Boyhood and other days in Georgia

Front matter

BY

George W Yarbrough, D.D.

Superannuate Member or the North Georgia Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South

Preface

My life has been undulating. There has been in it less of monotony than of anything else.

If I were to leave to the public an autobiography, its readers, if they should become interested in it and should be asked to give a reason for it, might reply, like the man found intently engaged in the perusal of a dictionary: "We like to read it because it changes the subject so often."

I have climbed the mountains and have luxuriated in the valleys ; the great cities have opened their wonders to me, and I have gone from them into the quiet and simplicity of the country; I have mingled with the great and have been happy with the lowly. In the mansions of the white man I have shared an abounding hospitality and have relished a frugal repast in the cabin of the negro; I have been honored with the companionship of the learned and have received from those of less attainments many contributions to the education of a side of my life without which any life is sadly deficient.

Having touched all conditions of society, running back to my third year of age, and connecting those years with the years that have succeeded to the present like a shifting panorama, I have found my pen with enough to employ it without attempting the realm of fictitious genius or magnifying the matters of real life into tedious and burdensome proportions.

My aim has been to give the plowboy something that he will read while his pony is feeding at noon, and not wholly to disappoint those of better advantages.

The book originated in the mind, wish, and request of others.

Dr. Young J. Allen, my college mate and club mate and for more than half a century my intimate friend, riding with me on a buggy road while on a visit to the homeland, turned his large, soft gray eyes on me and said: "George, you must write a book." We talked it over and fixed on a title.

Deeper than the suggestions of many others, highly as they were appreciated, did the request of this, to me, the grandest of men sink into my heart. The world has never been the same to me since his death.

Yet it does seem to me that an apology is due my readers for sending forth another book, when this old globe of ours may be fitly compared to a vast library wheeling around the sun.

This response to the wish of many friends whom I love may be read. If so, it will need no apology ; if not, an apology will not help it, and this is my apology for not offering an apology. G. W Y.

Part One. Reminiscences of Childhood and Boyhood CHAPTER PAGE

I. In the Bend of the Towaliga 13

II. Boyhood Recollections of Meriwether County, Georgia, in the

First Fifties 19

III. Roamings, Reminiscences, and Reflections, 1881 26

Part Two. Concerning Oxford and Emory Days

I. My Emory and Conference Classmate, Rev. John T. Norris, of

the North Georgia Conference 37

II. Oxford's War Heroine 42

III. Let It Speedily Rise to His Honor and Glory 47

IV. The Enthronement of Christian Principle the Condition of At-

taining the Best in Character 50

Part Three. Recollections of the Itinerancy

I. Packing and Unpacking 65

II. My Forty-Fourth Move in the Methodist Itinerancy 69

IV. From West to East 80

V. A Month's Release for Rest 87

VI. Spring Days at Miccosukee 92

Part Four. Georgia Stories and Selections

I. How the Cats Helped to Cure the Croaker 99

II. Hannibal and Rowland 102

III. Dogs of Other Ownership 105

IV. Dick's Chum— Vagabond Bob— Senator Vest's Classic Eulogy on

the Dog in

V. Romance of Cracker's Neck 114

VI. Which? 124

Part Five. Personal Sketches and Else

I. Bishop E. M. Marvin at the Session of the North Georgia Conference in 1872 I29

II. Decatur, Georgia, in the Latter Forties 137

CHAPTER FAGK

III. A Social Function in the Mountains of Upper Georgia 146

IV. More Giraffes than Stalls 149

V. A Countryman's Sunday in the City 151

Part Six. Monographs and Meditations

I. A Response to a Wish 161

II. A Promise Remembered 165

III. Intellectual Benefits from Bible Doctrines 168

IV. The Authority of the Pulpit 172

V. The Falling Off 175

VI. The Devotional Use of the Holy Scriptures 180

VII. Knowing Our Families after the Flesh and Not after Christ... 198

VIII. The Night Interview in Jerusalem 203

Part Seven. Sermons and Other Addresses

I. The Law of Mutual Dependence in the Formation of Character. 209

II. Death before Life 219

III. First Half of Our First Century 236

IO

Part One Reminiscences Of Childhood And Boyhood

M

CHAPTER I In the Bend of the Towaliga

Y heart for many years had been set on a visit to the bend of Towaliga River near High Falls, in Monroe County, Georgia, where I lived when a child three years old.

Let me say to the brethren of the Methodist itinerant ranks that they will find it a great help to rest a little after getting their appointments, and a little well-chosen solitude will prove a great advantage. It soothes the asperities, quiets the nerves, closes the ear against much that it ought not to hear, veils the eye from much that it ought not to see, opens the heart to many soft, sweet, refreshing experiences, and will enable it to weigh its pinions against another year's battle with the storm. Solitude is the pavilion into which our Captain invites his soldiers to confer about the battle.

I took a rest of two days, including a Sunday, after the session of the North Georgia Conference of 1900.

My dear friend, Tom Cochran, of Barnesville, was kind enough to place at my disposal his wife's elegant turnout, Flora and the buggy, and I was soon on the old Alabama Road, one of the historic highways of Georgia, heading for one of the dearest spots on earth to me. All the old stagecoach lines in Georgia are historic. Along this route the great "Harry of the West" was drawn by six splendid claybank horses when he was the idol of his country, and Martin Van Buren made a tour along the same route. One fact about the latter that I heard years ago came to mind. In a group of distinguished gentleman, of which he was the center, a bet was made that he could not be induced to answer directly any question. This question was put to him: "Mr. Van Buren, does the sun rise in the east or in the west ?" As quick as thought came the reply: "East and west, gentlemen, are relative terms."

I was also reminded of the only politics I ever had or ever intend to have — a Henry Clay Whig. I had many a fight over this ground in my boyhood; and if all of us would let the whole truth out, we would confess to a kind of all-gone feeling ever since this star of the West faded from the heavens. During the war of the sixties I rode through the slashes of old Hanover, Virginia, near where he was born and went to mill, and I felt like rising in my stirrups and giving a whoop. The sixties would not have rolled their floods of war over our country if Henry Clay had been followed. The hills, the trees, and the streams along the old Alabama Road that afternoon seemed to be trying to tell me that Henry Clay once rode where I was riding. Will the twentieth century, or any century, send another Henry Clay to Washington City? Better take time in answering that question.

Just as the sun was setting that Saturday afternoon and all nature was lulling to rest I reined in Flora on the crest of a hill commanding an entrancing view of the Towaliga Valley and caught the roar of High Falls, which had not blessed my ears since I was three years of age. With the rush of the waters came a rush of recollections that submerged my whole being. Change had left its autograph on everything else in sight; but the keyboard of the old Towaliga organ was still there, and not a note of its grand music was lost. It is with sadness that I have to record the fact that money has taken the place of music there, as in many other places of our fair land, where God's concert halls have been silenced for the revelings of Mammon.

How often in my little trundle-bed in the itinerant preacher's home had it soothed me to sleep, my imagination meanwhile peopling the dark valley with strange beings that walk forth in the darkness !

The good Lord gave me one of the brightest days I ever saw for my rambles. Not a cloud cast its shadow. The sun on his royal pathway in the firmament was all smiles and seemed to say to me: "I caressed you here when a child, and

I will attend you to-day. I have much to do in keeping the earth bright and warm and mending the fires on other worlds, but I will guide you to the places where the old trees stood and where the squirrels chattered at you from their boughs; to where the little rabbits sat high on their supple haunches with hearts beating with a curiosity to know who you were; to the patches of weeds and briers into which the partridges glided from your intrusions; to the sand bottoms and the damp places where your little feet left their tracks." And it was so.

There was no sanctuary worship in the neighborhood that day; but I went to the sacred spot where the old Methodist church, Providence, stood on the hill to the east and beyond which memory cannot find a place, where I was carried to public worship. This was the first I can remember ; but about the old hill all was as vivid as if I had been the day before led by mother's hand into the strange precincts and placed by her side on the old bench in the midst of the curious-looking old men and women, with my mind, more than on anything else, on the long, high bridge over the river that we would have to cross on our way home after meeting. Hardly anything occupied my mind in those childhood days as did that bridge across High Falls.

One day father and I had crossed it behind old Jack, our family horse, on our way from preaching, when, hearing an awful rumbling and rattling, we looked back to see Uncle Will Freeman's horse", Fox, coming at full speed, with Aunt Freeman and mother in the carriage screaming for life and their bonnet ribbons streaming in the air.

Again, a carriage drawn by a pair of horses and containing husband, wife, and babe was crossing the bridge when the horses took fright, became unmanageable, and backed until they broke down the railing. The mother was thrown from the carriage, now hanging over the broken railing, and clung to it with one hand and to her babe with the other, over the boiling waters below. A brave man plunged in and begged her to turn loose, and he would save her and her child. He caught them in his arms and carried them ashore unhurt.

The road running down to this side of the river and to the other side looked strange to me, and the bridge across the river seemed to be at the wrong place. This part of my visit would have been far from satisfactory had I not found the old road and the old spot where that long, high bridge of my childhood spanned the river.

"Heaven lies about us in our infancy," sang Wordsworth. I am sure there was a time in my life when I knew of no other heaven and where no other heaven could have taken the place of that little home of two small rooms and a single chimney in the bend of the Towaliga. Father and mother were my only divinities, and sister Mollie and baby Martha were the only angels I knew or cared to know. All my world was there. The stream of smoke rising from the lone chimney was the tether that kept me from slipping too far into the wierd haunts filled with wonders upon wonders. To me the sun in all his glory had nothing to do but to light that little home by driving away the darkness of the night. The moon, with her retinue of stars, had no mission but to paint beautiful pictures for us on the floor and on the walls of that little home and out in the yard and fields that lay about us.

I knew nothing of sin, had never felt a sorrow, had never seen anything dead. There was a time when no serpent's hiss was heard in the tender verdure and among the sweet flowers of my little heart's garden; and, blessed be God, I can remember it as if it were yesterday.

Most of the time father was from home on a circuit that took in much of that part of Georgia, returning for short visits to see that we lacked nothing. Our queenly mother reigned in his stead when he was away. In cold weather our frugal meals were served near the wide, deep fireplace; and sister Mollie and I would chatter and sport with the large, many-colored cats that would come up from the river swamps and surrounding woods and creep under the house to be fed with the fragments through the cracks of the floor. How we wondered where those cats came from and how they kept so fat and how they kept warm through the cold, stormy nights !

The fact that my dear father and mother did not draw nigh and join themselves with me on that Sunday ramble satisfies me that such favors are withheld from the glorified. "We, according to his promise, look for new heavens and a new earth." If in the recasting enough of the Towaliga home place can be retained to insure recognition, I shall feel that I have gotten back to heaven again.

So many are saying that memory is their weakest faculty, that they forget almost everything; and the mental philosophers are not agreed on the position memory holds among the intellectual powers. Let not memory be underrated; memory is queen over the intellectual household.

"Lull'd in the countless chambers of the brain, Our thoughts are link'd by many a hidden chain ; Awake but one, and lo, what myriads me!

Each stamps its image as the other flies."

Let's see, my friend, if in your case memory is really as unfaithful as you say it is.

"Hush, my dear, lie still and slumber, Holy angels guard thy bed, Heavenly blessings without number Gently falling on thy head.

Sleep, my babe, thy food and raiment, House and home thy friends provide,

All without thy care, or payment, All thy wants are still supplied.

How much better thou rt attended

Than the Son of God could be When from heaven he descended

And became a child like thee!

Soft and easy is thy cradle,

Coarse and hard thy Saviour lay; For his birthplace was a stable, And his softest bed was hay." 2 17

Riding with Dr. Weyman H. Potter a year or two before his death, I quoted to him the last four lines of Dr. Watts' s "Cradle Hymn," as written here. He dropped his large, fine head thoughtfully, as if to recall a lost strain of song, and then said: "George, go over those lines again." A few days ago I quoted them to a saintly pilgrim, many, many miles from her cradle, and a smile kindled in her care-worn face as if an angel had kissed her.

Our cradle songs are not forgotten, and of much else this is true.

Sunday afternoon I took leave of Mrs. Head, my kind hostess, and her interesting family. They had entertained me most hospitably; and they kindly entered, as far as they could, into my soft experiences.

For miles as I rode away I would get up in the buggy, tighten the reins on Flora, and stretch my neck to catch parting glimpses of the valley of enchantment.

The sun gathered up his golden banners and waved me a parting salute, and another of the brightest, sweetest days I ever spent — God's precious gift — was gone.

Memory has driven its golden staple into the family room of that humble home, holding securely the first link of a chain that will never end.

On the other side all is as dark as if I had never existed; on this side the chain grows brighter as it grows longer, in full assurance that there is never to be a last link.

Chapter II

Boyhood Recollections of Meriwether County, Georgia, in the First Fifties

T>OYHOOD life is rarely, if ever, forgotten. One incrustation after another may settle upon it until the layers grow thick and manifold, sufficient, it would seem, to suffocate the young life; but ever and anon it is found fresh and green in the meditations, dreams, conversations, and writings of riper years.

I once met in the lunatic asylum at Milledgeville, Georgia, an old friend whose face was blank, whose eyes had lost every spark of intelligence, whose locomotion had been narrowed to the shambling gait of the asylum. Hearing the voice of his old schoolmate and looking into his face, he readily called his name, and there came back to his face the old-time playground smile, and he called the name of our school-teacher and the name of the place where we went to school together and the names of a number of our playfellows.

It is said that the early German settlers in this country, when on their dying beds, would often begin to talk in the German language, the tongue of their childhood, although they had long ceased to speak in the language of the Fatherland; and while in health and the rush of business and the forming of new associations they seemed altogether to have forgotten it, it' would return to them in their last hours.

Doubtless this is true of all nations under similar conditions.

It requires no effort on my part to drop back into 1850 and 1 85 1 and jot down some reminiscences of those happy years.

There being no parsonage in Greenville Circuit at that time, my father, who had been appointed to it, had to arrange a home for his family. He and my mother, having been reared in the country, found it agreeable to their rural tastes to rent a little house two and a half miles from town. Isaac

C. Bell, a royal soul, met us in Griffin and piloted us to his home and then to ours.

The Thorntons, Rossers, McClendons, Stroziers, Gastons, and Hattons were our neighbors, Newnan Thornton being our nearest neighbor.

I had always been hearing about the Primitive Baptists (commonly, but not disrespectfully, called "Hardshells"), but had never been thrown with them. Flat Rock was not far away. I heard my first sermon from those brethren in 1850. Like other preachers, this Primitive preacher got out of wind several times in his sermon. To rest himself and avail himself of what the rhetoricians call transition, he would tell little incidents and give out little scraps of information and talk along quietly until the time came to give the trumpet another blast.

Stopping suddenly on this occasion, like a bird shot in the air, in modulated tone he said: "Brethren, as I was a-comin' along this morning I seed a notice stuck up ag'in' a tree what give an account of a clay bank mare what had run away. She was blaze- face, my brethren, had one eye out, a saddle gall on one side of her back, three white feet, long mane and tail and kukkleburrers tharin." Clearing his throat and rubbing the floor with his foot, he was soon on his gospel tone again. It sounded a little odd to me, but his congregation took it as seriously as any other part of the sermon.

In those days preachers were newspapers as well for their people in many localities. They were expected to carry them both the gospel and current events.

I intend to visit old Flat Rock again if I can. My father was reared among the Hardshells and never got wholly rid of them, and I like them, too, for his sake and their own.

I loved that little home ; and I went out there from Greenville seventeen years ago mainly to see the little hillock on which my beautiful little dog, Rowland, would sit wagging his tail and looking for me and the little school bucket of scraps on my way home from school.

T. P. Crump, a Virginian, was our school-teacher in Greenville. It was said that he had in his veins some of the blood of Pocahontas. I hardly ever saw anybody from that old State that didn't have. George Grant assisted him awhile. I imagine the old schoolhouse is gone. It stood between the Howard Hotel and Mr. Gresham's, just above Mr. Grant's gin shop, a little east. I was among those who enjoyed the honor of being the last subjects of effort to teach the young idea how to shoot in that temple of learning. There was not a shade tree, shrub, or flower near it. The recitation bench was the only bench in the house that had any back. Here and there was a desk, unpainted, rough, forbidding, big prisons cut in them for caging flies in the summer months, stained with ink, and stuck over with paper wads that the boys would exchange with one another when the teacher's back was turned.

Our class had reached "Csesar's Bridge" in Latin. We stalled and had to stay in at play time and be ready the first thing after dinner. We did our best, but no go. Right there we had our first experience in taking in Latin through the pores of the skin, as it were. It was too far to the woods for "hickories," and the teacher came down on us with a piece of green leather fastened to a handle about eighteen inches long. I have been afraid of bridges ever since. The pontoons during the war always alarmed me more or less. But that recitation bench had a back to it, and the teacher was so set on getting us over the "Bridge" of the Roman warrior that he never detected that his lash was wasting its force.

John Ragland, George Heard, Dump Jones, Jim Banning, John Grant, Tobe McMath, Pres Hatton, Pope and Bob Park, and Marshall and Jim Pope Martin were some of my schoolmates. Dr. J. H. Hall, of the Baptist Church at Newnan, was also a schoolmate whom I loved much and whom I love still.

Capt. W T. Irvine, of Chattooga County, and his brother Tom, noble boys and brave soldiers, were my closest friends. Bobbie Ellis was on the roll, or Henry, perhaps both.

Town ball, knucks, marbles, bull pen, sweepstakes, leapfrog, and fights were the athletic sports. As to the last diversion, I am proud to say that I never saw a knife or pistol drawn. There was no gouging. Plain fist and skull was the code ; and when the fight was over, it was over, and each combatant felt that his honor had been preserved. John Grant and Tobe McMath were lightweights and could most easily be drawn into a fight of any of the boys. I never saw either one of them whip anybody, but they could not be "run over."

Another thing in those days of thrilling adventure dating back several years: A valuable mulatto slave ran away from his owner, Mr. Bohanan, of Coweta County. He went to New York City and established himself in business, of which he felt so proud that he had to write back to his friends about it.

Mr. Green G. Howard, who kept a hotel in Greenville, entered into an agreement with Mr. Bohanan to restore to him his runaway slave. Taking his son, Columbus, he started for New York. Arriving there safely, they secured lodging at a hotel; and Columbus was left in the room with sealed orders one Sunday afternoon, while his father took a stroll into the lower part of the city. Passing many crowds, he finally halted at one group of whites and negroes having a social time together. His suspicions were aroused. Calling for refreshments for the crowd, he added: "If there is anybody here from Georgia, I want him to come up first and drink." Up walked his man, very proud of his State and of the honor he was sharing with one of her citizens. He drank freely, his fellow Georgian taking pains to appear sociable only, avoiding quite adroitly everything that could interfere with the regular beating of his pulse or the coolness of his head. He was fast winning his way to the other's admiration, so that when he started back the negro accepted promptly and with increasing pride the invitation to accompany him. Refreshments were served as they were needed along the walk, until a passing carriage suggested the idea of a ride. In the meantime the negro had given his name as Bohanan, of Coweta County, Georgia, and had much to say of his people, of whom he was very proud.

A short ride brought them to Mr. Howard's hotel ; and an invitation to go with him to his room was accepted, where he met another Georgian. The key was turned and orders issued for silence until he was asked by one of them to speak. A closed carriage soon had the three at the wharf; and a safe voyage brought the trio to Georgia, and rail and stagecoach put them down in Greenville, where old friends were soon shaking hands and old associations happily renewed, for the New York Bohanan seemed about as glad to get back as the Georgia Bohanans were to have him back.

But the cotton rows of Coweta grew monotonous in contrast with the stirring streets and attractive scenes of New York City after a while ; and the farm hand hung up the shovel and hoe, left the farming interests in other hands, bowed himself out again, and has never been heard of by his Georgia associates since.

When once tasted, the charms of city life are hard to resist ; and the negro is not, by a good deal, an exception to the rule. Columbus Howard became a member of the Georgia Conference, entered the Confederate service when the war broke out, and fell gallantly in battle while leading his command into action at First Manassas. Father and sons were brave men, and Sallie was as beautiful as a spring rose. She and her mother and one brother are still living.

Another incident: We found Col. Walton Ector in Meriwether. The gold fever was contagious in Georgia in the last forties, and he had been to California. On his return, leaving the highway one day, he came upon a sack of unminted gold that had fallen from a pack mule, it was supposed, while grazing some distance from the thoroughfare. He placed it on another pack mule, brought it to Georgia, published his find, and, upon its being strictly identified, turned it over to the owner. He was quite a favorite with my father, who asked him one day: "Walt, will you be kind enough to tell me what vour first thought was when you found that gold?" The noble fellow responded at once: "As God is my judge, my first thought was that the gold was not mine." My father was studying the doctrine of total depravity at this time. Here was a young man unconverted, wild, a stranger to transforming grace. How about it? Facts before theology. A discrimination relieves the perplexity. Honesty is a natural virtue, not necessarily a spiritual grace. A man cannot be a Christian without being honest ; he can be honest without being a Christian.

During the great revival there under my father's pastorate he saw his friend one morning sitting in the rear of the church, a very respectful attendant, although he had never professed conversion. He walked deliberately down the aisle and said to him: "Walt, since we had that talk I have been determined that the devil shall not have you. Come along with me." And he went. I hear the name occasionally, and it is still dear to me.

Drs. Terrell, Wimbish, Reese, Dannelly, and Turrentine were living in Greenville then. Memory is a little indistinct about the first-named. I am writing wholly from memory.

The lawyers were: Judge Hiram Warner and his brother Obadiah, Colonel McMath, the Hall brothers, and James Russell. Likely there were others there whose names have escaped me. I am inclined to say that William Harris, brother of Hon. H. R. Harris, belonged to that noble group of men. Anyhow, he was one of the finest characters I ever knew. My father had great respect for his literary criticisms and his theological lore as well.

James Russell was considered a little skeptical in religious matters, but he and my father were fast friends, I have a book in my library, a present to my father, with the name in it.

Judge Warner had but one child, a lovely, queenly daughter, whom Hon. Warner Hill may always feel proud to call mother

I have written before of the old family names of Greenville and Meriwether County.

My dear friend, Hon. Henry R. Harris, whom I have known from the flush of young manhood and whom I have always honored and loved, imagines of late that he detects the approach of twilight; but in the spiritual realm the sun never goes down, and that is the only realm worth a thought.