Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia

und was slight, the graze of a bullet only, cutting some smaller blood-vessels, and it was only from the loss of blood that insensibility had followed. The moderate skill of our country

ss of the youth returned, and he was enabled to learn how he had been discovered, wh

s. The brief questions of Ralph obtained copious answers; and, for an hour, the woodman cheered the solitude of his chamber, by the narration of such matters as were most likely to interest his hearer, in respect to the new region where he was, perforce, kept a prison

, and he expressed some curiosity in respect to it. This was enough for the woodman, who had partially informed himself, by a free conversation with the wagoner who drove the ve

did you ever se

ed, answering

ey'll so bedevil bone and flesh, that I reckon he'll be the last Yankee that ever comes to practice again in this Chestatee country. Maybe, he ain't deserving of much worse than they kin do. Maybe, he ain't a scamp of the biggest wethers. His rascality ain't to be measured. Why, he kin walk through a man's pockets, jest as the devil goes through a crack or a keyhole, and the money will naterally stick to him, jest as ef he was made of gum turpentine. His very face is a sort of kining [coining] machine. His look says dollars and cents; and its always your dollars and cents, and he kines them out of your hands into his'n, jest with a roll of his eye, and a mighty leetle turn of his finger. He cheats in everything, and cheats everybody. Thar's not an old woman in the country that don't say[70] her prayers back'ards when she thinks of Jared Bunce. Thar's his tin-wares and his wood-wares-his coffeepots and ke

gulators?" asked th

riffs, and lawyers, and settle scores with the growing sinners. We jine, hand in hand, agin such a chap as Jared Bunce, and set in judgment upon his evil-doings. It's a regilar court, though we make it up ourselves, and app'ints our own judges and juries, and pass judgment 'cordin' to the case. Ef it's the first offence, or only a small one, we let's the fellow off with only a taste of

ese punishments will they be li

which only went while the rogue stayed, and when he went they stopt forever. Some bought ready-made clothes, which went to pieces at the very sight of soap and water. He sold a fusee to old Jerry Seaborn, and warranted the pie

le that they will torture him as you describe

ellow that's got no more of a saving soul in him than my whip-handle, and ain't half so much to be counted on in a fight. He's jest now nothing but a cheat and a swindle from head to foot; hain't got anything but cheat in him-hain't got room for any principle--not enough either to git drunk with a friend, or have it out, in a fair fight, with his enemy. I shouldn't mys

pendent borderers in the South and West, were shockingly imposed upon. He made but a feeble effort accordingly, in[72] this direction, but was somewhat more earnest in insisting upon the general propriety of forbearance, in a practice which militate

er than the sheriff, and laugh at all the processes you send after them. So, you see, there's no justice, no how, unless you catch a rogue

n away, and, as the reader will readily conceive, our friend Forrester had a sneaking consciousness that all the world's eloquence did not cease on the day when Demosthenes died. But he was not the person to be offended because the patient desired to sleep. Far from it. He was only reasonable enough to suppose that this was t

far, his mother-wit, which seldom failed before, could suggest no means of evasion or escape. His prospect was a dreary one; though with the wonderful cap

t, they surrounded, had, in the Indian phrase, more tongues than brains, and were sufficiently aroused by their potations to enter readily into any mischief. Some were smoking with all the industrious perseverance of the Hollander; others shouted forth songs in honor of the bottle, and with all the fervor and ferment of Bacchanalian novitiates; and not a few, congregating about the immediate person of the pedler, assailed his ears with threats sufficiently pregnant with tangible illustration to make him understand and acknowledge, by repeated starts and wincings, the awkward and uncomfortable pre

take his name to frighten away the crows with. Now, one person can jist as well make a plain statement as another. I know, of my [74] own score, there's not one of my neighbors for ten miles round, that can't tell all about the rotten prints he put off upon my old woman; and I know myself of all the tricks he's played at odd times, more than a dozen, upon 'Squire Nichols there, and Tom Wescott, and Bob Snipes, an

saws and sayings-could quote you the paradoxes of Johnson and the infidelities of Hume without always understanding them, and mistook, as men of that kind and calibre are very apt to do, the capacity to repeat the grave absurdities of others as a proof of something in himself. His business was not large, however, and among the arts of his profession, and as a means for supplying[75] the absence of more legitimate occasions for its employment, he was reputed as excessively expert in making the most of any difficulty among his neighbors. The egg of mischief and controversy was hardly laid, before the worthy lawyer, with maternal care, came clucking about it; he watched and warmed it without remission; and when fairly hatched, he took care that the whole brood should be brought safely into court, his voice, and words, and actions, fully attesting the deep interest in their fortunes which he had manifested from the beginning. Many a secret slander, ripening at length into open warfare, had been traced to his friendly influence, either ab ovo, or at least from the perilous period in such cases when the very existence of the embryo relies upon the friendly breath, the sustaining warmth, and the occasional stimulant. Lawyer Pippin, among his neighbo

distinction which this phrase makes between the man and the soil, between the noble intellect and the high soul, and the mere dirt and dust upon which we daily tread. This very phrase, my friends, is a fine embodiment of that democratic principle upon which the glorious constitution is erected. But, as I was saying, my friends, I am

hails from Connecticut-that he is a shark, and a pirate, and a pestilence. Let him deny that he is a cheat-that he goes about with his notions and other rogueri

ghing, that fortunately succeeded in producing the degree of quiet around him to secure which his language had, singularly enough, entirely failed. For a moment the company ceased its clamor, out of respect to the chairman's cough; and, having cleared his throat with the contents of a tumbler of Monongahela which seemed to stand permanently full by his side, he recom

Bunce-is tha

er old Uncle Jared Withers, that lives down at Dedham, in the state of Massachusetts. He did promise to do something for me, seeing I was named af

mlocution. You have heard some of the charges against you.

and to his ear, and put on all the external signs of devout att

antation, he living at that time in De Kalb county; that you stopped the night with him, without charge, and in the morning you traded a clock to his wife for fifteen dollars, and that you had not been gone two days, befo

ural weapon to it, as if it was a house or a horse, why I guess, it's not reasonable to expect it to keep in order, and it's no use in having a clock no how, if you don't treat it well. As for its striking thirty-one, that indeed is something remarkable, for I never heard one of mine strike more than twelve, and that's zactly the number they're regulated to strike.[78] B

mean about taking whip and hammer to the clock. If you mean to say th

rous and urgent cry of the chairman, repeated by half a dozen voices; the pedler, in the meanwhile, half doubting t

h the sullen ferocity of a chafed bear. "I know jist as well how to keep order, I reckon, as any on yo

ghtened by sich a lank-sided fellow as you; and, by dogs, if nobody else can keep you in order, I'm jist the man to try if I ca

parties interfering, the new difficulty was made to give place to that already in hand. The imputation upon Jenkins, that his ignorance of the claims of the clock to gentle treatment, alone, had induced it to speak thirty-one times, and at length refuse to sp

all content ourselves with a brief summary. The chair went on rapidly enumerating the sundry misdeeds of the Yankee, demanding, and in most cases receiving, rapid and unh

ndell a coffee-pot and two tin cups, all of which went to piec

d take a fight for breakfast, and make three meals a day out of it: now, we in the north have no stomach for such fare; so here, now, as far as I can see, your climate takes pretty much after the people, and if so, it's no wonder that solder can't stand it. Who knows, again,

e, and spoke with a gravity corresponding with the d

lers won't do for us. Why, when I recollect that they are buried in snows half the year, and living

wn east in your time and among my people, for you [80] do seem to kno

so slyly and evasively put in, responded to the remar

is not me that you are to satisfy. Answer to the gentlemen around, if it is not

ught out last season was made under those circumstances; but I have a lot on hand now, which will be here in a day or two, which I

ch referred to, and whose coffee-pot bottom furnished so broad a foundation for the trial. He was a wild and roving person, to whom the tavern, and the racecourse, and the cockpit, from his very boyhood up, had been as the breath of

a trade with you-the money's no object-and if you have furs, or skins, or anything that

hat's to hinder us now? I sha'n'

d calkilate to call on you at the farm, on my way in

eat, and laugh at me in the bargain. I reckon, old boy, you don't come over me in that way again; and I'm not half done with you yet about the kettles

pidation, responded the beleagured dealer in clocks and calicoes-"they shall all be here in a day or two at most

he had made out to bring him to the village with all his wares; and this fact, as in tho

y by the neck. "Do you want to take a summerset through that window, old fellow, that you try to stuff us with such tough stories? If you do, I rether reckon you can do it without much di

of Jared Bunce, wheels and all, if so be that the b

ich he personally stood, and only solicitous to save his chattels from the fate which

-morrow or the next day you shall see them

me your friend. I say, Mr. Chairman, if it's in order-I don't want to do anything disorderly-I move that Bunce's cart be

one, or perhaps any two of his competitors, he found the task of contending with the dozen rather less easy, and, in a little while, his speeches, into which he had lugged many a choice ad captandum of undisputed effect on any other occasion, having been completely merged and mingled with those of the mass, he wi

n. He saw fee after fee thrust into his hands-he beheld the opposing parties desirous to conciliate, and extending to him sundry of those equivocal courtesies, which, though they take not the shape of money are money's worth, and the worthy chairman had no scruples as to the propriety of the measure. The profits and pay once adjusted to his satisfaction, his spirit took a broad sweep, and the province of human fame, circumscribed, it is true, within the ten mile circuit of his horizon, was at once open before him. [83] He beheld the strife, and enjoyed the triumph over his fellow-labo

the key!" was the

esignated "notions"-brought all eyes immediately around, and rendered a new order, for common convenience, necessary in the arrangement of the company. The chairman, chair and man, were in a moment raised to a corresponding elevation upon the table, over the collection; and the controversy and clamor, f

ome to the scratch, and answer that, neighbors-but he can't. Well, then, as you've all hearn, he has traded clocks to us at money's worth, that one day ran faster than a Virginny race-mare, and at the very next day, would strike lame, and wouldn't go at all, neither for beating nor coaxing-and besides all these doings, neighbors, if these an't quite enough to carry a skunk to the horsepond, he has committed his abominations without number, all through the country high and low-for hain't he lied and cheated, and then had the mean cowardice to keep out of the way of the regilators, who have been on the look-out for his tracks for the last half year? Now, if these things an't desarving of punishment, there's nobody fit to be hung-there's nobody that ought to be whipped. Hickories ough

t therefore to be judged by the standard which had been brought to decide upon its merits. He did not venture, however, to say what, perhaps, would have been the true horn of the difficulty, that the print

an natur, from [85] your pairts, I give up; but until that time, I say that any man who thinks to give the w

nt having been considered conclusive against him, he was

impose upon us. Look now at this here article, and I reckon it's jist as good as any of th

the chair, until warned of his imprudent zeal in behalf of goods so little deserving of the risk, by the sharp and sudden application of an unknown hand to his ears which sent him reeling against the table, and persuaded him into as great a degree of patience, as, under existing circumstances, he could be well expected to exhibit. Article after article underwent a like analysis of its strength and texture, and a warm emulation took place among the rioters, as to their several capacities in the work of destruction. The shining bottoms

did not impair the industry of the regulators. A voice was heard proposing a bonfire of the merchandise, and no second suggestion was necessary. All hands but those of the pedler and the attorney were employed in building the pyre in front of the tavern some thirty yards; and here, in choice confusion, lay flaming calicoes, illegitimate silks, worsted hose,

rra

ut the blaze like so many frenzied demons. Strange, no one attempted

tice of the pedler, to doubt for a moment the perfect propriety-nay, the very moderate measure-of that wild justice which they were dealing out to his misdeeds. And with this even, they were not satisfied. As the perishable calicoes roared up and went down in the flames, as the pans and pots and cups melted away in the furnace heat,[87] and the painted faces of the wooden clocks, glared out like those of John Rogers at the stake, enveloped in fire, the cries of the crowd were mingled in with a rude, wild chorus, in which the pedler was made to understand that he stood himself in a peril almost as great as his consuming chattels. It wa

ever, eve

of which the crowd joined in with unanim

er, ever, in your

sure's in it, that

rong shoulders, that'

ngue of sinner, just to p

h is nigh you, lookin

to see how you l

olling, through the

ntil you give the

e riding, highly-s

wooden horse, the

y shoulders that wil

d plant him, on the

ine rail, the ple

hickory law, with a

ver, ever,

roupe in f

the despairing pedler, as this ominous

Bunce?" he asked. "How

th a mixed expression of grief, anger

"Do you know what that means? Does you

of the lawyer, which had been affectionately laid upon his shoulder. "Friend, indeed! I say,

ce, you are a fool. I was

ugh to set them on. That was like a good lawyer, I guess, but not so much like a f

and you know them well enough. The devil himself couldn't stop 'em when

ve

'll be after you. It's a wonder they've left you here so long. Now's your time. You must

ould like to know how yo

u. You know m

I do, pre

all you have to do is to bring suit. I'll do all that, you know, the same as if you did it yourself. You must lay your dam

something over three hundred and twent

t five hundred dollars damages at least, and perhaps a thousand. But of this

f the house-what t

and take the back track to my clearing; it's but a short mile and a quarter, and you'

udge. I put him in 'Squire Dickens' stable, 'long with his animals, and seeing that he hadn't had much the day before,

e. Take my nag, there-the second one from the tree, and put him in the gears in place of your own. He's as gentle as a spaniel, and goes like a d

culty. I'll move as you say, and be off pretty

ut your nag in gears quickly-

d was in a little while ready for a

d obstropulous, but didn't think they'd gone so far. Indeed, it's clear, if it hadn't been th

d deal to complain of. Now, though I said nothing about it, that coat you s

s neither here nor there. If I did, as you say, sell my goods for somethi

ride upon the rail, cap the blazing goods of his cart with the proper person of the proprietor. The pedler lingered to hear no further; and the quick ear of the lawyer, as he ret

urn daylight; though they do say, those

have disfigured it, I thought I should have time enough to take it with me, and anything that might be lying abou

tiently. "They are upon you-they come-fly

hurried off, the pedler passed from the rear of the

till," was the muttered speech of the lawyer, a

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