Here I am, then, Whacker-Danichester-Bouche. [Anglicé, Bush.] And, since man is but the epitome of his ancestry, what kind of an author should result? Chemists tells us that it is not so much the molecules as their arrangement. Let us try this: Danichester-Bush-Whacker,—so what else could I be but a Humoristico-sentimental Bushwhacker?
And such I am, ladies and gentlemen, at your service!
29.
And a Bushwhacker, beloved scion, you will rightly divine to be one who whacks from behind a bush. But that this is so is (and that you would never guess) one of those whimsical accidents of which philology points out so many examples. Bushwhackers no more got their name in the way the name suggests than your Shank-high fowls got theirs from length of limb.
How they did get it I must now explain. Not that I may vaingloriously show off my rather quaint and curious philologic lore. I have a better motive. The word has its origin in an incident in our family history; an incident, too, of such interest that it gave rise to a poem, famous in its day, beginning, “All quiet along the Potomac to-night,”—the author of which will never be known. For three hundred and eleven people (two hundred and ninety-nine women and twelve men) went before justices of the peace, when it began to make a noise in the world, and made oath that they wrote it. Which shows, among other things, that there is no lack of justices of the peace in this country. But let’s to the incident.
30.
You must know, then, that the Bouche connection is as numerous as it is respectable. Hardly a county in Virginia where you shall not find a colony of them. And as a rule they are genteel folk, mingling with the best. But (for I shall not conceal it from you) every now and then one stumbles upon a shoot of the original stem that is fallen into the sere and yellow leaf. Still, the motto with us is, that a Bouche is a Bouche, even though he be run down at the heel. But our clannishness has its limits. We draw the line at the spelling of the name,—draw it sharply between Bouche and Bush. Still, I happen to have heard my grandfather say that, though old Jim Bush did not spell the name after the aristocratic Huguenot fashion, his father before him did; and that, consequently, he was one of us.
After all, he was by no means a bad fellow. It covers his case better to say that he was not profitable unto himself. He was, in fact, a kind of Rip Van Winkle, whose hands, though he was desperately poor and owned a farm of a few acres, were more familiar with the rifle than the handles of a plough. For miles around his tumble-down old house he and his gun were a terror to game of all kinds; and it was believed that, of squirrels especially, he had killed more, in his day, than any man within miles of Alexandria. Nor were there lacking those who maintained that upon a dozen of these edible rodents, as a substratum, he could build up a Brunswick stew such as—but I dined with him once, and feel no need of outside testimony. (I suppose it was the French streak in him. He spelt himself Bush, but blood will tell.)
“The main secret, Jack” (everybody calls me Jack, no matter how poor and humble they may be; besides, he was a cousin),—“the main secret is that I put in the brains. When I was a green hand with the rifle I used to knock their heads off; and monstrous proud I was, I remember, of never touching their bodies. Now I save their brains by just wiping off their smellers.”
Yes, my son, he was an out-at-the-elbows Bouche, and his language was low. But let us not sneer at him. He could do two things well. And how many of us can do one! For my own part, when I look at myself and then at my brother-men, I cannot find it in my heart to despise the lowliest of them all. The scornful alone do I scorn. And when I see a little two-legged puff-ball strutting along, with its nose in the air, I long for old Jim Bush and his rifle, that he might serve it as he did the squirrels.