A CONVERSATION IN A KENTUCKY STAGE COACH.[13]
I can not refrain from giving a conversation which I heard as we came by the coach to Louisville. One of the speakers was a very agreeable and apparently well-informed gentleman, who seemed to have seen a great deal of the world. When he first entered the "stage," it would seem it was with the benignant intention of giving a sort of converzatione in the coach, in which, after a few preliminary interrogatories to the various passengers (as if to take the size and measure of their capacities), he sustained all the active part, not calling upon them for the slightest exercise of their conversational powers. He varied the entertainment occasionally, by soliloquizing and monopolyguizing; and ever and anon it appeared as if he addressed the human race generally, or was speaking for posterity in a very elevated tone indeed, and seemingly oblivious of that fraction of the contemporaneous generation who were then largely benefiting by his really most animated and amusing discourse—for he was thoroughly original and very shrewd and entertaining.
Where had he not been? What had he not seen? what not met, tried, suffered, sought, found, dared, done, won, lost, said? The last we could give the most implicit credence to, no matter how large the demand. Now he told us, or the ceiling of the coach, how he had been eighteen months in the prairies (which keep very open house for all visitors), shooting herds of buffaloes, and with his cloak for his only castle, and all his household furniture, and how he had been all this time without bed or bread: and he described the longing for the last, much in the way Mr. Ruxton does in his account of prairie excursions; and now—but I will not attempt to follow him in all his wondrous adventures.
Suffice it to say, Robinson Crusoe, placed in juxtaposition with him, was a mere fire-side stay-at-home sort of personage, one who had never left his own comfortable arm-chair, in comparison. In short, the adventures were marvelous and manifold, and all told in the same agreeable, lively, Scheherezade-like sort of a manner—so agreeable, indeed, that I am sure had Judge Lynch himself had any little account to settle with him, he would have postponed—à la Sultan of the Indies—any trifling beheading or strangling, or unpleasant little operation of the sort, to hear the end of the tale.
After these narratives and amusing lectures had been poured forth continuously for a length of time, it chanced that a quiet countryman-like person got into the coach, bundle and stick in hand. After a few questions to this rustic wayfarer, our eloquent orator left off his historic and other tales, and devoted himself to drawing out, and "squeezing the orange of the brains" of this apparently simple-minded and unlettered man. The discourse that ensued was a singular one—to take place, too, in the United States between Americans.
The new-comer was a Kentuckian by birth, who had not very long ago gone to settle in Indiana. He called himself a mechanic—these facts came out in answer to the queries put to him by our unwearied talker—but he had, as I have said, much more the appearance of a respectable country farming man—and, indeed, I believe, mechanic means here, in a general sense, a laborer. He seemed a fine, honest-hearted, straight-forward, noble-spirited son of the plow; and his lofty, earnest, generous sentiments were spoken in somewhat unpolished but energetic and good language; and what particularly struck me was a really beautiful and almost child-like simplicity of mind and manner, that was combined with the most uncompromising firmness and unflinching adherence in argument, to what he conceived to be right.
His features were decidedly plain, but the countenance was very fine, chiefly characterized by great ingenuousness, commingled with gentleness and benevolence; and yet bearing evident traces of strength, determination, and energetic resolution. It was rather a complicated countenance, so to say, notwithstanding its great openness and expression of downright truth and goodness.
After opening the conversation with him, as you would an oyster, by the introduction of a pretty keen knife of inquisitorial questions, the chief speaker began to hold forth, capriciously enough, on the essentials and distinguishing attributes of a gentleman. He declared, emphatically, that one qualification alone was necessary, and that money only made a gentleman, according to the world, and, above all, in the United States (quite a mistake is this, I fully believe). "Let a man," said he, "be dressed here in every thing of the best, with splendid rings on his fingers, and plenty of money to spend at the ends of them, and he may go where he will, and be received as a gentleman; ay, though he may be a gambler, a rogue, or a swindler, and you, now, you may be a good honest mechanic; but he will at once get into the best society in these parts, which you would never dream even of attempting to accomplish—"
"But he would not be a gentleman," broke in the Kentuckian, indignantly. "No, sir; nor will I ever allow that money only makes the gentleman: it is the principle, sir, and the inner feeling, and the mind—and no fine clothes can ever make it; and no rough ones unmake it, that's a fact. And, sir, there's many a better gentleman following the plow in these parts than there is among the richer classes: I mean those poor men who're contented with their lot, and work hard and try no mean shifts and methods to get on an' up in the world; for there's little some 'ill stick at to get at money; and such means a true gentleman (what I call a gentleman) will avoid like poison, and scorn utterly."