“ ‘Yes,’ said the old lady, wearily. ‘Carry him in.’ ”
§ 343 Or in Other Words, Slightly Confused
I have always been interested in the character of Daniel Boone. It seemed to me that of all our early pioneers he, perhaps, was the most gallant and the most picturesque, and certainly the most typical.
A few months ago a collector of early Kentucky lore told me a story of the great pathfinder. I leaped upon it with loud cries of joy. I said to myself that if it were not true it deserved to be true. So far as my informant knew, it had never been printed but instead had been handed down by word of mouth from one generation to another. So I just was making ready to plunge into the arena with a brand new contribution to pioneer Americana when I sustained a severe shock.
This shock was the discovery that the same anecdote, in substantially the same form in which I heard it told by my Kentucky friend, already had appeared in print. It was published a trifling matter of one hundred and two years ago. Even so, I offer it here again for the reason I believe it has merit in it entitling it to perpetuation.
It appears that in 1819 Chester Harding, an artist, being prompted by a patriotic impulse made the long journey from his home on the eastern seaboard to Missouri, which then was in the far West, for the purpose of meeting the aged Boone and painting his portrait. At the time of Harding’s arrival Boone had left his log-cabin home and had gone on one of his periodical outings into the wilderness. The visitor followed along an obscure trail until he came to a tumbledown shanty. To quote Harding’s words, “I found him engaged in cooking his dinner. He was lying in his bunk, near the fire, and had a long strip of venison wound around his ramrod, and was busy turning it before a brisk blaze, and using pepper and salt to season his meat.
“I at once told him the object of my visit. I could tell that he did not exactly know what I meant. I explained the matter to him, and he agreed to sit. He was nearly ninety years old, and rather infirm; his memory of passing events was much impaired, yet he would amuse me every day by his anecdotes of his earlier life. I asked him one day, just after his description of one of his long hunts, if he never got lost, having no compass. ‘No’, said he, ‘I can’t say as ever I was lost, but I was bewildered once for three days.’ ”
§ 344 A Squirrel without a Peer
In the wicked days when drinking still was going on, Riley Wilson, the official humorist of West Virginia, met on the streets of Huntington a friend of his from up in the mountains. Extending the customary hospitalities, Wilson invited the hillsman to have something. The visitor was agreeably inclined. They crossed the street and entered the swinging doors of a life-saving station.
At one end of the bar an electric fan was buzzing. The gaze of the mountaineer froze on this novel object. So absorbed and interested was he that he almost forgot to help himself from the bottle which the barkeeper set out for him. He put down his emptied glass and, walking close up to the fan, continued to watch it in a fascinated silence.