PEN PICTURES

Of Eventful Scenes and Struggles of Life

By B. F. Craig

Kansas City, Missouri

1880

Original

Original

CONTENTS

SCENE FIRST—INTRODUCTION.

SCENE SECOND.—THE HERO OF SHIRT-TAIL BEND.

SCENE THIRD—THE SEPARATED SISTERS.

SCENE FOURTH—ROXIE DAYMON AND ROSE SIMON.

SCENE FIFTH.—THE BELLE OF PORT WILLIAM.

SCENE SIXTH.—THE SECOND GENERATION.

SCENE SEVENTH—WAR BETWEEN THE STATES.

SCENE FIRST—INTRODUCTION.

It is fashionable to preface what we have to say.

Some men build a large portico in front of the edifice they erect.

This may attract the eye of a stranger, but no real comfort can be realized until we enter the house.

And then no display of fine furniture or studied form of manners can equal a whole-soul, hearty welcome.

Besides, no long proclamation of the entertainment can equal in interest the entertainment itself.

Without further preliminary ceremony, I will introduce you to the sad experience of a living man:—

Born in the house of respectable parents, on the southern bank of the beautiful Ohio, in the dawn of the nineteenth century, and educated in a log school house, the first scenes of my manhood were upon the waters of the great Mississippi river and its tributaries. Leaving home at an early age, no hopeful boy was ever turned loose in the wide world more ignorant of the traps and pit-falls set to catch and degrade the youth of this broad and beautiful land.

At Vicksburg, Natchez, Under-the-Hill, and the Crescent City, with armies of dissipation—like the Roman Cæsar—I came, I saw, I conquered.

I had been taught from my earliest infancy that a thief was a scape-goat—on the left-hand side of the left gate, where all the goats are to be crowded on the last day. And that saved me.

For I soon discovered that the gambler and the thief acted upon the same theory.

Having no desire to live through the scenes of my life again—I am not writing my own history, but the history of some of the events in the lives of others that I have witnessed or learned by tradition—in the execution of the task I shall enter the palace like the log cabin—without stopping to ring the bell.

Although I have been a diligent reader for more than forty years, my greatest knowledge of human character has been drawn from observation. For prudential reasons some fancy names are used in this story, but the characters drawn are true to the letter. Local, it is true, but may they not represent character throughout this broad continent? In 1492 Columbus discovered America—a Rough Diamond—a New World.

Our fathers passed through the struggle of life in the rough, and the log cabin ought to be as dear to the American heart as the modern palace. Emancipated from ideas of locality, I hope, and honestly trust that the sentiments in the Rough Diamond will be treasured in the hearts of the millions of my countrymen, and that no American character will ever become so brilliant that it cannot allude with a nat've pride to the Rough Diamond—our country a hundred years ago.

And with a thousand other ideas brought to the mind, and blended with the Rough Diamond, may the good Angel of observation rest with the reader as you peruse these pages.

Near the seat of the present town of Helena, Arkansas, old Billy Horner and Henry Mooney made a race on two little ponies, called respectively Silver Heels and the Spotted Buck.

The distance was one quarter of a mile, and the stake one hundred dollars.

Wishing to obtain the signature of the Governor of Arkansas to a land grant and title to a certain tract of land on the Mississippi river, I determined to attend the races.

The ponies were to start at twelve o'clock, on the 15th day of May. I forget the year, but it was soon after the inauguration of steam navigation on the Mississippi.

On the 14th day of May I left Bush Bayou, twenty miles below Helena and fifteen miles back from the river, where I was on a tour of surveying, in company of two negro boys, from fifteen to twenty years of age, to assist me. Our route was down the Bayou, which was evidently an old bed of the great river. How long since the muddy and turbulent waters had left this location and sought the present channel no human calculation could tell. Trees had grown up as large as any in other localities in the Mississippi bottoms, in some places extending entirely across the Bayou; in other places there was an open space one hundred yards wide and sometimes a mile long, but there were many places where the timber extended from shore to shore for miles. In such places our only guide was a blaze upon the trees, made by the first navigators of the Bayou. We started in a canoe, eight feet long and eighteen inches wide, with a large trunk, a number of tools, and three men. When all were on board the top of our boat was only three-quarters of an inch above the water. In this critical condition the negroes had to go as freight, for they are proverbially too awkward to manage a nice thing. Near the close of our journey we were attacked by an alligator. He was sixteen feet long, and larger than our boat. His attack frightened the negroes so badly that it was impossible to keep them still, and we came very near being upset. I fired several times at the alligator, with a double-barreled shot-gun, charged with twenty-four buckshot, but the shot only glanced from his scales and fell into the water. At last, frightened by the loud cries of the negroes, the animal left us.

When we arrived on the bank of the Mississippi the Western hemisphere had blindfolded the eye of day; the river was bank full, the turbulent waters bearing a large quantity of drift wood down the stream. Upon the Arkansas shore there was no sign of civilization. On the Mississippi shore, two miles below, there was a cabin, and the faint light of the inmates was the only sign of civilization that met our view. To cross the great river, in the dark, with its turbulent waters and drift