Men and things

Preface

The author has lived in eventful times. He presents to the public in this unpretentious volume, sketches — biographic, historic, reminiscent and analec tic of some of the men and things that have made them eventful. He does so in the ardent hope that they may be interesting to the present generation, and useful to future ones.

Gumming, Ga., Hieam P. Bell.

CHAPTER I. Paeentage and Bieth of the Author

I was born in Jackson County, Ga., January 19th, 1827.

My father was of English extraction. He was a native of Guilford County, North Carolina. He was born July 22, 1794. His name was Joseph Scott Bell. His father, Francis Bell, removed from North Carolina, and settled in Jackson County, Ga., about the year 1800. He died in 1837, at the age of ninety-one years. He was a non-commissioned officer in the Continental army, and failed to be in the battle of Guilford Court House, by reason of being in command of a squad on detached service. My father was a man of iron constitution, physically, of high temper, strong impulse, resolute will and fearless courage. His education was limited, being such only as could be obtained by a short, irregular attendance upon inferior schools in the back-woods. He was by occupation, a farmer; never held a civil office, and was never a candidate for one. In politics he was a "State's Rights Whig." He was no trader. His communications were " yea, yea," and "nay, nay." He was the genius of manual labor. I do not remember to have known him to spend an hour in idleness.

Mj mother was Eachel Phinazee, a native Georgian, and of Irish descent. Like my father, she was brought up in a newly settled country, from which the Indians had but recently disappeared, and therefore, her education was meagre. With poor people, in a newly settled country, bread-winning was the watchword. She was born on the second day of jSTovember, 1794. Her mother, whose maiden name was Sarah Harris, died at the advanced age of ninety-one years, which age, my mother also attained. She was distinguished for plain, practical common sense, unremitting industry, devotion to duty and faith in God. Her spirit was quiet and gentle as a May zephyr, and even her reproof was in tones sweet as the "Spicy breezes of Araby the blest." Success did not elate, nor defeat depress her, but always and everywhere she maintained that self -poise which is the offspring of philosophy and Christianity.

My father and mother married young, probably in 1813 or 1814; and located in a cabin in the woods, on a small tract of land given to my father by his father. This was in the northeast portion of Jackson County, Ga., fifteen miles from any to\\Ti. Here they lived and toiled in agricultural avocation, until 1838, when, immediately after the removal of the Cherokees to the West, my father bought a few himdred acres of land in the woods, unmarked by human invasion, except an Indian trail, leading from the Chattahoochee to the Etowah River, in the county of Forsyth, to which a part of his family removed in the early part of the year

1838. The remainder of the family joined this colony in the spring of 1840. Here he repeated the experience of his early life, — the building of a home, and clearing a plantation in the woods, unscarred by the civilizing touch of the axe and ploughshare. Here he wrought, until he "crossed over the river, to rest under the shade of the trees."

The family of my father and mother consisted of six sons and six daughters, all of whom lived to attain majority, and a majority of whom passed the allotted threescore and ten years. The senior son, Joseph T., died at the age of twenty-two years. His death left a scar in my mother's heart that never healed.

My parents were both deeply religious. They united with the Methodist Church shortly after their marriage. My earliest remembrance is associated with the visits of ministers of the Gospel at our home, which was always open to them; and with the regular and systematic family worship. Such was their admiration for them, that they gave to each of their six sons, the name of a favorite preacher.

My father was an official of the church — either steward, class-leader, or trustee — practically all his church life. He was a man of extraordinary power in prayer. I have heard him often, at the family altar, pray with an earnestness and power and pathos, that seemed to me to make the foundation of the house tremble. Faithful, earnest, consistent, devoted Christians, they lived together in harmony, peace and love, for more than sixty years, until all of their children

4 MEH AND THINGS

became grown, and married; and passed away without a cloud upon their spiritual horizon.

On a calm, moonlight night in May, 1876, I witnessed my father's translation; with a face all radiant with the light of high communion, his last utterance was: "I leave the world in triumph," and gently exchanged the cross for the crown. My mother survived him nine years. In September, 1885, at the home of her daughter, in Gumming, Ga., she closed a long life, with the stainless record of duty faithfully done, sufferings patiently borne, wrongs freely forgiven, and faith unfalteringly kept; and passed sweetly into the joys of the true life. I honor my parents for their character and their virtues; I bless their memory for their love and benefactions to me, in a thousand different forms.

CHAPTER II. Boyhood on the Faem

Those familiar with the history of Georgia during the first half of the nineteenth century, wiU remember that, at the close of the Revolutionary War, but a small part of the State, extending from the coast up the Savannah River, was occupied by white inhabitants ; the bulk of the territory, of what now constitutes the "Empire State of the South," was wild woods, occupied by hostile Indians and wild beasts. The absence of money and commerce, the continental war-debt, apprehension "of failure in organizing successfully the new system of civil government, and the general demoralization resulting from the war, and the disorganized state of society generally, created the conditions to be met. These conditions developed the cardinal factors in achieving our present advanced type of civilization — enterprise and industry. Men and women went bravely to work to win bread and better their condition. Controversies were adjusted, and treaties negotiated with the Indians, population poured in, new counties were formed, forests subdued, the wilderness reclaimed, churches and school-houses built — cheap and humble at first, it is true, but they were the seed of a harvest to be gathered later.

That portion of Georgia lying west of the Chatta-

S hoochee River, known as Cherokee, Georgia, was the last portion of the State opened for settlement by the white people. It was occupied by an industrious, hardy class of people, with small means, very speedily. There were few slave-holders among them. The settlement of this section of the State took place at the time when President Jackson's removal of the deposits from the national bank, and specie circular burst the bubble of "flush times" sent the wild-cat banks, which had sprung up like Jonah's gourd, to grief; and left the people in debt without a circulating mediiun. Under these conditions — from 1840 to 1847 — and between thirteen and twenty years of age, from sunrise until sunset, in winter and summer, I was engaged, without intermission, in work on the farm, which consisted in the winter season, in clearing and fencing the land, cutting, hauling logs, and erecting buildings. The county was heavily timbered, which was wasted with reckless prodigality. Each neighborhood had its circle of fifteen or twenty neighbors ; and every spring, as regular as the Ides of March, each neighbor had his regulation log-rolling; and in the fall, each within the circle had his corn-shucking. The house-raising was another institution of these primitive times. This was carried on either in the winter or in the summer, between the crop-finishing and fodder-gathering season.

These good people wrought hard and constantly, without money; and strikingly illustrated the truth that: "Man wants but little here below." They were plain and simple in their dress ; the cotton patch, flocks, cards, spinning-wheel, loom-room, and deft hands of

MEN AND THINGS T

good, virtuous house-wives, supplied the wardrobe. It was not long, however, until the farm, herd, orchard, garden and dairy, poured their treasures into the refectory in a variety and profusion that would satiate the appetite of Milo, or eclipse the board of LucuUus. They lived like princes on the proceeds of honest labor. In those days many communities had its little log church, built after a vigorous controversy over the place of its location, at which they held their Sunday-school and attended preaching, which was often on a week day, and to which the men would go from the field and the women from the loom — all in fatigue dress. They went to hear the Word of Life, and were generally thrilled by its power, and comforted by its solace. They lived in peace, all, or most of them, unconscious of what was transpiring in the great big world around them. If they were denied the blessing of different environments and a more advanced state of civilization, the law of compensation exempted them from the annoyance of an army of cooking-stove, sewing-machine, and insurance agents, and peddlers of rat poison and Chinese grips. It was not long, however, until the thin-nosed, irrepressible wooden-nutmeg Yankee clockpeddler put in his appearance.

It is written: "In the sweat of thy face shall thou eat bread." My boyhood life on the farm is a striking illustration of the truth of this divine statement. An accident to an elder brother in the spring of 1834, sent me to the plow at the age of seven years. Other hands put on the gear and tied the hamestring, and a friendly stump or fence corner, after climbing, enabled me to reach the back of the horse. In 1843, in the absence of my father, I bossed the farm. The weather was phenomenally cold in the winter and spring, forage was scarce, live-stock died — a magnificent comet stretched across the southwestern heavens. Miller's prediction of the approaching end of the world alarmed the superstitious. It snowed in March, and the ground was deeply frozen as late as the 5th of April; and vegetation indicated no sign of appearance at that date. A little later, an indiscreet neighbor put out fire on an adjoining farm in dry, windy weather, which caught the dead timber on my father's farm, set the fence on fire, and necessitated the tearing down and rebuilding of between two and three hundred panels, to save the rails. I felt something of the consternation of ^ISTapoleon, when he discovered the blaze of Moscow. I did not retreat, but saved the fence. How much trouble, labor, expense and solicitude we could save others by a little caution at the proper time ! In the winter of 1842-43 my elder brother and myself made the rails and enclosed a forty-acre lot of land, thirty acres of which was mainly a chinquapin thicket. When the crop of 1843 was finished, my father returned home from a mining enterprise in which he and my elder brother had been engaged, and constructed a threshingmachine, the band of which my two brothers and myself turned, in the month of August, until we threshed out the wheat crop of one hundred bushels, at the rate of five or six bushels per day. In the winter of 1843-44, my elder brother having attained his majority, left home and entered school. My two younger brothers and I devoted our time to the clearing of the thirty acres of chinquapin thicket, which consisted in cutting o£F the bushes near the ground with club or pole-axes.

Early in the month of May, 1844, the brush was burned, the ground was laid off, without breaking, and planted in corn. After wheat harvest, on the twentieth of June, my brother Matthew and I commenced to plow it for the first time. Father and a negro woman followed with the hoes. The rows were nearly a quarter of a mile in length. The watersprouts were as thick, and very nearly as tall, as ordinary wheat at maturity — so thick and tall that we frequently lost the row in running the furrow next to the corn. The corn having grown in the shade, was about eighteen inches high, and the stalk but little larger than a well-developed sedge-broom straw; so slender indeed, that when the sprouts were taken from around it much of it fell do^^•n. We had been plowing, or trying to plow, for about three hours in this wilderness on an immensely hot day, when I discovered an immensely large rattlesnake making an effort to disengage itself from entanglement with the foot of my plow. I shall not attempt to describe my liorror, for the reason that there are some things beyond the attainment of human power. I killed the snake, reported at once the adventure to my father, and begged him to abandon the field, urging that it was tenptiug providence to take the risk of the snakes. But my father had more faith than T, and scarcely gave my importunate plea a respectful hearing. We ploughed on for nearly a week; and passing each other near the centre of the field, we stopped and engaged in conversation. I noticed in a moment mv brother's face turned white as cotton. He had discovered a large rattlesnake lying nnder a bush in the row between us. We loosed our horses, despatched the rattler, and turned to hitch them, when I discovered, under another bush nearby, a companion snake of equal size, w^hich was also promptly despatched. After ten days of ploughing in new ground covered with a wilderness of bushes, permeated with roots and stumps, and inhabited by rattlesnakes — suffering all the agonies of mental crucifixion — we finished the job, with Nil as the result, so far as the crop yield was concerned. A few years ago, as I closed my brother's eyes in death — within an hour after I reached his bedside in Milledgeville — these struggles, toils and associations of our boyhood came trooping down the dusty aisles of memory, with a powder and pathos for which language has no expression.

The year 1845 was eventful in most of the Gulf States, on account of the absence of rain, and the failure of crops. Hundreds of families, especially from South Carolina and Georgia, sought homes in the West. Four weeks of the summer of this year is epochal in my history. I had, for that period, the benefit of my brother's instruction. The preceding year, he had the instruction of a first-class teacher, and was himself an accomplished grammarian. This month's instruction from a competent teacher laid the foundation for what little I may have attained in the way of education.

In 1846 my father took a new departure in his farming enterprise. He had tried cotton, which his boys had shivered with cold in picking during Christmas week and in January and which he had hauled with an ox-team to Madison, Ga., then the head of the Ga. K. E., and sold at two and one-half cents per pound. This departure consisted in substituting a tobacco for a cotton crop. He planted ten acres in tobacco plants. The land happened to be in the most favorable condition to produce its largest yield of crab-grass. The season was unustially wet, the growth of the tobacco was retarded, that of the grass, not. After much toil, the crab-grass, late in the sununer, was subdued. If there is any one thing for which a farmer-boy ardently pants, it is a few wrecks of rest, after the crop is "laidby," and the peach and watermelon season puts in an appearance. But just as this halycon heaven of boyish delight was reaished, the tobacco plants must be topped, and the worms and suckers removed. This process consists in pinching off the top bud, and suckers with the fingers; and knocking off the great, green, loathsome worms with a stick, and mashing them with the foot. The operator is bent forward in the broiling sunshine, besmeared with the gum and stench of this plant, and disgusted with the sight of the worms. This is anything but a delightful exercise. It was completed, in this case, some days after the drying fodder had suffered for gathering. Then the tobacco-house was to be built and daubed, the plant to be cut, placed on sticks and cured, stripped from the stalk and bound into hands. What the crop yielded in money I do

12 MEU A.ND THINGS

not now remember. I am sure it was the only experiment my father ever made with tobacco. He went back to cotton.

Having attended school — all told, only six or eight months in snatches of two or three weeks at a time — in the old field school, most of that time to very inferior teachers, even for this grade of school; and having attained the age of twenty years, without education, I proposed to my father to serve him another year if he would send me to school for one year; or, that if he would release me from the service, I would discharge him from the obligation to give me a year's schooling, as he had done for my older brother, and take the chances of educating myself. He generously accepted the latter proposition. It is due to the memory of my dear father to say that he had a high appreciation of his obligation to educate his children, and ardently desired to discharge that obligation. But having a large family to support, always necessarily in debt, settling in the woods remote from school* fitted to be entrusted with one's education, it was utterly impracticable for him, with these environments, to carry out his wishes in this respect. It is a matter of solace to me, that most of his children, somehow, secured a good English education.

Before I close .this chapter, allow me to say that there is one phase of the life of the average countrybrought-up boy, that it would do him great injustice to omit. It is about the time, in his history, when the first application of a dull razor is made to his upper lip, designed to elicit the appearance of an infantile mustache, and he is, or thinks he is, desperately in love with a neighbor's pretty daughter. My observation convinces me that this event in a boy's life constitutes a rule of general, if not universal application. I was not an exception to the rule. On a bright Sunday morning, having blacked my shoes — that is, the top of the front portion of them — with a mixture of cold water and chimney soot — as much as I could induce them to mix — donned my best suit, saddled and mounted a small mule, something — but little larger, than a full grown Texas jack-rabbit — (it was a very small mule), and set out on the Don Quixotic adventure of calling to see the object of my supposed idolatry. Within a quarter of a mile from the house the road crossed a creek with rather precipitous banks. The mule, as it soon afterwards became apparent, was thirsty. As soon as it came within reach of the water, it very naturally but very suddenly and decidedly unceremoniously, put its mouth to the water, which left its body in an angle of something over forty-five degrees. The result was, the rider was tumbled over the mule's head into the creek, followed by the saddle, which fell on him. This mishap was then esteemed a calamity. It is now regarded as the poetry of the ludicrous. It would present a picture that would shame the genius of Nast, whose artistic skill as a cartoonist broke the heart and caused the death of Horace Greely.

CHAPTER III. The Old Field School

The old field school, like some other institutions of this country, has, in its peculiar way, served its day and generation, and by common consent has been relegated to memory and history. In these days of public school fads, higher educational pretentions, college and university base and foot-ball games, and punchbowl banquets, reference is seldom made to an institution which, though lowly in origin and humble in claim, has made possible all these institutions as well as our advanced state of civilization. When it is referred to it is usually with the sneer of derision or the smile of amusement. It seems that such a spirit of ingratitude is capable of repudiating the love of a mother, or reproaching the misfortune of poverty. It met a condition of society at a time and under circumstances which could not have been met without it. It kindled a light that makes the opening years of the twentieth century all radiant with the glow of intelligence. The "old field school" possessed three distinctive sides — the ludicrous, the sentimental and the useful. Its houses, furniture and comforts, as well as the extent of its curriculum and the qualifications of its teachers, compared with those of the present time, appear ludicrous in the extreme.

The school-house was usually located in the corner of an old field cleared by the Indians, or in the woods, constructed of small round oak or large, split pine logs, notched down at the corners and covered with clapboards. The orthodox dimensions were 24x16 feet. The larger part of one end was devoted to what is known as a "stick and dirt chimney." Economy in labor and money was promoted by dispensing with sleepers and floor, and substituting the ground therefor. The furniture consisted of a small, rough pine table and a superannuated chair in the rear of it. This was the throne of the intellectual sovereign. The seats for the pupils were made of oak or chestnut logs about six inches in diameter, split open in the center and pegs driven into auger holes from the round side of the halflog. These pegs were of a length that would prevent the feet of the urchins occupying the benches from reaching the dirt floor by a distance of from six to eight inches. To occupy such a seat for a long, hot summer day was a penance that ought to atone for a multitude of sins. The remaining article of furniture was the writing bench. This consisted of a rough plank nailed to the top of a frame, as nearly on a level as practicable, twelve inches wide and ten feet long, and a plank of similar dimensions joined to each of its edges, slightly inclining downwards.

The aesthetic will perceive that this equipment, in the line of convenience and comfort, was neither expensive nor elaborate. The curriculum was not extensive but it had the merit of being in harmony with its surroundings, and conflned, within the constitutional limitation, to "the elements of an English education only." It embraced spelling, reading, writing and arithmetic The standard text-books were : The American Spelling-book^ the American Preceptor and Daworth's or Fowler s Arithmetic. A little later, as this class of educational institution advanced, the Columbian Orator and Weems' Life of Washington were added.

The teachers, in the main, were men of advanced age, too lazy to work and too poor to live without it. Having appeared after the age of Raphael, Titian, Angelo and Reynolds, and passed away before the discovery of Daguerre, the world has lost the pleasure of looking upon their pictures and must rely only upon such faint and imperfect pen-pictures as memory alone can supply.

I have in mind with some degree of distinctness, the image of four of them who are strikingly typical of the class. For fear of marring the pleasure of some filial descendants in tracing his heraldry, for the discovery of his ancestral escutcheon, I refrain from stating names. Indeed, the given or Christian name of the first one to whom I refer is forgotten. I only remember that his students, by common consent, substituted for it, whatever it was, the name "Nipper," so that he was known

only as Nipper A s. I do know, however, that

he was a tall, ungainly, bald-headed, sour-tempered old man, with no magnetism and but little intelligence. He was not deficient in physical force, as two certain boys who engaged in an innocent game of "hard-knuckles" during study hours when he was supposed to be asleep, after having visited, at the noon recess, a neighboring still-honse, discovered to their mortification and discomfort.

The next one, W , whose only possession was a

homely wife and a bad "small boy," was an Irishman of exuberant cheerfulness. No conditions seemed to discourage or dishearten him. He secured his support, principally, from his neighbors by borrowing such articles of food as were necessary to prevent actual starvation, under the pretext that "to his surprise, he had ascertained that the articles desired had just been exhausted at home," and with the munificence of a prince bestowing an "order" or conferring a proconsulship upon a grateful subject, he promised to return it with manner that simply defies description, except to say that it was done in a way of Irish shrewdness that made the lender feel that he was the beneficiary. This feeling was the only benefit he ever received for the loan. His theory of teaching seemed to consist, judging from his practice, in the belief that light could be communicated to the mind by the application of force to the body.

H , unlike W , was a man of some means.

He had a wife, a very large family of children, five or six dogs and two rifleguns, the stocks of which were

well worn by long use. Mr. K was a man of large

frame, dark complexion, of slow motion and deliberate speech ; though of robust health he seemed to be averse to motion, and the act of breathing appeared to be irksome to him. If the "law of the Lord" was not his delight the law of inertia was . His uncharitable neighbors entertained the suspicion that he was afflicted with an attack of remediless laziness. Of the truth of this imputation, posterity must judge. I only state the facts in the case.

F , the remaining member of this quartet of

famous pedagogues, was a man of decidedly marked, if not unique, personality. His stature w^as low, his head large and of peculiar form, his lower limbs short and bent with a regularity that fitly represented the segment of a circle, the convex side being outward; his feet inclined to the club variety; his walk w^as sort of hobbling and shuffling movement. The conception of a cross between a chimpanzee and a dwarf would present the nearest an ideal picture, of which his figure was susceptible. In bestowing her gifts, Nature had been parsimonious with him; some — and among them, beauty — had been entirely withheld. An officiating clergyman said at a vagrant's funeral, that "Whatever else might be said of the deceased, all would admit that he was a good whistler." So I can say of this dead pedagogue (and it is about all that could be said), he wrote a beautiful hand.

These great men of the olden time were differentiated, mainly, if not solely, in their personality. They were all old men. They were about on an equality in scholarly attainments, perhaps T should say, in the absence of scholastic attainments. They all taught at the same place, used the same books, practiced like methods and quenched their thirst at the common "still-house."

As the branches taught were few, the methods employed were simple. The lessons were studied vocally, not silently, and by far the largest portion of the study consisted in the hubbub of mingled voices in every variety of key. The full measure of vocal power was developed in preparing the "heart lesson" preceding the evening adjournment. With favorable atmospheric conditions the hum of this noise could be distinctly heard at the distance of a mile, and the peculiar shrieks of one boy's voice (Duncan Campbell's) could be easily distinguished at that distance. The useful art of writing was taught by commencing with a so-called "line of straight marks" across the top of a leaf of coarse, unruled paper. This, of course, was made by the teacher and called the "copy." The beginner, equipped with a goose-quill pen and the juices pressed from oak-balls (well known among the scholars as inkballs) for ink, commenced the process of copying the marks. The second lesson was the mark, as in the first, curved at the bottom and traced upward. This mark, in the figurative language of the teacher, was called "pot hooks." The third copy was a line of "pot hooks" with the second line curved at .the top and brought down to evenness with the lower curve; then followed copies of capital letters of the alphabet, etc. It was a singular fact that the students almost invariably in making these curves, slightly twisted and protruded the tongue, and kept the tongue and eyes in a movement precisely corresponding to the motion of the pen. I never did understand, and do not now know, which was the dominant motor in this operation — these members or the pen. I had the privilege of securing early instruction from each of the worthies here mentioned, in an institution which I have endeavored to describe. Whatever mistakes in instructions or dis-" cipline they made I forget and forgive. For whatever of good they did me, I give them the thanks of a heart, which I trust is incapable of ingratitude.