“We are in a slave State now,” wrote Jean, under date of April 16; “and from my limited experience I am forced to conclude that slavery is more deteriorating in its effects upon the white people we meet than it is upon the blacks. The primitive cultivating of the soil we saw in central Illinois, where the white men do their own farming, was bad enough, God knows; but the shiftless, aimless, happy-go-lucky work of the Missouri ‘niggers,’ as they style themselves, is even worse. The white men we see at times are idle, pompous, and lazy. The white women are idle and apathetic; and the children are aimless and discouraged. Daddie says slavery is wrong, and no contingency can make it right; but I notice that he doesn’t propose any remedy.”
Prairie schooners were not known as “ships of the desert” then, for Joaquin Miller had not yet sought or acquired fame; and no Huntington or Holladay had made a transcontinental railway track, or tunnelled the sierras of the mighty West to open the way for the iron horse. Even the overland stage was an improvement as yet unknown; for Holladay had not yet established his relay stations, or sent his intrepid drivers out among the savages as heralds of approaching civilization.
“Daddy says humanity’s a hog,” was the leader in Jean’s next entry in her diary. “The weather continued so bad, mother was so wan and weak, and the stock were so nearly starved, that he decided to stop over for a day or two near a farmhouse and barnyard, where there seemed a chance to purchase food for man and beast. But we were glad to move on after a rather brief experience. The farmer doubled the price of his hay and grain every morning after ‘worship,’ reminding those of us who could not choose but hear his daily dole of advice to God, of Grandpa Ranger’s story of a planter and merchant he knew in his youth, of whom it was said that he would call his slaves to their devotions in the morning with a preamble like this: ‘Have you wet the leather? Have you sanded the sugar? Have you put meal in the pepper and chicory in the coffee? Have you watered the whiskey? Then come in to prayers!’”
The necessities of these farmers were born of isolation; and the opportunities for barter and dicker with passing emigrants stirred the acquisitive spirit within them into vigorous action. The prices of their hitherto unsalable commodities went up to unheard-of figures, increasing in geometrical progression. But Captain Ranger, having created a market in the remote country places in Illinois for supplies of coffee, tea, calico, and unbleached cotton cloth, had prepared himself at Quincy with such commodities, and was able to adjust his trade somewhat to the law of supply and demand.
Oh, those teamsters of the plains! No jollier crowd of brave, enduring, accommodating men ever cracked cruel whips over the backs of long-enduring oxen, or plodded more patiently than they beside the slowly moving wagons, as, wading often over shoe-tops through the muck and mire of the Missouri roads of early springtime, they jollied one another and cracked their whips and sang. Each misfit nickname was accepted as a joke, and none of the men inquired as to the origin of his peculiar cognomen. But Hal, being more inquisitive than they, asked troublesome questions of his sisters, who were in the secret.
“Better tell him, girls,” said their mother. “He’ll be in honor bound to keep the secret then. Won’t you, dear?”
“Jean did it,” said Marjorie.
“Then suppose you confess,” said Hal.
“It was this way,” she explained after a pause of mock seriousness. “The first night we were in camp, after we had washed the dishes, it occurred to me to write each teamster’s name and paste it to the bottom of his plate. I didn’t know the real name of one of ’em from Adam’s, so I wrote them down as Scotty, Limpy, Yank, Shorty, Sawed-off, and so on. We didn’t intend to perpetrate a misfit, but a joke, and we struck both. Scotty got the correct title, though it merely happened so. But you just watch ’em! Limpy’s as straight as an Indian; Sawed-off stands six feet two in his socks; Lengthy is no taller when he stands up than when he lies down; Yank is a characteristic slave-owner; and Sambo is an ingrained abolitionist!”
“We couldn’t have made such a lot o’ misfits if we had tried a week,” said Mary. “But the men all think Hal did it; so the suspicion doesn’t fall on us; and you get the credit for being somewhat of a wag, Mr. Hal.”