GOVERNOR PINCHBACK.
Great oaks from little acorns grow; and you can never tell the eminent position to which the little bare-footed, ragged boy may climb if he has good luck. There is Governor Pinchback, of Louisiana. He was my boy. I raised him, and trained him. I took him out of a steamboat barber shop. I instructed him in the mysteries of card- playing, and he was an apt pupil. Never shall I forget the night we left New Orleans on the steamer Doubloon. There was a strong team of us—Tom Brown, Holly Chappell, and the boy Pinch. We sent Pinch and staked him to open a game of chuck-a-luck with the niggers on deck, while we opened up monte in the cabin. The run of luck that evening was something grand to behold. I do not think there was a solitary man on the boat that did not drop around in the course of the evening and lose his bundle. When about thirty miles from New Orleans a heavy fog overtook us, and it was our purpose to get off and walk about six miles to Kennersville, where we could take the cars to the city.
Pinchback got our valises together, and a start was made. A drizzling rain was falling, and the darkness was so great that one could not see his hand before his face. Each of us grabbed a valise except Pinch, who carried along the faro tools. The walking was so slippery that we were in the mud about every ten steps, and poor Pinch he groaned under the load that he carried. At last he broke out:
"Tell you what it is, Master Devol, I'll be dumbed if this aint rough on Pinch. Ise going to do better than this toting along old faro tools."
"What's that, Pinch? What you going to do?"
"Ise going to get into that good old Legislature; and I'll make
Rome howl if I get there."
Of course I thought at the time that this was all bravado and brag; but the boy was in earnest, and sure enough he got into the Legislature, became Lieutenant-Governor, and by the death of the Governor he slipped into the gubernatorial chair, and at last crawled into the United States Senate.
He did me a good turn when he got up in the world, and true and high honor did not dim the kindly feeling he had for me. I had been playing on the Jackson Railroad, and my luck had been good; but I was satisfied, from certain ominous signs, that a big kick was brewing. To avoid trouble I got off the train a few miles before reaching the city, and had been in town a day or two when the Chief of Police sent for me.
Of course I responded, when he told me, "Devol, you have beat one of the Police Commissioners out of $800, and he says you shan't live in the city."
"I have lived in the city too many years to be run out by any one man."
Thinking it best to have this matter settled, I went to my old friend Bush, and we took a hack and drove to the executive mansion. Pinchback, my old boy, was Governor then; and though it was late at night, he insisted on calling us in, woke up all the servants, and set out a royal lunch, with all sorts of liquors, and we had a high old time. "Go to bed, George," he said, "and don't give yourself any uneasiness. I'll settle that fellow in the morning."
That was the end of the $800 Police Commissioner.