Part 11

My uncle-in-law “offered” a tedious petition, too long-winded to please the average politician perhaps, but it was generally felt that a younger man and newer resident could not have been called upon without incivility verging upon disrespect to a venerable citizen. The invocation over, the presiding officer announced that “the Whigs, in obedience to the spirit of fair play to all, and injustice to none, that had ever characterized the party, would to-day grant to their honored opponents, the Democrats, the opportunity of replying publicly to the arguments advanced in the addresses of those representing the principles in the interest of which the present assembly had been convened. The first speaker of the day would be the Hon. Holden Rhodes, of Richmond. The second would be one almost as well known to the citizens of county and state—the Hon. John Winston Jones, of Chesterfield. The Whigs reserved to themselves the last and closing address of the day by the Hon. Watkins Leigh, of Richmond.”

Nothing could be fairer and more courteous, it seemed to me. In the hum of approval that rippled through the assembly it was apparent that others held the like sentiment. Likewise, that the “Honorable Chairman” had scored another point for the magnanimous Whigs. But then—as I whispered to my indulgent neighbor on the left—they could afford to surrender an advantage or two to the party they were going to whip out of existence.

Holden Rhodes was an eminent lawyer, and his speech was a trifle too professional in sustained and unoratorical argument for my taste and mental reach. I recall it chiefly because of a comical interruption that enlivened the hour-long exposition of party creeds.

I have drawn in my book, _Judith_, a full-length portrait of one of the men of marked individuality who made Powhatan celebrated in the history of a state remarkable in every period for strongly defined public characters. In _Judith_ I named this man “Captain Macon.” In real life he was Capt. John Cocke, a scion of a good old family, a planter of abundant means, and the father of sons who were already beginning to take the place in the public eye he had held for fifty years. He was tall and gaunt, his once lofty head slightly bowed by years and—it was hinted—by high living. He had been handsome, and his glance was still piercing, his bearing distinguished. I ever cherished, as I might value a rare antique, the incident of his introduction to that stalwart dame, my New England grandmother, who had now been a member of our family for three years.

We were on our way home after service at Fine Creek, and the carriage had stopped at a wayside spring to water the horses. Captain Cocke stood by the spring, his bridle rein thrown over his arm while his horse stooped to the “branch” flowing across the highway. Expecting to see my mother in the carriage, he took off his hat and approached the window.

“This is my mother, Captain,” said my father, raising his voice slightly, as he then named the new-comer to her deaf ears.

The old cavalier bowed low, his hand upon his heart: “Madam, I am the friend of your son. I can say nothing more to a mother!”

The fine courtesy, the graceful deference to age, the instant adaptation of manner and words to the circumstances, have set the episode aside in my heart as a gem of its kind.

He wore on that Sunday, and he wore on every other day the year around, a scarlet hunting-coat. I wonder if there were more eccentrics in Virginia in that generation than are to be met with there—or anywhere else—nowadays? Certain it is that nobody thought of inquiring why Captain Cocke, whose ancestors had served under Washington and Lafayette in the war for freedom, chose to sport the British livery. We had ceased to remark upon it by the time I write of. When strangers expressed wonderment at the queer garb, we had a resentful impression of officiousness.

Mr. Rhodes, with the rest of his party, was thoroughly dissatisfied with the policy (or want of policy) of John Tyler, who had been called to the presidential chair by the untimely death of Gen. W. H. Harrison. In the progress of his review of national affairs, he came to this name when he had spoken half an hour or so.

Whereupon uprose the majestic figure clad in scarlet, from his seat a few feet away from the platform. The Captain straightened his bent shoulders and lifted lean arms and quivering fingers toward heaven. The red tan of his weather-beaten cheeks was a dusky crimson.

“The Lord have mercy upon the nation!” he cried, his voice solemn with wrath, and sonorous with the potency of the mint-juleps for which “The Bell” was noted. “Fellow-citizens! I always cry to High Heaven for mercy upon this country when John Tyler’s name is mentioned! Amen and amen!”

He had a hearty round of applause mingled with echoes of his “amens” and much good-humored laughter. They all knew and loved the Captain. I felt the blood rush to my face, and I saw others glance around reprovingly when a city girl who sat behind me, and carried on a whispered flirtation with a fopling at her side during Mr. Rhodes’s speech, drawled:

“What voice from the tombs is that?”

Mrs. James Saunders, née Mary Cocke, was my mother’s right-hand neighbor. With perfect temper and an agreeable smile, she looked over her shoulder into the babyish face of the cockney guest—

“That is my Uncle John,” she uttered, courteously.

Whereat all within hearing smiled, and the young woman had the grace to blush.

Mr. Rhodes was speaking again, and the audience was respectfully attentive. The orator made clever use of the Captain’s interruption. The manner of it offended nobody. John Tyler was, perhaps, the most unpopular man in the Union at that particular time. The Democrats had no use for him, and he had disappointed his own party. When the smoke and dust of political skirmishing cleared away, Virginians did something like justice to his motives and his talents. Twenty years thereafter, my early pre-possessions, engendered by the vituperative eloquence of the Clay campaign, were corrected by a quiet remark made by my father to a man who spoke slightingly of the ex-President:

“The man who chose the cabinet that served during Tyler’s administration was neither fool nor traitor.”

John Winston Jones demolished the fair fabric Mr. Rhodes had spent so much time and labor in constructing that I began to yawn before the lively Democrat woke me up. I recollect that he was pungent and funny, and that I was interested, despite his sacrilegious treatment of what I regarded as sacred themes.

It was a telling point when he drew deliberately a wicked-looking jack-knife from his breeches pocket, opened it as deliberately, and, turning toward Mr. Rhodes, who sat at his left, said:

“If I were to plunge this into the bosom of my friend and respected opponent (and I beg to assure him that I shall not hurt a hair of his head, now or ever!), would I be regarded as his benefactor? Yet that is what General Jackson did to the system of bank monopolies,” etc.

I did not follow him further. For a startled second I had really thought we were to have a “scene.” I had heard that Democrats were bloodthirsty by nature, and that sanguinary outbreaks attended political demonstrations and cataracts of bad whiskey.

It goes without saying that the Hon. Watkins Leigh—a distinguished member of the Richmond bar, famous for legal acumen and forensic oratory—made quick and thorough work in the destruction of Mr. Jones’s building, and sent the Whigs home with what I heard my mother describe as “a good taste in their mouths.”

The orations were interspersed with “patriotic songs.” A quartette of young men, picked out by the committee of arrangements, for their fine voices and stanch Whiggery, stood on the platform and sang the body of the ballads. The choruses were shouted, with more force and good-will than tunefulness, by masculine voters of all ages and qualities of tone.

Doctor Henning, an able physician, and as eccentric in his way as Captain Cocke in his, stood near my father, his back against a tree, his mouth wide, and all the volume of sound he could pump from his lungs pouring skyward in the refrain of

“Get out of the way, you’re all unlucky; Clear the track for Old Kentucky!”—

when his eye fell upon a young man, who, having no more ear or voice than the worthy Galen himself, contented himself with listening. As the quartette began the next verse, the Doctor collared “Abe” Cardozo (whom, by the way, he had assisted to bring into the world), and actually shook him in the energy of his patriotism—

“Abraham James! why don’t you sing?”

“Me, Doctor?” stammered the young fellow, who probably had not heard his middle name in ten years before—“I never sang a note in my life!”

“Then begin now!” commanded the Doctor, setting the example as the chorus began anew.

How my father laughed! backing out of sight of the pair, and doubling himself up in the enjoyment of the scene, real bright tears rolling down his cheeks. I heard him rehearse the incident twenty times in after-years, and always with keen delight. For the Doctor was a scholar and a dreamer, as well as a skilful practitioner, renowned for his horticultural and ornithological successes, and so taciturn and absent-minded that he seldom took part in general conversation. That he should have been drawn out of his shell to the extent of roaring out ungrammatical doggerel in a public assembly of his fellow-citizens, was a powerful proof of the tremendous force of party enthusiasm. The incongruity of the whole affair appealed to my father’s ever-active sense of humor. He would wind up the story by asserting that “it would have made Jeremiah chuckle if he had known both of the actors in the by-play.”

One specimen of the ballads that flooded the land in the fateful 1844 will give some idea of the tenor of all:

_Tune_: “Ole Dan Tucker”

“The moon was shining silver bright, the stars with glory crowned the night, High on a limb that ‘same old Coon’ was singing to himself this tune:

_Chorus_

“Get out of the way, you’re all unlucky; clear the track for Ole Kentucky!

“Now in a sad predicament the Lokies are for President; They have six horses in the pasture, and don’t know which can run the faster.

“The Wagon-Horse from Pennsylvany, the Dutchmen think he’s the best of any; But he must drag in heavy stages his Federal notions and low wages.

“They proudly bring upon the course an old and broken-down war-horse; They shout and sing: ‘Oh! rumpsey dumsey, Colonel Johnson killed Tecumsey!’

“And here is Cass, though not a dunce, will run both sides of the track at once; To win the race will all things copy, be sometimes pig and sometimes puppy.

“The fiery Southern horse, Calhoun, who hates a Fox and fears a Coon, To toe the scratch will not be able, for Matty keeps him in the stable.

“And here is Matty, never idle, a tricky horse that slips his bridle; In forty-four we’ll show him soon the little Fox can’t fool the Coon.

“The balky horse they call John Tyler, we’ll head him soon or burst his boiler; His cursed ‘grippe’ has seized us all, which Doctor Clay will cure next fall.

“The people’s fav’rite, Henry Clay, is now the ‘fashion’ of the day; And let the track be dry or mucky, we’ll stake our pile on Ole Kentucky.

“Get out of the way, he’s swift and lucky; clear the track for Ole Kentucky!”

(The chorus of each preceding verse is, “Get out of the way, you’re all unlucky,” etc. The “Fox” is Martin Van Buren, or “Matty.” The “Coon” is Clay. The “Wagon-Horse from Pennsylvany” is James Buchanan.)

Another ballad, sung that day under the trees at the back of the Court House, began after this wise:

“What has caused this great commotion Our ranks betray? It is the ball a-rolling on To clear the way For Harry Clay. And with him we’ll beat your Polk! Polk! Polk! And his motley crew of folk. O! with him we’ll beat your Polk.”

To my excited imagination it was simple fact, not a flight of fancy, that Powhatan should be alluded to that day as “your historic county—a mere wave in the vast Union—

“That ever shall be Divided as billows, yet one as the sea.”

“A wave, fellow-citizens, that has caught the irresistible impulse of wind and tide bearing us on to the most glorious victory America has ever seen.”

Ah’s me! That was how both parties talked and felt with regard to the Union seventeen years before the very name became odious to those who had been ready to die in defence of it.

I cannot dismiss the subject of public functions in the “historic county” without devoting a few pages to the annual Muster Day. It was preceded by five days of “officers’ training.” The manœuvres of the latter body were carried on in the public square, and, as one end of our house overlooked this, no lessons were studied or recited between the hours of 10 A.M. and 4 P.M. on those days. The sophisticated twentieth-century youngling will smile contemptuously at hearing that, up to this time, I had never heard a brass-band. But I knew all about martial music. Already there was laid away in the fat portfolio nobody except myself ever opened, a story in ten parts, in which the hero’s voice was compared to “the thrilling strains of martial music.”

I boiled the tale down four years thereafter, and it was printed. It had a career. But “that is another story.”

I used to sit with my “white work,” or a bit of knitting, in hand, at that end window, looking across the side-street down upon the square, watching the backing and filling, the prancing and the halting of the eight “officers” drilled in military tactics by Colonel Hopkins, the strains of the drum and fife in my ears, and dream out war-stories by the dozen.

The thumping and the squealing of drum and fife set my pulses to dancing as the finest orchestra has never made them leap since that day when fancy was more real and earnest than what the bodily senses took in.

By Saturday the officers had learned their lesson well enough to take their respective stands before (and aft, as we shall see) the larger body of free and independent American citizens who were not “muster free,” hence who must study the noble art of war.

They came from every quarter of the county. The Fine Creek and Genito neighborhoods gave up their quota, and Deep Creek, Red Lane, and Yellow Jacket country kept not back. It was a motley and most democratic line that stretched from the main street to that flanking the public square. Butternut and broadcloth rubbed elbows; planter and overseer were shoulder to shoulder. “Free, white, and twenty-one” had the additional qualification of “under forty-five.” Past that, the citizen of these free and enlightened United States lays down the burden of peaceable military muster.

Besides those worn by the officers, there was not a uniform on duty that Saturday. Here and there one might descry the glitter of a gun-barrel. Walking-canes and, with the Yellow Jacket contingent, corn-stalks, simulated muskets in the exercises dictated by Colonel Hopkins, who was to-day at his best. I employ the word “dictated” with intention. He had to tell the recruits (surely the rawest ever drawn up in line) exactly what each order meant. To prevent the swaying array from leaning back against the fence, three officers were detailed to skirmish behind the long row and shove delinquents into place. The Colonel instructed them how to hold their “arms,” patiently; in the simplest colloquial phrase, informed them what each was to do when ordered to “shoulder arms,” “right dress,” “mark time,” and the rest of the technicalities confusing to ears unlearned, and which, heard by the veteran but once in a twelve-month, could not be familiar even after ten or fifteen years of “service.”

Both the windows commanding the parade-ground were filled on Muster Day. My mother and our grown-up cousins enjoyed the humors of the situation almost as much as we girls, who let nothing escape our eager eyes. Especially do I recall the shout of laughter we drew away from our outlook to stifle, when the suave commanding officer, mindful of the dull comprehension and crass ignorance of a large proportion of his corps, directed them in a clear voice—whose courteous intonations never varied under provocations that would have thrown some men into paroxysms of mirth, and moved many to profanity—to “look straight forward, hold the chin level, and let the hands hang down, keeping thumbs upon the seam of the pantaloons.” More technical terms would have been thrown away. Twenty warriors (prospective) brought both hands forward and laid their thumbs, side by side, upon the central seams of their pantaloons! Merriment, that threatened to be like the “inextinguishable laughter” of Olympian deities, followed the grave anxieties of the officials in rear and front of the mixed multitude to hinder those at the extreme ends of the line from bending forward to watch the manœuvres of comrades who occupied the centre of the field. In spite of hurryings to and fro and up and down the ranks, it chanced, half a dozen times an hour, that what should have been a straight line became a curve. Then the gallant, indomitable Colonel would walk majestically from end to end, and with the flat of his naked sword repair the damage done to discipline—

“Just like a boy rattling a stick along the palings!” gasped Cousin Mary, choking with mirth.

The simile was apt.

Some staid citizens, tenacious of dignity and susceptible to ridicule, seldom appeared upon the parade-ground, preferring to pay the fine exacted for the omission. Others—and not a few—contended that some familiarity with military manœuvres was essential to the mental outfit of every man who would be willing to serve his country in the field if necessary. This sentiment moved sundry of the younger men to the formation, that same year (if I mistake not), of the “Powhatan Troop.”

One incident connected with the birth of an organization that still exists, in name, fixed it in my mind. Cousin Joe—the hero of my childish days—was mainly instrumental in getting up the company, and brought the written form of constitution and by-laws to my father’s house, where he dined on the Court Day which marked the first parade. Our kinsman, Moses Drury Hoge, came with him. He prided himself, among a great many other things, upon being phenomenally far-sighted. To test this he asked Cousin Joe to hold the paper against the wall on the opposite side of the room, and read it aloud slowly and correctly from his seat, twenty feet away.

The scene came back to me as it was photographed on my mind that day, when I read, ten years ago, in a Richmond paper, of the prospective celebration of the formation of the “Powhatan Troop.” I was more than four hundred miles away, and fifty-odd years separated me from the “historic county” and the Court House where the banquet was to be given. I let the paper drop and closed my eyes. I was back in the big, square room on the first floor of the long, low, rambling house on the village street. My favorite cousin, tall and handsome, held the paper above his head, smiling in indulgent amusement at the young kinsman of whom he was ever fond and proud. My father stood in the doorway, watching the progress of the test. My mother had let her sewing fall to her lap while she looked on. The scent of roses from the garden that was the joy of my mother’s heart, stole in through open doors and windows. The well-modulated tones, that were to ring musically in church and hall on both sides of the sea, and for more than a half-century to come, read the formal agreement, of which I recalled, in part, the preamble:

“_We, the undersigned, citizens of the County of Powhatan, in the State of Virginia._”

While the glamour of that moment of ecstatic reminiscence wrought within me, I seized my pen and wrote a telegram of congratulation to the revellers, seated, as I reckoned, at that very hour, about the banqueting-board. I addressed the despatch to Judge Thomas Miller, the grandson of the chairman on the day of the Whig rally. By a remarkable and happy coincidence, for which I had hardly dared to hope, the telegram, sent from a country station in New Jersey, flew straight and fast to the obscure hamlet nearly five hundred miles off, and was handed to Judge Miller at the head of the table while the feast was in full flow. He read it aloud, and the health of the writer was drunk amid such applause as my wildest fancy could not have foreseen in the All-So-Long-Ago when my horizon, all rose-color and gold, was bounded by the confines of “Our County.”

XIV

RUMORS OF CHANGES—A CORN-SHUCKING—NEGRO TOPICAL SONG

MY mother’s love for Richmond was but second to that she felt for husband and children. It was evident to us in after-years that her longing to return to her early home wrought steadily, if silently, upon my father’s mind and shaped his plans.

These plans were definitively made and announced to us by the early autumn of 1844. Uncle Carus had removed to the city with his family late in the summer. My sister and I were to be sent to a new school just established in Richmond, and recommended to our parents by Moses Hoge, who was now assistant pastor in the First Presbyterian Church, and had full charge of a branch of the same, built farther up-town than the Old First founded by Dr. John H. Rice. We girls were to live with the Caruses that winter. In the spring the rest of the family would follow, and, thenceforward, our home would be in Richmond.

A momentous change, and one that was to alter the complexion of all our lives. Yet it was so gradually and quietly effected that we were not conscious of so much as a jar in the machinery of our existence.

I heard my mother say, and more than once, in after-years, crowded with incident and with cares of which we never dreamed in those eventless months:

“I was never quite contented to live anywhere out of Richmond, yet I often asked myself during the seven years we spent in Powhatan if they were not the most care-free I should ever have. I know, now, that they were.”

My father gave a fervent assent when he heard this. To him the sojourn was prosperous throughout. Energy, integrity, public spirit, intelligence, and, under the exterior chance acquaintances thought stern, the truest heart that ever throbbed with love to God and love to man, had won for him the esteem and friendship of the best men in the county. Steadily he mounted, by the force of native worth, to the magistrate’s bench, and was a recognized factor in local and in state politics. He had established a flourishing Sunday-school in the “Fine Creek neighborhood,” where none had ever existed until he made this the nucleus of a church. He was the confidential adviser of the embarrassed planter and the struggling mechanic, and lent a helping hand to both. He was President of a debating society, in which he was, I think, the only man who was not a college graduate.

His business had succeeded far beyond his expectations. Except that the increase of means moved him to larger charities, there was no change in our manner of life. We had always been above the pinch of penury, living as well as our neighbors, and, so far as the younger members of the family knew, as well as any reasonable people need desire to live. We had our carriage and horses, my sister and I a riding-horse apiece, abundance of delicacies for the table, and new clothes of excellent quality whenever we wanted them.

The ambitions and glories of the world beyond our limited sphere came to our ken as matter of entertainment, not as provocatives to discontent.