,'\ .v^.- OO'' •:; 0^ ^ '^^ \-^ .0 C o O -J.^ \.^^" ,0 a ^^ V CO^ = •^- < xO V''^ -s'^''^. .^:^''^ oA" o xO°.. ' xO^x, \\ ■„ V 1 6 . V, U.V*' Oo, ^ cP^ <%r:^%o' ..„ %/*^:;^''^ ^^^ .\' * •^^ s^ .■i> X^ ..:^ -'*. v^ 3 x> '^;>. '- -^A v^ NOTES TAKEN IX SIXTY YKARS. " Let us keep tlie feast, not with old leaven, nor with the leaven of malice and wicked - less, bnt with the unleavened in-ead of sineerity and tnith." — Paul to Corinthians, v. 9. If By RICHARD SMITH ELLIOTT, Of St. Louis, Missouri, U.S.A. .<.-^V OF CO^?e;S> ST. LOUIS, MO. R. P) Studlky & Co., Printers, Lithogkaphers ami Stationers. 1883. \ Entered according to the act of Congress, By RICHA^RD smith ELLIOTT, In the Office of the Librarian of Congress. ADVERTISEMENT. Single copies of this Book -will be raailed to any address for )2.00 in cash and 20 cts. in postage stamps. Five copies will be sent by mail for $10.00 free of postage. On larger orders reasonable deductions -will be made. Orders may be sent to R. P. Studley & Oo., 221 N. Main treet, St. Louis, or to the undersigned. Persons desiring to act as Agents (to "whom liberal discount /ill be allow^ed) -will please address R. S. ELLIOTT, St. Louis, Mo. K X T R A C T From John Buntan's Apology for his Book, taken from an edition of Pilgrim's PKOGRESs,y printed in 1775. As John died in 1688, these lines are probably 200 years old, and we must|( give them a ( hane(! to survive till A.D. 2084. ' " More than twenty things, which I set down; This done, I twenty more had in my Crown; And they again began to multiply Like Sparks that from the Coals of Fire do fly. Nay, then, thought I, if that you breed so fast, I'll put you by yourselves, lest you at last Should prove ad infinitum. * * * * ***** Yet I did not think To show to all the World my Pen and Ink In such a Mode ; I only thought to make I knew liot what : Nor did I undertake To please my neighbour ; no, not I ; I did it mj' own self to gi-atify. Thus I set Pen to Paper with Delight, And quickly had my Thoughts in Black and White. For having now my Method by the End, Still as I pull'd, it came; and so I pcnn'd It down; until it came at last to be For Length and Breadth the Bigness which you see. —Well, when I had thus put my Ends togethtn- I showed them others, that I might see whether They would condemn them, or them jiistif y : And some said, let them live ; some, let them die ; Some said, John, print it ; others said, Not so ; Some said it might do Good; others said No. Now I was in a Streight, and did not see Which was the best Thing to be done by me ; At last I thought, since ye are thus divided, I print it will, and so the Case decided. ' For, thought I, some I see would have it done. Though others in that Channel do not run : To prove, then, who advised for the best, Thus I thought fit to put it to the Test." NOTES TAKEN IN SIXTY YEARS. CHAPTER I. PREFATORY BUT NOT APOLOGETIC — FOREFATHERS — DATE OF AN IMPORT- ANT EVENT — PARALLEL BETWEEN N. BONAPARTE AND THE WRITER — EXILE — EARLY RECOLLECTIONS — OLD-SCHOOL PEOPLE AND TIMES — THE LADY TEACHER'S CONUNDRUM — LINES ON A TRUE-HEARTED MAN — SELF-PROPELLING NORMAL SCHOOL — HINT AT DESTINY. Ben. Franklin, Sol. Smith and Horace Greeley have written of them- selves and their times. So have Arago, Lamartine, and many others. Abler men than I, no doubt; but, because Jupiter is a great planet, do we say the little star shall not twinkle? And why, then, may not I, too, write modestly of myself and my times ? As it would make the book too big for any writer to tell all the truth about himself, I need not tell distasteful things. It is therefore a safe busi- ness to write a Memoir, as anything one would rather not tell can be left out ; and if I think of any dubious things in my own life, I can pass them pver. Great slices of the actual life of any man must be thrown aside, whether he or another tells the tale ; but if the reader hankers after the Lintold, thinking it might be savory with peccadillos or the like, let him imagine the void filled with his own shortcomings, and he need not care to feast on those of men no better than himself. Noah Webster (whose blue-backed spelling-book is remembered with lingering aflTection from childhood) defines a Memoir to be " a history com- posed from personal experience and memory ; a history lacking method and 3ompleteness." This definition was made for me, as what I aim to write, ivhile autobiographical to some extent, and reminiscent, will be apt to lack nethod and completeness. Still, though my little dish may not be very lutritive or high-flavored, it may yet have the spice of variety, and, like }he famous ragout of Theron Barnum's old City Hotel, may turn out to be ;he best dish of the kind to be found anywhere. 2 NOTES TAKEN IN SIXTY YEARS. As I am of sad and melancholy temperament, it may happen that a , streak of something like humor may now and then get into my work, as i the naughty gray gets into Madame's hair, but I shall keep all such out ; as well as I can. I trust not to be top egotistical ; but egotism in print is not always offen-- sive. On the contrary, it is sometimes very pleasant, and we give our • hearts to the writer, even while he gossips only of himself. He may, in- • deed, be only doing what we would like to do for ourselves, if we could do t it as well. It is egotism in talk that wearies and offends. We cannot put ; the talker on a shelf when tired of his chatter. Necessarily I must write of myself, but will treat of so many other per- ■ sons and so many things, that my personality will be only a string to hang pearls on, as I shall write mainly of what I have seen, read, or heard, rather than of my own sayings and doings. There may not always be pearls on the string, and the men and things may at times be more like the dried apples hung up of old by the chimney, or the red peppers festooning the adobe houses in New Mexico ; but the apples and peppers are good enough when properly served up. I am not prompted to write by vanity or inordinate self-appreciation. Unfortmiately, I have always been lacking in vanity and self-esteem, which are qualities essential to the best use of the faculties. Conceit and confi- dence in one's self are convertible terms, and self-reUance is the parent of i achievement. • Washington Irving, in his fiction of Diedrich Knickerbocker — so like truth that he doubtless believed the story while telling it— begins at the creation of the world, but I shall not go back so far, as it may be granted that this was a very passable world even before I came into it, but has grown amazingly since. Nor shall I weary the reader with tedious ances- tral details. Let it suffice that my forefathers were among the first fami- lies of Pennsylvania, in old Cumberland county, having found it convenient to leave the British Isles after the rebellion of 1745. Good people in their way, those forefathers, but on the losing side in politics, and hence had to come over the salt sea. They were rebels again in 1776, but were trans- muted into patriots by winning the fight. But behold how one's fate may be influenced by circumstances entirely beyond his control ! If the Stuart heir had won his crown, those forefathers of mine might never have come over the sea, and I might never have been born at all, or born a foreigner. As events turned out, I was born in Pennsylvania, on the tenth day of July, Anno Domini 1817. Tradition holds that I was a remarkable child. Everybody within hear- ing remarked on my infant utterance, crude as it was. I could out-scream any child in the State. "The crossest baby in the Commonwealth," they said of me, and likened me to Napoleon Bonaparte, who from all accounts, was one of the most petulant and disagreeable children that ever lived His parents, however, loved and admired him, and mine loved and admired KOTES TAKEN IN SIXTY YEARS. 3 me. But here the parallel between N. B. and myself seems to end. There has been little other parity in our careers. He grew up in a time of turmoil, and had a chance to light his way to the Consulate and Empire. I grew up in a quiet time, when there was no chance to pick up a crown at the point of one's sword. N. Bonaparte is, I think, the most illustrious character in profane his- tory ; and in some respects the most detestable. He did wonders, but with all his genius he lacked good sense, or he would never have marched to Moscow. That Russian cami)aign began his ruin. But in common life men are constantly marching to Moscow — prosperous for a time, and then peril- ing all on some big enterprise, that fails at last and ruins them. Commerce, manufactures, mines, and even politics, are full of these Napoleons, who bravely march on, and perish. The world often gains by their ventures, but they must abdicate and go into exile all the same. On his lone isle in the South Sea Napoleon dictated a skeleton Memoir. I write a truthful one from unmerited exile in the sad solitude of crowds. My first recollection is of a wrong suffered. My loving mother spanked me for throwing into the fire one of my socks, and as I was really not guilty, this unjust punishment filled my little heart with agony. My next recollection is of a horrible dream, when, in the silence of the night, the room was filled with the "bears" which I had been assured would " eat" me if I was not "good," just as those bears in the Bible ate the little bad boys who mocked Elisha. Each foot seemed to be as big as my body ; I could not move or cry out, and expected every moment to be devoured. < My next recollection is of an eflbrt in science. I asked my father how fire was made, and he replied " by fiint and steel." There the investiga- tion ended. I knew fire was made by flint and steel, but what these were I did not find out till some time afterwards. Thus my three earliest recollections are of a wrong suftered, a dream of horror, and a fruitless pursuit of knowledge. False testimony brought the injustice. The dream was the action of imagination, excited by the sad fate of the naughty boys who perished for saying " go up, thou baldhead." I had almost wept for those little boys. My failure in science was my father's fault; he ought to have replied more fully to my question, as with due encouragement I might have become a philosopher. Children wish to learn, and their education goes on to advantage long before they go to school. I cannot recollect much of my first school. There was a shallow pond near it, and one wmter day the boys were sliding across it on ice so thirj^ that it bent under us. At length it broke, and I went down to my armpits. I was nearly frozen when I got home, where I was " warmed up" as they called it, with a whipping. This I thought unfair. I felt the honest resentment of an injured boy, and determined to go on the ice again, thick or thin, the very first opportunity. 4 NOTES TAKEN IN SIXTY YEARS. All I remember clearly of this school Is that we had for reading books- the "Introduction to the English Reader," the "English Reader," and the "Sequel to the English Reader" — all containing pieces suited to the differ- ent classes. One of my favorite pieces was that beginning — " Pity tlie sorrows of a poor old man, WTiose trembling limbs have borne him to your door: " and I always had before me in imagination the figure of that old man. How deeply I felt his woes ! He was a real old man to me, and I longed to actually see him in his rags and tatters, and give him something. The sympathy for the needy excited so long ago is hardly worn out even now, yet the old man of the poem was possibly not real, but only a fancy man alll the time. A jjoem rehearsing the dispute of three travelers about the color of the ■ chameleon interested us so much, that we hunted along the fences, hoping r to find chameleons, and ascertain their color for ourselves. The "Three Warnings" (by Mrs. Thrale, Dr. Johnson's friend and patron) was also ai favorite. It is a pretty little poem, with a moral : " On neighbor Dodson's wedding day, , Death called aside the jocund groom With him into another room And looking grave, ' You must,' said he. Quit your sweet bride and come with me.' " But Mr. Dodson, just married as he was, did not like to go, and begged 1 off— finally getting a promise from Death that he would give him three warnings before calling again. Years passed, and Dodson was happy. At length Death called, when the old man, surprised by the visit, told him he ' had not had the promised warnings. Death inquired the state 'of Mr. D.'s > health, when it appeared that he had an ailing in his legs, his hearing was i defective, and his eyes were failing ; whereupon Death says to him : " ' If you are lame, and deaf, and blind, j You've had your three sufficient warnin So come along, no more we'll part,' He said, and touched him with his dart." I do not know what kind of poetry or verses they read in schools now-a- days, but I doubt if they have anything better liked by the pupils, or indeed of more intrinsic value, than the pieces in the old books which we had and enjoyed before the advent of the book agent. My next school was in a log cabin, with a door on one side and a window on the other. The window was made by cutting out a log, fixing a frame in the opening, and pasting greased pai)er over it as a substitute for glass ; and along the window, inside, a smooth board was the writing desk. We made our " pot-hooks and hangers" on the old-fashioned fools-cap paper, with untrimmed edges and unruled siirfaces, that we ruled ourselves, using lead pencils made by pounding bullets into the required shape. Our pens NOTES TAKEN IN SIXTY YEA.RS. 5 were genuine goose quills, and it was a matter of no little pride with the "master" that he could make and mend a pen skillfully. I do not remem- ber the name of that master, but he may have been of kin to the one who taught in the "Deserted Village," as told by Dr. Goldsmith, for in the families where he boarded round, as well as among his pupils, " The wonder grew, That one small head could carry all he knew." Our studies at those primitive schools were reading, writing and arith- metic. To read aloud well, to write a fair round hand, and to "cypher through the book," were accomplishments. I could read passing well, but fell behind in writing and cyphering. My gift of reading aloud so well may have been hereditary, as my good father, even before I was born, and while he was yet quite a young man, had great local repute for his excellent read- ing of the Declaration of Independence on the Fourth of July. A later school was taught by a lady, but all I recollect of it is, that com- ing in late one afternoon, I found the pupils all posed by the question : " Who was the father of Zebedee's children?" None could tell, and when the question was put to me I gained much credit by the hap-hazard reply, that I supposed it was Mr. Zebedee himself. But I have never had any adequate means of verifying the correctness of this answer. There were no common schools in Pennsylvania then. Tuition had to be paid for by the " quarter," and in some rural districts the teachers "boarded round," a week or two at a time in the homes of the pupils, as part of their compensation. My dear old friend and neighbor, Professor J. L. Tracy, who in his youthful days taught school in that state, has often told me of his varied and piquant experiences when he boarded round among liis patrons. The good professor (who in his time did so much to advance education in Missouri) was in later years ever busy giving pleasure and .instruction with his pen ; but the grass now grows over his resting place. Only a year before he was taken from us, a distant correspondent having inquired what manner of man he was, whose writings were so pleasant and profitable, the reply was given by me in verse, not unpleasing to my valued friend : The Professor. My friend, the Pi-ofessor, a worthy good fellow, Like an over-ripe apple, is somewhat too mellow ; Yet still he gets round rather lively 'mongst men, For one counting up nearly three-score and ten. Only give him a pencil, and spread a blank page, You'll get vigor of youth with the wisdom of age; And Addison, Goldsmith, or Irvinjr, I tliink. Never let better English flow out with their ink. 6 NOTES TAKEN IN SIXTY YEARS. This genial old stager, with heart unclefiled — No statesman e'er wiser, and simpler no child — Looks over all nature, all science, all art. And tastefully culls for our use the best part. Though ever deserving of Fortune's good will, He's left in old age Avith a pocket to fill ; And his days that ought rightly to pass without toil, Are given to labor " to make the pot boil." Still, onward he plods, bearing gaily his load. That does not get lighter, though down hill the road; And as friend or as neighbor for all has a smile — The true-hearted man in a world full of guile. From about eleven to thirteen years of age I attended the town academy,, '' footing it " three miles from the farm. The academy, with its belfry cov-- ered with bright tin, was regarded as the shining light of the region, and' pupils came even from adjoining counties. The principal and his wife were' tlie faculty, and the advanced scholars acted as monitors ; so it was a kindl of self-propelling normal school, as the State did not tax the people to edu-- cate any one for a profession, whether fitted for it by nature or not. Like hundreds of others, I look back and see that I must have been am idle student, and wasted my time. I could learn rapidly enough, but could I as readily forget ; and though the higher branches were taught in the acad- emy, even Latin, Greek and mathematics, yet I never got beyond geography ■ and grammar. I was pretty well acquainted with Lindley Murray, and got some idea of natural philosophy by hearing the class recite, but the recita- tions in history were a bore. As to spelling, I was usually at the head of the class, seeming to have a natural gift for spelling, which, like my gift for reading aloud, may have been hereditary, as my father was in his younger days a printer. It is the happy belief of the present day that the means of education are beyond all precedent ; but as far back as I can remember there were abun- dant means for all who had the gift and determination to learn ; and I might have been an accomplished scholar if I liad been blessed with talents, industry and perseverance to improve my opportunities. I think, too, they must have had good schools where Goldsmith, Addison, Pope, et al., were taught. My parents wished me to continue at school, but I chose rather to quit at the age of thirteen, and work on the farm. But, though schooling had stopped, my education still went on, and after the age of fifty-three years the learning of the farm came into practical and beneficial use, in such manner as to justify the supposition that a special providence may have led me to quit the academy. A very useful episode of an unpretentious career, affecting large interests, could not have occurred if I had kejit on at school, instead of working on the farm. I will tell of this in due time, and show how it was that events of much importance might have never taken place, if I had staid at school as my parents wished. " Kismet " says the Mussel- man, meaning Destiny. NOTES TAKEN IN SIXTY YEAKS. CHAPTER II. AN OLD TOWN — THE OLD JUNIATA TRAIL — THE NEW TURNPIKE — BELL TEAMS AND INTER-STATE COMMERCE — GREATEST MEN OF EARTH — AN OLD TAVERN AND COOKERY — COUNT RUMFORD — SCIENCE IN STOVE OVENS — LEARNED DISQUISITION ON GROG — PANTALETS ON PIANO LEGS — A PLAIN ST. LOUIS MECHANIC. My native place, Lewistown, having- over 4,000 people now, is in the charming valley of the Juniata, in the centre of the great State of Pennsyl- vania. Although not a " City," but an old-fashioned " Borough," with its "Burgesses," and without any City Counselor or Marshal, or a big tax fund, it is yet more than a Centenarian, however deficient in the modern improvements of municipal management. The first house was built in 1755 ; the county organization dates from 1789. It is a brisk town for honest business, but so slow in some respects that they have never had any defaulting treasurers, and I think the county has not had a trial for murder in sixty years, nor any robbery worth naming in all that time. Penn's purchase notwithstanding, they used to have Indian troubles in that region, and thrilling narratives of the perils and sufiTerings met and endured by the pioneers might have been written, if pen and paper had not been rather scarce. Tales of brave adventure and of savage deeds were told round firesides three score years ago, by the ancient people to whom the arrow, tomahawk and scalping knife had been realities. From a very remote day a trail for pack-horses from Philadelphia to Pittsburgh, along the Juniata and over the Alleghenies, had been used in carrying supplies to the people west of the mountains ; and many a bar of iron, bent to rest on the pack-saddle, was taken over to the waters of the Ohio, and perhaps even reached St. Louis, then an innocent village, with unlocked doors, and fiddles played without notes. Early in the century the trail was changed to a wagon road. When I was old enough to run with a little kite, my bare feet were hurt on the sharp stones of the new "turnpike" through the town. On this road teams of six horses, often with bells on their hames, drew large cov- ered wagons, laden with merchandise for the "backwoods," which meant western Pennsylvania, Ohio, and parts beyond ; — a rather indefinite term for a region then more distant, in the time required to reach it, than Old 8 NOTES TAKEN IN SIXTY YEARS. Mexico is now. Tiie wagons had but little return freight, but what they had, if the drivers replied truly to inquiring boys, was mostly "ginseng and feathers." Ginseng, a plant with a small taper root, and a taste resembling that of liquorice, was gathered in western Pennsylvania, and I believe ex- ported to China. My friend Mr. Murtfeldt tells me that the dry ginseng root is worth its weight in gold ; but this must be the price in China, or it would have been dug up for currency in the flush times when gold was 180 above paper par. Fisk would have sold " short," and settled with ginseng, making a fair profit on the tinware traded for it. The drivers were proba- bly quizzing the boys, and must have had furs and peltries in their wagons, to make even a moderate load for teams of Conestoga horses, then common in Pennsylvania, and in build, weight and power fully equal to the Norman stock imported of late years. Our old inter-state commerce needed no regulation by any Mr. Reagan in Congress, or by any state board of com- missioners, but was very much facilitated by our new turnpike road, notable as the first highway of the kind in that part of Pennsylvania. A very dim recollection floats through my brain of a two-horse vehicle, which must have carried mails and passengers, before the turnpike road was made ; but after that great highway, as it was then considered, came into use, four-horse coaches appeared, and their drivers, in the estimation of the boys, were the greatest men of earth, with their lofty seats and their long whip-lashes. I pity the modern boys, who never see men as great as our old stage drivers. To children of a larger growth, the stage, its driver, and passengers, were objects of interest, as shown by the gatherings at the tavern door to greet their arrival. But do you know, My Dear Lady, how they cooked at the old tavern? Not in a " Charter Oak," or a " Superior," or a " Brilliant," or in any thing else like a modern cooking stove. None such were then in existence. Count Rumford originated the cooking stove in 1795, but it had not reached our secluded valley. The cooking of our tavern was done at a liberal wood fire, in the ample kitchen hearth, with pot, and skillet, and frying pan, and dutch-oven, and waffle-irons, and griddle, together with the " tin kitchen " for roasting the beef, or turkey, or saddle of venison. Such roast. turkey as you never saw, my young friend, and cannot have, from the oven of a com- mon cooking stove or a hotel range. The tin kitchen was a half-cylinder, placed horizontally before the fire, with an iron rod to impale the turkey. Sometimes a turkey would be hung up by a string before the fire to roast, when on court days two turkeys were needed for dinner. Bread and pies were baked in a brick oven, like the old-fashioned ovens used by j)ublic bakers. The only stoves tlien in use among our people were the " ten- plate" and the "Franklin;" the latter set into the fire-place, and both used only for heating. The stoves, as also the pots and other like things, were all cast at the iron-smelting furnaces; no foundries having then been established in the interior. The changes during sixty years in household and kitchen arrangements are great, but as a rule the cooking has not NOTES TAKEN IN SIXTY X"EAKS. 9 improved. On this point, Prof. Jolin H. Tice, thie philosopher of Chelten- ham, suspends his meteorological studies, or his regulation of the weather, long enough to write : "Those whose remembrance runs back half a century, when cooking stoves began to come into use, will recall the fact that their sainted moth- ers, while lavish in praises of the handiness, convenience and general per- formance of the innovation, uniformly made one objection to it, namely, that in baking and roasting it did not come up to the old standard. All persons who have passed the meridian of life recall with zest the fine and delicious flavor of the tender beef, pork, lamb, turkey, etc., roasted before the open fire, and hence their own experience can bear testimony to the reality of the maternal objection." Prof. Tice then tells us that Mr. Giles F. Filley, of St. Louis, has lately made a scientific discovery, and applies it to cooking stoves with most grati- fying results, both as to saving of fuel and cooking and baking. As Mr. Filley has been making stoves for about a third of a century, anything to w iiich he gives sanction ought to be reliable, and hence I note his discov- ery. He had observed that the iron door closing the feed hole of his cupola became very hot and soon burned out. This was costly, and he conceived the idea of using a wire screen to protect the workmen from the heat. The screen arrested the heat, but to his surprise did not itself become heated, as the iron door did. Here was something new, but was mainly valued as saving expense in renewals of the door. Some time after the use of the screen began, several of the rival stove-makers having vaunted the merits of their oven doors, fitting very closely, and even made double, with non- conducting material between the plates, Mr. Filley began to insist that instead of greater heat in the stove oven, some means of modifying the temperature was required; and he decided to try. the effect of wire gauze doors on a Charter Oak oven. The experiment indicated that by using the gauze, baking and cooking could be done with less wood or coal. But the most striking result is, that the gauze doors to the oven, Mr. Filley says, enable our womankind to bake and roast with all the old time perfection. Granting this, I can hardly master the reasons why the stove does better work; but if forced to give an explanation I would say: 1st, That in 212 degrees of Fahrenheit's thermometer — the limit to which water can be heated, unless confined, as in a steam boiler — nature has apparently given us a measure of the heat required in cooking our food, as we see in the boiling process ; 2d, That if in baking or roasting we go beyond this measure, as in a stove oven with close iron doors, we may have a tempera- ture not only unnecessary but injurious; 3d, That the gauze doors, which modify the heat in the oven of the stove, keep it at about the measure of heat received by the turkey in the old tin kitchen ; and, 4th, That with the close iron doors the heat in the oven may rise much beyond 212 degrees, even to 400 or 600 degrees, and by hardening the outside of the turkey or loaf may interfere with the proper roasting or baking. Such would be my 10 NOTES TAKEN IN SIXTY YEAKS. theory, and if tlie facts do not agree with it, some one of the learned scien- tists may provide a better. I am not, liowever, so certain of my theory in regard to the effects ot the