Whittling
was not formerly confined to the youth of the country; lawyers, merchants, and statesmen, were adepts in the art, and on the counter of every well-regulated tavern was always to be found a heap of sweet-smelling cedar sticks for the guests to whittle, after meals.
Even as early as Puritan times the jack-knives were busy, and the little conscience-stricken Nathaniel Mathers confesses that “of the manifold sins which then I was guilty of none so sticks upon me as that, being very young, I was whittling on the Sabbath day, and for fear of being seen I did it behind the door.”
Times have changed since this poor little chap hid behind the door to whittle a stick, and some of the less conscientious descendants of the Puritans would not dare now to whittle on Sunday, or any other day, for fear of cutting their clumsy, untrained fingers. But the fingers of the readers of this book, I trust, are skilful in the use of a pocket-knife, and for them it will not be a difficult task to make a Wabash, or Flat-boatman’s, wooden horn.
The wooden horn was the particular favorite of the jolly, reckless flat-boatmen. Its soft musical notes sounded especially sweet and mellow in the early morning, when the boatmen were casting loose their cables from their moorings. From Pittsburg to New Orleans the reveille of the boatmen’s horns announced the dawn of another day.
Descriptions of these horns have come to us from our pioneer grandparents, and printed accounts can only be found by rummaging among old Western papers. The Frankfort (Kentucky) Commonwealth, in 1836, published some verses extolling the boatman’s music:
Oh, boatman, wind that horn again!
For never did the joyous air
Upon its lambent bosom bear
So wild, so soft, so sweet a strain.
And this horn was made of the same material as the boat. They performed upon a wooden bugle of long conical shape, constructed of small wooden staves, which, according to all accounts, produced sounds of a wonderfully sweet tone. On a beautiful, clear and still morning the echoes of the boatmen’s trumpets, prolonged at a great distance through the neighboring woods and hills which bordered the river, are said to have possessed a charm and enchantment which none can realize but those who have heard them.
The Western boatmen were not the only ones who used