The Minute Man on the Frontier

by William George Puddefoot

What joy to sit in the ample porch and look over the great cotton-fields with their regular rows of bluish green, variegated by the tender hue of the young corn, and a dozen shades of as many species of oak, while the brilliant tulip-tree and the distant hills, now of softest blue, contrasting with the rich, red ochre of the soil, make up a picture never to be forgotten. Cooled by the breezes that sweep through the porch, one dozes away an hour of enchantment. The negroes with their mules, in the distance, in almost every field, add to its piquancy, and often, floating on the wind, come wild snatches in weird minor notes the broken rhythm of their old Virginia reel, performed with the rollicking exuberance of the race.

The reader must not suppose that all Southern homes answer to the above description. Thousands of houses are without a porch or any shade save that which nature gives. The chimneys are built on the outside, sometimes of stone, sometimes of brick or of clay, while layers of one-inch slats hold the chimney together; but, as a rule, so prodigal is nature that a vine of some kind will entwine around their otherwise bare and severe outlines, and make them, like some dogs, homely enough to be handsome.

Although these poorer houses are devoid of all artificial attempts to beautify, they are frequently built near a great oak and the dense china-tree for shade, while wild fruits of many kinds grow promiscuously about. In every hedgerow, and within a stone's throw of nearly every country home, will be found partridges, wild pigeons, and all sorts of small game, with plenty of foxes to keep it in reasonable bounds, while every household has a number of hounds and curs for the foxes. But with all the varied beauty of the scene, the New Englander constantly misses the well-kept lawn,—for here bare ground always takes the place of grass,—and there are no village green and fine shaded roads, and that general neatness which distinguishes the rural scenes of "the Pilgrim land."

A few words about the people. They are as warm-hearted as their climate; the stranger is greeted with such invitations as these: "Come in;" "Take a chair;" "Have some of the fry;" "Have some fresh water." They are up with the sun—family prayer by five, A.M.; breakfast half an hour later; dinner at one; supper at seven; to bed by dark. The churches are plain, costing seldom more than eight hundred or one thousand dollars; doors on all sides opposite each other to allow for a good circulation of air. A pail of water stands on a form near the pulpit. The church generally stands in a grove or the forest itself.

The people are very fond of preaching. The whole family, from the oldest to the youngest, go; and one may often see the mother at the communion with a little one at the breast. Sometimes eleven or more of a family will occupy a wagon filled with oak-splint chairs.

It takes one back thirty years ago to the West, as one stands at the church-door and sees the people flocking in through winding roads in the woods, the sunlight and shadow dancing upon the moving teams that shine like satin in the bright morning air. The dogs are wild with delight as they start a covey of partridges, and make music in the deep shadows of the woods. Here a group of young men and maidens are drinking at the spring.

The preacher often is a jack-of-all-trades—sometimes a doctor, getting his degree from the family medicine-book; and strange to say, though an ardent believer in faith-cure, and with marvellous accounts of cures in answer to prayer, yet prescribing a liver invigorator when that organ is in trouble. Some of these men are natural orators, and with their bursts of eloquence often hush their hearers to holy awe and inspiration. They have one book, and believe it. No doubts trouble them. Higher criticism has never reached them. Mosaic origin of the Pentateuch is unquestioned. Moses and no other, to them, wrote the five books, including the account of his own burial. They know nothing of pre-exilic Psalms or Greek periods of Daniel; but all preach Jesus, no matter whence they draw their text. In an instant they make a short cut for Calvary.

One brother, over eighty years of age, walks fifteen miles, and preaches three times. Some of his sermons take two hours in delivery, without the aid of a scrap of note; and the talk for days after is on the sermon. No quarterlies, monthlies, or weeklies lie at home to divert. No lecturer strays to that region. Here and there is a village house with an organ or a piano, and, of course, a paper.

I am speaking of the rural South,—and nearly all the South is rural, nearly all American, even the cities, with few exceptions, and the operatives are Southern, and mostly from the farms; so that one may find a city whose operatives live in another State, across a river, in a community numbering nearly seven thousand souls, and most of them keeping pigs and a cow (or, rather, not keeping them, for they roam at their own sweet will down grassy, ungraded streets). In such a place one meets old ladies of quite respectable appearance, with the little snuffing-stick in their mouths, or a pipe; and here one small grocery shop may sell two hundred dozen of little tin snuff-boxes in a month! There are cities in the South where you will find as fine hotels and stores as any on the continent. But from any such city it is only a step to the most primitive conditions.

Let me describe a characteristic night scene near a large city. My friend met me at the depot with his little light wagon and diminutive mule, and we started for the homestead. Our road lay between banks of honeysuckle that saturated the air with its rich perfume; wild-goose plum, persimmon, bullice, and chinquapin (the latter somewhat like a chestnut, but smaller), huckleberries on bushes twelve feet high, called currants there, lined the road on either side. The house was surrounded by the débris of former corn-cribs and present ones; stables were scattered here and there in picturesque confusion. One end of the house was open, and had been waiting for years for its chimney; there was shrubbery of every kind all about. I had the usual hearty welcome and supper, and then attended the inevitable meeting in the grove.