old Pete out to board awhile. I shouldn't be surprised though if he should give me up for lost, and fret himself to death. But I must see the man that goes to the country with them; 'cause Pete couldn't bear shabby talk; he's what I call a leetle particular in his company for a dumb brute."

"The man rides behind us," said Chevillere, "who will perform that duty. Cato! this gentleman wishes to speak to you."

"Did you call, your honour?"

"Yes. Cato! Mr. Damon wishes to give you some charges about his horse, which you are to take into the country with ours."

"Cato," said Damon, "tell the farmer who takes the horses, that old Pete Ironsides here has been used to good company, and that he has been treated more like a Christian nor a horse, and that I wish him indulged in his old ways."

During this harangue, Cato cast sundry glances from his master to the speaker, as if to ascertain whether he was in earnest, or only playing off one of those freaks in which the young men had so often indulged in his presence. Being accustomed, however, to treat with respect those whom his master respected, and seeing his eye calm and serious, he bowed with grave deference, saying, "It shall be done as you direct, your honour;" and then fell back.

"Now," said Damon, "that's what I call a well-bred nigger. I would venture that old Scip would'nt have puzzled me with the warm water; 'cause he knows that I'm not one of them there sort of chaps what knows all their new-fangled kick-shaws. He knows in a case of real needcessity, or life and death, as I may say, either to man, woman, or horse, I'm more to be depended on than a dozen such chaps as went along here in the stage this morning."

"You saw the dandies in the stage, then?" asked Victor.

"Yes, and one of 'em popped his head out of the window, and says to me as they went by, 'Country,' says he, 'there's something on your horse's tail.'--'Yes,' says I, 'and there's something in his head that you hav'nt got, if his ears ain't so long.'"

Thus were our acquaintances and their new companion jogging along when the distant rumbling of wheels upon the pavements and the dense clouds of black smoke which seemed to be hanging in the heavens but a short distance ahead, announced that they were soon to enter the monumental city.

There is not, perhaps, a feeling of more truly unmixed melancholy, incident to the heart of an inexperienced and modest student, than that which steals over him upon his first entrance into a strange city; a feeling of incomparable loneliness, even deeper than if the same individual were standing alone upon the highest blue peak of the far stretching Alleghany. The vanishing rays of twilight were extending their lengthening shadows; the husbandman and his cattle were seen wending their way to their accustomed abodes for the night; and the feathered tribes had already sought the resting-places which nature so plentifully provides for them in our well-wooded land. The sad, and it may be pleasing reflections which such sights produced, were occasionally interrupted by the clattering of a horse's hoofs upon the turnpike, as some belated countryman sought to redeem the time he had spent at the alehouse; or as the solitary marketman, with more staid and quiet demeanour, sped upon a like errand. Occasionally the scene was marred by some besotted and staggering wretch, seeking his lowly and miserable hut in the suburbs. At intervals too, the barking of dogs and the lowing of cattle contributed their share to remind our friends that they were about to take leave of these quiet and pastoral scenes, for an indefinite period, and to mix in the bustle and gay assemblage of city life. Often, at such junctures, there is a presentiment of the evil which awaits the unhappy exchange. Warning clouds of the mind are believed to exist by many of the clearest heads and soundest hearts: we do not say that our heroes were thus sadly affected, nor that the Kentuckian had a fore-taste of evil; but certain it is, that all were silent until they arrived at the place of separation. All things having been previously settled, they exchanged salutations, and departed upon their separate routes. They passed a variety of streets in that most gloomy period of the day when lamp-lighters are to be seen, with their torches and ladders, starting their glimmering lights first in one direction and then in another, as they hurry from post to post. Draymen were driving home with reckless and Jehu-like speed; and the brilliant lights which began to appear at long intervals, gave evidence that the trading community carried their operations also into that portion of time which nature has allotted for rest and repose to nearly all living things. Our travellers now alighted at Barnum's; but as their adventures were of an interesting character, we shall defer them till a new chapter.