Rugg then stood upright in his chair, and asked with some authority, “Who has demolished my house in my absence, for I see no signs of a conflagration? I demand by what accident this has happened, and wherefore this collection of strange people has assembled before my door-step. I thought I knew every man in Boston, but you appear to me a new generation of men. Yet I am familiar with many of the countenances here present, and I can call some of you by name; but in truth I do not recollect that before this moment I ever saw any one of you. There, I am certain, is a Winslow, and here a Sargent; there stands a Sewall, and next to him a Dudley. Will none of you speak to me,—or is this all a delusion? I see, indeed, many forms of men, and no want of eyes, but of motion, speech, and hearing, you seem to be destitute. Strange! Will no one inform me who has demolished my house?”
Then spake a voice from the crowd, but whence it came I could not discern: “There is nothing strange here but yourself, Mr. Rugg. Time, which destroys and renews all things, has dilapidated your house, and placed us here. You have suffered many years under an illusion. The tempest which you profanely defied at Menotomy has at length subsided; but you will never see home, for your house and wife and neighbors have all disappeared. Your estate, indeed, remains, but no home. You were cut off from the last age, and you can never be fitted to the present. Your home is gone, and you can never have another home in this world.”
JAMES HALL
1793–1868
Judge Hall gained eminence in the early Middle West at both law and letters. His law studies in Philadelphia, where he was born, were interrupted by the war of 1812. After soldiering along the Niagara he went sailoring with Decatur in the Mediterranean (1815). Then completing his studies at Pittsburgh, he emigrated to Shawneetown, where he became public prosecutor. The office of state treasurer bringing him to Vandalia, he edited there, with Robert Blackwell, the Illinois Intelligencer. The Western Souvenir, projected, edited, and largely written by him, was published at Cincinnati in 1829; the Illinois Magazine, at Vandalia, 1829–1831, then successively at Cincinnati, St. Louis, and again at Cincinnati. Following himself its last remove, Hall continued it there, 1833–1835, as the Western Monthly Magazine. Letters from the West, which appeared first, 1821–1824, in the Portfolio, were printed collectively in London, 1828. His scattered observations were brought into more consistent form: Sketches of the West, Philadelphia, 1835; Notes on the Western States, Philadelphia, 1838. A collection of his tales, entitled The Wilderness and the War Path, appeared in Wiley and Putnam’s “Library of American Books,” 1846. A uniform edition of his works was published in four volumes, 1853–1856 (a list is given in the American Cyclopedia). Some details of his life not compiled in the cyclopedias were published by Hiram W. Beckwith of Danville, in the fifth of the papers entitled “The Land of the Illini,” Chicago Tribune, 8th September, 1895.
A writer of tolerable verse and historically valuable descriptive sketches of the frontier, Hall gave much of his leisure also to embodying the history, legend, and local color of the Mississippi valley and the prairies beyond in tales. These are often removed from our present taste by the magniloquence then considered literary; but they keep the interest of close observation and have their flashes of enduring human import. The local truth of Hall’s tales is commended in the Western Monthly Review for November, 1828 (volume ii, page 367). Unless the reference be to some of the early Letters from the West, the tale printed below may have appeared earlier than the date of its incorporation in the Western Souvenir. (See also pages [5], [9] and [12] of the Introduction.)
THE FRENCH VILLAGE
[From the “Western Souvenir,” 1829]
[A long introduction and a concluding summary of the effects of American development have been omitted as not essential to the narrative; and certain obvious corrections have been made in the text.]
* * * * *
This little colony was composed partly of emigrants from France, and partly of natives—not Indians, but bona fide French, born in America, but preserving their language, their manners, and their agility in dancing, although several generations had passed away since their first settlement. Here they lived perfectly happy, and well they might, for they enjoyed to the full extent those three blessings on which our declaration of independence has laid so much stress—life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Their lives, it is true, were sometimes threatened by the miasm aforesaid; but this was soon ascertained to be an imaginary danger. For whether it was owing to their temperance or their cheerfulness, their activity or their being acclimated, or to the want of attraction between French people and fever, or to all these together, certain it is that they were blessed with a degree of health enjoyed only by the most favoured nations. As to liberty, the wild Indian scarcely possessed more; for although the “grand monarque” had not more loyal subjects in his wide domains, he had never condescended to honor them with a single act of oppression, unless the occasional visits of the Commandant could be so called. He sometimes, when levying supplies, called upon the village for its portion, which they always contributed with many protestations of gratitude for the honor conferred on them. And as for happiness, they pursued nothing else. Inverting the usual order, to enjoy life was their daily business, to provide for its wants an occasional labor, sweetened by its brief continuance, and its abundant fruit. A large tract of land around the village was called the “common field.” Most of this was allowed to remain in open pasturage; but spots of it were cultivated by any who chose to enclose them; and such enclosure gave a firm title to the individual so long as the occupancy lasted, but no longer. They were not an agricultural people, further than the rearing of a few esculents for the table made them such; relying chiefly on their large herds, and on the produce of the chase for support. With the Indians they drove an amicable, though not extensive, trade, for furs and peltry; giving them in exchange, merchandize and trinkets, which they procured from their countrymen at St. Louis. To the latter place they annually carried their skins, bringing back a fresh supply of goods for barter, together with such articles as their own wants required; not forgetting a large portion of finery for the ladies, a plentiful supply of rosin and catgut for the fiddler, and liberal presents for his reverence, the priest.