1. The Barbecue
Yoo would have known that it was a holiday in the county-seat village of Luzerne, had you fallen in with a party of country boys dressed in white cotton shirts and trousers of blue jeans, who hurried along the road at sun rise, to the summit of the hill that overlooks the town. You might have guessed that it was an occasion of merry-making by the eager speech and over-reaching steps of the boys, hastening, boy-like, hours beforehand to the scene of anticipated excitement, trembling lest some happening of interest should be unseen by them. Job's war-horse was never half so eager for the fray. Hearing already the voices of others of their kind shouting in the village streets below, they do not pause a moment on the crest but plunge forward down the " dug-road " that slants along the steep hill-side, until it reaches the level plain below and debouches into the main street of the town.
But you, had you been of their company, must have halted on the hill to look off eastward where the sun is quivering in the thin yellow-and-white horizon-clouds that hang over green hills. You must have stopped to look at the Luzerne island in its many shades of green, from the dark maple-leaf to the lighter cotton-wood and sycamore, the whole fringed by a margin of yet pale* water-willows which dip their outermost boughs iuto the placid water of the broad Ohio, glistening in the early sunlight like the apocalyptic river of life. You must have paused and looked away in the other direction to the long stretch of river to the westward, till at last in a grand sweep to the south you lost sight of that majestic current, which first by the Indians, then by the French, and then by the English-speaking settlers has been called " The Beautiful." You must have looked across the mile-wide current to the little Kentucky village on the bank opposite you, its white houses shut in by a line of green hills behind. And just beneath, on the nearer bank, lies Luzerne, one of the oldest towns in this new country, and the fairest object in the landscape. There are no fine houses only white " frame " and red brick ones, with now and then an aboriginal lo;-cabin standing like an old settler, unabashed among more genteel neighbors. But all the yards are full of apple-trees and rose-bushes and lilacs lay-looks the people call them and altheas and flowering almonds. Here one sees chimney-tops and roofs jutting out of the surrounding green of the trees, and there are large patches of unfenced greensward or " common " upon which the newly-milked cows are already congregating, their bells, on different keys, keeping up a ceateless tinkling. You see the brand-new court-house with glittering brass ball above the belfry, standing in the treeless, grass-green "public square;" and there in plain sight is the old town pump in front of the court-house, and about it the boys and girls w T ho have come hither for water.
But the party of country boys with whom we started have almost reached the foot of the hill. They have gone clown running, walking, and leaping by turns. Now ana then one of them stops, and looking over the valley and the village, swings his cap and cries out : " Hurrah for Harrison and Tyler ! " or, " Hurrah for Tippecanoe and Tyler too ! " Not, perhaps, because he knows or cares anything about the candidates for the presidency, but because a young cock must flap his wings and crow. Most of the enthusiasm of a political canvass is the effervescence of animal spirits. The struggle of the leaders is to make this overflowing tide of surplus life grind their grists. It was the processions and hard cider and log-cabins of 1840 that gave the Whigs the election.
But now other parties of straggling boys and men are coming: into the village, afoot and on horseback, over this hill, and over others, and along the river-banks; while skiffs are crossing from Kentucky. In the village the trees are full of birds; yellow-hammers, jays, blue-birds, sap-suckers, red-birds, pee-wees, cat-birds, martins, and all the others that abound in the genial climate of Southern Indiana, are filling the air with their whistling calls to one another; the singing locust sends forth everywhere in quick-following vibrant waves his curious notes ; but we do not hear these things. The usually quiet streets have already the premonitory symptoms of the on-coming excitement of the day, and the village lads in Sunday clothes, but barefoot none the less, are singing lustily to one another, such refrains as this :
" Hurrah for Harrison and Tyler !
Beat the Dutch or bast your b'iler ! "
to which some sturdy Democratic boy, resolved not to strike his colors, replies with a defiant, " Hurrah for Little Van ! " and the Whig, feeling himself in the ascendant for the day, responds by singing :
" Little Van's a used-up man,
A used-up man, a used-up man,
A used-up man is he ! "
But the opposite side can readily answer again with ditties quite as forcible and ungrammatical.
By this time it wants a quarter of six o'clock, and the bell in the belfry of the tavern is ringing in a jerky fashion its warning for breakfast. It is the one invariable thing holidays may come and go, but the tavern bell never fails to ring at six and twelve and six, with a first bell fifteen minutes before the hours for meals. The movements of all the people in the town are regulated by this steady old bell, and were it to waver in its punctuality the life of the community would be thrown into disorder ; clocks would have no regulator ; meals would be out of time ; farmers would not know when to start homeward ; preachers would have no reminder of the length of their sermons.
By seven o'clock on this day of the barbecue, the village is in a state of general expectancy. Girls are traveling to and fro singly and in squads ; women are talking to each other over garden fences, and at front gates ; merchants in their Sunday clothes are standing on the sidewalks, and Doys are hurrying away to the great beech-woods on the river-bank above the town, where the barbecue is to bo held, and then hurrying back to the village to see what is to be seen there. Wagons, loaded with provisions of various sorts, are constantly arriving from the country and making their way direct to the barbecue ground.
" Where are you going, Roxy ? " asks a girl of sixteen in a lawn dress of another a year older, perhaps, in a bright new gingham. She speaks with that flutter of expectancy in her voice which girls always have at such times.
" To the beech-woods to see them roast the oxen-I thought it might please Bobo, here," and saying this she turned toward a pale boy whom she led by the hand.
" Please Bobo here," the lad echoed, with a childish exultation, and a strange wistful look in his eyes.
" I wonder what poor Bobo thinks about these things ? " said the girl in lawn, looking at the lad's pale face and uncertain eves.
" Bobo thinks about these things," he echoed, with a baby-like chuckle of happiness.
" I believe he does, don't you, Roxy ? "
" I know he does," said Roxy, looking at her unfortunate charge tenderly ; " to be sure he does."
" To be sure he does," chimed in Bobo, with a delight, which was increased by the smiles of the girls.
" You see," continued Roxy, " he was a very smart little fellow till he got that fall. I don't think his mind is injured, exactly. It is only the brain. It seems to me like old Mrs. Post's cataract over her eyes, a sort of film a cataract over his mind, Twonnet.* Things don't get in and out well, but he seems to keep trying to think in side."
" Think inside ! " cried the foolish fellow, beginning now to pull Roxy's hand to signify that he wanted to go, and saying, " See how nice ! " as he pointed to the flag? suspended over the street.
* This orthography best represents the common pronunciation of the nam? among the village peaple. It rhymes exactly with the word " bonnet."
" He is very fond of red," exclaimed Roxy.
" You're better than most people, Roxy. They'd be ashamed to take anybody that was was simple you know, around with them."
" Why ? " said Roxy, in surprise. " I think Bobo win always be one of those ' little ones ' that are mentioned in the Bible. He don't know any harm, and I won't let him learn any. I could hardly live without him." Then she added in a lower tone : " I used to feel a little ashamed of him sometimes when people laughed. But that was a very bad feeling, I am sure. Good Bobo ! "
" Good Bobo ! " he chuckled, still pulling at Roxy's hand until she had to go on, Bobo expressing his pleasure whenever they passed beneath the flags. Going through the crowd of people in holiday dress, who were slaking their thirst at the town pump the handle of which had no rest they turned at last into the principal street running toward the river. The village was chiefly built upon the second bank or terrace. The street led them down to the lower bank, which was thinly occupied by one or two hay warehouses and some dilapidated dwellings. This part of the town had once been in r fair way to take the lead on account of its proximity to tne landing, but in the great flood of 1832 the river had quite submerged it, rising almost to the height of the rooms on the second floor, and floating away one or two buildings. The possibility of a repetition of this calamity had prevented the erection of new houses on this level, and some of the better ones had been given up by their owners, so that now this part of the town was the domain of fisher .nen, boatmen, and those poor people who, having always to struggle to keep the soul in the body, are glad to get any ehelter in which to keep the body itself. The fewness of their chattels made removals easy, and since they were, most of them, amphibious creatures, they had no morbid dread of a freshet. Several of the better class, too, had held on to their rose-embowered homes on this lovely river-bank, declaring their belief that " the flood of '32 " had deepened the channel of the river, so that there wae now no danger.
But this lower bank seemed all the more beautiful to Roxy and Bobo that there were so few houses on it. The fences for the most part had not been rebuilt after the flood, so that there was a broad expanse of greensward. Their path took them along the river-bank, and to Roxy the wide river was always a source of undefined joy.
Following the hurrying squads of boys and men, and the track of wagons, they came at last into the forest of primeval beech that stretched away for a mile above the town, on this lower flat bordering the river. Here were not such beech-trees as grow on the rocky-hills of New England, stunted in height and with a divided trunk. These great trees, having a deep and fertile soil, push their trunks in stately columns heavenward, sending forth, everywhere, slender lateral limbs that droop soon after leaving the trunk, then recover themselves and droop a little once more at the distant tips, almost making Hogarth's line. The stillness of the deep shade was broken now by the invasion of busy men and idle boys ; there were indescribable cries ; the orders, advice, and jokes shouted from one to another, had a sound as of desecration. Here a table was being spread, set in the form of a hollow square to accommodate a thousand people ; in another place hundreds of great loaves of bread were being cut into slices by men with sharp knives.
All of this pleased Bobo, but when at last Roxy took him to the pit, thirty feet long, over which half a lozen oxen split in halves wero undergoing the process called barbecuing, he was greatly excited. A great fire had been kept burning in this trench during the night, and now the bottom, six feet below the surface, was covered with a bed of glowing coals. As the beeves over this fire were turned from time to time, they kept up a constant hissing, as such a giant's broil must ; and this sound with the intense heat terrified the lad.
He was better pleased when Roxy led him away to a tree where a thrifty farmer was selling ginger-cakes and cider, and spent all her money five old-fashioned " coppers " in buying for him a glass of cider which sold for five cents, with a scolloped ginger-cake thrown in.
But now the drum and fife were heard, and Roxy could plainly see a procession of Whigs from the country coming down the hill in the rear of the village. Others wero coming by the other roads that led into the town. The crowd of idlers who scattered about the grove started pell-mell for the village, where all of these companies, in wagons and on horseback, were to be formed into one grand procession.
But Roxy took pains to secure for Bobo a perch on a fence-corner at the end of the lane by which the wood was entered. When at last the procession came, the poor fellow clapped his hands at sight of the wagons with logcabins and great barrels of " hard cider" on them. The waving banner gave him pleasure, and the drum and fife Bet him in an ecstasy. When the crowd cheered foi Harrison and Tyler, He did not fail to join in the shout. The party uf country boys who had come over the hill in the morning, observing the delight of the poor fellow, began to make sport of him, calling him an idiot, and quizzing him with puzzling questions, thus drawing the attention of the crowd to Bobo, who sat on the fence, and to Roxy, who stood by, and tried in vain to shield him from the mockery.
Happily, about that time the procession halted on account of some difficulty in turning an angle with the long wagon which held the twenty-five allegorical young girls from Posey township, who represented the two dozen states of the Union, with a plump Hoosier Goddess of Liberty presiding over them. It happened that in the part of the procession which halted opposite to Bobo's perch on the fence, was Mark Bonaray, who was quite an important figure in the procession. His father Colonel Bonamy had been a member of Congress, and as a Whig son of a Democratic father of such prominence, the young man of twenty-one was made much of. Reckoned the most promising young man in the county, he was today to declaim his maiden speech before the great audience at the barbecue. But being a politician, already ambitious for office, he chose not to ride in the carriage with the " orators of the day," but on his own horse among the young men, to whose good-will he must look for his political success. The boys perched on the " rider " of the rail-fence were now asking Bobo questions, to which the simple fellow only gave answer by echoing the last word* ; and seeing the flush of pain on Roxy's face at the laughter thus excited, Mark called out to the boy to let Bobo alone.
" It don't matter," replied the boy ; " he's only a fool, anyhow, if he is named Bonaparte."
At this the other boys tittered, but young Bonamy wheeled his hcrse out of the line, and, seizing Bobo's chief toi mentor by the collar of his roundabout, gave him a vigorous shaking, and then dropped him trembling with terror to the ground. His comrades, not wishing to meet the same punishment, leaped down upon the other side of the fence and dispersed into the crowd.
" Thank you, Mark," said Roxy.
"Oh, that's all right," answered Mark, with "Western unconventionality. He tried to look unconscious as he again took his place in the ranks with reddened face, and the same crowd that had laughed at the ridicule put upon Bobo now cheered Mark for punishing his persecutor. Even Bobo showed satisfaction at the boy's downfall.
The Whig leaders of 1840 roasted beeves in order to persuade the independent voters to listen to arguments on the tariff; they washed down abstruse reasonings about the United States Bank with hard cider ; and by good feeding persuaded the citizens to believe in internal improvement. But in order to the success of such a plan, it was necessary that the speeches should come first. The procession, therefore, was marched to the stand ; the horsemen dismounted ; the allegorical young ladies, who represented sovereign states dressed in white muslin, took places on the stand ; and most of the other people seated themselves on the benches in front, while the drums and fifes were played on the platform, where also were ranged the speakers and some ornamental figures an ex-Congressman, a colonel of the war of 1812, and a few lingering veterans of the Revolution, who sat near the front, that their gray hairs, solitary arms, and wooden legs might be the irore conspicuous.
Since Mark Bonamy's interference in her behalf, Roxy had rapidly elevated the young man into a hero. Sha cared nothing whatever about banks or tariffs, or internal improvements, but now she was eager to hear Mark make his speech. For when an enthusiastic young girl comes to admire a man for one thing, she straightway sets about finding other reasons for admiration.
Mark was sent to the front to make the opening speech, upon which one of the young men got up on a bench in the back part of the audience and cried : " Three cheers for Bonamy ! " The grateful Roxy was pleased with this tribute to her hero, whose triumph seemed somewhat to be her own. Bobo recognized his deliverer and straightway pointed his finger at Mark, saying to Roxy :
" Looky, Roxy, looky there ! "
Indeed, she had much trouble to keep him from pointing and talking throughout Mark's speech.
In Roxy's estimation the speech was an eloquent one. There were no learned discussions of banks and tariffs, no exhaustive treatment of the question of the propriety of internal improvements by the general government all of these questions were to be handled by Judge Wool, who was double-shotted with statistics. Mark Bonamy's speech was not statesman-like. It was all the more popular for that. He had the advantage, to begin with, of a fine presence. His large, well-formed body, his healthful handsome countenance, his clear eye, and the general look of quick intelligence about him, and a certain air of good-fellowship won upon the audience, even while the young: man stood with flushed face waiting: for the cheering to subside. He did not lack self-possession, and his speech was full of adroit appeals to national pride and to party spirit. He made some allusions to the venerable soldiers who sat by him and to their comrades who slumbered in their bloody graves on the hard-fought fields of Bunker Hill and Brandywine. and Germantown and Trenton. He brought forth rounds of cheers by his remarks on Harrison's log-cabin. Measured by the applause he gained it was the best speech of the day. A critic might have said that many of the most telling pjints were unfairly taken, but a critic has no place at a barbecue. How else could Roxy judge of such a speech but by the effect ?
Very few of the voters were able to follow Judge Wool's argument against the veto of the Bank Bill and the removal of the deposits, and in favor of the adoption of a protective tariff that should save the country from the jaws of the British lion. But the old heads declared it a "mighty weighty" argument, and the young ones, feeling its heaviness, assented. After some stirring speeches by more magnetic men, there was music by the drum and fife, and then the hungry crowd surrounded the tables, on which there was little else but bread and the barbecued meat.