Part 12 (1/2)
”_Sic itur ad astra!_”
{69} Before sunrise I had crossed the threshold ofwound ht, over a prairie fifteen ht, The keen de upcabin in the middle of the plain, the nature and extent of ed matron, who had coet, _stran-ger_; but you'll just take your _creetur_ to the crib and _gin_ him his feed; _bekase_, d'ye see, the old man is kind o' _drinkin_ to-day; yester' was 'lection, ye know”
From the depths of my sympathetic emotions was I moved for the poor old body, ith e; and I had proceeded forthwith, agreeable to instructions, to satisfy the cravings of my patient animal, ho should appear but my tipsified host, _in propria persona_, at the door The little old gentle towards the spot where I stood, and, war my hand, whispered to me, with a most irresistible serio-comic air, ”_that he was drunk_;” and ”that he was four hours last night getting hoer, you won't think hard on me,” he continued, in his maudlin manner: ”I'm a poor, drunken old fellow! but old Jim wan't al'ays so; old Ji his face in his toilworn hands, as, having now regained the house, he seated himself with difficulty upon the {70} doorstep ”Once,out, whip, lift, or throw any amon, if he _was_ a _leetle_ fellow: but _now_--there's the receipt of his disgrace--there,” he exclai forth before ladiator ar with excite astonishment at the spectacle, he assured me that these wounds had been torn in the flesh by the teeth of infuriated antagonists in drunken quarrels, though the relation see to divert histopic, on which it seeht, I made some inquiries relative to his farh culture--and respecting the habits of the prairie-wolf, a large ani crossed ht of dawn Upon the latter inquiry the oldon his hands Looking up at length with an arch expression, he said, ”Stran-ger, I _haint_ no _larnin_; I _can't_ read; but don't the Book say so-streaked cattle?” ”Yes” ”Well, and how old Jake's ring-streaked and round-spotted _creeturs_, after a _leetle_, got the better of all the stock, and overrun the _univarsal_ herd; don't the Book say so?”
”So so” ”Well, now for the wolves: they're all colours but ring-streaked and round-spotted; and if the sucker-faret {71} the better of all the geese, turkeys, and _hins_ in the barnyard, speckled or no!”
My breakfast was now on the table; a substantial fare of corn-bread, butter, honey, fresh eggs, _fowl_, and _coffee_, which latter are as invariably visitants at an Illinois table as is bacon at a Kentucky one, and that is saying no little The exhilarating herb tea is rarely seen An anecdote will illustrate thisin Illinois, stopped one evening at a log cabin with a violent headache, and requested that never-failing antidote, _a cup of tea_
There was none in the house; and, having despatched a boy to a distant grocery to procure a pound, he threw hie was handed him, the first shich nearly excoriated his ony of the moment he dashed down the bowl, and rushed half blinded to the fireplace Over the blaze was suspended a huge iron kettle, half filled with an inky fluid, seething, and boiling, and bubbling, like the witches' caldron of unutterable things in Macbeth The good old lady, in her anxiety to give her sick guest a _strong_ dish of tea, having never seen the like herself or drank thereof, and supposing it sonorantly poured the whole pound into her largest kettle, and set it a boiling Poultry is the other standing dish of Illinois; and the poor birds seem to realize that their destiny is at hand whenever a traveller draws nigh, for they invariably hide their heads beneath the nearest covert Indeed, so invariably are poultry and bacon visitants at an Illinois table, that {72} the story _uest by the village landlord is the following: ”Well, stran-ger, what'll ye take: wheat-bread and _chicken fixens_, or corn-bread and _coant soubriquet being signified bacon
Breakfast being over, my foot was once ateway, and shaking ood-nature, pressed ain when he was _not drunk_ I had proceeded but a few steps onafter er! what do you reckon of sending this young Jack Stewart to Congress?” ”Oh, he'll answer” ”Well, and that's what I' to vote; and there's a heap o' people always thinks like old Jiht”
I could not but co on what had passed He was evidently no common toper; for some of his remarks evinced a keenness of observation, and a depth and shrewdness of thought, which even the withering blight of drunkenness had not completely deadened; and which, with other habits and other circuht have placed hiue
_Decatur, Ill_
XXIX
”Ay, but to die, and go we know not where!”
_Measure for Measure_
”Plains immense, inter eye, Unfix'd, is in a verdant ocean lost”
THOMSON
”Ye shall have miracles; ay, sound ones too, Seen, heard, attested, everything but true”
MOORE
”Call in the barber! If the tale be long, He'll cut it short, I trust”
MIDDLETON
There are few sentireat man Benjamin Franklin for which he isthe burial-place of the departed[197] The grave-yard is, and should ever be deemed, a _holy_ spot; consecrated, not by the cold for ceremony, but by the solemn sacredness of the heart Who that has committed to earth's cold bosom the relics of one dearer, perchance, than existence, can ever after pass the burial-ground with a careless heart There is nothing which s--if I may except that wanton desecration of God's sanctuary in some sections of our land {74} for a public cohted and abused It is like wounding the memory of a buried friend And yet it is an assertion which cannot be refuted, that, notwithstanding the reverence which, as a people, we have failed not to ard and obsequy is not with us observed in the sacred rites as a the inhabitants of the Eastern heather up an opinion from circuround appropriated as a cees of our land was devoted to this most holy of purposes solely because useless for every other; as if, after seizing upon every spot for the benefit of the living, this last poor _re-place for the departed And thus has it happened that rounds of our land have either been located in a region so lone and solitary,
”You scarce would start to meet a spirit there,”
or they have been thrust out into the very lare of sunshi+ne, noise, and dust; ”the gaudy, babbling, and remorseless day,” with hardly a wall of stones to protect them from the inroads of unruly brutes or brutish men It is as if the rites of sepulture were refused, and the poor boon of a resting-place in the boso; as if, in our avarice of soul, we grudged even the last narrow house destined for all; and {75} fain would resuift our departed ones may retain Who would not dread ”_to die_” and have his lifeless clay deposited thus! Who would not, ere the last fleeting particle of existence had ”ebbed to its finish,” and the feeble breathing had forsaken its teneuish of his spirit in the melancholy prayer,
”When breath and sense have left this clay, In yon damp vault, oh lay reen, and sunny spot”
Reverence for the departed is ever a beautiful feature of humanity, and has struck us with admiration for nations of our race who could boast but few redee traits beside It is, moreover, a circumstance not a little remarkable in the history of funeral obsequy, that veneration for the departed has prevailed in a ratio al to account for this circumstance, or to instance the multitude of examples which recur to every mind in its illustration, I would only refer to that deep religion of the soul which Nature has implanted in the heart of her si him to preserve and to honour the bones of his fathers! And those mysteriousas they rise in lonely grandeur from our beautiful prairies, and look down upon the noble strea their base!